The Megyn Kelly Show - GOP's Giant Virginia Victory, with Ken Cuccinelli, Charles C.W. Cooke, Asra Nomani, and Bill McGurn

00:00:00.400 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.640 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have a huge show for you

00:00:16.320 today following a giant GOP Virginia victory last night. Republican Glenn Youngkin did it.

00:00:23.280 He beat Democrat Terry McAuliffe against all odds handily in a race that was seen and is still as a

00:00:31.400 bellwether for what may come in 2022 and 2024. But that's not even close to it. The Republicans

00:00:38.800 are projected to flip the Virginia statehouse to picking up at least seven seats held by Democrats.

00:00:45.860 The Virginia voters have had their say and they feel really strongly about a change in direction

00:00:52.360 in that state. And it's not just Virginia and the South. In New Jersey, New Jersey, deep blue New

00:00:59.960 Jersey, Virginia at least used to be red. New Jersey's been blue forever, so it seems. Democratic

00:01:05.380 incumbent Phil Murphy is locked in a shockingly close battle with his GOP challenger, Jack

00:01:12.360 Chattarelli. Despite Murphy being up by as much as eight points in recent polls, he is expected to

00:01:18.380 eke out a tiny victory as of this moment, but it's not yet completely certain. And the fact that he is

00:01:23.940 even on the ropes in New Jersey says a lot about our national electoral politics, which we'll get into

00:01:31.160 in one minute. Meanwhile, a ballot initiative in Minneapolis touted by Representative Ilhan Omar to

00:01:36.820 replace the police with a public safety department failed. And Seattle elected the very first Republican

00:01:44.300 official in the city since 1989. This is you've got recalls going for school board members and DAs

00:01:52.180 as far west as San Francisco, a Democrat bloodbath on Long Island where Republicans are taking over

00:02:00.800 office by office. I could go on even here in Connecticut where I am. Republican sweep. It's it was an

00:02:08.100 incredible day for for Team Red. And there are all sorts of reasons for that. To break it down for us

00:02:14.540 today, we've got a cast of all stars. Charles C.W. Cook of National Review, Bill McGurn of The Wall

00:02:19.060 Street Journal, Azra Nomani, a Virginia parent and vice president of Parents Defending Education, who will

00:02:24.600 respond to all we heard from the media last night that the parents who voted because they don't want

00:02:29.920 CRT and their education systems are deluding themselves because it's not taught. Really? Well,

00:02:35.260 she's a Virginia mom. She's actually part of this group that I've mentioned to you guys, Parents

00:02:39.360 Defending Education, as I said, that's been keeping a thumb on it coast to coast. So we'll take a hard

00:02:46.060 look at that and whether that delusion is going to continue costing Democrats in future races. And to

00:02:53.360 kick us off on Virginia, we are honored to invite here and have here with us Ken Cuccinelli,

00:02:58.440 former attorney general of the Commonwealth of VA and gubernatorial candidate a few years ago. Ken,

00:03:05.080 thank you so much for being here. What a night. What are your thoughts on what it means?

00:03:10.280 Well, first of all, it was a great night. Very encouraging in a state that Biden won by 10 points

00:03:17.100 last year to flip it by 12 for a sweep of all three statewide offices that were up. And as you noted,

00:03:25.100 Megan winning back the House of Delegates, which is actually in some ways even harder to do. But

00:03:31.700 anyone who looks at the map of Virginia will see that there were Democrat seats flipped in almost

00:03:37.340 every region of the state. But you'll also see this solid blue block right outside Washington, D.C.

00:03:44.600 And Virginia's politics are affected, unlike any other state, by the massive growth, bipartisan,

00:03:51.120 unfortunately, of the federal government over the years. So it's hard to sell a limited government

00:03:56.140 philosophy in that part of Virginia. Yet education, crime and economic opportunity, and the focus on

00:04:04.100 them by Glenn Youngkin and the whole Republican ticket carried them over the top last night.

00:04:09.040 Mm hmm. I see it as revenge of the moms. That's my own headline on what happened last night. They

00:04:15.160 were told their opinions didn't matter, that they needed to stay out of the education of their

00:04:19.860 children. And they, as it always happens in electoral politics, have had the last word.

00:04:26.500 Yes, indeed, they have. And I've been joking the last two weeks, you know, the mama bears are out and

00:04:32.360 fighting. And when the mama bears are out and fighting, you want to be on the same side as the mama bears.

00:04:38.200 And Terry McAuliffe got mauled last night. I mean, literally, he doubled and tripled down on parents

00:04:45.760 not having a say in their kids' education. He claimed CRT wasn't actually happening in Virginia,

00:04:53.860 all while Loudoun County, Virginia was the national, not just Virginia, but national epicenter over CRT,

00:05:01.600 transgender issues, safety in schools and parental involvement. And ultimately, even Virginia law

00:05:09.460 says parents have the final authority over their kids' education. So for Terry McAuliffe to come out

00:05:14.640 the way he did really made him vulnerable. But Glenn Youngkin had to play his part and he made him pay.

00:05:21.560 It would be one thing if just McAuliffe had said that. And it was a gaffe. And, you know,

00:05:26.980 Rich Lowry has said the worst gaffes are the ones where the politicians tell you what they actually

00:05:31.880 think about something. That's what happened. It would be one thing if he misstepped and said

00:05:36.060 that at a debate and then tried to do cleanup for weeks thereafter. That's not what happened.

00:05:40.600 As you say, McAuliffe doubled down and stood by his statement that parents have no rights telling

00:05:45.220 schools what to teach. And it's a sentiment reflected nationwide now, as I see Democrat pundits

00:05:52.280 on TV and members of the mainstream media seeming to repeat that parents don't have any business

00:05:59.340 inserting themselves in this. And to me, it's like, OK, well, let's see how that plays out over

00:06:06.220 the coming elections if you're going to double and triple and quadruple down on that messaging.

00:06:11.160 And Megan, I think it's important for people to remember, first of all, a lot of those people

00:06:15.220 are going to get very quiet now. But we need to remember, to your point, that's what they really

00:06:22.200 believe. They said it. They were doubling down on it. It's only now that they see how out of the

00:06:30.540 mainstream they are that they're going to stop saying it. But that does not mean they're going

00:06:35.520 to stop believing it. And when those people get power in the space that can affect education,

00:06:41.460 that's what people can expect to see happen. And Glenn Youngkin said on day one, he's going to get

00:06:47.940 rid of CRT in Virginia schools. That's, you know, that kind of follow through makes being a Republican

00:06:54.660 candidate in Virginia not only survivable, but an opportunity to thrive again.

00:06:59.440 Mm hmm. Can you put this in perspective for us as a guy who knows Virginia so well and obviously

00:07:05.280 ran for governor there yourself and lost to McAuliffe when he when he won before? How big a victory was

00:07:11.120 this for the Republicans? Well, like I said, given that it was a 10 point loss last year

00:07:19.100 and what you haven't heard talked about, so we can be the first, Megan, is the incredible turnout in

00:07:25.540 this election. If you look at the turnout compared to four years ago in the governor race, which was

00:07:32.960 then a modern record, this year blew it away, absolutely blew it away. And if you look at where the

00:07:40.040 biggest increases in turnout were, it was all the Republican areas. I mean, literally some areas

00:07:46.140 ran out of ballots because so many people showed up to vote in this election. It was more like a

00:07:54.440 federal midterm in the 60 percent turnout range than it was like a Virginia governor's race around 40,

00:08:01.740 45 percent. So very high enthusiasm. This the education piece played a big role in the enthusiasm.

00:08:10.660 And that flip from last year, I think, is going to set the stage as Virginia has before in 2009,

00:08:18.280 before 10 and in 1993, before 1994, Contract with America. We were seeing that pattern play out again.

00:08:26.740 Our odd year election is showing people what's going to happen across the country next year.

00:08:33.120 I think it's a virtual statistical certainty. The Republicans will take back the House

00:08:37.380 and they have an excellent chance of winning back the U.S. Senate next year.

00:08:42.160 And there's also an election security element here, too.

00:08:46.260 What do you mean?

00:08:46.940 Well, the last two years, Democrats got control of Virginia elections and I'm sorry, offices. They

00:08:57.440 had the House, the Senate and the governorship, and they made dozens and dozens of changes to

00:09:02.400 Virginia election laws. We basically ran this year under a Democrat set of rules and won. And so lesson

00:09:10.240 number one is the people who say, oh, your vote doesn't matter. Don't show up. They'll steal it anyway.

00:09:16.240 Don't listen to those people. That is not true. And we proved it in Virginia. And we have the opposite

00:09:23.340 that happened at the beginning of the year on January 5th, where people believed that sentiment

00:09:28.360 in Georgia. And we lost two Senate seats because of that. So that's lesson one. Lesson two is

00:09:35.760 organic Virginians, regular folks, thousands of them this year got trained to be election officials,

00:09:43.900 went in and worked. In Virginia, we call them the registrar. It's a different name in different

00:09:48.720 states. But went in and worked the election themselves. Every local election is run by local

00:09:55.700 citizens because the registrars where you live don't have enough people to do it themselves. So

00:10:01.140 they bring citizens in. And Republicans have always been outnumbered in this space on the inside of

00:10:07.180 these polling places. Well, not this year. This year, the effort made by ordinary Virginians,

00:10:13.320 thousands of them, to get themselves trained and to participate in our 45-day election, because that's

00:10:20.780 one of the changes the Democrats made was we don't have an election day anymore. We have election season

00:10:27.140 with the 45 days of early voting. That's very difficult to provide all the manpower to cover

00:10:33.640 so that you have the transparency and the security provided by citizens watching every step of the

00:10:39.700 way. But that happened in Virginia. And that can happen in Connecticut where you are. It can happen

00:10:45.300 in every single state in the country. That doesn't require any politics. It just requires effort on the

00:10:52.160 part of ordinary citizens. It's a great point because, you know, Republicans lament these changes in

00:10:57.940 voting laws that make it, as you say, election season. But once you've lost that particular battle,

00:11:03.000 because the Dems control the statehouse or what have you, fight. You've got to fight on the terms

00:11:07.120 that have been delivered to you. And that's what the Virginians did. The enthusiasm on the GOP side was

00:11:12.080 higher than it was on the Dem side. We saw that going into the election. If you've got to have

00:11:17.380 mail-in ballots, then use them. I mean, that's one of the things Youngkin was saying to everybody.

00:11:22.660 Do it, especially rural Virginians. You guys don't want to hang around the polling station all day

00:11:27.720 any more than I do. Mail in your ballot. And it worked. Now, let me ask you this, because the numbers

00:11:33.940 in particular, so it was white women who made the big difference here, and in particular,

00:11:39.180 those without a college degree. Just starting more broad, 2020, white women went for Biden in

00:11:45.360 Virginia, 50 to 49. It was tight. 2021, white women went for Glenn Youngkin, 57 to 43. So there was a big

00:11:53.200 swing for the Republican. Women without a college degree in 2020, they did tend to favor Trump a bit

00:12:00.780 more than women overall, 56 to 44, Trump Biden. In 2021, women without a college degree went 75%,

00:12:11.000 white women, 75% for Youngkin, 25 for McAuliffe. And I will tell you, when I look at that and I see that

00:12:20.640 the women with a college degree still favored McAuliffe, 62 to 38 for Youngkin, I think what's

00:12:27.500 playing out there is, yes, revenge of the moms. These women without college degrees don't tend to

00:12:33.260 be able to take advantage of private school. And they don't tend to be able to get their kids out

00:12:37.560 of public education systems that are shoving things like CRT and trans ideology and inappropriate books

00:12:42.940 down their throats. They have to go where they pay the taxes. And women who don't have a college

00:12:47.780 degree very often can't afford private tutors like somebody who's practicing law or practicing

00:12:53.140 medicine or what have you involved in the government can do. And so they were the victims of this never

00:12:59.240 ending shutdown and the never ending mask mandates and felt powerless for much of the past year plus

00:13:07.420 until last night. And you tell me whether Democrats will hear that.

00:13:15.680 Some will. Some, you know, what passes for a moderate Democrat today, which is probably covered by the

00:13:22.720 Endangered Species Act now, but they exist. And in a 50-50 U.S. Senate and in a House of Representatives

00:13:29.860 so closely divided, they matter. They make the difference right now in where votes swing at the federal

00:13:36.860 level. And that's repeated around the country in many places. Some of them are going to get this

00:13:43.060 message. I don't ever think the, you know, the Ilhan Omars and AOCs of the world are going to get this

00:13:50.620 message. They don't want to hear it. And they, you know, they have a left-wing ideology that believes

00:13:57.020 in imposing itself on the rest of the populace. But, you know, the Joe Manchins of the world aren't in

00:14:03.480 that category. The John Testers in Montana, you know, they're not the same ilk. And I think what

00:14:11.700 you're going to see is a major deepening of the already significant battle in the Democrat Party

00:14:18.160 between what, like I said, what passes for their moderates and their far left-wingers.

00:14:24.460 Their far left-wingers are going to say at the federal level, oh my gosh, we've got to hurry up and

00:14:28.960 do all these things because we're going to lose power next year. Whereas the moderates are going

00:14:34.260 to say, whoa, we got to stop doing these things or we're going to lose more power next year. And

00:14:40.860 so that's, that battle is going to be driven to a higher pitch of intensity than we've even seen so

00:14:48.220 far. But things like election security, they're going to vote on that federally today. That vote's

00:14:55.080 going to go the way it will. But I'll tell you this, I think Virginia protected the filibuster.

00:15:01.000 I think Virginia will protect the filibuster. The senators who have doubts about getting rid of

00:15:07.220 the filibuster are going to look at Virginia and think, oh, I don't want to get run over by that

00:15:11.720 steamroller. I think that's one of the sorts of outcomes that the whole country is going to benefit

00:15:17.920 from immediately from Virginia's success. Well, that's exactly what people are wondering. How much of a

00:15:23.380 break, if any, does this put on the Democrats agenda, whether it's the filibuster or the spending

00:15:30.120 bills or even just this sort of woke ideology that permeates not just our schools, but our federal

00:15:36.660 government? It's the only cultural piece of the race, Megan. You know, Glenn Youngkin isn't a culture

00:15:42.940 zealot, but the CRT was such a central piece of the contest. And it was, it drove enthusiasm and

00:15:51.680 intensity, particularly on the Republican side in support of Glenn Youngkin. I mean, the numbers are

00:15:56.940 incredible. The Fox exit polls for the quarter of people for whom, you know, CRT was a top issue.

00:16:05.380 They broke 71-28 for Glenn Youngkin. Those are unheard of kinds of splits. And you're going to see a

00:16:14.300 major impact from that all across the country. And it'll be interesting to see just in Virginia,

00:16:20.360 does a still Democrat state Senate recognize the mandate with which Glenn Youngkin is coming into

00:16:27.580 office and accommodate it somewhat? We will see in January.

00:16:32.500 It's crazy. We're going to get to this a bit later, too. But to listen to the coverage last night,

00:16:36.980 I mean, over and over from from MSNBC to CNN and just reading this morning, the AP, the New York

00:16:43.320 Times, they actually state as fact or under the guise of a correction of the record. CRT is not

00:16:51.700 being taught in K through 12 schools. CRT is not being taught either in Virginia or elsewhere. They

00:16:56.240 state it as though it is a factual assertion that they can defend. And it's funny, Ken, because, you

00:17:01.620 know, as a mom myself with kids who are 12, 10 and eight in the school systems a year ago in New

00:17:06.980 York, now in Connecticut. And I've had so many guests on this show to talk to me about other

00:17:10.980 states. I don't care what you call it. Racial division is being sold to our kids day in and

00:17:19.200 day out in these schools. And the message of ignore your lying eyes and ears. And believe me,

00:17:26.220 MSNBC anchor, when I tell you that's not critical race, no one cares.

00:17:30.640 That's semantics. You're dividing our children based on melanin. That's the bottom line.

00:17:37.540 Yeah. And that that's evil fundamentally. But their best defense is to is to argue it doesn't

00:17:43.920 exist, which is what McAuliffe tried to do. But as you point out, use the word evidence.

00:17:49.480 The evidence is overwhelming. It's on the state board of election website. It's it's in the

00:17:54.260 curricula. It's in the libraries. I mean, this was demonstrated in the most Democrat parts of

00:18:00.220 Virginia, Fairfax County, the biggest county in the state, very Democrat, two to one. And last

00:18:06.460 night, about 6535, roughly, in favor of McAuliffe, a million people live there. And people were pulling

00:18:13.820 books out of the library, reading the books to the school board. And they were being shut off because

00:18:19.320 they were too vulgar, disgusting and outrageous. And yet that's what they're feeding to the children.

00:18:24.920 So hypocrisy was it went noticed by parents most critically. And you walk through some of the

00:18:32.560 biggest splits there with the moms. And no surprise that that mothers would react most strongly to

00:18:40.020 protecting the ability to control their children's education and to not teach them this sort of evil

00:18:47.520 that we're not saying don't reflect on the negative aspects of American history, the oppression of blacks,

00:18:53.300 you know, with slavery. And then between the Civil War and the civil rights era, that that's all real.

00:18:58.940 I was the last attorney general in Virginia under preclearance. There was a reason the Voting Rights

00:19:05.360 Act was needed in 1965. And as the feds had to keep an eye on certain southern states to make sure that

00:19:11.300 the votes were fair. That's right. That's right. But as the Supreme Court said in 2013, we fixed it.

00:19:17.660 We have fixed it. Yeah. Those problems we've grown out of. And one of the other things in Scott

00:19:23.980 Rasmussen's exit polling was that something like 80 plus percent of Americans agree with that

00:19:30.740 statement. So the Democrats are really on the wrong side of reality and history here.

00:19:37.000 Let me ask you about the the lieutenant governor. Oh, my gosh. A star is born. Right. Winsome Sears

00:19:45.360 wins the lieutenant governorship. And also Jason Mayaris wins first attorney general.

00:19:52.220 Mayaris. Okay. Attorney general. She, Winsome, born in Jamaica, grew up in the Bronx,

00:19:57.800 electrician in the Marines. She is black. She was vice president of the Virginia Board of Education.

00:20:02.460 She made education a centerpiece of her campaign, school choice, parental rights. She was the anti

00:20:07.700 McAuliffe. And Jason, first ever Latino AG, first son of an immigrant. His mom felt fed fled Cuba

00:20:16.920 and was up against a Democrat two term liberal activist incumbent. So these two take over these

00:20:24.840 top spots in Virginia. And I'll tell you, this winsome Sears has got a future in politics. Here she was

00:20:31.680 last night with a new kind of message for Virginia voters. There are some who want to divide us and

00:20:37.980 we must not let that happen. They would like us to believe we are back in 1963 when my father came.

00:20:47.620 We can live where we want. We can eat where we want. We own the water fountains.

00:20:53.340 We have had a black president elected, not once, but twice. And here I am living proof.

00:21:01.420 In case you haven't noticed, I am black and I have been black all my life.

00:21:19.640 She's amazing.

00:21:21.780 She's all energy. I'll tell you what. She's the most conservative candidate to ever win for

00:21:27.500 lieutenant governor. She's the first black female to win statewide in Virginia. Of course, Doug Wilder

00:21:34.000 was the first elected black governor anywhere in the country. And that happened in Virginia

00:21:38.660 30 years ago. And, you know, so history was made there. And Jason Miare is first Hispanic

00:21:46.240 statewide elected official. He'll be attorney general taking over from Mark Herring. I call him

00:21:51.740 Red Herring. He did such a terrible job for Virginia. And Jason really laid his record out

00:21:58.320 there and and won the won the race. It's tough to beat incumbents. And I don't care what state you're

00:22:05.300 in. It's tough to beat incumbents. And he did it. So but interestingly enough, here we are. It's it's

00:22:11.600 the middle of the next day. And how much have you heard the mainstream media talking about the first

00:22:17.160 black female and the first Hispanic statewide in Virginia? Where's the celebration? Oh, to the

00:22:23.340 contrary. And I know you pointed this out last night and I thought you were dead on. I'll just

00:22:28.260 give you I'll tee it up for you and you can respond. But we're hearing things like the following. This

00:22:32.860 is from Wajahat Ali. He's with the Daily Beast, but he's all over CNN and MSNBC. This is the guy who

00:22:38.120 was in that infamous Don Lemon bit with Rick Wilson, where they were sneering at Republican voters like

00:22:44.360 this. Those pretending that they were Republicans talking about Democrats like those Democrats with

00:22:49.360 like their maps and their math and their that's that's Wajahat Ali. He tweeted out whiteness

00:22:56.240 remains undefeated. Whiteness remains undefeated in Virginia. Hello. Hello. He writes, let's wait and

00:23:03.100 see who those white suburban voters went for tonight in Virginia. Any guesses? Well, was it winsome

00:23:08.740 Sears? Is that is that who you mean, Wajahat? And the whole white supremacist lie can has been

00:23:15.340 thoroughly dismantled in the Commonwealth? Well, look, the Democrats had a governor who did blackface

00:23:23.360 Northam, who Terry McAuliffe called for to resign. But then Northam endorsed McAuliffe and McAuliffe has

00:23:31.000 now been hugging him all the way to losing. And his attorney general, Mark Herring,

00:23:35.760 called on Northam to resign. Four days later, we learned Mark Northam did this blackface sort of

00:23:42.740 thing, too. But while he had called on Northam to resign over it, he didn't. And he won his Democrat

00:23:49.200 primary against a qualified black opponent. So don't tell me which party is clinging to its whiteness.

00:23:57.100 They had two old white guys who had embraced blackface or done it themselves, who were their

00:24:02.560 candidates. The only minority they had was for Lieutenant Governor Ayala, who, you know, lost,

00:24:12.640 obviously, to win some Sears. And so either way, a minority woman was going to win the Lieutenant

00:24:18.560 Governor's race. But it was winsome. And I'll tell you, you're going to be hearing more from her.

00:24:24.540 She is, like I said, all energy, former Marine. She's also been in the House of Delegates in the past.

00:24:30.160 So she knows the system already. And she will be presiding over a Democrat, for now, state Senate.

00:24:38.980 And it's definitely going to change the environment there. She's a real winner. And Jason

00:24:43.040 Meares is finally going to bring the rule of law back to Virginia, where Mark Herring has just been

00:24:48.400 doing whatever he wants. Yeah, we didn't even get into crime. But she's clearly got a future at the

00:24:52.100 national level in GOP politics. And let's hope that her name portends exactly what it suggests.

00:24:58.860 She's going to win some, and she's going to win some more. Ken Cuccinelli, so great to talk to you.

00:25:03.440 Thank you for being with us this morning. Good to be with you, Maggie.

00:25:06.020 Wow. Up next, a Virginia parent, one of those mama bears Ken talked about, and a vice president at a

00:25:11.580 group that's been really important in this whole electoral cycle, Parents Defending Education.

00:25:16.620 Azra Nomani is here.

00:25:17.900 If you want to know exactly what happened in Virginia last night, and frankly, across the

00:25:28.440 country, all you really need to know is the story of Azra Nomani, a Muslim immigrant, a single mother.

00:25:34.980 She came to the United States not knowing a word of English, a liberal progressive who only moved to

00:25:40.480 Virginia because she saw the state vote for Barack Obama in 2008. But last summer, she stood up and began

00:25:47.180 speaking out and then would not stop speaking out at her local school board meetings. She says she did it

00:25:54.000 because she began to realize what her son was being taught in school was, quote, anti-American propaganda

00:25:59.120 with a racist core. Azra is now a vice president at Parents Defending Education, a great group which you should

00:26:05.980 totally check out if you're dealing with this nonsense in your K-12 school. They've got great

00:26:10.560 roadmaps and help for you from Azra and others like Azra. She's also a former Wall Street Journal

00:26:16.260 reporter. Azra, so great to speak with you again. Great to see you.

00:26:19.780 Oh, it's so great. I can't even believe the trajectory of our conversations from years ago to today, right?

00:26:26.860 I know. And I, you know, even you, you know, saying you, you were a liberal progressive person.

00:26:32.400 Can I tell you one of my closest, dearest friends who would describe herself the same way

00:26:36.800 voted yesterday? This is in New York across the board Republican. And it was a moment for her. I

00:26:44.220 think she felt a little teary about it. She felt emotional. It wasn't because she's gone, you know,

00:26:49.600 hardcore pro second amendment. It was because she's a mama bear. Like your shirt says, she's a mama bear

00:26:56.500 like you. This isn't a Republican Dem issue. Yeah, it's such a tragedy that the Dems right now cannot

00:27:04.160 see the humanity of their base because they're so caught up in the politics of Ilhan Omar and Rashida

00:27:10.700 Tlaib and AOC. They're just chasing the extreme and they've left them behind, the centrists like myself.

00:27:18.140 I, like you said, I only moved to Virginia in December 2008. I remember it precisely, Megan,

00:27:24.900 because I was living in DC and I needed to find a new place. Well, the election had just happened

00:27:32.240 of 2008 and I grew up in West Virginia. So I grew up, you know, really feeling pride in our state of

00:27:40.120 West Virginia being on the correct side of history on the issue of civil rights, slavery, this big issue

00:27:45.800 of slavery. Well, it was only when the state voted for Barack Obama that I said, oh, it's ready for a

00:27:52.300 Muslim immigrant, progressive feminist like me. I raised my son here. And then all of a sudden in

00:27:58.920 June, 2020, the principal of my son's high school told me that I and the other Asian, mostly Asian,

00:28:05.360 mostly immigrant parents had to check our privileges. And on it goes. You're the perfect person to talk to

00:28:12.020 about this lie. We keep hearing over and over from the mainstream media, from the Democrats,

00:28:18.240 all over cable news last night that that CRT is a unicorn. It, this is not something being taught

00:28:25.740 in K through 12 schools. They say it like it is a factual assertion. They are correcting this

00:28:31.220 nonsense record that conservative crazies, white supremacists keep pushing. I mean, your take on it,

00:28:37.540 because I will tell you, I just said earlier in the show, I don't care what you call. I don't care

00:28:40.680 if they're not teaching the actual legal doctrine that you learn in law. No, that's not what parents

00:28:44.360 are saying. You're teaching racial division. CRT is a catch-all phrase for parents who don't know

00:28:50.460 quite how to categorize the insanity you're delving out. Yeah. My colleague, the president of Parents

00:28:57.660 Defending Education, you've spoken with her. She said, I don't care if you call it magical unicorn

00:29:02.020 theory, right? We are just opposed to it because it's bad news. Like behind me, Megan, is all of the

00:29:08.200 books on Islamism that we would talk about for years, the extremism within my faith of Islam

00:29:14.020 and how we had to challenge it. Well, now I have here critical race theory and all of the extremism

00:29:19.820 of wokeism. And it is very much real and happening in the state of Virginia. First of all, you know,

00:29:27.920 just to start off with your, your audience, you know, critical race theory says that we have to look

00:29:34.400 at all issues through the lens of race. It's just very simple premise. So that was a fundamental

00:29:41.760 problem on this issue of my son's school because they wanted to have racial demographics at the

00:29:46.860 school matching the racial demographics of the county. 20% Asian, 70% Asian in my son's school.

00:29:56.100 So right away, they changed admissions. So it's getting in the weeds a little bit here, but I just want to

00:30:01.420 let people know how it is that they started messing with schools through the lens of race. And then one

00:30:07.920 example I have here that I wrote about in National Review, I think you talked about it a bit, is this

00:30:14.140 class called how to be an anti-racist educator. And I didn't get this into the National Review piece,

00:30:21.560 but the premise of this class that's taught at Marshall High School right now to educators there

00:30:28.380 in Virginia is yeah, in Virginia, just right down the road for me here is that they have to discuss

00:30:34.700 in lesson number six, exploring and understanding white men. So this is again, looking at people

00:30:41.320 and society through the lens of race. And they use this book, courageous conversations and courageous

00:30:48.380 conversations is the bad ideas of this man named Glenn Singleton. That's who they brought to my school

00:30:55.180 in New York. That's one of the schools we left. Exactly. Yeah. So he, you know, because you know

00:31:00.440 how in Islamism, we had to study where did extremism come from? And then we learned that it's the Muslim

00:31:06.620 Brotherhood, right? It's this guy named Khara Dawi, who are the vessels of these bad ideas. And it's this

00:31:13.920 guy, Glenn Singleton. And that's what they are now teaching these courses in here. And they're going to

00:31:20.280 include in the next coming weeks here in Virginia, right down the road from me, the privilege walk,

00:31:26.540 right? You know, all of these anecdotes, Megan, that have just, you know, seeped into our school

00:31:32.280 systems. And it's always bad ideas from really like, you know, not very sophisticated intellectuals

00:31:42.040 who are just now making millions of dollars. And, you know, over here, I have the receipts,

00:31:49.800 the contracts from a neighboring county, Talbot County next door in DC. It's money, it's bad ideas,

00:31:57.780 and it's ultimately trickling down into our schools. And that's what is, that's what we know. We see it

00:32:03.700 every day as parents, we hear about it, and we're not stupid, you know, we get it. And just like you

00:32:10.700 guys just talked about, we are not going to let anyone get in between ourselves and our cubs.

00:32:18.320 That's right. And you talk about, I mean, in your piece for National Review, which was wonderful,

00:32:22.920 and I recommend it to everybody, Virginia parents have had enough of woke lies at their schools. This

00:32:29.320 is a couple of days ago before the election, woke lies. We heard so many more of them. But last night,

00:32:35.840 when CRT is not being taught, it's not being taught, it's not being taught. Okay, well,

00:32:39.280 one of the examples you gave was of that anti-racist educator you just talked about,

00:32:46.060 and who the encouragement that people listen to Bettina Love, and promote Bettina Love. We've

00:32:51.420 seen this all over Virginia. We've seen it actually coast to coast, Bettina Love is a problem.

00:32:56.040 This is a woman who says whites need therapy to overcome their racism, ignorance, and history of

00:33:00.460 harm in the school setting, who doesn't believe that children can learn well from teachers of the

00:33:05.920 same race, who says public schools do not see blacks as human, and they're guilty of the systemic

00:33:12.320 anti-blackness and the spirit murder of black and brown babies, that whites are directly responsible

00:33:19.900 for the plight of, quote, dark children. What? I don't care. She is a critical race theorist. But even if

00:33:25.980 those words aren't used, the fact that these Democratic politicians and media pundits will not

00:33:30.980 acknowledge that stuff is trickling down to our children is at their own peril. You tell me it's

00:33:37.520 at their own peril. Yeah, you know, James Carville was a consultant to the Terry McAuliffe campaign,

00:33:44.820 and I signed up for the newsletters. And every day I get, you know, another missive from James Carville

00:33:50.560 or whoever else they brought in. And you know, Megan, that James Carville called out the wokeism

00:33:55.540 earlier this year in the country and said that it was going to cost the Dems. But his voice is not

00:34:02.500 prevailing. And in fact, all of this character assassination last night of the voters of Glenn

00:34:08.680 Youngkin reveal that they are only going to continue to try to smear us. I know Wajahat Ali very well.

00:34:16.660 He is part of the Muslim network in the United States that has now embedded itself in the Democratic Party.

00:34:23.380 And, you know, he was just a kid who would write to me from time to time and say, oh, can you help me

00:34:29.380 place an op-ed in the Daily Beast? Well, now he has a coveted role as a contributing columnist to the New York

00:34:36.100 Times, and he bounds off about all of this absurdity. But Megan, this is really important, and it's like

00:34:43.220 only with you that I can really connect the dots. In the state of Virginia, the Muslim individuals who have

00:34:51.980 been part of this network of political Islam that's called Islamism, they live right here. They're right

00:34:58.000 down the road from me off of Route 7. They have contributed mightily to the Democratic Party.

00:35:04.300 They had, as a favor then, the Virginia Education Secretary installed during the Northam administration.

00:35:12.060 He became the vehicle through which Ralph Northam saved face from his whole Black debate debacle.

00:35:19.660 He was the one who launched this whole war against merit at my son's school. He put in all of these ridiculous

00:35:26.940 ideas about critical race theory and equity. Hala Ayala, the lieutenant governor nominee, she's part of that whole

00:35:34.800 network. They want to keep that unholy alliance alive between the Islamists represented through people like

00:35:43.040 Ilhan Omar and the Democratic Party. And this is a rejection of that alliance. And the Dems are just

00:35:50.800 going to continue to lose if they keep thinking that that is America, because it's not. It's regressive

00:35:56.520 ideas that are actually very illiberal and racist.

00:36:00.600 And as you know, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been making the same connections and saying exactly what you're

00:36:04.880 saying. And it's bold of you. I know you get blowback for that, but it's bold and it's true.

00:36:09.000 It's factual. Can I show you? This is for our listening audience at home. This is a cartoon

00:36:14.600 that embodies the way the press is reacting to the Virginia victory of Youngkin last night. It was

00:36:21.480 retweeted by, among others, Nicole Hannah-Jones. And what it shows is Glenn Youngkin and his little

00:36:27.520 fleece sweater vest kicking a young Black girl. And she's falling and her books are going everywhere.

00:36:35.400 And it says the campaign's final stretch. And in her, I can't see it from here, but the names on

00:36:43.440 the book, what are the words on the books, guys? It says something like history or racism. It's like

00:36:48.120 her trying to educate kids on history. And he's kicking her and making her fall. And that's how

00:36:55.440 they sum up what your movement is about, what parents defending education, what all these parents

00:37:00.920 who took to the polls last night to try to say, don't divide our kids based on race, do teach

00:37:06.560 history, but don't teach ones in a presser and ones in a press just based on melanin. That's how they

00:37:11.360 describe the movement. Yeah. You know, I have this signs here because I wanted to just illustrate.

00:37:17.100 I've got a sign that says grannies for Glenn, Democrats for Glenn, sportsmen for Youngkin,

00:37:22.900 parents for Youngkin, because I stood there in the ballroom, about thousand people packed shoulder to

00:37:29.380 shoulder. And I'll tell you, there was me. I voted for Glenn Youngkin. I am a Muslim immigrant feminist,

00:37:36.640 and I am a mother of color. And I am what they are now claiming white supremacy looks like. Beside me

00:37:44.160 was this amazing mom, Subharnadatta, who came here from India, and she had just dollars in her pocket.

00:37:50.680 And Megan, she was never involved in politics, but the school board, the 12 Democratic school board

00:37:56.960 members in Fairfax County just ignored her. And Yu Yan, this mom from China, and Himong, another dad

00:38:03.720 from India, just ignored us all these months, just like you just said. You know, they treated us a lot

00:38:10.200 like we were invisible. They would mute us. And we got to have the last word, as you put it last night.

00:38:17.060 And they, Subharnadatta was dancing, Megan. She felt like she had defended the American dream,

00:38:25.280 that she had come sacrificing so much to experience.

00:38:29.840 Azra, I can relate to this. I've never been a political activist. I've never been an ideological

00:38:36.100 person. As a journalist, I've always kept my cards close to the vest. This is a different thing. This is

00:38:42.380 about the future of our country, about loving America and teaching a future generation that it's

00:38:47.040 okay to love America, and it's a good thing. And it's about shaming, shaming of one's immutable

00:38:53.500 characteristics in a way that would be very damaging on the psyche of an entire generation

00:38:58.120 of children already facing record suicide rates. If you don't speak out against that, you're

00:39:02.880 complicit. You're complicit. And so I, too, felt joy to see the message being sent back to these

00:39:08.140 politicians, that parents do get a say, that the parents are the ones in charge.

00:39:13.700 And after this break, I want to pick it up with you on, I know you made this point before, but

00:39:17.380 it's not just the race thing. It goes well beyond that. I watched you defend another woman whose

00:39:23.640 soundbite we played on this show who was going off about the inappropriate sexual content. And this

00:39:29.880 is not like 1960s, like, oh, they're showing sex. They're talking about sex in the books.

00:39:33.800 This is disgusting, child rape, promotional materials popping up in our schools. And so

00:39:41.320 my point is that the battlefront is wide, and it's far from over. And we're going to pick it up there

00:39:46.400 in one second with Azra. Stay tuned. By the way, you are listening to The Megyn Kelly Show live on

00:39:51.980 SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111, if you're listening right now. And you can catch us every weekday at

00:39:56.980 noon east. Also, you can check out the full video show and clips when you subscribe to our YouTube

00:40:02.020 channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Or if you prefer an audio podcast, we've got you covered.

00:40:06.520 We've got everything for you, whatever you want. Subscribe, download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora,

00:40:10.800 Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And there you'll find our full archives with more than

00:40:15.000 190 shows, including the Ruthless podcast guys yesterday who predicted what would happen last

00:40:19.220 night pretty well. Great guys. You'll enjoy it.

00:40:21.140 I want to talk to you for a moment about Stacey Langton, because people get caught up in the CRT

00:40:31.980 thing. And I do want people to know it's real. And by the way, as you pointed out, it is, or maybe it

00:40:36.500 was Ken, but it is literally on the Virginia Department of Education's website. It features

00:40:40.560 a quote, anti-racism and education page. It shows, quote, drawing from critical race theory. It's you,

00:40:49.560 it's right there, black and white on their, on their webpage. You don't have to take Asra's word

00:40:54.200 or my word for it. They teach Bettina Love. They teach Ibram X. Kendi. They teach Robin DiAngelo. I

00:40:59.900 mean, okay, we can pretend until the cows come home that they're not teaching the anti-racist

00:41:04.020 divisive stuff, but they are. But it's beyond that, Asra. And you guys have been doing a great job of

00:41:08.680 putting this out. And I know that you wrote about defending Stacey Langton, who they tried to silence

00:41:16.020 at the school board meeting. They, they didn't want her. They tried to cut her mic and you had

00:41:21.420 her back. And I'm going to play the soundbite. I do need to give the same warning. And because then

00:41:25.480 I want you to give us the context for this. I'm giving you the same, same warning I gave

00:41:29.260 when Carol Markowitz was on and we played this. It is graphic. It is disturbing. If you have children

00:41:34.640 in your car, you, you might want to turn this part down. Um, it's upsetting and it's inside the

00:41:42.100 Virginia schools. Listen to Stacey. I decided to check the titles at my child's school,

00:41:48.540 Fairfax high school. The books were available and we checked them out. Both of these books

00:41:57.840 include pedophilia, sex between men and boys. Both books describe different acts. One book describes

00:42:09.160 a fourth grade boy performing oral sex on an adult male. The other book has detailed illustrations

00:42:16.500 of a man having sex with a boy. The illustrations include fellatio, sex toys, masturbation, and violent

00:42:30.380 nudity. Pedophilia here. From the author, Maya Kobabe. Quote, I can't wait to have your cock

00:42:40.160 in my mouth. I am going to give you the blow job of your life and then I want you inside

00:42:45.300 me. End quote. From the author, Jonathan Evason. What if I told you I touched another guy's dick?

00:42:52.480 What if I told you I sucked it? I was 10 years old, but it's true. I sucked Doug Goebel's dick,

00:42:58.460 the real estate guy, and he sucked mine too. This is not an oversight at Fairfax high school.

00:43:06.800 This material. There are children in the audience here. Do not interrupt my time. Do not interrupt my

00:43:14.440 time. There are children in the audience. There are children in the school where you've placed this

00:43:20.440 book. We all owe her and you a debt of gratitude. You and Stacey and moms and dads like you are the

00:43:26.940 reason we had this result. Yeah, we're like Nancy Drew's. Megan, I bet you read Nancy Drew when you

00:43:33.140 were growing up, right? Of course you did. And, you know, what you just said before the break,

00:43:37.780 I just want to reflect on that for a second because I know you. I've been following you for a long time.

00:43:42.460 You always give a platform for those of us that have been advocating for what, you know, correct

00:43:47.280 issues, I believe. But when they introduced this content in front of your child, you became the

00:43:54.860 mama bear, you know? And that's really where I think you felt it, right? Like a deep existential threat.

00:44:01.600 That's what it was. Yeah. Absolutely right. It's infuriating. And if you won't fight for yourself,

00:44:06.480 you don't want to be active. You don't want to be a squeaky wheel. All those fall by the wayside when

00:44:11.000 it's your child. Yeah. And the beauty of your child, you know, that just remarkable innocence

00:44:16.640 and just joy that they have as human beings. We don't want that, you know, adulterated with this,

00:44:22.180 this kind of stuff. This is critical race theory in education, which they claim doesn't exist,

00:44:26.400 right? They say that it's just the law. It's literally on the front of the book.

00:44:29.900 Well, I know like, boy, they're very subtle about it, aren't they? But, you know, on Stacey,

00:44:34.160 I went there that night because I was on the wait list on the school board list of,

00:44:38.860 you know, public participation. And I sat there dutifully, nicely. And then all of a sudden,

00:44:43.900 this mom started speaking. And I'd never met Stacey before. I didn't know who she was.

00:44:48.980 And this was one of the books that she presented. It says genderqueer on the front of it.

00:44:54.480 Yeah. This is one of the images of the violence that she talks about for those who can't see it well.

00:45:00.620 You know, there's a blade going through the genital area of a young man. This is the pedophilia that she

00:45:07.940 talks about, um, this image of a bearded man having, uh, you know, sexual relationship with

00:45:15.440 the boy clearly. And then finally, explicit, explicit. I I've, I've marked it in my, um,

00:45:23.820 post-it note as blow job, um, little indelicate, but this is in a school, uh, Robinson literally

00:45:33.500 showing fellatio. Yeah. I just, I want, we have to know the truth, you know, so I'm not doing this

00:45:40.660 to be sensational or anything like that as Stacey did. And it's poor thing. She was, you could hear

00:45:45.520 the tremble in her voice, right. While she was reading that garbage because she doesn't, she was

00:45:50.360 embarrassed reading it, but this genderqueer book, you know, the, um, the, uh, secretaries of all these

00:45:59.880 different educations, all of our different officials, they, they like to excuse it away as

00:46:05.120 award-winning. Um, and this is what parents are opposed to because critical race theory takes

00:46:13.920 garbage about race and then gender query and gender theory, I'm sorry, gender theory and queer theory

00:46:21.460 end up taking issues of gender and sexuality. And that's how we're getting this assault on our little

00:46:29.040 baby. That's right. It may indeed be award-winning. You know what else it won? It won Glenn Youngkin,

00:46:35.900 the governorship of Virginia. And it's not going to stop. It's not going to stop unless this kind

00:46:41.780 of content stops because the mama bears are not, they're not done. Asra. So wonderful having you

00:46:48.020 keep going, keep going, Megan. You're amazing. Thank you. Don't go away folks. Uh, Charles CW cook

00:46:54.660 and Bill McGurn of the wall street journal coming up, uh, in just a couple of seconds. We're going to

00:46:58.960 keep talking this week. Joining me now, one of my favorite people, Charles CW cook. He's a senior

00:47:07.540 writer at national review, and I've been dying to get your take on this Charles. Uh, first,

00:47:12.720 let's just start with the overall, your thoughts on what happened in Virginia and then nationwide last

00:47:18.440 night. This was a route. It was surprising. I got it wrong. I know you listened to the editors. I

00:47:24.200 said McAuliffe would win. Yeah. Uh, I was wrong about that, but I don't think anyone quite predicted

00:47:30.400 the scale of what happened last night to the Democrats. Not only did the Republicans sweep

00:47:36.580 Virginia, they won all the statewide offices and control of the house of delegates, but they're still

00:47:42.800 counting votes in New Jersey. It looks as if it's going to be decided by, you know, 15, 20,000 votes,

00:47:50.160 which was absolutely, uh, uh, unheard of in the prediction game. Also Democrats lost every single

00:47:59.200 judicial race in Pennsylvania. They did badly in the New York city council elections. Uh, Seattle, uh,

00:48:07.100 elected a Republican against, uh, an anti-police and anti-jail candidate for city attorney. So, uh,

00:48:13.740 there's a lot that's specific to Virginia to talk about, but clearly there is a backlash here against

00:48:19.320 this administration and the Democratic party in general. Yeah. I mean, the news was just bad for

00:48:25.160 the Republic or for the Democrats in city after city, state after state, uh, Texas at governor Abbott was

00:48:31.760 tweeting out that, uh, the Republican from San Antonio was just elected to the house of reps.

00:48:35.980 There won an open seat that had been held by a dem, um, San Francisco recalls now for lax on crime

00:48:40.900 DAs and school board members who are pushing CRT and who are pushing things like let's change the name

00:48:45.760 of this school while they're not keeping it open for the kids to go long Island bail reform, killed a

00:48:50.380 couple of, uh, races for Democrat DAs out there was a bloodbath. They said, New York city, just as you

00:48:55.980 know, elected a former cop who's pro gun as its new mayor, which is about as right wing as we'd

00:49:02.900 probably go in New York these days. It was that when 87% Manhattan for Joe Biden in any event, um,

00:49:09.680 yeah, it was bad news for Democrats across the board, but Virginia, Virginia was the stunner.

00:49:14.640 And what we're seeing today is, um, I'll just give you a piece from the New York times, uh,

00:49:19.880 right up of it. This is how they say they think that, um, that young can did it. Republicans found

00:49:25.460 an issue that energized their voters, uniting the white grievance politics of the Trump base

00:49:31.760 with broader anger over schooling during the pandemic. Um, they took aim at Youngkin for

00:49:37.500 promising at nearly every campaign stop to ban critical race theory, a concept not taught in

00:49:43.540 Virginia schools. They falsely claim Mr. Youngkin resurrected Republican race baiting tactics in a

00:49:49.900 state that once served as the capital of the Confederacy. Do you agree with their analysis of

00:49:57.760 what we learned from last night's vote? I don't, although that is a good review of what they should

00:50:04.720 say if they want more last nights in the coming year. First off, it's not a myth that critical race

00:50:12.700 theory is being taught. Uh, one can only make that case convincingly by being extremely semantic

00:50:21.620 and narrow. It is of course the case that schools K through 12 are not teaching critical race theory

00:50:30.240 in the way that critical race theory would be taught at a law school or a graduate school, but that's not

00:50:37.060 what parents are objecting to. No parent in America is complaining that their children are being taught

00:50:42.700 graduate level work. They're complaining that the framework and the assumptions of critical race

00:50:49.980 theory are making their way into K through 12 education. And they are, I mean, they made their way

00:50:56.220 into that New York times excerpt you just read. They made their way, uh, into all of MSNBC's coverage

00:51:02.460 last night, some of CNN's coverage and many of the reactions from the left to last night that we have

00:51:07.980 now seen. Everything is held to be about race. Absolutely everything. Education is a code word

00:51:14.220 for race. There is, uh, a phenomenon at the moment of brain worms in this country, uh, attacking our

00:51:23.740 commentators and forcing them to see every question through the lens of race. You know, there are,

00:51:29.340 is of course a benefit occasionally at looking at power structures and history and law and culture

00:51:35.580 and trying to work out how race affects it. But when you do it for absolutely everything,

00:51:40.300 you really lose your ability to reason. And that's what parents are worried about at school.

00:51:45.660 They're worried that the people who are teaching the curriculums that are being written are being

00:51:51.300 infected by the same brain worms. And that rather than getting away from judging people preemptively

00:51:56.500 on the basis of their race or seeing them as pawns on a chessboard, um, to be judged by the color of

00:52:03.940 their skin that we're doing that more and more. And it really was farcical watching people

00:52:08.980 simultaneously insist, uh, that this doesn't exist, but it's also wrong to oppose it and then

00:52:14.900 demonstrate that they themselves are, uh, infected by it. Yeah. I mean, I've said this before, but I,

00:52:20.900 I want to repeat it in our school in New York city. Uh, they wanted it to be mandatory reading for

00:52:25.780 all teachers of a piece by a so-called professor that argued in every classroom where white children learn,

00:52:32.020 there is a future killer cop that we need studies on white mothers who indoctrinate their children

00:52:37.660 into black death. In Virginia, we ran a soundbite from a mom the other day who said, my six-year-old

00:52:42.260 came home and said, am I evil? Because I have white skin. You know, I don't care what you call it,

00:52:47.280 call it whatever the heck you want to call it, but that's, what's being taught. It's divisive

00:52:50.680 and it's odious and wrong. And yet this is how the geniuses over on MSNBC, Joy Reid,

00:52:56.460 Nicole Wallace, um, posited, uh, the issues last night. Listen to this sound like seven.

00:53:04.780 If you're saying education is the most important issue, you might be a black voter who says I'm

00:53:09.500 defending great literature and defending Tony Morrison. And I don't like the idea that

00:53:15.320 Youngkin wants to be a governor that would purge those books. What's next? The biography of Dr. King

00:53:20.080 is his campaign promise. And he was making this promise in Loudoun and in Alexandria is on day one.

00:53:26.600 I'm going to ban critical race theory. That is like us banning the ghost.

00:53:30.220 This isn't a party. That's just another political party that disagrees with us on tax policy that at

00:53:35.060 this point they're dangerous. They're dangerous to our national security because stoking that kind

00:53:40.920 of soft white nationalism eventually leads to the hardcore stuff. Okay. So what, what, what,

00:53:50.080 people on the left really want to do Charles is just have us read Tony Morrison and it, and the

00:53:55.120 conservatives are trying to get Tony Morrison out of the schools, which is their, the beginning of

00:53:59.660 their soft white nationalism. That's about to lead to harder stuff. I mean, oddly enough, it's that sort

00:54:06.080 of thinking that's more likely to lead to the banning of Dr. King's biography. Um, because Dr. King

00:54:14.480 believed in judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, which is

00:54:18.080 the one thing joy read another seem incapable of doing. You know, I think that, uh, the importance

00:54:24.960 of, of teaching children, the American creed is just unappreciated by the sort of people we just heard.

00:54:33.600 And you can't do that without teaching them about slavery and segregation and racial animus. But you,

00:54:43.120 if you, if you are to bring up a generation that understands what America is about and indeed

00:54:49.520 understands where America has fallen short, you have to start with the presumption that the American

00:54:54.480 creed is a good thing, but at various points in America's history, uh, has been undermined or ignored.

00:55:00.480 Uh, America has for much of its history been hypocritical, but the ideals were good. They were great.

00:55:07.840 And I think if you combine some of the thinking in critical race theory, which holds that America

00:55:15.360 is essentially a white plot, that all of its laws are the instruments of whiteness with the sort of

00:55:21.600 historical revisionism you're seeing in the 1619 project, you're actually going to create a culture,

00:55:27.280 both in the schools and outside of it, in which we aren't telling people we have a beautiful set of

00:55:32.880 ideals, a world changing set of ideals, uh, that we failed to live up to, but that then created

00:55:39.120 the regeneration that led to the civil war and the civil rights movement, um, and so forth.

00:55:45.520 And that would be an absolute disaster. Uh, because if you lose that, you lose hope. And I think that's

00:55:51.280 what parents really worry about is the idea that their children, uh, will, will not be exposed to

00:55:58.640 America's historical sins, but we'll be told that that is America and that they are somehow

00:56:04.560 complicit in it and that it exists to this day, much as it did a hundred years ago or even 60 years

00:56:10.560 ago. And that isn't true. Um, so I think it's totally rational for people of all races to be

00:56:16.960 worried about that. My own experience here in Florida, talking to parents of all races is that

00:56:21.440 they hate this. They think it's a step backwards. And I think what you saw in Virginia last night was a

00:56:25.920 welcome repudiation of that. It's interesting to me that it was the white college women who still

00:56:32.240 backed the Democrat McAuliffe versus the, uh, white women who lacked a college education,

00:56:38.560 because that's what we've seen on the streets and the protests and so on. It's these, you know,

00:56:42.800 upper West side women and Lululemon with their college degrees and their high rise buildings,

00:56:47.680 trying to get rid of the cops, trying to bring critical race theory into these. And it's a lot of

00:56:52.160 black voters and some, some non-college educated white voters are saying, what are you doing?

00:56:57.280 What are you, what are you, what? No, we don't want to get rid of the cops and we don't want to

00:57:01.040 divide our kids based on skin color and so on. All right, let's talk policy because I know you guys

00:57:05.680 on the editors have been talking a lot about what would, if McAuliffe were to lose, what would a

00:57:11.360 McAuliffe loss on the Youngkin victory mean for the Biden agenda? And I, I ask you that on a sweeping

00:57:19.120 level and then also with respect to his two huge spending bills, which I know is really of interest

00:57:23.840 to you. But I mean, I, a very popular, uh, Republican said to me last night privately,

00:57:30.320 watch Pelosi and Schumer because you think it's difficult hurting cats, try hurting scared cats.

00:57:37.680 Well, I hope that, uh, your interlocutor there is correct. Um, uh, thus far today,

00:57:44.800 it doesn't seem as if, uh, that, uh, has got through some, as a message to the Democratic

00:57:50.560 Party, although Joe Manchin made some noises this afternoon. Uh, I think it would be really

00:57:56.640 quite absurd if the Democrats didn't see this as a repudiation. A lot of what happened last night

00:58:02.800 to Virginia was the product of Virginia politics. We just discussed some of it and we, we, we didn't

00:58:07.680 even get to Terry McAuliffe's contention that parents should not be involved in their children's

00:58:12.880 education. Something eight out of 10 voters disagreed with him on. Right. But, but whether,

00:58:18.560 um, or not this should be the case, a lot of last night was also clearly about the national

00:58:24.560 environment and the national environment is just not good for Democrats at the moment.

00:58:28.560 It's happened pretty quickly. Joe Biden's really unpopular. His approval rating in Virginia, uh,

00:58:35.200 yesterday was 42, 43%. Uh, his administration is underwater on almost every key issue. Uh,

00:58:44.240 the bills that he's trying to push through Congress are not popular. Most people don't know what's in

00:58:51.440 them and what, uh, they do know about what's in them. They dislike. You don't need to take my word for

00:58:57.520 that. I am quoting a democratic aligned think tank called third way, which acknowledged this this

00:59:04.800 morning. Most Democrats, uh, uh, want these bills, but independents and Republicans do not. Uh, and,

00:59:12.320 you know, I I've seen people arguing, well, this, uh, election disaster indicates that we need to

00:59:20.320 get our act together. We need to pass the Biden agenda. I think that's ridiculous. I think it's

00:59:25.440 self-evidently ridiculous, but I also think it's ridiculous given the high turnout in Virginia.

00:59:30.320 If this had been a low turnout race, you could have credibly made an argument. Look,

00:59:33.920 Democrats are disillusioned because they haven't got what they wanted. They shouldn't be disillusioned

00:59:38.800 because they have 50 votes in the Senate and a cushion of three in the house. The fact they're

00:59:41.840 trying to achieve this with these narrow margins is silly, but maybe they'd be disillusioned. But

00:59:46.960 turnout in Virginia last night was huge. Terry McAuliffe got more votes last night as the losing

00:59:53.280 candidate than any Democrat has ever got in any gubernatorial race in the history of Virginia.

00:59:59.600 He just lost because Youngkin got more. So high turnout helped the Republican. And that suggests

01:00:06.880 to me that if we're going to speculate as to how the national environment and the congressional

01:00:10.800 environment is affecting local races, we should do the opposite. We should say, look, people really

01:00:16.240 don't seem happy with what the Biden administration is trying to push through. And if you look at the

01:00:20.960 exit polling from CNN, there's a lot to bear that out. The vast majority of Virginians said that Joe

01:00:28.320 Biden is too liberal rather than liberal enough or not liberal enough. The vast majority of Virginians

01:00:39.040 said that they wanted government to do less. So I don't see how we could draw from this that these

01:00:46.560 terrible losses in Virginia and elsewhere somehow ratify a Biden agenda that Americans didn't ask for

01:00:53.120 in the first place. It's not not why he was elected. Julian Castro was on MSNBC last night saying McAuliffe

01:01:02.240 was the wrong candidate. I think you may have tweeted this to moderate. We should have had someone much

01:01:08.480 more left. I mean, if that's where they're going to go. I don't know that he speaks for the party,

01:01:16.400 but if that's where they're going to go, I think bloodbath will be another word we'll be using after

01:01:21.040 the midterms in 2022. No, I think so. And this is a mistake that both parties make. You hear this on

01:01:27.840 the right, too. Sometimes Republicans lose winnable races and they say, well, the guy we ran was was a

01:01:34.560 squish. You know, he wasn't conservative enough. There wasn't enough of a difference. It's rarely

01:01:40.080 true. There are certain moments in history where you need sharp differences. But usually that is a

01:01:48.160 form of denial. And that's just that's just not true here. I mean, it when the Democratic primary

01:01:54.400 was underway in Virginia, most people correctly said Terry McAuliffe would have the best shot because

01:02:00.880 he was more moderate. And if you look at the environmental factors yesterday at the state

01:02:05.520 and federal level, the idea that if he'd been a hardcore progressive, the heat of one

01:02:10.480 is is, I think, silly. And it's also somewhat contradicted by what we've seen in actually

01:02:15.680 progressive areas. I mean, I mentioned earlier, Seattle just elected a Republican and up in Buffalo,

01:02:21.440 New York, a socialist candidate, self-described socialist candidate was beaten

01:02:26.320 two to one by a writing candidate. So I'm I'm not really on board with that argument.

01:02:32.960 Yeah, I think it was in New Jersey. We were following a race by a guy. It was it was a truck

01:02:38.240 driver, a truck driver who spent, I think, one hundred and forty nine dollars on his campaign,

01:02:43.440 who just ousted an incumbent in one of the race in one of the state races. It's amazing. New Jersey.

01:02:49.760 This is now we're not talking Texas. So the the voting population is telling us something and but

01:02:56.880 expand on it, because I know it's not all about CRT. And I actually think even the school battles,

01:03:02.160 not just about CRT. It involves covid lockdowns and never ending masking. And I was saying to my

01:03:08.800 friend the other day, I almost feel like they've forgotten about our children, like they slap masks on

01:03:13.040 them and they have to go and wear them eight to ten hours a day. Not not in Florida where you are.

01:03:17.280 And then they just moved on. And it was like the CDC said a couple of weeks ago, by the way,

01:03:23.200 you can't take them off even when you vaccinate your child, which we're likely to make mandatory.

01:03:27.440 OK, but like everyone else has them off in the grown up level. And, you know, at some point they

01:03:32.560 need to come off and you have no metrics. So I think that's in there. I do think the inappropriate

01:03:37.200 content that I highlighted with my last guest is something that people are upset about. But the backlash

01:03:42.800 that we're seeing coast to coast, it's it goes beyond schools. It speaks to crime. Right. The rising crime

01:03:48.320 numbers, police. You you frame it for me. Well, I think that when we're looking at this is to think

01:03:55.760 of of where we are relative to where we were a year ago. And two things have happened that are pretty

01:04:03.120 negative for President Biden. The first one is that he is now the president instead of Donald Trump.

01:04:09.760 And what I mean by that is obviously good for Biden personally. But after a certain point,

01:04:14.080 presidents own problems. As a libertarian leaning guy, I often think it's unfair what we put on our

01:04:20.800 president. But it's also unfair what presidents claim they can do. And Joe Biden, when he was running,

01:04:27.120 said he was going to make the economy better. He was going to shut down the virus. He's done

01:04:33.760 neither of those things. Now, some of it's not his fault. But at the same time, if you say I'm

01:04:39.840 going to fix things and then you don't, people notice. And the Democrats have thought they could

01:04:45.520 get around this by saying Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump every 10 seconds. We saw Terry McAuliffe do this

01:04:50.160 in Virginia. It works maybe for one, two, three months at the beginning of a presidency. And then it goes

01:04:54.880 away. People just don't think like that. So Biden is now suffering from expectations that haven't been

01:05:02.800 met. The other thing that's happened is the politics have turned on a number of crucial

01:05:07.040 questions for him in the wrong direction, just at the wrong time. Back in September, when he announced

01:05:13.360 his federal mask mandate, which I think is flatly unconstitutional, it had majority support. It wasn't

01:05:20.720 huge, but it was 54, 55. Now, and it hasn't actually been implemented yet, although I hear it's about to

01:05:27.840 be. Now it's under water. You mean the vaccine mandate.

01:05:30.800 Vaccine mandate. Sorry, I misspoke. The vaccine mandate's now under water. Partly, I think, because

01:05:37.600 people have seen their friends and family get fired in some areas, partly because I think it has made

01:05:45.120 things worse in terms of selling the vaccine. The vaccine is a good thing. And it should be easier

01:05:50.800 to sell than it is. And the same thing I think has happened with masking, with masking in schools.

01:05:57.120 I think people's patience, as you suggest, is wearing thin with school closures. That was another factor

01:06:03.920 in Virginia. And it's also happened on the economy. Gallup tracks American sentiment towards the size of

01:06:10.480 government. Three months ago, Americans said the government could be bigger, could do more. Now,

01:06:17.360 they're back to saying it should be smaller, do less, and we should be leaving more roles to businesses

01:06:24.320 and individuals. And Biden hasn't actually passed either of the bills that he wants to pass yet. And so

01:06:30.640 he's now found himself out on a limb with public opinion rapidly shifting. And on top of the debacle that

01:06:39.120 was Afghanistan, on top of his general lackluster performance, and on top of the supply chain

01:06:47.200 issues, high gas prices, inflation, and economic malaise, that's causing him and his party real

01:06:52.640 problems. Yeah. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how do you enjoy the play? Yeah.

01:06:59.040 Just a word before I go back to the spending bills, because I know you've been watching them closely.

01:07:03.440 So this is the story I was mentioning in New Jersey. All right. Edward Durr, a conservative

01:07:09.920 truck driver who reported spending just, I had it off by a few dollars, $153 on his campaign,

01:07:16.960 leads the Senate president, Steve Sweeney, the longest serving legislative leader in New Jersey history,

01:07:23.600 by over 2000 votes in the South Jersey based third legislative district. They say this is an article

01:07:34.320 New Jersey Globe saying, if Sweeney loses, it will cause a total realignment of politics in New Jersey.

01:07:42.560 This would be truly earth shattering for New Jersey politics. If this guy loses his state Senate seat,

01:07:49.920 could be a stunning political upset. We have a soundbite from Edward Durr, the truck driver. Let's listen.

01:07:57.280 My name is Edward Durr. I'm running for New Jersey State Senate. I've lived here all my life,

01:08:02.080 raising my three kids. In 2020, my opponent sat by and watched as Governor Murphy forced nursing homes

01:08:08.080 to take in COVID-19 patients, resulting in the death of over 8,000 of our seniors. He remained silent

01:08:14.240 as Governor Murphy, with his lockdown and mandates, forced the closing of over one third of our small

01:08:19.280 businesses across the New Jersey family, thousands of jobs. The Senate president has spent 20 years

01:08:24.800 in Trenton. Higher taxes, increasing debt, and a rising cost of living. We deserve better.

01:08:33.040 New Jersey, it's time for a change.

01:08:38.800 So together, let's end single party rule. Vote for me, Edward Durr, for Senate.

01:08:44.000 And he rides off on his bike. By the way, Charles, 99% reporting now. He's still up 2,000. He's going

01:08:54.640 to win. Oh, he is. He's going to win. Absolutely. And when he wins, it's going to show a couple of

01:09:00.960 things. The first, and this is the theme I've hit on for years, money in politics matters to an extent,

01:09:06.720 but it doesn't trump the issues. And clearly what he was talking about resonated. He spent $140,

01:09:13.920 he seems to have registered his candidacy, printed out a couple of t-shirts, made that video,

01:09:18.320 set up a Facebook page with nothing on it, and then left it. And that is important because what

01:09:26.000 that means is that in New Jersey last night, a lot of people, unbidden, walked into the voting booth

01:09:32.800 and voted Republican. They weren't pushed by TV ads, radio ads. There weren't people knocking on doors.

01:09:39.760 There weren't millions of dollars spent in a lot of these races. They just voted Republican. And

01:09:44.880 that's your basic nightmare when you're a party that is on the downswing, when people can win by

01:09:52.080 by doing nothing.

01:09:52.800 So last question then, rounding back to those big spending bills, you guys talk about them all,

01:09:57.040 about them all the time. You got the 1.2 trillion infrastructure. You've got, I mean,

01:10:01.200 it was 3.5 trillion in domestic spending, a wish list of Democrat items. That's obviously gone down,

01:10:08.560 thanks to Manchin. But what is the likelihood of that latter bill? I mean, both of them, but really

01:10:14.320 the latter bill going forward now?

01:10:17.280 Well, these things, unfortunately, gain their own momentum. So it seems probable that something

01:10:27.680 is going to pass that they will be able to call a reconciliation bill or a social spending bill or

01:10:33.120 a second infrastructure bill. I do think that the more time that passes and the more worried Democrats

01:10:40.720 become, the smaller that bill becomes. And it does seem to me that the process by which this is being

01:10:49.520 written is chaotic. Now, we've talked before about it's being intrinsically absurd, given the size of

01:10:55.600 the Democrats' majorities and our debt and our existing spending and so on. Also the fact that we're not

01:11:03.760 actually debating anything in the bill. We debate the number, then we shove things in. Apparently that's how

01:11:08.000 we do it now. But I think that the way that this is being conducted by Democrats is really strange. I

01:11:15.120 mean, last week, Joe Biden said, right, here's a compromise. And then he flew off to Rome and

01:11:20.080 immediately Democrats said, no, it's not. Earlier this week, the progressive caucus in the House said,

01:11:25.120 all right, we're fine. We're on board with this now. So let's move forward. And Joe Manchin had to make

01:11:29.120 a speech saying, I'm not on board. Manchin today said that he thinks it's time to wait again to pause,

01:11:37.040 whether that's a longer strategic pause, as he puts it, I don't know, and really debate this and

01:11:42.160 score it and think about it. So the more time that goes on is worse for the bill. And if it somehow

01:11:47.440 creeps into next year, there probably won't be a bill because lawmakers do not like passing big

01:11:51.920 controversial bills in election years. But at the very least, it's going to be smaller. I just

01:11:58.160 can't fathom why Democrats thought that they had any sort of mandate to do this in the first place.

01:12:03.040 Americans aren't clamoring for it. This was not the message of the last election.

01:12:06.800 And as we saw last night, there's just no real support out there for it, or for them. And public

01:12:13.280 sentiment, if anything, has gone the other way. So you asked what the likelihood is, something maybe

01:12:20.080 just under 50%, something really big, maybe now 15%. But the fact is, we are just irresponsible with

01:12:29.920 our spending, we're irresponsible with permanent programs. And the only really good outcome,

01:12:36.160 I suppose the less bad outcome on this is for the bill to go down completely.

01:12:40.240 One of the many reasons to listen to the editor's podcast is Charles's love-hate relationship with

01:12:45.840 Joe Manchin, depending on the day and what he's done. Your hopes, they rise, they fall. And you're

01:12:54.000 always very honest about it. What a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here, Charles.

01:12:58.240 Thank you so much for having me.

01:12:59.200 Up next, Wall Street Journal columnist Bill McGurn, who's been all over this Virginia race. He's here

01:13:05.280 to talk about some exit polls and other interesting results throughout the country and what they portend

01:13:10.880 for the future. Joining me now, columnist from the Wall Street Journal, Bill McGurn. Bill,

01:13:19.760 let's start broad. What do you make of what we saw last night?

01:13:22.400 Well, I think it's an earthquake. And I think, you know, Glenn Youngkin really ran an excellent

01:13:28.880 campaign. But I think it's clearer today, when you look at the closeness of the race in New Jersey,

01:13:35.520 and you look at the other candidates who won in Virginia, this is a lot bigger than just Glenn Youngkin.

01:13:41.440 It suggests that Democrats might have to think their whole enterprise, not just trying to win

01:13:47.520 elections by shouting Trump, as Charlie was just telling you. But also their progressive package.

01:13:54.160 I mean, where is the moderate Democrat agenda? It doesn't exist. It's just a watered down

01:14:00.000 version with the lower price tag of the progressive agenda.

01:14:03.600 It's like they may have gone hard left, but the country didn't. Joe Biden ran as a moderate

01:14:08.720 and then started governing as a hard lefty. And the country is still where it was saying,

01:14:12.640 what are you what are you doing over there? Come, come back, because stop, stop that right now.

01:14:16.960 And the question is, what Joe Biden are we likely to get next? The one who ran as a moderate and

01:14:21.920 governed as a moderate for some years or this weird leftist version of him we've seen more recently?

01:14:29.440 Yeah, I mean, that's the question. Look, he's opted to to take on the Bernie agenda.

01:14:35.280 You know, he kind of falsely presented himself as a moderate in the last campaign,

01:14:39.920 and he's allied himself with the very extreme version. I think part of it is ego. You know,

01:14:45.440 he wants to be a transformative president. I think part of that is kind of getting back at

01:14:50.400 the Obama team that didn't really take him that seriously, that he wants to go down in history as

01:14:56.000 more sort of radical and far reaching than Barack Obama. And I think it's just really

01:15:02.080 crashing into the cliffs right now. Hmm. There was an interesting we put together a

01:15:06.400 butted soundbite of some of the Democrats on CNN. It's kind of interesting to watch is like that

01:15:11.520 the light bulb appears over their heads like maybe maybe what we're doing and saying isn't

01:15:18.880 working. Watch this. I think that Democrats are coming across in ways that we don't recognize

01:15:24.720 that are annoying and offensive and seem out of touch. The messages tend to be moralizing.

01:15:32.640 It's like it is. We are going to tell you. You got a lot of parents who just spent a year

01:15:38.960 homeschooling their kids and were forced to do so to tell those people, look, we don't care what

01:15:44.960 you think about education. That is a big insult. But maybe they are too liberal. Maybe some of the

01:15:50.720 messages slow down, slow down.

01:15:53.760 Oh, maybe we are annoying when we tell parents to get out of their schools and their kids education.

01:16:02.800 So but I don't know. You tell me, because when I I listen to a broader discussion just this morning,

01:16:07.040 I'm morning, Joe. And they were really sort of doubling down on, you know, OK, maybe we need to

01:16:14.160 talk about race in a different way. And all I could think was that's never going to happen. The Democrats

01:16:20.000 are not going to start talking about race differently just because of this election.

01:16:24.480 And that's a problem for them. Yeah. Look, as you know, people in our business are not very

01:16:31.120 self-reflective when they get things wrong. And, you know, one of the lessons of Virginia is that,

01:16:36.640 you know, in a tight race, calling half of the voters racist is not really a winning formula.

01:16:43.600 You wonder if the people are getting tired of the race card, if that's part of it. You know,

01:16:47.920 Terry McAuliffe did it himself in the last weekend on the campaign. He accused Glenn

01:16:52.480 Youngkin of running a racist campaign from start to finish. And he was echoed by a lot of people in

01:16:59.360 the press. And remember, there was a big dirty trick in there by the by the Lincoln Project.

01:17:04.800 You know, there's supposed to be so many racists in Virginia, so many white supremacists, and they

01:17:10.320 couldn't find five real ones to send to the Youngkin campaign. So they sent five phony ones,

01:17:16.480 you know. And has the press been interested in finding out who these people were that were

01:17:21.120 photographed? No, I just think that's that's their kind of appeal. If you disagree with them,

01:17:27.280 you're a racist. And I think Glenn Youngkin just kind of shrugged it off. And it's even more

01:17:32.000 extraordinary if you look at the other Republicans running in Virginia. Winsome Sears, African-American

01:17:37.760 woman, first African-American woman to win a statewide race. We've got a Cuban-American that looks like he's

01:17:44.000 out in front for attorney general. And yet these are the these are the people that supposedly racist

01:17:49.680 elected. It's just it's just insane. But I agree with you. I don't think we're going to see any

01:17:55.520 self-reflection on the press, any reconsideration of this. That's their mode of operation, demeaning

01:18:02.160 the other side and calling everyone racist or white supremacists or Trumpkins.

01:18:07.680 Winsome Sears was on Fox not long ago and made a great point. It's like speaking of the light bulb

01:18:15.720 going off, it's really interesting and uplifting to see a black woman in a powerful position call out

01:18:25.280 the racist nonsense that gets spewed by the left. Right. About the about half of the country and the

01:18:32.480 intentional manipulation of black voters. Listen to her. This is what the Democrats do over and over

01:18:40.960 again. They come into the black community and they try to gin up our anger over some supposed threat or

01:18:48.400 some supposed slight. And then we're supposed to run out and vote for them because they're coming to

01:18:54.640 save us. There are political saviors. Folks, here come the Democrats. They are the cavalry. Thank God for

01:19:01.120 them. You know, at some point this is going to get old and this is the time and this is the year it's

01:19:07.120 going to get old because we are sick of it. Wow. Yeah, she I mean, she's an impressive woman. I watched

01:19:15.760 her talk about how she signed up for the Marine Corps and was willing to die for the country. What an

01:19:22.480 impressive woman. If she were a Democrat, she'd be on every front page and they would be touting her

01:19:28.880 all the time. But she doesn't fit the profile. Look, this is so insane. You have Larry Elder,

01:19:35.680 African-American candidate for governor. He was accused of being, you know, promoting white supremacy

01:19:41.640 himself in the California campaign. In my family, Megan, my three daughters are Chinese. I'm an ethnic

01:19:50.160 and gender minority under my own roof. My kids, though, are called white adjacent and so forth. It's just

01:19:56.120 insanity that we have. And I think people are tired of it. That's right. I think they're tired

01:20:01.480 of it, too. So let's talk Trump for one second, because McAuliffe tried to make Youngkin into a

01:20:06.420 Trump disciple. That didn't work. It was kind of interesting. Even McAuliffe said to the press on

01:20:12.400 Monday he thinks it would have been better for him, Terry McAuliffe, from a political perspective,

01:20:17.920 if Trump hadn't been deplatformed by Twitter. It would have been better for him if he had been out

01:20:23.660 there doing his stuff that he does. Alas, Trump is not on Twitter. And I wonder what we learned from

01:20:30.800 last night when it comes to Trump, his influence and the road forward for Republicans.

01:20:37.200 Well, it's interesting. My understanding is that Glenn Youngkin

01:20:40.040 did better in the Trump areas of Virginia than even Donald Trump. He really got out that boat.

01:20:46.280 He played it very well. He didn't attack the former president. You know, he wanted his supporters to

01:20:52.480 vote for him, the Republicans, but he didn't appear in any rallies with them. I mean, as try as hard as

01:20:58.060 Terry McAuliffe did, Donald Trump just wasn't a factor. They, you know, Terry McAuliffe ran against

01:21:04.320 Donald Trump, not against Glenn Youngkin. And it shows, you know, this lack of agenda. And if you

01:21:09.480 that comes, I think, more into a stark relief when you look at New Jersey, New Jersey, Donald Trump

01:21:15.920 really wasn't a factor. It wasn't part of the campaign to the degree that Phil Murphy campaigned

01:21:21.600 against Jack Cittarelli. It was over vaccines where he had said, you know, he opposed vaccinating,

01:21:28.060 forcing young children to be vaccinated. And that was kind of the issue against them.

01:21:32.060 And yet in this very blue state, much bluer than Virginia, you know, it's almost tied. It's come

01:21:40.780 down to a statistical dead heat. I believe that Phil Murphy at this minute is up by about 15,000

01:21:46.620 votes, but it's much closer than anyone realized. And Donald Trump isn't a factor here. So I think

01:21:53.460 so many people were counting on this to be their 2022 campaign, you know, just campaign against Trump.

01:22:00.120 And when you see it, I think all those plans have to be reconsidered now.

01:22:05.000 Listening to the Democrats deal with this loss on some of the, you know, left wing cable channels,

01:22:10.280 they keep making the point. Not everybody's Glenn Youngkin. Not every Republican can do the little

01:22:15.500 fleece vest sweet thing that Glenn Youngkin did. You know, they're basically like they're fire,

01:22:20.960 they're mouth breathers, they're, they're going to look more like scary Trump MAGA world type

01:22:26.660 candidates. And then the Republicans will learn that they can't do it. Glenn Youngkin in every

01:22:31.080 state. But like, if you were advising Republicans across the country, how to win now, right? How to

01:22:36.160 win. Right. Do they have to follow the Glenn Youngkin model? Is this the new way?

01:22:41.140 Well, I think the Glenn Youngkin model is pretty good because, um, first of all, I think he's a

01:22:45.200 genial, affable man. Uh, and I think that came across. So it was hard to tar him, uh, as a new

01:22:51.800 Donald Trump. But I think for other Republicans, the other message was Glenn Youngkin had an agenda,

01:22:56.760 you know, talk about bread. They always say he had bread and butter kitchen table issues. He

01:23:00.860 literally did. He was one of the things he campaigned on was eliminating this 2.5% sales

01:23:06.860 tax on groceries. So that's literally a bad bread and butter issue. Right. And other tax cuts and the

01:23:13.620 schools. And, you know, it's funny, the left is always saying culture wars, culture wars when they

01:23:18.840 launched them. You know what the, the schools issue, education became the top issue. I believe

01:23:23.920 in September that, um, uh, uh, Glenn Youngkin was 33 points behind on the education issue. It's

01:23:31.540 generally polls, you know, in favor of the Democrats. And then you watch what happened in

01:23:36.640 Loudoun and Fairfax counties. And, um, by the end of the campaign, education was a top issue.

01:23:42.500 And I think, uh, Terry McAuliffe had a 10 point deficit, you know, and that, that deficit,

01:23:48.840 you know, that, that meant a lot of suburban moms and dad, people who had turned on Trump in the last

01:23:54.940 election came back to the Republican party, or in some cases I know of came over to the Republican

01:24:00.280 party. So I think my message is there is a Republican agenda about letting people keep more of what they

01:24:06.640 earn, making the public schools accountable to parents and, and so forth. And, and, you know,

01:24:13.120 pursuing policies that promote prosperity, not identity politics that promote divisiveness. I

01:24:19.020 think that's a pretty good formula for the United States. I think, um, you know, you look at New

01:24:24.940 Jersey, as you, as you point out, Biden won it by 16 points, 16 points. And now it's neck and neck

01:24:31.320 between a Republican nobody ever saw winning this race and the incumbent democratic governor. And it

01:24:36.480 does make me wonder whether we're going to see, let's say Phil Murphy pulls this out and he stays

01:24:40.140 governor of New Jersey. Um, does he start waffling on vaccine mandates and mask mandates and all the

01:24:48.180 overreaches that we've seen in particular in blue States when it comes to muzzling children and

01:24:53.940 muzzling adults and never bending on vaccine mandates, even with people who have natural immunity,

01:24:58.500 you know, do they, do they take this message bill? Do you think it's even if he wins and say,

01:25:03.380 right, right. They gotta be careful. Yeah, I think he might. I'm not sure that the democratic

01:25:09.320 party in general will, because I think, you know, the other read of this, um, the opposite of yours

01:25:15.740 and mine is among progressives. They would say, you know what the problem is? And I, I expect the

01:25:20.840 white house to say this. We didn't pass Joe Biden's build back better agenda, all that spending and

01:25:26.260 taxing and, you know, recasting of the economy and new entitlements and so forth. Um, and if we had

01:25:32.820 passed that, have an achievement, the voters would have turned out. I'm not sure. I, but I think they've

01:25:38.100 always thought they have a small window. The progressives have always, um, worried that in 2022,

01:25:44.360 they'll lose whatever majority they have. So they have to ram it through very quickly. Look,

01:25:50.040 that's what Nancy Pelosi is trying to do. She's trying to ram the, uh, the spending bill,

01:25:54.720 the reconciliation bill through before the CBO can score it because she knows the scoring will show

01:26:00.820 that it isn't paid for. And all these kinds of tricks that, um, Joe Manchin has been complaining

01:26:06.320 about. So I think you have, you'll have two different reads. And one reason for those reads is

01:26:11.400 by and large, the democratic moderates aren't really moderates. They're basically, they accept the

01:26:16.660 progressive agenda, but with a lower price tab, right? They don't have a moderate agenda,

01:26:21.280 but they're often in swing districts, you know, districts that either went for Donald Trump or

01:26:26.880 Biden won by a small margin. They're worried about their seats in Congress. Most of the progressives

01:26:32.480 don't have to worry about that. There's a handful that do, but most of them don't have to worry.

01:26:37.340 Look, AOC, um, you know, uh, got rid of Amazon for her district, you know, which would have been a big

01:26:44.460 plus, and she's probably going to be there as long as she wants to be in that seat, assuming she

01:26:48.760 doesn't go after Chuck Schumer seat. So, um, there's a different dynamic that the progressives

01:26:53.860 aren't really worried about their own incumbency and the moderates really are. Um, so they're

01:27:00.800 frightened, but if I were a democratic, a so-called moderate, I'd be looking at the results and say

01:27:05.900 a year from now, do I really want to be subject to all those Republican ads about passing this tax and

01:27:11.880 spend monstrosity, especially if it does what I think it's going to do and really harm the economy.

01:27:17.840 Yeah. And you can kiss, you know, getting rid of the filibuster or packing the Supreme court.

01:27:22.000 Goodbye. The most crazy agenda items. So let me flip it on you and say, what about Republicans?

01:27:27.100 Because as apart from try to be more like Glenn Youngkin, um, there are some lessons for them in

01:27:32.180 here. And I think, you know, one of the things is that what we saw with parents at the school board

01:27:36.960 meetings was the opposite of AstroTurf. It was real. It was organic. It was heartfelt.

01:27:42.180 It came ground up, not top down. And I don't think it's going to stop because having lived this

01:27:47.700 firsthand as a mom with kids in school, they can't reverse engineer this crazy race ideology

01:27:54.060 just like that. It's, it's in there and the teachers are committed to it. Believe it not to

01:27:59.000 mention the trans stuff and so on. So I think this is going to go on and on. And I wonder whether

01:28:04.120 we're going to see, well, I think Merrick Garland goes away entirely on his little task force,

01:28:09.460 his FBI investigate. There will be no prosecutions of any single parent in America from Merrick

01:28:14.540 Garland because they understand politically that was a disastrous move and probably helped Youngkin

01:28:18.400 win. Uh, and B, I think that, um, they're going to have to get somehow more empathetic openly toward

01:28:24.480 the parents at these meetings, as opposed to just saying over and over again, you lie, you lie.

01:28:29.460 That's not working. Right. Look, I I'd make a general point and a specific point. The general

01:28:35.300 point is that this is going on all over the country. There's a recall effort against three

01:28:41.020 school board members in San Francisco. You know, San Francisco is like the woke capital of the USA,

01:28:47.260 but a lot of parents were upset that it was one of the worst districts in terms of reopening the

01:28:52.860 schools and so forth. They've watered down the, uh, entrance standards for one of their elite schools.

01:28:58.520 A lot of, there's a lot of dissatisfaction among parents who are not Republicans in San Francisco

01:29:04.020 over the school board. And you see this in other parts of the country. And I think, again, as I

01:29:09.100 mentioned, there are a lot of specific issues. People don't like critical race theory. They don't

01:29:13.720 like, you know, dividing kids by their race and telling some kids, well, you're part of the oppressor

01:29:18.920 class and the other part of the class, you're, um, you're the victims here. People don't like that,

01:29:24.960 but I think what they've learned, uh, you know, they've learned this from COVID first,

01:29:28.920 their kids have been home. They've seen, you know, what's taught in the classrooms. They see

01:29:33.600 how they're treated, that their interests come last. It's the teachers unions that come first

01:29:38.200 and they want their public schools held accountable. And I don't think they can help themselves. Look at

01:29:44.140 Loudoun County. I mean, one thing that really hurt Terry McAuliffe is first, he made that statement

01:29:50.540 where parents should have no say in the schools. I mean, that was the classic Washington gaffe where

01:29:56.040 he inadvertently blurted out the truth or what he believed that took on a special resonance because

01:30:01.960 as you mentioned, Merrick Garland had responded to that school board letter, uh, where they suggested

01:30:07.640 that protesting parents are really a form of domestic terrorism. So that was one, one aspect.

01:30:13.180 And then in Loudoun County, you know, where there was an assault of a girl in a bathroom,

01:30:18.260 the school superintendent at a meeting of the school board told everyone in the room,

01:30:23.360 there were no reports. Everyone on the school board knew that was a lie and didn't say anything

01:30:28.240 because he had, the superintendent had emailed them about the assault on the day of the assault.

01:30:33.460 And so people see their officials just lying to them. And as far as I can see, the man hasn't

01:30:38.140 resigned yet. They just see unaccountability. Uh, I think the fastest way to make someone into a

01:30:45.720 conservative say, Hey, Megan, why don't you go down and try to speak up at your local school board?

01:30:50.660 They go through that experience. Um, they're going to be radicalized.

01:30:55.320 Well, um, I will say shout out to the daily wire, uh, and their reporter, I think his name is Luke

01:30:59.960 Rosie, Rosniak listened to their morning wire every day. And he did a great job in breaking

01:31:03.820 new details on that Loudoun County story that we hadn't yet known and that have taken over.

01:31:08.100 So it's been a lot of great reporting and great effort by parents to try to turn the tide on

01:31:12.840 some really crazy policies that are very abusive and bad for kids. And Bill, it's been a pleasure

01:31:17.600 speaking with you and reading you over the past months. Hope to do it again soon. We're going to

01:31:21.660 have much more. We're not done. We're going to be back tomorrow. Um, and we'll have the latest on

01:31:26.100 the, on Fauci appearing before the U S Senate and the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and more fallout from this

01:31:31.040 Virginia win. Don't forget to go to youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. And thanks for listening.

01:31:36.100 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:31:42.840 Thank you.

01:31:43.500 Thank you.

01:31:43.600 Thank you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - November 03, 2021

GOP's Giant Virginia Victory, with Ken Cuccinelli, Charles C.W. Cooke, Asra Nomani, and Bill McGurn ｜ Ep. 195

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