The Megyn Kelly Show - Ghouls Blame Texas Flooding on Trump, Shock Epstein Announcement, and Assassination Attempt Secrets, with Andrew Klavan and Salena Zito

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

00:00:12.040 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, another massive news day as we begin the week.

00:00:18.440 Wow. We'll get to Texas in one second, but just first, the DOJ and the FBI have reportedly concluded their investigations now

00:00:28.380 into the death of Jeffrey Epstein and have found, they say, that there is no evidence Jeffrey Epstein

00:00:36.420 blackmailed powerful figures, kept a so-called client list, or that he was murdered. Needless to

00:00:44.460 say, although I guess we shouldn't say that, it is needful to say that those conclusions have opened

00:00:50.420 up a whole new line of questions. And I, I've, I've got to add, it's, it's totally predictable.

00:00:59.880 And I'm just, so here's my headline with all due respect. I like her, but I blame Pam Bondi for

00:01:04.280 this. She, she has said all sorts of things and created big events at the white house. Like here

00:01:12.480 it is. And then blame the FBI. Oh, there's more and I'll get it. And now today we get a joint announcement,

00:01:18.300 DOJ, FBI, there's nothing, but you are, you're on camera saying you have something

00:01:23.120 like this is not the fault of the so-called conspiracy theorists. We've been led down a path.

00:01:31.520 Yes. In part due to the armchair, you know, information analysts for years now, but

00:01:35.460 this DOJ told us that we'd be getting a lot more. Um, Pam Bondi, Alina Habba went on Piers Morgan,

00:01:43.740 made a bunch of, like I, we're going to get into it. All right. But we are going to start with new

00:01:49.340 information on the awful tragedy unfolding in Texas. My God, it's a nightmare. If you listened

00:01:56.620 to our AM update show, you know, that five young campers were confirmed dead over the weekend after

00:02:02.700 flooding hit camp mystic. The campsite hit hard during the storm at around 9 AM this morning,

00:02:09.280 the camp put out a statement that reads in part camp mystic is grieving the loss of 27 campers

00:02:16.100 and counselors following the catastrophic flooding on the Guadalupe river. And I feel sad for the

00:02:22.120 counselors to, you start to read up on them. They were just teenagers themselves. The counselors are

00:02:27.080 just high school girls and the campers were eight, nine year old little girls. I mean, but none of these

00:02:33.820 was even an adult 27 lost with almost no chance, almost no chance to live whatsoever. The way this

00:02:44.100 river moved in, it's unclear exactly what number of the 27, um, are which, you know, the very young

00:02:51.660 children and the teenage counselors, but it just doesn't matter. Thinking of the terror that those

00:02:56.580 sweet souls felt it happened overnight. One minute tucked in their beds and their nightgowns at sleep

00:03:02.360 away camp, completely joyful by all accounts. The girls love this camp and the next, a wall of

00:03:09.700 rushing cold water in the total darkness of night. This is the aftermath of what happened at camp mystic

00:03:16.960 for the listening audience. You're going to see the beds inside the cabins. This is an all girls camp.

00:03:26.780 That's been around for nearly 100 years here. You see rows of bunk beds thrown about covered in mud

00:03:32.840 left behind when the water's finally receded, pink and purple blankets, stuffed animals, all stuff.

00:03:38.980 Your little girl probably has fans, photos taped to the walls, stuff they packed for what was supposed

00:03:46.080 to be a normal week of camping with new and old friends and horseback riding and Bible reading.

00:03:52.620 These were Christians. It was a Christian camp. The cabins for the youngest campers sat less than

00:03:58.520 a football field away from the Guadalupe river, which rose several feet in just minutes. They said

00:04:05.140 normally it was around one foot and went up to over 34. Among the girls lost was Renee, Renee, sorry,

00:04:16.220 Sumastrala. She was nine years old. Sumastrala. Her uncle wrote on social media. We are thankful

00:04:23.740 she was with her friends and having the time of her life as evidenced by this picture from yesterday,

00:04:28.320 the day before she died. She will forever be lying in her. She will forever be living her best life at

00:04:34.580 camp mystic. Lila Bonner and Eloise Peck were best friends and camp mates too. Here's a picture of the

00:04:41.420 two of them, arm in our arms around each other's shoulders, hugging. Eloise's mother writing on

00:04:46.620 Facebook, quote, Eloise was literally friends with everyone. She loves spaghetti, but not more than she

00:04:51.700 loved dogs and animals. She passed away with her cabin mate and best friend, Lila Bonner, who also

00:04:58.240 died. Eloise had a family who loved her fiercely for the eight years she was with us, especially her

00:05:05.360 mommy. Oh my God. It's awful. It's just so awful. The loss of life was not just at camp mystic. The

00:05:13.140 death toll continues to rise by the hour. As of noon Eastern on Monday, it stands at 82 people dead,

00:05:19.960 but it will climb. Sisters Blair and Brooke Harbor also lost their lives. They were just 11 and 13.

00:05:27.320 They were staying with their grandparents in a cabin along the same river, their grandparents still

00:05:32.200 unaccounted for. A family member said the bodies of Blair and Brooke were later found 15 miles away

00:05:37.800 from the campsite with their hands locked together. If you don't live near a river, it's sometimes hard

00:05:44.480 to imagine just how quickly they can rise. But this next video shows what people in Kerr County, Texas

00:05:51.000 and surrounding areas were up against. It was taken by Gavin Walton near Centerpoint, Texas, and he shared

00:05:56.660 it with us. Gavin tells us he took the video just after 7 a.m. on July 4th. Remember this happened

00:06:01.860 largely overnight Thursday to Friday. Look at this. He was standing on a bridge. This is downriver from

00:06:06.840 Camp Mystic. You can see the Guadalupe riverbed is almost dry with little water in it. And then

00:06:12.540 a rush of water quickly surges from around the corner. I've seen so many videos of this

00:06:18.460 online where it's dry, it's a regular road, and the next minute it's a raging river.

00:06:23.880 This next video was taken just five minutes later on the very same bridge.

00:06:29.160 The water's now filled with debris easily taking down nearby trees.

00:06:35.580 It's uprooting old trees, root and branch. This video was taken 17 minutes after the first rush of

00:06:43.840 water. Now you see the water has not only risen several feet, but has picked up speed too, speed

00:06:48.700 and force that would be nearly impossible for a youngster or even an adult to withstand.

00:06:57.440 This video taken 33 minutes in. The water's now almost as high as the bridge. Tree branches,

00:07:03.000 garbage, pieces of decks from nearby homes crashing into the bridge. And wait until you see what happens

00:07:08.840 next. As Gavin records, an entire home comes into the frame and eventually slams into the bridge.

00:07:16.120 My God. In a matter of just a few hours, the river rising from one to 34 feet.

00:07:25.000 President Trump is expected to travel to see the damage himself on Friday, saying he would go today

00:07:29.480 if he could, but he doesn't want to get in the way of rescue operations. Some in the media,

00:07:34.900 absolute ghouls all over the internet, trying to blame the president and Doge for the tragedy,

00:07:42.020 claiming cuts by Doge to the National Weather Service are to blame, that they left the agency

00:07:47.360 unprepared. There's a long list of disgusting political ghouls who are doing this. They're

00:07:57.180 insane. These are insane people. They're literally saying that these people deserved it, that these

00:08:03.540 sweet little eight-year-old girls, that the 11 and 13-year-old girls with their arms around each

00:08:08.260 other, that they deserved it because it's a Republican state and they must have voted for

00:08:15.580 Trump and Elon. So suck it. It's absolutely disgusting. Again, there's a long list. We're

00:08:23.560 going to go over it. But take a listen to ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, fresh off of settling a 16

00:08:31.000 million defamation lawsuit for lies, he told, over and over and over. He's an on-camera paid liar,

00:08:41.100 still finding ways to lie about Donald Trump, who he says is to blame for everything.

00:08:49.400 Maria, we're also learning that there were significant staffing shortfalls of the National

00:08:53.080 Weather Service's offices in the region. You know, George, as of right now, the local county

00:09:00.520 officials really didn't want to address that just yet. Okay. He wants you to know that there

00:09:07.840 were shortages at the National Weather Service. What is the relevant question? Were there shortages

00:09:13.320 in the office that was responsible for this region? Did anybody involved at that office say,

00:09:19.780 the problem was we were understaffed? We needed more bodies. To the contrary, they had extra staff

00:09:27.680 on board in that office going into this event. They understood that they were in a very precarious

00:09:34.660 situation. They brought on more than double the normal expected staff that night. And not one of them

00:09:41.140 is saying that this was the result of doge cuts. I missed that in George's toss to

00:09:49.760 his reporter on the scene. Great job. Great job informing your ABC news audience who you also

00:09:55.520 misled, by the way, your colleagues at their presidential debate between Kamala Harris and

00:10:03.260 Donald Trump on the subject of Venezuelan gangs out in Aurora, Colorado. Remember when ABC news

00:10:10.740 tried to tee up Donald Trump on that and Trump took it and said, this is what's happening with these

00:10:14.860 gang members? Well, now even the left wing media is admitting Trump was right about that. But ABC news

00:10:21.100 doesn't get it. Then if it, if, if it means Trump was right or Trump didn't do something terrible,

00:10:27.200 they're not interested. You see, because our media won't respect the dead that some of which are still

00:10:35.860 floating in the Guadalupe river. They're too focused. I'm bringing down orange man bad. They're sick.

00:10:43.480 These are sick people we're dealing with. They're on the left and they're all over the media.

00:10:50.020 It's just reached the same epic flood proportions of that very river where it's almost too strong and

00:10:58.940 overwhelming to really handle, to really get your arms around all of them. Joining me now on an

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00:12:10.780 Text MK to the number 9-8-9-8-9-8. Andrew, thank you so much for being here today. I'm horrified by the

00:12:19.640 events. We have a better chance of predicting sometimes earthquakes, sometimes hurricanes in

00:12:34.000 particular. Flash flooding seems to be a problem for us. They can predict big rains. And in this

00:12:41.900 particular circumstance, unfortunately, the big rains met very, very dry ground, which I initially

00:12:47.840 thought would be better. But no, I've since learned it's worse because I guess slightly wetter ground

00:12:53.760 can absorb the water better. It's just more absorbent. Whereas dry, dry land, like they were

00:12:59.540 seeing in Texas, they said it's like concrete. So nothing gets absorbed and the flash floods can

00:13:04.840 quickly turn a river into what's more like an ocean raging through campgrounds. But I cannot believe

00:13:12.620 the ghouls, again, on the left and in the media, who think the most important thing right now is to

00:13:18.660 make sure Trump gets blamed. Your thoughts? It's a profound, it's a profound evil because it's a

00:13:24.200 profound tragedy. I have a lot of experience with rivers. I'm a lifetime fisherman and rafter, and you

00:13:29.440 cannot, you cannot describe the power that a river has, even at a low level, the way it can reduce you

00:13:36.320 instantaneously to helplessness, the way it can carry you off as if you were nothing, as if you were a

00:13:41.760 twig just being carried away on the tide. These tragedies are going to happen. They always have

00:13:47.440 happened, and they're going to continue to happen, and they're really, really hard for the human heart

00:13:52.220 to encompass, you know, especially, maybe especially if you have faith and you want to trust in God. These

00:13:59.020 are the moments that try that faith, that try that trust, because it's hard to understand why these things

00:14:04.500 happen in the world. It's just incomprehensible, and the human heart can't handle it. There's always an

00:14:10.000 urge to look for someone to blame or something to blame, something that could have been fixed,

00:14:14.140 something that could have prevented it, and there's always something that you can find that people did

00:14:17.780 wrong because people always are imperfect, and they always do things wrong, and nobody, nobody can come

00:14:23.020 up with an answer to the power of nature. It's just something that is beyond us. To take advantage of that

00:14:29.000 absence, to take advantage of that emptiness that we feel, that need to find some kind of, make some kind

00:14:34.740 sense out of what doesn't make sense to find some kind of soft place to land in this tragedy, to sell

00:14:41.380 your particular political point of view, is actually wicked to the point of evil. You know, evil is a

00:14:48.360 word I don't like to use, but you can't help, but when you look at a guy like George Stephanopoulos, who

00:14:52.840 was hired for his place at ABC solely from his experience of silencing women who said they had been

00:15:00.360 abused by Bill Clinton, who has remained at that level of morality throughout his reporting career,

00:15:06.360 as far as I'm concerned, to stoop to that level. Dana Bash did it too at CNN. You just, you wonder

00:15:13.180 at the hollowness of them. You wonder at the fact that they're not thinking about the fact that there

00:15:18.160 are parents out there who have lost their children, which is the worst thing that can happen to you in

00:15:22.840 human life. That is the single worst thing that can happen. They're going to take advantage of that

00:15:26.940 to sell their petty politics. At some point, at some point in most human beings' hearts,

00:15:33.580 you know, left and right, at some point, there's a point when you stop and you just say, you know,

00:15:38.820 we just have to bow our heads. We have to bow our heads. We have to try to look for faith. We have to

00:15:43.320 try to look for trust and try to, you know, encompass these things that happen and have always happened

00:15:48.100 and, in my opinion, will always happen. There's only when paradise comes, maybe this will stop. But for now,

00:15:55.160 in human life, this is going to be a part of life. And to take advantage of that, whether it's a

00:15:59.800 school shooting or some kind of other act of human evil, or just this really, which is more

00:16:06.260 comprehensible than these natural events that take people we love away, and as you say, take these,

00:16:11.420 the most helpless and most beautiful and most beloved among us away, to take advantage of that

00:16:16.820 for your political purposes is just as base as is possible to be. I can't understand it exactly,

00:16:22.580 except to say that if you find yourself doing something like that because of your political

00:16:26.300 philosophy, change your political philosophy. It's time to really repent and turn your mind around

00:16:31.200 in another direction. This is what tragedy is like. You know, it really does bring out people's

00:16:37.120 characters. And I think the people who run these news media outlets should take a look at the

00:16:42.200 characters that have been exposed and do something about it. Yeah, I totally agree. Just look,

00:16:47.980 if there were clear evidence, you know, if it emerged immediately thereafter that the local

00:16:52.380 National Weather Service guys were understaffed, they only had one guy on duty where they used to

00:16:56.800 have 10 and that guy couldn't handle it. And that's what, okay, we would deal with that. You know,

00:17:00.860 we would deal with that after we had a moment to mourn the loss of these innocents. However,

00:17:08.160 the information is exactly the opposite. What we know now is that the National Weather Service,

00:17:13.920 I'm just going to walk you through it, provided over 12 hours of advance notice via the flood watch

00:17:19.820 and over three hours of lead time for flash flood warnings with escalated alerts as the storm

00:17:25.780 intensified. The main problem seems to have been it all happened overnight and most people were asleep

00:17:31.960 and really not paying that close attention. And I've heard some locals down there say something

00:17:35.800 which rings very true, which is there's also flash flood fatigue, warning fatigue. And you get this

00:17:42.980 in any area that is, you know, um, tornado alley, um, down in, I think it's in Oklahoma, that

00:17:48.900 particular area, um, or places where they have, you know, lots of warnings when there's big storms

00:17:54.980 in the winter, whatever people get used to them. And they're like, I'm not leaving. I'm not evacuating.

00:17:59.140 I'm sick of these big warnings happens in Florida with the hurricanes. And there's probably a fair

00:18:03.840 amount of people in this region who get flash flood warnings a lot and are like, eh, because maybe

00:18:09.960 they're already overused. I don't know, you know, cause that can happen too, where you're like,

00:18:13.380 they're just covering their own butts. It's not real. And I'm not evacuating, you know,

00:18:18.260 my family or a whole camp of youngsters for this, but you do that at your risk and at the risk of the

00:18:24.900 people you love or are charged with caring for. So just to keep going. And by the way, do not have

00:18:30.100 any information that the folks at camp mystic actively ignored warnings. I don't know what happened

00:18:34.820 there, but I would like to know. Um, okay. So they, there was over 12 hours of advanced notice

00:18:40.540 with a flood watch, three hours of lead time for flood warnings, which is an escalation and then

00:18:45.660 escalated alerts, um, beyond just a warning, like warnings with, um, emergencies attached to them as

00:18:52.560 they got closer to the actual floods and the storms were intensifying. So this is overnight. Um,

00:18:58.680 oh, the day before. So July, July 4th is Friday on the morning of July 3rd, the national weather

00:19:03.500 center issue to the flood hazard outlook, identifying flash flooding potential for Kerrville and

00:19:09.120 surrounding areas, which is the relevant area. 1 18 PM on July 3rd, that's Thursday. They issued a

00:19:14.980 flood watch for Kerr County effective through Friday, 6 22 PM, July 3rd national weather center

00:19:20.900 warns of considerable flooding risks, uh, North and West of San Antonio, including Kerrville 11 41 PM.

00:19:29.180 Now, now it's about to start really happening Thursday night into Friday, July 3rd, first flash

00:19:34.560 flood warning issued for Bandera County, which is right next to, uh, 1 14 AM. Now we're on July 4th,

00:19:40.900 the wee hours flash flood warning with considerable tag issued for Bandera and Kerr counties triggering

00:19:47.140 wireless emergency alerts and NOAA weather radio notifications. Now, a lot of the phones didn't have

00:19:53.380 service, I guess, historically in this area, it's tough to get cell phone service. So the locals who really

00:19:58.340 do care, we'll get a NOAA weather radio and that, that stuff works, but query who was listening to

00:20:07.340 their NOAA weather radio that night as they went to bed. You know, I would argue, look, I don't know

00:20:12.200 what happened at camp mystic, but I would argue they had an obligation to have that radio, to have

00:20:16.420 somebody awake and to have somebody listening. And I'm sorry. I know I've, I've only heard lovely

00:20:21.020 things about the people who ran the camp, but those eight year old girls should have been removed from

00:20:25.780 that obviously endangered cabin when there was the first notification and moved to higher ground.

00:20:31.980 I realize hindsight is 2020. I'm not saying it in a nasty way. I'm saying these are things we needed

00:20:36.880 to learn that you got to listen, even if it's pain in the ass to move the kids. And just a couple more

00:20:41.240 for you. 4 0 3 AM, July 4th flash flood warning upgraded to flash flood emergency for Kerr County,

00:20:49.100 including hunt 5 AM, July 4th national weather weather center warns of widespread considerable

00:20:54.000 and catastrophic flooding. And on top of all that, the associated press reports, the national

00:20:59.480 weather service office in new Braunfels, which delivers forecasts for this region had extra

00:21:05.200 staff on duty during the storms. According to Jason Runyon, a meteorologist with the national

00:21:09.560 weather service where the office would typically have two forecasters on duty during clear weather.

00:21:13.580 They had up to five on staff. There were extra people here that night. He said that's typical

00:21:18.660 in every weather service office. You staff up for an event and you bring in people on overtime

00:21:22.820 and hold them over. None of that stopped the cretins, Andrew. But it sounds like they did

00:21:29.220 what you would expect normal humans to do in advance of this kind of tragedy.

00:21:34.000 That's that is exactly the point. Going back to what you said before, if you're at the weather

00:21:38.780 service and you don't issue a warning, then and somebody gets hurt, that's on you. So you're

00:21:44.500 going to issue that warning. But that means you're going to issue a lot of warnings that don't pan out.

00:21:48.540 And ultimately, people are going to get inured to the warnings and they're not going to move every

00:21:52.240 time they hear a warning because it would be insane to do that. It would be insane to leave

00:21:56.040 your house every time the weather service feels compelled to tell you to be careful. So there's a

00:22:00.640 built in human nature, a flaw in human nature where on the one hand, it's not it's not cover your ass.

00:22:06.700 It's actually do the right thing. You issue the warnings. But a lot of them are not going to pan

00:22:11.040 out so that eventually, on the other hand, people are not going to move. And as you say, a lot of

00:22:15.680 this happened late at night. People were sleeping. They were they had been told that maybe they wanted

00:22:20.340 to install a siren. And I'm sure they should have. And I'm sure at some point you're going to find out

00:22:26.480 that somebody could have done something better because nobody ever does anything perfectly.

00:22:30.160 And that's that's going to be part of the investigation and part of what comes out over time.

00:22:33.940 But the director of the camp died trying to rescue some of these people, some of these children.

00:22:39.080 You can't you can't doubt the goodwill or the courage or the love that was on display.

00:22:43.560 The kids loved this camp because of what it was, because of the love that was on display.

00:22:48.260 This is just it's just a tragedy. That's what tragedy means. It's when something cannot be helped

00:22:53.460 because it feeds into human nature and it feeds into nature itself. And again, I'm not saying that

00:22:59.140 there shouldn't be improvements. I'm not saying there might not be somebody who did something wrong or

00:23:03.840 was careless or reckless. But at least at the beginning, I think it's time to mourn. It's time

00:23:08.840 to pray. It's time to hope that these that some people will still survive who are missing. But

00:23:15.420 and there will be time to do this investigation. I understand that we live in a minute by minute

00:23:20.660 news cycle. But still, all the same, I just I think it is one of my least favorite things about the

00:23:27.460 American news media is the search to use tragedy to push forward an agenda when the first thing should

00:23:35.900 be to take in the scope of the tragedy, support the guys, the Coast Guard and the police and the

00:23:41.320 first responders who are out there trying to rescue people. That's that's the seems to me the first

00:23:46.400 order of business. And then, yes, we have to look into what went wrong and what can be made better

00:23:50.940 without wrapping people in so much safety that they can't live. There's always going to be room

00:23:56.280 for tragedy. There is always going to be room for even this kind of unimaginable terror and tragedy.

00:24:02.340 And I think that that's something that America just hasn't seemed to get used to. You know,

00:24:07.380 it hasn't seemed to be able to teach itself that, yes, at some point, sometimes you just bow your head

00:24:11.920 and weep because that's the only thing you can do. Again, there will be investigations.

00:24:16.660 There may be things they find that can be improved, but it does not seem to me some kind of act of

00:24:21.200 massive malfeasance by the government or by anybody else. It just seems the the absolute power of nature

00:24:26.620 to carry things away when it decides that that's what it's going to do. Nature, the earth can,

00:24:32.040 you know, as George Carlin once said, the earth can earth can shrug us off like a dog shrugs off

00:24:37.480 fleas. That's how powerful it is. And that's what we were seeing witnessing in this flood.

00:24:42.640 Mm hmm. I mean, I can't I too have heard only lovely stories about the guy who ran Camp Mystic

00:24:49.620 and that he did. He died. He gave his life trying to save those kids. But I do. I do have to wonder

00:24:54.540 why would you put the most the youngest, most vulnerable so close to the river when this river

00:24:59.460 has flooded repeatedly in the past? Ten teenagers were killed in 1987. We pulled the news report.

00:25:04.620 It wasn't exactly at this area, but it was a couple of miles away. It wasn't wasn't far away.

00:25:07.860 And it's just, you know, it's 2020 hindsight, but the warnings were coming. I mean, I just I'd like

00:25:13.540 to think that a camp I went to or I sent my children to would have somebody awake and whose

00:25:18.480 responsibility it is on a night where it's heavy downpours to be listening to that NOAA weather

00:25:23.440 radio and to be taking precautions because it was a known risk. And as you point out, these rivers

00:25:27.980 can quickly go from one foot and an absolute nothing to a raging ravine that looks more like a,

00:25:35.680 you know, level five rapid that no one could be expected to survive with RV debris and tree debris,

00:25:42.200 you know, coming into a girl's cabin. You know, it's just it's the risk is just so high.

00:25:47.860 We have to learn more about exactly what went on there. We actually pulled the news report.

00:25:52.460 It looks just like William Shatner doing this report, tossing to this. I'm not sure if that could

00:25:58.400 be. Maybe he did a stint as in news for a time or maybe this guy is just a lookalike. But here is

00:26:03.260 thought too from 1987. On Friday morning, July 17th, 1987, the small town of Comfort, Texas became

00:26:10.920 a scene of a heroic rescue and tragic loss. Much of the footage you will see was taped on that day

00:26:16.680 by the banks of the Guadalupe River. It was the day they were supposed to go home. The more than 300

00:26:22.440 children at the church camp were awakened early. The river was flooded. If they didn't leave soon,

00:26:27.400 their buses might not be able to leave at all. We started going around the corner. Would it go down

00:26:33.340 the hill? Then water started coming in the bus and stuff. We tried to back up, but then the bus

00:26:38.160 got stuck. So they made all of us get out of the bus. And that's whenever the first wave hit us

00:26:43.160 and started scattering people to different trees.

00:26:52.420 Kids clinging onto the trees like ants surrounded by rushing water.

00:26:58.260 Masterman tried repeatedly to rescue 14-year-old Melanie Finley, but she was ripped away by the river.

00:27:05.000 Here she goes!

00:27:05.860 Oh, it's awful. You see these people floating in the river. When we're seeing those scenes today,

00:27:13.960 it was William Shatner. He hosted a show called Rescue 911 at the time. Okay. So there's a history,

00:27:20.460 and that wasn't the only time. It's flooded repeatedly, this river. So there was some level

00:27:25.340 of warning built in. I don't know that all the parents sending their kids to this camp were

00:27:30.520 considering it, but certainly if you're running the camp, I'm not blaming anybody. I'm just saying

00:27:33.780 these are definitely things that need to be looked into. But that's different from saying,

00:27:38.000 let's figure out how this happens so that we can build in protections at other camps where other

00:27:42.040 kids are vulnerable. Then what's happening with these just partisan hacks on the left in the media

00:27:48.260 who immediately need to find a way to blame it on Trump or to see one of their other pet core

00:27:54.080 projects or issues of their life confirmed like climate change. You mentioned Dana Bash. Here she is.

00:28:00.160 How much do you think the changing climate is part of what we are seeing go on here? Just talking

00:28:10.420 about the federal government and even the local government, two Texas National Weather Service

00:28:16.620 offices involved in forecasting and warning about flooding on the Guadalupe River are missing some

00:28:23.720 key staff members. A director of the NWS union told CNN that the Austin San Antonio office is missing a

00:28:32.540 warning coordination meteorologist due to the Trump administration's buyouts.

00:28:38.140 Right. And did she get to the part about how, but the, the area, the office responsible for this

00:28:43.480 area was overstaffed and hasn't made any complaints about missing key personnel in order to predict

00:28:49.900 this tragedy, which it did. There were also reports that the, uh, the Trump big, beautiful bill,

00:28:57.900 which hasn't even gone into effect had cut down on satellite reporting, which is also untrue. It was a,

00:29:03.820 there is a, some, something in there about the DOD not wanting to use, uh, classified satellites for

00:29:10.280 weather reporting, but had nothing to do with any of this. It's a sickness. It really is. I mean,

00:29:15.520 it, it, it obviously look, it obviously should tell you that your philosophy is wrong, that something

00:29:21.100 is wrong. If your politics, if my politics turned me into somebody who would do that, I would change

00:29:26.340 my politics. I would immediately say, what have I become? What have I done? That, that is the way

00:29:31.260 you maintain some sort of decency in your life by checking your actions, uh, against some kind of

00:29:37.800 moral measure. But they've convinced themselves that this is morality, that standing up for, uh,

00:29:43.500 climate change is some important thing to do, even while they build their mansions on the side of

00:29:48.120 other rivers and other coastlines, uh, saying those coastlines are going to overflow. It really is a

00:29:54.200 sickness. And I, I really do believe this. I believe that we have gone into a period of, of mental

00:29:59.220 illness in this country, of widespread mental illness, and some of it is being spread by the

00:30:04.320 news media, but some of it is also being demonstrated by the news media. How do you sleep at night when

00:30:09.780 you do a report like that? I don't understand it. I really don't. I mean, I think I

00:30:13.260 understand that people's hearts get twisted. I understand that people do evil things, but you're

00:30:17.600 being paid a lot of money to actually live up to a certain standard of reporting. And I, I'm not

00:30:23.400 seeing, I, I don't see this on the right. Was it climate change in 1987 when I was 16 and a junior

00:30:31.200 in high school? Was it that like, that was 40 years ago? Well, not quite, but almost like what they,

00:30:37.400 they, they, they ignore all this. That's her pet issue making its way into her coverage.

00:30:42.780 And then there was just the abject, like celebrations of this. I'm just going to read

00:30:46.840 you a couple now worst among them, because this guy actually has a very popular podcast

00:30:52.700 called the Midas touch. It's a left leaning one. His name's Ron Filipowski. And he tweeted out the

00:30:58.820 people in Texas voted for government services controlled by Trump and Greg Abbott. That's exactly

00:31:03.940 what they're getting. And he went on to say in a one, I think you've deleted this one or the other

00:31:08.480 one. Also, when you have an entire political movement like MAGA, who has sneering contempt for

00:31:13.640 experts who have spent decades in a profession like weather forecasters and the need for government to

00:31:19.360 use those experts to save lives, the results of that too often are that many people died.

00:31:25.280 Then, um, there's more highly followed leftist X account, Brooklyn dad defiant, um, says the death

00:31:32.640 count in Texas is now up to 32 people. Now, of course it's up above 80 at the moment from flooding

00:31:36.800 that could have been projected earlier, if not for the devastating doge cuts to Noah months ago.

00:31:41.340 Really? What? Where'd you get that, sir? Cause that's not true. Trump has blood on his hands

00:31:46.020 and should be held accountable. Here's a couple, a couple more for some, from some more prominent

00:31:50.200 left wing accounts. Um, okay. This one guy, I can't read his name, but it's Mike. I can't read it,

00:31:58.140 but in any event, he writes good. I'm glad. Did it take Rogan with it too? I can only hope Texas

00:32:04.480 deserves it. It's God's will. Of course, that's what God would have wanted. Right? Republicans.

00:32:10.260 Ha ha ha. My empathy for these red, redneck reject States is zero. So fuck them. I hope more come.

00:32:17.920 Let's start the hurricanes. I mean, there are little girls dead. And this is the reaction from this guy.

00:32:23.860 Um, here's another one. It's not awful. It's what Texas deserves. Cry harder. Says another one.

00:32:30.100 Texas deserves it. Here's another. I'm kind of happy. The national weather service gate

00:32:33.860 gave incorrect predictions when it came to how much rain would fall, especially since the best

00:32:38.520 and brightest from that organization were let go to do to do do do do do Elon and Trump and on and on

00:32:44.260 and on. They're celebrating. They're celebrating that little girls are dead. That, that, that pair of

00:32:51.940 sisters died holding one another that they can't think about the suffering of those parents, about

00:32:57.100 the one mom who said that their, her family will miss her, especially her mommy. Oh, having to write

00:33:02.580 that, having to like write an off the cuff eulogy for your eight year old, because you're standing down

00:33:08.560 all the good people and all the good Samaritans who have been out there for the past four days now

00:33:13.020 searching night and day for the missing. I mean, of course, in all these stories, Andrew,

00:33:18.160 you find against those awful soulless people, you find the great ones, you know, the ones who died

00:33:26.300 trying to save the little girls or like this guy recently out of the national guard who said to

00:33:31.460 save over 160 people, like first day on the job and rescued over 160 people. Like you're hearing more

00:33:38.280 and more stories like that, but it really is a juxtaposition of, of good and evil. It's a story

00:33:42.260 like this. Yeah. I'm, I'm a firm believer and maybe I just believe this to keep myself sane,

00:33:47.300 but I have witnessed it in life. I'm a firm believer that the people who tweet those things,

00:33:51.560 that they were glad these children died, that there's something, there's some kind of justice

00:33:55.860 in life that you would have to live with that inside yourself. Uh, you know, I, I can't imagine

00:34:00.200 what it would be like to live with that much hatred, even for the people I oppose, you know,

00:34:04.260 to, to down to my heart and soul. I don't feel that way about them. I don't want them to lose

00:34:09.060 their children. The people I disagree with every word out of their mouth. I still, uh, don't want

00:34:14.740 tragedy to, to befall them. I'm never rooting for that. I'm never rooting for death. It comes to us

00:34:19.380 all. I, I, I've always believed that there's something that the worst thing about having those

00:34:25.460 feelings in your heart is what they do to you is what they turn you into, uh, what you're like

00:34:30.000 inside, what you're walking around with inside yourself. I don't consider myself a righteous

00:34:35.180 person. I don't think anybody's really righteous, but I would hate to have to live with that inside

00:34:40.500 of me. I would hate to have to live, uh, with that kind of anger and rancor, uh, just every day.

00:34:46.220 It's like, it would be like, it would be like having a stomach full of acid all the time.

00:34:49.980 And so a cancer, a cancer that will keep you alive. Let me just mention this quickly. Cause I

00:34:55.120 mentioned him not, not national guard coast guard. Um, this is a Marina Medvin posted about him

00:35:01.100 online as did others. American hero, Scott Ruskin saved 165 people on his first coast guard mission

00:35:07.360 in Texas, sometimes carrying two girls per arm onto rescue helicopters. Those are the ones you need

00:35:14.900 to focus on. He's a true hero. And there are many more like him who risked their lives. You see some

00:35:19.640 of these rescue videos and there was one, do we have it cut you guys with where there's an elderly

00:35:24.280 woman. We do it's V V six, an elderly woman. They described her as elderly. I can't totally tell,

00:35:29.560 but she looks like she has gray hair in this water for the listening audience. You can see

00:35:33.000 the raging waters. You can see a rescue or these two men, they're wearing their life jackets around

00:35:37.500 their necks and they've gotten a life jacket on her. And then there are men holding a rope on

00:35:41.180 either side, trying to like do something to either pull her out. I it's not exactly clear to me, but

00:35:47.340 they're really struggling given the current. And if you watch this full video, Andrew, you can see at

00:35:52.940 one point, like she keeps going under and then the men get, the men get sucked, sucked under the strong

00:35:57.280 rescue, rescue or men get sucked under. And at some point during this, like four minute video,

00:36:04.400 most of them become in serious danger. And then there's people steps away on the shore,

00:36:09.480 but there's only so much they can do because it's just, it's like getting caught in like a riptide

00:36:13.300 and finally they get her out. But I mean, every rescue puts many lives at risk for the rescuers.

00:36:20.420 And you still have guys like Scott, Scott Ruskin who did it over and over and over again.

00:36:25.480 You can be standing in two feet, three feet, four feet of water and be washed away. It has

00:36:31.280 happened to me. You can be knocked right on your backside. You have no power against the power of

00:36:36.620 a river and against the power of running water. You know, one thing this really brings up, and you

00:36:41.640 and I have talked about this before, is the power of ideology, what ideology does to you. If you have

00:36:47.080 an ideology that dehumanizes people, that sets standards of good and evil according to your opinions of

00:36:54.980 things, instead of according to like the moral law that's in every human heart, this is what

00:37:00.840 happens to you. You know, you become dehumanized. You forget all this stuff. Whereas if you have

00:37:05.500 an ideology that is based in love, even if you make mistakes, even if you go astray, you're

00:37:11.820 ultimately going to be called to service when people are in trouble and when people are hurt or when

00:37:16.620 their people are, you know, suffering through tragedy. I think it's just something that has happened in

00:37:22.660 this country. I did not grow up with it in a country that had this kind of ideology throbbing

00:37:27.860 through it like this. It was always there. Obviously, there's always bad ideology and evil

00:37:32.960 people. But somehow at the level of the establishment, at the level of the people who

00:37:37.420 went on the newscasts and talked and wore ties and jackets and were the guys who were supposed to be

00:37:44.080 responsible to us for information, they were not swept away by the river of ideology and not swept

00:37:50.560 into evil by it. And I just think that it's just something that really needs to be addressed.

00:37:55.720 There's because of the First Amendment and God bless the First Amendment, it's very hard to reform the

00:38:00.360 media. But you just think that somewhere, somewhere at the top of these organizations, human hearts would

00:38:06.480 say, you know, we've got to reform a media that is speaking evil into the world. You know, when you

00:38:11.700 when you see those guys going out there and doing what they do and you talk about that guy who's on his

00:38:15.440 first day of work at the Coast Guard saving over 100 people, you know, you understand that there

00:38:21.380 is something called decency and heroism. These things really do exist. And not all of us can

00:38:26.580 live up to our heroes, but we can all live up to some level of decency. And I think that that is

00:38:31.260 something that has really disappeared from the establishment in the country. It hasn't disappeared

00:38:36.040 from America. You only have to travel in America and meet people and talk to people to see all the

00:38:40.600 decency in the world you want to. But it's at our leadership level. And the guy who was complaining,

00:38:44.600 by the way, about the Republican distrust, the conservative distrust of experts might want to

00:38:50.100 consult the experts like Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, who lied and lied to us and undermined

00:38:55.300 the power of expertise and the credibility of experts. Because I agree, there are such things

00:39:00.260 as experts, but right now they're in bad odor because of the fact that they betrayed the country.

00:39:06.200 And so, you know, where you place the blame for these things is a question of how far back in time

00:39:12.460 you're willing to go into the actions of the people who are being blamed.

00:39:15.960 I see those guys in the water, Andrew, and I think, okay, you know, Scott Ruskin, God love him.

00:39:21.020 He's a professional rescuer. Day one, indeed. But he's a professional rescuer who signed up to

00:39:26.180 rescue. The odds are those guys we just saw in the water trying to save that older woman,

00:39:32.700 they're probably volunteer firemen. Those are the overwhelming odds. It's a very rural town.

00:39:38.160 I mean, I spend my summers in a more rural New Jersey beach town. And if there is an emergency

00:39:43.420 of any kind, they sound the fire alarm. There's not some, there's not a firehouse where they're

00:39:48.420 all sitting around. They sound the loud alarm and all the volunteer firefighters and EMS guys go

00:39:53.720 running and they put their lives in the line at a moment's notice. I guarantee you it's a situation

00:39:58.360 not unlike that. You see these guys in the water. They're not like the completely fit. That guy looks

00:40:02.900 like he's straight at a top gun to his credit. I'm not, I'm not mocking him, but you know,

00:40:07.080 those guys in the water, they, they look like normal guys. They look like maybe a little older,

00:40:11.720 maybe a few extra pounds. Still, they went into that water. Still, they risked their lives. They

00:40:16.880 probably have families. They risked their role as dads to save somebody else's important person.

00:40:22.680 And for me, I know this is a weird, not possible non sequitur, but like I went to mass on Sunday

00:40:27.120 yesterday and they do this every year down here. And I love it. I love it. I love it. We,

00:40:31.080 we went, we listened to the mass, we observed mass and it ended this year as it did last year.

00:40:36.080 And the year before that, before they sing the last hymn and at the very tail end of that hymn,

00:40:43.340 as soon as it ends. Um, and by the way, it was be not afraid, which was just, it's such a great one.

00:40:49.180 So, so moving, um, they burst into the whole congregation led by the cantor. Um, God bless America.

00:40:56.900 Yeah. And it was just, Oh, it just makes you feel something from deep within God bless America.

00:41:05.320 And I look at those guys. That's what I think those Texans risking their lives,

00:41:09.660 probably volunteer. Like God bless America. God bless them. God bless the helpers.

00:41:14.040 And I have almost no use for these, sorry, fucking cretins online who don't understand us or what

00:41:21.360 we're here for, what we're really about, or the goodness of this country at its heart and soul,

00:41:25.340 irrespective of partisan politics. Oh, wait, I'll give you one more. And this is an emotional journey

00:41:30.120 of a comment because you've got these wonderful people and you've got these terrible people,

00:41:33.880 but I've got to, I've got to get this person in. Her name is Sadie Perkins. She is a fellow.

00:41:39.820 She's a non-resident fellow at Princeton university, previously one of our most respected

00:41:44.620 institutions. It means that they've given her a big grant. I think it's a $1 million grant. She

00:41:49.700 got a couple of years ago, post George Floyd, 2022 to research how black religious leaders and

00:41:55.620 communities responded to COVID climate and environmental crises or struggles for racial

00:42:00.940 justice. Any one of those three will do. Uh, they give grants from this project. So that makes her a

00:42:06.520 fellow at Princeton university. And here is what Sadie Perkins, non-resident fellow at Princeton

00:42:12.560 was concerned about as she watched children die. I know I'm probably going to get canceled for this,

00:42:20.320 but can't mystic is a whites only girls, Christian camp. And I think that context needs to be said

00:42:30.120 in this matter is not to say that we don't want the girls to be found with whatever girls that are

00:42:37.440 missing or whatever right now, but you best believe, especially in today's political climate,

00:42:43.120 if this were a group of Hispanic girls, especially with them being in East Texas, it should be most

00:42:49.820 likely Hispanic. Um, if this were a group of Hispanic girls out there, this would not be getting this type

00:42:56.080 of coverage that they're getting. No one would give a fuck. And all these white people, the parents of

00:43:00.500 these little girls would be saying things like they need to be deported. They want you to get out of

00:43:04.580 your bed and to come out of your home and to go find these people and donate your money to go find

00:43:09.700 these people. Meanwhile, they're deporting your family members. Meanwhile, they're setting up

00:43:15.820 concentration camps and prisons for your family members. And I need y'all to keep that in mind

00:43:21.320 before y'all get out there and put on your rain boots and go find these little girls.

00:43:26.080 Oh God. Oh, just people with no shut up button in their hearts. You know, it's amazing. It's

00:43:34.160 unbelievable. She's truly depraved. There's something depraved. Princeton university must do

00:43:40.240 something. I don't know if she's still on her million dollar grant, what it is, but whatever

00:43:44.000 it is must be pulled. It absolutely must be severed. Princeton university must make a statement.

00:43:50.060 She's calling the parents of the dead children racists based on absolutely nothing, but a figment

00:43:58.200 of her imagination and the, and the pictures she's seen that they're white and the information she

00:44:03.720 heard that they're Christian and discouraging while she does the cover her ass. Oh, it's not to say we

00:44:09.360 don't want them to be found. She finishes it up with, you better think about this before you get out

00:44:14.160 there and you put on your raincoats to try to go find these girls. You think about how they're

00:44:18.180 racists and how they'd be letting your people die. If you're Hispanic, Holy shit. Yeah. I like the

00:44:24.200 word that I'll probably be canceled for this, you know, cancel culture, which conservatives complain

00:44:28.880 so much about was really a culture in which if you disagreed politically, you were deemed to be

00:44:34.040 immoral, but it's not wrong to cancel people when they're actually immoral to tell people that before

00:44:39.620 you go out and try to rescue children, you have to take some kind of bizarre, uh, you know, critical

00:44:44.960 race idea into your head. You know, even if there was some kind of truth or legitimacy to critical

00:44:51.200 race theory, which there isn't, but even if there were, there would be nothing that should stop you

00:44:56.900 from putting on boots and going out and helping people if you can do it. So this idea that you're

00:45:01.380 being canceled, if you do something that's actually immoral, that if you do something that is actually

00:45:05.900 cruel and stupid and evil, that's not being canceled. That's simply just human decency in

00:45:11.160 society, basically regurgitating something that it shouldn't have swallowed in the first place.

00:45:15.340 And you're absolutely right. Princeton is responsible for addressing this. I, you know,

00:45:20.380 I think, I think that in some ways, whoever these people are, who are saying these things that you're

00:45:25.380 reading that are legitimately shocking, they're legitimately mind blowing that people could do this.

00:45:30.480 Whoever is in charge of those people, whoever is giving them money, whoever is giving them

00:45:34.160 support should really take a look at what they're doing and, and giving them a platform. Because

00:45:39.640 I don't understand why we have to, I understand that people are free to say evil things, but I

00:45:45.360 don't think that we are, I think we are equally free to react to those evil things and turn them

00:45:50.040 off and withdraw our support from them. I don't believe this should be censored at all. I actually

00:45:54.960 don't believe they should be censored. I want those people to expose themselves. I want them to say

00:45:58.820 what they have to say, but we is as an audience and we, as the people who pay people to say things,

00:46:03.960 I think we can shut people down when they say things like this. There's another woman who bears

00:46:09.600 mention. She's a pediatrician. Unbelievable. A pediatrician in Texas who suggested that these

00:46:16.720 Texas flood victims got what they deserved. Uh, she, she posted as followed. Her name is Dr.

00:46:22.380 Christina B. Probst P R O P S D S T. She drew widespread scorn quoting here from the New York

00:46:29.120 post, following her disparaging since deleted Facebook post under her old name, uh, which was

00:46:35.520 Christina. That was her username. May all visitors, children, non MAGA voters and pets be safe and dry.

00:46:42.740 She wrote, uh, as she goes on Kerr County MAGA voted to gut FEMA. They deny climate change. May they get

00:46:51.220 what they voted for bless their hearts. And first at first her employer, blue fish pediatrics said

00:47:00.460 she'd been suspended and then announced she's no longer employed there, uh, saying they have, there's

00:47:05.560 no room for politicization of a tragedy like this. No word on what's going to happen with her, with the

00:47:11.260 Texas medical board. She's in charge of taking care of children. Do the parents who bring their

00:47:15.260 children to her as their pediatrician? No, this is how she feels. If you voted for Trump, she thinks your

00:47:20.580 child deserved and deserves any death that she can blame on climate change or a Trump doge or big,

00:47:27.820 beautiful bill initiative, because that appears to be how she sees the world. They're lurking.

00:47:32.240 We saw this after 10 seven, Andrew, you know, we're like, people weren't just saying I've got real

00:47:37.180 problems with Israel. I don't condone the, the death that, you know, this terrorism we saw in 10 seven,

00:47:41.880 but you know, these people can't live under blockade, right? That which would, which have been,

00:47:46.660 it would have been a reasonable way to react. If you're pro-Palestinian. Nope. They loved it.

00:47:51.980 They love the hostages. They tore down their pictures, wanting them to remain in captivity and

00:47:56.260 to suffer. Like I don't, I, I know maybe I'm beating a dead horse, but I just, there's something

00:48:02.200 dead inside people. I talk about politics all day for a living. You do too. I've been doing this for 20

00:48:07.500 plus years immersed in the most vicious political battery battles for that, that time. It hasn't

00:48:13.300 hardened my heart. I recognize insane people. I try not to generalize too much about the left

00:48:19.200 as being awful because I, I love people on the left. You know, my mom's still a registered

00:48:23.400 Democrat. Some of my best friends are liberals. There's a hardness happening here. And there's

00:48:28.420 something else happening on the left that was in the news this weekend. Gallup showing for the first

00:48:31.680 time ever. The Democrats don't love America. They're not patriotic. They're not proud to be

00:48:37.260 Americans. Republicans have remained steady at 92, 93% for 20 plus years. Democrats have gone off a

00:48:45.120 cliff. More people now say they hate America on the left than say they're proud to be American.

00:48:50.340 It's all part of the same sickness. It is. And it's, it is an ideological sickness. It is something

00:48:55.940 you can blame on ideology when ideology trumps morality. Look, we are built, we are built to know

00:49:01.500 right from wrong. We do know right from wrong. The struggle we have is not knowing it. It's doing

00:49:06.400 it. Sometimes, you know, doing the right thing interferes with our personal interests. And so

00:49:10.740 you're tempted to follow your personal interests instead of doing the right thing. But ideology is

00:49:15.700 the single force. And Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about this. Ideology is the single force that can

00:49:20.420 wipe that knowledge out of our minds and out of our hearts. And that is the problem that the left has.

00:49:25.460 Yes, there are people on the right, but on the far right, people on the fringe who have this problem,

00:49:29.540 but the, the, the center of the Democrat party, the center of the left has now basically let ideology,

00:49:36.120 white morality out of their hearts. And this is the result.

00:49:40.240 It's just so awful. There's much more to cover. Uh, and we will do that. We're going to take a

00:49:44.480 quick break more with Andrew right after this. We'll get into Jeffrey Epstein and the FBI. Plus

00:49:48.880 Selena Zito is coming up on her new book about Butler, Pennsylvania. As we approach the one year mark,

00:49:54.900 she's got some chilling information in there about Donald Trump and about the shooter who actually

00:50:01.660 did take a shot and hit Trump that day and killed Corey combatory. We talk a lot about personal

00:50:06.560 freedom on the show. Well, part of that is owning your privacy. And let me tell you, if you have ever

00:50:11.340 Googled your name and found your home address, phone number, or even your income floating around,

00:50:15.880 it's not a coincidence that data is bought and sold by data brokers without your consent.

00:50:20.780 And this is why I want to tell you about incogni, a service that bites back on your behalf.

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00:51:35.340 Andrew, this FBI thing has got tongues wagging all over the country today. It's FBI and DOJ

00:51:44.860 coming out with a shocking announcement for many. Well, I've talked to others who are closer to the

00:51:51.700 case who say they're not shocked. And they've been saying that there's really, this is just the stuff

00:51:56.020 of conspiracy theories all along that he had some blackmail list, some long client list that was going

00:52:01.540 to wow everybody that, um, that there wouldn't be videos that would incriminate necessarily Epstein

00:52:08.420 or, or those around him. But, uh, and that, and that he, that he was, uh, the, the, the non-conspiracy

00:52:15.260 theorists say obviously he killed himself. Okay. So here's the story. DOJ FBI have concluded. They

00:52:19.840 have no evidence that Epstein blackmailed powerful figures that he kept a client list or that he was

00:52:26.740 murdered according to a memo detailing the findings that was leaked to Axios. So clearly our friends

00:52:32.800 who we love Bungino and or Patel leaked it to Axios, which is interesting. I mean, why Axios?

00:52:39.700 That's not really a Republican friendly site. Um, they probably aren't steeped that deeply in all

00:52:48.480 things Epstein. I don't know, but it was leaked to Axios. Maybe I'm wrong. No further charges are

00:52:53.400 expected in connection with the probes into Epstein as investigators quote, did not uncover evidence

00:52:59.000 that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. The DOJ and FBI say in

00:53:04.960 the memo, no further disclosure of Epstein related material would be appropriate or warranted. So we

00:53:10.700 are done getting any Epstein material. The memo says much of the material relates to child sexual abuse

00:53:18.260 and details of Epstein's victims, as opposed to like other third parties who were swept up into his

00:53:23.560 awfulness. The files related to Epstein include a large volume of images of Epstein images and videos

00:53:29.800 of victims who are either minors or appear to be, and over 10,000 downloaded videos and images of

00:53:35.500 illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography. Through this review, we found no basis to revisit

00:53:40.760 the disclosure of those materials will not permit the release of the child pornography. Obviously

00:53:44.600 consistent with our prior disclosures. This review confirmed Epstein harmed over 1000 victims,

00:53:49.500 but they're not expanding those conclusions to anything beyond Epstein. They've also released

00:53:56.580 video. What they say is 10 hours of raw and also enhanced videos, meaning enhanced just, just so we can

00:54:04.780 see it a little better and the colors better that they say indicates no one entered the area of the

00:54:09.260 Manhattan prison where Epstein was held the night he died. Many are pouring over this video footage

00:54:14.160 right now, which goes from between 10 40 PM on August 9th, 2019, when he was locked in a cell

00:54:18.680 to around 6 30 AM the next day when he was found unresponsive. They say, uh, that it shows no one

00:54:25.280 entering the area and or leaving the area, but already loose on online or suggesting there are cuts

00:54:31.480 or jump cuts. We have not independently examined it. So we're not in a position to comment on that.

00:54:36.880 Here's why it's causing such a problem, including amongst many people who love Vangino and Patel,

00:54:44.900 maybe not so much Bondi, um, because we've been told over and over and over again that they did have

00:54:51.420 materials. And, um, I'll get, I'll take you through some of those. Here's Pam Bondi in February of this

00:54:59.300 year, talking about Epstein's client list that they now tell us does not exist. SOT 7.

00:55:04.960 DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients. Will that really happen?

00:55:11.640 It's sitting on my desk right now to review. Um, that's been a directive, um, by president Trump.

00:55:17.360 I'm reviewing that. I'm reviewing JFK files, MLK files. That's all in the process of being reviewed

00:55:23.320 because that was done at the directive of the president from all of these agencies.

00:55:26.700 So, so have you seen anything there? You said, Oh my gosh,

00:55:29.600 not yet, but she explicitly said the Epstein client list was sitting on her desk. And now

00:55:38.820 they explicitly say they have no evidence that he kept a client list. Okay. So that's one.

00:55:45.860 Then she brought a bunch of conservative influencers to the white house. And I'm told

00:55:49.700 this was a Pam Bondi operation that didn't have like the, the blessing of the FBI or necessarily

00:55:55.600 the white house staff either. She brought them to the white house, gave them binders that said it

00:56:00.440 was like the Epstein files. And they all were embarrassed because it turned out that there was

00:56:05.160 no more than I think 200 documents of materials that were already public, which in these influencers

00:56:12.020 defense, they did not know they were trusting the attorney general of the United States who for some

00:56:17.640 reason thought it would be a good idea to humiliate some of president Trump's most ardent supporters

00:56:23.280 and who people who helped get him elected, which for which she hasn't been forgiven by a lot of

00:56:28.480 these folks. I know many of them. Then she came out a little later in February and said on Hannity,

00:56:36.020 the following sought eight. You're looking at these documents going, these aren't all the Epstein files,

00:56:41.840 you know, there were flight logs, there were names and victims names. And we're going,

00:56:45.540 where's the rest of the stuff? And that's what the FBI had turned over to us. And so a source said,

00:56:51.720 whoa, all this evidence is sitting in the Southern District of New York. So based on that,

00:56:56.880 I gave them the deadline, Friday at eight, a truckload of evidence arrived. It's now in the

00:57:02.560 possession of the FBI. Cash is going to get me and himself really a detailed report as to why

00:57:08.600 all these documents and evidence had been withheld. And, you know, we're going to go through it,

00:57:13.920 go through it as fast as we can, but go through it very cautiously to protect all the victims of Epstein.

00:57:19.820 So that's her blaming the FBI. There were additional files. I didn't mean to embarrass

00:57:24.740 the influencers. It's the FBI's fault, but I'm going to get them. Um, then you have Pam Bondi

00:57:30.800 caught on tape by James O'Keefe. And as soon as it came out like that, he had this and was about to

00:57:38.860 hit, it was about to hit. He went to her for comment. Obviously she got on camera and affirmatively

00:57:43.800 said it as though she, she meant to say it all along. It was like, it seemed to me to be a CYA.

00:57:48.960 Like I said, nothing special to James O'Keefe. I'll say it right now on camera. And I happen to know

00:57:53.880 that this caused a lot of consternation inside, um, some of these national security socials where

00:57:59.420 they didn't know what she was doing. Here is SOT 10.

00:58:02.280 There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn. And there are hundreds

00:58:14.000 of victims and no one victim will ever get released. It's just the volume. And that's

00:58:20.040 what they're going through right now. The FBI is diligently going through that.

00:58:24.140 Okay. So that, that piece of it is somewhat consistent with what they said in this statement,

00:58:30.760 which is there's a lot of child sexual assault material, uh, online, but she left it open.

00:58:35.500 Like it hundreds of victims of Epstein's or of others that Epstein has, like, this is the kind

00:58:43.540 of thing you need to be really specific about. And we were left with yet another question mark.

00:58:48.200 Now here's Alina Haba, who's, we're also now working at DOJ on Piers Morgan.

00:58:55.820 But in this case, in Epstein's case, it is incredibly disturbing. We have, uh, flight logs,

00:59:01.540 we have information names, uh, that will come out. Is it going to be shocking?

00:59:09.140 I don't see how it's not shocking that there were so many individuals that were hidden.

00:59:15.880 Um, and kept secret and not been held accountable. Let's talk about the reverse. I believe in

00:59:23.680 accountability. So you have to now go through your process. Now I won't say they're guilty until they

00:59:29.080 go through their time in court. Um, but again, now it's time for accountability. We have seen for so

00:59:34.680 many years, Pierce in this country, many investigations, subpoenas, testimonies in Congress,

00:59:39.760 et cetera, et cetera. But there's a general frustration with accountability. We take it halfway.

00:59:44.560 We don't take it home. And I really believe that now with cash and Pam, there will be accountability.

00:59:50.240 That was February. So now she says they have information and the names to will come out.

00:59:57.160 So many individuals who have been hidden, kept secret, haven't been held accountable.

01:00:03.020 She won't yet say that they're guilty until they've had their time in court, but there's been a

01:00:08.920 frustration with accountability. Okay. Now we get, there's no client list. There's no evidence that

01:00:16.740 he blackmailed anybody and there's nobody else who's going to be charged and no additional information

01:00:21.760 that will be released. I'm sorry, but I fully understand why people are extremely doubtful

01:00:27.320 and frustrated with what's being released right now by the administration and what's being told to

01:00:32.460 them. This is extremely upsetting. I mean, I'm a big Dan Bongino fan. I judge him to be a man of

01:00:39.620 integrity who really is committed to doing the right thing. I've met Cash Patel, but I don't know Cash

01:00:44.360 Patel, but I've always been favorably impressed by him. So there's so much to talk about here.

01:00:49.300 Let's just go back to what you talked about of the leak to Axios, nevermind their political

01:00:54.360 leanings. It was released at the end of a holiday weekend, which is when you dump information you're

01:00:59.600 hoping no one will pay attention to. That's the first thing. There is Pam Bondi and this list.

01:01:04.380 There's Cash Patel two years ago calling for this list to be brought forward. I'm, I am willing

01:01:10.620 because of my respect for Dan and my respect for Cash Patel. I'm, I am willing to stipulate that

01:01:16.000 Jeffrey Epstein did not commit suicide. If I, if I can include the idea that it was some kind of

01:01:22.480 Godfather two situation where suddenly all the cameras went off, suddenly all the guards disappeared,

01:01:27.920 suddenly all the cellmates were removed from his cell. So he was allowed to commit suicide and,

01:01:32.900 and maybe protect some other interests that he had beyond his own life and avoid going to prison for

01:01:38.520 the rest of his life. So, all right, I'll buy that he didn't commit suicide. And the evidence

01:01:42.640 says that he didn't commit suicide. But when you tell me that there's no list, my questions just get,

01:01:47.420 my questions just get broader and bigger. Uh, they don't get less. If there's no list

01:01:53.380 of people who did things, are there no witnesses or the people, the children and the young people who

01:01:58.620 were abused, have they made no accusations? Can they not be questioned? Can they not be asked?

01:02:03.380 Who was it who raped you? Who was it? Who used you again and again? Some of these women have come

01:02:07.640 forward when, and said, you know, I was raped again and again. Well, by whom, you know, did you

01:02:11.920 recognize the person? Can you identify him in a, in a photo array? Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison for

01:02:18.920 20 years. Is there no deal that she would expect, uh, that she would accept to get less prison time

01:02:24.400 and come on and say, you know, yeah, let me tell you who I, who I brought into this, uh, to this

01:02:29.820 island. You know, this is something that is so widespread in America and maybe throughout the

01:02:35.420 world, this abuse of young people, this use of young people for your own personal pleasure,

01:02:40.560 uh, that I think it really has to be addressed at the highest level and it has to be addressed in

01:02:45.140 the harshest possible way. So I'm not satisfied with you saying, oh, I, you know, Pam Bondi

01:02:50.180 misspoke or whatever the hell she did when she said, yes, this list is on my desk. All right. So

01:02:55.500 there's no list, but are, is there no way of, of attaining names and information from the people

01:03:01.060 who were victimized? Are there no accusations that are going to be made? Is nobody willing to make

01:03:06.180 these accusations? I mean, this thing has been covered up so completely, including at ABC news,

01:03:12.800 where we were talking before about George Stephanopoulos and why he was hired being hired

01:03:17.160 because he silenced women for Bill Clinton. Then, then we know from Amy Robach, the, uh,

01:03:23.840 tape that was released of Amy Robach, that that was spiked during Hillary Clinton's run.

01:03:28.320 And they say, well, George Stephanopoulos had nothing to do.

01:03:30.000 We had it all. Clinton, she mentioned him.

01:03:32.740 That's right. So, so I'm sorry, this is not holding together. And I think a guy of the quality

01:03:38.160 of Dan Bongino should be coming forward with it. I know, you know, people who know him inside

01:03:42.540 the administration, I know he's working like a dog. He's trying hard to rejigger the FBI from the

01:03:47.740 corrupt state. It fell into under Biden and under Obama as well. I think they are working hard to,

01:03:53.560 to, uh, clean out the FBI, but something about this case, there is a stumbling block here.

01:03:59.720 And by the way, I don't believe that it's Donald Trump. I actually believe that Donald Trump was

01:04:04.540 not part of this, uh, situation. If Donald Trump were in the Epstein files and in any meaningful

01:04:10.340 way, Joe Biden would have told us. You betcha. And also he threw the guy out of Mar-a-Lago.

01:04:16.300 He made jokes about the fact that he likes him young. That's not, those are not the words of

01:04:19.800 somebody who's participating in this abuse. This goes on in Hollywood. It goes on in churches. It

01:04:25.180 went on in England when Muslims were, uh, collecting these little girls for their own

01:04:29.900 personal use. And the government covered it up. This is something that is endemic right now.

01:04:34.100 They're still doing that. They're still doing that. There's a story just today about Taliban,

01:04:37.880 some Taliban leader who wanted to marry a six-year-old and they said, oh, you got to wait

01:04:41.880 till she's nine.

01:04:43.000 She's nine. Like, like Muhammad. You know, I, I think that, I think that this is something that is

01:04:48.120 somehow, uh, so interlaced in our society that maybe there's no way that it, maybe it would just

01:04:54.740 take a superhero to say, I don't care who I bring down. I don't care what threats I, I, I'm given,

01:05:01.420 you know, every now and again, they arrest some poor, uh, schmuck who's got, you know, uh, child porn

01:05:07.540 on his, on his computer. And yes, that's evil. That's wicked. You should be arrested for it. But why is it

01:05:12.840 that the guys who actually do this stuff or are powerful people who are people of substance and

01:05:18.060 people of money and who are using innocent girls who don't have, uh, that kind of influence and

01:05:23.160 don't have that kind of money? Why is it that they are never arrested and never named? This is a moment

01:05:28.800 for Cash and Van to really stand up. It's not enough to leak this at the end of the 4th of July weekend.

01:05:35.140 You've got to come forward and tell me why you cannot get the names of people from the people who were

01:05:41.560 abused. Do you recognize this guy? Do you recognize anybody in this photo array? Was this the person

01:05:47.000 who raped you? I don't understand. And I don't understand why Ghislaine Maxwell was not offered

01:05:51.420 some kind of deal, uh, to get the names out of her. So maybe she doesn't have to serve 20 years.

01:05:55.960 Ghislaine went to prison for helping Jeffrey Epstein and, you know, in the, in his sex trafficking and

01:06:03.360 his behavior toward these young women. But the trial evidence against her was about

01:06:08.520 procuring young women for Jeffrey. It wasn't for others. It wasn't like she was the main sort of,

01:06:15.060 but she was, she was there. She was, she was on. No, I know. I'm just saying like just people online

01:06:20.540 are like, what'd she get convicted of? She got convicted of funneling girls to Jeffrey and I'll

01:06:25.220 play devil's advocate for a minute though. And we should, and we should explore this. Okay. Let's

01:06:28.400 explore the possibility that you have to put Pam Bondi's statements to the side in order to go down

01:06:34.340 this lane with me because I don't know what she's doing. I gotta be honest, but I really do trust

01:06:39.880 Dan. Dan, Dan is a wonderful guy and he's a very straight shooter. He's, he's all heart. He's totally

01:06:47.900 earnest. I don't believe Dan is lying to us. I just, I don't, I don't know cash as well. I don't

01:06:53.200 mean to indict him at all. I'm just saying, I don't know him the way I know Dan who's been coming on the

01:06:56.240 show for years. We've had long, many long hours and hours and hours. It's like you, I know him. Like I

01:07:00.860 know you, like I just, no one's going to convince me he would go out there and just blatantly lie.

01:07:05.220 I don't believe it. So let's go down the line of he's telling the truth and cash is again,

01:07:10.100 we're checking Pam Bondi's weird statements for now. Um, I know somebody very close to the Epstein

01:07:16.180 case. I've never said who this is, but this is a very, very well-informed person. And this person

01:07:20.820 from the beginning has told me that Epstein was into young girls. I don't know what he looked at

01:07:28.400 online. I, I believe he probably did look at what now they just call child sexual assault material.

01:07:33.640 We used to call it child pornography. I believe he was probably into that, but, but this person was

01:07:38.220 saying in terms of what Jeffrey wanted brought to him at his mansions and his, you know, Island,

01:07:43.240 it was the barely legal type. It was like the 17 year old girl or the 16. I'm not justifying any of

01:07:50.380 this. I'm just telling you what's been told to me by a very reliable person that that's what he was

01:07:54.960 into. And in many States, that's not unlawful. You know, the 17 year old sex partner for a grown

01:08:02.260 man is actually not illegal. Now in some it is, and he got in trouble in Florida. Um, so that's,

01:08:09.040 it is a possibility that that was his thing when it came to actual sexual interactions, forget what

01:08:14.540 he was looking at online. And it is a thing that, you know, he had some of those girls who weren't

01:08:20.060 committing crimes with powerful men. And that while he had a very interesting black book that

01:08:26.580 had names, including Donald Trump's in it, that doesn't amount to a client list. And there aren't

01:08:32.020 young girls who can point the fingers. There is Virginia Giuffre who recently died, who was the

01:08:38.700 girl pictured with Prince Andrew in those infamous daily mail photos that we've all seen, where she

01:08:43.460 was, I think 17 and with Prince Andrew, this is why he got excommunicated from his family. Um, she

01:08:49.680 says they, the girls were being funneled out to third parties to other men and that she was one of

01:08:55.160 them, but I'm sorry. Virginia Giuffre is a proven was God rest her. I'm sorry. Liar, a proven liar.

01:09:03.420 And not, not only do I firmly believe she lied about Alan Dershowitz and she admitted

01:09:07.600 she might've been confused about him. Um, but there's a lot of stuff she said turned out to be

01:09:13.840 just totally false. It's complicated because these victims, you know, these predators choose them for

01:09:20.440 a reason. They they'll choose a girl like that because they know maybe she's going to have

01:09:24.220 credibility problems and so on. So I'm trying not to be disrespectful to her, but there's no question

01:09:28.400 that Virginia Giuffre did tell a lot of lies. And then there's a lot of other people who, when

01:09:33.040 Jeffrey Epstein went down, set, saw dollar signs in their eyeballs. Cause he could not forget he was

01:09:37.400 very rich and said, I know something I, I want to pay out or I was a victim and I want to pay out.

01:09:43.740 And it wasn't always true. All of these are complicated factors, complicating factors in

01:09:48.960 like the lure around him. And it is possible. This guy did not want to spend the rest of his life in

01:09:54.320 prison. He was used to all the trappings of wealth. You know, Arthur Idala has talked about

01:09:59.560 this. He represented Ghislaine Maxwell, that, that it's a terrible place where he was being held.

01:10:04.340 You know, he spent a couple hours in there and felt dark and depressed and, you know, sad and he

01:10:09.100 wasn't getting sentenced. He was there as a lawyer. It is very possible. He was extremely depressed,

01:10:14.260 realized that he was going to go to jail forever and decided to take his own life. So all of that

01:10:18.660 really is possible. And, you know, conspiracy theories do spring when we're not being told to

01:10:23.700 straight skinny as we weren't for years after Jeffrey died and so on. So it, it, I'm leaving room

01:10:29.320 for the possibility that it really is less nefarious, not, not, not nefarious, but less

01:10:35.180 nefarious than we were told. And maybe we've just been so spun up by so many spinners that now when

01:10:42.420 you have people you can trust telling you what's real, it's hard to believe. But, but you know,

01:10:48.520 my problem with that explanation, and again, I'm putting the suicide aside because I agree with you

01:10:53.120 about this. I do think it's possible that he, that he killed himself. Although I do think it's kind

01:10:57.720 of interesting that every camera went off, every guard was gone, every cellmate had been removed.

01:11:01.520 I think maybe it was convenient for him to kill himself, but still I'm, I'm perfectly willing to

01:11:06.580 believe that. Let's, let's just say that everything you said was true. You're Kash Patel. And again,

01:11:12.900 like, I really like these guys. I like both of them. And, and I, I know more about Dan than I know

01:11:18.120 about Kash Patel, but still they both have favorably impressed me and I trusted them and I trust them

01:11:22.800 still. But a couple of years ago, Kash Patel is on the air saying, this is a conspiracy. There's a

01:11:29.800 list. We got to get this out. And now he's the head of the FBI and he finds out, Oh, all of these

01:11:34.560 things that I said to the public are untrue. You leak that to Axios at the end of the 4th of July

01:11:40.140 weekend, or do you come out and you face the cameras and say, you know what? I'm no one could

01:11:45.880 be more surprised than I am. You know, I, I put this stuff forward. I put these ideas forward. I was wrong.

01:11:51.400 And this is why I was wrong. And this is why I can't show you everything and, and just really

01:11:56.480 lay it out for you and, and take responsibility for the things that he said, because he's one of

01:12:00.920 the people who made you think like, gee, something is going on behind the scenes. And you're also right

01:12:05.960 by the way that you have to leave Pam Bondi out of this, because I don't understand what the hell

01:12:10.000 she's been talking about. And, and that's, that's something that she should be really held responsible

01:12:14.860 for. She did go on and say, you played that clip, but she went on and said at other places as well,

01:12:20.060 that she had a list that she was just going to check out. We're on the verge of finding out.

01:12:24.780 And it's just been strange, Megan. And I mean, yeah, it's possible. It is possible that all of

01:12:31.180 those bricks fall into place, but it's still true that, you know, it's still true that even if he

01:12:37.480 didn't break the law, even if he just skirted the law by, by finding girls who were just, uh,

01:12:42.940 within legal limits, he broke the law. Why aren't they talking? You know, why aren't they coming

01:12:47.820 forward and saying things? Why, why is it that many of have sued him? I mean, he, he actually

01:12:52.800 had, well, he was, he's dead now, but he was facing civil suits from some and Virginia Giffray,

01:12:58.940 she had to civil suit and Ghislaine has gotten sued. So there are some who have come forward.

01:13:04.200 It's not like two dozen. And most, I think a lot of women want nothing to do. They don't want their

01:13:10.220 names associated with this case whatsoever, but we don't have some full list of victims.

01:13:14.480 And presumably the FBI knows more than we do, but so far what they seem to be saying is it was

01:13:19.620 Jeffrey, it was Jeffrey, it was Jeffrey and Prince Andrew. I don't know what the truth is, Andrew.

01:13:26.940 I wish I did. Let them come out and talk to people. Let them come out and take hard questions from

01:13:31.040 people. You know, that's this leak to Axios at the end of the July 4th weekend, let them come out and

01:13:36.400 face the music and say, look, this is what we found. I was surprised, you know, aren't, aren't they

01:13:42.240 motivated? I would think they are motivated to prove that the things that they had been saying

01:13:46.200 to the public before they got into office, they should be motivated to prove those things are

01:13:51.080 true. And if they're not true, they should come out and say, yeah, you know, like I misled you.

01:13:55.240 I didn't mean to, but I said the wrong things. I just don't like the way this is unfolding.

01:14:00.000 And again, like you, I am big fan. I'm a big fan of Dan's and I'm a fan of Kash Patel's. I have

01:14:05.700 nothing to say negative about him, but this doesn't sit right. It doesn't taste right.

01:14:09.980 They're going to do it. They're going to, they are going to come out. I just don't believe those

01:14:12.920 two guys will say they're not afraid that they're not, these are not like cowardly men.

01:14:17.440 They're going to be out there probably this week, I would imagine. And there, I believe there will

01:14:21.280 be a full fledged vetting. I mean, I was talking to Dan not long ago about coming on with us,

01:14:27.200 maybe both of them soon. I didn't, I don't think we anticipated July, but I I'll definitely ask both

01:14:34.440 of them about it. And I think they'll answer me. I don't, I don't think they're afraid. I do think it's

01:14:38.840 possible, however, that they've learned more since becoming government administrators that

01:14:44.960 they can't reveal. I mean, some information would be classified. There are many who believe

01:14:49.360 Jeffrey Epstein and or Ghislaine Maxwell had connections to example, um, the Mossad, you

01:14:55.900 know, out of Israel and that it's possible. Now that's also been debunked. Well, not debunked,

01:15:00.720 but like the, they've thrown cold water on that saying it's not true. I haven't seen any evidence of

01:15:05.420 that, but I mean, there are possible reasons why they might have to mislead and that we do need to

01:15:11.660 look for. I mean, cash was on Joe Rogan in, uh, June, it was June 6th. And he definitely sounded

01:15:18.860 to me like he knew more than he was revealing. And I thought, okay, it's, it's harder when you're

01:15:24.800 actually in charge and you're responsible for maintaining classified briefings and so on.

01:15:29.540 But here he is in SOT 13 in June. But what about the video from the island? Again, we're going to

01:15:36.320 give you everything we can. And people have to remember, we're not going to re-victimize women.

01:15:43.160 We're not going to put that shit back out there. It's not happening because then he wins. Not doing

01:15:47.120 it. You want to hate me for it? Fine. Again, logical play out. If there was a video of some guy

01:15:54.820 or gal committing felonies on an island and I'm in charge, don't you think you'd see it?

01:16:03.540 If you have access to it.

01:16:05.180 If I have it. Period. If I have it. If I have it.

01:16:09.600 So.

01:16:10.900 Where else would it be?

01:16:12.800 Right. If you have it.

01:16:14.200 Right.

01:16:14.740 But you can't say that you have it.

01:16:17.180 No, we're giving you everything we have.

01:16:19.260 So far.

01:16:20.700 Everything we have so far is.

01:16:22.120 Have you guys gone over all the video that's available?

01:16:25.300 Yeah. That's what I'm telling you. That's what takes so much damn time.

01:16:28.060 Right.

01:16:29.000 And.

01:16:29.780 And is there video from the island?

01:16:32.900 Not of what you want.

01:16:34.600 The people out there have filled the void with can't wait to see X, Y, or Z.

01:16:41.140 Right. Speculation.

01:16:42.000 Now, I understand that you would never re-victimize these women and show this footage.

01:16:47.860 But is there footage?

01:16:52.240 Outside of.

01:16:55.160 The only thing I can say right now is.

01:16:59.000 If there was ever, if there was footage of anyone doing anything else, we would have opened a case.

01:17:03.320 So, he just doesn't sound like himself.

01:17:07.720 You can hear him being careful.

01:17:09.720 He's not, like a lot of those are not fully direct answers.

01:17:13.320 He's not volunteering information.

01:17:15.440 And you are, you can see Joe Rogan really trying to like kind of like pulling teeth, trying to get like full answers.

01:17:22.280 So, it's clear to me, it's just different when you're in charge.

01:17:25.900 Yeah, no, I completely understand that.

01:17:27.760 I'm willing to be understanding right down the line, but not where we're standing right now.

01:17:32.240 I mean, I'm willing to hear what they have to say.

01:17:35.320 And again, like I said, you know, three times, I'm fans of these guys.

01:17:40.120 I trust them.

01:17:41.020 But I do not think that they are handling this the right way as it stands.

01:17:44.960 I do not think that this is the way this information should get out there.

01:17:47.760 And because the abuse of young people by the powerful is so endemic and because the stories never get to the surface somehow.

01:17:55.940 You know, when I was working in Hollywood, these stories would bubble up.

01:17:59.160 They'd percolate up and you'd start to see little paragraphs of them in Variety, the Hollywood trade paper.

01:18:04.280 And then they disappear again.

01:18:05.560 They just vanish because Hollywood, you know, Variety depends on advertising from the Hollywood studios.

01:18:11.300 And then you'd think like, all right, so that just got covered up.

01:18:13.660 And it would happen again and again.

01:18:14.980 And it happens, you know, we still don't know all the things that happened in the Catholic Church.

01:18:19.640 We still don't know all the things that are happening in Britain with the Muslim rape gangs.

01:18:23.480 All of these things just seem to get killed somewhere along the line.

01:18:27.460 And I guess I would like these two people who I trust and who I believe in to come forward and explain to me bit by bit how exactly they got from, yeah, we're going to release this list to there is no list.

01:18:39.480 How exactly they got to, you know, yeah, we're going to put this woman in prison for 20 years, but we're not going to offer her a deal if she'll name some names.

01:18:46.720 How do we get to those places?

01:18:49.080 Fair, all fair questions.

01:18:51.200 Andrew Klavan, what a pleasure.

01:18:52.860 Thank you so much.

01:18:53.700 I miss talking to you.

01:18:54.740 I'm glad you came on.

01:18:55.500 Thank you.

01:18:56.020 That's great to see you, Megan.

01:18:56.860 Thanks a lot.

01:18:57.300 Okay, coming up next, Selena Zito is here.

01:19:00.740 We're going to talk to her about the news, and we're also going to get into her new book on being with Trump the day of the Butler rally.

01:19:09.760 We're coming up on the one-year mark.

01:19:11.300 Remember that?

01:19:11.940 Do you remember where you were when you heard Trump was shot last July?

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01:20:17.600 It was almost one year ago that President Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

01:20:29.120 It was on July 13th, 2024, which would be this Sunday.

01:20:34.440 It'll be one year.

01:20:35.420 Do you remember where you were?

01:20:36.880 I do.

01:20:37.300 I remember I was down here at the beach, and my then 10-year-old was walking by my phone and saw my phone lighting up like a Christmas tree with messages from my team and saying,

01:20:47.900 Mom, Trump got shot.

01:20:49.800 And that feeling of just your stomach dropping, you know, like, no.

01:20:54.640 And then he said, in his ear.

01:20:57.240 And I didn't know what to make of that, right?

01:20:59.660 In his ear is bad.

01:21:02.100 Like, on his earlobe, far less troubling.

01:21:06.780 And the news would come rapid fire after that.

01:21:09.500 I'm sure you remember it, too.

01:21:11.180 Well, today we're joined by a reporter who remembers it in especially a cute way.

01:21:15.520 She was literally a couple feet away from the president that fateful day.

01:21:19.360 She saw and heard the shots fired, the immediate aftermath, the resilience of President Trump, and of the crowd, how they behaved in this time of panic and violence.

01:21:33.980 And it was unlike what you might expect of a typical crowd and unlike what you might expect of a Trump crowd if you read The New York Times exclusively.

01:21:40.980 Selena Zito's new book uncovers how President Trump's messaging changed following that attempt on his life and more.

01:21:49.760 It's called Butler, The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland.

01:21:58.180 And it's out tomorrow.

01:21:59.360 Go preorder it right now.

01:22:00.820 Trump is endorsing the book, urging everyone to read it.

01:22:04.220 He doesn't talk that much about the assassination attempt.

01:22:07.180 He said he was only going to talk about it that one night at the RNC.

01:22:09.500 I think he did it one other time, but he doesn't like talking about it.

01:22:12.660 He did to Selena, who lived it with him.

01:22:15.660 Selena, welcome back.

01:22:16.520 Great to see you.

01:22:17.640 Great to see you.

01:22:18.560 Thanks so much for having me.

01:22:20.540 Oh, yeah.

01:22:21.040 Congrats on the book.

01:22:22.280 And just what what a scoop.

01:22:24.940 I mean, I feel like the reason Selena Zito got this story and was with the president that day and spoke to him for over an hour within 24 hours of it happening is because Selena Zito has made a lifetime out of reporting on events.

01:22:39.280 And places and people that few others will.

01:22:42.100 The mainstream doesn't.

01:22:44.260 You were in Butler because you knew Butler mattered.

01:22:46.260 You were in Pennsylvania because you knew the the back areas of Pennsylvania would determine the next president of the United States in a way.

01:22:53.700 Yes, the mainstream media knew Pennsylvania was important, but you knew the state.

01:22:57.280 You knew the towns, you knew the flavor, you knew the feeling, your family's from there.

01:23:02.260 But that's been your MO, your entire reporting career.

01:23:06.180 And I just think like there was in the same way there was divine intervention to save Trump that day.

01:23:10.400 There was something divine about you being steps away and having that front row seat to history, Selena.

01:23:16.600 You're the perfect person to write this book.

01:23:18.900 Congrats on the pub.

01:23:20.040 And you tell me when you think back on it almost a year later, how do you see it?

01:23:25.840 How do you feel it mattered?

01:23:28.980 Well, first of all, thanks for having me on.

01:23:31.300 I feel very honored and to be able to tell this story in a way that I think is very authentic to the people and honors the people of Pennsylvania who were part, you know, they're part of this story.

01:23:45.720 Not only that day, but in the days leading up to it and the days after.

01:23:51.140 And, you know, when you're a reporter, you don't always expect what you're supposed to do that day to be exactly what happens.

01:23:59.360 I wasn't supposed to be standing in the buffer four feet away from the president.

01:24:04.240 I wasn't supposed to see the president before he went out there.

01:24:09.880 But through a series of like, we're going to do this, Selena, we're not going to do that.

01:24:13.860 People will really enjoy having a front row seat to that back and forth about how I ended up there.

01:24:21.060 But, you know, I was there for a reason.

01:24:25.040 And I think I was there because I'm supposed to tell this story in a way that is meaningful and nuanced and understands not only Trump, but more importantly, the constituency of people, people that are very rarely seen who placed him into office.

01:24:46.200 As a reporter, I often feel like I straddle two completely different worlds.

01:24:52.760 If I go on social media and I watch other or read other journalists and how they were talking about the race that last year, and then I'm on the ground in Pennsylvania and watching something completely different.

01:25:07.000 You know, I think that's part of why I was there and why I ended up being so close.

01:25:13.860 When I'll just start like later in the book, just for this first question, you point out that as you wrote into Butler, as you were looking around Butler, Pennsylvania, you actually tried to call attention to what people were seeing, what's happening in the town.

01:25:32.860 Um, with the other reporters, the so-called mainstream reporters who refused to look up from their phones.

01:25:40.920 They had zero interest in understanding Butler, Trump supporters, the rally crowd, really those people.

01:25:50.060 When I read that piece of the book, I'm like, they were too busy writing orange band, bad Trump, Hitler, fascist, right?

01:25:56.100 Like, that's the only narrative they understand, the same as they're doing today with respect to what's happening down in Texas.

01:26:02.920 Yeah.

01:26:03.700 Yeah.

01:26:04.260 Okay.

01:26:04.600 So that point you're talking about, it was in Erie, Pennsylvania.

01:26:07.760 I have long argued that Erie, Pennsylvania is the most important county, not just in Pennsylvania, but also in the entire country.

01:26:15.160 As Erie goes, so goes the country in a presidential election.

01:26:18.920 It has been that way for a couple hundred years, right?

01:26:22.580 And we're in Erie.

01:26:24.080 J.D. Vance had been there that day.

01:26:26.300 It was his first visit to Pennsylvania after being named the nominee by President Trump.

01:26:32.420 And he's at this event in this sort of old industrial area.

01:26:37.640 And he gets this massive crowd, right?

01:26:42.060 And there are people lining the streets to see his motorcade.

01:26:45.900 And I'm thinking, you know, this matters.

01:26:48.140 This is huge.

01:26:50.060 This traditionally was a Democrat county.

01:26:52.920 If they're coming to see this guy who they've been calling, you know, something about cat ladies and there was all kind of weird.

01:27:01.100 He's weird.

01:27:02.040 Right.

01:27:02.560 And I'm pointing out to these journalists because I'm, you know, as a blue collar kid from Western PA, Lake Erie was our beach.

01:27:12.860 Okay.

01:27:13.540 That's where we went on vacation.

01:27:15.380 So I know Erie really well.

01:27:17.080 I'm pointing out the old GE plan and all these industrial institutions that are gone and trying to show them like that matters, like place matters in this election.

01:27:27.940 And, and I'm like, they're not paying attention to me at all.

01:27:33.320 And it's not about me.

01:27:34.980 I was trying to like be instructive and they didn't care.

01:27:39.400 They all had their heads down in their phones.

01:27:41.480 And I was, I was, I was so frustrated.

01:27:44.960 They probably were writing another childless cat lady article right at that moment.

01:27:49.120 It couldn't be interrupted.

01:27:51.820 Yes.

01:27:52.400 It was about, he said something that day.

01:27:54.900 Oh, I know what JD Vance said that day.

01:27:57.540 That was the day that he said that Harris, he was really angry about Harris saying that she would do nothing different than Joe Biden did when it came to Afghanistan.

01:28:07.480 Right.

01:28:07.720 And, and, and, and JD said something about that in strong words, and that's all they wrote about and how terrible he was for framing it that way.

01:28:15.520 And I'm like, y'all are missing this race that's going on right in front of you.

01:28:20.160 There are people that are holding up signs and saying, I'm weird too.

01:28:25.280 Nobody else wrote that.

01:28:27.000 And I'm thinking you're not getting what's happening.

01:28:30.000 So Trump, a week prior to that, goes to Butler, Pennsylvania.

01:28:34.780 You're there too.

01:28:36.200 And you, you write about how there, you know, that was a, it was a joyful crowd.

01:28:42.060 Like, like we always saw the Trump rallies, you know, not, not at all what the media would portray, but like truly joyful, celebratory.

01:28:49.480 They did not know that Trump was going to win.

01:28:51.380 We did not know that.

01:28:52.360 It was what we were told by everybody, including me.

01:28:54.540 It looked like a very tight, tight race.

01:28:56.600 All the polls suggested tight, tight, tight.

01:28:58.100 But still they were joyful just to be around him, his messaging.

01:29:01.720 They felt seen.

01:29:02.440 They felt heard.

01:29:03.680 And then Trump gives the speech and we've heard this before, but I want you to tell it about how the turning of the head.

01:29:11.940 Yeah.

01:29:12.480 And like how unusual it was for him to do that.

01:29:17.420 Yeah.

01:29:18.360 So, um, he goes out.

01:29:20.100 If you look at the cover of the book, my daughter actually took that cover.

01:29:23.200 And I think that cover is very, very powerful.

01:29:26.340 It's symbolic because it shows Trump facing the crowd and the crowd facing back at him.

01:29:33.240 That is the transactional relationship that he has with rally goers.

01:29:37.900 And Megan, you were in Pittsburgh on the night before.

01:29:40.320 You see that, right?

01:29:42.040 And, and he never turns his neck away.

01:29:45.760 Now he might turn his body away to face a different side of the rally, different part of the stands, but he never turns his head away.

01:29:53.720 Two things happen simultaneously.

01:29:56.220 A chart goes down.

01:29:57.680 And I remember, I remember turning to my daughter and says, what does he think?

01:30:00.780 He's Ross Perot?

01:30:01.860 Because he never has a chart, right?

01:30:04.320 True.

01:30:04.780 And then, and then like a split second later, he turns his neck away again, something he never does.

01:30:11.460 Pop, pop, pop, pop went right over my head.

01:30:14.360 I knew exactly what it was.

01:30:16.020 I'm a gun owner.

01:30:17.920 And I knew exactly what, what was happening.

01:30:21.240 I saw the blood streak across his face.

01:30:23.760 I saw him, most importantly, the thing that almost gave me immediate release, relief, was that I saw him get down on his own.

01:30:34.060 And I'm making this mental checklist.

01:30:36.080 And I never get down.

01:30:37.340 I'm eventually taken down by a campaign spokesperson because I'm just reporting, right?

01:30:45.280 I have my recorder on.

01:30:46.140 He was trying to protect you.

01:30:47.360 Yeah, he was trying to protect me.

01:30:49.220 He's a, he's a brave young man.

01:30:51.040 I will always love him.

01:30:53.100 But, you know, he, he does not, he does not get, he's not falling down.

01:30:58.680 There are a sea of blue that surround him when the next four shots go off.

01:31:03.440 And, and I just remember saying, oh, dear God, that podium is not going to protect him, that there's more shots.

01:31:10.060 Please let him be okay.

01:31:11.520 Please let everyone in the stands be okay.

01:31:13.780 And I never, it never occurred to me to think about myself in that moment.

01:31:17.440 And I'm not saying that like I'm selfless, but there's, there's this thing that happens when you're a reporter that you just continue.

01:31:25.580 You, you have to, you have to do your job.

01:31:28.080 And that's what I continued doing.

01:31:30.080 And, and so, you know, he passes me, they eventually take him past me.

01:31:37.960 I'm on, I'm like four feet away, four or five feet away.

01:31:41.480 They eventually take him past me.

01:31:43.900 And there's some really interesting moments after that in the book.

01:31:47.400 But the one thing I thought was so powerful, and I'm going to get in so much trouble with my parents for this one.

01:31:54.140 And yes, even at 65, I worry about getting in trouble with my parents.

01:31:58.300 But the next morning, the president calls me.

01:32:02.160 I don't know, it was early.

01:32:04.520 And he said, he said, Salita, this is President Donald Trump.

01:32:08.780 Like I didn't know it was him, right?

01:32:10.380 And, and he says, are you okay?

01:32:13.860 Is your daughter okay?

01:32:14.920 Is your son-in-law okay?

01:32:16.660 He says them by name.

01:32:17.620 Like, I can't even believe he remembers that.

01:32:19.980 He's by himself.

01:32:21.040 There's no one with him.

01:32:22.000 So it's not like he has like a little crib sheet, right?

01:32:25.400 And, and he, and I, and I said, are you bleeping kidding me?

01:32:30.200 You just been shot and you're asking about me.

01:32:32.860 And then I'm like, oh my God, I just swore at the president.

01:32:35.340 And I got myself really upset.

01:32:38.800 He ended up calling me seven times that day.

01:32:41.800 We had a very in-depth conversations and people can read it.

01:32:45.300 But why I want to go back to the cover of that book and why this moment's important.

01:32:50.060 Because I asked him, um, and, and I asked him, I said, why did you say fight, fight, fight?

01:32:57.580 And I'll never forget this.

01:32:59.120 He goes, well, Selena, I wasn't Donald Trump in that moment.

01:33:04.080 I, I was representing the presidency and I have an obligation.

01:33:10.540 Yeah.

01:33:10.680 I want to get, I get chills every time I say it.

01:33:12.460 I just got the chills too.

01:33:13.400 So, yeah, I have an obligation as a former president and maybe potentially president again

01:33:21.020 to show strength, to show people that we are resolved and nothing will hurt us or take us

01:33:27.120 down.

01:33:27.420 And we continue on.

01:33:29.940 And I have, that's amazing.

01:33:31.540 That's that moment.

01:33:33.420 I mean, we, we have it here.

01:33:35.480 It is.

01:33:35.740 I mean, we, we've, we've talked about the assassination moment.

01:33:38.840 Let's just, let's look at the fight, fight, fight moment in SOT 32 saying fight surrounded

01:33:53.060 by the secret service agents.

01:33:54.680 It's, it's his incredible combination of like, yes, he has hubris.

01:34:00.360 Of course, every president does, but, but, but also understanding how to lead, how to be

01:34:06.740 strong and how to lead what people need in a leader.

01:34:11.160 Yeah.

01:34:11.900 We revisited that, that question two weeks ago.

01:34:15.340 It'll be, um, it'll be out in my Washington post story on Friday, very emotional interview

01:34:20.800 between him and Helen Compatori, the widow of Corey Compatori and myself.

01:34:25.880 And, and I asked him again, I said, you know, you told me that he goes, yeah, I did.

01:34:33.020 Um, I said, well, he goes, well, I mean, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing now.

01:34:37.880 That's why I'm going full steam ahead because I have purpose.

01:34:42.380 God's hand was in that moment.

01:34:44.740 And I have an obligation to be the best that I can be for this country.

01:34:50.000 And again, I get goosebumps because people have all these different thoughts about who

01:34:54.300 they think president Trump is.

01:34:56.980 And as a reporter, and, and trust me, he's gotten mad at me too along the way.

01:35:02.760 Um, but as a reporter, um, there is a humanity and empathy in him.

01:35:09.140 Always remembers your name.

01:35:10.520 Always asks about your children and your grandchildren.

01:35:13.920 Um, was obsessed with your hair, which is fantastic.

01:35:18.040 By the way, something funny about Trump, um, I'm occasionally I do hear from the president

01:35:22.960 in one way, shape or form.

01:35:24.420 And if he calls me, he says the same thing.

01:35:27.920 It's your favorite president by far, by far.

01:35:34.720 He's funny.

01:35:35.760 You know, that to me is actually not exactly hubris.

01:35:38.560 It's just funny.

01:35:39.400 It's almost self-deprecating because he's just sort of like, yes, I am.

01:35:42.560 Period.

01:35:43.820 Yes.

01:35:44.360 Yes.

01:35:44.720 He's very, very funny.

01:35:45.820 There's a part in the book where he chases me around the green room with hairspray.

01:35:50.440 Um, he really wants you to try hairspray because he loves your hair.

01:35:53.500 You can't believe you don't need hairspray.

01:35:55.180 Yeah.

01:35:55.520 Mr.

01:35:55.840 President, my hair is big enough.

01:35:57.400 I do not need hairspray.

01:35:59.620 Um, and last week or two weeks ago when I was, I wrote on air force one.

01:36:06.000 Um, now let me tell you as a kid that grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, who went

01:36:10.540 to, who was, has been a waitress and worked in a sewage treatment plant and had been a

01:36:15.440 cafeteria lady, right?

01:36:16.940 Like I've not exactly had this life of privilege.

01:36:19.800 And to be on air force one is like, Oh my God, who am I?

01:36:24.120 But it is where we're going from air force one into the beast, which is the vehicle that

01:36:30.160 the president uses.

01:36:31.360 He asked me if I want to, um, diet Coke and I scrunched my face.

01:36:35.480 I do not have a poker face.

01:36:36.960 Obviously if anybody's watching this, they can see that.

01:36:39.860 Um, and he goes, wait, we don't like Coke.

01:36:42.300 I'm like, no, I don't like pop because pop.

01:36:45.520 And, and so he couldn't believe I didn't like it because you're trying to like it.

01:36:49.660 It's the best Coke ever.

01:36:51.420 It's amazing.

01:36:52.140 It's amazing.

01:36:52.860 He's as healthy as he is at his age subsisting on McDonald's diet Coke and Hershey chocolate

01:36:57.720 bars.

01:36:58.120 Keep going.

01:36:59.300 Yeah.

01:36:59.840 And, and so I tried it.

01:37:01.820 No poker face.

01:37:02.820 I made a face.

01:37:03.820 He goes, I can't believe you don't like Coke.

01:37:06.960 So, but you, you know, I think it's so interesting.

01:37:11.480 You talk to him seven days, I'm sorry, seven times the day after the shooting and for at

01:37:17.180 least 10 minutes of time to me, that tells me he needed to talk to you.

01:37:21.940 Like he, he must've needed to talk to people who were there, who are rational, who saw it,

01:37:29.380 who had a perspective on it.

01:37:30.760 And you write something in the book to the effect of, I gave him the time and space to

01:37:36.600 figure it out for himself.

01:37:37.880 Like what the, the sort of the wisdom that would come from what had happened to him,

01:37:42.620 because I'm sure it wasn't instantaneous.

01:37:45.460 I'm sure it did take a while.

01:37:46.780 We saw that a little at the RNC, which happened a week later.

01:37:49.420 He still had the bandage on his ear where, you know, he was a little meandering in the

01:37:53.540 speech, but you could see he was openly grappling with like, was I saved?

01:37:59.640 You know, like maybe something extraordinary is happening with me.

01:38:03.460 Maybe I actually, I'm, I believe Trump believes in God.

01:38:06.440 I don't think it's particularly religious, but I do think that that experience started

01:38:11.600 to reframe his own purpose here for him.

01:38:15.180 Yes.

01:38:15.740 And you were part of that in their early, early day.

01:38:18.320 Yeah.

01:38:19.160 And, and, and that, and that's why I decided, I know other journalists would push him to,

01:38:24.320 to talk and push him to say things, but I didn't think that was right.

01:38:28.580 I knew he was going through something and I thought it was important for him to be able

01:38:33.820 to figure that out while we had that conversation.

01:38:37.700 And, and there is, this has been very humbling for him.

01:38:41.020 The death of Corey has had a huge impact on him.

01:38:45.240 And, and you'll find that throughout the book, but also purpose and, and God have really

01:38:52.980 had, had a, a spiritual impact on him in a way that I don't think people truly understand,

01:38:59.240 but they can see in the way he is leading his presidency currency currently.

01:39:04.560 The book is called Butler, the untold story of the near assassination of Donald Trump and

01:39:11.060 the fight for America's heartland.

01:39:13.340 Please go out and order it now support Selena.

01:39:16.140 As you well know, she will not be featured all over CNN or MSNBC who do not want to pay any

01:39:21.680 attention to this story.

01:39:22.520 She stays with me.

01:39:23.800 Go ahead and buy the book Butler by Selena Zito.

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01:40:49.100 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.

01:40:54.420 It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations

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01:41:50.520 I'm not supposed to be here tonight.

01:41:53.080 Not supposed to be here.

01:41:54.540 Thank you.

01:42:17.180 But I'm not.

01:42:19.440 I was there that night.

01:42:21.000 My family was there.

01:42:22.020 It was very moving.

01:42:23.140 You could see a man still trying to, still reeling.

01:42:27.000 He was still, I mean, Trump is a human.

01:42:29.260 You know, he has emotions.

01:42:30.820 He has freelties just like the rest of us, even though he doesn't acknowledge them.

01:42:33.900 There was a picture that made national news the other day on the Daily Mail catching him

01:42:37.900 with reading glasses on.

01:42:39.240 And they pointed out, you never see Trump with reading glasses on.

01:42:41.840 He doesn't, you know, he likes to project strength and robustness, which he has.

01:42:47.860 He does.

01:42:48.420 I'm already using reading glasses and I'm much younger than Donald Trump, but that's just

01:42:53.380 just how he's built.

01:42:54.760 So you can see it was an interesting moment, Selina, to watch him starting to come to terms

01:42:59.900 with it.

01:43:00.240 Like I literally almost lost my life like seven days ago.

01:43:04.000 And then you point out, then he did come to terms with it.

01:43:07.980 And here he is sounding more sure at the actual inauguration post the victory.

01:43:12.820 That's SOT 37.

01:43:14.400 Just a few months ago in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin's bullet ripped through

01:43:19.600 my ear.

01:43:20.560 But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason.

01:43:28.640 I was saved by God to make America great again.

01:43:33.280 Standing ovation inside the Capitol of everyone except for the Democrats.

01:43:45.880 How do you think it's affected him as president?

01:43:48.780 Like, what do you see in him that you think is related to this event?

01:43:52.940 He's just going.

01:43:54.520 So so this is technically a lame duck presidency at this point, right?

01:43:58.900 You would never think that.

01:44:00.060 He is so full charged and he is so determined to to fix and and sort of undo not only what

01:44:12.780 Biden has done, but what has been done before by past presidents, Republicans and Democrats

01:44:18.220 alike.

01:44:19.060 And he is he is not putting the brake pedals on.

01:44:23.040 And and it's very unlike 2017.

01:44:26.360 2017, 2017 was like, oh, God, now I'm here.

01:44:30.080 And with, you know, these people are all telling me what to do.

01:44:33.040 And he's like, I'm doing what I in my gut I know is right.

01:44:37.740 Watching his face, Megan, then in that clip you just showed, I remember looking at his face

01:44:44.040 that night and saying, oh, yeah, I I know that face.

01:44:49.180 I have that face in the morning right now because I don't know what just happened and I don't

01:44:54.520 know what I'm supposed to do.

01:44:56.000 But I feel as though I'm called to do something bigger, bigger than self.

01:45:01.380 Right.

01:45:02.360 You know, and and not that I do anything big, but it ended up being this book.

01:45:07.260 And I was reluctant initially to do this book, but, you know, I realized it was an important

01:45:14.900 book.

01:45:15.180 And it's not just about what happened that day.

01:45:17.740 It's what happened before we find out that President Trump isn't the only president to

01:45:24.200 be shot at in Butler.

01:45:27.220 And it makes us very reflective as to how different the country would be had George Washington died

01:45:33.780 that day.

01:45:34.620 And it has to make us think about how reflective we should be about if President Trump had died

01:45:39.440 that day.

01:45:40.300 There would be steelworkers that wouldn't have a job anymore.

01:45:43.800 There will be a flood of people because because Harris and Biden were both against that that

01:45:49.200 that deal.

01:45:50.580 There would be people still flooding across our border.

01:45:53.480 There there would be people in Western North Carolina that never saw any help or hope after

01:46:01.520 those devastating floods that hit that area in September of 2024.

01:46:07.340 Right.

01:46:07.720 And the continual help from from FEMA.

01:46:10.400 There would have been no no no annihilation of the Iran's nuclear capabilities.

01:46:16.300 There would be no Israel and Iran deal.

01:46:18.980 The world would look very different in just the same way that the world would look very,

01:46:24.040 very different had George Washington died in in Butler in 1754.

01:46:29.580 And we have to think about governs now.

01:46:32.840 And so not only you point out, yes, this time around, he wanted competent, but loyal.

01:46:37.540 You know, first time around, I think he just went for what looked like competent.

01:46:41.080 He didn't factor in loyalty and he paid a price for it.

01:46:43.700 And this time around, I think, yes, he learned from term one.

01:46:47.720 But also, I think when you've almost been killed, you probably do have a greater appreciation

01:46:52.940 for people who are loyal to you, who you can trust, who are going to have your best interests,

01:46:58.420 your family's best interests, and who are going to be totally aligned with your mission.

01:47:01.760 Like now you're determined and you can't have anybody getting in your way.

01:47:04.840 And then there's there's a certain grandiosity about what Trump does.

01:47:10.000 But I it's been magnificent.

01:47:12.560 You know, I mean, Gaziera, like what Maragaza, what do you want to what?

01:47:19.000 Now, that's probably not going to happen.

01:47:20.840 Let's get real.

01:47:21.460 But what other American president would even think to say, I'll take it on?

01:47:26.640 I actually think I might be able to fix it.

01:47:28.460 Like, it's incredible.

01:47:29.940 And or even like, you know, Greenland says no, but I say yes, like it actually might

01:47:36.740 happen or result in some sort of a compromise, you know, peace in the Middle East.

01:47:40.880 I'm going to try to settle the Russia thing in a day.

01:47:43.000 He realized he couldn't do that.

01:47:43.960 But he's just taken on everything, things that are politically toxic, that most normal

01:47:50.380 politicians wouldn't want to touch with a 10 foot pole because they don't have to.

01:47:54.020 It's like somebody else's problem.

01:47:55.300 I don't have to solve it.

01:47:56.740 I got my own problems.

01:47:57.780 Trump is like, I think I can fix it.

01:48:00.480 I think I have that solution.

01:48:01.720 I think we can be friends with the new Al Qaeda linked runners of Syria.

01:48:05.380 I think I can renew hope and optimism and great relations with the Saudis.

01:48:09.860 Like, there's nothing he says.

01:48:11.640 Yeah, I can't.

01:48:13.640 You're exactly right.

01:48:14.920 And I think there would have been 70 percent of that after surviving all the lawfare, right?

01:48:21.880 There would have been an element of him that would be I bow in a China shop and yes,

01:48:26.940 I'm breaking all the China and we're going to get new China, right?

01:48:30.560 But you add on the assassination attempt.

01:48:36.500 You add on questioning purpose and aspiration, right?

01:48:42.100 Part of something bigger than self.

01:48:44.020 And all of a sudden you get the Trump 2025.

01:48:50.000 And he is going to be the most consequential president in not just my lifetime, since FDR.

01:48:57.880 Just think about this.

01:48:58.720 He's going to own a space and time that stretches out at least 15 years where he was the dominant

01:49:06.160 figure in American politics.

01:49:08.160 That is unprecedented.

01:49:11.220 And I don't know that we'll ever see anything like this again in our lifetimes, right?

01:49:16.460 It was my parents who were children when FDR was president.

01:49:22.080 But, you know, that was what, 70, 80 years ago?

01:49:25.920 It took that long for another president to be that dominant in our culture.

01:49:30.400 And strong.

01:49:32.340 Yes.

01:49:32.860 He was, he was built for this moment.

01:49:35.420 You write and we, and it was a good refresher about some of the things that we learned this

01:49:38.840 time last year about how he'd been, he went down and then the secret service was all over

01:49:43.520 him and they hit him so hard.

01:49:45.320 I mean, in trying to protect him that they knocked him right out of his shoes.

01:49:49.180 I had forgotten that.

01:49:50.780 And you write about how you, you heard him.

01:49:53.400 And even in that moment, it's really kind of the explanation.

01:49:56.680 I think for why he went back up and was able to do the fight, because remember, we're all

01:50:02.260 like, why is it, what's he doing back up?

01:50:04.440 Get down.

01:50:04.880 Like, I know why he did it, but like, you are also thinking, no, get down.

01:50:09.620 You don't know if the threat has been neutralized.

01:50:11.580 But initially he was like, get my damn shoes back.

01:50:15.900 Like, that's another thing.

01:50:17.140 Like Trump, I'm sure he didn't want to seem be seen without his shoes.

01:50:20.380 He's conscious of what the American people need.

01:50:22.440 They need to see a strong leader, not somebody walking around in his sock feet.

01:50:25.900 Now, somebody with the reading glasses all the time, somebody who says fight, even when

01:50:31.240 he might get shot, he doesn't know for sure it's been neutralized.

01:50:34.920 You saw that all unfold in a second.

01:50:38.260 Yeah.

01:50:38.460 And it's not even just about personal image, which is, I think, is such an important nuance,

01:50:43.460 right?

01:50:44.060 Yes, it is about him.

01:50:45.740 But also he has this really granular understanding of the presidency needs to look strong, feel

01:50:54.440 strong, feel robust, feel resolute, that he believes that is his obligation in this position.

01:51:01.800 And that is what he did in that moment.

01:51:04.800 And that's what he does every day.

01:51:07.680 Yeah.

01:51:08.220 It's like all of the seams come together.

01:51:12.000 I'm going to show you a video on that in just one second.

01:51:13.880 When you read the book, again, it's called Butler, The Untold Story by Selena Zito, Z-I-T-O.

01:51:20.340 A couple other things I want to hit on that are very interesting.

01:51:24.540 Thomas Crooks.

01:51:25.860 What, where, why don't we know more?

01:51:28.320 Where are the in-depth pieces about him?

01:51:31.160 You know, we know more about Lee Harvey Oswald than we do about this guy.

01:51:35.420 Yeah.

01:51:35.560 Yeah, part of that is, and trust me, it wasn't for a lack of trying on my part.

01:51:41.220 Part of it is, unlike most young people, he didn't really leave a social media footprint.

01:51:47.000 There wasn't anything there.

01:51:48.760 He didn't tweet.

01:51:49.960 He didn't have a blog.

01:51:51.720 He didn't have MySpace, right?

01:51:53.760 He didn't have anything.

01:51:55.840 He's a very introverted young man.

01:51:57.700 And seemed to be fine until about six months before, and then had a complete mental breakdown.

01:52:05.700 But we don't know the details of it.

01:52:08.060 I don't know that he was particularly political.

01:52:11.640 I don't know if this was because he wanted to get Trump.

01:52:15.800 I think he wanted this attention.

01:52:18.820 He craved being this historical figure.

01:52:22.340 Not a good historical figure, but a historical.

01:52:25.640 So people would never forget his name again.

01:52:30.080 Well, they will.

01:52:31.560 Yeah.

01:52:32.620 Yeah.

01:52:33.380 I mean, his life was so lonely that when I went over the, from the Clareton Sportsman Club,

01:52:40.720 when I went over the log of when he went to the gun club, it was every day, but it was

01:52:48.380 also Thanksgiving and Christmas and Valentine's Day, days you're supposed to be with your family

01:52:54.140 or friends or loved ones.

01:52:57.680 So why do you think we don't know more?

01:53:00.860 Is it, you know, because a lot of people think it's because he was being paid by Ukraine or

01:53:04.760 he was Iranian backed, you know, that there's an international conspiracy and it's been hushed

01:53:09.260 up.

01:53:10.040 I mean, I would suggest your book tells a different story and it's something much more practical

01:53:14.000 about why we don't know more.

01:53:16.320 Yeah.

01:53:16.700 Well, his family lawyered up.

01:53:19.860 We don't, we don't have any access to get any information about him, at least not now.

01:53:27.340 I don't know whenever we will get it.

01:53:29.980 I'm still waiting to hear about the Las Vegas shooter.

01:53:32.140 Um, and, and so I don't, uh, you know, I, I pushed as hard as I could until I knew I'm

01:53:40.280 hitting a brick wall and I've got a rest of a book to write and maybe someone much better

01:53:45.600 in investigative journalism can get in that.

01:53:48.500 I couldn't get past the brick wall.

01:53:50.960 I also think it's the point you raise about local news is going away, you know, for all

01:53:56.080 of our ripping on how biased the news media is nine times out of 10, we're talking about

01:54:00.580 the national media, the local news that they, they're not all focused on politics.

01:54:05.620 They're mostly not focused on politics.

01:54:07.480 They're mostly focused on crime and education and more local stories.

01:54:11.360 And they're really important.

01:54:12.780 They're important.

01:54:13.360 They're far more important in many ways to the ways we actually live.

01:54:16.940 And they're drying up.

01:54:17.980 This is something I'm against.

01:54:18.900 They're drying up from coast to coast.

01:54:21.180 And this is exactly the kind of story that they would normally have had, you know, every

01:54:25.500 single news organization in town on, but you know, Pennsylvania and Butler are

01:54:30.460 not immune to these national trends either.

01:54:32.660 Yeah.

01:54:33.320 There's news deserts everywhere and, um, they don't have the facility.

01:54:37.740 They don't have the, the, the, um, the reporters that can do this.

01:54:41.360 And so that, that is the challenge.

01:54:44.880 Speaking, um, of reporters and, and the national level anyway, and their cozy relationship with

01:54:50.360 the Democrats, you have very interesting information in this book, Butler, the untold

01:54:55.880 story by Selena Zito about what a bomb the Harris walls campaign was when they did come

01:55:04.240 to Pennsylvania, they, which they knew full well was the most important state in the union.

01:55:10.180 And they're all important, but the swing States are most important in Pennsylvania, the biggest,

01:55:13.080 most swingy of all.

01:55:14.840 And it was just a very good window into how inept they were, notwithstanding the boatloads

01:55:21.760 of money that were being thrown at them.

01:55:23.880 Could you explain?

01:55:25.840 They, they just may, I mean, she spent an unbelievable amount of time in Pittsburgh and nobody ever

01:55:31.680 saw her.

01:55:32.420 If they did see her, she had an event where the, all the events were closed.

01:55:36.420 It was only people that they wanted to come to their events.

01:55:39.340 It wasn't people that, you know, they didn't open up for people to be curious for people

01:55:43.940 to.

01:55:44.420 It was S E I U members.

01:55:46.160 You're right.

01:55:47.140 Oh yeah.

01:55:48.100 Yeah.

01:55:48.400 They were all, you know, yeah.

01:55:50.160 And it wasn't like labor unions.

01:55:51.840 It was a social justice union.

01:55:54.100 And, and so it, it was so cautious.

01:55:56.700 It was so poorly run.

01:55:58.380 There were opportunities for her to, um, to, to be able to, you know, grow a coalition and

01:56:06.020 none of that was done.

01:56:07.540 Hmm.

01:56:08.060 You know, and then on the other hand, you have Trump out there glad handing with the

01:56:12.500 people nonstop, understands talking their talk, you know, does, does remind me of the

01:56:18.920 story that we kicked off our show today, whether you weren't here yet, but we, we just touched

01:56:22.160 on it briefly.

01:56:23.140 What happened with the Venezuelan gang members out in Aurora, Colorado?

01:56:27.500 You know, Trump was touting this story because they're Trenda Aragua members and they were

01:56:32.180 committing crime and taking over apartment complexes in Aurora.

01:56:35.340 And the mainstream media dumped on this story just as fast as humanly possible.

01:56:40.600 It's not happening.

01:56:41.560 It's a lie over and over the New York times.

01:56:44.840 It's a lie.

01:56:45.280 It's a lie.

01:56:45.580 I, and even now the New York times has been forced to admit it's true.

01:56:52.120 They're, they are taking over buildings.

01:56:54.560 They are killing and committing violent felonies against Americans out there, but there'll be

01:57:00.460 no apology.

01:57:01.860 There'll be no mea culpa, all these political, political fact, fact checks.

01:57:06.680 We saw Trump after that debate on ABC news, where he raised this, they tried to say it's

01:57:10.760 not happening.

01:57:11.780 They're not going to go back and apologize to him, Selena, but that's the way the news

01:57:14.780 operates these days.

01:57:16.900 It's so frustrating as a reporter.

01:57:19.480 It really is very frustrating to see how these things are, are run to see the bias in them

01:57:26.840 and, and to see no accountability when you get the story wrong.

01:57:30.300 If I get a story wrong, I'll be like, I got this wrong.

01:57:33.260 Right?

01:57:34.060 Like I, you know, I miss this.

01:57:36.440 Mostly you miss things.

01:57:38.560 Uh, and if you can't admit that, then, then you're not good at your job.

01:57:44.560 Well, I think that's fair to say about the New York times on any story in which bias can

01:57:51.080 affect them.

01:57:52.180 It does.

01:57:53.500 And they're not reliable.

01:57:54.820 Okay.

01:57:55.400 Uh, the book again is called Butler, the untold story of the near assassination of Donald Trump

01:58:00.240 and the fight for America's heartland.

01:58:02.220 It is by the one and only Selena Zito, who you can trust.

01:58:06.640 Unlike all those mainstreamers go and get it now support her.

01:58:10.620 Um, let's show the New York times that they will have to put Selena on the best sellers

01:58:14.500 list, whether they want to do it or not.

01:58:16.900 Great to see you, my friend.

01:58:18.160 Great reporting.

01:58:19.220 Thanks, Megan.

01:58:20.100 Thank you.

01:58:20.760 Bye-bye.

01:58:21.380 All the best.

01:58:22.200 Wow.

01:58:22.560 What a story.

01:58:23.300 Can't believe it's been almost a year.

01:58:24.780 Thanks to all of you for listening and we will see you again tomorrow.

01:58:30.240 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.

01:58:32.700 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - July 07, 2025

Ghouls Blame Texas Flooding on Trump, Shock Epstein Announcement, and Assassination Attempt Secrets, with Andrew Klavan and Salena Zito ｜ Ep. 1102

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