The Megyn Kelly Show - Could Biden Be Replaced, Trans Sports Receipts, and Cuomo's COVID Lies, with Emily Jashinsky and Matt Welch

00:00:00.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:12.000 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. It is GOP debate day in America,

00:00:18.340 except the guy who is 30 to 40 points up won't be there. So what will happen tonight and will

00:00:25.360 any of it matter? We'll see in just a few hours as the second Republican presidential debate

00:00:31.560 gets underway this evening at Reagan National Library in California. In the meantime, we have

00:00:37.280 a lot to get to, including President Biden spending like two minutes at least on the UAW

00:00:43.500 picket line before jetting off to a fundraiser. Of course, many on the left reacting like the second

00:00:49.640 coming happened last night, plus his dog biting the 11th person. Yet another Secret Service agent

00:00:56.640 gets bitten by commander, and Joe Biden doesn't seem to give two dams about what's happening to

00:01:03.460 these Secret Service agents around. It's ridiculous. Today, two great tastes that taste great together.

00:01:10.760 Is that like a coffee, Sam? I'm not sure. What is that, peanut butter and jelly?

00:01:13.680 A fifth column co-host plus an EJ. Joining us now, Matt Welsh of the Fifth Column Podcast and editor

00:01:19.960 at large for Reason, and Emily Jashinsky, culture editor at The Federalist and host of The Federalist

00:01:25.800 Radio Hour. Matt, Emily, great to have you here. How are you doing?

00:01:29.580 Doing great. Hi, Megan.

00:01:30.360 Good to see you, Megan.

00:01:31.720 Who's the peanut butter and who's the jelly?

00:01:34.400 Matt's the peanut butter.

00:01:37.120 Millennials can't eat peanut butter. We have peanut allergies.

00:01:39.340 That's true.

00:01:41.520 Okay, so do we care about tonight? I am mildly interested. I'm going to say I'll probably

00:01:48.340 watch some of that. I'll definitely watch the highlights, but it does feel a little like

00:01:52.580 the Miss Congeniality contest at this point. Am I wrong, Emily?

00:01:57.360 No, not at all. I mean, again, what is going to change substantially at a debate where the front

00:02:02.260 runner, who continues, by the way, to open, his lead grows over time. There might be some dips here

00:02:08.200 there if you look at the RCP average, but he's been expanding his lead over the other candidates,

00:02:13.540 and he's up so much. I mean, we're talking double, double digits, right? We're talking he's up by, what,

00:02:19.680 40 points? So as long as he's not there, it really, I mean, you're jockeying for second place,

00:02:25.900 you're jockeying for third place, which matters a lot if you're down by single digits. It might matter

00:02:31.240 a lot if Iowa was down to five points, but it's not. So again, we're looking at a VP tryout for

00:02:38.560 the most part. It's like the JV stage at 2016, where you literally had a JV stage, five people,

00:02:44.680 you know, that were not able to make the first stage. That's what this entire debate is.

00:02:48.640 The reason Matt Walsh, I think it's, Walsh is a different Matt. I always do that. Matt Welsh,

00:02:54.460 not to be confused with Matt Walsh. The reason it is interesting, and I would definitely host a debate,

00:03:00.260 even though it's the B team. The reason it's interesting is, number one, something could

00:03:06.000 happen to Trump. Putting aside the fact that he's 77 years old, something could happen to him like

00:03:12.120 he could be locked up before November 2024. Incredibly, it's a realistic possibility. I

00:03:19.280 don't think it will happen, but, you know, I was talking to Mark Levin last week, and I was saying

00:03:23.760 that's not likely to happen, you know, that he could actually get tried, that he could get convicted,

00:03:28.040 and that somebody would throw him in jail before he exhausts the appeal in the event that that

00:03:32.760 happens. And he reminded me, look at the judges that we're dealing with here. Look at Judge

00:03:37.600 Chuckkin in Washington, D.C. You can tell this woman hates Trump. Look at Fannie Willis down in

00:03:42.500 Atlanta. She's already trying to put this thing on a fast track. That's not going to be a favorable

00:03:47.420 jury. So it is possible that Trump could be in jail. I do think that's going to change his polling

00:03:53.020 numbers. It's come to that. It's like the comments about the Gold Star families. That's

00:03:58.840 going to change. No, the comments about whatever that judge being a racist just because he's

00:04:04.080 Hispanic. No, didn't. But like actually convicted and sitting in a prison, Matt, Matt, that could

00:04:11.280 change things. And therefore, the GOP debate actually does matter. Could change things. We've

00:04:18.620 all lost confidence about every scenario in which affection for Trump is less than the Republican

00:04:24.940 Party, which is interesting on itself. What I'm fascinated by is that the last debate, I presumed

00:04:30.420 because of the dynamics that both of you guys are talking about, that no one would pay attention to

00:04:34.980 it. But it actually got pretty good ratings. I mean, Trump was counterprogramming with Tucker Carlson

00:04:38.960 and still a lot of people tuned in. So what were they doing? I'm not exactly sure because,

00:04:44.800 yes, Trump has widened his lead since then. And most everyone else has stayed the same except

00:04:49.960 for Nikki Haley. She kind of has almost doubled her support. In the meantime, she had a very good

00:04:54.160 debate performance. So she might have another good debate performance and become the largest person

00:05:01.500 in the very small lane of kind of elected normie officials who don't like Trump. That is a 15%

00:05:09.800 lane. So if she somehow manages to elbow out Mike Pence and Chris Christie and Tim Scott and everybody

00:05:16.440 else, she might get all the way up to maybe 15%. There has to be someone who can attract Trump

00:05:23.280 supporters. People are kind of in denial about... What about Vivek? Vivek got a little bump after the

00:05:29.120 first debate and he attracts Trump supporters. Absolutely. So like if you look at Vivek and Trump

00:05:35.240 and Ron DeSantis as a block. And DeSantis is the only one who has a foot in kind of both camps.

00:05:40.980 He's an elected normie official on one level, but he also can plausibly attract some MAGA support.

00:05:48.480 Those three guys in every single poll, with the exception of New Hampshire, are going to get 75%

00:05:52.560 of the vote. So it has to probably come from one of those three people. DeSantis has been in free

00:05:58.840 fall since basically January. Maybe he has bottomed out. So I think he definitely has the most at stake

00:06:04.620 today. And he's the one who's going to compete hardest or has the biggest chance of success in

00:06:09.160 Iowa, which can still presumably slingshot people. But precisely because he's in this weird spot,

00:06:16.200 because he's plausible to both camps, that makes him kind of unattractive as a person,

00:06:22.980 which is to say he's aware consciously. You can see it on his face that he is trying to run against

00:06:30.100 Trump while still getting some of Trump's support. And it makes him awkward. It makes him seem less

00:06:34.500 like his own man in direct contrast to the way that he actually governs Florida,

00:06:39.340 where he seems supremely confident. So he has a lot to gain. But also, he's in the really awkward

00:06:45.180 spot. So I guess tonight we'll see if he's able to figure out a way to come out not looking awkward

00:06:50.940 in that spot and chip away at some of Trump's support. But I don't I wouldn't bet on it.

00:06:57.460 No, it's so tricky. And part of what's interesting about watching these debates is the trickiness of

00:07:01.860 it. Right. Like that's it's kind of interesting and entertaining, frankly, like, how are they

00:07:07.500 going to navigate? I don't really care what, you know, Doug Burgum does. I think he's interesting

00:07:11.740 just because he's espousing normal Republican ideas. And it's like good to be reminded that

00:07:16.040 not not all Republicans, you know, are in agreement on every issue. And it's good to hear different

00:07:22.200 points of view, you know, coming in from the more conservative side, the more traditionalist side,

00:07:26.640 the more populist side, you know, MAGA Trump. I like hearing that. That's that's good. And it's

00:07:32.600 good, I think, for the country, including Democrats and independents, to hear Republicans up there

00:07:36.680 talking about their ideas and why they would work. I think that's an advantage to Team Red over

00:07:42.420 Joe Biden. It's good for the Republicans. Now, if they get really nasty, maybe maybe not right with

00:07:49.040 one another. But it is entertaining. I'll say this. The latest poll, we're just looking at CBS News

00:07:54.660 poll, Trump leading in Iowa and New Hampshire by 30 points over DeSantis and 37 points over to

00:08:03.200 DeSantis, who's in second position in both of those, according to the CBS poll. All right. So

00:08:07.320 latest CBS out of Iowa, Trump, 51. DeSantis is in two at 21. Latest out of New Hampshire, Trump, 50.

00:08:16.540 DeSantis, 13. Nikki Haley's right behind him at 11. She's right behind DeSantis in Iowa, too,

00:08:22.440 according to this poll. So anyway, that lead is huge. OK. However, what's interesting here is they

00:08:30.280 say in both states, most voters are still considering multiple candidates. In fact, just a

00:08:37.320 fifth in Iowa and a quarter in New Hampshire are considering Trump and no one else. So the vast

00:08:44.800 majority of the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are considering somebody other than Trump, even if

00:08:51.280 they like Trump. So that's interesting. That's there's some gleam of hope for these GOP years

00:08:56.760 tonight. And these voters, they say, are more likely to say they are supporting Trump with some

00:09:03.640 reservations in both states. Only Trump voters, you know, the people who only vote for Donald Trump

00:09:10.240 are outnumbered by the one third of the electorate who are not considering Trump at all.

00:09:18.040 So there are more never Trumpers in each of these states than there are only Trumpers. And again,

00:09:25.340 they are saying most voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are still considering someone other

00:09:31.440 than Trump. So I see, Emily, what the point is tonight. They're looking at the same data saying,

00:09:38.920 so you're saying there's a chance.

00:09:40.640 Well, and they're not entirely wrong because they know other people around them have reservations

00:09:47.940 about Donald Trump. And I think it partially explains what you mentioned earlier about why

00:09:52.080 the ratings were higher than some people, including myself, actually, where they expected them to be

00:09:56.420 in the first debate. Now, of course, this isn't the first debate, so it's not the spectacle,

00:09:59.820 but there's so much interesting stuff happening with the dynamics back and forth. It's why I think

00:10:04.940 all of us wish that Donald Trump were a part of it because it's healthy to see this contrast and to

00:10:09.720 argue it out. But this all is exactly why he's not. To your point, Megan, it's an unnecessary risk

00:10:15.620 for him. And on the one hand, it's impossible for him to lose debates because he just, like Shane

00:10:22.220 Gillis says, will turn around Paul and be like, you're ugly. That's his debate. And you just can't

00:10:27.560 lose at that game. But on the other hand, there's really no reason for him to strategically look like

00:10:34.500 he's on their level. It just makes more sense for him to totally stay out of the fray, do his own

00:10:39.060 events that he can control. The other interesting thing, who's watching these? Donors. And where the

00:10:44.240 money goes is going to make a difference in that sort of second place lane. And after that first

00:10:50.280 debate, there was a lot of reporting that people who were DeSantis curious, Tim Scott curious, then

00:10:55.000 turned and gave money to Nikki Haley or decided to stop giving money to Ron DeSantis. And so you're

00:11:01.060 balancing on the one hand, wanting to appeal to those Trump voters with reservations, but on the

00:11:06.280 other hand, needing to appeal to the donor class that is totally in tension with those Trump voters

00:11:11.460 that just have reservations about him personally. That's a good point. Go ahead, Matt.

00:11:16.880 I would take those polls that you cited with a little bit of a grain of salt, because they remind

00:11:21.860 me a lot of the polls that you see all the time and you'll see in this cycle, too, of large numbers

00:11:26.760 of Americans, sometimes a majority, say that they are willing to entertain the possibility

00:11:31.460 of voting for a third party. I'm someone who's covered third party candidates for a quarter

00:11:34.960 century, so I'm aware of this. Americans are third partyists in the streets, but not in the

00:11:40.380 sheets, I guess is the way the phrase goes. When it comes down to it, they will go back to a more

00:11:50.120 predictable place. So I'm sure there's a lot of people who say, no, no, I'm definitely going to

00:11:55.040 think about other candidates besides Trump, but then when push comes to shove, it's usually what

00:11:59.200 happens to Trump is that anytime he's really in the news, he's in the crosshairs of the legal system

00:12:04.120 or something else, people, Republicans will, at least in the presidential primary, will flock

00:12:09.580 toward him, not away from him, because part of his selling proposition from the very beginning

00:12:14.200 was the way he makes the media mad. He makes the left mad, and that is a value proposition. So it's

00:12:21.840 sort of this little cycle. It is valuable. It is. And I mean, people react to politics

00:12:27.440 emotionally in many senses, and so it just helps. We haven't yet seen the place. We did for a moment

00:12:35.560 during the Access Hollywood tapes in the late 2016 and October 2016, I think it was, that was sort of

00:12:42.160 a micro moment when the reason that everyone was getting mad at Trump was actually affecting his poll

00:12:48.040 numbers. And we've, you know, memory hold it now, but I think, what, 10 senators, Republican senators

00:12:53.400 at that time withdrew their support for Trump. Like, it was a big problem for a week and a half for

00:12:58.640 Donald Trump, but then support ended up rallying for him. And since then, there haven't been many

00:13:03.140 external factors that have dulled Republican willingness to vote for him, let's say, if not

00:13:10.360 quite a super open fondness. So, you know, it's going to be hard for there to be any extraneous

00:13:17.480 factor, I think, that will kick people off. I think it's more internally to him. If he decides

00:13:21.520 that he's really going to run and be in it to win it, does he have the energy to do it? He's got to

00:13:26.360 spend a lot of energy fighting criminal activity right now and legal problems. So I think it's...

00:13:33.360 So, like, realistically, and just to throw a couple numbers at you before I get to my realistically

00:13:38.920 ending, there was another poll just out, Morning Consult, shows Trump up, this is just a national

00:13:45.120 poll, shows Trump up 43 points over his next closest competitor, who is DeSantis, 58 to 15,

00:13:52.960 43 points. My God, 58 to 15. That is just... It's insurmountable.

00:14:03.360 Unless something absolutely devastating happens to Trump. And so what I was going to say a moment

00:14:10.220 ago was the thing about the theory that, you know, I discussed with Mark Levin, right, that he

00:14:16.080 actually could be in jail at the time of the election or shortly before the election, that all

00:14:22.860 would happen post-Iowa, post-New Hampshire, post-Super Tuesday. So we are down a path at that point.

00:14:29.900 Like, I don't even know if playing the long game is a realistic option for these Republicans who are

00:14:36.780 going to be on the stage in Simi Valley tonight, Emily, because these decisions get made this winter

00:14:44.960 into this early spring about who the Republicans are going to go for. The trials will not be done.

00:14:52.380 I realize she wants a trial, Fannie Willis, March 4th and so on. But realistically, best case scenario

00:14:57.540 for these rabid prosecutors, maybe they get maybe they get him in jail by June. Well, we won't have

00:15:04.240 had a nominating contest by them, but we will have had votes in all of the major states. We will know

00:15:08.260 who the nominee is going to be. So practical as a practical matter. I really don't know how it could

00:15:15.280 work. And I think that's a big question for Democrats right now, too. And I actually think

00:15:21.980 that's why you see both Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis agreeing to debate each other on Fox News,

00:15:27.100 because they both want to set themselves up in this lane. And I would be curious to be a fly on

00:15:32.320 the wall at the RNC and the DNC as they're like sort of digging through what I imagine are like bylines

00:15:36.760 and having their lawyers pour over what happens in the case of a serious problem, a health problem,

00:15:44.180 a prison problem. By the way, it's possible there's something out there that prosecutors

00:15:50.300 are working on, that the Justice Department is working on as it relates to Donald Trump,

00:15:54.280 or that some attorney general is working on as it relates to Trump that would result in more

00:15:58.060 immediate action. It's hard to say. We don't know. But certainly we've seen different things crop up.

00:16:03.180 So it's just genuinely difficult to say. And I'm sure both parties right now are actually trying to

00:16:07.680 figure out what the avenue is should something happen come June of 2024. And again, I think that's why

00:16:13.640 you see both Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis and the people who are now fighting to overtake Ron

00:16:18.480 DeSantis. And it's just this like cannibalism to see who can take Ron DeSantis down a peg,

00:16:24.100 create themselves as the heir apparent, which I don't know if it's possible because they're all

00:16:28.100 sort of running in similar lanes except for Mike Pence. They're trying to do that because for the

00:16:34.480 exact reason you mentioned, nobody really understands what happens when you get a free-for-all

00:16:38.780 because something happened to the leading candidate after the majority of primary votes are cast.

00:16:44.240 You know, I want to tell you guys that we're actually taking a deep dive into all of this

00:16:48.520 right now. And we're going to be doing a show in about a week. You know, we're making sure we've

00:16:52.440 got all our facts on exactly how each person can be replaced. How would it work if it's Trump or Biden?

00:16:58.340 If it needs to happen, how could it happen? How late in the process could it happen?

00:17:02.260 And what are each of these teams, DNC and RNC, actually doing to prepare for it? So I'm really

00:17:07.740 looking forward to that. I asked my team to get this ready a couple of weeks ago and we've been

00:17:11.260 working hard on it. So we are going to take a deep dive into how. Because for the first time that I

00:17:16.340 can remember, it is a realistic possibility that they're going to need to replace one and possibly

00:17:21.820 both of the guys who get nominated or who win the early nominating contests and who have emerged as

00:17:28.560 the one to be nominated with the most primary and caucus votes. It's crazy. Matt Walsh is crazy.

00:17:33.680 But let's let's talk about Joe Biden, because every day we get new reports about his his failing.

00:17:41.900 I don't know if I guess it is health, but just, you know, the loss of. What's the what's the noun

00:17:48.160 for being robust, you know, like the loss of vigor, the loss of verve, the loss of the capability to put

00:17:55.520 two sentences together without failing to make sense or saying something racist? That's him

00:18:00.640 these days. And you can see his team is on eggshells. And now it's emerging on the on the heels of these

00:18:07.520 polls, which we saw earlier this week to two polls, NBC News and ABC News, three quarters of the

00:18:14.580 electorate believe he is too old to do a second term. Almost two thirds of Democrats want someone else.

00:18:23.500 Those are the realities. They're not. Those are not outliers. Those are backed up by repeated polls.

00:18:29.520 The American electorate thinks he's too old for the job, whether it's his age or his infirmity.

00:18:34.380 A far lower number think Trump is too old, but over 50 percent think he's too old, too, too old, too.

00:18:40.580 But they look at Joe Biden and they know he can't do it. Matt, I think we all know he cannot do it.

00:18:45.660 So the left is pretending that he can because they're terrified of Trump. This is all happening

00:18:54.140 as Axios drops this little report yesterday that kind of puts a fine point on it about how

00:18:59.460 now he's switched to just sneakers. You know how like your mom at this point, I'm 52. But so it's

00:19:07.100 like my mom. But like when I was a little younger, my Nana, she died at 101. God bless her. But like

00:19:12.420 when she got into like the eight late 80s, she switched over to the trainer. You know,

00:19:16.440 the sneaker. She there was no more little flats or shoes, certainly not high heels for her.

00:19:21.140 My mom's now in that category. I'm sure I'll wind up there eventually. He's in the trainers. He's

00:19:26.380 in the sneakers now. Our president. No more shoes for Joe Biden. We already did the story on how

00:19:30.780 he's only using the short steps to get on Air Force One in the belly of the plane.

00:19:34.980 His staff is on complete alert for any sandbags used in every television setting to hold down

00:19:40.580 the mic stands and the light stands. It's a safety matter. That's why they do that. Those

00:19:43.880 things fall on you. You're dead. You get a gash in the middle of the forehead at a minimum.

00:19:48.700 But now they can't because he tripped over one. And then there's a deep dive in the precautions

00:19:53.840 that they're taking, the physical therapy they're putting him through, Matt, to make sure he doesn't

00:19:59.420 fall and to try to improve his balance. Axios reporting that his doctor has recommended exercise

00:20:06.460 for balance, which he calls proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers. Um, then to Axios's credit,

00:20:14.640 they go to professional James Gordon, associate dean and chair of the physical therapy department

00:20:18.760 at USC, who says, I have never heard of that term. I do not know what proprioceptive maintenance

00:20:24.960 maneuvers is. This is not a clinical thing. That is not a thing. Uh, but the point is they're

00:20:30.780 terrified he's going to fall. And with that fall will come the downing of any chance of the Democrats

00:20:40.360 holding on to the white house. There are, um, the, the five alarm fire in the polls right now is not

00:20:47.640 even the outlier from the other week that Trump was ahead 10 points in the head to head matchup.

00:20:53.340 Um, but he's been at basically parody. They've been 50, 50 in these matchups, but here's the thing

00:20:58.560 that's in all of these polls. Trump is leading Biden among independence that I would not have

00:21:04.540 ever really bet on because Trump beat Hillary Clinton, maybe by a percentage point among

00:21:08.840 independence back in 2016. And from that moment forward, that was the last time that even a

00:21:13.580 plurality of independence, favorite Donald Trump, because they were appalled by his behavior and

00:21:17.880 some of his actions and et cetera. And I thought that that would stick because you can't woo them back.

00:21:23.340 It, he hasn't necessarily wooed them back, but independents have soured so completely on Joe

00:21:28.800 Biden and they see him more often than they see Donald Trump. Uh, he's in office. You can watch

00:21:33.160 him stumbling around and figuring out which way not to walk after he gives a speech in the podium and

00:21:38.760 not remembering to shake the hand of the foreign dignitary and just all of the things. My parents

00:21:42.660 are 83. Um, uh, one might vote Republican more. One might vote for Democrat, uh, for, um, they're,

00:21:49.060 you know, varying States of their own kind of cognition. Both of them say, my God is too old

00:21:54.240 and he's not as old as my dad, uh, in terms of, of where he's at, but like they can reckon game

00:21:59.960 recognize game in this case. And, and what, and when they don't have game, um, that is terrible for

00:22:05.500 Biden and it should induce all kinds of panic among Democrats because you're not going to get that back.

00:22:11.260 And let's remember why did Biden win last time? Anyways, is it because Americans like suddenly tapped

00:22:16.860 into this long gestating affection for Joe Biden, who's been trying to run for president since I was

00:22:22.180 about 16 years old and I'm 55. Um, uh, no, it's because they thought he could win. They needed to,

00:22:29.120 they needed someone who seemed normal enough to beat Trump. And that just figured out, okay, look,

00:22:34.160 Joe's been around forever. He talks about the lunch bucket and tells weird stories about Scranton

00:22:38.880 that probably aren't true, but, uh, he seems like a normie. He can win unlike, you know, uh,

00:22:44.400 Beto O'Rourke or somebody. Uh, so that works and that's great until the moment when you stop

00:22:50.080 thinking he can win and then his entire value proposition evaporates. There's a, an attempt

00:22:55.940 right now. Franklin four has a new book out, um, that wants to posit him as this sort of last

00:23:00.340 politician. And he's a lot, you know, everyone underrated him, but he's really great and all

00:23:03.820 this, um, Americans are not going to buy that. He won president because they thought that he could

00:23:09.220 win. And now that they know or suspect that he can't, that's going to collapse. Democrats are

00:23:14.680 going to have a come to Jesus moment, uh, at some point during this campaign, Gavin Newsom does every

00:23:20.220 morning when he kisses himself in the mirror. Um, and you can bet that he's going to do whatever he

00:23:24.200 can to, uh, to get there, but, uh, it looks really, really bad for Joe Biden right now.

00:23:29.480 It does. And even you say the come to Jesus moment, we heard James Carville making headlines

00:23:34.620 yesterday because he went on Bill Maher's podcast and they had, you know, these are both Democrats.

00:23:39.480 Bill Maher is a Democrat. He's not woke, which is why a lot of us love listening to those bits,

00:23:44.120 but he is a Democrat. And he and I talked about this. I've gone on his show a few times. Um,

00:23:48.700 and he said, you know, you seem kind of like me, like a person without a party.

00:23:52.460 And this is, I always laugh. And like, when people call me a rhino and I'm like, if you only knew

00:23:57.660 not, not even in name, not, not even Republic rhino is Republican in name only, not even a name,

00:24:03.660 hate to tell you, not a Republican. I'm registered independent. And thank God I wake up every day

00:24:08.440 saying, thank God, thank God. I didn't throw my lot in with either one of these parties. I don't,

00:24:13.200 I will never wear a team Jersey of either one of these. Yes. My sensibilities are more aligned

00:24:18.000 with the Republicans, but many times they're not. And I'm just thrilled to be in my own little lane.

00:24:23.520 Anyway, Bill Maher, um, James Carville, who I love listening to. I love James Carville. He's,

00:24:29.820 he's come in this show too. You know, we don't agree politically, but I,

00:24:32.580 I think he's a valuable voice in America and he is sounding the alarm as, you know,

00:24:39.660 a guy who got Bill Clinton elected as somebody who knows what he's talking about. Here he is.

00:24:44.360 Let's assume the election was November the 3rd of this year. And, and they said the candidates of Joe,

00:24:50.820 Joe Biden, the Democrat, Donald Trump, the Republican, Joe Manchin and Larry Hogan,

00:24:55.920 no labels and Cornell West. Trump would be a betting favorite. Yeah. If I told you I would

00:25:02.940 give you even money, you would not take that bet. All right. Um, and so somebody better wake the fuck

00:25:10.660 up. It's good. He gets right to it. He's got it. EJ. Yeah. I mean, I think again, this is Gavin Newsom

00:25:20.200 and it's interesting that you have the governor of California debating the second Republican

00:25:25.120 presidential candidate, uh, on national television, on cable television, because there are establishment

00:25:31.560 Democrats. We now know things to all kinds of reporting who are panicking for all of the reasons

00:25:36.340 you and Matt just laid out, which is that the value proposition of Joe Biden was that he could ride

00:25:41.800 both lanes. He could sort of, uh, wink and nod at the woke lane while also sort of being coded as

00:25:47.480 somebody who just privately did not like the woke lane and was going to hold them at bay while also

00:25:52.940 being this kind of old school, you know, he was on the UAW picket line yesterday for, as he mentioned,

00:25:57.260 a couple minutes and then went to a fundraiser. He's able to do both of those things. And, uh,

00:26:02.080 that's what everyone saw as this, this makes him electable. And at the very least, it makes him

00:26:05.700 more electable than somebody like Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, who they feel

00:26:10.980 like has steered fully into one lane or the other. So with that gone, it means there's going to be

00:26:17.460 some organizing behind the scenes because it's a, it's total panic mode. Um, and James Carville was

00:26:23.780 one of the people in 2016, fall of 2016, uh, was looking at what was happening. And like Bill Clinton

00:26:30.820 sort of realized there was a problem, a cultural gap for Democrats. And that's another big issue for

00:26:37.120 them. There's a lot of media about, if not Trump, then who, because DeSantis originally seemed like

00:26:43.460 somebody who was the only person that could do it. He was plowing this new lane. Republicans are

00:26:47.900 reportedly trying to get Glenn Youngkin to win or to run because they think he can do it too in a way

00:26:52.880 that Ron DeSantis hasn't. Well, they should start having that conversation about Democrats because

00:26:57.140 if not Joe Biden, who, is it one of the people that has come out and put their pronouns in their

00:27:01.900 Twitter bio? Is it one of the people who has, uh, done, has gone all in on abolish ice, defund the

00:27:08.840 police, uh, and is going to have to atone for that on the campaign trail. Good luck. Uh, and Democrats

00:27:14.040 haven't really had to reckon with that either. And if Gavin Newsom is your best bet, you are in

00:27:18.620 trouble nationally. I've got, and we'll get into this when we do our rundown and how they could

00:27:23.700 replace, you know, the guys that win. I got, I like Glenn Youngkin a lot. I'd vote for him. I'd vote for

00:27:30.540 him for anything, but is core MAGA ever going to vote for Glenn Youngkin? I mean, I actually hadn't

00:27:36.840 looked that deeply into his background, but he's a Carlisle group guy. He's like made $500 million.

00:27:42.320 He's, he makes Mitt Romney look like he failed in business, right? With being capital. Um, I don't

00:27:49.540 see also signed a BLM letter when he was at Carlisle group. This has not gotten a lot of attention,

00:27:54.360 but he signed like a donation to BLM when he was at the Carlisle group. So yeah. All right. So that's,

00:28:00.140 that's going to come back to haunt him and just core MAGA. They're very suspicious of these big

00:28:05.720 corporations, uh, and how they look down on the working class. They want to exploit them,

00:28:10.460 but they, you know, for votes and, and for their work, but how they look down on them and they're

00:28:14.880 part of the elites. And Youngkin is definitely an elite. Again, I mean, I'd vote for him, but like,

00:28:20.140 I just don't see somebody like that resting anything away from Trump. But I guess the thought is

00:28:26.080 if Trump only has a core, you know, true, true believers, 30% of the party and some, you know,

00:28:32.960 50 to 70% of the party is like, I like him, but I'm open-minded. Could he be the one to consolidate?

00:28:38.920 You know, that's the thing, Matt Walsh, because why do I keep doing it? Welsh, Welsh, it's Welsh.

00:28:44.500 Matt Walsh is over on the day. He's on the daily wire. He's trying to figure out what a woman is

00:28:49.140 one of these days. He didn't even ask for our pronouns. Okay. So anyway, um, if you look at like

00:28:59.360 the numbers, it, if all the candidates got behind one, if all the voters got behind one

00:29:05.340 person other than Trump, like, let's say tonight, they, they surprised us all. They go out on the

00:29:10.360 stage and see me Valley. And they say, we have an announcement to make that the six or seven of us

00:29:14.760 who are up here. The only one who didn't make the dance is Asa Hutchinson. The, the surprise

00:29:18.720 announcement is we're all dropping out and we're all putting our support behind Nikki Haley. Okay.

00:29:25.060 Let's just take one. She's, she's rising. She's right by DeSantis and all the polls.

00:29:29.820 Then it would be on. Then we actually might have a horse race because the non-Trump vote,

00:29:36.060 if you add up all the percentages of Haley, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, you know, Christie, Pence

00:29:42.020 is big. It's still behind the Trump vote, but it's big. So, so maybe you'd have something and that's

00:29:49.380 what they're thinking. I think with Glenn Youngkin, if, if we're, they're not going to do that tonight.

00:29:53.400 So I think the thinking in Republican circles is underdog comes in to save the day. He hasn't been

00:29:58.960 in the fray. He hasn't been taking shots at anybody. He's like, I'm doing it because my country needs me

00:30:03.420 because Trump's sitting in jail or whatever it is. I will serve. I'm reluctant. I love MAGA.

00:30:09.320 I love establishment. Um, I love money and I will serve. Is that a winning plan?

00:30:16.860 Uh, no, I mean, there's no, the only reason Glenn Youngkin is even a thought for anyone is

00:30:23.240 because, uh, Ron DeSantis didn't do as well as was hoped by a lot of people. It's the same lane.

00:30:29.460 The only, I mean, it's, they were competent, uh, and to the point of, uh, like surprise, uh, levels of

00:30:37.100 effectiveness in running, uh, uh, uh, managing the school's issue during COVID. That's what they

00:30:44.720 both did especially well. Uh, DeSantis did even more because he's had a lot longer, uh, time in

00:30:49.580 office than Youngkin has. Um, and, uh, uh, Florida is more of a Republican state, especially now.

00:30:55.880 Uh, DeSantis has self-pushed it that way. Virginia has been more of a democratic straight. So it was

00:30:59.080 more of a surprise that he won, but there's nothing that Glenn Youngkin can add that Ron DeSantis

00:31:03.960 hasn't already done. And DeSantis has also spent a lot of time trying to appeal to conservatives

00:31:09.980 nationally. Um, uh, not in ways that I particularly have fondness for, but, uh, it has been, uh,

00:31:16.440 politically effective, I guess, to some degree when he goes to a war against Disney and, um, uh, and

00:31:21.740 when he's fought more national cultural battles, uh, Glenn Youngkin hasn't been doing any of that.

00:31:26.740 And I can't imagine him doing that in his little nice sweater vest or whatever. Um, it's just,

00:31:31.680 there's at this late stage, uh, it's a pipe dream. It's a, it's a reason for another person

00:31:36.700 to get a talk show three years from now, or to build up some kind of war chest. I think he has

00:31:41.740 a really zero chance of, of going anywhere with that. The number that is really, uh, shocking to

00:31:47.840 me talking about both Biden and Trump is that, so Trump has a crowded field of people that he's

00:31:54.000 running against. And right now nationally, he's averaging North of 56%. Joe Biden is running against

00:32:00.760 two pretty marginal characters, uh, two people that Democrats themselves don't necessarily

00:32:05.860 love. And he's got 66%, right? It's a non crowded field against the fringe. And he's only polling

00:32:13.940 nationally at about nine percentage points within his own party, uh, more than Trump is within his

00:32:19.440 that again is, should tell Democrats something that's very, very important and useful that they

00:32:25.920 need to know. Republicans need to know that they do need to consolidate behind, uh, you know, one

00:32:31.300 person per each lane maybe. Um, and, uh, sooner rather than later, but I can't imagine, uh, that the

00:32:37.900 same people who like DeSantis are going to suddenly rally around Mike Pence, for example. Uh, and, and

00:32:44.140 Vivek Ramaswamy's vote, I don't think is applicable, uh, to Chris Christie or whatever. So, uh, uh,

00:32:51.100 it's really hard to imagine anyone but Trump at this point. Super quick. And I also want to say

00:32:55.900 Joe Biden. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, I remembered it was the, uh, because the

00:33:00.900 young people are going to be upset about this. It was a letter to the SPL urging Carlisle group

00:33:04.920 employees to donate to the SPLC, the NAACP legal defense fund, the equal justice initiative. It wasn't

00:33:10.040 explicitly BLM. So to be precise, it was basically BLM. I mean, they've never seen somebody they don't

00:33:16.700 think is a racist unless they happen to be a Democrat and then you're good. That's the one

00:33:21.600 that labeled Ben Carson, a terrorist or whatever the extremist word was that they labeled on him.

00:33:26.180 But I was thinking like the Democrats are looking at Joe Biden, like he's, he's the only one that

00:33:31.820 asked us to the prom and he's like the biggest nerd in school. He's got the tape between the

00:33:36.780 glasses. Like he's, his pants are way too high and they're checkered and there's no, like they're

00:33:43.420 waiting for the quarterback to come ask them to the prom. And like the quarterback has left the

00:33:47.620 building. There is, it's not happening. Only the nerd wants to go. So they may wind up going to the

00:33:52.560 prom with the nerd, but that, that doesn't mean you put on false eyelashes or false anything else.

00:33:58.000 It doesn't mean you put your Spanx on to hold everything in. It doesn't mean you get the hottest

00:34:01.220 dress or the highest heels. It doesn't mean you really go out on the hair and makeup. It doesn't

00:34:05.700 mean you have any enthusiasm for the evening whatsoever. And that's the position they're

00:34:11.100 because you need enthusiasm in your voting block to win a presidential election. Don't

00:34:16.180 believe me? Ask Hillary Clinton. All right. Stand by. When we come back, we've got a budded

00:34:21.360 soundbite that I promised to the audience on Joe Biden and his frequent use of the term boy

00:34:27.160 when referring to African-American men and other racial minorities.

00:34:36.900 So I just want to show you a couple of things before we get to the soundbite that I promised.

00:34:41.780 We cut this video. It's not dramatic, but it does show you just, here's what I want to talk

00:34:46.400 about. And I hope that the listening audience will go and watch this segment on YouTube.

00:34:50.120 I want to ask you what you feel when you watch this video of Joe Biden coming down the steps of

00:34:55.240 Air Force One from, I think it was two days ago, yesterday. That's yesterday, him arriving in

00:34:59.340 Michigan. For the listening audience, you can see him going down. He's holding the railing. He's going

00:35:03.280 down the short steps of the Air Force One descending and he stumbles. You can see his, his footing,

00:35:08.640 he slips and you can see the jerk, you know, that happens when you, when you, and he catches himself

00:35:13.540 and keeps going. What do you feel when you watch that, Emily?

00:35:19.320 He walks the way he talks. And I don't say that to be funny. It's, it's all on that same level of

00:35:26.020 stumbling. He stumbles through sentences and he stumbles physically. And it seems actually

00:35:30.560 almost unremarkable. Like it's the same Joe Biden. We see when he's walking to Air Force One across the

00:35:36.280 White House lawn, when he's in front of foreign dignitaries, world leaders, the press corps,

00:35:41.480 it's the same thing. Whether he's physically walking or talking, he's, he's frail and is in

00:35:47.660 absolutely no position to be running a Chick-fil-A franchise, let alone the leader of the free world,

00:35:54.860 let alone the United States of America. It's just, it's tragic. And it's, it's sad for him on a

00:36:00.200 personal level, but it's really sad for us just as Americans. It's really hard to watch.

00:36:06.680 Matt Welsh. I'm scared. I watch it. I'm like, if I saw you come down those stairs and you stumbled,

00:36:12.740 I'd be like, whatever that happens, you know, but with him, you're like, you know, it's like,

00:36:18.040 you don't want, I don't want to see the president of the United States embarrassed. I really don't.

00:36:22.800 I don't want to see Joe Biden embarrassed. And it's, it's just a matter of time before it happens,

00:36:27.880 before he actually goes down, coming down those stairs or some other stairs. There's only so much

00:36:32.300 the trainers. And I, by that, I mean, both the sneakers and the personal trainers can do to

00:36:36.880 prevent it. And when you fall and hit yourself at this age, bad things always happen. You know,

00:36:44.860 my dad went to sit on a bench that wasn't there five months ago, and it's been a pretty bad time

00:36:52.160 for him ever since then. You look at him and, and you have this sort of sense of, you know,

00:36:56.640 like when you have a friend who's in the band or a comedian and they're not really good and you

00:37:00.580 got to watch them and then like, tell them that they're really good or like find a way to talk

00:37:04.420 about it. And you sort of feel this, this cringe building up inside of you. It's like that because

00:37:10.560 you can see that he is really focused, not going to fall, not going to fall, not going to fall.

00:37:16.140 And the entire white house team as that Axios report, which is just painful to read is

00:37:23.580 illustrating is that they're just trying not only to have the bad thing not happen,

00:37:28.360 but to have the appearance of the bad thing, not show. So they can plausibly say, no, I mean,

00:37:34.620 he's working 17 hour days and he's forging peace and managing our allies with Ukraine or whatever

00:37:41.000 the story is going to be. And it's the look of someone who's like trying to keep it together when

00:37:47.160 it's not together and you feel embarrassed for him. But then you're also like, wait a second,

00:37:51.940 this is our country. What people who are kind of a little bit more fit and less like trying to

00:37:58.480 cover up their own deficiencies. We're kind of in a long, bad place politically on the national level

00:38:04.620 in this country. And he's a sign of that. I'm in the same boat as you are. You know, my mom is 82

00:38:10.640 and I worry about her all the time. She does fall occasionally and it's terrifying. And you know,

00:38:17.840 I am comforted by the fact that usually the most complex decision she has to make in a day

00:38:22.680 is whether she's going to watch Seinfeld or Gunsmoke reruns. And that's good. That's a good thing.

00:38:29.280 It's a tough call. It's a tough call. Gunsmoke. So rando, but she loves it. He's, you know,

00:38:35.860 the leader of the free world. So it's a lot more fraught. We've got a whole war going on in Ukraine

00:38:39.840 that he's managing to some extent. We could go down the list. The, the, here's a, here's a story

00:38:46.360 that brings both of these threads together. The, the story about his age and the, and infirmity and

00:38:52.480 the story about his electoral chances and how he's going to motivate people. There was an interesting

00:38:57.520 piece. Um, let's see what, what was this at the intersection, the intersection, Steve, why Trump lost

00:39:03.900 Georgia. It was a very lengthy piece and it, it, it says the following. Okay. Uh, Steve Krakauer,

00:39:11.780 my crack executive producer, got it to me. Uh, the bottom line is that this guy is saying Trump can

00:39:17.160 only win Georgia if he flips enough black voters, uh, toward him and more black men in particular.

00:39:24.960 Can he do it? And the thought in this piece is he might, he actually might be able to flip enough

00:39:32.320 black male voters in Georgia to win Georgia. I mean, he only lost by 11,000 votes as we now

00:39:38.440 infamously know from that phone call. Um, he might be able to do it because not only is Joe Biden,

00:39:46.000 the nerd at the prom and Trump is anything but nerdy. Um, Joe Biden cannot stop himself from

00:39:53.780 slipping both actually, uh, in his feet and his legs and rhetorically when it comes to what is

00:40:01.080 clearly some innate racism in the guy who was born 80 plus years ago. Um, and this is evidenced

00:40:07.820 over and over and over. Just get Victor Davis Hanson on your show and how he's got this photographic

00:40:11.720 memory. He could go down the list of every racist thing Joe Biden's ever said. And it's long,

00:40:14.860 it's long. Uh, but as of late, he's really revived an old bad habit of referring to black

00:40:21.280 men and other minority men as boy boy. Now we know he knows this is wrong because I'll give you

00:40:28.880 just one example, but I'm going to play you another in 2019. Cory Booker, Senator who is black

00:40:34.680 rebuked Biden for downplaying the use of the word boy to diminish black men. Biden was defending some

00:40:42.500 racist that he managed to do business with by saying he never called me boy. He called me son.

00:40:47.260 And Cory Booker was like, well, that's a dumb ass thing to say. The use of the term boy for a white

00:40:51.860 man has a very different implication than it does when used for a black man. We, anybody who's spent

00:40:56.620 two minutes in the United States and knows anything about our history knows this.

00:41:00.140 And he said, Booker later did that. He had had a constructive conversation with Joe Biden

00:41:05.580 about his use of this term, adding, this is about him invoking a terrible power dynamic,

00:41:11.540 uh, that he showed a lack of understanding or insensitivity to by invoking this idea that he

00:41:16.940 was called son by white segregationists who, yeah, they see him, uh, in him, their son. But of course,

00:41:23.740 the implication is in, in somebody like me, Cory Booker, they see something very different and use

00:41:27.380 a very different term. He wasn't the only one to confront Joe Biden about this. Um, Al Sharpton did

00:41:33.460 too. And I'm going to show you that confrontation, which happened in 2019 before the Biden presidency

00:41:39.420 and every soundbite that comes thereafter is post these conversations with Cory Booker and Al

00:41:45.000 Sharpton. Watch. Well, it hurts when you talk about boy, I mean something different to us.

00:41:51.000 I do understand the consequence of the word boy, but it wasn't said in any of that context at all.

00:41:57.820 But you understand they would never call me son. They would never call me son. No,

00:42:01.700 no, no, no, no. But, but they call Bob, they call Teddy Kennedy boy. Look, I, as you know,

00:42:07.160 Rev, you know about me in Delaware. I, you know, I came up in that community. I came up in the black

00:42:11.580 church. I came up because that's where we got, that's where we sit down to organize, to go out

00:42:15.360 and march. The great artists of our time representing the groundbreaking legacy of hip hop in America,

00:42:21.100 LLJ Cool J. Uh, by the way, that boy's got, he's got, man's got biceps bigger than my thighs. I think

00:42:31.440 he's got a hell of a new governor in Westmore, I tell you.

00:42:40.680 He's the real deal. And the boy looked like he could still play.

00:42:44.540 You want to come and make a speech?

00:42:49.680 Hush up, boy. As my mother would say, you've got a Japanese boy coming over here. And guess what?

00:42:56.340 He won the masters. He won the masters. He won the green jacket.

00:43:02.920 I mean, do we need to go to the, if Trump did this place? Like, it's very interesting to think

00:43:10.600 about what could happen with the black vote and the feelings on the economy coupled with Biden's

00:43:16.680 obvious racism on the other side, Emily.

00:43:20.480 And it would be even more, uh, interesting if the media, I think, would give any oxygen to this

00:43:27.880 in the same way. It's not just about the double standard. It's about the fact that there are real

00:43:31.920 consequences to giving people a pass on all of this stuff. And actually, uh, I'm, I may have been

00:43:38.300 sort of like, eh, if I had just seen one of these clips or the other one of these clips, you know,

00:43:43.400 he's a, he's, he's older. He's from a different generation. Maybe he slips up time and again,

00:43:47.700 um, and afforded him some grace. But when you see the pattern, it's pretty damning. Um, and,

00:43:54.200 and if the media gave oxygen to him, the pattern that he just demonstrated recently, again, like we're

00:44:00.620 not talking about something five, 10 years ago. These are what people in the business call

00:44:04.420 news hooks and the news is not biting on any of these, these hooks. Now, of course,

00:44:10.360 new media is going to cover it. Places like this are going to cover it. And so a lot of people will

00:44:13.880 see it in those spaces because they're not paying much attention to the mainstream media anymore.

00:44:17.880 So I think that's powerful, but, uh, you know, the, the media is not going to give him, uh, the,

00:44:23.040 the, the criticism that he deserves in this case. And, uh, I think that's a real benefit to him and a

00:44:29.900 real sad story about the media. That same feeling that we had Matt, when he was coming down those

00:44:35.500 stairs and he stumbled, the stumble. That's what his staff has every time he speaks because they know

00:44:42.480 not only is he likely to screw it up, but something like this is more and more likely to come out. It

00:44:50.980 is another big risk for them between now and November 24th. We had reason, uh, had a, did a

00:44:58.360 video, a little parody video. Remember the, uh, uh, the, uh, the real man of genius ads. I forget what

00:45:05.600 it was for like, uh, Budweiser or something. Um, so we did that, but did it for Joe Biden. Um, and this

00:45:12.080 is back in like 2008 or nine or seven when he was running as a vice president. Cause we found it

00:45:17.200 hilarious that of all people were going to appoint Joe Biden, who's been kind of a, a clownish character

00:45:22.920 in American politics for a long time, a successful one. Um, but like he's been sort of a, a punching

00:45:28.100 bag, a punchline, the American politics. He's been doing this thing the whole time. Look at what he

00:45:34.840 said about Indians working at seven 11. That's not very cool. Talk about corn pop down at the swimming

00:45:40.760 pool. That's super, not so great. Um, you know, telling, uh, and, uh, and yeah, Barack Obama too.

00:45:48.540 Um, he's has the first clean, articulate black man, the source of that, of that meme. Uh, he's been

00:45:58.720 doing this forever. And another thing that I was just noticing, looking at that clip, right? Did you

00:46:03.140 notice the difference between 2019 Joe and the two years later, Joe, um, like it's in the bowl.

00:46:09.760 It's visible. That's not so great. Um, you know, every president looks a hell of a lot worse after

00:46:15.600 four or eight years, everyone gets gray. Everyone gets a bit haggard around the edges. But the thing

00:46:20.520 that's happened to Joe Biden in just two or three years is very, very noticeable. And one thing that

00:46:25.540 you will see over the next few months is a lot of people in the media trying to tell you that's not

00:46:31.080 what you see there is not happening. And to focus on it is what about is because Donald Trump is bad.

00:46:36.060 Uh, it's going to be a really bad season for journalism. I'm afraid,

00:46:38.700 but they know, they know, Emily, that Carville sought shows they know and they're faced with

00:46:46.920 a very tough decision. Now I know the ABC news, Washington post poll was an outlier showing

00:46:52.400 Trump now up 10 over Biden, but more and more we're seeing polls that show Trump up over Biden

00:47:00.700 and the race tightening in the general, uh, in the critical swing States. And even those Trump

00:47:07.020 voters in that poll, I was citing a minute ago, the CV CBS poll that said, well, I'm open-minded

00:47:12.140 to somebody else. No one's saying that their problems with Donald Trump are that they don't

00:47:16.940 think he can win the general. That's not their objection to him anymore. It used to be, uh,

00:47:21.300 that was Ron DeSantis, his main reason for running. I'll win and he won't. The Republicans don't believe

00:47:26.200 that anymore. And I do think it's in large part because what they're seeing happening to Joe Biden,

00:47:31.180 not even to Trump, right? Wait, stand by. There's so many great stories. We need a three hour show

00:47:35.940 today. I want to get to you what Andrew Cuomo is now saying about his revisionist history

00:47:39.720 on the pandemic and much, much more. Stay with us.

00:47:46.580 Okay, guys, we've got to talk about this COVID revisionism. I got some from Trump when I interviewed

00:47:52.200 him and now we're getting some from Andrew Cuomo. I'm going to take them in reverse order because

00:47:57.100 Andrew Cuomo just made these comments that made my head explode. He's such a liar. He has tried to

00:48:04.320 rebrand himself just like his loser brother as some sort of a moderate. Now, you know, he's like a fair

00:48:11.000 and balanced Democrat. He's trying to reinvent himself and reinvent history and his behavior when

00:48:17.780 it came to the COVID lockdowns. And on his podcast, he had CNN's favorite doctor, Leanna Nguyen, who never

00:48:24.860 saw a lockdown she didn't like or a mask or a vaccine mandate. And they're going over, you know,

00:48:30.920 how reasonable they both were during the pandemic. And he drops this on it. I lived in New York for

00:48:37.980 the entire pandemic, right? It's one of the reasons we left and came to Connecticut, his overreach. But

00:48:43.580 I lived in New York. Everything, as it turns out, I know you did too, Matt. Everything, as it turns out,

00:48:51.760 it was all voluntary. None of it was mandatory. Okay. All those businesses, they didn't need to

00:48:58.420 close. The schools, that wasn't thanks to him. The mask mandates, not his doing. He was just this

00:49:04.920 sort of gentle idea suggestion at the top. Listen to this in SOT 14. Government had no capacity to

00:49:14.800 enforce any of this. You must wear a mask. And people wore masks in New York. But if they said,

00:49:25.320 I'm not wearing a mask, there was nothing I could do about it. You must close your private business.

00:49:32.160 I won't. Well, there was nothing I could really do about it. It was really all voluntary. And it was

00:49:38.540 extraordinary when you think about it, that society acted with that uniformity voluntarily.

00:49:49.000 Oh, my God. Can I just tell you one quick story? Just one quick story. So I have a very dear friend

00:49:55.460 who is a single mom who had a dance studio and a company in Manhattan. And she was making it.

00:50:02.820 And she really was making it. She had a lot of young girls who were loving her instruction. And

00:50:08.080 they performed at the UN. They performed overseas. She was getting a bunch of gigs for these young

00:50:13.560 girls. One of them went off to Princeton, I think it was. Another one got cast in a Scorsese movie.

00:50:18.560 Like these, they were making it. And everything was shut down because of him, because of this man.

00:50:25.420 And it wasn't just my friend. It was a lot of people. This is just one industry. We could go

00:50:29.240 through any one of them. But the dance industry, for one, you weren't allowed to dance during COVID.

00:50:34.000 Couldn't offer in New York State, New York City. You couldn't have a dance studio. It wasn't allowed.

00:50:38.900 And I actually went back and just pulled the New York Times article on some of the complaints in

00:50:42.560 that particular industry, just as one example. And it was talking about how frustrating the

00:50:48.000 existing guidelines were, that they seemed to conflate dance studios with gyms. And gyms had a much

00:50:53.960 longer period in which they were not allowed to open at all. But dance studios were also ordered

00:50:58.040 closed for a period. One studio owner received clearance to reopen from the Department of

00:51:03.360 Health. Another called the Department of Health and was told she could not open her dance studio.

00:51:09.680 Another reopened and was shut down by the city sheriff's office. So what would happen, Andrew Cuomo,

00:51:17.540 if anybody tried to defy your executive orders was the sheriff would show up. People were not free

00:51:25.700 to disregard your vaccine mask or business or school closure mandates. They had to comply. It was not some

00:51:33.920 miraculous handholding. Let's unify and bow down to the dear leader in Albany moment. And the nerve,

00:51:42.240 Matt, Matt, to suggest otherwise on camera, on the record.

00:51:48.460 He in August of twenty twenty one. All right. This is the guy who made his nut in the spring of the pandemic

00:51:55.860 somehow became the love gov and everyone was really interested in what he had to say. And he was calming and

00:52:00.640 soothing. He was portrayed as sort of the the anti Trump or the counterpart to Trump. And so, you know, we're going to

00:52:07.340 follow the science. We're always going to follow the science. Right. Remember that August of twenty twenty

00:52:12.740 one. He was warning that if we open up schools, public schools again, that they might become a super

00:52:18.980 spreader event. We had had a lot of science in between March of twenty twenty and August of twenty

00:52:25.700 twenty one. We had a lot of examples all around the world of what happens when you open up schools.

00:52:30.560 And it turns out what happens is then the schools are open and the kids can learn and they're not going to

00:52:35.520 based in their own dysfunction and social isolation and have a lot of problems that have, among other

00:52:41.920 things, driven a whole lot of people away from the public school system in the city of New York like

00:52:46.620 me. Now I'm paying way too much money for private schools for my dad. This is a separate story, maybe,

00:52:54.120 but it's all kind of related. It's ridiculous, this sense of revisionism. And we're going to see a lot

00:52:58.960 of it because none of that's popular. Gavin Newsom, right? He's the one who said, like, I'm, you know,

00:53:04.600 we're going to look back and we're going to see and where we went wrong. And and now that we know

00:53:10.020 a lot more, I actually appreciate the gesture, but I want him to know and everybody else that

00:53:15.460 that's not doesn't mean that we're going to forget that you put yellow tape on outdoor playgrounds

00:53:21.120 in California in December of twenty twenty, which is absolutely insane, is so counterproductive to

00:53:27.960 every public health thing that we know. So both of those characters, New York has a special sauce in

00:53:32.680 which because of progressive era, like meaning 20s and 30s governance reforms, no one knows who's in

00:53:39.540 charge of anything. Right. The somehow the governor is in charge of the subways in New York City. It's

00:53:43.920 just like it's all like weird and doesn't make sense. There's these quasi governmental authorities

00:53:47.880 like the Port Authority. So I'm sure he could hide behind like, well, it wasn't me who could enforce

00:53:53.700 this particular mask mandate. It was actually the city. But if you're a resident of New York,

00:53:58.560 all you know is that governments around you at all times, a health inspector can come in any minute

00:54:03.980 and close down your business for any reason. You're aware of it. You follow the law or the threat of the

00:54:09.920 law. And what that meant in New York was really severe lockdowns, way too severe lockdowns. And

00:54:16.140 we're still climbing out of that. And it's going to take a long time for us to.

00:54:19.800 Yeah, we've been covering that. What happened with the church out in California? David Zweig's been

00:54:24.240 doing great reporting on this, that that held services, notwithstanding the lockdowns there

00:54:29.820 and the mandates there. And the FBI infiltrated the church. And now that church has been forced

00:54:35.400 to pay all these fines pursuant to their state policy. There are enforcement mechanisms. He's

00:54:40.640 lying. He's full of shit. This was not voluntary. People were forced to go along with it by state

00:54:45.820 health authorities and at some level, federal authorities. I pulled some of the New York Times

00:54:50.520 background on this just because we all lived it. And here's what here's the New York Times piece.

00:54:55.460 In recent weeks, the governor has repeatedly made it clear that he believed he had no choice but to

00:55:00.080 seize more control over pandemic policy from state and local public health officials. And because he

00:55:06.400 didn't think they understood how to how to force people to comply. Here's another one. State health

00:55:11.280 officials said they often found out about major changes in pandemic policy only after Governor Cuomo

00:55:16.820 announced them at news conferences and then asked them to match their health guidance to the

00:55:21.080 announcements. So that's what would happen. Then the state state health authorities would issue these

00:55:25.660 mandates or, quote, guidelines that the schools hadn't felt that they had no choice but to comply

00:55:30.680 with, that businesses had to comply with. And then in some cases, law enforcement would run around

00:55:35.960 enforcing on everybody, Emily. And here's one more. Here's one more before you comment on it.

00:55:40.040 I would be remiss if I did not mention my dear friend Janice Dean's, you know, reason for being

00:55:46.200 over the past three years. And that is what he did with the nursing homes. He issued an order on March

00:55:52.000 25th, 2020, that all New York State nursing homes must accept residents that are medically stable.

00:55:59.380 And it stated, quote, no resident shall be denied readmission or admission to nursing homes

00:56:05.820 because because they tested positive or were suspected to have covid. What it essentially

00:56:12.680 did was render testing of incoming patients inappropriate and therefore covid to her patients

00:56:19.460 who are covid positive were put into the nursing homes by the thousand. And it led to some 10 to 15

00:56:26.360 thousand deaths of the most vulnerable elderly populations inside these nursing homes.

00:56:31.720 He then went on to lie about the number who died because he knew he had blood on his hands and he

00:56:37.680 didn't want the responsibility. All of this is backed up by the Democrat Attorney General Letitia James.

00:56:43.100 He gave the order. He gave the order. It wasn't voluntary. People are dead because of what he did.

00:56:52.160 And I'm sorry, I realize covid's over. They're trying to bring it back, but it's over. But

00:56:56.800 accountability is important and calling out these lies is important.

00:57:03.060 It's one of the clearest cut examples from the pandemic of a policy that, as you pointed out,

00:57:09.940 was an order, not a voluntary suggestion leading to deaths. You can connect A and B more clearly with

00:57:18.460 Andrew Cuomo than almost this specific policy decision, more clearly than almost any others.

00:57:24.000 It is really the perfect example of covid evil and incompetence. And on the incompetence point,

00:57:30.360 first of all, the man wrote a book that celebrated his legacy during covid as the media was celebrating

00:57:38.600 his legacy during covid. He got taken down by Me Too stuff, not by his gross mismanagement that

00:57:45.500 actually led to deaths during covid. He wrote a book because the media allowed him to get away with

00:57:53.120 mismanaging covid because the media was reporting bad information. They were ideologically driven

00:57:58.560 throughout the throughout the pandemic. And again, does a governor get away with having a policy like that

00:58:03.960 that is actually having life and death consequences for as long as he did without a complicit and

00:58:10.940 incompetent and ideologically compromised media? Absolutely not. So did Andrew Cuomo absolutely lead to

00:58:16.920 life and death consequences? Yes. But the media's enabling of Andrew Cuomo also have life and death

00:58:22.500 consequences? Absolutely. Yes. Looking straight at CNN, by the way, who allowed him to get away with

00:58:28.720 all of this stuff. But so did everyone else. I am fascinated by how what he's saying now is probably

00:58:34.960 in conflict with his own book. He is telling the story. And again, they will get they will let him get

00:58:40.460 away with it. He will get away with it. There's there's just there's no question about it. And that's why

00:58:45.500 he feels comfortable doing it. And that is why the media's idiocy has, again, real life or death

00:58:51.800 consequences. It's not just this abstract conversation about fake news. It actually like

00:58:57.240 the bigger conversation is that Andrew Cuomo shouldn't be able to show his face in polite society

00:59:02.620 without apologizing and explaining why his voice still is relevant and legitimate because he learned

00:59:10.900 from the pandemic and made all of these major mistakes. Why should we trust you or care what you say

00:59:15.300 unless you are groveling and saying what you did wrong? Now he's just able to reenter and talk like

00:59:20.640 it never happened and that he was the hero and he's just going to get away with it. We're not even

00:59:24.940 having the conversation about what it showed in terms of his character and competency.

00:59:30.080 No, when when Janice Dean, who lost both of her in-laws in nursing homes at this very time,

00:59:37.600 went public saying you gave the order, you did this, you're misleading about the number of deaths.

00:59:43.360 He lied. And there was reportedly correspondence between Andrew Cuomo, then the sitting governor

00:59:49.060 and his brother, Chris Cuomo, who was still fronting a primetime show on CNN about that weather

00:59:55.200 bitch, Janice Dean, the weather bitch. That's what led me to get a shirt that read, I stand with the

01:00:02.040 weather bitch. F these guys and their revisionist history. They're fucking liars. They're liars.

01:00:07.340 And you're right. I don't know whether he's got some dream of like running again for New York state

01:00:14.540 governor or somehow finding himself on the Democratic ticket if Joe Biden implodes, because that was

01:00:20.440 discussed last time when Biden was running. It's not going to happen. That's I mean, Janice alone will

01:00:27.200 make sure it doesn't happen. But those of us who are paying attention to his history will make sure

01:00:30.780 to. And for that matter, Trump also Trump also did some revisionist history on what he did on the

01:00:39.780 pandemic in my interview with him, because he senses now this is plutonium in the Republican

01:00:46.000 Party to what he did with the lockdowns. And I understand you can go back and say, as he did a

01:00:50.300 different part of the interview, we didn't know what was happening. People were dying. Body bags were

01:00:54.040 stacking up in China and here. It was a difficult time. That's one thing to do. But to say you never did

01:00:59.900 it and that you didn't support lockdowns is another. And it's also not true. So here's what

01:01:05.360 he said to me in our interview. Twenty seven. I asked my audience, what would you like me to ask

01:01:10.760 President Trump? These are your fans. This is the number one question they wanted me to ask you

01:01:14.620 that you shut the country down for six weeks in spring of 2020. Operation Warp Speed.

01:01:19.260 Excuse me. Rushed through. I didn't really let me let me let me ask you. This is my audience's

01:01:23.980 question. I got to get it out. But I let the governors shut down. Some did and some didn't.

01:01:29.900 So it wasn't me. It wasn't me. Here he is. March 17th, 2020.

01:01:38.240 Americans to take action for 15 days to help stem the outbreak. So it's a 15 day period,

01:01:44.760 I guess. Now would say it's a 14 day period. We're asking everyone to work at home if possible,

01:01:49.680 postpone unnecessary travel and limit social gatherings to no more than 10 people.

01:01:54.640 If we do this right, our country and the world, frankly, but our country can

01:01:59.440 be rolling again pretty quickly. April 13th, 2020, he tweeted out the following for the purpose of

01:02:07.080 creating conflict and confusion. Some in the fake news media are saying it is the governor's decision

01:02:12.060 to open up the states, not that of the president of the United States and the federal government.

01:02:17.300 Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect. It is the decision of the president and for many

01:02:24.900 good reasons. And then he goes on to say, with that being said, the administration and I are working

01:02:29.780 closely with the governors and this will continue. A decision by me in conjunction with the governors

01:02:33.820 and input from others will be made shortly. And we could go on. He criticized Sweden for not locking

01:02:41.340 down, saying they were paying heavily. So the revisionism is bipartisan. Matt, let me go to Matt

01:02:47.580 on that one. Yeah, he the two weeks to slow the spread. Again, it's in the line of fire. It's in the

01:02:54.520 heat of battle, whatever. One thing that the playbook that both major political parties and their

01:02:59.760 politicians and certainly the CDC tore up and you could see they had a big guidance in 2005, 2006 about

01:03:07.720 what to do in the next big pandemic. And they stressed above all, what you have to do is have

01:03:13.080 very calm information that is factual, including to the level of the degree, which we say what we

01:03:21.040 don't know. Right. You don't have a sense of a false. Oh, definitely masks work or definitely they

01:03:26.900 don't just tell them what it is and trust people to make good decisions for that. Obviously, Anthony

01:03:31.860 Fauci was not interested in that guidance, nor was Trump. Trump, remember, he had the daily

01:03:37.480 press conference he was having there for a couple of weeks during the beginning of the pandemic.

01:03:41.720 Trump is not a disaster in any context who is going to be the source of calm, cool, collected,

01:03:48.380 just the facts information. That's just not what he does. He's got other value propositions.

01:03:53.400 He could have receded than he did. It stands to reason that he zigged and zagged during the

01:03:58.780 pandemic. He did, for example, a very good thing in my estimation in July of 2020, although it

01:04:04.940 backfired politically when he and Betsy DeVos said, you know what? Schools should be open in

01:04:09.960 September. We know enough now where that seems to be true. It's not the virus is not spreading

01:04:15.160 like wildfire among the kids and they're disproportionately, thank God, not affected

01:04:19.580 by this. We should open up the schools, even though it's not the federal government's call.

01:04:23.320 Definitely not in that case, but they can make recommendations. That was great. And then the

01:04:27.700 Democrats took over the we're not going to follow the science mantle, including, you know,

01:04:32.860 Governor Cuomo issuing a masking two to four year olds order, which stayed in effect until

01:04:39.820 2022, including people who are going to speech therapy. I have friends who are gone insane

01:04:45.720 with rage because of just that order. So, yes, Trump zigged and zagged and it's Trump. He's

01:04:50.900 when called on, he's going to do a lot. Excuse me. And he's not going to cop to it. This is the

01:04:56.360 line that Ron DeSantis has on Donald Trump of attack to chip away at at his lead. And it would

01:05:03.620 resonate with people. We'll see if DeSantis actually tries to draw blood on that. There's a lot of

01:05:09.760 people. It doesn't take much to scratch into the anger that we all feel about stuff that happened

01:05:14.520 during covid. So you don't look to politicians to not to start telling the truth all of a sudden.

01:05:21.100 But people know what happened. That's the only reason Glenn Youngkin is governor, for crying out

01:05:25.940 loud, in the state of Virginia. And it really is Ron DeSantis' main selling proposition that he kept

01:05:31.820 his head during a time he was called Death Santus by the media and everybody else at that time. And

01:05:36.780 he said, I don't care what you say. We're going to do this. And most of what he did in that context

01:05:40.860 was correct. Trump zigzagged. He did good. He did bad. And, you know, it's Trump. He's not going to

01:05:46.860 like come at his record in a super honest way. No, it is very much to DeSantis' credit that he

01:05:52.920 held the line. He closed Florida for basically a month and a couple of small lingering things

01:05:58.400 thereafter. But Florida was open and he's produced a memo he got from the Trump White House Coronavirus

01:06:05.100 Task Force headed by Anthony Fauci as late as I think it was January 21 saying you will mask up.

01:06:11.440 You will issue a mask mandate in Florida. And Ron DeSantis said, no, we're not doing that.

01:06:17.440 So, I mean, not only did he not, you know, decide to impose these lockdowns and mandates,

01:06:23.700 he pushed back when others tried to force him. So, you know, he's got a lot of evidence. It's

01:06:29.140 ridiculous for Trump to attack DeSantis on COVID. There's plenty of other things he can attack him on.

01:06:35.720 That's just not one. That's not one. I do want to shift to the media, though, Emily,

01:06:40.840 because you've raised it a couple of times in the show, rightfully. And they are complicit in

01:06:45.460 all of this. They made Andrew Cuomo a star and Anthony Fauci as well. We all know what they do to

01:06:51.600 any Republican, especially one named Trump. But there was a very interesting piece in the Atlantic

01:06:57.260 just yesterday, 926. And it's titled How We Got Democracy Dies in Darkness, which became the

01:07:07.600 Washington Post's slogan during the Trump years. And anybody who was in the media who wasn't a leftist

01:07:14.940 understood immediately when this came out what a joke it was. Talk to somebody like me and Matt,

01:07:20.440 you know, we're older, about how dark democracy was over at the Washington Post when Obama was

01:07:27.860 spewing the lies about if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. I didn't hear much from

01:07:31.820 the Washington Post. In fact, what I heard was them defending Barack Obama. That would later be

01:07:36.740 dubbed the lie of the year by even left wing sources because it got to the point where it was

01:07:42.420 totally undeniable. He had lied and it came out that actually he knew he knew it was untrue when

01:07:47.020 he said it. So the word lie is OK. A deep dive based on Marty Baron, who used to run the Washington

01:07:53.600 Post, his upcoming book about the Washington Post talking. I mean, at length about how they came up

01:08:00.120 with this wonderful slogan, the number of alternative slogans that were bandied about.

01:08:06.700 Bezos had given them their marching orders, Emily. He said, I want I want it to be both

01:08:12.100 aspirational and disruptive, not a paper I want to subscribe to, but rather an idea I want to belong

01:08:21.240 to. We love this country, so we hold it accountable. They went through slogan after slogan. Months of

01:08:29.460 meetings were held. Frustrations deepened. Outside branding consultants were retained to no avail.

01:08:36.380 Desperation led to a long list of options venturing into the inane. The ideas totaled at at least a

01:08:41.600 thousand. A bias for truth. No. A right to know. You have a right to know. Unstoppable journalism.

01:08:50.440 The power is yours. Relentless pursuit of the truth. Facts matter. It's all about America. Spotlight

01:08:57.340 on democracy. Democracy matters. A light on the nation. Democracy lives in light. Democracy takes work.

01:09:07.640 We'll do our part. Apparently, they settled on a free people demand to know. And Jeff Bezos's ex-wife,

01:09:18.520 Mackenzie Scott, who was a novelist, said, that's a Franken slogan. Too many words. It doesn't work.

01:09:25.620 And then we needed Bezos to take unilateral action. Are you getting the chill up your spine? Are they

01:09:34.600 getting the tinglys yet? Finally, he did. Let's go with democracy dies in darkness, he decreed.

01:09:44.020 It had been on our list from the start. It was a phrase Bezos had used previously in speaking of the

01:09:50.600 Post's mission. He himself had heard it from the Washington Post legend, Bob Woodward, and went on

01:09:58.660 from there. Oh, my God. I've never heard anything so self-aggrandizing and so false

01:10:05.920 all in one from a newspaper head.

01:10:09.420 And then The Atlantic is publishing it, too, without any self-reflection. I mean, the Trump era is now

01:10:18.700 in the rearview mirror, and we can look at exactly what the media's failures were. Even the media—okay,

01:10:24.980 so The Washington Post has a long series right now basically about how it allowed democracy to suffer

01:10:32.140 in darkness throughout the Russia collusion hoax. Like, they actually allowed one of their own

01:10:36.860 journalists, media critics to go back and look at how they got so many stories wrong as it pertained

01:10:42.880 to Russia. Eric Wemple was like the only honest man over there. Keep going.

01:10:45.180 Yeah, Eric Wemple did it. Yep, absolutely. And it's in its own—in their own paper. And the sad thing is

01:10:52.300 that it's true. Like, the reason—you can go back and look at what the framers, the founding fathers,

01:10:58.000 wrote about the importance of a free press. And they didn't have the same mass media and neutral

01:11:02.700 press that we got used to in the 20th century. It was pretty partisan. But when mass media came along,

01:11:09.000 they had to appeal to as many people as possible, so they had this sort of neutral stance for the ad

01:11:12.740 money. And that's when we came to this idea that journalists were, you know, just out there being

01:11:17.640 objective, neutral. And some people really did try for years to do that because you do need a free press

01:11:23.860 to be able to shine. Otherwise, politicians have no incentive to behave and no incentive to do the right

01:11:29.580 thing. So it's absolutely essential. They're right. Democracy does die in darkness. They are time

01:11:35.200 and time and again the source of the darkness. They are shielding it. They are intentionally—it's

01:11:40.380 not just that they're missing things. They are missing things, to continue torturing this metaphor.

01:11:44.420 But they are also shielding things from light actively. They are helping the government censor

01:11:49.440 things. You can look time and again. And there's just absolutely—like, the collusion. It's the

01:11:54.440 Missouri v. Biden. I mean, this stuff is, like, actually in court right now that they were working

01:11:59.080 in concert with big tech and media and the Biden administration. And Joan Didion absolutely skewed

01:12:05.500 Bob Woodward in the New York Review of Books in, like, 1991. It's just, like, a beautiful thing

01:12:10.660 looking at how he was basically allowing democracy to suffer in darkness for years. So it's not new.

01:12:16.420 But the Trump era is what accelerated it, not what solved it in this telling from Marty Baron. And it's

01:12:24.060 staggering. Staggering. Staggering. Because it's so untrue that they are still not reckoning with it.

01:12:31.340 They are sprinting further in the other direction. The media is not getting better. It is getting

01:12:35.560 aggressively worse. And this is a great example of why.

01:12:39.040 Matt, you've got Glenn Kessler over there, the king fact-checker, who is wrong all the time.

01:12:47.440 Philip Bump, Jennifer Rubin. Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post.

01:12:52.780 America's sweetheart.

01:12:54.320 Oh, my God. I mean, that's what a joke this once-revered paper has become. I'm sorry,

01:12:58.900 it's become a joke. Its circulation is down to record lows. It's absolutely abysmal,

01:13:04.180 both online and in terms of the actual delivery. And I went back just to look at just a couple of

01:13:09.380 my favorites. Here is Washington Post October 2020. The Hunter Biden laptop could be fake,

01:13:18.680 or it could be real. We may never know. That was their democracy dies in darkness approach

01:13:26.520 one month before a presidential. Tomato, tomato. Then by March of 2022, when everybody

01:13:34.160 verified it, after extensive forensic analysis, the Washington Post was able to determine

01:13:41.340 that some of the data on the laptop appears to be authentic. Some, you know, some, but not all.

01:13:47.800 Okay, Hunter Biden's literally filing a lawsuit right now saying the whole thing was his

01:13:51.400 and that they were wrong to steal it from him and gave it to the papers. So that's just a couple

01:13:57.320 examples. And then let me give you one more. February 17th, 2020. The headline, which they

01:14:04.780 then had to revise, but it was Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists

01:14:11.140 have debunked. I'll give you one guess what his fringe debunked theory was about. Do you have any

01:14:18.000 guess, Matt, Matt, Matt Welsh? What do you have any guess? It's something about a lab leak, perhaps.

01:14:24.740 Nailed it. Nailed it. His debunked theory fringe was that COVID was somehow connected to research

01:14:33.620 in the disease ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China. He referenced a laboratory in the city.

01:14:40.520 Right. I'm getting to that. But there is, quote, ready for it? No evidence, says the Washington Post.

01:14:47.620 There is no evidence. Where have we heard that phrase recently? Cotton is referring to a well-known

01:14:52.840 lab in Wuhan. Numerous experts dismissed the possibility that the coronavirus may be man-made.

01:15:01.200 This isn't true. They go on to cite some expert, quote unquote, to say it's very harmful. It's very

01:15:06.940 dangerous to stir up suspicion, rumors, and spread them among the people. For one thing, this will

01:15:13.200 create panic. Another is that it will fan up racial discrimination, Emily, xenophobia, and so on.

01:15:22.040 Their expert goes on to say these kinds of conspiracy theories are unhelpful and borderline

01:15:28.940 irresponsible. It's a conspiracy theory. And he's peddling it. So that's our democracy,

01:15:36.620 democracy dies in darkness. Let's hold the powerful, accountable newspaper of record, Matt.

01:15:44.340 Yeah, the people can't handle the truth. This is the longstanding idea about a lot of media critics

01:15:50.260 or media thinkers over time is that we have to be so careful. We have to massage. We have to be careful

01:15:54.800 not to platform the wrong people because the consumers are these inert sheep. And if they get the

01:16:01.420 wrong ideas or even bandy around the wrong theory, they're going to do horrible things. We can't even

01:16:07.180 imagine how bad these sheep-like consumers are going to be activated. What's interesting about

01:16:12.180 Marty Baron as a character in this is that, and this excerpt is from a book, forthcoming book that

01:16:17.840 he has, and maybe they mash together like a Frankenstein slogan of a book about the origins of

01:16:24.900 democracy dies in darkness. And he's sneering. He's like, yeah, Trump thought it was about him,

01:16:28.880 but far from the truth kind of thing. As if it has nothing to do with Trump, we know what you're

01:16:33.380 doing. We know it. All right. It's really obvious that it was, and it was a source of a lot of inter

01:16:39.300 industry snickering and rightfully so, because it was very dramatic and kind of silly. The second half

01:16:45.420 of this book excerpt is about how Marty Baron was fighting an increasingly lonely battle within his own

01:16:52.540 newsroom. And in fact, it's why he left earlier than he planned to. He was fighting against people

01:16:58.380 who had gone completely like woke crazy. There's Taylor Lorenz was in there, Felicia Somnez, all kinds

01:17:04.120 of interior struggle sessions at the Washington post. But he's fighting a lonely battle to hold on to

01:17:10.760 that old timey sense of neutrality and, and pursuits, you know, imperfect pursuit of objectivity. He's

01:17:16.820 written quite a lot about this and he recognizes that he's outnumbered. He was outnumbered at his own

01:17:22.340 newspaper by the likes of Margaret Sullivan, the very bad press critic over there who now works

01:17:27.780 for the Guardian. He doesn't see the connective tissue between the two things, right? You created

01:17:33.460 a slogan, a very dramatic one that was an idea you could belong to that sounded like you were going

01:17:39.400 to be the rallying cry against Trump. And that's how your newsroom therefore behaved. That is why you

01:17:45.820 lost the objectivity fight. And also not incidentally, that is why you've lost 500,000 subscribers

01:17:53.460 since Trump left office. If you became essentially an opinion journal magazine, journalism magazine,

01:17:59.180 you became the nation during George W. Bush's presidency. The nation got a lot of subscribers

01:18:03.900 then. And then Obama won and that's over. So you created the pendulum swing. You leaned into the idea

01:18:10.640 that we can belong to. You chose a team, your newsroom, the younger people who worked there

01:18:15.060 said, great. I love it. Moral clarity at last. Just like one of the things that they love to talk

01:18:20.040 about these days. And what happened is the quality of the journalism got worse and they got more

01:18:24.560 obsessed with the idea of who can be platform and who cannot. They went after, and I'm sure you've

01:18:29.060 talked about this on your show. The food critic went after the barstool sports guy for his pizza thing.

01:18:34.680 They tried to get it. I love that story. It's insane. What are you doing here? You're trying

01:18:39.920 to like stir up a boycott against someone because he's not the good person. And you don't know what

01:18:45.040 these sheep people are going to be like if they watch his one bite pizza taste test, because he might

01:18:50.380 be a racist or something. It is ridiculous. They have created their own problem. Marty Baron was there.

01:18:55.840 He couldn't fight it. And it's amazing to me that he doesn't see the connection between this thing

01:19:01.300 that he's celebrating and the one thing that he claims to be fighting against. He lost the war.

01:19:04.920 And that's why he's no longer working in mainstream journalism.

01:19:07.460 It's well said. Oh, my God. The thing with Dave Portnoy and barstool sports is just so epic. And

01:19:11.440 he did such a great job. He did us all a favor by taping that food reporter saying this is how you

01:19:16.720 get people to respond to you. You have to lie about somebody else. You basically have to defame

01:19:19.840 somebody just so you make it tantalizing for your target to respond to you. No, madam. No,

01:19:24.880 that's not how journalism is performed. You're going to have to go back and check your little rule

01:19:28.600 book. Maybe you didn't learn that at Columbia Journalism School, but you learn it if you're

01:19:33.280 an actual reporter and you actually go out there and work the beat and and write honest stories.

01:19:39.140 And then they use, you know, the Molly Hemingway of the Federalist, I think, pointed this out,

01:19:43.440 Emily. They use the passive voice in their piece, like when they finally wrote about Dave Portnoy,

01:19:47.660 it was like critics, critics respond to allegations about Dave Portnoy. It was something like so

01:19:54.260 generic. Like who you were the one who made the allegations. Nobody else made allegations.

01:19:59.040 You did. What are you saying? It's amazing. Like whether you're a whole fake news story.

01:20:05.180 It doesn't matter if you're a neutral reporter, a conservative reporter, a liberal reporter.

01:20:09.420 Like I actually my part time job is National Journalism Center. Like we trained students in

01:20:13.440 journalism. And now we can say that this is actually a textbook example of what not to do,

01:20:17.720 because I immediately added it to our curriculum for students to listen to the phone call and

01:20:21.800 actually see exactly what you don't do as a reporter. By the way, she knew she was being

01:20:27.080 taped. That's how shameless these people are. She knew she knew she knew and she didn't care

01:20:32.400 because all that matters at these Beltway cocktail parties is Manhattan. What book events? All that

01:20:38.460 matters is that you stood up against Dave Portnoy. It doesn't matter if you dropped your journalistic

01:20:42.440 ethics in the process. It's you against him and you have to be against him.

01:20:46.400 That's so right. Whose side are you on? That's all they want to know when hiring at The Washington

01:20:53.900 Post. And it's not just The Post, but The Post has become the worst. I mean, I have to say,

01:20:57.440 I think they're worse than The Times and The Times is bad. But I mean, like there there's no one to

01:21:02.360 read there now. It's they at least I can read some Brett Stevens at The New York Times. I do think

01:21:07.860 Eric Wimple, you know, maybe usually I don't want to vouch for all of his journalism, but I've seen

01:21:14.060 quite a few fair pieces from the guy. I'll just give you a little reminder as we go to break.

01:21:18.660 Washington Post headlines, March 31st, 2017. Trump campaigns, Russia ties. Who's involved?

01:21:25.380 September 8th, 2017. The case for the Trump-Russia collusion. We're getting very, very close.

01:21:32.880 February 17th, 2018. Trump's Russia hoax turns out to be real. No, it doesn't. WAPO, no, it doesn't.

01:21:42.660 More with Matt and Emily right after this quick break.

01:21:48.440 There is a guy named Jonathan Van Ness, who is one of the co-hosts of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

01:21:54.920 and I don't know, some other shows too. He co-hosted something with Dylan Mulvaney. That was a hot mess.

01:21:59.760 And this guy went on Dax Shepard's popular podcast. Dax Shepard, I like. He calls himself,

01:22:07.600 I think, like unapologetic, independent, something like that. And he pushed back very gently on the

01:22:14.440 idea of boys being able to participate in girl sports, men participating in women's sports.

01:22:20.020 And Jonathan Van Ness didn't like it. Van Ness is a man who uses they, them pronouns,

01:22:27.020 but also he, him. It's totally clear. Sure. Good luck with that. You spend some time talking about

01:22:32.960 Jonathan. And I guess Jonathan didn't really enjoy the conversation because he decided

01:22:39.160 to cry, I guess, to end it, to engender sympathy for him because he knew he was losing the argument.

01:22:47.440 Here's a little sample of what happened when he was on Dax's podcast, Armchair Expert, Saten.

01:22:52.560 Do I wish that the trans woman athlete had access and could play and follow her dreams? I do.

01:23:01.040 Will I elevate her rights over women? We're pretending that women aren't the ultimate

01:23:07.560 marginalized class throughout history. People who have written cervix have her. And she goes,

01:23:13.640 no, no, no, there's a name for us. You can't steal my identity to help your cause.

01:23:19.740 There isn't legitimate questioning going on. There is like a public targeted onslaught towards

01:23:26.580 queer people. It's a boogeyman to make us feel that our girls are being attacked, that their things

01:23:32.540 are being taken away with fairness in sports. Honestly, I just, I wanted to come like chat about

01:23:37.940 my podcast like other shows. We're going to do that. We're going to do that. I did not intend at all to

01:23:42.020 get into a debate with you about this. I didn't want that at all. I adore you. I think you're hysterical

01:23:46.400 and talented. And I love that you're an activist. I could just like cry because I'm like so tired of

01:23:50.900 having to like fight for little kids because they just want to be included. I wish that people were

01:23:57.800 as passionate about little kids being able to like be included or grow up as they were about

01:24:03.700 fictitious women's fairness in sports. I have to tell you, I am very tired.

01:24:09.200 You know what, Jonathan? Same, same. I'm so tired too. I'm so tired. I'm tired of having stand up

01:24:17.380 from my daughter's right to play sports with other girls. I'm tired of having to stand up for the

01:24:21.620 volleyball player, volleyball player down in North Carolina who got hit so hard in the face

01:24:25.840 that she has permanent damage thanks to a boy who is allowed to play on the girls team against her,

01:24:31.380 Peyton McNabb. Here's the video just in case you didn't happen to see it, Jonathan. Watch.

01:24:36.280 Permanent damage to that girl. And we could go down the list. Apparently, Jonathan is too busy

01:24:43.860 dressing other people to realize that there are girls like this across the nation who are having

01:24:49.500 titles taken away from them, scholarship opportunities taken away from them, the joy of

01:24:53.420 winning taken away from them because they're being forced to perform and play against biological boys,

01:25:00.060 against boys. And he goes on in this interview to say,

01:25:03.240 the science we have now says that transgender women do not hold an unfair biological advantage

01:25:10.060 over cis women. Number one, that's a lie. That's bullshit. Number two, the reason we don't have

01:25:17.780 10,000 studies is because we can see it with our own eyes and we don't need them. And number two,

01:25:23.960 it's because anytime somebody actually does try to put this science out showing it,

01:25:27.900 they get a shit storm rain down on them from the very active, abusive trans activist community,

01:25:35.720 Emily. And those are the only reasons that you don't have hundreds of studies saying it's obvious,

01:25:41.340 but you don't have, you don't need that. Look at Leah Thomas in the pool, 38 seconds ahead of his

01:25:47.320 nearest competitor, 38 seconds. This guy wants to go out there and say, I bet you Jonathan Van

01:25:52.140 Ness has never competed in a sport. It seems quite obvious to me. Final 50 yards of the 1650 yard

01:25:56.680 women's freestyle at the 2021 Akron Zippy Invitational. Leah Thomas has no one in the

01:26:02.080 rear view. No one because these women couldn't do it. After 15 minutes, Leah Thomas in lane five

01:26:08.280 has lapped every swimmer once and some twice. That's just one example. And I'll just give you

01:26:14.820 one more. Okay. I'll give you one more, Emily. Then this guy has the nerve, has the nerve

01:26:21.140 to use the term transmisogyny. How dare he? Listen to this. I'm not calling you a transphobe.

01:26:31.140 You cannot be transphobic and still have thoughts that espouse transmisogyny and espouse transphobic

01:26:37.520 ideologies or beliefs and not be transphobic. No, no, you do not get to use that term.

01:26:44.780 Misogyny does not affect or describe any man, a man posing as a woman, any man, just, just for kicks.

01:26:54.260 I went and looked it up. We all know that misogyny means woman hatred, but just here's,

01:26:58.380 here's the definition. Hatred of women's women and girls, a form of sexism that is used to keep

01:27:04.300 women at a lower social status than men. He's talking about men, men competing against women,

01:27:13.100 men in women's spaces, trying to say it's misogynistic for women to say no. This is so

01:27:20.640 bass-ackwards, it's infuriating. He, as a man, has the audacity to smear women,

01:27:29.620 women who have these concerns as misogynists and bigots and haters. And it's like, I'm so tired,

01:27:38.200 I'm so tired narrative. Well, you know what? A lot of people are tired. I'm tired of having to talk

01:27:41.860 to moms and grandmothers whose kids are put in horrible, unsafe situations and who have their

01:27:48.720 lives permanently altered, in some cases, clearly destroyed, at least for now, until they're able

01:27:55.680 to sort of climb out of these horrible dark holes that they're thrust into by this broken culture.

01:27:59.840 I'm tired of talking to people like that. I'm tired of talking to moms, grandmothers, dads who have had

01:28:04.120 their children in situations like that. And so it's this weaponization of his exhaustion as though

01:28:13.220 we can't have this conversation. Dax, you can't raise what you rightfully referred to, Megan, as

01:28:18.220 mild, the most mild form of criticism of this movement, which, by the way, when Jonathan Van

01:28:24.920 Ness says, oh, you know, I am just, I wish people had the same amount of energy for protecting kids that

01:28:30.460 they have about these fake stories, which are obviously not fake. But I wish, I just wish people

01:28:35.380 had that energy. Well, you know what? People did have that energy about, quote unquote, protecting

01:28:39.380 kids because they bulldozed our culture for just quickly in a matter of months. I mean, if you look

01:28:46.380 at the time the Obama administration sent their dear colleague letter to how this completely consumed

01:28:51.160 our culture, it happened in a matter of months because people did have the energy to protect kids.

01:28:55.400 And guess what? It didn't protect every kid. We ran the experiment. People realized that it was

01:29:00.320 wrong and that children were guinea pigs in the process. And Jonathan Van Ness, I think,

01:29:04.940 genuinely doesn't realize that the science that he claims is capital S science is wrong because the

01:29:10.920 media spreads that science. The media tells people that those stories are fake. The media tells people

01:29:15.320 that that so-called science is real. I mean, it's just, it's so, like you said, Megan, it's completely

01:29:20.520 backwards. It's offensive. And Dax Shepard was right. It was one thing that he injected into that

01:29:26.160 conversation that we never hear, is that this is very specifically, very specifically undercutting

01:29:31.920 the advances that women have made. And women have historically suffered misogyny and sexism.

01:29:37.900 They're probably going to change that definition in the dictionary because we live in 1984 after you

01:29:41.840 highlighted it. But seriously, this is, this is, men do not have, it's just amazing the audacity that

01:29:48.420 men have to inject themselves as the victims in these stories.

01:29:51.840 Oh my God. How dare he? How dare he use the term misogyny in referring to women standing up for

01:29:59.340 women and girls trying to keep men out of our spaces? It's a no, sir. I don't care how often

01:30:06.280 you cry in your soup. I'll make you cry all day long. We'll be doing this for years. I couldn't give

01:30:12.320 a shit how upset you are about these imaginary kids you're referring to. By the way, the littles

01:30:16.860 are allowed to play against one another. It's post-puberty that it becomes a problem,

01:30:20.940 which is documented by, documented by the science trademark. Then he goes on, Matt,

01:30:26.380 and actually tells more lies. This one about Leah Thomas. Listen to SOT 25.

01:30:31.760 Even if you look at the very limited number of trans people who have been allowed to play around

01:30:36.020 elite sport or elite competition, if you take like Leah Thomas, for instance,

01:30:39.160 none of her numbers were record setting. None of her height, weight measurements were out of portion

01:30:44.220 in all of the pictures on the podium where they're like, look at how much bigger she is.

01:30:47.480 If you take her and look at an Olympic level, she wasn't outside of the realm of possibility for

01:30:52.260 someone who is assigned female at birth. All right. He's an idiot. This guy's an idiot.

01:30:56.280 He's an a factual idiot. Let me just give you a couple. Okay. February, 2020, Leah Thomas won the

01:31:01.460 200 yard freestyle race at the Ivy league women's swimming and diving championships in a minute and

01:31:06.360 43, 12 seconds, uh, setting a new Ivy record. Hello, Jonathan record, a new Ivy record, a woman's

01:31:13.680 record. March, 2022. Thomas is now an Ivy league champion in women's swimming after winning the

01:31:18.860 500 yard freestyle event with a time of four 37 32. Her time is the fastest ever recorded at Harvard

01:31:26.240 university's blodget pool. Fastest time recorded. That's a record. Jonathan in women's swimming,

01:31:32.200 December, 2021 at Akron zippy invitational won the 200 yard freestyle with a time of one 41 93 a time

01:31:38.960 that was good enough to set. Wait for it. School pool and program records and marked the fastest

01:31:46.780 in the nation. Congratulations, sir. You're now the fastest woman in America. And this idiot goes on

01:31:55.640 with Dax shepherd, who I believe is an honest broker, but wasn't prepared for these lies and spews a bunch

01:32:01.780 of bullshit with his tears to try to pull the sympathy away from the women whose opportunities

01:32:07.240 were denied and championships were denied and put it towards this guy who we know from his social media

01:32:13.000 posts is an autogonophile who was getting off, meaning he was turned on by wearing women's swimsuits

01:32:19.680 amidst the ladies. And they're going to have to deal with him getting off in the women's locker room

01:32:25.160 while they're running to change in some closet so that he couldn't look at them. And he, they could,

01:32:30.900 didn't have to participate in his sexual fetish, Matt. I've had it.

01:32:35.600 I invite people to think about the rhetorical two-step that was used in this case, because we

01:32:40.620 see it in a lot of places. It's not just in sort of trans issues spaces. A lot of activism does this

01:32:45.860 too. First step, call you a fill in the blank ister or fill in the blank foe. It could be homophobe,

01:32:51.800 it could be racist, it could be some, some kind of bigot. Second step when that fails,

01:32:55.760 if that fails is to do the, I am so tired from doing the work. I am emotionally exhausted.

01:33:01.960 I might cry or I might not. That's, it's actually a tactic. There's a thing in the legal realm,

01:33:07.840 as Megyn Kelly knows, well, being a lawyer, um, called strategic lawsuits against public

01:33:12.900 participation slapped with two Ps for short. It's what usually corporations do, but sometimes rich

01:33:19.000 people do. They will file kind of a nuisance lawsuit against a critic. Um, and in many States,

01:33:24.780 I think majority by now there are statues, anti-slap statutes, because they can see this

01:33:29.100 rightly. They're trying to sue their critics away, right? I see, and I've seen this for now for five

01:33:35.300 or 10 years, activists do this in a lot of realms, uh, in my realm in New York city, in school equity

01:33:41.660 policies. If you object to it, like a normal person might object to it, they will call you a fill in

01:33:47.920 the blank is sometimes it's a racist. And if you are not a public figure, that is a heavy accusation.

01:33:53.200 You will shy away from participating in public discussions because you don't want to be called

01:33:58.180 a racist. If you power through it anyways, you will get the tears and the, I am so tired. They

01:34:03.580 are trying to get you to not participate and to not voice objections, recognize it for what it is

01:34:09.960 and plow through it. I was joking in repeating his language. I'm so tired. The truth is I'm not tired

01:34:17.900 at all. I am completely energized for this fight. It's on. I don't care how much you cry or wine or

01:34:26.260 spew bullshit. I will be here. So will these guys. And so will millions of Americans over almost,

01:34:33.880 I think it's over 70% of which, according to the latest poll who are on our side about keeping men

01:34:39.760 and boys out of women's and girls sports. Again, it's a no. Matt, Emily, thank you. Very spicy two

01:34:48.120 hours. Really loved today's discussion and appreciate you both being here tomorrow. We will break down all

01:34:54.040 the storylines from tonight's big GOP debate. See you then. Thanks for listening to the Megan

01:35:02.840 Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 27, 2023

Could Biden Be Replaced, Trans Sports Receipts, and Cuomo's COVID Lies, with Emily Jashinsky and Matt Welch ｜ Ep. 636

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