The Megyn Kelly Show - Fani Willis ＂Real Housewives＂ Drama, and Trump's SC Victory, with Emily Jashinsky, Eliana Johnson, and Phil Holloway

00:00:00.560 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:12.060 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Happy Monday.

00:00:16.700 Well, the South Carolina primary was Saturday night. Blink and you would have missed it.

00:00:20.920 There wasn't a ton of coverage because the outcome was predicted and not that shocking.

00:00:24.780 Former President Donald Trump won by 20 points over Nikki Haley in her home state. Not unexpected.

00:00:32.780 Both sides claiming that they see some good news for their respective favored candidate in there, believe it or not.

00:00:40.580 And we'll get to that and much more when the EJs join us in just a bit.

00:00:44.880 But it's 2024 and a very unique presidential election year, which means the big news right now brings us back to Georgia.

00:00:51.780 And Fannie Willis, where there were breaking developments over the past two days since we last left you on Friday.

00:00:58.940 When we last spoke, I was in D.C. for CPAC and a stunning filing was submitted in this case.

00:01:05.420 It was a filing by Team Trump alleging cell phone records show that Fulton County D.A., Fannie Willis,

00:01:15.020 and her lover, Nathan Wade, lied to the court when they claimed their affair didn't begin until 2022 after they started working together to prosecute Donald Trump.

00:01:26.020 They did not have exactly a smoking gun, but it was about as close to that as you can get without having the actual thing.

00:01:34.100 They had cell phone records showing him allegedly visiting her home 35 times in 2021, not 22, when they claimed they weren't lovers.

00:01:43.600 2,000 phone calls, 1,800 text messages over the course of 11 months, and at least two what appeared to be late night visits by Nathan Wade to Fannie Willis' house

00:01:55.080 or to some location very near it at a time when they claimed the two had not been sleeping together.

00:02:01.520 That brings us to today.

00:02:03.860 Since then, I should point out that Fannie Willis has responded to that motion.

00:02:07.300 We'll get into it.

00:02:07.860 And Team Trump has replied to her response, so they're fighting it out.

00:02:10.640 And at this moment, we are getting ready for, or it could be underway, Mr. Wade's one-time business partner, well, law partner, friend, and one-time divorce attorney,

00:02:23.740 all the same man, Terrence Bradley, is expected to speak behind closed doors to Judge McAfee down in Georgia

00:02:32.100 about whether he really does have a foundation to claim that all of his communications with Nathan Wade,

00:02:39.580 really from the beginning of time, from the beginning of time of Nathan Wade's first marital issues forward,

00:02:45.860 should be considered attorney-client privileged.

00:02:48.360 And if they're not, they're going to be in some trouble, because we believe Terrence Bradley has some things to say

00:02:55.180 that may put the lie to the story we've heard from Willis and Wade.

00:02:58.400 We start on all of that today with Phil Holloway.

00:03:03.400 He's the founder of the Holloway Law Group, based in Cobb County, Georgia.

00:03:06.400 Phil, welcome back to the show.

00:03:08.220 So let's start with what is or is not happening behind closed doors, because we mentioned this on Friday.

00:03:14.480 Nathan Wade is the holder of the attorney-client privilege that he had, at least for some time,

00:03:19.220 with his one-time lawyer, Terrence Bradley.

00:03:21.880 And he has asserted the privilege and said it would be totally inappropriate for Judge McAfee to talk to his lawyer,

00:03:27.780 even behind closed doors and chambers, about anything that was said between the two of them.

00:03:33.260 So has the judge issued a ruling on that motion?

00:03:38.040 And if he has, do we expect Bradley to actually appear in chambers and have the conversation or not?

00:03:43.580 Yeah, great to be with you again, as always, Megan.

00:03:46.240 Listen, what's going to happen, I think it's at 1.30 Eastern time this afternoon,

00:03:50.640 is when this in-camera review is supposed to occur.

00:03:54.280 And all that means is, as you mentioned, it's just behind closed doors.

00:03:58.060 It'll be the judge, Mr. Bradley, you know, his attorney, and the judge's questions, okay?

00:04:03.960 The judge, ironically, the law sometimes is quirky.

00:04:07.380 The judge has to listen to the evidence and look at those text messages before he can actually decide if he's allowed to look at them.

00:04:16.220 And by that, I mean if he's allowed to actually use them in making the decision in this case,

00:04:23.080 because he can't evaluate whether or not they are covered by attorney-client privilege unless he knows what they are and how the information was gathered.

00:04:30.920 We talked about this the other day.

00:04:32.720 Lawyers sometimes, when they represent their friends, their business partners,

00:04:35.700 they might know things that are outside the attorney-client relationship.

00:04:41.280 If you pick up something when you're out having beers with your friends or at lunch or things like that,

00:04:46.180 that's not necessarily covered by attorney-client privilege.

00:04:48.960 So the judge has to look at this stuff and find out what is the source of this information,

00:04:54.500 and then he can decide if it's covered by attorney-client privilege.

00:04:57.760 But he's got to look at it before he can officially look at it, if that makes sense.

00:05:01.900 So that's coming this afternoon.

00:05:03.080 Of course, and if, let's say, Nathan Wade and Fannie Willis went out to dinner or to drinks

00:05:08.780 and they saw Terrence Bradley at the time, that's not privileged.

00:05:14.760 Terrence Bradley can't assert privilege just because he happened to be the lawyer at the time.

00:05:19.660 That would be information that he did obtain via his personal knowledge.

00:05:23.280 Now, he testified he didn't get any info about their relationship from personal knowledge

00:05:28.500 as opposed to via the attorney-client relationship.

00:05:31.220 But this judge clearly by the end of that last Friday hearing had doubts about that assertion,

00:05:36.440 and that's what the judge is going to be looking to test in their private conversation today.

00:05:41.780 Yeah, and this goes back, if you remember a couple of filings ago, it's hard to keep it at all straight,

00:05:46.640 but Ashley Merchant, who is the attorney for Mr. Rowland, the co-defendant in this case,

00:05:52.580 when she first named Terrence Bradley, she said,

00:05:55.940 look, Terrence Bradley is going to come to court.

00:05:58.560 He's got this information that's not privileged, that wasn't gathered in the scope of his representation of Mr. Wade.

00:06:07.040 So she made those representations to the court.

00:06:10.100 And we can infer from the testimony that we've seen that she has text messages.

00:06:16.620 Okay, she has a conversation with Mr. Bradley.

00:06:19.580 Mr. Bradley has confirmed the existence of the text conversation.

00:06:24.280 He has mentioned and talked in court about some of the text messages.

00:06:30.040 So between what he has talked about and what has been listed in the pleadings,

00:06:34.660 we can infer that Bradley has talked about Nathan Wade and Fonnie Willis and their relationship

00:06:40.600 and when it began and that it's not helpful to Willis and Wade.

00:06:44.820 And so that's why we see the state fighting tooth and nail to keep this out.

00:06:49.600 The judge actually ruled, I think it was Thursday or Friday, Nathan Wade had filed a motion asking the judge,

00:06:57.220 you know, not to even question Mr. Bradley.

00:06:59.740 But the judge said, no, he's going to have to get into that.

00:07:02.520 And so the further, the longer this goes on, the more the state fights to keep this information out,

00:07:11.540 honestly, in my opinion, the worse it looks for them.

00:07:13.920 Because if you remember, this is really about a conflict of interest and whether or not Fonnie Willis

00:07:18.640 is making money off this, basically.

00:07:20.960 Okay.

00:07:21.260 So the longer it goes on, the more Nathan Wade is paid by the hour.

00:07:25.360 And by the way, prosecutors never get paid by the hour.

00:07:28.960 This is the first I've really ever seen of this with a couple of small exceptions here in Georgia

00:07:33.380 that were for much, much less per hour.

00:07:35.380 It's like $45 an hour.

00:07:37.140 The prosecutors don't get paid by the hour.

00:07:39.140 The more they fight, the more they dig, the more the conflict of interest potentially becomes very real.

00:07:45.700 And so that's why all of this matters.

00:07:47.900 People are asking me, what about the guilt of the accused?

00:07:51.040 What about those kind of things?

00:07:52.420 Well, we're not there yet.

00:07:54.120 This is about the fairness of the system.

00:07:56.480 If you don't have a fair-minded prosecutor, one who comes into the investigation or the trial of the case

00:08:02.540 without a conflict of interest, if you don't have that kind of fairness, fundamental fairness,

00:08:07.580 you don't have due process.

00:08:09.140 And without due process, you don't have a system.

00:08:11.280 You can't run right to the trial.

00:08:12.460 I refer people back to the Duke fake rape case back in 2005 and 2006,

00:08:17.480 where there was a corrupt DA who didn't much care whether he had a alleged victim making up lies

00:08:24.760 about the three Duke lacrosse players.

00:08:26.540 What Mike Knifong wanted was to win re-election in a minority-majority community,

00:08:32.600 and his pension would go up if he won a re-election one more time.

00:08:36.780 And he decided he had a winner if he pushed this woman's allegations,

00:08:41.040 even though they turned out to be BS.

00:08:42.800 He wound up getting disbarred.

00:08:44.160 He wound up spending a day in jail.

00:08:46.780 So in that case, if we had followed the logic of the people coming to you now,

00:08:51.880 we would just, what about the guilt of the accused?

00:08:53.500 Let's get right to the trial of these three accused guys.

00:08:56.000 No.

00:08:56.840 If there's a corrupt DA prosecuting the case,

00:09:00.160 you have to stop and make sure that corruption is addressed.

00:09:04.640 It's ferreted out.

00:09:06.040 People understand how bad it is, if it exists at all.

00:09:08.640 And that's what's happening right now, to make sure there is not a corrupt DA pushing

00:09:12.500 these charges against Trump and all the others.

00:09:14.440 It's completely appropriate to do.

00:09:16.720 And, you know, it would be nice if they would be a little bit more cooperative about forking

00:09:19.980 over information.

00:09:20.920 Now, the thing you said about Terrence Bradley brought me to a question.

00:09:25.560 Terrence Bradley definitely texted with Ashley Merchant.

00:09:27.920 There's no question.

00:09:28.820 She showed him a couple of the texts when he was on the stand.

00:09:32.160 He seemed very uncomfortable.

00:09:33.980 He was caught.

00:09:34.940 I mean, I don't know why he texted with Ashley Merchant if he didn't want it coming out.

00:09:41.360 Right.

00:09:41.740 But we saw the one where she forwarded him her whole motion to disqualify, saying the

00:09:45.600 affair began back and, you know, way before 2022.

00:09:48.500 And he said, looks good.

00:09:50.060 Who could testify to the affair?

00:09:52.220 And he said, no one's going to burn that bridge.

00:09:54.760 And we appear to be looking at even more.

00:09:58.060 Then he gets up on the stand against his objection.

00:10:01.120 Right.

00:10:01.260 He tried to avoid it and said everything is attorney-client privileged.

00:10:06.300 All my knowledge about their relationship is covered in the attorney-client privilege,

00:10:10.240 and I have no personal knowledge.

00:10:13.240 Now, Phil, that either means that he violated the attorney-client privilege when he spoke

00:10:19.220 to Ashley Merchant, or it means he lied on the stand to the judge.

00:10:24.060 It's one of those two things.

00:10:25.660 There's no other alternative.

00:10:27.100 Am I wrong?

00:10:27.600 Well, I think you're pretty much right on that.

00:10:31.160 And this is why he looks so uncomfortable, I think.

00:10:33.940 You know, and this is why he's really trying his hardest to not have to go down and answer

00:10:40.660 questions, because he's really caught in a trap, OK?

00:10:45.140 I mean, he's between a rock and a hard place.

00:10:47.400 On the one hand, you know, he's got to think about his own reputation and all this.

00:10:52.640 He's got to think about whether or not Nathan Wade is going to make a bar complaint for

00:10:57.320 violating attorney-client privilege, if that's what he did.

00:11:00.800 But remember, Ashley Merchant was very sure that the text messages and the things that

00:11:06.740 he would testify to were not actually covered by attorney-client privilege.

00:11:11.540 So, you know, he's kind of between a rock and a hard place.

00:11:15.440 He doesn't know if he needs to accept that.

00:11:18.260 He put himself there.

00:11:19.060 You and I both know as lawyers, if somebody texted you saying, Phil, you know, what about

00:11:24.120 all that secret stuff your client told you?

00:11:25.860 You would respond saying, I can't reveal that to you.

00:11:28.980 It's covered by attorney-client privilege.

00:11:30.580 Much as I'd love to share with you, go knock on somebody else's door.

00:11:33.760 This guy gave it up.

00:11:35.020 He clearly gave it up to Ashley Merchant.

00:11:36.660 And I'm going to give this man who I don't know the benefit of the doubt and say he did

00:11:41.380 that because he did have personal knowledge.

00:11:43.060 I mean, most attorneys absolutely know you do not violate attorney-client privilege, period.

00:11:49.000 I mean, it's just grilled in you from the first day of law school.

00:11:51.920 So I believe that this guy would know not to do that.

00:11:56.080 He probably gave it up because he did have personal knowledge.

00:11:58.060 And then when he got, by the time he got on the stand, he was scared.

00:12:02.280 Yeah, this is a big case, obviously.

00:12:05.700 And this is the kind of thing where sometimes people may say things, they may do things,

00:12:10.560 they may text things and not really think about how this may come out later.

00:12:14.740 But we all tell our clients, you know, first thing you do is don't talk.

00:12:19.980 Okay, keep your mouth shut.

00:12:21.280 Don't say anything.

00:12:22.080 And the reverse is also true.

00:12:24.040 As lawyers, the less we talk about our clients' cases, the better off we are going to be.

00:12:29.400 And so he is between that rock and a hard place.

00:12:33.560 I hate to repeat myself, but I really don't know any other way to put it.

00:12:37.320 I think that he wants to get in that room and get out as fast as he can.

00:12:41.200 He's probably hoping that the judge asks him as little as possible.

00:12:45.200 Nevertheless, he's going to have to answer questions from the judge.

00:12:48.420 And the judge is going to use whatever he learns today.

00:12:52.380 The judge is going to use that, Megan, as a basis for determining what comes next.

00:12:56.700 Because as of right now, they're scheduled for closing arguments on this hearing on Friday.

00:13:01.260 But the Trump team, of course, is asking for the evidence to be reopened.

00:13:05.700 I've got sources who are telling me that other defendants may be weighing in on that because I think they're sharing the cell data.

00:13:12.600 So we may see other filings.

00:13:14.340 But we don't know if Friday is going to be closing argument or it's going to be more evidence.

00:13:19.900 But in any event, the judge can't make that decision until after he hears from Bradley.

00:13:24.000 And if he decides that these text messages are not covered by attorney-client privilege – and by the way, there's a good argument that Nathan Wade has waived any attorney-client privilege because his prosecution team said Ashley Merchant was a liar.

00:13:38.300 They said she had no good faith basis for even going here with these things.

00:13:42.660 And so she's, I think, entitled to rebut that.

00:13:45.860 And so if the judge says, no, this is something she can get into, we've got to reopen the evidence so that this can come out in open court and on the record.

00:13:54.900 So there's so much riding on today.

00:13:57.080 Because there was, you know, this officer at the court, Ashley Merchant, had her integrity impugned, we all saw it, by Fannie Willis, by Nathan Wade, who said, you lied, you lied about getting Terrence Bradley communications.

00:14:09.400 And you claim that was the whole basis for this hearing, that he had this information he was going to share about us being liars.

00:14:15.720 Well, you're the liar.

00:14:16.520 You're the liar, Fannie Willis said.

00:14:18.700 So because of that, is this judge entitled to look at all the text messages?

00:14:22.540 We heard Ashley Merchant say, I'll give you my phone.

00:14:25.320 You can put it in evidence.

00:14:26.120 I would even take the stand, which is extraordinary to have the lawyer become the witness.

00:14:30.200 But she said, I would do it.

00:14:31.920 So do we think that this judge, you and I haven't seen all the text messages, but do we think that Judge McAfee, or McAfee, has seen them all or is about to in an hour and 15 minutes?

00:14:42.620 Yeah, I think he's about to.

00:14:44.540 If they have been submitted by Ms. Merchant or anybody else, I'm not aware of it.

00:14:48.720 That's not been made public.

00:14:50.100 But he's got to look at them.

00:14:51.160 He can't consider what they mean unless he sees them and he learns about the entire context of all of this.

00:14:57.120 And that's what this is about today.

00:14:59.060 And I think my prediction is that he's going to allow these text messages into evidence.

00:15:06.120 Now, they might be subject to some kind of protective order so that they're not made public.

00:15:10.640 But that's the other wrinkle here.

00:15:13.380 We may not actually see them in this court case.

00:15:15.840 We might see them some other way.

00:15:16.860 Let me ask you a question, though, Phil.

00:15:18.640 Why would he seal them?

00:15:20.300 Why can't I see them?

00:15:22.120 Terrence Bradley sent them to Ashley Merchant.

00:15:24.220 That's not privileged.

00:15:25.960 Ashley Merchant can put them.

00:15:27.300 She could leak them to any publication, including the Megyn Kelly show today.

00:15:32.400 There's is there some sort of protective order already in place that would prevent that?

00:15:37.360 Because I heard her read from a couple allowed in court.

00:15:41.380 Why can't she read from them all?

00:15:43.200 Why?

00:15:43.560 Why can't we know?

00:15:44.360 Well, you remember the filing that blew this up with the cell data.

00:15:51.320 If you remember, it's like 450 pages long, but only like 12 pages are in the public record.

00:15:58.040 The rest of it is covered by this.

00:15:59.560 It's a standing protective order that shields confidential or sensitive information.

00:16:06.100 So I don't know.

00:16:07.020 I'm just predicting the judge could say that this is something that's covered by his protective order.

00:16:12.200 It's a standing order.

00:16:13.020 Or he could say, no, it's all fair game.

00:16:15.140 Ashley Merchant's not, you know, she's not anybody's, she's not Nathan Way's lawyer.

00:16:19.300 She's not bound by any privilege.

00:16:20.640 And, you know, she can do whatever she wants with it.

00:16:22.460 So he could do that.

00:16:23.700 And I personally think that one way or another, they're going to become part of the record in this case.

00:16:28.620 I do think the judge is going to consider them.

00:16:30.520 I hope they're made public in this hearing because the public has a right to see what's going on in this.

00:16:36.800 This is so important to our national, you know, collective interests and having a public discussion about this election.

00:16:44.780 Yeah.

00:16:44.960 So we kind of know what's going on.

00:16:47.140 Because here's the thing.

00:16:47.660 Think about this.

00:16:48.660 The judge is meeting with Terrence Bradley today.

00:16:51.180 Terrence Bradley.

00:16:52.340 OK, let's say he shows him all the texts.

00:16:54.680 Ashley Merchant shows all the texts.

00:16:56.160 And let's say the texts are much worse than we know.

00:16:58.460 You know, he's going on.

00:16:59.760 They're lying.

00:17:00.820 They've been having the affair since 2019.

00:17:03.200 I witnessed it.

00:17:04.180 He asked me to lie for him.

00:17:05.560 I'm going worst case scenario for Nathan Wade here.

00:17:08.000 It's imaginary.

00:17:08.800 We'll see.

00:17:09.220 Um, now the judge sees this, but the judge says, OK, you know what?

00:17:13.480 I can't consider it because it was covered by the attorney client privilege.

00:17:17.740 Um, so I'm not able to technically and officially consider these.

00:17:21.700 Then what do you do if you're Ashley Merchant or one of these defense lawyers, all of whom have seen it by now?

00:17:26.220 They leak it.

00:17:27.040 Someone's going to leak it.

00:17:27.960 If he rules against them, someone's going to leak it.

00:17:31.340 Trust me.

00:17:31.960 I've been in the news business long enough to know that's what's that's what will happen.

00:17:35.480 And then the judge looks terrible.

00:17:37.600 If the judge rules, you know, in favor of keeping Fannie and Nathan on this case, and then a report hits in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution or wherever, that there's extensive text messaging from Terrence Bradley saying they're liars.

00:17:54.620 The affair began long ago, right?

00:17:56.680 It's the judge can't put himself in that position.

00:18:00.640 Laws of reality should prevent it.

00:18:04.540 Yeah, that's all true.

00:18:05.320 And remember, he can rule in favor of Ashley Merchant and her client, Mr. Roman, based on the testimony of Ms. Yurdy, right?

00:18:13.860 We have people already who have come out on the record, not just, you know, televised.

00:18:20.420 This is worldwide attention we're getting here.

00:18:22.820 They publicly said this affair started much earlier.

00:18:26.280 2019 is what Yurdy said.

00:18:27.760 The cell data is, as you mentioned, not a smoking gun, but it's strong circumstantial evidence that there's a fraud being perpetrated on the court.

00:18:35.320 And honestly, I think it's up to the judge has to do something.

00:18:37.760 If I'm the judge, I want to preserve the dignity and the sanctity of the process.

00:18:42.840 I'm going to refer this out, if it were me, to some independent third party to investigate, were they telling the truth or were they not telling the truth?

00:18:52.720 I wouldn't necessarily leave it up to the litigation, the criminal litigation taking place in my courtroom.

00:18:57.540 Somebody or some entity needs to get to the bottom of this and prove one way or another, are they lying or are they not lying?

00:19:04.040 Because right now, there's a pretty strong circumstantial and even direct evidence that they were lying.

00:19:10.380 So, Phil, in that scenario, what you're saying is the judge could say, I don't need to have a mini trial about this alleged affair and the alleged lies they've probably told here.

00:19:20.340 I've seen enough to believe Yurdy, Robin Yurdy, and to disbelieve these two, and I'm bouncing them from this case.

00:19:28.200 But there's a matter of ethics as an officer of the court.

00:19:32.420 There's a matter of potential perjury if they lied under oath that I leave for someone else to look into.

00:19:38.060 Is that that's an option for him?

00:19:40.280 Yes, it is.

00:19:40.860 I think that, you know, judges like to split the baby, so to speak.

00:19:45.620 And if they have an easier way to rule on something than than taking the hard way, they're going to take the easy way.

00:19:53.400 And I'm just trying to put myself in his shoes.

00:19:55.840 I might not want to get into this whole can of worms.

00:19:59.060 I might want to take the simple way out and say, I disbelieve the testimony of Willis and Wade.

00:20:05.420 I accept the testimony of Yurdy.

00:20:07.520 The defense has made their threshold showing here and demonstrated that there's been some fraud being perpetrated on the court, which, by the way, I think is in addition to any conflict of interest.

00:20:19.360 This is enough for him to bounce Willis off this case and then everybody who works for her is off the case.

00:20:26.420 So, yes, he's got an easy way he can get out of this.

00:20:28.920 And it's going to be interesting to see what he does.

00:20:31.060 But if he wants to get out that way and not have to make the very difficult ruling, he certainly could do that.

00:20:36.440 Which they never want to make the very difficult ruling.

00:20:39.580 So we'll see whether he's any different.

00:20:41.300 OK, so that leads us.

00:20:42.320 You mentioned the cell phones.

00:20:43.220 That's also what we talked about on Friday.

00:20:45.420 And there now have been responses to the bombshell motion that Team Trump dropped on Friday with the cell phone records of prosecutor Nathan Wade.

00:20:55.880 I mean, an extraordinary thing.

00:20:57.320 One of the questions I asked you was, how do they get their hands on the prosecutor's cell phone records?

00:21:03.840 And you said they issued a subpoena and you're allowed to do that.

00:21:07.840 And sure enough, we now have Fannie Willis's response to the Trump motion saying a bunch of stuff.

00:21:14.480 She says it's too late.

00:21:16.600 You know, we already kind of closed the hearing.

00:21:18.240 You're too late.

00:21:18.740 And by the way, you can't submit opinion testimony or expert testimony like this without meeting a couple of foundational things, like qualifying the guy as an expert.

00:21:29.220 And you didn't do any of that.

00:21:31.340 And they also say this doesn't really prove what you think it proves.

00:21:36.220 And they say kind of what I was saying, which was you may have gotten these illegally.

00:21:41.580 You didn't.

00:21:42.020 How'd you get how'd you get these?

00:21:43.320 They seemed surprised that the defense had managed to get this, too.

00:21:46.980 And now we also have Trump's reply trying to address each of those points.

00:21:52.740 So I know you've read the briefs.

00:21:54.880 What do you make of where we are on these arguments?

00:21:57.000 Yeah.

00:21:57.480 Well, I think that the response that the state filed, I guess, later on Friday was a lot of it was ridiculous.

00:22:06.120 Setting aside the, you know, they tried to present Willis as having some kind of an alibi for the sleepover dates that were claimed in September and November.

00:22:15.200 And they attached screenshots or PDFs of her calendar for dates in like April and May that had nothing to do with the dates in question.

00:22:25.720 So putting that issue to the side, that one of the most ridiculous claims that they made was that the defense had no legal way of getting this.

00:22:32.980 Well, I said it, and I think you said it, others have said it, compulsory process means that lawyers get to subpoena witnesses and evidence in their favor.

00:22:42.940 And this is one of the biggest tools defense lawyers have to defend their clients and to get information.

00:22:49.780 The cops in the investigative stage, they need a warrant.

00:22:52.740 It's got to be supported by probable cause.

00:22:54.340 That's Fourth Amendment.

00:22:55.080 But we are now dealing with the Sixth Amendment.

00:22:57.280 Now that you've brought criminal charges, the defense gets to investigate the case and they get to present evidence that's favorable to them.

00:23:04.540 Trump, in his footnote on page two, he goes, his lawyer says the records were obtained by a valid subpoena issued to AT&T.

00:23:14.200 And they say that the state's claim in that response that it was somehow illegal is patently frivolous.

00:23:23.600 OK, they said that it's and I agree it was kind of a frivolous argument to make.

00:23:27.920 And it's not the kind of thing I would be expecting from professional prosecutors.

00:23:32.080 But the the Trump motion, the most the recent response points out that this is not opinion testimony.

00:23:39.840 This is direct evidence.

00:23:41.680 It's what we call impeachment evidence.

00:23:43.800 And in the legal sense, what that means is that you're basically attacking the credibility or the substance of what somebody has said in court.

00:23:51.500 In this case, Wade and Willis have said that, you know, these overnight visits didn't happen.

00:23:56.940 Well, this is this is meant to contradict their their testimony.

00:24:00.540 And this is something that is also allowed by the rules of evidence.

00:24:03.780 It's not that Charles Middlestad, the investigators coming to offer his opinion on things.

00:24:08.540 He's coming to present the data.

00:24:10.820 What is it that was collected?

00:24:11.980 And he can offer a summary of it.

00:24:13.480 So Trump is, I think, right on that point.

00:24:15.760 He's right that the information was obtained legally.

00:24:18.740 He's right on the point that it means that there's strong circumstantial evidence that these meetings, overnight meetings.

00:24:28.420 We talked on Friday, the kitchen cabinet or whatever that means.

00:24:32.500 Because, you know, this is not conclusive evidence that they were necessarily having sex or anything like that.

00:24:41.680 But what it is, it's circumstantial evidence that corroborates yourity and it contradicts their direct testimony in court.

00:24:48.840 So it goes to prove two things.

00:24:50.060 It goes to prove that they possibly might be lying to the judge in this case.

00:24:55.020 And it goes to show that the conflict of interest is real and that it began much earlier than Willis and Wade have said that it did.

00:25:03.500 So, honestly, if I had to be keeping score right now, I would say the Trump team is clearly winning, at least in the battle of the competing briefs here.

00:25:13.940 But the arguments that were raised by the state in objection to these records, I thought, was really not that great.

00:25:23.440 And honestly, I agree with the characterization that some of the claims are frivolous and just outright ridiculous.

00:25:28.880 It was thin, to put it mildly.

00:25:32.400 There were the two overnights, September 11th, 2021, which last I checked is earlier than 2022.

00:25:40.660 And then November 29th, 2021.

00:25:43.060 Those are the two nights submitted by Team Trump showing that his cell phone appeared to have left his address and arrived near or at her address.

00:25:53.500 The first one was from 10.45 p.m., leaving at 3.28 a.m.

00:25:58.180 And then at 4.20 a.m., he texted Fannie Willis.

00:26:01.820 I mean, my God, as you said, it's the got home safely text, seems clear.

00:26:05.280 And then November 29th of 21, he, again, left his area, his residence at 11.32 p.m., and then returned back home after visiting her area at 4.55 a.m.

00:26:21.620 On neither of those two nights is any contradictory record, testimony, location information provided by Fannie Willis in her opposition.

00:26:32.260 She submits some emails, all of which are redacted, heavily redacted, to show the cell phone records Team Trump submitted are wrong.

00:26:40.340 They're not reliable.

00:26:41.740 Since they're almost entirely redacted, I can't really tell for sure, but what they seem to be to me, Phil, tell me what you think, is a bunch of emails of Fannie Willis potentially saying,

00:26:52.360 here, I'm at work, come meet me, or meet me at the office at X time, and it appears to be a time at which Nathan Wade is shown at her home residence.

00:27:04.280 I'm taking a guess.

00:27:05.400 I don't understand how her emails on various dates having nothing to do with the two overnights can disprove Trump's case,

00:27:12.700 other than to perhaps, if they prove positively that she was at the office when she sent them,

00:27:20.020 and I do not believe they've submitted any such evidence.

00:27:22.700 They've submitted emails from her work account.

00:27:25.040 I can send that right now from Devil May Care Media.

00:27:27.940 It doesn't mean I'm at corporate headquarters, right?

00:27:30.400 Like, I'm not sure what she's trying to prove, but they don't address the two overnights at all.

00:27:35.060 They don't.

00:27:36.640 They simply attach those emails, and the dates on the emails, at least the ones that I saw and that I remember seeing,

00:27:42.520 were not on the dates in question.

00:27:44.400 One of them was in November, but it was a different day.

00:27:47.240 Then the calendars we talked about were from April and May.

00:27:50.300 I think there was something from August, but there was nothing that responded directly to the claim

00:27:56.260 that the cell data was strong circumstantial proof that he was at the Yertie condo in Haightville, Georgia,

00:28:02.780 overnight on those two nights in September and November.

00:28:08.100 Remember, Nathan Wade talked about in the hearing, well, you got the Porsche experience down there,

00:28:13.780 which is actually a great place, but it is down in Haightville near the Atlanta airport.

00:28:19.820 But nobody ever claimed that he was actually at the Porsche experience at midnight or 1 o'clock in the morning.

00:28:26.540 There was some suggestion in the states filing that this is a generalized data location,

00:28:32.520 which happens to put him also near bars and restaurants.

00:28:36.200 There was no allegation.

00:28:37.460 Nobody ever said he was actually at any bar or restaurant or that any bar or restaurant was even open at that time.

00:28:44.760 I was going to say, Phil, you're a local.

00:28:46.820 Are the bars open at 5 a.m., 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. in this area?

00:28:50.320 Well, I can't.

00:28:51.560 I'm too old to know.

00:28:53.400 That was maybe an earlier time in my life I would know.

00:28:56.040 Even in the Yankee states, the bars close at 2.

00:28:59.360 Most bars close at 2.

00:29:00.540 Down in the south, there's no way they're open at 5 a.m.

00:29:03.280 So here's the big thing about these text messages, though.

00:29:06.160 Do you know if you noticed that when the cell phone stopped moving, right,

00:29:10.920 and it was down there near the Yerty condo and apparently also near bars and restaurants and all this,

00:29:16.780 the texting and the calling between Wade and Willis stopped.

00:29:19.220 OK, and I think that's a big point that, you know, if if if if that if he's texting and calling other people at three,

00:29:28.140 four or five o'clock in the morning, that might might weigh in favor of the Willis and Wade team.

00:29:33.160 But the calling and the texting apparently stopped until he left and resumed his travels back to his home in Cobb County,

00:29:40.560 according to the motions that we've seen.

00:29:42.760 And it's something else to do.

00:29:44.060 OK, here's a here's a little color from the state's response to Team Trump.

00:29:48.240 They say these records do not prove in any way the content of the communications between Wade and Willis.

00:29:53.880 They don't prove that Wade was ever at any particular location or address.

00:29:58.460 I think Team Trump would concede that it's circumstantial that they believe he was at her house.

00:30:03.840 They do not prove that Wade and Willis were ever in the same place during any of the times listed.

00:30:11.200 And in fact, multiple relevant dates and times on on multiple relevant dates and times.

00:30:16.900 This evidence clearly demonstrates that Willis was elsewhere, including at work.

00:30:20.360 That's the blacked out emails.

00:30:22.420 OK, now Team Trump responds by saying, all right.

00:30:28.360 The prosecution will surely point out nobody knows what was happening in the House between midnight and 328 a.m.

00:30:34.040 on September 12th or between midnight and 5 a.m.

00:30:36.700 on November 30th.

00:30:38.040 Middlestat, that's their phone analyst, the guy who's doing the cell phone to our data, does not claim to know.

00:30:43.560 Neither does President Trump or any other defendant in this case.

00:30:47.160 Only two people know they are certainly the ones who should testify and say exactly what was happening on those occasions.

00:30:53.600 So nobody will complain about improper speculation or improper efforts to distort the truth or nefarious context with the media.

00:31:01.280 All we have heard from Wade and D.A. Willis so far has been that they did not have a romantic relationship until 2022.

00:31:08.500 Yet it is highly significant that the state's response did not even attempt to challenge this phone evidence regarding those two dates.

00:31:17.200 So they're they're raising the same thing we're raising, Phil, which is in all those attached emails and even the response and they didn't submit a new affidavit.

00:31:26.600 There's been zero attempt to explain why his cell phone would be what appears to be at her house or right, right, right near it for two overnights, contrary to what they represented in the court.

00:31:39.680 And you tell me whether there's any chance of this court reopening the evidentiary window for them to get into this more like because Fannie Willis is trying to say you're too late in submitting this motion altogether.

00:31:54.320 This this you didn't raise it.

00:31:56.620 You had the records when we had our big hearing and you didn't submit it.

00:32:00.840 So you can't do it now.

00:32:01.800 And the other side saying, well, we're trying to impeach lies you told at that on that last day.

00:32:05.860 So do you think there's a chance that this judge will exclude the cell phone evidence and if he allows it in, could we then have testimony from Fannie and Nathan on what happened those nights?

00:32:15.280 Yes, I think he's going to allow it in one way or another.

00:32:17.880 He might allow it in as is and consider it based on the the the summary, if you will, the affidavit that's been presented.

00:32:27.060 But typically affidavits are not, you know, admissible.

00:32:30.220 So my my sense is he's going to reopen the evidence.

00:32:34.660 He's going to allow some testimony fallback position as he's going to allow the data sort of to be presented through the briefs.

00:32:42.580 But I do think the judge is going to consider the cell phone data one way or the other.

00:32:49.240 And so I doubt, Megan, that he's going to have Fannie Willis, you know, testifying again.

00:32:55.260 I don't think he's going to quite go that far.

00:32:57.360 But I do think there's a good chance, at least, that he might allow Middlestad to testify, be cross-examined by the state's attorneys and city where it goes from there.

00:33:05.980 But to the point that you were just making, this is not, I think, difficult to to basically counter what the state's filing here.

00:33:15.960 The Trump response yesterday is I would like to think that you and I are really, really smart lawyers and that we are the ones.

00:33:23.520 But this is not it doesn't take a smart lawyer.

00:33:25.440 Anybody can figure this out.

00:33:26.900 They didn't even contradict the allegations on those two dates that these two were in the same place.

00:33:33.740 They simply raised the ridiculous, in my view, idea that this is some kind of unreliable evidence.

00:33:40.280 This is the kind of evidence, Megan, that prosecutors rely on to arrest people, to charge them and to convict them of serious crimes.

00:33:48.620 Yeah, she does it.

00:33:49.380 This is this is common use these days in in criminal prosecutions to for them to come out and say that this is unreliable.

00:33:58.160 It doesn't prove anything.

00:33:59.200 It doesn't mean they were actually in the same residence.

00:34:01.980 Every person who's charged with a crime that in Fulton County right now, where they're trying to use cell location data against them,

00:34:08.840 needs to quote Fonnie Willis's response to that when they get to court to try to have their case thrown out,

00:34:14.520 because it's disingenuous at best for prosecutors who use this all the time to say that it's not reliable and that it doesn't mean anything.

00:34:23.380 This is not you know, it's not rocket science to pick apart the state's response from Friday,

00:34:29.740 which I think was just really, really far fetched.

00:34:33.700 And it was was quite something to behold, to be honest with you.

00:34:36.320 It's not the kind of thing that I would expect to have come out from a major city professional prosecutor's kind of office in America.

00:34:44.420 But this is where we are.

00:34:46.680 Same.

00:34:47.000 I couldn't help shake the feeling, Phil, when I was reading it, that they had had a first year associate draft this brief.

00:34:53.860 And in the interest of time, just didn't review it.

00:34:56.760 It was really it was pretty bargain basement lawyering in that brief.

00:35:01.760 I would like to imagine they could do better because they're in charge of putting really bad guys in jail,

00:35:06.500 not in this particular case, but in other cases.

00:35:08.760 So you want top notch lawyers working at the D.A.'s office.

00:35:11.880 I'm not sure they have it down in Fulton County.

00:35:15.020 OK, more to follow as we get more information about what happens between the judge and Terrence Bradley today

00:35:20.740 and all the other developments.

00:35:22.460 They seem to come by the day down there.

00:35:24.440 Phil, thank you.

00:35:25.980 Always happy to be here.

00:35:26.960 Talk to you soon.

00:35:28.200 All right, Phil Holloway, everybody.

00:35:29.300 Up next, the E.J.'s and plenty of news to dissect with them.

00:35:36.880 Joining us now to break down the biggest political and cultural headlines today, the E.J.'s.

00:35:42.060 Emily Jashinsky is culture editor at The Federalist and host of The Federalist Radio Hour

00:35:46.500 and Eliana Johnson, editor in chief at The Washington Free Beacon

00:35:50.500 and co-host of the Ink Stained Wretches podcast.

00:35:54.820 Ladies, welcome back.

00:35:55.840 Hey, Megan.

00:35:56.920 Great to see you.

00:35:57.520 All right, so just because we just left off on it, can you believe what's happening in the Fannie

00:36:00.800 Willis case down in Georgia?

00:36:02.000 I mean, can you believe that case may be imploding because of an affair between the top two prosecutors

00:36:08.120 who may or may not have lied under oath to a judge, potentially in more than one setting

00:36:14.060 in the case of Nathan Wade, and that Trump could potentially be saved by all of this nonsense

00:36:19.920 and shenanigans that have been going on?

00:36:22.420 Emily, I'll start with you on that because you have the most bemused look on your face.

00:36:25.940 No, I really, I honest to goodness cannot believe it.

00:36:29.560 We were talking to the producer before going on air, and it was like, this is real Housewives

00:36:33.880 level drama.

00:36:35.060 The audacity that has been on display down in Fulton County is incredible.

00:36:40.400 And what is even less believable is that Fannie Willis, as you've discussed, is like on tape

00:36:45.400 talking about how she was going to crack down on corruption and nobody would be sleeping with

00:36:49.220 other people in the DA's office is like completely insane.

00:36:53.840 And on top of that, the left has been going after Trump on the basis of like very real character

00:36:59.880 accusations for a long time.

00:37:02.340 You know, this guy, he was bragging in the tabloids about his affairs, and he's just not

00:37:08.780 fit for office.

00:37:09.740 And then this woman that they championed in the press, I mean, really went out of their

00:37:13.820 way to cast as a hero, to Trump's villain, is winding up in exactly the same situation

00:37:20.560 after sort of months of sanctimonious and smug coverage of her effort to take down Trump.

00:37:25.780 Which is basically having an affair and lying about it.

00:37:28.340 And then the lie is being told to protect yourself politically.

00:37:31.440 That's what Trump is accused of doing in the Stormy Daniels case.

00:37:34.680 That's what she's accused of doing here.

00:37:36.320 By the way, I mean, you tell me, what reason would a man have to go over to a woman's house

00:37:42.140 from 12 a.m. and then leave at 5 a.m.

00:37:46.440 if the affair could otherwise be open and notorious?

00:37:50.340 He was still married.

00:37:52.240 That's like, I realized that, you know, ultimately he filed for divorce and he testified that the

00:37:57.920 marriage was kind of emotionally over before whatever he was still married.

00:38:02.440 And to me, it's pretty obvious that this was during 2021 before he had filed for divorce

00:38:09.420 in at least one of the cases.

00:38:11.440 And it looks like a man sneaking back into his house.

00:38:15.060 Maybe the wife was in another room.

00:38:16.480 I don't know.

00:38:17.160 But there's no other reason that I can think of for a man to be sneaking out of the alleged

00:38:21.920 affair partner's house at three in the morning or five in the morning.

00:38:25.040 Any thoughts on that, Eliana?

00:38:26.900 A couple of thoughts on the whole thing.

00:38:28.360 The first is all of this has been absolutely gripping to follow.

00:38:32.900 Watching Fannie Willis' testimony was totally gripping.

00:38:36.580 Watching Wade's testimony was totally gripping.

00:38:39.200 So just as a news consumer, it's been so interesting.

00:38:42.340 But beyond that, there really is something to the fact that Donald Trump has extraordinary

00:38:48.940 luck.

00:38:49.900 And I think part of his political ability is the fact that the people who pursue him so

00:38:56.620 doggedly tend to take on his characteristics.

00:39:00.180 And you mentioned that before.

00:39:02.020 You know, he's being accused of having an affair, paying people off, lying about it,

00:39:06.240 and so on.

00:39:07.000 And we're seeing now that his pursuers are engaged in the same behavior, although there

00:39:11.160 are more unethical strands in Fannie Willis and Nathan Wade.

00:39:14.960 But what really struck me in watching Willis' testimony was that this is just not she doesn't

00:39:23.220 not come across as as a super competent person.

00:39:26.580 She's I don't think that formidable of an opponent.

00:39:30.240 And and Trump is lucky in this case in his in his opponent.

00:39:35.720 Yeah, you're I completely agree.

00:39:37.940 And I also think there's some risk if you hire a broke D.A.

00:39:42.420 There's risk.

00:39:43.200 They hired a broke D.A. down there in Fulton County.

00:39:46.640 By her own testimony, she had sunk fifty thousand dollars of her own money and she

00:39:51.300 didn't have it to give.

00:39:52.520 She she borrowed it out of her.

00:39:54.060 It was her.

00:39:54.680 Was it her 401k to fund a previous campaign that failed where she was trying to run for

00:40:00.360 judge.

00:40:01.220 And right after that, she ran for D.A.

00:40:03.760 And she got it.

00:40:04.900 And this is part of Trump's story in this case, that she didn't have any money, that she

00:40:09.360 was sleeping with Nathan Wade and that she brought him on to pay him much more than the other

00:40:16.200 two prosecutors she brought on.

00:40:17.720 And then they went all over the world together on these lavish vacations, which she swears she

00:40:22.720 paid half for in cash, all cash that she had sitting in big piles in her apartment, notwithstanding

00:40:29.800 the five thousand dollar lien that was against her for not for unpaid bills.

00:40:34.920 I mean, Emily, it's farcical.

00:40:38.420 It's obvious to anybody with fresh eyes that this is a lie by somebody who's in a panic

00:40:44.580 now after having made some very bad choices.

00:40:47.180 Yeah, they're they're not doing a particularly good job of covering up for the lie either.

00:40:52.380 And I mean, at one point there was testimony that not under having suspicions about these

00:40:56.880 stacks of cash that just must have had to have been sitting around Fannie Willis's house

00:41:00.360 in order to pay these obscene bills all in cash to split it.

00:41:05.780 That's just a difference between, you know, people in the white community and people in

00:41:09.240 the black community.

00:41:09.860 I mean, these are things that are actually being testified to in court.

00:41:13.460 Yes.

00:41:13.700 So it's just it's a circus.

00:41:15.900 It's a complete circus.

00:41:17.080 And it sounds like when you didn't do your book report in fifth grade and you said, I

00:41:22.640 absolutely turned that in.

00:41:24.820 I know I put it on your desk to the teacher.

00:41:26.840 And then you start building these like layers of falsehoods around it.

00:41:30.560 And you're stretching and just engage in these mental gymnastics to stand by your story to

00:41:35.140 the point where even you start to believe that you did put that book report on your teacher's

00:41:38.840 desk.

00:41:39.460 That's what Nathan Wade and Fannie Willis sound like in court.

00:41:42.800 It's an embarrassment.

00:41:43.700 And it's also, again, to Eliana's point, tend to take on the characteristics like Trump's

00:41:48.020 opponents tend to take on his characteristics.

00:41:50.040 Well, it's that.

00:41:50.940 And I think it's also that it proves his point about rampant corruption in the political

00:41:56.800 system in America.

00:41:58.220 And Willis is really getting a lot of she's gotten some tough media coverage, but she's

00:42:02.220 also gotten a disproportionate level.

00:42:04.140 I think of good faith from the media.

00:42:06.640 She had a lot of positive coverage going into all of this.

00:42:09.040 And so it just they continue to prove his point about the political system, too.

00:42:13.940 They needed somebody like my big sister, God rest her, who back when I was a kid in high

00:42:20.700 school and getting in all sorts of trouble with my best friend, Kelly McGinnis, it was

00:42:24.860 Megan Kelly and Kelly McGinnis.

00:42:26.360 We were so fun and a hot mess together.

00:42:28.840 And we had a party at my parents' house when they weren't there.

00:42:33.820 There may or may not have been a couple of Bartles and James wine coolers.

00:42:38.080 We took pictures.

00:42:39.920 We had them developed.

00:42:41.340 This is back in the day for our young listeners when you actually did that at Kodak.

00:42:45.560 And then we left the pictures on the kitchen counter and went to visit my sister at college

00:42:51.960 with all the evidence of our bad doings on the kitchen counter for my parents' return.

00:42:57.720 Well, they found the pictures.

00:43:00.260 They called my sister, you know, who we were visiting at college.

00:43:03.760 And I said to my sister, what did mom say?

00:43:05.860 What'd she say?

00:43:06.520 And she said, she said, you have no life left.

00:43:10.100 Whereupon Kelly and I went into a panic because our social life was about to be ruined.

00:43:13.720 And Kelly said, do you think we could tell them that we were just posing for some funny

00:43:19.000 pictures with the Bartle and who is just a funny pictures?

00:43:22.780 And I was like, maybe we.

00:43:24.380 And my sister, of course, looked at us and said, you two are a couple of dumbasses.

00:43:29.480 They will never believe that nonsense.

00:43:31.720 They needed someone like Suzanne Kelly to say, no one's going to believe your cash lie

00:43:38.880 or that you weren't having an affair when there's thousands of texts and phone calls.

00:43:43.580 When there are overnight visits, everything gets found out.

00:43:47.320 You just can't lie.

00:43:49.000 Anymore in 2024 America.

00:43:51.060 It'll be found out, Eliana.

00:43:52.580 Well, I think the cell phone, the cell phone pings and the cell phone records really

00:43:58.240 are bearing that out.

00:44:01.880 You can't be somewhere without people being able to find out the proximity of where you

00:44:07.120 were.

00:44:07.400 You can't text somebody without being able to pull the records.

00:44:09.900 We just live in too online a society now to be able to hide the way you once might have

00:44:16.340 been able to.

00:44:17.040 And it's dangerous to try to lie your way out of something for exactly that reason.

00:44:22.160 But you can't.

00:44:22.680 I mean, Joy Reid is still employed by NBC News and lied in the exact same way with the same

00:44:29.040 level.

00:44:29.160 We all know the truth, Emily.

00:44:30.820 We all know the truth.

00:44:32.020 We do.

00:44:32.420 But she kept your job and continues to be treated as a serious journalist in elite circles.

00:44:39.180 So, I mean, you can't.

00:44:41.080 But you also can in certain circumstances if you if you happen to fit into the right side

00:44:47.560 of any given issue.

00:44:48.400 Donna Brazile got hired by Fox and then she's she back at CNN now after cheating where MSNBC

00:44:59.140 secret ABC because Steve Krakash tell me.

00:45:02.680 Yeah, ABC.

00:45:03.620 So she got hired by Fox and ABC after she was caught, denied and ultimately was forced to

00:45:10.520 admit cheating on a presidential debate, taking the questions she had because of her access

00:45:14.920 to CNN and giving them to Hillary Clinton.

00:45:17.580 I mean, Emily, is there a better?

00:45:20.060 So you've got her.

00:45:21.300 You got Fannie.

00:45:22.080 You got Joy.

00:45:23.280 Like, there's just a different set of rules here.

00:45:25.660 They did exactly what you thought about doing, Megan.

00:45:28.540 First, Donna Brazile was like, I could have been Russia.

00:45:31.200 And Joy Reid was like, I was hacked.

00:45:34.300 They really tried.

00:45:36.340 She was like, I don't know where this came from.

00:45:38.220 Like, this must have been a hacker who went into my website all the way back then, made

00:45:43.120 changes that nobody saw.

00:45:44.640 I mean, again, this is coming from a journalist, somebody whose priority is supposed to be truth.

00:45:48.400 And Donna Brazile genuinely went and said, could have been could have been Russia.

00:45:52.560 We don't know.

00:45:53.400 There could have been tampering and had other people saying the same thing.

00:45:56.620 It was incredible.

00:45:57.440 And yeah, they got away with it.

00:45:58.900 And then when I confronted Donna Brazile right before that presidential debate at the time,

00:46:02.580 she said, you're persecuting me.

00:46:05.520 As a Christian woman, I understand persecution, but I will not sit here and be persecuted.

00:46:10.460 So we'll see.

00:46:11.700 I don't think Fannie Willis, one of my joys in watching this case, and I know a lot of people

00:46:16.340 believe the judge is going to keep them on the case and that that could happen.

00:46:19.920 I have to tell you, so far, I trust this judge.

00:46:23.600 I do.

00:46:24.320 He is.

00:46:25.060 He was a member of the Federalist Society when he was in law school.

00:46:28.260 He is, I think, a registered Republican.

00:46:30.540 He is not some far left guy.

00:46:33.080 Now, he did work for a time for Fannie Willis, and he made a small donation to her campaign,

00:46:38.060 but so did everyone.

00:46:39.140 I think even Phil Holloway said he did.

00:46:40.660 Like, it's one of those things where you can see she's about to win.

00:46:43.060 Everybody's like, oh, here's $50 from me.

00:46:45.300 So you're on, you know, you have a good relation.

00:46:46.740 That happens all the time.

00:46:47.900 Trump testified to that when he was running for office the first time.

00:46:52.480 But so far, I trust the judge.

00:46:54.680 But one of the things I'm loving about watching the case is liars have a difficult time when

00:47:00.760 they're in the legal system and they're under oath and there are real consequences to lying

00:47:05.540 and there are real tools to prove a lie.

00:47:08.700 There's something very satisfying about it, Eliana.

00:47:11.240 You know, just to watch, like, the evidence come out, like, we found your phone records.

00:47:16.520 We have your friend under oath.

00:47:18.820 Only one of you has a major motive to, you know, there's, I don't know.

00:47:22.580 Are you having the feeling?

00:47:24.600 Watching her wriggle, even answering questions about why she had stacks of cash in her house

00:47:30.660 and then, oh, but you didn't use them to pay off your $4,600 tax lien.

00:47:36.600 You used them to fly to Barbados or wherever, you know, wherever she was going.

00:47:41.820 You went to Napa.

00:47:43.000 You paid cash for that.

00:47:44.500 She didn't pay off your tax lien.

00:47:45.980 I mean, there is a real genuine pleasure in watching them wriggle.

00:47:52.040 And the response to that was, oh, now you're going to tell me how to pay my bills, right?

00:47:57.160 Whereas a truth teller would have said, I know it wasn't the most responsible thing,

00:48:02.340 but, you know, that's what I did.

00:48:04.080 A lot of people can relate.

00:48:05.020 That's what a truth teller sounds like.

00:48:06.780 When you attack the question or the questioner, odds are you're lying.

00:48:12.140 Those are the odds.

00:48:13.020 I'm telling you, go back to Phil Houston, the human lie detector.

00:48:15.660 He will walk you through it, buy his books, buy the lie.

00:48:18.040 All right.

00:48:18.200 The EJs stay with us for the rest of the show.

00:48:20.560 There's a lot more to get to.

00:48:21.320 We haven't even touched on South Carolina.

00:48:22.800 The results there, both sides finding some good news.

00:48:25.560 And by that, I mean, Trump's team and Nikki Haley, who's saying she's staying in it.

00:48:31.000 And yet a major donor just abandoned her.

00:48:34.120 Stay tuned for that update.

00:48:35.580 And don't forget to follow us at youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.

00:48:39.980 If you want to get the video of the show, we'd love to see you over there.

00:48:43.100 Stand by.

00:48:46.900 Okay.

00:48:47.340 Before we get to South Carolina, this just breaking, Trump has filed his notice of appeal.

00:48:50.980 Not the actual appellate brief, but his notice of appeal in the $355 million judgment against him in that Judge Angaran civil corporate fraud case brought against the Trump organization.

00:49:03.660 That's the smiling judge who was loving his moment in the spotlight.

00:49:07.300 And this case is getting very weird.

00:49:11.500 Even weirder than it was because as soon as they entered the $355 million, they slapped on interest, pre-judgment interest, and it went up to like $450 million that Trump owes this court.

00:49:27.460 Well, you know, the state, the state of New York, and Letitia James, the attorney general of New York state, who ran for office on a promise to get Trump.

00:49:37.580 I mean, we've played the butted soundbites of her saying it over and over and over again, has been tweeting out on X the number that he owes each day.

00:49:49.460 Like, we had one the other day, 460, no, it's hard to get my arms around the number.

00:49:57.860 These are millions, 464,576,230.62.

00:50:05.460 Let's just round it and call it 465 million.

00:50:08.280 And she tweets out, plus 114,000, because each day, in addition to the 100 million, 110 million he had to pay in pre-judgment interest, it continues to accrue interest on it that he owes for every day until he pays it or gets it reversed by an appellate court.

00:50:27.060 And this woman, who actually, I guess, wants us to believe she's a nonpartisan law enforcement official, she is the top law enforcement official in New York state, every day, not only tweets out plus 114,000, she tweets it on her attorney general account, and then she retweets herself on her personal account.

00:50:48.800 She's so in love with her tweets, she's really proud of herself that she's come up with this clever way to show us what the running tally is.

00:50:55.660 She's retweeting it everywhere.

00:50:57.360 She's doing it every day.

00:50:58.820 And I will say, you have guys like Tom Elliott, who I follow on X, responding as follows.

00:51:04.940 You're doing well turning Trump critics like me into Trump defenders.

00:51:08.700 Like, this feels pretty ghoulish as he's trying to appeal this outrageous judgment against him that even his critics can see is made up.

00:51:21.220 No one was hurt.

00:51:22.680 And look at her swagger in celebrating it.

00:51:27.400 Emily, your reaction?

00:51:29.260 Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty gross, especially because that money is set to go basically into the New York Treasury.

00:51:34.200 It's not going to victims.

00:51:35.920 So because, of course, there were no victims.

00:51:38.020 In fact, the people who were supposed to be victims testified that they were really glad to have Donald Trump as a client during this trial.

00:51:44.280 So it would be one thing if she was celebrating the money going to people who really, truly deserved it.

00:51:51.020 But in fact, what she's celebrating is this hyper partisan takedown of a main presidential candidate in a way that even the Associated Press, their excellent analysis of how this law has been prosecuted, that Trump is accused of having was found to have broken.

00:52:07.240 And how it has been applied in the past and found, you know, the Associated Press, no friend of Donald Trump found that this was an unprecedented application of it.

00:52:15.040 So this is what's being celebrated by Letitia James.

00:52:18.640 It's not especially surprising on someone who basically ran on a Get Trump platform, but it is really gross because I think to a lot of people, it just puts the sinking feeling in their stomach about our lurch towards banana republic status.

00:52:34.040 And, you know, it's not just Letitia James.

00:52:36.040 Obviously, I think Judge Chutkin has problems.

00:52:38.200 Judge Engeron has problems in making the whole effort to take down Donald Trump look partisan and look like it'd be more fit for a trial in a banana republic.

00:52:47.640 She's not doing, you know, the country any favors by by celebrating this.

00:52:52.140 Again, it's not money that's going to victims because she chose to prosecute a case where they're actually, by their own admission, were no victims.

00:52:59.660 And it's just ghoulish is a great word for it, Megan.

00:53:02.960 Prosecutors are supposed to be committed to justice, Eliana.

00:53:06.800 That's not getting a conviction, not sticking it to the man, certainly not sticking it to a political opponent, but to justice.

00:53:15.340 And they're certainly not supposed to be licking their lips as the hundred and fourteen thousand gets added to the judgment every day with just a little bit of Trump blood dripping from the mouth.

00:53:27.240 I mean, that's what she's trying to show us here.

00:53:30.980 Meanwhile, look what he's facing.

00:53:32.780 This is just a couple of these are a couple of points via CNBC of the position he's in right now.

00:53:37.300 He files this notice of appeal, so he will be appealing, which we knew he's appealing the money judgment and also the substance of the decision saying the judge committed errors of law and or fact abused its discretion and or acted in excess of its jurisdiction.

00:53:53.220 The notice does not indicate that Trump has secured the bond needed to appeal this massive judgment.

00:54:03.700 And that normally if you get a big judgment like this against you, you do have to show the court I have a bond that will allow me to pay it.

00:54:09.860 So I'm not appealing just to delay paying the money I owe you.

00:54:15.860 And that's why the courts in all cases would require a defendant like this in a case like this to post a bond showing I've got the money, but I have legal rights to play out.

00:54:26.280 He has not secured the appeal appellate bond from the sound of it yet, or at least he didn't notice that.

00:54:32.320 Um, appeal bonds typically up to 120% of the judgment plus the current interest at that rate reports the NBC Trump's original ruling with interest would indicate he will need to secure a bond worth more than 540 million.

00:54:49.820 I'm like, I actually just like had to swallow just saying that number by like 540 million.

00:54:55.960 I think he testified at trial.

00:54:58.180 He's got about 400 million cash available to him.

00:55:02.320 He's got assets.

00:55:03.520 He's got Trump tower.

00:55:04.520 He's got other buildings, but I mean, this is, this is massive.

00:55:08.960 This truly is a bet your business situation for Donald Trump.

00:55:12.220 And it's, this is before we've had one criminal trial to even begin.

00:55:18.320 Eliana.

00:55:20.780 You know, Megan, you said that if you're Tish James, you, um, you wouldn't want people to think that you're a partisan hack just going after, um, Donald Trump.

00:55:31.200 Um, but I think what we see in, in Tish James and Alvin Bragg is that their, um, incentives are, are sort of different.

00:55:38.100 They're responding to, um, the folks that elected them in New York state.

00:55:42.860 And it seems that they want precisely the opposite.

00:55:46.560 They want to be seen as, um, attack dogs against Donald Trump, pulling any, um, new lever, however novel, um, in the legal system to get Donald Trump.

00:55:58.260 Um, they know, uh, their mission has been clearly identified and, um, while it's bad for the country, it's, they clearly think it's good for their political careers.

00:56:11.060 And it's true. Um, this was an unprecedented application of the law.

00:56:16.340 You are seeing, um, Trump critics turn Trump defenders because, um, this sets a precedent that's dangerous for companies in New York.

00:56:25.020 There are plenty of businessmen in New York who oppose Donald Trump, who are now fearful of, um, the legal repercussions of a political enemy coming after them, uh, using this law.

00:56:34.300 There may not have been any victims, but they're on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars, um, for, uh, inflating a value here.

00:56:40.980 Somebody argues they inflated a value here, inflated a value there.

00:56:43.580 Um, it's dangerous and bad for the country, but they are demonstrating that the legal system can be used to go after, uh, a political enemy like this.

00:56:53.200 And I think Trump is rightfully appealing this, uh, novel verdict.

00:56:56.940 The Trump campaign legally is not allowed to use campaign money to fund this verdict.

00:57:05.640 Um, or I think his legal fees either.

00:57:08.420 Um, I think the super PAC can pay the legal fees.

00:57:10.400 I got to go back and look at this to be honest with you, but I know they can't use it to pay this verdict.

00:57:14.620 Um, private donors could pay it for him.

00:57:18.340 Um, there was a GoFundMe begun by our friend, Eliana Cardone, uh, Elena, I should say, I'm looking at you, Eliana, Elena Cardone, wife of Grant Cardone.

00:57:28.220 And, um, it's got like a, I don't know, 1.4 million.

00:57:31.700 I mean, these good people have donated their own money to try to help the guy.

00:57:36.640 It's sweet, but it's, it's a drop in the bucket.

00:57:39.680 I mean, you know, it's going to be 550 million, you know, that's just, I just don't know.

00:57:47.640 I don't know what he's going to do.

00:57:49.140 I mean, Trump has the ability to pull a rabbit out of a hat like no one else, but this one, it disturbs me.

00:57:54.900 And I'm sure it's really disturbing them.

00:57:56.340 This is again, before he's got one real dollar in legal fees of actual trials in the criminal lane.

00:58:03.000 Okay.

00:58:03.400 Notwithstanding all that, I would just add to that, Megan.

00:58:05.960 Um, when he's raising money for his campaign, he can't quite say it out loud, but what he's essentially saying is please fund my legal defense because that's what really where the, his big campaign dollars through the super PAC are going to the RNC has been paying his legal bills.

00:58:22.600 Um, but reporting this weekend suggested that there's a movement afoot in the RNC to say, we don't want to pay his legal bills anymore.

00:58:29.280 We don't want the money to go there.

00:58:30.740 And so it's possible he could have trouble on this horizon going forward.

00:58:35.140 I don't know, um, you know, Republican donors are certainly going to want him to win the election.

00:58:40.140 So they may keep the money flowing, but it's not quite as compelling a pitch as, Hey, we want to put $20 million behind this ad buy to attack Joe Biden.

00:58:48.480 It's just, um, it's, it's not as easy as sell for them.

00:58:52.660 Which is why he's fomenting a takeover.

00:58:54.180 And that's why, right.

00:58:56.000 So he, you know, he's got his folks going into the RNC to take it over and he's lagging Joe Biden in fundraising hugely, hugely right now.

00:59:04.620 And I think this is a major reason why.

00:59:06.320 I mean, he was, he was lagging Hillary Clinton too, and he beat her.

00:59:10.800 So, you know, all hope is not lost for Republicans who want Donald Trump, but you, you'd rather have the other situation where you didn't have four criminal trials and this huge silver verdict and the donations could be used for ads and rallies and get out the vote efforts.

00:59:24.600 Right. The money is not dispositive, um, at all, but, um, but you'd rather have the money on your side than not.

00:59:33.940 I hate when Elia uses words like dispositive.

00:59:37.660 It's just super smart lady.

00:59:39.980 Okay. But did not start a GoFundMe for Donald Trump.

00:59:43.380 That was somebody else.

00:59:44.380 Yeah.

00:59:46.280 Okay. Um, Donald Trump electorally is having very good news, though.

00:59:52.480 So it depends on who you ask. I'm actually genuinely interested in it, to hear your take on this.

00:59:56.240 So he won South Carolina as expected, but he won it by 20 points.

01:00:01.660 Call it 60, 40. He got 59.8. Haley got 39.5.

01:00:06.620 Um, Donald Trump came out and said, I've never seen the Republican party. So unified.

01:00:11.360 That's of course, you know, that's an intentional word. Cause he wants to forget.

01:00:15.180 It's basically like Haley, you're failing. You did, you know, we unified despite you, but it's not totally unified, right?

01:00:22.120 You still got 40% of South Carolinians, Republicans, that is voting for someone other than Trump.

01:00:30.520 So I can see why the non-Trump Republicans are feeling okay.

01:00:35.940 They're feeling kind of good about that, even though they lost, even though Haley lost and changed her messaging from,

01:00:42.480 I'm staying in it to the end to, I'm definitely staying in it through like super Tuesday.

01:00:46.680 I think she said, which is a little different.

01:00:49.460 The Koch brothers pulled their money. That's bad for her. That was a big, deep pocket that was making it possible for her to stay in this race.

01:00:58.680 And really, as you know, Emily, they don't ever get out because they want to get out.

01:01:03.420 They get out because they run out of money and without the Koch money and, you know,

01:01:08.800 they won't be the only donors to start pulling.

01:01:10.600 She really isn't going to have much of a runway left.

01:01:13.500 But what does it tell us, do you think, that still at this late stage in a state in which roughly 8 in 10 voters in this GOP primary describe themselves as conservatives,

01:01:25.320 Trump only got 60%?

01:01:28.560 Yeah, I do think that's interesting.

01:01:30.160 Another thing I think is interesting is the spending discrepancies.

01:01:32.840 And this is partially because Trump, frankly, doesn't have a lot of money right now, but she is wildly outspending him.

01:01:39.280 Actually, Nikki Haley in Iowa spent more than Trump and DeSantis.

01:01:42.640 She spent way more than anyone else in New Hampshire.

01:01:45.360 And now to come at 40% in second place, she dramatically outspent Donald Trump, especially since New Hampshire,

01:01:51.900 where she sort of put this benchmark that I have to do better here.

01:01:54.600 So I think it's interesting that in her home state with a huge spending example or huge spending advantage, she came at 40%.

01:02:02.520 But she also then came out on stage and said 40% is not a tiny number.

01:02:08.200 And there is truth to that, that where a lot of money pours in, you're still getting some 40% of people being like, eh.

01:02:14.680 In her most powerful argument is that when you look at some national polls, people are not happy about the Trump-Biden matchup.

01:02:22.080 But primary voters, on the other hand, are continuing to push on us the Trump-Biden matchup because primary voters tend to be more hyper-partisan than a lot of the sort of independents

01:02:33.160 and people who are not super politically active but are interested in who the president is, maybe not enough to vote.

01:02:39.460 Maybe they don't want to vote because they don't like either of their options.

01:02:42.160 It's a huge lane for RFK Jr., obviously.

01:02:45.220 And we're going to see more of that in the months to come.

01:02:47.400 I think that's probably the least discussed major story of this election cycle right now.

01:02:51.580 And that's a big Nikki Haley argument.

01:02:53.240 She made that argument over and over, put a lot of money behind it.

01:02:55.600 She's using the grumpy old men line a lot now that Americans don't want this.

01:03:00.900 And she's right.

01:03:01.760 The problem really is, though, in the Republican primary nationally, she's actually pulling at 17%.

01:03:07.260 Trump has huge numbers in the RealClearPolitics average nationally.

01:03:11.620 So she can pour a lot of money into a state.

01:03:13.260 Yeah, South Carolina is her home state, right?

01:03:14.500 Right, right.

01:03:15.080 So she hasn't been getting a bigger number there.

01:03:17.360 Right.

01:03:17.600 And she did really well in New Hampshire.

01:03:19.640 If you look at the numbers, sort of behind the numbers, Eliana, Trump had more than 80% of the voters who described themselves as very conservative.

01:03:28.900 He had a majority, but a smaller one, of those who called themselves somewhat conservative.

01:03:36.100 Haley went over the small contingent of moderates.

01:03:39.840 This is per CNN.

01:03:41.000 Voters who are college grads, normally you expect Haley to run away with those.

01:03:46.460 That's how it's been so far.

01:03:47.800 They were divided.

01:03:48.920 They were closely divided between Trump and Haley.

01:03:51.140 But three quarters of those without a college degree, and that's the majority of the South Carolina electorate, GOP electorate, supported Trump.

01:03:58.760 If you look nationwide, we just saw the latest data on college grads.

01:04:04.020 It was like high 30s, like 37, 35% are college grads, and the rest aren't.

01:04:11.440 So you'd rather have the non-college grads on your side than the college grads on your side.

01:04:16.060 That bodes well for Republicans coming in the general electorate either way, because the Democrats have become the party of the so-called elites and the college grads and the postgraduate degrees and all that.

01:04:25.800 But it is just sort of interesting to hear, you know, how it's split.

01:04:30.800 Only 4 in 10 in South Carolina described themselves as affiliated with the MAGA movement.

01:04:36.780 4 in 10.

01:04:37.540 45% said yes.

01:04:39.420 49% in South Carolina said no.

01:04:43.840 And last but not least, about 36% of South Carolina GOP primary voters said they would consider Trump unfit if he were convicted of a crime.

01:04:55.000 So what's your takeaway from all those results?

01:04:59.200 They do mirror more or less what we've been seeing in the rest of the country, which is that Trump does extremely well with those who define themselves as very conservative.

01:05:09.000 And there's a reason in presidential primaries that people have coined the term pivoting to the general, where you lock down the conservative or the left-wing base, and then you sort of moderate when you get into the general election to try to win over moderates.

01:05:24.280 Haley has kind of taken the opposite tack, where she's locked down the moderates, but she's not really pivoted to try to get these conservative voters that she's unable to get.

01:05:34.760 So Trump, he does really well with the very conservative voters, the non-college-educated, and he struggles more with the college-educated and moderate voters.

01:05:46.460 That's fine so far as the primary goes.

01:05:49.000 He's got no problem.

01:05:50.200 He'll have no problem getting through this primary.

01:05:54.520 He's a clear choice of Republican voters.

01:05:56.400 But it is going to matter in the general election, where he doesn't need to win these people, but he needs to lose them by less than Republicans have been losing them in the past three election cycles, where they've lost them by wide margins.

01:06:08.960 And he's got to close that gap and make sure that his rhetoric isn't alienating college grads more than it needs to, particularly female college graduates.

01:06:19.000 There's a real gender divide there.

01:06:20.700 And the other thing I would say is, you know, people have been asking, why is Nikki Haley in this?

01:06:25.060 Why does she keep running?

01:06:26.420 She really wants to drive home the point that 40 percent of the party is not with Donald Trump, 30 percent in some states, 40 percent in other states, and that despite what he says, that he's united the party, he actually has not.

01:06:39.880 And the Republican Party very much remains a party divided, which you can see it on Capitol Hill every single day of the week.

01:06:47.180 The party is very much divided, and this primary is exposing it.

01:06:51.800 Haley, I mean, she'll be in this until she runs out of money.

01:06:54.820 And of course, the Kochs pulling their money suggests that maybe sooner rather than later.

01:06:58.920 But she is running to make this point.

01:07:00.900 We went back just to take a peek of where Trump was in February of 2016 with the party.

01:07:10.060 And three polls from mid-February 2016, he had between 35 and 49 percent of the GOP.

01:07:17.400 Now, he had not yet been president.

01:07:19.620 You would expect a former president to perhaps have more support.

01:07:23.980 But Trump's a divisive figure.

01:07:26.640 January 6th didn't help with anybody who's not hardcore MAGA, right?

01:07:31.980 There's still a lot of bitterness and anger over that, even amongst Republicans.

01:07:36.240 And so here he sits now with 60 percent of the party in South Carolina.

01:07:42.320 And, you know, he hasn't completely unified it.

01:07:45.520 But in 16, and probably this time, the party came home in the end, just given a binary choice.

01:07:53.220 And I realize you're going to have RFKJ and possibly even Nikki Haley on a ticket with no labels.

01:07:59.860 Given a binary choice, they came home for the Republican.

01:08:03.580 They held their noses, even the ones who didn't like him.

01:08:05.640 And they voted for Donald Trump because, you know, it's him or Biden.

01:08:08.140 And they hate Biden more than they hate Trump.

01:08:10.100 And I think there's probably every reason to believe they'll do that again.

01:08:13.560 Now, in what numbers, what kind of enthusiasm, that remains to be seen.

01:08:16.440 All right, let me flip the page and get to this big story out of Atlanta, which is just horrifying, horrifying.

01:08:21.940 It's not Atlanta.

01:08:23.160 It's, hold on.

01:08:25.200 It's Augusta, Augusta University College of Nursing.

01:08:28.460 I'm sure many in the audience have heard this story.

01:08:30.700 I'm sure you gals have heard this story, too.

01:08:32.300 A young woman, 22 years old, named Laken Riley, was at the university, the nursing school down there in Augusta.

01:08:41.360 And she was killed by an illegal immigrant this weekend on Thursday.

01:08:47.840 She was found dead after going out for a jog in a wooded area of the University of Georgia campus in Athens, Georgia, this was.

01:08:55.720 They began searching for her around 12.07 p.m. after they received a call from a concerned friend who said she hadn't come home from her run.

01:09:04.320 Within 30 minutes, they found her body.

01:09:06.320 Visible injuries, no pulse.

01:09:09.180 And it's, you know, they classified it now as a homicide.

01:09:12.900 There's no doubt about what happened to her.

01:09:15.340 The perpetrator is alleged to be 26-year-old Jose Antonio Ibarra, who has got a long history with ICE.

01:09:23.740 Look at this guy.

01:09:25.720 The latest statement issued by ICE on Sunday describes him as follows.

01:09:29.580 A 26-year-old citizen of Venezuela arrested by custom and border protection on September 8th, this is a couple years ago, 2022, after unlawfully entering the United States near El Paso.

01:09:42.240 He was paroled and released for further processing, which we all know never happens.

01:09:48.040 Further processing doesn't happen.

01:09:50.280 They have a free ticket to roam the United States.

01:09:52.120 On September 14th, 2023, Ibarra was arrested by the NYPD and charged with acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17.

01:10:02.980 We now know that that was allegedly him putting his wife's son on the back of a gas-powered moped without any helmet or restraint.

01:10:09.980 That's via the Daily Mail and New York Post.

01:10:12.360 And with some motor vehicle license violations.

01:10:16.720 He was released by the NYPD before a detainer could be issued by ICE.

01:10:20.620 Not that it would have mattered because New York is a sanctuary city and they would not have complied with any ICE detainer.

01:10:26.900 So, whatever.

01:10:29.560 Flash forward to February 23rd, this past Thursday, Atlanta encountered Ibarra, pursuant to his arrest by the University of Georgia police.

01:10:38.700 He's been charged with murder and other crimes.

01:10:42.700 And the question is, what was he doing here?

01:10:46.880 How many more Americans need to die before someone will take the border situation seriously?

01:10:54.400 Emily?

01:10:54.660 More Americans will die, sadly.

01:10:58.480 You know, just last year, tens of thousands of migrants with criminal records were deported.

01:11:02.840 And that's just a number.

01:11:03.880 I think it's 35,000 around there.

01:11:05.500 That's just a number of people who were deported.

01:11:08.500 And now we know this suspect was not among them because he had a criminal record and he was here.

01:11:14.580 So, if you're looking at the numbers of people who actually go through the deportation process, first of all, a lot of them come back.

01:11:20.240 But second of all, there are plenty of people that are not caught.

01:11:23.940 And it's outrageous.

01:11:25.320 And no other country would tolerate the amount of people who are not vetted, who are admitted to the interior of the country through our process.

01:11:35.880 A lot of these people are not illegally crossing.

01:11:39.340 They are now coming legally because they make appointments through CBP-1 or because they go to a sector that is, you know, they wait on a border town and then they wait for, you know, the quota to be one of the people in the quotas.

01:11:50.400 I mean, I've watched people at migrant shelters scroll through their phones, their messages on WhatsApp from CBP, just of the totally arbitrary numbers of people that are allowed to come in on any given day.

01:12:01.540 It's incredible that this is, you know, the most powerful, wealthiest country in the world, allowing the lack of security.

01:12:08.100 No other country, again, would tolerate it.

01:12:09.740 But we have these luxury debates in elite media about whether Biden's border is technically open or not.

01:12:16.140 But when if you're in Georgia or California, you could go back to Katie Steinle, you can go back to other of these instances.

01:12:23.460 This is happening in the interior of the country.

01:12:25.840 It doesn't matter.

01:12:26.700 By the way, murdered in San Francisco by an illegal who had been deported at least five times, at least five times.

01:12:32.040 Sanctuary City.

01:12:32.260 Keep going.

01:12:32.720 Yep.

01:12:33.020 Yeah.

01:12:33.240 No, absolutely.

01:12:33.880 I mean, it's just you sometimes hear people in Beltway circles say, well, why do people in North Dakota care about the border?

01:12:39.760 Why do people in Missouri care about the border?

01:12:42.400 And it's like, well, what do you mean?

01:12:44.060 People are going everywhere.

01:12:45.620 They're spreading out throughout the United States.

01:12:47.580 And we don't have a serious asylum system.

01:12:50.000 And people who have legitimate asylum claims, this is another tragedy of this.

01:12:54.020 People who have legitimate asylum claims are getting mixed up in all of this.

01:12:57.960 And, you know, America as a beacon of opportunity and freedom for people who are being legitimately persecuted in places like Venezuela, in places like Cuba.

01:13:07.540 There are just so many people coming through now that the entire system is completely broken.

01:13:12.560 And Americans are suffering, let alone the migrants, who every single one of them is a trafficking victim, paying the cartels, making the cartels more powerful with every single person that is coming up through the Darien Gap into Central America, into Mexico, and then across our border.

01:13:26.380 Every single migrant is making them richer and more powerful.

01:13:30.060 So there's just suffering to go around.

01:13:32.340 And the people who are engaged in these luxury debates in Beltway circles about whether the Biden border is open or not, it's outrageous.

01:13:39.960 They should go talk to the families of people who are being affected by this.

01:13:42.700 People are being murdered.

01:13:44.420 They don't have time for these debates.

01:13:46.900 You know, Eliana, it feels scary.

01:13:49.480 It feels like who's next, who's going to be the next to go?

01:13:53.880 Because we've got, what, 8.5 millions of these illegals in the country over the past couple of years.

01:13:58.900 We have no idea where they are.

01:14:00.580 We don't keep track of them.

01:14:03.360 And this guy, while he had a bad history, they're far worse.

01:14:07.860 There are illegals out there right now who have committed felonies who are still allowed to stay and haven't been turned over to ICE.

01:14:13.620 We've seen it time and time again.

01:14:14.920 And this guy, they were probably saying, oh, you know, he came here illegally.

01:14:19.320 And then there was this moped violation with a kid.

01:14:21.120 But it wasn't enough for them to actually take interest in him.

01:14:24.160 And then the next thing you know, a 22-year-old American girl who was about to devote her life to taking care of others, the sick, the vulnerable, is dead for no reason.

01:14:33.180 In the middle of the day, just trying to work on her physical fitness and health for no reason.

01:14:38.580 And what American parents are going to get the next notification that their child, who did nothing wrong and was only intent on having a helpful, loving life here in the United States, is dead because we wouldn't pay attention to this.

01:14:54.740 This crisis, you know, from traveling and covering political candidates, political races in the West, in the East, North, South, I can tell you, people say, immigration is not a border issue.

01:15:08.380 This is a 50-state issue now.

01:15:10.680 And the thing that's maddening about this tragedy is that this is a policy choice.

01:15:17.400 Joe Biden came into office and on his first day set about reversing the hawkish Trump immigration policies, illegal border encounters and crossings began to skyrocket.

01:15:32.140 Only now, three years into his tenure, is he reverting to some of the Trump-era policies that he decried as inhuman.

01:15:40.380 Speaking of inhuman, it's, you know, the murder of an innocent American by an illegal immigrant.

01:15:48.640 And then the way this is covered in the press is, you know, the danger of being a female athlete going out for a run by yourself and nary a mention of the fact that this murderer wasn't even supposed to be in the country.

01:16:02.500 But I do hope everyone remembers that these are policy choices, and we're seeing the impact of those choices.

01:16:11.820 They actually are life and death choices for these victims.

01:16:17.400 Right. I mean, I think about these parents over and over.

01:16:21.080 I'm sure that they've been watching, at some level, the immigration debate.

01:16:25.280 And you just never think it's going to be your child.

01:16:29.100 You know, you just never think it's going to be your kid.

01:16:32.020 And it always is somebody's.

01:16:34.700 And this poor girl, I just can't get over her beautiful smiling face, just trying to work on herself so she could help others at the hands of this loser, this absolute derelict.

01:16:45.220 And now what? Great.

01:16:46.600 So he's going to go to prison for the rest of his life, potentially.

01:16:49.060 Maybe now we'll deport.

01:16:50.020 I couldn't give a shit.

01:16:51.380 I don't care.

01:16:53.260 I don't care about him anymore.

01:16:54.500 I care about all the others who are out there wanting to do harm to others.

01:16:58.740 And by the way, I don't know whether there was a sexual assault.

01:17:01.200 They haven't released that information.

01:17:02.960 But so far, it sounds like it was just a crime of opportunity.

01:17:06.140 That's how the police described it.

01:17:07.680 A crime of opportunity.

01:17:08.880 He saw this beautiful girl, and he decided to hurt her.

01:17:11.780 It's sick.

01:17:12.520 It's sick.

01:17:13.480 These people come.

01:17:14.220 They don't have our shared values.

01:17:15.600 It's not that we don't have sickos here who are Americans, too, Emily.

01:17:18.500 But we have no idea what this guy's background was, what kind of damage he had.

01:17:23.380 Why did we let him into our country?

01:17:25.240 Why didn't we do more to stop him once we knew he was here illegally?

01:17:28.600 We have zero clue of what we're letting in here next to our young girls and boys.

01:17:34.380 And it's one thing.

01:17:35.400 I mean, in years past, we used to have at least somewhat of a system, you know, go back more

01:17:39.280 than 10 years ago.

01:17:40.200 But now, not only are we letting people in, but once we know who they are, and once we

01:17:45.820 have them on record, we're not deporting them, sometimes because of sanctuary jurisdictions,

01:17:49.960 other times because the system is such a joke.

01:17:51.900 Again, any other country is looking at this and just completely laughing at us.

01:17:56.220 And another thing that's worth mentioning is so many of these migrants now are coming

01:18:00.100 across in debt to cartels.

01:18:02.340 That is a fairly new thing within the last five or so years in mass at the level that

01:18:07.380 it's happening now.

01:18:08.240 They have to pay cartels to get across the border.

01:18:11.540 Sometimes they can't afford.

01:18:13.340 And so they go in in debt.

01:18:14.900 And to get out of that debt, they traffic drugs.

01:18:17.240 So a lot of for a lot of parents, the fentanyl issue is so close and personal in the same way

01:18:23.160 that this young woman was murdered.

01:18:24.560 There are so many parents of children who took a fentanyl pill that was precursor criminals,

01:18:30.200 chemicals come over from China, mixed by cartels in Mexico, traffic across the border, sometimes

01:18:35.480 by migrants in debt, other times just by the cartels themselves and mules.

01:18:40.280 And it is wreaking so much tragedy around the country because of political cowardice on behalf

01:18:47.320 of centrist Republicans and the entire Democratic Party, basically, which is too cowardly to do

01:18:53.540 anything serious.

01:18:54.320 And you saw that with the Biden, the border bill that was being debated, that would not have

01:18:58.920 done anything serious to crack down on this.

01:19:01.680 It did some small things.

01:19:02.920 It did not do anything serious that would actually stanch the flow of people coming across the

01:19:08.380 border.

01:19:09.000 And if you talk to people coming across the border, you will know that.

01:19:12.060 I mean, it's so obvious right now.

01:19:14.980 And so we have a lot of desperate people, people who have been kidnapped and have to get Western

01:19:20.360 Union wires to be released from cartel custody and then come over across the country and are

01:19:26.060 still in debt.

01:19:26.740 This is happening every single day to the tune of tens of thousands of people, hundreds of

01:19:31.380 thousands of people a year, millions of people a year in the last couple of years.

01:19:34.160 There's so much desperation.

01:19:35.440 It is going to lead to more crime.

01:19:36.940 And it's going to lead to, as you said, Megan, we have plenty of our own problems here.

01:19:40.160 We're not saying that immigrants are all criminals.

01:19:43.260 That's not the case at all.

01:19:44.380 But if any of them are criminals, and we know that, it's outrageous that they're in the

01:19:50.180 country.

01:19:50.500 I mean, it just doesn't make any sense.

01:19:51.780 No other country would tolerate it.

01:19:53.780 So you've got, Eliana, you touched on this.

01:19:55.140 You've got the ideological commitment to an open border on the left.

01:19:59.820 I mean, I would love to say it's just like the far left.

01:20:03.460 I don't think that's true in this case.

01:20:05.340 I think the left is pretty committed to an open border.

01:20:08.460 They're starting to feel the penalties of those policies.

01:20:11.120 But as a whole, they have this belief that that's what's humane.

01:20:14.560 That's what's right.

01:20:15.360 And Eliana, you mentioned the headline.

01:20:18.420 So they have a compliant news media that shares the same sympathies.

01:20:22.840 You pointed out the AP news headline, which was literally, as you said, the killing of

01:20:28.100 a nursing student out for a run highlights the fears of solo female athletes.

01:20:34.680 Talk about burying the lead.

01:20:37.280 That is not what this story is about.

01:20:40.140 And secondly, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tweets, breaking, a 26-year-old Athens man

01:20:46.860 has been charged with murder and the death of a nursing student.

01:20:50.460 Athens man.

01:20:51.840 Which, I mean, everybody on X just went nuts over.

01:20:54.800 And I just want to say this other thing.

01:20:57.700 As all this happens with the left, the policies, the compliant media, we get news.

01:21:04.560 President Biden will travel to Brownsville, Texas to meet with U.S. Border Patrol agents,

01:21:08.780 local law enforcement and leaders, according to a White House official.

01:21:12.280 OK, sure, that'll that'll do it.

01:21:15.940 That's going to appease people in blue cities and red cities across America who understand

01:21:21.700 perfectly how we got into this situation.

01:21:24.800 The AP article refers to the murderer as Athens resident.

01:21:34.780 And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is Athens man.

01:21:39.260 And nowhere reading this article would you know that this guy was an illegal immigrant.

01:21:44.060 It's all about female runners.

01:21:46.740 They interview a store associate from the Athens Running Company and the head of women's running

01:21:52.960 clubs and how do women protect themselves.

01:21:55.180 And really, if there's any question, it would be, well, how do we protect ourselves from

01:21:59.700 violent predators or

01:22:02.540 violent illegal immigrants who are not supposed to be in this country in this case?

01:22:08.120 But but but really, the headline on this story is.

01:22:13.420 The dangers of illegal immigration of illegal immigration come home to small college town.

01:22:21.560 Yes.

01:22:21.780 And instead, the headline is.

01:22:25.440 The fears of solo female athletes without a mention of it.

01:22:29.560 It is just astonishing, astonishing.

01:22:32.840 And for for those of us in the news industry, I think it does highlight the importance of having

01:22:38.980 center right news outlets that are going to frame this in a different way.

01:22:42.660 Jeffrey Beacon and the Federalist got the headline right.

01:22:45.760 It is super quickly.

01:22:48.140 The Federalist.

01:22:48.800 We went to Brownsville two years ago.

01:22:50.600 Biden's going there now.

01:22:51.540 We went to Brownsville two years ago and talked to a pastor.

01:22:54.400 Actually, he's from Brownsville, but works across the river in Matamoros in Mexico.

01:22:57.200 And we were in the shelter in Matamoros, which he was saying it was absolutely because

01:23:00.980 migrants know that Joe Biden is going to be more lenient on immigration than Donald Trump.

01:23:05.520 That's exactly what's happening.

01:23:07.180 And he said that he was begging.

01:23:08.780 He and a group of other people in Mexico were begging the Biden administration and the United

01:23:14.160 States government to tell people seriously not to come, not just to say it, but to mean it

01:23:18.960 and to tell people across all these countries not to come.

01:23:21.800 So Joe Biden, if he's going to go to Brownsville now, he sure as hell should have done it two

01:23:25.140 years ago, but he didn't.

01:23:26.580 His administration didn't take any of the symbolism serious back then, even because this is purely

01:23:30.640 symbolic.

01:23:31.620 What is he actually going to learn at the border?

01:23:32.840 I don't know if it's going to be like when he went to El Paso.

01:23:35.180 They cleaned the whole place up before he actually even got there.

01:23:38.640 So it's going to be the same thing as that.

01:23:40.840 It's a yeah, it's a photo op.

01:23:42.480 Yeah, it's a photo op.

01:23:43.480 Exactly right.

01:23:44.100 He doesn't mean it.

01:23:45.160 And even if he tries to slap a bandaid on these policies over the next 10 months or nine

01:23:49.200 months, whatever it is now, no one's going to believe it.

01:23:51.440 They know on an inherent level who is pro closing the border and who is pro opening it.

01:23:56.660 And he's stuck with that.

01:23:57.980 He is stuck with that.

01:23:59.040 I'm sorry, but this administration has this young woman's blood on their hands.

01:24:03.540 They've done nothing, nothing to help prevent this from happening or more deaths from happening.

01:24:09.340 Emily, you look like you have something you want to add.

01:24:11.100 Well, it's just because they refuse to detain people.

01:24:13.500 They will not do it because, again, Donald Trump got hit for kids in cages, even though

01:24:17.240 Obama had done it.

01:24:18.300 But Biden will not do that because his base will call it inhumane.

01:24:21.680 They don't ideologically have the will to do it.

01:24:23.420 They don't politically have the will to do it.

01:24:24.980 And it's by the law.

01:24:26.100 You have to detain people.

01:24:27.540 We've run out of space.

01:24:28.400 So the bill said, OK, well, the bill from last month said, OK, we can, you know, have

01:24:31.960 some people, some extra detention centers, et cetera.

01:24:35.060 But if you're still letting them into the country, then that does not work if you are

01:24:39.540 not actually processing their asylum claims.

01:24:41.920 And the Democratic Party does not have the will to do that.

01:24:45.080 They only have the will to let people into the country and go through these two, three

01:24:48.460 year, four year asylum periods while they disappear into sanctuary jurisdictions.

01:24:51.680 They do not have the will to detain and process asylum claims and to turn people back, to do

01:24:58.060 Remain in Mexico, the Trump policy that actually changed what was happening at the border.

01:25:02.480 They do not have the will to do it.

01:25:04.020 They will not do it.

01:25:05.220 So it will not stop until the leadership changes.

01:25:07.260 They could have.

01:25:08.360 Just as we go to break, this Bill Malusian of Fox News reporting this statement that

01:25:12.820 just hit from the Border Patrol Union.

01:25:15.080 Unfortunately, a visit by President Biden three years into his term and after repeatedly stating

01:25:19.400 there's no crisis is too little too late, whether stating it himself or through White

01:25:24.180 House Press Secretary Corrine Jean-Pierre.

01:25:26.120 Biden has said he's done everything he can to secure the border.

01:25:29.380 If that was the truth and it wasn't, there would be no point in visiting the border now.

01:25:34.300 But even if he were to put the proper policies in place at this late hour, he would be doing

01:25:38.020 it only to try to save his presidency and self-serving actions when time is winding down should

01:25:43.280 always give Americans pause.

01:25:45.200 Common sense dictates that as a lame duck, he would revert back to his open border

01:25:49.380 policies if reelected.

01:25:51.200 Biden is going to the border now solely to try to save himself.

01:25:54.760 Border security should never be about politics.

01:25:56.840 It should always be about the safety and security of this great nation and the American people.

01:26:01.960 Signed the head of the Border Patrol Union, President Brandon Judd.

01:26:06.520 Well said, sir.

01:26:08.400 Stand by.

01:26:09.240 We'll be right back.

01:26:10.120 More with the EJs after this quick break.

01:26:12.100 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.

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01:27:12.940 Okay, we've got to talk about Joe Biden's sex life.

01:27:18.080 I'm sorry, but we've got to do it.

01:27:21.380 I don't think we do.

01:27:24.420 We're doing it, EJ.

01:27:26.900 Okay.

01:27:27.680 It's in the news.

01:27:28.660 I'm here for it.

01:27:29.540 We have to do it for no other reason.

01:27:31.400 We have to do it for the responses on X when this hit over the weekend.

01:27:35.020 There's a new book coming out called American Woman, The Transformation of the Modern First Lady from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden by New York Times columnist Katie Rogers.

01:27:46.760 And apparently there's a bunch in here about Joe Biden's feelings about his sex life.

01:27:52.900 According to the book, this is quoting here from The Post, President Biden's poll numbers may be cold, but his libido sure is hot.

01:28:01.240 He's fond of telling aides in the West Wing that the key to a successful marriage is good sex.

01:28:08.100 I just threw up a little in my mouth.

01:28:09.980 He apparently told a group of supporters in 2006, I'd rather be at home making love to my wife while my children are asleep.

01:28:17.800 Since he won the 2020 election, he has tamped down on his public bedroom declarations, but he continues to tell his staff the importance of good sex to a happy marriage, much to his wife's chagrin.

01:28:35.400 They also say that he gushed about the sexual and emotional connection he and his first wife shared.

01:28:42.360 This is to a Washingtonian magazine, the Washingtonian magazine in 1970, 1974, talking about how the first wife had the best body of any woman I ever saw.

01:28:51.580 She looks better than a Playboy bunny, doesn't she?

01:28:54.400 I can't even believe it goes on and on.

01:28:59.300 And then, oh, he goes on to say, at first, okay, hey, first, is this about the first wife or the second wife?

01:29:07.720 I think this is about the first wife still.

01:29:09.480 Yeah.

01:29:10.160 At first, she stayed home with the kids while I campaigned, but that didn't work out because I'd come back too tired to talk to her.

01:29:15.640 I might satisfy her in bed, but I didn't have much time for anything else.

01:29:19.640 Oh, my God.

01:29:23.600 As I think it was Dave Marcus tweeted out, they're going to release a sex tape, aren't they?

01:29:29.300 And if you don't like it, you're the problem.

01:29:35.800 It's actually going to be beautiful.

01:29:37.840 And yeah.

01:29:38.880 Is this rehab?

01:29:41.860 What's happening here?

01:29:43.320 Why was this told?

01:29:45.260 I'm really feeling like every time Biden has a verbal flub or falls down on the stage and then all the aides come out to tell us, like, are you serious?

01:29:55.060 This guy has way more energy than I do.

01:29:57.240 I can't keep up with him.

01:29:58.560 He's the youngest 81-year-old I've ever seen.

01:30:00.880 I just really feel like this is part of that where it's like, what do you mean?

01:30:04.320 He has more sex than I do.

01:30:05.680 He's so young.

01:30:07.000 I mean, he's like, you know, he's hornier than my 19-year-old.

01:30:11.440 Yes.

01:30:11.700 Like, it feels very weird.

01:30:13.220 Next thing you know, he's going to be, they're going to be like Larsa Pippen.

01:30:16.780 You say you had five times, five times a night sex with Scottie Pippen and now your new boyfriend.

01:30:21.200 Same, same.

01:30:22.720 We can barely get any legislating done.

01:30:25.780 This is so disgusting.

01:30:27.580 You should, you guys should both be ashamed of yourselves.

01:30:29.660 It's not me.

01:30:33.100 It's Joe Biden.

01:30:34.300 I'm just recording sex.

01:30:34.980 Joe Biden, healthy enough for sex.

01:30:37.540 That's his campaign slogan.

01:30:39.800 Okay.

01:30:40.480 Speaking of sex, you don't technically need to have it to conceive a baby via IVF, though

01:30:48.260 the man does have to engage in some self-pleasure.

01:30:51.160 All right.

01:30:51.560 This, for those of you who haven't been through it, certain things do have to happen.

01:30:55.960 And that leads me to what's happening in Alabama and this court ruling that is now has like

01:31:00.660 completely upended IVF in Alabama.

01:31:02.780 So we go from something very funny to very serious where this court, basically what happened

01:31:07.940 was somebody went into an IVF clinic in Alabama.

01:31:10.380 I don't know how the person got in, but they were in the room where they keep the stored

01:31:13.820 frozen embryos, stuck his or her hands into the area where they have the frozen embryos

01:31:19.800 and the test tubes.

01:31:20.800 It's cryogenically preserved.

01:31:22.620 So the person burned their hands on the freezing cold test tube, dropped one, at least three families

01:31:27.760 lost embryos, sued the clinic claiming wrongful death, which is unusual.

01:31:32.920 Normally it would be a negligence suit.

01:31:34.540 We've seen that in the past, but never wrongful death.

01:31:36.620 One with the Alabama Supreme court saying you, you took the life of a minor and that's against

01:31:43.800 the law.

01:31:44.280 And all the IVF clinics now are in a total panic in Alabama.

01:31:48.400 Many shutting down entirely saying we cannot guarantee like suddenly we're murderers if

01:31:53.940 we don't take care of these embryos, which was not what we thought we were doing, the

01:31:58.100 business we were in.

01:31:58.900 And now real life women and men are suffering the consequences of this.

01:32:04.900 I give you Megan Cole, who spoke to the New York times is the daily podcast about her situation

01:32:10.560 when she was about to have her embryo implanted in a surrogate.

01:32:14.880 She is a blood disorder and therefore cannot carry a baby supposed to happen this past Friday.

01:32:19.020 Take a listen.

01:32:19.500 Our doctor said, I'm so sorry, but you know, it has to be canceled.

01:32:25.820 I instantly broke down in tears.

01:32:28.640 I don't think I've ever cried that hard in my life.

01:32:32.480 I called our surrogate and had to break the news to her.

01:32:36.160 The person who's been taking hormone medications for the last three weeks.

01:32:39.840 I mean, the only option would be for me to go through an IVF cycle out of state, my third

01:32:46.920 IVF cycle, get those embryos frozen, genetically tested again.

01:32:52.380 The whole process.

01:32:53.400 I mean, redo the whole process, which would cost us another $30,000.

01:32:57.520 One thing that my sister said, you know, is she's been angry as well.

01:33:01.780 And she said it feels like a death in the family.

01:33:04.260 Like, we were all excited to have the possibility that a child would be coming into our family.

01:33:11.760 And she said, you know, it feels like a death.

01:33:15.080 Do you feel that way?

01:33:18.080 I do in the sense of it feels like a death of our dream to become parents.

01:33:26.100 This poor woman.

01:33:27.480 I have to tell you, if those were my embryos, there is zero chance I would be allowing the

01:33:33.840 clinic to just keep them and tell me we're no longer in the business of doing IVF.

01:33:40.120 Those are your future children.

01:33:42.180 I conceived and I've told this story before all three of my children via IVF.

01:33:46.000 I am very pro IVF.

01:33:47.700 I understand the legal rationale behind the court ruling, but the legislature in Alabama

01:33:52.620 needs to act immediately to rectify this gross miscarriage because you cannot be endangering

01:34:00.700 IVF clinics this way.

01:34:02.020 It is not a pro-life position to tell parents desperate to start families who have conceived

01:34:08.380 embryos sitting right there, that they can't have them, that they can't bring them into

01:34:14.580 a uterus so they can actually be born.

01:34:17.660 This is insane.

01:34:19.340 And I think the Alabama legislature and governor actually are poised to do something about it.

01:34:23.000 President Trump has weighed in saying they should.

01:34:25.440 Even Matt Gaetz is out there saying this should be reversed.

01:34:28.060 But some hard, hardcore pro-lifers, and I understand their position, I respect their views, but

01:34:33.240 I completely disagree with them, think this is a win.

01:34:36.420 This is a huge win for the pro-life movement because they don't like IVF because it creates

01:34:41.120 embryos, not all of which get used.

01:34:43.680 Eliana, what do you think?

01:34:45.920 I'm with you on this, Megan.

01:34:47.640 I think this is, first of all, the stories of the families caught in the gears of this

01:34:53.440 are just heart-wrenching.

01:34:55.920 And secondly, the verdict, it is hard, while I understand the views, it's hard to see it

01:35:06.060 as purely pro-life versus pro-choice for me because, of course, the people in these IVF

01:35:13.740 clinics, you couldn't find people who are more pro-life and pro-family and who are really

01:35:20.280 yearning to start families.

01:35:21.760 So one has to feel for them and not consider them or label them as opposed to the pro-life

01:35:28.560 cause.

01:35:29.720 So it's complicated.

01:35:31.060 And I'm with you in being supportive of the use of this technology for people who aren't

01:35:40.720 able to have kids without some help from the technology that's available to us.

01:35:45.480 Can I ask you a question?

01:35:46.180 We're going to, the series show wraps in a minute 40, but we have to continue.

01:35:49.840 Can you just stay for like another 10 minutes just so we can finish this conversation, gals?

01:35:54.480 Sure.

01:35:55.020 Yeah.

01:35:55.420 Okay.

01:35:55.640 They're saying yes, because it's just too important.

01:35:57.200 Like, this is a big one.

01:35:58.340 And there was, we had to talk about Biden's sex life, so I didn't get to it.

01:36:02.260 I didn't get to it early enough.

01:36:04.640 Um, but it's really deeply disturbing what's happening here, Emily.

01:36:09.960 And I, like, I'm, I'm worried that this is going to start a trend where other women are

01:36:15.860 going to actually lose their babies.

01:36:17.560 That's what's going to happen.

01:36:18.340 Like if this woman can't get access to her embryos, she's going to lose those babies.

01:36:22.460 What are they going to do?

01:36:23.100 Hit the defrost?

01:36:24.460 So I'm somewhere in the middle on this because I think legally there is a lot that needs to

01:36:28.960 be worked out with IVF.

01:36:30.760 And actually, I wonder, I mean, I'm actually very curious as to the woman who was on the

01:36:35.280 daily, uh, who the, the clip that you just played, um, I actually wonder what legal ramification

01:36:40.240 she has.

01:36:41.100 And I'm eager to see her potentially and people in her position potentially pursue those

01:36:46.080 legal ramifications, because I think there actually is a very important framework to be

01:36:49.740 worked out here.

01:36:50.860 Let me tell you something.

01:36:51.560 Let me tell you something.

01:36:51.800 If I had been her or advising her as a friend, as soon as she found out on Wednesday, I think

01:36:56.660 that's when the ruling came down, things might be in jeopardy.

01:36:58.820 She was supposed to implant the embryo and the surrogate that Friday who, you know, when

01:37:02.940 you go through to be a surrogate, you do, she's right.

01:37:04.880 You have to do like all the progesterone.

01:37:06.360 You have to get the uterus ready because it's the woman's not actually pregnant.

01:37:09.780 So you got to get the uterus ready for the implantation of the embryo so she can carry

01:37:13.340 it.

01:37:13.920 And, um, I would have gone right into court that day with a lawyer saying, I need a, uh,

01:37:20.080 I need a temporary restraining order on this clinic from embargoing my embryos away from

01:37:25.100 me.

01:37:25.360 I demand that my embryos be released to me.

01:37:28.700 I waive all claims against the facility for the, you know, negligent transfer or for any

01:37:36.420 wrongful death claims, I guess, just wave what you've been, what you've lost thanks

01:37:39.820 to the ruling, not all claims, but I waive any wrongful death claims against you.

01:37:43.760 Give me my damn embryos right now.

01:37:46.360 Like they cannot hold the embryos from their rightful parents, which is that woman, Megan

01:37:51.900 Cole.

01:37:52.260 So I like, she probably wasn't advised as she doesn't sound like a rich person.

01:37:57.060 She talks about the financial pressure that this put on her family, but that's what you

01:38:00.880 should do.

01:38:01.220 They can't just hold onto your embryos.

01:38:03.160 That's sorry.

01:38:03.800 That's one of the things that's very annoying about the story.

01:38:05.640 Keep going.

01:38:06.320 No, no, no.

01:38:07.000 I mean, I think that's a hugely important point because the wrongful death suit in and

01:38:10.760 of itself, that is on the other side of the coin is coming from basically the same position,

01:38:15.340 which is that this is, you know, a form of life that was created with my unique DNA and

01:38:21.820 my husband or my partner's unique DNA.

01:38:23.840 It cannot be in a position where it is dropped on the floor.

01:38:27.500 And, you know, the term wrongful death implies that a life was snuffed out because something

01:38:32.440 was dropped on the floor.

01:38:33.720 So, yeah, I mean, I think that's why, you know, IVF has rapidly increased.

01:38:38.480 Like the technology has gone really quickly, really far, really quickly.

01:38:42.520 And it's wonderful.

01:38:43.680 I mean, it's such a blessing for so many families.

01:38:46.060 I think there's probably a better way to do it than some places do it.

01:38:50.060 And I think the laws just need to be worked out on this.

01:38:52.620 And, you know, I think the judge was kind of in a tough position because the wrongful

01:38:56.760 death law and what IVF is, which is, you know, embryonic development.

01:39:01.780 Christopher Hitchens back in 2003 were a really interesting piece on this for Vanity Fair

01:39:05.600 where he and he had some like heterodox thoughts on, you know, embryonic development and abortion

01:39:12.640 and all of that.

01:39:13.360 But when you have something that is a fertilized embryo, you do have unique DNA that was created.

01:39:19.980 And so if it goes away, what does that mean?

01:39:22.160 Does that mean death?

01:39:23.340 Does that mean the end of potential life?

01:39:26.440 So legally, I do think, you know, hopefully the silver lining here, you know, it's a tragedy

01:39:31.840 that people are being caught up in this.

01:39:33.160 But hopefully the silver lining is that we will work towards a more ethical and just a

01:39:37.820 more helpful legal framework that doesn't lead to people losing fertilized embryos in this

01:39:42.860 way that, as she described, it felt like a death in the family.

01:39:46.700 I don't begrudge my deeply pro-life friends who feel like the IVF clinics are bad because

01:39:54.760 invariably what happens is the woman produces X number of eggs, gets put in a Petri dish,

01:40:00.760 it gets fertilized with sperm.

01:40:02.680 All of them, all the eggs get fertilized, which is not normal.

01:40:05.700 That's not how a normal pregnancy would take place inside of a body where you only release

01:40:09.480 one egg.

01:40:10.180 I mean, sometimes two or three in extraordinary cases with triplets or twins.

01:40:15.620 You know, you could release whatever, 10 eggs, and potentially they could all get fertilized.

01:40:20.500 And then you have the leftovers.

01:40:22.420 And I understand why the pro-life, you know, like true, true, hardcore believers, many of

01:40:27.760 them are like, this is not okay.

01:40:29.820 But I guess I'm just, this is where I draw the line.

01:40:33.600 I don't think a fertilized embryo outside of the uterus that's never been in its mother

01:40:39.940 is the same to me as one that's in the mother and growing and has a real shot at viability

01:40:47.060 in life.

01:40:47.540 I just, I don't see it the same.

01:40:49.620 And I will tell you, I mean, Eliana, I've told you this privately and I've told my audience

01:40:52.920 this.

01:40:53.300 Dave Rubin came on and he's of course in a gay marriage and therefore there's no, there's

01:40:58.040 no wife in the relationship.

01:40:59.860 And I know people have problems with that too.

01:41:01.540 I'm not one of them.

01:41:03.640 We talked about surrogacy.

01:41:05.060 They had to use a surrogate.

01:41:06.140 I, I was able to have my own babies, but I have, and this is a lot of information, but

01:41:10.240 I'll tell you, I have what's called a T-shaped uterus.

01:41:13.140 And what that means is instead of like, like a big uterus, it's mine is kind of small.

01:41:18.700 And it was leading to problems in, in getting pregnant.

01:41:22.500 So we went, you have to have the histriol salpingogram, I think is how you pronounce

01:41:26.400 it.

01:41:26.680 And you have to like get tested.

01:41:27.880 And I didn't think anything was going to be wrong with me.

01:41:29.600 And there was something not wrong, but not conducive to pregnancy or getting pregnant.

01:41:35.720 I went to a fertility specialist and he said, don't worry, you can carry a baby.

01:41:40.660 It's just going to be very hard to conceive one.

01:41:42.400 And that's why we did IVF and we did it for all three of our children.

01:41:46.240 And I thank God every day for that technology.

01:41:49.640 I would not have my three amazing children if it hadn't been for IVF.

01:41:56.740 And I mean, I can't think of a world in which any sane person would look at me and my family

01:42:03.740 and say, nope, they shouldn't be here.

01:42:06.200 The world would be better if your children were not here.

01:42:09.200 If that would be a win for society, bullshit, bullshit, it's a very easy argument to win

01:42:15.820 when you're zeroed in on the embryos that are in the Petri dish that may or may not.

01:42:20.760 But then you look at the live children who have made it, you know, the millions of children

01:42:24.600 now who have made it because of this technology.

01:42:27.460 And how, how is it pro-life to argue with that, with their existence in this world?

01:42:33.340 I just, I don't, it's very frustrating to me, Eliana, because if this continues, if they

01:42:40.080 don't reverse this, then Megan Cole might not get her embryos.

01:42:43.580 And who knows how many other women who would love to use the same technology I used will

01:42:48.760 wind up in the same position.

01:42:49.960 One footnote to what I just said, we were lucky.

01:42:53.340 We were lucky in that we did not produce extra embryos.

01:42:58.380 And so I didn't have to make the decision about what to do with potential children of

01:43:06.000 mine that I, you know, I mean, look, if it had been one or two more, I probably would

01:43:11.000 have tried to have them.

01:43:12.280 But if it had been 10 more, what do you do in that circumstance?

01:43:16.060 So I'm not blind to the ethical considerations here.

01:43:19.180 And I do consider myself fortunate not to have had that end result.

01:43:22.640 I wish I had a ton to add, Megan, but I sort of share your views exactly.

01:43:30.440 As you mentioned, we had talked about this and I also have a hard time.

01:43:41.060 I'm more, I feel a much stronger opposition to abortions and to ending the life of a baby

01:43:49.180 in the mother's womb than to the frozen embryo that's, I just don't have as strong a reaction.

01:43:57.560 But I will say, I am not, I've never been a fervent pro-lifer.

01:44:02.820 I'm not a Catholic.

01:44:03.760 And so I think it is just harder for somebody maybe of my background to relate to those views.

01:44:10.720 Um, so I, I just, I, I really do feel for, um, for everybody caught up in the gears of

01:44:19.320 this situation.

01:44:20.420 And, um, and, and, well, let me ask you this, there's one thing you do know a lot about.

01:44:24.960 One thing you do know a lot about is politics.

01:44:27.420 And as you know, the Republicans have been struggling ever since Dobbs with these more

01:44:32.980 moderate voters.

01:44:33.820 And, you know, I mean, even that New York times daily podcast was talking about how well

01:44:39.500 in the wake of Dobbs, you know, it's just, everything's different.

01:44:43.280 Every state can do it, what it wants.

01:44:45.600 And this is going to be pinned on Republicans now, right?

01:44:50.380 Like Republicans don't want IVF, even though Trump was quick to come out and say, this is

01:44:55.100 insane.

01:44:55.600 I'm against this with IVF should be allowed.

01:44:58.180 Matt Gaetz is no, he's not some light footed liberal, you know, like, yeah, it's not going

01:45:02.780 to matter.

01:45:03.060 This is going to be hung around the Republicans in an election year.

01:45:06.420 It's not going to matter.

01:45:07.560 And I think it's even more troubling when, um, women like us who are well to the right

01:45:12.540 of, of center are seeing things happen where we're like, ah, uh, that's, uh, we can't defend

01:45:20.560 that can't, can't get behind that.

01:45:23.080 And so that that's what alarms me, but this is, you know, if I were Democrats, I'd be making

01:45:29.220 political ads all over the country around this.

01:45:31.380 If I were, um, if I were Republicans, I'd be making ads all about this, um, this murder

01:45:36.520 in Georgia with that young woman's face on it everywhere.

01:45:39.520 If you turn all of this stuff into politics, but you know, right after these things happen,

01:45:44.760 um, it is important to remember that these are real people, um, you know, on, on the other

01:45:49.360 end of it and that policy decisions do affect these, uh, you know, very, they affect real

01:45:55.400 individuals, uh, in these cases, but politically look, even the six week and 12 week abortion

01:46:01.120 bands were bad for Republicans.

01:46:02.960 Um, just the, the cadence of the, uh, the environment created post jobs, Republicans have not been

01:46:11.220 able to talk about well, to grapple with well, and whatever Biden's foibles abortion as an

01:46:16.420 issue, uh, Democrats were able to, um, make sure that outweighed, um, whatever was, uh, hanging

01:46:23.600 around Biden's neck.

01:46:24.980 And so this is certainly not going to help in, in that regard.

01:46:29.260 No, I mean, I realize it's Alabama, Emily, but they got to fix it.

01:46:33.920 It, the latest I heard was, you know, the governor, the Republican governor, uh, said she's inclined

01:46:39.380 to fix it and that the legislature appears to have the numbers to fix it, but it's not

01:46:45.220 a lock.

01:46:46.920 And if they don't fix it, then what?

01:46:50.720 It's a huge problem for the pro-life movement going forward.

01:46:54.060 And it's one that I'm not sure those of us in the pro-life movement, I mean, I consider

01:46:57.620 myself pretty hardcore pro-life.

01:46:59.260 I consider myself pretty hardcore, honestly, on IVF, even though I think it's a wonderful

01:47:02.540 blessing.

01:47:03.040 There is a way to do it that is perfectly ethical and wonderful, but I don't think people are

01:47:07.680 prepared to have these conversations about technologies that, uh, have advanced to the

01:47:12.140 point where everybody kind of gotten used to them.

01:47:13.660 They're normalized.

01:47:14.520 They've produced incredible results.

01:47:16.720 And is this going forward like this after Dobbs, um, and now after this ruling, this is going

01:47:22.380 to be a question that is posed to every single pro-life Republican, uh, and, and there has

01:47:27.840 to be a message that leads, uh, with agreement about how wonderful these technologies are.

01:47:35.580 Uh, we can have the serious sort of ethical discussions.

01:47:38.140 As you were just mentioning, Megan, there are some, you know, areas that are, that really

01:47:42.600 bring up, uh, debate and that really bring up room for having those conversations.

01:47:46.240 But, uh, man, if Republican politicians don't understand the gravity of how they have to

01:47:51.940 lead with, uh, the, the complete support for and, uh, gratitude for what these technologies

01:47:58.760 have, have brought into people's lives, uh, and are just going to lead with, you know,

01:48:03.820 some type of, and I don't know, I mean, this is a, the, the pro-life movement has to figure

01:48:06.940 out how to talk about this, uh, because it's not just going to be IVF.

01:48:09.900 It's going to be other things down the road.

01:48:11.300 Um, but this is going to be a huge, huge thing because it's affected so many people's lives

01:48:16.140 because this decision is going to have so many ramifications in Alabama and potentially

01:48:20.220 elsewhere.

01:48:21.360 Again, the silver lining is that we develop a better legal framework for this that has

01:48:25.300 more clarity so that people don't get caught up in the mix.

01:48:27.800 Uh, but if Republican politicians, if pro-lifers are going to talk about this just in terms of,

01:48:32.900 uh, you know, saying things that, that are very alienating to other people, um, that is,

01:48:38.760 if that's what they're going to lead with, this will not just be a political loser.

01:48:42.180 It'll be a moral loser.

01:48:43.220 It'll set the cause back, uh, instead of, you know, coming to the table on some points

01:48:48.000 of consensus and agreement.

01:48:50.080 There is a huge difference between looking at a woman and saying, you do not have the

01:48:55.720 right to kill your own child and saying to her, you do not have the right to have your

01:49:02.100 own child.

01:49:02.580 That is just a complete, completely different message, politically, morally, religiously

01:49:08.500 take your pick and the ladders not going to fly.

01:49:12.180 It's not going to fly with Republicans.

01:49:13.360 I'm not going to fly with the very group that Trump is trying to win over.

01:49:16.540 As we discussed earlier, in particular, young, moderate women, right?

01:49:21.400 That's who he needs to win.

01:49:22.660 So he took the right position on this.

01:49:24.360 Can, before we go, can you just, can you expand on what you're saying, Emily?

01:49:27.220 Cause it's been a long while, you know, my youngest child is now 10.

01:49:30.680 And so I haven't really been following the latest IVF developments, but what is the more,

01:49:34.780 you know, moral, humane way of doing it that you're referring to?

01:49:39.140 So targeted.

01:49:40.300 Yeah.

01:49:40.520 Like what you were saying about to minimize situations where people have 10 extra embryos

01:49:45.160 that they have to make decisions on.

01:49:47.060 Just put the number of eggs in the Petri dish that you're willing to have.

01:49:50.620 Like it's really the eggs that will control the number of children.

01:49:53.980 Right, right, right, right.

01:49:54.820 And then figuring out what these clinics do with extra eggs too.

01:49:58.280 Um, I, I think that's a big, big, big, big legal question as well, because now we have

01:50:03.100 people like the woman on the daily caught in the lurch when a court decision comes down.

01:50:06.680 So as this stuff sort of, uh, flip-flops or ping-pongs through the legal system, you're

01:50:10.920 going to have people's lives sort of caught in the balance and, uh, that there should be

01:50:15.040 some way that there's, there's clarity.

01:50:16.980 So people aren't in those situations.

01:50:19.500 Yeah.

01:50:19.900 And obviously I'm, I think we'd all agree, like no medical testing on quote, discarded

01:50:24.560 embryos, all of that.

01:50:26.200 Just, uh, maybe we won't all agree, but I, I certainly wouldn't ever have agreed to that

01:50:30.760 kind of thing.

01:50:31.320 And I don't know.

01:50:32.460 I just, uh, I, my heart goes out to her.

01:50:34.160 I predict she will get her embryos.

01:50:35.620 And honestly, if, if I were one of those moms or dads down there, I'd be sitting outside

01:50:38.860 of that clinic every day with a photo, treating them as hostages, give release my hostage

01:50:44.680 child.

01:50:45.180 That's my baby.

01:50:45.880 You will not tell me I cannot have him or her.

01:50:48.540 I, I, I, I'd be ready to storm that IVF clinic the same way the bad person did in, in the

01:50:53.000 first instance to try to go grab it.

01:50:54.700 Though it's harder to identify when it's an embryo form in, in the little test tube, but

01:50:58.880 I would just look for the loud mouth one, a little brash one swearing from the test tube.

01:51:05.880 That's mine.

01:51:07.700 It'd be so obvious.

01:51:10.680 Ladies, thank you so much for sticking around.

01:51:12.700 Thank you, Maggie.

01:51:13.800 Thanks, Maggie.

01:51:14.300 See, see you soon.

01:51:16.020 Thanks to all of you for listening.

01:51:17.940 Would love your thoughts.

01:51:18.800 You can write me, uh, with your thoughts on this debate or any other you've listened

01:51:21.740 to today.

01:51:22.760 Uh, you can follow us on, on the podcast and right there is a great place to leave your

01:51:27.860 comments on the Apple podcast.

01:51:29.400 Cause that actually helps our show too.

01:51:31.100 Or on YouTube, just do it at youtube.com slash Megan Kelly and leave a comment down below.

01:51:35.000 I often go there and I scroll on here and read what you all are saying all the best and

01:51:40.240 to be continued.

01:51:40.920 We'll talk tomorrow.

01:51:41.460 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.

01:51:47.480 No BS, no agenda and no fear.

01:51:50.240 We'll see you next time.

The Megyn Kelly Show - February 26, 2024

Fani Willis ＂Real Housewives＂ Drama, and Trump's SC Victory, with Emily Jashinsky, Eliana Johnson, and Phil Holloway ｜ Ep. 731

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