The Megyn Kelly Show - Final GOP Primary of 2024？ Plus, Fani Willis Affair Drama, with Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke ｜ Ep. 708

00:00:00.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:11.880 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.180 The first in the nation primary is underway.

00:00:17.380 It's officially underway as voters head to the polls in New Hampshire.

00:00:21.960 We're finally making real progress here.

00:00:24.700 Voting is actually happening.

00:00:26.320 Nikki Haley hoping for a strong showing.

00:00:29.280 Her messaging has gone from, I'm going to win, to a little more like strong showing.

00:00:35.360 Although, she said to Fox News yesterday she is going to win.

00:00:38.780 So, we'll see. They're a little bit all over the board on it.

00:00:41.580 A short time ago, she was asked about securing the first victory of the day, which she did.

00:00:46.840 A six, as in six people, six votes to zero win over former President Trump in the tiny town of Dixville, Notch.

00:00:55.760 Right now, we'll take whatever we can take.

00:00:57.960 It was certainly a good start.

00:00:59.300 It gave us some good energy and momentum, and I'm grateful to those six people.

00:01:03.300 We're not promising that it's going to be 350,000 to zero, but we're definitely on track for that. 1.00

00:01:08.560 Governor Haley, what do you need to do?

00:01:10.360 That was New Hampshire Governor Krista Nunu at the end, who has done more than anyone short of the candidate to actually get her elected or to at least get her a win in New Hampshire.

00:01:21.080 We know that tonight is very well going to be do or die for Nikki Haley.

00:01:27.680 We get to this and much, much more, plus tensions over the border crisis as the Supreme Court deals a defeat to Texas in its effort to stop illegal immigrants from crossing over.

00:01:40.240 And we've got new developments as well in the Fannie Willis case.

00:01:43.940 Going to get to all of that.

00:01:46.580 Joining me now, two of our favorites for NR Day, National Review Day here at the Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:52.440 Rich Lowry is editor-in-chief of National Review.

00:01:55.200 Charles C.W. Cook is a senior writer for National Review and host of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast.

00:02:01.140 You can find all of their work by becoming an NR Plus subscriber, and you should do it today.

00:02:06.520 I am one.

00:02:07.440 Highly recommend it.

00:02:08.780 I get the print edition.

00:02:10.000 I get the online subscription.

00:02:12.040 I avoid the ads.

00:02:13.200 And you get extra content, too, if you actually subscribe.

00:02:16.040 Rich, Charles, welcome back to the show.

00:02:18.340 Hey, thanks for having us.

00:02:19.740 Thanks for having us.

00:02:21.480 All right.

00:02:21.880 So I haven't had a chance to talk to you guys yet, though I did listen to the editors on Tuesday and Thursday of last week.

00:02:31.240 So, or Friday it was.

00:02:33.620 Let's just start with your thoughts on whether there's any chance now that Nikki Haley pulls this out.

00:02:40.380 Because looking at the latest polls going into today, it looks terrible for her.

00:02:45.000 You know, it was tight according to a couple of polls, but the final New Hampshire tracking poll from Suffolk University, NBC, Boston Globe, came out this morning showing Trump at 60% in New Hampshire, Haley at 38%.

00:02:59.760 So, Rich, that's Trump plus 22%, which is not exactly tight.

00:03:05.560 Yeah.

00:03:05.960 So, New Hampshire, the polling can be squirrelly.

00:03:09.360 The methods of a lot of these polls.

00:03:11.760 There's not like, in Iowa, you have the Des Moines Register polls.

00:03:14.340 The gold standard, everyone believes it.

00:03:16.400 You don't have a poll like that in New Hampshire.

00:03:18.860 But every poll seems to be showing the same thing.

00:03:21.580 And it's true in a lot of places, especially true in New Hampshire.

00:03:25.460 It's the momentum in the polling that matters a lot, because oftentimes there's swings in New Hampshire, because independents can vote in either primary.

00:03:33.380 That polling doesn't pick up.

00:03:34.800 But the momentum here, the margins with Trump, the momentum is with Trump.

00:03:40.260 I mean, just the feel, this thing already feels over, is with Trump.

00:03:44.140 So maybe there's some shocker where every independent in New Hampshire floods into the Republican primary and puts Nikki Haley close or even, you know, over the top.

00:03:52.600 The chances of that, very, very, very slim.

00:03:55.120 Charlie, this feels fake, doesn't it?

00:03:59.360 Like, you know, in past primaries, it's like, it's exciting.

00:04:04.420 It's primary day.

00:04:05.720 People are going to the polls.

00:04:07.460 Who's going to win?

00:04:08.520 Who's going to?

00:04:10.780 Even if she wins, we kind of know.

00:04:14.020 She has no chance in any place other than New Hampshire in the coming days and weeks.

00:04:18.960 So it feels like fake news to me.

00:04:22.980 Well, I think it does now.

00:04:24.400 I mean, in a sense, it has felt like that for months.

00:04:27.120 But there was always the question of whether it was going to end up being a mirage.

00:04:32.560 I were paid to that on my part, hope.

00:04:36.840 And now we're in a two-person race.

00:04:41.360 The second person is not going to win the state she needs to win.

00:04:45.460 Seems to me that it is almost inevitable that Trump will be the nominee.

00:04:50.200 That said, he is going to find himself in and out of courtrooms a great deal in the next few months.

00:04:57.700 I think Republican primary voters have forgotten or too heavily discounted this.

00:05:03.300 And I just wonder whether there will be some surprise down the stretch.

00:05:08.620 But it's not going to come from Donald Trump losing the primaries to Nikki Haley.

00:05:12.640 She, as I said, I've listened to her and Sununu, Rich, change a little bit in their messaging.

00:05:19.580 You know, she was saying, I'm going to win New Hampshire.

00:05:21.500 Then it kind of changed to, like, she's going to have a strong showing there.

00:05:25.160 Sununu's messaging has changed a little.

00:05:27.420 But then here she is on Fox News yesterday, sounding very bullish. 0.92

00:05:31.780 Take a listen to this in Sat 10.

00:05:33.680 I'm running to win this race.

00:05:36.780 And as much as everybody wants to talk about what I'm going to do, at some point, y'all are going to realize that I won this race.

00:05:44.300 And you're going to have to accept when I say I told you so.

00:05:47.060 I don't want anything else.

00:05:48.460 I don't want anything else.

00:05:49.800 I'm running to be president.

00:05:51.320 I'm not going to pull out because somebody wants to be coronated.

00:05:54.240 I'm not going to pull out because they think that I shouldn't be there.

00:05:57.400 Because I'm fighting for normal people.

00:05:59.340 And I'll always do that.

00:06:00.320 What do you make of it?

00:06:03.540 Just bravado?

00:06:04.980 Like the kind of closing messaging?

00:06:06.800 Like, I'm a winner.

00:06:07.480 Get behind me.

00:06:08.140 Or do you think she's seen some internal polls that the rest of us haven't?

00:06:12.400 Well, they're playing it really close to their chest, if that's true.

00:06:15.480 Because Sununu this morning was saying, it's going to be great.

00:06:18.920 She's going to get to 40% or maybe above, which translates into basically a 20% loss.

00:06:24.620 But as long as you're an active candidate, you've got to say you're going to win.

00:06:28.340 And you've got to say you're never going to drop out.

00:06:30.220 Even if you know you might drop out in 12 hours.

00:06:32.100 Now, I think she's, I mean, she's a dead woman walking right now. 1.00

00:06:35.660 But if she loses, it's really over.

00:06:37.840 I expect it to play out a little bit like the DeSantis, the way DeSantis did.

00:06:42.200 It's really hard.

00:06:43.120 You've put your all into this.

00:06:44.860 They work so incredibly hard.

00:06:46.440 We, you know, as pundits, we're criticizing them all the time.

00:06:49.160 It's incredibly hard work.

00:06:50.980 You feel sick a lot.

00:06:52.120 You know, you're exhausted the whole time.

00:06:53.680 You've got to smile.

00:06:54.760 And, you know, you get beaten up.

00:06:56.100 You lose.

00:06:56.600 And you've got to say you're going to win.

00:06:57.620 It's not easy.

00:06:58.240 So it'll be hard for her the way it was for DeSantis to just instantly say, I'm out.

00:07:02.000 You know, it's a consequential decision.

00:07:03.380 So you think about it.

00:07:04.460 But I would expect her to be out by the end of the week.

00:07:07.960 I don't know why she'd lose New Hampshire, where, like DeSantis, DeSantis was not going

00:07:11.700 to do better than Iowa.

00:07:12.680 Iowa matched up for him politically, given the way he was running in the nomination fight.

00:07:19.200 He had the endorsement of a popular governor.

00:07:20.920 He had an endorsement of a really important conservative activist, both of whom were wholly on board with

00:07:26.040 him.

00:07:26.300 They weren't, you know, nominal endorsements.

00:07:28.380 Same thing with Sununu.

00:07:29.300 My understanding is usually he just says, oh, I endorse you.

00:07:31.600 And then you never see him again.

00:07:32.860 As you say, he's been out there actively campaigning.

00:07:35.220 So if she doesn't win there, come really, really close there, where is it going to get better?

00:07:39.200 And there are more primaries in the nomination fight that are open to independence than people

00:07:44.760 think.

00:07:45.280 They think, like, it's New Hampshire, nowhere else.

00:07:46.820 That's not true.

00:07:47.900 But you can't win a nomination just by winning independence and losing Republicans to the

00:07:52.940 frontrunner, which is what she'll likely do tonight and what she'd do elsewhere. 0.78

00:07:56.720 So it's just going to be impossible for her.

00:07:58.540 And I would expect her to drop in fairly short order and also to endorse Trump in fairly short

00:08:03.060 order.

00:08:03.260 Mm hmm.

00:08:05.180 Charlie, it didn't happen for Ron DeSantis, your governor down in Florida and a great

00:08:10.460 governor, I think, by all three of our standards.

00:08:13.900 I've listened to you over the past year, really hopeful that he could do it.

00:08:20.200 You know, the audience knows you don't like or want Trump and then sort of wrestling with

00:08:25.760 some of his failings on the campaign trail.

00:08:28.240 And now, you know, it's like the five stages, right?

00:08:30.440 You get to acceptance.

00:08:31.880 There's the bargaining.

00:08:32.800 There's the denial.

00:08:34.100 Now there's the acceptance.

00:08:35.480 I think there are a lot of Republicans who are probably feeling what you're feeling right

00:08:38.220 now.

00:08:38.460 Just just sadness and disappointment.

00:08:40.780 Here we go again.

00:08:42.120 We had this guy who probably would have been a great executive, but he didn't have the charm,

00:08:47.640 the charisma or run the greatest campaign.

00:08:49.940 Let's be honest.

00:08:51.340 So now having had the benefit of a few days after his announcement to look back on where

00:08:56.260 he went wrong, if he went wrong, right, if it could be blamed on him at all, how are you

00:09:01.880 seeing his his campaign and how it ended?

00:09:04.640 Well, I should say up front, my primary objective in this campaign season was to see Donald Trump

00:09:11.600 lose.

00:09:12.780 Now, had the primaries come to Florida, I would have voted for DeSantis.

00:09:17.160 We had a debate at National Review quite early on.

00:09:20.400 Michael Brendan Dowdy wrote a piece essentially saying we should put all of our chips in behind

00:09:23.780 DeSantis.

00:09:24.240 I was on the side of not doing that because you never quite know how people are going to

00:09:28.300 pan out.

00:09:28.820 That's one reason you have primaries.

00:09:30.660 So you're right to say I think he's a very good governor of Florida, although I have been

00:09:34.560 critical of him in some ways.

00:09:36.320 It wasn't as if I was DeSantis or bust.

00:09:38.520 I'm anyone but Trump, really.

00:09:41.200 But I think DeSantis made a couple of big mistakes, you know, leaving aside the elements that

00:09:48.140 he can't control, such as that he's short and isn't especially charismatic, doesn't

00:09:53.340 really like campaigning.

00:09:55.500 No, those things matter, right?

00:09:56.900 I mean, they do.

00:09:57.820 The taller candidate tends to win the presidency.

00:10:00.420 It's been like this for a long time.

00:10:02.920 But he made a couple of mistakes.

00:10:04.840 And the biggest mistake that he made, in my view, as a Floridian, is that he forgot how

00:10:10.800 he's seen in Florida and why he won so big.

00:10:13.180 He won so big in Florida because he was not regarded as anything other than a normal politician.

00:10:19.860 In the country at large, he was turned into this football, a piñata at times.

00:10:24.700 But in Florida, that's just not how he's seen.

00:10:26.820 He has a moderate record on the environment.

00:10:29.240 He's really into cleaning up lakes and saving manatees and making sure the Everglades are

00:10:34.020 still there in 100 years.

00:10:37.380 Although he has taken on the teachers' unions, he raised teachers' pay twice.

00:10:41.960 He is really good at the bread and butter of politics in Florida, much of which was laid

00:10:48.320 out for him beforehand.

00:10:49.820 The state has no income tax.

00:10:51.880 It has no tax on capital gains.

00:10:54.200 There are constitutional prohibitions on raising fees.

00:10:57.580 But he did all that really well.

00:10:58.860 And he absolutely crushed the number one responsibility of a Florida governor, which is hurricanes.

00:11:04.780 I think it's the best hurricane response I've ever seen was Ron DeSantis' last year, actually

00:11:09.900 two years ago now.

00:11:10.900 And then he went on the campaign trail and he talked in this strange online language.

00:11:15.760 Everything was about wokeism.

00:11:17.560 Everything at his launch, which didn't work, the Twitter launch.

00:11:21.240 He talked about Chevron deference.

00:11:23.320 Very dear to my heart.

00:11:24.900 Probably not the first thing you mentioned when you're running for president of the United

00:11:28.240 States.

00:11:28.960 And I think this was a big mistake.

00:11:30.480 They're going to decide how big the administrative state should and can be. 0.89

00:11:34.600 Keep going.

00:11:35.760 Right.

00:11:36.140 And I just think that was a big mistake.

00:11:38.220 Now, I think, as I've said many times, that he was probably not going to win because Trump

00:11:42.820 distorts the electromagnetic field.

00:11:45.400 He's just a remarkable figure, a sui generis figure within our politics.

00:11:54.040 But I think DeSantis would have had a better chance if he had talked about things that most

00:11:57.880 people care about, which is the economy and crime.

00:12:02.500 And yes, education.

00:12:03.420 But did so in a less esoteric way or in less of a way than you would expect to see on Twitter.

00:12:10.260 And I do think that was a mistake.

00:12:12.160 It's almost as if he saw himself becoming a cultural lightning rod and he saw himself

00:12:17.320 regarded as sort of something outside of the American mainstream.

00:12:20.000 And he decided to run with that.

00:12:22.100 But that's just not how he was seen in Florida.

00:12:24.040 And he won by 20 points here as a result.

00:12:26.720 Hmm.

00:12:27.860 You know, there's been a debate now about whether he should have been touting the anti-woke

00:12:32.420 thing, Casey DeSantis's jacket where woke goes to die.

00:12:36.420 You know, Florida, I you guys are not woke.

00:12:39.280 I'm not woke.

00:12:40.140 I count myself as an anti-woke warrior and loved everything he said.

00:12:44.480 But I can see the question about whether that should have been the thing he ran on.

00:12:49.780 You know, I mean, that, as you point out, Florida's thriving.

00:12:52.860 And, you know, Trump had some tweets, Rich, about how, oh, well, you know, it's thriving

00:12:57.760 under other governors, too.

00:12:59.420 Jeb Bush is really the one who saved Florida.

00:13:01.080 It kind of runs itself now.

00:13:03.480 But Ron DeSantis really changed the voting patterns in Florida and for a good reason.

00:13:08.500 So he had some things he could have bragged about on the economy, which is the number

00:13:11.340 one thing people care about.

00:13:12.800 Maybe woke plays a 20 percent role instead of an 80 percent role, which is how it felt.

00:13:18.200 Yeah.

00:13:18.440 So first of all, I think you just can't underestimate how the performance ability plays in national

00:13:24.220 presidential politics.

00:13:25.460 And there's just there's not one thing anyone can remember that Ron DeSantis said that was

00:13:29.940 funny the entire campaign.

00:13:31.940 Right.

00:13:32.180 But maybe the closest I can remember the CNN town hall he did with Caitlin Collins.

00:13:37.300 And it was after Nikki Haley had messed up her name, called her Caitlin Clark, who apparently 0.98

00:13:40.900 is a fantastic college basketball player.

00:13:43.220 So DeSantis came out with the Caitlin Clark jersey to give to Caitlin Collins, which was

00:13:47.360 sort of light or funny, but it was making fun of Nikki Haley.

00:13:49.800 It wasn't making fun of himself.

00:13:51.340 You know, he had a lot of material to use for self-deprecating humor.

00:13:54.040 Even after that horrible last debate, he goes with Anderson Cooper for the interview afterwards.

00:14:00.460 And he seemed relaxed.

00:14:01.660 I mean, it was actually like a transformative thing to see him relax.

00:14:04.700 I don't know what was going on, but he talked at the end about his five-year-old kid being

00:14:09.840 in the front row in the whole debate and making it to, you know, through the entire

00:14:13.840 thing, awake.

00:14:14.740 So why didn't he start that debate saying, you know, here's my son.

00:14:17.480 I don't know his name.

00:14:18.300 She's sitting on Casey's lap.

00:14:19.560 And this is the most important metric for me in this debate, whether I'm to succeed

00:14:23.100 or not, whether I can keep him awake or whether he's going to fall asleep on me.

00:14:26.640 But he just that's not his repertoire.

00:14:28.640 He doesn't even think of doing it.

00:14:30.660 And it's not the most important quality of president.

00:14:33.680 No, but it's really important quality for people to identify with a political candidate.

00:14:38.080 Now, overemphasizing the woke stuff.

00:14:39.820 Yeah, I think in retrospect, he did.

00:14:41.420 I don't think it was crazy what he was trying to do at the beginning.

00:14:43.800 And it went to the big strategic theory of the campaign, which go to the middle of the

00:14:47.800 party, not the middle ideologically, but the middle in terms of feelings towards Trump,

00:14:52.720 MAGA people who are kind of soft on Trump and in theory persuadable to be moved away from

00:14:58.100 him and convince them that DeSantis is pure and more of a fighter.

00:15:03.680 On this cultural stuff than Trump is.

00:15:05.680 And, you know, Trump is not really into the trans thing.

00:15:08.340 You know, abortion, he's obviously been much, much weaker this time around.

00:15:13.020 But it's just impossible to convince people that Trump is soft on cultural stuff because

00:15:17.980 he's such a cultural symbol himself.

00:15:20.140 And then you get the indictments.

00:15:21.460 If these people are movable at all, maybe they just weren't.

00:15:23.600 But you get the indictments that bond them to Trump.

00:15:27.000 And then his theory was, I'll get these people, these soft Trump voters, and then I'll establish

00:15:31.920 such strength.

00:15:33.160 All the non-Trump people, and they're not a majority, so I got to worry about these people

00:15:36.980 first.

00:15:37.680 The 20 to 25 percent never non-Trump people will just come to me because they have to.

00:15:43.700 Everyone, all the other candidates are flaking away and dropping out.

00:15:46.460 So then I have maybe a winning plurality.

00:15:48.920 And that works on paper.

00:15:49.860 But he couldn't get the soft Trump voters.

00:15:52.440 And then Nikki Haley vacuums up the non-Trump voters. 1.00

00:15:55.380 And that's why you're 20 percent in your strongest state in Iowa and 5 to 10 percent everywhere

00:15:59.980 else and just done.

00:16:02.180 That's such insightful analysis.

00:16:04.540 I totally agree.

00:16:05.300 He has a sense of humor.

00:16:07.520 You know, when I went down there to interview him in Florida, he, like the dinner itself

00:16:13.160 that we had the night before is off the record.

00:16:14.920 But I will tell you, he was telling stories that had us rolling.

00:16:18.280 There was an amazing story he told about a particular U.S. senator who went in front of

00:16:23.860 Trump when Trump was in the Oval Office, which I'm not at liberty to repeat.

00:16:27.380 But in telling the story, he, DeSantis, did an imitation of Trump that was the best.

00:16:34.560 I mean, it was among the best imitations I've heard.

00:16:37.300 And he did it with gusto.

00:16:38.860 You know, he didn't half-ass it.

00:16:40.740 And it was great.

00:16:42.020 I had a smile from ear to ear.

00:16:43.540 I was genuinely entertained.

00:16:44.780 And it got me thinking, you know, you know how they used to, in the law, they used to

00:16:49.160 say, I'm sure you guys have heard this, you hire the A students from the top schools to

00:16:53.220 write the appellate briefs.

00:16:54.560 And you hire like the C students at the second and third tier schools to actually get in front

00:17:00.260 of a jury.

00:17:01.280 Because those are people who were smart enough to get into law school and make it through

00:17:04.580 law school.

00:17:04.980 But they're more likely to be people persons.

00:17:09.020 And DeSantis has had this stellar resume career, right?

00:17:13.740 With like the Yale and the Harvard Law School and right.

00:17:18.000 And then went right to the JAG Corps.

00:17:19.860 I mean, he's been building the presidential resume from the time he was, you know, 17.

00:17:24.400 And I do think that probably makes you risk averse.

00:17:27.480 If you're not a natural people person, your inclination would not be to press past your

00:17:34.140 veneer.

00:17:34.900 It would be like, everything I've done has gotten to me what I've achieved so far.

00:17:39.180 I should not let down any of these defenses, Rich.

00:17:42.700 Yeah.

00:17:43.180 So just a couple of things.

00:17:44.660 I probably have thoughts on this too.

00:17:46.920 But it's hard to, you know, there's only a certain level which you can manage a presidential

00:17:52.040 candidate.

00:17:52.340 But what they should have done, every time you said something funny in private, that

00:17:56.360 someone should have written it down and some material they can't use, right?

00:17:59.640 You're making, you're not going to mock Trump that way, or you can't talk about the senator

00:18:03.380 by name.

00:18:04.100 And then have them try it out on the stump and stuff that's funny.

00:18:08.420 You're a public performer, Megan.

00:18:10.360 You need to do speaking.

00:18:11.220 Once you have a joke, you know, that's gold, right?

00:18:14.540 People love that.

00:18:15.700 It makes you more relaxed.

00:18:17.880 If people laugh at something you say that's intended to be funny, it bonds people to you.

00:18:21.960 It makes them think better of you.

00:18:23.440 Just use that.

00:18:24.100 And then you have 10 things you can work in.

00:18:26.160 But apparently it just, and this all goes to the top, he's just uninterested in it.

00:18:29.560 And I'd never heard your theory, but I think that makes a lot of sense.

00:18:32.560 And then the last thing, that thing about doing something wrong and the A student worried

00:18:36.900 about the misstep because he'd never made one in his life.

00:18:39.400 This was a key thing.

00:18:41.100 One reason people associate Trump with strength is he's fearless.

00:18:45.040 He's not calculating what he says.

00:18:46.600 At least you can't feel the gears whirring around in his head, right?

00:18:49.980 He'll say anything about a judge.

00:18:51.240 He'll say anything about a clerk sitting next to the judge.

00:18:54.160 He'll say anything about other candidates.

00:18:56.140 He'll make up nicknames.

00:18:57.460 But both Haley and DeSantis, you could always feel they were calculating every line.

00:19:03.400 That debate they had must have been the most rehearsed, non-spontaneous debate ever.

00:19:07.720 I doubt any of them actually ever said anything they hadn't thought about beforehand or written

00:19:11.640 down beforehand.

00:19:13.280 And that feels weak.

00:19:14.560 It feels insincere.

00:19:15.720 It feels inauthentic.

00:19:16.900 And this goes back to Charlie's point that DeSantis, he didn't run quite as DeSantis, right?

00:19:21.160 He's a conservative and he believes all the anti-wealth stuff.

00:19:24.420 But this isn't quite who he is.

00:19:27.320 And people could feel that, I think, and that hurt as well.

00:19:31.180 What do you make of it, Charlie?

00:19:32.200 I mean, there's a paradox here within democracy itself in that we're all sitting around and

00:19:41.740 we're describing his ability to perform.

00:19:45.340 But the job he's running for is mostly not about performance.

00:19:51.960 I mean, if you look at DeSantis' record as governor, he's an exceptional executive.

00:19:55.860 He's the sort of person you would want to be in charge of the federal government.

00:20:02.300 I mean, leave aside for a moment.

00:20:04.500 Sure.

00:20:05.160 Leave aside for a moment whether you agree with him or not.

00:20:07.340 Just look at his executive ability.

00:20:09.100 If he had left-wing politics, people on the left would, I think, be able to see that he

00:20:15.400 is good at being an executive.

00:20:18.840 But he's not really interested in the stuff that you need to do to be able to become the

00:20:25.040 executive.

00:20:25.680 And so he can't get there.

00:20:27.120 And I don't think he was ever interested enough in changing that.

00:20:31.800 And so he's probably not going to take the next step.

00:20:35.940 It's quite rare you do get both.

00:20:38.960 And you have people who are really good at running for president.

00:20:42.960 They're really good at the campaigning stuff.

00:20:46.680 Say Barack Obama.

00:20:48.200 Not a great leader.

00:20:49.720 You probably have to go back to Ronald Reagan, to someone who had both and who picked it up

00:20:53.720 over years.

00:20:54.700 And Rich said, when you have a joke that lands, you keep it.

00:20:58.440 Well, Reagan had 50 years.

00:21:01.460 Since he was 10 years old, he'd been telling people jokes.

00:21:04.800 He'd been through a job in the union.

00:21:06.720 He'd been the governor of California.

00:21:08.220 He'd been a spokesman for General Electric.

00:21:09.960 He'd been an actor.

00:21:11.960 You know, he had every joke at his disposal.

00:21:13.800 During that time, he also managed to turn himself into a fantastic executive as well.

00:21:21.520 Ron DeSantis had one in spades.

00:21:23.080 He didn't have the other.

00:21:24.060 It is a bit strange, though, how much we prioritize the performance quality.

00:21:28.680 I'm not saying that we're wrong, because clearly DeSantis didn't make it.

00:21:32.000 He got 20% of the vote in his best state.

00:21:33.880 But it's a bit frustrating, I must say, as someone who's lived in Florida and seen what

00:21:39.480 DeSantis has delivered, to read piece after piece, accurately describing what is wrong

00:21:46.500 with him, none of which actually has to do with the core job description that he was

00:21:52.120 seeking.

00:21:53.720 Can I add two things?

00:21:55.920 One, to emphasize the point you're making, Charlie, and one, to add a caveat.

00:21:59.640 So just what you're saying made me think the two best communicators in Republican politics

00:22:05.480 ever were Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, both of whom were hilarious, who were funny,

00:22:11.260 had an endless story, an endless store of jokes and stories, like for any circumstance,

00:22:16.360 any situation.

00:22:17.380 They could use it to deflect certain things when they're being pressed or to emphasize

00:22:21.000 a point.

00:22:21.600 So I think this humor is really important.

00:22:24.240 And Trump, not in that way, you know, Lincoln and Reagan did, but he's funny.

00:22:28.120 You know, he's funny.

00:22:28.920 And I'll just add, yeah, you need a good executive to be president.

00:22:33.200 Obviously, it's hugely important.

00:22:34.280 But performance is important.

00:22:35.560 I remember, at least in the element, you need to look sad at the right times when you

00:22:40.380 need to be sad, strong when you need to look strong, even if you're not feeling it.

00:22:44.040 And George W. Bush, once we were meeting with him in the Oval Office, and he was talking

00:22:48.140 about, there's a big thing.

00:22:49.460 He doesn't read the newspapers every day.

00:22:51.080 What's wrong with him? 1.00

00:22:52.000 You know, he's an idiot. 1.00

00:22:52.720 He's not well-informed. 1.00

00:22:54.220 He's like, I read that stuff, and it upsets me.

00:22:57.280 You know, it makes me feel under attack, you know?

00:23:01.460 And if I do that, people, when I go out and do an event, they're going to, I don't want

00:23:06.180 to slouch you out there.

00:23:07.240 I don't want people to sense that about me.

00:23:10.020 So there is an inherent performance part of the job.

00:23:13.420 It's, you're absolutely right.

00:23:14.980 It's more of the campaign element than the presidency element, but it doesn't totally go away when

00:23:19.120 you're president.

00:23:19.460 By the way, both of those presidents you mentioned from the state of Illinois, I mean, Reagan

00:23:25.460 was born there, Lincoln, Illinois.

00:23:28.420 And you know what else?

00:23:29.780 Guess who else was born in Illinois?

00:23:31.440 Here's truly, just saying.

00:23:34.580 But it does.

00:23:37.000 I only know this because my 10-year-old is doing, they're researching the states and the

00:23:41.360 capitals, and he got assigned to the state of Illinois.

00:23:43.480 So he's learning all sorts of things about Illinois.

00:23:45.440 It's not been on the brain.

00:23:47.460 I will say, I've told this story long in the past, but when I was young in journalism,

00:23:51.740 there was a fairly well-known female news anchor who said to me, you should never try 0.97

00:23:59.660 to use humor on the air.

00:24:01.100 It's very dangerous to try to use humor on the air.

00:24:03.520 Like, don't do it.

00:24:04.820 And it, you know, I definitely have a goofy side and it is part of who I am to use humor.

00:24:11.300 Sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn't, but it's just, it's like an outlet.

00:24:14.860 And I did use humor on the air.

00:24:16.820 And I really think that it helped me, whether it landed or it didn't, people can tell you're

00:24:22.040 in earnest and they appreciate you kind of trying to make the, them, to entertain them

00:24:28.820 and that you can see the levity in a situation.

00:24:31.000 And all the more so when you're running for president and they, they get that you understand

00:24:36.540 there can be wars and there are people's lives and there are the economies in your hands

00:24:41.220 in some ways.

00:24:42.580 But, you know, I think I was right in this debate with this news anchor who didn't go

00:24:46.460 on to do very well.

00:24:47.860 And, um, I think Ron DeSantis, he's got the side.

00:24:51.740 That's what's frustrating.

00:24:52.480 If he didn't have it, you guys, I'd be like, well, he doesn't, he doesn't have it, but he

00:24:57.080 has it.

00:24:57.780 He just didn't, he didn't let it out.

00:24:59.840 Maybe he'll learn.

00:25:01.480 All right.

00:25:01.740 Here's Nikki Haley, who I think she tried to use humor. 0.99

00:25:07.440 She had an interesting exchange here, uh, on the campaign trail that my team teed up.

00:25:12.600 Take a look at it in SOT 11.

00:25:14.600 And you look at what's happening in this election.

00:25:17.840 Yes.

00:25:20.640 Are you going to vote for me?

00:25:27.420 Oh, get out of here. 1.00

00:25:31.740 All right.

00:25:32.540 He says he's voting for Trump.

00:25:33.500 Get out of here.

00:25:34.320 Nice.

00:25:34.760 Nicely done.

00:25:35.440 Could have been like a more poisonous moment.

00:25:37.720 But I asked my, this of my panel earlier this week, there is a, like the core MAGA base

00:25:44.540 has come to hate her hate.

00:25:47.660 And I don't think when she throws in the towel in a couple of days, they're going to do what

00:25:52.900 they're doing now with DeSantis.

00:25:54.180 I mean, there's some infighting still, like forget it.

00:25:56.120 You didn't support Trump.

00:25:56.940 You're out.

00:25:57.240 But for the most part, I think MAGA is like, yeah, welcome to the party, to the DeSantis supporters.

00:26:01.740 I just don't think, I'm not sure Nikki Haley has any sort of a future in Republican politics.

00:26:07.440 Am I wrong?

00:26:10.040 I think you're probably right.

00:26:11.380 I think she'll, there will be some deep consideration because by traditional standards, she checks

00:26:16.880 every single box.

00:26:18.040 I mean, it's insane.

00:26:18.860 She'll be the second runner up, you know, the last candidate standing against the nominee. 1.00

00:26:24.380 She has a different base in the party and a base that Trump needs a lot of if he's going

00:26:29.000 to win in November to come home.

00:26:30.960 She could help with that, help with the demographic weakness, you know, women in the suburbs. 1.00

00:26:35.800 And she's, she's performed at a high level.

00:26:37.960 This campaign, she's overperformed in this campaign, you know. 0.98

00:26:40.860 Definitely.

00:26:41.580 And DeSantis has drastically underperformed.

00:26:43.620 She, she overperformed.

00:26:44.660 So she's not going to wilt under pressure.

00:26:47.400 She's been a governor.

00:26:48.120 She's been a UN ambassador.

00:26:49.000 She could be president on day one, all that. 0.72

00:26:52.000 But, you know, the MAGA hates her.

00:26:55.500 Trump, he can't forgive anything.

00:26:57.220 I mean, he holds incredible grudges, but if it's in his interest to forgive, or if you

00:27:00.780 say something nice about him, he will forgive.

00:27:03.120 It's very transactional.

00:27:04.500 But I think the chances are against her being, being selected.

00:27:08.140 And then we talked about this in the podcast, an episode or two ago, both DeSantis and Haley,

00:27:14.140 28, it's so long, you know, and DeSantis will have the advantage.

00:27:17.660 He's a sitting governor, and so he recently left office, so he'd still have a kind of

00:27:21.740 currency.

00:27:22.600 But Nikki Haley will have been-

00:27:23.380 You're saying in 28, he will have left office within the past two years.

00:27:27.920 Yeah.

00:27:28.520 Whereas Haley, you know, it's really kind of yesterday's news, her service.

00:27:33.120 And, you know, she's out of sympathy where the party currently is. 1.00

00:27:37.780 I think the, I'm not a huge fan, but the level of hatred is off the charts and uncalled

00:27:43.660 for it, but it's because the MAGA people say, you know, not unreasonably, she represents

00:27:48.160 the old party.

00:27:49.300 Don't pick her for Veep, you know, because you're giving the old party this foothold when 0.93

00:27:53.560 we've waged this revolution and taken it over, so why are you going to give it to her?

00:27:57.000 But that's, you know, there are many reasons they hate her, but the main one is that they

00:28:01.560 associate her with the old guard.

00:28:04.380 But, you know, just to, I heard you guys talking about that.

00:28:06.840 And it was kind of depressing to think, you know, I'd love to see Ron DeSantis have an

00:28:10.160 act too in presidential politics.

00:28:13.260 But why couldn't it happen, Charlie?

00:28:15.320 Because when, in 2028, he'll have been out of it.

00:28:19.120 Yes.

00:28:19.440 Okay.

00:28:20.220 The four years of the next presidency.

00:28:23.360 But, and of course, from, I don't know, from now until, when does his term expire?

00:28:29.300 It will be in 26, right?

00:28:31.760 26.

00:28:33.060 Right?

00:28:33.780 His term expires in Florida.

00:28:35.040 So anyway, he'll be, he'll have been out of office for two years.

00:28:37.700 But Nikki Haley left UN ambassador in 2018.

00:28:41.820 What's she been doing all that? 1.00

00:28:42.720 She's been working for Boeing and earning, like she's been in the private sector and she

00:28:46.980 made a good run of it.

00:28:47.960 So why, why, why so pessimistic on Ron DeSantis' ability to resurface as a real contender in

00:28:54.540 28?

00:28:56.500 Well, I'm pessimistic because, and again, leaving aside the problems that won't go away, such

00:29:03.820 as his height and, uh, like Prisma, he is.

00:29:10.960 Charlie's a tall guy, keeps, keeps, uh, harping.

00:29:14.160 No, I, look.

00:29:14.980 He's a shortist.

00:29:15.660 He's a shortist.

00:29:16.840 I've come to this view.

00:29:18.040 I'm a college giant podcast, Charlie.

00:29:19.680 Is that what it is? 0.95

00:29:20.480 I have this view reluctantly because I think it is so silly. 0.61

00:29:23.660 And the guy who wrote the constitution, James Madison was five foot three, but it is true. 0.78

00:29:28.500 Just look at the statistics.

00:29:29.880 America elects tall people.

00:29:31.760 Um, thankfully I'm unable to become president.

00:29:34.160 So you can't draft me just because I'm tall.

00:29:36.420 But no, look, I think that DeSantis is going to be in a difficult position, whatever happens

00:29:40.700 in that if Trump wins, then DeSantis was the guy who didn't do well against Trump and the

00:29:51.300 Trump candidacy will have been ratified in a sense by the American public.

00:29:58.840 If Trump loses, then Joe Biden is going to be president of the United States again, perhaps

00:30:07.400 succeeded within his second term by Kamala Harris.

00:30:11.180 And there's going to be a great deal of upset on the right at what Joe Biden and or Kamala

00:30:18.100 Harris try to do.

00:30:19.140 And there's going to be someone who becomes the face of the resistance.

00:30:23.820 Now, in the first Biden term, that happened to be Ron DeSantis.

00:30:28.800 He had the perfect issue.

00:30:30.400 So COVID obviously spanned both presidencies, but Donald Trump was a private citizen living

00:30:40.860 in Mar-a-Lago by the time that Biden was really kicking into gear.

00:30:45.220 Ron DeSantis was not.

00:30:46.460 He was the governor of Florida, the third most popular state.

00:30:48.960 And he filed all sorts of suits.

00:30:51.100 And he was the guy on the national stage saying, we're not going to stand for this.

00:30:54.740 And he became the face of the conservative opposition to Biden.

00:31:00.920 I suspect someone else will be that in 2027, 2028, right when they need to be ahead of the

00:31:09.120 next set of primaries.

00:31:11.140 And I don't think that DeSantis' success, such as it was in Iowa, followed by his dropping

00:31:17.920 out, is going to be enough to persuade voters who at that point should be livid, Democrats

00:31:24.520 having in that scenario won four of the last five elections, to go back to that well.

00:31:30.760 And on Nikki Haley, I just think Nikki Haley, although she's done really well and far, far

00:31:34.700 better than anyone anticipated, including myself, I think Nikki Haley's success is the product

00:31:40.160 of Donald Trump being the main character.

00:31:42.600 In other words, she provides a foil to Trump.

00:31:45.740 If Donald Trump tomorrow were abducted by aliens and we never saw him again, I can't quite

00:31:50.560 see what role Nikki Haley would play in a 2028 primary. 0.83

00:31:54.920 Why would anyone, and this is no disrespect to her, she's accomplished, but why would anyone

00:31:59.920 say at that point, you know who we really need?

00:32:02.420 We need the former governor of South Carolina, former UN ambassador who hasn't been in office

00:32:07.160 by that point for more than 10 years.

00:32:09.740 And to your point, that poll I mentioned when we started asked her voters, is your vote going

00:32:19.320 to be for Haley or against Donald Trump?

00:32:22.200 And it was basically 50-50, evenly split, 46 and 46, for Haley versus for, against Trump.

00:32:29.800 Whereas with the Trump voters, 84% said, I'm going to vote for him because I want him.

00:32:35.880 I'm there to support him.

00:32:37.220 Only 10% said, I'm going to go because I don't like Nikki Haley.

00:32:40.760 That's just what's happening with the Republican party.

00:32:43.180 They love him.

00:32:43.960 They're, you know, they're under the spell.

00:32:46.500 They, they love the man.

00:32:49.500 They love his personality.

00:32:50.360 They, they see the problems with it, the temperament and all that, but they've learned to love that

00:32:54.540 too, because it's indicative of other characteristics.

00:32:57.320 I think that they value and the law affair and all that is so much the better for them.

00:33:03.600 I mean, they, they see the fighter that they love fight even harder.

00:33:06.220 He seems indestructible.

00:33:07.820 His chest gets bigger.

00:33:09.260 His shoulders get broader.

00:33:10.580 He never backs down.

00:33:11.880 He gets in the face of the judges who try to silence him.

00:33:14.560 Just, he cannot be controlled, which is another thing Republicans want to see.

00:33:18.380 They don't want anybody who can be controlled by anyone.

00:33:21.340 That's Trump and so on.

00:33:22.900 And yet I know our mutual friend, Annie McCarthy is saying over and over as are many, this is

00:33:28.960 the whole plan.

00:33:29.960 This is the Democrats plan working to perfection that they wanted to get exactly the results.

00:33:35.040 They're probably going to get tonight in New Hampshire.

00:33:36.580 They got last week in Iowa and they have been holding their fire and it's about to unleash

00:33:43.220 and it's going to be ugly.

00:33:45.500 And if you think Trump's not going to lose his status as the front runner in those swing

00:33:51.740 state polls really quickly, then you don't understand the Democrats war machine.

00:33:57.420 That's where we will pick it up right after this quick, quick break from your commercial

00:34:01.240 sponsor.

00:34:02.880 I've been indicted.

00:34:04.080 I've been indicted more than Al Capone and he got indicted less than me.

00:34:09.040 That's not right. 0.98

00:34:10.500 Now, these people are crazy. 1.00

00:34:11.800 These people are crazy. 1.00

00:34:12.860 It's weaponization. 0.99

00:34:14.260 It's going after your political opponent.

00:34:16.280 Nobody's ever done this before in the history of our country.

00:34:18.280 They do it in third world nations, but they don't do it here. 0.95

00:34:22.960 And I have a feeling maybe it's going to be the last time because people are going to

00:34:26.520 see it at the polls.

00:34:27.480 And somebody said, don't indict him anymore, please.

00:34:30.180 You're killing us.

00:34:30.880 You're going to indict him right into the White House.

00:34:32.640 We don't want to have that.

00:34:34.060 I guess today are Rich Lowry and Charles C.W.

00:34:37.640 Cook.

00:34:38.620 You know, guys, we were all together for National Review last spring on the day of the first

00:34:44.120 indictment.

00:34:44.920 And we talked, I remember about, you know, how this is just going to send the poll numbers

00:34:49.200 through the roof for him that remember that he should be on his hands and knees praying

00:34:52.920 for that Trump should for an indictment.

00:34:55.780 Lo and behold, it came and, you know, look at us now for indictments later.

00:35:00.600 However, however, as to part two of the Democrats plan, if indeed this is a plan, you know,

00:35:08.580 I don't know, sometimes I sometimes I wonder whether we get too conspiratorial on this stuff,

00:35:14.040 like there's some master Democrats pulling the strings, you know, like, OK, and then

00:35:17.440 we'll go to Fannie Willis and we'll go to Alvin Bragg and then we'll use Jack Smith or whether

00:35:22.300 they're just that vindictive that on a case by case basis, they see outrageous things and

00:35:26.980 they say, oh, that that one, too, that one, too, as opposed to like the master plan.

00:35:30.180 Anyway, there's a poll out today, Pennsylvania, interactive polls showing now Biden up eight

00:35:39.340 over Trump in Pennsylvania, which was one of the states, one of the critical swing states

00:35:43.680 that we've been watching where Trump had actually gone up over Biden by a couple of points.

00:35:47.900 Now already he's down by eight, at least in this poll.

00:35:50.760 And there were already some DeSantis supporters online saying we're doing the wrong thing.

00:35:55.840 Like this is get used to it because we're going to get a lot more polls like this.

00:36:00.900 And the this, you know, the air and the sale of Trump and his supporters is about to die

00:36:06.920 a slow and painful death, Rich.

00:36:08.420 You think so?

00:36:10.460 Yeah.

00:36:10.920 So, by the way, this is, again, talking about what went wrong in the primary, the two main

00:36:14.540 things that hurt DeSantis that were exogenous to his campaign, the indictments and the polling

00:36:18.680 showing Trump beating five, which destroyed the electability argument, which was going to be

00:36:23.040 one of the main props that that of DeSantis' case against Trump.

00:36:27.880 So I'm more bullish about Trump's chances than Andy is.

00:36:31.660 He mentioned earlier than Charlie, as we'll hear in a in a minute.

00:36:36.340 And I think it's probably going to be a 50 50 proposition in November.

00:36:39.620 And Trump easily could win.

00:36:41.380 But the case you couldn't make, which I think is true, is that this polling should polling

00:36:47.200 showing you slightly ahead of Joe Biden, given his enfeebled state in every single sense,

00:36:53.480 physically, mentally and politically, the weakest incumbent running for reelection since

00:36:57.940 George H.W. Bush and or Jimmy Carter.

00:37:00.800 That's not great.

00:37:01.740 It's just being a little bit ahead is not great before they've started the onslaught,

00:37:05.820 before trials might start and before you might get a conviction.

00:37:09.940 And a lot depends on how accurate polling is on a conviction.

00:37:14.460 Now it's catastrophic, you know, basically says everyone would would leave Trump or be

00:37:18.900 less likely to vote for him.

00:37:20.820 I kind of wonder if there'll be like the Access Hollywood tape and for three weeks be the biggest

00:37:25.420 thing ever and destroy his campaign and everyone absorbs it and forgets about it.

00:37:28.760 And and we go on.

00:37:29.920 But Trump obviously is the riskiest candidate.

00:37:31.900 He's obviously the candidate Democrats want to run against.

00:37:34.580 They think correctly.

00:37:35.780 They beat him once before.

00:37:36.960 And just a last thing on these trials, whether there's a conspiracy or, you know, they're

00:37:43.860 actively talking about this.

00:37:46.260 I don't know.

00:37:46.940 I kind of doubt it.

00:37:47.640 But I am certain that if the polling showed the opposite and three quarters of people would

00:37:52.960 be more likely to vote for Trump if you were tried and convicted of a felony, these would

00:37:59.020 all go away. 0.88

00:37:59.660 They find some reason for them to go away.

00:38:01.740 Oh, it's inappropriate to do it so close to election.

00:38:03.940 Oh, this legal theory we're advancing is a little too adventurous.

00:38:07.500 The Supreme Court has been kind of down on it lately.

00:38:11.380 We're not going to do that.

00:38:12.340 Whatever it would would be, they would find a reason.

00:38:15.740 So does Jack Smith hate Trump sincerely?

00:38:17.740 Yes.

00:38:18.080 Does Jack Smith think that Trump should be nailed to the wall for January 6th?

00:38:21.240 Yes.

00:38:21.740 Totally sincerely.

00:38:22.940 But he'd find a reason not to do it if he thought by doing this he would actually help

00:38:26.920 Trump get elected.

00:38:28.100 Of course, he knows.

00:38:29.540 And everyone on the other side thinks that it will hurt Trump's chances.

00:38:33.080 And that's why they want to do it.

00:38:34.020 And just the last thing, I think it's a total distortion of the legal process.

00:38:37.700 I think it's disgraceful.

00:38:39.280 And we'll give Trump, if he loses, if he's convicted and loses, the excuse, the rationale

00:38:44.120 to say it was rigged once again.

00:38:45.660 And he made it all up.

00:38:46.960 Not all, but most of it up.

00:38:48.700 The lion's share of it.

00:38:49.700 Most important parts of it up in 2020.

00:38:51.820 But this will be a significant distortion of our process that he'll have a legitimate claim

00:38:57.300 to scream bloody murder about if he's convicted and he loses in the aftermath.

00:39:03.660 Yeah.

00:39:04.000 I was just having a friend, a talk with a friend, a woman who was saying, no matter what, before

00:39:09.200 November, we have to make sure to be armed.

00:39:11.520 Because she's really scared that if Trump wins, the Democrats are going to riot, you know,

00:39:19.020 are going to see Antifa everywhere plus, and that if Trump loses, his core supporters

00:39:25.680 are going to be so outraged at the lawfare and it having had an effect that they too will

00:39:32.700 take to the streets.

00:39:33.900 Having said that, in general, putting January 6th to the side, Republicans don't normally

00:39:38.820 go out there and riot politically.

00:39:40.520 That hasn't been their thing.

00:39:41.900 It's been more the Democrats thing.

00:39:43.480 But you never know, Charlie, because tempers are going to be so charged going into this

00:39:47.500 next election.

00:39:49.360 He's right.

00:39:50.020 It's helping him for now.

00:39:51.200 What do you make of Pennsylvania?

00:39:52.840 And do you think these other swing states are likely to go move from that Trump into that

00:39:57.200 Biden column as the Democrats really unleash what they're capable of unleashing politically

00:40:02.260 and advertising and so on, speaking?

00:40:05.360 Yeah.

00:40:05.800 I have been encouraging people for months to step back for a moment outside of the bubble

00:40:15.860 that the three of us inhabit and say out loud the sentence, and of course, once Trump

00:40:24.500 had been indicted multiple times, his nomination was guaranteed.

00:40:28.360 And just think about it in any normal circumstance.

00:40:33.340 It's preposterous.

00:40:35.860 I'm not saying it's not true within the highly politicized bubble that we occupy, in which

00:40:45.040 Trump is a star, that Republican primary voters and influencers live in.

00:40:52.420 But it is crazy to most people.

00:40:56.660 Now, I don't know whether this was some grand plan or whether it's various prosecutors or

00:41:03.420 groups acting on their own volition or whether there's a little bit of contact, whatever it

00:41:12.160 is, you cannot force the Republican primary electorate to nominate someone.

00:41:19.780 They chose to do that.

00:41:21.980 Again, I think that is what happened.

00:41:26.320 But there's no mechanism that guarantees that outcome.

00:41:32.740 People in Iowa and today in New Hampshire, and if the primary continues, subsequently in

00:41:39.660 South Carolina and Nevada and everywhere else, have to acquiesce to the impetus that they

00:41:46.760 have been given, they have chosen of their own free will to pick the guy who lied when he

00:41:55.680 lost last time around, whose candidates flamed out in 2022 and wasted what should have been

00:42:02.320 a much better year for Republicans, who is only marginally winning when he is winning against

00:42:08.720 Joe Biden, who is effectively dead in 2024, and who is very, very likely, whether it's legitimate

00:42:18.240 or not, this is a fact, who is very, very likely to be indicted and prosecuted for crimes, as

00:42:28.740 well as the civil suits, that will carry punishments of some sort.

00:42:34.380 Republicans knew that this was coming, and they were privy to the polls that showed, as

00:42:42.340 Rich says, that if Trump is convicted, his support in the middle among moderates, independents

00:42:49.980 and suburban voters who turn out, falls off a cliff.

00:42:55.200 They made this choice.

00:42:57.520 One of the reasons, Megan, that I'm a conservative is that I try to live in the real world.

00:43:03.840 I like reality.

00:43:05.920 I like to take the evidence that is in front of me as it is, not as I wish it were.

00:43:12.200 And I see no sign that Republican primary voters have done that over the last year.

00:43:18.600 They just assume it's all going to be OK.

00:43:20.640 They are so convinced that Joe Biden is weak and beatable, which in a vacuum he is, that

00:43:26.120 they can't imagine any other outcome than a loss.

00:43:29.860 So, yeah, I think we're about to see the ramping up of the Democrat media industrial complex.

00:43:38.680 I think we're about to see the fruits of those court cases yielding consequences that Republicans

00:43:48.420 will not like and bleeding out into the real world where no one actually cares how you became

00:43:54.600 president.

00:43:55.100 They just care whether or not you've taken the oath and are able to exercise the powers

00:43:59.740 that are vested in you.

00:44:02.060 And we're all going to have to live with the results of it.

00:44:06.780 Well, that's the risk, of course, is that I think the Republican base will stay motivated.

00:44:11.380 I do believe the indictments motivate them in a special way.

00:44:16.780 They're so angry that the law system is being used in this punitive way.

00:44:23.180 But the independents are less diehard when it comes to Trump.

00:44:27.380 They're already a little iffy on Trump.

00:44:30.340 And they're saying right now to the pollsters, the big question is whether they mean it, that

00:44:36.240 they won't vote for him if he gets convicted before November.

00:44:39.280 They are saying that the only real question we have, again, is do they mean it when push

00:44:45.900 comes to shove after a year of, yes, the Democrats unleashing their best when it comes to ads

00:44:50.940 in the media.

00:44:51.800 But the Republicans will be out there, too.

00:44:53.820 And Joe Biden, you guys know as well as I do, he could fall.

00:44:58.500 He's going to have more verbal gaffes.

00:45:00.120 At the end, with an open border, and we'll get to what's happening in Texas, where the

00:45:05.220 feds are not only allowing complete chaos at the border, but they're fighting the efforts

00:45:09.820 states like Texas are making to try to protect the citizenry.

00:45:13.480 Could they actually say, I'm voting for this guy?

00:45:17.500 I'm going to vote for Joe Biden instead?

00:45:19.600 Or might they stay home when it comes down to animated Republicans and semi-animated Democrats?

00:45:27.960 Rich, they do hate Trump on the Dem side, but they don't love Biden.

00:45:32.200 And already we're seeing that lack of enthusiasm show up in places like the Black vote.

00:45:36.860 Yeah.

00:45:37.920 So as a colleague of mine pointed out a while ago, if Trump had just said after the 2020

00:45:42.500 election, I hate this, I don't think it was fair, I think it was wrong.

00:45:45.920 In fact, I think it was stolen from me, but I understand I'm never going to be able to

00:45:49.520 prove that to the satisfaction of any legal or political authorities that matter.

00:45:54.480 So I'll see you in 2024.

00:45:55.960 See you in 2024.

00:45:57.380 He'd be a heavy favorite in this race, or at least a favorite.

00:46:01.300 But he obviously didn't do that.

00:46:02.620 He disgraced himself, helped bring disgrace on the country on January 6th.

00:46:07.900 And this is the main vulnerability, the stop the steal stuff, which they haven't really

00:46:11.720 started using.

00:46:13.400 On the legal case, just another thought here.

00:46:15.440 And again, I'm relying on Andy McCarthy's thinking here, but the Alvin Bragg thing may

00:46:20.460 never get to trial. 0.95

00:46:21.300 It's so ridiculous. 0.73

00:46:22.220 Fannie Willis, that case is also a real stretch.

00:46:25.940 Classified documents, the timing is not going to work.

00:46:28.140 So this January 6th case is the main thing.

00:46:29.840 And there are signs that that is not going to get off on the dime.

00:46:32.260 And actually, it may be delayed into July or August if they wait for a Supreme Court decision

00:46:37.020 that's highly relevant to about half the case on the meaning of the instruction statutes.

00:46:40.820 So is she going to start that case in July or August and go into September or October?

00:46:44.700 I mean, that's really brazen.

00:46:46.440 So there's a chance he tips those through the raindrops the way Trump always assumes

00:46:50.200 he can and doesn't.

00:46:52.040 These trials actually don't come off before the election.

00:46:55.140 But the feeble state of Joe Biden, the economic numbers, they're just horrible.

00:47:00.040 And 75 percent of people not thinking that he's suited to be president again or can serve

00:47:05.040 as president is a huge X factor.

00:47:06.480 They can they can try to disqualify Trump and they did it in 2020.

00:47:09.980 But then there's that huge thing about people thinking he's disqualified, too.

00:47:14.100 So that's why I think it's a jump ball.

00:47:17.240 Look who's over there. 1.00

00:47:18.020 Well, that's actually where we're going to pick it up right after this.

00:47:20.460 I want to get to what's happening in Texas in the Supreme Court ruling.

00:47:22.780 But I there's a very interesting bit in the New York Post today about Michelle Obama

00:47:29.020 and a possible switcheroo.

00:47:32.140 We'll start there when we come right back.

00:47:33.820 Don't go away, guys.

00:47:34.540 So, guys, we saw Michelle Obama surface for what seemed to me to be a totally

00:47:43.120 pointless interview on a podcast the other week in the past two weeks.

00:47:49.260 And she's not promoting anything.

00:47:51.980 It was a real question about why she got out there.

00:47:53.960 She mentioned she's terrified at the prospect of Trump being reelected.

00:47:57.620 And on the heels of that, the New York Post through Cindy Adams reporting today.

00:48:02.460 And this is following up in another report that she had about a few days ago that there is a plan

00:48:11.040 to replace Joe Biden with Michelle Obama.

00:48:14.700 What she says is reportedly I'm being told that Obama has pulled donors.

00:48:19.820 This is Barack Obama for his wife and that the plan is around May, Joe Biden announces he's not

00:48:28.200 running. And this this will that allow the August convention for Michelle to get nominated at the 0.94

00:48:38.140 August convention, that they don't want to do it any earlier than May because it would make

00:48:42.200 Joe Biden a lame duck.

00:48:44.600 But sometime between May and August, their thought is that Mrs. 0.54

00:48:49.380 Obama will become the nominee, that she will be subbed in and that her team has already sent a survey

00:48:55.460 to the top heavy duty donors asking how they would feel about her as the candidate.

00:49:01.140 Now, I can't imagine an answer from top Democratic donors to that question other than we feel great

00:49:10.420 about that. Please, please have her do that.

00:49:14.960 I mean, it would be a total game changer, Rich.

00:49:17.560 It would be a total game changer.

00:49:20.600 Yeah, I'm not a fan of Michelle Obama, but have huge respect for her political skills, 0.80

00:49:25.640 which she developed. You can see her growing as a communicator and speech giver during her time in 0.87

00:49:30.140 office. She is not going to fall down. Right. She she can speak cogently, but I'd be shocked if

00:49:38.320 she wants to do it. She's been there. She's a world celebrity. You know, why would you want to 0.84

00:49:43.460 go through this? And I just don't believe in the switcheroo scenario. Yes. If Biden suffers,

00:49:48.840 something terrible happens to Biden. Yes. And there that's not there is some serious risk to that.

00:49:56.360 Right. He could have a terrible fall at any time. But he spent his whole adult life wanting this,

00:50:02.260 thinking about how to get there, trying to get there, usually failing. And then he caught his

00:50:06.320 break in 2020. There's no way he's going to give it up voluntarily unless he and Jill really take a

00:50:12.780 serious look and realize he's not up for it physically or mentally. There's no sign they're

00:50:19.080 going to do that. And if he doesn't want to do it, doesn't want to go, there's no way to leverage

00:50:22.740 him out because I was talking to a Democrat about this a while ago. He said, you can send

00:50:27.540 Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, James Clyburn, you know, who made him as a 2020 candidate or resurrected

00:50:32.940 his campaign and say, Joe, great job. You know, you saved democracy. You've transformed our economy.

00:50:39.140 You're going to save the planet through your electric car initiatives. But it's time to go.

00:50:43.620 And you'll just say, no, no, make me. How are you going to make me? And their option at that point

00:50:47.660 would be to go out and at a press conference say he's not fit to be president anymore. And he has to go.

00:50:51.660 Are they going to do that? Because you can still not go. And now you've fundamentally damaged him.

00:50:55.400 He's going to lose to Trump. No, they're not going to do it. So the way to switch by now

00:50:58.820 would have been to run someone serious against him. They weren't going to do that. They never

00:51:03.220 had any interest in doing that. And now they're stuck with them and may, you know, even though

00:51:08.360 I think they're aware of his weaknesses, may think there's there's no good alternative because

00:51:13.220 Michelle Obama is not going to do it. So maybe Kamala Harris is going to do it if you're going to 0.97

00:51:16.180 switch him out. Is that really an improvement? And what does what would this convention look

00:51:19.880 like unless you have a consensus candidate? It'd be a huge risk, hugely complicated at a time when

00:51:25.880 he's running against this guy they consider a threat to democracy. So I think they're there.

00:51:30.420 They're in with him and into the end for better or worse.

00:51:35.440 If it's true, Charlie, that the Obamas are polling big money donors on whether they would like to see

00:51:41.020 Michelle run, then it does telegraph some interest. If it's true, we don't know.

00:51:45.940 This is what the Post is reporting. Then it does telegraph some interest by the Obamas, which I do

00:51:51.960 think many Democrats, if not most, would see as a huge lifeline. I don't know. I don't see Joe Biden

00:51:57.840 voluntarily ceding power either. I've said that all along. But if you have a scenario in which the New

00:52:03.280 York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, MSNBC, CNN are all piling on with he has to go save America,

00:52:13.660 your final patriotic duty, cede the mantle to the next generation. And also it's anti-black if you 0.86

00:52:22.240 don't. They'll add that in too. I could see a scenario in which he gets effectively forced out. 0.82

00:52:27.960 Well, I can't. I think that the Democrats are in a difficult position here because Joe Biden is weak

00:52:38.820 and senile and regarded by the vast majority of the electorate as too old to be president.

00:52:49.240 In fact, majorities say that they suspect he will die in the second term, which is a situation voters

00:52:58.280 haven't been asked to contend with since at least Franklin Roosevelt. But the alternative is not

00:53:05.020 necessarily better. And that's because the Republican coalition is a mess and the Democratic

00:53:11.700 coalition is a mess. The Democratic coalition, in some sense, is more of a mess than the Republican

00:53:17.760 coalition. It makes less sense. The Democrats have done OK in recent years, but they've done OK with

00:53:24.900 a hodgepodge of voters that consists of extremely educated, increasingly woke, upper middle class

00:53:34.660 white people and poorer people and minorities who don't have that much in common, except that they 0.99

00:53:41.980 don't like Republicans. Now, if you are running against Donald Trump as a party, not liking Republicans

00:53:48.520 and not liking Donald Trump in particular might be enough. If you are holding a convention to decide

00:53:54.420 who should replace the one guy you could find to satisfy the coalition in 2020, you've got a bit of a

00:54:02.280 problem on your hands, especially when to get to Michelle Obama, even if she wants to be president, which I

00:54:08.420 doubt, but you said suppose it's true. To get to Michelle Obama, you have to remove Kamala Harris. You have to get 0.89

00:54:15.100 rid of her. You have to tell her she's not allowed to be president. That inspiring story of hers only goes so far. 1.00

00:54:22.500 Michelle Obama is going to be appealing to some parts of the Democratic coalition, but not to others. So is Kamala Harris.

00:54:30.940 So is Pete Buttigieg. So is anyone you can think of. Joe Biden's actually their best candidate, paradoxically.

00:54:37.500 That's how much of a mess the party is in. It's why it is, in my view, so irresponsible of Republicans to put up their

00:54:43.940 weakest candidate against him. But it's true. Nevertheless, Joe Biden is their best shot. That's why he's there.

00:54:50.100 And that's why he's probably going to stay there. Now, if he were to say, have a terrible public undeniable

00:54:58.000 fall, something that you just could not spin away in the press, something that everybody saw

00:55:04.700 and agreed was enough to prompt him to step down. Well, at that point, the situation I've just described

00:55:13.180 becomes inevitable. And maybe it is true that Michelle Obama wonders whether she would make

00:55:18.420 a good candidate. And maybe she declares and maybe she tries to get enough people on her side. 1.00

00:55:23.100 But I don't think there are going to be too many people in the Democratic Party who are going to

00:55:26.980 try and bring that about in January 2024, because the unknown is potentially much more alarming than

00:55:35.520 the known. They're banking right now on the lawfare. They're banking on Jack Smith, Fannie Willis,

00:55:42.380 who I will get to as well in one sec. Let's talk about Texas, because what's happening at the

00:55:47.700 southern border is absolutely dreadful. And there was a very disturbing, but I can see the legal 0.95

00:55:54.480 positioning for it, ruling out of the Supreme Court yesterday, in which Texas, because we really are

00:56:01.640 facing a true crisis at the southern border and Texas is dealing with the brunt of it, just fed up,

00:56:07.620 fed up at the total inaction at the feds. I mean, inaction would probably be a blessing. It's more like

00:56:12.700 action to invite people in. So they decide to launch this operation. It included busing the

00:56:19.420 illegals to sanctuary cities all over the country. That's working out very well. I think it's making 0.76

00:56:24.140 the point brilliantly. But it also included trying to fortify the border to the extent Texas can.

00:56:29.240 They put up razor wire. They put out sort of a barricade, these sort of big flotilla things in the

00:56:35.340 water down there, which remain up. And then rather than just leave well enough alone, rather than say,

00:56:41.960 this is a win for us at the federal level, Texas is going to take on this burden and we don't have

00:56:45.920 to get it through Congress and we don't have to say it was us. The Biden administration goes in and

00:56:50.780 sues them. They sued them over it, saying you got to take them down, take down the razor wire,

00:56:56.380 take down the flotilla. Allegedly, we can't perform our duties of getting to the illegal immigrants as 1.00

00:57:02.520 they're coming across the border. Three died recently, but there's been testimony that they had died long

00:57:09.000 before the feds ever could have gotten to them. In any event, they're trying to exploit it.

00:57:14.000 And the Fifth Circuit, which is a more conservative federal court of appeals, voted in favor of Texas.

00:57:20.960 And that's playing out. The government has now appealed to the Supreme Court. But while the appeal

00:57:27.860 is pending, the government asked the Supreme Court to say the feds could take down the razor wire,

00:57:35.080 that the razor wire had to come down, that these measures had to come down while they're

00:57:39.200 litigating. And the Supreme Court just agreed. They just agreed 5-4. The three libs, Chief Justice

00:57:46.020 Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett voted together to say, yeah, you can take down those things while the

00:57:51.360 case pens. Now, Texas could still win on the merits when this thing gets heard this term. But there's no

00:57:57.440 question. It was a blow. And it doesn't bode well for Texas that Barrett and Roberts voted this way,

00:58:06.040 Rich. Yeah, I don't see this as a politically good thing for Joe Biden at all. But it's just so far

00:58:12.220 beyond the politics of it. I mean, really, the country's changing by the second. And there are

00:58:17.200 there's already a crisis in city after city that's affecting kids. They're not doing anything about it.

00:58:23.060 Yeah. So on the legalities here, I need to read the circuit opinion. I have it. But

00:58:30.160 to the extent I follow this, the Supreme Court has been pretty adamant and pretty clear that just the

00:58:36.180 federal government has total authority in the area of immigration enforcement. Now, what's perverse,

00:58:41.000 right, is this is immigration non-enforcement or active lack of enforcement. But the federal

00:58:47.740 government be able to make the case, you know, what do they say? Like these barbed wires obstructing our

00:58:52.260 border patrol agents. And whether that's BS or not, I think that if the federal government says

00:58:58.260 that, the court is likely to accept it. But going back to the scenario that we're talking about with

00:59:03.400 Biden, you know, for the good of the party, if they were a clear successor, if Michelle Obama was

00:59:08.700 willing to run, he should step aside. If he thinks the country's system of government is at stake in

00:59:17.080 this election, he should do everything he can to defeat Trump. And the first thing should be removing

00:59:20.880 himself from the equation. If he's not going to do that, the second thing he should do is enforce

00:59:25.740 the border, right? This is a yawning political vulnerability that he totally created out of

00:59:32.060 discretion when he first came to office by removing all the Trump controls, and he could reinstate them,

00:59:39.640 right? Or at least say, yeah, you know what, it is a crisis, and we're going to deal with it.

00:59:43.880 And his poll numbers in immigration, which are totally in the toilet, understandably,

00:59:47.860 and is the main issue for Trump, or one of the main issues. And according to polling was the

00:59:52.460 biggest issue in the Iowa caucus, the biggest issue in the New Hampshire primary coming up

00:59:57.960 here today, it would at least minimize the political vulnerability, but he won't do it.

01:00:05.380 Now, there are some indications and numbers have been going down, because the Mexicans have been 1.00

01:00:09.740 discouraging people from coming over, apparently, in reaction to talks that the Biden folks had with

01:00:15.000 them in December. So that, I mean, that's better than the alternative. But why not do it yourself?

01:00:19.640 You're in the United States government. This is what you're signed up to do. You took an oath of

01:00:23.080 office to do. It's wrong, one, not to enforce the law. Two, it's straining jurisdictions all across the

01:00:30.560 country. And it never should have just been on Texas. Yeah, Chicago should have part of this

01:00:35.080 burden in New York and Washington, D.C. Why not? It's a national problem. And three,

01:00:40.900 there's a political element. So everything says, enforce it, you know, do your duty, but is not.

01:00:48.500 The problem is where the feds have legislated, the states aren't allowed to. I mean, it's basically

01:00:55.600 a matter of federalism. And the feds are saying, we're trying to enforce this, how they're arguing

01:01:02.720 it. The solicitor general went in there and said, we're trying to perform our duties. We're trying to

01:01:08.760 get to the illegal migrants as they're in the waters. And these fences and other barriers are 1.00

01:01:14.200 stopping us from performing our federal duties. So you can't have a Texas law that creates a barrier

01:01:19.620 between us and our federal responsibilities. And in the abstract, that's true. It just ignores the

01:01:26.180 realities, Charlie, of what's actually happening at the southern border, which is, in all honesty,

01:01:33.320 almost nothing from the feds. The border patrol would like to do more, but they don't have the

01:01:38.480 go ahead from Joe Biden. In fact, the Biden administration is all but given a green light

01:01:42.240 for people to run across the borders as long as they scream, asylum, asylum.

01:01:46.860 Well, I think it's slightly more perverse than that. And you mentioned legislation. It is true

01:01:51.900 under our system of government that the federal government in this area trumps the states.

01:01:58.720 That's a foundational principle within this area, which is covered by an enumerated power.

01:02:05.900 But the executive branch is not following the law that Congress has written. And so what the

01:02:13.040 executive branch is asking the states to do is not follow the law as it has been determined by the

01:02:19.940 federal legislature, but follow the law as it is being interpreted, and in my view misinterpreted or

01:02:25.960 not enforced by the executive branch. That's a really weird problem to grapple with. It's a problem

01:02:34.300 that starts in the White House that is also, to some extent, on Congress's shoulders, because if

01:02:40.360 Congress grew a pair, it could start to deprive the executive branch of things that it wants

01:02:47.060 in exchange for enforcement. I'm actually less critical of the Supreme Court on this than others,

01:02:58.040 especially of Amy Coney Barrett. I have seen a great deal of slings and arrows lobbed her way.

01:03:05.400 I think they're premature. As you noted, this is not a decision on the merits. The merits were never

01:03:10.720 reached. The question here is what happens before the merits are reached. I know that Amy Coney Barrett

01:03:17.040 has criticized what she calls the shadow docket and the changing of policy without any explanation.

01:03:25.580 We don't actually know what it is that she thinks or John Roberts thinks or the conservative justices

01:03:33.500 on the other side think, yeah, if it is the case that they ignore the law and give carte blanche to the 0.50

01:03:39.860 Biden administration, I'll be disappointed. But until that happens, I think we just have to

01:03:43.880 wait and see and reserve our oppobrium to where it belongs, which is Joe Biden, who, as Rich said,

01:03:51.640 came into office and explicitly decided that he was going to open up a border that had been largely

01:03:59.820 closed and that has not been dissuaded from this course of action by anything, including inexplicably,

01:04:05.420 his own self-interest. It's obviously in the interest of the Biden administration politically

01:04:10.440 to fix this. The public hates Joe Biden on immigration and the broader Democratic Party on

01:04:16.000 immigration. It's not just a presidential election year. It's also an election year in the Senate

01:04:22.220 in many places. Texas has a Senate election. Arizona has a Senate election. If you look at the last round

01:04:29.700 of House races in 2022, Republicans did pretty well in California. If they do pretty well in California

01:04:36.680 again in 2024, it'll be more difficult for Democrats to take back the House. This is one of those examples

01:04:43.000 of where fringe ideology has captured the Democratic Party to such an extent that it just can't act in

01:04:51.060 its own interests. It can't get out of its own way. I blame Joe Biden for that. To a slightly lesser

01:04:56.280 extent, I blame Congress. I'm not ready yet to blame the Supreme Court.

01:04:59.920 Hmm. Here's the problem. You can't have what's happening now in some pockets of the Republican

01:05:09.260 Party, which is folks like Chip Roy saying, ignore it. Ignore the Supreme Court ruling.

01:05:16.300 And even Governor Abbott of Texas saying, he's suggesting to me, you tell me how you read this,

01:05:24.000 that he's not going to follow it. He posted on his X account, this is not over. Texas is razor-wise.

01:05:29.900 is an effective deterrent. I will continue to defend Texas's constitutional authority to secure

01:05:36.120 the border and prevent the Biden administration from destroying our property. Now, I don't know

01:05:45.380 exactly what he's saying there, but if the feds, the way I understand it is the feds have just been

01:05:50.180 given the green light to go destroy their property, to go get those fences down while this case is

01:05:55.860 pending until we have a Supreme Court final decision. And as much as I understand how important

01:06:01.340 this issue is to Republicans, you can't have individual governors or lawmakers saying to the

01:06:09.160 U.S. Supreme Court, this is an extremely slippery slope. Rich, this is what the Democrats have been

01:06:15.040 threatening to do since Dobbs. Yep. You know, we just have to place our faith in the laws and court

01:06:23.100 decisions, even if we hate them and want to argue against them. All that's fine. But what's going to

01:06:28.620 happen? Are the Texas Rangers going to fight, you know, actively federal forces over this barbed wire?

01:06:36.180 Yeah, it is a slippery slope. You don't want to go there. I think Greg Abbott has done a great job on

01:06:41.080 this. If nothing else, just highlighting it for the entire country and making all these

01:06:45.140 Democratic mayors squawk. And my understanding, you know, these buses and flights, people are asked,

01:06:49.200 do you want to go to Michigan? You know, migrants are asked, do you want to go to Chicago? You want

01:06:52.880 to go to New York? And they say, yes, there they go. And if they want to go there, they're going to

01:06:56.540 make it there anyway. In New York, at least, and I assume this is true of other cities, that the number

01:07:01.780 of illegal immigrants who are coming in through buses and flying flights from Texas are a minuscule

01:07:07.500 percentage of the overall flow of illegal immigrants, because it's a great destination 1.00

01:07:11.560 for illegal immigrants. It's always been a destination for illegal immigrants. New York 0.93

01:07:14.740 has always welcomed them and said more. And then now you have, you know, numbers showing up that

01:07:20.180 strain the system. And all of a sudden, wow, illegal immigration isn't such a great thing.

01:07:24.140 Illegal immigrants should go someplace else or stay in Texas. 1.00

01:07:28.520 Charlie, the Texas Department of Public Safety also weighed in. The spokesperson saying the state of Texas

01:07:34.640 will maintain its current posture in deterring illegal border crossings by utilizing effective

01:07:39.880 border security measures, reinforced concertina wire, and anti-climb barriers along the Rio Grande.

01:07:46.260 The logical concern should be why the federal government continues to hinder Texas's ability

01:07:50.140 to protect its border. Correct on that second part. And I get it. I mean, I get it. You can feel

01:07:56.440 the Republican ire right now saying, F yes, Texas, don't comply. But if we start blowing off Supreme

01:08:07.020 Court decisions, like it's just kind of up to us whether those will be the rule of the land,

01:08:13.140 we're not going to like the country we'll be living in in about four or five years.

01:08:17.740 I couldn't agree more. I'm for the law. And so must be anyone who's taken an oath.

01:08:24.980 I don't quite know what those messages mean. They are somewhat ambiguous. I'd feel a lot more

01:08:29.780 comfortable with them if they ended with, but of course, we will respect the decision of the

01:08:35.440 Supreme Court. Until such time as Texas does anything, it's okay. You're allowed to talk about

01:08:43.360 ignoring court decisions or pretend that you're going to ignore court decisions, but you shouldn't.

01:08:50.700 I don't think that we want to go down this road. Just to interject quickly, there's nobody better

01:09:02.640 on guns than you are. Think of what the Democrats will do in the wake of the next Supreme Court

01:09:08.000 decision on guns. If you can just blow off the order, the ones you don't like, where do you think

01:09:13.500 this is going to go? Right. And look, the institutional right has been really good about

01:09:19.360 following bad Supreme Court decisions. And pro-lifers believe, as I do, that killing unborn

01:09:25.940 children is tantamount to murder. That law obtained for 50 years. And although it was challenged and a

01:09:35.260 movement was built to overturn it, it was followed. There was no insurrection against it. So if that's

01:09:43.900 possible, then it's possible to weather this storm. You really do not want to destroy your

01:09:49.500 constitutional order over a bad decision, especially when, as I'll say again, that bad decision

01:09:54.240 is not forthcoming yet. We have a not on the merits decision that deals with what happens until

01:10:01.700 a ruling comes down. It's temporary bad news. It's temporary bad news. And no, if the decision

01:10:08.740 is bad, then you also have to follow the law. But you especially don't want to be talking about

01:10:13.000 ignoring the law when there is no law yet. Right. What a principle to sacrifice for the

01:10:18.260 next six months. I mean, we're going to have a decision by June. You got to hold the line on

01:10:23.620 following the law. The Republicans have had the moral high ground when it comes to this for the

01:10:28.200 very reasons you point out. We haven't had the Supreme Court in conservative control for the

01:10:32.980 better part of my lifetime. And it's now is not the time to start saying you can ignore Supreme

01:10:38.000 Court decisions just as there is a conservative majority. Just wait, just hold the line. I don't

01:10:43.920 know what those statements mean either. I can read the Chip Roy one pretty clearly. Don't comply

01:10:48.400 means don't comply, though. So far, as you point out, no one's no one's done anything. Here's the

01:10:54.520 thing that is pretty galling about all of this, Rich. The Biden administration, you know, Biden

01:11:01.680 came out and he was just asked, is the border secure? And he said, no, it's not secure. And

01:11:05.560 I've been saying for 10 years, it's not secure. Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about it this week,

01:11:09.300 too. You know, is it secure? And her messaging is, you know, it's just such a problem. And like

01:11:16.120 those Republicans, they just they won't do anything. They just you know, we've proposed deal

01:11:20.720 after deal. And they just they won't do anything. And it's really unfortunate that we don't have

01:11:26.700 willing partners. I'm actually doing a pretty good imitation. And the Santa's will be laughing

01:11:33.520 at your impression. Yeah, Megan. When you run for president, that one's gonna kill. 0.85

01:11:38.760 I'll make sure you guys are in the audience. So this is what they're going to start. They're

01:11:46.580 going to do more of this. It's all the Republicans fault. The Republicans control the House right now. 0.99

01:11:50.440 You know, they wouldn't do anything about it. And and already they're trying to tie it

01:11:54.260 to this border bandaid that was tacked on by Republicans to the demand for aid, 60 billion to

01:12:02.720 Ukraine and 11 billion to Israel. And in response to that, the board, the House Republicans said,

01:12:07.820 well, give us something. We don't want to give you any of that, really. But how about some border

01:12:12.840 security if you want us to agree to that? And they got some agreements, which really aren't going to do

01:12:18.080 much, but they got something. And now Corrine Jean-Pierre is basically like, look at us. We have

01:12:23.100 a border plan and these losers are kind of stopping it. And so what do you make of this effort? And will 0.93

01:12:29.400 it work politically? Yes, they've been saying this all along, right? They've been blaming Trump when

01:12:34.300 Trump controlled it and the genius and cleverness of of what the Trump people did. And there are a couple

01:12:39.060 of things where the Trump administration was was really creative. This would be one Abraham Accords,

01:12:45.700 which totally blew up the conventional thinking about the Middle East. Another Operation Warp Speed,

01:12:50.880 which no one wants to take credit for anymore, was another one. But what they figured out was you look

01:12:55.620 at the laws and the authorities existed to actually implement programs that would really end this

01:13:01.920 problem. And that's how you get returned to remain in Mexico, because the name of the game is not

01:13:08.020 letting them in the country in the first place, because once they claim asylum and get in, they're 1.00

01:13:11.880 not going to show up for all their hearings. They're certainly not going to show up for a

01:13:14.200 deportation hearing. They'd be morons to do that. So once they're here, they stay and everyone knows 1.00

01:13:18.860 that. So you got to keep them out. That's the point of remain in Mexico, state third party 0.81

01:13:22.940 agreements. You know, if you're really being politically persecuted, which is supposed to

01:13:27.440 be the standard in Guatemala and Honduras, as soon as you walk into another country, you're not going

01:13:32.900 to be politically persecuted in that country. So you're supposed to claim asylum there, not walk

01:13:36.720 through three or four countries and come here for some reason to claim asylum, which is because you

01:13:41.160 want a job here. So they figured all that out, had a system that worked. And, you know, Title 42 played

01:13:46.660 a role, obviously, but arguably not necessarily the most important. And they blew it up. They ripped it up.

01:13:52.080 They don't need Congress to tell them to do it. They don't need Congress to give them more money

01:13:55.920 to do it. They could do it, right? They could do it right now. And they don't want to. And that's

01:14:00.760 Charlie got to this. They've become ideologically extreme on this question. Bill Clinton used to be

01:14:05.380 anti-illegal immigration, you know, Barack Obama. They were kind of BS, but their deportation numbers

01:14:12.080 that were supposedly really high because they changed the accounting on them to make them seem high

01:14:16.380 because they realize that's something you should do. Biden's the opposite because a de facto

01:14:21.400 open border has become democratic orthodoxy, like being pro-choice on abortion or pro-affirmative

01:14:27.580 action. It's something that you just don't want to cross the left on. At least Joe Biden

01:14:32.020 does it. So this whole idea that Trump messed it up or it's been a problem for 20 years. No,

01:14:37.100 Trump figured out a way to fix it. They ripped it up. They don't need permission from Congress or

01:14:41.560 anything from Congress. They could drastically alleviate this problem on their own and they don't

01:14:47.420 want to do it. This is like, this is like where they tried to say that Republicans were the ones

01:14:52.500 who wanted to defund police. This is not going to work. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's that level of argument.

01:14:57.120 Reality is too in your face, no matter where you are for people to buy this lie that this is a Trump

01:15:02.640 problem. Just look at the numbers of crossings and people are experiencing it in a personal level

01:15:07.160 now at their schools, in their towns. You know, you look at this Brooklyn school where they kicked

01:15:12.460 out the students for a night so that the illegals could be moved in. They're just feeling it. You 0.99

01:15:18.120 got the governor of Illinois begging for mercy now, even though he's a sanctuary guy. Like, no,

01:15:23.580 there'll be no mercy. There's no mercy until Texas gets some mercy. How about the southern border

01:15:28.260 states? And Bill Malugian of Fox News has been doing a great job with all of his reporting on it.

01:15:33.000 And he's he's bringing home the reality of, yes, of course, the fentanyl deaths, which is not

01:15:38.300 it's largely illegals, but it's also American citizens. But the problem is the border wide

01:15:43.440 open and being smuggled in. And then you've got the crimes. This was just one example he tweeted

01:15:50.020 last week about Virginia, a Honduran illegal immigrant charged with the sexual abuse and 0.56

01:15:55.640 quote, carnal knowledge of a child in Virginia. The guy was caught and then released from a Fairfax

01:16:03.640 County, Virginia jail without notice to the feds because it's a sanctuary jurisdiction.

01:16:08.820 They ignored the ICE detainer request on this child molester because being a sanctuary city

01:16:15.020 is more important to them. So they released this guy who likes to rape little children 0.99

01:16:22.040 back into the community. I mean, that's insane. Not the only one, of course. Actually, 1.00

01:16:28.540 Peter Doocy asked Karine Jean-Pierre about this case on Monday. Let's take a listen to that.

01:16:32.820 It's at 14. They released an illegal immigrant from Honduras who's charged with sexually assaulting

01:16:38.200 a Virginia minor and production of sexual abuse material. Doesn't that go to show that as record

01:16:45.540 numbers of people appear at the border, you guys have no idea what kind of people are coming into

01:16:51.060 this country? Let me just say, first of all, this is why the president is having negotiations with

01:16:57.860 the Senate, senators, Republicans and Democrats, right, for the past couple of weeks to deal with

01:17:03.240 what's going on with the border security, right? As it relates to border security. This is why the

01:17:09.200 president on day one put forward a comprehensive immigration plan that more than three years now,

01:17:15.620 Congress didn't do anything about. There's more work to do. There's more work to do. We understand

01:17:20.880 that. We have said that. You've heard that from the president on Friday. We understand that

01:17:24.560 there's more work to do. We need more resources. We need more funding.

01:17:28.800 There's more work to do. You're talking about the rape of a child. Okay. No one wants to hear 0.88

01:17:33.380 you're stupid. There's more work to do. Right. Right. There's like a lot of, and it's, 1.00

01:17:37.660 there's another report. Um, this is bill plus daily wire, uh, illegal immigrant from Haiti

01:17:43.560 charged with raping a developmentally disabled person in Boston, released from the jail back into

01:17:50.380 the community because it's a sanctuary jurisdiction that will not cooperate with ice. So they do not

01:17:56.240 honor ice's detainer notification saying this is a criminal. Let us know when this person gets,

01:18:02.500 they won't honor it. And these are the cities that are begging for mercy. Now it's a, no,

01:18:07.480 you'll get no mercy. Why should we have mercy on them? This is becoming an issue that people

01:18:12.760 understand on a gut level, rich. I just think they're playing with fire right now.

01:18:17.760 Yeah. I mean, releasing someone like that, sexually abusing it, developmentally disabled 1.00

01:18:24.740 person. I mean, it's infernal. It's, it's, uh, you can smell the sulfur. What's wrong with 0.94

01:18:31.060 these people? It's disgusting. And you're right. You know, as we've talked about, it's, 1.00

01:18:35.540 it's been felt in every community and there's a sense community, people feel invested in their

01:18:41.720 community, right? We've, we've seen really, um, moving statements from African-Americans in Chicago. 0.66

01:18:47.400 That's our community center, right? Now, are they hateful people? Cause they feel a sense of

01:18:51.840 ownership about it. Are they hateful because they, they think, um, their neighborhood in some sense

01:18:57.580 belongs to them? No, that's a deeply human instinct. And everyone feels wronged. If you, you think you,

01:19:04.120 the community belongs to you and your community has problems and it's, you know, trying to take care of

01:19:09.200 itself and people from who don't belong here, who violated every rule to get here, all of a sudden

01:19:15.500 are bust in and it's given to them. That that's just deeply offensive to people naturally. Right. And

01:19:21.560 people are going to feel that in Martha's vineyard. They're going to feel it in the South side of

01:19:26.280 Chicago. And this is not just, this has been a border problem for a long time and not just a border

01:19:32.180 problem. You know, these legal immigrants, they go to, you know, other places in California, 1.00

01:19:35.280 New York and big cities, but it's been felt immediately in numbers that are impossible to

01:19:41.180 ignore such that you have sanctuary city mayors and governors saying no mosque, no more. We can't 0.92

01:19:47.120 handle this, which goes to the point that there's a cost to illegal immigration, right? Which is what

01:19:51.960 immigration hawks or restrictionists, the argument they made for a very long time. You got to pay for

01:19:56.300 the medical care. You got to educate their, their, uh, kids there, there, uh, they have more kids

01:20:02.280 when they're here, they they're eligible for welfare. So the cost to all this, and they've

01:20:06.560 been considered also hateful people and wrongheaded people for pointing that out. But now, uh, all

01:20:11.700 these, uh, progressors are feeling it in real time. Plus Charlie, she didn't answer the question.

01:20:16.440 His question was, doesn't this show, you don't know who's coming in. Yeah, we don't, we don't know

01:20:21.300 who's coming in. Then we set them off under the community. And then when they commit additional

01:20:26.380 crimes, these sanctuary cities don't cooperate with federal authorities who would like to actually

01:20:31.860 potentially deport them. So the whole system is meant to endanger. That's how it looks meant to

01:20:37.160 endanger actual Americans. Yeah. You know what I don't understand about this just strategically strip

01:20:43.800 out for a second, the moral questions and just look at it purely apolitically. I don't understand

01:20:49.480 why they can't even concede that. So the sanctuary city set up is the product of a Supreme court decision

01:21:00.180 from the 1990s called Prince versus United States. It was actually about guns. The question in that

01:21:05.680 case was, do local or state, uh, authorities have to enforce federal law? In other words, can

01:21:14.860 Washington DC say that the state of Florida, uh, police officers have to enforce federal gun laws? And

01:21:23.200 the answer to that question in that case, it was written by Justice Scalia was no. He said,

01:21:27.940 if you look at the structure of our constitution, although, uh, the federal government can enforce

01:21:33.300 federal law in the States, the States don't have to help them do it with their own treasure and

01:21:38.960 personnel. And so on what became a gun case has, has also been used, um, to, to justify sanctuary

01:21:45.800 cities. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong, uh, with that decision, but the decision didn't say

01:21:50.840 that the States can't help. I mean, if the States want to help the federal government,

01:21:55.820 they're allowed to do it. And I don't understand why, even if you have some weirdo ideological

01:22:02.540 reason for not wanting to help enforce, uh, the immigration laws, I don't understand why

01:22:09.500 jurisdictions that have in their possession, uh, a rapist or a murderer don't say, all right,

01:22:15.860 but in this case, we're going to help the federal government. We're going to have this guy over to

01:22:20.540 ice. And I don't understand why, when she's asked about it from the white house podium,

01:22:25.360 Karine Jean-Pierre, even if she is completely in hock to that same weirdo ideology, can't say,

01:22:31.100 do you know what? This is a good example of the sort of immigration enforcement that we really

01:22:37.780 need. Why can't she concede that to me? It makes them look so zealous that I just don't trust them on

01:22:44.880 anything. Yeah, you shouldn't. I agree with you. All right, stand by. We're going to take a break

01:22:50.180 and then we're going to come back and talk about the latest with Fannie Willis, because, uh, there

01:22:53.940 have been a couple of developments in that case. Fascinating. She's in a lot of trouble. Stand by.

01:23:00.440 I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest,

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01:23:58.260 All right, guys. So an update in this Fannie Willis investigation. She's the DA prosecuting Trump for

01:24:09.000 alleged RICO violations in the Atlanta area, and she's under fire herself now for allegedly hiring 0.98

01:24:15.500 a special prosecutor with whom she was sleeping. Her quote paramour is the allegation in legal papers

01:24:21.740 and paying him more than she's paying the other special prosecutors. That's the allegation. And

01:24:28.180 then going to places like Aruba, Jamaica. Ooh, I want to take it. And he allegedly did. He took her,

01:24:36.180 took her to Aruba and to Napa and to Miami, and they cruised Royal Caribbean and some other line and

01:24:42.780 on and on it goes. All while he was getting paid by the taxpayers, thanks to her and getting paid a lot,

01:24:49.900 a lot more. I mean, $650,000 so far in the same time that she was earning only 200,000. So the

01:24:56.160 allegation is that it's a sort of like a vendor kickback scheme where I hire this vendor and I

01:25:01.360 give him a pretty paycheck. And then before you know it, he's giving me extras that let me go to

01:25:06.760 Aruba when I normally couldn't afford that on my DA's salary. So they had a hearing yesterday in which

01:25:12.380 the judge did unseal the marital divorce records that Nathan Wade, the special prosecutors going through

01:25:18.040 right now. As far as I can tell so far, though, not all of it has come out. Nothing new was learned.

01:25:23.360 We already had received the headlines from the credit card receipts that his soon-to-be ex-wife

01:25:30.620 released to the public, showing him buying the tickets for Fannie Willis to Aruba on Royal

01:25:36.420 Crown. As evidence goes of an affair, it's pretty dead to rights. It doesn't actually show them

01:25:41.140 sleeping together, but it's as close as you can get. And neither Fannie nor Nathan Wade has denied an

01:25:47.580 affair. Now, all of this, as you get even the New York Times weighing in with a report pointing out

01:25:54.840 Fannie Willis ran for DA with the slogan, Integrity Matters, frequently pummeling the incumbent, her 0.98

01:26:02.080 former boss, with accusations of ethical lapses. In a letter to Fannie Willis just this past Friday,

01:26:10.260 the county commissioner, quoting here from the Times,

01:26:12.120 Bob Ellis demanded documents from her in an effort to determine whether county funds paid to Nathan

01:26:18.380 Wade were converted to your personal gain in the form of subsidized travel or other gifts.

01:26:24.540 On Saturday morning, Norman Eisen, special counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first

01:26:29.340 Trump impeachment, who's been vocal in supporting this Georgia prosecution, called on Mr. Wade to step

01:26:35.280 down, saying this whole thing has become a distraction. And the New York Times adding,

01:26:40.380 at the very least, the revelations have raised questions about Ms. Willis's motivation for hiring 0.83

01:26:44.480 Mr. Wade, a legal generalist who appears to act as a sort of player manager for the prosecution's team.

01:26:51.120 A review of his more than two decades as a lawyer by the New York Times also raises the issue of his

01:26:56.480 qualifications. And they go through page after page of how he's never tried a Rico case. He's never

01:27:01.780 been a prosecutor pushing felony cases. He's been a criminal defense lawyer.

01:27:07.160 They have real questions about what he's doing on this team, besides the fact that he appears to

01:27:11.000 have been stupping Fannie Willis. So ask a different legal expert, and you'll get a different answer.

01:27:17.000 But I'll tell you, they started with Stephen Gillers, who's the god of legal ethics, Rich.

01:27:20.880 And he's the one who said, if all of this is true, she's in a world of hurt and trouble.

01:27:25.540 So I don't know that she's committed a crime. I don't know that the case against Trump or the

01:27:30.200 others falls apart. But I really don't see a way in which Fannie Willis stays as the prosecuting

01:27:34.380 attorney on this case.

01:27:36.300 Yeah, I mean, obviously, I don't know the legal niceties, but it's grotesquely unethical

01:27:41.160 on its face, right? And another Trump enemy bites the dust who's been celebrated. Maybe

01:27:48.280 she wasn't celebrated at the level of Robert Mueller or Michael Evanotti, but it's that sort of

01:27:53.100 flame out. Robert Mueller knew everything. You couldn't mess with Robert Mueller. We don't know

01:27:57.160 what Robert Mueller has, you know, that hasn't been revealed. He's going to nail Trump to the

01:28:02.380 wall. The walls are closing in. Then you get his congressional testimony. It's like, this

01:28:06.140 is an old, confused man. There's no way he was making the decisions here. He doesn't understand

01:28:10.900 the intricacies of his own investigation. Avenatti, of course, wall to wall on CNN. No one knows

01:28:16.740 how to combat Trump. You know, like Michael Avenatti, he's in Trump's head, you know, that this

01:28:21.860 case could bring Trump down. And then, you know, he's in jail. And I don't know whether

01:28:25.340 Fannie Wills is going to go to jail. But what an embarrassment. What a clown and a moron 1.00

01:28:31.200 she is. And, you know, does the case collapse because of this? I don't know. Maybe not. But 1.00

01:28:38.440 it should never have been broad. I mean, this thing is a sprawling stretch of this RICO

01:28:43.620 statute, which is broad, I think, ridiculously broad. But you shouldn't be taking advantage

01:28:49.100 of the law and trying to stretch it to nail one guy. And in this case, obviously, there's

01:28:53.340 more than one guy, but it's all at the end of the day about one guy. And that's what we're

01:28:57.160 seeing. I think the classified documents case, they have Trump dead to rights. Maybe you don't

01:29:01.800 get them on the documents, possessing the documents themselves, because, you know, Hillary did it and 0.99

01:29:06.460 Joe Biden did it and others have done it. But the obstruction related to that, if any of us did

01:29:12.620 that, you'd be in big trouble. So that's totally fair game. But you bring that, it's a complicated

01:29:16.580 case, and it's going to happen after the election, right? Instead, there's a rush to be the hero,

01:29:21.140 to be the one that brings Trump down and nails him to the wall. And that's just not how the law is

01:29:25.900 supposed to work. And now we're learning there are other ways in which the law is not supposed

01:29:30.320 to work, but it has in her office. No, a prosecutor under the ethical guidelines that govern us all 0.96

01:29:36.700 as lawyers is supposed to behave in a way that avoids even the appearance of impropriety,

01:29:42.100 even the appearance. She's clearly violated that legal ethic and more given the kickback scheme. 1.00

01:29:48.840 I mean, just bringing in a special prosecutor with whom you're having a sexual relationship

01:29:53.200 would violate the appearance of impropriety. And even she ran for office saying she wouldn't do

01:29:57.740 that. And that doesn't even count the money that she's been paying him as compared to the other

01:30:01.900 prosecutors and him giving her what appear to be kickbacks with all these trips, Charlie.

01:30:07.160 Just one other detail that I wanted to offer. They want to take her deposition in this divorce case, 1.00

01:30:12.480 Fanny's. She's saying that's an attempt to oppress me. I am oppressed by your motion to take my

01:30:18.280 deposition. The court has said, look, you haven't taken Nathan Wade's deposition in this divorce case,

01:30:23.840 and he's the husband. So let's do that first. And if Fanny Willis has particular information she can

01:30:28.960 bring to or add to what we get from him, then I'll handle that then. And there's just an interesting

01:30:35.600 detail. An attorney for Jocelyn Wade, who's going to be the ex-wife, took issue with the fact that now 1.00

01:30:44.240 they are Willis's team, Fanny Willis's team submitted in a recent court filing, they don't want her to be

01:30:50.920 deposed, saying Wade's marriage was irretrievably broken long before Fanny Willis entered the picture,

01:31:00.420 suggesting his estranged wife, quote, confessed to her own adulterous relationship. And this is so Fanny 0.97

01:31:07.120 Willis is the first one to raise this in Nathan Wade's divorce case, not Nathan Wade. And the lawyer

01:31:15.120 for Jocelyn Wade came out and said, this is the first this has been raised after 783 days that this

01:31:21.220 case has been pending. Fanny Willis is the first to raise it, quote, I have questions. It's all getting

01:31:27.140 very unseemly, doesn't reflect well on Fanny. But is it anything more than interesting grist for the 0.83

01:31:34.960 GOP media mill? Well, Trump is certainly very lucky with his enemies, many of whom start behaving like

01:31:44.080 him. And this is the great story of this Trump saga is how many of the people who go after Trump

01:31:53.120 end up picking up his worst habits and traits and exhibiting them themselves. She is not, in my view,

01:32:03.920 getting very far with her defenses. I think Ruth Marcus ripped her apart in the Washington Post 0.56

01:32:11.100 today. Fanny Willis tried to play the race car, didn't really make a great deal of sense. 1.00

01:32:17.180 She said that she was being oppressed. If so, I'm in favor of oppressing her. It sounds fairly routine.

01:32:25.040 She, well, don't you always think that when, you know, it's like when you get told that if you don't, 0.87

01:32:29.840 you don't want to have a sexual relationship with a trans person, that's transphobic. 0.86

01:32:33.080 Fine. Well, I'm transphobic then. What am I supposed to say to that? Okay, I'll do it. 0.98

01:32:36.980 I mean, if normal legal procedures are oppression, then I'm for oppression.

01:32:42.680 But she's not going to get very far with it because it's just so transparently

01:32:46.920 grotesque. Now, does it end up derailing the legal proceedings? I don't know. I do think there's a bit

01:32:55.100 of hope here from the Trump people that it will work like offsetting penalties do in the NFL,

01:33:01.140 that the referee will end up saying, well, Trump did what he's been accused of. Fanny Willis is also bad. 0.88

01:33:06.340 Those penalties offset, no yardage lost. That's not what's going to happen. Politically, though,

01:33:11.000 it's going to help. I mean, again, I'm not defending Trump here. I think that it's a disaster that Trump's

01:33:17.500 going to be the nominee. And I think Trump's done a lot of what he's been accused of. But you do not want to be in a position

01:33:23.240 as a government or as a Democratic Party pointing to these allegations, where the guy who has been

01:33:30.820 in trouble can say, look at the person who is going after me. She did all of these terrible things. 0.99

01:33:40.080 That is politically disastrous. And it actually, oddly enough, plays into Trump's central conceit,

01:33:45.420 which is that everyone in America is on the take. Everyone in America is corrupt. He's just 0.96

01:33:50.700 the guy who will say it out loud. That is not true. That is nihilism. But you want, if you're a

01:33:58.440 prosecutor or a prosecutor's office or a federal government or a state to be able to say, no,

01:34:04.460 that isn't true. Look at the person who is in charge of this process. They are cleaner than clean.

01:34:10.500 She's not. She's clearly extremely corrupt. 1.00

01:34:15.180 She's got skin in the game now. And I don't think this is a case of her taking on Trump's bad 0.68

01:34:20.700 it's the reverse. The reason she went, she came up with this cockamamie prosecution is because she 1.00

01:34:26.500 appears to be a bad person who will act on her politics. Rich, I listen to you and Andy every

01:34:30.900 Friday discuss Jack Smith, how he's got the pedal to the metal on every motion, totally unnecessary for

01:34:36.940 just trying a normal criminal case. These are partisan hacks trying to disguise themselves as

01:34:43.300 objective prosecutors just trying to uphold the law. Yeah. So just on the timing, routine January 6th

01:34:51.880 cases have taken much longer from indictment to trial date than Jack Smith wants to do with this

01:34:58.580 hugely complicated, novel case that actually might not pass Supreme Court muster at the end of the day.

01:35:06.720 It makes no sense unless he's looking at a political calendar. And of course,

01:35:09.880 he's looking at a political calendar, which he's not supposed to do.

01:35:13.480 There's no reason to be rushing all the motions that he's rushing, the appeals that he's rushing,

01:35:18.220 unless your only goal is to get Trump and get him quickly. Make sure he's got a conviction

01:35:23.820 before November that these are not good people. This is not how a normal prosecutor behaves.

01:35:29.440 And they're they're showing their true colors. Guys, thank you so much for showing yours as well.

01:35:34.840 It's always a pleasure to see them here. It's like two beautiful peacocks

01:35:38.160 right here on the Megyn Kelly show. First time we've been called peacocks. We've been

01:35:42.660 caught a lot of other things, but never peacocks. First time I've been called beautiful as well.

01:35:48.120 Great to see you. See you soon over on the editors.

01:35:51.520 Okay. Don't forget, we'll follow New Hampshire tonight. We'll have full analysis for you

01:35:54.920 tomorrow with a team of all stars.

01:36:01.820 Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:36:08.160 You're welcome.

01:36:10.840 Bye.

01:36:26.580 Bye.

01:36:32.080 Bye.

01:36:33.180 Bye.

01:36:34.200 Bye.

01:36:34.500 Bye.

01:36:34.740 Bye.

01:36:35.020 Bye.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 23, 2024

Final GOP Primary of 2024？ Plus, Fani Willis Affair Drama, with Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke ｜ Ep. 708

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