The Megyn Kelly Show - Disturbing Chicago Violence Excused by Politicians, and Media Salivates Over Fox News Trial, with the Fifth Column Hosts

00:00:00.400 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.700 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Tuesday.

00:00:16.820 The Fox News Dominion trial is officially underway in Delaware. It appears to be a go.

00:00:23.420 And this is crack for the media reporters. My God, it's Brian Stelter's Super Bowl.

00:00:29.580 He's so excited. It's the nerd Super Bowl for those people obsessed with Tucker Carlson.

00:00:37.180 I've got some thoughts on this trial. I have to say, I was really hoping it would settle,

00:00:42.560 unlike the lunatics who just hate Fox News and want to see Dominion emerge with a huge judgment

00:00:47.620 against them. That could happen. It also might not. But I really wanted this to settle because

00:00:52.600 there are some serious First Amendment principles at risk. There are some serious journalistic

00:00:56.700 principles at risk. They're now saying that if Dominion doesn't win, you know,

00:01:01.780 it's a defamation case. Dominion saying Fox defamed them by platforming people like Sidney

00:01:06.840 Powell with her election lies. And they're now saying that if Dominion doesn't win its defamation

00:01:13.880 case, that no one will ever be able to win a defamation case if they are a public figure

00:01:19.720 because of that actual malice standard set up by New York Times versus Sullivan all those years ago,

00:01:24.540 that this would be proof that the actual malice standard is just too high to ever overcome.

00:01:30.360 And therefore, we need to revisit it. I don't think that's true at all. I don't think that's

00:01:34.840 true at all. I think Dominion's got a shot. They've definitely got a shot that the odds are against

00:01:38.880 them. Know that they're against Dominion. They are in most of these defamation cases brought

00:01:44.880 against a public figure, which Dominion is. And I know they've got all these problematic statements

00:01:50.440 by Fox executives and the Fox News brain room, which is the fact checking center. They are saying

00:01:56.400 this is all bullshit. Sidney Powell's a lunatic. There's absolutely no proof. I mean, they do have

00:02:02.600 all of that in writing from Rupert to Suzanne Scott, who's the CEO to other top executives to

00:02:08.900 producers on all the primetime shows and so on and even some anchors. But they don't have it as far

00:02:16.720 as I can tell. And I've read the Dominion papers for the actual speakers at issue. There is no Maria

00:02:22.240 Bartiromo text saying this is bullshit and I know it. Now we'd be getting there. You knew it was untrue

00:02:29.080 and you platformed and you didn't push back and you didn't telegraph to the audience. There's reason

00:02:33.620 to doubt. Now we're getting there. They don't have that. So anyway, don't believe the mainstream

00:02:40.260 obsession with Fox, those people who hate Fox, that this is a slam dunk for Dominion. It's anything

00:02:45.780 but. This could go their way for sure. It's a Delaware jury. They're not going to like more than

00:02:50.940 likely it's not going to be a bunch of Fox News lovers. But also don't underestimate the power of

00:02:56.680 celebrity. You know, if Sean Hannity takes a stand, if Tucker Carlson takes the stand, notwithstanding

00:03:02.000 what you may read in the New York Times, they're very charming guys. They actually are. They're

00:03:06.020 they're self-deprecating. They're funny. They know how to work an audience. And I would expect the jury

00:03:12.040 to wind up really liking those guys. I really do. I think that they will. I think once they see who

00:03:16.400 they are, apart from this caricature painted about them by the mainstream media, by, you know,

00:03:22.200 the Times that writes about Tucker like every week, don't underestimate their power to connect with

00:03:28.460 the jury and convince them that while this was a tough assignment as a journalist, how are they

00:03:34.280 supposed to ignore these claims being made by the president and his lawyers? How are they supposed to

00:03:40.560 go out there and say definitively we know none of it's true? That's what they have to prove.

00:03:46.580 Just as an FYI, they that the judge gave Dominion a very favorable ruling in the summary judgment phase

00:03:52.160 and said, you don't have to prove falsity of these statements. That's already been proven. Fox cannot

00:03:57.940 take the stand and try to claim that you were created by the Venezuelans or all this other

00:04:03.520 nonsense. Like, oh, that's BS. And we know it. You don't have to prove that what they were saying

00:04:06.480 was false. We know it's false. We're going to tell a jury it was false. But you do have to prove that

00:04:10.440 they did it with actual malice. And that means either knowledge of the falsity of the statements

00:04:14.660 or reckless disregard for the truth or the falsity. And then you have to back up your $1.6 billion

00:04:20.460 damages claim, which is another weakness for Dominion. So the actual malice is what it really comes down

00:04:25.000 to. And can you impute the knowledge of one person saying this is bullshit to the brain of an anchor

00:04:31.380 sitting on set platforming the claims who doesn't believe it's bullshit? Just one of the many

00:04:36.280 questions here. All right. It's expected to be a six week trial. This is day one. Um, and we'll get

00:04:41.300 into it with our panel. Meantime, we're getting disturbing video out of Chicago of the violence

00:04:46.080 and lawlessness over the weekend and the statements from the mayor and the mayor elect. Good God,

00:04:51.420 this guy. Do not inspire confidence. I lived in the city for five years. I'm so sad about what's

00:04:56.340 happening. And it's absolutely pathetic, pathetic that the leaders of that city continue to be

00:05:01.700 feckless when it comes to crime, when it comes to gang violence. And when something like this happens,

00:05:07.020 the knee jerk instinct is, well, don't be too hard on the, on the violent ones. Don't be so nasty to

00:05:12.760 the people committing the beatdowns and like the murders. They, there are people too. Uh, always love

00:05:19.000 it when our friends from the fifth column podcast join the show and they are here today, Camille

00:05:22.740 Foster, Michael Moynihan and Matt Welsh. And you can find more of them at their sub stack. We, the

00:05:28.000 fifth dot sub stack.com guys, welcome back to the show. Hi Megan. So let's spend a minute on, on

00:05:37.080 dominion just cause I was just talking about it. And it's an interesting case. I mean, legally it really

00:05:42.620 is nerd prom there outside of that courtroom. It's like Brian Stelter, Eric Wimple, Brian Steinberg of

00:05:50.160 a right. They're all there. Like, Oh, they're not allowed in the courtroom, but they're, they're,

00:05:53.860 they're in their media. It's amazing. Right. Can you imagine it's Stelter. Apparently Stelter is

00:06:02.280 doing a podcast about this, a column and, uh, for variety or for vanity fair. Andy's writing a book

00:06:10.280 about it's like, thank God for Stelter that they didn't settle. What would he, what would he be

00:06:16.940 doing? It's the same thing. It'd still be, it'd still be doing all the time. Yeah. Yeah. But if

00:06:23.020 you read the mainstream coverage of this, they are salivating over the thought that Fox news could

00:06:28.740 lose. And they're so dumb. Their next conclusion is this will be the end of Fox. It will be the end

00:06:35.440 of the Fox news credentials at the white house at Congress, at any polite society event. It will be

00:06:41.500 the end of Fox being distributed on your local cable channel because we can turn to them as consumers

00:06:47.060 and say they lie. They were found guilty of lying by a Delaware jury. And I mean, to talk about

00:06:53.240 delusions of grandeur as to the power of a jury, but in any event, what do you make of the media coverage

00:06:58.380 of the biggest media dispute we've seen in this country in decades? I think that your take at the

00:07:04.700 beginning is one that I've been waiting for anyone to give. And occasionally you'll see it in the op-ed

00:07:08.100 pages, the New York times or somewhere else, but generally that if dominion wins, um, that could

00:07:14.200 be a bad thing for the first amendment for people who work in the first amendment business. It would

00:07:18.500 mean that the standard for being able to sue people, uh, and show a malice as a legal standard,

00:07:24.840 um, is more achievable than it was previously. That is something that is a future that not

00:07:30.740 everybody should be cheering on. I think you have 30 years worth of this, uh, feeling among people

00:07:36.640 who work in the non-Fox journalism business. I've been waiting for this great comeuppance,

00:07:41.380 like finally, we're going to show them that they've been, that the fair and balanced wasn't

00:07:45.420 fair and balanced after all. And that they're, uh, it slaves to their audience. You know, uh,

00:07:50.820 there might be an argument that there's definitely some audience capture happening, not just there,

00:07:54.540 but at every cable news, uh, outfit. Uh, but there's so much invested in Fox getting its

00:08:00.540 comeuppance that people are being kind of short sighted about what it means. I too hope that they

00:08:06.180 settle rather than it goes fully to trial, except the part of me, the little devil part of me that

00:08:12.300 wants all the chaos and wants all the discovery because it's fascinating. It is super fascinating

00:08:16.820 to, to look under the hood. I think. Yeah. I mean, I would say them take a stand.

00:08:20.680 Yeah. I mean, it's kind of adjunct point to that is that, yeah, I mean, it's very, very similar to

00:08:28.760 what happened with Trump, Russia and with Trump in this indictment is that people are over their

00:08:35.780 skis quite a bit because they're too excited about the potential, uh, fallout that like we're going to

00:08:40.480 get this guy finally. Well, don't you sound a bit like, uh, conservatives and Republicans in 1950s

00:08:46.600 saying everybody works for Russia. Everyone is somehow involved in this kind of massive conspiracy.

00:08:52.480 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We don't really have it nailed down yet, but let's go full court press

00:08:56.600 ahead with it. And they don't realize the consequences of that for their reputation and

00:09:00.960 for the country as a whole. And it seems like something similar is happening here is that whatever

00:09:05.020 we can do to take these guys down, because there's been Robert Greenwald documentaries, there's

00:09:09.960 been, uh, advertising campaigns, there's been protests, there've been, you know, target Glenn Beck's

00:09:14.740 advertisers, et cetera. And, you know, in, in fairness, uh, to, to Roger, which Roger Ailes,

00:09:19.640 which is not something I'm likely to say very often, but he did actually fire him when he was

00:09:23.340 the top rated show on the network. So there was some standards there at the time, but they've been

00:09:27.080 trying to do this for a very long time. And it seems like it's another way of like, can we just

00:09:31.740 cheat and kind of get the result we want? And, you know, it may be, it'll have some kind of knock on

00:09:36.860 effects in the first amendment. Yeah, but whatever, we're going to get Fox on this one. That's what I find

00:09:41.020 kind of amazing and disturbing about the coverage. I don't have a legal opinion, Megan, you are a

00:09:45.820 lawyer. I am not about, you know, whether this stuff rises to the level of actual malice. It

00:09:51.040 rises to me as, as just watching this and as Matt said, the discovery is fascinating as like kind

00:09:55.840 of sleazy, uh, and, and, you know, saying like, well, this is what our viewers want. Uh, maybe we

00:10:00.880 should give it to them in kind of a, you know, half-assed way that kind of disturbing to me, you

00:10:05.480 know, that, and I just to interject, that is true of the executives. If you look at the

00:10:09.380 executives, they were all like, it's bullshit, but we're losing our audience after that Arizona

00:10:16.320 call. And we have to throw them a bone and that they started to get up to get upset by reporters

00:10:20.560 who were fact-checking claims made on the air on certain shows that supported the Trump line of

00:10:25.480 stolen election, the Sidney Powell stuff. And they'd say like, no, tell her not to do that.

00:10:29.620 You know, we're losing our audience. This is bloodbath. Okay. So that's one thing. But when you go down to

00:10:34.460 the host level, it gets a lot tougher for dominion. I, again, I'm waiting, show me the Lou Dobbs text

00:10:40.820 where he says, I know this is a lie. It doesn't exist. Show, show me the Maria Bardo Roma one,

00:10:47.060 right? Could she have pushed back harder on Sidney Powell? Duh. Of course. Yes, she could have,

00:10:52.580 but that to me is not necessarily actual malice proof, you know, like that's, yes, it's a journalistic

00:10:59.640 fall down for sure. But that's, if that's proof of actual malice and if you can use what's in

00:11:05.800 Rupert's head against Maria, that'd be like me. And I covered these election claims at the time. I did

00:11:12.320 have the podcast. We hadn't yet launched video. That'd be like Steve Krakauer, my executive producer

00:11:18.500 being like, okay, this is bullshit. It's not true. And me being like, I hear you. I have a different

00:11:23.980 opinion. I, neither of us knows whether it's true or not. Did you go down to figure out whether,

00:11:28.420 you know, there was any vote manipulation? Have you checked all 50 States? Are you able to

00:11:32.200 definitively say that it's our job as journalists to probe, to ask? We don't actually have to be the

00:11:37.300 finders of fact. We have to ask questions of the people making the claims. And I definitely would

00:11:42.120 have platform Sidney Powell and I would have given her a very hard time. But if you get to the place

00:11:46.560 where it's like the journalist must take a position and that position must reflect the objections

00:11:52.660 coming into them from the party they're covering, you know, just because Dominion wrote the letters

00:11:56.720 saying, these are lies that Fox had to go with. These are lies. We as journalists are in a very

00:12:03.200 sketchy place. Cause I guarantee you Anthony Fauci would take out his little pen and be writing to

00:12:07.320 everybody. And then what we're required to do what he says. Go ahead. Camille. Yeah, no, I would

00:12:12.960 concur with most of what's been said. Moynihan a moment ago when you were describing the situation and

00:12:17.860 the fact that so many people are salivating at the opportunity to see their political enemies

00:12:21.580 done, done away with and the networks finished, um, that they don't realize that this, these bad

00:12:28.220 outcomes could happen. Or don't care. They don't care. Yeah, that's right. Sorry.

00:12:31.700 They're completely interested in the possibility that, you know, the norms are being eroded and all

00:12:36.260 of these changes are happening. I'm giving them credit. I'm a little hungover. So I'm being

00:12:40.460 generous today. At other times in our, in our, in recent history, there'd been a great deal of

00:12:45.900 concern about the erosion of norms that Donald Trump and his administration might, might portend.

00:12:51.380 And the fact that all of these legal cases that are happening right now and all of the, the, in

00:12:56.600 some cases, again, confusing, nuanced, um, somewhat contradictory pieces of evidence that we are

00:13:03.500 actually sorting through trying to figure out whether or not there's any there, there, you know,

00:13:07.120 there's very little interest in the nuance on the part of the mainstream press. And I think

00:13:11.620 it is once again, another example of them impugning their own credibility, um, and ignoring the very

00:13:19.160 real potential fallout that could happen from this sort of inquiry. I think the fact that it's

00:13:25.020 proceeding at all, um, is actually potentially dangerous. Um, but certainly I think, uh, a conviction

00:13:30.980 that looks overly political, overly politicized, whether it be in the, the Trump, um, Stormy Daniels

00:13:36.920 case or in the Dominion case is something that would almost certainly be detrimental to

00:13:41.560 the country in some respects. So one hopes that to the extent that these things are proceeding,

00:13:45.860 that it's all on the up and up and that at some point, these journalists, um, at major media

00:13:50.640 publications, like actually get their acts together, um, and develop a little bit of curiosity.

00:13:55.700 I would say one thing to what, something Megan said, and it is a plea to all of us, uh, to not fall

00:14:02.600 for the language tricks that have, uh, come upon us since 2016. Megan said something, you know,

00:14:08.800 you're using the language because this is what they're using in the, in the lawsuit is you said,

00:14:13.000 you absolutely would platform Sidney Powell. No, you wouldn't. You would interview her platforming

00:14:17.880 isn't a thing. That's what we do as journalists. We interview people and you, and I think I've

00:14:22.120 mentioned this on the show before you, Megan got a lot of shit for something. I didn't get any shit

00:14:26.440 for. And 2016, um, right before the election, I spent some time in Texas with Alex Jones at his studio.

00:14:33.900 I think I was the first one to film in the studio for the HBO show. And we had a combative interview.

00:14:38.820 We had a funny interview. It was all over the place. And people were like, Oh, this is a guy

00:14:42.580 who just had a call with Donald Trump. Donald Trump had just come on to, uh, info wars. And they got a

00:14:48.880 look at this kind of swing and what he was all pushed back on him. And, you know, I let him talk

00:14:55.860 too. Cause the whole thing is not about, you know, a knockout blow. It's to say, what is this guy all

00:15:00.160 about? Because he has a lot of fans. And after that, no one said anything, but when Megan, you

00:15:04.400 did it, because you had a platform on NBC and people said, you shouldn't be doing this stuff

00:15:08.240 on NBC. That's around the time disinformation started becoming a word that people used in

00:15:13.460 platforming. And I just, you know, my skin crawls when I hear the word, even when I use it in a kind

00:15:19.880 of sarcastic way, because that's what we do. How do you know Sidney Powell is crazy? Cause someone

00:15:25.160 quote unquote platformed like, and she's actually involved in this. She's working with Donald Trump.

00:15:30.600 This is the man that was just, it was the president from 2017 to 2020. What do you do?

00:15:35.320 Like we have to know what she thinks and what kind of advice she is giving him. Who are you going to

00:15:39.720 trust? We'll put her on the air and let's talk to her. We tried to interview her many times. We

00:15:43.420 reached out and asked for her to come on many times. And I would submit there is a reason she said no.

00:15:49.680 I, I, I, I know exactly why she said no. Yeah. It's one thing for someone to be absent from the

00:15:54.580 public eye and from mainstream press coverage because they refuse to talk. It is another thing

00:15:59.380 entirely for us to be told that person is bad. We are not going to talk to them at all. Like this

00:16:05.000 actually can create this illusion that there is some mysterious truth that is being suppressed.

00:16:10.020 Yes. And that is also dangerous. That's exactly right. It is. They undermine themselves and their

00:16:14.900 credibility so many times in so many different ways with so many very important stories. And again,

00:16:20.540 they may be doing it here as well. Once the Dominion case proceeds and people see that things

00:16:25.200 are a little bit more complicated. I'm curious about your perspective, Megan, on some of the like

00:16:30.280 phone conversations that we've heard recently from the case where people are actually, Hey,

00:16:35.540 I want to know whether or not this is true. Can you bring this particular evidence? Hey,

00:16:41.340 it sounds like this might not be true. I don't want to present anything that isn't true.

00:16:44.920 I mean, you have recordings that in some cases kind of make your skin crawl because it seems like

00:16:50.820 people are more skeptical than they are presenting it, or at least than certain people are presenting

00:16:56.360 it. But it's also somewhat exculpatory because it suggests that there is a genuine interest in

00:17:01.240 figuring out whether or not certain things are true and whether or not certain things are false or

00:17:06.280 perhaps someplace in the realm of just general uncertainty. The thing that I can't get past in the case is

00:17:14.920 if Suzanne Scott, who was a, you know, she was an executive when I was there too. She wasn't CEO.

00:17:19.320 Roger was. Um, and then Bill Shine went and then I left and Suzanne took over once Bill Shine got the

00:17:25.140 boot, but Suzanne Scott's belief about the news does not dictate how I do the news, especially at Fox

00:17:31.280 news at Fox news. The anchors are in charge of their programming. They don't answer to their producer.

00:17:36.320 Now the producer and the booking department and the PR lunatics can definitely say it's a hard pass.

00:17:44.920 On Moynihan. Moynihan is not coming on Fox news and there's nothing you can do about that.

00:17:50.980 Usually Matt Wells, by the way, that they've banned 15 times.

00:17:53.920 They can definitely do that, but no one. And certainly when Roger was there, he could,

00:18:00.700 he could chastise you if you went too far on an issue. And, you know, I I've told the story before,

00:18:05.620 but when I interviewed Dick Cheney, who was sitting next to Liz Cheney and that morning,

00:18:09.400 he had claimed that the Iraq war was the fault of Barack Obama. So we were supposed to be talking

00:18:14.700 about something else. That's why the daughter was there doing some initiative. And I'm like,

00:18:17.960 Oh my God, he dropped this op-ed in the wall street journalist morning. I'm going to have to

00:18:20.820 club him like a harp seal, which is what happened. And it was awkward. And honestly, it was like the

00:18:27.040 only interview of my career where I got like dry mouth. My heart started to really beat. I was like,

00:18:31.520 Dick Cheney is scary. And I know I have to go after him, but Roger after that interview did not

00:18:37.960 like that interview. And he said, um, the way he phrased it was you can go after the guy, but when

00:18:42.280 he's sitting next to his daughter, it doesn't look good. And I'm like, well, that's the package they

00:18:45.740 arrived in. What was I supposed to do? But in any event, so he could push back on things like that

00:18:49.940 and would help him. But my point is no one since Roger could look at an anchor and say,

00:18:55.740 this is the way you will cover it. Trust me when I tell you Suzanne Scott would be laughed at by Sean

00:19:01.020 Hannity. He's way more powerful than she is way more powerful. She has no control over him. Zero.

00:19:07.460 Everybody there respects Sean's news judgment more than they respect Suzanne Scott's who used to run

00:19:11.540 hair and makeup. I mean, I'm not saying she knows nothing about it about news, but Sean had been

00:19:15.740 anchoring that show when Suzanne was literally in charge of hair and makeup. He is not going to

00:19:19.420 listen to her period. So we do have to look at his state of mind. We have to look at the speaker

00:19:24.280 state of mind and not just what Suzanne Scott thought. Now, one other point. The brain room to me is a

00:19:29.700 different story. The brain room is our internal fact checker at Fox News. The brain room, they

00:19:34.720 literally hire those people to keep us factual and honest. And there's a reason that they put

00:19:40.280 them in that room and give that room that name. And where there's uncertainty, you're supposed to

00:19:44.720 go to the brain room. And they did. The brain room offered a hard fact check on the claims being

00:19:49.860 made by Powell and Trump. And all of them came out against Powell and Trump and Giuliani. And that seems

00:19:55.760 to have been utterly discarded. Now, whether that knowledge is imputable right to the anchors like

00:20:00.900 you just disregard reckless disregard for the truth will also get you to actual malice. Now

00:20:06.700 we're on more fertile ground to me as a lawyer and a former insider at Fox News. Yeah, I think

00:20:12.360 the case lies there and the case lies with individual producers like Lou Dobbs is producer saying,

00:20:19.080 hey, this sounds pretty squirrely. And then Lou saying whatever Lou says at night, making some

00:20:25.420 kind of bold accusations out there. I would just modify your point a little bit, Megan,

00:20:32.220 that it is absolutely true that anchors, especially on the main network at Fox have the power. They

00:20:39.460 have more power, I think, I would guess, without really knowing a lot about what's going on in the

00:20:43.080 building. Just that Roger Ailes was a totemic figure in the development of cable news. And in

00:20:48.540 that area where he he ran the kingdom, he called the shots. And when he left, there's just no way

00:20:53.600 anyone who replaces him is going to have enough a comparable amount of power and sway. Rupert Lachlan

00:21:01.200 would. Yeah, but on a daily managerial level, they don't get involved at that level. That's that's

00:21:07.520 the problem. They had their opinions. But trust me, I was also there when Rupert and Lachlan were in

00:21:13.080 control. And they are not micromanagers like that. They had their opinions. They might say, like,

00:21:18.360 hey, make sure the audience knows we hear them. That's not the same as saying, you know, support

00:21:24.300 everything Sidney Powell's doing. That's just not the same. I just don't I think is the media loves

00:21:29.240 to blow up a random Rupert quote or random Lachlan quote, because whatever, it makes them sound like

00:21:34.280 they got it. They knew Trump was full of bullshit. But that doesn't legally that doesn't get them

00:21:39.360 there. It's it's also true that if Rupert was micromanaging things, he owns the Times in the

00:21:45.860 UK, Sky, Sky in Australia, newspapers in Australia. I mean, he's accused everywhere he goes of

00:21:53.020 micromanaging all of those publications. He's an old guy. He doesn't have enough time in the day.

00:21:57.360 He's got a lot of romantic. Yes, he's got Jerry Hall's a problem. So, you know, you said something

00:22:04.340 that I find interesting and, you know, particularly from, you know, with a law background, I'm interested

00:22:08.180 in your perspective on this. And sorry to do the thing where we're interviewing you, but you worked

00:22:11.840 at Fox. Come on. So you said at the beginning that this is a tough case for Dominion to win.

00:22:16.820 That seems to be seems to be true. In the past couple of days, we've seen a lot of reporting

00:22:21.500 about 11th hour committees between lawyers talking about settling and a lot of reporting on this.

00:22:29.020 And it seems from Wall Street Journal, I mean, all over the place. Why would Fox, if you if you suspect

00:22:33.840 they have such an airtight case here and a First Amendment case, too, would they be

00:22:38.360 airtight strong? Yes. But, you know, a very good case here. Why would they be in talks to settle?

00:22:47.340 Well, because I'm sure they want to spare their stars and their top executives the considerable

00:22:54.140 emotional burden of taking the stand and being cross-examined. Now, there's no cameras in this

00:22:59.000 courtroom. And again, nerd prom is right outside of the courtroom. They're not even allowed in.

00:23:04.400 But this is not a pleasant experience for anybody, even a depositions unpleasant. Never mind to

00:23:08.560 actually take a stand. Then they got two unfavorable rulings by this judge last week

00:23:12.220 who accused them of withholding these tapes that this disgruntled producer who worked for Maria.

00:23:19.900 And at one point, I think Tucker had on her phone. She says, I told the Fox lawyers when

00:23:25.600 discovery came around, I had this second phone that it was dead, but that they should fix it and

00:23:31.380 find my recorded conversations with Maria Bartiromo and Giuliani on there. And they never did it. So

00:23:38.020 she said, so finally, I did it. And here's the evidence. And the judge was very unhappy that Fox had

00:23:43.860 not done that and had not turned it over, which is indeed an obligation to Fox's Fox. Forgive the legal

00:23:50.220 term, shat the bed. And the judge was understandably very displeased. That's like,

00:23:56.060 that is an oh shit moment as a lawyer when you realize, oh my God, my client didn't give me all

00:24:00.600 the information. We're at trial. We're on the eve of trial. This is a massively on point recording

00:24:06.600 that we never gave to the other side. And the only reason they know about it now is because one of my

00:24:10.680 employees at my company got disgruntled and sued us and it came out from her directly. So that's

00:24:15.640 one. Two, the judge got very upset that they had misstated Rupert's corporate role. They had

00:24:20.860 downplayed the oversight and the role he had at Fox News Channel, as I understand it. And the other

00:24:25.480 side, Fox said, that's all public. But in this case, they had misrepresented it, according to the

00:24:30.080 pleadings. So they're getting some bad rulings. The judge doesn't like them. It's very clear. He

00:24:35.600 doesn't think Maria's fair. There were some open quotes about, oh, sure. She's fantastic.

00:24:41.600 Yeah. He's not wrong. Maria was not neutral on this question. He's not wrong. I happen to like

00:24:50.060 Maria, but I understand why. But she's not supposed to be. She's an opinion host.

00:24:54.240 She's an opinion person. Exactly. So you could tell he doesn't like them. So if you're the lawyer,

00:24:58.960 you're saying, you're in Delaware, by the way. You are not in Texas with Fox News personalities

00:25:04.200 taking a stand. You're in Delaware. They probably can't find one person who watches Fox there for

00:25:08.360 for likable, you know, other than hate watching. And so they're up against it. Now, I think they

00:25:14.580 like their odds on appeal. You know, they're going to argue some of these issues that we're

00:25:17.600 discussing on appeal, but much better to not get the verdict against you. I think this is total

00:25:22.040 speculation, but I think the reason they didn't settle, notwithstanding those incentives for Fox to

00:25:27.140 do so, is Dominion's got dollar signs in its eyeballs. Dominion really wants that one point six

00:25:34.000 billion dollars, which is I just was some huge exponential amount more than Dominion the company

00:25:39.820 is worth. But Dominion can get punitives. Yeah. And if you get punitives, God knows what the number

00:25:45.120 is, right? That just means you don't have to limit me to my actual damages that I suffered. You can

00:25:49.680 give me damages to make Fox suffer members of the jury. And that could be billions. And having said all

00:25:56.280 that, Rupert has more money than God. Rupert can afford 1.6 billion and then some. Um, but Rupert's

00:26:03.560 also, um, like a fighter. He's probably like, fuck off. I mean, he, that's who he is. Like I was

00:26:10.520 watching succession last night and I was thinking Logan Roy is a little pussy cat compared to Rupert

00:26:15.660 Roy. Rupert's way scarier and tougher and more of a ball buster. And just on, he's just unafraid.

00:26:23.800 And I don't know if I mean that as a compliment or a criticism, but that's just true. So I'm sure

00:26:31.140 he's like, I can afford all of this. You don't scare me. I'll take the stand in front of the jury.

00:26:36.580 I'll say everything I said in deposition, you won't touch me. And by the way, look at the latest

00:26:41.620 polls on how our viewers feel about Fox. The trust in Fox news has gone up, not down. So piss off.

00:26:48.860 Yeah. Yeah. The, the idea, and you references the top Megan, that this is going to be finally

00:26:54.220 the thing that breaks the bond between Fox and its audience. Like, are you crazy? Have you paid

00:26:58.520 attention to either either Fox's audience or just, uh, conservatives, uh, and their relationship

00:27:04.260 with media and conservative figures, just like with Donald Trump, right? If you're going to throw

00:27:07.480 some flimsy case at him in lower Manhattan, um, you're going to rally support, uh, for Trump,

00:27:13.700 uh, uh, by people who are sick of the media and sick of the institutions that are allegedly neutral

00:27:21.000 going all in and grabbing on any possible little shred of evidence is something to whack someone

00:27:26.560 over the head with. So I can't imagine this is going to happen. I mean, that said, you know,

00:27:30.660 if I'm a discerning viewer and I'm watching Tucker Carlson every night and I'm reading these

00:27:34.360 transcripts, I'd be pissed off at Tucker Carlson, uh, for Tucker's one of the ones who got it and

00:27:40.240 actually said on the air, Sidney Powell is a loon. Don't believe her.

00:27:44.700 Yeah. So that, uh, was pretty credulous. And to this day now he's, his big, uh, uh, claim is that

00:27:52.200 the election in 2020 was, you know, the most sort of corrupt or, or most it's very superlative in how

00:27:58.440 it was rigged and wrong. But let's just be clear. Cause it's a legal case. We have to be clear in

00:28:04.300 language. He's not about dominion. He's mad about what they did in Pennsylvania. He's, he's mad about

00:28:11.200 like the last minute of the voting changes, the mail-in balloting, the harvest, the ballast

00:28:14.780 harvesting. That's the stuff he, so, but that's, so that's his opinion, but that's not legally

00:28:19.000 actionable. That's not an issue in this lawsuit. Absolutely. Correct. Uh, what I'm saying is that

00:28:23.840 there, if there was going to be a break in the bond between viewer and Fox, it would be stuff

00:28:29.340 that came out. I don't think it would be what Lou Dobbs said about dominion. That was crazy,

00:28:32.880 which is probably everything that Lou Dobbs ever said about dominion on air. Cause

00:28:36.200 Dobbs is a bit touched. Um, if we're talking about, honestly, I don't think any, any Fox

00:28:41.280 viewer is going to be mad or surprised by any of that. The surprise would be when someone that they

00:28:45.320 trust, um, says at different points, uh, including in November, uh, makes sort of a, like says openly,

00:28:53.180 we can't say this cause it's going to hurt the feelings of our audience, you know, makes the

00:28:57.540 expression that they feel reticent about saying factual things because our audience isn't ready to

00:29:04.340 accept that. I would, uh, as is for with that, but, um, everybody in the V is camped out in front

00:29:13.440 of this lawsuit and rubbing their hands with glee. I think that people are not going to, uh, to hold

00:29:18.060 it against, uh, Tucker Carlson to more than a half a second. They're not. I will say this to your

00:29:22.740 point. I don't, I don't agree with your last points there, Matt, you paid it in and out, but I

00:29:26.140 got enough of them to hear you because the Fox executives, while in my view, they did not do the

00:29:32.040 right thing. Journalistically, I would have followed the, the Fox news brain room. I would

00:29:35.900 have, and I would have taken the scorn of the audience, but you know what I would have understood

00:29:40.160 because I was at Fox for 17 years. The audience comes back around. They will forgive you. They

00:29:44.820 could be mad. They'll go watch news max temporarily, but they will come back because Fox news has very

00:29:49.280 compelling programming. And the, the, there's a very solid relationship between the hosts and the

00:29:54.020 audience. And it takes temporary hits. It has for all the years I was there, but they always come

00:29:58.280 back. So you're playing a long-term game. So I don't think they did the right things

00:30:01.880 journalistically. However, the business panic reflected by the executives in that text after

00:30:07.600 the Arizona call was correct. That that's the shit that was, was going to cause a rift between

00:30:14.380 them and their audience. Like none of this will touch the relationship between them and their

00:30:19.060 audience. The audience does not care if the behind the scenes musings match up with the coverage.

00:30:23.280 They do care if you're calling Arizona too soon. If you see, if all your news people seem totally

00:30:29.120 anti-Trump, if you know, none of the coverage allowed for even the possibility that Trump's

00:30:35.000 claims, you know, were true, did, did like a fulsome exploration of the claims. That's the stuff the

00:30:41.860 audience will hold against you. So I'm just saying like their instincts that that's going to cause a

00:30:46.920 rift between us and the audience. I think those were correct. This lawsuit.

00:30:51.000 Uh-uh. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's ultimately right. I mean, I just, I'm the one, the things

00:30:58.740 that disappoint me and particularly, you know, I've known Tucker Carlson for many years, you know,

00:31:03.520 the, the Tucker Carlson thing is, is not even about the election. It's about the two kind of the,

00:31:08.740 the Janus face Tucker Carlson when it's talking about Trump, but you know, it's funny. I mean,

00:31:13.060 it bothered Trump enough that they had a call about it, but the thing about it is his hatred.

00:31:18.000 Yeah. I mean, that's yeah. It's Tucker saying that I don't like this guy. I think he's poisonous

00:31:24.800 and I'm obviously not quoting him directly. He's done nothing for it. He's done nothing for us.

00:31:29.280 The, the, the phrasing was something along the lines of, we can stop pretending that he's like

00:31:33.280 accomplished something. Yes. He's accomplished nothing. Perhaps he doesn't actually mean it in

00:31:37.380 that way, in that moment. And he's just angry either way to be saying that in private, to be saying the

00:31:43.120 things he was saying in public, that is a pretty extraordinary disconnect, which is interesting,

00:31:46.920 Matt. I mean, I disagree with that to actually have to come out in order for him to lose credibility.

00:31:52.200 Well, I disagree with that too. I disagree with that too. If you could hear my private thoughts

00:31:55.300 and a lot of the people I have to cover, you'd be horrified. I don't, it's, it's not my responsibility.

00:32:01.220 Suspicions would be confirmed.

00:32:03.060 It's, it's not appropriate for me to just go out there and go off on the people. I have a personal

00:32:09.540 disgust for as the news anchor, as the anchor of the show. Even if you're an opinion person,

00:32:15.120 you, you, you do need to be respectful of your audience's opinions and understand that

00:32:20.000 many of them may love this person, especially if it's a president, you can be critical of the person

00:32:26.280 or you can, you can run cover for him. If you think the, the, the news media writ large is being

00:32:31.860 too critical of him, but your personal opinions about the guy should not drive the way you cover him.

00:32:37.140 Um, but what if you're an opinion journalist? The expectation is that we're getting your

00:32:41.380 legitimate opinion. And I'm talking specifically about Tucker, by the way. I mean, I do have,

00:32:45.120 I was going to make the point that it, it does upset me that, that, um, you know, after the Arizona

00:32:49.440 call that Fox, this is, I think a problem that they fire Bill Salmon and Chris Steyerwald or two

00:32:55.640 very smart, very, very interesting people. We've had Chris on the show. He's a brilliant guy.

00:33:00.620 His book is really smart journalists. Yeah. And Bill Salmon, by the way, if you want a conservative

00:33:05.280 journalist, I mean, Bill Salmon was at the Washington Examiner, the Washington times for

00:33:08.060 years. It's not, he's not anybody's liberal. And I think that was a huge mistake, but your

00:33:12.340 point on Tucker is that, I mean, I, I get the point if you're, if you're Brett Baer, but you

00:33:16.680 know, Tucker's out there, you know, telling you what he believes about everything in my, my issue is

00:33:21.080 that it just seems that those are two very different things that you're getting from Tucker about

00:33:25.700 Trump, um, privately and publicly. Okay. So I think that there, I know people mock that,

00:33:31.480 oh, there's no difference between analysis and opinion. I actually think that we're kind of

00:33:35.460 getting to where there is a difference between analysis and personal opinion. If you had asked

00:33:40.000 me my personal opinion of Donald Trump in the midst of him attacking me and teaching my daughter,

00:33:44.420 the word bimbo, you would not have heard nice things. Not at all. But if you had asked me for

00:33:49.760 my analysis, let's say, you know, a year later when he was actually president, um, I absolutely could

00:33:55.900 have said positive things about him, about his agenda, about how even the morning after I've

00:34:01.120 the morning after he won, I went on with Kelly Ripa, go back and look at the tape. And I said,

00:34:06.480 the positives here are that a huge swath of Americans feel like they have been heard when

00:34:11.120 they were ignored for too long under Barack Obama. And so I was able to provide that analysis,

00:34:16.420 whether I was one of them or not, that doesn't make my analysis dishonest. It makes me able to check

00:34:23.160 my most strong personal opinions that are my own business between me, my husband, my therapist,

00:34:29.820 whoever away from my ability to bring my audience, fair coverage, something I pride myself on even now

00:34:36.420 that I'm more like a hybrid, you know, I I'm a journalist, but I also offer my opinion. Uh,

00:34:42.120 and I think it's an important thing to be able to do. I wasn't surprised by the

00:34:44.760 Tucker's smart. There's no way Tucker is enjoying Trump's antics. There's no way he he's not somebody,

00:34:52.880 he loves America too much to be like, yeah, so fun, you know, to have this guy so divisive at

00:34:58.320 the helm all the time and have the news coverage revolve around his narcissistic tendencies. But

00:35:02.780 he's also smart enough to see how he resonated and the good that he was bringing, you know,

00:35:07.220 on certain policy initiatives into this group of Americans that, as I said, felt hurt, hurt.

00:35:12.160 Fair and reasonable points. It's your show, Megan. But also fair and reasonable.

00:35:17.840 I'm joking.

00:35:19.380 A lot of articulated arguments.

00:35:20.620 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a hard thing to tell sometimes to Tucker of what is analysis and what

00:35:27.500 is his own personal opinions, animosities and everything. I mean, it kind of, it blurs.

00:35:33.140 And, you know, I mean, I would also make the argument that Tucker does reporting too,

00:35:36.080 by having Sidney Powell on and, you know, beating her up. He did a great service that,

00:35:40.740 you know, one would assume everybody knows this hearing this woman talk that she's a bit,

00:35:44.160 a bit off. But Tucker, you know, could have played to the audience in that moment and didn't.

00:35:48.780 He didn't have her on. He did not. Unless I'm mistaken, he didn't have her on. He just went

00:35:54.440 off on her saying she's a liar and I have the proof. That's right. Yes. And said,

00:35:57.280 and said, we've repeatedly gone to them asking for evidence of these queens.

00:36:00.840 And they wouldn't come back. Yes. And we can't find any of that evidence.

00:36:03.800 Yes. That's what he said. But yeah, I mean, that moment, whether she was on or not,

00:36:07.040 this, you know, this blur together at a certain point that he did take her on,

00:36:11.260 which I probably think if it was like OAN or one of these people, these networks that is just all

00:36:17.240 red meat, no news whatsoever, that wouldn't have happened. So, I mean, I give him credit in certain

00:36:22.520 and certain points, but, you know, it is a hard thing. This kind of what is opinion, what is analysis?

00:36:27.460 Hmm. It's, it's tricky, but you know, the job of a journalist is tricky and there are all sorts of,

00:36:33.020 you know, trade-offs you have to make. And you do have to be honest with your audience. You know,

00:36:36.380 it's like at the end of the day, you need to give them honest analysis about the facts. And when it

00:36:41.880 comes to your own personal opinion, are you able, are you able to have them and keep them privately

00:36:46.440 and still do straight analysis? I think so. I think I've been doing it for years. Um, and I feel

00:36:51.700 totally comfortable with that. Um, one, one small final point is that the number of people I've talked

00:36:57.120 to on Capitol Hill and going up there and shooting who are Republicans who, who say nobody talks

00:37:02.800 positively about Donald Trump behind closed doors and everybody does publicly because that's just

00:37:07.400 part of the horse trading. And, you know, I would always push back and say, don't your constituents,

00:37:11.340 you know, want to know that when you see how the sausage is being made, what kind of disgust you about

00:37:16.200 it? And they're like, well, you know, and you know, some people that come on the show, uh,

00:37:20.300 former representative Peter Meyer had said the same thing to us is that, you know, 99% of Republicans he

00:37:25.720 talks to say very different things about, uh, Trump and private. I mean, Trump was attacking

00:37:31.140 Mick Mulvaney the other day. I was, uh, at Frank Luntz's house before the election and he was on a

00:37:37.880 speakerphone call with Mick Mulvaney. We filmed it. So it was okay. And Mick Mulvaney was just

00:37:42.340 tearing Trump apart. And this is before, before the election of 2016. And then he goes and works

00:37:47.440 for him kind of temporary chief of staff, acting chief of staff. And now he's back in Trump's,

00:37:52.820 you know, bad graces again. And it's just been this unique thing with Trump of people who have

00:37:57.020 worked for him, who have denounced him, who have worked with him and then denounced him

00:38:01.600 and who, but positive things from the public. And that's when you see this dominion stuff.

00:38:07.160 It's like, I'm just used to that with politicians. And so the nuance of, of Tucker, I get your

00:38:13.600 point, but, but, um, but I, I've seen a lot of this over time.

00:38:16.660 I'm not unique to Trump. Almost certainly. I mean, it's not unique to Trump. Biden with his age. I mean,

00:38:20.980 Democrats who come out publicly talk about how competent he is and how strong and virile.

00:38:24.920 I mean, are you kidding? You don't believe it. Also say that pre Trump, there was a, a longstanding

00:38:32.580 problem on the right of Republican establishment Republicans being terrified of the Republican

00:38:38.140 base and pivoting really insincerely during primary elections. Uh, the, the greatest example of this

00:38:44.380 is when one of the few times John McCain looked like he might get primary in Arizona as a Senator.

00:38:49.160 That's when he filmed the absolutely cringe inducing complete the dang fence. He like walks with a guy

00:38:54.660 on the, on the border and like, what do we got to plan? Um, and, uh, and it's really insincere

00:38:59.300 because John McCain spent the rest of his career trying to put together bipartisan, comprehensive

00:39:04.100 immigration reform. Like he's the opposite of the guy he was in that ad, but he felt scared by the

00:39:09.400 Republican base. And so pivoted really, really hard in this direction as a really lifelong establishment

00:39:15.060 figure. Um, you see this constantly. And I think there's something disreputable about that when

00:39:19.580 you can't speak honestly. And this is a wide swath of people, uh, uh, among Republicans and yes,

00:39:26.260 it's happening among Democrats too. Uh, but I think that the gap between the like establishment

00:39:31.740 Republicans and the fear of the base and what to do with that is this weird longstanding

00:39:36.500 relationship. And the Fox dominion thing definitely brings this up like this, that that is different.

00:39:41.780 The politicians owe us their actual opinions because they're going to be the decision makers.

00:39:47.460 A journalist does not owe you his or her personal private opinion. I'll give you an example. I have

00:39:53.420 never once in this job in NBC at Fox ever said my own personal opinions when it comes to the issue

00:40:01.440 of abortion. I have never done it. Try to go back and find it because there are certain lines that I

00:40:08.160 don't have to cross. But if you went back and looked at my coverage, you would say she's fair.

00:40:13.220 She's fair. She understands where both sides are coming from this. So I, you don't, you,

00:40:19.100 you know, somebody who wanted to get me might try to find my personal opinion. If they found a diary

00:40:23.900 of mine or an old friend of mine, and then compare it to my news coverage and say, she's a liar.

00:40:28.040 She's a liar. Like, no, that you're not a liar just because you do the good business management

00:40:33.060 principle of being a journalist and check your personal opinion. Try not to let it color your

00:40:39.140 coverage on something extremely controversial, like abortion, like Trump, you know, like

00:40:45.680 presidential politics. You know, maybe you love the one guy and you hate the other guy. You

00:40:48.980 shouldn't let that show to your audience. You should try to be more respectful of the process,

00:40:55.280 especially if you're at Fox News, you're talking about a Republican primary, you know who your

00:40:58.300 audience is, or you're talking about the president of the United States who's making these extraordinary

00:41:01.660 claims. And you don't know whether they're true. You doubt them. You have a strong doubt,

00:41:06.160 but you don't know. Right. So who are you to put yourself in the position of these are lies

00:41:12.160 until, you know, that's, what's bothering me. How, I don't know if we're going to know.

00:41:17.000 I, I, I've been, we, we know now enough now, but in the moment I hadn't checked the dominion

00:41:22.740 machines. I hadn't even heard of dominion. It was like, what's it going to require a lot

00:41:26.120 of work for me to figure out whether this is all bullshit. Sidney Powell's a respected appellate

00:41:29.360 lawyer. Anyway. Okay. I, I got to go. Cause I got to get a break in and there's much,

00:41:32.940 much more to discuss. I want to get to Chicago, but that was fun.

00:41:36.160 That I am. I'm enjoying my conversation with the, with the guys. It's fun to disagree.

00:41:43.260 Before we get to Chicago, I don't want to leave the Tucker subject without showing you a little

00:41:47.960 bit of his interview with Elon Musk last night. I don't know if you caught any of this, but this

00:41:52.560 was the soundbite making the rounds on Twitter and it's a good one. It's about the, um, downsizing,

00:41:58.380 shall we say that Elon's done at Twitter since taking over. Listen here percentage of your

00:42:04.140 staff. Did you fire at Twitter? One of the great business stories of the year.

00:42:08.760 I think we're about, we're about 20% of the original size.

00:42:12.140 So 80% left. Uh, yes. Uh, it turns out, uh, you don't need, uh, that will let many people

00:42:17.840 to run Twitter, but 80%, that's a lot. Um, yes. Uh, I mean, if you're, if you're not trying

00:42:25.040 to run some sort of, uh, glorified activist organization, uh, and you don't care that much

00:42:32.320 about censorship, then, uh, you can really let go of a lot of people. It turns out.

00:42:42.480 That was funny. I love the Tucker laughed. It was funny. And people are like, he laughed at the

00:42:47.540 layoffs at Twitter. Okay. Yeah. A lot of those people just left actually, which created a circumstance

00:42:54.340 that made them want to leave, I suppose, which I suspect was probably strategic. Um, but yeah,

00:43:00.080 they kind of left, but it's also crazy because I saw the, I didn't actually the first time I've seen

00:43:04.120 the clip I've read this morning and I saw it last night, uh, being mentioned and Tucker evilly laughing

00:43:11.280 about these layoffs. And it's because it's Elon. Like no one has said much about the fact that Facebook

00:43:17.440 has fired what? 23,000 people in the past year. Yes. 11,000, the last round, 12,000, something

00:43:23.140 like that. 20. These companies are famously bloated. They're bloated. And there were these

00:43:27.340 kids, you see these videos on Tik TOK of people doing their days. Like I work at Facebook and I

00:43:32.380 just go get my smoothie and then I go get a back rub and it's like, does this woman work? And then

00:43:35.940 they had a video of the same person. And she was like, I got fired today. This is so hard. I was like,

00:43:39.780 you just made a video, but I don't do anything. You kidding me? It's like, I would laugh at you. I was

00:43:44.740 laughing at the first video and I was crying at the second one. I'm laughing. You were begging to be

00:43:48.560 fired. You were begging to be fired. It's Twitter. How much do they need? How many people do they need

00:43:52.900 to run that thing? Apparently many, many fewer. Yeah. And you know what? This is the problem with

00:43:58.000 overstaffing. You know, I remember seeing this at NBC. There were too many people for too few

00:44:03.360 responsibilities and it leads to backbiting. It leads to nastiness. People have too much time to

00:44:08.240 twiddle their thumbs and go on Twitter and write nasty things and generate little campaigns against one

00:44:12.360 another. At Fox News, that shit never happened because we were always undermanned.

00:44:17.360 I've heard talk about like these leading tech companies and how rather than being these hubs

00:44:22.480 of innovation, like plenty of them are pretty much just like financial institutions to the extent

00:44:26.820 you invested in them and you're looking for a return. It's sort of like a bank. Like it's a safe

00:44:31.120 place to park your money. But for the most part, like glorified activist organizations, whether or not

00:44:35.860 that's the best description, I don't know. I think it's probably right. But in a lot of respects,

00:44:39.820 yeah, kind of hubs of narcissism. Now Elon's tenure at Twitter has been very interesting to watch. I

00:44:45.400 remember early on, not necessarily being of the belief that he's going to save free speech online,

00:44:50.720 but certainly thinking in general, like a little bit of disruption here is probably good. And a lot

00:44:56.840 of the public proclamations about we're going to be transparent, we're going to do this and we're

00:45:01.000 going to do that. And the reality is that he actually hasn't managed to deliver on some of those

00:45:05.360 things. And in other cases has made a lot of, if not kind of outright overt acts of censorship,

00:45:13.080 like the most recent dust up with Substack. That was just kind of at a minimum, like a bizarre

00:45:19.040 self-owned. And Matt Taibbi, who, you know, you provide access to these Twitter files.

00:45:24.340 And Barry, I think both have these weird falling outs, which were completely unnecessary. And I think

00:45:29.880 I have so much respect for Elon as an entrepreneur. And even that is perhaps a controversial opinion,

00:45:35.060 but Tesla and SpaceX are sort of remarkable. They're amazing companies.

00:45:38.680 That's what he said. Camille, he was saying, he goes, running Twitter is not hard. Twitter is not

00:45:43.720 hard. Building cars is hard. Getting to space is hard. This isn't that hard. I don't miss the 80%.

00:45:49.280 And so it's like, exactly right. He's not looking for perfection. He did say to Tucker,

00:45:53.440 I want to make Twitter the least bad place on the internet. Something like the least untrustworthy

00:46:01.000 place on the internet. Something like that. Go ahead, Matt.

00:46:03.380 Just a little bit better.

00:46:04.940 It's what will be hard is making that $44 billion pay. Yeah. I have a really hard time believing that

00:46:11.200 there's a sense of the place that it's not nearly as fun as it was. And actually,

00:46:17.380 the Substack started its own little kind of social media-ish thing. This is what caused the beef.

00:46:23.440 With Elon Musk called Notes. And it's funny to watch all these people who contributed to making

00:46:29.780 Twitter an intolerable place come over to Substack Notes and start doing the same thing.

00:46:34.060 Yes. Like they're trying to mal-mal the people who run Substack.

00:46:36.880 Name names, Matt. To be more censorious.

00:46:39.160 Name names, you coward. That's the thing, though, is that when he says that I'm going to make this

00:46:43.860 the least bad place on the internet, and you see what Substack has done with Notes. And by the way,

00:46:48.440 we're not promoting our dear, lovely overlords at Substack. It's just a thing they have. I haven't

00:46:53.660 really tried it yet. But you realize that there is no way to make anything the least bad place on

00:46:58.620 the internet because everybody is horrible. People are terrible.

00:47:04.840 My theory of online, this is true of blogging. This is true of Twitter. As soon as the journalists

00:47:10.520 find it, then it's ruined. It's ruined within six months.

00:47:13.740 Oh, my God. You've just set me up perfectly, perfectly for the thing I want to ask you about

00:47:19.600 with Chris Cuomo. We got to take a break. We got to do Chicago. But when we come back,

00:47:23.860 I am going to lead with Chris Cuomo and why the internet is a force for good. Stand by.

00:47:30.420 Not at all. Not even a little. And don't forget, folks, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on

00:47:39.640 Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. It's fun to listen to it live. I'm

00:47:44.880 reading all of your emails. By the way, folks are writing into me. If you want to email me,

00:47:49.080 it's Megan, M-E-G-Y-N at MeganKelley.com. And I love your emails. My God, they're so thoughtful.

00:47:56.480 And a lot of folks do listen to us live on Sirius XM. I appreciate that. You can also check

00:48:00.500 us out on YouTube and via podcast, wherever you get your podcast for free.

00:48:06.480 So I know you were wondering what Chris Cuomo is up to. And I have an update for you. So literally,

00:48:14.840 he tweeted this out on Thursday. And I was like, oh, my God. So this is what he tweeted.

00:48:22.140 Just stopped at a light in New York City. And guy next to me was listening to the Chris Cuomo

00:48:27.840 project podcast. Funny. Okay. Correct. So the responses I was tweeting, I was texting about

00:48:40.240 it with my pal Janice Dean. And I said, there is zero chance this happened. Literally no one is

00:48:44.500 listening to that. And she started forwarding me the responses of the people online who are,

00:48:49.120 this is why the internet is a force for good. I give you some man named Jordan. Some man named

00:48:54.660 Jordan, I think is a man, who tweeted out in response, of all the things that never happened,

00:48:59.740 this never happened the most.

00:49:03.840 Jordan, you're an American hero. That is true. Yeah.

00:49:09.160 Here's another guy, Howard Finkelstein tweets out, sir, you pulled up next to an office

00:49:14.440 building's mirrored window. It's so it's just he's just the same he's ever been full of hubris

00:49:24.880 and dishonesty. Yes. And this false, like self deprecating funny. It's funny how people love me.

00:49:32.560 Yeah, it's just so it reminds me of those tweets that people did during the Black Lives Matter

00:49:37.000 protest. There's mostly from like Brooklyn moms are like, my kid just said and it's just like a long

00:49:41.400 W.E.B. Du Bois quote. And it's like my five year old just went on this amazing jag about racial

00:49:47.640 inequality. And I was like, your five year old just like peed his pants. You're lying. And there

00:49:51.660 was just a series of these that happened all the time. And I would just flag them and be like,

00:49:55.960 here's another lie. Here's another lie. And it's funny, because I was trying to find this.

00:50:00.240 Your producer sent it over and said, you know, they were going to talk, maybe talk about this

00:50:03.540 Chris Cuomo thing. And I was like, what the hell is this? So I'm trying to find it. And I swear to God,

00:50:06.980 I found nothing. I did a Google News search. And the only stories were the utter collapse of people

00:50:13.380 listening to the Chris Cuomo podcast. There's nobody. The first week, people were like curious,

00:50:18.960 like, is he going to talk about how he's like kind of a scumbag and was helping his brother,

00:50:22.420 et cetera. And then they were like, I guess he's not. And then it just totally fell off a cliff.

00:50:26.400 And that's all I could find. So it makes me even less likely. I mean, we keep an eye on news

00:50:31.920 podcast just to see. And he is never in the top 200 of news podcasts. I mean, he doesn't even touch

00:50:38.820 the top 200. By the way, our show is consistently in the top five. And the ones who precede us are

00:50:44.460 the behemoths, you know, like the New York Times, the daily that's got like 10 million a day,

00:50:49.440 you know, huge pockets. Our show is actually doing well. But to suggest that just randos in New York

00:50:55.620 City are you just happen to pull up next to them listening. Okay, I love that they're cranking it to like

00:51:01.400 it's like rap music or something. It's like, put it up. Turn it up. It's called Cuomo. He's got

00:51:05.380 some. Shut up. Everybody shut up. I hear people going down the street cranking music. I heard a

00:51:12.280 guy like cranking on his little scooter. Yeah, yeah. Scooter is absolutely like blasting uptown

00:51:18.440 girl. Yeah. Singing along. Very weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not Cuomo. I've never heard of

00:51:24.700 a podcast. Why would you crank a podcast? Yeah. It's like, I'm going to crank Sam Harris. I'm just

00:51:29.780 going to do that right now. Well, at least people listen to Sam Harris. We know that people listen

00:51:33.580 to Sam Harris. Chris Cuomo is just talking to himself in the basement, waiting to come out of

00:51:37.980 COVID. This is not the way, Chris. This is not the way to advertise for your show. And by the way,

00:51:44.240 so Steve Krakauer, the executive producer of this show, you guys may not know that he has weird

00:51:48.060 habits. Like he actually, I don't know where he found this little ditty. Where did you find his YouTube?

00:51:53.160 It's from the Chris Cuomo YouTube show. Now it's his business. It's his business to know what's

00:51:57.640 happening. And he decided we needed to get a sampling of what Chris Cuomo is doing over on

00:52:02.620 YouTube, where he does not even have a hundred thousand followers. Here's a little bit of what

00:52:06.540 he's doing. Time for a walk and talk. And I don't want to be here. It is cold. None of us. So why am I

00:52:15.260 doing it? Because nobody wants to do this right now, but helps me as a catalyst for desired change.

00:52:25.260 Have you ever done a personal inventory? Work's going to be the easiest, by the way. So many

00:52:30.400 years. So many reps. What is it?

00:52:36.240 It's a catalyst for desired change.

00:52:38.760 I love to film my mental breakdowns in the woods. Just walk in the woods so I can lose my mind.

00:52:45.080 No one wants to be here. I am Michael Moynihan.

00:52:47.680 I got to say that I love more than anything Steve Krakauer, your amazing producer. He's got a great

00:52:52.560 new book out, by the way. You should buy it. His newsletter is incredible. But I tell you what,

00:52:56.320 Steve, you're listening. If that shit comes up on the, I'm unsubscribing. I don't need to see

00:53:01.520 this guy walking through the jungle. Is he mic'd up too? Because a very good audio quality.

00:53:07.260 He says he's doing a whole expose just for you.

00:53:13.820 Is he getting into self-help now? Is that going to be his new lane? He's going to go like the,

00:53:17.880 like the Gwyneth Paltrow route. I don't like, we're going to get vagina candles from him next. I

00:53:22.740 don't get, I'm not sure what's happening. That, first of all, is the most disgusting

00:53:26.740 thing I've ever heard with Chris. It's man, it's man goop. I could see that. Definitely man goop.

00:53:30.820 Yeah.

00:53:33.460 I'm not just saying man goop for the hell of a man part. I don't know. I think the third time

00:53:37.400 you did just say it for the day. I did. I did. I did. Cause it's disgusting. Does any,

00:53:40.480 do you remember Megan? We, we had a, we used to play that all the time and talk about all the time

00:53:45.340 when, uh, his wife was, uh, bathing in, uh, chlorox. Remember that? Yes. It was like,

00:53:51.600 we're talking about like medical misinformation. And Chris Crone was like, you know, my butt,

00:53:55.400 my wife is in the basement bathing in Clorox. So we don't get that too. Right. That's a lie.

00:54:01.020 And then remember his fake emergence from the basement. Remember how he staged his,

00:54:04.920 when him emerging from the basement, which was a lie. We already knew he'd hit the paper. He'd been

00:54:08.900 out, he'd been riding his bike, all this stuff. It's just, it's, it's, it's just totally

00:54:14.220 considered. That's why I said on the tease, nothing has changed. There you go. I just wanted

00:54:17.460 to give you your update. Um, FYI. All right, let's move on to more serious matters. Like what's

00:54:22.140 happened in Chicago. Um, this is just dark, dark Chicago. Okay. A couple of stats for you.

00:54:30.380 All right. This is from a city journal from 2020 to 2022, more than 2000 people were murdered within

00:54:37.900 Chicago's city limits, 2000. That's huge. The 2021 figure of nearly 800 was about 60% higher than it

00:54:49.280 had been just two years earlier. So they had a 60% rise in their murder rate in two years, but the

00:54:56.420 Chicago PD made less than half the number of arrests in 2021, as it did two years earlier. So the murder

00:55:03.580 rate's up by 60%, but the arrests are down more than 50%. It's down more than 50% because the cops

00:55:10.720 all left after George Floyd. They got beat up on by the mayor, by the town, by the leftist activists

00:55:18.880 and the police force shrunk by 8% in less than half a decade, which makes a difference in a city

00:55:24.860 like Chicago. And they had a mayor, Lori Lightfoot and the new mayor, um, Brandon

00:55:31.180 Johnson, Brandon Johnson doesn't seem that interested in, in enforcing crime either. Uh,

00:55:37.360 enforcing the laws against crime. So here's what happened. Uh, you had on Friday night,

00:55:44.000 hundreds out on 31st street beach, nice area running around, lighting fires, chasing cop cars,

00:55:49.920 smashing windows on a squad car. 14 year old was shot 14 Saturday night. Hundreds went to Chicago's

00:55:57.260 loop, which was previously a nice area. It was, it's a business hub. People go there for cocktails

00:56:02.200 after work. You didn't have to worry if you're in the loop, not to mention Michigan Avenue where all

00:56:07.660 the top stores are. Here's video. Look at this. Look at this. Uh, Michigan Avenue is the nicest area

00:56:12.280 of Chicago. It's where you go. When you're a tourist there, you got the intercontinental, you got all the

00:56:16.000 nice department stores, the Bloomingdale's mall. It's beautiful. Um, jumped on cars, the CTA bus.

00:56:21.120 One woman told Fox 32 Chicago that people jumped on her windshield. They smashed it,

00:56:25.580 then attacked her husband as he sat inside the vehicle. Um, the police were unable to handle the

00:56:29.660 crowd. Two teenagers were shot that night, 14 year old, the night before two teenagers shot that night,

00:56:35.340 six juveniles arrested, nine adults as well. And then there's this video. And I want to give you

00:56:40.920 the appropriate disclaimer on it. Um, we found it is all over the internet from CWB Chicago.

00:56:47.460 It's, which is a Twitter account covering public safety on Chicago's North side. They say they were

00:56:52.660 created in 2013 by five Chicagoans who had grown disheartened with inaccurate information being

00:56:56.660 provided, uh, at a local community policing meetings. So they wanted to bring truth to what

00:57:01.820 was really happening, uh, and provide original public safety reporting. They say this happened during

00:57:06.780 this past week, um, on Saturday night at one 29 North Wabash, which is again, a very nice area.

00:57:14.400 Um, I live there for five years, as I say, so they say this is from this past weekend. We haven't been

00:57:19.260 able to independently confirm that here's the video. It's about 20 seconds. I'll describe it for the

00:57:23.740 listening audience once it's done. It's horrifying. What you see is, uh, she looks to me like she's

00:57:53.720 in her twenties, young woman trying to go into her apartment building. She's, she's by herself.

00:58:01.340 And then this mob grabs her. Some guy gets her headlock and then they just start punching and

00:58:06.880 stomping on her. We don't know her condition. She easily could have been killed. And, um, what's the

00:58:12.980 little moniker on there? Yay. We got active. Yay. Yay. So fun. We beat the living daylights out of some

00:58:21.300 innocent woman just trying to go into her apartment building. Um, in this particular video,

00:58:27.600 the victim is white. Her attackers are black. I mentioned it because had it been the other way

00:58:32.460 around, this would be getting covered by every single news agency in the country, right? Had it

00:58:37.780 been a bunch of white people picking on one black woman trying to go into her apartment, but no, um,

00:58:44.460 it's, it's the other way around. So it gets ignored. And the elect, the mayor elect Brandon

00:58:51.980 Johnson puts out the following statement. In no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw on

00:58:57.860 the loop and the lakefront this weekend. It's unacceptable and has no place in our city. However,

00:59:02.220 it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities

00:59:07.360 in their own communities. Our city must work together to create spaces for youth to gather

00:59:13.140 safely and responsibly under adult guidance and supervision and goes on from there. So that is

00:59:19.040 that the problem? They have no safe spaces to gather under adult guidance. Therefore they beat

00:59:26.480 the living shit out of innocent civilians, shoot teenagers and set fire to cop cars. Is that,

00:59:33.800 is that an accurate assessment of where we are?

00:59:35.360 I, I doubt that they have adult guidance in the home. That's my guess. And if one looks at numbers,

00:59:40.860 you would see that that's, that is also true. Um, I remembered when I was, um, when I read that

00:59:46.540 statement, I was waiting for that. However, in good God, did it come leaping out at you and say,

00:59:50.700 I'm going to do a lot of work right now. And it reminded me of an old Chris Rock bit from the late

00:59:56.340 1990s. Do you remember Bill Clinton's midnight basketball program? Uh, Chris Rock had a funny bit about

01:00:02.380 this when he's like, yeah, thank God I have this basketball in my hand, or if I wouldn't,

01:00:05.720 I'd be killing somebody right now. Like, like, this used to be laughable stuff that we would,

01:00:10.620 you know, I just need to be distracted by something else because otherwise these instincts will take

01:00:15.780 over me and I will just beat a random woman, um, half to death. And God knows, I mean, what kind of

01:00:21.200 condition she's in. It doesn't seem like anybody in the media is trying to follow up on her condition.

01:00:25.560 I haven't seen anything about that. I could be missing something. I am also presuming,

01:00:29.900 because I saw this video online too, Megan, I'm assuming that, uh, the, that it is from,

01:00:35.600 you know, this week or whatever. It doesn't really make a difference because it's so horrifying either

01:00:39.860 way. But the funny thing is I looked this up and this is a, I saw this headline this morning.

01:00:45.160 This is the response you're getting from the, the mayor elect. There's a random headline this

01:00:49.840 morning from a, uh, Chicago, I think CBS affiliate. And it's, uh, from yesterday,

01:00:56.240 Chicago shootings today, colon 35 shot. That was a day ago. It is a common headline. They just,

01:01:04.860 it's a, it's a fee. It's a feature. It's a series Chicago shootings today, 35. That is outrageous.

01:01:11.480 And by the way, if you want to make a case for the second amendment in Chicago, which as we know,

01:01:17.740 has limited access to, uh, firearms and you see the response to this in the Heller case,

01:01:23.000 um, I, if I were living in Chicago and I were living in the loop, I living on Wabash,

01:01:27.660 I would be at the store right now trying to protect myself or myself. I don't want to be in a situation

01:01:33.000 where I'm being mobbed by people. I don't feel that way. I've never felt that way where I live.

01:01:37.980 So I've never had to avail myself of these things. But if, if this is so outrageous in the response is

01:01:44.100 so despicable that, you know, you should say, we need to flood the streets with people. And by the

01:01:49.380 way, it's the, it's the George Floyd thing. And it's also like, where do you, how do you get into

01:01:53.680 these situations? How do you get criticized as a cop? And the George Floyd thing, obviously the guy

01:01:59.220 went to jail. He should have been criticized. He should have been prosecuted in my opinion,

01:02:01.880 but you're going to have to use your weapon. And there was a case last year in Chicago when the

01:02:06.460 video came out, there's a guy that was shot against the fence. Do you remember this thing?

01:02:09.360 And he pulling, I mean, it was, this person was crying, this cop crying on the ground,

01:02:14.920 captured on somebody else's body cam. He was dragged through the public as this is maybe the

01:02:18.920 next George Floyd. And the guy was protecting himself. Like, why do you want for a, for a

01:02:23.380 meager salary to be in a position where there are 35 shootings at night? You're going to have to use

01:02:28.520 your weapon pretty, pretty frequently. I'd imagine. Yeah. You're drawing your gun every day.

01:02:32.960 Yeah. You're drawing your gun a lot. It's like, there's no, there's nothing good in that for you.

01:02:36.600 It's not just the, however, in that statement for me, it is in no way do I condone. Let's

01:02:42.340 imagine you're the mayor of Los Angeles. There's an earthquake in no way. Do I condone the earthquake?

01:02:48.700 What kind of response? It doesn't make any sense. Why would you condone the horrible thing?

01:02:52.480 Nobody condoning it. No, right.

01:02:53.400 You don't have to say that you don't condone the horrible action in no way. Do I condone

01:02:57.940 9-11?

01:02:58.840 You have to say that because your next statement is so shitty.

01:03:02.440 Well, this, this is it because their entire approach to the problem of crime in the city

01:03:07.700 of Chicago and in various other places as well is it's centered on the criminals and it's

01:03:13.800 not centered on the victims. In which case, yes, it is very important for there to be a

01:03:18.500 preamble when you're addressing the suffering of the victims and whatever the province of

01:03:23.820 this particular video with, with this woman, which I, I at this point cannot watch. It is

01:03:28.360 disturbing. I have family that lives in the Chicago. That woman looks like someone who

01:03:32.040 I love and care about who lives in the city. And every time I see it, I imagine something

01:03:36.700 terrible happening to her. And she's already been attacked physically in the city, a random

01:03:40.780 act of violence. I'm a person, a young person who had already been previously arrested, but

01:03:46.680 never incarcerated for this and was not prosecuted again after this attack. So I, I've got a bit

01:03:52.240 of trauma related to this to use a word that's somewhat loaded now. There, there's some, there's

01:03:58.120 so many disturbing attributes of this story that I think are important to pay attention

01:04:02.260 to. The, the increase in violent crime in Chicago is happening in a very small area.

01:04:07.740 It is largely impacting particular communities. The people who live in these communities live

01:04:13.740 in a literal war zone. The statistics, when you pay attention to the number of shootings

01:04:18.420 and the number of fatalities rival, what happens in a place, uh, in, in the Middle East, where

01:04:24.040 there's an active ongoing conflict. And most of the people who live in these communities

01:04:28.300 are decent, hardworking people who like go to work, who, who care about their families

01:04:34.380 and are trying desperately to make a life for themselves. They are also victims of the predators

01:04:39.900 who, who wantonly prey on their neighbors. In many cases, these are young people. In many

01:04:45.620 cases, these are young people who live in homes that aren't necessarily able to give them the

01:04:50.680 kind of support that one would hope kids get either way that there should be consequences

01:04:55.660 for perpetrating violent acts that we should generally like hold people to account and have

01:05:01.780 an expectation that you will behave yourself in a civilized way. It's entirely reasonable to

01:05:07.820 have that expectation. And I can't think of anything more disgustingly racist than the insinuation

01:05:13.740 that when these particular people like do something wrong, we can't hold them accountable.

01:05:18.360 I mean, what do you expect from them? This is who they are. This is what they are. It is an

01:05:22.980 outrageous perspective. And it is so detestable to see this from Chicago's elected leadership.

01:05:29.060 It's a city that I care about a great deal. I love Chicago. People are friendly on the street

01:05:33.000 in a bizarre sort of way. It's a big city where you're walking down the street and someone will say

01:05:36.820 hello to you. Yeah, in certain places, in the nice places where I'd want to be.

01:05:42.000 But the city is in huge trouble. And it is so sad to see the political leadership of that city,

01:05:50.300 not just abdicating their responsibility, like actively doing things and saying things in public

01:05:55.440 that make me think that they are going to cause further pain and harm to the citizens of that city.

01:06:01.360 Camille, you just raised a good point. Can I tell you, so I lived in Chicago for five years,

01:06:05.220 I said, I've also lived in Baltimore. I was just down in Washington, D.C. All those cities have

01:06:10.980 one thing in common. They're very diverse. You you will not live in those cities for any length of

01:06:15.720 time without having a multiracial set of friends, all of whom are law abiding citizens who feel as

01:06:22.900 you do, who feel as I do, who are horrified by this. But to try to excuse this violence, right,

01:06:28.580 because I don't know that he'd be excusing this violence, as I said at the top, if this is a bunch of

01:06:32.220 white kids who were hurting a black girl, I think his instinct is he's got to excuse the behavior

01:06:37.600 of these kids, black kids who came from the south side of Chicago to cause trouble inside the city.

01:06:42.600 It is absolutely an insult to the black communities in these cities who the vast majority of whom are

01:06:49.900 law abiding and are as appalled by this as we are. So what does that say about Brandon Johnson?

01:06:55.440 Well, what does it also say about the way that Brandon Johnson won his recent mayoral race against

01:07:03.540 Paul Vallis? Yeah. Paul Vallis, lifelong Democrat, also a school reform type guy. That's his big issue.

01:07:10.960 He was demonized, as was Rick Caruso in the mayoral race in Los Angeles against Karen Bass,

01:07:15.900 as being a Republican. That was sufficient. And literally the next day headline in The New York

01:07:21.700 Times was Paul Vallis just couldn't get beyond the reputation that he was a Republican, although

01:07:27.000 Republican with close ties to the police. He's actually a Democrat. Oh, he's been a Democrat.

01:07:31.600 He's critical of the way that Chicago has mismanaged schools and Chicago is among the worst

01:07:35.280 in the country at mismanaging schools. They have gone on strike. They went on strike during COVID.

01:07:40.520 They were closed as much as any school place in the country. The teachers union called parents who

01:07:45.560 wanted to reopen the schools racist openly. Like you said, it is racist. It's rooted in white supremacy.

01:07:50.880 And there's a famous problem with all the murdering in Chicago as well. It's, I think,

01:07:56.160 the 13th highest murder rate overall of the top 75 cities. The second highest among the top 20 cities

01:08:03.080 is the murder capital by a raw number. These are problems of dysfunction. There are no Republicans

01:08:08.520 in Chicago. The city council has 50 members. Zero are Republicans. It's been run by Democrats as

01:08:16.480 mayors for nearly a century. I wrote about this recently in the context,

01:08:20.880 of Chicago being chosen by the Democratic National Committee as the place to hold the Democratic

01:08:26.400 Convention in 2024. It seemed kind of obvious to me that that's kind of a bad decision because it's

01:08:32.380 going to remind people of what happens when you have one party Democratic governance in a place.

01:08:37.220 It's not governed well on a bunch of different things. The pensions are completely shoddy.

01:08:41.160 They're losing population and there's crime and problems with the schools.

01:08:44.520 People can console themselves by saying, we at least are not Republicans. People are congratulating

01:08:52.600 themselves to death in this country. And it's not just Democrats who are doing it. Republicans do

01:08:56.180 it in their own way in different places. But in the specifics of Los Angeles and in Chicago and

01:09:01.420 California, when they have a Newsom recall, you could portray anyone being legitimately critical of

01:09:07.460 legitimate government failure as in, well, you're giving succor to Republicans and so therefore we

01:09:12.640 will run successfully against you and people will high five each other and they will blame whatever

01:09:17.580 dysfunction they have on, well, there's Republicans in Indiana. That's why there's so many guns here.

01:09:22.440 It's because Republicans did this and that. It's a level of self-delusion and an inability and

01:09:26.800 unwillingness to sit there and say, hmm, maybe our team isn't governing well and we should look at that.

01:09:32.460 It's something also that Republicans would be advised on a national level in 2024 to run on,

01:09:38.300 which would be things like San Francisco and Chicago. But one thing I just want to advise

01:09:42.120 listeners and people who pay attention to the media, we do a podcast about the media. I've been in the

01:09:46.460 media and paying attention and critical of the media for a very long time, is that what you see in that

01:09:50.800 statement, just to go back to it quickly, is the very familiar narrative recasting, right? So we saw that

01:09:57.280 obviously in the shootings in Atlanta. The massage parlor once was Asian hate. It was not Asian hate.

01:10:02.460 But still, people still report it and talk about it that way because it fit the dominant narrative

01:10:06.520 and the one that people wanted to go out with. When you say, well, you know, the situation that

01:10:13.240 these kids are in, it of course reminds me of the much later recasting of the LA riots to the LA

01:10:20.280 uprising. You see this all the time now. You're like literally kids breaking into, you know,

01:10:26.660 windows and stealing stuff. One of my favorite onion headlines of all time, the 1992 joking one,

01:10:32.220 with a kid carrying a TV out and it said, it has the wonderful use of the headline comma,

01:10:36.780 it's a rioters demand justice comma tip decks. And that's, that's sort of it, right? I mean,

01:10:44.800 that you, if you want to recast this, let's make everybody a Black Panther. Let's make everybody,

01:10:50.400 you know, somebody who has an ideological idea. And you look at these people, what is the ideology

01:10:54.680 behind beating that woman in her doorway? What is the ideology behind the, one of the most amazing

01:11:00.160 protest? It's an active protest. It's an active protest. Well, I love this sub protests here

01:11:05.220 because quote unquote protest, because there's a video and your listeners can find this, um, of a

01:11:09.820 kid stealing a very large Mac computer running out the store and then being beaten up. And he's trying

01:11:15.760 to hold onto the Mac and people are stealing the Mac from the kid who stole it. It's like this, I mean,

01:11:19.460 it's infinite regress of, of bad behavior. And it's an incredible thing when people try to recast

01:11:26.060 that narrative recasting, that this is for a political reason rather than kids who fail out

01:11:32.300 of school at a remarkable rate. And presumably when they're doing that, they're not somebody who's like,

01:11:36.560 you know, reading, you know, Bayard Rustin or something. These are not kids that are thinking

01:11:40.160 about this. They see an opportunity to, you know, go and steal things and they have a, they enjoy, you can

01:11:46.040 see the joy in their face of everyone trying to get a punch in. I mean, this is not a political

01:11:51.380 uprising. And that is what's, what's contained in that statement is that that's why if they had a

01:11:56.520 place to go, they would just be sitting there doing, you know, a pottery or weaving. Right.

01:12:01.840 If only we had like a local arcade that they could go to instead of beating the hell out of people

01:12:07.220 and actually murdering. I mean, truly just to read it again. However, it is not constructive to demonize

01:12:12.200 youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities. Well, I will demonize

01:12:17.400 you. I will. I'm demon. I'm demonizing. I'm demonizing, demonizing the people who did that

01:12:22.520 to that thing to that girl. Yes. You're demonizing criminals and I'm demonizing criminals. Nobody's

01:12:27.680 demonizing youth. Youth. That's a sort of thing that I'm demonizing. But I'm like, well, is he telling

01:12:32.160 me I shouldn't pass judgment on those, on those, those kids who grabbed that girl and really could

01:12:36.840 have murdered her. I have no idea whether she survived that or what condition she is in. This is

01:12:40.860 like similar thing back on Fox. I saw something like this years ago and I was like, these are thugs

01:12:45.200 and people say that's racist. Well, how is it racist? White, black, Asian. I don't give a damn

01:12:51.040 Hispanic. You're a thug. If you do that to an innocent person, right? Like you're injecting

01:12:55.820 race into it. If you think that's just a term that we use for people who are criminals who happen to be

01:12:59.740 black, that's thuggish behavior. I will demonize, right? Not youth writ large, but those criminals.

01:13:06.540 Why isn't he? That's the real question. And you're, you're dead on about the DNC, Matt, because I was

01:13:12.680 seeing like, they're going to have Chicago as their backdrop with this, with the 2000 people dead

01:13:17.600 over the, over in two years. Like that is like Joe Biden having the, instead the DNC, like Bagram

01:13:23.800 air base in Afghanistan or Chris Christie doing it in front of that bridge. Or I mean, Donald Trump

01:13:29.860 could do it on the steps of the Capitol. Like let's just bring back all the worst memories. My absolute

01:13:34.360 lowest moment is a politician or us as a party.

01:13:36.400 God's ears. Oh my God. So bizarre. Yeah. Well, you know, it's not racist. I don't think I would be

01:13:44.940 so outraged by the attempt to inject some conversation and discussion about the importance

01:13:51.220 of empathy and acknowledging complexity with respect to like how crime occurs and happens and the

01:13:58.520 pathologies related to it. I'm interested in having those conversations and I might even respect the

01:14:03.960 people who were suggesting that we should have these conversations in the midst of the turmoil.

01:14:08.400 I might respect it if they were consistent, but I think as you pointed out, Megan, and there,

01:14:12.780 there are so many stories that bear this out. I think we just had another story recently with a

01:14:16.760 young man who was shot when he arrived at the wrong, at the wrong house.

01:14:22.040 I'm getting to that next, Ralph Yarrow.

01:14:24.060 So like we, we, we see this so many times where the race of the, of the person who was shot is in

01:14:31.500 the headline in one instance. And in another instance, it's, it's mysteriously, it's not there

01:14:36.360 at all. We don't talk about it. If they could be consistent in this, I might respect them, but they

01:14:41.640 haven't been consistent in this. There is an obvious political agenda and all of this is occurring

01:14:46.120 at the expense, at the expense of the actual safety and wellbeing of people who live in these

01:14:51.740 communities. Yep. Let's talk about, uh, that case because that's made a lot of headlines. And to

01:14:57.220 your point, um, the race of this Ralph Yarrow and his shooter is everywhere. It's everywhere. Uh,

01:15:04.700 a 16 year old, uh, again named Ralph Yarrow, Kansas city, Missouri rang the wrong doorbell.

01:15:11.580 That is what the authorities are saying in searching for trying to go to pick up his younger brothers

01:15:16.040 and just got the house wrong is what the authorities are saying. And this old guy,

01:15:21.160 84 year old opens the door and starts shooting. Um, they say this state, Missouri does have

01:15:29.820 it's one of 30 with a stand your ground law, but which would allow you to use deadly force

01:15:34.340 in self-defense. But the prosecutor is saying this was not in self-defense. He just shot this

01:15:38.740 kid. The kid was at the door trying to open like the exterior door from the sound of it,

01:15:43.160 you know, like the storm door handle. And, uh, the man said he thought he was trying to break

01:15:47.680 in. Now the 16 year old was black. The shooter was white. Um, and they're saying now, though,

01:15:53.220 I don't know why they haven't revealed that race is an element. They say the AP reports quote,

01:15:59.860 racial component in shooting of Ralph Yarrow, who went to wrong house says prosecutor racial

01:16:05.880 component. Well, what does that mean? Cause the charging documents do not explain anything other

01:16:11.640 than the man, the shooter was white and the victim was black. Thankfully, Ralph survived

01:16:16.700 and hopefully will continue to do well. He got shot once in the head and once in the arm.

01:16:21.240 But to your point, Camille, like that story is everywhere. Unlike the one I just, you know,

01:16:26.840 showed you that we discussed at Chicago with the white girl being beaten down

01:16:29.700 and the race of the perpetrators is everywhere. The perpetrator and the victim.

01:16:33.520 It's a similar story actually in out of New York that I just saw that's been making the rounds

01:16:40.200 about a young woman who was in her early twenties, who is driving in a car with a friend who turns

01:16:46.120 down the wrong driveway. And this is a very similar situation where someone is not expecting this

01:16:51.240 person to come and just starts firing and kills this woman. And by the way, this is not you finding

01:16:55.860 this. This happened yesterday. Yeah. This has just happened there. Both of these stories are in the

01:17:00.040 news. Only one of them is kind of national news. The other one is sort of percolating,

01:17:05.880 but not nearly in the same way. And there certainly isn't this broader kind of moral veneer that is

01:17:11.180 being placed around the story to help us understand why this needs to be discussed. Perhaps some people

01:17:16.400 will talk about guns and the prevalence of them in American society. But it is certainly the case that

01:17:21.340 I've seen no one talk about this with respect to race and the unfair treatment that is meted out to

01:17:28.640 white women. I don't know the race of the person who perpetrated the shooting.

01:17:32.480 It's a white guy. But a very similar last name to me, unfortunately.

01:17:35.420 But this is but this is the situation like one doesn't know because it wasn't necessarily in

01:17:39.120 the headlines. Well, we might we might see some information at the prosecutor's thing.

01:17:43.280 Yeah, yeah. She was white and he was white. What's up with these trigger happy people,

01:17:48.540 though? I mean, truly, like what's going on with these trigger happy people in their house? Like

01:17:51.320 set the wrong like a car pulls up in your driveway that doesn't belong and you start shooting

01:17:55.540 or a young man comes to your door and opens your storm door and you start shooting?

01:18:00.560 Like, what are we what's happening?

01:18:02.260 It looks like there was and it looks like there was a standoff, too, with the police who

01:18:06.020 responded. And the woman died. Yeah. In New York. And the woman died because there was no cell phone

01:18:10.660 coverage. It took them, you know, five miles to get somewhere where they could actually call

01:18:13.780 somebody. And, you know, the situations are pretty interesting because I don't know. And I looked and I was

01:18:20.380 trying to find is there a racial component beyond the fact that the shooter is white and the young

01:18:25.740 kid who seems to be like a lovely, super accomplished kid, 16 is an unbelievable tragedy.

01:18:31.260 And thank God he's alive. And I'm going to get to that in one half a second because it's relevant

01:18:34.240 is that what happens here is I don't know. This guy could be racist. He could be. He's 84,

01:18:40.060 85 years old. He might have dementia. Who knows what is going on here? You know, we've learned that we

01:18:46.840 don't trust the initial version of anything. We wait and see before we say that this is a racial

01:18:50.740 crisis, even though it pretended it did. And I it's completely possible that it was racial.

01:18:56.740 I you know, it still doesn't happen very much. Let's just be honest about that. But there's

01:19:01.440 something that I that I was completely stunned by. And I sent this to you guys this morning.

01:19:05.460 And it's back to this narrative pushing this kid's, I guess, aunt gave an interview

01:19:12.100 and told people that he went to three houses in which people wouldn't respond to him after he'd

01:19:20.680 been shot. And finally, the person that tended to him forced him to keep his hands up while he was

01:19:26.740 bleeding out. Now, that was from her. And that was in all the coverage a day and a half ago.

01:19:32.040 This morning, NBC had a story about the hero. And it seems by all accounts, this guy is a hero who

01:19:38.240 heard someone screaming out that he'd been shot, runs out of his door, hops a fence, puts because

01:19:44.680 he was an Eagle Scout. It looks like he saved his life. This guy is because this guy and apparently

01:19:50.860 other neighbors came out with blanket with towels and tourniquets and things in them. To me, it's like

01:19:56.900 I couldn't believe that at the very beginning, we're trying to establish not only that this was a

01:20:01.820 racist shooting, which it very well might be, that everyone around is so high on white supremacy

01:20:08.460 that they almost allowed a kid to bleed out and die. And that appears not to be true.

01:20:13.340 That is really-

01:20:13.820 And the man, we should point out, the man who ran in to save him was white. So, I mean-

01:20:17.820 Yes, he was white. Yeah.

01:20:18.700 The previous narrative.

01:20:19.140 It seemed like the neighbors were too. Yeah. I mean, to your point,

01:20:21.660 Megan, my dad is 84 years old. Thank God he doesn't have a gun.

01:20:27.760 Or never really did. And he doesn't no longer live with himself in a house. But there is something

01:20:35.080 absolutely strange and weird and wrong by the itchy trigger finger that we have in this country. We

01:20:41.140 have too much violence just in general. Always have. Still do. Too much gun violence. Guns are great

01:20:47.220 messengers of violence. And there is something problematic. We haven't figured out a way to

01:20:53.140 talk to each other without having these kind of horrifying conflicts. And yeah, it's the kind of

01:20:59.160 thing where you read the news in the morning and you feel a bit alienated from your own country.

01:21:04.380 Like, what the hell is wrong with us? You should be able to resolve a wrong door dispute without

01:21:09.440 shooting somebody twice.

01:21:11.240 Stay inside. Stay inside. Go over there and turn the deadbolt.

01:21:14.860 Like, who comes out shooting? But I will say this, to your point, it depends on the person.

01:21:19.800 Because while your dad probably never had like a formal weapons training, does anybody doubt

01:21:25.180 that Dana Lash and her husband, Chris Lash, who I mean, those two are like serious Second

01:21:30.580 Amendment people. They are amazing shots that when they are 200, they're going to be able

01:21:34.660 to get anybody. So like, I feel like I'd be confident with them at 84 to do not mess with

01:21:41.860 the Lash family. They keep inviting us to go down there and hunt wild boar and be a helicopter

01:21:49.140 and

01:21:49.800 By the way, one thing we haven't mentioned- Doug and I are like, do you want to go to

01:21:52.360 the cricket club?

01:21:55.180 That's it. Yeah. Sailing is preferable.

01:21:57.160 It sounds like it's a little more.

01:21:58.520 You know, I'm from Connecticut. I don't. I'm fine.

01:22:01.600 One more. I just want to add one more thing that we haven't mentioned, which is the politicization

01:22:05.180 of this, which again, I want to be very clear, but this could be political.

01:22:09.200 We don't have all the facts.

01:22:10.060 We just don't know. And we should find out. Also, somebody who doesn't know, President Biden,

01:22:15.160 who called the kid, which I think is a great thing to do because he's a 16-year-old who's

01:22:19.160 been gunned down. And he seems like incredibly bright, promising, had scholarships all lined

01:22:25.880 up. Just a really interesting kid. And then I believe they invited him to the White House.

01:22:30.580 You know, the shooting at the school in Tennessee.

01:22:35.200 Nashville, yeah.

01:22:35.760 No one showed up. No one showed up. I mean, Kamala Harris showed up for the protest for the

01:22:40.860 quote-unquote Tennessee Three. And, you know, they're calling this kid and they're, I mean,

01:22:45.340 again, this is a narrative thing. It's like, they're not going to call that woman who was

01:22:49.020 beaten probably within an inch of her life in Chicago.

01:22:51.760 No.

01:22:52.240 Because there's no politics in it. It's not a humanity thing. I would give Joe Biden credit

01:22:56.400 for calling this kid because if I saw this, I would give the kid money. I would help the kid.

01:23:01.000 I would donate to his thing. But, you know, that's not why he's doing this. There's a political

01:23:05.480 narrative thing and narrative casting I find endlessly frustrating, you know?

01:23:10.000 I couldn't agree more. He's exploiting that kid's injury to help himself. That's what's

01:23:15.440 happening. It's disgusting. We all know it, too. It's like, yeah. And so Kamala Harris goes

01:23:20.140 down to Nashville and she calls, her people call the families who are grieving after that

01:23:24.420 school shooting at the Christian school. And she says, if you want to come to me, you know,

01:23:29.960 we can have a meet and greet. The family's like, we're in the middle of burying our relatives. So

01:23:34.260 thanks, but no thanks. So thoughtful. You know, her priorities are exactly in the right place.

01:23:39.680 Let's go stand up for these two, you know, martyrs who got up there on the house floor and tried to

01:23:44.540 hijack the debate from people who are actually trying to fortify the schools and had listened to them

01:23:49.660 and rejected their opinions. But those people got her full attention. Whereas the families of the

01:23:54.400 victims get up, maybe just a phone call saying, you come to me or there'll be no meeting. And as

01:23:58.580 far as I know, Joe Biden did not call the families at all. Uh, okay. Stand by. Cause there's much,

01:24:02.880 much more to get to, uh, including Leah Thomas has decided we needed, we need to hear from Leah

01:24:08.940 on the latest revisions to title nine that the Biden administration is putting out. Leah Thomas

01:24:13.820 wants to make sure sports remain super fair. Leah Thomas, 555th and the men's races. Number one

01:24:20.740 is a woman is really concerned about fairness and athletics. We'll show you that next.

01:24:28.720 Before I get to Leah Thomas, governor Ron DeSantis has weighed in on the boycott of Bud Light,

01:24:35.460 which is happening organically. I mean, nationwide now because it featured, uh, Dylan Mulvaney

01:24:41.920 on its beer cans and sent Dylan these commemorative or whatever celebratory beer cans, uh, and Dylan

01:24:48.920 Mulvaney spends Dylan's career mocking women. I mean, truly Dylan Mulvaney thinks that some bizarre

01:24:55.500 caricature of women represents us and keeps getting away with it. It's offensive. It's absurd. And it's

01:25:01.400 one of the reasons why so many of us are upset, especially at companies like Tampax and oil of

01:25:06.300 oil. Uh, but Bud Light has a customer base. Yes. They're partnering. Yes. Yes. Moynihan Tampax

01:25:13.300 is also using Dylan. It is, it is. They sent Dylan all this free Tampax, but Dylan has a penis,

01:25:20.800 you see. So no one knows where the Tampax goes. Okay. Wow. Can we get Glenn Kessler to get some

01:25:25.740 Pinocchios on this one? Because that can't be real. That's not right. This is all an elaborate

01:25:29.880 way to get Megan to say bleeding. Well, no, I mean, this might be great. Dylan is bleeding out

01:25:35.180 of nowhere, nowhere, nowhere. There's 101 uses for Tampax that I was unaware of. Yeah. Who knows?

01:25:41.760 See, wow. Working. It's just good. People are mad and they're mad at Bud Light because Bud Light's

01:25:46.740 customer base is, you know, men, men who drink beer at sporting events and so on. And really not the

01:25:52.080 people who would be celebrating Dylan. So fail. Ron DeSantis, uh, speaking in his car the other day

01:25:58.460 about this, forgive me, I'll get the name of the reporter, uh, says as follows.

01:26:02.600 I've ever seen a drink Bud Light. I mean, like, honestly, that's like them rubbing our faces in

01:26:08.100 it. And it's like these companies that do this, if they never have any response, they're just going

01:26:13.480 to keep doing it. If you don't have conservative beer drinkers, you're going to feel that. And so,

01:26:18.720 you know, I think it's a righteous, um, I think it's a righteous thing. Will we ever see you

01:26:22.380 drinking a Bud Light again? No, I don't think so. Benny Johnson. Uh, yeah. So

01:26:27.800 he's, he's in on the boycott, which is a very different message than we heard from team Trump

01:26:32.180 where Donald Trump Jr. was decrying the boycott because according to him, Anheuser-Busch donates

01:26:38.220 to Republicans more than Democrats. And therefore it's not a woke brand that should be targeted.

01:26:43.140 So already we're seeing political lines drawn around this battle and we'll see more. I'm sure.

01:26:47.080 What do you guys make of it? I just want to die.

01:26:51.740 That's not a fair response. Ron DeSantis, like, you know, he's like fist pumping on this one.

01:26:58.240 Yeah. I get to, I get to show that I'm in favor of Bud Light against the, the Trump.

01:27:04.380 No, it's just stop. No, no. The fact that this is our politics in 2023, um, I, I, I feel like I need

01:27:12.500 people to blame. So I'll just blame all of them since I don't vote for any of these people who

01:27:16.380 ended up, ended up winning, um, that this will be like a salient political thing that there's a beef

01:27:20.500 between the, the Trump boys and team DeSantis and all the people, the conservatives that have gone

01:27:25.280 from Trump to DeSantis and are working for DeSantis now. Like they, aha, we got them. It's a wedge issue

01:27:30.320 that we can get with Trump on Bud Light commercials that went straight to Instagram. Uh, I would really

01:27:37.400 like to opt out of this timeline. Well, there were no commercials by the way. They just, I think

01:27:41.320 they just sent Dylan the beer, um, which by the way, it could be problematic for Dylan. I'm not,

01:27:46.140 there are all sorts of rules. My, my audience members have been telling me this via email who

01:27:49.800 are in marketing. There are all sorts of rules. If you're going to advertise a beer and it appears

01:27:52.820 that Dylan violated every single one of them. Um, you know, the audience you target has to be

01:27:57.940 majority, you know, over the age of 18 and you have to have all these disclaimers on there and

01:28:02.340 all this stuff. But I mean, I will be honest, Matt, I'm one of the people you should be mad at.

01:28:06.480 Cause I, I do find this very irritating and I am team DeSantis on this all the way.

01:28:11.680 Go ahead, Matt or Michael. I mean, whoever. Oh yeah. Go for it. No, I was just going to say that,

01:28:16.400 look, I, I understand the reaction to this, the negative reaction to this. And it doesn't even

01:28:21.180 matter what the issue is. Honestly, it doesn't, it matters actually the political direction of the

01:28:25.980 issue because you know, this is a very strange thing that has been happening, not in our politics.

01:28:32.300 It's, it's kind of infiltrated our politics in a way, but in our culture for so long and no one has

01:28:37.500 said anything. And it's a minority position that everyone is pushing on the majority and

01:28:42.100 the majority says nothing. So, you know, put, post the black square. I had a friend, you know,

01:28:46.180 this was on Instagram after the George Floyd thing, you had to post the black square that said,

01:28:50.400 I don't know, you, you don't like violence. I mean, I guess that was the fault I thought.

01:28:55.080 And I, we had listeners. I had friends that were criticized for not posting the square,

01:29:01.300 right? Like literally just like, you didn't do it. What's, what's going on. It reminded me of that

01:29:05.060 Seinfeld episode of Kramer wing, not wearing the ribbon. You know, and it was like that in this

01:29:11.780 point, like, you know, I opened, I used to send you guys screenshots this all the time. I'd open like

01:29:15.860 the Amazon app to get like, you know, a paper towels delivered. And it was like, do you know,

01:29:20.960 this paper towels are a Dominican owned business? I'm like, what's the, what to pay shipping? What

01:29:26.940 is the, I don't care. Don't politicize my life. And like, you know what, we have to push back.

01:29:31.940 And then it's not even a political thing. It's not about the trans stuff. It's not about anything

01:29:34.180 in particular. It's like, when you start saying like, we need the, in this woman who is the head

01:29:38.340 of marketing was like, we need to change our, um, fratty customer base, which is a fratty image.

01:29:45.640 It's like, you just did it. Congratulations. They lost like $5 billion in a week.

01:29:50.960 So true. And I hope they keep losing.

01:29:53.460 If the goal was to, uh, try to push into new markets or to try to sort of like, uh, to blend

01:30:00.920 people, if there was actually a goal of true tolerance, it would be, here's this beloved

01:30:06.020 person that we know that our beer drinkers, our customers like, um, uh, but who also happens

01:30:10.980 to be trans. Let's say it's RuPaul or something. I don't know if RuPaul would qualify, but it's

01:30:14.460 someone who's a beloved figure there and like have some kind of a handshake, but that's not

01:30:19.640 the spirit of this at all. Yeah. I think this is another, another bad idea. Well, another

01:30:23.820 bad idea. I don't, I disagree again. Well, actually I'm curious about this. I, I, my thinking

01:30:29.280 was that there was probably, there would probably be very little controversy if RuPaul were to

01:30:36.520 appear. I think that's probably right. RuPaul has been a fixture in American culture since

01:30:40.040 the 1990s, like hugely popular show. His, his, um, hit songs are like 1993. He's had this

01:30:47.500 show that's been on the air. America right now. If they used one of those songs in a prominent

01:30:55.960 beer commercial, no, like absent any other political nonsense, I suspect that everyone

01:31:01.360 would just be okay. So what? I do think the selection of this particular person is

01:31:06.780 deeply problematic. I talked about this the other day. That's the case. And that seems

01:31:10.280 to me to be worth sort of differentiating between, although I do worry a little bit about some

01:31:17.800 of the reactionary backlash to some of these things and the degree to which I see people

01:31:23.320 getting animated in a way that feels more kind of vehemently like anti those people, anti that

01:31:31.840 thing. When I do, I can definitely respect like being, uh, averse to people pushing a political

01:31:39.560 agenda on you through various products. I get a little less, um, I'm less sympathetic towards

01:31:45.880 the shooting hostility towards, which, which feels, which feels very much like the vehement hostility

01:31:53.540 that's projected from certain activists who say, if you won't say that I am a woman, then you are a

01:32:00.380 monster. Well, no, you don't get to dictate my perspectives and I don't get to dictate yours.

01:32:05.260 And that's part of what is supposed to make this country of ours.

01:32:08.900 We don't have enough time for this discussion. Cause I, there are definitely, I've got thoughts

01:32:12.280 on this myself, which is like what we're standing up for something else. Like it's not about the

01:32:15.840 individuals in Dylan's case. It's a little about the individual, but like in general, it's about

01:32:20.180 woman face. I mean, that's what it's, it's like you, you don't get to put on a dress and claim

01:32:25.360 you're a woman. You don't, you're not, you're a man and you can't turn into a woman. If you have

01:32:31.540 an issue with gender dysphoria and you want to parade around like a woman, I, I will let you do

01:32:36.320 that without interfering in your life or taking away rights for you to work at a particular place,

01:32:40.380 all that stuff I get, but I'm not going to say you're a woman cause you're not, you're still a

01:32:44.480 dude. Sorry. You can't switch into my lane just by putting on fake boobs and a dress. It's not

01:32:49.860 possible. Um, that leads me to Leah Thomas, who I've got to get to before we leave. You know,

01:32:54.400 I'm right. Leah Thomas is worried, very, very, very worried about fairness in sport

01:32:59.440 and has changed Leah's hair as well. Take a look at this.

01:33:04.240 My name is Leah Thomas. I'm a transgender woman, a former college swimmer and the first trans

01:33:09.740 athlete to be named division one NCAA champion. That's why it breaks my heart to see trans kids

01:33:14.940 across the country lose out on these opportunities. This rule would prohibit blanket bans on transgender

01:33:20.560 kids. However, it would not prohibit discrimination against trans kids in the high school and college

01:33:26.640 levels under the guise of competitive fairness. We have a 30 day period to urge the Biden administration

01:33:32.720 to amend the rule and grant equal protection for all transgender kids because all trans kids deserve

01:33:39.280 the opportunity to compete and play in the sports they love.

01:33:44.640 Then create your own league. Get out of women's sports, Leah, because you already stole enough medals

01:33:49.520 from people like Riley Gaines. That's what Leah's worried about college and high school athletics.

01:33:54.880 Whereas I don't have to tell the three men sitting here, you've already matured into your man body

01:33:58.840 and your man body is very different from our women body. Seek talking boys. Number one.

01:34:04.760 Don't be so sure. I mean, he's wrong about a lot of things and he hasn't got his man body as a drone

01:34:10.920 boy. Leah Thomas should never be a spokesman for anything that looked like a hostage video.

01:34:16.200 I was like, I am holding a newspaper that I a sign of life. But yeah, the thing is, is that this is the

01:34:23.480 one that no one should ever the hill that nobody on this issue should ever die on because no one on

01:34:30.040 earth disagrees with the position that you were 555 and then you were champion. That's like me. I am

01:34:37.080 the boxing champion of the 15 year old girl league. I'm amazing. No, you actually were the worst. You

01:34:44.200 get knocked out every time you're in the room. It's like, yeah, but now I'm fighting people that are

01:34:47.800 smaller than me. It's a little different. I'm super tough. But like that's like, people just

01:34:52.760 don't like it. Ask anyone. Most people aren't political. Most people are not following this

01:34:56.520 stuff. If you say, should this person who's developed into a man be able to swim against

01:35:00.280 everyone says no. I mean, the numbers on this are out there. You can see the poll numbers. It's just

01:35:04.120 like, no, the Biden administration is very foolish politically to actually get on the side of,

01:35:09.000 of, um, like Leah Thomas or Thompson. I can even see at the elementary school level,

01:35:14.040 all the experts say you haven't changed yet. The little boys and the little girls,

01:35:17.560 third grade, they're the same physically, but at the middle school level, and I've got

01:35:21.480 two middle schoolers, right? Two, two out of my three. The bodies are so different. You got to be

01:35:25.560 crazy. An eight year old, I mean, an eighth grade boy versus an eighth grade girl. Very, very different.

01:35:30.120 It's not safe. And this rule would, would make sure that you can't ban that, which is not okay.

01:35:36.280 And would make sure that, uh, you, you cannot have state bands, uh, at the higher levels either,

01:35:42.720 which is not okay. All right. I gotta, I gotta go. It's been a pleasure as always, Matt,

01:35:46.360 you'll work on it. You'll come back. You'll do better the next time. Thank you.

01:35:53.560 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 18, 2023

Disturbing Chicago Violence Excused by Politicians, and Media Salivates Over Fox News Trial, with the Fifth Column Hosts ｜ Ep. 531

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