In the wake of anti-Israel protests on college campuses across the country, President Joe Biden seemed to have his own "good people on both sides" moment when discussing the recent protests. Katie Herzog and Jesse Singel join me to discuss it all and much more.
00:01:16.580Yeah, the pleasure's mine. All right, let's start with Joe Biden and his both sides moment.
00:01:21.160It's amazing how the media kind of moved right past this, but here's what he said the other day.
00:01:25.080Uh, this was Monday about whether he condemns what's happening with response in response to Israel.
00:01:34.240Do you condemn the anti-Semitic protests on college campuses?
00:01:38.380I condemn the anti-Semitic protests. That's why I've set up a program to deal with that.
00:01:43.500I also condemn those who don't understand what's going on with the Palestinians.
00:01:47.620Huh? What? What? What program has he set up to deal with the anti-Semitic?
00:01:56.540What program? I'm not sure what he's even referring to, and I'm not sure, Jesse, he knows either.
00:02:02.440Yeah, it seemed like sort of an off the cuff comment that I don't know. That one didn't bother me that much.
00:02:06.980I mean, I think he's trying to carve a middle path with a lot of people yelling at him from different directions with the election coming up.
00:02:13.940I guess if you interpret it as there's anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses, which there are, but he's also, I interpret it, Katie might disagree, as I'm trying to signal some sympathy for Palestinians stuck in Gaza.
00:02:28.100Yeah, but I mean, Trump got no such benefit of the doubt when he was trying to say, with his so-called both sidesism in Charlottesville, he was talking about the people who were out there mad about the tearing down of statues.
00:02:39.820And he had made that clear, but the media refused. They refused. They wanted to make him in support of the tiki torch white supremacists.
00:02:47.800Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any doubt that the media treats Biden and Trump differently.
00:02:53.320I think that's been well-established, but I also don't think it's really particularly fair to compare what was happening at Charlottesville to this current conflict.
00:03:01.940I mean, there is shades of anti-Semitism in both of them. For sure, I can see the parallels.
00:03:08.140But I think Jesse's right. Biden is trying to thread this very complex position, which is that there are concerns about anti-Semitism on these protests,
00:03:21.960but these protests are also legitimate. They are protesting the slaughter of civilians in Gaza, and he's trying to not alienate anybody.
00:03:32.800It is a difficult position to be in. I do not envy him.
00:03:36.380I mean, when you say the slaughter of civilians, that's just so without context. Israel's military-to-civilian death rate is one-to-one.
00:03:44.060Ours in Afghanistan, ours in Iraq was well above that. It was, I think, four-to-ones. I've heard it as much as ten-to-one.
00:03:49.900So I don't think slaughter is the right term. That suggests indiscriminate murdering of civilians, which is not what's happening.
00:03:56.080I don't think that we should take America's actions in Iraq or Afghanistan as the gold standard.
00:04:03.240It's a complicated—it is complicated, for sure. But, you know, I mean, there are children being slaughtered in Israel.
00:04:09.820There's no question about that. And did Hamas start this? Yes, they absolutely did.
00:04:14.280But it still remains the fact that there are women and children being slaughtered and starving every day in Gaza.
00:04:20.060I think, yeah, I've had a lot of—I've had a lot of trouble, like, figuring out where I stand with this as a Jew.
00:04:26.900I was so disturbed in the immediate wake of October 7th by the utter lack of any sort of empathy.
00:04:34.040Like, the inability to take one day just to say murder is bad, kidnapping is bad.
00:06:01.400I think there's a—Palestinian people, there's a mix of them.
00:06:05.380There's obviously some awful violent ones.
00:06:07.140But I just—I don't think there's anything that really justifies—I'll put it this way.
00:06:11.320If you're going to do military operations that kill a lot of women and children, I hope at the end of it, there's a good outcome that will lead to lasting security for everyone.
00:06:19.840And I'm just worried things aren't headed that way.
00:06:22.580Well, I mean, look, it's not that I have no empathy for the dying children in Gaza.
00:06:26.720It's that I blame Hamas for all of them.
00:07:42.700So at Columbia, Katie and I were debating on our podcast whether Columbia did the right thing, arresting some of them.
00:07:48.760Part of the problem is apparently the administration went to them to negotiate, and the kids said no.
00:07:53.740Until the entire University of Columbia, this billion-dollar institution, divests entirely from Israel, we are staying put.
00:08:00.440So I'm not sure what choice that leaves the administrators because it's obviously not the case that a major institution is just going to divest from an entire country like Israel.
00:08:18.800Yes, and from—I'm speculating here, but from the outside, I wonder if maybe the president of Columbia is thinking about what happened to Claudine Gay at Harvard and Liz McGill at Penn and thinking, I don't want to lose my job over this.
00:08:32.480I'm not going to let allegations of anti-Semitism derail my career.
00:08:53.880She's—this university president is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't because she actually did call in the cops to try to make some arrests and clear the campus and let, you know, order restore so that children—children and kids—could go to college per the contract that has been struck between their families and the college.
00:09:11.360And what's happening now is university senate leaders today are meeting with her, and she might get censured for calling the cops.
00:09:19.760They're—they're having an emergency meeting.
00:09:23.160They're hoping it will help calm faculty members, many of whom remain furious over the decision to call in the cops, who made more than 100 arrests last Thursday.
00:09:34.240And, yeah, she's looking at a possible censure allegation for doing that.
00:09:38.820Of course, the university senate is made up—I was on the university senate when I was at my college in Syracuse.
00:09:43.060It's made up of faculty, students, as well as alumni and administrators.
00:09:47.960So she's going to get in trouble for trying to do something, the same as you point out, she would have gotten in trouble had she done nothing.
00:09:54.840Yeah, she's either in trouble with the faculty and students or she's in trouble with Congress.
00:10:47.940But the camps, the anti-Semitic slogans, screaming, threatening things at Jews, forming these human chains that then follow the Jews and don't let the Jews cross over into their territory, that's a hard no.
00:11:25.980You should probably operate with a soft hand.
00:11:28.400But as soon as protesters are blocking people's access to places, let alone these anti-Zionist human chain, which was bizarre footage, I don't know.
00:11:39.880I think if you're going to be a protester and do that, you should accept the possibility that you're going to be arrested.
00:12:20.180Discriminatory harassment is not protected.
00:12:21.920So when you surround a group of Jewish students and chant, go back to Poland, you should be treated as if you had surrounded a group of Black students and chanted, go back to Africa.
00:12:33.180But that's what's so—I didn't mean to talk over you.
00:12:35.860But part of what's complicated about this is there's also these videos from Broadway outside Colombia, which is, like, any protest like this is going to attract every lunatic in a 50-mile radius.
00:12:46.160And I do think some of the anti-Semitic stuff—I'm not justifying it—genuinely comes from non-students.
00:12:52.460And Colombia has no jurisdiction over non-students.
00:13:39.120I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
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00:15:22.320I got a call from a friend of mine who's very interested in Massachusetts politics where Berkey sort of made a name for himself by being crazy.
00:15:29.560Everyone has been wondering where are these kids getting funding?
00:15:33.360Where are all these same tents coming from?
00:15:35.120And Fergie Chambers himself, I dropped it in our chat, tweeted, as a philanthropist and outdoor, this was April 20th.
00:15:41.520As a philanthropist and outdoor enthusiast, I have recently been glad to support U.S. college students seeking to learn about camping who don't have access to supplies.
00:15:50.860If students at more schools would like to explore this wholesome hobby, please feel free to DM me for support.
00:15:56.960So it sounds like, oh, he fled to Tunisia.
00:16:23.420Fergie Chambers to Mother Jones in March of 2024.
00:16:27.220He called Russian President Vladimir Putin one of the better statesmen of our century and described Hamas' October 7th attack as, quote, a moment of hope and inspiration for tens of millions of people.
00:16:38.140Okay, so we're getting to know Fergie a little bit.
00:16:40.360And I love that he's really trying to encourage people's love of the outdoors.
00:16:54.480My friend pointed this out to me, but we don't know about his legal situation, or I don't.
00:16:58.560He apparently left to Tunisia because he's a little bit worried about his legal situation.
00:17:03.320If Columbia students are accepting money from a guy based in Tunisia, when they try to work for Goldman Sachs in a couple of years, this could really be problematic for them.
00:17:17.940While he denies a recent claim in L.A. magazine that he chants death to America every day, that's an interesting thing to confront him with, he allows that the idea itself is more or less true.
00:17:30.420Quote, I think the most important thing for the prosperity of humanity is the destruction of the United States.
00:18:03.360I mean, that's the irony we were talking about with Heather McDonald, about these kids out there who are paying $85,000 a year at Yale or close to it at Columbia, trying to whine about oppression.
00:18:12.420And while they get their Starbucks and their sushi and their salsa and do their interpretive dance and get their tent funded by somebody else.
00:18:19.540Like, you know, when I started off on Fox as an anchor, it was 20 2007, 2007.
00:18:25.680Then when I went solo as an anchor, it was 2010.
00:18:28.660And that was when I first started to lead discussions on things like this.
00:18:32.260And I remember back then, so that's 14 years ago, saying, what's going to happen when these these narcissistic, know nothing kids graduate college?
00:18:41.860And that back then we called them politically correct.
00:18:44.660Now they're woke and go out into the world.
00:18:47.860And more and more we're seeing, well, they're going to get jobs at the universities and in corporate America and they're going to change the fundamental fabric of the nation.
00:18:54.380They they are they're winning in pocket after pocket of American industry.
00:18:58.900And there's a whole slew of offspring coming up right behind them.
00:19:03.800Now, I will say, as the mother of three children and who gets exposed to a lot of kids who are younger.
00:19:08.220Right. I think it's going to end soon.
00:19:10.920I think they've lost the tail end of Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
00:22:09.880We've, like, passed the peak of a lot of that.
00:22:12.760It doesn't surprise me that some universities or small literary magazines are still dealing with that.
00:22:17.920But I think mostly the adults in the room have realized, like, for lack of a better cliche, you can't negotiate with terrorists.
00:22:23.180And you can't just be constantly firing and canceling people.
00:22:26.700So I think a lot of things have improved, to be honest, as weird as it might be to say that today.
00:22:31.720I just feel like we can't be so—we're defensive when it comes to the issue of free speech for good reason.
00:22:38.780We've had our speech clipped and criticized and shut down—criticized is fine—but shut down and censored over and over and over for the past several years.
00:22:47.120People who are more heterodox, as I know you guys are on certain issues and have faced so-called cancellation.
00:22:53.040But we can't be so defensive of the right and the willingness and the principles behind free speech that we don't draw the line when someone actually has crossed it.
00:23:04.720But I also would allow the protesters, if I were running Colombia, I would allow them to go out and protest, to hold placards, to say, you know, the Intifada, to say from the river to the sea.
00:23:18.480It's not great, but I think half of them don't even know what it means.
00:23:22.960And I don't think I would interpret it from everybody.
00:23:23.500Right, it depends what river you're talking about, the Mississippi or—
00:23:35.860So, but, you know, standing in front of a group of Jews saying this is where the weapon should hit, like saying right here, like you're the next target of Hamas weapons, these Jews right behind me.
00:23:49.420The human chains blocking Jews from getting on campus or going to class.
00:23:53.300What we saw elsewhere with them, the Jews having to lock themselves in a library and others banging on the door.
00:24:50.400Like, I would put it higher—I think I'm agreeing with you on this.
00:24:52.620But, like, the intifada idiocy, I don't—I think you need to allow it.
00:24:57.840If you're individually harassing a Jewish student or preventing them or any student, frankly, from getting somewhere, yeah, you can't physically prevent someone from moving around the campus.
00:25:06.960But I think, generally speaking, we need to take a liberal stance on this and let people just scream themselves out, honestly.
00:25:14.500I mean, it really depends on where each individual draws the line.
00:25:18.960And the three of us would possibly get in trouble for saying other things, maybe things on—for disagreeing with some activist talking points on trans issues or things like that.
00:25:29.360And so I think to protect everybody, we really need to be as liberal as possible when it comes to this.
00:25:34.760I take my guidance from FIRE, the foundation for, what is it, individual rights and expression now, and they're clear about this.
00:25:42.620Violence is a—violence crosses the line.
00:25:45.460Discriminatory harassment crosses the line.
00:25:47.400And, of course, the way you interpret that is—it depends on the individual case.
00:25:53.680The point of protecting free speech, it includes protecting odious speech.
00:25:58.320And I think we have seen a lot of hypocrisy in the sort of broader—you know, I don't like the term, but the heterodox sphere.
00:26:05.340We have seen a lot of hypocrisy of people who have, for years, spent the last few years crowing about people getting canceled or fired for their speech, now demanding that other people get fired or canceled for their speech.
00:26:20.060I don't think anybody who's out there, you know, protesting or whatever, just pro-Palestine should get fired for being pro-Palestine.
00:26:26.900However, the people who, after 10-7, came out and celebrated the terrorist murder of infants and children, I want them canceled all day long.
00:26:41.380Tearing down hostage posters of innocents so they can't be helped and the problem can't be discussed.
00:26:47.800I want their names out there, and I want them banned.
00:26:52.940I'm perfectly happy, and I don't see any hypocrisy in that position and my stance against cancel culture, which is not about eliminating all consequences for terrible people.
00:27:05.620Yeah, but there's even here, again, not to be the pervert for nuance, but you need to unpack a few things.
00:27:12.500If someone says a pro-10-7 thing on a public university campus, they have a constitutional legal right to do so.
00:27:21.640To not—yeah, to not experience consequences.
00:27:24.020And I do think this idea that you can say whatever you want publicly and be recorded saying it, and it's not going to lead to professional consequences, like, maybe people just shouldn't express constantly opinions on every hot-button subject in public.
00:27:41.520You don't have to, but if you choose to do that, there's no constitutional amendment saying you won't get punished for it.
00:27:47.400My own view is I don't think people should be fired for political speech except in extreme situations, but there's going to be consequences.
00:27:54.380So, yeah, to me, it's just a matter of, like, protecting universities.
00:27:57.460How if you are running a small dentist's office and you've got two dentists and your chief hygienist is cheering on the 10-7 attack, this is what resistance looks like, you know, I don't care about the dead babies at all.
00:29:12.940I mean, like there's a price to pay to hold truly heinous opinions.
00:29:18.200Part of the problem that Katie and I have experienced is that people seem to have extremely liberal views or maybe not illiberal views of what is a heinous view.
00:29:30.180Even a friend of ours at Harvard basically had her career partially ruined because she thinks there's two sexes.
00:29:36.440And there's people who find that more offensive than celebrating 10-7, which is deranged to me.
00:29:41.660But we live in a, you know, a colorfully, entertainingly deranging country because it's the freest country on earth and people are allowed to say what they want.
00:29:48.460This is this is a good point, too, because I know you guys have both gotten in trouble, quote unquote, for your views on the trans issue, like biological sex is real and people aren't two sexes or three genders or a tree gender or spring gender, whatever it is.
00:30:11.280But I do think the trans thing is an interesting parallel because I'm very, very aware of the fact that this has come back to haunt our side on this many, many times.
00:30:22.060And what they say, these trans advocates, is you're arguing for my erasure.
00:30:28.720You don't recognize my right to exist, which is kind of similar to what some of these Jewish students on campus are saying.
00:30:39.020And in one situation, it may actually be real, the Jewish situation, if you're saying, you know, gee, I really hope Hamas targets you next with its rockets.
00:30:48.540And in one, it's not you're not saying you can't exist.
00:30:53.380You're saying I don't see this issue of gender and biological sex the way you do.
00:30:58.100You can continue existing just as you are.
00:31:01.000It doesn't mean I have to say you can come into a woman's bathroom or come into women's sports.
00:31:05.220But I see your argument on the slippery slope.
00:31:07.500I don't I was hard on you, Jesse, but I also have the same worries about where we're not going to be the ones who get to draw the line.
00:31:15.560It's going to be the hard leftists who get to draw the line or the heart or the heart right wingers.
00:31:20.200I mean, this is why Jesse and I have been talking about this now for four years with each other on our show.
00:31:25.740And this is why we tend to draw the line as liberally as possible.
00:31:29.520This is why I think the First Amendment really is the best the best metric here.
00:31:35.700Part of defending speech is defending is defending speech that you find odious.
00:31:40.480And as Jesse said, there are people who find the fact that you, Megan, misgender.
00:32:18.460And that means hearing things that really, really disturb you.
00:32:22.740I'm sure for some Jews on campus, I'm also sure there are plenty of Jews who are parked out in one, who are sleeping in one of Fergie Chambers tents right now.
00:32:31.760But there are, I'm sure there are plenty of Jews at Columbia who are deeply uncomfortable, maybe offended, maybe hurt by what's happening right now.
00:32:40.160But we've also talked for the last few years about this concept of safetyism.
00:32:44.060We've said things like words are not violence.
00:32:48.680But they actually have reason to be concerned, at least according to this rabbi who sent out a message to some 300 or 200 Jewish students on the campus of Columbia on Monday saying, I am sorry to say this, but you should not come to campus.
00:33:06.040I've been informed that campus police cannot guarantee your safety.
00:33:12.260And like this is something if if if my kid were there and received such a warning from a respected rabbi connected with the university, I would not send him.
00:33:22.520I would urge him not to go, even though I'm much more of the normal reaction of get in there and get up in their grill.
00:33:27.980But I want my child to be safe and to live.
00:33:31.240This isn't the bullshit rhetorical safety that we get lectured on.
00:33:34.100I don't want to slice the kosher salami too thin, but there's a fair number of Jewish students in the encampments on the pro-Palestinian side.
00:33:44.100I have not seen any evidence that this is as straightforward as Jewish students being attacked.
00:33:49.900And I know people are going to be mad at me for making this distinction.
00:33:52.060But I think if you go up to one of these protests and identify yourself as a Zionist or pro-Israel, yeah, things are very heated.
00:33:59.460And there have been a small number of physical attacks.
00:34:01.380I also like I just people should keep the perspective in mind that given how big a country this is, how many protests have been, how many how raucous those protests have been, there has not been a lot of violence.
00:34:24.020When I watched the tape, I did not think it was an intentional stabbing, but she did get a Palestinian flag in the eye.
00:34:29.280Yeah, but then there was a protest down in Vanderbilt where there was actual violence that broke out in the back of that truck where somebody got attacked with a with an Israeli flag.
00:34:38.440I think it was an Israeli flag that was used against a pro-Israeli person.
00:36:09.220I think if you're Jewish, we have a unique, uniquely horrific recent history.
00:36:15.860And it's understandable that that will color the way we interpret the world.
00:36:18.800And I think sometimes I don't know how to phrase this because it's impossible to phrase this without pissing people off.
00:36:25.940But but sometimes like we there's a little bit of catastrophizing going on.
00:36:30.240I saw an Israeli professor at Columbia who was barred from reentering the campus compare that to when the Nazis barred Jews from entering German universities.
00:36:44.740I don't think it helps anybody to pretend we're on the verge of another Holocaust or widespread pogroms.
00:36:51.320And this is the same argument Katie and I have made when people claim that unarmed black people are being killed in droves or trans women are being killed in droves.
00:36:59.500There's a little bit of a tendency for people to spread the scariest version of a given moment.
00:37:03.720And while I think there's reasons to worry, I would not want to be a Jewish student in Columbia who is who is pro-Israel.
00:37:08.100I just I think there's something to be said for maybe chilling out a little bit, frankly, even being a Jewish student who's wearing a yarmulke, whatever your feelings on Israel is not going to go well for you.
00:37:17.820If you're a Jewish student, just wear a keffiyeh.
00:37:27.400I don't I don't want to end without spending a minute on the trans stuff.
00:37:30.880You guys are really good and have really been leaders on that at a time when it was very controversial to say what was real.
00:37:38.100And we just had a disappointing result in New Hampshire as the House there was taking up this bill that would have banned boys from girls public school sports and the Senate, as I understand it, there was a Senate bill.
00:37:53.220And now that the House took it up and person after person got up there to try to dissuade these House members from passing this bill, demanding that instead the boys be allowed to run in the girls races and play in the girls.
00:38:08.100There was one boy who poses as a girl trying to make this point, Mael Jacques.
00:38:17.240This person is crushing all the girls right now in his chosen sport, posing as a girl.
00:38:23.320And so needless to say, he was against the ban.
00:38:27.640Throughout my entire life, sports have been an integral part to my belonging, playing playing soccer since the age of three.
00:38:35.760When I began my transition in the sixth grade, my school welcomed me onto the girls team.
00:38:40.040This act of being able to be a part of the teams I belong to allowed me to skip through the phase of social ostracization as the other girls accepted me for who I was.
00:38:48.440Being part of the team allowed me to be seen as normal, where everywhere else I could be perceived as a pariah.
00:38:54.080I didn't join sports with the goal of dominating competition or being better than anyone else.
00:38:58.820I joined because it's something I'm passionate about and enjoy.
00:39:02.380If banned from sports teams and locker rooms, joining the male teams wouldn't even be a choice for me with the bullying and threats I'd receive, let alone the mental anguish I'd go through being forced to be someone I'm not.
00:39:12.340Yeah, you feel uncomfortable when you're forced to share a locker room with men.
00:39:18.320This guy won the girls high jump in February at the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association Division II State Indoor Track and Field Championship.
00:40:03.040You know, I haven't read the bill itself, so I'm going into this not not fully informed.
00:40:12.500I mean, it is a more complex issue than I think just the way that it's more complex than than either side, I think, has a tendency to sort of pose.
00:40:24.960I mean, if this kid transitioned and took puberty blockers from never went through male puberty, there is a difference, a physiological difference between someone like Jazz Jennings, say, and someone like, I don't know, Leah Thomas, who did go through male puberty.
00:40:43.060And I think the law, it's possible that the law should reflect that.
00:40:47.280And there are, you know, there's this tendency on why should my daughter, who's 12, have to go in to the girls locker room and see a man, a boy with a penis.
00:40:58.100Do you think that I under I totally understand where you're coming from, but I just you know who Jazz Jennings is, right?
00:41:43.240And so under your sort of what you would like to see is you would like to see someone like Buck in the changing room with your daughter.
00:41:50.760I can guarantee you, I don't know your daughter, but I can guarantee you that most women are going to feel more comfortable with someone like Jazz Jennings in the locker room than someone like Buck Angel.
00:42:00.520Well, you've made a leap that I didn't accept because it's different when it goes the other way.
00:42:05.600When you're talking about women who pose as men, it's just the safety threat is not present the way it is when it's a man posing as a woman.
00:42:12.500And you guys know all about the autogynophiles, not to mention the non-autogynophiles who are just male perverts who will exploit these rules, allowing access to our daughter's bathrooms and locker rooms.
00:42:23.500So, yeah, I'm very, very firm no on it.
00:42:26.840So you think the law should be written so that no, like just like no dicks in the ladies room?
00:42:32.340They should write the law. Biological men should not be allowed to access women's spaces, period.
00:42:36.360OK, but biological women should be allowed to access male spaces. Is that your position?
00:42:40.680It's just not my threat. It's not my issue because there is no evidence of biological women who pose as men causing any sort of a threat to men.
00:42:50.880And I believe that in part is why men don't complain about this the way they do, the way we do.
00:42:55.980And they advocate on our behalf as well.
00:42:58.440And it's also doesn't there's not the same fairness issue when they cross over into sports.
00:43:02.560No, I agree with you. But I also I mean, I read one article that your producer sent us about this.
00:43:07.800And there was one Republican legislator who said that the reason that he that he voted not to not to voted against this bill was because there was a clause in this particular bill that would also ban trans women.
00:43:24.680So trans male, I'm sorry, trans boys. So natal females from competing in men and male sports.
00:43:32.460He said that was a threat to men's sports. And so I think it's just I think it's a little bit more nuanced than both sides have its tendency to to sort of say when it comes to this.
00:43:43.220I don't know. I'd be curious to get Jesse's take on this. Jesse, what do you think?
00:43:47.840All right. Whatever. I agree with whatever Katie said, unless people later find it offensive, in which case I retroactively disavow it.