The Megyn Kelly Show - COVID Hysteria Aimed at Kids, New Proposed Gun Laws, and Cuomo Latest, with Janice Dean, Bethany Mandel, and John Lott Jr.

00:00:00.560 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.960 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have three great

00:00:15.980 guests for you today. In just a bit, I'm going to be joined by Bethany Mandel. She is an

00:00:20.200 editor at Ricochet, a mom of five, and a favorite of mine at calling out COVID BS and hypocrisy.

00:00:26.720 I'm also going to be joined just a bit by gun rights advocate John Lott Jr. about self-defense,

00:00:33.340 concealed carry, and gun storage laws, as well as California Governor Gavin Newsom's just

00:00:37.920 announced plan to restrict guns. We're seeing more and more of this in the week of that school

00:00:42.720 shooting in Michigan, but will more gun laws solve any of our problems? But first, my old pal J.D.

00:00:50.820 Janice Dean is here. Over the weekend, reports emerged that newly fired CNN anchor Chris Cuomo

00:00:56.300 didn't just go after the women who had been accusing his brother Andrew Cuomo of sexually

00:01:01.340 harassment. He was none too happy with Janice Dean, who was very vocal about Andrew Cuomo's

00:01:07.320 failings when it came to elderly people in the nursing homes of New York State, like her two

00:01:12.800 in-laws. And while I call her, you know, Janice Dean, the weather machine, or Janice Newman weather

00:01:19.600 woman, he apparently calls her that Fox weather bitch. Such a charmer, J.D. He's such a charmer.

00:01:28.280 But I mean, like I saw him over the weekend. I'm not surprised, but it is the continuation

00:01:34.900 of a pattern of just bullying, narcissism, and honestly, like attacks on women at every turn.

00:01:42.620 Mm hmm. Should I get business cards made? The weather bitch? Oh, let's get t shirts. Weather

00:01:49.440 bitch. I'm going to get a t shirt that reads I'm with weather bitch. I'm not surprised you

00:01:54.900 and I have had discussions about this for the last almost two years, right? At the very beginning,

00:02:01.580 when I started to speak up about Sean's parents and how they died tragically in nursing homes and

00:02:07.980 how we found out that there were over 9,000 infected patients put into those nursing homes by

00:02:13.800 the governor, Andrew Cuomo, and then how he covered up the numbers at least by 50% to sell his $5.2

00:02:21.180 million book, I got an email from someone that knows the family very well that said, you need to watch

00:02:29.160 your back. And they were being very honest about that, that these are vindictive people. They, if anyone

00:02:36.220 dares to go against them, they're going to do whatever they can to silence them. So I wasn't

00:02:41.940 surprised. And over the last year and a half, this isn't the first time that they've tried to demean me

00:02:47.020 or my family. They, uh, rich as a party, which is Cuomo's main henchman that is still acting as his

00:02:53.940 publicist. He, um, went after my sister-in-law Donna on Twitter and told her to get a life, get a life

00:03:01.880 after she was trying to find answers as to why her parents died. They also called us to death cult

00:03:07.500 because we wanted to find out why the governor and his administration were treating seniors so badly

00:03:14.020 by essentially, you know, putting, uh, COVID and like wildfire through, through dry brush. That's

00:03:21.720 what the governor actually said. Putting infected patients into nursing homes was going to spread

00:03:26.100 like wildfire. He said that before he did it. Um, so it doesn't surprise me that we're starting to

00:03:32.540 find out they were actively trying to smear me like they were trying to do with, uh, the sexual

00:03:38.560 harassment victims. Well, that's all we know right now is what Chris Cuomo said. We haven't found out

00:03:45.340 what Andrew Cuomo said. I'm sure it made Chris's comments look completely G rated, but I want to talk

00:03:51.520 to you because you and I haven't yet had the talk, had the chance to talk about Chris Cuomo. I mean,

00:03:54.740 you've been coming on the show since its launch first, just to talk about what Andrew Cuomo had

00:03:59.000 done with your in-laws and so many 15,000 other seniors in New York state, his stupid book tour

00:04:04.740 using state employees to write the book and so on. And then it emerged, it evolved to where Cuomo got

00:04:11.440 fired. Andrew Cuomo got fired. And now we see the brother fired and the whole story really has come

00:04:17.780 full circle for you. But I was at an event last week, JD, and I was giving a speech or talking to some

00:04:22.720 people. And, um, they asked me about this and I, you know, like, why did he deserve to get fired?

00:04:27.880 Your thoughts? And I was like, a hundred percent, he deserved to get fired. And it, and the reason is,

00:04:32.980 and I want to get your reaction. It's not, it's not good what he did, you know, violating the ethics

00:04:38.200 of journalism by helping his brother using his post to help a sitting politician who happened to be his

00:04:42.560 brother. But it's about so much more than that. To me, it's about the, the repeated, consistent

00:04:48.040 breaking of trust with his audience. And why did he do it over and over the repeated breaking of

00:04:52.680 trust? He did it because of his narcissism, because of his sense of entitlement. I was just thinking

00:04:57.580 about it going back. Let's go back to, cause you and I have talked about all this. Let's go back to,

00:05:02.780 um, the, when the COVID story broke. Okay. Let's just start there. Cause we could go back further,

00:05:07.760 but, and the testing, something you raised questions about at the time and thereafter.

00:05:13.060 To me, that's exhibit a in the story of Chris Cuomo's narcissism in the course of this pandemic.

00:05:21.160 So what happened with the testing? He got VIP COVID tests before nursing homes could ever get

00:05:28.260 them. So in the early stages of the pandemic, when the tests were, you know, no one could get them,

00:05:34.460 including nursing homes, they could not test incoming patients to see if they had COVID. They were

00:05:39.460 prohibited to do that. Um, so, but in the meantime, we learned that Chris Cuomo and others, friends and

00:05:47.700 family were getting VIP COVID tests. And what had to happen was the testing had to go to their homes.

00:05:55.580 So the state resources, um, the, the, you know, the people from the hospital or the state troopers

00:06:03.200 would go out to the Hamptons to do the test on Chris Cuomo. And then they would have to drive

00:06:09.780 upstate a couple of hours to get that test done. So they were already abusing these tests for friends

00:06:18.480 and family, uh, when it could have been used elsewhere to actually save lives of people like

00:06:25.240 my in-laws. So that's the beginning of how we're seeing that state resources were abused. And by the way,

00:06:31.320 that's against the law, not only Chris Cuomo, but Chris Cuomo's sister and, uh, Chris Cuomo's, uh,

00:06:39.340 brother-in-law who was Kenneth Cole, you know, the designer of the shoes, Kenneth Cole. So he was

00:06:44.760 also getting these VIP COVID tests and state judges here in New York state, which by the way, I filed a

00:06:51.240 complaint against. That's like giving a gift to somebody, uh, a state judge. And that's also against

00:06:56.900 the law. She's not supposed to be abusing her power to get these perks like a VIP COVID test that

00:07:03.640 essentially no one else could get. Yep. Right. So, but he, and by the way, he's our age, you,

00:07:08.780 Chris Cuomo and I are all the same age. We're all 51 and he had no business getting those tests. He

00:07:14.140 didn't need a test more than the senior citizens who were dying and really needed to know whether they

00:07:19.960 had it in those nursing homes, but he was more important. And that's the theme you see with this

00:07:26.820 guy at every turn, right? He gets diagnosed with COVID ultimately while he's covering this story,

00:07:32.280 he walks out and about in the Hamptons outside, right? And this is before, listen, I will say right

00:07:38.540 now, my God, we know a lot more about the disease and it doesn't transmit effectively outside. I don't

00:07:43.720 know of any cases that have been identified as having occurred outside, but at the beginning of the

00:07:47.600 pandemic, we did not know that. And Chris Cuomo thought, even though he'd been diagnosed with

00:07:51.800 COVID, it'd be just fine for him to walk around the Hamptons, even though no one was doing that

00:07:55.940 at that point, people were still very terrified of the virus. Why? Why was he okay? Because he was

00:08:01.920 more important and we wouldn't have even known it if it hadn't been that guy who wanted to speak into

00:08:06.660 the post, right? Who's like, he, I told him he should be quarantining and he yelled at me.

00:08:11.900 Yeah. Yeah. And he lied to his viewers as well, right? Every night he was pretending

00:08:17.480 to do his show live from his basement. Meanwhile, he's out doing whatever he wants and he gets

00:08:22.340 caught and he, and he threatens the guy on the bike. I think Tucker Carlson had him on a show and

00:08:26.860 this guy is a Democrat. He admitted that he was like, but I'm seeing Chris Cuomo, the hypocrite who's

00:08:33.160 supposed to be inside quarantining because he apparently has COVID. Yep. Which he probably found

00:08:38.740 out from one of Andrew's tests that should have gone to an elderly person. So then, um, after that,

00:08:44.360 we see the fake emergence from the basement tape, I mean, the most absurd CNN segment ever. And that's

00:08:49.620 saying a lot. He literally fakes his emergence from the basement is the very first time. It's a lie.

00:08:54.900 He's lying to his audience. It's a massive break of trust. It's CNN's fault. 100% just as much as it is

00:09:01.160 Chris Cuomo's. It is. That is not just a Chris Cuomo problem. Um, another break of the trust. And then

00:09:06.480 he, let's not forget the, um, I'm not sure exactly sure where this went in the sequence,

00:09:11.580 but remember the infamous Fredo tape where some guy in a bar called him Fredo. Now, you know,

00:09:17.340 as well as I do, when you're in the public eye, sometimes people call you nasty names. It's

00:09:22.680 happened to me. It happened to you just, just by Chris Cuomo, right? Right in the middle of the

00:09:27.620 segment. Um, and Chris Cuomo went off on the guy. Do we have the soundbite? I think we've got it.

00:09:33.160 Uh, yeah. Listen, remember this.

00:10:03.160 To be on television. Yeah. But if you want to play, then we'll fucking play. You got something

00:10:06.540 you want to say about what I do on television and say it, but I'm going to fall in the

00:10:09.300 fucking insult. Hey man, hey, listen. I don't want any problems, bro. You're going to have

00:10:12.440 a big fucking problem. What's the problem? It's a little different on TV. Don't fucking

00:10:15.820 insult me like that. I had an insult. Oh, look, I'm such a tough guy. Fucking fuck. You know

00:10:22.780 what? I am Italian, Chris Cuomo. Di Mayo off the boat from Italy on my mother's side.

00:10:28.220 And you are Fredo. Um, but what does that show to me? Cause I look at that JD and I think

00:10:32.880 contrast that Mr. Tough guy with his steroid infused. That's my guess. I don't know if he's

00:10:37.760 on steroids, but it certainly appears that way. Um, workout videos and contrast that with what

00:10:42.820 happened to Tucker. Tucker gets approached in a fishing store by some guys with his family,

00:10:48.020 minding his own business. And what does he do? He tries to deescalate the situation. He tries to

00:10:52.940 politely move on. He doesn't let it turn into some viral moment. It did only because it's Tucker,

00:10:57.540 but the contrast between the two men is pretty stark. Right. And that's why I believe that there

00:11:03.840 are probably not one, but several texts with maybe more choice words than just the B word,

00:11:10.420 uh, the B weather girl. Um, he, these guys have abused the Cuomo name since the very beginning.

00:11:19.120 Right. And, and, and they've never really had to do anything, but get away with stuff. And I didn't

00:11:26.040 know, I didn't know Mario Cuomo obviously. And I wasn't in New York when he was governor, but from

00:11:32.960 people I've talked to, they say he was a kind man. He was kind to people. So it's just such a travesty

00:11:41.140 that these men, uh, use their name for power and, and, and just disgraced their father's name and

00:11:50.300 bring back the Tappan Z bridge because they have just, just, you know, disgraced that name so much,

00:11:58.100 uh, that it's, it's really hard to even see, you know, the sign when you're crossing over the bridge.

00:12:04.780 It's so true. Why should all the families like yours who lost loved ones once thanks to Andrew

00:12:09.500 Cuomo's order or women who have been harassed by Andrew or Chris, I could go on, have to drive over

00:12:15.100 that bridge and be reminded of it because Andrew needed to rename the Tappan Z bridge, which we've

00:12:20.000 all had forever here in New York, the Mario Cuomo bridge. My GPS lady's so confused. I go by it every

00:12:25.960 day. Um, I'm halfway there. She's like coming up the Tappan Z bridge. Then you go like another 50 yards.

00:12:30.920 She's like the Mario Mario Cuomo bridge. Even my kids are like, no, no, it's just, it's, it's really,

00:12:39.040 it's, it's too bad. And I feel really bad for the families. I've never brought up, uh, Andrew Cuomo's

00:12:46.060 daughters or his mom or any of Chris Cuomo's family members because, you know, they're not responsible

00:12:54.240 for these people's behavior. Um, but I do feel for them, uh, seeing what has happened to these,

00:13:01.140 these brothers in the last year and a half. I mean, really incredible. If you had told me

00:13:05.020 last year at this time, when I was ready to give up the fight, I literally was writing my last op-ed

00:13:11.540 thinking these guys, my voice is never going to be heard loud enough, right? He's got an Emmy.

00:13:17.580 He's got his book deal. He's on every single late night show on the CNN program, the pandemic

00:13:25.580 politician, perhaps a president one day. Uh, if you had told me that both brothers would be out of

00:13:31.640 work this time last year, I would have said you were completely insane. Right, exactly. But, um,

00:13:38.420 it didn't quite work out the way they had planned. And that's, you mentioned rich as a party, that guy

00:13:43.280 who's still Andrew Cuomo's spokesperson. He's the one. So the New York Post has this article saying,

00:13:49.840 um, Chris Cuomo schemed, quoting now from the report, schemed to discredit Fox News meteorologist

00:13:57.100 Janice Dean, allegedly calling her that Fox weather bitch and texts after she criticized his brother,

00:14:03.100 Andrew. He texted with Andrew's staff. Oh, remember how we were told he only did that

00:14:07.800 with respect to the women who came forward against him and accused him of sexual harassment? Oh, also

00:14:12.360 this woman too. Uh, he texted with Andrew staff re how to defend his brother and discredit Janice Dean

00:14:19.060 saying, and this is again, the post is quoting a source who saw the communications, any help painting

00:14:25.740 her as a far right crazy. Um, and then rich as a party says to the, to the post, I have no knowledge

00:14:32.500 of this ever happening. And you must ask why then did the AG not put anything about it in her report

00:14:37.480 or ask any of the relevant people about it. Rich as a party. JD has no memory of anybody conspiring

00:14:43.380 against you, even though his own comment on you was on the record attributed to him. And I quote,

00:14:49.820 last I checked, she's not a credible source on anything except maybe the weather. So his word

00:14:54.420 is worth zero. But how about Chris Cuomo trying to paint you as quote, a far right crazy.

00:15:01.360 I'm not surprised. And not just Chris Cuomo, by the way, uh, you know, the blue checks and reporters,

00:15:08.380 I've had many reporters, uh, want to do this story. And, and when they do, instead of the main focus

00:15:15.540 being a meteorologist who had a terrible atrocity happened within her family, uh, two family members

00:15:23.100 close to her dying in New York nursing homes and her trying to find answers and accountability,

00:15:27.880 it's always, Oh, but she works at Fox news. So she must've voted for Trump. So let's go dive into

00:15:35.580 her Twitter feed and all the articles that she's ever written to try to, you know, discredit her

00:15:40.680 because she's probably a right wing loony. It's not just Chris Cuomo. That's the go-to. And that's

00:15:46.460 what's really sad. I think to myself, Megan, what if I worked at another channel? What if I worked over

00:15:52.000 at CNN and we found out that Tucker Carlson, uh, was trying to do oppo research on me and trying to

00:15:59.060 find out who I voted for, or if there was any, you know, problems with, uh, maybe, uh, the husband's,

00:16:04.960 uh, record with the FDNY, you know, I believe that they did do a deep dive and how unfortunate that not

00:16:12.140 only the family that's trying to smear, smear my name, but actual reporters that want to try to do a

00:16:18.740 story, uh, a New York story of, of trying to do something good, uh, to find out answers for

00:16:24.680 family members and over 15,000 that died, you know, it would be quite a different story. I think if I

00:16:29.760 worked at another network. Yep. All you have to dangle is Fox news, right wing. And I mean, honestly,

00:16:36.620 it's got all the stuff in it, right? You're crazy. Cause you're, uh, they, they're wondering if

00:16:41.100 you're a Republican cause you're at Fox and you're a woman and you're a bitch, crazy bitch, far right

00:16:45.960 Republican. Okay. So that's Chris Cuomo, such a classy guy, his way of attacking you for, wait,

00:16:51.240 what were you mad about again? Oh, oh wait, you're dead in-laws. Sean's parents dead. And Sean, who's

00:16:57.960 a hero, nine 11 firefighter, who's never spoken out. He, the man only wants privacy, dignity. He's the

00:17:03.660 kindest, honestly, most elevated person. He just doesn't get sucked into these things. You're, you're

00:17:09.780 your own kind of fighter, but how dare they? How dare they? You're, you're speaking out for your

00:17:15.340 husband for at the loss of your, your son's grandparents, both of them in a month's time.

00:17:21.380 And their response, this is who the Cuomo's are, is to look at you and say, bitch, far right wing,

00:17:27.400 crazy. Let's discredit her. I mean, it's disgusting. So, but to me, it's a pattern.

00:17:32.440 You see how Andrew Cuomo treated the women on his staff, Chris Cuomo. We had Shelly Ross on the show,

00:17:38.360 and I know you saw her, her piece in the New York times. And I know you listened to that show.

00:17:42.080 Janice was texting me during it. Shelly Ross was one of the many women who Chris Cuomo diminished.

00:17:47.300 He doesn't even deny it, but it was part of a pattern. It's not what anyone act. It's a pattern

00:17:52.800 of him being narcissistic, misogynistic, and believing he can get away with anyone because

00:17:58.720 he's a Cuomo. Here's a bit of what Shelly told me when she came on the show. At this moment, here's

00:18:04.900 this guy who's, you know, an anchor, a talent at the, at the network. You're in a very well-respected

00:18:12.000 position there. You've been there almost 20 years. And what goes through your head as this

00:18:17.440 guy has the nerve to squeeze your ass?

00:18:19.900 It was belittling. It was clearly a power trip to make me feel, you know, you're no longer

00:18:33.120 my boss. I can do anything I want with you. You know, he knew he, something in his head said

00:18:42.420 he couldn't do that when I was his boss. Maybe he thought he would get, you know, I would fire him

00:18:50.960 or something. But it was meant to diminish. Chris Cuomo is over six feet tall. I'm 5'2".

00:19:03.520 I'm under a hundred pounds. And it, it was, uh, it, it was overpowering and I certainly didn't like it.

00:19:16.160 Hmm. She wasn't alone. You had what his executive producer on Cuomo primetime was reportedly pushed

00:19:22.940 out. She had to resign because she couldn't deal with his bullying. She went out of the digital

00:19:26.280 property. Um, there was a woman who came forward when he was, you know, on ice during his alleged

00:19:31.920 suspension. We haven't heard anything about that report. I don't want to give it credence because

00:19:35.720 we haven't, but CNN says it's why they wound up finally pulling the trigger. Um, there's you,

00:19:41.900 it's just, cause I'll tell you, one of the things that's on my mind is I've heard of more than one

00:19:46.080 person say they feel bad for Chris Cuomo. He lost his CNN show. He, he lost his Sirius XM show.

00:19:52.540 He lost his book deal. And I've heard some people say like, he was just trying to protect his brother.

00:19:56.760 It's about so much more that he, a, he was wrong to handle that situation the way he did.

00:20:03.120 He did do oppo research on the women who accused his brother and then lied about it. He did use his

00:20:08.140 journalistic resources against the women and then lied about it. But even if you table that we've had

00:20:13.920 a year, two years plus of Chris Cuomo bit by bit, putting himself above his audience, above trust.

00:20:20.320 And at every turn decides to side against women who are in a vulnerable position.

00:20:27.580 I listened to that interview and you know, I said to you afterwards, what kind of man just goes up

00:20:32.920 to a woman and grabs her behind at a party? You know, you have to think to yourself, that's a guy

00:20:39.480 that's gotten away with that before with that kind of behavior. Can you imagine Doug or Sean actually

00:20:44.680 going up and doing that to someone? That's the difference between Chris Cuomo who has gotten away

00:20:49.760 with this kind of behavior for a very long time. Uh, and, and, you know, shame on Jeff Zucker too.

00:20:56.420 Like something has happened between those two. I feel like, listen, I don't know if, if this is

00:21:03.500 true or not, but I think about those VIP COVID tests. Who did Chris Cuomo give VIP COVID tests over

00:21:09.040 at CNN? That's a possibility, right? I mean, what, why did Jeff Zucker's just know all of this

00:21:17.380 information and still stick by him. And then all of a sudden one fell swoop. He's gone. You know

00:21:23.740 what I, if Chris Cuomo had a conscience, he should have removed himself off the air at the very

00:21:30.820 beginning. And, you know, even after the, the Cuomo brothers comedy hour, I would actually even say I

00:21:36.660 would forgive that. But afterwards, realizing that his brother was in trouble saying, you know what,

00:21:41.360 I'm going to take, remove myself from the situation. And if he knew he was going to help his

00:21:45.580 brother out, why didn't he just remove himself from CNN? I would have given him props. I would

00:21:51.060 have given him props and said, he took himself out so he could help his brother. And, and that's good.

00:21:56.380 He took him off himself off the air. So he wouldn't be lying to the people he works with and his viewers.

00:22:02.260 And instead he did the Cuomo brothers show and then had the nerve to lie about that too,

00:22:06.180 saying that, well, it was all in good fun. And he didn't, it wasn't a dereliction of duty because

00:22:11.640 there was no scandal at that time, which is a, which is false. He was on the air with him

00:22:16.060 March, April, May, or it was April, May, June, and the nursing home scandal broke in May. It was,

00:22:21.900 the order had been given earlier. It, there was, there was reporting on it. He just chose to ignore

00:22:26.420 it. Well, if it wasn't for the Cuomo brothers comedy hour, I wouldn't have gotten upset, you know,

00:22:31.800 and I probably wouldn't have gone on television. So I'm grateful for their hypocrisy and narcissistic

00:22:37.580 clown behavior and CNN for letting them get away with it because I saw them with that big cotton

00:22:44.400 swab when nursing homes couldn't get them joking around. Who's their mother's favorite son? Who

00:22:50.320 has the greatest meatballs? The love gov, the love gov. And I thought to myself, Oh my gosh,

00:22:56.260 if, if I don't go out and say something, who's going to, they're going to get away with this and

00:23:00.980 shame on Jeff sucker for allowing them to do that. Yeah. CNN allowed it. Same as everybody else.

00:23:09.220 Right. Because I tweeted that night, like, what kind of behavior is this? And then Anna Navarro was

00:23:16.140 like, Oh, it's two brothers with levity. We all need a little levity. I mean, while body bags are

00:23:22.960 being piled up outside of nursing homes, these guys are joking around and all the celebrities and

00:23:27.980 everyone gave them a pass because it's two brothers and they love each other. We need a laugh.

00:23:33.920 It's just, it's so gross, right? No, is CNN allowed that interview to go forward, understanding

00:23:39.720 that they had had a policy against it in place for many, many years, which was a good policy.

00:23:44.900 Don't let him interview his brother. It's going to make us all look bad. So they allowed it to

00:23:48.980 happen. They allowed him to not challenge the brother on anything, but just to lionize him.

00:23:53.900 And they allowed Chris Cuomo to do his fake emergence from the basement when they knew it

00:23:58.780 wasn't true to let him lie to his audience. And there's no question that they knew he was

00:24:03.700 coordinating with the governor's staff because it was in the New York Times. New York Times did a big

00:24:08.580 write up about the two of them during the Cuomo brothers show, which the left loved and explicitly

00:24:14.280 said he was talking to the governor's aides that he dealt with the governor's aides and helped his

00:24:18.640 brother out. Jeff Zucker didn't read that article at the time. So I don't buy for one second that he was

00:24:23.320 shocked by what Chris Cuomo did. That's for Cuomo and Zucker to work out in the context of this

00:24:27.440 battle. My only point is that he didn't deserve that post. He had sacrificed trust. He was all

00:24:32.860 about himself so that they can argue about whether he gets his final payout or not. I have no dog in

00:24:38.320 that hunt. But but this guy was allowed for far too long to be on the air misrepresenting to his

00:24:45.720 audience. And I will say, J.D., there's a poll out today, Economist YouGov poll. Two thirds of

00:24:49.900 Americans agree with his firing. Two thirds of America, 65 percent say they agree. Only 12 percent

00:24:54.840 said, I don't think it was the right move. The rest are unsure. Even among people for whom CNN is

00:25:00.520 their primary news source, 49 percent of people agree with the firing. Just 23 percent disagree,

00:25:05.980 27 percent unsure. And the vast, vast majority said they would have made the same decision to let him

00:25:11.860 go. So once again, you have the last laugh. Wait, before you go, I do have to ask you because

00:25:20.680 there's awful, awful weather news today and over the weekend. I've been following your reporting on

00:25:26.660 it. Can you put into perspective what happened this past week in Kentucky and Tennessee in these

00:25:32.500 states where now the death toll is over, they believe, 80 people?

00:25:36.620 It's something that happens. You know, there are two seasons when it comes to severe weather. There's

00:25:42.860 the springtime outbreaks that can happen. It really has to do with the fact that you've got leftover

00:25:47.600 air masses, a cold air mass from winter and then turning into the springtime. And then there's a

00:25:53.200 secondary season, the fall into the winter. And we've had abnormally warm temperatures across the

00:25:59.620 east coast. So the similar setup was there. And these tornadoes struck populated neighborhoods and

00:26:06.900 they were at night, which is when you don't want tornadoes to strike. Unfortunately, these types of

00:26:13.380 situations happen. And I know that there's been a lot of reporting like, well, this is climate change.

00:26:18.760 Actually, when you look at it, we have had a deficit of tornadoes for the past couple of years. We are down

00:26:24.820 from what we typically see over the last couple of years in terms of tornado reports. And December

00:26:32.900 tornadoes do happen around the Mid-South. Kentucky, the last time they had a severe weather outbreak

00:26:39.380 this bad was actually, I believe, in the month of December. So they do happen. But the loss of life

00:26:45.240 is tragic. And it hit areas that were working, you know, the Amazon factory, the candle factory,

00:26:51.700 because it's Christmas time. So people were in their place of business. And these tornadoes struck

00:26:58.560 and maybe people didn't have enough time. There was warnings. National Weather Service does a great

00:27:03.640 job. But unfortunately, Megan, it's like not like a hurricane where you have several days of lead up

00:27:08.480 time. You don't have a lot of lead up time with these tornadoes. We did have a bullseye of where we

00:27:13.600 thought the severe weather was going to happen. But you know, unfortunately, we can't pinpoint the exact

00:27:20.160 areas and December tornadoes unfortunately do happen. These will be historic because of the loss of

00:27:26.680 life and the fact that this one tornado lasted over 200 miles. It's tragic. It's awful. I will say this

00:27:33.240 when weather disasters strike, any disaster, is you see the best in humanity. Neighbors will help

00:27:41.540 neighbors, strangers coming across the state line to bring water, food, blankets. And that's what we're

00:27:49.120 seeing right now. We're actually seeing the best of America when a tragedy strikes and people need

00:27:54.740 help.

00:27:55.640 Look for the helpers. J.D., so good to catch up. Love you. Miss you.

00:27:59.540 I love you, too. Merry Christmas, my friend.

00:28:01.800 You, too. A lot more to talk about later.

00:28:05.020 Coming up, John Lott Jr., gun rights advocate. As more and more officials take a look at the school

00:28:13.540 shooting we saw in Michigan and some of these other gun cases as a reason to tighten the gun laws

00:28:18.160 in America. Don't go away.

00:28:19.920 Joining us now is president and founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center,

00:28:32.840 John Lott Jr. John's here to discuss the renewed calls for gun storage laws in the wake of the

00:28:37.760 Oxford school shooting. The latest in the Kim Potter case and the defensive gun uses that the media

00:28:43.240 won't tell you about. John, good to see you again. How are you doing?

00:28:46.060 Great to talk to you. Thanks for having me on.

00:28:48.540 You know, I was thinking about you the other night because I went out to dinner with some of my very

00:28:52.360 close friends in New York. And these are all Manhattan liberals. And we were talking about

00:28:57.800 the Oxford shooting. You know, this kid in Michigan, this 15 year old who brought a gun to school and

00:29:03.360 there had definitely been warning signs that were missed or ignored. And now his parents have been

00:29:07.840 charged with involuntary manslaughter and he's facing four murder counts and others. The school's

00:29:13.160 already been sued for 100 million and on it goes. And one of the things that people are saying in

00:29:17.380 the wake of that is we need a gun storage mandate, a law in Michigan where there wasn't one.

00:29:24.200 And that might have stopped this tragedy from happening. And I'll tell you, look, unlike you,

00:29:30.160 I'm not an expert when it comes to gun laws or even guns. I understand both sides. I'm the mother of

00:29:35.960 three kids. I'm much more worried about their safety, you know, than I am about anything else.

00:29:40.140 And every time one of these comes up, I say to myself, let's put it all on table. Let's great.

00:29:46.120 Let's do. Look at all of it. Show me the reform that would have prevented this shooting. And I will

00:29:53.280 go march in the streets for it. I don't care who gets mad at me. And I don't care. But to be honest,

00:29:59.840 I haven't yet seen the one, you know, I just the ones that get proposed in the wake of these

00:30:05.620 shootings just seem like comfort measures that wouldn't have prevented this shooting.

00:30:11.740 And that's kind of what I'm seeing with Oxford. But when I read your piece posted, where was it?

00:30:18.240 It was on Real Clear Politics, why gun storage laws would do more harm than good. I was like,

00:30:23.020 oh, my gosh, it's got all the answers in it. And I wanted my New York liberal friends to hear your

00:30:27.700 answers. So I'm going to forward this segment to them. But let's start there. The gun storage laws

00:30:32.740 in Michigan and elsewhere. Why aren't those the answer to teenagers taking guns and shooting up

00:30:38.220 people? Right. Well, I hope they're listening. But what I can say is, I think you're exactly right

00:30:46.020 about the reaction after these just in general. I mean, the normal law that keeps on getting pushed

00:30:51.700 after mass public shootings is background checks on the private transfers of guns. And usually the point

00:30:59.720 I raise there is, would it have mattered in the last case? Is there one mass public shooting this

00:31:06.120 century that would have been stopped if such a law had been in effect and been perfectly enforced?

00:31:11.940 And the answer is no. But yet it's usually the first law that people keep on raising that we need

00:31:17.580 to have to stop these attacks. And in this case, look, it's not even clear whether the gun was locked or

00:31:25.280 not in the family's home. The parents claim that it was. I guess we'll find out later whether or not

00:31:31.180 that was the case or not. But what we need to talk about a little bit are the costs and benefits of

00:31:38.140 these types of laws that can be there. You know, in Michigan, they average about less than two

00:31:44.740 accidental gun deaths for kids under 18 in any given year over the last 20 years in the state.

00:31:51.840 The main purpose of gun lock laws is accidental death. I mean, as you are implying, referring to your

00:32:00.160 kids, you know, nationwide for children under 10, there's 35 accidental gun deaths. The vast majority

00:32:08.920 of those, about two thirds of those actually involve adults in their mid to late 20s who are firing the

00:32:15.940 guns, who have criminal records usually and are either drug addicts or alcoholics. And

00:32:21.600 gun locks aren't going to stop those types of attacks when, in many cases, it's illegal for

00:32:28.580 people to be owning these guns. And it's not going to stop an adult in any case. But the issue that you

00:32:35.400 have is that they're trade-offs. To the extent it may reduce these accidental gun deaths, you also have

00:32:44.180 to take into account that people are going to find it more difficult to have access to guns to be able

00:32:50.760 to go and protect themselves and their families. When you see these types of laws get passed, what you

00:32:57.420 see is an increased breaking into people's homes when they're there. You see an increase in successful

00:33:03.740 crimes. Gun locks make it more difficult for people to go and protect themselves and their families.

00:33:10.960 And, you know, we've had four since 19, since 2000, we've had four mass public shootings involving

00:33:20.140 schools, involving juveniles. We've had a couple others, the Parkland and Sandy Hook involving people who

00:33:29.560 were over 18, 19 in one case and 21 in the other case. You know, so, you know, I, my goal is to try to

00:33:40.980 look at on net what saves lives. And while I understand the desire for many of these types of laws,

00:33:49.700 I worry that they're actually going to increase the number of deaths.

00:33:54.980 What about the other argument I hear is the, um, the mass carnage that can be inflicted so quickly

00:34:01.540 with a gun, you know, that's reason enough to crack down on firearms. And, you know, certainly you

00:34:09.080 mentioned anything like an AR-15 and that's the argument you'll get. What's the response to that?

00:34:13.560 Well, surely guns make it easier to kill people and it makes it easier to go and kill people quickly.

00:34:21.240 Uh, you know, with the, but guns also make it easier for people to protect themselves and prevent

00:34:27.400 bad things from happening. You know, so people focus on the AR-15 that you mentioned. Uh, I think

00:34:35.280 there's a lot of misnomers about what it is exactly, you know, and surely things like entertainment

00:34:41.740 television creates a lot of that misimpression over last year. If you look at ABC, CBS, NBC,

00:34:49.260 and Fox, their police shows about 80% of the time that criminals were using guns, uh, they're depicted

00:34:56.240 as using machine guns, often being referred to as AR-15s in many segments. But you're talking about

00:35:03.640 in actuality, a semi-automatic rifle that fires the same bullets with the same rapidity, doing the

00:35:10.940 same damage as any semi-automatic hunting rifle. Now, if you want to go and ban all semi-automatic

00:35:17.180 guns, I mean, just so people know, semi-automatic gun is one pull the trigger, one bullet comes out,

00:35:24.640 it reloads itself, one pull the trigger, one bullet comes out, and so on. Uh, it's not a machine gun where

00:35:30.760 if you hold your finger down, bullets will continue to come out as long as you have your finger

00:35:35.980 depressed on it. Uh, the thing is, though, civilians benefit from having semi-automatic guns for self-defense.

00:35:43.480 I mean, the alternative is a manually loaded gun where you have to physically put another bullet in

00:35:50.700 the chamber yourself, uh, after you, after you fire. And, you know, if you're facing multiple, uh,

00:35:58.980 attackers, or if you fire and you miss, or if you fire and wound somebody, uh, you may not have the

00:36:05.920 luxury of time to go and manually reload your gun at that point. And so, you know, uh, you have to go

00:36:15.460 and take into account, you know, how often people use guns defensively, uh, at the same time there.

00:36:22.760 And unfortunately, a lot of the discussion there doesn't weigh both the costs and benefits of these

00:36:28.460 things. Well, and one of the things I was saying to my friends is even if you somehow got a Congress

00:36:34.940 and a president who wanted to ban any semi-automatic weapon, right? A handgun, AR-15s, all of them,

00:36:42.520 right? That's what they wanted to do, which is not, which is not what we've done before. Um,

00:36:47.940 you couldn't there, you tell me, John, what the numbers are. But the last time I looked at it,

00:36:52.580 it was like, there were over, there were more guns in America than there are people. It was like 330

00:36:57.000 million. And I don't know how many of those are semi-automatic, but there are hundreds of million,

00:37:02.800 like there's just not, there's no way of getting rid of semi-automatic weapons in America. It's just

00:37:09.860 not going to happen. Right. I mean, it's just a guess how many guns people have in the United States.

00:37:15.260 It depends upon what rate you assume guns depreciate. And there's issues about surveys and whether

00:37:21.140 people honestly say whether they own guns in the home, but you're exactly right. Uh, we probably have

00:37:26.920 hundreds of millions of guns that are there. And the vast majority of guns owned in the United

00:37:32.080 States are semi-automatic guns. Uh, there are reasons why people have semi-automatic guns for

00:37:39.380 self-defense. And there's reason why hunters have semi-automatic guns. So, you know, you're right.

00:37:47.220 At least it would be logically consistent if we would talk about banning all semi-automatic guns,

00:37:53.380 rather than just picking certain guns based on how they look. I mean, they often use the term

00:37:58.800 military style. The key word there is style. You know, some people like to have guns that look like

00:38:06.520 military guns, but they're not guns. You know, they refer to them as weapons of war and stuff,

00:38:12.500 but these aren't the types of guns, uh, that are used by militaries around the world. They use-

00:38:18.380 No, this is, this is John, this, to me, this is the same thing as we did at the airports after 9-11.

00:38:23.240 You know, we're, we're still taking off our shoes. Why? Not because there's been bombs in the shoe.

00:38:28.560 It's because in, since that one guy, um, it's because we want to make ourselves feel like we're

00:38:34.700 doing something on a trap, on a trap after tragedy that is unspeakable and you can ban AR-15s. It's not

00:38:41.320 going to, it's not going to change anything. It's not going to change anything. I mean,

00:38:44.720 I really do think, okay, maybe if you banned all semi-automatic, uh, guns in America, maybe,

00:38:50.220 but that's not possible. It's not going to happen. And by the way, you know, that's what they have in,

00:38:55.140 in England, right? In Europe, you can't, you can't have a gun. Even if you're a cop in London,

00:38:58.860 those bobbies walking around, they're not armed. So they stab each other. And even here in America,

00:39:03.780 we just saw some guy mow down a bunch of grandmothers and children with a truck.

00:39:08.520 That's not to say guns can't kill people quickly, but there are many ways for a deranged murderer

00:39:12.700 to take out victims. And yeah, go ahead. No, I mean, I agree with you completely. Look,

00:39:20.700 gun bans have been tried in parts of the United States, uh, Chicago and Washington DC tried to

00:39:27.680 ban all handguns. It's been tried in many different countries. If you look at any place that's tried to

00:39:33.900 ban all guns or all handguns, every single time murder rates have gone up. You think out of randomness,

00:39:41.940 once or twice murder rates would go down or at least stay the same. You know, if you think guns

00:39:48.060 on net are bad, then surely the solution would be, let's just get rid of all guns or at least all

00:39:54.200 semi-automatic guns or all handguns. And yet there's a reason why you see that murder rates go up every

00:40:01.700 single time, often by large amounts, even in island nations that have tried it like Jamaica or Ireland

00:40:07.860 or, uh, the UK. Only law, the law abiding citizens turn in their guns. The criminals keep theirs and

00:40:15.220 use them for ill. Hold on. We're going to come right back with John Lott. Uh, more I want to

00:40:18.960 discuss with him. Uh, we're going to squeeze in a quick break. Don't forget folks, you can watch the

00:40:23.520 Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel one 11 every weekday at noon East. They can listen to

00:40:29.760 it live and you can watch the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel,

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00:40:44.860 for free. And there you find all of our archives, something like 220 shows. Now check it out.

00:40:57.920 So John, especially with the crime rates going up as they have been a 30% increase in homicide rates,

00:41:03.280 uh, in our top 12 cities, our largest 12 cities in America, year over year, uh, people are thinking

00:41:08.440 about how to protect themselves. And, um, and many people have had to use a gun in the past year

00:41:14.540 or two to prevent crime. I think it's fascinating that you say in the same way the media takes one

00:41:22.080 bad cop, um, killing of an unarmed black man, you know, and we do see this and they put it, this is my,

00:41:28.720 this is my editorializing and they put it on loop to try to make us believe that, you know,

00:41:33.800 this is a problem that happens every day in America. And it's not, you know, out of 10 million

00:41:37.480 arrests, you've got between 13 and 18 men who are unarmed and shot by police and unarmed is

00:41:42.900 questionable in these cases, but that's it. You know, let's say, let's call it 15 out of 10 million

00:41:47.280 arrests, but the media leads people to believe it's much more. And you make the point that the same is

00:41:52.680 true when it comes to you bad use for lack of a better term of guns by criminals versus good use

00:42:01.160 of a gun by people who are saving innocent others. Can you speak to that? Sure. You know,

00:42:08.100 what makes something newsworthy doesn't always reflect reality. Uh, so earlier this year through

00:42:16.200 January through August, I looked at, uh, the top five largest newspapers in the United States for

00:42:22.620 news coverage. They had between them about 2,600 and some news stories about gun crimes.

00:42:29.340 By contrast, between the five of them, uh, New York times, LA times, Washington post, USA today,

00:42:36.620 the wall street journal, they had a total of 10 defensive gun use stories. And many of those were

00:42:43.160 very unusual cases where something went wrong with the defensive gun use. Uh, overall for the first

00:42:51.100 nine months of the year, we found about a thousand, uh, news stories across the country about defensive

00:42:57.120 gun uses. But one thing that was interesting is that most of those involved cases where the attacker

00:43:03.300 was killed in the defensive gun use. Close behind that with over 40% were cases where, uh, the attacker was

00:43:12.300 wounded. And only 4% of those involved cases were wounding or brandishings occurred with the gun.

00:43:20.280 And the thing is, those are the exact opposite proportions from what we believe how people use

00:43:26.000 guns defensively. It looks like about 95% of the time that people use guns defensively, they simply

00:43:32.660 brandish it. Uh, woundings are less than 1%, but times where attackers are killed are about one eighth

00:43:41.640 the rate of woundings. Uh, those numbers we know pretty much for sure. And, uh, and, you know,

00:43:49.200 but I understand why the media covers that to some extent. If you have your editor of a news bureau and

00:43:55.800 you have two stories, in one case, there's a dead body on the ground. In another case, let's say a

00:44:00.940 woman's brandished a gun. It would be attackers run away. No shots are fired. Nobody hurt. You're not

00:44:08.320 even sure what crime would have been committed. I think any of us as news editors would pick the

00:44:14.540 first story as being more newsworthy than the second. But as far as policy is concerned, we care

00:44:20.440 about both of those cases, or at least we should. And they just don't get one quick thing on the

00:44:27.180 police things. We've actually gone through and looked at police shootings. Uh, when a, when a white

00:44:33.760 officer shoots a black suspect, news reports were there will almost always mention the race of both

00:44:40.920 the officer and the suspect. When a black officer shoots a black suspect, the race of only the suspect

00:44:47.940 will be mentioned in the news stories. Uh, when a black officer shoots a white suspect, the race of

00:44:54.940 neither will be mentioned in the news stories. Wow. I I'm, I'm not surprised. Um, meantime,

00:45:02.980 92% of violent crime has nothing to do with guns. It's not a panacea. Even if we could get out every

00:45:08.400 gun out of the country, as Gavin Newsom would like to do, he's now saying he's going to follow the Texas

00:45:14.240 abortion law and do the same with guns. This was a risk that people had on the right side of the

00:45:19.440 country had raised where you basically outlaw it despite the constitutional right and then create

00:45:24.840 sort of a private right of enforcement. And it might be a way to end around the constitution.

00:45:29.660 Um, do you think that will help California with its skyrocketing homicide and crime rates?

00:45:36.380 Look, I mean, I think there's an easy reason to explain why crime's gone up over the last year

00:45:41.660 and a half or so. And that is we've had, uh, police officers being ordered to stand down,

00:45:47.960 police budgets being cut. We've had large numbers of inmates in places like Los Angeles. It's something

00:45:53.620 like a two thirds of the inmates have been released from jails in the county there. Um, you know,

00:46:00.940 across the country, you have many places where, uh, over half of the inmates have been released from

00:46:06.240 jails and prisons. And you have prosecutors in many urban areas from Los Angeles to Philadelphia to

00:46:12.400 Boston and Chicago, which are refusing to prosecute even violent criminals. I mean, you just had a case

00:46:17.960 a few weeks ago in Chicago where you had two drug gangs fighting against each other in broad daylight.

00:46:24.920 It was caught on high definition video. Police were there as witnesses. One person was killed.

00:46:31.520 Several people were seriously wounded. And yet the initial statements from the district attorney was

00:46:38.000 this was mutually agreed to combat. Right. And so that they weren't going to prosecute anybody involved

00:46:44.320 later on. They said they just didn't have sufficient evidence. So, uh, even though the

00:46:49.700 cops were there. So you've got, you've got two thirds of the prisoners being let out in certain

00:46:54.520 places. You've got soft on def on defendant, uh, crime laws that don't, they don't like bail

00:46:59.440 anymore. So you, instead you just get a, you know, go roam the community free card. And then they want

00:47:03.840 to take away your guns. If you want to defend yourself, you can see why people are getting a little

00:47:07.780 concerned, John, such a pleasure. Thank you for the, for the facts and the data. We appreciate it.

00:47:12.760 Joining me next is Bethany Mandel. She's an editor at Ricochet. She's one of my favorite advocates for

00:47:17.380 kids on Twitter, and she's got the latest on the COVID madness. Don't miss Bethany.

00:47:27.580 Very excited to chat with my next guest. I've never met her real time until today. She's a mom of five

00:47:34.980 who homeschools her children and somehow finds time to school the left on Twitter too. How is that even

00:47:39.920 possible? Bethany Mandel has become a powerful voice for children's rights in the wake of COVID.

00:47:45.980 She's also editor at Ricochet, a contributed, right? A contributing writer at, I never know how to say

00:47:51.980 it. Desiree news. Desiree. I think. Thank you, Bethany. And also she has a new project, uh,

00:48:00.180 involving a book, which we'll get to Bethany. So fun to talk to you live.

00:48:03.400 You too. And we have met in person like a bazillion tea years ago. I was just joking

00:48:08.860 with your producer before we came on. And I joked before I went on air with you in person,

00:48:14.240 when you were hosting Fox that I was drunk and your producers came in and they were like,

00:48:19.040 I'm sorry, ma'am. Was that a joke? Because we cannot have you on air if you're actually drunk.

00:48:23.700 And I was like, no, no, just, I'm just kidding. Just kidding. And they like sort of pow out before

00:48:28.500 they came back and were like, okay, we will let you on air if you swear. How many years ago is this?

00:48:34.140 Six years ago. Oh man. All right. Well, other than that, I've never met you before. And I'm

00:48:38.680 excited for this talk because I'm a huge fan of yours. I fell in love with you really on Twitter

00:48:42.560 where everybody, you know, you battle anybody and everybody, but you were one of the ones early on

00:48:47.800 to say like, love grandma, but lockdowns, this is insane. And it was before it was like, okay,

00:48:54.780 for a large segment of the population to say that, you know, now that's more than half the country

00:48:59.760 saying that. But back then you, you were kind of alone. And so it was a risk.

00:49:03.400 And you were 100% right. So in the news today, we've got stories. This made the viral rounds

00:49:10.760 the other day of kids at Capitol Hill Elementary School in Portland, Oregon, sitting on buckets

00:49:16.360 to socially distance from their classmates outside in 40 degree weather. That's also happening in New

00:49:22.340 York City. It's not just Portland and it's cold in New York. All of this is madness there. As far as

00:49:28.460 I understand, there are either no or almost no documented case of people getting COVID outside.

00:49:33.680 And yet still we punish the little ones, Bethany.

00:49:38.620 Yep. Yep. It's, it's really infuriating. So I wrote a column about this today for Deseret News.

00:49:43.360 I'd even wait for my editor to say that he wanted it. I just sent him the column and I was like,

00:49:46.900 I'm really angry. And usually that's when I write good stuff. So here's a column for you,

00:49:50.200 if you care to put it on your website. So it's right now on Deseret News.com. But I mean,

00:49:54.560 I'm basically talking about this and I, the sort of, I think the turning point and the final screw

00:49:59.200 in the coffin of Terry McAuliffe's campaign in Virginia was when he had Randy Weingarten on and

00:50:03.980 he, it was like his sort of final push. And by having her on, he said, you know, this is the

00:50:09.240 status quo as far, as far as he's concerned for Virginia schools. And she was the reason why kids

00:50:14.920 in Virginia didn't go back to school, why things still feel like a prison. I honestly think that it's

00:50:19.160 probably better in some prisons than it is in public schools around the country. And I now

00:50:24.640 Jen Psaki is out there saying, you know, it's not really so bad. And my three-year-old does it. My

00:50:30.020 three-year-old eats outside. So, I mean, what's the big deal? And like, if that's going to be the

00:50:34.360 Biden campaign, the Biden campaign's message in a several years and going into the midterms,

00:50:39.440 they're going to get absolutely buried because this is absolute insanity to see people

00:50:43.880 on one weekend, shoulder to shoulder, at concerts, at Broadway shows, at restaurants,

00:50:50.440 doing normal things. We can do normal things as adults. But then on Monday, kids are in school

00:50:55.520 wearing masks, silent lunch, facing a wall, sitting on the floor, social distancing at lunch as if they

00:51:02.740 were the most at risk instead of the least at risk. Yeah, exactly. Even unvaccinated, they are the

00:51:07.440 least at risk. And by the way, so Jen Psaki's focus group of one is infuriating. I don't, with all due

00:51:13.020 respect, I don't really give a damn that her kids has no problem with it. Her job is literally to

00:51:18.060 listen to the millions of Americans with different feedback and come up with policy, her boss's job,

00:51:23.660 that makes sense. I don't want to hear one more word about her kid and how delightful it is for

00:51:28.420 them to be in a mask. I mean, tell it to, this reminds me of, this is full screen too for my staff.

00:51:33.340 Tell it to this kid who's hearing impaired. A mom tweeted this out. My hearing impaired son drew this

00:51:37.920 picture in October. He wears one hearing aid and you can imagine the challenges he has faced

00:51:42.340 we went back to school in August, 2020. Her little kid cannot understand what anyone is saying

00:51:50.900 because their mouths are covered. There was a lawsuit. There was a lawsuit, Bethany, by the,

00:51:57.700 by parents with kids who have disabilities against DeSantis in Florida saying his, his law that he signed

00:52:05.020 saying, I'm not going to mandate masks and I'm, I'm not going to allow anyone to mandate masks is what

00:52:11.840 he said. You know, parents can make up their own mind, but I I'm against mask mandates in this

00:52:14.960 state. They said it's not fair to the kids with disabilities. They won't be able to go to school.

00:52:19.180 They're immunocompromised. They can't, they have to be assured that everybody there is going to wear

00:52:22.460 a mask. What about this kid? What about his disability? What about the fact that he can no

00:52:26.120 longer understand anyone? This sweet little boy who can't complain about anything. Finally,

00:52:30.580 his mother has got to say, please help him.

00:52:33.980 Yeah. I'm not sure why we think that COVID is the first and only virus that has ever existed in

00:52:40.800 humanity. I have a friend who has a severely immunocompromised, very delicate, medically

00:52:45.920 fragile child. And during flu season, every year she pulled both of her kids out because she knew

00:52:50.880 that if her kids got the flu, it would be a death sentence for her child. And so she pulled him out.

00:52:55.880 I don't understand what, why it's any different and why we have to reorder all of society around

00:53:02.700 a few really tragic cases. But the reordering society also comes with a cost. And that's

00:53:08.700 something that no one feels comfortable talking about. We sort of, we talk about masking toddlers

00:53:13.160 and masking five-year-olds and high schoolers and whatever. And we act as though it's a zero cost

00:53:17.940 intervention, but we're seeing those costs. We're seeing those costs in the Surgeon General's report,

00:53:22.780 a 53 page sort of emergency statement from the Surgeon General saying there's a youth mental

00:53:27.640 health crisis going on and rates of depression and anxiety are skyrocketing. The number of teenage

00:53:34.240 girls who are attempting suicide has literally doubled. This is an absolute crisis and it has a

00:53:40.300 lot of components, but masks are part of it. Quarantines are part of it. And just also the

00:53:45.300 unpredictability of life for these kids. I shared last night on Twitter, I was talking to my eight-year-old

00:53:51.380 and she said, I don't remember life before the masks. Like I have vague memories. My six-year-old

00:53:58.300 doesn't really remember it. And my four-year-old and my two-year-old have absolutely no memories

00:54:02.100 of life before masks and life before COVID. And I'm, as a parent, I'm sick of saying we can't do XYZ

00:54:08.160 because of COVID. And I mean, I'm not locked down. We are living our lives every day for the last year

00:54:14.380 and a half, but we can't get on. And this was another Deseret News column. We can't get on a plane

00:54:18.880 because my two-year-old can't wear a mask for six hours through the airport and down to Florida

00:54:23.480 or California or whatever. So should we drive? Is that the answer? We'll just be driving to

00:54:29.160 Florida. They're saying more and more parents are doing that. It's like, okay, well, that's great

00:54:31.680 for you. But if you've got five kids driving to Florida, it really isn't all that much of a joy.

00:54:35.860 It's not that easy. And by the way, with gas prices, what they are, it's extra difficult right

00:54:40.700 now. And statistically, it's more dangerous. Yeah, absolutely right. And more dangerous than COVID

00:54:45.860 for children too, by the way, putting them in the car and driving them down to Florida.

00:54:49.120 That makes no sense whatsoever. A friend of mine, a woman who I follow on Twitter, who I love,

00:54:54.140 and she had sent me this a while ago. I couldn't get it out of my head. I'm going to put this up.

00:54:58.680 It's full screen number one. It's a kid drawing another kid. And she said, this is a drawing one

00:55:07.060 of my little boy's classmates did of him. And it shows her son in a mask. This kid has never seen

00:55:14.540 her son's face. This child drew a portrait of their new friend with the mask. They don't know

00:55:22.720 what his smile looks like. It's heartbreaking. It actually does make me upset. It's deeply wrong

00:55:28.140 and immoral. And I have to tell you, Bethany, I'm a little tired of people. I love Rand Paul,

00:55:33.960 but I'm tired of people being like, resist. It's like, don't you understand? They have to go to

00:55:39.620 school. I know. I appreciate moms who homeschool. For me, I can't. I have a job. I need to do that.

00:55:46.920 And also, I want stability. I just pulled them from the New York City schools because of the crazy

00:55:50.960 CRT stuff. Now I'm going to pull them again. They need stability. I just want reason. I don't want

00:55:56.020 to have to pull them. I want reason to be restored. Yep. And that's the thing that gets me to people.

00:56:02.380 Last night, one of my favorite people on this issue, Rory Cooper, he's a parent of three kids out of

00:56:07.580 Fairfax. And he posted a video of a concert, wall to wall, no masks, no distancing, people shoulder

00:56:14.920 to shoulder, literally probably thousands of people. And he said, my 11-year-old has to eat

00:56:20.620 lunch. My vaccinated 11-year-old has to eat lunch silently. My nine-year-old has been going to school

00:56:27.700 in a mask this whole time. And my six-year-old has never experienced a normal school setting.

00:56:32.880 And it's infuriating. And the people that were responding to him were like, fight, Rory, fight.

00:56:37.580 What would you like him to do? I texted him. I was like, Rory, why don't you fight? Why didn't

00:56:43.320 you think about that? We are powerless as parents. And it's a really enraging feeling and really

00:56:51.140 heartbreaking feeling knowing that my children's childhood is just slipping away. And there's

00:56:55.300 nothing we can do about it. It's not like CRT. How I kind of get it out. It's not like CRT or crazy

00:57:00.120 trans ideology or the inappropriate sexual lessons on kink at school. That we can fight. That we can show up

00:57:06.220 at the school board meeting. We can yell at people. And we can argue about the COVID mask policies and

00:57:10.880 the mandatory vaccines and all that. But the truth is, with that stuff, our kid will not be allowed

00:57:15.820 to show up and go to class unless we comply. You know, there's a woman at our school who was her son

00:57:22.440 was 16. He'd been at the school since pre-K. And he had until November 1st to get his vaccine

00:57:28.460 or get kicked out. They didn't care that he'd been there since he was a babe. Get him the vaccine

00:57:35.160 or he's out. If I try to send my kids or any of us who are at these mask mandatory schools without

00:57:39.840 their masks, they wouldn't make it past the foyer. Yeah. And to what end? And this is something that

00:57:46.900 I think a lot of people without children don't understand. For a lot of people, it probably feels

00:57:51.540 like the pandemic is over. But for those of us with kids, even kids, I mean, I homeschool. Even for my

00:57:57.060 homeschool kids, it's heartbreaking and infuriating because it's not just schools that are affected.

00:58:01.660 It's the planes that I talked about. But it's also there was a heartbreaking tweet from a parent in

00:58:06.000 Chicago. His three-year-old special needs kid was kicked out of a science museum over the weekend in

00:58:12.220 Chicago because they couldn't comply with the mask mandate. So it's literally everywhere that we might

00:58:18.040 have wanted to send our kids. And all of those places that survived, by the way, the pandemic, one of

00:58:22.460 our favorite places, like one of those, you know, like the gymboree places that was like a really

00:58:28.200 just bedrock of normalcy for my kids, they went out of business because not enough people were going.

00:58:33.300 And so they went out of business. And so we're sort of watching every aspect of our kids' lives

00:58:37.800 sort of disappear. And as parents, we sort of have to decide what our line is. And so over the spring

00:58:44.940 and fall, we had kids in a local soccer league here in like outside of D.C. And they required the

00:58:52.100 four-year-olds to wear masks outside. And we said, no, that is our that is our line in the sand. We

00:58:56.940 will not mask our children outside. And then they made it, you know, masks optional. And so we allowed

00:59:01.900 our kids. But then the whole season, especially for my oldest, all of her friends were asking her,

00:59:06.980 where's your mask? Where's your mask? And my eight-year-old was like, I don't have a mask. I'm not

00:59:11.840 sure what it's normal not to have a mask. That's normal. What we want to do is is what's normal and

00:59:18.700 expected and has been accepted by society since the dawn of time. What they want is not two weeks

00:59:25.240 to stop the spread. They want more lies to keep these masks on us forever. And to all the people

00:59:30.200 out there who say, well, the difference between these people at the sports arenas and the concerts

00:59:34.840 and, you know, at anything run by any Democratic governor who don't have their face masks on while

00:59:39.400 they keep our kids with the face masks on is vaccines. The adults have the vaccines. That's

00:59:44.000 not true either. In our schools, in L.A., in all these schools that are requiring vaccines as

00:59:50.300 mandates, those are already the most uptight schools when it comes to COVID, mostly based on

00:59:55.940 politics. And they are not. They're specifically saying the masks will stay on. The CDC said that as

01:00:02.420 its recommendation, the masks stay on your kid even after he's vaccinated. So screw you because

01:00:09.440 he's not going to die of COVID. The odds are overwhelmingly against a child getting COVID and

01:00:14.340 then dying from it. If your child has comorbidities, he may be in a different situation. You already know

01:00:19.360 that. So he's not at great risk of hospitalization or death. He's already going to catch COVID even if

01:00:26.860 he's vaccinated. The odds are. Right. Look at what's happened with Delta Delta and now Omicron or

01:00:31.320 whatever, however you pronounce it. So so what is it preventing? What is it's just and it's not a get

01:00:36.620 out of mask free card. So screw you. I'm not doing it. If those if those are the stakes for which we're

01:00:41.160 playing and we don't know the long term effects of the vaccine, where is my incentive? Yeah. And what

01:00:46.240 sort of makes me really reticent and I say this as someone who has written pro vaccine pieces for

01:00:51.760 literally every single major newspaper in the country over the course of my entire writing

01:00:55.520 career. The difference is when the FDA panel met and discussed boosters for healthy adults,

01:01:01.760 they voted against it. And you know what the CDC did? They did it anyway. And they didn't meet to

01:01:06.840 talk about boosters for 16 and 17 year olds. They just did it because they knew that the panel was

01:01:11.180 going to say no because of the risk of myocarditis and the risk of myocarditis. The FDA never took

01:01:18.020 seriously. I was sort of going to the way back machine into June when all of the data started

01:01:23.420 rolling in. Like there's actually like seems to be a heart risk that's associated, especially with

01:01:27.880 the second dose. And they waited weeks to meet. And then they finally had a date on Juneteenth.

01:01:34.880 And then the federal government very last minute made Juneteenth a federal holiday. And so what did

01:01:39.840 they do? They were like, OK, for this holiday that literally was just put on the calendar yesterday,

01:01:45.400 we're going to have to move this meeting. This is not a meeting about like, oh, let's let's set a

01:01:51.140 let's set a schedule and digital. Like this is a literal life or death meeting about heart defects

01:01:56.080 and heart sort of events that are happening in teenage children, teenage boys mostly. Where is

01:02:01.960 your urgency? And so for me as a parent, my my trust is gone. And when I saw how big the sort of size of

01:02:08.040 the study was to see if there were any adverse effects, the study size was not big enough to ever record

01:02:14.420 anything. And so for me as a parent, I'm like, why would I give this vaccine to my children who

01:02:18.860 are not at risk? And as a homeschool parent, I have absolutely no reason to do so.

01:02:23.040 And giving them the lower dose, right, like giving my 12 year old who who weighs less than my 10 year

01:02:28.040 old. OK, he's a boy. She's already hit puberty. He hasn't yet. That's that happens. So he weighs less

01:02:33.400 than my 10 year old daughter. Why? Why do I have to give him the 30 milligram dose because he's 12

01:02:39.600 and she can get the 10 milligram and it's fine. What sense does that make?

01:02:44.180 Why isn't it up to me? Forgive me. This is what fucking pisses me off. This is a decision for me,

01:02:50.120 Doug and our doctor and everyone else can piss right the hell off because who's going to tell me

01:02:54.540 I've got to stick the vial in my 12 year old and get him a certain MG that is not appropriate for his

01:02:59.000 weight class. Right. In any other society, we'd be looking at that like they do in Europe. But you have

01:03:04.480 bureaucrats saying I will tell you what goes in your son's arm or you can get out. And you know

01:03:10.060 what? Maybe we will get to the point where we say goodbye. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing.

01:03:15.280 And sort of my frustration with schools in general, it extends to the private schools. They think that

01:03:21.800 they have a say in our parenting decisions. And we're seeing that with any number of things,

01:03:25.960 the sort of sex education conversations that they're having, the CRT conversations that they're

01:03:30.020 having, they think it's up to them to do everything. And it's not. It's our place as a parent to make

01:03:35.600 these medical decisions. And it's also our place as parents to sort of set for our kids. Like this

01:03:41.120 is what we believe as a family about any number of sort of social issues that are outside of the

01:03:46.920 purview of the schools. This is none of your business. Teach them math, teach them writing. And

01:03:50.500 by the way, maybe if you focused on that, the test results would be a little bit better.

01:03:54.480 That's right. Who the hell told you you could talk to my kid about kink? Screw you. I don't want you

01:03:58.700 to stay in your lane. But you raised a good point a minute ago. And I really,

01:04:03.260 I'm hanging my hat on this. David Leonhard of the New York Times was on last week. And he's definitely

01:04:09.140 more left-leaning than I am and I think than you are. But I said, what's it going to take for your

01:04:15.720 people to listen to reason? Your leftist people. And he said elections. He said, if there's one thing

01:04:25.160 that will change, you know, the tide, you know, because it hasn't been even Bethany,

01:04:30.760 you mentioned the surgeon general's report, who's suffering most of the children from the

01:04:35.660 effects of the pandemic. You know, it's black and brown children. It's socioeconomically

01:04:39.540 disadvantaged children. It's kids with disabilities. You would think that they would

01:04:44.400 be at the top of the list of these so-called woke leftists. Like that should make them see

01:04:49.640 reason and change policy. It doesn't. COVID fear rates above everything. It trumps everything.

01:04:59.660 But if they lose power, it's a different story, right? So I think if they get punished in 2022,

01:05:06.420 I mean, that's what, that's when we have, that's the eye on the prize, right? November of 22.

01:05:10.980 Yeah. I mean, I, I never knew the name of my local county council members before,

01:05:15.400 and now I am the biggest thorn in their sides. I will knock on doors until my knuckles bleed to get

01:05:22.460 every single local official out of power where I live because they have made life really, really

01:05:28.280 unpleasant. It's like, um, it's the way I think a lot of people felt when Trump was elected, you know,

01:05:33.460 the, the diehard never Trumpers thought he was just an emergency. He himself was an emergency. And,

01:05:40.440 um, uh, somebody I used to work with said that he thought his wife was being radicalized by Trump,

01:05:45.820 like against him. You know, she was never super political, but he radicalized her. And a friend

01:05:51.460 of mine who is definitely a established left person, um, when they put Steve Bannon on the

01:05:57.400 National Security Council, she literally called both senators every day, every day to say Steve

01:06:02.460 Bannon needs to come off the National Security Council. And eventually he did. He was an advisory,

01:06:06.400 whatever. Um, I think that's starting to happen to parents across the political aisle left and right,

01:06:11.640 uh, who have seen enough is enough. It might not fight for myself. I might not be a squeaky wheel

01:06:17.640 when it's me. Um, but this is severely damaging. And by the way, what was the problem in 2019,

01:06:24.340 according to that surgeon general isolation causing anxiety and depression with kids. And now what do we

01:06:29.740 do in the pandemic created further isolation? The iPhones, you know what the iPhone did in creating

01:06:35.500 disease in our children when it comes to anxiety and depression and loneliness and isolation,

01:06:39.840 the pandemic restrictions only exacerbated, right? It, it, it's like they took that disease

01:06:46.600 and it multiplied tenfold. And we're still looking around saying, get, get your child vaccinated.

01:06:52.200 That's the solution to everything. Yeah. Remember at the pediatrician when they used to ask you how

01:06:56.860 much screen time your kids got? I haven't gotten that question in two years. Good point. That's exactly

01:07:02.540 right. And now more and more are going remotely again. And these teachers in Michigan who were

01:07:06.900 like, we need Fridays off for our mental health. Get to work too. Yep. In New York, doing it here

01:07:12.120 too. There there's in, in DC and they're saying, you know, we're so burned out. I live in Montgomery

01:07:17.200 County, Maryland. They're saying we're so burned out. Student behavior is so bad that we're, we're just

01:07:20.960 going to have to take a couple of days off. Do you not see the link between instability and ripping

01:07:26.480 school away from kids with absolutely no notice and their behavior, your actions have directly

01:07:31.420 contributed to the problem that you're now facing. And this is sort of a generational societal problem.

01:07:37.600 Instead of addressing problems head on, they've decided to, to cop out and to say, we quit or we'd

01:07:44.660 like less time in the classrooms, or we want to keep the masks on because I, I feel like they like the

01:07:50.800 masks on kids because it makes them more subdued because they can't express their emotions as much.

01:07:55.520 And so it's sort of like puts them into their shell a little bit, but the masks are also dehumanizing

01:08:01.400 to children. And when you dehumanize kids and you make them feel like they're animals in a cage and

01:08:06.120 don't let them talk and don't let them drink water during class. This is the result. When you treat

01:08:11.840 children like animals, they will act like animals.

01:08:14.600 Oh my God. I mean, like I don't let my kids have the mask on for one second longer than they have.

01:08:19.940 If they forget about it, they have it on the car. I'm like, get it off your face, get it off.

01:08:23.460 It's not normal. Do not get used to it. And by the way, there was just a study out. This is in North

01:08:28.680 Dakota that took a look at two different school districts to see whether the masks were making a

01:08:34.120 difference. And what they found at best, at best for the mask mandate advocates was there was no

01:08:40.480 difference. That's the best case scenario. But really, if you look at it, there's a slightly

01:08:44.340 they did slightly better at preventing covid in the school that did not have the masks.

01:08:51.120 And that was what the CDC's own study in Georgia said when it looked at 90,000 students.

01:08:55.640 And then they promptly ignored it. And, you know, people don't listen. They don't. The leftists don't

01:09:03.080 watch Fox News and the mainstream or, you know, right wing media outside of Fox and the mainstream

01:09:09.180 won't report on things like that. You know, just a little bit here, a little bit there.

01:09:13.760 They're starting to Bethany. I'm sensing some sort of. End of opening a little bit. Some

01:09:18.620 right on the center left. But it I feel like at this rate, it's going to take years before

01:09:24.660 they see each other's faces at school. Yep. Yep. And at that rate, I mean, I think that we're

01:09:29.480 going to see the ramifications societally forever. We're going to see increases in crime,

01:09:34.420 increases in dropouts, mental mental health. I mean, we're already seeing that with the

01:09:38.740 surgeon general. The the just monetary costs of this are going to be significant. I don't

01:09:45.840 see how a lot of kids come out of this pandemic without without serious sort of mental illness

01:09:51.240 and and problems, honestly. That's right. And and then what we're told, though, and I saw

01:09:57.460 this in your piece, they're resilient. Children are resilient with this fake Stephanie smile

01:10:03.480 that you want to smack. It's like that doesn't mean you can just pile onto them ad nauseum in

01:10:10.260 trying to ramp up your vaccination rates that in a situation that where children's participation

01:10:16.640 is not required. It's not required. And other countries have confirmed that we're the only

01:10:23.100 ones who are the lunatics. We in Australia have been the the covid lunatics. This is not a race we

01:10:29.840 want to win. All right. Stand by because there's much more to go over with Bethany Mandel. We're

01:10:33.220 going to have more on covid and she's got a new children's book out, which I think you're going

01:10:36.900 to like. She's working to counter the woke drift in schools. Right. It's not going to be all. Let's

01:10:42.380 celebrate Ruth Bader Ginsburg anymore. And she's fine. Like RBG. I mean, I did. God rest her soul.

01:10:46.760 Not necessarily her judicial philosophy, but her as a woman. Now, what about if your child read a book

01:10:51.020 about Amy Coney Barrett? How about that? So, Bethany, how do you do it? How do you raise five

01:11:02.840 children and homeschool them and still work, still work outside the home, write, write columns and so

01:11:08.720 on and write a book and on it goes? How? Yeah. Yeah. So I don't sleep is really just the answer.

01:11:15.760 A lot of people, you know, they give like answers like I'm really good at time management. Like, sure,

01:11:20.160 that's part of it. But I also just don't sleep. I'll sleep when I'm dead. Have you always been a

01:11:24.980 bad sleeper or is it that it's not that you're a bad sleeper? It's just it's not a bad sleeper to

01:11:29.280 sleep. If someone would allow me, I would be a great sleeper. But I, you know, I have every every

01:11:36.940 other year I have another baby in my bed or in my belly or something. I mean, basically,

01:11:40.540 I just don't sleep. How old are they? My short answer. Eight, six, four, two and zero. And while we

01:11:47.280 on commercial break, my husband ran up the stairs to get the baby to bring him to the basement. So

01:11:50.940 oh, my, my friend just had her fifth child and she's in New York City. And she's so funny. She

01:11:56.700 says, MK, what kind of a person has five children? She says about herself. She's like, we're crossing

01:12:04.100 over into weird now. Do you ever have people look at you with that stunned like five?

01:12:09.540 Yeah, no people. I I've noticed people's eyes starting to count now once we hit five.

01:12:15.680 And my favorite moment, and I'm happy to send you one, by the way, on our Hanukkah card,

01:12:19.960 the text box ran out of room and it didn't give me a warning. And so on 180 cards, I had to like

01:12:27.700 handwrite and and the baby's name because I don't say my kid's name is in public. So I had to handwrite

01:12:31.960 his name on the bottom. Like, that's amazing. That's pretty classic. Yeah. So you you like yours truly do

01:12:37.800 not show pictures of your kids online. And but you've gone one step further. I've noticed you

01:12:42.940 you give them pseudonyms. And one of them is Altima. There's a lot of stories about Altima,

01:12:47.760 which I love the story behind why you chose that, because somebody is like you named your kid

01:12:51.160 Altima. Can you tell us how that one child got that one name? So he it really fits his personality

01:12:57.940 to say. So he is four years old. And four years ago, I had like a number of false labor scares. And so

01:13:06.000 my midwife told me, like, I cannot have you come back to the hospital unless you're actually in

01:13:09.540 labor. So wait until your water breaks. And so I was asleep and my water broke and we got in the car

01:13:13.880 and we were driving to the hospital about 45 minutes away. And he only had about 20 minutes

01:13:17.920 left in him before he was like, I'm done. I'm out. I don't care where you are. I don't care what you're

01:13:21.420 doing. And so he was born in my husband's Nissan Altima with like 200,000 miles or something on it.

01:13:27.420 And he pulled over into a gravel parking lot of an auto body shop off the highway in New Jersey.

01:13:31.980 And that's where he was born, covered in gravel. And that's like who he is to this day. I'm like,

01:13:36.620 oh, yeah, that's that's the one that was born on the side of the highway.

01:13:39.020 That is amazing. So how do you make it work? Homeschooling for all five different ages?

01:13:45.000 Are you in a network with other homeschooling parents?

01:13:48.580 Yeah, so my older, my oldest two are officially homeschooling. And then my other two younger ones,

01:13:55.060 my four and two year old are in like an in-home preschool for a couple days a week.

01:13:58.980 And that's when we bang out a lot of school. And a lot of our a lot of our homeschooling is just

01:14:03.180 reading out loud and reading to them. And so it's not it's not like a big heavy lift. Like we were

01:14:08.720 we were done with school today in two hours. And then like, this is how I'm spending my afternoon

01:14:12.460 with my children hiding in my basement. Well, this is not in any way to compare you to the Duggar

01:14:16.620 family. But I did go out there and do an interview with the Duggars and they're like 19 children.

01:14:20.540 And what I noticed when I was there was the older ones really take care of the younger ones. Like

01:14:25.560 when you're when you have a lot of children, you really have no choice but to make the older ones

01:14:30.520 help you out. And I thought it was such a not the Duggar family, but that dynamic is healthy,

01:14:36.500 right? Like I wish I could get my older kids to take on more of the family burden and help out

01:14:42.840 like with my little guy or even just I've got to do a better job of getting them to help around the

01:14:47.580 kitchen, around like picking up after themselves. And I feel like you probably have that down.

01:14:51.460 No, not at all. You should see my house. There was a profile of me in Deseret News and the

01:14:56.560 reporter who's a friend of mine now mentions like six times how messy my house is. She's like,

01:15:01.740 I can't can't fit my water bottle on her coffee table. I'm like, yeah, well, that's that is my

01:15:07.900 life. That is really messy. Like this is a very tight frame. OK, I love I love my house. It's OK.

01:15:14.380 This is the part that's presentable. The only part. OK, but we won't we won't wander.

01:15:18.900 The other thing I did not know about your family background, your family of origin.

01:15:25.020 And whenever I hear that somebody lost both of their parents at a young age, as you did,

01:15:28.860 I wonder like if they're doing well, if they're thriving in the world as you are,

01:15:34.160 how they did that. Right. Because it's so important to have parents who are involved,

01:15:38.400 who are loving at least one. And you I didn't see your mom died when you were in high school

01:15:44.360 and your dad not not that long after. Yep. Two and a half years after, maybe three years after.

01:15:50.920 Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of it was because of sort of how my mom raised me and my mom raised me to

01:15:55.900 not dwell and not not get bogged down in it because we knew that my mom was not going to survive high

01:16:01.500 school for me. And so she sort of gave me a lot of like life skills like she had me paying the bills

01:16:07.140 when I was in high school and middle school. She had me doing a lot of stuff so that when I

01:16:11.120 eventually was on my own and we knew it was going to be way too early, I was able to sort of

01:16:16.040 live life in that way. And so it was a lot of like my mom's sort of coping mechanisms was like to not

01:16:22.840 dwell, to not sort of submerge, submerge myself and to not define myself by victimhood and to just

01:16:29.900 sort of plow on and to fake it until you make it. There's there's something to be said for like,

01:16:35.460 I'm really, really frickin miserable, but I am just going to get out of bed and I'm going to get

01:16:39.480 dressed and I'm going to do these things and I'm going to find one thing to look forward to.

01:16:43.900 And eventually sort of faking it until you make it. You don't have to fake it anymore. You're just

01:16:47.840 making it. That's so true. So the reason you were on your own after she died is your dad was not in

01:16:55.520 your life. He wasn't in the picture. Yeah, yeah. I had a very fractured relationship with my dad,

01:17:00.520 so I didn't see him from when I was seven to 17 or 18. And he died when I was 19 and he committed

01:17:06.160 suicide. So that was like a whole other sort of, you know, when when someone makes that choice to

01:17:11.500 do that there, there's like a whole other set of baggage that you have to sort of deal with. And

01:17:14.920 so I was I was basically on my own. No brothers or sisters? Just you?

01:17:21.000 No, which is why I have five kids. Yeah, of course. That's absolutely linked. And so were you really on

01:17:29.200 your own when your mom passed? Like it was just you trying to figure out life as a what, 16 year old?

01:17:34.000 Yeah. I mean, I had one really amazing cousin who let me sleep in her like loft in her one bedroom,

01:17:41.620 like sort of on Gold Street in lower Manhattan. Like she let me sleep in her loft and she brought

01:17:47.240 me to Target and bought me stuff for college. Like she really stepped in without resources of her own

01:17:52.660 because she knew that no one else was going to do it. And so she did it. And my mom's ex-husband was

01:17:57.620 sort of another person that was there for me in really critical moments. And so they like really

01:18:02.940 pitched in and I could not have survived my childhood without the two of them. But yeah, I mean,

01:18:09.220 in a lot of in a lot of ways, I was on my own. But I can't sort of ignore the fact that they they

01:18:14.680 stepped in and they weren't the obvious choices. Like I still had grandparents when my mother died

01:18:19.240 and they didn't step up. I had my mom's sister actually stole most of my inheritance. And like,

01:18:26.120 wow, that was unfortunate. Well, this is, you know, one of the things I like about you on Twitter is

01:18:31.660 you and in your columns, too, is you really aren't pro victimhood. You know how the whole society is

01:18:36.960 pro victimhood. Now you recognize when somebody's been hurt. You're not one of these people who's

01:18:40.300 like, get over it. No, rape. No, you're fine. You're not that person at all. But you're not

01:18:44.900 leaning into victimhood. And now hearing your backstory, it's even more impressive because you

01:18:49.960 could absolutely be that person. How how is what's happening in our society? How does it make

01:18:55.880 you react having, you know, been through all you just discussed? Yeah, I mean, I think it's really

01:19:01.860 important to me as a parent. I am so grateful that my children will never, God willing, have any of the

01:19:07.360 experiences that I had. I sort of look at my kids at like eight and six. I'm like, oh, my life was very

01:19:12.660 different when I was your age. But I don't resent them for it. And I don't sort of throw it in their

01:19:16.280 faces like, well, you know, when I was your age, I was walking uphill both ways. Like, that's not

01:19:19.920 I don't think that's healthy either. But I really want to sort of give them coping mechanisms without

01:19:25.780 without sort of the the anvil that was hanging over my head, because I do want them to be able

01:19:31.660 to cope. I do want them to have coping mechanisms. And and a lot of that we get through through

01:19:36.960 literature and through books, because I'm very grateful they don't have the real world experiences

01:19:41.520 of hardship. Now, you I know that you're you're Jewish. You write about it online. But your dad was

01:19:49.340 the one who was Jewish and your mom was Catholic. And so he didn't really he wasn't around that

01:19:53.860 often. So how did that happen? How did you connect with the faith?

01:19:57.240 So it was it was kind of weird. So my mom, I was like a very rebellious child. And so my mom

01:20:03.260 brought me to Catholic Church. And I was like, this doesn't feel right. This is weird. And also,

01:20:07.720 like I was told that Jesus was the son of God. And I had accidentally walked in on my parents,

01:20:12.860 one of my parents, my father, with his girlfriend and sort of I don't think God did that

01:20:19.340 that was that was my seven year old. I was like, that is disgusting. And that is not holy. So I

01:20:24.460 don't think that's what happened. And so my mom was sort of explaining to me Judaism. And they're

01:20:28.660 like, well, they don't believe in Jesus. I'm like, well, that's good. Because I thought that thing

01:20:32.000 that happened was gross. So that no Jesus thing is a plus in my column. That's what got you?

01:20:37.940 What? That's what got you? That's so funny. No. So no, it's ridiculous. It gets even more

01:20:42.720 ridiculous. And then my mom was like, they're people of the book. And I was like, well, I love books.

01:20:46.400 Books are like my favorite thing to do. And she said, Oh, and your favorite soup that I make matzo

01:20:51.120 ball soup, that's also Jewish. And I was like, done, sold. No fornication. No, there's matzo ball

01:20:57.620 soup. And there's tons of books. That's like my dream religion. That's what I am. And so stubborn

01:21:02.520 person that I am, I was like, I am Jewish for now and forevermore. Poor Seth. He probably was raised

01:21:07.840 more traditionally. It was like, is this what is within all this? You've misunderstood the whole thing,

01:21:11.900 your husband. Yeah. No, I mean, he understood what he was getting into. He was like, this is

01:21:17.100 a whole ball of weird. But Seth is weird, too. There's a reason why. Tots and Tots is what his

01:21:21.580 grandmother used to say. What's his actual title at the Washington Examiner? Executive? What's his

01:21:25.940 title? Executive editor of the magazine. Okay. Okay, great. So he's sort of immersed in more conservative

01:21:32.360 media. And how's that going? Like with the two of you, I mean, you're living in an area of the

01:21:37.280 country that's pretty blue. Have you struggled to connect with, you know, people in your neighborhood

01:21:42.040 and your town and so on? So yes and no. So I have a really wonderful pocket of in-person friends.

01:21:49.760 There was, you know, multi-page, multi-week-long thread about me on a local mommy board that I'm

01:21:56.260 still getting Google alerts about. This is about grandma? No. So I stopped reading it for my own

01:22:01.660 mental health. I was like, I don't need to know. But a friend that read it was like, yeah,

01:22:04.900 they're talking about how your kids are brats and about how your kid Altima pooped in the community

01:22:09.840 pool two years ago. I'm like, okay, I feel like we don't have to talk about that on a community

01:22:14.560 thread. Two-year-olds poop in the pool. I'm sorry. So I mean, there's definitely some people in the

01:22:20.900 neighborhood that are not fans. But I, you know, that's one of the nice things about COVID. I don't

01:22:24.860 have to deal with you because you're locked in your house terrified. Yeah. I don't, I'm wondering,

01:22:30.180 because I do see you get a lot of blowback online. And I do think very strongly opinionated women

01:22:35.840 always do. I mean, I'll say that on the left or the right, there's something about

01:22:39.960 you're supposed to be shyer about it. You're supposed to be a little more sorry that you've

01:22:45.600 got these strong opinions. You know what I mean? Yep. And they tell Janice to just read the weather.

01:22:50.900 Oh my God. Can you believe that story? Did you see? I don't know. I'm so angry.

01:22:54.120 Chris Cuomo, fucking weather bitch. Or no, I had the fucking, sorry, weather bitch.

01:22:58.420 That weather bitch. Oh my God. That's why I was like, people are like, oh, I've been hearing a

01:23:02.980 little bit in my corners. You know, I feel sorry for the guy. You know, he lost everything. I'm

01:23:06.880 like, no, no, no. You have to follow. It's not just because he helped his brother, right? That's

01:23:10.360 what you will hear. I love Tucker, but that you hear on Tucker, that's not it. But Tucker will also

01:23:13.480 tell you about all the bad stuff he did. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's been years of accumulation,

01:23:17.820 right? Of, of distrust and bad behavior and narcissism. And that's why only 15% of the country

01:23:23.560 thinks he shouldn't have gotten fired. He had no base. There was no one rooting for him to stay. I mean,

01:23:27.800 why do you think that was? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's infuriating to me that Andrew Cuomo

01:23:32.780 lost his job because of the groping instead of the killing elderly. And it's infuriating to me

01:23:37.340 that Chris Cuomo lost his job over this one. There was any number of things that he could

01:23:41.720 have been fired for breaking quarantine and wandering around the Hamptons or, you know,

01:23:46.300 having his brother on in the first place, which was highly unprofessional. There were so many other

01:23:51.160 reasons why the Cuomo brothers should have lost their jobs. And it's, it's frustrating that

01:23:55.080 this is what they lost them over. I do think though, with the, with the loss of

01:23:59.060 all three properties, right? The, the CNN show unclear what happened here at Sirius XM. He's

01:24:04.720 trying to spin it certainly as a decision to step down. But I mean, listen, no, no one here has said

01:24:09.500 anything to me. I'm not giving inside information. I just feel like that's suspicious. You don't,

01:24:13.120 you don't get fired from one job and then just quit the other. I mean, the other job would probably

01:24:16.960 become more important to you than ever in that moment. And then, and then the book deal gets taken

01:24:21.240 away. But I wonder why, because it's not a situation where, you know, the, the offense with

01:24:27.960 respect to like the women would have been perceived in most corners is so awful. He could never work

01:24:32.980 again. So, I mean, what do you make of the complete implosion? I mean, I think that they just realized

01:24:38.340 that he was not stable and they were looking for a reason to, to offload him. And I think there might

01:24:44.260 have been some sexual stuff going on too, that we don't really know about. The there's, I, I, I'm not

01:24:50.000 sure we'll ever hear the full story, but I think that they just realized that he was becoming too

01:24:53.260 much of a liability. Well, that's the thing. Cause it's like, there was the Shelley Ross incident

01:24:57.320 happened years ago while he was at ABC, but she came public with it. Now there was the executive

01:25:01.760 producer at CNN who left his show because she said he was a bully and she got farmed off to the digital

01:25:07.140 property. Um, and then there was this other woman who came forward. We don't know anything about that.

01:25:11.860 In the meantime, he's back there doing oppo research on his brother's accusers and calling Janice

01:25:15.520 Dean, a weather bitch asking how he can discredit her because she's upset at her dead in-laws. I

01:25:21.520 mean, that's who he is. That's who Chris Cuomo is. What did you make of, um, the other big media

01:25:27.820 news over the weekend, which is Fox news is Chris Wallace stepping down from his post on Fox news Sunday

01:25:34.240 and going to CNN digital, not even like the main CNN, but CNN digital for a five day a week show.

01:25:40.580 I don't understand. Um, I, I, I like Chris Wallace a lot. I, I, I'm not really sure what's

01:25:49.240 going on there because it, from the outside, it doesn't make much sense, but who knows,

01:25:54.840 who knows what's going on in other people's homes and other people's lives. And I don't know.

01:25:59.440 Yeah, I know. I think that, um, Wallace was disliked and remains disliked by most of the Fox news base

01:26:06.680 after his performance in the last presidential election. And I've spent a lot of time with Chris

01:26:12.060 Wallace. I know him pretty well, but I think he lost the Fox news base in a particular way,

01:26:17.600 right? Like in a way that wasn't mendable. And, um, I'm sure he doesn't like, you know,

01:26:23.380 the direction that Fox is going to, you know, they've sort of embraced some of their right wing

01:26:28.340 leanings and they're not as ideologically balanced as they were, but I mean, they're still the only thing

01:26:32.820 on television basically that's in anything to the right of, you know, everything else out there.

01:26:38.520 Right. It's like, you got news max, which doesn't really put a bunch of points on the board though.

01:26:42.060 I like them. Um, and then you've got Fox. So I just think he probably didn't feel like he was at

01:26:46.960 home anymore and, uh, he didn't have the support of the audience. And so you can sort of see where

01:26:52.800 that's going to go. Not to mention he's 76 years old. It's like my, like, like at that point,

01:26:56.320 but God love him for taking on a five day a week job at 76. Yeah, no, I mean, 74. Sorry.

01:27:02.960 We'll see how it goes. Yeah. I think it'll go fine because I think the CNN audience will like him a

01:27:08.020 lot better than the Fox news audience did. Um, I think they're sort of, he showed his partisan stripes

01:27:12.500 and he was right. He was on, he was on the wrong team. He was not on the team that, that loves him.

01:27:18.280 And the CNNers I think will feel differently though. I don't know. Maybe he'll wind up with a digital

01:27:21.620 producer from quiz Cuomo that, that wound up not working out. Bethany,

01:27:25.760 such a pleasure to talk to you. Good luck with, Oh, wait a minute. Shit. I forgot. Sorry.

01:27:30.520 Forgive me the books. I didn't forget. I did forget. And I need to talk about the books.

01:27:34.400 So I love this idea because Amy Coney Barrett, I think is amazing and would be celebrated by most

01:27:38.680 of the left if they just didn't, if it shouldn't have a stance on abortion she has. So what's it

01:27:42.360 called and what are you doing? So it's called heroes of Liberty and you can get our books at

01:27:47.280 heroes of Liberty.com. And we created a promo code for your viewers. So it's Megan is the promo code. So

01:27:52.840 you can get 5% off, but it's, we're a literary startup and we're producing a book series about

01:27:57.240 great people who embody life values that we want our kids to sort of carry with them through their

01:28:01.680 childhoods and into their adulthoods, Liberty, freedom, family, standing on your own. Kids

01:28:06.900 follow the, these amazing people, Amy Coney Barrett, Thomas Sowell and Ronald Reagan from childhood

01:28:12.220 through adulthood. And they're learning from example. And so, you know, instead of sort of teaching our

01:28:17.500 children about victimhood, for example, as we were talking about, we were teaching them about

01:28:21.620 sort of standing on your own and Thomas Sowell was a great example of that. That's one of my

01:28:26.660 favorite books. And, you know, it's not preachy, it's not political. It's just telling great stories

01:28:31.280 with really incredible and engaging art. And, and so we're sort of teaching about the importance of

01:28:36.500 family, Amy Coney Barrett. That's like sort of the theme of that book and resilience and standing on

01:28:41.700 your own is, is the theme of the Thomas Sowell book. And Ronald Reagan, I mean, he was just like

01:28:46.660 the kindest, most wonderful president and we want our kids to sort of have a family, a familiarity

01:28:52.280 with all of these sort of people that were so instrumental in our, in our country's history.

01:28:56.240 So folks can get the books at heroes of liberty.com and heroes of liberty.com. And what's the,

01:29:03.940 and what was the second part? Megan, Megan. And so they can read them with their kids at night and

01:29:08.300 whatever, whatever is going on in their kid's school, they can sort of push back a little bit

01:29:12.800 at home and teach their kids sort of the right way that we want our kids to be because we can't

01:29:18.440 count on the schools to do it. What's the age target range for these books?

01:29:23.440 So it's between ages six to 12. The illustrations are really, really captivating. So they really

01:29:28.700 kind of hook the younger kids in and the, the prose is also like really challenging and really

01:29:33.380 wonderful. It's, it's sort of one of those like throwback books that you sort of remember from your

01:29:37.540 childhood that were really sort of I think about sort of the Chronicles of Narnia, like the really

01:29:43.560 intricate prose. That's really challenging. That really tells you a story. That's really what

01:29:48.440 we're shooting to do. And, and we hope to eventually become like a more wholesome and moderate scholastic

01:29:54.960 because they've gone just completely off the cliff. I love this. I love this. It's hard to find those

01:30:01.860 books. I mean, I always post pictures from my local bookstore on the Upper West side. And it's,

01:30:06.200 of course, it's like all RBG, AOC, Fauci, Michelle Obama. I mean, you, in no world would there ever

01:30:13.560 be a Thomas Sowell ever. So it's wonderful to have this as an option. Yeah. Yeah. So here's

01:30:19.680 the liberty.com and people can use the promo code Megan for 5% off. I'm doing that today. Abby,

01:30:25.100 will you, will you get me all three of them? It's just the three so far. Yeah, so far. And we're

01:30:29.620 going to, we're planning on producing one a month into the new year. And so we're going to have John

01:30:33.540 Wayne, Mark Twain, Margaret Thatcher, that's the one I'm editing right now. Churchill is another

01:30:39.140 one, Douglas MacArthur. And so sort of all of these people that our kids desperately need to know

01:30:43.540 about. And, you know, speaking of resilience, my God, like Winston Churchill, you really can't get

01:30:47.780 a better sort of role model for your kid. And I would love my kids to walk around saying, you know,

01:30:52.160 my hero is Thomas Sowell or Winston Churchill. It doesn't get much better than that.

01:30:56.180 And of course the left is to be like, of course you ignored his history of colonialism and they're

01:30:59.980 all racist and so on. And it's like, okay, no one, not even your heroes were perfect. Go take

01:31:04.840 a look at the FBI report about Dr. Martin Luther King and what his own Pulitzer Prize winning

01:31:09.360 biographer unearthed when he was studying Dr. King and his history with women and alleged sexual

01:31:16.460 assault. It's not to say that, you know, we dismiss all flaws, but our heroes are heroes for a reason.

01:31:23.200 They did extraordinary things in extraordinary times. And that's why people continue to love MLK.

01:31:29.980 And continue to love Winston Churchill. Bethany, thank you so much. I'm buying them right now.

01:31:34.040 Thank you. Thank you.

01:31:35.580 And you guys should do the same. Tomorrow, our friend Charles C.W. Cook will be here. Excited

01:31:40.660 to talk to him as always. In the meantime, download the show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify,

01:31:44.880 and Stitcher. If you leave a review at Apple, I will read it. I read them all. Also at youtube.com

01:31:50.000 slash Megan Kelly. You can check out the visual aspect of the show. Thanks for listening. And we'll

01:31:54.420 talk tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 13, 2021

COVID Hysteria Aimed at Kids, New Proposed Gun Laws, and Cuomo Latest, with Janice Dean, Bethany Mandel, and John Lott Jr. ｜ Ep. 220

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