The Megyn Kelly Show - Kari Lake on the Bribe Attempt, Plus Texas vs. Biden Border Showdown, with Andrew Klavan and Alan Dershowitz ｜ Ep. 710

00:00:00.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:11.880 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have a packed program for

00:00:16.540 you today. The Daily Wire's Andrew Klavan is here to weigh in on Texas in a showdown with the

00:00:23.440 federal government over this wire at its border. We are facing a constitutional crisis unlike

00:00:29.900 any I have seen. This thing is getting more and more charged as now the governors from all the

00:00:38.380 southern states, or most of them, we've seen Governor DeSantis of Florida. We've seen Governor

00:00:42.980 Kemp of Georgia come out saying they stand with Texas as Governor Abbott of Texas says he will not

00:00:49.220 be standing down. We'll get into it in more detail. You know that Texas has this barbed wire up. They

00:00:54.440 have another flotilla out in the waters trying to prevent the invasion, which they've declared

00:00:58.660 as a matter of law through Governor Abbott as the feds continue to snub their responsibilities

00:01:05.040 under federal immigration law to protect Texas and the citizenry beyond from the invasion of

00:01:11.160 illegals coming across the southern border in record numbers now for the better part of a year,

00:01:16.240 more than a year. And they tried. Texas has been left to do, to take care of the matter by itself,

00:01:22.580 and it's trying to do something. People are dying. Not just the Texas citizens, but drug mules,

00:01:31.000 young girls, they're raped. I mean, the feds have just turned their eyes from this whole thing. And now

00:01:38.180 Texas does something to try to protect itself. And what do the feds do? They sue Texas, saying you're

00:01:42.720 not allowed to interfere. And Texas's response has been, you have to help. It's your legal

00:01:48.240 responsibility. And if you won't do it, we have rights to. We have rights to protect our citizens

00:01:53.460 from an invasion. And that's actually written right into the Constitution. Now there's a Supreme

00:01:57.840 Court ruling saying we are lifting the lower court injunction that stopped the feds from cutting down

00:02:04.920 that wire. So the feds have been given a green light by SCOTUS to cut it down. And Texas Governor

00:02:12.040 Abbott so far has said he stands prepared to not allow that. Now that hasn't happened yet. So, so far,

00:02:20.680 there's been no express or explicit flouting of the Supreme Court order. And Biden has not yet sent

00:02:27.160 anybody down there to cut down that wire. But if he does, I don't know what's going to happen.

00:02:34.820 We're watching it very closely. We're trying to get Dershowitz on for some legal analysis here,

00:02:39.460 because truly that we're in for something over the coming days, and we want to prepare ourselves

00:02:45.500 and you for it. So we'll talk about it politically with Andrew. We're trying to get Dershowitz on to

00:02:51.220 join us with the legalities of it. But we're going to start today with a political story that everyone

00:02:58.280 is talking about. Earlier this week, something bizarre happened. An audio recording was leaked to

00:03:05.780 the Daily Mail. Now, on this recording, you hear the head of Arizona's Republican Party apparently

00:03:13.800 trying to bribe Carrie Lake, who had run for governor, you recall, and was contesting what had

00:03:21.140 happened with her in that race, but clearly had set her sights on running for Senate. She wants to run 1.00

00:03:28.000 for U.S. Senate in Arizona and now is. And you can hear this guy apparently trying to bribe her to drop

00:03:33.380 out of the U.S. Senate race. I mean, it's pretty clear. Ms. Lake is, of course, a prominent supporter

00:03:39.500 of former President Donald Trump. And two years ago, she came into national prominence as she ran for 0.96

00:03:45.200 governor and dazzled most of us with her contentious exchanges with the media and made a national name 1.00

00:03:52.420 for herself. So now she's moving on to the Senate race. Again, I'm going to play you about a four to 0.99

00:03:58.220 five minute excerpt of this call. We never do this on the show. We don't run soundbites that long,

00:04:02.140 but you have to hear this. Carrie Lake is here listening. All right. She's going to join us

00:04:06.020 on the back end of this. What you're about to hear is the Arizona GOP party chairman, Jeff DeWitt,

00:04:12.560 talking to Carrie Lake about how someone back East wants her to drop out and is willing to pay her big

00:04:21.320 money to do it, trying to probe how much it will take to get her out and someone else in who someone 0.99

00:04:28.820 can be controlled, someone who's not MAGA, someone who will do this imaginary sort of party boss. I

00:04:36.740 mean, there is somebody. Even DeWitt seems to be admitting this is not a made up thing

00:04:41.340 to do that person's bidding. Who? Again, we're going to listen to an excerpt of this long call

00:04:48.400 and Carrie Lake will be on right after the recordings. It's extraordinary. Take a listen.

00:04:54.280 This is, this is, this is, this is back East. They, there are very powerful people going to keep

00:05:03.000 you out. I know they do, but they're willing to put their money where their mouth is in a big way.

00:05:10.560 So this conversation never happened. This is crazy though. They should want me. I'm a great

00:05:16.920 candidate. People love me. These people are corrupt. If you, if you say no, which is fine. It's your

00:05:23.100 choice. Don't tell people. They're going to have, try to have me murdered. So what, what, what's going

00:05:29.320 on? Who is it? What? Forget the who. Let me just tell you what. Let's just say there are people calling

00:05:36.880 around saying, gosh, no, they can't repeat this. Never repeat this. You say no, don't. I got offered

00:05:43.300 to buy out. Yeah. Here's my problem. Rather than just say, let's work with her. She's a great 1.00

00:05:49.360 candidate because they don't own me and it pisses me off. Yeah. It's about ownership. It's about control.

00:06:00.060 I don't know if it's about control. It's about being on the team. But if they're pushing a

00:06:08.760 globalist agenda, I can't do that. So what do they want? What do they want me to do?

00:06:13.180 You want me to stay opportunist.

00:06:17.620 But I'll tell you what I can offer you. I said, if you can do original, it's talking head, this and

00:06:21.940 that. So the ask of me was, it's kind of funny. So the ask I got today from back East was,

00:06:27.960 is, is there any companies out there or something that could just put her on the payroll and give 1.00

00:06:34.860 her to keep her out? And I said, well, what are you willing to do? Whatever you need to do.

00:06:40.260 This is about defeating Trump. And I think that's a bad, bad thing for our country.

00:06:46.380 DeSantis is not America first. This is about the final death blow to Trump. And I don't think

00:06:55.660 that's good for our country. I love Trump. I love Trump. It's not good for our country, Jeff.

00:07:00.620 I think what it really comes down to for a lot of people, it's not only about like control

00:07:04.800 or agenda, it's just about the ability to raise money to win. You know? If you really want to know

00:07:10.880 all of those, all of those calls on the money, I think. And even on their end, what makes

00:07:16.940 them the most money? I know. There's all these consultants don't want their payday to end.

00:07:22.620 And I don't want to make a deal with these kinds of people. This is a hill worth dying on.

00:07:29.280 I am not, if they're going to steal the election to make me and our, our movement go away,

00:07:34.520 I'm not letting them do that. I owe it to the people of Arizona to carry their torch and their

00:07:39.840 voice. You don't go away, but you pause. This is the battle is right now, Jeff.

00:07:47.620 No, the battle is right now. It's a, it's a backscratching club. That's all DC is. It's a big

00:07:55.660 backscratching club. You're in no, you're in no position to scratch anybody's back. And you've

00:07:59.760 already made it known that if you get there, you're not going to scratch anybody's back.

00:08:01.980 Where are we in two years? If they steal the election again.

00:08:06.240 Listen to what you're saying. Why don't we do something about it? So that we, the people can pick our,

00:08:11.520 what can we do? I'm not willing to accept that. And I'm going to be the biggest pain in these

00:08:16.660 people. Go back and tell them that I'm running and I'm going to be the biggest pain in their 0.97

00:08:21.540 and they're going to have to kill me to stop me. You don't have to tell them that, but I don't think 0.99

00:08:33.680 they will, but I'm offended by whoever these people are, that they're trying to buy me out.

00:08:40.540 Well, you should be honored. I'm offended that there's people back there who just don't

00:08:45.860 get about our country. Do you understand that? You should be honored. That means they know how

00:08:50.240 powerful you are. Just to say, is there a number of which I can be bought? That's what it's about.

00:09:00.320 You can take a pause for a couple of years. No. And they go right back to what you're doing.

00:09:03.240 No. 10 million, 20 million, 30. No, no, no. A billion? No.

00:09:13.140 This is not about money. This is about our country.

00:09:15.760 Yeah. I don't want to deal with people like this. These people are un-American and I think

00:09:21.800 they're unethical and I would be absolutely immoral if I did that. Again. That's immoral. I couldn't, 0.68

00:09:30.100 I couldn't look at my, I couldn't look at myself in the mirror if I, you know.

00:09:35.120 It's just, it's very powerful people that are willing to, they really want someone

00:09:41.820 different. They want new names, whatever it is. I love you, but I got to get working.

00:09:45.540 All right. I appreciate it. I mean, I'm just, I can't believe this. I think you should go

00:09:51.000 public with this and then say, hey, these people don't want to, they don't want, they're,

00:09:55.220 I turn my key in my car and I just, I'm offended that they don't care about our country more.

00:10:02.280 I actually wish you'd just give me a counter offer this big. Give me a counter.

00:10:07.100 I can't, I can't be bought.

00:10:09.180 Come on.

00:10:11.440 Wow. Carrie Lake joins me now. Carrie, so good to have you on again. This is unbelievable.

00:10:18.740 Every time I hear it, it's shocking and I've heard it several times and it's, it, it just,

00:10:24.160 I feel like the blood drains out of my body every time I hear it.

00:10:27.280 I mean, just so the audience knows to kick it off, you are running. You did not pull yourself

00:10:31.940 out of any race and you're doing very well, uh, for right now, trying to get the, the primary win

00:10:37.320 so you can run as the Republican candidate out there and you're crushing it at the moment.

00:10:41.860 Um, so the latest poll shows me six points up, Megan. So I think that's, we're doing pretty well.

00:10:47.320 And this was, um, this conversation happened in my home 11 months ago. So this was, uh, people,

00:10:55.040 powerful people back East trying to prevent me from getting into the U S Senate race.

00:10:59.340 And honest to God, it's one of the reasons I said, I have to jump into it. If these people

00:11:05.080 back East, if these powerful people are going to try to bribe me out of politics, that tells me that

00:11:11.980 I need to jump in with both feet. And that's one of the reasons I, I ultimately decided I have to do

00:11:17.240 this. One of the interesting things on there to me is what, you know, what can we do with her,

00:11:22.280 uh, talking head? Is there some company that would take her? I mean, it's like that you used

00:11:29.200 to be a news anchor. We talked about that when you came on before they thought maybe we can just

00:11:34.020 station her someplace as a talk. I mean, does that tell you anything about who is making the offer?

00:11:39.300 Cause I, my understanding is you don't know who was behind the money.

00:11:41.680 I don't know who is. And I've thought about it many, many times. The sad thing, Megan is you could

00:11:47.540 sit and ponder for 24 hours and probably come up with a list of 400 corrupt people or entities,

00:11:53.540 or maybe even more. It could be anyone. The whole Washington DC swamp is so corrupt. So I don't know

00:11:58.960 who it is. You know, I've had my suspicions here and there, but I really don't know. Um, and you wonder

00:12:05.640 how many other people get this offer. What you wonder why good people don't get into politics because

00:12:10.220 maybe the minute they step in, they get a meeting like this and they decide to step back out. It's

00:12:16.440 disturbing. We've heard about this kind of stuff happening. I will be honest when it happened,

00:12:20.340 it was so surreal. And I was in a hurry because I was finishing up my book, finishing the edits on

00:12:26.660 my book. I know you've been there before and you have, you're under deadline. And I was getting ready

00:12:30.960 to pack for CPAC where I was going to go and be a keynote speaker there. And so I shooed him out of

00:12:36.740 the house and I got on the plane later on. Um, and I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about

00:12:41.880 at CPAC. And, you know, many times during this conversation, he said that this conversation

00:12:47.420 never happened. Don't talk about it. Don't say anything about it. And I said, I have to say

00:12:50.720 something about this. So I changed my speech the next day at CPAC and I brought this up immediately.

00:12:56.820 So I've been talking about this conversation for 11 full months. I didn't name who it was that came to

00:13:02.700 my home, but I, in very, uh, very good and sharp detail described what happened. And the mainstream

00:13:10.520 media never once contacted me and said, Hey, what was that about? Who was behind that? This is just,

00:13:16.980 um, you know, they're, they're so in cahoots with the swamp back in DC, the mainstream media is. And

00:13:23.000 that's why we're lucky to have independent people like you out there, um, where we can get information

00:13:27.940 and, and, and trust it. Well, it's, it's shocking to see how the wheels turn behind the scenes,

00:13:34.580 how you were apparently deemed unacceptable by someone, someone with a deep pocket who had a

00:13:41.360 connection to Jeff DeWitt, who was running Arizona's GOP party. And to the point where they got him to go

00:13:46.940 to you and say, Hey, would you take a bunch of money to get out now? Who was this person who,

00:13:52.460 what other candidates did they buy right out of the races? Were they all MAGA candidates who said,

00:13:57.740 yes, you can guarantee it didn't stop with just you. And it really, like, I just said yesterday,

00:14:03.320 I I'm not much for like conspiratorial. There's a cabal of people who made the decision to do all

00:14:09.300 the indictments. I don't know, but this is exactly the kind of thing that makes you think maybe there

00:14:13.860 is. Some of these conspiracy theories have come true in the past few years, as we've all seen,

00:14:20.300 you know, it's just so shocking because here, Jeff DeWitt, by the way, he resigned yesterday,

00:14:25.260 uh, was leading up the Republican party here. I endorsed him and I was looking forward to having

00:14:32.720 some good leadership out of him. And he takes the candidate who is the most popular Republican in the

00:14:37.820 state myself. I, um, there had been several polls coming out on the U S Senate race, possible

00:14:43.920 contenders who might run. And every single one of them had me not only winning, but beating everybody

00:14:51.160 and going on to win in a general. And every single one of them, um, showed me where nobody could even

00:14:57.140 come close to beating me. So you would think that the chairman of the Arizona Republican party would

00:15:02.880 say, Oh my gosh, we have to convince her to run because then the people come out. I'm a populist.

00:15:08.100 We bring the people out. We're going to get out and vote and we're going to have a huge, huge election.

00:15:12.300 But he did just the opposite, which tells me, you know, maybe he's bought and paid for as well.

00:15:17.940 Why would you want the most popular Republican in the state to not be on the ballot in a critical

00:15:23.960 year? Like 2024 have a lot of questions about why. So it's interesting. You're right. Jeff DeWitt

00:15:30.120 then resigned. And right now, as far as I can tell, he's, he's kind of claiming that he was a victim

00:15:36.780 here. He's saying, uh, she was a friend. I was employing her when she did this to me,

00:15:42.340 she breached her fiduciary duty to me as my employee, which is not Jeff the way it works,

00:15:48.400 which I'm not his employee. Yeah. That's not how good. And then he says the following, he says,

00:15:53.600 um, this offer had everything to do with her being a drag on the ticket. There are people who want to 1.00

00:15:59.260 make sure we win the election and that's it. No one believes she can get across the finish line, 0.99

00:16:03.060 particularly with independence. I definitely felt like we were in a better

00:16:06.640 position of trust because of all I had done for her. I'm blown away. She had no respect for that

00:16:12.080 at all. So what do you make of that? He wrote a two page resignation letter. And I never heard an

00:16:19.140 apology for this incredibly unethical, hinging almost on criminal behavior, never an apology

00:16:25.020 to the people of Arizona. It was a two page diatribe manifesto. It's, it's, it's almost like

00:16:30.140 he's delusional to think that was creative editing. I put 10, almost 11 minutes of this bribe

00:16:36.340 out. And I don't know how, um, you could edit that any difference. I, I laid, I laid it out

00:16:42.360 what he said. And so I don't know how that could be taken out of context. It's exactly what he said.

00:16:49.020 And, um, he never even apologized for that behavior. I'm embarrassed. Actually, I'm truly

00:16:54.060 embarrassed for him. And that he was trying to say, this is kind of normal business talk. This is

00:16:58.880 kind of how you, you get deals made. I've been in business and I've been in, uh, got lots of

00:17:04.660 friends. He was saying, which was a friendly conversation. I've got lots of friends. I've

00:17:08.580 never had a conversation like that. And I'm sure Megan, you have thousands upon thousands of people

00:17:13.840 who own businesses, work in business, who listened to you every day, who heard that and would say

00:17:19.140 that they would never, ever have a conversation like that in any way in business. And I don't know

00:17:25.520 anywhere, anybody who thinks that's normal. I just, I'm just going to take, I mean, it was,

00:17:31.120 it was explicit. How much is it going to take to make you not run, to drive the people of, of a

00:17:36.820 choice who's very, very popular in the state. And as for his concern about how you would do with

00:17:40.640 independence, I mean, the latest polling, including by the Democrat election, uh, firms

00:17:45.580 are showing you're either in the lead or right behind. I mean, you're, it's very tight looking past

00:17:51.860 the primary. I'm saying you're, you're definitely leading in the primary, but looking at the general,

00:17:55.520 this is not a case where all the Republican has no chance. You know, we need to get the most

00:18:00.160 moderate Republican. We can possibly, it's not that case. You could very well win this race if

00:18:04.880 nominated according to the polls out this month. So it does make you wonder what was really behind

00:18:10.860 it and whether it was more your alignment as you were suggesting in the conversation with Trump.

00:18:16.880 I think that's exactly what it is. The polling, our internal polling and several polls I've seen,

00:18:21.980 especially even polls that came out after the election show that I'm the most popular Republican

00:18:26.800 candidate with independence. I mean, you have to remember I was in the homes of Arizonans for 27

00:18:32.600 years, three hours a day in their living rooms. And, and, you know, I was in Democrats homes and

00:18:38.160 independence and not a week goes by that. I don't have Democrats come up to me and say,

00:18:42.480 I voted for you. You're the first Republican I ever voted for. And I don't have extreme policies.

00:18:49.820 My policies are policies that Democrats and independents want. You ask any Democrat and

00:18:55.080 independent right now, do you want the border secure? They're going to say yes. Do you want

00:18:59.440 safe streets where you can actually, especially here in Arizona, enjoy our weather, go for a bike

00:19:04.100 ride, take a hike and not have to worry about the crime that's skyrocketing. We have policies to make

00:19:09.640 sure that all Arizonans are safe policies to make sure that our kids go to school and get a world-class

00:19:14.900 education where they're actually ready for the jobs that are out there. So, you know, policies for

00:19:19.980 energy independence, once again, like president Trump brought us, the people of Arizona want those

00:19:25.300 common sense policies. So I don't know what it's about. I think it truly is about getting somebody

00:19:30.900 in there that they control. You know, I I'm not sure if this one talked about the back scratching.

00:19:36.220 He said, DC is a back scratching club and you've already made indicated you're not going to scratch

00:19:42.760 backs. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not joining the back scratching club. I'm going to start up

00:19:46.900 the ass kicking club. And that's what Washington DC needs. The fact that Megan, these people in DC 0.99

00:19:54.120 have done nothing to secure our border. When for the last few years, we've had an invasion on our

00:19:59.840 border. I mean, this is a dereliction duty. You know, it's interesting, Carrie, you said,

00:20:03.520 you said invasion early on. And I remember you got a lot of guff about it. And now we have an actual

00:20:09.780 official declaration to that extent by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott. And as I said,

00:20:15.700 at the top of the hour, it's turning into a serious constitutional crisis down there because

00:20:19.040 of the non-enforcement by the feds. A lot of the things that you said that you got, you know,

00:20:23.980 negative coverage on have come back actually to bear out. The election denialism is what sort of

00:20:32.620 party elders didn't like. But I will say this. Most of the Republican Party agrees with you,

00:20:38.840 whether it's factually true or not. Most of the Republican Party agrees with where you landed

00:20:43.180 on it. I don't want to get back into all that. But let me ask you this.

00:20:46.300 Well, and I will tell you this real quickly. Independents are concerned about how our elections

00:20:51.180 are run. Sixty plus percent of independents are concerned about fairness and honesty in our

00:20:56.580 elections. And a growing number, more than 30 percent now of Democrats say something's not right.

00:21:02.160 And all I will say is I am pushing to make sure that all voters, whether they're the most

00:21:06.740 liberal Arizonan, the most conservative, they're with the Republican Party, the Democrat and

00:21:13.120 Independent Party, the pizza party or the pool party, whatever you are, I want you to know that

00:21:17.400 when you vote, you can feel comfortable and confident that your one legal vote counted. So

00:21:22.520 that's where we want to get. I won't belabor the issue, but I'm still working to achieve that.

00:21:28.280 Good. I mean, everyone should agree on that. Okay. A couple more things from his statement,

00:21:32.460 which is very lengthy and people can find online. But he says it was selectively edited audio

00:21:37.500 of a private conversation. Now, is that true? Was it was it edited in any way other than,

00:21:43.040 you know, for time or like what did you edit? It was edited. Excuse me, I've got a frog in my

00:21:47.920 throat. It was edited just to include this part about the bribe. I thought that was the newsworthy

00:21:53.360 part. So you cut off a chunk so that the chunk that we listened to, not what we just played,

00:21:57.920 we edited that just to get the most salient points. But what you posted online, the part you put up

00:22:02.920 was a, I think Benny Johnson kind of edited down, kind of edited down. But I think we did that clip

00:22:09.080 about the bribe was about, I don't know, 10 or 11 minutes. And, you know, I had to move him out

00:22:15.140 of my house quickly. As I said, I had a lot going on. It was under a deadline with my book.

00:22:19.760 I was trying, but I'm just making sure. So, so you weren't taking like one line of his

00:22:23.940 and then slicing it and putting in a different response of yours. You know, that's, that's

00:22:28.780 what's dishonest, selective editing, as you know. Right. No, that that's not how it was. I just took

00:22:34.260 the bribe part and said, this is what's worthy. This is the reason we have an unethical person

00:22:39.120 and people need to hear this and people need to hear. I don't know how you could, I don't know how

00:22:44.460 you could selectively. I mean, he said what he said. This isn't like, uh, I pulled one sentence here

00:22:50.740 or one. Were you, he had called me, he had called me, um, and said, Hey, what are you up to? And I

00:22:57.380 said, well, I'm at home. I'm just, you know, I'm busy working. He said, I'm right around the corner.

00:23:00.800 I'm just outside of your neighborhood. And I got to come over and talk to you. And, and I, at the time

00:23:06.480 I had been talking and, uh, there'd been some word that I was thinking of getting in the Senate race.

00:23:10.920 A lot of polling had come out showing that, that nobody could beat me and that, um, we had a real shot

00:23:15.820 at taking back the Senate seat. And there were some people who were trying to talk me out of it. Some of the,

00:23:20.240 you know, non MAGA type people don't want a MAGA person in Washington, DC. And so I said, Jeff,

00:23:26.780 if this is about talking me out of the Senate, I don't have to, I don't have time for this. Oh,

00:23:29.700 no, no, no, no. I got, I got to come over. I just, what I have to tell you, I cannot do on the phone.

00:23:33.880 I have to do it in person. I got to talk to you about something you need to hear and offer. You got

00:23:38.540 to hear it. And I thought, this is weird. So he's right around the corner. I said, okay, you can come

00:23:43.140 over right now. And I put, um, I put a microphone on and I thought this could be a threat. I don't know

00:23:49.580 what he's about to say, but it gave me great concern. You ever get just like a feeling in

00:23:54.040 your stomach where you just go, something's not right here. And I'm sure glad I did. I'm sure

00:23:59.600 glad I did. I thought, you know, what's funny to me, I have to tell you, Carrie, what's funny to me

00:24:02.480 is you hear he's now indignant that you taped him in this, you know, so-called private conversation.

00:24:07.800 Yeah. At no point did the light bulb, cause he's like, she tried to make herself the hero of her own

00:24:11.940 story to make herself sound good. As she taped me, it's like, hello, at some point, the light bulb should

00:24:16.340 have gone off for you, sir, that you were having an inappropriate conversation and she wasn't taking

00:24:22.500 your bait at all. I think he's disappointed that at no point did he think to say, oh, gee, this is not

00:24:28.820 a bribe. This is just a friendly offer to what, you know, whatever. Right. So he's now saying, you

00:24:34.620 know, and to be honest, I, because he's, I'll give you the floor, but he's saying he's quitting because

00:24:39.720 you, you said you have more tapes and he doesn't want to be further embarrassed. Is that true?

00:24:45.400 Are there more tapes? He's saying that, that we threatened him with that, that threat. There's

00:24:50.180 never that threat made at all. I know he's concerned because he's been taped before. I mean,

00:24:54.900 this isn't the first time this guy has been taped. If you go online and I just saw it, somebody made me

00:24:59.800 aware of it yesterday. There's a bunch of other recordings out there that sound just like Jeff

00:25:04.600 trying to bribe other people. There's a recording of him in a conversation where he's slamming president

00:25:09.800 Trump. I mean, you'd think that this guy would learn after all these other recordings of him in

00:25:15.680 the past, where he's putting his foot in his mouth, they're being completely unethical that he should

00:25:20.580 probably shape up the way he talks and the things he says to people. So he's obviously, he's obviously

00:25:27.280 worried that there's more out there. And, you know, he's basically saying I'm resigning. He's saying

00:25:33.340 I'm resigning because there's worse stuff out there. Well, he's worried you have it. He says

00:25:38.420 that you, you threaten him. You have other conversations of so-called private conversations.

00:25:42.380 And that's, he's asking. I don't have, I don't have any other, I don't have any other recordings.

00:25:46.600 I've never taped any other recordings with Jeff at all. I've never, this is the only reason I taped

00:25:52.360 this is because it sounded highly suspect when he said, I've got to come over. I'm right outside your

00:25:57.300 neighborhood. I'm pulling in and I have to talk to you in person because what I have to say

00:26:01.740 cannot be said over the phone. I don't know about you, but a huge red flag comes up when you hear

00:26:06.640 that. And I thought, what on earth? I felt like I was in an episode of house of cards. What on earth

00:26:11.780 is going to happen here? And, um, I never even listened back to it until last this week, earlier

00:26:17.560 this week. Yeah. So that's my other question. What, what do you release it now? Well, I went to CPAC,

00:26:23.700 as I said, and I spoke about this immediately. I changed my entire speech. I said, people need to hear

00:26:29.120 what just happened to me. This is the kind of crazy stuff happening in our government and in

00:26:34.320 our politics. And so I went and spoke at CPAC a day or two later. I decided to completely change

00:26:41.320 my speech and tell the audience about this because it's so, it's so terrible. And I have been talking

00:26:46.920 about this for the last 11 months, nonstop. I do speeches all over the country. I do talks to small

00:26:54.020 groups, big groups. I've brought this up too many times to count and no media outlets even asked me

00:26:59.500 about it. It's really a shame, but just this week, I don't know why I just said, I wonder,

00:27:05.300 I never listened to that back. I wonder what that conversation sounded like. And I was sitting at the

00:27:11.040 dinner table. My daughter who's 20 was sitting there and my husband, and I pulled that up and I hit play

00:27:16.160 while we were eating dinner and our jaws dropped to the table. We were shocked. I remembered it. I

00:27:24.540 described it in all these speeches, but it was so much worse, Megan, than I even remembered it.

00:27:29.900 And my daughter said, mom, tell me that guy is no longer in, um, in Republican politics. I said,

00:27:36.440 oh yeah, he is. He's actually running the Arizona Republican party. And she said, what are you going to do

00:27:42.360 about it? You have to do something about it. That guy's that's bad. If that's the way he conducts

00:27:47.280 business, that's bad, mom. What are you going to do about it? And I said, I don't know. I don't know.

00:27:51.680 And I slept on it for a couple of days and just kept getting that kind of nagging feeling in my

00:27:56.340 stomach. And, and I felt that it needed to get out. Well, he's gone now and, uh, I don't know who's

00:28:02.400 taking over for him, but you've got your sights set on bigger things. I've got to ask you as we do the

00:28:08.580 veep stakes, uh, chats as president Trump secures this nomination. Your name comes up a lot. Is,

00:28:16.060 is that a different job you might be interested in? You know, I'm really interested in helping to

00:28:21.780 turn this country around. And we have such an opportunity here in Arizona to take back a U.S.

00:28:26.560 Senate seat. Megan, you know how big of a deal that is. The U.S. Senate is so important. We can't

00:28:31.820 have Chuck Schumer controlling them and there's an independent, uh, Mark Kelly and Kirsten Sinema keep

00:28:36.900 going. Yeah. And so we, we have a chance to take back the Senate seat from Kirsten Sinema,

00:28:42.040 who's changed and become an independent. And since she became an independent, she's become

00:28:46.400 more liberal. She's voted with Chuck Schumer a hundred percent of the time. She's the one working

00:28:50.400 on this terrible border deal. That's going to include the U S taxpayer paying for attorneys for

00:28:54.740 all of these people seeking fraudulent asylum, um, you know, claims here and wants to keep everybody 0.65

00:29:00.900 here and give them work permits and doesn't want to build the wall. So she doesn't, I don't believe 1.00

00:29:05.500 she's got a snowball's chance in Phoenix of winning. So we have a great opportunity to pick

00:29:09.000 up this seat. I think the Senate's really, really important. I want to help. I envisioned myself

00:29:13.800 in January of 2025 standing on the Senate floor during the inauguration and then getting to work

00:29:19.940 in Washington, DC. I want to help president Trump in any way, because I think he is the greatest

00:29:24.340 president. He's the man for the moment that we're in, in history. And he's the only one who will stand

00:29:29.880 up to the corruption. That's why they hate president Trump, the people back East. That's 1.00

00:29:35.340 why they hate me because they don't want people who are honest brokers who are going to DC who can't

00:29:40.240 be bought and can't be bribed. So, you know, I, I do believe that president Trump is so good and such

00:29:46.120 a great president. He doesn't really matter who his VP is. And I know that our movement has so many

00:29:51.160 great fighters. He will pick somebody great and whomever he picks, I'm going to get in line and vote

00:29:56.220 for. And I can't wait to support him. So you don't mind if it's because a lot of Trump MAGA folks who

00:30:02.880 would say hard no on someone like Nikki Haley. Do you share that feeling? Um, yeah, I do. I think

00:30:10.280 that's pretty, that's pretty obvious. I mean, she's not even a Republican and she's sitting here and just

00:30:16.240 saying horrible things about president Trump. She's losing, but staying in the race, forcing all of this

00:30:22.700 money and energy to continue to drag out her vanity project, her ego trip. And, and we are

00:30:29.020 because of that hundreds of millions have been spent on ads for people who don't have a shot at

00:30:35.520 winning. When we have an incredible candidate in president Trump, who's done the job, all of our

00:30:40.700 lives were better when he was in the white house. And he's got a plan to turn this nightmare around.

00:30:45.560 The guy brought us, you know, peace in the middle East. He brought us a strong energy policy where we're

00:30:50.480 energy dominant. I mean, I can go on and on. I know we're, we're up against it. Um, I got to ask

00:30:56.340 you about the border crisis that we're facing now. Arizona is also a border state. This is a,

00:31:00.320 this is a crisis that is building by the moment right now between Texas and the feds. How do you

00:31:05.400 see it? Well, and not to toot my own horn because I don't, I'm not trying to be boastful, but I was

00:31:11.120 calling warning, warning about this two years ago when I put out the strongest, most bold border plan,

00:31:17.540 which says if the government fails, the guarantee clause in protecting the U S citizens,

00:31:22.960 article four, section four from invasion, then the States have the right to protect their citizen.

00:31:29.000 Article one, section 10, clause three, our people are in imminent danger. Time is of the essence and

00:31:34.360 we're being invaded. And I called for doing exactly what governor Abbott is doing. And then some,

00:31:40.160 and nobody wanted to listen, except the people of Arizona. They said, that's exactly what we want

00:31:44.300 at our border. I'm happy that Greg Abbott is doing that. I was suggesting he do it earlier,

00:31:49.200 but Hey, better late than never. And it's just shocking that our federal government is so tyrannical 0.59

00:31:54.440 and so corrupt that they're spending every energy they can trying to stop States from protecting

00:32:00.420 their citizens from this invasion. You know, we we've just, our, our government has gone full

00:32:05.640 rotten to the core between fighting Texas from trying to protect their citizens. And by the way,

00:32:11.300 when, when they're protecting their citizens, they're protecting all of us because fentanyl is

00:32:15.260 pouring across people are pouring across. And then they're also at the same time, the federal

00:32:20.320 government is going after president Trump. It's, it's just, it's frightening the times that we're in.

00:32:25.440 And I think they need to stand their ground. They need to stand their ground and don't budge one

00:32:30.080 inch in Texas. If I could go over to Texas and help protect that border myself, I would. And I know

00:32:35.980 there are millions of Americans who feel the same way. Millions of Americans who want to stand strong

00:32:40.820 and protect the border of this great nation. Otherwise we won't have a country much longer.

00:32:45.920 Well, using, using the bully pulpit and running for office are two great ways of helping to

00:32:50.180 Carrie Lake, a pleasure to see you again. Thank you so much for coming on.

00:32:54.280 Thank you so much for having me on. And thanks for the work you do, Megan. We, we are so appreciative

00:32:59.080 of truthful journalists that are out there. You know, this is, we've got so many people putting out

00:33:05.340 lies and, uh, opinion and you put out the truth and we, we need you and we thank you for what you

00:33:12.100 do. Oh, I appreciate it. All the best to you and good luck. Thank you so much. All right. Wow.

00:33:18.500 Unbelievable story. Isn't that unbelievable? It's crazy to actually hear it, you know, for yourself,

00:33:22.900 what goes on behind closed doors, uh, in trying to decide who we get to vote on, who we get to vote

00:33:29.620 on. Uh, sorry, Jeff did not work out by the way. If you want to come on and offer your side of the

00:33:34.120 story, you're welcome here, sir. I understand you may have some time on your hands. Uh, we'll be

00:33:38.280 right back with Andrew Klavan. The fight between the state of Texas and the Biden administration

00:33:46.300 is escalating. And how, as Texas continues to deploy razor wire at the border in an attempt to

00:33:53.720 prevent migrants from crossing. Governor Greg Abbott has issued a lengthy statement saying the

00:33:58.800 executive branch has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting states, including

00:34:03.440 immigration laws. And in his words, the quote, refusal to protect the states has inflicted

00:34:10.460 unprecedented harm. End quote. My next guest is Andrew Klavan. He's hosted the Andrew Klavan

00:34:16.020 show on the daily wire. He also has a new sub stack with his equally brilliant son, Spencer

00:34:21.880 Klavan. It's called the new Jerusalem, which we'll get to in just a bit. Andrew, welcome back

00:34:27.440 to the show. Great to have you. Good to see you, Megan. So it's getting, it's getting very tense at

00:34:33.480 the Southern border with Governor Abbott accusing President Biden of violating his oath to faithfully

00:34:41.860 execute immigration laws, um, saying that he instructed agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the

00:34:49.700 detention of illegals, um, and that he's done things like enticed illegals away from legal entry points,

00:34:57.000 um, into dangerous waters of the Rio Grande and so on saying you flouted your responsibility, uh, under

00:35:03.780 the federal immigration law. And then adding that under carrier Lake just referenced it, article four,

00:35:09.960 section four of the constitution and article one, section 10, clause three of the constitution. Um,

00:35:15.180 the feds have an obligation to protect the States against invasion and the States have a sovereign

00:35:20.120 interest in protecting their own borders. In other words, it's on basically daring Biden to go down

00:35:28.040 there as Supreme court, just green lit them to do it, to go down there and cut those, those wires to 0.97

00:35:34.620 cut that, that wire fence. The Biden administration got the green light the other day from SCOTUS to do it

00:35:39.480 Monday. I think it was so far. They haven't Andrew, but if they go down there,

00:35:44.240 and Texas stops them, like, I don't know what's going to happen, but we are, we truly are facing

00:35:50.460 a constitutional crisis right now. Your thoughts. Oh, there's no, no question. It's a crisis, but good

00:35:54.860 for Abbott for basically blowing up the narrative of the left of the Biden administration on the left

00:36:01.600 because they keep blaming Republicans for this. They keep saying the border is secure. They say it's

00:36:06.520 not secure, but it's fine. And their basic argument always is that you're a bad person. If you don't

00:36:13.200 like homeless people living on your streets, if you don't like people breaking into your country, 0.98

00:36:17.080 if you don't like high crime, when these criminals are such poor, mistreated people,

00:36:21.720 you're a bad person for not liking those things. And they're just blowing that up first by sending

00:36:26.580 all of these migrants into leftist cities. So, you know, that Boston is keeping them at the airport 0.99

00:36:32.260 and New York is filling up their hotels. And also now by showing that not only is the Biden

00:36:38.340 administration not securing the border, it's stopping Texas from securing the border. And it 0.62

00:36:44.240 is a genuine constitutional crisis because a lot of people on the right were angry at the Supreme Court

00:36:50.180 for knocking down the lower court's order that they couldn't remove, that the feds couldn't remove

00:36:55.600 the barbed wire. But back in the day when Trump was in office, the right was arguing that the president

00:37:01.620 had complete control of border law and that anything that he wanted to do by executive order was

00:37:06.940 thereby illegal. So it really, it really was not the Supreme Court's fault. I think there really

00:37:11.780 is an open question. Abbott is making a terrific argument. He's making the argument that not only

00:37:18.060 the constitution, but just the social contract, the reason we turn over our freedoms and our rights,

00:37:24.340 some of our freedoms and our rights to a government is because they promised to protect us. They promised

00:37:29.060 to protect us, our property, they promised to protect our lives. And the federal government is failing

00:37:33.900 to do that. And they're openly failing to do that. This is a throwback to the Obama administration's

00:37:39.620 decision not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act. The idea that our legislators have the power

00:37:45.740 to pass a law, but the president can just say, no, I'm not going to enforce it, which basically makes

00:37:50.120 him the king. If you can basically throw away a law, you become the king. And so everything that the

00:37:55.080 Biden administration is doing seems to me a violation of the rule of law. I think Governor Abbott has the

00:38:00.860 better of the constitutional argument, but he's also got a much better narrative going now. He's

00:38:07.020 showing the people who are very concerned, according to the polls, about our open border,

00:38:12.700 as they should be. He's showing the people that the Biden administration is not doing its basic job

00:38:17.780 of keeping us safe, of keeping the state uninvaded. And I just think he's winning this argument,

00:38:23.740 hands down. He is winning the argument. That's the thing. So the Supreme, what happened was the

00:38:29.600 Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an injunction saying to the feds, keep out. You cannot go mess

00:38:36.420 with Texas, except under very limited circumstances, emergency circumstances. You cannot cut down the

00:38:42.000 razor wire. And the Supreme Court lifted that injunction that had been placed on the feds.

00:38:48.600 So the feds are now free to go try to cut down border wire. And Texas, I mean, what Governor Abbott

00:38:55.540 is saying is we're going to build more, which he can do. That actually doesn't flout the Supreme

00:39:00.740 Court order. That's right. But if he prevents the feds from cutting down the wire, then he's

00:39:09.500 potentially in violation of the Supreme Court order. And so they've got to be very careful about not

00:39:15.540 flouting the order, like not doing anything to get themselves in any legal. Like right now,

00:39:19.680 they haven't done anything unlawful at all. And the keep the merit, keep the argument on the merits of

00:39:25.340 who's got the obligation. Does, does Texas's ability as written into the constitution to protect itself

00:39:31.300 against invasion, Trump, these federal immigration statutes that the Biden administration is saying

00:39:37.960 it has the right to enforce and only it has the right to enforce, you know, the constitution does,

00:39:42.560 does Trump a federal statute. So like, we're kind of ramping it up on who's got the prior claim.

00:39:47.300 We'll talk about it with Dershowitz, but to your point, as long as Abbott has a legal leg to stand

00:39:53.800 on, he's winning in every other way. The PR war is on. And if Biden is forced to send agents down

00:40:02.020 there, Andrew, to cut down those wires, every news organization in the country will be forced to send

00:40:09.020 a camera and to air it, and it will stay on loop between now and November.

00:40:13.920 This is, this is the brilliant part of it because everything that the Biden administration has done

00:40:18.860 up till now has seen, has been, or at least has seemed to be passive. They don't have to do anything

00:40:24.520 to open the border. They keep saying, send us more money because we need more border agents,

00:40:28.780 but all they do with the border agents is process people into the country. So the more money we send

00:40:33.560 them, the more we're actually aiding this invasion, which is ridiculous. But this is an active

00:40:38.220 thing that they have to do. They have to basically say, we want these borders open. And once again,

00:40:43.760 even if they do that, even if Biden somehow takes over the National Guard, which he has some right

00:40:49.340 to do, you know, in terms of, in terms of history, he has some right to do that. He's actually taking

00:40:55.780 the action that says, I want these people pouring into the country. Nobody, but the farthest people 1.00

00:41:00.760 on the left want people pouring into the country. We've never had it before. It can't be done.

00:41:05.660 It's especially bad now that we have a government and an establishment, not just the government,

00:41:10.600 but our entire cultural establishment that doesn't really believe in America, so isn't in favor of

00:41:16.080 assimilation. So you not only have people coming in, you have more people coming in that could be

00:41:20.360 assimilated. Plus you have this massive establishment calling us racist, saying we're systemically racist,

00:41:25.740 saying our history is awful, our stature should be torn down. So there's no way to assimilate these

00:41:29.860 people and teach them to become, you know, potentially good citizens. They've got the entire system

00:41:35.100 rigged to overturn what has been an incredibly successful nation. I don't think that that is a

00:41:41.720 majority idea in any way, in any manner of means. And it's jet fuel for Donald Trump. I mean, basically

00:41:48.620 the guy who's been saying build a wall all this time, it makes him look great.

00:41:52.660 Well, that's a lot of people have been asking the question, does Biden know he's running against Trump?

00:41:57.340 Like, does he know Trump is going to be his opponent? Because he seems to be doing everything

00:42:02.700 possible to play right into Trump's, you know, strongest hand.

00:42:07.260 Well, on the one hand, it does seem to me that Trump, Trump is still in some ways, the weakest

00:42:13.220 opponent he could have in the general election because of the way he offends

00:42:17.040 independents and suburban women. And that's, that's just numbers that has nothing to do with 1.00

00:42:21.000 anything but, but the numbers. But, but at the same time, Biden now has a popularity rating,

00:42:26.500 I think of six guys in Delaware who used to know him. I mean, I don't know who is in favor of this

00:42:31.380 administration anymore. So now you've got the real possibility that maybe Trump can't win,

00:42:37.860 but maybe Biden could lose. And so these, this strategy that they've had, that people hate MAGA

00:42:42.760 and they've managed to demonize MAGA so much, you know, may not work. It may backfire. There's a

00:42:48.220 really interesting thing going on in the country right now, which is people are starting to wake up

00:42:52.720 to the hysteria of the media, this full court press. I mean, you can watch just for laughs,

00:42:59.200 you can sit back and watch these super cuts of the media talking about what Trump will do in their

00:43:04.400 imagination. If he becomes president again, you know, he could shoot his wife over office and get 0.90

00:43:09.400 away with it. He could, you know, he's going to send us all to Gitmo. He's going to arrest all his 0.94

00:43:13.320 opponents and all this stuff. And Trump loves this stuff because it makes them look like idiots and he 1.00

00:43:17.520 can even play into it. And the more he gets them excited, the stupider they look. But even Jonathan 1.00

00:43:23.020 Chait, a hyper liberal, a big supporter of Biden, a hater of Trump in New York magazine. So people are

00:43:29.060 getting tired of this. They're just exhausted by the hysteria and the fact that the hysteria just isn't

00:43:34.620 true. I mean, Donald Trump can be a very offensive character. His manner is off-putting to many, many

00:43:41.100 people, but his policies are center-right at most. They're really center-right and center-left. So when you

00:43:48.220 start to look at his policies and you start to think, well, you know, he did a better job as

00:43:51.860 president than Biden, that's A. I mean, I could do a better job as president than Biden and I can't

00:43:56.440 even balance a checkbook. But he did do a better job than Biden and his policies are just not that

00:44:03.040 offensive to really anybody. And that's coming through to people. It's a really interesting

00:44:07.840 moment. People are waking up in a lot of ways to this leftist idea that somehow we're bad guys

00:44:15.020 if we disagree with their crummy policies. The problem for Biden on this immigration thing is

00:44:21.480 the country's mood has changed. And I understand Democrat Inc. is pro-open borders, period. But

00:44:28.580 real live Democrats living in various cities have had it, right? Like you're seeing that lawsuit in

00:44:36.400 Chicago where they're pushing back against the illegals taking over. The Illinois governor openly

00:44:42.920 begging for mercy on Governor Abbott sending all the illegals up there. The New York mayor who's

00:44:49.160 been Chicago mayor who is begging for it and the Illinois governor both saying that they need a

00:44:54.200 reprieve. And then over in New York, you've got Mayor Adams who's been out there openly saying we

00:44:57.920 can't take anymore. The city is going to implode. These are Democrats who, like, I just can't get past

00:45:05.900 if there is a visual of the feds not just not enforcing but actively opening. I mean, there was a

00:45:11.900 Babylon Bee headline the other day saying the Biden administration takes down razor wires to roll

00:45:16.300 out red carpet for illegals, right? That's going to be the metaphor going into November. 0.94

00:45:22.420 Well, you know what was really interesting that they recently had that ridiculous thing in Davos,

00:45:26.260 the World Economic Forum, which is the, you know, that's basically the headquarters of globalism.

00:45:31.240 That's the place where they're going to solve all our problems by the sheer brilliance of their own,

00:45:35.240 you know, minds. And they're not going to take into account national borders. National borders are a

00:45:39.660 thing of the past and all this. If you look back a couple of years ago, the name of the Davos meeting

00:45:44.940 was the Great Reset. They were going to use COVID. They were going to reset everything. All this stuff

00:45:50.120 we had about morality and nationalism and old-fashioned belief in God, all that stuff was all going to go

00:45:55.740 away because they were going to deem it gone. They were just going to eradicate it from their height

00:46:00.640 in Switzerland. This year's Davos meeting was called trying to win back trust because

00:46:07.120 they've messed up everything they touched. You know, it's like this COVID thing came up and

00:46:14.660 everything they did was wrong. And it's like, please trust us again. But it never occurs to them

00:46:19.600 in order to get trust. You have to be trustworthy. But there were a lot of people, including Obama's

00:46:24.720 old pal, Jamie Dimon from JP Morgan. There were a lot of people who stood up at Davos and said,

00:46:29.660 you know, you keep demonizing Donald Trump, but he was right about a lot of things. The head of the

00:46:35.540 Heritage Foundation did it best where he just got up and he said, you know, China, immigration,

00:46:41.160 transgenderism, these are the things that the right is right about. And we have to start thinking about

00:46:46.280 that. And it wasn't just one person or two people. It was a lot of people who were saying the same

00:46:50.700 thing. These guys have been humiliated, A, by their own incompetence, but B, after a while, you know,

00:46:56.800 we're not living in a three network media situation anymore. We're living in an open

00:47:02.380 information age. And especially with Elon Musk taking over Twitter, but even beyond that,

00:47:07.680 new spreads. You know, we start to find out that the things that were called conspiracy theories

00:47:12.480 were true. We start to find out that the things we were told by the people we were supposed to trust

00:47:16.680 in the government were false. And they keep coming back and using these terms, conspiracy theories and

00:47:22.300 far right people. And we just think, well, far right people are just us. It's just normal people

00:47:27.080 who want things to go the way that they successfully have gone. You know, this is still, if you get out

00:47:33.440 of New York, if you get out of Washington, DC, this is still an incredibly tolerant country. This is a

00:47:38.880 country where people marry across racial borders, where they live together in perfect harmony, or if not

00:47:44.560 perfect harmony, at least human harmony. And the fact that they keep telling us how evil we are just

00:47:49.740 doesn't mesh with the people that we know. I mean, I know a lot of Democrats who are sitting there

00:47:54.400 scratching their heads and saying, you know, I don't agree with this. The only thing I know is

00:47:58.260 that I can't stand Trump. Well, that's not going to take, that's not going to last forever. Ultimately,

00:48:03.420 policies matter and policies do change people's minds. And people are just tired of being told

00:48:08.060 they're a bad person if they don't let them tear down the country. Yeah, they may not like Trump.

00:48:14.300 I don't think many of those people are thinking, but I really love that Joe Biden.

00:48:17.700 If you're a diehard Dem, you feel that way. But I think a lot of the people you're referring to are

00:48:21.360 like, they're not, they're also not feeling like they love him and certainly not Kamala Harris.

00:48:25.460 So in the end, if you really do have to hold your nose and vote for one or the other, you're going

00:48:30.380 to vote for the one whose policies are going to improve your life. That's Trump's advantage. I

00:48:35.540 recognize the polling on independence, which, you know, we've spent a lot of time talking about and

00:48:39.900 will over the next year. But that's, that's the bet of the people who think Trump can win.

00:48:44.660 Stand by. I want to get to one of the things you mentioned in particular, which is the collapse

00:48:49.260 of so many of these dishonest media outlets. Updates on that today. Andrew stays with us. Don't go away.

00:48:58.580 My guest today, Andrew Klavan, author of The House of Love and Death. Andrew, speaking of death,

00:49:06.440 the media is dying. The mainstream media and these ridiculously untrustworthy outlets are going down

00:49:12.000 left and right to the point where we need to talk about it. So just today, Business Insider

00:49:17.460 announced it's laying off 8% of its staff, which is considerable. The Washington Post just had

00:49:23.940 massive layoffs. The LA Times announced a huge round of layoffs earlier this week. One of the

00:49:30.740 most severe in the newspapers, 142 year history. CNN's reporting that it was 115 journalists,

00:49:37.880 more than 20% of the newsroom got the ax. The Sports Illustrated essentially closed its doors

00:49:45.520 last week. And we could, I could keep going. All of this led to, this is like a legit problem. I think

00:49:54.320 it's a good, it's a, I mean, with all due respect to those who lost their jobs, I have empathy for

00:49:57.620 them, but I do think the collapse of the mainstream media is not bad. It's just desserts for the way

00:50:02.520 they cover the news, but it's led to some, some meltdowns by people who still think that they're

00:50:07.980 at the top of the influence cycle and don't want to see any sort of consequences for the way these

00:50:15.080 outlets have covered the news over the past few years, which brings me just for a little sampling

00:50:20.860 to Taylor Lorenz, who switched from her COVID hysteria for a day to media hysteria. A lot of

00:50:28.520 what she says, not all, a lot of what she says here is true, but just take a listen.

00:50:32.760 Our journalism industry is basically in a free fall. Today, the Los Angeles Times laid off 115

00:50:38.220 employees. But what's really dark is this is just the latest in months and months and months of layoffs

00:50:44.380 in the media industry. In fact, tens of thousands of journalists have been laid off in the past year.

00:50:50.280 Pretty much the entire digital media ecosystem that myself and a lot of other millennial journalists

00:50:54.900 came up in has been completely hollowed out. And it's not just digital media sites. Local news has

00:50:59.960 been obliterated. The newspaper industry is cratering. Radio is essentially dead aside from NPR,

00:51:06.280 which has been gutted. Even mainstream national media outlets owned by billionaires, like the Washington

00:51:11.300 Post, where I work and the Atlantic, where I used to work, have done layoffs. If you're a young 0.65

00:51:15.860 journalist, say there's almost no on ramp to traditional journalism. Even if you do get a

00:51:20.140 job, journalists' salaries have been stagnant and even declined. And by the way, we don't make that

00:51:24.580 much to begin with. I don't think people understand how bad the world would be without journalists.

00:51:29.640 Well, I love my favorite part of it is radio aside from NPR is dead. Like no clue that there is a huge

00:51:40.540 and thriving right wing radio ecosystem, Sirius XM thriving. We're not close to closing our doors

00:51:49.760 like some of the outlets that she's right. So it's like if Taylor doesn't listen to it, she's with

00:51:54.420 the WAPO. It doesn't exist, Andrew. But the larger zoomed out look is media is hurting. It's endangered.

00:52:02.640 And there's a very good reason for it. Your thoughts?

00:52:04.420 Well, that's exactly right. I mean, I too hate to laugh at other people's misfortune,

00:52:10.120 but I just can't help it. I mean, my show, my podcast on Friday is entitled Die Sports Illustrated,

00:52:17.760 Die. You know, I'm a real sports fan, a big NFL fan. I loved Sports Illustrated. Five years ago,

00:52:26.680 I publicly canceled my subscription so publicly that they actually had to go on Hugh Hewitt's show to

00:52:32.520 defend themselves, but they couldn't defend themselves except by attacking me. The reason

00:52:37.600 was that at some moment, the thought enters these people's head that their reason for being journalists

00:52:45.640 is not to report the news. Their reason for being movie makers is not to make movies. The reason for

00:52:50.660 being TV people is not to entertain us. No, it's to teach us their higher superior reality and teach us

00:52:57.380 why we are not deserving until we raise ourselves to their moral standards. Sports Illustrated, which

00:53:04.520 10, 15 years ago was still a terrific venue to find out about sports, started preaching, A,

00:53:11.500 about how George W. Bush was a terrible president, but B, about how God was a terrible God. This was

00:53:16.460 what caused me to cancel my subscription. I don't care if you hate God. I don't care if you attack God.

00:53:22.600 I care if you attack God when you're supposed to be telling me the score of the game. That was your

00:53:27.580 job. Your job was to tell me about football. They started to tell me how these idiot sports guys are

00:53:33.820 praying before a game and how awful that was. Drew Brees was talking about faith. What could he possibly 1.00

00:53:39.640 mean by that? It was just absurd. They moved on from that because you do move on from that. It is

00:53:45.840 logical once you get rid of God to get rid of all human standards because all the human standards are based

00:53:50.660 on our sense of reality, our sense of a spiritual reality as well as a physical reality. So once you

00:53:55.800 get rid of God, all standards are gone. So now they start putting on the annual swimsuit thing,

00:54:03.480 which was basically a cheap sex thrill that they would send out to sports fans. And you could look at

00:54:08.960 very beautiful girls in very skimpy bathing suits. And suddenly they put an overweight model on the 1.00

00:54:15.760 front and we're supposed to all say, Oh, now thank you for teaching us instead of looking at a beautiful

00:54:20.620 girl in a swimsuit, which is why I'm here. And now you are now teaching me that I have to really look

00:54:26.060 at fat people in a new way. And Jordan Peterson is being reeducated because God knows the one thing

00:54:31.360 Jordan Peterson is lacking is education. I mean, you know, read a book, read a book, Jordan.

00:54:36.720 He's being reeducated because he said, it's not pretty. You're not pretty. If you're pouring, 1.00

00:54:40.880 you're so fat that you're pouring out of your bikini. Nobody wants to be mean. Nobody wants to 0.94

00:54:45.800 pick on people, but you force people into this situation. And the way the left has done this

00:54:50.440 is by violating any human standard. They force us to push back and say, no, a man can't become a

00:54:57.180 woman. No, a gay marriage is not the same as a marriage between a man and a woman. And then they 0.99

00:55:01.680 get to call us bad guys. They get to call us bigots. And so once again, it's this idea that if you

00:55:07.820 don't accept their complete distortion of reality, their complete reversal of the moral order,

00:55:12.940 you are the bad guy. And so watching them fall down, especially watching, I love watching the

00:55:18.300 New York Times. These are the small pleasures of life, Megan. I love watching the New York Times

00:55:22.200 cover these things without mentioning the woke factor. Sports Illustrated is dying because it went

00:55:27.860 woke. The LA Times is dying because it's woke. That's why Washington Post is dying too. They're not

00:55:32.540 dying because the internet was invented. They're dying because they don't tell the truth and they don't tell

00:55:37.060 the truth about anything, even the most basic things in life that we know, like a man can't 1.00

00:55:41.080 become a woman. I mean, that's only, it just happens to be the most obvious one, but all of the things

00:55:46.600 that they say and all of their standards are not human standards. They're not the standards that have

00:55:50.740 upheld us for thousands and thousands of years. They're just nonsense. And so people are turning

00:55:56.280 them off and they deserve it. And it's hard not to celebrate. It is just a quick note. I, there was a

00:56:02.700 reporter for the guardian who tweeted out a woman who tweeted out something to the effect of,

00:56:06.720 you know, there's nobody, none of these, no women actually believe that the trans thing is impossible.

00:56:15.300 All real women are allies to the trans community. There's just a couple, like a couple hundred 1.00

00:56:20.460 transphobes who claim to speak for women who are out there causing problems. And then it was great 1.00

00:56:25.900 because of course, Twitter just unloaded on this reporter. Like you are so clueless. You have no idea

00:56:31.600 what you're talking about. Right? Like, because again, just like Taylor Lawrence, if I don't see

00:56:36.480 it, it doesn't exist. If I don't listen to anything other than NPR, it must not be out there. Like I

00:56:41.780 guess Sean Hannity failed in radio. Okay. Keep telling yourself that Taylor. Um, I guess Howard

00:56:47.280 Stern, he's not getting any, okay. You know, it's like, there's a whole ecosystem that you might not

00:56:52.160 be tapped into. So anyway, um, the LA times is a great example of this. Their headlines that people

00:56:58.940 have pulled in the wake of their layoffs are absolutely stunning. I, even, I didn't realize

00:57:04.620 how bad it was. Um, and I was reminded, first of all, one of the people who got laid off was

00:57:09.040 Jean Guerrero, who is the person who wrote the Larry elder is a white supremacist article.

00:57:16.320 Remember Larry elder. The audience doesn't know that he was running for a governor at the time to,

00:57:24.700 to take down Gavin Newsom. And she thought it would be great to write a column about how he's

00:57:30.120 the black face of white supremacy. Um, as she gets fired, she wants us to know I was the only, 0.84

00:57:35.220 only Latina columnist for the opinion desk. Oh no, the only Latina on the opinion desk. Well, 0.77

00:57:41.400 that should save you. I mean, you're a Latinx because you can't go. Um, but anyway, so a couple of 1.00

00:57:47.780 the LA times headlines were absolutely disgusting as were the Washington posts. Hold on. I'm pulling,

00:57:53.920 um, yeah, LA times going to read you a couple. Okay. White drivers are polluting the air breathed 1.00

00:58:03.020 by LA people of color. Look at this is courtesy of X user, Kristen mag, um, editorial, bring on the 0.98

00:58:10.220 crackdown. The unvaccinated must be held accountable. Another one column mocking anti-vaxxers. COVID deaths 0.93

00:58:16.620 is ghoulish. Yes, but may be necessary. They wonder why they're going out of business slowly,

00:58:23.660 but surely, Andrew, we, I'm sorry to not to mock their deaths, but I have to.

00:58:30.680 That's the thing that headline especially struck me because I thought, yeah, I feel the same way

00:58:35.620 about you guys. And it is, you know, in one way, the opinion page, I suppose you have to give them a

00:58:42.160 little latitude on the opinion page, but really when you start to call Larry Elder, the black face 1.00

00:58:47.440 of white supremacy, it's just clear that you are a babbling idiot who never leaves his room. And this, 1.00

00:58:53.240 this, that what you said before is exactly it. The great weakness, and I've been pointing this out

00:58:58.160 for years, the great weakness of the media, the take, the leftist takeover of the media is that it

00:59:03.080 put them in the position where they could not hear what everybody else was saying. They literally could

00:59:08.280 not hear that people were laughing at them. It always reminded me of like that scene in singing

00:59:14.040 in the rain where they open the curtain and you find out the real singer is standing behind the

00:59:18.100 woman mouthing the words. We found out that the left was standing behind the media giving, telling

00:59:23.220 them what to say, and they didn't know the curtain was open. And so this, it was really a design flaw

00:59:30.900 in their takeover of the culture that it caused them not to hear the people. So what do they have to do?

00:59:36.560 They have to complain that the problem is Elon Musk, letting the far right people who don't believe

00:59:42.040 that their children should be trans or queered, you know, the people who believe in what people 0.94

00:59:46.960 have believed for thousands and thousands of years, those are the people that are the problem

00:59:51.700 and not letting them speak will solve the problem. And I just think it has gone beyond that. It is

00:59:56.900 exactly, it is exactly what the Catholic church tried to do when they invented the printing press.

01:00:01.540 It is the exact same thing. It is, you know, no, we are going to be in control of what translations

01:00:07.820 of the Bible people read, what opinions people read. And if you don't go along with those opinions,

01:00:12.720 we're going to burn you at the stake. I don't think so. Didn't work then, isn't going to work 0.99

01:00:17.120 now. This flow of information is the most important subject. Obama and the rest who want to shut it down

01:00:23.140 are absolutely right about that. That is the fight we're in, but I just don't see how they win it

01:00:27.600 without crushing people and crushing people is not a good look for the free West. It has never

01:00:33.020 really worked in the West. Every time you do it, the country falls apart. The fact is,

01:00:37.120 the fact is when you oppress people, you can't both oppress people and have a free market. This is what

01:00:42.080 China is finding out right now. You know, people told us of China is the future. I used to shake my

01:00:48.160 head and say, how do you have a free market without free people? You can't do it. Free people are what,

01:00:53.280 who create ideas. Ideas are not created in the government. They're created by guys in their

01:00:57.340 garage who then get rich and forget that the next guy who's going to create the next idea is in his

01:01:02.320 garage right now. And then they start to shut things down. You just can't hold on to power in

01:01:08.080 the same way in a free bubbling creative society. And if you do hold on to power, all that free

01:01:14.840 bubbling creativity that makes you rich goes away. That's the choice you have to make. And people have

01:01:20.880 made the same choice in the West for centuries, which is we want to be free. This information is

01:01:27.180 everything. It is the definition of the problem we have, but it's also the definition of the

01:01:31.780 solution. The more voices, the better. And the more of these voices who have tried to shut everybody

01:01:36.320 else down, the more they are silenced, the better for everybody. That's exactly right. The LA Times,

01:01:42.660 it doesn't have to go, you know, full conservative ink. It can just offer fair coverage or a varying,

01:01:50.540 you know, attempted opinions. And it, and it will do a lot for its credibility and its ability to stay

01:01:55.720 open, but it won't, you know what I mean? Like take a, take a page out of Sirius XM's book where

01:02:01.780 you've got the, you know, Patriot radio channel where it's all conservatives. And then you have

01:02:06.200 more woke programmers like Stern. That's how he describes himself. You've got me, whatever.

01:02:11.380 The point is, it's not that businesses aren't going to suffer during the Biden economy. Of course,

01:02:16.060 they're going to suffer during the Biden economy. Many businesses have had layoffs,

01:02:18.940 but there's a reason all these media companies are suffering so badly and we're getting into it.

01:02:25.920 Not only have they abandoned all pretense at objectivity, but they've taken on like a particular

01:02:31.260 cultural stance that is disgusting to probably a good 65% of the country. So like, what is the

01:02:38.240 business model when your sports illustrated in the few times you're supposed to deviate from sports

01:02:42.820 back in the day was to, as you put point out, to put on Elle McPherson and launch the supermodel

01:02:47.500 careers and the most beautiful women we've ever seen. And you change it to putting on a trans person 1.00

01:02:53.260 who's a man hiding what, who knows what under his bikini and telling the guys they need to like it.

01:03:00.400 You'll like it. That's why they went from 3.4 million in circulation per issue to closing their

01:03:07.420 doors. It's over for sports illustrated. They're now saying it's well, you never know they could come

01:03:11.500 back. Okay, whatever. We'll see. But this is not what people want to see when they're, you know,

01:03:17.420 trying to feel kind of sexy and turned on. They don't want to see some man posing as a woman. 0.93

01:03:23.060 And you can't convince them that they do. And what you said before, I totally agree with this.

01:03:27.920 You know, when I, when I first started and it's a long time ago now, but when I first started railing

01:03:31.980 about the culture, I used to say, I don't want a conservative culture. I am a conservative,

01:03:35.920 but I, I like seeing left-wing movies. I just don't want only to see left-wing movies. I don't want

01:03:40.400 the right to be blacklisted as it has been. They, they, they won't admit it,

01:03:44.360 but it is just true. You cannot make a conservative movie. No, I want to see all the

01:03:49.640 ideas. That's how it works. That's how good ideas rise. That's how bad ideas fall. When you have all

01:03:54.860 the ideas and we know why they have to shut down the right, because the right has better ideas.

01:03:59.140 The right is at least in touch with a reality outside itself. It is at least in touch with the

01:04:04.320 fact that in order for your ideas to work, no matter how virtuous they are, no matter how virtuous

01:04:10.140 your ideas are, people have to thrive. Countries have to thrive. We want to be prosperous. We want

01:04:15.760 to be creative. We want to be free. And if your ideas are ever so virtuous, but they shut that down,

01:04:21.740 hit the road. We don't want it, but at least, at least let the argument take place. And that has

01:04:26.760 been the big flaw. The big flaw has not been to my mind, there are people on the right who don't agree

01:04:31.380 with me, but to my mind, the big flaw has not been that there are people speaking leftism. It's that

01:04:36.400 they will not let the right speak. And they have acquired enough power to almost shut them down

01:04:41.340 almost, but you got to do it completely or else you're going to lose. They can't do it completely.

01:04:45.640 They are going to lose. They're losing right now. And it's bliss to watch. I'm sorry.

01:04:49.780 Yeah, I know. Well, that's, I, you know, I've said, I tweeted out today and I stand by this.

01:04:54.120 The future of media is independent connections between the audience and a host, an anchor, a journalist,

01:05:02.080 who they trust. That's the future. People don't trust these corporate conglomerates.

01:05:06.040 anymore. They've just been exposed as having an agenda that may or may not conform with what the

01:05:10.360 audience wants time and time again. So you have to find somebody who you trust and make a real

01:05:16.420 decision about whether you're going to entrust your beautiful mind to that person. You know,

01:05:20.260 is it a truth teller? Is it somebody who's honest? Is it somebody who corrects their own mistakes?

01:05:24.260 That's the future, you know, whether it's me or you or Ben or anybody, Tucker, whoever your cup of tea

01:05:30.020 is. And ideally you have a few who you trust and you take them in. But I don't, I don't see the

01:05:36.340 future being CNN. And by the way, they're hemorrhaging too. Their average just this past

01:05:41.000 week in prime time was down below the channel that Tammy Faye Baker started back. 0.99

01:05:46.720 But you know, you, you put yourself on the line, Megan. I put myself on the line. If you come in

01:05:55.140 and just give Megan Kelly's reality, nobody's going to listen to you. They listen to you because

01:05:58.920 you not only describe reality as you see it, you let other people come on and talk about how they

01:06:03.620 see it. And you're not afraid. You're not afraid to invite the left on to come and talk about what

01:06:07.800 they see. You know, that's the way everything should operate. I am absolutely unafraid of the left

01:06:13.980 won't come on my show because it'll ruin their careers just to be seen with me. But still I

01:06:18.880 invite them all the time because I want, I like arguments. I mean, you know, it doesn't have to be

01:06:24.040 mean. It doesn't have to be nasty. I want to hear what people say. I don't think that every word that

01:06:28.900 comes out of a leftist mouth is, is untrue. Uh, not every word, you know, a lot of them, but not

01:06:34.020 everyone. And so I want, I want to hear what they have to say. And I, I mean, I do think sometimes the

01:06:39.460 left, because all they see is trouble. All they see is our problems with our country. Sometimes

01:06:44.140 they hit upon a problem that actually needs a good right wing solution, but that left is the

01:06:48.780 one to identify because conservatives sometimes want everything to stay the way it is. Now you

01:06:53.060 want a free, you know, open discussion, but that's what they've tried to shut down. And they have tried

01:06:58.520 to shut it down for one reason and one reason only they can't win the debate. It's just like, you know,

01:07:03.640 they want to expand the Supreme court because they've lost the majority. They want to change the

01:07:08.800 electoral college because they lost an election. They want to shut down free speech because they're

01:07:13.820 losing the argument. That's the only reason they do it. And I, I'm glad to see Americans pushing

01:07:18.480 back, you know, Americans can be too docile as they were during the pandemic. Yeah. We're not

01:07:23.240 your hostage anymore. I know. I feel like the difference between me and many of my audience

01:07:29.120 members, I would venture to say most is we may not agree with the left, but we don't hate the left

01:07:35.280 and we don't want to silence the left. And the left is very different about people who are over

01:07:40.600 on the other side of the aisle and we feel it. And we have a lot of purchasing power. And so we're

01:07:45.580 turning off of their channels and we're stopping the purchase of their magazines and their newspapers.

01:07:50.740 And these are the natural consequences of that whole ecosystem imploding because of its own choices.

01:07:57.080 Okay. That brings me to, it's kind of a good segue into the next thing I want to talk to you about,

01:08:01.480 which is before you became Andrew Klavan, social commentator and political commentator that we

01:08:07.220 know and love. Um, and the author, of course you were in Hollywood. You were a very, very famous

01:08:12.320 screenwriter, award-winning screenwriter who wrote like big, big hits. And we're about to go into the

01:08:17.520 Oscars and there's controversy as you may have seen because Barbie didn't get enough nominations.

01:08:27.580 All right. So the, the new feminists are very, very angry that Margot Robbie did not get nominated for 0.98

01:08:35.060 best actress and Greta Gerwig did not get nominated for best director because you see they were entitled

01:08:41.960 to. That's pretty much what I understand is the argument that they're the best supporting actress,

01:08:49.200 America Ferreira, who was in that movie. She got the nod and best like screenplay. Greta Gerwig was 0.57

01:08:56.940 nominated with the man with whom she co-wrote the movie, but that's not enough. You see that you're

01:09:02.360 a misogynist unless you actually make Margot Robbie, the nominee for best actress and recognize

01:09:08.640 Greta in her directing role. And that's just how life works. What do you make of it? Right? Well,

01:09:14.700 first of all, the first thing we should notice is that the Oscars, which used to be a major cultural

01:09:20.200 event that people used to have Oscar parties. They used to wait for it. It's now like a nothing.

01:09:25.160 It's a blip. Nobody watches it except for the, they watch the people looking pretty on the red

01:09:29.600 carpet, but nobody actually watches it because they did nothing but yell at us about their superior

01:09:33.960 moral position. So first of all, all of this, these arguments are the reason nobody is watching

01:09:39.280 the Oscars. And the other thing is if you look at the list of nominated pictures, most of them with

01:09:44.400 the exception of Barbie and Oppenheimer are pictures nobody went to see. They didn't go to see them because

01:09:48.380 they are minor little pictures that, you know, that deal with very small things that the left is

01:09:53.880 interested in that the rest of us aren't interested in. The fact that the star and the director of the

01:10:00.360 Barbie movie were not nominated has in some ways to do with the way nominations are made, but it also

01:10:08.640 reflects the fact that Barbie was just not a very good movie. It was an interesting movie. It was an

01:10:13.020 entertaining and a beautiful to look at movie, but it was a mess. It was kind of because the left can't

01:10:18.740 define what a woman is. They couldn't really make a movie about women except to complain about how 1.00

01:10:24.080 hard it is, why, why, why to be a woman. You know, they actually didn't make a movie that explained, 0.99

01:10:28.600 you know, why it is that girls play with Barbies and actually don't feel bad about their bodies. 1.00

01:10:34.420 That's not what happens. It's not because of Barbie that women feel bad about their bodies. You know, 1.00

01:10:37.880 that's not what happens. They couldn't do a realistic movie about Barbie and the effect of Barbie,

01:10:43.300 or even a movie that allowed 12 year old girls to go to the show or eight year old girls to go to

01:10:47.900 the show and enjoy it. So it's not really a good movie. What happens is that the best picture is

01:10:53.060 nominated by all of the Academy members. So it's kind of a hit and miss thing. It's like sort of

01:10:59.980 everybody throwing in their, their ballots. And of course, Barbie was a smash hit. It was a huge hit.

01:11:05.860 So everybody had to name it. You just thought, yeah, well, it must be a good movie because it made

01:11:09.060 so much money. But once you get to the directors, the directors are nominated by other directors and you

01:11:14.060 looked at it and thought, well, it didn't have any narrative drive, but what didn't really make sense.

01:11:17.640 It wasn't really besides the actual art direction. It wasn't really a very good movie. So why would

01:11:22.880 I not, you know, nominate the direction? The Margot Robbie, good actress. I actually think she's

01:11:27.940 quite good. She is. She should have gotten it for I, Tanya. Yeah. But there was nothing for her to do.

01:11:33.680 She just said to be a doll, you know? It's so ridiculous. Like now that women, now that, 1.00

01:11:39.800 you know, we're considered equals, of course, um, and are getting treated like it, we deserve all the

01:11:43.820 awards. We, all the women we choose need to be nominated for the positions we think that otherwise 1.00

01:11:48.660 the fucking patriarchy. That's literally what they're tweeting out that, you know, they made 0.99

01:11:53.400 a movie about the patriarchy and then the patriarchy kept them down. Well, how did they, why did they

01:11:58.240 keep America Ferreira down? Cause she seems really thrilled that she got this nomination for best 0.89

01:12:02.820 supporting actress and Greta got a nod as best best screenwriter, but it's never enough. The best

01:12:09.000 though, I would be, and it's an accurate journalistic malpractice if I did not raise the Hillary Clinton

01:12:15.020 tweet, which was my favorite thing I've seen on the internet in a week. Hillary Clinton decided to 0.88

01:12:20.700 weigh in on this snub. Greta and Margot, she writes to them while it can sting to win the box office,

01:12:30.120 but not take home the gold. Your millions of fans love you. You're both so much more than

01:12:36.280 Keno. Is that a reference to the movie? I didn't see it. And then here's the capper at the end.

01:12:42.000 Hashtag Hillary Barbie.

01:12:48.840 She's trying to make that a thing. 0.98

01:12:51.920 I do play with my Hillary doll, but that keeps slicking the pins in and nothing happens. I don't

01:12:56.140 know what the problem is. The thing about the director is one thing, but the actress is probably 1.00

01:13:04.040 going to be a woman. You know, the best actress is probably going to be a woman. So I don't see the 0.97

01:13:07.980 argument there. And to be honest, Lily Gladstone for the Killers of the Flower Moon acted everybody

01:13:13.700 off the stage for the last five years. It was just a fantastic performance. So she's the one who

01:13:18.260 actually deserves it no matter who gets nominated. You know, the fact that that's what the Oscars have

01:13:24.620 come to be about, these political gripes, is why nobody watches them. And it's partly why the

01:13:30.480 movies, for the same reason that Sports Illustrated and LA Times and Washington Post are going out of

01:13:34.900 business, is the reason the movies are kind of irrelevant now. When was the last time? I mean,

01:13:39.020 Barbie and Oppenheimer are the last time people saw a movie that they talked about, but they weren't

01:13:43.140 really culturally effective. Nobody is going to change their minds about anything because of

01:13:47.540 Barbie and Oppenheimer. The movies are kind of irrelevant now. Streaming is much more important. And I would

01:13:53.020 say even YouTube is more important than the movies because of this takeover of the left and their

01:13:58.920 small minded ideas. They're out of touch with reality. You can't even find a show. You know,

01:14:05.660 I like action movies. You know, it's kind of my guilty pleasure, as it were. And you can't find a

01:14:12.000 show in which women don't beat up men, you know, and you just sit there and look and think like, you 0.94

01:14:15.720 know, God love them. That's not the way it works. You know, that's what works. And you just want to

01:14:21.140 see movies that actually reflect your life and speak into your life, whether they speak at a high

01:14:25.220 level or a low level, and they just don't make those anymore. And these arguments are indicative

01:14:30.200 of that. The fact that this is what they care about shows you why their movies are empty and

01:14:35.440 meaningless. Yeah. My team informs you that the word is Kenneth. You're both so much more than Kenneth.

01:14:42.580 It's a combo of enough and Ken. Sorry, I didn't see the movie. I really don't have any desire to. I got to be

01:14:47.100 honest. Some of the reaction online to this. I love this. Clearly, Greta and Margo should have

01:14:52.600 campaigned in Michigan and Wisconsin. Hashtag Hillary Barbie. That's great. That's terrific.

01:15:00.200 This is the thing that ordinary people are funnier than the actual writers in Hollywood.

01:15:04.960 Totally. Well, we'll see what happens. I'm sure we won't be watching, but we'll cover it after the

01:15:09.340 fact just for all the woke speeches that we get from Jimmy Kimmel, Mr. Blackface, and let's make the 1.00

01:15:16.700 girls jump in bikinis on trampolines so we can see their boobies flop. Andrew Clayton,

01:15:22.220 always a pleasure, my friend. Thanks for being here. Thanks a lot, Megan. It's good to see you.

01:15:27.160 All right. Coming up, Alan Dershowitz will join us on what we're supposed to make of what's about

01:15:33.320 to happen between the feds in Texas. I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.

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01:16:39.680 Joining me now to discuss the legal ramifications of what's happening and what might happen in Texas

01:16:45.580 as they take on the federal government at the border, Alan Dershowitz, constitutional law expert

01:16:50.660 and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. He's also the author of the new book, War Against

01:16:56.820 the Jews, which he wrote quickly after everything that happened on 10-7, and it's well worth your time.

01:17:02.480 Alan, thanks for coming back on the show. So this really is looking like a constitutional crisis

01:17:08.860 in which Texas has built this border wire fence. The feds don't want it up there and have been

01:17:18.640 interfering with it to the point where Texas had to go into court to say, please stop them

01:17:22.700 from interfering with our efforts to protect ourselves. And they won at the lower court level.

01:17:28.780 They won at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued an injunction against the feds saying,

01:17:35.360 do not cut down their wire fence. And then the Supreme Court lifted the injunction,

01:17:44.700 basically clearing the way for the feds to cut down the border fence. They haven't yet gone back to do

01:17:51.460 it, but they might. And Texas right now is saying, we're going to build more wire fencing. And Governor

01:17:59.320 Abbott, he didn't actually do it yet, but he did say, I will continue to prevent the Biden administration

01:18:06.600 from destroying our property. So that's actually, that's pretty close to saying, I'm not going to

01:18:15.300 listen to the fact that the injunction was lifted by the high court and the high court basically gave

01:18:21.760 them a temporary green light to go in there, the feds. So what do you make of all of it?

01:18:26.040 Well, first, this is a classic constitutional clash under the concept of federalism and the

01:18:34.280 supremacy clause. You have a very legitimate state interest here, very legitimate in preventing the

01:18:40.200 crossing over of illegal immigrants with fentanyl and crime, et cetera. And you have a legitimate 1.00

01:18:46.700 federal interest in controlling the national borders of the United States. So it's not surprising that you

01:18:52.880 get an unsigned five to four decision with a moderate and a conservative joining the three

01:18:59.700 liberals. Let's remember, this is a temporary order. This is an order only pending final resolution

01:19:06.160 of the case after evidence is taken. We'll see how many emergencies there have been. Remember,

01:19:12.480 the lower court also made exceptions and said the feds could come in and cut the wires in the case of a

01:19:18.900 medical emergency. But the feds came back and said, no, it takes too long. In case of a medical

01:19:23.880 emergency, it'll take 15 minutes to cut the wires. And by that time, it might be too late. So this is a

01:19:30.040 very important case that I think we're just seeing the beginning of. And it may very well be that one of

01:19:37.720 the two conservative moderates is just waiting and saying, let's hear the evidence. It wouldn't surprise

01:19:44.460 me if Barrett ultimately joined the state of Texas after the decision was made on the merits rather

01:19:53.340 than just as a preliminary matter. So it's not over.

01:19:55.720 Or maybe, maybe Chief Justice Roberts, because sometimes when he votes with the liberals, he does

01:20:00.380 so in order to prevent chaos, you know, maintain the court's integrity. He certainly would want to

01:20:06.280 avoid a constitutional crisis. And in this case, voting with the liberals is helping create one. So

01:20:12.440 there's a shot at him, too, I think. What do you think?

01:20:14.860 I think that's right. There's no way of avoiding a constitutional crisis here. It's inevitable.

01:20:20.900 Texas has a strong point of view. If you had to vote in Texas, it would be, you know, 80 to 20 in

01:20:27.160 favor of what Texas did. And you have already at least one congressman advocating civil disobedience,

01:20:32.960 saying essentially what Andrew Jackson said to the Supreme Court in one of the Native American cases,

01:20:39.360 you know, you've made your decision now to enforce it. Of course, times have changed and the federal

01:20:45.100 government can enforce its decisions and would enforce it if it came to it. But there's no way

01:20:50.920 of avoiding a constitutional crisis here unless Congress gets involved and starts passing some

01:20:57.980 reasonable legislation allowing control of the border, dividing the function appropriately between

01:21:04.980 the state and the federal government, which is where it belongs. But this has become so politicized.

01:21:11.040 This is going to be a major issue in the 2024 presidential election. The Republicans know

01:21:16.440 that border control is a great issue for them. The vast majority of Americans, even in the North,

01:21:22.660 believe that the borders are too open and that the Biden administration is responsible for that.

01:21:26.960 So this will figure heavily in the election. Already we're seeing the Democrats moving slightly in the

01:21:33.820 direction. Yes. All right. But wait, let me stick with you on the legal analysis. The Fifth Circuit

01:21:39.600 decision, which the Supreme Court in that 5-4 decision, which was just it was just a paragraph long

01:21:44.260 reversed. But the Fifth Circuit decision said defendants are enjoined during the pendency of this

01:21:53.280 appeal. And the defendant, the plaintiff was the state of Texas. The defendants are the feds. So

01:21:58.180 the feds are enjoined, meaning stopped during the pendency of this appeal from damaging, destroying or

01:22:04.960 otherwise interfering with Texas's seawire fence in the vicinity of Eagle Pass, Texas. Right. So they're

01:22:10.500 saying that the feds may not may not destroy or damage that that fence. The Supreme Court lifted the

01:22:18.020 injunction. So does that mean so? So the feds can go in there. They absolutely can go in there now and

01:22:25.240 try to cut down the fence. Does this does the lifting of the injunction against the feds from doing

01:22:33.900 something stop Texas from doing something like fighting the destruction of that fence?

01:22:43.580 Well, under the supremacy clause, the state of Texas must abide by the Supreme Court's decision.

01:22:52.780 Now, as you say, the Supreme Court's decision merely lifts an injunction. And so it does give Texas

01:22:58.640 some ability to achieve the results it wants to achieve, but it can't do it in direct defiance of

01:23:07.840 the Supreme Court. It would have to figure out clever ways of doing this. Well, let me ask about

01:23:13.260 that. So I have a thought on it. I have a thought on it. So the way I would read it is, so Texas can't

01:23:18.760 stop the feds from cutting down the fence. Right. If I'm right, if I'm reading this right. But they can

01:23:25.460 put up a fence the next day. They can put up another fence and another fence and another fence.

01:23:29.660 And especially if they don't put a dangerous fence up, a fence that has razor wires that can cut

01:23:37.740 people and that can endanger federal... Why couldn't they? They have that up now. That's what

01:23:42.860 was at issue here. And it's been very effective. And actually, the decision, the Fifth Circuit

01:23:48.880 decision talks about how... Let me just read you part of it. To guard the vast stretches of land between

01:23:55.440 these points of entry, Congress created the Border Patrol, whose objective is to deter illegal entry

01:24:00.020 into the U.S. In recent years, illegal crossings have increased dramatically, talking about how it

01:24:04.260 was 458,000 in 2020, 1.7 million in 21, 2.4 million in 2022. Unsurprisingly, the situation has

01:24:13.160 been exploited by the drug cartels who have made an incredibly lucrative enterprise out of trafficking

01:24:17.460 human beings and illegal drugs like fentanyl, which is frequently encountered in vast quantities at

01:24:21.880 the border. But they go on to say that the two parties have been working together quite well.

01:24:29.160 Texas has constructed along more than 29 miles of municipal and private land in the Eagle Pass

01:24:33.720 sector of our southern border. And they talk about how the feds and Texas have been working

01:24:38.540 quite well together for some time. The Border Patrol wants to enforce the border. It's the corporate

01:24:44.280 betters in D.C. who are telling them that they're constrained. So I just... Like, I... What came up was

01:24:53.000 the wire fencing and whether it was hurting people, like illegals who were trying to get in. They alleged

01:24:58.840 that people had been caught in it, people had been hurt, people allegedly drowned. And according to the

01:25:04.200 press, that caused even the Border Patrol to say, we can't have this, and we're actually in charge of the

01:25:10.440 one's processing these illegals. So it's got to come down. 0.97

01:25:15.400 This is an obvious answer to the problem. You're very sensible. I wish you were the president or in

01:25:20.920 charge of the Border Patrol, because you and I together can come up with an obvious answer in

01:25:25.840 which Texas and the federal government work together on the legitimate goals. But the provocative

01:25:31.180 nature of radio wires and three people allegedly drowning in medical necessities is what caused the

01:25:39.400 provocation. This is a case that never should have come to the Supreme Court. It should have been

01:25:44.920 resolved by adult, wise minds working together to achieve Texas's legitimate goals, while at the

01:25:52.280 same time not defying federal court orders. I suspect that's the direction in which it's going to go,

01:25:59.240 and I suspect that in the end there will be a resolution, and it will require building more barriers,

01:26:05.220 but not ones as provocative as razor wires. Probably help.

01:26:10.140 Because it is risky. It's risky. I hate to see Texas get in the position, if it chooses to,

01:26:16.060 of defying the Supreme Court order. Although I can see the argument, how do you defy the lifting of an

01:26:22.640 injunction against someone else? It's like, you know, the feds were enjoined from doing something.

01:26:29.520 Now they're not enjoined from doing something. Texas can just keep doing what it's been doing,

01:26:34.020 which is the fence is going back up. The fence is going back up again. It's going back up again.

01:26:38.020 But if they try to stop the feds from pulling down the fence, now we're on shakier ground.

01:26:43.300 Let me ask you this, though. As a constitutional guy, something new enters the fold today.

01:26:49.740 Abbott puts out a statement yesterday saying,

01:26:54.260 The framers included Article 4, Section 4, which promises that the feds shall protect each state

01:27:02.560 against invasion. And Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges the state's sovereign interest

01:27:10.460 in protecting their borders. And he says,

01:27:14.060 The failure of the Biden administration to fulfill its duties imposed by Article 4, Section 4, meaning

01:27:19.280 protect the states against invasion, has triggered Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3, meaning the states

01:27:25.280 have a sovereign interest in protecting their borders, which reserves to this state the right

01:27:29.480 of self-defense. For these reasons, I already declared an invasion under Article 1, Section 10,

01:27:34.900 Clause 3 to invoke constitutional authority in Texas to defend and protect itself. That authority

01:27:40.840 is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. So he's invoking

01:27:48.820 the U.S. Constitution to say he's got ultimate authority on what happens at the border, no matter

01:27:54.340 the federal statutes that say this is the purview of the federal government.

01:28:00.900 It sounds like something Ted Cruz would have come up with in my class when I taught him.

01:28:06.400 Ted Cruz is arguing the same, I think, right now. Keep going. Sorry.

01:28:09.340 Ted Cruz is a brilliant constitutional theorist. And I think the argument is a sound one,

01:28:14.960 that there's no firm answer in the Constitution. The Constitution didn't anticipate a situation like

01:28:21.140 this. But I think what Senator Abbott is doing is showing that there is a constitutional argument

01:28:27.160 on the other side. He will make that argument through his lawyers in the case itself, which has

01:28:34.380 still not been resolved. And we may see a different constitutional issue presented to the Supreme

01:28:39.780 Court six months or a year from now. All we know, and you put your finger on it exactly, is that what

01:28:45.880 the federal government today can, what the state government cannot do and what the federal government

01:28:51.840 can do, but it's very limited. It's limited both in time and both in scope. And so we're going to see

01:28:59.180 this continuing and we're going to see- Let me back up too. Sorry. I want to just keep driving

01:29:04.040 it forward. So you keep referencing the supremacy clause, which basically is where the feds have

01:29:09.920 chosen to legislate, the states cannot, that you can't pass conflicting legislation there. And so the

01:29:15.780 feds have said they're legislating immigration. But now the states here, Texas, is trying to say

01:29:21.780 not so fast because I too have something in the original constitution that gives me rights to

01:29:30.740 prevent an invasion. And if we're talking about constitutional power granted to me, that trumps

01:29:36.520 your federal statute. The constitution reigns supreme over federal statutes that contradict

01:29:43.300 what it says, right? Is that basically what's happening here with the Texas statement?

01:29:47.420 But the supremacy clause is limited. It's limited to areas where the federal government has

01:29:53.920 authority. Now, for example, under the supremacy clause, the federal government couldn't require

01:30:00.640 Texas to teach certain things in school or now after the Roe versus Wade overruling deal with issues

01:30:08.800 like abortion or birth control. Because if an issue belongs to the state, then the sovereignty,

01:30:15.420 then the supremacy clause doesn't apply. The supremacy clause only applies when Congress

01:30:21.380 legitimately passes legislation within its limited authority. Let's remember Hamilton's

01:30:28.600 federalist papers. He said you didn't need a Bill of Rights because Congress is very limited as to the

01:30:35.360 scope of what it can do vis-a-vis the states. And so what we're seeing is not only a major clash

01:30:41.520 under the supremacy clause, but under Article I and Article IV, this is, you know, I could teach a

01:30:47.840 whole court with you on constitutional law regarding a case just like this one, because it's precisely

01:30:55.040 the kind of area that the Supreme Court ultimately will have the last word in.

01:31:00.740 But could this, so Alan, could this actually go to, I mean, potentially go to a situation in which

01:31:07.980 the Supreme Court rules those federal statutes saying the feds are in charge of immigration

01:31:14.000 cannot stand in the face of Article I, Section 10, Clause 3, which does reserve to the states

01:31:21.980 the right of self-defense. It acknowledges their sovereign interest in protecting their borders.

01:31:28.100 I mean, could this actually, if litigated out all the way up to the Supreme Court,

01:31:32.080 wind up in a decision that says, you know what, those federal statutes, they're too much.

01:31:36.220 The Constitution did envision the states being able to protect themselves,

01:31:40.140 at least when the feds aren't doing it. Like this, could this wind up in a huge legal victory

01:31:45.140 for Texas, for all border states? If Texas says the right thing and has hearings and talked about

01:31:51.400 how the invasion of fentanyl and the invasion of cartel gangs is really affecting the quality of

01:31:57.880 life among the citizens of Texas, I can imagine the Supreme Court saying that the state really

01:32:05.280 has a legitimacy over the federal government. The state's concerns are more immediate,

01:32:10.940 they're right on the border, than the federal concerns. Yeah, I could see it going that way.

01:32:15.340 If you had the right legislation with the right kind of hearings and the right legislative findings,

01:32:21.100 this is a great case. This is a kind of case that Hamilton and Madison would have argued over

01:32:27.280 at the Constitutional Convention.

01:32:30.100 Well, now you've got the other border state governors weighing in.

01:32:35.600 Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia, enough is enough. Our southern border is in crisis,

01:32:40.280 thanks to the Biden administration's refusal to do their job. Greg Abbott and the state of Texas have

01:32:44.540 our full support. Even up in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, Virginia stands with Texas. Greg Abbott

01:32:50.000 is doing the job. Joe Biden and his borders are refused to do to secure our border. We must stop

01:32:54.600 the flow of fentanyl, save lives and secure our southern border. Oklahoma governor, Oklahoma stands

01:33:00.140 with Texas. Ron DeSantis said as follows. We have a little bit of a clip, which he posted online.

01:33:05.640 Watch this.

01:33:07.200 Biden is going after Texas, saying that they must remove fortifications from their border. They put

01:33:12.940 wire. They put things to keep people out. Biden's saying you got to take that down to let people

01:33:19.340 come in illegally, which is just crazy. And I remarked that if the Constitution was originally

01:33:26.500 understood to mean that a state could not protect itself against an invasion, that the federal

01:33:31.800 government could force a state to allow an invasion, the Constitution would have never been

01:33:36.300 ratified in the first place. Texas would have never joined the union when it did. And if you look at

01:33:41.560 Federalist 46, which Daniel Horowitz pointed out, James Madison talks about situations where

01:33:49.300 federal encroachment can be mitigated by state action. All of this is just nonsense, what Biden's

01:33:56.360 doing. Texas has every right to stand its ground. We've in Florida, we've been sending people to

01:34:00.880 help. Florida will continue to be there, helping out every step of the way.

01:34:04.840 Look, you're going to get governors. Alan, that's got to be catnip to you. Somebody,

01:34:09.040 a smart constitutional lawyer talking about all your favorite things. Anyway, your reaction.

01:34:13.960 You know, DeSantis went to Harvard and Yale, notwithstanding that, he's pretty smart,

01:34:17.800 and he knows the Constitution very well. So this is a great constitutional issue. We're going to see

01:34:23.540 the governors of California weigh in. Obviously, the governors of Arizona and other states weigh in,

01:34:29.360 and we're going to see some coming out in favor of Texas, some coming out the other way. This is a

01:34:34.400 case that demands resolution short of a constitutional crisis, and such a resolution is possible. And if it

01:34:41.960 wasn't as political as it is, we would see a reasonable resolution of this. But both sides think

01:34:48.160 they can benefit politically. I happen to think the Republicans are right on this one. The Democrats are

01:34:53.980 wrong. They will lose on this issue, and the Republicans will benefit, which is why people

01:34:59.000 like DeSantis and others are chiming in. So, you know, continue to be continued. We haven't seen the

01:35:07.660 end of this. This is going to be in case books. This is going to be taught to our law students

01:35:11.780 for years to come. Yeah, this is all still pending. And even the Supreme Court lifting that injunction

01:35:18.820 against the feds is temporary. They lifted it just while the case is pending. It goes back down to

01:35:24.620 the Fifth Circuit for an appellate argument, which happens on February 7th. Everyone's going to be

01:35:29.960 paying attention to that. So this is not a final decision on the merits by the Supreme Court, nor was

01:35:35.260 it by the Fifth Circuit. All of it's going to start playing out. And this is, I mean, look, politically

01:35:40.160 speaking, what this does is it thrusts the immigration issue front and center back into the headlines of the

01:35:45.500 news. And depending on what the Biden administration does in Texas, the mainstream media will be forced.

01:35:51.360 They will be dragged along kicking and screaming to cover it because it could cause a constitutional

01:35:56.400 crisis. So I think it's good lawfare. It's good. It's important lawfare that they're unleashing against

01:36:02.120 each other, I think, for legitimate purposes. And I think it's going to have a major role in the political

01:36:07.140 discussion. Alan Dershowitz, thank you. Yeah, I'll give you the last word. Well, I think politically this

01:36:13.000 definitely helps the Republicans, hurts the Democrats. And I think the Biden administration

01:36:17.520 can ameliorate that if they act in a coordinated way with the states. But whether or not we'll see

01:36:24.020 cooperation now in light of the politics, that's the real question. But what a great, what a great

01:36:28.820 issue to discuss. You made my day constitutionally. Well, I always love listening to you. I listen to

01:36:34.740 your podcast. I enjoyed your one recently on Fannie Willis. Can't get enough of that story and read

01:36:39.540 his latest book, War Against the Jews. That's another area in which Alan has true expertise,

01:36:44.800 Israel and what's happening on college campuses. Thank you, my friend. See you soon. We're going

01:36:49.900 to stay on the story. This one's not going away, as I pointed out. We mentioned Andrew Clavin. He has

01:36:54.760 a Substack. You've got to check it out. It's with his son, Spencer. We love them both. And you can

01:36:59.500 subscribe there at thenewjerusalem.substack.com. Check it out. It's emailed conversations between the two

01:37:06.000 guys. Published in full about faith and our culture today and all sorts of great ideas.

01:37:10.340 Charlie Kirk is on tomorrow. See you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:37:15.800 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 25, 2024

Kari Lake on the Bribe Attempt, Plus Texas vs. Biden Border Showdown, with Andrew Klavan and Alan Dershowitz ｜ Ep. 710

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