The Megyn Kelly Show - Left Falsely Blames Right For House Fire, and Data Privacy Issues, with Rich Lowry, Charles C.W. Cooke, Erik Prince, and Joe Weil

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00:00:30.160 When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners,

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00:01:00.820 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:02.640 Live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:01:06.340 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:01:14.160 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:15.720 Attorney General Pam Bondi is testifying before the Senate as we speak,

00:01:19.000 where she is blasting Democrats for opposing immigration enforcement in deep blue cities.

00:01:24.420 And Stephen Miller had an epic takedown of a CNN anchor.

00:01:27.200 You have to see this one.

00:01:28.040 We'll get to it.

00:01:28.660 Plus the latest on the saga of Jay Jones, the Democratic Virginia AG candidate with a penchant

00:01:33.460 for sending violent texts.

00:01:35.240 Again, it's not really a violent, there's no such thing as a violent text.

00:01:39.360 Sending texts.

00:01:41.640 Loving violence.

00:01:43.160 Sending texts.

00:01:44.320 Celebrating violence.

00:01:45.580 Wishing for it.

00:01:46.720 Praying for it.

00:01:47.820 Hoping for it.

00:01:48.560 About his political opponents.

00:01:50.980 We're going to bring in our guests now.

00:01:53.080 We're going to start with a different story.

00:01:54.700 They are Charles C.W. Cook, senior writer for National Review and host of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast,

00:02:01.140 along with Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review.

00:02:04.660 You can find all of their work by becoming an NR Plus subscriber.

00:02:08.820 And come see Charlie and Rich together with yours truly on the Megyn Kelly live tour.

00:02:14.820 You can find us outside of Atlanta on November 8th.

00:02:18.200 Go buy tickets to that date and all of our 10 stops.

00:02:21.520 And if you come to the Atlanta visit, you might, if you're lucky, get to meet my brother,

00:02:27.700 Pete Kelly, who lives down there as well.

00:02:30.080 So all sorts of reasons to go.

00:02:32.700 And you can get your tickets by going to megankelly.com.

00:02:35.720 Get them before they sell out.

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00:03:44.860 Guys, welcome to the show.

00:03:45.980 Great to see you.

00:03:47.060 Thanks for having us.

00:03:48.920 All right.

00:03:49.320 So I'm very interested in this South Carolina judge story.

00:03:54.880 Not one of the stories that we began with, but I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about.

00:03:58.300 There's a South Carolina circuit court judge named Diane Goodstein, and this woman, like

00:04:04.500 pretty much every judge in America, has recently ruled on a matter involving some Trump policy,

00:04:12.880 and she ruled against him.

00:04:15.460 It wasn't that big a deal, but she did rule against him.

00:04:17.960 She temporarily blocked the state's election commission from releasing its voter files to

00:04:23.180 the DOJ.

00:04:23.920 The DOJ is looking for voter files because they're trying to comply with Trump's executive

00:04:28.520 order to stop non-citizens from registering to vote.

00:04:32.580 Seems like it would make a lot of sense, right?

00:04:35.020 You've got to check the voter rolls, and we're already seeing some voter rolls get purged of

00:04:38.460 illegals, which is good.

00:04:39.600 They have no right to vote.

00:04:41.060 No one can even argue opposite.

00:04:42.960 So in any event, she didn't want to turn over the information, and she said, I'm going

00:04:48.200 to temporarily block this, that was later reversed by the South Carolina Supreme Court, the state

00:04:53.720 Supreme Court there.

00:04:54.440 So whatever.

00:04:55.140 To me, that's your bargain variety legal dispute.

00:05:00.060 She did rule against Trump, but whatever.

00:05:02.440 Then they said, okay, she's been getting death threats.

00:05:04.420 Now, I'm sorry, but death threats for any judge, sadly, in modern-day America, are commonplace.

00:05:12.820 I mean, I was a practicing lawyer for 10 years.

00:05:15.340 I know about this.

00:05:16.380 Lawyers get them, too.

00:05:17.840 And by the way, not for nothing, but also journalists.

00:05:20.620 So it's not that I'm celebrating it or don't have empathy for somebody who receives it,

00:05:25.140 but I always ask the question, what kind of death threats?

00:05:28.460 I mean, if you just seriously go take a look at any, probably any one of ours, but definitely

00:05:32.540 my Twitter feed, and you see the comments that people post, you'll find a couple.

00:05:36.980 Some rape threats, some death threats, some assault threats.

00:05:39.660 It's crazy, but unfortunately, it's out there.

00:05:43.300 But then there's serious death threats.

00:05:45.120 Then there's an elevation of something that's an actual threat, and people around public figures

00:05:50.520 know the difference between the two.

00:05:52.660 So I always want to know, like, what kind of death threats?

00:05:55.100 Somebody online saying, I hope you burn, right?

00:05:58.020 That's not exactly what we're talking about, or like a credible threat.

00:06:01.500 All right, so all that is just to set up what happened here.

00:06:04.260 So this woman says she was receiving some death threats, and then on Saturday,

00:06:09.660 her home caught on fire at 11.30 a.m. Eastern time.

00:06:15.320 She was not there.

00:06:16.560 She says she was walking on the beach.

00:06:18.020 You can see in the pictures here that her home is on the water in South Carolina.

00:06:21.540 She wasn't in the home, but her husband, who I think is 81, she's 69, was in the home.

00:06:28.220 He's fine.

00:06:28.620 Everyone is okay, relatively speaking.

00:06:31.080 The husband, who is in his low 80s, was in the house, along with, it's unclear to me,

00:06:36.520 but they said three people suffered some sort of an injury.

00:06:39.680 It sounds like it was all related to jumping out of the house.

00:06:42.680 Thank God they got out, but like went out on a balcony and had to jump for it.

00:06:46.080 You can imagine if you're 81, that those injuries would be, you know, rather profound.

00:06:50.240 And then it sounds like either their adult children were in the home or possibly their

00:06:56.300 grandchildren, but no one's making too much out of the other injuries.

00:07:00.520 I'm not downplaying the story.

00:07:01.500 I'm just trying to, I spent some time this morning trying to figure out exactly what the

00:07:04.280 injuries are.

00:07:04.940 And it sounds like the husband was the one with the most significant injuries, and we

00:07:09.860 certainly hope he gets better quickly.

00:07:12.180 Let's see.

00:07:12.760 They said, stand by.

00:07:14.940 Okay, Arnie is his name, suffered multiple fractures to his hips, legs, and feet.

00:07:21.320 The judge's son was also hospitalized.

00:07:24.280 Those, his condition remains unclear.

00:07:26.740 And that dad, the Arnie injuries are the most severe.

00:07:30.240 He was airlifted to the hospital.

00:07:31.860 So that's nothing to shake a stick at.

00:07:33.580 The husband seems really hurt, but thank God they weren't burned to death.

00:07:36.960 I mean, obviously that or smoke inhalation are the most serious injuries when a fire breaks

00:07:41.920 out.

00:07:42.700 Okay, so that's a tragedy.

00:07:44.000 It's awful.

00:07:44.940 And everybody lives in fear of house fires.

00:07:47.220 However, the story is the lead of our show today because of what happened thereafter,

00:07:53.060 which is a bunch of leftists led by Dan Goldman of Levi's fortune.

00:08:00.380 He's a, he's a rich kid who decided to cosplay as a lawmaker and he ran cover for Joe Biden

00:08:07.320 for four years, just with a, was a mouthpiece for whatever Joe Biden said, did not exercise

00:08:12.840 any independent judgment.

00:08:13.980 And he rushes to X, formerly Twitter to post as follows.

00:08:19.420 Trump, Stephen Miller and MAGA world have been doxing and threatening judges who rule against

00:08:27.300 Trump, including Judge Goodstein.

00:08:29.540 Today, someone committed arson on the judge's home, severely injuring her husband and son.

00:08:36.740 Will Trump speak out against the extreme right that did this?

00:08:40.120 I mean, there's a lot in there, guys.

00:08:44.340 First of all, how did he know it was arson?

00:08:47.180 And second of all, how did he know whatever happened was committed by the quote extreme

00:08:52.180 right?

00:08:53.200 Talk about getting out ahead of your skis.

00:08:55.380 Stephen Miller promptly chastised him, calling him vile, deeply warped, and said that was

00:09:02.360 a libelous madness that he posted.

00:09:06.300 And Dan Goldman doubled down.

00:09:08.840 Try answering my question.

00:09:10.340 If you're trying to combat political violence, why don't you condemn the political violence

00:09:14.500 against a judge who ruled against you and your administration?

00:09:18.080 It's pretty simple.

00:09:19.020 Do you condemn all political violence or only that against your supporters?

00:09:22.060 All right.

00:09:24.700 He wasn't the only one.

00:09:25.720 I'll get to the others in a minute, but I'm just going to start with Goldman.

00:09:29.420 And then you had Monday afternoon and SLED, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division,

00:09:35.780 coming out, the chief, Mark Keel, saying there is no evidence to indicate this fire was intentionally

00:09:43.900 set.

00:09:45.220 SLED agents have preliminarily found there is no evidence to support a pre-fire explosion.

00:09:51.160 So no evidence to support a pre-fire explosion and none of arson.

00:09:56.640 Zero.

00:09:57.980 Has Dan Goldman taken down his tweets?

00:10:01.260 No.

00:10:02.260 Has he apologized for them?

00:10:04.500 No.

00:10:05.680 They're still sitting there misinforming whatever number follows Dan Goldman.

00:10:10.900 I didn't bother to look it up.

00:10:11.920 This is an elected U.S. congressman.

00:10:14.040 That's the state of America today, guys, where you're seeing figures on the right wing, prominent,

00:10:21.320 very prominent figures from the Republican nominee in July of 24, Trump, to Charlie Kirk

00:10:26.740 just last month being actually assassinated or assassination attempts happening.

00:10:32.680 And as conservatives run around saying, we really, really, really need to talk about why this

00:10:39.060 is happening.

00:10:39.540 And we really would like you to just put some sort of a cap on the incendiary talk about

00:10:44.780 very prominent right wing figures, especially right now when we're in danger of copycats.

00:10:49.620 We just keep getting told it's both sides, both sides, both sides.

00:10:53.420 And now they rushed to judgment because you could feel, Rich, the excitement on their part

00:10:59.960 that they thought they finally had one.

00:11:03.140 They were thrilled.

00:11:04.380 Desperate.

00:11:04.800 They thought they finally had one.

00:11:06.380 Yeah.

00:11:06.680 Hungry for a counter example.

00:11:08.920 Look, two things.

00:11:09.580 One, that looked like it was a beautiful home.

00:11:11.780 And that was a no kidding fire, right?

00:11:13.560 This is this is not a kitchen fire.

00:11:15.720 People injured exiting the house.

00:11:19.060 Looks like it burned to the ground.

00:11:20.780 Quite spectacular.

00:11:21.680 But I would just say, you know, you always have to be cautious about jumping to conclusions.

00:11:26.760 No pun intended, obviously.

00:11:29.100 But 1130 a.m., that's when you said the fire started.

00:11:32.820 It's very unlikely someone's going to go commit an act of fire, of arson at 1130 a.m.,

00:11:38.280 daylight hours, middle of the morning with people in the home, right?

00:11:41.960 It doesn't make any sense.

00:11:42.860 And then there was no there was no perpetrator or suspect.

00:11:46.520 So you're leaping to the conclusion that it's arson.

00:11:49.580 And then you're leaping on top of that conclusion that it was politically motivated arson.

00:11:55.320 And then you're leaping on top of that, that it was mega politically motivated arson, right?

00:12:00.760 And the only reason you do that is because you're feeling extremely defensive because there have been these hideous acts of political violence that your own side has committed.

00:12:08.740 And you want to engage in what about ism or both side ism and use this this terrible house fire as an example.

00:12:16.480 He should be humiliated.

00:12:17.840 He should be embarrassed.

00:12:18.600 He should take the post down and apologize to everyone he misled and apologize directly to Stephen Miller.

00:12:25.780 Of course, he'll never do it.

00:12:27.440 Mm hmm.

00:12:28.040 And, Charlie, it's not just him, of course.

00:12:31.800 Among the others who pushed this lie was Neera Tanden.

00:12:36.920 She's like a bad penny.

00:12:38.720 She just keeps resurfacing in every administration.

00:12:41.900 Right.

00:12:42.040 We saw her.

00:12:43.200 She was Biden's director of domestic policy council.

00:12:46.500 This was Neera Tanden after his bad June is bad to put it mildly June 2024 debate.

00:12:51.520 He's inquisitive, focused.

00:12:53.980 He remembers he's sharp.

00:12:56.160 That's that's the honesty level we're dealing with when we talk about Neera Tanden.

00:13:01.140 He she was domestic policy advisor for Obama's 2008 campaign.

00:13:04.880 She was domestic policy advisor to Hillary.

00:13:06.840 This woman's just all over Democrat politics.

00:13:08.720 She's a very, very well-known figure on the left.

00:13:11.720 And Neera Tanden retweeted a tweet.

00:13:16.720 It remains up that.

00:13:19.600 Let's see.

00:13:20.320 Reads as follows.

00:13:22.220 A few weeks ago, one of Trump's top DOJ officials publicly targeted this judge.

00:13:28.240 Today, that judge's home is on fire.

00:13:31.920 Neera Tanden retweeted that.

00:13:34.140 By the way, they're talking about Harmeet Dillon.

00:13:35.780 This is how Harmeet Dillon, quote, targeted this judge.

00:13:40.860 After that ruling, I mentioned Harmeet Dillon, who's a perfectly reasonable person.

00:13:45.260 I mean, good luck trying to paint her as an extremist.

00:13:47.660 Tweeted out the Justice Department Office of Civil Rights will not stand for a state court

00:13:52.940 judge's hasty nullification of our federal voting laws.

00:13:56.720 I will allow nothing to stand in the way of our mandate to maintain clean voter rules.

00:14:00.620 One citizen, one vote.

00:14:02.080 That's how Neera Tanden, according to the left, somehow incited an alleged arson that didn't

00:14:08.240 take place.

00:14:08.800 And Neera Tanden's post remains up as well.

00:14:11.600 Then she also added, we need to get to the bottom of what happened here.

00:14:15.700 But this happened hours after Stephen Miller attacked judges for insurrection.

00:14:20.400 I mean, the irresponsibility.

00:14:22.100 Yeah, there are two things about this that annoy me.

00:14:26.360 The first is, I really do think that the institutional left has to decide whether or not it's acceptable

00:14:32.000 to criticize judges.

00:14:34.260 I don't like the way that Trump sometimes talks about judges.

00:14:37.660 I don't like the way people around Trump sometimes talk about judges.

00:14:40.920 But that is a consistent view that I have.

00:14:45.640 The left spent the last four years suggesting that the Supreme Court was corrupt and illegitimate

00:14:53.200 and needed to be packed.

00:14:54.960 And now every time the Trump administration so much as says that a lower court ruling is

00:14:59.340 wrong, which is fine, then we're apparently living in the final days of the republic.

00:15:04.880 So that's annoying.

00:15:05.440 The bigger problem here, I think, is that figures such as Neera Tanden live in this little bubble.

00:15:14.280 And as a result, they receive information that is incorrect.

00:15:19.920 And they may never actually see the correction.

00:15:24.020 So it's not just that Neera Tanden has a false impression of what is currently the problem.

00:15:28.900 And I use that word currently advisedly.

00:15:30.540 There is such a thing as right-wing violence.

00:15:32.660 We've seen some of it.

00:15:33.580 We saw January 6th, which was a pretty bad illustration of right-wing violence.

00:15:38.500 But in the last three or four years, leftist violence has been much worse than right-wing

00:15:43.320 violence.

00:15:43.940 And in the last year especially, the trend is pretty alarming.

00:15:49.220 But Neera Tanden doesn't know that.

00:15:51.260 Neera Tanden, like a lot of people who work in professional progressive politics, simply

00:15:55.800 do not believe that people on their side are capable of committing violence or doing bad

00:16:01.280 things because they're progressives and they're therefore on the side of the angels.

00:16:04.660 So she's primed to see this as violence.

00:16:07.060 The way she talks about it is, well, of course.

00:16:09.700 And then she jumps to this conclusion.

00:16:12.400 And she and certainly those who follow her may never know that this wasn't anything to

00:16:18.000 do with politics from all that we know.

00:16:20.760 There are millions and millions of people out there right now who believe that the person

00:16:25.480 who murdered Charlie Kirk was a right-wing griper.

00:16:28.000 They will believe that forever.

00:16:30.180 There is nothing that will convince them otherwise.

00:16:33.000 For the rest of their lives, that will form part of the political and ideological scaffolding

00:16:38.560 that undergirds their views.

00:16:40.500 Neera Tanden is a perfect example of that sort of person.

00:16:42.960 And that is a very big problem that we struggle with in the modern era.

00:16:48.880 The, to your point, I was making this point yesterday.

00:16:53.460 In the mornings, I listen to a bunch of podcasts, including NPRs Up First.

00:16:58.920 I do this so that you don't have to do it.

00:17:00.580 I need to keep an eye on them.

00:17:01.780 I can't stand the podcast.

00:17:03.620 I don't recommend the podcast.

00:17:05.180 I don't like the personalities.

00:17:06.480 I hate the music.

00:17:07.680 The news is biased and almost like a thought bomb that goes off where like, you know,

00:17:12.020 you're corrupting your mind.

00:17:13.100 But literally every day I get an example of left-wing bias that is so egregious.

00:17:18.500 We talk about them a lot.

00:17:19.860 So people know it's real.

00:17:21.460 They know it's real anyway, but seeing the examples is persuasive.

00:17:24.740 And when the ICE shooter took aim at the Dallas ICE facility and wound up accidentally killing

00:17:32.880 detainees instead of ICE agents, and the very first day that that story broke, you may remember,

00:17:38.600 it came out that on the bullet casings, he had written anti-ICE.

00:17:43.680 You didn't really have to try hard to understand what was in his head.

00:17:47.420 And it was all there, black and white.

00:17:49.880 But NPR decided to do a story, just like much of the mainstream media, saying, motives are

00:17:55.580 unclear.

00:17:56.120 We really don't know.

00:17:57.580 Okay.

00:17:58.180 Except it was literally written there on the bullet casing.

00:18:00.960 It's not like a gum wrapper near the scene, like on the bullet casing.

00:18:06.400 We may never know.

00:18:07.760 It's unclear.

00:18:08.180 So the next day, it comes out, this guy had written all sorts of notes at his personal

00:18:17.080 residence where they found it, attacking ICE agents as guilty of human trafficking, saying

00:18:24.540 the people who are at that facility are nothing but folks showing up to collect a dirty paycheck.

00:18:29.740 Then there was a handwritten note recovered by investigators that read, hopefully, this will

00:18:35.220 give ICE agents real terror to think, is there a sniper with armor-piercing rounds on that

00:18:42.200 roof?

00:18:43.540 I'm sorry, Charlie, but how much more clear can you get?

00:18:46.560 Hopefully, this will cause terror in the hearts of ICE agents.

00:18:51.500 Did NPR go back the second day and say, now we know.

00:18:56.520 Nira, because it's Nira Tanden and her ilk who listened to NPR.

00:19:00.340 I'm the only right person who does it.

00:19:03.080 Nira, actually, we want to amend our report yesterday.

00:19:07.720 It's now clear, clear as can be, it was anti-ICE.

00:19:12.180 No.

00:19:12.920 So to your point, they do, they live in this bubble and they're controlled by media people

00:19:17.060 who have absolutely no fealty to the truth.

00:19:20.360 And look, who can know what someone means by writing anti-ice on a bunch of bullets?

00:19:27.900 Maybe they work in a restaurant in Europe and they just don't have an ice machine.

00:19:32.840 They don't want an ice machine.

00:19:34.580 They like delivering that tepid, room temperature water.

00:19:38.020 And they're really, really convinced that that's the way of it.

00:19:41.440 I mean, look, it's so silly.

00:19:42.340 And we saw this again with the guy, I won't name him, who murdered Charlie Kirk, where suddenly

00:19:47.780 it became very nuanced, became very difficult to discern.

00:19:52.780 Meaning was impossible to interrogate because this online world is ironic.

00:20:01.500 And it's just give me a break.

00:20:03.020 The double standard here is really irritating.

00:20:05.280 I am quite open, as I was earlier, about right-wing violence, where it exists.

00:20:13.160 There are examples of it.

00:20:14.580 But that's not the problem we're facing as a country right now.

00:20:17.080 And it doesn't help anyone in the long run to pretend otherwise.

00:20:20.260 It's amazing.

00:20:21.240 Like the actual someone committed political violence.

00:20:25.220 It was arson.

00:20:26.840 Naming Stephen Miller.

00:20:28.240 I mean, this is aggressive stuff.

00:20:29.840 Even for your most ardent partisan, this group, progressive, this progressive news outlet,

00:20:37.240 Democracy Now!, you guys have all heard of them.

00:20:39.500 They, too, got in on the bashing Harmeet Dillon train, writing the following.

00:20:45.740 Let's see.

00:20:46.580 Judge Goodstein had received death threats recently after President Trump's assistant attorney

00:20:51.140 general, Harmeet Dillon, criticized the judge for temporarily blocking the state's election

00:20:55.340 commission from releasing its voter file to the DOJ.

00:20:57.740 Again, based on that milquetoast tweet by Harmeet, Rich, the media, too, leaned into this.

00:21:05.100 Here's Nicole Wallace and former Obama DOJ official Mary McCord.

00:21:10.660 Listen to their take.

00:21:12.740 When we come back, what we're learning about the fire that destroyed the home of a South

00:21:16.920 Carolina circuit court judge who faced criticism from Trump officials.

00:21:21.020 It comes amid a surge in hostility and threats against judges, as well as criticism directly

00:21:26.880 from the Trump administration, including for Judge Goodsteins.

00:21:30.620 Mary, what questions do you have based on what we're hearing so far?

00:21:33.920 You know, this is the kind of again, we've talked today already about crossing Rubicons,

00:21:38.160 right?

00:21:38.380 And when you're starting to attack judges because of their rulings, we're in a very,

00:21:43.760 very dangerous position in this country.

00:21:45.880 He needs to know the power of his voice and how people respond to that.

00:21:52.180 Oh, my God, Rich.

00:21:53.880 Yeah, it's one thing to get something wrong.

00:21:56.400 We all get things wrong.

00:21:57.360 We all go prematurely sometimes, but they'll never go back, right?

00:22:01.520 Is she going to do another show?

00:22:02.860 Oh, I got this all wrong.

00:22:04.040 Sorry, I misled my viewers.

00:22:06.120 They never go back.

00:22:07.640 And to your point, a lot of these people just delete the tweet.

00:22:09.980 He didn't even delete the tweet.

00:22:11.120 Even the most shameful people will just delete without apologizing.

00:22:14.120 Yeah, and then, you know, to the point of people not knowing, I was struck about a year

00:22:19.460 ago, Pete Buttigieg was on CNBC and was challenged by in the morning show and that one one host

00:22:25.320 who's a Republican about, yeah, why did you undo all the Trump enforcement measures that

00:22:30.580 were working under Biden?

00:22:32.060 And now you have a border crisis.

00:22:33.400 And Buttigieg said, no, we only undid child separations.

00:22:37.220 We only reversed child separations.

00:22:38.960 And I don't think he was lying.

00:22:40.280 I think he had legitimately no idea that starting on day one, Biden had unraveled all this Trump

00:22:47.980 stuff because he never consumed any media that would have told him that.

00:22:51.860 So this guy is very glib and supposed to be well-informed and one of the brightest and

00:22:56.820 best Democrats had no idea what the reality was on this key issue that helped decide the

00:23:02.620 2024 election.

00:23:04.420 And then just on the issue of violence, I mean, we have seen a low-level anti-Trump terror

00:23:10.820 campaign in this country over the last year.

00:23:12.880 Now, I emphasize low-level, but I think the Tesla, the violence against Tesla dealerships

00:23:18.260 and cars, it's acts of violence, illegal acts undertaken to advance a social or political

00:23:24.360 agenda.

00:23:24.980 And that's certainly what we've seen with ICE.

00:23:27.300 The shooting was terrible.

00:23:28.440 But there was an incident in Texas just a few weeks earlier that didn't get a lot of

00:23:33.000 attention that involved a pro-trans anti-fascist cell in Texas undertaking an organized ambush

00:23:42.420 of an ICE facility where they're graffitiing vehicles in the parking lot in hopes to get ICE

00:23:49.840 to come out, ICE officials to come out and get shot.

00:23:52.740 Now, none of them did.

00:23:53.740 A cop showed up and he got shot at, but this is terroristic activity in the same way what

00:23:59.980 we're seeing in Chicago.

00:24:01.120 Again, I've emphasized very low-level, but it's kind of a low-level insurgency against

00:24:06.340 federal law enforcement where the vehicles are being chased by convoys of people, rocks

00:24:12.180 are being thrown at the vehicles, vehicles are being rammed.

00:24:15.920 Everything is being undertaken to resist federal law enforcement, including acts of violence.

00:24:22.080 So, this is shameful.

00:24:24.000 It's very real.

00:24:25.360 We should all be aware of it.

00:24:27.080 But one side is wearing blinders and then is hypersensitive to try to find any counter

00:24:32.900 examples again so they can say both sides are doing it.

00:24:35.900 What wasn't low-level, obviously, was the assassination of Charlie, the attempted assassination

00:24:40.040 of Trump, the murder of Corey Comperatore.

00:24:42.880 Or yesterday, I was mentioning the names of David Dutch and Jim Copenhaver, 57 and 74.

00:24:49.080 You guys probably don't know those names when I say them because no one does.

00:24:52.940 They're the other two people who were shot at the Butler rally.

00:24:56.760 They don't get, they'd be national heroes.

00:25:00.180 They'd be everyday household names if that had been, oh no, an Obama or a Kamala Harris or

00:25:05.480 a Joe Biden rally.

00:25:06.560 But they're not because they were Trump supporters who got shot and they too were victims of political

00:25:11.880 violence.

00:25:12.720 Again, not, that part's not low-level, but I take your point on like the Tesla dealerships

00:25:17.920 and what's been happening on these attempted ICE harassment incidents that include violence.

00:25:22.740 One other thing on the messaging by the media, Charlie, Time Magazine, hours before the fire

00:25:28.700 at Goodstein's house, Trump's deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, accused this, accused

00:25:34.620 U.S. judge Karen Immergut of legal insurrection for granting a restraining order that blocks

00:25:41.260 Trump's deployment of the Oregon National Guard in Portland.

00:25:43.340 This has nothing to do with, this judge whose house burned was in South Carolina.

00:25:48.040 They're calling up something Stephen Miller said about a judge in Oregon to try to blame,

00:25:55.640 like creating an atmosphere against judges, which is insane.

00:26:00.800 People Magazine, which people may not know this, People Magazine is 100% leftist.

00:26:06.020 They never get a story right that in a way that would flatter a right winger.

00:26:10.460 They are of the left.

00:26:11.920 Trust me, I actually know a lot of the people who are there.

00:26:14.400 This is their headline.

00:26:15.620 South Carolina judge's home erupts in flames with family inside after she ruled against Trump

00:26:22.640 and began receiving death threats.

00:26:24.620 Newsweek, Judge Diane Goodstein's home burns to the ground after ruling against Trump.

00:26:29.780 This is just irresponsible journalism.

00:26:31.980 You don't do that.

00:26:33.000 You do not do that.

00:26:34.760 House fires, one more point, can happen for all sorts of reasons.

00:26:40.320 When we saw Charlie get shot in the neck, it was a logical leap that this was an intentional

00:26:47.220 act by someone who hated him.

00:26:49.020 And the odds were overwhelming that it was somebody who didn't share his politics.

00:26:53.360 That was a speculation that was supported by facts that was engaged in across the board.

00:26:59.300 And of course, it was true.

00:27:01.040 A house fire?

00:27:02.540 It happens all over the place.

00:27:04.720 And this is not to make light of what happened to this judge's family, but I pulled this video

00:27:08.400 just to show you.

00:27:09.080 This happened a couple of weeks ago, and my staff and I, we all laughed at this.

00:27:13.220 I was sitting upstairs in my studio here.

00:27:17.000 I have an office up there.

00:27:17.920 You guys have been here.

00:27:19.180 And I'm just sitting there reading, and my desk, like underneath the lamp, started smoking.

00:27:28.120 I'm going to show it to you, because I took out my camera and filmed it.

00:27:31.520 Okay, so here you can see there's this globe.

00:27:33.800 Look.

00:27:35.140 Oh my God.

00:27:36.440 It's the same.

00:27:37.180 Was it not the clock the last time?

00:27:39.800 Is it the desk that's on fire?

00:27:45.980 It's the light.

00:27:46.980 It's the sun.

00:27:47.540 Isn't it?

00:27:48.020 So what was happening there for the listening audience is I had this lamp that has a big

00:27:52.520 glass bottom, a bulbous bottom, and the sunlight, much like you practice when you're

00:27:57.220 a kid with a little prism, was coming through the bulbous glass, and it was burning my desk.

00:28:04.400 I thought, previously you heard me reference it, that I had a clock that was catching fire.

00:28:10.360 I threw away that clock saying, oh my God, the battery's melted down.

00:28:13.400 I didn't realize even that.

00:28:14.640 And if you look at the desk, there are five, like, hash marks in it from previous burns.

00:28:20.880 Whatever you do, don't get a toaster on your desk.

00:28:23.400 That'd be too hazardous.

00:28:25.520 We got rid of the lamp.

00:28:27.140 This is a silly way of making my point, Charlie, which is house fires can start through all sorts

00:28:32.880 of unforeseen ways.

00:28:34.000 It's not like somebody being gunned down at a rally.

00:28:37.900 This was so irresponsible of all these media to jump immediately to after death threats,

00:28:43.940 after comments by Trump, after comments by Stephen Miller, about some other judge, after

00:28:48.400 a benign tweet by Harmeet.

00:28:51.220 This is a cousin of this term that the left developed called stochastic terrorism, which

00:28:57.540 in a sense is a clever way of being able to blame Republicans if anyone out there does something

00:29:03.140 crazy by linking it indirectly to something that someone has said.

00:29:07.300 The idea is that if someone says something inflammatory, because there are crazy people,

00:29:13.060 you're statistically likely that a crazy person will hear the inflammatory comment, act on

00:29:18.140 it.

00:29:18.460 Therefore, it's terrorism.

00:29:19.460 It's complete nonsense.

00:29:20.480 It's partisan.

00:29:21.320 It's one sided.

00:29:22.720 And it's been quietly dropped in the last year for obvious reasons, because if there's

00:29:26.500 any such thing as stochastic terrorism, which there's not, then it would be obviously a big

00:29:31.540 problem at the moment for the left.

00:29:33.680 What I think is particularly amazing about this, though, and especially the clip that

00:29:38.020 you showed from MSNBC there, is that we just witnessed the trial and inadequate sentencing

00:29:45.280 of a man who was going to kill Justice Kavanaugh and up to two other Supreme Court justices over

00:29:54.360 the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

00:29:56.040 That person got eight years, it seems in part because he now says he's a she, and the mother

00:30:04.720 of he is now more on board with he being a she.

00:30:09.700 So on the one hand, we have an actual plot to kill actual justices to change the actual

00:30:17.080 foundation of American law.

00:30:19.220 And that person being given a sentence that is 22 years under the 30-year guideline maximum.

00:30:28.120 And on the other hand, you have a house burning down, and this somehow being an indictment of

00:30:33.820 general criticism of the judiciary.

00:30:37.180 This is preposterous as a double standard.

00:30:40.080 I don't want to blame the left for what happened in the case with Kavanaugh's would-be assassin,

00:30:48.040 because I don't want to create a culture in which people feel unable to speak out loud.

00:30:53.080 But if you are going to make that case, as we just heard on MSNBC, you should not be focused

00:30:59.340 on some absurdly attenuated link with a house fire that had nothing to do with it.

00:31:03.920 You should be utterly outraged by what happened in the sentencing of the man who was going

00:31:10.080 to kill Justice Kavanaugh.

00:31:11.440 But they weren't.

00:31:12.580 MSNBC did not run a segment on that.

00:31:14.700 They didn't say it was a threat to the country.

00:31:16.440 They didn't call out Chuck Schumer for standing near the Supreme Court and saying that Kavanaugh

00:31:21.060 and others would reap the whirlwind because they don't actually care.

00:31:26.700 That's right.

00:31:27.460 And you can sense it, Rich, as we've been waiting for them to have an appropriate, some have,

00:31:33.940 not all have been awful in the wake of Charlie's death.

00:31:36.680 But as we've been waiting for there to be universal condemnation of what happened to him,

00:31:41.560 and we've been frustrated to see that's not the case, or even universal condemnation of

00:31:46.140 what happened to the UnitedHealthcare CEO after Luigi Mangione allegedly, well, did shoot him.

00:31:51.320 He denies it, but we'll see.

00:31:53.440 But there wasn't.

00:31:54.540 You know, the universal condemnation is only a thing on the right.

00:31:59.000 You know, that's why these two situations of like what happened to Charlie and what happened

00:32:02.460 to that Minneapolis House Speaker, the one in Minnesota, are not on point because the right

00:32:09.980 did universally condemn what happened to her.

00:32:12.440 There was one errant Mike Lee tweet, which he immediately took down after being shamed by

00:32:17.000 right-wingers.

00:32:17.640 But the entire right-wing condemned that.

00:32:20.720 And no one had been creating a cauldron for that House Speaker prior to her assassination.

00:32:26.760 Some nutcase who said he was there on orders from Tim Walz is the one who killed her.

00:32:31.840 But that's why it's just, you know these people have been waiting.

00:32:35.300 Instead of universal condemnation, some of them are like, is it so bad that Charlie Kirk is gone?

00:32:41.900 I mean, is the world better without him?

00:32:44.280 He was a hateful person.

00:32:45.780 That's their narrative.

00:32:46.820 And they're just waiting, waiting, waiting until a right-winger commits an act of violence

00:32:52.220 so they can say, see, see, both sides.

00:32:56.020 Now you condemn, you condemn.

00:32:57.720 It'll come back on us.

00:32:59.280 Yeah.

00:33:00.080 So at least we haven't seen what we saw with Mangione, which is actually making him into

00:33:04.980 a cult hero.

00:33:06.560 So we haven't seen that with Tyler Robinson.

00:33:08.720 We have seen the misdirection, like some people, oh, is it disturbed?

00:33:12.440 We'll never know.

00:33:13.340 It's obvious what this was about and why he did it.

00:33:18.240 And some of these cases where a political figure, Gabby Giffords, famous one, is harmed

00:33:24.300 in a terrible attack, the perpetrator is just literally completely out of his mind.

00:33:30.300 That was a schizophrenic that attacked Gabby Giffords.

00:33:32.800 That was not the case with Charlie Kirk.

00:33:34.400 This was someone who's had his wits totally about him and set about murdering Charlie

00:33:41.120 Kirk for political reasons to silence his voice.

00:33:45.160 But we have seen a lot of people not wanting to take that on and sort of evade that truth

00:33:52.080 and then also being harshly critical in a way of Charlie's views in the immediate aftermath

00:33:57.840 of this in a way that's inappropriate.

00:34:00.320 Now, obviously, not everyone needs to agree with Charlie Kirk.

00:34:03.160 A lot of people didn't agree with Charlie Kirk.

00:34:05.320 All that's fine.

00:34:06.800 But there is some kind of diplomacy when someone's actually been murdered in cold blood.

00:34:16.780 And we have seen a lot of this.

00:34:18.980 You know, the guy who was about to debate Charlie in a couple of weeks was horrified by it and

00:34:23.780 obviously really moved by it and disturbed by it.

00:34:27.120 But that's the that's the appropriate reaction.

00:34:30.380 But they they play this game and we've seen it with with Jay Jones, you know, the attorney

00:34:34.280 general candidate down there in Virginia.

00:34:37.580 Yeah.

00:34:37.980 So there has been a lot of condemnation of that, but no one's said, oh, you got to step

00:34:42.760 aside.

00:34:43.400 So they're trying to do just just enough to placate the view that this is hideously wrong.

00:34:50.060 What he what he said.

00:34:51.280 And this is a worldview that's poisonous to has no place in our politics, but they won't

00:34:54.740 take the actual steps, say, well, if it has no place in our politics, maybe has no place

00:34:58.860 in that race because that that would hurt too much and give up any chance of winning

00:35:03.220 that.

00:35:03.680 He's he's running to be the top law enforcement official of the Commonwealth of Virginia to

00:35:07.920 be the top law.

00:35:08.600 He's not running to be the dog catcher where we don't really have to worry about whether

00:35:12.540 he's going to catch the Republicans dogs who are loose, too.

00:35:14.840 So he's running to be the top law enforcement officer and he's perfectly comfortable calling

00:35:20.140 for the murder of Republican children.

00:35:22.380 Well, I'm going to go to Jay Jones in one second, but you mentioned Van Jones and I've

00:35:25.060 been trying to get to this.

00:35:26.340 I have a very different view of Van Jones.

00:35:28.520 You can go check our feed to find out why.

00:35:31.500 But he I think he's been extremely cowardly around the Charlie situation.

00:35:34.740 He he was like, oh, I wouldn't have gone on his show.

00:35:38.180 I wouldn't have platformed.

00:35:39.680 I was thinking of that.

00:35:40.760 I don't know his name, but there's a progressive influencer who I'd never heard of before.

00:35:44.840 That Charlie was going to debate, who immediately was like, this is horrifying.

00:35:49.620 Hassan Piker?

00:35:50.280 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:35:51.240 I think that.

00:35:51.840 Yeah.

00:35:52.440 Yeah.

00:35:52.720 OK, because Van Jones, I think, has really been cowardly.

00:35:55.460 He really truly like he got he called Charlie a racist based on nothing.

00:36:00.120 Van had his facts wrong.

00:36:01.780 Charlie made a comment that there was a racial element.

00:36:04.280 It appeared in North Carolina with the slaying of Irina and Van hadn't done his homework

00:36:09.220 and apparently hadn't heard that that man who was black killing a white woman had said,

00:36:13.220 I got that white girl.

00:36:14.140 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:36:14.980 He's muttered it on video.

00:36:16.380 This is when I called when I called Charlie Cook when when we first learned of the Kirk

00:36:21.260 shooting that I remember I mentioned this CNN segment.

00:36:23.840 I was just I was just watching it from the night before when they're all are condemning

00:36:27.100 Charlie as a racist.

00:36:28.540 So so if you were Van Jones and honorable, what would you do, especially after Charlie had

00:36:32.860 been killed?

00:36:33.460 You would say, I am so sorry, I don't blame Van Jones for Charlie's murder, just to be

00:36:40.420 clear.

00:36:40.660 And he didn't need to apologize for Charlie's murder.

00:36:43.060 But but for calling him a racist than the two nights before that he was murdered.

00:36:47.360 Yeah.

00:36:47.700 He should apologize for that with or without the murder because it was a smear and it was

00:36:51.660 wrong.

00:36:52.080 And it was based on erroneous facts.

00:36:55.420 So, of course, every time as somebody who's in news, you have to come out and say, I was

00:36:59.380 wrong.

00:36:59.700 I didn't know about what that black man had said.

00:37:01.960 And I apologize for Charlie for saying something about him that has no basis.

00:37:06.600 In fact, he wouldn't.

00:37:08.440 Instead, he wanted credit for outing Charlie for doing a nice thing because Charlie had

00:37:13.980 reached out to him and said, hey, let's have an let's have a good faith debate.

00:37:17.360 You know, as men, let's have an honorable debate.

00:37:20.020 And Van Jones didn't get back to him.

00:37:21.780 He likes to he wants us to believe that he didn't know about it until after Charlie died.

00:37:26.280 I don't believe that either.

00:37:27.240 I've got my reasons.

00:37:28.040 I don't trust Van Jones word.

00:37:29.700 And now he's continuing on this grift of trying to look like somebody who's like an

00:37:34.640 uphold Charlie's legacy.

00:37:36.080 He's going to be the good guy by saying a couple of nice things about Charlie after Charlie

00:37:39.500 died.

00:37:40.300 Meanwhile, the story is he's a bad guy for smearing Charlie as a racist while he was alive

00:37:46.000 and causing him strife in the last 48 hours of his life and then not owning up to his erroneous

00:37:52.320 smear when it was clear to everybody that's what it was.

00:37:55.740 And so now he goes on with Bill Maher and Bill gives him the benefit of the doubt and

00:38:00.640 says, oh, you probably would have debated him.

00:38:02.260 Right.

00:38:02.560 Meanwhile, Van's already on the record as having said, I wouldn't have gone on his show and

00:38:06.400 like build his platform.

00:38:07.760 Um, and, and listen to how Van Jones compliments Charlie.

00:38:14.360 Take a listen here this Friday night.

00:38:17.080 Would you have agreed to debate Charlie Kirk?

00:38:19.500 I bet you I know the answer and I bet you the answer is yes, because that's the guy that

00:38:23.120 kind of guy you are.

00:38:24.580 Yeah.

00:38:25.020 Um, listen, uh, Charlie Kirk and I were not friends.

00:38:29.200 Um, and we were in a big, big public fight.

00:38:32.340 Yeah.

00:38:32.820 Uh, the week that he died.

00:38:34.780 And, uh, it turned out that the day before he died, he sent me a personal message wanting

00:38:41.240 me to come on his show.

00:38:42.640 And he said, let's be gentlemen.

00:38:45.460 He said, let's disagree agreeably.

00:38:48.400 Let's disagree agreeably.

00:38:49.880 I'm going to carry those words with me because, uh, he was a words, not weapons guy.

00:38:54.780 I disagree with his words.

00:38:56.200 He's a words, not weapons guy.

00:38:58.020 And we're getting away from that now.

00:39:00.140 And I was very frustrated people in my party throwing rocks at the corpse before he could

00:39:05.580 even be buried, uh, blood still on the widow's shoes and people want to post every dumb thing

00:39:10.240 he ever said.

00:39:10.980 He was 31 year old kid, right?

00:39:12.900 If you got me at 31 years old, I was on the left side of Pluto.

00:39:16.420 There is no telling what you have had me say.

00:39:20.400 So let's give some grace and some space, even to our enemies and everything.

00:39:27.020 Okay.

00:39:28.200 He should have stopped after the words widow's shoes and we would have had no problem with

00:39:34.060 what he said there other than the ones I already outlined.

00:39:36.780 Instead, he had to go on to say people are posting every dumb thing he ever said.

00:39:42.640 This is a 31 year old kid.

00:39:44.840 It's pejorative.

00:39:46.520 He's trying to put Charlie down.

00:39:48.240 He's trying to diminish him.

00:39:49.840 He's trying.

00:39:50.440 This is classic Van Jones trying to act like he's this person giving grace when what he's

00:39:55.240 actually doing is insulting Charlie.

00:39:57.520 31 years old is not a kid.

00:39:59.980 All of our founding fathers were younger than that when they drafted our documents, our founding

00:40:04.200 documents, most of them.

00:40:05.780 And Charlie lived a life just like those founders.

00:40:09.300 Charlie was self-educated.

00:40:10.820 Charlie was a man of the world.

00:40:11.940 Charlie spent his life in flyover country trying to understand the issues that were affecting

00:40:16.260 actual Americans.

00:40:17.920 Charlie was a far more articulate spokesperson for the causes he believed in than Van Jones

00:40:22.540 could ever hope to be ever.

00:40:24.600 They weren't errant, stupid tweets by a kid that the left was freaking out about.

00:40:29.920 They were thoughtful policy positions as a grown man that Charlie professed that most

00:40:36.660 of us on the right wholeheartedly agreed with.

00:40:39.100 And there there is no cause to diminish them or him.

00:40:42.880 It's it is truly part of an ongoing smear campaign.

00:40:46.300 But Van Jones is more clever about it than Nicole Hannah Jones.

00:40:50.100 To me, it's infuriating.

00:40:51.820 He was not some kid.

00:40:53.300 He did not need Van Jones to run cover for him on his tweets.

00:40:58.100 Van Jones, just stop talking about Charlie Kirk.

00:41:00.820 Just stop.

00:41:01.860 Unless you're going to say you apologize.

00:41:03.480 I don't want to hear from you anymore.

00:41:05.140 And I'm pretty sure I speak for most of the right wing on that.

00:41:07.620 Just stop it.

00:41:08.220 OK, sorry, but I had to get that out there.

00:41:10.860 It's been driving me nuts since I saw it on Friday night.

00:41:13.800 But let's go to Jay Jones, because a different Jones, Jay Jones, who's running for attorney

00:41:19.280 general of Virginia.

00:41:20.740 And Charlie, I read at length from your piece on this show yesterday about how you believe

00:41:28.020 his text messages in your title reveal a disqualifying worldview.

00:41:33.160 I want to tell the audience before I toss it to you that we've now heard that there was

00:41:37.980 more to the Jay Jones exchanges with this Republican, Kerry Coyner, who he had spoken to earlier

00:41:48.680 before these texts.

00:41:50.460 And you see actually a reference in his texts to that conversation.

00:41:54.080 He says something like, I've told you before.

00:41:57.940 Right.

00:41:58.460 Like, I'm only when people feel pain personally, do they move on policy.

00:42:03.500 And so to their credit, a local news organization called the Virginia Scope called up Kerry Coyner

00:42:11.820 and said, what's that a reference to?

00:42:14.940 What was that conversation?

00:42:16.560 Good question.

00:42:17.140 And she told them, she said that we had a pretty heated conversation about public policy

00:42:22.500 and pain involving qualified immunity for cops.

00:42:25.560 He believed that they should not have qualified immunity.

00:42:28.600 And I said, I believe that people will get killed.

00:42:32.160 Police officers will get killed.

00:42:33.780 And he said, well, maybe if a few of them died, they would move on, not shooting people,

00:42:39.240 not killing people.

00:42:40.220 And I said, that's insane.

00:42:41.840 But he firmly believed that if you removed qualified immunity, police officers would act

00:42:46.120 differently.

00:42:46.640 And I firmly believed it would not result in good public policy and it would put police

00:42:50.860 officers in the public lives at risk.

00:42:53.640 So then Jones told the Virginia Scope, I did not say this, which is really hard to believe,

00:43:00.680 given his other statements that he has to admit to, because we've seen the text messages

00:43:05.700 where he calls for the then Republican Speaker of the House to have two bullets put in his

00:43:10.180 brain, along with his children to die, young children to die in their mother's arms and

00:43:16.600 that the parents should have to watch it and doubled down when the Republican he was texting

00:43:20.660 to said, this is really offensive.

00:43:22.100 There's something wrong with you.

00:43:23.360 Called her up, said it again, resumed the text thread, said it again.

00:43:26.800 So now this guy comes out, would love to see cops get shot, too.

00:43:30.940 And so far, we cannot find a single Democrat politician who is calling for him to step down,

00:43:38.320 Charlie.

00:43:40.180 Right.

00:43:41.120 The reason this is so alarming, as you imply, is that this seems to be the product of a

00:43:47.080 considered worldview.

00:43:50.080 People do get angry or upset or emotional, and they send hyperbolic text messages or tweets.

00:43:59.920 Now, I will say that I don't send people text messages fantasizing about the murder of politicians

00:44:08.720 or their children.

00:44:09.620 But I am, as a flawed person, willing to grant some latitude, less so perhaps for people who

00:44:17.880 want to be an attorney general, but some latitude for those who make a mistake, providing that it is a

00:44:25.420 mistake, providing that it is acknowledged and reversed.

00:44:31.280 We have all had conversations with people in our lives who have said something awful, then been called

00:44:37.220 on it, and then said, all right, all right, I got upset, or at least apologized for it.

00:44:41.440 But what we seem to be looking at here is somebody who has said this same thing in various fora.

00:44:48.500 By the time he gets in that text thread to saying, yes, we've talked about this before, and then

00:44:54.980 articulating the theory, which is people need to die so that my politics can prevail, he's already

00:45:02.080 said it once by text message and then said it on the phone.

00:45:04.900 And then we learned that he also said the same thing about cops.

00:45:08.160 What that tells me is this is his politics.

00:45:10.920 Now, that's not illegal.

00:45:13.000 In America, you can have horrendous views, but you really should not be the top law enforcement

00:45:17.100 official in the state of Virginia, if that is your view.

00:45:21.440 And I draw this distinction in general, Megan, I've talked about this on my own podcast, with race.

00:45:27.780 You know, I have met people in my life who had bigoted views.

00:45:32.360 The people who had never really thought it through, although I didn't like them or what they were

00:45:37.080 saying, didn't particularly bother me.

00:45:39.400 People who maybe inherited bad views from their family or got angry about something or just

00:45:45.960 were egged on by their friends.

00:45:47.900 And you say, I really don't think that's a nice way of looking at the world.

00:45:50.780 And they go, all right, all right, all right, all right.

00:45:52.660 That's one thing.

00:45:53.940 What is really alarming is when you meet the guy with the charts, when you meet the guy who's

00:45:59.060 a zealot, when you meet the guy who's into race science, or the guy who has a long standing

00:46:05.860 and well-considered opinion on why Jews are bad, those people scare me, because those

00:46:12.320 people are not being carried away by the moment.

00:46:16.420 They are making a political play.

00:46:19.780 And look, Jay Jones, although he wasn't doing it publicly, was making a political play.

00:46:25.200 That is a political attitude.

00:46:28.440 And it's one that is frankly at odds with the way that America has set up all of our

00:46:33.540 presumptions.

00:46:34.220 We don't allow that.

00:46:35.940 You can hold those views, but you can't make them consistent with the American system of

00:46:41.580 government or with the fundamental presumptions of the West.

00:46:44.700 You don't get to kill people because you don't like their politics.

00:46:47.640 You don't get to kill their children because you don't like their parents' politics.

00:46:51.180 You don't get to hurt people so that they will see or discover or learn that they were

00:46:57.820 wrong all along.

00:46:59.040 This should be disqualifying without any qualifications.

00:47:03.060 This person should have dropped out.

00:47:04.940 Everyone should have told him to drop out.

00:47:07.160 It is more important than partisan control.

00:47:09.760 And again, the person that Jay Jones is running against, despite Abigail Spamberg's rhetoric,

00:47:15.420 is actually not Donald Trump.

00:47:16.860 It's Jason Meares, who is a center-right, moderate, competent, current attorney general

00:47:22.840 in Virginia, who is clearly preferable from any political perspective than someone who

00:47:28.300 wants to put bullets in the brain of his opponents.

00:47:31.460 The, just another word on Jay Jones and why I don't believe his current denial that he didn't

00:47:37.420 say that about wanting to see cops die.

00:47:39.860 A Richmond Times dispatch investigation published just last week on him found that in 2022, Jones

00:47:45.760 was convicted in a reckless driving case after he was pulled over driving 116 miles per

00:47:51.220 hour, which was 46 miles per hour above the speed limit.

00:47:57.140 So that means the speed limit was 65.

00:48:01.980 Pretty sure that's 65.

00:48:03.660 That's 116 and a 65.

00:48:05.740 But here's the thing.

00:48:06.740 I don't condone the speeding, nor have I ever driven over 100 miles an hour in my life.

00:48:11.400 But his punishment was a $1,500 fine and 1,000 hours of community service, 500 of which

00:48:18.920 he spent working for his own political action committee.

00:48:23.380 So he's not an honest guy, Rich.

00:48:25.900 The only reason he admitted to saying he wanted to put two bullets in the head of the Republican

00:48:31.280 House Gilbert, speaker, was because it was written.

00:48:34.920 And there was a fellow congresswoman there attesting that the texts were real, that he

00:48:41.920 called her and doubled down, that he resumed the text chain and tripled down about wanting

00:48:45.660 the man's children dead, too.

00:48:48.140 So this guy, he's a reckless driver.

00:48:51.840 He's a liar.

00:48:52.740 He wants cops dead, Republicans dead and Republican children dead.

00:48:56.820 And I'm sorry to make it all about Neera Tanden.

00:48:59.240 We played this yesterday.

00:49:00.120 But here was Neera Tanden excusing it on Meet the Press.

00:49:05.840 And there's not one national Democrat calling for him to step aside.

00:49:08.980 Not one.

00:49:09.700 It's disgraceful.

00:49:10.740 I absolutely think people should criticize that 100%.

00:49:14.900 It's, I think it was a private conversation he had, but still awful and disgusting.

00:49:20.100 We should condemn that.

00:49:21.100 But then you should condemn when the president's called the Democratic Party, the party of Satan.

00:49:25.920 Yeah, in all fairness.

00:49:26.880 Why don't we just say both of those?

00:49:27.960 I think I've paid the price for Satan for political violence on our side.

00:49:31.800 Mike Pence is the chief of staff.

00:49:33.780 Private.

00:49:34.300 It's a private conversation, Rich.

00:49:36.520 Private.

00:49:37.140 And then I'll give you one more.

00:49:38.660 This woman, Melody Mel Cartwright, who is a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates,

00:49:43.900 tweets out with Jay Jones's picture.

00:49:46.940 I stand with Jay Jones.

00:49:49.760 Period.

00:49:50.780 End of statement.

00:49:52.180 And by the way, the only thing that's heartening is to go down and read the replies.

00:49:54.660 I'll give you a couple.

00:49:56.580 Behold the face of pure evil.

00:49:59.240 I wonder what she thinks about him saying the only cop is a good cop.

00:50:03.000 Is it only good cop is a dead cop?

00:50:05.180 And on and on it goes.

00:50:06.560 Like she's getting crushed in the comments because people are absolutely they've had it with all of this.

00:50:10.420 Yeah.

00:50:11.500 So Jay Jones has no credibility to deny that he wanted anyone to die for political reasons, right?

00:50:16.880 Because we have it on the record.

00:50:18.440 And all you need to know about him besides what he said in those messages was his initial reaction when we broke the story was to say that we all regret text messages that we've sent,

00:50:28.700 that it was a smear, that it was an oppo dump from Meoris, his opponent, and then now she is a Trump-controlled publication.

00:50:35.060 Every part of that is wrong.

00:50:36.520 Most of us don't send text messages saying we hope people are going to die.

00:50:40.180 This wasn't a smear.

00:50:41.040 It was true.

00:50:42.040 It wasn't a Meoris oppo dump.

00:50:44.180 And National Review isn't a Trump-controlled organization.

00:50:46.440 But he thought he could get away with that.

00:50:48.620 He thought he could get away with that until it finally occurred to him or someone told him, no, you've got to go out and apologize.

00:50:55.060 And then he started to apologize and express regret.

00:50:58.800 Yeah.

00:50:59.060 How about calling in our Trump-controlled?

00:51:01.000 I said in AM update, that'll be news to Trump.

00:51:04.360 Exactly.

00:51:04.760 Yeah.

00:51:05.180 News to everyone.

00:51:06.520 Yeah.

00:51:06.780 Well, you guys did a great job.

00:51:07.880 Audrey Falberg broke the story, and it set the internet on fire, although not everywhere.

00:51:13.240 The New York Times has yet to devote any time to it.

00:51:17.420 Isn't that amazing?

00:51:17.960 The New York Times is ignoring this story, which is outrageous.

00:51:22.440 It's part of a media pattern, but it's not the only one who have decided this is a non-story.

00:51:26.900 Of course, because it's a Democrat.

00:51:29.300 If this had been a Republican, it would have been on the Times' front page.

00:51:32.980 It might not have been above the fold, but it absolutely would have been there, Rich.

00:51:37.340 Yeah, absolutely.

00:51:38.680 So it's a complete double standard.

00:51:41.280 It's total hypocrisy.

00:51:43.440 And, you know, that's what we've been talking about the last 40 minutes, right?

00:51:46.660 They're desperate to have a MAGA arson.

00:51:49.520 So they make the South Carolina fire into that.

00:51:53.580 And then here they have one of their own side expressing this poisonous worldview, and they

00:51:57.440 want to ignore it.

00:51:58.480 No coverage whatsoever.

00:51:59.820 We'll be right back with Rich and Charlie.

00:52:01.500 Don't go away.

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00:53:06.680 We absolutely have to keep talking.

00:53:09.740 It's more important now than ever.

00:53:11.940 To cower, to hide, to go silent is not the answer.

00:53:16.300 And all I can tell you is there is no fucking way I am canceling one stop on this tour.

00:53:24.560 Not one stop.

00:53:25.920 I'm going.

00:53:26.740 I'm going to stand on these stages and I'm going to say all the things that we say all the time

00:53:32.040 on this show.

00:53:32.760 We're going to make it safe for me.

00:53:33.560 We're going to make it safe for my team and my guests and you.

00:53:36.620 We're going coast to coast and do something really important, which is to say what's true

00:53:42.060 and what's real to honor him.

00:53:45.460 I really now more than ever would love to see you all face to face.

00:53:49.300 God, I would love to see you face to face.

00:53:52.340 I need to see you face to face.

00:53:55.040 I am doing this tour and I would love for you to join me.

00:53:59.060 MeganKelley.com for the tickets.

00:54:03.560 Rich Lowry and Charles C.W.

00:54:06.280 Cook of National Review are back with me now.

00:54:08.880 Guys, there's an important case going up before the Supreme Court this morning.

00:54:12.860 It was argued beginning at 10 a.m.

00:54:15.840 And we have the audio because they release audio on the big cases.

00:54:20.720 What this case is about, we fronted it for our audience earlier this week, is alleged conversion

00:54:25.340 therapy bans, which is just such a bastardization of what conversion therapy is.

00:54:30.860 That's not really what this case is about.

00:54:33.040 Conversion therapy is a thing that parents used to do to little gay kids in the 1950s.

00:54:37.620 Like, you're not gay.

00:54:38.760 You're fine.

00:54:39.620 You're straight.

00:54:40.680 Don't like boys.

00:54:41.920 And send them into therapy where the therapist would be like, you're not gay.

00:54:45.660 You like straight.

00:54:46.500 You're straight.

00:54:47.020 You like girls, girls, girls.

00:54:48.340 And try to convince these boys that whatever.

00:54:49.980 Okay, so that's what conversion therapy is.

00:54:52.720 Colorado glomming onto a term that is pretty universally condemned.

00:54:56.600 I mean, some Christian circles still believe it can happen and some people still believe

00:55:00.080 it can happen.

00:55:00.700 So with all due respect to them.

00:55:01.980 But that term is basically loathed.

00:55:05.220 And glomming onto that fact, Colorado decided to ban the practice via legislation.

00:55:11.500 And it does cover the gay thing, but it's all about the trans thing.

00:55:15.800 And their law says that therapists are not allowed to converse with their patients, children

00:55:25.800 who say that they're gender confused in a way that would push them back to their actual

00:55:32.680 biological sex.

00:55:34.620 That too would be considered conversion therapy as opposed to just therapy where you're actually

00:55:41.980 trying to search for, is this real, this gender confusion?

00:55:45.980 Or are you just having home problems?

00:55:47.940 Are your parents getting a divorce?

00:55:48.920 Have you been bullied?

00:55:49.760 Are you a young girl going through puberty?

00:55:51.660 What could possibly be the cause of this other than actual gender dysphoria?

00:55:56.460 It's insane.

00:55:57.380 And it's really dangerous what they've done in Colorado, which is a lunatic state.

00:56:01.880 I mean, truly, like the legislation coming out of there on the trans issue is as far left

00:56:05.420 as it gets.

00:56:06.200 So they passed this ban and a therapist files a lawsuit saying, I can't do my job with this.

00:56:14.960 I'm not just going to affirm a child I don't actually think is trans because of a law that

00:56:20.440 says I'm not allowed to discuss with him whether he really is or isn't, or, you know, really

00:56:24.480 is having gender confusion.

00:56:25.540 So these, this, the law, the underlying litigation all lined up, um, in favor of Colorado of in favor

00:56:37.220 of letting the ban stand.

00:56:38.880 And then thankfully the high court took the case, which is good.

00:56:42.380 That's a good sign.

00:56:43.480 They didn't want to just let the lower court decision stand and they're hashing it out

00:56:47.840 right now.

00:56:48.260 And we pulled a soundbite in this soundbite.

00:56:50.220 We've got both justice Alito, who of course is a conservative and justice Kagan, who definitely

00:56:54.960 is not, uh, questioning Shannon Stevenson, uh, the Colorado solicitor general top appellate,

00:57:01.920 uh, uh, uh, lawyer.

00:57:04.640 And you're going to hear some discussion discussion in here about viewpoint discrimination, which

00:57:08.980 is the position of those challenging the Colorado ban.

00:57:12.980 The therapist is saying, this is basically a free speech case.

00:57:16.920 You're, you're trying to tell me that I'm not allowed to say, are you really trans young

00:57:22.580 man?

00:57:23.300 Um, or could it be something else?

00:57:25.640 You're trying to clip my speech because you don't want my viewpoint that maybe he's not

00:57:31.220 trans making its way into my therapist's office.

00:57:34.820 So that's what they're talking about.

00:57:36.260 When you hear that term, let's play it.

00:57:37.620 In the first situation, an adolescent male comes to a licensed therapist, uh, and says

00:57:45.140 he's attracted to other males, but he feels uneasy and guilty about those feelings.

00:57:49.620 He wants to end or lessen them.

00:57:52.020 And he asks for the therapist's help in doing so.

00:57:54.920 The other situation is, uh, similar adolescent male comes to a licensed therapist, says he's

00:58:01.040 attracted to other males, feels uneasy and guilty about those feelings.

00:58:05.020 And he wants the therapist's help so he will feel comfortable as a gay young man.

00:58:10.460 Uh, it seems to me your interpret, your statute dictates opposite results in those two situations.

00:58:18.760 As I heard your examples, I think they would both be permissible because it didn't sound

00:58:22.280 like in either case, the goal was to actually change sexual orientation.

00:58:27.300 I guess I had the same kind of question that justice Alito had.

00:58:30.600 I mean, if we assume, for example, and this is a big assumption on your part, but just

00:58:35.520 assume that we're in normal free speech land rather than in this kind of doctor land.

00:58:42.260 And, um, if, uh, if a doctor says, I know you identify as gay and I'm going to help you

00:58:48.600 accept that.

00:58:49.440 And another doctor says, I know you identify as gay and I'm going to help you to change

00:58:56.060 that.

00:58:57.020 And one of those is permissible and the other is not.

00:59:00.600 That seems like viewpoint discrimination.

00:59:03.300 I don't disagree with that, Justice Kagan.

00:59:04.820 And that's why medical treatment has to be treated differently.

00:59:07.600 Because anytime you exclude one harmful practice, you are by definition saying these things are

00:59:13.180 allowed because they are not harmful.

00:59:14.700 And these things are excluded because they are harmful.

00:59:17.740 Um, that's the driving force behind regulating the particular practice.

00:59:22.060 Oh, all right.

00:59:24.700 And that top lawyer for Colorado's argument, which is, I agree, this is viewpoint discrimination,

00:59:31.860 but we're allowed to do it in the medical community is exactly what we heard on NPR this

00:59:38.180 morning from Nina Totenberg, who's their Supreme court reporter, who is an absolute bully, nasty

00:59:46.320 person.

00:59:46.740 I was there for years covering the high court when she was there because she's 200 years

00:59:51.060 old and trust me, this is not a nice person, but listen to her summary of this case this

00:59:58.380 morning to the NPR listeners.

01:00:01.020 I guess when advocates of conversion therapy hear that their treatments are discredited,

01:00:06.160 they just don't believe the medical associations.

01:00:08.340 They note that the American Psychiatric Association actually listed homosexuality as a mental disorder

01:00:14.540 until 1973.

01:00:17.040 Attorney General Weiser says that medical science evolves over time.

01:00:21.000 And there were times when we didn't know that smoking cigarettes, for instance, that they

01:00:24.900 cause cancer.

01:00:25.960 But now we do know that.

01:00:27.860 And it's wrong, he says, for a doctor to tell people to smoke cigarettes three packs a day

01:00:33.100 and tell them don't worry about the health effects.

01:00:35.880 He says that would be substandard care, just like conversion practices are substandard care.

01:00:41.980 Can you believe that, Charlie?

01:00:46.220 That's Nina Totenberg trying to say a therapist just actually doing a full-throated explanation

01:00:52.640 with a child on why they might be feeling gender dysphoric or gender confusion is akin to forcing

01:00:58.620 cigarettes on them or saying cigarettes are healthy, you should smoke those.

01:01:02.820 So as you suggest, the problem here is with the analogy.

01:01:07.960 There are so many bases being stolen here.

01:01:12.040 This is not a free speech case in the sense that we would usually think of free speech

01:01:16.720 in America, where effectively anything goes.

01:01:19.580 The question posed by Sotomayor did draw the right distinction structurally.

01:01:24.780 We do, of course, impose certain rules on medicine because we regulate medicine.

01:01:30.060 And so what the people who want Colorado's law to stand will say is,

01:01:34.280 well, if your doctor told you to stick a knife through your calf, is that free speech?

01:01:39.000 Well, no.

01:01:39.600 Or if your doctor told you to go smoke cigarettes and it's good for you, is that free speech?

01:01:44.160 Well, no.

01:01:45.080 We do regulate medicine and there are some questions that are now beyond doubt.

01:01:50.160 The idea that this is one of them is so preposterous that it defies belief.

01:01:58.780 This should be laughed out of court.

01:02:01.240 If anything, the rules should run in the other direction, or at least they should acknowledge

01:02:07.320 that up until about 10 years ago, this was considered absolute lunacy.

01:02:13.240 So for a state to go from all of human history to you are not allowed to question this as a doctor

01:02:22.480 is ridiculous.

01:02:25.040 And yes, there is a free speech element there because when a matter, medical or not,

01:02:31.100 is a ongoing question of public debate, is an ongoing question of medical inquiry.

01:02:38.680 And just as a sidebar, I don't trust a lot of the medical organizations that were referenced.

01:02:43.800 You shouldn't.

01:02:44.480 No.

01:02:45.100 I mean, on NPR, of course, they started listing all of these institutions.

01:02:48.920 They have lost their credibility and for good reason because they will just produce false

01:02:52.460 evidence in response to social pressure.

01:02:54.820 But forget that for a moment.

01:02:56.280 This is an ongoing matter of legal dispute, political dispute, medical dispute, philosophical

01:03:02.640 dispute.

01:03:03.320 You cannot intervene, as Colorado has said, and put your finger on the scale in the direction

01:03:09.300 of the innovation and expect not to be challenged on it.

01:03:12.400 It is such a dishonest comparison.

01:03:14.740 Yes.

01:03:15.320 So well said, Charlie.

01:03:16.580 And ours, Ed Whelan, just posted this.

01:03:19.240 Sure seems like there could be nine to zero agreement that strict scrutiny applies, which

01:03:25.120 would be good.

01:03:25.820 That means we're going to apply the most strict scrutiny against this law and to see whether

01:03:29.780 it's basically the law will likely fall.

01:03:31.960 It's almost impossible to pass that standard.

01:03:35.120 The court might divide on whether it should go ahead and apply strict scrutiny itself,

01:03:40.760 thus striking down the law, or remand for the lower courts to do so.

01:03:45.020 He writes, I'd expect the majority to apply the strict scrutiny.

01:03:48.320 Colorado effort to defeat standing seems to have failed.

01:03:51.420 So it sounds like it's been so far a very bad day for Colorado to the point where Ed thinks

01:03:56.160 we could be getting a 9-0 ruling on this.

01:03:59.640 If we did, that would just be so beautiful.

01:04:01.620 We almost never get them.

01:04:03.000 And for them to send a message like that on an issue like this would be actually quite

01:04:07.220 bold.

01:04:08.620 Yeah.

01:04:08.880 So when you have Alito and it was, it was a Kagan, you pay the clip from making exactly

01:04:13.240 the same point for the same reason.

01:04:15.040 That's not a very good sign when you're the lawyer on the other side.

01:04:18.300 And the idea that everyone in the medical profession, including therapists, just has to accept gender

01:04:25.220 dysphoria as, oh, that's the way you are, and I can't talk to you about it, is insane.

01:04:30.980 And as we all know, gender dysphoria is associated with other forms of trauma, with other disorders,

01:04:38.900 autism, childhood abuse, all that.

01:04:41.920 And that's not going to come up.

01:04:43.540 We're just supposed to accept the dysphoria.

01:04:45.660 I remember a couple of years ago, Megan talking to a friend, there was a story about Megan Fox,

01:04:49.760 the very successful and attractive actress, having some form, the story didn't stipulate what it was,

01:04:55.700 some form of body dysphoria, right?

01:04:57.660 Clearly, totally irrational, right?

01:05:00.040 But when she goes to talk to a therapist, the therapist is supposed to say, oh, yeah, you're ugly,

01:05:05.040 or you're too skinny, or whatever it is, just because she has this irrational belief about her own body.

01:05:10.900 It is insane and should never stand.

01:05:14.500 And all these therapists, like, not allowed to exercise their expertise in how to flesh out an issue

01:05:19.240 and see what is really bothering someone, as we've heard so many times from the transitioners.

01:05:23.540 There can't be a Christian therapist in Colorado anymore if this law stands.

01:05:28.200 Exactly right.

01:05:29.000 Go ahead, Charlie.

01:05:30.180 Just to add another stolen base here, and of course, Colorado knows this, and the activists know this,

01:05:36.120 which is why they're pushing this.

01:05:38.160 There is a big difference here.

01:05:39.740 So I am a pro-gay conservative.

01:05:41.980 I always have been.

01:05:42.840 I think people are born that way.

01:05:44.800 I was born straight.

01:05:45.900 Some of my friends were born gay.

01:05:47.280 If you say to a therapist or a doctor or your parents, you know, I think I'm gay,

01:05:52.040 and then you subsequently decide that you're not, well, what have you really lost?

01:05:57.740 But if you say now, well, actually, I was born in the wrong body, that unlocks the next step,

01:06:04.960 which is the immediate movement into very often physical and irreversible so-called gender-affirming care.

01:06:13.860 It's not something that you can say, I was wrong about that, or it was a phase,

01:06:20.020 in the same way as you could with most other of the controversial gender and sexuality questions.

01:06:28.060 And they know that.

01:06:29.260 So the stakes here are much, much higher.

01:06:31.940 That's another reason why you shouldn't shut down this speech,

01:06:34.720 because we know what happens next, Megan.

01:06:36.920 The 12-year-old who gets affirmed in their conception of themselves,

01:06:41.140 the next day they get affirmed in their hormones or in surgery.

01:06:47.560 And then they end up at 18 years old saying, God, I actually was just a tomboy,

01:06:52.300 but now I have had my private parts cut off.

01:06:55.620 That's why Abigail Schreier named her book Irreversible Damage.

01:07:00.060 That's what comes next.

01:07:01.820 And by the way, that's another reason why schools should not be asking people their pronouns,

01:07:08.300 children or college students, because for some people, they've never said it out loud.

01:07:12.760 They may be secretly wrestling with whether they're a she or a he.

01:07:16.580 And the first act of actually writing down and choosing the opposite pronouns begins the social transition.

01:07:23.780 And once it's begun, it's extremely hard to undo it,

01:07:28.220 which is why we shouldn't be allowing this.

01:07:30.760 Some teacher in a classroom should not have that sort of a power over your child,

01:07:35.040 especially a minor child, which is the hill I will die on.

01:07:39.900 I've said that to my own school.

01:07:41.600 So it's just outrageous.

01:07:43.360 I think this is a good sign, Rich, that the Supreme Court's going to go the right way.

01:07:47.820 And let's hope so, because there's another trans case going up involving athletics

01:07:51.620 and whether boys should be allowed to play in girls' sports.

01:07:54.300 So if the Supreme Court sends a nice strong message here, I think I'll sleep a little better at night.

01:07:58.580 OK, I want to keep going.

01:07:59.720 I know Rich has got to leave in seven minutes.

01:08:01.500 Charles stays with us for a bit longer.

01:08:03.100 There is a big story today per Just the News and John Solomon,

01:08:07.660 which is about Jack Smith and his investigation of the January 6th riot at the Capitol.

01:08:15.240 And what has just been revealed by Dan Bongino and Cash Patel at the FBI is actually quite shocking,

01:08:21.720 I have to say, even for Jack Smith and the Biden DOJ.

01:08:24.600 And it is that the FBI and Jack Smith collected the private phone records of eight.

01:08:32.920 I've also heard 10 Republican senators and one GOP House member as part of his investigation of the J6 riot.

01:08:41.120 So he went, according to Senator Chuck Grassley, to the private phone companies and subpoenaed the private phone records of U.S. senators, all Republicans,

01:08:52.380 to see who they were talking to, when they were talking to them, the duration of the call and the general location data of the call.

01:09:01.600 He couldn't hear the contents of the calls themselves.

01:09:03.900 It wasn't a wiretap, but got all that information for some 10 Republican lawmakers from the dates of January 4th through January 7th, 2021.

01:09:14.960 The lawmakers included Lindsey Graham, Bill Haggerty, Josh Hawley, Dan Sullivan, Tommy Tuberville, Ron Johnson, Cynthia Lummis,

01:09:23.540 Marsha Blackburn and GOP Representative Mike Kelly.

01:09:26.640 It was all conducted via a grand jury subpoena that Jack Smith got and then served on the phone companies through his cellular analysis survey team.

01:09:37.500 He then looked at the information and Chuck Grassley's office revealed that the FBI found this piece of the investigation in what was called a prohibited access file in response to Grassley's oversight requests.

01:09:55.380 Grassley must have gotten wind that there might be such a thing.

01:09:58.780 So the FBI started digging and digging to see if they could find it.

01:10:01.880 It was hidden in a prohibited access file that is meant to limit the ability of FBI agents to access certain documents.

01:10:09.760 But they got in there.

01:10:11.120 A former executive assistant director of the FBI tells Just the News Chris Wray would have had to be involved in approving this rule.

01:10:18.480 There is no way this would have happened without the head of the FBI signing off on it.

01:10:22.500 And now you really do have things going to the next level when you look at the Jack Smith investigation subpoenaing secretly Republican members of Congress and their private cell phone messages.

01:10:34.900 Your thoughts on it, Rich?

01:10:36.140 Yeah, well, that should be a real red line.

01:10:39.020 And I always thought Jack Smith was a fanatic.

01:10:41.340 I hated January 6th.

01:10:42.560 I think it was terrible.

01:10:43.520 It was a blight on the country.

01:10:44.440 I don't think it was a crime or Donald Trump committed crimes on that day.

01:10:50.540 Obviously, the rioters committed crimes.

01:10:53.720 But this was an effort because the impeachment failed to have a do-over and try to go after Trump criminally.

01:11:01.600 And it was obviously all done with a political timetable.

01:11:05.340 He wanted to get after this and then the classified documents case on an expedited timetable that was ridiculous compared to the usual timetable in these cases just with an eye to the November elections last year.

01:11:21.480 That was wrong.

01:11:23.080 I think Smith just lost his mind over this matter.

01:11:26.220 I can understand how that might happen.

01:11:27.960 It was a terrible thing.

01:11:29.220 But if this is true and correct, it would be another sign of that.

01:11:34.740 Cash Patel said, under our watch, the FBI will never again be turned against the American people.

01:11:39.280 Dan Bongino said, under our leadership, the FBI will never again be used as a political weapon against the American people.

01:11:45.220 It's a disgrace that I have to stand on Capitol Hill and reveal this, that the FBI was once weaponized to track the private communications of U.S. lawmakers for political purposes.

01:11:55.600 That era is over.

01:11:57.140 There are Republicans who are very angry over this, Charles, including Josh Hawley, who is one of the senators targeted.

01:12:05.360 I mean, this has got this just whiffs of serious separations of powers issues here because you've got Jack Smith, who worked in the executive branch under the attorney general, without notice to sitting U.S. senators and House members getting their private phone communications right around the time when the election was being certified.

01:12:22.340 I mean, right around like what I know we all we all feel the same about January 6th, that it was terrible.

01:12:28.960 And we've never know the three of us have never run excuses for January 6th.

01:12:32.340 However, there was the certification of an election that was about to happen and there would have been conversations about it.

01:12:39.100 And are there any legitimate objections, just like we saw Democrats raise in every earlier election won by a Republican and to have the FBI spying on those Republican senators and any communication communications they had?

01:12:52.180 What with lawyers? Did they want to find out if they spoke to lawyers off campus who specialize in election law?

01:12:57.560 And then that person became the focus of their crosshairs?

01:13:01.120 Is there another secret FBI file where they then zeroed in on those guys?

01:13:04.960 Like we've we've crossed here like a bridge.

01:13:08.720 I don't think we've crossed before.

01:13:10.040 Chuck Grassley is saying this is almost as bad as Watergate.

01:13:14.320 Well, it's just so unlike the FBI to behave like a fourth branch of government, start tracking the phone conversations and records of people it dislikes.

01:13:22.480 Is there any point in the history of the FBI which it hasn't done this?

01:13:26.300 If Kash Patel stops, it'll be the the first time in in its history.

01:13:32.840 This is classic Hoover style conduct.

01:13:37.160 This is where it gets so annoying for those of us who are staunch critics of January 6th.

01:13:44.480 And in my case, who didn't vote for President Trump over January 6th, because despite my repeated and sincere condemnations of January 6th,

01:13:54.680 I don't think that gave the government carte blanche to do anything it wanted.

01:13:59.740 And I also don't think that it is an all purpose excuse to oppose anything right of center.

01:14:06.280 Unfortunately, there are too many people within our politics who have adopted that approach.

01:14:10.900 And one of them was Jack Smith, who really, I think, responded in a way that made January 6th worse, in a sense,

01:14:21.760 because what you had at January 6th was a thankfully unsuccessful and never going to be successful repudiation of American constitutional norms.

01:14:31.620 And what you have had in response to January 6th, sometimes from Jack Smith, is a repudiation of American constitutional norms.

01:14:38.900 And you do not fix violations of constitutional norms by adding more violations of constitutional norms on top.

01:14:47.660 Now, this wasn't Jack Smith necessarily, but we saw another one, for example,

01:14:51.080 with the attempt to disqualify Donald Trump from the 2024 election in certain states because of January 6th.

01:14:58.160 I see all of these things of a piece.

01:15:00.480 I think you had a terrible and embarrassing incident that should be long in the memory.

01:15:06.320 And those who were responsible for it should be vilified.

01:15:10.160 I also see a response from certain parts of the government that we should be extremely uncomfortable with

01:15:15.920 as small L liberal, classical liberal Americans.

01:15:19.300 And this is a good part of that.

01:15:21.620 I mean, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that Jack Smith gets his own subpoena

01:15:27.100 and gets dragged in front of the Congress.

01:15:29.820 I mean, Hugh Hewitt, who I really respect and who's a smart lawyer, posted the following,

01:15:34.940 put an ideological zealot outside the law, arm him with an unlimited budget and as many prosecutors as he desires,

01:15:42.100 two grand juries and a compliant FBI.

01:15:43.880 And this is what you get, an American barrier, which was he was part of Stalin's secret police.

01:15:50.100 The congressional investigation should begin today.

01:15:52.600 A select committee in the Senate full of the brightest lawyers in the Senate GOP should be stood up by Leader John Thune

01:15:57.940 with usual powers and allotment to the usual numbers of minority senators.

01:16:01.360 No charades like the J6 jammed down by Speaker Pelosi.

01:16:05.600 It's difficult to overstate what Smith did here in terms of attacks on the Constitution's separation of powers.

01:16:10.680 I hope Leader Thune calls a select committee together and gets them to working immediately.

01:16:15.320 Former Director Wray and former A.G. Garland have much to explain.

01:16:20.300 Our Javert should be the last witness.

01:16:22.720 This is so Hugh, meaning Javert like the guy in Les Mis, the investigator who is kind of the villain.

01:16:30.420 Anyway, I agree with him.

01:16:32.780 I don't think this is I think this is the beginning of a massive story that's going to go on and on.

01:16:36.080 And I'll bet you he did more.

01:16:37.580 If Jack Smith was willing to cross that line, I'll bet you there will be other lines that he crossed and then put it in a secret FBI file.

01:16:43.520 Thanks to Chris Wray.

01:16:44.580 He's going to have his hands full, too, when we see that select committee probably come through.

01:16:48.660 Rich, I know you've got to run.

01:16:49.580 Thank you so much for being here, as always.

01:16:52.280 All right, Charles, I have something super fun for you to discuss now.

01:16:55.320 And I'm sad for Rich that he won't get to weigh in on it.

01:16:57.940 But you're going to be really honored.

01:17:00.280 Michelle Obama, as you know, has got a podcast.

01:17:02.660 And she's using it.

01:17:04.760 She's putting it to good use.

01:17:05.800 I mean, she's really working through a lot of her feelings about the United States, about her husband, about her children.

01:17:13.100 P.S., the answer on all three of those is she can't stand them.

01:17:16.220 She hated motherhood.

01:17:17.860 She can't stand her marriage.

01:17:19.240 And she's not too keen on the United States of America.

01:17:21.460 And there's another thing she's not too keen on, and that is being so famous.

01:17:29.140 Listen to this, Sot 33.

01:17:31.280 I wanted to ask you guys earlier, like, what makes you feel alive?

01:17:38.120 What makes you feel like you're present?

01:17:40.340 In the life I live, which is so abnormal now, it's really, it's like being outside.

01:17:48.000 You know, I mean, we've, I say this a lot, something that comes with fame that people don't, that they don't appreciate, they're not cautious of, is the loss of anonymity.

01:18:03.160 Yeah.

01:18:03.400 Like, it's hard for Barack and I to just be in the world unobserved.

01:18:09.100 Yeah.

01:18:09.620 And as a couple, so much of your interaction just happens because you two are experiencing the world together, sitting in a park and watching life go by, you know, stopping at a cafe and getting a cup of coffee.

01:18:25.320 And then the conversation turns to the conversation next to you, right?

01:18:30.520 We're always the conversation next to the people we're sitting.

01:18:34.680 Oh, my God, Charles.

01:18:38.560 So, no one held a gun to her head and made her run for the White House and become First Lady twice.

01:18:48.160 Though, you wouldn't know that to hear her talk.

01:18:51.100 And on top of that, you know, like, Laura Bush, she kind of went off into the sunset and never bothered anybody again.

01:18:59.060 Barbara Bush certainly did that.

01:19:02.060 Hillary Clinton didn't.

01:19:03.020 But Michelle Obama decided to launch a podcast where she talks about herself incessantly.

01:19:12.240 That there's the woman she had on who was questioning her was a relationship therapist talking all about Michelle's relationship with Barack.

01:19:19.200 Again, P.S.

01:19:20.480 Spoiler.

01:19:21.300 She can't stand him.

01:19:22.600 She looks at him across the dinner table and wants to smack him because she cannot stand the way he chews.

01:19:27.780 The contempt is oozing out of her whenever she speaks of her husband.

01:19:30.880 And answering questions like, what makes you feel alive?

01:19:35.900 Like you're present.

01:19:37.080 I mean, it was like listening to an episode of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast.

01:19:40.220 This is I Hear You Do This All The Time.

01:19:43.220 And so she goes out there.

01:19:45.320 She wants people subscribing.

01:19:47.080 She does a huge promotional tour.

01:19:49.520 Come listen to my podcast.

01:19:50.680 And then she's got the nerve to go out there and cry about how famous she is.

01:19:56.340 And people are always talking about her, Charles.

01:19:59.040 Yeah, and just as a 30,000 feet point, she doesn't really have a big problem there in that description.

01:20:10.840 I mean, this is something else going on.

01:20:12.840 That is a good problem to have.

01:20:15.200 To be very rich and very famous does not solve all of your issues.

01:20:19.280 But it is generally quite a good thing to be.

01:20:23.960 I mean, I remember when I was much younger hearing a movie star, I forget who it was, complain that people would come up to him at dinner and ask for autographs or whatever.

01:20:33.460 And my view was, look, that's kind of what goes along with all of the money and fame and adoration that you get.

01:20:41.440 There are certain times where people can be, I'm sure you experience this, but people can be a little bit inappropriate or they come up when you're with your kids and they wish you wouldn't or whatever.

01:20:49.820 I'm sure.

01:20:50.420 I'm not a movie star.

01:20:51.180 But it is generally a good problem to have is the first thing.

01:20:55.460 She just seems wildly ungrateful that she has lived this extraordinary American life that most people would never get to experience.

01:21:03.840 But the thing that I find most annoying about this, she says that she's saying this on a podcast that she chose to produce.

01:21:09.780 She was not handcuffed and put in front of that camera.

01:21:12.860 She was not zip tied to the table and told to speak into that microphone.

01:21:16.960 It is actually possible to disappear even if you've been president.

01:21:19.880 Ronald Reagan flew back from Washington, D.C. to California and lived on his ranch.

01:21:25.900 And he made public appearances when he wanted to, but people didn't go find him.

01:21:29.280 George W. Bush lives on a ranch in Crawford, Texas.

01:21:32.180 He is in public if he wishes to be.

01:21:35.440 It's not mandatory.

01:21:36.740 This is an absolutely enormous country.

01:21:40.540 There are so many corners of it where you can live, if not anonymously.

01:21:45.300 You can live on a bunch of land with Secret Service protection and no one will ever bother you.

01:21:52.220 So what she's really saying is that she is no longer able to interact with the world in the way that she wishes to be since her husband was president for eight years and she was first lady.

01:22:03.100 Well, then don't run for president.

01:22:04.420 That's obvious.

01:22:05.140 We know that.

01:22:05.900 I have some sympathy, I guess, at one level for someone like Dwight Eisenhower or Harry Truman who, you know, they lived after their presidencies and it was an interesting move for them because some of them didn't have much money.

01:22:19.860 And so they'd gone from being commander of the Allied forces and then president to sort of, well, do I have enough money for groceries?

01:22:28.140 And they would live on a farm or whatever.

01:22:30.060 And they didn't quite know what their role was as a former president.

01:22:32.980 But this is a very well trodden path now.

01:22:35.820 They knew what they were getting into.

01:22:37.180 They knew what it would be like afterwards.

01:22:38.540 They loved every minute of it.

01:22:39.660 Just give me a break.

01:22:41.100 Yes.

01:22:41.520 And by the way, who made her pose on the cover of Vogue three times?

01:22:47.040 Was that the terrible American public?

01:22:50.180 Like, no, she wanted the stardom.

01:22:53.160 She wanted the fawning attention.

01:22:55.700 She wanted everything that she's gotten.

01:22:58.120 And now she wants us to feel sorry for her because she got it.

01:23:02.300 And by the way, you're not the subject of everybody's conversation.

01:23:05.480 With two seconds, they'd say, is that Michelle Obama?

01:23:08.140 Yeah.

01:23:08.460 Oh, and then they'd move on.

01:23:09.700 You're not that interesting, Michelle.

01:23:10.860 Don't flatter yourself.

01:23:12.380 So that was something I needed to discuss with you.

01:23:14.960 And then last but not least, can we talk about Zach Bryan?

01:23:19.060 Because this is actually a very big star who a lot of people, especially including on the right, adore.

01:23:26.120 His music's really popular.

01:23:28.180 But Zach Bryan has come out with a new album.

01:23:32.200 And in it, he's previewing a song that condemns ice.

01:23:37.160 He goes after ice.

01:23:38.860 And he seems to be going after the current state of America.

01:23:41.940 We have a bit of that here in this soundbite from the song.

01:23:45.940 My friends are all degenerates.

01:23:48.360 They're all I got.

01:23:49.400 The generational story of dropping the plot.

01:23:52.460 I heard the cops came.

01:23:54.800 Cocky motherfuckers, ain't they?

01:23:58.540 And ice is gonna come bust down your door.

01:24:01.800 Trying to build a house.

01:24:03.240 No one builds no more.

01:24:04.520 But I got a telephone.

01:24:06.820 Kids are all scared and all alone.

01:24:08.980 The bar stopped bumping the rock.

01:24:13.040 Stopped rolling.

01:24:13.880 My middle finger's rising.

01:24:15.440 And I won't stop showing got some bad news.

01:24:18.940 The fading of a red, white, and blue.

01:24:21.360 So this is, he's posting a snippet of his song that's about to drop on the new album.

01:24:27.720 And you heard, just for the listening audience, in case you didn't quite get it,

01:24:30.100 I heard the cops come.

01:24:31.100 Cocky mother effers, ain't they?

01:24:33.080 And ice is gonna come.

01:24:34.360 Bust down your door.

01:24:35.460 Try to build a house.

01:24:36.360 No one builds no more.

01:24:37.600 But I got a telephone.

01:24:38.800 Kids are all scared and all alone.

01:24:40.880 And then he goes on to say, got some bad news.

01:24:42.800 The fading of the red, white, and blue.

01:24:45.000 This is the same guy who, let's see, he reportedly condemned officers as out of control

01:24:52.260 and as a bunch of middle-aged white dudes arresting people.

01:24:56.800 When another country singer condemned Bud Light after they partnered with Dylan Mulvaney,

01:25:01.200 this trans activist, he declared in a now-deleted tweet,

01:25:05.020 I just think insulting transgender people is completely wrong because we live in a country

01:25:08.780 where we can all just be who we want to be.

01:25:11.320 It's a great day to be alive, I thought.

01:25:13.340 And on and on.

01:25:14.680 He's gotten pulled over a couple times by the cops.

01:25:16.840 Well, one, in which he was like, I'm a famous singer.

01:25:20.020 I'm a famous singer.

01:25:21.100 I don't have to give you my address.

01:25:23.180 And so on.

01:25:24.620 And you tell me whether this is gonna have any sort of backlash for him, Charles,

01:25:28.060 because you've got actual country music star John Rich tweeting out, let's see,

01:25:34.840 who's ready for the Zach Bryan Dixie Chicks tour.

01:25:37.700 Probably a huge Bud Light sponsorship for this one.

01:25:40.500 And also adding, he said that this is actually pretty commonplace, that he said,

01:25:46.560 Nashville is full of guys like this.

01:25:48.960 A lot of pushback from people on the right suggesting he just lost most of his audience.

01:25:52.740 What an idiot.

01:25:53.460 Your thoughts?

01:25:53.920 Well, I'm more offended by the fact that rhythm guitar was so out of tune on what sounds like a

01:25:59.580 finished record than by the lyrics.

01:26:01.040 I really think they ought to have done better than that.

01:26:03.360 But seriously, look, he's a free American.

01:26:06.840 He can speak his mind.

01:26:08.300 I'm not a fan, so I don't particularly care.

01:26:10.520 But what I do think, which is what I always think in these situations, is why do it?

01:26:14.980 Not because he's saying things I don't agree with, but because there's so much to talk about

01:26:19.140 in music and politics is inevitably a downgrade.

01:26:24.360 There is almost no piece of music that has ever been written that was improved by bringing

01:26:30.380 day-to-day politics in.

01:26:31.960 Maybe timeless truths.

01:26:33.260 So true.

01:26:34.580 But the things that are happening right now, that's so right now.

01:26:38.240 Those could be tweets.

01:26:39.480 I mean, that is the resistance piece du jour that he's put in there.

01:26:44.400 And it just annoys people.

01:26:47.800 And those that it thrills, forget about it in three weeks.

01:26:50.760 So why do it?

01:26:51.740 Again, I don't want to silence him.

01:26:53.040 That's what he really wants to do from the bottom of his heart.

01:26:55.520 That is his lookout.

01:26:56.700 It's not my prerogative.

01:26:59.120 But it's an odd temptation that artists have to get political in the most boring and

01:27:06.720 inconsequential of ways, when they could instead be talking about things that are timeless

01:27:11.820 or interesting.

01:27:12.360 So I find that almost embarrassing rather than upsetting.

01:27:17.040 So good.

01:27:17.620 You're a bore.

01:27:18.640 Zach Bryan, you're boring.

01:27:20.660 That's good.

01:27:21.440 That's cutting.

01:27:22.300 Well done, Charles.

01:27:23.240 Great to talk to you.

01:27:24.600 Thank you so much for being here.

01:27:26.140 Everybody check out Charlie's, especially his latest piece.

01:27:29.180 It's so good on NR.com.

01:27:30.660 I mentioned it earlier on Jay Jones and everything at NR, which is how I spend my morning, just

01:27:35.880 pressing play on the audio recording on every NR article.

01:27:40.040 Talk to you soon, Charles.

01:27:40.700 Thanks for being here.

01:27:41.280 Thanks for having me.

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01:31:12.400 Have you ever looked up something and suddenly it seems like ads for that product are following you everywhere you go on your phone?

01:31:23.600 Or you've spoken about something and an ad for it shows up on your phone?

01:31:28.700 Are you worried about your data getting collected and sold to some company in America or some foreign country?

01:31:35.960 Well, my next guests are the co-founder of Your Solution, the co-founder and CEO of a really exciting tech company called Unplugged.

01:31:44.620 They're working to solve this problem for all of us.

01:31:47.300 Unplugged designs and manufactures the privacy-focused UpPhone, UP, UpPhone, a smartphone that functions just like other companies' smartphones but without any of the privacy risks.

01:31:59.460 That's thanks to firewalls and other features.

01:32:02.480 The UpPhone users can browse.

01:32:04.220 They can shop.

01:32:04.700 They can call.

01:32:05.140 They can text.

01:32:05.560 They can take pictures.

01:32:06.200 They can post on social media, whatever they want to do, without being tracked and without having their data harvested and then sold to third parties.

01:32:15.900 How about your children?

01:32:17.560 Did you know this is happening to them, too?

01:32:20.040 Here with me now, Unplugged co-founder Eric Prince, who was previously CEO of Blackwater, and Unplugged CEO Joe Weil.

01:32:28.680 Guys, welcome to the show.

01:32:31.040 Thanks for having us.

01:32:31.560 Thanks, Megan.

01:32:32.520 This is a great idea.

01:32:33.840 I worry about this all the time because that does happen to me.

01:32:37.160 I'm sure it happens to everybody with the ads listening to you and definitely watching what you do online.

01:32:41.880 I'll never forgive it for coming back to me with an advertisement for elderly Pilates.

01:32:48.120 They misread the situation.

01:32:50.100 That's all I'm going to say.

01:32:52.140 But it can be a far more serious problem than that.

01:32:56.260 Eric, you started the phone company and then brought Joe in because he was a genius at Apple.

01:33:02.040 We're going to get into that.

01:33:03.160 But why did you think this was necessary, given all your years in security?

01:33:05.880 You know, after the 2020 election, seeing big tech canceling certain voices, throwing people off platforms, and we actually had a team together doing an unlock.

01:33:17.660 And I said, we're never going to make big tech better by complaining about it, only if we can actually compete.

01:33:23.020 And so we went out to build an independent phone platform that allows you to be in the world, but not of the world, and have all your data collected and harvested and exported.

01:33:32.840 And we managed to make it to market.

01:33:35.480 We've sold 13,000-some devices in our beta test, and now we're out of the mass market.

01:33:42.980 And, you know, we wanted the phone to be comfortable and usable so that people are – it's easy to switch.

01:33:54.720 And I think we've accomplished that.

01:33:56.600 And now with Joe being a true product guy, really taking us to new heights.

01:34:00.920 So, Joe, you were at Apple, and before we get to the phone, I understand you were there, and you thought it used to be a great company.

01:34:08.020 And then speaking of Trump, things started to change in the era of Donald Trump.

01:34:13.480 Definitely.

01:34:14.460 When I first got to Apple, no one ever talked about politics, and that was really appealing because I'm here in the Bay Area.

01:34:20.000 It was nice to feel like I wasn't at a politicized environment at work.

01:34:23.560 But after the 2016 election that started changing, people started making comments in meetings, and it became kind of normal to criticize Trump and then conservatives, and it really started ballooning.

01:34:35.780 After a few years, it went from a nonpolitical environment to, like, a full-on, you know, in the summer of the George Floyd revolution, you know, struggle sessions and intense political talk at work about, you know, COVID not being from a lab, saying things like that is racist.

01:34:54.580 A lot of the pro-transgender sort of re-education happening at work.

01:35:01.340 So, yeah, as these things escalated and became more politicized and started representing a more and more niche kind of, you know, Berkeley, Bay Area attitude, I really felt like, man, can I keep contributing to a company that, like, wouldn't hire my son for one of my sons?

01:35:17.060 You know, that was very clear. I was supporting a company that was building a future that didn't favor my kids.

01:35:22.540 And then I saw Eric on a podcast about a year and a half ago and reached out, and we started talking, and here we are.

01:35:29.940 Wow. So, Eric, can you outline for us some of the risks that we're all facing every day when we just carry around our iPhones or our Android phones?

01:35:38.220 Megan, the entire industry really exploded after 9-11, when the U.S. government was rightly trying to find more people that fit the profile of the 19 hijackers.

01:35:48.980 And they went to the advertising industry to start looking for certain characteristics.

01:35:52.780 And then when the iPhone came out around 2009, the software development kits, the app development kits, everything was built around surveillance capitalism,

01:36:03.420 all about the ability to collect your habits, where you go, what you buy, who you call, what you browse,

01:36:10.800 to collect that information off your cell phone and to sell it to advertisers.

01:36:14.580 So, this entire multi-trillion dollar industry, the reason that Google and Apple are multi-trillion dollar companies is they are surveillance platforms.

01:36:24.760 Google pays $32, $33 billion a year just to have their browser on an iPhone to enable the collection of all that data.

01:36:37.420 And so, this is not even Big Brother doing it. This is Big Tech doing it.

01:36:42.520 And you consent to it. When you buy a new iPhone or a new Android phone with Google Mobile Services on it,

01:36:49.420 and you scroll through that big user agreement at the beginning that nobody ever reads,

01:36:54.020 you're consenting to have all your stuff collected, analyzed, and exported.

01:36:59.600 And so, the phone works with all the apps sitting on the phone to do things as radical as turn on the microphone,

01:37:06.380 to listen to your conversations while the phone is sitting on your nightstand in your bedroom talking to your spouse.

01:37:15.480 Oh, yes.

01:37:15.780 Surely, that's rare. That's got to be rare, no?

01:37:18.420 A hundred percent. I wish it was rare. It is not.

01:37:22.940 I would, you know, this is a big topic. People ask me all the time, like thousands of times people have said like,

01:37:28.480 Joe, do the phones really listen? And I can tell you this. The sad thing is, I don't think they have to.

01:37:35.420 I think it's worse than the mics being turned on.

01:37:38.520 So, whether or not an application is turning on a microphone, it's certainly plausible in some scenarios.

01:37:43.820 But the fact is, all the apps on your phone are spewing information constantly to advertising databases

01:37:50.920 that are able to learn everything about you and the people in your life.

01:37:54.680 Like what? Like how? Yeah.

01:37:56.200 Sure, sure. So, you don't realize like when you have a phone and you put an app on it and it says

01:38:01.300 ask app not to track, what's actually happening in the background is that app is opening sessions

01:38:07.840 with third-party data harvesters to transmit. The most important thing is your location.

01:38:12.680 Because when you have everyone's locations, you have like a three-dimensional topographical map

01:38:17.160 of the relationships in our country, right? So, you know who sleeps with who, who goes to work with who,

01:38:21.820 who goes to the gym with someone else, right? Who goes to church, who goes to a mosque, who goes

01:38:26.920 to a gun store. All of that is discernible from location information that's streaming from our

01:38:31.980 apps, even if you turn location off and ask app not to track. Apps have ways of doing this. Yeah,

01:38:37.460 it's called fingerprinting. So, applications use many signals from your Wi-Fi, your cell signal

01:38:42.780 to identify your location. That's being deposited from the app through the SDK, the data harvester,

01:38:50.080 into a data broker, which then turns you into a cohort. So, an advertiser can say,

01:38:55.980 show this ad to a 30-something woman in Connecticut who loves Pilates, right? And then they'll nail that

01:39:02.240 cohort, right? So, what's happening is you start with relationships and location,

01:39:09.020 and then you go on, okay, someone did a web search and they didn't do it on private.

01:39:14.420 So, now we have information about Pilates in that search from a group of friends and now you're

01:39:20.120 seeing ads. And I think the big thing we don't realize, too, is that the amount of ads we're

01:39:24.220 seeing has catapulted in just the last 10 years. Because roughly at the peak of TV, we were seeing

01:39:30.320 like 2,000 to 3,000 ads a day. It's estimated we're seeing 10,000, 12,000 or more ads per day now,

01:39:36.200 as we've gone from three hours of TV a day on screen time on TV to seven, nine, 10 hours a day

01:39:42.640 on smartphones. Okay. So, let me ask a dumb question. Let me ask, who cares, right? The

01:39:47.260 young kids would be like, who cares? We're growing up in the information age. They know everything

01:39:50.640 about us. I think there's a big risk here. So, the average kid in America, by the time they

01:39:56.660 reached the age of 13, has had 72 million data points collected on them. Every bit of their

01:40:03.000 preferences, every bit of their human interaction. So, imagine now in an era of AI, you effectively

01:40:09.240 have an algorithm digitally grooming them. And this is really dangerous. All this information

01:40:15.660 being out there, Megan, I would say there's like layers of problems here. The first is

01:40:20.040 just, let's not discount creepy ads or dystopian. You know, my mom, for example, she went to get

01:40:25.540 a screening. I'm from New York. She went to Sloan Kettering to get a cancer screening for an

01:40:28.940 insurance thing. And just because she brought her iPhone with her and it knew she was there,

01:40:33.940 for a month, she was seeing ads on the meta platforms about products to help with the

01:40:38.180 aftereffects of chemotherapy. And she thought that like they had discovered she had cancer.

01:40:41.780 Yeah. Luckily, thank God she didn't have cancer.

01:40:44.140 And some people keep that kind of thing secret, especially from an employer. I mean, I remember

01:40:48.720 back in the 80s when people were getting HIV diagnoses and it was like the scourge. You would

01:40:53.960 never have wanted that to come out. But who knows what people are hiding? Could be an STD,

01:40:58.100 whatever. You don't want your employer knowing.

01:41:00.980 Totally. And all this information is in databases where you can buy it. This is the big thing I

01:41:05.920 think people don't realize. The cell phone information, everything coming from these apps

01:41:10.620 is meeting a legal designation called third party doctrine. It's not considered normal data that

01:41:16.960 has Fourth Amendment protections. So the government can buy this. That's, I think, the next risk after

01:41:22.040 creepy ads. Correct. So follow me here. Okay. The government can buy this data to say, hey,

01:41:27.800 who's going to churches or mosques? Who's going to gun conventions? Who's going to anti-abortion

01:41:33.660 rallies? All of this is discoverable and is frequently purchased by the government. So

01:41:37.980 we work with operators in various agencies who use this data today to find.

01:41:43.660 Okay. I think I lost. I think I lost Joe, but I'll go back. I hope I still have Eric. Can you hear me,

01:41:55.040 Eric? I'm here. I got you. Okay. Okay, good. So just pick it up where he left off. So does the

01:42:01.300 UpPhone block all of that? Sure. Joe, show your phone. The UpPhone blocks at the root level those

01:42:11.200 apps from collecting and exporting that data so that you don't have an advertising ID. Your phone,

01:42:17.680 Megan, has an advertising ID, which is like a 32-digit alphanumeric code, which follows you around and makes

01:42:24.600 your device unique and makes it possible for the apps sitting on your phone to export all of that

01:42:31.080 stuff, which can be bought by anybody with a credit card and $1,000. It's shocking what can be

01:42:38.280 ascertained from that data. Yes. The big risk. Can you hold it up? Let's see what it looks like. Does

01:42:43.680 it look like a normal phone or is it like? So here's my normal phone. Here's my UpPhone. It runs just like

01:42:48.100 an iPhone. We have like our own encrypted cloud storage product you can see here. That's my son.

01:42:53.580 Let me move over here. When I flash over here. He's flashing through his pictures. Whoa. Whoa.

01:43:01.760 Dashboard. No, just kidding. Just kidding. Okay. You see that number there? What's that number say?

01:43:06.060 No, I can't see it. 3550. Oh, yeah. 3550.

01:43:09.780 Okay. That's the number of times today that my phone has blocked the apps on the phone from opening

01:43:16.280 sessions with third-party data harvesters. You're saying this would even happen on airplane mode

01:43:21.080 on these other regular phones? Yeah. What I'm saying is that the apps on your phone,

01:43:26.800 many of them are constantly trying to get money by selling things like your location or who's around

01:43:32.220 you or what you're doing in the app. So they're reaching out to do this. Our phone blocks this

01:43:36.180 on the device. So that means my phone's not contributing to this third-party database of

01:43:42.460 advertising information that's purchasable by anyone.

01:43:44.880 Mm-hmm. Can you guys stick over a couple of minutes after we have to say about a serious

01:43:50.080 XM audience? Cause we got to hand over the baton to Dr. Laura, but can you stay around for a little

01:43:54.460 bit extra for podcast and YouTube? Gladly. Thanks. Okay, good. Because, uh, this is crazy. I, I actually

01:44:00.820 really do want to know more about this. This is, this sounds right up my alley. I have to tell you,

01:44:03.880 I mean, now with like the deep state, people genuinely worry about the deep state, what it

01:44:07.700 knows, you know, who it could target, irrespective of who is sitting in the white house. There is a

01:44:13.980 group of people we believe are working against, uh, the interests of let's say Republicans,

01:44:19.280 president Trump, conservatives, and I don't want them having all my information. I don't want them

01:44:24.020 knowing where I am, even if I have location services off. And by the way, this explains why every,

01:44:29.000 every website now is asking you if they could turn on your location, right? Have you gotten that?

01:44:32.880 Like every website is like, can I, can I know exactly where you are? No. Why? Um, let's talk

01:44:38.320 about the, the risks to us because I was saying, I worry, I do. I'm not going to lie. I worry about

01:44:43.880 the government spying on my phone and spying on me and knowing exactly where I am. I don't trust them.

01:44:49.160 Now I don't care who's president. I don't trust the government to have all that, all that data about

01:44:53.160 me. Is that crazy paranoia type stuff? Or is that something that's a real worry? It's a real worry.

01:44:59.300 And I share your concern completely, regardless of who's in power. I think a lot of us have seen

01:45:03.620 in the last 10 years that the closeness of the DOJ and the tech companies is a really big concern and

01:45:09.920 none of us should be comfortable with this. So yeah, the idea that there's all this data out

01:45:14.140 there about us, which can be leveraged in the event of a crisis, or if there's a change of government

01:45:19.560 and policy, suddenly maybe something about us, we're in a group that's not popular. Um, I think we

01:45:25.340 should be concerned about this, especially Megan, because of this technical legal issue,

01:45:29.940 the information coming off of our phones is not fourth amendment protected. So like if the

01:45:35.640 government wants to wiretap you, there are fourth amendment issues there, but they don't need to

01:45:40.040 wiretap you. This is what I think people need to understand. People are worried about the back door.

01:45:44.300 Oh, what if, what if there's like some, the government sneaks in and monitors my phone,

01:45:47.840 the front door is open. Uh, the information from our phones allows us to be profiled and put into

01:45:54.600 groups in ways that are very, very dangerous for us. So what you're saying is if the, if the

01:45:59.240 government, let's say I only had an up phone and I didn't have an iPhone or an Android, then the

01:46:04.360 government would try to get it from like you guys, and it wouldn't be there for the giving. Like they,

01:46:09.740 they try to get it directly from this phone, but they just couldn't do it.

01:46:12.880 Correct. So we, we have no unencrypted customer data at all. So like we have a photo and video storage

01:46:18.760 service similar to iCloud, but unlike Apple, ours is encrypted from us. So if the government says,

01:46:23.980 Hey Joe, give me Megan's photos because she has an up phone. I don't have the photos. There's

01:46:28.420 nothing for me to give in the case of photos. Yes. So Megan, we've already gotten law letters

01:46:34.300 of, uh, federal agencies coming to us saying we need access to this device. Yes. And we say,

01:46:41.600 we have nothing to give you because we don't have the keys. And they said they've used every means

01:46:47.760 at the U S government's disposal, the DEA, um, the DOJ, the secret service and beyond, and they

01:46:54.740 couldn't get it. So, uh, look, we take digital privacy very seriously. We take the first amendment

01:47:01.240 and the fourth amendment. That's why this phone exists is to protect individual data sovereignty.

01:47:08.580 The, the news just today is full of a story of Jack Smith working while he was at the DOJ as a

01:47:18.620 special prosecutor, um, working with the phone companies to subpoena all this data of Republican

01:47:25.400 senators and lawmakers. Now that's a different way of getting after it. That did require, um,

01:47:30.200 a grand jury to say, yes, you can have this data. But I mean, the, the point is simply that government

01:47:35.420 will work against you. If you, if you piss them off enough, that was just Republican senators

01:47:39.720 who did nothing, who did nothing. Like it was just Republicans around J six. It's not like, Oh,

01:47:45.320 we saw you organizing J six, even if they had seen that it would have been problematic. But I mean, Joe,

01:47:50.240 this is not a figment of our imagination. No, it's happening all the time. So I think, again,

01:47:56.560 I think we, we don't realize how big this problem is and how frequently it's happening. And what you're

01:48:00.960 describing is not just the phone data, but the cell carrier data, which is what was discussed

01:48:07.340 here in this recent case, which is another separate, terrible issue. This is separate from the phone,

01:48:12.620 but this is just basically, if you've, if you've got a phone, its location is permanently being

01:48:17.020 tracked by all the cell carriers. And that information is available going back permanently.

01:48:22.180 So are your call records and any SMS messages you send, even the content of the SMS messages are saved

01:48:28.040 by the phone company. So this is something else we've been working on. We're actually really

01:48:31.480 excited to announce a new product. I always wondered that. Is that true?

01:48:33.780 The phone companies all, they have all your texts like on record?

01:48:37.240 Yes. SMS messages. So this is why we're focusing on solving this problem as well. We just created a

01:48:43.040 new product with a mobile network called pond. So it's a data only SIM for your phone. So you can

01:48:48.720 make calls on signal or other apps like that, but it doesn't make phone calls because those phone

01:48:53.920 calls would be kept by the phone company. So this is a data only SIM and unlike normal cell products

01:49:00.000 where your location of your phone is being kept forever, pond deletes your location information

01:49:05.280 every 24 hours. So there's just a 24 hour buffer of where your phone has been. But if the government

01:49:10.140 goes to them and says, Hey, where was Joe's phone? They just don't know. So the way to think about this,

01:49:15.180 these risks, it's like a diamond with many surfaces. And what we're trying to do is basically

01:49:19.700 create increased protection on each surface of the diamond. There are many ways that we can be

01:49:24.900 vulnerable to government surveillance and tracking. And we're talking about ways to improve your chances

01:49:30.260 in each of these areas. Now, Eric, what if you wanted to track your kid? You know, like I know

01:49:34.960 there's life 360 and there's all the different apps where you can have your kid turn on his location

01:49:40.820 services or join the app. And then you as the parent can find him. Is that something you can do on the

01:49:46.600 up phone? Or is that no, that's contrary to the entire purpose of the up phone?

01:49:51.040 I will defer to Joe on that question. But I what I will say is, you know, we have we actually have

01:49:55.580 a kill switch on this device, which separates physically separates air gaps, the battery from

01:50:00.660 the electronics. So that off actually means off your phone, you can't turn off now. We also have a

01:50:07.260 what do you mean? I can't turn it off. Even when I totally power it down.

01:50:10.640 When you power it down, it's still pinging towers. It's still pinging Wi Fi building that

01:50:16.040 digital breadcrumb trail of wherever you've been that advertising ID following you around

01:50:20.520 100%. So this phone also has a just in case feature. If someone says, Megan, give me your

01:50:27.940 phone. I'm here to inspect it. You can say, sure, officer, you can unlock it with a certain code.

01:50:31.940 And it's an instant hard wipe. You have another feature.

01:50:36.560 Okay, are we worried at all that this is going to get the hand in the hands of like true criminals

01:50:40.040 and terrorists who are going to use this? It sounds like, you know, could be used for

01:50:43.620 various purposes too. Certainly, we don't want to support, you know, bad guys. But I think our

01:50:48.340 founders addressed this issue, right? Like our legal system is designed to protect innocents. And

01:50:52.720 they said at the time, like, whoa, bad guys are going to take advantage of this. And they said,

01:50:56.580 you know what, to have the society is at much greater risk. If citizens aren't protected from

01:51:01.320 the government, then if citizens can get away with things on an individual basis. So our perspective

01:51:06.320 is we support law enforcement completely all the way because law enforcement protects our

01:51:10.460 constitutional rights. And we've designed our product to protect constitutional rights.

01:51:15.160 So yeah, this, this, the way to think about these risks, Megan, it's like a, it's like a pyramid.

01:51:19.980 You know, Eric is a unique person who's probably at the top of the pyramid. There are probably many

01:51:23.840 people who are trying to get into his phone and find his location. And for someone like him,

01:51:28.460 having an actual off switch for the batteries really important because he needs to go into

01:51:33.020 situations where the phone can't emit any electricity at all, right?

01:51:36.380 Well, I've had this scenario in meetings with important people where, you know, I have my

01:51:43.440 phone and I turn it off, like entirely off. And yet you do wonder who's in there. Is there a

01:51:49.820 government in there? I mean, I've, I've, I've met with Vladimir Putin. I've, I've prepared for

01:51:53.600 meetings with Vladimir Putin, with prime minister Modi of India, like with president Trump. And I

01:51:58.880 always think before these things, like, you'd be stupid if you were China or someone else not to try

01:52:05.540 to go in, I'd probably an easy access point, right? Probably easier than Putin or Trump.

01:52:11.500 If you could get into my phone and turn on a microphone, that'd be really convenient.

01:52:15.840 So, I mean, this, I would love to have battery off and you, no one can even potentially be

01:52:22.540 listening through anything that's on me.

01:52:25.160 We can even do things, simple things like shut the microphone off, shut the camera off,

01:52:30.040 the GPS, the wifi, the touch to pay, all those features hard off at the root level that, you know,

01:52:36.320 off means off.

01:52:38.280 Yes. Well, the other thing is, you know, I always worry about airplane mode because

01:52:41.480 you see these studies every once in a while about like, if your kid's walking around with that phone

01:52:46.320 in his front pocket and he's 13 years old and he's got another, I don't know, you know, 80 years

01:52:51.660 of walking around with that thing, it can reduce sperm count. It can potentially cause

01:52:55.680 problems that we haven't. I don't know whether this is true, but I, you see the warnings all the

01:52:59.420 time you see an article about it, but if you truly have the ability to just turn it off

01:53:03.520 when you're not using it actually off, um, that's some, it seems much better.

01:53:08.420 It's, it's great to be able to physically turn it off. And like, we're not motivated for customers

01:53:12.760 to use the phone, right? Every other phone provider is motivated financially for people

01:53:17.400 to use the phone more. We have no financial interest in usage. So we want you to turn it

01:53:21.760 off when you want to turn it off. We also have this feature, which I love. I think you would

01:53:25.420 really like this too, which is it shows me the time since my last unlock.

01:53:32.000 Oh, so that is good.

01:53:33.520 I love this. And I'll tell you why this is so great because I have a problem. I'm a busy

01:53:38.140 guy. I use my phone way too much. I have six kids. I have a beautiful family. My wife is

01:53:42.240 the best. And I sit down at dinner and I look at my phone to see, you know, do I have an email?

01:53:47.760 You know, how's that deal going with Verizon, whatever, right? This is a problem for me.

01:53:51.820 Like, I love having a phone that encourages me not to pick it up. So with this feature,

01:53:57.800 I put my phone in the pocket. Same thing at church, right? I go to church and I'm like,

01:54:00.620 I don't want to look at the phone. But because of this, I know I'm like building up time. We

01:54:05.020 call the feature time away. Instead of screen time, which is about your phone, we call it

01:54:08.960 time away. It's about you. So here I get to go to dinner with my family and know like when

01:54:13.180 I pick this phone up, it's going to say it's been like 90 minutes since I opened it. And

01:54:17.100 I'm going to feel so great about that. And it really helps me in my family, in my day-to-day

01:54:21.180 life, right? Like, I think your point is, pardon me, please.

01:54:24.240 You can still use everything on this phone that you could use elsewhere? Like, can I

01:54:27.440 still use Google or can I still use, you know, X or if I wanted to use TikToks?

01:54:34.180 We have, yes, we have all the, we have 10,000 native apps and we also have access to all the

01:54:39.960 apps that are in a Google Play Store. They're just going to behave a little differently because

01:54:44.400 they're not giving you the super customized experience.

01:54:46.860 Actually, let me clarify this issue a little bit. So what we do is like, I have YouTube on

01:54:54.080 this app on this phone and I sign into it and I'd stream your show and it's just like normal

01:54:58.100 YouTube, right? I happened, I sign in with Google. I'm fine with this, but my phone doesn't have

01:55:02.780 Google mobile services. So what we're balancing is allowing people to have normal consumer experiences

01:55:09.280 with their phone without having this crazy data leakage. So to answer your question, yes,

01:55:14.340 all the normal apps work and I use them just like every day. So I use YouTube. I even use Google

01:55:19.100 Maps. I turn on location when I want to use Google Maps. It's a great map product. And you know, I'm

01:55:24.060 fine with my location being known by Google for that drive that I'm having to take and then I turn it

01:55:28.440 off. So all of the normal stuff, the day-to-day stuff is just like an ordinary phone. The change is

01:55:35.500 I'm actually using less data because my apps are not streaming all of this unnecessary information

01:55:41.340 about me to third-party service. Battery must last a lot longer. Correct. Yes. So you'll notice

01:55:46.340 this. We actually have done recent tests. I don't know if this is wild. We had a cybersecurity firm

01:55:50.980 compare this issue between an iPhone and our phone and they watched, it just took one hour, a phone

01:55:57.240 with 33 apps, the same apps, all the apps you use like Spotify, Pinterest, whatever. And they just

01:56:02.500 watched the network traffic. And the iPhone made 3,100 calls in that one hour that our phone did not

01:56:09.540 make. Our phone did not call any data harvesters. The iPhone, even when Ask App Not to Track was

01:56:14.400 selected, made 3,100 calls to known data harvesters. And get this, Megan, in those 3,100 calls, it

01:56:21.260 transacted 210,000 packets of data in one hour. That's 60 packets of data. Yeah, that's 60 packets

01:56:28.860 of data per second on a phone with just 33 apps, meaning. What's it telling them? I mean, if you're

01:56:34.360 just sitting here, you're not doing anything. What is it telling them that, you know, that amount of data

01:56:38.940 in an hour? You know, when you have like a kid and they start, they go from like toddler and they

01:56:43.080 start getting a little more independent and they want to see that you're there all the time.

01:56:46.680 You know, I have, you know, dad, dad, yeah, hey, I'm here, buddy. I'm here. The apps are like that.

01:56:51.080 They're like ravenous for transmitting your location. They're basically just constantly

01:56:56.240 phoning home going, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. Because your real-time location,

01:57:01.220 you got to think about it in detail. One of the most valuable signals is, you know, the simple feature

01:57:05.280 that determines whether your phone is in profile or landscape to like read an article,

01:57:09.660 how you're holding the phone, that's a very important signal that every app has access to.

01:57:14.240 And that can tell a data harvester, is this person moving? Are they stationary? Are they laying down?

01:57:20.340 Are they running? All of this is very valuable when you're building a profile. So the apps are just

01:57:25.560 completely dedicated to transmitting this information to data harvesters at this insane rate. I mean,

01:57:31.220 that's over 60 times per second that this test showed that these packets were moving, which is

01:57:36.920 just wild. Eric, this was meant to be, given your security background and Joe's background at Apple

01:57:42.460 and his growing unhappiness with working for that company. This seems like a match made in heaven.

01:57:48.060 I mean, do you even have an iPhone now? Do you have a second phone that's connected to all of this

01:57:52.520 stuff or no? No, I've pretty much shifted digital life fully to unplugged.

01:57:57.460 And is it working? Okay. You said it's in beta. Does that mean people can't buy it yet? Or what,

01:58:02.060 what's, where's that? They can, they, you can buy them today at unplugged.com.

01:58:06.480 You can. Okay. So, and we're also in Best Buy, Megan.

01:58:09.820 Is it a plan? Like you'd get, then you'd get an AT&T or, you know, whatever Verizon phone service.

01:58:15.220 So we're on AT&T and T-Mobile and all the MVNOs. We're working with Verizon right now,

01:58:21.600 but we're with those two major networks. So if you're not, if you're on Verizon,

01:58:24.500 you can move your number to AT&T or T-Mobile. And it just works like any normal phone.

01:58:29.960 We ship them. We have a great US-based customer service support team to help you set up your

01:58:34.680 phone and transfer your data from your iPhone to the UpPhone. It's really easy. It takes about a half

01:58:38.820 an hour. They're great, by the way. Everyone loves them. I get a million emails a day about this.

01:58:42.520 Um, so yeah, it's super easy. Unplugged.com. We're also in Best Buy,

01:58:46.920 um, which is a great partner for us as well. That's good. Um, and we're also delivering to

01:58:52.080 Canada and to the UK now and soon to mainland Europe. Well, they, they definitely need it

01:58:57.240 because their governments are way nosier than ours. And I'm not saying something, but the UK

01:59:00.760 has absolutely no respect for anybody's privacy and neither does Canada. All right. So now you,

01:59:06.420 you guys actually are advertising on the Megan Kelly show, but that is not why we did this segment.

01:59:10.180 I know Eric a little bit, and I think this is a great idea. I've actually been worrying about this

01:59:13.960 in my own life for a bunch of reasons lately. So I love this. It's like necessity is the mother of

01:59:19.880 all invention. So here you go with the product we've been waiting for. It's called the UpPhone

01:59:25.580 unplugged.com. You guys, thank you. Thanks for coming up with us, Eric. And thanks for joining the team,

01:59:30.700 Joe. Thanks Megan. Thanks for having us, Melvin. Thank you. All the best. See you soon.

01:59:35.740 God bless. Very cool. Wow. I mean, have you ever worried about it? I'm sure you have, right? How

01:59:42.080 have you not? Like who the hell knows? And every day you hear another story like that one about

01:59:47.060 Jack Smith. I mean, just seems like, do we trust our FBI? I mean, I trust cash and I trust Dan,

01:59:53.980 but it's like, who else is in there? How about the CIA? My God, nobody trusts them, nor should you.

01:59:58.740 Um, anyway, I, I don't, I haven't looked at phone security the same since I started hearing about

02:00:04.860 this. And I, I read the packet about like the bedroom. That's not good. That's, that's not

02:00:09.840 okay. Um, anyway, check it out. Unplugged.com, the UpPhone. Thank you all so much for being with us

02:00:16.060 today. We are back tomorrow with Link Lauren and more. Don't miss that.

02:00:23.160 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

02:00:28.740 Okay. Flights on air Canada. Oh, wow. Mallorca. That's new. Oh, nice. But Vienna is a classic

02:00:42.280 Mozart palaces and schnitzel. Now you're cooking. If you're hungry, deli brings the heat. Heat.

02:00:49.480 Cartagena's got sun and the sea to cool off. So does Martinique. And that French cuisine. Book it.

02:00:56.260 Yes, chef. Wait, what about Lyon? Choose from our world of destinations, if you can. Air Canada.

02:01:04.060 Nice travels.

The Megyn Kelly Show - October 07, 2025

Left Falsely Blames Right For House Fire, and Data Privacy Issues, with Rich Lowry, Charles C.W. Cooke, Erik Prince, and Joe Weil ｜ Ep. 1166

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