Jewish Man Killed in California, and Key Election Races to Watch, with John Podhoretz, Christine Rosen, Andy Ngo, and Chris Stirewalt | Ep. 664
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 39 minutes
Words per Minute
162.46658
Summary
As anti-Israel sentiment across America grows, we are expecting to hear from law enforcement in about an hour updating us on the death of a Jewish man in California. On Sunday afternoon, 69-year-old Paul Kessler was spotted waving an Israeli flag as dueling protests took place between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian supporters.
Transcript
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When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners,
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I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners?
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Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.
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Live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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As the anti-Israel sentiment across America grows,
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we are expecting to hear from law enforcement in about an hour updating us on
00:01:23.960
the death of a Jewish man in California and wait until you hear the circumstances.
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On Sunday afternoon, 69-year-old Paul Kessler was spotted waving an Israeli flag as dueling protests
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took place between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian supporters.
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Exactly what went down a little later is still unclear, but we do know some core facts.
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We know there was some sort of physical altercation between Kessler and another person.
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Some have suggested a man threw his megaphone at Kessler.
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Video showed Kessler on the ground bloodied. A pro-Palestinian woman and others appeared to help him.
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She was later seen laughing and smiling shortly after helping this man.
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And then the paramedics arrived. Kessler was taken away by ambulance and while paramedics treated him,
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a man continued to shout anti-Israel slogans with Kessler's blood visible on the concrete. Watch.
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Come get our children now! Come get our children now!
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This is the kind of respect these Palestinian protesters are giving.
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The Ventura County Sheriff's Office says the medical examiner has determined the cause of death was indeed blunt force head injuries
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and the manner of death has been classified as homicide.
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But this would hardly be the only incident of anti-Jewish hatred we have seen over the past month
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According to the Anti-Defamation League, there has been a 388% interest, percent increase,
00:03:20.420
in anti-Semitic attacks in America since Hamas launched its attack on Israel exactly one month ago.
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a car with individuals holding Palestinian flags
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appeared to intentionally swerve out of its lane, nearly hitting a Jewish family.
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An Indiana man carrying an Israeli flag was allegedly assaulted by a pro-Palestinian protester.
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On August 15th, in New York, a person allegedly punched a Jewish woman in the face
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you are Jewish, we told you, for example, what happened down outside of the Tulane campus
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when a young Jewish man was punched in the face.
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Anti-Semitic attacks are always also on the rise now in places like Europe,
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where they've had basically open border policies for the past 10, 15 years.
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In Germany, Molotov cocktails have been thrown at a synagogue.
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Molotov cocktails thrown at a synagogue, among other anti-Israel incidents.
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In the UK, there have been more than 1,000 reported anti-Jewish incidents in the past month,
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with 47 assaults, 47 assaults, and schools and children have been targeted.
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In France, which has the largest Palestinian or Muslim population in Europe,
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on Saturday, a 30-something-year-old Jewish woman in France was attacked in her home.
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This is a truly scary time for Jews in America and throughout the world.
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And yet we get lectured by this administration every other day on Islamophobia.
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My guest this hour, John Podoritz, editor of Commentary.
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And if you haven't been listening to the Commentary podcast,
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One of his co-hosts on that podcast is Christine Rosen.
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She's a writer for Commentary and also a senior fellow
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They're both co-hosts of the Commentary magazine podcast,
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John and Christine, I'm a little starstruck because I listen to commentary
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And Megan, I miss you because we used to live on the same block.
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And I used to occasionally see you coming out of the building,
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And then you sanely, I think, decamped to wiser places to live.
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I'm still here looking for you and Doug on the corner.
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I've been thinking about you nonstop because of that.
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Because, of course, you know, the Upper West Side,
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New York has become the site of a lot of these crazy protests.
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I heard you talk about the Crown Heights protest.
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What do you, I want to kick it off with this, John,
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where are our Jewish friends and their allies like us in the streets?
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who are out there chanting from the river to the sea, right?
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And now we're starting to see a little bit more of it.
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and forgive me, because I'm going to ask you to tell it,
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who had been sentenced to death by firing squad, right?
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So it's a very, two Jews are in front of a firing squad
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powerless, without any real means to fight back.
00:52:14.300
before our very eyes with these pro-Palestinian
00:53:33.840
chants may be in Arabic, they may be in another
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And because I have some background in this area
00:53:45.140
video footage, such as those who have been very
00:53:47.880
explicit in calling for jihad, chants in Arabic
00:53:52.100
about Muhammad's army returning to slaughter the
00:53:56.920
And all this is building up to politicians here are
00:54:03.440
quite concerned because this upcoming weekend in the
00:54:18.320
And it coincides on Saturday, the 11th of November, with
00:54:22.660
another Palestine demonstration being called the
00:54:28.040
Now, I think your audience is familiar with what's
00:54:32.680
been happening in the US, where you see university
00:54:35.620
student radicals, academics, and others going out
00:54:40.260
and being not just pro-Palestine, but often quite
00:54:50.060
But there's an element of religious extremism to it,
00:54:55.020
given the demographic differences between the US and
00:55:00.600
And it's manifesting in dangerous ways and can be
00:55:04.340
potentially be very explosive, given that there's a
00:55:07.680
longer history of Islamic terrorism happening here.
00:55:11.040
I mean, just in the days after the 7th of October, there
00:55:15.200
was a deadly terrorist attack in the UK that most people
00:55:20.860
There was a deadly stabbing attack in the north of England, and
00:55:25.300
authorities have been very tight-lipped about it, just saying
00:55:36.760
So there's already been deadly violence here in relation to the
00:55:43.980
What similarities, if any, do you see between Antifa and these groups
00:55:55.880
The huge demonstrations that have been happening in the US and UK have
00:56:03.920
In a way, you can view them sort of as strange bedfellows.
00:56:06.320
I mean, what do Muslim immigrants, Islamists, Muslim extremists, and radical
00:56:17.320
On the surface, you wouldn't think they have things in common, but they do share
00:56:21.980
often the same targets, the same political enemies, that being America and
00:56:34.400
I think the Antifa element in the US, or the radical left, I should broaden it a little
00:56:42.140
We have now a generation and a half of university students who have been, in my view,
00:56:52.420
And they have no moral compass, and they have no moral foundation for anything.
00:57:00.380
And because they've been radicalized, it's very easy for them to be directed into the
00:57:08.740
And within that, you have a context of decades now of Palestinian nationalist propaganda in
00:57:19.080
the West being extremely effective, not only in the media, but also through the academy.
00:57:24.280
And it's merging and incorporating with various critical race theories and decolonization
00:57:31.680
And this is the cause that has been able to bring people out in ways we haven't seen since
00:57:42.820
And in fact, it's often the same people who were involved then who are now taking to the
00:57:49.320
streets with the goal to destabilize America, to pressure our politicians to turn our backs
00:58:01.020
And it's a scary time because I think, I mean, we just, I'm speaking to you a day after a Jewish
00:58:12.400
man was killed in a homicide related to a Palestine protest in Southern California.
00:58:21.020
So, you know, these are not just peaceful protests that are happening.
00:58:29.560
You have coalitions of people that is being built who have already shown themselves to
00:58:36.160
be extremely radical and supportive of the use of terrorism as a tactic.
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It's not just, it's not like this thing broke out two months ago before October 7th.
00:58:48.700
And we're just right back in the middle of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that we've been
00:58:54.680
They're out there chanting death to Israel and to wipe Israel off the face of the map.
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Effectively, that's what from the river to the sea means right after this civilian torture
00:59:10.360
Why wouldn't you look at this group and say, what exactly is that they support?
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Especially if you're a Jewish person, you got some of this on tape.
00:59:19.280
You've been, I mean, as I mentioned, but you've been great about the reason you got
00:59:22.840
attacked by Antifa was because you kind of embed yourselves within the groups and then
00:59:29.860
And that made you a target and they did get you, but you survived, thank God, and wound
00:59:34.560
up bringing them to court, which is absolutely the way to handle it.
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So here you are now out in Trafalgar Square, London, documenting some of what's happening
00:59:59.260
And here's a little bit more in Sot 34 as we listen to chants of Allahu Akbar, which
01:00:07.520
Same chant they yelled before they took the Twin Towers down and crashed into the Pentagon
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So there's been, I think there was just this past Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters
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showing up at one of these on the streets of London and 29, this is from your article
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at Human Events, 29 pro-Palestinian rioters were arrested, charges like assaulting police,
01:00:45.000
inciting racial hatred, other racially motivated crimes.
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When you walk amongst the crowds, Andy, what kind of people are these?
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Are these people who clearly have never been to college?
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Like what, what kind of demographics are you seeing?
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You, there are, the majority of them are those of Muslim heritage.
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And then there are white leftists who are there too in a smaller amount.
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And I'm really glad that you played the video of the Allahu Akbar chants because that, that
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And it's, um, I don't think I can overstate how provocative of a chant it is because on the
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surface, Allahu Akbar is something that is chanted, um, during the daily prayers for Muslims,
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but these people are not doing it with, um, uh, during, during the prayer, uh, for the day
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And I think they're doing it in the context of, as a political statement, echoing and mirroring
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the chants of what Hamas did as they were carrying out atrocities on video and, um, slaughtering
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And, uh, unfortunately we in the West just sort of expect this as a normal occurrence at
01:02:21.680
But I think it, it, it demonstrates to me that within certain, um, immigrant communities
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or those of heritage in the Middle East or of Muslim background, that there's, there's
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a particular, uh, racial and or religious solidarity that they have with, um, their brothers and
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sisters and using their language in, in the Palestinian territories in a way that I think
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the normie white American or white British doesn't really understand.
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You, you have to be on the ground to see the dedication that these people have.
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And, um, the fact that it is coupled often with, um, either support for violence or incitement
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Um, and it's, it's actually really terrifying, I think for, for, for not, for the future and
01:03:16.520
Well, I mean, we were talking in our last segment about the pro-Israel rally that happened in
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Now, 29 people were not arrested and accused of racial hate and assaulting police officers.
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Uh, you know, weirdly, no assaulting police officer, inciting racial hatred and other racially
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No one was, as they were in London, arrested on suspicion of breaching the terrorism act.
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It's just, you know, ABC news can try to describe and dismiss these pro-Palestinian protests as
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quote, passionate protests, as we saw from their chief White House correspondent after they
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were putting fake blood all over the White House gates the other day.
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Um, that's, that's what a passionate protest looks like with the Israelis there.
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It was more of a vigil in honor of the dead, in honor of an ally of the West's of America's
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that's fighting for its very existence right now.
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I want to turn the page, Andy, because you, you've been involved in a lot of, a lot of
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news and it's a story that we didn't get to yesterday because we were just doing too
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But I want to talk about the manifesto out of Nashville.
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He's been on the program many times and he got his hands on three pages of the manifesto
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that was written by the shooter in this Nashville shooting that happened in February of this year.
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Uh, it's a woman, a young woman who claims she's a trans male.
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She was sort of trying, you know, posing as a male, um, but biologically female.
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And she shot up a school killing, um, six individuals, including children.
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Now, all this time later, we're going on a year later, they have not released the manifesto.
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I do not remember another case in which this has happened as disturbing as it might be.
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And as they always are, they're always deranged rantings, um, they release them because the
01:05:56.100
public has a right to know they can be understood.
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They can provide a window into usually madness, um, and potentially motivation.
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Not in this case in Nashville, the FBI has kept it.
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And they just keep saying whatever's in there is so horrific that we can't release it.
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It's, and you know, all along, it just makes you say, well, what is so awful that we can't
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No one, no mass shooters manifesto is a nice read.
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So what is it that's so in any event, what appears to have happened is, and I haven't
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talked to Steve and I haven't seen his whole presentation, but someone they it's believed
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It's believed to be in local law enforcement who got fed up with this hiding of the manifesto
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I understand you've now seen it as well through Steven and some pages have been, he's posted
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So, um, when I, uh, spoke with my contacts at, um, uh, Steven Crowder show, I did inquire
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And their quote to me was, uh, from a source close with law enforcement.
01:07:08.740
So I do, I, I'm of the view that the public has a right to know what this, um, mass school
01:07:17.240
shooter wrote and did in the days and hours leading up, um, to the horrific actions in,
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in March of this year, there have been some family members of the victims who have stated
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Um, I, I, I hear them, I listen to them, but I, I think it's in the public interest to
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We don't have the full writings from this notebook.
01:07:40.560
Uh, there have been only three pages released, um, through Steven Crowder.
01:07:45.140
Um, but what they do show is, um, there is a, a pathological grievance ideology that is
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running through some of the, uh, screeds through these pages, um, a hatred of white people, a
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resentment against, uh, their perceived wealth and the privileges they have.
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Some, and I mean, these are hateful ramblings, um, against children.
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And I, I think one thing that, uh, one of the pages that was, uh, really chilling and
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disturbing to me was, um, like this, as the shooter wrote out a schedule for the day and
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it was so, uh, the way they did it was so calm in that, uh, early in the morning, there's
01:08:33.200
And then there's time to take care of stuffed animals and belongings.
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And then down, as you go further down, that there's a time for, uh, going to the covenant
01:08:43.460
And so this person, um, was clearly very committed to it.
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And viewed it, I don't know if this person even realized that this was, uh, that they
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It was like just another thing to do on the day.
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And this is a person, we don't know what her story was, whether she was on cross gender
01:09:11.520
hormones or some sort of medications to assist with a transition.
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Um, those can include testosterone, which does, you know, sometimes extreme things to
01:09:21.040
a woman, but she was clearly a mental health patient on top of all of that, not blaming
01:09:25.480
it on testosterone, just saying this would be the kind of thing the media would normally
01:09:28.620
be exploring, but because you're not allowed to try to touch trans ideology as having had
01:09:36.240
And you and I both know, you know, especially Andy, having covered all the things you have,
01:09:41.600
if this were a white guy wearing a MAGA hat who went in and shot up, God forbid, a school
01:09:47.400
with a bunch of black children, this manifesto would have been released long ago.
01:09:52.420
But what we appear to have here is a female to male trans person who wrote openly about
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her desire to kill crackers, white privileged, quote, crackers at a quote, private fancy school.
01:10:07.120
And that does not line up with any narrative of the left or the media, which is the same
01:10:14.280
And in this case, law enforcement seems to be cooperating with that narrative too, because
01:10:19.800
Yeah, and another curious thing is that there was a lot of homophobic slurs written through
01:10:27.260
Some people are wondering, why would an LGBTQ plus person say those type of slurs against
01:10:35.420
Well, as others have pointed out before, and this is speculation, but it's, it's something
01:10:40.220
I think it's analysis of words that is worth considering is that some people who are homosexual
01:10:47.360
and transition to what they think is the opposite gender do it out of the inability to cope with
01:10:55.100
And we do know that, um, this mass shooter before having a trans identity was lesbian.
01:11:03.040
And I think discuss, um, and yeah, it just looks very much if you look, and I'm not going
01:11:10.580
to put it up on the board, but it looks very much like quotations out of, uh, a women's
01:11:16.340
or ethnic studies class at Yale, all the quotations that this shooter puts in the manifesto, you
01:11:23.480
know, what's motivating her, how she thinks about the children at this school.
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I, no one has any desire to cause them any more pain.
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It seems like you'd already have achieved the maximum pain possible for a human.
01:11:38.640
If this happened to your child, but we do need to understand exactly what infected this
01:11:46.160
It is to the benefit of society to understand to the best we can.
01:11:49.920
I mean, to the extent any of these things can be understood and it is not for the FBI
01:11:53.800
to protect us from the horrors of this writing.
01:11:57.620
That's, and, and honestly, like if the New York times got its hands on this, I believe
01:12:03.380
If, if it had been leaked to them, I think they would have probably would have gone, would
01:12:08.360
But Steven did what any journalist would do, which is if you get your hands on a leak like
01:12:13.180
The only way you don't publish it is if it's, is if you've stolen it, if you've been the product
01:12:17.060
of stealing, you know, you've been the thief, then you shouldn't.
01:12:19.580
But as a journalist, if you receive this, this is newsworthy and you publish it and it shame
01:12:27.860
They publish it over on rumble and good for rumble, but same thing.
01:12:32.640
And actually the study of it could actually potentially lead to our ability to understand
01:12:37.600
and hopefully prevent another one of these things.
01:12:40.700
How dare any of these people tell us we don't get to know?
01:12:45.080
We, we participate in the society and who the hell is the YouTube executive deciding to
01:12:59.120
I also think people need to remember that in the immediate hours and days after the mass
01:13:04.080
shooting in Nashville in March, there were radical trans activists who occupied various
01:13:10.440
state capital buildings, including in Nashville, demanding trans rights and a list of other things.
01:13:16.820
And one video that I remember then seeing is that in Nashville, I think this was the day after the mass
01:13:27.140
shooting there, there was a moment of silence that the trans activists held for the victims of the school
01:13:37.320
And that's very curious because the mass shooter killed six, including three children.
01:13:43.060
And they included the killer as one of the victims.
01:13:50.060
This is from, this is from, I think from you, but we have that.
01:13:54.380
This is what some people did after the, after the Newtown shooting, the worst mass shooting
01:14:18.440
of all time, not, not in terms of numbers, but in terms of the young, beautiful, beautiful
01:14:22.100
children murdered. Some people were counting the shooter in the death toll. You don't count the
01:14:26.780
shooter in the death toll. Everyone knows that.
01:14:31.080
Yeah. And I, you know, just earlier you were asking, we were discussing what, how could the
01:14:36.960
radical left in America be so openly supportive of terrorism in regards to the Israel and Hamas
01:14:43.020
war? Well, they were supportive domestically of a terrorist shooter who killed children. So,
01:14:49.440
you know, that line has already actually been long, been long crossed. And I, what I'm asking
01:14:57.680
myself is how, how now do we de-radicalize the universities, institutions in the United States?
01:15:04.120
You, the institutions are captured. You have a whole generation and a half of essentially
01:15:09.600
an army that can be mobilized at any time, um, given whatever conflict people want to exploit and
01:15:18.500
get people out on the streets. It's, it's a very bad place for the United States right now.
01:15:23.780
No, the die has been cast and it's very hard to uncast it. I want to update the audience on,
01:15:30.480
um, Paul Kessler, the man who died in Southern California. Andy, you just referred to him.
01:15:34.760
We talked about him in our first hour at this pro-Palestinian and then the counter protesters,
01:15:40.560
pro-Israel protest, uh, that happened. Uh, this is from the sheriff who just held a presser
01:15:44.680
out of Ventura County. The suspect in this case, so they do have one is 50.
01:15:49.020
He was advocating for Palestine. Suspect was identified willingly was identified and willingly
01:15:54.940
remained at the scene was interviewed by deputies. The suspect was cooperative and indicated he was
01:15:59.820
involved with an altercation with Kessler further stated. He was one of the reporting parties who
01:16:04.180
called nine one one requesting medical attention for Kessler. Several witnesses were contacted.
01:16:08.620
Witnesses provided conflicting statements about what the altercation, uh, was and who the aggressor
01:16:14.400
was yesterday. Detectives obtained a search warrant for the suspect, I guess,
01:16:19.020
for his home. The suspect was detained. And until the completion of the search warrant,
01:16:23.040
uh, and he was released at six 15, the sheriff says, I cannot comment on the results of the
01:16:27.420
search warrant. As the investigation is ongoing, suspect has not yet been arrested. No arrests have
01:16:31.560
been made. And the suspect has not yet been publicly identified. The medical examiner reiterates
01:16:36.220
calling it a homicide does not indicate a crime was committed. So it is not yet correct to call it
01:16:42.160
a murder. Lethal impact was to the back of Kessler's head. There were also injuries on the front of his
01:16:49.260
face, which could be consistent with a blow to his face. So there was a killing, but we yet we don't
01:16:55.900
know whether we could call this homicide, whether we can call this murder homicide, though. Yes,
01:17:01.220
that's what he's saying. Uh, his funeral is being held today. So more on that case as we got it. Andy,
01:17:06.280
please stay on all of this. Thank you so much for your brave reporting. It's great to see you again.
01:17:11.540
Thank you for having me on. And we're going to be right back to bring you an update on election day.
01:17:17.360
Do you know today is election day and there are a lot of important things happening, especially down
01:17:21.360
in Virginia. Some of the big happening in Kentucky with a friend of the show, Daniel Cameron, and in
01:17:26.960
Mississippi, can a relative of Elvis who happens to be a Democrat on seat, the Republican,
01:17:35.940
in Mississippi, deep red, Mississippi. We'll talk about it next.
01:17:40.620
I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open,
01:17:46.460
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01:17:50.460
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01:18:38.560
It's election day. You probably noticed from all the annoying signs all over your town
01:18:47.400
and contests in Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, and especially Virginia will give us a sneak peek
01:18:53.680
at what to expect for 2024. Joining me now with a preview of the races to watch tonight,
01:18:59.700
Chris Steierwalt. He's a contributing editor for the dispatch and co-host of the podcast,
01:19:04.560
Inc. Stained. Wretches with our pal Eliana Johnson, one half of the EJs. Chris, so great
01:19:11.280
to have you. You know what I've noticed here in Connecticut? They've gone to just like, you
01:19:16.120
know, Jeb. They're all doing first names now, like the big, all the lawn signs and like,
01:19:20.900
it's like Joe, Maria. Like I, then you got to squint to see the tiny print. Like one was
01:19:27.980
like, keep your taxes low. I'm like, oh good. Who's that? And you could like get your readers
01:19:33.340
on to see like, who, who's, these are not effective signs. In a, in an insensibly childish
01:19:40.400
society, the idea that anyone would be called by their proper name, uh, is now some mark of
01:19:46.500
absolute snobbery. But as you point out, first names are not enough. We're allowed to have our
01:19:51.640
surnames and use them. I encourage people to do so, please. Especially if like your name is Joe,
01:19:56.940
that's not helpful. There's one ticket I've been seeing like DeSantis slash somebody I'm like,
01:20:01.860
all right. So it's not Ron DeSantis. This person's really up against it. Cause you know,
01:20:05.720
like everybody's going to be like DeSantis. Oh, the loves left. I hate him. Forget it. Like
01:20:09.900
if I were that guy, then I would be like, Bob, it's Bob DeSantis. If you know, how far he's fallen
01:20:16.400
from front runner for the presidential nomination to running for town council in Connecticut. It's a
01:20:21.260
real, I mean, it's been, it's been a steep slide, you know, politics one day, the bride,
01:20:26.600
next day, the bridesmaid next day, divorced altogether. Okay. So I think Virginia is probably
01:20:32.980
the most interesting thing we're watching. Am I wrong? Well, I don't want to be contrary,
01:20:37.980
but, uh, and I'm not normal. I should, I should point out decidedly abnormal when it comes to these
01:20:45.520
things. I get why everybody's paying attention to Virginia because $200 million or so parties have
01:20:52.500
flooded money into Virginia. And because of something that, uh, I like to call the snowmageddon
01:20:59.340
effect. Uh, if it happens near Washington or New York, it gets way more attention than it deserves
01:21:05.800
nationally. So there's a blizzard in the East coast and people in Arizona are like, I don't know, bro,
01:21:10.760
seems, seems okay here. Um, but so, so there is a geographical thing, but there's also the Glenn
01:21:16.360
Youngkin factor and Glenn Youngkin has tantalized his donors by saying, well, I'm not going to make
01:21:23.300
up my mind about whether I'm going to make a late entry into the presidential campaign until we're
01:21:27.840
done with these Virginia midterms. So with all 100 seats in the Virginia house of delegates and all 40
01:21:36.200
seats in the Virginia state Senate, uh, Youngkin has raised a ton of money. He has campaigned vigorously
01:21:42.840
and he is still popular in, uh, Virginia. He is much more popular in Virginia, which is a blue state,
01:21:48.600
uh, than Joe Biden is. And he has staked it all on this run and his backers and the national media,
01:21:55.000
uh, both, uh, are curious to see. So if Youngkin has a big night, if they pick up, so basically the
01:22:01.860
Republicans, uh, Democrats have a narrow majority in the Senate. Republicans have a narrow majority in
01:22:06.420
the house. It's going to come down to five seats basically in, in either chamber. And if Youngkin has
01:22:12.680
a big, big day and the Republicans get unified control, that this could be a launch pad, uh,
01:22:18.900
for a late entry into the Republican nominating process. I care about it because we're going to
01:22:24.940
get a nice core sample of what intense voters, what, what are the, the, cause remember we have
01:22:31.560
to bear in mind for all this conversation. You're looking at half or maybe, uh, maybe two thirds at most
01:22:39.720
of the turnout that you would get in a regular election. So this is, these are low numbers in
01:22:45.500
Pennsylvania. We're probably looking at a third or 40% of, of what you would see. So we're talking
01:22:49.540
about the most engaged, most motivated, most intense voters, which means that they're highly
01:22:54.520
partisan. So what we're going to get to see in Virginia is in the Northern Virginia suburbs of
01:22:59.140
Washington, DC, in the tidewater in Southeastern Virginia and outside of Richmond in the suburbs
01:23:05.000
outside of Richmond, how, and how fired up are Democrats and Republicans. And given how bad the
01:23:10.720
news has been for Joe Biden lately on the 2024 election will be our Democrats divided, uh, are
01:23:17.500
the intense partisans in the democratic party, uh, is there real disaffection there? So we get to see
01:23:22.480
some of that in Virginia. And I mean, now I don't know, I mean, we've talked about this before,
01:23:27.920
including with you at length, but there are reports, uh, like in Forbes that if the Virginia
01:23:35.680
governor is successful in winning control of the Senate and keeping control of the house or improving
01:23:40.520
the Republican margin in the house, Glenn Youngkin does that. Then billionaire supporter, Thomas
01:23:45.720
Peter fee. I don't know him. P D P E T E R F F Y. Is that, is that a name? Peter fee? Anyway,
01:23:53.420
if you've got, if you've got that many billions of dollars, people call you whatever you want.
01:23:57.480
I think that's the rule. Well, he's a billionaire, so he knows something more than you and I do.
01:24:02.700
Likely he told Forbes that if let Youngkin is successful at this, he believes Youngkin will
01:24:08.120
jump into the white house race despite missing some key deadlines, like registering for the New
01:24:12.160
Hampshire primary. And he says he has several tens of other Republican billionaires at the ready
01:24:19.100
quote, I have spoken to Youngkin. I have spoken to many big GOP donors. We are all enthusiastic and
01:24:24.620
waiting for him to win Virginia and enter the race. I have heard that exact same thing myself
01:24:30.060
from a former RNC official who believes that indeed will be the plan. Any thoughts on that at this late
01:24:38.880
stage of the game? I kind of hope for Youngkin that he doesn't have to go through that. Um, uh,
01:24:45.140
he's, he has been surprisingly successful as governor of Virginia. Again, not a Republican
01:24:51.460
state hasn't voted Republican on the presidential level since 2004. Um, and he has managed to both be
01:24:58.220
conservative and popular, uh, which is a trade-off that Republican governors of blue states, uh, uh,
01:25:04.540
a combo they're not often able to do. You can be a liberal Republican in a blue state and be popular.
01:25:09.360
We saw Charlie Baker in Massachusetts and other people do that, but being a conservative,
01:25:14.380
uh, being, being a, being a, being a, being a conservative, what did he call himself?
01:25:19.920
Severely conservative. Mitt Romney would tell you he was severely conservative. Um, but Youngkin,
01:25:24.860
yeah, Youngkin has cast himself and delivered on conservative priorities in Virginia. And he's
01:25:32.120
managed to remain popular because he's been an effective chief executive because what, you know,
01:25:37.040
most people don't care about ideology, persuadable voters care about, are the roads fixed? Uh, are
01:25:42.660
the, are the schools better? Uh, how are the, the quality of life considerations? And Youngkin has
01:25:47.300
managed to remain popular doing that. If he were to say, okay, I'm getting in before he even deals with
01:25:55.660
the question of Donald Trump, he's got to deal with Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley who are getting ready
01:26:00.960
for a death match, right? The two of them are fighting for the same quarter to a third of the
01:26:07.680
Republican electorate that they need to lock down before they can take on Trump. I don't know why
01:26:13.060
it would be true that Glenn Youngkin, if he parachutes and at a late date would be able to
01:26:18.200
make either of them go away. Do you see Ron DeSantis saying, you know what? I had my chance. I already
01:26:24.160
spent that $110 million, but you know what? You go ahead. I don't, I don't think that Kim Reynolds,
01:26:29.840
governor of Iowa is going to say, yep, I'm changing my mind now that you're here. So
01:26:33.820
anything can happen, but I, I, I feel like Youngkin's benefactors are putting pressure on him,
01:26:40.980
uh, that it would be very hard for anybody to live up to.
01:26:44.780
Mm-hmm. Yeah. At this point, I don't think it's going to happen. All right, let's talk about
01:26:48.640
Mississippi next. Cause I just think it's interesting. There's a guy related to Elvis.
01:26:52.240
He's a dem. He's trying to unseat a semi-popular Republican governor, um, named Tate Reeves.
01:26:59.140
He's the incumbent, but you know, it's bad to be in Mississippi and have Elvis's relative
01:27:03.860
challenging you. Um, however, Mississippi is very, very red and the challenger is very,
01:27:09.180
very blue or at least blue. And so this race, I guess is tighter than the Republicans would like.
01:27:15.200
The Democrats seem to be very excited at the prospect of a blue state. I mean, a red state
01:27:19.980
governor with a blue, you know what I'm trying to say. So is it likely to happen?
01:27:24.300
No. Um, we, we remember, uh, Doug Jones won the Senate seat for an unexpired term,
01:27:32.380
uh, Jeff Sessions, unexpired term in neighboring Alabama. Uh, and it was a big deal. A moderate
01:27:38.540
Democrat won in Alabama. Wow. Well, what does it take to get that? It takes Roy Moore, uh, is what
01:27:45.040
it takes. It takes somebody who was being accused by a lot of women of some really deplorable kind of
01:27:51.680
behavior and a guy who was very radical. Tate Reeves, the governor of Mississippi is not Roy
01:27:56.760
Moore. He's not super popular. Uh, that's true. And he does have that weird scandal. So he, I don't
01:28:04.300
know that he's been accused of any wrongdoing, but he was in the administration, uh, as Lieutenant
01:28:08.540
governor. I don't know if you remember the Brett Favre scandal, which was a welfare scam.
01:28:13.620
Um, okay. So Reeves has, uh, the, the Democrat Presley has zeroed in on this as a corruption
01:28:21.180
election. Presley is running. He says, you know, I'm pro-life, I'm pro-gun. I want to cut your taxes.
01:28:26.700
Uh, but Tate Reeves is corrupt and we've got to get him out as basically the argument.
01:28:32.180
Could it work? Maybe, but the Republicans, uh, look at next door in Louisiana. So Louisiana has a
01:28:40.500
jungle primary system, which means if you get more than it's an open primary, all parties go in the
01:28:46.800
same primary. If you get more than 50% of the vote in the primary, then you don't have to have the
01:28:53.260
general election. You just declare it over there. And a Republican in a crowded field of Republicans,
01:28:59.240
one next door in Louisiana, which is more democratic than Mississippi. Uh, I understand why this is an
01:29:05.560
appealing story for Democrats. And I understand why it's an appealing media story because you've got an
01:29:10.220
Elvis Presley cousin, uh, the most famous son of Mississippi, his cousin running. I get it,
01:29:16.480
but the odds here are very long. Mississippi is an extraordinarily Republican state. And this is,
01:29:22.700
uh, could they sneak by in a low? Yeah. So here's, here's the, the, the Presley. Okay. His name is
01:29:28.920
Brandon Presley. The problem is he doesn't look anything like Elvis. If he could look a little bit
01:29:34.380
more like Elvis, I'd like his chances better. His, his granddad and Elvis's granddad were
01:29:40.100
brothers. There must've been an age span there between the two of them, but that's the relation
01:29:44.380
there, I guess, second cousins. I don't know. I see no resemblance and that's not going to
01:29:49.280
inure to his benefit. You can finish your thought. Well, he needs the lip. He just needs the,
01:29:53.800
the Elvis lip curl, maybe, maybe plastic surgery if he wants to run again, but no,
01:29:58.560
it's would be extraordinarily long odds, just given the partisan nature. And also how much
01:30:03.620
Republicans hate Democrats right now, how, how upset Republicans are. I don't think they're
01:30:08.760
feeling cool about it. Yeah. Uh, he can't sing as far as I know. Okay. So let's talk about
01:30:14.140
Kentucky. I was excited about Kentucky. I love Daniel Cameron. I just think he's a rising star,
01:30:19.160
a good guy. He came on the show, like one of our first episodes very early on before we even had
01:30:22.780
video. And, uh, he was the AG in Kentucky. And I remember saying, you're going to be governor.
01:30:29.020
And, uh, I wasn't alone in my prediction. It wasn't anything special. I just wanted to note that
01:30:33.600
for the record. In any event, here he is running for governor. And yet I wouldn't say he's favored.
01:30:40.840
Um, what do you think is likely to happen in the Kentucky governor's race where the incumbent
01:30:45.000
is pretty popular and Daniel Cameron, the Republican challenger, um, seems to have an
01:30:51.440
uphill battle. If you look at the polls. I mean, I, I, I would rate this one a toss up basically. Uh,
01:30:57.920
Kentucky is a, is a very Republican state on the federal level. Um, but it is, uh, schizophrenic
01:31:05.280
on the state level. Kentucky has traded the governorship between parties four times, uh,
01:31:11.200
this century. So Kentucky has basically been a reliable Republican state on the federal level
01:31:15.440
since 2000. But in that time, they've toggled back and forth between the parties, uh, four times
01:31:21.780
and twice have there been Republican governors who were both defeated after one term. Um,
01:31:27.920
uh, Bashir, the democratic incumbent is very moderate. He's very Kentucky, uh, and he's really
01:31:35.040
focused on the sort of pragmatic. He, he would be the democratic doppelganger in a lot of ways to
01:31:40.880
Yunkin. He's in the wrong state on the presidential level, but keeps the focuses on quality of life
01:31:46.780
issues and, and that kind of stuff. Daniel Cameron represents a fusion that Republicans have been
01:31:53.220
looking for for a long time. Here's a guy who can appeal to the MAGA movement and can talk about
01:32:01.180
those issues and engage on those issues, but he is a protege of Mitch McConnell. This is what,
01:32:06.260
this is what Republicans have been looking for. Somebody that both sort of the MAGA populist wing
01:32:12.120
of the party and the traditional conservative wing of the party where they can unite. Uh, that makes
01:32:17.840
Cameron very potent. Now, the problem that Cameron has is that turnout in Kentucky will, so here's a
01:32:25.440
good rule of thumb. The richer you are, the more likely you are to vote. Uh, the electorate skews the,
01:32:31.920
um, middle-class and upper middle-class people are disproportionately represented in the electorate
01:32:37.940
because they have a higher voting propensity. There's a lot of reasons for that, but basically
01:32:41.480
the electorate is more educated and wealthier than the nation as a whole. Um, now what that means
01:32:48.860
though, is that when you have an off year election like this, who's the 40% of the Kentucky electorate
01:32:54.200
that's not showing up. Now, some of those people, Kentucky's, uh, is basically, uh, three quarters
01:32:59.940
of Kentucky is a very rural state, highly Republican. And one quarter of the state is Louisville and
01:33:06.520
Louisville is a diverse, uh, and, uh, they're highly educated affluent suburbs. There's a
01:33:13.980
ethnically diverse, uh, urban core. It's a democratic city. So basically it goes like this
01:33:20.220
of the 40% of the people who will turn out in 2024, but who don't turn out this year, who are they
01:33:26.060
mostly? And a lot of those folks are from Eastern Kentucky, rural Kentucky who are big time Trump
01:33:32.120
voters, right? They're big time mega mega there that that's where they are. But what Cameron has
01:33:38.520
been trying to do is basically nationalize the election and say to those voters, I know you don't
01:33:43.640
usually come out in races like these, but I really need you because we have to send a message to Joe
01:33:48.060
Biden. So what Cameron has had to say about the sheer is basically Biden, whatever the question
01:33:53.300
Cameron's answer is it's Joe Biden. You're just like Joe Biden. You're just like Joe Biden. So that's
01:33:58.160
what he's trying to do. Um, he needs to change basically the shape of the electorate, but that
01:34:03.200
really could happen when passions are running as high as they are in Republicans or as fired up as
01:34:07.480
they are. I mean, he really is a rising star on the Republican party. He took so much flack for the
01:34:13.840
Brianna, um, Taylor case where he was the AG who was in front of that grand jury and did not feel that
01:34:21.140
they should indict those police officers. And then the grand jury blamed him and he was stood all of that
01:34:26.800
and stood on principle and said, I don't think the law supports charges against those officers.
01:34:30.940
And now here he is seeking higher office, very popular. Um, this is something interesting about
01:34:36.260
the race. The, uh, David Axelrod, of course, former chief strategist for Obama told political
01:34:42.600
if Bashir wins the Democrat, he instantly will become part of the 2028 discussion, a young charismatic
01:34:49.300
Democrat who won twice in a deep red state. There will be a great deal of chatter. So the stakes are
01:34:56.040
significant on both sides. We'll watch that one tomorrow. Kentucky governor got to spend one
01:35:00.420
minute on Bridgeport, Connecticut. Did you see the hot mess that was the voting situation in the
01:35:05.120
mayoral primary, the Democrat, the incumbent. Oh, I love this. This is okay. So the, the incumbent
01:35:11.400
Democrat mayor, uh, was running to keep the nomination on the, on the primary side. And he had
01:35:16.880
another Democrat coming for his, his position and he was winning. No, the challenger was winning in the
01:35:23.440
day of vote. And the incumbent said, you just wait until the absentee ballots come in. You just wait,
01:35:28.980
Mr. Challenger. I'm feeling good about how I'll do. Well, they came in and he won, I think it was
01:35:33.980
like an 8,000, uh, votes and he won by 200 thanks to the absentee ballots. Well, the challenger started
01:35:41.480
to go around and kick the tires a little bit on this win. And they found that certain of the ballot
01:35:47.360
boxes had way more absentee ballots than was normal for any of these jurisdictions. And then they pulled
01:35:54.980
the security tapes on those ballot boxes and they saw this democratic city council woman and another
01:36:03.300
local representative representative. I'm showing it to you. Here she is stuffing, stuffing ballot after
01:36:11.520
ballot in their style while she was so happy to help the incumbent mayor keep the primary nod. And, um,
01:36:20.140
the, a judge took a look at all that. She went back four or five times. This woman did the same thing
01:36:24.720
stuff and they put her on the stand because the challenger filed a lawsuit saying, this is all
01:36:29.580
bullshit. You got to throw out this win. And they put her on the stand and she pleaded the fifth 71 times.
01:36:34.280
Okay. So what happened? So here's the craziness. So the judge said, we cannot possibly let this
01:36:46.620
primary victory of the incumbent mayor stand. This is bullshit, but I can't just declare the other guy,
01:36:51.940
the winner. So we have to redo the primary vote. We have to redo the primary vote. But that was just
01:36:57.500
last Wednesday. The, the general is today. There wasn't enough time to redo a primary before the
01:37:04.540
general. So the way he did it was the incumbent mayor is going to be listed on the ballot as the
01:37:08.840
dem. The challenger is going to be listed on the ballot as the independent. And then there's a
01:37:14.560
Republican who's not going to win. So here's the deal. What a rip off. If the incumbent mayor wins as
01:37:22.160
the dem, then they're going to go back and redo the primary. It won't be certified. So the challenger
01:37:28.440
could win. He could win. He could win. The Republicans are not going to win in Bridgeport,
01:37:33.280
Connecticut. But anyway, that's one of the many races I'm watching. It's just, I love when people's
01:37:38.080
bad behavior is caught on camera. It's the best, right? That's fabulous. I love local politics because
01:37:43.360
it's so awful. It's just the, the it's like the old joke about faculty Senate. What, you know,
01:37:50.580
why, why are people so awful? Because the stakes are so low and the, the, the lengths that people
01:37:55.480
will stoop to in local politics is just really human nature, never change. It really is. It
01:38:02.940
reminds me of my, one of my favorite sayings too, is, um, you know, we got a summer house in New Jersey
01:38:08.240
and one time we were driving down there and we saw all those terrible power plants in Newark, you know,
01:38:13.320
it kind of starts to smell bad and it looks bad and you look at it. And I, one time I looked up,
01:38:17.380
what are these power plants? What is that thing? And it led to this whole conversation online that
01:38:21.800
I checked in on, like, what did they say? And the one person wrote in where, where do all the
01:38:27.240
terrible things about New Jersey come from? And somebody responded from people who have been
01:38:31.780
there. Oh, that's mean. That's mean. I'm allowed to say it. I cause I own property there. Doug jokes.
01:38:41.480
That's the only reason that we did that. Cause so I can exactly. So you could have the Jersey.
01:38:45.480
Love you. You ink stained wretch. Happy to be here. Good luck on election night. Stay out of
01:38:53.580
trouble. Thank you. I'll do my best. You too. Uh, we will be watching tonight. We'll bring you the
01:38:59.660
latest tomorrow and tomorrow we'll have Stuber gear and Dave Marcus, a fun pairing. Those guys are
01:39:04.500
always great. And they'll bring you the full rundown of what happened. Thanks for listening
01:39:11.540
to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.