The Megyn Kelly Show - August 04, 2026


DSA Candidate Slams "Proximity To Whiteness," and Tennis Star SUPPORTS Women, with Matt Taibbi, Plus Roland Orzabal of "Tears For Fears" | Ep. 1373


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 41 minutes

Words per minute

158.7

Word count

16,182

Sentence count

903


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:27.060 order up thank you no no no oh come on this is not happening turn off the water where's the
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00:00:49.460 a licensed dd insurance advisor can help you get the right insurance coverage to protect your
00:00:54.040 business. It's how we're making insurance more human. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show,
00:00:59.740 live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
00:01:09.620 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Tuesday.
00:01:13.400 We have a great show for you today. There is more on the DSA takeover of the Democratic Party,
00:01:18.580 Democrat Socialists of America, that is, as a progressive battles it out with the
00:01:22.740 establishment candidate in the Michigan primary today, plus a major plagiarism scandal from the
00:01:28.940 youngest black professor in the history of the University of Cambridge has grown since we first
00:01:33.420 brought it to you last week. Joining me now is Matt Taibbi. He's the editor of Racket News,
00:01:37.820 which you can find on Substack. You don't wait until your house is on fire to install a smoke
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00:02:53.520 check it out for yourself by texting MK to 989898. Matt, welcome back. Great to see you.
00:03:01.480 Before we get to all of that, we've got to start in the state of Maine because they continue to
00:03:08.400 have serious trouble over on the Democrat side in finding their nominee to take on Susan Collins.
00:03:14.280 This is a seat that they felt really good about about two months ago.
00:03:18.680 Not so much anymore.
00:03:20.480 So Graham Plattner was forced out of the race when multiple women came forward against him.
00:03:24.200 And ultimately, a woman with whom he had a relationship came forward to accuse him of
00:03:28.360 rape.
00:03:29.540 He dropped out.
00:03:30.980 Now they've settled on Troy Jackson to replace him.
00:03:34.980 And Troy Jackson, as it turns out, Matt is married to his second cousin.
00:03:42.360 um that's extremely weird okay that's like you and your first cousin have children they're not
00:03:54.180 married but they're lifelong partners and they have children together um you and your first
00:03:58.480 cousin have children and those children get well life partners become life partners and have
00:04:04.940 have children of their own so you picture your first cousin out there you have a child
00:04:10.980 he has a child, your children get together and have a family, including biological children of
00:04:17.940 their own. I'm sorry. It's too much. That's those are second cousins having relations and children
00:04:25.700 together. And now he's commenting on it. This report hit a couple of days ago. Now he's speaking
00:04:33.660 out his campaign called the reporting by the the main wire. It's a local outlet, politically
00:04:40.340 motivated, blaming Susan Collins.
00:04:43.460 Quote, Susan Collins will do anything to distract from the fact that she votes with Trump 96%
00:04:47.940 of the time and has sold out the working people of Maine.
00:04:51.740 Personal attacks on Troy's family are shameful and desperate, but they don't add untrue.
00:05:00.720 Matt Taibbi, they seem to be admitting he is having sex with his second cousin and reproducing
00:05:08.760 with her which i'm sorry is just creepy your thoughts yeah um this is something that oddly
00:05:17.140 enough uh even it's legal to uh marry even first cousins in uh a lot of countries in the world um i
00:05:25.440 i actually know somebody uh know a couple of second cousins who were married um but uh it's
00:05:32.760 it's an odd thing and the thing that's really interesting about this is the reflexive answer
00:05:38.660 This has become the go-to answer to everything. Almost everything is either but Trump or why are you talking about that now? And it's sort of the standard way to non-debate an issue or non-answer a question in this day and age. But Maine is a fiasco. I think it's sort of the poster child for all the problems that the Democratic Party is facing right now.
00:06:05.500 here's what's interesting too so his response is to say trump trump trump trump and also you know
00:06:13.400 in the same i mean that's what he's saying by saying susan collins you know this is all susan
00:06:17.360 collins and her her affinity for trump which is laughable most republicans would say they wish
00:06:22.260 susan collins would have a greater affinity for trump right but in any event um the the guy uh
00:06:27.860 at the main wire the editor-in-chief his name is steve robinson actually came out and spoke to that
00:06:34.080 allegation. Listen here in Sat 9. I wanted to check in and give a little update on the
00:06:39.540 consanguinity story with Troy Jackson. For those who don't know, consanguinity is the fancy word
00:06:47.520 for banging your cousin. Now, I'm just a humble blogger from Dexter. I don't know fancy
00:06:53.320 communication stuff like all the D.C. consultants that Troy Jackson has on his payroll. So maybe I
00:07:00.320 don't understand the wisdom of the statement that they put out, but they effectively confirmed
00:07:06.340 all of the reporting that the main wire has done. They put out a statement saying that this was
00:07:12.700 Susan Collins' work, but don't go around giving other people credit for my work. This was original
00:07:17.400 investigative work that came to us from a tip, and we investigated it, pulled together a little
00:07:22.560 family tree, family reef on Ancestry.com, confirmed the work, and were confident in it
00:07:29.740 enough to report it out this had nothing whatsoever to do with senator collins i'm into this guy he's
00:07:37.440 got a sense of humor matt yeah no that's very funny and you know that i can see why you would
00:07:42.540 be upset if um you know if they're essentially saying this is a plant from trump and susan
00:07:47.260 collins and he actually dug that up himself uh that that's something i've dealt with in the past
00:07:52.200 before is uh being accused of being uh the conveyor of opposition research when that's not the case
00:07:59.000 at all. And they don't even bother to confirm that that's the case anymore when they when they
00:08:04.340 do that. So it's it's that's right. They just want to slander him. Consanguinity. That's a great
00:08:08.840 word. Yeah. I know. I haven't heard that one in a while. But like in Troy Jackson's defense,
00:08:15.200 where do you go with that? Yes, I am banging my second cousin. I like that's really the response.
00:08:22.140 It's true. I'm banging a blood relative. Ew, I'm sorry. It's gross. The Republicans of Maine
00:08:28.640 have now responded with the following uh to everyone planning to call our office about this
00:08:34.820 troy jackson news we just had to say no we do not know what's wrong with maine democrats but it is
00:08:40.740 only affecting them exclamation point the rest of us mainers are still quite normal
00:08:45.500 this i don't i don't think this is the kind of pr you want as as you gear up toward uh election day
00:08:56.880 Matt, I'm thinking this they could they could have better stories about Troy Jackson out there
00:09:01.140 than that one. Well, there's nothing they can do, but admit it. I mean,
00:09:04.400 as a PR consultant, what else would you advise them to do? I think that's probably the only move
00:09:09.560 other than other than go with your line of like, it's legal, right? It's totally legal.
00:09:18.360 Cool. OK, doesn't mean I have to vote for you. I'm sorry, but it's bizarre. They just don't know
00:09:23.100 what they're doing up there in Maine. They go from one bad candidate to the next to the next
00:09:26.680 to the next and okay, we'll see how that, that works out for them. Um, they're not the only ones
00:09:33.300 with, you know, some serious issues over in Wisconsin. They have this woman running for
00:09:39.040 governor who's in the lead, um, named Francesca, Francesca Hong. And she is in the news for among
00:09:48.560 other things. Uh, she wants to defund the police among other radical positions, but she also
00:09:53.800 apparently really hates Thanksgiving. Like she really wanted Thanksgiving to be canceled.
00:09:57.960 And to her credit, Caitlin Collins of CNN asked her about it. And she now realizing that most of
00:10:05.020 us love Thanksgiving and don't want to see it canceled and don't think much of loons who speak
00:10:09.980 otherwise is kind of hedging a little. And here's how she's doing that. So too. Do you still believe
00:10:16.700 that uh thanksgiving should be canceled i'm a chef and one of the first meals that i made
00:10:25.260 uh that was um for the community when i was 16 was a thanksgiving meal you know i always think
00:10:33.000 my hospitality background in owning a restaurant for seven eight years that bringing folks around
00:10:38.500 the table uh to share conversation and build community is always a good thing but thanksgiving
00:10:45.120 is also a time that's incredibly painful for many people in our communities.
00:10:49.520 And so I think there I wanted to make sure that people understood
00:10:53.300 that there are multiple views, but views can evolve.
00:10:57.020 And the position that I'm running for right now,
00:11:00.180 and I think my background as a chef,
00:11:02.380 will actually help me become a better governor
00:11:04.660 that's able to bring more people to the table.
00:11:08.980 She is, according to the latest Marquette poll,
00:11:11.720 22 points above her competitors like she is looking like she is going to pull out the
00:11:19.060 the nomination here she's a dues-paying member of the democrat socialists of america this group
00:11:26.000 that is growing by the minute within our country and within the democrat party which has even many
00:11:31.520 democrats deeply disturbed um the post-millennial also had an article out on saturday saying that
00:11:39.240 Francesca Hong admitted to being diagnosed as mentally ill, that she was cutting herself.
00:11:47.000 She was diagnosed with bipolar disease. She was taking SSRIs. She had overdosed on lithium.
00:11:53.980 This is years ago. And at age 18, she had a mental breakdown and was hospitalized
00:11:58.780 for a week at a psychiatric hospital. So this is the woman who is in the lead right now
00:12:05.760 for this Wisconsin's governor race. Um, I'm concerned, Matt, I'm concerned with candidate
00:12:15.340 quality, which traditionally was more of a Republican issue where they kept going for
00:12:20.140 people who are too extreme. And it's very interesting to see the foot now or the shoe
00:12:24.180 now on the other foot. It's really incredible, this phenomenon. I mean, once upon time being a
00:12:30.580 self-flagellating, depressive slash formerly mentally ill person who hated the country and
00:12:41.420 hated its traditions would be automatically disqualifying in a general election. And it
00:12:47.180 may still be in the general, but in the primary, being somebody who is a victim of mental illness
00:12:54.740 and thinks of herself as a victim
00:12:58.280 and also hates the country apparently
00:13:00.980 and hates the things that most of us love about it
00:13:03.620 is the thing that's going to propel you
00:13:06.220 to the lead in the primary,
00:13:07.560 which is the phenomenon we're seeing
00:13:08.820 all over the country with the DSA.
00:13:11.300 And it's really an incredible thing.
00:13:14.080 It speaks to what's happened educationally
00:13:16.760 in this country over the last 20 or 30 years.
00:13:21.580 It's truly like jarring, you know,
00:13:24.160 because it's really unfortunate for everyone
00:13:27.140 because just at the moment
00:13:28.260 when some faction of Republicans
00:13:30.380 are feeling very disaffected
00:13:31.740 because they're unhappy with the economy,
00:13:34.120 they don't think Trump has lived up to his promises
00:13:36.000 on bringing down prices and costs and so on.
00:13:38.900 Many are unhappy with the Iran war.
00:13:41.580 Truly, you look over there at Team Blue
00:13:44.600 and you're like, holy shit, nevermind.
00:13:49.060 I'm not doing that.
00:13:50.540 This woman, Hong, again,
00:13:52.560 she's probably going to win the Democrat primary for governor in Wisconsin today.
00:13:56.640 Then she'll have to face off against a Republican for the actual job. But this is who the Democrats
00:14:02.960 are likely to put up for for the post. She all these things I mentioned, she hates Thanksgiving.
00:14:11.060 She apparently bipolar, had a lithium OD and is a cutter or was. That's in addition to her DSA
00:14:20.080 membership, which includes she backs the legalization of marijuana, a state run development
00:14:25.880 bank, Medicare for all a 32 hour work week with no pay cuts, abolishing ICE, restoring voting rights
00:14:33.480 for felons and the eventual elimination or at least reduction of prisons and police. So we need
00:14:41.720 to eliminate the prisons and the cops, what could possibly go wrong?
00:14:47.040 Well, and the DSA's platform now additionally has eliminating, abolishing the Senate and
00:14:56.500 replacing both the presidency and the Supreme Court with a body that would be subordinate
00:15:03.220 to the House.
00:15:04.160 So essentially it would be a one party, a unicameral government that would have no set of checks and balances at all.
00:15:13.740 This is the official platform of the DSA.
00:15:15.880 I mean, of all the other crazy things that are in, you know, their platform from prison abolition to no borders to all kinds of other stuff that makes even hardcore liberals nervous, they want to fundamentally reform the entire political system and make it so that it's effectively mob rule and that there's no protection of minority views or minority political rights is terrifying.
00:15:44.400 And this point of view is winning all over the country.
00:15:48.640 And as you say, at a moment when, you know, there are a lot of people who are disaffected
00:15:52.660 with Donald Trump, this is serious cause for concern.
00:15:56.920 Yeah, that's at least the presidency, police and prison, the three Ps she wants to get
00:16:03.420 rid of, the DSA wants to get rid of and the Pentagon.
00:16:06.400 That's a fourth presidency, the Pentagon, police and prisons.
00:16:09.120 How could I'm sure America would be a lot safer and better if we went along with these nutcases
00:16:14.420 and they really are gaining purchase. I really think it's because of two things. One, the
00:16:19.780 Democrat Party is very, very anti-Israel now and all the DSAers very much stand for that.
00:16:25.520 That was the group that was in Times Square celebrating the day after 10-7, 10-8, while
00:16:32.900 the bodies were still bleeding. They were jubilant in Times Square. We ran the tape.
00:16:39.740 That's this group. So that's number one. And the second is prices. You know, they're they're like
00:16:46.260 all communists and socialists. And, you know, you used to live in Russia, you know, it comes with
00:16:51.120 these wonderful promises of how they're going to take from the evil rich and give to the downtrodden
00:16:56.320 poor and everyone's life will be ready or better without reckoning reckoning with what actually
00:17:01.840 happens, which is we live in a federalist society where you can move from state to state.
00:17:07.120 You don't have to stay in a state like California or New York City, for example,
00:17:12.080 where they oppress you with taxes just because you've become successful.
00:17:16.620 You leave.
00:17:17.460 And that's exactly what's happening in places like Manhattan.
00:17:20.420 Yeah, it's incredible.
00:17:22.080 And the ignorance about economics is unbelievable.
00:17:26.540 The ignorance even about the history of socialism is unbelievable.
00:17:29.300 And as you mentioned, I went to school in the Soviet Union.
00:17:33.720 I had to take scientific communism, believe it or not.
00:17:36.780 I mean, I was just studying language, but I had to take that class.
00:17:40.860 And coming back to the United States and seeing the difference between how students were taught about the Soviet era when I was in high school and what happens now,
00:17:52.760 they don't teach them anything about the bad things that happened in the Soviet era.
00:17:59.300 about how that kind of economics doesn't work,
00:18:01.820 about how even the Soviet Union had to abandon,
00:18:05.300 you know, so-called war communism where they fixed prices
00:18:08.340 and go back to the market as early as 1921.
00:18:13.420 None of this stuff is known here in the United States.
00:18:16.120 They don't know about the massacres,
00:18:17.380 the political prisoners.
00:18:19.800 And so all of this is just novel.
00:18:21.860 It just sounds like a bunch of politicians
00:18:23.700 promising them free stuff and, you know,
00:18:26.880 pathway to a fairer economy not understanding the underlying politics are are tremendously
00:18:32.920 dangerous matt i gotta send you a copy of doug's book it's called the lost empire of emmanuel
00:18:39.320 nobel and it's all about russian history and emmanuel nobel this guy is part of the nobel
00:18:43.340 family who is really the richest nobel the most successful nobel who built the oil industry in
00:18:48.500 russia and the reason he's not a household name like his brother alfred who started the prizes
00:18:52.620 is because of another man who was growing up at the same time named joseph stalin anyway it's a
00:18:57.560 great book it's not a novel it's it's um non-fiction but it's great it reads like a novel and it's
00:19:01.960 doing very well so thank you all for buying it but i'm going to send you a copy that's right up
00:19:05.640 your alley i would love to my son is actually telling me about it so i would love to love to
00:19:08.780 check it out oh oh you'll laugh this past weekend um we were in saratoga we went to the races it
00:19:13.820 was super fun and um we were in a book store and they had a bunch of them and doug offered to sign
00:19:19.740 them. You know, it's always nice if the author will sign it and then the bookstore can sell it
00:19:23.580 saying, signed by the author. And I go over there just as he's starting and I said,
00:19:31.000 would you stop doing that? I'm so sorry. He has this habit of going into bookstores and claiming
00:19:35.780 he's the author. He's not. He just likes to sign books at the woman's face. She believed me. I've
00:19:45.200 got such a kick out of my own joke anyway and she looked at the photo and realized i was joking
00:19:52.120 but i'm still amused by my own joke as you can see okay let's pocket that one yeah
00:19:56.980 let's keep going in wisconsin i have a couple more on this francesa francesca hong so we she's
00:20:04.520 against uh the pentagon she's against the presidency she's against the police she's against
00:20:08.660 prisons and she is against proximity to white men or white women, for that matter. Just whiteness
00:20:17.380 is what she objects. And she knows of what she speaks and here's how. Listen to top four.
00:20:22.760 I wasn't always aware of the struggles of other communities of color because for me,
00:20:26.920 assimilation always kind of took over. And so I did marry. My proximity to whiteness continues,
00:20:35.500 right i i'm my son is biracial he's he's half white and half korean and um i think navigating
00:20:42.680 um you know what his identity is and how people perceive him is always at the back of my mind as
00:20:48.500 well oh my god can you imagine using your child's skin color to make your point about the evils of
00:20:57.320 whiteness? It's it's unbelievable. And, you know, this this person who is clearly got problems and
00:21:05.440 has no ideas other than to roll out a bunch of academic gobbledygook phrases that she was fed at
00:21:12.360 one one time or another as if they're real or meaningful. But to to use your own child like
00:21:20.420 that um and even to publicly denounce uh your your child's heritage is i think that's you know
00:21:28.400 as a parent that does not sit well with me um i'm half asian and i i've never had a problem
00:21:34.880 uh in this country it doesn't particularly bother me um and most of the people i know who are don't
00:21:41.480 seem to have any issue with it unless your parent makes it an issue on television which is what
00:21:46.900 she's doing right yeah right and by the way matt he's only 10 can you imagine she's out there
00:21:53.180 talking about her experience next to this half white boy has really given her the proximity to
00:21:58.140 whiteness experience what like what's the point because if you're only half white and you're
00:22:03.100 walking around half asian half white like do you get do you get the full white experience i don't
00:22:09.120 know like she seems to want to say she's getting it through him um but i'm not sure like tell us
00:22:15.900 more about your son. Just how Asian does he look? This is the kind of conversation she's inviting
00:22:20.040 about her sweetheart, her child. No, it's you should never be as a celebrity. It's always an
00:22:28.340 awful thing when you when you bring your kids into some kind of public controversy. You know,
00:22:35.660 there was a moment in the I remember in the 80s and 90s when people were writing parenting books
00:22:42.040 and they were making celebrities out of their kids who didn't want to be.
00:22:46.960 But this is even worse.
00:22:48.120 This is demonizing part of their background
00:22:50.160 and taking a 10-year-old kid who has no choice in the matter
00:22:54.000 and thrusting, I guess, him right into the middle of this picture.
00:22:59.320 It's, I think that's horrible.
00:23:01.800 I can't believe that people are endorsing it.
00:23:05.220 No, it's very disturbing.
00:23:06.760 All right. As we continue down the lane of candidates in bizarre trouble, let's take a look at the Ohio race for representative House House of Representatives.
00:23:20.940 Now, at the Senate level, U.S. Senate in Ohio, we have Bernie Moreno. He's a Republican. He's been great.
00:23:30.040 But he has a Republican ex-son-in-law.
00:23:35.000 This man was married to Bernie's daughter, Emily, but is no longer.
00:23:39.680 And his name is Max Miller.
00:23:41.880 I realize most people don't know who Max Miller is because if he's not your congressman, you
00:23:45.240 probably don't know.
00:23:45.980 Even though all the aides to every House of Representatives member on Capitol Hill think
00:23:50.280 that we all know who their member is.
00:23:51.860 We don't.
00:23:52.720 No one has any idea who most of the members of House of Representatives are unless they've
00:23:56.400 managed to make an individual sort of case for themselves like an AOC. Anywho, this guy, Max
00:24:01.980 Miller, is in the midst of this ugly, I guess, either divorce proceeding or the aftermath of the
00:24:08.540 divorce proceeding. It seems like they are divorced and they have custody battles ongoing, perhaps,
00:24:12.360 with the daughter. But now Bernie Moreno comes out with this post on X over the weekend saying,
00:24:19.460 Max Miller is not fit for office. He belongs nowhere near the House of Representatives.
00:24:26.100 When I think of how he treated my daughter, it makes my skin crawl.
00:24:31.080 I have to hold my breath every time he's with my two-year-old granddaughter.
00:24:36.040 I do not trust him.
00:24:37.540 The most scurrilous allegations you can hurl at a man, Max Miller denies that he's engaged in any abusive conduct whatsoever.
00:24:46.440 And he said, I'm now going to release all these tapes that are going to show you how these are lies.
00:24:52.800 Now, I have no idea whether these are lies or not. I mean, divorce proceedings can get very,
00:24:57.660 very ugly. They can get really ugly when you have custody of a child at issue too. So I have no idea
00:25:04.260 who's telling the truth, but it is interesting. It's spilling over into the public eye and
00:25:08.020 it's all Republican on Republican blood, right? The U.S. Senator versus the House of Representative
00:25:13.620 guy. And here's Max Miller. He released this audio. This is a June 2024 incident with his
00:25:20.760 then wife, Emily, where they are discussing because one of her allegations is that he threw
00:25:26.100 scalding water on her, which absolutely would be abusive. But here they're on tape discussing it,
00:25:34.480 sort of maneuvering for what exactly happened in the incident. Listen, it never was done
00:25:39.740 to hurt you. And you know that you are weaponizing this because of my previous allegation.
00:25:44.240 And if you knew it was, because you went into my, you went into my room when I was crying.
00:25:48.200 So Emily, so I didn't mean to hurt you.
00:25:51.280 I didn't mean to hurt you.
00:25:52.340 Why are you scared of me?
00:25:53.600 Why are you scared of me?
00:25:54.420 Yeah, I didn't mean to hurt you.
00:25:55.820 It wasn't done with intent.
00:25:57.080 You just said it yourself.
00:25:59.760 You literally just said it yourself.
00:26:01.420 It wasn't done to hurt you.
00:26:03.020 And I told you before that not to come over to me and start screwing around with me.
00:26:07.440 I wasn't trying to describe it.
00:26:08.580 I was trying to give you a hug.
00:26:09.600 You are taking, you're taking a playful incident and making something nefarious.
00:26:14.240 It's not playful when you have hot water.
00:26:16.360 Emily, going out of the faucet, it does not get to a temperature of boiling water.
00:26:21.580 It does not.
00:26:22.660 I did it and I tested it and I had our attorneys tested because I figured that this is what you're going to come at me with.
00:26:30.760 And it's literally what?
00:26:32.280 No, no.
00:26:32.560 But literally, it's like standing under a hot shower and we already have someone to go ahead and combat this.
00:26:37.220 If this is what you're going to do.
00:26:40.160 I don't think it didn't reach the point of boiling.
00:26:44.240 is going to that's not a great defense. It's not a great defense, Matt Taibbi. But what do you
00:26:49.620 think of this whole mess? I mean, nobody comes out looking good in this story. I think the thing
00:26:58.080 that's bothersome in the current environment is that it's become almost automatic that you can
00:27:03.720 just vaporize any politician's career just by bringing up these accusations. What's unusual
00:27:09.140 about this one is that there's some evidence involved and and maybe you know like a witness
00:27:14.820 uh who might be credible but um i i don't like this whole phenomenon of you know we've just seen
00:27:22.500 platner eric swalwell and and a whole raft of other uh members of congress just wiped up by
00:27:29.380 their own party um this can't be the way uh that parties exact discipline upon their own members um
00:27:37.220 Um, I don't know. I don't know how you, how do you, how you feel about it, but, um, it worries
00:27:42.540 me because it could be. Divorce proceedings are messy. Like I, I feel uncomfortable getting
00:27:48.660 involved in anybody's divorce because people say things, they say things that are untrue.
00:27:54.000 They have the most negative spin on actions that may not have been great. Like when I was,
00:28:00.860 when I was a kid, I was like 13 and my brother was 18 or maybe I was 12 and he was 17,
00:28:06.360 where there's five year age difference. He one time had me in a headlock and used that
00:28:10.760 sprayer of the sink on me. Now it wasn't scalding water. It was, it was, it was regular water. Like
00:28:17.300 it was cold water, but in his defense, he did it because I had tied the rubber band around the
00:28:22.720 sprayer and it went off when he turned on the sink. Now that was not abuse. It was kind of
00:28:29.120 sibling, you know, fun and rivalry and we still laugh about it. But I, so I don't know in what
00:28:35.040 context he grabbed the little sprayer and sprayed her because he's saying it was horseplay and you
00:28:40.920 heard her there being like it was suggesting it was scalding and him i don't like do it's a
00:28:47.040 dangerous practice to start to dissect the spats even the big ones in somebody's marriage where
00:28:54.100 there's not a police report or an actual finding of some sort of misdemeanor or felonious behavior
00:29:00.340 Yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to know this. I don't want to be litigating this in the media. I especially don't want to be deciding somebody's political career based on incomplete information that they leak out. You know, this isn't.
00:29:15.760 And weirdly, he did leak this. He's the one who put out that audio. And by the way, there's one more. There's a bunch. He put out this audio to like exonerate himself. I don't pro tip. Just it doesn't like you were better off, Max, without any of that. But here's another one in which they're disputing his use of needles. And there's a bit of an admission in this one, too, which set the Internet ablaze.
00:29:39.860 and I've never gone into your cell phone and I've never gone into your computer and I've never
00:29:45.360 sneaked into your backpack and I've never banged on the bathroom door thinking that you're
00:29:51.140 masturbating when you were just using the bathroom at 5 30 a.m. I have gone into your
00:29:57.960 backpack because I truly do believe you have a drug problem okay what drugs
00:30:03.520 uh well at first it was weed and then i found needles next to your bed
00:30:09.560 you found needles yes i did and i took a picture of it so you can try to deny it to me
00:30:15.960 okay i don't know why that's funny that's actually really fucking scary
00:30:22.900 okay you found it and there's a huge impetus with why i left
00:30:26.320 i will say this too one of the reasons why it's in the news is the republicans have until tomorrow
00:30:36.180 if they want to replace him as their candidate uh wednesday is ohio's deadline to trigger a
00:30:43.900 special election to replace miller on the ballot republicans reading here from axios could still
00:30:49.760 fill a vacancy through a party committee but would have to certify a replacement by august 10th
00:30:55.040 If he withdraws after August 10th, Republicans cannot replace him.
00:31:00.780 The AP reporting Democrats see Miller could be vulnerable in a district he won two years
00:31:07.460 ago with just over 51 percent of the vote.
00:31:09.700 So it wasn't exactly a runaway.
00:31:12.100 His Democrat opponent is union iron worker Brian Poindexter, who the Democrats selected
00:31:20.060 as like a manly man who might be able to win crossover voters because they're realizing now
00:31:27.240 that they've gone to a feat in their selection of especially male candidates. So there are stakes
00:31:34.240 involved. The Republican Party has a decision to make here about how badly this is going to
00:31:38.140 blow up in their faces if they stick with this guy. And there's a lot more either in Emily's,
00:31:44.480 you know, coffers or somebody else's. So do you stick with the one who's got the name recognition
00:31:50.800 who they did vote for already? Or do you replace him and put yourself in a situation like they're
00:31:55.140 in the Dems are in Maine where you might pick somebody who married or at least had sex with
00:31:59.800 and had children with their second cousin? I don't know. I mean, if you got to pick the guy
00:32:07.560 who thinks it looks good to release a tape of him denying that he had or not even denying that he
00:32:16.960 had needles next to his bed. I don't know. I mean, I guess the quality, the general quality or pool
00:32:25.160 of possible candidates must be so low out there that they just can't find somebody who isn't crazy
00:32:30.720 to run for higher office. That's the only conclusion I can draw from that. But certainly
00:32:35.440 of listening. I think it is about my own marriage and count my blessings, I guess.
00:32:42.520 But totally, totally. And also, I've reinforced my own conclusion, which is the solution to all
00:32:48.280 of our problems is not in Washington. You know, it's in private industry. It's in ourselves. It's
00:32:54.180 in our schools, which does require us to vote in local elections, especially. But those nimrods
00:32:59.880 in D.C. are not going to get us out of any of the jams we're in. Sadly, it's up to us.
00:33:05.440 Sorry to break it to us, but it is you're not do not rely on any of these people as the answer.
00:33:10.880 OK, let's keep going, because there's a lot of other news.
00:33:14.100 Now, you've been following the saga of this Cambridge professor.
00:33:19.440 And every day we get about 20 new pieces of his alleged bio that are either under attack or actually are falling apart.
00:33:31.900 And today it's it's not a great update for him.
00:33:35.440 And I don't think I don't think you can dispute that he's he's like by the day suffering credibility problems.
00:33:43.360 Here's the latest. The UK Telegraph is reporting that this charity water aid is now throwing water on his account of volunteering for them.
00:33:58.540 His bio on the website of his speakers agency, the Simon and Schuster Speakers Bureau, because he's coming out with a book, stated until recently that this professor at Cambridge, again, they tout him as the youngest black professor ever at Cambridge.
00:34:13.440 And all these allegations, plagiarism and others that we're going to go through, he has dismissed as racism, racism, racism.
00:34:19.060 This is about an ableism. He also added that lately, too, because he he claims that he was autistic and nonverbal for the first 11 years of his life.
00:34:27.900 and he had to do sign language
00:34:30.620 and then miraculously went on to become a PhD
00:34:34.060 and defended his PhD
00:34:37.480 after having just gotten brain cancer
00:34:40.220 and also, I think, some lung issue.
00:34:45.860 Okay, anyway, just want you to know,
00:34:48.680 he says it's all racist.
00:34:50.100 So here's what Simon & Schuster's Speakers Bureau,
00:34:53.320 his bio said until recently
00:34:55.160 that this Professor Arday, Jason Arday,
00:34:57.900 has also undertaken and completed relief work in South America and West Africa with WaterAid.
00:35:03.840 That's the name of the charity, installing water points, which provide drinkable and clean water.
00:35:08.900 This is the UK Telegraph reporting. WaterAid, however, says it never sends volunteers abroad.
00:35:15.540 Again, he said he's undertaken and completed relief work in South America and West Africa
00:35:19.900 with WaterAid. They say we never send volunteers abroad. The name of WaterAid has now been removed
00:35:25.940 from his bio on the website.
00:35:28.820 Then there's Glasgow University,
00:35:32.160 where on the Cambridge Faculty of Education page,
00:35:35.980 Professor Jason Arday claims
00:35:37.500 that he is a visiting professor
00:35:39.940 at Glasgow's School of Education.
00:35:43.900 However, this was denied by the university spokesman
00:35:47.480 at the University of Glasgow.
00:35:49.440 Quote, I can confirm that Professor Arday
00:35:51.300 is not a visiting professor here and was never.
00:35:55.740 Now, back in 2021, I believe he was a sociology of education professor there, but their point
00:36:04.020 is he left, he moved to Cambridge in 2023 and has no ongoing affiliation with the university
00:36:11.100 and was never a visiting professor, which is yet another thing that's on his bio, but
00:36:17.700 it's not true.
00:36:19.320 One more for you from today.
00:36:21.060 uh cambridge per independent journalist benjamin ryan who's been doing a good job on this
00:36:27.460 cambridge quietly edited his college bio sometime between january 1st and august 2nd of 2026
00:36:36.180 our day's title changed from professorial fellow of education to fellow of education they got rid
00:36:45.360 of the professorial. And an MA in education studies from Liverpool, John Moores, vanished
00:36:54.100 from the list of his degrees. It was up there and now it's gone. And sorry, Matt, the final thing is
00:37:01.220 we get word today that he was supposed to sit down with the New York Times.
00:37:05.800 He canceled yesterday, decided he did not want to do that. Query why. But he did.
00:37:15.360 state that there is a well-documented playbook for discrediting Black academics in high-profile
00:37:22.200 positions, and it's been used to devastating effect in the U.S., and now with me in the U.S.
00:37:27.740 My greatest hope is that what is happening to me now will serve to further expose these actions
00:37:33.600 and forces. Okay, so anyway, right now, Cambridge is standing by him. Simon & Schuster is standing
00:37:40.280 by him. There's an online petition by all these woke young white women to make sure we all stand
00:37:45.660 by him. But the bloom is coming off this rose and fast. This is an unbelievable story, Megan. I mean,
00:37:52.860 this this is so devastating, not just to this one professor, but to the all of academia and
00:38:02.000 And frankly, other industries as well. I mean, think about that Speakers Bureau. We all have public personas online now. In the Internet age, everybody has to check what they say to make sure that it's true before you put it online.
00:38:19.500 It's just a reflexive thing nowadays. You don't make a claim on social media or on Twitter without making sure that something's there.
00:38:28.500 But you see all these institutions are willing to put their own names behind the claims of a professor like this without checking first.
00:38:39.100 Clearly, someone didn't check with that charity. The Speakers Bureau didn't check with the charity before they put that up on their site.
00:38:47.500 The university, Cambridge, has all kinds of things that they're now taking down, which means that they didn't check them in the first place, which is incredible, especially when you look at the writing of this person.
00:39:01.940 You know, when I first read about this plagiarism scandal, I always try to check it myself because you never know what people are calling plagiarism.
00:39:10.120 Sometimes it's language that's close and sometimes it's only a few instances and sometimes it's a failure to cite or something like that.
00:39:17.460 In this case, it's absolutely clear that there's there's no doubt whatsoever.
00:39:23.820 His writing is filled with borrowed passages wholesale so much that there's an error with a possessive apostrophe like in the title of one of his papers that he's, you know, many, many errors.
00:39:37.520 And by the way, that mistake by itself should be discrediting for a senior academic.
00:39:44.060 I mean, if you if you if you put teachers with a an apostrophe on it and you, I guess, think that that means that it's plural or something like that, you wouldn't get it past the high school.
00:39:58.160 um listen to this one matt chris brunette brunette independent journalist who helped
00:40:04.020 chris ruffo expose claudine gay at harvard um he he says okay jason our day has published 34
00:40:10.240 academic publications i'm too lazy to check them all he writes i picked two at random number one
00:40:15.600 uh understanding race and educational leadership in higher education number two what are the
00:40:20.880 issues for black and ethnic minority students i'm just starting to get a feeling for why they
00:40:25.140 love him so much at places like cambridge okay here are some funny mistakes i found he this is
00:40:30.800 quoting our day increasing diagnoses of mental illness he was attempting to write diagnoses
00:40:38.780 will enviably impact attainment outcomes of course he meant inevitably not enviable
00:40:47.040 Mental illness supposedly destabilizes individuals, apostrophe, mental facilities, he meant faculties, heightens feelings of sensibility and vulnerability, he meant sensitivity.
00:41:05.260 And there are few opportunities available for them gain these types of opportunities.
00:41:11.340 Them gain.
00:41:12.820 Matt, it's that this and I just picked random two and they want us to believe this.
00:41:18.480 This guy's there. He's up there on his own merit. He deserves it.
00:41:22.220 The claims of plagiarism are completely unfounded. This has been investigated.
00:41:26.580 He was exonerated, which isn't does not appear to be true that he was exonerated.
00:41:31.180 It looks to me like he did commit plagiarism in multiple instances and they're willing to overlook it.
00:41:37.020 And this is the point that's really the central thing.
00:41:39.840 I mean, think about what's happened in journalism in the last, you know, 15 to 20 years, really more the last 10.
00:41:48.460 We've seen this phenomenon of really terrible, serious mistakes that are overlooked and the newspapers don't go back and either admit it or change the mistakes.
00:42:01.240 Because, you know, as it turns out, once upon a time, the most important thing was getting it right.
00:42:06.280 now the most important thing is is that is the content directionally politically um in the place
00:42:13.320 that we want it to be so all the the wrong russiagate stories there's they're still out
00:42:17.720 there because people want that to be true even the the the publications do the same thing is
00:42:22.840 happening in academia as long as the person is preaching the right gospel they're willing to
00:42:28.200 overlook a complete lack of scholarship a lack of literacy an inability to communicate this this is
00:42:34.280 This is a person who's supposed to be teaching other people how to write and think and can't do it in Cambridge, Cambridge, at one of the great universities of the world.
00:42:44.020 What is that? What message are you sending to people with this?
00:42:47.840 You're telling them that it's OK to not be able to write, think, spell, use grammar.
00:42:54.360 What's the point? Yeah. Soft bigotry of low expectations being applied in real time on this guy.
00:43:01.140 got a couple more for you here. So first of all, he claimed that he ran 600 miles in six days,
00:43:07.480 and then he changed it to 12 days, took him 12 days to do. Okay. Like this would make him one
00:43:14.040 of the great runners in the world, but no one knows his name. Okay. I mean, many people have
00:43:19.160 questions, but then we hear him, um, also talk about how, when he got his PhD, he had to, you
00:43:26.900 know, you have to defend it whenever you, you have to, you have to submit a dissertation and
00:43:31.740 defend your PhD orally, verbally. And now he claims that he had to do that while battling
00:43:38.360 a brain tumor and some sort of lung issue. It's in this soundbite. Take a listen to this.
00:43:46.860 I'm sorry, but patently ridiculous claim he makes in a 2022 interview with
00:43:53.880 welcome sanger institute it's at 29 i would say the most defining moment or some of the real
00:44:02.680 moments when i got my phd so i completed my phd in two and a half years working full-time
00:44:09.340 so like i i killed myself to do it but the reason why it was really significant
00:44:13.420 and which which i've said i've said publicly now so i might as well say it but like i had
00:44:19.320 at the time i had a brain tumor um and i had my brain tumor removed two weeks two weeks before i
00:44:27.960 had my viva so i didn't remember anything so i had a stroke straight after so um like um passing that
00:44:35.120 was really really significant okay so he had a brain tumor and there was some other lung issue
00:44:41.260 that he's claiming he had as well two weeks before he had to defend his dissertation but it went
00:44:45.980 swimmingly, Matt, I got like 600 miles and brain tumors and lung issues and defending your
00:44:51.540 dissertation, which you completed your PhD in two and a half years, which is extraordinary after
00:44:56.200 being nonverbal for, you know, until age 11. Um, and you've also been doing this all alleged work
00:45:01.660 overseas with this group, water, whatever, which now maybe you did, maybe you didn't unclear.
00:45:07.860 And, and what we get instead of like, you know, condemnation, like what, let's get off of this
00:45:14.480 lily pad. OK, there's plenty of lily pads we can jump on where we support black or in some way
00:45:21.280 challenged individuals who had autism. But this is instead what we get from places like the Good
00:45:27.600 Law Project, SOT 28. You might have not heard who Jason O'Day is. Jason is the youngest black
00:45:33.800 professor in Cambridge's history. And to the surprise of literally no one from the start,
00:45:39.720 newspapers like the telegraph and the times have been calling him a diversity poster boy and just
00:45:44.900 overall annoying him but now they're taking it a step further and they're trying to smear him
00:45:49.980 with accusations of plagiarism a baseless smear campaign against a distinguished black academic
00:45:55.260 isn't just a personal attack it's an attempt to shut down a black person who has a platform
00:46:00.420 and they keep doing this again and again if you want to join us comment jason we'll send you a
00:46:06.220 to add your name to our open letter to stand in solidarity with jason and to help us tell
00:46:11.820 right-wing newspapers that again they can't say and do whatever they want not on our watch
00:46:17.060 so your thoughts on it matt so look if you want to be progressive and i certainly think of myself as
00:46:25.780 you know wanting to be racially uh progressive you're hurting the cause uh by defending
00:46:33.280 a person like this and standing on wrong facts and saying a person is not guilty of plagiarism
00:46:39.820 when they are. Anybody is going to be able to go and check for themselves, and they're going to
00:46:43.680 find it out, and they're going to conclude that you're lying not just about this, but about
00:46:47.660 everything. They're going to question every person that you support. So this does tremendous
00:46:54.220 damage to their own movement, and that's why I don't understand it. I mean, for all these
00:47:00.260 institutions to stand behind this person. You know, I think about what I was taught. I was taught
00:47:04.720 that if a source tells you a story and you find that they've lied about anything ever, never to
00:47:11.600 use anything that that source tells you, because it's the only way to protect yourself. Here they
00:47:16.380 have a person who's lied about all sorts of things and they're lifting him up to one of the
00:47:22.760 most prestigious positions in academia. It's just not worth propping up the lie. I don't understand
00:47:29.260 what they have to gain from it.
00:47:31.480 New lily pad, new lily pad.
00:47:33.500 A couple more for you.
00:47:35.000 The UK Times did an in-depth article
00:47:38.640 and one of the points that they raised
00:47:41.520 I thought was interesting.
00:47:43.120 They said he gave a webinar in July 2020
00:47:46.280 about an upcoming paper on mental health issues
00:47:48.380 for black and minority ethnic staff in higher education.
00:47:51.560 In that webinar, he referred to a participant
00:47:54.180 who took their own life and read out their quote
00:47:57.420 detailing the, quote, violence of these racialized cultures in the academic world.
00:48:03.240 Very powerful example.
00:48:04.300 You would think that, you know, he would stay on that.
00:48:06.320 They write, although Arde's paper, accepted in September 2020, which is after July of
00:48:13.280 2020, and published in January 2021, used near identical quotes attributed to a male
00:48:20.600 mixed heritage academic, there was no reference to this person taking their own life.
00:48:27.420 certainly seems like that would have been a relevant detail to include in your paper that
00:48:34.620 was written about this. He later told the paper, I have no reason to fabricate or exaggerate black
00:48:40.940 people's suffering in academia. Um, all researchers within recent reason tend to be selective. It's
00:48:47.660 not possible to use every single bit of information. That's one thing. Okay. I want to keep
00:48:51.440 going. Then there was the business of running all those miles, allegedly for charity. They point out
00:48:59.060 he claimed that doing these runs raised five million pounds for charity. When asked if that
00:49:04.940 figure was accurate, R.D. clarified to the Guardian that the money was raised, now it's with the help
00:49:09.780 of many fundraising collectives over a two-decade period. Oh, so now it's not the runs, it's two
00:49:15.740 decades with a lot of people, not just him. When asked to identify other people who took part in
00:49:20.300 these efforts. He said he had signed NDAs preventing him from disclosing that information
00:49:25.640 because you know how they all want to keep quiet their charitable works. The Guardian also asked
00:49:30.880 Arday about his claim to have run 600 miles in six days as an achievement that would make him
00:49:36.840 one of the world's most gifted endurance runners. He said that because of the cumulative wear and
00:49:43.780 tear of training from his previous running challenges, he had to put rest days in between
00:49:47.860 the running days just to finish the 600 mile challenge, which was actually completed over
00:49:51.540 a 12 day period. Again, not not six. And then finally, Matt, this now he's claiming he's been
00:49:56.640 the victim of all these alleged racist attacks because of mean, mean people like The Telegraph
00:50:02.180 and The Guardian. The Guardian is that pretty sure that's not a left wing publication saying
00:50:07.820 he's been threatened with a knife, physically assaulted and spat on. He's had rape and death
00:50:11.520 threats being made to him and his family, bananas and bullets being posted to him via the university
00:50:17.160 campus, poison and mutilated animals sent to his family home. When asked what was the mutilated
00:50:22.720 animal, he told the guardian it was a severed pig's head delivered in a large cardboard box
00:50:30.740 to his parents' home. They immediately threw it away. He couldn't produce it. He said he told the
00:50:36.240 police several months later and there was an investigation. Then the guardian checked with
00:50:40.460 all the butchers and the cops, none of whom knew anything about this and ardently denied
00:50:46.300 having done an investigation into this so you tell me matt taibi where does this story go now
00:50:52.060 well look for first of all this is a pattern um if you've ever uh you know done any kind of stories
00:50:59.720 about people who are fabulous uh once you find the first thing that they've lied about you'll
00:51:06.640 suddenly discover that there are all kinds of other stories out there and and this kind of
00:51:10.860 person just can't they can't help themselves uh they always they if they told the story one way
00:51:17.260 the first time they want to add something the next time uh oddly enough joe biden is a little
00:51:21.700 bit like this if you go back and look at his speeches and his explanations about his speeches
00:51:25.680 he he always seems to want to add something to it he's not nearly this bad uh but that's the
00:51:32.440 pattern with this kind of person but you know all these institutional defenders it's a little bit
00:51:38.020 like the Anthony Fauci story, you cannot penetrate a myth for people who are determined to believe.
00:51:44.140 And no matter how much evidence you throw at them, they will still believe it. And that's
00:51:49.900 amazing. Yeah. That's the trap they're stuck in. Thank God we're free. Matt Taibbi, great to see
00:51:56.760 you. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Every season change seems to come with the same
00:52:01.880 realization, a closet full of clothes and absolutely nothing to wear, right? Haven't
00:52:06.920 you've been there, between work, travel, family commitments, and everything else, you might not
00:52:11.020 have the time or frankly, the desire to spend hours and hours shopping. That is why I'm so
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00:52:53.460 code Megan for 50% off your first order. Once again, that's dailylook.com for 50% off and make
00:53:00.420 sure you use our promo code, Megan, so they know we sent you. A couple of things we have to get to,
00:53:10.100 um, house cleaning after yesterday. We talked all about the trans issue yesterday on this show,
00:53:16.100 as you know, that's going on in the WNBA and beyond and beyond. And the usual suspects
00:53:21.060 ran to their corners and started calling the usual names, whatever. I don't, I don't have
00:53:25.320 time for it. Um, but I did want to take this on. Okay. This is just one example. I mean, this
00:53:30.860 woman's in, she's a nobody. I've never heard of her before. Neither have you. Her name is
00:53:35.000 Stephanie Calloy, K-A-L-O-I. And she writes for an industry publication called Mediaite,
00:53:41.940 where they do little write-ups of what's in the news, whether it's a podcast or a TV show,
00:53:46.520 what have you. And she did a write-up of my, uh, talking about how I wish Caitlin Clark
00:53:51.220 had come out and said something in Sophie Cunningham's defense, as she twists in the
00:53:56.800 wind, she's always got Caitlin's back, but Caitlin didn't have hers, and how she really
00:54:00.460 whiffed on an opportunity to lead in her league. Not like Colin Kaepernick, who injected whether
00:54:06.780 police are racists into NFL football games, but on an issue that directly affects little girls
00:54:14.920 and younger women in her sport, of which she's the queen, right? Why wouldn't you? It's become
00:54:20.540 an issue. It's not, it's not her fault. It became an issue. It's not Sophie Cunningham's fault
00:54:27.080 either. She was asked about the men and women's sports thing in, if I'm not mistaken, an ESPN
00:54:34.400 written article. She answered it honestly. And then it came up a week later in a podcast she
00:54:40.680 was doing where they followed up on what she had said to ESPN and she stuck by what she said.
00:54:44.960 and then it burst out into all of the NBA or WNBA arenas where they're now having protests at all
00:54:52.520 these games. The activists are outside protesting her. She's getting booed nonstop whenever she's
00:54:57.740 on the court. So look, I'm not, Megyn Kelly did not make this an issue in the WNBA.
00:55:02.720 And frankly, Sophie Cunningham didn't either. ESPN did. So that's how we got here.
00:55:09.260 Kayleen Clark may not like it, but it's there. And she punted on it. She chose not to comment,
00:55:14.160 even though it's raining down all around her. And there are young girls in basketball at the
00:55:21.200 high school level, ages 13 to 17 across this country, who I'm sure would have loved to seen
00:55:26.600 her, to have seen her speak out on it, but she didn't have the guts. It's unfortunate. In any
00:55:31.840 event, this nobody who I mentioned in this media publication, Stephanie,
00:55:37.440 took issue with my commentary yesterday that there are, quote, little girls who are getting
00:55:45.880 the shit kicked out of them in their sport, meaning basketball. She writes, there are none.
00:55:52.160 There are none, not due to transgender women playing the same sport. In 2022, Leah Thomas
00:55:58.600 became the first openly transgender female athlete to win a division one title. Thomas was later
00:56:03.920 stripped of her awards in 2025. I'm sure that was a big comfort to all the women whose medals
00:56:08.040 she took and records she took. This person's just wiping it away. It got, it got taken away
00:56:13.540 because Trump won. Trump raised the issue. Trump crammed this down the throats of places like the
00:56:18.060 University of Pennsylvania, threatening all of them. He lived up 100% to his campaign promise
00:56:22.920 on this. And then they bent the knee because they were forced to. So let's not pretend Stephanie
00:56:27.620 that somehow the University of Pennsylvania just did the right thing by Riley Gaines and the others
00:56:32.240 who were devastated by Leah Thomas's participation in their sport,
00:56:36.500 walking around with his penis out while they had to change completely nude in front of him,
00:56:41.740 not to mention the taking of their medals and their places on the podium. So just stop, okay?
00:56:48.800 Now, as for whether it is true that girls are getting the shit kicked out of them
00:56:53.440 by trans athletes playing in their sports, I'm sorry to inform you, Stephanie, that's true too.
00:56:59.460 Okay?
00:56:59.980 And you might want to do just a little bit of research before you mouth off on this subject
00:57:05.960 rather than getting your talking points from John Oliver.
00:57:08.880 That never steered anyone right.
00:57:11.420 And we're going to go through a few of them since I get the feeling you're not big on
00:57:15.280 research, sweetheart.
00:57:16.380 I got you.
00:57:17.380 I'm here for you.
00:57:18.760 All right.
00:57:19.100 Let's go through a few of them.
00:57:21.080 Massachusetts.
00:57:21.560 We mentioned this yesterday because it's the case we were talking about when I talked
00:57:26.520 about the young girls getting the shit kicked out of them.
00:57:28.940 You didn't really have to look hard, Stephanie.
00:57:31.180 You should have just watched the segment you were ripping on because we played this video
00:57:34.940 yesterday and here you see a high school player someplace between the ages of 13 and 17 writhing
00:57:41.140 in pain on the ground after the six foot tall trans player yanks the ball away from her so
00:57:47.900 hard that he caused obviously a back injury that kept her on the floor, unable to get
00:57:54.200 up.
00:57:54.680 This is at this happened in 2024.
00:57:56.620 It is the collegiate charter school of Lowell.
00:57:59.660 It's the girls basketball team.
00:58:01.260 It happened in February of 2024 and the injuries were so severe and multiplied that the team
00:58:08.460 decided to forfeit because the other players were terrified.
00:58:13.240 Okay.
00:58:13.620 It's not ancient history, 2024.
00:58:18.220 So yeah, that's what I'm referring to, but that's not all.
00:58:21.260 Of course, our audience is very familiar with Peyton McNabb, who was in a North Carolina
00:58:27.960 volleyball match at which a male player spiked the ball so hard into her face that she suffered
00:58:37.540 permanent damage. Her injuries included significant long-term physical and mental effects,
00:58:44.240 impaired vision, partial paralysis on her right side, balance issues, anxiety, and depression.
00:58:49.540 she was not unconscious by the ball because what happens in volleyball is the net is I think seven
00:58:57.360 and a half inches shorter shorter lower in women's volleyball than it is in men's volleyball because
00:59:03.660 men have a natural height advantage I think the average height for an American male is like
00:59:09.580 five nine or five eight and a half believe it or not and for women it's five three so that's
00:59:15.140 accounted for. And obviously, volleyball players in both sexes tend to be taller. It's one of the
00:59:20.700 things that makes you great at volleyball, but they're both taller. So in any event, they lower
00:59:25.340 the net for women's volleyball. And when you have a biological male there, you see he has a natural
00:59:31.240 inborn advantage, not to mention what the testosterone does to his muscles. And it
00:59:35.420 endangers the girls and it endangered Peyton McNabb. And for what it's worth, this guy had
00:59:40.020 zero, zero regrets or apologies to her for hurting her. Peyton's been on our show a few times. Here
00:59:48.140 she is describing the impact of her injury to Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented
00:59:54.860 her and so many others who have been hurt by these players in SOT24. I had to wear sunglasses
01:00:02.900 everywhere I went, the lights were all really harsh, and I couldn't really understand or
01:00:10.620 comprehend my work as well at school, so I had to get extra help and accommodations to help with
01:00:17.520 testing and tutoring and stuff, and that's never been the case for me. And, of course, the headaches,
01:00:26.080 and I was having to have someone with me at all times. I couldn't drive for a few months.
01:00:31.240 It was really bad at first, but thankfully, I've grown a lot since then.
01:00:36.900 I still have to get help now that I'm in college.
01:00:39.820 My body is just in shock, and it's still trying to recover.
01:00:45.380 There's still things I'm having to deal with today, and it's just completely aggravating
01:00:50.400 because it was 100% avoidable if only my rights as a female athlete had been more important
01:00:57.300 than a man's feelings.
01:00:58.520 Honestly, where where's her story? All these activists out there saying, how big of an issue
01:01:05.140 is this? This doesn't even matter. It was only Leah Thomas. Where do your homework? Do your
01:01:13.220 homework. I'm not here to teach remedial reporting to you. When you're going to make a sweeping
01:01:19.060 comment like that without doing a modicum of research to find out whether there are any
01:01:24.480 claims. Shame on you. Let's keep going. Callie Keeler. She was a sophomore at Rogers High School
01:01:31.700 in Pulliup, Washington. Forgive me on the pronunciation. Not sure how you say that.
01:01:36.040 She alleges that her transgender opponent jammed his fingers through her spandex and penetrated
01:01:41.540 her, according to the 74 page lawsuit filed this week. This happened a couple like a month ago
01:01:48.500 by her and her mother who filmed the December bout. This is a boy pretending to be a girl.
01:01:55.060 She did not realize she was wrestling against a biological boy. Keillor was only 15. Is that
01:02:01.080 young enough? Sorry, Stephanie, is that young enough for you? I'm not sure if, does that
01:02:05.340 qualify? Get back to me. She shouted to her mother on the sideline that her opponent's fingers were
01:02:13.380 in my coochie, she yelled. She let herself be pinned just so that it would stop. It was only
01:02:18.680 later she learned she had been assaulted by a biological male. Her complaints were ignored by
01:02:24.320 the school and that lawsuit is ongoing. Let's go to field hockey. I mentioned this yesterday too.
01:02:31.340 Do your homework. Mentioned it yesterday. Back to Massachusetts where a high school student athlete
01:02:35.520 had her teeth knocked out and suffered, this is November 2023, significant facial injuries when
01:02:42.500 an opposing male player shot a field hockey ball at her face during a playoff game. Watch the sound
01:02:48.160 bite. You hear the screaming? Do you hear the screaming? Go F yourselves.
01:03:18.160 people who are denying this girl's existence and this problem's existence and asking questions
01:03:24.220 about, yeah, how many are there? Fuck off. Enough. There's this girl screaming after all her teeth
01:03:33.600 were knocked out by a male player posing as female in Massachusetts in 2023. Watch it again.
01:03:48.160 it's infuriating. It's infuriating to see this denialism by these absolute know nothings.
01:04:11.060 if you know nothing then you should at least look into these sweeping claims of non-existence
01:04:20.300 of any of these players okay you disrespect every young woman and girl who has been hurt
01:04:27.380 and endangered by doing that shame on you shame on you you call yourself a journalist
01:04:33.220 the players on the field were visibly distraught over the injury it happened during a playoff
01:04:40.600 match. The male player was seen winding back his stick to take the shot, but instead he drills the
01:04:48.840 opposing female defender directly in the face. Swampscott Public Schools athletic director Kelly
01:04:54.580 Wolfe confirmed the player who took the shot was a male four-year varsity student and co-captain.
01:05:01.220 imagine imagine um let's keep going this is um a dutch story happened in 2025 elena king's knee
01:05:11.820 she was 20 not not a young girl but a young woman her knee was torn from its socket when she was
01:05:19.460 tackled by a male player identifying as a woman in a dutch premiership rugby match she was told
01:05:24.060 that she will have lifelong knee pain and needs to endure months of physiotherapy before she can
01:05:28.100 run again. She told the Sunday Times that a woman, quote, could not have pulled my leg out of its
01:05:34.600 socket, adding this could have been prevented. Last year, the year prior, the same man who hurt
01:05:41.500 her knocked unconscious another female rugby rugby player in a match. That person was still
01:05:47.620 undergoing tests for suspected brain injury and could no longer use a helmet due to migraines.
01:05:52.640 So now we have two with brain damage. And these are rugby players. Last I checked, that's a very tough sport. Those women are not easy to hurt. They are not pushovers. They do not complain a lot. But brain damage is kind of a bridge too far. Your leg being ripped out of its socket, that can upset a woman.
01:06:15.780 that can radicalize other women who actually do pay attention to these issues, unlike some of
01:06:21.880 the know-nothings out there, into speaking out against this issue. Okay? So that's just a few.
01:06:29.140 I want to keep going. This isn't all. This is just stuff I pulled together this morning.
01:06:34.340 Let's go to Canada. This is via Rebel News. One of three women injured by Ash Davis last month
01:06:43.180 has said, I've never been hit like that before. This is rugby again. Look, here we have video.
01:06:48.000 You don't have to imagine it. You're going to get to see Ash Davis, who is not trying to look like
01:06:53.180 a woman. He has male pattern baldness setting in. He has an Adam's apple. And look at his legs.
01:07:01.340 This is a man not even posing as a woman, just participating on the woman's team,
01:07:06.180 and they allow it. Rebel News reporting he tackles hard. Just asked the three women players
01:07:11.760 who suited up for the Stony Creek Camels last month
01:07:14.140 who had to be removed from the game
01:07:16.000 thanks to Ash's debilitating tackles.
01:07:20.000 Again, one of the women said,
01:07:21.100 I'd never been hit like that before,
01:07:22.520 even at the competitive women's level.
01:07:24.340 There was so much more brute force.
01:07:25.940 There are women who are bigger than him,
01:07:28.280 but no girl hits like that.
01:07:29.980 This is a strong human.
01:07:31.640 That is almost verbatim what the women
01:07:34.940 who were forced to box against Imane Khalif said
01:07:37.980 in the Olympics when they allowed
01:07:40.860 that biologically male boxer to participate in the women's competition, and he walked away with
01:07:46.580 the gold. That's almost verbatim what they said, that no woman could hit like that, that these
01:07:53.520 women can take a punch. They are Olympic-level boxers. There is a difference when you get
01:07:59.060 punched by a woman versus a man. Let's keep going. While we're up in Canada, mentioned Melody
01:08:07.540 Wiseheart yesterday. Now, I wonder whether this would count. Does this count for the naysayers?
01:08:13.700 Because the 12-year-olds in the swim league up there, they weren't physically, they didn't have
01:08:20.760 their legs ripped out of the socket so that maybe it doesn't rise to your level. I mean, you'll have
01:08:24.000 to get back to me on whether you consider this injury. But they were, quote, terrified. Terrified,
01:08:31.540 according to one of the parents of the teenagers, 12 and 13-year-olds. But girls as young
01:08:37.480 as eight were forced to be in a locker room with Melody Weishart, who once competed under the name
01:08:43.680 Nicholas Cepetta and decided to compete as a girl in Ontario, Canada, and in particular, a league
01:08:52.680 with these very young girls. At one point, as I said, he was in the locker room with girls
01:09:00.080 as young as eight. Weishart, who was a professor, is a professor, I believe, up there at York
01:09:05.760 University, participated in several events over the first three days of December in 2023,
01:09:11.260 including the women's 1500 meter freestyle for athletes 16 and older. Melody placed second.
01:09:19.440 Melody has reportedly been competing against girls since 2019. Rebel News caught up with Melody
01:09:25.060 after one of Melody's big accomplishments, beating the young 12 and 13 year olds.
01:09:30.320 And here's how that went. In the meantime, we're going to watch him swim. Just will you
01:09:35.700 see the perverse visuals of a 50-year-old man lining up against 13- and 17-year-old girls.
01:09:45.660 we finally have a definitive answer to where nicholas cepeda changes and showers it is in
01:10:10.780 the girl's dressing room. I saw it myself with my own eyes. He didn't go into the male dressing
01:10:16.460 room. He didn't go into the family dressing room. Mr. Cepeda, what is your deal? Why are you swimming
01:10:25.600 with 13-year-olds? Why are you breaking world aquatic rules? Why are you a coward? Do you have
01:10:33.000 a record of sexual perversion? Protect me from these people. Protect us from what?
01:10:40.780 where are you going? Protect me from these people. The nerve. Protect me. By the way,
01:10:56.280 Melody, if you identify as a 13-year-old girl, why are you driving a car? Truly. You should be
01:11:03.260 asking the alleged furries in your school communities the same question, by the way,
01:11:07.660 people. If they identify as a cat or some animal, why are they sitting in the cafeteria eating a
01:11:14.200 peanut butter and jelly, sipping out of a juice box? Why aren't they licking milk out of a saucer?
01:11:21.840 Truly, if you actually identify as this thing, why aren't you behaving like this thing?
01:11:26.960 12-year-old, 13-year-old girls cannot drive, Melody. Sorry. So I don't know. Does psychological
01:11:32.940 injury of terror. Qualify as injury to you naysayers about where's the injury? How many
01:11:39.420 people are doing this? This is not a thing. Okay. Um, I, for me, it qualifies. I, maybe I'm an
01:11:44.180 outlier. I don't know. My audience will let me know. Um, here's another one. This is, this one
01:11:50.820 actually happened out of standby. So via this, this is out of Australia, 2023, a male soccer
01:12:00.120 player who identifies as transgender, he injured a female player during a semi-professional women's
01:12:05.200 league. The trans, look, we have video. The transgender player's aggressive shoulder check
01:12:10.380 sent the female player to the ground where she lay unmoving. She was unable to train until later
01:12:17.680 in the week when she did, it was only very lightly. Maybe that doesn't count, right? Because
01:12:21.860 a semi-professional, well, she must've been about like 20. I guess, do we, do we count them? Did the
01:12:27.040 20-year-olds get to complain or they just have to fucking take it. You take it. Too bad if your
01:12:32.420 career is on the line. Just shut up in the name of tolerance. God, you whining ladies, sick and
01:12:38.360 tired of your bitching. That's really what these people are saying. S-T-F-U, because we need to be
01:12:46.140 inclusive. No, we don't. You want your daughter's leg ripped out of the socket? You want your
01:12:54.420 daughter getting fingers up her vagina while she's doing a wrestling match? What in the actual?
01:13:01.040 Speak up. Don't let these know-nothings silent you, male or female, trying to jump into this
01:13:08.080 debate because they want to defend Caitlin Clark or they want to rip on Sophie Cunningham.
01:13:14.320 Shame on all of you. Shame on you. Do your damn homework. There have been countless males
01:13:22.560 participating against females, stealing medals and scholarships and joy and a feeling of safety
01:13:29.800 and security for years now, for years. This is just a few. Okay, just a few. Literally,
01:13:36.320 we could be here all day. There's Leah Thomas. There's Terry Miller and Andrea Yearwood.
01:13:43.360 Those are the ones who ran in the Connecticut track meets without doing anything to lower their
01:13:51.880 testosterone. At the state level, Terry Miller was the high school state title, state title winner
01:13:56.640 in Connecticut with fellow trans girl, Andrea Yearwood, finishing second and also were the
01:14:01.080 regional New York champions. Uh, there was a player, the player against Peyton McNabb, as I
01:14:06.080 mentioned, who wasn't sorry at all. There was Veronica Garcia who won back-to-back state high
01:14:10.560 school championships in Washington in the 400 meter run. She told the anti-trans detractors
01:14:15.360 after the state meet, get a life. There's AB Hernandez, who's still competing in girls track
01:14:21.600 and field in California, blew away the competition at the Ontario Relays and Invitational, beating
01:14:25.960 the second-place finisher by eight feet, a shocking margin, just this past May. The long jump result,
01:14:32.180 Hernandez posted 20 feet, four and a half inches. The next closest finishers reached
01:14:36.720 19 feet, one and a half inch, more than a foot separated first from second. Aiden Gallagher,
01:14:43.300 May of 2024, won a high school girls track and field state championship in Oregon in the 200
01:14:47.340 meter jc cooper won the women's 2019 national championship for bench press in the super
01:14:53.120 heavyweight division laurel hubbard the olympic weightlifter won two oceana championships and
01:14:58.240 two commonwealth championships against many gold medals amongst many gold medals that she won during
01:15:03.320 her competition years i i mean they go it goes on for pages and pages and pages and pages all right
01:15:08.980 i can't help caitlin clark if she can't find the courage to speak out against this
01:15:16.560 maybe she wants another girl to get injured in high school basketball just like those
01:15:22.880 three girls in Lowell Massachusetts okay I guess she doesn't care Sophie Cunningham does good for
01:15:29.780 her you know who else cares Sabalenka who's number one she's the number one women's player
01:15:36.380 in women's tennis where thanks to Martina Navarrola and some other outspoken advocates
01:15:44.140 they have now passed a rule for U.S. women's tennis that they will only accept biological
01:15:49.080 females. God bless you. God bless you for doing that. And Sabalenka, who is a current player with
01:15:56.120 a lot to lose, which is what we've been waiting for. Sophie Cunningham, yes. But again, with
01:16:01.500 respect, she's not a household name like Caitlin. But Sabalenka is, if you know anything about
01:16:06.320 tennis and she did it god bless her and i applaud her here it is hi uh the wta recently announced
01:16:15.540 that you know the players will take a one-time gender test how do you how do you feel about that
01:16:19.880 the first pro league to go in that direction i think it's really important to keep the fairness
01:16:24.500 in our tour and it's obvious that biologically right the men are way stronger than women so i
01:16:30.680 feel like it would be not really fair for the woman to compete
01:16:34.160 against biological men.
01:16:36.740 So I believe it took them a little while to make the decision.
01:16:42.160 And yeah, I support it.
01:16:48.860 But for me, I'm focusing on myself, on my goals,
01:16:51.860 you know, whatever it takes.
01:16:53.200 If they want to test us all, I'm happy to do that.
01:16:56.400 It's pretty fair.
01:16:57.420 And let's keep it that way.
01:17:00.400 Look how simple that is.
01:17:03.740 She's just saying what we all know is true.
01:17:07.080 It's not that hard.
01:17:10.480 It's it's honestly, it's not even political.
01:17:12.640 It's just acknowledging biological reality and the reality of sport.
01:17:18.720 It is not fair.
01:17:20.400 I mean, truly, will Caitlin Clark say something of LeBron James or somebody like him joins
01:17:23.900 the WNBA?
01:17:24.700 I wonder, would she be OK competing against such a person?
01:17:28.340 What if somebody that size joins high school basketball with the up and comers into college athletics or college basketball, the up and comers into the WNBA?
01:17:37.980 Will she speak out then?
01:17:38.840 What will it take?
01:17:40.340 Does somebody need to have permanent brain damage?
01:17:42.560 Will that do it?
01:17:43.780 I guess not, because that's already happened.
01:17:46.000 And she doesn't want to talk about it.
01:17:47.340 She said the league should work it out with their players.
01:17:49.440 You're one.
01:17:50.760 But it's not even about Caitlin Clark.
01:17:51.940 It's about everyone who is shitting on the notion that this is a danger.
01:17:57.280 Okay, there's something wrong with you people.
01:17:59.740 You have ideological blinders on.
01:18:02.920 Girls are being hurt in multiple ways.
01:18:05.760 That's beyond dispute at this point.
01:18:09.580 And last but not least, I've got to get to Seth Moulton.
01:18:12.260 Seth Moulton, remember this guy?
01:18:14.600 Democrat out of Massachusetts, congressman.
01:18:17.200 After the last election, 2024, he decided, since the Democrats got their asses handed
01:18:22.220 to them on this issue, it was the number one issue in the swing states, according to a
01:18:26.140 large survey done by a Democrat firm trying to figure out what the hell happened, why they lost
01:18:30.080 so badly. And he decided in the wake of that to come out and try to speak sense. And he said,
01:18:35.820 you know what? I have two daughters. I wouldn't want them competing against males on the soccer
01:18:41.240 field. It's not fair. It's a question of fairness, I think he said, and maybe he mentioned safety.
01:18:46.640 And we said, oh my gosh, that's wonderful. That's great. Okay. First you think, good for him.
01:18:51.680 And then shortly thereafter, he had a vote on the Save Girls Sports Act and he voted
01:18:59.060 against it.
01:19:00.500 And he was called out here, among other places.
01:19:03.920 And now he is in a political debate for his political future in Massachusetts and was
01:19:11.540 asked about those comments in the debate.
01:19:16.320 And this is how he answered it here in SOT 22.
01:19:19.280 Congressman Moulton, in your last debate, you said when you were asked about student
01:19:23.680 athletes who are transgender.
01:19:25.780 To anyone out there listening tonight, anyone in the LGBTQ community or anyone else, I stand
01:19:31.900 with you because I've always stood with you.
01:19:34.200 But after the last presidential election, you said, I have two little girls, I don't
01:19:38.960 want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.
01:19:44.580 Congressman Moulton, which is it?
01:19:48.100 To the trans community, feeling the weight and the pain of the Trump administration policies,
01:19:54.820 I deeply recognize your trauma.
01:19:58.100 And I'm sorry if my comments hurt you.
01:20:02.120 Do you still have a fear that your daughters could be run over on a plane?
01:20:06.280 The point I made.
01:20:07.040 By a biological male or formerly male athlete.
01:20:10.460 My kids are young.
01:20:12.000 They play co-ed sports.
01:20:12.960 But the point I made is that as Democrats, we can't have that debate.
01:20:15.640 That was my full quote.
01:20:16.540 And I think we should have and I think we should be willing to talk about these issues.
01:20:19.960 But I stand 100 percent with the trans community.
01:20:24.340 Coward, utter coward, dishonest, feckless, dickless coward.
01:20:29.920 That's I mean, forget it.
01:20:31.960 Right. He's running. He wants to he wants a promotion.
01:20:34.700 He's running to get the Democratic nomination for Senate.
01:20:37.940 He wants his opponent's seat at Markey, who's no better.
01:20:42.920 I mean, he was out there openly saying, oh, no, we got to trans the kids.
01:20:45.820 Not exactly, but he's in favor of trans athletes and girls sports.
01:20:50.320 So those are your choices.
01:20:52.380 And it's not lost on me that both these guys are running for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts.
01:20:59.660 That's where those girls got hurt.
01:21:02.640 Playing basketball, writhing in pain.
01:21:06.080 That's where we heard this from the field hockey player who got smashed in the face by a trans athlete.
01:21:15.820 tell it to her. We'll be right back. Feeling sluggish, bloated, not quite like yourself,
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01:23:53.860 Hey everyone, it's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own
01:23:59.420 channel on Sirius XM. It's called the Megan Kelly channel, and it is where you will hear the truth
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01:24:23.620 Joining me now is one half of one of the biggest bands of the 1980s and beyond. Here's a hint.
01:24:53.620 Ah, one of the greatest ever. Yes, Tears for Fears gave us Mad World, Shout, Head Over Heels,
01:25:02.060 and the iconic, everlasting, Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Now, Roland Orzabal is telling
01:25:09.840 the story behind the music, and he does not hold back. He writes about the band's extraordinary
01:25:14.840 rise, his painful split, and eventual reunion with his partner, Kurt Smith, surviving an
01:25:21.840 addiction that nearly killed him, and much, much more. His new memoir is called Welcome to Your
01:25:27.260 Life, Love, Death, and Tears for Fears. Roland, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for
01:25:33.640 having me. Oh, it's an honor to meet you. I'm a huge fan. As a child of the 80s, of course,
01:25:39.400 I know all the music. You're very kind. I've admired you. Very kind. Yeah. For many, many years.
01:25:45.520 So why now? You're still a relatively young man. Why the memoir at this point?
01:25:50.240 Well, I have a literary agent in New York called Mark Gottlieb, and he was taking a book of fiction I'd written called Truthwall around to various publishers.
01:26:04.480 And every one of them was saying, what about a memoir? What about a memoir?
01:26:09.180 And Mark said to me, how do you feel about it?
01:26:12.760 I wasn't particularly interested at all because I didn't think the story was finished.
01:26:20.240 But I'd had a hankering of writing a book on astrology, which might sound a bit strange to people.
01:26:28.740 So I wondered if I could combine the two so I could write about my life and Tears of Fears, which are intimately connected.
01:26:39.120 And that might have been enough, but I wanted to sew in an extra thread of understanding, which I think I've done.
01:26:48.140 So hopefully it's an interesting story, but you might learn something about this subject, which a lot of people do not understand.
01:26:59.960 A lot, a lot about this subject, actually, about multiple subjects.
01:27:03.360 I mean, astrology, I actually, I admit I'm into it.
01:27:06.660 I don't know that much about it, but whenever I talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about, I'm completely gripped.
01:27:13.600 By the way, you're 64.
01:27:14.980 So as I said, you're really not that old.
01:27:16.540 um so but it's fine i wrote a memoir at age i think 46 so it can happen um if if you've had
01:27:23.820 an interesting life and you certainly have so before i want to talk a little bit about the band
01:27:27.800 and when i get your personal story as well but let's just start with you and your partnership
01:27:31.940 with kurt smith your your partner in crime and cheers for fears how did you two find each other
01:27:36.620 and what was your background in music that made you consider you know being in a band professionally
01:27:41.560 we had a mutual friend and um i was staying with this guy his name was paul noble in bath i was
01:27:49.880 living in canesham just outside and he said to me one morning um let's go and meet my friend kurt
01:27:56.180 and um so we went across to what are called the snow hill flats in bath it's a big bath stone
01:28:06.500 tower of council flats state housing or like the projects you would have here
01:28:10.820 and we knocked on kurt's door his mother answered and said you know i shouted to kurt he came to the
01:28:19.400 door but he wasn't allowed out because he'd been he'd thrown someone down the stairs now i oh yeah
01:28:27.160 I was a relatively conservative kid doing all the schoolwork, trying to be a good boy and get on at school.
01:28:40.120 And here was what I considered to be a ruffian.
01:28:43.780 But what eventually happened was I was in a band with Paul.
01:28:49.540 It was only guitar, bass and drums.
01:28:51.680 and we heard Kurt singing along to a Blue Oyster Cult song in his bedroom.
01:28:58.460 And I thought, wow, this guy can sing.
01:29:00.620 He certainly conveyed all the emotions that the song had.
01:29:06.160 And so we asked Kurt to be our lead singer.
01:29:09.120 Then we were a four-piece all of a sudden.
01:29:11.880 So that's how we started.
01:29:13.300 But then we were in – it didn't last very long.
01:29:16.360 Then we were in another band when we were 18,
01:29:18.880 and that was when we formed Tears for Fears
01:29:21.320 out of the skeleton of that band.
01:29:26.220 I am happy to call Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi a friend.
01:29:31.540 He was their, of course, lead guitarist
01:29:33.540 and he wrote a lot of their,
01:29:35.740 he wrote most of their songs.
01:29:37.620 Not all, but a lot of them.
01:29:39.380 How did it work in Tears for Fears?
01:29:40.860 Was one of you the main songwriter?
01:29:42.780 Was it a collaborative effort?
01:29:44.720 No, I wrote all the first album on my own
01:29:47.780 and the hurting and songs of the big chair i wrote with um our producer and keyboard player
01:29:55.820 chris hughes and ian stanley but i still wrote most of the songs all the lyrics and melodies
01:30:02.700 have been mine yeah are you one of those guys who now cannot stand to hear songs like tears
01:30:09.080 like everybody wants to rule the world because you've played it so many times i don't mind that
01:30:14.660 song at all i mean there are other songs i can't listen to you know you know like um like which
01:30:20.780 one like shout i love shout too yeah i'm tired of playing that song because it's so it's so
01:30:26.000 repetitive you know it's so loud at the end of the show we can't we have never managed to fit it in
01:30:31.840 at the beginning or middle you know um what um on this on the on the subject of everybody wants
01:30:39.940 to rule the world. I know that it had a different name when it first started. But I have to say the
01:30:45.240 lyrics, they're so beautiful. They really are beautiful. It's kind of a haunting song. And
01:30:52.180 you knew that when you were writing it. Can you tell us what the original title was and what you
01:30:56.920 were trying to say with it? Well, there was a lot of war talk at that time. Russia and America and
01:31:07.040 Nuclear Weapons, Proliferation, Mutually Assured Destruction.
01:31:15.640 And the original title was Everybody Wants to Go to War, which I struggled with very
01:31:24.480 much.
01:31:25.560 And that was one of the reasons why I didn't like the song.
01:31:29.380 But our producer, Chris Hughes, had us play it every day.
01:31:34.240 and it came to get came together very naturally and it was a eureka moment for me where i changed
01:31:42.220 the title to everybody wants to rule the world then all of a sudden we were off we're looking
01:31:49.500 at video of you and kurt playing and singing and rocking out and i wonder if you look back
01:31:54.600 at that period when you were touring and in huge demand with all the screaming girls
01:32:00.220 and miss it, or are glad you survived it, or both?
01:32:05.720 I didn't really notice, to be honest with you.
01:32:08.200 I mean, hysteria is something that you can manufacture
01:32:13.920 by the way you behave to an audience.
01:32:16.760 So I'll give an example.
01:32:17.940 In 1985, we were doing a TV program,
01:32:21.460 and there were a lot of screaming girls outside.
01:32:26.160 And I thought it was a bit strange,
01:32:28.860 And so I went out the door and spoke to them all.
01:32:31.100 And then the hysteria died, you know, that's just by showing them that you're a normal person.
01:32:37.720 Just by showing them you're a normal person.
01:32:40.040 Exactly.
01:32:40.500 Yeah.
01:32:41.120 Yeah.
01:32:42.560 Does that get extremely heady?
01:32:44.480 You know, you hear a lot of stories from bands who make it big about how they lost their connection with reality and they got drunk on their own wine, started to think that they were godlike figures.
01:32:54.120 What happened to you?
01:32:55.000 well as you read in the book i we started tears for fears to get rich get famous and get therapy
01:33:05.840 we were inspired by the writings of ava yano and um all i cared about was doing this thing called
01:33:14.820 primal therapy to go into myself and understand myself and try and exercise some of the demons
01:33:22.060 from my childhood so when we made it really big um that's all i had in the back of my mind i knew
01:33:30.860 that what was going on with all the success was lovely it was beautiful but that wasn't
01:33:37.240 exactly what i had intended so after all that um you know the incredible period of big chair and
01:33:46.260 the success i then started primal therapy on my own in london yeah
01:33:53.480 eventually as happens with so many great bands you and kurt broke up uh and this is you know
01:34:03.520 every every fan's nightmare that one of their favorite bands is going to break up and we saw
01:34:08.620 it happen you know with another great duo i'm i realized that it wasn't just the two of you but
01:34:13.400 uh holland oats at each other's throats what happened between you and kurt well it was quite
01:34:21.140 simple i think seeds of love maybe was sort of my my child maybe a bit more than it was uh
01:34:34.520 the pair of us and i got him alita adams involved suddenly there were three singers
01:34:42.820 as the stage show completely changed from what it was when we were at our commercial peak.
01:34:50.900 And our manager at the time, Paul King, I didn't realise, but he was also a promoter,
01:35:00.720 and he made a huge punt on a Genesis show, which lost money.
01:35:06.600 So he was financially in peril.
01:35:09.420 We also took four years to make Seeds of Love, which made him even more in peril.
01:35:14.180 And then when we were touring, I found out by the swimming pool via our lawyer that Paul King had taken all the profits from the tour and put them into his own bank account so he wouldn't go bankrupt more than a million pounds.
01:35:34.200 if he had he would have not been able to do business ever again so that for me
01:35:41.100 was more than a red flag uh i never liked the guy and i thought i don't want him to be our manager
01:35:49.860 and the problem is the problem was kurt was his friend so we really split up because of our
01:35:59.420 manager it's a tale as old as time oh yeah but you did find your way back to one another oh yeah
01:36:07.180 and released another album and now you guys are on you're on good terms which we're happy to hear
01:36:12.240 very much you know from afar you always want to see that especially given everything that you've
01:36:16.920 been through together but all of that drama would pale in comparison to what was happening
01:36:20.980 in your personal life you you were married to a woman named caroline and while you were touring
01:36:28.700 and a big success she was struggling mightily and she met with an with an early death so explain
01:36:38.340 the effect that arc had on you because watching a loved one suffer is not easy and then there
01:36:45.780 was a level of guilt because you would meet your next wife while caroline was still alive
01:36:51.940 yeah well yeah she had alcoholism and um stage four cirrhosis of the liver so whatever happened
01:37:08.780 that was going to be the cause of her death and for the last six seven years of her life
01:37:18.840 I became her carer, which wasn't easy because she was very good at using the menopause as a smokescreen for her alcoholism.
01:37:38.640 And we saw a lot of doctors, neurologists, hepatologists, psychiatrists, that kind of stuff.
01:37:43.720 um but it got really bad and to the point where it was a form of a form of dementia
01:37:53.840 form of alcohol induced dementia and um you know a whole circle of friends was
01:38:02.480 shrinking rapidly incredible and um she was antagonistic to them she was at one point
01:38:12.000 sectioned she went into a a psych ward for the elderly not that she was elderly it's just that
01:38:19.180 she was so fragile young 50s yeah and um i spent almost every day visiting her in the cycle which
01:38:28.360 was three months and um once we had to postpone the tour because we almost lost caroline we i was
01:38:37.040 told she might die that very weekend because she wasn't eating she was very very light and
01:38:42.000 she didn't know what was going on and um it was it was when the tour um began again
01:38:53.760 in october of that year caroline was out of uh the psych ward and for a little while was recovery
01:39:03.780 and I was in Denver leaving a restaurant with Cheers for Fears
01:39:11.360 and the whole crew and I looked behind me and I saw a young woman
01:39:16.600 and I've seen a lot of beautiful women on tour,
01:39:19.860 but this coincided with a voice in my head saying,
01:39:24.200 that's my wife.
01:39:28.580 Wow.
01:39:29.580 Yeah, and I didn't understand it because I'm not a very psychic person
01:39:33.600 um but there was just something about her and the chemistry and yeah i there's no no doubt about it
01:39:42.180 that well it was right actually that voice in my head was right because you know when caroline died
01:39:49.180 many years later emily became my wife emily became your wife yeah it's it's actually
01:39:57.360 you write about it very honestly in the book um about had the choice i'd made in order to be with
01:40:06.780 emily to not go to be with caroline determined the outcome of caroline's life that's right or was it
01:40:13.240 just a coincidence or synchronicity perhaps i had simply let her go so she could leave this earthly
01:40:20.000 plane of loneliness addiction and degradation yeah very honest i know you you struggled yourself
01:40:27.600 you eventually went into a rehab program on your own and the astrological journey piece of it has
01:40:35.140 also been big for you and people can hear all about it uh read all about it by buying the book
01:40:41.060 it's called welcome to your life love death and tears for fears uh roland that's his astrological
01:40:49.000 memoir. And honestly, if you have any affinity for Roland's music, you will enjoy this. I thought
01:40:56.400 you were extremely raw on it, Roland. And I am happy to hear that you're happily married now.
01:41:01.400 You have a little girl and still making music. And I'll be there at the next concert. Hopefully
01:41:08.120 Kurt will be there too. Good luck with it all. You take care. You as well. Again, welcome to your
01:41:14.520 life, love, death, and tears for fears. Check it out. And before we go, want to make a programming
01:41:21.780 note. You can go to youtube.com slash Megan Kelly, and you can hit join. Okay. There's a little
01:41:27.460 button there that says join. And that's our members only club group. I don't know what we're
01:41:32.660 calling it, but you will see some content that nobody else will get to see. And we are beginning
01:41:38.660 with a documentary behind the scenes of our show,
01:41:42.920 our staff, our tour, our guests,
01:41:45.740 which I think you will enjoy very much.
01:41:47.680 So check it out and we will see you all tomorrow.
01:41:50.500 Thanks for watching and for listening.
01:41:53.140 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.
01:41:55.120 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.