GOP Debate Stakes, and Progressives Refusing to Condemn Hamas, with Charles C.W. Cooke, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Josh Hammer, and Seth Mandel ｜ Ep. 679
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 36 minutes
Words per Minute
170.69054
Summary
With the Iowa caucuses less than six weeks away, tomorrow s debate provides a crucial opportunity for the presidential hopefuls to set themselves apart from the pack. We ve got a great lineup of guests this week, including a few on-set surprises, including Michael Brendan Doherty and Charles C.W. Cook.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, coming to you live from the University of Alabama,
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where tomorrow night I will be co-moderating the fourth Republican presidential debate.
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And frankly, this could be the fourth and last Republican debate.
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It could be the fourth and last debate entirely in the entire election season.
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We are here in The Spin Room, where The Megyn Kelly Show will be live today, tomorrow,
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and then also with a special post-debate election show tomorrow night.
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We've got a great lineup of guests for you this week, including a few on-set surprises.
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With the Iowa caucuses less than six weeks away,
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tomorrow provides a crucial opportunity for the presidential hopefuls to set themselves apart.
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And it is the smallest number of candidates to date,
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meaning you can expect a much more substantive conversation.
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We do not expect former President Trump to attend,
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Yesterday, long-shot candidate and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum
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He actually could have a shot in future elections.
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I think a lot of people opened their eyes to this guy in a way that they hadn't prior.
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But for now, he's gone back home to North Dakota and is not thinking about presidential politics.
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Joining me now to discuss it all, two of my favorites from National Review,
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Charles C.W. Cook, senior writer and host of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast,
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and Michael Brendan Doherty, also a senior writer at National Review.
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It's getting kind of exciting now, 24 hours out from the next big debate.
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And I'll tell you, here in Tuscaloosa, you can feel the energy already.
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They're peppering, you know, all of us here on the rules and where everybody's going to stand.
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And we at the debate team, I'm co-partnering with News Nation and the Free Beacon,
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Thankfully, now we have four candidates, so there's no exact center.
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But there are all these sort of power dynamics in setting up the stage and getting ready that
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So, Charles, let me ask you, because a lot of people will be asking themselves going into this
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Obviously, I've got my own thoughts on it because I'm here.
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I think that the race at the moment has been frozen for a long time.
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And as I've suggested before, the big question now is whether or not that freezing is real.
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If it is the case that Trump is 60 points to the good and that everyone else is fighting
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for scraps, then no, the debate's not going to matter.
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But if people aren't paying attention or there's an incumbency factor for Trump, then, yeah,
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we need to know who's going to be left standing.
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And in that scenario, people are still going to be looking for answers to questions in
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It also matters in the sense that it has been a useful winnowing exercise.
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And the debates have obviously changed the way that people see the candidates.
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Tim Scott, for example, was just not really there at the other debates.
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The fact that you still have, especially Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis on the stage,
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shows you that whether or not they can beat Trump, they have some sticking power.
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I'll tell you another reason why it could matter, MBD, and that is, you guys know in National
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Review, our mutual pal Andy McCarthy just posted a big piece on how Trump has been denied for
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now an argument that he's immune from this criminal prosecution by the federal government
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in Washington, D.C. in front of Judge Chutkin, who is not a Trump fan, it is safe to say.
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And he's going to try to take it up to the U.S. Supreme Court saying, I can't be put through
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There's a question about presidential immunity.
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These are for acts I took as president and so on.
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And the point I'm getting to about Andy's piece is he points out that Judge Chutkin might very well,
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if Trump gets convicted in that D.C. federal case, he does not think it's likely that she
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So if if he gets tried in D.C., and this is a federal case, but you're still pulling from D.C.
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for all of your jurors, a town that went over 92 percent for Joe Biden in the last election,
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the odds of him being convicted in front of such a jury are extremely high for obvious reasons,
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You really are looking at a scenario where the likely Republican nominee could not only
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be a convicted felon by Election Day 2024, but thanks to this judge could be sitting in
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And that really could be a break glass in case of emergency moment for the Republican Party,
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especially if that happens prior to the Republican National Convention this summer at a point where
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potentially they could still switch out the nominee.
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There's it's strange that for many months we've been proceeding as if this were going
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And there's like a, you know, an even lower level of interest, I think, than there had
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been in the last two presidential election cycles, when in fact, this one is by far potentially
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the most explosive where you as you point out, you could have someone in prison.
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You could also have someone in the morgue by Election Day.
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You know, these are highly unusual circumstances.
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I mean, Joe, people that are prosecuting Trump under bogus legal theory should cease doing so.
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And perhaps, you know, candidates who are under so many indictments should, you know, get out.
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We may need a break, break an emergency option.
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We also, you know, these debates matter because these debates are a time for people to hash
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Even if you think Trump has got the nomination sewn up, perhaps he's going to look at Nikki
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Haley and decide this person is a good vice presidential candidate for me that has enough
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appeal to suburban voters or to women voters that I need to make up for in 2024.
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The debate, you know, we're talking about real issues that affect Americans, the border, inflation,
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seeing how the audience responds to these questions and these candidates can shape the
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race next year, even if the four participants you have tomorrow night are not among the candidates
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So, you know, this is a public service and I'm glad you're the one doing it.
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Co-moderating with Elizabeth Vargas of News Nation and Eliana Johnson, our pal from the
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It's going to be a spicy couple of hours as long as the candidates show up ready to play,
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Charles, the reason I said this could be actually the last debate entirely is you've
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got not only, you know, if Trump keeps going up, right, if this debate does nothing to change
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the trajectory and let's say Trump goes from 50 to 60 percent up on these folks to 70 to
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I mean, at some point, the RNC is going to say we're not doing this anymore because at
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that same time, the votes are going to start to come in in Iowa, in New Hampshire, in South
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So all those those two points could come together at the same time.
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So let's assume just for purposes of argument that nothing happens to change the early races
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There's no way Joe Biden's going to going to debate Donald Trump.
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I think some people disagree with me, but I just don't think Biden can do it.
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You know, you will get to some of his latest snafus, but at the Kennedy Center Honors, but
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So I really think he'll say I'm not debating an insurrectionist.
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I'm not debating a convicted felon, an accused felon, an imprisoned felon, whatever, wherever
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And so we may actually have an election in November 24 without either candidate having
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sat for even one debate the entire cycle, which feels deeply wrong.
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I'm not sure it feels deeply wrong if the two candidates next year are Joe Biden and Donald
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I would like to see an election in which ideas were batted around.
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But if you remember back to the 2020 election, the debate that we got between Biden and Trump
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It really involved them throwing pies at each other and disgracing the nation.
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If we could have two different candidates, then a debate would be fruitful.
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I was somewhat dismissive, at least in its effects, of the contest between Ron DeSantis
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But actually, that is the sort of debate that Americans ought to have.
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That is a fight between two different visions, between people who have taken dramatically different
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And within reason, I thought DeSantis did a much better job than Newsom, are willing to hash
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But I don't think we would get that from Biden and Trump, even if both Biden and Trump were
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He's going to use any excuse he can not to have to debate Trump because he can barely get
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through a press conference or a gaggle at the moment.
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Trump doesn't seem to want to debate anyone either.
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I wouldn't be too surprised if Trump tried to underscore the advantage he has in virility by
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But I think it's more the product of it being a contest potentially between Biden and Trump
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That DeSantis-Nusom debate reminded me, did you guys ever see the movie Sliding Doors
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with Gwyneth Paltrow where she kind of has the opportunity to see what life would have
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been like in another set of an alternate universe?
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We could have had two young, vibrant leaders hashing out policies for the future of the country.
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Um, I honestly, I thought Newsom came across just so grating and irritating, but fine.
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We have two very probably elderly men who are going to maybe hash something out, maybe not,
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And the American voters, if you look at the overall numbers, they don't want this.
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On the subject of Joe Biden, he, they were the Kennedy Senator honors the other night
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and, uh, they honored Billy Crystal, Queen Latifah, Barry Gibb, Dionne Warwick, and Renee
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And Joe Biden couldn't make it through without multiple mistakes.
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He continued to refer to Dionne Warwick as Diane.
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Now, guys, we're like, I think I'm, I know I'm older than Charlie and MBD and I are a little
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closer, but this, we all know who Dionne Warwick is, but Joe Biden really knows or should know
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This is not like Taylor Swift or, you know, one of these, Olivia Rodrigo, like somebody who
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Dionne Warwick, he should know, repeatedly called her Diane, Diane, truly a gift to us all, Diane.
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To where that poor White House transcript man or woman had to continue like doing strike
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throughs, Diane and put in brackets, Dionne, same thing happened with Barry Gibbs.
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Um, he continued to call him Billy of the Bee Gees.
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Joe Biden still was like somewhat vibrant back then.
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Then there was the moment he paused to honor Queen Latifah.
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And we have a little bit of what happened there.
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And by the way, with other movies and movies, she's earned a golden globe and a primetime
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At the Kennedy Center Honors, how on earth could they put him out there for a debate?
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Well, I mean, how on earth are they putting him out there as president of the United States?
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I mean, the debate is a courtesy to the voters, but, you know, in an election.
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But we have him serving in the toughest job of all at a time of international crisis.
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We have a war in Eastern Europe, and we're asking a guy who cannot read the word Emmy
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to negotiate potentially with Putin to handle Bibi Netanyahu to prevent a war in Gaza from
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becoming a regional war across the Middle East.
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I mean, he has grave responsibilities beyond being a host of a little award show.
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So I, I'm just astonished at how this is going on.
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And I'm waiting, you know, for years, years from now, we're going to get real journalism
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about what the Biden White House was like, how it operated day to day.
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And, and I am waiting for that, you know, the way that Americans had to wait for Woodrow
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Wilson, you know, the revelations about Woodrow Wilson and how his wife basically was running
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I mean, this is an astonishing scandal altogether.
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And yet it's held, you know, just as, you know, in a way, Biden is holding up Trump.
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And, you know, it's these two old men leaning on each other.
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And that's the only reason that they're still standing as far as, as candidates for next year,
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because people are so afraid of what it would be like to have four more years of the guy
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Um, I mean, it is seriously afraid that leads me to the Atlantic.
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So the Atlantic, their January slash February, 2024 issue has 24 contributors, 24 contributors
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considering what Donald Trump could do if he were to return to the White House, his second
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term, they conclude you'll be shocked to learn would be much worse than the first term.
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Um, however, it's no surprise that Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic is saying it will be trust us all
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while trolling, trying to tell us that they are a nonpartisan magazine.
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Um, here's just a little, it's not a sure thing that he could win the Republican nomination
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But as I write this, he's the prohibitive front runner, which is why we felt it necessary
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to share with our readers, our collective understanding of what could take place in
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I encourage you to read all of the articles in this special issue carefully, though perhaps
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not in one sitting for reasons of mental hygiene.
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Our term of brilliant writers makes a convincingly dispositive case that both Trump and Trumpism
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pose an existential threat to America and the ideas that animate it.
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Um, the concern is that the Republican party has mortgaged itself to an anti-democratic demagogue,
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Now, these are points that you could read from a lot of Republicans who don't like Trump,
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but this is what we're in for, for the next, what, 15, I don't want to do the math, months.
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Um, if one of these guys on stage tomorrow night does not unseat Trump in this nomination,
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I mean, they've, they've already thrown out terms like Hitler and Charles, I know you don't
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like Trump, but you know that it's going to go so sky high on the rhetoric.
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And I really do think, you know, we're, we're in a, we're going to be in a world of hurt.
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We're going to be looking at riots if Trump were to win, but even in the next year,
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and maybe even from the MAGA right, if Trump is convicted, if he's thrown in jail, like
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this, all of this is at stake in some way here in Tuscaloosa.
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And I think he should have been impeached, but that doesn't mean every criticism that is
00:18:24.840
And I think one of the problems in reading through some of the essays in the Atlantic,
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which I did yesterday, is that the authors, they make three mistakes as far as I can see.
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The first one is they level their criticisms of Trump, many of which are true, but they
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For example, McKay Coppins wrote an essay in which he suggested that Trump's desire to
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have people around him who are willing to implement his agenda is somehow sinister, that Trump's
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desire to be able to fire people within the executive branch that he heads up, which is
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the only elected member as a president, is sinister.
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We need to keep our criticisms of Trump, and I have many within the right frame.
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The second thing is there is a profound inability on the left, and you see this in the Atlantic's
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package, to reckon with the anti-democratic or illiberal behavior of their own friends.
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And we have seen this with Biden over and over again.
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He has ignored his own lawyers who have told him his behavior is illiberal.
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He's reversed himself on court packing, on the filibuster.
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He has tried to stage a federal takeover of elections.
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This is not a purely Republican problem, and yet there's nothing in there about that because
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it is apparently only the case that Donald Trump is a threat.
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And then the third problem I have is, while I think that Trump has disqualified himself from
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consideration and should have been impeached, I think that our system works.
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Trump did not succeed after he lost the election in staying in power.
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The vast majority of Trump's initiatives in office that went beyond his authority under the
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He's not Hitler because America is not Germany.
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And this is a problem that I have with progressives in general, is that they simultaneously describe
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figures such as Donald Trump as Hitler while trying to get rid of the guardrails in our
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system that prevent anyone from pushing it too far.
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All of the institutions that checked Trump, as they've checked Biden and Obama and Bush
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and everyone else, are anathemic to progressives and have been since the time of Woodrow Wilson.
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So I find it very, very odd that you get this sort of hyperbole at the same time as the one
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thing that prevents it from becoming a reality, remain under attack from the same people who
00:21:08.100
You know, to that point, so true, Charles, to that point, some of the things that they're
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predicting under, you know, a Trump presidency, MBD, the things that are really upsetting some
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of the left and these think pieces that we're starting to get now is the following.
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I'll give you a couple of the, this is from the New York Times, the radical agenda that we
00:21:35.580
He'll order the military to attract, to attack the drug cartels in Mexico.
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He'll use the military on domestic soil to keep law in order.
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To the point Charles just made, he's going to be the culprit who does that.
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They are very concerned at the New York times that Trump would use the justice department
00:22:00.620
to wreak vengeance against his adversaries in a naked challenge to democratic values.
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Were they alive during the first Trump administration?
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I ask seriously because I remember the first Trump administration.
00:22:18.080
And the problem was that half the time Trump wasn't president.
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Trump would go out, he would tweet something like, we're putting a ban on transgender persons
00:22:30.080
And then the Pentagon would announce, we're providing services for transgender persons serving
00:22:38.780
Trump would announce, we're withdrawing all troops from Syria.
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And then the White House, quote unquote, would announce weeks later, actually we're putting
00:22:49.180
When Trump was in the White House, everyone knew Trump kind of wanted to reopen the country
00:22:57.420
He talked about reopening by Easter, but no, Dr. Fauci decided the terms on which most Americans
00:23:04.580
And the implicit threat was, and you better elect someone else other than Donald Trump, or
00:23:14.760
And so, to me, the problem is not that Trump was a dictator.
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The problem was Trump was hardly in charge at all after 2016.
00:23:25.360
And that kind of lack of oversight by him and lack of control through the White House is
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a danger, but it's the exact opposite danger of what they're warning against.
00:23:39.060
And so I just don't know what planet they're living on.
00:23:42.300
Robert Kagan wrote a similar op-ed in the Washington Post saying, the chances of a Trump
00:23:46.600
dictatorship are rising and we have to pay attention to it.
00:23:51.460
I mean, the guy could not dictate to his own chief of staff at the White House without being
00:23:59.020
And it's going to continue being a problem going forward.
00:24:01.820
I mean, like you both said, I mean, if Trump is elected again, I expect not only will Congress
00:24:09.540
check him, as they did before, they didn't pass all of the MAGA agenda, they passed the
00:24:17.280
The courts, they blocked his immigration orders, sometimes under pretty shoddy legal reasoning.
00:24:24.040
But worst of all was that the executive branch itself was in rebellion against the president.
00:24:32.600
And I don't know if Trump is the one to, you know, lead a kind of draining of the swamp,
00:24:39.760
like he said, because he was swallowed by it in his first term.
00:24:46.800
I was just going to say that the list that you read prior to Michael's answer is a perfect
00:24:51.760
example of what I mean when I say that the criticisms of Trump fail to distinguish between
00:24:56.700
the things that he actually did wrong and policy disagreements.
00:25:08.020
That is actually well within the political range.
00:25:14.280
In fact, the vast majority of Americans are not.
00:25:22.860
If the Congress decided to, it could open the borders.
00:25:26.880
If it decides not to open the borders, then we're supposed to have border enforcement.
00:25:31.240
But that is a question that should be debated by the people.
00:25:34.040
It is within the plenary powers of the federal government.
00:25:37.000
The idea that that is equivalent to dictatorship or is equivalent to the things that Trump actually
00:25:42.700
did do wrong, like trying to rewrite the electoral count act in the 12th Amendment so he could
00:25:50.320
And it makes it sound as if all they're trying to do, which many of them are, is stop a Republican
00:25:58.000
That speech he gave with the weird red lights behind him, where he looked angry and almost
00:26:04.040
He made some good points about the things that Trump did wrong.
00:26:06.560
And then he said that pro-lifers were equivalent to this attack on America.
00:26:14.200
And I hope that those arguments against Trump, that win the day, if they do, in the Republican
00:26:21.580
primary can distinguish between those two things because they really need to be separated.
00:26:26.920
It jumped out at me that half of this list are things that Republicans would like to see Trump do,
00:26:34.080
but that he didn't when given the chance as president.
00:26:40.020
But, you know, it's one of the complaints Ron DeSantis has been raising about Trump when he says,
00:26:45.560
I'll use the military on domestic soil to keep law and order.
00:26:48.640
DeSantis and his supporters have said repeatedly, what you really did in office when we had BLM
00:26:53.800
anarchy all over the streets was tweet law and order, law and order, without actually doing anything.
00:26:58.740
It was Senator Tom Cotton who wrote an op-ed in the New York Times saying, we do need to
00:27:06.140
And then that led to a complete meltdown inside the Times, which cost one senior editor his job.
00:27:11.240
But MBD, you know, a lot of Republicans looking at this same list that the Atlantic, the nonpartisan
00:27:15.820
magazine wants us to believe that actually that's the New York Times wants us to believe is,
00:27:20.180
you know, cause for alarm that he's he's going to be a dictator, a fascist, whatever.
00:27:31.340
And, you know, meanwhile, by the way, the same people that want this list, if they're empowered
00:27:37.560
again in a second Biden administration, what are they going to do?
00:27:41.140
They're going to try to rebuild the disinformation project that sicked the intel agencies on Americans
00:27:47.800
who disagreed with COVID policy or had a different idea about the origin of the COVID-19 virus or who
00:27:56.060
have the wrong views on any other subject that matters that day.
00:28:05.400
I mean, you point out, obviously, the idea of weaponizing the Justice Department.
00:28:09.240
I mean, what is what do you think Merrick Garland is doing right now?
00:28:12.040
Um, you know, they are they are putting Trump, the the, you know, nominal leader of the Republican
00:28:18.380
Party, the person who's most likely to be the nominee into a situation where they can withdraw,
00:28:24.860
they can draw testimony from him according to a political schedule that benefits them.
00:28:30.440
I mean, this is just and and they have no compunction about it, that that this is going to stir up in
00:28:37.840
people, crazed feelings, both left and right. And as you said, Megan, the biggest fear is that
00:28:44.760
what these what the elite journalists are doing and elite opinion makers are doing is creating a
00:28:51.220
permission structure for extra legal and violent political action around the election next year.
00:28:59.280
And you you're going to see it if Trump is elected, even if he gets a popular vote majority,
00:29:05.180
you will see the city of Washington, D.C. occupied for months on end by scores of thousands of
00:29:13.300
activists trying to bring him down or prevent him from being inaugurated. If you see Trump in jail,
00:29:20.880
I'm sure you're going to see slightly more disorganized and crazed action on the right on the
00:29:27.960
far right. This is a very dangerous and heady time. It requires real leadership. And we have total
00:29:34.500
absence of it, both politically and intellectually. Well, I'll tell you one thing. If you're I know,
00:29:42.320
as we discussed, you're not a huge fan of Trump. You should be rooting for him to win. Charles,
00:29:46.560
in particular, you should be rooting for this, because if Trump doesn't get the nomination or
00:29:52.060
if he does get it and runs and loses, he's probably going to try again in four years.
00:29:57.720
And we're going to go through this whole thing over and over and over again. There's only so much
00:30:06.040
the country can take of this storyline. I think we'll see. All right, let's take a quick break
00:30:11.900
and we'll be right back. Charles and MBD, stay with us.
00:30:14.560
My guests this hour, National Review's Charles C.W. Cook and Michael Brendan Doherty. We are here in
00:30:24.780
advance of tomorrow's big Republican presidential debate. It should be very spicy. We're trying to
00:30:30.880
keep it spicy as we come up with these debate questions. And I've said to the press interviewing
00:30:35.080
me on it, you guys, that I think what you'll see different in this debate versus the other debates is
00:30:39.960
we've worked very hard to make the questions, you know, 90% of the questions, A-plus level questions
00:30:45.700
that are hard questions, as opposed to just, what would you do about this? What would you do about
00:30:50.020
that? Right? We're trying to make it tough for them to just give us talking points that we've heard
00:30:55.160
them say a million times before. And especially because we're the fourth debate that we've heard
00:30:59.280
them say on the debate stage multiple times before. And we're trying to foster actual debate.
00:31:04.400
You know, one of my biggest frustrations with that NBC debate was it wasn't a debate. It was
00:31:08.840
Kristen Welker and Lester Holt. And at times Hugh Hewitt asking questions that they wanted the
00:31:13.500
answers to, which there's room for that, but there was no debate. And when debate broke out,
00:31:18.020
they stifled it. So it's like, I can, I can see Kristen Welker do this on meet the press every
00:31:23.120
Sunday. I don't need to tune into a debate to watch it, you know, get, get her questions answered.
00:31:27.520
I need to hear them fight because by the way, they're not allowed to do this in between the debates.
00:31:33.000
Vivek, DeSantis, Nikki, they're not allowed to, to debate each other on Fox news or any
00:31:38.740
place else in between the debates. So this is literally their only chance to have it out with
00:31:43.740
one another. So you'll see that on our, on our debate tomorrow night. Um, join, not find join
00:31:50.560
nn.com. My apologies to news nation. I always forget that join nn.com join nn. Okay. So going
00:31:57.060
into tomorrow night, let's talk about who's got the most to gain. I think it's probably all of them
00:32:03.240
and who's got the most to lose and how you think it's likely going to go down between them. Because
00:32:07.520
you know, these are some silverback gorillas going out there who need to sort of take down
00:32:11.720
a couple of the other ones who are costing them points in various States. Kristen Welker,
00:32:16.680
speaking of her at NBC, had DeSantis on meet the press this past Sunday and really, really,
00:32:22.020
really wanted to know when he's going to drop out. Take a listen.
00:32:27.980
Are you committed to staying in this race through the Iowa caucuses?
00:32:32.240
So I don't think anyone's ever done an Iowa caucus, uh, with this amount of institutional
00:32:37.400
and grassroots support. And it's only going to build for here. And we look forward to being
00:32:42.340
victorious on January 15th. So just to be clear, you are committed to staying in the race through
00:32:47.820
the caucuses. Of course I am. And I mean, it's absurd that I wouldn't be on caucus night. If you
00:32:54.400
don't come in at least second, would you then drop out of the race? How critical is Iowa?
00:33:01.420
Well, we're going to win the caucus. We were doing everything that we need to do it.
00:33:05.400
But what if you don't, governor? What if you don't? And I've said from the beginning, we are,
00:33:09.280
we are, we're going to win. We're going to win the, we're going to win the caucus.
00:33:12.960
Bottom line is Iowa do or die for you, governor.
00:33:15.820
We're going to win Iowa. I think it's going to help propel us to the nomination.
00:33:20.120
Okay. I will tell you my own take on that is it was rude. You can ask once. You can definitely
00:33:27.460
ask him, you know, are you getting ready to drop out? Your poll numbers don't look so good,
00:33:30.460
whatever, however you want to put it. To badger him like that is you're pushing your agenda.
00:33:35.320
You're, you're desperate to make a news headline to the disrespect of the candidate. Charles,
00:33:39.460
what did you make of it? Well, I agree with you. I think it's rude. I think it's agenda driven.
00:33:44.980
I also think it's pointless because what's he supposed to say? Unless he's going to drop out now,
00:33:49.320
of course, he's going to stay in until Iowa and his aim is to win Iowa. And if he wins or does
00:33:55.520
really well in Iowa, then he's going to continue. I mean, as you say, maybe you could ask that once
00:34:00.320
just to see what his reaction is. It makes more sense to ask that of, say, Chris Christie,
00:34:05.340
who really does seem to be competing for just one state, but okay, ask Ron DeSantis if you have to,
00:34:11.120
but what is he supposed to say after that? The way she asked it too was really irritating.
00:34:18.020
It's this sort of smug, knowing way of asking that suggests to me, once again, that the press
00:34:27.960
really would love for Donald Trump to be the nominee and for everyone else to drop out. That does seem
00:34:33.380
to be a narrative they're interested in developing. Either way, I agree with you.
00:34:39.100
The latest narrative, MBD, is that Nikki Haley, some have described it as a boomlet,
00:34:44.740
you know, she's having a boom, a boomlet, that she is, you know, the favorite. There was a piece
00:34:53.620
suggesting he, DeSantis, can't recover now because of her surge. I'm trying to find it in front of me,
00:35:00.520
but suggesting that it's a death knell to the Ron DeSantis campaign, that he's not going anywhere in
00:35:09.420
the polls. She's now giving him a run for his money, even in Iowa, where his lead has been cut
00:35:14.320
to, I think, three points and suggesting that that's not recoverable for Ron DeSantis. But
00:35:19.940
the truth is, while Nikki Haley is beloved by a certain wing of the party, she's loathed by a
00:35:28.380
separate wing, right? So I don't know that her boomlet is the death knell of anyone. What do you think?
00:35:35.400
So the New York Times and Siena College did a poll of the GOP earlier this year, and it showed that
00:35:43.880
there was like a 20 to 25 percent portion of the GOP that were implacably anti-Trump, right? They're
00:35:51.720
anti-MAGA. One of the other notable things about them was they were super pro-supportive of Ukraine
00:35:58.300
and arming Ukraine and defeating Russia. And what you're finding is Nikki Haley is the candidate of
00:36:05.560
that passionate minority in the party. But the fact is, when you dig deep into the polls,
00:36:14.400
she doesn't seem to have strong appeal beyond that yet. Whereas Ron DeSantis, when you look in
00:36:19.360
the polls, you find out, oh, well, half of his supporters are looking at Trump. And well, gee,
00:36:25.240
half or more than half of Trump supporters are looking at DeSantis as potentially their second
00:36:29.820
choice. So, you know, what you're really looking at is so far, she's been able to activate that
00:36:36.440
passionate anti-populist pro-Ukraine sector of the party, which is real and which has real muscle and
00:36:44.060
organization. You know, even Americans for Prosperity and the GOP organization came through
00:36:51.240
and endorsed her, which means, you know, a gusher of money coming through. But that doesn't mean the
00:36:57.840
voters are there. And so far, she hasn't shown an ability to appeal very far beyond that core.
00:37:06.180
And the rest of the party can sniff it. They detect in her that her rise is somehow a rebuke of them.
00:37:14.460
So I just don't think it's going to fly. You know, she might win. Maybe she can win New Hampshire
00:37:20.500
if Chris Christie got out of the way. You know, I do think one of these early states wants to give
00:37:26.520
Trump a spanking, you know, for not doing the debates, for not working as hard as the other
00:37:31.820
candidates are working. But I just don't see her appeal nationwide, you know, what she's offering
00:37:38.140
other sectors of the country, you know, outside of Northern Virginia.
00:37:44.080
We talk about win New Hampshire. I mean, all these are after Trump. Win New Hampshire amongst
00:37:49.440
the undercard. I mean, no one has a great chance of beating Trump in any state. I understand DeSantis
00:37:55.280
is hoping, thanks to the endorsement of the governor there and of Bob Vander Plaats, that he actually
00:38:00.320
could leapfrog Trump in Iowa. And Trump is stiff-armed Iowa. So yeah, we're talking about maybe
00:38:07.480
beating the rest of the undercard. But what about that, Charles? Does Nikki Haley need to try to take
00:38:13.080
out Chris Christie at this debate tomorrow night? Because she actually is potentially in a position
00:38:19.180
to, again, win, in air quotes, behind Trump, in both South Carolina and New Hampshire. But it would
00:38:27.640
be much easier for her in New Hampshire if Chris Christie were no longer there.
00:38:31.140
Yes and no. I mean, obviously, he is an impediment to her in New Hampshire. And as we saw in 2016,
00:38:39.640
when you have too many people going for the same votes, it helps Trump. But the ultimate problem is
00:38:45.980
that Trump's polling at 50 or 60 percent. So I think really what Nikki Haley needs to try to do is take out
00:38:53.600
Ron DeSantis in the long run, because the race, if it's not going to be Trump, is going to be
00:39:01.020
not Trump, because it came down to Trump and a not Trump, if that makes sense. That was very
00:39:06.040
Monty Python-ish. But you're going to have to have a head-to-head at some point where people are clear
00:39:12.180
as to what their alternative choice is. And they're making the decision to back someone else because
00:39:18.260
Trump's in legal trouble, or they're tired of him, or he's too old, or they're just bored of all of the
00:39:24.660
drama, or they don't think he can win. So, you know, yes, I suppose if we're getting down into that level
00:39:32.440
of detail, then she should want to take out Chris Christie. But the two candidates that have a chance
00:39:38.980
of becoming the not Trump are DeSantis and Haley. And that's why we're seeing so much money being spent
00:39:47.380
by Nikki Haley going after Ron DeSantis, because she understands that. And also why DeSantis MBD took
00:39:55.000
a shot at Nikki Haley on Newsmax, I think yesterday, saying she's not conservative. He said she
00:40:02.840
opposed protecting girls in bathrooms and locker rooms when a bill on the trans issue came up when
00:40:10.200
she was governor of South Carolina. He said she opposed me on Disney, inviting Disney to move to
00:40:15.740
South Carolina when I tried to push back on them for criticizing the sexualization of children in
00:40:21.220
school. And his third example was, she said Hillary Clinton was her inspiration to get into politics.
00:40:27.500
Now, she said she disagreed with Nikki Haley, I mean, with Hillary on policy, but she did say she was her
00:40:32.420
inspo. So he's coming right out with it. She's not a conservative and has no business becoming the GOP
00:40:38.840
nominee. But it's my point is, there's an escalation for sure between those two.
00:40:42.780
Absolutely. And there needs to be, I mean, DeSantis needs every type of voter he can get
00:40:50.900
if he wants to challenge Trump. Any Trump challenger needs every type of vote. And if,
00:40:56.380
you know, Nikki Haley's support is primarily because she's like the full package anti-Trump,
00:41:04.580
well, if she's ever knocked out of the race, those people will be searching for someone who is not
00:41:10.260
Trump. And they may settle for DeSantis if they can, if that's the best that they can get. So
00:41:16.380
of course that makes sense. I mean, I would be worried if I were Nikki Haley, though,
00:41:20.900
that if I knock out Ron DeSantis too early, that the bulk of his supporters go to Donald Trump and
00:41:27.840
Trump just romps through these early states by unbelievable margins. I mean, you know, nearly half
00:41:34.720
half or more of Ron DeSantis' supporters would go to Trump if DeSantis is out. So, you know,
00:41:42.520
if she manages to somehow, you know, sneak up on him in Iowa, I mean, I think in a way it could be
00:41:49.820
a disaster for her. You know, it would be the end.
00:41:53.300
That's interesting. That's such an interesting point. You're right. If she takes him out,
00:41:58.640
who benefits, not necessarily Nikki. So she does need to, I mean, she's smart. I'm sure she's doing
00:42:05.340
all this calculus behind the scenes herself, but that'll be one of the most fascinating things
00:42:09.800
because, you know, you can tell these debates, who's ganging up on whom, who's trying to take who
00:42:14.660
out and for what reason. You know, we saw that, I mean, who could forget Chris Christie and Marco
00:42:20.160
Rubio Charles. It's like, it's very obvious when one of them makes up their mind that the other is
00:42:25.300
their prime target. I have to say, I'm a little bit of a skeptic of this sort of thinking, as you
00:42:31.360
may know. And I think Donald Trump illustrates why. You remember back in 2016, we heard so much about
00:42:39.680
lanes, these lanes in the Republican primary. And we were told that this poll, if you dig down the
00:42:47.500
third choice in this state, that person. And so this will break that way. And look, Donald Trump
00:42:53.160
is unique. He's sui generis. He was, before he became a politician, one of the most famous people
00:42:58.660
in the world. He's probably the most famous person in the world now. So he is a little different. But
00:43:03.660
I think that momentum has a great deal to play in our politics. And I'm just not convinced that the
00:43:13.260
minutiae of polling represents accurately how people actually think. I think people get excited
00:43:20.100
about candidates. I think that they tend to follow the herd. And I think that if Ron DeSantis or Nikki
00:43:27.460
Haley were to break away and make it a two-person race, then a great deal of the analysis that we're
00:43:33.800
seeing would be rendered moot and replaced by much more human instincts, such as a desire to follow the
00:43:41.340
crowd or back the right horse or get excited about someone who's different or move on, or perhaps just
00:43:46.600
to vote for Donald Trump once again, as Republicans have done now for eight years. So I'm a little bit
00:43:52.040
of a skeptic. I do agree with you that you can tell at a debate what each candidate thinks they have to
00:43:57.200
do to win by who they're attacking and on what grounds. I'm just not convinced that that's actually
00:44:05.340
I mean, there's no question the debates have had an effect, at least for Haley. Her numbers have gone up
00:44:10.440
in a way they hadn't even come close to doing prior to the beginning of this thing. She's been
00:44:15.320
very animated and active out there. DeSantis hasn't. That's one of the things I want to see is he is he
00:44:22.100
more aggressive on the debate stage than he's been. All right, let's take a look in the time we have
00:44:26.120
left at what's happening on the other side of the aisle, because I mean, what's going on with John
00:44:31.860
Fetterman? I feel like those of us who have been very critical, it's not like people hate John
00:44:38.560
Fetterman, but just, you know, the fact that he's in this office, notwithstanding his multiple
00:44:43.740
challenges, I think are paying new attention to this guy as he's proving very willing to cross
00:44:50.740
factions of his own party on certain things. Number one, Israel. Number two, he's now going after
00:44:58.240
Bob Menendez, U.S. Senator from the state of New Jersey, who's involved in yet another alleged
00:45:04.040
corruption scandal. And he went, Fetterman did, on The View on Friday and said this, hot six.
00:45:11.580
We have a colleague in the Senate that actually did much more sinister and serious kinds of things.
00:45:18.740
Senator Menendez, he needs to go. And if you are going to expel Santos, how can you allow to somebody
00:45:27.100
like Menendez to remain in the Senate? And, you know, Santos is kind of lies were almost, you know,
00:45:33.200
funny. And like, you know, he, you know, landed on the moon and a guy kind of stuff. Whereas,
00:45:38.520
whereas, you know, I, you know, I think, you know, Menendez, I think is really a senator for Egypt,
00:45:43.640
you know, not New Jersey. Pretty bold. What did you make of it, MBD?
00:45:49.500
I loved it, to be honest. I mean, he's dead right. I mean, George Santos is a comical
00:45:57.320
fact, you know, person. And some of his scandals, like fencing puppies or whatever, you know, like,
00:46:03.900
it is the strangest stuff. And he goes, he was expelled from Congress because he annoyed his
00:46:09.000
colleagues. But Fetterman is right that Bob Menendez is being charged with really grave
00:46:14.660
crimes of corruption of office. And he's, he's right to go. I think the Babylon Bee joked,
00:46:21.560
weird, man becomes more conservative as he gains brain function. And I think that's about where it
00:46:30.660
is. I'm excited to see this Fetterman. I mean, maybe he just has decided he's his own brand and
00:46:38.760
can get away with whatever he wants to and become a little bit of a legend in politics in the meantime.
00:46:43.460
He also, Charles, hired, you know how you can pay certain people to do these cameo videos?
00:46:49.860
He hired George Santos, Fetterman did, to do a cameo video for Menendez. I'll show you just a
00:46:55.400
little bit. Let's, let's check it out. Stop seven. Hey, Bobby. Uh, look, I don't think I need to tell
00:47:02.780
you, but these people that want to make you get in trouble and want to kick you out and make you run
00:47:09.000
away. You make him put up or shut up. You stand your ground, sir. And don't get bogged down by all
00:47:15.360
the haters out there. Stay strong. Merry Christmas. Oh my God. Charles. I'm sorry,
00:47:23.680
but that's a brilliant move. That's the best $200 he's ever spent. Yeah. I admire the fact that he
00:47:30.320
is willing to buck the trend, be it the partisan trend or, uh, normal political behavior. I don't
00:47:39.760
want to be churlish, but he is going to annoy the hell out of conservatives most of the time.
00:47:45.120
And we, we ought to forget that, uh, when it comes to judicial nominees, legislation,
00:47:49.680
we're having a moment of levity, sir. We're not endorsing. Yeah, I know. No, I know. But I,
00:47:54.200
I just sometimes think we ought to remember that on the right. Cause we were very quick. Anyone who
00:47:57.520
says anything that remotely aligns with what we believe we jump on the yes. Oh my goodness. You,
00:48:02.280
you, you are great. You're president. I still going to annoy the hell out of us.
00:48:06.420
Well, it's like RFK jr. You know, people like, yes, I agree with him on the vaccine madness or on the
00:48:12.000
military industrial con complex. And then you get a look at his social policy. Wait, what? Wait. Okay.
00:48:18.020
Guys, such a pleasure to see you. Uh, we'll talk after the debate and thanks for coming on.
00:48:22.400
Good luck. Uh, thank you. And, uh, don't forget, we are going to come back right in two seconds.
00:48:28.820
We're going to catch up on a lot of the madness that's happening on campuses and in the country,
00:48:32.560
on Israel with Josh hammer and Seth Mendel. In the meantime, subscribe to the show at youtube.com
00:48:37.360
slash Megan Kelly and at rumble. Can I tell you in advance of the big debate tomorrow,
00:48:46.440
uh, on news nation, it will air live at 8 PM Eastern. I'm freezing. I'm always so cold.
00:48:54.640
They keep these events just like the tundra. It's gotta be 50 degrees here in this little spin
00:49:00.940
alley tomorrow. There'll be, this'll be filled with reporters trying to get interviews with the
00:49:05.000
candidates and their surrogates and all that. But why must it always be so freezing? I'm telling you,
00:49:09.640
uh, it's some sort of either. I'm just getting too old for this crap or, um, they're trying to
00:49:14.600
freeze me out. I don't know. Either way, I cannot be frozen out. I will be here. You're going to be
00:49:18.600
able to see my breath shortly. However, all right, now back to the news. Anti-Semitism on college
00:49:23.760
campuses is the focus of a hearing today on Capitol Hill. And it's really interesting. One of the
00:49:29.260
university leaders called to answer questions, Harvard university's Claudine Gay. This woman's been
00:49:35.200
a nightmare. She's been an absolute disgrace. She's been getting criticized by former presidents
00:49:41.080
of Harvard, like Lauren Summers. Um, a bunch of donors have pulled. She's all over the board on
00:49:47.060
her messaging. She's in love with DEI unless you're a Jew. That's the bottom line with Claudine. Uh,
00:49:52.100
well, she testified that she has seen a dramatic and deeply concerning rise in anti-Semitism. Okay.
00:49:58.720
First of all, that's obviously just window dressing from her because she clearly did not give two
00:50:02.620
shits about rise in anti-Semitism until she was made to by their rich donors. But in any event,
00:50:09.020
questioning continued in particular from Republican Congress, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik. And she
00:50:15.720
refused to say students calling for the genocide of Jewish people is against Harvard's code of conduct.
00:50:22.940
Now watch this. Let me ask you this. You are president of Harvard. So I assume you're familiar
00:50:28.000
with the term intifada, correct? I've heard that term. Yes. And you understand that the use of the
00:50:35.020
term intifada in the context of the Israeli Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance
00:50:40.740
against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you
00:50:46.120
aware of that? That type of hateful speech is personally abhorrent to me. And there have been
00:50:53.100
multiple marches at Harvard with students chanting, quote, there is only one solution intifada revolution
00:50:58.620
and quote, globalize the intifada. Is that correct? I've heard that thoughtless, reckless and hateful
00:51:07.900
language on our campus. Yes. So do you believe that type of hateful speech is contrary to Harvard's
00:51:15.160
code of conduct or is it allowed at Harvard? It is at odds with the values of Harvard. Can you not say
00:51:22.540
that it is against the code of conduct at Harvard? We embrace a commitment to free expression,
00:51:30.180
even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful. It's when that speech crosses into conduct
00:51:39.800
that violates our policies against bullying, harassment. Does that speech not cross that barrier?
00:51:46.100
Does that speech not call for the genocide of Jews and the elimination of Israel?
00:51:49.980
When you testify that you understand that is the definition of intifada?
00:51:58.620
Is that speech according to the code of conduct or not?
00:52:06.480
Wow. Joining me now, Josh Hammer. He's editor at large for Newsweek and a host of the Josh Hammer show
00:52:13.840
and Seth Mandel, who is now senior editor at Commentary and doing a great job over there.
00:52:19.480
Guys, welcome. Great to have you. That it's she's been honestly among the worst. Is there somebody like
00:52:26.400
is there a university president? Maybe Liz McGill of UPenn, who was also there. But Claudine Gay
00:52:31.120
has been an absolute disgrace. And the irony of listening to this woman talk about her commitment
00:52:37.100
to free speech when Harvard ranks, I pulled it up, number one for the worst. So it is the worst
00:52:45.200
in FIRE's college free speech rankings. Unless you're saying kill all the Jews, in which case it's
00:52:53.260
very important to be able to express yourself, because I don't know. Josh, you tell me.
00:53:00.840
Yeah. I mean, how many examples do we need, Megan, over the past 10, 15 years of conservatives being
00:53:05.780
shouted down on university campuses for saying such anodyne things as, you know, maybe if you are a
00:53:12.240
biological male that you should not be able to compete in women's sports that, oh, maybe the unborn
00:53:17.300
child in the womb might actually have an inalienable right to life. So obviously, these universities,
00:53:24.080
the Claudine Gay's, the Liz McGill's of the world, their recent rediscovery of this absolutist
00:53:29.800
commitment to free speech, which, you know, by the way, isn't actually necessarily what the First
00:53:34.260
Amendment says. That's actually a whole nother kind of constitutional conversation. But even taking that
00:53:38.840
at fixed value there, the timing of it obviously stinks to high heaven and reeks of hypocrisy.
00:53:43.960
It ultimately is nothing whatsoever about procedure. It is not about neutrality. It is
00:53:49.080
not about free speech for all. It is about free speech for some, but lack of free speech for others.
00:53:54.560
And unfortunately, you know, in your remarks there, Megan, you alluded to DEI, which is the reigning
00:53:59.820
orthodoxy on prestigious, you know, I wouldn't even call them prestigious on the most expensive
00:54:04.480
university campuses these days. According to the tenets of DEI, the Jews are an oppressor class.
00:54:10.540
Therefore, they get less privilege. They get fewer rights than the other groups get. And what that
00:54:16.260
translates to, what that cashes out to in concrete terms, is that when you call for genocide of them
00:54:21.620
as these Intifada revolution moral cretins, these pro-Hamas jihadist sympathizers are doing at Harvard,
00:54:27.900
Penn, Princeton, elsewhere, ultimately then you get free speech. But, you know, dare you say, of course,
00:54:33.600
that, you know, Riley Gaines is correct, University of Kentucky swimmer, that biological men should not
00:54:39.240
compete against her when it comes to NCAA swimming. Oh, then you're a transphobe and you have no right
00:54:45.120
Wait, before I go to Seth, you actually, you had a piece on this, was it? No, it was actually, this was Seth.
00:54:51.460
I will go to you on it, Seth. You had a piece on commentary, which I saw, a truly terrible idea on campus
00:54:55.900
anti-Semitism, which was about this issue that we just teed up, which is the answer to this is not to file
00:55:01.620
the Jews inside of the DEI protocols and to have them latch on to these people who are running these
00:55:08.440
programs at these universities. The answer is to break these DEI monopolies in our schools,
00:55:13.940
which are pernicious, rabid forces that only foster
00:55:17.960
difference and fighting and division. That's the word I'm looking for. Go ahead, Seth.
00:55:23.860
Yeah. Look, the piece that I wrote was after Hillel International and the Anti-Defamation League
00:55:32.280
put out a report saying all this anti-Semitism has been going on on college campuses. It's as bad
00:55:40.000
as you think it's been. Half the survey was from before the October 7th Hamas attacks and part of
00:55:46.420
the survey was after. And it showed that was their way of showing the spike in what they call incidents,
00:55:53.840
but the end of the report, none of that was surprising. I think we've all seen this going
00:56:00.980
on, but the end of the report asked one question about what to do about it all. And the question
00:56:07.280
was not multiple choice and it was not open-ended. It was, should DEI include Jews? So there's one
00:56:15.460
solution you're giving to students here and you're saying, do you want this too? And so of course,
00:56:21.160
70% or whatever it was said, yes, but this is, uh, this is precisely the wrong way to go because
00:56:27.480
DEI, first of all, it can't be molded to include Jews on campus because Jews are considered by DEI,
00:56:38.380
by animating ideology to be white or white adjacent or white enough, whatever it is. Um, and as Josh said,
00:56:47.180
that makes them the oppressor. Um, so there's no way to have, you, you can't have the two coexist DEI
00:56:55.200
ideology and the idea that Jews are considered to put upon minority, the two cancel each other out.
00:57:02.360
And, but the other point that I will, I made in the piece is that why would you want that anyway?
00:57:07.600
Let's say DEI could be expanded somehow. The umbrella could be expanded. So Jews could stand under it,
00:57:13.960
but why would you want that? And look what it's doing to campuses across the country. It's tearing
00:57:19.240
them apart. It's completely resetting our idea of higher education. It's, uh, infiltrating, um,
00:57:27.480
it's infiltrating studies that we have normally nothing to do, uh, with any of these social issues.
00:57:34.180
And they're being made into, these courses are being made into requirements. So everybody has to
00:57:38.720
go through it and it's like a programming and it's teaching people to see those around them based on
00:57:45.600
the shade of their skin color and therefore to put them in a specific box on what that means for
00:57:51.940
their privilege and how many minutes they should be allowed to talk versus how many minutes you should
00:57:56.500
be allowed to talk. And it just creates this hierarchy and it completely obliterates the entire
00:58:01.880
point of education and especially a liberal arts education, which is to learn, to be open to ideas,
00:58:08.440
to hear new things, to be challenged and to challenge others. Uh, this is just sort of a racial hierarchy
00:58:15.220
spoiled system and it's contrary to education. And I can't imagine the Jewish community, people of the
00:58:22.100
book wanting to be part of this, you know, opting in to essentially, uh, help deconstruct real education
00:58:29.980
and replace it with, um, you know, some sort of, of, of racial protection racket, no matter which
00:58:36.020
of it they're on. And it's too late. It's too late. Anyway, the DEI crew has already branded the Jews
00:58:43.280
whites and that's the end of the game for them. It's too late. You saw that Gallup poll that came out
00:58:49.200
more than six in 10 Democrats, 63%. Um, let's see, hold on. I want to get it. Um,
00:58:58.540
okay. Disapprove of Israel's military action in Gaza, 63% of Democrats. And you, you break it down.
00:59:05.040
You know who it is? It's adults younger than 35, 67% of the younger adults under 35 oppose Israel,
00:59:12.800
64% of people of color, 64% uh, disapprove. And so do the slight, the slight majority of women,
00:59:21.800
52% uh, are not in favor of Israel's actions in, um, in Gaza. So it's too late. Those are the groups
00:59:32.100
most affected by the DEI ideology. They've been captured and there's no battling it once it's
00:59:39.120
sunk in. So I really, I, I think the move is the Chris Rufo position. You don't go DEI light. You
00:59:46.560
don't try to get more groups included in DEI. DEI must go away. It must be crushed at every level.
00:59:52.280
Even at my daughter's school, she's in seventh grade. You can run for next year for, you know,
00:59:57.000
various positions, you know, president, class president, vice president of this, right? There's
01:00:00.980
vice president of DEI. I mean, this is starting at very young ages. You can get PhDs and bachelor's
01:00:07.200
degrees and so on in DEI. It's become a whole cottage industry and you can guarantee virtually
01:00:12.080
all of them are against the Jews because as I said, you've been classified as white. I do want
01:00:18.640
to raise this, this issue though, um, Josh on the question of the intifada chance. Cause to me,
01:00:24.120
as somebody who is generally a free speech advocate, it doesn't mean there are no consequences to your
01:00:28.660
free speech, but generally in America, you're allowed to say hateful things. Hate speech is allowed.
01:00:33.860
Now college campuses, uh, it gets a little trickier because any place where you can disrupt
01:00:40.220
education, the schools are allowed to crack down more though. That's generally more of a K through
01:00:44.800
12 thing. So what's your position on that? Should the, should students be able to march across a
01:00:49.360
campus given at least Stefanik's definition of intifada and shout that they're in favor of it?
01:00:55.240
No, Claudine Gay is dead wrong in saying that Harvard university students have either a first
01:01:03.180
amendment right or a Harvard code of conduct rights to chant for the mass slaughter for the genocide
01:01:09.280
of others. First of all, I mean, it is well-established first amendment case law that you do not have
01:01:13.680
a first amendment right to imminently incite violence. Now that goes back to 1960s and the court
01:01:19.600
has kind of watered it down a little bit. So you really have to kind of directly try to incite violence,
01:01:24.160
which is one of many reasons that I and others have tried to dismiss the allegations that Trump
01:01:30.420
himself on January 6th imminently incited violence because his speech was not literally calling for
01:01:35.240
a certain action, but it gets a little lawyerly. But when you are literally using the word intifada,
01:01:39.860
there is one solution intifada revolution. Well, first of all, I mean, just the first half of that
01:01:45.460
phrase, the one solution. I mean, where does the mind go, Megan? When you hear one solution,
01:01:49.680
what do you think of? You're obviously thinking of Hitler and the final solution. And then you
01:01:53.540
finish that phrase with intifada revolution. Well, Israelis paid the price of the first intifada
01:01:59.200
and the second intifada in, and that price was the deaths and the maiming and the slaughter,
01:02:04.480
the Sbarro pizza bombing in Jerusalem in 2000, thousands of Israelis dead. The biggest modern
01:02:10.360
slaughter pre-October 7th was the second intifada. So you don't have a first amendment right to save
01:02:16.760
these things. And again, what's good for the goose has to be good for the gander. So there
01:02:21.500
is an element of hypocrisy here too. But I think it's a dangerous road to go down to say that you
01:02:26.560
have a first amendment right to imminently call for the slaughter of others. That is not our
01:02:30.780
tradition. That certainly is not what the free speech clause, the first amendment, which is
01:02:34.920
ultimately there to have an exchange of ideas to ultimately arrive at the truth. That is what
01:02:40.060
Aristotle would have called the telos, kind of the overarching purpose of the free speech is to
01:02:44.500
get at a conversation to arrive at truth. If you're chanting for the death of others,
01:02:49.240
you are not contributing to a principled discourse, a principled discussion, ultimately arriving at
01:02:54.360
truth. I think that can be said for sure. So I, this one is, is bothering me because I'm very pro
01:03:02.100
Israel and absolutely want them to annihilate Hamas. However, when it comes to saying controversial
01:03:08.100
things, I'm, I'm in favor of saying controversial things and I'm in favor of then the Jewish group
01:03:13.060
shouting right back, you know, F off. Um, it's, it's different though. If the college code says
01:03:21.420
all students have a right to feel safe on campus, which is the way they've been approaching free
01:03:25.380
speech till now, safe spaces, you can't say hateful things. Otherwise you can't even join the university.
01:03:30.520
Nevermind march around the quad saying the things. And it's not that I have any empathy for the message
01:03:35.720
about intifada. It's just, this is America and you are hate speech is constitutional. Incitement is a
01:03:42.920
very, very, very high bar and almost no speech reaches it. So I don't know, Seth. I mean, I,
01:03:48.240
I recognize what a hypocrite Claudine Gay is. I don't believe one word of her out of her mouth was
01:03:53.140
sincere. She couldn't give two shits about free speech, but I also wonder, is it the right place to go
01:03:59.820
to start cracking down on the words coming out of people's mouths, even if they're really awful?
01:04:07.140
Generally of the opinion that you want to hear what awful people have to say.
01:04:11.540
So I err on the side of letting people be idiots, um, in part because this conflict,
01:04:18.740
especially this conflict and its aftermath have been revealing, right? I mean, this has been,
01:04:24.400
this really tells you who cares about what or anything at all. And so if you're, you need to
01:04:31.840
know who people are and what they think in order to move through the political world. And in order to
01:04:38.780
navigate your life, you have to know who you can trust. And we got a lot more information about a
01:04:45.060
lot of people and a lot of organizations since October 7th that tell you who you can and who you
01:04:50.620
can. And I think it's illuminating. And I also think that there's strategically, you don't really
01:04:55.900
want to be in the dark. And that's one thing. Another is that when you push speech underground,
01:05:01.400
it doesn't go away. It just sort of ferments and, um, grows in an environment that has no sunlight.
01:05:10.780
Uh, and that's, you know, less healthy than leaving it open air and debating those ideas. Um, and also
01:05:19.540
in terms of constitutional, what's constitutional, I just think that on campuses, if you have rules,
01:05:26.120
they should be applied to everybody. And if they're bad rules, you should get rid of them.
01:05:31.080
So what this may be showing is not that people shouldn't be allowed to chant their Israel slogan,
01:05:38.900
slogans, but maybe that the rules that are preventing others from chanting what they want to chant,
01:05:46.000
maybe all of these rules are bad to begin with, right? I mean, it's telling you that if you can't
01:05:50.640
apply them evenly, then, uh, perhaps we should move far beyond this idea that your comfort on college
01:05:59.420
campus is paramount and that the rules should be structured around people not hearing things they
01:06:06.580
don't want to hear. And so the frustration with college presidents is that nothing actually changes.
01:06:13.000
They don't enforce the rules that they have in place evenly, and they don't get rid of the rules
01:06:20.160
that they see obviously needs to be changed. And so there's no, there's, there's no solution. They
01:06:26.060
don't actually do anything. They don't take steps in either direction. I would prefer in general,
01:06:32.860
the direction that they take would be in the direction of free speech, but they don't actually
01:06:38.140
take that direction and they don't actually take the anti-free speech direction. They just kind of sit
01:06:44.220
on their hands and say, Oh, well, this is really too bad. And what it's exposing is that the way these
01:06:50.020
college rules and norms are structured is a complete and total mess and completely at odds with, in some
01:06:58.200
cases, constitutional speech, in some cases, just, you know, the general academic project and academic
01:07:03.400
freedom. So do something about the rules. If you don't want to, if you don't want to apply the
01:07:08.440
rules. Yeah. We have seen person after person shouted down at Harvard. I'm just looking at a
01:07:13.560
quick list from fire, which is a great organization. They fight for free speech, no matter your partisan
01:07:18.240
connection. Um, just a couple in 2022, Harvard disinvited feminist philosopher, Devin Buckley from an
01:07:27.020
English department colloquium on campus over her views on gender and trans issues. So that's one
01:07:34.580
person who was going to go to a little gathering in the English department and offer her views on
01:07:41.420
gender. It's a no, no said Harvard, but the whole masses out on the quad shouting about intifada.
01:07:50.680
We're really committed to free speech. So I, you know, I can't stand the hypocrisy and we see right
01:07:55.500
through her. Um, but I look forward to going, I really want to get Kelly J Keene and I want to get,
01:08:00.200
uh, Rebecca. I mean, and I want to get, uh, Riley, Riley Gaines and, uh, Helen Joyce. And I want to go
01:08:06.480
to the Harvard quad and I want to chant a man cannot become a woman, make women female again. There's no
01:08:13.660
such thing as chest feeding. And anyone who tries it is a sick child abuser. I'm going to say all of that.
01:08:19.120
And I can't wait to see Claudine's protection of my free speech. Um, let's meander from Harvard over
01:08:26.840
to Cornell, which I don't, surprisingly to me, I don't know. I just kind of am surprised that Cornell
01:08:33.100
is like one of the hotbeds of the antisemitism movement. Um, I went to Syracuse, which is 45 minutes
01:08:40.820
away. It was a stone throw away. And, uh, it's many of the same people. It's not just like,
01:08:45.740
I'm surprised they've lost their mind to this extent. So the students, uh, there,
01:08:50.300
the pro-Palestinian students have decided to protest now while their fellow students are
01:08:55.940
trying to study. My information is that you pay $62,000 a year to go to Cornell and Ivy League
01:09:01.740
school these days. And this is what you're going to have to deal with. Take a listen to SOT 14.
01:09:15.740
Okay. So this is once again, students for justice in Palestine, which is truly just the most
01:09:31.900
abhorrent group of, uh, the things that they stand for are absolutely horrific to me,
01:09:36.780
but they're everywhere and they are walking into the buildings. They're disrupting the students who
01:09:41.480
you can see at the cubicle studying for their finals. And this is according to David Bernstein
01:09:45.440
reporting on Twitter saying, um, that when complaints were lodged with the Dean's office
01:09:51.420
about this, the response was that the protesters have the right to express themselves so long as
01:09:57.280
they don't get too disruptive. So you can disrupt, you just can't get too disruptive. They said with
01:10:04.360
20 to 30 minutes being considered acceptable. Can you believe this Josh?
01:10:11.520
Well, unfortunately I can believe it Megan, because I literally lived it three weeks ago.
01:10:15.640
I was speaking at the university of Michigan. I was giving a YAF young America's foundation talk
01:10:19.800
on this conflict. The title of my talk was Israel's righteous fight against jihadism.
01:10:24.400
And within three minutes of my talk, it was shouted down by 20 to 25 well-organized pro Hamas
01:10:30.500
protesters. And there were university of Michigan campus police and building administrators standing
01:10:35.220
right there in the room. And what did they do? They did absolutely nothing. So you had the guy
01:10:40.460
who was the university's man who was in charge of the building, went up to the podium. He kind of
01:10:44.220
shoved me aside and he tried to remind them of this, of the code of conduct. You couldn't hear a word
01:10:48.900
he was saying because they were shouting so loud, shouting all the things that you would expect them to
01:10:52.720
say from the river to the sea, blah, blah, blah. So long story short, what happened to me was
01:10:57.280
this whole thing lasted about 35 minutes. If I had to guess maybe 40 minutes at the most,
01:11:02.200
at which point they went outside, they were banging on the doors, by the way, they had painted all their
01:11:06.520
hands in red. And it's a very nice lecture hall at university of Michigan, beautiful campus. So you
01:11:10.820
kind of get outside the hall and they, they, they left these filthy red handprints on the wall.
01:11:15.480
So this literally happened to me. So what you're reading, you know, you have 30 minutes to go
01:11:20.120
with your heckler's veto. That's exactly what happened to me. Unfortunately, Megan though, I'm not,
01:11:25.080
I'm not surprised that this is happening at a school like Cornell. Actually, I was just there. I was,
01:11:29.160
I was there at both Cornell and Syracuse in, in late September. I spoke at the federal society
01:11:33.480
chapters of the law schools on both campuses. I actually took an Uber ride from Mythica to
01:11:36.880
Syracuse. It's very pretty in that part of New York, but a university like Cornell, they're drawing
01:11:41.720
so heavily from these elite prep schools in New York city, in Boston, Philadelphia, and cities like
01:11:47.340
that. You're going to have kids who have been indoctrinated their whole lives. I think one of the
01:11:51.460
great fallacies that many, you know, you know, conservative people,
01:11:55.080
people who are center right tend to think is that, oh, the kids are totally fine until they're 18
01:11:59.620
years old. And then they go to these universities and they're totally brainwashed. That's totally
01:12:03.540
nonsensical. Look, my mother was an elementary school teacher, a third, fourth grade teacher for
01:12:08.180
20 to 25 years or so. I have it from firsthand experience or secondhand, I guess from her,
01:12:13.540
the extent to which these kids these days are being brainwashed the entire time. Just yesterday,
01:12:17.840
actually, I was speaking with Jason Rance out in Seattle on his radio show. He had this 47 slide
01:12:23.980
elaborate PowerPoint presentation from a local high school out there in Washington state. And he
01:12:29.300
wanted to bring me on to talk about it. It was, well, they called it a history of the Israeli
01:12:33.600
Palestinian conflict. I will tell you that it was one side's history. It was one side's truth. It
01:12:39.120
didn't bear much of a resemblance to the actual truth. It was a lot about the Nakba, not about,
01:12:44.020
not a lot about the 1929 Hebron massacre where the Arabs murdered the Jews of Hebron and things like
01:12:49.580
that. But again, they don't care about the facts whatsoever. They will never let stubborn facts
01:12:54.440
get in the way of their pernicious ideology, which ultimately is all downstream of the Christopher
01:12:59.320
Rufo woke capture of the institutions and all of that. My God, these are annoying snot nosed kids who
01:13:05.560
came from exactly the institutions you just suggested. You see their behavior at Cornell and
01:13:10.500
you know it. So the greater context of what I just showed you for the audience watching is they
01:13:16.040
decided to have like an occupation of Cornell. They're mad that the president of Cornell
01:13:21.080
isn't entirely on the side of Hamas and they want certain concessions. Otherwise they're going to
01:13:29.400
continue their occupation or they decided to have a quote trial for Cornell president Martha Pollack.
01:13:35.380
By the way, the, by the way, the Cornell son, the university on campus in reporting on their antics
01:13:41.520
quote, chose to blur the faces of participants in the photos due to safety and doxing concerns.
01:13:48.320
They blurred the faces. We're not going to blur their faces, but they blurred their faces
01:13:53.880
because they don't think that they should have any accountability for what they're doing.
01:13:58.640
It's completely non-journalistic that decision, Cornell son. So you really need to work on your
01:14:03.640
journalism before you proceed with your activism on the Palestinian side. So they decided to hold this
01:14:09.800
mock trial for the Cornell president and not surprisingly, they, I think, found her guilty.
01:14:16.060
Yeah, they did. They found her guilty on a bunch of things, including genocide and apartheid.
01:14:20.140
She's guilty of genocide just sitting in her office because she hasn't given them
01:14:24.140
all the things they want when it comes to Cornell's position. They want divestment from Israel.
01:14:30.800
They want Cornell to support disarming the apartheid, freeing Palestine. And ultimately they were
01:14:40.200
somewhat satisfied that they got what they wanted because she, the executive vice president of
01:14:46.520
Cornell promised that they would at least discuss pathways to divestment through revisions and
01:14:52.780
alterations to the endowments at Cornell. Unbelievable. So they, they're getting what they want with these
01:14:58.400
antics, Seth. And on top of all that, back to the snot nose piece, they, after their little protests
01:15:05.620
and occupations were asked by the administration to move so that they could close the building for
01:15:10.420
the night. And guess what they did? They went to Willard straight hall where they met and posted
01:15:16.140
everyone's in good spirits. And some of us have started playing super smash brothers, allies in the
01:15:22.720
community, super smash brothers, allies in the communities and from the university have donated pizza,
01:15:27.820
sandwiches, chips, drinks, drinks, and even homemade cookies to us. That's, I mean, we are,
01:15:34.380
we're a far cry from the civil rights movement where African-Americans had to face down dogs in the
01:15:41.720
street while they just tried to stand up for their rights. They're playing Mario, whatever, super smash
01:15:47.220
brothers and having pizza and cookies while they want us to see them as these fierce social justice warriors.
01:15:53.140
Well, look, we don't, we don't know if Martin Luther King had access to a Nintendo switch,
01:15:59.480
if he would have played it, maybe he would have played too. So, you know, you can't really judge
01:16:03.740
based on that. I was too harsh. You know, this is, this is just, this is progress. We just have more
01:16:08.780
technological improvements since then it's innovation, but yeah, the thing that, that really
01:16:13.960
comes out of me when you talk about that specific situation is that let's go back to the, I should
01:16:21.200
feel comfortable on campus thing. And my comfort is paramount. The presence of Jews, presence of people
01:16:30.500
who support Israel, that's, what's making them uncomfortable. They have, they need someone to bake
01:16:36.600
them cookies and to play Nintendo switch, uh, late into the night, just to get over the fact that
01:16:44.200
they share a campus because they're not running from a counter protest. They didn't duck into Nintendo
01:16:50.580
hall, um, you know, on the campus to, uh, escape, uh, you know, some sort of like angry Jews, you know,
01:16:59.360
pitchforks and torches or something like that. No one's actually getting in their face. They have no
01:17:04.100
threat. Nothing's making them feel uncomfortable except literally the existence of Israel, the
01:17:09.200
Jewish state. And that is part of the key problem here, which is that it really does fit into the
01:17:16.360
comfort mold because it's just not speech. It's just our existence that makes them uncomfortable.
01:17:23.780
And they have somehow arranged the situation in a way that they get sympathy for it. I'm sorry,
01:17:29.600
you have to share, uh, the campus and your state and the planet and the universe with people who
01:17:36.700
support Israel. And of course, Zionism is at its core, essentially a civil rights, you know,
01:17:43.500
movement itself. I mean, that's an oversimplification, but Zionism at its core just asks for Jews to have
01:17:49.160
the same rights as everybody else. And so what you're seeing is a counter civil rights protest
01:17:55.980
protest that is so upset by the fact that the, the school is not, uh, totally on their side,
01:18:04.140
that they have to, you know, eat cookies and play video games and stuff like this. So the tantrum is
01:18:09.120
beyond just, you know, it's one thing if somebody were making them feel unsafe, but they're the ones
01:18:14.700
making others feel unsafe. They're the ones, you know, a lot of these protests, you know, receiving
01:18:20.420
reports of, I know people of kids in the city who've, you know, had to run the other way when a,
01:18:25.120
when a smoke bomb comes, you know, they're like shooting off smoke bombs and stuff like that.
01:18:29.400
These protests, I mean, I guarantee you, you know, the nine year old kid on the upper West side is
01:18:34.960
not chasing 500 pro Palestine protesters. It's, you know, it's surely the other way around. So the
01:18:42.000
people who have been taking in some places, virtually every day or every other day, the opportunity to
01:18:49.160
make people feel unsafe, uh, are the ones saying, you know, I don't feel safe or I don't feel
01:18:55.960
comfortable because I'm not allowed to. Yeah. I need, I need my cookies after a long march of
01:19:02.000
throwing smoke bombs at nine year olds. You know, that on the, the point about anti-Zionism,
01:19:07.500
one of the things they're upset about that their last demand that was not quote, 100% met
01:19:14.500
and they're mad about this, but they're feeling like they can go back on it was for the university
01:19:20.940
to publicly recognize the clear theoretical and political distinction between anti-Zionism and
01:19:28.460
anti-Semitism. But they believe that, um, they might make progress because Cornell has promised
01:19:35.360
negotiations are in process on that. And I know very well from listening to commentary and I'm reading a
01:19:42.660
lot that, that that's a hard no to, to separate anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism. And there's a
01:19:51.820
reason, Josh, that they're making this a requirement for Cornell in order for these snot nose brats to
01:19:58.140
get out of the lecture halls and let the students who just want to work, get their expensive education
01:20:03.820
that they're paying for. So look, the gold standard for the definition of anti-Semitism nowadays is what's
01:20:10.140
known as the IRA definition. That's I-H-R-A, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
01:20:15.540
And according to them, according to Natan Sharansky, according to U.S. State Department
01:20:19.560
policy for many, many years now, applying a double standard from the rest of the world,
01:20:25.100
as you would apply to Israel, which is one definition we might say of so-called anti-Zionism,
01:20:30.600
that is itself anti-Semitism. Obviously, these campus radicals, these progressives,
01:20:34.860
these stot-nose brats, as you are accurately describing them, they want to redefine anti-Semitism
01:20:40.100
so as to not include this one particular component of it. But modern anti-Zionism is,
01:20:45.820
there's simply no other way of viewing it as anti-Semitism. The exact same way that hundreds
01:20:50.700
and hundreds of years ago, you know, whether it was for the communists or the fascists or anyone in
01:20:55.240
between, the Jews were the scapegoat of all. They were the one kind of tiny minority group that was
01:21:00.580
the root of all the world's evils. That is exactly the exact same framework that these
01:21:06.040
idiots applied to the state of Israel today. If Israel has to kill Hamas in Gaza, and because
01:21:11.840
Hamas, you know, ever the cynical jihadist outfit, they hide themselves within civilian
01:21:16.600
infrastructure. They are complicit with UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency there.
01:21:21.620
They fire rockets from schools, from mosques, from inside hospitals for God's sake there.
01:21:26.180
So because of the way that Israel is forced to conduct war fighting, that there are, you know,
01:21:31.160
I'm not sure what the exact number is, because we don't have reliable statistics, obviously,
01:21:34.480
but call it 8,000 to 12,000, somewhere in that range, innocent civilian deaths.
01:21:39.080
Because there are tragically some civilian deaths that under international law are solely attributable
01:21:43.760
to Hamas, therefore Israel is the root of all evils. Well, you know, where are these same people
01:21:48.380
over the past decade in Syria, where Bashar al-Assad and the result of the Syrian civil war has killed
01:21:53.680
half a million Syrians? Where have these same people been in Yemen over the past nine years
01:21:58.000
as the Saudi-backed faction and the Iranian-backed faction have had a horrific civil war there in
01:22:03.120
Yemen with tens, hundreds of thousands of deaths? You know, back in Iraq, Saddam Hussein,
01:22:07.800
obviously gassing his own people. I mean, like, where does this stop? Obviously, when the Arabs
01:22:11.640
killed the other Arabs, we default to no one in these campuses caring anymore, but somehow you get
01:22:16.960
some Jews involved and, oh, they care a lot. And if that's not anti-Semitism, I'm not sure what is.
01:22:21.540
Yeah, suddenly they're very clear on who's to blame.
01:22:51.540
The NewsNation Republican Primary Debate, moderated by SiriusXM's Megan Kelly and
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01:23:24.960
I have busted out the hand warmers. If you could only feel how cold it is in here. My nose is so
01:23:36.740
cold. I'm just going to do the show like this. It's freezing. Thank God I have long sleeves for
01:23:42.780
tomorrow night's debate because I don't think it's going to be any warmer in the debate hall.
01:23:46.520
All right, guys. Taking a more somber shift in the coverage, it's been absolutely dark to watch
01:23:55.120
some of these, in particular, squad members come out with their messaging on the horrors coming out
01:24:00.540
of Israel and the reporting. And this Representative Jayapal, my God, I'm sure you saw it, went on with
01:24:10.340
Dana Bash on CNN and, like so many of her Democratic colleagues, seemed to want to refuse to acknowledge
01:24:19.540
the use of rape as a weapon of war and the atrocities, the sexual violence that was unleashed
01:24:25.860
against Israeli women. I mean, this is just a bridge too far. It's one thing to be Claudine Gay
01:24:31.360
and finally find free speech, right, on your campus. This is something else entirely. It's just, what kind
01:24:40.620
of a person can't look at the reports of what was done to those women in Israel and say anything other
01:24:46.040
than, I am horrified, horrified. This will be condemned immediately. But it took the UN two months, the UN
01:24:54.240
women's group, to say anything. And now Dana Bash tried to get Representative Jayapal to say something
01:25:00.260
about it and watch her resist. I've seen a lot of progressive women, generally speaking,
01:25:07.720
they're quick to defend women's rights and speak out against using rape as a weapon of war. But
01:25:14.540
downright silent on what we saw on October 7th and what might be happening inside Gaza right now to
01:25:22.240
these hostages. Why is that? I mean, I don't know that that's true. I think we always talk about the
01:25:29.000
impact of war on women in particular. And I've condemned what Hamas has done. I've condemned
01:25:33.760
specifically all of the actions. Absolutely. The rape, the, of course. But I think we have to
01:25:40.420
remember that Israel is a democracy. That is why they are a strong ally of ours. And if they do not
01:25:48.000
comply with international humanitarian law, they are bringing themselves to a place that makes it much
01:25:53.540
more difficult strategically for them to be able to build the kinds of allies, to keep public opinion
01:25:59.240
with them. With respect, I was just asking about the women and you turned it back to Israel. I'm
01:26:05.760
asking you about Hamas. In fact, I already answered your question, Dana. I said it's horrific. And I
01:26:11.040
think that rape is horrific. Sexual assault is horrific. However, I think we have to be balanced about
01:26:17.860
bringing in the outrages against Palestinians. And it's horrible, but you don't see Israeli
01:26:24.260
soldiers raping. Well, Dana, I think we're not, we're not, I don't want this to be the hierarchy
01:26:30.440
of oppression. Oh, my God, Seth. My God. Now, now we don't want this to be the hierarchy of oppression.
01:26:39.820
Convenient timing. You know, there was years ago, there was a, there was an article written,
01:26:47.840
in academic ease, that was making the point that the lack of Jews, lack of Israelis raping their
01:27:00.140
victims, among the Palestinians was actually a kind of bias in itself. And so, you know, this is,
01:27:08.180
that's what it makes me think of that you really, there's literally, there's literally nothing you
01:27:12.220
can do. But also that you have to understand how people decide, find a way to bring it back to
01:27:20.300
criticism of Israel, absolutely, no matter what. And I think it's horrified a lot of people who,
01:27:26.540
they can't, you can't actually defend anything that Hamas did, right? So you have two options,
01:27:33.580
you can deny it, or you can, what about? So what abouting it is very tough, which is what she tried to do
01:27:41.300
there? Because, you know, well, Israel is going to have to build alliances, and it's not going to
01:27:51.380
build those strategic alliances, if people don't think it can fight fairly, and stuff like that,
01:27:56.600
not a question about rape. And, and I think that what you're seeing is, there's just a total loss for
01:28:05.320
words. Because what do you do? If you are part of a progressive movement that holds that Hamas
01:28:14.320
represents the oppressed, and the Jews represent the oppressors? And what did you think decolonialism
01:28:23.060
meant? Did you think it was just a theory, you know, as these, as people like to say? So if you,
01:28:28.360
if you believe- That tweet endorsed by the Washington Post's Karen Atiyah, this is what
01:28:34.780
decolonization looks like. Endorse, it is not some fringe, the Washington Post's Karen Atiyah, keep
01:28:39.900
going. Yeah, it's not, it's not fringe. That's right. And so if you believe that, if you believe
01:28:45.900
that the uprising itself is justified, then you have to be able to pass whatever they do off as part of
01:28:53.780
legitimate resistance. And, you know, it's all completely insane, because then you get asked on
01:29:01.500
live TV, about the rape of, of Jewish civilians, in a terror attack, and you have to hem and haw and
01:29:11.040
um and um your way around to Israel's conduct and its need to build alliances. And you saw something
01:29:17.920
almost similar, not to change the topic, but you saw something similar with the UNRWA,
01:29:21.600
the United Nations Relief and Works Agency official, who was asked about the fact that we got a report
01:29:28.680
that a United Nations, a member of that agency, a teacher, held a hostage in Gaza. So he was asked
01:29:39.480
on national TV, seems like one of your guys may have been involved in holding Israeli hostages.
01:29:45.920
Your teachers hold hostages. And he kept bringing the question back to bringing flour and other
01:29:53.120
essential goods to the Gazans. And all I could tell you is how we keep track of the flour and
01:29:58.760
providing the flour. And it looks absurd, because there's no way you could possibly answer the question
01:30:05.300
itself. You have to just completely change topic and make excuses and, and all of that, because
01:30:12.000
you're defending the indefensible and all you need, if you're a member of Congress and you're
01:30:18.140
being asked on TV, something like that, what you need is for the person sitting across from you to
01:30:23.020
stop saying what Hamas actually did, because you don't want to, uh, you don't want to condemn it and
01:30:31.280
you want to put it back on Israel. And so like the people who tear down the posters and the people who
01:30:37.660
disrupt screenings of the Hamas atrocities on account of, uh, the idea that it's somehow Israeli
01:30:45.100
propaganda, even though a lot of the video Hamas actually took and disseminated themselves while
01:30:50.980
they carried out the attacks. These people are trying to stop you from learning what's actually
01:30:57.340
happening and seeing what's going on. If you can't see posters of hostages, if you can't see
01:31:02.560
the footage of what Hamas did, then you can deny it, or you can say, I'll wait for an investigation
01:31:08.480
or something like that. And so what you realize is that their entire response to this rests on
01:31:15.520
preventing the public from actually knowing public information about, and verifiable information about
01:31:23.620
what Hamas has been doing to Israelis. It's, it's unbelievable. These are obvious war crimes.
01:31:29.560
There should be absolutely no hesitation, even if they are at war, even if you accept in their view
01:31:35.700
of the world, that the war has been ongoing and that 10 seven wasn't a terrorist attack. It was an
01:31:41.360
act of war against someone who's unleashed war on you. That does not include putting babies in ovens.
01:31:49.620
It does not include raping women, cutting off their breasts and playing with them before the woman has
01:31:56.060
died. This is sick effing stuff. And for an American woman, a representative from the state of
01:32:03.640
Washington to have any reaction other than I am horrified by this period. No, but no, however,
01:32:12.660
to try to contextualize human torture through the use of sexual violence of women. Josh is absolutely
01:32:21.440
disgusting and is a game changer. I knew they were radical in the squad. This is a game changer in
01:32:28.500
the way I see all of them. So Congresswoman Jaipal is the chairwoman of the House Progressive Caucus.
01:32:36.680
So I think we can reasonably infer from that, that she roughly speaks on behalf of the Progressive
01:32:43.360
Caucus. She speaks, if we can extrapolate perhaps just a little bit, she speaks on behalf of what's the
01:32:49.620
modern progressive elite like to think. Now, if you go back to September 2018, when Brett Kavanaugh was
01:32:55.820
going through his trials and tribulations, Congresswoman Jaipal had a very straightforward
01:33:01.220
stance on the Christine Blasey Ford allegation. She literally put the hashtag, believe all women.
01:33:06.780
That was the hashtag of the day. Apparently, in retrospect, they should have added an asterisk to
01:33:12.040
the end of that tweet. And the asterisk on the bottom would have said, except for the Jews. But this
01:33:15.760
just gets back to what we were saying earlier about the DEI construct. They don't actually believe in
01:33:20.460
liberal rules of neutrality. They do not believe in a free speech construct that actually applies
01:33:24.660
to all Americans. They do not believe all women, no matter what their race, creed, color, ethnicity,
01:33:30.380
religion, or so forth. They only support free speech for some, and they only believe some women.
01:33:35.960
How do you decide who to protect free speech-wise? How do you decide who to believe, who to give due
01:33:40.280
process to? Well, it gets back to the oppressed versus oppressor status. It's really ironic,
01:33:45.060
as Seth pointed out, that she began her response to Dana Bash by saying that I don't want to get
01:33:48.980
into this hierarchy of oppression. That's all these people actually believe in at the end of the day.
01:33:53.660
Mm-hmm. And in part, it's what got our country and its bizarre reaction to what happened to the
01:33:58.900
Israelis into this mess to begin with. Josh, Seth, thank you both so much. Really appreciate you being
01:34:04.600
here. Thanks so much. Thank you, Lincoln. All the best, guys. All right. And before we go,
01:34:09.660
I want to tell you some exciting news. And that is, you guys remember when my husband,
01:34:15.100
Doug Brunt, came on the show to promote his book, The Mysterious Case of Rudolph Diesel,
01:34:20.080
the guy who invented the diesel engine that requires your diesel gasoline. You see his name every day when
01:34:25.360
you fill up your gas tank. Well, guess what? Diesel is crushing it. I'm super proud of Doug,
01:34:31.100
and I'm super grateful to all of you because I know a ton of you went out and bought his book.
01:34:35.360
You can see the Amazon rankings go way up after he came on, and he was so thankful.
01:34:40.780
So just a word of what's happened with Diesel since Doug came on. Diesel, of course, made the
01:34:45.820
New York Times bestseller list repeatedly. Diesel, happy to tell you, has now sold, Doug has sold the
01:34:53.740
book to film rights. Yay! So it looks like Diesel is on its way to potentially becoming a movie.
01:35:00.500
You know, Hollywood, it takes like 20 yeses before that actually happens. But the first round went
01:35:06.880
well, and it was in much demand, and he sold the rights for it to go book to film. So it'd be super
01:35:12.040
fun to see. And I wrote down so I wouldn't forget a couple of things that have happened to Diesel.
01:35:16.480
It was just voted one of Apple's best books of the year. One of the top 20 books of the year,
01:35:23.500
says Apple, which is a high honor. Audible, same. One of the best, best books of the year.
01:35:29.120
Four rave reviews from the New York Times, from the Wall Street Journal. A starred review in
01:35:33.620
Publishers Weekly called The Greatest Caper of the 20th Century. Equal parts Walter Isaacson
01:35:39.640
and Sherlock Holmes. Love that one. Superb biography, an indispensable book. So the reason I'm mentioning
01:35:46.200
it to you is to thank you and to say that your efforts in supporting it have worked. It's been
01:35:50.880
doing really well. And to remind you, as we go into the holiday season, it really does make a great
01:35:56.120
gift. So if you're wondering, what do I get mom or dad or nan or pop or aunt and uncle or a friend
01:36:02.780
or your boss, it's a great book because you learn a lot about history. It's nonfiction, but it reads
01:36:08.640
like a thriller. And it really is a mystery that Doug has solved. So all the best to all of you and
01:36:14.740
all the best to Duggar. Go Diesel! Mysterious Case of Rudolph Diesel. Thanks to all of you for joining
01:36:20.700
me today. We're going to be back with full coverage in advance of the big debate tomorrow night. We'll
01:36:25.660
see you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.