The Megyn Kelly Show - Dems Reckon with Biden's Pardon Lies, and Kamala's Possibly Tipsy Closing Message, with The Fifth Column Hosts

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:00:12.060 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Tuesday.

00:00:16.740 The fallout from President Biden's pardon of his son Hunter continues.

00:00:20.060 It's so fun watching the leftist meltdown over this, like the wrestling with what, you know, why?

00:00:27.100 Why did he do this to us? Because he's a lying liar who lies. Again, consume other media, people.

00:00:36.260 Try to expand your horizons and then you won't feel so stupid all the time.

00:00:41.260 Can you imagine being one of these viewers of like MSNBC and that's just your only news source?

00:00:46.000 Like not an ironic viewer like the rest of us, you know, who are like, oh my God, maybe he didn't collude with Russia.

00:00:53.320 I mean, oh my God, maybe he didn't actually do anything wrong with that phone call with Ukraine.

00:00:59.600 Jeez. I mean, maybe Trump has a point about the weaponization of the Department of Justice.

00:01:05.820 Jeez, maybe those so-called experts who attacked him actually weren't really all that reliable.

00:01:11.760 Like, and now finally, maybe Joe Biden actually isn't all that honest.

00:01:16.340 Is it possible he was intending on doing this pardon all along?

00:01:21.960 Hello. You don't have to watch Fox.

00:01:25.100 You don't have to watch this show, but you should because we're actually very fair.

00:01:30.540 And we're very, as somebody put in our, it was one of our commenters online, relentlessly factual.

00:01:38.120 Thank you, Megyn Kelly show viewer.

00:01:39.960 Uh, we are a little relentlessly factual.

00:01:42.260 Just expand. That's all I'm asking. Expand.

00:01:45.460 You don't have to eliminate MS, but you are being misled on a daily basis.

00:01:52.120 That is why you feel so dumb and confused all the time as these houses of cards continue to collapse week after week, month after month.

00:02:00.660 And by the way, we have an update for you on the MSNBC ratings.

00:02:05.160 My God. Um, okay. So now you've got the New York times, which is one of the ones that got it so wrong.

00:02:11.760 Now trying to like spin its way out of this, you see, president Biden had a legitimate change of heart late on a Saturday evening on Nantucket last weekend under a dark sky.

00:02:27.140 That's how he finally came to this realization. It was totally in good faith just up until the dark sky came.

00:02:33.560 And then there are those who are speaking out publicly attacking Joe Biden for even what they say is a legacy defining mistake.

00:02:41.480 I mean, like, I don't, here's what I think about this legacy defining thing.

00:02:46.480 Cause we're seeing that a lot of these pieces.

00:02:47.960 These are people who are mad at Joe Biden for not stepping aside earlier.

00:02:54.880 They blame him for the fact that Kamala Harris lost.

00:02:58.820 And while they had to go through 107 days of he's going to go on Mount Rushmore

00:03:04.600 for this selfless decision to pass the baton,

00:03:10.140 they really were angry with him all along because they didn't really think she could do it.

00:03:15.540 And they were right.

00:03:16.480 And now they got saddled with Trump 2.0, which they're very unhappy about.

00:03:20.240 So now it's fine to just be like Biden fucking sucks.

00:03:23.400 And this is as good as excuse, excuse as any to say it was the pardon.

00:03:29.060 His legacy is ruined.

00:03:31.200 You know, we were totally willing to go the Mount Rushmore route.

00:03:34.200 It wasn't because of the loss, it was because of the pardon,

00:03:37.360 because we're a party of principles and we don't break our word.

00:03:41.120 So it's just super fun to watch these narratives take hold.

00:03:44.580 They're all lies, as was Joe Biden's promise not to pardon Hunter,

00:03:49.760 as was virtually everything Hunter and Joe Biden have ever said about Hunter Biden's

00:03:55.280 Burisma and Chinese and Romanian business deals.

00:03:59.040 So where does that leave us today?

00:04:00.460 Well, let's bring in our pals from the fifth column to chat all about it.

00:04:05.360 Camille Foster, Michael Moynihan and Matt Welsh, who you can find at wethefifth.com.

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00:05:10.980 Guys, welcome back to the show.

00:05:12.800 Thank you for having us.

00:05:14.220 Merry War on Anti-Christmas.

00:05:17.180 We are noticing in your...

00:05:18.400 Very Christmassy set.

00:05:19.420 Really nice.

00:05:21.260 It's December 3rd.

00:05:22.340 I'm leaning in.

00:05:22.960 It's time.

00:05:23.500 Do it.

00:05:24.040 Lean into it.

00:05:25.180 It's not anti-anything.

00:05:26.180 She's just celebrating Christmas, Matt.

00:05:27.840 Well, she's just anti-war on Christmas.

00:05:30.080 She's just fighting on behalf of Christmas.

00:05:32.380 That's fine.

00:05:33.080 We say Merry Christmas.

00:05:34.720 Remember that from the O'Reilly War on Christmas?

00:05:36.860 We say Merry Christmas.

00:05:38.260 You'd have to walk into a store and explain that.

00:05:41.720 I do wrestle every year with a Christmas card.

00:05:43.920 Like, do I put Happy Holidays on there?

00:05:45.240 Because I'm sending it to Jewish friends, too.

00:05:47.100 But in the end, I always go with Merry Christmas because, yeah.

00:05:51.160 Like, to your point, I am anti-war on Christmas.

00:05:52.660 They wrote the Christmas songs.

00:05:53.660 Yeah.

00:05:54.300 That's fine.

00:05:55.440 Lieber and Stalin.

00:05:56.000 I'm playing them nonstop.

00:05:57.200 I'm driving my kids crazy.

00:05:58.780 Yeah.

00:05:59.040 What do you make of my analysis that is just very fun to watch the spiraling of like, oh, he's tarnished the legacy.

00:06:08.300 Oh, under a dark sky, he had a last-minute change of heart.

00:06:11.240 Like, it's very different messaging depending on which pocket of the Democratic Party you're looking at.

00:06:15.500 Anyone want to take that?

00:06:16.640 Megan, I want to go after your commenter here because you apparently deal in facts, but in your monologue, you did not.

00:06:24.960 You said the people who watch MSNBC should go somewhere else.

00:06:29.800 They have gone somewhere else because no one watches MSNBC.

00:06:33.400 The premise of your statement is wrong.

00:06:36.100 If people did watch it, I would agree with you.

00:06:38.260 But as I assume we'll get to on this episode of the show, there's seven people left watching it, and one of them is Keith Olbermann screaming in his basement.

00:06:46.800 And two others are my producers.

00:06:49.020 I was getting clips.

00:06:50.660 It's the new view.

00:06:52.260 I think, by the way, and I'm totally convinced of this, and I'm actually quite serious about this, is that I don't think Joe Biden lied about this.

00:07:00.260 I think that he's so infirm that somebody over the weekend was like, hey, Joey B, do you remember that you said you were going to pardon your son?

00:07:08.200 And he was like, oh, yeah.

00:07:09.240 Yeah, let's do that.

00:07:10.580 I think that's kind of probably how it happened.

00:07:12.600 I don't think he's having any revelations at this point because we can't hold those two ideas in our head at once that he is completely infirm and out of it.

00:07:21.440 And apparently he's still the president.

00:07:22.060 Did that person's name rhyme with Bunter?

00:07:26.040 He's an oil expert who works in China and Ukraine.

00:07:29.180 I don't know who he is.

00:07:30.220 And artist.

00:07:31.040 But he's a brilliant painter.

00:07:32.480 And artist.

00:07:33.440 That's right.

00:07:34.100 Respect.

00:07:34.940 Show some respect.

00:07:36.800 The thing that gets me, Megan, and it's reiterated the way that you introduced the whole thing, is that, yeah, people are like, this is the thing that tarnishes his legacy.

00:07:46.160 There have been more consequential lies that I'm still madder about.

00:07:50.300 I mean, I don't think that Hunter Biden should have gone to jail for lying on a gun application for a crime that I think 100 people, 130 people are prosecuted for each year and also a crime that his father enhanced the penalty of going into it because Democrats have idiotic ideas about people and gun ownership.

00:08:11.080 Let's table that aside.

00:08:12.220 A more consequential lie is when President Biden, Jen Psaki, and Rochelle Walensky, and a bunch of other people said, oh, we're totally not going to make the COVID vaccine mandatory.

00:08:26.420 We weren't.

00:08:26.800 The federal government doesn't even have that authority.

00:08:29.120 They went from there to look at what you made me do.

00:08:31.960 We have to do it.

00:08:32.980 And we're going to fire people in the military.

00:08:36.380 Tens and thousands of people lost their jobs because they lied about this consequential thing.

00:08:41.680 And having healthy young people take a COVID vaccine and forcing them to, not giving them a choice, is a much more consequential lie.

00:08:51.240 And you don't see the same wailing and gnashing of teeth among the media because they participated in that lie.

00:08:57.520 To this day, I mean, I was pointing this out minutes after this news came out that that is the more consequential lie that I'm more upset about.

00:09:06.580 And, you know, rational people with blue check marks are like, you know, why don't they just take their jab?

00:09:10.600 We still have this mindset in this country that is one of it's one of the most beneficial things about Donald Trump winning is that he's appointing a whole passel of people who were on the other side of all of those debates.

00:09:21.320 Not just the lying about it, not just the suppression of speech that came about it, but all of the basic sort of morality of compelling people to do something that they wouldn't wouldn't normally want to or need to do.

00:09:35.560 Those lies are more important.

00:09:36.800 Um, so this is a guy who's been lying since the first time he was kicked out of running for president guy who as president, how many times has he told the story about his uncle beating eaten by cannibals?

00:09:48.080 And people are like, oh yeah, that's, that's normal.

00:09:49.920 The worst lie that he told in part of this, in, in this pardon, did you catch it all the way down at the bottom of his announcement?

00:09:56.800 He's like, look, I've always said, I'll be, I've been truthful.

00:10:00.280 The one thing about my life is I'll just be square and truthful to the American people.

00:10:04.140 My dude, no, you have been lying your face off my whole fucking life move off the stage.

00:10:12.200 Yeah.

00:10:12.940 You know, to me, what's interesting about it, cause like a president pardoning somebody, even somebody who might be a relative, you know, it's, it's a story for sure, but this one's gotten so much attention from the left and the right.

00:10:25.840 So I'm asking myself like, what is it?

00:10:28.240 I mean, yes, it's sweeping.

00:10:29.540 Yes.

00:10:29.940 Most sweeping since Richard Nixon.

00:10:31.920 It's for all crimes.

00:10:33.140 It's not just like for the one or two that he's been actually prosecuted or found guilty on.

00:10:37.940 So, so what is it?

00:10:39.520 And to me, it's, it's just that it, it undermines.

00:10:42.400 It's just the big reveal at the end of the Biden story that he is an abject liar, that all the stuff we've been getting fed about how noble the justice department is, has been bullshit.

00:10:55.160 And Biden knew it all along.

00:10:58.400 And like these Democrats who were defending that system now look stupid.

00:11:02.840 So they're angry.

00:11:04.220 You know, I was telling, um, my kids, the story about my mom.

00:11:07.260 Cause we did, you know, it was Thanksgiving last weekend and, uh, last weekend.

00:11:10.300 And, uh, it was a great story.

00:11:11.720 The short version is when my Nana was like 90, she died at 101, but this is my mom's mom.

00:11:18.380 My mom and my stepfather were driving my Nana to my uncle's house where we all met for Thanksgiving.

00:11:24.000 And my mom was joking with my Nan that my mom as a lifelong veterans hospital nurse with that.

00:11:32.380 Whenever my mom sees a flag out on the street, my mom has to salute or the VA will track her down the government and get, she'll get in trouble.

00:11:42.120 She's messing with my 90 year old Nana who's in the backseat.

00:11:45.740 And Peter, my stepfather's going totally along with it.

00:11:48.400 He's like, Oh no, no, it's, it's a, it's a rule.

00:11:50.180 She's got to do it to my, my Nana.

00:11:53.580 But, and, uh, my Nan's like, Oh my God.

00:11:55.960 So my important hands in the backseat going, Linda, there's one, there's one over there.

00:11:59.760 And my mom's like, Oh, that's a big one.

00:12:01.040 That's the double.

00:12:01.920 I got to do the double solution.

00:12:05.080 So we get to my uncles and we all meet and my Nan is like, Oh Megan, your poor mother.

00:12:11.820 She had to salute every single flag on the whole way down.

00:12:15.460 She was like, there's a huge one.

00:12:16.540 She had to do the double salute.

00:12:17.600 Otherwise the government, they're going to get her in trouble.

00:12:19.680 I'm like, no, no, Nan.

00:12:22.380 That's not, it's not true.

00:12:23.420 She's like, what?

00:12:24.680 No, your mother said so.

00:12:26.000 It's true.

00:12:26.800 I said, mom, she, she think like, and she goes, Linda, Linda, tell her, tell her the truth.

00:12:33.260 And my mom goes, no, mom, I was just pulling your leg.

00:12:37.660 What?

00:12:38.380 She couldn't believe it.

00:12:39.680 She couldn't believe the story that the truth came out.

00:12:42.720 My Nana identified my mother as an abject liar.

00:12:47.020 And the big, the big reveal was had before the Turkey.

00:12:50.680 This is the big reveal before the Turkey, you know, I guess right around the Turkey by Joe

00:12:55.840 Biden.

00:12:56.100 I was lying all along.

00:12:57.540 The whole thing was made up.

00:12:58.980 The DJ, the DOJ is corrupt.

00:13:01.560 Don't trust it.

00:13:02.620 It's been politicized.

00:13:03.980 I'm the one who politicized it.

00:13:05.800 And all of our protestations that we couldn't say that while Trump was in the crosshairs

00:13:11.100 were made up.

00:13:14.600 Yeah.

00:13:15.180 Not only, not only could they not say it, that it was corrupt.

00:13:18.280 They were insisting it was the other way around the entire time.

00:13:21.160 Like Kamala Harris is out there on the campaign trail talking about these active cases.

00:13:24.760 And in some cases, cases recently decided cases, um, and touting all of this as proof

00:13:31.260 that Donald Trump could not be elected and was, was kind of an inappropriate person to

00:13:35.120 elect while all this stuff with Hunter Biden was just kind of waiting there in the wings

00:13:38.280 and would be resolved.

00:13:39.660 I am, I am dispositionally inclined to agree with virtually everything that's been said.

00:13:43.900 In fact, I suspect I do agree with it, but I also wonder if there isn't room for us

00:13:48.680 to acknowledge that the political landscape is pretty weird.

00:13:52.160 The climate is pretty charged and I've tried to put myself in Joe Biden's shoes here.

00:13:57.300 And I think I'm on record as are the other two guys.

00:14:00.280 You fell down.

00:14:00.740 That Joe probably fell asleep.

00:14:02.920 That Joe probably should, um, have done this pardon.

00:14:09.140 Um, and that there probably was real opportunity for maybe Joe Biden and Donald Trump to collaborate

00:14:13.540 on something here.

00:14:14.520 Donald Trump is probably going to pardon some January 6th people.

00:14:17.620 Perhaps you're turning the page on some of these things politically and you're suggesting,

00:14:22.080 look, the old, the old wars are over.

00:14:24.020 Let's go forward together.

00:14:24.960 Like we're all Americans.

00:14:26.580 Maybe you could have done that, but that isn't what happened here.

00:14:28.800 Instead, it's Joe Biden kind of generally acknowledge, acknowledging that there is some kind of

00:14:33.300 political corruption.

00:14:34.400 There is a tint, a tinge of it in our justice system.

00:14:38.180 It does seem that impartiality goes out the window when you're a certain kind of person

00:14:41.880 with a certain kind of profile.

00:14:43.860 Um, and to the extent that's true, then maybe that justifies a more sweeping pardon that is

00:14:49.820 expansive, that protects you from your political adversaries once they take power.

00:14:54.120 I mean, again, that's a very generous interpretation of things, but it does seem to me that some

00:14:58.360 dimensions of that aren't entirely unreasonable.

00:15:02.940 I just, one, one thing about this, I would say is that, um, that I think is incredibly beneficial

00:15:07.900 is look, the president, as you said, Megan, I mean, I don't get incredibly exercised about

00:15:13.320 this.

00:15:13.520 I think it's wrong to pardon a member of your family.

00:15:16.720 It's, it's allowed.

00:15:18.220 You can do it.

00:15:18.840 I mean, you know, back to Seth Rich and all of these kind of corrupt pardons that we've

00:15:24.240 had in the past, but the one thing that is, uh, I'm sorry, Mark Rich, Seth Rich is a different,

00:15:29.560 um, conspiracy, but, uh, Mark Rich in, uh, the end of the second Clinton term, but I will

00:15:35.260 say this, that it does have this kind of x-ray capability.

00:15:38.080 So I'm happy they did it because as I think that you might've mentioned, and I saw all over

00:15:43.460 Twitter, there was some brilliant enterprising young person put together a nine and a half

00:15:50.320 minute cut in a matter of what, eight hours of people talking on MSNBC, on CNN, et cetera,

00:15:58.820 about this pardon that was never going to happen.

00:16:01.880 And so the fact that it did happen is this great exposure to a number of people that rely

00:16:08.160 on hyper-partisan news sources and people that are just playing team tribal politics.

00:16:13.820 They're saying, you know, this is a man who respects the justice department and he would

00:16:19.340 never do something as politicized.

00:16:21.120 And now you have somebody like Molly John fast on MSNBC getting the news in real time and

00:16:26.520 just stopping and saying, can I process this?

00:16:30.300 No, no, you're, you have to do it in real time.

00:16:33.300 That's the job.

00:16:34.200 So like, I got nothing.

00:16:36.080 It's like, no, you have something you don't want to say.

00:16:39.280 Yeah, say it.

00:16:40.180 That's exactly right.

00:16:41.340 And that's been great about this is for your listeners to go find this nine minute cut.

00:16:46.980 I found it so compelling.

00:16:49.340 And I can't remember who was the, was, was Weissman, I think was the worst of them all

00:16:54.320 on MSNBC.

00:16:56.080 You know, these people just like going so over the top of this is the fundamental difference

00:17:01.580 between this wonderful president.

00:17:04.140 I'd love to have been in the anchor desk when Molly John fast was like, I've got nothing.

00:17:08.240 I mean, like, I'll give you a minute, find your balls, come back and we'll continue the

00:17:13.420 discussion.

00:17:13.920 Like, I understand you need a minute, but there's, we played that yesterday.

00:17:18.020 So if people want to hear it, you can listen to that and Weissman.

00:17:20.480 Um, but here's a good one from Dan Goldman, who I used to know a little bit when I was

00:17:25.560 at NBC is such a transformation.

00:17:27.140 That guy, when he was coming on, when I was at NBC, he was trying to be like this moderate.

00:17:30.720 I think at the time he was a more moderate guy.

00:17:32.440 Then he ran for Congress and went far left and insane in his Biden defending.

00:17:36.720 It's just such lies.

00:17:37.980 So here he is on CNN here with, um, Brianna Keelar, who makes him watch the old clip of

00:17:44.220 himself.

00:17:44.740 Watch.

00:17:45.260 Great.

00:17:46.080 In July of 2023, just after that plea deal fell through, this is what you said.

00:17:50.720 I want to watch.

00:17:53.540 Do you think a pardon for his son would be a mistake?

00:17:56.680 Yes.

00:17:59.680 And I don't think there's any chance that president Biden is going to do that.

00:18:03.260 Merrick Garland kept on a Trump appointed U S attorney to investigate the president's

00:18:08.540 son.

00:18:08.920 If there is not an indication of the independence of the department of justice beyond that, I

00:18:14.020 don't know what, what we could look for.

00:18:17.800 What does that feel like watching yourself back then reassuring people that Biden was not

00:18:23.420 going to issue a pardon for his son?

00:18:26.680 Yeah.

00:18:28.560 And I think that if that plea agreement and that plea deal had gone through, uh, there

00:18:33.200 would be no pardon.

00:18:34.460 Uh, that was a satisfactory outcome.

00:18:38.880 It had already fallen.

00:18:41.440 Sorry.

00:18:41.820 She says good for her.

00:18:43.100 You took him at his word.

00:18:44.660 So what does that feel like knowing that he's gone back on it?

00:18:50.040 Well, as I said, I I'm, I'm disappointed that, um, after the plea fell through and it became

00:18:59.000 clear about why it did, including Republican congressional intervention in this case, uh, which made this

00:19:08.480 case very unique, but that's all, everything he said happened, happened before Joe Biden promised

00:19:16.120 not to pardon.

00:19:18.120 So that was just spinning, spinning, spinning.

00:19:21.120 It's so fun to watch him squirm.

00:19:22.980 Good for her.

00:19:23.600 I've criticized her a lot and she deserves it, but that was a good moment.

00:19:27.120 Like rub his face in it.

00:19:27.940 It was too long of a question, by the way.

00:19:29.740 Don't ask somebody how you feel.

00:19:31.460 Just say, you took him at his word and then let them respond.

00:19:34.200 I don't like that.

00:19:35.400 I kind of liked how does it make you feel?

00:19:37.380 I, I kind of like different, different, I feel bad.

00:19:41.920 If Dan Coleman had any, like any confidence, you know, or any sense of honesty, he would

00:19:46.940 laugh.

00:19:47.300 He'd be like bad.

00:19:48.600 I feel embarrassed.

00:19:49.860 Yeah.

00:19:50.200 I, you know, like he could have put it on Biden.

00:19:53.180 He could have in that moment, put it on Biden and said he embarrassed us all those of us who

00:19:57.840 believed him, but he is just, here he is again, just doing the president's bidding.

00:20:02.100 Even if you want, if he makes himself into yet again, the court gesture.

00:20:07.360 Imagine how much better politics would begin to be in this country.

00:20:11.240 We're not even politics or sort of political culture.

00:20:13.840 If we re, uh, imagined or re reinstated the idea that once in a while, at least you say,

00:20:20.440 gosh, sorry for lying.

00:20:22.360 Whoops.

00:20:22.980 Sorry that I, something that I asserted turned out not to be true.

00:20:25.900 A prediction I made was wrong.

00:20:27.660 I mean, I predicted that JD Vance wouldn't become the Senator of Ohio, uh, cause he wasn't

00:20:31.820 a talented politician.

00:20:32.740 I was wrong.

00:20:33.580 I probably said something like that on the show.

00:20:35.180 Sorry, wrong.

00:20:35.840 Uh, that's why we try not to make predictions, but like to actually carry water for a politician

00:20:41.020 and then be confronted with it.

00:20:43.240 And you just kind of keep carrying water.

00:20:45.460 I mean, let's keep in mind that the reason why that plea deal fell through is cause it

00:20:50.480 was a weird plea deal.

00:20:51.920 It was a strange thing.

00:20:52.640 Um, it was tried to do for him what this pardon pardon did for him.

00:20:57.880 Exactly.

00:20:58.300 Yeah.

00:20:58.540 Wipe out.

00:20:58.940 Stretched backwards.

00:21:00.000 Every crime.

00:21:02.020 And going back to 2014 is a pretty weird thing considering that we are talking about tax, uh,

00:21:09.080 fraud and a gun charge.

00:21:11.620 Um, and so what are we, why, and why are we putting the judge into position to decide whether

00:21:16.360 the terms of the plea deal are being met or not?

00:21:18.800 The judge was rightfully, uh, scornful of that fact.

00:21:22.240 All of that, uh, looks bad.

00:21:23.740 And this whole clothing that Democrats do in the media does, um, of, uh, Oh no, we are

00:21:29.560 the ones who really care about the rule of law and the norms.

00:21:32.360 Uh, we're not going to hear much about norms for a while.

00:21:34.440 I do predict, but, uh, we care about all that stuff.

00:21:37.480 Uh, again, they have already swept under the rug that back in February when Robert Herr

00:21:42.820 came out with this report about why we're not going to prosecute Joe Biden for the documents

00:21:46.000 case.

00:21:46.700 Um, what did Democrats do then?

00:21:48.800 Did they respect the independence of the judiciary?

00:21:51.480 Did they say up just a professional over here doing his work?

00:21:54.840 No, they threw him led by Kamala Harris under the bus for daring to suggest in February of

00:22:00.440 the year of our Lord, 2024, that maybe Joe Biden is kind of too old to be prosecuted because

00:22:05.820 jurors would think that he's an old man who's forgetful.

00:22:08.300 They absolutely threw him under the bus, called him a Republican, said this and that.

00:22:13.100 Um, they did that in real time because it was politically expedient.

00:22:15.740 That's what politicians do, whether they are Democratic politicians or Republican politicians.

00:22:20.760 The very few Republicans at all that deserve anything like respect from normal human beings

00:22:27.340 are ones who could, uh, occasionally admit error and act like decent human beings.

00:22:33.040 Dan Goldman can't.

00:22:33.700 Norms and institutions is the new, um, experts, right?

00:22:40.000 It's just, we've stopped believing those terms, like stop throwing those at us.

00:22:44.580 Like no, no one believes that anymore.

00:22:46.260 Go ahead, Moynihan.

00:22:46.720 Yeah, I just think it's worse in a way because he has an out, uh, you know, when Matt says

00:22:52.820 liar, he's not a liar.

00:22:54.780 He didn't lie about this.

00:22:56.420 He trusted someone.

00:22:58.000 He trusted that what Joe Biden said was going to be true.

00:23:01.320 And you can come on the other side of that, as you pointed out, Megan, and just be like,

00:23:06.460 look, you know, the president made this promise to us, to the voters, um, you know, Jen Psaki

00:23:12.960 on her show on MSNBC, uh, Corinne Jean-Pierre in front of the lectern every day, promising

00:23:18.240 us that this wouldn't happen because it stinks of corruption.

00:23:22.800 Um, you, but people are too obsessed with the tribal politics and people like independent

00:23:28.360 actors.

00:23:28.880 When Jared Polis comes out from Colorado and says, this is no good.

00:23:33.380 And you see him get leaped on by all of these people that are within the firmament of, you

00:23:39.020 know, democratic party politics and machine politics.

00:23:42.000 But you got to look at the voters.

00:23:43.900 The voters don't like being lied to.

00:23:46.220 And there's no way around this one.

00:23:48.640 The liar here is Joe Biden.

00:23:50.180 If, uh, Mr. Levi Strauss, uh, scion to the fortune wants to say, you know, well, um, uh,

00:23:56.880 Dan Goldman, by the way, is just like you and I, he's a scion to the Levi Strauss fortune.

00:24:02.840 And I think there's a great grandfather that was like the president.

00:24:05.660 So this is like a lot of money for a lot of years, but just like you and I, you could

00:24:08.900 just say, look, I was misled on this.

00:24:11.960 I mean, who do you have fealty to Joe Biden is leaving office.

00:24:16.420 He's not going on Mount Rushmore.

00:24:17.960 He might go to Mount Rushmore just for a visit, but he's like, wander around for a little

00:24:23.080 bit.

00:24:23.320 That'd be fun.

00:24:23.900 Um, they gave us Kamala Harris, which is a total, total disaster.

00:24:28.700 The democratic party is in the point, like a baseball team that goes in the last place.

00:24:33.480 It's a rebuilding year and it's totally fine to throw Joe Biden under the bus, but there's

00:24:39.640 so it's a habitual thing where they're just like, we got to go out there and protect our

00:24:46.640 guy.

00:24:47.080 It just makes you look stupid and it makes you look untrustworthy.

00:24:49.740 But I want to read you guys some of what the New York times said about this and their

00:24:55.700 attempt to cover it up.

00:24:56.620 But before I do take a look at Dave Portnoy and his meltdown in response to this whole

00:25:01.300 thing.

00:25:02.360 Your brain is broken.

00:25:04.160 Your brain is broken.

00:25:05.140 You don't get it because here's the thing.

00:25:07.660 What the Democrats have done for, I don't know, 12 years have taken this moral high ground

00:25:12.680 that we're the righteous party, the truth, honesty, integrity, and Trump is a threat to

00:25:19.040 the markets.

00:25:19.640 He's Hitler and he's a Nazi and this and that.

00:25:22.860 And then the Democrats, whether it's the primary or this time and again, they're worse than

00:25:29.420 anything Trump's ever done.

00:25:30.840 So if you're like, but, but, but, but it's not that.

00:25:32.940 It's the lecturing, it's the Democrats, this engine, just lying straight to our face, pretending

00:25:40.380 they're the moral righteous authority and thinking the American people are so stupid

00:25:46.020 that we don't see through it.

00:25:47.960 Blow up the Democratic Party.

00:25:49.740 You guys are fucking scumbag liars and you prove it time and again.

00:25:54.420 And this is just the latest in a long line with Hunter Biden.

00:25:57.800 Yeah, I would pardon my son too if I had one, if I could save his ass too.

00:26:01.520 I just wouldn't lie about it.

00:26:02.960 Like you guys.

00:26:05.040 Exactly.

00:26:05.860 Fucking scumbag liars.

00:26:07.300 I can relate to that sentiment.

00:26:09.860 It's Massachusetts, man.

00:26:11.300 It's just like a guy on the street in my home state like, dude, this guy's a fucking liar.

00:26:16.700 I can't believe it.

00:26:17.720 Like, it's just this accent from Dave Portnoy convinces me of everything he says.

00:26:22.220 Yeah, I'm very much in line with that thinking.

00:26:25.200 Like I'm the whiff of corruption, all of that stuff.

00:26:27.940 Sure.

00:26:28.500 Ultimately though, he does have this presidential prerogative.

00:26:31.360 It happens to be his son.

00:26:33.320 The actual issue is the way that you went about this.

00:26:36.260 The lying, the dishonesty, and perhaps it's also fair to flag the overstatement on the

00:26:42.140 part of the people on the left who were like, oh, look at this, this very honorable man who

00:26:45.740 could never possibly do the thing, the most bad thing, which definitely separates him from

00:26:50.400 Trump.

00:26:51.100 Actually, it's very different.

00:26:52.880 And actually-

00:26:53.200 Okay, what about this, Camille?

00:26:54.540 What if it's not lying?

00:26:56.060 What if it is, as the New York Times has told us, just a change of mind?

00:27:01.320 A dark sky had fallen over Nantucket, Massachusetts on Saturday evening when President Biden left

00:27:07.640 church.

00:27:08.540 What a godly man.

00:27:09.560 Alongside his family after his final Thanksgiving as president.

00:27:14.460 Inside a borrowed vacation compound earlier in the week with its views of the Nantucket

00:27:21.600 Harbor, Mr. Biden had met with his wife, Jill Biden.

00:27:25.440 I'm going into Hollywood, 1950s, and his son, Hunter Biden, to discuss a decision that had

00:27:33.720 tormented him for months.

00:27:36.240 The issue?

00:27:37.320 A pardon that would clear Hunter of years of legal trouble.

00:27:43.200 Something the president had repeatedly insisted he would not do.

00:27:48.240 A pardon was the one thing he could do for his troubled son.

00:27:53.280 A recovering addict who he felt had been subjected to years of public pain.

00:28:04.520 Give him that Red Scare hooch again, Megan.

00:28:07.820 I gotta say, yeah, I mean, it sounds like the Philadelphia story.

00:28:11.680 You're like, I can't believe it.

00:28:12.680 It's been in Nantucket Harbor, see?

00:28:14.900 But also, you're in Nantucket Harbor, and you're being defended by the Levi's scion.

00:28:21.260 It's really relatable.

00:28:22.220 I'm sorry, other parts of Massachusetts gave Portnoy.

00:28:26.280 It's the non-Nantucket versions.

00:28:28.640 I appreciate that.

00:28:30.540 That's right.

00:28:31.100 No, but this is what I was saying yesterday.

00:28:33.440 Like, this is what gets to me.

00:28:35.480 You know, and I told the audience, they know the story, but like, I'm not the only one.

00:28:38.460 Millions of people have this in their family where somebody you know and love got swept

00:28:42.740 up into the opioid crisis.

00:28:44.280 That wasn't Hunter's thing.

00:28:45.540 I mean, he was a crack cocaine, whatever.

00:28:47.780 But, you know, my sister actually legitimately got caught up in the opioid crisis by a doctor

00:28:53.000 telling her this thing was not going to be addictive, and then it was, and really never

00:28:57.420 righted the ship again.

00:28:59.700 You know, and she died two years ago at age 58.

00:29:01.960 And I, I'm just, it, it makes me so angry because she had no advantages like this.

00:29:09.400 She did not have a presidential connection, nor did my, you know, place in the public sphere

00:29:15.120 or my financial resources save her.

00:29:18.440 She didn't have the connection she needed because there was some petty anti-crime that

00:29:23.520 she got involved in, basically like a shoplifting thing.

00:29:26.380 But anyway, my point is, it wasn't like a massive bank robbery, but once you have that

00:29:31.560 on your record, you're effed.

00:29:34.000 She could just never get rid of it.

00:29:35.800 She couldn't get a job.

00:29:37.040 Even when she got clean and sober, which she had been for many, many years by the time she

00:29:40.760 passed, she could never get a job once it's on your record.

00:29:44.380 And they want us to feel sorry for this rich, spoiled fucking brat, Hunter Biden, who's had

00:29:51.860 an entire life of privilege as the son of a senator, the son of a sitting vice president,

00:29:57.720 the son of a president who had every advantage in the book and squandered them all after exploiting

00:30:05.460 them to the detriment of our country with his dad's hand guiding the ship.

00:30:10.800 And now we're supposed to feel sorry for these two?

00:30:14.380 Well, I don't at all.

00:30:16.280 And the New York Times doesn't get it.

00:30:19.480 The thing that you're talking about, Moynihan, the thing you like about Portnoy and the thing

00:30:23.620 that you're picking up on in what I read, the dark sky in Nantucket after leaving the

00:30:30.560 church, sure.

00:30:31.580 His final Thanksgiving is president inside a borrowed vacation compound on Nantucket.

00:30:38.800 Like with views of the net, like shut up.

00:30:42.440 No one in the country who's sitting in jail or whose kid is about to go to jail for a gun

00:30:47.820 charge or tax evasion or drugs gives two shits about your problems.

00:30:55.360 There's a guy sitting in jail.

00:30:57.340 My colleague at Reason, Jacob Solem, was one of the best journalists in the country for my

00:31:00.640 money.

00:31:00.920 He wrote about a really good piece about this pardon and all the hypocrisies of it and

00:31:06.760 the dissonances and the things that Biden has talked about about lying, which goes way

00:31:10.740 beyond just his saying that he was not going to do it and then doing it just the way that

00:31:16.280 he characterized Republican pressure, this and that.

00:31:18.940 But there are people who are in jail right now for serving four-year sentences because

00:31:25.020 they lied on their application to get a gun about being a legal in their state cannabis

00:31:31.160 user.

00:31:31.740 That's it.

00:31:32.660 They weren't a crackhead.

00:31:33.840 They weren't going down the slide in a way that Michael Moynihan still feels pretty envious

00:31:37.760 about.

00:31:38.560 They weren't doing all the things.

00:31:40.100 They didn't get a cushy job at Burisma.

00:31:42.320 Well, their dad was in charge.

00:31:44.520 The dad, the vice president was in charge of the, I don't know, Ukraine portfolio in

00:31:49.600 the Obama administration.

00:31:51.860 Speaking of which, I mean, is that good parenting?

00:31:55.300 Let's see.

00:31:55.880 I've got a troubled fail son over here.

00:31:58.560 He's going to get a job that he would not otherwise get unless I was vice president,

00:32:02.540 perhaps with his portfolio.

00:32:04.100 It has nothing to do with any of his skills.

00:32:06.480 I'm going to sign off on that and give him a high five.

00:32:08.880 That's not good parenting.

00:32:09.960 Sorry to say that out loud, but it's just not.

00:32:14.100 But there are people who are in jail for stuff like this.

00:32:17.100 Wouldn't you think that you might go out and find a few of those to pardon as well?

00:32:21.340 Maybe have second thoughts about you wanting to increase the penalties for these types of

00:32:27.740 things because you hate guns so much.

00:32:30.140 And no, he's not taking that opportunity.

00:32:32.180 And this is one of the infuriating things about all politicized pardons.

00:32:36.120 And of course, Donald Trump did political pardons as well.

00:32:39.320 And he's about to do some more, I'm sure.

00:32:42.280 The problem with that is that there are genuine people who should be pardoned.

00:32:46.960 We've seen the last three presidents deserve some credit for pardoning some amount of people.

00:32:53.460 It's not nearly enough for people who are languishing in jail for things that we no longer

00:32:56.960 consider crimes and were never violent.

00:32:59.120 You should be spending your entire presidency doing that.

00:33:02.300 But particularly after you have pardoned your failed son and lied about it while doing it

00:33:07.260 and cloaking at the mantle of truth, go out and find people who are in jail, who are less

00:33:12.180 reprobate crackheads and get them out of jail now, too.

00:33:15.760 Yeah.

00:33:16.080 Biden didn't just sign off.

00:33:16.960 Trump did criminal justice reform when he was president.

00:33:18.960 I mean, you know, I mean, that was a lot of people who were affected by that.

00:33:22.920 Forget the pardon power.

00:33:23.800 He actually changed the law to let some people out of prison.

00:33:25.760 A lot of them.

00:33:26.780 But Biden's done nothing.

00:33:27.880 Biden tightened these laws, these very same gun laws that wound up coming back to haunt

00:33:31.120 his son.

00:33:32.100 And now and then he gave him a pardon once he got convicted of the damn crime and wants

00:33:35.600 us to feel sorry for him.

00:33:36.780 This is more from The New York Times, Moynihan.

00:33:39.420 Mr. Biden's decision has tarnished a storied public legacy.

00:33:47.000 Storied, I say.

00:33:48.520 That began more than 50 years ago.

00:33:50.660 It began more than 50 years ago at a hospital bedside of two sons who survived a car crash

00:33:56.600 that killed his first wife and young daughter.

00:33:58.880 Several people close to Mr. Biden said the decision created a conflict between two core

00:34:03.460 identities, the anguished father trying to protect his son and the president who takes

00:34:10.180 pride and standing on principle.

00:34:14.400 He's a prideful man.

00:34:16.020 I just want to do everything in the Kate Hepburn accent.

00:34:20.200 That relates to what you were saying about your sister.

00:34:24.840 I mean, this is a thing that most people are very reticent about saying and talking about,

00:34:30.700 but I think it's kind of necessary at this point.

00:34:34.280 We all know somebody.

00:34:36.260 I mean, I know people very close to me who have gone through very similar things.

00:34:39.620 Drug addiction, you know, in trouble with the law, et cetera.

00:34:44.000 And I'm not talking about myself, Matt Welch, but I know other people close to me.

00:34:49.440 But, you know, if they were to lean on these things in their life, in the mistakes that they

00:34:55.880 made, people talk about this as a tragedy, as an addiction, all true.

00:35:00.120 But in times when you actually have to also say, we made mistakes.

00:35:03.280 I made a mistake as a person.

00:35:04.600 I'm trying to correct that mistake.

00:35:05.600 And they don't have this kind of, you know, excuse factory.

00:35:11.680 So when you think about Joe Biden, and again, this is the thing that people don't want to say

00:35:14.980 because it's kind of, you know, impolite to say so.

00:35:17.780 It's car crash.

00:35:19.220 It is a bow and a rock.

00:35:22.080 It is Hunter's drug issue.

00:35:24.260 I get that these are very difficult things for a family.

00:35:27.520 And I have an enormous amount of sympathy for that.

00:35:30.040 But I start kind of losing that sympathy when it's deployed, not mentioned,

00:35:35.380 but deployed is the correct verb.

00:35:37.540 It is like it is deployed in a political way.

00:35:41.180 I mean, we've all been through this and it doesn't resonate.

00:35:44.680 Right.

00:35:44.980 The reason it doesn't resonate is because we don't get out of trouble.

00:35:48.460 We don't get board seats on Ukrainian energy firms with no background in this.

00:35:53.680 We don't get art shows, despite the fact that our art is absolute garbage in any anybody

00:35:59.280 with any taste in art understands this.

00:36:01.960 This like he has had a path out of this for so long.

00:36:05.420 Joe Biden was Scranton Joe, working class man who took the Amtrak every day.

00:36:12.160 I don't buy that, but OK, let's grant him that.

00:36:15.780 His son was not.

00:36:17.280 These are people who grew up in extraordinary privilege.

00:36:20.540 I just made a joke about Dave Portnoy, you know, the non-Nantucket versus the Nantucket.

00:36:24.720 But Dave Portnoy, I don't know if people remember this, but he got stuck in his boat

00:36:29.240 off of Nantucket this summer, which, by the way, is shows you you're not a blue blood.

00:36:33.460 Do you have to call the Coast Guard?

00:36:36.580 But Dave Portnoy is like he got rich later.

00:36:40.460 He's like a working class guy with a working class accent.

00:36:43.220 And we have sympathy for him.

00:36:44.700 We understand somebody who's made it.

00:36:46.520 And we look at someone like Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, you know, scratching his chin, saying,

00:36:51.940 what shall we do with dear Hunter when he's sitting, you know, in his mansion in a borrowed

00:36:58.560 mansion, by the way, he didn't buy it like Barack Obama did.

00:37:03.940 But probably owned by Jim Biden, who's also going down.

00:37:07.260 Is that the next pardon, by the way?

00:37:09.220 Is that the next blank check?

00:37:11.460 By the way, if I were Trump, I'd definitely pardon myself in the wake of all this.

00:37:14.780 I would. And then we'll have weeks of stories of whether pardon can be given by a president

00:37:18.500 to himself. But I would be pardoning myself.

00:37:20.660 Now, I'd not forget the J6 defendants.

00:37:22.500 I'd definitely be pardoning myself and saying these people are lunatics.

00:37:25.180 Even Joe Biden admits they cannot be trusted.

00:37:27.120 They've already said that they want a dismissal without prejudice of these federal charges

00:37:30.740 against me. F them.

00:37:32.500 I'm not putting myself. Why should I?

00:37:34.300 Why should I have less protection than Hunter Biden?

00:37:37.760 I want to play this for you guys.

00:37:40.180 Chuck Todd.

00:37:41.640 He's he's in the Catherine Hepburn field when he looks at.

00:37:44.780 Joe Biden, at least at least he was four years ago on Joe Biden Inauguration Day.

00:37:52.280 Listen here.

00:37:53.500 To watch Joe Biden today, it was such a stark reminder of of how as a country we do seek

00:38:00.580 out whatever we think we were missing, you know, whatever it is we thought we were missing

00:38:05.020 in the previous president.

00:38:05.940 He is the better angel president.

00:38:09.540 Joe Biden believes he's he's eternally optimistic.

00:38:13.860 He's not cynical.

00:38:16.000 The guy's been in Washington so long, you would think, you know, some of us are here too long

00:38:19.720 and you become cynical.

00:38:21.400 He's never cynical.

00:38:22.860 He still thinks the better angels exist.

00:38:24.920 And it was just such a such an important moment.

00:38:27.600 OK, stand by, stand by.

00:38:31.160 That's the that's the my boyfriend's so hot and dreamy.

00:38:34.420 He's never going to cheat on me.

00:38:36.320 Portion of our story.

00:38:37.920 And here is the expected epilogue.

00:38:42.900 And there is you want to you want to read you want to you want to get angry just as a

00:38:47.420 as somebody in just all these mixed emotions.

00:38:50.740 You read the Hallie Biden transcript and that's Bo's widow.

00:38:54.360 Yes.

00:38:56.440 And essentially, he turned her into a crack addict.

00:39:01.920 And this was all happening in 2017, 2018.

00:39:06.220 And Joe and Joe Biden were so concerned about their family that they decided to run for president.

00:39:12.320 Yep.

00:39:12.940 Oh, I just so when you talk about the word selfish, I it's almost like the word doesn't.

00:39:19.100 I mean, I their decision to run for president, put the entire Democratic Party and the United

00:39:24.820 States of America in the position that it's in now.

00:39:28.900 Jeez, my my boyfriend isn't loyal.

00:39:31.880 My boyfriend is bad.

00:39:35.720 God, don't fall.

00:39:37.460 Who doesn't have a show, who's just in front of some weird screen with the changing landscapes

00:39:41.200 behind it with Chris.

00:39:42.540 So is a like word right on.

00:39:45.680 Is that what is that what makes the difference?

00:39:47.380 Is that what like flips the switch from like obsequious to honest, like all of a sudden?

00:39:51.440 And I mean, Matt, earlier in this conversation, you mentioned like how Joe Biden just kind of

00:39:56.980 signed off on Hunter's joining the family business in which he and his uncle like fleece foreign

00:40:02.700 governments for tons and tons of cash because of their connection to the president or then

00:40:06.980 vice president.

00:40:08.180 Like he didn't do just do that.

00:40:09.940 He also lied about it a lot.

00:40:12.160 I don't know anything about this.

00:40:13.400 I've never been participated in any of Hunter's meetings.

00:40:16.360 And we actually know that those things are fundamentally.

00:40:18.200 Never been in business with my son.

00:40:20.140 Yeah.

00:40:20.400 If you're going to talk about the political dimensions of this and kind of bring in all

00:40:23.940 of the family matters related to it, you probably ought to mention that fact as well,

00:40:28.300 that this is dog Joe Biden for years, not just Hunter Biden, but Joe Biden, because he

00:40:33.780 has been so reliably dishonest about it, misrepresenting the degree to which it stinks of corruption

00:40:39.240 and it reveals something really filthy about the way he and his family have profited mightily

00:40:45.360 from his time in politics, not just good old fashioned public service.

00:40:50.080 Like all of that is part of the story as well.

00:40:52.520 And all of that in many ways is a tale as old as time.

00:40:56.120 But it's also Joe Biden's story.

00:40:58.540 That is who he is.

00:40:59.740 He was never the savior of democracy.

00:41:02.060 He was never this man who was pure as a different person.

00:41:04.640 But he's not cynical, Camille.

00:41:05.320 Like he was always this guy too.

00:41:07.460 He's always lied.

00:41:08.940 That's what you do in politics.

00:41:10.280 Yeah, he's definitely not cynical because when your son joins the board of a Ukrainian

00:41:16.960 energy company on the heels of an uprising in Ukraine in which Viktor Yanukovych is shuffled

00:41:23.600 off to Moscow and there's a lot of tumult in the country, you as a father who, as Matt

00:41:29.540 pointed out, your remit is the Ukraine portfolio.

00:41:33.240 You don't have the power to say, at the very least, son, this looks really bad.

00:41:39.360 Maybe, maybe you should.

00:41:40.480 Maybe don't do this.

00:41:41.760 Not maybe don't do this.

00:41:43.300 I'm the vice president.

00:41:44.460 Don't do this.

00:41:45.360 I tell you not to do this.

00:41:47.040 But there's no cynicism in him.

00:41:48.780 Like they said to Iran and Hezbollah.

00:41:51.520 Don't.

00:41:52.220 Yeah.

00:41:52.580 Please don't.

00:41:53.800 I mean, this wish casting is unbelievable.

00:41:56.320 I have to say that I hadn't seen those two Todd clips, one, because I'm not on FaceTime

00:42:02.340 calls with Chris Eliza.

00:42:03.740 I think it's the only way to get that one.

00:42:05.820 I presumed, Megan, you were actually on that call in your screen recording.

00:42:09.600 I'm sorry.

00:42:09.780 My producers earn every penny of their salary.

00:42:13.180 Good Lord.

00:42:14.500 You should get hazard pay for watching that stuff.

00:42:16.480 But the first one, I mean, it is so obsequious and over the top and fawning and wish casting.

00:42:24.860 This is what we this is not what is going to be heat.

00:42:28.160 But but he's claiming that this is the truth.

00:42:30.540 Right.

00:42:30.820 We have seen through his tenure in Washington.

00:42:33.120 This is absolutely baffling to anyone who's watched Biden's tenure is that he's not cynical.

00:42:37.460 He's not a creature of Washington.

00:42:38.640 He's managed to stay above the fray.

00:42:41.180 And it's like and then to go four years later and be like, oh, by the way, he was running for

00:42:45.520 president.

00:42:46.580 Because his family was in trouble.

00:42:48.920 And by the way, his his son was smoking crack and having a relationship with his dead brother's

00:42:55.900 widow.

00:42:57.240 I mean, it's the most Mexican soap opera.

00:43:00.980 It's so insane.

00:43:02.380 And you didn't know that at the time.

00:43:04.000 You didn't see that at the time, because I'll tell you what that would be.

00:43:06.660 That would be like the most cynical thing I can think of to run for president for that

00:43:10.200 reason.

00:43:11.020 Well, it's interesting to see, like, for some, I don't know if the truth is finally

00:43:15.900 becoming apparent, you know, like the Chuck Todd's of the world, the Jared Polis of the

00:43:20.080 world, Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado, a Democrat.

00:43:23.880 He's criticized Biden.

00:43:25.400 Go take a look at his his comments under his tweet.

00:43:28.560 They're killing him.

00:43:29.560 The Democrats are so angry there.

00:43:31.980 They feel betrayed that he would criticize Joe Biden over this.

00:43:35.820 So some some Democrats and media commentators have spoken out like that, like this is bullshit.

00:43:41.340 F him.

00:43:42.600 What has he done?

00:43:43.760 And then you have The New York Times with Under the Dark Night started 50 years ago.

00:43:48.940 Man tormented.

00:43:50.320 By the way, just for kicks.

00:43:51.520 Here's one more of those.

00:43:52.680 This is ABC's Mary Bruce and sought to.

00:43:56.460 Well, this is something that President Biden and this White House were adamant that he would

00:44:00.320 not do.

00:44:01.020 But this morning, with just weeks left in office, the president is now protecting his

00:44:04.920 only living son with a sweeping pardon.

00:44:07.400 The about face comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office.

00:44:12.300 Trump has vowed retribution against his political opponents and has repeatedly bashed Hunter

00:44:17.320 and the Biden family, accusing them without evidence of corruption.

00:44:22.060 Without evidence.

00:44:22.880 Wow.

00:44:24.400 We pivoted to a without evidence from Trump?

00:44:27.360 Without evidence.

00:44:28.300 Yes.

00:44:28.980 In the middle of Donald Trump.

00:44:30.480 No evidence of corruption against the Biden's?

00:44:33.460 His only living son?

00:44:34.180 The only living son, by the way, is gross, I have to say.

00:44:38.240 I know.

00:44:39.120 Once again, he uses it and so do his media enablers.

00:44:43.340 They also use it.

00:44:44.620 But anyway, more importantly, just wanted to show you a little bit more of Dark Night 50 years

00:44:49.620 ago coverage from ABC's Mary Bruce.

00:44:52.100 But that brings me to something I think is special that you're really going to enjoy, and

00:44:56.240 that's from your friend and everyone's, Don Lemon.

00:44:59.700 Oh, boy.

00:45:01.620 Good morning, Lemon Nation.

00:45:03.160 I missed you guys.

00:45:04.040 Did you guys miss me?

00:45:05.040 What's good for the Donald is good for the Hunter.

00:45:10.340 So if you're going to talk about selective prosecution and you're going to talk about

00:45:14.060 lawfare, okay.

00:45:15.520 That's why I said Joe Biden should use it, too.

00:45:19.080 And also, this whole idea about a president having complete immunity.

00:45:24.680 Well, maybe Joe Biden needs to do some shit before he leaves, because then he would just

00:45:29.940 be immune.

00:45:31.300 What?

00:45:31.820 What if he jailed Donald Trump for, I don't know, January 6th?

00:45:36.220 I'm just saying.

00:45:37.420 How do you do that?

00:45:38.240 What's good for the Donald is good for the Joe Biden.

00:45:49.140 The economy is messed up, and they're paying more for goods.

00:45:55.580 They don't even care if their family members are going to get deported.

00:45:58.160 They don't care.

00:45:58.760 It says, oh, my God, I can't believe it.

00:46:00.940 What happened with the gas prices?

00:46:03.360 Don't do the voice talk.

00:46:04.600 You know what?

00:46:04.940 I don't drive.

00:46:05.440 I take the subway.

00:46:06.680 Y'all want to have dinner tonight?

00:46:08.240 What?

00:46:08.720 That's my attitude.

00:46:10.660 What?

00:46:11.140 And I wouldn't help them do nothing.

00:46:14.580 I got a fact.

00:46:15.500 There's a subway in Sag Harbor?

00:46:17.440 Yeah, I was going to say.

00:46:19.280 You seem done out there.

00:46:22.300 That's a lemination.

00:46:24.160 I kept on thinking that my internet correction was going out.

00:46:27.300 Hello, my lemon heads.

00:46:28.300 Now it's lemination.

00:46:29.920 Lemination is a lemination suit.

00:46:34.520 I kept on thinking.

00:46:35.720 I mean, I think he was trying to do some legal analysis there.

00:46:37.680 I don't know what that was.

00:46:40.580 Just jail him.

00:46:41.620 He'd just go over to his house and put him in jail.

00:46:44.100 Get on this Sag Harbor subway.

00:46:46.700 Take the subway to Washington.

00:46:49.520 And that is, you should have shown the beginning of that clip where he gets kicked in the head by a horse.

00:46:54.140 Because he's just like on the fritz the whole time.

00:46:57.640 I literally thought my connection was going out.

00:46:59.500 I was like, oh, what?

00:47:00.300 I think I lost them.

00:47:01.840 Because there was, what, 10 seconds between his very deep thoughts.

00:47:05.580 I think, by the way, the Don Lemon thing.

00:47:06.960 And I feel bad picking on Don Lemon.

00:47:10.640 Because he obviously has some cognitive issues.

00:47:14.360 And the decline has been pretty significant.

00:47:18.180 But I think we first saw that with his interview with Elon Musk.

00:47:22.580 And I am watching this and thinking, like, how on earth did they keep him at CNN for that long?

00:47:30.260 From the black hole swallowed up the Malaysian flight?

00:47:34.420 Gee, what could it have been?

00:47:36.300 Let me really try to think what it was that kept him in his spot as long as they did.

00:47:43.680 Camille seems to have frozen.

00:47:47.500 He's black and he's gay, as he said repeatedly when he was trying to get them not to fire him.

00:47:51.660 Did he say that?

00:47:53.100 I'm a black gay man.

00:47:53.880 Just like Camille.

00:47:55.040 Cable knows prime time.

00:47:56.860 Yeah.

00:47:57.620 Every time we try to fire Camille, he says that, too.

00:48:01.000 Yeah.

00:48:01.520 So annoying.

00:48:03.080 He's saying that he's open-minded suddenly.

00:48:05.980 He's like gay adjacent.

00:48:07.680 No comment.

00:48:08.320 No comment.

00:48:10.680 Camille used to be spelled differently.

00:48:12.320 Because my team is so confident, they have pulled the clip that really sums up this entire thing.

00:48:23.220 And this is really what Joe Biden is doing.

00:48:26.180 And the media is either shocked, horrified, or making excuses for him.

00:48:30.720 But here's Joe Biden.

00:48:33.260 Come on, flounder.

00:48:35.740 Can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes?

00:48:38.560 You fucked up.

00:48:39.900 You trusted us.

00:48:42.320 That is it.

00:48:43.600 That's amazing.

00:48:45.060 Still works.

00:48:47.280 All these years later.

00:48:48.760 I think there's one point that's worth reflecting on for everybody of all political persuasions,

00:48:53.700 including those who are enjoying lapping up everyone's tears.

00:48:56.840 It's that as soon as you get yourself in the position of, this is the vessel through which I can smite the person I hate.

00:49:04.700 So that's what Chuck Todd thought Joe Biden was on Inauguration Day.

00:49:08.200 I'm sure he called him Joseph Robinette Biden II to show it.

00:49:11.340 Then you are going to tell yourself a fable about how honorable he is and how swelled with emotion and honor America was in doing that.

00:49:20.860 And you see people invest Donald Trump with the same kind of hopes as they're using him to beat back the left.

00:49:26.300 Don't place your hopes in politicians, people.

00:49:28.920 They're going to lie to you.

00:49:29.860 That's what they do.

00:49:30.740 That's how they got there.

00:49:32.260 Don't start.

00:49:32.940 You're going to embarrass yourself.

00:49:34.180 It's a very good point.

00:49:35.300 They will disappoint you and they will all lie to you 100 percent.

00:49:38.680 Unlike the guys from the fifth column.

00:49:40.300 They are staying with me.

00:49:41.720 That's no lie.

00:49:42.800 Don't go anywhere because we will finally get to the Kamala Harris message from Thanksgiving that I haven't had a chance to discuss with anyone.

00:49:51.480 And this will be the first.

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00:51:04.180 Well, we almost missed all the fun while we were having our turkey.

00:51:08.300 And that was another turkey took to the airwaves and gave her a farewell message.

00:51:15.040 I don't know what it was, but it was glorious.

00:51:17.660 Yes, Kamala Harris decided to give us an early Christmas gift and to speak out on camera yet again

00:51:24.280 with a little Thanksgiving Day inspo, which I really appreciated because, you know,

00:51:29.820 I'd been missing her a little and gave a little message to her supporters.

00:51:34.720 We've pulled a little so you can hear how, if at all, she's changed her messaging.

00:51:40.120 The outcome of this election obviously is not what we wanted.

00:51:45.320 It is a coalition where we bring people together based on a deep love of our country

00:51:51.120 and our understanding that the strength of our country will be a function of our willingness

00:51:57.560 to put in the work and that we will do that work with a sense of joy.

00:52:03.840 Yes, with a sense of work ethic and understanding that it's going to be hard, but it's good work.

00:52:10.700 It's good work to be engaged in a collective fight for America's future, that we're all in this together.

00:52:19.140 And that work continues.

00:52:21.900 The work must continue.

00:52:23.880 So look, we still have a lot to fight for, okay?

00:52:26.960 A future where every American can pursue their dreams, ambitions, and aspirations.

00:52:32.200 I just have to remind you, don't you ever let anybody take your power from you.

00:52:38.360 Look, this mission that we have, it takes hard work.

00:52:43.880 As you've heard me say many times, we like hard work.

00:52:48.080 You just said that.

00:52:49.220 Hard work is good work.

00:52:50.620 Hard work can be joyful work.

00:52:52.880 Is that Boris Yeltsin?

00:52:56.840 That is late 90s Boris Yeltsin slash the person I was across the bar from the other night.

00:53:04.220 It was like, let me tell you something.

00:53:06.420 We got, don't let anyone ever tell you.

00:53:09.540 If anyone says that, you know that they're drunk.

00:53:11.980 Don't let anyone ever tell you.

00:53:13.660 It's like, okay, okay.

00:53:15.340 She is obviously either having a stroke or she's wasted.

00:53:19.880 And I prefer the first one.

00:53:21.580 Oh, it's amazing to watch her like, go ahead, go ahead, Matt.

00:53:26.220 Just asking the two fellas, if you have any experience of like talking with someone late

00:53:30.000 at night when they're slurring a lot and trying really hard to act like they're not.

00:53:33.800 Oh, Matt Welch.

00:53:35.000 Yeah, that's me every night.

00:53:36.240 Oh, Matt Welch.

00:53:38.340 Game knows game.

00:53:40.400 I mean, wow.

00:53:41.980 Just so like the trying to make understanding be really just four syllables.

00:53:47.900 Like you could see the mental concentration.

00:53:50.360 I'm going to do it.

00:53:51.320 I'm going to.

00:53:52.520 I'm just.

00:53:53.460 Yeah.

00:53:54.020 Totally.

00:53:54.680 She reminds me of this woman.

00:53:56.180 Doug and I were at some party.

00:53:58.460 This is years ago.

00:53:59.320 And she was at our preschool and she comes up to me drunk, very drunk at this bar.

00:54:03.700 And she's like, I need to talk to you.

00:54:07.420 Yeah.

00:54:07.660 Yeah.

00:54:07.860 That's always a good thing.

00:54:08.740 I owe you an apology.

00:54:10.640 And of course, you're like, you're forgiven.

00:54:11.800 It's fine.

00:54:12.160 We're good.

00:54:12.660 Right.

00:54:12.880 It was like, get me out of here.

00:54:14.440 She's like, no, I never liked you.

00:54:18.260 I never liked you.

00:54:20.420 And it was always very confusing because Doug is a very nice person.

00:54:26.640 Yeah.

00:54:26.820 But I never liked you.

00:54:30.120 Kind of the opposite of Moynihan, strangely.

00:54:32.640 Yeah.

00:54:32.960 Is there anyone who can come get me out of this?

00:54:35.680 Of course, all my friends were over there like, ha, ha, ha, laughing.

00:54:39.140 Anyway, finally, my love Christina came and got me and rescued me from the convo.

00:54:43.160 But my point is, that's who she reminded me of, like, I used to talk to you.

00:54:47.960 Like you said, don't you ever let someone take your power.

00:54:51.740 Power work is good work.

00:54:53.600 It's good.

00:54:54.440 It's joyful.

00:54:56.180 It is the opposite of the Katherine Hepburn mid-Atlantic accent of that clear crispness.

00:55:01.540 She's like, I don't even know.

00:55:04.440 But you have to realize something about this.

00:55:06.760 There is one important political point here.

00:55:09.400 Someone watched that.

00:55:10.660 A whole team of people watched that.

00:55:11.840 Yeah, that's good.

00:55:13.160 And they're like, you're friends across the bar laughing.

00:55:17.480 Like, oh shit, Megan's dealing with the drunk mom here.

00:55:19.840 That's her staff.

00:55:21.200 They're like, you know what?

00:55:22.400 Print it.

00:55:22.880 Put it out.

00:55:23.700 Let's put it out.

00:55:24.700 Like, just no, no.

00:55:25.300 Should we cut it?

00:55:25.880 No, no.

00:55:26.200 Just fucking put it out.

00:55:27.440 The DNC was like, check this out.

00:55:29.320 This is why we lost.

00:55:31.240 And that should have been the caption.

00:55:33.220 Good lord.

00:55:33.720 It wasn't our fault.

00:55:35.620 That's exactly right.

00:55:36.480 And it was just, she hit it all.

00:55:37.820 Right, Camille?

00:55:38.140 It was like, ambitious, aspirations, dreams.

00:55:43.380 And that thing about, like, she keeps using that line.

00:55:45.620 She used it in her concession speech or whatever that was after she lost.

00:55:48.900 Like, don't you let anybody take your power away from you.

00:55:53.640 Don't you ever.

00:55:54.460 Meanwhile, it's like, we're literally taking your power away from you on January 20th.

00:55:57.800 You're losing it all.

00:55:58.420 How much did you take her keys away from her?

00:56:00.000 Look at the lighting of it, too.

00:56:04.920 I mean, like, they set that shot up.

00:56:07.500 In the drab, beige curtains in the back.

00:56:09.740 Like, that also is very nice.

00:56:10.280 Because you're matching her jacket.

00:56:11.160 Which matches her jacket.

00:56:12.400 Yeah.

00:56:12.720 It's just a bad look.

00:56:13.160 And she's hiding in the woods, hunting a deer.

00:56:14.960 Like, the whole thing is weird.

00:56:16.500 Like, all blending.

00:56:18.040 Her hair, her jacket.

00:56:19.100 With her Glock.

00:56:19.520 But the best thing is, I know people listen to this on audio only, so I should probably

00:56:23.680 describe it.

00:56:24.100 The best is when she puts her hands together like this and puts it under her chin for a

00:56:28.360 moment.

00:56:28.780 Wait, let's show her any hands.

00:56:30.500 Yeah, this is.

00:56:31.480 Stand by.

00:56:31.740 Here we go.

00:56:32.140 Get her off the camera.

00:56:32.900 There it is.

00:56:34.080 No, that's not.

00:56:34.940 Go ahead.

00:56:35.980 Don't let anyone ever do the thing that they shouldn't do.

00:56:39.460 Because doing the thing that they shouldn't do is bad.

00:56:42.360 Never, ever.

00:56:43.660 Never do it.

00:56:44.680 It's so, it's amazing.

00:56:45.940 We're going to do a full, like, breakdown later as a separate episode of that Pod Save

00:56:51.300 America interview of her campaign team.

00:56:54.740 Yeah.

00:56:54.960 But have you ever heard so much denial and so many excuses?

00:57:01.320 And they knew enough to say, no excuses, no excuses.

00:57:04.600 And then they just deliver excuse after excuse.

00:57:07.900 Tough political environment.

00:57:08.940 Making excuses, pointing fingers while insisting you're not doing it.

00:57:12.120 And of course, not taking any responsibility for any of the mistakes made.

00:57:15.280 Because there were no mistakes made.

00:57:16.140 It was amazing.

00:57:16.540 You ran a great campaign.

00:57:17.340 Well, you listened to a chameleon.

00:57:18.300 You were like, I actually, I'm trying to feel sorry for her.

00:57:21.420 Like, she had a terrible team behind her.

00:57:23.980 As it turns out, it wasn't all her fault.

00:57:27.700 Yeah.

00:57:28.360 Although, I don't actually feel sorry for her.

00:57:30.200 But I do kind of get a little, but I don't feel sorry for her at all.

00:57:34.260 Not, not even.

00:57:34.660 You had a Don Lemon pause there when you were trying to figure out if you felt sorry for her.

00:57:38.500 Yeah, she didn't want to compete for the nomination at all.

00:57:42.180 She didn't want there to be some sort of open field.

00:57:44.840 No, no, no.

00:57:45.240 Just give it to me.

00:57:46.580 Give me all of the things.

00:57:47.600 Hand me the baton.

00:57:48.480 Same way I got the VP nod from Joe Biden.

00:57:51.340 Like, it's not really a competition.

00:57:52.780 Just give me the things.

00:57:54.560 So yeah, I can't feel sorry for her.

00:57:55.760 I will say, though, that my favorite Thanksgiving message was Donald Trump's Happy Thanksgiving post, which has become something of a tradition for him.

00:58:05.120 Like, every single one of them begins with a Happy Thanksgiving to all, including.

00:58:10.440 Haters and the losers.

00:58:11.960 It's always, always, like, the most deplorable people in the world who actually want the bad things.

00:58:17.500 Like, I still want good things for you people, too.

00:58:20.280 No matter how terrible you are.

00:58:22.020 Unbelievable.

00:58:23.740 Camille, I'm glad that you pointed out that I just want to point out that he did this in 2013, way before he was running for president, where he said, I'd like to spend my best wishes to all on 9-11 on this special day to the haters and losers, too.

00:58:40.440 Always.

00:58:41.560 On 9-11.

00:58:43.360 The haters and losers.

00:58:44.520 Which I took as a swipe at Al-Qaeda, to be honest, so I'm on his side on this one.

00:58:50.900 Yeah.

00:58:51.900 I'm going to interpret that way as well.

00:58:53.480 Speaking of Trump's truths, his post on Truth Social, he did have a hell of a one yesterday.

00:58:58.220 It reads as follows.

00:58:59.360 And for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities,

00:59:29.160 against humanity, those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America.

00:59:37.700 In all caps, again, release the hostages now.

00:59:41.020 63 hostages are believed to still be in the captivity of Hamas.

00:59:47.480 Of the some 250 who were taken, 71 have been confirmed dead.

00:59:53.700 So we don't exactly know the precise numbers of who is alive, but we believe it's some 63.

00:59:59.160 And this is what he said when he was running, too, that those hostages better be released before I even get sworn in.

01:00:06.860 And it's a very interesting situation because the Trump base, the MAGA base, is non-interventionist, interventionalist.

01:00:18.000 They really are not very pro-American power and might being exercised militarily.

01:00:25.880 Trump, I've said this before, is a little less that way than I think many in his core base.

01:00:32.700 But this is Trump clearly threatening some sort of, I think, military action.

01:00:37.380 I mean, maybe I'm overstating it.

01:00:39.160 Maybe it's just some sort of sanction I'm not reading.

01:00:41.120 But in any event, what if they don't release the hostages before he gets inaugurated?

01:00:47.260 Any thoughts?

01:00:48.500 Yeah, cut or screwed.

01:00:49.940 That's what I'm hearing.

01:00:51.940 They're not going to be a major non-NATO ally anymore.

01:00:55.600 They're going to be running into the bomb shelter is the implication of what he is saying.

01:01:00.040 I kind of agree with you, but maybe I would stand off some of the edges on his base being non-interventionist or him being non-interventionist.

01:01:08.920 I think some non-interventionists did vote for him, but he's always been a Jacksonian, right?

01:01:13.080 So he doesn't like nation building.

01:01:15.700 America doesn't like nation building, if we're being honest.

01:01:17.920 A lot of our interventionist and neoconservative pals still are kind of in denial about that.

01:01:23.560 But it is just true.

01:01:24.760 We don't like Americans soured on Afghanistan.

01:01:27.080 We soured on the Iraq war and we had reason to.

01:01:28.960 So we don't want to go and put boots on the ground, but doesn't mean we don't also want to avoid like punching someone in the face if they take some of our people.

01:01:40.500 So Trump is a Jacksonian.

01:01:42.440 He's in the Andrew Jackson kind of mold of I will absolutely threaten.

01:01:47.120 I mean, this is the biggest, you know, military strike in the history of the world.

01:01:52.380 So he's going to go like a little bit more than Hiroshima.

01:01:55.240 That seems a little bit unlikely, but, you know, he wants to talk very, very loudly and have a stick to carry and wave around and then see what what you do.

01:02:03.320 I think you will see a lot of scrambling on the part of Qatar, perhaps of Turkey as well.

01:02:09.260 And Iran, and we're seeing all kinds of weird things happening in Syria right now, which is too complex for my little brain to even understand.

01:02:16.300 But I think people are moving on the chessboard very fast because he has a clear difference, not just in the sort of Jacksonian.

01:02:24.380 I'm going to punch you in the jaw with my whole hand kind of approach.

01:02:28.760 But the Biden approach, which I think is often misunderstood, has been mostly like, hey, if we give money to everybody, maybe we just tell everyone to kind of cool it.

01:02:37.500 Just don't get too out of hand in whatever you do.

01:02:39.620 So he tells that message to Israel.

01:02:41.340 He also tells that message to Iran and he tells that message to this guy and that guy.

01:02:44.920 He's sort of like we want we want to just kind of can you please contain it like we're going to support Ukraine, but only until after he lost the election or after Kamala Harris lost the election.

01:02:54.260 Do we allow them to shoot with long range missiles?

01:02:57.500 And I would imagine that came after having a conversation with Donald Trump.

01:03:01.380 So it's a different thing.

01:03:02.740 It's not containment anymore.

01:03:03.860 It is like, no, don't rile us up.

01:03:06.200 If you rile us up, we will absolutely hit you in the face, which has never been Biden's message, but it's definitely Trump's.

01:03:12.900 I think that's absolutely right.

01:03:13.820 And, you know, there's a lot of people that project their own ideas of foreign policy on Donald Trump because of the sentence that you heard, like ad infinitum, that he didn't start any new wars, that that somehow translates into the fact that he's kind of a pussycat on the global stage.

01:03:31.360 I think there's a few things about this.

01:03:32.840 I mean, you think of, you know, Kash Patel, for instance.

01:03:36.980 I mean, this is the most MAGA guy that you see on on Bannon show.

01:03:41.040 And, you know, a week ago, he's like, we have to prioritize our relationship with Israel.

01:03:45.180 And it's making so many of those people, Megan, that you're referencing, you know, on Twitter and there's a little upset, a little exercise.

01:03:51.120 It's like this is not what we want.

01:03:52.460 It's like you do remember the Abraham Accords, right?

01:03:55.060 You do see the the polling in Israel when it came to Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump, who they preferred by an enormous margin.

01:04:05.200 It was Donald Trump.

01:04:06.160 And they would not prefer that in the middle of a war, in the most brutal war in its history, if they thought Donald Trump was soft on these issues.

01:04:15.140 I mean, it doesn't matter what I mean, Donald Trump is obviously has a flair for, you know, going big and saying, you know, since the founding of the republic, nothing like this has ever been seen.

01:04:25.140 As Matt points out, I guess that's Hiroshima and Nagasaki together on one day.

01:04:29.980 You know, he's doing the Donald Trump bluster.

01:04:32.080 But I talked to an Israeli yesterday after this thing came out, after this truth.

01:04:38.380 So someone sent it to him and we were talking and he is a very moderate kind of guy and had this kind of glow on his face.

01:04:45.300 And we were talking about how Joe Biden, Joe Biden never said that.

01:04:48.860 He never came out and said in keeping in mind that of the hostages that are there, there are Americans.

01:04:55.320 Yeah, six or seven.

01:04:56.960 Consider them Americans because they're dual nationals.

01:04:59.560 They served in the IDF and they're Israeli Americans, but they're American citizens there.

01:05:04.520 And has there been a constant drumbeat or any drumbeat coming from that podium that Joe Biden's never behind?

01:05:12.880 But I suppose it would be Kareem Jean-Pierre saying, give them back and give them back now or they're going to be enormous consequences.

01:05:19.860 No, we've seen a lot of fiddling with Israel and like, well, maybe we'll have a weapons embargo.

01:05:24.740 I mean, does anyone think in the non-interventionist universe that there's going to be a weapons embargo on Israel through Donald Trump?

01:05:32.460 You've got to be kidding me.

01:05:33.420 No, no, that's not going to happen.

01:05:34.880 I mean, Ukraine thing, too.

01:05:36.860 I mean, the Russians responded to his ideas about a peace settlement saying, no, this is ridiculous.

01:05:42.340 And you don't you say this is ridiculous to Donald Trump.

01:05:46.020 He's not going to go away into the night and say, well, you know, I don't believe in intervention.

01:05:49.460 I think that, you know, the Russian reaction in the last couple of days towards the Kellogg plan of what will happen in Ukraine was one of total contempt.

01:05:58.080 And he's not going to appreciate that.

01:06:00.540 And I think that he is probably telling in Zelensky in the calls with him, you know, yeah, you know, amp it up and then we'll come in and we'll solve it.

01:06:08.060 He's not somebody that's like, just lie down your weapons and let's take what is happening to you right now.

01:06:13.180 That's just not who he is.

01:06:13.980 Hmm. You raise a good point about what Trump is about to inherit.

01:06:18.900 Right. So we not only have, yes, the hostages still in the custody of Hamas, but the Ukraine war amping up to a dangerous level right before he takes the office.

01:06:28.540 And then, of course, the thing in Syria is just it's almost hard to get your arms around that Bashar al-Assad could fall, that this sort of dictator, strongman, you know, villain in the eyes of America for decades now.

01:06:41.820 How about he's been in the news forever? I mean, since I feel like I can't remember not having it be Bashar al-Assad as the boogeyman of Syria and the chemical weapons and the whole thing with the civil war there spun out of control.

01:06:53.860 And now it's like he could go down, you know, one of the major cities in Syria fell to these rebels and one of the one of the presidential palaces and but not his.

01:07:05.420 Right. The dictator, you know, because these groups who are sort of storming the palaces and taking over the cities don't look all that friendly to the United States or, you know, Christians or peace lovers.

01:07:28.100 And yet they're trying to sort of say, we've reformed, you know, you could work with us like stability is what's best in the Middle East.

01:07:35.760 That's not what Donald Trump is walking into.

01:07:37.980 No, it's not. And on the Syria thing, just quickly, that, you know, the group that is taking over Vaswas of the country and, you know, took over Aleppo, which is a city that used to have 50,000, 60,000 Christians and is down to about 10,000.

01:07:52.960 And they say now, and there's been some reporting on the ground, we'll see how this pans out, that this group has been, you know, broadly ecumenical on their way in, they were surprised that they weren't being, you know, executed, arrested, whatever, there hasn't been some sort of ethnic or religious cleansing.

01:08:08.740 But keeping in mind, Megan, to your point, these are people, you know, one of these commanders was in U.S. custody at one point in Iraq.

01:08:16.380 I mean, these are people that have denounced their association with both ISIS and al-Qaeda.

01:08:22.620 I mean, do we believe that? I very, very highly doubt it.

01:08:25.940 But we get back to that situation that people came to in 2006.

01:08:30.260 It's like Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. He was a scumbag.

01:08:33.080 And he was the butcher of Iraq for so long.

01:08:36.120 And as Assad, you know, keep in mind that he was granted that position from Hafez al-Assad, his father, who was also a butcher in Syria.

01:08:44.100 But the Syrians, of course, have been supported by Hezbollah and by Russia.

01:08:49.780 Russia's carrying out airstrikes in Aleppo today.

01:08:52.260 They hadn't done that since 2016.

01:08:54.440 So, I mean, this is a chaotic situation that Donald Trump is inheriting.

01:08:58.160 And this is not one in which you can make a deal.

01:09:01.940 You can't make a deal with these people.

01:09:03.280 I mean, these are people that don't give a shit about America.

01:09:05.520 These are religious extremists on one side.

01:09:08.380 A country like Syria has been America's enemy and Hezbollah, who has been America's enemy for a long time, too.

01:09:13.240 But they saw the opening.

01:09:15.100 And that opening was because of what Israel was doing and what Ukraine was doing.

01:09:18.820 Ukraine had their Russians bogged down.

01:09:21.220 And the Israelis had taken out almost the entire Hezbollah leadership.

01:09:25.600 And so the vacuum is being filled.

01:09:27.220 And that's the Middle East.

01:09:28.040 And that's what Donald Trump is inheriting.

01:09:29.980 And Iran.

01:09:30.400 Iran's eye was on the Israel ball and what's happening to Hezbollah.

01:09:33.780 And maybe potentially wondering how the hell its main proxy got dragged into the Israel-Hamas thing when it wasn't really for a while.

01:09:43.080 Anyway, yeah, all the forces came together to make things a bit of a powder keg.

01:09:48.580 Not a bit of.

01:09:49.100 Like an actual powder keg right now.

01:09:51.220 And so Trump, as much of a dealmaker as he is and a negotiator and, you know, yes, I think instinctually non-interventionalist, but also he doesn't fuck around.

01:10:02.160 You know, he's not afraid to drop a bomb on Soleimani, that kind of thing.

01:10:05.040 He's going to have to play this just right, you know, because we actually do have a number of conflicts that are begging for our intervention and an American populace that doesn't want it.

01:10:15.020 I don't think the American populace wants to get involved in anything involving Iran or Syria or Russia.

01:10:24.300 I think they'd like to see us out of the Ukrainian conflict, Camille.

01:10:28.160 Well, I was just going to say that we haven't even talked about the situation in Asia.

01:10:31.160 I mean, there's there's a weird Ukrainian connection with the North Koreans sending troops to Russia to participate in that conflict.

01:10:37.320 The news today about martial law being declared in South Korea.

01:10:41.180 And then there's China.

01:10:42.700 There's always China.

01:10:44.000 And there's certainly the conflict that's roiling with respect to tariffs and the likely implications for China there.

01:10:49.720 But we're always watching China and Taiwan.

01:10:52.260 So there are so many broiling conflicts at this point and potential conflicts.

01:10:58.780 So Trump is really going to have his hands full.

01:11:01.340 And to the extent he does have some deal making savvy, it would be wonderful to see him deploy it.

01:11:06.060 I do wonder what kind of conversations he's having with the Saudis at this point where the Middle East is concerned.

01:11:10.720 I mean, that to the extent there were things to celebrate with respect to foreign policy during the Trump administration, the Abraham Accords and the progress that seemed to be made there was something.

01:11:20.060 And it almost certainly helped to precipitate the horribleness that Hamas unleashed on October 6th.

01:11:30.840 But I do wonder, I do wonder, like, what kind of conversations are happening there?

01:11:36.620 Because if they can get the Saudis back to the table in a more meaningful way, perhaps that can help to unwind things.

01:11:41.620 But I certainly don't have any expectation that Hamas is actually going to comply with the request.

01:11:45.860 Certainly the early statements don't suggest as much.

01:11:47.800 But, Matt Walsh, that raises such a good point because think about it.

01:11:52.960 We started the show talking about the media, like, oh, he's damaged his legacy, you know, Joe Biden has with this with this pardon of his son.

01:12:00.860 He's tarnished his perfect legacy.

01:12:03.740 And, you know, you were saying this is so absurd.

01:12:06.040 Like, look what he did during COVID and so on.

01:12:08.780 And look what he did in the Middle East.

01:12:10.820 Look what happened with respect to the U.S. foreign policy during the four years between Trump leaving and Trump returning.

01:12:19.880 You know, things are on fire and there's been no accountability.

01:12:23.500 And by the way, the media doesn't hold Joe Biden accountable for any of this.

01:12:26.540 There's no talk anymore about the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal and how provocative it was.

01:12:31.720 Or just, I mean, the abandonment of the Abraham Accords and the road that we were on, not toward solving everything in the Middle East, that's too grand a goal, but towards stability there.

01:12:43.500 Like I said, stability.

01:12:45.340 So Trump goes back now.

01:12:47.520 It's like one step forward, two steps backward.

01:12:49.840 It's going to take a lot just to I don't even know if it's possible just to get back to where we were in 2020 when he was voted out.

01:12:56.740 One thing to think about is that the Abraham Accords are still in place.

01:13:01.040 They're still strong.

01:13:02.060 They haven't really backslid.

01:13:03.700 One of the first things that Biden did upon becoming president said, yeah, OK, we're keeping the embassy in Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords are still with.

01:13:12.080 He saw the point of it, which is not surprising.

01:13:16.000 I think that we have as Americans a tendency with some understandable reason.

01:13:21.060 But but we do it to excess of always casting ourselves as the major player in every conflict like this happened.

01:13:30.600 One thing I'm going to let you finish your point, but the thing, the thing that yes.

01:13:33.700 OK, fine.

01:13:34.300 To your point.

01:13:34.960 But the one of the very first things that happened with Joe Biden was he humiliated himself in front of the Saudis.

01:13:39.640 Remember, he embarrassed us and himself when he went over there.

01:13:44.080 And right.

01:13:44.760 Like he did after saying he wasn't going to.

01:13:47.400 Yes.

01:13:47.560 After saying he wasn't.

01:13:48.300 And then he tried to strong arm them.

01:13:50.000 And it was it was a humiliation.

01:13:52.680 It was another Barack Obama type of humiliation for the United States on international scale.

01:13:56.700 Well, I, I, I am nobody's fan of Saudi Arabia.

01:14:01.280 It's a very mild way of putting it.

01:14:03.200 I think they've had a very malign influence on American foreign policy.

01:14:06.860 To me, the most humiliating thing that's ever involved in Saudi Arabia is George W.

01:14:10.880 Bush walking hand in hand in his ranch in Crawford with with I forget which member of the House of Saud that was.

01:14:18.020 But it was just gross to see that happen within.

01:14:21.240 It wasn't Bandar Bandar, whose nickname was Bandar Bush because he had been so friendly.

01:14:26.340 With Bush family stretching back decades.

01:14:29.200 But, you know, this is the country where 15 of the 19 hijackers came from.

01:14:33.540 And many of them came to America by working around the normal visa channels.

01:14:39.780 There's a lot of bad stuff.

01:14:42.040 It hasn't been a great relationship.

01:14:44.420 Every single administration, Democrat or a Republican, but to different degrees, has been overly reliant.

01:14:51.280 Saudi Arabia always puts itself in the middle of any peace process.

01:14:54.520 Sometimes that works well.

01:14:55.560 Sometimes it doesn't.

01:14:56.380 One of the things that they were asking for for the Biden administration is that they want to become a major non-NATO ally as well.

01:15:02.380 That's the thing.

01:15:03.200 They want security guarantees from us in addition to the many scores of billions of dollars worth of hardware that they pay for.

01:15:08.900 And they've been holding up a lot of normalization with Israel dependent on that.

01:15:16.800 I don't want us to give them that security guarantee.

01:15:19.000 I don't like the fact that we gave Qatar that security guarantee.

01:15:23.040 They don't deserve it.

01:15:24.580 And it's part of the, like, let's have our fingers in every little pie.

01:15:28.600 There are better ways and worse ways to do the Middle East.

01:15:30.980 None of them are going to guarantee that the Middle East is going to work out well in the end because it almost never does.

01:15:36.920 It would be great if it did better.

01:15:39.160 I'm curious to see whether the Trump approach to Iran in particular and also to Israel, that is much different than the Biden and kind of Democratic approach, Obama approach writ large.

01:15:50.860 I'm interested to see what kind of fruits that yields.

01:15:55.080 And it's also interesting to observe that some of the incoming Trump administration people, including the guy who was the head of the transition team for foreign policy, has said pretty upfront, we're not interested in regime change in Iran.

01:16:09.840 Right.

01:16:10.320 So that's playing to your kind of non-interventionist side.

01:16:12.880 A lot of the people who worry about neocons or American interventionism are always worried about, you know, Lindsey Graham is going to try to topple yet another regime somewhere, maybe in Tehran.

01:16:22.040 And I think it's good and right that Trump coming in says not interested, but also laying down the kind of thing like if you transgress against us, it's going to turn out very, very badly for you.

01:16:35.140 I think that's more in keeping with what American appetites and attitudes are.

01:16:39.280 And I think that'll also become true of the Syrian civil war ongoing.

01:16:43.480 I mean, it's more than a decade now.

01:16:46.000 I can't imagine American intervening in any meaningful sense.

01:16:49.860 Do you remember even like when John McCain would go there and he's like posing with guys like I found the moderate militias and like, you know, the next day we'd find out that they'd like dismembered somebody on live television.

01:16:59.840 And there's not going to be a moderate partner in Syria.

01:17:03.160 It's just not going to happen.

01:17:04.740 No government there is going to be good.

01:17:06.360 It's all going to be a mess.

01:17:07.600 And hopefully Trump has the wisdom not to get in there and meddle.

01:17:11.800 I think what he might do is sort of draw a cordon around it and say, don't spill your borders.

01:17:16.260 Whatever you do, you know, be savage to one another, but don't let that spill over here or else you're going to get punched in the jaw.

01:17:21.160 Just a quick addendum to that of the things that Trump is inheriting.

01:17:24.920 I mean, obviously, it was it's never monocausal.

01:17:28.780 It's it's there's a number of reasons that October 7th happened.

01:17:31.800 But one of them is upsetting that relationship with Saudi Arabia.

01:17:35.820 As Matt points out, there was a Saudi U.S. defense alignment treaty that people was going to have to pass the Senate that was about 90, 95 percent done.

01:17:46.740 But it required that the Israelis say that we recognize a two state solution is in the future.

01:17:52.820 And then it would require Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel.

01:17:56.680 And what happened after October 7th and the upset within the country of making any sorts of deals with Israel has made that nearly impossible.

01:18:06.860 Trump has a very good relationship with Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudis in general.

01:18:11.980 So we'll see how that goes.

01:18:13.920 I mean, that that I think is one of the biggest foreign policy challenges in Iran, too.

01:18:18.800 And that's right. You can say that.

01:18:20.620 I mean, there's no idea that we're going to invade Iran.

01:18:23.420 This has been a conversation since 2003.

01:18:26.000 Iran's next. Iran's next.

01:18:27.040 No, but I think that the Trump administration and I know a number of the people that are involved in the kind of Iran areas of this and know what they believe.

01:18:36.700 I mean, and they will make Tehran hurt, particularly with like oil exports and things like that and make the economy hurt.

01:18:45.240 And the Iranians are rational.

01:18:46.920 They're very sensitive to things like that, because remember, I mean, the Israelis just hit, you know, at 100 some odd Israeli Air Force planes going into Iranian airspace and bombing things in Iran.

01:18:57.240 And nobody really even noticed it that if you had said that five years ago, that's going to precipitate a regional war.

01:19:03.920 It didn't. It's a very delicate situation.

01:19:06.420 But Trump really, really has his work cut out for him in the Middle East.

01:19:10.620 It's crazy. You think about it.

01:19:12.040 All right. So we've got Hezbollah.

01:19:13.440 We've got Hamas.

01:19:14.740 We've got our hostages in Israel.

01:19:16.400 We have got civil war in Syria amounting to a potential, you know, deposition of Assad.

01:19:24.340 We'll have to see whether he withstands this and who's ruling Syria in the next year.

01:19:30.000 And we've got Ukraine fighting Russia.

01:19:33.320 And as you point out, North Korea now sending its troops to help the Russians.

01:19:36.460 And we've got China and Taiwan.

01:19:42.380 And I mean, I think almost no American appetite to do much if China goes for Taiwan.

01:19:47.940 I mean, other than like the most neocony of neocons, nobody wants to see Americans get involved in a proxy or direct war with China over Taiwan.

01:20:00.500 Chips or no chips.

01:20:02.600 There's just a lot.

01:20:04.120 You could make the case that it shouldn't be handled by Truth Social.

01:20:09.180 But right now, it's the way the president-elect communicates.

01:20:15.220 And we'll see.

01:20:16.200 We'll see whether he gets any results.

01:20:18.900 All right. Stand by.

01:20:19.440 We're going to take a quick break.

01:20:20.620 And then we're going to come back.

01:20:22.280 Yet another attack drops on Pete Hegseth.

01:20:25.040 And we will go behind it.

01:20:26.680 The October 15th deadline has come and gone.

01:20:29.340 Are you prepared for what's coming?

01:20:30.640 It's scary.

01:20:31.280 Let's do scary.

01:20:32.100 And then we'll do the better part.

01:20:33.220 Do you owe back taxes?

01:20:34.980 Are your tax returns still unfiled?

01:20:36.840 Have you missed the deadline to file for an extension?

01:20:39.120 Now that October 15th has come and gone, the IRS may be ramping up enforcement.

01:20:42.780 It's scary stuff.

01:20:44.140 You could face wage garnishments.

01:20:46.100 You could face frozen bank accounts.

01:20:48.580 You could face property seizures if you have not taken action.

01:20:52.180 But here is the hopeful part.

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01:21:03.500 These guys specialize in helping people reduce their tax burdens.

01:21:06.780 So visit TNUSA.com slash Megan or just call 1-800-958-1000 for a free consultation.

01:21:13.420 Their experts will walk you through a few simple questions to see how much you could save.

01:21:16.900 Give it a try now before the IRS takes more aggressive steps.

01:21:21.040 Take control and visit TNUSA.com slash Megan or call 1-800-958-1000.

01:21:27.080 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.

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01:22:30.900 A couple things to go over in our last block together.

01:22:34.400 Pete Hegseth, for Pete Hegseth, the hits just keep on coming.

01:22:38.360 The latest is from CBS News.

01:22:41.580 The headline is,

01:22:42.520 GOP insiders sought Hegseth's removal as leader of Veterans Group in 2016.

01:22:50.240 They go on to say,

01:22:52.300 one of those who led the effort to oust Hegseth as the head of Concerned Veterans of America in 2016

01:22:57.500 was Jessie Jane Duff.

01:23:01.040 That name may be familiar to our audience because she was, at some point, a Fox News contributor.

01:23:05.640 She might still be.

01:23:06.320 She's a Marine veteran.

01:23:08.180 And she worked for this group at the same time Pete was running it.

01:23:12.400 Let's see.

01:23:14.440 They say this is according to multiple Republican insiders familiar with the events.

01:23:19.240 Duff sought Hegseth's removal from leadership roles in the Veterans Group.

01:23:23.700 According to CBS News, Duff, a Newsmax analyst, served as an advisor for Concerned Veterans for America

01:23:29.240 while he helmed the organization from 13 to 16.

01:23:32.460 CBS has learned the allegations contained in the seven-page report,

01:23:36.020 first reported by the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, originated with Duff.

01:23:39.620 So now we know that the so-called whistleblower, who was in the New Yorker report that we got to yesterday,

01:23:45.500 alleging that Pete went to a strip club and allegedly stormed the stage.

01:23:51.120 A source close to the situation tells us he was not at the strip club.

01:23:55.480 This is not true at all, that he admits to drinking and, you know, having drank too much here and there,

01:24:01.460 but that there are specifics in there that are not true and that were said by a disgruntled employee.

01:24:05.760 And now we know who we're talking about.

01:24:07.880 It's Jessie Jane Duff, who does not like Pete, and it's probably safe to say he doesn't like her.

01:24:14.100 The report also reveals he fired her from Concerned Veterans for America, according to two sources.

01:24:20.020 And it is believed by his supporters that she's been out to get him ever since,

01:24:25.800 filing reports like this one, trying to get him ousted at the veterans organization where he was ultimately let go

01:24:31.540 and raising questions about improprieties when it comes to the money at this group,

01:24:39.280 saying that they had tons of dough in the coffers.

01:24:43.420 He raised, according to this CBS News report, let's see, I want to get my numbers right,

01:24:49.520 that, okay, first it was Veterans for Freedom, that was one of the groups,

01:24:53.620 that he became a director at in 2006 and executive director in 2007.

01:24:57.780 In 2008, filings show the organization raised over $8.7 million in revenue, but spent $9 million.

01:25:03.640 By 2010, tax filings show revenue had dropped to just under $265,000.

01:25:08.860 Then they say he started Concerned Veterans for America in 2011.

01:25:12.820 By 2016, the year he resigned, so five years later, the organization raised $15.9 million

01:25:18.640 and listed $16.4 million in expenses.

01:25:23.320 The following year after he stepped down, the nonprofit reduced its expenses after major programs developed

01:25:28.960 in the last fiscal year were paused.

01:25:32.580 Okay, so what we have here is, it appears, Jessie Jane Duff getting fired by Pete.

01:25:37.560 She doesn't like him.

01:25:39.300 She, we don't know why.

01:25:40.780 It could be this financial stuff, as she's allegedly claiming, or it could be something else.

01:25:46.480 It could be because he fired her, as it appears his side is claiming.

01:25:50.880 But it's another hit, right?

01:25:52.400 It's that he can't manage financial money, finances.

01:25:57.500 And in this CBS News piece, they quote Margaret Hoover, who's now host of PBS's Firing Line,

01:26:04.220 who is a former advisor to Vets for Freedom.

01:26:06.440 And she tells CNN that Hegseth managed the organization, quote, very poorly, expressing doubt that he could run

01:26:13.700 the sprawling Defense Department when he had struggled with a staff of less than 10 people

01:26:17.940 and a budget of under $10 million.

01:26:19.760 The staff at the Department of Defense is almost $3 million.

01:26:24.680 And we have 750 military installations around the world and a budget of,

01:26:28.300 I didn't realize it was quite this large, $842 billion, $840 billion.

01:26:36.060 Which understates it, actually.

01:26:38.140 Billion, yes.

01:26:39.020 So where does that leave us on the latest with respect to Pete Hegseth?

01:26:45.840 I mean, the, oh, as soon as the Jane Mayer story came out, I went instinctively to the usual place

01:26:52.560 of like, oh, there's a Jane Mayer hit piece about a Republican nominee to a thing.

01:26:57.560 So I probably can safely discount a lot that comes from there.

01:27:02.000 Margaret Hoover, I know, and I think is an honorable person.

01:27:04.240 So I will, I will listen to her testimony with interest.

01:27:07.940 For me, the, the baseline with Pete, who I know a tiny bit, Green Rooms, I'm sure we all kind of

01:27:15.040 know him similarly.

01:27:16.420 Megan, you probably know him a little bit more, is that does the sloppiness of his personal life,

01:27:23.040 which normally I don't care about.

01:27:24.440 Uh, yeah, I would, don't care about that with, uh, RFK junior, for example, so heroin addict

01:27:29.360 for 15 years, whatever.

01:27:30.940 Um, you know, my complaints with him are separate from that, but it's the DOD.

01:27:36.600 So, uh, like, do we have a different standard for that kind of sloppiness?

01:27:41.300 I'm old enough.

01:27:42.020 And Megan, you're almost old enough, uh, to remember the John Tower, uh, days back, uh,

01:27:47.640 a long time ago, where it's like, oh, is he, you know, his drinking issues, is it big

01:27:52.420 enough to maybe make us think that we shouldn't have this person in this sensitive job?

01:27:56.360 Um, uh, Pete sounds like he's been cutting a swath out there, um, which, you know, hats

01:28:02.380 off.

01:28:02.700 But do I want Michael Moynihan to be the head of the Department of Defense as opposed to

01:28:06.740 HHS?

01:28:07.620 Um, um, well, because I don't want to say compromise.

01:28:11.340 I mean, is it because when Megan said the thing about storming the strip club stage wasn't

01:28:15.520 true?

01:28:15.800 I was disappointed.

01:28:16.640 I was like, oh, I was on his side and then it turned out not to be true.

01:28:21.100 That was a source.

01:28:21.940 That was a single source.

01:28:23.460 Uh, so, uh, we've all been there.

01:28:25.400 Come on.

01:28:26.020 I think, I think I haven't been there Moynihan.

01:28:29.040 Uh, uh, I think, so that's a legitimate question worth asking, um, uh, regardless of the hit

01:28:34.600 piece-ness of the stuff that's coming at him and then just managerial experience.

01:28:38.300 I'm not totally impressed with like, oh, he's, they spent $16 million and only raised 15.6.

01:28:43.760 I mean, welcome to nonprofit world.

01:28:45.200 Those are kind of normal.

01:28:47.120 If there was really, really lopsided, then we can talk and I haven't gotten to the weeds

01:28:50.460 of it.

01:28:51.120 Uh, but it is legitimate to say to someone who's going to manage a gigantic organization,

01:28:55.000 what is your experience with managing organizations?

01:28:57.160 Is it good?

01:28:57.700 Is it bad?

01:28:58.400 Um, how big is it?

01:28:59.660 Um, what do people who saw you manage those organizations say?

01:29:02.880 And I have seen a couple of people have said, Hey, it's great.

01:29:05.160 Um, there's no problems.

01:29:06.380 Um, so, but I think those are legitimate things to ask about.

01:29:08.900 I mean, just the thought that it's like Pete sitting there with his little, you know,

01:29:11.760 visor on and his pencil and his pad, figuring out the budget at DOD is not what's going to

01:29:16.760 happen.

01:29:17.160 You know, he's being hired to do other things there that Trump prioritizes and that, you

01:29:21.640 know, the electorate prior, like de-woke-ifying the military, taking out these generals who

01:29:25.960 just want to see their names in the paper and putting in somebody who cares more about the

01:29:29.980 enlisted guys and isn't so, uh, you know, trigger happy that they push for, you know,

01:29:37.240 the first response being military engagement, you know, somebody who's actually served, who

01:29:41.380 understands that that's actually very risky and what it's done for the United States and

01:29:45.040 for the guys involved in gals over the past 20 years.

01:29:47.640 I mean, Pete knows that firsthand.

01:29:48.800 So I do think that like, he may not have the managerial skills on the dough, but he's not

01:29:53.520 going to be doing that, but I, you, you said something that was interesting to me, Matt,

01:29:57.460 which is like, do you, do you hold the guys like personal foibles against him?

01:30:03.700 And we've been having that debate on the show.

01:30:05.260 I, I, um, subscribe to Ann Coulter's sub stack.

01:30:09.040 She's always entertaining.

01:30:10.360 And she was, she had just interviewed Heather McDonald and I've interviewed Heather many

01:30:15.220 times.

01:30:15.500 And Heather has said this to me too.

01:30:16.780 Heather has absolutely no use really for the me too movement and for like deposing men based

01:30:22.820 on their personal conduct when it comes to, you know, office romances or male libido.

01:30:29.120 You know, she basically says that's something that's biologically engineered in men from

01:30:33.140 the dawn of time.

01:30:33.960 And we shouldn't be hiring a firing guys based on it.

01:30:36.300 I mean, I'm sure you could find the most egregious case that Heather would find upsetting too,

01:30:40.100 but just as a general rule, she's really not into the me too thing.

01:30:43.580 And Ann's point was actually the more traditionally conservative points saying character matters and,

01:30:51.400 you know, saying, Ann was like, I don't know about this rape allegation against Pete,

01:30:56.400 but I'm concerned enough about the fact that he cheated on three wives, you know, not one,

01:31:01.920 not two, all three.

01:31:04.140 And, um, that matters to me.

01:31:06.600 And like these allegations about how he's treating underlings and, you know, women in particular.

01:31:11.400 And, you know, she would not approve of the stripper story, even though they're denying it.

01:31:15.760 And so like, and it, it really does like, it reminded me of 2010 at Fox news.

01:31:20.760 That's exactly the angle we would have come into this story on had it been a Republican

01:31:24.820 or a Democrat.

01:31:25.620 And have we, have we changed so much in those 14 years?

01:31:29.520 Maybe it's Trump's ascendancy, ascendancy, but all the bullshit that's been done to the

01:31:34.840 country that leads us to be like, we don't give a shit any longer.

01:31:38.640 Where, where do you guys stand on it?

01:31:40.860 And I mean, of all of the departments of all the appointments, I mean, for it to be the

01:31:44.880 Pentagon, for it to be the defense department, I mean, this, they actually care about that

01:31:48.180 sort of thing there.

01:31:48.860 Like that kind of conduct among, amongst enlisted persons is a problem, a huge problem.

01:31:54.820 It is not a small thing that folks are going to wink at and say, ah, it doesn't really matter

01:31:58.500 here.

01:31:59.560 If to the extent Pete is going to be the guy, he has to actually be an exemplar on those things.

01:32:04.500 And his, his conduct, personal private conduct, the extent it becomes public, certainly it's

01:32:10.760 consequential and it's relevant.

01:32:12.320 There aren't a lot of things that we can kind of measure this up against.

01:32:14.780 I think you're, it's, it's correct, Megan.

01:32:16.300 He won't be responsible for being the bean counter there.

01:32:19.740 Although I imagine some of his decisions and the, and the focus of his particular leadership

01:32:25.920 and leadership team are going to have an awful lot to say about whether or not the Pentagon

01:32:31.060 becomes actually worse, which is hard to imagine, um, with respect to its kind of fiduciary

01:32:36.400 unseriousness, um, as an institution.

01:32:39.200 So finding someone who is more disciplined, who has fewer skeletons in the closet, um, is

01:32:43.960 perhaps a good look for the Trump administration.

01:32:46.440 One wonders if they're, if they're not actually going to move away from him at this point.

01:32:49.760 I, I share, um, Matt's skepticism of the more recent revelations, like a single source

01:32:56.200 who is kind of complaining, who turns out to be someone who has kind of some personal animus

01:33:00.120 towards you, but that's not so exciting to me.

01:33:02.740 And it's not at all surprising to see that kind of thing, scoring headlines with someone

01:33:06.440 this controversial, but against the backdrop of all of the other things, your mom writing

01:33:11.880 a rather impassioned note to you about your horrible, horrific personal conduct.

01:33:17.340 It's not a great look.

01:33:18.880 Um, and it's the sort of thing that one actually has to address and address pretty forcefully.

01:33:23.360 Um, the mom note didn't get to me at all.

01:33:25.220 I was like, uh, my, you should share the way my mom talks to me, but love you.

01:33:30.000 Love you, mom.

01:33:30.840 Um, but it got to Doug.

01:33:32.600 Like my husband was like, that's not good.

01:33:35.280 He was like, you know, having heard what she said, he's like, it's really not great.

01:33:38.600 And I was like, come on.

01:33:39.760 Like the mother saw a son back from the combat tours, treating his wives badly in the midst

01:33:46.400 of a contentious divorce, calling the soon to be ex-wife who he had cheated on names

01:33:51.100 and said, knock it off.

01:33:53.820 You are not only abusing this woman with those words, but you're a serial abuser of what you

01:33:58.080 cheated on your first wife.

01:33:59.380 This is exactly how God forbid I ever found my son in this situation.

01:34:02.640 And my, I have two, um, I would hope I'd speak to him, like get your shit together.

01:34:08.060 I do not approve of one thing you've done in the past two years when it comes to women

01:34:12.220 or whatever years that one.

01:34:14.180 I, I don't know, I wasn't as moved by it, by you and, and Doug or Camille.

01:34:18.920 I would say, by the way, there's, there are a number of Senate Republicans who aren't just

01:34:22.600 Susan Collins, um, who are dismayed by this and worried about it.

01:34:26.960 And, you know, Wall Street Journal did some reporting on this of like, you know, we're

01:34:29.960 going to wait for, we'd like to see the FBI investigation into this.

01:34:33.840 That's not the Jane, Jane Mayer investigation.

01:34:36.200 Who's somebody who obviously took shots at Kavanaugh, did some shoddy reporting there.

01:34:42.440 I think did some shoddy reporting back when she did a book, um, about Anita Hill, uh, and

01:34:47.780 you know, then ran to the defense of Al Franken, who by the way, I think deserved defending, but

01:34:52.360 she's very partisan in her defenses.

01:34:54.600 But to Anne's point, I mean, it shows you a lot of things.

01:34:58.240 I mean, I disagree with Anne on about 70% of things, but I do find her wildly entertaining

01:35:03.340 and funny and she's very, she's very, she's very, she's very consistent on this, on this

01:35:09.100 issue from the Clinton.

01:35:10.960 I mean, we knew of Anne Coulter because she wrote a book called High Crimes and Misdemeanors

01:35:15.420 about what Bill Clinton was doing.

01:35:16.980 She's very consistent on, on these issues.

01:35:18.780 So, but the one thing that gives me some pause is I think that it starts in a lot of ways

01:35:24.460 with these movements that go way overboard.

01:35:27.180 The reason some, many of us are reticent when these charges come up was because of this

01:35:33.220 kind of fanaticism of the Me Too movement that had some real honest targets that deserve

01:35:40.240 to be taken down.

01:35:41.540 And I could, you know, list off 10 of them, but we started lumping everybody into the same

01:35:46.260 thing.

01:35:47.140 You know, Louis CK was the same as some guy was weird to you at work.

01:35:51.140 And, you know, at the, on the other side of this, there's so many people you have to

01:35:55.360 like, these people who are responsible for these movements.

01:35:57.660 I mean, I know you talk a lot, Megan, about trans issues.

01:36:01.340 There was a article in the New York times last week that, you know, trans advocates saying,

01:36:06.780 you know, maybe we're going a little too far with this.

01:36:08.860 Maybe we're pushing a little too hard and there's no grace in what we do when people

01:36:13.080 disagree with us.

01:36:13.960 And that's JK Rowling, that's you, et cetera.

01:36:16.280 But that's the same thing in the Me Too movement is that when you take, when you have a movement

01:36:21.200 like this in your hands and you sort of control it and you deploy it and you just kind of ruin

01:36:26.600 people's lives or try to get them kicked out of their company or whatever it might

01:36:30.500 be, get them kicked out of politics.

01:36:32.720 There is a backlash eventually if you go too far, if you're weaponizing something for

01:36:37.980 political purposes.

01:36:39.160 And that's why I think when I saw the rape allegation and I read a little bit about it

01:36:43.860 and I might be totally wrong about this.

01:36:46.120 I have no idea what the answer to this is.

01:36:47.960 But when I read that, I was like, oh, here we go again.

01:36:51.580 This is somebody who's got to pay out.

01:36:53.960 It looks like utter bullshit.

01:36:56.420 It seems like bullshit.

01:36:58.260 And why?

01:36:59.360 I don't know if I would think that instinctually in 1995 or 2005.

01:37:04.500 I'm just kind of conditioned at this point because there's been so much politicization

01:37:09.360 of these charges.

01:37:11.220 And it's no surprise that it's Jane Mayer coming out and saying it.

01:37:14.180 And again, people who are hyper-partisan, people who have axes to grind can be right.

01:37:19.580 Jane Mayer can be right about all this stuff.

01:37:21.180 I do not know.

01:37:22.120 I have not done the counter research.

01:37:23.100 Let me tell you something about that.

01:37:24.580 Yeah.

01:37:25.480 In that same CBS News report that I was reading from with this latest, you know, Jesse Jane

01:37:29.700 Duff and financial issues, they summarized that rape allegation on the last page just

01:37:35.580 to make sure you didn't miss it.

01:37:37.380 Last month, it was revealed that Hegseth had secretly paid a financial settlement to a woman

01:37:41.960 who had accused him of raping her in 2017 at a Republican women's banquet at the Hyatt

01:37:45.460 Regency in Monterey, California.

01:37:47.340 The city of Monterey released its 2017 investigation into Hegseth.

01:37:51.160 The accuser, who has not been publicly named, reported she felt as though she had been drugged

01:37:55.380 and recalled repeatedly saying no while in a hotel room with Hegseth.

01:37:59.060 She alleged that he prevented her from leaving and was on top of her.

01:38:02.220 CBS News does not publicly name individuals who have reported an alleged sexual assault unless

01:38:06.540 that person chooses to publicly identify themselves.

01:38:09.780 That's it.

01:38:10.360 It's a very strange story.

01:38:11.260 I mean, and I think we talked about this on the podcast as well.

01:38:12.980 No, then they say the allegation, according to his lawyer, the allegation was investigated

01:38:16.600 by the police department and they found no evidence for it.

01:38:20.080 They did, then they point out that they did not bring charges and that Pete denies it and

01:38:24.580 says it was consensual.

01:38:25.880 There's not, this audience knows the details of this case better than anybody right now

01:38:29.660 because we've done, we've gone in depth on this multiple times.

01:38:32.820 None of the exculpatory facts that are laid out in that police report, none is in there.

01:38:40.040 Not a one.

01:38:41.420 And so this is what happens.

01:38:43.820 And my little note reads so unfair.

01:38:46.120 This is what happens to men in particular, right?

01:38:48.760 Like somebody drops a bomb of a report, the original reporting, and then the police report

01:38:55.460 comes out.

01:38:56.880 You know, honest reporters will go through it and report the stuff that's bad for the person

01:39:01.560 who's accused and the stuff that's good for the person who's accused.

01:39:03.940 And a fair report would tell you both.

01:39:06.640 But what we have here is, let's just summarize.

01:39:10.000 And all we'll pick is the stuff that's terrible for Pete.

01:39:13.460 Oh, he would buy the door.

01:39:15.060 None of the stuff that she was seeing.

01:39:17.220 She didn't look drunk to anybody at any point, including her own husband.

01:39:20.620 Her alleged period in which she could have been drunk, drugged, was only two hours long.

01:39:25.800 That's not how the date rape drug works.

01:39:27.760 She refused to participate in a pretextual phone call where she called him with police

01:39:32.080 on the line after the fact to ask him about the alleged crime.

01:39:35.700 I mean, on and on.

01:39:36.480 Like, there's so many.

01:39:37.980 Three witnesses saw her.

01:39:39.020 She was totally sober.

01:39:39.740 She was on camera totally sober.

01:39:41.000 Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah.

01:39:42.200 That's not—none of that's in there.

01:39:44.160 Her story, what Pete said, was consensual.

01:39:47.500 She told me she was going to tell the husband that she fell asleep, and the husband at the

01:39:50.760 same time telling the cops she came home and told me she fell asleep.

01:39:53.580 Nope, doesn't get mentioned.

01:39:54.540 Not naming this person, by the way, it really screws up the incentives.

01:39:59.920 You have no incentive to not attack somebody who you really don't like, or if you made

01:40:04.200 a mistake and you want to get out of it, there's no negative repercussions for you, even if

01:40:08.540 there's exculpatory evidence on Pete Hegseth's side, because you can never be named, because

01:40:13.940 we don't do that as journalists.

01:40:15.520 If you release the name of the accuser, and that's how she should be referred to, not as

01:40:19.740 the victim.

01:40:20.500 We don't know if this person's a victim.

01:40:22.340 This person's claimed she's a victim.

01:40:23.800 The police were not persuaded.

01:40:26.100 She should be the accuser.

01:40:28.300 That's a fair term until there's been a jury verdict.

01:40:32.540 So the accuser, we don't know her name, and therefore, what if this person has accused

01:40:38.200 someone in the past?

01:40:40.480 That would be a massive development.

01:40:43.240 And so what if you are a man who is out there and knows that you've been accused by, you know,

01:40:48.240 Jane Doe, and you know her by her proper name, but you have zero clue that she is now the

01:40:54.300 person accusing Pete Hegseth.

01:40:56.200 And maybe if you heard this person's actual name, you might come forward to say, this person

01:41:01.440 accused me too.

01:41:02.500 And it was total bullshit.

01:41:04.160 Now, I don't know whether any of that could happen here.

01:41:06.500 I'm just saying the fact that we protect the identities of these, quote, victims is entirely

01:41:13.160 unfair to the person being accused.

01:41:16.380 And that's just one way in which it hampers a guy from offering a full defense.

01:41:22.420 Yeah, there's like an appropriate level of sensitivity that you have to have when dealing

01:41:28.020 with these cases.

01:41:28.620 We all know people who have had their lives decimated by erroneous charges, personally.

01:41:35.620 In some cases, that happens in the pages of the New York Times.

01:41:39.360 And it's awful and terrible.

01:41:42.860 And one, I think the most generous thing you can presume is that they're attempting to protect

01:41:47.820 these alleged victims by kind of treading carefully here.

01:41:51.580 But when you only do that in one direction and you hide or obscure anything that might

01:41:57.160 be obsculpatory evidence for the accused, then you're not doing them a service.

01:42:02.440 Once it becomes, once it hits the headlines and it becomes obvious that there are details

01:42:06.080 here that complicate the situation.

01:42:07.280 This is a married woman.

01:42:08.440 She has every incentive, if she was actually just having an affair, to continually and consistently

01:42:14.780 misrepresent it as something else.

01:42:17.500 Because obviously it's beneficial to her, especially if she starts to ask for money.

01:42:21.580 Now, is it also the case that an honest victim would do precisely the same thing?

01:42:25.900 Sure it is.

01:42:26.880 But it still matters.

01:42:28.600 And actually being serious and nuanced about this, as opposed to having a hypersensitivity

01:42:33.640 that gives all of the deference to the accuser and presumes essentially the guilt and culpability

01:42:40.160 of the accused, especially if it's someone who happens to get around a lot and might be more

01:42:44.800 likely to stumble across someone who is a nefarious actor in this way, like that's wrong.

01:42:50.280 And we really do actually still need to correct the scales with respect to that.

01:42:55.260 Guess what else is not in this report, Camille, summarizing the alleged rape allegation.

01:42:59.920 The fact that she was married at the time, as you just pointed out, and that the husband

01:43:04.320 was asleep in their hotel room with their two children down the hall, which might give somebody

01:43:10.800 some pause about coming clean on what looks like a booty call and not a rape omitted.

01:43:19.560 If you want to summarize that there's this alleged rape allegation against him, you may as a news

01:43:25.500 organization.

01:43:26.020 But part of the pain in the ass of summarizing a complex case, and believe me, I've been

01:43:31.240 there many times, is you have to pick and choose which details to use and which to leave

01:43:35.400 out in order to be fair to the person you are besmirching.

01:43:39.600 And CBS News, it's a fail.

01:43:41.860 And it does lead me to say, this is what I think of everything else you just reported.

01:43:46.720 What else is in there about the fucking finances that you didn't print?

01:43:50.180 What is there about...

01:43:51.160 Jesse Jane Duff.

01:43:52.800 I like Jesse Jane.

01:43:53.700 And I'm just saying, what are you leaving out on your latest allegations, you and Jane

01:43:58.620 Mayer?

01:43:59.220 And this is why, OK, we know that he cheated on the three wives.

01:44:03.300 Maybe that's enough.

01:44:04.860 But everything outside of that, I'm like, no, this can't be the reason he doesn't get

01:44:10.780 confirmed, because this is a corrupt system.

01:44:14.080 I want to point out that the media on this issue, this is not just a kind of close judgment

01:44:19.820 call.

01:44:20.420 When you have something like, well, we don't know.

01:44:22.260 Oh, they didn't choose to, the police didn't choose to prosecute or arrest him.

01:44:27.180 This is not just for close calls.

01:44:29.220 I want to point out somebody that has really, really had their lives ruined in a false accusation.

01:44:34.940 And Matt knows this person because he's a huge baseball fan.

01:44:38.040 Trevor Bauer was a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he was accused in 2021.

01:44:42.540 In 2020, he won the Cy Young Award.

01:44:45.720 This is not a slouch.

01:44:46.960 This guy has not pitched in the major leagues since.

01:44:50.060 And I want to read you just the first paragraph of an AP story after this whole thing blew up.

01:44:55.420 And it blew up, not like it wasn't close anymore.

01:44:57.620 He had video evidence that this one was lying.

01:45:00.860 An Arizona woman who accused former major league pitcher Trevor Bauer of sexual assault has been

01:45:06.480 charged with defrauding the baseball player.

01:45:09.560 An indictment unsealed Monday in Maricopa County Superior Court charges the woman with fraud,

01:45:14.400 theft by extortion, both felonies, but doesn't provide blah, blah, blah.

01:45:17.920 The next sentence, the Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have

01:45:23.060 been victim of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly.

01:45:27.800 He was vindicated and she was charged with fraud.

01:45:31.380 He went to play in Japan.

01:45:33.340 And then I think he just he just refused like a Mexican winter league contract.

01:45:38.160 Mexico, yeah.

01:45:38.400 He didn't play baseball in the major leagues and he was life was destroyed.

01:45:43.040 This woman was charged and they don't name her.

01:45:45.840 Oh, my God, we covered the Trevor Bauer.

01:45:48.300 We covered that and how it fell apart.

01:45:50.220 And it was a nightmare.

01:45:50.940 But I did not realize that there was an AP report after she'd been charged refusing to

01:45:55.180 name her.

01:45:55.740 We won't name her because she said she was accused of sexual assault.

01:45:59.740 And not only the charges are not only that she wasn't, that she wasn't.

01:46:02.960 And she tried to extort him and they still wouldn't name her.

01:46:06.120 It's it's sickening.

01:46:07.460 The lessons always are that that incent people always respond to incentives.

01:46:13.660 It's the basic economics idea and also that behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated.

01:46:21.140 And for a long time in the in the sort of apex of the Me Too movement, there's a lot

01:46:25.620 of people who are rewarded through making allegations themselves or participating in social media

01:46:31.940 pylon that had to do with allegations.

01:46:33.600 And you're just rewarded simply by like that that rush of excitement when you kind of popularize

01:46:41.140 the takedown of a person that you seem is you think is bad or is famous or something that you

01:46:46.120 sort of suspect is guilty of wrongdoing.

01:46:48.460 And the behavior that gets rewarded, that gets repeated, also refers to the way that the media

01:46:52.640 handles themselves.

01:46:54.220 It refers to the way that Jane Mayer handles herself, not just with Kavanaugh, but also

01:46:59.380 in her really bad reporting on the Koch brothers back in the day and the way that it's completely

01:47:03.980 the opposite, how she reported on George Soros about the exact same stuff, basically.

01:47:08.520 But it looked all saintly when it came to him.

01:47:11.700 When you have sort of like a partisan coded reward structures for people who engage in very

01:47:19.440 one sided partisan journalism that isn't particularly good journalism, then you're going to do it

01:47:25.440 again.

01:47:25.840 It's going to be a single source story that is throwing someone like Mark Judge under the

01:47:31.460 bus and and whatever, you know, you're going to go on to your next Pulitzer.

01:47:36.440 This is bad.

01:47:37.260 And the the ticket for getting out of that system is by, you know, doing whatever we all can as

01:47:45.180 individuals or people in the media to call out obviously bad and bad faith behavior as

01:47:50.680 it happens.

01:47:51.040 But it also depends on consumers like don't reward people who do this, who pass around

01:47:56.820 things they don't know it's true, whether or not something happened.

01:48:00.040 They're participating gleefully in the social media pylon, et cetera.

01:48:03.980 Got to stand up and say, hey, look, you don't know this and you might be ruining someone's

01:48:07.480 life.

01:48:07.720 Maybe like slow your roll a little bit.

01:48:10.300 The this is why I look at this like I think about when I practice law.

01:48:15.540 And if you try a case and you introduce a bunch of evidence against somebody and then

01:48:21.900 you introduce some sort of a bomb against them and it turns out that bomb was inappropriately

01:48:27.720 admitted, your verdict is going to get thrown out.

01:48:30.640 Even if you had a bunch of other evidence that was valid and could have persuaded the

01:48:34.760 jury to reach a verdict that was in your favor, it's going to get thrown out because if there's

01:48:40.900 something that was introduced and it shouldn't have been that is prejudicial against the

01:48:44.520 defendant that could have affected the outcome of the verdict, your verdict is going to go

01:48:48.580 away.

01:48:49.400 And that's why like this whole process is so corrupted, not just against Pete, against

01:48:53.560 you know, the election against Trump was it was perverted.

01:48:56.640 Like a lot of these nominees are are having this done to them right now.

01:49:00.360 And with Pete, I feel like, OK, we know about the infidelities.

01:49:04.260 Let's deal with that.

01:49:05.140 Like, I'm perfectly willing to have a debate on whether that is a game changer for the Department

01:49:10.180 of Defense head.

01:49:11.340 But I am I I can't have an honest debate with anybody who's going to raise this stuff with

01:49:16.240 me and say, well, I saw it on CBS News like or any senator who hasn't done his or her

01:49:23.300 homework that wants to try to cross examine Pete in a way that will undoubtedly be very unfair.

01:49:28.100 And that's why I keep winding up with like he has to be confirmed.

01:49:32.360 He has to be in the same way Trump had to be elected.

01:49:34.800 He has to be confirmed.

01:49:36.040 The middle finger must be put in place.

01:49:37.760 And if he sucks, he will be fired.

01:49:40.060 I do believe Trump will fire him if he does any of this shit while in that position.

01:49:44.480 I think he'll be well supported right underneath the top level as well.

01:49:47.640 I also think I've said this yesterday, I think at the top of DOJ, at the top of FBI or

01:49:52.380 at the top of DOD, we could look to Ron DeSantis.

01:49:55.820 I say it again, we really like he could be of great help to us.

01:49:59.640 This is another guy.

01:50:00.420 He would fit in perfectly here.

01:50:01.580 He knows how to bust shit up and fight.

01:50:04.540 He doesn't care what people write about him in the media, but he's an extremely competent

01:50:08.140 executive and he happens to be a Navy man.

01:50:11.140 So, OK, that's that's where I stand.

01:50:13.920 I think he should be confirmed.

01:50:15.600 But if he can't be or if we're looking for alternatives, you know, DeSantis's time in

01:50:19.720 Florida is limited thanks to term limits.

01:50:21.220 And we could do we could do a lot worse than him.

01:50:24.500 That's not about the final word.

01:50:25.660 I'll give you guys the final word.

01:50:26.860 Do you have a better choice?

01:50:27.760 We've ruled out Moynihan.

01:50:29.500 Anyone else?

01:50:30.620 We did.

01:50:31.820 I'm not ruling him out.

01:50:33.040 I like it.

01:50:33.920 I like my I'm willing to forgive him the stage.

01:50:36.100 I just got up there because I thought I had left a dollar bill there that I tried to

01:50:40.700 give one and I gave two.

01:50:42.320 So I get up and get it back.

01:50:43.800 Fair.

01:50:44.300 That's totally reasonable.

01:50:45.260 That's disqualifying.

01:50:46.380 Yeah.

01:50:46.820 But OK, really unfair.

01:50:48.140 OK, very, very unfair.

01:50:50.980 I do like that recommendation, though, Megan, it is it is frequently suggested that there

01:50:55.400 are like no serious people who like Donald Trump, who who who could possibly be appointed

01:51:00.780 and he's got these kind of rogues gallery of people.

01:51:03.720 I think he's he's just decided that he doesn't really care about the vetting process, but he's

01:51:08.240 not doing himself any favors either by going about things this way.

01:51:12.520 There are almost certainly better appointments that he could make in a couple of instances,

01:51:16.360 people who are less controversial, would still potentially presumably be loyal to him and

01:51:22.540 not undermine him personally, but would also just be better at governing these institutions,

01:51:28.020 these really important, massively consequential institutions who have more, let's say, more

01:51:35.940 evidence on their CV that they're actually well suited for the job as opposed to, you know,

01:51:41.480 combat experience.

01:51:42.420 Obviously important.

01:51:43.200 Like your educational pedigree, obviously important, but it matters if you've worked

01:51:48.440 in and around these institutions in some way, shape or form, because they are bizarre

01:51:51.960 and strange.

01:51:52.960 You don't want it only to be staffed with creatures from the inside.

01:51:56.360 But there are almost certainly some better choices here.

01:51:59.040 And I think the Trump administration should probably give that some consideration.

01:52:02.720 I think the person you need for this job, um, I don't like, I think it's a, it's kind of

01:52:09.100 a gimmick to focus on DEI.

01:52:11.640 And if anyone listens to the fifth column, they know that this is not stuff that we appreciate

01:52:16.300 in any way.

01:52:17.380 As a matter of fact, we loathe it, but I think that's a kind of small percentage of what needs

01:52:22.220 to be done at DOD.

01:52:23.220 Obviously I think what you need is, I mean, some of the combat experience, of course, I mean,

01:52:27.200 all of this stuff makes sense to me, but Megan, you have been doing the show for a very long

01:52:32.660 time.

01:52:32.960 You've been a journalist for a very long time and you, the eye, your eyes popped out of

01:52:36.880 your head when you read 850 billion, as Matt pointed out, surely an undercount.

01:52:42.820 The person who goes into DOD needs to be the person that goes in there and trims the fat

01:52:48.160 and says, there's a lot of, of bad spending here.

01:52:52.000 And we need to kind of make this a leaner machine.

01:52:55.380 I think that's the, the thing that, and, you know, I don't think Pete Hegseth is, is

01:53:00.400 the guy to do that.

01:53:01.260 No offense to him.

01:53:02.080 I mean, my pick would be not somebody who wrote a book that, you know, excoriates DOD

01:53:07.540 for, for being, you know, too woke or something.

01:53:10.440 I think it's just somebody that needs to go in there and stop the never ending growth

01:53:15.560 of that department.

01:53:16.720 It just, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger every year.

01:53:19.600 And now we have Republicans actually, because Republicans always say we want to cut government,

01:53:23.740 but not DOD.

01:53:24.820 That was always, the military was always a piece of part.

01:53:28.160 And now we have a Republican party who doesn't think that way.

01:53:31.420 So someone going in there with a, with a scalpel or a sledgehammer, it seems like a better

01:53:36.220 choice to me.

01:53:37.100 Yeah.

01:53:37.220 He, uh, uh, he would never do this for reasons that will become immediately obvious, but an

01:53:42.480 actually good pick would be, uh, our friend and former guest in the column, Peter Meyer,

01:53:46.340 former, uh, former, uh, Republican congressman.

01:53:49.500 He did vote for Trump's second impeachment.

01:53:51.500 So, uh, Trump is never going to do anything except have him taste his, taste his boot.

01:53:57.260 Uh, but a young guy who has served, uh, has spent a crucial time in Afghanistan, including,

01:54:03.200 he did some heroic stuff with Seth Moulton, if I'm not mistaken, um, in Afghanistan, trying

01:54:08.700 to get people out during the, uh, during, uh, the debacle, uh, Myers done.

01:54:14.260 There's somebody on the democratic side who's kind of coming towards your position.

01:54:17.520 Don't be mean to him.

01:54:18.860 No, he can F right off.

01:54:20.760 No, he isn't.

01:54:21.640 First of all, he created all the conditions that he's now complaining about.

01:54:24.360 He voted for all the shit that mandated the boys and the girls sports.

01:54:27.000 It's thanks to him that he has to worry about his daughter's situation.

01:54:28.900 He was out on a walk in Nantucket and he was like, I see the mistake of my ways.

01:54:35.080 Seth Moulton, you're not forgiven.

01:54:37.540 If you want to come on the Megyn Kelly show, it's on.

01:54:40.300 Let's do this, my friend.

01:54:41.420 Oh, I want that to happen.

01:54:43.020 Under pressure from the left, he's already walking it back, being like, I didn't say

01:54:49.120 that we should change anything.

01:54:50.200 I just said we should be talking.

01:54:51.640 We should be talking about it.

01:54:53.060 He lost all his courage when he left the battlefield.

01:54:55.340 I'm sorry.

01:54:55.740 Don't be wrong, Seth Moulton.

01:54:58.640 Come on.

01:54:59.620 Not just he should come on, but that we all should go together because we have some friends

01:55:04.580 there to Salem, Massachusetts.

01:55:06.600 Yes.

01:55:07.100 Let's do a live witch trial with Seth Moulton, Megyn Kelly, and the Fitz Collins.

01:55:12.860 Yes.

01:55:13.580 The trial of Seth Moulton.

01:55:15.780 Just so many bad Moynihan accents.

01:55:18.440 Oh, my God.

01:55:19.620 You could do your weird.

01:55:21.300 I'm going to start it just like this.

01:55:22.580 I'm going to start it with, I never liked you.

01:55:26.460 I never liked you.

01:55:29.180 Yes.

01:55:29.780 Yes.

01:55:30.580 Honestly, Meg, the next time we record together in person, now that we know this is a thing,

01:55:34.220 like we're drinking.

01:55:35.100 Like at least.

01:55:35.700 Yeah, yeah.

01:55:35.920 Of course.

01:55:36.820 We were very offended when you drank with our friends from Red Scare and not with us.

01:55:42.000 Yes.

01:55:42.480 I know.

01:55:42.920 Next time you're in a person, it's happening.

01:55:44.320 We owe you an apology.

01:55:45.040 We'll have the Doug Brunt special.

01:55:46.500 He loves to make the martinis.

01:55:48.520 I gotta go.

01:55:49.900 It's good.

01:55:50.200 We'll see you in Salem next month.

01:55:55.060 All right.

01:55:56.060 Bye.

01:55:56.420 Thanks, Megan.

01:55:57.340 Bye.

01:55:59.020 And thanks to all of our listeners for spending the time with us today.

01:56:02.420 We appreciate it.

01:56:03.560 Don't forget to tune in tomorrow where we're also going to have some amazing guests.

01:56:07.260 We'll find out together who it is.

01:56:11.020 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:56:12.960 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:56:20.200 No BS, no exam, and no fear.

01:56:29.680 Thanks, Megan.

01:56:30.060 Bye, guys.

01:56:33.260 Bye.

01:56:33.480 Bye.

01:56:33.900 Bye.

01:56:34.020 Bye.

01:56:36.060 Bye.

01:56:37.080 Bye.

01:56:37.860 Bye.

01:56:38.120 Bye.

01:56:38.180 Bye.

01:56:38.860 Bye.

01:56:39.200 Bye.

01:56:39.780 Bye.

01:56:40.000 Bye.

01:56:40.040 Bye.

01:56:40.980 Bye.

01:56:41.580 Bye.

01:56:41.920 Bye.

01:56:43.420 Bye.

01:56:44.780 Bye.

01:56:45.340 Bye.

01:56:46.260 Bye.

01:56:47.360 Bye.

01:56:47.400 Bye.

01:56:47.980 Bye.

01:56:48.580 Bye.

01:56:49.120 Bye.

01:56:49.420 Bye.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 03, 2024

Dems Reckon with Biden's Pardon Lies, and Kamala's Possibly Tipsy Closing Message, with The Fifth Column Hosts ｜ Ep. 955

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