The Megyn Kelly Show - Legacy Media Bias Exposed and Debated, and MAGA Heir Apparent Rumblings, with Tom Bevan and Andrew Walworth

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00:00:30.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:00:42.180 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.580 Mahmoud Khalil, what is he still doing here?

00:00:50.420 He's speaking out in an interview with The New York Times,

00:00:53.460 and he said the quiet part out loud about October 7th.

00:00:57.400 And speaking of quiet part out loud, the Washington Post's fact-checker takes the buyout.

00:01:04.240 What are we going to do without Glenn Kessler to tell us how wrong Republicans always are?

00:01:10.320 He took the buyout.

00:01:11.520 He's moving over to Substack, where he and others, formerly in corporate media,

00:01:15.720 get to embrace their bias and finally, finally let us see that they might be a little left-leaning.

00:01:22.620 Oh my God, I can't wait to see it on full display.

00:01:26.380 Oh, it's shocking.

00:01:29.120 Mark Halperin, who's part of our MK Media network, just did an exclusive interview with Glenn Kessler,

00:01:36.660 this guy from WAPO, for his Next Up with Mark Halperin show.

00:01:41.000 And it's hot off the presses.

00:01:42.220 We just saw it.

00:01:43.500 And it's good.

00:01:44.620 It's pretty juicy.

00:01:45.460 We're going to show you some of that.

00:01:46.480 Joining me now, Tom Bevin, co-founder and president of Real Clear Politics,

00:01:51.460 and Andrew Walworth, chief content officer of Real Clear Politics,

00:01:55.460 co-host of the Real Clear Politics podcast, Carl Cannon's on vacay.

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00:03:11.700 Guys, welcome back.

00:03:12.660 Great to have you.

00:03:13.580 Hey, Megan.

00:03:14.020 Great to be here.

00:03:14.900 Good.

00:03:15.160 We can keep some order today without Carl.

00:03:17.460 That's it.

00:03:18.920 Who wants to kick it off by saying something about Carl?

00:03:21.580 No, just kidding.

00:03:22.280 Just kidding.

00:03:24.000 Okay.

00:03:24.880 Might as well kick it off with Glenn Kessler because I think this is really interesting.

00:03:29.380 I heard you guys talking about it on your show too.

00:03:30.940 I think this is about more than just Kessler taking the buyout.

00:03:34.980 It's the death of the fact checker.

00:03:36.420 The model was flawed.

00:03:37.660 It was loathed by half the country.

00:03:40.100 It only targeted half the country.

00:03:42.520 And it's also a comment on what's happening over at the Washington Post now that Jeff Bezos

00:03:49.060 is going through like a mini Mark Zuckerberg reformation when it comes to his media properties

00:03:56.260 and perhaps even himself.

00:03:57.860 I mean, one thing I'll say about his marriage to Lauren Sanchez is it seems to have revitalized

00:04:01.940 his testosterone, which tends to make you a Republican.

00:04:05.040 Okay.

00:04:07.720 Tom, thoughts on that?

00:04:10.200 Well, I do think you're right about, look, the fact checking thing.

00:04:13.560 This was something that came, basically blossomed around when Trump came into office, right?

00:04:21.520 And we were constantly getting these, you know, oh, Trump's told X number of lies and PolitiFact

00:04:27.040 and all that.

00:04:27.880 I mean, PolitiFact was around longer than that.

00:04:31.140 But it really did show that these fact checkers, you know, it's in the eye of the beholder.

00:04:38.700 When you're only fact checking Republicans, never fact checking Democrats, they lost credibility,

00:04:44.020 you know, with the way that they were conducting themselves in their work.

00:04:48.360 And, you know, you mentioned people going to Substack and them sort of exposing their

00:04:53.920 biases or, you know, freeing themselves.

00:04:56.780 That's one of the great things about Twitter and now X over time is that that's when you

00:05:03.260 really started learning about these journalists who were supposed to be objective.

00:05:07.640 They would get on X or Twitter at the time and post like this crazy left wing stuff and

00:05:12.620 just expose themselves.

00:05:13.960 And so I think that's that that was part of the whole loss of credibility of the journalism

00:05:19.640 industry.

00:05:20.460 And the fact checking was part of that.

00:05:22.080 And so, you know, Glenn Kessler, you know, he wrote this really long thing I said on our

00:05:26.880 show.

00:05:27.120 I said the first thing you could say is Glenn Kessler really needs an editor.

00:05:30.860 Needs an editor.

00:05:31.660 I heard you say that.

00:05:32.940 Yeah, because he wrote like 3000 words on this.

00:05:34.840 Um, but but he was talking about, uh, you know, how he would when he would fact check,

00:05:40.900 uh, Democrats, you know, he would get an earful from his from his readers at the Washington

00:05:46.920 Post because that's what these these organizations have become.

00:05:50.440 The Washington Post, The New York Times, they're catering to a liberal audience and they become

00:05:54.260 captured.

00:05:54.800 And anytime they try and do anything that that offends the sensibilities of the readers,

00:05:59.920 you know, they a they get they get mao maoed into basically towing the line.

00:06:05.260 But B, it also presents a it presents a sort of, uh, you know, a financial issue for them

00:06:12.000 when people start reading, you know, boycotting and losing readers because maybe they said

00:06:16.500 something nice about President Trump or something.

00:06:18.080 It's it's a real conundrum that the the industry has found itself in.

00:06:22.180 And Glenn Kessler has been one of the players in that over the last, you know, couple of

00:06:26.280 decades.

00:06:26.660 I mean, what do you think, Andrew, is this is is is he and our people at The Washington

00:06:32.940 Post who are getting fired like on the editorial team or taking the buyout just coming to grips

00:06:38.680 with the reality, which is it's very hard in 2025 America to have a totally objective

00:06:45.940 news source.

00:06:47.460 Most publications have a point of view.

00:06:50.100 And I really think my own opinion is the future is just owning it and proceeding accordingly

00:06:57.340 and to stop pretending like your objective, like The New York Times and The Washington

00:07:01.980 Post and The Chicago Tribune and others have been trying to do, even though we know it's

00:07:06.380 not true.

00:07:07.920 Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting.

00:07:09.060 This piece Kessler kind of agrees with you because he starts the piece by talking about

00:07:13.580 his meeting with the publisher and the publisher asks him, how do we get more Trump, more Fox

00:07:21.240 viewers to read the paper?

00:07:23.100 He says, why would we do that?

00:07:24.580 That's just going to take off our base readership.

00:07:27.140 So he sort of admits that he thinks that basically The Washington Post is going to it's a bad business

00:07:34.360 move to actually try to attract these other readers.

00:07:38.200 And the other interesting thing about the piece is at the end, he talks about the buyout

00:07:42.140 and very, very straightforward about it.

00:07:45.360 I give him credit for this is, hey, you know, at the end of the day, there was a financial

00:07:49.080 incentive for me to take the buyout.

00:07:51.760 It wouldn't because I would have been working for four more years for free if I hadn't taken

00:07:55.320 the buyout.

00:07:56.420 So interesting piece.

00:07:58.680 And, you know, I like to think that objective journalism will continue in some way.

00:08:05.320 And I think if you go to RealClearPolitics, we try to give you some of that.

00:08:08.780 We try to balance articles so you get the best argument on both sides.

00:08:13.740 But we may have left.

00:08:16.100 Finding original reporters who are truly objective and unbiased is very tough.

00:08:22.780 You know, but that's the reason RealClearPolitics.com has been my main source of news for the past

00:08:29.020 15 years is because you pull from both sides.

00:08:32.940 So I know I'll be reading, you know, a righties article or a lefties article, but you have

00:08:39.160 both represented, which I really think is the future.

00:08:42.760 I just it's just too hard to find reporters in today's day and age who can keep their own

00:08:48.780 points of view and their own biases out of the pieces.

00:08:52.000 I much more respect, like, frankly, an MSNBC that just owns it or a Fox that owns it.

00:08:58.380 And then, you know, you know exactly what the bias is, the ones that are the most irritating

00:09:02.880 are places like The Washington Post, which whatever Kessler says is not owning it, has

00:09:08.960 not been owning it, has been trying to tell us democracy dies in darkness, except went totally

00:09:14.860 dark during the Biden years, Tom.

00:09:16.680 Yeah, and look, you know, if for people who aren't familiar with RealClearPolitics, you

00:09:22.220 know, we we have in our center column, we list the top 17 sort of opinion pieces.

00:09:27.020 They're mostly from the opinion pages and they're they're arguments.

00:09:30.200 And you're right.

00:09:30.800 We do do sort of, you know, the lefties and the righties and we pair them together and

00:09:34.660 let our readers decide who they agree with or disagree with.

00:09:37.620 But on the left column, we do these basically sort of news stories and analysis stories.

00:09:41.940 And we call them sort of news modules on topics of the day.

00:09:45.600 There's usually one about the Trump administration.

00:09:47.560 Today, there's something on the redistricting wars.

00:09:49.860 And those are more news stories.

00:09:52.140 But it's the same concept, Megan, which is, you know, we go out and we look at 10 different

00:09:57.840 versions of the same story from one from The Washington Post, one from The Washington

00:10:01.860 Times, one from The Wall Street Journal.

00:10:03.360 And we try and find the one that we think is sort of most representative of the truth.

00:10:10.840 And sometimes, you know, based on what the headline is, based on what the lead of the

00:10:15.100 article is.

00:10:16.400 And so we're able to pick and choose which story.

00:10:19.000 But if you're just relying on the Associated Press, for example, you are going to get a vastly

00:10:23.800 skewed, you know, opinion or perspective of what the news is.

00:10:29.360 Or if you're just relying on The New York Times or just on The Washington Post, you need to

00:10:33.640 have conservative news sources.

00:10:35.760 I mean, it's, you know, you go watch Bret Baier's show, for example, which I think is probably

00:10:40.480 the best news show on cable TV.

00:10:43.640 And then you watch, you know, one of the network broadcasts, ABC, CBS, you know, you name

00:10:49.180 it.

00:10:49.760 And they're presenting completely different perspectives on what the news of the day is.

00:10:55.740 And, you know, the network news, and they've done this for a long time.

00:10:58.640 They'll ignore stories that don't fit their narrative or that they just don't want to

00:11:02.720 report, which half the country is really interested in.

00:11:05.400 We'll talk about Russiagate or some of these other stories.

00:11:07.560 So you do have to be a real discerning news consumer.

00:11:11.460 And you still have to go to, you know, conservative sources.

00:11:15.220 But there is some still some decent reporting that is done in The Washington Post and The New

00:11:19.180 York Times.

00:11:19.780 But, you know, it's it's getting more and more like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

00:11:22.960 It has to be on things that don't have a political angle.

00:11:24.400 Like if it's something that doesn't have a political angle, you can maybe trust them.

00:11:28.040 Maybe, but like where they don't have a clear horse in the race.

00:11:32.680 But it's rare, you know, but if they're doing like some big expose on some local, I don't

00:11:39.200 know, story where a politician got blown up, you know, politically speaking, that is, you

00:11:44.120 might be able to trust them.

00:11:45.060 But like when it comes to national politics or anything involving Donald Trump, do not

00:11:48.160 trust them.

00:11:48.640 People know that.

00:11:49.920 And Glenn Kessler, I don't know if he gets it or not.

00:11:52.300 I mean, you pointed out, Andrew, the point about how he's like, OK, that the question

00:11:57.440 was, how do we appeal to Fox viewers?

00:12:00.820 What should The Post do to appeal to more Fox News viewers?

00:12:03.180 He was asked.

00:12:04.060 And he writes, I used to cover diplomacy, so I knew how to keep a poker face, even as the

00:12:11.200 hair on the back of my neck prickled.

00:12:14.640 Prickled is the right word.

00:12:15.940 We have to remain true to our journalistic principles, I said.

00:12:20.220 We have to tell the truth.

00:12:21.600 I paused and added, they may not like that because it would conflict with what they've

00:12:26.740 been hearing.

00:12:27.540 The nerve of this guy, this guy whose fact checks included giving Tim Walls a pass on

00:12:35.180 his military lies, including dismissing the Biden videos as cheap fakes, and even now is

00:12:44.000 dismissing the Russiagate stories coming out of Tulsi Gabbard as, you know, lies made up.

00:12:48.400 There's no there, there.

00:12:49.200 Like, he's worried about the right wing not knowing the truth if it hit them in the face.

00:12:57.120 Well, yeah, I mean, I think, well, the whole, and if you've ever seen this in The Post, they

00:13:01.260 had this Pinocchio's scale that they use, which is really kind of, I guess, seemed clever at the

00:13:06.220 time, but over time kind of boxed them in a little bit.

00:13:09.640 And, you know, I think, as Tom said, that the whole sort of fact-checking movement or

00:13:17.140 trend is maybe run its course, and I think that's probably a good thing.

00:13:20.740 I think that it might be time to retire that as a sort of trope because, you know, it is

00:13:28.300 just bias sort of dressed up as objectivity, and that makes it all the worst to me.

00:13:35.400 You know, it's one thing to sort of have a news story and have it be biased, but another thing

00:13:39.020 to sort of, like, announce to the world that you are fact-checking and then use that to be biased

00:13:44.760 makes it, you know, all the more insulting to me.

00:13:48.300 You know what would be good, Megan?

00:13:49.680 You're right. That's extra insulting. Correct. Go ahead, John.

00:13:51.880 You know what would be good? I mean, if they wanted to be sort of fair and honest about it,

00:13:55.340 it's fine. Have Glenn Kessler, have a liberal fact-checker, and hire a conservative fact-checker

00:13:59.920 and run their columns side by side, and they can pick a, you know, and then we'd get at least,

00:14:06.060 again, you'd have both perspectives represented. You could read them both, and you could decide

00:14:09.660 which one you agreed with or didn't agree with, but I mean, for every single fact-check that Glenn

00:14:13.700 Kessler did on Trump or a Republican, you could have done easily another one on a Democratic lie or

00:14:20.020 falsehood that was being told that just got omitted or, you know, they just passed over. So hire a

00:14:27.220 conservative fact-checker, Washington Post. They won't. They won't. It's not consistent

00:14:30.940 with their ideology. I mean, I've told a story before, but in 2016, I was asked by many of the

00:14:36.580 top big tech companies to go out to Silicon Valley and to speak to their executives about bias in the

00:14:43.220 news. Like, they were all shocked. Trump won. What's, you know, whatever. We totally missed it.

00:14:48.840 How do we miss it? How do we don't understand Republicans? And I did, and I said the same thing

00:14:53.220 to all of them. You need to get actual, real, live Republicans working on your editorial boards

00:15:02.040 and your editorial decisions and your fact-checking groups and your censorship groups, whatever groups

00:15:07.140 you're having that are, that is touching the news. You need, like, not Nicole Wallace, real, live

00:15:14.600 Republicans, the real kind. You know, the kind that scare you, that wear the MAGA hat. You need those

00:15:20.260 people on your teams if you, if you're genuinely concerned about fighting bias. And you know how

00:15:25.680 many listened to me? None. Not one did it because they're too ideologically committed to their leftist

00:15:33.180 point of view. Okay. Here is a little bit. Here's a preview. Everybody should download Mark's show to

00:15:37.840 watch the full because I haven't seen it myself because it was just being taped as we were getting

00:15:41.460 ready for air. But Steve Krakauer, our executive producer, has said it's a barn burner. It's a good

00:15:46.140 one. And you can watch it when it posts later today. Mark Halperin, next up with Mark Halperin,

00:15:50.640 go ahead and download. You should already be downloading and following that show.

00:15:53.680 But here is a preview of his interview with Glenn Kessler, which got pretty contentious.

00:15:59.700 How could it be that I see the post as fundamentally anti-Trump in every day, in every crevice of every

00:16:06.940 story, practically, and you say we are down the middle by the book and the fact that our readers are

00:16:12.240 liberal is because we're in Washington, D.C.? How could that be? Well, okay. First of all, it's

00:16:18.400 because you're wrong and I'm right, Mark. I was in the newsroom and I watched how the stories were

00:16:29.200 put together and what the editorial discussions were. So now that I am away from the newsroom

00:16:36.860 and I'm going to read it as an ordinary reader, I will have, you know, based on the comments you've

00:16:44.500 made to me, I will have an open mind to see what I see. But I do know when, you know, it's not like

00:16:54.200 people in the newsroom are saying, we've got to get Donald Trump. We've got to write this story.

00:16:58.660 We're going to slant it in a way that is negative to Donald Trump.

00:17:01.220 It's more, it's more, I agree with you. It's more insidious. It's more insidious than that.

00:17:05.160 It'd be, it'd be some ways it'd be more comforting to me if they said, we're not trying to be

00:17:10.520 objective. We think Donald Trump's bad for the country. He's against abortion rights. He's,

00:17:15.660 he's corrupt. He's a liar. Look at all the four Pinocchios he gets. We need to, we need to protect

00:17:21.080 Joe Biden and destroy it. That'd be better instead. And again, I just go back to Glenn, I just go back

00:17:26.620 to two facts. Your audience by your own acknowledgement and by every indication is

00:17:31.340 super liberal. Yeah, yes, correct. And listen to him like now, now that he's left WAPO, I'm open

00:17:41.740 minded to see what I see. Oh, great, Glenn. We can't wait until you try to exercise your open

00:17:48.120 mindedness. Would have been wonderful if you did that while employed by the Washington Post as their

00:17:52.500 fact checker, but sure. Welcome to the team of sanity. And then, um, it's not like people in

00:17:57.820 the newsroom are openly saying, let's get Donald Trump. I mean, and I take Mark's point too, but

00:18:03.020 it's like, there's no, there's no need to, that's what he's trying to say, Tom. There's no need to,

00:18:07.600 for people to openly say that it is the unspoken mission of everyone who gets hired there. And

00:18:13.880 frankly, of who would want to work there in the first place these days.

00:18:17.580 That's right. And, and this did happen when, you know, the media sort of threw in openly,

00:18:24.420 some cases openly with the resistance when Trump was first elected in 2016 and said, we are going

00:18:29.240 to, after just treating Barack Obama for eight years with these kid gloves and, and, you know,

00:18:35.020 fawning over him and giving him all this glowing coverage and then turned right around and said,

00:18:39.180 you know, we're going to hold Donald Trump to account, not let him tell lies and democracy

00:18:43.360 dies in darkness and all that bullshit. Um, but, but Mark makes the good point that it is,

00:18:50.240 these folks don't see themselves as anti-Trump and that they're out to get Trump. They, they truly in

00:18:55.260 their own image seems to, I'm a journalist, I'm objective. I'm just trying to get to the truth.

00:18:59.400 And yet through every layer of the journalistic process from the writing to the editing, to the

00:19:05.140 choosing of the headlines, to the photo editor, the choices that they make that layers in all of

00:19:10.280 these biases that they all have, whether they're conscious or subconscious that to frame these

00:19:16.300 stories. And, you know, we've been the beneficiary, I should say of, of a couple of, you know, hit

00:19:22.520 pieces from the New York times over the last few years. Even though you guys got it right in the

00:19:28.300 polling analysis and the average. Yeah. Five days before the election, they tried to, you know,

00:19:32.720 dump the story. But the point I'm trying to make is journalism now is, is just confirmation of

00:19:37.900 narratives. They, they write the story and then they'll send with, without including another

00:19:43.060 point of view. And then they'll send you something like 20 minutes before they're going to publish

00:19:47.160 and say, Oh, here's what we're going to say. And, you know, do you want to respond to this? Instead

00:19:50.880 of what journalism used to be, which was you go out and you talk to people and you know, the facts lead

00:19:55.980 you to where they lead you, whether that's to the right or to the left or whatever, that, that hasn't

00:20:00.860 been the case for a long, long time. These, the Washington post, New York times, they decide that

00:20:06.100 they're going to run a story that is negative toward Donald Trump because of something he said

00:20:10.440 or whatever. And then they go and just fill in the blanks and that's how it gets done.

00:20:15.480 Do you know what this is reminding me of Andrew? This is reminding me of, I don't know if you guys

00:20:18.840 covered this, but the CNN defamation lawsuit against it was Jake Tapper show, but Jake Tapper

00:20:25.400 wasn't in the seat when this aired, if memory serves, I'm trying to remember, but it was definitely

00:20:28.920 on his hour where they had reporters who were covering this military veteran who is offering

00:20:34.940 services to evacuate people. Um, was it out of Afghanistan? My gosh, I don't know why I'm

00:20:40.900 remembering. It was out of Afghanistan and, um, you know, for a fee and, and there's a going rate

00:20:46.740 for this kind of thing. And he was offering it and they were on a story saying he was somehow

00:20:50.620 exploiting people and his fee was jacked up to usurious rates. And, uh, he was trying to take

00:20:56.780 advantage of hurting people and none of it was true. And it came out in the course of the defamation

00:21:02.600 law. So we had the guy on the program, it came out in the course of his defamation lawsuit that

00:21:06.860 when he responded to the producers who did what Tom just said, like did the old, okay,

00:21:13.740 this is our story, but we got to on paper, at least we got to reach out to this guy and was like,

00:21:19.020 yeah, I have thoughts. None of this is true. And I want to give you my side of the story.

00:21:22.340 You could see from their internal texts, they were like, Oh shit. You know, this loser wants to talk,

00:21:28.240 which is of course exactly the opposite of what a reporter's instinct should be. But they too are

00:21:34.820 just as agenda driven as these other paper outlets. Yeah. I remember that story. And I

00:21:40.820 remember the, uh, I think I had this right. There was an email internal saying, we want to nail this

00:21:45.700 effort to the wall. There was something like that. It was so clear that the, that the bias at the start

00:21:50.280 of the whole thing, but you know, I think there is something underlying all this so that we should

00:21:54.460 keep in mind. And that's that newspapers are terrible business right now. And the reason why

00:21:59.200 Jeff Bezos ended up buying the Washington post wasn't because it was such a great business and

00:22:04.380 he was going to turn it around. It was basically an act of charity. And so that sort of undergirds

00:22:09.440 the whole thing. I mean, Kessler is not wrong in thinking, Oh my God, you know, how do you keep

00:22:14.000 this thing alive? And his theory of the case is that you don't do what the publisher is thinking of

00:22:20.220 doing and try to appeal to a different audience. You dig deeper into the audience that you have,

00:22:25.480 and you try to hold onto them desperately. I think that's happening across the media. And I think

00:22:30.120 that's part of what's driving this. So it's partly ideologically driven. I think that's fair,

00:22:36.000 but I think it's also driven by the business reality and people, uh, in the media have just

00:22:40.820 decided that the way you survive and the way you win is by appealing to a smaller audience, but really

00:22:47.140 appealing to them hard. And that drives you into your sort of ideological corner. Um, at least

00:22:53.620 that's the way that's when I stand back from it. That's what I think is partly what's going on.

00:22:57.880 So I get it. And I like, I'm not against objective news sources. Like for example,

00:23:02.780 the folks over at news nation are trying to be down the middle on, on their news approach. And I love

00:23:09.280 the folks at news nation and I appreciate the mission. The channel is not enjoying the kind of

00:23:14.780 success. I'm sure they'd like to, um, I don't know what the market is anymore for that kind of

00:23:21.780 thing. You know, I think people kind of want to hear their worldview affirmed. My own experience

00:23:26.440 on this show is, and I think this is the reason behind our success. I'm convinced of it that we

00:23:32.080 stay factual. We don't misinform the audience. Like it is important to me to not misinform the audience

00:23:37.300 on facts. I never want my audience to be embarrassed when talking about a story because they have their head

00:23:42.000 in the clouds and have only been spun by, you know, a right winger or left winger, but also I have a

00:23:47.540 point of view. So I'll tell them how I feel about the news and what, how I feel about the facts, but

00:23:51.240 the facts are knowable and they shouldn't always be pro Republican or pro Democrat. They should just

00:23:58.100 be facts. And that is tough to do. I think it can be done. I think, you know, I feel like we are doing

00:24:04.940 it and others in small group are doing it. Um, but the Washington post isn't really doing it.

00:24:10.360 They have surrendered to storylines. And I think that while post having the same problem now that

00:24:16.800 CNN had, do you remember those two minutes, Tom, when CNN was purchased and the discovery group got

00:24:25.300 involved and they said, we're going to try to go back to what we used to be, which was rather boring,

00:24:30.680 but factually correct, right? Like, or at least trying to be factually correct. They were always

00:24:36.160 boring. They were never exciting. They never hired interesting personalities. I'll never forget Roger

00:24:40.740 Ailes talking to, um, Jeff Zucker when Zucker first got hired over there. And, um, he asked Roger for

00:24:46.980 advice. I was in his office and, uh, Rogers and, and he said, you know, do you have any advice for me?

00:24:51.120 And Roger said, well, I could certainly use another few hours of Wolf Blitzer.

00:24:54.520 So they've never had a bunch of dynamic personalities over there, but they used to at

00:25:03.180 least be someplace you could go for facts and then they surrendered it under Zucker to ideology. And

00:25:10.440 then they decided for two minutes to try to go back to the old CNN and two things happened. Chris

00:25:16.080 Licht got fired who was trying to do it. You remember first he demoted and then fired Don Lemon. He got

00:25:21.840 rid of stelter. He tried to like have that town hall with Trump, with Caitlin Collins, where she

00:25:26.880 decided to be like this hard partisan as opposed to objective news. But he was trying to like put

00:25:31.160 Trump on CNN. They had a leftist meltdown of their audience. And then they immediately switched back

00:25:36.460 to just, okay, we're leftists. We're MSNBC by different call letters. Because once you've alienated

00:25:42.880 half of your audience and basically told them that you hate them, Tom, it's very, very hard to get them

00:25:49.180 back. No, that's exactly right. And you're right. CNN did have for a long time, they had a sort of

00:25:57.580 centrist brand and they were known for, you tune into them when you wanted, you know, when there was

00:26:02.720 a natural disaster or plane crash or whatever for sort of the hard news. And they went away from that

00:26:10.920 and they started hiring some person because I think they saw the success of Fox and of MSNBC. And they

00:26:17.380 thought, oh my gosh, here we are stuck in the middle and, you know, that's where you get run

00:26:21.880 over. And so they decided they made a conscious choice to sort of move in that direction. And

00:26:26.620 again, when Trump was elected, I mean, Jim Acosta was, you know, openly declared war on Trump and he

00:26:34.000 was their prime guy in the White House press briefing room, just standing day after day after

00:26:39.620 day. Exactly. And by the way, he became, you know, he wrote books about it. He became very famous,

00:26:44.620 earned himself a lot of money, a lot of notoriety was going on, you know, the late night shows and

00:26:48.820 all that. It was a huge success for, for him, but it did, it alienated and really destroyed the CNN

00:26:55.260 brand to the point where they're, they're hardly distinguishable from MSNBC these days.

00:27:01.140 So that's the problem. Like can Washington Post go back, Andrew? Can they, if Jeff Bezos wants to do

00:27:07.760 the Zuckerberg thing and bring the Washington Post back to where it was, I don't know, decades ago.

00:27:13.280 Um, I mean, many people would argue it's always had a strong left-wing bias, but I would say

00:27:18.640 not as strong as today. I mean, it's just, it's gone, you know, it's gone full Rachel Maddow.

00:27:23.700 Um, but can it be corrected? You know, Kessler in this piece is lamenting that all of the,

00:27:29.440 I'm reading from the piece, the post-liberal columnists generated huge traffic. That's because

00:27:34.040 of the liberal slant of the readership. And now they've all quit every day. I checked the daily

00:27:39.840 traffic numbers and year over year. It was like being on a water slide with no bottom.

00:27:45.060 I ran one of the most popular features at the post and internationally recognized brand.

00:27:49.300 I loved working there, but now working at the post feels like being on the Titanic after it struck an

00:27:55.900 iceberg, drifting aimlessly as it sank with not enough lifeboats for everyone. The Carpathia,

00:28:03.020 i.e. Bezos, and that was the ship that was, you know, well, he gets to it, appears too far away

00:28:09.800 and too distracted to help. And the captain is shouting commands that the solution is a different

00:28:16.920 ship. Well, it's, uh, it's, it's artfully written. Uh, I wouldn't have edited that part of it, Tom. I

00:28:25.000 think that that was a nice little paragraph. Um, but I think, uh, you know, the question you asked is,

00:28:31.800 you know, could they shift to the middle and would that help the brand? Would that help them build

00:28:37.620 back their audience? Um, I'm going to say yes. Um, I'm not sure, uh, what the answer is, but I, it seems

00:28:45.660 to me that what they're doing now isn't working. And you see that, um, you see that across the

00:28:51.960 board. I mean, CNN isn't working. MSNBC isn't working. The Washington Post isn't working. Arguably

00:28:56.820 the New York Times isn't working the way it used to. NPR isn't working. None of these sort of people

00:29:01.980 who are groups that have sort of latched on to sort of ideology first as their sort of load star

00:29:08.340 are having trouble. So yeah, heck, why not? Why not try to go back to being more objective or being

00:29:14.500 more balanced? Um, it certainly works for real clear politics. So I think it should work for that.

00:29:18.800 To do that though, I think, you know, we've, we've seen these newsrooms be captured by all of the

00:29:25.760 sort of young woke journalists that are coming up out of, you know, Columbia journalism school and

00:29:30.140 the like. And anytime that anything happens, they, they throw these hissy fits and basically browbeat

00:29:36.440 their managers into, uh, you know, reverting to, or staying the, the sort of liberal course. I mean,

00:29:42.820 I really do think if, if Jeff Bezos was serious about that, if the Washington Post is serious about

00:29:47.180 that as a strategy, they would have to absolutely clean house. I mean, fire everybody and start from

00:29:53.500 scratch and start, and hire some editors who are conservative and some who are liberal and hire

00:29:58.820 some journalists who come from Hillsdale as opposed to just Columbia and, and really sort of rebuild

00:30:04.960 the ethos at the Washington Post to be sort of bipartisan as opposed to what it is now, which is

00:30:10.420 completely captured by progressives. Yeah. The first thing you do is you stop hiring anyone who has a

00:30:15.800 master's in journalism from a U S institution. That's the absolute first thing you do that do

00:30:21.820 the Roger Ailes rule. He, he wasn't hiring people who got their master's at Columbia. If he did,

00:30:26.300 it was because like he had a soft spot for them personally, for some reason, they knew the parents

00:30:30.000 or what have you, but he knew, and he was not looking for journalists. I mean, like when, when I

00:30:34.200 went into Fox news, I remember thinking I was going to dazzle everybody because I was, I had a law degree

00:30:40.340 and I'd practiced law for 10 years. No one cared about that. Of course I learned all they really care is

00:30:44.040 about your resume tape and you know, how do you deliver a story and can you penetrate the lens and

00:30:48.020 you know, are you a good storyteller and all that? Um, and then I was like, I always felt like,

00:30:52.980 okay, am I, cause in journalism, it's turned very elitist. You know, if you look at the resumes of

00:30:57.300 virtually anybody over NBC, it's Harvard and Yale and Princeton. And I went to Syracuse and Albany law

00:31:02.580 and, uh, I felt somewhat like, and was that going to hurt me there? Is this going to, I have no idea

00:31:06.980 because Fox is number one and all this? Um, no, to the contrary, it was a big bonus at Fox. They

00:31:12.220 wanted people who weren't from those institutions who didn't think they were better than everybody.

00:31:17.440 And it's still part of the Fox news formula to find people on air who you feel like you could have

00:31:22.920 a beer with the other channels just don't get it. They, they will never get it that they will never

00:31:28.440 have the ratings of Fox news and the Washington post. I don't know. As much as I criticize Lauren

00:31:34.860 Sanchez, they could probably use a hefty dose of this woman in changing the editorial over there.

00:31:39.560 I mean, like, seriously. Megan, can I say one more thing, going back to what you said about

00:31:44.940 like giving advice to these folks and them not taking it. And, and this idea that, you know,

00:31:49.400 having people who, who actually represent the MAGA point of view, right. You still see that if you

00:31:55.600 watch any of these Sunday shows and I stopped watching them years ago because they're just not,

00:31:59.340 they don't make news and they're not really informative, but you know, I'll look at the Sunday

00:32:03.080 show lineups from time to time. And it's the same thing. It's like, it's like two sort of liberal

00:32:08.440 journalists and one liberal political operative, and then like an establishment Republican or an

00:32:15.040 anti-Trump Republican. Those are the panels that are appearing on face the nation and meet the press.

00:32:20.020 And, and this week, you know, it doesn't have, rarely do you have someone who actually represents

00:32:25.720 Donald Trump and the MAGA point of view talking about these issues. And so in that sense,

00:32:31.980 it doesn't even reflect reality. No, at best they'll put on a Republican who hates Trump.

00:32:37.060 That's the only way you get booked. Um, you get interviewed at one of these, uh, round tables or

00:32:43.340 seminars, or you get on CNN or MS, if they ever going to put a Republican Republican on, it's got to

00:32:48.020 be old school, the kind that hates Trump and never, never, never a MAGA. It's just, look, my concern,

00:32:54.620 I don't care about CNN or MSNBC at all. I'd literally do not care if they dry up and go away

00:33:01.000 tomorrow, but I do care about newspapers. Like I, I think we need them. I mean, we get a lot of our

00:33:08.780 news from newspapers. It's like, there is a role in America for the shoe leather reporter who has time

00:33:15.700 to go out there and contact sources and craft stories and get stories. I mean, is there, it's almost

00:33:22.440 like the month of August, Andrew, is there any news? If the reporters don't report on it, you know,

00:33:27.060 like everything slows down because people go on vacay. Same thing, the two weeks over Christmas,

00:33:32.600 we need reporters without the reporters who are out there. And it's tends to be newspaper print

00:33:37.400 reporters, the news dries up. So I do think there's a place for these people. And it is kind of important

00:33:43.720 to save these, these newspapers. Otherwise I like, I don't want all of my news coming from

00:33:49.780 podcasters who don't tend to have a model that allows for that kind of in-depth, time-consuming,

00:33:56.400 you know, nuts and bolts reporting. Yeah. I, well, I, I, I buy your point, but at the same time,

00:34:01.920 I'd say, look, you know, uh, the, the newspaper, as we know of the sort of daily newspaper, it's,

00:34:07.920 it's, you know, it's time may have come and gone and maybe, you know, there's Kessler going on to

00:34:14.000 Substack, uh, and people tuning into your program and, you know, dwarfing the audiences of some cable

00:34:20.260 shows. Uh, maybe the future is online. Maybe it is, um, you know, these other platforms and maybe

00:34:28.040 they just have to evolve to the point where they sort of fill the hole that the newspapers, uh, are

00:34:34.020 leaving. Um, it does seem hard to me. I mean, if you think about, you know, what drove newspapers

00:34:40.440 for long time is classified advertising. I mean, you know, basically once you take away the classified

00:34:45.600 advertising, that's when newspapers started to fall apart. Maybe there has to be a totally different

00:34:50.280 business model, uh, that would provide the kind of revenue that you need to support the kind of

00:34:57.140 investigative journalism that you're talking about. And, you know, if it's not classified, uh, ads,

00:35:02.880 maybe it's something else. Maybe it's, uh, you know, uh, I don't know what it is, but it, um,

00:35:08.920 the business model is definitely changing. It's some sort of backpage.com or no, we're not in

00:35:15.640 favor of that. That was used for sex trafficking. Yeah. Well, I was trying to think of like the

00:35:23.500 newspaper version of OnlyFans. I don't know. I'm not sure anything to drive some sort of revenue.

00:35:30.700 I don't know. I, I also think like, you know, Tom, as you know, I went on with the New York

00:35:34.240 Times and gave an interview to Lulu Garcia Navarro over there a couple of months ago.

00:35:38.420 And, um, you know, I liked her. She was a nice person, but she was just so not getting it about

00:35:44.880 like where news is going. And she was part, she's part of a dinosaur model. And I think it really is,

00:35:50.600 it's the problem of the times is the problem of the post. We're like, they really don't think

00:35:55.120 they're biased. They think they're reporting the truth. They wouldn't hire somebody with a resume

00:36:00.760 like mine, either when I started at Fox or now, um, because they think they know better. And they think

00:36:07.400 if they hire kids from these elite so-called universities, they're going to get truth tellers

00:36:12.380 and that not owning your bias is really important to projecting and even maintaining objectivity.

00:36:20.420 And she and I got into this back and forth of like, no, it's exactly the opposite. The audience

00:36:24.820 today, especially the young audience, um, needs you to acknowledge that you have a bias and be honest

00:36:30.700 about it. We pulled some of the discussion. Here's, here's a taste of it.

00:36:34.780 I think you're right that there is some way that we are seeing things or discussing something

00:36:42.480 different, right? I guess what I'm trying to understand is what are the rules of this new

00:36:46.620 world that you are inhabiting? Um, are you sort of making them up as you go along and you're sort of

00:36:51.740 seeing what it is, or do you adhere to some of those old values that you used to embrace?

00:36:55.660 The only way one succeeds in this medium is by violating all those rules that we used to have

00:37:02.720 in journalism, where you don't really talk about yourself at all. You don't talk about your opinions.

00:37:08.520 You might have a bias. Your only goal is to hide it, not to own it and then get past it with the

00:37:13.720 audience. It's just a whole new world and it's okay. We used to be much more partisan and openly

00:37:19.720 partisan in our journalism and our media, you know, a hundred plus years ago. And we survived that just

00:37:25.940 fine. And we will survive this just fine too. What the audience wants from me is my authentic self and

00:37:33.200 no filter. What they can smell from a mile away is a phony. So they have no problem with me endorsing

00:37:40.360 Trump, even if they don't like Trump. What they would have a problem with is me pretending I don't have

00:37:46.700 a horse in the race and going out and trying to deliver the news as though I'm completely objective

00:37:51.980 and I'm just as open-minded to Kamala as I am to Donald Trump.

00:37:58.500 She, she thinks that the times is fooling people, Tom. She thinks that their audience thinks they're objective.

00:38:06.020 Yeah. Well, look, I understand the, the desire for her to say, well, you know, I'm objective and, and you do have

00:38:18.400 these, these, um, folks who have, um, and I think this goes back honestly to, to, to Watergate and this whole

00:38:26.180 generation of, of student before that, you know, the newspaper business was inhabited by, you know, blue collar folks.

00:38:33.440 This was not an Ivy league, not an elitist type institution. And after Watergate, you had this

00:38:38.760 sort of, you know, generation that came up and, and viewing journalism as this really noble cause.

00:38:44.180 And they're holding the, you know, the, the powerful to account. And they're doing all of these

00:38:48.140 sort of a, it's sort of a good government type thing, as opposed to people just, you know, the old

00:38:53.840 shoe leather reporters, like, I'm going to go out and talk to some people and figure out what the hell's

00:38:56.640 going on. And then report it to my, my readers for better or worse. It became this, this,

00:39:01.840 and they had this inflated sense of self that, you know, this institution is, is, you know, uh,

00:39:08.660 just above and to your point, elitist. And they look down on people who don't follow their rules

00:39:15.320 as they were established and all of these things. And it's just led to also, and part of not just

00:39:21.240 above the regular people, but part of the elite circle that they are getting paid to cover,

00:39:27.840 that they're getting paid to question and be skeptical of, but crossed over to wanting to

00:39:32.180 be part of those groups. Correct. Yeah, no. And it's also led to this, this interesting idea,

00:39:40.560 which is very anti-journalist in, in my opinion, uh, of the last few days that even Leonard Downing

00:39:47.060 of the, of the Washington Post at the time wrote, you know, this idea that there, you know, we can't

00:39:51.520 do both sides and, and, you know, this moral equivalency that's out there that, you know,

00:39:56.820 newsrooms shouldn't be objective. They shouldn't try to cover both sides because in some instances,

00:40:02.680 there aren't two sides. Um, and that just is, you know, I, I wish Carl was here to talk about this

00:40:09.060 because Carl's been in the news business a long time. And, you know, when we talk to our reporters,

00:40:13.780 Phil Wegman, Susan Crabtree, when they go out to do a story, you know, Carl's, Carl's instructions to

00:40:19.540 them is always make sure that the other side's argument is represented in a way that they would

00:40:24.820 recognize and understand, right? That's important. You, you quote these people so that they're,

00:40:31.560 when they read the story, they feel like they were treated properly and fairly and their voice was

00:40:36.080 heard. And we just don't have any of that in most of the media stories. You go out and you read these

00:40:40.300 stories. If you read them carefully, you'll find that, you know, the, the folks that they've,

00:40:45.140 they get the, the experts that they get are all totally one-sided. They don't quote anybody from

00:40:50.920 the other side, or if they do, maybe it's, as you said, like an anti-Trump voice or somebody who's

00:40:55.160 not exactly who they represented to be. And so the, I think the whole structure of, of our current

00:41:02.780 journalism, uh, is just completely out of whack. No, but I would, I would say that. Yeah, go ahead,

00:41:08.760 Andrew. Oh, it's just, I mean, you know, I, when I look at what you're doing, Megan, I, I, I agree

00:41:15.040 that you, you're, you're, you're breaking a lot of journalistic rules, but I also see you and people

00:41:20.180 like you in sort of part of a tradition that goes way back, you know, to Edward R. Murrow or Walter

00:41:24.660 Lipman, George Will, um, Charles Krauthammer. I mean, people who are sort of opinion journalists,

00:41:30.520 we used to call them. I don't know if people use that term anymore, but people who would present

00:41:35.060 objective facts and present an argument with them. And you knew when you were reading Charles

00:41:41.300 Krauthammer, just as an example, you knew where he was coming from. Uh, but nonetheless, you learned

00:41:46.540 something and he was, you know, he would sort of represent the other side of the argument, but make

00:41:51.700 his argument against it. I, you know, I grew up reading George Will. He was one of my heroes. I loved

00:41:56.500 the way he wrote, um, same sort of thing. I mean, he was writing in the New York Times, right? And, um,

00:42:01.320 so, uh, there are, you know, that's a tradition I think is, is worth honoring and, and, uh, continuing.

00:42:09.460 And I think that's partly, uh, what I see you doing and people like you who are, who are, you know,

00:42:14.580 doing this honestly on air. Well, thank you. I mean, it's, I definitely think that my background

00:42:19.420 in journalism has helped me do well in the podcast space because there is a thirst for real facts,

00:42:26.540 for actual truth through commentary. Cause I think commentary does help you retain it better,

00:42:32.120 frame it better, understand why it's relevant to your life better, you know, than just like a

00:42:36.280 straight news report that kind of comes from somebody trying to do just exactly just facts

00:42:40.800 and no context and all, you know, it's just a kind of a more fun, useful way. I think of getting your

00:42:46.060 news and getting your facts. Um, the problem for people who are on the left who are still using

00:42:51.020 only sources like the AP is they get articles like this one, survivors of Israel's pager attack

00:42:59.740 on Hezbollah struggle to recover. Oh my gosh. That's an actual headline. That's a good one at the AP

00:43:10.580 yesterday. This would be like us saying like the families of the nine 11 terrorists remain in mourning

00:43:19.800 at the loss of their gifted pilots. I mean, this is a crazy ass bent on editorial. Andrew from the AP,

00:43:30.300 they go on about how they acknowledge that, uh, the attack, this is Israel's, you know,

00:43:36.920 detonating the pagers, uh, in the pockets of Hezbollah terrorists. We recognize that group of

00:43:41.020 terrorists that it wounded more than 3000 people and killed 12, including two children. Hezbollah has

00:43:47.000 acknowledged that most of those wounded and killed were its fighters or personnel. The, the simultaneous

00:43:53.560 explosions in populated areas, however, also wounded many civilians. It was well over 90% military

00:44:00.840 fighters, which is rather remarkable for any military bomb drop or attack of any kind, whether

00:44:06.480 you're the United States or Israel. And, um, they've decided to focus in here on those who were

00:44:13.860 adjacent to the terrorists who are on a quote, slow, painful path to recovery 10 months later.

00:44:22.680 Thoughts? Well, um, that pager attack was one of the most amazing, uh, stories, uh, that I've ever

00:44:30.880 read. Uh, and if you think about it, it is in war, you have collateral damage. There was, it was so

00:44:37.420 about the most closely drawn target you could have. I mean, you had to have one of these pagers in your

00:44:42.440 pocket, uh, and it blew up, uh, you know, everything around your pocket. So not, not a good thing.

00:44:48.680 Um, but, uh, so, you know, I, I, I'm sort of stunned. I, I didn't, I haven't seen that story

00:44:54.600 myself, so I'd love to read it, but, um, yes, there is sort of a, there are examples like that of,

00:45:02.180 of bias that have just gone too, so far that they appear ridiculous. And that, that's an example.

00:45:08.100 Well, that, that's a pretty ridiculous headline. It seems. I mean, it's crazy town. They say the

00:45:11.560 survivors for first, they say the hours of interviews offered a rare glimpse into the

00:45:16.660 attacks, human toll. I mean, I'm sorry, but we don't care. They expressly say that everybody

00:45:21.940 they talked to were Hezbollah officials or fighters or members of their families. You know,

00:45:27.440 if you're going to do the terrorism, you're going to probably die by the terrorism. If you're going to

00:45:31.460 do the terrorism from your home around your family, you're endangering them too. Like this is

00:45:36.220 an absolutely crazy way in. This is, I don't remember us doing like the single tear shed for

00:45:42.400 like the Al Qaeda family members or the Hamas family members. But you, as you know, when it

00:45:47.940 comes to Israel, all the rules are different. Well, that, and that's the point I was going to

00:45:52.260 make is, you know, this story is absurd in and of itself, but it, but it highlights the broader

00:45:57.980 problem, which is the, the associated press and a lot of the media, right. The way that they,

00:46:03.920 the way that they frame these stories and we talk about the narratives that they produce

00:46:09.200 and they're constantly relying on, you know, the Gaza health ministry for, you know, casualty

00:46:15.020 numbers and the like. Red flag, red flag. Right. Like how can we even, how can we even as, as news

00:46:21.920 consumers, how can we trust anything that they print? How do we know, where can we get accurate

00:46:27.420 information about what, what's actually happening in, in the Middle East right now? Because, you know,

00:46:33.640 I approach these stories by, and I've done this long enough, but I don't know, you know, if the

00:46:40.120 general public, you know, realizes that the way that these stories are always framed to cast Israel

00:46:47.100 in the worst possible light. And so I always bake that in when I'm reading, I'm like, okay,

00:46:50.900 you know, there's probably a seed of truth in here. There's probably some famine going on,

00:46:55.460 but do we know why it's being caused and what's causing it? Is Israel totally to blame? Is it

00:47:00.860 genocide that's happening there? I mean, you just, there, there's such bias that is baked into

00:47:06.660 obviously our domestic coverage, but, but this international coverage as well, that it's really

00:47:13.100 hard. The further you get into this, the harder it is to trust anything that some of these organizations

00:47:18.400 are writing about stuff that's going on beyond our borders. Did you guys see the, while we're on this

00:47:24.720 topic of Israel, this Mahmoud Khalil is, he's been on a press tour. He's a media darling. Now this guy

00:47:31.780 who's here on, um, he's got a green card on a visa, but he's not, he's not a U S citizen.

00:47:39.480 And he was at Columbia. He participated in the protests that basically took hostage the campus

00:47:45.400 of Columbia and really said to the officials at Columbia, nice university here. Shame. If anything

00:47:51.300 happened to it, something will, unless you divest entirely from Israel. Those are our terms,

00:47:56.900 take them or leave them. I mean, it was truly mob tactics by this group. He makes no apologies for it.

00:48:02.520 And Marco Rubio said, you know what? I, as secretary of state have the power under the law to eject

00:48:07.280 somebody who's not here as a citizen, uh, whose, whose beliefs and behaviors are inconsistent with the

00:48:14.880 foreign policy of the United States. So get out. Well, he's been embattled in the legal system ever

00:48:20.760 since he's got a team of lawyers that OJ would envy, um, up and down criminal and civil. I mean,

00:48:27.040 they're all representing him for free. He's got a $20 million lawsuit against the United States right

00:48:31.840 now saying that he was unfairly detained. Um, and on top of it, he's on this media tour all over CNN.

00:48:38.760 Now latest with the New York times is Ezra Klein, where he offers the following justification

00:48:44.000 for the 10, seven terrorist attack. Listen, October 7th happens. What do you think that day?

00:48:53.380 To me, it felt frightening that we had to reach this moment and, and, and, and, and in the

00:49:03.660 Palestinian struggle. I remember I didn't sleep for a number of days and Noor was very

00:49:08.460 worried about, about like just, um, my health. Um, and it was heavy. Like I, I still remember,

00:49:17.240 like, I was like, this, this couldn't happen. What do you mean? We had to reach this moment.

00:49:21.640 What, what, what moment is this? The situation in the West Bank and, and, and you can see that

00:49:27.900 the situation is not sustainable. Unfortunately, we couldn't, we couldn't avoid such, such a moment.

00:49:35.280 It's unbelievable, Tom. We, we had to reach the moment where we burned the babies. It was,

00:49:41.740 it's unavoidable. It's regrettable, but yeah. Who's we, buddy? Who are you talking about? We,

00:49:47.700 um, certainly not me. Uh, yeah. I mean, the idea that we, we couldn't avoid this moment where,

00:49:54.480 where babies were burned alive and killed, parents, you know, hostages taken. Of course,

00:50:01.540 we could have avoided this moment. And so I think he just kind of exposed himself further here as,

00:50:09.000 you know, folks had been, his detractors have been saying for a long time that this guy really,

00:50:15.540 and this was sort of Marco Rubio's point is, you know, when you're here on a student visa,

00:50:19.740 when you're here as a guest of the United States, at a minimum, we should expect you not to agitate

00:50:26.380 against the United States, um, and, and do the kind of things that this guy has been doing.

00:50:32.320 So it was pretty outrageous. I mean, even just listening to that again for the second time now,

00:50:37.480 I'm actually more pissed off about it than I was the first time. I mean, it's, it's really hard to

00:50:42.260 fathom. Get out, get out, get out, go home. We don't want you get out. You clearly hate America.

00:50:48.980 It's mutual move along. You don't need to be here. This isn't even our fight. Get out. It's so

00:50:54.740 annoying. Andrew, you take in the last 43 minutes before break. Well, uh, you know, um, I, I would

00:51:02.700 get one less lawyer and maybe one more PR professional involved because it, it's disastrous,

00:51:07.900 uh, for his, his brand so-called right now. Um, he also said that, uh, anti-Semitism on Columbia,

00:51:15.200 at Columbia campus is manufactured. Um, he did, he said that, uh, you know, from the river to the sea

00:51:21.720 and the globalized me into, into Fata where, uh, you defended both terms. So, um, pretty,

00:51:26.940 pretty disastrous. And yeah, um, I think it's time for him to leave.

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00:52:31.080 Trump sends out a post saying he wants to change. Well, not change, but he wants to conduct a new

00:52:41.900 census, which is only supposed to be done every 10 years. Technically we're only on the five-year

00:52:46.440 mark. It was done in 2020 last. And, um, this is very interesting because there's a question about

00:52:53.740 what, if anything, it could do to our electoral politics. Here's the true social post. I've instructed

00:52:59.860 our department of commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate census based on

00:53:05.480 modern day facts and figures, and importantly, using the results and information gained from

00:53:09.300 the presidential election of 24 people who are in our country illegally will not be counted in the

00:53:14.720 census. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Now that you've got our CPs, Ben Weingarten,

00:53:22.680 your guy writing, this could have significant political implications because the census count

00:53:28.960 is used to apportion house seats, determine the number of votes each state gets in the electoral

00:53:34.100 college for selecting the president and drive the flow of trillions of dollars in government funds.

00:53:40.000 But there's also the question of whether you can exclude illegals for those purposes. Like you are,

00:53:49.180 you do not have to let illegals vote, but the constitution seems to read that they are supposed to be

00:53:55.200 included. You're supposed to just count all persons in the United States, which is going to be a legal

00:54:01.860 battle in the same way it's a legal battle right now over Trump and birthright citizenship. So what do

00:54:08.200 we make of this? Andrew, do we think the census and redoing it at the midway point is going to have

00:54:14.100 electoral consequences? Well, I'm not sure he's talking about redoing it before 2030. That would be a big

00:54:23.560 change. The constitution, you're right. The constitution calls for a census every 10 years

00:54:29.040 and we do use that to apportion. He says to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate

00:54:33.740 census. Immediately. Yeah. Well, maybe, maybe he's, well, that, that would be, that would be a big

00:54:38.760 change. And then how you would use that? I don't know that, that, boy, that's, that, that's a whole

00:54:43.980 different constitutional question of whether you could speed up the census in order to, to change the

00:54:50.560 numbers. I seem to be, that would be a hard, hard, hard lift. It's going to be a legal battle.

00:54:56.300 Yeah. I mean, it's a hard enough lift because as you point out the constitution, the language is

00:55:00.200 kind of clear. It says you have to count everyone in the country and it doesn't distinguish between

00:55:05.320 the two. But the political consequences of this and Ben Whitengarden's piece is, is well worth reading

00:55:11.700 on this. And Pew has done a study on this as well. California and Texas, I think we both lose seats.

00:55:18.980 Wisconsin and a bunch of other states would gain seats. So it would change the electoral composition

00:55:26.120 and could change control of the house. And we're seeing that right now with all this,

00:55:31.180 this sort of redistribution argument that's going on, redistricting argument that's going on

00:55:37.740 in Texas and other places now. So this is all, this is all part of that same argument.

00:55:42.360 Um, and, uh, I do think though Trump has a point and the point is that if you're counting,

00:55:49.260 if you don't count voters and then you, uh, you provide, uh, uh, these seats based on that number,

00:55:58.140 you're sort of jipping, uh, voters, you're sort of, uh, so it might be, why does my vote get diluted?

00:56:04.000 Because I live in a state with a ton of illegals who don't have the right to vote and whose interests

00:56:09.200 are really not in my head or heart when I go into the ballot box. Right. Well, actually I think it's

00:56:15.320 the opposite. I think you get more representation if you, because they're counting people who don't

00:56:19.660 vote. So, um, it's anyway, pretty, pretty complicated stuff, but I don't think it goes anywhere. I mean,

00:56:26.240 I'm not a lawyer, uh, but it does seem to me that the, the, the, the courts have ruled on this before.

00:56:32.500 And it seems to me that changing the census is pretty tough. I'm trying to do the math that you

00:56:38.120 just quickly did. Does my vote get diluted? If I live in a state like New York or California, where

00:56:42.740 there's a fair amount of illegals and I'm a U S citizen, is my vote diluted or does it count more?

00:56:48.680 I can't do the math like that. I don't, I think it counts more. I think it counts more.

00:56:53.440 Tom, you went to Princeton. Would you, would you like to resolve it? Explain it.

00:56:56.740 No, I wasn't a math major. None of us was. That's why we're in journalism.

00:57:02.520 That's right. Look, I, this is, I think Trump makes a good point. And, and once again,

00:57:11.220 in a very Trumpian way, right. Which is going to outrage the liberals and, Oh, he's breaking all

00:57:16.680 these norms and he wants to rig the system and do all these things. But, and I don't know where this

00:57:23.160 goes. I legally, it's going to be tough. I think it will absolutely be challenged in court. There's

00:57:27.020 no question about that. It might go all the way to the Supreme court. Um, and because Democrats,

00:57:32.760 I don't think want to partake in anything, uh, that would discount the, the counting of folks who

00:57:40.220 are here illegally, um, because it could drastically alter, um, the composition of, of some of these

00:57:48.900 states now again, but we don't know. I mean, this is one of those things. Like if Texas loses votes,

00:57:53.040 that's, that's the Republican state of California loses votes. That's a democratic state. If Arizona

00:57:57.500 loses votes, that's a swing state, um, New Mexico. Yeah. Because just to be clear, because we're,

00:58:02.260 if we're talking about eliminating illegals from the count, it doesn't necessarily mean

00:58:07.420 like Republicans benefit or Democrats benefit. It, it means certain states are going to lose

00:58:14.520 house members and also electoral votes because of the power of your vote. Like you get more

00:58:20.540 electoral votes, the more citizens or the more people, again, persons you have living within

00:58:25.180 your borders. Keep going. Correct. So we don't know exactly how this might actually affect the outcome

00:58:31.360 of, of, you know, the composition of the house or the composition of the electoral college. I mean,

00:58:37.860 it would be, but it would be interesting. And I do think, uh, even though the constitution says,

00:58:42.540 you know, count all persons here, I don't know that the founders were counting on the fact that

00:58:47.980 there would be, you know, I don't know, 15, 20 million or more people here illegally.

00:58:53.700 So definitely not. I think that that's the argument that the Trump administration will make

00:58:57.380 and we'll see whether they, they're successful in that or not. That's right. And right now, if you

00:59:01.240 have, if you have a diplomatic visa, you're not counted. So, I mean, there are exceptions to the rule

00:59:05.400 even now. Uh, right. So yeah, it makes no sense to be counting illegals. It doesn't. And I mean,

00:59:12.360 like, I don't know how that'll shake out or whether it will be beneficial to write, you know,

00:59:16.220 red America or blue America, but it does seem stupid and backward to be counting people who

00:59:22.220 cannot vote and have no right to public funds and so on, uh, in the census. Okay. Although in some

00:59:29.280 states they're trying to create them more and more while we're on that subject. Um, I've been listening

00:59:33.660 to you guys in the redistricting fight down in Texas. I mean, I do think it's really interesting

00:59:37.140 because everybody's basically said all this nonsense that the Trump administration said,

00:59:41.380 oh, well, those districts created, they were created based on racist criteria. So they must

00:59:46.380 be redone. And then Abbott was like, yes, sir. I agree. Racism runs amok. We're going to redo them

00:59:51.880 ASAP. And suddenly they come up with five new house seats for Republicans. Okay. I see what's

00:59:57.460 happening, but listening to you guys, like who are much closer to this, especially you, Tom in Illinois,

01:00:04.300 it's you're basically saying the only reason he has to do this is because it has been done to the

01:00:09.520 Republicans by the Democrats in every state that this is the Dems game of redistricting their states

01:00:16.280 to make the districts look like little slivers of, you know, a spoon handle, uh, in order to get them

01:00:24.300 as democratic as possible to the point where you have states like Illinois, where, uh, what is it?

01:00:30.820 They say that they're, uh, Kamala Harris only got 53% of the vote, but Democrats occupy 82% of the

01:00:37.660 state's congressional seats. So how did that happen, Tom? Right. And, you know, it was ironic.

01:00:43.300 JB Pritzker went on, he's, he's, you know, having his moment now because, uh, he's, you know,

01:00:49.640 the father figure to all of these fleeing Democrats and went on Colbert and Colbert actually, to his

01:00:54.340 credit, put up a map of Illinois and was like, look at these crazy districts. Like what's going on with

01:00:58.200 you guys? Like what? And, and JB Pritzker kind of yucked it up. It was like, Oh, we had a

01:01:02.100 kindergarten class decide. Well, no, actually they had, they have super majority control of the state

01:01:06.700 legislature and they redrew these districts to be as favorable to Democrats. Like look at this one.

01:01:13.640 There's this like, just looking at the map of Illinois right here for the list. Yeah. So it's

01:01:16.800 Illinois 13. It starts, it starts in, in basically down in sort of the suburbs of St. Louis area and goes

01:01:23.160 up through the middle of the state, almost bisects the entire state. It goes all the way up. It's like a

01:01:27.060 sort of, yeah, exactly. And then, and then the other district has to curl all the way around it

01:01:31.740 to go back. I mean, it's, it's really absurd. Democrats have abused this privilege. Uh, you

01:01:37.620 know, the gerrymandering, um, they've abused gerrymandering for decades and when they do it,

01:01:44.660 right, they're just, you know, this is democracy in action. And when Republicans retaliate and do this,

01:01:49.800 right, it's, they're suppressing the vote and they're, you know, killing democracy. So it's all a big

01:01:54.840 game. It's all a big, you know, sort of hypocrisy. Now, the one thing that they,

01:01:58.680 and this is what JB said the other night and the one, the, the, the real outrage is that,

01:02:02.780 you know, Republicans are doing it mid census, right? They're doing it five years, not waiting

01:02:07.380 for the full 10 years, but it has been done before it's rare, but it, but it has been done,

01:02:12.400 including by New York, I believe like in 2024. So again, Democrats do not have clean hands on this

01:02:17.900 at all. And so for them to sort of take this moral high ground, once again, it's all just sort of

01:02:22.580 virtue signaling and posturing. And it has kicked off though, this real interesting national debate

01:02:29.960 and discussion where you've got now all these other States or, you know, Gavin Newsom in California is

01:02:34.260 going to do something. And, um, you know, JD Vance is going to Indiana to see if they can maybe

01:02:39.780 squeeze another Republican seat out of there, which is already a heavily Republican state. So,

01:02:44.960 um, it'll be interesting to see how this all ends up working out, but yeah, I mean, to, to hear the

01:02:51.640 Democrats, a for the Texas Democrats to sort of cry foul and then flee to Illinois is almost too

01:02:58.380 perfect for, for words. I mean, if you had, if you had imagined it, people would say this is, you

01:03:03.660 know, you got to send it back for a rewrite. It's, it's yeah, it's all well and good until they sit

01:03:07.640 down at the dinner table and say to their fellow Democrats in Illinois, can you believe this

01:03:10.840 gerrymandering? This is a nightmare. Who would do such a thing? Right. This is so

01:03:14.860 wrong. Now we just got news before we came to air that, that they've authorized the FBI

01:03:20.320 to go track down the rogue Democrats. Yeah. So that'll be interesting. What are they going to

01:03:27.360 do? Are they going to arrest them? Like drag them back to Texas because they can't have a vote on the

01:03:31.980 newly proposed lines without these Democrats in the state. That's why they fled to prevent

01:03:36.460 their, uh, from being a quorum. So things could get even dicier there. Um, I want to switch gears

01:03:42.920 though, Andrew, cause we don't have that much time. Speaking of JD Vance, Trump commented and

01:03:47.300 it's a very interesting comment and you have to listen to the exact wording, but he commented on

01:03:51.580 JD Vance and his future role, uh, the other day when he was asked on Tuesday in Sot7. Listen.

01:03:59.700 This weekend, secretary of state Rubio said that he thought JD Vance would be a great nominee.

01:04:05.140 You could clear the entire Republican field right now. Do you agree that the heir apparent to MAGA

01:04:12.460 is JD Vance? Well, I think most likely in all fairness, he's the vice president. I think Marco

01:04:17.860 is also somebody that maybe would get together with JD in some form. Uh, I also think we have

01:04:24.160 incredible people, some of the people on the stage right here. So it's too early obviously to talk

01:04:28.900 about it, but certainly he's doing a great job and he would be, uh, probably favored at this point.

01:04:36.580 Any thoughts on that, Andrew? Well, you know, I, we, we played that clip and talked about it because

01:04:41.660 it's so fascinating. And the question was whether he would be the, whether he's the heir apparent to

01:04:46.700 the MAGA movement, um, which is not to say who is the next presidential nominee for the Republican

01:04:52.180 party, two different questions. Um, and then in his answer, it sort of sounded like at the end of it

01:04:59.300 that he was sort of alighting to the second, he says where, you know, uh, he would be favored. Well,

01:05:03.400 that's, that's a political term. Um, so, you know, it's always dangerous to, to try to parse, uh, the

01:05:09.680 president's language too carefully, but I thought that was a really interesting statement. And I think,

01:05:15.240 uh, so I think clearly he was answering, answering it honestly, which he does from time to time.

01:05:20.920 And he was saying that, yeah, that's what he thinks that, that, uh, J.D. Vance is the leader,

01:05:25.480 but to put Marco Rubio as a potential, uh, leader of the MAGA movement, again, that's interesting.

01:05:32.800 Which by the way, Trump always does. It's very interesting. I've been noticing this

01:05:38.000 for a while from him. Whenever he's asked this question, he mentions both of them and he like,

01:05:44.380 he clearly hasn't in his own mind made up his mind on like who he really wants to pass the baton to.

01:05:50.920 Yeah. And the question of course, is who's at the top of the ticket and who's,

01:05:53.800 who's the number two slot. Um, I think those two principles might have different views.

01:05:58.940 I don't think J.D. wants to spend another four or eight years as vice president.

01:06:03.300 Yeah. But, um, but, but, but he's a lot younger than Marco.

01:06:07.100 Yeah. But I think that, that, uh, that Rubio, uh, being positioned as a MAGA guy, that's,

01:06:12.200 that's really interesting because it does mean, I mean,

01:06:14.780 he's about the one guy who sort of went from being a bushy really, uh, you know, to being,

01:06:21.040 uh, uh, you know, at the head of the MAGA movement. I mean, that's pretty extraordinary,

01:06:25.220 pretty, pretty deft politics on his part.

01:06:27.180 Very. I know. I heard you guys talking about, I'm real clear politics about how,

01:06:30.160 I think it was Carl who was saying he started off as like a tea party, darling. And then he asked him,

01:06:35.580 or somebody asked him like, how'd you manage that? And, uh, he said, I don't know.

01:06:39.740 They just, they just voted for me, you know, like he, but he's maneuvered it. I mean,

01:06:43.980 he went from Lil Marco, which Trump used to say Lil with an apostrophe, Lil Marco to mentioned in

01:06:51.620 every breath by Trump as possibly the heir apparent, though this one clearly seemed to favor Vance,

01:06:57.720 Tom, which, you know, obviously I'm sure J.D. Vance would have been quite happy to hear him say

01:07:02.500 that. And by the way, uh, here's some more support for J.D. Vance as the heir apparent from CNN's

01:07:08.080 Harry Enten. Take a listen to SOT 7B. Where does he stand on this?

01:07:12.600 You know, I'm going to quote the esteemed scholar, Larry David and say, pretty, pretty good.

01:07:17.820 J.D. Vance at 40%. There's no one even close to him. Ron DeSantis back at single digits at eight.

01:07:23.600 Donald Trump Jr. back at 7%. But keep in mind that early favorites have actually gone on to win the

01:07:29.400 nomination 63% of the time. Those who have run since 1980. And when you're dealing with fields that

01:07:35.480 are 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, upwards of north of 20, and all of a sudden you're telling me that the

01:07:40.360 early poll leader, who is J.D. Vance, that those win more than 50% of the time? That is why I say

01:07:45.480 it looks pretty gosh darn good, or pretty, pretty good for the man from Ohio. How about vice presidents,

01:07:52.660 sitting vice presidents, the last five sitting vice presidents who ran Richard Nixon in 60? He won.

01:07:58.340 How about Hubert Horatio Humphrey in 68? That's H-H-H. That's a real acronym for him.

01:08:03.720 How about Bush the first in 88? Won. Al Gore in 2001. Kamala Harris in 2024? Won. All of the last

01:08:11.140 five sitting vice presidents who ran for their party's nomination won. So it's not just a polling.

01:08:16.780 Historically speaking, if J.D. Vance gets in this fight and he's the sitting vice president,

01:08:20.620 the history books say, hey, he's got a pretty gosh darn chance of going all the way,

01:08:24.980 at least to the general election, because five out of five.

01:08:29.120 Tom, thoughts?

01:08:29.920 Well, not to nitpick Harry, but Kamala didn't really win.

01:08:35.000 True. She did not even win her party's nomination.

01:08:37.460 She did not win the nomination.

01:08:39.180 But look, he makes a good point, which is, look, J.D. Vance has done a good job as vice

01:08:46.020 president, I think, in the eyes of Trump supporters. And Trump clearly thinks highly of him.

01:08:54.640 And I think Trump is right. He just based on, you know, if you were a neutral observer, you'd say,

01:09:00.580 yeah, I mean, he's he's he's has the highest profile now. He has the highest name ID. I mean,

01:09:06.080 he's going to be in poll position to to win the nomination. The only reason that he might not be

01:09:12.360 or he might have some vulnerabilities. We need to know where where the country is going to be,

01:09:17.840 where the, you know, Trump presidency is going to be, where the economy is going to be when J.D.

01:09:23.700 Vance, because that's always the problem. Right. He's going to be basically running for a Trump

01:09:27.740 third term, even though they're nonconsecutive. And and so that could be a real asset to him

01:09:33.240 with Republicans or depending on how things work out, it might it might be a bit of a drag on him.

01:09:37.780 So we'll see. But but clearly he is the guy. And I think he knows that. I think Trump was sort

01:09:42.280 of intimating. Look, a Vance Rubio ticket would be ideal in terms of in terms of his mind and the

01:09:49.840 MAGA movement. Yeah. Yeah, it would be dreamy. But there's no way the guy who ran Celebrity

01:09:54.260 Apprentice for all those years is going to give up the contest this early. We're seven months into

01:09:59.620 Trump in his second term. He's the star. He would like to remain the star. There's no way he is going

01:10:05.860 to let somebody else become the star by naming them the heir apparent, probably until the very,

01:10:10.480 very, very end. And maybe not even then. We'll have to wait to find out. Right. Yeah. He might

01:10:16.340 decide that he's going to run for a third term in the end. Right. Yeah. He says he probably won't.

01:10:20.880 He says he probably won't. OK, let's take a look at Team Blue, because every other day we have

01:10:27.200 another one sort of sticking their head up, kind of going to South Carolina or let's say in Rahm Emanuel's

01:10:32.760 case, coming on The Megyn Kelly Show and so on. And now we have Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.

01:10:39.900 I'm sorry. I'm just going to say he's too fat to be president. I'm sorry, but he is.

01:10:46.220 I don't make these rules. I just know them. You can be too short to be president and you can be

01:10:50.520 too fat to be president. And I think he might be both. It's a double whammy. I don't understand

01:10:55.660 why he doesn't get on the shot. Being that obese is a surefire way to die early. I say this to you

01:11:01.000 as a fan, J.B. Pritzker. No, I don't. I'm not your fan. I'm not your fan at all. But as a fellow

01:11:07.300 American, I urge you, go on the shot. Do something. In any event, this isn't why I had

01:11:12.180 you on, Andrew. I did want to get your thoughts, however, on his possible run, because there's

01:11:20.080 you guys have this up at RealClearPolitics today. J.B. Pritzker's presidential ambitions

01:11:23.840 are sinking him at home. And there's a there's a piece about how he's he's flailing with his

01:11:32.420 own general election voters in Illinois as he tries to create more of a national profile for

01:11:39.180 himself. So what's going on there? Well, I think it's the same problem sort of any blue state

01:11:43.860 governor has right now. The advantage they have is that they're not tied to the Biden administration.

01:11:48.680 So they don't have to they weren't in the cabinet. They don't have to sort of explain

01:11:52.420 why they didn't tell the country about Biden's declining acuity. But at the same time,

01:12:00.600 they've got to defend these records of what they've done to their states. And, you know,

01:12:04.440 Tom lives in Chicago, so I'll let him tell you more about what it's like to live under the

01:12:10.120 Pritzker regime. But it's not an easy case to make to the broader American public. He does seem to have

01:12:17.880 thrown himself in all the way to the left, which I think is interesting. I mean, he's really

01:12:23.480 decided that's where it's going to be. Trans thing, the Sanctuary City, this, you know,

01:12:30.680 defending these Texans. He's he's decided that's where he's going to go. And, you know, for a for

01:12:37.780 for a die in the wool billionaire, it's kind of interesting.

01:12:41.260 Quite the contrast from Rahm Emanuel, Tom.

01:12:43.920 Yeah, for sure. And look, JB's running for reelection as governor for his third term. Now,

01:12:50.540 that doesn't preclude him from running for president in 2028, although he'd have to make

01:12:54.320 a kind of a quick turn there. But at the same time, this new poll from M3 Strategies that came out

01:13:00.560 that we have this piece on the site today shows him underwater for the first time. You know, he's

01:13:06.180 normally because it's such a blue state, he's been viewed favorably and he's at like forty seven fifty

01:13:12.080 now. So there is some discontent, I think, among folks in the state. And we have you know,

01:13:17.880 we have all sorts of problems, you know, people fleeing the state and all of those things.

01:13:24.700 JB likes to present it as we've made so much progress, but there's more progress to be made.

01:13:29.820 Unfortunately for the Republicans, there's no one really there to challenge him. They don't

01:13:34.520 really have a marquee challenger. And JB's got millions and millions of dollars. He's already spent

01:13:39.380 a couple hundred million getting himself elected the first two times. So he's probably,

01:13:45.100 you know, going to win reelection. But but the the bloom is definitely off the the chubby rose,

01:13:51.980 as we say. Yes. Oh, my God. He's congratulations, JB Pritzker, because you've given Tom Bevin

01:13:57.400 the highest gas taxes in the country, the highest property taxes in the country. And I can say,

01:14:03.820 as somebody who lives in the Northeast, that's a real feat. Congrats, because that's tough to do.

01:14:07.500 Um, he's embraced the teachers union. He's screwed over the kids. He loves the trans,

01:14:13.480 the transing of children, um, the illegals, all of it. Like, pick your issue. He's like,

01:14:19.120 Mom Donnie in like the the big and tall store. Okay. But only in the big, only only there for the big

01:14:27.200 part of it. Okay. Um, I have two things more I need to get through with you. Trump is making some

01:14:34.720 intimations about possibly playing a bigger role in the New York mayoral race, possibly getting

01:14:41.760 involved to try to help maybe Andrew Cuomo defeat Mom Donnie. Now, this is based on reports by at least

01:14:48.620 one Republican congressman from New York who Trump asked, like, if I were to get involved, who would I

01:14:53.180 help? And one other person he asked, um, and both apparently said Cuomo. Curtis Lee was a Republican

01:15:00.040 who cannot win, sadly. And Eric Adams numbers are in the basement. He's got like a 7%. He's got zero

01:15:06.760 chance to win reelection. I'm sorry. It's not going to happen for Eric Adams. I cannot back Andrew Cuomo

01:15:12.760 in any way. I can just let nature take its course. But this guy's too radical to be mayor, Mom Donnie.

01:15:19.320 In any event, Trump's thinking about it, Andrew. But the question is with New York,

01:15:23.180 you know, going like 90% for Kamala Harris, how helpful can Trump be in stopping Democrats from

01:15:33.720 doing what they want to do? I think the only thing that he could do that would be helpful

01:15:38.040 is if he could convince Eric Adams to drop out and maybe Curtis Lee as well. That, that, that's about

01:15:43.680 it. I think his endorsement or any, any, and you know, it's, it would be a, it wouldn't help,

01:15:49.280 uh, Cuomo if Donald Trump came out and, and, uh, got the three Republicans left in Manhattan to say,

01:15:55.280 oh, gee, I'll vote for Andrew Cuomo. I don't think that's, that's going to help. So, um, yeah. Uh,

01:16:00.780 but I, I think, uh, I mean, the interesting thing about Cuomo is before, you know, if you looked at

01:16:06.480 the early polls, he was clearly the leader. Everyone thought he was going to sail to, uh,

01:16:10.760 uh, victory in this. Um, and then he ran this horrible, horrible primary campaign.

01:16:15.680 And if you were running a better campaign now with better negative research and that sort of

01:16:19.920 thing, would it be different? Maybe it just seemed a little late to me. And he doesn't seem to have

01:16:25.180 sort of course corrected his campaign to the point where he's going to be competitive with, uh,

01:16:30.180 Mondami. I think it's Mondami's to win at this point. I know me too, sadly. Now this is unfortunate

01:16:35.760 because I really wanted this question to go to Andrew first. Maybe I'll, I'm going to do it. I'm not

01:16:39.700 going to be fair and balanced here. I'm sticking with Andrew. Um, I need your opinion and I need it

01:16:43.780 fast on Sydney Sweeney, my friend. Thank God. I appreciate that. Oh God. Here's, here's my way

01:16:52.580 in. Here's my way in. Um, Vox, Vox has a piece up titled Sydney Sweeney and the unsettling legacy of

01:17:02.020 the blonde bombshell. You remember the Rolling Stone yesterday and the guys at Pod Save America were

01:17:09.020 trying to tell me that this is a right wing manufacturer controversy, that there are actually

01:17:12.700 no leftists upset about Sydney Sweeney, and then we get this. Um, it's, she's part of the unsettling

01:17:19.040 legacy of the blonde bombshell. This is written by a party. Obviously this is all Dems trying to win

01:17:24.420 back young men, unsettling legacy of the blonde bombshell. Sweeney represents a modern version

01:17:29.500 of the blonde bombshell, a loaded cultural symbol tied to white femininity, sexuality, and American

01:17:35.860 nostalgia. Marilyn Monroe defined the blonde bombshell for the 20th century. Sweeney updates

01:17:42.500 it for the 21st. And in doing so has become just as culturally divisive. Yes, because that's what

01:17:50.000 Marilyn Monroe was known for dividing the culture harshly and politically, and not just being a

01:17:56.540 uniformly admired sex symbol, the most admired to ever walk the face of the earth. Thoughts, Andrew?

01:18:04.020 Well, I think, uh, if the left thinks that sex doesn't sell anymore, they're wrong. Sex will

01:18:10.360 always sell. Uh, and, uh, she's a sexy woman and, uh, um, I liked the ads personally. And, uh, I thought

01:18:17.780 that the sort of blue jeans were great. So there you have it. Tom, I managed to get him to comment on

01:18:23.540 it. I feel like I accomplished something here. You did. That's great. I, I, I was following your

01:18:29.140 Twitter back and forth or your ex back and forth with the pod bros. And it's like, it's almost the

01:18:34.300 exact opposite of reality. Like somehow this was a Republican or right wing manufactured thing. I mean,

01:18:40.060 it was, it was the left, the way the left treated this. And again, it shows they just, they, they

01:18:45.820 haven't learned their lessons necessarily. And they're still looking for things to be outraged by

01:18:50.980 things that are, you know, even silly and make them look even worse than, than people possibly

01:18:57.260 imagine. I mean, this whole controversy came because, because folks on the left decided that

01:19:03.120 this was eugenics. They, they read into this, this was eugenics and, and it shouldn't be,

01:19:08.320 shouldn't be stood for. So, um, once again, not learning lessons.

01:19:12.460 Here's more. And by the way, this was written by a woman named Constance Grady,

01:19:17.880 who I'll get to in a second, uh, back to Sweeney. She writes her very existence in the public eye

01:19:23.120 revives debates about race, desirability, conservatism, and modern feminism, much like

01:19:29.640 Monroe did in her time, though, through different lenses. It's a highly charged encapsulation of

01:19:35.660 American fantasies and fears about white femininity, femininity, what a nice white lady should be.

01:19:41.700 And what we are afraid she might be. This is about people's fear of white people. According to

01:19:49.540 whitey Constance Grady, who is as white as, as the driven snow. Um, she goes on to say,

01:19:56.980 Marilyn Monroe represented the idealized post-war American woman, desirable, white,

01:20:01.920 submissive, yet powerful through beauty. Sweeney revives the persona in this new era,

01:20:06.340 becoming a vessel for contemporary culture war battles over race, gender, and politically,

01:20:13.400 and a political identity. So I wondered, Tom, who is this Constance Grady? She's been at Vox for nine

01:20:20.700 years. She's a senior correspondent. She covers books, publishing, gender, celebrity, uh, and theater.

01:20:26.580 However, she went to the University of Chicago. Oh boy. Guilty. She, I mean, they're, they're not as

01:20:32.440 bad as others, but yeah, they're still. Okay. Here are some facts about her. She wrote articles like

01:20:38.880 in April of 25, the strange link between Trump's tariffs and incel ideology.

01:20:45.600 Incel, I say. Yes. Trump's, Trump's tariffs and incel. I mean, you got to give him points for

01:20:51.560 ingenuity on that one, at least. Um, Trump's petty revenge on the Kennedy center. Why the Met Gala

01:20:56.740 still matters. Jon Stewart is as funny as ever. And then this one from July of 2023,

01:21:03.000 something you almost commissioned. I have it on good authority at real clear politics,

01:21:06.700 a long history of kids doing weird stuff to Barbie. Yes. Constance delve deep into the following.

01:21:16.520 Did you decapitate your Barbies or make them kiss? Barbie was for ripping apart and pulling,

01:21:22.720 putting X inexperately back together. She was for removing heads and limbs. She was for microwaving.

01:21:27.920 She was for chopping off her doll hair. She was for doll orgies. Constance. Oh, Constance,

01:21:33.200 sweetheart. You're saying too much. Uh, as Jezebel put it in 2007, growing up, everyone did dirty

01:21:39.340 things with their Barbies. Oh, sweetheart. You rip her apart. You make her have sex. What else can you do

01:21:45.520 with her? What else can you do with the problem of what you're going to grow up to face? So this is

01:21:51.360 a sick person. This is who Box has telling us Sydney Sweeney is a problem because she's the blonde

01:21:58.820 bombshell, which is a loaded cultural symbol tied to white femininity and sexuality. It's a horror.

01:22:08.300 Well, to the earlier discussion we were having, at least she's owning her,

01:22:11.700 her liberalism and her progressivism. And she's not hiding it at all, even if it's making her look

01:22:16.940 silly and psychotic. Yeah. I had many a Barbie Constance. I never did dirty school with them or

01:22:23.500 put them in the microwave. I might've cut one's hair at one point or another, but that's about beauty.

01:22:28.660 She's, she went full Lena Dunham on like the weird sexual perversions of her own childhood.

01:22:34.360 Good luck, Constance. That's not what most of us did with our Barbies.

01:22:37.540 Andrew, am I right or not? Andrew, what does America do with its Barbies?

01:22:43.780 I, you know, I have three daughters and I'm sure they did things with their Barbies,

01:22:50.160 but I don't think they did a lot of that stuff. I hope, I don't know. I mean, this is just,

01:22:55.460 this is a level of sort of like left-wing cultural critique that, you know, that gets ridiculous.

01:23:00.940 And, and I think, uh, I think that's a good example of that these days. Yeah. And I guess

01:23:05.920 maybe, you know, uh, it does get people like us to talk about it though. So, I mean, that's,

01:23:11.020 maybe that's really going to be sad he missed this one. Oh, Carl, Carl is dying. He, I hope he's

01:23:16.900 listening right now. He's probably dying. He would have loved the Washington Post conversation.

01:23:20.900 I know. Well, we'll round back with him on it when, when he comes back the next time. I mean,

01:23:24.620 I will say this. I know a fair amount about Marilyn Monroe. This is completely misstating her actual

01:23:29.680 role in the culture and her legacy, but she, she was not a controversial figure. She was pretty

01:23:34.140 uniformly beloved. She had a very unique ability of being incredibly sexy and a sex symbol by any

01:23:40.700 man's measure, um, while non-threatening. I think this is part of the, why she was beloved. Women

01:23:46.880 wanted to be her and men wanted to be with her. And, um, it was both like the combo of incredible sex

01:23:52.260 appeal and luminous, um, takeovers of any room she was in, but also this little girl-like quality to her,

01:23:59.260 which was non-threatening, was submissive in its nature and made women marvel at, at this

01:24:05.380 combination that, uh, was also part of why men found her so attractive.

01:24:10.280 Yeah. Well, I, you know, Madonna always comes to mind when I hear these conversations. Well,

01:24:15.320 you know, she's, she's sort of viewed as this sort of great icon of the left, uh, and, you know,

01:24:20.540 trans, trans, uh, transsexual, but, but she transcended a lot of categories and, uh, you know,

01:24:27.920 people seem to love her. So, uh, you know, maybe Sydney Sweeney's just the Madonna of our age when

01:24:33.200 maybe we look at that. Oh my, that's a hot take. I thought Andrew was about to break some news on

01:24:38.280 Madonna there, Tom. I mean, there's no limit to your scoops over at RCP. Thank you, gentlemen.

01:24:43.680 We know how you feel about JLo trying to act like she's a sex symbol at 55. Madonna seems to be,

01:24:49.300 he's even older than that, still trying to get, make news by being outrageous.

01:24:53.460 No, it's, it's too late. Like you, you can have sex appeal. You got to go the Ann Margaret way.

01:24:59.560 Okay. There's been no sexier woman on earth as far as I'm concerned than Ann Margaret at her peak.

01:25:04.200 And as she aged, she still, she was very saucy. She was gorgeous, still gorgeous. She's still here.

01:25:10.080 She's still around, but she started to dress. She'd have a little bit more fabric. It's fine. You know,

01:25:15.600 she wasn't like trying to always show off her God given gifts. Um, and she always had that playful

01:25:22.040 sex kitten way of talking and being and like interviewing. But she realized at some point you

01:25:28.460 take off like the, the waist high leotard and you put on like a skirt and, uh, you know, like a nice

01:25:37.200 blouse. It's at some point, that's how you approach your life. Um, at a bare minimum, you don't shove

01:25:42.980 your crotch into the face of 13 dancers. Jennifer, don't get me started again, Tom. I gotta go.

01:25:48.900 Sorry. Okay. Goodbye. I triggered you. Yeah. Okay. Coming up. America's nicest judge in the world

01:25:59.360 is here. Why are we inviting an 88 year old judge on the Megan Kelly show? Because he's about to drop

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01:28:39.460 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open,

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01:29:42.780 He is known around the world as America's nicest judge, a man whose compassion and understanding

01:29:48.840 on the bench have touched millions. Judge Frank Caprio spent 38 years in Providence

01:29:54.680 Municipal Court, turning everyday traffic cases into heartfelt moments on his show,

01:30:00.080 Caught in Providence, showing that kindness and understanding really can transform lives.

01:30:05.880 And now at 88 years old, he is sharing his journey from humble beginnings to a national symbol of

01:30:12.180 empathy in his book, Compassion in the Court, life-changing stories from America's nicest judge.

01:30:19.520 Judge Frank Caprio joins me now. Judge, welcome to the show. Great to have you.

01:30:23.100 Well, it's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for the opportunity.

01:30:27.980 All right. So how does one become a nice judge? Because when we think of judges, that's not where

01:30:33.880 we go.

01:30:35.260 Oh, it's very easy. First, you have great parents who treat you, you know, like human beings instead of

01:30:42.320 an apostle. And you follow their footsteps. And whatever lessons they taught you as a child,

01:30:52.100 you then incorporate into your life in treating other people that way. Some people think, for

01:30:58.560 example, if you come from a position of power, like a judge, that you have to use that power,

01:31:05.200 you know, in adverse ways. I never thought that. I thought it was a tool for good. I thought it was a

01:31:13.340 tool for understanding people, for helping them if I could, to let them know that I understood their

01:31:19.980 problems. And that was basically it.

01:31:23.160 So, Judge, you were born then, what, in 1937?

01:31:28.960 1936.

01:31:30.780 1936. Okay. So you've seen a lot. You've been around the block. You did not come from a family

01:31:34.860 of privilege at all. Can I just ask you, broad view, how do you see the dramatic changes in the

01:31:41.860 world over your 88 years, you know, from your childhood to now? Describe like the massive change

01:31:47.240 you've seen. The thing that impresses me the most is the lack of understanding and civility

01:31:55.860 among people. I was brought up in a working class family. And, you know, my dad was a milkman. I

01:32:08.100 delivered newspapers. I helped him on the truck. And it always was the lessons from my dad were

01:32:16.700 treated people honorably and with respect and compassion and understanding. Now, he didn't

01:32:23.680 tell me in those words. I just had the opportunity to watch him, you know, how he treated people.

01:32:31.600 And that's how I ended up treating people, the way I do. And it was just a lesson from my parents

01:32:38.500 and the way I was brought up.

01:32:41.060 Do you feel like what do you what differences do you see in the country? Right? Because it seems

01:32:45.180 like if you were born in 36, then you're graduating high school, what, around 54, 1954. And we were less

01:32:54.000 populated. We were less overwhelmed, I think, with the number of bodies when we tried to travel and we

01:32:59.380 got on roads. But we were finding each other back then. We had the bowling leagues and we had,

01:33:04.060 I don't know, parades and we had like a shared patriotism. I feel like that's all changed so much.

01:33:10.460 Big changes that I've seen in my lifetime are the breakdown of the family unit. The basic unit of

01:33:19.600 society is the family unit. You know, that's what youngsters see. That's the first impression

01:33:26.600 that they have when they're born and they're brought into this world. And I think, unfortunately,

01:33:33.560 the family unit, the substance of the family unit has broken down over the years. And I think that's a

01:33:40.740 shame. How important is that? You know, like family dinners and time together and, you know, an intact

01:33:48.000 mother and father unit in the home. You cannot import the importance of that enough. Just the family

01:33:59.420 unit being together, the togetherness, the love of each other, being together for all major events

01:34:08.640 and enjoying them together is just something that I think is lacking in the world today.

01:34:15.820 And I...

01:34:16.740 How many cousins did you have growing up? It was a big number, right? Cousins?

01:34:21.520 Oh, my cousins numbered over 30. Over 30. My father was one of 10. My mother was one of eight.

01:34:30.540 Wow. All providence, the whole life? Oh, I knew what you were doing, right?

01:34:38.000 All right. Lucky you. So your dad did the right thing because he wound up showing you what it was

01:34:43.960 like to be a milkman and what it was like to make a living, you know, doing honest work,

01:34:49.120 though not work that will make you rich. So how did you use that when you got on the bench as a judge?

01:34:55.860 You know, it's interesting you ask that question because the very first day on the bench,

01:35:02.220 very first day, a woman came in and the fact of the matter was, she was arrogant and she had three

01:35:10.500 kids. And that was my first day on the bench. And I asked my dad if he would come to the court

01:35:15.880 to view my proceedings. And he came. So here I am. I'm a judge now. I got the robe. I'm in the court.

01:35:22.900 But, you know, my father's watching me. So I'm going to show my dad what a great judge I can be.

01:35:29.500 So this woman came in and she had four parking tickets and she was a little rude. And she said,

01:35:39.700 I just don't have the money. I have three kids and I don't have the money. And I'm not paying them.

01:35:44.980 It's my first day on the bench. I'm here. My dad's in the courtroom. I'm going to now make

01:35:51.780 my mark. I'm not going to take any kind of guff from anybody. And so I get into a conversation

01:35:58.040 with her. And finally, because she is so arrogant and rude, I find her the full amount of money

01:36:05.940 without cutting her any kind of a break. Now the court is over. And I can't wait to talk to my dad

01:36:14.540 because my dad now sees me with a role. I'm a judge. And I didn't take any guff, you know.

01:36:22.740 And I said, Dad, how did I do? And he looked at me. He said, how did you do? He said, that woman,

01:36:30.680 how could you do that? I said, what woman are you talking about? He said, the woman that you

01:36:37.340 find her the full charge. I said, Dad, she was arrogant. She was rude. He said, you don't

01:36:45.580 understand. He said, she was scared. And she didn't have any money. And now she may not be able to feed

01:36:52.480 her children tonight. She may not be able to pay the rent. She may not be able to pay any other bills.

01:36:58.460 He said, you can't treat people like that. That's not the way you were brought up.

01:37:02.960 My very first day on the bench, my very first day, my very first client, my dad straightened me out.

01:37:12.360 And it's been a whole different story. A whole different story since then.

01:37:15.540 There was a reason you were given that case in front of your dad while he was there

01:37:19.280 to remind you, right, of that other piece of having power, right? Knowing when to exercise it

01:37:25.560 and knowing when benevolence is a better way. This is a picture of you on the bench, 38 years

01:37:32.920 on the bench in this role. What's the number one case you remember? Like, is that the one that you

01:37:38.540 remember because it was your first or was there another one that taught you something?

01:37:43.660 I remember several, but the one that I remember the most is a gentleman who came in. He was 96 when he

01:37:50.740 came in. He was driving his son to get treatment. And we actually bonded with him and invited him to

01:37:59.620 our house. And, you know, just, it was a very, one of the full experience.

01:38:05.440 Wow. I mean, this is like, you don't hear about stories like this with the judge inviting

01:38:09.160 a litigant in front of them, a constituent to come over for dinner. But you know what? That's Italian

01:38:15.020 too. They always want to feed you. When you're Italian, that's, that's not that unusual. I know

01:38:20.260 you say in the book, a person's worth is defined from learning from mistakes, not from the mistakes

01:38:26.180 themselves. Can you talk about that? I'm sorry. I didn't hear the beginning of that. In the book,

01:38:33.040 you write about how a person's worth is defined from learning from their mistakes, not, not the

01:38:39.400 mistakes themselves, but from taking some time to learn from the mistakes. I mean, can be easier said

01:38:44.120 than done. But what, what do you mean by that? Well, we don't, we don't learn by our victories.

01:38:53.520 Sometimes we get consumed by them and we feel that we're, that we have this power that we really

01:38:58.780 don't have. You know, so, but understanding people's everyday problems. You know, I, I had the

01:39:07.020 privilege of working with my dad on a milk truck, you know, when I was 12 years old.

01:39:14.120 And delivering newspapers in a working class neighborhood where people really didn't have

01:39:20.300 any money. And they, many of them couldn't even afford to pay for the newspaper. And the question

01:39:26.360 that I had to resolve was, what did I do? Did I stop delivery or not? And the lessons that I took

01:39:32.340 were the lessons that I learned from my dad, right? And it wasn't that he sat me down and said,

01:39:38.040 it doesn't, you treat somebody this way or that way. It's the way he treated people every single

01:39:44.020 day. And, and it was those experiences that formed my, my thought process.

01:39:52.280 Did it ever make it hard for you to issue a harsh punishment against someone in front of you

01:39:57.620 because you are so nice and you view people through such, through such a sympathetic lens?

01:40:03.860 It did. As a matter of fact, sometimes, sometimes that they challenged you.

01:40:10.420 I actually had a woman come in, you know, and she, she challenged me. I can't afford to pay it. I'm not

01:40:15.740 paying it. So I said, you know, what, what, what do I do in this situation? So anyway, we, we worked it out.

01:40:23.860 Did she come over to your house? No, no, she never got an invitation.

01:40:31.020 Not everybody does. Listen, I think it's great that you wrote this book, Judge. I mean, I love

01:40:35.540 when people who have a lot of wisdom to give actually put it in writing. And I know that you're,

01:40:41.340 you're having, you've, you've been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. So it must've been important to you

01:40:46.940 to write down these stories and these thoughts. I hope you have big plans for the coming months.

01:40:53.280 It's involving your family and everyone who loves you.

01:40:57.280 I thought that I would share my early life's experiences.

01:41:02.440 It would help other people who are in the same situation.

01:41:07.560 My dad was one of 10. My mother was one of eight.

01:41:12.020 And all my cousins and aunts and uncles, you know, we were a very close knit family.

01:41:16.960 And when I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, you know, it was a very traumatic time in my life,

01:41:26.220 not only in my life, but in the life of my family on both sides.

01:41:29.380 And I tried to conduct myself in a way that would reflect great credit upon my family

01:41:37.220 and upon how we treat things.

01:41:41.240 I'm sure they love you very much.

01:41:45.620 Listen, I thank you for your public service.

01:41:47.840 It's hard to get smart, kind, well-meaning people like you to serve in public service for their whole lives.

01:41:53.180 Thank you for doing it, sir, and all the best with it.

01:41:56.280 And the book, too.

01:41:57.600 It's called, again, Compassion in the Court, Life-Changing Stories from America's Nicest Judge.

01:42:02.740 Check it out, Frank Capriot.

01:42:04.660 Thanks to all of you for joining us today.

01:42:06.160 We'll be back on Monday.

01:42:07.120 Have a great weekend.

01:42:10.680 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:42:12.840 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:42:15.340 We'll be right back.

The Megyn Kelly Show - August 07, 2025

Legacy Media Bias Exposed and Debated, and MAGA Heir Apparent Rumblings, with Tom Bevan and Andrew Walworth

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