Dire Consequences of Biden's Policies, and Fetterman-Oz Deep Dive, with Charles C.W. Cooke and Salena Zito | Ep. 406
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 36 minutes
Words per Minute
171.06017
Summary
Charles C.W. Cook joins the show to discuss the latest in the midterms, including the latest on the Georgia Senate race and what may be ahead for gas prices in the United States, among other things. Plus, a new podcast from National Review's Charles C. W. Cook, and a new piece from The New York Times on the craziness in the arts.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
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We are just about one month away, can you believe it, from the November midterms?
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And later today we're going to take our first deep dive into the key races happening in one of the swing states that everybody's watching.
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We're going to look at the Senate and gubernatorial races in Pennsylvania with Selena Zito, who knows the state better than just about anybody.
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But we're going to start today with Charles Cook, Charles C.W. Cook, who had President Biden down in his state of Florida, his home state, yesterday to survey the hurricane damage with Governor Ron DeSantis.
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And Mr. Biden used the opportunity to tell a local mayor that no one F's with a Biden.
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What? Did you see this headline? Sort of weird.
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Not sure what it's about. We're going to get into it, plus the latest on Herschel Walker and the Georgia Senate race and what may be ahead for gas prices in this country, among many other things.
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Charles C.W. Cook is a senior writer at National Review and host of the brand new podcast called, conveniently, The Charles C.W. Cook Podcast.
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Charles, great to have you back on the show. How are you doing?
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I got to say, you're two episodes in it, and I like it even better than I liked Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
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Oh, thank you. That's kind of you. And I'm glad you noted how creative the name I chose for the new podcast was.
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I'm in a glass house on that one, Charles. I will not be ripping that.
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It makes it very easy for people to find you, which is why it makes a lot of sense.
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I am interested to say what you don't know is here on our show, Behind the Scenes, we make some fun of you.
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We know we love you, but we make some fun of you on the Editor's Podcast because when Rich tosses to you to do the ads, they are a minimum of three minutes long.
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I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I have to do a minute. I think that's in the contract, so I'm obviously going way over the top.
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Yes. I think on your own podcast, you siphon, shorten just a little, just a tiny bit. I love our advertisers, but they're probably not paying for three minutes at Charles CW.
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Okay. I want to start in a, not with news of the day, but with something I heard you talk about yesterday and we talked about on this show yesterday, too, because it's really irritating me.
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And I could hear the irritation in your voice, too. And that is what happened to this NYU professor who got fired for making organic chemistry too hard, for making his class too hard, but only for 82 whiners, 82 out of 350, who apparently didn't like their grades, filed a petition against the guy saying he wasn't being cognizant enough of their feelings.
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And in the tone that he was using and in the tone that he was using and that their grades really didn't reflect the effort that they'd put in.
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To me, this is an absolute absurdity. And the university caved to these whiners, fired the professor, like the professor in organic chemistry, literally wrote the book on organic chemistry,
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and took a knee to the whining mob. And I just think this portends many bad things. You know, we knew the campus craziness wasn't confined to campus anymore. But this isn't about being woke. This is about being weak.
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Yeah, so there's a tendency, and I'm guilty of it myself to assume that the lunacy that we see in the arts can't really translate over to sciences, because you can't get away with it. Now, I'm happy to admit, and I have done when talking about this, I'm not good at organic chemistry. It's not my skill. I would fail this class. I was more of an arts guy. I was an English literature, history, politics sort of guy.
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In English literature, history and politics, especially English literature, you can get away with a bit of sort of fluffy thinking. You know, maybe you could eloquent your way out of it. Maybe you can argue your way out of it.
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But you can't do that when it comes to organic chemistry or engineering or physics or what you will. And I think for a while, I had sort of assumed that the locus of the craziness would therefore be the arts.
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But what this piece in the New York Times shows us is that that isn't true. At least it's not true anymore. And I don't know quite why students are signing petitions against their professors in the first place.
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Petitions really are a political tool. But I especially don't know why they're signing a petition against this professor. So this is a guy, he's 84 years old. He taught organic chemistry at NYU. It's a pretty good school. And as you said, he wrote the book. The book's called Organic Chemistry. It's in its fifth edition.
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So it's not as if he wrote it. And then the entire industry said, this is full of nonsense. He wrote it. And then he wrote another one, another one, another one, another one kept updating it. He's extremely well regarded. He won all sorts of teaching awards. And his crime here seems to have been failing people who weren't good at organic chemistry. That's I wouldn't have been myself.
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And that really matters. Because as the Times points out, the reason people are frustrated with him for failing them in organic chemistry, is because they want to go on to be doctors. And that's pretty important as a job. You know, if I disappeared tomorrow, Megan, it wouldn't particularly matter. There would still be people to write about politics and history and so on. Doctors, yeah, you've got to get that right. People don't wake up on the operating table if you don't. So he should be failing people.
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And the question that is asked over and over in this New York Times piece that just made me wince was, how hard should organic chemistry really be? It should be as hard as it is, because otherwise, you know, people are going to die.
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Right. That's the problem when this coddle culture seeps its way into medicine, into the military, into pilot training, right?
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Like the messing of standards when it comes to our firemen, when it comes to our Navy SEALs, when it comes to, again, our pilots, which are now more worried about diversity than they are about just getting the best, most qualified candidates.
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And now this is medicine. This is a precursor to medicine. Even lawyers, you can get away with having some lame ones.
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But doctors, people actually could die. There should be absolutely no lowering of the standards.
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And by the way, I understand it's the pandemic and all that. Too bad. Too bad.
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Medicine itself is a test of who can do well in the most trying and stressful of circumstances.
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Who do they think was saving lives during the pandemic? Doctors!
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Right. And this is a misapplication of concepts.
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So there is a role, although not half as much as the one we've carved out.
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There is a role in history, in the arts, in politics, for a discussion of social constructs, for a discussion of our assumptions as a society.
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It is true that the way we think about our history is conditioned by who's writing the books, who's in power.
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It's true that we're all affected by what's around us, the families we came from, the places we grew up in, and that we're going to apply that when we're in the voting booth or we're arguing about what's right and wrong.
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Now, again, I think it's gone far too far, and I think it's being filtered through some really quite horrible sort of racial and sexual immutable characteristics assumptions.
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But there's some truth to that. There is no truth to that whatsoever when it comes to hard sciences.
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There's no social construct that can change whether or not a bridge has structural integrity.
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There's no social construct that can change whether or not the right medicine has been recommended.
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There's no social construct that can change whether or not the airplane that's been built is going to fly or crash.
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These are not presumptions that one can argue one's way in or out of.
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You have to know the law, and the law is written down for a reason.
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Even in those topics, you could get away with it.
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And the idea that this is now being decided by petition, and that NYU caved when it saw this petition, I think is absolutely terrifying.
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Because what it tells me is that there are people out there, and worse, there are people in positions of authority who have completely abandoned the idea of objective truth.
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My takeaway yesterday was, do not go to a Gen Z doctor.
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Stick with the Gen Xers, maybe an older millennial.
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But do not go to a Gen Z doctor, because if the standards are getting lower to accommodate their feelings, your likely feeling, when cared for by that doctor, will be pain and possibly death.
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It's just not an area in which we need to make these compromises.
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And he's amazing, and he gives it to me straight.
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And it's very clear he's had a lot of his feelings hurt.
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And now he's a crusty old bastard, just like I want him.
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And he gets caught on tape in this weird moment, talking to, I think it was a Democratic mayor of one of the cities down there.
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And people sort of put their lip readers on it.
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And everybody's determined that what he actually said in this following clip, it's very short, was no one F's with a Biden.
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He says that last line was, you can't argue with your brothers outside the house.
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But to me, it's interesting he's, you know, engaging in a machismo moment.
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Says something about where he's been mentally for the past couple days or weeks.
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That was honestly like a scene from a Martin Scorsese movie.
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The big boss goes down to Florida and, you know, meets up with another of the families and wants to make himself clear.
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You know, this has been a good moment for America.
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People are shocked by the fact that they've been working together so well, Biden and DeSantis.
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You know, I've written a bunch about this because this has driven me crazy.
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And in fact, I wonder whether it's annoyed Biden, because maybe that's what that clip's about.
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Maybe he's trying to get back his sense of control.
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But, you know, the way this has been covered in the press is really irritating to me.
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We have political disagreements because we're a free country.
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So people are going to disagree profoundly with each other on fundamental questions.
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What should we do in the realm of war and peace?
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What balance should there be between the federal and state governments?
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But the idea that because people disagree, and in particular, because Governor DeSantis,
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the governor of Florida, and President Biden, who's the executive within the federal government,
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disagree on ideological matters, that they shouldn't work together on hurricane relief,
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or that it's somehow hypocritical for them to work together on hurricane relief,
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or that it's surprising for them to work together on hurricane relief, is really odd.
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Because there is no great ideological difference in this country when it comes to hurricanes.
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And we're all pretty much in agreement as to how we deal with them,
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which also makes the analogy I've seen in some quarters with coronavirus moot.
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We know what we want and need to do when a hurricane strikes.
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There is a federal role, and there is a state role.
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And a functioning system, a system that is not a banana republic,
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is one in which people who disagree with one another profoundly on a whole bunch of moral and political questions
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And it's really nice that that's what we've seen.
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I mean, to the extent that our politics have been put aside,
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yesterday we had dogs and cats living together.
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Joe Biden said that DeSantis had done a good job.
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And Donald Trump said DeSantis had done a good job.
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And I think DeSantis has said that Biden has done a good job,
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and he's got everything he needed from the federal government, which is how it should be.
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You know, so there's this weird reporting where it's, wow, right up until the hurricane,
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Yeah, and I'm sure he will be afterwards as well.
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It's just completely irrelevant to dealing with Hurricane Ian.
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I mean, we've always come together in the wake of these and tried to put partisanship aside.
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And then if somebody falls down on the job, like Bush after Katrina, there will be a pile-on.
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So thankfully, the system's working as it was designed to work.
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And so as I've watched that happen, the media has tried to blame Lee County on DeSantis a bit.
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well, it's your own votes against climate change that made this happen.
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Like, you put Florida in a worse position to battle all of this
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because you voted against big dough that would have helped fight climate change.
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And what they mean in particular is the Inflation Reduction Act,
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the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, and so on.
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October 4th, Florida's GOP leaders opposed climate aid.
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All right, this is by Christopher Flavel and Jonathan Wiseman of the New York Times.
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Hurricane Ian's wrath made clear that Florida faces some of the most severe
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consequences of climate change anywhere in the country.
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I thought I saw the head of NOAA saying that's not at all what it shows
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and that there's been no increase in frequency or severity of hurricanes
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But the Times would like us to tell, like us to believe, as a matter of fact,
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that the hurricane has made clear Florida faces some of the most severe consequences
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But the state's top elected leaders opposed the most significant climate legislation
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to pass Congress, laws to help fortify states against and recover from climate disasters,
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going on to talk about, as I mentioned, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and others.
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And then they hit DeSantis for blocking the state's pension fund from taking climate change
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into account when making investment decisions, because DeSantis took the position that politics
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So because DeSantis doesn't want woke ideology to be the basis for state investments,
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he's getting hit as not in favor of climate change remedies.
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And therefore, the pain and suffering is still his fault.
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This is extremely sloppy thinking from start to finish.
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I mean, even if you believe that the bills in question would have had a material effect on
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the strength of hurricanes, which I think is a stretch, they wouldn't have done it that
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And if you look at the way that these examples are set up, the one that's doing the rounds
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at the moment is that Hurricane Ian is likely to be the most deadly to hit Florida since the
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1930s, which should suggest that this is something that happens in this part of the country from
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time to time and has done for thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, this is so petty.
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The idea that Congress can micromanage the weather in this way is farcical.
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And I don't think one has to be completely dismissive of the idea that there is some climate change,
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They're taking somebody who's been governor since 2018.
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They're taking bills that, if they had any effect at all, would have a marginal effect
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The most annoying one of these I've seen is the claim that DeSantis bears some responsibility
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for this hurricane because he voted against a climate bill when he was in Congress.
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Well, after hurricane, after Superstorm Sandy in New York.
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That bill was full of an extraordinary amount of pork.
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And I don't think that it is incumbent upon members of Congress to suck that up each and
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I don't think it is reasonable, and this is unfortunately a tendency we're increasingly
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seeing in our politics, to put worthwhile, valuable items inside another bill that is broadly
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opposed, and then to say, because you voted against the overall package, you therefore
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must have disdained everything that was within it.
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I think it's a cynical game, and I wish people would stop playing it.
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For the record, Michael Schellenberger tweeted this out the other day, citing NOAA.
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The New York Times says climate change is making storms like Hurricane Ian more destructive.
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Going back to the article I just read, and it's been positing that for days now.
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There have been 15 Cat 4 or stronger hurricanes that have made landfall in Florida since 1919.
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But you wouldn't know it if you were to read the New York Times blaming all of this on man-made
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climate change and pinning the blame on Republicans like DeSantis for not doing more to get solar
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OK, the other big story in the news right now is the midterms.
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We're less than a month away, as I pointed out.
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And things appear to be tightening again, this time in the Republicans' favor.
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Over the course of the summer, it got a lot tighter to the benefit of the Democrats.
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And now things are starting to look better for the Republicans again.
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There is a CNN, actually, CNN Politics article talking about how Republicans hold a near historic
00:19:43.180
All right, so Gallup has for decades put the question to voters, what issue is most important
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And then they say, which party can better handle that issue?
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Well, an overwhelming majority said it's the economy, not surprisingly.
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And 48% say the Republican Party is best equipped to handle it.
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That 11-point Republican edge is one of the best Republicans have ever had.
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Looking at 20 midterm elections since 1946, when this question was asked, only once has the
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Geo Party had a larger advantage on this question, and that was in 1946, when they had a 17-point
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When they had the 17-point lead on this question, they saw a net gain of 55 House seats in 1946.
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So it's just a long, sort of convoluted, but interesting look at how they're leading on
00:20:44.880
And we're about a month out, so it matters more right now than it has.
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And to put that number you just read into context, you say 1946.
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So that was after the Democrats had been in charge of Washington, D.C. for 16 years.
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The 1929 crash happens, and then there is an immediate backlash against the Republican
00:21:12.160
And 1932, you get the election of Franklin Roosevelt, massive super majorities in 1936.
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So by 1946, you would expect a backlash on that scale.
00:21:24.940
But Joe Biden's been in office for less than two years, and his party have been in control
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of Congress for nearly four years in the House and two in the Senate.
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I think there was a profound overcorrection in the last few months when imagining what's
00:21:46.220
I do think that the Dobbs decision probably had some effect.
00:21:49.640
That effect was primarily to bring Democrats who had been disaffected by the economic situation
00:22:01.880
But I don't think that the decision that the Supreme Court arrived at has alienated swing
00:22:10.080
voters in quite the way that it was supposed to have.
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And I thought also over the summer that people were a little premature because we weren't really
00:22:28.740
But most people are not in the middle of August saying, what about those midterms?
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So it was always going to shift back a little bit.
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And the truth is that the fundamentals here are just not good for the Democratic Party.
00:22:48.020
They have unified control of Washington, D.C., and they have had that control at the same
00:22:55.520
time as we've seen two quarters of contraction, whether that's a recession or not, we can argue
00:23:00.400
about inflation at its highest level since 1980.
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And then all of the things that result from high inflation, the consequences of trying to
00:23:09.880
fight high inflation, which tend to be the contraction of the economy and high interest
00:23:14.880
rates, which in turn lead to high mortgage rates and, you know, high car payment rates
00:23:25.820
Oh, and high gas prices, I should say, as well.
00:23:28.040
And Joe Biden and his party have just not signaled that they're serious about fighting this.
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Some of it really is their fault because they just spent so much money and they sent out so
00:23:41.280
But they haven't been serious about fighting it.
00:23:47.180
Then when it didn't go away quickly, they said maybe we should do Build Back Better and
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add another three to six trillion dollars to it.
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Then when they realized that that wasn't going to happen, they kept looking at ways to spend
00:23:58.040
Then they passed a bill called the Inflation Reduction Act that had absolutely nothing to
00:24:02.340
do with inflation and that everybody knew had nothing to do with inflation.
00:24:06.240
And now they're coming into October when it's far too late for Congress to do anything and
00:24:13.820
And the last thing he did, by the way, was unilaterally and illegally spend up to a trillion
00:24:19.300
dollars on college students, which is inflationary.
00:24:22.780
And they're wondering why the message, hey, the economy is starting to turn around, isn't
00:24:29.020
And the reason for that is very simple, because the economy is not starting to turn around.
00:24:32.960
There's no victory lap to take because there's no victory.
00:24:35.620
And the numbers that we're seeing for Congress are reflecting that.
00:24:39.840
We the news just gets worse and worse by the day for them economically.
00:24:46.020
But it was very late to this party to try to get control over the amount of money circulating
00:24:52.420
So people are feeling that pain, but they're feeling it at the gas pump again.
00:24:57.000
One year ago, the price of gas was three point two.
00:24:59.860
Now it's up to, I think, three point eighty seven.
00:25:02.260
As of today, I just took a look just because I know it was obviously lower under Trump when
00:25:07.320
Trump left office in January twenty twenty one.
00:25:13.260
You don't you don't need an economist to walk you through that.
00:25:16.020
You're already feeling it when you go and fill up your tank.
00:25:19.160
So we're at almost back, you know, pretty close to four dollars a gallon again.
00:25:23.220
And this, as I haven't heard you guys talk about this yet, but the OPEC embarrassment
00:25:28.540
after we went on bended knee back to the Saudis after we were going to make pariahs out of
00:25:36.780
Joe Biden goes there saying, I'm going to I got this goes and does a fist bump to try
00:25:44.900
And so we humbled ourselves in front of the so-called pariahs and got absolutely nothing.
00:25:54.300
Biden comes back acting like some sort of a victor.
00:25:56.380
And now we get the answer, which is not only are we not going to produce more, we're going
00:26:00.660
to pull a couple million barrels from the current supply.
00:26:05.260
And Joe Biden saying, OK, maybe we'll just go to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve here in
00:26:10.340
OK, but the point is, we have absolutely no heft internationally when it comes to our
00:26:18.440
We have high gas prices and we're actually looking at a winter where they're now saying
00:26:22.400
it's going to be way more expensive to heat your home than it's been.
00:26:32.880
And it's expected to be $300 or more expensive this winter.
00:26:41.140
And again, some of this was inevitable and is not Joe Biden's fault.
00:26:44.640
It's the product of our coming out of COVID, all of the supply chain issues that we saw.
00:26:49.240
It's quite difficult just to turn on energy production overnight and the increase in demand
00:26:54.280
as it interacts with supply pushing up the price.
00:26:56.960
But even if you accept that, which I do, you can judge the president on how he has responded
00:27:05.180
And he and his party are just not interested in taking advantage of the great blessings
00:27:10.440
that the United States has with its natural resources.
00:27:14.440
I mean, we have not taken advantage of the resources themselves.
00:27:20.340
And we haven't taken advantage of our ability to build refining capacity.
00:27:25.620
A lot of the oil that we're pulling out of the ground in the United States, we're actually
00:27:34.200
It's a short-term choice and a long-term choice.
00:27:37.000
We do not need to be using the strategic petroleum reserves, not what it's for, to try to lower
00:27:43.620
We do not need to be going on bended knee to the Saudis or now to the Venezuelans.
00:27:51.080
In fact, if there's one thing we should have learned from the last 50 years, it's not to
00:27:58.580
If we were an island nation with very few natural resources, then our calculation would be different.
00:28:07.980
We're an enormous, blessed continental nation that can, if it wants to be, be energy independent,
00:28:16.640
We can pull out of the ground enough oil and refine it to keep cars going.
00:28:22.020
And this is a slightly separate topic, but we can create enough domestic energy, including
00:28:28.440
nuclear, if we had the will, to never have to ask Saudi Arabia for help ever again.
00:28:34.240
And what I think this has shown is that whatever one's view is on the question of energy and
00:28:42.160
climate and the conservation of land, it is now abundantly clear, if it wasn't already,
00:28:48.740
that the American public is not going to agree to go back in time or to forswear the industrial
00:29:05.280
But the demand for gasoline and for other energy is not going to go down.
00:29:11.320
So we're going to have to get it from somewhere.
00:29:16.460
It seems absolutely crazy to me that we're in this position.
00:29:20.000
And much of that, again, in the short term and in the long term, is a choice.
00:29:27.280
We were talking the other day about what consequence does the election of the president
00:29:33.680
If you could have divided government, is gridlock enough to change to stop the Democrat big
00:29:42.100
And, you know, this is a good example of how you might not be enough.
00:29:47.500
It's better than what we have right now, which is just far left spending and policies
00:29:53.980
But, you know, whether we tap into our energy reserves, whether we spur big business in the
00:30:00.440
energy industry into doing more and drilling domestically and so on, that really is an executive
00:30:06.840
So there's some things that would have to be undone before we could vote for gridlock.
00:30:22.060
Charles, you've been busy, clearly, maybe not as busy as Joe Biden, who not only had to
00:30:27.220
deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, but you may not know, spent some time with getting
00:30:36.840
I don't know if you saw this, but I love this story.
00:30:41.900
Not long after claiming that he actually visited the Tree of Life synagogue after the horrific
00:30:48.000
attack there that killed 11 people in 2018, when he said, I went there and I visited and
00:30:52.620
spent time and then they came out and said, no, you didn't.
00:31:01.580
A couple of years later, here he is saying he was he's basically raised by Puerto Ricans,
00:31:05.160
Delaware, which is less than one percent Puerto Rican, his home state, that he was raised
00:31:14.780
And there's a montage that I don't know who put it together, but it's brilliant of some
00:31:21.760
of Biden's gaffes along these lines, because it wasn't just these two examples.
00:31:33.460
I got my education for real in the black church.
00:31:40.460
I probably went to school more than many of you did.
00:31:48.960
You can tell you, I was sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home politically.
00:31:59.680
It just shows he's such a panderer and, of course, liar.
00:32:08.220
If you go back to the first time he ran for president in the 80s, this is what he's always
00:32:14.260
And he has these stories about his father that are really, really unconvincing.
00:32:22.460
Apparently, his father always said to him at the foot of his bed exactly what he would
00:32:27.040
need in the future to be able to tell an audience his father said to him.
00:32:32.320
Apparently, his father was the most forward-looking man in the history of the United States as well,
00:32:38.480
And everything that is currently fashionable, his father was into in 1952.
00:32:50.920
He's always had a very casual relationship with the truth.
00:32:54.200
And it's one of the things, I think, that has made the tendency of people who didn't want
00:33:00.520
to vote for Donald Trump, which I absolutely understand, to turn Biden into a hero rather
00:33:11.060
I comprehend why people said, I'm voting for Biden, not Trump.
00:33:16.720
I don't understand why people who did that feel the need to pretend or insist that Joe Biden
00:33:24.460
is a good, upstanding person, because he's not.
00:33:30.240
Before Joe Biden ran for president, and I'll be honest, before I ever thought he would be
00:33:35.940
president, when he was vice president, I wrote a piece at National Review comparing him to
00:33:40.800
Prince Philip in Britain, because he always seemed to have a gaffe.
00:33:44.460
Now, he doesn't have the charm that Prince Philip had.
00:33:46.820
But Prince Philip was absolutely notorious for saying things that were, let's say, politically
00:33:53.160
incorrect, that were likely to make the people in the room feel uncomfortable, that you would
00:34:01.880
probably more associate with somebody in the 1950s than in the modern era.
00:34:09.420
This is a guy who told a black man a few years ago, you know, if you don't vote for me,
00:34:23.300
He sees an audience, and he really wants to convince that audience that he is more like
00:34:31.840
And so he'll just have whatever it takes, whatever it takes, he'll say it.
00:34:36.160
And, you know, sometimes it's funny, but sometimes it's actually quite sinister.
00:34:39.800
The clips that you played were funny in their own way.
00:34:42.500
What he said about Mitt Romney wanting to put the audience back in chains was really
00:34:48.440
very sinister and I think was a turning point in our politics.
00:34:51.680
Not to mention the Dark Brandon speech that we were all just subjected to.
00:34:55.720
And then he goes out and he denies that he said any of the things the very next day, once
00:34:59.780
again, like the inflation and the economy story, asking us not to believe our lying eyes.
00:35:03.960
Now, it must be said on the other side from the election in 2020 and possibly in the election
00:35:09.920
in 2024, we have Donald Trump, OK, who rather than sort of taking the high road and giving
00:35:20.100
And I mentioned the two dollars and 40 cents gas prices.
00:35:23.820
But sends out one of the just the most insane tweets, even by Trump standards the other day
00:35:36.280
I don't know what's going on here, Charles, but I know it caught your attention, too.
00:35:40.240
And I genuinely don't understand what Trump is doing with this.
00:35:43.360
I know he doesn't like Mitch McConnell, but this seemed to come out of left field.
00:35:46.920
And this is what he wrote is McConnell approving all of these trillions of dollars worth of
00:35:52.660
Democrat sponsored bills without even the slightest bit of negotiation because he hates
00:35:56.900
Donald J. Trump and he knows I am strongly opposed to them.
00:36:00.180
Or is he doing it because he believes in the fake and highly destructive Green New Deal and
00:36:09.900
He has a in all caps death wish must immediately seek help and advice from his China loving
00:36:23.280
I even knowing Trump tweets or truth show, whatever troops, extraordinary things that I
00:36:34.680
And I wonder I know it's factually not correct either.
00:36:53.720
McConnell was instrumental to the Trump presidency.
00:36:59.680
Without McConnell, Trump wouldn't have got most of the things he got done.
00:37:03.380
McConnell is not and has not been passing trillions of dollars of Democratic spending to annoy Donald
00:37:15.860
And then when we get to the end with the racial slur, and this is not only a woman who served
00:37:23.840
in Trump's own cabinet, it's Mitch McConnell's wife, and what he said about her, it's just gross.
00:37:36.060
I think Republican voters, including Republican voters who really like Trump, ought to ask
00:37:43.720
themselves exactly the question that you just asked.
00:37:47.160
There's a temptation to say, well, I don't care about mean tweets.
00:37:58.960
The disease is a total lack of control, self-control exhibited by Trump.
00:38:05.360
And also a total lack of care, it seems, or interest in moving the ball forward.
00:38:12.700
So the question I've been asking people is, let's strip that truth of its moral failings.
00:38:23.960
Let's just ignore for a second what he said about Alain Chow, and let's ignore that it contains
00:38:40.100
Forget that I find it abhorrent, and I think less of Trump for it.
00:38:45.100
Let's just look at it from the perspective of somebody who is worried about the direction
00:38:54.020
It diminished the man who will probably be the next Senate majority leader.
00:38:59.520
It told Asian Americans that they are unwelcome.
00:39:05.240
It told voters that Republicans are unserious and spend money that they have not, in fact,
00:39:12.780
spent, most of which that they've blocked when they could.
00:39:36.680
And I've just been struck by the side-by-sides.
00:39:44.260
And on the other hand, the images of my governor running around the state, giving 11 press conferences
00:39:50.540
a day, getting bridges fixed, and generally exhibiting competence and care of Governor Abbott in Texas
00:40:01.420
I don't know how we can look at this as a movement and say, yes, that's what we need.
00:40:10.840
We're not talking here about somebody who has been nominated for the presidency.
00:40:16.220
We're not comparing, or shouldn't be comparing that, to Joe Biden.
00:40:21.740
We're comparing that to basically everyone in the country.
00:40:26.040
And it should factor in to the decision that conservatives make when 2024 rolls around.
00:40:33.660
Because what Donald Trump, in my view, is saying is,
00:40:37.060
I'm not focused on what matters, and I'm not serious.
00:40:39.980
It's just, it's like, with the Republicans being dismissed as an entire group of racists
00:40:47.940
and bigots, and I think that reasonably taking umbrage at that, how does this reflect on them,
00:40:57.440
on the Trump lovers who don't have this in their heart, who would never say China-loving
00:41:01.420
wife Coco Chow about Elaine Chow, who served this country and Trump's administration faithfully?
00:41:06.340
And by the way, we would not have a Justice Gorsuch if it weren't for Mitch McConnell.
00:41:10.760
Forget the other two, who he helped shepherd through, but we really wouldn't have Gorsuch
00:41:17.340
He's been critical of Trump on the election claims and didn't support the January 6th stuff.
00:41:21.640
That seems to me where he really broke from him.
00:41:28.440
And he continues to say things like this that will only undermine his own chances,
00:41:33.540
the chance of any Republican running for office from this point forward.
00:41:36.960
You know, if I'm a Democrat media person, I'm bringing this up at the Senate race that
00:41:45.180
I'm saying, what's your response to this, Mehmet Oz?
00:41:51.660
And so, like, it's not helpful to himself or to the Republican Party or to any Republican
00:41:56.740
And it shouldn't be defended, even by the most ardent Trump lovers.
00:41:59.980
And also, is that the person you want to be president when you have a choice?
00:42:08.100
As I said, I understand the people who said, I don't want to vote for Trump.
00:42:13.020
I also understand the people who said, no, I'm voting for Trump because Biden's wrong
00:42:18.900
And, you know, he's pro-choice and he's against more energy production and all of the stuff
00:42:26.900
But at the moment, Donald Trump is a private citizen.
00:42:29.520
In fact, all he has at the moment is mean tweets.
00:42:33.240
What is it about that that could make anyone say, that's the guy?
00:42:44.260
I would be remiss if I didn't get you to respond to this because your big issue these past six
00:42:49.660
weeks and since he announced it has been this, you know, student loan forgiveness, again,
00:42:55.320
a misnomer program by President Biden, which I know you believe is so egregious, he ought
00:43:04.240
He's gotten hit with several lawsuits now, which is good because the lawsuits are going
00:43:11.520
So as that's happened, he's slowly tried to change it to the Department of Education.
00:43:16.440
Oh, we're going to do a little differently to try to address the one lawsuit because
00:43:20.980
And maybe we'll make another tweak to try to address another set of lawsuits that's gotten
00:43:25.320
filed because he knows he's going to lose again.
00:43:27.240
And Corinne Jean-Pierre was asked about the program.
00:43:29.620
Here's what she said, trying to play to the heartstrings.
00:43:35.820
It's a shame that you have Republicans out there, Republican groups, Republican states
00:43:42.760
that are trying to stop Americans from getting a little bit of a breathing room, a little
00:43:49.680
This is a commitment that the president has made.
00:43:54.020
And this is one of the one of the ways that the president is going to continue to work
00:43:59.900
for the American people, trying to find ways to give them a little bit of a break.
00:44:05.260
Because I think it's six Republican states that have also sued.
00:44:08.240
So she's accusing them of stopping the president in his efforts to give people a little bit of
00:44:16.280
I think the question here is, do we have a constitutional order or do we not?
00:44:22.880
The Constitution of the United States gives lawmaking power exclusively to Congress.
00:44:29.620
Congress has not passed a law that permits the president to do this.
00:44:33.780
The 2003 Heroes Act that Biden claims allows him to do this does not.
00:44:39.440
But even if it did, it would require there to be an emergency.
00:44:45.860
And besides, what sort of emergency is only apparent 16, 17 months into a presidency?
00:44:57.120
What Biden did was flatly, indisputably illegal.
00:45:02.480
And he's making it worse by trying to parry the lawsuits that are coming in by changing
00:45:11.320
Not only was his initial order illegal, he's now carving out exceptions.
00:45:16.600
In order to try and avoid the plaintiffs having standing in the eyes of the courts.
00:45:26.180
I will ask this question here, as I have elsewhere.
00:45:31.160
What about our political system would have been different in relation to the student loan order
00:45:40.460
If instead we just elected a president and allowed that president to determine what was
00:45:54.340
Then when President Biden was sued, he said, don't worry, I've updated to the website on
00:46:04.040
Then when he was sued again, he said, don't worry, I've exempted the people who were suing
00:46:12.380
That's not how legislating works in this country.
00:46:16.900
And even when Congress has given the president certain powers, even when we have had delegations
00:46:23.260
of legislative authority from the legislature to the executive branch, we have a process.
00:46:30.960
The Administrative Procedure Act is there to prevent this sort of capricious lawmaking.
00:46:42.380
And I think that Americans, irrespective of whether or not they like the idea of student
00:46:48.140
loan transference, it's not forgiveness, it's transference, I think they should be deeply
00:46:52.580
worried about this because this is not really a question of the nature of the decision or
00:47:03.740
Just she makes it sound like they're helping the poor, the downtrodden, just give them a
00:47:10.680
And what they're in fact doing is taking money from some of the most well-educated and likely
00:47:16.640
to be financially rewarded professionals we have and making the people who are working
00:47:29.440
And don't forget, folks, tomorrow I'm going to be sending my next American News Minute.
00:47:32.960
That's all the news you need in one minute or less, plus all the latest trouble my little
00:47:43.560
If you want to reach out to me directly, you can email me.
00:47:46.280
The email is Megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at MeganKelley.com.
00:47:50.500
And I'll address some of those right here on the show.
00:47:52.500
And don't forget, you can find the Megan Kelly Show live right here on Sirius XM Triumph
00:47:56.120
Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing
00:48:00.520
to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash Megan Kelly.
00:48:03.580
Download the podcast wherever you get your podcast for free.
00:48:12.360
Let's talk politics down in Georgia for a minute because the Herschel Walker story continues.
00:48:17.840
And it's, you know, it's basically a dispute over what kind of a husband and father he was
00:48:22.680
and what connection he has with the truth present day, because he came out, what initially
00:48:29.200
happened was the Daily Beast, which absolutely hates Herschel Walker and any Republican, came
00:48:33.980
It was obviously an oppo research, you know, November type surprise, October surprise, comes
00:48:39.460
out saying he's got, he paid for a woman to have an abortion back in 2009.
00:48:44.480
And here's a card and a check from him in his, with his handwriting for $700.
00:48:50.340
And then we have the woman, uh, we're going to keep her name anonymous, but we know who
00:48:55.520
And this is a guy who's advocating for, um, he's a pro-lifer now and says, I want an abortion
00:49:00.440
ban with no exceptions, not rape, not incest, nothing.
00:49:03.960
He comes out and say, it's a lie and told Fox, not only is it a lie, I don't know this
00:49:08.280
woman and I don't remember sending this woman any money.
00:49:12.620
Uh, he went on, as for the rest of it, he went on Fox and friends yesterday and said
00:49:17.680
the following, uh, to explain away the man he used to be in the man he is today.
00:49:22.940
I've been redeemed and I'm going to make this statement here.
00:49:26.200
It's like, they're trying to, uh, bring up my past to hurt me, but they don't know, like
00:49:31.480
bringing up my past only energize me to go out and fight even harder.
00:49:34.860
Well, then last night, uh, the daily beast has a follow-up report saying you definitely
00:49:41.380
know the woman because you actually had another child with her and gets the woman to go on
00:49:48.860
And she says, yeah, you know, he, he did pay for my abortion and I had another child with
00:49:55.140
And his son, Christian, who's a Trump supporter, like diehard Trump supporter has been out there
00:50:03.260
We had to move six times in six months to avoid his wrath.
00:50:08.360
And it's really, it's causing a lot of consternation amongst Republicans who really want to take
00:50:21.160
Well, from my perspective, the problem here will be if he's lying now, if this did happen
00:50:27.660
and he's saying it didn't happen, if this report's accurate and he's saying it's false,
00:50:34.700
If it were part of his past, I think it would be really fine depending on how he dealt with
00:50:47.980
He says that he was a mess, that he struggled with mental health.
00:50:52.300
He wrote a book about that and that he's made all sorts of decisions that he really regrets,
00:50:56.940
but that he found Jesus and he's saved by the grace of God.
00:51:01.660
And, you know, irrespective of the religious component, I think redemption is a good quality
00:51:08.040
And I think it would be an undesirable society in which someone like that couldn't change
00:51:20.340
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with someone who is now pro-life having not been in the
00:51:26.480
There's nothing wrong with somebody who's had an abortion or paid for an abortion saying
00:51:30.820
these were the wrong decisions and I've changed.
00:51:35.320
But if he did it and he's now lying about it, then that is a contemporary problem.
00:51:43.860
And I think that really does speak to his character now and should actually bring into
00:51:50.380
question whether or not all of his talk of redemption is sincere.
00:51:55.540
I don't know if this story is true or not, so I find it quite difficult to judge.
00:52:01.560
But if it does turn out to be true and if he does turn out to have been lied, then it
00:52:07.880
Whether or not it will hurt him enough to lose the race, I don't know, because we're
00:52:16.500
It could just be, especially with how popular Brian Kemp, the gubernatorial candidate in Georgia
00:52:21.140
seems to be, it could be that he makes it over the line anyway.
00:52:25.020
If it's a very close race, this could be enough to slough off enough people at the margins
00:52:32.180
Think about it, you know, so, and I should clarify, the Daily Beast did not name the
00:52:38.640
They just said, we know who she is and we've gone back to her and now here's a new detail.
00:52:44.260
She was so well known to him that they conceived another child years after the abortion and she
00:52:50.080
continued on with that later pregnancy, though she claimed that Walker said it wasn't a really
00:52:56.700
convenient time for him to have that baby either, but she decided to carry that baby
00:53:05.920
It's an interesting question to me because if all of this is true, if we assume the Daily
00:53:10.320
Beast reporting is true and he did threaten to sue, but then his lawyers when asked kind
00:53:20.840
Do you want a man who you know is flawed in his former marriage, in his role as a man,
00:53:29.480
and even in his connection to the truth about those behaviors?
00:53:32.080
I would expect him to be embarrassed about this and to perhaps lean on the side of some
00:53:40.760
Do you want that man if he's going to be elected to the Senate and tip the balance in
00:53:44.840
favor of Republicans at a time when so much rides in the balance?
00:53:49.720
You know, if if we have another Supreme Court vacancy, Joe Biden's going to fill it in those
00:53:53.780
last two years and then it's going to have to get Senate approval and who controls the
00:53:58.180
Senate will be really important again, not to mention all the other agenda items that
00:54:03.580
the House and potentially the Senate could stop or control over the next two years and
00:54:09.300
You know, these senators get six year terms, so it's a long it's a long deal once you
00:54:15.760
Do you care or would you rather go with I don't know, Raphael Warnock?
00:54:27.020
Let's pretend he's squeaky clean, you know, he's like this minister and he's going to
00:54:30.700
be like God fearing man in there, but he's going to vote for this totally crazy left wing
00:54:38.700
And and against all these other things, like against due process for men on college campuses
00:54:42.360
who are accused and he's going to vote for the most far left justice you could ever imagine.
00:54:50.440
And specifically on the question of abortion, too.
00:54:53.460
I mean, if the idea is that pro-life Americans should look at this and be horrified by it,
00:55:00.120
But equally, Raphael Warnock's views on abortion are much more likely to have a mass impact
00:55:08.100
than Herschel Walker's because, you know, Warnock is in favor of federal preemption of
00:55:14.060
In other words, wiping out 50 states abortion laws.
00:55:21.320
I think it's a very difficult question, and it's one that I've grappled with and struggled
00:55:26.020
I wrote a piece just before the 2020 election about this as it related to Donald Trump.
00:55:34.400
I was under no allusions as to Trump's shortcomings, and I laid them out in the first five paragraphs.
00:55:39.940
And then I said, the problem is, I also don't like Biden.
00:55:44.460
And, you know, there are a great deal of important issues at stake in our politics at the moment,
00:55:57.060
And where the line is between someone's character and how someone will vote is really difficult
00:56:06.500
It's difficult to discern which you should prefer.
00:56:10.900
I mean, the way that I tend to look at this, the way that I always explain this to people
00:56:14.860
if they ask how I view candidates is, as a rule, you should determine whether or not someone
00:56:21.160
is so far beyond the pale that they've disqualified themselves and then vote for the person you
00:56:26.860
You know, so, for example, in Florida, I've done this on your show.
00:56:31.020
I've criticized Governor DeSantis for quite a few things.
00:56:33.920
But I agree with him on more than I disagree with him on.
00:56:36.920
And I agree with him on more than I agree with his opponent, Charlie Criston.
00:56:40.540
And I don't think there is anything about him that is disqualifying.
00:56:47.720
With Herschel Walker, that becomes much more difficult.
00:56:59.320
And, you know, I haven't actually sat down and thought about that in great detail, in
00:57:10.760
And, you know, we'll get a lot of pieces about this from people on either side of this who
00:57:15.200
will pretend that this is a very easy question and that anyone who disagrees with them doesn't
00:57:20.620
So, you know, if you talk to people outside of the crucible of daily politics, just normal
00:57:30.200
Americans who vote, they really struggle with this, too.
00:57:33.320
I can't count the number of letters and emails that I got after that piece I wrote about Trump
00:57:37.800
saying this is exactly what I'm trying to work out as well.
00:57:41.600
And I would imagine the same things happening in Georgia.
00:57:44.720
It's so like I'm thinking about that Trump tweet versus the Herschel Walker allegations.
00:57:49.640
Herschel Walker, what they've alleged about him is that he was not a good husband.
00:57:54.420
He was not a good man with respect to his obligations and the women he brought into his
00:58:03.640
And now when potentially confronted by some of those acts, alleged acts, he may have lied
00:58:10.820
And I again, it's not great to lie, but I would understand why this is a big race.
00:58:17.920
He sees it as an oppo dump meant to get rid of him by the media.
00:58:29.580
But the Trump thing is like an active decision to tweet out something so weirdly.
00:58:36.760
I know this is a weird phrase, but like unnecessarily racist against somebody who worked for him and
00:58:46.360
What's why just disparage yourself, your supporters in that way?
00:58:51.520
You know, like it's going to be used against them.
00:58:58.960
He can be just so reckless, not to mention the racial tones.
00:59:02.780
And, you know, like that's a whole other matter.
00:59:07.520
He's he's got a serious weakness in the personal lane.
00:59:16.080
I also think that it's important for us to remember, just as a matter of elementary fact,
00:59:22.460
that neither party has a monopoly on virtue in this area.
00:59:26.020
Ted Kennedy was elected over and over and over again after what happened at Chappaquiddick
00:59:33.460
And it was only after he died that people were prepared to say maybe that wasn't a great idea.
00:59:37.640
But Bill Clinton was more popular among Democrats after the Lewinsky scandal than he was before.
00:59:45.980
And it was only after not just he had left office, but his wife had lost her presidential
00:59:50.160
run that we started to see columns saying maybe that was a mistake.
00:59:55.480
And the famous one was, I believe, Juanita in The New York Times.
01:00:01.940
Most Republicans would have been absolutely horrified prior to 2015, 2016 to have someone
01:00:10.780
Republicans like to see themselves as the party of character and morality and the stand-up
01:00:18.520
And then Trump came along and people said, well, the Supreme Court's in the balance.
01:00:25.180
As I say, I think it is very difficult to work out where the line is and how to interrogate
01:00:30.440
But it is important for us on both the right and the left not to pretend that we're the
01:00:35.120
only ones who do it because we're absolutely not.
01:00:38.080
Oh, that was the joke of the Trump-Clinton matchup where people were like, look, another
01:00:44.540
It's like, do you know how many people have accused Bill Clinton and of what?
01:00:50.360
I mean, of actual rape and repeated sexual assault against women who worked for him over
01:00:56.020
and over, who have women have gone on the record under oath and made these allegations.
01:01:00.200
And Hillary Clinton actively worked to help cover it up and to defend him.
01:01:05.300
And by the way, one of America's most respected anchors, George Stephanopoulos, created the war
01:01:13.500
So it's like, can you spare me the moral high ground?
01:01:17.240
Neither ticket has got perfect men connected to the office that would that would inhabit
01:01:23.160
in which, you know, they or their spouse want to ascent.
01:01:26.880
So to me, it's just frustrating because I said this yesterday, but you could get Mitt
01:01:31.000
Romney, who I don't think is I don't think there'd ever be a story that Mitt Romney cheated
01:01:34.020
on his wife or got him to be pregnant or pay for an abortion or sent out a racist tweet.
01:01:42.360
But now he's like, I don't even know what he is, but he's not a Republican that most
01:01:45.960
Republicans would vote for over a real Republican.
01:01:48.900
Right. So it's more so right now than ever because we know so much about them.
01:01:53.680
The day of social media, the day of like everything you've ever done is known.
01:01:57.320
We really have to grapple with this stuff in a way we didn't.
01:02:00.440
OK, let me shift gears for a second. Speaking of bad Democratic politicians, Governor Andrew
01:02:06.220
Cuomo got booted out of office and we got stuck with some very stupid replacement, Kathy
01:02:10.820
Hochul. And we'll see whether she wins. She looks like she's going to win, but she shouldn't.
01:02:15.900
But his brother, Chris Cuomo, got booted for trying to help him smear the women who are
01:02:20.260
accusing him from CNN. And now he's got over at News Nation, which is a network trying to
01:02:26.320
be a little bit more in the middle, independent and opened up last night saying he's going
01:02:30.400
to or two nights ago saying he's going to be the voice of reason.
01:02:32.680
He's going to be the person who eschews hard partisanship.
01:02:35.720
I mean, after how many years of doing exactly that on CNN, telling Republicans he hated them.
01:02:41.100
And there was a question about how well will he do?
01:02:48.140
Eight thousand viewers in the key advertising demo of twenty five to fifty four, which is
01:02:54.760
They don't care about that. The overall number was dreadful, too.
01:02:56.860
It's like one hundred and forty nine thousand eight thousand.
01:03:00.140
I'll tell you, having spent 17 years in cable news, eight thousand in the demo means everyone
01:03:06.720
A few cats were at home with the television station still on and they managed to give you
01:03:12.040
an eight thousand in the twenty five to fifty four year old category.
01:03:14.580
So what do you make of Chris Cuomo's attempt to reinvent himself over there?
01:03:25.660
If his last name was Smith, he wouldn't be on television.
01:03:30.540
What is it about him that makes him think that he needs to go from place to place and
01:03:40.260
He's been shown to have seriously poor moral and professional judgment.
01:03:49.900
It's not as if it's written in the Constitution that Chris Cuomo has to be on air in some
01:03:55.840
And if if there's not the demand there, which is you're suggesting there's not those numbers
01:04:02.060
Then isn't it just time he tried something else?
01:04:04.780
Honestly, like I was at my friend's house in New York the other day.
01:04:09.200
Your doorman has just opened the door for more people than watch that show.
01:04:15.340
Not only that, but he went down from his lead in, which is also a very bad sign when you're
01:04:21.860
Your numbers are supposed to go up respectively.
01:04:28.120
But he continues to get hired and continues to talk because he thinks people want to hear
01:04:32.540
And to me, it's amazing because his brother's out there saying I'm time for I'm ready for
01:04:37.540
And he's out there having been sort of pushed out of this job.
01:04:40.780
These guys, these Cuomos, these Democrats, boy, they get they get out of the Me Too cancellation
01:04:47.480
They don't have to spend any time at all in there.
01:04:49.540
If your last name is Cuomo, it's especially easy to get out of it.
01:04:52.940
Not so for people who aren't hardcore Democrats or, God forbid, Republicans.
01:05:03.640
Coming up next, we're going to get into we went to Georgia politics and we talked about
01:05:08.380
Next up, we're going to talk about Pennsylvania with Selena Zito.
01:05:13.980
And she's been following Fetterman and Oz all over the campaign trails.
01:05:20.560
And she's going to give us an update on the tightening poles in a state that was said to
01:05:35.720
I think it's a commonwealth, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
01:05:49.480
OK, but anyway, there's a very important Senate race there.
01:05:52.340
As you know, this is one of the ones that could turn the balance.
01:05:55.300
Right now we have a 50 50 Senate GOP versus Dem.
01:05:58.380
And when that's the case, the sitting vice president gets to cast the deciding vote.
01:06:04.180
So that's why for effective all of all effective purposes, the Democrats control the Senate.
01:06:08.640
So every single seat matters, every single one.
01:06:10.640
And one of the most important races that everybody's watching is in Pennsylvania.
01:06:13.860
Now, at one point, the Democratic candidate, John Fetterman, there is who's the lieutenant
01:06:18.320
governor, was leading against his opponent, Republican Dr.
01:06:27.440
But over the last few weeks, that gap has narrowed and the race has been dubbed a toss up now.
01:06:33.940
So I want to I want to just walk you through it before we bring in Selena.
01:06:37.100
So Fetterman had a stroke last May and it led to all sorts of health issues for him that
01:06:44.980
the campaign clearly was not being honest about.
01:06:47.880
They they sort of said he had a stroke and then it came out that the stroke was related
01:06:53.340
And the heart issue had started five years earlier before he even ran for lieutenant governor
01:06:58.400
And now we can't get the current medical reports.
01:07:00.740
And there's been no doctor press conference or statement, et cetera.
01:07:04.340
And we don't know how John Fetterman is doing, but we know he's struggling.
01:07:12.120
He went on just as an example, Chris Hayes' show on MSNBC a couple of weeks ago.
01:07:24.240
He's confused in what was his first TV interview in months.
01:07:28.440
First, I just wanted to check in and see how how you're feeling and how you're doing.
01:07:36.260
And and it's not about kicking balls in the authority or anything.
01:07:47.080
I mean, I guess if it was it's not about kicking authority in the balls, it's not really a saying,
01:07:55.740
And what we're being told now is he can't even do a Q&A without closed captioning sitting
01:08:02.620
That that basically translates the auditory version of words into written.
01:08:09.360
Now, there are real questions about whether somebody who's in that condition should be
01:08:13.120
should be representing Pennsylvania in the U.S.
01:08:17.380
It should be there listening to debates on the Senate floor, which are not closed captioned
01:08:24.840
But we don't know whether that's required full time and so on, because he won't speak
01:08:29.220
about his health and we won't get updated about his health.
01:08:31.920
And so far, he's refused to even even have a debate.
01:08:35.440
Right now, he's sort of dragging his feet on the one that he was shamed into joining me
01:08:41.480
She writes for The Washington Examiner, The New York Post and The Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
01:08:46.400
And she knows everything about Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania politics.
01:08:54.380
And so this race is getting interesting because Oz was he was losing and he was a disappointment
01:09:02.400
to a lot of Republicans who weren't sure whether they should get behind him.
01:09:07.800
There was a sort of an inter-party fight about him, but he became the nominee.
01:09:12.480
And at that point, Republicans were like, OK, we'll get behind him.
01:09:18.260
And on the Democratic side, they have this guy, Fetterman, who had a stroke.
01:09:22.100
We have no idea what his physical condition was, but he was running away with the race.
01:09:27.720
Because there's been a real tightening in the polls.
01:09:30.400
He says the Democrat is still pulling ahead, according to most polls.
01:09:35.840
Well, I think what you saw what happened is the thing that a lot of journalists weren't
01:09:41.820
covering and that Oz had this sort of understanding that he needed to get out in there in the
01:09:49.940
public, you know, away from the television, away from Twitter, away from cable news and
01:09:56.120
spend his time getting to know the voters, understanding what their issues are.
01:10:00.540
And I have spent thousands and thousands of miles following him on this trek this week
01:10:09.460
of June, going not just to rural areas, not just to the suburbs, not just to the cities,
01:10:17.120
But I spent the entire week when he went into the Black communities of Pittsburgh, but also
01:10:24.120
the Monongahela Valley, Philadelphia, Erie, and spent hours and hours with community leaders,
01:10:31.920
Black leaders, faith leaders, talking to them, and more importantly, listening to them about
01:10:39.160
And what has been really fascinating, and you see the sort of revelation on voters' faces,
01:10:44.860
is that this guy has actually matured into a very good candidate.
01:10:49.160
I would say he's more Tom Ridge or Tom Cotton in terms of style and thoughtfulness and accessibility
01:10:58.460
than maybe you would see with a more populist like J.D. Vance in Ohio.
01:11:06.780
And I think that is the untold story about this race.
01:11:10.960
He went out and did the sort of old-fashioned thing, the unglamorous thing.
01:11:15.080
I've seen him dodge cow pies on farms, but also, you know, walking down bullet-ridden
01:11:23.340
street, parade street in Erie, Pennsylvania, and doing the hard work it takes to earn a
01:11:31.000
You know, in Pennsylvania and in most states, voters want you to show up.
01:11:42.240
And he's demonstrated a willingness and a curiosity to do that.
01:11:48.960
It has happened at the same time where Fetterman has gone from sort of this celebrity progressive
01:11:56.440
rights based a large part upon what he looks like.
01:12:01.700
However, as, you know, there's been a lot of great big, you know, beautiful think pieces
01:12:06.980
about him, written, you know, magazine pieces, but a lot of it was based on books and what
01:12:16.200
And now other journalists are realizing that he's not exactly what he espoused to be.
01:12:24.160
So he ran on being this sort of small town, mayor from Braddock.
01:12:32.000
Braddock is an old steel town, the 1700s, and that he, you know, brought it back.
01:12:42.540
Under his, under his mayorship, they lost a cumulative amount of 40% of the population.
01:12:51.880
No new, the only two new businesses that came to town, one has already closed and the other
01:12:58.820
The most important place in Braddock, Pennsylvania, Braddock Hospital, where for 20 years was the
01:13:07.720
only place you could sit down and have a meal at the hospital cafeteria, was demolished.
01:13:14.740
He did nothing to save it and, and, and show this sort of image has not, his, the realities
01:13:26.460
Uh, well, there's, there's the, the, the GOP has also finally unleashed its, some of its
01:13:33.780
Their spending has gone way up on the ads against Fetterman, um, and, and they're attacking
01:13:39.960
him on one of the most important issues, certainly in Pennsylvania, but also nationally.
01:13:44.780
And that is crime and accusing him of being soft on it.
01:13:49.080
We've got an example of one of those ads, um, by this, let me see if this is, uh, yeah.
01:13:57.940
This one's by Dr. Oz and it hits him on crime and drugs.
01:14:03.480
John Fetterman supports decriminalizing dangerous drugs like fentanyl and heroin and Fetterman
01:14:09.320
supports creating heroin injection sites in our neighborhoods.
01:14:12.880
Fetterman's ideas are radical, deadly, and raw.
01:14:16.100
Giving addicts easy access to drugs is not the answer.
01:14:20.900
It hurts to see families broken, promising young futures cut short.
01:14:26.120
I'll crack down on the cartels, fund rehab centers, and rescue as many lives as I can.
01:14:32.700
So obviously a related issue, but the crime, like the, he continues to hit it because Pennsylvania
01:14:39.660
And Fetterman, as I understand it, Selena was on, or maybe still is on a parole board.
01:14:45.020
And it's like, he's never seen a convicted felon who he wants to keep behind bars.
01:14:50.820
I mean, his position on the parole board caused such a consternation between him and Attorney
01:14:57.760
General Josh Shapiro, who's now running for governor.
01:15:00.780
That is that Fetterman, uh, threatened to run against Shapiro for governor, um, over it.
01:15:08.100
So he's at odds with a lot of the sort of more, uh, moderate Democrats, um, and governing
01:15:17.000
And, you know, and, and speaking of crime, crime has skyrocketed in Philadelphia.
01:15:26.660
You know, fentanyl was seen as sort of the drug of white Appalachian working class.
01:15:35.780
Philadelphia is now one of the leading cities, or if not the leading city in overdose deaths
01:15:46.000
So, so crime and fentanyl are uppermost in the minds of, of voters as they, as they go into
01:15:53.760
the voting booth in November and crime in his city, which he claimed he reduced.
01:16:00.160
It went up, uh, violent crime went up, uh, um, uh, theft went up.
01:16:06.160
You know, it, it, it, it, it, it's, uh, unfortunately he's sort of, his, his oxygen has been all the
01:16:14.480
great stories written about people who parachuted in and out of, of, of, um, of Braddock and never
01:16:23.420
And, and the other, and it's like Braddock is one thing, but it's like, as, as a Lieutenant
01:16:28.220
governor and as somebody sitting on this parole board, he's got another record and it's like
01:16:36.800
And by the way, I will get to his attacks on Dr. Oz and where, what his messaging is
01:16:41.560
Um, but the second piece of the, the Fetterman problems and why we think this race is getting
01:16:47.660
tighter and tighter, um, by the way, just to let you know, so a Suffolk university USA
01:16:52.680
today poll, uh, just from two days ago shows that Fetterman is up 46 to 40 over Oz, but it
01:17:00.600
was, it was way, uh, less tight than that just a couple of weeks ago.
01:17:06.900
So, and some, and some polls have had them even tighter than that.
01:17:13.720
As I said, in the intro, um, we don't know how Fetterman is.
01:17:17.620
I played that soundbite from him on, um, on Chris Hayes.
01:17:21.720
You've been following him and I'm going to get your take on it, but you've been following
01:17:27.460
And here's one example of what Selena has observed where he struggles.
01:17:33.380
He seems to struggle to get through his sentences.
01:17:36.900
What is wrong with demanding for an easy, safe kind of their income, a path to a safe place
01:18:01.420
Well, you know, I've been covering John Fetterman since 2005.
01:18:07.700
Um, and, and it is, is very, I will say it is very sad to see that, um, to see, to, to
01:18:17.840
But, and, and, and, and I, the stroke has left its mark.
01:18:21.960
It is called auditory, um, I'm going to forget the whole phrase, but what it has to do with,
01:18:29.160
as it explains to me, um, uh, by, uh, um, an expert in this in Philadelphia is that he
01:18:37.020
So, therefore, when someone says something to him, when it comes back out, that is where
01:18:42.480
But I think, Megan, what is really important, and I don't think we've been paying enough
01:18:47.200
attention to, is the heart condition is what caused the stroke.
01:18:51.680
And the heart condition was diagnosed in 2017, a very serious heart condition, and he let
01:19:00.680
He not only had a pacemaker in, put in, but he also had a defibrillator placed in.
01:19:11.820
So, so, I, I don't, we don't know the condition of his heart.
01:19:19.800
And, and if you think, if someone is sitting back and saying, well, what's none of your
01:19:23.860
Well, in my state of Pennsylvania, we have a very, um, long tradition that if our elected
01:19:30.360
officials are, have a medical issue, they have come out shoulder to shoulder with the
01:19:36.700
elected official and explain to the voters and to the reporters what is wrong.
01:19:52.400
And, and Bob Casey, the, the former, the late governor, he had a liver and heart transplant.
01:19:58.380
But, you know, I, I, we all knew what was happening minute by minute.
01:20:04.200
The only thing we have from the Fetterman campaign is what they're saying.
01:20:08.400
And because they've been so dishonest since the very beginning saying, you know, oh, it's
01:20:14.820
just a blip and I'll be fine to, to, uh, I almost died.
01:20:20.740
The voters deserve to know the truth, whether they decide to or not to vote for him.
01:20:30.260
And now we have, well, I don't know, do we, or do we not have a debate scheduled for
01:20:36.060
The, the, the voting has already begun as of late September in Pennsylvania via mail
01:20:43.680
And I assume that's because of the change they did in the last election, Selena, to make
01:20:48.620
mail in voting just as easy as possible during the pandemic, which by the way is over.
01:20:53.540
Um, so they're already voting right now and there's been no debate.
01:20:57.060
And usually there are at least two debates, but is it on or isn't it?
01:21:00.460
Um, well, it's technically on for October 25th.
01:21:06.300
Um, we shall, we shall see that the chamber, um, the chamber of commerce, uh, um, debate was
01:21:14.640
supposed to be held this past, this past week in, in Harrisburg.
01:21:19.420
And instead, um, um, Oz had 30 minutes to talk and, and Josh Shapiro had 30 minutes to talk
01:21:26.320
because Doug Mastriano wants the Republican, uh, candidate for governor.
01:21:32.420
So, um, and, and Donna Brazile was there and she was admonished Satterman for, for not,
01:21:43.880
What, I mean, I don't even understand his excuse at this point.
01:21:46.740
I know he said, I, I need to have closed captions to read what Oz would say in a debate.
01:21:52.060
And Oz, as I understand it, said, great, you can have him.
01:21:55.760
But the debate needs to go a little longer than 60 minutes.
01:21:58.240
We're going to need 90 since your closed captioning system is going to significantly delay what
01:22:04.240
And, and Fetterman was like, no, I don't follow your rules.
01:22:11.080
I mean, really, how do you act like such a brat when somebody.
01:22:16.100
And want us to believe you're such a tough guy.
01:22:22.340
And to the other point of his image of a tough guy, you know, he has tried to create this
01:22:30.480
However, the entire time that he was mayor of Braddock, his parents supported him.
01:22:37.460
You know, I didn't realize the extent of that until I was preparing for today.
01:22:42.160
Oz hit him with saying, you've been on your parents couch, like your parents have been
01:22:45.480
paying for your life until you were 40 something years old.
01:22:50.880
So don't criticize my, my mansions and all my wealth.
01:22:55.860
Successful physician, Harvard educated, uh, attending physician at I think New York pres
01:23:02.500
And not to mention his successful talk show host at his career as one.
01:23:06.400
But can you just fill in the, the lines there on Fetterman on the parents couch?
01:23:12.620
So he is the being mayor of Braddock pays $150 a month.
01:23:21.540
I've actually been inside it, um, right across from steel mill.
01:23:25.320
Uh, his parents paid his salary, um, every year that he was mayor, um, of, of, of, of Braddock.
01:23:35.320
So he lived off of his parents and, and, and I think it's also important to know that he
01:23:41.280
He went, I think it was, oh my gosh, it was in the six sixties, uh, the 60 instances of
01:23:49.420
This is a guy who's, who's run on, on, on, um, funding the public schools and the public
01:23:57.440
school system in his district, in his town is one of the poorest in the country.
01:24:05.280
I think to the tune of 38,000, I don't have the amount in front of me.
01:24:08.700
And it took six years for them to finally, they had put liens on his property.
01:24:12.840
They had to take him to court and he just didn't pay.
01:24:19.880
He uses that to his advantage by saying like, I'm a man of the people.
01:24:25.480
He looks like a tough guy, you know, like somebody you might see on the gridiron.
01:24:28.080
Um, so he just basically tries to say Mehmet Oz is not relatable.
01:24:32.220
He's this effete, you know, ultra rich Oprah disciple.
01:24:39.680
Here's a little bit of how that's sounding in the ads against him.
01:24:47.360
With my diet, you can eat all you want, anytime you want.
01:24:56.480
I've got the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat.
01:25:06.060
I recommend a slow, steady gorging process combined with acyl horizontology.
01:25:19.520
Hit another line of attack by Fetterman against Oz suggesting he's a hack.
01:25:23.000
He's a hack doctor who pushed questionable medical remedies during the 20 years hosting his show.
01:25:30.540
I mean, I've never even seen the ad, so I don't think it's playing well.
01:25:42.180
I don't think, so his cute little memes and, and his attacks about crudités and, and, uh,
01:25:50.360
New Jersey and calling him a quack and out of touch at first gathered a lot of attention
01:25:57.540
However, as people have found out that that's the only thing that Fetterman is running on,
01:26:02.660
they're sort of, you know, I, I don't know that they vote broad.
01:26:09.220
I've had several Democrats say exactly that to me.
01:26:12.420
They're like, well, we're, I'm not voting for either of them.
01:26:15.300
Um, and these are Democrats who, you know, I, I think the old phrase was yellow dog Democrat.
01:26:21.140
Um, and, and, you know, they wouldn't vote for anyone that wasn't a Democrat, but they
01:26:25.940
are so unhappy with his lack of, uh, what the guy said the other day, there's no, they're
01:26:32.240
Uh, and I think that's the struggle right now for Democrats.
01:26:35.620
I think Fetterman's problem right now is gaining new voters, right?
01:26:54.020
And, and Oz is, you know, I, I was very skeptical of him to begin with.
01:26:59.180
Um, his first event was kind of like glossy and staged.
01:27:04.420
And I thought, oh, this is not going to fly in, in Pennsylvania.
01:27:07.940
It's just, I mean, it's, it's nice, but it's not going to fly.
01:27:13.940
I, I have a story about that coming out in New York post this weekend, just this dramatic
01:27:18.660
change, uh, uh, and the seriousness of which he's taken this role, um, has really been
01:27:26.000
a remarkable sort of metamorphosis that I didn't anticipate happening.
01:27:30.980
Well, one of the things you wrote about that I thought was interesting was when you listen
01:27:33.500
to Fetterman on the campaign trail, he can get the sentences out, maybe not perfectly
01:27:37.800
stumbles a lot, but he keeps saying the same three things, you know, he keeps hitting Oz.
01:27:44.560
You mentioned the crudité thing, just for the viewers who aren't aware, Oz, when he put
01:27:49.280
out some video and he was walking through the vegetable department of what he called Wegner's,
01:27:54.220
which is really Wegner's and, um, he used the term crudité, which is a term, but it's
01:28:09.220
I'm at Wegner's and my wife wants some vegetables for crudité, right?
01:28:27.340
He used the word crudité, which is a word, but it's, it's an elite word.
01:28:31.700
So you've been saying that Fetterman has been kind of just hitting the same few things.
01:28:37.540
He's talking about the crime rates, talking about the drugs.
01:28:39.640
He's talking about things that are actually affecting people's lives.
01:28:44.920
I mean, you know, it's, it's still, it's 30 days out.
01:28:48.560
I would say ask me in two weeks where this happening, but I would say right now,
01:28:53.260
well, if I, if I, if I wanted to be one of the two men, I'd probably want to be Oz because
01:28:59.540
he's moving in the right direction where Fetterman is not.
01:29:03.380
Um, it's like the racehorse at the, at the last lap.
01:29:07.600
He sort of reminds me, I was thinking this sort of dawned on me the other day, um, and
01:29:13.740
watching his crowd and the people that are attracted to his crowds were with her mostly
01:29:18.940
middle-aged white, um, with a varying, um, degrees.
01:29:23.540
Some have degrees, some don't, uh, a sprinkling of young people, but not very many people of
01:29:37.080
You're talking about Fetterman right now or Oz?
01:29:41.860
It just reminds me of the Howard Dean campaign in 2004 for some reason, um, based on who attends,
01:29:48.620
um, sort of the lack of depth and, and, um, and his problem with black voters, you know,
01:29:57.760
he, you were going to, you were going to get to this.
01:30:01.920
And then you fill in the story here about his, it's crazy.
01:30:04.940
Cause if this had been a Republican, whoever did this, they could kiss their electoral future.
01:30:11.060
I think the Democrats would just kill them, but they've given Fetterman a total pass on this
01:30:16.000
Here's a bit of an ad from the Republican Jewish coalition victory fund against Fetterman
01:30:26.720
That's what John Fetterman said after he chased down an unarmed, innocent black man and held
01:30:37.440
My message to black voters, do your homework about John Fetterman.
01:30:50.240
Selina, he basically chased somebody with a gun for jogging while black.
01:30:56.540
A shotgun and held it to him until the police arrived.
01:31:03.060
And I just want to know why his shotgun was in the back of his truck.
01:31:12.500
You know, he also, there was a black nightclub in Braddock and our black owned nightclub in Braddock.
01:31:24.880
I should mention that Braddock is majority black town.
01:31:30.340
But he, in the middle of the night, was caught on the surveillance cameras.
01:31:35.860
I remember covering it back, I think it was 2010, where in the middle of the night, like
01:31:40.560
two in the morning, he walked over and changed the sign on the front door of the nightclub
01:31:50.360
And it's just something that said it's never opening.
01:31:53.880
Got caught doing it and told reporters, like, yeah, I did it.
01:32:06.020
You can't arbitrarily chase someone because you think and hold them at gunpoint.
01:32:14.420
The mayor's office in Braddock, the sole duty is to be in charge of public safety and to
01:32:26.020
He's he missed the majority of council votes when he was mayor.
01:32:31.580
But I think it's also important to know that there's an Associated Press story that came
01:32:35.540
out today that says he's been in the he's missed a huge chunk of his duties as as lieutenant
01:32:52.120
Josh Shapiro, Democrat versus Doug Mastriano, Republican.
01:33:03.420
If he does crush, if Shapiro crushes Mastriano, that's really going to help Betterman.
01:33:09.300
You get to the poll and you just go DDD all down the line or RRR all down the line.
01:33:13.820
It's very rare that you would switch it up or even think to switch it up unless you have
01:33:18.480
really strong feelings about one person on the on the ticket.
01:33:23.380
Well, actually, Pennsylvania has a great history of of splitting our tickets.
01:33:29.560
I mean, we split our ticket between Al Gore and Rick Santorum.
01:33:35.100
Which is, you know, just think about that for a while.
01:33:44.640
But you look at every race down ballot, two statewide row offices, all the state House
01:33:50.260
seats, all the state Senate seats, not all of them.
01:33:53.060
But Republicans won seats they weren't even trying to win in the state House, in the state
01:33:59.340
They had no money for those statewide row offices.
01:34:02.020
And yet they won in a very big way over the well-funded by Bloomberg Democrats and Eric
01:34:09.260
And they also kept two House seats in in in Dauphin County and in Bucks County that they were projected
01:34:20.900
So you you agree that Mastriano is likely to go down, but you like if you had to put money
01:34:26.260
on on Oz versus Fetterman, who would you choose?
01:34:31.140
I think that if you ask me today how it and if it is how of an end today, I would say Josh
01:34:37.720
Shapiro wins by eight percentage points and that Dr. Oz wins by about two.
01:34:44.940
And do you think the debate will actually happen?
01:34:54.520
But I see if you're Fetterman in his camp, you're like, hell no, we're still ahead.
01:35:13.800
And that more to lose potentially by releasing his medical results.
01:35:16.760
The people of Pennsylvania are the ones who are going to have to insist on both.
01:35:25.320
If people want to find my stuff, just go to SelenaZito.com.
01:35:34.360
I want to tell you that tomorrow we're super excited to have Tom Bauer on.
01:35:38.780
He's broken so many stories on the royal family.
01:35:46.040
I cannot wait to talk to him and reading his book.
01:35:51.960
In the meantime, download The Meghan Kelly Show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher.