The Megyn Kelly Show - GOP Debate Stakes, and Progressives Refusing to Condemn Hamas, with Charles C.W. Cooke, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Josh Hammer, and Seth Mandel ｜ Ep. 679

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

00:00:11.860 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, coming to you live from the University of Alabama,

00:00:17.920 where tomorrow night I will be co-moderating the fourth Republican presidential debate.

00:00:22.440 And frankly, this could be the fourth and last Republican debate.

00:00:26.380 It could be the fourth and last debate entirely in the entire election season.

00:00:30.200 We'll talk about why in a minute.

00:00:31.900 We are here in The Spin Room, where The Megyn Kelly Show will be live today, tomorrow,

00:00:35.720 and then also with a special post-debate election show tomorrow night.

00:00:40.180 We've got a great lineup of guests for you this week, including a few on-set surprises.

00:00:44.980 With the Iowa caucuses less than six weeks away,

00:00:47.960 tomorrow provides a crucial opportunity for the presidential hopefuls to set themselves apart.

00:00:53.040 We can now tell you who will be on the stage.

00:00:57.180 And it is the smallest number of candidates to date,

00:00:59.500 meaning you can expect a much more substantive conversation.

00:01:03.460 Those who made the cut?

00:01:05.100 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis,

00:01:07.100 former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley,

00:01:09.500 entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy,

00:01:11.660 and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

00:01:14.460 We do not expect former President Trump to attend,

00:01:17.640 but you never know anything could happen,

00:01:20.840 especially when it comes to Trump.

00:01:23.260 He loves Alabama.

00:01:24.680 Mr. Trump, we're here.

00:01:26.000 We can come up with questions for you.

00:01:27.560 Trust me.

00:01:28.460 It'll be saucy.

00:01:29.300 It'll be fun.

00:01:30.340 But don't count it.

00:01:31.720 Yesterday, long-shot candidate and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum

00:01:35.040 dropped out of the race.

00:01:36.880 Goodbye, Doug.

00:01:38.160 We'll miss you.

00:01:39.360 He actually could have a shot in future elections.

00:01:41.580 I think a lot of people opened their eyes to this guy in a way that they hadn't prior.

00:01:45.300 But for now, he's gone back home to North Dakota and is not thinking about presidential politics.

00:01:51.440 Joining me now to discuss it all, two of my favorites from National Review,

00:01:54.920 Charles C.W. Cook, senior writer and host of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast,

00:01:59.440 and Michael Brendan Doherty, also a senior writer at National Review.

00:02:05.560 Guys, welcome back to the show.

00:02:07.280 It's getting kind of exciting now, 24 hours out from the next big debate.

00:02:11.300 And I'll tell you, here in Tuscaloosa, you can feel the energy already.

00:02:14.980 The candidates are coming in.

00:02:16.520 Everyone's getting ready.

00:02:17.740 They're peppering, you know, all of us here on the rules and where everybody's going to stand.

00:02:22.280 And we at the debate team, I'm co-partnering with News Nation and the Free Beacon,

00:02:27.260 are figuring out who goes in the center.

00:02:30.160 Thankfully, now we have four candidates, so there's no exact center.

00:02:32.960 But there are all these sort of power dynamics in setting up the stage and getting ready that

00:02:36.980 are fun to be immersed in.

00:02:38.360 So, Charles, let me ask you, because a lot of people will be asking themselves going into this

00:02:42.800 fourth debate, does it matter?

00:02:45.080 Could it matter?

00:02:46.640 Is there a reason to pay attention to this?

00:02:48.900 Obviously, I've got my own thoughts on it because I'm here.

00:02:51.600 But what's your take?

00:02:54.200 Well, I think it matters.

00:02:56.200 I think that the race at the moment has been frozen for a long time.

00:03:03.420 And as I've suggested before, the big question now is whether or not that freezing is real.

00:03:12.380 If it is the case that Trump is 60 points to the good and that everyone else is fighting

00:03:20.560 for scraps, then no, the debate's not going to matter.

00:03:23.760 But if people aren't paying attention or there's an incumbency factor for Trump, then, yeah,

00:03:32.820 we need to know who's going to be left standing.

00:03:35.560 And in that scenario, people are still going to be looking for answers to questions in

00:03:40.720 choosing their candidates.

00:03:43.320 So, yeah, it matters.

00:03:44.620 It also matters in the sense that it has been a useful winnowing exercise.

00:03:48.780 And the debates have obviously changed the way that people see the candidates.

00:03:55.460 Tim Scott, for example, was just not really there at the other debates.

00:04:01.660 People noticed it cost him momentum.

00:04:03.960 It cost him funding.

00:04:04.960 It cost him support.

00:04:06.080 And he dropped out.

00:04:07.520 The fact that you still have, especially Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis on the stage,

00:04:13.480 shows you that whether or not they can beat Trump, they have some sticking power.

00:04:17.320 Mm-hmm.

00:04:18.140 I'll tell you another reason why it could matter, MBD, and that is, you guys know in National

00:04:22.840 Review, our mutual pal Andy McCarthy just posted a big piece on how Trump has been denied for

00:04:29.440 now an argument that he's immune from this criminal prosecution by the federal government

00:04:35.780 in Washington, D.C. in front of Judge Chutkin, who is not a Trump fan, it is safe to say.

00:04:43.720 And so he lost that battle with her.

00:04:47.020 And now he's going to try to appeal it.

00:04:48.640 And he's going to try to take it up to the U.S. Supreme Court saying, I can't be put through

00:04:51.600 this criminal prosecution.

00:04:52.800 There's a question about presidential immunity.

00:04:54.740 These are for acts I took as president and so on.

00:04:56.480 And the point I'm getting to about Andy's piece is he points out that Judge Chutkin might very well,

00:05:05.080 if Trump gets convicted in that D.C. federal case, he does not think it's likely that she

00:05:10.460 would stay imprisonment pending appeal.

00:05:14.720 He said, don't bet on it.

00:05:17.320 So if if he gets tried in D.C., and this is a federal case, but you're still pulling from D.C.

00:05:22.260 for all of your jurors, a town that went over 92 percent for Joe Biden in the last election,

00:05:27.820 the odds of him being convicted in front of such a jury are extremely high for obvious reasons,

00:05:31.820 especially with this judge.

00:05:32.820 You really are looking at a scenario where the likely Republican nominee could not only

00:05:38.040 be a convicted felon by Election Day 2024, but thanks to this judge could be sitting in

00:05:44.420 jail on Election Day.

00:05:46.120 And that really could be a break glass in case of emergency moment for the Republican Party,

00:05:52.420 especially if that happens prior to the Republican National Convention this summer at a point where

00:05:58.720 potentially they could still switch out the nominee.

00:06:02.820 Yeah, there is.

00:06:04.440 There's it's strange that for many months we've been proceeding as if this were going

00:06:09.660 to be a normal election.

00:06:11.420 And there's like a, you know, an even lower level of interest, I think, than there had

00:06:15.320 been in the last two presidential election cycles, when in fact, this one is by far potentially

00:06:21.080 the most explosive where you as you point out, you could have someone in prison.

00:06:27.620 You could also have someone in the morgue by Election Day.

00:06:30.940 Right.

00:06:31.240 And 2024.

00:06:33.260 You know, these are highly unusual circumstances.

00:06:37.980 In effect, we shouldn't be here.

00:06:40.660 I mean, Joe, people that are prosecuting Trump under bogus legal theory should cease doing so.

00:06:46.800 It's dangerous to the republic.

00:06:48.860 And perhaps, you know, candidates who are under so many indictments should, you know, get out.

00:06:53.100 But here we are.

00:06:55.360 We may need a break, break an emergency option.

00:06:59.840 We also, you know, these debates matter because these debates are a time for people to hash

00:07:06.820 out disagreements within the party.

00:07:08.460 The effect, there are other implications, too.

00:07:12.920 Even if you think Trump has got the nomination sewn up, perhaps he's going to look at Nikki

00:07:18.320 Haley and decide this person is a good vice presidential candidate for me that has enough 0.98

00:07:23.100 appeal to suburban voters or to women voters that I need to make up for in 2024.

00:07:28.440 The debate, you know, we're talking about real issues that affect Americans, the border, inflation,

00:07:36.220 seeing how the audience responds to these questions and these candidates can shape the

00:07:42.600 race next year, even if the four participants you have tomorrow night are not among the candidates

00:07:48.340 next year.

00:07:48.920 So, you know, it's absolutely matters.

00:07:52.380 We need more debate going into 2024, not less.

00:07:55.480 So, you know, this is a public service and I'm glad you're the one doing it.

00:08:00.540 Wow.

00:08:01.020 Thank you.

00:08:02.320 Co-moderating with Elizabeth Vargas of News Nation and Eliana Johnson, our pal from the

00:08:07.520 Free Beacon.

00:08:08.340 And we just came from a debate meeting.

00:08:10.360 We're ready.

00:08:10.840 I'll tell you that we're ready.

00:08:12.460 It's going to be a spicy couple of hours as long as the candidates show up ready to play,

00:08:17.660 you know, which I have every belief they will.

00:08:20.880 Charles, the reason I said this could be actually the last debate entirely is you've

00:08:25.840 got not only, you know, if Trump keeps going up, right, if this debate does nothing to change

00:08:30.320 the trajectory and let's say Trump goes from 50 to 60 percent up on these folks to 70 to

00:08:37.080 80.

00:08:37.480 I mean, at some point, the RNC is going to say we're not doing this anymore because at

00:08:41.640 that same time, the votes are going to start to come in in Iowa, in New Hampshire, in South

00:08:46.800 Carolina.

00:08:47.300 So all those those two points could come together at the same time.

00:08:50.600 So let's assume just for purposes of argument that nothing happens to change the early races

00:08:57.320 and the trajectory and Trump wins those races.

00:09:01.220 There's no way Joe Biden's going to going to debate Donald Trump.

00:09:04.000 I think some people disagree with me, but I just don't think Biden can do it.

00:09:09.600 He's going downhill.

00:09:11.540 You know, you will get to some of his latest snafus, but at the Kennedy Center Honors, but

00:09:16.220 I don't think he can do it.

00:09:18.360 So I really think he'll say I'm not debating an insurrectionist.

00:09:21.400 I'm not debating a convicted felon, an accused felon, an imprisoned felon, whatever, wherever

00:09:27.300 Trump is in that process.

00:09:28.520 And so we may actually have an election in November 24 without either candidate having

00:09:33.560 sat for even one debate the entire cycle, which feels deeply wrong.

00:09:41.400 Well, it feels deeply wrong per se.

00:09:43.700 I'm not sure it feels deeply wrong if the two candidates next year are Joe Biden and Donald

00:09:48.500 Trump.

00:09:48.840 I would like to see an election in which ideas were batted around.

00:09:54.140 But if you remember back to the 2020 election, the debate that we got between Biden and Trump

00:10:00.780 was not exactly substantive.

00:10:03.140 It really involved them throwing pies at each other and disgracing the nation.

00:10:09.400 If we could have two different candidates, then a debate would be fruitful.

00:10:13.020 I was somewhat dismissive, at least in its effects, of the contest between Ron DeSantis

00:10:20.100 and Governor Newsom from last week.

00:10:22.740 But actually, that is the sort of debate that Americans ought to have.

00:10:27.600 That is a fight between two different visions, between people who have taken dramatically different

00:10:35.160 decisions.

00:10:36.140 And within reason, I thought DeSantis did a much better job than Newsom, are willing to hash

00:10:41.680 them out.

00:10:43.040 But I don't think we would get that from Biden and Trump, even if both Biden and Trump were

00:10:50.040 with it, which certainly Biden is not.

00:10:53.300 I think you're exactly right.

00:10:54.360 He's going to use any excuse he can not to have to debate Trump because he can barely get

00:10:58.120 through a press conference or a gaggle at the moment.

00:11:02.160 Trump doesn't seem to want to debate anyone either.

00:11:03.980 I wouldn't be too surprised if Trump tried to underscore the advantage he has in virility by

00:11:10.140 saying, I am leading in the polls.

00:11:12.080 I'm the front runner.

00:11:13.060 I'm going to win in a landslide.

00:11:14.280 Why would I bother debating Joe Biden?

00:11:17.340 So yeah, it's a strange scenario.

00:11:20.280 But I think it's more the product of it being a contest potentially between Biden and Trump

00:11:26.380 than it is the debate itself.

00:11:29.400 That DeSantis-Nusom debate reminded me, did you guys ever see the movie Sliding Doors

00:11:34.300 with Gwyneth Paltrow where she kind of has the opportunity to see what life would have

00:11:39.760 been like in another set of an alternate universe?

00:11:43.700 That could have been our politics, right?

00:11:45.920 We could have had two young, vibrant leaders hashing out policies for the future of the country.

00:11:52.540 Um, I honestly, I thought Newsom came across just so grating and irritating, but fine.

00:11:59.020 The left likes him.

00:11:59.880 So that's who they want to put up.

00:12:01.400 Then that's who they know.

00:12:02.980 We have two very probably elderly men who are going to maybe hash something out, maybe not,

00:12:10.060 but who are going to be in the contest.

00:12:11.420 And the American voters, if you look at the overall numbers, they don't want this.

00:12:14.620 This is not the contest they want.

00:12:16.140 On the subject of Joe Biden, he, they were the Kennedy Senator honors the other night

00:12:22.540 and, uh, they honored Billy Crystal, Queen Latifah, Barry Gibb, Dionne Warwick, and Renee

00:12:28.860 Fleming.

00:12:29.720 And Joe Biden couldn't make it through without multiple mistakes.

00:12:36.020 He continued to refer to Dionne Warwick as Diane.

00:12:40.360 Now, guys, we're like, I think I'm, I know I'm older than Charlie and MBD and I are a little

00:12:47.420 closer, but this, we all know who Dionne Warwick is, but Joe Biden really knows or should know

00:12:53.900 who Dionne Warwick is.

00:12:55.660 She's from his era.

00:12:57.380 This is not like Taylor Swift or, you know, one of these, Olivia Rodrigo, like somebody who

00:13:03.420 maybe he's not familiar.

00:13:04.640 Dionne Warwick, he should know, repeatedly called her Diane, Diane, truly a gift to us all, Diane.

00:13:10.360 To where that poor White House transcript man or woman had to continue like doing strike 1.00

00:13:15.880 throughs, Diane and put in brackets, Dionne, same thing happened with Barry Gibbs.

00:13:22.380 Um, he continued to call him Billy of the Bee Gees.

00:13:26.340 Same thing.

00:13:27.400 These guys were big in 1970.

00:13:29.480 Joe Biden still was like somewhat vibrant back then.

00:13:33.200 That was 50 years ago.

00:13:34.800 You know, it's Barry Gibb.

00:13:36.740 It's not Billy Gibb.

00:13:38.320 And he did it over and over.

00:13:39.680 Same brackets man had to keep fixing it.

00:13:42.480 Then there was the moment he paused to honor Queen Latifah.

00:13:46.360 And we have a little bit of what happened there.

00:13:49.040 Cut.

00:13:50.520 And by the way, with other movies and movies, she's earned a golden globe and a primetime

00:13:56.660 enemy.

00:13:58.000 Enemy.

00:13:58.400 That's me.

00:14:00.520 That's me.

00:14:03.160 Primetime Emmy.

00:14:06.640 Primetime enemy.

00:14:08.280 So this is with scripted remarks, you guys.

00:14:11.680 At the Kennedy Center Honors, how on earth could they put him out there for a debate?

00:14:18.140 MBD?

00:14:18.500 Well, I mean, how on earth are they putting him out there as president of the United States?

00:14:25.380 I mean, the debate is a courtesy to the voters, but, you know, in an election.

00:14:31.360 But we have him serving in the toughest job of all at a time of international crisis.

00:14:37.000 We have war in the Middle East. 0.95

00:14:38.760 We have a war in Eastern Europe, and we're asking a guy who cannot read the word Emmy 1.00

00:14:45.180 to negotiate potentially with Putin to handle Bibi Netanyahu to prevent a war in Gaza from

00:14:56.380 becoming a regional war across the Middle East.

00:14:59.020 I mean, he has grave responsibilities beyond being a host of a little award show.

00:15:06.460 So I, I'm just astonished at how this is going on.

00:15:11.360 And I'm waiting, you know, for years, years from now, we're going to get real journalism

00:15:16.560 about what the Biden White House was like, how it operated day to day.

00:15:21.480 Same.

00:15:21.740 And, and I am waiting for that, you know, the way that Americans had to wait for Woodrow

00:15:26.300 Wilson, you know, the revelations about Woodrow Wilson and how his wife basically was running

00:15:30.940 the country while he was in bed.

00:15:33.260 I mean, this is an astonishing scandal altogether.

00:15:37.820 And yet it's held, you know, just as, you know, in a way, Biden is holding up Trump.

00:15:44.240 Trump is holding up Biden.

00:15:45.820 And, you know, it's these two old men leaning on each other.

00:15:48.940 And that's the only reason that they're still standing as far as, as candidates for next year,

00:15:54.100 because people are so afraid of what it would be like to have four more years of the guy

00:15:59.280 that they don't like.

00:16:00.140 Um, I mean, it is seriously afraid that leads me to the Atlantic.

00:16:06.080 Okay.

00:16:06.640 So the Atlantic, their January slash February, 2024 issue has 24 contributors, 24 contributors

00:16:14.520 considering what Donald Trump could do if he were to return to the White House, his second

00:16:21.160 term, they conclude you'll be shocked to learn would be much worse than the first term.

00:16:25.580 Now it may, that may be true.

00:16:28.200 Um, however, it's no surprise that Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic is saying it will be trust us all

00:16:34.380 while trolling, trying to tell us that they are a nonpartisan magazine.

00:16:38.320 Um, here's just a little, it's not a sure thing that he could win the Republican nomination

00:16:43.000 again.

00:16:43.300 But as I write this, he's the prohibitive front runner, which is why we felt it necessary

00:16:46.740 to share with our readers, our collective understanding of what could take place in

00:16:50.400 a second Trump term.

00:16:51.580 I encourage you to read all of the articles in this special issue carefully, though perhaps

00:16:55.880 not in one sitting for reasons of mental hygiene.

00:16:59.540 Okay.

00:16:59.800 But it's not a partisan magazine.

00:17:01.300 You got it.

00:17:02.280 Our term of brilliant writers makes a convincingly dispositive case that both Trump and Trumpism

00:17:06.200 pose an existential threat to America and the ideas that animate it.

00:17:10.800 Um, the concern is that the Republican party has mortgaged itself to an anti-democratic demagogue,

00:17:17.940 one who is completely devoid of decency.

00:17:21.240 Now, these are points that you could read from a lot of Republicans who don't like Trump,

00:17:26.060 but this is what we're in for, for the next, what, 15, I don't want to do the math, months.

00:17:32.320 Um, if one of these guys on stage tomorrow night does not unseat Trump in this nomination,

00:17:36.940 it's the ratcheting up of rhetoric.

00:17:39.920 I mean, they've, they've already thrown out terms like Hitler and Charles, I know you don't

00:17:43.920 like Trump, but you know that it's going to go so sky high on the rhetoric.

00:17:48.780 It's going to try to scare people.

00:17:50.900 And I really do think, you know, we're, we're in a, we're going to be in a world of hurt.

00:17:54.940 We're going to be looking at riots if Trump were to win, but even in the next year,

00:17:59.120 and maybe even from the MAGA right, if Trump is convicted, if he's thrown in jail, like

00:18:05.080 this, all of this is at stake in some way here in Tuscaloosa.

00:18:12.080 Yeah.

00:18:12.640 So as you said, I don't like Trump as correct.

00:18:15.520 And I think he should have been impeached, but that doesn't mean every criticism that is

00:18:21.180 advanced against him is correct.

00:18:24.840 And I think one of the problems in reading through some of the essays in the Atlantic,

00:18:28.220 which I did yesterday, is that the authors, they make three mistakes as far as I can see.

00:18:35.200 The first one is they level their criticisms of Trump, many of which are true, but they

00:18:40.580 then glue them to policy preferences.

00:18:43.360 For example, McKay Coppins wrote an essay in which he suggested that Trump's desire to

00:18:50.680 have people around him who are willing to implement his agenda is somehow sinister, that Trump's

00:18:58.700 desire to be able to fire people within the executive branch that he heads up, which is

00:19:03.440 the only elected member as a president, is sinister.

00:19:08.260 That is false.

00:19:09.580 We need to keep our criticisms of Trump, and I have many within the right frame.

00:19:15.060 The second thing is there is a profound inability on the left, and you see this in the Atlantic's

00:19:22.940 package, to reckon with the anti-democratic or illiberal behavior of their own friends.

00:19:30.380 And we have seen this with Biden over and over again.

00:19:33.620 Biden has ignored the Supreme Court.

00:19:35.700 He has ignored his own lawyers who have told him his behavior is illiberal.

00:19:38.720 He's reversed himself on court packing, on the filibuster.

00:19:43.780 He has tried to stage a federal takeover of elections.

00:19:49.260 This is not a purely Republican problem, and yet there's nothing in there about that because

00:19:54.580 it is apparently only the case that Donald Trump is a threat.

00:19:59.200 And then the third problem I have is, while I think that Trump has disqualified himself from

00:20:03.640 consideration and should have been impeached, I think that our system works.

00:20:09.700 Trump did not succeed after he lost the election in staying in power.

00:20:15.300 The vast majority of Trump's initiatives in office that went beyond his authority under the

00:20:20.980 Constitution or the law were swatted down.

00:20:23.780 He's not Hitler because America is not Germany.

00:20:27.920 And this is a problem that I have with progressives in general, is that they simultaneously describe

00:20:34.720 figures such as Donald Trump as Hitler while trying to get rid of the guardrails in our

00:20:39.740 system that prevent anyone from pushing it too far.

00:20:43.660 All of the institutions that checked Trump, as they've checked Biden and Obama and Bush

00:20:49.120 and everyone else, are anathemic to progressives and have been since the time of Woodrow Wilson.

00:20:54.880 So I find it very, very odd that you get this sort of hyperbole at the same time as the one

00:21:01.440 thing that prevents it from becoming a reality, remain under attack from the same people who

00:21:06.360 write the hyperbolic statements.

00:21:08.100 You know, to that point, so true, Charles, to that point, some of the things that they're

00:21:13.380 predicting under, you know, a Trump presidency, MBD, the things that are really upsetting some

00:21:19.560 of the left and these think pieces that we're starting to get now is the following.

00:21:24.000 I'll give you a couple of the, this is from the New York Times, the radical agenda that we

00:21:27.920 can expect from President Trump.

00:21:29.740 He'll reevaluate NATO's purpose and mission.

00:21:34.260 So reevaluating.

00:21:35.580 He'll order the military to attract, to attack the drug cartels in Mexico.

00:21:40.560 He'll use the military on domestic soil to keep law in order.

00:21:44.940 He'll purge undocumented workers. 1.00

00:21:48.080 He'll expand presidential power.

00:21:50.340 Okay.

00:21:50.660 To the point Charles just made, he's going to be the culprit who does that.

00:21:53.480 And here's the last one.

00:21:54.820 This is the best MBD.

00:21:57.080 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.

00:22:08.320 Who would ever do that?

00:22:11.080 Were they alive during the first Trump administration?

00:22:14.160 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.

00:22:21.160 Trump would go out, he would tweet something like, we're putting a ban on transgender persons

00:22:28.680 serving in the U.S. military.

00:22:30.080 And then the Pentagon would announce, we're providing services for transgender persons serving

00:22:37.840 in the military.

00:22:38.780 Trump would announce, we're withdrawing all troops from Syria.

00:22:42.200 And then the White House, quote unquote, would announce weeks later, actually we're putting

00:22:47.520 300 more troops into Syria.

00:22:49.180 When Trump was in the White House, everyone knew Trump kind of wanted to reopen the country

00:22:54.460 during, in the early months of COVID.

00:22:57.420 He talked about reopening by Easter, but no, Dr. Fauci decided the terms on which most Americans

00:23:03.740 would live.

00:23:04.580 And the implicit threat was, and you better elect someone else other than Donald Trump, or

00:23:10.060 we'll keep you locked up after the election.

00:23:13.040 This was not a subtle threat.

00:23:14.760 And so, to me, the problem is not that Trump was a dictator.

00:23:19.600 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

00:23:33.360 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.

00:23:49.900 A dictatorship?

00:23:51.460 I mean, the guy could not dictate to his own chief of staff at the White House without being

00:23:56.160 undermined.

00:23:57.640 That was the problem.

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

00:24:14.640 agenda that Paul Ryan was ready to pass.

00:24:17.280 The courts, they blocked his immigration orders, sometimes under pretty shoddy legal reasoning.

00:24:22.900 They gummed up the works.

00:24:24.040 But worst of all was that the executive branch itself was in rebellion against the president.

00:24:31.040 And that's a serious problem.

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.

00:24:44.360 Can I just add one thing?

00:24:46.180 Yeah, go ahead, Charles.

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.

00:25:00.200 I'm a big NATO guy.

00:25:01.400 I really like NATO.

00:25:02.440 I don't want to reevaluate NATO.

00:25:04.240 I think NATO is a force for good.

00:25:05.760 But that is a debatable question.

00:25:08.020 That is actually well within the political range.

00:25:10.160 Likewise, illegal immigration.

00:25:12.340 I'm not a fan of illegal immigrants. 1.00

00:25:14.280 In fact, the vast majority of Americans are not.

00:25:17.200 That is not a question of democracy.

00:25:20.660 That is a political matter.

00:25:22.860 If the Congress decided to, it could open the borders.

00:25:25.400 It hasn't decided to.

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

00:25:46.960 stay in power, is absurd.

00:25:48.340 And it massively weakens their case.

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

00:25:54.860 from becoming president.

00:25:56.180 Joe Biden has done the same thing.

00:25:58.000 That speech he gave with the weird red lights behind him, where he looked angry and almost

00:26:02.720 dictatorial himself.

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.

00:26:11.420 I mean, this is crazy and it doesn't help.

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.

00:26:37.520 He's promising again now that he will.

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. 0.64

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

00:27:03.520 disperse the National Guard to keep order.

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.

00:27:23.920 And they'll say, this is our wish list.

00:27:27.020 Great.

00:27:27.660 Thanks for the free promo.

00:27:28.740 Trump's probably thinking.

00:27:30.680 Right.

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.

00:28:00.820 I mean, this is the hypocrisy.

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 1.00

00:32:11.720 a couple of the other ones who are costing them points in various States. Kristen Welker, 0.99

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 0.79

00:37:31.820 candidates are working. But I just don't see her appeal nationwide, you know, what she's offering 0.93

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 0.93

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 0.98

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 0.98

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 0.65

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. 0.68

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 1.00

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

00:44:02.400 how human beings engage in politics.

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 0.50

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 0.99

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 0.99

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 1.00

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, 0.73

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 0.91

00:50:02.620 shits about rise in anti-Semitism until she was made to by their rich donors. But in any event, 0.78

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? 0.90

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?

00:52:03.760 We embrace a commitment to free expression.

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 0.96

00:52:31.120 has been an absolute disgrace. And the irony of listening to this woman talk about her commitment 0.96

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 1.00

00:52:53.260 very important to be able to express yourself, because I don't know. Josh, you tell me. 0.99

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 1.00

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. 1.00

00:54:10.540 Therefore, they get less privilege. They get fewer rights than the other groups get. And what that 1.00

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 1.00

00:54:39.240 compete against her when it comes to NCAA swimming. Oh, then you're a transphobe and you have no right

00:54:43.280 to free speech. It's just awful.

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 1.00

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, 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.56

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 0.98

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 0.93

01:01:53.540 finish that phrase with intifada revolution. Well, Israelis paid the price of the first intifada 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.98

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 0.99

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 0.96

01:03:59.820 to start cracking down on the words coming out of people's mouths, even if they're really awful? 0.98

01:04:07.140 Generally of the opinion that you want to hear what awful people have to say. 1.00

01:04:11.540 So I err on the side of letting people be idiots, um, in part because this conflict, 0.99

01:04:18.740 especially this conflict and its aftermath have been revealing, right? I mean, this has been, 1.00

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 1.00

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 1.00

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. 1.00

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 0.65

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 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.93

01:14:24.140 all the things they want when it comes to Cornell's position. They want divestment from Israel. 0.90

01:14:30.800 They want Cornell to support disarming the apartheid, freeing Palestine. And ultimately they were 0.62

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 1.00

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, 1.00

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 0.98

01:17:09.200 Jewish state. And that is part of the key problem here, which is that it really does fit into the 0.74

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, 0.61

01:17:43.500 movement itself. I mean, that's an oversimplification, but Zionism at its core just asks for Jews to have 0.88

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, 0.83

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 1.00

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 0.75

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 1.00

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 0.98

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 1.00

01:21:11.840 Hamas, you know, ever the cynical jihadist outfit, they hide themselves within civilian 0.99

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. 0.98

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 0.86

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, 0.97

01:22:07.800 obviously gassing his own people. I mean, like, where does this stop? Obviously, when the Arabs 1.00

01:22:11.640 killed the other Arabs, we default to no one in these campuses caring anymore, but somehow you get 1.00

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. 0.89

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

01:22:56.600 NewsNation's Elizabeth Vargas, December 6th, 8 p.m. Eastern. Watch it on NewsNation,

01:23:01.880 America's fastest-growing cable news network. Find NewsNation on your screen at joinnn.com

01:23:07.680 or listen on SiriusXM Triumphs Channel 111. Go to siriusxm.com slash mkshow to subscribe

01:23:14.200 and get three months free. Offer details apply. The NewsNation Republican Primary Debate.

01:23:19.480 See you on the debate stage. To find NewsNation on your TV, go to joinnn.com.

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 0.96

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 0.81

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 0.97

01:25:00.260 about it and watch her resist. I've seen a lot of progressive women, generally speaking, 1.00

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 0.68

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 0.97

01:26:11.040 think that rape is horrific. Sexual assault is horrific. However, I think we have to be balanced about 0.59

01:26:17.860 bringing in the outrages against Palestinians. And it's horrible, but you don't see Israeli 1.00

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 0.83

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, 0.75

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, 0.94

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 0.94

01:28:14.320 represents the oppressed, and the Jews represent the oppressors? And what did you think decolonialism 0.50

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 0.91

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 1.00

01:31:56.060 died. This is sick effing stuff. And for an American woman, a representative from the state of 1.00

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 0.98

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. 0.70

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 0.67

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.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 05, 2023

GOP Debate Stakes, and Progressives Refusing to Condemn Hamas, with Charles C.W. Cooke, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Josh Hammer, and Seth Mandel ｜ Ep. 679

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