Katie Porter's Interview Meltdown, AOC's "Body-Shaming," and the Truth About Biden Corruption, with Link Lauren and Ken Vogel | Ep. 1167
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 45 minutes
Words per Minute
187.0143
Summary
The leading candidate to be the next Governor of California is a nightmare. She completely implodes in a spectacular fashion in a new interview simply because she was asked what she would say to voters who supported President Trump to get them to vote for her in the primary. Former Vice President Kamala Harris is out there on her book tour calling Republicans "motherfucking morons." Meantime, former Congresswoman Katie Porter could not handle the thought of talking directly to Republicans at all.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
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The leading candidate to be the next governor of California is a nightmare.
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She completely imploded in a spectacular fashion in a new interview simply because she was asked what she would say to voters who supported President Trump to try to get them to vote for her in this gubernatorial race.
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It's basically like, what do you say to people on the other side of the aisle whose votes might be helpful to you?
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This is very foreseeable and really not that hard.
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I know there are a lot of disaffected California Republicans who haven't been at whatever.
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We're talking about former Congresswoman Katie Porter, who could not handle the thought of talking directly to Republicans at all.
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Instead, she tried to shut down the interview because she only wanted to have a, quote, positive conversation.
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Meantime, former Vice President Kamala Harris is out there on her book tour calling Republicans motherfuckers.
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Joining me now on all this news and more, Link Lauren, host of Spot On with Link Lauren on the MK Media Podcast Network.
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Link will be joining me on the MK Live Tour in Fort Worth, Texas, his home state.
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So go get your tickets right now before they sell out.
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If you want to see me and Link together and meet us behind the scenes, too, you can find all of the 10 stops we'll be making on the tour there at MeganKelley.com.
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I'm so excited to be back in my hometown being from Dallas.
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I was just talking to some folks last night who are getting their tickets.
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My pitch to everyone listening, come out and have a good girls' night in Fort Worth.
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I have so many groups of girls who are coming to Billy Bob's.
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And then the last thing I wanted to say is, I know there are a lot of folks who live alone, right?
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There might be someone who hasn't gotten off the couch in a week or months.
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You're going to make friends in line, going through security, sitting around you.
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Very seldom can you get this many like-minded individuals who are a fun night out, okay?
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It's like, you know, originally when we were doing the tour, they asked,
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do you want to just do like two weeks straight where you just go night after night?
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And the more we thought about it, the more we're like, people don't want to leave their house on a Sunday night or a Monday night.
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You know, like you want to go out a Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
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So we're like, let's move it so that it's like a few weekends over the course of a couple of months so that people want to go.
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It's like we will make it worthwhile for you to actually get up off your couch,
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get dressed and go through security and get in there.
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Between Link and yours truly, we'll make sure it's fine.
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I will do my Jasmine Crockett impression during the show, I promise, in Dallas.
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Something tells me the crowd in Dallas might want the Jasmine Crockett impression.
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Now, if only we could book Katie Porter because I think she'd be better than either one of us.
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I don't remember the last time I went and bothered Doug, my husband,
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like after seeing something on my phone and said,
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you need to sit down next to me and we need to watch this together next to one another.
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And that's what you and I are about to do with this audience who, unlike us, have lives
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and probably are not sitting around watching every minute of Katie Porter because why would you
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But we're going to do it today because it's our gift to you.
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We screen all the nonsense hits so that you only get the gold ones, members of the audience.
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And Link and I would like to bring you the Katie Porter interview.
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And she sits down with this journalist from the local CBS who's an investigative journalist
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who's been doing a series of interviews of all the candidates and asking the same,
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This is a time-tested way of doing a candidate comparison.
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And so she starts off with the other candidates and then eventually she gets to Porter.
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Here is a sampling of how it went when she sat down with the other candidates asking the same
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questions that caused Katie Porter to self-immolate.
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Six million voters who voted for Trump is a lot of votes.
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Are you going to need those votes in order to win if you're a top two?
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What do you say to those 40 percent who you may need in a top two California primary?
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I think they're tired of politicians just talking at them.
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And I feel like they just want to be heard and they want to want to listen.
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Are you alienating those Republicans by saying, yes, I support what Gavin Newsom is doing?
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You know, look, I would look at the polls of the state right now.
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The polls say protect California, whatever the California customers want.
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Literally, you can you can pivot to something you do, put whatever you want in there.
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OK, so then sits down Katie Porter and the audience.
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You guys, you need to know she's long suffered under reports that she's a bully, that she's
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extremely nasty to her staff and people around her, like not just like a tough boss, but abusive.
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She had this crazy thing with her ex-husband where he he said she was abusive toward him
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and was like controlled whether or not he could have a phone and was verbally abusive to him.
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And like it said that that's what we knew about Katie Porter before this interview.
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The lady seems to have a temper, a temper temperament problem.
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Here is the interview that went around the world.
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We're going to air these three and a half minutes in full and you can see for yourselves how it went.
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What do you say to the 40 percent of California voters who you'll need in order to win who voted for Trump?
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Well, unless you think you're going to get 60 percent of the vote, you think you'll get 60 percent.
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Everybody who did not vote for Trump will vote for you.
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If it is me versus a Republican, I think that I will win the people who did not vote for Trump.
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You know, I'm saying I'm going to build the support.
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I have the support already in terms of name recognition.
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And so I'm going to do the very best I can to make sure that we get through this primary in a really strong position.
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I have stood on my own two feet and won Republican votes before.
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That's not something every candidate in this race can say.
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If you're from a deep blue area, if you're from L.A. or you're from Oakland, you don't have an experience.
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But you just said you don't need those Trump voters.
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I feel like this is unnecessarily argumentative.
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The question is the same thing I asked everybody, that this is being called the empowering voters to stop Trump's power grab.
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Every other candidate has answered this question.
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So and the question is, what do you say to the 40 percent of voters who voted for Trump?
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It's the do you need them to win part that I don't understand.
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I'm happy to answer the question as you have it written and I'll answer it.
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And we've also asked the other candidates, do you think you need any of those 40 percent of California voters to win?
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No, I'm saying I'm going to try to win every vote I can.
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I'm not not with seven follow ups to every single question you ask.
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I want to have a pleasant, positive conversation, which you ask me about every issue on this list.
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And if every question you're going to make up a follow up question, then we're never going to get there.
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Oh, you've never had to have a conversation with a reporter.
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So you're not going to answer questions from reporters?
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I will continue to ask follow up questions because that's my job as a journalist.
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And if you don't want to answer, you don't want to answer.
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I don't want to have an unhappy experience with you.
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I don't want to have an unhappy experience with you either.
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I would love to continue to ask these questions so that we can show our viewers what every candidate feels about every one of these issues that they care about.
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We're going to do an entire story just on the responses to that question.
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And I've asked everybody the same follow up questions.
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I want to tell the audience that reporter is Julie Watts, CBS News.
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And my own take on it is Katie Porter's not ready for primetime.
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You could tell from the dress she was wearing, the lighting she accepted, and her absolute meltdown on being asked follow up questions.
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But I will say there was something mildly antagonistic about this Julie Watts that I loved.
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It was like everything she said was so by the book.
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There was just something very needling about it that it was absolutely delicious.
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And Katie Porter, she was responding a bit to that and also to her own ineptitude mostly.
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But that's what made it so compelling is that the reporter didn't give one inch and clearly was like, fuck off.
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And Katie Porter knew she had humiliated herself and kept looking for the moral high ground but couldn't get there.
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She was desperately trying to get there and just never could.
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I mean, it's going to be tough to come back from.
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It honestly felt like a scene from that show Homeland when they're doing an interrogation.
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Like one light, one overhead light interrogation.
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But Katie Porter, this is what it's like being a Democrat, right?
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Joe Biden, people would ask him what his favorite ice cream flavor was.
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So I think they've gotten so spoiled they're not used to actually having real questions.
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It was like, hey, how are you going to reach the other side of the aisle?
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You don't have to be in Mensa to answer that question.
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But Katie Porter, I think she probably has anger issues from the stories we've heard and the rumors we've heard around California.
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I also just feel like Katie Porter, I thought she was transgender.
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Until today, I thought Katie Porter was transgender.
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From the way that she looked, apparently she is not.
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Michelle Obama, Brigitte McCrone, or Katie Porter, okay?
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Because Katie Porter, she looked like one of those people, you know, like back in the day, like the bearded ladies at the circus.
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Like the people who could like lift 500 pounds and stuff.
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Like her poor husband, when he doesn't give her the TV remote, does he get a black eye or something?
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So no, I would not want to be with her in private if that's how she's acting in public.
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And my last thing I'll say is, if you're going to do a walk-off, okay, you guys need to watch Andy Cohen.
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If you're going to do a walk-off, you've got to walk off.
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You can't like kind of walk off and then you stay.
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You either walk off or you don't do the BS and the theatrics of it all.
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Yeah, I love my favorite part is, I'm me, I'm me.
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And I don't want to have an unhappy experience.
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You know, Dan, I'm not going to be ignored, Dan.
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And the reporter's like, I don't want to have an unhappy experience either.
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But like she kept shaming her with the, every candidate has answered these questions.
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And it paralyzed Katie Porter because she's not actually just me.
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I'm getting up and leaving, which actually would have been the power move.
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She like tried to do the power move without putting the power behind it and just demanding
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to have a pleasant, positive and happy experience, which is, ma'am, this is politics and news
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Also, I will say it's hard to look like a badass getting up and walking out of a broom closet.
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That looked like where Harry Potter lived under the stairs, like this dark, dingy broom closet
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If I am not like blown out like the sun, I won't be in there.
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So for Katie Porter to be sitting in there with like one little candle light a thousand
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yards away, it's hard to look badass walking out of a broom closet.
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Can we roll the tape without running the sound for a second?
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Because I want to show something on Katie Porter's shot.
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The reporter, honestly, CBS should have done a more professional job in lighting the scene
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and picking like a lot of times you do a newsroom interview.
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It's exciting you're in the newsroom, but like this was not it.
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And on the single shot of Katie, look how it looks like there's something blue sticking
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It looks like she's got like a blue flag coming out of the right side of her neck.
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It was there the whole time is clearly like a piece of tape or a light.
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I couldn't tell the difference on some something behind Katie.
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Link, you sit down in any interview as a monitor to see things.
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Um, and he'll say the light needs to come up, pet up with the camera.
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This vase needs to go like that's what a lifetime intelligence will do.
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Clearly, this woman is not focused enough on how one should appear.
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She's in what we call a rough lighting, but my family and friends know I travel with full
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Katie Porter has no gay men around her because she's being sabotaged.
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But yeah, no, also it's like the sleeveless dress and then kind of like the Helga Oktoberfest
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I think she's a calamity and we won't be hearing from her a year from now.
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There was something just mildly antagonistic about like somewhat mocking and like she wouldn't
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There were seven follow ups to that first question because Katie Porter wouldn't answer
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it and she just tried to go seven ways from Sunday to make her answer it because Katie
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Porter was pretending she didn't understand anything and sort of playing dumb and like
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And that is something that you don't often see when they're when they're talking to Democrats.
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Like if they can find if they can see this Democrat target is uncomfortable.
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No, what's interesting is that Katie Porter said, I've never had this happen before.
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I'm like, you've never been asked a follow up question or second or third question.
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And like I said, I know I keep coming back to this like a broken record.
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And I feel like when you're running for office, I'm always shocked when politicians aren't
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ready for questions because there aren't really that many tough questions.
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It's like, hey, what are you going to do for the voters?
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How are you going to solve this issue in your state that you live in?
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I don't know why she's acting like she's caught off guard, but I think there might be a
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more underlying mental health issue like anger management or some type of personality
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disorder, which means she's actually perfect for California.
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She has severe narcissism and a personality disorder.
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She here's here's why I think it happened, because it's a Democrat primary.
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That is the only time the media asks tough questions of Democrats or is in any way relentless
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If Katie Porter were already the nominee up against a Republican, I'm sorry, I don't know
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this particular reporter, but the vast majority of the media would not lay a glove on her.
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It would have been a lot more gentle from most reporters.
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So that's when you see the media actually actually lean into being good journalists like that's great.
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They actually do want the strongest candidate to emerge so that they can beat the Republican.
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I think also from a ratings perspective, this journalist is probably thinking, okay, it's
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my job to be a conduit from, let's say, all Californians.
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In this last election, President Trump was able to shift so many counties to the right.
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They thought Kamala was going to win in this massive landslide because she's from California.
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So I actually don't blame this journalist for pressing Katie Porter a little bit.
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Because it's a fallacy to think that everyone in California is a diehard liberal.
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And you can't just ignore them when you're asking to be governor of the whole state.
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Eventually, you heard her kind of stumble into what should have been the first answer,
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which is like, I represented a purple area and Orange County.
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Then articulate their concerns and say, and they're in my policies on X, Y and Z are much
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OK, let's keep going, because there's other clips of Katie that I do want to get to.
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But she's being asked about those toxic workplace allegations and whether she's a bully.
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And I saw this as a professor, certainly female professors, particularly women of color,
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And even when the you know, all the professional evaluations are the same.
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Lots of the so-called bad bosses are women and disproportionately people of color.
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I think it's really unfortunate because those are the very voices we need more of in our
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OK, so she's like a woman of color who was discriminated against when asked about whether
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Democrats get very uncomfortable when you put them in the role of like the victimizer.
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They're much more comfortable being the victim much.
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You're not a woman of color because you're wearing color.
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There's so many up and coming Democrats right now who have bullying allegations.
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She was accused of bullying and having people, you know, open the car door for her and snapping
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at them and making male aides carry her purse and carry a pillow.
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I think these Democrats are just divas and they're used to everything going their way.
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That is what is so clear about Katie Porter and every single clip.
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It's not like President Trump where he gets 99% negative coverage from the mainstream media.
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They're going to be pretty positive and nice to her.
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Kamala Harris had tons of bullying allegations.
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She had 92% staff turnover the four years she was in D.C. as vice president.
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And so, Katie Porter, we are going to bring your stuff out into the open now because we
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have new media, we have podcasts, and these Democrats can't hide their horrific behavior
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And put a pin in that because we will get to Meghan Markle before the end of this hour
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when we're talking about badly behaving Democrats who appear to be psychopaths.
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Listen to her when she Fox's Hillary Vaughn asked her in April of 2024, that first
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Here's a year after, April 2024, asking her about some of the chants we're hearing.
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And that are anti-Israel and anti-America, SOT 5.
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Protesters blocking the Brooklyn Bridge burned the American flag and chanted death to America.
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Are you OK with people burning the American flag?
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Are you OK with people chanting death to America?
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Congresswoman Porter, are you OK with people chanting death to America?
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I mean, that guy does seem a little gay to me, Link.
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She has one gay assistant, but he's honestly, the people around you might be sabotaging you.
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I'm happy she was getting some exercise in that clip, though.
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These are things I think Democrats need more of.
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But the reason she won't answer is because the Democrats are perfectly fine with Americans
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chanting, you know, death to America, burning the American flag.
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As we just saw in Portland with Nick Sorter, who's an independent journalist, he was trying
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to put out an American flag that they were burning.
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There is this radical Marxist, you know, faction on the left that's growing and growing.
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And folks like Katie Porter are so scared of turning them off, they won't condemn that
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That's what we're seeing with Chuck Schumer and Haki and Jeffries.
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They're not radical far left, but they're just capitulating to those folks as they don't
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want to scare that progressive wing of their party.
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So the reason Katie Porter didn't answer, it's not because she had to go to an event.
00:23:59.580
Here she is behaving dishonestly and as an extremist on the subject of women's rights
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Nobody, including Riley Gaines, who I disagree with strongly, should be.
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I think that it should be up to sporting bodies.
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To make the decisions about who and how she can compete.
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I think that what she has done is try to turn this.
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We talked about people, you know, becoming, using things to kind of get likes and get clicks.
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I mean, I've got no truck for Riley Gaines personally, but all I've seen her do is stand up for women's
00:24:48.300
She actually competed against Leah Thomas, and it was obviously unfair.
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Leah Thomas won one of the races in the NCAA championships by 50 seconds against a bunch
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of biological females who simply couldn't keep up.
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I was told this would be positive and I would be happy.
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The women on the left, they purport themselves to be, you know, feminist and we're going to
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They're perfectly fine with men coming into their locker rooms, into their sports teams.
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For folks like Katie Porter, Kamala Harris, all of these elite women Democrats, they think
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women's rights begin and end with abortion, right?
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Kamala Harris showed us that on the campaign trail for 107 days.
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She would go to black colleges and tell young girls, we're going to get you the right to
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The girls are like, okay, but women's rights is also like, how do we pay our bills?
00:25:58.340
We don't have criminals on the street so we can walk home from work.
00:26:00.420
And so for Katie Porter, of course, she doesn't know about women's rights and she thinks it's
00:26:03.560
fine for guys to come in to women's sports teams.
00:26:05.940
But this is going to continue to be the losing issue for Democrats and they keep trying to
00:26:11.240
One more and then we'll move off of Katie Porter.
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But here she is talking about her 12-year-old after Trump won last November.
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So on election night, I was with, I went to pick up my daughter from water polo practice
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and she's 12 and she got in the car and she was crying.
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And what if I get raped and I need to have an abortion?
00:26:41.840
This is from a 12-year-old, my 12-year-old daughter.
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And so it was really a reminder of how scary this time is for people and how important it
00:26:50.200
is for Democrats to have strategies, both at the state level and the federal level, to
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make sure that we can continue to protect people's rights.
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It's really a reminder of how sick you are as her mother to be filling a 12-year-old's
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head full of worries about getting raped and needing abortions and having that be, of course,
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By the way, if it does, it will be at the hands of a Democrat DA who let some criminal
00:27:19.700
And then, of course, what I'll do is I'll kill my baby because I'm Katie Porter's daughter.
00:27:29.400
And folks like Katie Porter and Pete Buttigieg, these folks who think they're sort of the
00:27:32.700
next generation of the Democratic Party, they always want to portray themselves as very
00:27:39.700
When push comes to shove and you really press them, they are just as radical as everybody
00:27:51.960
And they might say, oh, we don't want these things, right?
00:27:56.620
If you won't condemn something that's absolutely horrific, right?
00:27:59.920
Absolutely disgusting, like a 16-year-old girl getting a mastectomy, which should never
00:28:05.040
If you won't condemn that, then that makes me see you as a sick and disgusting person yourself.
00:28:10.100
And I hate that we even have to have this conversation.
00:28:12.400
You know what I'm saying about people who are seeking high offices in the United States
00:28:17.680
And she's kind of on par with this next generation of Democrats.
00:28:22.500
She wants you to believe that she's super woke and she's really into like uplifting
00:28:26.440
people and we don't put people down for their immutable characteristics.
00:28:30.600
But she's in the news this week for mocking Stephen Miller, basically calling him a dwarf.
00:28:36.060
Meanwhile, Stephen Miller is a normal height man.
00:28:38.820
I think the average height in America, the average height of a man is about five, nine and
00:28:45.240
But that is the average height of an American male.
00:28:57.160
Point is, is that they are scrapping and grasping at straws because they have nothing else.
00:29:08.440
I've never seen that guy in real life, but he looks like he's like four ten and he looks
00:29:16.280
like he is angry about the fact that he's four ten and he looks like he is so mad that
00:29:23.560
he is four ten that he's taking that anger out at any other population possible.
00:29:34.520
But one of the most powerful cultural things that you can do to a political movement that
00:29:40.160
is predicated on the puffery of an of insecure, insecure masculinity.
00:29:48.900
This isn't people talk about toxic masculinity.
00:29:50.840
And one of the best ways that you can dismantle a movement of insecure men is by making fun of
00:30:02.040
That is an Elizabeth Bennett thought penned by Jane Austen.
00:30:08.200
We've all read the book a million times and seen the many movies.
00:30:11.580
Elizabeth Bennett is the one who said you laugh at him.
00:30:14.620
That's what you do to a man who intimidates you or by whom you feel put down in any way,
00:30:26.340
I'm reliably told you're not allowed to do that by the woke left.
00:30:31.640
Well, that was my first thought when I saw this clip going viral of AOC.
00:30:34.780
They preach about diversity and love everybody and kumbaya and braid each other's hair.
00:30:38.900
But of course, the first thing they do is going to attacking people's looks and height and the
00:30:51.720
It's like, I'm going to break down Lauren Sanchez and Meghan Markle at Fashion Week.
00:30:55.820
But AOC, these folks on the left, they're all about kumbaya diversity.
00:30:59.060
I also think this is rich coming from AOC because part of the reason AOC has been so
00:31:05.160
People talk about this all the time in private.
00:31:10.380
Ted Kennedy didn't just hire her years ago to be his intern because she was so brilliant
00:31:18.880
That has helped her advance herself in her career.
00:31:24.000
And yeah, the last thing I'll say is actually sort of a more dramatic point.
00:31:28.020
She says we have to laugh at these Republicans.
00:31:31.840
I would rather you laugh at us than pick up guns and try to shoot us as we have seen recently,
00:31:36.600
right, with Charlie Kirk, with the assassination attempts on President Trump and so many other
00:31:42.980
I would rather you laugh at us than tell your supporters that we're fascist and dictators
00:31:47.140
and Hitler and Nazis to where they come and try to kill us in our own homes.
00:31:50.480
That I would actually prefer, AOC, if we're going to get serious.
00:31:54.360
She's a complete hypocrite because she's running around there dropping the fascist word
00:31:59.720
You know, like she doesn't actually mean laugh at them because that's not what she's been
00:32:02.820
And she doesn't actually mean her woke messaging about not shaming people and
00:32:06.280
celebrating whatever immutable characteristics because she doesn't do that if it's a Republican.
00:32:10.920
And then you've got to love the self-flagellation because a little too late in the game, she
00:32:14.220
realized, oh, shit, I'm not supposed to be doing that.
00:32:22.780
The next day she goes back on camera to offer this.
00:32:27.040
I want to express my love for the short king community.
00:32:34.560
I am talking about how big or small someone is on the inside.
00:32:40.320
Like, for example, I have no idea how tall Andrew Tate is.
00:32:56.680
Whereas physically men of smaller stature can come across.
00:33:12.540
If you're not belittling immigrants, you're like, you know, six, three spiritually.
00:33:18.840
Yes, you're being problematic and dishonest and a hypocrite.
00:33:23.720
I was talking about how tall or short they are on the inside.
00:33:31.020
Yeah, that's what I used to think when I was dating.
00:33:34.260
The guy would be, you know, five, two on his profile.
00:33:41.660
I don't think anybody should be taking her seriously.
00:33:47.600
I don't know why she's even, you know, put on this pedestal as this leader of the Democratic
00:33:55.460
Remember she was doing those sit-ins in Nancy Pelosi's office and causing all this trouble?
00:33:59.800
That AOC, I respected a little bit more because at least she was trying to buck the system and
00:34:06.120
Now, you know, she was out campaigning with Joe Biden, wearing the aviator.
00:34:14.980
So AOC can sit there and do her little Instagram videos.
00:34:17.680
Why doesn't she actually go have some legislative achievements?
00:34:21.880
Well, I look forward to taking her advice and making lots of fun of her.
00:34:25.100
The internet right now is commenting on how she's gained a bunch of weight and they're
00:34:37.600
And it's because AOC has been able to coast on her looks for a long time.
00:34:45.940
AOC, the fact that she's very beautiful and voluptuous and has a little waist, that has
00:34:53.200
And so now when she looks a little bit different, you're going to get called out.
00:35:05.620
So we got to keep going with terrible people and hypocritical left.
00:35:17.020
I have heard from in certain circles, you know, I don't want to get specific, that you're
00:35:23.440
not allowed to darken your skin as any sort of a costume or it's racist.
00:35:29.820
I'm trying to remember where I heard that, but I definitely heard from many, many leftists.
00:35:38.500
Don't, don't pay any attention to the fact that Billy Crystal opened the Oscars wearing
00:35:43.100
The point is, it's always been racist and everybody always knew that.
00:35:46.100
Enter Whoopi Goldberg with a solution to how to handle ICE being at the Super Bowl looking
00:35:57.320
She's threatening to go to the Super Bowl when Bad Bunny is there and round up all these
00:36:06.840
Do you think that she would go if it was Garth Brooks or Eminem or Taylor Swift or any
00:36:14.420
I understand what you're saying because she's going to go to the Super Bowl and round up.
00:36:22.020
Because the Supreme Court has given permission to question anyone who has a Spanish accent who
00:36:28.840
So here's the thing, everybody, get a little cocoa butter, sit in the sun.
00:36:39.400
And then, and this is the only time you can probably ever do this, give yourself a Latin
00:36:53.320
Okay, you get the cocoa butter and you tan, you go in, you tan your face with it and then
00:37:03.700
At least Whoopi is consistent because Whoopi actually was fine with Ted Danson wearing actual
00:37:09.680
minstrel face, black face, like the, the deeply offensive stuff from like the forties films.
00:37:15.820
It, she stood right next to him when he did that at a roast, she thought it was hilarious.
00:37:20.580
And then she sat there as Joy Behar celebrated her own wearing of black face on Halloween.
00:37:29.360
There's joy with her dark face and her Afro, which would be also celebrated.
00:37:33.740
So at least she's not totally hypocritical, but the left is hypocritical.
00:37:37.160
And you tell me whether they on the view would be celebrating it, Link, if you and I went to
00:37:41.920
the Superbowl wearing brown face and big hoop earrings and lip liner outside the lips and
00:37:50.900
Well, you know, I was actually going to go as Diana Ross for Halloween this year.
00:37:54.460
I'll have to throw the Afro in the trash, unfortunately, but you know, inside joke here,
00:37:59.100
You're allowed to talk about black face on ABC, just not NBC.
00:38:02.620
I think, I think there are a lot of talk about it on ABC apparently, but no, I think on ABC
00:38:06.760
as well, it wasn't Jimmy Kimmel and a black face scandal.
00:38:09.080
Maybe we can find a picture, but Jimmy Kimmel, who's, you know, one of the 100%
00:38:12.440
big guys over at ABC, yeah, he's done black face for sure.
00:38:15.900
But no, this is just part and parcel of the hypocrisy of the women of the view.
00:38:19.620
As I always say, none of these women are in Mensa either.
00:38:22.060
They've kind of found the worst five women you can put on a panel and just have them
00:38:29.160
But yeah, no, Whoopi Goldberg, I'm not shocked to see this, but there's also been such
00:38:32.820
an increase in attacks on ice and sort of vitriol against ice agents, people having their
00:38:37.880
families threatened and them being attacked and punched and shot at.
00:38:40.680
And so as much fun as it is to laugh about how ridiculous these women of the view are,
00:38:45.260
there are serious repercussions when you vilify law enforcement, right?
00:38:48.720
When you vilify our men and women in uniform, cops, ice agents, there are real repercussions.
00:38:53.320
People go out in the street and shoot at them and try to attack them.
00:38:56.540
And so of course that doesn't affect these women on the view because they make millions
00:38:59.500
of dollars and they live in penthouse apartments with chefs and security and their only job is
00:39:03.740
to come to a nice studio each day and get driven home.
00:39:06.100
They don't really understand the immigration crisis, right?
00:39:09.520
So Whoopi Goldberg, I wasn't shocked by any of this, but she's been cosplaying a comedian
00:39:16.240
There was a time a long time ago when she was funny.
00:39:19.220
A word on what Joy Behar, noted legal expert, not purported to represent as the Supreme Court
00:39:27.500
The Supreme Court, the ice criteria for deciding whether somebody might be the illegal they're
00:39:36.460
There's a long list of factors that they said that they look at, and one of them is skin
00:39:41.520
So if they know they're looking for a guy from Venezuela, they're probably going to rule
00:39:48.180
And that has been upheld by courts for decades now as an acceptable one criterion of many.
00:39:54.640
It cannot be the sole criterion, but it's one of many that they are allowed to factor in,
00:39:59.320
not represented accurately by legal scholar Joy Behar.
00:40:07.960
Yeah, no, Joy Behar, I think she's a drunk Italian.
00:40:12.220
But I think they could also do like a sequel of My Cousin Vinny with Joy Behar.
00:40:16.220
Maybe she can play the attorney in like a My Cousin Vinny sequel.
00:40:19.080
But no, I don't take her seriously for her legal prowess whatsoever.
00:40:22.120
Don't even talk about her ruining yet another of my favorite movies.
00:40:26.100
It's bad enough she was in Manhattan Murder Mystery, which I absolutely freaking love if you
00:40:30.340
haven't seen it, Run, Don't Walk, starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton and Joy Behar.
00:40:35.420
I can't have her in another one of my favorite movies, My Cousin Vinny, which really is one
00:40:40.840
One more thing before we leave the view, and that is Joy Behar, back to our local resident
00:40:45.060
legal expert, on why Trump is so determined to put the National Guard troops in various cities.
00:40:51.740
There is crime in American cities, but the way to deal with it is get the funding that
00:40:56.440
you need for police, get the training that you need, and work with local officials.
00:41:03.940
I would say it might also be a distraction from the hearing that's going on right now
00:41:09.040
Some things have come up, and AG Pan Bondi was dodging questions and attacking back.
00:41:16.600
Do you not think maybe the whole civil unrest storyline is maybe overblown?
00:41:21.920
This is in order to make the case, because in their minds, in all of their minds, they
00:41:30.780
now believe they have carte blanche to do whatever they want to.
00:41:37.140
And if they stop us from voting, that's the one thing people have.
00:41:40.040
Well, I mean, it's the one thing that makes us very different from lots of other countries.
00:42:03.700
And now the ladies of The View think Trump's going to have a permanent state of National
00:42:09.100
Guard in all these blue cities, so they can't vote at all, because he's worried about people
00:42:16.800
No, I actually, anytime I see clips of The View, I can feel my IQ cells just disintegrating.
00:42:22.000
I can feel my brain atrophying, watching these women try to form a coherent thought.
00:42:26.480
Like, if reaching was a sport you're honored, they are reaching, okay?
00:42:29.920
They're reaching and forming conclusions, and they are absolutely ridiculous.
00:42:34.120
So no, I don't take any of these women seriously.
00:42:36.220
It's also funny, Alyssa Fair Griffin is supposed to be the conservative on the panel.
00:42:40.340
There's really not much conservative about her.
00:42:42.440
I would love for them to bring in a real conservative on The View.
00:42:45.000
I dare them to bring in a real conservative for one hour, for 10 minutes on The View.
00:42:48.460
They had Meghan McCain for years, who is conservative, but a Trump hater.
00:42:51.500
The whole time she was there, it was like, so that's why she was acceptable, because
00:42:54.200
as long as you're going to dump on Trump, we can take you.
00:43:03.980
She was the one like, oh, you know, why is he bringing these National Guard troops?
00:43:07.760
And elsewhere she tried to claim that there's been no violence against ICE, no threat she's
00:43:17.800
It's just fun to sometimes check in on what they're doing.
00:43:22.600
I do want to get to Meghan Markle, but before we go there, we've got to spend a minute on
00:43:27.260
Greta Thunberg, who has moved on from her climate activism, as you know, to being a pro-Palestinian
00:43:34.620
She joined this flotilla, which actually is like a normal thing from Sweden.
00:43:39.280
I guess they've been doing these flotillas for like 20 years.
00:43:43.620
And apparently it's always a collection of C-list stars who are just looking for attention.
00:43:48.000
It's basically like they're big brother or they're real housewives that you join the
00:43:55.420
And there's actually a really interesting piece in National Review that is dated today, October
00:43:59.860
8th, by John Gustafsson, that gets really into Greta's background and how I didn't know
00:44:06.080
She's the child of two celebrities over there in Sweden.
00:44:09.060
And she was somebody who is probably obviously ignored for a while because her parents were
00:44:14.580
And then she decided to make like a name for herself through climate activism.
00:44:19.960
And she had she has Asperger's and severe mental health problems.
00:44:28.820
But she's, according to John, got actual severe mental health problems so bad that her mother
00:44:33.360
like had to take a leave of absence and be home with her.
00:44:35.300
So this is a girl who needs parental attention more than the mother's short leave of absence
00:44:40.400
and has decided to get it first from climate activists.
00:44:43.640
And now by joining the C-lister flotillas to make Gaza her cause, she's been out there
00:44:49.120
railing about Palestine and Israel and all of that.
00:44:55.340
Well, I'll give you the montage of Greta first, and then I'll show you what Trump is saying
00:45:00.300
You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.
00:45:21.120
And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.
00:45:28.520
Why is it so important to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius?
00:45:32.100
Because even at one degree, people are dying from climate change because that is what the
00:45:38.880
United Science calls for, to avoid destabilizing the climate so that we have the best possible
00:45:45.440
chance to avoid setting off irreversible chain reactions.
00:45:53.760
And you shouldn't take your climate advice from somebody who has to go home and put benzoyl
00:45:59.240
Now, Trump has finally decided to weigh in on Greta.
00:46:05.800
You know, I mean, she's you mean she's no longer into the environment.
00:46:28.700
Maybe no Katie Porter was talking about her daughter.
00:46:30.860
Maybe the daughter is Greta Thunberg and we've never seen them in the same room at the same
00:46:39.620
But yeah, no, with Greta Thunberg, she's just a professional activist, which is why I don't
00:46:45.360
And shout out to the people who opened doors for all of us and yada, yada, yada.
00:46:48.600
But I don't take a lot of these new activists seriously because they just go from one grift
00:46:58.460
Then it's oil and drilling and everything in between.
00:47:00.860
But these folks are such professional activists.
00:47:03.660
They'll do like a sit in or they'll lock arms on a freeway.
00:47:06.200
Then they'll go back to like a five star hotel and be eating crumpets and scones.
00:47:09.560
So I don't take Greta Thunberg seriously at all.
00:47:11.860
And when it comes to this flotilla, I don't even know what a flotilla is.
00:47:14.560
It sounds like something you could get at like Chipotle, like a flotilla, like a grande
00:47:20.140
To me, it sounds like what they put together in Jaws 2, which did not end well for most of
00:47:27.760
Also, I don't share bathrooms and I really like my creature comforts and my amenities.
00:47:35.280
What would the water pressure be like on the flotilla?
00:47:41.600
I will change hotel rooms if there's like a faint noise.
00:47:46.220
So I am not going to be on a flotilla with a bunch of like stinky little liberal, you
00:47:51.520
Sorry, I am going to get canceled for saying that.
00:47:53.060
But I don't want to do that and be on the flotilla and like sailing to Gaza.
00:47:58.540
You just remember, they smell good on the inside.
00:48:06.020
She was over in Paris for the Balenciaga fashion show and she filmed herself, herself going
00:48:31.580
And then you see her naked feet crisscrossed in front of her like, the world is at my feet.
00:48:47.680
No, what's interesting is Meghan Markle, she will try to plead ignorance and say, it was
00:48:55.280
Everything is a deliberate choice with Meghan Markle.
00:49:02.640
And for her to act like she didn't know where Princess Diana died in that famous car
00:49:06.960
crash is just absolute malarkey, buffoonery, tomfoolery.
00:49:10.620
It's like when she said she didn't even know who Prince Harry was in the documentary.
00:49:13.780
She's like, I don't know much about Prince Harry.
00:49:16.960
Then we find pictures of her out in front of Buckingham Palace.
00:49:20.060
It's like if I say I don't know a guy and then there are pictures of me driving around
00:49:24.360
Meghan Markle knew exactly who Prince Harry was.
00:49:31.600
There was some reporting recently that we covered on Spot On that they're doing a Diana documentary
00:49:36.060
to commemorate the anniversary, I believe, in 2027.
00:49:40.920
I thought maybe Meghan Markle is out doing research for the documentary.
00:49:45.360
But she's going to go drive around and take the exact route to sort of, you know, manifest
00:49:50.880
But the last thing I'll say about Meghan Markle, she's gone on the Drew Barrymore show and
00:49:55.120
talked about how she'll FaceTime her kids when she's on the road.
00:49:58.420
She'll send videos to whoever's watching her kids while she's traveling.
00:50:02.260
Instead of going to these fashion shows, you left the royal family because you guys wanted
00:50:10.440
You know, you don't need to go to Balenciaga, who's been accused of grooming children, had
00:50:15.120
Then you're out partying with, you know, your friend who's in charge of membership at Soho
00:50:20.720
If that was the reason you left the royal family, go do it.
00:50:25.300
That video of her walking into Balenciaga, it was ridiculous.
00:50:28.560
She looks like she's part of the fashion show in all white, walking out like all eyes are
00:50:37.200
But no, she doesn't want to be with the children.
00:50:38.620
That's why she keeps doing these things the same way Hoda Koppi doesn't want to be with
00:50:41.960
And you can't get her off the set of the Today Show.
00:50:43.660
She's there every two weeks launching a new business venture because now she's a CEO.
00:50:49.120
None of these women actually wants to be at home with their children.
00:50:52.380
Look, if you want to be a working mom and, you know, do them both, just own it.
00:50:56.560
Don't try to like build yourself up as like some fake stay at home mom because you're obviously
00:51:02.680
And Meghan Markle, you used the word earlier in a post I read that you made, that she's a
00:51:11.380
And Uvalde and now this she's never seen a tragedy that she doesn't want to exploit
00:51:20.160
Great to see you subscribe to spot on with link.
00:51:22.400
Lauren on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, go to spot on with link.com and that'll show you all
00:51:30.640
Ken Vogel of the New York Times on Hunter Biden.
00:51:34.320
It's time for Medicare annual enrollment again.
00:51:37.680
The mailers, the robocalls, the techs blowing up your phone.
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It can be a circus and overwhelming, but this is one Medicare message you do need to hear.
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And even if you like your current plan, your costs could go up or you could lose coverage
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sure you are on a plan that best fits your needs.
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That's 27 Medicare to talk to a trusted advisor today.
00:52:34.260
It's more important now than ever to cower, to hide, to go silent is not the answer.
00:52:40.420
And all I can tell you is there is no fucking way I am canceling one stop on this tour.
00:52:51.380
I'm going to stand on these stages and I'm going to say all the things that we say all
00:52:58.220
We're going to make it safe for my team and my guests and you.
00:53:01.140
We're going coast to coast and do something really important, which is say what's true
00:53:08.860
I really now more than ever would love to see you all face to face.
00:53:19.600
I am doing this tour and I would love for you to join me.
00:53:24.920
We've been reporting for years on the conflicts of interest and alleged corruption related to
00:53:33.180
Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings, especially his position as a board member of
00:53:38.740
Ukrainian energy company Burisma, a job for which he had absolutely no qualifications.
00:53:43.860
The corporate media mostly ignored or downplayed this story.
00:53:46.440
But there was one notable exception, Ken Vogel of The New York Times.
00:53:53.760
Here he is back in September of 2019 when the left was all excited about possibly impeaching
00:54:00.200
Donald Trump for his phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky when he urged him to find
00:54:06.340
out exactly what Hunter Biden was up to in his country.
00:54:09.720
Vogel pointed out on MSNBC that Joe Biden might have a big problem in Ukraine as well due to
00:54:21.620
This situation involving Joe Biden's sons work for this Ukrainian oligarch owned gas company,
00:54:28.460
which is, I have to quibble with some of what your previous guest said, is a significant
00:54:39.780
We're going to continue to sort of pull that back.
00:54:42.960
That said, the way that Rudy is inserting himself into it is both not helpful, I think, to Rudy
00:54:52.180
He's getting the facts wrong and he is making it appear as if this is just a partisan hit job.
00:54:58.460
Whereas if he would just kind of leave the reporters to do the work on it, I think that,
00:55:03.660
you know, potentially this story might be taken more seriously.
00:55:08.460
Well, that went over like a lead balloon with Team Biden.
00:55:12.460
In fact, just two days later, they put out a digital ad featuring pundits attacking Vogel
00:55:23.280
Trump invited foreign interference in our election in 2016, and he's doing it again.
00:55:28.040
Will media see through Trump's sleazy playbook or fall for it again?
00:55:37.860
And when he does that, and when, for example, Politico has a whole bunch of headlines today
00:55:42.680
doing the same thing, they need to be taken on.
00:55:45.380
They need to be taken on by the candidates and responsible people in the media.
00:55:51.140
You know, it may market itself as part of the resistance.
00:55:53.700
It's obsessed with kind being right down in the middle.
00:55:56.780
You know, with this Ukraine story, a lot of people say, well, this is just like, you know,
00:56:02.620
At some point, we have to ask if a lot of journalists don't want to learn anything.
00:56:10.980
They could not have the story being told about the Biden family corruption over in Ukraine.
00:56:16.920
And it turns out there is more of the story to be told, and Ken Vogel is telling it in
00:56:20.980
his new book titled Devil's Advocates, the hidden story of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden,
00:56:26.920
and the Washington insiders on the payrolls of corrupt foreign interests.
00:56:36.040
And Ken joins me today for an exclusive interview.
00:56:48.600
I have never run cover for Rudy Giuliani or anybody else who may have their hand in the
00:56:58.620
Can you just first set it up why this is an area that is just so ripe for exploitation
00:57:04.540
by foreign governments trying to find some, I'm sorry, weakling here connected to whatever
00:57:11.260
president, could be a right-wing one, could be a left-wing one, for exploitation to try
00:57:18.620
Yeah, I mean, there's this sort of mindset in a lot of the developing world, really a lot
00:57:22.780
of the rest of the world that, you know, you can get what you want from government by
00:57:28.100
essentially paying the government or the people around the government, the families of the
00:57:33.960
And we in the U.S. like to think that we're above that.
00:57:38.540
We have all these ethics laws and conflicts of interest laws and disclosure laws that prevent
00:57:44.080
But it turns out that in the rest of the world, when they sort of get crosswise with the United
00:57:49.320
States or other international bodies, they apply this same mindset and they look for
00:57:53.720
Americans who are close to the government and the top officials in the government to
00:57:58.560
put on their payrolls to be able to at least create the perception that they are gaining
00:58:04.200
some kind of favor or effectively navigating their way out of trouble.
00:58:09.180
And it turns out that there are plenty of well-connected Americans who are willing to take those
00:58:14.880
paydays, including Hunter Biden, including Rudy Giuliani, but also many others who I profile
00:58:23.280
Yeah, this is a grift because you have some access to power and you run around to deep
00:58:28.620
pocketed foreigners touting it, trying to seem important, like you can change policy.
00:58:33.960
And certainly when you are the son of the sitting vice president, that carries a lot of weight
00:58:40.000
because what you're zeroing in on with Hunter really all started when Joe Biden was vice
00:58:46.120
That's when he joined the board of Burisma in Ukraine.
00:58:49.820
Before we get to that, I just want to start with a headline that just came out on Tuesday.
00:58:54.300
Thanks to our pal John Solomon over at Just the News.
00:58:57.280
And the headline is Joe Biden's team blocked the CIA from distributing report on son Hunter's
00:59:04.760
And what Solomon is reporting that back when Joe Biden was vice president, it was February
00:59:10.420
of 16, his team intervened, his vice presidential team intervened to prevent the CIA from disseminating
00:59:19.720
an intelligence report to policymakers about the senior Ukrainian officials perceptions regarding
00:59:31.740
In other words, they were going to tell policymakers in the United States, the CIA was, that the
00:59:37.680
Ukrainians think Hunter Biden is a joke and are rolling their eyes at these professions
00:59:43.220
by Joe Biden that we're not corrupt, but foreign countries like Ukraine are, while his own son
00:59:52.440
And he, Joe Biden, his team intervened, saying the VP would, quote, strongly prefer this report
01:00:05.280
Just so we have this, here is vice president, then vice president Biden on his infamous anti-corruption
01:00:15.760
But listen to the holier than thou attitude he was espousing while his son was essentially
01:00:22.120
But I can tell you, you cannot name me a single democracy in the world where the cancer of
01:00:40.760
And it's not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting
01:00:50.880
The office of the general prosecutor desperately needs reform.
01:00:56.180
The energy sector needs to be competitive, ruled by market principles, not sweetheart deals.
01:01:01.700
It's not enough to push through laws to increase transparency with regard to official sources of income.
01:01:06.260
Senior elected officials have to remove all conflicts between their business interests and
01:01:14.680
Of the democracy in the world that system pertains.
01:01:21.540
Just the news reporting that these Ukrainian officials, quote, viewed the alleged ties of the
01:01:27.240
U.S. vice president's family to corruption in Ukraine as evidence of a double standard within
01:01:33.020
in the United States government toward matters of corruption and political power, according to the
01:01:46.320
Yeah, and it's not just that it's a double standard, though.
01:01:49.740
And we saw this pattern play out where Hunter Biden was working for individuals and companies
01:01:57.040
that were targeted by U.S.-backed, not just U.S.-backed, but anti-corruption initiatives that were
01:02:08.820
But this also gets at this other theme that, like, the perception is important here.
01:02:13.380
It's not just that, you know, you're paying Hunter Biden to effectuate some change in U.S.
01:02:18.960
policy to get the U.S. to back away from a given prosecution or to enact energy policies that were
01:02:26.280
more favorable to the Ukrainian gas company for which he was working, but rather that there's
01:02:31.120
an importance that there's a weight that is associated with having Hunter Biden on your
01:02:36.940
So the Ukrainian prosecutors who are being encouraged by Joe Biden to pursue corruption kind of look
01:02:44.260
at it and say, wait a minute, that here is the son of the vice president who is telling
01:02:50.740
The vice president is the son is working for one of the targets of the of this anti-corruption
01:02:57.940
That's certainly a mixed message at the most charitable way to perceive it.
01:03:05.600
You know, it's one thing if Hunter had had a lifetime in the oil and gas industry, still
01:03:10.300
But at least you'd say, all right, I mean, on paper, at least you can sell it.
01:03:14.980
There was absolutely no basis for him to be there other than to curry favor with his
01:03:19.600
And your reporting is that's exactly why Burisma put him there.
01:03:24.000
And it is something where they, you know, the prosecutors are going to think twice when they
01:03:29.960
see that a very the son of a very important U.S. public official who is very important to
01:03:37.060
the U.S. policy towards Ukraine is is essentially sitting on the board of this entity.
01:03:46.700
It's, you know, again, it's like a mixed message at best, but it could be seen as protection,
01:03:52.600
like that they are paying for protection from this prosecution that the U.S. is encouraging.
01:03:57.980
And I think that very much comports with the post-Soviet mindset that prevailed in Ukraine
01:04:05.420
And so you could see where the motivation would be for the Ukrainians or for anyone else who
01:04:09.320
is in a similar position where they're being targeted by a U.S.-backed anti-corruption
01:04:13.260
initiative to look for that kind of protection and see Hunter Biden as the type of person
01:04:20.740
What an opportunity for Hunter, whether it was with the Chinese or the Ukrainians or
01:04:25.320
There were the opportunity abounded for him to line his own pockets, never mind what it
01:04:32.320
Now, there is reason to believe that Joe Biden paved the way for him.
01:04:37.440
You've got a quote from Devin Archer, who I did not realize was previously an Abercrombie
01:04:44.960
But Devin Archer was his business partner and best friend.
01:04:48.740
And those two, plus a guy named Chris Hines of Hines Ketchup fame and fortune, originally
01:04:58.140
Eventually, Chris Hines got a touch of, like, morality, where he looked at these other two
01:05:04.060
and said, I'm not sure I want this association or whether this is going to a good place.
01:05:09.060
But Devin Archer and Hunter stayed in business together.
01:05:12.240
And you point out in the book that Devin Archer says Joe Biden used to call people and
01:05:17.000
he said, you do something for me, you're a friend.
01:05:20.540
You do something for my son, you're a friend for life.
01:05:24.060
Yeah, so even if we accept the argument at face value that the Bidens have made and Joe
01:05:31.940
Biden has made himself and Kareem Jean-Pierre made from the White House podium that Joe Biden
01:05:37.480
never specifically talked with Hunter or Hunter's business partners about these foreign business
01:05:43.760
ventures, you see right there that the message is communicated.
01:05:47.060
It's the same sort of wink and nod that we're talking about the Ukrainians wanting to avail
01:05:51.760
themselves of by putting him on this board that Joe Biden is telling these foreign business
01:05:58.360
partners that, like, he sort of endorses their whatever it is that they're doing with Hunter
01:06:04.840
so that even if he doesn't know the specifics of it, it is certainly sending the message
01:06:09.260
to these foreigners that, hey, you're getting what you're paying for.
01:06:13.800
Okay, so clearly that was the deal where Joe Biden kind of blessed it.
01:06:18.160
Hunter went over there and worked it and sold it, and ultimately Joe Biden pardoned Hunter
01:06:25.900
And you do point out in the book that there's a reason that pardon, that sweeping pardon he
01:06:30.220
After all the protestations, I will never pardon Hunter, I'm not pardoning Hunter.
01:06:34.500
And then all the Democrats saying, we believe him, we believe him, it's not going to happen.
01:06:40.460
And you say there's a reason it went back to January 1st, 2014.
01:06:43.280
Yeah, that's when he was really ramping up his foreign business dealings, including with
01:06:49.940
That arrangement started in early 2014 and was made official in about April or May when
01:06:55.680
Hunter Biden was added to the board after Devin Archer, the business partner, sort of paved
01:07:00.200
the way and got on the board first and brokered the introduction.
01:07:05.400
It's not just like, you know, at the time that I wrote the book, it was sort of like it was
01:07:12.580
But eventually the prosecutors in the Hunter Biden case essentially suggested that there
01:07:19.120
is a potential charge for violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, interestingly
01:07:25.060
not connected to his work in Ukraine, but rather to his work in Romania for a different oligarch
01:07:35.080
But they were sort of hinting at that, I think, probably to extract a guilty plea.
01:07:40.400
But it's hard to ignore that when you look at the way that the pardon was framed.
01:07:45.740
It's hard to ignore that the prosecutors are suggesting that there might be a potential
01:07:49.320
FARA charge and that the pardon was sort of chronologically situated to cover the activity
01:07:56.620
that would be the basis for such a Foreign Agents Registration Act.
01:08:01.080
Back to the earliest foreign interference that he was doing back to when Joe Biden was VP.
01:08:06.300
And we'll get to Romania because you've broken some news there, too, which is kind of shocking.
01:08:10.060
But let's just stay with Ukraine since we started with it.
01:08:15.540
But just as a refresher for those who haven't been thinking about Hunter Biden in Ukraine blissfully
01:08:19.580
for the past year or so, Ukraine was corrupt, is corrupt.
01:08:24.660
And at one point when Joe Biden was vice president, he went over there and said, and he bragged publicly
01:08:31.360
that he said, you better fire this corrupt prosecutor or I'm not giving you this billion dollars
01:08:37.920
And remember, he said at the Council on Foreign Relations, son of a bitch, they did it.
01:08:42.040
So they fired this allegedly corrupt prosecutor.
01:08:44.720
Well, it stunk to high heaven because we would later find out that prosecutor was investigating
01:08:49.300
corruption in Ukraine, including at Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company on whose board
01:08:55.100
Joe Biden's son, Hunter, sat for this do nothing position for which he wasn't qualified.
01:09:01.800
Are you doing this because you want to clean up corruption in Ukraine?
01:09:04.300
Are you doing this because you want to do your son a solid?
01:09:07.040
And he's already introduced you to some of the officials running Burisma.
01:09:12.120
And the connections between the Bidens and this company have gotten uncomfortably close.
01:09:17.100
You point out in the book, Ukrainian prosecutors were investigating Zlochevsky, the founder of
01:09:24.800
Zlochevsky started paying prominent foreign politicians to try to diffuse those investigations
01:09:29.620
and clean up his reputation, not only in Ukraine, but internationally.
01:09:34.020
Zlochevsky's top American recruit was Hunter Biden, while then VP Joe Biden was overseeing
01:09:42.380
Buying Hunter's loyalty, according to this thinking, would mean buying favor
01:09:49.180
Hunter Biden was offered a seat on the Burisma board for $1 million a year in salary.
01:09:54.360
He then joined the board in the spring of 2014.
01:09:58.540
And you write about how he had an expensive cocaine problem, mostly private schools for
01:10:02.640
his daughters, expensive tastes, and he needed to fund the Hunter Biden lifestyle.
01:10:07.320
But this whole business of cleaning up Zlochevsky's reputation and thus Burisma's reputation would
01:10:16.360
have tentacles throughout America, like Hunter, the vice president's office, law firms, PR firms,
01:10:25.360
all of which Hunter was connected to and seems to have unleashed on cleaning up the reputation
01:10:35.080
Yeah, I mean, it was a very sophisticated reputation laundering campaign and sort of protection
01:10:40.700
campaign where they were seeking to get out of trouble from Ukrainian prosecutors, as well
01:10:46.060
as U.S. Justice Department officials and State Department officials who were encouraging Ukrainian
01:10:50.980
prosecutors and British prosecutors at one point to investigate Zlochevsky.
01:10:56.240
And what's most interesting, at least an important and interesting bit of context here, is like
01:11:02.360
what Zlochevsky was being charged with or Zlochevsky's background.
01:11:06.420
He was a part of this authoritarian government in Ukraine before 2014 that was toppled by mass
01:11:16.180
street protest and with the encouragement of the U.S. government.
01:11:20.380
And Zlochevsky had been a minister in that government and ended up, he was a minister in
01:11:33.980
And lo and behold, a company that he started was awarded all these very lucrative licenses.
01:11:40.080
And so he leaves the government and becomes a billionaire rather quickly as a result of being
01:11:46.180
able to essentially privatize some of these state assets.
01:11:49.220
That is like a quintessential oligarchic corruption pattern of the sort that the U.S.
01:11:54.700
government and Joe Biden, both when he was vice president, before that as a senator, and
01:11:58.840
then when he was president, decried as anathema to democracy.
01:12:04.940
So, you know, they would have reason to be, they, Burisma, would have reason to be concerned
01:12:10.120
that this would be something over which they would be targeted.
01:12:14.760
And Hunter Biden was in the middle of this campaign to get them out of trouble.
01:12:20.520
Now, on the prosecutor, there is, I think, still some debate about the reasoning for both
01:12:28.960
wanting the prosecutor to be gone and Joe Biden pushing for it.
01:12:32.620
You know, there is question about whether he was actually investigating Burisma or whether
01:12:37.540
he was just using the threat of an investigation to essentially elicit bribes from Burisma.
01:12:46.420
Yeah, I mean, and, you know, big surprise that someone in the Ukrainian government would
01:12:52.500
But either way, Burisma was happy when he was fired under pressure from Joe Biden because
01:12:59.380
they thought correctly that they would be able to deal in a more open, transparent way with
01:13:06.420
And in fact, they were able initially to do so.
01:13:08.820
And they ended up getting what they wanted, which is the dropping of these cases by the
01:13:15.660
Can you speak to these, like the PR group and the law firms?
01:13:20.840
You talk about, write about this group, a consulting firm called Blue Star Strategies.
01:13:25.880
Now, this is a Democrat Party-linked consulting firm here in America.
01:13:30.920
These are both former Hillary people, the Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano.
01:13:42.180
And why is some American consulting firm called Blue Star Strategies at all getting involved
01:13:50.680
Well, yeah, they are a Democratic consulting firm.
01:13:53.080
They worked in the Clinton administration, actually, at the same time that Hunter Biden
01:13:56.840
worked in the Clinton administration and the Commerce Department.
01:14:00.560
And they set up this firm that essentially worked with international interests, oftentimes
01:14:07.060
that were sort of being targeted by prosecutors in their own countries or sometimes international
01:14:16.080
They were brought in by one of Hunter's partners with assistance from Hunter Biden.
01:14:20.740
And he was involved in the recruitment of Blue Star and the signing of that deal between
01:14:27.420
And what they did was both on the PR front trying to essentially cleanse Zolchevsky's reputation,
01:14:34.700
but they also, importantly, reached out to their contacts in the U.S. government during the
01:14:41.260
Obama-Biden administration to try to get them to back off of Zolchevsky and back off of U.S.
01:14:50.000
Now, that would seem to be the kind of thing that would trigger a requirement to register
01:14:54.800
under this Foreign Agents Registration Act as a foreign lobbyist.
01:14:58.020
They did not do that in real time, despite questions from me and others in the press and
01:15:04.320
Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson about why they hadn't done so.
01:15:08.020
Ultimately, at the same time that Hunter Biden was being investigated by the Justice Department
01:15:13.360
for his foreign business, Blue Star was also investigated, and they retroactively registered
01:15:18.980
as foreign agents, which to me seems like sort of a tacit admission that they skirted the
01:15:26.580
But they got a deal under which the prosecution was dropped.
01:15:30.360
There would be no charges as long as they filed this registration, which they did.
01:15:34.100
But even the name, like Blue Star, it just reminds me of the Blue Horseshoe Loves whatever
01:15:39.660
from Wall Street, you know, just has this feel to it of like, oh, it's meaningless and therefore
01:15:45.420
it's hiding something they don't want us to know.
01:15:50.140
Do these two gals deny that they were, you know, taking money after having been hooked up
01:15:56.300
with Burisma through Hunter and his pal to cleanse Burisma's reputation so that it could
01:16:03.960
get this prosecutor off of its back and, you know, smooth sailing with the U.S. government?
01:16:11.480
The way they frame it is that they were just seeking information.
01:16:14.940
They wanted to know why the U.S. government had this negative view of Zolchevsky and of Burisma,
01:16:20.300
and they wanted to, like, help correct the misperceptions in Washington about this guy.
01:16:29.620
So now it wasn't just Blue Star, this consulting firm that Hunter brought in to cleanse Burisma.
01:16:36.200
Again, this is how he was actually earning his million dollars a year.
01:16:41.620
It was to work his dad to bring in this consulting firm to work the American public's perceptions
01:16:47.020
and the perceptions of the Obama-Biden government.
01:16:50.060
And then this law firm, which is just everywhere, David Boies' firm,
01:16:54.760
he also brought in, and he was of counsel to that firm.
01:16:58.840
And you actually point out, I mean, talk about your other conflicts of interest.
01:17:02.460
Hunter Biden had a couple of roles in connection with Burisma, and one was as a lawyer, right?
01:17:11.160
Initially, he was sort of brought in through Boyce Schiller.
01:17:15.720
But when he joined the board, he sort of handed off the legal portfolio from Boyce Schiller to another lawyer there.
01:17:22.940
And ultimately, a different firm was brought in to sort of run the effort to try to get the Ukrainian prosecutors to back off.
01:17:34.900
I'm forgetting the rest of the names there, but Cravath is the first name.
01:17:39.900
And the lawyer who they had, who, again, it's very symbolic and important that they're choosing this particular lawyer.
01:17:47.880
There's a guy by the name of John Beretta who had worked in the Obama Justice Department in a rather senior role.
01:17:55.420
And so he comes in, and he's basically like advertising to the Ukrainian prosecutors, like, I worked in the Justice Department, and now I am here on behalf of this company to help resolve this situation.
01:18:09.400
And so, again, it's like the signaling that carries so much weight in – I mean, it carries so much weight everywhere, but particularly in these foreign countries where there's, like, less of a clear line between, like, the government and the allies of the government who are on the outside.
01:18:24.680
And John Beretta and Hunter and Bluestar, they all sort of, like, take advantage of this perception that they are kind of unofficially carrying the implementer of the government, and that gets them taken seriously and helps their clients.
01:18:41.900
I mean, I hear you on – we may have had a couple of motivations for getting this prosecutor fired, right?
01:18:50.180
He may actually have been corrupt, and the Obama-Biden administration may have actually wanted him gone, but it sure does seem convenient that after Hunter Biden worked very hard – he didn't work very hard for many things, but he did work very hard to clean up Burisma's reputation and get this prosecutor fired.
01:19:07.240
With an outside consulting firm in the states, with lawyers in the states, Cravath Swain – you don't hire them unless you're really willing to pay for good results, like, that's a huge, very well-respected firm.
01:19:16.980
And through working his own dad, suddenly the prosecutor was fired.
01:19:22.620
While they're lecturing the whole world about corruption.
01:19:25.740
I mean, Joe Biden, like, he – we could spend all day playing soundbites of him saying Ukraine really needs to root out corruption.
01:19:36.140
And he was the point person for the Obama administration on making sure that happened.
01:19:41.240
Meanwhile, his son is running around trying to run cover for one of the most apparently corrupt organizations there.
01:19:48.160
Yeah, and, you know, their argument at the time – not at the time, but because of the time, this, as you noted, was not really covered with the sort of degree of intensity that you would typically think that, like, a high-level conflict of interest scandal involving a top U.S. official would be.
01:20:06.380
But after the fact, when this became an issue, the Biden folks' argument was, you know, Joe Biden wasn't aware of this.
01:20:13.380
He wasn't aware of what his son was doing beyond saying – you know, beyond being alerted by news stories that he had joined the board and telling him, I hope you know what you're doing.
01:20:21.760
Well, we see from this CIA, this memo where the Biden folks are telling the CIA not to disseminate a memo that really does point out this sort of conflict of interest here, or at least the double standard and the perception of a double standard that, like, no, in fact, they were aware of this.
01:20:44.180
And Joe Biden was aware of this, and he didn't want others in his government to be made aware of it.
01:20:50.080
So, you know, whether or not he was actively involved in pushing out a prosecutor because it would benefit his son or his son's client, or whether it just so happened that it benefited the Burisma, you can't argue that he wasn't aware of this potential conflict of interest.
01:21:13.100
He did argue it many times, just as a refresher for the audience.
01:21:16.900
Hannity Show put together this montage back in the day, Sop 55.
01:21:20.180
Mr. Vice President, how many times have you ever spoken to your son about his overseas business dealings?
01:21:27.820
I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.
01:21:30.500
I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their businesses, period.
01:21:38.780
And what I will do is the same thing we did in our administration.
01:21:43.060
There will be an absolute wall between personal and private and the government.
01:21:48.640
Do you stand by your statement that you did not discuss any of your son's overseas business dealings?
01:21:55.100
I did not know he was on the board of that company.
01:21:58.520
I've never discussed my business or their business, my son's or daughter's.
01:22:02.760
I never discussed a single thing with my son about anything having to do with Ukraine.
01:22:14.480
Yeah, I mean, so clearly he did know that Hunter was on the board of this company and the people around him knew.
01:22:21.820
And the people around him and possibly him himself did not want others in the government to be sort of aware of this and sort of focused on it as a potential problem that undercut the U.S.'s effort to fight corruption around the world.
01:22:37.340
You know, the other thing that's sort of notable on that front is like this memo that was circulated or that they attempted to circulate that the Biden folks blocked from circulating came right as this effort by Biden to force out the prosecutor was heating up.
01:22:55.880
And as Blue Star's effort to kind of get to get the U.S. to back away from the prosecution was really at its apex.
01:23:04.640
So, like, this was the moment when people in the government should have been aware of this.
01:23:08.900
And, in fact, we do know that there were some people in the government who were aware of it and were deeply troubled by it and tried to flag it for the vice president himself.
01:23:17.140
And we're told that he just doesn't want to hear it right now at the time.
01:23:20.740
I mean, this is – I'm not making light of this.
01:23:22.400
At the time, his other son, his older son, Beau, was fighting brain cancer that ultimately cost him his life.
01:23:29.380
And so, you know, there is, I guess, a human argument, and you could understand why he wouldn't want to be troubled with, like, what his other son was doing.
01:23:37.660
But it implicated U.S. foreign policy and the ability of the U.S. to take the moral high ground in calling out and fighting corruption, which was, again, a key part of, like, the Biden doctrine in foreign policy.
01:23:53.400
You're the vice president of the United States.
01:23:55.100
It's very sad, the personal tragedy that happened with Beau Biden, but you have to do your job.
01:24:02.580
So, if you need to take a leave of absence because of, you know, a massive health problem in your family, then that's what you do.
01:24:07.380
But you don't just say, don't bother me with massive corruption my other son is engaged in that's compromising the United States of America.
01:24:15.080
Do you think this is why, when you started to report this story more aggressively or at all, because if you were, in 2019, they came at you so hard?
01:24:25.660
It's very normal to see hit pieces like that on MSNBC against people like me.
01:24:31.420
It's not normal to see it against people like you.
01:24:37.060
Yeah, I think that they recognized that this was a real issue and one that they wanted to get ahead of.
01:24:44.960
And it wasn't just them coming after me or other reporters.
01:24:48.740
I mean, we saw it most acutely with the Hunter Biden laptop.
01:24:52.560
And when the New York Post wrote about it in the run up to the 2020 election, the way that the Biden campaign was able to marshal all these former intelligence officials to essentially shout it down and encourage successfully the social media companies to suppress the spread of the link to the New York Post story.
01:25:11.800
And any other reporting or commentary about the Hunter Biden laptop really does show the degree to which they recognize that this was a problem, even as they sort of pretended and tried to brush it off as like, oh, no, this is either Russian disinformation or this is like a Rudy Giuliani spin.
01:25:31.640
And, you know, to the point that I was trying to make, maybe not super articulately in that clip that you played from MSNBC, was that Rudy was, in fact, kind of muddying the waters in a way that made it more difficult to discern what the facts were and what the real problems were with having, you know, a close family member of the former vice president and potential future president, you know, working for corrupt.
01:26:00.400
I mean, interest that the US government had determined were corrupt in places that were of critical geopolitical importance to US national security priorities.
01:26:11.480
OK, but now I am I have it on very good authority that it's only the current president who targets his media foes and folks in the media who make him unhappy.
01:26:20.380
I seem to be gleaning that he wasn't the very first to do this, Ken.
01:26:25.160
I mean, it's a different approach. I take your point. But but yes, the Bidens were effective and, you know, maybe there is something to be said for the idea that they were, you know, the Democrats are more accustomed to being able to, like, work with the media and therefore taking like a less adversarial, publicly adversarial approach and sort of working the back channels.
01:26:47.600
But here is an example where the effort to work the back channels because they did, you know, work to sort of shape our coverage and maybe discourage our coverage before it ran.
01:26:59.300
And then after it ran, they reacted in this very aggressive way that you saw play out there with that digital ad.
01:27:05.800
Did you ever get rattled? Like, did you ever think, oh, God, because the book reports that what's her name?
01:27:12.920
Kate Bedingfield. She wrote a separate letter to the executive editor of The New York Times accusing you of an egregious act of journalistic malpractice, spreading Russian propaganda.
01:27:21.780
That's their favorite go to. Then the Biden team provided the letter to a CNN reporter who published it.
01:27:27.700
Andrew Bates, who literally lied every other sentence.
01:27:30.640
Another Biden aide blasted your reporting on Hunter's work for Burisma as historic malpractice and then called you a coward.
01:27:39.480
Then we saw that Biden campaign produced that video that we just played, impugning you by name.
01:27:45.520
You write in the book, this is the type of media targeting for which Trump rightly drew criticism lately.
01:27:52.760
You I mean, the to me as a reporter, this would tell you you're right over the target.
01:27:58.420
But I don't know. Was The New York Times rattled at all by this?
01:28:02.360
The New York Times definitely had my back and the executive editor at the time, Dean Becke, publicly defended, you know, my reporting and me and sort of justified or validated the reporting as being like significant and something that we were going to continue.
01:28:17.760
You know, we did continue it. And it was it was interesting because it did not.
01:28:23.140
You know, I think much of the I can say like much of the mainstream media either sort of shied away from it or was like more measured in in in their approach to it.
01:28:34.100
And of course, that's changed quite a bit after Biden dropped out of the race and Democrats sort of blamed him for costing them a chance at beating Trump in 2024.
01:28:44.660
And now it seems as if there's much more of an appetite to scrutinize the Bidens.
01:28:49.800
Mm hmm. Well, I mean, good for you for doing exactly that.
01:28:53.360
I want to talk about what happened in Romania, but let's just take a quick break first and we'll be back with Ken Vogel.
01:28:58.620
The book is Devil's Advocate. Check it out. You can preorder it right now.
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A lot of juicy stuff in there and you should know about it.
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This is his first interview for his brand new book, Devil's Advocates.
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The Hidden Story of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden, and the Washington Insiders on the Payrolls of Corrupt Foreign Interests.
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You can preorder it right now and be in on the know.
01:33:58.200
Ken, what happened with Hunter Biden and Romania?
01:34:02.060
Yeah, this is one that is a pretty similar fact pattern, actually, with what happened in Ukraine,
01:34:06.580
which is that there was a Romanian oligarch, a real estate developer, extremely wealthy,
01:34:12.500
who was being prosecuted by prosecutors in Romania in connection with what they allege was a corrupt land deal
01:34:20.080
in which he had, again, bought land from the state.
01:34:27.200
Right, and so he was able to get what prosecutors allege was a real sweetheart deal from the state
01:34:33.840
to buy this, like, very coveted land, and he built a massive development on it,
01:34:40.240
including, you know, a mall and offices and commercial, other commercial properties,
01:34:46.360
and he ended up renting, under a long-term lease, part of the land to the U.S. government
01:34:56.060
So he's being prosecuted, and who does he reach out to to hire to help him navigate this prosecution
01:35:03.140
but Boyce Schiller and Hunter Biden, and Hunter Biden goes over to Bucharest with a partner at Boyce
01:35:09.920
Schiller, and he meets with the U.S. ambassador under the Obama-Biden administration to Romania,
01:35:16.100
and they talk about this case, and they sort of eventually follow up about, you know, their concerns
01:35:22.400
with it, essentially seeking the help of the U.S. government in backing away Romanian prosecutors
01:35:30.220
Well, as if that wasn't enough, Hunter Biden is also working to develop a land deal with this
01:35:35.900
Romanian developer and a Chinese-linked company, not just linked, but a company that was regarded
01:35:42.040
as like a pivotal cog in the Chinese Belt and Road economic influence campaign to essentially
01:35:50.040
create this joint venture that would include Hunter, his partners, the Romanian developer,
01:35:58.500
So you would have, and in so doing, they thought that this might sort of diminish the appetite
01:36:04.140
of the Romanian prosecutors to pursue this case because the real estate developer would
01:36:09.420
have less interest in the land, and they would cut a deal with the state that would pay them.
01:36:14.140
But the end result, if this were to have gone through, which it didn't, was that would have
01:36:20.060
been that Hunter, the Romanian, and the Chinese would co-own the land around the U.S. embassy,
01:36:27.500
if not the land itself on which the U.S. embassy was built, you could see why that could cause
01:36:36.120
One of Hunter's partners at the time, Tony Bobulinski, actually raised this concern to
01:36:41.940
the Romanian real estate developer and said, hey, we need to make sure that the embassy is
01:36:49.320
It never got far enough for that to actually be an issue where they were spelling out which
01:36:54.660
specific parcels were involved and which weren't.
01:36:57.500
But again, a concerning fact pattern that just shows how his pursuit, Hunter Biden's
01:37:04.320
pursuit of foreign paydays was in some ways at odds with the foreign policy of the United
01:37:10.320
States that his father, as vice president, was pushing.
01:37:14.060
We're talking with Ken Vogel, the brand new book out by Ken next week.
01:37:31.220
I mean, the thing that's so interesting about Rudy is he went after Hunter Biden.
01:37:36.240
In fact, he encouraged Trump to go after Hunter Biden to highlight Hunter Biden's foreign business
01:37:40.560
dealings as a political cudgel and in some ways effectively, in some ways ineffectively,
01:37:48.160
But the reason why he was so well versed in sort of the way that this foreign influence
01:37:54.820
business worked is because he himself had worked at the same space.
01:37:59.340
In fact, he had worked at it in ways that directly overlapped with the ways that Hunter Biden had
01:38:04.840
worked in it, including on behalf of this same Romanian real estate developer.
01:38:09.600
So the story there is that Hunter Biden eventually sort of passes off this legal work for the
01:38:16.920
Romanian real estate developer to Louis Free, a family friend, the former FBI director, family
01:38:21.940
friend of the Bidens and the former, and also a close friend of Rudy Giuliani.
01:38:27.720
So Louis Free is working this case on behalf of the Romanian developer.
01:38:31.880
And when Trump gets into office, Louis Free brings in Rudy Giuliani to write a letter to
01:38:37.520
the Romanians calling out some of the elements of this anti-corruption prosecution.
01:38:42.640
So it's sort of it's more than a little ironic then that Rudy would sort of come after Hunter
01:38:48.240
Biden over his work in the foreign space when he himself had worked at the same space, in
01:38:52.300
some cases on behalf of on behalf of or with some of the same people.
01:38:56.360
You know, it does remind me of how like if you want to figure out how a hacker is likely
01:39:00.640
to get into your network, you've got to go work with a hacker and have somebody explain
01:39:05.980
it to you. And that's how some of these like hacker criminals keep themselves out of jail.
01:39:10.560
They cut a deal to like work with the FBI to show them how it's done.
01:39:14.260
Not say suggesting it's exactly a parallel, but yeah, it makes sense to me.
01:39:18.680
How widespread is this? I mean, like, is it just these guys or is it not just these guys?
01:39:24.920
No, I mean, it's very widespread. And in fact, like the the point about the parallels or the
01:39:29.820
points of connective tissue between Hunter and Rudy in this case are important because
01:39:36.100
it shows that this is a very bipartisan thing. Sure, the foreign interests are looking for people
01:39:41.540
who have connections to the party in power, but they're also looking for connections like across
01:39:46.600
the government. So you see these strange bedfellows types of situations like in Ukraine, where Paul
01:39:53.040
Manafort is working on behalf of the authoritarian president who employed the guy Zolchevsky who
01:40:00.260
started Burisma, who hired Hunter Biden. That was the pro-Russian Ukrainian president who got ousted
01:40:05.600
thanks to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's State Department. Yeah, I mean, the U.S. was certainly
01:40:10.680
behind. It was certainly supportive of the of the street protests that led to his ouster. But
01:40:16.060
Paul Manafort was trying to keep him in power. And so how does Paul Manafort go about doing that?
01:40:22.000
Well, he brings in Tony Podesta, a prominent Democrat with close ties to the Biden to the
01:40:27.720
Obama administration through his brother, John Podesta. He brings in Tad Devine, a Democratic
01:40:33.340
operative who had worked for John Kerry and would go on to work for Bernie Sanders. He brings in
01:40:38.440
Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman with close ties to Mitt Romney. So you see like all these
01:40:44.380
people who in the U.S. are on opposite sides of some of the most heated political fights between the
01:40:49.920
red side and the blue side. But when they're going abroad and looking to pad their pockets,
01:40:55.300
they're all in alignment on the green side. That is the side that's able to like pay them the most
01:41:00.420
money. And so what country does pay the most? I mean, it's it's usually there's this dynamic where
01:41:07.560
the ones that the foreign interests are the sort of most toxic and therefore like most, you know,
01:41:14.020
face the most problems from prosecutors at home and in the U.S. and the U.S. State Department,
01:41:19.000
U.S. sanctions. They oftentimes have the most money, often ill begotten funds, or at least that
01:41:24.640
prosecutors would say what ill begotten funds and have the most incentive to try to protect
01:41:30.060
themselves. And also they're the ones who like there's the real reputational costs for the well
01:41:36.340
connected Americans who are going to go on their payroll. And so they're eyeing it and they're saying
01:41:40.620
like, I don't know, this is like a real a client that might look really bad. So the payday better be
01:41:47.160
worthwhile. And so you see, you know, dictators in Africa. Joseph Kabila was one. He was the former
01:41:53.960
president, strongman president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, launched a huge lobbying
01:41:58.760
campaign in 2018 that I write about in the book that brought in people from across the political
01:42:04.760
spectrum and was paying, you know, millions of dollars because like that's a tough client to take
01:42:10.360
and it better be worth your while. What was there anything that really shocked you when you were
01:42:17.100
researching this book? I mean, I think it was the willingness of of Americans to sort of try to
01:42:24.520
frame a political argument in the U.S. where they would say, look, this person looks really,
01:42:30.660
really bad. And sure, they've done some terrible things, but like they're kind of it's kind of in
01:42:35.860
the best interest of like U.S. foreign policy for the U.S. to like turn a blind eye to the bad
01:42:41.980
things that they're doing in their country, whether they're human rights violations or corruption or
01:42:46.180
what have you. We're still doing that. We're still doing that. We all buy Apple phones and we we deal
01:42:51.580
with China, you know, in a corporate level and a presidential level under both presidents, you know,
01:42:55.540
most the most recent ones, notwithstanding what we know what they're doing, the Uyghurs and all that
01:42:59.920
human rights abuses over there. So I find that easy to believe. I do wonder, you know, like the
01:43:08.040
Hunter Biden laptop and how willing the media was to go along with Russian disinformation, Russian
01:43:13.140
disinformation. How much do you think that kind of thing, like the censoring of that reporting
01:43:18.580
by X, then Twitter? Well, how much of an effect do you think that had on like the American media
01:43:25.080
and understanding that we're just not going to go there? We're not going to talk about things like that.
01:43:28.860
Yeah, it's tough to know. I mean, I think it was troubling from the perspective of someone who
01:43:35.080
like is whose whole job is transparency and enforcing transparency in places where it's not
01:43:41.060
comfortable for the ruling class. And I think there were stories in there. But, you know, I think they
01:43:50.140
did ultimately get told most of them. I mean, maybe I should I should check myself a little bit.
01:43:55.400
But yeah, thanks to my side of the aisle. I should check myself a little bit because I'm still like
01:44:01.380
in this with this Romania story with the land around the U.S. embassy. Like I found about that
01:44:05.660
out about that and reporting my book. So this was well after Biden was, you know, the already or,
01:44:11.840
you know, but it was not Biden already been elected in 2020. So, yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of
01:44:17.200
a lot of interesting information out there about this industry. And it doesn't make either side look
01:44:23.280
particularly good. No, but they should be outed, even if it doesn't make them look good. I appreciate
01:44:28.420
writing the book, Ken. I love this kind of stuff. It's the granular detail is very appealing to me
01:44:34.320
because that's evidence. Again, it's called Devil's Advocates, the hidden story of Rudy Giuliani,
01:44:40.000
Hunter Biden and the Washington insiders on the payrolls of corrupt foreign interests by Ken Vogel
01:44:47.200
of The New York Times. Thank you so much for being here. All the best.
01:44:49.720
It was a pleasure. Thank you, Megan. All right. We're back tomorrow, everybody. We will see you
01:44:53.640
then. Don't miss that. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.
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