The Megyn Kelly Show - Jussie Smollett, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Abortion Before The Supreme Court, with Lila Rose, Jonna Spilbor, and Lis Wiehl

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.540 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.560 We've got a big show on some of the hottest legal cases in the news today.

00:00:18.800 We're going to be taking a look at the historic Supreme Court arguments on abortion rights a little later this show with Lila Rose.

00:00:25.220 I'm so interested in this and I have strong feelings on how it went yesterday.

00:00:30.000 This is truly a watershed moment in abortion jurisprudence.

00:00:36.860 So we'll get into it.

00:00:38.000 But first, jury selection right now is underway in the trial of a former police officer who says she mistook her gun for a taser when she killed a black man.

00:00:49.500 We'll get to that in the case of Kim Potter.

00:00:51.400 Also, actor Jussie Smollett is fighting allegations that he staged his own race-based attack by two guys who claimed he was in MAGA country in the middle of Chicago a couple of years ago.

00:01:04.260 As one of the brothers accused of helping him takes the stand and puts the lie to Jussie's allegations.

00:01:11.540 A Jeffrey Epstein accuser in another case detailing horrific abuse, not just by Epstein, but by his girlfriend and helper, Ghislaine Maxwell.

00:01:22.060 And the witness named celebrities that she met throughout her ordeal in the trial as we watch this sort of icy woman sit at defense council or defense table and stare down this now 40-something-year-old.

00:01:37.400 That case, it's an interesting one because her defense lawyer is basically saying they're trying to blame Ghislaine for all the sins of Jeffrey.

00:01:44.460 But so far, these witnesses are saying Ghislaine herself was an abuser.

00:01:48.640 And then finally, Elizabeth Holmes is on trial explaining how her multi-billion dollar company imploded.

00:01:53.600 Well, it's actually not the final one.

00:01:54.780 We're going to get to Alec Baldwin, too, because he broke his silence saying he did not actually pull the trigger when the gun went off and the fatal shooting of a cinematographer.

00:02:03.580 Do we believe him?

00:02:04.740 We got a lot to get to.

00:02:05.780 We have two of my favorite lawyers from back in the Fox days.

00:02:08.140 Johnis Bilboer is a criminal defense attorney licensed to practice in New York, California and D.C., and founding attorney of Johnis Bilboer Law.

00:02:15.320 And Lise Weill is a former federal prosecutor and a prolific author.

00:02:19.220 Her latest upcoming book is A Spy in Plain Sight, the inside story of the FBI and Robert Hansen, America's most damaging Russian spy.

00:02:28.920 Oh, that sounds good.

00:02:30.060 Welcome, ladies.

00:02:30.620 Great to have you back.

00:02:31.680 Great to be here with you.

00:02:32.680 Okay, so just so people know, the three of us have been doing, it started as, this is how long we've been together.

00:02:38.120 When we first launched these legal segments together, it was Kendall's Court.

00:02:41.580 I was still married to Dan.

00:02:43.360 I hadn't even met Doug.

00:02:45.040 And I hadn't gone back to my maiden name of Kelly.

00:02:47.280 So that's how long, I mean, I think we look pretty good, all things considered.

00:02:50.320 A lot of shit's gone down.

00:02:52.180 A lot.

00:02:53.100 A lot.

00:02:53.800 And it's so great to be back with the original gang.

00:02:58.560 This is so much fun.

00:03:00.440 This is where it all started.

00:03:01.700 And the Kelly's Court, Kendall's and then Kelly's Court segments got so hot and always popped so much in the ratings that we then went five days a week.

00:03:08.840 I kept it going my entire career.

00:03:10.920 And anyway, it's all thanks to you two.

00:03:13.080 So perfect panel to have here to kick things off today.

00:03:15.920 All right.

00:03:16.260 So we're going to kick it off with Kim Potter.

00:03:18.940 And so our viewers remember, this happened not that long after George Floyd was killed, a black man in Minnesota by a white cop.

00:03:28.520 And this, too, happened in Minnesota.

00:03:30.200 So the whole area is already very fraught, as the entire law enforcement community has been since that event.

00:03:36.640 And Kim Potter, for better or for worse, this moment was caught on camera.

00:03:41.060 She was a veteran of the force, I think, 26 years, and they pulled over this man for they said he had an air freshener hanging.

00:03:50.120 OK, and then also expired license plates.

00:03:53.920 That's legit.

00:03:55.200 They pull him over.

00:03:56.880 And our viewers may remember that she she had what you hear her saying as he as he gets back into his car and she would say attempts to flee.

00:04:04.180 She yells, taser, taser, taser.

00:04:05.960 And then she shoots him, not with a taser, but with a gun.

00:04:09.580 Let's play that tape so the audience knows what we're talking about.

00:04:12.640 Oh, no.

00:04:16.880 You're not doing that?

00:04:17.880 No, you're just not, bro.

00:04:19.100 Don't do it.

00:04:20.040 I'll do it.

00:04:20.840 I'll do it.

00:04:26.500 I'll need you.

00:04:29.960 I'll need you.

00:04:32.140 Taser, taser, taser.

00:04:34.860 Holy shit.

00:04:37.280 I just shot him.

00:04:38.440 Oh, wow.

00:04:39.580 Oh, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful.

00:04:43.980 So, I mean, at least you're the former prosecutor and you tell me because what happened here is Keith Ellison, the attorney general there, who's definitely a political guy.

00:04:54.140 He stepped in and tried to jack up the charges against her and also wants to jack up the sentencing if she's convicted.

00:05:00.140 So, what is he charging her with and what do they need to prove to put this cop behind bars?

00:05:06.020 Right.

00:05:06.460 I don't think it's jacking up the charges, though, Megan.

00:05:09.200 I mean, she's charged with two degrees of manslaughter, first degree and second degree.

00:05:13.640 And for the first degree, they've got to show.

00:05:16.220 Remember, manslaughter just means it's not, you know, it's not premeditated.

00:05:20.660 She didn't go out that day thinking she was going to kill this guy, right, over an air freshener.

00:05:25.380 Come on.

00:05:26.120 So, it wasn't premeditated.

00:05:27.720 But she's culpable legally because of how she acted with the firearm.

00:05:33.720 And they're saying, look, for the first degree manslaughter, you've got to show that she's already committing another crime in here, a misdemeanor in recklessly handling that firearm.

00:05:43.600 I would say when she shoots the guy dead that she's recklessly handling her firearm thinking it's a taser.

00:05:49.800 So, they have to say, look, there's a misdemeanor going on while she commits the homicide, while she's culpably negligent.

00:05:56.560 If the jury doesn't buy the first degree, they can go with second degree, which is a lesser included.

00:06:03.160 And that just means that the misdemeanor doesn't count within the charging.

00:06:08.140 And it's just, again, culpable negligence.

00:06:10.340 I mean, that results in this guy's, in Dwayne Wright's death.

00:06:14.100 And, you know, the facts absolutely support this, Megan.

00:06:18.780 Yeah.

00:06:19.340 Well, that is so, yeah, Dante, right.

00:06:20.780 So, he was, I think, 20 years old.

00:06:24.260 She was 48 when it happened.

00:06:26.160 She's married to a retired cop.

00:06:27.780 They have two adult sons.

00:06:29.100 She had been through much, much training.

00:06:31.420 But the elements of the crime, Jonna, seem simple to meet.

00:06:36.140 As much as I don't agree with this Keith Ellison's, I do think he jacked it up because it was second degree murder.

00:06:40.980 He stepped in and he jacked it to first degree manslaughter.

00:06:43.980 I mean, second degree manslaughter.

00:06:45.220 He jacked it.

00:06:45.720 This is how I read the element.

00:06:48.300 It says, first degree manslaughter.

00:06:49.700 Prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Potter caused Wright's death.

00:06:53.520 Well, yes.

00:06:54.240 I mean, we know that.

00:06:55.540 While committing the misdemeanor offense of reckless handling or use of a firearm.

00:07:01.420 I mean, if that's all they have to prove, really, then reckless handling or use of a firearm, she's in trouble.

00:07:07.900 And, yeah, except, you know, when I look at this case, when I listen to the video that you just played, when she accidentally, and that's the key word here, shoots Dante Wright, that is real.

00:07:22.300 That is raw.

00:07:23.320 I don't think she's faking it.

00:07:24.620 She's not.

00:07:25.100 She wasn't intending to do it and make it look like it was an accident.

00:07:28.160 And the question from the defense standpoint here is, when is a tragic accident simply a tragic accident?

00:07:35.900 Now, you know, cops shoot people for a living.

00:07:38.560 At least they have the license to do so.

00:07:40.620 They often have to make these critical life and death decisions on the fly.

00:07:45.500 Now, if this had happened at a time, maybe if George Floyd never happened, or if it happened prior to, or maybe if it happened 10 years from now, would it be charged at all?

00:07:58.000 Like, when do we take, when do we give cops a break and realize that they are also human and mistakes, even tragic ones, can be made in a split second?

00:08:08.860 If she honestly thought, Megan, if she honestly thought that she was reaching for her taser, she's not looking at the gun.

00:08:14.920 When you're in that kind of posture, she's looking at the person.

00:08:19.180 If she thought that was her taser, honestly, and it wasn't, is that a crime?

00:08:24.340 I mean, that's the question that the defense is going to pose to the jury.

00:08:27.520 Or is it an accident and we should all go home?

00:08:30.420 And I agree with the defense standpoint of this.

00:08:32.980 It's tragic.

00:08:34.340 But we got to let police be police and human beings at the same time.

00:08:39.180 At least to me, you can analogize it to a surgeon at an operating table who, if he commits malpractice and, you know, cuts off the left leg instead of the right leg, there's no question it's malpractice and he's going to face a massive civil lawsuit.

00:08:53.940 But we wouldn't charge him with a crime saying his his recklessness caused, you know, a massive injury that that would be extraordinary.

00:09:03.020 You have to prove there was something wrong with him, that he took drugs before he went in there or something in order to elevate that criminally, usually.

00:09:09.080 Well, let's let's look at the facts of this case, because that that will give you everything you need.

00:09:14.940 She had two firearms, right, a taser and a handgun.

00:09:19.040 And they were on both either hip.

00:09:21.560 She so she knows where, you know, one is and one and the other is.

00:09:25.640 And she pulls out the handgun, which doesn't have a safety.

00:09:29.780 It's a completely different color.

00:09:31.480 The taser is yellow and black.

00:09:34.160 I mean, it's, you know, just an absolutely different animal.

00:09:36.660 The taser has a locking mechanism on it.

00:09:40.560 So she would have to unlock the safety and then point.

00:09:43.860 And then, you know, the taser would go off and she doesn't do any of that.

00:09:47.360 She grabs the handgun instead on a different hip.

00:09:50.920 I mean, she had training on this just six months prior.

00:09:54.100 She had two trainings on taser.

00:09:56.100 She's 26 years in the police force.

00:09:58.400 And what we didn't hear in that audio that we played is that after she says that she says after she says, I shot him, she says, I'm going to prison.

00:10:05.860 I mean, that's consciousness of guilt.

00:10:07.800 She knows what she did was wrong, even in that moment.

00:10:11.620 Well, you might say that even if you made a terrible mistake, like, oh, shit, you know, oh, my God.

00:10:16.720 I don't why.

00:10:17.380 So what is the theory then, Lise, that is the prosecution going to argue that she intend intended to kill him?

00:10:22.360 You know, that she is all a ruse, the taser, taser, taser.

00:10:25.120 No, no, that's the whole point.

00:10:26.760 No, it's not a ruse.

00:10:27.960 And I agree with John.

00:10:28.780 I agree with you.

00:10:29.420 That is in the moment that she said that again.

00:10:32.040 She says she's going to prison.

00:10:33.360 But you don't have to prove premeditation.

00:10:36.160 That's the whole point of a manslaughter charge instead of a premeditated murder charge.

00:10:41.600 She didn't go out.

00:10:42.620 She didn't set out to kill him even in that second.

00:10:44.940 But what she did was a mistake that we have to elevate.

00:10:49.100 Otherwise, we're going to have, you know, cops pulling people over for air freshener violations and they get shot.

00:10:54.180 I mean, that can't happen in this country.

00:10:56.320 We didn't used to treat every mistake as a as a criminal matter.

00:11:00.380 This is definitely a post George Floyd situation.

00:11:03.540 This is more than a mistake.

00:11:05.880 I don't know if it is.

00:11:06.960 I mean, I think it's obviously a mistake.

00:11:08.540 And I think we watched the mistake unfold before our very eyes.

00:11:11.300 If this woman I'm all for holding bad cops accountable, John.

00:11:14.080 But you tell me, because I think the videotape for once is on her side.

00:11:18.640 The videotapes on her side, because you can hear she thought she was going to discharge her taser.

00:11:25.840 You can hear her instant regret and sadness and panic that she fired the wrong weapon.

00:11:32.100 I mean, at least I see Lisa's point.

00:11:34.520 Like the gun is on the right hip.

00:11:37.160 The tasers on the left hip.

00:11:39.020 They are discharged differently.

00:11:40.880 You have to do more to discharge a taser than you do apparently to discharge the gun, according to what the information is.

00:11:47.360 And she didn't.

00:11:48.720 You know, so in other words, she had to handle the the taser much differently than she would have had to handle the gun.

00:11:54.260 So she should have known that that was a gun in her hand and not the taser.

00:11:58.540 But I don't like how do you find a jury?

00:12:01.180 And by the way, the jury, it's not, you know, for what it's worth, it's not a particularly diverse jury.

00:12:06.200 So far, they've got, I think, at least nine jurors seated for jurors seated white man in his 50s, white woman in her 60s, white man in his 20s, Asian woman in her 40s.

00:12:16.400 And they had five additional and so on.

00:12:19.280 And it's a mostly white jury so far.

00:12:21.180 Not that that necessarily means anything.

00:12:22.660 We saw a white jury convict those white guys in the Ahmaud Armory case.

00:12:27.420 But you tell me what their best chances as the defense.

00:12:30.120 You know, I wouldn't want to be prosecuted by Lise because she makes some very good arguments here.

00:12:37.920 We have to remember a couple of things.

00:12:40.960 First and foremost, Dante Wright was not seated in his car with his hands at 10 and 2 when this traffic stop happened.

00:12:47.940 And yes, it was because he had something hanging from his mirror, which is a legit reason to pull somebody over.

00:12:52.580 But what elevated this is they figured out from pulling him over that there was also a warrant.

00:12:57.940 And then he made some furtive movements that is what compelled this police officer to act like a police officer.

00:13:03.700 So that's argument number one.

00:13:05.420 Argument number two is I guarantee you police officers spend a heck of a lot more time practicing drawing their actual firearm than they spend practicing drawing their taser.

00:13:15.980 And there could have been a little element of muscle memory going on here, for lack of a better term.

00:13:20.700 And then when you combine that with the fact that we do have video where this woman is not faking it, she is not faking the realization that she just took a life and didn't mean to.

00:13:32.360 You can you can get that from her affect and from her voice.

00:13:37.040 A jury is going to really have to analyze all that and and decide when is an accident, an accident and when is an accident criminally negligent.

00:13:46.660 What's up, Lise, with because the sentencing guidelines are first degree manslaughter carries a max of 15 years in prison, second degree manslaughter, 10 years in prison.

00:13:57.900 I mean, for, you know, a 48 year old mom who she doesn't have some history of as far as we know, nothing in the papers, at least of harassing defendants or, you know, a bunch of complaints against her like we saw in Chauvin.

00:14:10.620 She doesn't have that. You're going to put her in jail for 15 years. Keith Ellison says no longer.

00:14:15.920 The prosecutors have filed a notice to say they'll seek a longer sentence than the recommended guidelines if Kim Potter is convicted.

00:14:22.980 That's effed up.

00:14:24.900 Well, and we we don't know what additional information the prosecutors have.

00:14:28.280 I agree with that one. I don't understand why she why they would go higher than the sentencing guidelines.

00:14:33.800 And you'd have to convince a judge to do that. So we're a long way from from going there.

00:14:38.020 And also remember, when the prosecutors charges, they charge first degree manslaughter and second degree.

00:14:43.540 So the jury can always come back with the second degree, which is going to be easier to prove because you don't have to have the pylon of the misdemeanor going on at the same time,

00:14:51.900 which might be confusing to a juror.

00:14:53.720 But I can see jurors absolutely saying, look, this was an accident, but it was absolutely preventable.

00:15:04.020 This woman had 26 years on the force.

00:15:06.460 She had been trained in tasers multiple times at a time close to in proximity to this incident.

00:15:14.080 She should have known better. We're not charging.

00:15:16.760 It's so important to remember this is not premeditated murder.

00:15:20.840 She didn't set out to do it. But the culpable negligence, we have to hold cops, doctors, everybody to to some level of negligence.

00:15:31.140 We don't want cops out there who are going to shoot people when they're just pulling them over for a minor traffic.

00:15:36.800 And I don't know what else could she have done? She did all the training.

00:15:39.320 Twenty six years. She's not a newbie.

00:15:41.660 I know it's like holding her accountable isn't going to make other cops behave differently.

00:15:45.720 You go through the training. Accidents do happen. People screw up.

00:15:48.640 They're still humans, even if they're cops, even if they're surgeons, you know, whatever they are.

00:15:52.840 Let me ask you this. This case is going to be a little similar to the Kyle Rittenhouse case, to the Chauvin case, where you're going to have national eyes on it.

00:16:00.900 Hence why we are covering it.

00:16:04.040 There's already been an attempt to influence, I would say, the judge.

00:16:08.440 The jurors are still being seated. So I'm sure they're next, although they're being kept anonymous.

00:16:12.020 But, you know, look what happened in Rittenhouse. We had MSNBC following the jurors home to their houses.

00:16:18.820 Protests have taken place at the judge's condo complex.

00:16:21.040 The judge is named Regina Chu, Fourth Judicial District, Hennepin County.

00:16:25.680 Been on the on the bench since 2002.

00:16:28.640 Three weeks ago, protesters outside of her home.

00:16:31.020 One person, one protester went all the way to what they believed was her front door.

00:16:34.960 It was live streamed by the activists who did it.

00:16:37.280 Cortez Rice went to the door and was excited to say, we got confirmation.

00:16:41.880 This is her house. The judge is staying in this nice, predominantly white neighborhood in this nice little white building.

00:16:47.900 We've got some tape of that. Take a listen.

00:16:50.160 I think this is her crib right here.

00:16:54.620 It's a predominantly white neighborhood.

00:16:56.700 Look at this shit.

00:16:57.920 The judge staying in this nice, predominantly white neighborhood, this nice little white building.

00:17:03.880 Wow. I mean, that that's another factor, right?

00:17:07.000 The jurors, the judge, they're going to be under unusual pressures, John, from the public.

00:17:11.680 That's very loud on cases like this.

00:17:13.320 And that is so scary because that really divests judges and juries of their responsibility.

00:17:21.420 You can't have them making decisions or rendering verdicts because they don't want their house burned down,

00:17:26.640 because they don't want their children run over on the way to school,

00:17:29.560 because they don't want to be harassed by the court of public opinion and the public in general based on what they're doing.

00:17:35.880 When they are there, they are the ones who will have all the evidence presented before them.

00:17:39.940 They have a civic duty.

00:17:41.300 They have a job to do.

00:17:42.280 And the outside influences and the threats, most especially the threats, should not be allowed to take place.

00:17:48.920 And that just scares the hell out of me.

00:17:51.880 Yeah, me too.

00:17:52.440 It's so wrong.

00:17:53.060 And these judges, people misunderstand.

00:17:54.420 They don't walk around with security.

00:17:55.740 Unless you're a Supreme Court justice, you're not walking around with security.

00:17:58.960 You know, you're very vulnerable.

00:18:00.320 We've seen attacks on judges and their families that have proven very deadly.

00:18:03.760 This is so far beyond the pale.

00:18:05.880 OK, let's let's turn the page to Jussie Smollett.

00:18:08.620 But Jussie Smollett, who the D.A. in Chicago, Kim Fox, a George Soros supported candidate, far left, decided to drop the charges on, even though he completely faked his own attack.

00:18:23.360 I mean, that's I'll just give you my opinion up front.

00:18:25.200 I'm not an impartial judge here.

00:18:27.520 He faked his own attack, a race based attack, which turned out to be a total hoax.

00:18:31.700 This is the guy who said he was walking through Chicago at two in the morning to get a subway sandwich.

00:18:35.160 And somebody in the middle of Chicago, very, very blue city, attacked him and said, this is MAGA country, put a noose around his neck, threw bleach on him on and on.

00:18:44.800 It went. It was in the middle of the polar vortex like I've lived in Chicago.

00:18:48.440 Nobody even goes outside at two and two a.m. in the polar vortex in Chicago.

00:18:51.820 You can't. You'll be dead soon because it's so cold.

00:18:55.060 Anywho, he got caught.

00:18:57.320 Kim Fox dropped the charges because she's a political animal, too.

00:18:59.800 And then then the state stepped in and appointed a special prosecutor, Dan Webb, who's a big time former federal prosecutor out there.

00:19:07.040 He's like a star. So, Lise, what's what's the theory of his case?

00:19:11.580 And why is why is he only charging Jussie Smollett with disorderly conduct?

00:19:16.600 That seems like a weird charge for this.

00:19:18.600 Yeah, I agree. Disorderly conduct and lying to the police.

00:19:22.300 Well, the lying to the police is the is the best charge.

00:19:25.120 And they're all misdemeanors.

00:19:26.460 And he probably is not going to face much of any prison time because he's got no criminal history.

00:19:31.500 And, you know, so it's it's a low bar.

00:19:33.940 But this case and the prosecutors said it is was just despicable.

00:19:39.880 I mean, what Jussie Smollett is accused of doing, if true, and I believe it is, is absolutely despicable.

00:19:47.200 I mean, he if you remember back at the time, the whole country was involved in this case and following this case.

00:19:53.960 And first and at first he was believed. Right.

00:19:56.980 This has all happened to him that a horrible note had been sent to him and threatening his life.

00:20:01.600 By the way, he thought I'm not being paid enough attention to.

00:20:04.620 It was all about getting more money, more fame for himself and to set this thing up.

00:20:10.440 And they've got surveillance, Megan, of them doing a dry run, getting ready for this thing.

00:20:16.980 I mean, you can call the brothers liars all you want, but I think you're going to get them on the stand.

00:20:21.480 They're going to be believable.

00:20:22.640 You've got the video to back it up.

00:20:24.500 And you've just you've just got Jussie Smollett's actions.

00:20:26.900 He shows up with the noose still around his neck when the cops arrived.

00:20:31.540 That isn't staged.

00:20:33.240 Come on.

00:20:33.860 He's like, I just wanted you to see it.

00:20:35.620 I know that's the thing was about that.

00:20:38.120 If I had a noose around my neck, that thing would be off, you know?

00:20:41.420 Yeah, here's the video of them showing up.

00:20:43.360 So when I told them, Jonna, when I told Abby, you know, my assistant about the the dry run that was on video of Jussie going by, she said, oh, my God, secondhand embarrassment.

00:20:52.760 I'm secondhand embarrassment.

00:20:54.200 It is.

00:20:54.560 It's humiliating because he's still his defense is still.

00:20:57.960 No, it was legit.

00:20:59.100 I did not don't believe those two brothers.

00:21:00.780 I didn't pay them anything to attack me.

00:21:02.680 I didn't do a dry run.

00:21:03.760 I didn't do it.

00:21:04.400 I was legitimately the victim of a race attack.

00:21:08.120 Yeah, he's got no choice, Megan.

00:21:11.220 He's he has doubled and tripled down for an I don't know whether it's because the prosecution has not offered him any plea deal because they were so disgusted by the fact that he cost the city one hundred and thirty thousand dollars that that he went on mainstream media and, you know, basically said that he wasn't lying when he was lying.

00:21:28.740 So his hope, I think his defense is basically let's hope that there is one bleeding heart liberal on the jury who is not going to follow the law, who's not going to who doesn't care that he faked his own crime.

00:21:43.420 And it's just going to sit there and hold out, you know, hands across their chest until this ends up in some sort of mistrial, if not.

00:21:50.040 So, Jonna, you're calling for jury nullification where the jurors, at least one juror just says, I've seen all the evidence.

00:21:57.340 I just choose not to believe it because I'm such a fan of Jesse Smollett.

00:22:01.320 Yeah, we're going to want to.

00:22:02.300 But let's not forget, this doesn't fall along clear racial lines here because the black police chief, I mean, I'll never forget how mad he was when he found out he was like as a black man.

00:22:13.940 This is disgusting.

00:22:15.660 This undermines legitimate claims of race based violence.

00:22:20.020 He wanted to throw the book at Jesse Smollett and he wasn't the only one.

00:22:23.460 That's why Kim Fox was overruled.

00:22:25.720 They brought in the special prosecutor.

00:22:27.000 So this isn't just about like and by the way, the two guys who he hired to hurt him are black.

00:22:32.700 I mean, what a weird, shitty scheme.

00:22:34.940 Like if you want to complain that you were the victim of a white supremacy MAGA based attack, why would you hire two black guys to attack another black guy and get your dry run on camera?

00:22:45.860 He's a terrible criminal.

00:22:47.380 Yeah, he says when he when he's asked to identify.

00:22:50.860 So I think one of the guys looks white.

00:22:52.680 I mean, look white.

00:22:54.220 Come on.

00:22:55.200 Why don't you just hire two white guys?

00:22:57.000 But commit and now his defense lawyer seems to be trying to turn at least into a it was it was a homophobic attack, too, because Jesse is gay.

00:23:07.000 And he's trying to say I think he's trying to leave open like, yes, he hired them.

00:23:10.720 It was a fake.

00:23:11.660 If that's what you want to conclude.

00:23:13.060 But it turned into a real attack because a third guy might have come and they really hated secretly Jesse because he's gay.

00:23:19.960 Oh, yeah.

00:23:20.280 OK.

00:23:20.600 And where's the third guy?

00:23:21.640 We'll be searching for him forever.

00:23:22.800 I mean, come on.

00:23:24.280 What this does is it it just I mean, it delegitimizes people who have, you know, this really happens to because there are race based claims and hate crimes every day in this country.

00:23:35.740 And there are homophobic crimes every day in this country.

00:23:38.120 So, I mean, you know, it's it's it's like a rape victim saying they've been raped when they haven't been.

00:23:44.060 I mean, it's the worst to do this because it hurts other people coming down the road.

00:23:48.540 That's right.

00:23:49.020 There's no defense on this one, Jonna.

00:23:50.560 I'm glad you agree with me, Jonna.

00:23:55.360 She's like, go for the notification.

00:23:57.940 Well, this is the same.

00:23:58.920 Of course, this is the same story in which, like Kamala Harris and virtually every media personality.

00:24:03.900 I remember watching them do it.

00:24:04.920 They're like, this is disgusting.

00:24:06.440 This is horrible.

00:24:06.880 And it's like, can you just slow your roll?

00:24:08.860 Because we don't know what's what.

00:24:10.860 And it smelled right from the start, right?

00:24:13.280 It smelled right from the start.

00:24:14.440 It was like, I don't think so.

00:24:16.860 But everyone was so desperate to prove their woke bona fides that they were like, oh, my heart.

00:24:21.280 Poor Jussie.

00:24:22.000 Like, you just wait.

00:24:23.060 Maybe poor Jussie, maybe not.

00:24:24.400 And as it turns out, Jussie did more to hurt the legitimate claims of actual victims in race based attacks than anybody else has in a long, long time.

00:24:33.960 All right.

00:24:34.120 So much more with the ladies.

00:24:35.120 I'm so enjoying this.

00:24:35.920 We're going to get the latest on Alec Baldwin on the Ghislaine Maxwell trial.

00:24:38.960 That's right after this quick break.

00:24:40.200 Stay with us.

00:24:48.000 All right.

00:24:48.660 So let's talk about Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's, like, lover, sort of life partner and co-conspirator and potential abuser, depending on who you ask.

00:25:00.560 So she's on trial right now for crimes related to his several decade long sex abuse scandal.

00:25:07.560 And the main defense of the law of the defense is you can't blame her for what Jeffrey did.

00:25:13.520 Everyone's frustrated.

00:25:14.400 Jeffrey is no longer here.

00:25:16.080 But you can't work out that frustration by blaming her.

00:25:19.540 And the prosecutors are saying, oh, we're not.

00:25:21.640 No, no.

00:25:22.200 That's that's not at all what we're doing.

00:25:23.880 She's independently responsible for her own behavior, which was also criminal.

00:25:27.700 By the way, before we before we get into Maxwell, can I just add this final addendum to Jussie Smollett?

00:25:32.920 Because apparently the the the one brother, you know, the two guys he hired, I just had to add this.

00:25:38.560 He testified yesterday that Jussie, they went over the attack.

00:25:42.680 Jussie wanted me to pull the punch so I don't hurt him.

00:25:45.120 Give him a bruise.

00:25:45.760 Oh, just he wanted the bleach in the rope, but not the bruise.

00:25:48.520 Final part of the plan would be to pour bleach on him.

00:25:50.320 Then he would run away.

00:25:51.240 Then he said he would use the fake attack or camera footage for media.

00:25:55.220 And he said, then Smollett instructed him to write a letter in the days after the reported attack in an effort to show sympathy.

00:26:01.000 I was supposed to send him a condolence letter.

00:26:05.280 I'm sorry, but this Jussie Smollett's a lunatic.

00:26:08.080 He's crazy.

00:26:10.820 You know, but John didn't have at it because I told you you wouldn't take this case.

00:26:17.700 She's unusually quiet.

00:26:18.800 I would need I would need a lot of money, a lot of money.

00:26:25.620 OK, so, oh, by the way, he has it.

00:26:27.300 He was getting something like sixty five thousand dollars an episode for Empire.

00:26:30.220 His Fox hit.

00:26:31.880 And apparently this whole thing was based on the fact that he claimed he got a letter threatening him in race based terms.

00:26:37.380 And he didn't like the fact that the studio wasn't responsive enough.

00:26:40.700 By the way, they never found who sent the letter.

00:26:44.140 What a shock.

00:26:45.180 Let me guess.

00:26:46.280 Does it.

00:26:46.800 Is it.

00:26:47.620 Is it Lussie Smollett?

00:26:52.840 By the way, Megan, the feds could come in if they can ever figure out on this on the mail.

00:26:58.340 I mean, if he sent that to himself, which we, you know, we think he did.

00:27:02.460 But you've got a federal crime there of using interstate mails to further further criminal conspiracy like this.

00:27:09.400 So I don't know.

00:27:10.220 I think the FBI should be stepping in.

00:27:12.260 I'm sure Dan Webb has got it.

00:27:13.760 On whether he's going to actually going to do jail time, because this jury might be mad that they have to sit through a trial when they come to a very quick guilty verdict.

00:27:22.820 Since, you know, everybody, the public loves a good apology.

00:27:26.420 And if he had come out and said, listen, I am doing this.

00:27:29.000 I should have just hired a better agent or a better lawyer to get me a better deal on Empire and apologize.

00:27:34.780 We probably wouldn't be in this trial right now.

00:27:37.100 He might see the inside of a jail cell.

00:27:39.360 That's my prediction.

00:27:39.920 So true.

00:27:40.640 And if he if he came out, I was like, I've had all this race based stuff and I haven't known what to do with it.

00:27:45.280 And it's just a stupid way of working out my, you know, frustrations as a black man.

00:27:49.660 I mean, that might play with a jury in Chicago in today's day and age.

00:27:52.540 I don't buy it for one second.

00:27:53.740 OK, so back to Ghislaine.

00:27:55.480 Lise, you tell me whether they've got an uphill battle, because when I listen to the testimonial of Jane, the first alleged victim, we didn't listen because there's no cameras or, you know, video audio in the courtroom.

00:28:05.400 But we read the account.

00:28:06.500 It was very moving.

00:28:07.680 But then, of course, the defense gets up and it's less so.

00:28:12.040 Now, I think you've got she's not the only one.

00:28:14.320 Jane's not the only one that's going to testify.

00:28:15.960 I've got at least four defense before victims that are going to come forward and say, look, it wasn't just Epstein.

00:28:21.520 It was that she got us in, got us involved.

00:28:24.820 And it's the worst kind of enabling.

00:28:27.060 I mean, it's criminal enabling, if you will.

00:28:29.140 I mean, just think about these these young girls as young as 14.

00:28:32.900 You know, they she coddles up to them.

00:28:35.880 She takes them out shopping, asks about their lives.

00:28:39.860 You know, if they come from a troubled past and they're even better prey.

00:28:43.540 I mean, it's really talk about despicable.

00:28:46.220 We talked about despicable in the last case.

00:28:47.800 This is this is despicable.

00:28:49.260 Plus, I mean, the fact that she would just bring these women in and then not only did she hand them over to him, but she would engage in some of these orgies and things like that.

00:28:58.480 And we're going to hear the jury's going to hear more of that testimony in the coming days.

00:29:02.520 I think it's going to be absolutely devastating to her case.

00:29:05.100 So, John, so far, we've heard from the pilot of the so-called Lolita Express, Jeffrey's private plane.

00:29:10.040 And the pilot was basically like, I never saw anything.

00:29:12.840 I had the cockpit door was closed.

00:29:15.720 Never, never.

00:29:17.400 But he's been paid very handsomely over the years by Jeffrey Epstein.

00:29:20.200 Although, you know, so far we've heard a lot of big names like Bill Clinton was on the jet and Donald Trump before he was president.

00:29:25.320 Prince Andrew was on the jet.

00:29:26.740 All these, you know, you're like, hmm, Kevin Spacey, you know, some with her own problems.

00:29:31.740 So it's like, hmm, that's not good.

00:29:33.840 But anyway, Jane gets up there and says Ghislaine and Jeffrey met her while she was at her damn summer camp.

00:29:39.960 She was a 14-year-old in Michigan at singing and acting camp.

00:29:43.200 And they were up there for some reason walking by, took a shining tour, get her name.

00:29:47.480 Turns out she's from Palm Beach as well, Jane, a pseudonym.

00:29:50.840 And when she goes back home, they call her and her mother and Jeffrey Epstein does the old.

00:29:54.440 According to Jane, I'll make you a star.

00:29:56.980 I know all everyone in the business, you know, but you've got to be ready.

00:30:00.760 You've got to be ready.

00:30:01.400 The next thing she knows, he's pulling his pants down.

00:30:03.800 She says she's never even seen a man naked before and abusing her and that Ghislaine was part of it, was actually in the room abusing for part of it.

00:30:11.660 But then when the defense got up there, they started poking holes in her memory.

00:30:15.900 This is 1994.

00:30:17.140 Been a long time.

00:30:18.300 She's 51 or 41 years old now.

00:30:20.700 Yeah, guys, I got to tell you, I have really strong opinions about this case and probably opinions that are unpopular with the masses.

00:30:28.380 Because I know the allegations are salacious, right?

00:30:31.200 Nobody is.

00:30:31.820 I would never defend a sex trafficker.

00:30:34.760 But what I feel I am doing in this case, and I've studied it from the day that she was arrested back in July of 2020, and the first thing that made my fine hairs go up was the fact that they would not release this woman on bail.

00:30:48.660 When every other high-profile, high net worth defendant of late does get bail, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Steve Bannon, Lori Loughlin, people who could equally have flown the coop, given bail, they got bail.

00:31:03.120 Now, something just told me this wasn't right.

00:31:07.120 And I am in the camp of the defense here is basically going to say, hey, wait a minute.

00:31:12.120 These charges, as salacious and awful as they sound, were invented after Jeffrey Epstein, who is the real target, died.

00:31:22.900 And you can't just take – defendants are not fungible.

00:31:25.960 You can't replace one with another when something happens to the main person who they never really got to take to task, and that was Jeffrey Epstein.

00:31:33.820 Now, he was taken to task a little bit back in 2008.

00:31:37.760 Why weren't any of these charges brought up back then?

00:31:41.900 Why weren't they brought up in the 90s?

00:31:43.380 Why weren't they brought up in the early 2000s when Jeffrey Epstein –

00:31:45.960 Because he was connected.

00:31:46.680 He was connected.

00:31:48.720 He was on the plane.

00:31:50.080 He was good friends with Prince Andrew.

00:31:52.100 He went to Prince Andrew's – Princess Beatrice is his daughter.

00:31:54.980 He went to her 18th birthday.

00:31:56.840 I read.

00:31:57.580 I don't know if it's true, but the queen was there.

00:31:59.680 This is – Jeffrey Epstein, you know, he was hanging out with guys from MIT.

00:32:02.840 He was hanging out with Bill Clinton, former presidents.

00:32:05.520 Like, people – he was connected.

00:32:08.340 That's why he got a slap on the wrist back in 2008.

00:32:10.920 And just to answer Jonna's point, she has a French and American passport, both passports.

00:32:16.540 So she's a flight risk.

00:32:17.900 And that's why she didn't get bailed.

00:32:19.300 Nothing more than that.

00:32:20.080 You have all those up.

00:32:21.360 $30 million and her passports.

00:32:23.180 And she still got denied six times.

00:32:25.220 And Epstein, when he was charged, his last time before he died, was charged with co-conspirators

00:32:32.380 on Nate.

00:32:33.420 She's one of the co-conspirators.

00:32:34.920 So they have this in mind.

00:32:36.340 The prosecution had this in mind way before Epstein's untimely death.

00:32:41.400 I mean, it's not like – it's not that she's a scapegoat.

00:32:43.860 She was absolutely involved.

00:32:45.400 It reminds me of – remember Allison Mack in the Keith Rainier trial, the NXIVM trial

00:32:50.940 a couple years ago?

00:32:52.160 She was the actress.

00:32:53.000 And Allison Mack, you know, I think she was on Smallville or something like that.

00:32:56.520 But anyway, she was convicted.

00:32:58.380 I think she got three years for her aid with Keith Rainier in exactly doing the same kind

00:33:04.320 of thing that's going on here.

00:33:05.600 She was grooming these women.

00:33:07.340 Look, if Jeffrey Epstein, with all his connections, whatever, comes up to you and you're 14 years

00:33:11.340 old, you know, you may run away if she comes up to you and she's nice and sweet and speaks

00:33:17.180 French or whatever.

00:33:18.160 I mean, I'm making this up.

00:33:19.520 No, but it's true.

00:33:20.940 And she was an internationally connected person.

00:33:23.520 Her dad, you know, apparently he died on some yacht.

00:33:26.860 He was like allegedly a spy.

00:33:28.820 Some people believe she may have been some sort of a spy.

00:33:31.520 I mean, the whole thing's full of intrigue.

00:33:32.980 But when I looked at the cross-examination yesterday of Jane, whose, you know, direct testimony

00:33:38.700 was very compelling, the defense was pointing out Jane is now a professional actress.

00:33:43.400 Jane acts on a soap opera.

00:33:44.900 And they were basically saying, you've had a long career in acting, haven't you?

00:33:47.840 The defense attorney, Laura Menninger.

00:33:50.500 There's no melodramatic role you haven't played, is there?

00:33:54.480 Can you cry on command?

00:33:56.180 Jane said, that's not really how it works.

00:33:58.000 Melissa Francis, my pal who used to star on Little House on the Prairie, would disagree.

00:34:01.260 She's very proud of her ability to produce the waterworks on demand.

00:34:05.300 Her kids will fake cry to her and she'd be like, oh, please.

00:34:07.620 If I don't see a tear, I'm not listening.

00:34:10.760 Then the defense got up there and pointed out, and this has been the case with a lot of the

00:34:15.320 Epstein accusers who have accused, you know, a slew of men, not just Epstein.

00:34:20.640 She apparently told law enforcement agents she wasn't sure if Ghislaine Maxwell ever actually

00:34:26.380 touched her.

00:34:27.240 She didn't remember Ghislaine Maxwell ever being present for any sexual activity between her

00:34:31.140 and Epstein.

00:34:32.000 She repeatedly said, Jane did, that she didn't recall if she had actually said that to investigate

00:34:37.600 but this is what the defense is going to do over and over because none of these victims

00:34:42.140 is, quote, a perfect victim, and they have a lot of conflicting prior testimony.

00:34:47.220 And this case and similar cases often come down to one thing, and that is the credibility

00:34:54.020 of the accusers.

00:34:55.700 And why is that?

00:34:56.480 Because a lot of these crimes, obviously, they don't happen in front of people, right?

00:34:59.940 So it lends itself to that.

00:35:02.040 So it's very important and actually probably the most difficult part of a defense attorney's

00:35:07.220 job because nobody wants to attack somebody who claims to be a victim.

00:35:11.780 But on the other hand, if they are truly not victims, I'm saying if.

00:35:16.340 What if, you guys, take Ghislaine Maxwell, take Jeffrey, take the big names out of it for

00:35:20.380 a second.

00:35:21.720 What if and what stops people in the accusers positions from inventing facts for some other

00:35:30.220 game?

00:35:30.600 I'm not saying it's happening here.

00:35:32.120 I'm saying it's possible.

00:35:33.860 But there is a pot of money, Jonna.

00:35:35.400 There is a pot of money.

00:35:36.920 There's a ton of money, right?

00:35:38.120 And that was my next point.

00:35:39.960 When you are incentivized by millions and millions of dollars and all of these accusers

00:35:43.880 put their hand out and they got between one and five million dollars from the Jeffrey

00:35:48.240 Epstein fund, which eventually ran out of money because 135 people, 135 people made claims

00:35:54.240 to that fund.

00:35:55.080 They paid out over 125 million dollars.

00:35:58.460 I would love to know what the criteria was for that.

00:36:00.620 But that's an aside.

00:36:01.780 When you have that kind of incentive, you can adopt and really believe what your story becomes.

00:36:09.620 And that's dangerous, not just in the Ghislaine Maxwell case.

00:36:12.880 It's dangerous in any case where anybody points a figure and says, this happened to me under

00:36:17.600 the cover of darkness with nobody else in the room, but it's a crime and I want my pound

00:36:21.900 of flesh.

00:36:22.780 That's what scares me.

00:36:24.580 And I get that, Jonna.

00:36:26.660 And maybe you could say that for one victim.

00:36:29.700 But you stack all these victims up.

00:36:32.420 Plus, you have all the public knowledge about her being together with Epstein for all these

00:36:36.920 years as being his girlfriend, lover, whatever.

00:36:39.340 I mean, you've got all of that.

00:36:40.780 And I'm sure the prosecution is going to show it.

00:36:42.540 So it's the accusers, multiple accusers.

00:36:46.760 And yeah, OK.

00:36:47.600 So their memory might be a little bit flawed on some things, but that actually can work

00:36:52.780 the other way and help the prosecution.

00:36:54.360 Because we know when people are lying, straight out lying, they have a story.

00:37:00.720 It's embellished.

00:37:01.800 You wrote a book about it.

00:37:03.020 You know how to tell a liar.

00:37:04.900 You wrote a book about lying.

00:37:06.660 About not telling lies.

00:37:08.760 Right.

00:37:08.980 And about how to detect when people are lying.

00:37:11.520 And it's, you know, so detail.

00:37:12.880 So it's actually more realistic that because some of these crimes happened so long ago,

00:37:19.700 that the memory is, you know, fuzzier on this point or another point or not so sure.

00:37:25.460 That actually adheres to the benefit of the test.

00:37:29.200 Yeah, but these are big ones.

00:37:30.260 This isn't like, oh, you said she was wearing a red dress.

00:37:32.940 And now today you say it was yellow.

00:37:34.420 No, this is you told investigators at a point in time much closer to the alleged incident

00:37:40.060 that Ghislaine Maxwell never touched you and that you didn't remember Ghislaine Maxwell

00:37:44.640 ever being present for any sexual activity between you and Epstein that, you know, and her only

00:37:49.360 response is, I don't recall whether I said that to the investigator.

00:37:53.380 And that's not compelling for her.

00:37:56.680 Now, I don't you know, I don't know.

00:37:58.260 Maybe it's one of the frustrations of covering this is we can't see her.

00:38:01.240 You know, it's not like Kyle Rittenhouse, we assessing the credibility of the witness,

00:38:05.840 especially on a cross like this.

00:38:07.400 It does require your eyes and ears.

00:38:09.460 That's how you kind of determine credibility, right?

00:38:12.000 Like you get a gut feeling, body language and so on.

00:38:14.940 So we're all kind of fighting with a hand tied behind our back and trying to assess how

00:38:18.480 this will go.

00:38:19.080 But it's fascinating.

00:38:20.360 We'll continue to follow it.

00:38:21.180 All right.

00:38:21.320 We got a couple more we're going to get to right after this, including Alec Baldwin in

00:38:25.340 tears with George Stephanopoulos.

00:38:27.400 Do we buy that?

00:38:28.300 And then there's an update in Kyle Rittenhouse, too, as they're trying to kick him off of

00:38:32.380 this online campus.

00:38:33.880 It's not even a real campus.

00:38:35.300 They want to kick him off of the online campus.

00:38:37.600 So we'll take that up in one second after this quick break.

00:38:40.280 Don't forget, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel

00:38:44.560 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips when you subscribe to my

00:38:48.940 YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly.

00:38:51.260 Or if you prefer an audio podcast, simply subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher

00:38:57.540 or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:39:00.220 And do it now because we're going to have more on Jeffrey Epstein coming soon.

00:39:09.640 All right.

00:39:10.320 So we're going to kick it off with Alec Baldwin and this shooting on the set of his film,

00:39:15.300 which resulted in the death of the cinematographer.

00:39:17.700 Alec has chosen to give, you tell me whether it's a dramatic performance or real, an interview

00:39:24.640 to George Stephanopoulos.

00:39:26.180 ABC is making the most of it.

00:39:27.460 It's going to air tonight.

00:39:28.520 But they've released this advance clip of Alec claiming he did not, did not point the gun

00:39:35.520 at Helena, the cinematographer whose life he took, he says, completely inadvertently.

00:39:42.480 Take a listen.

00:39:43.240 Wasn't in the script for the trigger to be pulled.

00:39:46.000 Well, the trigger wasn't pulled.

00:39:47.100 I didn't pull the trigger.

00:39:48.120 So you never pulled the trigger.

00:39:49.540 No, no, no, no, no.

00:39:50.360 I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them.

00:39:52.620 Never.

00:39:52.900 What did you think happened?

00:39:54.940 How did a real bullet get on that set?

00:39:56.980 I have no idea.

00:39:58.060 Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn't even supposed to be on the property.

00:40:02.180 Okay.

00:40:02.740 Well, there's other like a promo of showing him sobbing.

00:40:06.960 So in any event, maybe I need to correct myself.

00:40:09.400 Not that he didn't point the gun, but that he didn't pull the trigger because you can hear

00:40:13.200 him there saying I would never do such a thing.

00:40:14.940 So the latest in this case, before I get to the Baldwin interview, the latest in this

00:40:20.340 case is interesting to me.

00:40:21.720 Okay.

00:40:21.980 Because everybody's been pointing the finger at the armorer, which is a term I'd never

00:40:25.780 heard before this case.

00:40:26.760 It's the person responsible for the guns on a movie set and potentially the ammo.

00:40:32.220 And she's a young woman.

00:40:33.400 She's 24 years old.

00:40:34.380 And to me, it's very interesting because, you know, all these very powerful, very well

00:40:38.340 connected people, Alec Baldwin and others are like, it was her, her, her, her, her.

00:40:41.940 And maybe it was her time will tell, but this is a young woman of no means.

00:40:46.040 She's obviously doesn't have any money.

00:40:47.920 They have shots of her house and so on.

00:40:49.960 She's not well connected or well represented so far as I can tell.

00:40:54.100 I mean, she's got a lawyer, but I'm just saying she doesn't have unlimited funds.

00:40:57.640 And I just wonder, my spidey senses are up, right?

00:41:01.100 Because she's an easy person to dump it on.

00:41:02.900 Maybe, maybe because she did it.

00:41:04.440 We'll see.

00:41:05.720 No, no one's really claiming there was intent here, but somebody screwed up and massively.

00:41:10.280 But the latest is that there was actually a different guy, a guy named Seth Kenny, who

00:41:15.880 apparently told detectives that he was hired to supply rust with the guns, the dummy rounds

00:41:20.680 and the blanks, and that he was the one responsible for the ammo that was on that set.

00:41:26.860 And she she would oversee it ultimately with the guns and load it and all that.

00:41:30.380 But like he was the guy.

00:41:31.380 And so the big question in this case is who put live bullets into a box that was apparently

00:41:37.180 labeled dummy rounds?

00:41:38.480 That's what she was supposed to put in there.

00:41:39.800 Dummy rounds don't even go off like a blank does.

00:41:41.740 They don't even make smoke.

00:41:42.760 They're just for show.

00:41:43.660 There's like a model of a bullet.

00:41:45.580 But real bullets got in there.

00:41:47.380 That's how this happened.

00:41:48.460 And the big question in the case is who put live rounds in that box?

00:41:53.240 So I'll give it to you, Lise, on how the the sheriff's office and the prosecutors out

00:41:58.300 there in Albuquerque are ever going to figure that out to make a case.

00:42:04.400 Yeah, it's going to be tough because you have two different accounts.

00:42:07.240 And I agree with you about this young woman.

00:42:09.940 It sounds like I don't know if she's being a scapegoat, being scapegoated, but we don't

00:42:14.640 know what involvement she had.

00:42:15.700 But you've got two different accounts of at least two different accounts of how that bullet

00:42:19.220 got there.

00:42:20.340 And so they've got to ferret that out.

00:42:22.480 And I that's going to be tough.

00:42:23.980 You know, they're going to be having to talk to talk to both of the people that have claimed

00:42:26.900 different different accounts of what happened.

00:42:29.720 And they've got to get to the bottom of that.

00:42:31.660 They're also, I'm sure, looking at Baldwin.

00:42:33.440 And that's why he got out in front of this.

00:42:35.580 And, you know, doing the interview, it's purely to make sure that he's out.

00:42:40.980 He's getting his story out there.

00:42:42.540 Right.

00:42:42.900 And he's crying those crocodile tears, crocodile tears.

00:42:45.660 And I believe part of it, maybe, you know, that he didn't know that the that the firearm

00:42:53.720 was actually loaded with a real bullet.

00:42:55.360 But when he says, I didn't pull the trigger, I that's where I'm sort of what I have to suspend

00:43:01.700 belief here at this point.

00:43:03.260 I mean, that's maybe going too far in the account.

00:43:07.040 I mean, right up to then I was with him.

00:43:08.720 And then I'm like, wait a second, dude, I mean, how did he the woman's dead?

00:43:12.960 She got shot.

00:43:13.920 So somebody pulled that trigger.

00:43:15.720 I agree.

00:43:16.420 And no one's been looking at him saying you intentionally murdered her.

00:43:19.020 I mean, no one's saying that.

00:43:20.680 We all understand that this was a terrible accident, you know, again, but we have to

00:43:24.600 figure out for, you know, who is responsible and what level was the culpability.

00:43:28.920 Right.

00:43:29.300 Because as we talked about earlier, it can be pure accident where nobody's held responsible

00:43:32.480 criminally or it can be recklessness where somebody is.

00:43:35.280 And he, Jonna, he understands, number one, he is not supposed to point a gun at another

00:43:41.900 human on a set.

00:43:43.100 That's very clear, according to the rules on a movie set.

00:43:47.220 And lots of people have said that you don't point a gun at a person, period, just because

00:43:51.640 you just never know.

00:43:52.720 Still a gun.

00:43:54.360 And so he's not he's not denying that.

00:43:56.860 I don't think he can, given the eyewitnesses.

00:43:58.580 He's denying that he pulled the trigger, which I don't know.

00:44:01.000 I don't think it passes the smell test.

00:44:02.840 Obviously, the trigger went off.

00:44:04.680 So how it was all some massive accident, not his fault, not no part of it.

00:44:09.820 Yeah, guns, guns don't shoot themselves.

00:44:11.720 And early on, I had a problem with the term prop gun on this case when it first happened.

00:44:16.280 Oh, a prop gun.

00:44:16.940 It wasn't a prop gun.

00:44:17.980 It was a real gun with prop ammo or what was supposed to be prop ammo.

00:44:22.240 But here's what's happening.

00:44:23.280 This is my take on what he's doing now.

00:44:25.320 He sat in his lawyer's office undoubtedly because even though he's probably safe from criminal

00:44:30.680 responsibility, there's still the civil liability that there's going to be checks written.

00:44:35.240 It's not a matter of if it's a matter of how much.

00:44:38.440 And he probably sat in his lawyer's office and his lawyer said, OK, Alec, now it's possible

00:44:43.420 you didn't really have your finger on that trigger, did you when you were on that set?

00:44:47.940 Right.

00:44:48.200 And now he's taking a cue from that and he's coming out with this story, which he is so

00:44:54.320 detracting from his own credibility.

00:44:55.840 It's not even funny.

00:44:56.720 What he should be doing instead of saying, I don't know how the gun went off.

00:45:00.700 Just shut up.

00:45:02.000 Yeah.

00:45:02.360 Just shut up, Alec.

00:45:04.660 And let the sheriff do what they're going to do.

00:45:06.800 You lay back.

00:45:07.720 You're going to have to write a check.

00:45:08.740 Your production company is going to write a check.

00:45:10.080 That's what you have insurance for.

00:45:11.600 Shut up.

00:45:12.580 Right.

00:45:12.980 And now he's on tape on this, right?

00:45:14.820 So if it ever gets, you know, again, eyewitnesses, as we talk about saying, well, no, actually

00:45:19.860 you did point the gun and you did pull the trigger.

00:45:22.380 We saw it.

00:45:23.100 We heard it.

00:45:23.840 All of that.

00:45:25.700 He's just made it worse.

00:45:26.900 So he's made it worse for the defense lawyer, John.

00:45:29.420 I don't you think?

00:45:30.000 Because sometimes you can't control your client.

00:45:32.640 But I guess, you know, you get to bill a lot more.

00:45:35.520 But he's used to being the star in command and used to being able to fool everyone into

00:45:42.960 thinking he is whatever role he's playing.

00:45:45.580 Right.

00:45:45.760 Like he is a great actor.

00:45:47.060 I mean, no one's going to take that away from him.

00:45:48.920 And that's the problem for someone like him talking to George Stephanopoulos.

00:45:51.760 We know he's a great actor.

00:45:53.360 We know he is like.

00:45:54.880 But is the claim credible?

00:45:56.860 You know, that he's just what an unfortunate victim.

00:45:59.280 He, unlike most actors, there's been reports this week about the other stars coming out and

00:46:03.200 saying, I never took a gun on set without checking myself to see whether there were bullets,

00:46:07.280 you know, in the like live bullets in the chamber.

00:46:09.620 Now, I don't know whether you've been able to see that here, but, you know, if the armor

00:46:13.420 couldn't tell the difference between the dummy rounds and the live rounds, I doubt Alec Baldwin

00:46:17.960 could have.

00:46:18.320 But anyway, he didn't check personally.

00:46:20.040 He was told it was a cold gun in his defense.

00:46:22.340 But are we supposed to believe that he was this unfortunate victim who got handed a hot

00:46:25.460 gun, meaning live rounds in it, when in fact it was a cold and then they said it was

00:46:29.920 a cold gun and that he broke a rule saying don't point it at somebody.

00:46:34.180 And then so bizarrely, the gun then went off.

00:46:38.060 This gun had a mind of its own.

00:46:39.760 It was making independent decisions.

00:46:43.140 No, exactly.

00:46:44.080 You know, I do feel a little bit for Alec because of this one thing.

00:46:47.220 I don't think he's criminally responsible.

00:46:49.880 But guys, he killed somebody, right?

00:46:51.620 He will live with that for the rest of his life.

00:46:53.920 His actions caused the death of Helena Hutchins.

00:46:57.120 And that is so tragic and so unfortunate.

00:46:59.660 I don't know if I would be able to live with myself.

00:47:01.600 And I use guns.

00:47:02.880 I'm a concealed carry permit.

00:47:04.140 I practice with guns all the time.

00:47:05.660 I've had hair trigger guns that went off when I didn't think they were going to, but they

00:47:09.140 were always pointed at a target and not at a person.

00:47:13.000 I hope I never have to aim my gun at a human being.

00:47:15.920 OK, but I have one.

00:47:17.520 So, you know, I feel bad that he took a life.

00:47:19.920 You live with that forever.

00:47:20.960 It's a terrible thing.

00:47:21.860 I can imagine.

00:47:23.020 Almost at a time.

00:47:23.800 We only have a minute left.

00:47:24.640 So I'm going to squeeze in Rittenhouse.

00:47:26.300 We'll save homes for another time.

00:47:28.440 Rittenhouse.

00:47:28.900 Now there's protests.

00:47:29.840 They had a protest trying to kick, quote, killer Kyle off our campus at Arizona State

00:47:33.940 University, a place he's attending online.

00:47:36.940 He's not even going.

00:47:37.980 And he already said he's not going to go this semester.

00:47:41.220 But he does plan to re-enroll.

00:47:43.140 So you tell me whether these people are off their rockers calling him a killer, a mass

00:47:46.820 murderer.

00:47:47.220 You've even had professors at other universities saying, yes, he should never be allowed because

00:47:51.100 he's a mass murderer.

00:47:52.040 Jonna?

00:47:52.700 I can't believe the level of stupidity we are raising in our college age students today

00:47:56.980 because they obviously don't understand the justice system, what the jury system is about,

00:48:02.100 how law and justice work.

00:48:04.120 If this is what they're saying, I think it's horrible and they're stupid.

00:48:09.600 They should focus more on their own studies and not on his.

00:48:12.700 Go ahead, Lise.

00:48:13.120 Give me the last word.

00:48:14.380 Yeah.

00:48:14.680 I mean, I think that's over the line.

00:48:17.280 You know, he was acquitted.

00:48:18.560 He's found to be not guilty in the eyes of the law.

00:48:21.400 The only thing I would say is if he does come back to campus and he's sitting in a small

00:48:25.380 seminar with, you know, 10 other, 10 other students, if I were a mom of one of those

00:48:29.400 other students, I'd be like, yeah, I don't know.

00:48:31.340 I'm kind of nervous about him.

00:48:32.440 Oh, man, I wouldn't.

00:48:34.340 No, I disagree.

00:48:36.040 He's fine.

00:48:36.560 Like this is he's not some career criminal.

00:48:38.700 You guys, such a pleasure to be back together.

00:48:40.660 Thank you for being here.

00:48:41.740 Up next, we're going to break down the latest Supreme Court case, how it went yesterday

00:48:44.800 on abortion.

00:48:45.880 Is Roe going away?

00:48:47.300 Lila Rose is here.

00:48:47.920 A potentially historic case is before the U.S. Supreme Court this week on abortion.

00:48:57.920 This is huge.

00:48:59.520 And the comments from the justices may may give us a clue where this is headed.

00:49:04.200 Joining me now to discuss it is Lila Rose, president of Live Action, a pro-life advocacy

00:49:08.940 group and author of Fighting for Life.

00:49:12.380 Lila, it's so great to have you here.

00:49:13.740 Thank you for coming on.

00:49:15.640 Thanks for having me, Megan.

00:49:16.680 So this is it.

00:49:18.240 I mean, this is the big one, unlike the Texas six week abortion ban and so on, which played

00:49:24.420 out a little bit at the Supreme Court.

00:49:25.780 That was not it.

00:49:26.460 That was decided on procedural grounds.

00:49:28.460 Supreme Court said we're not going to get into that yet.

00:49:30.600 But this is the one where conservative activists and others who have been trying to get Roe versus

00:49:35.800 Wade overruled for a long, long time said it's our chance.

00:49:38.980 We have six conservatives on the court.

00:49:40.720 We have three liberals on the court.

00:49:43.200 And now's the time.

00:49:44.440 And so this law in Mississippi was crafted with an eye toward, you know, bringing the challenge

00:49:50.480 at this point in time for a long long.

00:49:53.040 I mean, since Roe was decided in 1973, the pro-life advocates and citizens have felt it

00:50:00.740 was a legal atrocity.

00:50:02.140 Forget forget that it found, you know, a right that people disagree with just as a legal matter

00:50:08.860 that it it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.

00:50:12.520 Even storied liberal lawyers like Lawrence Tribe have said that.

00:50:17.560 Right.

00:50:17.740 So it's it's not a good case.

00:50:19.700 It's just not.

00:50:20.500 It's just based on nothing.

00:50:21.860 They made up a right that didn't even arguably exist.

00:50:25.140 And so the real debate now is whether, well, they did it.

00:50:28.620 We've been living with it for 50 years.

00:50:30.080 And so, you know, you can't really pull that rug out from under women is what the liberals

00:50:34.520 say.

00:50:35.140 And the other side saying bad law is bad law and it should be overruled when you when

00:50:39.480 you're given the chance.

00:50:40.200 Is that basically the nut of it?

00:50:42.700 That's that's exactly it.

00:50:44.000 And, you know, they've changed over the last decades the argument for why abortion should

00:50:49.320 remain not just legal at the federal level effectively, but it should be somehow enshrined

00:50:54.340 as a constitutional right.

00:50:55.580 When the Constitution says nothing about abortion, it doesn't even say anything about the privacy

00:51:00.160 that they claim should be the justification for abortion, at least one of their initial

00:51:03.860 claims.

00:51:04.740 What it does say under the 14th Amendment is that there should be equal protection for all

00:51:09.280 persons under the law and that the state should not deprive anyone of their life without

00:51:13.740 due process.

00:51:14.940 And that is actually a case for against abortion for why states have an interest in protecting

00:51:19.700 innocent human life.

00:51:21.080 And also, you shouldn't be depriving the preborn of their lives without due process.

00:51:25.520 And you should be giving them equal protection.

00:51:27.060 So, yeah, there's a lot of bad case law, decades of bad case law.

00:51:31.740 And now, finally, there's a chance to rectify that.

00:51:34.780 And the court may actually do that because you have six, you could call them more conservative

00:51:40.080 or call them more originalist.

00:51:41.380 But six justices who have indicated, even by taking on this case, even by agreeing to

00:51:45.800 hear abortion, the 15-week abortion ban from Mississippi, have indicated that they're,

00:51:50.360 you know, I think it's a, I dare say, likely chance that they're going to uphold this law

00:51:55.640 and that's going to deal big damage to Roe v. Wade and other abortion case law.

00:52:00.960 Yeah.

00:52:01.100 Explain that because Mississippi did something we've seen many states do many times.

00:52:05.540 And, you know, the Supreme Court always denies the appeals on these cases, because what normally

00:52:10.720 happens?

00:52:11.840 Normally, what happens is these laws get struck down.

00:52:14.600 So basically, any any law at the state level that tries to ban abortions on babies before

00:52:20.200 around 21 weeks, which is this moving line of viability.

00:52:24.080 So KCB Planned Parenthood was this 92, 1992 case that basically said it was another kind

00:52:29.860 of explainer of Roe and trying to create more justification after Roe was so tenuous in

00:52:35.180 how it even argued for abortion.

00:52:37.180 But KCB Planned Parenthood basically says that if you're a state, you have an interest in

00:52:41.960 protecting fetal life before viability or after viability because the baby is old enough.

00:52:48.080 So all of a sudden the baby has enough, you know, there's enough reason to protect that

00:52:50.960 baby.

00:52:51.200 But before this arbitrary line of when the baby can survive outside the womb, then the

00:52:55.400 state can't ban abortions.

00:52:57.380 And so what has happened over the last two decades, and particularly in the last two to

00:53:01.540 three years, there's been this wave of pro-life legislation attempting to protect children

00:53:06.460 before this, you know, arbitrary line of viability.

00:53:09.240 If you're a if you're a baby at 21 weeks deserving of legal protection, why not 20 weeks?

00:53:13.240 Why not 19 weeks?

00:53:14.240 Why not 18 weeks?

00:53:15.300 Really, there's no reason why the baby shouldn't deserve protection and not be killed at an earlier

00:53:20.560 age.

00:53:21.080 So Mississippi does 15 weeks.

00:53:23.360 One of the reasons I think they chose that is because most Western countries, most of

00:53:27.540 our allies, most of Europe bans abortion after the first trimester.

00:53:31.560 So they're kind of using that very rough trimester framework to say, OK, let's try banning at

00:53:35.900 15 weeks.

00:53:36.540 So after that, right after the first trimester.

00:53:39.160 And this is, of course, challenged.

00:53:41.400 But this time, the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case.

00:53:44.380 And this time, you've got six justices potentially on the Supreme Court who might uphold this law

00:53:49.960 when in past courts, of course, we've had not enough votes to uphold a pro-life law.

00:53:55.440 So that's why this is a huge deal.

00:53:57.920 And many people are saying this may be the end of Roe v.

00:54:00.800 Wade, at minimum, the end of Roe v.

00:54:03.220 Wade and its power to not to prohibit states from doing basic legal protections.

00:54:08.540 I mean, you can argue a state's rights argument for why states should have people who are democratically

00:54:14.060 elected leaders should be able to pass pro-life protections.

00:54:17.460 But my argument here is, and I think that the ultimate pro-life argument is, nobody has

00:54:22.760 the right, whether you're a democratically elected legislature or you're the Supreme Court

00:54:28.340 of the United States, nobody has the right to say that because you are pre-viability as

00:54:35.280 a human being, because you're only six weeks old with a beating heart, the very early beginning

00:54:40.260 of human life, you don't have legal protection.

00:54:42.740 I mean, we don't have the right to draw arbitrary lines in the sand and say, you're a human now,

00:54:48.460 worthy of life.

00:54:49.360 And now, just days earlier, you're not a human.

00:54:52.220 That's illogical.

00:54:53.340 It's immoral.

00:54:54.020 It's unjust.

00:54:55.020 And that's the ultimate pro-life case to say, if you're human, you have human rights.

00:54:59.200 Human rights are universal.

00:55:00.480 If you're human, you have human rights.

00:55:01.720 Um, of Justice Kavanaugh's comment yesterday on the bench, because he was getting to that,

00:55:06.840 you know, the, the fact that if you have a mother that wants to abort her baby, there

00:55:12.240 is an inherent conflict in the rights of the woman and the baby.

00:55:17.840 I mean, it's so uncomfortable to even think about, really.

00:55:19.820 It's like mother and child are divided when it comes to what they want and what's best for

00:55:25.720 them.

00:55:25.980 You know what I mean?

00:55:26.520 Like, there's an assumption that the child belongs.

00:55:29.700 It has a right to live.

00:55:31.080 It has a right to be here.

00:55:32.220 And the mother wants it not to be.

00:55:35.380 And he kind of, let's listen to the Justice Kavanaugh side.

00:55:38.320 It's soundbite 12.

00:55:39.500 I think he gets right to the heart of it.

00:55:41.160 In your brief, you say that the existing framework accommodates, that's your word, both the interest

00:55:48.000 of the pregnant woman and the interest of the fetus.

00:55:51.180 And the problem, I think the other side would say, and the reason this issue is hard, is that

00:55:57.640 you can't accommodate both interests.

00:56:01.800 You have to pick.

00:56:03.620 That's the fundamental problem.

00:56:05.980 And one interest has to prevail over the other at any given point in time.

00:56:12.040 When you have those two interests at stake, and both are important, as you acknowledge,

00:56:17.740 why should this court be the arbiter rather than Congress, the state legislatures, state

00:56:25.300 Supreme Courts, the people?

00:56:27.880 I mean, I've never heard a justice dealing with abortion rights get right to the heart

00:56:32.040 of it.

00:56:32.440 He's raising the point you were raising, which is, you're talking about that.

00:56:36.060 Shouldn't the people's representatives be in charge of the decision of weighing those

00:56:40.120 two competing interests?

00:56:42.560 Why should nine judges in robes have that power?

00:56:46.000 Right.

00:56:46.240 And that's Mississippi's case.

00:56:47.940 I mean, that's what their solicitor general is arguing.

00:56:50.240 Give us the right to protect children in our state.

00:56:53.260 I mean, our people want this.

00:56:54.860 Why can't we do this?

00:56:56.380 But, you know, it's interesting.

00:56:57.740 Justice Kavanaugh's comment about, you know, these rights are in conflict and someone's

00:57:02.820 rights are going to have to prevail.

00:57:04.280 And why does the, he's basically saying, why is it after viability, all of a sudden the

00:57:07.900 child gets to live and their rights prevail, but before viability, they don't.

00:57:11.560 I mean, again, it's going to the arbitrary standard, which was drawn in KCV, Prime Parented.

00:57:16.040 And I would say, listen, I disagree as a woman and a mother myself, this framework of saying

00:57:23.420 that a woman's interest is to have an abortion.

00:57:26.640 And I think that's one of the greatest lies that we have just bought as a society, even

00:57:33.280 to the degree where the pro-abortion attorneys yesterday were arguing that we need abortion

00:57:38.880 as backup contraception.

00:57:40.240 I mean, they said that straight up.

00:57:41.840 They said that women, 10% of women who are, 10% of contraception fails.

00:57:46.780 They even admitted that.

00:57:48.320 And so we need abortion as backup contraception.

00:57:50.540 And so this framework that we're operating in now legally, which says that, you know,

00:57:55.100 the child has an interest or a right to live, but this woman has the right to kill the child

00:58:00.220 because they're dependent on her.

00:58:02.100 I don't think that's actually in a woman's interest.

00:58:04.200 So I would go a step further and say, it's not in our interest as women to accept the

00:58:10.040 paradigm that we need abortion to be empowered.

00:58:13.640 And if we develop a designer society where we need this, this, this, you know, this trap

00:58:19.140 door of abortion to get out of tough situations, or we basically live a sexual ethic or lack

00:58:24.680 of sexual ethic.

00:58:25.540 And so we put sexual pleasure on this, on this pedestal and say, we have a right to sexual

00:58:31.120 pleasure without consequences.

00:58:32.380 Therefore we need abortion as backup birth control.

00:58:35.020 I don't think that's a healthy society.

00:58:37.240 So I think there are actually bigger ramifications for this whole legal discussion, bigger questions

00:58:41.620 we need to be asking ourselves, both as a society and for our public policy.

00:58:45.560 I mean, that's a moral question, but it fits in because they necessarily are dealing to

00:58:50.440 some extent with morality inside that courtroom.

00:58:53.020 The other side, of course, says that women need to be able to make their own choices about

00:58:57.620 how their life is going to go.

00:58:59.080 And if they become pregnant, you know, by accident, unintentionally, that they should

00:59:04.180 have the right to not be forced to carry a child to term, to raise a child.

00:59:08.920 And I thought that it was like the big question was, as I understood it yesterday, Thomas Alito

00:59:14.480 and Gorsuch seemed very much in the camp of Roe is going away.

00:59:19.320 That's the big ruling because they could rule Roe versus Wade is no longer good law.

00:59:24.780 We are no longer recognizing a fundamental right to abortion.

00:59:27.920 They could rule.

00:59:29.420 We're not doing that.

00:59:30.760 We're not reversing Roe.

00:59:32.420 But we're going to say this 15 week ban is fine, even though it's pre viability, which

00:59:37.020 would open the door for all states to move the line much earlier in a woman's pregnancy

00:59:41.500 or they could uphold the Mississippi law.

00:59:43.600 I agree.

00:59:43.980 They're not going to uphold the Mississippi law.

00:59:45.320 They wouldn't have taken the case.

00:59:46.240 The lower court struck down the law.

00:59:47.920 If they agreed with that, they wouldn't have taken the case.

00:59:49.420 So it's going to be one or two.

00:59:52.160 And I thought it was interesting in sort of getting to, well, which camp are the other

00:59:56.840 conservatives in?

00:59:57.700 Right.

00:59:58.240 Where's Kavanaugh going to land?

01:00:00.000 Where's Amy Coney Barrett going to land?

01:00:02.440 John Roberts seems to be in the middle camp, of course, always right of the 15 weeks.

01:00:08.040 But Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh, you know, we don't know.

01:00:15.180 So Coney Barrett was focused on the argument by the pro choicers that you can't impose this

01:00:22.740 burden on a woman.

01:00:23.600 OK, so speaking to the argument I was just making on the other side's behalf, you know,

01:00:28.500 it's too much of a burden to make a woman do this.

01:00:32.100 Right.

01:00:32.300 They have rights, too.

01:00:33.460 And Coney Barrett looked at society, which you're allowed to do, and said, basically,

01:00:37.960 things have changed a lot since 1992, since 1973.

01:00:41.900 When it comes to a woman's options, listen to this.

01:00:47.040 This is Soundbite 11.

01:00:48.480 It seems to me that the choice more focused would be between, say, the ability to get

01:00:53.960 an abortion at 23 weeks or the state requiring the woman to go 15, 16 weeks more and then

01:01:01.960 terminate parental rights at the conclusion.

01:01:03.920 Why didn't you address the safe haven laws and why don't they matter?

01:01:07.520 I think they don't matter for a couple of reasons, Your Honor.

01:01:09.960 First, even if some of those laws are new since Casey, the idea that a woman could place a

01:01:16.120 child up for adoption has, of course, been true since Roe.

01:01:19.580 So it's a consideration that the court already had before it when it decided those cases and

01:01:24.900 adhered to the viability line.

01:01:26.420 But in addition, we don't just focus on the burdens of parenting, and neither did Roe and

01:01:31.860 Casey.

01:01:32.360 Instead, pregnancy itself is unique.

01:01:34.920 It imposes unique physical demands and risk on women and, in fact, has impact.

01:01:39.960 All of their lives and their ability to care for other children.

01:01:43.880 So what about that argument, Lila, that she's not conceding it, but basically, even if you

01:01:50.140 were to assume this, thanks to the safe haven laws where you could drop off your baby after

01:01:53.620 you have it anywhere and someone else will take care of it and there's no criminal prosecution

01:01:58.020 of you, the mom, the lawyer for the pro-choicers was saying pregnancy is an undue burden.

01:02:05.380 An unwanted pregnancy is burdened enough.

01:02:08.080 Well, let's break it down.

01:02:10.600 I mean, first of all, she kind of acknowledges the pro-abortion attorney.

01:02:13.640 I think that was Julie Rickleman that, yes, parenthood, you're right, this argument from

01:02:19.340 or this justification early on for abortion under Roe that parenthood is an undue burden.

01:02:24.640 Yeah, we can kind of do that way with that with adoption.

01:02:26.960 So, yeah, oops, you know, we kind of maybe lost some of that ground.

01:02:30.160 But then she kind of relies on stare decisis that, well, the court knew about adoption back

01:02:35.780 then, so they must have already considered it, so we don't need to consider it now.

01:02:38.680 That's basically what she's saying.

01:02:40.120 And stare decisis is this concept, this principle that if the court addressed something in the

01:02:44.680 past and they settled it, then it's settled law.

01:02:47.360 But of course, the court can overrule and has done that many times.

01:02:50.920 And these are some of the biggest cases and most consequential cases is when they do overrule

01:02:54.660 a past ruling because they realized, oh, we did this wrong.

01:02:58.280 That does happen.

01:02:59.140 But to address this specific question of the burden of pregnancy, I think it goes back

01:03:05.040 to this idea that the state might force a woman to remain pregnant.

01:03:09.520 Pregnancy, it's a curious way to even talk about pregnancy, Megan, I think, because pregnancy

01:03:14.240 is a biological process.

01:03:16.880 It continues on its own unless you are forcing it to stop, unless an abortion is forcing birth

01:03:24.100 of a child that would lead to a death ultimately to deliver a dead child.

01:03:28.060 So even our paradigm to talk about pregnancy right now, I think, is flawed, deeply flawed.

01:03:34.640 It's unnatural.

01:03:35.800 Pregnancy is natural, but to forcibly interrupt it is an unnatural act.

01:03:40.980 I think we should all acknowledge that pregnancy involves responsibilities and burdens.

01:03:45.320 I mean, being pregnant is not easy for most women, and it can be very, very challenging.

01:03:50.920 But again, it goes back to what Kavanaugh was talking about.

01:03:53.260 Does my natural responsibilities being pregnant to this developing child, do they exist?

01:04:01.660 Do natural responsibilities exist?

01:04:03.240 Yes, they do.

01:04:04.380 That child deserves to live.

01:04:06.700 And so that really has to, in the end, trump the discomfort and even the challenges that

01:04:12.800 women may face.

01:04:13.600 Instead of looking at it as a negative, and again, that's a societal problem, I think,

01:04:17.820 right now, where we look at motherhood in this negative light and pregnancy in this negative

01:04:21.980 light, we should instead work together to make it better for women, both pregnancy and

01:04:27.140 motherhood, and stop, again, using abortion as this kind of trap door of saying, if there's

01:04:32.660 a tough situation, let's just kill off the child.

01:04:34.900 So, you know, I think acknowledging that there are burdens involved, that there are also

01:04:39.160 responsibilities involved, that those are natural, and that the real forced action is

01:04:44.900 abortion, not pregnancy.

01:04:47.520 The other side continued to raise socioeconomically disadvantaged women as those who will bear the

01:04:57.060 biggest brunt of this.

01:04:58.220 And they talked a lot about domestic abuse, you know, women who become pregnant thanks to

01:05:02.380 abusive husbands, and the emotional trauma, the physical trauma that that imposes on these

01:05:07.500 women who already have a difficult time getting access to health care in general, you know,

01:05:11.320 it's like, for people who have means, it's like, why don't you just get the thing in your

01:05:14.340 arm so you never get pregnant?

01:05:15.440 Oh, that's not that so easy for everybody, right?

01:05:17.780 And so they're basically saying, I mean, they even admitted that.

01:05:21.940 So they're basically saying, you know, the people who are going to bear the brunt of this

01:05:25.280 are not, you know, the Megyn Kellys or the Lila Roses of the world, not that we would

01:05:28.660 do this.

01:05:29.260 But it's sort of people who have no means and no real ability to come into this court

01:05:35.200 and represent themselves and fight.

01:05:36.880 What do you make of that?

01:05:38.840 Well, listen, I think this idea that if you're poor, or if you're a minority, or if you're

01:05:43.400 young, then the obvious thing for you to do is to have an abortion.

01:05:47.880 You know, you need an abortion, let's make sure you get one.

01:05:50.400 I think that's terribly wrong and offensive.

01:05:53.180 Why is it that if you're poor, an abortion is somehow going to advance you in life and

01:05:59.000 make you better?

01:05:59.660 No, if you get an abortion and you're poor, you're still poor afterwards.

01:06:03.500 And now you're the mother of a dead child.

01:06:05.860 You know, now there's a dead family member in your history.

01:06:08.680 And there's a lot of post-abortion trauma, we could talk about that, that was not acknowledged

01:06:13.380 whatsoever yesterday.

01:06:14.720 I mean, that's a whole flip side of this, is that there's real traumas associated with

01:06:18.660 abortion.

01:06:19.040 Some studies say that 100% more likely the year after having an abortion to commit suicide,

01:06:24.620 the depression, the anxiety, the substance abuse that's added on to the emotional pain

01:06:31.040 of having an abortion.

01:06:32.140 So there's that.

01:06:33.540 But then the other piece of it too is we should be focused on lifting women out of poverty,

01:06:39.740 right?

01:06:40.040 We should be focused on, yeah, preventing unplanned pregnancies.

01:06:43.800 We should be focused on helping women care for their families or choose adoption or make

01:06:50.340 other choices that are pro-life choices ultimately, as opposed to, again, saying, well, let's just

01:06:55.920 kill off the child.

01:06:56.740 That's the solution.

01:06:58.060 And that's the big flaw in all of this, that they're assuming abortion is killing your child

01:07:03.700 is a path to empowerment when it actually leaves the woman in the same state as she was

01:07:08.680 before.

01:07:09.100 But now she's the mother of a child who's dead, and she has the traumas associated with

01:07:12.740 that.

01:07:13.520 And she, you know, we haven't done the work to actually authentically advance her.

01:07:19.100 You have all these amicus briefs, friends of the court briefs from people like the women's

01:07:24.300 soccer organization.

01:07:25.920 I think it was the WNBA or, you know, professional female basketball players saying, you know,

01:07:31.340 don't overrule Roe and don't support this Mississippi law.

01:07:35.840 And I wouldn't have been able to do my career the way I did if I hadn't been able to have

01:07:40.060 an abortion.

01:07:40.940 And the other side really frames it in terms of like a woman's liberty over her own body,

01:07:45.840 the right to choose what's going to happen with her own body.

01:07:49.100 And I understand that, you know, I've heard the conservative side argue many times you made

01:07:53.480 a choice to have sex, you know, assuming you weren't raped or the victim of sexual assault.

01:07:57.180 You made a choice to have unprotected sex.

01:07:59.900 And everybody knows what the potential consequences of doing that are.

01:08:04.220 But the courts have recognized that you get to keep making choices after that choice, you

01:08:09.100 know, and they basically recognize the sliding scale.

01:08:13.340 I mean, there's nobody who says it's OK to kill a two year old.

01:08:16.780 You know what I mean?

01:08:17.140 Like, you can't do that.

01:08:18.760 You can't, notwithstanding what Ralph Northam, outgoing governor of Virginia, says, kill a

01:08:23.500 baby on the table after it's been delivered because the mom has second thoughts.

01:08:28.620 In most states, you can't kill a baby in the third trimester unless there's a very, very

01:08:32.960 severe medical justification to save the mother's life.

01:08:37.220 Although in the blue, the blue or the state, the longer it's possible to get an abortion.

01:08:41.180 So we're really kind of arguing over, well, where does the second choice, you know, like,

01:08:44.740 is there ever a second choice and where at what point do we do we cut it off?

01:08:49.280 Yeah.

01:08:49.500 And Megan, the reality is, I would argue, I would, I would, I would, I would dare to guess

01:08:54.920 that most of those athletes haven't really thought very seriously about where they would

01:08:58.700 draw that line personally, because they don't know, you know, some of them might just say,

01:09:03.120 oh, yeah, till birth, I can abort for any reason.

01:09:04.960 It's my choice.

01:09:06.120 But most people, you know, are pretty, try to be moderate and they say, well, you know,

01:09:10.980 let's draw the line at a, before abortion when, you know, you know, this viability line,

01:09:15.460 again, that changes because medical technology has changed.

01:09:18.420 A little boy was just born last year, Richard Hutchins, who at Hutchinson, who actually was

01:09:24.400 born at just 21 weeks old.

01:09:26.020 It's crazy.

01:09:26.840 And he, now they, you know, the youngest, another little boy was actually just born a few

01:09:30.920 months after him.

01:09:31.480 And they, they share the, the world record for being born at the youngest age, less than

01:09:35.480 a pound and they survived.

01:09:36.760 So that age changes, viability changes, that standard, but yeah, most people, they don't

01:09:42.740 have a, nobody has a good answer of when, before birth, you draw the line where you can

01:09:48.760 make the choice to kill before that, but you can't make the choice to kill after.

01:09:53.060 And so some people just say, well, make it at birth then.

01:09:55.340 And then you even have some people like Peter Singer, a so-called ethicist, you know, who

01:10:00.180 says, a philosopher who says, oh, actually for the first three months after birth, you should

01:10:04.400 be able to take the life of the infant because they're so brand new, you know, they're so

01:10:09.100 undeveloped in their brain.

01:10:11.840 Yeah.

01:10:12.000 But he's, he's a professor at Yale.

01:10:13.740 So he's not, or he has a professor at Princeton, excuse me.

01:10:16.060 So he's not, you know, it's not so loony.

01:10:18.080 He's up there teaching people ethics right now.

01:10:20.180 So, um, yeah, yeah.

01:10:22.200 So I, I think that, you know, the reality is when you draw any line to separate some humans

01:10:29.180 from being considered persons and say, other humans are persons and the people that aren't

01:10:35.520 persons under the law, they don't get legal protection.

01:10:37.620 You can do what you want with them.

01:10:39.480 And the people who are persons, they deserve the full protection of the law.

01:10:43.420 You open the door to serious injustice.

01:10:46.040 That's how every past serious human rights abuse has taken hold.

01:10:50.360 Um, that's how we got, you know, um, genocides.

01:10:53.200 That's how we got the Holocaust.

01:10:54.340 That's how we got slavery in this country.

01:10:56.500 They were considered less than persons under the law, and now we're doing it to children

01:11:01.300 in the womb and it's convenient for us because they don't have political advocacy themselves.

01:11:06.380 Right.

01:11:07.160 I mean, we are talking about them.

01:11:09.120 I'm trying to advocate for them.

01:11:10.380 There's, you know, thankfully thousands of others advocating for them, but we're born already.

01:11:15.020 You know, we, we have legal protection.

01:11:16.400 My right to life isn't under threat right now.

01:11:18.940 Megan, yours isn't.

01:11:20.280 Um, and these children have no voice, but theirs are.

01:11:22.820 And so I think, yeah, the, the, the arbitrary line, we have to stop doing that because bad

01:11:28.680 logic will make bad law will make injustice.

01:11:32.700 Oh, a quick question before we squeeze in a quick break.

01:11:35.200 Um, do you know the number, what is the number of abortions that takes place every year in

01:11:40.400 the United States?

01:11:41.480 Yeah.

01:11:41.800 So the number is nearly 1 million abortions, 2,363 abortions every single day.

01:11:48.760 It's the leading cause of death in America, beating out COVID deaths, heart disease, death,

01:11:53.620 cancer deaths, um, about one fourth of all, um, pregnancies, nearly one fourth, uh, women

01:11:59.540 are choosing abortion.

01:12:00.820 Abortionists are killing those babies and that's 2,300 abortions every single day.

01:12:04.620 Whoa.

01:12:05.720 Whoa.

01:12:06.340 That's big.

01:12:07.100 I want to pick it up right after this break with what justice Sonia Sotomayor said on the

01:12:11.780 bench about a stench.

01:12:14.080 That's getting a lot of attention today.

01:12:15.800 We'll be right back with that and with our predictions on how this is going to come out.

01:12:25.400 So right now there are only three more liberal jurists on the court, um, Breyer, Elena Kagan

01:12:30.980 and Sonia Sotomayor.

01:12:32.680 And Sonia Sotomayor, um, I mean, there's no question they're going to be voting to strike

01:12:37.160 down the Mississippi law and voting to uphold Roe based on stare decisis, this, this, you

01:12:42.420 know, precedent, you follow precedent, basically adherence to precedent.

01:12:45.800 For the stability of the court, for the predictability of the nation and so on.

01:12:50.560 So this is what she argued, or this is the question she asked that is getting some attention

01:12:55.880 today.

01:12:56.400 This is soundbite four.

01:12:57.640 Sponsors of this bill, the house bill in Mississippi said, we're doing it because we have new justices.

01:13:05.640 The newest ban that Mississippi has put in place, the six week ban, the Senate sponsor

01:13:11.780 said, we're doing it because we have new justices on the Supreme court.

01:13:17.420 Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the

01:13:29.620 constitution and its reading are just political acts.

01:13:35.520 Um, your thoughts on it.

01:13:39.580 I mean, uh, justice Sotomayor can say, could say the exact same thing about Brown v.

01:13:46.580 Board of education, about Lawrence v.

01:13:49.240 Texas, about any number of other cases that overruled precedent.

01:13:53.480 Some of the most consequential Supreme court cases in history have overruled precedent.

01:13:58.800 She's basically saying just because they're overruling precedents, politicization, and therefore

01:14:02.800 there's a stench, uh, you could say that it applies to any other number of cases that

01:14:08.360 overruled precedent.

01:14:09.440 Yeah.

01:14:09.680 If it hadn't done that, we'd be stuck with Dred Scott.

01:14:12.220 We'd be stuck with Plessy versus Ferguson, separate but equal, you know, all these terrible

01:14:16.240 Supreme court rulings that later they saw the light on.

01:14:19.120 What's really happening here, Megan, I think with justice Sotomayor saying that, and with so

01:14:23.840 many questions coming from, um, the, you know, you could say the left leaning justices,

01:14:28.400 whatever you want to call them, Breyer and, um, Kagan.

01:14:30.900 And they're the New York times calls them moderates.

01:14:33.480 Lila, the New York times refers to them as moderates.

01:14:35.840 We've got some moderate, a moderate decision from one of them, but, um, you know, what

01:14:41.240 they're really doing here is they're dodging the really tangling with the, the, the real

01:14:46.440 arguments at hand.

01:14:47.460 They're saying, well, they're settled law, they're settled law.

01:14:49.640 And the pro-abortion attorneys did that multiple times when they were asked tough questions

01:14:53.220 by the other six justices, uh, where they would just go back to stare decisis, basically

01:14:58.720 saying, well, the court already decided this, they already addressed these questions.

01:15:02.460 I mean, we talked about that with, um, Coney Barrett's question about, uh, safe haven laws

01:15:07.300 and the answer, um, almost immediately rapid fire was, oh, they knew about adoption back

01:15:12.060 in 1973 when Roe v.

01:15:14.180 Wade was decided.

01:15:14.920 So it's why, why are we talking about it now?

01:15:17.460 That's not a good argument.

01:15:18.900 That's not enough to just say, oh, the court ruled one way in the past.

01:15:22.160 Therefore, it should always be that way.

01:15:23.540 And I think anybody with a mind who's engaging this question right now can see that, you

01:15:29.040 know, there's another way of looking at it too.

01:15:30.800 I, this is what occurred to me when I heard Sotomayor's question.

01:15:34.580 And I think she might've been referring to something that was in the Casey decision.

01:15:37.520 If I'm not mistaken, something about the stench of politics.

01:15:39.960 I can't remember, but in any event, you could argue that this is a chance for the court to

01:15:44.020 get out from under the preexisting stench, you know, that the court never should have gotten

01:15:49.880 involved in this, that this was always a matter for state legislators who are responsible

01:15:54.260 to the citizenry.

01:15:56.160 And the court's decision in 1973 was not some landmark to be celebrated, no matter what your

01:16:03.380 position on abortion, because they made up rights, you know, penumbras and conundrums.

01:16:08.940 I mean, the, the effort to expand what they had earlier found as a privacy right in Griswold

01:16:12.660 to specifically cover abortion was a real legal gymnastic jump.

01:16:17.600 And so you could argue that since then, the Supreme Court's become unnecessarily political

01:16:22.280 and, and a divisive force in American life in a way they might not have otherwise been

01:16:26.440 seen.

01:16:27.020 And this is a chance to kick it back to the States and say, we are out of the business

01:16:32.000 of legislating abortion.

01:16:34.160 No one elected us to do anything.

01:16:37.320 Well, and that was part of actually Solicitor General, um, Scott Stewart's argument.

01:16:42.500 He basically said, um, enough is enough.

01:16:44.980 You know, he, he mentioned over 60 million abortions, 60 million children killed since

01:16:49.420 1973.

01:16:50.700 Um, like you're saying, Megan, one of the most hotly contested political issues of all time.

01:16:55.580 Why, why is it so passionately contested?

01:16:58.540 Because life is on the line.

01:17:00.240 Children's lives are on the line.

01:17:01.660 And so to let, again, the nine, the, the, the, the seven men in robes back in 1973 decide

01:17:07.960 this for the nation.

01:17:08.700 No, we're not going to let that happen.

01:17:10.220 Decide in the name of women.

01:17:11.880 I mean, that's the other thing that's so, that was so offensive here as a, as a, as a

01:17:14.920 woman that was born after Roe to be told that these men decided my women's rights for

01:17:20.400 me at 1973.

01:17:21.500 And now my, my most cherished right as a woman is to kill my child is to kill a child.

01:17:27.140 Come on.

01:17:28.100 I mean, where did we, first of all, it's on the constitution.

01:17:30.820 If there's anything in the constitution, it's equal protection under the law in the 14th

01:17:34.320 amendment for all, for all persons.

01:17:36.540 And so why, why exclude children from that?

01:17:39.760 You know, like you said, basically look at a Liberty, right.

01:17:41.840 They say from there, you get a privacy, right.

01:17:43.500 And from that privacy, right.

01:17:44.880 We've gotten everything from abortion to gay marriage, um, to, you know, the right to use

01:17:51.080 birth control and so on.

01:17:52.480 Some people argue that those rights will then become in jeopardy if they overturn Roe.

01:17:58.360 That's not true.

01:17:59.660 No one's challenging Griswold v.

01:18:01.220 Connecticut, which in which they rec, they recognize the privacy, right.

01:18:04.440 That's, that's not getting reversed even arguably.

01:18:08.000 Yeah.

01:18:08.540 I mean, there, there's, um, a tremendous moral difference between taking an innocent

01:18:13.500 human life via abortion and using a form of contraception that doesn't take innocent human

01:18:19.600 life.

01:18:19.920 I mean, one takes an innocent human life and one doesn't, and we could talk about the

01:18:23.220 morality of contraception or the, the, you know, how effective it is and how helpful

01:18:27.280 it's been for our population.

01:18:28.460 Those are all important questions to discuss, but what's, what's that question here is the

01:18:32.420 fact that we have permitted 60 million deaths that I would argue the murders of 60 million

01:18:38.320 children since 1973.

01:18:41.300 And of course, this is hotly contested justice Sotomayor, you know, of course, this is not

01:18:47.660 settled law because this is the ongoing greatest human rights abuse.

01:18:52.120 I would argue that our country has ever seen, and we're still dealing with it today.

01:18:56.660 So let me ask you something as, as somebody who, you know, up until recently, it was immersed

01:19:00.800 for the past 20 years in New York city liberals.

01:19:02.740 Okay.

01:19:03.400 Because virtually every single friend I have is, is pro-choice and, um, and some of them

01:19:07.860 are a little bit more right-leaning, but also still pro-choice.

01:19:10.900 Um, you know, they, I don't think you can realistically argue about whether life begins

01:19:14.860 at conception.

01:19:15.440 I mean, to say it doesn't is just anti-science, right?

01:19:18.300 To steal a phrase.

01:19:19.800 This is like obvious that we shouldn't be arguing about that.

01:19:22.720 I think the more honest argument is some people say, you know, I'm okay with that.

01:19:27.720 I'm okay with ending the potential for life or the, a very young life because I

01:19:32.720 just see it as a clump of cells.

01:19:34.020 I mean, this is what people say, right?

01:19:35.440 It's a clump of cells and there's a difference between a clump of cells without a heartbeat

01:19:38.960 or, you know, new heartbeat.

01:19:40.420 That's not identifiable in a womb as a human and an eight month old baby in the womb.

01:19:45.360 Right.

01:19:45.720 And that if you, if you take a pill before a baby can feel pain and make it go away and

01:19:51.420 save yourself, yourself a lifetime of, you know, heartache in having a baby you don't want

01:19:56.100 or bringing a baby into a situation that the family doesn't want it, they're not going

01:20:00.160 to treat it well.

01:20:00.900 It's not going to have a good life, right?

01:20:01.920 This is sort of, this is the argument that you hear, um, that that should be up to the

01:20:06.860 woman.

01:20:07.100 Like it should, it's a very personal decision, at least prior to the baby, you know, getting

01:20:12.200 older and we can, and do argue about where that line is.

01:20:15.920 What do you, what do you say to that?

01:20:18.400 Well, listen, I mean, I, I think we have to look at the facts here.

01:20:21.860 Are they, are these humans or are they not?

01:20:24.740 And to say, well, they're a very young human.

01:20:26.980 They're a very, you know, a dependent human, um, you know, six weeks or three and a half

01:20:31.900 weeks after fertilization, about six weeks, LMP, two different dating systems, the heart's

01:20:36.580 already beating, but it's a very young heart that's beating.

01:20:39.000 So it doesn't matter.

01:20:39.940 They're, uh, yeah, you can say that.

01:20:42.280 I mean, people can say those things.

01:20:43.940 That doesn't mean that it's true.

01:20:45.920 It doesn't mean that just because they're young or less developed, or just because they're

01:20:50.120 wholly dependent on their mothers means that they, they don't deserve to live.

01:20:54.640 They don't have a future too.

01:20:56.400 So it's a really hopeless, um, ideology that says that these children don't deserve to live

01:21:03.420 and they don't have a right to live because they're so young.

01:21:06.220 And it's an, it's an illogical ideology too.

01:21:09.260 There's something called the fled test, Megan.

01:21:11.260 I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's a good way to think logically about this question

01:21:15.520 because it can be so emotional, which is not, um, you know, not to say we shouldn't engage

01:21:19.520 the emotion, but thinking about it logically, are they human or are they not?

01:21:23.100 Um, their size does size determine your humanity?

01:21:25.920 You know, obviously when you're a single cell embryo, you're much smaller than when you're

01:21:29.000 a 10 week old embryo.

01:21:30.500 Um, no, because we don't say a two-year-old who's much smaller than a 20 year old is less

01:21:35.540 valuable, right?

01:21:36.440 So your size as a human doesn't determine your value.

01:21:40.220 And then that's the first letter in the acronym SLED.

01:21:43.360 Another letter is L for level of development.

01:21:46.180 Um, your development as a human being, you know, you're less developed pre-adolescence,

01:21:50.400 you know, pre-puberty than post-puberty.

01:21:52.080 You're less developed as a newborn than you are at five years old, but your development as

01:21:56.700 a human being doesn't determine your worst.

01:21:59.140 It doesn't determine your value.

01:22:00.160 It doesn't change your legal status, right?

01:22:02.680 Um, the E in SLED, S-L-E-D is environment.

01:22:06.400 You know, they say, well, you're in the womb of your mother, therefore you shouldn't, you

01:22:10.260 know, deserve to live or you don't have the right to live.

01:22:12.320 Just because I live under a different, um, government, I live in a different state.

01:22:16.240 I live in the body of my mother or because I'm a pre-born child or I'm outside the body.

01:22:20.120 My, my environment as a human being doesn't also determine my value.

01:22:24.560 It doesn't mean I'm less valuable or more valuable.

01:22:26.620 Uh, you know, someone in China isn't less valuable than someone in the United States.

01:22:30.020 Someone in, uh, you know, Florida isn't less valuable than someone in, in California and

01:22:34.360 someone in the womb isn't less valuable than someone outside the womb.

01:22:37.160 And then that last D in the SLED test to determine, you know, is this a human, the same as another

01:22:43.480 human is degree of dependency.

01:22:45.500 Uh, your dependency on another human being doesn't change your value and shouldn't change

01:22:50.860 your legal rights.

01:22:51.660 A two-year-old is totally dependent.

01:22:54.220 A newborn is completely dependent.

01:22:56.220 You know, if you leave a newborn alone, um, they'll die.

01:22:59.160 They need you for everything.

01:23:01.020 Uh, but that doesn't mean the newborn doesn't have legal rights or worse.

01:23:04.540 And same with a pre-born child who's totally dependent on their mother, that doesn't change

01:23:08.980 their value or their rights.

01:23:10.780 So whether it's their size, it's their, um, level of development, it's their environment,

01:23:15.540 it's their degree of dependency.

01:23:16.600 These are the reasons that people use to justify abortion.

01:23:19.220 They're too small, they're less developed, and you know, they can't feel pain.

01:23:22.840 They're dependent.

01:23:23.640 They're in the womb.

01:23:24.740 None of those are logical reasons to accept abortion.

01:23:29.360 And so I would just posit the question, should human lives be protected?

01:23:33.880 Do they have human rights?

01:23:35.500 And if the answer is yes, they have, you know, humans have human rights.

01:23:39.000 They have to extend to children in the womb.

01:23:41.760 Well, the law does recognize that in other circumstances, right?

01:23:44.060 There are some states, uh, I think Ohio's one where if you kill a pregnant woman,

01:23:49.220 you'll be charged with two counts of murder or manslaughter.

01:23:53.300 Um, so they, they do, the law does recognize the life of an unborn child, even early in the

01:23:59.620 pregnancy in some circumstances already.

01:24:02.920 Um, I mean, I don't, to me, it's hard to believe that this court might overrule Roe, but having

01:24:09.060 listened yesterday, I think they might be getting ready to, I mean, the headline from

01:24:13.460 scotusblog.com, which I like and trust and have read for a long, long time.

01:24:17.960 Uh, there's a woman there, um, named Amy Howe.

01:24:20.240 She's been writing for them for forever and she's a straight shooter.

01:24:22.860 You know, she'll tell you what she thinks.

01:24:24.560 I don't know what her political persuasion is, but she's a straight shooter.

01:24:27.500 She's predicting they're going to uphold the 15 week ban.

01:24:29.860 And I don't know that she foresees an overruling of Roe.

01:24:33.320 I think I'm, I think I'm in a more aggressive camp than she is.

01:24:37.580 I, I feel like what we heard yesterday, because no one seemed to be jumping on board the John

01:24:42.280 Roberts.

01:24:42.960 How about if we just go for the 15 weeks thing?

01:24:44.940 He's John Roberts is always worried about the future of the court.

01:24:46.980 You know, don't be seen as a political body.

01:24:48.780 Oh, too late.

01:24:49.900 Um, and I didn't see, let me play what he said.

01:24:53.660 And then I'll just talk about, cause I, I just didn't see other justices like circling

01:24:57.840 around him, like kind of jumping behind that, that logic.

01:25:00.800 This is soundbite 10, John Roberts, chief justice.

01:25:04.120 If it really is an issue about choice, why is 15 weeks, not enough time?

01:25:09.900 For, for a few reasons, your honor.

01:25:12.000 First, the state has conceded that some women will not be able to obtain an abortion before

01:25:17.060 15 weeks.

01:25:17.760 And this law will bar them from doing so.

01:25:20.400 And a reasonable possibility standard would be completely unworkable for the courts.

01:25:26.040 It would be both less principled and less workable than viability.

01:25:30.100 And some of the reasons for that are without viability, there will be no stopping point.

01:25:34.800 States will rush to ban abortion at virtually any point in pregnancy.

01:25:39.580 So he's trying to say, why, why can't we live with 15 weeks to the people challenging

01:25:43.660 the Mississippi law?

01:25:44.560 And you heard her saying that it's not going to stay at 15.

01:25:47.180 It's going to slide back to six weeks and so on.

01:25:49.260 And there's no stopping it.

01:25:50.700 But no other conservative justice piped in, continued the line of argument, tried to run

01:25:55.700 cover for him on it, tried to work on persuading other justices to come around to the 15 week

01:26:00.280 point.

01:26:01.360 To me, it sounded much more like the Amy Coney Barrett.

01:26:03.560 What about the safe havens?

01:26:04.660 And things have changed now since 1973 and 1992.

01:26:07.920 And the world looks very different now.

01:26:10.360 So what do you what do you think?

01:26:11.660 Do you think I know what you hope?

01:26:13.340 But like, what do you and what are your circle saying about predictions?

01:26:16.540 Yeah, well, first of all, I mean, how can the court uphold the 15 week ban?

01:26:22.760 So the pre viability ban, which basically undoes the viability standard of KCB Planned Parenthood

01:26:28.580 without effectively overruling Roe v.

01:26:32.020 Wade?

01:26:32.760 I mean, it's a really hard legal maneuver.

01:26:34.860 I don't know what it would even look like to do that.

01:26:37.560 And there were some questions from some of the justices about and certainly in the in

01:26:41.840 the briefs in advance in there and the prepared arguments in advance.

01:26:46.020 It's, you know, what is the legal standard we we can use instead of viability?

01:26:49.900 Right.

01:26:50.260 You know, if we're going to draw a line in the sand and if there's going to be an arbitrary

01:26:53.080 line, it's not viability.

01:26:54.880 What is the arbitrary line?

01:26:56.520 And just quickly there, you heard the lawyer for the one Mississippi abortion clinic who's

01:26:59.900 who's arguing against this ban saying, no, we don't want that.

01:27:03.300 Like even she's not saying settle on the 15 weeks.

01:27:06.400 You know, it's he's like the only one who's like, well, I just leave it there.

01:27:09.720 Even Mississippi and crafting the law didn't really want 15 weeks.

01:27:12.320 They'd love to see Roe v.

01:27:13.620 Wade.

01:27:13.880 The whole thing was crafted to get Roe overturned.

01:27:15.760 So you've got Chief John Roberts, you know, Chief Justice saying, how about that?

01:27:19.000 Let's just settle where they where they left it.

01:27:21.200 And to me, it seemed like the rest of the participants were like, that's the worst option.

01:27:26.120 Well, I mean, I think it's I hope it's very clear to Justice Roberts that it's an arbitrary

01:27:32.800 line of viability and that, you know, it's been badly decided.

01:27:36.760 These cases were badly decided.

01:27:38.340 Even pro-choice legal experts say that about Roe.

01:27:40.740 And and I hope that he has enough intellectual honesty and just enough courage to at least

01:27:47.860 co-sign onto something that some one of the other justices says in, you know, advancing

01:27:53.160 justice here.

01:27:54.120 They don't need it.

01:27:54.800 But they don't need it.

01:27:55.960 Right.

01:27:56.340 I mean, there's six conservatives.

01:27:57.940 For his own legacy, Megan, I would hope that he, you know, he gets off this fake fence he's

01:28:03.800 straddling because it's not really there's not really a real fence to straddle here.

01:28:06.800 That's the problem.

01:28:07.700 You know, that is the whole problem of abortion case law is because it's illogical, because

01:28:12.760 the arbitrary line does change and can change.

01:28:16.860 They're really inventing this right out of thin air.

01:28:19.820 And that is that is the whole problem of Roe v.

01:28:22.900 Wade and the campaign, the later that is true.

01:28:25.540 I mean, listen, no matter what your opinion on whether you're pro-choice or pro-life, Roe

01:28:30.100 versus Wade is an embarrassing decision.

01:28:32.140 There was no basis for it.

01:28:33.180 And really, it never should have been written.

01:28:35.120 It never should have been decided that way.

01:28:37.000 But now we're stuck with it.

01:28:38.320 And the question is, do we adhere to precedent 50 years old that's been reaffirmed as recently

01:28:42.560 as 92 or have things changed in the country or have we just gotten it?

01:28:46.420 Justice Thomas would say, I don't give a damn how long it's been on the books.

01:28:49.040 If it's bad law, you overrule it, i.e.

01:28:51.280 Dred Scott and Plessy versus Ferguson.

01:28:53.540 Others would say, no, you've got to respect for precedent.

01:28:55.420 So we sort of know what we're dealing with when it comes to judge made law.

01:28:59.660 And but if the circumstances in the country have changed enough, like viability, the point

01:29:04.780 has changed or the safe haven laws have changed where people can safely.

01:29:09.320 I don't know how else to say it, but get rid of pass off a baby that's been born to others

01:29:15.020 who want to love it and raise it.

01:29:16.540 You know, maybe that could change the situation.

01:29:19.720 What what about, though?

01:29:21.400 Let's just first of all, let's talk about this.

01:29:22.980 It's an important point.

01:29:24.380 If I had a nickel for everybody who thinks abortion will be outlawed in every in all 50

01:29:29.300 states, if this case goes in favor of Mississippi, I'd be rolling in dough.

01:29:35.200 That's not true.

01:29:36.300 Oh, yeah.

01:29:37.220 I was going to say, yeah, I don't.

01:29:38.720 Yeah.

01:29:38.920 I think you'd be dirt poor.

01:29:40.540 Yeah.

01:29:41.140 If I had a nickel for everybody who believes it, that's what I'm saying.

01:29:43.360 Like so many people believe this is like abortion becomes illegal if this court rules in favor

01:29:50.320 of Mississippi.

01:29:50.960 And that's in all 50 states.

01:29:52.800 That's not true.

01:29:53.480 Explain what would happen.

01:29:54.380 I think.

01:29:55.220 Yeah.

01:29:55.420 And I think that's a lot of that is ignorance about how abortion law even works.

01:29:59.860 I mean, a lot of people, they run these polls and they say, well, most Americans want

01:30:03.800 Roe v.

01:30:04.260 Wade.

01:30:04.700 Right.

01:30:05.020 There are these polls out there that say that.

01:30:06.800 And then you actually start to dig into it and they run other polls and most Americans

01:30:10.560 actually want abortion restrictions, at least at the first trimester, which Roe v.

01:30:15.480 Wade prohibits states from doing.

01:30:17.700 So it's really a lot of misinformation and ignorance about what these laws, what these

01:30:23.380 cases have even done.

01:30:24.320 Roe v.

01:30:24.620 Wade has forced states to permit abortion up until the point a baby can survive outside

01:30:29.380 the womb.

01:30:30.080 That's what Roe v.

01:30:30.740 Wade did.

01:30:31.760 And most people don't know that if they knew that they would be against it.

01:30:34.860 So, yeah, there's just I mean, what is happening in the court of public opinion is very different

01:30:40.380 than what often happens in the court of law.

01:30:43.900 And right now and my organization, Live Action, you know, our focus is education in the court

01:30:48.200 of public opinion, because there is so much misinformation about not just these laws and

01:30:54.060 what federal law has effectively done to shut down any state protections after before

01:30:59.380 viability.

01:30:59.980 But it's also just ignorance, Megan, about abortion procedures.

01:31:04.940 When people think, OK, an abortion procedure is just sort of undoes the pregnancy.

01:31:09.060 The baby kind of magically goes away and we move on with our lives.

01:31:13.320 When people are actually educated about how these abortion procedures take place, even the

01:31:17.760 abortion pill is starving that baby with a beating heart of nutrients.

01:31:21.680 And then the second abortion pill is a forced miscarriage.

01:31:24.640 And it's extremely can be extremely traumatic for women.

01:31:27.600 It can be weeks of bleeding.

01:31:28.860 It can even lead to hemorrhaging and death when they learn about the abortion pill, when

01:31:32.660 they learn about suction abortion in the first trimester.

01:31:34.800 It's a powerful suction machine that rips the child into pieces.

01:31:39.760 This developing child that already often has arms, legs, internal organs.

01:31:44.100 And the second trimester abortion, which is what they are arguing right now with the Mississippi

01:31:48.960 ban at 15 weeks, it's a second trimester abortion.

01:31:52.960 That's what they use on a 15 week old baby.

01:31:55.380 That involves using forceps with metal teeth to tear a child into pieces and remove.

01:32:02.460 It's a live dismemberment process.

01:32:04.000 And you remove the baby piece by piece while they're alive and can feel pain, according to

01:32:11.000 most scientific studies on babies that age.

01:32:13.680 Well, let me challenge you on that.

01:32:14.880 Let me challenge you.

01:32:15.360 Because I actually did look into that recently.

01:32:16.980 And what I read was that there's a group of surgeons saying that's impossible.

01:32:20.200 You cannot feel pain until the spinal cord is further developed.

01:32:23.380 And that is in the in the low 20s in terms of weeks.

01:32:28.380 Well, there's also studies that say that as early as nine weeks, the child can feel pain

01:32:33.040 and that that that's why, you know, but your pain, your capability to feel pain doesn't

01:32:38.740 determine your humanity, of course.

01:32:40.060 But yeah, I mean, there's there's there's scientific studies on both sides that say and

01:32:44.080 that's why they give anesthesia to babies that are operated on in utero because of the

01:32:49.340 ability to feel pain.

01:32:50.400 And yet we're still committing abortions in some states through all nine months, like

01:32:53.780 New Mexico, for example.

01:32:54.980 Obviously, that's the same killers.

01:32:57.500 That's how most people are against that.

01:32:58.840 I mean, you tell me, because the way I understand it, the vast majority of Americans, they don't

01:33:03.400 like abortion, but they don't want to see it on ruled unconstitutional, which, again, is

01:33:07.640 not on the table.

01:33:08.500 The Supreme Court's not going to rule it unconstitutional.

01:33:11.020 The question is whether they abandoned a decision that said it is a constitutional right that must

01:33:16.180 be recognized by all 50 states.

01:33:18.400 Now it'll be up to the states if they overrule it.

01:33:20.540 However, about half the states have so-called trigger laws that would make it unlawful in

01:33:25.600 their states.

01:33:26.320 So it will come down to a matter of, you know, red versus blue, you know, half and half allow

01:33:31.640 it versus ban it.

01:33:33.180 But it won't be illegal in all 50 states.

01:33:36.260 You know, what does that mean?

01:33:37.700 Like, what does that look like?

01:33:38.860 Does that enable women who want to have an abortion in red states like Mississippi to actually

01:33:44.520 get one?

01:33:45.280 Will they be out of options?

01:33:47.460 And how will that all play politically?

01:33:49.100 That's where I'm going to pick it up with Lila Rose right after this quick break.

01:33:52.820 Don't go away.

01:33:57.080 OK, so can we just talk about where the public is on this?

01:34:00.320 Because I'm sure you've got, you know, the latest data.

01:34:02.380 But what I read and, you know, the polls is that, as I was saying before, there's a there's

01:34:08.120 a 15 percent contingent that wants to see Roe overruled and abortion illegal everywhere.

01:34:13.060 There's a 15 percent contingent that wants abortion on demand all the way through nine

01:34:18.040 months.

01:34:18.400 And most Americans fall someplace between those two ends saying, I don't love it.

01:34:24.760 I don't want to see a lot of it.

01:34:26.380 I don't necessarily want to see it banned, but I want a lot of restrictions.

01:34:30.480 I'm totally fine with restrictions in the second trimester, definitely in the third trimester,

01:34:34.980 but they don't want to see an outright ban on it.

01:34:36.940 Do I accurately state the numbers?

01:34:39.080 Yeah, I mean, two two things.

01:34:40.720 First of all, on the question of Roe v.

01:34:42.580 Wade, most people don't realize that Roe v.

01:34:44.200 Wade permits abortion through all nine months if a state doesn't prohibit it at all.

01:34:48.300 So when people look at that question, actually, the vast majority of Americans don't want

01:34:52.960 abortion through all nine months.

01:34:54.140 They want abortion restrictions.

01:34:55.340 Over 70 percent of Americans want some kind of abortion restriction.

01:34:58.960 So most people want states to have laws and many of them laws after the first trimester

01:35:04.040 to ban abortions.

01:35:05.380 And that's unlike in Mississippi and like Europe, exactly like what Mississippi is trying

01:35:11.560 to do.

01:35:12.500 But, you know, the second thing is, I think, you know, the polling is obviously important

01:35:17.700 to look at where people are.

01:35:19.100 And I'm really interested in that as an educator, because I want people to be educated on the

01:35:23.660 humanity of the baby in the first trimester, because that's usually when people say some

01:35:27.540 people say, oh, yeah, well, we can permit abortion then because the baby is so small and

01:35:31.280 less undeveloped.

01:35:32.960 But when it comes to, you know, what should be legal?

01:35:36.140 There's this question now, the Supreme Court, it seems likely that they're going to uphold

01:35:39.500 Mississippi's law, turn effectively these decisions back to the states to be making them

01:35:44.040 individually about when to ban abortion in the state.

01:35:47.000 You know, California is not going to be banning abortion, at least not anytime soon.

01:35:50.700 But Mississippi may ban abortion.

01:35:52.120 Right.

01:35:52.420 So it's that red versus blue state question.

01:35:54.080 But the second thing I would say here is I don't think it's up to a democratic process

01:35:59.380 to decide whether some innocent people live or die.

01:36:03.320 And so even while it may be the case that the Supreme Court is about to turn abortion

01:36:07.660 back to the states and say they're not going to make a decision at the federal level, it's

01:36:10.860 not a question for the Constitution to answer.

01:36:13.460 I think it is a constitutional right that we have a right to life.

01:36:17.860 I got you.

01:36:18.120 And you made that point.

01:36:20.020 You're in the contingent that would like to see them rule.

01:36:22.260 Well, this is not a lawful thing to do, a constitutional thing to do, period.

01:36:25.820 But that's not on the table right now.

01:36:27.660 Last question.

01:36:28.200 I've got about a minute or so left.

01:36:30.260 What do you think politically this would do if they overruled Roe and kicked it back

01:36:34.580 to the states?

01:36:35.140 And we had, I don't know, between 12 and 22 states kick in with their trigger laws saying

01:36:38.840 abortion is illegal here and the other half don't.

01:36:42.600 Like what?

01:36:43.500 How do you think that plays politically?

01:36:44.740 Because I've heard a lot of smart Republicans say we want that, but it's not going to play

01:36:48.860 that well for us politically at the ballot box.

01:36:50.540 I think it can play very well politically if we do a good job in education and continuing

01:36:56.700 to expand safety net resources, both private and public for women and families.

01:37:01.900 And that's been a huge, quiet effort of the pro-life movement over the past 40 years.

01:37:06.740 There's 4,000 pregnancy resource centers offering free and confidential care in cities

01:37:12.780 in virtually every state in the country.

01:37:14.580 So continuing to beef up that network.

01:37:17.460 And as long as we can educate on, you know, we care for families.

01:37:21.000 There's so much work being done in the pro-life movement that has been done since day one

01:37:24.040 to care for mothers and families, to promote adoption, to help kids in foster care, to

01:37:29.820 celebrate and encourage motherhood and fatherhood.

01:37:32.720 Then I think we can shift the scale.

01:37:34.680 It's hard to do.

01:37:35.980 It's going to be hard to do, Megan, because the media is very pro-abortion in this country.

01:37:40.120 A lot of our institutions are very pro-abortion.

01:37:41.840 That's been sort of cemented since Roe v. Wade, but we can change that with enough work.

01:37:48.020 Last thing, quickly, quickly, where should people go for more information on what's real?

01:37:51.960 Thank you.

01:37:52.680 Thank you.

01:37:53.340 Liveaction.org.

01:37:54.420 There's great information on the abortion procedures from former abortionists on fetal

01:38:00.180 development.

01:38:00.720 And then, of course, great review of what's happening at the Supreme Court and great news

01:38:04.240 coverage of that.

01:38:05.520 Lila Rose, such a pleasure.

01:38:06.960 Thank you so much.

01:38:07.820 Thanks so much, Megan.

01:38:08.440 I really enjoyed talking to you.

01:38:09.420 Thanks for joining us today, everybody.

01:38:11.740 I want to let you know that tomorrow we've got Matt Walsh, so excited, and Adam Carolla.

01:38:15.080 They're both with The Daily Wire here.

01:38:16.640 You're welcome, because it's going to be amazing.

01:38:18.640 Check us out on YouTube and download the show in the meantime.

01:38:22.120 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:38:24.300 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:38:39.420 Thanks for listening to The Mind through.

01:38:43.020 Let's see.

01:38:59.020 And the này is going to be amazing.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 02, 2021

Jussie Smollett, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Abortion Before The Supreme Court, with Lila Rose, Jonna Spilbor, and Lis Wiehl ｜ Ep. 213

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