The Megyn Kelly Show - Hayden Panettiere's Death and Her Hollywood Enablers, with Rob Shuter, and Jason Arday Exposed Before His Demise ｜ Ep. 1380

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00:01:00.760 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:01:12.460 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.

00:01:16.760 We have a lot of news to get to today, including on Jason Arday, the youngest Black professor in

00:01:21.140 the history of the University of Cambridge, who resigned earlier this month in the wake of his

00:01:26.940 biography completely imploding and being exposed as almost entirely false, was found dead on Friday,

00:01:35.060 quite clearly from an apparent suicide. We'll have thoughts to share with you. But first,

00:01:40.920 breaking overnight here in the United States, actress Hayden Panettiere is dead at the age of

00:01:47.500 36. Penitentiary began appearing in commercials at just 11 months old. She became a household name

00:01:54.560 in her teens as one of the stars of the show Heroes, where she played a cheerleader with

00:01:59.920 special powers. She also hit it big while in her 20s playing a country music star on the show

00:02:05.600 Nashville. More recently, she was open about her mental health struggles, publishing a memoir in

00:02:12.000 May that revealed she suffered from depression, substance abuse, and that she had given up

00:02:20.420 custody of her daughter, but she didn't really like that phrase that she had given her up.

00:02:26.560 She made the argument that she was in touch with her daughter, regular touch with her

00:02:30.800 daughter, but that given her postpartum issues and her substance abuse issues, she concluded

00:02:35.760 the daughter actually would be better off with the father.

00:02:39.160 I mean, I don't know if that's giving her up or not, if you're still in her life, but it's clearly the responsible decision.

00:02:46.860 I mean, you can take the most negative view of that and rip on her for giving up her kid.

00:02:52.140 I see it as a mother rescuing her kid.

00:02:54.800 I wish this Clancy mother had done the same.

00:02:57.220 You know, it's like if you recognize you can't take care of your child because of substance abuse or postpartum, as they're arguing in the Clancy trial.

00:03:04.220 You know, the good mothering thing to do is to remove yourself from that child.

00:03:12.720 Sometimes the best thing for them is not to be with you.

00:03:16.200 So it's just a small point as I read her bio.

00:03:19.420 I didn't know much about Hayden before today, to be honest.

00:03:22.800 I didn't watch either of those shows, but I've now spent the morning reading her story.

00:03:27.520 And I have to say, it's like, it's new to me because I don't know her, but it's not new to me because I'm in news.

00:03:34.880 And for 25 years now, I've been covering stories of child actors who end just like this, whose lives end just like this.

00:03:45.240 Do not put your child into any industry that will make them a star as a minor.

00:03:50.880 Don't do it.

00:03:52.900 No matter how badly you need the money, no matter how badly your child tells you it's her dream or his dream, the answer is no, if you love them.

00:04:03.880 Could be as a singer like Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez.

00:04:07.840 Could be as an actress like Hayden or Amanda Bynes.

00:04:13.300 It doesn't tend to end well. 1.00

00:04:14.980 Look what's happening to Ariana Grande right now. 1.00

00:04:17.660 Child actor. 1.00

00:04:18.820 she made her start on nickelodeon a disgusting cesspool of child abuse 0.96

00:04:24.260 it just it just was it was there were actual pedophiles roaming around the set and a disturbed

00:04:34.040 inappropriate man running the entire channel and the show running there so i mean it's just

00:04:41.180 don't do it and it separate it apart from whether you happen to drop them into a cesspool of

00:04:46.080 toxicity and abuse, like Nickelodeon was, you're just setting them up for massive life failures

00:04:53.300 unless that kid has got the strongest emotional resolve of all children out there.

00:05:02.040 And that doesn't tend to be the case. Like for every Jodie Foster, there are far more

00:05:08.680 River Phoenixes, who Gen Xers will remember as the brother of Joaquin Phoenix, who died of a

00:05:14.680 drug overdose out in front of a club when he was very young and a star and had been a child star

00:05:19.940 who was in movies like Stand By Me. It's just, it's so rare that they grow up and have well-adjusted

00:05:27.260 lives. And one of the main reasons is, have you ever had something great in your life? Were you

00:05:35.580 whoever the high school track star, football star, prom queen, or you were at the top of

00:05:44.580 your college class and got recruited for grad school, or you made it big at your first job

00:05:51.540 and got the biggest bonus, whatever it was, was there ever that time in your life?

00:05:56.800 Well, if that big, big moment is never matched in its bigness by another event in your life,

00:06:05.580 you may look back at that event and think it was your peak. A lot of people do. A lot of people

00:06:12.380 look at their lives that way, as opposed to just like a river that runs and it has turns and it

00:06:18.880 has tribulations and it has smooth times. Some people look at it more as like a mountain with

00:06:24.700 a peak and then a descent. And they think they're failures if they never recapture that peak.

00:06:32.020 I disagree with this, but that is how a lot of people look at their lives. And if your child

00:06:38.160 has her peak at age 17 or 11, it's going to be very hard for her to feel like she's a success

00:06:48.000 after that. And the problem is child actors don't tend to make it in Hollywood.

00:06:53.200 They may make it as children, but let's take a look at the biggest child star,

00:06:58.840 at least one of the top three ever in our country, and that's got to be Macaulay Culkin.

00:07:05.360 What's he doing now? Do you know? I don't know. Got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

00:07:10.340 a couple years ago, and we saw him. Looks exactly the same, only in an adult body.

00:07:14.600 And I'm not ripping on him at all. The opposite. But he did not make it as an adult actor,

00:07:21.380 not in any meaningful way, at least. You don't turn around every day on Broadway,

00:07:26.180 there's another Macaulay Culkin production or new movie. It's just, he was a huge child star

00:07:31.880 because he had gifts that made him really resonate as a child actor. And so this industry that builds

00:07:39.220 them up, then rejects them. It rejects them and they can't ever reclaim that top of the mountain

00:07:46.540 moment. They feel like a failure. Next thing you know, they're getting written up in the tabloids

00:07:50.100 as having gained weight and, you know, some picture of them working in a grocery store,

00:07:54.720 are trying to humiliate them. That's our press. Okay. But you are setting your child up to fail.

00:08:01.180 And even if they don't get kicked out of the industry, like a Justin Bieber,

00:08:07.420 how do you think he's doing? How does he look to you? Totally well adjusted,

00:08:13.460 comfortable in his own skin, the picture of happiness? No, no, not to me either.

00:08:18.660 And he was never kicked out. He made it as a star and he became a star and maintained his

00:08:22.540 stardom to this moment he does um things happen to child stars that can be extremely damaging

00:08:30.720 drew barrymore has talked all about it what happened to her when she was drinking at age 12

00:08:36.700 and um you know engaging in all sorts of illicit behaviors that she regrets and i think you know

00:08:43.980 her mother has a lot of answering for and she went through some very dark times now thankfully she

00:08:48.640 came out the other end and actually is a quite lovely person. Um, notwithstanding her Kamala 1.00

00:08:52.440 Harris and Dylan Mulvaney interviews, I have to say, I met her. I think I told you guys this last

00:08:56.320 spring and, uh, or February, whatever it was this last winter, she was delightful and she's clearly

00:09:02.780 gotten her act back together, but look at Bieber. So the industry can keep you afloat and a star

00:09:08.300 and rich, and you can marry a supermodel, et cetera. But those demons that came into your life

00:09:14.480 when you were 15 and too young to handle the things your parents allowed you to be subjected

00:09:19.300 to, hello, like a weekend with Diddy and Usher, they can ruin you in a different way.

00:09:29.300 So I'm not surprised to read the news about Hayden Penetary at all. I'm sad. I lament the loss of

00:09:38.760 this American young woman. Um, but I don't think it's a pattern we're ever going to correct for 1.00

00:09:44.820 because there will always be incomplete mothers. And in some cases, daughters like Britney Spears

00:09:54.960 too, who shoved their child into the entertainment industry at too young and too precarious in age 0.98

00:10:00.940 and don't have the skills or the desire to rescue them from the fallout that inevitably comes.

00:10:06.100 and you know the nation will keep watching them on the big screen and shoving their popcorn in

00:10:11.760 their mouths and moving on with their lives i mean it's it's not a judgment on the american people

00:10:16.600 it's like you know what who are we to say anything about it like if that's what you've decided to do

00:10:23.600 in your family i like i don't want you to judge my family any more than you want me to judge yours

00:10:27.680 but when this happens don't ask me to be surprised i'm not

00:10:32.800 according to the authorities in South Carolina where she died, the Greenville PD and emergency

00:10:40.340 personnel responded to a report of an unresponsive female at an apartment complex just before 2 p.m.

00:10:47.380 yesterday. Just that term, unresponsive female. It's like she was responsive for 36 years. She

00:10:58.920 responded to everything. She was given uppers. She said in her memoir, she wrote in her memoir,

00:11:06.060 she was given amphetamines as a teenager before she went out on the red carpet. So she'd be peppy.

00:11:11.180 Oh, got to dazzle everybody. Who gave her those? She didn't, she did the person, the courtesy of 0.99

00:11:17.180 not outing them by name or title, but was it an agent? Was it somebody that the Hollywood machine

00:11:24.400 put around her to make sure she'd be stellar. She wouldn't forget to sparkle while on the 0.76

00:11:31.820 red carpet. She was a responsive female. They made damn sure of it until she couldn't do that 0.82

00:11:39.520 anymore. They found Penetary and administered emergency aid, but she was tragically pronounced

00:11:47.980 dead at the scene. Doesn't seem like there was any saving her. A statement from the Greenville

00:11:53.600 police said the initial findings had, quote, not indicated any signs of foul play or suspicious

00:11:59.040 circumstances, but that the investigation is ongoing. Not sure what that means. No indication

00:12:04.860 of suspicious circumstances. So what could that mean? Could it mean there were bottles of pills

00:12:09.560 empty all around her? Would we consider that not suspicious because we can see what's on the

00:12:14.080 outside of the bottle and we know what was ingested? Is it not suspicious because, you know,

00:12:21.520 there was some sort of a death by suicide that was obviously self-inflicted i genuinely don't

00:12:27.640 know we no one's using the word suicide um but there is a question about an overdose based on

00:12:33.920 the 9-1-1 call here it is obtained by the new york post care everyone in centers on for cardiac

00:12:39.580 arrest justin milbaugh 701 easily redrode apartment 1209 701 easily redrode apartment

00:12:45.280 12-0-9.

00:12:46.720 Care B-1, engine 2, respond for cardiac arrest.

00:12:49.420 Justin Milboff, 701, Easley Bridge Road, apartment 1209.

00:12:53.700 701, Easley Bridge Road, apartment 1209.

00:12:56.200 Post-Mistro 1, Medic 29, responding.

00:12:59.600 Respond in place of Medic 29.

00:13:02.140 Easley Bridge Road, overdose.

00:13:03.980 CPR is in progress.

00:13:06.800 There you heard it.

00:13:10.220 Overdose, which is almost certainly what happened.

00:13:12.880 uh according to new reporting by the daily mail she died after going into cardiac arrest following

00:13:20.120 a suspected od in the apartment uh i guess it's panettiere steve tells me sorry i did again like

00:13:27.200 i it's a tough last name and i i never watched her in any of these shows just knew of her in the

00:13:32.180 culture uh but with respect the last name is panettiere she arrived in south carolina from

00:13:38.720 LA just one day prior to her death with her on-again, off-again real estate agent boyfriend, 0.99

00:13:46.120 Brian Hickerson, who is from South Carolina and seems like an absolute fucking douchebag. 1.00

00:13:52.580 That's my opinion. Absolutely terrible person from what I can see. He was once arrested for 1.00

00:13:58.500 punching her in the face and was accused of abusing her multiple times over. Let me just

00:14:06.920 show you a clip. I just did a quick search and found this clip of him after her memoir came out

00:14:13.520 in May. She wrote a whole memoir, which we are going to get into. Um, and it hit in May and she

00:14:20.140 went on a press tour and TMZ caught up with him, this guy, Brian, to ask him about, you know,

00:14:27.860 she had outed some of the abuse and so on, Brian Hickerson. And, um, keep in mind, she had been

00:14:34.240 saying she never wanted to be back together with him. There had been a five-year restraining order

00:14:37.760 from 2021, which would have just expired based on his abuse of her. And she had been publicly

00:14:43.360 saying, I'll do whatever I can to make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else. And it was really

00:14:48.260 important for me to speak about the abuse because I want other girls to know, other young women to

00:14:53.240 know. Then she was back with him the day before she died. So I think we all would like to know

00:15:01.720 more exactly about what went on in the time they were together in the 48 hours prior to her death.

00:15:09.420 But I'm sorry, here is TMZ asking him a bit about the memoir and about his relationship with her.

00:15:16.300 You tell me whether this is someone you'd want dating your daughter.

00:15:20.480 You ever think about one day marrying her?

00:15:24.300 Yeah, of course.

00:15:25.680 Is it something that you think could still happen?

00:15:28.100 I hope so. I'm sorry. She probably don't think the same way, but, you know, it's, you know.

00:15:40.360 Do you think it's better for her to not be with you? 0.98

00:15:43.480 I think that Hayden is one of the most talented people I've ever met in my life, and I would be an idiot not to walk away from her and let her bulwish in her career. 1.00

00:16:00.340 So we probably wouldn't be good together. 1.00

00:16:07.200 He can barely spit out two sentences and shows up for his TMZ interview with his backward baseball cap.

00:16:13.480 If you watch the whole two minutes, it's even worse. It just sounds like an absolute dolt. And one of the, you know, this huge Hollywood star settles with this loser? I don't think so. I don't, I mean, it says so much about the kind of mental state she was in. 1.00

00:16:30.460 she reunited with her abuser, this guy with an IQ of four. Um, there were so many people who did

00:16:39.620 not serve this woman well in her life. And it's sad. And by the way, she dies at 36 years old,

00:16:47.560 which is the same age as Marilyn Monroe. It's very interesting to me who had a very similar story.

00:16:55.160 And Marilyn had a very damaged mother, very damaged, and had a childhood where she wasn't

00:17:04.920 a child actress, but she was passed from home to home.

00:17:08.680 She never really had anybody to love her.

00:17:11.680 And she wound up modeling and then becoming an actress and never dealt with her childhood

00:17:19.400 trauma or the fact that she never felt loved by anyone ever.

00:17:25.160 No one ever really wanted her when she was Norma Jean and wound up allegedly taking a

00:17:31.240 massive overdose and dying at age 36.

00:17:33.920 And I remember looking into her story and thinking, the miracle around Marilyn Monroe,

00:17:40.540 like the shock, is not that she died at age 36, it's that she made it to 36.

00:17:46.700 And as I read more about Hayden's story, I'm starting to feel the same.

00:17:52.000 I mean, it was depression.

00:17:53.380 it was sexual abuse it was physical abuse it was child exploitation it was an absence of love from

00:18:04.120 her primary caregivers it was non-stop conflict with her mother her mother who made her feel like

00:18:12.980 a piece of meat like a commodity to be sold that i mean the the primary relationship with the mother

00:18:19.780 being that effed up does not necessarily set one up for success. Now, there are exceptions to this

00:18:25.340 rule. There are very strong women like Dr. Laura Schlesinger, who follows me on SiriusXM, who's 1.00

00:18:30.960 incredible and one of our MVP Americans, if I do say so. She's got some very strong feelings about 0.55

00:18:39.480 how one should deal with that. Melissa Francis, my dear friend, wrote a whole memoir called Diary

00:18:46.220 of a stage mother's daughter and she starred as um the new ingles daughter in the sort of second

00:18:53.520 iteration of little house on the prairie once the original cast had aged out she was cassandra

00:18:58.540 ingles next to jason bateman by the way um but she's written very openly about the damage that

00:19:06.140 that mother and that relationship did to her um but yeah the the absence of a strong healthy

00:19:14.080 relationship with one's mother can be extremely damaging, and it certainly seems to have been for

00:19:17.900 Hayden. So there's a lot to unpack here, including the Hollywood angle. On that and all of this

00:19:24.060 is Rob Shooter. He's a reporter. He's author of the novel. It started with a whisper,

00:19:29.040 and he's a regular on the nerve at night with our pal Maureen Callahan, and they are wonderful

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00:20:36.280 slash Megan. That's half off at S-I-M-P-L-I safe.com slash Megan. There's no safe like Simply

00:20:45.440 Safe. Rob, welcome back. It's such a sad piece of news, but as I say, were you shocked? I mean,

00:20:53.240 surprised, right? But shocked? That's a brilliant setup, Megan. Nobody that I've spoken to in

00:20:59.180 Hollywood, I hit the phones from the moment that this was announced, when this news broke,

00:21:03.580 I hit the phones and people are really sad, but nobody is shocked. And the word that keeps coming

00:21:10.720 up, I've spoke to six different people who knew Hayden, was that she died heartbroken. Several

00:21:16.760 things were going on in her life right now, which I think we should address. She was in financial

00:21:22.640 trouble. She was very successful, but she'd never had that big part, that big money-making franchise 0.87

00:21:30.120 that would set her up for life and so it was it was a struggle for her to to pay her bills and

00:21:37.220 also too Hollywood had pretty much moved on the reason that she wrote the memoir is because she

00:21:43.360 wasn't getting roles anymore often when people sit down and write their memoir it's because other

00:21:48.440 stuff is not keeping them busy she had a lot of time on her hands and I think she thought that

00:21:54.100 this book would make a lot of money would put her back on top it sold well it was a New York Times

00:21:59.160 bestseller but it didn't make the sort of money that you can retire on so a lot of pressure here

00:22:03.920 she didn't have the money and also to the the adoration the the the people adoring her which

00:22:11.240 which she really needed she really wanted that had gone away too so money and fame both had

00:22:16.540 pretty much disappeared yeah and it had disappeared and at a time when nothing else was going well

00:22:24.020 you know she she didn't solve the depression she didn't have custody of the daughter who was being

00:22:30.520 raised by the daughter's dad over in europe once she who i think was she gave up whatever the word

00:22:38.220 is let's see um let's see uh when she was it was 2018 the child was born in 2014 but by the time

00:22:48.920 Hayden got herself together after the postpartum and the alcoholism and so on.

00:22:54.580 She looked at her child, she said, and the child was thriving with the dad in Europe.

00:23:00.420 And she made a good motherly decision to leave her there.

00:23:04.360 I think that was the right decision for her to make.

00:23:06.580 She shouldn't have been dragged for it.

00:23:07.960 But I'm sure it brought up massive feelings of insecurity and guilt.

00:23:12.240 Guilt, totally.

00:23:13.260 She talked about this.

00:23:14.300 She talked about, you know, the most remarkable thing about this memoir

00:23:17.780 are, is that she was literally an open book, no pun intended. I reread some of the book

00:23:22.780 this morning, and she really put it out there. She put out her feelings. She put out how she felt

00:23:28.340 worthless. She announced that her brother had died of heart issues just a few years ago, and that was

00:23:34.580 a hole in her heart that she could never fill. She talked about this really toxic relationship

00:23:39.800 with her mother that she tried to fix over and over and over again, and was never able to do so.

00:23:47.120 She felt so much alone. If I can just give a personal note to here, Megan, I met her several times.

00:23:53.840 So before I was a reporter, before I was a journalist, I was a publicist and I repped Jessica Simpson.

00:23:59.900 I repped Jennifer Lopez. And so a ton of people in the music business, Alicia Keys, I met with Hayden about her music career.

00:24:06.540 She desperately wanted to be a pop star and it didn't happen.

00:24:09.980 But what I took away from all these meetings was just how sad she was.

00:24:14.320 It was just a really sad, vulnerable young person who really wanted me to like her.

00:24:22.280 And it's a Hollywood cliche, but it's the truth here.

00:24:27.240 These people who start off so young in the business, they peak way too early and then nothing else in their life can give them that high except maybe drugs.

00:24:39.380 It's heartbreaking.

00:24:40.620 Yep.

00:24:41.220 yes and she talked about being given the amphetamines by somebody close to her before

00:24:47.060 she would go on the red carpet and she did she used the term gateway like no one explained to

00:24:54.440 me what they were giving me and what kind of a gateway drugs like that would be to a life of

00:25:01.720 being hooked on drugs rob i mean the irresponsibility of of the sort of supporting cast

00:25:09.300 around a child actor or a teenage actor like hayden it's legion it seems to happen more often

00:25:16.220 than it doesn't happen that you know when you get like a responsible caretaker that that's the

00:25:20.960 exception this is this is the rule yeah pump them full of drugs expose them to inappropriate parties

00:25:26.380 and grown-ups including men and the abuse starts becoming sort of regular whether it's physical

00:25:34.760 sexual um you know this is abuse it is abuse for somebody who's supposed to be taking care of a

00:25:40.260 young teen star to start funneling drugs into her system absolutely and it happens more often than i

00:25:47.400 think anybody listening anybody watching realizes i've been around hollywood a really long time and

00:25:52.720 i think we all hoped it had changed from the judy garland days his dorothy on the wizard of oz who

00:25:57.840 died very young addicted to pills too that she started taking as a child and i think we would

00:26:03.220 like to think we've progressed we haven't and let me tell you why Hollywood cares about money

00:26:08.140 doesn't care about people it certainly doesn't care about children if you're making money for

00:26:13.420 the studio they want you to keep making that money and the message this sends young people

00:26:18.640 any anybody who's in the Hollywood world is the more work you do the more successful you feel

00:26:27.280 and pills and booze all becomes part of that equation and you start you start believing

00:26:34.000 that the the drugs are actually helping you you really believe that without the drugs you won't

00:26:41.360 be quite as sparkly you won't be quite as loud you won't be kind of quite as bright and so it's

00:26:46.740 a really ugly message to send anybody particularly children i am shocked when i look at children who

00:26:54.820 are now stars that they actually made it because we have a laundry list britney spears lindsey

00:26:59.360 lohan tara reed it goes on and on and on and even the stars that we assume are very well adjusted

00:27:05.040 we we a couple of years ago four or five years ago we thought justin timberlake was a solid

00:27:09.800 character and now we see he has a dui in the hamptons and um it is everywhere within the

00:27:15.760 business if you love your kids you set it at the top of the show don't get involved in show business

00:27:20.180 And if you do, if they really want to, if it's not you, if it's not the parent pushing, if your kid wants to be an actor, an actress, you've got to be there.

00:27:28.700 You've got to be on the set because you can't rely on Hollywood to babysit, to look after, to raise your kids.

00:27:36.140 They won't.

00:27:38.700 Nor would I ever let my child drop out of school, homeschool their lessons.

00:27:45.220 You know, I don't mean the kind of homeschooling that a lot of parents do in America.

00:27:48.240 I'm talking about like some tutor on the set instead of an actual bricks and mortar school

00:27:53.000 or a parent doing, you know, structured homeschooling.

00:27:56.220 No, that's basically eliminating positive social influences that a child needs.

00:28:02.860 A child needs to be a child.

00:28:05.900 That's really the basic rule.

00:28:08.800 They need to do kid things.

00:28:10.620 They need to not be, not feel like little prisoners in their parents' money-making scheme.

00:28:15.280 Yeah. And, you know, not to be too hard on the mother, but I will be. Her name is Leslie Vogel. She's Hayden's mom. And apparently she was some middling soap star and decided that, you know, she that this daughter was going to be the star she never could be.

00:28:30.280 And she put Hayden into commercials where, as I said in the intro, she had done multiple, by age five, she had been in 50 commercials.

00:28:43.840 She was in auditions when she was eight months old.

00:28:47.160 She wrote, oh, she wrote, actually, she talks about this.

00:28:50.800 I think we have a soundbite about how her mother became her business manager in all things and, of course, wanted a cut.

00:28:57.520 And Hayden was funding the entire family.

00:28:59.280 I think her dad was a fireman.

00:29:02.220 And so she became the breadwinner.

00:29:04.580 They were spending her money.

00:29:06.620 And she finally got to the point, I think at age 19, where she looked at her mother and said,

00:29:11.800 I'm done with this dual relationship.

00:29:13.920 I do not want, you can't be both my mother and my manager.

00:29:17.420 And I would like you to just be my mother.

00:29:19.800 I choose mother.

00:29:21.100 And the way the mother responded, here it is in her own words, as she sat down on May 11th,

00:29:26.820 Hayden did with Jay Shetty on his podcast, Sot2.

00:29:30.660 When I was 19, I finally got the guts to, got up the courage to split from her as business-wise

00:29:42.500 because I desperately wanted a relationship with her, desperately wanted her to just be my mom.

00:29:48.400 um and so she came to my trailer during lunch when we were filming heroes and and I said to her

00:29:57.280 I don't want us to work together anymore I just want you to be my mom and I remember being hopeful

00:30:05.760 but there was that part of me who knew her too well but I also wasn't expecting the reaction

00:30:13.240 that i got which was you owe me and that's all she said oh oh my god you owe me i mean the

00:30:24.220 pathology rob yeah it's like again it the miracle is that she survived age 36 it's a miracle mother

00:30:30.240 like that and and the mother the real mother stepping in was hollywood right you're doomed

00:30:34.560 right right it's so shocking to me i think if you'd ask the mother you can have one role be

00:30:39.820 my mother or my business manager, she would have picked business manager. This is a lot of money

00:30:44.420 that these young people earn, often from families that were not terribly wealthy. When I worked with

00:30:49.680 Jessica Simpson, her dad, who was a preacher, suddenly became her manager. And the other thing

00:30:55.300 too about this is they're terrible managers because they don't have any of those skills.

00:31:00.000 You want a really good manager. Anybody that runs their own business, anybody that works

00:31:05.580 in an organization knows how important it is to have a real manager. And so when these stars,

00:31:12.260 when they hire their moms, their dads, their brothers, their sisters, their husbands, their

00:31:16.260 wives, it is such a disservice to their career. So the mother here believes Hayden owes her entire

00:31:22.860 career to the manager. I would argue that if Hayden had had a real manager, a manager that

00:31:29.280 could set her up, a manager that could teach her how to save money, a manager that could teach her

00:31:34.020 how to invest, we might have a very different story that we're telling today. Joe Simpson was

00:31:39.860 a terrible, terrible manager. And Jessica, ultimately Jessica Simpson, needed to own that.

00:31:46.820 But by the time they got the courage to tell their parent, no, the damage is done. When you look at

00:31:53.460 these big superstars, really successful people, they have great teams around them. They have great

00:31:58.520 managers. They have great lawyers. You're only as good as your team. And Hayden was better. She was

00:32:04.940 better than her team. She was talented. She was smart. She's a good actress. And she could have

00:32:10.540 had a very different career had she had better representation. And that representation was 0.91

00:32:15.180 unfortunately her mom. There she is in a picture we just put on the board with her mom, dad, and

00:32:22.240 her younger brother, Jayden, who also died. He died a couple of years ago at age 28. And

00:32:29.380 they said that it was of a congenital heart defect that no one knew about until he was

00:32:34.640 pushing 30. But he too, she said, had substance abuse problems. I mean, it just seems to me

00:32:41.100 that these parents were out to lunch at every turn. You know, you have two kids and both of

00:32:48.540 them, develop serious substance abuse problems. And now one dies possibly from that issue. And

00:32:55.360 I'm sorry, but if you have a congenital heart defect and you're engaging in substance abuse,

00:33:00.520 you're setting yourself up for a catastrophic ending. Again, he didn't die technically of drugs,

00:33:06.700 but it's just an ultimate parenting fail. And it's very hard to recover from that or to become

00:33:14.300 a good mother after all that. And the postpartum thing, she talked about it pretty bravely because

00:33:20.180 you know, you're going to talk about that. People are going to judge you, you know, because we all

00:33:24.760 say like a mother should love her kids. Well, it's more complicated than that. It is. I have

00:33:30.200 not a lot of empathy for this woman on trial right now for killing her three kids, but I recognize

00:33:35.340 postpartum depression as a very real thing. A lot of mothers have had it. And here she is back in

00:33:41.560 2022, uh, in connection with a good morning America story, talking about that and what

00:33:47.900 she went through as that one, where did you turn to for support?

00:33:51.820 Um, the bottle, the bottom of the bottle.

00:33:55.000 I didn't have any negative feelings towards my child.

00:33:58.100 I just knew I was deeply depressed and I didn't know where, you know, the alcoholism was

00:34:03.920 ending and postpartum was beginning.

00:34:06.320 And, and I ran myself pretty ragged.

00:34:10.540 I felt like I was walking blind and there was nobody there that was really able to support me in the way that I needed to be supported.

00:34:18.820 And I don't like to ask for help either.

00:34:21.400 You know, I want to be that strong, stoic woman.

00:34:23.860 But I mean, when you see a happy-go-lucky girl for years suddenly on the floor in a puddle of mess and alcohol, you got to know something's wrong.

00:34:37.920 hmm rob she said no one was there to help her and it i believe that thoroughly right it's like

00:34:45.580 what hollywood is like a different version of media it really is in so many ways i see so many

00:34:52.600 similarities where there are very few actual friendships there are lots of like you know

00:35:00.440 fake friendships where you're patting each other on the back or your your interests are aligned

00:35:05.000 and you're making that work.

00:35:06.280 But at this point in my career,

00:35:08.160 I have learned that most of those relationships

00:35:11.160 are not true friendships.

00:35:12.800 There are exceptions to the rule.

00:35:14.400 Maureen is one of them.

00:35:15.540 God love her.

00:35:16.180 The best.

00:35:17.800 But there's just a ton of people who are users.

00:35:21.680 I'm just going to say it.

00:35:23.120 And I'm sure she's telling the truth

00:35:26.040 that when her life imploded,

00:35:28.300 she looked around,

00:35:29.660 she's got her business manager mother 1.00

00:35:31.700 who really isn't interested unless she's getting paid. 1.00

00:35:34.540 and all of these fake Hollywood friends

00:35:36.860 who probably had no interest

00:35:38.220 because her star was on the wane.

00:35:40.240 She was on Heroes from 2006 to 2010.

00:35:43.800 She was on Nashville from 2012 to 2018.

00:35:47.400 But everything after 2018, Rob,

00:35:49.540 it's, you know, what have you done for me lately?

00:35:51.020 What are you starring in now?

00:35:52.140 Yeah, it's a brutal, brutal business.

00:35:55.300 Part of it is the way that the business is set up itself.

00:35:57.600 You work on a movie for six weeks and then you leave.

00:36:01.080 When you have a job, what I call a regular job, you see the same people for years after years.

00:36:07.480 I built real friendship working in offices, in newsrooms, where we all got tea together or coffee together each day.

00:36:14.520 And we were in those rooms for months and months, years and years.

00:36:17.920 Show business is not like that.

00:36:19.520 Most movies, you are on set for just a very short period of time.

00:36:22.500 And then after that, you never see those co-workers ever again.

00:36:26.080 And also, too, it's very much a town.

00:36:28.120 And I think I think it's not just Hollywood, but success is when everybody wants to be your friend.

00:36:35.200 And she had success. It didn't last for very long.

00:36:38.560 But while she had success, she knew what it was like to have everybody calling her, everybody praising her, everybody wanting to be her best friend.

00:36:46.980 So she had tasted it, which I think is actually more dangerous than never have tasting it at all.

00:36:52.860 And when the success went away, there was nobody else left around her.

00:36:59.360 She didn't have many friends.

00:37:00.940 She didn't have many contacts.

00:37:03.220 She didn't have much family support at all.

00:37:06.640 She had a brother, and that's why she was so devastated when her brother died.

00:37:10.740 He was her ally in this toxic, disgusting family that she grew up in.

00:37:16.000 And so she was just set up for failure.

00:37:18.360 I don't know how this story could have ended any other way, Megan.

00:37:22.680 Like you asked me at the top of the show. I'm shocked, but I'm not surprised. And that's what's so heartbreaking. And it's not going to be the last time this happens. We're going to see this happen again and again and again until really big changes are made in Hollywood. And that won't happen because the money is what drives that business.

00:37:45.020 the um book launch led to her public telling of some other shocking stories from when she was

00:37:56.420 in the business and coming up and including one where she said she was 18 years old and on a yacht

00:38:01.200 and that there was a woman who she did not name who brought her down below deck and said i want

00:38:09.120 you to get in bed with him and there was a man who she described as a british singer songwriter

00:38:14.620 in bed and she did it she got into bed with him and said she she almost had a disassociative

00:38:22.120 moment where she'd been so used to just doing what these grown-ups told her to do

00:38:26.660 and behaving as instructed that she did it and you know it was a a peek under the sheets

00:38:34.740 into how hollywood works there was speculation about who the woman was but never any confirmation

00:38:40.860 then she also told a story about um this oscar winner who exposed himself to her she explained

00:38:50.060 um that he she was 19 so this is a year after the yacht incident she said the actor and director

00:38:56.720 showed his genitals to her at a private party reading here from a daily mail report organized

00:39:01.520 by the same friend who had invited her to the yacht uh she was chatting with a group of men 0.94

00:39:06.620 in their 40s and 50s at the party when she sensed these men's eyes on her and said it, quote, made me

00:39:12.760 uncomfortable. She felt like a young commodity ripe for the picking in that moment and decided

00:39:17.700 to leave when one of the men approached her as she was putting on her coat. She said the man

00:39:21.720 whom she did not identify claimed to have a big wad of gum on his pants, but she wrote,

00:39:28.560 I looked down and recoiled. This well-respected award-winning actress testicles were hanging out 0.99

00:39:34.980 from his unzipped fly she did not tell her friend about the incident because she believed the moment 0.97

00:39:40.360 had passed and assumed some older men had just grown up with no manners the fact rob that she 0.62

00:39:48.180 didn't tell the friend and that she just kind of shrugged it off as like this is what old men do

00:39:53.580 tells us so much about what she had seen in just her first 19 years and it's like

00:39:59.520 i have a 15 year old daughter and i have an almost 17 year old son and i can guarantee you that if

00:40:04.420 anything like this happened to them at a party, I'd be their first phone call, or at least I'd

00:40:09.060 be in the top four. They'd talk about it. It would be so shocking and beyond the pale.

00:40:14.400 God only knows what she had seen prior to that. Yeah, this became sort of like an everyday

00:40:18.460 occurrence. Even the way she describes it in her book, it's not that shocking. And that's because

00:40:25.080 from a very, very young age, she had been around depravity. She had been around people that were

00:40:31.760 just bad bad people who had never had any consequences we saw this with the harvey

00:40:37.560 weinstein case and to put a child into this environment it's just so unfair adults i don't

00:40:44.340 know how adults can actually navigate going to hollywood and having a career we've heard about

00:40:50.320 the casting couch we've heard about auditions we've heard about lecturers heads of studios bad

00:40:56.920 behaviour. Add into that mix somebody who is literally a child, who has never, ever had to

00:41:04.240 learn the skills yet that they need in life. And that innocence was taken away from her. And I

00:41:10.440 truly believe, I spoke to a friend of Hayden's this morning, they told me that's why she made

00:41:15.960 the decision that her daughter would have a better life with her father than with her mother,

00:41:23.500 because she wanted to break the cycle.

00:41:26.180 She didn't want this to go on.

00:41:27.840 It ends with us. 0.99

00:41:29.520 She did not want her daughter in this environment. 1.00

00:41:32.900 And then she got slammed for that.

00:41:35.940 She knew people were going to slam her.

00:41:37.760 And it does sound terrible to give up your daughter.

00:41:41.060 She didn't look at it like that.

00:41:42.340 A friend said she wasn't giving her up.

00:41:44.760 In Hayden's opinion, she was rescuing her,

00:41:47.780 rescuing her from a world that Hayden just couldn't shake off.

00:41:52.620 she wanted it back in hollywood she wanted to be making movies this was her life this was her drug

00:41:59.560 and she knew it was bad in the same way she knew that that boyfriend was bad she just couldn't walk

00:42:05.380 away from it it walked away from her wasn't giving her up she was giving her a chance and it worked

00:42:11.500 the child by all accounts is thriving and i'm sure extremely distressed today to find out what's

00:42:16.920 happened with her mother. This quote came from the memoir about her own mother. I became the

00:42:25.300 confidant and the assistant and the therapist and the shoulder to cry on and everything but her

00:42:32.140 child. I mean, that is just so brutal. And I believe every word of it. That innocent little

00:42:39.520 girl, the one who first took us all by storm, she was in A Bug's Life. And then she was in

00:42:44.880 Remember the Titans, which to be honest is the only thing I ever saw her in those, those movies

00:42:48.640 that I've seen with my kids. But when I saw the younger version of her, I was like, Oh yeah,

00:42:53.660 this, this brings back a lot of memories. She was effervescent and had for sure star quality.

00:43:00.980 There is this video that we pulled of her on the then Rosie O'Donnell show. This is back when Rosie

00:43:08.180 was super likable and fun and funny and had her talk show, which was a hit before she'd lost

00:43:14.780 her mind too to be honest but watch this clip baby i'm so into you you got that something what can i

00:43:25.420 do baby you see me around oh the earth is moving but i can't feel the ground every time you look

00:43:38.220 my heart is jumping tell me what can i do you drive me crazy i just can't sleep

00:43:48.080 i'm so excited i'm in too deep oh crazy but it feels all right

00:43:57.280 baby thinking of you keep me up all night

00:44:01.120 adorable I mean absolutely adorable but of course they're promoting something in red like

00:44:16.240 they look like latex pants it's giving a little JonBenet vibes there you know a little

00:44:22.420 sexualization of a young girl Rosie was clapping along and kind of doing fun facial expressions 1.00

00:44:28.740 It's like, I can't believe how good she is.

00:44:31.000 And but you think about that sweet, innocent girl, Rob, who had her whole life in front

00:44:35.320 of her, who should have been out at the playground in the middle of the day, not on Rosie O'Donnell

00:44:40.860 promoting her latest project amidst a sea of vipers.

00:44:45.560 And then you find out she winds up drug addicted, an alcoholic, a mother who doesn't apparently

00:44:53.620 love her who's getting used and abused who then has massive postpartum depression has to give up

00:44:59.780 her child to the husband with which you know which caused her additional emotional issues

00:45:05.220 and then the ultimate of course winds up in a physically abusive relationship yeah yeah that

00:45:11.800 little girl winds up in this physically abusive abusive relationship she talked about it too on 0.99

00:45:17.360 Jay Shetty. This was dated May 11th, again, two, three months ago, about that relationship and

00:45:24.400 when he would hit her, according to Hayden. It's not four. That the physical abuse would come out

00:45:30.040 of left field, but it was always when he was drinking. Same as my mom. We could be dancing

00:45:35.900 and joking, and then a switch would flip and suddenly it was on. Something would snap and it

00:45:42.600 was like watching a predator suddenly smell blood. I was dealing with this Dr. Jekyll,

00:45:50.200 Mr. Hyde situation. I tried to fight back in every way that I could think of. I took every

00:45:56.240 approach from standing my ground to attempting to calm the situation to running and hiding from it

00:46:02.220 until he sobered up. Then once he was sober, that good part of him would be back and he would see

00:46:10.220 the damage he had done. And he was devastated and apologetic. And it seemed so honest and genuine

00:46:17.700 that I was torn. I thought back to everything I've done wrong in the past and the forgiveness

00:46:24.340 I was shown. So I think a part of me felt an obligation to be just as forgiving.

00:46:32.420 Classic abuse, classic survivor behavior. Yeah. So what do we make of the abusive relationship

00:46:39.560 here yeah yeah just this is a behavior that she was taught at a very early age and it's so easy

00:46:44.120 to fall into this and i know that people from the outside look at this and just say leave just leave

00:46:49.280 you can't this is in her her dna and so she got a kid away from this which i think we all have to

00:46:55.280 be really grateful for and have extraordinary admiration about but she herself just couldn't

00:47:01.380 get out of it and just that clip you just played on rosie o'donnell really touched me because where

00:47:06.860 was the off-ramp? There must have been so many decisions from that kid to yesterday when she

00:47:14.460 passed away, all those years. Where was the off-ramp? Why wasn't there any chance to get off

00:47:21.220 this path that I think we could all see now looking back? It seems so clear to me that we

00:47:26.900 know what the outcome of this is going to be. And it's so much harder than it sounds. Once the damage

00:47:33.160 is done. And it was done at a very early age. Forever on, you've got to constantly be fighting

00:47:40.280 to correct that. And she did fight. She put up a good fight. I think writing the memoir,

00:47:46.540 I spoke to a friend of hers this morning, writing the memoir really helped. It helped her sit down

00:47:52.380 and think about this stuff. Unfortunately, it didn't help enough. And it was probably a little

00:47:57.040 bit too late. Right. It was three months ago. Three months ago. And the bomb, though it may

00:48:05.940 have soothed on its initial release, did not last. And it appears she went back to some sort

00:48:12.480 of substance abuse. And it appears she was doing that with the abusive ex-boyfriend. Just to

00:48:18.740 clarify again, the ex-boyfriend is the one whose soundbite we played at the top who sounded like 1.00

00:48:22.840 an idiot. The ex-husband or partner, the father of her child is a totally different guy who 0.99

00:48:28.260 seems to have been a good guy who's got custody of the daughter over in Europe.

00:48:33.740 But this is what TMZ is reporting, that Hayden's on-again, off-again boyfriend,

00:48:40.080 Brian Hickerson, was living in the unit where she died with his brother. We have not been

00:48:45.580 able to confirm if Brian was in some sort of distress. The 911 caller reported two people

00:48:51.320 in need of an ambulance. So there may be another shoe to drop on this whole thing,

00:48:58.160 Rob, because the reporting prior to that was via the Daily Mail. 1053 is saying she went into

00:49:06.720 cardiac arrest following a suspected overdose at a loft apartment in South Carolina. You could hear

00:49:13.000 the woman on the phone say she had suffered cardiac arrest, 9-1-1. A few moments later,

00:49:18.560 you could hear the male dispatcher talk about suspected overdose. Police, excuse me, and the

00:49:24.300 medical examiner are investigating the death. No indications of foul play or suspicious

00:49:29.380 circumstances. Again, we don't know what that means. They said that she and Brian were said

00:49:33.920 to have flown from LA to South Carolina, where he's from one day before she died. And that he,

00:49:40.440 of course, had been arrested in the past for punching her in the face. There were other

00:49:43.940 instance. Instances alleged, but not proven in court as well. So there you have it. They were

00:49:49.380 together in the 24 hours prior to her death. It sounds like she died in his apartment. And he may

00:49:56.400 also have taken something if that second person in need of an ambulance was Brian. This is just so

00:50:03.500 like revolting story. It is, but there's so many questions here though, Megan, too. She got on a

00:50:08.680 plane with him to go to South Carolina to his apartment to celebrate her birthday. Friends tell

00:50:14.480 me they were back together on again, off again, on again. At the moment, unfortunately, they were

00:50:19.380 back together. There was so much together that she was going to celebrate her birthday. This was

00:50:23.940 meant to be a joyous trip. This wasn't a trip of heartache, of heartbreak. They went to South

00:50:30.400 Carolina together where he, I'm told by my sources, was planning a big birthday party. It wasn't a

00:50:36.340 surprise, but he was throwing a birthday bash. What happened? Where was he? Was he in the

00:50:41.660 apartment? Where did the drugs come from? Are they prescription drugs? What is going on? We

00:50:46.320 have a ton more questions about this really ugly case. We saw people around Matthew Perry

00:50:52.440 charged after he died, the ones who supplied him with the drugs. If this was an OD, who supplied

00:50:58.580 the drugs? Was it the boyfriend? Was this the final act of abuse? I'd like to know. Let's end

00:51:04.520 with what she said to Jay Shetty in SOT 7.

00:51:08.020 I finally feel like I have shaken off all of this darkness

00:51:16.520 and this negativity,

00:51:19.100 and that means I've closed one door

00:51:22.600 and another door is opened,

00:51:26.040 and I can feel it opened,

00:51:29.020 And I can feel all the possibility, all the possibilities, all the exciting possibilities.

00:51:38.160 I feel like I have a lot more life to live.

00:51:43.920 Oh, Megan.

00:51:45.220 If only that had been true.

00:51:48.080 Rest in peace, Hayden Penadere.

00:51:50.740 You deserved better.

00:51:52.360 Rob, thank you so much.

00:51:53.620 Great to have you here.

00:51:54.360 Good to see you, my friend.

00:51:56.200 Say a prayer.

00:51:57.020 We'll be right back.

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00:53:31.360 No, no, no!

00:53:34.160 Oh, come on! This is not happening!

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00:53:54.700 we're making insurance more human just me this hour folks because i've got a lot to say about

00:54:03.980 a few subjects, including the death of Professor Jason Arday. First of all,

00:54:11.360 like most normal people, I was horrified to see the news cross the transom on Friday. I mean,

00:54:18.560 once again, I could believe it. I wasn't actually struggling to believe it just because this was

00:54:26.240 clearly a disturbed person. I mean, very clearly not mentally solid or well. And he had already

00:54:34.060 begun a pattern of painting himself as the victim where the truth is he was the perpetrator and the

00:54:41.060 cause of the troubles that he was suffering. He was not the victim of people finding out he had

00:54:47.520 lied and reporting on it. So that's what happened. But it would have been, I thought,

00:54:55.520 on brand, for lack of a better term, for him to become the ultimate victim because he clearly

00:55:02.100 wanted us to see him as such. I don't believe for one minute that story about the pig's head 0.51

00:55:06.600 winding up on his parents' doorstep. No one took a picture. I don't believe he was attacked on the

00:55:12.080 campus of Cambridge University twice, and no CCTV coverage caught it. I don't believe any of

00:55:21.420 those things happened. I don't believe he was beaten so bad at a bus stop that he got epilepsy

00:55:25.380 and then went on to have two of the abusers as students, and one asked him to be the godfather

00:55:33.040 to his child. I will believe that if we find said young man. Show me the man and have him say it's

00:55:41.180 so and then I will believe it short of that I don't believe it it's too extraordinary and I

00:55:46.340 don't believe you get epilepsy from getting beaten up at a bus stop same as I don't believe he had

00:55:50.480 multiple brain tumors or a stroke or broken leg on which he ran the last nine of his alleged 30

00:55:56.580 marathons in 30 days at 30 30 or 35 I just I think what we've stumbled upon here and I think

00:56:04.640 we all know this now is a serial fabulist whose word could not be trusted and who at every turn

00:56:09.580 was making up lies. One of the things he said about himself was that he was featured in some

00:56:14.380 British television program when he was a child, but that television program had been on long

00:56:23.940 before he was born. So he was not, he was not featured in that television program. Like these

00:56:30.140 were, they were very bold and aggressive lies, aggressive lies that he could easily be caught

00:56:35.700 telling and now has been. But having said all that, and I'll get back to the substance of

00:56:40.800 what happened in his case. When a human being dies, it's appropriate and proper

00:56:50.300 to pay your respects to them. He was a dad of two kids. He was a husband. He was a son.

00:56:57.420 And look, he was a British citizen who was flawed, deeply flawed. And people did get hurt. 0.99

00:57:04.520 there have been testimonials from students who didn't get anything like what they were entitled

00:57:10.540 to as paying students at Cambridge University. But this isn't a Bernie Madoff type who's running

00:57:16.260 around with his lies so big that people are losing their fortunes and their lives.

00:57:21.300 So on the relative scale of, you know, bad actors, he was nowhere near toward the bottom. He was more

00:57:27.900 of a very interesting feature of DEI gone wild, you know, of a university that's at the apex of

00:57:38.160 prestige and respect and at the nadir of credibility now because of its unwillingness

00:57:48.400 to verify any of his credentials. So it was a shocking display of DEI on steroids where

00:57:54.820 truly they just hired him because of his skin color, notwithstanding his obvious lack of

00:58:01.760 qualifications, even on the resume he submitted. And then if you probed it just a bit, I mean,

00:58:08.540 just a bit, you would see it fall apart like a house of cards. You know, I think Simon & Schuster

00:58:14.360 is wrestling with that same reality right now as his memoir sits on the shelves with a bunch of

00:58:18.720 obvious lies in it. So it's very sad that he thought he had no way out of this scandal,

00:58:26.540 but to take his own life. And it's clearly a testament to his lack of resilience and lack of

00:58:33.720 mental wellness. I really thought that the play could have been for Jason Arday,

00:58:40.800 something akin to what we saw George Santos do, which is become in on the joke. You know,

00:58:48.280 if he could have come out and given a tell all interview, just confessing to it all and saying

00:58:54.640 I did lie. These are the lies I told. And you know what? I was embraced like the second coming

00:59:01.420 by the admin board or the university board at Cambridge and at my last university, too.

00:59:09.440 And there was a long list of people who bought my lies hook, line and sinker. And I don't blame

00:59:14.100 them because I'm the one who told them he can talk like that. But it does tell you a thing or

00:59:20.860 two about this system. So, you know, for whatever it's worth, this is what I gleaned. You can wipe

00:59:27.060 your, you know, hands clean and free of me, but this is my story. That book, Simon & Schuster

00:59:33.800 should have published and it would have been a huge bestseller. You know, I think healthy people

00:59:40.860 can generally see beyond the storm to the next sunny port. And it is very sad that he was not

00:59:50.300 able to. So I do, my heart goes out to his family and friends who are suffering. However, none of

00:59:56.780 that undoes the truth, which is that Jason Arday's demise professionally is due to one person,

01:00:03.840 Jason Arday. And to the extent outside institutions or influences pushed it along,

01:00:11.000 it was not the media that exposed the lies. It was the institutions that set this guy up to fail

01:00:18.600 like nobody's business. I mean, this, when someone sets someone up to fail, it should now

01:00:24.880 be called an Arday. Or maybe it should be called a Cambridge. But something along those lines,

01:00:30.240 because this was the biggest disservice

01:00:34.880 a university has ever provided to someone

01:00:37.860 in the name of helping them.

01:00:40.220 What did they think was gonna happen?

01:00:42.940 I mean, truly, what did they think was gonna happen

01:00:44.660 when they took this guy

01:00:45.620 who was not particularly impressive in his credentials

01:00:49.060 or where he'd been educated?

01:00:51.600 He had written almost nothing

01:00:53.140 and certainly nothing deeply scholarly,

01:00:55.060 which is what the actual criteria are

01:00:57.260 to get hired as a Cambridge University professor.

01:00:59.540 They overlooked them because they were, this is also an openly reported fact, under pressure to add to their ranks in both the professorial departments and in the student department when it comes to black people, male or female.

01:01:14.960 They need a more black participants at Cambridge.

01:01:18.920 And even when they were defending our day early on, I read you this quote twice as we covered the story over the past two weeks.

01:01:25.640 They were saying openly his defenders there, one of the assistant professors at the university was saying, oh, but he does such a good job of basically being black, of being representative and being diverse, which is so important here at Cambridge.

01:01:38.760 It's like, this is so insulting.

01:01:40.380 Remember, we talked about this.

01:01:41.320 It's so insulting.

01:01:42.960 They were saying it outright.

01:01:44.400 Oh, but he does a great job of being diverse.

01:01:47.520 Like, he's nailing that. 1.00

01:01:48.520 Oh, my God, you're so insulting.

01:01:50.860 So they overlooked his lack of qualifications.

01:01:54.740 And the New York Times, in a very interesting twist, came out with a long story underscoring

01:02:00.960 that point over the weekend, you know, on how what the qualifications are and how he

01:02:05.500 didn't come close to meeting them and how there actually were a few other people in

01:02:09.080 the running to become to fill this position that he filled, including two black women

01:02:14.600 who put in for the position, but got rejected because they didn't have his disability story.

01:02:20.000 I'm sure that was it. That's the reason he was chosen over them was not explicit

01:02:23.580 in the piece, but let's face it. You know, the only way to Trump a black woman in the field of

01:02:29.700 DEI is to, yes, you have to be black. So he had that box checked, but he was a man. So he went 0.97

01:02:34.480 down. They were above him. I guarantee you, I know the hierarchy. So do you guys. Um, you have

01:02:39.940 to have something in the LGBTQ field or you got to have disabilities. Those are these are their 0.92

01:02:46.520 rules. Sorry. You know, in destitution derby woke style, you need another identity chip.

01:02:55.700 And he had them galore. He wasn't gay. He was married to a woman, but he did have the 0.68

01:03:00.840 disabilities. Just ask him. And they were clearly made up. I mean, maybe he had one or two, but the 0.71

01:03:06.040 New York Times also reported that he was not mute until age 12. He said he only spoke his first

01:03:12.380 words just days before his 12th birthday. And now the New York Times has tracked down

01:03:17.480 his childhood friends saying that's not true. He used to crack jokes in the back of the car on the

01:03:24.020 way to some practice they carpooled and he would imitate people's accents and we'd be very funny.

01:03:29.840 and he was absolutely fully verbal.

01:03:34.000 So his parents knew he was lying

01:03:36.580 and virtually everybody who grew up with him

01:03:39.920 knew he was lying

01:03:40.620 and did him the courtesy of not outing that.

01:03:44.440 Cambridge University,

01:03:46.080 I mean, I guess that's one of those things.

01:03:48.520 I don't think they're going to run around

01:03:49.540 testing people's stories about themselves

01:03:51.300 when they were 10.

01:03:53.240 Like if I go out and say I was a tomboy,

01:03:56.040 are they going to want proof?

01:03:57.320 Like, show me a picture of you in jeans,

01:03:58.760 sweatshirts. I can see why they didn't look into that one. But honestly, the Times hits them for

01:04:06.760 that too. Because what the Times reports is that, and Cambridge has these speech specialists and

01:04:13.100 disability experts and specialists on staff, senior staff in their professorial ranks

01:04:19.260 that could have told them, and apparently has spoken to the Times or at least others at other

01:04:23.760 universities, other professors at other universities have, saying that's not possible.

01:04:30.040 What they've reported about that disability not being able to speak and then turning it around

01:04:34.300 is not possible. I'm pulling up the Times article here. They write, his claims about not speaking

01:04:40.800 were false. A former classmate and a speech professional who worked with him told the

01:04:47.200 Times. One former schoolmate, Jonathan Stewart, recalled Dr. R. Day cracking jokes and putting

01:04:52.580 on playful accents in a minivan on the way to church activities as children. His supposedly

01:04:58.900 remarkable trajectory from nonverbal preteen to PhD had no precedent in medical literature.

01:05:07.080 No precedent, experts in developmental and speech delays say. That should have set off alarm bells

01:05:13.280 for the Cambridge Hiring Committee, which included a child psychiatrist who had done research on

01:05:20.360 autism, experts said. So the hiring committee had someone who was an expert in child psychiatry

01:05:28.140 and had done research on autism. And yet that person wasn't able to muster the courage to say,

01:05:34.640 this sounds like bullshit. The longer article in the Times talks about how, you know, these 0.99

01:05:41.820 experts in this field have been getting calls from parents who do have children with this problem

01:05:49.940 saying, oh, this is prior to Friday and his downfall, saying, oh, my God, this is wonderful.

01:05:56.000 Like, what a story. Is it true? And that these experts have been saying, you never want to tell

01:06:01.780 a grieving mother, grieving because of her child being mute, unable to speak, that it's impossible.

01:06:09.920 But so they knew. So the Times was doing this deep dive on our day when they found this Jonathan

01:06:18.280 Stewart. They found the speech professional who worked with him and who knows who else they found,

01:06:26.120 but they were doing a deep dive on Jason Arday. And if they had, if that had gotten back to Jason

01:06:32.320 Arday, then I'm sure he knew, you know, the other shoe was about to drop that more and more huge

01:06:38.820 pieces of his bio were falling apart because while many of us suspected that was a bunch of 0.91

01:06:43.100 bullshit about not being able to speak prior to age 12 and not, and being totally illiterate until 0.57

01:06:48.000 age 18, only to then go on and get your PhD. We didn't have proof of it, even though it did seem 0.99

01:06:53.640 imminently disprovable. There would be childhood friends. There would be professors and teachers

01:07:00.900 in your life. There would be piano teachers and so on who any intrepid reporter could track down.

01:07:06.900 It just hadn't been done. And now you've got the Times writing how conservative commentators

01:07:13.220 seized on our day's fall as evidence of diversity and inclusion efforts run amok.

01:07:19.060 Okay, number one, what else could this even arguably be? This was DEI run amok. That's not

01:07:28.740 a matter of opinion. That is a fact. It's a fact. What do you mean run amok? They, in three paragraphs

01:07:37.740 later, admit Cambridge had so few black professors that it was under pressure from faculty and

01:07:42.720 students to diversify. I mean, you are reporting that Cambridge was under pressure to hire more

01:07:51.220 black professors. And that's when our day came along. Cambridge is on the record defending the

01:07:58.620 hire as saying, oh, but he was so diverse and he did a great job of showing that we now want

01:08:05.800 diversity at Cambridge. I think this isn't Megan Kelly's opinion or any other conservative

01:08:10.200 commentator's opinion. You you're reporting the facts that support no other conclusion, New York

01:08:16.260 Times. So this is nonsense to try to say they seized on this as evidence of DEI run amok. But

01:08:24.040 it's also not conservative commentators. All right. The guy the first. The guy who brought

01:08:30.960 this out had been at Cambridge. I mean, like he does have very controversial views on race, this

01:08:35.820 guy, but I'm going to guess he's not some diehard right winger. But the Guardian did one of the

01:08:42.560 first and best early takedowns of this guy. The Guardian. The Guardian is as far left as a paper

01:08:49.200 can go. So this is not some right wing hit job. This was everywhere over the past two weeks. It

01:08:57.280 was like the dismantling of a massive lie that had been told at the most elite levels of university.

01:09:04.060 and we all watched a crumble in real time.

01:09:06.960 Like, that's what was interesting about it.

01:09:09.440 Only the nutcases are like, 1.00

01:09:11.840 ah, ha, ha, ha, let's destroy a black man. 1.00

01:09:14.440 That had nothing to do with it. 1.00

01:09:16.380 It was only interesting that his skin color 0.85

01:09:18.820 was the reason for his rise.

01:09:21.140 It had nothing to do with people wanting to see him fall.

01:09:24.440 Not the vast majority.

01:09:26.000 I'm sure there was a couple of racists out there

01:09:28.060 who said, oh, great.

01:09:29.200 You know, but that's not actually how this went down.

01:09:32.120 And yet, and yet, we've got a narrative forming now amongst the normal race hustlers who are trying to make this into something about racists hurting a black man.

01:09:49.700 That's what this is really about.

01:09:51.020 And of course, chief among them, Ibram X. Kendi.

01:09:55.080 Oh, let me start before I get to him.

01:09:56.420 There's a PBS anchor.

01:09:57.760 PBS.

01:09:59.100 What?

01:10:00.060 Why are you commenting on anything?

01:10:01.600 We don't want to hear from you, Jeff Bennett, who posted on X about the New York Times article.

01:10:08.240 A man dies at 41 after weeks of relentless public scrutiny.

01:10:12.260 The New York Times the next day, he was underqualified for his job.

01:10:15.660 Whatever the merits of the underlying questions, publishing this now is ghoulish.

01:10:20.340 What are you saying?

01:10:22.020 You're in a news organization.

01:10:24.200 We're in news.

01:10:24.960 This is a McDonald's, sir.

01:10:26.440 Like, what are you?

01:10:27.380 We're in news.

01:10:28.400 it is literally our job to report on on events like this and what the truth is you don't want

01:10:35.100 to read it you don't have to read it don't buy the times don't click on my face as dave chapelle

01:10:39.760 says but how is a newsman at pbs criticizing another another news organization for telling

01:10:46.960 the truth about this serial fabulist whose character and life story is very much in question

01:10:56.200 I mean, I think he gave us the ultimate answer with what he did on Friday. But

01:11:00.480 for those who still have doubts, the reporting is worthwhile. It is worthwhile to hear from

01:11:05.920 the Stewart character, Jonathan Stewart, and others who grew up with Arde.

01:11:11.800 So then there's Ibram Kendi, the anti-racist, who believes that the only answer to past racism is

01:11:17.640 present-day racism. Literally, that is his belief. His name is not even Ibram X. Kendi.

01:11:24.780 I think you know that.

01:11:25.860 His name is Ibram Henry Rogers.

01:11:28.060 Henry, Henry, you really shouldn't be a Malcolm X wannabe.

01:11:31.840 Don't be such a poser, okay?

01:11:33.540 Because you didn't live like Malcolm X at all.

01:11:36.520 He actually was born in Queens.

01:11:38.500 He's the son of a tax accountant, Larry Rogers, and a business analyst, Carol Rogers.

01:11:43.600 Larry and Carol had little Henry, who then changed his middle name when he married Dr.

01:11:51.680 Sadiqa Kendi, and he adopted her last name. So he's very progressive. And let's face it,

01:11:57.420 Kendi sounds more exotic than Rogers. So he himself is just a creation. And he posted this

01:12:03.820 on X. The death of Jason Arde hit so close to home that I had no words yesterday. To be a

01:12:10.240 prominent anti-racist black scholar is to know you are a target, almost totally surrounded by 0.65

01:12:17.580 resentments. You know that at any point the attacks can come like a lynch mob. And then he

01:12:24.260 goes on to say, your lynchers will announce your death as if they had no role in your lynching.

01:12:31.260 Unbelievable. Okay. This is a lynching. This is a lynching by people who suspected they were being

01:12:37.660 lied to and suspected he had plagiarized and suspected he hadn't done all of the things that

01:12:43.540 the hiring decision was allegedly based on and investigated those things and found out that they 0.92

01:12:48.660 were right and that he was a liar. They had an anti-racist obligation, you might say,

01:12:54.140 to bite their tongues. Then there's a little bit more. He wrote, I guess, in his, I don't even know

01:13:02.180 what this, where this publication is. It's his substack. He had a gig at the Atlantic. I don't

01:13:08.600 think it worked out. It was very short, a short stint as now, now he's writing at Substack. So

01:13:14.800 I'm kind of feeling like the Atlantic is onto his grift. So his longer piece is entitled the

01:13:21.580 media lynch Jason Arde. I mean, you know where it's going. You know where it's going. Um,

01:13:27.600 okay. He goes, I have enough on him. Then Karen Atiyah, formerly of the Washington post. We've

01:13:36.460 talked about her. She and I had our little Twitter war. She was the one who she liked the tweet.

01:13:43.380 This is what decolonization looks like after 10-7. Remember, somebody saw all the dead Jews 0.99

01:13:50.920 in the streets of Israel, dead grandmas at the bus stop, dead babies, dead children, raped women, 0.99

01:13:56.440 and tweeted out some some other person. This is what decolonization looks like. And Karen 0.92

01:14:02.080 Atiyah of the Washington Post liked the tweet. That's insane. You're a lunatic. If that's your

01:14:11.320 opinion, you're a sick person and she is a sick person. So she got fired by the Washington Post, 0.99

01:14:17.700 not over that, but it was after Charlie Kirk, um, from their terminal termination letter to her,

01:14:24.480 they wrote your postings on blue sky, which clearly identifies you as a post columnist

01:14:29.460 about white men in response to the murder of Charlie Kirk do not comply with our policy.

01:14:35.280 For example, you posted, quote, refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face

01:14:40.860 in performance in performative mourning for a white man that espouse that espouse violence

01:14:46.640 is not the same as violence. And you posted, quote, part of what keeps America so violent

01:14:51.900 is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness, and absolution for white men 0.74

01:14:59.620 who espouse hatred and violence. That was her reaction to Charlie's murder. And good for the

01:15:05.500 Washington Post, they fired her ass because that was a bridge too far, even for them. 0.99

01:15:14.580 She went off into obscurity because we don't need another know-nothing, 1.00

01:15:19.980 aggrieved black woman to write a bunch of nonsense about decolonization or this nonsense about 1.00

01:15:28.300 Charlie, implying clearly that he deserved to be murdered at any publication. And even the left 0.99

01:15:34.920 knows that now they're, they're coming back slowly to their senses, or at least some mild

01:15:39.820 recognition that they pushed it too far. And, and as a result, Karen Atiyah has been sitting

01:15:45.660 on the sidelines doing absolutely nothing for months now, if not years. Do we have her? She

01:15:51.960 went on with Jim Acosta not too long ago and was once again playing the victim.

01:16:00.840 And I just wonder if you could lay out your thoughts on where you are right now and

01:16:06.120 maybe explain a little bit what what happened, because you were pushed out essentially for what

01:16:10.420 you said about charlie kirk yeah and and well thank you so much you actually i think you were

01:16:17.820 actually the first one to reach out it's uh it actually um i'm still processing but it's actually

01:16:26.140 been i have not been able to land a one-on-one on a major network no um i've you're the first

01:16:37.460 sub stock one um i went on with don lemon um you guys have been the only ones seemingly brave enough

01:16:44.480 to have me on so i i also just want to say thank you you don't you have no idea how much this means

01:16:52.500 to me and like i think it's just sadly a sign of the times for mainstream media not just in this

01:17:00.120 moment and the culture of fear i think but also where uh where the truth tellers are finding

01:17:07.240 themselves having to go oh my god yes jim acosta and don lemon that is where the truth tellers have

01:17:16.540 to go now she this this piece takes the cake my friends it takes the cake on her sub stack jason

01:17:25.140 Nardé's death, and the age of digital racial terror.

01:17:29.620 On Monday, I was sitting on the beach in Spain, a beautiful village north of Barcelona.

01:17:36.580 I watched families with little children squealing with delight in the clear water, glamorous

01:17:41.620 older women sunning themselves topless. 0.93

01:17:44.260 Despite the scenes of joy, play, and sensual ease, I found myself wondering all week what 0.72

01:17:49.920 or who I had left to live for, to fight for.

01:17:52.860 and she mentions I was wrongfully fired by the Washington Post last September and then she lost

01:17:57.520 her father okay so this is amazing because she's about to go on to tell you how racist America is 0.98

01:18:02.880 and how we want all black people dead as she writes about how she's sitting in some beautiful 0.99

01:18:07.980 village north of Barzalona watching families with little children squealing with delight in the 0.99

01:18:12.380 clear water the glamorous older way oh you've got it so tough Karen Atiyah my god I'm I feel really

01:18:19.060 sorry for you. Um, said no one. So she goes on to say she had planned to write about turning 40 as

01:18:29.000 a single woman. No wonder what no one wants to talk to her. Who wants to hear about that? Who 0.99

01:18:33.880 gives a shit? Stop lamenting your age. I'm sick of this is like a new cottage industry for women. 1.00

01:18:39.400 Like, Oh, what it means to me for it's like, like there's no going back. People embrace whatever 1.00

01:18:45.980 age you are. Like Holly Berry, who, you know, we've ripped on endlessly for like trying to show

01:18:52.120 us how sexy she is because somebody once said she was bad in bed and she's created a complex in this 1.00

01:18:56.640 woman. She, she posted a beautiful shot of herself in this sexy, but appropriate dress. Like this is 0.98

01:19:03.280 60, like a black dress. And I was like, Oh, you know what? She's getting it. She's getting it.

01:19:07.780 That's you should embrace. This is 60. This is what 60 can look like. I think Nicole Kidman,

01:19:12.300 same. Yeah, here she is. She looks stunning. It's great. I'm like, she's turning it around. 0.65

01:19:17.380 She's not, she's not, she's not turning it around. Here she is in SOT 17 touting her new podcast,

01:19:22.220 Holly Berry. Juicy like a peach is the name of the podcast. Here's another picture, by the way,

01:19:27.840 with boobs galore. Let's listen to SOT 17. I am in Fiji celebrating two things. My 60th birthday. 1.00

01:19:37.920 I don't know how that happened, but I thank God every day that it did. I've never felt better.

01:19:41.860 mind, body, and spirit.

01:19:43.980 Time is a construct and age is just a number, so who cares?

01:19:47.240 But I'm also celebrating the launch of Juicy Like a Peach. 1.00

01:19:54.080 This is for all my menopausal ladies going down that path of life, 1.00

01:19:58.560 trying to hold on to your intimacy because that's what makes us us. 1.00

01:20:02.580 It's a vital part of being a woman,

01:20:05.900 and there's no reason that part of our lives should have to change in any way. 0.62

01:20:10.620 So stop by Ulta, pick up Juicy Like a Peach.

01:20:14.080 Consider it like a daily moisturizer, like we put on our face every day to keep us moist and supple.

01:20:20.000 That's what Juicy Like a Peach does for our vaginismus.

01:20:23.180 Go pick it up and be eternally Juicy Like a Peach.

01:20:29.540 Okay, so she's not over there.

01:20:31.980 She's not over the issue.

01:20:35.160 I was wrong.

01:20:36.020 the juicy like the peach is the product, not the podcast that was put out a week or two ago. And

01:20:41.480 then she went down a lane with a bunch of other overly saucy pictures. So I like, she looks great.

01:20:47.760 I'm inspired that that's what 60 can look like. But, um, the, the point is we don't have to

01:20:53.620 continuously lament our age 40. I was at one of her to write an article. What 40 is like as a

01:21:00.420 single woman and what rebellion reinvention and strategy might look like for a black woman 0.92

01:21:05.220 entering the second half of life but the midlife reflection sadly people will have to wait 0.97

01:21:10.240 the midlife reflection will have to wait she writes because because yet another black intellectual

01:21:15.180 has been destroyed by white institutions what who's who are the other black intellectuals

01:21:22.720 in case you were wondering she does tell us you got to flip to the second page here and you know

01:21:27.640 who they are? Claudine Gay, the plagiarizer who used to run Harvard. Don Lemon. Joy Reed. 1.00

01:21:37.680 And she writes, quote, myself, Karen Atiyah. Those are the ones she throws in one for good measure.

01:21:45.280 Meghan Markle, in her view, another black intellectual destroyed by white institutions. 0.99

01:21:52.440 Okay. The white institution that Meghan Markle married into made her a princess and fabulously famous beyond her wildest dreams. They gave over one of their prized beloved sons to her, and then he reproduced with her. It doesn't seem like they really hated her. 0.96

01:22:13.580 could it have been possibly Karen stay with me here that she was a bully brat narcissist who 1.00

01:22:20.980 refused to behave like everyone who marries into that institution must behave like Kate had to 0.99

01:22:26.920 behave like Fergie was told to behave like Diana was told to behave and it had absolutely nothing 1.00

01:22:32.740 to do with her skin color you absolute idiot I was there I was in London for the royal wedding 1.00

01:22:42.140 saw the whole procession. She was adored. They loved her there and here. If her skin color played 1.00

01:22:52.540 any role, it was in making people love her more because we in America were like, oh, 0.96

01:22:58.240 give me a black princess. That's so cool. Black American princess, no less. And the folks over

01:23:02.380 in the UK, the liberals felt guilty about all the colonialization. So they were all, yeah,

01:23:07.480 Yay. If it was relevant at all, it was relevant in a positive way. You absolute fool. It was her

01:23:13.900 behavior, her behavior that turned people on her. And I have a newsflash for you. Black people are

01:23:19.420 not immune from criticism because of their skin color, which all normal black people already know

01:23:24.760 and support. Like only you weird, angry ladies sitting on the beach surrounded by gorgeousness 1.00

01:23:31.460 and luxury, find these little slivers to complain about, made up nothings that are not real. 0.98

01:23:40.140 She goes on. Let's see. She talks about our day's impact. Our day's impact is precisely what made

01:23:51.360 him and what makes black intellectuals like him targets for elimination, elimination. Black 1.00

01:23:58.980 Black people who transgress the racial hierarchy are targets to be put back in their place. 0.99

01:24:05.840 Now, you know what, Karen, I've got some news for you. 0.95

01:24:07.860 I agree with you on that, except it doesn't work the way you suggest. 1.00

01:24:12.280 I agree that black people who transgress the racial hierarchy are targets to be put back in their place. 0.68

01:24:18.740 But the racial hierarchy, I hate to break it to you, has blacks up here and whites down here and Asians down here. 0.74

01:24:28.140 That's the racial hierarchy post-2020. 0.52

01:24:31.780 And Blacks who transgress that by challenging it, those with heterodox thinking on this 0.53

01:24:40.480 particular issue, yeah, they do indeed become targets to be put back in their place. 0.97

01:24:45.880 I speak, of course, about Blacks like Clarence Thomas, who is constantly referred to as an 0.82

01:24:52.660 Uncle Tom on the U.S. Supreme Court because he doesn't see race the way you do. Karen,

01:24:59.400 Karen, people like Carol Swain, who came on this program and explained to us how she was doing

01:25:06.800 great in the academic field at universities like Vanderbilt and others until she started to speak 0.66

01:25:13.320 out about race in a heterodox way. Take a listen to this soundbite. The decision to leave academia 0.84

01:25:21.740 had a lot to do with the reaction. After I criticized Black Lives Matter in 2016, 0.82

01:25:28.660 I had returned to teaching and I was on CNN debating Areva Martin. And I had gone to the 0.51

01:25:36.320 Black Lives Matter website. And at that time, it was like they weren't concealing their Marxism. 0.94

01:25:42.340 There was very little about blacks, but there was a lot about the other things they stand for. 0.99

01:25:47.600 and I was shocked and so on the show I said that they represented a destructive force in our society 1.00

01:25:56.880 that they were Marxists and I encourage people to go to that website and that set up an even

01:26:03.840 even greater firestorm because on the campus I'd had problems you know with with some groups you 1.00

01:26:12.060 know, but not the blacks. They had not been involved. And so once I criticized Black Lives 0.99

01:26:19.720 Matter, I united the affinity groups on campus. And she was pushed out of academia for having 0.90

01:26:29.600 those views, as was Shelby Steele, author of White Guilt, amongst other major publications.

01:26:36.500 and his son, Eli, posted on social media last week.

01:26:41.960 And I read this to you at the time.

01:26:44.220 And I'll just read it to you in part because it's long.

01:26:46.880 I was only a teen when I witnessed how my father, Shelby Steele, 0.98

01:26:50.100 was forced out of his university for the crime of believing that blacks

01:26:52.980 could achieve the American dream without preferential treatment.

01:26:56.820 My father was often voted as the best professor in his department.

01:27:01.120 When I would go with him around town,

01:27:02.540 former students would come up and thank him for pushing them to their limits. 0.89

01:27:05.420 But when he began to publish his thoughts on race in Harper's and Commentary magazine, the white guilt slash black power elites. 0.95

01:27:14.740 Got it. He's so right. White guilt slash black power elites at the university decided he had to go. 1.00

01:27:22.300 Goes on to conclude with, don't you see how evil race is to rely on even an inch of it robs one of the will they need to push their talents to the highest of heights. 0.97

01:27:33.480 so it is the case that black intellectuals get punished for heterodox views on race 0.75

01:27:42.340 or their views on race just not the ones you think karen atia it's not working the way you think

01:27:49.400 she goes on to say a black person in the united states can hear about what happened to our day 0.86

01:27:56.260 and feel terrified for his or her job. So now all blacks have their necks on the chopping blocks 0.99

01:28:03.780 because of our day, because he was outed. So every single black person now has to work. 0.99

01:28:08.860 This is such nonsense. Note to all blacks and whites and everybody else. You're fine if you 1.00

01:28:16.980 didn't tell a bunch of huge foundational lies that collectively amount to a fraud in getting

01:28:24.280 the job. And then in doing the job, you'll be fine. And honestly, even regular resume puffery

01:28:30.620 would never have been a story like the Jason Arday story became. This is just crazy ass, 0.98

01:28:37.800 self-important lying, you know, just to make herself feel like more of a victim. 1.00

01:28:42.660 Like she's, she's got to build it up. Like the whole world's against me. The Washington Post

01:28:46.140 was wrong to fire me for those tweets. And I guess Israel is so wrong that, that they,

01:28:51.740 they deserve to have their old ladies killed at buses and their babies murdered like that's 0.98

01:28:55.360 decolonization like this is her worldview it's very dangerous it's very weird and then she goes 0.99

01:29:02.140 on this is like so good i've got to read you part of it um algorithms can now turn the punishment

01:29:07.320 of a single person into a global demonstration of power delivering a lightning fast warning to

01:29:12.480 successful black people in white institutions around the world don't aim too high what happened

01:29:17.460 to our day can happen to you. Behave accordingly. And she ends by saying, as I sit here in Spain,

01:29:23.580 I wonder if any place in the world is safe if you are a black person who has transgressed the 0.99

01:29:28.240 racial order. Maybe we should ask Barack Obama. And by that, I mean, former president Barack 1.00

01:29:37.740 Obama. Should we ask him? Let's ask him what if there's any place in the world that is safe for

01:29:42.660 you as a black person who has transgressed the racial order. Could he do it like we could if he's 0.85

01:29:48.220 not available, he doesn't take your calls. Maybe we call Kamala Harris. Let's ask her what she

01:29:53.760 formerly vice president of the United States. Do you think you think that she feels that a black 1.00

01:29:58.980 person can transgress the racial order and have any place in the world that's safe for her? I

01:30:05.040 don't know. Like if you can't get her to call, maybe maybe you could get Oprah, Meghan Markle's

01:30:09.520 friend. Let's check in who could buy and sell all of us and our whole families 25 times over.

01:30:15.280 So let's find out how life in America went for her. Like all of this is just so absurd.

01:30:20.460 This woman is a nutcase and it is very telling that she was writing for the Washington Post 0.98

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01:33:28.960 Hey, everyone.

01:33:30.040 It's me, Megan Kelly.

01:33:30.940 I've got some exciting news.

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01:34:00.940 here's one of the one of the cherries on the sunday um this crazy person who's a member of

01:34:10.720 parliament in the uk her name is i don't know her personally but her name is zara zoltana

01:34:15.960 writes if jason arday were a white middle-class academic he would not have been hounded by the

01:34:21.340 british press in the way he was so the i saw actually a fair amount of this on x over the

01:34:27.680 weekend. So this would never have been done to a white academic who told all these lies.

01:34:33.680 That's not true. In fact, Greg Lukianoff, a fire who's been on this show repeatedly,

01:34:41.740 he's a free speech advocate, responded on X to her tweet, quote, I think what happened to Jason

01:34:47.820 Arde is tragic and heartbreaking, but this counterfactual that you propose did actually

01:34:53.480 take place in the U.S., involving a professor and right-wing jokester, who I became friends with over

01:34:59.400 the years of having to defend his free speech rights. Mike Adams was mobbed and canceled in

01:35:04.820 2020, and he killed himself shortly thereafter. And the American press largely treated it like

01:35:11.380 he had it coming. Also, same commenters on the internet seemed almost gleeful about his death.

01:35:19.240 some commentators. That was wrong then, and it would be wrong now. And sure enough,

01:35:26.580 Greg had written an article in 2023 about Professor Mike Adams and his suicide, saying it's been more

01:35:31.980 than three years since former University of North Carolina Wilmington Professor Mike Adams killed

01:35:36.580 himself after being pushed into early retirement for offensive tweets. He was the author of the

01:35:42.180 book Feminists Say the Darnedest Things, A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts Women,

01:35:47.280 spelled W-O-M-Y-N on campus. 0.89

01:35:50.900 Mike posted a tweet addressing

01:35:52.060 state governor Roy Cooper

01:35:53.320 that compared North Carolina's

01:35:55.060 COVID-19 restrictions to slavery,

01:35:57.140 writing Massa Cooper,

01:35:58.180 let my people go.

01:35:59.700 Change.org petition 0.59

01:36:00.780 then to get him fired.

01:36:03.300 Mike and I finally spoke,

01:36:04.520 writes Greg over the phone

01:36:05.860 on July 13th.

01:36:06.740 He was shaken and upset

01:36:07.940 in a way I'd never heard him before.

01:36:09.760 He told me stories of angry phone calls

01:36:11.600 and emails he received.

01:36:13.440 He was found alone in his home

01:36:14.640 on July 23rd

01:36:15.520 with a self-inflicted gunshot

01:36:16.700 wounded the head. He was 55. Then Greg writes the following. For those of you who have never been

01:36:24.880 in the middle of the battle between the worst of the ideological left and the worst of the

01:36:30.960 ideological right, I can tell you it really gets inside your head. You get to see people on both

01:36:36.460 sides go from loving you to hating you, depending on who you defend, even if the moral principles

01:36:41.020 of the case are identical. You can be unpersoned into a caricature of societal evil, an object of

01:36:47.340 scorn, no longer a real person, but an evil abstraction, sometimes a laughable cautionary

01:36:54.080 tale. That's all true. But the difference here is that Karen Atiyah and others like her, including

01:37:01.460 this Zahra Zoltana, believe that no white person would ever be subjected to that kind of online

01:37:09.640 abuse. And indeed, you have an example right here of a college professor who was, and I don't think

01:37:17.040 Karen Atiyah, wrote one word about it. And I'll bet you this Zahra Zoltana knows nothing about it

01:37:25.460 because the press ignored it and they didn't care about a 55-year-old white male professor

01:37:31.960 taking his life after the online mob came for him. I can tell you something else. I back up

01:37:39.000 what Greg writes about 100%. To be in the middle of the battle between the worst of the ideological

01:37:45.000 left and the worst of the ideological right. Yeah, been there. I've been canceled by both sides

01:37:50.380 over and over and over. It's not pleasant. It can really do a number on you. And even though

01:37:58.020 it's been stressful, no matter who's trying to cancel me, nothing compared to what the left did

01:38:03.480 me. I mean, they are the most vicious in the country as far as I'm concerned. Absolutely

01:38:08.760 vicious. They will bully you until you are in the fetal position and have zero empathy. They

01:38:17.760 will smile as they watch your pain. So I don't really have any tolerance for these leftists

01:38:24.520 trying to lecture anybody on the right about canceling Professor Arday. He was canceled not

01:38:33.020 by the right. He was canceled by the New York Times, by the Guardian, by Cambridge. And just

01:38:39.080 because conservatives noticed he was a DEI hire and his perpetuated lies does not make them

01:38:44.480 responsible for his death. That brings me to the Atlantic's Thomas Chatterton Williams,

01:38:50.100 who wrote the following. There's something really nasty about the bloodlust that exists on part of

01:38:57.640 the right. Goes on to say, dancing on a man's grave for the crime of plagiarism and being

01:39:03.120 over-promoted is morally abhorrent. That's not what happened here. That is a straw man, Thomas.

01:39:11.160 It's not that he was over-promoted. Come on. He was a serial fraudster. Every piece of his bio

01:39:17.600 turned out to be false. We're learning more about his lies by the minute they were so many in number.

01:39:24.420 and it is a fascinating human story

01:39:27.660 when you find somebody like that

01:39:29.560 who's risen to the highest ranks

01:39:30.960 of our most trusted institutions,

01:39:33.700 allegedly Cambridge University.

01:39:35.340 That would be a story

01:39:36.420 irrespective of skin color 0.97

01:39:37.820 and bloodlust that exists

01:39:40.880 on parts of the right. 1.00

01:39:41.920 What the fuck? 0.99

01:39:43.600 We are three weeks away 1.00

01:39:44.920 from the anniversary

01:39:46.440 of Charlie Kirk's assassination

01:39:48.580 before our eyes.

01:39:49.860 Would you stop?

01:39:51.560 Stop it. 0.99

01:39:52.340 don't be ridiculous 0.99

01:39:54.660 was it 0.99

01:39:55.720 was it

01:39:56.420 a right winger

01:39:58.040 who tried to take him out

01:39:59.600 I don't think so

01:40:00.500 Thomas

01:40:01.220 was Luigi Mangione

01:40:03.080 who just pleaded guilty

01:40:04.580 to federal stalking

01:40:06.220 of Brian Thompson

01:40:07.460 we'll see

01:40:07.960 what happens

01:40:08.480 with those state charges

01:40:09.720 as well

01:40:10.140 which are for murder

01:40:10.920 was he a right winger

01:40:13.760 did he have

01:40:14.580 bloodlust

01:40:16.020 existing on parts

01:40:17.600 of the right

01:40:18.040 I don't think so

01:40:18.980 this is just

01:40:21.060 you know

01:40:22.340 This is just a narrative that people push to make themselves feel better.

01:40:27.820 Then you've got this group, the Good Law Project, which had been defending Jason Ardett, irrespective of all his lies, never gave in on the lies, never admitted any lies, whatever.

01:40:37.220 Now they are standing by their positions.

01:40:41.140 They call it still fake accusations of plagiarism.

01:40:43.480 And they want a public inquiry into his death.

01:40:48.040 The death was the direct, foreseeable, and foreseen result of press harassment.

01:40:53.360 There cannot be any doubt that racism lay at the heart of this story.

01:40:56.800 To be black in a public figure is now enough to make you a target. 1.00

01:40:59.720 Black people are fearful, and on the evidence, they are right to be. 1.00

01:41:04.840 We respectfully ask you, this is to the government, to set up a public inquiry into the press, 1.00

01:41:10.220 to commission an immediate public inquiry into how to ensure a responsible press,

01:41:15.860 given its contribution to Dr. Arday's tragic death. 0.94

01:41:19.520 That is so outrageous and ridiculous.

01:41:23.320 This is not the doing of the press. 0.90

01:41:26.080 The press had every right to test the claims

01:41:28.660 that were offered to it publicly by Professor Arday,

01:41:33.460 who made sure he was on camera

01:41:35.520 and in prominent writings and publications

01:41:38.500 touting his alleged life story,

01:41:41.560 including in a memoir he chose to release

01:41:45.060 through Simon and Schuster. Okay, like, you put it out there, sir. You put it out there,

01:41:51.940 Professor Arday, and the testing of the claims was entirely appropriate and frankly, long overdue.

01:42:00.400 I just, you know, this whole thing is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy that was caused by Arday and 0.61

01:42:06.020 a university so determined to feel good about itself and wash away its own white guilt that

01:42:14.100 it put someone in a position asking for him to fail. The students that have come forward since

01:42:20.060 he was elevated talking about how he never gave them proper reviews. He was not a proper mentor

01:42:24.840 to them as he was required to be. He wouldn't meet with them. He would just say, you're doing

01:42:29.020 great, doing great. Then he'd give them grades that fell far below what his oral brush offs had

01:42:35.020 been. They were not well served by him. And the other professors who saw him being touted as the

01:42:40.760 poster boy at Cambridge who knew his scholarship was flimsy at best and did a minimal amount of

01:42:47.060 checking only to find tons of plagiarism. They were not well served. Of course, those people

01:42:50.940 were going to start testing whether he was legit. And that's actually how the story got started.

01:42:55.880 Some professors at the university raised concerns to the university, which was able to verify them

01:43:02.440 and then work with Jason to rectify the, you know, whatever they had found. But then as they

01:43:07.360 got more widespread. First, a publication in the UK took it on. They got threatened and actually

01:43:14.640 didn't go forward with their publication. But then we had the gentleman who came on our show

01:43:19.500 last week, a former Cambridge professor who'd been fired. He started digging around. And one by one,

01:43:23.800 the plagiarism allegations grew. Cambridge tried to blame a lot of them on the earlier institution

01:43:28.380 he had been at, saying they're going to have to look into it, not us. And then the bio questions

01:43:32.160 grew and so on. Anyway, this is not a media concoction. Frankly, it was Cambridge professors

01:43:37.260 who were mad and felt slighted and saw the lies because they're Cambridge professors and they knew

01:43:44.420 what the qualification should be who got this ball rolling. The lesson here is that DEI is an

01:43:51.760 utter failure. It doesn't help the person. It doesn't help black people who don't check the

01:43:58.420 box either because they get suspected of being the beneficiaries of DEI and it should be abolished 0.97

01:44:03.820 entirely, entirely. We should get back to the game of merit and only merit mattering.

01:44:12.860 And if the doors had been previously closed to people of color, when it comes to consideration,

01:44:18.720 they should be open. They should be getting the same fair and balanced look as anybody else,

01:44:23.260 but their skin color cannot be the cause of elevation. That's the lesson here.

01:44:28.420 We're back tomorrow. We will see you all then and much, much more to discuss.

01:44:33.580 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - August 17, 2026

Hayden Panettiere's Death and Her Hollywood Enablers, with Rob Shuter, and Jason Arday Exposed Before His Demise ｜ Ep. 1380

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Transcript