The Megyn Kelly Show - Left Blames ＂Racism＂ For Claudine Gay's Harvard Exit, and New Appreciation For Trump's Border Policy, with The Fifth Column Hosts

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00:00:31.180 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:42.620 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:46.440 Well, Harvard President Claudine Gay made it longer than some predicted

00:00:50.940 after various instances of plagiarism surfaced.

00:00:54.180 I lost count of how many. It was like dozens.

00:00:56.540 By the time we were said and done.

00:00:58.400 But yesterday afternoon, she submitted her resignation as we reported

00:01:02.040 when it happened live during our show.

00:01:04.720 Now, many on the left, the woke left, are blaming her exit on racism.

00:01:13.240 Of course they are.

00:01:15.340 You got to dance with the one that brung you.

00:01:17.680 Plus, the crisis at the southern border continues.

00:01:20.080 My God, it's terrible.

00:01:21.180 As GOP leaders are set to visit the border today.

00:01:25.200 And Secretary Mayorkas, for whom there is a strong case, I mean, that he ought to be impeached.

00:01:30.780 He blames the increase in migrants on climate change.

00:01:35.140 So, fear not.

00:01:36.600 He's on it.

00:01:37.480 We're going to discuss it all with our pals today.

00:01:39.180 From the fifth column, Camille Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welsh.

00:01:43.540 You can find all of their content on Substack at wethefifth.substack.com.

00:01:49.980 Well worth your time.

00:01:51.140 Your business doesn't move in a straight line.

00:01:55.140 Make sure your team is taken care of through every twist and turn

00:01:58.280 with Canada Life savings, retirement, and benefits plans.

00:02:01.840 Whether you want to grow your team, support your employees at every stage,

00:02:05.480 or build a workplace people want to be a part of,

00:02:08.480 Canada Life has flexible plans for companies of all sizes,

00:02:11.720 so it's easy to find a solution that works for you.

00:02:15.180 Visit canadalife.com slash employee benefits to learn more.

00:02:18.880 Canada Life. Insurance. Investments. Advice.

00:02:23.740 Guys, welcome back to the show.

00:02:25.320 Hey, Megan.

00:02:26.040 I have so much I want to talk to you about.

00:02:27.820 I'm so excited to have you guys here today.

00:02:29.340 You're just the perfect guests.

00:02:31.320 So, the backlash to Claudine Gay's forced resignation is actually magnificent.

00:02:38.480 Is it not?

00:02:39.180 Like, it's everyone knew their role to play,

00:02:43.920 and they're playing it to perfection.

00:02:46.300 It genuinely amuses me.

00:02:48.100 Um, for example, there's Ibram X. Kendi.

00:02:52.960 Okay.

00:02:53.760 Uh, first of all, he goes on with,

00:02:55.600 the question to assess whether this was a racist attack against her isn't whether Dr. Gay engaged in any misconduct.

00:03:04.200 The question is whether all these people would have investigated, surveilled, harassed, written about, and attacked her in the same way if the Harvard president in this case would have been white.

00:03:12.760 I, period, I, period, think, period, not, period.

00:03:17.320 It could never happen.

00:03:18.020 Too often means to join the racist mob or give it credibility as they did here, just as they did a century ago.

00:03:29.520 That's, and he went on.

00:03:30.840 I mean, he's got several tweets along these lines.

00:03:33.780 Um, Celesting, you know, she wrote Little Files Everywhere.

00:03:37.360 Hearst was one of my favorites.

00:03:38.540 What we've learned here is bad faith bigots pretending they're concerned about anti-Semitism will happily use women of color, especially black women, as a scapegoat and lightning rod for large systemic issues,

00:03:54.920 and that people invested in maintaining those systemic issues will comply.

00:04:01.740 And then I'll just give you one more.

00:04:02.860 Nicole Hannah-Jones, of course, the 1619 Project writer.

00:04:07.200 Academic freedom is under attack.

00:04:09.480 Racial justice programs are under attack.

00:04:11.600 Black women will be made to pay.

00:04:14.180 Our so-called allies too often lack any real courage.

00:04:18.360 So, guys, it is the fault of systemic racism and its allies in the media who too often go along with the narrative,

00:04:26.460 and not to mention bad actors like Chris Rufo, who's getting blamed for all the reporting he did on this.

00:04:32.340 Um, you know, right-wing conservatives who seized an opportunity, et cetera, et cetera.

00:04:38.360 What do you make of it?

00:04:41.080 Who wants to go?

00:04:42.300 Well, Moynihan, you're a resident plagiarism.

00:04:44.540 You're a resident plagiarism expert, and this is a plagiarism scandal.

00:04:48.660 So you're the guy.

00:04:49.900 No, I want to-

00:04:51.220 You unearthed plagiarism.

00:04:52.580 I have many, many plagiarism scandals, and I want to correct Camille on this.

00:04:56.340 I am now also an anti-racism expert.

00:05:00.740 Yes.

00:05:01.180 Because I have discovered how that one defeats these racists.

00:05:05.780 It's to not plagiarize 60 times.

00:05:09.120 And then none of this ever happens.

00:05:11.300 You can't bull Connor your way into a plagiarism allegation.

00:05:16.900 No, it's funny.

00:05:17.360 Before we started, Camille very helpfully reminded me that she makes $900,000 a year.

00:05:23.340 I mean, look, the incredible thing about this is that there was a clip this morning.

00:05:29.100 I actually sent your producer, the great Steve Krakow, from another gay.

00:05:34.040 What's her name?

00:05:34.640 Mara Gay from the New York Times?

00:05:36.420 Who went on in an incoherent ramble?

00:05:39.420 Another gay, sorry.

00:05:40.780 That was, I'm very pro-gay generally, but in this case, I'm not.

00:05:45.860 But she went on in an incoherent ramble, and none of it addressed the actual allegations.

00:05:50.300 It's all the people are terrible.

00:05:52.040 All the people are doing terrible things.

00:05:53.640 They hate Black people.

00:05:54.760 They hate Black women in particular.

00:05:57.280 Multiculturalism is also the enemy.

00:06:00.000 Well, no.

00:06:00.660 I mean, the very basic thing here is not only did she plagiarize, and by the way, this is

00:06:05.180 very, very clear plagiarism.

00:06:06.340 I'm somebody who's written a lot about this.

00:06:07.820 I actually am very tough on some of these plagiarism allegations and say, well, I don't

00:06:11.760 think that meets the standards.

00:06:13.580 This met the standards 10 times over, and it kept on going so bad, in fact, that she

00:06:19.040 plagiarized in her acknowledgements, which I thought was really remarkable.

00:06:23.340 That's really showing a certain level of laziness.

00:06:26.160 But also, it shows the kind of rot in these institutions.

00:06:29.840 This is the most prestigious university on earth.

00:06:34.880 Can we say that it's, what, maybe Oxford, maybe Cambridge?

00:06:38.480 No, I'd say Harvard's number one.

00:06:40.040 That is the stand-in when you're talking about academic excellence.

00:06:43.780 And you have the president of this place, who's not only a plagiarist, but has produced

00:06:48.120 almost nothing in her academic career.

00:06:50.580 And this is also not somebody in this.

00:06:52.200 By the way, I'm going to make a slight recommendation before I kick this over to Camille to give the

00:06:58.700 not-Black perspective, by the way.

00:07:02.380 By the way, he doesn't identify as Black, for your listeners who don't know that.

00:07:05.080 That's right.

00:07:06.840 But the incredible thing about this is Claudine Gay went to Phillips Exeter, one of the most

00:07:13.100 elite schools on the East Coast.

00:07:15.960 She then went to Princeton, decided she didn't like Princeton very much, and then went to Stanford,

00:07:20.680 and then went on to Harvard.

00:07:22.380 I would suggest maybe getting somebody from more of a working-class background who actually

00:07:27.160 does have a record and has worked very hard in their life and not produced 16 or 15 or

00:07:32.520 12 or however many sort of lazy and halfway fraudulent academic articles and never produced

00:07:37.520 a book.

00:07:38.580 But, you know, I saw Mark Lamont Hill, the writer, professor, who just responded to-

00:07:44.540 Hip-hop intellectual.

00:07:45.340 Hip-hop intellectual.

00:07:45.940 Hip-hop intellectual.

00:07:46.180 That's how he described himself in his Bible for many years.

00:07:48.060 Yeah.

00:07:48.240 That's right.

00:07:49.120 Yeah.

00:07:49.640 So, which makes a certain amount of sense.

00:07:51.380 Yes.

00:07:51.720 But he said, you know, we must replace her with another Black woman.

00:07:55.600 I mean, this is kind of the problem, isn't it?

00:07:57.340 Period.

00:07:57.500 Is that, you know, that's it.

00:07:59.420 It wasn't who.

00:08:00.200 It could be anybody.

00:08:01.500 I mean, obviously, it wasn't Candace Owens.

00:08:03.520 She's not thinking that.

00:08:04.860 Well, he didn't say that type of person.

00:08:06.760 How about Candace?

00:08:07.700 Maybe.

00:08:09.400 She's smart.

00:08:10.260 She's young.

00:08:10.900 She has a long runway ahead of her.

00:08:13.040 Yeah.

00:08:13.340 And probably a more significant publishing record, too.

00:08:16.220 Shape and shade of her genitalia, check out.

00:08:18.280 So, it should be fine now.

00:08:19.800 That's all you need.

00:08:20.700 That's all you need.

00:08:21.960 When you're selecting the vice president of the United States, as well, you just declare

00:08:25.460 initially, it's going to be a Black woman, for sure.

00:08:28.120 Yeah.

00:08:28.320 No problem.

00:08:29.280 Or Supreme Court justice.

00:08:30.780 Feels good.

00:08:31.100 You really set these women up for success when you do that, too.

00:08:33.660 Everybody, when they come, thinks first about their mind, and not at all about those

00:08:37.120 other things.

00:08:38.100 How could anyone doubt their credentials once you've laid that groundwork for them?

00:08:42.780 You know, I may disappoint Moynihan here.

00:08:44.860 I mean, the perspective I'd really like to bring to bear is actually the perspective

00:08:47.940 I can offer as a board member of the wonderful organization FIRE, the Foundation for Intim-

00:08:53.540 You got it.

00:08:55.540 You can do it.

00:08:56.080 You got it.

00:08:56.460 You can do it, man.

00:08:57.280 We know what it is.

00:08:57.860 Free speech.

00:08:58.660 So, initially, it was education, and now it's expression.

00:09:02.020 Yes.

00:09:02.920 We've been defending free speech and have been defending, and I'm using the we very generously

00:09:07.840 there, because I'm on the board.

00:09:08.760 I don't do any of the heavy lifting.

00:09:09.780 But just defending academic freedom on campus for years and years.

00:09:14.380 And it is amazing to see people on MSNBC now very animated about the attack on academic

00:09:20.360 freedom.

00:09:20.920 Yeah.

00:09:21.040 In the specific context of an overpaid administrator who has a documented history of engaging in

00:09:28.180 plagiarism, now this is an attack on free expression.

00:09:31.220 I want to commend to them the FIRE's rankings, which have for years now documented the rot

00:09:37.600 in higher education and the genuine attack on free expression.

00:09:40.820 Nicole Hannah-Jones ought to be well aware of this.

00:09:43.100 FIRE came to her defense when she found herself in the midst of a firestorm where people were

00:09:47.100 insisting that she shouldn't get a job because of her particular political background, and

00:09:51.480 in some cases, criticizing some of her work on the 1619 Project.

00:09:54.340 But in either case, FIRE came to their defense because they're nonpartisan and they believe

00:09:58.120 in genuine diversity in higher education, and they believe in free expression in higher

00:10:02.180 education.

00:10:03.160 This isn't an example of that by any stretch of the imagination.

00:10:06.520 And it doesn't matter who is particularly excited about the fact that Ms. Gay is being

00:10:10.620 purged from the university or resigning because of the controversy surrounding her.

00:10:14.600 The controversy would not exist but for the documented history of plagiarism, which has

00:10:20.240 existed for some time.

00:10:22.500 Records and rumors about this have existed for some time.

00:10:24.960 Harvard has investigated it.

00:10:26.640 And the only conclusion you can reach at the end of this is to let her go if you actually

00:10:31.620 want to be taken seriously when you're censoring students, expelling students regularly for

00:10:37.440 engaging in the same kind of conduct that Ms. Gay is now being slammed for.

00:10:43.280 It's not a white supremacist cabal.

00:10:45.860 There's no secret conspiracy here.

00:10:48.060 I would even say that the activists who are most thumping their chest, hoping to be given

00:10:51.780 credit for this, they don't matter here.

00:10:54.280 What matters is that she's a plagiarist.

00:10:57.260 And as a result, she's getting bounced.

00:10:58.780 The question, of course, is who replaces her?

00:11:01.620 Who replaced her?

00:11:02.140 That's the thing.

00:11:02.960 Oh, this poor guy that we know who's replacing her temporarily.

00:11:06.200 This poor, poor man.

00:11:07.720 Can you imagine being this man?

00:11:09.280 Hold on.

00:11:09.660 Where is he?

00:11:10.200 What's his name?

00:11:11.200 I've got to hear someplace in front of me.

00:11:13.280 But Alan Garber and the poor guy is white.

00:11:17.040 Can you imagine what's going to happen?

00:11:18.980 That's why he's temporary.

00:11:20.860 His genitals don't actually measure up for the position here.

00:11:24.720 It's the wrong shape.

00:11:25.460 Don't get too comfortable, Alan.

00:11:27.220 It's definitely not happening.

00:11:28.780 You're on the way out, sir.

00:11:29.660 Alan also condemned the university's first shot at, you know, commenting on the anti-Semitism

00:11:35.500 on campus.

00:11:36.280 He was like, oh, he didn't get there.

00:11:37.660 Alan is not long for this job, even the temporary job.

00:11:40.560 So he should not be too comfortable in that seat.

00:11:43.760 Here's the AP.

00:11:44.800 You guys probably saw this today.

00:11:46.520 Their take on this.

00:11:47.720 The Associated Press.

00:11:48.460 Harvard President's Resignation Highlights New Conservative Weapon Against Colleges.

00:11:56.440 Plagiarism.

00:11:57.920 What?

00:11:59.360 That's fantastic.

00:12:00.200 What?

00:12:00.800 We may be missing the real story, AP.

00:12:03.240 That's not how that word is.

00:12:03.980 Conservatives pounce.

00:12:05.220 Yeah.

00:12:06.180 I'm not thinking, Matt Welsh, like, over at Reason, this would not have been your headline.

00:12:10.400 Scroll down in that piece, too.

00:12:13.000 They also say that Chris Rufo using the word scalp is a classic white supremacist play or

00:12:21.360 something like that.

00:12:21.880 White colonialism.

00:12:22.760 Couldn't make less sense if you put it in a blender and poured it out of a fourth story

00:12:28.660 walk-up window.

00:12:29.480 So even I went back just for kicks, Matt, just to just to see, you know, Wikipedia.

00:12:35.340 How does Wikipedia describe describe scalping?

00:12:38.700 Right.

00:12:39.240 And of course, the whole thing is about the Native Americans.

00:12:41.360 The whole thing is about the Native Americans, what they did.

00:12:43.100 It's not about the white colonialists who came over.

00:12:46.340 But the AP apparently didn't even simply consult Wikipedia.

00:12:50.580 They just decided to blame that, too, on the evil white man.

00:12:54.260 I want to to highlight a word that you used at the intro, Megan, which is performs.

00:12:58.920 You were talking about various people were, like, performing their roles.

00:13:02.400 There is something so performative about a lot of the response to this.

00:13:06.580 It feels rote.

00:13:07.960 It feels trite.

00:13:08.740 It feels not necessarily even that much believed by the people doing it.

00:13:13.140 But part of what they are doing is trying to browbeat the media.

00:13:18.540 Right.

00:13:18.780 There's a like, oh, look, your allies in the media are performing well.

00:13:22.080 You you fell for the Chris Rufo tricksterism.

00:13:25.220 I can't believe you let them frame the issue here.

00:13:28.340 All of those great words are tells that they're trying to tell their kind of fellow traveler

00:13:35.100 colleagues in elite institutions to act and behave in a certain way.

00:13:39.460 And that is why you get conservatives pounce headlines.

00:13:42.380 There was a recent every decade study that came out.

00:13:46.980 I think Syracuse University does it of the self-identified political leanings and affiliations

00:13:52.920 of journalists at newspapers and other institutions like that.

00:13:56.820 And it was pretty stunning.

00:13:58.760 They in 1970s, 80s, 90s, there was more or less two self-identified Democrats for every

00:14:06.520 one self-identified Republican.

00:14:08.260 It would go up and down, but it'd be in that range more or less.

00:14:11.380 And then between 10 years ago and now, it has gone to 11 to one Democrats to Republicans.

00:14:19.860 The reason why you get a conservatives pounce headline in a way that you would never get,

00:14:25.200 you will not once see a Democrats or lefties pounce on ProPublica's reporting about Clarence

00:14:31.520 Thomas.

00:14:32.020 You will not see that.

00:14:33.140 Yet they pounce.

00:14:34.300 Yet pounce they do.

00:14:35.600 It is that because the conservatives or people right of center are so outnumbered on campus

00:14:42.320 and now so outnumbered in the media that they stick out like sore thumbs, right?

00:14:47.280 It's like being a Jew or a Muslim in France, a Catholic country, even though, you know,

00:14:53.640 it's supposed to nominally not be Catholic, but you stick out.

00:14:57.020 The people, you look different, you sound different, you wear different regalia.

00:15:00.420 And so people are going to notice you and that is going to be the story.

00:15:04.000 And it happens over and over again.

00:15:05.960 And then on these occasions, these rare occasions, when the people are in the crosshairs and they

00:15:13.860 lose their jobs under criticism from people on the right, it is a scandal and they can't

00:15:19.900 even wrap their minds around it as if they've forgotten the entire summer of 2020 when every

00:15:25.400 single institution under the sun lost its ever loving mind, trying to purge poetry magazine of

00:15:32.720 people who are insufficiently anti-racist museums in San Francisco, because they had a meeting and they

00:15:38.620 said this word this way instead of that word that way.

00:15:40.880 It was an absolute season of madness and it wasn't conservatives pouncing.

00:15:46.140 It was a left of center people absolutely in a purity spiral and purged trial situation.

00:15:53.440 So this is why they do that over and over again.

00:15:56.460 And they're trying to tell their friends in the media who they just assume, not inaccurately

00:16:02.260 necessarily, that they're on their team.

00:16:04.480 Like, don't do this next time.

00:16:06.080 Next time Chris Ruffo wants something, make sure to be to be in the opposite position, even

00:16:12.320 if the facts are on his side.

00:16:13.720 There's a reason.

00:16:14.920 That's what the Kendi tweet was going after.

00:16:15.780 The Kendi tweet was going after that I read where he's like, this shouldn't happen.

00:16:19.500 This is like real journalists shouldn't pile on and contrast that with what he was saying

00:16:24.780 yesterday.

00:16:25.900 Racist mobs won't stop until they topple all black people from positions of power.

00:16:31.760 Really?

00:16:32.600 Sure.

00:16:33.460 We don't need evidence for that.

00:16:34.920 Just say it.

00:16:35.640 But I mean, the thing about the Kendi stuff is that it does make people think twice.

00:16:40.180 I mean, what is Kendi offering as evidence that this is a racist mob?

00:16:45.500 Absolutely nothing.

00:16:46.340 We don't need to offer anything.

00:16:47.660 It's putting the fear of God into people about reporting something like this or going after

00:16:52.600 a person like this.

00:16:53.820 If you do that, we're going to say something and we're going to accuse you of the most toxic

00:16:58.500 charge in public life.

00:16:59.660 We don't have to have any evidence for it.

00:17:01.740 I mean, the thing about that is the more that this happens, and you see this from 2020 to

00:17:05.500 today, the more it happens, the more people become skeptical of this stuff.

00:17:09.240 The average person who comes across this and says, well, you know, she plagiarized.

00:17:13.380 I mean, that seems to be true.

00:17:14.260 And then there's 85,000 tweets and a bunch of people on MSNBC on Morning Joe saying,

00:17:20.920 well, this reeks of racism.

00:17:22.420 OK, well, then why don't we sort of prove that?

00:17:25.600 I would say that the opposite is true, because you need people like Chris Ruffo.

00:17:30.880 And I disagree with Chris Ruffo on a lot of things.

00:17:33.000 But but, you know, I mean, he's right on this.

00:17:34.800 You need somebody like Chris Ruffo because the media and Harvard in general don't do

00:17:39.820 their jobs.

00:17:40.740 Keep something in mind.

00:17:41.740 This is very important to remember.

00:17:43.640 The allegations against Claudine Gay were first surfaced online in 2022, December of

00:17:49.660 2022, right after she was appointed.

00:17:53.480 This was obvious to a lot of people.

00:17:54.880 This was on an academic forum where people are anonymous and they had sent these things

00:17:59.040 to Harvard.

00:17:59.500 Harvard knew about this.

00:18:00.780 In October, the New York Post, which didn't run a story about this, asked Harvard about

00:18:05.980 it.

00:18:06.520 And what did they do?

00:18:07.700 They dragged their feet and they said, well, you know, all of these things, which, of course,

00:18:12.380 would get you kicked out as a student.

00:18:13.880 They threatened the Post.

00:18:14.700 They threatened to sue the Post for defamation if they published a story that was transparently

00:18:19.300 true.

00:18:20.140 If a student does this, of course, they get kicked out.

00:18:22.960 That's known.

00:18:24.000 And keeping in mind also that Claudine Gay was not fired.

00:18:27.500 Right.

00:18:28.140 She resigned.

00:18:28.820 Now, did they push her?

00:18:31.040 It doesn't matter if they pushed her.

00:18:32.460 What they should do is publicly fire her to disassociate themselves.

00:18:36.600 She should be humiliated to disassociate herself, themselves from academic fraud.

00:18:41.720 And this is academic fraud.

00:18:43.080 The problem with Harvard is that is that they're like an aging model.

00:18:46.540 Right.

00:18:46.840 They were once beautiful.

00:18:48.240 And now you can't really trade on that anymore.

00:18:50.660 But it's at Harvard.

00:18:51.420 Harvard.

00:18:51.820 It's a reputation.

00:18:52.980 Is it a university?

00:18:54.360 Do they have great professors?

00:18:55.720 They're a year away from the Daily Mail taking the obese pictures of them in a candid on

00:19:00.920 the street.

00:19:01.680 And then they say that they look beautiful, by the way.

00:19:03.660 The Daily Mail, I was like, look at how bad they look, but it's always like sarcastic.

00:19:07.480 Yeah, they don't mean it.

00:19:08.320 They always are looking gorgeous.

00:19:10.020 And you're all like, oh, come on.

00:19:11.680 We know what you're doing here.

00:19:13.000 They're not looking gorgeous.

00:19:14.540 They're looking well fed.

00:19:15.540 Which is a kind of beauty.

00:19:19.600 So can I ask you, let me ask you about this, because the fact that she keeps her nearly

00:19:23.280 million dollar salary, notwithstanding the number of instances in which she's been exposed

00:19:28.440 as an intellectual thief, is stunning to me.

00:19:31.240 And she also committed the same sin as Liz McGill, who got fired from UPenn, for just

00:19:37.280 that, for just not being able to say that, well, yes, free speech, your legal standards.

00:19:42.920 But yeah, you really shouldn't be calling for genocide against Jews on campus.

00:19:45.700 That's not a thing we want to see on Harvard.

00:19:47.440 Anyway, the other woman, the white woman, got fired just for that congressional testimony.

00:19:51.380 Claudine Gay did that, plus got exposed as an intellectual thief and is not fired.

00:19:56.620 She lost the presidency, but she's still at Harvard.

00:19:58.920 And listen to this, okay, so the goodbye letter to Claudine from the Harvard Corporation, this

00:20:06.020 group that's really kind of making the decisions behind the scene, the scenes, they've got

00:20:09.300 people like, I think Ted Wells is on there, very respected attorney from Paul Weiss, people

00:20:15.400 like that, muckety mucks, who probably went to Harvard and are supposed to be standard bearers.

00:20:20.180 Okay, I just highlighted a few phrases.

00:20:23.160 With great sadness, we write in light of her message announcing her intention to step down

00:20:28.280 and resume her faculty position.

00:20:31.000 Throughout Gay's long and distinguished leadership as dean of social science and this other dean,

00:20:34.840 she demonstrated the insight, the decisiveness, and the empathy that are her hallmark.

00:20:39.660 She has devoted her career to an institution whose ideals and priorities she has worked tirelessly

00:20:44.700 to advance.

00:20:46.460 And we are grateful for the extraordinary contributions she has made and will continue to make as a leader,

00:20:51.060 a teacher, a scholar, a mentor, and an inspiration to many.

00:20:56.620 I'm not done.

00:20:57.060 So, uh, her own message conveying her intention to step down eloquently underscores, by the

00:21:05.120 way, that's racist.

00:21:06.560 I've heard all the liberals tell me you refer to a black person as eloquent or articulate,

00:21:11.780 articulate, you're racist.

00:21:13.200 You people are racists.

00:21:14.780 Okay.

00:21:15.160 Her own message conveying her intention to step down eloquently underscores what those who

00:21:21.640 have worked with her have long known her commitment to the institution and its mission is deep

00:21:26.440 and selfless.

00:21:27.680 We've accepted her resignation, but we do so with sorrow.

00:21:31.800 She has shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks.

00:21:38.400 Okay.

00:21:38.680 What are the attacks that she plagiarized?

00:21:40.620 She did.

00:21:41.300 So I'm looking for the evidence and here it is.

00:21:43.320 Um, some has played out in the public domain, but much has taken the form of repugnant and

00:21:48.560 in some cases, racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful emails and phone calls.

00:21:56.400 What?

00:21:57.260 You can't see.

00:21:58.860 Who among us hasn't received that shit, right?

00:22:02.040 Like it's ridiculous.

00:22:03.760 And they end with, for today, we close by reiterating our gratitude to President Gay for her devoted

00:22:11.020 service to Harvard.

00:22:12.740 Amazing.

00:22:13.320 I know it's basically like, please don't call us racists.

00:22:15.860 Don't sue us.

00:22:16.960 Please love us.

00:22:17.500 Black people.

00:22:18.180 We love black people.

00:22:19.440 We love Claudine and we're not racists.

00:22:21.660 See all the nice things we said about her, except for the racist part about being eloquent.

00:22:26.640 I mean, it's, it's really bizarre to, to see this sort of thing play out.

00:22:30.420 I mean, it's hard to believe that there aren't more skeletons there, that there isn't going

00:22:34.380 to be more evidence of some sort of general academic misconduct or malfeasance.

00:22:39.760 Um, granted her tenure was pretty short.

00:22:42.240 And she only published 15 articles, Camille, but it's not a lot to look at.

00:22:48.500 I just, I can't imagine like going out on a limb for someone who was being forced to leave

00:22:56.320 a position under these circumstances.

00:22:58.560 It's not as though the only people calling her out here are conservative activists.

00:23:03.200 There are plenty of people who are disheartened by this, who were completely incensed by the

00:23:09.580 horrible performance that she had in front of Congress.

00:23:12.420 And it's not to say that there, there wasn't a whole bunch of performing going on in those

00:23:15.700 congressional hearings as there always is, but you're really well compensated.

00:23:20.880 You know what you're going into.

00:23:22.520 You ought to have better answers prepared than that.

00:23:25.180 She performed abysmally.

00:23:26.400 And as you correctly pointed out, plenty of people, or not plenty of people, but one other

00:23:31.000 person was fired precisely for that.

00:23:33.740 That ought to be, that's grounds for termination.

00:23:35.780 Apparently that plus all of this plagiarism.

00:23:40.160 I mean, I just can't, I cannot fathom them doing this for many people.

00:23:46.480 It's no joke.

00:23:48.540 I mean, if I had a nickel for every white man who said like, I'm sure I'd get the same

00:23:53.640 treatment, the same bending over backwards, not to fire me as Claudine Gay's been getting

00:23:58.740 nevermind the beautiful, we're so sad and sorry letter from the board.

00:24:04.400 Nevermind the million dollar, almost salary that will continue to go into her coffers.

00:24:09.320 No white guy would have been given these accommodations and not even a white woman.

00:24:14.400 Look what happened to Liz Medill.

00:24:15.600 Bye.

00:24:16.320 Don't let the door hit you.

00:24:18.160 And she didn't have any plagiarism.

00:24:20.280 She only had the comments before Congress.

00:24:23.140 The amazing thing, by the way, is that as you pointed out, Megan, there's a, somebody

00:24:26.820 has collected these online and it's absolutely baffling and dizzying to look at the number

00:24:30.440 of people who've accused those who have exposed Claudine Gay as, and by the way, most people

00:24:37.780 just passing on messages that were out there for a very long time.

00:24:41.220 And as I think I mentioned on the show before, I mean, somebody sent me those allegations

00:24:45.060 before they came out.

00:24:45.920 I mean, I knew about them before they came out and, you know, was starting to look into

00:24:49.600 them and was beaten on that because other people are faster than me.

00:24:53.580 But when everyone is out there saying this must be racist, it's absolutely a racist plot.

00:24:58.860 And the amazing thing is what precipitated all of this is Claudine Gay in front of Congress

00:25:04.980 saying that calling for the extermination of Jews is not a violation of policy.

00:25:10.080 I love the fact that that might not be problematic, but this is racist.

00:25:15.980 But what she said, she was like, well, incredible.

00:25:17.100 But back to Camille's point that she, even in her takedown resignation, is going back to

00:25:22.360 her deep commitment to academic freedom and free speech.

00:25:26.140 And she also said it was racism, too.

00:25:28.340 It's selective.

00:25:28.900 Yeah.

00:25:29.240 Oh, yeah.

00:25:29.700 It's a lie.

00:25:29.960 That's the other thing we didn't even talk about.

00:25:31.140 She played the racism card in which we read yesterday in her resignation saying like she'd

00:25:35.920 been the victim of racism.

00:25:37.380 But I mean, all of it's a lie.

00:25:39.260 She wasn't the victim of racism.

00:25:41.000 Harvard doesn't stand for free speech or academic freedom and hasn't in years.

00:25:45.740 Go ahead, Matt Welsh.

00:25:47.060 Camille's colleagues over at FIRE about 10 days ago published a really interesting Twitter

00:25:52.680 thread, and I'm sure it's a full document on their website saying, OK, let's make let's

00:25:58.060 make something out of this controversy constructed.

00:26:00.000 Here is what Harvard and other universities can do to recommit themselves to free speech

00:26:06.020 and free inquiry and a truly kind of diverse level of thought and understanding.

00:26:11.920 Many things to commend about that.

00:26:13.960 And I have you won't see a shred of that in that long and anguished letter, which that's

00:26:20.940 why it took her so long to resign is that they had to write that letter so long with so many

00:26:24.620 adjectives to get there.

00:26:26.260 And she can't write on her own.

00:26:27.800 So it's nothing to copy from.

00:26:32.020 What are you going to do?

00:26:32.920 It is baffling.

00:26:34.640 Not baffling.

00:26:35.580 It is sadly unsurprising that the same people who are saying, oh, it's all about academic

00:26:40.680 freedom have not been there on any kind of front lines when it comes to opening up academia

00:26:47.400 for free speech.

00:26:48.320 And that means also understanding something that it seems to get lost, not just on campuses,

00:26:52.520 but in the streets of New York, for damn sakes, is that there's a difference between having

00:27:00.220 a conversation, having a civil discourse, et cetera, and engaging in vandalism and illegal

00:27:07.080 conduct and violent confrontation.

00:27:10.560 This bedeviled the university professors when they were in front of Congress.

00:27:14.300 It continues to absolutely flummox college administrators everywhere.

00:27:18.860 And it seems to confuse a lot of people who are trying to get to the airport in New York

00:27:23.180 City without being encumbered by 400, like, snotty-nosed, bedraggled, nothing-burners.

00:27:31.140 Terrorists.

00:27:31.960 They were terrorists.

00:27:32.780 You shut down JFK for your stupid-ass political point.

00:27:35.960 You're a terrorist.

00:27:37.560 I mean, at this point-

00:27:39.900 To Gitmo with you.

00:27:41.140 If it's that easy to close the Brooklyn Bridge, maybe I'll do it to protest Bobby Grinch not

00:27:45.920 being in the Hall of Fame.

00:27:47.080 That's a very good protest.

00:27:47.920 We don't need to go to Gitmo, Moynihan.

00:27:49.320 You know, what we need to do is put them in a room and expose them to, like, 48 hours

00:27:53.940 of baby shark.

00:27:55.180 Just over.

00:27:55.960 Put it on the loose.

00:27:57.360 Over.

00:27:58.060 But I would just say that you're right about that, but I would do that in Gitmo.

00:28:02.960 One thing that we haven't mentioned, by the way, when we're talking about FIRE, is that

00:28:07.120 Harvard was ranked last in all of its free speech rankings last year.

00:28:11.740 And I think it was the lowest.

00:28:12.720 They had, like, a negative score.

00:28:14.440 And the other thing about Claudine Gay, as somebody who cares about academic freedom,

00:28:17.620 there were two professors that were on the other side of her campaigns to ruin their

00:28:22.660 careers.

00:28:23.460 And that was Roland Fryer.

00:28:25.040 And I think the other one was Ronald Sullivan, the law professor.

00:28:28.580 The dean, who they didn't extend his contract again.

00:28:32.220 He's still there, I believe.

00:28:33.780 But they didn't re-up his contract.

00:28:35.980 And, you know, he did the simple thing.

00:28:37.620 And by the way, the Harvard Law School has some really, really smart and interesting people

00:28:41.740 in it.

00:28:42.120 And they have actually defended academic freedom as a group.

00:28:45.300 They've, you know, released statements and they released a statement in defense of

00:28:48.560 Sullivan.

00:28:49.000 And Sullivan's sin, by the way, was acting as defense counsel for Harvey Weinstein.

00:28:55.000 And the people at Harvard Law School had to point out this is one of the foundational

00:28:58.740 principles of our legal system is bad people get representation, too.

00:29:04.700 And she didn't understand that.

00:29:06.220 And now it seems to be a little bit of crying wolf.

00:29:08.680 I mean, look, on the scale of sins you get dragged into a criminal court for, serial rape

00:29:15.300 and sexual assault is very, very bad.

00:29:18.180 But there are some worse ones.

00:29:19.760 And I'm sure any criminal defense attorney, especially those who are in an institution

00:29:23.200 like Harvard, they give their eye teeth to be involved in a case.

00:29:26.680 Well, you know what?

00:29:27.320 I know this for a fact.

00:29:28.480 Alan Dershowitz was a Harvard Law professor for 50 years.

00:29:31.440 He defended Klaus von Bülow.

00:29:33.280 He defended O.J. Simpson.

00:29:34.820 He didn't get kicked out of Harvard.

00:29:36.740 I mean, just like on the rank of sins.

00:29:38.560 I'm just going to put murder and nearly beheading your ex-wife above sexual assault like Harvey

00:29:43.980 did.

00:29:44.900 So, I mean, like the modern day standard.

00:29:46.920 What do they think a criminal defense attorney does?

00:29:49.140 Just sits in his room and thinks about new amendments we can potentially push for on the

00:29:53.320 Bill of Rights.

00:29:54.100 Like they defend accused criminals.

00:29:56.480 It was absurd what they did to that guy, Sullivan.

00:29:58.640 He got punished for something he was doing off campus, which was literally his job.

00:30:02.480 And by the way, the parallel just occurred to me, the O.J. parallel, which was the entire

00:30:09.660 defense was because Mark Furman was the one that found this and he had bad personal views.

00:30:14.780 He couldn't have done this other thing, which is essentially what we're getting right now,

00:30:18.420 right?

00:30:18.600 It's like the person who delivered this information, I think, is bad.

00:30:21.520 I'm not comparing him to Mark Furman or any of these people to Mark Furman, but they're

00:30:24.320 bad.

00:30:24.560 And so, therefore, the larger point is moot, is null and void.

00:30:29.280 You're talking about the attacks on Chris Ruffo?

00:30:31.460 Yeah, or any of these people.

00:30:32.740 And I'm not saying, and again, I'm not comparing them in any way.

00:30:35.800 No, God, no.

00:30:36.720 I'm just saying, but it's the same instinct.

00:30:40.500 The person, that person said the thing or found the thing.

00:30:43.400 But so what was that person actually?

00:30:44.560 What was their motivation?

00:30:45.100 Who are they?

00:30:46.140 And that is more important than the actual crime.

00:30:48.140 Who cares?

00:30:48.600 If she didn't give them the fodder, he couldn't have done what he did.

00:30:54.900 And it wasn't just Chris Ruffo, right?

00:30:56.460 It was Aaron, is it Sibarium over at Washington Free Beacon?

00:31:00.120 I don't want to screw up his name.

00:31:00.920 He did a lot of really great work on it.

00:31:03.020 He did a great job.

00:31:04.220 I was just texting with Eliana Johnson about him.

00:31:06.800 And she said he's a brilliant kid from Yale, has a heart of gold.

00:31:13.320 He's relatively young.

00:31:14.840 And this guy was critical in exposing this woman's plagiarism.

00:31:19.040 Can we just spend a minute on your plagiarism expose, Moynihan?

00:31:22.640 Because this happened in 2019 when I was off.

00:31:24.900 But I do remember this happening to the New York Times woman, right?

00:31:27.840 The editor?

00:31:28.800 Yeah, I've done a few.

00:31:29.880 I've done about four or five of them.

00:31:31.680 It became my beat for a while.

00:31:34.040 Do you just take anybody's random book or post?

00:31:37.280 Is there like the plagiarism machine?

00:31:39.220 No, I don't.

00:31:40.400 There are some people, I guess, that use those things.

00:31:41.920 I mean, there's one that I've been told that is effective,

00:31:44.260 but it's really, really expensive.

00:31:45.460 I don't use it.

00:31:46.260 There are ways of doing it.

00:31:47.560 There are ways of finding like what is Harvard called duplicative language,

00:31:52.380 that sort of thing.

00:31:54.080 And I've done it for a couple, four or five people, maybe five or six, actually.

00:31:58.880 And I don't know the reason is because I can always tell.

00:32:01.700 There's always a way of telling when particularly in certain type of writing,

00:32:05.160 when you have shifts in language, you have shifts in style.

00:32:08.660 There's somebody in particular that is in this universe.

00:32:11.300 It's so funny.

00:32:11.960 Chris Rufo put something up and said, I'm going to offer a bounty for more people.

00:32:17.080 And I'm like, well, maybe you should drop me a line because I got a few that I've discovered.

00:32:21.980 And I'm just like, you know what?

00:32:22.840 I don't really have time for this at the moment.

00:32:24.780 But the thing that bothers me so much about it is that writing is really hard.

00:32:30.640 And I think that people don't really get that, is that, you know, writing an email is easy.

00:32:35.000 Writing, you know, a piece, writing a book, writing a long article is difficult for a

00:32:39.980 lot of reasons.

00:32:40.520 And I don't like people who cheat at it because I've, you know, it's like William F.

00:32:44.020 Buckley, who famously produced, you know, 10 columns a week.

00:32:47.760 He was an incredibly prolific writer, said he hated writing more than anything else in

00:32:51.660 life.

00:32:51.880 But he did it so much that he could just kind of dash these things off in the back of

00:32:55.600 his car on his way back to Connecticut.

00:32:57.640 And that's kind of how he wrote, you know, but he didn't like it because writing isn't

00:33:01.720 fun.

00:33:02.480 And sometimes when you're not having fun doing that, maybe people have this instinct where

00:33:07.640 it's easier to plagiarize now because you can cut and paste and before you'd have to

00:33:10.860 type out these long passages.

00:33:12.220 And it's also easier to get caught.

00:33:14.120 But people don't think about that because most people aren't paying attention.

00:33:18.700 They were paying attention to her because obviously she was under the mic.

00:33:21.880 When, you know, she was appointed president of Harvard, there were people in her field

00:33:28.320 that were like, they started actually with the numbers.

00:33:30.300 They said, you know, her data sets don't look right.

00:33:33.260 And then it came to plagiarism and things like that.

00:33:35.640 But when it came to something like Jill Abrams then, who is the former editor of the New York

00:33:39.120 Times, she wrote a book that had a couple chapters about the place that I used to work.

00:33:43.660 And what piqued my interest is that most of the stuff wasn't true.

00:33:48.160 And then I said, where did she get this?

00:33:49.500 And the first time you see it, you say, oh, God, there's a lot more of this here because

00:33:53.720 the rule of plagiarism, no one ever does it once.

00:33:58.940 No one ever does it for a single cent.

00:34:01.480 Fascinating.

00:34:01.980 They do it always, you know, you know, throughout.

00:34:04.740 And notice with her language, too.

00:34:06.720 And this is what drives me crazy about the people who are defending her.

00:34:09.160 It's not, you know, language that was cut and paste.

00:34:12.380 So when I write, I actually have a system where I label things.

00:34:16.060 If I've cut and paste something, this is interesting.

00:34:17.920 And I want to, like, reincorporate this or this thought or give credit to it.

00:34:21.800 I make sure it's labeled.

00:34:22.820 Sometimes people mess up.

00:34:24.120 That can happen.

00:34:25.100 And it happens once.

00:34:26.060 That's what happens once.

00:34:27.200 But the other thing is that it's usually exactly the same.

00:34:30.100 If it is not exactly the same, as in the case of Claudine Gay, what they do is they try to

00:34:34.620 mask it and try to change a few words here and there, which means if you shroud the sentence

00:34:39.380 in quotation marks on Google, and a lot of your listeners might know this, it'll give

00:34:43.360 you exact results.

00:34:44.220 But they're never exact results.

00:34:45.760 There's ways of finding this stuff where all the language is fairly similar.

00:34:49.520 The verbs change slightly.

00:34:51.540 You know, this to the adjective might slightly change.

00:34:54.060 But the other argument that I've heard quite a bit is that this is common.

00:34:58.540 This is common in academia.

00:35:00.060 Is this common at Harvard?

00:35:01.380 Is this really what you're paying $75,000 a year for your student?

00:35:04.620 Your kid to go to a school where people aren't clever enough to come up with their own language?

00:35:09.660 I mean, do you think Christopher Hitchens, do you think Martin Amis, some of my favorite

00:35:13.620 writers, ever copied a sentence in their life?

00:35:15.500 No, they couldn't keep the sentences in them.

00:35:18.620 They were spilling out constantly, you know?

00:35:20.820 And these people are just like, it is hard.

00:35:22.600 And I want to be in this world.

00:35:24.260 I want to be an academic.

00:35:25.540 And there's shortcuts to take.

00:35:27.000 But just remember, if you're trying to do that, your shortcuts, there's always an asshole

00:35:30.540 like me who's going to try to catch you.

00:35:31.840 But you'd rather somebody go like, I, we had an interesting discussion with our friends

00:35:37.360 the other day, and we were talking, and this guy's a very successful businessman.

00:35:41.380 And we were talking about how so many of these schools just want to build the perfect SAT

00:35:45.780 score.

00:35:46.240 That's all they want to do.

00:35:47.180 They want your, you know, they will teach to the test and they'll make sure that your

00:35:50.800 kid comes out with, you know, the top X percentile on the SAT.

00:35:53.640 And my friends were saying that doesn't produce a leader.

00:35:58.240 That's exactly right.

00:35:59.300 Like how it produces somebody who's very book smart, or at least looks at, you know, who

00:36:02.980 maybe can write the best appellate court brief.

00:36:05.420 But you need, in order to run a company or lead a team, you need a whole different set

00:36:11.080 of skills.

00:36:12.460 And it's almost like they're just looking for the wrong criteria to begin with.

00:36:16.340 You know, it would have been much better for Claudine Gay if she said, I'm not really

00:36:19.500 not a writer.

00:36:20.460 That's not my thing.

00:36:21.420 I teach well, I can excite a room, I'm inspirational to some people, and leaned into whatever quality

00:36:27.340 she really had.

00:36:28.160 I don't know Claudine Gay.

00:36:29.020 This is based on what I've read about her over the past 24 hours.

00:36:31.600 But instead, she had to defrog people.

00:36:34.460 She had to pretend that she was the thing other than what she was, and she got caught.

00:36:38.720 A quick thing on that, by the way, and sorry to interrupt the step on you guys here, but

00:36:43.440 the thing about Claudine Gay and why I pointed out that she went to Phillips Exeter, one of

00:36:48.220 the best schools in America, and then a series of other best schools.

00:36:53.400 One of the things that drives me crazy about this idea of representation in diversity is

00:37:00.740 it's never really diversity.

00:37:02.160 And when people say that, they're talking about diversity of thought.

00:37:04.300 I'm like, no, but I'm actually not even talking about that.

00:37:06.220 I'm talking about diversity of background.

00:37:07.760 Class in particular, and every time I worked at a place, we would hire, make sure that

00:37:13.980 there was a Hispanic person, a Black person, and they all had parents that were doctors,

00:37:19.840 and they all had parents that sent them to Harvard.

00:37:23.040 There are kids, by the way, and this is true, and if you don't think it's true, maybe you're

00:37:27.220 the racist, is that there are kids in the projects.

00:37:30.660 There are kids that come from really, really tough backgrounds who are insanely creative and

00:37:34.880 insanely bright, and if given the opportunity, because the public schools, particularly in

00:37:39.220 the city of New York, where I live, are so terrible, they don't get those opportunities.

00:37:44.620 The teachers' unions are part of the problem there.

00:37:46.720 There's a lot of problems.

00:37:47.780 But you look at the kids that are dealing with that in those boot heels on their necks,

00:37:53.400 and what do they do?

00:37:54.520 They come out, and they don't have the best SAT scores.

00:37:56.780 As you pointed out, Megan, they're trying to keep that 1,600 or whatever it's been inflated

00:38:00.520 to now.

00:38:01.520 They're trying to keep people hard to get into, easy to get out of.

00:38:04.340 It's like, no, no, you should be looking at kids who come from disadvantaged backgrounds,

00:38:09.460 regardless of race, by the way, and kind of try to help them out, because those opportunities

00:38:15.800 are sometimes those people have an incredibly interesting perspective, but aren't going

00:38:19.680 to be booksmarked.

00:38:20.580 What I always notice is what these idiots care about is getting a Hispanic person who happens

00:38:25.820 to be the ambassador from Mexico's daughter.

00:38:29.320 And that actually happened to me.

00:38:31.240 Well, you know, on the same front, yeah, I went to Syracuse, and my college boyfriend

00:38:37.240 was the captain of the lacrosse team there that won three national championships.

00:38:41.800 Of course he was.

00:38:42.100 And in the field of lacrosse, you know, it's like Syracuse.

00:38:45.340 Of course he was.

00:38:45.900 He was.

00:38:46.400 And in the field of lacrosse, you know, it's mostly all these white shoe colleges that produce

00:38:52.420 lacrosse players, especially today.

00:38:53.720 Back then, they had more blue-collar guys who loved lacrosse.

00:38:56.380 Like, he was from Yorktown Heights, New York, which is a nice suburb.

00:39:00.220 But back then, he was, I mean, he was the youngest of nine children in a two-bedroom

00:39:04.080 house, New York City cop, as a dad.

00:39:06.340 He was not privileged.

00:39:07.560 You're thinking about him a lot, Megan.

00:39:10.140 You know a lot.

00:39:11.280 Does Doug know this guy?

00:39:13.040 Doug does know.

00:39:13.700 Doug does know about this guy.

00:39:15.440 But anyway, here's the point about this guy and the others on the team.

00:39:18.340 All these guys, even though we were all at Syracuse, which is not Yale, would get recruited

00:39:23.560 to go to these big banks in New York to work in sales and trading, right?

00:39:28.680 Because they knew these guys knew how to deal with other guys, to have a good time, to sort

00:39:36.460 of, not whatever, they might call it bro culture today, but that would be diminishing of these

00:39:40.480 guys.

00:39:40.760 They weren't that way.

00:39:41.620 They were just cool guys who knew how to interact in a way that would make others feel

00:39:45.880 comfortable.

00:39:46.640 Others want to be with them.

00:39:48.340 They weren't looking for, necessarily, the smartest book smart guy.

00:39:53.300 And I actually think that system could work, you know, and it could be open to more guys

00:39:57.360 than just, you know, the white kids who are in private schools around New York.

00:40:01.460 You know what I mean?

00:40:01.760 If you did find guys with this personality or this ability to sort of reach out to others

00:40:06.420 and give them those jobs, they could crush.

00:40:08.800 They don't, not everybody has to be able to write the perfect appellate court brief.

00:40:13.520 I think it's, looking at Harvard, it is like a lot of these institutions.

00:40:18.000 Philip Sexton is one of them.

00:40:20.320 It's useful to look at them as kind of the, they are elite factories.

00:40:26.060 They produce elite.

00:40:27.600 There's always going to, whether or not the actual level of talent, the quality of person,

00:40:35.760 we might consider elite.

00:40:37.000 But the most elite people in the country are going to gather in a university setting and

00:40:41.900 perpetuate their status for their kids.

00:40:45.000 That's just going to happen whether we like it or not.

00:40:47.140 I happen to not be a huge fan.

00:40:48.560 But the people who rise to the top of that system are going to reflect the changes in what the values are

00:40:58.280 that elite institutions now favor.

00:41:03.300 And I think in that sense, it's not a surprise that we see the emergence of someone like Claudine Gay

00:41:10.500 as opposed to Lauren Summers, right?

00:41:12.180 Larry Summers, who was a predecessor of hers.

00:41:15.220 He is like a total 90s guy, right?

00:41:17.540 There couldn't be someone who's more sort of neoliberal, a bunch of books, you know,

00:41:23.920 academic, sort of rough, Clintonites, whatever, right?

00:41:26.780 Like he just smells like the 1990s version of what elite Harvard is.

00:41:31.940 She looks like the elite of 2020, right?

00:41:34.820 We've seen in all of these institutions this incredible creation of a bureaucracy

00:41:40.460 that has figured out how to talk in this completely tortured language that is inadmissible for normal people.

00:41:47.860 I mean, that's one of the reasons why the congressional meetup was so incredibly fascinating to watch

00:41:53.660 and disastrous is because these people who learned an entire system that's insane

00:41:58.400 and the lingo that's associated with it that is designed to repel kind of normal people.

00:42:05.000 You have to, like, go intricately through all of these different things.

00:42:08.120 She is a reflection of what the elite is, and that is why this is not the last of one of these types of scandals.

00:42:14.860 It's not necessarily going to be plagiarism.

00:42:16.800 It's going to be that the systems that have been built up, particularly over the last 10 years,

00:42:21.520 in elite institutions and not just in academia, in media and a lot of other places as well.

00:42:27.160 Those systems are kind of crazy.

00:42:29.720 It's a lot of bureaucracy.

00:42:31.060 It's a lot of diversity, equity, and inclusion, mumbo-jumbo.

00:42:34.700 And before that all gets rolled back, and I don't think it'll ever get fully rolled back,

00:42:38.800 we're going to look around and say, my God.

00:42:40.720 I mean, the most interesting thing to me in terms of who's coming out of this unscathed is Columbia University.

00:42:45.440 How the hell did Columbia University escape by the last two – they produce more of that badness in the system

00:42:53.740 through the Teachers College, through the Center for International Public Affairs, through the Journalism School.

00:42:59.620 They are producing these kind of elite ideas and attitudes that I think have been largely poisonous in the system of elite America,

00:43:09.280 and it's going to take a long time for that to be rolled back.

00:43:11.960 It's not a surprise that you see people rise up who just don't seem all of that normal or great or impressive

00:43:20.280 under even the 1990s rules of what elite used to be.

00:43:24.260 But that's because elites themselves have changed, and this is what they're producing, and it is repellent.

00:43:30.300 I wanted to say one other thing.

00:43:31.820 I'm going to take a break, but I've got to give a shout-out to Colin Wright.

00:43:35.060 He's, among other things, at the Manhattan Institute.

00:43:37.700 And he predicted on December 19th the following.

00:43:44.840 Harvard President Claudine Gay will resign, but she will not admit any wrongdoing.

00:43:48.860 Again, this is December 19th, right, that she resigned on January 2nd or 3rd, whatever it was yesterday.

00:43:53.740 She will resign, but she will not admit any wrongdoing.

00:43:55.820 Instead, she will claim to be the victim of a racist right-wing witch hunt that is impacting her mental health

00:44:01.000 and causing a needless distraction for students and faculty.

00:44:04.660 Her resignation, just to give you a couple highlights,

00:44:09.160 it's become clear that it's in the best interest of Harvard for me to resign so the community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge,

00:44:15.920 which will focus on the institution rather than any individual.

00:44:19.860 She goes on.

00:44:20.380 Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate

00:44:26.860 and upholding scholarly rigor to bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am

00:44:32.020 and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.

00:44:39.880 Colin Wright nailed it.

00:44:41.620 Your business doesn't move in a straight line.

00:44:45.140 Make sure your team is taken care of through every twist and turn

00:44:48.280 with Canada Life savings, retirement, and benefits plans.

00:44:51.880 Whether you want to grow your team, support your employees at every stage,

00:44:55.480 or build a workplace people want to be a part of,

00:44:58.500 Canada Life has flexible plans for companies of all sizes,

00:45:01.720 so it's easy to find a solution that works for you.

00:45:04.740 Visit CanadaLife.com slash EmployeeBenefits to learn more.

00:45:09.180 Canada Life.

00:45:10.260 Insurance.

00:45:11.200 Investments.

00:45:12.040 Advice.

00:45:16.260 So you guys, I won't say I almost didn't make it to today's show.

00:45:20.980 I did make it with plenty of time,

00:45:23.280 but my team has told me that they are convinced one of these days I'm not going to make it

00:45:28.320 because I have a little issue of keeping my car's gas tank off of E.

00:45:35.440 And I am just like Kramer.

00:45:38.420 I feel the need to push it.

00:45:39.840 I've got to put, I do not fill up that tank until it's dangerous,

00:45:43.920 until it's told bad for the engine.

00:45:46.400 It's something in me.

00:45:47.760 And one of the commentators on Twitter was saying,

00:45:50.100 you're either one or the other.

00:45:51.100 You're either, as soon as it gets below half a tank,

00:45:53.840 you've got to go refill your gas tank,

00:45:55.380 or you're like I am, like Kramer is.

00:45:58.200 Who could forget this from Seinfeld?

00:46:00.160 Watch.

00:46:01.800 What is it now?

00:46:03.020 There's still some overlap between the needle and the slash below the E.

00:46:06.120 Where are you going to go?

00:46:07.660 Oh, I've been in the slash many times.

00:46:09.680 This is nothing.

00:46:10.740 You could do it.

00:46:11.660 Just put it out of your mind.

00:46:15.120 Have you ever been completely below the slash?

00:46:19.620 Well, I almost did once, and I blacked out.

00:46:22.060 What a great show.

00:46:25.600 This is me.

00:46:26.760 This is me.

00:46:27.820 And unfortunately for my husband, Doug, he's in the other camp.

00:46:30.880 So he gets very stressed out by my practice.

00:46:33.020 I get in the car this morning and take,

00:46:34.560 I had to take my little guy to school.

00:46:35.720 Doug took my other two.

00:46:37.180 And I see that the gas tank, I've only got 14 miles left.

00:46:41.580 And I know his school is about 11 miles away.

00:46:44.280 So I'm like, I'm good.

00:46:45.100 I'm fine.

00:46:45.880 I can, I can.

00:46:46.840 You got to get back.

00:46:47.920 But then, well, I figured I'd just go to the gas station at some point after.

00:46:52.520 And I didn't bother to see whether it was in three miles of, you know, where the school was.

00:46:56.040 But I know the dashboard lies.

00:46:59.560 I don't believe the dashboard of the gas fuel tank gauge.

00:47:03.700 And so we're driving.

00:47:05.120 I'm like, Thatcher, you know, I'm down to seven.

00:47:08.680 He's like, how far away is the school?

00:47:10.200 I'm like, I think it might be about seven.

00:47:12.260 And he's like, okay, it goes down.

00:47:15.300 It's down at two.

00:47:16.780 By the time I get to drop them off, it's at two, which I took a picture of and sent to

00:47:20.640 poor Doug, which was really mean because it just drove up his agita.

00:47:23.600 There it was at two.

00:47:25.400 Two.

00:47:26.260 Are you kidding me?

00:47:26.900 The seatbelt sign's on because my little guy had gotten out of the back seat and he was

00:47:30.500 going into school at 8 a.m.

00:47:32.100 So now I got two miles to get to the gas, but I don't believe it.

00:47:34.860 I know there's a reserve in there that they're not telling me about because they built it

00:47:38.500 for people like me.

00:47:39.440 So I kept going and look what came up on the gauge next.

00:47:43.720 Look, this I've never seen before.

00:47:45.360 Look.

00:47:45.740 What?

00:47:46.420 Can you see it?

00:47:47.100 I can't.

00:47:47.660 No.

00:47:48.040 Flatline.

00:47:48.860 We'll zoom in.

00:47:50.120 It's a nothing.

00:47:51.700 It's literally a flatline.

00:47:53.800 That's just gone.

00:47:57.660 He's going to do drugs, you know, for their kicks.

00:48:01.760 There's other things to do.

00:48:03.980 But you know what happened?

00:48:04.880 I dropped him off.

00:48:06.040 His last words to me, his 10 was, were good luck.

00:48:09.440 You're going to need it.

00:48:11.460 And off I went.

00:48:12.780 They said that the nearest gas thing was, I think, 11 miles away.

00:48:16.260 I was on E for a long time, just like Kramer.

00:48:18.760 Made it.

00:48:19.160 No problem.

00:48:19.520 Look what happened.

00:48:20.120 By 816.

00:48:21.100 Can you show him the picture?

00:48:23.240 Stay by.

00:48:25.340 So proud.

00:48:27.080 454 miles.

00:48:28.200 Boom.

00:48:28.960 By 816.

00:48:29.460 You are a menace, Ms. Kelly.

00:48:31.860 Megan?

00:48:33.400 Megan, do you need to borrow some money or something?

00:48:36.200 Like, I can Venmo you if you need a little for, like, gas money or whatever.

00:48:40.220 I'm winning.

00:48:40.680 I'm winning.

00:48:40.780 I'm winning.

00:48:40.920 You're winning.

00:48:41.620 What's the winning?

00:48:42.860 You're winning.

00:48:43.460 I'm winning.

00:48:44.140 It's just less time at the gas station.

00:48:46.840 That's how it feels.

00:48:47.680 Are you in?

00:48:48.580 There's a parallel.

00:48:50.260 This is a parallel between people who do this and people who get to the airport, like

00:48:54.580 three minutes before the flight leaves.

00:48:56.220 Of course.

00:48:56.820 Of course.

00:48:57.500 Shocker.

00:48:58.100 I always, Doug always says, I'm not happy unless my lungs are burning when I sit down

00:49:02.040 on the plane.

00:49:02.600 And I'm like, nailed it.

00:49:04.520 Yeah, that's, you didn't nail it.

00:49:06.380 You didn't nail it.

00:49:07.680 There's going to be a video, by the way, that goes viral of you screaming at a gate agent.

00:49:12.140 Yeah.

00:49:13.040 I'm fucking, I don't have to because my system works perfect.

00:49:16.580 He wants to go three hours in advance.

00:49:18.260 And God forbid we have the family with us and an international trip.

00:49:21.740 You could bring a sleeping bag.

00:49:23.180 The amount of time he wants to leave between us and the flight.

00:49:25.680 I'm with him.

00:49:26.840 He and Abby are the same.

00:49:29.020 And Steve Krakauer and Debbie Murphy, my producers, are very, very stressed out.

00:49:33.100 They're texting me saying, Debbie Murphy says, this is just like when you're on the air

00:49:37.640 and you won't wrap.

00:49:38.600 And our days at Fox, she said, the dashboard is the problem.

00:49:41.560 It states, please refuel for you.

00:49:43.840 It needs to be.

00:49:44.460 I'm serious.

00:49:45.560 Refuel.

00:49:46.960 I see the number on the screen ticking down now.

00:49:49.920 Can I just keep talking?

00:49:51.040 If it goes to say, MK, you're not going to make it seriously right now.

00:50:00.700 Go.

00:50:01.580 We got eight minutes.

00:50:02.560 I could introduce a whole new topic.

00:50:04.680 Oh, but they really don't want me to.

00:50:06.860 Stand by.

00:50:07.940 We'll be right back.

00:50:09.160 Your business doesn't move in a straight line.

00:50:11.900 Make sure your team is taken care of through every twist and turn with Canada Life savings,

00:50:16.840 retirement and benefits plans.

00:50:18.440 Whether you want to grow your team, support your employees at every stage, or build a workplace

00:50:23.280 people want to be a part of, Canada Life has flexible plans for companies of all sizes.

00:50:28.520 So it's easy to find a solution that works for you.

00:50:31.920 Visit CanadaLife.com slash employee benefits to learn more.

00:50:35.980 Canada Life.

00:50:37.140 Insurance.

00:50:38.020 Investments.

00:50:38.820 Advice.

00:50:39.300 A bit of breaking news right now.

00:50:44.420 I called for the impeachment of Mayorkas at the beginning of this hour.

00:50:47.800 Guess what?

00:50:48.080 They're doing it.

00:50:49.000 They're doing it.

00:50:49.820 What else should we wish for, guys?

00:50:51.220 What else?

00:50:51.820 What's on our list?

00:50:53.400 Oh, my God.

00:50:54.220 Peace on Earth.

00:50:56.280 Goodwill toward all men.

00:50:57.840 The Epstein list.

00:50:58.580 All right.

00:50:59.560 A lacrosse player from Syracuse.

00:51:03.240 Here's the release.

00:51:05.260 House Republicans moving forward with impeachment proceedings against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

00:51:11.900 The proceedings will begin January 10th with the House Homeland Security Committee holding

00:51:15.740 a first impeachment hearing.

00:51:17.420 A committee spokesperson told USA Today, Punchbowl News, first reported news of the hearing.

00:51:22.280 This concerns allegations that Mayorkas has been derelict in his duty of managing the

00:51:27.180 border or Reuters.

00:51:28.380 They've been trying to get this done in the House, and they haven't actually had the GOP

00:51:32.060 votes.

00:51:32.880 There's been like some eight holdouts saying, eh, he's like he's derelict in his duties,

00:51:36.780 but it doesn't rise to the level of impeachment.

00:51:39.980 And now things appear to be swinging the other way.

00:51:45.420 So, yeah, we'll see what happens with him.

00:51:47.820 I mean, look, I'm just horrified by these numbers.

00:51:50.380 They're terrible.

00:51:51.120 We have no border.

00:51:53.520 The number was 302,000 in this past month, in the month of December.

00:51:58.600 302,000, you know, undocumented migrants coming across the border.

00:52:03.220 That doesn't include the God of Ways.

00:52:05.700 It literally is almost now equal with and about to exceed the birth rate in the United States.

00:52:13.000 More people coming in from other countries than are being born to American mothers.

00:52:17.440 Like there's something deeply wrong about this.

00:52:20.240 And maybe maybe they're targeting the wrong guy because it's really his boss who ultimately

00:52:25.400 should be directing the administration's immigration policy.

00:52:28.860 But even you guys is more I don't know if it's fair to say you're more open borders guys, but you're libertarians.

00:52:35.760 You even you have to see that this is this is out of control.

00:52:40.440 Completely out of control.

00:52:41.380 I mean, 300,000 in a month is absolutely astonishing.

00:52:44.860 I mean, you have a border.

00:52:46.400 I mean, it's a very simple proposition.

00:52:48.900 If you if you want to have a border, you have to have some measure of enforcement.

00:52:52.380 And it strikes most people.

00:52:54.000 And by the way, this is true of both Democrats and Republicans.

00:52:56.520 I mean, I'm keeping in mind in the past, you know, Bernie Sanders was somebody very, very critical of more open borders because the left wing argument always was that more immigrant labor pushes down working class wages.

00:53:10.600 And there is some evidence to suggest that that is absolutely true.

00:53:14.540 So, I mean, there are a number of ramifications from this across the board, whether it's from, you know, welfare state stuff, whether it's, you know, job market stuff.

00:53:23.280 But beyond anything is that there has to be some system and most people are totally baffled by this.

00:53:28.660 And I've talked to a few voters about this when I was in Texas doing a story about this.

00:53:34.280 And by the way, all of them are Hispanic, that, you know, what they're baffled by the fact that you cannot apprehend somebody and send them back.

00:53:42.600 And this is beyond, you know, something about seeking asylum, et cetera.

00:53:46.760 And I think, Megan, you played on the show the other day.

00:53:49.080 I can't remember who it was saying that, you know, everybody has a right to come to America and seek asylum.

00:53:54.560 The mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, who loves having parties that white people can't attend.

00:54:01.220 And it's a great place, by the way. But, you know, this kind of thing is is is baffling to people.

00:54:07.220 And it should be something that when they're an open border is an open border.

00:54:11.180 I mean, when I was down on the border, you had Governor Abbott, who was sending the Texas Rangers and everybody out there to try to do something.

00:54:17.900 And when I talked to these people, they said there is nothing we can do.

00:54:20.980 We're absolutely overwhelmed. And I think that was the week where there was the false story that the migrants are being whipped.

00:54:29.260 And that is, you know, we're trying to apprehend people into, you know, that's that's what these people have to deal with when they're in this job.

00:54:36.920 And apprehending them is kind of useless anyway.

00:54:41.260 Well, it's amazing because Texas actually had to pass a law.

00:54:44.420 They just passed a law saying we're going to take care of it.

00:54:47.960 We're going to start arresting illegals and we're going to deport them.

00:54:50.100 And the feds, the Biden administration, has stepped in to say, oh, no, you won't because of federalism.

00:54:56.420 And unfortunately, the Biden administration is right.

00:54:59.940 That is the way the Constitution works.

00:55:02.460 When the feds haven't legislated, the states are free to legislate as they want.

00:55:06.060 When the feds have the responsibility of the legislating and have legislated, though not in the way most of us would like to see,

00:55:13.100 you can't it's their field to legislate in and they preempt the state law.

00:55:16.960 That's really the way immigration works.

00:55:19.360 And I applaud Governor Abbott for trying to do something about this, Matt, but that's not going to work.

00:55:25.240 It's going to be struck down in the courts.

00:55:26.900 And Texas has been really suffering trying to just do anything.

00:55:33.360 Even if they got rid of Mayorkas, the next guy is going to just be pushing Biden's policies to the that power the president has and that the executive branch has was expanded by Donald Trump.

00:55:44.260 So in the defense of his own more restrictionist policies.

00:55:48.640 So it's just always an object lesson in the way that power works in Washington.

00:55:52.660 If you're if your guy gets more power, the guy that you hate is also going to get more power.

00:55:57.780 He's going to use it in a different way.

00:56:00.300 One thing that that is always brought to mind about this and one reason why we're in this cycle.

00:56:05.580 Right. Take a broader view or a longer view of 30 years, 35 years, 35 years ago, there wasn't a mile even really of a wall or fencing.

00:56:16.640 Now we have what, 650 miles of some kind of barrier or some of the concrete, some of it imposing, some of it less.

00:56:23.720 So there when people get mad about illegal immigration, which they are right now, and I understand that and and the chaos is is infuriating and just kind of horrific to grapple with.

00:56:37.780 The instinct too often, in my view, is that they want to restrict legal immigration in those moments.

00:56:45.680 Donald Trump did everything in his power to basically stop America as a destination country for refugees, which is completely a historical.

00:56:52.580 That's not what we used to do in the 70s and 80s under both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

00:56:58.180 We were the primary destination for refugee populations who could totally enrich the country right from Cuba, from Vietnam, from Russia, from Iran, came to this country.

00:57:07.620 We no longer are that country anymore.

00:57:11.600 Part of what happens when you restrict the ways for legal immigrants to go in is that, of course, people find their way around in the other 1300 miles that is not fenced off.

00:57:22.240 They go around the normal way.

00:57:24.480 Like there's we did a magazine cover or graphic when I was editor of Reason called Get in Line Now Stay Out.

00:57:32.260 It's a bit cheeky.

00:57:33.160 But if you look at the actual flow chart of what would happen if you were a Filipino wanting to come here and immigrate legally, perfectly legally as a nurse,

00:57:40.720 which is something that people have done for a long time because we have a nursing shortage or we've decided that we have a nursing shortage.

00:57:47.800 That's a longer story about the nurses union in California.

00:57:51.680 But so if you do everything right, it takes 19 years.

00:57:54.960 That's not really a way to get people to come in legally.

00:58:00.180 But it's counterintuitive to say that, oh, we need more legal immigration to have less illegal immigration.

00:58:05.200 People already you've already lost the plot with a lot of people.

00:58:07.760 And so we go into these cycles now where both sides, in my opinion, love the issue.

00:58:13.220 They don't love solving the issue.

00:58:14.860 Democrats love to say, yeah, we're here for the dreamers, man.

00:58:17.240 We're just like trying to do all this.

00:58:18.800 And they never, ever pass any bill that actually does anything with them.

00:58:23.840 Well, to your point, Matt, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Donald Trump had a Republican Congress when he first took over in the White House.

00:58:30.760 I believe he did, too.

00:58:31.380 Always look at what happens in the first two years of a presidency when they have all the power.

00:58:35.940 What do they do with immigration?

00:58:37.320 In Donald Trump's case, well, he tried the Muslim ban.

00:58:39.780 So he did actually try to do his own executive power thing.

00:58:43.060 All the stuff he did could be easily undone, to your point.

00:58:46.320 I mean, we really do want a small executive.

00:58:48.300 People need to be reminded of this all the time.

00:58:50.440 We need a small executive.

00:58:51.480 We did not want a king.

00:58:52.520 That's not what the founders created this country for.

00:58:54.820 There's a reason why Article 1 of the Constitution establishes the legislative branch first.

00:58:59.400 The legislative branch, the people who answer directly to us.

00:59:03.260 And the president comes second.

00:59:05.220 He's after.

00:59:06.040 He's supposed to be smaller.

00:59:07.120 We want his power to be tiny, teeny, tiny.

00:59:09.920 He's harder to fire.

00:59:11.500 And it's no one man or woman should have that much authority over us.

00:59:15.180 And by the way, they're not using it properly.

00:59:17.440 It is getting they skip the legislative branch altogether so they can put their agenda items and then they just get undone.

00:59:23.060 This problem is really pernicious in New York City, where I know you guys are.

00:59:28.360 There's lines going around the block yesterday for the guaranteed housing that New York is offering because it's a sanctuary city.

00:59:37.440 So these illegal migrants come in.

00:59:41.360 They go up to New York, either because they're being bussed there by the Biden administration or they're putting they're putting them on planes.

00:59:47.640 The New York Post has documented this.

00:59:48.900 They get off at Westchester Airport and then they run around New York or because some southern state governor has bussed them up here.

00:59:55.320 And then they get free housing, but only for like 30 to 60 days.

00:59:58.800 And then they just get out.

00:59:59.520 All you have to do is get back in line and back into the free housing free in quotes, air quotes, free.

01:00:05.440 So the actual taxpayers of New York City are paying for this through the nose.

01:00:10.520 And what are they supposed?

01:00:11.940 I mean, like, yes, you should vote in a Republican, but even the Democrat in charge of New York now is starting to get it.

01:00:17.120 Speaking up about it.

01:00:18.540 His solutions are left wing solutions.

01:00:20.860 More money from the feds.

01:00:22.340 Faster work permits for the illegals.

01:00:24.140 Well, that's an incentive for more to come.

01:00:26.680 Just no one is in charge.

01:00:28.260 I really believe this is one of the reasons why Donald Trump's numbers are so strong.

01:00:32.200 They people are feeling this.

01:00:33.920 They're feeling this in northern cities, in southern cities.

01:00:36.400 The problem gets worse by the day.

01:00:38.080 A great get rid of Mayorkas until you get rid of Biden or somebody who's in favor of this shit.

01:00:43.180 It's going to keep happening.

01:00:45.200 Yeah, it's certainly one of those situations where it's impossible to say that Donald Trump got got everything right on the border.

01:00:51.380 He certainly didn't complete the wall that he promised to build.

01:00:54.560 He didn't end the problem.

01:00:55.780 But he did talk honestly, for the most part, about what was going on.

01:01:01.540 At a minimum, the thing that he said that left people most incensed was saying there was a crisis on the border.

01:01:06.340 That there was, to quote him, an invasion.

01:01:09.440 At a minimum, there has been a crisis on the border for a very long time.

01:01:13.020 It wasn't racist to say so when Donald Trump said it.

01:01:15.280 It was correct.

01:01:16.480 And at this point, it is a full-blown, undeniable crisis.

01:01:19.100 And the Biden administration has spent much of recent weeks trying to shift blame on this away from themselves and away from the policies that they have generally supported and towards Republicans, insisting that they're the ones who really don't want to protect the border, which is a little bit hard to swallow.

01:01:35.820 But, of course, there's a hell of a lot of politics being paid right now.

01:01:38.580 As you pointed out, Megan, I think it's fair to say that I, at least, I don't know about all of us uniformly, I'm generally in favor of very permissive immigration policy.

01:01:49.120 But what I'm most in favor of, specifically, is a functional immigration policy, something that is coherent, something that both at the national level permits it possible for people to come here who would like to improve the quality of their lives.

01:02:02.020 And at the local level, it doesn't involve incredible entitlements being created that incentivize people to come that have no real means of taking care of themselves or finding a job on their own if they manage to immigrate to the country.

01:02:16.120 I'm a first-generation immigrant.

01:02:17.760 My grandfather and grandmother who came, my grandmother was a duressic worker.

01:02:22.340 My grandfather was an illiterate dock worker.

01:02:24.220 He died signing his name with an X.

01:02:26.600 Like, we probably wouldn't have been able to come here under certain policies, but I think I've made some pretty important contributions to this country.

01:02:36.920 Immigration policy that makes it possible for me to come here, that makes it possible for me to come here to this fabulous country and be a part and contribute is wonderful.

01:02:46.260 An immigration policy that creates the kind of chaos that we're seeing on the southern border and the chaos that we're seeing in blue states and blue cities all across the country is not functional and reasonable.

01:02:58.320 So there's a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done here politically.

01:03:01.080 And a lot of the attempts to blame shift and, you know, point fingers in one direction or another or insist that people are racist for being concerned about this are just dead wrong.

01:03:10.780 And I think you've got a lot of southern state, border state Democrats who are concerned about these issues and have talked about them in soberer ways than we've seen on the national level.

01:03:21.860 One can only hope that we start to get our act together because this is awful.

01:03:25.640 It is a genuine concern from a national security standpoint and is a real human tragedy.

01:03:30.020 There are people who are suffering because they're participating in these caravans and going to the southern border.

01:03:36.260 So there's so many reasons to be meaningfully concerned about it.

01:03:38.940 And I just wish there were more serious political conversations happening around these issues.

01:03:43.840 There's no one who looks at the images from those caravans and says, well, this is sensible.

01:03:48.140 This is the way it should be done.

01:03:49.520 I mean, that's the first reaction people have.

01:03:51.360 And as a little game, I would recommend viewers and listeners go back to the Trump years and find the endless numbers of media accounts that said that the crisis on the border was misinformation and was false.

01:04:08.680 That was that was four years of that, that this didn't this was not a real thing.

01:04:13.220 This was a fake crisis.

01:04:14.240 It was not a fake crisis.

01:04:15.400 And we saw that it you know, the incentives are for a caravan of people to come.

01:04:21.320 The immigrants that are coming know exactly what to do.

01:04:23.800 I mean, I remember this when I was in Sweden is that, you know, people would come from the Middle East to Greece and to Italy.

01:04:31.360 Pretty hospitable climates for people that are from the Middle East.

01:04:34.660 And somehow they would try to go to the northernmost point in Europe, which is Sweden and unbelievably inhospitable and cold, but very hospitable when it came to giving people apartments, giving people asylum.

01:04:49.160 Very easy process there.

01:04:50.860 People know what they're doing.

01:04:52.040 They know exactly what they're doing, what they're going to get when when they get here.

01:04:55.600 Taking away that incentive.

01:04:57.280 I mean, I think Matt's right.

01:04:58.580 It was an enormous number of contributions.

01:05:01.360 Of people that came from Vietnam after the Vietnam War, which, by the way, we had a very particular responsibility for those people after fighting the Vietnam War and from Russia, et cetera.

01:05:11.320 But, you know, when you have people that are claiming asylum, that they say that, you know, I'm in trouble in Guatemala or Honduras or something.

01:05:20.640 It's like, well, you've just walked through a number of countries that could provide you the safety.

01:05:25.020 That's not what you're looking for.

01:05:26.300 You're an economic migrant.

01:05:27.620 You didn't ask Mexico to help you.

01:05:28.880 Right.

01:05:29.120 You just want to be here.

01:05:29.980 It's a lie.

01:05:30.680 And we know it's a lie.

01:05:32.060 The whole thing is a, you know, it's chicken and egg what you were talking about, Matt, because the higher the illegal immigrant immigration, the less amenable the American people are to legal immigration.

01:05:43.680 They just start to say, you know what?

01:05:45.340 It's like the sign from Homer Simpson.

01:05:47.380 Go home.

01:05:47.900 The country's full.

01:05:48.820 That's how they're feeling.

01:05:49.780 Like, get out.

01:05:50.420 We're done.

01:05:51.060 You know, we are hospitable.

01:05:52.320 We are welcoming.

01:05:53.000 We have been it's been abused and now Americans are suffering.

01:05:56.780 And so we're going full hard line.

01:05:58.780 And there's just I mean, look, if this Biden administration were serious about doing something along the southern border and it's not, it would consult with somebody like Stephen Miller.

01:06:07.820 Honestly, that guy had real plans for stopping the flow of illegal migrants across that border, like the remain in Mexico policy, which the Biden administration is now much warmer to like making you seek asylum in a country.

01:06:22.640 You can't seek asylum here unless you've already sought it in a country prior to getting here and so on.

01:06:27.540 And this is what I think.

01:06:30.160 I want something closer to Australia's immigration policy.

01:06:34.660 You know, the movie, I make this reference all the time.

01:06:36.480 I'm going to have them cut the clip so I can just press it like a button on my little Sirius XM button box.

01:06:41.400 You know, the scene in A Christmas Story with Ralphie where he wants the gun and he finally gets on Santa's lap and forgets to say he wants the BB gun and he starts going down the slide.

01:06:52.440 And then he remembers, oh, my God, I forgot to say it.

01:06:54.640 And he climbs up to the top of the slide.

01:06:56.900 And you remember what happens to him?

01:06:58.320 He gets a boot in the forehead, boot in the forehead, back down the slide.

01:07:02.460 That's what Australia does to illegal immigrants.

01:07:04.780 That's what we need to do.

01:07:06.960 You go over to Australia and you're not supposed to be there.

01:07:10.240 They put you in a detention facility like that.

01:07:13.460 You are in immigrant jail, effectively, and you do not get out of immigrant jail until you can prove that you are deserving of a visa or some other legal presence.

01:07:23.440 In Australia, I mean, good luck to you in trying to get in there.

01:07:27.180 That's why they don't have the problems we have.

01:07:28.780 One of these days I'm going to put on Paul Murray, who I love.

01:07:31.120 He's over there on Sky News.

01:07:32.400 He's going to explain it all to us.

01:07:33.660 But we need something other than what we have because it's a hot mess.

01:07:36.180 All right.

01:07:36.300 Let me move on.

01:07:36.880 I want to do politics.

01:07:40.060 There's another debate sort of next week.

01:07:43.620 A couple of things are happening in the political world.

01:07:45.140 Number one, it's official now, according to FiveThirtyEight polling.

01:07:49.220 Nikki Haley is number two behind Donald Trump and DeSantis is number three.

01:07:56.240 You know, it's like she's like a point ahead of him.

01:07:59.160 It's not a meaningful lead, but she has some teeny tiny bit of momentum and he doesn't.

01:08:04.160 Um, this as the two of them, Haley and DeSantis are about to face off against each other on

01:08:10.140 CNN on January 8th.

01:08:12.120 Is it the 8th or the 10th?

01:08:13.740 You'll look it up.

01:08:14.960 Um, and it's just those two.

01:08:17.040 It's DeSantis versus Haley.

01:08:19.000 Uh, CNN required you to have 10% in, I think, either three national or one Iowa poll.

01:08:24.760 It's on the 10th.

01:08:25.500 And the only two to make it were those two.

01:08:28.660 So they'll go mano a mano, which doesn't mean man to man.

01:08:33.140 It means hand to hand combat.

01:08:34.920 Hello.

01:08:35.640 And, uh, one person very upset about this is your pal, Matt Welsh, because I read your

01:08:41.540 Reason article about him, Vivek Ramaswamy.

01:08:43.720 He's very upset that he was kept out of the CNN debate and is going to be counter-programming

01:08:51.700 with an interview with Tim Poole, which I think with all due respect to those two will be

01:08:56.960 watched by absolutely no one, at least live, because the real Vivek, Donald Trump, is having

01:09:04.280 a live town hall on Fox at the same moment.

01:09:08.440 He's trans-Trump.

01:09:09.500 He identifies as Trump.

01:09:12.320 That's a real thing by a comedian, and it's amazing.

01:09:14.740 It's amazing.

01:09:15.260 The great Kyle Donegan, yes.

01:09:16.280 What do you make of the, what's going on on the 10th between the GOP candidates?

01:09:21.680 I'm kind of relieved.

01:09:22.900 I generally want more people on a debate stage than less, uh, especially when it comes to

01:09:27.420 general elections.

01:09:28.200 I would like the third party and weirdo independent candidates to be up there, um, just because

01:09:33.400 I'm more likely to vote for them, but also because I think America needs more than what

01:09:37.820 we're going to get in 2020, what we're going to get good and hard, uh, in 2020.

01:09:42.140 Um, but in this case, um, there's there, whatever year we are in, uh, it's, it's always 2020.

01:09:48.320 Like we haven't climbed out of that rut yet.

01:09:50.840 It's true too.

01:09:51.580 Um, but, uh, in the case of the, if you're not going to have Trump on the debate stage

01:09:56.900 and there's no reason for him to do it, so he's not going to, um, then the question is

01:10:01.420 who's going, who has a meaningful chance of taking him on.

01:10:05.340 And Vivek Ramaswamy, as interesting as he is on, in many ways, um, he hasn't demonstrated,

01:10:11.840 uh, except for that little period of time when he was polling nationally around seven or 8%

01:10:15.820 when he first sort of like broke through and that, you know, was arguably the most interesting

01:10:20.160 person in the, in the race on some level.

01:10:22.240 Um, but he has not, uh, concentrated meaningfully on one of the early States in such a way to

01:10:28.760 kind of break through or have a normal window of opportunity in there.

01:10:33.080 Um, uh, so he's not polling nationally near 10%.

01:10:35.800 He's not polling in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, or anywhere else like that,

01:10:39.400 uh, close to 10%.

01:10:40.500 So it kind of does make sense to let's see the difference between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.

01:10:45.240 Um, and see how they behave in that, uh, uh, kind of rehearsal for what it's going to be

01:10:51.180 like when there's just, uh, two people, um, or a very small number of people on stage.

01:10:57.040 Um, so, you know, Vivek did the exact thing that you'd expect as he slightly preempted CNN

01:11:01.480 and, and said, you know, he's going to go, he's going to, gloves are off now, you know,

01:11:05.200 because up to now he's really been restraining himself from saying every damn cool thing.

01:11:11.260 They gave him a town hall.

01:11:12.440 Like they haven't, he's had an opportunity to go on CNN.

01:11:15.240 He didn't qualify.

01:11:16.460 Chris Christie didn't qualify either.

01:11:18.220 Of a browbeating.

01:11:19.560 My God, CNN, I think before even the town hall had happened, had already had this Oliver

01:11:24.640 Darcy, like hand wringing, like my God, they're just platforming this person with their dangerous

01:11:30.040 ideas.

01:11:31.260 Just awful kind of browbeating.

01:11:33.780 Yeah.

01:11:33.960 What it's, it's media, it's journalism.

01:11:36.100 He's a presidential candidate.

01:11:37.580 Interview him.

01:11:38.400 You bring him on.

01:11:39.200 You ask him serious questions.

01:11:40.700 That's what you do.

01:11:41.240 That's not platforming.

01:11:42.220 That is your job.

01:11:42.840 And then Van Jones is over the top reaction after the fact, like, we're going to be stuck

01:11:47.980 with him and his ideas for the next 50 years.

01:11:50.540 This fascist.

01:11:51.860 Okay.

01:11:52.120 Take a breath, sweetheart.

01:11:53.580 Get your smelling salts.

01:11:54.880 You'll be okay.

01:11:55.720 Get over to your fainting couch.

01:11:56.960 But in any event, so they're going to go, Nikki and Ron, and I don't think anything changes

01:12:01.980 as a result of this.

01:12:02.800 It's on the eve of Iowa.

01:12:04.220 They're going to do the same thing, I think, on the eve of New Hampshire.

01:12:06.940 Nothing changes.

01:12:08.380 Trump, the New York Times' The Daily podcast did a very interesting deep dive on the plan

01:12:13.520 ahead for the next year.

01:12:14.960 For Trump, they did that yesterday.

01:12:16.880 And for Biden, they did that today.

01:12:19.260 Biden's, I would say, is less interesting.

01:12:20.880 It boiled down to, he's going to make it all about Trump.

01:12:23.900 Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.

01:12:25.520 It's the anti-Trump election.

01:12:27.060 Those of you who didn't really want to vote for me, you can't put this maniac back in

01:12:30.560 office.

01:12:31.580 And the Republicans actually was a very interesting dive into what Trump has been doing with state

01:12:36.580 party leaders to secure this nomination early when it comes to delegates, long before

01:12:41.960 he has to sit for a trial.

01:12:43.420 So that if he is convicted, and we believe he will be convicted in some of these, if

01:12:48.020 not all, cases, we'll see what happens in appeal, he'll already have the delegates necessary

01:12:52.680 for the nomination.

01:12:53.720 If you listen to Maggie Haberman laid out with Michael Barbaro on yesterday's podcast, it

01:12:59.140 was good.

01:13:00.400 He's been working hard to make sure all these state party leaders are changing the rules

01:13:04.820 right now to inure to Trump's benefit so he can round them up good and early.

01:13:10.280 And then the Republicans are stuck with Trump.

01:13:12.220 There's no there there won't be any switching him out at the convention, by which point he

01:13:17.820 may have been convicted.

01:13:19.480 And the Democrats are banking on these independents and these sort of softer Republicans just not

01:13:25.480 being able to pull the lever for someone who's been convicted of a felony.

01:13:29.360 And keep in mind that, too, will it will be the vote on the heels of seven months plus

01:13:36.340 no more like 11, I guess, of nonstop Trump coverage.

01:13:41.060 So, you know, in a way, it's like Trump's been kind of lying low ish.

01:13:45.780 But once he's back day to day in the national consciousness, this doesn't necessarily help

01:13:51.100 him.

01:13:51.620 Right.

01:13:52.160 His drama is something a lot of Republicans were done with Democrats.

01:13:56.900 Yes.

01:13:57.400 Independent.

01:13:57.940 So they have him in the news every day and I have him on trial every day.

01:14:02.680 Like they're throwing enough shit at him that they think these voters in the middle are going

01:14:09.040 to be done with him come November.

01:14:11.380 Anyway, things seem to be going according to plan.

01:14:14.800 I mean, they're one thing you can't say about the Democrats is that they're dumb.

01:14:19.520 Yeah, I mean, they know what they're doing here.

01:14:21.120 I don't I wonder about this strategy.

01:14:23.560 I mean, there's some polling that suggests that that might be a decent strategy.

01:14:27.320 The number of people who say if Donald Trump is convicted, if that changes their opinion of him

01:14:32.100 and changes their willingness to vote for him, that's higher than I suspected.

01:14:36.000 Because, you know, the thing about Donald Trump is he's done so much for so

01:14:39.060 many years in so many kind of weird iterations.

01:14:43.440 And it doesn't seem to do much to his popularity and or credibility.

01:14:47.480 The difference, obviously, now is Joe Biden had to amble up on stage in 2019, 2020 and say,

01:14:53.800 I am not him. And now he has to amble up on stage and he's he's not as good at ambling now.

01:15:00.660 Also not as good as talking as he was.

01:15:02.640 If you go, honestly, go back and watch those debates.

01:15:05.080 He's not very good at all, but he's a thousand times worse now.

01:15:09.000 It's really, really astonishing.

01:15:10.460 So what they have to do is kind of keep him out of the spotlight, keep him out of a debate.

01:15:14.360 I mean, they they should.

01:15:15.780 But Donald Trump should want to debate him.

01:15:17.280 He'll absolutely crush him.

01:15:19.380 And that's sort of beneficial to him.

01:15:21.320 But obviously, you know, Joe Biden has a record now to run on.

01:15:25.620 And a lot of that record isn't very good, particularly when it comes to the border.

01:15:28.740 I mean, the Bidenomics, I mean, that has just been the weirdest rollout of this is what we're

01:15:34.420 going to hang our shingle on.

01:15:36.060 This is going to be Bidenomics is going to be the thing, despite the fact that now the

01:15:39.200 economy is getting better and interest rates are coming down, which is going to be actually

01:15:43.880 a very, very positive thing for a lot of people, particularly people always forget about

01:15:47.680 those who have a bus adjustable rate mortgages who are paying a thousand dollars more in

01:15:52.600 the past four years.

01:15:53.600 I mean, now that that is a substantial difference.

01:15:56.040 So he has some things to run on, but there's plenty that that people do not like.

01:16:00.900 It's just like, God, if a Republican run somebody who is not Donald Trump and who is not about

01:16:05.380 to sit in the docket four times, there wouldn't be a question that that Joe Biden wouldn't

01:16:11.500 have a Michael Dukakis election.

01:16:15.240 The Bidenomics thing, Camille, is like Trump trying to run on like Trumpocracy.

01:16:20.000 Take your weakest thing, you know, like January 6th, the worst thing, and just try to turn

01:16:24.820 it into a positive.

01:16:26.000 Yes, it was.

01:16:26.520 It was too.

01:16:27.340 You'll like it.

01:16:28.580 Look, I'm Doug Brannon.

01:16:30.420 I can only I can only imagine that the Biden administration in a universe where Biden has

01:16:38.880 the nomination and Trump has the nomination will use the Trump precedent of just not engaging

01:16:43.720 in debates is at least part of their rationale for refusing to share a stage with Donald Trump.

01:16:49.320 And and it is very curious.

01:16:50.600 I mean, certainly all these state efforts to try and push Trump off the ballot in states

01:16:55.480 that he probably wouldn't win anyways.

01:16:57.020 So it's largely theater.

01:16:59.420 It does seem to be having a beneficial effect for Trump in that you've got all of his opponents

01:17:05.580 essentially rallying to his defense and kind of insisting that this is wrong and you're

01:17:10.120 overstepping.

01:17:11.160 And you certainly see Republicans who are similarly seeing this kind of thing and certainly anyone

01:17:15.040 who is even remotely skeptical about the outcome of the election in 2020 now having essentially

01:17:19.760 their concerns validated in a way because they see these states doing something that at a

01:17:25.420 minimum is an extremely novel legal maneuver to try and ensure that the person who would

01:17:32.540 be most likely to win a Democratic election or at least a person who has a shot at winning

01:17:37.360 a Democratic election can't even participate in that Democratic election.

01:17:41.260 I mean, they are sending all of the worst signals if this is some sort of scheme that they hope

01:17:48.180 will actually hurt Republicans.

01:17:49.900 Not clear that it will.

01:17:51.260 It could backfire in a pretty profound way.

01:17:54.340 You mentioned states that he's not going to win anyway.

01:17:56.780 I will say, well, he came within, it was 4.9 percentage points of Hillary in 2016 in Colorado.

01:18:03.860 So, you know, that's, that's not insurmountable.

01:18:08.880 Then in Maine, where he's also been booted off the ballot by this one unelected Secretary

01:18:14.820 of State, very partisan woman who's called him an insurrectionist in the past, among other

01:18:20.340 things.

01:18:21.040 Among other things, yes.

01:18:21.860 That's one of those states that splits, that splits its electoral votes and there, at least

01:18:26.640 one of them is definitely gettable.

01:18:28.080 And this kind of thing can come down to one electoral vote.

01:18:30.660 That leads me back to Vivek because he is pledging that he's going to take himself off

01:18:36.520 the ballot in Maine because of what they've done.

01:18:38.560 He says the same about Colorado.

01:18:40.560 Here he is talking about Maine on News Nation on Monday.

01:18:44.620 Watch, thought for.

01:18:45.200 But if every Republican removes themselves, that nullifies Maine and it nullifies Colorado.

01:18:51.420 If they remove Trump's name, my name's off too.

01:18:53.840 And I call on Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley and Chris Christie to do the same thing.

01:18:58.340 Their words are cheap.

01:18:59.400 Action speaks louder than words.

01:19:01.620 Now, their unwillingness to do that, I think, reveals that they're actually complicit, in

01:19:05.120 part, in what's happening, even if indirectly.

01:19:09.120 Okay.

01:19:10.880 I'm the only one with the courage to do it.

01:19:14.260 I'm the only one with the courage to do it.

01:19:16.840 Here's Ron DeSantis responding last night on Laura Ingram.

01:19:20.580 Just absurd.

01:19:21.600 I mean, I have a responsibility to accumulate delegates.

01:19:24.760 I'm not going to unilaterally cede any.

01:19:26.840 I'm going to win as many as I can.

01:19:28.840 And I've been very clear about both of those decisions in those states.

01:19:33.480 It's not consistent with the Constitution.

01:19:35.280 I do expect them to get reversed.

01:19:38.000 I've raised a question about Biden.

01:19:39.720 I mean, if he has greenlit eight million illegals invading this country,

01:19:43.500 is he eligible to be on?

01:19:45.580 So we can play this game all along.

01:19:47.360 I think it's not going to end up well for our country.

01:19:50.020 But I do know this, that if any of the other ones of us had gotten kicked off the ballot,

01:19:55.240 Trump would be spiking the football.

01:19:56.860 Let's just be clear.

01:19:58.260 That is just a fact of the matter.

01:20:00.700 That's so true.

01:20:01.860 That sounds about right.

01:20:02.420 So true.

01:20:03.300 Yeah.

01:20:03.660 Well, Vivek is obviously doing this the right way.

01:20:05.940 If in a race to see who maybe gets the vice presidential nod, you want to say everything

01:20:10.820 that would be satisfying to the front runner.

01:20:12.920 And hey, if he's off, I'm off.

01:20:14.760 And anyone else who doesn't do the same is a coward and a monster and is a party to this

01:20:19.260 horrible, egregious crime.

01:20:20.660 He's saying precisely the right thing.

01:20:22.480 That's what you want to say.

01:20:23.160 He said it in the longer side.

01:20:24.280 He says, I'll lead the way.

01:20:25.940 I mean, this is Vivek's rhetoric on everything.

01:20:28.100 I'm the only one.

01:20:30.020 There's a reason you're the only one.

01:20:31.460 One thing about pardoning Trump, let's remember, he said, I will preemptively, not only will

01:20:36.760 he pardon Trump on day one, I'm sure it's minute one, he's not even going to take a presidential

01:20:41.920 piss.

01:20:42.300 He's just going to get there and he's going to preemptively pardon Trump.

01:20:45.580 But that he's the only one with the courage to, he's calling out everybody else.

01:20:49.740 If they're not going to preemptively pardon Trump, we had him on the Fifth Column podcast

01:20:52.640 a few months ago and pressed him on this.

01:20:57.340 And it wasn't just like, yeah, I think it's a good idea to make the peace.

01:21:00.360 And also, I would really love to be the vice presidential nominee.

01:21:02.880 It was like, no, I'm the only one who understands the legal theory of why all of the prosecutions

01:21:09.800 of Trump are like unconstitutional.

01:21:12.400 He had to invent some kind of constitutional expertise, which he patently does not have.

01:21:18.140 He was unfamiliar.

01:21:19.500 But meanwhile, both, I mean, I don't have any love lost for Chris Christie's presidential

01:21:23.340 race, but Chris Christie and Ron DeSantis were both practicing lawyers for far longer.

01:21:28.820 I don't think Vivek's ever practiced law.

01:21:30.580 I think he went right into entrepreneurship.

01:21:32.500 If he did, he practiced it for maybe for a year.

01:21:34.660 Those two, I mean, DeSantis was a JAG Corps lawyer for years.

01:21:37.700 And Chris Christie was the attorney general before he became the governor.

01:21:40.920 So, I mean, yes, there are others in the race who do understand the law probably much

01:21:45.780 better than Vivek.

01:21:46.560 Yeah, and in fact, that's what we handed him was Chris Christie's interpretation of the

01:21:53.900 law, and he rejected it out of hand.

01:21:57.880 But, you know, let's also say that it's good to have people who are not lawyers, Megan,

01:22:02.300 to be involved in politics, in addition to not being necessarily Harvard lawyers.

01:22:07.900 So, I have respect for that.

01:22:09.320 But, yeah, it's almost everything that Vivek has done just so happens to be very, very

01:22:15.820 copacetic to Donald Trump's political fortunes.

01:22:19.960 He should just endorse him.

01:22:21.980 You know, who's Ben Shapiro yesterday was saying if he really wants to help Trump, he should

01:22:26.980 just get out of the race and endorse him.

01:22:28.760 Just like, what's the point?

01:22:30.360 You know, like, go for it.

01:22:31.540 Well, I think one of the points is that Trump might die, and Trump might have something involved

01:22:39.440 with his legal complications that makes it difficult for him to run, in which case Vivek

01:22:43.700 is the best suited at this point, maybe, to be a recipient of people who are ride or die

01:22:50.480 for Trump right now.

01:22:51.720 Not this time.

01:22:52.320 Maybe in the future.

01:22:53.880 Yeah, don't undercount narcissism, too.

01:22:56.460 I mean, Chris Christie this morning was on Morning Joe and asked about this and says,

01:23:01.940 you know, I mean, it would be beneficial to the people that you think could potentially

01:23:05.920 be Trump slayers if you backed out a tiny bit.

01:23:09.340 The tiny number of people that are actually backing you would maybe be thrown to Nikki

01:23:12.420 Haley or Ron DeSantis.

01:23:14.320 And he was like, you know, I'm in it to win it.

01:23:16.080 And it's like, you're not, but you're not going to win it.

01:23:18.280 It's just, I mean, you can't win it.

01:23:20.920 So why don't you?

01:23:21.860 And it was and he also gave a very mealy mouthed attack on on the main decision, too,

01:23:29.320 which was like, yeah, it's wrong.

01:23:30.820 But he is an insurrectionist.

01:23:32.100 It's like, no, no, you don't get to say that.

01:23:33.780 That's the way this works is very simple.

01:23:36.240 Due process in this country is important.

01:23:37.880 If you think that he's an insurrectionist, it does not matter.

01:23:40.760 A court has to decide that.

01:23:42.980 When David Axelrod is saying it better than you're saying it, you're a bad Republican

01:23:47.600 presidential candidate.

01:23:48.700 I mean, it's ridiculous.

01:23:49.560 And but I have to agree, I mean, the cases against Trump, there is one that has, in my

01:23:55.320 view, legal merit, and that is the prosecution on the Mar-a-Lago documents.

01:23:59.940 If he defied a federal subpoena, he's in a lot of trouble.

01:24:02.900 All of us would be if we defied a federal subpoena.

01:24:05.640 But there's a real question about whether it should have been brought.

01:24:08.060 We can go back to Hillary.

01:24:08.860 We can go back to a lot of whatever we've we've been over this.

01:24:11.900 But I agree with Vivek that these are bullshit cases and that they shouldn't have been brought

01:24:16.400 in the first place.

01:24:17.120 The thing with Vivek is that he's out there saying shit like, why am I the only one to

01:24:21.240 be talking about how 9-11 was an inside job?

01:24:23.480 Why am I the only one to be talking about how January 6th was an inside job and that

01:24:26.920 the 2016 election was stolen to?

01:24:28.620 There is a reason why you're the only one.

01:24:30.920 Because no one else is totally insane.

01:24:33.720 I got theories.

01:24:35.400 I got I got feelings in any way.

01:24:37.880 OK, so let's let's move on because that's immigration and that's politics.

01:24:41.240 And that's all very interesting.

01:24:42.520 But I want to get to the fact that we have to do a quick, quick break and then come back.

01:24:46.840 And then we have to talk about the fact that now in America, USA boxing is allowing men

01:24:55.020 who say they're women to box actual women.

01:24:59.940 This has been a joke up until now.

01:25:02.320 This has been the one sport that people have been joking like, oh, sure.

01:25:05.720 Yeah.

01:25:05.880 Like what's going to happen?

01:25:06.820 And I'm like, and boxing.

01:25:08.000 Yeah, it's happening.

01:25:09.280 Finally, I can box.

01:25:13.040 I'll let you roll that over in the next 60 seconds and we'll get back to you.

01:25:17.560 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.

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01:26:47.260 Advice.

01:26:47.740 So it's finally happened.

01:26:52.080 USA Boxing, the governing body overseeing America's amateur and Olympic-style boxing,

01:26:57.800 has adopted a new policy that will let men who say they're women beat up actual women.

01:27:04.600 You do have to have reassignment surgery, but I've got news for USA Boxing.

01:27:11.060 Cutting off your penis doesn't eliminate your male muscle and bone and lung strength and so on.

01:27:17.180 Advantages.

01:27:18.100 You don't fight with your penis when you're boxing.

01:27:20.700 I do.

01:27:21.440 Be aware of this.

01:27:22.200 Oh, boxing, boxing.

01:27:23.780 Sorry.

01:27:24.240 I just thought in general, because I do.

01:27:26.420 Yeah.

01:27:26.620 Anyway.

01:27:27.140 Speak for yourself.

01:27:28.960 Yeah.

01:27:29.760 Now, you do have to lower your testosterone for four years, but again, none of this reduces

01:27:37.120 the advantage.

01:27:38.180 I mean, picture the rock.

01:27:40.240 All right?

01:27:40.720 Suddenly, his penis is gone, and he's lowered his testosterone.

01:27:44.800 He's going to fucking kill somebody.

01:27:47.180 I don't want to picture that.

01:27:48.260 I don't want to picture that.

01:27:48.520 I don't want to picture that.

01:27:50.280 Oh, my God.

01:27:52.340 So, somewhere, Ike Turner is smiling.

01:27:56.600 Yeah.

01:27:57.040 This is, I was thinking that.

01:27:58.580 This is like the Ike Turner boxing.

01:28:00.000 He never relented.

01:28:01.300 He never relented from his defense that when he hit Annie Mae, it was for her own good.

01:28:05.240 He was helping her.

01:28:05.940 That's right.

01:28:06.300 Correct.

01:28:06.420 It's totally fine.

01:28:07.460 She deserved it.

01:28:07.800 And we need to be okay with that.

01:28:08.760 It's in his memoir.

01:28:09.380 She wasn't singing the song tonight, Camille.

01:28:11.220 Yeah.

01:28:11.580 Correct.

01:28:11.780 Or she just wouldn't, yeah, what's wrong with you, girl?

01:28:14.240 What's wrong with you?

01:28:14.800 It went on for like two, three days.

01:28:16.460 So, I just, you know, you hit her just a little bit to try to get her to talk.

01:28:20.300 And then she-

01:28:20.580 Oh, this is the end of whatever career you have, Camille.

01:28:24.200 That's what he said.

01:28:25.200 I'm not saying it's good.

01:28:26.280 Look, in boxing, at a minimum, you do have these weight classes.

01:28:30.780 In MMA, you've got even more.

01:28:32.420 I know that there's, apparently, I just learned there's something called an atom weight, which

01:28:36.060 is less than a straw weight.

01:28:37.580 So, I don't have to worry that I'll see a castrated rock pummeling some 105-pound woman.

01:28:45.120 But it is, it is, and this is the thing.

01:28:48.420 There are certainly men who have had their asses whooped by women.

01:28:51.520 And I imagine that that will happen again in the future.

01:28:54.340 And in some cases, they've even got somewhat equivalent weights.

01:28:57.700 But there's a reason why you have weight classes in boxing.

01:29:00.700 You're trying to avoid people who are of dramatically different capabilities getting into a ring

01:29:07.160 together and bludgeoning one another to death, or someone being bludgeoned to death because

01:29:11.780 they're so out of their depth in a particular fight.

01:29:15.260 And I don't know if they'll be able to maintain that sort of parity by disregarding gender, even

01:29:22.120 under the particular criteria that they've defined for themselves.

01:29:24.960 Oh, I know.

01:29:25.380 Here's your answer.

01:29:26.480 It's a no.

01:29:27.700 It's a no.

01:29:28.580 It's a hard no.

01:29:29.640 Hard no.

01:29:31.800 Who are those girls?

01:29:33.960 I'm going to fight one of them.

01:29:35.080 I just want to figure out which one I'm fighting.

01:29:37.480 Sages.

01:29:38.440 Sages on this issue.

01:29:39.740 That's who they are.

01:29:40.280 Just to help them.

01:29:40.820 Gary and Brett.

01:29:41.120 Yeah.

01:29:41.720 No, this is ridiculous.

01:29:43.740 And they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

01:29:45.180 And this needs to be reversed immediately.

01:29:47.320 Okay.

01:29:47.520 There's a couple other things I've got to get to.

01:29:49.500 Otherwise, I could spend all day doing that.

01:29:51.420 Have you heard about the conservative dad's calendar?

01:29:55.100 Made a bunch of waves when we were all celebrating the holidays.

01:29:59.020 And the ultra right beer is the sort of brand behind it.

01:30:05.280 This guy, I follow him on Twitter.

01:30:07.280 He put out this calendar of conservative women.

01:30:10.840 Full disclosure, he actually asked yours truly if I would be a part of it.

01:30:13.580 I said, hell no.

01:30:14.620 But others made a different choice.

01:30:18.280 And now a lot of people on the internet are upset about this.

01:30:21.420 More conservative women are saying, this is not what we need.

01:30:23.480 It's been called conservative dads.

01:30:25.980 Real women for America are a calendar.

01:30:27.820 But I got to be honest.

01:30:29.760 I couldn't care less about people doing it.

01:30:32.260 I think this is great.

01:30:33.080 Dana Lash, she's amazing.

01:30:34.380 She's not showing anything.

01:30:35.220 She's like holding guns.

01:30:36.640 Riley Gaines is in a bikini.

01:30:38.140 Hello, she's a swimmer.

01:30:39.520 She swims.

01:30:39.920 She's gorgeous.

01:30:41.300 But people are upset.

01:30:42.640 A lot of conservative women who I love are like, this is not the way forward.

01:30:47.800 It doesn't have to be the way forward.

01:30:49.640 It's up against the wall.

01:30:51.100 It's not everything has to be the way forward.

01:30:53.540 Something could be just staying right in place or not having any forward, lateral, or

01:30:58.240 backwards motion at all.

01:30:59.360 The only thing that matters here, Megan, and you know this as well as I do, is if they

01:31:04.180 are hot.

01:31:04.860 And if they are hot, then it's fine.

01:31:06.720 If they are not hot, then I'm opposed to the calendar.

01:31:08.900 I mean, this is a simple calculation.

01:31:10.160 Wow.

01:31:11.240 You know, Matt, Moynihan, you make a very strong argument.

01:31:14.400 I make a very strong.

01:31:15.600 I could be a lawyer from that.

01:31:17.900 I'm going to talk with my wife.

01:31:18.920 I'm going to see if this argument passes muster.

01:31:20.720 But if it does, I'm in your corner.

01:31:23.100 She'll tell me.

01:31:24.860 I said this on the fifth column the other day.

01:31:28.160 My daughter accused me of being at a restaurant.

01:31:31.580 My 12-year-old daughter said, you think the waitress is hot, don't you?

01:31:34.320 And I'm like, am I really?

01:31:35.720 Is it that obvious?

01:31:37.120 Am I showing this at all times?

01:31:39.120 And I said, yes, dear, I do think that.

01:31:41.880 And then we just moved on and had a very lovely meal.

01:31:44.200 Yes, dear.

01:31:44.380 Wow.

01:31:45.360 Very creepy.

01:31:46.280 Girl, dad.

01:31:46.680 Girl, she's going to do years of therapy for that one.

01:31:48.660 Oh, we've already started it.

01:31:51.020 Yeah.

01:31:51.340 Yeah.

01:31:51.880 I don't know.

01:31:52.880 People are upset.

01:31:53.920 They're like, I mean, I love Allie Beth Stuckey.

01:31:56.140 She's conservative.

01:31:57.680 She's Christian.

01:31:59.740 And she's like, look, do we really need something for conservative dads?

01:32:03.080 I don't think it's necessarily for people who are married with children.

01:32:05.780 It's like, that's the name of the guy's group.

01:32:09.200 Anyway, you know, saying like, I've seen this before.

01:32:12.300 I posed actually for, was it GQ magazine?

01:32:15.160 I can't remember now.

01:32:15.820 I think it was GQ magazine in like a sultry little dress.

01:32:18.120 I was very pregnant at the time.

01:32:19.380 And I was proud that I could still squeeze myself into one of these numbers.

01:32:23.340 And it was when I was turning 40.

01:32:24.760 I was like, this is a good marker in time for like the 40-year-old me.

01:32:27.580 But I got a lot of blowback for that too.

01:32:29.120 And it was all from conservatives who were like, that was a mistake.

01:32:31.800 That's not what conservatives stand for.

01:32:33.300 I was like, what do you mean conservatives can be saucy?

01:32:35.420 Why are conservatives, why do we have to be all stuffy and like not sexy?

01:32:40.080 I don't, yeah, I don't know.

01:32:42.280 That's why conservatives lose the culture war.

01:32:44.540 Because they give you a hard time about being in GQ.

01:32:46.740 It's not the right response.

01:32:47.600 But it's not just conservatives who do it.

01:32:49.080 It's people on the left, I imagine, primarily who were critical of you, Megan, for posing.

01:32:53.700 And there is a bizarre double standard with respect to gender here.

01:32:57.360 Because, you know, we, and less me and more for Moynihan and Welch, I mean, they're confronted

01:33:03.120 every day with, you know, these apex predators who have their chiseled eight-pack abs and they're

01:33:08.580 on the covers of magazines.

01:33:10.000 And where's the love for Moynihan and Welch?

01:33:12.160 They deserve love to, you know, not all of us, not all of us can be chatted.

01:33:16.680 I mean, look, you know, I hope that I'm someone's cup of tea, but I doubt that.

01:33:32.160 So we can give it a try, guys.

01:33:34.300 We can take one of those like cruises together and we can bill it as like, let's meet the

01:33:38.180 men of the libertarian calendar.

01:33:40.480 Oh my God.

01:33:41.760 That would be, and by the way, I say this and Matt knows this very well of being around

01:33:45.760 libertarian world, that is not, and Matt actually just dropped out of the call because he was

01:33:50.100 so angry.

01:33:51.520 No, like that, that is so angry because he's frozen.

01:33:55.020 He looks so unhappy with what you're saying.

01:33:57.200 He's so unhappy.

01:33:58.320 Yeah.

01:33:58.540 Well, I mean, if you've ever been around libertarians, you realize that maybe you'll

01:34:01.600 get January and February and it's both going to be me.

01:34:05.240 So I'm sorry.

01:34:06.300 Well, I'm Mr. October.

01:34:07.680 So it's fine.

01:34:09.040 Look at Stossel in there.

01:34:11.000 Oh, Stossel with the mustache.

01:34:12.480 Of course.

01:34:13.140 Yeah.

01:34:13.420 With the pushburns and only the mustache.

01:34:15.200 One month for Ron.

01:34:16.820 Yes.

01:34:17.720 That'll sell.

01:34:18.300 He's the Tom Selleck of free markets.

01:34:20.940 Yeah.

01:34:21.220 People love him.

01:34:22.940 I already have that calendar.

01:34:23.940 At least you're men.

01:34:25.060 Okay.

01:34:25.320 At least you're men.

01:34:26.340 There's a growing trend to fall in love with trees.

01:34:30.600 Trees.

01:34:31.860 Trees.

01:34:32.440 Oh yeah.

01:34:32.760 This is from the New York Post, right?

01:34:34.380 New York Post.

01:34:35.620 Highlighting a woman who calls herself an ecosexual who has become insatuated with an oak tree.

01:34:42.100 She is also a self-intimacy guide and quote, somatic sex educator in training.

01:34:48.920 She has taken nature loving to the extreme after becoming infatuated with this oak tree,

01:34:54.020 which she says fills her with erotic energy.

01:34:57.300 Wow.

01:34:57.640 This is a quote.

01:34:58.500 What a tree.

01:34:59.060 And eroticism with something so big and so old.

01:35:03.280 Yes.

01:35:03.680 Holding my back.

01:35:05.460 That's what she says.

01:35:07.100 And I don't know.

01:35:09.740 That's pretty great.

01:35:10.640 Oak tree.

01:35:11.760 What do you think?

01:35:12.320 Wow.

01:35:12.460 I'm thinking like, at least if it were like an apple tree, she could get something back.

01:35:16.620 Yes.

01:35:16.980 I would love to lose out in that, in that relationship.

01:35:23.160 She's not into, she's into the old tree.

01:35:25.920 Okay.

01:35:27.020 That makes sense to me.

01:35:29.320 I'm trying to see that picture of her.

01:35:31.260 Oh my gosh.

01:35:32.180 Yeah.

01:35:32.720 You mean the tree or her?

01:35:36.820 I want to make, I want to make a bush, a bush joke, but I'm not going to.

01:35:40.520 Don't.

01:35:40.760 So I'll just put that out there.

01:35:41.500 It's serious, but you still can't do it.

01:35:43.760 That's it.

01:35:44.180 That's it.

01:35:44.580 That's all I'm going to say.

01:35:46.280 This is the new trend.

01:35:48.400 All I could think was, oh, Welsh, you're back.

01:35:51.380 Do you, do you have any thoughts on Moynihan and the libertarian calendar?

01:35:56.500 Oh, dear God.

01:35:58.280 I'm going to wear his little like skinny jeans, trying to pretend he's in a Brit pop band.

01:36:03.900 We're talking about me.

01:36:05.180 We're talking about everybody else in the libertarian movement who doesn't deserve to

01:36:09.020 be photographed, much less photographed for a calendar.

01:36:11.240 I just want David Reboi to be on every single calendar.

01:36:15.860 That's a deep cut.

01:36:17.160 If we can do that.

01:36:18.080 That's all that.

01:36:18.740 Just one man.

01:36:20.820 Yeah.

01:36:21.200 Check out the Twitter account.

01:36:22.980 Well, in any event, look, this woman has managed to find love and good for her because

01:36:27.260 it's tough to find it in today's day.

01:36:28.780 Absolutely.

01:36:29.080 She said, she said, I was walking a path near the tree five days a week for the whole

01:36:35.240 winter.

01:36:35.860 I noticed a connection with the tree.

01:36:38.380 I would lie against it.

01:36:40.500 And, uh, she went on to talk about her, how she loves the feeling of being tiny and supported

01:36:45.840 by something so solid, the feeling of not being able to fall presence.

01:36:51.840 I feel with the tree is what I'm looking for, but that's a fantasy with the person.

01:36:56.500 You can't get that from a person.

01:36:58.060 I'd been craving that rush of erotic energy that comes when you meet a new partner.

01:37:02.580 And that's just not sustainable.

01:37:05.380 Unlike her life with this tree.

01:37:09.680 There's a reason we want to go for picnics and parks and hike in nature.

01:37:15.840 That's the reason you have no idea it's turning you on.

01:37:19.560 That's the thing.

01:37:20.720 I want to have a sandwich.

01:37:23.000 Like on a, on a quote.

01:37:24.880 That is the last time I take my daughter for a walk in the park.

01:37:28.720 That is the, that's it.

01:37:29.740 We will no longer do that.

01:37:31.120 Yes.

01:37:31.520 This, this, this one woman is a wonderful woman.

01:37:34.180 And if she'd like to hang out under the tree with me, we can figure it out.

01:37:37.160 But I think she might, might have some slight mental health issues.

01:37:41.720 I think there's something for everyone.

01:37:42.860 I think if she wants to date the holly tree, she can go lesbo.

01:37:46.740 Oh, that, yes.

01:37:48.180 She wants to be codependent.

01:37:49.920 She can date the weeping willow.

01:37:52.920 If she wants something more prickly, she can go for the pine.

01:37:55.840 I mean, there are all sorts of options.

01:37:57.540 Or me.

01:37:58.180 I got questions about settling on the oak.

01:38:01.080 Maple.

01:38:02.260 That's your complaint?

01:38:03.360 I'm just going to leave it at that.

01:38:05.280 Wow.

01:38:05.640 Why is it when we come on, there's always a trans thing and it just descends into pornography?

01:38:11.880 I apologize to the listeners out there.

01:38:14.900 Megan has lost it.

01:38:16.180 She's on E.

01:38:17.340 She has a mile left.

01:38:19.620 And I don't know if she's going to make it.

01:38:21.760 This is what they came for, Moynihan.

01:38:24.180 This is it right here.

01:38:26.180 Guys, always a pleasure.

01:38:27.620 Thank you.

01:38:28.640 They're the best, aren't they?

01:38:30.120 Love them all.

01:38:31.520 Tomorrow we've got Nancy Grace.

01:38:32.560 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - January 03, 2024

Left Blames ＂Racism＂ For Claudine Gay's Harvard Exit, and New Appreciation For Trump's Border Policy, with The Fifth Column Hosts ｜ Ep. 694

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