The Megyn Kelly Show - Corporate Media Gate-Keeping, and Bizarre Depp-Heard Behavior, with the Ruthless Podcast Hosts, Mark Geragos, and Vinnie Politan ｜ Ep. 312

00:00:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.580 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Happy Monday.

00:00:15.460 We have a ton to get to today, including a deep dive into the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial next hour

00:00:20.600 with two of my favorites, Vinnie Politan of Court TV and Mark Garagos, both of whom have been following it really closely.

00:00:26.800 And it's about to get very interesting because she's expected to take the stand tomorrow.

00:00:31.580 And keep in mind, we've only heard his side of the case so far, right?

00:00:34.940 So we're going to hear her side and we're going to go in depth on what to expect

00:00:38.820 because we took a deep dive into what happened over in that UK, that British court where she won.

00:00:46.000 She was accused of lying about his alleged abuse there and she won the case.

00:00:55.080 It was a defamation case. In any event, we're going to we're going to give you coverage.

00:00:59.600 You probably aren't going to hear any police else today. So stay tuned for that.

00:01:02.600 OK, first up, though, did you stay up late Saturday night to watch the press celebrate the press at the White House Correspondents Dinner?

00:01:10.180 My executive producer, Steve Krakauer, sent us a text at like 1030 on Saturday night, like,

00:01:15.580 ha ha, did you see how Biden's doing humor? I'm like, are you sitting at home watching?

00:01:19.020 Are you sitting at home watching this thing? Are you the one?

00:01:23.660 He has a new baby, so it's not his fault. He can't go out.

00:01:28.080 Twenty five hundred people in a D.C. ballroom handing out awards to themselves.

00:01:33.540 Apparently no longer too concerned about covid protocols.

00:01:37.500 Joe Biden was even there and actually did some stand up or tried to.

00:01:42.100 We've got the highlights and the lowlights with some of our favorites.

00:01:45.220 The hosts of The Ruthless Podcast are back with me today.

00:01:53.240 Joining me now to discuss it all, Michael Duncan, Josh Holmes and the man known to his Twitter minions as comfortably smug.

00:02:01.020 Welcome back, guys.

00:02:02.600 Hey, great to be here. Good to be back.

00:02:04.800 Yeah. So were you like Steve grilled, like riveted to your television at home Saturday night?

00:02:10.640 Taking down every word.

00:02:11.780 Not even a little bit. The funny thing is it's become such an unbelievably narcissistic, incredibly.

00:02:20.360 I mean, like I don't even know how to wrap my mind around this. Right.

00:02:23.520 They make you triple mask and double and double vacs for like the better part of two years.

00:02:27.640 And then all of a sudden, yeah, it's all good. Right.

00:02:30.580 We need twenty five hundred people in a ballroom to celebrate ourselves. 0.86

00:02:33.520 Yeah. Why not? It's over. Right.

00:02:35.600 Or wait, is it over? Wait, I have to check my memo over.

00:02:38.360 Not over. Depends. Immigrants. Who are we talking about? 1.00

00:02:41.060 Yeah. It's like they can't get the story straight.

00:02:44.160 It's incredible. But, you know, here's the thing that that really bothers me about it.

00:02:48.380 And maybe this like 10 years ago, I used to go to these things.

00:02:51.540 Maybe they weren't as bad that or maybe they were.

00:02:54.000 And I was just sort of like wrapped up in it.

00:02:55.920 But now if you look at it like they celebrate each other as though that they're like movie stars.

00:03:00.480 Yeah. Right.

00:03:01.440 And they're all like they're all decked out, except they're all like just dorks.

00:03:05.700 Yeah. You know, they call it nerd prom. 0.92

00:03:08.660 I guess they do.

00:03:10.300 And they and but they talk about it as though it's like, oh, this big celebration and like red carpets and stuff like who the hell wants to see these people on a red carpet?

00:03:17.920 Like, thanks so much for the 700 words daily.

00:03:20.100 So CNN treated this like it was the State of the Union address, like the big run up to it was covered.

00:03:28.820 They had full panel coverage, CNN team coverage of the White House Correspondents Dinner.

00:03:33.300 The brilliant Debbie Murphy, Canadian Debbie, has assisted in putting together a little montage of some of the pre-gaming that went on on CNN prior to this event.

00:03:43.720 Watch this.

00:03:45.300 But these are live pictures right now that people enjoy.

00:03:48.900 I don't know if this is the salad or the dessert portion of the meal.

00:03:51.920 It is the wine portion of the meal, which is a very important portion tonight.

00:03:56.140 Yes, I do see that on the table right there.

00:03:59.580 It's kind of exciting, though.

00:04:00.860 Everyone looks great there.

00:04:02.160 We're just trying to give people the play by play of every minute.

00:04:04.920 I don't know what's going on.

00:04:06.000 Is it an ascot on the outside?

00:04:08.160 I don't know.

00:04:09.100 It's like a tie and an ascot, a tascot.

00:04:11.360 It's a merger between the two.

00:04:12.960 Sorry, you can see Trevor Noah there.

00:04:14.520 This is live pictures right now.

00:04:15.580 Trevor Noah hobnobbing with White House best secretary Jen Psaki just a little bit prior to when he will be delivering jokes.

00:04:21.300 I did not mean to interrupt.

00:04:22.080 Not at all.

00:04:22.680 How would you describe Joe Biden comedy?

00:04:26.520 Well, he's great in one on one setting.

00:04:28.560 This isn't one on one.

00:04:29.900 Three thousand to one.

00:04:31.280 I was kind of burying him a leaf.

00:04:34.780 Oh, my God.

00:04:36.400 Wow.

00:04:36.800 You guys.

00:04:38.060 Wow.

00:04:38.440 Can you think of anything that needs play by play commentary less than a White House correspondence dinner?

00:04:45.440 I mean, just filling all that dead air.

00:04:48.640 You know, you almost feel bad being in this line of work now.

00:04:51.680 Megan, I almost kind of feel bad for him having to fill all that that time, that empty air.

00:04:55.940 People are they're eating appetizers and you got to make it sound interesting.

00:05:00.360 Once you're out there, you're dead.

00:05:01.540 The no had to come when the CNN bosses went to them and said, here's what we'd like you to do.

00:05:07.540 It needed to be shut down before it ever started.

00:05:10.200 I mean, the whole thing and even CNN doing like a play by play of it just makes it so conceited of these journalists just celebrating themselves, depicting themselves as war heroes and the grotesqueness of it all.

00:05:23.780 Well, I mean, you always see, as always, at these events, the help is wearing masks and then all the stars and celebrities.

00:05:30.140 Oh, they're too good for masks.

00:05:31.280 Except none of them are stars and celebrities.

00:05:33.220 That's what gets that's what makes it even worse.

00:05:34.860 I guess we had Kardashian and Pete, which is basically like every journo took a selfie with over the over the weekend.

00:05:42.160 Right.

00:05:42.900 But then they set the whole thing up as some grand event.

00:05:46.800 Like, can you imagine doing color commentary on top of it?

00:05:49.020 You're like, you're looking now live at.

00:05:51.260 Well, nothing you want to look.

00:05:52.100 I mean, it really is like the Hunger Games or something.

00:05:56.000 You're seeing all these people in D.C., you know, celebrating themselves and Joe Biden even laughing at a joke about how everything's getting more expensive for Americans, how it's getting harder to afford food and gas.

00:06:07.940 And it's the funniest thing in the world for them.

00:06:09.540 I think we have that.

00:06:10.300 Do we have that?

00:06:10.660 It's not like they haven't put American people through two years of if they're lucky, they have maintained a job.

00:06:16.280 They're having to be masked up.

00:06:17.640 Their kids are having to be masked up.

00:06:18.940 It's insane.

00:06:19.460 Here, listen, we have the Trevor joke about inflation and Joe Biden yucking it up.

00:06:24.520 He thinks he finds inflation hilarious.

00:06:26.380 Watch.

00:06:28.100 Ever since you've come into office, things are really looking up.

00:06:31.160 You know, gas is up.

00:06:32.180 Rent is up.

00:06:32.760 Food is up.

00:06:34.320 Everything.

00:06:35.860 No, it really has been a tough first year for you, Mr. President.

00:06:39.440 OK, I get it.

00:06:42.180 You know, it'd be a good sport and laugh.

00:06:44.280 But the fact is, people are really hurting.

00:06:47.600 And there was a poll out just, I think, today or yesterday showing it was that 94 percent of the American people say they're either concerned or disturbed about inflation right now.

00:06:56.920 So as the president who unleashed these policies on us, you're going to have to be a little careful.

00:07:02.960 Yeah.

00:07:03.200 You know, here's the thing.

00:07:04.180 I love a good roast.

00:07:05.840 Right.

00:07:06.180 I mean, I think all of us do.

00:07:07.460 Megan, I know you love a good roast.

00:07:09.020 I mean, like comedy being comedy again.

00:07:11.900 I love that idea.

00:07:12.960 And I love the fact you can roast the president of the United States sitting next to him.

00:07:15.920 But these are the same people who enforce the no comedy absolute deadlock on everything else in American culture.

00:07:22.780 That's right.

00:07:23.200 Nothing is funny unless they're doing it with themselves.

00:07:25.600 Yeah.

00:07:26.260 Yeah.

00:07:26.720 I mean, the one joke that Joe Biden did, which I actually appreciated, was when he came in, he was like, it's nice to be in a room with people who have a lower approval rating than me.

00:07:36.700 Talking about the media.

00:07:38.260 Which I really like.

00:07:39.340 That was a good line.

00:07:39.920 That was a good line.

00:07:40.540 I like that.

00:07:40.940 But how about this?

00:07:41.620 Speaking of the self-congratulatory tone of it all.

00:07:45.060 Trevor Noah, he actually did a decent job, I think, in the overall.

00:07:48.680 I expected him to be far more partisan and kind of unfortunate.

00:07:52.560 But I have to say, he wasn't.

00:07:55.760 He, of course, ended it by touting how important the press is, in response to which they got all teary-eyed and excited out there that Trevor Noah had something nice to say about them.

00:08:07.140 Here's it in part.

00:08:08.300 Sound by eight.

00:08:10.160 I really hope you all remember what the real purpose of this evening is.

00:08:13.760 Yes, it's fun.

00:08:14.320 Yes, we dress nice.

00:08:15.420 Yes, the people eat, they drink, we have fun.

00:08:16.960 But the reason we're here is to honor and celebrate the fourth estates and what you stand for, what you stand for, an additional check and balance that holds power to account and gives voice to those who otherwise wouldn't have one.

00:08:32.540 Do they?

00:08:33.540 Do they?

00:08:35.260 That group?

00:08:36.480 Right now?

00:08:37.160 Yeah, we know why we're here.

00:08:38.240 We hold Republicans accountable.

00:08:39.840 That's why we're here, right?

00:08:41.580 Right.

00:08:41.600 Yeah, we dox random people on the internet.

00:08:44.500 That's how we hold the powerful to account.

00:08:47.360 Cue the national anthem playing quietly underneath the Taylor Lorenz.

00:08:52.280 Yes.

00:08:53.240 Yes.

00:08:53.600 It's like, you know, journalism is supposed to be about comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.

00:08:58.500 And right there, he says, you know, it's up to us to hold the people in power to account.

00:09:03.200 When in that room, it was less of a ball than more of just buddies hanging out.

00:09:07.780 Yeah.

00:09:07.960 It was the White House press corps and the White House press just hanging out like the only difference is they're wearing tuxedos.

00:09:14.020 Otherwise, it's the same as business as usual.

00:09:16.260 It's like, are you looking at Peter Doocy?

00:09:19.100 Because outside of that one guy, there isn't anybody in the White House press corps doing that right now.

00:09:24.760 Anybody.

00:09:25.520 What happened to Fearless Maggie Haberman? 0.98

00:09:27.640 Remember Fearless Maggie Haberman?

00:09:29.140 Oh, and, you know, actually, Trevor Noah made a joke about how the fact checker over at CNN and I think it was the Washington Post went totally silent.

00:09:37.340 They like they're gone.

00:09:38.300 What happened to them?

00:09:39.800 There was an article, I think it was in Politico last week that was basically like, oh, well, the briefing room now, it's so boring because, you know, Biden's such a normal president.

00:09:47.920 And she's so good.

00:09:49.200 Saki's so good.

00:09:50.140 Saki's just so good.

00:09:51.540 You know, we're not going to get any book deals.

00:09:53.300 This is a ho-hum assignment now.

00:09:55.160 You know?

00:09:56.160 Well, that's true.

00:09:56.980 It's unbelievable.

00:09:57.300 They're not going to get book deals.

00:09:58.200 It's an absolute indictment on the press of that's what their mission was, is they wanted they loved having Trump there because they could make careers off of trying to attack him, getting book deals of how they're like the final guardian of democracy left in America.

00:10:12.700 Right.

00:10:12.980 And in the absence of them being able to create their careers off of that, they have no like, what are we supposed to do?

00:10:17.920 Our job?

00:10:18.700 That's crazy.

00:10:19.340 Oh, no.

00:10:19.740 Oh, you know the answer.

00:10:20.980 You guys know the answer.

00:10:21.880 So what did the New York Times do on Sunday?

00:10:26.060 A three part series now that they don't have Trump to kick around anymore on Tucker Carlson.

00:10:32.240 I don't know.

00:10:33.820 Face of white surprise.

00:10:34.580 Whatever they say.

00:10:35.780 They don't get it.

00:10:36.520 They're outraged that Tucker is focusing on class distinctions.

00:10:41.140 You used to care about that, too, Democrats, press corps.

00:10:46.640 And of course, they just style it all as, oh, he's a racist and he issues sort of racist tropes.

00:10:52.160 I'm like, oh, OK, what what what are they?

00:10:53.660 Let's see.

00:10:54.500 Oh, he's concerned about immigration.

00:10:56.320 Oh, OK.

00:10:56.980 I guess every Republican is a racist then.

00:10:59.920 Right.

00:11:00.180 And on it goes like the examples that they provided were not moving.

00:11:04.580 And they had something like nine reporters on him watching his show for like twelve hundred

00:11:09.400 hours.

00:11:10.560 Meanwhile, somebody's pointing out online.

00:11:12.480 What what if they had done this on Hunter Biden?

00:11:14.960 Wouldn't that have been like couldn't that have been done?

00:11:17.280 Why, Tucker?

00:11:18.940 Yeah, no, there's no news value in the people who are actually in charge.

00:11:22.260 It's the people who are talking about the other things that everybody's concerned about

00:11:25.860 outside of the the little sort of urban epicenters that all of these people live.

00:11:30.760 But you even you even made a cameo in this piece, Megan, as is providing a platform for

00:11:36.440 all of us sort of a platformer.

00:11:40.080 I'm definitely a platformer.

00:11:43.480 It's so funny.

00:11:44.460 It's like we used to recall that journalism.

00:11:46.360 I remember when we when I when I interviewed Alex Jones, they they lost their minds in

00:11:53.240 the press at CNN and others.

00:11:54.940 By the way, he'd been on CNN.

00:11:56.200 OK, so they lost their minds.

00:11:58.140 And I was pointing out at the time, like, do you realize Diane Sawyer interviewed Jeffrey

00:12:04.020 Dahmer? 0.89

00:12:05.000 OK, Alex Jones is very controversial, but he didn't eat anybody like nobody's in the freezer

00:12:12.480 that we know about.

00:12:13.200 Seriously, she interviewed Charles Manson.

00:12:15.700 Like, could you stop with your platforming nonsense?

00:12:18.620 Because we call it journalism.

00:12:20.360 You interview good guys, bad guys, controversial people, other people.

00:12:25.680 It's what we do.

00:12:27.000 You talk to them and you figure out their story and then you let the audience figure out how

00:12:31.080 they feel about that person.

00:12:33.280 Totally.

00:12:33.960 But don't you feel like I mean, I just pick up this.

00:12:36.100 I know exactly what I'm going to be able to read here when I picked up this story and started

00:12:39.660 working my way through it.

00:12:40.840 And I do it because it sort of enrages me.

00:12:42.820 And I like that feeling from time to time.

00:12:45.700 But I pick it up.

00:12:46.820 OK, Johnny Depp.

00:12:51.060 Right.

00:12:51.420 I have a better wife than Johnny Depp.

00:12:54.460 But like the way that it's constructed, it's like journalists going to the zoo.

00:13:01.220 Right.

00:13:02.080 Or like a foreign exchange program where every single observation that they're making about

00:13:08.160 Tucker, about his world, about it's like, look through, peer through the glass and look

00:13:12.780 at this list of horribles that we can't possibly identify with.

00:13:16.360 Right.

00:13:16.660 Right.

00:13:16.780 It's just like all their coverage is so predictable.

00:13:20.080 They don't get it.

00:13:20.920 They don't.

00:13:21.420 And like Glenn Greenwald was tweeting this out, but it was my first reaction to which

00:13:25.220 is, who is this for?

00:13:27.340 The people who read The New York Times are almost 100 percent liberal, like virtually

00:13:31.140 everyone who reads it self-identifies as liberal.

00:13:33.820 They already hate Tucker.

00:13:35.040 They hate Fox.

00:13:35.840 They hate conservative media.

00:13:37.000 They don't consume it.

00:13:37.880 They already think it's all racist.

00:13:39.200 But we've heard it a million times.

00:13:41.360 And the people who don't believe that, right, who have no problem with Fox News and may or

00:13:46.400 may not watch Tucker, but don't accept that everything he says about the border or Black

00:13:51.340 Lives Matter is racist just because he's not on board with Team Biden's policies.

00:13:56.120 They don't need a New York Times.

00:13:57.560 Like they're not going to listen to The New York Times and it's nine reporters and they're

00:14:01.100 twelve hundred hours watching Tucker.

00:14:02.860 So who's this for?

00:14:04.780 I mean, it's for themselves.

00:14:06.580 Right.

00:14:06.840 They it's it's it's two things, I think.

00:14:09.460 I think number one is preaching to the choir, which is the only thing that they're capable

00:14:12.440 of doing now these days is speaking to a very narrow subset of the American population that

00:14:18.040 already agrees with them.

00:14:18.900 And that's the reason why these people subscribe to The New York Times in the first place, be

00:14:22.960 told that they're good people and get pats on the head.

00:14:25.640 And I think number two, it's gatekeeping.

00:14:28.220 Right.

00:14:28.660 I mean, everything from the White House Correspondents Dinner and the people in that room, they do that

00:14:32.340 for a living.

00:14:32.920 But, you know, articles like this do as well, because they define what you're allowed to

00:14:38.500 talk about.

00:14:39.640 Right.

00:14:40.320 That's a good point.

00:14:41.080 And that's the most that's the most important thing for a lot of these media figures is to

00:14:45.960 like you said, we terms like platform.

00:14:49.320 Where the hell did that come from, you know, platforming or de-platforming and giving giving

00:14:55.900 voice to angry people and all this sort of stuff that sort of it's it's it's risen in

00:15:00.520 the last five years around, you know, the presidency of Donald Trump, where suddenly, you know, certain

00:15:06.160 conversations were not allowed to be had.

00:15:08.660 Basically, the speed from which an opinion of like a professor at Oberlin has become

00:15:13.840 accepted reality and enforced upon the public has become stunningly fast, like it's gone

00:15:20.700 from theory to practice in months.

00:15:23.140 Right.

00:15:23.320 Where any crazy idea of where the Overton window lies, you know, what is acceptable, what is

00:15:28.900 not acceptable, what's considered disinformation and becomes enforced by the media.

00:15:33.480 And now we even have a government agency.

00:15:35.620 You know, the Ministry of Truth is going to start deciding what people are allowed to discuss.

00:15:39.400 And I think a lot of that has to do with particularly the Tucker Carlson piece is the left has become

00:15:44.080 incredibly nervous, not just about this midterm, but in general, where for the for years, their

00:15:49.520 message of basic neoliberalism is, listen, you know, if we have open borders, everyone's

00:15:55.200 going to be fine.

00:15:56.180 All you coal miners are going to learn to code. 1.00

00:15:58.300 We're all going to drive flying electric cars.

00:16:00.540 Right.

00:16:01.020 And that's just how it's going to be.

00:16:02.360 We'll get solar panels from China.

00:16:04.120 And none of it has worked.

00:16:05.440 Everything has gotten a lot worse, especially for working class people.

00:16:08.260 The same group who The New York Times is terrified might start listening to conservatives.

00:16:12.980 So they have to say, listen, you're not allowed to listen to this guy's show.

00:16:15.940 He's addressing, you know, your concerns.

00:16:17.980 He's addressing what matters to you when this administration is laughing in your face about

00:16:21.040 inflation.

00:16:21.660 You're not allowed to listen to him.

00:16:22.680 But they want to signal to any person who gets the idea of, wow, maybe he does speak

00:16:26.420 for me, that if he speaks for you, then you're a white supremacist.

00:16:29.480 Yeah, you're a racist.

00:16:30.680 That's right.

00:16:31.120 And I also think it makes them feel better.

00:16:35.420 Like Tucker's hugely successful.

00:16:37.360 Tucker's got the number one show in cable news right now.

00:16:40.240 He's powerful in that way.

00:16:41.960 You know, in conservative circles, he's powerful and he's watched by more Democrats than any

00:16:45.780 other show on cable.

00:16:47.060 But that's just because nobody else has ratings.

00:16:50.620 So anyway, so he's powerful.

00:16:52.620 OK, so it makes them feel better to say, OK, he's horrible.

00:16:57.300 He's powerful, but he's horrible.

00:16:58.780 He's horrible.

00:16:59.720 No decent person would ever consume that show.

00:17:02.040 So our side has the moral high ground.

00:17:04.160 He may be doing very well in terms of the numbers.

00:17:06.020 People may be flocking to him, but those are bad people.

00:17:09.200 Our people are good.

00:17:10.340 We're on the side of goodness and light.

00:17:11.940 And it's the same reason why so many of them can't let go of January 6th.

00:17:19.440 They they are obsessed with it.

00:17:22.440 I mean, they they love to talk about it every day.

00:17:24.780 If there's an inkling of an update, they'd love to cover it.

00:17:27.120 They can't wait until every trial goes through because it makes them feel like this is an

00:17:33.560 albatross around Trump's neck and Ivanka's neck and Eric and Don Jr.

00:17:38.500 and Jared's neck forevermore.

00:17:41.040 And we will never let anybody forget about it.

00:17:43.560 They're the bad people and we are the good people.

00:17:46.720 We don't care how much even if he's going to win.

00:17:49.440 If he runs against Joe Biden, you remember he's bad and we're good.

00:17:54.060 Oh, and especially in light of the fact that these are the same people who contributed to

00:17:59.960 bail funds during a summer of rioting.

00:18:02.080 Kamala Harris, you know, invited everyone.

00:18:04.540 Please give to this bail fund where recidivists got back out. 1.00

00:18:08.420 They committed rapes.

00:18:09.240 They committed murders.

00:18:10.360 There was a summer where cities across this country were set on fire in New York state.

00:18:14.700 They issued a blanket pardon, right?

00:18:16.960 They're like, oh, you know, sometimes burning down a building is mostly peaceful.

00:18:19.940 You know, you got to let them go away with that.

00:18:21.800 I think the greatest irony of all this with the Tucker Carson article is that it's all

00:18:27.100 done through this principle of diversity, right?

00:18:30.500 They're protecting diversity when in all honesty, it's the exact opposite of diversity in every

00:18:35.840 possible way, right?

00:18:36.940 Unless you subscribe to this absolutely specific narrative that the New York Times, the Washington

00:18:41.720 Post conjure up on a day-to-day basis, you are the other, right?

00:18:46.180 You're out and you should be canceled.

00:18:48.920 And like, look, I don't agree with everything that Tucker Carlson has to say.

00:18:51.880 I don't suspect that most of our audience agrees with everything that I have to say either.

00:18:55.820 Right.

00:18:56.100 Right.

00:18:56.480 Right.

00:18:56.800 But asking the question and having conversations, I thought that was the reason we were all here

00:19:02.800 in the first place.

00:19:03.580 Unless you want to hook yourself up to the hive mind and everybody has the exact same opinion.

00:19:09.420 But it seems to be like, that's what they want.

00:19:11.960 Yeah.

00:19:12.220 They're really, you know, with the Ministry of Truth, they're really starting to make a

00:19:15.340 play for that.

00:19:16.280 Like, I think we can make the hive mind happen.

00:19:18.380 You know, but it's an interesting thing, right?

00:19:20.960 Because I do wonder whether those attacks have really, truly lost all impact.

00:19:28.320 Right.

00:19:28.860 10 years ago, that kind of an appease, that kind of a piece by the New York Times would have

00:19:33.340 hurt.

00:19:34.120 I mean, I know at Fox News we would have spent a day dealing with the PR people who would have

00:19:38.880 been freaking out about it.

00:19:40.060 You know, nobody liked the Times, but they still had a lot of influence and you would

00:19:43.960 not have wanted a piece like that to have come out.

00:19:46.520 Yeah.

00:19:46.700 Glenn Greenwald pointed this out very well.

00:19:48.700 He was like, you know, this shows how much of a silo the left has put itself inside where,

00:19:54.960 you know, there was a time where if the New York Times says this individual is a white

00:19:59.080 supremacist, that used to mean something.

00:20:00.840 Yeah.

00:20:01.320 Number one, because that term wasn't thrown around every single day for every single person

00:20:05.920 where even they've accused Clarence Thomas of being a white supremacist.

00:20:10.060 It's lost all meaning of the word.

00:20:12.760 And secondly, the New York Times is only preaching to the choir.

00:20:15.700 This doesn't matter.

00:20:16.880 Everyone who reads the New York Times already, you know, their base is people who hate Tucker

00:20:22.520 Carlson to begin with.

00:20:23.380 Except for one thing, Megan.

00:20:24.920 It doesn't matter for people like us or you or consumers of both of our programs, obviously,

00:20:30.620 but their constituency is corporate America in a lot of ways.

00:20:34.680 Right.

00:20:35.240 And so by putting out a piece like this, they still have a very responsive sector in the

00:20:40.560 most powerful corporations in this country to basically send a memo to all of them that

00:20:45.720 like you don't have you can't have anything to do with this guy.

00:20:48.180 Right.

00:20:48.840 This is controversial.

00:20:49.860 This guy is racist.

00:20:50.800 I mean, if there's a company in America that had a look at it's a Fortune 50 company that

00:20:55.740 had a look at that piece in the New York Times, what are the chances that any of them choose

00:20:59.820 to advertise on his show?

00:21:01.560 Like zero.

00:21:02.180 Right.

00:21:02.600 So this is all they are talking to themselves, but they're also trying to intimidate commerce

00:21:07.860 in this country to try to move away from any sort of conservative thought or basically

00:21:12.020 any thought.

00:21:12.820 Right.

00:21:12.960 Because there's a lot of stuff that Tucker's talking about.

00:21:15.540 It's not conservative at all.

00:21:16.940 It's more libertarian or maybe even left.

00:21:18.940 But to your point, to your point, Holmes, like you used to be just media matters, sleeping

00:21:24.900 giants, these people who like get behind the boy, right.

00:21:27.820 People on the far left who organize this stuff through social media and say, you know, don't

00:21:32.860 don't, you know, don't advertise on Tucker Carlson show.

00:21:35.640 But New York Times now is basically mainstreaming this concept where, you know, we've seen this

00:21:42.540 and you talk about it, Holmes, a lot, but like how casually we call people racist in

00:21:46.760 this country now or misogynist, you know.

00:21:49.280 And so the New York Times, you know, like you were saying, it's basically just like mainstreaming

00:21:53.040 this idea that he must be othered.

00:21:56.120 Right.

00:21:56.400 That always existed a little bit, Megan, like in the background and people will call for

00:22:00.200 boycotts.

00:22:01.020 But, you know, rarely would you have a publication like this willing to go this far.

00:22:05.060 That's such a good point.

00:22:06.700 Can I just say a word on media matters?

00:22:08.780 So I was their target for years and still I still am one.

00:22:11.640 But when I was at Fox and they had nothing else to cover because conservative digital

00:22:15.400 media really wasn't a thing yet.

00:22:16.700 Right.

00:22:16.920 It wasn't it hadn't exploded in the way it has.

00:22:18.640 So all they had was Fox.

00:22:20.640 They love to cover me and they loved to just distort what I had actually said into something

00:22:25.940 that was controversial that wasn't.

00:22:27.440 And back then I was a young anchor and it bothered me.

00:22:30.280 I was like, this is so this is so false and this is so dishonest.

00:22:33.720 And like that I understood it was a partisan group and I didn't need to worry about them

00:22:37.060 at all. But when I left NBC and all these left wing publications were writing up, you

00:22:45.840 know, my alleged history of racism, what they did was they took a media matters like cheat

00:22:53.220 sheet and they put it in the pages of major newspapers and nightly newscasts without any

00:23:00.740 fact checking whatsoever.

00:23:03.340 However, there was one that they pull out sometimes.

00:23:06.940 There's so many that they that they misrepresented.

00:23:09.340 But there was one about this young black girl at a pool party outside and she had a tussle

00:23:13.780 with police like they they wound up like putting cuffs on her, getting rough with her.

00:23:17.720 And I was on the air while it was happening.

00:23:19.300 And I said something.

00:23:20.040 Well, she was no angel prior to this because I'd been watching the whole thing live on my

00:23:24.540 show.

00:23:24.860 And she had repeatedly disregarded the orders of the cops like they had been telling her

00:23:29.160 to comply.

00:23:29.660 She had been complying over and over and over and over, whereas a lot of other people had

00:23:32.860 been complying with police orders and they didn't get no tussle with cops.

00:23:36.280 Well, it was like, you know, blaming the victim or something.

00:23:39.380 I guess she was black, a black young girl.

00:23:42.080 She was no angel because of her skin color. 1.00

00:23:43.940 I guess the implication is people run with that.

00:23:46.700 They wrote it like as an example of like this is.

00:23:48.780 So so I, of course, I'm in a position of like, I'm very skeptical whenever they throw

00:23:53.220 this label on anybody because I know how they weaponize race. 0.61

00:23:57.160 They weaponize it to try to discredit you if you're saying something that goes against

00:24:02.220 their preferred narratives.

00:24:04.680 And that's still the model, the media matters cheat sheet model.

00:24:08.060 I mean, if you go back and you read that that story on the Libs of TikTok in The Washington

00:24:12.620 Post, oh, yeah, it's basically a rubric written by the by media matters.

00:24:17.520 Yes.

00:24:17.820 And she cites media matters.

00:24:19.940 She's right.

00:24:20.460 She cites them openly.

00:24:21.980 Right.

00:24:22.460 And that's the thing is a lot of journalism.

00:24:24.480 I mean, journalism is basically dead at this point in the country.

00:24:28.040 There's no actual investigation.

00:24:29.760 There's there's no one, no journalists out there trying to hold power to account.

00:24:34.120 They're all friends with the White House press corps.

00:24:35.820 They're all, you know, on the same team, essentially.

00:24:38.540 Yeah, they're outsourcing their job to a liberal.

00:24:40.360 So media matters.

00:24:41.640 OK, we'll do the journalism for you.

00:24:43.520 Here's what you copy paste.

00:24:44.660 You put in your article.

00:24:45.860 Some of them aside, it was pretty fine.

00:24:47.340 This past weekend, you had a person from media matters tweeting about how we need President

00:24:54.120 Biden needs to forgive all student loan debt, saying that they are being crushed under the

00:24:58.640 weight of student loan debt.

00:25:00.200 And then someone pulled up because media matters is a nonprofit group.

00:25:03.940 Right.

00:25:04.160 Someone pulled up her income and media matters pays her one hundred and eighty thousand a 0.98

00:25:07.800 year.

00:25:08.040 Yeah.

00:25:08.240 Oh, my God.

00:25:08.580 It's all there on the nine ninety for Megan.

00:25:10.320 They're like, why are taxpayers paying for my education?

00:25:12.760 I make one hundred and eighty thousand.

00:25:15.300 I can.

00:25:16.040 Can we talk about the student debt thing?

00:25:17.460 I'm horrified by this.

00:25:18.800 This is like this is infuriating.

00:25:21.520 I was talking to there's a gal who comes and does my hair a couple of days a week because 1.00

00:25:26.040 I can't make it look like this on my own voice.

00:25:28.440 And she doesn't make a lot of money. 1.00

00:25:30.900 And I was explaining to her.

00:25:33.120 We were talking about, you know, what Biden's saying now about student debt.

00:25:36.060 And basically, I'm saying I'm looking at this woman who works so hard and I'm saying what

00:25:41.660 they want is for you to pay off the student loans of people who are now potentially doctors

00:25:47.600 and lawyers and any individual, so long as they're making less than one hundred fifty

00:25:52.400 thousand dollars a year or couples, so long as they're making less than three hundred thousand

00:25:55.980 dollars a year.

00:25:56.540 That's what Joe Biden just said.

00:25:57.760 Those are the modifications he's considering imposing, limiting the payback or the forgiveness

00:26:04.480 to couples who make over or under three hundred thousand dollars a year combined.

00:26:11.460 That's insane, right?

00:26:13.080 Like how on earth this is a reverse Robin Hood, right, where we take from the working class 1.00

00:26:18.200 and we give to the rich.

00:26:19.940 And the only limiting things he's considering are that one hundred and fifty thousand or three

00:26:23.880 hundred thousand for couples.

00:26:25.260 And maybe not even certainly, maybe if you went to law school or med school, you won't

00:26:30.900 be a candidate to have your debt forgiven, forgiven, which basically means transferred

00:26:34.340 to other people.

00:26:35.460 Is this this is madness.

00:26:38.000 So what's very interesting when you look at this is they're trying to make it an argument

00:26:42.980 saying that we're we're helping lower income people here, right?

00:26:46.660 They say that these are people who are suffering under under this debt.

00:26:50.780 But the people who are affected by this are inherently college educated individuals.

00:26:56.520 These are people who are already statistically going to be in a higher income bracket.

00:27:00.620 This is not helping lower income bracket individuals who didn't attend college and don't have the

00:27:04.900 college debt to be in with.

00:27:05.840 But those are the individuals that are going to be paying for it.

00:27:07.760 It makes no sense.

00:27:08.720 Brookings did a study on this, right?

00:27:10.500 And the people who are likely to benefit are more likely to be white, obviously more likely 0.99

00:27:14.740 to be higher educated and more likely to be higher income than your base population

00:27:20.020 at large.

00:27:21.080 I mean, why is this the civil rights?

00:27:23.540 Well, I mean, the thing the thing that really offends me about this whole policy isn't isn't

00:27:29.940 just the the getting rid of the debt, right?

00:27:32.920 I mean, these borrowers were wrong.

00:27:34.340 Yeah, they were 18 years old, you know, so there's a little bit of sympathy I have for

00:27:37.840 those people.

00:27:39.180 What I don't understand is how you could propose this huge program to basically bail out the

00:27:46.440 student loan industry with no reform.

00:27:48.780 We're not going to reform universities or tenure or or the not going to bend the cost

00:27:54.800 curve of college at all.

00:27:56.320 We're just going to bail out universities that are robbing this next generation of income. 0.83

00:28:01.820 I mean, it's absurd.

00:28:02.720 Their billion dollar endowment.

00:28:03.900 Yeah, why am I not seizing the endowment to pay for this?

00:28:06.500 That should be said one.

00:28:07.400 Yeah.

00:28:07.720 So you guys, you're the perfect person to ask this of, right?

00:28:10.700 So you are your D.C. insiders, your swamp creatures.

00:28:15.620 You know how it works there.

00:28:17.140 So is this all about improving his numbers with young voters, which are cratering by 20

00:28:21.820 points?

00:28:22.640 Because I look at this, the Gallup just did a poll and no one gives a shit about this.

00:28:27.880 So I'm like, who is he trying to curry favor with?

00:28:30.340 This is what Gallup says.

00:28:32.840 There was an article in National Review on this.

00:28:34.740 They ask people frequently what they believe is the most important problem facing the country

00:28:38.020 today.

00:28:38.700 According to the Gallup analyst, Justin McCarthy, the pollster is, quote, unable to report the

00:28:43.400 percentage of Americans who have mentioned student debt or student debt cancellation.

00:28:46.600 Because it hasn't garnered enough mention to do so.

00:28:51.420 They go on.

00:28:52.220 Gallup has conducted four polls on the question.

00:28:54.420 And just one person said this is the most important facing problem facing the nation.

00:29:01.280 No one's no one care.

00:29:02.880 Like no one's it doesn't matter enough for them to even respond to Gallup.

00:29:06.980 So it is about politics, but it's even worse than you think.

00:29:12.460 It's not that students are somehow totally in favor.

00:29:15.900 Younger Americans are totally in favor of this.

00:29:18.300 It's actually been a cottage industry that's been stood up on the left and paid for by billionaire

00:29:24.080 leftists that, you know, employ all these make work, fail sons to push paper to try to convince

00:29:30.560 people that this is the next progressive hill to climb.

00:29:33.320 Right.

00:29:33.540 It's all in the name of basically creating government run everything.

00:29:37.060 But this piece of it, they've tried to make clear that it is somehow a civil rights issue,

00:29:41.760 that somehow Hispanic caucus and the in the black caucus and everything is is important to them.

00:29:48.400 When in reality is you just ticked off in the stats.

00:29:50.500 It's not it's not right.

00:29:52.300 So.

00:29:52.600 So, yes, it's about politics, but it's actually not even about electoral politics.

00:29:55.980 It's about everything that has driven this administration since day one, which is this

00:30:00.720 constituency, this narrow, progressive constituency that he is entirely responsive towards during

00:30:07.440 the entirety of his administration.

00:30:09.020 So, plus, it's like we were talking to Peter Schiff, economist, about this last week.

00:30:13.680 So if he doesn't pay for this, this forgiveness of debt, you can't make debt go away like it's

00:30:19.520 being transferred from some somebody to somebody else.

00:30:21.880 So it's either other taxpayers are going to have to foot the bill.

00:30:25.620 Right.

00:30:25.900 So, you know, I've got to pay for somebody's college education, even though I already paid

00:30:29.320 for my own, even though, you know, I was responsible with my loans and I paid them back,

00:30:33.480 even though it wasn't that easy and it isn't for most people, but they do the right thing

00:30:37.120 and they pay them back or there's a whole group of other people who didn't go to college

00:30:39.840 at all because they knew that they couldn't afford this and they didn't want to be saddled

00:30:43.600 with debt.

00:30:44.120 Well, now they're going to get saddled with other people's debt who can't pay their bills

00:30:47.180 or who can but prefer not to.

00:30:49.160 People who went to med school, maybe people who went to professional school, people who

00:30:53.220 make one hundred and forty nine thousand dollars a year.

00:30:55.420 It's absurd.

00:30:56.200 But he was saying, or they just print more money from the the Treasury.

00:31:00.480 Right.

00:31:00.640 Like if they don't want to raise the taxes, they go back to their favorite trick, which

00:31:03.480 is print more cash, which is inflationary at a time we already have eight and a half

00:31:07.000 percent inflation.

00:31:08.040 So that and that's a tax on everybody.

00:31:09.880 So either way, you know, it's like what's the Saturday Night Fever?

00:31:13.680 Everybody's dump, dump, dump it on everybody.

00:31:15.440 That's what we have here.

00:31:17.480 Dump, dump, dump it on everybody's situation.

00:31:21.420 Nice Travolta.

00:31:22.540 I like that.

00:31:23.360 That's really good.

00:31:24.300 I never played outside.

00:31:26.480 I only watch television and movies.

00:31:30.360 But, you know, I mean, what it boils down to it is, I mean, you mentioned all the people

00:31:35.140 who chose not to.

00:31:36.140 Some people went to trade schools, right?

00:31:38.140 They're making great money, but they took a loan to go to a trade school that they could

00:31:42.020 afford to pay back.

00:31:43.040 I mean, ultimately, we're talking about here are people who made an investment in themselves

00:31:48.080 that was so poor that they couldn't pay it back.

00:31:51.840 If you ultimately make that kind of investment decision where you are deciding to go entirely

00:31:58.800 in the red for something that you know will never be able to pay back some art history

00:32:02.840 degree or something else.

00:32:04.000 If you can't make that investment, why the hell should I?

00:32:06.620 Right.

00:32:06.880 And that's basically what these guys.

00:32:09.860 But is there a more fulsome understanding of the government itself?

00:32:13.500 It is just basically there to protect every bad decision that any American could ever make

00:32:19.540 in any facet of life, including now your education.

00:32:23.760 That is such a fascinating way of looking at it.

00:32:26.240 See, this is why we like your connection to the swamp.

00:32:28.380 This is why we need advocates who are swampy, not not necessarily swamp creatures, but swampy.

00:32:33.800 Guys, stand by.

00:32:36.200 So, so swamp adjacent.

00:32:38.880 Stand by because there's so much more to go over, including more from the woman who

00:32:42.860 is going to run our disinformation cafe.

00:32:46.760 She's now going to be in charge of whether you've said the wrong thing or thought the

00:32:51.000 wrong thing.

00:32:51.940 Oh, wait, this is America.

00:32:53.800 Don't go away.

00:32:54.320 Nina Jankiewicz is a name that we're going to have to become familiar with if we're not 0.99

00:33:03.600 already.

00:33:04.600 She's going to be our new leader, our new unelected disinformation czar. 1.00

00:33:08.700 She's going to be running the Department of Homeland Security's disinformation board, 0.97

00:33:16.080 the government disinformation board.

00:33:18.440 And the Mayorkas, DHS Secretary Mayorkas, was asked about her and what this board is going

00:33:25.380 to do by Dana Bash, I think, on CNN this past weekend.

00:33:29.980 Take a listen to how he described what the board is going to do.

00:33:34.460 You tell me if you feel reassured what the board is going to do.

00:33:37.220 Sound bite nine.

00:33:38.180 But it's still not clear to me how this governance board will act.

00:33:42.200 What will it do?

00:33:43.220 So what it does is it works to ensure that the way in which we address threats, the connectivity

00:33:52.020 between threats and acts of violence are addressed without infringing on free speech, protecting

00:33:59.960 civil rights and civil liberties, the right of privacy.

00:34:03.800 And the board, this working group, internal working group, will draw from best practices

00:34:10.060 and communicate those best practices to the operators, because the board does not have

00:34:15.600 operational authority.

00:34:17.020 I think Kamala Harris wrote that.

00:34:19.420 That was exactly my reaction to it.

00:34:22.220 That is the most Kamala answer of all.

00:34:24.340 Oh, it's best practices.

00:34:25.180 What do you mean you don't know what best practices are?

00:34:26.960 Best practices.

00:34:27.800 Best practices.

00:34:29.500 They're going to work collaboratively.

00:34:30.780 I think I think Brett Baer also asked Mayorkas this question because he was really honing

00:34:37.660 in with a conservative audience about, well, this is just foreign threats, right?

00:34:42.660 What we're really monitoring here is Russia and Russia and, you know, all that.

00:34:47.460 And so Brett was basically like, OK, so the Steele dossier, is that misinformation?

00:34:51.280 And he's like, I'm not qualified to talk about that.

00:34:55.120 Look over there.

00:34:55.880 He dodged, too, when Dana asked him, would you be comfortable with the Trump administration

00:35:00.360 doing this?

00:35:01.260 He was like, something shiny over there.

00:35:03.220 And there's a shiny Brian Stelter's head.

00:35:06.840 So he was asked about Nina Jankowicz, who we do need to be concerned about because she 0.94

00:35:12.780 seems like a lunatic.

00:35:14.940 She's he was she was she was asking him whether she's qualified and whether she's partisan and

00:35:21.200 so on.

00:35:21.600 And he defended her.

00:35:22.540 So let's just listen to that first.

00:35:23.680 A soundbite 10.

00:35:25.880 Republicans are criticizing your decision, the administration's decision to choose

00:35:31.360 Nina Jankowicz to lead this disinformation board. 0.95

00:35:34.740 They say she is not somebody who is neutral.

00:35:37.340 Your response?

00:35:38.440 Eminently qualified, a renowned expert in the field of disinformation.

00:35:43.700 Absolutely so.

00:35:45.880 Really?

00:35:46.420 Because she's the one who dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop as just a Trump campaign drop.

00:35:50.660 I mean, I think she's an expert in disinformation as someone who's experienced.

00:35:55.280 Yeah, right.

00:35:55.900 The disseminator.

00:35:56.920 That was that was the experience that Mayorkas was talking about.

00:35:59.540 It was like, no, no, no.

00:36:00.080 You don't understand.

00:36:00.760 She's a purveyor of misinformation. 1.00

00:36:02.920 She's very good at misinformation. 0.79

00:36:04.740 She's like a Hillary Clinton type. 1.00

00:36:08.040 I don't know if you saw the video of this lady. 1.00

00:36:11.340 Oh, yeah.

00:36:12.000 But like the video.

00:36:12.880 We have it.

00:36:14.200 Yes.

00:36:14.420 If you wait, I'll play it and then I'll give you the floor.

00:36:17.960 Josh, stand by.

00:36:18.780 Here she is.

00:36:19.520 We showed you the one where she was singing the weird song about disinformation.

00:36:22.600 I don't know.

00:36:22.980 And but here's a second.

00:36:24.660 She loves to sing.

00:36:25.720 She's like a theater major, which is reason enough for concern.

00:36:28.640 Here we go.

00:36:29.300 We're looking for some prefects in the bathroom one day.

00:36:35.940 But instead I found Harry.

00:36:37.980 And so I said, hey.

00:36:39.680 I helped solve the mystery of the A. 0.98

00:36:43.020 And I'd like to solve the mystery between his legs.

00:36:46.740 I hope that Harry drowns tomorrow in the lake.

00:36:50.260 So that our honeymoon we can change.

00:36:53.620 We know that ghosts have working that old means.

00:36:57.240 But what's better than that?

00:36:58.860 We don't get STDs.

00:37:01.760 What the hell's going on?

00:37:04.280 She's a giant nerd. 1.00

00:37:06.560 I mean, how disturbing is it?

00:37:08.800 And fantasizing about like underage kids.

00:37:11.880 Harry Potter's eight years old or something.

00:37:14.860 What the hell was that that we just watched?

00:37:18.380 Oh, I don't know.

00:37:21.040 I mean, look.

00:37:21.480 We need lives of TikTok.

00:37:24.440 This is why they need to be here.

00:37:26.560 To hold the powerful account.

00:37:28.240 This is unreal.

00:37:29.540 Lives would understand the right caption.

00:37:31.980 The first time I saw a video of it.

00:37:33.460 And you'll appreciate this as a mom, Megan.

00:37:36.100 But she reminded me of, you know, those kids like Saturday morning shows that are not cartoons.

00:37:43.020 Yeah.

00:37:43.240 Where they have this like super overly enthusiastic.

00:37:46.580 Because they're trying to keep attention.

00:37:47.960 Adult.

00:37:48.560 That's trying to like pretend like they're a child.

00:37:50.780 And like you can't figure out whether it's a children's show or you're having a fever dream.

00:37:54.460 Right?

00:37:55.040 Like that's basically what I thought of the first time I saw this lady.

00:37:59.020 It's like the Wiggles.

00:38:00.140 You know the Wiggles?

00:38:02.380 She's like a character from the Wiggles. 0.94

00:38:03.980 I feel like this woman just wants to be a star.

00:38:09.520 Does everyone like who works at the White House, who like Jen Psaki, she wants her own TV show. 1.00

00:38:16.580 Of course, this woman, she wants to be a star.

00:38:19.700 She just found some weird back way to develop some alleged expertise in an area no one cares about. 1.00

00:38:24.720 And she, you know, the blind squirrel found the nut because it just happens to be the favorite thing in the Democratic Party right now. 0.96

00:38:30.860 And now she's going to be a czar. 0.54

00:38:33.400 Which actually should be terrible.

00:38:35.560 We're laughing about this, but it should be terrifying if you really think about it.

00:38:39.140 You know, somebody who's like this, who craves attention this much and is this much of a nerd who thinks they know what misinformation and disinformation and information is, is like that's somebody who could be a tyrant.

00:38:50.720 Right. Like you look at what Anthony Fauci did with covid over the last two years.

00:38:55.200 And I'm very concerned that she will be the Fauci of information on the Internet.

00:39:00.560 And she's going to go before Congress and people are going to discuss, you know, what is allowed to be said and what's not allowed to be said.

00:39:06.720 I don't trust that individual at all.

00:39:09.780 Me neither.

00:39:10.220 Let alone defining that when when when America is like we should be you know, we should feel calm and good that this person is going to set best practices for what's considered acceptable to say.

00:39:21.220 I mean, that's stunning that he would think that's a good idea.

00:39:23.220 This person clearly, you know, should not be trusted with anything, let alone, you know, the American people's First Amendment.

00:39:29.120 Let me have a totally competitive take on this for a second, Megan.

00:39:32.160 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:39:33.420 I actually if Republicans get the House and Senate back, I want that I don't want this woman to go anywhere. 1.00

00:39:38.360 I want I want her to be exactly where she is, because can you imagine the entertainment value of this woman sitting in a panel in front of like Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton and the rest of them just giving her. 0.86

00:39:49.920 I mean, it would be the most pay-per-view hearing in history.

00:39:54.380 It would be fantastic.

00:39:55.820 I want to I want to sit with her and just say, OK, I'll get I'll give you a couple.

00:39:58.760 OK, one hundred thousand kids are in the hospital or ICU or on ventilators because of covid right now.

00:40:05.740 Sonia Sotomayor, disinformation or true?

00:40:08.780 You tell me that's it.

00:40:10.200 Right. Like we could go down the list.

00:40:12.000 It could be really fun because I guarantee you this woman has no clue what's real and what's not when it comes to the most dicey debates, because she only listens to her one side. 1.00

00:40:21.460 And they didn't report that Sotomayor was wrong in the places that she listens to.

00:40:26.680 But here's some of sort of the this is like part of the problem.

00:40:30.500 Is it pleb or plebe? 0.80

00:40:34.180 Plebe. I'm going to go with plebe. 0.99

00:40:35.600 Yeah, I always said plebe. 0.94

00:40:36.860 And then somebody said it's pleb.

00:40:38.460 Whatever.

00:40:38.960 Plebeian.

00:40:39.460 For plebeian.

00:40:40.080 Yeah.

00:40:40.500 Plebeian.

00:40:42.840 Surf.

00:40:43.560 Low life.

00:40:44.940 Nothing.

00:40:45.520 Nobody.

00:40:46.240 Sorry.

00:40:46.540 And then it got mean.

00:40:47.320 That just turned mean.

00:40:48.480 But CNN's David Zerowick.

00:40:50.260 Remember, he was from the Baltimore Sun, I think he used to write for.

00:40:52.940 This guy used to be somewhat not totally normal, but somewhat like reasonable to listen to as a media critic.

00:41:00.620 He wants it like this is why I was sort of going to the surf place.

00:41:04.300 Like there are some in the masses who are like, yes, lead us, mistress, lead us away from the dangerous misinformation.

00:41:11.860 How else will we figure it out on our own?

00:41:14.600 Listen to this guy on CNN commenting on her.

00:41:20.100 This is dangerous.

00:41:21.060 We can't think anymore in this country.

00:41:23.460 We don't have people.

00:41:24.420 No, I'm serious.

00:41:25.220 We don't have people in Congress who can make regulations that can make it work.

00:41:29.920 I think we can look to the Western countries in Europe for how they are trying to limit it.

00:41:34.460 But you need you need controls on this.

00:41:37.620 You need regulation.

00:41:38.840 You cannot let these guys control discourse in this country or we are headed to hell.

00:41:44.020 We are there.

00:41:44.720 Trump opened the gates of hell.

00:41:46.200 Now they're chasing us.

00:41:48.280 Gates of hell.

00:41:49.140 Yikes.

00:41:51.020 Yikes.

00:41:51.380 I mean, first of all, imagine just a scenario where you show up and you're like, you know

00:41:55.200 what?

00:41:55.320 The one thing that we have to do to ensure the Bill of Rights is let's just try to replicate

00:41:58.860 Western Europe.

00:42:01.420 I mean, wowzer, right?

00:42:05.200 It's scary.

00:42:06.640 Yeah.

00:42:07.000 But it's also this underlying thing that you see play out of the White House Correspondents

00:42:10.780 Dinner and everything else, which is modern liberalism.

00:42:13.660 And this is their this is their religion.

00:42:16.380 This is their organized religion.

00:42:18.040 Right.

00:42:18.520 It's not about any sort of faith in anything other than institutions to tell us what to

00:42:23.920 do.

00:42:24.560 And free thought, free expression.

00:42:26.740 And this guy says nobody can think anymore.

00:42:29.000 Well, but he doesn't mean him.

00:42:30.360 But he doesn't mean himself.

00:42:32.060 Right.

00:42:32.560 He means everybody else.

00:42:34.100 He wants everybody else to listen to him.

00:42:36.560 And what his thought is, is what's real and what's not real.

00:42:39.100 That's always that's always the turn with these people.

00:42:41.540 And that's why they always become tyrants is because when they say stuff like, oh, well,

00:42:45.180 we can't think anymore.

00:42:46.520 Well, you think you can think.

00:42:48.000 It's the royal.

00:42:48.420 You know, right.

00:42:49.260 Right.

00:42:50.020 Right.

00:42:50.540 Right.

00:42:50.860 Right.

00:42:51.400 All right.

00:42:51.860 So let's talk politics in a few minutes we have left.

00:42:54.700 Primaries are coming up in several states for folks who would like to become U.S.

00:42:58.300 senators or what have you. 0.99

00:42:59.840 And there was a moment.

00:43:01.700 I've got to play this because I got to get your reaction.

00:43:03.260 And so Trump, there was a big fight amongst the Republicans out in Ohio to try to get

00:43:06.840 Trump's endorsement.

00:43:08.180 That's Trump territory.

00:43:08.940 And they all all these GOPers wanted Trump to bless them.

00:43:11.940 And in the end, he gave his endorsement to J.D.

00:43:15.120 Vance.

00:43:15.500 And now there are cutthroat advertisements being run by the other guys against Trump's endorsement

00:43:21.840 and then back and forth.

00:43:23.340 And so J.D.

00:43:24.260 Vance gets the nod.

00:43:26.240 But Josh Mandel is right behind him in the polls.

00:43:29.280 J.D.

00:43:29.460 Vance now has 26 percent.

00:43:30.720 Josh Mandel has 24 percent.

00:43:32.000 And Trump seemed to be a little confused about who he actually wound up endorsing when he

00:43:36.220 spoke at a rally in a neighboring state or another state over the weekend.

00:43:39.140 Listen to how that went.

00:43:41.400 Boy, they're waiting for one race. 0.99

00:43:42.880 You know, we've endorsed Dr.

00:43:44.100 Oz.

00:43:44.740 We've endorsed J.P., right?

00:43:47.940 J.D.

00:43:48.480 Mandel.

00:43:49.060 Mandel, and he's doing great.

00:43:51.140 They're all doing good.

00:43:52.880 Oh, no.

00:43:53.780 So what's that about?

00:43:55.220 Clearly, he's not really bonded to J.D.

00:43:57.320 Vance.

00:43:58.440 Well, I think J.D.

00:43:59.280 Mandel is a pretty solid guy.

00:44:00.720 I think he'll do well for the people in the aisle.

00:44:03.880 There's nothing else to like about J.D.

00:44:05.740 Mandel.

00:44:06.240 I've never heard that word about J.D.

00:44:07.400 Mandel.

00:44:07.540 Maybe he's just maybe maybe he's just hedging his bet, you know, whoever comes out on top.

00:44:13.680 He can be like, well, I said there I said both their names.

00:44:15.920 I endorse them.

00:44:16.860 Alabama Senate race.

00:44:18.020 This is a little bit more precision.

00:44:20.460 I mean, honestly, Ohio, Megan, for people who follow this stuff closely, this has been

00:44:24.440 the best soap opera in politics I've ever seen.

00:44:26.360 It couldn't end any other way than that clip, right?

00:44:29.400 Yeah, that's true.

00:44:31.440 It has been unbelievable to watch.

00:44:33.000 I mean, mercifully, it's done on Tuesday because I don't know if there's going to be anybody

00:44:36.240 left standing in a month from now.

00:44:37.800 There was almost an open brawl on the debate stage between these candidates out there.

00:44:43.740 It's like, that's how insane it's gotten.

00:44:46.360 And it's like $10 million table stakes, right?

00:44:49.240 Yeah, minimum.

00:44:49.980 Like each candidate, you have to bring a 10 mil spend minimum.

00:44:53.120 It's unreal, unreal how that primary has gone down.

00:44:55.960 It really is.

00:44:56.680 What do we think is likely to happen there?

00:44:58.000 Do you think J.D. Vance is going to pull that out?

00:45:00.360 Or what do you think?

00:45:01.120 Because it's like Vance is at 26 percent, Mandel's at 24 percent, and then Matt Dolan's

00:45:04.880 at 21 percent.

00:45:06.620 National Review likes Matt Dolan because he's like, he wants to move beyond Trump.

00:45:10.560 I like the guys at National Review.

00:45:11.800 But, you know, they're sort of the more sophisticated, like distinguished Republicans.

00:45:15.100 They're like, anyway, but I wonder what's going to happen.

00:45:18.600 We clearly do not fit into that category.

00:45:20.860 No, you're the same.

00:45:23.980 But what do you think is going to happen?

00:45:25.040 Because I think Ohio is interesting.

00:45:26.280 And of course, the way the media is going to write about it is this is all a test of

00:45:29.260 Trump's power.

00:45:30.340 If Trump's endorsed candidate doesn't win, he's a loser.

00:45:33.780 Right.

00:45:33.980 It's like without accounting for the dynamics on the ground and so on and so forth.

00:45:38.260 Yeah.

00:45:38.420 I mean, they pick and choose on where they want to enforce that.

00:45:40.800 Right.

00:45:41.040 I mean, look, Trump still Trump still has a huge hold on a segment of the primary electorate.

00:45:47.680 And it's evidenced by J.D. Vance basically surging six, seven, eight points in recent

00:45:52.840 polls to take the lead in that.

00:45:54.600 Josh Mandel has been in that one or two slot now for nine months, maybe a year.

00:45:59.260 So he's he's basically been where he's at.

00:46:01.360 But then every other candidate in this race, as we said, it's like 10 million dollars table

00:46:04.780 stakes.

00:46:05.540 Everybody else has had their moment.

00:46:07.480 Right.

00:46:07.960 Whether it's James Timken or Gibbons or now Dolan.

00:46:12.220 And so, look, I mean, it's polls show this Dolan guy is starting to surge at the end.

00:46:18.320 I think it's J.D. Vance's race to lose because of the timing of the endorsement, the timing

00:46:22.820 of the peak of his end of his campaign.

00:46:25.720 But I mean, you wouldn't be surprised if it got razor thin here at the end.

00:46:29.740 Yeah.

00:46:29.840 The only poll I trust is the exit poll.

00:46:31.960 That's the one I'll be watching for.

00:46:35.440 The least reliable.

00:46:37.280 Served us so very well in the past.

00:46:38.400 In case you didn't know, listeners.

00:46:41.420 Well, hopefully we I mean, obviously, we don't have too much longer to wait because we are

00:46:45.320 going to get some results soon, at least in these primaries.

00:46:48.100 Herschel Walker looking good for the as a Senate candidate on the GOP side in Georgia.

00:46:52.360 And then what's happening with Dr. Oz?

00:46:55.240 So that's a tight race, right?

00:46:57.000 McCormick and Oz have basically made that a two man race here for the last three months

00:47:02.140 or so.

00:47:03.480 Again, tons of spending in the race.

00:47:05.480 Trump made his endorsement of Dr. Oz.

00:47:07.480 By all accounts, it's within the margin of error at this point.

00:47:10.780 And I think this is a real coin flip.

00:47:13.460 You've got to you've got to think that the Trump endorsement probably propels Oz to an advantage.

00:47:19.740 But I'm not ready to to rule McCormick out at all.

00:47:23.000 I mean, they've spent a ton of money.

00:47:25.260 They've really done a lot of damage to the image of Oz statewide in Pennsylvania.

00:47:29.960 But I think ultimately, from a Republican standpoint, either of those two candidates are going to be

00:47:33.820 incredible general election candidates, particularly when matched up against this Fetterman.

00:47:38.720 Yeah, that's going to be so bad for them.

00:47:41.380 Like the stories that are coming out about Fetterman.

00:47:43.620 He's a lunatic.

00:47:45.420 That has to be our tease until until the next time, because we're up against a break.

00:47:51.040 Guys, always a pleasure.

00:47:52.520 Thank you so much.

00:47:53.180 And we'll be right back.

00:47:57.660 We are taking an in-depth look at the trial captivating the nation right now.

00:48:02.020 Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.

00:48:03.180 It's it's an insane case.

00:48:05.160 It's really it's nuts.

00:48:06.100 Every time you tune back in, somebody said something equally outrageous to the day before,

00:48:10.840 and you didn't think that they could do it, but they found a way and everyone's got an

00:48:14.500 opinion on it.

00:48:15.640 Last week, Johnny Depp was on the stand.

00:48:18.220 People came from all over to get a look at Johnny Depp.

00:48:21.440 I mean, this country is still obsessed with celebrity this week.

00:48:24.540 It's Amber Heard's turn to me now to discuss what has happened and how this case is likely

00:48:29.260 to go to very experienced lawyers who've been closely following the trial.

00:48:33.820 Vinnie Politan is a lawyer, former prosecutor and the lead anchor of Court TV.

00:48:38.400 He's covered some of the nation's most captivating and critical trials, including Scott Peterson,

00:48:42.960 Michael Jackson, Casey Anthony, Jody Arias and George Zimmerman.

00:48:46.020 And Mark Garagos tried all those cases.

00:48:48.200 He tried virtually everyone.

00:48:50.360 I just mentioned he's a lawyer from Scott Peterson, from Michael Jackson.

00:48:55.300 He's now the managing partner of Garagos and Garagos, and he co-hosts his own podcast

00:48:58.960 called Reasonable Doubt with our pal Adam Carolla.

00:49:03.000 Welcome, guys.

00:49:03.600 Good to have you here.

00:49:04.340 And Vinnie, I've been enjoying your podcast on Court TV covering this case, too.

00:49:09.500 And the young female reporter, forgive me, I can't remember her name, but she does a good

00:49:12.680 job.

00:49:13.620 Chandley Painter.

00:49:14.980 Chandley.

00:49:15.720 First of all, I like that name, Chandley.

00:49:17.360 And she's been doing a good job covering that, too.

00:49:19.320 All right.

00:49:19.660 So thus far, this is my take.

00:49:22.880 And then you guys can tell me whether I'm right or wrong.

00:49:24.940 But my take is thus far, it's only been his case.

00:49:28.540 So she hasn't yet presented her defense.

00:49:30.220 He's suing her for for defamation, for suggesting in The Washington Post that he abused her.

00:49:35.000 And it's going well for him so far in that he's gotten a lot of evidence in that she allegedly

00:49:42.220 abused him.

00:49:43.640 And that might cast doubt on her previous allegations that she suffered abuse at his hand.

00:49:50.260 So that's a win for him.

00:49:52.260 He doesn't need her 50 million dollars.

00:49:54.500 He's already got hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:49:56.400 This isn't about earning money from her.

00:49:58.580 It's about squaring things up PR wise so that the public understands he wants them to think

00:50:06.060 he was the victim at a minimum that they were both tumultuous and it was ugly and bad.

00:50:12.200 And so he's winning at that.

00:50:13.720 But now she's going to put on her case.

00:50:15.680 And they've already been through this once before in England.

00:50:19.340 And they actually had a lot of these same witnesses and she won.

00:50:23.940 She won outright.

00:50:25.520 And they so they already this dance was danced before and it was a judge, not a jury.

00:50:31.160 But she won.

00:50:32.500 And the judge rejected all these arguments that the press here has been spending so much

00:50:35.880 time on saying, no, she was an abuse victim. 1.00

00:50:39.240 I don't know.

00:50:40.040 So right now I feel like he's winning PR wise and it'll remain a win because he's got enough

00:50:43.400 out to show that she abused him, too.

00:50:45.580 He's not going to win a defamation claim.

00:50:47.120 However, where am I going wrong?

00:50:48.900 Mark, I'll start with you.

00:50:50.420 Well, first of all, I think and I can't find it.

00:50:53.440 Maybe Vinny's got it.

00:50:54.560 I haven't seen the jury composition because one of the things I've noticed about this

00:50:59.160 so far is that it breaks almost completely down gender lines, meaning team team depth

00:51:07.180 is our females and they're the toughest on other females. 1.00

00:51:11.880 And it supports everything that I've ever known anecdotally about jury selection.

00:51:17.760 I want to know who's on that jury, because I will tell you he's got he's got the leg

00:51:22.820 up if he's got a some drivey females who are going to drive this thing. 1.00

00:51:28.020 Number one, number two, remember, and you bring it up, Megan, and people generally forget

00:51:33.400 about this.

00:51:33.920 We've seen this show before, and he lost in spectacular fashion, and this isn't about

00:51:40.360 the money.

00:51:41.140 Clearly, he doesn't need it or the amount of money that was stolen from him allegedly prior

00:51:47.720 to this was only a dent.

00:51:51.040 This is all about publicity.

00:51:53.860 I don't understand it.

00:51:55.240 If he had come to me, I would have tried to talk him out of this.

00:51:57.860 I don't think this has helped him.

00:51:59.780 I understand that, you know, a lot of times this is precisely why I avoid family law like

00:52:07.660 the plague, because this is way too similar to a divorce case for my liking.

00:52:13.520 Because the way it came up in England, Vinny, was he sued a newspaper over there that had

00:52:18.100 suggested she was his abuse victim.

00:52:19.860 And he was like, that's defamatory.

00:52:22.260 It's not true.

00:52:23.080 And in England, the court found, no, there's plenty of evidence that would sustain that

00:52:29.240 accusation.

00:52:30.580 And that defamation claim is not going to fly here.

00:52:33.860 And now he's got her in an American courtroom, kind of retrying similar allegations.

00:52:41.160 Well, here's the thing.

00:52:42.180 And it's amazing.

00:52:44.160 I'm going to disagree with both of you.

00:52:46.860 This is unreal.

00:52:47.860 I mean, we haven't seen this before.

00:52:51.580 Because the first trial was in the UK.

00:52:55.000 What does the UK not have that the United States of America does have?

00:52:59.860 Court TV, cameras in the courtroom.

00:53:03.900 So the public is actually hearing and seeing all the evidence in the case.

00:53:09.900 What did we hear out of UK?

00:53:11.600 We heard, you know, secondhand accounts filtered, filtered through journalists who see the world

00:53:18.640 pretty much all in the same way.

00:53:20.800 I think you will agree with that, Megan.

00:53:22.840 You've lived in that world a long time.

00:53:24.820 You know the way journalists see the world.

00:53:26.620 So now it's directly from the witness stand to the public.

00:53:31.840 And to me, that is the huge difference in this case, number one.

00:53:35.680 Number two, let me get to what Mark was saying, which is another big, big important factor.

00:53:40.100 And I don't know how to read it, Mark.

00:53:42.060 This jury, I walked into that courtroom and I looked at the jury and I was like,

00:53:45.400 well, are we on spring break?

00:53:47.780 It's like a bunch of young guys in their 20s and predominantly Asian young men in their 20s.

00:53:54.280 I don't know if that means anything, but you've got seven jurors who will decide this case.

00:53:59.340 Right now we're down to nine.

00:54:00.860 We lost two alternates.

00:54:01.900 But you've got five young men.

00:54:05.120 You've got one older man.

00:54:07.600 Then you've got an older woman, a younger woman, and a woman with a mask. 0.92

00:54:12.860 I have no idea how old she is.

00:54:14.860 You know, that's interesting, Vinny, because if I were going to handicap it,

00:54:18.360 and I were picking the jury here, I would want young men if I was representing Amber.

00:54:24.580 And I know it sounds trite, but I've seen it anecdotally.

00:54:29.880 The people who are identifying with Johnny Depp almost breaks exclusively or tilts heavily towards women.

00:54:38.800 And I think they've been vicious on Amber.

00:54:42.040 And I have not seen that when it comes to young males.

00:54:45.600 I'm the father of the young male.

00:54:48.620 And I talked to him and his friends, my own personal focus group.

00:54:53.940 And they're not buying anything Johnny Depp is selling.

00:54:57.400 It's kind of an interesting dichotomy here.

00:54:59.740 Now, let me go to this.

00:55:01.020 So the judge in England, Judge Andrew Nichol, found the great majority of alleged assaults of misheard by Mr. Depp have been proven to the civil standard.

00:55:12.400 There's a multiplicity of emails, texts and messages and diary entries in the papers before me.

00:55:16.260 He goes on to say that they may not be independent evidence of the truth, but he believes she's been corroborated in her abuse allegations.

00:55:22.080 And he goes through all of her abuse allegations, which we haven't yet heard in this case.

00:55:27.100 OK, but we're about to.

00:55:28.160 So this is sort of a preview of what's coming this week.

00:55:31.260 There are 14 in all, a couple of which he did discount.

00:55:34.920 And I'm not going to go through all of them.

00:55:36.140 But she says there were, let's say, let's just go with the ones he found he believes were supported.

00:55:41.860 Twelve assaults.

00:55:43.480 First one, Los Angeles, early 2013.

00:55:46.420 She joked about his tattoo that used to say Winona Ryder now says, why no, forever?

00:55:52.700 And she said he got angry.

00:55:54.260 He knocked her to the floor. 0.95

00:55:55.240 Then he cried, apologized, saying he sometimes turns into the monster.

00:55:58.560 Los Angeles, 2013.

00:56:00.900 She alleged he was enraged.

00:56:02.760 She hung a painting by her ex-partner.

00:56:04.720 He tried to set it on fire.

00:56:05.960 He hit her, quote, so hard that blood from her lip ended up on the wall. 0.67

00:56:09.760 She said he was a Jekyll and Hyde on a binge.

00:56:12.000 All of these involve drugs or alcohol.

00:56:13.820 Three, Hicksville, June 13.

00:56:15.520 He had taken alcohol and mushrooms.

00:56:17.160 He threw glasses at her.

00:56:18.240 He ripped her dress.

00:56:18.960 He damaged the cabin they were staying in.

00:56:20.240 Four, private plane from Boston to L.A., May 2014.

00:56:23.220 After drinking heavily, he had thrown objects at her, slapped her in the face, kicked her in the back, causing her to fall over.

00:56:28.140 He threw his boot at her. 0.99

00:56:28.940 Or he passed out in the toilet.

00:56:31.060 He denies all of this.

00:56:32.500 And on it goes.

00:56:33.500 I could keep going through all 14, 12 of which the judge believed.

00:56:37.760 But this same judge, for what it's worth, guys, found, number one, her donation of the $7 million to charity is hardly the act that one would expect of a gold digger.

00:56:51.220 Well, we know that didn't really happen.

00:56:53.140 She didn't donate the $7 million she got in the divorce settlement.

00:56:56.380 So the judge was confused to be charitable on that.

00:57:00.100 And then the judge also did not believe the poop incident.

00:57:04.400 He did not believe that she had defecated or had a friend defecate in the marital bed.

00:57:10.320 But this week in court, and forgive me for playing a poop sot, the chauffeur testified that she admitted it. 0.89

00:57:19.620 Here it is, soundbite 25.

00:57:20.700 Did you have any discussions with Ms. Hurd on the way to Coachella that evening?

00:57:27.340 We had a conversation pertaining to the surprise she left in the boss's bed prior to leaving the apartment.

00:57:34.220 And when you refer to the surprise in the boss's bed, what are you referring to?

00:57:39.360 The defecation.

00:57:40.440 And what did Ms. Hurd say about the defecation in Mr. Depp's bed?

00:57:46.380 A horrible practical jerk gone wrong.

00:57:50.740 So the judge, he wasn't all that up to speed over there in England.

00:57:55.000 Vinny, your thoughts?

00:57:55.880 I mean, to the point of that's a different trial than this one.

00:57:58.540 Yeah.

00:57:58.780 And I think we refer to it as a grumpy.

00:58:00.880 At least that's what Johnny Depp referred to it as.

00:58:03.020 A grumpy is a new word for me.

00:58:05.020 Here's the thing, right?

00:58:06.280 You've got all these allegations by Amber Hurd, which are going to come up this week, but this jury is hearing them a little bit differently than the judge because of one of Johnny Depp's witnesses, which was the psychologist who interviewed and analyzed Amber Hurd for this jury and described her as borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder.

00:58:28.160 So there's a little bit of a different filter that that jury has right now.

00:58:31.460 And I'm sure Amber Hurd will have her own experts, but the bottom line is they've heard that that testimony from that expert describing the mind of Amber Hurd.

00:58:40.020 So now when they hear these allegations from Amber Hurd on the witness stand, maybe they look at her a little differently than the judge did.

00:58:47.360 This is a very good point.

00:58:48.160 You raised this on your podcast, which I listen to.

00:58:50.940 And we said we stole this soundbite from you, hoping that you might raise that point because it was a good one.

00:58:55.460 This is soundbite 30.

00:58:56.660 This is the psychologist who examined Amber for 12 plus hours and has thoughts on Amber's issues.

00:59:02.240 Here it is.

00:59:03.940 Borderline personality disorder.

00:59:05.260 You're having these fluctuating moods constantly.

00:59:07.860 And again, this hypersensitivity to being slighted or feeling offended, really driven by the fear that if you're offended or slighted, if the therapist comes in two minutes late or if somebody shows up to dinner two minutes late, that they might be abandoning you.

00:59:26.640 So if they're in the middle of the restaurant and they feel offended, they're going to start the fight.

00:59:31.440 People are going to see it or they might just start crying or break down, but they'll make a lot of accusations.

00:59:39.040 And that reactivity is when you're going to just you're going to see a lot of this escalation, the bizarre behavior.

00:59:44.720 They can react violently.

00:59:45.940 They can react aggressively.

00:59:48.620 Now, Mark, they tried to poke holes in that by saying, well, you know, you only interviewed her for 12 hours and you came to this case by having dinner with Johnny Depp and his lawyers and a bunch of drinks.

00:59:56.820 And only when they talk to you over the booze did they decide she'll do. 0.94

01:00:01.440 Right.

01:00:01.800 Because we all know how that works.

01:00:02.900 You're like, well, would you believe that this woman, you know, right? 0.96

01:00:06.320 And then she's like, no, I wouldn't.

01:00:07.680 And you're hired.

01:00:09.120 I'll tell you, every every time I've ever had a witness with psychiatric so-called qualifications, all you got to do is put somebody else up there who says the opposite.

01:00:20.560 And then the jury says a pox on both your houses.

01:00:23.860 I mean, this is that that to me is not going to be pivotal in the least.

01:00:28.520 People are going to discount that.

01:00:29.920 You think so?

01:00:30.720 Because right now they're like, she's a lunatic.

01:00:33.000 This woman's a lunatic, borderline person and histrionic personality disorder. 1.00

01:00:35.920 I actually knew somebody who had this.

01:00:37.880 And it's if you if you might know somebody who has this thing and you might not know that's what it's called.

01:00:42.800 But it's somebody who tends to be hyper sexualized in lots of their conversations, trying to draw weird, inappropriate attention to themselves.

01:00:49.900 They have to be the center of attention.

01:00:51.800 If they're not the center of attention, they get upset and they do weird things.

01:00:54.220 There was this one woman who I knew a long time ago who, like, if if the conversation was going on and she wasn't involved, she would just start like humming loudly.

01:01:01.820 She would do whatever she could to get the conversation back on her.

01:01:04.940 Always weird references to her sex life or her body or whatever.

01:01:08.260 Anyway, the jury's thinking she's a nut. 0.96

01:01:10.120 Was it someone you worked with?

01:01:11.200 I was going to say, Megan, you may have a sequel on your hands.

01:01:16.260 She actually is well known publicly.

01:01:19.360 That's all I'm going to say.

01:01:20.400 OK.

01:01:22.200 Vinny, we'll start we'll start guessing.

01:01:24.820 We'll start a pool.

01:01:26.280 We'll chat after the show.

01:01:27.480 So I don't need my own defamation case against me.

01:01:31.560 So let's shift to this.

01:01:32.720 Johnny Depp gets up there and he's introduced lots of evidence that he's the victim.

01:01:36.200 He's the real victim.

01:01:37.980 She claimed she was a victim falsely and ruined his career.

01:01:41.800 Here's a sampling of what he says was the physical abuse he faced.

01:01:46.640 Soundbite 16.

01:01:47.160 It would commence with sort of demeaning name-calling, berated sort of to be made a fool of, and those

01:02:03.000 would escalate into a full-scale argument.

01:02:08.240 I would just go and lock myself in, you know, the bathroom or anywhere that she couldn't

01:02:15.960 get into.

01:02:17.640 If I stayed to argue that, eventually I was sure that it was going to escalate into violence.

01:02:27.800 It could begin with a slap.

01:02:29.620 It could begin with a shove.

01:02:33.260 It could begin with, you know, throwing a TV remote at my head.

01:02:37.760 It could be throwing a glass of wine in my face.

01:02:45.380 She kicked the bathroom door into my head. 1.00

01:02:53.640 And I was completely taken aback by such a corrosive, horrific move.

01:03:16.940 The next move was just a bang, and just she clocked me in the jaw. 1.00

01:03:22.840 She walked up to me and reached and grabbed the bottle of vodka and then just kind of stood 1.00

01:03:32.140 back and then hurled it at me.

01:03:35.540 And then I looked down and realized that the tip of my finger had been severed.

01:03:47.740 And what did you say in response when Miss Hurd said, tell the world, Johnny, tell them, Johnny Depp,

01:03:53.740 I, Johnny Depp, a man, I'm a victim to of domestic violence?

01:03:59.080 I said, yes.

01:04:01.840 What do you make of it, Mark?

01:04:03.040 How, how, how many points did he score there?

01:04:05.960 Look, I, I just don't, I don't understand, uh, frankly, the, the plaintiff's case.

01:04:14.180 I mean, people have to understand he brought this case and the, to my mind, the collateral

01:04:20.700 damage to him is worse than anything that ever was suggested.

01:04:26.000 And mind you, I don't even think he was named in the Washington Post editorial.

01:04:29.540 Um, by, but it was clear, it was clear, I suppose, but they, if you stop somebody on

01:04:35.480 the street and you ask them today, do you remember that editorial?

01:04:39.060 Or do you remember the, the argument over whether or not the tip of his finger was cut?

01:04:44.160 I'm going to suggest, or that somebody, um, defecated in his bed.

01:04:48.320 I think that's what they're going to remember.

01:04:50.120 So I don't understand.

01:04:51.780 And now I will, I will, uh, give Vinny kudos here.

01:04:56.320 Now that I know who the jurors are in this case, I really don't understand what the point

01:05:00.700 is of this case.

01:05:02.180 I really don't.

01:05:02.960 I don't think.

01:05:03.360 But isn't, isn't that the point?

01:05:04.680 Like if, if all I can remember about this case is that his, he lost his finger and there

01:05:08.420 was a poop in the bed.

01:05:09.880 I see her differently, not him.

01:05:12.880 I think that that is, we're taking kind of a, a snapshot right now.

01:05:18.080 I think she may, we'll see a quit herself well on the stand. 1.00

01:05:23.080 I see, you know, it's about to get worse for him for sure.

01:05:25.340 But yeah, it's, I mean, cause that's the thing, Vinny is like so far it's just been

01:05:29.400 his stage and she, she's an actress too.

01:05:33.380 Yeah, exactly.

01:05:34.360 Right.

01:05:34.800 And by the way, I'm, I'm telling you again, I see this going down gender lines.

01:05:39.380 So that's just my, that's a great prediction.

01:05:41.940 I'll say this about her testimony though, Megan, you know, and it's six years later, but she

01:05:46.140 was deposed and I've seen the video of her deposition.

01:05:49.220 She's no Johnny Depp in that deposition.

01:05:51.240 So, um, it's six years later, she's, she's a more mature woman.

01:05:55.440 She's been through it a couple of times already.

01:05:57.400 She may come across much better.

01:05:59.200 Um, but she did not come across well in her deposition. 0.97

01:06:02.640 Can we talk about that for a second?

01:06:03.860 Hold, hold that, hold that thought.

01:06:05.240 Cause can we talk about that for a second?

01:06:06.620 I've seen some of those clips too.

01:06:07.920 And you're a hundred percent right.

01:06:09.160 I haven't heard enough people make that point.

01:06:10.780 She was bizarre that she was the, she was getting crossed by the lawyers and, and it was

01:06:15.960 getting uncomfortable and she kept shoving, was it mints?

01:06:19.720 Was it gum?

01:06:21.060 I thought it was mints or something.

01:06:22.920 In her mouth.

01:06:23.660 Like every, every tough question, she'd shove her mouth full of mints or gum.

01:06:27.960 And then she'd like need a minute before she could answer.

01:06:31.320 Cause she was chewing whatever was in her mouth.

01:06:33.480 I mean, it was such an obvious delaying, like stalling mechanism.

01:06:38.620 She looked like a moron. 0.51

01:06:40.560 And then she went all holier than thou.

01:06:43.220 But the one time she admits she had, I mean, he says he got hit many times.

01:06:46.500 She admits hitting him one time when she says he was allegedly threatening to throw her

01:06:50.420 sister down the stairs and just her overly dramatic, absolutely to save the life of my 1.00

01:06:55.420 sister.

01:06:56.320 Yes.

01:06:56.820 Yes.

01:06:57.200 Of course.

01:06:57.800 Every time I will hit somebody, it was, you would think as a professional actor, she'd 0.75

01:07:02.000 know battle it back sister. 1.00

01:07:04.540 Oh, we have it.

01:07:05.360 All right.

01:07:05.620 Sorry.

01:07:05.900 Hold on.

01:07:06.240 Let's let's let the audience hear it for themselves.

01:07:09.980 Okay.

01:07:10.560 He was about to push my sister down the stairs. 1.00

01:07:13.080 She was attempting to break us up. 1.00

01:07:15.200 I am protective over my baby sister.

01:07:17.360 When he laid hands on her, I don't know what I did.

01:07:21.720 But I know I jumped in between the actions that I saw could lead to a fatal injury to my

01:07:28.080 sister.

01:07:28.700 She was standing on the top of a flight of the stairs and she has never hurt anyone in

01:07:31.860 her life.

01:07:32.240 And she does not deserve to be pushed down the flight of the stairs.

01:07:35.240 And it looked like she was about to be.

01:07:37.120 And I would have done what anybody who has a child or sister would have done.

01:07:42.580 I acted defensively in her life.

01:07:45.960 I saw her standing on top of a flight of the stairs and trying to interrupt a fight in 1.00

01:07:50.920 between him and I.

01:07:52.060 I don't know what part of my body I put in between me and him and her, but I would have

01:07:59.960 done anything.

01:08:01.780 I would have done anything to prevent her from being pushed on a flight of stairs. 0.98

01:08:07.480 Go ahead, Vinny.

01:08:08.300 Well, there's a couple of things about her testimony is with her sister.

01:08:14.400 This relationship isn't clear.

01:08:15.600 Sister's on her witness list.

01:08:17.780 So I'm sure she will testify for Amber Heard.

01:08:20.940 But there are allegations that there were some problems between the sisters and where her

01:08:25.580 sister Whitney may have been a victim of Amber.

01:08:27.980 At least those are some of the allegations that are floating around all this.

01:08:31.560 So expect to hear that on cross-examination as well.

01:08:34.660 So it's going to be a huge moment when she testifies, but I know it's six years later

01:08:41.140 and she looks like a different person in the courtroom than she did in that deposition.

01:08:45.280 And we'll see if she sounds like a different person, but something tells me you don't change

01:08:50.500 that much.

01:08:51.860 And I think there's a chance here.

01:08:53.960 The other part of this lawsuit has always been why, why, why?

01:08:57.860 And I think Mark has a great point.

01:08:59.000 Why would you do this?

01:08:59.720 Um, I think it goes back to in 2016, they had a divorce settlement and then that's it,

01:09:06.840 right?

01:09:07.140 Mark, you divorce someone, especially if you're a public figure like they are, you don't talk

01:09:11.740 about it.

01:09:12.560 That's the end.

01:09:13.440 We move on.

01:09:14.520 And then two years later, she poked the bear, uh, with the ACLU for some reason and, and

01:09:20.680 put out this op-ed, which he felt was directed at him.

01:09:23.940 And the jury will make that decision.

01:09:25.840 I think it's obvious, but maybe, maybe it's not obvious to the jury.

01:09:28.520 Um, and I think that's why he brought it.

01:09:31.020 It was like, okay, you're going to poke me.

01:09:33.380 You already took me down.

01:09:34.560 You're trying to take me down again.

01:09:36.040 If I'm going down, you're going down.

01:09:39.240 And it's almost like an episode of curb your enthusiasm where this is the spite lawsuit.

01:09:45.280 I look, I don't disagree with you in the least.

01:09:49.020 That's why somebody should have talked to him off the ledge on this in my humble opinion.

01:09:54.240 And by the way, uh, maybe, uh, Megan will want to get to this.

01:09:58.220 The ACLU is, uh, look, I've always thought, you know, for 40 years early in my career, I

01:10:05.140 thought they did great work, fantastic work.

01:10:07.740 I, you know, and even as recently as the last decade, this, uh, at least if you believe what's

01:10:13.500 reported is abhorrent.

01:10:15.440 I don't even understand this, a three and a half million dollar donation to help coauthor

01:10:20.940 an op-ed.

01:10:22.580 Yeah, exactly.

01:10:23.560 And she, and they were allegedly behind the very first draft of, of course, because let's

01:10:28.680 face it, she seems like a moron. 0.53

01:10:30.080 So she didn't write that op-ed.

01:10:31.580 They wrote the op-ed for her and you can tell.

01:10:34.460 Megan, you are proving my gender theory in spades on this thing. 0.55

01:10:38.960 I'll just point that out.

01:10:40.120 I am open-minded to her case.

01:10:41.860 I have not ruled out the possibility that Johnny Depp abused her.

01:10:44.960 I haven't.

01:10:45.280 I want to, I want to hear it.

01:10:46.800 The enchanting Johnny Depp versus moron Amber Heard, but.

01:10:50.360 No, no, no.

01:10:51.000 He seems like a moron too.

01:10:53.080 At least he's been, he's able to string two sentences together today versus all the

01:10:56.960 tapes we've seen of him where the guys had so much drugs and so many, so much alcohol

01:11:01.300 in his system.

01:11:01.960 It's like a walking advertisement.

01:11:03.500 And I said to my team, the moral here is do not marry Johnny Depp and do not marry Amber

01:11:09.200 Heard.

01:11:09.500 They don't marry these people. 1.00

01:11:11.060 Well, once constantly intoxicated and drugged up, do not do family law or anything related

01:11:15.580 to it.

01:11:16.480 But, but I, I want to challenge you, Mark, because I actually don't dis, I don't disagree

01:11:21.000 with his strategy of bringing the lawsuit.

01:11:23.460 He'd already been labeled as an abuser.

01:11:25.660 It had been all over the British tabloids.

01:11:27.700 Some of the American tabloids, I think too.

01:11:29.980 Um, she, like she was sort of, she, she orchestrated that press opportunity in front of the tabloid 0.98

01:11:35.500 reporters, the paparazzi when she came out, uh, after she filed for divorce.

01:11:39.660 So she made sure that the press was going her way, that she was this abuse victim and poor 0.98

01:11:43.800 Amber.

01:11:44.480 And he was probably really irritated about it.

01:11:46.740 If in fact, she abused him in the way that he now claims.

01:11:49.780 So at a minimum, he's changed the national conversation to he's an abuser.

01:11:54.520 By the way, he was like fired from the pirates of the Caribbean series.

01:11:57.500 Immediately, he's changed the narrative from that to they're both hot messes.

01:12:02.780 They were in a very messy, unfortunate, abusive relationship.

01:12:06.160 And she's not just this unsullied, poor, little, woe is me abuse victim. 0.92

01:12:12.380 That, as long as we're talking about a snapshot in the trial, what if he loses?

01:12:16.780 Then what happens?

01:12:17.780 And by the way, at least in Hollywood, um, the, the scuttlebutt, if you will, is that

01:12:25.960 he was uninsurable prior to this for reasons that had nothing to do with her.

01:12:31.960 And that was the real reason that, uh, he wasn't working as much.

01:12:36.200 I don't know if that's true.

01:12:37.820 Yeah, no, he's a mess.

01:12:38.980 He's, he's like fired his entire legal team a couple of times.

01:12:41.360 He fired his like managers or agents, something like that.

01:12:43.360 He hasn't been able to maintain relationships, which is not unusual when you have somebody

01:12:46.880 with that big abuse.

01:12:47.200 By the way, when you go through, you know, one of the things they tell you, uh, the state

01:12:50.900 bars always, and ethics lawyers always tell you is shy away from a client who's on their

01:12:55.700 second or third set of lawyers.

01:12:57.380 You're just asking for all kinds of issues.

01:12:59.800 That's kind of the, uh, the red flag.

01:13:01.660 She's equally bad though.

01:13:03.160 She's, I mean, like all the stories about her doing the drugs too.

01:13:06.100 She's, I don't know if she's as bad of a victim when it comes to, she's got a new 1.00

01:13:09.880 PR team this week for her testimonial.

01:13:12.120 Right.

01:13:12.400 They just fired over the weekend.

01:13:14.280 The headlines are too bad for her. 0.53

01:13:15.880 Well, sorry, but that's, it's really not the fault of the PR people.

01:13:20.740 They've just, the press is in there listening to the allegations about her bad behavior.

01:13:24.840 That's why I think it wasn't a bad move for him to just say, okay, I've behaved like a

01:13:29.800 shit, not as badly as she says I have, but she's problematic too. 0.99

01:13:33.660 And let, why don't, cause now already we're seeing something like 3 million signatures

01:13:36.520 to get her booted from the Aquaman sequel, which she was in.

01:13:40.400 Um, because you know, what's good for the goose, right?

01:13:43.020 Like if he has to go from pirates, she has to go from Aquaman and it's on.

01:13:48.520 Yeah.

01:13:48.960 And I think, you know, ultimately with this jury and, and, you know, the law obviously is on

01:13:53.400 her side, he's a public figure, first amendment, United States.

01:13:57.260 I get it.

01:13:58.240 But ultimately I think there's a chance that the jury can look at this and say, wait, this

01:14:03.060 really wasn't fair.

01:14:04.260 What happened to Johnny Depp?

01:14:05.340 We've, we've seen, we've now learned what this relationship was like and what it was

01:14:08.660 about and how she was and how he was.

01:14:11.020 And, and it just didn't seem fair that she should be the one that comes out as the victim.

01:14:16.020 Um, he comes down as the cliche wife beater and, you know, his life gets disrupted.

01:14:21.980 Um, I, I can see them not coming back for the 50 million, but how about the 7 million

01:14:25.680 from the divorce just as sending a message that this whole thing wasn't fair.

01:14:30.080 That's interesting.

01:14:31.300 I, cause I've all along, I've been thinking no public figure can win a defamation case.

01:14:35.100 You know that, right?

01:14:35.760 So it's like, he's not going to win a defamation case.

01:14:38.540 The, the, the bar for proving defamation, if your public figure is just so impossibly high.

01:14:43.160 So he's got that against him.

01:14:45.060 And then he's got the fact that there has been testimony, even on his case that he did

01:14:50.740 abuse her. 0.63

01:14:51.580 So, you know, technically what she implied was true, but it wasn't the full story.

01:14:57.820 So that's been, that's sort of why I've been thinking he's not going to win.

01:15:01.440 Cause maybe, maybe he did abuse her, but it wasn't the full story, but I don't see a

01:15:07.260 defamation case.

01:15:07.760 And they're arguing different types of abuse.

01:15:10.280 Megan, a big part of this is there.

01:15:11.700 It's like Amber Heard and her team are really focused on the, the emotional abuse, the verbal

01:15:17.880 abuse, whereas Johnny Depp and his team are focused really on the physical abuse and that

01:15:23.660 aspect of the relationship.

01:15:25.440 And again, we'll see what the jury does with that, but you can see where the two sides have

01:15:29.720 split in this case and the way they're questioning witnesses trying to define abuse for this jury.

01:15:36.580 Well, and the question is, what evidence does she have?

01:15:39.020 What evidence, like he's put in pictures of his, his face hurt right underneath his eye,

01:15:44.100 like on his orbital bone.

01:15:46.420 And what's her actual evidence is apart from her claims that he abused her.

01:15:51.000 Um, we've seen a cop, cops testify.

01:15:53.800 They saw no injuries on her when they showed up the night he allegedly whipped his phone

01:15:57.660 as hard as he could in her face.

01:15:59.180 They said, we saw nothing.

01:16:00.620 Um, we've seen his security team testify.

01:16:03.480 Nope.

01:16:03.840 We saw him hurt.

01:16:04.760 We never saw her hurt.

01:16:06.000 Um, but she's got friends too, and she's got witnesses and they're on her witness list. 0.65

01:16:11.280 Um, that's, we're going to pick it up right after this quick break.

01:16:18.540 Let's talk about what she is going to say.

01:16:21.460 Um, first, before we play the, him assaulting the cabinets with the, with the wine and all that,

01:16:29.120 there's a soundbite.

01:16:30.000 It's 27 where she, you can hear her saying, here's what I've got on my side.

01:16:35.020 It's soundbite27.

01:16:36.000 By the way, my family, my friends, everyone around me saw all the bruises and broken,

01:16:42.940 broken blood vessel under my eye, the bruises on my head, the missing chunks of hair, the

01:16:47.700 split lip, the black eye, the swollen nose, all that because you're stronger.

01:16:52.380 It does not mean, it does not mean because they hurt me that I'm somehow more responsible.

01:16:58.660 It just means they hurt me because I yell in a fight.

01:17:01.540 You do provoke.

01:17:02.860 I yell.

01:17:03.500 It doesn't mean I'm more responsible or batter.

01:17:07.480 Batter.

01:17:08.400 Back to my earlier point.

01:17:10.160 Um, okay.

01:17:10.780 And then I'm sorry.

01:17:13.920 She's not running for president. 0.72

01:17:15.320 You are, you know, that former prosecutor in you.

01:17:19.200 I can't help it.

01:17:21.400 Um, she's not going to, she's not leaving the trial for her Mensa meeting, but neither is

01:17:25.480 he.

01:17:26.760 Um, okay.

01:17:27.780 Then this is probably the most damning piece of tape that we've seen because his abuse,

01:17:32.440 his alleged abuse of her, of her is not on tape.

01:17:35.140 We have no tape either way, showing somebody hitting the other person, at least not that

01:17:40.340 we know of.

01:17:41.000 Here's some by 26.

01:17:42.100 This made the rounds on, um, on social media and so on a long time ago.

01:17:45.900 And now here again at trial.

01:17:49.880 Nothing happened this morning.

01:17:51.480 You know that?

01:17:54.560 Were you in here?

01:17:56.400 No.

01:17:57.020 So nothing happened to you this morning?

01:17:59.260 Yeah, you're right.

01:18:00.100 I just woke up and you were so sweet and nice.

01:18:02.600 We were not even fighting this morning.

01:18:07.120 All I did was say sorry.

01:18:08.560 Did something happen to you this morning?

01:18:13.700 I don't think so.

01:18:15.100 You want to see crazy?

01:18:15.980 Don't give me a f***.

01:18:18.480 That's crazy.

01:18:20.840 Oh, you're crazy.

01:18:22.920 Are you crazy?

01:18:23.600 Have you drunk this whole thing this morning?

01:18:25.380 Oh, you got this going.

01:18:26.540 You got this going?

01:18:27.640 I just started it.

01:18:28.420 Oh, really?

01:18:29.200 Yes.

01:18:29.960 Really?

01:18:30.280 Finds the camera.

01:18:36.340 See that s*** here?

01:18:37.540 No, it didn't.

01:18:38.720 You were smashing s***.

01:18:44.340 This is at your house in West Hollywood on Sweetser Avenue, correct?

01:18:49.340 That's correct, sir.

01:18:50.420 And that's you in the video, Mr. Depp, right?

01:18:54.100 That's correct, sir.

01:18:55.220 And you would agree that you were violent in that clip, correct?

01:19:00.280 Clearly, I was having a bad time.

01:19:06.440 I don't know what it was with regard to completely at this point, since I don't know the date.

01:19:12.660 But being legally recorded by your chosen other is quite fitting with the rest of the photographs and tape recordings she made.

01:19:34.160 So, I thought what was most interesting is that she tried to hide it from me and then that she laughed and smiled at the end.

01:19:45.140 I thought that was the most interesting part myself.

01:19:48.120 But so, yes, I did assault a couple of cabins, but I did not touch Miss Hurd.

01:19:54.620 They're kind of eating it up inside the courtroom, from what I hear, Vinny.

01:20:00.960 Like, there's a group of women that loves Johnny Depp.

01:20:04.260 He says hello to them every day.

01:20:06.640 You know, the fan factor, I don't know.

01:20:10.060 They love his little jokes about the cabinets and so on.

01:20:12.860 Oh, absolutely.

01:20:16.160 And there was a moment in the courtroom when I was there that I've never seen before.

01:20:20.600 Maybe Mark has seen it, but where it's done.

01:20:24.420 We're done for the day.

01:20:25.120 The judge has, you know, ended.

01:20:26.880 She's left the bench.

01:20:27.940 It's time for Johnny Depp to exit.

01:20:30.060 He goes in the back behind the judge's bench is where the door is that he goes out.

01:20:34.840 And as he's going through the doorway, he just turns and just gives them a little wave like this.

01:20:41.020 And, like, 50 women are like this. 1.00

01:20:44.760 It was so amazing.

01:20:47.780 That's the level of fandom that you have inside the courtroom and outside of the courthouse.

01:20:53.120 They wait for him to come out every day as well.

01:20:55.980 And there's, you know, in fact, the demographic is basically, I'd say, probably, like, 40 to 55 is the majority of them.

01:21:03.880 But there are some that are younger.

01:21:05.900 He definitely has younger fans from the Pirates movies as well.

01:21:09.360 And a few guys, like one or two, but, like, 50 to, like, 150 women every day that are there for Johnny Depp.

01:21:16.720 How does that play, Mark?

01:21:17.860 I mean, you've made a career out of representing celebrities in trouble.

01:21:20.600 And she's a star, but she's not the kind of star he is.

01:21:25.440 Well, that's why I say jury selection is everything in a case like this.

01:21:29.340 Because you want – you're looking for a constituency.

01:21:33.180 And as Vinny has described it, that's exactly what I would have expected his constituency is, maybe even a higher on the upper band of the age.

01:21:43.540 But that is – that's kind of where they are team Depp.

01:21:48.080 The problem is that if Vinny's description – and I have every reason to believe it's completely accurate – if it's younger males, that is not his demographic.

01:22:02.140 And, you know, you may have – I don't know, Vinny, did they ask on the questionnaire whether any of these people were fans or had seen the Pirates or anything of that nature?

01:22:11.740 Do you know?

01:22:12.340 And I would want to know those kinds of things.

01:22:14.900 Because you can be the most popular person in a courtroom with your fans.

01:22:21.320 But remember, there's only one audience or demographic that you're appealing to, and that's the jury.

01:22:26.340 Although I would say it would be interesting to me – I don't know, Vinny, did you observe with this judge?

01:22:32.840 How does the judge treat them, and what's her interplay with the various lawyers on each side?

01:22:39.080 The judge has been amazing, by the way.

01:22:41.480 You know, the type of judge that calls balls and strikes is decisive, does it quickly, doesn't blow anything out of proportion.

01:22:48.740 And a lot of hearsay objections.

01:22:50.660 Both sides are all over it, right?

01:22:52.980 So if she has to bring people to the bench, she'll bring them to the bench. 1.00

01:22:56.480 But I didn't get the sense one way or the other that either side was the favorite of this judge.

01:23:02.100 I mean, it's the perfect judge for a case like this.

01:23:04.860 She does, however, she has a big concern about not turning this into a circus, has very specific rules about what happens in the courtroom.

01:23:14.640 And sometimes when that courtroom gallery reacts to Johnny Depp, she has to remind them once in a while.

01:23:22.260 It hasn't happened a lot, but it happened a couple times.

01:23:24.380 But she's done a great job keeping order.

01:23:26.040 The one thing, though, that she didn't allow us to see was the jury selection process.

01:23:32.120 So that part was not open.

01:23:34.660 But the judge has been amazing because the state of Virginia, Court TV, we've never done a trial in the state of Virginia before.

01:23:39.960 I was wondering about that.

01:23:42.520 How did you?

01:23:43.120 Yeah, because they have some of the most restrictive rules of any of the states.

01:23:47.260 I was wondering about that.

01:23:48.780 I was also wondering whether you think the lawyer for Amber Heard, who's been pilloried on the Internet, deserved or not deserved?

01:23:58.460 She's doing her job.

01:24:00.180 What happens is people, you know, the people take sides.

01:24:03.100 You know, it happened in the Jody Arias case.

01:24:05.100 It happened in the Casey Anthony trial.

01:24:07.900 They take sides and then they can't separate it.

01:24:11.400 Like sometimes it's hard to separate Scott Peterson from Mark Garagos, although they're completely different people who have led different lives, completely different lives.

01:24:19.500 But that's the dynamic that happens.

01:24:22.120 And I think that's what's happening online.

01:24:23.540 The thing is, we're in a world now that, you know, between TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, there's so many places.

01:24:33.640 It's so overwhelming for Johnny Depp that I think that's why Amber Heard is concerned right now, why she hired a new PR team, because the fans of Johnny Depp are there's many more of them.

01:24:46.240 And right now we're in Johnny Depp's case and they're cutting those little pieces of video and sound over and over again.

01:24:53.220 I'll give you one example that I thought was a little unfair, directed at her lawyer, whose name I don't know, one of her lawyers.

01:25:00.960 He had asked the question of Depp and Depp had started to go on a narrative and then he objected.

01:25:07.380 And he didn't use the right evidentiary objection.

01:25:10.860 I mean, he should have moved to strike non-responsive.

01:25:13.700 But he was savaged on social media, objecting to his own question.

01:25:18.780 So, but he was basically what he was trying to articulate is objection, non-responsive.

01:25:24.380 It's devolved into a narrative.

01:25:26.080 But boy, that that evidentiary distinction was lost in the great abyss that is the Internet.

01:25:32.340 Back in the day, when you take somebody's deposition, you the rules of evidence, they don't really apply.

01:25:37.940 Like you can pretty much ask mostly what you want.

01:25:40.560 And the person's just supposed to say objection to form, object to the form of the question.

01:25:44.340 But pretty much you're allowed to ask what you want and get a bunch of information and whether it's admissible at trial is a different question for a leader.

01:25:51.220 But there was this old grizzled partner at Jones Day where I practiced law and he was great.

01:25:56.880 I love this guy.

01:25:57.660 He just took he just didn't suffer fools.

01:26:00.180 And he'd be taking a deposition and he'd say the other the other lawyer, instead of saying objective form, would say objection, hearsay, move to strike.

01:26:11.440 It's like, OK, you don't move to strike in a deposition.

01:26:13.920 Anyway, this old grizzled lawyer, Jones Day would go overruled, motion denied.

01:26:18.280 I miss the legal war stories.

01:26:27.760 OK, wait, here's a question for you.

01:26:29.200 Back to let's go back to the legal matter, because I have two brilliant legal minds here that I want to probe.

01:26:34.180 Because if she if what she said in The Washington Post op-ed is true, I am an abuse victim.

01:26:41.820 And she clearly means at the hands of Johnny Depp.

01:26:44.460 It is true.

01:26:45.440 But it is not the full story.

01:26:47.380 If the jury gets to the place of believing you are also an abuser.

01:26:52.020 The question is whether that can amount legally to defamation, because there is something that's known as liable by omission, liable by omission.

01:27:04.580 Now, wait, while you ponder that, I'm going to play the soundbite of Laurel Anderson, who was their marriage counselor.

01:27:11.700 She's apparently been a counselor for 40 years.

01:27:14.440 They both came in when they were still married.

01:27:16.120 She was called as a Johnny Depp witness.

01:27:18.240 And she seemed to say they both abused each other.

01:27:22.760 Here's a soundbite of Laurel Anderson.

01:27:24.560 This is Sot 24.

01:27:25.320 He had been well-controlled, I think, for almost, I don't know, 20, 30 years.

01:27:33.820 And both were victims of abuse in their homes.

01:27:38.500 But I thought he had been well-controlled for decades.

01:27:41.780 And then with Ms. Hurd, he was triggered.

01:27:46.480 And they engaged in what I saw as mutual abuse.

01:27:51.820 Sometimes I'm not, I know she led on more than one occasion and started it to keep him with her because abandonment and having him leave was her worst nightmare.

01:28:06.200 Okay, so if the jury believes her, mutual abuse, can he win?

01:28:11.980 Because Amber Hurd's op-ed was misleading in that it certainly did not tell the whole story and created a false impression of the relationship.

01:28:22.420 Well, I think what you're going to see is in most civil cases, this is civil, you're fighting over other people's money.

01:28:30.040 What the judge will do is give a verdict form that will have questions.

01:28:35.900 And they'll go down the verdict form and the jury will have to answer the questions.

01:28:39.820 And there are certain points where if you answer yes or you answer no, that's it.

01:28:45.720 It stops their deliberations and the verdict is done.

01:28:50.160 So this is one of the reasons I was asking Vinny, and you anticipated it, about the judge, is the crucial aspect of this case.

01:29:00.800 You know, summation is great, but summation is basically just giving your arguments to the people you think are with you so that they're effective when they're in the jury room.

01:29:09.820 But clearly what's going to happen is the jurors are going to sit down and they're going to have to figure out, at certain points, the answers to those questions.

01:29:18.580 And one of the questions, Megan, you're spot on here, you may be, if you find that she was an abuser, but he was as well, blah, blah, blah.

01:29:29.940 Those could conceivably be in the final jury instructions that the jurors get.

01:29:37.480 I wonder, because typically, and it's been a while since I've looked at this, but typically when you have a liable by omission claim, it's because like the thing that you omitted would have completely changed the meaning of the thing that you said.

01:29:54.220 And so, like, this doesn't completely change the meaning, like she's, if the jury believes he abused her, then the statement is technically correct.

01:30:03.720 That she was also a shitty person doesn't necessarily, it's context that's interesting and may ethically change your view of both parties.

01:30:11.140 But I don't know that it's going to, it's going to make what she said defamatory in a way that's illegal, you know, that's unlawful, such that he could recover.

01:30:18.900 Anyway, from a legal perspective, I find that, I find that whole thing interesting.

01:30:23.840 The other thing is, Vinny, the, so far, all the cops, all the witnesses, they're saying they saw nothing on her.

01:30:29.320 Now, she's going to have friends who are going to come and say, I saw her bruises, I saw this, I saw, but those are her friends.

01:30:34.740 Now, the cops and sort of the independent witnesses are saying, I mean, I guess his household staff is more aligned with him, right?

01:30:41.320 Like the maid in the Bahamas and his security guards, he pays their salary. 0.98

01:30:45.680 But the cops who showed up on the day she, again, he allegedly whipped his phone as hard as possible at her face, said, I saw nothing.

01:30:52.160 I saw a woman who was crying.

01:30:53.280 That's all I saw.

01:30:54.260 So how does the jury figure out who to believe, her friends versus cops and so on?

01:31:00.720 I think this is crucial.

01:31:02.480 We focused a lot on this on my show, the independent witnesses, witnesses who have, you know, no known bias going into all of this.

01:31:11.120 What did they see?

01:31:12.000 What did they observe?

01:31:12.920 And if you've got the officers who are responding and you had two sets of responding officers don't see any injuries, and this was the incident, this was the incident that was the subject of her going to get a restraining order against Johnny Depp, right?

01:31:28.080 This was the incident with which she took the whole thing public, right?

01:31:33.260 As soon as she went down to the courthouse and filed all this stuff, this is when it became a public matter.

01:31:38.480 And if you had the responding officers didn't see anything, but days later there were marks on her face, then the question is, well, how did the marks get there?

01:31:46.960 Were they there that night?

01:31:48.120 No one saw them.

01:31:49.380 Did she self-inflict these marks?

01:31:51.680 Well, who would do that?

01:31:53.040 Maybe someone with a borderline personality disorder might do that.

01:31:56.400 I don't know.

01:31:57.320 That may be the argument.

01:31:58.520 But that's going to be really crucial, I think, to all of this, is the independent witnesses, and then there has to be an explanation from the other side that is inconsistent with the independent witnesses.

01:32:12.420 And right now, that's Amber Heard has to come up with that explanation.

01:32:15.320 All right.

01:32:17.420 So we don't know what's going to happen, but we learned new information about the jury, which gives me some pause, too, Mark.

01:32:23.260 That was a fascinating observation.

01:32:25.480 Young men, spring break.

01:32:27.960 That's what's going to stick in my head when we get this verdict.

01:32:30.300 I love the spring break characterization of it.

01:32:35.580 Boy, jurors gone wild.

01:32:38.120 Could be good for her, right?

01:32:39.520 They're thinking girls gone wild.

01:32:40.880 What's the matter?

01:32:41.440 It's fine.

01:32:41.980 He's the jerk.

01:32:42.640 Mark, Vinny, thank you guys both so much.

01:32:45.600 We'll be watching this week.

01:32:46.340 Thank you, Megan.

01:32:46.820 Bye, Vinny.

01:32:48.400 Okay.

01:32:48.940 Don't go away, because up next, we're going to talk about the death of Naomi Judd.

01:32:53.900 I have a couple things I want to say on that.

01:32:58.300 Some terribly sad news breaking over the weekend.

01:33:01.400 Country music legend Naomi Judd died just a day before her induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

01:33:07.940 Her heartbroken daughters say she died of mental illness.

01:33:11.060 The reports are she died by suicide.

01:33:14.020 A few years ago, I had her on my show at NBC, and we talked about her really tough struggle with depression.

01:33:22.980 I knew that all during my life, there were periods where I would get so sad, and everybody in the family, my neighbors and friends would say,

01:33:30.680 you're so empathic, you care so much about other people, you pick up their stuff, and I do.

01:33:37.860 And my psychologist, Ted Klont, said that I'm one of the most compassionate, empathic people that he's ever worked with.

01:33:43.740 So I just attributed to that.

01:33:45.680 But when I came home off the tour, I went into this deep, dark, absolutely terrifying hole, and I couldn't get out.

01:33:54.640 I spent two years on my couch.

01:33:56.940 Oh, she was such a doll, and she was so open in her book about those struggles, which is a big risk for a public figure to talk that openly about their struggles.

01:34:07.060 And she's been studying whether there was a link, you know, whether it had a genetic link, and she believed strongly that it did.

01:34:12.960 But she was doing well then, you know, so I was so, so sad to hear that she died, and that she died by suicide, and that it was a battle, ultimately, she did not prevail in.

01:34:26.220 Thoughts to her entire family today.

01:34:28.220 Of course, her daughter, and she, huge, huge stars.

01:34:31.460 They scored 14 number one songs, five Grammy Awards, and a career spanning nearly three decades.

01:34:36.140 And her other daughter, Ashley, is super famous in her own right as an actress, and as one of the people who helped bring down Harvey Weinstein, a truly bad actor.

01:34:45.100 Listen, I want to tell you that the suicide hotline is there for anyone struggling.

01:34:48.600 It's 1-800-273-8255.

01:34:51.740 Please don't suffer alone.

01:34:53.760 Tomorrow, we're doing our first live in-person interview when former Attorney General Bill Barr will join me.

01:34:59.980 It's going to be amazing.

01:35:01.200 Hope you'll tune in.

01:35:03.320 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:35:05.240 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - May 02, 2022

Corporate Media Gate-Keeping, and Bizarre Depp-Heard Behavior, with the Ruthless Podcast Hosts, Mark Geragos, and Vinnie Politan ｜ Ep. 312

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