The Megyn Kelly Show - Leader Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Joni Ernst on the Crime Surge, the Border Crisis, and Bipartisanship

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00:01:00.640 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:02.620 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:01:12.040 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:01:13.740 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:15.140 Today, there's a crime spree here in America.

00:01:19.020 And slowly but surely, there are reversals on the defund the police calls.

00:01:25.340 And these Democrats who pushed it and in many cities did it are not acknowledging it.

00:01:29.660 They are just quietly refunding the police and getting a federal bailout to take care of it as well.

00:01:36.560 So we're going to get into all of that and what it means with two lawmakers you may know very well.

00:01:42.340 One, Kevin McCarthy.

00:01:43.720 He's the House Minority Leader.

00:01:44.980 He is a Republican out of California's 23rd District.

00:01:48.520 And he's been pretty outspoken about this.

00:01:51.280 And then we'll be joined by a senator I've always really liked, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa.

00:01:56.380 A super strong lady.

00:01:57.720 She's a veteran.

00:01:59.580 She served our country overseas.

00:02:01.600 She's actually the first female combat veteran to ever serve in the U.S. Senate.

00:02:05.780 And she's a Republican who's been dealing with all of this, you know, the For the People Act,

00:02:09.740 where they're trying to federalize the voting system, which just failed this week,

00:02:12.900 and has been pushing back against some of these agendas.

00:02:15.220 She was actually on Trump's shortlist for his vice presidential nominee, believe it or not.

00:02:20.040 She didn't want to do it.

00:02:20.840 She was going through a lot personally.

00:02:22.080 And we'll get into some of that.

00:02:23.520 But we're going to get an overview of where we stand legislatively.

00:02:26.180 And what about the upcoming midterm elections?

00:02:29.080 Are the Republicans likely to hold control or gain control, I should say, in either the Senate or the House?

00:02:35.580 The latest out of Larry Sabato in the Senate does not look so good for them.

00:02:39.360 What does Senator Ernst think of that?

00:02:40.740 We're going to get into it in one second.

00:02:42.240 But first this.

00:02:48.500 Kevin McCarthy.

00:02:49.880 How are you, sir?

00:02:51.100 I'm doing well.

00:02:51.880 How are you?

00:02:52.700 I'm great.

00:02:53.260 Good to talk to you.

00:02:53.900 Thanks for being here.

00:02:55.080 No, no.

00:02:55.580 Thanks for having me on.

00:02:56.620 It's an honor.

00:02:57.400 All right.

00:02:57.640 So summer is upon us.

00:02:58.640 And so is the summer crime spree that everyone predicted would happen.

00:03:03.000 And that is underway in all of our major cities.

00:03:05.640 And here's what I see happening.

00:03:06.880 You tell me your take on it.

00:03:08.960 The numbers are up.

00:03:10.040 The murder numbers are way up.

00:03:11.620 And the shooting numbers are way up across the country in our major cities.

00:03:15.700 In places like New York, we've got a 77% increase in shootings.

00:03:20.080 But I could go down the list in all the major cities.

00:03:22.880 And what's quietly happening now is these Democrats who pushed to defund the police are quietly

00:03:29.960 refunding the police.

00:03:31.840 And I'll just give you a couple of examples that I saw in the Wall Street Journal the other

00:03:34.480 day.

00:03:35.540 De Blasio in New York quietly reinstating 92 million in funding for the cops.

00:03:40.140 The Baltimore mayor, who led efforts as a city councilman to cut the police budget by 22 million

00:03:45.300 last year, recently proposed a 27 million increase.

00:03:49.140 Cut it by 22, increase it by 27.

00:03:51.320 In Oakland, California, lawmakers just restored 3.3 million of the 29 million they made in cuts

00:03:58.500 to the police budget.

00:03:59.480 And now the mayor wants to increase the department's budget by 24 million.

00:04:03.500 Okay, so cut 29, add back three, and then add back another 24.

00:04:08.160 So they're back.

00:04:09.300 L.A. mayor wants to increase funding by 50 million after cuts.

00:04:12.140 Minneapolis, they cut 8 million from the police last year.

00:04:14.600 They just restored 6.4 million to hire new cops.

00:04:18.180 All this amid mass retirements.

00:04:20.900 There was an article in the New York Times talking about, they surveyed almost 200 police

00:04:24.940 departments across the country.

00:04:26.420 Retirements are up by 45%.

00:04:28.040 Resignations rose by almost 20%.

00:04:30.440 In New York City alone, 2,600 officers retired in 2020.

00:04:34.120 It was only 1,500 in 2019.

00:04:36.180 So this is the state of policing right now, thanks to a dishonest media, Black Lives Matter

00:04:41.080 and their dishonest messaging.

00:04:42.800 And now people are getting killed.

00:04:44.340 And you know who's getting killed at a disproportionate rate?

00:04:47.280 Black people.

00:04:48.380 Black people in the inner cities who are being killed at numbers that are greater than their

00:04:52.060 population.

00:04:52.920 And no one says, boo.

00:04:54.960 They just quietly refund the cops and hope for the best.

00:04:58.360 You are 100% correct.

00:05:01.060 But the worst part about this is just putting money back won't solve the problem.

00:05:06.120 You have lost decades of expertise in these officers who have retired.

00:05:11.940 And think about the recruits.

00:05:13.740 Who wants to do the job?

00:05:15.660 The community out there that you're working with criticizes you before you even take the

00:05:21.040 job.

00:05:21.660 They want to change the law so they can sue you.

00:05:24.860 Here you are maybe making $50,000, $60,000 a year.

00:05:28.180 They think you do one thing wrong.

00:05:29.700 You're going to lose all your house and everything else.

00:05:33.700 And when you look at Minneapolis, they're doing the same thing that they put more money

00:05:37.540 into recruiting because they can't get people to take the job now.

00:05:41.240 But every single weekend, I wish the media would just do one weekend of Chicago.

00:05:47.280 How many people got shot, how many bullets were fired, and the identity of who was getting

00:05:55.400 killed.

00:05:56.440 I mean, there should be an uproar in this nation.

00:05:59.200 And you just watched in your own hometown of New York City and this mayor's race.

00:06:03.220 I mean, I think crime was the number one reason he's leading in this race because he

00:06:08.940 was a former officer willing to stand up against them.

00:06:11.980 Um, and as I travel the nation, I would tell you, I pulled into Chicago the other day and

00:06:17.160 they told me over the weekend, there were 40 bullets fired one block from where you're

00:06:21.220 staying in the hotel.

00:06:22.580 When I go in through New York, it's a fundamentally different feeling, different look.

00:06:27.080 And here we are right before the mayor's race.

00:06:29.140 You watch those two young children being tackled by the man running from the other one shooting

00:06:33.680 at him.

00:06:34.040 And the person shoots at him as he's on top of the children.

00:06:37.020 That's in America.

00:06:38.300 We would not think that would happen anywhere.

00:06:40.560 We've gone through this in New York City before until Giuliani came in to clean it

00:06:44.920 up.

00:06:45.400 Now we reversed all that advancement.

00:06:47.780 And what happens when this does, people are not safe.

00:06:51.060 So families leave, crime rises, investment goes away.

00:06:55.300 It doesn't turn back around when you think, oh, I'll just put some more money in place.

00:06:59.040 You are now talking another decade to try to clean this up.

00:07:02.540 It's so true that that video out of New York City was so disturbing.

00:07:06.180 And that father saying that his kids already, obviously, they've got PTSD from it was like

00:07:10.860 a five-year-old and a nine-year-old being in the midst of bullets as an execution, an

00:07:15.760 attempted execution happened right next to them, right in the midst of them.

00:07:20.040 On top of them.

00:07:20.820 They're struggling to keep their, yeah, they keep their arms and legs and torsos out of

00:07:24.200 the line of fire.

00:07:25.320 And this is just another day in New York now, which feels very good about itself because

00:07:29.620 it painted Black Lives Matter on Fifth Avenue as it defunded cops, as it took away, I think

00:07:36.020 it was a billion dollars.

00:07:36.940 I'll go back and check from the police budget.

00:07:39.880 And by the way, Mayor de Blasio's Band-Aid isn't going to fix that.

00:07:43.760 But the Daily Caller News Foundation had done a study and they took a hard look at who's getting

00:07:48.220 affected by it.

00:07:48.980 And in Chicago, they found that Black people have been the victims of roughly 81% of the

00:07:54.160 317 murders in the first six months of 2021.

00:07:57.660 They were the victims of about 70% of the 295 murders committed in the first six months

00:08:02.600 of the year prior.

00:08:03.480 So they've gone from 70% of the murder victims to 81% of the murder victims.

00:08:07.780 The uptick in violent crime across the country is disproportionately affecting people of color.

00:08:12.840 Where are the protests now?

00:08:14.180 Who's going to go protest that?

00:08:15.740 Yeah, why aren't they standing up to the mayor of Chicago?

00:08:17.740 But think about this, Megan, you just talked about that one weekend of these two children

00:08:22.280 walking in their own neighborhood.

00:08:24.440 PTSD because they're not just seeing someone get shot.

00:08:28.260 It's on top of them.

00:08:29.120 They're feeling the pressure from the bullets.

00:08:31.260 They're hearing it.

00:08:32.020 They're seeing the individual.

00:08:33.940 And then you turn around that same weekend in Chicago, a man and woman pulled from their

00:08:39.900 car, not that they were walking, not that they got into altercation, pulled from their

00:08:44.940 car as the crowd comes over and shoots them both in the streets.

00:08:50.480 Till you go back to New York, a volunteer in the mayor's campaign being stabbed as people

00:08:56.220 are walking by.

00:08:57.200 This isn't one little incident that happened unusual.

00:09:00.860 This is one weekend in these cities.

00:09:03.580 And what's happened, it's not just defund the police.

00:09:06.580 They changed the police ability to engage the neighborhoods, right?

00:09:11.380 It's not just making police retire.

00:09:13.660 It's what they changed on how they can do their jobs.

00:09:17.780 You're now watching this whole woke community in other areas, removing the officers from the

00:09:25.560 schools.

00:09:26.640 Somehow that was bad.

00:09:27.840 And then you have this woke community where you have people on CNN who said they felt

00:09:32.100 unsafe during Memorial Day because they saw a bunch of American flags on cars.

00:09:38.140 Unbelievable what is happening.

00:09:40.220 You know, I mean, Chicago is such a mess.

00:09:42.200 And this mayor out there, Lori Lightfoot, she just got eviscerated by this column posted

00:09:46.920 by John Cass, who was with the Chicago Tribune for a long time, but now it's just been let

00:09:52.020 go along with a lot of other journalists there.

00:09:53.680 He just wrote this excoriating piece about how awful she has been and about how the city,

00:10:00.860 this beautiful city in which I lived for five years in Chicago, is overwhelmed as the homicides

00:10:05.960 and the shootings spike.

00:10:08.160 The tourists are being harassed, robbed, killed downtown.

00:10:12.260 And that, you know, in this city, he writes, people there are conditioned to think a mayor can

00:10:16.560 be ruthless or corrupt, but always strong enough to maintain order.

00:10:20.340 Enter Lightfoot, who rather than maintain order, she undermines it, he writes and talks

00:10:26.400 about how the other day a young couple was pulled from their car after the Puerto Rican

00:10:29.740 Day parade and murdered on the street in this terrible video that's now gone viral.

00:10:34.780 And what does she do?

00:10:36.640 Nothing.

00:10:37.520 She really does nothing.

00:10:38.400 They're focused there right now on what to rename Lakeshore Drive.

00:10:42.960 They're trying to find some woke name to rename Lakeshore Drive as people are being

00:10:47.300 shot down in the street, and she's talking about only giving interviews to people who

00:10:51.920 are not white.

00:10:53.300 And the people that are being killed on the weekends are people of color.

00:10:57.640 You just watch Puerto Ricans pulled from their car, going to a parade to celebrate, literally

00:11:03.120 pulled from their car and shot in broad daylight.

00:11:06.560 And remember what Chicago, what they built to this, where mobs would walk up to Michigan

00:11:11.540 Avenue and just storm a building, a store, and still everything in it.

00:11:17.100 And then you found people in government would say, well, they needed it.

00:11:20.440 We're watching city after city that use these woke people elected to their district attorneys

00:11:24.880 that they will not be prosecuted.

00:11:27.020 You watch what's happening in New York.

00:11:28.640 They will not prosecute the people who took over these buildings and stole because they're

00:11:33.000 too busy trying to look after the past administration.

00:11:36.680 We just saw that.

00:11:37.760 Looters in New York City are getting away scot-free.

00:11:40.780 The charges have been dropped by the hundreds that have the numbers here.

00:11:46.020 118 arrests were made in the Bronx during the worst of the looting after George Floyd.

00:11:50.780 73 of those cases have been dismissed.

00:11:52.880 18 remain open.

00:11:54.180 19 have convictions, but all for lesser charges like trespass.

00:11:57.840 They don't care.

00:11:58.700 You can loot to your heart's content in New York City.

00:12:01.940 You're not going to face any charges.

00:12:03.280 And forget, don't get me started on cities like Portland.

00:12:05.560 Well, this is the point, though.

00:12:06.520 Why do we think their behavior is going to change?

00:12:08.280 Because now they know the police can't go and get them.

00:12:11.420 They know they're not going to be prosecuted.

00:12:13.200 So there's no value when it comes to private property.

00:12:16.220 They can shoot you.

00:12:17.000 They can take you, steal you.

00:12:18.380 And it's not just happening in New York City and Chicago.

00:12:21.960 You look what's happening in San Francisco.

00:12:23.620 There was this viral video of a lady sitting in, I don't know, CVS or Walgreens.

00:12:30.500 A guy rides in his bike in San Francisco, literally loads up in a bag and just rides straight out.

00:12:36.760 Why?

00:12:37.240 Because they will not prosecute you if it's $1,000 or less.

00:12:41.000 Now they have a district attorney elected in LA, won't even prosecute people even for murder.

00:12:47.680 I mean, we...

00:12:49.140 What?

00:12:49.820 Yes.

00:12:50.640 You have watched time...

00:12:51.320 What do you mean?

00:12:51.680 Brian, you had a case of an individual that is up for murder, and he did not feel that was the right approach to prosecute on.

00:13:02.020 And we have found time and again that this individual now wants to release people.

00:13:07.380 We had a shooting of a road rage that a person shot into a car, and they shot into the car and killed a young boy about five years old.

00:13:17.700 Fortunately, it happened in Orange County.

00:13:19.740 We've got a DA down there who will prosecute there.

00:13:23.520 In LA County, it won't happen.

00:13:24.740 We are now trying to recall the DA of Los Angeles.

00:13:30.360 And how did he get elected?

00:13:32.360 Soros.

00:13:33.960 Right.

00:13:34.820 Right.

00:13:35.120 Of course.

00:13:35.680 Who wants to get rid of bail in all these states because they think bail disproportionately affects people of color and keeps them behind bars for a long time while they wait for an education?

00:13:45.740 You have that in New York where someone does a crime and they're released out because there's no bail and they do another crime later that day.

00:13:53.560 That's exactly right.

00:13:54.540 I mean, I understand trying to be more humane in our approach to law enforcement.

00:13:58.220 I really do.

00:13:58.740 I get it.

00:14:00.120 But here's the reality.

00:14:01.800 It's not about skin color.

00:14:03.580 It's about criminality.

00:14:05.060 It's about criminals.

00:14:06.520 And when these people are getting back out on the street, they're hurting at a disproportionate rate other black people.

00:14:11.640 So, you know, we have to sort of be a little bit more racially blind when it comes to dealing with people who are accused of crimes.

00:14:18.140 I understand the other side's argument, but let's look at who's being hurt.

00:14:22.640 Do we care about that?

00:14:23.540 Because right now, when you see these rising murder rates in these major cities, up in many cases by 33 percent, you look at the federal government, which has been pushing against cops.

00:14:33.500 And what Joe Biden is saying is it's the fault of the firearms.

00:14:37.020 What we need is to cut back on firearms.

00:14:38.820 We need to tighten New York City.

00:14:40.700 Is there a tighter firearm law in the in the country than we have in New York City?

00:14:45.480 You can't carry in New York City.

00:14:47.420 It's not the fault of firearms in New York City.

00:14:49.720 It's the fault of criminals who will get their hands on weapons and they want to hurt people because they understand the police are really not a force anymore.

00:14:57.500 They're not a presence.

00:14:58.620 You know, one of the greatest strengths of this nation is the rule of law.

00:15:01.360 It doesn't matter the color of your skin.

00:15:03.480 You want a safe neighborhood.

00:15:04.660 You want safety for your for your loved ones, for your children and others in your own neighborhood, people being shot at.

00:15:11.700 But there's a very good point you raise.

00:15:13.440 This all started with the Democrats in the House to defund the police.

00:15:17.780 They want to just not defund the police.

00:15:20.120 This goes to the border itself.

00:15:21.900 They want to defund the border patrol.

00:15:24.020 They want to make sure that we have an open border that people can just walk across.

00:15:27.620 And who are we catching along the border?

00:15:29.740 People on the terrorist watch list, people from Yemen, not from Central America, from Yemen.

00:15:34.840 We didn't catch them on the same day.

00:15:36.280 We catch them on other days.

00:15:37.440 Why are they coming across?

00:15:38.740 Who are they talking to?

00:15:39.860 What do they have planned?

00:15:41.200 I had this person talk to me the other day and he has his own small business where he goes out into neighborhoods to do inspections and others.

00:15:48.360 And he goes, you know, it's getting very scary now because of defunding the police.

00:15:52.480 The crime is rising.

00:15:53.500 And, you know, I've never felt that I needed to protect myself or carry a weapon because I thought the police were there.

00:15:58.260 Now they're not.

00:15:59.360 I need to get a concealed weapon.

00:16:00.860 But now the Democrats are making it more difficult for me to even protect myself.

00:16:05.120 Right.

00:16:05.240 First, they take the police away from me.

00:16:06.760 Then they take the ability for me to protect myself away.

00:16:10.580 Well, they're certainly circling it because we hear a lot now.

00:16:14.200 And that's I found it disturbing that that was Joe Biden's response to the rising crime wave is that, you know, we've got to crack down on firearms.

00:16:20.080 And by the way, to your point on who's who's getting hurt in New York City, Eric Adams, who it looks we're not going to know for weeks, but it looks like this guy may have won the mayoral race.

00:16:30.000 And he's the he's the ex-cop who's running Brooklyn and the borough president there.

00:16:35.060 And and he won the majority in the black and the Hispanic neighborhoods.

00:16:38.720 He won the black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

00:16:40.580 He lost the majority white neighborhoods.

00:16:42.160 Manhattan went for the more liberal places, of course.

00:16:45.440 Right. And that's that's the white people.

00:16:47.040 Right. Because they live in the high rise buildings.

00:16:48.960 They're not worried about it like people who live in the higher crime areas are.

00:16:53.080 And so it's great for these limousine liberals and their Lululemon to go out there and protest BLM and shout at the black cops about, you know, their systemic racism.

00:17:01.300 Well, then they then sit there, sipping, they're sobbing nonblanc as the people in the real neighborhoods have to worry about crime rising.

00:17:09.180 Right. And you tell me what you think is what Biden is also saying is, yeah, we've got to crack down on the firearms.

00:17:13.840 But he's also quietly saying, oh, by the way, all that three hundred and fifty billion dollars of covid relief money that I that I gave to you, you can use that to rehire cops back to the pre pandemic level.

00:17:23.840 So that's me. Seems like a bailout of these states for their own poor decision making.

00:17:29.060 I mean, frankly, why should why should people in Florida have to bail out New York that defunded its own police?

00:17:36.060 They shouldn't. And, you know, I was in Omaha recently and they just reelected their mayor.

00:17:41.280 Now, Omaha is a Democrat majority city. She's a Republican mayor.

00:17:46.000 And she's the first woman mayor of Omaha and she's the first mayor to get elected to the third term.

00:17:50.740 But when they had Black Lives Matter, they had a they had a really bad problem where people came in and just like other major city ransacked and they they had a shooting.

00:17:59.180 They had a shooting of an individual that shot a young black man and an uprising.

00:18:03.520 But the way she handled it, she went out front, the protesters.

00:18:07.680 And you know what she did? She didn't defund the police.

00:18:10.280 She gave them more money. She won by more than 60 percent of the vote in a city that doesn't want to elect a Republican.

00:18:17.000 But it's based upon this issue. It doesn't matter the color, your skin or party.

00:18:21.040 And this is what the Democrats in Washington don't quite understand.

00:18:24.540 People want safe neighborhoods and they have made them unsafe to every aspect.

00:18:29.800 And just what you talked about in that race for mayor in New York, it's a crime that we don't know who won yet.

00:18:36.900 Now they've gone so woke that it's a ranked system that you can't know for weeks on in.

00:18:41.600 I mean, is there anything sacred in this country anymore that does not go woke to our elections that you can't know when, when, who won or how they won?

00:18:51.320 And let's just say of how I feel like 30 percent for one person, 10 percent for another.

00:18:57.560 Maine does this exact same thing in their congressional race.

00:19:00.700 The Democrat that is seated there didn't get the most votes.

00:19:04.260 He didn't get the most votes. But in the rank system, he got more votes than the person in picking.

00:19:11.440 I want you to be the congressman or congresswoman.

00:19:15.140 Are you this system is crazy?

00:19:19.180 Yeah. Well, I mean, New York politics are bizarre and led to Bill de Blasio.

00:19:24.480 Need I say more? But I want to pick up on something you a point you made, which I think is important.

00:19:29.000 And that is the demoralization that's that's happened in the police force.

00:19:33.140 There was a there was a story out of The New York Times talking about why police have been quitting in droves over the last year, as if we didn't know.

00:19:40.760 I mean, thanks to you, New York Times, and your biased coverage against them, portraying police as these hunters, these these hunters in the street trying to kill anybody with black skin, which is a lie.

00:19:50.140 It's just a lie. And they highlighted the story of a woman named Lindsay Rose, a police officer down in Asheville, North Carolina, who quit after seven years.

00:19:58.040 Now, this is a liberal city and the median pay for an officer there is thirty seven thousand dollars a year.

00:20:03.480 It's not a lot of money. Eighty officers have left the force of a force that was two hundred and thirty eight strong.

00:20:10.640 The racial tensions have been heightened down in Asheville in the recent years.

00:20:14.420 And after George Floyd died in the protest, what happened to this cop, Lindsay Rose, according to the article, is various friends and relatives stopped speaking to her because she was a police officer.

00:20:23.920 During a protest in June, a demonstrator lobbed an explosive that set her pants on fire and scorched her legs.

00:20:32.400 She was spat on. She was belittled.

00:20:35.740 It goes on and talks about how she felt like a total failure.

00:20:38.460 She became angry, disgruntled, unable to eat or sleep.

00:20:41.200 These are human beings. These are not, you know, just like our soldiers.

00:20:44.360 They're human beings. They feel.

00:20:45.700 And now she is working at a moving company started by another cop who also left.

00:20:52.000 I mean, this is such B.S.

00:20:54.460 Why can't Lindsay Rose keep keep practicing, you know, on the police force?

00:20:58.640 Why can't we keep good cops?

00:20:59.760 Because of a false narrative that's endangering the very people groups like BLM say they they hope most to protect.

00:21:07.320 But we've watched it time and again.

00:21:10.120 You try to demoralize the officers just because they wear a uniform.

00:21:13.840 You want to say they're wrong.

00:21:15.040 You want to judge them before you have any information time and again that we find if it was an involved shooting, people judge right off the bat that that person is wrong.

00:21:24.420 You have I was just in Denver this week.

00:21:26.580 An officer was murdered going to a case.

00:21:29.260 He was he worked in the schools, but because the schools are closed, he was out.

00:21:33.120 He went to a domestic violence situation.

00:21:35.460 They said someone shooting in 15 minutes.

00:21:37.860 He was shot and killed.

00:21:40.380 This is going across the nation.

00:21:42.060 But also think about how this is happening.

00:21:44.460 I remember just a couple months ago, it was a college student taking a course, I think in community college on a zoom.

00:21:51.640 And he put to his professor that he honored the police.

00:21:56.020 He respected the work they did.

00:21:57.800 She criticized them.

00:21:59.560 He literally said, what do you mean these people come when you're in time of need?

00:22:03.400 And he literally asked her, well, what would you do if someone was breaking out?

00:22:06.740 I wouldn't call the police.

00:22:07.860 That reminds me of I had this young woman on the show from St.

00:22:11.780 Louis, Missouri.

00:22:12.280 She was only 17.

00:22:13.380 She was a high school senior.

00:22:14.500 She was getting harassed by her administration and another student because she had one of those.

00:22:20.240 It wasn't even a Blue Lives Matter flag.

00:22:22.060 It was one of those flags that just shows support for the police, you know, with like the blue stripes.

00:22:26.560 It was a sticker because she had law enforcement in her family and they were getting, you know, attacked a lot in the wake of George Floyd unfairly in some in some cases fairly.

00:22:34.520 But in a lot of cases, unfairly, she put she put a sticker on her laptop.

00:22:38.160 She got called in by the school administration, told that was a racist flag.

00:22:41.100 She needed to take it off that all of that.

00:22:44.120 Just it builds up over time.

00:22:47.100 And the thing that's bothering me now about the quiet refunding is it's so cowardly.

00:22:52.800 Why don't you come out and just say we were wrong that we took the wrong approach.

00:22:56.600 We wrongly besmirched an entire group of public servants who were not making a lot of money in a great living.

00:23:03.440 Right. And put themselves in harm's way every day.

00:23:06.100 And now we see how important they are.

00:23:08.660 And we want you to know communities.

00:23:10.820 We want you to know how important they are.

00:23:12.340 And so maybe this could be a healing moment.

00:23:14.540 Like, no, they cowardly take the quiet, secret, quiet refund route.

00:23:19.980 And where do the cops go to get their reputations back?

00:23:22.320 Nowhere.

00:23:24.020 Up next, our vice president, our border czar, is finally actually going to go to the border.

00:23:28.960 So what does Leader McCarthy think of that?

00:23:31.280 Don't go away.

00:23:34.400 I want to talk to you about the border.

00:23:35.980 Finally, our vice president, our border czar, who's never been to the border, is going to go to the border.

00:23:40.200 And I do think, you know, Trump is now saying he shamed her into it because he's about to go.

00:23:45.300 But I think it was more Lester Holt.

00:23:47.260 A shout out to my former colleague at NBC who had this great exchange with her.

00:23:52.380 Did you even think he would ask?

00:23:52.800 Did you think he would even ask?

00:23:53.600 No, I didn't.

00:23:53.980 That was impressive.

00:23:54.540 I didn't.

00:23:55.300 It was so fun to watch.

00:23:56.760 And it's worth rerunning now.

00:23:58.220 So let's listen to Lester and Kamala Harris on the border.

00:24:00.480 Do you have any plans to visit the border?

00:24:03.020 I'm here in Guatemala today at some point.

00:24:08.020 You know, we are going to the border.

00:24:11.100 We've been to the border.

00:24:12.420 So this whole this whole this whole thing about the border, we've been to the border.

00:24:17.060 We've been to the border.

00:24:18.280 You haven't been to the border.

00:24:20.160 And I haven't been to Europe.

00:24:22.080 And I don't I don't understand the point that you're making.

00:24:25.940 OK, so finally, she's going to go and she's getting shamed already because she's going to El Paso.

00:24:31.340 She's not going to the Rio Grande.

00:24:32.720 And I know you went in March and I think you hit both spots.

00:24:34.920 But what do you make of her her trip?

00:24:37.240 Is it is it enough?

00:24:38.940 Is it well-timed?

00:24:39.720 And is she going to the right place?

00:24:41.260 It really concerns me for a number of a number of reasons.

00:24:44.200 This crisis was created not because we passed new legislation.

00:24:47.880 It's simply what they did with executive orders.

00:24:50.380 They knew it became a crisis.

00:24:51.760 And what's the first thing that they did?

00:24:53.540 You can't call it that.

00:24:54.580 So we went we went a month with them saying you can't say it's a crisis.

00:24:59.140 Then what did the president do?

00:25:00.500 He avoided it and put it on to the vice president.

00:25:02.960 Then the vice president avoided it for how many months?

00:25:06.460 It's only grown bigger.

00:25:07.740 When I was in the Oval Office a couple of weeks ago, I asked the president about this.

00:25:11.080 I was shocked by his answer.

00:25:13.060 He told me he inherited a border that was dysfunctional.

00:25:16.500 And now he's fixed it.

00:25:18.020 It is only gotten worse.

00:25:20.440 And the thing that people need to understand, it doesn't matter where she goes on the border.

00:25:23.660 It's going to be terrible.

00:25:24.460 El Paso is bad, too.

00:25:25.880 But as all these people come across and you talk to them, why are they coming?

00:25:30.540 They're coming because of what they heard from Biden and Harris.

00:25:34.760 They literally told me that.

00:25:36.400 And as these children come unaccompanied, you talk to these border agents.

00:25:40.920 They will tell you this one.

00:25:42.480 He was like in tears.

00:25:43.280 He said, I saw a three-year-old, a five-year-old, a two-year-old together.

00:25:46.580 I said, oh, they came in a big group.

00:25:48.200 No, they're all by themselves.

00:25:49.420 Nobody around for miles.

00:25:51.840 Nobody around.

00:25:53.400 Nobody around.

00:25:53.840 And you have that rancher who found one that was 11 months, three kids together, no clothes.

00:26:00.820 And had he not found them, they wouldn't be alive today, the weather down there and others.

00:26:05.540 But what happens when they're unaccompanied, the border agents are taken off the border

00:26:09.980 to protect it and are caring for them.

00:26:12.460 So it's less secure now even.

00:26:14.720 And then they told me fentanyl has increased by 300%.

00:26:20.140 So if you're wondering if the border affects you and you're not along the border, yes,

00:26:23.820 it does, because they ship these people not being tested for COVID into your community.

00:26:28.260 But more importantly, that's where the fentanyl is going.

00:26:31.640 And when I went there, I think it was one of the first groups to go there this year.

00:26:35.920 I was up at the one border station, and they told me that they have now caught people on

00:26:42.360 the terrorist watch list with more than 100 different nations, people coming across,

00:26:47.120 Sri Lanka, Yemen, and others.

00:26:48.520 And I went down, and at the press conference, I mentioned this, right, because they had just

00:26:52.400 told me this.

00:26:53.840 My colleague, a Democrat, said I was lying, said I was lying, that he had more information,

00:27:01.560 that he was also on Intel, too.

00:27:03.700 The next day, they showed the number of people that we've been arresting on the terrorist watch

00:27:08.920 list, and we've now arrested more.

00:27:10.820 I would thought.

00:27:13.000 Wait, who said you were lying?

00:27:14.800 He's a Democrat out of, I believe, Arizona.

00:27:18.100 I'll get you the name.

00:27:19.500 Ruben Gallegos.

00:27:20.940 Ruben Gallegos.

00:27:21.480 So he didn't believe you?

00:27:22.360 He thought it was true?

00:27:22.900 He didn't believe me.

00:27:23.560 No, he called me a liar.

00:27:24.700 He literally tweeted.

00:27:25.520 He never apologized after he was proven wrong.

00:27:28.460 But this is what concerns me the most.

00:27:31.820 If you thought I was lying, then you found out the truth.

00:27:34.520 As an American, wouldn't you be afraid?

00:27:36.840 These people are put on a terrorist watch list for a reason.

00:27:39.640 They're now coming across the border.

00:27:41.340 Why are they coming?

00:27:42.740 They're not from Central America.

00:27:44.420 What do they have planned in America?

00:27:46.280 Why are there more than one?

00:27:47.660 Why would individuals from Yemen on a terrorist watch list come across?

00:27:51.100 And that's not the only one.

00:27:53.220 We had 2,000 people from Romania the other day.

00:27:56.700 This country, which I love so much about it because we all have this history of being immigrants

00:28:01.540 somewhere in our family coming here.

00:28:03.960 And what we have found is we do more than a million people a year become Americans.

00:28:07.960 We are going to have now more than a million people this year coming across this border

00:28:12.860 breaking what I believe is a foundation, the rule of law, what we just spent a lot of time

00:28:18.060 talking about of people looting.

00:28:19.600 You're going to break down society.

00:28:20.320 Your numbers may not be wrong.

00:28:21.540 They may not be wrong.

00:28:22.360 Just looking it up.

00:28:23.440 The border crossings are at a 20-year high right now.

00:28:27.220 So Biden has not fixed it.

00:28:29.000 We've got to circle back to that comment.

00:28:30.560 But just stand by.

00:28:33.480 180,000 people intercepted in May.

00:28:38.820 That's nearly eight times the number 23,000 that have been stopped in May of 2020.

00:28:45.440 OK, so 180,000 people that you can feel the surge.

00:28:49.120 You don't have to just look at the numbers.

00:28:50.700 There's obviously a surge at the southern border.

00:28:52.340 And the majority of them are single adults.

00:28:56.360 It's not families.

00:28:57.860 It's people like you're saying who are trying to sneak across that border and the questions

00:29:01.520 why.

00:29:03.220 And as for the families, you know, we heard so much about the sob stories and the, you

00:29:06.760 know, the Trump administration was separating the children.

00:29:09.400 Now, suddenly no one seems to care.

00:29:11.200 But the Guatemalan president actually blamed President Biden for the increase in that, saying

00:29:17.100 he considers Biden the root cause of what we're seeing right now at the border.

00:29:21.600 And I'll quote, he said, the message changed to we are going to reunite families and we

00:29:26.500 are going to reunite children.

00:29:27.580 The very next day, the coyotes here in Guatemala were organizing groups of children to take

00:29:32.380 them to the United States.

00:29:33.600 So there's no accountability.

00:29:35.420 And you're telling me that Joe Biden told you he fixed the problem.

00:29:38.860 It's not just that president.

00:29:40.520 The president of Mexico also said it was Biden who created this problem, even at the very

00:29:45.060 beginning that he he was becoming the immigrant president.

00:29:49.040 And what's happening is even the border agents will tell you they've never seen this before.

00:29:53.580 A hundred minute, one time, rush, rush the border and go across.

00:29:57.900 And the other dirty little secret here, the wall was working.

00:30:02.040 And when did we stop building the wall?

00:30:04.560 January 20th at midnight when he became president.

00:30:07.800 But this is the other thing you have to know.

00:30:09.540 We are paying people, but we have the material there to finish it.

00:30:12.900 So in El Paso, I hope she goes to see it.

00:30:15.100 It was supposed to build 150 miles of a wall.

00:30:18.180 Now, they're 13 miles short.

00:30:20.460 And what happens is they took down the small barrier before.

00:30:22.900 So it's wide open.

00:30:24.060 So it's not just people coming across.

00:30:25.600 You have cattle and others.

00:30:27.040 But who's coming across?

00:30:28.460 These are the gangs.

00:30:29.960 And they're going into these ranches.

00:30:31.840 They're burning down their houses.

00:30:33.780 If you go to the border cities, they will tell you they have to shut down schools at times

00:30:37.760 because these cartels are making more money, bringing people across.

00:30:42.680 They're trying to influence the areas.

00:30:44.780 And what we found, just like in New York City, where the mayor who could win was a former officer,

00:30:50.480 we just found a Republican win in a city that's 85% Hispanic.

00:30:55.580 He's not just a Republican.

00:30:56.940 He was the chairman of the Republican Party.

00:30:59.580 Because it's like everywhere else in America.

00:31:02.040 They want secure and safe neighborhoods.

00:31:04.360 And they're not getting it with the Democrat policies that are happening.

00:31:08.760 And that's what I've been putting into a lot of these American stories.

00:31:11.740 Because we've got to go directly to the people.

00:31:13.900 The media has ignored the border.

00:31:17.040 When Lester asked that, this has been going on for months.

00:31:20.280 Why was it just now, 100 days later, the vice president being asked?

00:31:23.720 And you know, every time she laughs, it seems like she's lying about something.

00:31:28.580 Yeah, the laugh is deeply problematic.

00:31:30.940 And I think it's one of the main reasons she didn't get the nomination.

00:31:33.780 That would appear to be much farther left politics than some people say she has.

00:31:38.780 So I know that this is something you're launching called the,

00:31:41.060 it's a new platform called The American Story.

00:31:43.040 And what I thought when I heard about this, because I said, what is he doing?

00:31:45.600 They said, my team said he's highlighting the stories of sort of real Americans that he's met.

00:31:49.560 And their stories sort of reflect what he, how he sees the country and its issues.

00:31:52.880 And I said, somebody needed to do that in New York City, right?

00:31:55.940 Because the Democrats in New York think that people want to defund the police.

00:32:00.520 They think that people hate the cops and that they're racist and that the country's systemically

00:32:03.440 racist.

00:32:04.260 And then Eric Adams emerges as what appears to be the leader in this mayoral race,

00:32:07.840 who is the, who's an ex-cop and one of the only ones calling for a more robust police force.

00:32:12.960 Even the Democrats in their leadership isn't getting what their actual members,

00:32:19.020 you know, their actual voters are trying to tell them.

00:32:21.940 And even Joe Biden's been guilty of this.

00:32:24.140 He didn't get some huge mandate for sweeping change in America.

00:32:27.420 He eked out a victory at the presidential level.

00:32:29.620 The Democrats lost seats in the House and they barely got control of the Senate,

00:32:34.760 basically just a tiebreaker, thanks to Kamala.

00:32:36.780 But they act like they have a country that's in favor of critical race theory and tearing down

00:32:43.980 patriotism in the country's July 4th roots.

00:32:46.700 And instead saying we're all based on slavery and so on and all this stuff, getting rid of

00:32:50.380 the cops and opening up the border.

00:32:52.640 You need something like this, the quote American story to remind people these crazy politicians

00:32:58.400 don't, they don't speak for the country.

00:33:01.620 There's a real disconnect.

00:33:02.640 There is a large disconnect.

00:33:05.100 And you're right.

00:33:06.240 The Democrats, this is the first time since 1994, no Republican incumbent lost.

00:33:12.280 Everybody said in the House, Republicans would lose 15 seats.

00:33:16.000 They got the number right, the party wrong.

00:33:18.300 And you know what's interesting when you talk about this?

00:33:20.540 And it's not about identity politics, but every single Democrat lost to a Republican woman

00:33:25.120 or a Republican minority.

00:33:27.820 It was the largest election.

00:33:29.040 That's interesting.

00:33:29.560 Is that true?

00:33:30.480 I didn't realize that.

00:33:31.480 Yes, that's 100% true.

00:33:33.240 And you know what else?

00:33:34.200 We elected more Republican women than in the history of the country ever.

00:33:38.100 Young Kim, Michelle Steele, both born in Korea, right?

00:33:41.840 Maria Salazar, Carlos Jimenez, one and both won in Miami, came from Cuba.

00:33:48.200 But as you know, your minority status only counts if you're a Democrat.

00:33:52.260 They don't consider Clarence Thomas even black, right?

00:33:55.640 It's like none of that matters unless you vote the right way.

00:33:58.300 Well, what about Brian Donalds, a freshman coming from Florida?

00:34:02.440 The Congressional Black Caucus won't let him join.

00:34:05.120 Oh, that's right.

00:34:05.960 I just pitched this story to my team.

00:34:07.720 How insane is that?

00:34:09.080 He's like, I have some different ideas.

00:34:10.220 I think I'd be a good voice for you guys.

00:34:11.680 They said no.

00:34:12.560 So they literally want to pick you based upon the color of your skin,

00:34:15.780 not the content of who you are, not your character itself.

00:34:19.780 They think if you don't think the exact same way.

00:34:22.180 And this is exactly what you're talking about, why the Democrats are wrong.

00:34:25.320 They have gone so far left.

00:34:28.580 I mean, you watch what happened with AOC, Tlaib, Omar.

00:34:31.820 And you're right about Joe Biden.

00:34:33.620 It is a 50-50 Senate.

00:34:35.900 When he came in as vice president with Obama, they had 60 Democrats.

00:34:40.460 They had a 40-seat majority in the House, and they lost both of them.

00:34:44.720 What they are doing, and I think the biggest elections that are going to happen across this country

00:34:48.820 are going to be mayors and school boards, this critical race.

00:34:53.680 I don't care what party you are in.

00:34:56.700 When you become a parent, the most important thing in your life is the opportunity for your children now.

00:35:02.080 It's not what you become.

00:35:03.120 It's what opportunity they have.

00:35:04.780 And people are rising up.

00:35:06.700 What happened was these left Democrats got elected in 2018 to these school boards.

00:35:11.360 There's people that don't even have children elected on these school boards.

00:35:13.720 And they thought exactly like defund the police, let's change the history of America, let's tear down our statues.

00:35:21.600 I think America is waking up, and it's not based upon party.

00:35:25.060 It's based upon country.

00:35:26.580 Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

00:35:27.740 What we saw in Loudoun County, Virginia, where all these parents showed up and they were angry about what's being taught.

00:35:35.820 They don't want their kids to be taught to hate America.

00:35:38.280 And they don't want kids to be taught to hate people based on skin color.

00:35:42.900 It doesn't make it any better just because now the skin color is white and it used to be black.

00:35:47.020 Both are wrong.

00:35:48.240 And these parents who, if there's one benefit of all the Zoom school we've had, it's that the teachers have been exposed.

00:35:54.420 That radical agenda has been exposed, and now they're kind of owning it.

00:35:57.880 You know, I mean, you've got school boards defending it.

00:36:00.040 You've got the military forcing its Navy seamen to read Ibram X. Kendi.

00:36:08.320 I can't believe that.

00:36:10.800 And I saw Congress giving them a hard time yesterday or this week about it, but it's spreading like wildfire.

00:36:16.720 And I do wonder, is it too late?

00:36:18.600 Are these uprisings too late to make a difference?

00:36:21.680 Well, remember what has gone on with our schools, our universities for a number of years.

00:36:26.960 I think we're just waking up.

00:36:28.060 I never believe it's too late.

00:36:29.680 Remember, we are not a perfect union.

00:36:31.840 We are a more perfect union.

00:36:33.140 We strive for it.

00:36:34.100 We should teach our past, and we should teach the things that were wrong, but what we improve.

00:36:39.860 But you don't judge people now for something their forefathers did in the process.

00:36:44.260 But remember, you know, we're conceived in liberty and dedicate the proposition that we are all equal.

00:36:50.660 There is no other nation in the world conceived that way.

00:36:54.580 And somehow they want to teach our children that you are wrong based upon the color of your skin.

00:37:00.620 This is what drives me crazy.

00:37:02.520 And now you put it into our military.

00:37:05.860 Our military is the greatest in the world.

00:37:09.620 People volunteer for it.

00:37:11.160 But what you want to prepare for is war, and you want to be able to have the shortest, and you want to be able to have all the materials that you can so you protect the individuals.

00:37:21.360 If this is what they're focused on, I will promise you Russia and China and Iran are not focused on this.

00:37:27.020 They're focused on killing Americans.

00:37:28.540 It was crazy to see this exchange where they're basically defending, making our soldiers read this stuff, this critical race theory, and read Kendi, and then sort of playing the victim when questioned by some of the lawmakers who are saying, is this an appropriate use of our soldiers' time?

00:37:47.160 Shouldn't they be working on, like Tom Cotton did a whole bit, like there's a lot we could shore up when it comes to military strategy and some of the mistakes we've made militarily.

00:37:54.340 Shouldn't they be focused on that and not Kendi, who hates America and wants to get rid of capitalism?

00:37:59.720 And the response was indignant.

00:38:02.180 You know, it was indignation.

00:38:03.500 It was, how dare you?

00:38:05.020 The troops can do both, and we're going to teach what we think is appropriate.

00:38:10.200 And here it is.

00:38:11.020 It is important that we train and we understand.

00:38:14.980 And I want to understand white rage, and I'm white, and I want to understand it.

00:38:19.100 So, what is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America?

00:38:27.840 What caused that?

00:38:29.000 I want to find that out.

00:38:30.200 I want to maintain an open mind here, and I do want to analyze it.

00:38:33.120 It's important that we understand that, because our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and guardians, they come from the American people.

00:38:38.620 So, it is important that the leaders, now and in the future, do understand it.

00:38:43.580 I've read Mao Zedong, I've read Karl Marx, I've read Lenin.

00:38:48.500 That doesn't make me a communist.

00:38:50.000 So, what is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend?

00:38:57.340 So, you tell me whether the military is going woke and what we can do about that.

00:39:02.420 What concerns me is, what do our adversaries think?

00:39:05.980 They plan day in and day out to try to defeat America.

00:39:10.100 America, this is exactly what they would want to happen to our military, to become weak.

00:39:14.560 And the people who are challenging this, the Tom Cotton, the Dan Crenshaws, these are individuals who served.

00:39:20.000 Dan Crenshaw was a Navy SEAL.

00:39:22.160 He lost his eye and he has a weakness in the other for this nation.

00:39:25.800 He knows what it takes to go to battle.

00:39:28.440 And when he watches this happening, he's fearful for his fellows, colleagues, the women and men who are in the military,

00:39:35.480 that he's fearful for them going into battle.

00:39:37.260 They're not going to be best prepared to fight it, being based upon what's being pushed upon them.

00:39:42.340 Why are we putting woke into the military, into our schools, into our politics, into everything?

00:39:48.280 It's like if you look back in history, the Soviet Union thinking they would defeat America by not shooting one bullet at us.

00:39:56.080 Because why?

00:39:56.840 They tear us down from within.

00:39:58.540 And that's what we've got to fight against.

00:40:01.020 Well, and shouldn't it be, I mean, aren't we about uniting our troops?

00:40:04.280 They're supposed to be a united force when they go out there.

00:40:05.920 It's not about dividing them between themselves based on skin color or dividing them from America, which is what Kendi wants.

00:40:12.420 Kendi hates America.

00:40:13.760 He wants to dismantle all of its systems.

00:40:16.120 Why would we be teaching that to soldiers who it's important that they have a cohesion?

00:40:20.540 I just like I don't understand how this stuff gets started, because I feel like if Trump were president, this wouldn't be happening.

00:40:25.580 But maybe I'm wrong.

00:40:26.460 You know, maybe this guy Milley wouldn't be in charge and he wouldn't be pushing an agenda that sounds like something out of AOC's wish list.

00:40:33.760 Remember what soldiers are.

00:40:35.260 They have to carry out orders.

00:40:37.120 Milley was in with President Trump, but he didn't do this then.

00:40:40.260 Why?

00:40:40.680 Because it wasn't the order coming down from the president.

00:40:43.020 The other thing, too, is even in the days where America needed to learn about race, it was the military that taught us more than others.

00:40:51.980 It was the military that desegregated faster than the rest of the nation, right?

00:40:57.560 Because we knew people were equal and they're defending one another, fighting with one another, united against the evils of the other nations.

00:41:04.160 And now we're trying to change that.

00:41:06.900 But it's not just within the military.

00:41:08.540 Think about what they've been trying to do to our schools, taking the name of Lincoln or Washington or Jefferson off the names of schools, trying to say everything about America was wrong.

00:41:20.400 When really, when you think about this, America is exceptional from that point.

00:41:25.280 We can improve time and again, and we do and we have.

00:41:28.200 But the idea that you're going to teach kids this and you're going to be in a military and you're going to identify people by the color of skin, whether they're right or wrong, that goes against everything we've known and learned.

00:41:38.920 And it's being supported in so many pockets.

00:41:41.620 You know, just this week, the Washington Post put out something demanding that we have white accountability groups and that white people sit and reflect on their own shame.

00:41:52.240 I think we have that soundbite.

00:41:53.740 Listen.

00:41:53.880 A living, embodied, anti-racist culture does not exist among white people.

00:41:59.740 White people have got to start getting together specifically around race.

00:42:02.840 White accountability groups are really helpful in terms of having a place to process, having a group of people whose responsibility it is to call me on things or to challenge me.

00:42:14.160 Most of us in doing this work have experienced this, where there's a period of deep shame for being white and for acknowledging the harm that our ancestors have caused.

00:42:26.720 And that's a very legitimate piece of this work.

00:42:29.920 And we can't ask people of color to hold our hands through the shame piece.

00:42:35.100 That needs to happen with other white people.

00:42:37.400 When you do that for one, two, three, four, five years, right, you end up with actually a community that is aligned with each other.

00:42:47.420 We're going to have to take your word for it, because I don't think most of the white people I know are going to sit around in accountability groups beating themselves up for stuff that happened 250, 250 years ago.

00:42:59.020 Meanwhile, it's it puts it puts people in such an awkward position, because I think, to your point, Republicans are fine teaching real American history, you know, teaching Tulsa, teaching all of it.

00:43:10.900 They just don't want people to be taught to hate America or to have our kids walk around shamed for stuff over which they have zero control.

00:43:20.900 They had no choice of how they were born, but now we're going to shame people based upon that.

00:43:24.940 That goes against everything that we fundamentally believe.

00:43:27.860 The one thing I will tell you, when you think about what they're doing to the military, the military shouldn't be focused on the color of people's skin.

00:43:36.560 They should be focused on China.

00:43:38.000 More than 600,000 Americans died from a virus that came from China.

00:43:43.000 More than 3.8 million people in the world died from that.

00:43:46.820 China, why we're focused on this, they just put a new space station up.

00:43:53.020 They're focused on taking Taiwan.

00:43:55.920 They just shut down the Apple Daily newspaper that's been for 26 years in Hong Kong that spoke about democracy.

00:44:05.480 And those 3 million people out of 8 million in Hong Kong that would come out on weekends and bring their umbrellas in the rain because what they do, they craved one thing, freedom of speech.

00:44:17.400 Or those 1 million kids who went to Tiananmen Square more than 30 years ago, and they made that lady of democracy that looked like the Statue of Liberty that stood across from Mao.

00:44:27.960 Or that young kid who stood in front of the tank, and when the tank moved left, he did, then he moved right, then he claimed on top of it.

00:44:34.640 We don't know his name because he's probably not alive today.

00:44:37.780 All they craved was freedom of speech.

00:44:41.840 China was concerned about growing and becoming the number one superpower.

00:44:46.880 And we're sitting here worried and teaching our military something different.

00:44:51.200 That's why they think they can be stronger.

00:44:53.080 That's why they believe they can defeat us.

00:44:55.160 I had a member tell me before COVID hit, they went over to China and they met with their military.

00:45:01.220 It was a U.S. senator.

00:45:02.120 The military general over there told them, America's weak.

00:45:07.640 You know why you're weak?

00:45:08.660 Because you believe in God and you take fentanyl.

00:45:11.780 You know where fentanyl comes from?

00:45:13.280 China.

00:45:14.640 And you know where it comes into America from?

00:45:16.900 The border along Mexico.

00:45:18.820 And you know the increase in it this year is 300% because people can cross that border with no problem.

00:45:25.960 And that's where people are making money.

00:45:27.560 And it doesn't matter what city you're in in America.

00:45:30.580 You just check your numbers.

00:45:32.820 You're going to have a higher death rate with younger people that have taken some drug that they didn't know was fentanyl for one time and had died.

00:45:40.820 That's what's happening to our nation.

00:45:42.460 We're focused on the wrong things.

00:45:45.160 We need to get back to what the foundation of what we believe, the foundation of freedom, of safety, of security, of opportunity,

00:45:52.840 instead of blaming each other for the color of their skin and whatever past happened in this nation.

00:45:58.580 So wise up.

00:46:01.160 I've got to ask you, I know I don't have you for too much longer, but can I just ask you about the weirdness between you and Tucker Carlson?

00:46:08.220 I don't totally understand what's happening.

00:46:11.460 Here's what I understand happened, then you tell me what actually happened.

00:46:15.340 There's something called the Ending Platform Monopolies Act.

00:46:19.980 And this is a bill that would crack down on Amazon and Apple, other big tech companies, not necessarily in the way that people are thinking.

00:46:29.360 This isn't the one that would stop them from silencing speech that they don't like and sort of break them up in the way that the lawsuit from the 49 states is pushing.

00:46:42.140 But this basically wants to stop them from pushing their promoted brands and apps on you so that it would make a little bit more fair for small businesses to compete against them.

00:46:52.780 And they say this would be huge for small businesses because right now, if you Google ice skates, Google will make sure that it's an ice skate company that if they have any ownership interest in it, it'll come up first.

00:47:02.620 And that hurts small business who then can't compete and so on and so forth.

00:47:05.620 That's very pedestrian explanation of it.

00:47:07.340 But that's my understanding.

00:47:08.800 So Tucker does a hit piece on you saying your top outside advisor is a guy named Jeff Miller, a registered lobbyist for Amazon and Apple.

00:47:17.700 And that this guy Miller has been calling offices on Capitol Hill saying, don't support this thing.

00:47:22.180 Don't support this thing.

00:47:23.220 And he's your buddy and you're listening to him and you should be in favor of this because it helps the little guy.

00:47:28.400 And you're not and your roommates with Frank Luntz, which took a turn.

00:47:32.720 It took a turn who he thinks, you know, is sort of a weak need, never Trumper who you might be listening to for policy advice.

00:47:41.840 So long wind up.

00:47:43.340 I'll give you the floor.

00:47:44.780 Great, great wind up.

00:47:45.880 So let me walk you through everything there.

00:47:48.460 When it comes to this legislation, I'm probably one of the first ones that came out and said we need to scrap Section 230.

00:47:55.180 And remember what 230 is.

00:47:56.520 It's liability protection for these companies of platforms.

00:48:00.340 So what it means is if someone says anything on your platform, you won't get sued.

00:48:04.500 Now, on a newspaper, they could be sued.

00:48:07.160 Right.

00:48:07.440 We've watched these papers when they went after Hulk Holden.

00:48:10.200 Right.

00:48:10.600 Shut them down.

00:48:11.320 Rightfully so.

00:48:13.140 But what we've now find these platforms are doing, like Twitter and others, they're kicking conservatives off.

00:48:18.300 There's nothing in this legislation that protects it.

00:48:20.520 In my belief, and you'll see legislation that we come out, if you want to allow a platform where anybody can say anything, I'll give you liability protection.

00:48:28.140 But if you want to pick and choose what people can say on that, you lose it.

00:48:31.240 Why?

00:48:31.700 Because then I can have a right of action.

00:48:33.140 I can go to court and I can hold you accountable.

00:48:35.560 I get freedom of speech.

00:48:36.620 The number of bills that are put up are put up by a Democrat, Cicilline and Nadler.

00:48:41.760 And what they do is they actually give more power to the FTC.

00:48:46.920 Who did they appoint to the FTC?

00:48:49.320 Nadler and Cicilline's Democrat staffer.

00:48:53.200 They're going to get all the power instead of the attorney generals who can sue.

00:48:57.680 Now, what does Cicilline and Nadler say?

00:49:00.240 They thought Trump should have been kicked off Twitter months before.

00:49:03.860 They don't think Fox should be on TV.

00:49:05.960 They don't think Republican voice should be able to be heard.

00:49:09.820 Now, I'm one who fundamentally believes Google is a monopoly.

00:49:14.400 Ninety percent of everyone who searches in this world goes through Google.

00:49:18.900 Google can determine what is seen.

00:49:21.360 Right before the primary election in California, if you Googled the California Republican Party, the ideology about it was Nazism.

00:49:30.180 Okay?

00:49:30.900 I am the one who's led that and brought that on.

00:49:33.440 I don't understand where Tucker came from from this position because if you watch this, this is Cicilline and Nadler.

00:49:40.520 There are three of the managers who impeached the president are the author of these bills.

00:49:45.300 Do you think they care about what conservatives say?

00:49:47.900 And I think if Tucker had spent a little time seeing what the FTC person that he thinks empowers would be better for us.

00:49:55.340 Look, what we are happening to us, there's censorship with conservative view.

00:50:00.880 None of this is stopping that.

00:50:03.240 We need to stop that.

00:50:03.860 This is focused on something else, for sure.

00:50:05.800 This is focused on a different problem, what I was saying about them promoting their own stuff.

00:50:11.300 I don't like the idea of promoting their own.

00:50:13.460 I mean, I would work towards not allowing that.

00:50:15.660 What I have found with these companies, they've become so big when you have a smaller company coming up, they crush you or they buy you or they don't let you there.

00:50:25.020 And it takes too long for you to get to the Supreme Court.

00:50:27.560 So it's 10 years in the making, right?

00:50:29.500 Microsoft never got there.

00:50:31.080 You know, could a new Google come up and compete against them?

00:50:33.740 That's the real question.

00:50:34.940 And I believe that's not having the case because they're crushing the ability to do that.

00:50:39.320 That's why we need different legislation to allow that to go.

00:50:41.980 So I do not believe Cicilline is going to allow that.

00:50:44.700 What he's going to want is he's going to want, he crafted a bill that has more government.

00:50:48.460 What does government do?

00:50:49.560 They create a utility.

00:50:50.920 So they guarantee Google's going to be there, but government's going to tell you what you can say, what you can pay, and what you can afford.

00:50:57.620 I've watched that failure in California time and again with PG&E and others.

00:51:01.700 That is, I want innovation and I want competition.

00:51:04.800 So I want somebody to be able to compete with Google and take them out.

00:51:08.020 And from the standpoint, if they're 90% of the monopoly, well, that's against the monopoly.

00:51:13.720 That gives a natural way to break up.

00:51:15.980 And Apple can't sit there like and have Parler and kick them off their app so you can't find it, but can only have Apple apps on Apple.

00:51:23.080 You've got to be able to open that up.

00:51:24.940 But can people hear about that?

00:51:26.560 Well, if you're kicking the conservative voice off Apple, off Facebook, that on Facebook you couldn't talk about it came from Wuhan, China, this virus, that somehow that was wrong, nothing in this legislation goes to change that.

00:51:38.020 So I really believe if Tucker would have called me or Tucker would have sat down with me, we probably would have been on the same page.

00:51:44.060 I think he wants to fight for those exact same things.

00:51:46.960 So I'm not quite sure because I didn't get a call from him.

00:51:49.220 I didn't get asked a question.

00:51:50.140 No one asked me where I stood on the bills.

00:51:52.620 I'm not on this committee.

00:51:54.560 If the bills could improve, I might even support them if they dealt with these issues.

00:51:58.360 But I've been on the first one on the forefront to make sure about Section 230, about competition.

00:52:03.420 When I was majority leader, I brought in the CEOs of these companies.

00:52:07.040 Nobody else had done that before.

00:52:09.180 Yeah, something has to be done.

00:52:10.920 As much as I think Republican voters, too, are capitalists and want generally to let the free market reign, and there are a lot of libertarians in the GOP.

00:52:18.440 It's just gotten they've gotten so big and with so much power over our speech and how we communicate and how we make purchasing decisions.

00:52:26.600 It's just they're ubiquitous that you'd like to think somebody is looking at, you know, drawing it back to some extent because they have too much power right now.

00:52:36.300 And I do think we have we need honest lawmakers to take a look at it.

00:52:39.740 Now, wait, what's the deal with Frank Luntz?

00:52:41.320 I know Frank.

00:52:41.900 I've known Frank for many, many years.

00:52:43.160 And when they say you were roommates, is that I picture like where you were like braiding each other's hair?

00:52:48.240 What was what on earth was going on there?

00:52:54.400 No, I've known Frank for 30 years.

00:52:56.740 I met him when he was writing the contract with America.

00:53:00.500 And if you know if you know Frank, well, his health, he took a turn on his health like a year or so ago.

00:53:07.120 And Frank has an apartment inside D.C.

00:53:11.960 And I rented a room from him.

00:53:14.600 And one of the reasons I did it, Frank had a stroke.

00:53:17.380 And, you know, Frank doesn't have family.

00:53:21.200 There's times we disagree on our politics.

00:53:23.680 That's fine.

00:53:24.240 Not talking about that.

00:53:25.120 But one thing I did want to make sure that he'd go on his walks and he'd make sure to take care of his health.

00:53:31.320 And what we had happen in D.C. with the COVID and others, I did rent a room for him for a number of months.

00:53:38.400 But many people rent different rooms in different places.

00:53:42.220 I didn't know that was critical.

00:53:44.280 I didn't know that.

00:53:45.000 I didn't know that Frank suffered a stroke.

00:53:47.400 Yeah, Frank had a stroke more than a year ago.

00:53:49.540 And if you know Frank well, he doesn't have family.

00:53:51.860 And I don't understand in America today, I don't have to only have Republican friends that only believe in the certain Republican way I believe.

00:54:02.320 I may be more concerned with other friends, but I have friends who are Democrats, too.

00:54:05.940 And I also have friends, if they have a health issue, a family issue, or others, I'm going to be their friends.

00:54:11.480 And I think this country has become too much that why do we all have to believe 100% of the way to be friends?

00:54:18.220 And I think that has destroyed this nation.

00:54:20.400 And it's what can we watch on TV?

00:54:22.660 We can't watch a different channel.

00:54:23.740 I can't be challenged about my own personal beliefs.

00:54:26.120 There's family members that aren't Republicans that I have.

00:54:29.020 I wasn't born into this party.

00:54:30.940 I chose to be in this party.

00:54:32.680 I have a strong belief.

00:54:33.800 Yeah, you come from a family of Democrats.

00:54:36.120 Yeah.

00:54:36.460 My father was a firefighter, and he moved furniture as in days off.

00:54:39.800 I started my first business when I was 20 years old.

00:54:42.580 But why is it that that's news?

00:54:44.680 Why is it that that's wrong?

00:54:46.360 Why is it that I can't have friends of different beliefs?

00:54:48.740 And I don't go, you're the first person I ever told that I was there because, Frank, I want to make sure he took his medication, right?

00:54:54.640 Yeah.

00:54:54.840 Did I did I rent a room?

00:54:56.200 I rented a room.

00:54:57.280 I have slept the entire time since I've been in Congress, except for the first year of renting an apartment, on my couch.

00:55:03.260 I can't believe.

00:55:04.180 I mean, I know a lot of guys do that, but it still seems hard to believe.

00:55:06.920 Are you telling me when you were the majority leader?

00:55:08.560 You're the majority leader and you were sleeping at night in your PJs on your couch, the couch I saw when I came to visit you, when I interviewed you?

00:55:14.440 Yeah, because I work all the time, then I fly home or I'm on the road.

00:55:19.680 It's not very glamorous.

00:55:21.120 I think we pictured something more glamorous.

00:55:23.180 No, it's not glamorous.

00:55:25.480 But look, I'm not going to complain.

00:55:28.740 I run for this job and I feel very fortunate to have the ability to do this job.

00:55:34.740 Was Frank's house more glamorous?

00:55:36.340 Because he does have a house out in California that has an exact replica of the Oval Office.

00:55:40.640 Now, does his Washington house have that?

00:55:43.040 It doesn't have an Oval Office, but if you know Frank, Frank loves politics and it's like a museum.

00:55:49.840 It's not the place I would want to stay.

00:55:52.280 I do want to be a museum.

00:55:53.300 So I rent a room and I...

00:55:55.520 How much did you pay?

00:55:56.760 If you know, it's about $1,500 a month.

00:55:58.860 And what I would do is, if you know my work schedule, I'm up early in the morning here and I work late into the night.

00:56:06.940 And then you have your whatever, your events and your dinners and your others and you come home around 10 o'clock at night and go to bed.

00:56:11.940 Yeah, you're never there.

00:56:13.480 Yeah, you're never there.

00:56:14.520 That's one of the reasons I slept on my couch, because I could be more productive and that's fundamental.

00:56:19.200 So how long were you guys living together?

00:56:23.340 I'm there right now for the first six months, because I agreed I'd live six months in the place.

00:56:28.560 Oh, of 2021?

00:56:29.580 Yeah.

00:56:30.180 Okay, so you're there.

00:56:31.280 And is he okay?

00:56:32.820 Is he doing better?

00:56:34.000 He's doing better.

00:56:34.500 He's got to take his medication.

00:56:35.600 He's got to keep what he eats and others.

00:56:37.600 Yeah.

00:56:38.640 Well, look, you're speaking my language.

00:56:40.860 I feel the same.

00:56:41.740 I have lots of friends who don't share my political leanings.

00:56:44.120 And I know Frank's taking a lot of guff because he's not a President Trump fan.

00:56:48.900 And you know how the party's gotten, you know, you can sort of get kicked out and excoriated for not being a Trump.

00:56:55.280 It's complicated.

00:56:56.640 And Frank puts himself out there publicly.

00:56:58.060 He can take as good as he gets and give as good as he gets.

00:57:00.640 But I like what you said.

00:57:02.820 Like, whatever.

00:57:03.540 You were very supportive of President Trump.

00:57:05.320 Frank was not.

00:57:06.200 He doesn't have an obligation to be.

00:57:08.140 We can have friends of many stripes.

00:57:09.860 I'll leave it to somebody else to figure out whether the housing situation was in any way problematic.

00:57:15.500 But I think it's good you took care of your friend.

00:57:18.500 Yeah.

00:57:18.920 No, I mean, that's the point.

00:57:20.160 But look, what I see the Democrats are doing, I watch where they're going woke from our education to our military.

00:57:28.820 They won't even have a hearing to know where the Wuhan virus came from.

00:57:34.280 When I sat and worked with the Democrats last year trying to have a bipartisan task force on China, they said yes at first and the day before we'd announced it.

00:57:43.900 They denied us the ability to have it.

00:57:46.500 We continue to go forward.

00:57:48.480 We just put out eight pillars on holding China accountable.

00:57:53.100 Shouldn't the public be able to sue them?

00:57:55.240 Shouldn't we declassify the information?

00:57:57.780 But that's not going to go anywhere.

00:57:58.800 I mean, you had really interesting proposals, but none of it goes anywhere since the Democrats control the House, right?

00:58:03.520 You know, it's only a five-seat majority, the smallest they had in the last hundred years.

00:58:07.540 I believe there's an opportunity we can.

00:58:09.500 Should every single Democrat vote no on that?

00:58:12.000 More than 600,000 Americans died, more than 3 million people in the world.

00:58:16.920 And they don't want to hold China accountable?

00:58:20.220 And these aren't crazy.

00:58:21.180 I mean, the one waiving Chinese sovereign immunity so that they can be sued, that's really interesting.

00:58:26.180 But a lot of these are-

00:58:27.740 We did that after 9-11.

00:58:29.740 Yep.

00:58:30.520 No, a lot of them are, I feel like they're no-brainers.

00:58:33.200 Requiring declassification of information on the origins of COVID.

00:58:36.340 Prohibiting gain-of-function research in and with China.

00:58:39.760 Yes, that makes sense now, especially.

00:58:42.020 Prohibiting the NIH from funding malevolent foreign governments like China.

00:58:46.300 I don't know.

00:58:47.420 Some of these don't seem all that controversial, but, I mean, realistically, it's not going to happen.

00:58:52.780 They're not going to do it.

00:58:53.400 They're barely now just admitting that there's something to investigate on the COVID lab theory.

00:58:58.060 Yep.

00:58:58.420 And how much information did we have before?

00:59:00.540 And then we had Facebook telling us we couldn't talk about it.

00:59:04.380 You know, that's when it goes back to the censorship of why that matters so much.

00:59:08.120 And none of this legislation deals with that.

00:59:10.120 And I think that's fundamental.

00:59:12.020 We cannot trust the major media that we're going to get all the information out.

00:59:16.560 We've got to go directly to the people.

00:59:18.880 That's right.

00:59:19.760 And that's what we're trying to do.

00:59:20.880 All right, last question on that front.

00:59:24.440 Midterms, right around the corner.

00:59:26.620 What are the chances that the Republicans retake the House?

00:59:30.100 We're going to retake the House.

00:59:31.640 You watch.

00:59:32.200 There's so many parts.

00:59:32.900 What's your level of confidence?

00:59:34.620 A hundred percent.

00:59:35.920 Oh, wow.

00:59:36.740 Does that just bluster?

00:59:38.040 That sounds like bluster.

00:59:40.260 It's the same thing people would say to me last time when they said we're going to lose 20 seats and we didn't lose one seat.

00:59:45.160 We beat 15 Democrats.

00:59:47.820 Now, history would say last time we should have lost.

00:59:51.020 What history says this time, the party in power, whoever wins the White House, on average, loses 27 seats.

00:59:57.540 Barack Obama lost 63.

00:59:59.600 We lost 40 in the last time.

01:00:01.420 They have a five-seat majority.

01:00:03.300 In the last cycle, you only had, of the targeted Democrats we went after, only one retirement.

01:00:08.000 We already have five on the list this time.

01:00:10.180 You have redistricting, where people have moved to different states based upon the policies of what happened.

01:00:16.420 So, Florida gained seats.

01:00:17.700 California, for the first time in history, if you really want to see what woke has done, is going to lose a seat.

01:00:22.480 Illinois is going to lose a seat.

01:00:23.960 New York is going to lose a seat.

01:00:25.360 Texas is going to gain two.

01:00:26.680 So, do the policies matter?

01:00:27.940 Yes, they do.

01:00:28.540 Then, when you sit and watch of what's happening, you've got an open border.

01:00:33.060 You've got inflation that you haven't seen in decades.

01:00:36.400 You've got Democrats doing woke on almost everything.

01:00:40.180 They're spending trillions of dollars.

01:00:42.440 I believe on policy alone, we're going to do quite well.

01:00:45.600 And if you watch the party in Congress, look at the names, look at the faces.

01:00:51.980 We are finding conservatives, and it doesn't matter the color of your skin.

01:00:55.920 There's an opportunity for you.

01:00:57.580 And if you believe and want to help and make the next century ours, we want you to join with us.

01:01:03.300 We're not going to judge you on the color of your skin.

01:01:06.260 We're going to judge you on the ability.

01:01:07.980 Do you believe in the Constitution?

01:01:09.840 Do you want to have a part of this?

01:01:11.180 And I just think the Democrats are now controlled by AOC, Omar.

01:01:16.740 They believe America is equal to Hamas, that Israel is equal to Hamas and the Taliban.

01:01:23.280 That's not what we believe.

01:01:24.560 That's what Yelan Omar said.

01:01:26.100 Yeah, that's not what we believe, and that's not what we understand, and that's what we'll fight against.

01:01:30.160 I should mention, was forced to sort of dial it back and say, well, I didn't mean that.

01:01:33.080 So, last question.

01:01:34.360 Where can people find the American stories that you're posting?

01:01:38.140 Well, it's on our website.

01:01:39.480 It's RepublicanLeader.gov.

01:01:43.460 We'll definitely check it out.

01:01:44.500 And as always, really appreciate your time and the talk.

01:01:47.280 All right.

01:01:47.740 Thank you.

01:01:48.860 Up next, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa.

01:01:51.740 And we'll ask her, after the Democrats suffered a defeat this week on their For the People Act,

01:01:56.860 their effort to federalize the voting system in America, whether that's going to get revived

01:02:01.540 by Joe Manchin.

01:02:03.300 Her thoughts on that next.

01:02:04.280 But before we get to that, I want to bring you a feature we have here on the MK Show called

01:02:08.340 Sound Up.

01:02:10.100 This is our feature where we bring to you some sound that we feel you must hear.

01:02:13.520 And today, we're talking about a trailer for a movie that came out this week that New York

01:02:18.640 Magazine has dubbed.

01:02:19.860 And this is New York Magazine, quote, the worst trailer you've seen.

01:02:23.720 Now, this is good.

01:02:24.440 You know when something's so bad that it unites the left and the right in the country?

01:02:28.340 Something's going on.

01:02:29.160 Something's happening.

01:02:30.200 You should pay attention.

01:02:31.740 What's the name of the movie?

01:02:32.500 One word.

01:02:34.420 Karen.

01:02:35.440 Listen.

01:02:37.800 Tell me about your new neighbors.

01:02:39.980 They're black.

01:02:41.080 Do you mind keeping it down?

01:02:42.400 If you don't comply, I'll tell the manager.

01:02:47.740 Somebody's taking home security serious.

01:02:49.820 Hi.

01:02:50.420 I am Karen Drexler.

01:02:51.660 I'm your neighbor.

01:02:53.220 You need to be taking your trash cans off the curb right when the trash is picked up.

01:02:59.340 So absurd.

01:03:00.400 Whose idea is this, right?

01:03:03.280 Like, who?

01:03:04.200 It is like a parody.

01:03:05.380 Abby was saying that.

01:03:06.580 Keep in mind, though, this is not a parody.

01:03:07.820 It's a real movie.

01:03:08.880 In this very 2021 film, a black couple moves into a new neighborhood where their neighbor

01:03:13.840 is, yes, Karen.

01:03:15.520 And she is all the sorts of Karen you can imagine.

01:03:18.400 Just a nosy, racist white lady.

01:03:20.420 Wait a minute.

01:03:21.220 We have a white, entitled neighbor named Karen.

01:03:25.420 Karen.

01:03:26.280 Okay, enjoy yourself.

01:03:27.220 There she is, slaving away in the kitchen.

01:03:30.200 Slaving away.

01:03:31.440 Get it?

01:03:32.380 That's what Karen says.

01:03:33.980 That's a Karen for you.

01:03:35.580 This actual, real movie is directed by someone named Coke Daniels, whose previous credits include

01:03:41.000 directing the film, Who Made the Potato Salad?

01:03:47.360 And, according to IMDb, is attached to direct the movie, Parking Lot Pimpin'.

01:03:53.460 In the starring role of Karen is Taryn Manning, who you may know from such TV shows as Orange

01:04:00.980 is the New Black and films like 8 Mile, but you may not know that Taryn Manning posted

01:04:04.900 on social media in support of Donald Trump and even QAnon last year.

01:04:09.720 Taryn just wants to work, like most actors.

01:04:11.680 Well, apparently Taryn Manning has found a way to repent for those social media sins, because

01:04:16.940 now she tells Deadline, I felt a social responsibility to take on this role.

01:04:22.100 Even if I had to play the villain to effect change around the globe, then I was more than

01:04:26.620 willing to step into the role.

01:04:27.620 Oh, who's she kidding?

01:04:28.480 She wanted to see her face on the big screen.

01:04:29.980 We're on to you, Taryn, Karen.

01:04:32.000 Now, she gets to play the ultimate Karen in this terrible movie.

01:04:35.220 Want another clip?

01:04:36.100 Here's Karen's daughter talking to her new Black neighbor.

01:04:39.540 She doesn't like Black people.

01:04:41.760 We have a search warrant.

01:04:43.420 Well, I'm Black.

01:04:45.780 I know.

01:04:46.620 She doesn't like you either.

01:04:51.360 Karen hates all Black people.

01:04:53.540 That's the premise of the film.

01:04:55.860 Karen doesn't yet have a release date.

01:04:58.200 Let's hope it never gets one.

01:04:59.800 But in the words of one Twitter reviewer, Hollywood is doomed.

01:05:03.720 And that is Sound Up for today.

01:05:05.900 Now, back to Senator Ernst right after this.

01:05:09.540 Senator, how are you?

01:05:15.980 Good morning, Megan.

01:05:17.340 Thank you so much.

01:05:18.320 I'm good.

01:05:19.520 Let's start with the implosion of this For the People Act this week, or at least that's

01:05:23.420 how it appears, that this federal, this attempt to federalize voting in America has failed.

01:05:28.960 All eyes had been on Joe Manchin.

01:05:30.740 Will he will he cooperate in some way?

01:05:33.420 At the last minute, it seemed like he was proposing an alternate that might save it.

01:05:37.640 But did this thing ever really have a chance?

01:05:40.020 I did not have a chance, Megan.

01:05:42.340 And I'm a former local elections commissioner.

01:05:45.360 So I really get and understand all of these different voting systems.

01:05:50.440 But I also know the importance of keeping elections run at the state and local level.

01:05:56.180 And that's what many of the Democrats were hearing.

01:05:59.120 Joe Manchin was hearing that as well.

01:06:01.000 This is not up to the federal government to administer elections.

01:06:05.540 It is up to our state and local jurisdictions.

01:06:08.160 That's the thing that bothered me about it from the beginning is we're a federalist system

01:06:14.000 and the powers are supposed to rest with the states.

01:06:17.640 And more and more what we're seeing from the left is an attempt to wrest control from the

01:06:22.500 states, put it in the federal government and have these sweeping measures that the Democrats

01:06:26.220 think are fair, quote, fair, imposed on the states by the federal government.

01:06:31.180 And that's really what this was.

01:06:32.300 From the beginning, we've had states set the standards on their voting, as it should be.

01:06:38.740 Yes.

01:06:38.900 And this was just basically a power grab by the D.C. Democrats.

01:06:44.740 And while they called it the For the People Act, if you dug in a little bit deeper, it was

01:06:50.480 actually the Fund the Politicians Act.

01:06:53.600 You know, it did things like take taxpayer dollars to pay for campaigns.

01:06:58.320 It allowed ballot harvesting, you know, just so many bad, bad ideas, even going so far as

01:07:07.020 to basically overturn state laws that required voter I.D.

01:07:12.880 The Democrats don't want to have voter I.D.

01:07:16.640 But again, it comes back to protecting the integrity of our election system.

01:07:21.120 And we feel that's important.

01:07:23.440 We feel that our local elections officials are the ones who administer this.

01:07:27.960 They know when there's anomalies, anomalies and they're in their elections.

01:07:33.700 And how would D.C.

01:07:35.460 bureaucrats know that?

01:07:36.740 So anyway, we rejected S-1 and hopefully we don't see it come back in a different form.

01:07:45.600 Well, no, because that's Manchin did start to to waver.

01:07:49.340 Right.

01:07:49.800 The most powerful he and Sinema, really the most powerful members of the Senate right now

01:07:53.180 saying, look, I've got an alternate proposal that I wouldn't neuter the state voter identification

01:08:01.220 laws, but I would preserve other measures and I would expand early voting.

01:08:06.240 This is his measure.

01:08:07.140 I would make Election Day a federal holiday.

01:08:08.760 I would make it easier to vote by mail and so on and so forth.

01:08:11.060 Could this thing be revived in that form and pass?

01:08:14.300 I know that Joe Antonin is trying to do this very delicate tightrope walk, but a lot of

01:08:21.100 what he was proposing, the Democrats on the far left simply won't go for.

01:08:26.720 And of course, a lot of Republicans won't go for that either.

01:08:31.040 So while he was talking a good talk and I appreciate that he works with us on some of these issues,

01:08:38.640 I just don't think it's pragmatic.

01:08:40.720 OK, now you mentioned the voter ID laws, and this has actually been kind of funny to

01:08:46.700 to see because, you know, politicians get a politician and some of the loudest Democrats

01:08:51.700 who objected to things like the Georgia voter ID law and really went off on it as Jim Crow

01:08:57.420 2.0 have now seemingly reversed themselves, although the press would describe it as evolving.

01:09:03.180 They evolved.

01:09:04.720 But I'm talking about people like Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Stacey Abrams.

01:09:10.720 The secret governor of Georgia saying she could absolutely support Manchin's proposal,

01:09:16.580 even if voter ID was a part of it.

01:09:18.200 Warnock spoke at great length about how he believed voter ID laws were racially suppressive

01:09:23.260 before, but now has done a 180 telling NBC, I've never opposed voter ID laws.

01:09:28.860 And that is because the polling has come out showing the American people, including people

01:09:33.980 of all races, overwhelmingly support voter ID requirements.

01:09:39.840 Associated Press poll conducted in March said 72 percent of Americans support voter ID laws.

01:09:44.500 Monmouth poll just released June 21st showed 80 percent of the American people support voter

01:09:50.680 ID, including black people who people like Stacey Abrams said, you know, we hated these laws

01:09:56.400 and that and we're being suppressed by them.

01:09:58.000 Well, they don't seem to see it her way.

01:10:01.340 This is astounding to me that people operate off of these polls.

01:10:06.720 We have for many years had a voter ID law in the state of Iowa, and we have not seen any

01:10:14.540 suppression of votes.

01:10:15.820 Matter of fact, we have had greater voter turnout in recent years than we have in the past.

01:10:21.820 And one thing that Iowa has done is if you don't have a voter ID or a driver's license, you know

01:10:31.360 what?

01:10:31.680 We will provide a voter ID, a photo voter ID to you for free.

01:10:38.920 So there really is no excuse not to have voter ID in many of these states.

01:10:45.460 And as you pointed out, Megan, across the country, this is extremely popular.

01:10:51.320 It's 63 percent of Democrats support photo ID at the polls.

01:10:56.800 As you pointed out, people of color support photo ID at the polls.

01:11:02.500 So what's the problem here?

01:11:04.820 Of course, it's so it's so pejorative to them, you know, like that Candace Owens had said something

01:11:09.700 like, believe me, I know how to pull out my ID.

01:11:12.080 I'm OK.

01:11:12.700 I can do this.

01:11:13.380 So can other black people.

01:11:14.800 And but the Democrats keep using black voters as as a wedge.

01:11:18.680 They use them.

01:11:20.160 And you can see it now on this on the rising crime in our cities, right, where it was like

01:11:25.900 we have to protect black Americans from police who are killing them in the street every day.

01:11:30.560 And it's like, you know what's happening now?

01:11:32.400 Black people are being disproportionately affected by the soaring murder rates.

01:11:37.080 And where are those same politicians now?

01:11:40.300 Where's BLM now?

01:11:41.800 They don't care about these black lives being snuffed out because there's no police presence,

01:11:45.580 because they're the dishonest media coverage has fractured the relationship between the

01:11:50.940 police and the communities.

01:11:52.860 It's completely silent.

01:11:54.140 Why?

01:11:54.380 Because they do this for political reasons.

01:11:56.320 And George Floyd happened, sadly, in an election year.

01:12:00.300 And it was ripe for, you know, to be exploited.

01:12:04.300 I think it's a really sad reflection upon politicians when they're taking the news of the day and exploiting

01:12:13.300 it and using a message that's not based in truth.

01:12:17.720 And certainly I've had many conversations with even our Capitol policemen.

01:12:22.980 And not all that long ago, one had told me just in a private conversation, he said, you know,

01:12:28.600 I'm tired of feeling like a pawn, you know, we have these these politicians out there.

01:12:33.800 In one minute, they're saying, defund the police, defund the police.

01:12:36.900 And then in the next breath, they're saying, oh, we we need you and we support you.

01:12:42.600 And and we have to have this big commission, you know, to take care of you.

01:12:47.040 And honest to goodness, I think a lot of our folks in blue, they see through the rhetoric,

01:12:53.240 they just they just want to do their jobs and they want to protect and serve.

01:12:59.080 That is what they are here for.

01:13:00.680 They don't need to be used as political pawns.

01:13:04.200 But of course, it's happening.

01:13:06.120 Now, let me ask you about that, about the police on Capitol Hill, because there was this

01:13:10.140 big push for a January 6th commission and, you know, get to get to the truth of what happened

01:13:15.480 that day and I saw Sonny Hostin on The View.

01:13:19.240 She was she was going after you for why don't you want to find out the truth?

01:13:23.120 Because you weren't in favor of this.

01:13:25.060 Why is the is the one one six commission not a good idea?

01:13:28.240 The reason that the January 6th commission was not a good idea is because it was politicized

01:13:35.760 and it became a political exercise on Capitol Hill, all the while having many other commissions

01:13:44.200 and investigations ongoing.

01:13:47.040 We know that DOJ, the FBI, is already investigating those that rioted and broke into the Capitol on

01:13:53.660 January 6th.

01:13:54.840 And we had a bipartisan group of senators working through the committee process, doing proper

01:14:01.920 oversight on the Hill.

01:14:03.960 And the same week that we took the vote on the commission, they released their findings.

01:14:09.040 So if we really do want an unbiased view, if we really want to find the truth, that is

01:14:16.140 how you do it.

01:14:16.960 You do it in a bipartisan manner.

01:14:19.460 You do it with independent agencies.

01:14:21.800 You don't do it with politicians who are preening and posing and and just trying to make this

01:14:28.680 a political exercise.

01:14:30.000 And that's what we saw with January 6th.

01:14:32.460 And that's how many of the Capitol policemen felt that they were just being used as tools

01:14:39.280 rather than actually wanting to get to the truth.

01:14:43.380 Well, of course, because we saw I mean, the police had been bashed for months by a lot

01:14:48.220 of these Democrats who suddenly saw them as these as these heroes to be celebrated after

01:14:52.740 January 6th.

01:14:53.500 It's like, well, which is it?

01:14:54.820 Right.

01:14:55.000 And there was some hypocrisy on the Republican side, too, and saying, you know, protect the

01:14:58.920 police, the police are honorable, you know, and then, you know, not seeming that interested

01:15:03.200 in going after the people who endangered them on January 6th.

01:15:07.200 This is the kind of stuff that disgusts people.

01:15:09.240 And I feel like Iowans are sensible people.

01:15:12.200 They're they're like me.

01:15:13.260 I do.

01:15:13.780 I believe this, that they're they're sensible.

01:15:16.200 They're not particularly partisan.

01:15:18.140 They just don't want nonsense.

01:15:19.840 And you tell me whether now because now Nancy Pelosi saying she's going to appoint a special

01:15:23.940 committee herself.

01:15:25.160 That's not that's not going to do anything.

01:15:27.180 I don't know what's going to come out of this.

01:15:29.140 I feel like people have moved on from January 6th who aren't partisans.

01:15:32.060 They understand it was a bad event, that the criminals who who partook in the events are

01:15:36.240 going to be held to account.

01:15:37.860 And, you know, some deep forensic examination of how people got there.

01:15:41.900 I think we know how they got there.

01:15:43.340 They don't trust the media.

01:15:45.040 They believe Trump in his rhetoric about, you know, it all having been stolen.

01:15:49.740 And, you know, things went from bad to worse after they were forced offline and sort of

01:15:53.740 came up with these plans and these dark sites to go and take our country back.

01:15:58.700 And, you know, we've kind of watched it unfold.

01:16:01.620 And it was a horrible day.

01:16:03.020 And I just want to say thank you, of course, to the U.S. Capitol Police, because they really

01:16:08.300 didn't do an extraordinary job.

01:16:11.140 A few members in particular, but it was a horrific day.

01:16:16.820 But at the same time, you know, it's time we move on.

01:16:21.340 We need to understand what happened.

01:16:23.140 We had the committees in the Senate that were doing a deep dive into that, again, bipartisan

01:16:28.720 and came out with a committee report so that we can understand the failings here on Capitol

01:16:36.320 Hill and know how better to prepare ourselves should it ever happen again.

01:16:41.600 I hope to God not.

01:16:43.480 But then we have the DOJ that's doing their independent investigations.

01:16:47.920 And those people that broke into the Capitol, they will be held accountable.

01:16:52.380 I think we need to know that and understand that because we've seen rioting all across

01:16:56.580 the country where people haven't been held accountable.

01:17:01.020 And I think no matter the situation or circumstance, those that are doing wrong,

01:17:05.480 they should be held accountable.

01:17:08.040 Yeah, absolutely.

01:17:09.360 I have faith that they will.

01:17:11.580 Right now, some are being treated rather unfairly, but it's just the process has been dragging

01:17:16.240 on so long.

01:17:16.840 So many people have been held in solitary confinement.

01:17:19.020 It's kind of crazy.

01:17:20.400 Can we talk about what's going to happen in 2022?

01:17:24.060 Because I think a lot of Republicans who were very sad to see Georgia go red in those two

01:17:29.940 Senate runoffs put their hopes in 2022 saying, OK, you know, the Republicans are going to take

01:17:34.720 back the Senate when people get to see the Biden agenda.

01:17:38.980 And he's definitely been more radical than he promised he would be when he ran.

01:17:43.440 But just reading the analysis that that's out there now, it doesn't look good for the

01:17:49.260 Republicans to take back control of the Senate.

01:17:51.500 The Republicans are defending 20 seats compared to the Democrats defending 14.

01:17:57.340 North Carolina and Pennsylvania are rated toss up races where Republicans are seeing two

01:18:02.660 retirements of seats that they hold.

01:18:04.720 And Larry Sabato's website, and I like Larry, he's got analysis now saying that Dems have

01:18:10.020 a nine point lead on the generic ballot and a lead of that magnitude would predict a Democratic

01:18:14.220 gain of two seats in the Senate, giving the Dems a 52, 48 seat majority in the Senate.

01:18:20.300 But it's expected to be very close there and in the House in 2022.

01:18:23.640 So what what's your read on what's likely?

01:18:26.820 Well, and Megan, I, you know, I will preface this, but I'm always a little bit of a Pollyanna.

01:18:33.820 So I always have a very optimistic outlook.

01:18:38.080 I know that the Senate for Republicans will be tough in 2022.

01:18:44.560 I still do think we have opportunity.

01:18:47.560 All we need is to hold our own and pull up one seat.

01:18:51.480 I think we can do that.

01:18:53.920 But of course, we also look across the rotunda and we see a very good pathway to gaining the

01:19:01.280 majority in the House.

01:19:03.220 So the concern about the Senate, while I am pulling, I'm working hard.

01:19:07.840 We're looking at different candidates across the country and just hoping that they do well.

01:19:13.640 But we also had the fallback that at least if we can gain one chamber,

01:19:18.020 it does slow down some of the very radical proposals that are coming from our left and

01:19:24.460 from the Biden administration.

01:19:26.660 So, you know, while I'm optimistic now, we're going to work as hard as we can to regain the

01:19:31.980 majority in the Senate.

01:19:33.460 And we will do whatever we can to assist Leader McCarthy over in the House as well.

01:19:39.540 So if the Republicans control the House, but not the Senate, it seems to me the Biden sort

01:19:47.860 of far left freight train still has a lot, a lot of room that they can cover if they just

01:19:53.000 control the Senate because they don't really effectively now.

01:19:55.500 I mean, they have Kamala Harris to set to cast the tie breaking vote.

01:19:59.060 But if they if they get more numbers, I don't know.

01:20:03.440 You tell me whether we're going to see things like packing the Supreme Court and trying to

01:20:08.120 abolish the Electoral College.

01:20:09.540 I mean, what can they do without the House if they lose the House?

01:20:12.400 Well, they still have to have the House.

01:20:14.120 So a lot of nominations run through the Senate.

01:20:18.080 Of course, having Biden as the president, should we see retirements off of the Supreme Court?

01:20:24.660 If they have 51 or greater, yes, they are going to proceed with that.

01:20:29.380 But a lot of measures, too, we will push back on as much as we can.

01:20:36.540 There are still, Megan, a number of silent Democrats in the United States Senate that don't like

01:20:46.660 or appreciate the direction that Joe Biden is going.

01:20:51.080 They do not appreciate the far left members of the Senate or the House.

01:20:56.340 And they will remain silent because, of course, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, while they are

01:21:02.900 out there speaking, they're getting praise from Thumb, but they're also being really wrenched

01:21:08.520 and twisted by the folks on the left.

01:21:11.120 And they want to stay out of that prey.

01:21:13.460 So if they can be silent and allow Manchin and Sinema to take the beatings for them, they're

01:21:19.420 going to do that.

01:21:20.500 But if they start to see things go a very radical direction, we continue hoping that those other

01:21:26.920 five, six violent members would come forward at that time.

01:21:32.420 That's interesting that they're just sort of letting them take the beating, but they're

01:21:35.880 secretly behind them.

01:21:36.800 And that's probably, I'm sure Manchin and Sinema know that.

01:21:39.620 And sort of they're fine because they're in relatively safe districts for the positions

01:21:44.100 they've taken.

01:21:44.640 They're not in far, you know, in very, very deep blue states.

01:21:47.280 Now, notwithstanding some of the partisan discussions that we're having here, you know, in terms

01:21:53.420 of the Dems and the Republicans, you are somebody who's reached across the aisle.

01:21:57.460 You will work with Democrats and you're actually working with a senator from my home state, New

01:22:03.720 York, Kyrsten Gillibrand, on a very interesting piece of legislation right now.

01:22:08.540 Can you tell us about that?

01:22:09.860 Yes, absolutely.

01:22:10.680 Sexual assault has been prevalent in the United States military for a very long time.

01:22:18.520 And it is something that we have tried to work on.

01:22:21.900 I work on many efforts with Senator Gillibrand on this particular topic and serving as a senator

01:22:30.960 that is the first female combat veteran to serve in the United States Senate.

01:22:35.320 I served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and retired from the Iowa Army National Guard.

01:22:41.620 You know, seeing some of the issues that we have had, sexual assault, sexual harassment

01:22:47.220 in the military, I've tried to find ways to make our military stronger to protect those

01:22:54.420 survivors.

01:22:56.600 But we haven't found that magical answer yet.

01:23:01.800 We have not seen the rates of sexual assault decrease in the military in spite of all of

01:23:08.240 the prevention efforts, the changes, modifications that we have made to the military code.

01:23:15.520 So Senator Gillibrand has been pushing very hard to take these hard felony type issues out

01:23:25.020 of the chain of commands purview and sending those cases to a special military prosecutor.

01:23:33.340 So that would include things like murder, sexual assault, rape, all of those things would then

01:23:39.980 go to a special military prosecutor.

01:23:42.100 I didn't agree with that for a very long time.

01:23:44.920 The problem is we're still not seeing a change.

01:23:48.000 So I worked with Senator Gillibrand.

01:23:49.940 We changed language a little bit.

01:23:51.900 And now I have joined in her efforts to remove these felony type cases out of the chain of

01:24:00.980 command.

01:24:01.960 We have 66 co-sponsors in the United States Senate.

01:24:06.120 So we have enough members to move this piece of legislation on the floor.

01:24:11.340 But we're still running into roadblocks at every turn, it seems.

01:24:16.440 But it is a significant issue.

01:24:18.880 So you've got the support of Ted Cruz, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, Josh Hawley.

01:24:25.800 We've all rallied around this same bill.

01:24:27.480 But then you've got guys like Jack Reed of Rhode Island, James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

01:24:32.400 These are, this is a Democrat and Republican, respectively, who say they want to wait.

01:24:36.540 They want to wait on results of a 90-day study on sexual assault by a Pentagon commission.

01:24:40.840 That's a dodge, right?

01:24:41.960 I mean, we know, right?

01:24:42.860 We know that there are thousands of sexual assaults in the military every year, only a

01:24:46.780 very small percentage of which wind up in conviction.

01:24:50.720 So that seems to me they don't want to do it.

01:24:52.760 So that's the question, right?

01:24:53.720 If you've got, you say, 66, I mean, is it a done deal if you can just get a vote on it?

01:24:58.900 So right now the House has introduced the bill as well.

01:25:03.220 Again, a wide variety of Republicans and Democrats in the House.

01:25:07.960 And so we do want to see that.

01:25:09.980 Now, maybe the House moves on it.

01:25:11.460 Speaker Pelosi actually attended the press conference at the introduction of the House

01:25:17.120 version of the bill.

01:25:18.600 So if she moves that bill on the floor and it comes over to the Senate, we have greater

01:25:23.600 opportunity just to take it up as a standalone bill on the floor of the Senate.

01:25:28.060 And just to just to be clear on what the distinction is, because you say you want it, it's going

01:25:32.100 to it would still be a military tribunal that would hear the case.

01:25:35.740 So it's not like giving it to a civilian court.

01:25:38.080 That's good.

01:25:39.040 But what's happening now when you say outside the chain of command is the commanding officer,

01:25:42.860 one of the triers of fact?

01:25:44.620 Yes.

01:25:44.920 The way it works is the the 06 level commander, the brigade level commander in the army would

01:25:52.960 be the one to decide whether it moves forward with prosecution or not.

01:25:57.040 And by moving it to a special prosecutor, they can make that determination and the case can

01:26:03.260 be taken out or not, depending on that military prosecutor who has been specially trained in

01:26:10.300 these types of intimate crimes and felony level cases.

01:26:15.140 So, yes, in the chain of command, you can, as a commander, make that decision that this

01:26:22.720 is something that moves forward.

01:26:24.000 This is not something that moves forward.

01:26:26.600 And that's where a lot of survivors, those that have undergone these traumatic situations,

01:26:33.160 maybe feel that, oh, my commander, he he likes my, you know, my perpetrator likes the man that

01:26:40.620 assaulted me.

01:26:41.440 And so I'm not going to see justice by removing it from the chain of command.

01:26:46.260 And it takes that doubt away from those survivors.

01:26:50.660 We're back with the end of our show in less than one minute.

01:26:54.760 You've written about this in your book, which I know I think is coming out in paperback right

01:26:58.860 now.

01:26:59.200 Yes.

01:26:59.680 Is it?

01:27:00.060 Yeah, it is.

01:27:00.660 Right around.

01:27:01.060 Okay.

01:27:01.600 Daughter of the Heartland, my ode to the country that raised me.

01:27:05.460 I love that.

01:27:06.140 More people should be writing odes to the country that raised them as opposed to these screeds

01:27:09.800 saying how awful America is.

01:27:11.160 Anyway, you were very open in that book.

01:27:13.860 I was surprised to see you talk about having been raped by your boyfriend when you were

01:27:20.040 in college.

01:27:21.020 Then later it came out that you'd been in an abusive marriage as well.

01:27:24.500 And you talked openly about the military and how, look, with all due respect to our men and

01:27:30.460 women in the military, it is an old boys club.

01:27:33.300 Women have massive challenges there.

01:27:35.720 And even you as a commanding officer felt undermined more than once.

01:27:40.120 So, I mean, I'm looking at you now on this bill thinking the sum of your life experiences

01:27:44.860 made you the perfect person to submit this and to actually get something done for the

01:27:49.960 women coming up behind you.

01:27:51.320 Yes.

01:27:51.880 And thank you for that, Megan.

01:27:53.480 And I do write about a number of very difficult situations that I faced both as a young woman

01:28:01.200 and as an adult woman, as a spouse.

01:28:04.540 And it came to fruition through a very painful divorce while I was serving in my first term

01:28:12.560 in the United States Senate.

01:28:14.720 And I was just so ashamed of all of these situations and things that while I had no control

01:28:23.780 over them, they're not things that you talk about in polite society, which is unfortunate,

01:28:29.980 I think, because we carry those scars and those pains for so long.

01:28:35.560 But I had a woman that came to me after a little get together.

01:28:41.280 And she said, Joni, you serve as a battalion commander.

01:28:47.300 You are a United States senator.

01:28:50.080 She said, you need to talk about this because women or others, you know, men are raped and

01:28:56.840 assaulted too.

01:28:58.280 But she said, other people need to know and understand that there is light after all of

01:29:03.700 this darkness.

01:29:04.700 And she was right.

01:29:05.940 And I have been able to find joy in my life.

01:29:09.840 I've been able to move on from those very dark periods.

01:29:13.560 And I've had support along the way.

01:29:15.880 And I am extremely grateful that I am where I am today.

01:29:20.460 But, you know, I've had to overcome a lot of those personal challenges to be who I am today.

01:29:27.520 But that's what I want people to take away from some of these stories in my book, is that

01:29:32.980 while things may be dark for you at certain times, you should never allow other people

01:29:39.180 to define who you are.

01:29:41.660 We will define ourselves.

01:29:44.560 And also being a team player, which is what you're raised to be in the armed forces, doesn't

01:29:49.800 mean taking abuse that you know crosses especially a legal line.

01:29:55.380 You know, but the way the military is set up does make it murkier because, forgive the

01:30:01.500 term, but some abuse is expected and part of the routine.

01:30:05.640 So I think there's probably some confusion, especially for the young women there who don't

01:30:08.760 want to be the ones complaining for all the obvious reasons as to where you draw the line.

01:30:13.720 Absolutely.

01:30:14.700 And of course, I can think back to my time at Fort Knox many, many years ago and drill sergeants

01:30:22.060 screaming at me, you know, making me do more pushups or flutter kicks, you know, run

01:30:27.440 faster, you know, all of those types of activities, you know, certainly very uncomfortable situations,

01:30:35.420 but that's part of developing a young soldier.

01:30:39.340 But there are situations then that go over the line where people in points of power have

01:30:46.920 really abused subordinates.

01:30:49.260 And that is absolutely unacceptable.

01:30:53.400 So whether it is physical altercations, whether it is sexual advances, assault, that is never,

01:31:02.600 ever to be tolerated.

01:31:05.040 Well, and I think you're one of the reasons you're a good person to speak on this is we

01:31:10.360 know you're a badass.

01:31:11.540 We know you're tough.

01:31:12.500 You know, we knew it when we first got to know you in Iowa when you ran and you did that

01:31:16.460 great ad about how you castrated pigs and, you know, you're just not afraid to get your

01:31:20.540 hands dirty.

01:31:21.320 As you point out, you're in the Army National Guard and you served in Kuwait and you were

01:31:26.680 the first woman ever, first female combat veteran ever to serve in the U.S. Senate and

01:31:30.960 on and on it goes.

01:31:32.580 So to those people and I forgive me, I like Eric Trump.

01:31:35.240 I actually think he's a nice guy, but he came out and said his sister, Ivanka, would

01:31:39.880 never be sexually harassed because she's too strong for that.

01:31:42.980 And that was just such a misguided comment because you can be harassed, you can be raped,

01:31:48.000 you can be abused and be a really strong woman.

01:31:51.860 It's just a it's a confusing, fraught situation.

01:31:56.000 Absolutely.

01:31:56.840 It is, Megan.

01:31:57.860 And that was another point is that, you know, I have been a battalion commander.

01:32:03.300 I was a company commander overseas during the first part of the Iraqi war.

01:32:09.320 And you will see women and even Martha McSally, she she has shared that she has been assaulted.

01:32:17.740 So you can look across the spectrum here in the United States of America and you will find

01:32:24.040 abusive situations with stay at home moms.

01:32:27.800 You find abusive situations with CEOs and leaders in the military.

01:32:33.160 And again, it's it's something that we don't talk about openly.

01:32:40.100 And I think that because of that, there is that misconception that it's only those who are

01:32:47.600 weak and vulnerable who will be assaulted or picked on at some point in their life.

01:32:54.260 And and that is untrue.

01:32:56.680 You know, I loved my spouse very much.

01:32:59.900 I tolerate it much more than I ever felt.

01:33:03.900 And that is understanding the difference between what is a healthy relationship and what is

01:33:08.560 a toxic relationship.

01:33:11.040 So it goes much further and deeper and very complicated situations.

01:33:16.320 But what I would say to women that are in that situation, please find a way to exit from

01:33:22.260 that relationship.

01:33:23.640 Do it for your own good and do it for your children's good.

01:33:27.220 Absolutely.

01:33:28.360 Listen, I know you have a vote.

01:33:29.900 But thank you for being so open about it and for pushing it.

01:33:33.200 And we will definitely continue to watch that one as it winds its way through.

01:33:36.960 God bless you, Megan.

01:33:38.060 Thanks so much.

01:33:42.400 And listen, don't forget to tune into the show on Monday because we've got our legal dream

01:33:46.220 team, Mark and Arthur, coming back.

01:33:47.960 Arthur Idalla, Mark Eichlarsh.

01:33:49.380 And we've got a bunch of interesting, kind of fun legal cases to go through.

01:33:52.900 Number one, some college students are pushing back on these mandatory vaccines.

01:33:57.660 Good for them.

01:33:58.700 Is it OK for the college or even your K through 12 school to mandate that you get these vaccines?

01:34:05.260 It's not like the vaccines that, you know, measles, mumps, rubella.

01:34:08.880 This is experimental.

01:34:09.940 This is the long form of these vaccines.

01:34:12.080 Hasn't received sort of the bigger FDA approval.

01:34:15.200 So how can they mandate that you get one in order to continue your education?

01:34:19.300 We'll get into that.

01:34:20.080 Plus, Britney Spears.

01:34:21.220 She's finally spoke out this week on this conservatorship and the weird dad.

01:34:25.860 And what is going on there?

01:34:27.460 Plus, we're going to get into Lori Lightfoot and whether her push to allow interviews with

01:34:32.640 only people of color and so on.

01:34:34.460 She's coming under fire now.

01:34:36.200 Is any of that legal?

01:34:37.600 We'll talk to the legal dream team about it in a fun episode on Monday.

01:34:40.720 In the meantime, have a great weekend.

01:34:42.880 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:34:45.020 No BS, no agenda and no fear.

01:34:49.760 The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - June 25, 2021

Leader Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Joni Ernst on the Crime Surge, the Border Crisis, and Bipartisanship ｜ Ep. 120

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