The Megyn Kelly Show - May 03, 2023


Failed Attempt to Destroy Tucker Carlson, and Supreme Court Leaker Latest, with James O'Keefe and Sen. Mike Lee | Ep. 542


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 36 minutes

Words per Minute

179.82793

Word Count

17,307

Sentence Count

1,276

Misogynist Sentences

37

Hate Speech Sentences

22


Summary

Fox News is in an existential crisis, and their solution to their massive error of firing their number one star is to try to ruin him. Megyn Kelly explains why Fox News fired Tucker Carlson and why they will do whatever it takes to destroy him.


Transcript

00:00:00.420 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.700 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:15.120 So the orchestrated campaign to absolutely ruin Tucker Carlson continues.
00:00:21.260 It wasn't enough to fire their number one star.
00:00:24.240 In my opinion, Fox News seems determined to absolutely ruin him.
00:00:28.780 To ruin his reputation, to make him unemployable, and ideally, in their view, to make his audience turn on him so that they won't follow him wherever he goes next.
00:00:39.720 Fox News is suffering what could fairly be called a bloodbath at eight o'clock, and now their entire prime time is suffering as a result of it,
00:00:48.580 as viewers' anger escalates to exponential levels in the wake of this unfair treatment of their number one star.
00:00:56.480 Okay, right now, the latest ratings we have are for Monday, because the ratings come out the next day, so we've gotten the Tuesday afternoon results.
00:01:04.620 We'll get Tuesday nights today at 4.30.
00:01:06.860 So I have Mondays.
00:01:09.620 On Monday night, the 7 p.m., hosted by Jesse Waters, in the Kia advertising demo of 25 to 54, which is the number they care about,
00:01:18.340 beat the 8 p.m., the 9 p.m., the 10 p.m., and even Greg Gutfeld at 11.
00:01:25.480 He beat them all.
00:01:27.060 Why is that? Because people are still in love with Jesse.
00:01:29.140 I like Jesse. This is not a hit on Jesse.
00:01:31.000 But, no, that's not what's happening.
00:01:32.880 Jesse's getting kind of the number he was getting, a little lower.
00:01:36.500 He's suffering a bit, too.
00:01:38.300 But it's off a cliff, off a cliff at 8 p.m.
00:01:42.980 They have left in droves, and then they don't recover.
00:01:45.860 They are not coming back for Hannity.
00:01:47.400 They're not coming back for Ingram.
00:01:48.880 They're not coming back for Gutfeld.
00:01:50.760 It is a devastating event from 8 p.m. forward now on Fox News.
00:01:55.140 They lost in both the demo and the overall to MSNBC.
00:01:58.000 The only reason they're not losing every night to CNN is because they have two viewers.
00:02:03.260 So, I mean, it's like Brian Stelter still tunes in, and I think Don Lemon might be the other one.
00:02:08.480 I hate watching.
00:02:09.620 That's the only reason.
00:02:11.640 So Fox News is truly in an existential crisis right now, and their solution to their massive error of firing their number one star is to try to ruin him.
00:02:22.640 Why are they doing this?
00:02:23.700 I was having a private conversation with a frequent guest of the show who's friends with Tucker, as am I, today.
00:02:30.540 And I said it's two reasons.
00:02:32.080 Number one, omerta.
00:02:33.400 You don't leave the cult.
00:02:35.120 You don't leave voluntarily like I did with a hug goodbye on supposedly good terms.
00:02:40.580 And you certainly don't leave when they've decided to fire you on good terms.
00:02:45.720 Hell no.
00:02:46.900 Fire and destroy.
00:02:48.040 That's how it goes.
00:02:49.300 Why?
00:02:49.540 Because if they fire the number one star, he could hurt them.
00:02:52.420 He still has a very massive audience.
00:02:54.500 So he has to be destroyed, you see.
00:02:57.440 Otherwise, somebody could employ him.
00:03:00.120 His audience is mad.
00:03:02.120 We have to make the audience see.
00:03:03.440 We fired Bill O'Reilly because he had paid $69 million in sexual harassment settlements.
00:03:07.800 You have to understand that, audience.
00:03:09.640 You have to forgive us.
00:03:10.820 And the audience did.
00:03:12.140 The audience isn't a bunch of unreasonable people.
00:03:14.320 They said, oh, I miss Bill, but okay, I'll give him another chance.
00:03:17.520 And Tucker took off in the eight o'clock because people were open-minded.
00:03:20.700 They're not a bunch of assholes at home.
00:03:22.320 Like, I don't get my favorite.
00:03:23.340 I don't watch.
00:03:24.660 They were never given an explanation for Tucker.
00:03:28.360 The rug was pulled under him, out from under him, out from under the audience with no explanation.
00:03:32.900 And so now the destroy mission has to happen so that you, the audience members, realize you just were too stupid to understand how evil Tucker was.
00:03:41.300 You see?
00:03:42.480 That's what I believe is clearly happening here.
00:03:44.580 And the latest offering is, once again, via the New York Times, the newfound favorite publication, apparently, of Fox News.
00:03:52.720 They've gone to the same reporters who leaked the earlier stuff about his allegedly horrifying text messages and the horrifying outtakes.
00:04:01.400 I'm referring to them as outtakes, but really what they are is the anchor sitting on the set during the commercial break making small talk with either the guest or with the staff and the producers, whoever.
00:04:10.840 There's only one way to have that.
00:04:12.540 You could be sitting there on the satellite feed if you have access, if you're at a competing news channel and watching every second of Tucker, looking for him to say something and hold on to all the tapes and then release it after he got fired to make him look bad.
00:04:22.580 But that's not what happened.
00:04:24.940 Or you could be somebody internally who's got a grudge against him, who now, on direction of the bosses, and it's part of the ruined Tucker plan, is going back, calling over all those tapes, looking for any moment that makes him look bad.
00:04:37.120 So the New York Times earlier reports he had a moment where he called a woman yummy.
00:04:40.540 Then he later said he was kidding in the same segment.
00:04:42.960 Not reported by the New York Times, the I'm kidding part.
00:04:45.540 However, they reported that somehow they got their hands on the tapes, the magical tapes.
00:04:50.780 Secondly, they had him making a reference to his post-menopausal audience.
00:04:55.400 Well, then, a couple of days after that, Media Matters for America, this far left group.
00:05:00.040 It was a Hillary Clinton-backed entity at one point.
00:05:03.520 David Brock, this craziness, what they've printed over there.
00:05:07.640 They printed, they got a hold of the videos.
00:05:10.380 We showed them to you yesterday.
00:05:11.280 Oh, it's amazing how the New York Times and Media Matters have exactly the same sourcing.
00:05:15.540 Who could it be?
00:05:17.300 Whoever.
00:05:18.340 Whomever.
00:05:19.180 Could it be?
00:05:20.640 Today, we get yet another installment.
00:05:23.180 Media Matters dropped another video yesterday, which we showed you on our program.
00:05:27.100 And now, today we have another Media Matters release, and we have a new New York Times release.
00:05:32.040 This is absurd.
00:05:33.680 Okay, this is absurd.
00:05:35.400 This is a destruction campaign, and the media is going along with it.
00:05:38.200 Without one thought for how they're participating in what is an internal work dispute,
00:05:44.300 allowing themselves to be used as tools of Irina Berganti, who runs the Fox evil communications
00:05:51.360 department, and her bosses, who are clearly allowing all of this.
00:05:55.280 The New York Times.
00:05:57.180 Carlson's text that alarmed Fox leaders, colon,
00:05:59.900 It's not how white men fight.
00:06:04.500 The discovery of the text message contributed to a chain of events.
00:06:08.900 Notice the ambiguity.
00:06:10.280 They can't say this is what caused it.
00:06:12.080 At some point, these people could find themselves under oath in a lawsuit brought by Tucker.
00:06:17.540 And they're clearly not prepared to say that this is actually what did it, because it obviously
00:06:21.540 didn't, but it contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to Carlson's firing.
00:06:28.560 The New York Times goes on.
00:06:30.820 A text message sent by Tucker Carlson that set off a panic at the highest levels of Fox
00:06:35.160 on the eve of its billion-dollar defamation trial showed its most popular host sharing
00:06:39.900 his private, private, inflammatory views about violence and race.
00:06:45.840 The discovery of the message contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to his firing.
00:06:50.320 In the message sent to one of his producers in the hours after violent Trump supporters
00:06:54.760 stormed the Capitol on Jan 6, Mr. Carlson described how he had recently watched a video
00:06:59.680 of a group of men, Trump supporters, he said, violently attacking, quote, an Antifa kid.
00:07:07.280 It was three against one, at least, he wrote.
00:07:10.640 And then he expressed a sense of dismay that the attackers, like him, were white.
00:07:16.520 Quote, jumping a guy like that is dishonorable, obviously, he wrote.
00:07:20.980 Quote, it's not how white men fight, he said.
00:07:24.400 But he said he found himself for a moment wanting the group to kill the person he had
00:07:29.460 described as the Antifa kid.
00:07:32.120 Now I will get into the full text that is printed here.
00:07:36.180 Let me start with this.
00:07:37.300 The Times acknowledges we are not supposed to be seeing this text.
00:07:40.440 Why?
00:07:40.700 Because it was produced by Tucker and or his producer in the context of the Dominion
00:07:45.800 lawsuit, which is good.
00:07:47.600 They complied with their discovery obligations.
00:07:49.560 He didn't hide it.
00:07:50.640 They turned it over to it would be the general counsel of the company asking him for responsive
00:07:56.280 documents.
00:07:57.360 I guarantee you there would have been an assurance to Tucker that this would be would stay private,
00:08:02.560 that his private correspondence would stay private and that this would not be relevant
00:08:07.120 to the Dominion litigation.
00:08:09.040 In my view, I don't know that this should have been produced.
00:08:11.060 I don't see how this is relevant to the Dominion litigation.
00:08:13.880 It's one thing to produce it and have it come up in a deposition where basically they had
00:08:18.120 cast a wide, wide net.
00:08:19.800 But there was no way this was going to be allowed in against Tucker at trial on a cross
00:08:23.680 examination.
00:08:24.080 What does this have to do with lies about Dominion?
00:08:26.920 He's talking about a beatdown he saw on the street a couple of weeks earlier.
00:08:30.440 So it was kept out.
00:08:32.520 It wound up in a Dominion filing.
00:08:34.200 Of course, they wanted to embarrass Fox and Tucker.
00:08:36.060 Um, and Fox managed to get it blacked out of Dominion's filing from the public eye for
00:08:41.660 all the reasons I just stated.
00:08:43.280 Well, miraculously, now someone has come up with it and leaked it to the New York Times.
00:08:48.540 Whomever could it be?
00:08:50.120 Who would have had the motive to keep it protected before, but now out at Dominion?
00:08:54.940 Oh, they have their $800 million.
00:08:56.820 Why would they now be leaking texts about Tucker Carlson?
00:08:59.740 Why would they do anything to risk their $800 million?
00:09:02.360 Could it be perhaps Fox, which has been, in my view, again, leaking to the New York Times
00:09:08.140 day by day with little bits and pieces that would hurt Tucker?
00:09:12.000 And here we go again with this long text.
00:09:15.980 Uh, so it's been released from a redacted court filing that we are not supposed to see.
00:09:20.120 The New York Times right now, I believe, is one of three news organizations.
00:09:23.380 They are suing in this courtroom to get the redacted portions of these briefs unredacted.
00:09:30.160 There's a process in place for the news media that's curious about what's behind these blackouts
00:09:34.820 to find out someone has jumped the gun.
00:09:38.740 Someone in possession of the Tucker texts has jumped the gun and flouted the court order.
00:09:44.360 Hmm.
00:09:45.280 Whomever could it be?
00:09:46.620 Such a mystery.
00:09:48.140 So Tucker's text.
00:09:49.940 A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington.
00:09:53.900 A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him.
00:09:58.720 It was three against one at least.
00:10:01.060 Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable, obviously.
00:10:03.620 It's not how white men fight.
00:10:05.560 Yet suddenly, I found myself rooting for the mob against the man,
00:10:08.380 hoping they would hit him hard or kill him.
00:10:10.260 I really wanted them to hurt the kid.
00:10:11.740 I could taste it.
00:10:12.960 Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off.
00:10:15.520 This isn't good for me.
00:10:16.940 I'm becoming something I don't want to be.
00:10:19.100 The Antifa creep is a human being.
00:10:21.420 Much as I despise what he says and does,
00:10:23.500 much as I'm sure I'd hate him personally if I knew him,
00:10:25.500 I shouldn't gloat over his suffering.
00:10:28.220 I should be bothered by it.
00:10:29.820 I should remember that somewhere,
00:10:31.540 somebody probably loves this kid and would be crushed if he was killed.
00:10:35.360 If I don't care about those things,
00:10:37.720 if I reduce people to their politics,
00:10:40.060 how am I better than he is?
00:10:42.360 First of all, I think it's extraordinary
00:10:43.740 that Tucker is being this introspective in a casual text exchange with a producer on his show.
00:10:48.940 That's who he is.
00:10:49.880 He's constantly talking like this and thinking about himself in these ways
00:10:53.560 and challenging himself when he falls down emotionally or mentally or intellectually
00:10:57.580 to do better.
00:10:58.940 You've seen it a million times and so have I.
00:11:01.080 So they plucked this one phrase out where he says,
00:11:04.440 it's not how white men fight to try to make him look like a demon.
00:11:08.160 Now, I don't know what Tucker meant by that.
00:11:11.120 I will say for whatever it's worth,
00:11:12.940 that to me it appears like he is describing a group jumping a kid
00:11:17.540 and then they start pounding the living shit out of him.
00:11:20.500 It sounds like gang violence to me.
00:11:22.580 I think he's observing what looks very much like gang violence.
00:11:25.200 And if you look at the stats on gangs in America
00:11:28.020 and in New York City in particular, where Fox is headquartered,
00:11:30.980 literally it's 99% non-white.
00:11:33.800 I looked it up just to see.
00:11:35.540 Juvenile Justice Information says New York City gangs are 99% people of color.
00:11:39.340 The National Youth Gang Survey, 81% people of color in gangs in America.
00:11:43.960 Only 11% white on a national basis.
00:11:46.300 So if Tucker's responding to what looks like gang violence,
00:11:50.300 it is not accurate, it is not inaccurate to say
00:11:53.080 it's not typically a group of white people doing that.
00:11:57.280 Was it the most artful sentence?
00:11:58.760 No, it wasn't.
00:11:59.300 But as the Times acknowledges it was a private communication,
00:12:03.320 never meant to see the light of day.
00:12:04.540 I'm sure had he articulated it on his show,
00:12:06.760 it would have been said a little differently.
00:12:09.260 But you're supposed to not see that.
00:12:11.700 You're supposed to hold it against him.
00:12:13.400 And you're supposed to feel like a racist if you're not offended by Tucker's messaging.
00:12:18.820 You see, that's the game.
00:12:20.660 Only racists watch Tucker or would excuse that kind of behavior.
00:12:25.240 Then we get into the long discussion of the board.
00:12:27.280 This alarmed the Fox board.
00:12:29.540 Sure it did.
00:12:30.460 Did they watch Tucker's show?
00:12:31.720 Because he wasn't the most ginger on the topic of race ever.
00:12:34.640 Okay, so spare me your false indignation.
00:12:39.420 They saw the message a day before Fox was set to defend itself against Dominion.
00:12:42.760 The board grew concerned the message could become public at trial
00:12:45.600 when Carlson was on the stand,
00:12:47.640 creating a sensational and damaging moment
00:12:49.220 that would raise broader questions about the company.
00:12:51.640 Sure, Jan.
00:12:52.440 Sure.
00:12:53.320 Once again, sure.
00:12:54.860 Who believes that?
00:12:56.520 Then they go on to say that this was one of the reasons they settled the case.
00:12:59.620 Oh, I see.
00:13:00.240 You were so determined not to let the public see that message.
00:13:02.580 You paid $800 million.
00:13:03.540 You didn't want to embarrass Tucker.
00:13:05.320 You didn't want to embarrass the company.
00:13:08.280 So you pay $800 million.
00:13:09.840 And then what'd you do after you pay the $800 million?
00:13:12.120 You embarrass Tucker and you embarrass the company anyway.
00:13:14.960 What sense does that make?
00:13:16.520 This was not the straw that broke the camel's back.
00:13:19.640 This is an attempt to destroy the man because of Omerta.
00:13:24.540 You leave the mob.
00:13:25.860 The mob leaves you.
00:13:27.140 You're dead.
00:13:28.440 You must be destroyed.
00:13:30.180 And because he's a threat,
00:13:31.820 you fire your number one host.
00:13:33.080 He can hurt you unless you convince potential employers and his audience he's bad.
00:13:39.020 He's worse than you knew.
00:13:41.660 That leads me to the Media Matters video today, which is absolutely hysterical.
00:13:45.420 I have no idea why they're doing this.
00:13:47.100 This offends nobody, not even arguably.
00:13:49.220 But here it is.
00:13:49.960 The latest in the death by a thousand cuts scheme.
00:13:53.380 Well, that was a week, I'll say.
00:14:00.060 Holy shit.
00:14:02.280 Ten hours.
00:14:05.920 That slimy little motherfucker sitting across from me.
00:14:09.020 Oh, you're the best.
00:14:10.420 And I wasn't talking about you.
00:14:12.260 It's just the opposite.
00:14:13.400 You seem to be a complex.
00:14:15.080 No, I'm not.
00:14:16.040 What do you mean?
00:14:16.660 Because you've never been this affirmed in your life?
00:14:18.880 I don't know.
00:14:19.980 Thank you, Alex.
00:14:22.000 Have a happy weekend.
00:14:24.840 See you, man.
00:14:25.340 Anyway, the amount, it was so unhealthy, the hate, thank you, Teresa, the hate that I
00:14:32.760 felt for that.
00:14:33.740 I mean, thank you, Todd.
00:14:34.740 I, I.
00:14:35.960 How could you not?
00:14:36.900 Well, I never feel that way, you know, because I don't, I don't want to feel that way.
00:14:40.800 It's not bad.
00:14:41.860 It's totally bad for you to feel that way.
00:14:44.680 But that guy, he triggered the shit out of me.
00:14:49.720 Where are you now?
00:14:52.260 Where do you live?
00:14:57.080 The amount of times I had, first of all, fuck you on my lips, it's like, it was unbelievable.
00:15:04.620 Suggesting that I was, that I was cheating on my taxes?
00:15:07.660 Really?
00:15:08.400 Oh, oh, absolutely.
00:15:09.880 Oh, absolutely.
00:15:11.680 So where, what's, where are you domicile?
00:15:13.800 Where are you now?
00:15:15.040 Do you own a home there?
00:15:16.640 I was like, no, I do not own a home in May, which I don't.
00:15:19.720 And, first of all, Tucker looks like a perfect gentleman in that exchange.
00:15:26.120 He's thanking the guy, the A2, who's taking the mic off of him.
00:15:29.140 He's thanking the makeup artist.
00:15:30.340 He's thanking every member of his production staff who's helping him get off the things
00:15:34.360 that help you be on TV.
00:15:36.300 I mean, I, I guarantee you 90% of news anchors don't do that.
00:15:39.200 They just let the people take the things off and go on their merry way.
00:15:42.800 He's wiping the makeup off of his face.
00:15:44.520 For those of you who are just listening, I have to say, one of the things that jumped
00:15:47.680 out at me is how good men look.
00:15:49.720 Even without the TV makeup.
00:15:51.180 Shit.
00:15:53.180 It would not be that way for some of us.
00:15:57.520 And he's talking about being deposed by the Dominion lawyer that day, which, surprise,
00:16:03.080 wasn't pleasant.
00:16:04.760 He was supposed to love the Dominion lawyer taking his deposition.
00:16:08.700 He's supposed to love the implications that impugn his character and suggest he's a criminal
00:16:14.000 tax cheat based on where he lives.
00:16:17.380 I mean, who are they kidding?
00:16:19.820 Who is this supposed to actually convince that Tucker sucks?
00:16:24.140 I mean, truly, they're desperate.
00:16:26.720 They're desperate inside of Fox.
00:16:28.440 And, you know, one of the things that really bothers me is, look, I think back at my time
00:16:33.380 in NBC and it ended badly there, as you know.
00:16:37.020 But I can't say I was totally surprised because, trust me, there had been some indications
00:16:40.920 internally that let's just say I wasn't totally surprised.
00:16:44.240 OK.
00:16:44.420 Tucker was the number one show.
00:16:48.460 Tucker got them through the Trump era, which was incredibly challenging for Fox and for
00:16:52.400 all news organizations.
00:16:53.980 Tucker found the voice of the people in a way nobody else at Fox did or could or has since.
00:16:59.580 Tucker took slings and arrows every night.
00:17:00.940 Tucker's called a white supremacist by The New York Times on the front page, and they keep
00:17:04.340 retweeting it.
00:17:05.340 Tucker's a man.
00:17:06.120 He's a human.
00:17:07.160 He is subject to stressors and unhappiness like any of us.
00:17:12.040 But he bore it for you, for the audience, for Fox.
00:17:16.340 And he was on tape yesterday and the one saying, oh, this is an organization of good people.
00:17:21.240 No, it isn't.
00:17:22.640 No, it isn't.
00:17:23.600 This isn't what good people do.
00:17:25.560 You don't want him anymore.
00:17:26.520 Tell him why.
00:17:27.500 Just tell him.
00:17:28.460 He still doesn't know why.
00:17:30.280 Even Tucker doesn't know why.
00:17:32.440 His lawyer doesn't know why.
00:17:35.020 They won't tell him.
00:17:36.260 They won't tell the audience.
00:17:37.800 They just want to ruin him.
00:17:40.020 The man has a soul.
00:17:41.480 He has a heart.
00:17:42.400 He has a family.
00:17:43.500 He has a career he's worked really hard for.
00:17:45.340 And this is wrong.
00:17:47.020 This is wrong.
00:17:47.680 Do you want to let him go?
00:17:48.420 Let him go.
00:17:49.420 Tell him why.
00:17:49.940 Tell the audience why.
00:17:51.320 Be a gentleman about it.
00:17:52.600 Be a classy person about it.
00:17:55.940 Don't be a complete douchebag like this.
00:17:59.960 You know, send a message to the rest of the Fox employees that if they do well for you,
00:18:03.600 they put points on the board.
00:18:04.840 If they develop the number one show against all odds in the wake of Bill O'Reilly leaving,
00:18:09.420 their biggest star, that you'll be loyal to them, that you won't treat them like shit.
00:18:15.220 You won't try to ruin their career.
00:18:17.160 He didn't leave you.
00:18:18.040 You fired him.
00:18:20.660 The whole thing is so undignified and it's kind of triggering.
00:18:25.200 You know, I said the other day, CNN is not doing this to Don Lemon because he's not a threat.
00:18:29.200 They're doing this to Tucker at Fox because he's a threat.
00:18:32.500 And it must have been greenlit from the very top of the company.
00:18:37.720 Meanwhile, it's not settled.
00:18:39.380 They don't have a deal.
00:18:41.240 Why not?
00:18:42.300 Because he needs to be silenced while Fox tries to rebuild that disappearing audience.
00:18:48.480 They are banking on you coming back to them.
00:18:51.600 They've got a debate in August.
00:18:53.220 You can't resist.
00:18:54.660 You'll go.
00:18:55.640 You'll forgive everything.
00:18:57.140 They're banking on it.
00:18:58.600 DeSantis is likely to announce this month, you're going to turn on Fox News.
00:19:01.840 You can't go to CNN.
00:19:03.700 You're not going to go to Newsmax.
00:19:05.300 You're not going to go to digital media.
00:19:06.820 You're going to tune in to the Fox News primetime.
00:19:09.520 You lapdogs.
00:19:10.520 It's what you always do.
00:19:12.160 It's how they have billions.
00:19:14.380 That's what's happening here.
00:19:15.520 Keep him silent on the sidelines for as long as possible, unable to use his voice on any of
00:19:20.860 these things, on Fox, on politics, on anything.
00:19:25.240 And we will win in the end like we always do.
00:19:30.340 Or will they?
00:19:31.840 We'll be right back with James O'Keefe.
00:19:37.780 Joining me now, James O'Keefe, founder and CEO of a new media company called O'Keefe Media Group,
00:19:45.300 cleverly, OMG for short.
00:19:48.620 James, great to see you again.
00:19:49.480 How are you doing?
00:19:50.380 Great to be with you, Megan.
00:19:51.900 Yeah, you've been busy since the last time we saw each other.
00:19:54.620 We can talk about that in just a bit.
00:19:56.080 But let me just start with you, too, have been targeted by The New York Times, which we
00:20:00.720 believe coordinated in your case with the government after it sicked the FBI on you.
00:20:06.680 And then suddenly it appeared in The New York Times.
00:20:09.820 So I'm sure you've got some some empathy for what Tucker's going through here.
00:20:13.900 What are your thoughts on it?
00:20:14.780 Yeah, I'm going to respond to your monologue.
00:20:17.580 I mean, I mean, these are the times that try men's souls, Megan.
00:20:22.180 And it seems like a ripping of the fabric of what it means to be an American.
00:20:29.580 You know, I saw your monologue there and they're releasing on camera breaks of Tucker being
00:20:37.880 human.
00:20:38.620 Nothing I think that's really that outrageous.
00:20:41.660 But I suggest we level the playing field.
00:20:44.960 And release the text message of New York Times reporters.
00:20:47.660 It may sound a little like a little bit of whataboutism, but the reality is Tucker was
00:20:52.920 removed from Fox News.
00:20:55.660 I was removed from the company that I founded two months ago.
00:20:59.260 And anybody who thinks differently or exposes the people in the administrative state or exposes
00:21:04.320 the three-letter agencies are targeted, smeared.
00:21:08.040 They try to humiliate you.
00:21:10.540 So we're human beings and nobody's perfect.
00:21:14.660 You put anybody under a magnifying glass, anybody, any human being in the world, you're
00:21:20.080 going to find something, I guess, maybe slightly embarrassing.
00:21:22.980 The question is, does the public have a right to know it?
00:21:25.780 And people like Tucker or people like me, I suppose that's our cross to bear that any
00:21:31.760 text message we've ever sent in our entire life, we put on the front page of the New York
00:21:36.020 Times.
00:21:36.480 OK.
00:21:37.400 By the way, I'm OK with that.
00:21:39.760 I signed up for that.
00:21:41.580 I signed up for that.
00:21:42.840 I'm not complaining about that.
00:21:45.380 But if that's the world that we choose to live in, which we do, we live in America and
00:21:51.120 the public has a right to know, then why aren't we putting the New York Times' text message?
00:21:55.600 Or what about Irina Briganti's?
00:21:57.440 Let's see her text messages.
00:21:58.820 I'm sure they're absolutely lovely.
00:22:00.600 Although I know firsthand she tries to do all her business by phone so that her fingerprints
00:22:05.200 won't be everywhere.
00:22:06.580 That's why it's very difficult for Irina to file a defamation lawsuit because we'd actually
00:22:11.660 start subpoenaing everybody she talks to and they'd have to give up the goods.
00:22:15.920 Right now, I guarantee you Fox is threatening people if they write stories about me accusing
00:22:20.360 Irina Briganti because she hates to see her name in print.
00:22:24.000 The people who come for you in this way, James, they're cowards.
00:22:27.520 They're happy to smear you.
00:22:29.300 But as soon as you turn the tables and start talking about them by name and their misdeeds,
00:22:33.480 totally different story.
00:22:34.400 This is a – if you would have said this to me two years ago, I would have thought
00:22:39.540 you were a little cuckoo.
00:22:40.480 This is a spiritual good versus evil paradigm that we're now in.
00:22:46.720 When I started in my journalism career 15 years ago, it was sort of injustice and balancing
00:22:51.560 like truth versus false.
00:22:53.140 But now it's become a bit of right versus wrong.
00:22:58.380 And the line that separates good and evil runs through every single person, whether
00:23:03.140 you're a good person or bad person.
00:23:05.040 We all have things that we do that we're not proud of.
00:23:07.660 And I struggle with the ethics of what I do as an undercover journalist a few years ago.
00:23:11.460 I wrote a book about it.
00:23:12.340 I wrote a chapter called Privacy.
00:23:14.000 You have to balance the harm done to the human being with the public's right to know the
00:23:18.020 information.
00:23:18.480 But where we're so off, OK, and I want to read something real quick, Megan, just as
00:23:23.820 response to your monologue, because I think it's really on point.
00:23:27.060 A journalist in the 1990s committed suicide.
00:23:29.400 Gary Webb was his name.
00:23:31.060 He wrote a book called To Kill a Messenger.
00:23:33.340 To Kill a Messenger.
00:23:34.400 Sound familiar?
00:23:36.100 And he was going after – I think his investigative reporting was on the CIA.
00:23:39.640 He said, quote, I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing
00:23:42.960 on TV shows.
00:23:43.720 And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been.
00:23:49.500 The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been because I was good
00:23:53.620 at my job.
00:23:54.460 The truth was I'd never written anything important enough to suppress.
00:23:58.960 And now we have the decentralization of journalism.
00:24:01.980 We have Twitter, thanks to Elon Musk.
00:24:04.140 I'm back on Twitter.
00:24:05.120 Broke a story on Pfizer two months ago.
00:24:06.920 That wouldn't have happened had Elon Musk not let me back on that platform.
00:24:10.960 And you have the decentralization of information.
00:24:12.920 I think something's changed since Bill O'Reilly left Fox and since Beck was canned from Fox.
00:24:19.180 This dynamic has now changed.
00:24:20.880 People are waking up.
00:24:22.140 And they're desperate.
00:24:23.200 And they're targeting people like Tucker.
00:24:25.060 They're targeting people like me.
00:24:27.280 And I just want to say that I'm okay with anything I've ever posted to any person I've
00:24:34.260 ever sent being aired.
00:24:35.500 You want to do that?
00:24:36.340 Go ahead.
00:24:37.260 But you know what?
00:24:38.360 If that's the world we want to live in, let's go after the people in the government
00:24:41.880 now.
00:24:42.140 Let's all live in it.
00:24:42.800 And air their dirty laundry in journalism if that's the world we're going to live in.
00:24:47.780 Yeah.
00:24:47.960 Let's all live in it.
00:24:49.160 It's just such a betrayal by your own company that you trust, that you're loyal to, that
00:24:53.860 you work hard for.
00:24:55.280 I mean, it's not totally dissimilar from your case where I read the allegations they were
00:25:00.080 making about you, James.
00:25:01.160 And to me, the bottom line was, okay, they say financial improprieties.
00:25:04.820 They say he didn't spend the money that people were investing wisely and he wasn't careful
00:25:10.320 and he was kind of mean sometimes to employees.
00:25:12.600 It was your company.
00:25:13.940 There's no Project Veritas without James O'Keefe.
00:25:17.220 And my feeling was, even if it's all true, the solution to this is to remedy whatever
00:25:23.420 has gone wrong and find a way to save the company because there is no Project Veritas without
00:25:28.400 you.
00:25:28.600 You are the person we trust on the reporting.
00:25:31.900 And even if all of it is true, what does it tell us?
00:25:34.320 You're a flawed man who needs to shore up some areas and do better.
00:25:37.640 But how does the company go on without the man who built it, who conceived of it, who built
00:25:44.320 it?
00:25:44.500 I know a lot of people feel just as I did.
00:25:46.900 Well, what were your thoughts when they were accusing you of such things?
00:25:50.700 I mean, I have a lot of thoughts.
00:25:52.300 They made some bizarre allegations about I take black cars around to meetings.
00:25:56.860 I have too many meetings.
00:25:59.660 I was raising $25 million a year, responsible for much of the revenue.
00:26:04.940 I was working as hard as I possibly could while also being the on-camera talent and the chief
00:26:09.600 executive officer.
00:26:11.180 It was truly bizarre.
00:26:12.520 I think it's indicative of the times that we live in.
00:26:17.340 Perhaps people feel very entitled.
00:26:19.700 They're perhaps envious or they want to tear down excellence.
00:26:26.100 And hard work.
00:26:28.900 It was very bizarre, Megan.
00:26:31.160 And I gave a 45-minute speech, which when I left, when I was terminated, that have all
00:26:40.440 my thoughts in it.
00:26:41.640 I learned a lot of things, Megan, about human nature, about good versus evil.
00:26:46.580 It was very painful.
00:26:47.900 It was very, very painful.
00:26:48.980 Sure.
00:26:49.580 Because I spent 15 years building this thing and building the credibility of this thing.
00:26:56.140 And I've always tried to do the right thing.
00:26:58.020 I think it's getting harder in our world to do the right thing.
00:27:02.080 And I learned a lot about board management.
00:27:04.580 Frankly, I never paid attention to who was on my board.
00:27:06.380 I know that Fox has a board.
00:27:08.300 You should look at who's on their board.
00:27:09.780 It's very interesting.
00:27:10.340 Private equity funds and so forth and so on.
00:27:12.020 And in terms of media ownership, I was the CEO and chairman of a nonprofit, but a nonprofit
00:27:17.880 is not owned.
00:27:18.580 It's not owned by me.
00:27:19.520 It's the board of directors.
00:27:20.720 And I never really paid much attention to that part of it.
00:27:24.300 Lesson learned.
00:27:25.020 I'll do a better job now.
00:27:26.440 And OMG, the organization I found, it doesn't even have a board.
00:27:29.820 No, I have no board either.
00:27:31.480 I'm the board.
00:27:31.980 Good.
00:27:34.040 As a journalist, I've always tried to do the right thing and to operate without, as they
00:27:41.100 say, without fear or favor.
00:27:42.960 I never make decisions based upon economics, which is very rare because if you're an investigative
00:27:49.200 reporter, sometimes I've spent a million dollars to do a story and I didn't really care.
00:27:52.800 I just wanted to get the story.
00:27:54.400 That was my model.
00:27:56.200 I, whatever I got to do to get the story, however much it costs, it's philanthropic.
00:28:00.100 So I was working as hard as I possibly could.
00:28:04.100 I think they made a statement when I took a helicopter ride and stuff like that.
00:28:06.960 Well, when you're running around having seven meetings a day and you're trying to raise $100,000
00:28:12.640 a day to keep the lights on, to pay your 70 employees.
00:28:17.140 So it didn't really make any sense.
00:28:19.140 The timing of it was right after a Pfizer story.
00:28:21.640 The only thing about me that was different, I'm the same guy I've been for 15 years, perhaps
00:28:26.900 less intense than I used to be, as I learned how to be an executive and learn how to, how
00:28:32.320 to deal with people, which is not an easy thing to do, by the way, if you're a leader.
00:28:37.120 The only thing that changed in, in 14 years of doing that was we broke a story on Pfizer.
00:28:43.800 And then four days later, this all happened.
00:28:46.360 So the timing was very, very bizarre.
00:28:48.660 I could say a lot more about it, but I would say mostly what I've learned, it's a spiritual
00:28:52.400 journey and it's a fight of good versus evil.
00:28:55.080 Now, um, as people like me and anybody, anybody who challenges those in power, um, are under
00:29:02.780 attack, you know, on land, air and sea.
00:29:06.160 Hmm.
00:29:06.960 I did look this up earlier just to answer your question.
00:29:09.680 The Fox board of directors is made up of Rupert Murdoch, chairman, Lachlan Murdoch, executive
00:29:14.820 chairman and CEO, William Burke, who, uh, looks like co-managing partner of the law firm,
00:29:21.240 Quinn Emanuel, Chase Carey.
00:29:23.700 He's been at Fox forever.
00:29:24.620 He's an internal guy.
00:29:25.820 And DS, who is founder and chief executive officer of Aragon global management and investment
00:29:32.080 group focused on global media.
00:29:34.660 Roland Hernandez, who is the funding principal and CEO of Hernandez media ventures, a company
00:29:40.360 engaged in the acquisition and management of media assets.
00:29:42.560 Again, so another, this is a big money group, Jacques Nasser, uh, who is, he's from private
00:29:49.500 equity advisor to the private equity firm, one equity partners, LLP, and then Paul Ryan.
00:29:54.980 And everybody knows who he was, former speaker.
00:29:57.220 So, so are any of those people, or any of those institutions or individuals, they have a,
00:30:03.080 okay, I don't know about the others, but, um, you, I mean, I, I learned early on in my
00:30:09.660 career that I had to be in order for me to do what I do, I have to effectively be the
00:30:14.440 final decision maker.
00:30:16.420 Um, and, and as you, and as you, and this is a very important point, the deeper I go,
00:30:20.220 deeper we go, we're going to have some powerful people here like the Pentagon and, and, and,
00:30:25.220 and, uh, Pfizer and Google.
00:30:27.360 I just spoke a story this morning about the department of justice, uh, the prison system.
00:30:33.020 Um, there is no area that I won't go.
00:30:35.880 Uh, the FBI raided me.
00:30:37.460 I mean, I'm, I'm, I've had a whistleblower in the FBI.
00:30:39.960 I have more coming out on that probably tomorrow.
00:30:42.360 And just as an aside, we had Matt Taibbi on the other day.
00:30:44.560 He got, he got served by the F by the IRS during his congressional testimony.
00:30:49.700 Um, and now he's being threatened with jail time for allegedly lying to Congress about his
00:30:54.520 Twitter file.
00:30:54.940 I mean, so it's not just you, but it wasn't, but it wasn't Tucker's, the subjects of his
00:31:00.480 inquiry and investigation that hurt Tucker.
00:31:03.320 It was Tucker's own colleagues.
00:31:06.040 It was Tucker's bosses.
00:31:08.040 It was Tucker's associates that made the decision to remove Tucker, not whoever he was talking
00:31:14.100 about on his show.
00:31:15.880 So my point is, we certainly think, I mean, I will say there was a report that both Murdoch's
00:31:21.940 I just mentioned had a conference call with Zelensky.
00:31:25.260 And of course, Tucker was not a supporter of the war in Ukraine, um, of our involvement
00:31:29.820 on behalf of Ukraine and the funding.
00:31:32.320 And, um, but the reports are that there was no evidence whatsoever that they even discussed
00:31:36.300 Tucker Carlson.
00:31:37.160 But I mean, certainly there are people out there who believe that maybe Zelensky pushed
00:31:40.540 but nevertheless, that, that, that may be, even if that's true, nevertheless, it's the
00:31:45.240 people around you that have to be very strong if you're going to do this and, and it, and
00:31:51.680 it reveals the strength or weakness in other people when you do this and the deeper that
00:31:57.960 you go and the more effective that you are.
00:31:59.860 Let's say you're completely ethical, even if you, you do everything right, but if, but
00:32:06.580 if, but if the pressure from the outside forces is so great, it'll make an otherwise decent
00:32:13.240 person crack under the pressure.
00:32:15.960 I think when you have the most powerful, I mean, Zelensky is a powerful guy.
00:32:19.760 I mean, right.
00:32:20.680 I mean, the, the, the things that Tucker he's, he's effective.
00:32:23.460 It was probably the most effective individual in media.
00:32:25.740 Um, it makes people around you crack under that pressure and therefore you have to surround
00:32:32.160 yourself with incredibly strong people, both loyal to you and also loyal to the cause such
00:32:38.620 that when you have the whole world coming down on you, you don't, you don't, you, you don't
00:32:44.640 betray for lack of a better word, your colleagues, because it's easier for you to betray your colleagues
00:32:50.760 than do the right thing.
00:32:51.740 This is a little difficult thing for me to explain, but it's something that I've learned
00:32:55.880 in the last year and a half that we have to find strong people who are courageous and it's going
00:33:02.760 to get worse.
00:33:04.080 Um, or the easier thing is just don't tell the truth.
00:33:06.720 Just don't do, don't do the story to get along.
00:33:10.320 Yeah, absolutely.
00:33:11.920 It's the easier thing to do.
00:33:13.180 Frankly, it's much, much, you have to be a sort of sadist, perhaps a masochist to do what
00:33:17.640 I do.
00:33:18.040 Um, there's no, there's no, there's no profit in it necessarily.
00:33:22.840 Right.
00:33:23.400 My God, James, it's, it's, it's the worst of a lot of worlds.
00:33:26.500 There's no profit.
00:33:27.440 There's a lot of hassle.
00:33:28.900 You could get arrested and wind up in jail.
00:33:31.220 You could have, you know, the FBI visiting you in the middle of the night.
00:33:34.040 I mean, I, I, I, I see the New York times.
00:33:37.000 I see the New York times and that was very expensive.
00:33:39.420 It was probably, I probably spent a million, a million, five a year.
00:33:42.900 I don't make that type of money.
00:33:45.420 Um, lawyers are making that money.
00:33:47.080 Okay.
00:33:47.240 That's fine.
00:33:47.960 So I have to run around the country, raising money to pay these lawyers in order to do that.
00:33:52.260 I have to have a secure vehicle by which to run around the country and raise money to pay
00:33:56.020 these lawyers because I'm on the phone with, with confidential sources that was weaponized
00:34:00.860 against me.
00:34:01.500 James O'Keefe is taking too many meetings to too many.
00:34:03.900 Well, what do you want me to do in order to raise the money to pay the lawyers?
00:34:07.740 I have to run around in vehicles to do that.
00:34:10.880 So, I mean, maybe this is just, we're living in bizarre times.
00:34:16.320 It's a spiritual, there's a spiritual dimension to it, but I promised you, and I promised your
00:34:22.400 audience, I will always do what I think is right.
00:34:25.440 I started OMG.
00:34:26.720 I have no board.
00:34:28.320 Um, we have a lot of sources, frankly, Megan, more sources are coming to me than before this
00:34:33.960 happened because they trust me more.
00:34:35.380 And I think they probably trust Tucker more.
00:34:36.740 I think they trust you more.
00:34:39.340 Um, they trust people who stick by their guns.
00:34:43.580 The, the, the Pfizer whistleblower woman by the name of Debbie Bernal, uh, after what
00:34:48.260 happened to me, went public with me.
00:34:50.120 She did not go public before, but she chose to go public with me, um, on stage in early
00:34:56.940 March after what happened to me.
00:35:00.400 And I think when, when these, when the, whether it's the DA indicting Trump separate issue, whether
00:35:05.920 it's Fox kicking out Tucker or whether it's project Veritas removing me people, for some
00:35:11.620 reason, trust me more now, uh, perhaps because, uh, you have the scars to prove, you know, what
00:35:18.100 you've been through.
00:35:18.700 Um, and, and people will come to you as a result of that.
00:35:21.700 No, I, I was saying, you know, I had a conversation with, uh, Glenn Greenwald who's on the opposite
00:35:26.940 side too.
00:35:27.620 You know, he left the intercept, the company he created sounds familiar.
00:35:31.600 Um, but he left voluntarily because they were editing his honest reporting about Joe Biden.
00:35:38.120 It was like, no, do you know me at all?
00:35:41.060 And he walked out of there.
00:35:42.580 Barry Weiss left the New York times under similar circumstances, but I was talking to Glenn and
00:35:46.780 I was saying not for anything.
00:35:48.920 I mean, Fox, any of these, or they could offer me $200 million to go back and I wouldn't do
00:35:53.060 it.
00:35:53.180 I'd rather work for pennies than go back.
00:35:55.680 What we're doing over here.
00:35:58.120 I'm not saying it's perfect.
00:35:59.120 Of course, it's, it's got challenges of its own, but it's honest and there's a purity
00:36:04.700 to it.
00:36:05.560 There's a, there's a purity of what we're doing where nobody owns me.
00:36:10.540 I'm, I have a direct relationship with the audience and I have promised them to tell the
00:36:13.960 truth and that, and I have a proven history of doing it.
00:36:16.900 And if they, if I don't uphold that promise, they'll leave me.
00:36:19.780 And if I do, they won't.
00:36:22.220 That's, that's pure.
00:36:23.660 That's something I can be proud of.
00:36:26.020 I don't have to go to bed at night wondering whether I'm somehow furthering an agenda.
00:36:31.560 I don't really believe in just to line somebody's pockets, whether it's at Fox or NBC or any
00:36:36.740 of these entities, they have very clear agendas, all these guys.
00:36:41.180 And usually it's just to line their pockets.
00:36:44.100 It's just like increasing the bottom line.
00:36:45.840 I think it's the commercial imperative.
00:36:47.380 And, and, and, and if you're a capitalist, which many of you are, um, this is the thing
00:36:51.940 about that, Megan, you tell me what you think, but in journalism, it seems like the commercial
00:36:56.280 imperative is incompatible with truth telling sometimes.
00:36:59.500 I mean, advertising.
00:37:01.680 I mean, that's the bread and butter of journalism.
00:37:03.620 The, the, the, I believe you're a Pfizer.
00:37:08.300 Right.
00:37:08.720 Brought to you by Pfizer, brought to you by Pfizer.
00:37:10.520 And we grow up with it.
00:37:12.000 I mean, I was a young man.
00:37:13.220 I was born in the mid eighties.
00:37:14.760 You just listen to all this commercial stuff and you, and you sort of become used to it.
00:37:19.860 But if I put in my videos, who is it, who it was brought by like a NASCAR driver with
00:37:25.580 patches all over myself, no one would believe me.
00:37:28.760 Rightfully so, um, I never took advertising money.
00:37:32.980 No, no one ever told me what to do, but, but the more Megan, the more successful I became
00:37:38.660 at my job, the more people resented the fact that nobody told me what to do.
00:37:44.460 It's almost like Megan, someone told me recently, James, everybody wants to control you.
00:37:50.160 The more, the, the bigger that you're, you get as a, uh, as a presence, the more everyone,
00:37:58.000 especially in politics, it's almost like they resent the fact that you're not controllable.
00:38:02.940 They resent that.
00:38:04.260 And they wish to control you.
00:38:05.860 So let me ask you to do what they want you to do.
00:38:09.840 Um, and my job, and I'm speaking again, as a journalist here is not to be controlled.
00:38:15.740 It's to operate unafraid and impartial and to follow the source, wherever the story goes,
00:38:22.480 where, however, this, whether the facts lead me, that's my only imperative.
00:38:27.360 It's not commercial, by the way, if, if I make money at this fine, if I don't, we'll
00:38:32.260 see, but, but, but that, that's, that's, that's the only, the only variable in my mind
00:38:38.360 as the owner of OMG moving forward.
00:38:41.620 Well, listen, I love that you picked yourself up, dusted yourself off and reinvented again,
00:38:49.440 that you did not let anybody keep you down and that you just kept going.
00:38:53.740 Half of life is just keep going.
00:38:55.480 Can you keep going?
00:38:56.700 You know, when, when you fall, when somebody pushes you, however you get down, do you get
00:39:00.440 back up?
00:39:00.860 That's really, that's more than half the game.
00:39:03.460 People respect it.
00:39:04.860 I respect what you're doing.
00:39:06.300 And I don't know how we'd be without a James O'Keefe muckraker out there.
00:39:10.520 Is it muckraker or wrecker?
00:39:12.520 I know that's the name of your book.
00:39:13.200 Well, an advisor told me, I won't tell you who, but I had some really amazing people helping
00:39:17.800 me through this.
00:39:18.520 Hardest thing I've ever been through in my life.
00:39:20.060 You know, I was, I was, it was, it was painful.
00:39:23.420 Um, but someone said to me, James, you get knocked down in a boxing ring.
00:39:29.160 You have whatever it is to count 10 count to get back up.
00:39:31.600 He said, even though you're wounded, he said, you get the F back up right now because people
00:39:37.000 need you and people believe in you.
00:39:40.060 Um, it was very hard, but within three weeks we started a new organization.
00:39:45.220 We have, it's a subscription based news organization and where we've had a very successful launch,
00:39:50.360 incredibly successful.
00:39:51.520 Thank you to everyone who subscribed to O'Keefe media group.com, um, to sponsor these cameras
00:39:57.240 that now we're shipping to, we have over a thousand people that we've sent these cameras
00:40:02.900 to.
00:40:03.420 And a lot of people, Megan, we're just buying the cameras on Amazon themselves.
00:40:07.300 They didn't, weren't even on my payroll.
00:40:08.920 Um, and we have, I don't know, dozens and dozens of stories right now that are in the
00:40:13.080 pipeline.
00:40:14.240 Um, so you're right.
00:40:16.640 Getting back up was the hardest thing.
00:40:19.360 I had to fight everything inside myself to not, I mean, I don't really think I'm constitutionally
00:40:24.700 capable of giving up per se, but it was so discouraging, disillusioning and discouraging.
00:40:30.460 And I think that I've always been a relatively naive person to do what I do, because if you think
00:40:35.480 about the fear, if you think about the government, if you think about the FBI, it'll drive you
00:40:40.180 nuts.
00:40:41.340 Okay.
00:40:42.540 And I try not to, um, I try to focus on the good people.
00:40:47.960 And what I drew from this process was that there are a lot of really great people.
00:40:52.160 Some of them may be rather quiet, but, uh, there are a lot of good people in the world
00:40:57.280 and, and let's focus on telling their stories.
00:41:00.380 You have such a huge fan base.
00:41:03.240 I mean, I think virtually everybody I saw online commenting on your separation from project
00:41:08.880 Veritas was like, there's no project Veritas without James O'Keefe period.
00:41:12.020 Sorry.
00:41:12.620 And they can keep going in whatever form.
00:41:14.140 It's not like I wish these people, people ill will, but you are the brand.
00:41:17.960 Like you're the reason we want to see the videos.
00:41:20.720 We trust the way you're going to do it.
00:41:23.060 You know, I mean, I, I've seen enough of you over the years that I know what I'm going
00:41:27.260 to get.
00:41:27.700 And I know your critics are going to say it's all bullshit and it's going to wind up being
00:41:31.260 legit.
00:41:33.600 Like that's a pattern with you is like you upset everybody, all the right people.
00:41:36.240 Then they try to say this is fake or improperly edited.
00:41:40.060 Then they never actually went in their lawsuits against you and you get proven right.
00:41:44.240 It's happened time and time again.
00:41:45.700 And you cover things that nobody else is like the stuff you did with the teachers that we
00:41:48.940 covered last fall, you know, with like, and, and some of those are gone now.
00:41:52.400 Thankfully, some of America's school children no longer have to deal with these crazy ass biased
00:41:56.980 teachers who hate white boys.
00:41:58.940 Like the one woman on the Upper West side.
00:42:00.940 I think it was the Trinity school.
00:42:02.340 Thanks to you.
00:42:03.620 You know, in today's day and age, this makes you very controversial.
00:42:07.300 You're a lightning rod, whatever you got to keep going.
00:42:10.320 All right.
00:42:10.700 So that leads me to your next.
00:42:12.140 We hold a mirror up to people like that's the video camera, right?
00:42:16.960 And, and, and oftentimes it's a hidden camera and they don't like what they see in themselves.
00:42:22.740 So there's, I'm not a psychologist, but there's all types of projection and gas lighting.
00:42:27.320 And you doctored the tape in the beginning of my career, Megan, people were saying that
00:42:31.040 I actually use CGI to make the lips move of the subjects, anything, any explanation, but
00:42:37.460 what, what they're watching is real.
00:42:38.720 And I was so young and broke that the notion, I knew how to do that with the lips.
00:42:42.820 I mean, I could barely use final cut seven.
00:42:45.460 I mean, but people will do anything to rationalize their own understanding of the world around
00:42:52.160 them.
00:42:52.500 And, and they, they are in this sort of disinformation bubble.
00:42:55.580 So the role, my role is to shake them away by, by, by revealing something that makes them
00:43:00.860 because you have to do deep inner work when you're looking at something that makes you
00:43:05.780 question your own views on the world around you.
00:43:09.000 So they tend to project and accuse and accuse and accuse me of that, which they're guilty
00:43:15.180 of.
00:43:16.380 Like they doctor tapes, they doctor tapes, you know, you, you, you, you lie to your audience.
00:43:22.740 Well, you, you lie to your audience and it would make a otherwise reasonable man, you know,
00:43:28.440 question his own perceptions of reality.
00:43:30.280 So you really have to be strong and you have to surround yourself with very strong people
00:43:35.460 who also have a firm constitution.
00:43:38.700 All right.
00:43:39.320 Well, let's talk about some of the stuff you're doing at OMG because it's great and it's really
00:43:43.720 fun to watch like exposing what's happening in prisons right now.
00:43:48.940 What's happening there is not fun, but I appreciate the exposure because too few people are talking
00:43:53.980 about what's happening to the female prisoners who are literally forced to live their lives
00:43:58.740 with sex offenders who have declared themselves female two minutes ago.
00:44:02.960 We're now coming into the prisons and raping these women.
00:44:06.800 Um, I think people ignore this because they're like, Oh, they're prisoners.
00:44:10.200 They're criminals.
00:44:11.360 Okay, whatever.
00:44:12.280 It's sad, but move on.
00:44:13.620 No, these women, I saw a lawyer arguing and I, she convinced me that this is an eighth amendment
00:44:18.540 violation of cruel and unusual punishment.
00:44:20.420 You take a woman who committed a crime and these aren't always, you know, violent crimes
00:44:25.180 that these women commit.
00:44:26.100 Usually they're not, um, maybe it's a drug crime, something like that.
00:44:29.860 They have to go behind bars and then you make them share a cell with a male sex offender
00:44:37.460 who's convinced the authorities in places like Washington state, where you did your expose
00:44:41.660 that they're actually female and then they get raped and no one seems to care.
00:44:47.040 So tell us about, we're going to play some clips, but tell us kind of what you've, what
00:44:51.220 you've done here.
00:44:52.740 Well, this is a breaking story today.
00:44:54.760 The department of justice official is saying that Merrick Garland attorney general is rolling
00:44:58.820 over on this transgender policy called million dollar baby.
00:45:02.260 So that means that men who are pretending to be women are going to female jails in order
00:45:12.080 to, according to our sources, have sex with women.
00:45:16.780 Men are, you know, they, they keep, they keep their male genitalia and keep their testosterone,
00:45:21.680 but say that they're women in order to intentionally impregnate females in a prison.
00:45:29.380 So this is highly, I mean, this is in many cases, rape, in most cases, rape.
00:45:34.860 And, and they are, they are then suing for a million dollars.
00:45:39.200 And according to this department of justice official who did not know that she was being
00:45:43.840 videotaped, we released today, she said, this is wrong.
00:45:47.400 And, and Merrick Garland is sort of rolling over on this.
00:45:50.200 Now we don't know what the solution is to this public policy issue, but maybe it's separate
00:45:54.660 prisons for transgender people.
00:45:56.080 Maybe it's keeping people in the biological prison that they were born with.
00:46:00.320 So, you know, so, so this is a big story.
00:46:02.500 And, and we went to Washington state where a lot of these inmates are and in this prison
00:46:06.400 in Tacoma, uh, we, we obtained footage of some of these women pleading through the plexiglass
00:46:13.180 on these video recordings, pleading, uh, for, for help.
00:46:17.720 Um, and the prison, uh, Megan, a video I released today, I went there actually on Sunday with my
00:46:23.700 microphone and my cameras and the prison officials drove onto the public area where I was standing
00:46:29.060 across and they said, you can't be here.
00:46:30.520 I said, well, I'm a journalist.
00:46:31.420 I could stand here.
00:46:32.720 So this, this was a product of a source who came to us with video recordings to OMG.
00:46:38.740 And she's very scared for her, for her, um, uh, life and, uh, and terrified of retaliation.
00:46:45.820 Um, this is another situation in which the comfort of biological men takes precedence over
00:46:52.880 the comfort and safety of women.
00:46:56.000 These trans women, quote unquote, trying to get into the women's prisons are men.
00:47:00.920 They're biological men.
00:47:02.280 And so as not to hurt the feelings of these biological men, they force the women who have
00:47:08.860 no choice about where they go to live with them.
00:47:11.800 And some of these guys are sex offenders.
00:47:15.280 It's absolutely outrageous.
00:47:17.200 We reached out to this Washington prison and we have a statement, which I'll get to in a
00:47:21.060 second.
00:47:21.700 The long and the short of it is they're not sorry.
00:47:24.280 They're not backing down.
00:47:25.720 They prize equity overall.
00:47:28.240 But here's just before we get to that, some of the setup.
00:47:31.160 So here's James.
00:47:32.420 Um, this is one of the women, an actual woman in the Washington prison.
00:47:37.680 Now we've disguised, well, not we, but James has disguised the voices, um, to protect their
00:47:43.300 privacy.
00:47:43.720 Can you imagine the shit storm that could be created for them if they're on camera there?
00:47:47.620 Um, so they're a little hard to understand for the watching audience.
00:47:52.060 We've verbated it on the screen.
00:47:53.340 So you can see for the listening audience, I think you can understand it.
00:47:56.180 Take a listen.
00:47:56.940 So we have men rapists, men murderers, child rapists, men who have killed women and are
00:48:06.020 in prison for raping and killing women who get put in our room.
00:48:09.480 Imagine coming to your room one day and you're in closed custody and you turn around and there's
00:48:15.860 a man standing up peeing in the toilet.
00:48:18.040 Some of these men know that they're men.
00:48:21.040 They're not trying to be a woman.
00:48:22.720 They just say that to come here to have sexless women during their prison sentence.
00:48:29.480 I've heard some of these men talk about how they would want to get a girl pregnant so
00:48:37.060 that the girl could form a lawsuit against WCCW and say that he raped her and he's willing
00:48:45.000 to go along with it.
00:48:46.860 All right.
00:48:47.580 And just for the listening audience who didn't get it, this is two different inmates, but
00:48:51.580 the first one saying we have men rapists, men murderers, child rapists, men who have
00:48:54.660 killed women and who have killed women and are in prison for raping and killing women
00:48:58.800 who get put in our rooms and goes on to say some of these men know they're men.
00:49:04.960 They're not trying to be a woman.
00:49:05.960 They just say that to come here and have sex with women during the prison sentences.
00:49:08.860 And the last bit was some of these men talk about how they'd want to get a girl pregnant
00:49:12.340 so the girl could file a lawsuit against the prison and say she was raped.
00:49:17.640 And the guy, too, is willing to go along with it so that they can get a payout.
00:49:21.980 And that is sort of where your reporting advanced to, James, where you sat with an official at
00:49:30.520 the federal DOJ, a woman.
00:49:33.960 Her name is Linda Noel, a school psychologist on the education in the education branch of the
00:49:39.360 DOJ.
00:49:40.960 And is she, I'm going to play this clip, but is she qualified to be opining on what policy
00:49:46.560 is when it comes to the prisons in Merrick Garland?
00:49:49.700 I don't understand a school psychologist knowing about that.
00:49:53.360 Yeah, we believe so.
00:49:54.240 I mean, she's an official with the department, the federal department of justice and,
00:49:57.760 and the state prison, this, these inmates are transferred from all over the country.
00:50:03.480 Um, and we believe that the federal government is involved and the department of justice is
00:50:09.160 involved because these lawsuits are federal, they're filing federal lawsuits and they're
00:50:13.900 getting what this so-called million dollar baby, million dollar settlements, uh, because
00:50:19.820 they're impregnated.
00:50:21.100 So there needs to be a fix here, but in her words, Merrick Garland, the attorney general
00:50:26.680 is rolling over.
00:50:27.760 He's, there's no backbone.
00:50:29.320 And it's, it's, so we believe that the public has a right to know what this federal official
00:50:35.940 who's involved in the prison system has to say about it.
00:50:39.600 All right.
00:50:39.740 And here's a bit of that.
00:50:41.420 You'll hear her speaking with one of James's reporters.
00:50:45.040 And I believe at one point here, you'll hear interspersed a clip of a prisoner with a disguised
00:50:50.300 voice.
00:50:51.000 Listen.
00:50:51.140 A man, right, is in on it, where he's trying to, like, basically get part of the lawsuit
00:51:00.100 that's going on, like, because.
00:51:02.860 Well, they all want to see after this one, they all want to see.
00:51:05.780 Yeah.
00:51:06.160 Like, how does it actually work, though?
00:51:07.880 It's like, the woman, basically, is raped or says she's raped, whether it's consensual
00:51:15.440 or not, who knows.
00:51:16.520 It's like the victim's part.
00:51:17.680 They would want to get a girl pregnant so that the girl could form a lawsuit against
00:51:25.640 WCCW and say that he raped her and he's willing to go along with it.
00:51:31.140 So the slang word that they're calling it is a million-dollar baby.
00:51:34.220 And then they go through H.E.L.U.
00:51:36.160 And the H.E.L.U.
00:51:37.000 assumes the DOJ.
00:51:39.140 And the DOJ, unfortunately, if you're a government and your call's over, it doesn't want to go
00:51:46.760 because it's important to just pay too far.
00:51:49.380 That's the bad thing.
00:51:51.920 So the DOJ won't fight because it's easier just to pay the people off because the Biden
00:51:56.340 administration favors this.
00:51:59.100 What's that?
00:52:00.260 The Biden administration favors this with the women being subjected to this.
00:52:04.000 Well, I don't know if they favor it.
00:52:05.960 I think that they're rolling over.
00:52:08.960 It's a horribly complicated area that needs reform.
00:52:13.860 And rather than actually address the issues, I'm curious to see your statement because I
00:52:17.200 didn't even get a statement.
00:52:18.080 So I'm anxious to hear what the women's prison said.
00:52:20.700 First of all, they start with, we're big fans of James O'Keefe.
00:52:23.240 No, that's not.
00:52:24.680 That's not what it is.
00:52:25.200 I thought you were serious for a minute.
00:52:26.280 No, it says the Washington State Department of Corrections strongly emphasizes the importance
00:52:34.020 of inclusion and representation by recognizing the unique challenges that non-binary and transgender
00:52:40.080 incarcerated people face.
00:52:42.160 DOC takes allegations of crime seriously, and any person incarcerated here suspected of
00:52:46.440 committing a crime is subject to the same laws and investigations, regardless of where
00:52:50.180 they were housed or their gender.
00:52:52.160 It's our position that a person's right to safe and humane treatment does not change based
00:52:55.700 on their gender identity.
00:52:57.300 DOC continues to actively work with community outreach organizations to identify and address
00:53:01.160 possible systemic issues regarding housing, mental health, and medical services for people
00:53:04.840 who identify as transgender.
00:53:06.320 We remain committed to the health and safety of all people in our custody.
00:53:09.800 They go on to say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, pointing to a policy that reads, if people
00:53:14.100 self-identify as transgender, intersex, and or gender non-binary, the policy provides detailed
00:53:21.000 guidance on placement and programming.
00:53:23.920 And they go on to say, we have a team of people who will make the final placement determination
00:53:28.180 after evaluating a health care assessment, a mental health assessment, to figure out whether
00:53:33.740 this person belongs in the man's or the woman's prison.
00:53:37.120 Finally, for good measure, a common myth perpetuated about people who are transgender is that they
00:53:42.560 will commit crimes of assault against vulnerable populations.
00:53:47.060 This is not the case.
00:53:49.480 So we should not believe the women who say they've been raped by trans prisoners because
00:53:56.660 it's a myth, James.
00:53:59.480 It sounds like a desperate statement.
00:54:01.400 By the way, if you're if you or your producer could send that to me, my team is is blowing
00:54:05.700 up interested in that statement to get that out.
00:54:07.700 But yeah, I have in the piece I published, I spoke to multiple sources.
00:54:13.720 I even recorded one of the sources.
00:54:15.520 And this is a new source, an actual prison official now, not one of the mates who said
00:54:22.500 they are on defense.
00:54:24.420 James, they are scared to death of you.
00:54:26.340 This is what this guy was saying.
00:54:27.820 I blurred his voice.
00:54:28.860 But it's we stand by reporting, Megan.
00:54:31.820 This is happening.
00:54:32.620 Women are getting raped and there's million dollar lawsuits after they're impregnated.
00:54:37.240 So are they saying that's not happening?
00:54:40.680 Are we OK with that in society?
00:54:42.660 I mean, Megan, some people have told me, not many, but a small percentage of mine.
00:54:47.160 Why do we care about these prisoners?
00:54:49.080 They already broke the law.
00:54:49.740 First of all, they're women.
00:54:51.860 And the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
00:54:56.400 Women should not be being raped by men in their prisons, period.
00:55:01.000 It's wrong in their cells where they cannot leave.
00:55:05.180 I mean, which they cannot leave.
00:55:06.380 It's deeply immoral what they're doing.
00:55:08.540 And why do they do it?
00:55:09.740 Because they're worried, again, about equity.
00:55:12.700 They say we strongly emphasize the importance of inclusion and representation by recognizing
00:55:19.640 the unique challenges that non-binary and transgender incarcerated people face.
00:55:23.500 I don't care.
00:55:24.880 I don't care.
00:55:25.460 Well, I'm not worried about the importance of inclusion and representation and the challenges
00:55:30.920 the transgender people in prison face.
00:55:33.000 I'm worried about the women.
00:55:34.860 So the Eighth Amendment's right to no cruel, unusual punishment and the and the so-called
00:55:39.620 equity inclusion are right now at odds with each other.
00:55:42.420 So somebody in Congress, I know Matt Gaetz and and Ted, not Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio have looked
00:55:49.500 at this, this report by by OMG.
00:55:52.440 What's the solution?
00:55:53.820 I don't know.
00:55:54.600 But that's not going to fly.
00:55:57.620 You can't get raped.
00:55:59.820 You're right not to get raped.
00:56:02.340 It's paramount here.
00:56:03.600 And first of all, we stand by reporting this is actually happening.
00:56:07.720 These inmates have child porn convictions.
00:56:09.420 These are men, biological men with male genitalia.
00:56:12.700 Yeah.
00:56:13.480 Most of whom are not gender dysphoric at all.
00:56:16.880 They are using it as an excuse to get a free pass into the women's prison.
00:56:21.260 That's obvious to anybody.
00:56:23.200 Get out.
00:56:23.660 You don't belong in the women's prison.
00:56:24.860 You're not a woman.
00:56:25.780 You're not.
00:56:26.260 I don't care why you feel uncomfortable.
00:56:28.040 Should have thought of that before you broke the law.
00:56:29.680 Sorry.
00:56:30.360 You're going to have to stay in the man's prison because that's what you are.
00:56:32.680 That's another reason for you not to commit crime.
00:56:34.540 You have enough problems if you're trans.
00:56:36.000 All right.
00:56:36.580 You don't have to add criminal to your list and then prison rapist to it.
00:56:40.280 So I don't really have a lot of empathy for the position that these guys are in.
00:56:43.680 I have a lot of empathy for the women who are subjected to this.
00:56:46.480 This is not part of the punishment.
00:56:47.580 This is not an OK sentence for someone who is female who commits a crime and has to go to jail.
00:56:53.560 Stand by.
00:56:54.000 There's much, much more to get to.
00:56:55.020 Got to squeeze in a break.
00:56:55.760 James O'Keefe stays with us when we come back.
00:57:02.380 Speaking of the women who are being raped in prison by men declaring themselves trans,
00:57:09.500 you recently had a run in with Dylan Mulvaney and you were trying to get Dylan to comment on this from my memory.
00:57:17.840 And some people it was a mixed reaction to this video.
00:57:19.900 Some people even who weren't fans of Dylan were like, ah, leave Dylan alone.
00:57:22.920 Don't don't do this.
00:57:23.920 And other people were like, go for it.
00:57:26.080 Dylan's never seen a camera.
00:57:27.220 Dylan doesn't like Dylan's brought this on themselves.
00:57:30.100 But I'll show a little bit of the clip and get you get your thoughts on it.
00:57:33.260 Sure.
00:57:34.340 Do you have a comment on the story here of the women being raped by the men claiming to be transgender?
00:57:41.480 James O'Keefe, O.M.G. News.
00:57:45.780 Do you what do you think about the women who are being raped by the men who are transgender?
00:57:52.340 Do you have a comment about that?
00:57:53.640 Please don't come in the elevator.
00:57:54.560 I'm sorry.
00:57:56.060 What do you think about what is your comment to the women are being raped by men claiming to be transgender, Dylan?
00:58:01.280 Which is the absurdity of Dylan parading around like Audrey Hepburn.
00:58:04.840 I mean, this is a man.
00:58:05.980 This is a biological man.
00:58:07.060 Yes.
00:58:07.500 Trying to pretend.
00:58:08.200 You're the second person to say she looked like Audrey Hepburn.
00:58:10.860 That's what obviously Dylan's going for that.
00:58:14.840 Listen, I mean, what is the ethics of confronting people?
00:58:17.960 First of all, she's a leader.
00:58:18.980 She's representing a movement, right?
00:58:22.700 And in a world you started your program where Tucker's personal text messages to colleagues were aired before the world to see.
00:58:32.300 This is a public figure in a public place.
00:58:36.960 And Mike Wallace at 60 Minutes stopped doing this sort of thing.
00:58:39.760 I believe it was the mid-80s, his rationale, which I think was a silly argument, was that these sorts of ambushes don't really bring any light.
00:58:49.700 They're just heat.
00:58:50.960 But I think they do bring light.
00:58:52.680 I think they hold people accountable.
00:58:54.220 I think we need accountability, and getting a microphone in someone's face is a really important thing.
00:58:59.800 I'm not invading their privacy.
00:59:01.340 I'm not filming them covertly in their home.
00:59:04.200 I'm in a Four Seasons hotel, and I think we need more people chasing people around with cameras.
00:59:11.260 And, in fact, if you're watching this program and that resonates with you, I'm going to D.C. to chase a bunch of people around this weekend.
00:59:19.800 And I want thousands of people with microphones.
00:59:22.920 Go to our website, O'KeefeMediaGroup.com, and send me a little note there, and I'll equip you to do that.
00:59:26.980 Well, it's an interesting point, because Dylan will, of course, sit with Drew Barrymore while Drew's literally on her knees praying at the trans altar.
00:59:36.600 But Dylan won't subject Dylan's self.
00:59:39.860 I can't do—I'm sorry, I'm not doing she for Dylan.
00:59:43.340 Dylan won't subject himself to a reporter who might challenge Dylan on these issues that we're discussing.
00:59:50.240 Like, Dylan said—I couldn't tell if it was a joke or if it was real, but if it was real—
00:59:54.720 it should be illegal to not use the proper pronoun for me.
00:59:58.220 Well, it's not.
00:59:59.100 We're still in America, Dylan.
01:00:00.840 What is legal is for these trans women, quote-unquote, to go into female prisons and attack these women.
01:00:07.460 No one seems to care.
01:00:08.960 And so, like, it is interesting.
01:00:10.960 Like, Dylan, if you're going to be the spokesperson for the trans community, what do you think of that?
01:00:14.620 No one has asked you, because you won't subject yourself to those interviewers.
01:00:17.700 Which he inserted himself as the spokesperson.
01:00:23.100 He no doubt wants to be the leader of a movement, whether it be through the Bud Light situation.
01:00:29.220 And by the way, that organization lost billions in revenue, whether it be through his public, you know, persona and his interviews.
01:00:36.560 So, yeah, you subject yourself to the public like that.
01:00:39.640 You're going to—you should be held accountable.
01:00:41.340 And I actually think it's more than that, Megan.
01:00:43.420 And I think if there was any justice in this world, you know, in a world where my personal attorney-client privilege documents, the FBI raids me at gunpoint.
01:00:54.560 Remind your audience, I was raided by the FBI over the Ashley Biden diary, which, as a reporter, I have a right to receive from a source.
01:01:02.760 In that world, and then the New York Times works in concert with the FBI to, like, leak things and shame me through anonymous sources, although there's nothing that I've done that's illegal.
01:01:15.020 Well, in that world, it's perfectly acceptable and necessary for us as citizens to go into the streets and to ambush these people with microphones and cameras and ask them really uncomfortable questions.
01:01:26.500 It's not even—it's not even a question about whether we should do that.
01:01:31.500 We need to do that 10,000 times to everybody.
01:01:35.260 Dylan should have said, I'm against that.
01:01:37.800 It was kind of a no-brainer.
01:01:39.440 Like, no, women who go into prison should be safe and protected.
01:01:43.540 But obviously, Dylan doesn't feel that way because otherwise he would have given you an honest answer.
01:01:47.860 Dylan Mulvaney is somebody who tried to make it as a star as a man, couldn't make it, decided to come over to Arlene because he knew that he would get sponsorships.
01:01:56.500 And people jumped right on board the Dylan train, and that is why I don't believe Dylan's transition is real.
01:02:02.380 I think he's exploiting the trans movement and women and our compassionate spirit to make money.
01:02:09.020 And by the way, you mentioned Bud Light.
01:02:11.240 For the week ending April 22, the brand's in-store sales plummeted more than 26%.
01:02:19.840 That's per Bump Williams Consulting, a firm that specializes in the alcoholic beverage industry.
01:02:25.640 They have not stopped the downward spiral.
01:02:28.440 The week before that, sales dropped by 21%.
01:02:31.540 The week before that, it was only 11%.
01:02:33.520 So they are on a downward trajectory at Bud Light that is rivaling the downward trajectory of the 8 p.m. on the Fox News channel right now.
01:02:42.360 Yeah, I think the pendulum is swinging.
01:02:46.740 I think people, individuals, citizens have more power than they ever have, and the institutions are losing power.
01:02:56.900 People follow people.
01:02:58.400 That's just what people do, and people will follow Tucker.
01:03:00.320 In a way, they haven't followed the previous individuals who've left that network, for example, way back when.
01:03:08.860 I think people really, really trust – the trust is waning in institutions.
01:03:14.660 And it's so important for us to decentralize information gathering.
01:03:18.460 That's my mission at OMG.
01:03:20.100 I think we can decentralize journalism.
01:03:22.060 We have to.
01:03:22.680 We can't trust big behemoth corporations to tell us the truth, obviously, and that's through no fault of their own.
01:03:30.440 They have a commercial imperative.
01:03:31.740 Their pursuit is profit.
01:03:33.480 So that's fine.
01:03:34.860 But if you want to be an investigative reporter, if you want to show uncomfortable truths, you can't be coerced.
01:03:40.440 So my mission is to give cameras to a lot of people to tell those sorts of stories, whether it be in an elevator with Dylan Mulvaney or a women's prison in Seattle.
01:03:50.740 I want, like, people on the ground – if this resonates with you, like, go to my website and I'll send you a camera.
01:03:57.000 They're very expensive cameras, but we've had a lot of subscribers help us out.
01:04:01.860 We have many, many, many, many stories to come.
01:04:04.140 And when the government does come after me or you or whoever, we as Americans have to understand that it's directly proportional to your effectiveness on doing the right thing.
01:04:13.920 I think people get that.
01:04:15.000 Even after Trump was indicted in New York, his popularity has seemed to surge.
01:04:19.340 And people that were skeptical of him seem to be less so.
01:04:23.180 It's like, you know, it used to be the case when the government went after you.
01:04:26.180 It was like, well, he must have done something wrong.
01:04:28.000 Now it's like, well, gee, you know, he must be doing something right.
01:04:31.740 I know.
01:04:32.360 It's true.
01:04:32.960 So it's amazing, isn't it?
01:04:36.580 Yeah.
01:04:37.000 You mentioned the Trump surge, just to bring people up to date on that.
01:04:40.120 The latest RealClearPolitics average shows Trump at 52.1%.
01:04:44.480 DeSantis is in the second position with 22.9%.
01:04:48.340 The average is Trump up 29 points over DeSantis, who is his nearest competitor.
01:04:54.120 The latest polls, because that's the average, latest show him up 58 over DeSantis' 22 and 62 over DeSantis' 60%.
01:05:02.960 16 before that was one 53 over 21.
01:05:06.620 I mean, it's just that.
01:05:07.580 And that is all posted.
01:05:08.420 Robert F. Kennedy is a junior in the Democratic.
01:05:11.200 I know you interviewed him and I watched your interview.
01:05:13.300 I thought it was well done.
01:05:14.800 He's now at 20% in the Democratic population.
01:05:20.420 And if you add in Marianne Williamson, you're looking at 30% of Democrats who want someone other than the sitting president of the United States.
01:05:26.500 And RFK and Trump have some things in common.
01:05:29.440 I have some things in common with both of them.
01:05:31.620 Not everything, but some things.
01:05:32.960 This is the decentralization of power and the corporate nexus between corporations and government is at question here.
01:05:39.360 And that is why it's so important for the individual citizens to take it upon themselves to be truth-tellers and exposers, an army of exposers, is what we need.
01:05:50.820 We knew they were going to come after people like me and Tucker and you and whoever.
01:05:55.720 They're going to come after anybody who questions them.
01:05:59.080 But in response, they can take down one man.
01:06:02.940 They can't take down an army of individuals.
01:06:07.460 And that's what they're scared of, Megan, in my opinion.
01:06:10.120 Well, that's what's amazing about Tucker is that everything I've seen, all of his outtakes, it's the man we all know.
01:06:15.620 He's exactly the same off camera, maybe with some saltier language, as he is on camera.
01:06:21.640 That's why this campaign is failing.
01:06:23.100 The best thing they've released against him was this thing in The New York Times today.
01:06:29.180 And I honestly don't think anybody's going to believe that's why Fox News fired him.
01:06:34.120 All right.
01:06:34.460 That's that offended literally no one in the Fox News management and their attempts to pretend otherwise are going to fail.
01:06:42.420 James, thank you for being here.
01:06:43.840 Good luck with the new company.
01:06:45.100 And it's great to see you.
01:06:47.280 Thank you, Megan.
01:06:47.980 See you soon.
01:06:48.980 All the best.
01:06:49.500 Senate Democrats stooping to new lows in their ongoing efforts to undermine public trust in the U.S. Supreme Court.
01:07:00.600 This days after Justice Alito went so far as to write an op-ed in the journal saying we are in danger.
01:07:08.800 We were protected, but our lives have been threatened.
01:07:12.500 We've been facing assassination attempts and people need to take a seat.
01:07:16.480 They need to take a step back.
01:07:17.920 And what do the Democrats do?
01:07:19.740 They lean in to the hateful rhetoric rhetoric against our justices.
01:07:23.620 Why?
01:07:24.160 Because now it's a it's a conservative Supreme Court and they can't handle it.
01:07:27.880 Things were all fine when the liberals were in control.
01:07:30.380 But now that we had three justices appointed by President Trump and the court leans right, this is what we have to deal with.
01:07:38.240 Senator Mike Lee of Utah once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and knows the high court very well.
01:07:45.080 Senator, great to have you on the show.
01:07:46.580 How are you?
01:07:47.920 Doing great.
01:07:48.580 Thanks so much, Megan.
01:07:49.740 And congratulations on having a million subscribers.
01:07:52.880 That's a great milestone.
01:07:53.980 And look forward to the next two and three million after that.
01:07:56.740 Thank you very much.
01:07:57.760 I appreciate it.
01:07:59.500 So what this is actually kind of nuts with the Democrats did yesterday.
01:08:03.440 I mean, right on the heels of what Sam Alito wrote, talking about how they really are in danger now, more so than in the past.
01:08:11.360 They are protected, but they are in danger.
01:08:14.060 And I want to get to what we saw at this hearing yesterday.
01:08:16.120 But let's just spend a minute on what Justice Alito was sounding the alarm on, because, you know, you know the court better than I do.
01:08:22.540 But I did cover it for three years as a young reporter.
01:08:26.000 And I practiced law for a decade.
01:08:27.780 I've never seen a justice write something like this.
01:08:31.260 He seemed ticked off.
01:08:33.600 He seemed I don't want to say emotional, but definitely it was emotionally charged.
01:08:38.040 And the biggest headline out of it was he thinks he knows who the Supreme Court leaker is.
01:08:43.960 Do you do you think you know who the Supreme Court leaker is?
01:08:47.600 I think he has a really good idea as to who the Supreme Court leaker is.
01:08:51.420 And I also think that anyone who knew the law clerks and the justices, the other court personnel at the time, or even had access to interview each and every one of them, could reasonably have figured it out in relatively short order.
01:09:03.880 For whatever reason, the Supreme Court marshal wasn't given enough resources to do that the first time around.
01:09:09.360 I think they could reasonably ascertain that now.
01:09:11.780 And, yes, it was somewhat emotionally charged when he gave that interview and those statements, because it's an emotionally charged thing when you think someone is either trying to have you killed or trying to have you at least believe and fear that you might be killed if you go through with a particular Supreme Court opinion.
01:09:28.780 So he has every right to feel strongly about this, and we all should, because this is a full-blown attack on the Supreme Court itself, on the institution, setting aside one's ideological viewpoints on how Supreme Court cases ought to be decided.
01:09:46.000 This is an attack on an institution, and the Democrats are behind it.
01:09:49.800 They're fanning the flames, and we've got to bring this back under control lest we do irreparable damage.
01:09:57.800 He writes in the journal, the threats, or the leak of the draft Dobbs opinion, quote, made us targets of assassination.
01:10:07.260 He said it created an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust.
01:10:10.100 We worked through it, and last year we got our work done.
01:10:12.840 This year, I think we're trying to get back to normal operations as much as we can, but it was damaging.
01:10:18.020 He writes, I personally have a pretty good idea of who's responsible, but that's different from the level of proof that's needed to name somebody.
01:10:25.340 And then he goes on to say explicitly this was a campaign, the leak, to try to intimidate the court.
01:10:32.760 Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination.
01:10:38.700 It was rational for people to believe that they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us.
01:10:45.500 He goes on to say that these folks who believed the leaker was on the conservative side, whether the justices themselves or people who worked for them, this is infuriating to me, he writes.
01:10:57.140 Look, this made us targets of assassination.
01:10:58.800 Why would I do that to myself?
01:11:00.560 Would the five of us have done that to ourselves?
01:11:03.920 It's quite implausible.
01:11:05.140 Interesting, he says five instead of six, because the chief justice concurred with the conservative justices.
01:11:10.820 He didn't want to overturn Roe versus Wade, though.
01:11:13.540 So he's clearly not counting Roberts in this.
01:11:16.200 Would we have done this to ourselves?
01:11:17.760 I don't feel physically unsafe, but that's because now we have a lot of protection being driven around and basically a tank.
01:11:24.600 So this is the state of affairs right now for our justices.
01:11:28.000 And before I move on from his opinion piece, is there anything left to be done, Senator, on unveiling who was behind this?
01:11:37.340 It would not take much at all.
01:11:41.400 There are things left to be done, and you're right, it wouldn't take much to unveil it.
01:11:46.300 All that needs to happen is that the marshal of the U.S. Supreme Court needs to be authorized to conduct a new investigation
01:11:52.780 and enlist the help of deputized members of the U.S. Marshal Service to help conduct that interview, that investigation.
01:12:00.000 They need to interview each and every law clerk and any other Supreme Court personnel who had close access to the circulating draft opinions.
01:12:08.780 I'm confident they can do that as they interview them, as they review their phone records,
01:12:13.140 and as they follow up on those interviews and the document reviews.
01:12:17.580 They can find the leaker.
01:12:18.780 I'm quite confident of that, and this does need to happen.
01:12:20.980 Look, this is no exaggeration to say that this put their lives at risk.
01:12:25.480 I remember exactly where I was one year ago yesterday when the leak was announced.
01:12:31.540 Immediately, my concern was for the welfare of the Supreme Court justices,
01:12:36.340 particularly those whose names were attached to the then leaked draft of the Dobbs opinion.
01:12:43.360 Very concerned.
01:12:44.260 I got on the phone immediately and made phone calls to make sure that the Supreme Court was taking adequate precautions as far as their personal safety.
01:12:52.340 Everyone knew.
01:12:53.320 Everyone understood immediately the natural ramifications this would have, and it was of its very nature,
01:12:59.980 the kind of thing that could threaten them, intimidate them, and subject them to a risk of physical violence.
01:13:05.820 And it's unacceptable that over a year later, we still don't know who it was.
01:13:10.200 Well, some of your colleagues in the government had very different reactions,
01:13:15.460 because we now know that Merrick Garland, our attorney general, was specifically advising those who were on scene there to protect the justices at their homes
01:13:25.340 when people were protesting in the wake of the release of the draft leak and the actual opinion,
01:13:31.380 when they were most vulnerable, when, as he points out, it would have been rational to think
01:13:35.580 if you assassinated one of the five, you could stop the reversal.
01:13:39.940 Merrick Garland was essentially telling these cops, stand down.
01:13:43.660 Don't do not arrest the protesters, even though if you protest as an attempt to interfere with the carrying out of justice,
01:13:51.740 with the conclusion of an opinion, you are breaking the law.
01:13:56.500 You're breaking the law.
01:13:57.740 You're committing a crime under 18 U.S.C. section 1507.
01:14:01.620 You're breaking the law if you show up at the home of a Supreme Court justice in order to protest or demonstrate,
01:14:06.900 trying to influence that justice in some way.
01:14:09.620 This is a crime.
01:14:11.860 And based on these documents that were unearthed by a whistleblower and through my colleague from Alabama,
01:14:20.020 Senator Katie Britt, we discovered that the U.S. Marshals Service has issued these training guidelines
01:14:25.500 saying that when you're at the home of a Supreme Court justice, don't make arrests under Section 1507
01:14:32.240 without prior approval from the U.S. Attorney's Office, which makes it all but impossible that it's going to occur.
01:14:38.440 And then they added additional elements onto the crime, elements that do not exist in the statute.
01:14:43.780 They have to be criminal threats.
01:14:45.500 There has to be some indication of violence under the circumstances.
01:14:49.120 Those are not elements of Section 1507.
01:14:52.980 And so not surprisingly, not a single, not one arrest under 1507 has been made at the home of a Supreme Court justice
01:15:00.200 in the last year since this Dobbs leak occurred, even though ever since then we've had protests at their homes.
01:15:07.520 They follow them to home, to their favorite vacation spots, in some cases to their churches.
01:15:11.800 And yet not a single arrest is made.
01:15:15.300 That's absolutely unconscionable.
01:15:19.040 It's unforgivable.
01:15:20.700 And what you said about how Merrick Garland said,
01:15:25.280 oh, you know, they have full authority.
01:15:27.020 The Marshals have full authority on site to make arrests if somebody crosses the line
01:15:32.400 or if somebody's doing something against 1507 directly contradicts that, you know, representation to you.
01:15:39.340 He tried to tell you that, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't worry.
01:15:42.720 They're going to be able to do whatever they want on the site.
01:15:45.320 And what you're telling me now is that these leaks that your fellow senator got show exactly the opposite.
01:15:50.860 They were being told, don't arrest the people unless they cross these additional lines that we've imposed
01:15:55.400 that aren't in the actual law.
01:15:57.080 But he looked you in the face and said something very different.
01:16:00.160 That's right.
01:16:00.880 About two months ago, he was in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on which I sit for an oversight hearing.
01:16:06.460 I asked him about arrests under 1507.
01:16:08.440 He told me they have full authority to arrest.
01:16:11.340 But we now know that's not true because a month later, in a different hearing in front of a different committee,
01:16:17.100 Senator Katie Bray from Alabama had unearthed these training materials showing that they were telling him not to arrest.
01:16:24.840 And then a few weeks after that, I interviewed the deputy attorney general at another hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee
01:16:31.420 and got almost no response as to why this was happening, other than that she refuted my suggestion that they had added elements to the offense of Section 1507
01:16:42.100 and that they had made it all but impossible by adding those elements and requiring prior approval for an arrest by the U.S. Attorney's Office.
01:16:50.220 She's dead wrong in suggesting that this makes it all but impossible for them to arrest.
01:16:55.500 And that's borne out by the facts as evidenced by the fact that notwithstanding the fact that dozens, if not scores, if not hundreds of these protests have been carried out at the homes of Supreme Court justices over the last year
01:17:06.600 and not one arrest under Section 1507.
01:17:10.060 This, by the way, is the whole reason why Brett Kavanaugh almost got murdered.
01:17:13.020 I mean, this is real. This is not hypothetical.
01:17:16.700 It made it a lot harder for them to detect him, to figure out what he was doing by virtue of the fact that they don't arrest these people.
01:17:24.840 Meanwhile, is there any doubt that if it had been a protest outside of the home of Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, or eventually Ketanji Brown-Jackson,
01:17:34.520 and the draft opinion had included the three of them, let's say Ketanji Brown-Jackson was on the court by that point,
01:17:39.620 saying, we uphold Roe, and they had the votes.
01:17:44.300 They were in a five-person majority to uphold Roe, but the conservative protesters were outside of the homes of those three women,
01:17:51.040 chanting and threatening and menacing that Merrick Garland would have fully empowered those marshals to arrest those protesters
01:17:59.700 and clear the premises like that?
01:18:02.900 Yeah, one can easily imagine that that would have been the outcome.
01:18:05.780 Now, that didn't happen, so there's no clear way to prove that, although I will point out that for nearly 50 years,
01:18:12.540 that was the status quo, and yet you didn't see conservatives or pro-life Americans showing up at the homes of Supreme Court justices
01:18:21.380 who supported Roe v. Wade and its progeny protesting in front of their homes.
01:18:25.780 If that happened, it certainly wasn't a regular thing that I'm aware of,
01:18:29.340 and one can imagine that if this had erupted in the scenario you described, that there would have been arrests,
01:18:35.260 as there are constantly arrests made for people interfering with access to the entrance of an abortion clinic under the FACE Act.
01:18:44.340 Dozens and dozens of these prosecutions are being brought for those,
01:18:47.640 even though the FACE Act also protects churches, places of worship from similar activities and acts of vandalism.
01:18:58.140 Overwhelmingly, the Justice Department errs on the side of prosecuting the abortion clinic crimes,
01:19:03.380 but not the crimes against churches.
01:19:05.440 That tells us something about what they might have done had this opinion gone the other way.
01:19:10.300 Right, or even the centers that help pregnant women looking for an alternative to abortion.
01:19:15.400 Pregnancy Crisis Center is also covered.
01:19:16.920 So what have these women done?
01:19:19.480 You're mad at them because they've chosen to have their baby?
01:19:22.120 Their clinics need to be bombed?
01:19:24.740 What's happened in the wake of Dobbs, which overruled Roe, notwithstanding these pressures,
01:19:29.780 is an almost uniform attempt on the left to delegitimize the court,
01:19:34.680 to endanger the court, as we've just discussed, and to delegitimize the court.
01:19:39.040 Now, I think you tell me, but I think the latest attacks on Justice Thomas fall in that lane.
01:19:45.400 To try to go after him as some sort of, you know, unethical man for not having reported
01:19:50.480 certain trips he took that were paid for by a rich friend of his, Harlan Crowe,
01:19:55.300 even though any independent expert you talk to will tell you he had no obligation to do that.
01:19:59.800 He did not have to disclose those trips that he took because Harlan Crowe wasn't in front of him
01:20:03.840 on the Supreme Court.
01:20:05.260 So then they found one case in which Harlan Crowe's company was the parent company of
01:20:11.840 a litigant that was trying to get an appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court.
01:20:17.080 All of the justices rejected that appeal, as they do in 99 percent of the cases.
01:20:21.700 And now they're turning around and saying, gotcha.
01:20:24.820 It was the parent company that didn't, as I understand, even own a majority interest
01:20:29.380 in the lower company.
01:20:31.500 And that lower company was trying to get an appeal.
01:20:33.080 And all the justices said no, but he didn't recuse himself.
01:20:35.800 So, gotcha.
01:20:38.220 These are beyond frivolous attacks.
01:20:41.260 Look, this is a character assassination campaign that's been going on for decades.
01:20:45.040 I mean, literally for 31 and a half years, they've been going after Justice Thomas.
01:20:50.200 And look, whether you agree with him or not, I happen to agree with him very, very frequently,
01:20:58.100 and I have enormous respect for him.
01:21:00.960 But even if I didn't agree with him, you can't look at the life of Justice Clarence Thomas
01:21:06.020 without having profound respect for him.
01:21:08.540 This is a man who was born into poverty in the segregated South and has risen to a pinnacle
01:21:15.780 of success in his profession and in the leadership of our nation's government.
01:21:20.540 Now one of the longest serving Supreme Court justices in history, not to mention one of
01:21:25.980 the more influential American jurists this country has ever known.
01:21:31.320 He is a deeply principled, deeply ethical man.
01:21:36.060 And yet they attack him nonetheless and have been continuously for 31 years because he has
01:21:43.140 the audacity to be a conservative jurist and also happens to be black.
01:21:48.120 The left can't handle that.
01:21:50.160 And they're attacking him as a result.
01:21:51.800 They're using that then as a springboard and in tandem with the assault on Dobbs, with
01:21:57.200 the refusal to make arrests under Section 1507.
01:22:00.180 They're trying to delegitimize the court, to destabilize it.
01:22:04.520 That is extremely dangerous and we can't let that happen.
01:22:07.440 So the Democrats remain in control of the Senate as a result of the disappointing midterms for
01:22:12.580 the GOP.
01:22:13.460 And they decided to hold hearings on this Thomas allegation and whether the Supreme Court needs
01:22:18.680 to be reined in by its co-equal branch of government over in the legislature.
01:22:23.660 And look, you guys can pass laws all day long that affect citizens.
01:22:28.060 It's a different matter when you're trying to impose new ethics on the Supreme Court and
01:22:31.360 pressure them into doing it themselves.
01:22:32.740 It's a co-equal branch of government.
01:22:34.920 So the Democrats don't totally seem to understand that and decided to hold hearings.
01:22:39.940 They tried to get Chief Justice Roberts to attend and he said, you can pound sand.
01:22:43.780 Bye.
01:22:44.460 I don't answer to you.
01:22:45.860 But they went ahead with it.
01:22:47.060 And their chief witness was this guy.
01:22:49.540 Is it Kedrick, K-E-D-R-I-C, Kedrick Payne of the Campaign Legal Center, which in my understanding
01:22:55.600 is pretty much like a left wing money group, who decides to offer testimony about the ethics
01:23:03.680 at the Supreme Court.
01:23:05.100 And your friend, Senator Ted Cruz, got a hold of Mr. Mr. Payne and had some questions about
01:23:13.240 some alleged hypocrisy when it comes to enforcing the rules against the conservative justices,
01:23:18.660 but maybe not so much the liberals.
01:23:20.720 Here's a little bit of that.
01:23:22.660 Well, if that's the standard, going and traveling and being paid for by others, then guess what?
01:23:28.140 Just about every Supreme Court justice has done so.
01:23:31.240 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed in 1993, two years later.
01:23:34.920 In the time she was on the court, she took 157 trips.
01:23:39.820 Mr. Payne, yes or no?
01:23:40.880 Do you think Ruth Bader Ginsburg was corrupt?
01:23:44.040 No.
01:23:44.480 Nor do I.
01:23:47.300 Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not alone.
01:23:49.300 Justice Stephen Breyer, appointed the year later in 1994, took 233 reported trips.
01:23:55.140 Again, yes or no, Mr. Payne, do you think Stephen Breyer was corrupt?
01:23:59.040 No.
01:23:59.780 Nor do I.
01:24:00.780 I would point out Justice Kagan has done the same thing.
01:24:03.500 Justice Sotomayor has done the same thing.
01:24:05.700 And yet none of my Democrat colleagues care because this is a political attack directed
01:24:12.140 at a justice they hate.
01:24:15.360 Hmm.
01:24:16.380 Pretty powerful moment.
01:24:17.700 And I have to say, in no way was Ted Cruz being unfair.
01:24:22.200 All those are honest statements.
01:24:24.320 Can I tell you, Senator Lee, even Nina Totenberg of NPR, which is no right wing organization,
01:24:29.780 was defending Justice Thomas and the high court yesterday?
01:24:34.560 That's how far the Democrats are reaching here.
01:24:37.840 And Megan, they reached so far that by the end of it, I believe my Democratic colleagues
01:24:42.540 on that committee were seriously regretting holding that hearing to begin with.
01:24:46.020 It backfired spectacularly because it allowed us to focus for two, three hours on the deficiencies
01:24:55.920 of their claims, on the absurdity of the accusations against Justice Thomas, and on the fact that
01:25:02.640 they're trying to make something out of nothing by comparing him to a standard that did not yet
01:25:09.840 exist on what was reportable and what wasn't.
01:25:12.780 He complied.
01:25:13.600 He complied in each and every instance with the law.
01:25:17.400 Now, if you really want to drill down into this, we can identify things that other justices
01:25:23.020 have done that probably were not in compliance.
01:25:26.320 We're not focusing on that because we don't think it makes them corrupt.
01:25:30.020 We think those were, at best, minor instances.
01:25:33.720 But if you really want to drill down on this and make any minor infraction into something,
01:25:39.340 this is not going to end well for the Democrats because many of their heroes,
01:25:43.600 arguably failed to comply, at least to the extent that they claimed Justice Thomas didn't
01:25:48.420 comply.
01:25:50.020 This guy, Payne, our friend Comfortably Smug over part of the Ruthless podcast, pointed
01:25:57.040 out his group took money from Sam Bankman free to the tune of $760,000.
01:26:03.860 He also appears to have misled you guys while under oath yesterday.
01:26:09.300 Your colleague, Senator Kennedy, was asking Mr. Payne about his bias against the conservatives
01:26:15.140 on the court, trying to figure out whether he personally insulted Chief Justice Roberts.
01:26:19.580 And the guy wiggled and wiggled.
01:26:21.800 We'll show you the exchange and then we'll tell you the update.
01:26:24.040 Watch.
01:26:24.240 You retweeted this out.
01:26:27.340 John Roberts is a disgrace.
01:26:30.620 No, I actually disagree with with with with Justice Roberts.
01:26:34.680 Well, you didn't call him Chief Justice Roberts.
01:26:36.580 You called him John Roberts.
01:26:38.420 No, this is you retweeted this.
01:26:40.800 No, Senator.
01:26:41.340 I did not retweet that.
01:26:42.820 Yes, sir.
01:26:43.140 You did right here.
01:26:44.100 I will need to see.
01:26:45.140 I will.
01:26:45.500 Can you provide a copy to me now?
01:26:47.140 But I did not.
01:26:48.020 Can you tell me why you think?
01:26:50.340 Chief Justice Roberts is a disgrace.
01:26:52.740 I did not say that.
01:26:53.600 Did not retweet that.
01:26:55.800 OK, maybe maybe Twitter got it wrong.
01:27:00.820 Twitter didn't get it wrong.
01:27:02.460 Mr. Payne was not being.
01:27:05.040 I'll give to him the courtesy of saying he was incorrect, though you could argue it was a lie.
01:27:10.820 He had to clarify his testimony just now, acknowledging that he did, in fact, retweet it.
01:27:16.600 As you can see right here on the record of the tweet, Twitter didn't make a mistake.
01:27:20.740 He retweeted somebody else's tweets by Norm Ornstein, calling John Roberts like he's your
01:27:25.440 neighbor and not the chief justice of the United States, quote, a disgrace.
01:27:29.060 So this is the best the Democrats could do in their smear campaign.
01:27:32.520 And the reason I raise it, Senator, is because we're really talking about life and death here.
01:27:37.040 Back to the Alito letter, you know, where he outlined the extraordinary steps they're now
01:27:41.660 having to take in order to protect their lives.
01:27:43.320 And these Democrats are on a campaign from what Chuck Schumer said outside the Supreme Court
01:27:47.580 to what Maxine Waters said and to what Lori Lightfoot in Chicago said about the Supreme
01:27:53.520 Court's coming for us and it's time to take up arms.
01:27:55.820 And the left doesn't seem to care.
01:28:00.080 When Chuck Schumer went onto the steps of the Supreme Court of the United States and said,
01:28:05.500 you've unleashed the whirlwind and you will pay the price, that was a threat.
01:28:10.940 And it's a threat every time they try to accuse someone of doing something that they didn't do on
01:28:16.260 the Supreme Court. It's perpetuating and encouraging threats when they say nothing
01:28:21.540 about the non-enforcement of criminal statutes being violated as the lives of Supreme Court
01:28:26.860 justices are being imperiled. And make no mistake, Megan, this is motivated by a sincere
01:28:32.800 desire to erode the reputation of the court, which has taken a hit because of this campaign,
01:28:38.380 a campaign, the flames of which are aggressively banned by the mainstream media establishment,
01:28:43.820 which almost never tells the full story, not with respect to Dobbs, not with respect to these
01:28:50.280 protests, not with respect to the scurrilous allegations against Justice Thomas and other
01:28:55.900 Republican appointees serving on the Supreme Court of the United States.
01:29:00.500 So it's leaving a mark. They want to delegitimize it.
01:29:02.900 And I think they're trying to drive out the justices they don't like. I think they're trying
01:29:06.860 to make life so miserable for Justice Thomas that he decides to step down early, perhaps early enough
01:29:12.660 to allow President Biden to replace him with some progressive jurist of their choice.
01:29:18.220 Well, first of all, on that latter point, if they think that's going to succeed,
01:29:21.980 they don't know Justice Thomas, as I do. That's not going to happen.
01:29:25.340 But what they're doing is wrong. And what they're doing is also leading towards something else.
01:29:30.180 They desperately want to finish the job that FDR started back in 1937 and pack the Supreme Court.
01:29:37.240 We cannot ever let that happen.
01:29:39.800 Here's an example. We've talked about the Schumer soundbite many times.
01:29:43.420 Here's just an example of some of the other attempts to delegitimize these justices,
01:29:47.780 something that this is historically unprecedented. This didn't used to be the way.
01:29:52.460 It's SOT 3.
01:29:53.040 It was three justices named by one president, Donald Trump.
01:29:59.720 This morning, the radical Supreme Court is eviscerating Americans, right?
01:30:04.100 An extreme ideology.
01:30:05.620 I am spitting mad over this. We have six extremist justices on the United States Supreme Court
01:30:13.300 who have decided that their moral and religious views should be imposed on the rest of America.
01:30:19.900 Radical Republicans are charging ahead with their crusade.
01:30:23.040 To criminalize health freedom.
01:30:29.720 Judges who promised to follow the law but wink-wink, nod-nod were cleared in order to get where they got today.
01:30:39.500 The conservative majority of the Supreme Court shows how extreme it is.
01:30:42.580 A woman's fundamental health decisions are her own to make, not some right-wing politicians that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell packed the court with.
01:30:53.300 But this decision must not be the final word.
01:30:57.000 It's pretty remarkable, Senator, especially, I'll just give you this last thing from Alito's op-ed.
01:31:03.580 He writes,
01:31:05.580 These types of attacks are new during my lifetime.
01:31:08.500 We're being hammered daily, and I think quite unfairly in a lot of instances.
01:31:11.780 And nobody, practically nobody, is defending us.
01:31:14.060 The idea has always been that judges are not supposed to respond to criticisms.
01:31:17.500 But if the courts are being unfairly attacked, the organized bar will come to their defense.
01:31:22.160 Instead, if anything, they've participated to some degree in these attacks.
01:31:26.380 And he finishes here, after Justice Kavanaugh was accused of being a rapist during his Senate confirmation hearings, he made an impassioned speech, made an impassioned scene, and he was criticized because it was supposedly not judicious, not the proper behavior for a judge to speak in those terms.
01:31:42.040 I don't know.
01:31:42.920 If somebody calls you a rapist, we're being bombarded with this.
01:31:46.540 And then those who are attacking us say, look how unpopular they are.
01:31:49.700 Look how low their approval rating has sunk.
01:31:52.080 Well, yeah.
01:31:52.600 What do you expect when day in, day out?
01:31:55.060 They're illegitimate.
01:31:56.900 They're engaging in all sorts of unethical conduct.
01:31:59.820 They're doing this.
01:32:00.560 They're doing that.
01:32:01.660 It's one thing to say the court is wrong, he says.
01:32:04.160 It's another to say it's an illegitimate institution.
01:32:08.840 Fair points?
01:32:10.340 Not only fair points, but this emphasizes why I have such enormous respect for my former employer, Justice Alito.
01:32:17.380 This is a decent, good man and a first-rate jurist, one of the best ever to serve on our nation's highest court.
01:32:25.060 He, along with Justice Thomas, have been dragged through the mud, through the dirt, mercilessly by people who are not concerned about the facts because they have only one objective, which is to delegitimize the court.
01:32:36.340 Liberal Democrats understand that they can no longer rely on the Supreme Court to adopt policy and impose it on an unwilling public, the American people, because the far left's policies are so unacceptable to the American people that sane electorates don't elect politicians willing and able to bring those policies about.
01:32:58.380 So the Supreme Court has made clear it's not going to do their bidding.
01:33:01.760 And for that, they're furious.
01:33:03.040 For that, they're trying to delegitimize the court so they can pack it.
01:33:06.380 I wrote a book about this, a book that's about to come out on paperback on June 6th called Saving Nine.
01:33:12.220 And in Saving Nine, I explain this longstanding campaign to try to delegitimize the court so they can remake it in their own image.
01:33:19.100 And as I explained in Saving Nine, you can't undo this.
01:33:22.720 Once they flip this switch, if they were to pack the Supreme Court, it'll go tit for tat depending on who's in control of Congress and the White House until before you know it, you add two here, you add three there, you add four there.
01:33:35.320 Because you can't remove those justices once they've been put in place, it becomes a one-way ratchet.
01:33:41.460 Before long, instead of a nine-justice impartial tribunal, you will have a highly politicized, enormous body more resembling the intergalactic Senate in the Star Wars movies than any judicial body ever could appear.
01:33:57.140 This is high-stakes poker they're playing.
01:34:00.020 They've got to be called out on it, and that's why I'm so grateful that you're willing to speak the truth on this topic.
01:34:06.060 Well, I'm disgusted by what they're doing.
01:34:08.000 I mean, I remember the day when every justice, so long as they were truly qualified in their credentials, would get a 99, 98 percent approval out of the Senate because we didn't partizize everything.
01:34:21.460 Politicize, that's what I'm looking for, politicize everything.
01:34:23.540 Not everything was about partisanship.
01:34:24.920 And now, not only have we gone tribal, but we're actually endangering these nine people who could be making millions in private practice but have chosen to serve.
01:34:35.000 We're lucky to have all nine of them, even though I know you and I disagree with some of them.
01:34:39.240 I respect them.
01:34:40.020 I don't want anything to happen to them when they're in the majority, deciding things against people who are more aligned with the Federalist Society like you and I might be.
01:34:46.580 And I can't stand that they're getting away with doing it to these conservatives.
01:34:50.420 It's outrageous.
01:34:51.640 Thank you for fighting the good fight.
01:34:52.780 Again, the book is called Saving Nine, the fight against the left's audacious plan to pack the Supreme Court and destroy American liberty.
01:35:01.420 All the best to you, Senator Lee.
01:35:03.340 Thanks so much, Megan.
01:35:04.520 And thank all of you for joining us today and all week.
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01:35:30.440 Welcome.
01:35:31.020 And we will keep bringing you the truth.
01:35:33.560 Tomorrow, the guys from Ruthless.
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01:35:36.940 You'll love it, too.
01:35:37.380 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
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01:35:44.540 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
01:35:45.540 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.