The Megyn Kelly Show - Establishment Meltdown Over RFK, New Lisa Cook Questions, and Being a ＂Lion＂ Instead of a ＂Scavenger,＂ with Ben Shapiro

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00:00:30.940 Now streaming on Paramount+.

00:00:32.940 Someone is trying to frame us.

00:00:36.000 Until our names are cleared.

00:00:38.440 We're fugitives from interval.

00:00:40.220 Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.

00:00:43.560 Espionage.

00:00:44.300 You're still as good a shot as you used to be.

00:00:47.280 Better.

00:00:48.120 Is there love language?

00:00:49.600 We like to walk that fine line between techno-thriller

00:00:52.080 and romantic comedy.

00:00:54.400 We make up our own rules.

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00:00:58.400 Now streaming on Paramount+.

00:01:00.180 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:03.260 Live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:01:13.080 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:01:14.840 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:16.180 Hope you had a great Labor Day weekend.

00:01:18.600 I don't know, it's like bittersweet.

00:01:20.840 Summer's over.

00:01:21.540 Had such a nice summer this year.

00:01:24.120 But also, I don't know about you.

00:01:26.260 I'm actually, I was looking forward to going back to school with the kids

00:01:29.080 so that I could see them again.

00:01:30.520 My kids just scattered everywhere the whole summer long.

00:01:32.960 I was like, where'd they go?

00:01:33.880 Now I think I'm going to see more of them in the fall than I did this summer.

00:01:37.720 It's a blessing for them to have such fun.

00:01:40.300 And you know, look, even though September is the time when all the trees start to die

00:01:44.540 and we're headed toward winter, it's always felt like a time of renewal, hasn't it?

00:01:47.960 Because it's like the new school year.

00:01:49.880 Sometimes when you start a new job, it tends to happen, I think, for a lot of people in the fall.

00:01:54.080 It's all possibilities.

00:01:55.880 I'm already in my fall clothing, so we're off to the races.

00:01:59.180 We're steps away from pumpkin spice lattes.

00:02:02.060 Life is good.

00:02:03.420 Not for Lisa Cook, but for us.

00:02:05.440 She's the Federal Reserve overseer whose scandal is only growing.

00:02:09.540 Lisa, you're going to have to give it up.

00:02:11.100 Girl, you're going to have to give it up because you appear to have been caught multiple times

00:02:14.660 on the alleged mortgage fraud.

00:02:16.260 And she's not even denying it.

00:02:18.220 She's really just kind of having her surrogates play the race card.

00:02:21.560 I think she's going, and I think Trump is within inches of taking over basically effective

00:02:26.340 control of the Fed.

00:02:27.820 But it's really, I mean, yes, it is about that.

00:02:30.000 But for me, it's about her.

00:02:32.180 You can't just DEI your way into these powerful positions.

00:02:35.760 And then when you're caught, try to fall back in your qualifications, which are non-existent.

00:02:40.780 We're going to get into that today.

00:02:42.940 So more on her because there's more problems around here, including we're learning there

00:02:47.000 are big questions about how she got tenure at Michigan State University.

00:02:51.740 Shocked.

00:02:52.300 Shocked.

00:02:52.880 Plus, the left is freaking out over Trump and RFKJ's reforms at the CDC.

00:02:57.840 They really are actually playing the science and expert cards on us.

00:03:01.700 But science.

00:03:02.820 But experts.

00:03:03.800 They don't understand the right half of the country at all.

00:03:05.660 And Maryland's governor is having a great time while people in Baltimore are getting

00:03:09.660 shot while he's over at George Clooney's place in Italy, having a grand old time.

00:03:15.700 Remember when like Ted Cruz wasn't allowed to go out of the country for 24 hours when

00:03:19.760 there was a weather crisis down in Texas?

00:03:22.000 But Westmore, I mean, people can literally be dying in his state and he can be on Clooney's

00:03:26.400 yacht and he's not going to get the leftist treatment of what a bad person he is.

00:03:29.900 But here now to react for the full show, so excited, we've never done this before, I've

00:03:34.120 never done in person, either me on his show or him on my show, is Ben Shapiro.

00:03:39.440 He's the co-founder of The Daily Wire, host of The Ben Shapiro Show, and author of the

00:03:43.800 new book, Lions and Scavengers, The True History of America, which is out today.

00:03:48.880 Get your copy now.

00:03:50.100 We got to make sure he winds up number one.

00:03:51.700 He will.

00:03:52.200 But we have to make sure of it on the New York Times bestseller list because they don't

00:03:55.340 let people like Ben Shapiro wind up number one on the bestseller list unless we make

00:03:59.260 them recognize reality.

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00:04:08.360 believes that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty,

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00:05:01.060 Good to see you.

00:05:02.520 Well, thanks for having me.

00:05:03.220 That's really sweet of you.

00:05:04.020 I don't think we've been together like this, like on the air for a show since my Fox days.

00:05:08.420 Yeah, that's right.

00:05:09.100 Right?

00:05:09.340 It's been a long, we've seen each other like not on the air.

00:05:11.560 Yeah.

00:05:11.740 On the air, it's been a long time.

00:05:12.640 Yeah.

00:05:12.780 Yeah, I know.

00:05:13.440 It's great to see you in person.

00:05:14.380 You too.

00:05:14.820 Did you have a good Labor Day weekend?

00:05:15.940 I did.

00:05:16.420 It was really, really nice.

00:05:17.240 I was with the kids and that's what it's about and now they're going back and doing

00:05:21.240 all of their schooling, which means I do their homework.

00:05:23.620 Do you really?

00:05:24.120 No, no, no, no.

00:05:24.620 Teachers, no.

00:05:25.200 They probably have Ben Shapiro big brains, so they don't need you to do their homework.

00:05:28.360 Yeah, I mean, I will say they get spicy on their social studies questions.

00:05:31.220 I'll bet.

00:05:31.840 Yeah.

00:05:32.620 So, your kids are little though, right?

00:05:34.380 What are the ages?

00:05:35.000 11, 9, 5, 2.

00:05:36.240 Yeah, so you're still at the age where it is sort of more of a blessing when they go back

00:05:39.240 to school.

00:05:39.980 A little bit.

00:05:40.540 They're so young.

00:05:41.080 You need like a break in the middle of the day.

00:05:42.540 Yeah.

00:05:42.860 Exactly.

00:05:43.440 Mine are more like, mine are 15, 14, and 12 now.

00:05:46.020 They're so fun and like, I miss them so much.

00:05:49.100 They're just, their lives are so complete with friends that I'm like, remember mom.

00:05:53.680 Mom loves you.

00:05:54.680 I will say, this is a fun summer.

00:05:56.020 We took them like all over the place.

00:05:57.520 We took them to like Italy and Greece and then we were in Montana and so that was awesome

00:06:02.040 and they loved the travel.

00:06:02.980 Yep.

00:06:03.260 And we did a lot of history lessons.

00:06:05.360 So, when we were in Sicily, I was showing my 11 and 9-year-old Patton, like the George

00:06:08.780 C. Scott movie and we were doing World War II history and they're very into it.

00:06:11.520 Yep.

00:06:11.760 That's how it goes in the Shapiro house.

00:06:12.940 I'm listening to Dateline with my children, so we went a different way.

00:06:15.420 This is not good.

00:06:17.480 This says something about both of us, I think.

00:06:19.240 This could wind up.

00:06:20.040 My daughter's like, mom, you listen to a lot of bad stories about crime.

00:06:24.180 I'm like, honey, I swear this is a genre.

00:06:26.220 Like, this is a thing.

00:06:27.180 It's not just my obsession.

00:06:29.300 I mean, you got to do what you're good at.

00:06:31.200 You got to go with the thing, dance with the girl that brought you.

00:06:33.820 Maybe they're going to be, you know, law enforcement when they grow up.

00:06:36.080 Exactly.

00:06:36.320 You never know.

00:06:36.840 They could be in training for some other kind of thing.

00:06:39.440 When we were waiting for the show to get started, I was telling you about my favorite story

00:06:42.640 right now is Lisa Cook.

00:06:43.700 I'm very into this woman because it's very clear to me she DEI'd her way up to this seat.

00:06:49.420 How dare you?

00:06:50.480 How dare you?

00:06:51.600 That's terrible.

00:06:52.760 And now she's been caught.

00:06:55.200 It's just like, honestly, I'm just going to say it.

00:06:57.580 There have been a lot of black women who have ascended these positions on very thin credentials

00:07:03.200 and then some sort of scandal takes them down.

00:07:05.640 And the left freaks out about the fact that you're going after a black woman.

00:07:09.720 You know, it's like from prosecutors, whatever, whether it's Kim Foxx or Fannie Willis.

00:07:14.420 Like Marilyn Mosby.

00:07:15.120 Marilyn Mosby.

00:07:16.000 Thank you.

00:07:16.560 Like who get bounced out for whatever reason.

00:07:18.520 But then you're not allowed to attack them because they're black women.

00:07:21.680 But it's like, well, you elevated them for that reason.

00:07:24.100 And we kind of were forced to skip.

00:07:25.420 The entire presidential election that was this.

00:07:27.440 Yes.

00:07:27.840 Where Joe Biden was like, I'm picking a black woman.

00:07:30.220 And I'm like, um, but you should really pick like a qualified person.

00:07:33.180 And then she ends up as the nominee.

00:07:34.600 And they're like, but you can't attack her saying she's a black woman.

00:07:37.540 So, well, when you said it, it was a good thing.

00:07:39.800 Right.

00:07:40.180 When we say it, it's somehow like a bad thing.

00:07:42.620 Like it's the same thing that we're saying right now.

00:07:44.460 At least like pick somebody who's got credentials that are pretty much unassailable.

00:07:49.540 Right.

00:07:49.680 If you're just going to bypass all the normal protocols and elevate them.

00:07:53.020 So it turns out not only does this woman, has she allegedly committed at least three alleged

00:07:58.660 instances of mortgage fraud with respect to a property in Michigan, a property in Atlanta.

00:08:05.160 And now there's a third property where she allegedly, um, misstated the purpose of her

00:08:10.580 home.

00:08:11.040 And this one was in, oh gosh, I'm trying to remember that it's a third location.

00:08:16.060 Uh, my team will get it to me.

00:08:17.340 And in all three instances, she has stated the wrong purpose for the home.

00:08:22.300 Two of them, she claimed were her primary residences at the same time, which is not possible.

00:08:26.540 Um, and it wasn't possible in her case.

00:08:28.340 And she's not even denying it.

00:08:30.040 Cambridge, Massachusetts was the third one.

00:08:32.160 Um, she's not even denying it.

00:08:33.600 She hasn't like the, everyone's coming out saying she, she has the presumption of innocence.

00:08:36.700 Well, she's not saying she's innocent.

00:08:38.260 Not once has she said, I didn't commit this mortgage fraud.

00:08:40.860 At most her lawyers have said, well, one was a mistake.

00:08:44.380 Well, my favorite is, well, she hasn't hurt anybody because she's paying back the mortgages,

00:08:48.660 which is of course, exactly what one Donald J.

00:08:50.760 Trump said in his New York fraud trial, when they claimed that he was defrauding, remember

00:08:54.880 all of his lenders by, by making claims about the value of his various real estate properties.

00:08:58.440 And they said, he's over claiming.

00:08:59.680 He said, well, I mean, they can sue me.

00:09:01.660 Like if I'm not paying it back, then they can sue me.

00:09:03.140 Like, no, you'll have a 500 million dollar judgment against you, sir.

00:09:06.720 And so it's amazing when the shoe is on the other foot, that he's precisely the same

00:09:09.840 defenses without any understanding of what it is that they're saying.

00:09:13.380 Right. With or without a victim, they were going to go after Donald Trump because justice.

00:09:17.400 Right.

00:09:17.740 You know, but with her, it's, you know what?

00:09:20.560 No one's been her.

00:09:21.520 We don't know if she even did it, even though she's not even denying it.

00:09:23.840 And black woman, black woman.

00:09:26.260 So now it comes out that this totally qualified woman, and I'll just give you an example of

00:09:32.160 that because Ellie Honig, who's the CNN legal analyst, he was even out there over the weekend

00:09:36.360 saying, she's kind of in some deep, you know what?

00:09:39.280 And for him to say it, you know, shows you they've got her.

00:09:42.840 But listen to how he describes in sort of the throwaway how qualified this woman is.

00:09:47.140 I mean, and I heard this over on NPR.

00:09:48.840 I heard this on The Daily.

00:09:49.860 They really talk about this woman like she's, you know, Maynard Keyes.

00:09:54.180 So here we go.

00:09:55.220 Watch Ellie Honig.

00:09:55.760 There's some suspicious activity here that's really problematic by Lisa Cook.

00:10:00.820 The claim that this might be clerical error or just a mistake, that's not going to fly because

00:10:05.000 Lisa Cook is one of the most established, accomplished financial and economic experts in this country.

00:10:11.920 I think that the allegations on their face could be enough for a judge to say, look,

00:10:16.480 I'm going to defer to the president on cause.

00:10:19.080 Is she one of the most accomplished, respected econ experts in the nation?

00:10:24.400 I mean, I'd never heard of her.

00:10:25.460 Had you heard of her?

00:10:25.940 Literally nobody has ever heard of her other than Chris Ruffo, who, unlike the two of us,

00:10:30.760 is always paying attention to these details.

00:10:33.480 And he was there.

00:10:34.120 That's not on Chris's radar.

00:10:34.980 You do not.

00:10:35.360 That's just a bad move.

00:10:36.020 Wow.

00:10:36.660 If you went to look at my academic papers, you would find they are almost non-existent.

00:10:41.480 But Lisa Cook came under the Chris Ruffo magnifying glass, as well as that of his one-time

00:10:48.780 research partner, Chris Brunette, who's an independent journalist.

00:10:52.660 And both of these guys were the ones who exposed Claudine Gay's plagiarism at Harvard.

00:10:58.080 And this guy works for the American Conservative.

00:11:00.240 He's written for the Daily Caller.

00:11:01.340 And he obtained her tenure packet, her 85-page tenure packet via FOIA.

00:11:06.860 It's heavily redacted, he writes.

00:11:08.380 But here are the big takeaways.

00:11:10.060 She was at Michigan State in the econ department.

00:11:12.480 And he concludes, although everything's blacked out.

00:11:14.820 You can see these blackout lines.

00:11:17.580 Secret economics.

00:11:18.900 It was clear from his review that they did not want to give her tenure, that they likely

00:11:24.160 voted, the econ department likely voted against giving her tenure, but appeared to have been

00:11:28.600 overruled by the dean.

00:11:31.060 There's a column titled, recommended by department chair slash school director in blackout.

00:11:36.640 The dean's column is not in blackout.

00:11:38.640 You see the dean check to recommend her.

00:11:41.360 But there's this, you can almost read between the lines.

00:11:45.100 This was long blackout.

00:11:47.200 Nor was this long blackout.

00:11:49.400 Lisa Cook is a valued colleague.

00:11:51.940 Whenever we fill a junior position, we hope that the individual will succeed and be promoted

00:11:56.540 to associate professor with tenure.

00:11:58.560 We do everything that we can to help out along the way.

00:12:02.500 Blackout, blackout, blackout, blackout.

00:12:04.120 Uh-oh.

00:12:04.820 It's very clear she didn't get it.

00:12:06.580 Yeah.

00:12:06.920 And then the dean elevated her.

00:12:08.740 And when she was applying for tenure, she relied on, among other things, Ben, her paper, which

00:12:16.540 was also mentioned when she came under fire from Trump last week because of the alleged

00:12:21.740 mortgage fraud.

00:12:23.100 Okay.

00:12:23.720 So here she was applying for tenure in a section called Commentary and Accomplishment.

00:12:27.560 She devoted 15 paragraph to her research on lynchings and patents and only one paragraph

00:12:33.840 to how she's served the economics profession.

00:12:37.180 Okay.

00:12:37.520 All right.

00:12:37.760 But she's written a lot, like everyone obsessed with DEI, about how terrible America was and

00:12:43.940 the Jim Crow South and lynchings in America.

00:12:46.140 She should probably make our inflation decisions.

00:12:47.600 She totally should.

00:12:48.540 It's obvious.

00:12:48.840 Why not?

00:12:49.540 Well, and she knows a lot about mortgages.

00:12:51.580 Yeah.

00:12:51.860 Clearly.

00:12:52.440 Clearly.

00:12:52.960 An expert.

00:12:53.600 So, so in this, so 15 paragraphs on her research on lynchings and patents, only one

00:12:58.620 on her economic service.

00:13:00.120 And apparently Rufo writes, I was making fun of this paper because it was like, the premise

00:13:04.860 was that lynchings of black people led to fewer patents held by black people.

00:13:09.480 I was like, well, I mean, frankly, I get it, right?

00:13:12.680 That's math.

00:13:13.200 But it appears to have gone beyond that and crossed over into black people are depressed

00:13:20.300 when they live in the Jim Crow South and therefore they're not even trying for patents.

00:13:23.560 But I learned from Chris Rufo that even that was totally debunked after she wrote it because

00:13:30.360 she relied on patents, patent applications in the year 1900, concluding that the number

00:13:37.560 plummeted because of lynchings and discriminations.

00:13:41.000 Discrimination.

00:13:41.660 We went, we tell other researchers soon discovered the reason for the Southern sudden drop in 1900

00:13:45.380 was that one of the databases Cook relied on stopped collecting data that year.

00:13:50.840 The true number of black patents, one subsequent study found might be as much as 70 times greater

00:13:56.860 than Lisa Cook's figure effectively debunking the study's premise.

00:14:02.820 So even her greatest accomplishment fell apart after the fact.

00:14:07.560 Well, sounds like, I mean, I heard Eli Honig.

00:14:10.980 I mean, he said that she's amazing at this.

00:14:12.440 He said.

00:14:12.740 I will take him for, I mean, he's on CNN.

00:14:15.560 There you go.

00:14:16.120 So I mean, I think we're done here.

00:14:17.520 Can we talk about why he did that?

00:14:19.220 I mean, I think we all know why he did that, right?

00:14:20.960 It's so frustrating.

00:14:22.020 It's obligatory.

00:14:22.640 You must read the words.

00:14:23.880 You must read the words before you.

00:14:25.360 I mean, it's Manchurian candidate kind of stuff.

00:14:27.060 Raymond Shaw is the kindest, gentlest, most wonderful human being I've ever known.

00:14:30.360 It's racist.

00:14:31.240 It is, of course, racist.

00:14:32.640 By the way, you can name half a dozen black economists who happen to be on the conservative

00:14:37.040 side of the aisle, who actually are really well qualified for this.

00:14:39.280 How about Glenn Lowry?

00:14:39.880 Glenn Lowry, Thomas Sowell, Roland Fryer.

00:14:42.620 I mean, you can keep going with all of this.

00:14:43.940 Where they're busy trying to, you know, kick out of Harvard.

00:14:46.100 Yeah, exactly.

00:14:46.560 And all those guys, very qualified, but given short shrift by the same exact people who

00:14:50.920 will talk about the majestic qualifications of Lisa Cook, who, of course, does not seem

00:14:55.060 to be a great shakes.

00:14:55.680 If you just wanted some random black woman who actually had written a bunch of scholarly

00:14:59.160 articles, who's actually really smart, you could go with Carol Swain.

00:15:02.400 Yes.

00:15:02.680 She's not an economist, but she's way more qualified to be on the Fed than this person

00:15:05.960 from the sound of it.

00:15:07.000 And then here's another.

00:15:07.680 Her 10-year packet lists her writings that I just talked about on the lynchings as a

00:15:16.900 peer-reviewed paper.

00:15:19.140 And this guy who I mentioned, Brunette, the co-author to Rufo on the Claudine Gay stuff,

00:15:23.920 he himself wrote an article for City Journal about this in 2022, pointing out she built herself

00:15:30.380 as a macroeconomist, but she'd never published a peer-review macroeconomics article, ever.

00:15:37.120 Not only that, but she misrepresented her publication history in her CV, claiming she had published

00:15:42.380 an article in the journal American Economic Review.

00:15:45.640 In truth, he writes, the article was published in American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings,

00:15:51.480 a less prestigious, non-peer-reviewed magazine.

00:15:57.160 So she lied.

00:15:58.180 I mean, it's not exactly Elizabeth Warren, but she lied in an academic setting to get ahead

00:16:03.420 to say that this paper had been peer-reviewed, and it was in the more prestigious senior partner

00:16:08.760 to this less prestigious, shitty, you know, junior partner.

00:16:12.140 And this sort of stuff matters, obviously, because when you're talking about the Trump administration,

00:16:15.680 the constant attempt by the media is any time there's something like this,

00:16:18.780 it must be they're out to get Lisa Cook because it's a perversion of the Federal Reserve

00:16:22.840 because the president has been so critical of Jay Powell over at the Fed.

00:16:26.700 Or if it's about John Bolton, it must be.

00:16:28.620 It can't be that there's actually a there there.

00:16:30.220 It must be that he hates John Bolton, and that's why he's going after John Bolton.

00:16:33.460 And nobody just takes a breath for like five seconds to think, hey, why don't we let this

00:16:36.900 play for three, four days and find out what the actual allegations are?

00:16:40.180 Because as you're pointing out, the allegations are pretty bad.

00:16:43.100 And it turns out this person probably shouldn't have been in that position in the first place.

00:16:46.220 But the media, it's Lucy with the football.

00:16:48.260 Every single time they think they've got this guy in some authoritarian trap,

00:16:52.960 then it gets pulled away.

00:16:53.840 It turns out actually there's kind of a legitimate basis for the thing that he's doing here.

00:16:57.320 Exactly right.

00:16:58.080 So what I see here is a pattern of somebody who is, appears to me, dishonest.

00:17:04.000 She lied, according to this, about her peer review.

00:17:08.220 Her paper fell apart.

00:17:09.500 It wasn't academically sound.

00:17:11.440 It's really the only thing she has.

00:17:13.380 She was denied tenure, we think, based on this reporting.

00:17:17.740 She only got elevated to a tenured position thanks to the dean.

00:17:21.680 I'm going to guess Ben Shapiro would not have been given the same help up as she got.

00:17:28.800 And then you have everybody running around saying how incredibly accomplished she is and

00:17:32.940 how incredibly entitled she is.

00:17:34.560 I mean, now when she goes, think about her income trajectory now.

00:17:37.480 She can pay off all those primary mortgages.

00:17:39.960 It'll be amazing.

00:17:40.740 She's already making money off of multiple properties because they're actually rental properties.

00:17:45.660 Exactly.

00:17:46.160 Not a primary residence, not a secondary residence.

00:17:48.060 Now she'll be a resistance hero, right?

00:17:49.980 Of course.

00:17:50.700 Now she'll get a nice book deal out of this.

00:17:52.320 She will get tenure at some other university on the basis of all of this.

00:17:56.300 And she'll have a perennial slot next to Eli Honig talking about what a wonderful, I guess,

00:18:01.920 legal professional he is.

00:18:03.000 And they can have a mutual admiration society.

00:18:04.840 It'll be awesome.

00:18:05.200 Well, what you see in her history, which is like the other strain.

00:18:08.500 So you've got these questionable academic achievements.

00:18:10.820 And then on the other side, right next to them, which really are blaring, are all of her woke

00:18:14.500 commentary.

00:18:15.440 Like all of it.

00:18:16.200 It's everywhere.

00:18:16.920 And just today on The Hills Rising, Robby Suave, yeah, sorry, I always screw that up

00:18:23.380 because of the spelling.

00:18:24.580 He went into a big thing about what she was saying during the COVID pandemic and George

00:18:31.020 Floydapalooza.

00:18:32.160 And she was everywhere.

00:18:33.780 She was everywhere talking about wokeism and Black Lives Matter and defunding the police.

00:18:40.100 And apparently she was involved in the effort to oust Harold Ulig, then editor of the Journal

00:18:45.120 of Political Economy.

00:18:46.140 He says, for crimes against wokeness.

00:18:48.800 What did Ulig do?

00:18:50.260 In the summer of 2020, quoting from Robby here, Ulig wrote a few tweets in which he politely

00:18:54.560 but firmly criticized the Black Lives Matter movement for the defund the police push among

00:18:59.960 him.

00:19:00.360 His most provocative sentence, this guy Ulig, was George Floyd and his family really didn't

00:19:04.940 deserve to be taken advantage of by flat earthers and creationists.

00:19:09.320 So what did Lisa Cook do?

00:19:11.280 She demanded his head.

00:19:13.040 She, along with these other so-called conservatives or commentators like Jannie Ellen was one of

00:19:18.480 them.

00:19:18.620 Paul Krugman was one of them.

00:19:19.620 Um, they were all calling for this guy to be fired and he was, he actually did get the

00:19:26.520 boot.

00:19:26.760 Cancel culture came for him.

00:19:27.920 It was successful, although temporarily he was placed on leave pending an investigation,

00:19:31.680 eventually reinstated after cooler heads prevailed.

00:19:33.640 But this woman was thrilled to see somebody canceled, losing their profession for one ambiguous sentence that she found offensive.

00:19:44.200 But she can lie.

00:19:45.860 I mean, she can lie to get hired potentially, possibly to get tenure.

00:19:50.200 She can lie to get her job at the Federal Reserve because there's real questions about

00:19:54.040 whether she disclosed any of this mortgage shenanigan stuff.

00:19:57.200 Um, we don't know whether she lied or just didn't disclose.

00:20:00.200 There's no way she disclosed.

00:20:01.500 She would have already told us that.

00:20:02.560 No.

00:20:02.780 And now she wants to run around claiming black woman, black woman, Trump, bad, Trump, bad.

00:20:08.520 And yet in her history, who did she want to cut a break for?

00:20:11.780 Right.

00:20:12.040 I just feel like I'm looking forward to her going down.

00:20:14.760 Yes.

00:20:14.940 Well, I mean, member of protected class gets hit by rules that she was trying to apply to others is definitely delicious.

00:20:20.660 Yeah.

00:20:20.940 That's one of the things I think we've all been enjoying about the Trump era thus far is just watching the rules be equally applied to the people who are only applying them for themselves over the course of the last 20 years.

00:20:30.640 Yeah.

00:20:31.160 I mean, a lot of a lot of these folks.

00:20:32.560 Yeah.

00:20:32.900 Like I'm sorry, I don't have anything against John Bolton himself, but like if he actually did disclose confidential and for classified information to the point where it was brought to our attention from some overseas CIA source, that would raise a red flag on anyone.

00:20:44.120 Yes.

00:20:44.720 I mean, clearly.

00:20:45.300 And he will go to jail if that is if that is what he did.

00:20:48.040 Mm-hmm.

00:20:48.760 And again.

00:20:50.240 On the CNN front, I just want to go back to the Ellie Honing over the top praise.

00:20:54.800 We see this all the time.

00:20:56.060 We see this on that Abby Phillips panel virtually every night.

00:20:59.500 I am sick and tired.

00:21:01.320 It makes me very uncomfortable of people being like, when the subject of, let's say, a black woman like Abby Phillips comes up.

00:21:08.820 I love Abby Phillips.

00:21:10.340 I mean, she's extremely talented.

00:21:12.200 She's incredibly talented.

00:21:13.440 She's one of my favorite people.

00:21:14.400 I consider her a friend.

00:21:15.520 She's a friend.

00:21:16.500 We had dinner together.

00:21:17.860 I grow so uncomfortable when people do this.

00:21:20.820 It's so clear what they're doing.

00:21:22.900 Like, who else do you?

00:21:23.920 I don't run around being like, I call Ben Shapiro a friend.

00:21:26.900 Like when the Israel folks got mad at me because I had like MTG on.

00:21:30.280 I don't run around like, I'm friends with Ben Shapiro.

00:21:32.480 Ben Shapiro is a good, close, personal friend of mine.

00:21:34.380 We are.

00:21:35.160 But I don't like, I'm so uncomfortable.

00:21:37.140 Stop fucking doing that.

00:21:38.400 It's definitely, it's a weird tick.

00:21:40.700 Right?

00:21:40.800 It's a weird tick and it's kind of a revealing tick when people do that.

00:21:44.200 But I think you have to say the words.

00:21:46.020 If you don't say the words, then you're not allowed to say the bad things about Lisa Cook

00:21:48.600 unless you also say the very nice things about Lisa Cook.

00:21:51.500 She could just be a moron.

00:21:52.760 Yes, that, again, how dare you?

00:21:55.000 Back to the beginning.

00:21:55.880 No, no, she's brilliant.

00:21:57.780 Michigan State University, the Harvard of Michigan.

00:22:01.460 That's not University of Michigan.

00:22:02.780 Is it?

00:22:03.600 The Harvard of not University of Michigan schools in Michigan.

00:22:05.900 I say Syracuse is the Harvard of upstate New York, at least central New York, arguably.

00:22:10.800 All right.

00:22:13.380 Well, that's Lisa Cook.

00:22:14.300 I think her goose is cooked and she won't be around much longer.

00:22:17.480 Let's spend a minute on foreign policy because there's video out now from this big meeting

00:22:23.800 of Putin and Modi and-

00:22:26.900 She.

00:22:27.340 Yeah.

00:22:27.580 Yeah, she.

00:22:28.460 And on Morning Joe, they were very, very upset because Putin and Modi of India were shown

00:22:34.520 very chummy together and kind of holding hands.

00:22:36.580 And, of course, they're not supposed to be doing that because we're trying to punish India

00:22:41.220 for with secondary sanctions because Putin is continuing the war in Ukraine and doesn't

00:22:46.520 seem like he's that fazed by it.

00:22:48.100 They're still very chummy.

00:22:49.300 Here is what Morning Joe had to say about it in Sat Zero.

00:22:51.780 You literally had Putin and Modi holding hands yesterday.

00:22:57.160 Clearly, this meeting a shot at President Trump's.

00:23:00.600 The image of Vladimir Putin holding hands with the leader of India, Narendra Modi, was a sign

00:23:10.640 that Putin is getting away with it, that three years into this war, he is now claiming this

00:23:17.440 was the West's fault.

00:23:18.860 And he has an audience of prominent world leaders who agree with him.

00:23:23.660 50 percent terrorists from the United States placed on India, in some ways driving Modi

00:23:29.380 to that photo op where he's holding hands with Putin and that incredible, extraordinary

00:23:34.540 show of support for Vladimir Putin.

00:23:36.500 Okay, so this jumped out at me, Ben, because I was actually in the middle of those two men

00:23:45.280 in July of 2017, Putin and Modi.

00:23:49.420 And I got ripped for wearing like a sort of a dress to the thing instead of a suit.

00:23:55.480 But I was literally told it was a state dinner to dress for a state dinner, which I did.

00:23:59.720 In any event, I thought the dress was nice.

00:24:01.960 But I was there.

00:24:03.040 Here, look, this is the video of it.

00:24:04.380 Here's Putin and Modi, and we are in St. Petersburg together meeting at the castle where Putin

00:24:11.140 and I were together.

00:24:12.600 Good night for us.

00:24:13.320 Thank you.

00:24:13.920 We had sort of a state dinner thereafter.

00:24:15.760 Right after this, the three of us sat down at a table that was like barely enough to hold

00:24:19.540 three teacups and had tea together, the three of us.

00:24:22.340 And they are and were and have been extremely chummy for many, many, many years.

00:24:28.260 So that's what jumped out at me.

00:24:29.280 Like, they've always been like this.

00:24:30.640 They actually do have a lot of strategic alignment.

00:24:33.000 And I don't know how, like, I don't think even Trump thought that he was going to end the

00:24:37.520 relationship between the men by opposing secondary sanctions.

00:24:40.700 They're also aiming at the wrong thing there.

00:24:42.640 The actual geopolitical change is Modi and Xi.

00:24:45.640 It's not Modi and Putin.

00:24:47.440 As you say, Modi and Putin.

00:24:48.640 He's been around for a long time.

00:24:49.400 Yes.

00:24:49.600 I mean, also India during the entirety of the Cold War was not aligned, but actually

00:24:54.380 aligned pretty closely with the Soviet Union.

00:24:56.020 And it took until the mid 2000s for the United States to start really warming up the relationship

00:24:59.980 with India to the point where they're now considered a military strategic partner as

00:25:04.100 part of the so-called quad.

00:25:05.100 That'd be like the United States, Japan, Australia and India.

00:25:08.380 And the idea there, and this is under Trump one, was to create essentially a ring of fire

00:25:12.640 around China.

00:25:13.560 Because if you look at the map, obviously the Indo-Pacific is dominated by China, but not if

00:25:18.020 you have India in kind of one corner and then Australia down in the south and Japan up kind

00:25:22.960 of ringing them.

00:25:23.760 And so the idea was that we were going to sort of box China in.

00:25:26.360 So I'm more concerned about India realigning vis-a-vis China because they have a bad relationship

00:25:30.240 historically.

00:25:31.580 They've almost gone to war several times.

00:25:33.580 Him being aligned with Putin is nothing new.

00:25:35.500 I mean, he's getting enormous amounts of oil from Vladimir Putin.

00:25:38.440 Something like 47% of all Russian oil exports go to the Chinese and 38% go to the Indians.

00:25:43.360 And that means that since 2022, the Indians have probably saved something like $17 billion

00:25:47.460 on their oil costs because of the amount of oil that they've been taking in from the

00:25:52.160 Russians.

00:25:52.820 And so the idea that the Indians were going to turn away from Russia full scale because

00:25:57.800 of the sanctions, I'm not sure if that's what Trump was going for.

00:26:00.480 I think that that was not going to happen.

00:26:02.700 But I'm not going to say that the realignment here is not a problem.

00:26:06.640 I do think it is a problem.

00:26:07.620 This particular event, it was Turkey, Iran, North Korea, I believe, was there.

00:26:11.620 It was China.

00:26:13.040 It was India.

00:26:14.860 And it was Russia.

00:26:15.440 And that sort of anti-American coalition that territorially now stretches all the way

00:26:19.980 from China all the way in the east to theoretically Turkey in the west, that is a very large land

00:26:26.340 bridge.

00:26:26.980 I mean, that is a serious geopolitical issue.

00:26:29.340 And so I think that, again, the idea that we are going to break the relationship between

00:26:32.980 Russia and India is foolish.

00:26:34.840 And you're right.

00:26:35.500 Modi and Putin have been friendly for a very long time.

00:26:38.520 I will say that I think the tariff war does have some unforeseen consequences.

00:26:41.300 And I think one of those consequences is that instead of boxing China in with all these

00:26:46.120 other countries, if you slap Japan with the tariff and you slap India with the tariff,

00:26:49.300 you slap South Korea with the tariff, and then you slap China with a lower tariff than

00:26:52.740 India, then you could theoretically be making moves that push India in the direction of a

00:26:57.420 realignment.

00:26:58.160 And that has some significant impact.

00:26:59.980 I mean, monetarily, it does.

00:27:01.340 You've seen that the dollar has been dropping as the global reserve currency.

00:27:04.700 The spot price of gold today is like the highest it's been ever.

00:27:08.720 And so there is downstream effect to some of these decisions being made.

00:27:12.980 Do you think it's all about the tariffs?

00:27:15.220 I don't think it's all about the tariffs.

00:27:16.800 I do think it is largely about the tariffs.

00:27:19.000 I think that we've offered a lot of sticks and not enough carrots to places like India.

00:27:24.340 The truth is that the trade relationship that we have with India is not wildly important

00:27:29.120 to the United States.

00:27:30.140 They represent, I think, our 10th largest trading partner.

00:27:32.560 They do have access to some rare earth minerals.

00:27:34.180 And I think one of the goals, theoretically, should have been to, if we were going to do

00:27:37.940 cheap goods at all from other parts of the world, to realign that from China to India

00:27:41.940 and make more of an ally of India, specifically because they're geopolitically between Pakistan

00:27:46.180 here and China here.

00:27:47.600 And so what you want to do is make, by the way, we hold more military exercises with India

00:27:51.940 than we do with NATO.

00:27:53.040 I was going to say, and they're not creating mass amounts of ships to potentially take us

00:27:58.000 down.

00:27:58.560 Right.

00:27:59.180 We're a lot friendlier with that.

00:28:00.160 But if you start to see them actually realign with China, if you start to see them move into

00:28:03.860 the Chinese camp, then that really does upend the geopolitical order.

00:28:07.440 And so, again, I'm not a Peter Navarro guy.

00:28:10.740 And I think that Peter Navarro's trade policy, if you do the opposite of that, typically you're

00:28:13.760 going to do well.

00:28:14.740 So when you look at Putin, you look at Modi, you look at Xi, are they all lions?

00:28:20.600 I think that the idea of the lion in the book is somebody who believes in the lions and

00:28:28.020 scavengers is somebody who is trying to build as opposed to tear down.

00:28:33.160 So I would say no.

00:28:33.960 I think that all three of those people, well, two of those three, I think, are attempting

00:28:37.260 to tear down.

00:28:37.640 I'm not sure about Modi.

00:28:38.620 I think Modi may be more in the lion category.

00:28:40.520 And I think him sort of forging a middle path and trying to move as an independent in

00:28:45.020 the world, which has been traditional Indian policy, you could see him as a lion more than

00:28:48.880 a scavenger.

00:28:49.360 I think Xi is definitely a scavenger.

00:28:50.660 Communism is a scavenger philosophy.

00:28:52.280 And I think Putin is a scavenger, too.

00:28:53.640 I think that Putin is essentially attempting to savage various countries and institutions.

00:28:57.940 What is he building?

00:28:58.980 Yeah, nothing.

00:28:59.660 I mean, it's a gas station with nuclear weapons.

00:29:01.680 That's right.

00:29:02.100 And so, yeah, I've never seen Vladimir Putin.

00:29:04.540 I think very early in his career, there was the possibility he could be.

00:29:07.320 If you remember back to 99, 2000, when he first took over, he lowered the tax rates

00:29:10.440 like 12 percent.

00:29:11.440 People thought he was going to realign with the West.

00:29:13.240 It didn't work out that way, obviously.

00:29:15.020 Lisa Cook?

00:29:16.400 Definitely a scavenger.

00:29:17.400 Totally.

00:29:17.700 She defines scavenger.

00:29:18.760 Yes, yes.

00:29:19.480 Somebody who has nothing but complaints about the United States, lives high on the hog because

00:29:24.360 of the systems that she criticizes, and then has the temerity to suggest that she is a

00:29:29.820 victim while prospering.

00:29:32.540 It's pure, hard to come up with a better example of a scavenger than Lisa Cook.

00:29:35.940 The way, I mean, that's obviously the title of the book, but you kind of break down what

00:29:39.920 does it mean to be a lion?

00:29:40.860 What does it mean to be a scavenger?

00:29:42.100 And you don't do it in purely right versus left thinking.

00:29:46.440 No, I don't think it's a right versus left thing.

00:29:47.560 No.

00:29:47.840 I even think it's a personal thing, meaning I think that if you take it to the personal

00:29:51.060 level, there's a part of all of us that wants to build, and there's a part of all of us

00:29:54.860 that wants to destroy.

00:29:56.280 And the easiest thing in the world when we face a problem is to say that it's somebody else's

00:30:00.100 fault, that it's a system's fault, and we should tear down the system.

00:30:02.560 Sometimes it is the system's fault, but you actually have to have evidence of that.

00:30:05.820 And then there's the part of us that wants to build.

00:30:07.360 You get to wake up every morning and decide whether you want to build or whether you want

00:30:10.520 to destroy.

00:30:11.640 And civilizationally, do we want to build or do we want to destroy things?

00:30:15.600 And again, I'm not talking here about unjust systems where you can show the evidence for

00:30:18.840 why it's unjust and whom it's victimizing.

00:30:20.580 I'm talking about the Zoran Mamdani-fication of America, the sort of idea that America is

00:30:28.340 a victimizing, oppressor party, and all the institutions need to be laid low so that Zoran

00:30:32.960 Mamdani and his friends can feel better about themselves, even though they, again, are the

00:30:37.180 greatest beneficiaries of American freedom and prosperity in the history of all of humanity.

00:30:42.060 And so what you've seen, I think, over the course of the last couple of decades is the

00:30:45.500 rise of what I call the scavengers, this coalition of people who essentially have three categories

00:30:51.320 of scavengers.

00:30:52.080 They're barbarians, they're looters, and they're lechers.

00:30:54.700 Barbarians are people who believe that we have made their civilization poor.

00:30:59.360 It largely comes from outside the United States.

00:31:01.380 I think there's a big gathering of them in Detroit, scavengers who basically say that

00:31:05.820 America is an awful place, an exploitative place, an oppressive place that has made the

00:31:09.080 rest of the world poorer and terrible.

00:31:10.800 And then they import that into our borders.

00:31:12.340 And then there are looters, people who believe that free markets, private property, equal

00:31:17.360 application of the law, these are actually biased.

00:31:19.520 And what we need is a system that benefits people, quote unquote, like me.

00:31:23.380 So Marxism definitely falls into this.

00:31:25.400 Like the democratic socialists of America.

00:31:26.900 Exactly.

00:31:27.420 And then you have lechers, people who believe that family and church are a threat to them

00:31:30.400 because their own identity is wrapped up in behavior that family and church pose a threat

00:31:35.920 to.

00:31:36.300 And so family and church need to be wiped away.

00:31:38.000 And the reason I say they're a coalition is because you see them acting coalitionally.

00:31:41.980 It's, it's very weird.

00:31:43.040 Like they should be mutually exclusive.

00:31:44.920 Barbarians and lechers in particular, it's, it's very weird to watch queers for Palestine.

00:31:49.080 Yeah.

00:31:49.260 Sort of like the apex example of this, you know, people who would be thrown off of buildings

00:31:53.340 in Gaza who are out there standing for Gaza.

00:31:55.340 And you're like, why?

00:31:56.160 Because the answer is they just don't like the civilization as a whole.

00:31:59.200 It's not that they, that they want to live in Gaza.

00:32:01.340 It's that they believe the civilization that is responsible for the terrible situation

00:32:05.980 in Gaza and is also responsible for the terrible situation I find myself in personally, because

00:32:10.580 I'm not accepted at my local family dinner, that those are the same civilization.

00:32:14.960 They need to be torn down.

00:32:15.740 So we're all going to march together on mass.

00:32:17.720 Right.

00:32:17.840 And you see, I think Mamdani is like a perfect example of this since we're in New York anyway.

00:32:21.580 I mean, that's, he is like a perfect example of this.

00:32:24.020 You look at his coalition and it's like radical Islamists and radical transgender advocates

00:32:30.200 and abortionists and communists.

00:32:32.260 They're like, what do all these people have in common?

00:32:33.840 And the answer is they hate all of the good things.

00:32:36.040 That's, that's the thing that they have in common.

00:32:37.320 They want to tear down all of these good things.

00:32:39.340 It makes perfect sense actually.

00:32:41.220 And to me, one of the pieces that resonated with me was you wrote something to the effect

00:32:44.820 of, you don't, you don't have to have like a conscious philosophy with which you're going

00:32:49.020 through life in order to be a lion.

00:32:50.740 Like you can just be a person, let's say a strong person with moral convictions, a person

00:32:55.600 of faith, a person who knows how they're raising their children.

00:32:58.640 And there was one piece in there that really resonated where you were saying the difference

00:33:04.120 between a lion and scavenger among others is you, a lion would never sit around saying

00:33:08.120 this is so unfair.

00:33:09.320 Right.

00:33:09.680 Oh, you know, poor me.

00:33:10.680 The whole attitude is just very un-lion-esque and you either teach that to your children

00:33:16.220 or you don't.

00:33:16.840 You may have a philosophy around it.

00:33:18.900 It may be on the board as one of your family values, or it may just be something that a

00:33:22.000 parent says to a kid, which is like, no, stop doing that.

00:33:25.160 We don't do that in this family.

00:33:26.500 That's not a healthy, positive way of thinking.

00:33:28.540 And if you don't pass it down to your kids, your kids end up becoming scavenger.

00:33:31.140 Because the society is just filled with them and they're trying to convert your child into

00:33:35.380 a scavenger at every turn, K through 12 and beyond.

00:33:37.640 A hundred percent.

00:33:38.300 And also I think there's a natural thing that lions do that has made us very vulnerable.

00:33:42.680 And I speak here just for people who believe the duty is the way that you do life, that

00:33:46.940 you get up in the morning, you figure what's your duty and you do those things.

00:33:49.400 But one of the things that Western civilization does differently than a lot of other civilizations

00:33:53.420 is that we're a guilt-based culture as opposed to a shame-based culture.

00:33:56.680 So we're a culture where we actually value the feeling of internal guilt.

00:34:01.600 It shows that you're a good person, right?

00:34:02.920 That you recognize your own mistakes.

00:34:04.360 You try to correct those mistakes.

00:34:05.900 Shame-based cultures don't worry about what you're feeling internally with regard to guilt.

00:34:09.680 They are interested in avoiding shame.

00:34:11.540 And so what that means is they want to shame you.

00:34:13.660 And so this imbalance between kind of guilt cultures and shame cultures explains why the

00:34:18.360 whole cancel culture thing went out of control.

00:34:19.780 Because there were a bunch of people who would traditionally be considered lions who were

00:34:23.500 like somebody who called them out for a sin.

00:34:25.140 They'd say, oh, you know what?

00:34:25.860 That's true.

00:34:26.400 You know, I have sinned.

00:34:27.200 I could have done better.

00:34:28.100 And then people would stomp on their neck and be like, wait, that's not what's supposed

00:34:30.400 to happen.

00:34:30.980 Right.

00:34:31.260 When I express guilt, I'm supposed to like get forgiveness at the other end of that.

00:34:34.300 The religious concept of repentance is I acknowledge sin.

00:34:37.660 In return, I am restored.

00:34:39.120 Right?

00:34:39.300 That's the basic idea.

00:34:40.680 And we have an entire side of the culture that says if you acknowledge sin, you have been shamed.

00:34:45.400 And being shamed is shameful, right?

00:34:47.100 You are lesser now because you acknowledge your own guilt.

00:34:49.280 And so people do this and they don't understand if you pass on to your kids a sense of guilt

00:34:53.840 without a sense of pride in your civilization and in your duty and in the important things

00:34:58.160 to do, what you end up with is a bunch of kids who are ashamed of who they are.

00:35:01.820 And they end up trying to dissociate from their own civilization.

00:35:04.560 And they only feel good when they're doing that.

00:35:06.540 And this is why you see so many of sort of the scavengers not appearing in the poorest

00:35:10.700 areas of America.

00:35:11.840 A lot of those people are lions.

00:35:13.020 What you end up seeing is them appearing on very rich college campuses, having parents

00:35:16.960 who are earning in six figures.

00:35:18.640 Because they're saying, I don't want to be like my shame-ridden parents, these terrible

00:35:22.980 people who have made the world an exploited place.

00:35:26.080 I'm different.

00:35:26.680 I'm not like them.

00:35:27.720 And so you see them marching in the streets, you know, hundreds of thousands strong in some

00:35:31.120 places, in solidarity with destroying a civilization they've benefited from.

00:35:36.040 And again, I keep going back to Mamdani, but he's like a perfect example.

00:35:38.520 No one has grown up richer and more privileged in America than Zoran Mamdani.

00:35:41.480 And he's walking around trying to rip down everything that makes success possible.

00:35:45.520 And also, like so many of these scavengers, he's accomplished nothing.

00:35:48.360 Nothing.

00:35:48.700 He has absolutely nothing on his resume to point to.

00:35:50.660 Lisa Cook is way more qualified to be mayor of New York than he is.

00:35:53.080 She wrote a paper one time.

00:35:54.060 She did.

00:35:54.660 She did.

00:35:55.740 Exactly.

00:35:56.180 She did get that tenure.

00:35:57.200 No matter how she got it, she did get it.

00:35:58.740 It's more than we can say for him.

00:36:00.900 The person I keep thinking of when you're talking about this, because she's on my list of

00:36:03.820 things to ask you about today, because I just find her amusing, is Greta Turnberg.

00:36:07.880 So she embodies the scavengers.

00:36:09.980 Lord Farquaad?

00:36:10.540 The book, exactly, totally.

00:36:12.760 And also Little Lord Fauntleroy, both kind of all in one.

00:36:15.100 She's got the He-Man haircut now?

00:36:16.320 Yes.

00:36:16.780 It's very odd.

00:36:17.760 I don't know.

00:36:18.160 I mean, like, I'm sorry, but if you're Greta Turnberg, your goal when you wake up in the

00:36:21.880 morning should not be to say, I want to, how can I make myself look less attractive?

00:36:25.860 It should not.

00:36:26.660 You're good.

00:36:27.260 You can stay.

00:36:28.760 You're at the point where you can say, I hold.

00:36:30.580 I hold.

00:36:31.360 I don't need anything additional.

00:36:34.160 I don't need the haircut with the bangs up here and the curl down.

00:36:39.320 She's back.

00:36:40.460 David Burge, Iowa Hawke, had a great line.

00:36:42.140 He said she has now surpassed the, what was it, Gary Coleman record for playing a 10-year-old

00:36:46.660 the longest?

00:36:47.500 For playing a 10-year-old the longest, totally.

00:36:49.340 Yes.

00:36:49.900 Because, well, she not only is scavenger-esque, and the book, again, is called Lions and Scavengers

00:36:54.160 by Ben Shapiro.

00:36:55.020 It's out now.

00:36:55.640 Get it.

00:36:55.900 It's a great social, cultural, moral commentary on where we are as a world, not to mention

00:37:01.720 a country.

00:37:02.520 But she's not only a scavenger.

00:37:04.120 She represents something else, which is how scavengers elevate other scavengers, how they

00:37:08.180 see it in a certain individual, and they genuinely admire it.

00:37:12.760 You know, it's not fake, their admiration for somebody like that.

00:37:15.760 She's taught in schools.

00:37:17.380 I mean, every single school we've been at, we've been at four of them because we were

00:37:19.880 at the two in New York before we fled, and now two out here.

00:37:23.180 She gets mentioned as like someone for these kids to look up to.

00:37:26.200 So she's gone from, do we have the thought of making predictions about, you know, world

00:37:33.000 calamity that did not come true, to now making all sorts of pronouncements on Israel?

00:37:37.620 Because, sure, why not?

00:37:39.200 Why not?

00:37:39.540 Attracts.

00:37:40.040 Geopolitical expert.

00:37:41.160 Yes.

00:37:41.420 Here she is, just as a flavor for those who have forgotten.

00:37:44.400 You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I'm one of the

00:37:51.300 lucky ones.

00:37:53.740 People are suffering.

00:37:54.960 People are dying.

00:37:58.020 Entire ecosystems are collapsing.

00:38:01.320 We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy

00:38:08.180 tales of eternal economic growth.

00:38:11.360 How dare you?

00:38:12.360 Why is it so important to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius?

00:38:17.380 Because even at one degree, people are dying from climate change.

00:38:21.960 She's in Davos here.

00:38:22.840 The United Science calls for, to avoid destabilizing the climate so that we have the best possible

00:38:29.280 chance to avoid setting off irreversible chain reactions.

00:38:33.800 Every fraction of a degree matters.

00:38:36.980 I feel like we're doing okay.

00:38:38.700 Yes.

00:38:38.900 Just for the first time, one of the Arctic ice shelves grew this past summer.

00:38:44.080 I feel pretty good about where we are.

00:38:45.760 I think that's why she got off the climate change bandwagon.

00:38:47.540 I had a rule, and the rule was, until she was 18, I couldn't make fun of her, right?

00:38:50.560 Because we have this stupid game that we play in the media where if somebody trots out like

00:38:54.080 a child actor, which she is.

00:38:55.680 I mean, she actually is like a child actor.

00:38:57.220 Or, and then you're not allowed to criticize because they're not of majority.

00:39:00.560 Well, she's like 35 years old now.

00:39:01.860 Right.

00:39:02.200 And so we can make fun of her as much as we could possibly want.

00:39:04.740 But she is a perfect embodiment of what people have called the omni cause, right?

00:39:08.580 That what she actually is in favor of is like all the things, right?

00:39:11.560 She went from climate change seamlessly over to Gaza because it's all the same thing, which

00:39:15.220 is, I just hate the civilization.

00:39:17.180 I hate capitalism.

00:39:18.280 I mean, when she was talking about climate change, she didn't care about climate change.

00:39:20.820 No.

00:39:20.960 She openly said she wanted to destroy capitalism.

00:39:23.060 Capitalism was responsible for climate change.

00:39:25.580 It was responsible for all the evils on planet Earth.

00:39:28.540 And now she's transferred that right on over to Israel versus Hamas on the Gaza Strip.

00:39:32.580 Seamlessly.

00:39:33.060 And it's all the same people saying all the same things.

00:39:35.180 They just change the banner out every so often.

00:39:36.980 Truly.

00:39:37.280 It's why you see what's happening on campus, and it's the exact same people.

00:39:40.100 They just switched out the BLM for the Gaza.

00:39:41.900 They just went right from one to the other.

00:39:43.460 And then whatever the next cause will be, probably immigration, that'll be the next banner

00:39:46.920 because they can just move seamlessly from cause to cause.

00:39:49.080 The only thing the causes have in common is the system sucks.

00:39:52.100 I want to tear down the system.

00:39:53.300 And again, this girl has had the most privileged life.

00:39:56.260 I mean, she didn't go to school from the time she was like 12, 13 years old.

00:39:59.520 She was jet-setting around the country, well, sailing around the world to the great plaudits

00:40:03.120 of the rest of planet Earth.

00:40:05.000 And now, I guess she's getting attention for getting on a boat and trying to float her way

00:40:09.040 to Gaza and then being turned away after taking a few pictures with Hamas members.

00:40:11.860 And the Israelis gave her a bunch of sandwiches and drinks.

00:40:14.760 It was the nicest dejection ever.

00:40:15.920 It was really funny.

00:40:16.300 You saw the pictures of her?

00:40:17.360 She's actually smiling as she receives the food?

00:40:19.040 Yeah.

00:40:19.520 Like, you can't come in, but here's a lovely meal for you on your way out.

00:40:23.440 Take care.

00:40:24.080 Enjoy.

00:40:24.520 And of course, she's still with the, I'm a victim, the oppressive Israelis.

00:40:27.900 They definitely, it was basically like an airline genocide because they put her in the

00:40:31.740 back row next to the bathrooms on El Al, which I have done, which is brutal.

00:40:36.080 Well, she's not wrong about Israel becoming more and more controversial.

00:40:40.240 And that is why Chris Martin did what he did at the Coldplay concert the other night, which

00:40:46.380 I just thought was shameful.

00:40:47.880 I really, I can't believe it's at this point now where you get an Israeli on the stage and

00:40:54.640 you have to like, you're jarred.

00:40:56.520 You can clearly see, I'm going to play the clip.

00:40:57.820 You can see he's like jarred when he says, where are you from?

00:40:59.940 She says, Israel.

00:41:00.760 As if she said, you know, I don't know.

00:41:03.640 Hell.

00:41:04.060 Like, yeah.

00:41:04.540 North Korea.

00:41:05.520 Yeah.

00:41:05.680 Yeah.

00:41:05.800 Something like where you were like, holy shit.

00:41:07.360 What have you been through?

00:41:08.160 What's going on?

00:41:09.380 I'll play the clip.

00:41:10.180 We'll talk about it.

00:41:10.660 Here it is.

00:41:11.740 Where did you come from today?

00:41:13.960 From Israel.

00:41:14.860 Okay.

00:41:15.240 Well, wow.

00:41:16.940 Okay.

00:41:17.380 Well, listen.

00:41:18.320 Wow.

00:41:19.260 Wow.

00:41:19.700 He says.

00:41:19.980 I'm very grateful that you're here as humans and I am treating you as humans on earth,

00:41:26.160 regardless of where you come from.

00:41:28.440 Good for you, dude.

00:41:29.380 So sweet.

00:41:29.820 Thank you for being lovely and fine.

00:41:32.600 And although it's controversial, maybe, I also want to welcome people in the audience

00:41:36.200 from Palestine because we have a belief that we're all equal humans.

00:41:43.580 And, um, yeah.

00:41:46.520 I want to treat you as equal humans on earth.

00:41:49.980 Well, don't do any favors.

00:41:51.220 I know.

00:41:52.040 Like, first of all, you're Coldplay.

00:41:53.300 You suck.

00:41:53.880 Second of all, like, and apparently all he does is just go around ruining random people's

00:41:57.500 lives at Coldplay concerts.

00:41:58.560 Now that's just all that happens.

00:42:00.600 Beware if you go to a Coldplay concert, you get what's coming to you.

00:42:03.620 But yeah, I mean, the entire premise, which is like, look at me, I'm bestowing humanity

00:42:07.560 on you because you come from a country that's in the middle of a war after the worst assault

00:42:12.420 on Jews since World War II.

00:42:13.700 How, you know, and now I'm also going to name check, you know, people who are on the other

00:42:18.440 side of that.

00:42:19.060 Would he do this in literally any other circumstance?

00:42:20.940 No.

00:42:21.200 Like if it were Russians, let's say it were Russians and they said, I'm from Russia.

00:42:24.500 Would he say, well, you know, I just have a name, throw it out there.

00:42:27.860 You're human.

00:42:28.760 And so are people from, I'm just going to name check Ukraine.

00:42:31.100 I can't imagine him doing something like that.

00:42:35.740 Why wouldn't you just say nothing or I'm sorry for all your country's been going through?

00:42:41.020 Right.

00:42:41.280 Or, or like, I'm so glad you came.

00:42:43.220 Yeah, that's it.

00:42:43.780 Just leave it alone.

00:42:44.500 Take a side.

00:42:45.040 You don't have to do anything.

00:42:45.720 You don't have to do anything.

00:42:46.400 But I mean, an Israeli citizen, like this isn't the IDF, right?

00:42:49.600 Like this is some like heavyset woman who showed up at his concert, who's clearly, you

00:42:54.580 know, not one of the chief fighters and he can't, he's got to take a political, like

00:42:59.080 why can't with her, you just say, you know what, there's, it's unambiguous.

00:43:02.280 Obviously the war has gone on for two years and it's getting more controversial as we've

00:43:05.440 discussed, but, but that's not to say that Israel, it was anything other than wrongly

00:43:12.700 attacked on 10-7 and an absolutely brutal terrorist attack from which the country is still

00:43:16.940 very much suffering.

00:43:17.660 I mean, like the bodies haven't even been in the ground for two years.

00:43:21.000 Like maybe a word about the hostages, the Israeli hostages who are still suffering, who

00:43:25.000 are starving to death too.

00:43:26.220 I always find it interesting at these sort of musical events.

00:43:28.880 I mean, you remember this thing was launched on the basis of a gigantic attack at a music

00:43:33.200 event, right?

00:43:33.640 It was the Nova Music Festival where some 300 people were slaughtered for going to essentially

00:43:36.840 a rave on a Friday night in the desert.

00:43:39.120 And at all these music festivals, they're out there like chanting in favor of essentially a

00:43:43.480 group that bans all music festivals in the Gaza Strip.

00:43:46.400 Not a lot of music festivals starring Coldplay in the Gaza Strip.

00:43:49.280 But again, he didn't have to go there.

00:43:51.020 I mean, wherever you are on these issues, and obviously my perspective is extremely clear

00:43:54.660 on this.

00:43:55.460 You just don't have to do it.

00:43:57.040 The fact that he felt the necessity to sort of apologize for the presence of Israelis at

00:44:01.660 his concert says something really disturbing.

00:44:04.460 Yeah.

00:44:04.680 Because you don't have to do that.

00:44:07.360 You don't have to.

00:44:07.900 And I understand that there are people there who immediately start booing any mention of

00:44:10.380 Israel.

00:44:10.640 He could just go right over the top of that.

00:44:12.080 Yep.

00:44:12.520 He doesn't need to.

00:44:14.180 I think if it were me, I would be caught by surprise by somebody who's in the middle

00:44:17.480 of a war, whose country's that.

00:44:19.100 I think I would have said something like, I hope your family's okay.

00:44:21.740 Yeah, exactly.

00:44:22.220 And by the way, he would have said the same thing if it was somebody from Gaza.

00:44:25.680 Yeah.

00:44:25.920 Right.

00:44:26.040 You could have done that.

00:44:26.760 Right.

00:44:27.320 But I'm choosing to treat you like a human.

00:44:29.600 He would certainly not say that.

00:44:30.740 If there had been two people from Gaza, he would not have said, I'm choosing to treat

00:44:33.860 you as a human.

00:44:35.320 As a human.

00:44:35.820 I just want to say, welcome to the people from Israel here also.

00:44:38.720 No way in hell.

00:44:39.620 Which shows you exactly where he stands on it.

00:44:40.940 And here's the thing, Ben.

00:44:41.760 Even though, like, even Trump is saying now, like, Israel's losing the PR war.

00:44:46.900 Okay.

00:44:47.200 And I've been saying that, and I think that's true.

00:44:48.880 I don't think they should, but I think they are.

00:44:50.440 I mean, it is true.

00:44:52.220 Yeah.

00:44:52.380 And also, like, wars go on a long time, and they're ugly.

00:44:55.760 And Hamas is great at propaganda.

00:44:57.100 Hamas is great at propaganda.

00:44:57.980 And also, I've yet to see a longstanding war in which one side is Western and the other

00:45:02.320 side is terrorist, and you don't end up, quote unquote, losing the PR war if it goes on a

00:45:05.620 long time.

00:45:05.900 Well, this is where I was going to go with it, because who does Chris Martin think his

00:45:09.980 values, like his core values that actually he lives by align better with?

00:45:14.040 Right?

00:45:14.300 I mean, if you actually press this guy, he would, of course, say Israel every day of the week.

00:45:18.180 But so many people, when they comment on this, when they embrace Hamas or, you

00:45:22.160 know, they won't usually say Hamas.

00:45:24.080 They'll say the Palestinians.

00:45:25.220 Right.

00:45:25.860 When pressed, like, what is it about them, you know, that really resonates with you?

00:45:30.040 Really can't say anything.

00:45:31.440 It's just about how bad Israel is.

00:45:32.920 Right.

00:45:33.080 It'll always be they're victims, right?

00:45:35.080 Victims, victims.

00:45:35.900 They're oppressed.

00:45:36.260 And the thing was about the victims and oppression narrative, that that was basically thoroughly

00:45:41.460 debunked by October 8th, meaning on October 7th, there was a gigantic attack that was launched

00:45:47.420 on Israel.

00:45:48.360 In 2005, Israel abandoned the Gaza Strip.

00:45:50.360 They were not in control of the Gaza Strip.

00:45:51.900 It's the reason October 7th happened.

00:45:53.140 If they'd had any sort of security oversight in the Gaza Strip, it never would have happened

00:45:56.640 in the first place.

00:45:58.000 And on October 7th, there was a gigantic attack.

00:46:01.080 And then the idea was that somehow the attack was Israel's fault, despite having abandoned

00:46:06.640 the Strip in 2005.

00:46:08.960 And so it's like, it's a no-win situation.

00:46:10.460 Yeah, the blockade, it was occupied.

00:46:13.920 Right.

00:46:14.160 It's occupied.

00:46:14.900 It's the blockade.

00:46:15.420 But as everyone recognizes who's watched this conflict for any period of time, if the Palestinians

00:46:20.060 in Gaza had put down the guns and put down the cement mixers for building the gigantic

00:46:25.080 terrors on a larger than the London subway.

00:46:26.660 And if they had said, we wish to economically develop, nobody would have been happier about

00:46:31.380 that than the Israelis.

00:46:32.640 And I know everyone on both sides of the Israeli political divide, the left and the right over

00:46:36.960 there.

00:46:37.300 And there's virtually no one there who would not have been very much in favor of an economically

00:46:41.200 well-developed neighbor to its immediate southwest that was not at war with it.

00:46:45.100 That would be a much nicer thing.

00:46:46.500 Because again, Israel has to draft all of its 18-year-olds into an army where they're having

00:46:50.120 their limbs blown off.

00:46:50.940 I mean, nobody in Israel is like clamoring for more war.

00:46:53.900 And this lie that that's what this is all about, I think that goes to a broader perception

00:46:58.900 of the West, that the West is a warmongering place, that all problems that happen all over

00:47:02.720 the world are the West's fault.

00:47:04.460 Everybody is doing blowback to the West.

00:47:06.180 Nobody ever has any individual agency anywhere else on Earth.

00:47:09.080 Anything bad that happens anywhere on Earth is the result of American foreign policy or

00:47:12.780 Israeli foreign policy or European foreign policy.

00:47:15.600 Well, what if it turns out that the world is a complex place and there are a lot of people

00:47:19.440 out there who have their own ideas of what they would like in life and geopolitically?

00:47:23.340 And those ideas don't match what the West wants, that people actually have agency.

00:47:27.300 When you say, you know, people should just take, like, maybe take a minute and actually

00:47:30.300 take a look over there.

00:47:31.340 I think you're being too hard.

00:47:32.540 Ibram X.

00:47:33.200 Kendi, didn't he go for, was it Ibram Kendi?

00:47:35.640 It was Ta-Nehisi Coates.

00:47:36.320 Oh, sorry.

00:47:36.800 I confused my left-wing black scholars, and I use that term scholars very liberally.

00:47:42.320 Ten days, I think he said.

00:47:43.860 Ten whole days, Ben.

00:47:44.760 Ten whole days.

00:47:45.260 He knows.

00:47:45.900 And his narrative, and he's a perfect example, his narrative lines up with the idea that

00:47:50.080 there are brown people in the Middle East and white people in the Middle East.

00:47:52.240 And the brown people in the Middle East are the Palestinians, and the white people are

00:47:54.940 the Jews.

00:47:55.660 And therefore, it's just like, and he says this in his book, black Americans and white

00:47:58.440 Americans.

00:47:58.960 And so because he believes that black Americans are oppressed in the United States by a white

00:48:02.760 supremacist structure, he then takes that exact same logic and he tries to apply that

00:48:06.600 wrong, faulty, false, and ugly logic to the Middle East, despite the fact that, by the

00:48:12.540 way, half of Israelis are brown.

00:48:13.660 Okay, let me ask you this, you know, in a couple of minutes.

00:48:17.980 How is it going to wrap up?

00:48:19.700 Because I will say, you know, my, a good friend of mine, it might have been Alan Dershowitz,

00:48:24.540 I was in the middle of several text exchanges, he said something like, I want to come on

00:48:28.580 and we'll debate Israel.

00:48:29.860 And I was like, there's nothing to debate.

00:48:30.900 This happened with me and a couple of people.

00:48:32.040 Like, there's nothing to debate.

00:48:32.780 I'm on Israel's side.

00:48:34.020 I don't, I'm not, you're looking for the wrong target.

00:48:36.040 Um, but I do, I do think they need to wrap it up because as a fan of Israel, I just,

00:48:43.080 you know, you can see what's happening.

00:48:44.360 I would, I think everyone in Israel wants them to wrap it up.

00:48:46.600 So what's the solution?

00:48:47.300 Because they don't have their hostages back.

00:48:49.140 Right.

00:48:49.560 So this has always been, what if they don't get them back?

00:48:51.540 So this has always been the, the serious problem with how Israel has approached the

00:48:54.760 war from October 8th.

00:48:55.680 And I've said this many, many times, Israel elevated as co-equal goals, getting the hostage

00:49:00.880 back and winning the war.

00:49:02.500 And those cannot be co-equal goals.

00:49:04.360 They can't.

00:49:04.980 And because the minute that you get down to the end of the war, and now you have to pick

00:49:07.660 one of those, getting the hostages back or quote unquote, winning the war, then you're

00:49:11.620 in a conundrum.

00:49:12.300 And that's kind of where Israel is right now.

00:49:13.720 Now, I think that Netanyahu is doing the right thing by saying they all come out, right?

00:49:16.820 We're not going to do this, this sort of Zeno's paradox with hostages where I get 10 and

00:49:20.060 then five and then two and then one.

00:49:21.620 And Hamas obviously doesn't want to give all the hostages up because they're afraid that

00:49:24.960 the minute they do, Israel goes in and finishes the job.

00:49:27.440 And Hamas is basically defenestrated and that's the end of it.

00:49:29.920 So that's, that's the impasse that they're at right now.

00:49:32.240 Well, I think the way that the war probably ends is that Israel goes into Gaza City.

00:49:36.460 Israel sets up humanitarian enclaves.

00:49:38.940 They've already talked about this in Rafa and several on the coast in Gaza where humanitarian

00:49:43.120 aid is available plentifully.

00:49:45.260 Right now, the, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is shipping in something on the order of 4,400

00:49:50.040 calories per day per person into the Gaza Strip.

00:49:52.400 No war in history has seen the amount of aid go from one side to the opposing sides, civilians

00:49:58.260 in the history of all modern warfare, the way that Israel has been shipping in aid over

00:50:02.300 the course of the last six months or so into the, into the Gaza Strip.

00:50:05.640 And so those areas, I believe the plan is to make those areas essentially terror free.

00:50:11.620 The security will be provided by the Israelis.

00:50:13.680 And I think they're hoping for a coalition of Arab countries as well.

00:50:17.220 Um, and listen, I think the United States should be involved in the most minimal possible way,

00:50:21.400 like really minimal.

00:50:22.200 I don't want American boots on the ground ever, ever, ever, ever.

00:50:24.380 I don't think the United States should have boots on the ground in that place.

00:50:27.300 It's a very, very bad place.

00:50:28.820 The, I think the idea that president Trump has put forward, which is essentially Israel

00:50:31.840 should make the ground safe over there.

00:50:33.560 And then economic building can happen.

00:50:35.700 Let, let the free market.

00:50:36.900 Trump, Trump international, Gaza Lago, Gaza Lago, like it's actually, it's a better plan

00:50:44.580 than whatever the hell they've been doing in the Gaza Strip for the last 80 years, which,

00:50:47.260 which has been a hell hole for a very long time.

00:50:48.960 Alternatively, by the way, on social media, either a hell hole or a paradise prior to October

00:50:52.520 7th, depending on which account you're, you're, you're looking at.

00:50:55.280 Um, but that, that seems to be the most likely scenario is a full scale military crackdown

00:51:01.080 in the areas that are not humanitarian enclaves, a declaration of the end of the war by the

00:51:06.580 Israelis.

00:51:06.860 And then the announcement that they are now in counterinsurgency operations in all the areas

00:51:11.400 that are not the humanitarian enclaves.

00:51:12.780 That seems to be the direction that things are moving pretty quickly.

00:51:14.980 Let's hope they move quickly.

00:51:16.320 I think they will.

00:51:17.100 Stand by.

00:51:17.420 Ben stays with us.

00:51:18.220 The books, lions and scavengers.

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00:52:26.400 I'm Chris Hadfield.

00:52:27.880 I'm an astronaut, an author, a citizen of planet Earth.

00:52:31.660 Join me for a six-part journey into the systems that power the world.

00:52:36.900 Real conversations with real people who are shaping the future of energy.

00:52:42.040 No politics, no empty talk, just solutions-focused conversations on the challenges we must overcome

00:52:49.560 and the possibilities that lie ahead.

00:52:51.960 This is On Energy.

00:52:54.420 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

00:52:59.880 We're back.

00:53:00.880 Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:53:02.340 Back with me here, my friend Ben Shapiro.

00:53:04.180 He's the author of the new book, Lions and Scavengers, The True Story of America, and

00:53:09.940 her critics.

00:53:10.740 It's out today.

00:53:11.600 Go get it now.

00:53:12.580 All sorts of good stuff in here.

00:53:14.160 Lots of wisdom for you, your kids, and just a philosophy and like how to be in your life.

00:53:19.720 How do you accept daily troubles?

00:53:21.660 How do you accept what the hand life has dealt you?

00:53:24.100 How do you accept messages that are all around you about the news or our country and so on?

00:53:28.780 What made you write it?

00:53:29.660 Well, I mean, I think that the genesis of this book was different than some of my others.

00:53:33.500 So usually I sit down and I sort of plan out what I want the book to be and then I read

00:53:37.540 and I research and then it comes out.

00:53:39.080 This one was written originally almost as a diary.

00:53:41.560 I was writing it contemporaneously over the course of the last couple of years.

00:53:44.580 And so there's a lot of first person.

00:53:45.820 I never use first person in my writing ever.

00:53:47.680 I hate using the word I on my show or in my books.

00:53:50.820 It appears a fair bit in this one because there's a lot of travel involved over the course of the last couple of years.

00:53:55.440 The book opens in London because this is where it first forcibly struck me what was going on.

00:54:00.260 So I went to London.

00:54:01.140 This is November of 2023.

00:54:02.480 I was supposed to debate over at Oxford and Cambridge over what was going on in the Gaza Strip.

00:54:06.740 And there had been a gigantic like 300,000 person march with the entire scavenger panoply.

00:54:13.140 And my security said, like, you're not allowed to stay in London.

00:54:15.920 If you stay in London, it's actually unsafe.

00:54:17.180 You have to stay like an hour outside of London and closer to Oxford.

00:54:20.580 And then when we actually went to Oxford, there was a significant security threat.

00:54:24.420 Like my security was quite concerned about it.

00:54:27.900 I mean, I have 24-7 security, so I'm pretty used to that sort of stuff.

00:54:30.320 But it was kind of a real thing.

00:54:32.460 And so I sat down and I started writing, like, this is one of the most historic places.

00:54:34.840 They're upstairs right now.

00:54:35.380 They have my entire staff at gunpoint.

00:54:36.660 Yeah, exactly.

00:54:37.000 And I started thinking, like, this is one of the great historic places of Western civilization,

00:54:42.960 the University of Oxford.

00:54:43.840 You're going back 1,000 years to its establishment.

00:54:46.200 And just a few blocks down, you can find the place where Richard the Lionheart was crowned.

00:54:49.780 You can find all these places.

00:54:51.320 And the people who are marching through these places are people who hate all of this,

00:54:54.760 who hate every single bit of this.

00:54:56.480 And so I started writing it because of that.

00:54:58.380 It was kind of out of a confusion and anger and true kind of interior turmoil about what have

00:55:05.520 we done to our own civilization that this sort of thing seems to be the rule rather than the

00:55:10.340 exception.

00:55:11.140 Because I think we all grew up in a time, and I grew up in the 90s, where this really was

00:55:15.020 the exception.

00:55:16.180 Everyone sort of accepted, right and left.

00:55:18.060 And America was a pretty damned amazing place.

00:55:19.800 And now it seems as though there is a bit of a horseshoe theory thing going on here where

00:55:23.740 huge swaths of the left and small parts of the right may be growing.

00:55:27.160 Think America is not all that great, or Western civilization is the great center in the history of

00:55:31.360 the world.

00:55:32.260 And where is that coming from?

00:55:34.040 And so over the course of the last couple of years, I sort of wrote it.

00:55:38.040 One area from which it's coming, and I understand the theory of the book and really enjoyed it,

00:55:43.740 Lions and Scavengers, everyone, by Ben Shapiro.

00:55:46.060 But one area it's coming from is just right now, great distrust of government, right?

00:55:51.560 Of our own government too.

00:55:52.620 And like, to me, part of it is very understandable and justifiable only because our government

00:55:57.460 is so effed up.

00:55:59.040 They're not to be trusted.

00:56:00.060 Like, we saw that over the past five years in such technicolor that that's why I think

00:56:06.000 you have people on the right sharing in this too.

00:56:08.360 I mean, I agree with a lot of that, actually.

00:56:10.080 I think that on the left, it's endemic to the ideology.

00:56:12.580 On the right, I do think it's an outgrowth of events and lack of trust.

00:56:16.740 I do think that it's easy for conservatives and people on the right to throw the baby

00:56:20.300 out with the bathwater because I've spent my entire life being skeptical of government

00:56:25.040 for the most part.

00:56:25.740 I'm a conservative.

00:56:26.360 I want the government to be small enough to be drowned in the bathtub, as Grover Norquist

00:56:29.060 once memorably said.

00:56:30.260 Lovely.

00:56:30.480 You know, like, that's fine.

00:56:31.580 I think the government is quite awful in most ways.

00:56:34.840 With that said, the institutions that were set up by the founders are quite good.

00:56:38.100 And many of the institutions that we need in our lives, family and church, are really,

00:56:41.500 really, really important.

00:56:42.380 And when you start tearing away at the institutions or when the idea is that the institutions have

00:56:47.620 been so thoroughly destroyed from the inside by the left that you have to tear them down.

00:56:51.860 I think there are cases where that's true, but I think you can overlearn the lesson.

00:56:55.380 I think you can go from the CDC really screwed it up in 2020 to never trust any science, random

00:57:01.620 guy on the street giving you advice.

00:57:03.480 And we still do need, like, I was thinking about with the CDC controversy.

00:57:05.820 I have no tears to shed for these losers who are leaving right now.

00:57:08.320 Neither do I.

00:57:09.000 But we need a CDC.

00:57:10.420 See, like, there needs to be some public health organization that keeps an eye on growing

00:57:14.680 bugs and whatever in the world.

00:57:16.660 And ideally, it would be one that's non-politicized that could just give us a straight scoop on

00:57:20.340 here's what we know, here's what we don't know.

00:57:22.120 We're not going to overreact.

00:57:23.220 We're going to be—I think we have that team in place right now.

00:57:25.300 I love Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

00:57:26.900 Thrilled about him.

00:57:27.980 Martin Koldorf would be amazing.

00:57:29.680 Martin McCary's great.

00:57:30.680 Martin McCary's awesome.

00:57:31.800 I like RFKJ.

00:57:32.760 But my point is simply, under him, he's controversial, but under him, there's a wonderful team.

00:57:37.060 Vinay Prasad over it with Martin McCary.

00:57:42.260 So I like those guys.

00:57:43.600 And I feel the same about the FBI.

00:57:45.000 Like, if the FBI would just do, like, crime fighting and actually, like, I'm fine with

00:57:48.900 them keeping an eye on all the domestic terrorists who want to, like, blow us up from, you know,

00:57:52.260 radical Islam, Islamic countries.

00:57:54.140 I'm not—I don't have a problem with that.

00:57:56.440 It's when they started to really, like, turn political and turn, like, us into political

00:58:01.260 enemies.

00:58:01.700 I totally agree with this.

00:58:02.460 So it's like, I agree, those institutions can stay, but down to the studs and then rebuild.

00:58:06.640 I mean, so I totally agree with this, and I think that was one of the purposes of the

00:58:09.080 Trump revolution, right?

00:58:09.860 I mean, the idea of the Trump election was put people who had been victimized by these

00:58:13.360 specific agencies in charge of the agencies and let them go to town, let them purge and

00:58:17.940 let them go through and try to make these institutions more honest.

00:58:20.760 By the way, including places like the State Department, where Secretary Rubio has been going

00:58:23.720 through with a hatchet, like, all of that, I think, is really, really good, but I think

00:58:27.360 that the gap emerges for me from the CIA has done some pretty terrible things over the

00:58:33.460 course of the last five years or so in terms of going after political enemies, for example,

00:58:38.980 with regard to Russiagate.

00:58:40.520 There's a leap from there to the CIA killed JFK, or the CIA was always a nefarious actor

00:58:45.260 in the world, and anything that it did from 1950—

00:58:47.240 Or that it's been responsible for everything.

00:58:49.500 Right, oh, right.

00:58:50.260 Secretly, it's behind the scenes, manipulating—here's my thing, evidence, right?

00:58:53.580 So I can evidentially show you how the CDC screwed things up in 2020, and you can too.

00:58:58.240 Right?

00:58:58.600 It's, like, available for everyone to see.

00:59:00.300 Lived it.

00:59:00.880 Exactly.

00:59:01.420 You can see how the FBI screwed things up with Russiagate because we all saw it happen,

00:59:04.920 and all the evidence is basically available.

00:59:08.440 I make the case in the book that conspiracy theories are bad, but that doesn't mean conspiracies

00:59:12.120 don't exist.

00:59:12.920 They do.

00:59:13.380 The difference between a conspiracy theory and a conspiracy is that a conspiracy has evidence

00:59:17.280 to it, and a conspiracy theory does not.

00:59:19.360 And there is something that Karl Popper, the philosopher, talked about as sort of the great

00:59:22.700 conspiracy theory of life, which is this idea that everything in my life that's going

00:59:26.420 wrong is the result of a shadowy cadre of people I can't quite identify, but maybe I can't,

00:59:30.520 but I can't quite identify, who are behind the scenes, who are manipulating things.

00:59:34.120 And that's—beyond it being wrong, it's really enervating.

00:59:37.040 Like, truly enervating.

00:59:38.460 Any population that believes that there's a shadowy conspiracy, that they can't identify

00:59:41.900 or fight in any material way, who's wrecking their lives, what you're really saying to

00:59:45.900 people is, you cannot succeed.

00:59:47.360 There is no way for you to succeed.

00:59:48.800 It's basically back to a pagan world before God, where the gods are up there fighting.

00:59:52.300 Let's do a real life example of it.

00:59:53.660 Sure.

00:59:53.920 Because you look at COVID, that's obviously the most recent, where we know, and we knew

00:59:59.500 at the time, some of us who were paying attention knew that this thing came from a lab,

01:00:02.460 that it did not come from some random pangolin.

01:00:04.380 It became clear, I should say.

01:00:05.860 Not everybody knew right from the get-go, but it seemed really super clear.

01:00:09.560 And then the reason that conspiracy theory, in quotes, was borne out as an actual conspiracy

01:00:14.860 that was being perpetrated against us, I think was in large part the Republicans won the House,

01:00:18.820 the Republicans started using subpoenas, the Republicans got documents from Fauci and Collins

01:00:25.100 on all these others showing the top virologists were all saying this looks like it is man-made,

01:00:30.420 this does not look like anything that could grow in nature.

01:00:32.280 You saw the men in power saying, fuck off, do not say that publicly, everyone needs to

01:00:37.280 get in line, it would be very damaging to our relationship with China and health to say something

01:00:43.140 like that.

01:00:43.800 And literally overnight, those same virologists came out and said, from a pangolin, it's

01:00:48.100 nature, definitely not lab-made.

01:00:51.640 I mean, so that, it's very rare when your conspiracy theory is actually proven with evidence, like

01:00:57.020 with papers that you could submit in a court of law to win the case before a jury beyond a reasonable

01:01:01.040 doubt. In nine times out of ten, the conspiracy theories never get that. So that's where some

01:01:06.800 people get stuck in that, and some people are like adjacent. It's like, I'm still waiting for

01:01:11.320 my proof. I'm waiting, I'm waiting, I'm waiting.

01:01:12.340 I agree with this, and I do think you do have to do a sort of Bayesian analysis, meaning like,

01:01:16.140 look at the plausibility of the conspiracy theory and the number of people that are required

01:01:19.520 to carry it out. And usually the grandest conspiracy theories require an extraordinary level

01:01:24.000 of competence, coordination, and number of people involved. So to take the example of the

01:01:29.180 idiotic theory that the moon landing was faked. And the number of people who would have to be

01:01:32.520 involved in the faking of the moon landing, and be great at their jobs, right? Not just like good

01:01:36.320 at their jobs, incredible at their jobs, because they'd have to fake it, and then they'd have to

01:01:39.480 maintain that silence and that secrecy for six decades plus. And they would have to get everybody

01:01:43.760 around them to also maintain that silence and secrecy in order to come up with this.

01:01:47.820 Well, isn't it also true that there's like an alien being held captive someplace in Nevada?

01:01:52.720 Yeah, exactly. I mean, look at the government. You know what usually a conspiracy theory is?

01:01:56.160 An actual conspiracy in the government typically is some power-hungry schmuck who's telling his

01:02:01.180 immediate subordinates to do a thing. And usually the circle of trust is like, I don't know, 15,

01:02:05.080 20 people. Like, if you look at like the Mueller report, or you're looking at what James Comey was

01:02:10.360 doing, that wasn't involving 2,000 agents. That was involving a fairly small team inside the FBI,

01:02:14.660 and it was really bad and really ugly. But it was like, that one was plausible, especially because

01:02:19.140 all of the outside indicators matched up with extremely plausible activity that a person was doing.

01:02:24.160 And then over time, it was revealed that that was true. But when you see these sort of kind of

01:02:27.460 grand overarching conspiracy theories where everything is the result, every single thing

01:02:31.600 is a grand unifying field theory of why your life isn't the way you want it to be,

01:02:35.580 it doesn't make your life better. Does it make your life better? Or does it make you smarter?

01:02:39.100 Like, what is it? This is my test. If you believe in all of them, it's you.

01:02:43.960 Yes. You know, I mean, truly, I know people like this who like used to have a stronger foothold in

01:02:50.920 reality, but just to become untethered. I think COVID had a major effect on a lot of people like

01:02:55.320 that who are like, borderline conspiratorial, but then went full, where it's almost like they've

01:03:00.240 had a break and they've, nothing is as it seems anymore. They see conspiracies everywhere. They

01:03:05.080 believe nothing that's being told to them, especially if it involves any facet of the government.

01:03:08.920 And I really think a good test for anybody to ask themselves is, do I believe in all of them?

01:03:14.460 Are there some where I'm like, that I don't buy? Because if you believe in all of them,

01:03:19.940 we're dealing with a you problem. I mean, I think that's right. I think also that when

01:03:23.080 you're analyzing information, obviously the source of the information matters. This is obviously true

01:03:27.260 that no one in the world is perfectly objective about anything. Maybe math is objective. Not very

01:03:32.000 many other things are. And when, when you are hearing people who are espousing conspiracy theories,

01:03:37.240 they are always taking somebody's expertise word for it. Somebody's word for it, right? This idea,

01:03:41.780 like I never listened to anyone, right? I'm a, I'm a pure skeptic. You're, you're really not though,

01:03:46.560 because in the end, you're believing a theory. That theory is based on somebody else's opinion.

01:03:50.540 And so that means that you're having to take somebody's view for granted. So you have to

01:03:53.360 try to establish, I mean, this is just how we go through life. You try to establish the

01:03:56.420 credibility of the people that you're talking to based on prior track record.

01:03:59.360 It's hard though. It is hard. It's hard.

01:04:01.340 Because you realize over the past five years alone, you realize that the people who are given to you as

01:04:05.260 the so-called experts are, they're liars. They're like, that's what I started the show by saying,

01:04:09.620 right? Like, you know, 51 intelligence officials believe that the Hunter Biden laptop is Russian

01:04:14.580 disinformation. Now we never believe that one, but you can see how well-meaning people in America

01:04:18.920 believed it. Well, I think one of the things you said was right. You said, you said, I mean,

01:04:21.720 and the opposite of it also, you said, if you believe all the theories, it's you. And if you

01:04:24.740 believe none of the theories, I think that it's also you. Because I think that, you know, when,

01:04:28.200 when you're looking at conspiracy theories, at least at the very outset, you have to judge the

01:04:31.820 plausibility and then you follow the evidence where it leads. But I think this is the difference also

01:04:35.960 between what I've called on the show, just asking questions and actually just like asking questions.

01:04:40.820 If you're just asking questions, typically you're not looking for an answer. If your question is not

01:04:44.680 seeking an answer, and if no answer given to your question can satisfy you, you're not asking

01:04:48.840 questions. You're positing a theory. Well, and also I think if you, if you genuine, if you genuinely

01:04:53.260 don't have an agenda and you're in the business of just asking questions, then you'll ask those

01:04:58.260 questions of people who say the opposite thing too, right? Like exactly. That's my own approach.

01:05:03.380 I try to get both sides on, you know, so that the audience can make up their own minds. They're big

01:05:07.560 boys and girls. They don't need me to pronounce this is what's real. Sometimes I will. Um, but

01:05:12.540 I think I like to be open-minded unless something's just totally fucking lunatic, you know, and it's

01:05:17.100 like, well, forget it. I'm not going to put you on because I don't want to intentionally confuse

01:05:20.260 anybody. Um, but it's very hard. And that's one of the things that's bothering me about the CDC

01:05:24.960 meltdown because so RFKJ, I mean, what appears to have happened is RFKJ had in the head of the CDC,

01:05:33.120 Lisa Monarez and, sorry, sorry. Uh, Susan Monarez, her last name confuses me too. Um, and wanted

01:05:42.440 her to do a couple of things around vaccines and wanted to change some things around vaccines.

01:05:47.380 And she disagreed with him. And then from what I read in the papers, she ran to secretary or to

01:05:52.780 Senator Cassidy and tattled on him and was like, he's doing crazy things. We need more oversight.

01:05:59.240 And then they got mad because she wasn't going to do what he wanted her to do. And she ran and

01:06:03.800 tattled on him to set to Senator Cassidy, who's annoying and thinks he's the HHS secretary. He

01:06:09.980 annoys me greatly. Um, and then she got fired. So fine. I'm fine with her being fired. Like you're

01:06:16.200 not the boss. No one elected you or nominated and confirmed you as HHS secretary. You're lucky you

01:06:21.980 have the job you do have. Uh, anyway, she got fired and then wouldn't leave. And now we have four or

01:06:29.040 five top CDC officials being like, me too. I quit too. I'm not working for this lunatic,

01:06:33.180 including some of the greatest people. Okay. So this is what, so the couple of things there's the,

01:06:39.440 just ask him very sexy BDSM, very gay over the top pregnant people person.

01:06:45.340 And pox dude. Yeah. And pox dude. Okay. I have zero use for somebody lecturing me on,

01:06:50.260 as you would say, the science TM, um, who's using the term pregnant people and pronouns and saying,

01:06:56.480 I can't stand the rice and their erasure of the trans community. Okay. Stop. So that's,

01:07:02.080 here he is. This is the most tame. If you go on X and search this guy, Daskalakis or whatever his last

01:07:07.700 name is, you will find genuinely near X rated photos of this person who never should have been in a

01:07:12.620 position of public authority. Certainly not public health. Oh, here we go. Here are some of them.

01:07:16.460 Does that look like somebody from whom you want your public health advice? It does not.

01:07:20.360 I mean, it looks like impact patient zero. Honestly, like what that, none of that looks

01:07:23.980 sanitary. Okay. So that's one thing. So he still wants to advise us on what vaccines we should be

01:07:28.840 taking. Okay. So that's one piece of it, whatever to somebody like that. But the nerve of these people

01:07:34.300 to now be like the distrust in public health that RFKJ is creating and the team around him,

01:07:43.340 I've never seen someone so immune to the science and real facts. It really makes me want to

01:07:51.260 figuratively, not actually strangle somebody. Yes. Well, I mean, it's gotta be kidding us, Ben.

01:07:56.180 They're doing the game that they did with Trump when he first came on the scene where Trump would say,

01:07:59.600 this institution sucks. This is all terrible. They say, he's destroying the credibility of the

01:08:03.400 institution. Well, what I always said about president Trump is the left accused him of

01:08:06.800 being the killer. And actually he was the coroner. He would stumble on a body and be like,

01:08:09.640 that's a dead body. And they'd be like, cause you killed it. They're like, no, no, no. It was

01:08:12.540 dead before I got here. Oh, I mean, the reason that RFK Jr. is the HHS secretary is the same reason

01:08:17.460 that Cash Patel is the head of the FBI. It's very funny. You should say this. Cause I always said

01:08:20.280 about Trump and the media and certain other organizations too. He was the Kevorkian to their suicide,

01:08:24.800 right? Like he's there. I'll give you the machine. That's fair. It's up to you what you want to do

01:08:28.220 with it. Yeah, exactly. And I think that when it comes to RFK, the reason he ended up as HHS secretary is

01:08:33.340 specifically because of this, it's because of the radical distrust of the public health

01:08:36.800 authorities. And one of the ways that you can tell, they did this whole New York times op-ed as

01:08:40.860 like nine former CDC heads writing an op-ed about how terrible RFK Jr. was. I know, I know. And some

01:08:46.020 of the things that they're pointing out are frankly things where I actually kind of disagree with,

01:08:48.840 with RFK Jr. I don't agree with everything RFK Jr. is doing. What I've said before is that,

01:08:52.520 you know, RFK Jr. I like him. I feel like he needs to take the spinal tap 11 down to like a spinal tap

01:08:57.220 seven. Everything is always all the way to the top, but, but you know, like, you know,

01:09:01.320 when, when it comes to completely defunding, for example, all mRNA vaccine research, I think that

01:09:05.960 the vaccine, obviously not, I think it was clearly oversold, right? We were lied to about the,

01:09:10.300 the vaccine's ability to stop transmissibility of the virus. That obviously was, was untrue. And

01:09:14.520 that was like an overt lie that was told by members of government and by Pfizer. And his risks were

01:09:18.440 undersold, particularly for young people. For, for older people, the steel man case for the vaccine is

01:09:22.800 that if you're over 65 and obese, that it, that it lowered your death rate. Okay, fine. Fair enough.

01:09:26.220 The, the killing of like all mRNA vaccine research, cause you don't like the COVID vaccine,

01:09:30.860 that might be overkill and that might be a problem. But one of the things they did,

01:09:34.140 and this just demonstrates how incompetent they are. Let's say that you were going to advise them

01:09:37.960 on PR. What you would do is you'd say, pick the single most obvious topic where he is in

01:09:43.600 violation of sort of the typical understanding of science, RFK Jr. Right? Like find the thing where

01:09:48.140 he sinned the worst and then focus on that. Instead, what that op-ed does, it lists like 10 things.

01:09:51.900 And the last thing that lists is, and he backed a terrible health bill that cuts Medicaid services

01:09:57.200 and could deprive people of the lives. And it's like, okay, so now you're just doing politics.

01:10:01.820 Yep. And now you're just doing politics. And then they bring out the AMA and say, well,

01:10:04.740 the AMA has worked for our kids. We don't trust them at all. I literally did a story on my show last

01:10:08.380 week about how the top, the guy who runs the AMA, Bobby McCamala, he literally did a, a, a zoom call

01:10:15.020 with Dr. Ethan Haim, the guy from, from Texas Children's Hospital, who's talking about transing the

01:10:20.800 kids in which he made all sorts of insane claims about why it was necessary to trans the kids and

01:10:25.000 how 50% of transgender people were going to kill themselves if they didn't have their body parts

01:10:28.160 chopped off. And, and that guy is going to critique RFK Jr. Like, I'm sorry.

01:10:31.980 And the American Association of Pediatrics, whatever it is. Yeah, exactly.

01:10:35.060 They're just as bad. Or the APA.

01:10:36.600 They're dying to trans our kids.

01:10:38.120 A hundred percent. And so you guys emptied out science of its content. And then you ran around

01:10:42.240 wearing its face like a Hannibal Lecter mask. And then, and then we're supposed to believe you.

01:10:46.580 Like that's not good enough. What you should do again, you want to reestablish trust in science.

01:10:49.700 What you should do is basically what we would call peer review, right? You should say,

01:10:52.720 here's the thing he's doing. Here's the analysis of the data. And here is why it's wrong.

01:10:57.100 Because that leaves commentators like you and me in the position of having to now analyze the data

01:11:00.540 that you're presenting as opposed to you as a human. Right. But, but when you go out there and

01:11:04.100 you say, it's all about the pregnant people in my BDSM gear, and I feel disrespected, he, him,

01:11:08.360 her. Yeah. Then like, I'm sorry. I'm out. Yeah. Not interested anymore.

01:11:11.980 And it's amazing. Just like the over-reliance on experts. Like they actually want us to be like

01:11:16.060 20 former CDC direct, we don't care. No one cares. You don't care. The CDC has humiliated itself.

01:11:23.000 It has lost the trust of at least half of the country. We no longer, like the moment Rochelle

01:11:28.740 Walensky came out crying during the COVID pandemic. We actually cut it for those of you who had the

01:11:35.420 lovely benefit of forgetting. Here she was crying. She was upset that some people might not get

01:11:41.380 vaccinated and, and might go outside. Here she is. When I first started at CDC about two months ago,

01:11:47.260 I made a promise to you. I would tell you the truth, even if it was not the news we wanted to

01:11:52.060 hear. Now is one of those times when I have to share the truth and I have to hope and trust you

01:11:58.040 will listen. I'm going to pause here. I'm going to lose the script and I'm going to reflect on the

01:12:03.600 recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to, so much promise

01:12:10.400 and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope. But right now I'm scared.

01:12:18.620 Doom! Who gives a shit what Rochelle Walensky thinks about what's happening at CDC?

01:12:25.860 It's ridiculous. And when they started with the whole, you must vax your kids stuff in the,

01:12:30.640 again, against all available data. One of the things we knew like from the very beginning is

01:12:35.220 that the virus was not hitting kids the same way that it was hitting old men, for example. And when

01:12:39.540 they were like, you must vax your kids, you've got to be kidding me. And so again, that's how you end

01:12:44.140 up with, with RFK Jr. And there's been no accounting for it. No, no, no admissions, no legal liability for

01:12:51.520 the drug manufacturers, no terminations for the people who made up the quote science and shoved it down

01:12:58.360 our throats and the throats of our children endangered our children. How about like an

01:13:01.060 apology? How about like, okay, so for me, when I, I tried to go along with the data during the early

01:13:05.340 pandemic. And what that meant was I was always against max mask mandates and vax mandates where

01:13:09.280 my company sued the federal government to try and stop the vax mandates. But I also said at the

01:13:13.460 beginning when they were, when they were arguing and the Trump administration and Pfizer were arguing

01:13:17.060 that it was going to stop transmission that you should get the vax, right? That if you, that I said

01:13:21.460 this in, I believe January of 2021, I believe. And this is before Trump left office. And then the data came out,

01:13:27.620 the transmission was not being cut off by any of this and that it was actually, the vaccine was actually

01:13:32.960 not nearly as effective as people thought. And I apologized. I said on my show, I got it wrong. I followed

01:13:36.960 the data. The data that they presented was not true. And so, you know, I got it wrong. I'm sorry. Like, why is it

01:13:42.460 that the same people who presented that data to me aren't out there apologizing? They should be apologizing,

01:13:46.960 right? Why, why was it that Pfizer, they literally said in a, in a conference, like a year later, we never even

01:13:51.680 bothered to do research on the transmissibility post-vaccination. But they, you remember,

01:13:57.180 they retailed this idea that you got it to stop your mother from getting it, right? Which is the

01:14:01.120 reason I got it. My parents were over, were 65 at the time. And we were basically in California with

01:14:05.420 them. Yeah. That made sense initially. If that were true, then you, you would want to get vaccinated

01:14:10.040 if you're going to spend time with your elderly. And then it was like, okay, if I had to have the info

01:14:13.000 that we have now in retrospect, would I, no, why, why would I have that? That would have been silly.

01:14:16.440 And when it came to my kids, I certainly didn't get my kids vaccinated, no matter how much pressure

01:14:19.620 they're putting on, cause the data just wasn't there. But like, why, why is it that none of the

01:14:23.380 public officials are willing to follow their own data, right? Why won't they just say the thing

01:14:27.780 that's true? Because the overselling is the problem. If they just came out and they said, listen,

01:14:32.020 the vaccine didn't say, it didn't do what we originally said it was going to do, right? We,

01:14:35.700 we were wrong or we fibbed or whatever it is. And now here's what we know, right? What we know is

01:14:40.620 kids don't need it. Young people don't need it. It may do, you know, it may have cardiac problems that,

01:14:45.260 that are cardiomyopathy and all the rest of this, that, that, that, that it's a problem.

01:14:49.620 But it's good for like, if you're 65 and fat. Yeah. Right. Then, then we'll be like, oh,

01:14:52.980 they did. And now they want to be like, well, we disclosed that there was a risk of myocarditis

01:14:56.840 at the time. It was in the most minuscule, low public, publicized, like minor press release

01:15:03.500 you've ever seen. It was a CYA. The problem was much more pernicious behind the scenes.

01:15:08.740 Vinay Prasad, again, who's working with McCary over at FDA was one of the only ones out there saying,

01:15:14.120 this is bullshit. This is a real problem. Like this is actually potentially life-changing

01:15:19.040 or ending for teenagers. And this is insane that we're not telling people this. There's been no

01:15:25.600 accountability for that. And for me, this is one of the reasons why, you know, we're sort of laying

01:15:31.520 into people who see conspiracies every everywhere, but they, they didn't get the vaccine. Like people

01:15:36.940 who are hardcore, like, I don't trust my government and I don't trust this. I remember some of them

01:15:41.440 like texted me or not texting me, um, posted online after I said, I got the vaccine. Something

01:15:46.120 like we'll miss you when you're gone. And I was like, Oh wow, that's harsh. But I, you know, I wound

01:15:52.820 up getting an autoimmune issue from that fucking thing. And I, I wish I had listened to them. You

01:15:58.240 know, sometimes when you're too trusting, uh, and I was very trusting of these, I just, I was like,

01:16:03.780 well, the doctors, you're not right. Yeah. My doctor, my doctor, who I do love, but he loved

01:16:08.200 the vaccine. Yeah. Well, I mean, but I think, I think this is also the danger on, on all sides

01:16:12.420 of trying to analyze information. We can say, well, yeah, they didn't get the vaccine and that's

01:16:16.020 true. And they got that one right. But also does that mean that you're going to listen to them when

01:16:20.120 it comes to, you know, broken leg? Like you do have to sort of analyze each one of these issues

01:16:23.860 independently. That's what makes it so hard. It's a very hard informational environment. And I think

01:16:28.180 part of what our entire society is struggling with is how do you analyze this fire hose of

01:16:32.420 information that that's coming from all available sources, including AI, which, which may actually

01:16:37.140 be trying to actively mislead you. All right. Exactly. And, and how do you then deal with that?

01:16:41.440 And I think that honestly, in some cases you're just going to get it wrong. Like there's, there's

01:16:45.100 no, nobody has a perfect record, I think is the best thing. And when, and if we, if we all recognize

01:16:49.260 we don't have perfect records, then we can say, okay, well, you know, here's what I got wrong.

01:16:52.320 Here's why I got it wrong. And hopefully I won't get it wrong in the future. But one of the things

01:16:55.800 that tends to happen on social media and also in the commentary, it is you get one thing, right.

01:16:59.800 That was very heterodox and 99 things wrong, but we pay attention to the one thing that

01:17:04.060 you got right. And that, that happens on all sides. And it's, and you know, again, consider

01:17:08.140 the source of, of your, of your information doesn't mean that it's always going to be the

01:17:11.680 same source, right? Nobody is, is gospel, right? But it's, I'm not going to pretend like

01:17:16.660 it's not hard. Of course it's hard.

01:17:17.980 I know. Gosh, it's harder than it should be. Most people don't, they don't have the time,

01:17:21.400 right? They don't. People ask me this all the time, given the business I'm in, and I'm

01:17:24.680 sure you get it too. Just like, how, how am I supposed to like know what's real?

01:17:28.820 And I always say the same, which is like, it's not just because I'm in this lane, but

01:17:33.140 you have to find the person or the handful of people you trust. That's it. Like, don't

01:17:38.500 trust a big platform. I wouldn't anymore. I wouldn't at all. I would never just say,

01:17:41.320 I trust CNN for the news or Fox news either. But I do have certain individuals, you're among

01:17:46.880 them, who I trust not to actively mislead me and whose brain I've come to say, that's

01:17:52.820 reliable. You know, like that, yeah, that brain analyzes information much in the same

01:17:56.880 way I want to analyze in the way my own aspires to. And so you get that. That's, that's sort

01:18:03.060 of how I curate my own news feed, which I would say right or wrong on everything. Like, I think

01:18:08.380 we have a high grade on our overall accuracy.

01:18:10.600 I mean, I think that's right. And I think that, listen, in life, we're all having to use

01:18:13.880 heuristic shortcuts, right? We're all looking for the shortcut when it comes to, you know,

01:18:18.120 any problem that you have in your life. You're not the person who's like going to town on

01:18:21.740 engineering to fix your engine, unless you're actually a person who works on engines for

01:18:25.100 a living. You're gonna find somebody who you know, who knows how to do that better than

01:18:28.040 you. And we're constantly doing that throughout our lives. Some people are better at analyzing

01:18:31.840 information. But what I always say is, you should listen to more than my show, right?

01:18:35.200 Try to find like three or four shows that you think are trustworthy and analyze information

01:18:39.620 in a responsible way. And then where they intersect is the fact and everything else is the opinion.

01:18:43.360 Yeah, exactly right. It's funny, because I just said to my husband, Doug, just speaking

01:18:47.540 of like, what what can we actually do? What are our actual abilities and knowing what they

01:18:51.760 really are and where they're limited? Our kids are getting at that age where here and

01:18:56.140 there, they're winning some sports trophies and stuff like that. And I said, you know,

01:18:59.440 maybe we should get like a little a little trophy case in some place to put them, because

01:19:02.300 right now we just kind of put them in a chest. Nobody ever sees them again. Doug actually

01:19:06.380 said he would build one, which still has me laughing, Ben. And I said, OK, well, that'll be

01:19:11.740 ready just in time for our little boys to win the men's senior tournament down at the club.

01:19:17.540 But we do need to know where our limitations are. And yeah, Colin, not their experts, but

01:19:23.640 people we believe have expertise.

01:19:25.360 Also a great way to tell who's telling lies to you and who is not is telling them what

01:19:29.180 what if does that person also say what they don't know?

01:19:31.820 Yeah.

01:19:32.260 What are the limitations of your knowledge? Like how far how far are you willing to go?

01:19:35.420 Yeah. And that's why, you know, the people it actually is sort of a brain thing with

01:19:40.240 human beings that we tend to listen to very authoritative language that the more strongly

01:19:43.600 someone speaks, the more we believe them. But the problem with that is that

01:19:47.220 actually the people you probably ought to believe are the people who are not speaking

01:19:50.120 necessarily.

01:19:50.780 Well, I mean, I hate to go back to this, but was there there aren't in history much

01:19:56.260 many greater many easy for me to say speakers than Adolf Hitler. He was amazing.

01:20:01.320 Certainty in language is is an easy shortcut to to authenticity and belief.

01:20:06.820 And style that, you know, you're talking about style. So strong.

01:20:09.500 Right. Exactly. The feeling of authority that comes along with using very charged

01:20:12.420 language, particularly in politics. I mean, again, there are lots of studies on this and

01:20:16.520 they all demonstrate the same thing. The stronger the language you use, the more trust you get from

01:20:19.860 the audience. But the reality is that that actually may be sometimes the worst way to

01:20:23.700 analyze information, particularly when you're talking about, for example, the science where

01:20:27.180 every single study has some element at the very end of every study. It's a bunch of

01:20:31.900 limitations explaining what exactly the data is doing, what the data is not actually doing.

01:20:35.800 Yep. And honestly, on, you know, this so-called revered science, you know, you wait two weeks,

01:20:40.340 you'll get a different answer. I like the stupidest stuff, too. I recently what it was last six

01:20:45.060 months or so. One of my doctors, my lady doctor said, oh, do you take a multivitamin? I'm like,

01:20:50.360 no, I don't. She's like, oh, you know, they're great for you. You should consider one. Okay. So

01:20:54.020 I bought one for me. I bought one for Doug. Then I just saw a study multivitamins. If you take one

01:20:58.340 every day, you're more likely to die early. I'm like, this can't be real. So I Googled it and it

01:21:01.820 was like, oh, I saw at least one thing that said that was actually real. Like, give me back your

01:21:05.840 multivitamin. It's so annoying. You can't get real information when it comes to health these days

01:21:11.920 because it changes underneath your feet like quicksand. In any event, I think that

01:21:16.820 this woman at the CDC will go. RFKG will get his way. And then when it comes to mRNA vaccines and

01:21:23.140 the research, I'm actually okay with it, what he's doing, because I think the public sector can

01:21:27.240 handle all of this. We don't need our government. The private sector, yeah. Yeah, sorry. The private

01:21:30.340 sector. We don't need our government doing this stuff. I mean, I think there's a case for that

01:21:33.360 across research lines. Yeah. We need money and we need it for a lot of things and this doesn't have to be

01:21:37.840 on the list. But I am, like when it comes to mRNA, like my doctor, again, he's, he loved the COVID

01:21:42.060 vaccine, but he was saying someday that mRNA technology might have a vaccine against pancreatic

01:21:47.620 cancer. I mean, thinking of that, or like if they told me there was an mRNA vaccine against all forms

01:21:54.580 of dementia, right? Can you imagine? I don't even know if that's possible. I'm just saying like,

01:21:58.700 it depends. I can't say, I can't rule out all vaccines. Cutting out research is definitely a dicey

01:22:02.840 proposition, but yes. I mean, I think a lot can be done in the private sector. A lot, a lot more than has been.

01:22:07.120 I'll tell you what you can't do. You can't, you can't say innovate in the private sector,

01:22:10.300 but cost control the drugs on the other end. Yeah. That you can't do. And that, that I think

01:22:13.740 is a bit of a problem. Yeah. That's fair. All right. Stand by. More with Ben Shapiro right after

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01:24:12.520 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM. It's your home for open,

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01:25:20.260 Welcome back to The Megan Kelly Show. Ben Shapiro is with me today. He's author of the new book,

01:25:24.720 Lions and Scavengers. And among the many things that Ben has done is testify before Congress,

01:25:31.160 about this advertising group that was trying to exclude right-wingers. And at that appearance,

01:25:38.020 you mixed it up with somebody who I think it's fair to say none of us likes, Eric Swalwell.

01:25:43.400 And here's this moment which shall live, not in infamy, but with respect and admiration.

01:25:50.120 Sot32.

01:25:50.960 You did say, I think homosexual activity is a sin.

01:25:53.600 Yes, I'm religious to you. That's true.

01:25:54.680 I'm sure there's a genetic component.

01:25:55.740 You found me out.

01:25:56.440 But the view of all religious people I know has always been that sexual behavior is something

01:26:00.840 that is up to you. And you said, I may have a desire to sleep with many women, but I do not.

01:26:06.360 I agree with me. Yes, that's true.

01:26:08.340 Congratulations on your, yeah. I'm sure it's very hard to restrain yourself.

01:26:14.940 You know how hard I had to restrain myself not from making a fang-fang reference right there?

01:26:18.360 Yes.

01:26:19.020 I was holding myself back. I was like, don't do it.

01:26:21.080 Bye, girl.

01:26:21.400 Don't do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:26:24.460 Did you have that in your back pocket? I agree with me.

01:26:27.420 No, that one was for the moment, actually.

01:26:28.760 That was well done.

01:26:31.480 What are you doing? You're reading a quote of me. What do you think I'm going to say? Come on.

01:26:34.300 Right. He didn't know you. You know what I mean? He actually thought he could scare you off of

01:26:38.080 your prior position because it was too controversial.

01:26:39.840 Oh, no.

01:26:40.200 For you to say it publicly, which is how he heard it in the first place.

01:26:42.480 Right. Exactly. Exactly. No, I'm terrified of you reading back a quote of me saying a thing

01:26:46.420 that I said.

01:26:46.900 Right. Are you aware of what I do for a living?

01:26:48.660 Exactly.

01:26:48.820 Yeah, I pretty much am always on air.

01:26:50.880 Also, that quote doesn't make like the top thousand things that I've said that are controversial.

01:26:54.240 My goodness.

01:26:54.740 You know, I have noticed something interesting in my own life since I've gotten more into

01:26:57.920 this line of work, you know, podcasting as opposed to like journalism on Fox News or NBC

01:27:02.340 for that matter. I don't worry about that anymore. But like, I used to worry that somebody might

01:27:07.460 tape me and then all of my opinions would be out there. And as a journalist, you're not supposed

01:27:11.760 to share that. And it would somehow feel like dishonest because like I tried to report the

01:27:17.340 news in a fair way without saying my real opinions. And then if you heard the way I talked off

01:27:20.660 camera like a normal person, you'd realize I had a lot of them. And I was just trying

01:27:24.020 not to blow that by, you know, you're not supposed to as a journalist. Now it's so freeing.

01:27:28.940 It's like, oh, yeah, there's nothing somebody could tape of me that the audience wouldn't

01:27:32.660 be like, yeah, that sounds exactly like her.

01:27:34.320 Exactly. Exactly. I remember I had this kind of tête-à-tête with Sam Donaldson back in

01:27:38.400 the day. It was like 2012. I was at the RNC and Sam Donaldson had moved over from being,

01:27:42.540 you know, reporter on ABC, yelling at Ronald Reagan to being a guy who did commentary. And

01:27:48.400 so I remember going up to him like, so you held all the same beliefs when you were a reporter

01:27:51.900 that you do as a commentator. Do you think that impacted your work in any way? And he

01:27:56.200 said, what are you trying to say? You're trying to say you're better than me? And I was like,

01:27:58.980 well, I mean, kind of. I mean, like, I'm totally honest about where I'm coming from. And so

01:28:03.820 if you detect bias, that's because my bias is quite obvious. I'm not trying to hide it

01:28:08.740 from you in some sort of radical way. And so I do think, you know, I've been an advocate

01:28:12.800 for a very long time of this idea that objective journalism is a lie is true. Like it is. It's

01:28:18.920 just a lie. There's no such thing. It's going to get shaded one way or the other. Some people

01:28:21.820 do a better job of getting it out of their work for sure. But you're right. I mean, nothing

01:28:26.220 you say privately, if we got hot mic'd here, nothing would change what we're saying on the

01:28:31.080 here. Nothing. Whereas at Fox, people would have been like, oh, whoa, she's got all these

01:28:35.000 different opinions about these different things that she reports on and doesn't show her cards,

01:28:38.980 which is fine. That is the way we used to do it. But I agree with you. And it's one of the reasons

01:28:42.000 why I'm not worried about what some people worry about it, which is like mainstream news is collapsing.

01:28:47.360 You know, when I gave my interview to the New York Times, they were very, very worried about these

01:28:50.760 like errant, weird podcasters who are going to drive the national conversation now because there's no

01:28:54.920 standards. There's no belts and suspenders. There's no guardrails, I guess. And therefore, we're going to be

01:28:59.640 living in just a nonstop disinformation, misinformation age. And I get it because there are guardrails

01:29:06.600 in the existing corporate media, but they're the wrong guardrails. So I feel like taking those away

01:29:13.060 and letting it become the Wild West, which it is, and then maybe there'll be excesses, maybe we'll

01:29:17.800 implode and then rebuild. I don't know. But whatever it is, I'm in favor of it.

01:29:20.860 I mean, I totally agree with that. I think there was a monopoly or an oligopoly, and then the oligopoly

01:29:24.840 dissolved. And now what you've got is kind of anarchic. But, you know, better than the anarchy that

01:29:29.040 eventually consolidates, I hope, into something that's like a more varied but trustworthy

01:29:33.700 informational environment than one guy telling you what you ought to think. And you don't have

01:29:37.840 any alternative because there's like three channels on your TV.

01:29:40.760 Yeah, and you must think it. All right, let's talk about politics for a bit.

01:29:44.740 Wes Moore is interesting to me. I mean, he's definitely on the short list for Democratic contender

01:29:49.180 in 2028. He's the governor of Maryland. He's obviously a Democrat. He's a military vet.

01:29:56.080 He's a black guy. He's a good looking guy. And he's starting to get out there a little

01:30:01.040 bit more on the TV circuit, which tells me something, even though he's officially said

01:30:05.680 he's not into it.

01:30:06.700 He's into it.

01:30:07.420 He's into it.

01:30:07.880 He's going to run.

01:30:08.560 So he's now making news the way everybody wants to make news these days, from Brandon

01:30:14.000 Johnson of Chicago to Pritzker, the governor out in Illinois, which is to make themselves

01:30:21.700 an adversary of Trump, Gavin Newsom, and so on. And so he's basically saying, I don't want

01:30:26.020 your help. I know Baltimore's got, I think, the fifth highest murder rate in the country.

01:30:29.400 I don't want your help. Don't send any troops here. But as he's like saying that, and people

01:30:33.960 are getting shot and killed in his city, he's on George Clooney's yacht over on Lake Como,

01:30:42.400 Italy, which I'm sorry, I'm sure it's very nice to get the George Clooney invite. Apparently

01:30:47.700 he wasn't there, Clooney. So it's just, they had the mansion and the yacht to themselves.

01:30:52.300 That's even better.

01:30:53.020 But think, of course, for us.

01:30:55.000 The resources of George Clooney without having to deal with George Clooney is amazing.

01:30:57.900 I think probably somebody like Wes Moore would like to spend time with him. But that's a

01:31:02.520 nightmare. I mean, that actually could come back to haunt him as he, as he potentially

01:31:06.560 runs. But like, your, your, your state was hurting your city that you were fighting with

01:31:11.000 Trump as you were rejecting troops that would keep them safe. You paraded off on Clooney's

01:31:16.080 yacht.

01:31:16.560 First of all, this is like the dumbest fight in the world. The Democrats are picking here

01:31:19.200 on crime. It's really, really, really stupid because again, it's not as though Trump can

01:31:23.480 indefinitely, legally leave gigantic numbers of federal troops, like policing pickpocketing

01:31:28.400 in Baltimore. He can't, he can't actually do that. A judge will strike it down and he

01:31:31.420 will have to stop doing that. He's been using sort of the, the bootstrap of immigration

01:31:35.500 enforcement in order to get federal troops into places like LA or into Chicago. And, and again,

01:31:40.000 there's kind of an expiration date on that sort of thing. If Democrats were smart, they would

01:31:44.220 basically just wait him out. They would say, okay, you know, we don't, we don't like what

01:31:47.180 he's doing, but you know, if it lowers the crime rate, we're open to anything, right?

01:31:50.860 Anything would be good. And then just, this is the wrong issue for them. It's the wrong

01:31:54.380 issue. And the fact that they all seem to consolidate around this issue demonstrates

01:31:57.680 president Trump has an enormous number of gifts. This is, I think his greatest gift

01:32:01.340 is that his enemies constantly be clown themselves. It's just a field of rakes and

01:32:05.300 they're constantly jumping on them. And no matter what he does, they have to declare

01:32:08.180 themselves in opposition. If he came out in favor of abolishing cancer tomorrow, they

01:32:11.100 would come out in favor of stage four.

01:32:12.900 Well, it's kind of what they did with the little boy at the state of the union.

01:32:15.180 A hundred percent.

01:32:16.220 Yeah. We're against him.

01:32:16.940 Or like any other thing, like, or, or men and women's sports. Like they, they can't

01:32:21.460 help themselves. They have to pick the 20% side of every 80, 20 issues. So long as he

01:32:25.020 picks the 80% side of that issue. And so I think Wes Moore is formidable actually in a

01:32:30.840 democratic primary, South Carolina, it's still unclear what the first democratic

01:32:34.460 primary is going to be. Right. Because remember that Biden rigged the calendar to

01:32:37.820 avoid Iowa and New Hampshire. So that's like a big internal DNC fight right now. If it

01:32:41.380 ends up being South Carolina, again, Wes Moore is the odds on favorite because 58% of the

01:32:45.060 democratic electorate in a primary and in a presidential year is black. And so he's going

01:32:49.300 to hope that they vote as a block and that will stop like an AOC candidacy or, or a super

01:32:53.840 white person, Gavin Newsom candidacy.

01:32:55.900 Super white.

01:32:56.600 I mean, he's, he's the whitest person who's ever whited.

01:32:58.540 Not white supremacist, but super white.

01:33:01.160 Yes. He's, he's, he's like unbelievably white. Like, like, like blends into the, into just

01:33:06.300 the paint white.

01:33:07.700 Have we seen him dance? Cause that will be the true test.

01:33:10.540 Oh man. I feel like he and Justin Trudeau are kind of like two halves of the same hole.

01:33:16.320 I, no, I, I think that's an insult to Gavin Newsom. I will defend the American in that

01:33:20.400 equation there. I mean, there's no one more stomach turning as a possible like life partner

01:33:25.200 than Justin Trudeau to me.

01:33:27.240 I mean, I don't know. Have you seen Gavin Newsom's history? It's not like a great history.

01:33:31.440 Like if you said, who are you going to wind up with? Like one of the Tate brothers or, or Trudeau?

01:33:37.280 Wow. Wow. Brutal.

01:33:41.920 I know. I just, I find Justin Trudeau makes my skin crawl in his like effete, effeminate,

01:33:49.920 mealy mouth, zero back bone.

01:33:52.480 His father, Fidel Castro, would be so ashamed of him.

01:33:54.180 He's so soft. He's soft in every way. Yeah. Right.

01:33:57.060 But yeah, Gavin Newsom, he's got some problems in the primaries. I don't think that Gavin

01:34:00.700 Newsom has the kind of juice that Gavin Newsom seems to think he does. Westmore has Clooney's

01:34:04.480 support and he'll be able to raise a lot of money. Westmore, uh, the fact that he is a

01:34:08.080 black man is going to help him a lot in the democratic primaries because again, you do

01:34:12.460 have that effect in the democratic primaries right now. And he is not quite as openly psychotic

01:34:16.900 as some of the far leftists in his party. So yeah, it does have another problem though.

01:34:21.660 There is a stolen valor issue.

01:34:23.480 Yeah. But he, he actually served in the military. So the stolen valor is about him.

01:34:27.300 He said he, he, he said that he had, that he'd been awarded the Brown star when he had

01:34:32.000 not. And then later he got it. Correct. So that's got it in 2024. Clearly somebody was

01:34:36.180 like, Oh shit, he'd stole valor. So let's give it to him so he can say he got it. Yeah.

01:34:40.960 His story is my commanding officer told me that he was going to submit me for it. And so I thought

01:34:46.140 it was okay to fill out this application saying that I got it, but he was introduced just like

01:34:50.680 Tim Walsh by many, many news anchors over the years saying he got it when he did not have it.

01:34:54.940 He was asked about it actually by Will Cain on Fox and also by Martha Raddatz, um, on ABC. Here's

01:35:01.940 Martha sought 15. Uh, you claiming you had a bronze star in 2006 when you were applying for a job.

01:35:10.140 Why did you do that? Well, I think it's, I'm, I'm deeply proud of my service to this country.

01:35:15.200 Oh boy. And I know my soldiers that I serve with are deeply proud and, and the veteran community

01:35:19.860 is as well. When you're commanding officers and your superior, uh, officers tell you, listen,

01:35:24.680 we put you in and we've gone through everything. So as you're going through your application,

01:35:28.280 uh, include it, I, I included it and I didn't think about it.

01:35:31.860 They introduced you when I full saying you had earned a bronze star medal. That's 2008,

01:35:38.040 2010, you were on the Colbert show when he said you had a bronze star, you did not correct him.

01:35:43.740 You had to know you did not have one then. Well, it was, I did not go back and, you know,

01:35:50.840 go back and tell the Pentagon, Hey, I was told, uh, to put this on my application and didn't.

01:35:56.160 And honestly, at that point, I'm not talking about the Pentagon. I'm talking about you knew

01:35:59.700 in those interviews, you did not have one. No, because even, even at the time of those

01:36:04.240 interviews, it wasn't something that I even thought about when I came home, it wasn't something I even

01:36:09.180 thought about. By the way, full points to her doing a journalism right there. I would say that,

01:36:13.980 but she's clearly trying to get it out of the way before he actually runs. That's true. But,

01:36:17.040 but you're not going to get credit where credit is due. She's asking those are good questions and

01:36:19.980 good follow-ups. Um, I don't believe one word of what he just said. No, I, you know,

01:36:25.200 whether you've received the bronze star or not. I haven't. So, I mean, yeah, I would assume,

01:36:29.660 I would assume that you would know this. It's a big deal. I think when you get it,

01:36:32.800 yes. And the actual medal is a thing that they give you. He didn't have it and he knew it.

01:36:37.380 If it's him versus JD, JD will hammer up over the head with it. I look forward to that. Yes. I'm

01:36:41.420 sick of these Democrats with their stolen valor. And like, it truly is deeply immoral to say that

01:36:46.900 you have the bronze star when you don't. He wasn't confused. He didn't think he had it when he didn't

01:36:51.800 have it. I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to go back and find some of his commanding officers to

01:36:55.040 retell the story though. Right. Like sign a letter saying I applied for it. I mean,

01:36:58.140 the question is whether it will play. Where is it? Why? Why? Did you think they just forgot to mail it to you?

01:37:03.700 I'm just, I'm just saying like, as a political candidate, how many points of damage

01:37:07.220 is that worth? I mean, here's the reality. A lot. I mean, maybe. I think it changed Tim

01:37:12.020 Waltz's trajectory with the electorate when all the stolen valor stuff came out about him. I mean,

01:37:16.400 I think Tim Waltz is like weird. I agree. He's, and, and his transiting of the children. He wants

01:37:20.460 to be, he's, he's worse than Pritzker's. I mean, the strange clapping and the hopping around and the

01:37:24.640 fact that he looked like that. Come on down. Yeah, exactly. That he, that he looked like one of the

01:37:27.480 things that was like an inflatable outside of used car lot. As you know, like normal Americans,

01:37:32.120 you know, Democrats too, they care about the military and they care about stolen valor. I

01:37:37.600 don't think this is going to make or break him, but I do think it's going to hurt.

01:37:41.120 I think that's probably true. I think it's probably true. But again, I think that when we get to 2028,

01:37:45.720 the biggest thing is going to be the economy. If the economy is good in 2028, then J.D.

01:37:49.480 is a shoe in basically if he's the nominee. And if the economy is bad, then things get real dicey,

01:37:53.720 real fast. And I'm old enough to remember when Republicans thought we would never lose an election

01:37:57.540 again after 2004. And then by 2006, Democrats were running the Congress. And by 2008, Barack Obama

01:38:02.680 was president. And I'm also old enough to remember when Democrats thought they would never lose another

01:38:06.200 election after 2012. And then lo and behold, four years later, Donald Trump was president of the

01:38:10.900 United States. So things shift real fast in this country. Well, that's why the executive orders

01:38:15.060 are not ideal. Yes. Yes. I mean, but he can't do anything more. I mean, he can't get you. It's

01:38:20.480 almost now. I don't know. I used to make Congress. I feel like Congress was fun. You need 60 votes in the

01:38:25.420 Senate. 51 is irrelevant. 53 is irrelevant. So I've made a proposal. Actually, my friend Jeremy

01:38:30.320 Boring originally aired this. And I think it's a smart idea. He suggested that Senate Majority Leader

01:38:35.740 Thune should go to the Democrats and say, listen, we need a constitutional amendment today to enshrine

01:38:41.360 the filibuster in the Constitution. And you have 12 months. And if in 12 months, this is not enshrined in

01:38:47.660 the Constitution, we're nuking it. Because that puts a time limit on it. And you don't want to and you

01:38:52.500 don't want to wait for Democrats to be the first to activate the full filibuster nuke option. Just

01:38:59.340 get rid of the filibuster next time they're in power. So we don't need 60. Right. Exactly. So

01:39:02.220 either it's good for the goose and good for the gander or it shouldn't be good for either. I think

01:39:05.980 it's a pretty good idea. I like that a lot. Right now, like nothing can get done. Yes. But I'm

01:39:11.040 thankful for nothing getting done when it's the other side that's in power. Right. Exactly. So I don't

01:39:15.840 know. The whole thing has been frustrating because I love the Trump executive orders. I can't think of

01:39:20.000 one I didn't really love. I'm sure there is one because there's been so many. But I know they're

01:39:24.520 all going away. You know, it's like, yeah, Christmas every day. But then, you know, something

01:39:28.940 comes up and it blows up your entire Christmas. All the presents are gone. Someone took them.

01:39:32.620 You know, it's like that scene in Mommy Dearest where she then makes little Christina give all

01:39:35.760 the presents back. Every election cycle, it's like we're going to do this like hundreds of executive

01:39:41.080 orders to rebut the original executive orders. Yeah, it definitely is. That's why I think what he's

01:39:45.860 doing with staffing may be long term more important. Like the reductions? Yeah, the staff

01:39:49.720 productions, eliminating departments if you can get away with it. Yep. All that sort of stuff. It

01:39:54.580 takes a while to rebuild that. So I think going through with the chainsaw that we mentioned before

01:39:58.220 is definitely a good thing. I do think some of the things he's done on like the executive order on

01:40:02.840 boys and girls sports. That's going to stick. Yeah, because it has such majority support. Who wants

01:40:07.880 to be the president that switches that around? Immigration, by the way. Yeah. I don't think Democrats

01:40:11.700 are going to reopen that one. I had Ron Emanuel on the show. I said, what would you change about

01:40:16.200 Trump's border policies? He said nothing. Yep. That's smart. Nothing. That's smart.

01:40:20.200 It doesn't like the deportation policies, but the border? Nothing. Well, I mean, if Democrats are

01:40:25.140 smart, that's what they will do. They will pocket the fact that Trump basically won the issue for

01:40:28.680 them and then move on with it with their lives. It's sort of like how everyone thought that Roe versus

01:40:33.120 Wade when it was overturned, it was going to be like the only thing that mattered in American

01:40:35.940 politics. And then it turns out that within two years, everybody just kind of was was moving on.

01:40:39.620 And while it was still a hot issue, it was helping the Democrats. So they're like,

01:40:42.780 yeah, actually. Exactly. Is this so bad? And abortions went up, which is not so great.

01:40:47.580 Yeah. But on immigration, if the Republicans solved it, Democrats don't have to talk about

01:40:51.480 it anymore. So that's actually quite nice for them. And what about crime? Because that's crime,

01:40:56.420 both on a national level and that committed by Biden administration officials will be one of the

01:41:02.040 big, big storylines, I think, for the next two years. Well, that giant, I still think the worst

01:41:05.740 scandal of our lifetime, you know, there've been many in the last five years. I still think the worst

01:41:09.200 scandal of our lifetime is we didn't have a president for full on two years and we were being lied to

01:41:12.620 about it every single day. That is so insane about the picture he's going to put up of Biden in his

01:41:16.960 new, like presidential hall of fame. He says, he's going to put a picture up of the auto pen.

01:41:23.380 Told the daily caller that so good. Yeah. It's the fact that we didn't have a president for a solid

01:41:29.020 two years. Like anybody who was even remotely attached to that administration has to be nuked

01:41:33.640 out of the process. No, I mean, that gets rid of like people to judge that, that unbelievable,

01:41:39.040 great secretary of transportation. Oh my Lord. So he grew a beard. So that's, that's, that's

01:41:44.480 exciting. Yeah. Very. And so, so that's exciting. Um, but yeah, I mean, anybody who's attached to

01:41:49.340 scavenger. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. The book is called lions and scavengers by Ben Shapiro. Yeah. Total

01:41:54.340 scavenger. Yeah. That dude has spent an awful lot of time talking about how much America sucks

01:41:57.880 after being made secretary of transportation based on not being able to fill potholes in South Bend.

01:42:01.840 I was just thinking, are there any Democrats we would call Alliance Rahm Emanuel? Uh, in

01:42:06.980 his new iteration? Yeah. I think you could make that case. There's some, there's some of

01:42:10.020 the, uh, there, there, there are a few kind of like abundance based Democrats who are sort

01:42:13.880 of interesting. Um, Seth Moulton from Massachusetts, kind of interesting guy. I'm against it. Um,

01:42:18.080 so, okay. Explain. Because he said he was like, Oh, I don't, it doesn't make sense to have

01:42:22.280 the boys. Yeah. And then of course, as soon as he got his hand slapped, he was like, nevermind.

01:42:25.900 Yeah. It was the right. But the fact that he dipped it, you know, again, partial credit,

01:42:29.800 he dipped his toe into a water that Democrats won't. I wish you'd go all the way. I'm a meaner

01:42:33.980 greater than you are. Exactly. Exactly. Harsh standards here. Um, yeah, it's, it's hard to

01:42:39.020 identify that the Democratic party has moved so far to the left that it's very difficult to identify

01:42:42.920 a non grievance based Democrat at this point. I know it's not the way it was when we grew up.

01:42:49.080 We used to have normies on both sides. I can make a solid case. The 1990s might've been the best

01:42:53.900 time in American history. Seriously. Like, um, yeah, I certainly better than the seventies,

01:42:58.240 but I'll take the eighties. I have to say the hair was great. The style, the fashion was very hot.

01:43:04.020 The music, come on. There's no better music than the 1980s. The eighties channel. It's awesome.

01:43:08.340 There is a theory that, that whatever, whatever was the decade where you were like 13 was what

01:43:13.000 you think is the best. Yes. And that's why I'm right. Yeah. All right. Don't forget. The book is

01:43:18.100 called lions and scavengers by Ben Shapiro. Go get it right now. Great to see my friend. Thanks.

01:43:22.260 Okay. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS,

01:43:30.320 no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 02, 2025

Establishment Meltdown Over RFK, New Lisa Cook Questions, and Being a ＂Lion＂ Instead of a ＂Scavenger,＂ with Ben Shapiro

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