The Megyn Kelly Show - Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch on Woke Culture, Free Speech, and Identity Politics

00:00:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.780 Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.900 You're going to love today's episode. We just taped it and I am smiling ear to ear.

00:00:18.560 I love these guys. Love these guys.

00:00:21.840 These are the hosts of the very popular podcast called The Fifth Column,

00:00:25.840 which if you're not downloading, you should.

00:00:27.200 And Camille Foster, Matt Welch, and Michael Moynihan.

00:00:30.840 You may know some of these guys because they had a short-lived show on Fox Business for a couple of years.

00:00:36.340 I don't mean that to sound insulting short-lived.

00:00:39.240 But you're going to understand the publications that they're for and Reason,

00:00:43.760 which is something that was started by Matt, which I absolutely love.

00:00:46.560 They're more libertarian in their approach to life, which I also like.

00:00:49.880 And I think you'll find their views interesting and provocative.

00:00:53.460 But we just had fun. We talked about everything, everything from Biden's remarks the other night,

00:00:57.120 the attacks on Tim Scott, the crazy race stuff, the attempt to give qualified immunity or take it away from the cops,

00:01:03.600 where we had an interesting and fun disagreement, drawing Muhammad, which one of these guys did.

00:01:08.440 They did a contest. It goes on. It was awesome.

00:01:11.740 We went two hours. It could have been five.

00:01:14.180 All I'm going to say is listen to this ad and then enjoy.

00:01:17.180 Hey, guys.

00:01:24.560 I'm Megan.

00:01:25.080 Megan, how are you?

00:01:26.180 How's it going?

00:01:28.360 Spectacular.

00:01:28.920 Great.

00:01:29.480 Yeah.

00:01:29.980 Never been better.

00:01:30.840 Delighted to be with you.

00:01:32.080 Delighted.

00:01:32.860 Same. We've never done an interview with three people at once like this.

00:01:35.720 So this could be a hot shit storm, but let's let's try it.

00:01:39.480 This is going to be the hottest mess in the history of the Megan Kelly show.

00:01:43.440 No, we know sort of generally not to talk over each other.

00:01:47.560 We try to do that.

00:01:48.420 Yeah.

00:01:48.660 But oftentimes when we record the podcast, we're about eight drinks in.

00:01:52.160 So it was very good to do it at 11 in the morning.

00:01:54.500 Yeah.

00:01:55.000 Dang.

00:01:56.280 We could have prepared that way.

00:01:57.620 That would have been fine.

00:01:58.320 I'm totally up for a mimosa.

00:02:00.680 You know, with the Irish last name of Moynihan, you'd probably expect that I would be about three drinks in.

00:02:05.020 You know what?

00:02:08.180 Stereotypes do exist for a reason.

00:02:09.940 And I embrace that and support it.

00:02:13.080 Yes.

00:02:13.680 Brought a lot of joy.

00:02:14.760 I indulge Irish stereotypes all the time.

00:02:17.340 All right.

00:02:17.600 So let's first of all, can I before we get started, Matt Welsh, did I have dinner with you at John Stossel's house one night?

00:02:23.560 Absolutely.

00:02:24.220 Yes.

00:02:24.520 With the spectacular Peggy Noonan.

00:02:26.760 Oh, yeah.

00:02:27.180 Yes.

00:02:28.000 She's great.

00:02:28.880 Yes.

00:02:29.480 I knew it.

00:02:30.660 Okay.

00:02:30.800 It was years ago, but we recently had Stossel on the on the program.

00:02:35.020 Who I know you love and I love, too.

00:02:36.480 And I was joking with him about the Stossel that Doug and I call it just the Stossel where he just gets up and leaves.

00:02:42.840 Oh, wow.

00:02:44.180 At 10 o'clock.

00:02:45.600 He'll let you know beforehand.

00:02:46.780 Like, like, look, I'm going to leave at 10.

00:02:49.640 I'm going to go upstairs.

00:02:50.580 You can do what you want.

00:02:51.620 But I'm leaving.

00:02:52.000 No, my, my Stossel impression is always the fake, like the fake incredulity.

00:02:57.420 Oh, yeah.

00:02:57.660 He's like, so you're saying that higher taxes are bad?

00:03:01.400 Yeah.

00:03:01.640 And it's like, John, I know what you're doing.

00:03:03.760 You know, what's crazy is like, I love him and I like his little online splainers that he does.

00:03:09.000 You know, he puts out these little videos now on Stossel TV and he's killing it.

00:03:13.500 I think Stossel might be 72 now.

00:03:15.560 He's killing it.

00:03:16.460 Like, younger viewers are watching those things in droves.

00:03:21.280 Even our podcast with him did so well.

00:03:24.420 And I love it because it's like, he's super smart and he's very relevant.

00:03:28.320 Not, you know, the ageists out there who think there's no life past 70 and media are wrong.

00:03:33.220 It's all that beach folly poly place.

00:03:35.320 Stossel TV, by the way.

00:03:36.540 And there is ageism, I think, because John has to do Stossel TV on YouTube.

00:03:40.500 But it has a half a million subscribers, which is a very, that's enormous.

00:03:46.460 Even I will go there just, you know, as a media person for splainers because he'll do it quickly.

00:03:52.680 He doesn't waste your time.

00:03:54.420 He has a lifetime of being like super to the point and user friendly, right?

00:04:01.260 Like he's, you got to get up and down on a story when you're in media.

00:04:04.260 You don't have it like in podcasting, it's a different story.

00:04:06.520 But when you work for ABC News, they're not going to give you 60 minutes to go through your story

00:04:11.820 and why the consumers are getting screwed, which was his original beat.

00:04:14.360 So he's come around to this place where he's really good at explaining stuff.

00:04:18.200 And unlike most people, he doesn't have a left wing bias.

00:04:21.620 He doesn't have a right wing bias.

00:04:23.140 He's more like you guys.

00:04:24.420 Libertarian.

00:04:25.480 Yeah.

00:04:26.280 He also does this thing for those of us who've been in the chair being interviewed by him on

00:04:31.600 the show.

00:04:32.060 He does the eye glaze if you're boring him or if you're using numbers or whatever.

00:04:39.280 He trains so many dorky libertarians to speak English by the eye glaze.

00:04:44.620 I can't remember who I know.

00:04:45.880 I won't keep it because I know I have to start.

00:04:47.560 But there was somebody, and you might remember this, Matt, in the green room at Fox was waiting

00:04:51.900 to go on.

00:04:52.900 And, you know, John comes in and says, you know, what are you going to talk about?

00:04:55.320 Here are the, what we're going to talk about.

00:04:56.520 What is your answer to X, Y, or Z question?

00:04:57.960 And the guy was responding and he turned to his producer and he's like, who invited this

00:05:02.620 guy on?

00:05:03.660 Literally on in the green room.

00:05:05.740 And he just shrunk.

00:05:07.200 Savage.

00:05:07.860 He was rough.

00:05:08.200 Savage.

00:05:08.920 Yeah.

00:05:09.500 You know, my husband reminded me that Stossel, because he and Stossel are actually good friends.

00:05:14.960 And unlike Stossel and I, who are just mediocre and, you know, he irritates me.

00:05:19.520 No, I love him, but I love his wife even more.

00:05:22.840 So Stossel came up to me one time at Fox, and I forgot to bring this up when he was on the

00:05:27.380 show.

00:05:28.400 And we didn't know each other very well.

00:05:30.420 And Stossel says to me in the, in the makeup room, out of the blue, right?

00:05:33.520 We don't know each other.

00:05:34.200 He goes, I owe you an apology.

00:05:37.060 Like, oh, go on.

00:05:39.440 Like, what for?

00:05:40.460 What'd you do?

00:05:41.480 And he said, I can't remember exactly how you put it, but he basically said, I used to

00:05:46.780 think that you were an, that you were an airhead, that you were an empty headed bimbo, basically.

00:05:53.580 And he goes, but that's before I listened to you.

00:05:56.420 And he said, now that I've actually listened to you, I'm sorry, because you're actually

00:06:01.160 really smart.

00:06:02.140 And I was like, he apologized for something that you would have no way of ever knowing.

00:06:09.920 No, it was just in his head.

00:06:12.900 Yeah, that's amazing.

00:06:14.560 Well, but I, I took it.

00:06:16.000 I don't care, like, I'm very, very hard to offend, very hard to offend.

00:06:19.480 So I decided to just wrap myself in the compliment that ended it.

00:06:23.680 And a beautiful friendship was born that day.

00:06:26.040 There you go.

00:06:27.260 And by the way, challenge accepted.

00:06:28.820 Yeah.

00:06:28.980 Okay, so let's talk about, because we're now taping right after Biden's fake State of

00:06:37.100 the Union address.

00:06:38.460 Yes.

00:06:38.940 And let's just start, we just start with how awkward it was.

00:06:41.900 It reminded me of the Biden campaign rallies, right?

00:06:44.340 Where like four people show up and they have like 20 feet between each one of them.

00:06:47.940 They can't get out of their cars.

00:06:49.760 Everybody's quadruple masked.

00:06:51.680 It's like everyone in the room had been vaccinated.

00:06:54.240 Everybody, even just look at who was up on the dais, right?

00:06:57.460 It's like Biden and Harris and Pelosi.

00:07:01.360 They've all been vaccinated.

00:07:02.520 Even they, like, just they, can't they take off their masks?

00:07:05.580 It just, to me, was emblematic of where we are, especially the Democrats, though, as a

00:07:11.020 country right now, when it comes to, we're never taking these things off.

00:07:16.040 Yeah.

00:07:16.760 I like, I like the Chuck Schumer in the front row.

00:07:19.640 Like no one sitting next to him, whenever he stood up, he was just, he was visibly confused.

00:07:23.420 Yeah.

00:07:24.240 Where did the people go?

00:07:25.460 Why are my glasses not on my nose?

00:07:27.660 They're usually on my nose right there.

00:07:29.260 Yeah.

00:07:29.720 No, it's amazing because the whole thing is so condescending to the American people.

00:07:34.120 Because the idea, of course, is that if we take these things off and we're on television,

00:07:38.880 first of all, no one's watching.

00:07:40.180 The people who you think are watching aren't watching.

00:07:42.640 That they're going to see this and just fling the masks off and go out and create, you know,

00:07:48.600 round eight of the pandemic.

00:07:50.180 Right.

00:07:50.460 Right.

00:07:50.540 And that is, I mean, most people would presume that not only being elderly, but being the

00:07:55.660 president, vice president, speaker, that maybe they've been vaccinated, but they can't do

00:07:59.720 that.

00:07:59.920 The dynamic is incredibly strange.

00:08:01.600 You're telling a story about every American having access to this vaccine.

00:08:05.680 Imaginably, all of you have it, but you're not sure if you should be projecting confidence

00:08:09.440 about how the future is going to go, about where we are as a country or not.

00:08:13.880 The place is half empty, not even half empty.

00:08:17.060 It's barely a third full.

00:08:18.560 Yeah.

00:08:18.740 Right.

00:08:19.320 And most of the people in the room, except for Joe Biden, who is stumbling through this

00:08:23.320 speech, are masked.

00:08:24.920 Completely bizarre situation.

00:08:26.520 Doug and I were sitting there and I was, every time we paused or appeared to go off script,

00:08:30.620 I was like, oh, oh.

00:08:34.500 I didn't, right?

00:08:35.600 Did you have that feeling?

00:08:36.800 Like he's not going to be able to do it.

00:08:38.560 Well, we watched it together and Camille very helpfully was following on with the prepared

00:08:42.140 remarks and would periodically tell us, although we didn't need to be told because it was the

00:08:47.320 meandering bits about how we found vaccines on Mars.

00:08:50.180 And I was like, what is going on here?

00:08:53.120 And it was just as bizarre.

00:08:55.320 I mean, look, we made fun, and I think appropriately so, of, you know, George W. Bush's gaffes.

00:09:01.400 I mean, more Trump's, you know, gaffes too, which were a little, there were less gaffes.

00:09:05.560 It was just kind of who he was.

00:09:06.860 They weren't like malapropisms.

00:09:08.020 And nobody did that about Joe Biden in the aftermath on Twitter anyway.

00:09:13.720 And of course, Twitter is not the real world, but I didn't see people making fun of these

00:09:18.320 bizarro tangents that I was just spent the time trying to figure out.

00:09:22.740 Why does he keep saying that he flew 17,000 miles with Xi and like nobody understands why

00:09:28.460 it's not true.

00:09:29.260 And he keeps saying it over and over.

00:09:30.920 It's which is he just makes stuff up.

00:09:32.900 And then you're not sure if that's his like, you know, senility seeping in or he's just

00:09:38.020 an old fashioned politician who lies.

00:09:40.360 I, I'm not sure, but it was like watching a guy on the high wire with no net.

00:09:44.760 I'm thinking, oh, just stick to the prompter.

00:09:48.060 You know, I may not support all the things you're saying, but I really don't want you

00:09:51.240 to fall down and drool.

00:09:53.140 Those of us who have parents of a certain age can recognize it.

00:09:56.920 You know, like my, my dad, who's just a couple of years older, he will grab onto a number

00:10:02.240 just like it's a, it's a life raft and whether or not that number has anything to do with

00:10:07.460 the conversation.

00:10:08.000 It likely does not, but just grabs onto it.

00:10:10.740 And Biden's the same way.

00:10:12.260 Like he will, he will, he, and he's been, he's been a politician for longer than Camille

00:10:17.080 and perhaps Michael has been alive almost as long as I've been alive.

00:10:20.360 And, and, and they just say the same stories and Neil Kinnick's stories are around.

00:10:28.340 And, and that's what he's holding onto, you know, at age 78 as president, it's, it's awful.

00:10:33.120 There are the Trumpian moments and the Trumpian little punctuations to the speech.

00:10:37.900 And my favorite one was there was one bit, and again, you have to correct me if I'm wrong,

00:10:43.220 because it was very difficult to follow.

00:10:45.260 There's one bit where he says, you know, I talked to leaders, I talked to all these world

00:10:49.120 leaders and they're like, you know what, America, come back to the world.

00:10:51.800 And that is the most Trumpian thing who, you know, Trump says, I talk to people.

00:10:55.540 I'm talking to the doctors.

00:10:56.720 I'm talking to world leaders.

00:10:57.720 The best people.

00:10:58.040 It's like, no, you're not.

00:10:59.020 You've not talked to anyone.

00:11:00.540 You just woke up this morning, had a hamburger and you're like, I'm just going to start.

00:11:03.980 No, yes.

00:11:05.280 I talk to the best people in my family.

00:11:09.300 It reminds me of, you know, so Biden's, he's 77 now.

00:11:12.700 My mom's 79.

00:11:13.720 With all due respect to my mom, who I adore, you know, she's not that much older than he is.

00:11:17.940 And, uh, she says stuff like, you know, at one point we were talking about the pandemic

00:11:23.780 and she was like, oh, you know, I was in Montana and I was telling her the bears were starting

00:11:27.400 to come out during the shutdown.

00:11:28.840 And she goes, oh, I'd be more worried about those bears than covert 12.

00:11:33.120 Like, what?

00:11:38.500 What if your mom's an epidemiologist and she actually discovered covert 12 and you had no idea?

00:11:43.460 And she's like, oh, I'm sick and tired of Dr. Fawcett.

00:11:50.100 Me too.

00:11:51.380 Me too, mama.

00:11:52.960 I had a similar feeling listening to him.

00:11:56.420 She'd do fine with a prompter too.

00:11:58.700 But, you know, the biggest problem was, and by the way, just one other point, if I may.

00:12:02.200 I found like the most annoying, the most annoying part of the evening was Nancy Pelosi.

00:12:10.840 It's like, sit down.

00:12:15.060 If everything is a standing ovation, nothing is a standing ovation.

00:12:19.380 This is so false.

00:12:20.520 It's so manufactured and artificial.

00:12:24.300 You, I, I hate your performance here tonight.

00:12:27.380 I hate your performance.

00:12:28.160 She was trying to do the opposite of when she ripped up Trump's speech.

00:12:31.760 Every line was a standing o.

00:12:33.620 And it was like, the speech was long enough.

00:12:36.100 You know, John Pedoritz had a piece in the post where he was like, I felt it like it.

00:12:39.000 They had like, let my people go.

00:12:40.500 It was went on forever.

00:12:42.020 She made it longer and longer.

00:12:43.920 And it was just so false and artificial, like so much about her.

00:12:47.760 Yeah.

00:12:48.200 I try not to be too cynical about politics.

00:12:51.120 Really, genuinely, because it matters.

00:12:53.480 There are things that happen here that affect all of our lives.

00:12:55.820 But I am always cynical about performances like this.

00:12:59.720 And it's, it's very odd at a moment where America has gone through so much over the course

00:13:03.780 of the past 12 months or so, like we genuinely do need some things.

00:13:07.360 We need some coming together.

00:13:09.020 There needs to be some healing.

00:13:10.720 One would hope that at a moment like this, you get some of that from the president of the

00:13:15.180 United States, some confidence, some certainty.

00:13:18.040 And I, it just felt like a totally missed opportunity.

00:13:22.320 Keep the speech short.

00:13:23.320 Talk about what's, what's important and what's good.

00:13:25.860 Talk about getting kids back into school.

00:13:27.820 The kind of things that are having an impact on people's lives.

00:13:31.620 Don't tell me, you know, we could totally spend $50 trillion and I've got a plan to do

00:13:37.000 it.

00:13:37.120 We'll just raise taxes.

00:13:38.260 Just raise taxes a little bit.

00:13:39.300 It's going to be fine.

00:13:39.840 Nobody's going to feel it.

00:13:41.200 Now, just to set the record straight, Camille, you have, you have kids to all three of you

00:13:44.460 have kids.

00:13:44.900 Yes.

00:13:45.200 But I'll start with you, Camille.

00:13:46.200 I've got, I've got one child as, as, as so far as I know.

00:13:49.740 Yes.

00:13:50.040 Yeah.

00:13:50.320 Jamaican.

00:13:50.820 This is a challenge.

00:13:51.620 You can't be sure.

00:13:52.960 Yeah.

00:13:54.320 Same for me.

00:13:55.740 Unclear.

00:13:56.180 I think I have three.

00:13:56.980 Yeah.

00:13:57.520 Yeah.

00:13:57.920 And, and Matt, how many, how many kids do you have in what age?

00:14:00.440 I've got two, a 12 year old and a six year old.

00:14:03.120 And we've been enjoying the New York city public school system this year.

00:14:08.120 And it's, it's opening.

00:14:09.520 Some sarcasm.

00:14:10.160 I can't wait to talk to you about this.

00:14:12.960 It has provided an enormous amount of fodder for our podcast because Matt is a terrible

00:14:18.340 father.

00:14:18.900 And the reason he's a terrible father, I mean, there's a number, but the one main reason is

00:14:23.140 that he comes onto the podcast and talks about his daughter and talks about the things that

00:14:27.900 his daughter is learning at the, you know, sugar plantation outside of Havana where they're

00:14:33.380 cutting cane for the revolution.

00:14:35.060 And it is totally bananas.

00:14:37.160 And I'm like, no, that's not, that's not real.

00:14:38.840 My daughter is a little bit younger.

00:14:40.720 They are friends.

00:14:41.380 My daughter's just turned 10 years old and at a private school.

00:14:45.040 And usually those are worse in New York city.

00:14:47.220 Yeah.

00:14:47.960 In Brooklyn.

00:14:48.600 And, and it is, you know, it's some problems, shall we say, but she's been in school for

00:14:55.880 a while and that's, I don't care.

00:14:58.480 They honestly, they could, you know, give her a Che Guevara tattoo on her shoulder blade.

00:15:02.280 It's great.

00:15:03.140 She's in school and everybody else I know in public schools are absolutely suffering from

00:15:07.800 this.

00:15:08.060 So, so that's the positive thing.

00:15:09.880 Yeah.

00:15:10.020 The only drawback is they, they going up at home, calling you guys racist.

00:15:15.040 A hundred percent.

00:15:16.320 Right.

00:15:16.900 Like that's, I mean, that hopefully everybody's counter programming against the lunacy.

00:15:20.660 And as I've made public, I'm pulling my kids from my schools, but, but, um, it on and on

00:15:25.320 it goes.

00:15:25.680 And it's, it's, I hate it because I actually love the schools from which in my boy's case,

00:15:30.360 we've left and my daughter's case, we're leaving.

00:15:32.680 I love them.

00:15:33.440 I love the teachers.

00:15:34.360 I love the administrators.

00:15:35.260 I love the parents, the student body.

00:15:37.380 It's the ideology they're thrusting on the kids that I, that I can't stand.

00:15:40.760 Right.

00:15:40.940 So it's like, I feel very conflicted.

00:15:43.240 It's like, you know, it's like when you find out your parent.

00:15:46.320 It's a serial killer.

00:15:47.320 Like, but I love you, but I just, I hate the stuff you're doing.

00:15:50.520 The thing is there's no escaping of it really like the, uh, you know, I started writing

00:15:56.000 about this, um, maybe in the fall of 2019 and it was in the context of, uh, the middle

00:16:02.020 school changing all of its admissions required, the district, uh, changing its, uh, admissions

00:16:06.540 requirements, which they're now aping all throughout New York city.

00:16:10.000 Um, and the language that they, that they use to talk about the desegregation of the

00:16:14.740 schools and all this, I found it to be super odd.

00:16:17.320 And they're, you know, the sales pitches to parents involved like a fire hoses in Birmingham,

00:16:22.100 Alabama.

00:16:22.480 It's like, we're in park slope.

00:16:24.540 Um, and when I was writing about it, um, initially I was like, I know this all sounds crazy to

00:16:32.240 you people reading this.

00:16:33.140 Um, but I, I fear that this might be happening around the country.

00:16:36.620 I had no idea how fast it would happen everywhere around the country.

00:16:40.240 We get, we get emails from listeners all the time about not just schools, but like, uh,

00:16:45.480 their human resource departments that wherever they work and all this diversity, equity and

00:16:49.880 inclusion, uh, training stuff, and it sounds insane and it's in a lot of places.

00:16:55.080 Yeah.

00:16:55.480 I mean, it's really overwhelmed the culture and to Matt's point, it is outside the schools.

00:17:00.520 It is in corporate culture and the emails that we get journalism, of course we'd expect

00:17:05.700 that, but you know, somebody at a bank in Tulsa is like, I just had to do an eight hour

00:17:11.100 course on, you know, Franz Fannin's books.

00:17:13.420 And it's just like, wait, what you're a bank teller.

00:17:15.980 And this is so, so this is everywhere.

00:17:17.740 And I know Megan, you had Paul Rossi on your podcast.

00:17:20.420 He was on, uh, we let you take the lead on that.

00:17:22.680 We did it a day later.

00:17:23.940 We didn't want to step on your toes, but the response to that, uh, was incredible.

00:17:30.160 I had people emailing me that listen to the podcast that aren't expressly political people

00:17:34.260 saying, oh my God, is that stuff real?

00:17:38.280 And I, it reminded me of something, the way the culture reacts to this.

00:17:42.000 Cause in 2010, some people might remember the brouhaha in Texas over the Texas school

00:17:48.400 boards, uh, curriculum changes.

00:17:50.720 And when you go back and look at them, it was like this right wing takeover, et cetera.

00:17:55.620 And now I don't like this in any ideological direction.

00:17:58.400 If someone's trying to rewrite what kids are learning from some ideological perspective,

00:18:02.340 but theirs was not as bad.

00:18:04.800 When I looked back at there was some stuff I was like, that's kind of crazy, but they were

00:18:07.480 trying to bring some, uh, bounds to it and redress some of the weird kind of, you know,

00:18:12.580 left-leaning stuff.

00:18:13.500 So I get it.

00:18:14.540 There were pieces on the Colbert report.

00:18:18.100 John, John Stewart did a long thing on it.

00:18:20.020 Every late night show, mocking these people every day.

00:18:23.700 And it was just in the state of Texas.

00:18:25.580 And of course it was watered down considerably.

00:18:27.680 We're now living in an era where, you know, nine-year-olds are getting like Ibram X.

00:18:33.440 Kendi kids books in no one bats an eye.

00:18:36.720 My, my hope, my aspiration would be that schools are interested in helping to cultivate like

00:18:42.560 critical thinking skills, the ability to deal with complex ideas, to find ways to navigate

00:18:47.340 complicated issues.

00:18:48.680 For the most part, it definitely seems like a circumstance where you just have to arrive

00:18:53.280 at the right answer.

00:18:54.320 We know what the right answer is.

00:18:55.540 Kind of like a jury that brings back a verdict in 10 hours without asking any questions to

00:19:00.660 the judge as if all of them are lawyers.

00:19:02.860 They completely understand the instructions.

00:19:04.800 All of this is fine.

00:19:05.620 And it's, it's a very strange situation to be in, to have seen the video, the footage

00:19:11.640 of George Floyd and Derek Chauvin and the rest of the officers who were taking him into

00:19:15.740 custody.

00:19:16.360 Like everyone has seen it.

00:19:18.040 And virtually everyone in America has some problem with what happened there.

00:19:22.660 It's difficult not to acknowledge that had things been done differently, it's possible

00:19:27.140 this guy wouldn't have died.

00:19:28.680 In which case you want there to be some repercussions.

00:19:31.480 And you also hope that you're instituting some changes that might ensure that this doesn't

00:19:36.200 happen again.

00:19:37.280 And I don't know that making certain that you can get on all three of these things right

00:19:42.640 away, put him in jail for 40 years, give people an opportunity to say, yeah, we got the

00:19:47.040 guy.

00:19:47.380 I don't know that that actually gets you that outcome.

00:19:50.100 It doesn't, it doesn't, there's something about it that doesn't feel like justice.

00:19:54.240 It feels insufficient.

00:19:55.760 It feels inadequate.

00:19:56.440 And I think that's because it is because the obsession with race in a case where there is

00:20:01.960 no concrete evidence at all.

00:20:04.400 That makes it clear to me that if all of the circumstances were the same, but George Floyd

00:20:08.720 had been a white man, he wouldn't have died in precisely the same way.

00:20:12.420 Didn't Keith Ellison say something similar, which kind of surprised me.

00:20:15.780 He said there was no evidence of race.

00:20:17.280 Yeah, that there was no evidence of racism on Derek Chauvin's, and you guys know, and

00:20:20.500 I've heard you talk about this in the fifth column, if they had it, we would have heard

00:20:24.320 it.

00:20:24.680 I mean, there's zero chance they would have held that back.

00:20:26.500 It did not come up.

00:20:27.840 Yeah.

00:20:28.100 And I made the Mark Furman analogy, I believe, in the podcast where, you know, obviously that

00:20:32.540 was explicit on tape and it was played ad infinitum in the courtroom and that had an

00:20:38.640 effect and that, you know, had an effect on the jury.

00:20:41.080 Nothing at all.

00:20:42.000 And to Camille's point about this feeling very political, and this is the thing, I can

00:20:47.900 separate this from what I believe about Derek Chauvin and his, and what he did.

00:20:53.860 And I don't think that was okay.

00:20:56.360 And that's, that's an understatement, right?

00:20:57.940 But, you know, I see this morning in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that the feds were planning on,

00:21:02.440 if the jury came back with a not guilty verdict, to arrest him in the courtroom on federal civil

00:21:09.620 rights charges in frog marching out.

00:21:12.100 That strikes me that this has become exceptionally political being directed from the White House.

00:21:18.160 Obviously there's a task force coming to Minneapolis to investigate the police force there.

00:21:22.360 I mean, the, the, the president is making comments, uh, on this, the vice president's

00:21:26.420 making comments.

00:21:27.040 Because this is, I mean, there's a, there's a, you know, uh, award being, being given to

00:21:32.180 the Floyd family from the city of Minneapolis and, you know, jurors are being sent away because

00:21:36.400 they knew about it.

00:21:37.000 And they're saying this prejudice is my opinion of the case.

00:21:39.140 I mean, to say that this is something that was just, you know, done by the book and everything

00:21:44.100 happened the way it should have been is absolute nonsense.

00:21:46.240 It's not normal.

00:21:46.980 The one thing that, uh, uh, or the two things that I appreciated from Tim Scott last night

00:21:51.400 in his rebuttal of the state of the union, um, Tim Scott is the leader, uh, in the Senate

00:21:56.100 on the Republican side of criminal justice reform.

00:21:58.480 He's the one who's advancing the ball on that.

00:22:00.080 And he's good and smart about it.

00:22:01.880 And he made the, the needling point, but there's some truth behind it that sometimes it

00:22:07.180 seems as though Democrats want the issue rather than the solution to the problem.

00:22:12.140 And the way that we talk about it, in fact, by emphasizing race so much, that means you're

00:22:17.180 actually not going to do it because you can't just solve racism by passing a law, right?

00:22:21.340 It's going to be very difficult to do that.

00:22:22.800 But if you talk about power relations, if you talk about qualified immunity, if you talk

00:22:26.740 about mandatory minimum sentences and the drug war, that's a bunch of policy you could

00:22:30.480 do actionable.

00:22:31.620 Maxine Waters could be doing that as opposed to telling, you know, black lives matter that they

00:22:36.140 need to be more confrontational.

00:22:38.200 Um, if we don't get the right verdict, if we don't get the right verdict, we got to get

00:22:41.320 confrontational.

00:22:42.540 Her rhetoric is utterly useless almost all of the time.

00:22:46.620 You know, people like Maxine Waters are not the ones we should be listening to.

00:22:49.460 There are honest brokers on the left who want police reform, who can make a good case for

00:22:54.460 the elimination of, you know, some elimination of qualified immunity or so on.

00:22:58.080 But she's not one of them.

00:22:59.320 She's just an instigator.

00:23:00.580 You know, she's somebody who just goes out there for clicks and appease her base.

00:23:04.260 And, you know, she's always gets reelected with something like 77 percent of the vote.

00:23:08.160 So she she doesn't really have to be accountable to a more general base of the population.

00:23:12.600 But she's constantly saying stuff like that.

00:23:14.600 That's really utterly unhelpful.

00:23:15.900 I hate to give her too much attention.

00:23:18.040 But wait, Tim Scott is actually I think he's amazing.

00:23:21.780 He's sort of there's a lot of talk about him possibly winding up on the GOP ticket next

00:23:26.040 time around.

00:23:27.080 You know, the hardcore MAGA crowd doesn't tend to love him.

00:23:30.380 They don't tend to love Nikki Haley.

00:23:31.640 They think they might be too milk toasty, but I don't know if I'm milk toasty, too.

00:23:36.440 But I like those guys.

00:23:37.820 I think moderation is a good thing.

00:23:40.840 Here is just a bit of what he said last night in Rebuttal to Biden.

00:23:45.020 I've also experienced a different kind of intolerance.

00:23:48.600 I get called Uncle Tom and the N-word by progressives, by liberals.

00:23:53.140 Just last week, a national newspaper suggested my family's poverty was actually privilege.

00:24:01.060 Because a relative owned land generations before my time.

00:24:06.220 Believe me, I know firsthand our healing is not finished.

00:24:11.520 In 2015, after the shooting of Walter Scott, I wrote a bill to fund body cameras.

00:24:17.980 Last year, after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, I built an even bigger police

00:24:24.360 reform proposal.

00:24:25.680 But my Democratic colleagues blocked it.

00:24:28.360 I extended an olive branch.

00:24:30.160 I offered amendments.

00:24:31.600 But Democrats used a filibuster to block the debate from even happening.

00:24:36.240 My friends across the aisle seemed to want the issue more than they wanted a solution.

00:24:43.680 But I'm still working.

00:24:45.320 I'm hopeful that this will be different.

00:24:48.040 When America comes together, we've made tremendous progress.

00:24:52.880 But powerful forces want to pull us apart.

00:24:55.880 A hundred years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most

00:25:00.900 important characteristic.

00:25:01.980 And if they looked a certain way, they were inferior.

00:25:07.000 Today, kids are being taught that the color of their skin defines them again.

00:25:12.900 And if they look a certain way, they're an oppressor.

00:25:15.840 From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending

00:25:22.260 we haven't made any progress at all.

00:25:25.320 By doubling down on the divisions, we've worked so hard to heal.

00:25:29.940 You know, this stuff is wrong.

00:25:32.440 Hear me clearly.

00:25:34.300 America is not a racist country.

00:25:38.360 Oh, boy.

00:25:40.060 He said it.

00:25:41.240 He said the stuff you're not supposed to say, especially if you're a black man in America.

00:25:47.320 And, of course, to disprove that America is racist, we saw a shit ton of racist stuff said

00:25:53.720 about Tim Scott and Uncle Tim was trending on Twitter for hours, for hours.

00:26:01.960 Finally, Twitter shut it down.

00:26:03.760 But I mean, please, if that had been trending about Barack Obama, you know, saying something

00:26:08.560 that people didn't like, they would have had it done immediately.

00:26:10.620 Oliver Willis, I hate Media Matters, the most dishonest organization out there, and that's

00:26:16.520 saying something, tweets as follows, as Tim Scott shows, telling racist white people what

00:26:22.160 they want to hear is a very lucrative path.

00:26:24.860 Dishonest, but lucrative.

00:26:26.680 And then there's Ture, the guy who got fired from MSNBC, saying Tim Scott gets called Uncle

00:26:31.520 Tom by progressives, but he's an Uncle Tim.

00:26:34.080 And then there's some lunatic who was tweeting a lot about Uncle Tom in response to Tim Scott.

00:26:39.440 And he was like, OK, I shouldn't have done that.

00:26:41.200 And then Yashar Ali tweeted out like five other instances in which said guy had called other

00:26:46.160 black conservatives like Ben Carson, Uncle Tom's.

00:26:49.740 It's somebody else tweeted out a picture of, forgive me, a raccoon.

00:26:54.660 The play on words was obvious.

00:26:56.340 It was it was this is the left, right?

00:26:58.760 This is the left media pundits going after him with ferocity because of the clip we just

00:27:04.980 played.

00:27:06.200 It surprises you, Camille, doesn't it?

00:27:07.880 Nothing like this has ever happened to you, right?

00:27:10.520 I've been subjected to all of the same treatment.

00:27:12.300 And it's interesting because Tim Scott and I, we agree on some things.

00:27:16.080 We probably disagree on more things.

00:27:18.240 But I would never think that the appropriate response to something Tim Scott says that I

00:27:23.200 don't like is to denigrate him because he fails to meet the standards for what someone

00:27:27.800 who's supposed to look for what someone who looks like him is supposed to think.

00:27:32.040 That is the most objectionable nonsense in the world.

00:27:35.500 And people who call themselves anti-racists, who imagine themselves crusading against white

00:27:41.140 supremacy, find it completely fine to indulge in objectively racial slurs and to hurl them

00:27:49.220 at a man who says things they don't like.

00:27:51.140 And the things that apparently are appeasing racists are to say things like, you know what?

00:27:56.160 Your race doesn't define you.

00:27:57.980 And we used to believe that in this country.

00:28:00.380 And now we're telling kids in classrooms across America that your race is all important.

00:28:05.460 And to the extent you look a particular way, you should either feel intense pride or intense

00:28:09.340 shame on account of your race.

00:28:11.820 It's deplorable.

00:28:13.060 I believe this to my core.

00:28:16.040 And I think lots of Americans do.

00:28:18.080 And to the extent Tim Scott is able to get Klansmen to endorse a sentiment like that,

00:28:22.980 he's a hero, a goddamn hero.

00:28:26.160 And I can't appreciate the way, I mean, someone like Torre, I saw that tweet as well.

00:28:32.180 And I remember Torre's book about post-Blackness.

00:28:34.800 And in that same book, he has a moment where he's talking to Henry Louis Gates, who apparently

00:28:38.840 was one of his professors at some point.

00:28:40.360 And he himself recalls Henry Louis Gates saying to him, you know, if there are 40 million

00:28:45.900 Black people, then there are 40 million ways to be Black, which tells you something pretty

00:28:50.120 extraordinary, that this notion of Blackness, this notion of racial identity is pretty superfluous.

00:28:56.880 It doesn't actually matter in a tangible way.

00:28:59.580 And there's no way that Tim Scott, by holding positions that Torre disagrees with or anyone

00:29:04.720 else, can become a traitor to his race or a coon or a tom simply by being honest and transparent

00:29:14.380 about what he believes.

00:29:16.020 And again, I heard his speech yesterday.

00:29:18.140 There were things that he said that I liked and things that he said that I cringed a little

00:29:21.960 bit at.

00:29:22.480 And that's fine.

00:29:23.320 And it ought to be fine.

00:29:24.300 And it ought to be appropriate for us to judge it on the basis of the quality of what he says

00:29:29.380 and not based on the color of his skin, which again, if that's what you people are doing,

00:29:34.860 what are your values actually?

00:29:37.020 It's racist.

00:29:38.720 It's racist.

00:29:40.080 It's not just the name calling.

00:29:41.440 Name calling is horrible and awful.

00:29:43.360 Sure.

00:29:43.620 And you shouldn't do it.

00:29:44.540 But I do a little bit of it.

00:29:45.520 It's fine sometimes.

00:29:46.440 As long as you're not being racist.

00:29:48.020 Yeah.

00:29:48.180 Have you listened to our podcast?

00:29:49.200 But even if all the words were fine, the mental act of saying this person, because of the

00:29:59.380 way that he looks, is not supposed to express certain things, that you are assigned a belief

00:30:08.100 system based on how you look.

00:30:09.840 That is never applied to me based on the way that I look.

00:30:13.160 It is applied to Tim Scott.

00:30:15.320 It's applied to Camille.

00:30:17.660 That is racist.

00:30:18.760 That is absolutely racist.

00:30:20.700 It's 100 percent racist.

00:30:21.920 It is racism against Tim Scott and black people.

00:30:24.680 But it is there is racism against white people in the same way right now, because, of course,

00:30:30.120 in an effort to be, quote, anti-racist, you've got to believe that people born with white

00:30:34.120 pigmentation are white supremacists.

00:30:37.080 Up next, we're going to talk to the guys about Biden's remark the other night that the riot

00:30:41.460 on January 6th on Capitol Hill was the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.

00:30:49.180 Really?

00:30:50.500 Really?

00:30:52.080 Don't go away.

00:30:52.920 That's next.

00:30:53.460 First, this.

00:30:53.920 The assumption that we feel that we have this inner superiority, even hatred, because we

00:31:04.820 happen to have white skin is also racist.

00:31:07.260 It's that's what's that's what's so infuriating.

00:31:09.840 Right.

00:31:10.120 It's like, what do you think that's doing?

00:31:11.720 Think that's opening up ears?

00:31:12.880 Think that's making people want to listen to any actual concerns that are legit out there

00:31:18.020 instead of these sweeping condemnations?

00:31:20.060 No.

00:31:20.740 Right.

00:31:21.040 No.

00:31:21.180 Nobody's going to listen when you're like, you can piss off.

00:31:23.860 You're a white supremacist.

00:31:25.100 You need to work harder.

00:31:25.880 Go to Thanksgiving.

00:31:26.880 Go to Fourth of July.

00:31:27.840 Tell all your old relatives that they're racist, too.

00:31:30.020 Tell your husband.

00:31:30.620 Tell them all they're racists.

00:31:31.860 Or you're even more racist than I thought.

00:31:33.520 Meanwhile, I'll tell your kids in school that they're racists.

00:31:35.700 And if you disagree with any of this, you're even you're a terrible person.

00:31:39.420 Right.

00:31:39.540 So it's like none of that opens up debate, opens up ears, makes people willing to listen.

00:31:44.100 And yet this is the tactic that's being employed almost universally on the left right

00:31:48.020 now.

00:31:48.840 In a time in which we're constantly admonished for having cable news channels, you know,

00:31:54.780 podcasts, talk radio that is divisive.

00:31:57.860 The rhetoric is divisive.

00:31:59.380 The Trump years brought us a new level of divisiveness.

00:32:02.600 And I think there's some truth to that.

00:32:04.760 But then again, in our schools, amongst very young kids, in our corporate boardrooms, you

00:32:11.220 know, in media, this type of racial talk is never considered to be divisive when it is

00:32:18.500 the most reductionist talk you can imagine.

00:32:21.100 We're reducing people to their skin color only.

00:32:25.060 And, you know, it's amazing.

00:32:27.260 At the end of that clip, Megan, you chuckled and said something that I completely

00:32:32.600 understand.

00:32:33.300 You said, oh, he said it.

00:32:35.880 Imagine that it is controversial in 2021 when the man standing behind the president, who

00:32:44.000 was the vice president of a black president, and his vice president is a black woman, that

00:32:49.960 it is controversial to say that we have made progress.

00:32:55.340 We have made enormous amounts of progress.

00:32:58.060 That doesn't say, and one shouldn't even have to do the throat clearing and say, well, that

00:33:02.120 doesn't mean we're done.

00:33:03.020 Well, of course it doesn't mean we're done.

00:33:04.780 No one said we're done.

00:33:06.340 But we can acknowledge that there's been an enormous amount of progress to be made, that

00:33:09.720 has been made, and maybe some that is to be made.

00:33:12.940 And to say so is not reactionary.

00:33:15.920 It's not white supremacist.

00:33:17.640 It's not burying your head in the sand.

00:33:19.700 It's absolutely true.

00:33:21.580 You see Joe Biden's speech last night.

00:33:24.160 There is this total bastardization of recent history where Joe Biden gets up there and says,

00:33:29.400 and then affirmed by the historian Michael Bush laws, that the January 6th MAGA riot was

00:33:37.280 the worst domestic attack on our democracy since the Civil War.

00:33:43.300 2,400 people died at Pearl Harbor.

00:33:45.940 3,000 people died in 9-11.

00:33:47.340 And, you know, one person died as a direct result of this, well, two, if someone was trampled,

00:33:53.220 of this thing.

00:33:54.240 But this is what we, how we treat history.

00:33:56.920 This is ultra Jim Crow, the voting law changes in 20-

00:34:01.000 It's Jim Eagle.

00:34:01.360 It's Jim Eagle.

00:34:02.240 It's the biggest thing.

00:34:03.600 I don't even know what that means, but it's possibly worse than Jim Crow, right?

00:34:07.300 All of this stuff allows, but our ignorance of history allows people to draw these utterly

00:34:14.280 insane, ideological points masquerading as historical truths.

00:34:19.040 To your point, Megan, about persuasion.

00:34:21.400 Hold that thought for just one second, because I think we have that soundbite from Biden.

00:34:24.640 Listen.

00:34:25.000 A hundred days since I took the oath of office and lifted my hand off our family Bible and

00:34:30.920 inherited a nation we all did that was in crisis.

00:34:35.200 The worst pandemic in a century.

00:34:37.960 The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

00:34:40.460 The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.

00:34:46.000 It really is crazy.

00:34:47.140 What are you talking about?

00:34:48.820 Yeah.

00:34:49.740 That is insane.

00:34:51.920 Oh my God.

00:34:52.720 It's something we've talked about a few times, because it becomes difficult for people to

00:34:57.000 parse this.

00:34:57.760 It is completely possible to find what happened on January 6th objectionable.

00:35:03.020 The people who participated in it, deplorable.

00:35:05.380 To think that this is bad and it is embarrassing for the country.

00:35:08.720 For the entire polity.

00:35:11.100 And to also think that it is hardly the worst thing that has ever happened to this country.

00:35:15.460 In fact, I'm not even sure it's the worst thing that's happened in the past like 20

00:35:19.260 months.

00:35:19.980 Like bad things have happened.

00:35:21.860 And it's possible to believe two things.

00:35:24.200 And I just don't think that the kind of hysteria that's been emanating from various corners,

00:35:28.660 but certainly from the White House most recently on issues of race and identity, which even

00:35:34.520 January 6th has become primarily about, despite the fact that there were minorities represented

00:35:39.520 there with MAGA hats proudly stomping through the Capitol or waving flags or doing other

00:35:45.160 foolishness, maybe even bear spraying police officers.

00:35:48.500 Like they call it an act of white supremacist violence in much the same way that Donald Trump's

00:35:54.160 election was white lash.

00:35:55.500 And I don't think all of this inaccurate condemnation on the basis of race, rather than

00:36:01.360 dealing with specific issues, rather than dealing with the genuine deficiency of people is actually

00:36:06.800 helpful.

00:36:07.140 And I think we have an opportunity that I think we all want to be compassionate to one

00:36:12.280 another and we could address ourselves to the genuine concern of particular people in

00:36:16.980 need.

00:36:17.420 And instead, we found ourselves presuming that an entire race of people are in the most

00:36:24.160 destitute state imaginable and that these are the people who we have to give all of our

00:36:28.820 concern to.

00:36:29.680 And we're ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of these people, Black people I'm talking

00:36:34.320 about now, are not impoverished.

00:36:35.860 Is that possible to say?

00:36:38.020 Most of them aren't criminals.

00:36:39.600 Most of them will never commit any sort of violent crime.

00:36:42.060 Most of them will not be shot or murdered by police.

00:36:44.280 In fact, an extraordinary percentage of them are thriving.

00:36:48.740 They're incredibly wealthy.

00:36:50.800 I don't need your help.

00:36:52.440 I don't need to be saved by anyone.

00:36:54.380 In fact, I will say this.

00:36:56.060 This is dangerous.

00:36:57.160 I'm privileged.

00:36:58.320 I live a privileged life.

00:36:59.520 My life is extraordinary.

00:37:00.940 I've borrowed money from you.

00:37:02.860 I've borrowed a little bit of money from you.

00:37:04.520 When we go out to eat, the Irish guy is always like, Camille, can I get a little money?

00:37:09.720 I'm starving here.

00:37:11.940 So wait.

00:37:12.700 So what you're saying is that when you guys sit down together in the morning, you, Matt,

00:37:17.240 and Michael, don't look at Camille and say, first, let me start with an apology.

00:37:21.260 I apologize on behalf of myself, my race.

00:37:25.660 I just start giving him that thing.

00:37:27.160 I only apologize for stepping on his $8,000 sneakers.

00:37:33.120 I mean, how crazy is that, Megan?

00:37:34.560 The notion that you would be ancestral guilt, perpetual ancestral guilt that never goes away,

00:37:40.900 that you're always forced to apologize for by dint of your birth.

00:37:45.580 What does that sound like?

00:37:46.960 That's original sin.

00:37:48.520 This is religious fervor.

00:37:51.100 This is a kind of divisive, fundamentalist ideology that is permeating throughout the country

00:37:57.260 and, quite frankly, has become indistinguishable from the core tenets of a particular political party.

00:38:04.700 And I know we're spending a lot of time beating up on the left,

00:38:07.500 and there are people who are going to be annoyed by that.

00:38:10.260 But I'm telling the truth about things here.

00:38:13.180 And it's not because I have some allegiance to conservatives or Republicans in general.

00:38:17.520 Well, this is just the way it is.

00:38:19.820 No, we spent four years beating the hell out of those people, too.

00:38:22.960 But I'll give you the floor, but just to offer a point,

00:38:27.080 because I have actually a fair amount of Democrats listening to this show.

00:38:31.400 I hear from them all the time.

00:38:33.200 And I have to say in their defense, the Democrats as a group are not with that rhetoric.

00:38:38.060 They're not.

00:38:39.200 Some portion are.

00:38:40.260 Certainly Joe Biden offers it a lot.

00:38:41.840 The leaders of the Democratic Party, sure, they say those things.

00:38:44.540 But I really, truly believe that many, many liberals are on our side on this,

00:38:50.540 that they are not on board with this sweeping, untrue, racist rhetoric.

00:38:57.060 Go ahead.

00:38:58.240 Well, I would say that I would urge listeners to look up a study,

00:39:03.380 and I think it was the University of Pennsylvania.

00:39:04.680 We've talked about it a few times.

00:39:06.100 Yasha Monk from The Atlantic wrote wonderfully about it,

00:39:08.600 called the Hidden Tribes Study.

00:39:10.720 And basically, it breaks down the difference between people, you know, of all tribes.

00:39:16.280 But I think that the stuff on the left was the most interesting.

00:39:20.020 And even the New York Times had a great infographic on this when the report came out,

00:39:23.740 showing that people on the left on Twitter were about seven clicks further to the left

00:39:28.940 than the average Democratic voter.

00:39:30.720 And they put down to the number of people who actually agreed with the woke stuff,

00:39:34.920 I think at 8%.

00:39:35.860 Now, that's 92% of Americans that are either alienated, don't care about,

00:39:41.380 or, you know, actively turned off by that kind of rhetoric,

00:39:45.220 particularly, and this was done probably two, three years ago, something like that,

00:39:50.480 in where the rhetoric has gotten so crazy that I had friends come to me,

00:39:56.040 and this was actually the most fascinating thing, was after George Floyd was killed,

00:39:59.780 there was, you know, the way that young people do this stuff is they campaign on Instagram.

00:40:07.540 And everyone was posting a black square.

00:40:10.420 And I had two people say to me within a day, and they come to me because they're like,

00:40:14.760 oh, you're like a political guy.

00:40:16.180 Is this normal?

00:40:17.400 That they were accused of, you know, harboring subterranean white supremacist instincts

00:40:22.920 because of something they didn't do, which was post a black square.

00:40:27.520 And it's like, oh, God, this is getting a bit Maoist at this point.

00:40:30.840 When you're saying, you are not actually doing the thing,

00:40:34.080 you have to be saluting the, you know, the dear leader, et cetera,

00:40:37.200 or following the tenets of the dear leader.

00:40:39.200 It has gotten so crazy that I believe that that 8%

00:40:42.400 identified in the Hidden Tribes study has probably shrunk a little bit.

00:40:47.920 I'm not so sure.

00:40:48.780 I don't know.

00:40:49.340 I'm not so sure.

00:40:49.640 I've seen some polling recently that suggests to me that there's at least,

00:40:52.900 some degree to which a lot of these identitarian ideas have caught on,

00:40:57.480 that there is a genuine strengthening of racial fealty in certain circles.

00:41:03.640 And the thing that I'm most concerned about is, I think a moment ago,

00:41:08.620 Megan, you used the word us, that there are lots of people,

00:41:12.660 Democrats, who are with us here, is the us is somewhat undefined.

00:41:16.500 Like, we did such a good job.

00:41:18.640 You raise a good point because this is something I wanted to yell at Matt Walsh

00:41:21.800 before.

00:41:22.640 Oh, great.

00:41:23.420 That's awesome.

00:41:24.060 Because I do it.

00:41:25.640 Because I wanted to call my company Reason, and he stole it.

00:41:30.340 And it was a brilliant, brilliant Matt Walsh.

00:41:33.380 I love it.

00:41:34.000 Because it was a really smart name, and it's where I think we, when I say us,

00:41:39.120 that's where we are.

00:41:39.700 I don't think any of this shit is black, white, left, right.

00:41:42.840 It's reason versus unreason.

00:41:44.680 And there's some fundamental values there, like a belief in this crazy idea of

00:41:49.660 equality under the law, as opposed to equity being the basis of things.

00:41:54.320 Equity, as defined by the President of the United States and the Vice President and

00:41:58.280 various other people, as starting from precisely the same place, a literal

00:42:02.720 impossibility.

00:42:03.960 Like, this isn't a thing that you can actually do.

00:42:05.940 And the one way you could do it is essentially by smashing everyone down to the same level.

00:42:10.640 There's no limiting principle on this.

00:42:12.140 So if we say that black people, on average, generally aren't doing so well, and they

00:42:15.980 don't start from the same place as white people, why not start with the number of

00:42:19.800 parents in your household, or the number of books that you're allowed to own and read

00:42:23.080 to your children?

00:42:24.140 There are so many ways that we are.

00:42:27.180 You can get rid of the parent.

00:42:28.680 In all the two-parent households, we have to get rid of one.

00:42:32.000 To your point of squishing it down.

00:42:34.560 It's not fairness.

00:42:35.540 And to the point, I think there's actually, and to the point about whether people still

00:42:39.400 believe this stuff or it's alienating, there is a bit of data that both shows that Americans

00:42:45.100 are, you know, generically good people and that this stuff is alienating.

00:42:49.020 If you look at the numbers, the approval ratings for Black Lives Matter, right after the George

00:42:54.720 Floyd killing, and then look at those numbers about three or four months later, they cratered.

00:42:59.660 It was something like 70%.

00:43:01.440 And, you know, I mean, you know, the other 30% are people who are probably unaware of it,

00:43:07.000 actually remember it and didn't like it from Ferguson, or maybe just racist.

00:43:10.800 Still high among Black people, though.

00:43:12.180 Still very high, very high in the 90s among Black people.

00:43:15.500 Yes.

00:43:16.080 And, you know, but it goes down to something like 30-odd percent.

00:43:20.840 That is a collapse in that short of a period of time.

00:43:25.300 And when you see people who say, you know, in this, by the way, it's not some sort of

00:43:29.840 Glenn Beck conspiracy point to say, this is a woman who goes on, you know, live stream

00:43:35.140 and says, I'm a trained Marxist.

00:43:37.040 Another one of the BLM leaders shows up in Venezuela holding hands with Nicolas Maduro.

00:43:41.680 You think that I'm joking?

00:43:42.540 I am not.

00:43:43.660 These people are deeply ideological.

00:43:46.260 And that's not what they were possible.

00:43:46.760 So Marxist sitting in Malibu getting $26,000 per conference and owning four homes.

00:43:51.940 You know what?

00:43:52.800 I'm reevaluating Marxism.

00:43:54.800 I might do it.

00:43:57.000 There's some.

00:43:57.480 It's the best advertisement she could have had for me joining what I was joking about the

00:44:01.220 other night on Twitter was, is it boatloads of money?

00:44:03.720 Is that what BLM stands for?

00:44:05.260 I don't.

00:44:06.660 I think it's instructive to point to remember that Joe Biden won the Democratic primary and

00:44:12.480 he's the least woke candidate.

00:44:13.840 Yes, he had.

00:44:14.560 There's a lot of different candidates who were fighting for the woke vote and they all

00:44:18.620 collapsed.

00:44:19.200 Beto O'Rourke collapsed.

00:44:20.640 Elizabeth Warren collapsed.

00:44:21.800 Kamala Harris.

00:44:22.500 They all went.

00:44:23.920 Kirsten Gillibrand tried to do that.

00:44:25.640 They all.

00:44:26.140 Nobody wanted that.

00:44:27.120 And Biden.

00:44:27.940 I'm sorry, who?

00:44:28.700 Exactly.

00:44:29.140 And yet, Biden literally on the first day in office signed a very sweeping executive

00:44:35.120 order embracing equity, which he made sure to say was equity, not equality.

00:44:40.540 Right.

00:44:40.720 Like he corrected himself in a press conference talking about it.

00:44:44.260 So you I think it leads to an interesting thing, which is how did this thing that he didn't

00:44:49.660 campaign on, which he has not lived his life that way?

00:44:52.380 That's not how he's been legislating.

00:44:53.900 It's not even how he's governing.

00:44:54.900 We're going to outlaw menthol cigarettes.

00:44:56.140 What part about equity does that have to do anything?

00:44:59.180 But like yet it has captured institutions.

00:45:02.060 Megan, you asked a question earlier about or you made a comment about how it's as if

00:45:06.560 these people don't want to persuade in their rhetoric.

00:45:08.780 I think that's exactly right.

00:45:10.420 They don't.

00:45:11.580 I get and we all have kids in schools.

00:45:14.180 At some point, all of the incessant emails about systemic racism, all the reactions,

00:45:19.540 including to the Maga right on the Capitol, you know, the anguished chancellor of the

00:45:24.900 schools and the and the district superintendent, you know, sending emails about white supremacy.

00:45:29.840 You just tune it out.

00:45:31.160 Yeah.

00:45:31.400 At some point.

00:45:32.200 So if there is a smaller.

00:45:34.540 So to speak, it's white supremacy noise.

00:45:36.820 If there are fewer people in any kind of like field or in the decision making body, then

00:45:42.480 there's more people to elbow out the room and to set the rules.

00:45:45.280 I think I think there's a real kind of minority in terms of of numbers of groups that are

00:45:52.820 nonetheless taking over institutions because people like, OK, screw this.

00:45:57.100 It's like the Oscars, right?

00:45:58.080 Like, screw it.

00:45:58.960 I don't want to watch it.

00:45:59.880 I know what they're doing out.

00:46:01.120 Yeah, I'm out.

00:46:01.960 I'm just going to tune it out.

00:46:03.000 And so you're so so Biden, correct.

00:46:06.220 He did not campaign like this, but he's certainly governing just like an AOC would.

00:46:10.160 And and I was you know, you're like he was he wasn't supposed to be woke.

00:46:15.540 And I'm thinking, you know, we got a pig in a poke.

00:46:18.000 Right.

00:46:18.180 Which, by the way, means a bag.

00:46:19.520 I never understood that it's buying a pig in a bag without seeing the pig.

00:46:23.420 And, you know, I guess you want like the big, fat, juicy pig.

00:46:25.940 Sorry.

00:46:26.480 Sorry.

00:46:27.000 Sorry, vegans.

00:46:29.080 Anyway, you're not supposed you don't want to buy a pig in a poke.

00:46:31.580 And I think we got a woke in a poke.

00:46:32.900 We should have checked inside the bag because he is he's way more woke than we were assured

00:46:39.580 he would be.

00:46:41.240 And you're right.

00:46:42.120 The rhetoric is sweeping and it's dishonest.

00:46:45.660 And it's it comes from him.

00:46:47.200 It comes from the news media.

00:46:49.140 I mean, just this morning I was reading Newsweek.

00:46:51.420 Right.

00:46:51.580 Which is actually they've got a little better, I have to say, in terms of their variety of

00:46:55.300 opinion.

00:46:56.580 There's some some no name, to be honest, although her name is Maggie.

00:47:00.780 Maybe I should have chosen Maggie.

00:47:02.040 That Maggie, Megan, anyway, Maggie Abenshine, founder of, quote, Moxie Mouth.

00:47:12.340 That seems aptly chosen.

00:47:14.980 She she goes on about how racist violence is on the rise in our country.

00:47:19.000 She's lamenting the fact that one hundred and eighty one black people have been killed

00:47:22.020 by police just since George Floyd's murder last year.

00:47:25.120 OK, zero context.

00:47:26.860 What did did they shoot?

00:47:28.780 Did they fire on the police officer?

00:47:30.260 Did they kill a cop?

00:47:32.040 Did they kill somebody else?

00:47:33.180 Did they was it like a Michaela Bryant case where they were out to kill somebody and were

00:47:36.300 killed by a police?

00:47:37.200 No context.

00:47:37.880 It's just that the sheer numbers are meant to shock.

00:47:40.960 And she mentions Michaela Bryant saying Daunte Wright and Michaela Bryant should be alive

00:47:45.760 today, just like countless black people before them.

00:47:48.720 And to not do anything as a white person is to perpetuate and remain complicit in violence

00:47:54.000 against black people.

00:47:55.420 And she makes the additional point.

00:47:57.380 Why are white people singled out to do this work?

00:48:00.180 Because black people, indigenous people and people of color are often thrust into the

00:48:05.260 work without a choice as a means of survival.

00:48:08.780 So it's it's the LeBron James point, right?

00:48:12.560 That that black people are being hunted in the street and being killed with impunity by

00:48:17.420 police officers who don't care with no regard to facts of actual cases.

00:48:21.580 Right.

00:48:21.900 The Michaela Bryant case is one.

00:48:23.140 I know I've heard you guys talk about that.

00:48:24.780 And and with no regard to the dangers that police themselves face on the streets.

00:48:30.240 You know, something that caught my eye this morning was a cop in outside of Baltimore.

00:48:36.940 His name is Corporal Keith.

00:48:38.720 He cook, 54 years old, died after being brutally assaulted Sunday morning.

00:48:44.080 He had to go to the hospital.

00:48:45.660 He was on the force for 22 years.

00:48:47.140 He was brain dead and they they had to disconnect him and he died.

00:48:51.900 He had a kid, I think, a 12 year old daughter.

00:48:55.160 Some guy had assaulted an old couple, like 70, 73 and 76, respectively, and then assaulted

00:49:04.200 this cop and killed him.

00:49:06.100 That's look, it's just one case, but I'm this is going to get no attention.

00:49:10.520 Zero.

00:49:10.900 No one's going to talk about a dead cop.

00:49:12.660 This is what they face and they have to make split second decisions.

00:49:15.380 And this is why the Michaela Bryant case should never have been made a thing and why this woman

00:49:18.940 should not be citing that in an article talking about how, you know, black people are endangered

00:49:24.340 every day of their life and that it's an existential question for them and that white people have

00:49:29.340 to run around lecturing everybody.

00:49:31.120 Otherwise, you're not doing your duty to protect your fellow man.

00:49:33.820 There are so many dangers like layered on top of each other when it comes to this kind of

00:49:38.480 hysteria.

00:49:39.140 And the first problem is you make the problem seem intractable.

00:49:41.800 There's nothing you can do to fix this impossible, inevitable thing.

00:49:45.860 It's thousands of black people a year being murdered by the police in the streets.

00:49:49.920 It's just absurd.

00:49:51.480 And it's not true.

00:49:52.280 But we make ourselves believe that it's true and that it can't be fixed.

00:49:55.480 But then there's the kids, a generation of young people who are being inculcated with

00:50:00.840 this knee-jerk paranoia.

00:50:02.860 In every story that they see or any story that they see, there's a lurch to conclude that

00:50:08.240 race is what's motivating this, that race is going to prevent them from succeeding in

00:50:12.600 life and getting ahead, or that their race makes them perpetually guilty and gives them

00:50:17.840 this obligation to apologize for something that they have, or perhaps to feel insecure about

00:50:23.040 talking about genuine needs that they have because of a difficult circumstance that they

00:50:26.860 come out of personally, but they're told that they're privileged despite that circumstance.

00:50:33.020 The entire thing is incredibly poisonous.

00:50:35.420 How do you fight that, Camille?

00:50:36.260 So I've got kids who are being told they're white supremacists because they have white skin

00:50:40.780 and sins of the father and they're oppressors and all that stuff.

00:50:44.980 And you've got a black child being told she's the oppressed, right?

00:50:48.760 I mean, how do you counter-program?

00:50:50.740 Well, the first thing is I've opted out of the race game altogether.

00:50:55.260 I don't have a black daughter.

00:50:56.400 I have a daughter and her name is Leah and she is her own person and she owns herself

00:51:00.840 and she will be able to forge whatever identity she likes for herself in precisely the same

00:51:05.380 way her father and her mother have.

00:51:07.740 And the color that I happen to be, the way I happen to appear says literally nothing about

00:51:14.280 who I am and what I believe and any presupposition associated with ideas of race, which is something

00:51:20.460 that we've inherited.

00:51:22.000 Race is an ideology.

00:51:23.280 It isn't a biological or genetic reality.

00:51:25.720 And as much as we imagine we see these differences when we see people who kind of look like us or

00:51:30.500 kind of don't, it is something that we've practiced.

00:51:33.560 We ignore all of the ways that these concepts simply do not work in reality.

00:51:38.520 And we affix for ourselves these definite properties to race.

00:51:44.080 So speaking honestly about that is one thing, but also not letting anyone get away with being

00:51:49.280 hysterical.

00:51:50.160 Matt, I think you're right when you talk about this just kind of onslaught of ideological

00:51:55.800 propaganda around these issues and the degree to which people either, A, shut up because

00:52:00.440 they're afraid to stick out like a sore thumb and say, I don't like that and they don't want

00:52:04.180 to get called racist or B, they shut up because they're just overwhelmed by it and they hope

00:52:07.700 that it goes away.

00:52:08.740 You can't do either of those things.

00:52:11.000 These are ideals that matter.

00:52:13.060 Equal protection under the law, that matters.

00:52:15.840 That basic idea matters.

00:52:17.160 The notion of the individual like being sacrosanct and you demanding the dignity of your individuality

00:52:23.680 above any notion of racial identity, that is sacrosanct.

00:52:27.320 And you have to be able to say so, say it confidently and say it everywhere you go.

00:52:32.240 You cannot allow someone like Ibram Kendi, a low rent, faux intellectual, to be able to

00:52:39.500 make tautological arguments about how it's not enough to be not racist.

00:52:44.200 You must be anti-racist.

00:52:45.560 Says who?

00:52:46.580 What is an anti-racist?

00:52:48.280 It is a contentless idea, totally baseless.

00:52:52.160 And to the extent there is any ideal there, the actual idea is not neo-racism, it's racism.

00:52:57.620 It's racism and explicit discrimination.

00:52:59.540 A man who has publicly advocated for establishing a constitutionally unbounded new bureaucracy

00:53:07.260 that would be responsible for striking down any law this unelected board saw fit if they

00:53:13.820 deemed it quote unquote racist.

00:53:15.720 It is a dangerous totalitarian idea.

00:53:18.900 And people like him have incredibly too much power.

00:53:22.040 And when the president of the United States and the Department of Education are talking

00:53:26.920 about grant programs, wherein they cite people like Ibram Kendi, that is a dangerous

00:53:32.800 threshold to be crossing.

00:53:34.960 And for you to not say anything, dear American, is a real problem.

00:53:39.420 So just before we go on, there's a little like gif.

00:53:42.600 Is it gif or jif on Twitter?

00:53:44.720 It's jif, but it's in both work.

00:53:46.180 Exactly.

00:53:46.700 Because we know what you're talking about.

00:53:47.900 And it's got a little girl.

00:53:49.540 It's one of the first ones that comes up and she's holding her little fists up by her

00:53:52.380 face.

00:53:52.720 She's got this big smile.

00:53:53.760 She's like, yes, yes.

00:53:55.440 That's me right now.

00:53:58.080 That's what everything you just said.

00:54:00.880 Yes.

00:54:01.680 I couldn't agree with that more.

00:54:02.840 I love what you said about your daughter.

00:54:04.760 It's one of the things that's so objectionable about what they're doing right now.

00:54:07.900 You know, I've said before that I've got three kids and two out of my three, their best

00:54:12.540 friends are black children and between whom there was absolutely no division and no, no

00:54:19.060 one telling them that they were different or something.

00:54:21.600 One was sort of bad and one was sort of victimized.

00:54:24.160 And then these schools stuck their noses in it and changed the entire messaging.

00:54:27.980 And I, I'm angry about it.

00:54:30.680 I'm, I'm really angry.

00:54:32.900 And you should be.

00:54:33.780 And more people should be.

00:54:35.340 And more people should be willing to take, take the fight to your school.

00:54:39.280 You didn't ask for this battle.

00:54:40.520 You did not ask for teachers unions and other pushy politicians to turn your schools into

00:54:47.000 ideological battlegrounds.

00:54:48.400 But here you are.

00:54:49.340 And your responsibility is to say, you know what?

00:54:51.880 No, like my values are in line with the values of Martin Luther King.

00:54:55.520 And I do believe that, you know, it's the color, it's the content of your character and

00:54:59.040 not the color of your skin that ought to matter.

00:55:00.640 And I believe in helping people who really need it.

00:55:03.120 And I'm not going to pretend that every black person needs something from every white person.

00:55:08.840 It is obscene.

00:55:10.520 It is dishonest.

00:55:11.820 It is objectively false.

00:55:13.580 And saying so is never a problem.

00:55:16.700 I, well, the thing that, you know.

00:55:18.380 Wait, gif jif again.

00:55:19.520 Gif jif.

00:55:20.440 Yeah, gif jif.

00:55:21.460 Matt and I have heard it a couple of times.

00:55:22.440 I'm going to just walk out of the room.

00:55:23.060 We actually were just out having a cigarette outside.

00:55:25.620 We just came back to the gym.

00:55:26.520 A menthol.

00:55:27.060 He's done the thing, right?

00:55:29.860 The part where he pounds the table.

00:55:31.340 Yeah, he's doing the table pounding stuff.

00:55:32.700 So the thing that bugs me, I mean, there's so many things that bug me, but it's the fundamental dishonesty of it, right?

00:55:38.260 If you look back at the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and you can cite King or Ralph Abernathy or any of these people, Bayard Rustin in particular, there's, no one's lying about anything.

00:55:51.460 No one's trying actively to deceive you because there's so much actual discrimination around you.

00:55:55.700 And it's codified into law, particularly in the South.

00:55:59.540 I mean, there is an elected official standing in the way of James Meredith going to school.

00:56:03.800 That is an abomination, and it had to be stopped, right?

00:56:08.380 Now, when you mention Ibermachs Kennedy, it is this abusive language when you say things like anti-racist.

00:56:15.760 Well, who's not anti-racist?

00:56:16.960 I hate racism.

00:56:18.700 I'm not somebody who likes racism at all.

00:56:20.940 But that's not what they're talking about.

00:56:22.760 Anti-racism is a specific ideology.

00:56:25.700 Black Lives Matter.

00:56:26.500 Who could disagree with that?

00:56:27.680 Right.

00:56:27.880 I think Black Lives Matter.

00:56:29.480 I think that's a proposition no one disagrees with.

00:56:31.200 No one disagrees with.

00:56:32.180 Yeah, and if you do, you're a very small percentage of the population, and you're not going to, you're a piece of garbage, right?

00:56:37.200 Uh-huh.

00:56:37.760 That stuff.

00:56:38.520 Not helpful.

00:56:39.600 Yeah.

00:56:40.220 And then you go on to, you talked about Michaela Bryant.

00:56:45.500 That one is amazing when you look at the headlines.

00:56:49.180 Because if this is, you know, happening everywhere at all times, you should be able to talk about the actual facts of the case without having these misleading headlines.

00:56:58.780 And, you know, huge credit to Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo, who actually said, guys, this is kind of crazy.

00:57:06.300 They don't get credit.

00:57:06.420 She was about an inch from Stine.

00:57:09.580 Megan, this is hard for me to say, too.

00:57:11.220 Come on.

00:57:11.900 Oh, come on.

00:57:12.440 It was like a teeny tiny little, one of those red berries you see on the tree.

00:57:17.140 It wasn't even a fig leaf.

00:57:18.300 It was one of those teeny tiny red berries that go on the fig leaf.

00:57:21.600 Yeah.

00:57:21.920 But bullshit.

00:57:22.740 They have been such forces for evil in this whole discussion.

00:57:25.700 I give them no credit.

00:57:27.620 Zero.

00:57:28.620 They covered, they tried to cover their asses by, on the one most obvious case, throwing the police a bone.

00:57:34.600 I need to win.

00:57:34.880 I need to win people to my side.

00:57:36.540 I need to win them to my side.

00:57:37.660 That's Camille talking.

00:57:38.140 I want to encourage them to get it right.

00:57:38.760 Carrot and stick.

00:57:39.200 Also, they should probably, you know, invite me on and stop canceling the invite.

00:57:43.460 Yeah, you're not going to get on.

00:57:44.700 Are they?

00:57:45.400 I'm just saying.

00:57:45.980 Oh, yeah, that's not going to happen.

00:57:47.000 I didn't say it.

00:57:47.360 Oh, I'm not surprised.

00:57:48.880 It's disgusting.

00:57:50.080 We've had so many guests on here from Glenn Greenwald and others talking about how they get,

00:57:55.420 they've gotten banned from places like MS or CNN because they're not saying the right stuff.

00:57:59.760 And honestly, like, I'll tell you, I was invited on CNN many times during my post-NBC time on the couch to go talk about Trump.

00:58:09.940 And it was always a woman issue because they are assuming she's going to bash on Trump.

00:58:14.000 Trump's a sexist.

00:58:14.840 Trump's a misogynist.

00:58:15.720 Trump said another bad misogynistic thing.

00:58:17.900 And I just kept declining.

00:58:19.180 I'm like, first of all, I am not going to say what you think I'm going to say.

00:58:22.120 I am not an ideologue.

00:58:23.240 I evaluate cases on a case-by-case basis.

00:58:26.020 It's up to the viewers and the voters to decide whether he's a sexist or not.

00:58:30.480 I'm not your resident bash Trump, strong, empowered woman.

00:58:34.560 And probably from you, Camille, they're looking for you to say the stuff they think most black men would say about Trump or about this whole.

00:58:40.820 And it's like once you realize they just want you to be their puppet, it's really fucking insulting.

00:58:47.560 Not wrong.

00:58:48.440 I feel I feel the need to say to say one thing briefly, just based on what we were talking about before,

00:58:53.760 because I'm imagining a critic listening to the conversation and hearing me get passionate and excited about things and saying,

00:58:59.700 you know, he's always denying the significance of racism, the consequences of history in America.

00:59:05.580 And I deny no such thing.

00:59:07.280 I recognize that there has been a distinct and unique history of racial oppression in this country,

00:59:13.640 that it almost certainly has profound consequences today.

00:59:17.060 I also go further and say, so societal outcomes are complicated because they are.

00:59:23.160 And they're driven by a number of important and complex factors.

00:59:26.960 And recognizing those factors and recognizing that complexity puts you in a better position to address meaningful problems.

00:59:33.540 And it is possible to have a car accident to break your femur and to know that that femur needs help.

00:59:39.320 And that talking about the car accident and who was driving and who was at fault is not going to help you learn to walk again.

00:59:45.940 The actual remedy is distinct from the process and the circumstances of the injury and even conversations about culpability.

00:59:55.500 The only thing to address if you actually want to help people where they are is the specific need that they have and the ways in which that need can be directly remedied by circumstances, by people who can help.

01:00:11.300 And most of the time, for all of the talk about government getting in there and helping and leveling the playing field, that stuff hasn't worked.

01:00:18.540 And there are places where it has actually been a net harm.

01:00:21.220 So having honest conversations about that and acknowledging that these things are complicated as opposed to imagining you can flatten history and that all injustice in the world stems from whiteness, it's not just wrong, it's obscene.

01:00:36.980 And it's a complete distraction from having good, serious, tangible conversations about how we fix hugely complicated and really important problems.

01:00:44.940 But who's trying to solve this?

01:00:46.120 I mean, that's the thing that when I know that Twitter is not the world and I've said that today already, but it is journalists and are people that are disproportionately, you know, in positions of power and we don't see a lot of remedies here.

01:01:00.820 And it's considered kind of gauche to point out after, you know, Adam Toledo, the 13-year-old kid who was shot and killed in Chicago, who had a gun on him about, you know, a nanosecond before he was shot, which is then, of course, framed as a kid didn't have a gun or was not armed at the time he was shot.

01:01:18.960 So no one steps back and says, okay, a thousand people have been shot in Chicago this year.

01:01:26.720 Crazy.

01:01:27.360 So talking endlessly and doing the kind of Kremlinology and going through with a magnifying glass on how many nanoseconds happened between Adam Toledo throwing a gun at three in the morning after him and his cousin were just shooting at a car.

01:01:40.780 So what is that doing beyond trying to further a narrative that people of, you know, I would say people of color, he wasn't black, being shot by the police is a thing that is, you know, endemic.

01:01:55.640 It never stops.

01:01:56.660 It is the forward motion of the police bureaucracy and hate machine.

01:02:00.540 We must put a stop to that.

01:02:02.220 Whereas a thousand people are being, I mean, Spike Lee made a movie called Chirac, a portmanteau of Chicago and Iraq, what, four or five years ago?

01:02:10.280 It is, you know, it's not gotten better.

01:02:12.540 It's gotten worse.

01:02:13.380 And what has anyone done, including a series of Democratic mayors, to do something about that?

01:02:19.800 Up next, are the feds about to take away qualified immunity from the cops who are out there?

01:02:25.800 There's a reason that they have been given this sort of special privilege.

01:02:30.320 And is it about to go away?

01:02:31.660 And is that a good thing?

01:02:32.520 The guys and I have a bit of a disagreement, but it's a fun one.

01:02:35.720 And you know what?

01:02:36.440 It's okay.

01:02:37.340 It's okay to disagree.

01:02:38.540 You can talk all about it.

01:02:39.780 At least here on this show and in America, we'll get to that one second.

01:02:43.500 But first, we're going to bring you a feature that we call From the Archives.

01:02:48.260 This is a feature where we look back at a previous episode we think you should check out from the Megyn Kelly Show library.

01:02:53.760 Like maybe you missed it.

01:02:54.820 You're busy people.

01:02:56.440 Today, we're going back to episode 35, which is from December of 2020, when we interviewed Representative Dan Crenshaw.

01:03:04.240 He's a Texas congressman from Houston.

01:03:06.140 He spoke about some of the challenges that he has faced with the injuries he sustained as a Navy SEAL.

01:03:12.200 The ramifications of which, by the way, he's dealing with to this day.

01:03:16.000 Today, he's dealing with a new challenge to his eyesight, which we're going to get to that in one second, actually.

01:03:20.540 But first, here's just a look back at our episode with him from last year.

01:03:24.740 Are you kind of over that?

01:03:26.080 Do you feel like you're over the trauma of that event?

01:03:28.780 But, yeah, yeah, I do.

01:03:32.420 Yeah, I think I'm blessed in that respect.

01:03:37.060 Well, my wife would probably have a different answer for that.

01:03:39.960 But I don't feel like I don't feel now like I have any remnants of PTSD from it.

01:03:47.060 I think I did for a while.

01:03:48.300 But, no, I don't dwell on it very much.

01:03:55.520 I'm just I'm extremely grateful, frankly, for what I can see.

01:04:00.900 It's an absolute miracle that I can see it all out of my left eye.

01:04:05.920 You know, there's a lot of adaptation that occurs.

01:04:07.780 People just see me as I am right now.

01:04:09.840 So they they wrongfully assume that there's there's not serious vision issues.

01:04:15.780 And it always strikes me as like how willing people are in politics to always make fun of the eye.

01:04:23.860 It's like you don't make fun of anybody else's missing body parts.

01:04:27.160 Like if somebody loses a leg or or an arm, you notice that's like off limits.

01:04:32.660 But for some reason, the eye thing and this is, by the way, more again, this is this happens more with conservatives.

01:04:38.380 Right. Again, that that crazy right wing, that that crazy wing that we talked about that pretends to be MAGA supporters, but they're not.

01:04:46.040 It just happens a lot more with them than it does the left.

01:04:48.420 I would just I would just point out.

01:04:50.880 They're mocking.

01:04:52.260 I mean, I remember the Pete Davidson thing on SNL, but that, of course, he's he's no Republican.

01:04:57.180 But what do you mean? People are mocking your.

01:05:00.060 Oh, yeah. They're vicious and disgusting about it.

01:05:03.640 You know, so it's just kind of I guess I'm noting it because what's interesting is that they.

01:05:08.100 And they'll never do it to somebody without a leg or an arm.

01:05:11.500 There's something about something about it's fine.

01:05:14.160 It's not. But anyway, maybe the other thing is, I will say the eye patch is kind of cool.

01:05:20.260 It could be a form of envy.

01:05:21.600 You know, like there's something that it kind of takes you to the next level of badass when you have an eye patch.

01:05:26.340 Well, well, I think I think I would say that a lot of these Groypers are probably in cells.

01:05:32.860 So, yeah, they might be envious.

01:05:34.660 Well, to your original question.

01:05:36.160 No, I which was a serious one.

01:05:39.120 Yeah, I'm blessed to feel like like I've gotten over it.

01:05:42.380 But, you know, I'm still I'm still constantly getting fitted for different glasses so I can see this computer that I'm looking at right now properly.

01:05:50.100 Because I have a I have a cataract in my eye that can't be fixed.

01:05:54.220 I have I have an iris that cannot open and close.

01:05:57.420 So like I can't be outside in the sun without sunglasses.

01:06:00.900 I take out my contact, which only one company makes properly in the world.

01:06:05.340 You know, I've got to wear the lenses that are a quarter inch thick to see anything at all.

01:06:11.400 So and then, you know, I've got like no, no field of view or depth perception.

01:06:16.200 So it's it just takes adaptation.

01:06:18.760 But but I've never I've always felt a real strong community support.

01:06:25.500 The SEAL teams are very tightly knit and like that.

01:06:28.620 And, you know, so it's I don't dwell on it.

01:06:33.060 Well, Crenshaw recently had retinal surgery and is facing an uphill battle as he fights to regain his vision.

01:06:40.400 Following the surgery, he had to lay face down for two weeks.

01:06:44.020 Think about that.

01:06:45.060 But now he has been able to lift up his head, which is a step in the right direction.

01:06:49.520 He said on Friday that he can only see light and shadows, but he has retained his positive attitude that he displayed when we talked to him.

01:06:57.580 I'm so sad to hear that, though, aren't you?

01:07:00.320 Shit.

01:07:00.760 Like, hopefully this gets turned around.

01:07:04.040 I mean, he obviously has the best attitude to handle any sort of a challenge, but just say a prayer for him, right?

01:07:11.560 You tweet it out.

01:07:12.660 I'm not sure how my vision will be in a few weeks, but I am hopeful and confident it will return to normal.

01:07:18.700 We've been through harder times before and we are going to get through this.

01:07:22.100 We are definitely praying for Dan Crenshaw and we'll keep you posted on his condition as we get more.

01:07:27.820 And we will keep bringing you episodes from the archives.

01:07:31.980 And now back to our guest right after this.

01:07:34.480 We have George Floyd Square, right?

01:07:42.200 Do we have Jaslyn Adams Square now coming in Chicago?

01:07:45.360 I know you guys have talked about her, the seven-year-old who was shot in the McDonald's drive-thru in Chicago.

01:07:49.000 Forty-five shell casings found outside of the car.

01:07:52.580 At least six bullets hit the little girl.

01:07:54.720 Where where's the protest?

01:07:56.760 When is BLM swinging by that street and creating Jaslyn Adams Square?

01:08:02.340 Not the crime rate in Chicago and other inner cities.

01:08:05.280 We've gone through the increase in the murder rate in several major cities.

01:08:08.280 Not mentioned by Joe Biden last night.

01:08:10.300 Where's the commission on that?

01:08:11.740 Instead, we're going to get a commission talking about how to crack down on the police.

01:08:15.900 How we got to start looking at the number of people police pull over and make sure that there's gender and racial parity.

01:08:24.360 So if we're going to start looking at the number of arrests.

01:08:26.400 Yeah, yeah, genders.

01:08:27.220 You're kidding me.

01:08:28.460 No, no, no.

01:08:28.920 No, no.

01:08:29.220 Just like now, I mean, like all the ladies in the world, like all of our shitty driving.

01:08:34.580 It's really going to come under the microscope now, ladies.

01:08:37.260 Prepare.

01:08:37.620 I hope they get after the parallel parking.

01:08:39.560 Enough is enough.

01:08:40.440 95% of murders are committed by men.

01:08:42.260 Are we going to start looking for parity there?

01:08:43.800 Are we going to start arresting women?

01:08:45.460 We want 50-50 murder conviction?

01:08:46.540 The thing to keep in mind is that there are multiple ways to achieve parity.

01:08:49.440 We just get more women to commit murders and then we'll be fine.

01:08:52.640 This is also, then you don't have to be worried anymore.

01:08:55.380 It's fine.

01:08:55.900 There are more dead people.

01:08:57.640 All of this is pretty perverse.

01:08:59.920 I will say, because we talk about this as well.

01:09:02.660 We've been advocating for criminal justice reform and for scrutiny.

01:09:07.500 of law enforcement way before it was cool, way before anyone else showed up to the party.

01:09:12.940 And I continue to think that these are important issues.

01:09:15.780 When any civilian is dead after an interaction with a law enforcement officer, that is a serious

01:09:22.560 thing that needs to be looked at and investigated thoroughly.

01:09:25.800 Like, impartially, transparently, we need to know what happened because it is absolutely imperative

01:09:31.820 that citizens can trust the people who have the monopoly on the legitimate use of force.

01:09:36.960 That is the government, right?

01:09:38.480 Full stop.

01:09:39.200 It's just true.

01:09:40.240 When we flatten them all and pretend that they're all indistinguishable from one another,

01:09:45.680 that there is only one problem and that it's police killing black people because they're

01:09:49.300 super duper racist.

01:09:51.240 It's harder to actually achieve that goal.

01:09:54.020 In fact, it becomes a lot easier to avoid achieving that goal, to avoid doing the difficult

01:09:59.400 work of trying to fix that problem.

01:10:01.020 When you've shifted gears and you're just talking about racism, it's what they're doing

01:10:04.780 with public schools that have been failing kids that I could talk specifically about the

01:10:10.320 demographics of the kids that they're failing, but I'll just leave it at that.

01:10:13.240 They're failing kids in New York, San Francisco, all across the country.

01:10:16.800 They're doing that.

01:10:17.700 Sure.

01:10:18.140 Let's talk about that because I think maybe we have a disagreement on that and that'd be

01:10:20.720 fun.

01:10:22.440 I don't, I don't totally have it figured out.

01:10:24.580 I'm not going to claim that I can't really debate you because I don't have a very strong

01:10:28.560 feeling on it, but I lean toward leaving quality, qualified immunity in place.

01:10:33.300 And the reason is I think more people are going to get killed if we take it away because

01:10:37.320 qualified immunity, it's a judicial created doctrine that basically says, unless you can

01:10:42.520 prove the police officer in question did exactly the thing that's already been deemed problematic

01:10:48.320 by another court, he's going to have immunity to your lawsuit and you can't, you can't sue

01:10:52.880 him for what he did to you.

01:10:54.600 And the, the Democrats want to get rid of qualified immunity altogether.

01:11:00.340 And Tim Scott's compromise is, well, why don't we just make it like super clear that you can

01:11:06.320 sue, you're not going to be able to get your hands into the pocket of the police officer who

01:11:11.140 hurt you or did something wrong to you, but you are going to get their, their, their department

01:11:16.760 to pay if a court finds in your favor.

01:11:19.240 So that's his compromise.

01:11:20.480 Well, I will say what he's proposing is basically what we have now.

01:11:23.440 It's kind of what we have.

01:11:25.900 If you can prove that the police officer did the thing that's already been deemed illegal

01:11:29.780 in another case, you can sue and you would get the department to pay.

01:11:34.260 And even here in New York city in the past year, I looked it up or 2019, most recent data,

01:11:39.100 the city paid out $175 million in those claims.

01:11:42.060 So people are suing the cops for misdeeds.

01:11:44.800 It's just like the cop himself is not paying it.

01:11:47.260 And most cops themselves couldn't pay anyway.

01:11:50.280 If you got a big judgment, they don't make a lot of money.

01:11:52.040 Anyway, so my feeling is, well, I like accountability and I realized cops do bad shit.

01:11:56.720 It's not like they're, they're human.

01:11:58.060 They're like, they can do bad stuff.

01:11:59.680 They can, they can do it negligently.

01:12:00.980 They can do it recklessly.

01:12:01.800 They can do it intentionally.

01:12:03.460 Um, they, if we add yet another layer of danger for them out there, cause they're already

01:12:10.540 overseen by the media, by, you know, remnants of Eric Holder's department of justice.

01:12:16.020 Now Biden's department of justice is going to put a bunch of layers in there where they seize

01:12:19.020 control over all these municipalities and their police forces.

01:12:22.960 They're going to hold back.

01:12:24.400 I feel like that, that, that Micaiah Bryant would have been allowed to stab the girl in

01:12:30.220 the pink jumpsuit if, if qualified immunity were removed because cops, they don't get paid

01:12:36.320 enough to take those risks, to put their family at risk, to put their job at risk.

01:12:40.660 You know, the, the George Floyd quote justice act also wants to up, make it a lot easier

01:12:45.760 to put cops in jail for, for misjudgments on the scene, right?

01:12:49.180 If they've, if they've, um, basically they want to lower the standard of culpability for,

01:12:53.980 for criminality for against cops.

01:12:55.680 That's you.

01:12:56.220 If I'm a cop, I'm like, go ahead, kill each other.

01:12:59.220 I'm going to be over here.

01:13:00.480 I'm going to make a showing of trying to protect you and let the chips fall where they

01:13:04.780 may.

01:13:05.300 That's what worries me.

01:13:06.820 I'll let you guys take it.

01:13:07.660 Um, I don't think that, uh, like it's very easy to have an instrumental, uh, sort of

01:13:15.740 consequentialist look at any given, uh, police reform, right?

01:13:19.780 If you, uh, for instance, empty the prison of people serving, uh, drug sentences for stuff

01:13:26.480 that would now be, uh, legal, that they wouldn't be arrested for.

01:13:29.460 Like if you emptied all of the prisons, uh, with those people who are currently in jail,

01:13:33.820 some of them are going to commit crimes.

01:13:35.180 So do we not do it because some of them are going to commit crimes tomorrow?

01:13:38.340 No, I think we do it because that is the just thing to do.

01:13:41.400 Uh, similarly in this case, I don't think that police or anybody, uh, should have a special,

01:13:47.680 you know, judicially created carve out preventing them, uh, from being sued as an other person

01:13:55.740 in that situation would be sued.

01:13:57.660 So it just doesn't make sense.

01:13:59.000 Let me just, let me challenge you on that and then I'll get, and then I'll be quiet.

01:14:01.460 But even, even given the nature of what a police officer does, cause that's why it came about.

01:14:05.700 Like they're looking at cops like the guy in McKay O'Brien who in one split second has

01:14:10.100 got to make a judgment call and can't be worried about qualified immunity.

01:14:13.560 They're going to take it away.

01:14:14.300 I'm going to get sued and lose my, he can't, he's just got to make a split second judgment

01:14:17.800 call life or death.

01:14:18.740 Yeah, I don't think that anybody, I don't think you're going to qualify the immunity

01:14:23.420 is not going to affect that case.

01:14:25.480 Nobody's going to look at that case and say, Oh, that was a bad, that was a bad shot.

01:14:28.520 Really?

01:14:28.820 That's not going to, I don't know.

01:14:29.960 Take it up with Meggie.

01:14:31.200 Take it up with old Meggie.

01:14:32.700 What's her name from Moxie Mount?

01:14:34.400 She's well, Meggie from Moxie Mount.

01:14:36.420 Like, like a lot of people, she's always screwing things up.

01:14:39.540 Meggie from Moxie Mount has a lot of ideas that don't really play out in the real world.

01:14:44.460 Just as, as Camille was mentioning before in the, uh, Derek Chauvin trial, every, you know,

01:14:48.900 the media has portrayed this as a, like a race thing, the trial didn't at all.

01:14:53.620 So like where the real stuff happens, uh, it's not like that.

01:14:57.080 Megan, you point out the, um, the kind of, you know, we're already getting the federal

01:15:00.700 government to involved in these things that might be true, might not be true.

01:15:04.180 Let's table that for a second.

01:15:05.160 But the most, the majority of all of this, uh, activity, just as it is with schools

01:15:10.260 happens in the local level.

01:15:11.420 These are decisions made.

01:15:12.480 These are local police forces, the Albuquerque, New Mexico police force.

01:15:16.360 Um, you know, actually, uh, New Mexico just abolished a qualified immunity, which I think

01:15:20.980 will be, uh, a positive based on how bad, uh, the Albuquerque police force has been historically

01:15:26.700 over the years, really has been involved in a, in a horrific number of killings.

01:15:30.920 But I, the, I don't think that the federal government is going to, um, suddenly go everywhere,

01:15:36.440 marauding into, into local police forces.

01:15:39.680 Um, most of the stuff happens locally.

01:15:42.020 Um, and they're doing it.

01:15:43.920 They're starting, you, you know, they're starting to, they are starting to review, right?

01:15:47.480 Like this is camel's nose under the tent.

01:15:49.960 Here they go.

01:15:50.780 They're already going to do pattern practice.

01:15:52.540 They're going to, they're going to do it.

01:15:54.300 They're going to do it in Minneapolis.

01:15:55.360 I mean, which will come as a surprise to Maderia Arradondo, right?

01:16:00.780 That was his name.

01:16:01.400 That's the city's first black police chief.

01:16:03.900 The guy was a star witness in the Chauvin trial for the prosecution.

01:16:07.640 He was a guy who, who he was, he was an Obama style progressive police officer who came onto

01:16:14.260 that stand and said, Chauvin did wrong.

01:16:16.440 Chauvin wasn't taught to do that stuff.

01:16:18.280 We're against Chauvin.

01:16:19.460 And now he's going to have the feds breathing down his neck saying pattern and practice.

01:16:22.160 You're going to have to answer this guy's probably like, what, as you guys put on your

01:16:27.040 podcast, if they had the evidence of that, we would have heard it already.

01:16:29.600 They don't.

01:16:30.380 But this is what the Obama Biden administration and now Biden Harris administration wants to

01:16:35.440 do.

01:16:35.600 They want to go in there.

01:16:36.540 They want to take policing out of the local control and give it, give it a more federalized

01:16:42.140 feel, which does not work.

01:16:44.760 That is not going to end well.

01:16:46.020 You can't police that way.

01:16:48.120 Sorry, go ahead.

01:16:48.480 Yeah, I don't, I don't think nationalizing policing is, is the answer.

01:16:51.640 And I will say that there does seem to be, at least from a cultural standpoint, a bit

01:16:56.300 of a pendulum that has swung in the other direction in terms of public opinion about

01:17:00.640 encounters like this.

01:17:02.000 I'm surprised to see so many people publicly effectively advocating for kids getting into

01:17:07.780 knife fights and occasionally murdering one another and the police just not getting

01:17:11.100 involved in firing their guns.

01:17:13.000 And look, we are seeing places locally where qualified immunity has been done away with.

01:17:17.800 And we will very soon see whether or not that leads to good or bad outcomes.

01:17:20.880 My suspicion is that it's going to depend on the circumstances because all of these things

01:17:25.940 are called are complex.

01:17:27.920 And that is the reason not to try to take this broad brush, you know, approach to trying

01:17:33.920 to fix all of these things.

01:17:35.520 But it does seem to me that before the pendulum swung, that the pendulum was probably too far

01:17:40.280 in the other direction.

01:17:41.020 There were too many circumstances where law enforcement was effectively involved in making

01:17:47.680 determinations about the legitimacy of its own actions.

01:17:51.540 And no person in America can agree that when the police shoot someone and kill them, that

01:17:56.640 they should be sort of the actual ones making determinations about whether or not that's okay.

01:18:01.840 But more than that, to bring us back to this, this same conversation we were having before,

01:18:06.000 the conversation around qualified immunity is mostly about retribution.

01:18:10.360 It's about punishment.

01:18:11.700 And it's not reform-oriented except to say, well, we're aligning incentives.

01:18:16.100 We're trying to get it so that cops are a little more judicious and careful when they're

01:18:19.240 out doing their jobs.

01:18:20.600 Well, let's talk about the specific job they're being asked to do.

01:18:24.400 Maybe there are ways that we can keep our society safe without getting armed agents of

01:18:30.540 the state involved in everything.

01:18:32.240 And those practical conversations, which I think require some deliberateness and some

01:18:38.000 thoughtfulness, and again, a lot of involvement at the local level based on circumstance and

01:18:42.800 need, to try to figure out what those things are.

01:18:45.760 And again, we're not having those conversations because we're too busy screaming at one another,

01:18:49.620 chasing after imaginary white supremacists who are likely to take over the country and kill

01:18:55.280 everyone if we apparently stop talking about them.

01:18:58.480 So I think there are lots of opportunities for reform here and probably lots of opportunities

01:19:05.620 for actual compromise and progress on a lot of important issues.

01:19:10.580 And I think it's fair to have some concerns about the possibility that qualified immunity

01:19:16.740 across the board might be too much.

01:19:19.860 But it's also a circumstance where we're saying, well, the problem here, the danger that we're

01:19:25.160 talking about is maybe there would be too much accountability.

01:19:27.560 And I mean, I'd probably rather make that error than the error in the other direction.

01:19:33.400 If I had to choose.

01:19:34.200 Let me just ask you this.

01:19:35.120 Let me ask you this.

01:19:35.660 So let's say they let's say we're not going to get the sweeping qualified immunity that

01:19:39.620 the Democrats want.

01:19:40.540 I think there's not enough.

01:19:42.700 I don't think they've got the votes in the Senate for that.

01:19:45.120 Tim Scott's version.

01:19:47.180 I think that could that could happen.

01:19:48.700 He actually said in the news the other day that he thinks they may have a deal on this between

01:19:53.080 one and two weeks.

01:19:54.180 But the other stuff that's being layered on here by the Democrats and what they want

01:19:58.400 to do to reform police.

01:20:00.960 To your point, they're already looking at a lot.

01:20:03.800 It's not just qualified immunity removal.

01:20:05.640 It's the thing I was saying, like getting rid of any disparities based on your ethnicity,

01:20:10.720 based on your gender, right?

01:20:12.220 Based on your sexual orientation, like we need as many gay people pulled over as straight

01:20:16.060 people.

01:20:16.360 I don't know.

01:20:17.280 Straight, whatever.

01:20:19.500 That stuff disturbs me, right?

01:20:20.980 Because it's 92 percent of the U.S. prison population is male.

01:20:24.700 There's a reason for that.

01:20:25.780 Men are the ones committing most of the crime.

01:20:27.740 Sorry, guys.

01:20:28.580 That's just the truth.

01:20:30.160 It doesn't mean that, look, all cops are sexist.

01:20:32.940 It's just I don't know.

01:20:34.140 There's probably a long, long reason for it.

01:20:35.620 And if you watch as much as Dateline as I do, you know, women are the victims.

01:20:39.240 Women are the victims.

01:20:40.480 And it's always the husbands.

01:20:41.560 OK, I've taken a diversion.

01:20:43.480 But this is the point I was trying to make, that this bill being proposed by Biden touted

01:20:49.100 last night would also, I'm now quoting from National Review, funnel federal dollars to

01:20:53.780 progressive organizations like the NAACP, the ACLU and the National Urban League, among

01:20:59.200 others.

01:20:59.880 And what for?

01:21:00.780 Quote, to study management and operations standards for law enforcement agencies, including

01:21:05.840 use of force, racial profiling and much more.

01:21:10.100 Then they're supposed to use these studies, which we can safely assume will not be disinterested,

01:21:15.140 so quoting, to create pilot programs for law enforcement that can be used to fulfill

01:21:18.760 their their accreditation standards.

01:21:21.320 Cops seeking federal grants must pledge to spend at least five percent of the funds that

01:21:24.860 they get on studying and implementing programs like those the NAACP, the ACLU and et cetera

01:21:29.960 are charged with coming up with.

01:21:31.080 Can you imagine they got to get their money?

01:21:34.800 They've got to pledge five percent of what they're given to it on implementing plans they

01:21:40.640 get from the NAACP and the ACLU, who if you look at some of the some of the police reform

01:21:47.700 positions they push.

01:21:48.740 I mean, it's like not that far afield from what we see from BLM, like who the hell is

01:21:53.740 going to know how to police after this other than, excuse me, ma'am, did you not want that

01:21:57.680 knife pledged into you?

01:21:58.880 How about you?

01:21:59.400 Do you could I could I get you to stop?

01:22:00.520 Oh, wait, the knife's already in.

01:22:01.780 It's already in.

01:22:03.040 You know, it's that's how it's going to go.

01:22:05.400 Yeah.

01:22:05.620 I mean, the risk of getting these people involved in this particular way is that you just end

01:22:11.380 up with a circumstance where this is a rich opportunity for highly paid consultants.

01:22:16.480 It's like they're going to make a tremendous amount of money, whether or not there's any

01:22:20.320 material progress made on these issues.

01:22:21.960 In fact, it's to their it's in their interest.

01:22:24.020 So there isn't material progress made on these issues that they perpetuated forever to maintain

01:22:28.820 that they are their stream of income.

01:22:31.380 And again, that's not the way we get to progress, which is the reason why probably isn't even

01:22:35.800 a good thing for Black Lives Matter to necessarily be up in arms about what's happening in Chicago.

01:22:39.980 What really needs to happen is all of us need to be collectively a little less inured to the

01:22:45.300 carnage that's taking place in various parts of America and a bit more compassionate and a bit

01:22:50.000 more thoughtful about the ways that we can get to solutions and stop thinking about this in terms

01:22:54.200 of Black and white, that Black conversations about Black on Black crime always make my skin crawl.

01:22:59.680 Like most Black people aren't committing crime.

01:23:01.540 People aren't committing crime on account of their Blackness.

01:23:04.120 They're not committing it on behalf of Black people.

01:23:06.260 Like the fact that it's Black on Black doesn't interest me at all because I don't wish it were

01:23:10.040 Black on white.

01:23:10.720 The only issue I'm interested in is it's crime.

01:23:14.020 It's criminality.

01:23:14.960 And maybe there are commonalities amongst criminals of any background.

01:23:18.520 And perhaps some of those commonalities might lead us to practical solutions, which talking

01:23:23.620 about those things narrowly is probably the best path forward.

01:23:27.100 It's too rare that people think about the federal government of what it can and should do of like,

01:23:33.080 well, let's create a thing and let's do a money.

01:23:35.080 And what it can and should do, especially in the area of criminal justice reform, is undo the bad

01:23:40.560 things that already has.

01:23:41.780 Right.

01:23:42.220 Right.

01:23:42.500 Like it's the federal government that basically created civil asset forfeiture, for example,

01:23:47.860 legalized theft by local police or whatever police of goods that they presume are stolen

01:23:53.420 and they can keep it.

01:23:54.440 They don't have to charge anybody with a crime.

01:23:56.020 This is a federal government created thing.

01:23:58.140 They could remove the thing.

01:23:59.400 That would be helpful.

01:24:00.420 The federal government created the drug war, essentially.

01:24:04.740 There were state and local marijuana laws and other things, but the federal government got

01:24:09.860 in there.

01:24:10.320 So like, let's get rid of those things that are there that will do so much more good than

01:24:16.200 than, you know, hiring a bunch of consultants.

01:24:18.560 Well, yes.

01:24:18.940 And why do we have to like they arrest so many people?

01:24:21.620 Like, that's the thing about the George Floyd trial that always sort of stuck out at me.

01:24:24.460 Like, I realize he resisted arrest once they decided to arrest to arrest him.

01:24:28.380 But like, it was a counterfeit $20 bill.

01:24:30.220 Like, OK, he was sitting behind the wheel of a car and there were drugs in the car.

01:24:33.900 I get all of that.

01:24:34.760 But like, could there be some some other version of handling that that wouldn't have

01:24:41.100 resulted in handcuffs resisting knee on the neck?

01:24:44.980 You know what I mean?

01:24:45.440 Like, it does seem when you have somebody who's in the course of committing what you

01:24:49.600 believe is a nonviolent offense that there there should we should be able to come up with

01:24:53.500 other options because cops hands on black suspects is risky.

01:24:59.220 It just doesn't it goes wrong too often.

01:25:02.000 And if you can decrease the number of times that happens, both by looking at the cops options

01:25:06.700 and and yes, the black crime rate, then you should you should.

01:25:11.820 Yeah.

01:25:12.000 Although I just warn again about making it about race in the context of these things,

01:25:17.180 just only because here's what you've become so comfortable with doing it.

01:25:21.700 Here's here's where I want.

01:25:23.660 Here's here's why I raise that.

01:25:24.940 OK, I'll give you the floor of this.

01:25:26.220 So and my audience knows, like, I am somebody who I don't tweet out random videos of black

01:25:31.380 crime.

01:25:31.800 I feel like there's something wrong about it.

01:25:33.440 I just I don't do it.

01:25:34.700 I see people do it all the time.

01:25:37.580 I'm not trying to make a point about blacks, you know, committing black on black crime more

01:25:41.940 than police do, although that that is an issue.

01:25:45.160 But I went to Chicago and I did some really tough interviews in inner city Chicago a couple

01:25:52.360 of years ago and tried to get to the bottom of I met with a bunch of moms.

01:25:56.220 Who had lost sons to gun violence or to, you know, prison sentences.

01:26:01.660 And there there was such a sense of hopelessness.

01:26:04.680 They didn't want to leave.

01:26:05.940 They did not want to leave the inner city.

01:26:07.460 This is their home.

01:26:08.320 It's where all their friends are, their families.

01:26:10.960 But they they wanted things to be better.

01:26:12.840 There weren't fathers in the homes most of the time.

01:26:16.120 They were drive by shootings all the time.

01:26:17.860 These kids are spending their entire days inside because it wasn't safe to go outside.

01:26:22.700 They couldn't go across certain streets in the town because of the gang violence.

01:26:30.120 And they understood where they were supposed to stay or if they crossed over to this other

01:26:32.840 area that that was the most dangerous part because they weren't affiliated with the right

01:26:36.160 gang.

01:26:36.640 And, you know, these are moms.

01:26:37.660 They're not in the gangs at all.

01:26:38.500 But they just understand sort of territories have been carved out.

01:26:40.840 Um, the schools are.

01:26:43.960 Nothing, the schools suck, the schools do nothing for these kids, and they've been given a lot

01:26:48.400 of federal money.

01:26:48.980 I don't know where it goes, why it doesn't work, but it doesn't schools themselves are

01:26:52.360 dilapidated, not far from inspirational.

01:26:54.880 They're depressing.

01:26:56.040 And the kids see no examples of.

01:26:59.000 A good a good future for them, right?

01:27:00.940 It's like we have to get to these communities so much earlier than the point at which they

01:27:04.640 meet the police.

01:27:05.780 Charlie Cook was making this point the other day, and there just doesn't seem any appetite

01:27:09.540 to do it.

01:27:10.020 So it's not just like, well, the black people are killing the black people.

01:27:12.500 It's like these communities are ignored or there's something happening inside of them

01:27:17.220 that needs to be addressed much, much earlier.

01:27:19.800 And I feel like we don't hear that highlighted enough as something we need to dig into.

01:27:26.080 I think I think you're.

01:27:27.740 Yeah.

01:27:27.960 So first, I'll begin by saying, I mean, I appreciate the genuine compassion on your part

01:27:32.320 towards a community that you do not reside in.

01:27:35.480 Right.

01:27:35.960 Not that you're not a part of because you're you're too white, but because you don't

01:27:39.540 live there.

01:27:40.240 You know, this is something that you see from afar.

01:27:41.860 Your kids aren't exposed to it.

01:27:43.380 Neither are mine.

01:27:44.420 And the principle issue that I have with our descriptions of these things being rooted

01:27:50.620 in our descriptions of things along like racial lines is the universe of really complicated,

01:27:57.020 interconnected problems that you just described.

01:27:59.660 Most of the things that you talked about, race is just not consequential there.

01:28:03.920 And it might be a common characteristic amongst the people who live in that particular region.

01:28:09.040 But the actual sort of patterns of dysfunction, the institutions that are failing people,

01:28:14.360 the ways in which they're failing them have nothing to do with race.

01:28:17.640 And there is a universe of people who kind of look like them who don't have their life

01:28:22.180 experience, who don't share those particular risks.

01:28:24.500 And there is literally no advantage in us classifying and codifying things in a way that effectively

01:28:32.160 like takes what is the characteristic of the victims in these communities.

01:28:37.340 People who live in high crime communities are the victims of the criminals who are operating

01:28:42.660 around them, who are committing theft, who are committing vandalism, who are killing people

01:28:46.640 and the difficulty with black on black crime or even white on white crime in regions of the

01:28:50.780 country where that is, you know, the particular problem.

01:28:53.780 Like it is a weird way of kind of characterizing or categorizing the horrible circumstances they're

01:29:01.660 dealing with, with respect to the physical attributes of the people who live in those

01:29:06.020 neighborhoods that doesn't actually give me anything actionable.

01:29:09.160 There's nothing about it that helps me grab my hands around the circumstances.

01:29:13.200 It gives us this veneer of understanding.

01:29:15.720 And I think it's a dangerous veneer of understanding.

01:29:17.460 Have you seen Shelby and Eli's deals?

01:29:19.260 What killed Michael Brown?

01:29:20.780 I have.

01:29:21.340 Yeah.

01:29:22.120 So that, so they came on the show and they're, they posited that in a city like Ferguson,

01:29:26.720 Missouri, um, what created sort of a, a, an area that's got a lot of crime is the federal

01:29:33.180 government that, that the black community, they were focused on the race of, you know,

01:29:36.660 the dominant population in that city saying they were on the rise.

01:29:39.700 Like, um, the marriage rate, the home ownership rate, the job rate was on the rise.

01:29:45.320 It comes up a lot.

01:29:46.460 Sure.

01:29:47.040 Yeah.

01:29:47.300 And then the feds got involved, the great society and so on.

01:29:49.580 Um, and, um, they created a, what Eli said was a permanent black underclass there with

01:29:56.660 federal housing that was awful, that fell apart and so on and sort of went back to look

01:30:02.240 at the root causes in a city like Ferguson of why there's so much poverty, which is directly

01:30:06.500 linked to crime.

01:30:07.180 Um, I don't, I don't know, maybe you're right.

01:30:11.200 Maybe it's not relevant at all.

01:30:12.500 I'm not, what I took away from that conversation in that film was the federal government's effort

01:30:18.100 to quote, help very often has the opposite effect.

01:30:22.200 And then when things go wrong now in today's day and age, people scream racism, but that's

01:30:31.320 not necessarily an honest assessment of how we got to where we got.

01:30:34.200 No, I mean, I think that race so often distorts rather than illuminates in one kind of tangential

01:30:41.480 point here and a related point is that when you tell people, I mean, the police are in

01:30:46.860 certain neighborhoods because they're getting calls from those neighborhoods, but they want

01:30:50.320 the police to come because most, as Camille says, you know, most black people are not committing

01:30:54.240 crime.

01:30:54.740 Most people are not X, Y, and Z that you would, would, would, you know, stereotypically racist

01:30:59.660 people would suggest.

01:31:00.620 So they don't want that in their neighborhood.

01:31:02.620 And if you go back historically, and this is a major blind spot and people become, you

01:31:07.900 know, baffled by this when you say, so it was mentioned today that, you know, Joe Biden,

01:31:11.860 you know, talks about mass incarceration and has some responsibility there.

01:31:15.760 Right.

01:31:16.060 And he's been criticized for this too.

01:31:18.000 And that is presumed to be, well, you know, the old racist Joe Biden is now become the new

01:31:23.080 woke Joe Biden.

01:31:23.860 Well, no, because if you look back, particularly like the Rockefeller drug laws in New York, there's

01:31:29.140 a fantastic book on this called the black silent majority about how those were pushed by black

01:31:33.840 people in those neighborhoods because they thought the liberal policies of, you know, John

01:31:39.100 Lindsay in New York city in the 1960s failed them.

01:31:41.360 And so we needed these laws because it's tearing apart our community and the presumption of a racial

01:31:46.640 motive that you guys don't care.

01:31:48.400 The second version of that is the crack cocaine disparity in sentencing.

01:31:52.100 And that was pushed very heavily by people that were part of the congressional black caucus

01:31:56.260 because they said there is the crack.

01:31:58.260 What was the word always used afterward?

01:31:59.560 Epidemic.

01:32:00.280 Yeah.

01:32:00.440 It was the crack epidemic.

01:32:01.400 And you don't care.

01:32:03.120 We need to get tough on people who are, you know, selling drugs in our neighborhood,

01:32:07.680 taking drugs brazenly and openly in the street and to do something about it.

01:32:11.540 And when we talk about, you know, over-incarceration, mass incarceration, you know, sentencing disparities,

01:32:17.460 et cetera.

01:32:18.140 And we talk about it through an explicitly racial lens.

01:32:21.100 We miss the actual truth of what happened.

01:32:23.780 And this is always obscuring things rather than enlightening things.

01:32:26.980 Charlie Rangel was advocating for the death penalty for drug dealers in New York because

01:32:32.700 they were destroying black communities.

01:32:34.140 Yes.

01:32:34.620 So talk about tough on crime.

01:32:36.400 Again, it's just that there are, I think I've seen Shelby's documentary.

01:32:41.680 I can appreciate some of the arguments that are made there.

01:32:44.080 A lot of the arguments that are made there.

01:32:45.580 I think it's fair to have conversations about cultural defects, cultural proclivities that

01:32:52.480 might lead to bad outcomes.

01:32:54.200 This is fair.

01:32:55.220 I think it's fair to have conversations about the unintended consequences of government policy.

01:32:59.520 What I think is unhelpful generally is to categorize it as, well, it's black culture that's deficient

01:33:05.680 or even to call it the poverty of culture.

01:33:07.900 I just think these concepts are too imprecise.

01:33:11.180 And quite frankly, because of our experience with them, they kind of overload our circuitry.

01:33:16.840 We just get distracted by race in these contexts.

01:33:20.220 And I think all it helps to do is compound error.

01:33:23.460 When people presume that the bad things are only happening because of race or that the

01:33:28.600 bad thing that's happening here is being perpetrated by people of a particular race.

01:33:32.760 And I'm not saying that anyone here is involved in that sort of thinking.

01:33:35.280 Just in general, that binary exists in the world, we're having the conversation on the

01:33:41.760 wrong plane.

01:33:42.620 And we need to be about two or three levels deeper than that if we want to get serious.

01:33:46.180 Hashtag part of the problem.

01:33:47.300 I get that.

01:33:49.060 I like that.

01:33:49.900 I mean, it's sort of falling into the same trap of seeing everything through that racial

01:33:54.040 lens.

01:33:55.020 And I'm going back to sort of the Thomas Chatterton Williams unlearning race.

01:34:01.460 Like unlearn it.

01:34:03.380 Unlearn it.

01:34:04.060 Let me shift gears with you guys for a minute, because something that when I was studying

01:34:07.800 up on you, I really wanted to ask Michael about this.

01:34:10.700 One of the things that you get ready.

01:34:13.780 That's a bad preamble.

01:34:17.920 One of the things that's been really bothering me lately is the erosions of free speech and

01:34:22.520 how these young whippersnappers on college campuses don't seem to care about it at all.

01:34:27.500 I recently spoke with some young college students and made very clear that I don't think words

01:34:33.060 are violence that at all, you know, they can be offensive.

01:34:36.600 And if you hear them, you can teach yourself that you'll be fine, you know, that you may

01:34:40.940 not have enjoyed the experience, but you'll be just fine hearing them.

01:34:43.980 They're not violence.

01:34:45.140 They're all what about bullying?

01:34:46.620 You know, people can get cyber bullied.

01:34:48.480 I understand it's not pleasant.

01:34:49.860 I'm not saying it's pleasant, but I think the answer to all that stuff is to shore up

01:34:54.320 your own resilience and strength.

01:34:55.460 That's me.

01:34:55.960 OK, but.

01:34:57.600 I am a nothing when it comes to free speech advocacy, when it comes to you, Michael, because

01:35:05.000 I saw.

01:35:06.060 You actually participated in the quote.

01:35:08.700 Everybody draws everybody draw Muhammad Day protest.

01:35:12.280 Do you guys remember this?

01:35:13.100 The audience remember this at 2010 and it was a response to when South Park, the censorship

01:35:19.660 ship of South Park for for depicting Muhammad.

01:35:23.360 And this was so dicey.

01:35:25.740 It was like I I will confess to you, it's scary even to talk about it now.

01:35:30.840 Right.

01:35:31.300 After what happened at Charlie Hebdo, it's like you draw Muhammad, you could draw the

01:35:34.880 ire of ISIS, you could get beheaded, you could do it's like crazy stuff can happen to

01:35:39.060 you if you do anything that depicts Muhammad at all, never mind in a way that's unflattering.

01:35:46.660 So what made you participate in that and how did you find the spine to do it?

01:35:54.140 I found it really depressing that this stuff was coming up again so many years after what

01:35:59.520 happened to Salman Rushdie, which was 1989, which is obviously not drawing Muhammad, which

01:36:03.360 is a depiction of Muhammad in his book, The Satanic Verses.

01:36:06.980 And, you know, I was living in Sweden for a while where this became an actual issue of

01:36:13.420 debate.

01:36:14.100 There was a far right newspaper in Sweden was associated with the far right party, legitimate

01:36:19.060 far right people.

01:36:20.060 I mean, they were not people that I enjoyed, but they published the cartoons that the Danish

01:36:24.960 newspaper had initially published in, I think, in 2005 or 2006.

01:36:29.140 And the government intervened and, I think, shut down their server or, you know, took it

01:36:35.240 offline, basically.

01:36:36.540 And I said, you know, this is kind of crazy.

01:36:37.920 And in Denmark, at the same time, they were reanimating a blasphemy law, a blasphemy law

01:36:42.600 in Denmark because of the power of particular lobbies saying this stuff shouldn't happen.

01:36:46.720 And so when it happened to the U.S. in a way that I found really disconcerting, which was

01:36:52.280 initially a woman named Molly Norris, who has disappeared from the face of the earth.

01:36:56.120 That's right.

01:36:57.100 Disappeared.

01:36:58.100 What do you mean?

01:36:58.640 In her crime, she disappeared.

01:37:01.360 I believe she changed her name.

01:37:02.860 Yeah.

01:37:03.420 She was doing kind of cartooning or something.

01:37:06.240 She was an alt-weekly cartoonist.

01:37:07.280 For Seattle Strangers.

01:37:08.420 Pacific Northwest.

01:37:08.940 So Pacific Northwest.

01:37:09.660 And she does in everyone draw Muhammad thing.

01:37:12.400 This is actually where the real genesis came from.

01:37:14.300 And she did this kind of wry, silly thing.

01:37:17.780 And this was women's, not political at all, and is a picture of a teacup.

01:37:22.240 And the teacup says, I'm Muhammad.

01:37:23.680 And it's like an I am Spartacus thing with like everyday household items saying, I'm Muhammad.

01:37:27.840 The response was so brutal that she had to go into hiding.

01:37:33.820 And she never came out of hiding.

01:37:36.260 And I understand that.

01:37:37.700 I understand being that terrified of people who don't, you know, I mean, not even kids say words are violence.

01:37:46.460 These are people that, you know, create violence because of words, right?

01:37:51.020 And if you think of the Salman Rushdie thing, Salman survives.

01:37:53.900 And I know Salman reasonably well.

01:37:56.540 And I've talked to him about it a number of times.

01:37:58.440 And it was a difficult thing in his life.

01:37:59.960 But it was even more difficult for people tangentially involved.

01:38:03.520 His Norwegian translator was shot.

01:38:05.780 His Japanese translator, I believe, was shot or stabbed.

01:38:08.760 One of them died.

01:38:10.760 So, I mean, this was their, you know, the Danish cartoons were published and thousands of people died.

01:38:15.900 Because there were embassies burned all across the world.

01:38:18.560 And it was, and I took a step back and I was like, these are cartoons.

01:38:23.320 What the hell is going on?

01:38:24.580 And what really worried me about it was the kind of jello-spined response from people in the West.

01:38:31.900 In particular, like, you know, all of these people from Penn, America, who, when Charlie Hebdo was going to be celebrated by Penn, a free speech organization, which actually did something today I didn't like, were going to honor the surviving members of a massacre.

01:38:46.960 They were massacred during an editorial meeting by two Islamists with AK-47s.

01:38:51.780 One of the most brutal things.

01:38:52.660 They killed a Muslim cop outside, shot him in the head.

01:38:56.060 I mean, there's photographs and videos of this.

01:38:58.080 The most brutal attack on freedom and democracy that France has seen in a very long time.

01:39:02.760 And Penn was going to honor them.

01:39:04.700 Hundreds of people from Penn objected because what is worse than murder?

01:39:11.260 Well, Charlie Hebdo had been, had done some racist things.

01:39:14.880 None of these people spoke French, of course, and they didn't understand the cartoons that they were criticizing.

01:39:18.940 And Charlie Hebdo offends everybody, right?

01:39:21.000 So there was all of this stuff that was swirling around.

01:39:24.280 And it was like, no, no, no.

01:39:26.140 This is kind of basically who we are and what we're about.

01:39:29.860 And for us to sort of back away from this, that we can't draw a silly cartoon.

01:39:34.600 Well, no, it's blasphemous.

01:39:35.500 Well, I'm not a Muslim.

01:39:36.400 It's not blasphemous for me.

01:39:37.520 I can do whatever the hell I want.

01:39:38.780 And Muhammad lived.

01:39:40.340 He was a person.

01:39:41.100 Yes, he was a person.

01:39:42.360 He's been depicted.

01:39:43.260 It's been depicted thousands of times in various, you know, Shia Islam, et cetera.

01:39:48.500 But, you know, this is some new thing that has been created.

01:39:51.460 And everyone was saying, well, yeah, it's very bad to offend people.

01:39:55.980 And I found that to be a very puzzling and then worrying precedent that had been set.

01:40:03.500 So the logical thing was, if Molly Norris was going to go underground, you know, screw it.

01:40:09.120 But why don't we do it?

01:40:10.520 And this, so this is the, we did the Reason Magazine.

01:40:12.740 It was that everybody draw a Muhammad contest or the reader contest to do it.

01:40:16.360 And this was before the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

01:40:19.340 Our idea was that, and I worked at the LA Times when the Danish cartoon thing happened.

01:40:26.100 No newspaper in the country, with maybe like one exception.

01:40:30.180 The New York Sun, I think.

01:40:30.920 The New York Sun.

01:40:31.320 Wait a minute, Matt.

01:40:33.740 Are you telling me you started?

01:40:35.640 I don't, I didn't know that.

01:40:36.840 You at Reason started the everybody draw Muhammad Day-Botist?

01:40:39.940 It was Moynihan's stupid idea.

01:40:41.540 Don't blame me.

01:40:42.480 Don't come and get me.

01:40:43.520 And Michael C. Moynihan.

01:40:46.620 And Megyn Kelly's podcast is huge amongst the Islamists.

01:40:49.580 Do you know that?

01:40:50.380 We got, we got visited.

01:40:51.780 I mean, it was.

01:40:52.160 As a matter of fact, I have many, I have many Muslim friends who listen to this podcast.

01:40:56.280 So there.

01:40:56.880 I'm very sorry.

01:40:57.620 It wasn't.

01:40:58.580 It was not the same as Islamist.

01:41:00.040 It wasn't a comfortable.

01:41:01.740 Yes, we were visited by the FBI.

01:41:03.160 We were visited by the FBI and everything like that.

01:41:05.080 But when I was working at the LA Times and the cartoon thing happened, I argued, I was

01:41:09.820 working at the opinion section.

01:41:11.380 The then executive editor, a guy named Dean Baquet, refused to, just like all the other

01:41:17.460 newspapers in America, refused to publish the cartoons, even as an illustration of what

01:41:21.340 is this furore about.

01:41:22.860 And so I tried to argue, let's do it on the opinion side.

01:41:25.820 And that was vetoed.

01:41:27.160 And the idea then in 2006 was, if we create the taboo in Western journalism that we can't

01:41:33.600 depict this, then what happens when you, you know, behavior that gets rewarded gets

01:41:39.600 repeated.

01:41:40.240 You are now creating a taboo.

01:41:41.700 You're making it so that if anyone breaks it, whoever's going to be lonely out there

01:41:45.960 is going to have a target on their back.

01:41:48.400 And that's exactly what happened.

01:41:49.600 Do you remember what happened when the Charlie Hebdo, after the massacre, they did a first

01:41:54.240 cover after that.

01:41:55.360 And people said, oh, they put Muhammad on the cover.

01:41:57.200 They actually didn't.

01:41:57.840 There was just a Muslim guy on the cover of this cartoon.

01:42:01.220 And I can't remember.

01:42:01.700 The think bubble was like, you know, they did this for me or some kind of thing.

01:42:05.880 It was, you know, criticizing from a Muslim perspective, like we don't buy this stuff.

01:42:09.660 And so there was a wire service and I can't remember which one.

01:42:13.520 And I don't want to defame a wire service.

01:42:15.720 And they said, we will not run that.

01:42:18.400 Image.

01:42:19.140 So you usually buy these images from a wire service, put them in your magazine, in your

01:42:22.440 publication.

01:42:23.580 And so what did I do?

01:42:25.020 Because I'm a shit disturber.

01:42:26.240 I went and logged into the wire service and I looked for Piss Christ.

01:42:29.660 Yeah.

01:42:30.020 The Andra Serrano thing that caused all this.

01:42:32.320 And there it was, a crucifix, a submerged in a jar of urine that was offensive to some

01:42:37.660 people, not to me, but it's offensive to some people.

01:42:39.640 So I tweeted it.

01:42:40.780 And what did they do?

01:42:42.080 They had the exact wrong response.

01:42:44.800 They took that off the wire.

01:42:46.560 It's like, no, no, no, guys.

01:42:47.220 No, no, no, no, no, no.

01:42:48.440 That's not what I'm saying.

01:42:49.820 We don't have to take more things off.

01:42:51.340 We have to include more things.

01:42:52.920 And that precedent was very, very bad.

01:42:55.400 And it was starting to retroactively affect, you know, you see this in television, right?

01:42:59.400 How many, you know, episodes like, you know, Joe Rogan's podcast is bought by Spotify.

01:43:03.560 They purge 40 episodes.

01:43:05.000 There's Gavin McGinnis on it.

01:43:06.100 There's this person on this.

01:43:07.120 We don't want that stuff.

01:43:08.600 Old episodes.

01:43:09.300 I believe South Park, they do not air that episode on HBO Max, who has the rights, I

01:43:13.940 think, to South Park.

01:43:14.240 Keep in mind, South Park was putting Muhammad in a bear suit.

01:43:16.860 A bear suit.

01:43:17.280 It was a joke.

01:43:17.920 The whole joke.

01:43:19.240 Muhammad's not a bear.

01:43:20.460 What is wrong with these people?

01:43:22.080 I know you're not an Islamic scholar, but the man wasn't a bear.

01:43:25.280 But isn't he, though?

01:43:26.100 I mean, in some way, there's a bearishness to it.

01:43:29.380 But this has happened all over.

01:43:31.880 And now, the new version of this, and that's the reason we have to be on our toes with this

01:43:36.060 all the time, and I don't want to speak too much about this because I read it this morning

01:43:40.520 while I was walking, and there was a number of groups, Pan America, Common Cause, Center

01:43:46.240 for American Progress, et cetera, were petitioning the government of Joe Biden saying, hey, you

01:43:52.440 know, we worry about free speech and everything, but we really need to do something about disinformation.

01:43:57.680 Oh, no.

01:43:58.420 This is the new version of this.

01:44:00.000 Or let's say, it's an adjunct version of this because disinformation, of course, is

01:44:04.040 often in the eye of the beholder because I can give you a lot of disinformation that

01:44:07.340 exists every day in newspapers.

01:44:10.320 I mean, particularly stuff on the Russia investigation, which was about disinformation, and so much

01:44:14.360 of it was disinformation, whether it was deliberate or whether they fell for it or whether

01:44:18.760 they were just like, you know, letting ideology overwhelm their good sense, it did happen.

01:44:24.100 So we are now at a point, and Megan, you pointed out talking to people and saying speech

01:44:28.440 is violence, it is not violence.

01:44:30.740 It came to me at one point when I was talking to a student for a piece that I was doing for the HBO

01:44:36.400 show, the Vice Show on HBO, and I realized where it all came from in just the flash, and it should have

01:44:43.700 been obvious to me, is that nobody likes and nobody wants to be the person that says, I don't agree with

01:44:49.680 free speech. It's a fundamentally kind of un-American thing to do. This is what we, we love free speech,

01:44:54.840 and we attack McCarthyism because of free speech, etc. And that's a bad position to take. It's not a bad

01:45:01.520 position to oppose violence. Violence hurts people. We don't want to hurt people. It's actually a big

01:45:07.400 hearted motivation to oppose free speech because speech can be violence. And this is the, you know,

01:45:13.100 disinformation is this thing. It, you know, undermines our democracy to have people out there

01:45:18.440 believing things because these people don't have any historical perspective, and they believe the

01:45:22.840 conspiracy theory started with Donald Trump, and that there was no Clinton death list and all this

01:45:27.900 stuff, and there weren't Holocaust deniers before the internet. This stuff is a part of human nature,

01:45:32.840 and there's a number of fantastic sociological books, historical books about the, you know, sort of

01:45:38.320 conspiratorial instinct in American politics and global politics. And we think that by suppressing speech,

01:45:43.720 we can eliminate it and eliminate bad thoughts. And unfortunately, some people use violence and

01:45:50.700 they say, well, we don't want that anymore, so we're going to submit to their demands. And it even

01:45:55.080 happens with, you know, dopey people like Milo Yiannopoulos are going to speak at a university,

01:45:59.100 and they say, well, there's a potential of violence we're going to cancel. That's not what we're

01:46:02.040 canceled. Come on. You know that. But at the same time, we have submitted to threats of violence

01:46:07.320 for so long, under the guise of protecting, you know, people in speech, that it's, it's deeply

01:46:14.360 alarming and become just sort of normal these days. Just imagine, like, I don't like disinformation.

01:46:19.480 So I'm going to appeal to Joe Biden. If you would have told that to teenage Matt, I would have,

01:46:27.300 no, that's not possible. Joe Biden, the guy with the scrum Joe, who had to, like, you know,

01:46:32.380 drop out of the presidential race because of serial fabrications and plagiarism.

01:46:37.040 That's plagiarism. Okay. Yeah, he plagiarized Neil deGrasse Tyson, yeah.

01:46:41.140 It's spreading, you know. I mean, obviously, now we're in such a much bigger free speech crisis. I

01:46:46.400 mean, the Charlie Hebdo thing and the drama Mohammed kind of all that, like, that is very charged,

01:46:51.640 very charged. Now, far less charged things are being treated like that, like they're being given

01:46:59.800 the same reaction. And the most recent one, it was just last week, I think it was, the cop who

01:47:05.940 shot Breonna Taylor's boyfriend when, you know, the no knock warrant, they went in, they, they wound

01:47:14.400 up shooting her boyfriend and Breonna Taylor, sadly, to death. But they weren't indicted. The cop who got

01:47:21.220 shot in the femoral artery, who fired the shot in return, he wasn't indicted because he got shot in

01:47:26.300 femoral artery. So he shot back. He was going to write a book. And he wasn't charged with anything. I

01:47:31.800 mean, the law has said he is not a criminal. He's a police officer who was told to go in there and

01:47:35.940 execute this warrant. He did it. And he didn't break the law. Simon & Schuster was going to public

01:47:41.280 publish the book like an offshoot of Simon & Schuster, but under that top, you know, masthead. Nope, not

01:47:48.020 going to do it because, you know, the snowflakes over in the ranks are very upset that Simon & Schuster

01:47:54.600 would publish this Louisville police officer's book. And then somebody was pointing out that

01:48:00.660 this is the same organization that published, remember Henry Hill? Henry!

01:48:04.760 That was my, that was my tweet. Yeah.

01:48:06.600 Oh, was it you? Okay. Yeah. Maybe that's, that's why.

01:48:08.940 And not only that, by the way. That's so brilliant.

01:48:11.080 They actually, Henry Hill, who was a psychopathic killer that gave us Goodfellas, that's the book

01:48:15.760 that it's based on. But not only that, it's actually worse that in 1991, Simon & Schuster sued the

01:48:21.540 state of New York, who was trying to seize the profits from the book under the son of Sam law,

01:48:26.280 which made it illegal to profit from your crimes. And I think they took it to the Supreme Court and

01:48:30.460 they ruled nine to nothing in the favor of Simon & Schuster. They were willing to go to sue on

01:48:35.780 behalf of a murderer so he could profit off of his crimes in the mafia. And now it's like,

01:48:40.380 we're not gonna do that anymore. But the thing about it is that you say, and it's right to point

01:48:44.800 that out. It's people in the ranks. And this happens in every company, you know, I've heard

01:48:49.960 about internally at Spotify, you know, all of the objections and meetings they've had to have

01:48:54.620 about, about Joe Rogan existing on their platform. And, you know, when these kids in university who

01:49:00.820 believe this stuff graduate, they get jobs.

01:49:03.540 A lot of them go to work at NBC, just FYI, in case you're wondering.

01:49:11.260 Not saying anything more than that. That's, I mean, I didn't realize that. So that's,

01:49:15.500 that's hilarious. First of all, Goodfellas is an amazing movie and Henry, Henry, right?

01:49:20.500 Joe Pesci, right? But it's the double, same double standard. I've talked about this before. I think

01:49:25.700 one of you guys may have, did you raise this on your podcast? But I felt the same wrath when it came to

01:49:31.620 Alex Jones, right? Like I interviewed Alex Jones and it was like, all hell broke loose. But like

01:49:36.640 many other people have interviewed Alex Jones. It was fine. But like the youngins are like, no,

01:49:40.860 no one's ever interviewed Alex Jones. Platforming, platforming, you know, piss off. I'm like,

01:49:45.000 by like two years, somebody sent me an email and they said, thank God you're not Megyn Kelly. And I

01:49:50.400 was like, what? And they're like, she's getting brutalized. And we have a piece that had, you know,

01:49:53.860 a couple of million views of me, you know, arguing with, with Alex Jones. And I was like, oh,

01:49:58.880 we platformed him because you know, we used to call it reporting. Yeah. Platforming has become

01:50:04.260 reports to be the job. Yeah. So the job, I have to talk to the people who are influential. Yeah.

01:50:09.340 Oh my God. The job now. It's so true. The analogy is, is the, the people in media want to work like

01:50:14.720 bouncers. They want to like control the velvet rope, who gets in, who gets out, who, what are they,

01:50:19.860 what are they, what can they look like if they come in? Sure. And then you better report on that.

01:50:24.180 Get the Pantone chart and you better behave a certain way in the club or else you're going

01:50:29.180 to be balanced. I mean, that's what platforming is. It's like weird with, it's not an expansion

01:50:33.900 of the public square. It's a contraction of it. And it's a policing of the boundaries,

01:50:37.980 which change on a whim depending on, you know, uh, you know, some kind of tweet storm or whatever

01:50:43.840 social media thing and panic. And it's the panic of the 50 year olds that, uh, that I'm most

01:50:50.060 discussed are the 60 year olds, you know, were terrified of their 26 year old younglings.

01:50:54.500 Yeah. Um, no fire. The teacher, the teachers were afraid of fire them. That's what you should do.

01:51:01.180 And you know, a hundred percent. I'm going to state right now. If anybody does this shit at my

01:51:04.040 company, you're fired. You're fired. If you don't, and I've told everybody who works here,

01:51:08.660 like if you're, if you're easily offended, you know, by, by tough discussions on third rail issues,

01:51:14.980 my team is texting me right now. We know, we know discussions on third rail issues. You shouldn't

01:51:25.220 work here. If you don't like, you know, the free form, uh, discussion of ideas in print form,

01:51:31.080 you shouldn't work at Simon and Schuster. Right. It's like, and the Alex Jones thing,

01:51:35.760 I laughed you guys. Cause I was like, you know, I think it was Diane Sawyer who interviewed Jeffrey

01:51:39.700 Dahmer. Like Alex Jones hasn't eaten anyone. Like he's accused Hillary Clinton. You know,

01:51:48.140 Michael, there's spirit cooking. He said that to me. There was less blowback when I interviewed

01:51:52.860 Putin, right? Like boots. Okay. I mean, I think he's probably done a lot more stuff that's

01:51:57.740 controversial than Alex Jones, but that's how soft people are now. And of course it's our

01:52:03.160 polarization. It's the wrong business. Get out of news, get out of publishing. It's like someone

01:52:07.900 working like at a strip club and being like, you know, I'm really opposed to all this nudity.

01:52:11.500 I do find it slightly offensive. It's like, you know, that's what the club is about. Right.

01:52:15.680 That's what we do. Maybe it shouldn't be. Yeah. Maybe it should be. Maybe it's just a

01:52:19.740 knitting circle. A knitting circle. Well, it's funny. Cause I always used to say to my teams

01:52:26.280 at Fox and NBC too, cause you get, sometimes you get sort of the young snowflakes who are like,

01:52:31.620 I had to work a weekend. I had to work after five. I will say that happened far less often at Fox News.

01:52:36.840 It's just cultural. But, um, I used to say, listen, you know, you work in news,

01:52:41.160 people work in news. You don't work here to make a fortune. You work because it's exciting.

01:52:44.320 You get a say on the biggest issues of the day. You can drive the public narrative. You get instant

01:52:48.400 feedback. You're on breaking stories, which is an adrenaline rush. Um, in, in some form,

01:52:53.400 it's a public service though. Most news organizations are not, um, you, if you want nice set hours that

01:53:00.460 where you can bank on being there from nine to four, you got key bank, go to key bank. It's wonderful.

01:53:05.040 You stand in front of the teller machine. You give out the money. You take in the money.

01:53:09.560 You'd make the receipts. Nobody ever wants you to stay late. You don't have to work all nighters

01:53:14.220 by don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you.

01:53:17.800 Is key bank a Megan Kelly show advertiser? It's wonderful. It's one of the best places.

01:53:24.480 It was my local bank growing up in little Del Mar, New York. And I loved it.

01:53:28.180 And you don't say like the sort of softness of the next generation, they can't,

01:53:32.960 they can't work too hard and they can't hear anything that upsets them and words are violence.

01:53:36.320 It's like, Oh my God, shut up. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, I made a joke about knitting. And

01:53:41.740 if people doubt that this lunacy has taken over the entire world, go to Google right now

01:53:47.180 in Google knitting community controversy. And I'm not joking. There is a woke controversy.

01:53:55.040 Massive, massive. Stop it.

01:53:57.080 Yes. Knitting, the knitting community is up in arms about many things.

01:54:03.880 But there's accusations of white supremacy, all this stuff in it's in knitting. There's been

01:54:08.200 multiple pieces about this.

01:54:09.700 In fact, expand the Google search and include the term purity spiral. It was an outstanding

01:54:16.540 essay written about a year or a year and change ago from someone talking about what using the

01:54:21.720 knitting community scandal. Oh, is that really? Yeah. Because it started the ultimate victim of

01:54:27.400 it was someone who launched it. Like the person who started the wokeness thing then became the

01:54:33.060 target of it. It's a spiral. Like you just like you set the thing in motion and now everyone's

01:54:37.320 looking around, okay, who's next? You know, my God, if when the purity spiral comes to the fifth

01:54:41.440 column, that's going to never, it will never, it'll never come. It can't come here. It's,

01:54:45.740 it's actually what makes it, it's what makes this an enjoyable, this, this is actually Megyn Kelly

01:54:50.120 show. Is that, is that who we're participating as well? So, but she seems very nice. It's what

01:54:54.500 makes programs like this rich and interesting. Diversity of perspective. It's somewhat, it's

01:55:00.760 occasionally somewhat dangerous. Someone could get their feelings hurt. You say things to one

01:55:04.940 another, you're not out to necessarily offend someone, but perhaps you may express an opinion

01:55:09.980 openly and honestly in a society where everyone becomes completely terrified that the next thing

01:55:16.300 they say might get them destroyed because the rules keep changing so quickly. Van Jones actually

01:55:22.180 used a phrase once that has always like stuck in my mind and maybe it originated with him, but maybe it

01:55:26.620 didn't, that there was something about young people who want the jungle paved over for them

01:55:32.280 and just turning the entirety of the world into just this horrible parking lot of ubiquitousness

01:55:39.780 where we're all able to avoid ever being offended or shocked or surprised or inspired or falling in

01:55:47.140 love or laughing at something. Like it's all part of the same thing. We absolutely have to preserve

01:55:53.700 that, which is the reason why all of these conversations around wokeness and PC culture, et cetera,

01:55:58.800 et cetera, whatever you want to call it. It's the reason that they happen because the very basis

01:56:02.620 of our process for discovering truth, and you know who I'm quoting there,

01:56:07.560 Jonathan Roush. Jonathan Roush. Yeah. The most important free speech. It is rooted. It is rooted

01:56:12.920 in these ideas. It is rooted in our ability to offend one another, to occasionally be, to traffic and

01:56:20.040 risque things. I don't want to see books canceled. I may not think it's a good book. I want to have an

01:56:24.480 opportunity to tell you all the reasons why. I hope you'll listen to me and not the asshole who wrote the book.

01:56:28.800 But I don't want to see books get canceled. I don't want to live in a world where that's what

01:56:31.500 we do. Yeah. We do live in the world, unfortunately. Yeah. Jif Gif. I looked it up and this is amazing.

01:56:40.140 First of all, very pretty knitting options, yarn options, and that the headline is-

01:56:44.480 Can I make a sexist comment? She's like, oh, the knitting is amazing.

01:56:46.620 Yeah, please.

01:56:49.500 Such a female response.

01:56:50.760 Also a bad driver and a cruel boss.

01:56:53.600 The knitting. I mean, I think people know me well enough to know I have never

01:56:56.800 knitted in my life. Though I would. I would if somebody would take the time to show me

01:57:00.400 why. Why?

01:57:02.260 And then-

01:57:02.800 Yes, that's the knitting needle at one time.

01:57:06.520 The knitting community is reckoning with racism.

01:57:10.980 Yes, finally.

01:57:11.500 The fact that there is a knitting community, right?

01:57:12.660 Yes.

01:57:13.300 Finally.

01:57:13.900 And then the subheading, fiber artists.

01:57:18.280 Fiber artists.

01:57:18.960 I don't even know what that is, but continue.

01:57:20.540 Fiber artists of color.

01:57:23.360 Oh my God, how many subgroups can we get to?

01:57:26.100 Are taking to Instagram stories to call out instances of prejudice and to try to shape

01:57:30.020 a more inclusive feature.

01:57:31.420 And then they talk about Karen Templar's Fringe Association Co.

01:57:33.960 Oh, get it?

01:57:34.540 Cute Fringe Association.

01:57:36.100 Little did you know Karen.

01:57:37.640 Is kind of like goop for knitting.

01:57:39.440 There are tips on how-tos for navigating knitting's trickier maneuvers.

01:57:42.640 There are knit-a-longs for chunky cowls and cute fingerless gloves.

01:57:51.580 What?

01:57:52.140 Knit-a-longs?

01:57:52.740 I'm sorry.

01:57:53.580 Okay.

01:57:54.360 There's an online store that sells the-

01:57:56.980 Racist knit-a-longs?

01:57:59.440 There's an online store that sells the Fringe Bag, which is going to be known in some circles

01:58:03.740 as the Birkin of knitting bags.

01:58:06.620 Oh.

01:58:07.120 And then there's the blog where Karen Templar puts her personal thoughts, wrapping up

01:58:11.040 soon.

01:58:11.220 On January 7th, she blogged excitedly about her upcoming trip to India.

01:58:15.580 She wrote that 2019 would be her year of color.

01:58:19.800 Karen.

01:58:20.460 Okay, Karen.

01:58:21.700 Yes.

01:58:21.880 She said that as a child, India had fascinated her and that when an Indian friend's parents

01:58:25.900 offered to take her with them on a trip, it was, quote, like being offered a seat on

01:58:29.640 a flight to Mars.

01:58:30.900 She spoke of her trip as if it were the biggest hurdle anyone could jump.

01:58:34.800 If I can go to India, I can do anything, I'm pretty sure.

01:58:37.520 Templar, it should be noted, is, hello, white.

01:58:41.220 Yes.

01:58:41.700 And that's the problem.

01:58:43.340 Now, this Karen, this literal Karen has apologized umpteen times.

01:58:49.500 It's not like going to another planet.

01:58:51.600 How do you think that makes people from India feel?

01:58:54.280 They don't care.

01:58:55.940 There's a billion people there.

01:58:57.660 They do not care.

01:58:58.780 They don't give a shit about Karen Templar's knitting temple.

01:59:01.760 Oh, man.

01:59:03.640 I won't do an accent right now, by the way.

01:59:05.900 Please.

01:59:06.180 I want you so bad.

01:59:07.340 No, but we do, we did a game at like one, one time on the fifth column and you guys should

01:59:11.920 be listening if you haven't.

01:59:12.740 I can't believe you haven't heard it.

01:59:13.820 In which, I think it was Matt who said this, that we would take an activity and it could

01:59:18.020 be knitting or anything and then follow it on Google with white supremacy.

01:59:21.200 And invariably, there will be multiple articles about it.

01:59:25.760 You could do like mini golf and white supremacy.

01:59:27.420 That's brilliant.

01:59:27.880 Like everything comes up.

01:59:29.400 It's Mad Libs for white supremacy.

01:59:30.960 And the knitting one was my favorite because it was so earnest and no one fights back.

01:59:37.320 So it's never a controversy.

01:59:38.700 It's usually an inquisition to quote Jonathan Raj again, but they go after you and people

01:59:43.720 just apologize.

01:59:44.660 And what we've always said, and this is the, you know, thing that I think that if you take

01:59:48.880 away anything from the fifth column podcast is never apologize.

01:59:52.660 Don't apologize.

01:59:52.920 They don't want your apology.

01:59:54.480 They want you to give it, but they don't forgive you.

01:59:56.740 No one's ever been forgiven and be like, you know what?

01:59:59.080 I actually believe that apology.

02:00:00.860 You're back on the force.

02:00:02.580 You're back in our club.

02:00:03.860 It never happened.

02:00:04.940 So don't apologize.

02:00:06.260 It's worthless.

02:00:07.220 It's just debasing yourself for their pleasure.

02:00:09.960 And this is what happens in all these communities.

02:00:11.800 Well, this is, this is actually your, that point is true.

02:00:13.980 And it's one good thing of the year of woke or whatever we've been through this past year

02:00:20.760 and sadly are still in, um, because I will say this when I apologized at NBC there, there,

02:00:27.160 that knowledge was not well known that that was not wide, a widespread belief that the apology

02:00:32.560 is shouldn't be offered that, you know, I still thought there were honest brokers out

02:00:37.240 there and I had genuinely been convinced that I had hurt people and said something awful.

02:00:41.960 And that, you know, when you do that, you should apologize.

02:00:44.540 You know, I, I was in that headspace a hundred percent.

02:00:47.400 And I, if that all happened to me today, I would see it much differently.

02:00:53.100 And I do think that's one benefit of what we've been through.

02:00:55.600 You know, when, when everyone's getting canceled for everything they've done and everyone's

02:00:59.060 claiming, and I would say indeed feigning in many cases, offense, then you have a better

02:01:04.480 perspective on it on, uh, as the person who's being targeted.

02:01:07.220 Like, and I think Douglas Murray's advice on this is very good.

02:01:10.680 Like if you are genuinely sorry, if you genuinely have good reason to believe and do believe you

02:01:19.260 have done something wrong, um, then you should.

02:01:22.540 But, and, but I would add an asterisk to that, which is, and, and make sure your belief is well

02:01:28.140 founded, right?

02:01:29.120 Because in my case, I was talked into it by, by people who did not have my best interests

02:01:34.320 at heart.

02:01:34.780 You know what I mean?

02:01:35.420 Like people who were already on the woke train.

02:01:39.120 Did anyone respond positively to that?

02:01:41.280 So if you said, you know, I apologize for my phrasing on it, I think it's, I think it's

02:01:45.400 acceptable to say, I'm sorry that you took offense, which people think is a weaselly apology.

02:01:50.240 I actually don't think it is.

02:01:51.380 I think it's like, I don't want you to be upset by this, but you know what I said, I

02:01:54.940 meant, or I was, you know, a question I was actually curious by, but when you actually

02:01:58.980 apologize, did anyone come to you and say, you know what?

02:02:02.740 I knew that this wasn't your attention or I appreciate the apology, or did it just land

02:02:07.740 with a thud?

02:02:08.580 Um, I will tell you a story without naming names.

02:02:11.940 So the answer overall is no, but there was one person who is connected to, but not

02:02:20.060 working at NBC and that person texted Doug, my husband saying she nailed it, that, you

02:02:27.980 know, that was a great apology and that'll be the end of it.

02:02:31.520 And, um, you know, Doug was like, well, that's nice.

02:02:35.000 You know, it would be great if the person you're connected to could say something along

02:02:38.800 that, along those lines publicly.

02:02:40.920 The answer was no.

02:02:42.060 Okay.

02:02:42.700 All right, fine.

02:02:43.180 And then we later found out that that person was pushing the negative stories about me

02:02:49.180 everywhere in the press.

02:02:50.320 Oh, wow.

02:02:50.980 Oh, wow.

02:02:52.160 Yeah.

02:02:52.380 The call is coming from inside the house.

02:02:54.320 Jeez.

02:02:54.740 Yeah.

02:02:55.280 Media is a disgusting, toxic business.

02:02:58.300 It's a disgusting, toxic business, which honestly is one of the reasons why I didn't enjoy

02:03:03.040 it and why I decided to get out because it was killing my soul.

02:03:06.920 It was people like you made all the money and you had all that.

02:03:08.760 And like, I look at people like Tucker now who I know well, and I think, oh my God,

02:03:13.680 I don't know how he's doing that.

02:03:15.060 I don't know how people stay in it.

02:03:16.480 It is, it truly is like taking a bath in a vat of acid night after night over time.

02:03:24.280 It's going to kill you.

02:03:25.080 So I'm glad I got out.

02:03:27.040 And by the way, broadcast is no better than cable, no better than cable, arguably a lot

02:03:31.380 worse, except they put a pretty smile on it and cable, they'll stab you in the front

02:03:35.820 and broadcast it's all in the back while they're smiling in the camera.

02:03:39.120 I'm so sweet.

02:03:40.800 Anyway, I don't think the apology does help.

02:03:42.640 It didn't help me and it hasn't really helped anybody since then.

02:03:45.360 The most we've seen is a begrudging, like, fuck off.

02:03:48.320 I kind of apologize because they're making me do this, but I'm not really sorry.

02:03:52.040 Like Jimmy Kimmel, who wore a black face so many times, we can't even count the number.

02:03:56.020 Some people managed to survive those things.

02:03:58.540 Like Ture, who was mentioned earlier, who got some hot water.

02:04:02.500 Stephen Colbert.

02:04:03.520 Totally fine.

02:04:04.240 Stephen Colbert, Asian accents and the cancel Colbert thing.

02:04:08.660 Well, you only have a running chance if you're on the left.

02:04:11.920 I mean, if you're on the right, forget it.

02:04:13.020 If you're on the right at an organization that is not of the right, forget it.

02:04:18.960 Yeah.

02:04:19.860 Yeah.

02:04:20.980 There's obviously something incredibly opportunistic about it.

02:04:24.040 It isn't about justice.

02:04:25.360 It isn't about perpetuating a world where no one's feelings are ever hurt.

02:04:28.480 It is a demonstration of power.

02:04:30.260 It is for the people who are doing the canceling and they will do it again.

02:04:34.540 And being loyal and being a part of that mob, it's only a matter of time before it's your turn.

02:04:39.420 Worth keeping in mind when you're participating in the savagery, especially when you know, when you just know.

02:04:45.640 Asking a question in a context like this, probably totally fine.

02:04:50.100 It don't mean any offense.

02:04:51.320 And even if it came out in an elegant way, the one thing that we probably need a hell of a lot more of is just a little grace.

02:04:58.060 Well, a little grace and one other thing.

02:04:59.440 And I'm going to promote Camille here.

02:05:00.900 We do a Patreon episode every week for people that pay us.

02:05:06.740 We keep selling our wares.

02:05:07.720 Yeah.

02:05:08.360 And during one of those Patreons, a very grumpy Camille let something just fly out.

02:05:13.940 I want to see that version.

02:05:15.560 Oh, it's really, it's unsightly.

02:05:18.080 You don't want to be around it.

02:05:19.540 It was a grumpy Camille.

02:05:20.680 So many speeds.

02:05:21.620 Yeah.

02:05:22.340 Sometimes I'm crooning.

02:05:23.780 You should come back for those.

02:05:24.740 Very good.

02:05:25.400 And he said something one time that will be, I think, adorning t-shirts that we're printing.

02:05:30.900 And my headstone.

02:05:31.680 Yeah.

02:05:31.920 And your headstone that in the middle of a rant when somebody said, hey, I'm getting this education that I don't want at a bank or at a military facility or something.

02:05:41.440 They were doing this anti-racist training and they had to read Ibn X. Kennedy or something.

02:05:45.000 And he was saying, I don't know how to deal with this.

02:05:46.840 Camille, what should I do?

02:05:48.240 And Camille went on this thing and it was great.

02:05:50.440 And then at the end, he paused and said, you know, be brave, call bullshit.

02:05:54.540 Amen.

02:05:54.620 And that was kind of had become our mantra since then is that, you know, the sort of submitting to it or trying to work within it or apologizing for it doesn't work.

02:06:06.000 So just be brave, call bullshit.

02:06:07.600 And it's the I am Spartacus moment.

02:06:09.020 If everyone's saying it, then maybe things will change.

02:06:11.580 Only the real one.

02:06:12.780 Not like the Cory Booker.

02:06:14.700 Yeah.

02:06:15.980 But the odds are they probably won't cancel you.

02:06:18.080 They literally can't cancel everyone.

02:06:20.400 And once you do that, sometimes there's even a domino effect.

02:06:24.200 Other people say, you know what?

02:06:25.520 He's right.

02:06:26.600 He's right.

02:06:27.140 105 million dollars to Joe Rogan from Spotify because people were like, we got to cancel.

02:06:30.640 And they're like, man, there's too much money being left on the table.

02:06:32.860 People like this stuff.

02:06:34.100 So they won't cancel everybody.

02:06:35.580 But I'll add to that.

02:06:38.520 A friend of mine, he works at Ben Shapiro's operation.

02:06:43.460 Jeremy Boring is his business partner.

02:06:45.260 He's Ben's business partner.

02:06:46.440 And he's a pal of mine.

02:06:47.260 And I love the guy.

02:06:48.100 And he put it to me once very well.

02:06:50.560 And that is when you find yourself in the crosshairs, you know, they're coming for you.

02:06:54.520 Don't show them your belly.

02:06:56.660 So good.

02:06:57.900 It really brings it home, right?

02:06:59.560 Because like, that's what people do.

02:07:00.920 They get in that position, like show them the belly, show them the belly.

02:07:03.460 They're going to take it easy on me.

02:07:04.620 They're not going to.

02:07:05.160 They're going to stick a knife in the belly.

02:07:06.540 Like do not show the belly.

02:07:07.760 Do not put your most vulnerable part up front because it's not going to end well for you.

02:07:13.040 This, however, has ended very well for the three of you.

02:07:15.280 I think it went very well.

02:07:16.120 What do you guys think?

02:07:17.360 It's great.

02:07:18.160 It's great.

02:07:18.940 I loved it.

02:07:19.580 Yeah.

02:07:19.800 We're doing this every week now, right?

02:07:21.660 A hundred percent.

02:07:22.460 You're booked.

02:07:23.360 I want to thank all of you.

02:07:24.700 And I really, I really want to, I want to, I want to thank, I mean, all of you have been

02:07:29.420 very honest and I appreciate it.

02:07:30.440 But Michael, I never understood how Beschloss was pronounced or malapropisms.

02:07:35.160 So thank you for that too.

02:07:36.920 So every week we'll do two hours and I'll say two words sprinkled in there that you don't

02:07:41.720 know how to pronounce.

02:07:43.140 I really appreciated it.

02:07:44.360 We will be your pips.

02:07:45.380 We're, we're willing to do that.

02:07:47.120 It's like, those are words you read all the time, but you never say it's like, oh, somebody

02:07:50.900 smarter than me.

02:07:51.560 By the way, you're doing something wrong.

02:07:52.840 If you're reading Beschloss all the time.

02:07:56.720 Okay.

02:07:57.080 I'll, I'll, I'll go back to Jonathan Rauch.

02:07:59.120 You guys, it's been a pleasure.

02:08:01.000 Thank you.

02:08:01.620 Thank you so much.

02:08:03.420 So don't miss the show on Monday because we have author Adam Grant.

02:08:12.040 He's what we call an organizational psychologist.

02:08:15.200 He teaches at Wharton.

02:08:16.860 He's in the belly of the beast when it comes to sort of liberal indoctrination, but he's

02:08:20.920 not somebody who does that.

02:08:22.200 And actually somebody who pushes back against it, as you'll hear when we talk to him.

02:08:25.140 He's got blurbs on his book from Bill Gates.

02:08:29.220 He's tight with Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook.

02:08:31.700 He's very well connected to sort of the glitterati of the tech world, but for good reason.

02:08:37.000 He's brilliant.

02:08:38.080 He's really thoughtful and he's not biased.

02:08:41.680 I think it's fair to say he leans left, but he's totally fair to the right.

02:08:46.000 And we had a really good conversation on personality, intelligence, how you figure out what you actually

02:08:52.660 are good at and whether the things you think you're good at right now are actually the things

02:08:56.940 you may be worst at.

02:08:58.620 I don't know what to believe about myself after this conversation, but the name of his

02:09:02.840 most recent book is Think Again.

02:09:04.560 And that's what he wants you to do.

02:09:06.280 He's got great stories.

02:09:07.920 This is actually not one that we got to with him, but it's worth reading his book just to

02:09:11.420 find it.

02:09:11.740 It's about the guy who invented the Blackberry and how his inability to think again, to sort

02:09:17.800 of understand that his little keyboard wasn't going to be the be all and the end all.

02:09:23.000 And that the iPhone might actually have a fighting chance to take down his business was the reason

02:09:29.080 his business failed, right?

02:09:30.560 That like he needed to think again, to like reevaluate the thing that made him a star and

02:09:35.740 made him all that money.

02:09:37.080 Anyway, that's who Adam Grant is.

02:09:38.440 That's how he views the world.

02:09:40.200 And I think you're going to learn from him, learn about yourself.

02:09:43.300 We had sort of a profound exchange on systemic racism at the end, which I've been thinking

02:09:48.160 about ever since.

02:09:49.300 Anyway, I hope you love him and I hope you give him the time he deserves because he's

02:09:54.480 somebody you're going to want in your head.

02:09:56.560 He's like an earworm whose thoughts are good for you and that you're going to want in your

02:09:59.600 head.

02:10:00.100 That's Monday.

02:10:00.760 Adam Grant.

02:10:01.540 Have a great weekend.

02:10:02.260 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

02:10:05.720 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

02:10:10.280 The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

02:10:14.640 See you next week.

02:10:27.440 Past High Piter.

02:10:28.500 See you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 30, 2021

Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch on Woke Culture, Free Speech, and Identity Politics ｜ Ep. 96

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