Kamala Harris is out of a job. Joe Biden is a disaster. Donald Trump is getting ready to get back in the game. And the left and corporate media are still trying to figure out how to make sense of it all.
00:00:00.560Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.
00:00:11.940Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.
00:00:16.600It is legitimately a happy Monday, isn't it? I don't know about you, but I've been on cloud nine since last Tuesday night.
00:00:22.880I feel great. I really do. I feel like America's already becoming greater than it was just by the promise of a Trump presidency.
00:00:32.640And he's made some staffing announcements that have me feeling especially so.
00:00:36.620We'll get to those in just a bit, especially on immigration.
00:00:40.040Meantime, the left and corporate media, but I repeat myself, are still trying to figure out how it all went so disastrously wrong for them.
00:00:47.720They believe Dan Seltzer. They believe Dan. They believe Dr. Alan Lipman with his keys and his forecast, who says he was totally right about everything.
00:00:57.660It was just our racism and misogyny that got in the way of him seeing things clearly.
00:01:01.880We showed you that on Friday. And we are starting now to get some of it.
00:01:05.720We still haven't had the big piece. Trust me. I know it's coming. It always does.
00:01:09.000But we're starting to get some of the juicy details about the Kamala Harris campaign mess.
00:01:13.460This is what's going to happen. I told you this before.
00:01:15.680More and more, you're starting to see it. Her team's coming out and blaming President Biden.
00:01:20.960He's a hot mess. She inherited a mess. You know, she did all she could, but mess, mess, thanks to Joe Biden.
00:01:26.860And trust me when I tell you the Joe Biden team will be leaking what a disaster she is and was behind the scenes.
00:01:34.800It's probably happening right now. Some publication is probably in the midst of shoring up their sources.
00:01:40.140And we're going to have some deep piece that says we spoke to 12 sources who didn't want to go on the record for fear of retribution,
00:01:48.520even though there can be no retribution now because her career is over.
00:01:54.960Meantime, Donald Trump wasting no time getting to work.
00:01:58.480And as I said, has made some big announcements today, which we will get to me.
00:02:02.980And there's also drama already unfolding in the U S Senate as they gear up to figure out who the new majority leader will be when the new Republican Senate takes office.
00:02:13.240OK, joining me now for all of it, the EJs, Emily Jashinsky, D.C. correspondent for Unheard and host of Undercurrents and Eliana Johnson,
00:02:21.400who is editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon and co-host of the podcast Ink Stained Wretches.
00:02:28.540For those of us holding our breath for the past several months, we can exhale.
00:02:32.780Work can finally be done on the major issues this country's facing, one of the most significant being our national debt.
00:02:38.940The fact is our nation's broke and that debt is a house of cards that cannot be quickly dismantled.
00:04:10.320We had one of the Pod Save America guys out over the weekend saying Biden's internal polls showed that he was going to lose like 49 states.
00:04:19.540Something like, or 400 electoral votes.
00:04:22.340Something incredible in this election and still thought he could win somehow.
00:04:27.620So the general consensus is F Joe Biden.
00:04:31.100Thanks for coming to where most of us were before.
00:04:33.340The country's been saying that since the Brandon thing.
00:43:53.400So watching the left, and that is CNN too, try to grapple with the messaging on the trans issue has been, I'm not going to lie, very entertaining.
00:44:04.640Like I don't give a shit about them anymore.
00:48:12.320You may disagree with that reality, but that's why Republicans kept running those ads over and over and over again because they saw the metrics suggested that they were working.
00:48:20.240And lying in those ads over and over again and using rhetoric like you just used, saying this is boys playing girls sports.
00:48:25.720Okay, sure, Michael Singleton, a moderate Republican analyst doing the Lord's work there, trying to correct or stand by the actual biological facts there.
00:48:37.540And this guy, Jay Michael Singleton, not having it, it's a slur to call a boy a boy.
00:48:43.480You have to call a boy who says he's trans a girl, a trans girl.
00:48:47.560And he will not sit on this set and allow that slur to be uttered.
00:48:50.920And then Abby Phillip, who's just insufferable, comes in to try to, like, regain control and looks at sure, Michael, to say, like, I understand, you know, your intent wasn't to offend.
00:49:05.520But on this set, we're going to use, you know, language that's not offensive because she, too, just like Stephanie Rule, needs to be in the club.
00:49:14.400She's got to say it the way the left wants her to say it, or she might lose her elite leftist card.
00:49:40.960Yeah, that was totally bananas and not the only one of those crazy roundtables that we've seen.
00:49:49.640And I do actually think Abby Phillip's role there was the most problematic, where she's supposed to be the neutral moderator and weighs in to say, this is not, you know, this is the sort of language we're going to use, which is actually not a neutral position.
00:50:02.940You know, I think I'm desperate to hear your full answer on this.
00:50:07.140I've got to squeeze in a quick break for Sirius XM.
00:50:08.820We'll pick it up right there in just a couple of minutes.
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00:51:32.540And she asked that, you know, the person who said boys playing girls sports use the appropriate language.
00:51:40.000And that, to me, is the most egregious thing that happened on that panel.
00:51:45.380You know, the person who said they're not boys, that guy's entitled to his opinion.
00:51:49.900Sure, Michael's entitled to his opinion.
00:51:51.540But for the ostensibly neutral CNN anchor to weigh in and say, you know, it's the view of the neutral person that this is the language we're going to use is ridiculous.
00:52:37.140On this set, we're going to have room for both opinions.
00:52:39.220Like, you've got to let this guy talk.
00:52:42.240Okay, but CNN can't do that because the Associated Press style on transgenderism was changed years ago.
00:52:49.580And all of these newsrooms abide by it.
00:52:51.500So speaking on the theme that we've been talking about all show, about being painted into their own prisons, they have all accepted the Associated Press.
00:52:58.500Even some conservative news outlets at the time accepted the Associated Press guideline on transgenderism.
00:53:04.340And they did the same thing with immigration.
00:53:06.080There are all kinds of AP style guide, capitalizing B for Black.
00:53:11.500Like, these are all changes that the newsrooms have accepted.
00:53:14.480So if Abby Phillip wanted to be a genuinely neutral moderator, she would have to shirk the Associated Press guideline on discussing transgenderism that her newsroom has accepted as the kind and non-bigoted and civil way to refer to people for years now.
00:53:31.480Like, they have to, if they want to go back on this, they have to admit that for years and years they were wrong.
00:53:36.860And I'm kind of interested to see how that goes.
00:53:40.040You've got Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat here in my adopted home state of Connecticut, who's out there trying to offer his postmortem.
00:53:47.600And what happened, it was a cataclysm, electoral map, wipeout, Senate D practical ceiling is now 52 seats.
00:54:11.220But mass deportation is a terrible response to Americans' real sense that they are helpless in the face of global forces like increased migration.
00:54:42.200And then he says, meanwhile, men tumble into a different kind of identity crisis as the patriarchy, society's primary organizing paradigm for centuries, rightly crashes.
00:54:53.840Listen to this guy trying to have it both ways, right?
00:55:35.560Anything having to do with the trans issue, which he, just like that guy in Massachusetts, has been shoving down our throats here in Connecticut, completely on the wrong side.
00:55:53.620As a parent, personally, I celebrate those few transgender kids who often spend their entire adolescence being shamed or marginalized by the kind of small people who push resolutions like this.
00:56:04.140I celebrate the fact that they get the experience of the camaraderie and the happiness that comes with being part of a sports team.
00:56:29.220He wants to make the trans kids happy, Eliana, unlike the girls who are having literally all of their teeth knocked out by boys on the field hockey field.
00:56:39.000Or the girls, like those in Wisconsin, who went into the girls' locker room after a sports match and had a so-called trans student, an 18-year-old male, come in fully naked to join them in the shower.
00:56:51.980But Chris Murphy is super glad that the so-called trans student is happy.
00:56:57.600And all the others who are unhappy, the actual girls who have a right to their privacy and to fair play and safe play, they can F right off in his world because their happiness, it's just not a priority because this is a small number.
00:57:11.540Look, I think there are going to be a lot of clips like this that Democrats are going to have to reckon with, because the truth is that the party went way too far left and embraced a lot of issues that, you know, America that ended up repelling a majority of Americans.
00:57:27.600And there's going to be a pivot away from these sorts of cultural issues.
00:57:35.080And I think it's going to take two or three years for the party to figure out how do they talk about issues that actually matter, both matter to Americans and don't repel them, because the trans issues is one that matters deeply to them.
00:57:49.580But the way Democrats have been talking about it is one that deeply alienates, you know, most normal people.
00:57:54.920So I think it's it's this is going to take a while for Democrats to untangle and they're going to have to be willing to make a lot of people in their own coalition very angry.
00:58:04.280I mean, look at look at that chart, Emily.
00:58:06.980It's it was the number one issue for swing state voters.
00:58:18.620Well, Chris Murphy and all of you other late to the party Democrats who are racking your, you know, wringing your hands and racking your brains trying to figure out how this happened.
00:58:29.040We all know that while we'd like to think we matter in states like Connecticut, New York and California, the ones who decide the presidency live in those seven critical swing states and they're paying attention.
00:58:39.960And they've had it with this nonsense.
00:58:42.960Yeah, by the way, Megan, I mean, we should note when you say it was the number one issue.
00:58:47.280The Trump campaign also also worked very hard to make it the number one issue and that their best ad was about this issue.
00:58:53.520And they poured hundreds of millions of dollars into putting that ad on the television sets of swing state voters.
00:59:02.380Kamala Harris is for they, them and Donald Trump is for you.
00:59:06.500And so I think it's hard to separate the two because, of course, before the campaign started, voters would have said inflation, immigration are the top two issues.
00:59:15.860But I think the Trump campaign did a lot to bring out this issue, knowing that it was something that would really alienate, you know, regular independent voters, undecided voters from Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party.
00:59:31.120To their credit, to their credit, they did.
00:59:32.800But I have to say the women and the men like Billboard Chris, who have been activists in this space for years, are the ones who made the Trump campaign recognize that they had a live wire here, that there was something in the American populace that was infuriating.
00:59:55.380A lot of lovely, well-meaning parents who had been tolerant for too long in an effort to be inclusive, not bully, but then had seen a shift to where biological girls, girls were getting bullied and hurt.
01:00:09.940And even when I talked to Trump a couple of years ago, you know, it was, he was a little on his heels when I said, can a man become a woman?
01:00:18.420But this wasn't really, and I was late to the party, but there have been women and men in this space for a long time who have been really pushing this and have been totally fearless, you know?
01:00:40.840I remember when I was covering Title IX back in like 2017 and Betsy DeVos was hesitant about actually undoing some of what the Obama administration had done because the cultural pressure at the time coming from outlets like CNN and the Associated Press and all of these places was so strong that even somebody like Betsy DeVos was being very, very careful about how to handle the issue.
01:01:03.440And now we fast forward and, I mean, shout out to people like Terry Schilling, the American Principles Project, who when I talked to him a couple of days before the election, I asked him, how are you feeling about suburban women?
01:01:16.080And one of the things he said was working, was running on pushback against the transgender issue.
01:01:21.540And that was I found that very, very interesting because what the left was saying at the time is that this is all about kitchen table issues and democracy, lowercase d democracy.
01:01:30.540You didn't hear from a lot of corporate media outlets that Republicans were having success running on the transgender issue.
01:01:37.980And what's also interesting about that to me is where the postmodern left, the Eddie Glaude juniors and the right agree, is that this mattered.
01:01:45.600But the Eddie Glaude juniors of the world will blame it on bigotry.
01:01:48.980And the right just says we tapped into the common sense of the Joe Rogan listener who doesn't who sees this as another one of the issues the same way as they see it sometimes economic populism.
01:02:00.520They see this as them being held in contempt by the people in power because there is room for reasonable disagreement on this.
01:02:09.000I've talked to parents whose kids went to facilities to deal with their gender dysphoria and were fully going through the transition process because their parents are generally supportive of the LGBT issue.
01:02:22.480And the parents realized, oh, my gosh, we made a horrible mistake.
01:02:25.320We thought that we were being supportive.
01:02:27.280We thought that we were being loving and we were wrong.
01:02:29.540And people who haven't gone through that or talked to people who have gone through that have no idea how wide the room for disagreement is on this issue, how common sense the people who disagree with this issue are and how far left many of them actually are.
01:02:44.240I mean, it's just so out of touch to continue carrying on as though this is the only acceptable position that you can have and not understand that for many people, it's not just something they disagree with.
01:02:54.800It animates them because you're telling them they're stupid and they're bigots if they disagree with you on it.
01:02:59.660And that's how you get people to the polls for Trump.
01:03:01.520I mean, I'm I'm terrified to offer a list because there's just been so many great people in this space who have been very bold and brave.
01:03:09.180But just just to name a few who have definitely influenced me, you got to start with J.K. Rowling, right?
01:03:15.280You got to look at Abigail Schreier and her amazing book, Irreversible Damage in 2020.
01:03:19.860And then the women who have just been incredibly smart and advocating on this, like Helen Joyce, like Kelly J. Keene, like Jennifer Billick.
01:03:26.980Like, even on this show, the women who came on and really kind of helped me see the light on language, not just Kelly J., but also Carrie Prejean Bowler and Britt Mayer came on for a year and they were refusing to do that crap.
01:03:39.380And I was like, I don't know. And eventually I realized, God, they're totally right.
01:03:44.460And there's just there's again, I hate to even say Billboard Chris, you know, Matt Walsh.
01:03:48.820There have been so many folks who have shown total and utter courage, and I'm so grateful to all of them for helping me see the truth and then to get loud about it.
01:03:59.560And all of us have been loud about it. And finally, we were heard. We were heard by the Trump campaign.
01:04:03.720Riley Gaines, how could I forget her after her terrible experience with Leah Thomas?
01:04:07.640So all these women, Chloe Cole, de-transitioner, who's been very brave, who was just a teenager when this was done to her, all of those fierce warriors won on Tuesday.
01:04:20.240And watching the other side try to deal with that fact is kind of entertaining and extremely gratifying.
01:04:27.260OK, let's talk about what's happening on Team Trump right now, because it's actually really interesting what he's doing, the announcements he's made.
01:04:33.820We talked about Susie Wiles on Friday, his new chief of staff. I mean, he hates women, but it's weird because he's made a couple of very big female appointments so far.
01:04:43.220So I'm weird how he's done that. He announced today he's asked Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York, from upstate New York, to become U.N. ambassador.
01:04:51.620You know her. She's tough as nails. She's the one who cross-examined those heads of university like Harvard and MIT and just eviscerated them, leading to all the resignations.
01:05:00.460She'll be great at the U.N. That'll be fun to watch. And you've got, got to hear what he did on immigration.
01:05:07.500This is so good. It's so good. If you voted for Trump, you're getting dividends already.
01:05:14.080He's announced that he's going to appoint this man named Tom Homan as his border czar.
01:05:19.380That's not a position that must be confirmed. So that's good because this guy can do what he want.
01:05:24.360Hey, if Kamala Harris can be the border czar, so can Tom Homan. He served in the first Trump administration.
01:05:30.420He was acting director then of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
01:05:34.880And in his announcement, Trump said that Homan, quote, will be in charge of all deportation of illegal aliens back to their country of origin.
01:05:45.820Homan reacted to the news this morning on Fox. Watch.
01:05:48.260And look, I've seen, I've seen some of these Democratic governors say they're going to stand in the way.
01:05:54.020They're going, they're going to make a hard force. Well, I, you know, a suggestion.
01:05:58.140If you're not going to help us, get the hell out of the way if we're going.
01:06:00.200Tom, you know, the last person who was border czar, she didn't want to be called border czar.
01:06:06.580You know what? I'm going to look like a genius because when you follow a failure, you can't help, you can't help succeed, right?
01:06:14.400He began his career in immigration enforcement back in 1994 as a Border Patrol agent.
01:06:21.820And while his career background is important, the way he fires back at these bully Democrats on this issue and at the media is a thing of beauty.
01:08:07.740And yes, I held a five-year-old boy in my arms in the back of that tractor trailer.
01:08:11.780I knelt down beside him and said a prayer for him because I knew what his last 30 minutes of his life were like.
01:08:17.060And I had a five-year-old son at the time.
01:08:18.740What I've been trying to do in my 34 years serving my nation is to save lives.
01:08:24.080So for you to sit there and insult my integrity and my love for my country and for children, that's why this whole thing needs to be fixed.
01:11:24.300In Spanish, he said, we're in a trailer, we're illegals.
01:11:29.200This is the cost of that open border that people now, like Harris and Biden, have allowed for years.
01:11:36.800And by the way, the reports now are that we can expect the immigration problem to spike over the next couple of months until Trump gets there.
01:11:44.620And that the illegals see, this is a court per the Daily Wire this morning, quoting from NBC, that they're anticipating January 20th as their deadline to get into this country.
01:11:55.100So what's Joe Biden going to do about it?
01:11:57.200Because you're going to get more deaths and more rapes of young girls and more families who ultimately get separated because these drug mules, these bad actors, use the children.
01:12:07.280Since we're against family separation to get across the border and the children are exploited time and time again.
01:12:14.640Tom Holman's been on the side of the angels on this and he's being placed back in charge and we should all celebrate his return.
01:12:22.240In that same hearing we just showed you, he also fired back at AOC, who as always thought that she knew better when she questioned him about the administration's zero tolerance policy.
01:12:33.800Mr. Holman, your name is on this, is this correct?
01:14:01.260Deputy chief of staff for policy on the immigration front.
01:14:04.180And he's the guy who came up with a lot of those policies that work so well under Trump, like remain in Mexico and some of the executive orders that Trump signed requiring us to crack down on these BS asylum claims.
01:14:19.720Tom Homan is so interesting because one of the ways he first started, I think, really getting in media is that he worked for the Obama administration.
01:14:27.820He's been given, like, an award by Barack Obama.
01:14:30.960And I think that's what gives him the confidence to go and talk to AOC like that because he saw this flawed process from the inside.
01:16:01.660And in the news today, too, Tom Homan making clear that President Trump's deportation priorities are not about people who are here unlawfully, who are abiding by the law now.
01:16:14.080I realize it's a crime to sneak into the country illegally across the border, but that that's not the priority.
01:16:20.360The priority is the criminals who are here and causing havoc in the states.
01:16:26.060And in response to that, you already get like the Massachusetts governor coming out and saying, we will not cooperate.
01:18:10.100Trump and the RNC weren't that close when he ran.
01:18:12.840Susie has been running his operation since 2021 and somebody who has really gained his trust and demonstrated an ability to manage manage both Trump and his operation.
01:18:24.640The second is that the first the first appointments we're seeing coming from Trump are on immigration, which I think sends a signal to folks that he's going to take the issue seriously.
01:18:35.560You know, the first the first appointment coming out wasn't the secretary of state or the secretary of defense, but it was the immigration czar.
01:18:44.280And I do think that's intentional and sends a signal.
01:18:47.160And also to see we haven't talked about Elise Stefanik going to the United Nations.
01:18:52.120She's someone who is he talked about strong women.
01:18:56.560She's, I think, likely to be in the mold of Nikki Haley, who was there before, who will be an advocate for for America and Israel on on the world straight stage.
01:19:10.200And so thus far, you know, we're seeing we're seeing interesting appointments that I think are broadcasting the president elect's intentions for what he intends to prioritize.
01:19:19.860Mm hmm. The other interesting battle unfolding right now, Emily, is in the Senate where they called the Massachusetts Senate race, not Massachusetts, Pennsylvania Senate race for Dave McCormick, who defeated Democrat incumbent Bob Casey.
01:19:36.080Good for him. And Casey's trying to challenge it, but it doesn't look like that's going to go very far.
01:19:42.220And also the Republicans are on track, according to the latest count, to win the House.
01:19:45.780It's going to be tight. It looks like maybe still they'll have a four vote margin, so not a lot.
01:19:49.960What they've had already. But it's very important that they win the House.
01:19:53.560And so right now, by the latest count, I'm informed that my people in the know, the Republicans expect them to pull it off.
01:19:59.980So now the question switches to leadership in the Senate and the they're going to what the reports are is that Mitch McConnell is pushing through a vote on leadership.
01:20:10.920The next generation of leadership this week, which is very soon, doesn't give a lot of time for people to get organized.
01:20:17.820And it's between John Thune, John Cornyn and Rick Scott.
01:20:24.680Rick Scott is a is a senator, former governor in Florida who is much more in the MAGA mold.
01:20:30.880And the other two are much more like establishment Republicans.
01:20:36.700There are some tape circulating of them crapping all over Trump when the Eugene Carroll allegations came out.
01:20:44.040That's obviously an attempt to signal to Trump that these are not MAGA loyalists, whereas Rick Scott is on board with the president's agenda.
01:20:52.340So what do you think is going to happen with this and what do you think should happen?
01:20:56.540Yeah, this is fascinating. And I was reading Politico playbook this morning.
01:21:00.420They did a rundown that was basically totally wrong and just clueless.
01:21:04.280This has been a campaign that's sort of been happening in the background for a really long time.
01:21:08.600And anybody with good sources in the Republican Senate coalition knows that Rick Scott has been trying to lay the groundwork for this for a really, really long time.
01:21:17.960And that he has also gotten good support from conservative stalwarts like Ted Cruz, even people like Marco Rubio.
01:21:26.200And like that has been going on for more than a year now because Mitch McConnell was sort of clearly on his way out.
01:21:32.740Cornyn and Thune are close to McConnell.
01:21:34.920And so if you want to sort of purge McConnellism from the Senate, which a lot of Trump allies in the Senate know needs to be done,
01:21:44.140then Mike Lee and Rick Scott and this sort of campaign they've been orchestrating for a long time in the background is really important.
01:21:51.940Now, I don't think there's a great option in this race.
01:21:55.000I think, you know, even people close to Rick Scott would tell you he's not the kind of perfect ambassador for for MAGA for a lot of reasons.
01:22:02.560Like he doesn't have the kind of personal charm some politicians do.
01:22:06.640And he hasn't really been in leadership, so he might not understand exactly how the machinations work in the background.
01:22:11.820But what Mike Lee and others are trying to do behind the scenes right now is make a point and say we are done with the Mitch McConnell approach to voters.
01:22:19.400We are done with this approach to the Senate where you just go along with leadership and leadership runs everything.
01:22:27.520And we're not, you know, sticking any we're not like trying to actually disrupt the Washington machine at all.
01:22:34.580So that's what they're trying to turn this battle into.
01:22:38.320And that's where you're seeing a lot of people get on Rick Scott's side, even if they're close with Thune or Cornyn or him ever,
01:22:45.760because they understand the voters want to see them kind of stick it to McConnell.
01:22:49.300And a big question going forward is what Trump does.
01:22:51.600It looks like he's going to stay out of it.
01:22:53.080But but a lot of people, in order to appeal to their their Trump voters in their own states are trying to face are actually going to face kind of a hard decision in this one,
01:23:03.140because if Rick Scott doesn't win and you allied with him, what happens with Thune and Cornyn?
01:23:08.060And if one of them is in leadership position, it's it's a tough palace entry situation.
01:23:12.340Yeah. Well, the by the way, Senator Rick Scott's going to be on the program tomorrow, which is one day before the vote.
01:23:19.140So that would be an interesting interview.
01:23:20.960I hope you guys tune in for that. It's it's kind of fascinating to watch it play out.
01:23:26.020It's very clear that Team MAGA wants Rick Scott and Trump hasn't weighed in as of today, as of the time I'm speaking,
01:23:34.780probably because he wants to have a good working relationship with whoever gets it.
01:23:39.680But he's obviously not a fan of Mitch McConnell.
01:23:42.180Those those two, they're not there's not a lot of love lost there, Eliana.
01:23:45.900But I'll give you a window into what Team MAGA is saying about it in the form of this tweet from Tucker Carlson,
01:23:52.240who doesn't tweet a lot. And he tweeted out the following yesterday.
01:23:56.960What the hell is going on in the U.S. Senate?
01:23:59.420Hours after Donald Trump wins the most conclusive mandate in 40 years, Mitch McConnell engineers a coup
01:24:04.360against his agenda by calling early leadership elections in the Senate.
01:24:09.300Two of the three candidates hate Trump and what he ran on.
01:24:13.580One of them, John Cornyn, is an angry liberal whose politics are indistinguishable from Liz Cheney's.
01:24:19.220The election is Wednesday. It's by secret ballot.
01:24:22.140Also important. And it will determine whether or not the new administration succeeds.
01:24:27.360Rick Scott of Florida is the only candidate who agrees with Donald Trump.
01:24:30.760Call your senator and demand a public endorsement.
01:24:34.080Public being the operative word there of Rick Scott.
01:24:36.800Don't let McConnell get away with it again.
01:24:39.940And then Robert Kennedy responded, saying without Rick Scott, the entire Trump reform agenda wobbly.
01:24:55.660There are reasons that Trump hasn't endorsed and has stayed out of it.
01:24:59.540You know, the ballot secret, which is a big deal.
01:25:05.040So nobody's going to know who voted for whom.
01:25:08.360But the Senate Senate leadership position, it matters for understanding the way the Senate operates and then for keeping a coalition together.
01:25:19.920And that's what McConnell was good at.
01:25:21.900So Trump, I think, is going to be weighing in terms of endorsements who can keep 50 what looks like it's going to be 53 Republicans together.
01:25:31.360He's he's going to want to nominate some crazy and controversial people.
01:25:34.960And in fact, he's already floated the idea that he wants the Senate to move for recess appointments.
01:25:39.120Having a Senate majority leader who's not that popular may not be the best thing for him if he wants someone who can keep who can wrangle votes for him.
01:25:49.800So I think it's actually more more more complicated than like who's the most MAGA here.
01:25:57.780You really may want to think about who can wrangle the most votes for him, who's also going to be an ally.
01:26:03.360And like, look, at the end of the day, any one of these guys is going to have to be an ally to Trump.
01:26:09.120You know, to varying degrees, has some more than others.
01:26:12.820But like they're going to need somebody who understands how the Senate works, where the weak points of each one of these guys is and how to cobble together the most votes.
01:26:23.080Because it seems to me that in the same way Trump said, I'm the get out the vote effort, like just me being me will get people out to the polls.
01:26:34.480Isn't Trump the thing that's going to make the Republicans vote Trump because they're all afraid of Donald Trump campaigning against them, saying negative things again?
01:26:45.380Like which Republican would have the stones to undermine Trump on his agenda with what is very clearly a mandate from the country right now?
01:26:53.080Well, I think probably the best example of where you could see a McConnell ally having the boldness to do that would be on Ukraine.
01:27:01.080And so if J.D. Vance now is president of the Senate, incoming president of the Senate, is pushing for cutting funding to Ukraine, which he's signaled in every instance that he absolutely would do conditionally, of course.
01:27:12.980And it's more nuanced than people say he just wants to stop, you know, cut off all funding to Ukraine.
01:27:17.320But if that starts to get pushed, I think what the people like Mike Lee and Rick Scott see is a real there's a absolute will to undermine the mega agenda on foreign policy by people who are really close with the Republican donor class.
01:27:35.500And it's fine to disagree with the mega position on Ukraine, but it is a deeply held belief among Republican leadership.
01:27:42.640And so I actually think it's not implausible at all that there would be very, very bitter backroom fights over that in particular that you wouldn't get with a Rick Scott.
01:27:51.700And to Eliana's point, it's also, though, true. Rick Scott lacks the sort of charm to get a Susan Collins and to do a little push and pull in those negotiating situations in the backrooms, which is what you do when you're in leadership.
01:28:07.580So there's something you lose something with that, too. But I think Collins is annoying.
01:28:11.980She's annoying. She's annoying. And I'm not sorry that we don't really need her vote anymore, although they would have to deal with her because I mean, yeah, it's true.
01:28:22.060They don't really need her vote. But on certain issues, there are different senators where that Ukraine is going to be the litmus test for how some of these.
01:28:30.960You're right. Didn't I just see you used to be at the Federalist. You tell me, I think I saw Sean Davis saying that he got attacked by John Cornyn as as a Neville Chamberlain.
01:28:39.900Yes. For saying, I really like the idea of getting out of these forever wars.
01:28:44.120And I think it was about Ukraine. I'm trying to remember if I'm tying the two together unfairly.
01:28:48.280But he was he was taking a more of a peacenik position and it got called Neville Chamberlain by John Cornyn.
01:28:53.540And as soon as John Cornyn sent that tweet, Sean at the time, this was like less than a year ago.
01:28:58.800Sean at the time was like, send John Cornyn's comms director an email and ask him to debate me on Federalist Radio Hour, which I used to host and did it and got a response from them back right away being like, no.
01:29:08.320So that's how it all played out. But it was I mean, he straight up called him compared to Neville Chamberlain.
01:29:14.620And that's how deep this goes with them. They are very deeply opposed to Trump as a person.
01:29:20.240They're very deeply opposed to some of these tenants of the MAGA agenda.
01:29:23.180And so they know they need to keep Trump happy. I agree with that.
01:29:26.620But there are they have buttons that once you press them, things become untenable between Trump.
01:29:31.760And this is going to be kind of interesting, ladies.
01:29:33.980You know, it's not all smooth sailing just because Trump won the election.
01:29:37.240There are deep divisions within the Republican Party.
01:29:39.380Look what's happened in the House over the past few years with the leadership elections over and over and deep divisions there.
01:29:45.920Not quite as deep as on Team Blue, but they're there.
01:29:48.980So they're going to have to learn to navigate through that.
01:29:51.400We'll see soon. I mean, I guess we'll find out on Wednesday.
01:29:55.680As my team tells me that McConnell announced he was leaving in February and said the leadership election would be in November back then,
01:30:05.560it seems that the other side would like a little bit more time to, I guess, organize and get the good word out and have meetings and do all the things.
01:30:20.620I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.
01:30:25.200It's your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures today.
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01:30:40.580Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey and yours truly, Megan Kelly.
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01:32:28.560His whole story was told in Lone Survivor.
01:32:30.360They made a movie out of it with Mark Wahlberg and his brother here.
01:32:33.740You're going to hear his identical twin brother telling about the moment they got the call down in Texas that he had been found, that Marcus had been found and was alive, which was very much in doubt.
01:35:10.180This is episode 109 and his description of the Navy SEALs and others on board the chopper flying into the bin Laden complex when they had gotten the intel from the CIA analyst on where he was and how to find him.
01:35:45.780If we know we're going to die, why are we going?
01:35:50.320And so we had a conversation and we had a conversation.
01:35:53.140We said, OK, well, we're not going after bin Laden for the fame or the reward or the bravado.
01:36:00.000We are going after Osama bin Laden for the single mom who dropped her kids off at elementary school on a Tuesday.
01:36:06.600And 45 minutes later, she jumped to her death out of a skyscraper because that was a better alternative than whatever the hell was going on inside at 2500 degrees Fahrenheit.
01:36:15.740And her last gesture of human decency was holding her skirt as she jumped out of a building and murdered herself.
01:36:21.740She was never supposed to be in the fight.
01:36:34.620You listen to that and you just remember how small your own life is, however big you may think it is, and the amount of sacrifice these guys go through, not just while they're over there, seeing their friends die, losing limbs too many times.
01:36:46.700But then when they come back and the readjustment, Dakota Meyer, Medal of Honor recipient, came on the show as well and talked about how when he got back stateside, tried to take his own life.
01:36:56.560Thank God someone who loved him, an angel, had taken the bullets out.
01:36:59.900But it's those guys we think of today and try to remember how humble we must be when we think about our own lives.
01:37:48.640And the negativity about it is sad when you hear these amazing stories of bravery and sacrifice.
01:37:54.180But you have a president now, president-elect, who says he's going to rebuild our military.
01:37:59.140He's going to get wokeism out of the military.
01:38:01.580And let's not forget the Gold Star families who lost their 13 service personnel daughters and sons in that disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal in August of 2021,
01:38:10.800who were made a campaign issue in this whole thing by Kamala Harris,
01:38:14.820who disgustingly stepped on a rake about them honoring President Trump at Arlington.