Johnny Depp and Amber Heard's defamation trial is in day three of deliberations, and the jury is beginning to decide whether or not to acquit Johnny Depp. Megynkelian gives her thoughts on the evidence and what she thinks of the defense case.
00:02:38.260This case really is a true he said, she said.
00:02:41.660They can't both be telling the truth here.
00:02:44.360Either he physically abused her, perhaps as many as a dozen times as she claims, or he didn't.
00:02:51.220Depp's team suggesting Amber was the only witness the jury heard from supporting her abuse allegations.
00:02:57.460But the truth is, no, they've misstated her claim.
00:03:01.680Her sister claimed to have witnessed the abuse on the stand under oath.
00:03:05.580Her makeup artist claimed to have covered up bruises many times.
00:03:08.460Friends claimed to have heard out of control arguments that led to them getting police involved in a desperate Amber scared on the other line.
00:03:15.960And one friend testified that she personally photographed her injuries, a split lip, a swollen face, hair, a big clump of blonde hair pulled out and still sitting on the floor in their apartment, allegedly at Johnny Depp's hand.
00:03:29.620Not to mention the marital therapist who testified that this relationship was mutually abusive.
00:03:35.740Amber produced those photographs, all of which Johnny Depp challenged with expert testimony, suggesting they had been doctored or pointing to other photos.
00:03:47.500Depp's team did taken after these alleged beatings, featuring a glowing, picture perfect herd.
00:05:13.300It's not the exact physical or sexual abuse that she claims took place, not on tape, but it's certainly enough to justify at least two of the three statements that he's now suing her over, which appeared in a first person.
00:05:26.200Amber Heard op-ed in the Washington Post in 2018 declaring that she had faced domestic abuse.
00:05:33.100Now, interestingly, on Tuesday, the jury had a question about that op-ed and the verdict form, potentially very telling their question focused on the first of three statements from Heard's op-ed that Depp now claims were defamatory.
00:05:50.560The statement they asked about was the headline of that piece, quote, Amber Heard, colon, I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our culture's wrath.
00:06:18.900They wanted to know if they were being asked if just the headline was false or if the entire op-ed was false.
00:06:27.600The judge told them on this particular question, the only issue was whether the headline was false.
00:06:34.880There are two other questions that get to Heard's more general claims about being, quote, a public figure representing domestic abuse.
00:06:42.300Now, it's always dicey to try to read jury questions since we have no idea what's going through their heads and you can easily get embarrassed on this.
00:06:49.940But I'll go out on a limb and say this is a bad sign for misheard.
00:06:52.400If the jury believed her entire op-ed headline and body together, why would they send out this question?
00:07:00.120If they believe she was a victim of sexual violence, as the headline says, and of domestic abuse more broadly as the body of the op-ed claims, why would they need to draw a distinction between the two?
00:07:10.240Why wouldn't they just check the boxes?
00:07:42.480We're here to make his case go away so Amber can, quote, get her life back.
00:07:47.840Whatever happens legally, there is zero doubt that this case was a PR win for Johnny Depp.
00:07:55.300He had been painted as a wife beater by a media that rushed to canonize Amber Heard.
00:08:02.380He lost business, so he said, his reputation, certainly, and was publicly humiliated.
00:08:07.420And at a minimum, we now know that Amber Heard, while painting herself as a victim, failed to tell the Washington Post and the rest of us the whole story, her hand in it, her own behavior.
00:08:18.400And it's tough to deny that Johnny Depp benefited by bringing it all out into the open.
00:08:23.960I believe Amber was abused by Johnny Depp.
00:08:28.640I believe Johnny Depp was abused by her, too.
00:08:31.820I watched her testimony, and some of it rang true to me.
00:08:35.060But I also observed her tell many obvious lies while under oath.
00:08:40.560So many, in fact, that if I were a juror, I could not rule in her favor.
00:08:44.660Just a few examples, and these are my opinion.
00:08:49.260She lied when she told the U.K. court that she had donated the $7 million divorce settlement he gave her to charity.
00:08:56.560Depp's lawyers did an admirable job of exposing that, and Amber Heard was visibly uncomfortable on the stand when she tried to suggest that a pledge to donate was the same thing as donating.
00:11:09.960She misled the jury when she suggested that Johnny Depp had thrown his ex-girlfriend, Kate Moss, down the stairs during their relationship.
00:11:18.660An accusation she gratuitously threw into her own story about a fight she had with Depp atop the stairs, one that came back to bite her in a sensational way.
00:11:29.240And Johnny swings at her, and I don't even wait, don't even wait for any other, I don't hesitate, I don't wait, I just, in my head, instantly think of Kate Moss and the stairs, and I swung at him.
00:11:49.380Did Mr. Depp push you in any way down the stairs?
00:11:55.220During the course of your relationship, did he ever push you down any stairs?
00:11:59.240No, he never pushed me, kicked me, or threw me down any stairs.
00:12:08.540But the biggest and most telling lie of all, the one I would have devoted much of my own closing to, was her claim that she did not leak the video of Depp attacking cabinets to TMZ,
00:12:21.360and that neither she nor her team alerted TMZ to her court filing in 2016 seeking a restraining order against Mr. Depp.
00:12:31.480This was the death knell to her credibility, and here is how I would have argued it had I been Depp's counsel.
00:12:37.760Members of the jury, I would have said, there's a jury instruction often used in the law.
00:12:46.600And what that means is that if you find Miss Hurd lied to you during this trial about one thing, you are within your rights to conclude she lied to you about everything.
00:12:54.180And she did lie to you about so many things, but here, let's take just one.
00:12:59.500Let's take this one thing, and let me ask you if she's a liar.
00:13:05.100May 27th, 2016, the day she filed for her restraining order.
00:13:09.560On that day, someone called TMZ and told them she would be there at the courthouse.
00:13:16.340Told them exactly where and when and what poses they could expect from her.
00:13:21.220Maybe it was Johnny she actually suggested on the stand.
00:13:25.320She had given him a heads up about the filing, she claimed.
00:13:32.040He called the tabloid press to alert them to the fact that his wife was about to publicly call him an abuser.
00:13:39.080He thought press coverage of that event might be, what, helpful to his career?
00:13:43.840And what about the pose to show off the alleged bruise that was promised to TMZ?
00:13:49.680Do you believe that Johnny Depp viciously attacked his wife, bruising her face, then called TMZ to photograph her injuries, promising them that she would pose just right so that they could document it to their millions of viewers?
00:14:03.660Or is it more likely that Amber Heard, who went to the courthouse that day with her publicist and for the first time ever without makeup, saw an opportunity to land a blow in the PR war?
00:14:18.060And then she had the nerve to look you in the eye.
00:14:21.720She was very good about trying to make you feel connected to her, wasn't she?
00:14:25.240She looked you in the eye and she tried to tell you that neither she nor her team had anything to do with that.
00:15:13.240He's from TMZ that they posted that video within 15 minutes of getting it and that they would not have done that unless it came directly from the source of the video.
00:19:56.800She fired hers mid-trial and for good reason.
00:20:00.220And it hasn't been lost on me that most women would be totally outmatched by this kind of money, power, fame and influence on the other side of the courtroom.
00:21:46.720This case does not mean something did or did not happen to you or someone you love unfairly.
00:21:53.220This is about a terrible, toxic marriage that never should have happened in a world, Hollywood, that promises the moon and more often than not delivers drug addiction, insecurity, sadness, rejection, emptiness, meaninglessness and a valueless life.
00:22:13.360Look at these two and then hug your spouse, your children.
00:22:17.380Remember that a life of value is about respect, honor, love for yourself and those you hold dear.
00:22:26.580Not fame, not drugs, not booze, not red carpets, not five penthouses filled with feces and so-called friends you barely know.
00:22:36.460That truth, more than any other, may be the biggest takeaway of this entire mess.
00:22:42.320Joining me now to discuss, Robert Barnes, founding attorney of Barnes Law.
00:23:26.800I think that it depends on what the jury thinks about what domestic abuse means.
00:23:31.280So I think as a whole, there's the cultural subtext here of the excesses of the Me Too movement that Amber Heard sort of piggybacked off of.
00:23:40.560That I think most of the people watching the case came to the conclusion that she at least was an abusive personality.
00:23:47.660The only question left was, was Johnny guilty at least of abuse, even if he was not an abusive personality.
00:23:53.960And that really depends heavily on your definition of the word abuse.
00:23:57.180But I think Amber Heard contaminated her defense by making exaggerated claims, making claims that appear to be patently false, sometimes contradictory claims.
00:24:06.340So I think the problem is, if this case comes down to, do you trust Amber Heard or not, then it's an easy win for Johnny Depp.
00:24:13.040If the case comes down to, do you think Johnny Depp's behavior was, as put at one point during the trial, Southern gentlemanly at all times or not, then Amber Heard would not win her counterclaim, but Johnny Depp would fail on his claim.
00:24:25.480I think what Johnny Depp set out to do, he won. He wanted to win in the court of public opinion.
00:24:30.020I don't think he cares all that much of what happens with the jury.
00:24:33.320But I think it would be added vindication for his side of the aisle if that took place.
00:24:38.000And then for the cultural commentators to recognize that Me Too can be men too, I think is a valuable addition.
00:24:44.400If we focus on the broad construct of abuse, if it devolves into a more gender-defined dispute, then we've probably gone backwards rather than forwards.
00:24:55.160You know, having said everything I just said, one thing that concerns me is I could definitely see a scenario where he did do at least some of these 12 acts of abuse toward her.
00:25:07.140And yet, she's an imperfect victim. He's richer. He's got a better legal team. He's more determined. He's angrier.
00:25:19.180And he did threaten to destroy her at the end of their marriage. He did say he was going to bring global humiliation to her.
00:25:26.420And he's got the means to do it. And there's that little sort of bird in the back of my head saying, is that what's happening here?
00:25:34.160I think at times there can be aspects of that. I mean, figuring out Johnny Depp is tricky.
00:25:41.460He's clearly a great performer, and he performed very well throughout the trial and on the stand.
00:25:46.740Given his kind of other, you know, admitted alcohol and drug problems, staying completely clean for six weeks might not have been the easiest thing, but he appears to have achieved it.
00:25:55.900I also thought they did better on just every aspect of marketing.
00:25:58.560I get that she wants to be seen as a tough or sees herself as a tough survivor, but I think that undermined the victim presentation.
00:26:06.460I mean, I've represented victims of domestic abuse for 20 plus years, hundreds across the country, started out doing it as a young lawyer.
00:26:14.760The reality is you've got to play into the gender stereotypes that exist if you want to win.
00:26:19.460It's what I've told many clients, and I've had clients that are like, I'm not going to look this way.
00:26:22.580I'm going to look this way, and I get it, and I understand it, but I say, look, if you want the jury to see you through their cultural stereotypes that they understand this world to be, then you need to kind of look the part.
00:26:33.280Johnny Depp played the part of the poor, abused, henpecked star husband who was really the nice, sweet guy underneath.
00:26:41.120She didn't play the part of a young, vulnerable victim.
00:26:44.620I mean, you know, she could have dressed differently, had her hair differently, done presentation differently.
00:26:51.540And that just doesn't play into the image and archetype that people have of young, abused girl with older, powerful, wealthier Hollywood star.
00:27:01.840And so all the PR side, Johnny Depp's team did much better than her side.
00:27:50.700I mean, she was definitely the best lawyer of anybody in the courtroom that I saw, at least.
00:27:56.080And I thought what she did a good job of is not only understanding how to command different aspects of a witness, but also just communicate and emote in a more real human way.
00:28:05.200I mean, she doesn't come from one of the elite law schools, and I think that's why she was probably the best lawyer in the room, is because she can connect to people in a real, tangible way.
00:28:16.420And you could tell she had a real connection with Johnny Depp that I thought was very important that Amber seemed to lack with her lawyers.
00:28:21.560That, you know, everybody's watching, the whole world's watching, jury's watching, gallery's watching, judge is watching.
00:28:27.540It's important to communicate and emote connection between you as a lawyer and your client.
00:28:32.680And she did that better than anybody else in the room in terms of Johnny Depp, as well as communicating most effectively with the jury and staying focused and controlling someone like Amber, who wants to go off as a witness, wants to tangent as much as possible, is not an easy thing to do.
00:28:48.140And she managed it very, very effectively.
00:28:50.280She, of course, it's no accident that they used her as lead trial counsel.
00:28:55.340You know, there's nine lawyers on that legal team, and there are a lot more senior trial lawyers who are available, I'm sure.
00:29:00.920But they wanted a young woman sort of sandwiched in between Amber's age and Johnny's to telegraph to the jury.
00:29:36.680But I don't think they made any connection with the jurors in the way Camille Vasquez did, which there's a reason she emerged as the star, and they didn't.
00:29:47.980And in my experience, I think Amber Heard does show signs of an abusive personality, even if the most abusive personalities are that way because they are the victims of abuse, often end up in relationships where they're the victim of abuse.
00:30:00.140But they're also the abuser themselves.
00:30:01.860And the thing is, in my experience, I knew my client was telling the truth when their ex, spouse, partner, whatever it may have been, picked a certain lawyer because certain abusers just flock to certain kinds of lawyers.
00:30:16.460And they tend not to be able to get good, capable, competent, skilled, emotionally stable lawyers because those lawyers either don't like their case or they, as a client, don't like them as a lawyer.
00:30:26.960They want lawyers who will do their bidding rather than lawyers who will do what's best for the client.
00:30:31.220Classic example here is she's kind of in trouble right now because of that headline in particular, factually and legally.
00:30:36.980But in my view, when I read the op-ed, it appeared that that headline was about the first paragraph, which was about other people that she had been the victims of prior to even meeting Johnny, because she talks about experiencing sexual abuse when she was young and in high school and in college or college age before she met Johnny.
00:30:56.960And yet, you know, that would have been the defense to embrace.
00:31:00.180But because she did an all or nothing defense, basically, she made that part of her own case by alleging abuse during the trial of that nature.
00:31:07.700And it's like that was unnecessary from a legal perspective.
00:31:31.600This it was not submitted to this jury that that allegation about her having suffered sexual abuse was about other people.
00:31:37.340It was ultimately she owned that this piece was about Johnny Depp, even though she tried to lie about it, which was just absurd, an absurd dodge.
00:31:46.780And if the jury comes back with a finding that that's the line, because that's been separated out that from the other, quote, domestic abuse assertions.
00:31:56.800If they come back saying that piece is the defamation piece and the other two are not, they are really going to live to regret having gone that far.
00:32:05.120And I realize she testified to an alleged sexual abuse.
00:32:07.160She claimed that he sexually abused her with a with a bottle in that same Australia trip in which he claimed she severed his finger with a bottle.
00:32:15.540So they're each pointing the finger at one another, so to speak.
00:32:19.800I don't know. That's not something she looks to have previously documented.
00:32:24.020That wasn't something she had gone to.
00:32:25.720She had another witness to back her up on.
00:32:29.480You know, when I had clients that tended to exaggerate and tended to tell stories, they were just a little over the top.
00:32:35.180It was usually a sign that there was problems with the client's story in general.
00:32:39.660And I would say I had one out of 10 clients I've had ended up making up stories.
00:32:45.000You know, most women who came and almost all my clients were women.
00:32:48.540Most of them. Now, this was in the physical abuse context.
00:32:51.940Emotional abuse only slowly did the court systems recognize as being part of the abuse issues related to the Violence Against Women's Act and Orders of Protection and so forth.
00:33:01.840But the nature of it, it was just too it was too much.
00:33:05.820And I think she had a tendency to tell stories that were too much.
00:33:08.860And either she just overrode her lawyers or her lawyers didn't say, OK, even if that happened, that's going to sound less credible to the jury than, say, this version of abuse.
00:33:19.780And I think it was a mistake of her to just go all or nothing.
00:33:23.260You have to believe everything I said or nothing I said.
00:33:58.560And if I'd been them, I would have only focused on that.
00:34:02.580You know, if I was her lawyer, I probably would advise her not to even testify unless she had to, because she's clearly someone who can't help herself.
00:34:09.460She got caught like when she admitted she really wrote it about Johnny was because she was under cross and didn't like where the cross was going.
00:34:16.020And people who are making up stories tend to always add a sentence that they can't help themselves.
00:34:22.200And she did that repeatedly to her detriment.
00:35:08.440Johnny, you punched me in the face several times.
00:35:10.660Johnny, you slapped me over the wino forever.
00:35:13.060Like you've there's why is there no documentation of any of that?
00:35:17.740That is one of the questions I remain with.
00:35:20.260If this really happened and she was so pro videotape happy, why isn't that on there?
00:35:26.060I mean, I think there's two interpretations.
00:35:27.680Generally, in my experience, when my client accused someone of abuse that had no history of it prior, it was a red flag.
00:35:34.640Wasn't a guarantee the person didn't do it.
00:35:36.680The person didn't snap that something didn't get triggered in this context.
00:35:40.880But it was usually a red flag because generally speaking, abusers have a long history of it because it's deeply rooted in their psychology and their psychopathology.
00:35:49.540I mean, it's their fear, actually, that's driving them.
00:35:51.400They think they're trying to quell their fear when they're being violent towards their spouse.
00:35:55.680And if you get inside their head, you feel it.
00:35:58.980People would be surprised, but you feel bad for them because they're tortured minds, totally tortured minds.
00:36:03.140But it comes from abuse when they're young.
00:36:05.580But the so mostly I thought, you know, the absence of proof with the absence of a history tells me that her story is likely not true about the physical abuse.
00:36:14.700But the other possibility, what became clear throughout the trial is she sees herself as a survivor.
00:36:21.840And I think I have no doubt now that she was the victim of bad abuse from a young age and probably repeated abuse by the time she was in her teens.
00:36:30.280I think some of the stories she was telling about physical abuse were true, just not necessarily true about Johnny Depp.
00:36:36.840I think she was describing stories from other places and other times.
00:36:40.980It's why the stories get kind of elastic and a little chaotic in their description and lack certain key details.
00:36:46.560The things that happened just not in the context of Johnny Depp.
00:36:49.420So I think that's probably the primary reason.
00:36:51.180But the secondary possibility with her is that she sees herself as a survivor and survivors don't like to admit they've ever been the victim of anything at a certain level.
00:37:06.120And she even says things to that effect on those tapes.
00:37:09.560So it's possible the physical abuse took place and she would never acknowledge it on a tape of Johnny because she's too strong and too tough for that to ever happen to her.
00:37:18.960I think there's aspects of that in her personality.
00:37:21.640The evidence in favor of that argument would include her then mocking him for being weak.
00:37:32.700So that would dovetail well with your second theory.
00:37:36.960I do want to talk about the other evidence she submitted of her alleged injuries and how you think that's playing right now,
00:37:43.180because this most abuse cases or harassment cases or cases involving this type of power imbalance and abuse of it would not involve any proof other than the word of the woman.
00:37:54.340But she did have some so much so that a UK court ruled that she was a truth teller,
00:37:59.660that there was enough evidence of abuse, that it wasn't defamatory for a paper, a magazine over there to say he was a wife beater.
00:40:41.620Although let's hope not since we both agree he's won the PR award and that's really what he was after.
00:40:46.460It's interesting because on that point you just raised, there was a post-deliberation motion by Depp's team.
00:40:55.160They were upset that Amber Heard's lawyer, Rottenborn, told the jury that a ruling against Heard, quote, sends a message that no matter what you do as an abuse victim, you always have to do more.
00:41:08.940Quote, no matter how honest you are about your own imperfections and your own shortcomings in a relationship, you have to be perfect in order for people to believe you.
00:41:20.120And they argued that that argument is improperly asking the jury to focus on a larger social objective than the case they're being asked to decide.
00:41:29.040The judge said she would not entertain that motion because the case is already in the hands of the jury.
00:41:34.020Now, it would be extraordinary for her to go knock on the door essentially and say, hey, I just want to give you an instruction, one thing to disregard.
00:41:39.580And even if she had it, it would still be floating out there.
00:41:43.340And Depp's team, maybe not the lawyers, but his supporters are kind of doing it, too.
00:41:48.840Right. Like this is the death of the Me Too movement.
00:41:50.580By the way, that already happened in Brett Kavanaugh.
00:41:52.100But like this is a chance, you know, to sort of reestablish my fairness in the process and, you know, the openness of mind that not all women are truth tellers on these claims.
00:42:04.460So what do you make of the competing social narratives?
00:42:07.820I think it was where Rottenborn had to go because of how the evidence had presented itself.
00:42:11.740You got a jury that's politically predisposed towards the Me Too movement and towards not wanting to be.
00:42:17.420What he was really saying is, do you want to be the juror, the juror who's known as putting a death nail in the Me Too movement because of the public and social and cultural significance of this trial?
00:42:28.900And that was smart of him because I think they were a little desperate at that point.
00:42:32.860They hung juries just fine for them legally.
00:42:36.180They know what they've lost in the court of public opinion.
00:42:40.000And at least if they could avoid a big verdict against her, they've kind of done the best they could do under the circumstances.
00:42:46.460I don't think she's going to be getting any jobs anytime soon, but her only chance to get back into Hollywood at any level would require a verdict that at least was not in Johnny's favor.
00:42:58.260And so I think that I think it was the right move by him politically and even some would say ethically controversial move, but one that was probably in the best interest of his client to make.
00:43:07.880And maybe what's saving her right now, because I think otherwise this was most people thought it was going to come back unanimously in favor of Johnny on Tuesday.
00:43:16.700The fact that we're here after mid-afternoon Wednesday or going into the afternoon Wednesday says that at least he did that part of his job effectively enough.
00:44:25.300They've been instructed to stay away from media.
00:44:26.960I mean, they're human, but most people would understand you don't talk to the jurors while they're walking around over Memorial Day weekend about the case they're trying.
00:44:33.820And I think most people try to do their civic duty by not engaging in discussions.
00:44:37.860They're certainly not supposed to be Googling anything or, you know.
00:44:40.200So they really may be just deciding what they what is true about the linear presentation this judge allowed them to experience.
00:44:50.020And that's how people like you and I can go wrong, because our experience is much more vast than theirs.
00:44:57.740Yeah. And the other what I tell people, like a lot of people were trying to read the jury.
00:45:01.300There are tons of people watching the jury and thought this meant this and that meant that.
00:45:05.400And I was very skeptical because I used to have young lawyers do that.
00:45:08.200I quit doing it because they would be too unsettling for them because they would predict basically the juries would do what they wanted the jury to do.
00:45:17.360And then the jury didn't. And it led them to question the whole legal system.
00:45:21.420But the whole nature of jurors, very tough to read.
00:45:24.040And you're right. The biggest thing that's different between the jury and everyone else is the jury was picked because they don't care about these people,
00:45:30.540because they don't care about this case, because they are not emotionally attached or invested at all.
00:45:36.260Not in Me Too, not in Men Too, not in Johnny Depp, not in Amber Heard, not in Hollywood, not in social media.
00:45:42.820And so consequently, they can have a radically different view than everyone else in the courtroom because they're not attached, not invested, not involved.
00:45:49.460And that's how they often surprise people. And in a case like this where you've got clearly a lot of damaging evidence,
00:45:55.340most of it against Amber Heard, but at least some of it against Johnny Depp, it'd be very easy for a jury to just say,
00:46:02.460screw it, nothing for nobody, everybody go home, or for the jury to just hang because they saw the case radically differently
00:46:09.520because they are, as a unit, seeing the case completely differently than, frankly, everyone else's.
00:46:14.600Mm-hmm. I'll correct myself grammatically. People like you and me, those things bother me. They stick in my craw.
00:46:20.300Yeah. Let's talk for a minute about the photos before we wrap because, you know, most abuse victims don't have that.
00:46:25.900So the fact that she had any photos of herself looking bruised or, you know, the one friend testified,
00:46:31.420she took the one photo of what appeared to be something on Amber's lip, her face red, a mark on her cheek,
00:46:38.760and big clumps of hair on the floor that clearly looked to be Amber's.
00:46:44.020She took a picture of her skull, too, showing, like, what looked like missing hair. And then she went on James Corden the next night and looked amazing,
00:46:50.660a great point for the defense. But his attempt to deal with a lot of this was to say at least some of them had been manipulated.
00:46:56.740He had an expert who testified as submitted. They couldn't have been, they could never have been sort of dealt with in this one program
00:47:04.740if they hadn't been manipulated. In other words, they had some data on them, some metadata that showed
00:47:09.140they went through an editing function before they were submitted. Anyway, how did that wash, do you think?
00:47:14.760She made a massive tactical error by adding on the other allegations, because what happened is if she had just presented
00:47:21.460these stories that were consistent with these photos, those photos become powerful evidence by saying,
00:47:27.040hey, look, I have photos when I got hurt and then saying he did things like make me walk on glass and all these other brutal forms of attack.
00:47:35.640And it was hitting my head and bashing it and strangling my neck and all these other much more extravagant allegations.
00:47:42.660Then the jury says, well, why aren't there photos of that? Why aren't there photos of your feet being cut up?
00:47:47.860If you were actually having to walk all over glass, why aren't there photos of other things,
00:47:52.160given some of the extreme physical injury you're describing of him being punching you repeatedly with his all his rings on?
00:47:58.220So that's where she would have been smart to focus on what physical evidence do I have of physical abuse only confirm that note confirm.
00:48:07.020She herself said that she had memory issues and the rest. So she could sort of black that out if she wanted to on those grounds.
00:48:12.680And if she focused on that, the photos would have become strong.
00:48:15.720What happened is the photos almost become impeaching evidence because she doesn't have photos of the more dramatic physical violence that she alleges against Johnny.
00:48:23.520Mm hmm. All right. So need a quick answer. Ten seconds, ideally or less.
00:48:28.420What's your prediction for how it's going to go? Well, I'll hold it against you.
00:48:31.820I the odds are that Amber Heard does not lose. I'm betting that she does.
00:48:37.520Verdict for Johnny. Seven figures or more.
00:48:40.380Wow. Robert Barnes putting it out there. Always a pleasure.
00:48:44.420Thank you so much for your insightful analysis.
00:52:04.200She loves to lecture people, Barbara Boxer.
00:52:07.200Okay, but lecture her you did, because you happen to know a lot more about this subject than most people.
00:52:12.920And not only are you defending fossil fuels, like they served a purpose, it's fine, don't demonize them, you know, we're going to need to use them.
00:52:20.400You celebrate them and say they're the answer.
00:52:23.640This is from your book where you say, I'm going to try to persuade you that if you want to make the world a better place, one of the best things you can do is fight for more fossil fuel use, more burning of oil, coal and natural gas.
00:52:38.200And then you go on to say, this is going to seem craziest of all, that you think that we will experience higher environmental quality and less danger from climate if we do so.
00:52:51.460So give me the broad 30,000 foot intro to why you believe that.
00:52:55.840Well, the first reason I believe this is because it's been happening for 100 plus years that we've been making the world far better using low cost, reliable, scalable energy from fossil fuels, including most people don't know.
00:53:07.760We've made our climate far safer. Climate is naturally dynamic and dangerous.
00:53:12.940Human beings have made it unnaturally safe. And this is very clearly documented.
00:53:16.740We have data on climate related disasters and climate related disaster deaths.
00:53:21.240So from storms, floods, extreme temperature, everything that's supposedly getting worse, they're documented to be down by 98 percent over the last 100 years.
00:53:30.140And they've continued to decline in the last 50 years, as catastrophists have said, will have sometimes up to a billion deaths from climate related causes.
00:53:38.960And so what people don't get is they think of the planet as this perfect, delicate nurturer and our impact ruins it.
00:53:45.160Whereas the planet is really a deficient and dangerous place.
00:53:48.300And to make it an abundant and safe place, including safe from climate, we need a lot of machines, which means we need a lot of low cost, reliable energy.
00:53:55.980And fossil fuels have been, and I argue will be, by far the most scalable way of doing that in the coming decades.
00:54:03.040Now, you make sure to point out you're not you're not a climate change denier.
00:54:08.000You know, I mean, like you're somebody who acknowledges the planet is warming, but not necessarily at the catastrophic levels that are being predicted.
00:54:16.800And that you I don't know, would you say it's not something we need to worry about?
00:54:20.560Or would you just would you just say it's just not something we need to catastrophize the way some on the left do?
00:54:25.140I think you need to just recognize what it is.
00:54:27.860So, yes, when when you do anything in life, there are benefits and side effects.
00:54:31.580And some of those side effects are negative.
00:54:33.300So when you burn fossil fuels, it's a warming gas and a fertilizing gas.
00:54:39.380The warming has positives and negatives.
00:54:41.420Warming occurs mostly in colder parts of the world where people want it to be warmer.
00:54:45.460But it can also lead to some increase in heat waves and warmer parts of the world.
00:54:49.300But the thing that comes along with that are just these enormous benefits, the ability to have modern agriculture, which depends on modern diesel machines and fertilizer, the ability to have modern medical care, the ability to have all of this time to fight a new virus like COVID-19.
00:55:05.680So my basic argument is we need to think about fossil fuels in the way we think of prescription drugs.
00:55:11.340You look at the benefits and the side effects, except the one thing about fossil fuels is they can actually cure their own side effects.
00:55:17.340So they can make drought worse, hypothetically, but then they can have irrigation and drought relief convoys that make it far better, which is why drought-related deaths are down 99% over the next 100 years.
00:55:28.840So I'm okay, and I'm totally okay and on board with people looking for superior low-carbon alternatives.
00:55:34.560And I'm probably the world's biggest advocate of nuclear, but we should not be sacrificing energy because energy is far more important than climate change.
00:55:42.220Mm-hmm. And I know you make the point of the book that what we don't realize is that there are 3 billion people out there who are not using really electricity and energy at all in the way that we do here in the Western world,
00:55:57.040and that what they're using is actually quite terrible for them and for the environment.
00:56:04.180And so expanding the use of fossil fuels to these people would actually help the world, not hurt it.
00:56:09.780I mean, one statistic that I find really powerful, which I got from the energy expert, Robert Bryce, just looking at the data,
00:56:16.920is that there are 3 billion people who are using less electricity individually than one of our refrigerators.
00:56:22.340So you just think about, you have to divide all your electricity into one refrigerator.
00:56:26.480And as you indicated with environmental quality, one-third of the world is burning wood and animal dung for their heating and cooking.
00:56:33.400So think about what that means for their environment.
00:56:36.020So, yeah, imagine them using natural gas, even modern clean coal.
00:56:39.740It's a total transformation in their environmental quality, also gives them clean water, and then it just allows them to become productive and prosperous.
00:56:47.300Without energy-powering machines, you cannot be productive and prosperous, and therefore the world is not a good place to live.
00:56:53.640Let's talk about that, because we kind of take these machines for granted, don't we?
00:56:59.020You know, it's like, I don't know, I'm building a studio right now, and you look out and you see the excavator and you see the dump trucks
00:57:05.820and you see all these big machines that do what would take men or women probably years to actually do, and they do it in a week.
00:57:35.480But the way to think of it is today's world is just completely unnaturally abundant, and everything you see around you, it can exist in this abundance, including the food, by the way,
00:57:44.780because of machines, because we can use machines to dramatically amplify our abilities and expand.
00:57:51.040So by amplify, I mean, an example of that is a modern combine harvester that can reap and thresh 1,000 times more wheat than the best manual labor.
00:58:01.240So it turns us into supermen, superwomen.
00:58:03.920But what it also does is it allows us to do things that no number of human beings can do.
00:58:07.640For example, we can't get 1,000 of us together and fly, right?
00:58:14.180A lot of what computers do, we can't do at all.
00:58:16.840What an incubator does, that's a really life and death thing I point out in Fossil Future.
00:58:21.320Like, human beings can't provide that.
00:58:23.180And so our whole way of life, the whole world we live in as we experience it, depends on these amazing machines.
00:58:29.280And they are these unsung heroes, as are the people who are producing the fossil fuels that we're choosing to use,
00:58:35.520because they are the lowest cost, most reliable way of powering our machines most of the time.
00:58:39.760You point out in the book that according to the WHO, 2 billion people lack basic sanitation in this world.
00:58:48.680Toilets and so on, that an estimated 10% of the world's population consumes food irrigated by wastewater.
00:58:57.220That diarrhea kills roughly 432,000 people annually.
00:59:02.340I mean, those are just stunning numbers.
00:59:04.200But if you live in the fossil-fueled world, you have a very different experience, incredibly clean, incredibly sanitary, yet another thing we take for granted.
00:59:17.660Yeah, and I think we should really lay a lot of blame on what I call our designated experts.
00:59:24.200The people were told there, the people are basically telling us, hey, here's what to do.
00:59:28.440So the people are telling us, hey, we need to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels.
00:59:31.980And what I point out starting in Chapter 1 of the book, which is called Ignoring Benefits,
00:59:36.140is these people are ignoring the huge benefits of fossil fuels now and in the future.
00:59:42.440So an example I've been thinking of lately because we're hearing talk of starvation is the fact that we haven't been taught about the benefits of fossil fuels for agriculture,
00:59:50.620both fertilizer coming from natural gas and all the amazing machines being powered primarily by oil-based fuels.
00:59:57.380And an example I give is one of our leading experts, a climate scientist named Michael Mann,
01:00:01.500has a whole book about fossil fuels and climate, and he talks a lot about agriculture,
01:00:06.160but he only talks about negative side effects, about how warming might harm agriculture in some area.
01:00:11.040But he doesn't talk about the fact that 8 billion people depend on fossil fuels for their food.
01:00:16.500And so it's no wonder we've restricted fossil fuels.
01:00:19.220Prices are skyrocketing and people are threatened with starvation.
01:00:22.000And I put that on Michael Mann and our other designated experts for deliberately making us ignorant about the unbelievable benefits of fossil fuels.
01:00:30.700And you touched on the medical benefits a second ago, but they're vast.
01:00:35.040I mean, you're talking about just something as simple as the MRI machine or, you know,
01:00:38.860when my little guy got hurt over our spring break skiing, we had to put him through the CT machine.
01:00:44.400Like these things, you don't even think about the little plug you put in the wall and how those things are powered, but it matters.
01:01:17.560I mean, you just have an incubator and you have all this support.
01:01:19.660But they don't have incubators because they don't have reliable electricity.
01:01:22.580And these babies just tragically die and the rest of this mother's life is just tragically affected by this.
01:01:29.200And whereas like a friend of mine near the same time had a kid premature with much worse complications and they never think about it anymore because they just had all these amazing machines to support them.
01:01:40.620And it's another case where experts have failed us that we're not thinking constantly about all the poor people in the world who need more energy.
01:02:52.120Is it because they don't know about solar and wind?
01:02:54.240China, by the way, is using coal to make huge amounts of our solar and wind.
01:02:58.720And so they know about it, but it's just not cost effective for them.
01:03:03.260And the basic reason is that solar and wind are unreliable forms of energy.
01:03:07.060So you can't just look at the cost of the solar panels and the wind turbines, which that's what these claims do that claim they're cheaper.
01:03:13.360You need to look at the full cost, including the cost of providing them 24-7 life support.
01:03:18.240And when you look at that cost, they add cost to the grid.
01:03:31.080When people talk about them as replacing fossil fuels in a world that is desperately short of energy, I think this shows a real lack of valuing of energy.
01:03:39.280It's one thing to say, hey, I want them to compete.
01:03:42.580I want them to supplement fossil fuels.
01:03:44.480I believe that if they are actually competitive, which is a whole issue because they get a lot of preferences.
01:03:49.640But if you're talking about let's get rid of fossil fuels in the next 27 and a half years, which, by the way, is the mainstream idea in the world right now, which terrifies me.
01:03:58.920And our government has signed on to this.
01:04:00.500Like if you're talking about that in an energy starved world, I don't think you at all value the benefits of energy.
01:04:07.000What when you when you said that solar and wind turbines only account for electricity, 20 percent, did you say 20 percent?
01:04:15.080Yeah, 20 percent of the world's energy is electricity.
01:04:17.380OK, 20 percent of the world's energy is electricity.
01:04:21.360And that's the only lane in which wind turbines and solar panels can play.
01:04:25.840What what are the other forms that what are the other forms of energy that they cannot that they don't service at all?
01:04:31.560So the big categories are different forms of heat.
01:04:34.380So there's residential heat and then what's called industrial process heat.
01:04:38.240And then there's transportation, including heavy duty transportation.
01:04:40.840Now, it's not that they can't play in them at all.
01:04:43.220So I talk in Chapter six about ways in which which is about alternatives, you know, ways in which eventually you can do more and more things with electricity.
01:04:50.400But the fact is that the often the cheapest way of heating buildings and also heating generating huge amounts of heat for industrial processes is to burn a fossil fuel such as natural gas directly versus versus doing using electricity.
01:05:05.940So, for example, in California, where I live, we have this insane policy of where we're preventing people from using natural gas.
01:05:12.860Now, even though burning natural gas directly is incredibly clean and incredibly cheap.
01:05:38.360And even hydrogen is far cheaper to generate with fossil fuels.
01:05:42.240So, again, what I want to point out is that the experts that we're relying on are not giving us the benefits of energy in general and fossil fuels in particular.
01:05:51.280They're just giving us the negative side effects.
01:05:53.520And that is a catastrophic way to think about things.
01:05:56.960Can you expand on how these renewable energy sources already and still depend on fossil fuels?
01:06:03.800Like, if you think you're going all clean and opting for wind or solar, you're not.
01:06:14.760So I'll just take the example of where I live in California.
01:06:18.060So what we have done is we have subsidized and mandated huge amounts of solar, particularly solar.
01:06:22.800And if you look at what happens, what we have is in the middle of the day, you know, during sunny time of year when it's in a really sunny time of day, you'll generate a lot of electricity via solar.
01:06:34.360And everyone will brag, oh, my gosh, we have so much of our electricity via solar.
01:06:41.520And so you need to rely on other things.
01:06:44.000And so what you need is you need – and even when the solar is coming, it's never coming in the exact amount that you want it.
01:06:50.140So it always needs 24-7 life support by reliable, controllable sources of electricity, whether in the state or in the case of California.
01:06:58.200We import huge amounts of electricity from outside the state.
01:07:01.700For example, Los Angeles has long imported a lot of electricity from coal in Utah, which I don't think the Hollywood celebrities know that they're doing, but that's part of what makes Hollywood work.
01:07:11.820So, yeah, what happened in 2020 is there's a heat wave regionally.
01:07:16.780We were so dependent on other states with more reliable sources, but they needed their electricity because the wind did die down and, you know, in the evening the sun fades.
01:07:27.800So it's just whenever you think about these uncontrollable, unreliable sources of energy, you have to recognize they can go near zero at almost any given time, which means they need 100% backup slash 100% life support.
01:07:40.200And when you try to cut that, when you try to cut back on that to save money, which we've done in California and also Texas has done, then you get blackouts.
01:07:48.000You're playing what I call reliability chicken where you're basically praying for it to be not too hot, not too cold, and you want plenty of sunlight and plenty of wind.
01:08:05.380And by the way, if you want cleaner electricity, which I'm all for, we should be liberating nuclear because that is controllable, clean and safe electricity.
01:08:42.580Well, because a battery, because, so people need to think there are reasons why we're using fossil fuels.
01:08:48.220So fossil fuels have out-competed alternatives for over 100 years.
01:08:51.200They're used everywhere in the world, even where people have no incentive to use them, no domestic industry, such as Japan.
01:08:56.560And one reason is because they have this incredible attribute of what's called energy density, which is they store a large amount of energy in a very small space.
01:09:06.300And that is crucial for many applications, but above all, portability.
01:09:10.060So if you have an airplane that needs to carry humans and other cargos, you want the highest density possible because you need to carry your fuel with you.
01:09:18.980An electric battery has nowhere near the density of jet fuel, which is why you don't have any electric planes.
01:09:24.520And there was some solar plane that cost something like $100 million, and it flew one person, and they regarded it as some sort of success.
01:09:32.200I mean, this just shows how much religious fervor there is for solar and for batteries.
01:09:36.240But yeah, oil is amazing in terms of its energy density, and that's why it's the most valued thing in the world.
01:09:42.320And that's why when you have all of these administrations and politicians so hostile to oil investment, oil production, and oil transport, you really get a crisis.
01:09:51.660And that's what we're experiencing right now.
01:09:53.640And I want to talk to you about this, but I know I should point out to the audience, you're like Schellenberger in that you used to be not like this.
01:09:59.760You were like, okay, it's fine, and I'm not really thinking about fossil fuels, but it's not like you work for the oil industry.
01:10:04.780You know, you just took an honest look at this and said, what's working, what's not working, and have come to these conclusions, honestly.
01:10:10.820It's not like you're, you know, for some lobby group that's trying to push fossil fuels.
01:10:14.680So that's why we should be listening to you.
01:10:19.620I'm not a lobbyist, but I think a lot of them are really good people.
01:10:22.500And I mentioned in that boxer clip, I think it's wrong that we associate people in the fossil fuel industry as they're, you know, they have negative motivations and stuff like that.
01:10:30.100I consider it really heroic that most of the people I've met in that industry are really good.
01:10:35.480So Mike is a really good friend of mine, and I'm a big supporter of his for governor.
01:10:39.320And, you know, he came from a more, like, classic liberal background.
01:10:43.540I grew up in a very liberal environment.
01:10:45.520I didn't even know anyone in the fossil fuel industry when I came up with my ideas, let alone, like, ever had any financial relationships.
01:10:51.920So I was a free market guy mostly, but I was very, very strongly, I should say.
01:10:57.680But I was really scared of climate catastrophe.
01:11:02.360And I, yeah, and I just, but when I started studying this, I realized, oh, my gosh, these guys are not looking at the benefits of fossil fuels.
01:11:09.960That's like you're looking at a polio vaccine, and you don't look at the benefits, and you only look at the side effects.
01:11:14.620And it made me really interested in what are the benefits.
01:11:17.640If we look at this carefully, how big are the benefits?
01:11:20.440And they're huge, and that's why, like, I came from, like, a liberal environment, Chevy Chase, Maryland, and now I'm the world's biggest champion of fossil fuels because I'm like, once you really look at the full context, it's so beneficial.
01:11:32.960And we're, like, killing people and threatening our security by not recognizing these benefits.
01:11:37.800That's why I spend, like, three years trying to research every nook and cranny and make it clear because I do think it's existential, and I think people are thinking of it backwards.
01:11:45.620It's so interesting, and short of, you know, killing people, we're really impacting people on a day-to-day basis here in our own country with, you know, what Joe Biden just essentially admitted was a choice of trying to transition us to renewables while we've got record high gas prices.
01:12:04.020Here he is on camera actually admitting it.
01:12:06.900This is from Monday, a press conference following a meeting in Japan.
01:12:15.620When it comes to the gas prices, we're going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it's over, we'll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less relying on fossil fuels when this is over.
01:12:32.540So it's an incredible transition, and it seems designed.
01:12:35.480He's trying to get us off of the, you know, the fossil fuel, you know, breast.
01:13:04.540We have to recognize we are uniquely privileged to live in the part of the world that is extremely empowered.
01:13:10.020There are 6 billion people in the world who use an amount of energy that anyone watching this in the U.S. would consider totally unacceptable.
01:13:17.020So you have to recognize that fossil fuels are 80% of the world's energy.
01:13:21.340They're growing because they are uniquely cost-effective and will be for the foreseeable future.
01:13:26.700So when you talk about this energy transition, what it really is, is it's an energy addition.
01:13:34.620Unfortunately, it's been an unreliable and costly energy addition.
01:13:38.460What we really want is a cost-effective energy addition where we're looking for alternatives, doing things like liberating nuclear, using more natural gas.
01:13:46.100But the way this energy transition has been architected, if you want to call it that, is that the primary thing has been restricting fossil fuel use.
01:13:57.480His first step was, let's shut down a pipeline, a key method of transporting a very valuable form of oil from Canada that our refineries specialize in.
01:14:06.200And so now we want to get it from Venezuela, right?
01:14:08.340Or he shuts down, you know, he bans leasing on federal lands.
01:14:11.740More broadly, he threatens the oil and gas industry, and he says in his campaign, I guarantee you we will end fossil fuel, threatening them and making them not want to engage in more investment and production because he's threatening it.
01:14:24.540And all of this – so notice what he's doing is his transition is destroying the industry that's working, the fossil fuel industry.
01:14:31.800It's not liberating or otherwise enabling a superior industry.
01:14:35.820And that's why it's so destructive because it's this false promise of solar and wind that's causing us to dramatically handicap ourselves, which leads to globally high energy prices and then higher and higher levels of insecurity for us and the rest of the free world.
01:14:51.800We've invested billions of dollars in renewable energy fields, trying to give people a leg up, give them a crutch, Solyndra and so on under Barack Obama.
01:14:59.620That's sort of what turned Schellenberger around.
01:15:01.600He was this Greenpeace-type activist saying, let's do this thing, and was one of the guys shepherding the Solyndra Project and others for the Obama green energy team and came to realize, this doesn't work.
01:15:19.140And so did an honest reevaluation of what might work.
01:15:22.360But given all those billions of dollars, Alex, that we've invested of taxpayer money trying to make these industries work here and elsewhere, where are they now?
01:15:30.480What percentage of the energy that we use are solar and wind that we've invested all that money in?
01:15:38.740Well, so globally, it's about 3% solar and wind.
01:15:42.940And then in the U.S., it's something like 12% of our electricity, about 4% of our energy, maybe it's up to 5% of our energy is solar and wind.
01:15:50.340But I want to – so the billions – first of all, it's many more than billions.
01:15:53.240It's at least hundreds of billions, arguably trillions.
01:15:55.600But the really costly thing is the restriction on fossil fuels that these are used to justify.
01:16:01.720It's one thing to take our money and waste it, and that is really, really bad.
01:16:05.620But it is a much worse thing to drastically increase the cost of energy by restricting it.
01:16:11.380And so when you think about higher oil prices, coal prices, natural gas prices around the world, this was a totally preventable problem.
01:16:18.600It is only caused by artificial restrictions on fossil fuel investment, production, and transportation, because we've got plenty of the resource.
01:16:26.560And the knowledge of how to harness it has not diminished.
01:16:29.920But our politicians on this idea that we need to get rid of fossil fuels and replace them with unreliable solar wind, they have restricted development around the world.
01:16:39.260And so that is the real tragedy because you raise energy prices.
01:16:42.400And as I told Barbara Boxer, and she didn't listen, when you – because she said, oh, you're a philosopher, I don't need to listen to a philosopher.
01:16:47.640Well, a philosopher looks at the big picture, and this philosopher learned a lot about energy and became an energy expert.
01:16:52.420And a very simple truth is the cost of energy determines the cost of everything because energy is the industry that powers every other industry.
01:17:00.420So when you make energy more expensive, you make everything more expensive.
01:17:04.580And that's what we're seeing most tragically right now with skyrocketing food prices around the world and threats of starvation.
01:17:46.520Greta Thunberg is she's got the ear of most folks on the left in our country and globally.
01:17:53.540That's what people believe, that we that we've stolen the childhood of people like Greta and that we are on the on the verge of global catastrophe.
01:18:01.940I mean, I'm very sympathetic to Greta.
01:18:06.380But I get why she's wrong because she's she's no child has ever.
01:18:10.180I mean, being a child in her era is like the greatest opportunity any human being has ever had.
01:18:16.000And this is why I'm really big on before we're predicting the future, we have to recognize the present.
01:18:20.380And most of the people we're trusting to predict our future are in total denial about the present.
01:18:25.060So the truth is that there's never been a better time to be alive, particularly before COVID and before we've had this energy crisis caused by fear of fossil fuels.
01:18:34.120But in general, it's still, you know, extreme poverty.
01:18:36.340So people living on less than $2 a day.
01:18:38.380When I was born in 1980, it was four out of 10 people.
01:18:42.540Now it's one out of 10 people living on less than $2 a day.
01:19:26.420And if you recognize the level of mastery that we have over nature, including over climate, and that that depends on machines powered by fossil fuels, you are optimistic about the future.
01:19:36.340Because if we've made climate so much safer after 170 years of warming and one degree of warming, how could you possibly think that another half a degree or a degree is going to be an apocalypse?
01:19:47.640That's just a primitive religious fear that has no basis in reality or science.
01:19:52.940Okay, I'm going to squeeze in a break.
01:19:54.220But after this, we're going to talk about accountability for the wrong predictions from people we're still listening to.
01:20:02.780And then we will get into nuclear because it's it's an exciting form of energy that has been just bastardized by people who have a different agenda.
01:20:10.720And more people need to know the truth.
01:20:12.320More with Alex Epstein right after this.
01:21:28.440So in general, I'm always in favor of innovation and things that are more cost effective.
01:21:33.220So for most people right now, EVs aren't more cost effective, both because they generally cost more and also they're not as effective in that they don't have the same range.
01:21:44.020You know, they can have a lot of issues, whether it's when it's really hot or when it's really cold.
01:21:48.320And in any case, when you're thinking of this, you always need to think about what is the – when I think about energy, I always think about what's the full process of producing the energy.
01:21:57.980Like with solar and wind, I don't just look at what's the cost of the solar panels and wind turbines.
01:22:01.600I look at, well, what's the cost of the backup that you need all the time?
01:22:04.700And with the EVs, you need to look at, as you said, where does the electricity come from?
01:22:08.720And because we have a mostly fossil-fueled grid, it comes mostly from fossil fuels.
01:22:13.900And unfortunately, the EV industry has not been very honest about this.
01:22:17.380The experience that drove this home for me is I wrote an article in Forbes that got a lot of attention maybe eight years ago, and it was called, with the Tesla S, Elon Musk has created a really good fossil fuel car.
01:22:27.780And I think that's what caused him to block me from Twitter.
01:22:43.580So I'm all for innovation in the field.
01:22:45.540The scariest thing to me about EVs is what we have in California, where Newsom is mandating battery-powered vehicles and undercutting our electricity.
01:22:54.760So that would be like if you mandated corn ethanol, and then you prevented people from growing corn.
01:23:00.420I mean, that's what we face in California.
01:23:02.200So that's the really scary thing is our electricity is getting worse, and yet we want to become far more dependent on electricity.
01:23:08.000And is there any risk to – you know what happens when the battery is in your house and you don't take care of it, and something crushes it, and like some weird stuff comes out, and you're like, I'm going to die a toxic death in a year if I touch this stuff.
01:23:39.240To they became viewed as, like, organic food or, like, something – you know, they're just viewed as this totally healthy thing that's part of this green environment, et cetera, et cetera.
01:23:48.080So, yeah, batteries are very hazardous.
01:23:51.920But, you know, I think you can manage those risks, but you have to deal with them in an honest way.
01:23:56.600You can't just treat them as, oh, they're clean, oh, we don't need to worry about what to do with them.
01:24:00.780Schellenberger has also pointed this out with solar panels.
01:24:02.640Like, solar panels have a lot of toxicity in them.
01:24:05.080You need to have a plan for disposing of them.
01:24:07.460But I keep coming back to the people who are pushing these solar-winded batteries as rapid replacements for fossil fuels are not serious about energy.
01:24:39.100The green stuff isn't as cost-effective, but it also has incredible impacts.
01:24:42.620And so what you find is that once these impacts become revealed, the green movement says, yeah, we don't really like that, too.
01:24:47.360Like, hey, we want more solar and wind, but let's oppose mining.
01:24:51.280Well, all these involve massive amounts of mined material.
01:24:54.480So it's further proof to me that what we're dealing with is an anti-energy movement that's pretending to be for these fake forms of energy to mask the identity of their hostility toward all forms of cost-effective energy.
01:25:07.320Well, how do they see us living in the future?
01:25:09.180I mean, like, how does that end for them?
01:25:13.780It depends on who you mean by them, because I think some people innocently believe this.
01:25:16.960But I think with some people, it ends with them being in control and them feeling superior.
01:25:22.320I mean, the basic – so my background is philosophy, and I'm really interested in environmental philosophy.
01:25:27.240I think that's really what gives me a different perspective.
01:25:29.220We're taught the environmental philosophy that the planet is perfect, and our impact on it is immoral and self-destructive, whereas my philosophy is the planet is imperfect, and our impact is very moral and constructive and beneficial so long as we do it with the principle of advancing human flourishing in mind.
01:25:47.440So it's good for us to take the naturally dirty and distant water and make it unnaturally clean and local.
01:25:52.980Like, it's good for us to take the naturally dangerous climate and make it unnaturally safe.
01:25:57.200But because we have this – our leaders have this very deep hostility toward human impact on nature, they really want a dehumanized planet.
01:26:16.040If somebody said to you, hey, Megan, I want to see a planet with less bear impact, you would expect – you would say these people hate bears and they want to kill bears.
01:26:23.980And I think that's ultimately true of a lot of our leaders.
01:26:27.040And some of them don't realize it, but that's the direction they're moving in, particularly by impoverishing the poorest people in the world by depriving them access to fossil fuels.
01:26:36.040You know those cults that believe the end of the world is coming and they say, like, you know, Judgment Day will be here, and then they get the date.
01:26:42.540And they're like, you know, December 1st, 1979, it's happening.
01:26:45.440You know, there will be no Earth after that.
01:26:47.160They're coming back down from outer space to get us or whatever it is.
01:29:25.780And fossil fuels, their overall effect, if you look at the benefits and side effects, has been to make our lives amazingly long, including amazingly safe from climate.
01:29:34.120So if he said, yeah, fossil fuels are amazing, they've made us unnaturally safe from climate, we're currently not experiencing a climate crisis, we're actually experiencing a climate renaissance, but I'm afraid of the future for X, Y, and Z, then I would respect it.
01:29:46.960But instead, he treats the present as terrible.
01:29:49.080Notice Greta, who's been miseducated by people like Bill Gates, who says, people are dying.
01:29:57.960That's the story that needs to be told.
01:30:00.140And if you look farther back, and this is what I do in Chapter 2, which is called catastrophizing side effects, you can see our leading institutions, including many thinkers that we've been listening to for 30-plus years and calling them experts, people such as Chief Science Advisor to President Obama, John Holdren.
01:30:16.940They've been predicting imminent disaster from four catastrophes, so catastrophic resource depletion, catastrophic pollution, catastrophic global cooling, catastrophic global warming, and yet we have more resources than ever, we have higher environmental quality than ever, and we're safer from climate than ever.
01:30:34.780So I had to invent a new term to capture how wrong these guys are.
01:30:38.780They're not just wrong, they're 180 degrees wrong.
01:30:41.860And we really need to question whom we're designating as experts, given that they have a track record of being 180 degrees wrong about fossil fuel side effects, and they ignore fossil fuels benefits.
01:30:52.940There's something deeply wrong with our expert class on this issue, which is why I decided to become an expert myself and write a 420-page book, because I think we need a fundamental re-education from someone who actually looks at the full context.
01:31:06.120Yeah, you name names. One so-called expert, Noel Brown. Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
01:31:15.620Well, that hasn't happened. Another guy, you mentioned Obama's top science advisor, John Holdren.
01:31:21.180Carbon dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020 didn't happen, and on and on this goes.
01:31:29.520If you read the book, you'll see he names names and gives you the exact predictions that did not come true.
01:31:34.240All right, in the time we have left, make the case for nuclear.
01:31:38.080So I think of the case for nuclear as nuclear is an amazing alternative for the future.
01:31:42.860You have a lot of people who are pro-nuclear, who are anti-fossil fuels.
01:31:45.900Actually, Schellenberger used to be this. Now I think he's pro-all energy, and he recognizes the world needs more energy.
01:31:50.940And that's one thing that's great about him is his thinking evolves over time as he's exposed to new facts and new arguments.
01:31:56.600But there are people who are pro-nuclear that are hostile to fossil fuels.
01:31:59.900I think that's a mistake because fossil fuels are totally necessary in the coming decades to provide the far greater amount of energy the world needs.
01:32:08.280But nuclear has unbelievable potential.
01:32:10.920I mentioned how concentrated oil is and how important that is.
01:32:14.380Nuclear material is far, far more concentrated than oil.
01:32:17.460It has this huge potential, even one day, for transportation.
01:32:20.260Right now, we already have nuclear-powered icebreakers, nuclear-powered submarines, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
01:32:26.560So you have this incredible potential to generate just an unbelievable amount of energy in a small amount of space.
01:32:32.780The problem is we've been regressing on nuclear.
01:32:36.080Nuclear was a relatively cheap and certainly very reliable source of electricity in the 70s.
01:32:40.940Now it has been demonized and criminalized in the U.S. to the point where it's about 10 times more expensive.
01:32:45.940And we've gone from four years to make a nuclear plant to 16 years, and it can easily be canceled.
01:32:52.080So we're in a nuclear tragedy right now.
01:32:54.700So what we need to do is we need to liberate nuclear.
01:32:57.260There's a whole bunch of anti-nuclear pseudo-safety stuff we need to get rid of.
01:33:02.320And that's actually why my next – I talk about – I give a plan for doing this in Fossil Future.
01:33:06.300But my next big project is what I call the Energy Freedom Platform, which I'm pushing to candidates this fall.
01:33:12.280And that includes one of the five planks is decriminalize nuclear.
01:33:15.820Because if we don't radically change the laws that are demonizing and criminalizing nuclear, we're not going to get the nuclear innovation that we want.
01:33:23.000And that could really one day – you know, the long-term replace fossil fuels.
01:33:26.580And in any case, it could provide far more energy for the whole world.
01:33:30.420And I'm all about – I want the world to have far more energy.
01:33:33.380And I think long-term, the only way we're going to get that is with a lot of nuclear.
01:33:37.080You know, the NOC, to name a couple, one is nuclear waste and it not being well-contained and it getting into drinking water, et cetera, and – or playgrounds, what have you – and meltdown.
01:34:01.980And then the meltdown is – the meltdown is actually a good thing.
01:34:04.580What that means is that when nuclear goes wrong, which is rare and, you know, very, very rare, it doesn't explode like basically other forms of energy, which can kill people.
01:34:12.880It just overheats and it melts down and you have time to get away.
01:34:15.600You have time to recover, which is why we don't have deaths from radiation in the civilized world from nuclear.
01:34:20.400So I recommend learning more about it in Chapter 6 of my book and there are other resources as well.
01:34:59.360There is a verdict in the Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard defamation trial.
01:35:05.020All told, the jury was out for 12 hours and 45 minutes deliberating this case.
01:35:09.840Update from Long Crime Network, which says that Johnny Depp will not be physically present for today's 3 p.m. verdict.
01:35:15.960He will be watching from the United Kingdom where he had, quote, previously scheduled work commitments.
01:35:20.640Do not know whether Amber Heard will be there, but guaranteed they'll both be watching.
01:35:25.820We hope you'll watch and tune in to us tomorrow when we'll have a full reaction to what happens today.
01:35:30.720And we will also have Matt Walsh looking forward to him coming back first time since January on his new documentary with The Daily Wire, What is a Woman?, which is available today.
01:35:41.460Check it out and hear him discuss it tomorrow.
01:35:43.240In the meantime, download The Megyn Kelly Show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher, and go follow us on YouTube.com slash Megyn Kelly, where we'd love you to subscribe and smash that like button.