00:08:33.880No, no, no. That is not the taper down. That is definitely all systems go. But, you know, if you win the Kentucky Derby, man, male, female, whatever, you should have a reaction like that.
00:08:47.280I think that actually was her friend standing next to her who hugged her on the win.
00:08:52.240And she posted something on her Instagram thanking that friend's employer, which I think she said was like the racing association of a particular state or maybe it was the national, for firing her friend so that her friend could come work for her and be part of the historic day and historic win on Saturday.
00:09:11.840Such a sweet story of friendship for those two as well.
00:09:16.320Despite being the first female trainer to win the Derby,
00:09:19.400Cherie does not, to her credit, want to make this about her gender.
00:09:23.660The horse racing has long been dominated by men.
00:09:27.720It's started to change a little bit in recent years,
00:18:18.360just how majestic and impressive Secretary it was,
00:18:24.120here he is in the 1973 Belmont Stakes.
00:18:28.960Behind them, then it's twice a prince,
00:18:31.380and the trailer is private smiles as they go by the turn.
00:18:35.420Those two together, Sham on the outside, Sham getting ahead in front as they move around the turn with Secretariat second.
00:18:42.160Then there's a large gap, making eight lengths back to Mike Gallant in third and Vice of Prince fourth, and Private Smiles is still a trailer.
00:18:50.280They're on the backstretch. It's almost a match race now. Secretariat's on the inside, by ahead, Sham is on the outside.
00:18:57.380They've opened 10 lengths on Mike Gallant, who is third by Ed, with fight to Prince fourth.
00:19:03.380Then it's another 8 lengths back to Private Smiles, who is trailing the field.
00:20:47.760It makes me tear up to see those moments, those great sports moments, whether it's Miracle on Ice or the hockey players this time around in the Olympics, male and female, the U.S. teams, or the horse coming from behind.
00:21:04.140They were saying that that whole story was documented so beautifully in the movie Secretariat starring Diane Lane.
00:21:09.500And just a fun fact for you. In the movie Secretariat and in real life, there was a famous moment as Secretariat was about to be born. And they knew that this was a good pairing of, you know, the mayor and the stud.
00:21:28.140and it was from two very respected breeders
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00:24:59.080Emily, it's such a great story, isn't it?
00:31:57.240I really think she tries to be fair. She's obviously a liberal and a New York Times journalist, but I like her. And she, I thought, did a very nice job with Tucker. Was it perfect? No, there were a couple of low moments where she's really, really focused on Nick Fuentes. But overall, I thought she gave him a fair shot. And Tucker handled himself, of course, very, very well and was very deft. And anything, any sort of would-be trap she was laying, he saw from a mile away.
00:32:24.980And it made for a very interesting, robust exchange between the two of them.
00:32:29.660There was the obsession with Nick Fuentes, but Tucker, his answer on it was very, very
00:32:47.300He's like more of a black-pilled young guy who hates both parties, says very controversial0.97
00:32:52.720things about Jews and blacks and women. But outside of that says a lot of things that,0.95
00:33:00.940you know, have turned out to be prescient, unlike politics. So he's got a bit of a following
00:33:06.260because he's got a good track record on his political predictions and insights, but he's
00:33:11.040incendiary in his discussions about any group of color or vulnerable, marginalized, whatever
00:33:17.140group. So anyway, he's become more and more popular over the past five years with a certain
00:33:23.660segment of especially young, disaffected men. And it's all the left's fault. It's all the left's
00:33:29.700fault who have told these young men that race is really what matters. It determines everything.
00:33:34.160It's the number one thing about you that matters. And by the way, if yours happens to be white0.89
00:33:38.560and you're a male on top of it, fuck you. You suck. So the left has driven people to,1.00
00:33:46.060you know a commentator like this um they have only themselves to blame but the reporters at
00:33:52.500the new york times would never acknowledge that um by the way he says he's voting for gavin newsom
00:33:57.400he says that because he doesn't like the fact that jd vance if he's the nominee
00:34:01.140is married to i won't repeat the ethnic slur about usha but it's an ethnic slur about him
00:34:07.080being married to a brown indian woman and uh so i don't this doesn't sound far right to me but
00:34:12.020whatever. Here's how that exchange went between. Fuentes also thinks Gavin Newsom is hot and good
00:34:18.680looking and has the, yeah, he's got the look. All right. I have to say on the sliding scale
00:34:26.500of politicians, he is hot. It's like Chief Justice John Roberts on the sliding scale of
00:34:32.280judges is he's hot. But like, then you put them out in the real world and things change.
00:34:39.600And then, of course, Gavin Newsom is like, you know, one of those like, I don't know, like a real housewife where they might look fine while they're just sitting there in the screen grab.
00:34:47.460But then you hear them talk and you're like, oh, my God, never mind.
00:34:51.480OK, here's Tucker and Lulu on Nick Fuentes 17.
00:34:55.860Fuentes himself is a distraction from the conversations that matter because power is displayed through the structure of the economic system globally and per country.
00:35:07.360and in the use of force so it's the economic program and the foreign policy program are what
00:35:14.400matters in every government from the beginning of time those are the two questions on which
00:35:20.460there's a bipartisan consensus in washington between republicans and democrats that were we
00:35:24.880should do this thing the public rejects that thing on both categories they reject the economics
00:35:30.820that are a consensus choice in washington and they reject the foreign policy this consensus
00:35:34.940choice in Washington. And so Washington's response, Wall Street's response as well,
00:35:38.640is to be like, let's have a race war and you guys can like argue over blacks or whites or
00:35:43.380whether JD is married to an Indian woman, like what? And so Fuentes is incredibly useful for
00:35:48.420people with actual power to divert the conversation to something that is both irrelevant and divisive
00:35:54.440because it's a divide and conquer strategy. And my strong view gained over 35 years of watching
00:36:00.960carefully and being involved is that that's come to its end. Okay. So smart, such an important
00:36:09.400reframing of some of the things that we've been discussing lately, Emily. And I mean, I think this
00:36:15.640is why people who don't like Tucker find him so threatening, because he's such an effective
00:36:23.080messenger, and he can redefine an entire debate like he did right there. Yeah, and it's a really
00:36:28.800deep point that he's making. Neil Postman in the mid 80s was kind of hysterical over Ronald Reagan
00:36:34.980being the president as an actor. And he saw this as the television-based epistemology overtaking
00:36:40.400the print-based epistemology. And in Amusing Ourselves to Death, he wrote about how inferior
00:36:45.400the television-based epistemology of politics and culture was to a sort of political epistemology
00:36:51.140based on print. And there's, I think, merit to that. But what we're in now is like the algorithmic
00:36:55.800social media based epistemology. And I think this is kind of what Tucker is getting at in that
00:36:59.980Fuentes for many people is a meme. They don't sit around and watch like long episodes. He definitely
00:37:07.260has like a dedicated audience on his streams, which, man, I think you're right. The left drove
00:37:12.020so many young men, especially straight into his arms and empowered him with their rhetoric that
00:37:19.220was often wildly over the top, inaccurate, wrong, and bigoted against men in so many cases, just did
00:37:24.620that for like the last 15 years and then don't want to have to reckon with the consequences. But
00:37:28.260more so, he's, for many, many people, a meme. They're laughing at him. They're not laughing
00:37:33.620with him. They don't really know much about him. They don't have much context for him.
00:37:37.880They just see funny clips that they were told were, you know, very naughty. And when you're
00:37:43.340a teenager, you're in your early 20s, and people are telling you, you can't laugh at these things.
00:37:47.900The kid's got comedic timing, and he says awful things that other people won't. And it's a meme.
00:37:53.120It's a meme. And Tucker is correct. It's a meme that has been used as a distraction from some of these structural problems that people would rather not talk about because it implicates them. It implicates the worldviews that they have perpetuated. It implicates the worldviews that they still hold dear about the ickiness of populism and the hoi polloi being wrong about their own fates.
00:38:15.220And so there, it's just much easier to fight this war with the proxy of Nick Fuentes than it is to actually deal with what's happening in the public.
00:38:27.000Because if you look at it, and Tucker believes that there's basically a uniparty, you know, that the left and the right on so many of the biggest issues are indistinguishable.
00:38:39.200On some of the smaller issues, though, there are big differences.
00:38:41.980Like not smaller, but like smaller than like the economy, which obviously is the number one thing that's motivating most people.
00:38:48.320But he thinks on the economy and on war, never ending war, and in particular war on behalf of Israel, the parties are nearly indistinguishable.
00:38:57.900and that both sides would much rather see us arguing over Nick Fuentes and his views on race
00:39:05.060than on those two things on which there's not that big a difference between the two of them.
00:39:10.580They all vote, both sides, to line their own pockets. They all seem rather corrupt.0.95
00:39:16.540And they all love war. They get paid by, they get put into office by the military-industrial complex
00:39:22.660and AIPAC. And those are effectively their masters, which is why we continue to see war
00:39:28.360after war after war, even from a guy like Trump who ran on not doing this.
00:39:32.520There's another great moment in the interview where I think Lulu asks Tucker, like, why
00:39:37.420then are people so obsessed with Fuentes? I'm paraphrasing it. I don't have the exact
00:39:41.460verbatim language, but he responds, well, because it's easier to call someone, or maybe they were
00:39:46.420talking about anti-Semitism, but I think it applies to Fuentes as well. It's like, it's easier
00:39:50.060to call somebody a name and to call them a bigot because it immediately stigmatizes and ostracizes
00:39:55.800them than it is to actually grapple with an argument they're advancing. And so if you're
00:40:00.760calling somebody that word, you're calling somebody, you're making this really serious
00:40:05.380charge, you actually should be able to back it up. But so often it's just deployed in a way that
00:40:11.420shuts a person down, shuts a person up, stigmatizes them, ostracizes them. And so that is the way to
00:40:16.740get them out of the argument. And you can basically discredit an entire opposition movement to war
00:40:24.040if you say anybody who is flirting with this is you, this is what happened with Fuentes. We were
00:40:28.880playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon with Fuentes every day last fall. Like if somebody had ever
00:40:33.560watched a Fuentes clip and laughed at it, oh my goodness, you hate Israel. It's just happening
00:40:39.260constantly. And Tucker's right. He points it out in the interview. He's like, well, it's much easier
00:40:43.260to default to the label and to the name than it is to deal with the argument. It's just a shortcut.
00:40:47.600It's a cheat code. If you apply the name and the label, then you just are automatically kind of
00:40:52.140disqualifying them with a segment of the public. And it's really, I mean, it's a terrible way to
00:40:57.400do politics in the United States, obviously. Now you have a huge section of the country that's
00:41:02.060against this war. You can't really do that. And so it's falling apart.
00:41:07.340Yeah. I went on Tucker's show months ago and said basically what I just said about Nick Fuentes,
00:41:12.740which is he's he has a lot of sharp insights and he's a smart political talker, but he says
00:41:19.840absolutely vile things about blacks, about Indians, about Jews, about women. And so, you know, you've
00:41:26.400got to like putting that to the side. He's got some smart commentary, but, you know, you can't
00:41:31.620like obviously you can't talk about Nick Fuentes without talking about that stuff, which I did.
00:41:35.280And my newfound detractors on the right, on the neocon pro-Israel right, clipped only the one part where I said the nice, like, whatever, what his value was, and circulated it all over X, all over X.
00:41:52.140Like, that was the alpha and omega of my own thoughts about Nick Fontes.1.00
00:42:01.980You got to live with it because the Internet's going to do what it's going to do.
00:42:05.400But some of them are my former friends.
00:42:07.500Some of them are people who actually used to come in the show.
00:42:10.540And it's just it's not good for anybody.
00:42:12.780And I know, Megan, like you have really thick skin.
00:42:15.180But I also just feel like we have to pause and realize what a horrible thing that is to do to another human being, especially another human being who is like put their own skin on the line to stand up, as you have done many times in some of these campus cases.
00:42:29.220and to like stand up against legitimate anti-Semitism.
00:42:57.640Like, yes, things feel tense and painful right now, but what we do in the United States is actually amazing. And it's partially because bigotry, genuine bigotry has been highly stigmatized. And so to apply that label to somebody who doesn't actually believe those things and to just, again, put the label on them, not argue about whether you're enabling it or just like have a substantive argument, fine.
00:43:17.880But to just toss the label around is truly disgusting on top of just not being constructive.
00:43:24.960It makes it impossible for people to talk to each other.
00:43:27.160And on a human level, it is really sad.
00:43:29.940And if you're doing that without thinking about it because you're caught up in the algorithm and you're not pausing 10 minutes before you do it, that's even more shameful.
00:43:44.460But it's just it's such a bad thing to do.
00:43:47.880Yeah. No, I mean, it is, you know, it's unfortunate because it's not working out for the people who did it. You know, it's like people who just jumped on the anti-Semitism train. They've dismissed Tucker as one. And I mean, like the notion of calling me an anti-Semite is so absurd that the listening audience to the show knows what a lie that is. But like the outside people, they don't know. They don't. Not everybody listens to the show on a daily basis or enough to know.
00:45:21.600They expanded into, they sort of like, you know, they had mission creep, Emily.
00:45:26.480Now they're selling razors and they're selling chocolate and they're selling, I don't know, all sorts of different products as opposed to just like doing the news.
00:45:33.980you know and they started to do all this like children's programming and um movie making and
00:45:39.980it's like i think if they just stuck to their core mission of doing the news in a more fair
00:45:45.180and balanced way and hadn't gotten hung up on all these other projects and yes indeed the israel
00:45:51.600first nature of ben's coverage in particular i think they'd be fine i don't i'm i think you know
00:45:57.720in the off election years it's always a little slower for you know any podcast so i'm sure that's
00:46:03.800a factor, but I think they would have withstood that no problem had these other factors not been
00:46:09.200there. I just think in general, the right doesn't take well to name-calling, culling of the movement,
00:46:17.320anyone declaring themselves like the godfather of it who will decide who gets to stay and who
00:46:23.360gets to go. According to Ben Shapiro, Steve Bannon had to go as of December. So did Tucker.
00:46:29.320I got lumped in there as an alleged coward
00:54:13.760First of all, the person updating us on the latest bad news is Bradley Cooper, which I
00:54:18.900told Steve Krakauer, we've really dropped the ball here if we're not taking these pressers
00:54:22.820live and Bradley Cooper is the new spokesperson for CENTCOM.
00:54:26.500It turns out there's more than one man by that name.
00:54:29.580He says the following, that 15,000 U.S. service members are now involved in what we're calling Project Freedom.
00:54:40.220We reported on this today on AM Update.
00:54:43.000It is our new effort to help commercial vessels pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
00:54:47.020Trump, the administration clarified that we're not, allegedly, we're not like physically escorting and protecting them.
00:54:53.180We're just helping show them the route that will avoid mines and other dangers.
00:54:58.620So I guess I no one really knows, as is typical with the reporting on this war.
00:55:03.860But the reporting is that we have 15000 U.S. service members who are involved in this effort, that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has launched drones and missiles to try to disrupt the mission over the last several hours.
00:55:17.880And now we're having like return fire.
00:55:20.860The U.S. military blew up six small Iranian boats in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday after
00:55:27.060Iran launched multiple cruise missiles, drones, and small boats at U.S. Navy ships and at
00:55:32.840commercial ships being, quote, protected, again, it's unclear, by the U.S. military,
00:55:48.200It sounds like there's some fire that's not ceasing. And this is to the surprise of no one, as President Trump claims, but no one knows for sure what's in there, that he's received a 14 point plan from the Iranians to bring this thing to a close, which he claims is not good enough.
00:56:07.400and now he's going to play hardball and he doesn't want to talk to them yet.
00:56:12.380I was on with Piers Morgan a little earlier, Emily, and he asked me,
00:56:15.640what would you tell the president to do?
00:56:17.760And I said I would tell him to just take the deal.0.87
00:56:22.460Give the Revolutionary Guard something.
00:56:25.700It appears to be that they're mercenaries.
00:56:28.400So give them some sort of financial incentive to relinquish control over the strait
00:56:33.280and don't make whatever around the nuclear program
00:56:38.460be the thing that screws up the end of the deal
00:59:11.560And that's not, I think these assessments are correct.
00:59:13.820Trump himself acknowledged in an interview
00:59:15.480with Maria Bartiromo a couple of weeks ago
00:59:17.340that, yeah, the prices could remain elevated0.97
00:59:20.100all the way up until the midterm elections. And so when you're asking the public to make a
00:59:25.940sacrifice for safety, and then you have to find a way to negotiate something that is different
00:59:32.820from what was on the table before the war, that is a serious, serious problem for President Trump
00:59:39.800right now. Because if you lose American lives in the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Hormuz was
00:59:44.040obviously open before the war began. And so if you end up losing American lives, this is an
00:59:50.160escalation that we're seeing happen right now in the process of trying to get something back to0.74
00:59:54.680the pre-war status quo. That is disastrous, all while you're asking Americans to sacrifice their
01:00:01.600hard-earned money. It's basically wiped out the benefits that the Trump administration was excited
01:00:06.000about from the tax cuts. That's what some of the economic estimates are looking like right now.
01:00:10.260it's easy to see how those prices are so, so high and not going down anytime soon in all likelihood.
01:00:15.760And so you might end up, I pray to God it doesn't happen, but you might end up losing more troops
01:00:21.400in the process of trying to open the Strait of Hormuz. And then what is on the table in terms
01:00:26.000of actually, like we're right now seeing President Trump has said the Iranian Navy has basically been
01:00:30.520decimated. Well, we're in an era of asymmetric warfare where they have their mosquito fleet,0.99
01:00:35.620they have drones, they can find a way to cause us pain if we're truly trying to reopen the1.00
01:00:41.700Strait of Hormuz. So where things are looking at right now for a peace deal, your option is,
01:00:46.940I think, the sane option. But the president is in a situation where he said that he was going to
01:00:52.360change the fate of Iran. And he's defined it in many different terms, you know, freedom for the
01:00:58.420Iranian people. He's defined it as no nukes ever. And I don't know where you go from here at this
01:01:04.420point, if that's what the president thinks he has to get out of this conflict to look like,
01:01:09.100he's truly had a win. So it's a scary position to be in right now.
01:01:15.460Yeah, because you've got the risk of escalation right there, looming over every move we make and
01:01:21.440every move they make, anything provocative by us, and they'd be happy to start this thing back up.
01:01:26.160They don't care. And they are enjoying watching Trump suffer politically. And I think the president's
01:01:33.240very frustrated. My own impression is he's very frustrated right now because he's used to being
01:01:39.320able to will his desires into existence, just the sheer force of him. And he's a tough negotiator.
01:01:49.160He can be a bully in his negotiations, which has always worked for him. And it's not working.
01:01:56.120And he's not used to this. I think he doesn't quite know how to get out of this one.
01:01:59.980I think that's totally correct. If they had a good idea of how to get out of it, we wouldn't keep hitting these impasses in negotiations and the like. And, you know, that's the question. If Iran wants to say 15 years, 20 years, no enrichment, and put that on the table, and it's not good enough for President Trump, then which, again, I don't even think it's an unreasonable position for Donald Trump, who ran on non-nuclear Iran against Barack Obama, like the politics of it.
01:02:29.980You can easily see how you get that position from Donald Trump. But at the same time, if that's the brick wall that you're hitting, it doesn't go away. It doesn't go away unless he finds some way to restore the Strait of Hormuz to what it was in the pre-war condition and then force Iran to concede while it has all of these asymmetric abilities to keep causing us pain.
01:02:55.940So I don't know how you end up breaking that wall because it's the same thing that we keep hitting up against. They're not going to agree to no nukes ever. It's just not it's not going to happen. And unless we're willing to keep fighting it out against this asymmetric military threat from Iran, then we're in it for the long haul.0.94
01:03:16.680Mm hmm. You've got Lindsey Graham and Mark Thiessen saying, if they won't give us what we want, the leaders with whom we're negotiating in Iran, kill them, kill the people we're negotiating with so that we can get some, quote, more reasonable people to negotiate with.
01:03:35.620so we should just keep killing the people we're negotiating.0.52
01:03:38.100What that would do to the United States' ability to negotiate with anyone0.86
01:04:24.880That sounds, that feels really good in the moment when you're killing the person you disagreed with across the table from Jared Kushner.
01:04:31.100the consequences long-term be damned. Well, right. That's predicated on the idea that if you0.94
01:04:38.840kill this person, if you drone this person, what's going to come next is going to be someone more0.70
01:04:43.220reasonable. And that assumption is doing some real heavy lifting from Lindsey Graham and anybody0.97
01:04:48.940making such propositions. Because if you are asking people, just on a human level, if you're
01:04:55.280asking people who would be in a position to negotiate after you take out one layer of
01:04:59.280leadership to then be more reasonable rather than more radical and more doggedly opposed to the
01:05:07.240United States. Again, that is a very, I mean, you are betting a lot on that particular idea of what
01:05:14.180would happen if you do that. And then what, of course, to your point happens when you're trying
01:05:18.420to host negotiations in the future and people worry that it's a setup for them to get killed
01:05:24.100or droned in the process, the long-term ramifications of that way of prosecuting a war
01:05:29.220are just frankly insane, insane. But it keeps happening, of course.
01:05:33.740Our word used to be really good. Our word used to be very good. The word of the United States
01:05:38.840of America. And it's being eroded and besmirched bit by bit by every time we keep doing this. This
01:05:45.600is twice we've allegedly negotiated with the Iranians of good faith only to bomb them while0.90
01:05:51.120they were negotiating with us. And, you know, Thiessen and Lindsey Graham would like it to be
01:05:56.300a third, at least. Speaking of our word, President Trump tells Fox News in an interview that's about
01:06:03.400to hit that the Iranians will, quote, be blown off the face of the earth if they attack U.S.
01:06:10.100vessels that are guiding ships through the Strait of Hormuz as part of, quote, Project Freedom.0.95
01:06:15.900So the Iranians will be blown off the face of the earth if they attack the vessels.0.99
01:06:19.220I mean, they are attacking the vessels. We just started the hour by saying they've launched drones and missiles to try to thwart the traffic and disrupt the mission over the last several hours. That's what led to our retaliatory strikes against them. So it is happening. I'm not sure exactly what he means, if this is just more bellicose language by the president trying to escalate everything to an 11, right, to try to just scare them.0.98
01:06:44.540We're going to end civilization as we know it.
01:07:35.880If you continue to speak in the bellicose rhetoric, and then it turns out to just be rhetoric, just even tactically, that doesn't fulfill its own goal. So the power of it wanes over time. Anyway, it's sort of like with the tariffs, which I've been pretty supportive of, to be honest, but it's basically this idea that you can, you know, posture, get the markets to go in one direction or the other.
01:07:58.180Well, some countries have started to bet against the United States and do their business elsewhere and say, well, we can't rely on the United States anymore.
01:08:04.420We can't rely on the word of the president because it changes.
01:08:06.820And so we're just going to hedge our bets and go somewhere else.
01:08:09.160He's doing something similar, I think, on the foreign policy level.
01:08:11.800And the power of being able to intimidate other countries into agreeing with you to coerce them, it does wane over time.
01:08:18.520It's not something that lasts forever.
01:08:20.120and plus it's like my main thing is i don't want american troops to die number one but i really
01:08:26.740am very focused on the midterms because the midterms get tougher for republicans in 28
01:08:32.900in particular in the senate um i mean obviously in the senate because the house re re does itself
01:08:39.740every two years uh but the senate is it's the map gets worse for the republicans in 28 so they
01:08:45.740really need to hold on in 26. And now we played it for our audience late last week. Mark Halperin
01:08:50.320saying, I think the Senate may now be in play, like legitimately in play, which was new for him.
01:08:54.580He hadn't been there. And so like, if we lose the Senate, if the right loses control of the Senate,
01:09:00.280you like forget you, you will not confirm another judge. President Trump will not get another judge
01:09:05.680on the federal bench for the remainder of his term, which is a very big deal. That is like
01:09:11.040a large reason. A lot of people on the right voted for President Trump because of the lunacy
01:09:15.320happening on the federal bench and to put a stop to that.
01:09:48.700But, you know, without me, she'd be living on a fixed income that would very much be rattling her because her day to day would be deeply affected by these gas prices.
01:10:07.900Seventy seven percent say Donald Trump.
01:10:10.180I look back at every president I could find on a similar question, which is when the gas prices rise, who gets the blame?
01:10:17.240Trump gets the blame more than Joe Biden did back in 2022, more than Barack Obama did in 2012, and more than George W. Bush did back in 2005, 71 percent.
01:10:27.260Donald Trump takes the cake. He owns this mess, according to the American people.
01:10:31.400And it is quite the mess because his gas prices climb ever higher and the increase in the percentage that blamed Donald Trump climb ever higher.
01:10:37.760his approval ratings go down in the base but when you break it down by party this is where it gets
01:10:43.200oh my you know this is a republican base that has been infatuated with donald trump for years
01:10:49.060but even here blame trump for rising gas prices 55 a majority of republicans blame donald trump
01:10:56.280for gas prices that is the highest ever blame for gas prices from one's own party then you see 82
01:11:01.440percent of independents that's the highest percentage who blame the president of the
01:11:05.320united states among independents not much of a surprise 95 percent of democrats but majority
01:11:09.600majority majority and what he keeps saying emily is that it's basically your patriotic duty to
01:11:18.160support these higher gas prices and pay them because iran cannot have a nuclear weapon not
01:11:22.920withstanding the fact that it was his own intelligence agencies that said they're not
01:11:27.040getting one we're good that's not a concern we need to have right now especially in the wake of
01:11:31.380the bombing that we did in June. So that, I mean, it's not, the public is not buying his rationale
01:11:37.820at all. And what he keeps saying also is, look at the stock market, the stock market. Okay.
01:11:43.600That's a rich person thing. Like, I'm sorry, but like, yes, the average person may have 401ks
01:11:49.380that get affected by the stock market, but the true average American is worried about
01:11:55.280what's in their weekly disbursement from Social Security, what they get in their paycheck,
01:12:01.660and they don't have a ton of money in the market.
01:12:05.360Right. Stocks are a long-term concern for probably about 60% of the country, but it's not
01:12:10.080their monthly income is not coming from that. And so he takes so much credit for the market that I
01:12:17.520think it's actually why Harry Enten was just pointing out those numbers are historically high
01:12:22.060of your own party blaming the president for where gas prices are, because if you are constantly
01:12:27.160taking ownership of the markets, it looks to the average person like you're taking ownership of
01:12:31.960the economy. And he's done that in various ways over, you know, gas prices are great. He's taking
01:12:36.460credit for the gas prices being great. And so he's, you know, if anything economic is happening
01:12:42.460in a good way, he's taking credit for it. He's very intentional and strategic about that. And
01:12:46.020so it's much easier than for people to blame you when the economy is in a bad position. And Megan,
01:12:50.840I remember you and I were talking a month ago about some of these Senate races. I think the
01:12:54.720big ones to watch are Ohio and Nebraska right now, because if you're in Ohio, or if you're in
01:13:00.080Nebraska, you're Pete Ricketts, and you have to defend the administration at every campaign stop
01:13:05.020that is taking money, it feels like to the average person, is taking money out of their pockets
01:13:08.840for the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war began. If you have to defend that at stop
01:13:14.480after stop, your support for this war, your support for this president to voters, those two races are
01:13:20.080really, really, really wants to watch. Susan Collins is kind of always vulnerable, but always
01:13:24.440persists. So I don't know what's going to happen in that race. Texas, I think, is probably safe0.99
01:13:29.560for Republicans. North Carolina is going to be a real problem for Republicans. North Carolina,
01:13:35.340Ohio, Nebraska. Yep, that's a big, big problem across the board. Georgia, certainly. So a lot
01:13:42.420of serious headaches for Republicans, especially as they get into the summer and they're back at
01:13:47.400The one in Maine concerns me, too, because this Graham Plattner, who is now going to be the Democratic nominee, you know, even Tucker was like praising him somewhat on that New York Times interview because his foreign policy sounds like Tucker's, you know, like, don't intervene, like stay out of other people's wars, which I like, too.
01:14:08.100However, you look down the resume and you see he wants to pack the Supreme Court with extra seats and make Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico states.
01:14:15.140No, it's a no. No. Oh, my God. If that were to happen, you know, like we'd have amnesty. We'd have mass amnesty if we had a Democrat in the White House and a Democrat-controlled Senate with people that radical. It's very scary to me. I care about foreign policy, but it's not my number one issue to the place where I'd be willing to vote for a guy like that.
01:14:36.400But he's got I don't know. He's got some. Is it charm? I don't know if that's the right word. Is it like charisma? I'm not sure he's he's new and he's young and he's interesting in a way that Susan Collins can never be and never was.
01:14:50.780Yeah, we've interviewed him before at Breaking Points, and he's very raw. Like, he will just have a conversation like a normal human being. And so policy disputes aside, looking at him as a candidate, I know it's such a low bar for politicians, but he's the type of guy, like, I was just listening to him with David Sirota on Lever News yesterday. David asked him if he would go on Tucker's podcast. And Graham's response was, you know, I don't know, to be honest with you, I'm just sort of torn on this question myself.
01:15:17.640I've been thinking about it a lot. And I just don't, you know, he's like, I just want to be
01:15:20.800honest. I don't have an answer for you right now. It's like that to the average voter right now in
01:15:25.480this, as we were talking about earlier in the show, the algorithmic social media based
01:15:29.500political discourse that we have, it's like, oh my gosh, that person sounds like a human being.
01:15:34.780They're not reading talking points. So I think he's just a very, very good candidate. Policy
01:15:40.160disputes aside, again, he's very anti-establishment. He says the problem is with both parties
01:15:45.000and he's just able to talk like a normal human.
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01:24:36.280Only on the Megyn Kelly Channel, Sirius XM 111, and on the Sirius XM app.
01:24:45.240Back with me now, Emily Jashinsky of The After Party Show and The MK Wrap-Up Show as well, live right here on SiriusXM after The MK Show airs.
01:24:54.160And you can call in and speak to her just as soon as that starts in a short time.
01:24:58.600Okay, so Vulture does a very, very deep dive into the Baldoni Lively Saga.
01:25:07.660This is part of New York Magazine's media empire.
01:25:39.840She will turn her celebrity husband against you and Taylor Swift, as we know, and that the loathing of this woman extended well beyond ultimately Justin Baldoni and his business partners, even Sony, right?
01:25:56.340Was it Sony, which was, I guess, putting out the film?
01:26:01.240I got to make sure I have that right.0.93
01:26:02.520Yeah, Sony called her a terrorist,1.00
01:26:06.680called her a terrorist in the way that she was behaving
01:26:09.500toward Justin Baldoni and the rest of the people
01:26:12.640working on this film because she wanted to be
01:27:22.360I know you took a look at the vulture article.
01:27:24.920Yeah, well, I always love when Kelly's court is in session on this because the trial is going to be like really, I don't know, it's just there's so many tangled variables or interests that are like going through the legal process right now with this story.
01:27:39.040But the vulture piece puts the meat on the bones.
01:27:41.880I think of the broad contours that you and a lot of others saw immediately when that Christmastime New York Times article dropped.
01:27:49.840uh that was this was this was like a year and a half ago at this point where this was like the
01:27:55.040first big article uh of the saga and it was trying to point the finger at Baldoni in almost a me too
01:28:03.700way and you could see in that story how something was being built and constructed even at that time
01:28:10.820when we had so little context about what was happening behind the scenes and what you get in
01:28:15.100this vulture piece is the step-by-step TikTok of how Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds roped in a
01:28:24.700network of very powerful celebrities and their reputations to try to take down Baldoni and save
01:28:32.260Blake Lively's career. They brought in Matt Damon and Matt Damon's wife. Obviously, people have
01:28:38.000known about the Taylor Swift of it all for a long time, but they are consciously trying. And you see
01:28:43.520in their text messages, which are deeply embarrassing because they are groveling to
01:28:49.080their celebrity friends. Like reading them as a third party, you have secondhand embarrassment
01:28:55.800for these celebrities who are groveling over more powerful celebrities and trying to bring
01:29:01.220them to their side. They are invoking politics. Ryan Reynolds is referring to Baldoni as a
01:29:07.240feminist, like F-A-U-X-minist, a fake feminist. Yeah. Here's the quote he writes to Matt Damon1.00
01:29:13.120and his wife. This is from Ryan Reynolds. He calls him a malignantly vain, sociopathic,
01:29:23.560feminist with almost no sense of boundaries or shame. Keep going.1.00
01:29:27.360Yeah. I mean, there's message after message where they are invoking politics, feminism,
01:29:34.980being a good ally. You can see this in some of the early text messages between Blake Lively and
01:29:39.720Justin Baldoni. They are like bonding over allyship. It just makes your skin crawl because
01:29:44.600it's so cringy. It's just like- And their wokeness.
01:29:47.080Yes. It's just like toxic millennial behavior, which I can say because I'm a millennial,
01:29:51.080but they are just like trying to bring this huge network of celebrities to crush
01:29:56.600Justin Baldoni. And they are manipulating the media in the process. It's incredible to watch
01:30:03.000the behind the scenes happen with all of these text messages. It's amazing.
01:30:06.880And how small these huge stars are at heart.
01:30:11.640You know, you can have all the money and all the fame and all the trappings of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively and still feel so small that you've got to rally your celeb network to try to ruin this director, Justin Baldoni, who really wasn't planning on doing anything to Blake Lively.
01:30:26.440He wanted to have a successful movie. He wanted to have a great rollout. She started to publicly humiliate him by unfollowing him on social media and getting the rest of the cast to do that and making him stay in the basement for the premiere. And he accurately deduced. I mean, it doesn't exactly take a genius that she was trying to ruin him.
01:30:42.580Like this is the beginning of a smear campaign from which he was unlikely to recover, hired his own PR team to try to fight back.
01:30:48.740And that's been painted as now retaliation for the alleged sexual harassment.
01:30:54.000She, in my view, completely falsely claimed she was subjected to on set.
01:30:58.300The sexual harassment piece of her claim has been thrown out.
01:31:01.380But I do think one of the most interesting things about this trial is going to be the exact same dynamic we saw at Amber Heard, Johnny Depp and that trial.
01:31:10.220because she, you see in the text messages
01:31:13.440outlined in this article that her team,
01:31:17.840including starting with her and her husband, Ryan Reynolds,0.62
01:31:20.840they're like, we will label him this fominist,0.92
01:31:28.260Justin Baldoni was one of those touchy feely guys
01:31:30.940with a man bun who was like, oh, women, women,
01:31:33.400and I need to be a real ally and all that stuff.0.98
01:31:35.700And they were like, he is the devil himself.0.99
01:31:38.640He's a disgusting man who uses that as a label to reel in women whom he then takes advantage of, speaks inappropriately to, treats with Me Too-like behaviors.0.98
01:31:51.020And they are going to have the chance to tell that story.0.95
01:31:53.760They are going, we get some of the details, which I actually hadn't heard some of these, about how they write in the, about how it started to go south, initially over tensions around sex scenes.
01:32:05.640reading from the piece here. Some of the first hints of tension between the two emerged as they
01:32:10.040started working out the intimate scenes between their characters in the spring of 2023. Baldoni
01:32:15.000wanted the movie's first sex scene to telegraph the shifting power dynamic between Ryle, the guy,
01:32:19.520and Lily, the gal. That's Justin and Blake's characters. She's in charge and then he takes0.81
01:32:25.400over, Baldoni wrote in a description of the scene. Quote, two strong personalities coming together as
01:32:29.880one. His character would start kissing his way down her torso until his mouth finds that0.92
01:32:35.400precious place between her legs. I mean, this is like day what of me doing the dirty readings on0.99
01:32:39.940the air after that JP Morgan lawsuit. And I'm not Adam Carolla, so I can't handle it quite like
01:32:47.060that. It's becoming like a sidekick for me. Okay. His direction called for the camera to then close
01:32:53.860in unlively as she, quote, moans in ecstasy. Baldoni's notes about a different scene described
01:32:59.720what parts of their respective bodies he hoped to show.0.72
01:36:11.640You're actually, you know, you're actually just being blamed for content that was older content that is reappearing in the Internet and reappearing in, you know, in significant ways.
01:36:26.420I mean, I think we could all agree that during the premiere of a movie and the start of a movie, there's a public publicity campaign.
01:36:33.080And, you know, that was another issue in in in why there was some organic hate.
01:36:37.460But but ultimately, you know, I think that that, you know, when you're you're basically doing nothing but showing what already exists, whether something like that can be actionable.
01:36:51.500OK, so if you're showing something like that exists, can it be actionable?
01:36:54.960I thought he might have been intimating that it's possible those negative videos about Blake
01:37:02.180were recirculated by some on Baldoni's team. I could be wrong, but I thought I gleaned that
01:37:09.240from his answer. And that could be what she's trying to base her claim on. You know, that's
01:37:15.040definitely her theory, which is that Baldoni's people pushed it. There was not a lot of proof
01:37:20.700of that. There was a lot of proof that a bad PR wave overcame her around the time of this movie,
01:37:26.460but not that Justin Baldoni caused it, that he was ready to do that, that he had hired PR people
01:37:33.400to help him if he needed to do that. But there may be a question of whether if the PR people
01:37:39.800working for Justin helped circulate those bad videos, is that worth $400 million as she's now
01:37:49.380proclaiming. Right. I think that's the crux of everything in this. One of the reasons I find
01:37:55.380this story so interesting and have from the beginning is it has potential to be a radicalizing
01:38:00.560experience for young people who are interested in pop culture in the way that people who are
01:38:05.540interested in politics have had some radicalizing experiences along the lines of what we were
01:38:09.820talking about earlier in the show, where you have the clips versus the reality. And what we see in
01:38:14.800that Vulture story, especially if you go back and read the original New York Times story that has
01:38:18.760been questioned hugely throughout all of this, every step of the way, it's that you see how
01:38:26.040there's a big business now in manipulating what was supposed to be the raw, authentic future of
01:38:32.820the internet, which was social media. This has become a big corporate endeavor with millions,
01:38:39.320sometimes billions of dollars on the line. And it is absolutely behind the scenes being manipulated
01:38:45.380for business purposes for personal purposes with by people who have more power than you
01:38:50.680who are trying to create these images and these actual narratives like they know perception is
01:38:57.660reality and so they're trying to manipulate the perception that is one of the absolute most
01:39:02.300fascinating things about this story is the chicken or the egg component were people organically
01:39:07.240already starting to question Blake Lively amid this kind of vibe shift that was happening at
01:39:12.900the time over like millennial feminism and how uh sort of weird it was and how outmoded it seemed
01:39:19.680to gen z was that already percolating or was it planted uh or was it just part of like it
01:39:27.480percolated organically and then it became part of this business strategy uh in baldoni's camp
01:39:34.080to get his cut of the movie uh to win at the end of the day they're like manipulating screenings
01:39:39.980it's just like the level to your point about how small celebrities can be small but then also in
01:39:45.860this like what is even the right way to put it this strategic um grand plan to make more money
01:39:54.200at the end of the day and protect their reputations like it's really amazing to see that in action when
01:39:59.580you go behind the scenes so true there's there's one other i wanted to show from in the well which
01:40:05.680you guys should check out. It's a new podcast with Matt Murphy and Mark Garagos, featuring
01:40:10.420Brian Friedman this week, the lawyer for Justin Baldoni, SOT 33. The lost damages on a movie
01:40:17.040that wasn't made would seem to me to be the most speculative type of damages that would0.84
01:40:23.380almost be garbage. So is that the argument? What was the argument? Well, some of the argument was,
01:40:30.160you know, obviously that Wayfarer had the rights to the movie. So it was ultimately their decision
01:40:35.320to whether to make the sequel or not and there was no you know you know there was no you know
01:40:41.020decision made and possibly the sequel could never be made um that certainly um who was going to be
01:40:47.640in the sequel or not and who is going to be participating and at what level even if one was
01:40:52.420made was with some decision that wasn't even made yet and um and in fact sony who you know was a
01:40:59.000co-financier of the movie um you know mr call grab reported in court that that um sony had
01:41:06.420referred to blake lively as you know as a terrorist um and so there was no guarantee
01:41:12.900that sony would want blake live that he'd be involved in the um in the sequel you know when
01:41:19.320you're referring referring to someone as a terrorist incredibly telling and um you know
01:41:26.260She's trying to get damages for a sequel to a movie that never had a sequel.