When Air France lost your bag at the baggage carousel, what do you do? Call them? No one knows where your bag is, and no one can figure out where it is. Megyn tells the story of how Air France handled the situation.
00:03:44.640I tried calling the JFK Baggage Services, got the number they had given me, ready with my claim and my baggage numbers, and no one picked up.
00:04:58.660Now, it's not like we had the Mona Lisa in our bags.
00:05:02.560But we were sad at the thought of losing them.
00:05:05.500There were lots of mementos in there from the trip.
00:05:07.620The kids' travel journals with their little handwritten notes and memories.
00:05:11.280Got a caricature of the three kids in Rome.
00:05:13.860My little guy's mini statue of the David.
00:05:16.300There were Father's Day presents that the kids cobbled together, which were super fun because we realized too late that Italy doesn't celebrate Father's Day in June.
00:05:25.140But also kind of sentimental and obviously plenty of clothes and jewelry and so on.
00:05:30.220Day after day, we waited, waited for word.
00:05:33.700I called the JFK Baggage Services relentlessly, only to get the answering machine each time and waited and waited for word on our Air France claim.
00:05:43.300Our travel agent friend tried to contact Air France for us, too, with absolutely zero luck.
00:05:47.560No one could break through their fortress of non-humans.
00:05:51.560On the bright side, one bag did arrive at JFK.
00:15:49.960We are nearly three weeks out now from our return to the U.S.
00:15:53.220And would you believe in all of that time, I have never spoken to a single Air France employee, not one for five lost bags, despite the public tweets and all of it.
00:16:06.720Air travel, as you know, is not cheap, right?
00:16:10.660The airlines do their level best to make you pay however they can.
00:16:14.160Half of them charge extra for a snack now, never mind a meal or if your bag is too heavy or if you want the crappy headphones.
00:16:20.240The CEO of Air France, who took a bailout from the French and Dutch governments during the pandemic and then went on to reportedly pocket over three million bucks in salary and bonuses last year, actually bragged in the press two weeks ago, quote, the ability to pass on higher costs to customers is unbelievable.
00:17:03.800Air France clearly feels zero guilt about charging its customers exorbitant fees and its customers have a right to expect basic services like safety, on time departures and arrivals.
00:41:48.680Matt's point, I think, is a good one about the pivot and the, you know, just total inability to pivot.
00:41:55.580And people kind of didn't appreciate this about Trump.
00:41:59.080And I used to see this all the time when I would go to Trump rallies and cover them.
00:42:02.180Is that a man who understood the room so brilliantly and so quickly and knew when a line worked and he would start repeating it in that actual arena.
00:42:12.720And then it would become a line that he repeated throughout a campaign or throughout his presidency.
00:42:16.880Biden is just kind of glassy eyed and doesn't know what is going on and can't can't actually pivot this stuff.
00:42:22.540And the incredible thing about the numbers of black voters at 64 percent, which is wild.
00:42:27.760I mean, that's, you know, I mean, usually expect 90 percent.
00:42:31.060The number of his approval rating with a generic Democrat approval rating is 70 percent.
00:42:36.200Black voters are below that, which is kind of a unique thing.
00:42:40.300And I can't remember the time it has happened.
00:42:42.380And then, of course, he does have to win over like non-college educated whites, which was the domain of Democratic Party.
00:42:50.580And that is one of the great flips in American politics over the past 50 years is that it's become the domain of Republicans.
00:42:56.720He's doing nothing to to get those people in.
00:42:59.840And, you know, he's just he doesn't have the phrase.
00:43:01.560He doesn't have build the wall or any.
00:43:10.000Repeat previous line, which is that resonates with a certain demographic.
00:43:14.640I'm sure repeat line to the point one of you guys just made about a progressive caucus now pushing for a different nominee next time around.
00:44:00.200I mean, the Republicans would love to see him run again.
00:44:02.200He's going to have to worry about things like this when it comes to getting back on the ticket.
00:44:05.800The tragic mistake would be that if he tried to run with these numbers and then listen to these people and decided to become more left wing.
00:44:12.720I mean, that's not what the American people want.
00:44:14.540If you look at other polling numbers and also when you're in the grips of of, you know, a recession and like runaway inflation, spending more money from the government is going to make all of that worse.
00:44:25.220One doesn't need to be an economist to figure this out.
00:44:27.000This is kind of basic one on one economics.
00:44:28.700So if the argument is you need to be more like AOC.
00:44:33.700Well, I mean, you see you saw the White House.
00:44:36.380I can't remember who the spokesman of the White House is saying, you know, the pro choice people, you know, they got very upset about this of saying, you know, they're doing this wrong.
00:44:44.960And everyone freaked out and like, well, you know, they're saying that because Roe v.
00:44:49.780Wade, that decision is people are kind of in the middle about a lot of it.
00:44:54.500And if you were just to do the activist version of that, you don't make any friends.
00:44:59.240And, you know, going to the kind of net roots or whatever these people, that's what they used to be called.
00:45:04.200That that is not a recipe for success for Democrats.
00:45:06.740And that New York Times poll yesterday showed that literally abortion is the most important issue for one percent of one percent.
00:45:49.780I want to talk to you about Elon trying to pull the plug in his Twitter deal and whether or not that's going to work.
00:45:54.420And a dust up he seems to be having with Trump.
00:45:57.640So much more to get to with Matt, Michael and Camille right after this.
00:46:01.100And remember, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, YouTube dot com slash Megan Kelly.
00:46:15.320If you prefer an audio podcast, follow and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast.
00:46:20.140If you leave me a comment on the Apple comment section, got an airline story, got a thought about mine.
00:46:25.000Leave it there or you can leave it on YouTube.
00:46:27.660Sometimes I go and I'll read those, too, and I will see what you think.
00:46:31.860And I would love to hear what you think there, by the way, when you're on the sort of podcast archives on Apple, you will see all of our archives with more than 350 shows.
00:46:50.540They've come to a conclusion, an official conclusion about those Border Patrol agents accused of whipping migrants down at the southern border when we were dealing with a crisis of an influx of some 15000.
00:47:03.840Even the Reuters photographer who took the footage said at the time, that is not what I saw.
00:47:09.680I don't know why people are saying that they saw them whipping migrants.
00:47:59.780Human beings should not be treated that way.
00:48:01.520And as we all know, it also evoked images of some of the worst moments of our history where that kind of behavior has been used against the indigenous people of our country, has been used against African-Americans during times of slavery.
00:49:04.440And last Friday, a 511 page internal investigation within the Border Patrol, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol's Office of Personal Responsibility concludes.
00:49:14.920Number one, they were falsely accused.
00:49:18.740They did not whip anyone with the reins used on their horses.
00:49:44.040Apparently, one or more of the guys allegedly instructed the noncitizens, quote, to go back to Mexico or words to that effect.
00:49:52.760The second charge is that one of them, it looks like one, committed unsafe conduct by maneuvering that agent's horse in a way that caused a noncitizen to fall backward into the river, thereby compromising the safety of those involved.
00:50:11.840And Joe Biden gets to say they were bad and he exacted punishment.
00:50:17.560And this whole whipping slavery narrative, where do you go to get your reputation back?
00:50:22.500Not to this administration and not to this press.
00:50:25.140This reminds me of the of the Ferguson case with Michael Brown at the press coverage and treatment and the memory holding into some degree.
00:50:34.680If you recall, Michael Brown was shot by a police officer and that became that he had said, hands up, don't shoot, which he never said.
00:50:43.640And the Justice Department, Camila, did at least one, maybe two big, two huge investigations.
00:50:49.980Yeah, there were two separate reports.
00:50:51.320And that were absolutely conclusive and convincing that the popular narrative about what went down there, which triggered a whole bunch of protests, some of which are, you know, I agreed with the purpose of the protest, not necessarily the underlying cause, talking about over-policing in certain communities or whatever.
00:51:09.580But the basic narrative was wrong and there wasn't a whole lot of, oh, whoops, kind of self-examination there, just as there wasn't with the Covington kid who was posing out or standing in front of a Native American weirdo.
00:51:25.680And not because he's Native American, because he's a weirdo out in Washington, D.C.
00:51:34.960And then when all of the conclusive evidence weighs in, there's a lot of crickets.
00:51:38.660And I recommend, in addition to watching that clip that you just played, Megan, go on Twitter, follow a guy named Drew Holden360, because he collects receipts for how media commentators, politicians, and blue check marks react in these moments.
00:51:53.860And what they do is that they immediately presume that the underlying thing is true and then just spread it.
00:51:59.920And then it's a competition to the highest possible dudgeon about this thing that they never proved.
00:52:04.500And check back with those people over the next coming days and see which of them, if any of them, say, ah, you know what, I was a little bit too quick.
00:52:16.540In real time, this story was fact-checked, as you pointed out, Megan.
00:52:20.080And the Biden administration and its various allies in the media and in public policy who are in elected office, we're still having these press conferences.
00:52:31.100We're still talking about slavery and whipping people, which it's one thing if it's an honest mistake, in which case you ought to wait for the facts to come in.
00:52:39.760It is another thing entirely when you are making these assertions repeatedly.
00:52:43.460And it's not just an absence of evidence.
00:52:46.200There is evidence to the contrary, and you refuse to acknowledge it.
00:52:49.560And we've actually seen this numerous times.
00:52:51.840And when it was Trump, people were quick to say, suggested without evidence, or he suggested this, and it's a lie.
00:53:44.320I mean, this smacks a political hit job, which is what the head of the Border Patrol said.
00:53:49.320It's not, you know, maybe it's not the right thing to say, but it is, in fact, their job to make people go back to Mexico and not come to the country illegally.
00:53:58.260I mean, it's very strange that you, when somebody states what their job is, that that is an offense.
00:54:02.880But, you know, as you pointed out, and I'm glad you did, Megan, because nobody is pointing this out, is that, as you said, the fix is in.
00:54:09.820I mean, when the president of the United States says this demands an investigation and they will be punished, that is not an investigation.
00:54:19.000You are saying what is happening at the beginning, that is not an investigation.
00:54:23.160When I talk about government wasting money, how long does it take and how many people does it take and what are the resources to produce a 511-page report that was precipitated by bad media coverage?
00:54:35.100Which, as you point out, Reuters said at the time, we were here, this is not what happened.
00:54:39.720And then you have someone like the half-witted vice president saying that this evokes times of slavery.
00:54:47.260Well, Madam Vice President, what is the major difference between times of slavery and this, beyond the fact that nobody was whipped?
00:54:53.960Well, these are people desperate to get into the country.
00:54:56.640Black people are trying to get into America versus people who were brought here against their will as chattel slaves.
00:55:02.500This is, I mean, the main reason for this happening is people wanting to get to America, and they do so illegally.
00:55:08.360And these people are trying to do their job.
00:55:11.040And, of course, you know, they're handcuffed at every turn.
00:55:15.120And, you know, the union that is representing Border Patrol is outraged by this.
00:55:20.740And, you know, it's funny to me because it's not getting a lot of coverage because it's the only fucking union in America that people that, well, the police unions and the Border Patrol unions that people on the left don't care about.
00:55:33.940And this is, you know, Border Patrol, that's an executive branch agency.
00:55:37.520I mean, that's I think it's under technically DHS.
00:55:39.660But my point is their boss, their boss's boss's boss said they will be punished at the outset.
00:55:44.660So it's like, oh, gee, I wonder what we're supposed to do here.
00:55:48.520It does feel like a political hit job.
00:55:50.280But if these guys, if one of these agents, they haven't publicly released the names, I don't believe.
00:55:53.900But if one of these agents gets fired for improperly maneuvering his horse and they don't even allege any injury or for saying go back to Mexico, which is literally, as you point out, what we're employing him to make sure happens.
00:56:06.440There's going to be there actually will be national outrage, at least on the right in the middle.
00:56:13.340And this, of course, comes in the context of record, record numbers coming across the southern border.
00:56:19.4002021 was already a record at one point seven three million coming across the southern border or trying.
00:56:29.000And we set another record in May and aren't and aren't track to continue doing so.
00:56:33.040We don't have June's numbers for some reason yet.
00:56:35.100In May, it was two hundred and thirty nine thousand plus arrests along the Mexican border, which is an increase from April, which is already a record.
00:56:44.360And now they're on pace to exceed two million detentions.
00:56:47.140That's the word between or during fiscal 2022.
00:57:00.660We publicly attack them, humiliate them, rush to judgment against them.
00:57:03.500And then even when the evidence doesn't pan out, instead of saying we're sorry, we try to find one bullshit comment or mismaneuvering one's horse that we can hang the whole case on.
00:57:12.940And I can recall from this thing happened on a weekend.
00:57:16.280I record the reason podcast on 11 o'clock on Monday morning.
00:57:31.900But by that afternoon, by the time we released it, it was already like, oh, OK, enough doubt has crept in to this.
00:57:41.560So it was in the first 24 hours that we had enough to know that you can't say X or that there's no evidence for X.
00:57:48.480And that didn't stop anybody from the top, from the media, from the politicians, from from so on.
00:57:56.240We have this culture of where there isn't a built in sanction for saying or spreading something that isn't true, including the most vile of all possible accusations that someone is acting in a violently racist way and abusing their power.
00:58:10.300That is an accusation that is so freely available to people.
00:58:14.760And there isn't a lot of pushback, legal or societal or cultural journalistic against people who do it.
00:58:21.600And it's a it's a real problem that we face right now.
00:58:46.700You know, just this just this week, I think there was a story in The Washington Post about this account of a 10 year old girl who had reportedly been raped and told in Ohio that she could not have an abortion.
00:58:59.620And was going to be forced to have this child.
00:59:02.060And this Washington Post story is a fact check.
00:59:04.880And it is all about how this story, which could only be sourced to one party and had only been reported in one paper and then was kind of regurgitated by everyone else, ended up being something that the president references during some official remarks about Roe versus Wade.
00:59:20.400And it is interesting that the conclusion of this fact check is something along the lines of with news reports around the globe and now presidential and presidential support.
00:59:33.160However, the story has acquired the status of fact, no matter its province.
00:59:37.840If a rapist is ever charged, the facts finally would have more solid grounding.
00:59:42.720That's the conclusion of this fact check.
00:59:56.660And when they tried to substantiate it, when this journalist tries to substantiate it, they can't figure it out.
01:00:02.460No, it's it really does put the point to how little they fact check before they send the president out there to make comments on very sensitive issues, whether it's something in the national news that has tempers flaring or.
01:00:16.360Well, I mean, both of these are instances of that with the alleged whipping and this alleged case of a 10 year old who needed an abortion, which may be a big lie.
01:00:25.640We don't know, but it's certainly not reportable and it certainly shouldn't have wound up in a presidential address.
01:00:42.620It was the attorney general of Ohio and asked him, has there been any report?
01:00:49.480Because it was Ohio in which the 10 year old allegedly lived and couldn't get an abortion, who then had to allegedly cross state lines to Indiana.
01:00:56.460And he and again, if this is a 10 year old is pregnant, they're alleging this is a rape victim.
01:01:01.560And he said, has there been any sort of reporting about this?
01:01:05.520And the AG said, we have regular contact with prosecutors and local police and sheriffs.
01:01:10.480There's not a whisper anywhere about any of this.
01:01:14.340Now, it doesn't that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
01:01:17.260Again, sometimes the caregivers to a 10 year old, I don't know, might not go to the law enforcement.
01:01:24.600There's a duty to report most circumstances.
01:01:27.920But all the more reason to check it out, like your spidey senses should be going up, certainly as a reporter, never mind as a politician who doesn't want to get too far out.
01:01:36.940And nobody did because it's bits the narrative.
01:01:39.100It's a it's an almost perfect story, too, because you can say as this woman who was the one source who is apparently quite quite an activist, too, which I think that was making people's spidey senses tingle a little bit, too.
01:01:53.020And again, like like you, Megan, I don't know if this story is true or not, but it's one that's very difficult to shoot down.
01:01:58.920So why I mean, if you're going to make something up, this is a perfect one to do because, you know, you can't you know, there's HIPAA, you can't betray, you know, a 10 year old who's reporting something like this and which is understandable.
01:02:10.220But in such a front political environment, I mean, we've mentioned how many cases here, you know, between all of us, Covington Catholic, Michael Brown, you know, this this the horse story, all of these things.
01:02:22.820The reason that Jill Biden is going to apologize for something like that, because it's a learning experience that talks about how good you're trying to be good, you're trying to get better on these issues of race and you can get some credit for it.
01:02:35.500These ones you don't apologize for because it fits the narrative that the point that everyone should always keep in their mind when they're looking at news coverage, seeing these stories that might not add up or something.
01:02:46.340And it's not that people are necessarily coming out and lying about news stories.
01:02:52.580They just aren't going to check these things out because narrative matters a lot more than truth to most people in this business.
01:02:58.760And that is just a fact that I've seen in this business for years.
01:03:04.140And I think that, you know, on our podcast, we were pretty schizophrenic when when it comes and that may be offensive to schizophrenic people.
01:03:10.900We're very schizophrenic about ideology because we don't really subscribe to I mean, we just kind of are always investigating what the media is saying about certain things.
01:03:19.420And sometimes it's on the right, sometimes it's on the left.
01:03:21.020But there's always this overwhelming instinct to feed a narrative and then later see if it's true, if it and you're not going to be the one to investigate, but if it isn't true, you just shut your mouth and you, you know, the damage has been done.
01:03:33.620That's what you said and what Matt said just reminded me of something on the Michael Brown thing.
01:03:37.660So I was on the air covering that when it happened and, you know, had been questioning the story and, you know, raising issues all along.
01:03:45.140And there were in the end, there were five black witnesses who told Eric Holder's DOJ the guy did not have his hands up saying don't shoot.
01:03:54.420He charged at the officer and that's when he got shot.
01:04:40.520You know, I don't remember the big apology on that.
01:04:43.240I really don't because it didn't happen.
01:04:44.900And not just that, we're living through a presidency right now, a Democratic presidency, right after a whole bunch of mainstream elite journalistic outlets went through this kind of spasm of saying we need more moral clarity.
01:04:59.240We need to call a lie by its name there.
01:05:25.520And it is not treated with anything like the same level of scrutiny and dudgeon and chyrons at the bottom of your screen unless you're watching cable news as Donald Trump.
01:05:36.580Now, I think Donald Trump lies more than probably any politician I can think of in the last 25 years.
01:05:45.360But that's also my memory starting to fog up with age.
01:05:50.520He treats things a little bit differently.
01:05:52.260But as we had frequently said during the Trump administration, like, OK, we're glad the people are really on high alert to call out Donald Trump's lies.
01:06:01.840We hope that they're accurate when they do that.
01:06:04.980They're so ready to believe every single thing is a lie that their reporting standards stumble.
01:06:10.900But the most important thing that we wished for, knowing that it would never happen, is that that same level of scrutiny would survive the change of team in the White House.
01:06:33.000Which, OK, so it'll be that this will be interesting, especially with CNN saying that it's going to go back to, you know, straight news now.
01:06:41.560It's going to take its foot off the partisan pedal.
01:06:44.340Will they to cover their asses and to get rid of this guy they've turned on, try to act like they're now truly, you know, objective reporters?
01:06:52.820Well, it's an it's an interesting thing.
01:06:53.940And a quick point to what Matt was saying.
01:06:55.280I mean, I made this prediction while Donald Trump is still in office.
01:07:09.400And that was like, this is our moral clarity, as Matt was talking about, is that what we discovered very quickly, and anyone who was paying attention knew this, is that the moral clarity was political clarity.
01:07:20.620Nobody who said that this was actually a thing that we had to do in the service of truth can actually defend it now and say that we believe in the supreme truth.
01:07:30.040The only thing that they were doing was making a political point, but they were, you know, couching it in this language of we care about truth.
01:08:29.960The president of the United States, this is too full of lies.
01:08:32.340It's like, why don't you either just fact check him at the end of it or, like, just shut up?
01:08:38.400Like, either way, not putting the president on while he's having a presser on COVID is not for you to do.
01:08:45.840Like, one thing when he's a candidate running against 10 other candidates, now he's the sitting U.S. president, and you're not going to let us hear from him?
01:09:08.800I mean, both you and I, Megan, have been to his studio and interviewed him.
01:09:13.020It's like I sat down with him, and I challenged him, and it was a good, robust interview.
01:09:17.780And no one said at the time, because that was actually 2016, no one said at the time, you were doing a great disservice to this nation.
01:09:24.480When Donald Trump became president, you couldn't talk to these people, because if people heard from them, they might be convinced of their ideas.
01:09:32.520Now, how much contempt do you have to have for the American people to believe something like that?
01:09:37.500That can't be the standard, because when Joe Biden is making claims about inflation and doing the kind of typical spinning that you would expect to get from any number of politicians, do you then cut them off as well?
01:09:48.800Do you insist that they don't have an opportunity to say anything?
01:09:51.860If this person is going to lie publicly and say things that are provably false, it is your job as a journalist to demonstrate the degree to which that is true or not true.
01:10:00.880And give the American people an opportunity to be able to make up their mind on the basis of the actual evidence, not to insist that they can't hear things because this is beyond the pale.
01:10:56.200We know they're anti-Trump, but truly, we're after facts.
01:11:00.000Okay, this is a little convoluted, so stay with me because I'll bring you there.
01:11:03.420But what they're doing with this Pat Cipollone testimony, the White House counsel under Trump, who they are on January 6th, puts the lie, like so many things do, to that claim.
01:11:13.440So Pat Cipollone gave an informal interview to the committee prior to the testimony of their star witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, the other week.
01:11:21.520And my understanding is they had that before she took the stand.
01:11:25.240But then they rushed to get Pat Cipollone back under oath this past Friday, and they did.
01:11:30.080So this guy testifies to them, not in front of the cameras, but to all of them, under oath.
01:11:35.880And the rush was because they wanted, ostensibly, to get confirmation of what Cassidy Hutchinson had said about what Pat Cipollone had told her.
01:11:46.800Namely, oh, my God, if he goes down to the Capitol, we are going to be hosting or facing a host of legal problems like you've never seen before.
01:11:56.440And that he begged her to make sure that Donald Trump didn't go to the Capitol.
01:12:00.160I remember making fun of it the next day because it was like, where are her notes?
01:12:03.820Because you're 23, 24 years old and the White House counsel comes to you as the 23 year old.
01:12:08.260You're like, don't let him go down to the Capitol.
01:13:02.760So you could just say to Pat, did you say if he goes down to the Capitol, we're going to be facing more legal charges than we've ever seen before?
01:13:09.960Or did you ask Cassidy Hutchinson not to let that like you could do it that way as opposed to saying she said this true or false?
01:13:16.540OK, so I can I can give him that so far.
01:13:19.300But then you find out that the committee had reportedly been told in advance that if he were to be asked whether he could corroborate what she said, i.e.
01:13:36.640that we would get charged with every crime imaginable if they went to the U.S. Capitol, he told them in advance he would not confirm that particular statement.
01:13:44.160All right. So basically, they had a heads up, according to these reports, that he wasn't going to go there and he was getting ready to disagree with her.
01:13:51.580So rather than ask him the specifics that would have shown a divergence in their views, they just stuck to what happened on January 6th?
01:14:00.220What did you do? What did you say? And they didn't go there.
01:14:03.880Right. This is how they cover their asses.
01:14:05.620And then they come out. Here's another piece of it, a little bit more color, an excerpt from The Times report.
01:14:10.420Two people familiar with Mr. Cipollone's actions that day, Cipollone, say he did not recall making that comment to Cassidy Hutchinson.
01:14:17.820Those people said the committee was made aware before the interview that Mr. Cipollone would not confirm that conversation were he to be asked.
01:14:25.400He was not asked about that specific statement on Friday, according to the people with the questions.
01:14:30.560This group is so biased. They didn't ask him because they knew he would contradict her.
01:14:36.360And they wanted Zoe Lofgren to be able to go on CNN and say he didn't contradict anybody.
01:14:42.140Nothing. He said he did not contradict Cassidy Hutchinson. It's a lie.
01:14:46.300They're they're biased. They're there. These people should not be treated as objective fact finders.
01:14:51.240And I'd really you can watch this for entertainment and pull and call whatever you may find mildly interesting.
01:14:56.400But you must remember, none of it's been cross examined. None of it's been challenged.
01:15:00.220This is not an adversarial proceeding. And the fix is in there, too, with the so-called finders of fact.
01:15:07.140It's it's a very difficult situation because I think the investigating January 6th is important and worthwhile.
01:15:13.920I think that President Trump's behavior around the election is his narrative about a stolen election is fraudulent and awful.
01:15:24.520It is one of the most despicable things that an outgoing president has done in my lifetime and perhaps before that.
01:15:34.780And then the January 6th committee, in terms of the way that it's conducting this investigation, is simply not covering themselves in glory.
01:15:41.480And so many of these things seem like obvious cell phones.
01:15:45.360I know, Megan, you know, a little bit about how these things work.
01:15:49.200I'm trying to imagine a judicial proceeding that has all of the interrogation of witnesses or the interviews with witnesses happening behind closed doors.
01:15:59.740And then the presentation of the facts for, in this particular case, the public, the jury, is only these manicured or select interviews in public or manicured presentations of clips from those conversations.
01:16:14.980It is really a rather bizarre and obviously theatrical exercise, and it can't be construed with an actual presentation of the evidence, an actual, as you mentioned, adversarial process wherein someone gets to interrogate what's being said here.
01:16:32.420And I think the material things that people ought to know, the real conversations that we should be having about the state of the polity, about what happened, about what's led to the profound distrust that so many Americans have in the electoral process, we're not having those conversations at all.
01:16:48.120And instead, we get this political theater.
01:16:50.580And really, very similar in terms of the last conversation we were just having, the way that the press responds to this in many instances is also very, very disconcerting.
01:17:00.600Yeah. No, the headline is, oh, Pat Cipollone doesn't contradict Cassidy Hutchinson.
01:17:12.440And today, they're going to be releasing little snippets of Pat Cipollone and the testimony that we didn't get to actually witness live in full on Friday that, of course, once again, went uncross-examined by anybody.
01:17:23.960Which is, you know, technically true, because if they don't ask him about it, he didn't contradict it, right?
01:17:28.740But, so, I mean, that's to your point, how it's constructed.
01:17:43.000I mean, this is, I mean, the Watergate committee is actually, if you go back and look at after Jaworski's fired and look all those, watch all that stuff, it's like pretty fascinating because you actually have Republicans turning on Nixon.
01:17:55.860And, of course, famously, Barry Goldwater walks over to the White House and says it's time to go because they actually had a process.
01:18:01.420And, look, I get that Republicans should share a huge amount of responsibility for this for not participating, but, of course, that's a complicated issue, too.
01:18:09.820But what we're seeing here, and I think that there's some useful stuff that comes out of this, but it's in the same way that if you're a historian and you look at a series of documents that come from one side of an issue or another historian who's biased in a particular way, you can find interesting things, but you have to kind of cross-check it and make sure that it's real.
01:18:27.620And what you have now is essentially a real-time documentary because what documentaries do, I mean, people tend to think documentaries, well, that's the truth.
01:18:35.040Well, no, think of Michael Moore and think of people who are ideological and have a direction they want to take with Al Gore.
01:18:42.700We're supposed to be dead already according to Al Gore.
01:18:45.380Yeah, I think it was a thing about mules.
01:19:06.320But, you know, the thing about this is, I mean, you're making a documentary in real time means that you interview people.
01:19:11.900And what happens when you interview people for a documentary?
01:19:14.020I mean, I usually do this and they take about two hours.
01:19:16.580The people get maybe 60 seconds, if that, sometimes 20 seconds.
01:19:19.780And you actually have somebody who's a television producer producing this.
01:19:24.320I mean, it's more of a documentary than it's not even just kind of an analogous situation.
01:19:29.200It actually is that situation when you have a television producer doing this and they're plugging things in for political purposes.
01:19:34.820Now, I get the fact that these things are always going to be a political show trial in some ways.
01:19:41.600And I mean, show trial is the wrong thing because that sounds, you know, too negative.
01:19:44.780But yeah, well, yeah, it's not Stalinist.
01:19:48.040But if you look at, you know, what happened in in 73, 74 with Watergate, obviously Democrats have a very specific goal here.
01:19:57.080But, you know, they get the truth at the same time.
01:19:59.460When you see this documentary production and my concern is not that we're not going to get anything truthful or anything interesting because we are getting those things.
01:20:07.500It's the fact that the no interrogation allows people in the media to present a very specific narrative that came out of this august institution in Congress and they're investigating this stuff.
01:20:19.760It's like, yeah, but most people don't know that there is nobody actually saying because I saw you, Megan, with Cassidy's testimony had a had a pretty viral clip of going through all the things.
01:20:32.120And because I was thinking the same thing listening to it, I was like, some of this doesn't make a ton of sense, but it shouldn't take you to do that.
01:20:38.540And it shouldn't take every someone looking on Twitter and seeing this because most people don't consume news that way.
01:21:06.780And then much more to get to with the guys from the fifth column right after this quick, quick break.
01:21:14.960So Elon Musk is now not buying Twitter, though it could still change.
01:21:20.120It could all be like the attempt to renegotiate a better price on the deal because the stock market and Twitter stock has fallen precipitously.
01:21:28.640Since he agreed, since he made his offer and they accepted it, he says it's because they failed to provide accurate information about the number of bots on Twitter.
01:21:40.080See, I, too, I am upset about the bots at Air France and he is upset about the bots.
01:22:17.340But really, the only issue is legally will that hold up?
01:22:21.540Twitter says he made them a promise of, quote, specific performance, which in the law means you you promised not not just that you'd pay us the billion dollar fee if this falls apart.
01:22:31.380You promised that if you pulled this deal for a bullshit reason, we could take you to court and make you actually buy us specific performance.