In the final leg of our "Megan Kelly Live in California" tour, Meghan is joined by Mark Eiglarsh, Ashley Merchant, and Phil Holloway to discuss the James Comey and Hillary Clinton scandals. Plus, a special guest appearance from Meghan's court.
00:01:27.420Bakersfield tonight, Anaheim tomorrow, and then we finish in Phoenix in Glendale, Arizona with Erica Kirk and Walter Kern on Saturday night.
00:01:36.720It's beautiful out here, I have to say.
00:01:38.540You know, every time you come out to California, you're reminded why people live out here.
00:01:42.300And then you remember, like, Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom, and you say,
00:03:59.540There's so much to discuss, and I actually have some exclusive reporting on the James Comey case that I'm going to use to clarify the record that's been misreported in a second, but let's just set it up for the audience what we're dealing with here.
00:04:12.380So the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsay Halligan, was appointed by this DOJ, and she indicted Letitia James and also James Comey.
00:04:24.020And James Comey is accused of lying to Congress about when he purported to say, oh, I never authorized anyone to leak on the matters of the Trump investigation or the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email use.
00:04:38.080He said that under oath, and the theory is you did authorize somebody to leak.
00:04:42.640It was your good pal Daniel Richman, who you brought on at the FBI as a special governmental employee, and you absolutely did use him to leak about, in particular, the Hillary investigation.
00:04:54.920Comey's trying to get out of it any way possible, and he's not only got an argument that substantively he didn't do the things that they're arguing he did.
00:05:03.480He's got an argument that, A, she wasn't properly appointed, and that's going to be argued and heard by a different judge.
00:05:08.540But, B, he's now challenging the actual four corners of the indictment as inappropriate and, like, not properly styled, not properly brought before the grand jury.
00:05:19.420And that hearing got very heated on Wednesday.
00:05:24.080I'm going to play you a little from CNN's Caitlin Paulance, who is their legal correspondent, I think, on the drama, she said, when she says it was revealed.
00:05:34.360Because just as a background for the listening audience, originally there were three counts that Lindsay Halligan proposed against James Comey.
00:05:41.060The grand jury was ready to return an indictment on two of the three, but they weren't convinced on the third.
00:05:46.640And so she struck the third and went back to the grand jury, and they approved those two and said, yeah, let's go.
00:05:52.600Now, there's a question about whether she did, in fact, go back to the grand jury and get them to bless what would be the final indictment with just the two counts that we know the grand jury did like and did believe in.
00:06:05.360And the judge, this wasn't even brought up by Comey's lawyer, this was the judge who thought there were, like, missing minutes in the train, like, there wasn't enough time for you to, after they struck the one count, for you to redraft the indictment, get back with a clean indictment with the two counts.
00:07:02.540This is Trump 1.0 White House lawyer Ty Cobb and his reaction to the news yesterday, SOT31.
00:07:09.360So that hasn't been dismissed yet or thrown out or the nullity been recognized.
00:07:16.180I do think if the ruling is that there is no indictment, there's no indictment to dismiss.
00:07:21.420Only if the indictment is dismissed with the six month rules for representation come into play.
00:07:27.560So what happened today is very significant in that regard legally.
00:07:32.180But, yes, Comey has, you know, the misconduct issues, you know, the miscarriage of justice issues, the denial of due process issues, the vindictiveness issues.
00:07:44.220This case is never going to get to trial.
00:07:46.100And Comey will, you know, never be held accountable as the government has desired and as the president ordered Bondi to see to.
00:07:55.600OK, and here's the last point I'll make before we get into it.
00:08:00.580I have exclusive reporting here on what actually happened in court yesterday.
00:08:06.700The entire grand jury, I've been reliably informed by a source who's in a position to know, did see the final indictment with just the two counts.
00:08:16.800They did see it, review it and approve it.
00:08:20.260And I'm told that there is a transcript of that proceeding, which will prove exactly that the magistrate judge then confirmed with the foreperson on the record in open court at the time they returned the true bill that everyone on the grand jury had voted on that indictment that has two counts.
00:08:41.260So I believe that this entire issue will be cured as soon as these magistrate judges, the magistrate judge and the judge above him, the district court judge, get a look at what actually happened with the judge and the grand jury overseeing these two counts.
00:09:28.620I think the indictment's fine and I think it would stand.
00:09:30.620Doesn't mean I wouldn't argue for dismissal as a defense lawyer.
00:09:33.240But I think it's one of those situations where you could put a you could put an indictment on a napkin.
00:09:38.540I mean, if you wanted to write it out, you could.
00:09:39.960There's no rule that says it has to be in a certain order or look a certain way.
00:09:43.100So as long as that language is the exact same and it sounds like it is, as long as the language is the exact same, if they went and they made what we would call a scrivener's change.
00:09:51.780That's just a change, you know, changing the heading, changing the title, changing the numbers.
00:10:33.940And everybody said, oh, well, it's just a scrivener's error.
00:10:36.220And I think this is the exact same thing.
00:10:37.840It does, as long as it doesn't change the language of the indictment, it's going to stand.
00:10:41.800What do you guys make, Mark and Phil, of the fact that the judge raised this?
00:10:46.820This wasn't even raised by defense counsel.
00:10:49.640And the same judge then asked the defense counsel, do you think Lindsey Halligan is just Trump's puppet?
00:10:58.340And even the defense lawyer was like, no, I'm not going to go that far.
00:11:02.420I mean, to me, it just shows this judge is not a fan of this prosecutor and maybe this prosecution.
00:11:09.380But it doesn't bode well for Team Trump in that courtroom that he's raising these things himself and then calling her names and getting the defense attorney to try to get the defense attorney to sign on to those names.
00:11:22.700So, look, this is really much ado about nothing.
00:11:25.560If you can't win on the facts, you attack the law.
00:11:28.420If you can't win on the law, you attack the prosecutor.
00:11:31.700And in this case, Halligan and her team are having to deal with not only the defense raising these issues, which is understandable, but she's also having to deal with a judge who, in my opinion, has abandoned his role as a neutral arbiter, okay, and has basically thrown in with the defense team in attacking the prosecutor.
00:11:53.020This is a non-issue for all the reasons that Ashley set out, but I would also add that Rule 6F of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure say that as long as a quorum of the total grand jury has approved the charges, it can be returned in open court by the foreperson, okay?
00:12:10.480So this was just an administrative thing.
00:12:13.540The entirety of the grand jury voted yes, there is probable cause as to two of those charges, and those are the ones that were filed.
00:12:21.780It's absolutely not an issue whatsoever.
00:12:25.060The court reporter even had an email that confirmed that all this is the case and that the grand jury foreperson's open court statements support that this is exactly how it went down.
00:12:40.400This document that was filed in the court, these two charges were reviewed by the grand jury.
00:12:45.960They gave it a thumbs up, a true bill, and that's it.
00:12:48.800If this judge decides he's going to throw it out or do something else with it, then obviously the government will have the right to appeal because that would be absolutely grounds for reversal.
00:12:59.960This is absolutely astonishing that federal judges are abandoning their judicial role in this way.
00:13:05.720And it would be, just to be clear, Mark Iglesias, devastating to the government's case if these judges, the magistrate judge and the district judge above him, find this to be fatal because the statute of limitations has run on Comey.
00:13:21.320So if they can actually convince this judge that there was an irregularity that kills the existing indictment, Comey's off.
00:14:03.180Let's say this is one of your loved ones in federal court, and you learned not these particular facts, but you learned somehow the whole grand jury didn't approve the final indictment, that it was just the head guy and someone else with him who approved that final document.
00:14:20.800You're doggone right you'd have me argue that there's a defect there and something needs to be done.
00:14:26.860Can I just ask you, totally fair case, and I agree with you, the judge has the obligation to make sure the proceedings are fair.
00:14:33.000But would it also be the case, even if the grand jury, no one's disputing that the grand jury approved these other two counts, the full grand jury approved these other two counts, they didn't approve the third, they crossed off the third.
00:14:47.460How does that render the original two as required for another vote, that they needed another vote?
00:14:55.440They already approved those two counts.
00:14:58.780Just so we're clear, legally, a court may find that it's totally okay.
00:15:03.800But the argument will be that the law requires the entire body of the grand jury to approve whatever's ultimately there for prosecution.
00:15:14.420And if you cut corners because you want to get Comey, be prepared to have the law changed so they can cut corners on someone you really love and care about.
00:15:22.320And again, just to remind the listening audience, my exclusive reporting today is that they did not cut corners.
00:15:28.580They actually did have the entire grand jury approve the new two-count indictment and that that was all on the record with the magistrate judge, that the magistrate judge confirmed with the foreperson on the record in open court that everyone on the grand jury voted on the indictment that has two counts, which does kind of, I don't know whether it's the same magistrate judge that they're in front of right now.
00:15:50.520I think it's a different magistrate judge that handled the grand jury proceedings.
00:15:53.180But, I mean, that does sort of, like, make you wonder if that's there and the magistrate judge, let's say she can just show the current magistrate judge and the district court judge, Ashley, here's the transcript that shows the earlier magistrate judge who dealt with the grand juror asking that the foreperson, did the entire grand jury approve this?
00:16:16.140And that foreperson saying, yes, they did, that the entire grand jury approved of the indictment that has just the two counts.
00:16:22.100That should be the end of this nonsense, no?
00:16:23.680It should totally be the end of this nonsense.
00:16:25.500And because there's other judges bringing it up, they're trying to undermine the indictment.
00:16:29.060They're trying to undermine the entire process.
00:16:50.580You heard a little anti-Cobbs analysis there, that soundbite, for the potential dismissal of this indictment.
00:16:56.160There's that, that procedural alleged snafu that had CNN all a Twitter.
00:17:01.380But there's also a motion to dismiss this thing for vindictive prosecution.
00:17:06.880And this is where things get interesting.
00:17:08.540Because they do have way more than your average defense attorney could ever hope to have to suggest there was some sort of personal animus behind Comey's indictment in the form of Donald Trump's hatred, it's mutual, of James Comey.
00:17:29.760To establish prosecutorial vindictiveness, a defendant must show, through objective evidence, that, one, the prosecutor acted with genuine animus toward the defendant, and, two, the defendant would not have been prosecuted but for that animus.
00:17:43.920The defense is arguing that President Trump harbors genuine animus toward Comey based on his speech and based on Trump's arbitrary personal bias.
00:17:52.980And they're talking about the number of times the Comey has been critical of Trump, and they say there's a causal connection between President Trump's animus and this prosecution, and it's clear.
00:18:04.020And then they go on to cite that September 20th, Truth Social post that we talked about quite a bit on whether this was intentionally posted by Trump on Truth Social or was meant to be a private DM, direct message, to Pam Bondi.
00:18:56.860It wasn't taken down, but it was posted, and there was speculation about whether it was intentionally posted publicly or was meant to be a private.
00:19:03.660And anyway, it's not all that helpful, I guess I'd say, Phil, to the defense in trying to argue there's no animus behind the indictment.
00:19:10.880And many of us who have been an observer of Donald Trump for all these years have consistently said that sometimes the things that he says, he makes himself his own worst enemy in many ways.
00:19:24.480And saying things like this publicly the way he did was a mistake.
00:19:37.960But it can also be true that Comey would have, and I would say should have been prosecuted, irrespective of who the president is.
00:19:44.800And to meet his burden of proving this vindictive and selective prosecution, Comey's got to demonstrate that there were similarly situated other people that did not get prosecuted.
00:19:56.920Now, obviously, there's not that many people you can find that would be quite similarly situated to the specific facts that we have in this case.
00:20:04.160But the evidence of Comey's guilt, in my view, is overwhelming, okay?
00:20:09.180So that's why I said earlier, if you can't win on the facts, then you attack the law.
00:20:13.480And if you can't win on the law, then you attack the prosecutor.
00:20:24.820And because Comey is guilty, that can be the sole basis for the prosecution.
00:20:30.180So I think, on balance, an appeals court—I think the trial court may very well toss this out.
00:20:35.740But I think an appeals court would probably rule with the administration.
00:20:38.360One of the things they're getting ready to argue on team defense, Mark, is that the communications between Comey and Daniel Richman, who's a Columbia law professor and lawyer, who Comey brought on as a special governmental employee at the FBI for some year and a half while Comey was running the FBI, for the express purpose of, I guess, advising him, but also to deal with the press.
00:20:59.760And the evidence that Richmond did deal with the press to massage coverage of Comey is replete.
00:21:07.940He was talking to many, many reporters about James Comey, about how James Comey was totally right with everything he did around Hillary Clinton.
00:21:31.240And one of the things we're told the defense is getting ready to do is argue that possibly there was some sort of breach of the attorney-client privilege.
00:21:39.840Like, the FBI had a strike force that looked at all the documents between Comey and Richmond.
00:21:48.440But then possibly you're supposed to have, like, a separate FBI agent, if you're going to proceed with an indictment, go and testify before the grand jury.
00:21:55.300And it's possible they didn't do that, that they used a guy who had seen some of the privileged communications.
00:22:01.820If you've dealt with this before, I'd be interested.
00:22:03.860And do you think that's a deal killer for this indictment?
00:22:20.900I think on that other issue that you talked about, it's a very low bar to meet whether the prosecution has a good faith basis to go forward.
00:22:29.220And that argument that they're only bringing it because there's animus towards him.
00:22:34.220Listen, I wouldn't be going to trial at all, ever, if we judged based on how prosecutors felt about my clients.
00:22:42.980They generally don't particularly care for them.
00:22:45.600But that's really, in fact, Antonio Brown this week, I got a lot of earful from prosecutors.
00:22:50.540But the truth is, that doesn't matter.
00:22:57.020Plus, they're only bringing this because they just don't like him.
00:23:01.200And here, whether there's a valid defense or not, there's enough at least to argue that there is enough that he did to justify the charges.
00:23:11.200Would it be enough that the president didn't like him as opposed to the prosecutor?
00:23:29.520It's got to be these prosecutors hold him in the worst regard, and they went after him, not because he violated the law, but because they have personal vendetta against him and just can't stand him.
00:23:45.360Okay, well, I want to keep going because there's a lot more to get to.
00:23:47.560Michael Wolff, who's been all over the news this week because he was BFFs with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:23:52.780I mean, it's like we, one week ago today, I think it was one week or eight days ago today, we had an exclusive report on Michael Wolff and tapes that we had heard, personally, of Michael Wolff dealing with Jeffrey Epstein and this former Obama White House counsel.
00:24:10.420And Michael Wolff was more of an advisor to Jeffrey Epstein than he was independent journalist trying to document anything about him.
00:24:18.300I mean, he had lots of thoughts on how Jeffrey Epstein needed to rehabilitate himself and, you know, could come clean with the public and sort of return to polite society and was advising him on how CNN might be asking Trump about Jeffrey Epstein at a debate and on and on it went.
00:24:32.720Well, Michael Wolff is making a living, like, single-handedly out of talking about the Trumps, thanks in large part to his talks with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:24:41.520Like, he's tried to parlay that plus his profile of Trump in Fire and Fury into a whole career as a Trump whisperer.
00:24:50.540But anyway, one of the things he did was he went on a podcast with the Daily Beast, and he started talking about Trump and Melania and the beginning of their relationship.
00:25:05.000This is from Michael Wolff's Instagram.
00:25:08.220But the Daily Beast also wrote up this story.
00:25:10.560And listen here to what he said, South 35.
00:25:14.140This sham marriage, trophy marriage, hardly any marriage at all, is part of the scam he's pulled on MAGA.
00:25:24.580But I think that's in danger of being undermined now by the Epstein story, in which Melania plays no small part.
00:25:37.200Epstein told me that Trump and Melania got together, had sex for the first time, on his airplane, Epstein's airplane.
00:25:48.380Melania met Trump through the same modeling circles through which Epstein and Trump procured dates.
00:26:01.320And after he got married, he continued to cheat on Melania, in part through his Epstein connections, and often with Epstein as the wingman.
00:26:12.340Okay, so he not only posted that on Instagram, but he talked to the Daily Beast, and there was a podcast in which he said similar things.
00:26:22.880And the Daily Beast took down that podcast after hearing from Melania Trump's lawyers.
00:26:32.240Michael Wolff, instead of backing down, filed his own request and action, a legal action, a case, for declaratory judgment, which is kind of what you do when you know you're about to get sued and you'd rather be the plaintiff than the defendant.
00:26:45.580You beat the would-be plaintiff into the court, and you say, I'm the plaintiff, and I demand a judgment saying I did nothing wrong.
00:26:51.500So that's what he did, and he's in there now saying, I didn't do anything wrong, I did not defame anybody, and I want a judgment to that effect.
00:26:59.680And he's going after Melania, standing by what he said in that clip.
00:27:05.060Anybody have thoughts on whether what he said in that clip is per se defamatory or could form the basis of a defamation case, given that he started it with Epstein told me?
00:27:17.120Well, if I can take that first, Megan, look, what he said, and you've got to, setting aside the absolute atrocity, like the atrociousness of what was said, I think it's just reprehensible, the things that he said.
00:27:31.680But setting that aside, you have to look specifically at the very words that were used.
00:27:37.400And this, what we just played in that thought, is a mixture, if you will, of opinions and allegations of fact.
00:27:45.820And in order to prevail on a defamation claim, you know, it has to be essentially a false statement of fact.
00:27:52.760And, of course, there's some nuances to that.
00:27:54.820A false statement of fact, and the burden of proof is on the plaintiff.
00:27:57.640In this case, it would be Melania to prove that those were false and, in fact, defamatory.
00:28:03.100So you mentioned that he's gone to court first.
00:28:06.880There's a type of law called a SLAP statute, and it stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.
00:28:13.960And the word strategic is in there for a reason, because as you pointed out, this allows the would-be defendant to go into court first.
00:28:21.580And then he has to prove, now that he's the plaintiff, though, he, Wolf, is going to have to prove that his comments were not defamatory.
00:28:30.120So he's basically changed the burden of proof, if you will.
00:28:33.980I think it was probably not a good idea to do that.
00:28:36.600The best thing to do would have been to just take it down and move on, as the letter from Melania Trump's lawyers asked them to do.
00:28:44.580That would have been the smarter thing.
00:28:45.920But now we're in court, and we're going to have judges and all sorts of people back and forth debating, is this a fact or is this an opinion?
00:28:53.680Oh, and by the way, if all we're doing is regurgitating the words of Jeffrey Epstein, then Wolf is going to say, technically, my statement is true.
00:29:02.080Because this is exactly what Epstein said.
00:29:07.780You agree, Mark, that's a get-out-of-jail-free card, like a total carte blanche for Michael Wolf to say whatever he wants, as long as it's prefaced with Jeffrey Epstein told me.
00:29:15.440Yes, and as we all learned when we went to law school, the First Amendment gives you wide latitude to spew outrageous and offensive speech.
00:29:24.380The question is whether this is primarily opinion, and it looks that way.
00:29:28.340There's a few facts that he'll say, well, I said in good conscience, it doesn't mean that they're actually true.
00:30:09.300Before he gets to Epstein told me, Ashley, he says,
00:30:11.800So all that precedes Epstein told me that they got together and so on.
00:30:29.820And by the way, he also went on and said some very terrible things about Trump wanting to sleep with his friends' wives and setting traps up to get them to sleep with them and so on.
00:30:39.140Now, Trump is not the one threatening a lawsuit.
00:30:41.660It's Melania about what he said about her.
00:30:43.880I don't know if that's enough to call their marriage a sham, a trophy marriage, hardly any marriage at all.
00:31:05.600He wants to be able to depose people, and he wants to be able to access documents in the public space and get discovery, get depositions, interrogatories, those type of things.
00:31:15.400If there's a lawsuit, you can get discovery.
00:56:26.500But when first lady Melania Trump does anything, she's pretty maligned by the mainstream media for doing, you know, nothing or even doing the same things.
00:56:33.280And so I thought, okay, I want to go see her in person.
00:57:17.980I mean, they're being rambunctious kids.
00:57:19.420And that's when I thought, okay, this is a real badass woman right here, the first lady.
00:57:24.940She's the epitome of class, and it doesn't matter how much they throw at her, and the mainstream media loathes her for no other reason than she's stuck by Donald Trump.
00:58:05.620She's sitting next to a little girl, telling the little girl she's so beautiful.
00:58:09.020And Melania's smile, of course, is 1,000 watt.
00:58:11.980And the little girl's looking up at her and kind of feeling self-conscious.
00:58:15.700It's a beautiful moment, one you will never see on the vast majority of the MSM because it has the unfortunate side effect of making Melania look human and kind.
00:58:26.300Well, that's why I'm so grateful they invited me because I don't have an editor I report to, right?
00:58:30.920So all the other reporters in the pool, they have to file and get it through this and that and the whole rigmarole.
01:00:25.380They're not going to be on the cover of magazines.
01:00:27.000They're only going to be covered in dripping vitriol from virtually every publication that writes about them because of who they're married to and the fact that they're Republicans.
01:01:23.320Liberal women will absolutely attack conservative women, which shows that all of the female empowerment, feminism, dress for success stuff that they talk about is a bunch of BS if you don't extend it to women who happen to vote a little bit differently than you do or happen to be married to a Republican, right?
01:01:39.260So that's why I just don't buy into all of the liberal feminism, and I was excited to see them.
01:01:43.460Just to jump in on it, also, Usha Vance, in addition to being stunning, and a mother and a wife, is a very successful attorney.
01:01:51.420She was at the top of her Yale Law School class.
01:01:53.340That's why she wound up clerking for Supreme Court for United States Chief Justice John Roberts.
01:01:59.620You don't just give that job to anybody.
01:02:01.520While pregnant, I mean, normally the left would be celebrating her universally.
01:02:07.080And by the way, I don't even know what her politics are.
01:02:10.180You know, like, she doesn't talk about her politics a lot.
01:02:12.160I think she might be an independent and not really even necessarily a Republican, but who cares?
01:02:17.500She won't get any accolades because she's married to J.D.
01:02:20.440So whatever, we're used to it, but it's always worth pointing out because those two women are worthy of celebration and no one else is going to do it.
01:02:27.140Okay, speaking of Democrats on the left who will never praise people over on the right, Jasmine Crockett.
01:02:33.380But she's run out of actual villains over on the right, so she's starting to make them up.
01:02:38.540Trying to say somebody like a Lee Zeldin, who almost became governor of New York four years ago, a Republican, now he's Trump's EPA administrator, took donations from Jeffrey Epstein.
01:03:10.340And I said yesterday, she's lucky she said that on the House floor, accusing Lee Zeldin of taking donations from the Jeffrey Epstein because he could sue her.
01:03:19.680And you can't sue her, though, because she was on the House floor when she said it.
01:03:23.400And now here she is out there trying to cover it up, trying to pretend she didn't make the error, that, like, it was intentional.
01:03:31.420And she knew what she was saying might be wrong.
01:03:33.780In an interview she gave Wednesday to CNN, it's Sot3.
01:03:37.920Do you want to correct the record on the people?
01:03:39.860Listen, I never said that it was that Jeffrey Epstein, just so that people understand when you make a donation, your picture is not there.
01:03:45.620And because they decided to spring this on us in real time, I wanted the Republicans to think about what could potentially happen because I knew that they didn't even try to go through the FEC.
01:03:55.760So my team, what they did is they Googled.
01:03:57.760And that is specifically why I said a Jeffrey Epstein.
01:04:00.080He admitted that he did receive donations from a Jeffrey Epstein.
01:04:03.560So at least I wasn't trying to mislead people.
01:04:05.620I literally had maybe 20 minutes before I had to do that debate.
01:04:10.660Yeah, but people might see that and say, well, you're trying to make it sound like he took money from a registered sex offender.
01:04:34.100There is the standard in law, which is you can defame a public figure like Lee Zeldin if you can prove that you made a false statement about him,
01:04:45.700and it was made either with malicious intent, that it was made with malicious intent, meaning disregard of the truth, reckless disregard of the truth.
01:05:27.640But Jasmine Crockett, I'm like, you are one of the dumbest, most uncouth women.
01:05:32.560And then when you look at your team, the fact that no one on the team stepped in, that's the job of your aides and your advisors to say, yo, yo, yo, let's not go out there and say this or this information isn't correct.
01:05:41.920And, you know, when you've lost Caitlyn and you've lost CNN, you might be on the wrong side of history.
01:05:46.540You know, when you've lost just for the audience who had who didn't see the original soundbite.
01:05:51.820It's sat for folks who also took money from somebody named Jeffrey Epstein.
01:05:58.280As I had my team dig in very quickly, Mitt Romney, the NRCC, Lee Zeldin, George Bush, Wynn Redd, McCain Palin, Rick Lazio.
01:06:12.820I just want to be clear. If this is the standard that we're going to make, just know we're going to expose it all.
01:06:19.800Okay, and the reason she was doing that is because she was trying to run cover for this Democrat representative, Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands,
01:06:28.820who was very tight with Jeffrey Epstein, or so it would appear as she was texting him live during a congressional hearing,
01:06:35.660cross-examining Michael Cohen, Trump's fixer attorney, and she was asking Epstein for dirt on Trump that she could raise with Michael Cohen.
01:06:47.040So that's Jasmine Crockett saying, oh, these are all the people that he gave to in an effort to diminish the relationship between her fellow representative,
01:06:57.100this woman who got in trouble yesterday, Blasket, but didn't actually get censored, and Jeffrey Epstein.
01:07:02.200So she'll run cover for her by condemning all those names you just heard, Mitt Romney, Lee Zeldin,
01:07:07.320completely carelessly just because she's got to save her fellow, what, female, black Democrat from the Virgin Islands.
01:07:14.680Well, absolutely, and I think it's interesting. The Democrats don't actually care about the facts, right?
01:07:18.940She's not going to get heat from her own party for this. She's not going to get called in by Mike Johnson or anybody over this.
01:07:24.280They just like that she's out there and she's loud and she's taking Republicans to task, so they don't care about the truth.
01:07:30.120But Jasmine Crockett, this isn't the first lie that she spewed. She's gone out there and spread vitriol.
01:07:34.640We find out from her team that she's a diva. She wants them to carry her purse around and get her a pillow to prop up her back.
01:07:40.180That's who Jasmine Crockett is, and so none of this is shocking to me.
01:07:42.940I don't think she's in elected office because she's brilliant or because she's in Mensa.
01:07:46.640I think she's there because she's loud and they look at her as maybe some resistance-type figure, like a Gavin Newsom, part of the resistance.
01:07:52.980But they might be resistance, but there's no substance, Megan, with her.
01:07:56.740I mean, you don't want to sacrifice smart for street.
01:08:00.680Ideally, you get both if that's your goal, but if you have to choose between one and the other, I'd recommend going for smart.
01:08:06.100I will say, though, the more time you spend in D.C., you're shocked at how unintelligent some elected officials are.
01:09:26.880That's an eight point rise on the net approval rating.
01:09:29.340We're talking about a double digit rise.
01:09:31.400The American people like much more of what they're seeing from Donald Trump in foreign policy in term two than they did in term number one.
01:09:47.360Donald Trump actually leads the pack at 43 percent.
01:09:50.800Donald Trump has a higher foreign policy approval rating at this point in a second term than any other president who served their entire second term in the 21st century.
01:10:01.380This is something I think Donald Trump really likes to look at because the bottom line is this.
01:10:05.560Presidents like to build their legacies off of foreign policy.
01:10:08.020And at this particular point, the American people like much more of what Donald Trump's doing on foreign policy than either of the two other 21st century presidents who served at least or served two terms.
01:10:18.960So, Link, is he getting enough credit?
01:10:21.400You know, do you think that he's getting a little too much jazz from critics on being overseas fairly frequently as opposed to recognizing he's actually accomplished some amazing things there?
01:10:32.120And he has been focused on domestic policy.
01:10:34.760I mean, he can chew gum and walk at the same time.
01:11:04.840And something I talk about a lot is I think one in five young men are what we call NEAT, which means not in education, employment, or training.
01:27:05.880Which, of course, is untrue in Meghan Markle's case.
01:27:08.320Link, as you've been calling her, she's, among other things, a disaster tourist who cannot seem to stop herself from taking advantage of places where people have suffered amazing hardship and injecting her photo op right in the middle of it.
01:27:43.700Like, all of these celebrities that you're trying to hang out with and you're hanging out with the Kardashians or hanging out with people who have, like, sex tapes and show their vaginas on camera, you could be British royalty right now.
01:27:54.840You could be eating crumpets and scones.
01:27:56.920Like, they just had a massive state dinner and a tiara.
01:28:00.020Look at that state dinner they had recently where President Trump sat next to Catherine and Camilla and the king and the whole delegation.
01:28:06.640You could have been there at that massive, beautiful state dinner at Windsor.
01:28:10.280You're hanging out with the Kardashians at a party and then you don't like the way you look in the photos because you look bloated and you allegedly asked for them to be taken down.
01:28:47.960Let this be a cautionary tale to so many of the women out there who maybe even look up to Meghan Markle, though I don't know how you would have stumbled upon this podcast.
01:28:56.100The grass is not always greener, okay?
01:28:59.520You might think you're holding all the cards in life.
01:29:02.140You got to know what cards you have and what cards you don't.
01:29:52.440And they're at an age where they're constantly learning something new.
01:29:56.280And you can remember as they face things that are insurmountable and say, I know it seems really hard right now, but trust me, that's going to come easily soon.
01:30:06.980I can give myself the same grace as a founder.
01:30:22.220And most normal people don't run around referring to themselves like that because they know it makes them sound completely artificial, narcissistic, and insecure.
01:30:41.760Okay, she goes on and says, this is the writer for Harper's Bazaar.
01:30:45.320When I ask Megan what she hopes her kids see when they see her working, she tells me, now most of us would say, hopefully they learn the value of hard work, right?
01:30:54.740I think that would be the first thing that would come to mind.
01:31:21.600I'm sure they have, like, privacy controls and adult filters on the kids, you know, phones and computers.
01:31:26.720Someday, these kids, Archie and Lily bet if they exist, they're going to go to a friend's house.
01:31:32.240And they're going to Google their parents, and they're going to realize, we could have been royalty this whole time.
01:31:38.400We could have been living in a palace, and we're stuck in this kind of compound in Montecito with this crazy woman and her scrawny legs and her jams on the stove.
01:31:49.220If I turned 18, this is like princess diaries.
01:31:51.700If I turned 18 and I found out I could have been royalty the whole time and I was stuck in California with the Kardashians, I would be so upset.
01:31:59.360And I actually hear that there are some titles available if they would like to adopt me.
01:32:04.340The Duke of York title seems like it's available.
01:32:56.240Right, she's got to stay in a friend's brownstone because you see, Link, she's too famous.
01:33:00.600She's too famous to walk through a lobby, unlike every other actual celebrity in the world who stay in hotels just fine, including Taylor Swift, with no problem in very many cities, much less a place like New York, which is very used to A-listers, which she is not.
01:33:16.560Okay, the writer writes as follows, quote,
01:33:19.920So, when I enter this brownstone, the house manager announces, Megan, Duchess of Sussex, even though we appear to be the only other two people in the house.
01:33:32.520And that harkens back to what we read on page one, where she said they were outside the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles to receive a local group of girls.
01:33:44.020And as the golf cart pulled up, they yelled out,
01:34:32.040And like, I have friends, they get divorced and they hang on to the last name because maybe the last name was better than the one they had.
01:34:37.420Or they were married to a prominent guy.
01:34:38.920So they cling to that last name in society.
01:34:41.480And it's like, Megan is clinging hard to this Duchess title.
01:34:45.160She was in the royal family for 18 months.
01:34:47.020I have stuff in my freezer that's been there 18 years.
01:36:02.220She's been so difficult for her to get her voice out there, Link, and her $50 million Netflix deal, and her Spotify deal, and all the other things she's done.
01:37:00.520I think his, like, soul is leaving his body.
01:37:03.440I mean, he just looks like a shell of a man.
01:37:05.620Like, you know that man who's just, like, emasculated and beaten down, and they've kind of thrown in the towel, and they're slouched in the big lazy boy chair?
01:37:14.460Like, that is Prince Harry to me, okay?
01:37:17.500He's just acquiesced, and he's in a prison of his own making, right?
01:39:56.960So, Meghan tells me that she'll be having lunch soon with Gloria Steinem, or Glow, as she calls her.
01:40:04.040You know how when you and I get together, Link, I always make sure before we part to tell you what more important person than you I'm about to see.
01:40:11.800And also my favorite pet nickname for them.
01:40:40.080Thank you for that remarkable insight.
01:40:42.540I never knew, writer Caitlin Greenidge, that Meghan Markle might actually enjoy the surrealism of global celebrity.
01:40:50.640Hello, it's why she married that ginger.
01:40:52.700It certainly wasn't for love of his weirdness and beta role in the royal family.
01:40:58.680No, and Meghan Markle, she couches herself as this big humanitarian.
01:41:01.680She wants to be like this, like, UNICEF woman, Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, traveling the world, you know, bringing tampons to girls in Timbuktu.
01:41:09.480But then, like, all she does is just slap her name on things.