The Megyn Kelly Show - Legacy Media Discovers Hunter's Laptop, and Warnock vs. Walker, with Clay Travis and Erick Erickson

00:00:00.400 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.500 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.840 The left and Democratic leaders continuing to place blame on conservatives

00:00:19.800 before the motive is even known in connection with this Colorado nightclub shooting.

00:00:24.420 I mean, this happens every time. Every time.

00:00:28.400 A Nancy Pelosi going as far as to accuse people who supported Donald Trump's presidency

00:00:34.000 for the deadly shooting. They can't even respect the dead for two minutes. I mean,

00:00:43.240 before the bodies get cold, they want to pin it on politics. Can we wait and see? Because this guy

00:00:49.200 pulled guns on and threatened to bomb his own mother a year ago. So it's possible he had some

00:00:55.900 mental health problems that were unresolved. You know, it's a situation similar to the Nancy

00:01:00.960 Pelosi attack on her husband by this guy who was clearly a lunatic, whose most recent writings

00:01:08.420 seemed out there and aligned with QAnon. But we're talking about a mentally unwell person.

00:01:14.000 So we're going to dig into that in one second. Also, two years after Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes

00:01:19.460 laughed in President Trump's face when he brought up Hunter Biden's laptop scandal during an interview

00:01:23.640 in 2020, the channel has finally authenticated the laptop as, in fact, Hunter Biden's. Can you believe

00:01:32.240 this? I mean, not only are they late, right, two years late, but they're like a year later than even

00:01:37.520 the New York Times and some of the other left wing press. What took them so long? Now they break it

00:01:42.600 like breathlessly. Oh, it's authenticated. Wait, I thought Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes said it couldn't

00:01:47.240 be done. How do we have to talk to Leslie Stahl? How on earth did it happen? Plus, we've got the

00:01:52.640 backstory on an epic fight that took place on ESPN over the weekend that the channel was hoping to bury

00:01:57.380 who better to discuss it with than Clay Travis. He and his outkick outkick reporters would not let the

00:02:03.380 burying happen. And he has been proven right. Clay is also co-host of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton

00:02:09.540 show, and he joins me now. Clay, great to have you back. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Great to

00:02:15.200 be with you, Megan. I think I saw you before election season, before school season out in Utah. And

00:02:21.440 certainly there's been a lot of craziness since then. So but everything's going well here. Kids are

00:02:25.600 home. If you hear people screaming and yelling in the background, it's Thanksgiving week. And so

00:02:29.400 they might be fired up playing their video games or watching the World Cup. So just FYI in advance.

00:02:36.560 Well, I'm kind of hoping for a signing now. So fingers crossed. All right. Before I do want to

00:02:40.980 talk to you about Thanksgiving and plans. But before we get to all that, let's talk about what's

00:02:44.240 happening with this shooting out in Colorado. Horrendous shooting. They've they've up up their

00:02:49.380 updated the death and injury toll. As of today, five killed, at least 19 injured. That's down from a

00:02:55.720 reported. Twenty five injured. One survivor was shot seven times. And the only reason we have some

00:03:02.200 survivors, according to what I read, are the the heroes, at least two people inside the club who

00:03:08.380 stopped the gunman before the police got there, including a war vet from Iraq and Afghanistan,

00:03:12.940 who I mean, it's crazy, the bravery. And it does always remind me of the Mr. Rogers look for the

00:03:18.060 helpers. You know, when you're feeling so down about these events, just look for the helpers.

00:03:21.340 The helpers are not in the mainstream media who truly before the bodies were even cold.

00:03:28.140 They jumped to this is right wing inspired violence. This is because of the Republicans.

00:03:34.760 This is because of Trump, because of Matt Walsh and the Daily Wire folks who have been outspoken

00:03:41.200 about drag queen shows for children and the mutilation of minors. And so somehow, because this

00:03:46.440 is a gay club, LGBTQ, this is their fault. It's a pattern. We've seen it so many times, Clay,

00:03:52.480 so many times, Clay, but it still is alarming and it's deeply immoral.

00:03:57.520 Yeah, Megan, I think of all the things that the media covers, the one that we probably cover the

00:04:03.260 worst and get the most wrong and continue to create the most antipathy out there in the general public.

00:04:10.100 And certainly among the, as you said, when you started, the people who are already mentally

00:04:14.420 unstable is mass shootings. So a couple of things. One, everybody is opposed to mass shootings.

00:04:19.760 OK, this isn't some situation where there's one side advocating for them. And I just always want

00:04:25.860 to focus on this to begin with. We should never say the names of mass shooters. I think I've also

00:04:31.420 seen you tweet and talk about this as well. This is something I've been on.

00:04:35.120 This has been my policy for 15 years. If we want to praise the people who take

00:04:39.960 out the mass shooters, the heroes who show up, I think all of the energy and effort should go there.

00:04:45.240 I think the number one thing that we could do to make mass shootings less common is not make these

00:04:50.300 guys famous. Second part of this, we have a problem with violence in this country right now.

00:04:56.540 Murder and violent crime is skyrocketing all over the country. No matter where you're listening to

00:05:01.660 us or watching us right now, there probably is an incident of late that you can point to.

00:05:07.220 This is symptomatic of that. And, you know, Megan, if we eliminated every single mass shooting in

00:05:13.260 America, do you know that 99 percent of murders would still occur? So I think this is a failure of the

00:05:21.340 media. I understand why it's sensational and why everybody rushes to want to cover the mass shooting.

00:05:26.100 But when we cover those mass shootings, we ignore what's happening in many cities across the country

00:05:31.640 every single weekend where there are killing fields, literally, and young kids overwhelmingly end up

00:05:38.400 the victims. And I'm saying kids defining it all the way up to, you know, college age, 22 and younger,

00:05:44.240 24 and younger. These guys are just not being stopped. And I think the real story here is

00:05:51.680 this is continuing to be the fallout from the George Floyd incident when in May of 2020,

00:05:59.760 our national media by and large just decided that cops were evil. They needed to defund the police.

00:06:06.380 There was something major wrong with the way that we protected people in this country. And unfortunately,

00:06:12.320 there are tens of thousands of people that I really believe would still be alive if we were allowing

00:06:17.880 police to do their jobs. But my big thing here is we can't use these mass shootings as political

00:06:24.040 related issues when even if we eliminated all of them, we'd still have 99 percent of the murders

00:06:30.660 going on. But if you look at the mass shootings, Clay, if you look at the mass shootings, and I agree

00:06:35.580 that the media completely ignores what's happening in Baltimore, what's happening in Chicago,

00:06:40.600 what's happening in Philadelphia. They don't care. They only care about these things because they can

00:06:44.940 look for what they think is a political motive. Or in any case, even if there's not even arguably a

00:06:49.280 political motive, they can look for the guns, get rid of the guns. It's the problem. That's the that's

00:06:52.960 the problem. But and they always ignore the mental health issue. They may give it a little

00:06:56.880 like nod of the head. But this kid obviously had severe mental health problems. And it's coming out

00:07:02.360 today that will come out yesterday. But in 2021, he confronted his own mother with a bomb threat,

00:07:09.020 threatened her with a homemade bomb, multiple weapons and ammo. He was arrested following a long

00:07:13.840 standoff with deputies so bad that they had to evacuate the nearby homes. No explosives were

00:07:19.500 found, but they were very fearful. And there were several weapons that this kid had and was considering

00:07:24.360 using against his mom. CNN obtained exclusive videotape of some of that moment. You can hear

00:07:31.800 the shooter ranting. This is, again, June of 2021 in this incident with his mother. Listen to this.

00:07:37.780 This is your boy. I've got the outside. Look at that. They got a beat on me.

00:07:45.020 You see that right there? It's got their rifles out. If they breach, I'm a blow it to holy hell.

00:07:54.540 OK, so what was he mad at then? Reportedly, he was mad as his parents were going to move out of town.

00:07:58.720 His grandparents were going to leave the state and move to Florida. And he was angry. I mean,

00:08:03.480 this is clearly an unwell person. But listen to the way the genius is over on the CNN morning show

00:08:08.900 today. We're talking about this guy's grandfather and how I mean, the clearly the intimation was

00:08:16.200 this may have been behind this kid's thinking. Well, just let the investigators, we journalists

00:08:22.100 are trying to piece together a profile of this suspect. Why did he maybe learn why he did what he

00:08:26.660 did? We've learned that his grandfather is an outgoing California state assemblyman by the name of

00:08:31.640 Randy Volpel. He has been a assemblyman since 2016. We recently lost his reelection bid.

00:08:37.880 This is the father of the suspect's mother, Laura Volpel. Randy Volpel attracted attention when he

00:08:44.340 compared the January 6th attack on the Capitol to the Revolutionary War. Here's what he said.

00:08:49.480 He said this is Lexington and Concord. First shots fired against tyranny. Tyranny will follow in the

00:08:54.940 aftermath of the Biden swearing on January 20th. Now, he later tried to walk that back,

00:08:59.800 saying he didn't condone the violence that took place that Wednesday at the Capitol. And it's not

00:09:04.020 clear at this point how what kind of interactions this 22 year old suspect had with his grandfather.

00:09:10.260 Right. Which is why you shouldn't be reporting on it. Also, Megan, this is just part and parcel of

00:09:18.640 the larger context that the CNNs, the MSNBCs, the New York Times, the Washington Post bring to bear.

00:09:24.440 They legitimately believe if you voted for Donald Trump, you are evil. And they believe that Donald

00:09:30.880 Trump is Hitler. He is evil personified. He is the Antichrist, effectively, if they believed in the

00:09:38.460 Bible, they called him the Antichrist. And so as you break all this down, it really is the motivating

00:09:45.160 factor to so much of this coverage. And Megan, the thing I've always said from the get go is if there

00:09:51.160 wasn't bias in media, there would be a ton of positive Donald Trump stories that ended up not

00:09:56.760 being true. Right. Like you would. Somebody would have said, hey, Donald Trump saved eight kittens

00:10:01.180 from drowning in the Potomac River. And then it comes out that it's not true. Every single thing

00:10:06.120 in the media that has been wrong about Donald Trump for the last, you know, eight years has all been

00:10:11.860 biased against him. You would if you were just incompetent, sometimes you would be biased in favor of

00:10:17.320 him. And I think this is their fever dream, Megan, that they just they really are convinced. I mean,

00:10:23.780 and it makes sense in some they're deranged in the way that they think. But if you thought and they

00:10:29.500 truly do that Trump is Hitler, then anything they can do to attack Trump and anybody who voted for him

00:10:37.080 is justified because they legitimately believe that he is he is Adolf Hitler. I really on January 6th to

00:10:44.840 them is as evil. I mean, that January 6th is any any, you know, got this guy had controversial views

00:10:52.660 on January 6th. That's what motivated the grandson. The grandson must have been driven by it. And what's

00:10:57.180 even more egregious about the CNN clip is if you continue watching it, Caitlin Collins, who's one of

00:11:02.520 the anchors, says to the reporter, well, there are reports that the grandfather hadn't been in touch

00:11:09.080 with the grandson, that they were estranged and that he hadn't spoken to him in 10 years in 10

00:11:14.100 years. So that. OK, so, A, yes, kudos to her for raising that. But B, no kudos to CNN for continuing

00:11:21.160 to report the information in the first place. So, you know, so what you're telling us is, you know,

00:11:26.220 there was no connection between them. They were estranged. They hadn't spoken in 10 years and you

00:11:29.880 still raise this. Why? Why? It's disgusting. And it's emblematic of what we're seeing on all the media

00:11:36.060 channels right now. Narrative over facts, Megan. As you well know, you skew whatever you can to fit

00:11:42.620 your preconceived narrative. And the preconceived narrative of CNN's of the world is that we are

00:11:48.820 under existential threat from attack at any moment from these evil Donald Trump supporters who were

00:11:55.460 involved in January 6th. And they're all complicit. And that's where we are. And so and the other thing

00:12:01.640 about these mass shootings is the only ones that get covered are the ones that fit the narrative.

00:12:07.380 If there is a mass shooter, Bernie Sanders supporter, you know, tried to kill the guys during

00:12:12.220 the softball game. It kind of vanishes from all the discourse. Right. The reality is I used to work

00:12:18.960 on Capitol Hill, Megan, back when I was in college. You know what my job was when you could still send

00:12:23.380 mail to Capitol Hill. I opened every single piece of mail that arrived in a congressman's office.

00:12:29.120 You were in college?

00:12:30.660 Oh, yeah. I was I was the lowest person on the totem pole and Congressman Bob Clement,

00:12:35.420 Nashville area congressman back in the day. And Megan, there was a crazy drawer inside of the

00:12:43.120 congressman's office, the front desk there. And you would be stunned how often we would get letters

00:12:50.520 that were like ransom note letters that you see in movies with like each individual letter cut out

00:12:56.440 from a newspaper spelling something out. I never knew how many crazy people there were until I started

00:13:02.780 opening congresspeople's mail. My point on this is people are crazy in every respect. You mentioned

00:13:08.960 earlier that the Nancy Pelosi attack. The guy was a nudist with BLM signs in his front yard who lived in

00:13:17.720 Berkeley. I don't think that's the fertile ground for Donald Trump supporters. The guy was just crazy.

00:13:24.000 Right. He probably had all sorts of crazy ideas. We have underrated crazy in this country. And crazy

00:13:30.420 is a motivating factor. And here's the other thing. You can't stop crazy. Right. Like if somebody is

00:13:35.360 truly insane, they're going to behave in an insane manner. And every single one of these guys who's a

00:13:41.600 shooter, whether they're Democrats, Republicans, they don't really have coherent political

00:13:45.620 philosophies most of the time. But Megan, every single one of these guys has a long history of

00:13:53.160 crazy before they act, whether it was Uvalde, whether it was, hey, what happened to that story?

00:13:58.300 Remember Waukesha, the guy who tried to just drive through the Christmas parade a year ago,

00:14:02.340 killed all those people. Daryl Brooks just got found guilty. I apologize for mentioning his name

00:14:06.740 because I try to avoid doing it too. But the narrative didn't fit there. Right. So we just kind of

00:14:11.700 pretended that story didn't didn't exist. But all these guys are crazy and neither political party

00:14:17.400 has a monopoly on crazy. And I just wish we stopped pretending that they did.

00:14:22.420 Well, why? Why? I mean, sometimes you can stop crazy. You know, that's why some of these red flag

00:14:27.620 laws could make sense that some of them are really draconian. But but some of them make a lot of sense.

00:14:32.960 If you see a person who's identifiable as severely mentally disturbed, they should not be

00:14:37.380 getting a license for a gun. But in this case, something even weirder seems to have happened.

00:14:44.760 He clearly had guns in that June 2021 incident that we just played the tape from. You can see them

00:14:51.100 in the video. And he was charged at the time. He was booked on two counts of felony menacing,

00:14:57.660 three counts of first degree kidnapping at the time. But there is no public record,

00:15:01.680 Clay, that prosecutors moved forward with the charges. According to the Associated Press,

00:15:06.640 they point out that there is no indication these charges were raised against him following through

00:15:12.960 or followed through on. I don't know why. So there is a question about why he was allowed to keep the

00:15:21.720 guns after that behavior and why no charges were pursued against him, even if the mother said,

00:15:28.620 I don't need to charge my son. That's irrelevant. We've seen that in domestic violence cases a lot.

00:15:32.860 The woman says, don't prosecute. And the prosecutor says, oh, I'm going to. So what happened here?

00:15:37.320 There may have been a law enforcement failure. Oh, I'm sure there was, because oftentimes there are.

00:15:42.420 If you remember the Charleston shooting where the kid walked into the church filled with with

00:15:48.100 black parishioners and shot, I think, eight people, that guy should have never been able to buy the gun.

00:15:52.840 If you remember what just happened at the University of Virginia, the awful story about the walk on

00:15:57.200 football player who killed three of his teammates. They've had to shut down the University of

00:16:01.080 Virginia's football season. It's awful. It's a devastating story. That guy should have never

00:16:05.600 had access to guns either, which is why one of the arguments out there of we need more gun laws

00:16:11.140 oftentimes doesn't necessarily apply to the facts of question, because most of the time or very often

00:16:18.040 the people who have access to the guns have behaved in a way or have a record that would prevent

00:16:23.460 them from actually being able to purchase those guns. And there's a failure. And one more thing.

00:16:28.740 I think there's a lot of parent failure on these on these stories very often, Megan,

00:16:33.380 because if you have a child and you know that they are psychologically unstable,

00:16:38.820 the amount of time that we are this happened in the Buffalo shooting, the grocery store shooting,

00:16:44.980 the amount of parents who seem to turn the other way and allow their children who may have violent

00:16:50.680 tendencies and certainly have mental health issues to obtain guns is really through the roof.

00:16:58.540 And and just as a parent, I know you've got young kids, too. When some of these guys are 18,

00:17:05.080 19 years old, and a lot of them are young teenage or early 20s actors, actors living at home with their

00:17:11.980 family. There's a lot of parental failure that often goes into these people having guns in the first

00:17:17.880 place, especially when they're behaving violently and behaving in a manner that, you know, they do

00:17:22.980 not have the mental capacity to be able to handle regular life, much less life associated with

00:17:28.940 weapons. That's so true. You know, I I'm a Yankee by my birth and my upbringing my whole life in New

00:17:37.160 York State, for the most part. And it's not I wouldn't say I grew up in a definitely not a hunting

00:17:43.000 family or a gun family. But as I've gotten older, first for security reasons and then just for,

00:17:49.420 you know, interest in leisure reasons, I've gotten more interested in firearms. And just just this past

00:17:55.120 weekend, our friends took us to a shooting club and it was actually really fun. I you know, it's a

00:18:01.240 proper place to shoot a gun. Obviously, everything was safe when we were taught the proper safety

00:18:04.840 procedures. And we really enjoyed ourselves. And our friend was telling us that he his dad taught him

00:18:10.460 how to shoot. And he taught his son and his daughter how to shoot. And he actually feels a

00:18:14.820 lot more safe knowing that his children know how to behave around a firearm like they know all the

00:18:18.900 safety protocols, but still they lock up their guns. Their kids are older now. So I can understand that

00:18:24.300 having a gun in the house, even when you have a child and sort of getting that out of the way and

00:18:29.060 teaching them safety procedures and they don't have access to it and it's kept locked. But the first sign

00:18:34.120 that your kid is mentally disturbed, you I'm sorry, but you've got to take extraordinary measures to

00:18:39.620 make sure he or she can never access the gun, especially when it's a kid, a boy between the

00:18:44.660 ages of 18 and 26. You can profile them very easily. You know who it's going to be. It is not

00:18:51.220 going to be a 13 year old girl. It's going to be a boy. And when you see, see the signs, you got to

00:18:56.000 get rid of the guns. You got to get rid of his access to them. There's no doubt. And look, I grew up

00:19:00.500 in the South, so I grew up around guns. And and what I would just look at is I've gotten older is

00:19:06.180 the goal is to remove all guns from society. Right. So anybody who says, oh, we just want gun

00:19:12.840 safety, which is their goal. And I don't begrudge it. I just wish they would be honest about it on

00:19:17.860 the left wing in this country is to remove all private weapons from citizens. And I totally

00:19:23.600 understand all the people out there who are saying you're not going to take away my rights. You know,

00:19:28.080 when Ukraine got invaded, what's the first thing they did, Megan? They started handing out guns to

00:19:32.380 every single person. Every man between the ages of 18 and 60, I think, is who had to report

00:19:37.800 so that they could help to defend their country. There are a lot of people out there who believe

00:19:42.680 that that the single most important right that we have in America is the right to bear arms.

00:19:49.300 I actually think it's the First Amendment. But but I certainly respect everybody who wants to defend

00:19:54.120 their constitutional right to continue to have weapons. And they understand, I think, better than

00:19:59.000 anybody. The NRA and the people who are most committed to the rights of gun owners understands

00:20:04.460 that the goal is not to to somehow come up with gun safety and say, hey, we're happy. Like I would

00:20:11.460 analogize it this way, Megan. The reason that I oppose all these desires to rename sports teams

00:20:17.900 is because it never ends. Right. It continues. Right. If you could like you and let's say you and me

00:20:24.040 were like, hey, we're reasonable people. We'll sit on one side of the table. All the people that are

00:20:28.500 offended by team mascots and names and everything else. Let's just negotiate this out. All right.

00:20:33.240 We'll give you a couple of mascot names. And can we just put this thing to bed forever? And we never

00:20:39.360 have to debate whether this is appropriate or inappropriate or anything else. No, they would

00:20:43.000 never agree because the progressive agenda on issues like these don't end. It really is a slippery

00:20:49.620 slope. They derive their political power from constantly needing something else to be attacking.

00:20:56.280 And that certainly applies, I think, for guns as well. Oh, I think about my Syracuse orange.

00:21:01.240 How long before they decide somehow orange is offensive? It's offensive to Trump.

00:21:05.140 It's that they were the orange is a little bit overweight, Megan. And, you know, it could be

00:21:09.980 fat shaming that the orange is quite plump. It definitely could be fat shaming. Now,

00:21:14.320 Abby just brought this to me. So I just want to show this to you, Clay. Look at this.

00:21:18.420 I mean, that's me right in the center. They're dead on. Oh, there you go. Bullseyes. That's my

00:21:25.740 that's my husband over there. He also he was that's what he was aiming for. So he was also

00:21:29.340 dead. I bullseye. He's he for the general public. You should know he is very experienced with the

00:21:33.880 guns. So don't mess with us. I thought the funniest thing you said in a long time was the I'd rather my

00:21:40.620 husband have a one night stand and cry. I I read that I didn't hear it live, but I but I read that

00:21:49.520 article in a legitimate headline legitimately legitimately maybe last. So he came on last

00:21:55.020 week because he just started. He came on last weekend because he just launched a podcast called

00:22:00.160 dedicated with Doug Brunt. And we talked about that. And he said every friend he knows was texting

00:22:03.860 him like, yo, dug her hall pass. I love that he's got a podcast. My wife said, you know,

00:22:11.320 she's finishing law school right now. But she said when she finishes law school, she may decide to start

00:22:17.020 her own podcast. It's just called I hate you play Travis, where she just talks about all the reasons

00:22:22.320 that that I drive her insane. I was like, you know what? People probably would love listening to that

00:22:26.360 podcast. She's pretty funny. So we love hate law degree. If if she doesn't doesn't immediately try

00:22:34.200 to divorce me and save money on legal fee, she can do the podcast instead. Good for her for going to

00:22:39.280 law school at this point. I love that. We met in law school. She did the first year of law school.

00:22:46.040 She was like, oh, my God, I hate this. I never want to sit in front of a computer, do all this research

00:22:50.260 and everything else. But then, you know, we get the boys are all we got three boys. They're all in school

00:22:55.340 now. And so when they finally got back to school, she was like, hey, you know what? I'm I'm really

00:22:59.680 kind of interested in based on what I do and what the family does. Now we have a lot of legal related

00:23:04.580 issues and she's way better at it than I am. So anytime there's a contract to read, I'm like,

00:23:09.720 will you just read this? And like I'm my eyes roll back into my head, even though I've got the

00:23:13.560 law degree. I just hate reading contracts and like thinking about all the things that can go wrong.

00:23:17.700 She's really good at it. And so I was like, you should, you know, you should go back and get your

00:23:21.600 degree. So she'll graduate in May from from Vanderbilt, finish her law degree.

00:23:25.340 Which is a really cool story. Are they trying to indoctrinate her into woke thinking? Because

00:23:29.620 Vanderbilt's been in the news for a lot of that. You know, what's wild, Megan, is she has kind of

00:23:33.620 a perfect window into how much law school has changed in the last generation, right? Because

00:23:38.700 I graduated in 2004. We started Met in 2001. So she will graduate a little bit over a generation

00:23:46.060 after she started. So she obviously is a mom and things are a lot different now than when we were in

00:23:51.000 our 20s and we were in law school. But she's got some pretty incredible stories just about the

00:23:55.860 culture and how things have changed. Remember, she had to wear masks, right? Like the law school,

00:24:00.760 like many schools out there, kept kids in masks for, you know, basically two years worth of law

00:24:06.380 school. I mean, we're going to be graduating this year, law students who spent the first two years of

00:24:11.180 law school, either remote or wearing masks, which is really kind of crazy to think about for anybody,

00:24:17.060 you know, being integrated and being sort of involved with your classmates and the conversations

00:24:22.300 and everything else. It's just kind of wild to think about the isolation that these kids went

00:24:27.000 through compared to what a typical college or law school experience would have been like.

00:24:33.880 Definitely. Well, good for her for going back and getting it done. I'll be looking forward to her,

00:24:37.960 to your arguments, hearing the reports on your arguments after she may rue the day. I want to

00:24:43.800 point out one other thing before we move on subjects. Glenn Greenwald, he's been posting on

00:24:48.200 Twitter and referencing back to some earlier reporting that he has done on this. But he's

00:24:53.320 pointing out that remember the Pulse massacre, another massacre that we were told was driven by anti-gay

00:24:59.680 animus. And I confess that I moved on from this. There's so many mass shootings, it's like almost hard

00:25:06.500 to keep track of all of them. But he he pointed out that actually the reporting would ultimately show

00:25:13.540 that the Pulse attacker had no interest in choosing a gay bar, that all the evidence showed

00:25:19.960 it, but that the media didn't report it because it played on stereotypes about Muslims. And the

00:25:26.000 narrative that that guy was about killing gays helped the LGBTQ groups raise money. And he goes

00:25:33.000 through in a great post he did in July of twenty twenty one entitled The Enduring False Narrative

00:25:37.480 about the Pulse Massacre shows the power of media propaganda. He goes through in great detail about how

00:25:42.180 that shooter was about avenging what was happening with strikes and otherwise other warfare against

00:25:51.420 against Muslims. And he was angry and he wanted revenge, but nobody would nobody would report it.

00:25:58.380 And this he included this quote. You have to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. This is him

00:26:04.680 making clear what his motive motivation was. Have to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq.

00:26:09.720 They're killing a lot of innocent people. What what am I to do here when my people are getting killed

00:26:14.660 over there? You need to stop the U.S. airstrikes. They need to stop the U.S. airstrikes. OK, this went

00:26:18.940 down. A lot of innocent women and children are getting killed in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan.

00:26:22.400 The airstrikes need to stop and stop collaborating with Russia. Not a single survivor reported this guy

00:26:27.600 saying anything derogatory about LGBTQs. But that's been the enduring narrative. So we just need to

00:26:33.520 like take a breath before we jump on the, you know, hate crime. And I'm very open minded to this being

00:26:40.640 a hate crime. If it was, we should call it out. But just the audience needs to be aware of the

00:26:45.920 manipulations that go on. All right. Let's talk about Hunter Biden and CBS. Can we?

00:26:49.840 Speaking of regulations, I don't I don't know if you're aware, but the Hunter Biden laptop story was

00:26:55.000 real. And it was it was verifiable. The laptop. This is so fun. We have to rerun it. Leslie Stahl

00:27:02.140 on 60 minutes right before the election. I think this was October 2020. Look at this.

00:27:09.220 It's this. I think it's one of the biggest scandals I've ever seen. And you don't cover it.

00:27:14.380 You want to talk about it because it can't be verified. You want to talk about insignificant

00:27:18.840 things. I'm telling you, of course, it can be verified. Excuse me. They found the laptop. Leslie,

00:27:24.200 listen. What can't be verified? The laptop. Why do you say that? Even the family hasn't

00:27:30.900 the family on the laptop. He's gone into hiding for five days. He's gone into hiding. He's preparing

00:27:39.800 for your debate. Oh, it's taken him five days to prepare. I doubt it. I doubt it. Okay.

00:27:45.480 Not verifiable. All right. Stay with me. I give you CBS News yesterday morning

00:27:53.160 on Hunter Biden two years later. And we commissioned an independent forensic review

00:28:00.060 to determine its authenticity. The laptop data we had analyzed showed no evidence it was faked

00:28:07.280 or tampered with. You're confident based on your analysis this is Hunter Biden's data and that it's

00:28:12.500 real. Yes. CBS News approached the lawyer for the computer repair shop owner to cut through the noise.

00:28:18.660 We've always had one clean copy. And obtained a copy of what he says they provided the FBI under

00:28:26.060 subpoena. Then we went to Minneapolis for an independent analysis. Just the sheer volume

00:28:32.740 of what we're dealing with. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to fabricate.

00:28:40.380 Hallelujah, Clay. Somehow they managed to verify it.

00:28:45.980 This is just... I sometimes want, Megan, I would like to be able to go to 100 or 200 years from now

00:28:55.840 and read the way that history chronicles this era that we're living through right now.

00:29:03.800 Because there are just so many things that Donald Trump was right about that were clearly covered up.

00:29:13.180 And I just... I'll just use this as an example, Megan. The people who claim that they care about

00:29:19.640 independent truth in journalism, democracy dies in darkness across the top of the Washington Post,

00:29:26.040 all the news that's fit to print across the top of the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, the obsession with

00:29:34.720 Trump. My argument, and I would love to see whether history truly vindicates this or not,

00:29:40.600 is that the decision not to allow the Hunter Biden laptop and Joe Biden's potential involvement in that

00:29:47.940 to be discussed, shared, rigorously debated as a part of the election of 2020 is the single greatest

00:29:57.540 rig job that has ever existed in the modern era, right? In like my life or probably your life that

00:30:05.740 we've ever seen in presidential politics. Because given the fact, based on the vote tallies, that we

00:30:11.320 know if 40,000 votes had been changed, right? 40,000 people changed their minds, really 20,000

00:30:17.760 people, but 40,000 votes total, 20,000 people changed their minds in Wisconsin, Georgia, and in

00:30:24.780 Arizona, then Trump would have been reelected president. I don't think there's any doubt that

00:30:30.080 if the Hunter Biden laptop story had been covered like it should have been by an honest media,

00:30:35.700 that Trump would have won the 2020 election. And so everybody wants to talk about the rig job that

00:30:41.640 goes on in our democracy and peril and all those things. This is, I think, the single greatest

00:30:48.160 evidence, but it actually benefits Democrats. So they tend to not pay attention to it. And in terms

00:30:53.160 of taking two years to verify and authenticate this laptop, it's indefensible. You know, they just went

00:30:59.380 and found some random person in Minneapolis. They could have done this before. And in this, to me,

00:31:06.740 it calls into question everything surrounding our FBI, the independence of the Department of

00:31:11.520 Justice. If we need a special counsel for Trump, which I think is probably the right call, actually,

00:31:16.920 how in the world can Hunter Biden be investigated by the Department of Justice that his father is in

00:31:23.140 charge of? It's all just a house of cards. That's true. That's exactly right, Clay. So I want to

00:31:31.400 mention the special counsel one second, but that the fact that CBS are it's a joke that this took

00:31:38.980 two years, a joke. As I said, even the New York Times and the Washington Post came around well

00:31:43.400 prior to CBS in finally saying, yeah, it's verified. It's Hunter's. And the fact that they wouldn't even

00:31:49.520 allow any discussion of it because we were one month before an election two years ago is absolutely

00:31:53.900 absurd. But so it takes them two years. But here's what you do. All right. Giving them every benefit of

00:31:59.240 a doubt. Here's what you do. You come on the air and you say, when this first broke, President Trump

00:32:04.860 confronted our correspondent, Leslie Stahl, asking for us to report on it. Truth be told, we laughed in

00:32:11.340 his face. One of our most respected correspondents told him it was not possible to verify the laptop.

00:32:18.580 Two years later, we've been proven wrong and we apologize to our audience and to the former

00:32:24.700 president. That's the only way you come back from what they did, something they didn't even attempt

00:32:30.280 and would never attempt because they know their audience is not going to hold this against them.

00:32:35.200 Megan, here's what's important. Some people would say, OK, why does this matter? One,

00:32:38.700 I think it truly did swing the election to imagine how CBS would have covered in October of 2020.

00:32:46.800 Exact same story, but everything that Hunter Biden was alleged to have done,

00:32:51.200 Donald Trump Jr. did it. All right. I just want everybody to think about how that would have been

00:32:55.220 covered. And then the third part of this that I think is like so massively important here is what

00:33:02.040 you just hit on. There's no accountability. And as a result of there being no accountability, Megan,

00:33:07.880 just a few months ago, there was a study that came out and over half of people in America believe

00:33:14.400 the Hunter Biden laptop story is fake, that it's not real, that there's no basis to it,

00:33:20.200 that it's all disinformation. And as bad as CBS was, there's no accountability there, Megan.

00:33:25.680 What about the 51 national security experts who put their name to a letter saying that this had

00:33:34.280 all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation? Credit Miranda Devine, the New York Post,

00:33:39.280 the incredible work that they did on this story two years ago. They got it all right.

00:33:42.780 But how about the fact that none of those so-called national security experts have been held

00:33:47.840 accountable? How about the fact that nobody in the media, by and large, even demands that they

00:33:52.660 answer for what they did, which was a transparent ploy to get Joe Biden in the White House, even though

00:33:59.760 there was zero evidence that this was Russian disinformation. And if you just spent a little bit

00:34:05.100 of time and I did it right, this stuff was all over the Internet. You go there. If you just spent 10

00:34:11.300 minutes looking at this footage, you would have been like, hey, you know what? I don't think the

00:34:16.060 Russians manipulated these hooker videos with Hunter Biden. I don't think that the Russians manipulated

00:34:23.800 all of this crazy, super detailed data that's out there. I mean, Hunter Biden basically recorded

00:34:32.520 every. He's crazy. Meanwhile, Clay, it's not like these tapes surfaced of like Ivanka Trump doing

00:34:38.240 this stuff. Somebody who's, as far as I can tell, led a very upstanding, respectable life.

00:34:43.660 Right. Hunter Biden himself has been putting out videos like this and pictures like we're well aware

00:34:49.340 of his issues with prostitutes, weird sex and drugs, notwithstanding this laptop. So, I mean, it's it's

00:34:56.300 really not that big a stretch. No, you're absolutely right. It's it was a dereliction. It could have

00:35:01.900 potentially interfered with the election. I don't know in terms of scope, but it's deeply wrong what

00:35:06.420 they did. And yeah, no accountability. The election, Megan, is just 150 million or so voted. Is it crazy

00:35:13.720 to think that if this story had been covered as aggressively as it as it should have been, that

00:35:19.400 20,000 of those 150 million people may have changed their mind about how they voted? I mean, that's a

00:35:25.720 pinprick, right? This election was a pinprick election one way or the other. That that seems reasonable

00:35:30.700 to me. I don't think it's crazy to make that argument. Mm hmm. We'll never know. But you're

00:35:35.780 absolutely right. If this had been Donald Trump Jr. and there was somebody called the big guy

00:35:39.640 who happened to be his dad, by the way, in our imaginary scenario, had previously been the vice

00:35:45.500 president exploiting his connections for himself and his son, as opposed to for the good of the

00:35:50.280 country, the media would have been all over it. All right. Stand by, Clay, because I'm squeezing a

00:35:55.260 break. And then there's much, much more to discuss. I have these great sports stories that I've

00:35:58.160 been dying to talk to you about. There's a breaking news on Tom and Giselle, which we'll

00:36:01.500 get to. And then crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy ass fighting over at the ESPN, which Clay is

00:36:07.700 going to explain to me what is happening. Stand by. We'll be right back.

00:36:14.620 Before we move on to the fun stuff, let's talk about the special counsel for one second.

00:36:18.800 So Merrick Garland, this very partisan, in my view, AG, appoints a special counsel saying

00:36:24.240 it's necessary to complete the investigation on Trump on Jan 6th and on Mar-a-Lago documents from

00:36:29.340 the White House because he's now announced for president. And I understand that this would be

00:36:34.340 me investigating my boss's rival. So I'm going to appoint a special counsel. I get it. Fine.

00:36:40.160 I have no problem with that line of reasoning. But the reality is the special counsel works for and

00:36:47.300 reports to really Joe Biden. I mean, none of these people exist without Joe Biden. He's in charge of

00:36:52.100 the executive branch. These people exist. The attorney general, the DOJ, they exist because

00:36:56.120 of Joe Biden. They answer to Joe Biden. And this guy answers to Joe Biden. So it's all a sleight of

00:37:00.340 hand. And to pretend, I guess we have to pretend that this guy's going to be this impartial arbiter

00:37:06.080 and deciding whether to go after Trump is to engage in magical thinking.

00:37:11.060 I 100 percent. And if you decide that that is true, and I do believe it's true. I mean,

00:37:15.120 I've been screaming that there's no way Merrick Garland could investigate Donald Trump

00:37:19.080 independently when he's the chief political rival of his boss, a.k.a. Joe Biden, the president

00:37:23.820 of the United States. Same thing is true for Hunter Biden. Right. The idea that Merrick Garland

00:37:28.560 could be in any way heading up a Department of Justice conducting a true investigation into

00:37:33.560 Hunter Biden is frankly impossible as well. And I'll just say this because I know we'll probably

00:37:38.880 get into it a little bit. The analogy that I would make about both Donald Trump and Joe Biden

00:37:45.240 is they're like heavyweight boxers in the 12th round of a fight. Both of them are holding each

00:37:51.540 other up. Right. Joe Biden seems to only be in 2024 to the extent that he gets to run against Donald

00:37:58.640 Trump. And I think Donald Trump, to a large extent, wants the rematch with Joe Biden.

00:38:04.120 And I think many Americans out there are like, man, we should just not have a president over 75 years

00:38:10.240 old, Megan. If you could go back and rewrite the Constitution and say, hey, the president has

00:38:15.080 to be up on election between 35 and 75. I kind of wish we had an upper age limit instead of just a

00:38:22.880 lower age limit. I understand the lower age limit. The idea was, hey, we don't want someone super

00:38:27.420 powerful handing off power to his 18 year old son as a default, you know, sort of president when

00:38:33.220 somebody else is pulling the strings like a king would. But but this is this is craziness to me that

00:38:39.440 we could end up with 82 versus 78 for the future of the nation. My God, why not 92? Why not 98?

00:38:46.100 How far can we push this? It's great. All right, let's switch to sports. There's a headline today.

00:38:52.660 Tom Brady removes family photo with Giselle Bundchen from his Twitter profile after she is

00:38:58.680 spotted with a new man. This is from she finds dot com. I oversold that as breaking news. I wouldn't

00:39:04.980 really call it breaking news, but it does further confirm the demise of the marriage, which we knew

00:39:08.820 she's apparently dating or at least spending a lot of time with her jujitsu instructor.

00:39:14.180 And now he's changed the Twitter profile. And I've been you know, I'm fascinated by this whole

00:39:19.940 thing, Clay. I really have my doubts about whether this marriage truly collapsed because he chose to

00:39:24.420 play another year of football. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. There had to be bigger

00:39:28.520 problems behind the scenes. I don't know what they were, but I don't accept that. What do you think?

00:39:32.760 I just I hate this for the kids, right? I wish they could have waited until the kids got to be 18

00:39:38.520 years old. I think their kids are, you know, 12 and 13 or something like that. And it just seems so

00:39:45.960 emotionally attackable by Giselle that they get divorced. And then she immediately basically makes

00:39:54.800 it known that she's dating this jujitsu instructor. I understand why Tom Brady would be angry. I mean,

00:40:01.600 it just feels like an emotional attack by her. And and I don't know what could have possibly caused

00:40:09.860 this this relationship. Let me just say, unless there's more to the story, what if what if this

00:40:15.640 is the land of speculation? He was the first offender and his real offense was not another

00:40:19.640 year of football, but, you know, sort of a thing on the side. I think probably that would have come

00:40:25.120 out because I think it's almost impossible. It's when Nick Saban has that great line,

00:40:28.880 Alabama football coach. He says to his players, you know, he's got a lot of 18 year old players

00:40:34.480 and everything else, you know, like you just got to make good decisions in life. He's like, for

00:40:38.080 instance, he said, if I was going to have an affair, the only person in America, this was like several

00:40:43.140 years ago, he's on tape saying this, which makes it even funnier. He's like, the only person in

00:40:46.800 America I'd have an affair with is Hillary Rodham effing Clinton, because she's probably the only

00:40:51.800 person who'd keep her mouth shut about the fact that she was having an affair with me.

00:40:55.260 Uh, and, and I just don't buy like, unless Brady's having an affair with like, uh, somebody equally

00:41:01.180 famous as Brady, it's hard for me to believe that it wouldn't come out. Right. That, uh, that,

00:41:06.760 that, that story one night with this gal or that guy, I just, I don't know. I want to make clear

00:41:13.380 I'm paid to tell her story about hooking up with Tom Brady and blowing up the Giselle marriage. Like

00:41:18.760 I, uh, I, you're right. It does feel like she's angry. And a lot of the coverage has been,

00:41:25.100 she's angry because he went back to football. That doesn't make a lot of sense. I think for

00:41:29.280 most people out there, after all, you married a football player. It's like, you can't be angry

00:41:32.960 for someone for doing what their profession has always been. Uh, but when I saw that she was dating

00:41:38.060 the jujitsu instructor, I saw the report. I just said like, she is furious. And this is all about

00:41:44.880 trying to drive Tom Brady insane. And I just go back to, they got kids involved. Right. Like,

00:41:49.980 uh, I also feel like why, why did the paparazzi get her like immediately down in Costa Rica? You

00:41:55.340 know, are they hanging out down in Costa Rica? Wait, yes, she clearly released it. Yeah. Agreed.

00:42:00.820 Uh, okay. So that's that. Now let's talk about sports coverage. I don't know most of these guys,

00:42:07.300 but I'm sure, you know, all these guys before we get to ESPN, let's start with Fox sports,

00:42:11.140 Skip Bayless and Shannon and Shannon Sharp had such an, I, I've like never seen anything like this

00:42:18.800 on regular news anchor TV, but let's just show the audience what happened between these two guys.

00:42:24.620 Uh, listen in top four.

00:42:27.240 All you do is go back and talk about when he was a rich and won seven games. I will talk about what

00:42:31.520 I want to talk about. Cause I got the floor. Baker Mayfield is dead last in 2022 at QBR.

00:42:36.520 Blah, blah, blah. He's dead last. I don't care. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's 57.8.

00:42:40.840 He's 30, 30 completion percentage. Blah, blah, blah, blah. You're going to let me talk?

00:42:44.860 Because that's what you do. If you'll stay on point on question. You'll never stay on point.

00:42:48.180 Okay. I'm about to stay on point. You're not going to get on point until I'm done talking.

00:42:52.700 Okay. All right. That's right. Spew all your hate. I'm going to spew it all.

00:42:55.600 Your banker hate. Spew it. He's talking about my Twitter followers. That's what I know I got it.

00:42:59.920 And I'm going to continue to go. He's 187. Tell me when it's my turn.

00:43:03.880 It's not your turn. Okay.

00:43:06.520 What is happening?

00:43:11.220 This is, that's their show. Uh, they yell at each other about sports. This is even more,

00:43:17.060 uh, more intense than usual. I, I, I look, I, I, you know, I, I love the good argument. I love,

00:43:25.120 I don't take my arguments that seriously. Uh, look, I, I will tell you exactly what I think,

00:43:31.040 but if you disagree, whatever, like, let's go have a beer. This is like skip a list. I think

00:43:36.280 is defined by what his sports opinions are. And so if you disagree with him, I think it really gets

00:43:43.780 him at the essence of his being like, and by the way, they're arguing about Baker Mayfield,

00:43:49.880 who is a quarterback right now for the Carolina Panthers, but it's like the,

00:43:53.960 you know, 38th best quarterback in the NFL, you know, 28th at best, like not a very good,

00:44:00.640 this is not a very high end sports argument. Like even Baker Mayfield's wife would not argue about

00:44:06.460 Baker Mayfield's quarterbacking ability that aggressively, I don't think. Uh, so, uh, there

00:44:11.480 are a lot of guys that would, that like, uh, you know, the, the, the schematic of two guys argue

00:44:16.900 about sports works, but that's a more intense argument than generally, uh, generally happens.

00:44:22.840 Okay. I'm glad to hear you confirm that as somebody who never watches that style, I was like, what is

00:44:26.920 even for the debate show format, this is crazy. So I thought people would enjoy it. Yeah.

00:44:34.120 So you're right. So much passion. And as you point out for somebody who's like the 38th quarterback,

00:44:38.660 why, what, like, don't fill your life in other ways, very insignificant issue,

00:44:43.780 even in the world of sports, which isn't known for being freighted with significance.

00:44:49.000 Okay. No, they are not the only one. Something interesting happened over at ESPN. Now this is

00:44:53.920 Ben Watson and Peter Burns who get into the initial, uh, hustle here. We're going to show what happened

00:44:59.260 first, where Peter Burns makes a comment. One of the, sort of those snide remarks about Ben

00:45:03.840 Watson's wife. Um, here's what happened.

00:45:08.060 Uh, 45, 20, by the way, did you not get the memo on the suits? We all went dark today. You were,

00:45:12.320 you're like Easter service.

00:45:13.420 Y'all kind of, y'all kind of leave me off.

00:45:16.060 As long as I get the text from my wife that says I look good.

00:45:21.340 Send me the text, babe. Send me the text.

00:45:23.600 That's not the one she sent me.

00:45:26.020 Wait a minute. Outdoors.

00:45:28.100 Come on, you're live TV.

00:45:29.580 14 to 6.

00:45:30.820 Live TV?

00:45:31.520 Keep my man on the phone.

00:45:33.840 Okay. So that, the, the one guy said, uh, what's his name? Peter Burns said, it's not

00:45:40.500 the text your wife sent me. You know, it's, it's like, I've heard millions of guys say

00:45:44.080 something like that. Like, Oh, you know, that's what she said or your wife, whatever. Um, this

00:45:48.740 caused a problem because when they came back from break, here's what the set looked like.

00:45:56.320 Welcome back to the farm rich halftime report. Uh, just you and I here to key. I'm not sure what

00:46:00.820 happened to, uh, Peter Burns or did you, uh, did you have him keep your wife's name out of his mouth?

00:46:07.480 Huh? Oh, we'll see how Peter Burns is, uh, with that smart mouth in the second half. But, uh,

00:46:14.720 so, so Peter Burns left and Ben Watson left and then you see Ben Watson sort of saunter back in

00:46:22.240 post the time he was supposed to be there was clearly very angry. And then here's where it

00:46:27.180 gets really interesting. All right. I got, he was offended. Whatever. Okay. Um, ESPN then appears

00:46:33.220 to have lied about it. Right. Yeah. Cause yeah. Right. So what happened? So first of all,

00:46:38.920 I want to get your opinion on this. You're obviously been married a while. Um, the joke

00:46:44.340 that he's making is that, you know, Peter Burns, in my opinion, like saying, Hey, your wife doesn't

00:46:49.360 like your outfit either. Like, it's not a very serious, uh, like to me joke. And the fact that

00:46:56.960 he would react as he did to me is Will Smith. Like, right. Like Will Smith got up and

00:47:03.220 smacked Chris rock over what was a fairly innocuous joke. To me, what it told on was man,

00:47:09.860 their relationship is in rough shape, right? Because if a guy feels compelled to me to defend

00:47:17.180 his wife's honor to that extent, it's like, you've got some major insecurities in your relationship.

00:47:23.160 Right. So that's my takeaway. Like, would you be offended by that? You saw the clip and there

00:47:29.660 are a lot of women listening right now to what there's several women who responded in the comments

00:47:33.920 when I shared that we're like, man, I'd be more embarrassed that my husband made a big deal about

00:47:38.780 this than I would be about a relatively minor joke. No. And even if the Joe, I took the joke as your

00:47:45.300 wife's texting me about my luck, which I also didn't find offensive. It's a joke. Obviously she

00:47:51.120 didn't. He's nudging it like, Hey, your wife likes me. Whatever. What man hasn't, it's absurd. You can't

00:47:57.660 be this much of an eggshell. Yeah, I agree. So I think the way he reacted, the guy who had the joke

00:48:03.600 made was worse than ESPN lied and tried to say, Megan, Oh, this was all one bit. We planned this

00:48:11.780 as a joke to go viral, but they got caught then in the lie because now the guys have come out and

00:48:18.260 apologize for their behavior. So ESPN tried to cover up this clip, which made it even worse by

00:48:24.120 saying, Oh, this was all planned. There's nothing to it at all. It's absurd. It's like, how ridiculous.

00:48:30.820 Why didn't they just say tensions run high? You know, I said to my team on the bright side,

00:48:35.820 testosterone is back. White house. We know that for sure. Right. Happy to see that. I like seeing real

00:48:44.620 men. Um, but yeah, you got to let some of that stuff roll off your back and ESPN 100% lied,

00:48:49.540 uh, as those guys have now made clear clay, Travis, always a pleasure. My friend, happy,

00:48:54.900 happy Thanksgiving. You're spending it with your family and friends. I assume I am. I can't wait.

00:48:59.820 Same to you and your family and everybody out there watching and listening as well. Hope y'all

00:49:03.320 have great Thanksgiving, Stu. Lots of love. Let's do it again soon. For sure. Appreciate it.

00:49:08.280 All right. We're coming right back with a deep dive into Georgia and the runoff race,

00:49:13.420 why it matters with Eric Erickson, a man who knows.

00:49:19.380 We are watching Georgia as early voting in the runoff election between Senator Raphael Warnock,

00:49:24.880 the Democrat, and his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker starts this Saturday. Both candidates are now

00:49:30.940 in a final sprint to capture votes. Joining us now to discuss the latest in both the Georgia runoff

00:49:36.480 and much, much more is host of the Eric Erickson show, Eric Erickson. Welcome back to the show,

00:49:42.440 Eric. It's great to see you. You too. Thanks for having me. Oh yeah. It's a wonderful to see you.

00:49:47.220 Okay. So I think a lot of people have been like, well, it doesn't matter because it's 50 50 in the

00:49:50.820 Senate now. So who cares about Georgia? But it does matter because you get one wobbly Senator like a

00:49:57.960 Joe Manchin on team Dem and you can completely change the future of, you know, proposed legislation,

00:50:05.240 a proposed confirmation of judges. And so the bigger the Democrats margin, the better off they

00:50:11.900 are. So the Republicans should care. And I believe do care about this runoff. So where do things stand

00:50:18.860 right now? Because the libertarian guy's out. So now it's just the Dem and the Republican running

00:50:23.440 against each other. So what is the conventional thinking that whatever percentage the libertarian

00:50:27.580 guy got? Is that likely to go GOP or likely to go blue? You know, no one really knows this time

00:50:34.560 is the 2021 runoff where the Republicans lost. It was the first runoff Republicans had lost since the

00:50:39.660 nineties in Georgia. Really that it kind of did something to them psychologically. Now they're not

00:50:45.200 very sure the numbers say the Republicans have more votes in Georgia than the Democrats, but

00:50:50.500 Herschel Walker underperformed Brian Kemp by 9% in virtually every county in the state. So

00:50:55.460 can you get people to cross the threshold? Rand Paul actually came on my radio show

00:50:59.000 out of Atlanta yesterday to try to make the case to libertarians that if you have a 50-50 Senate,

00:51:04.620 all of the committees are tied. So the Republicans have more power than if the Democrats win the seat

00:51:09.780 and get to 51. Suddenly the Republicans don't have a tie split on the committees, urging libertarians

00:51:15.440 to get out. Brian Kemp for the first time is on the campaign trail going everywhere with Herschel

00:51:19.680 Walker. He's kept his ground game going, handed it over to Mitch McConnell to run the operations

00:51:24.240 on the ground. Uh, we actually had a door knocker come to our house two days ago or Saturday, not

00:51:29.380 Sunday, uh, had door knocker come on Saturday. We didn't have any during the general election and

00:51:34.240 they're coming for Herschel Walker. So maybe they can get people across the finish line, but then

00:51:39.240 Warnock has ads all over the state with Brian Kemp voters and prominent Brian Kemp supporters saying

00:51:44.600 vote for Warnock character matters. Hmm. The, um, the, the knocking on the door is interesting

00:51:51.280 because one of the criticisms of the Republicans in this past midterms was they have no ground game.

00:51:55.420 They didn't work the early vote that, you know, they, they basically just try to inflame people

00:52:00.780 and then don't do very much to actually get them to the polling stations, which is the most important

00:52:04.960 part of the whole process. So that's, that's interesting to hear. They're getting a little

00:52:08.280 bit more aggressive on, on that. Do we, do we look at the, in, in this election and this runoff election

00:52:14.420 are the, is everyone allowed to vote? This is what I'm trying to ask. Or is it just the people

00:52:19.140 who voted the last time? Because it's a general election, anyone who voted last time or people

00:52:24.800 who didn't vote, it's considered a continuation of the election, so to speak. So really anybody

00:52:28.720 can vote right now. If they're registered to vote, uh, they can go vote. Oh, really? So you can expand

00:52:34.200 the universe? Uh, cause I, I was told it was the opposite that only the people who voted, uh, three

00:52:39.220 weeks ago would be allowed to vote now. No, in Georgia runoff's considered an extension of the

00:52:44.320 election. So whether you have or have not voted in the general, you're able to vote this time.

00:52:48.100 Uh, the only, the caveat is in primaries. If you have voted or not voted, that is a termination

00:52:53.860 for primary runoffs, but for general election runoffs, you can go vote. Oh, okay. Well, that's,

00:52:59.240 I guess, good news for Herschel Walker. Cause he could expand the universe and he needs to expand

00:53:03.080 the universe of potential voters. So you mentioned Warnock and his approach. Um, he is running on a

00:53:09.520 couple of things. He's not Trump and he has character. Let's take a look at his Trump ad. Uh,

00:53:15.980 this is Sot 9. We must all work very hard for a gentleman and a great person named Herschel

00:53:24.200 Walker, a fabulous human being who loves our country and will be a great United States

00:53:31.980 Senator. Herschel Walker, get out and vote for Herschel. And he deserves it. He was an incredible

00:53:39.500 athlete. He'll be an even better Senator. Get out and vote for Herschel Walker.

00:53:43.800 I'm Raphael Warnock and I approve this message.

00:53:47.780 That's unbelievable. That's a, that's a Warnock ad.

00:53:52.020 It is. Uh, and you know, it's going to have an impact. People kind of forget if you go all the

00:53:56.340 way back to 2016 in the Metro Atlanta suburbs, Cobb, Gwinnett, uh, Clayton County, Marco Rubio

00:54:03.180 won those, not Donald Trump. Uh, basically all the counties Atlanta touched, uh, Donald Trump

00:54:08.580 didn't do well in, in 60 to 70% of the vote in this runoff is going to come from those

00:54:13.020 counties. So that's actually an effective ad in the Atlanta suburbs. Uh, Walker underperformed

00:54:17.580 Kemp. Every Republican in the state, Donald Trump endorsed other than Herschel Walker lost. Uh,

00:54:22.680 he's not very popular even among Republicans in the state. So that ad will have an impact.

00:54:27.900 Okay. The other ad hits Herschel Walker on character and I am dying to describe him following

00:54:32.820 your tweets. I've been following your coverage of Herschel ever since the scandals broke. Um,

00:54:36.780 so I'm looking forward to this discussion, but here's the next Warnock attack on Herschel

00:54:40.980 top 10. My parents taught me that there's nothing more important than your name. Character is what

00:54:47.100 you do when nobody's watching. It's about doing the right thing simply because it's the right thing

00:54:52.300 and doing it over and over again. It's an amazing thing for the people of your state to say that we

00:54:57.860 want you to represent us. That's not simply a vote. It's a sacred trust. They're counting on me

00:55:04.520 to be thinking about them and their families. And that's what I'm committed to doing every single

00:55:09.180 day. Now you had been saying that the Herschel Walker character attacks were bad, that they were

00:55:17.820 going to have an effect. And I confess to you, I had my doubts because I thought more Republicans

00:55:25.020 in Georgia would say, I don't love it, but it's not going to stop me from voting for control of the

00:55:30.020 Senate. And that turned out to be very wrong because of the, you could see it in split vote,

00:55:35.520 how they liked Kemp. And as you point out, he, he underperformed 9%, um, then, then Herschel did

00:55:42.160 then Kemp. And, um, so they did care and there's nothing that's happened since then to change the

00:55:48.440 caring. So why would the Republicans feel optimistic about Herschel doing better this time around,

00:55:54.540 especially with ads like that from Warnock reminding them character matters? Okay. They're

00:56:00.080 a little more optimistic. And first of all, I got to correct myself because I looked it up during that

00:56:03.300 commercial. They, this was part of the change in the election law where you do have to have voted in

00:56:07.060 the general to vote in the runoff. So I was wrong on that. I want to clarify, um, you've got to vote

00:56:11.280 in the general. Um, the Republicans are a little more optimistic this time because one of the problems

00:56:17.940 Warnock had in the general that didn't get him across the finish line was the democratic ground game

00:56:23.040 broke down. Uh, Stacey Abrams funded the democratic ground game across the state for everyone, including

00:56:28.220 Warnock. She's now out of the picture. Uh, her ground game broke. It didn't work. I mean, the Republicans

00:56:34.020 won every single statewide race and even picked up a few seats in the state legislature. They were expecting

00:56:39.200 to lose one of the few bright spots for the GOP nationwide. Uh, so now you've got Brian Kemp's ground game

00:56:45.100 still fully operational. The Republicans think they can turn out the vote. I'm still not sure. And the reason

00:56:50.240 why, and the reason I knew that was a problem was my kids go to a very small Christian school,

00:56:55.540 very Republican as well. And I'm in a very evangelical church with people who are still to this day mad at

00:57:01.220 me that I didn't support Trump in 2016. And my wife and I both kept encountering people who were like,

00:57:06.560 I don't know that I can vote for Herschel. Have you seen the ad about his ex-wife? And they never

00:57:12.840 mounted a good response to that ad. They said they had one. They never mounted it. They didn't have the

00:57:18.460 money apparently to get it on air. And that's had a lingering effect. I mean, when you have the man's

00:57:23.060 ex-wife on television, granted, they cut him out of the picture. Herschel Walker was actually there

00:57:28.180 with her in the interview, but you hear her talking about his abuse, holding a gun to her head,

00:57:33.060 uh, quoting him. It really had an impact on Christian evangelical women. And in fact, if you look at the

00:57:39.620 vote, the odds are, uh, Walker would have won except for white evangelical women not voting for him.

00:57:45.360 Oh, fascinating. So how did those women, I mean, do you think those women voted for Trump?

00:57:51.300 Because he did not, as far as I know, you know, well, I don't know. There was an allegation in

00:57:56.860 his divorce from Ivana Trump that he allegedly raped her, uh, something that she would later

00:58:02.900 take back. But it was different from the Herschel Walker situation where he admitted Herschel Walker

00:58:09.080 admitted doing these things and just said, I was, I was sort of a, I was out of my mind and I've

00:58:14.380 gotten help since then. So how did those women have voted for Trump and not for Herschel?

00:58:19.540 I think they voted for Trump in 2016. And then you saw this shift in, in 2020, we're about

00:58:25.960 basically 27,968, I think is the precise number of people who voted in Georgia in 2020, but refused

00:58:33.120 to vote for president. We saw about the same number this time refused to vote in the Senate race. They

00:58:39.020 skipped over and voted straight for Brian Kemp over Abrams. You, I do think that after 2016,

00:58:45.160 there is a segment of the population, particularly of evangelical women who began to kind of get

00:58:50.620 tired. Um, and they really wanted to start voting for people who, who vote for someone as opposed to

00:58:56.500 against someone. I, I might be married to someone like that, who just, she's tired of having to vote

00:59:01.080 against the, the evil of two lessers and would really like someone to vote for. And I get that sentiment

00:59:06.700 more and more from even women who call my show. They're just kind of tired of having to say,

00:59:11.380 I've got two bad candidates pick the less bad one. They're like, I'm just tired of picking.

00:59:16.400 Yeah. Yeah. I hear that. So what's, what's the strategy then for Herschel Walker? Yes. He gets

00:59:22.340 the bear hug from governor Kemp. That's good. Cause he had been stiff arming him for throughout the

00:59:27.340 whole campaign leading up to the midterms. Kemp was like, Oh no, that's your problem. I'm not dealing

00:59:31.340 with that. So now he gets the bear hug. That should be helpful. But on the other side,

00:59:36.240 you got Obama going down there to rally for, uh, Warnock, get the Dave Matthews band. Those

00:59:41.880 things don't move numbers, but whatever. So like, I'm just still struggling to figure out what the

00:59:47.140 game plan is to get a bigger turnout for Herschel Walker this time. It is. It's base mobilization.

00:59:52.620 If you talk to Republicans, they will tell you there are more of us than there are of them.

00:59:56.460 Maximize them, find people who voted enthusiastically for Walker and just keep rounding

01:00:02.060 them up, get them to early voting. The problem here, honestly, is much like what Republicans

01:00:06.500 have seen nationwide with the exception of the Kemp campaign. No one really ran an early vote

01:00:11.320 campaign for the GOP this time that Kemp did it and is now trying to do it for Herschel Walker might

01:00:16.460 help him, but there's just not a level of enthusiasm. I actually on Sunday nights have a group of guys

01:00:22.540 who come over. We just sit on the front porch, watch football and smoke some cigars. And,

01:00:26.240 and all of them voted for Herschel Walker in the general election. And I said, are, I mean,

01:00:30.500 who's going to go vote in the runoff? And nobody was really enthusiastic about doing it. They're

01:00:34.580 all like, yeah, I guess I will. When is it again? But no one really was enthusiastic.

01:00:39.340 The sentiment that I get so much is we did what we needed to do. He didn't, he came up short.

01:00:44.560 That's not on me. That's on him. I still think Republicans can win this. There are more Republicans

01:00:50.420 than Democrats, but I don't know that Republicans are really willing to admit that there is a

01:00:57.200 candidate problem here, much like there has been in other races that they've got to really

01:01:01.140 overcome with voters. And the Walker campaign really had some brilliant opportunities in the

01:01:07.060 general to push back on the Warnock attacks against him on character. And they just never did.

01:01:12.680 And from what I hear, it was a money issue more than a lack of willingness issue. And I think that

01:01:17.100 money issue is still plaguing them right now. You've got multiple senators claiming to be

01:01:21.060 fundraising for Herschel Walker, including Rick Scott at the NRSC. And 90% of the money that you

01:01:26.600 raise actually goes to those candidates, not to Herschel Walker. So he's struggling against even

01:01:31.220 Republicans claiming to be fundraising for him who aren't actually giving him money.

01:01:35.460 Well, wait a minute. Was there not, I don't live in Georgia, but was there not an ad by the Walker

01:01:39.760 campaign showing that Raphael Warnock was accused of his ex by his ex-wife of running over her foot

01:01:45.260 in his car and he denied it, but they ran it for about two weeks. They ran out of money and couldn't

01:01:52.540 keep it on air. Oh, wow. Well, it was all over. It was all over the internet, but they ran out of

01:01:59.140 money and couldn't run it all over Georgia. In fact, it was interesting. You knew there was a

01:02:03.440 problem towards the end when you had the Georgia-Tennessee game right before the election. And there

01:02:08.460 were lots of Warnock ads. There were lots of Brian Kemp ads. There was one Herschel Walker ad and no

01:02:13.480 Stacey Abrams ad, you kind of knew which campaigns had the money and which didn't.

01:02:17.760 Okay. So Stacey Abrams, that's where I wanted to go next. How much of a depressant will that be to

01:02:22.280 the GOP vote? I mean, I've got a brother who lives in the Atlanta area and honestly, like we were raised

01:02:28.260 in a democratic household, but he's so had it with the crazy, you know, far left stuff that's being

01:02:33.940 handed down in Georgia and by proposed by people like Stacey Abrams. And I know he's not alone. So she

01:02:38.800 must've been a motivator for the GOP years to come out. Like the one thing we don't want is a

01:02:43.820 governor Abrams and maybe less motivated by the Senate race in which they both men have serious

01:02:49.980 problems in their past with women. But you know, no one's crazy. No one, like even Warnock is running

01:02:56.580 more in the middle than Stacey Abrams. She sounds like she could be a member of the squad. So that's

01:03:01.760 not good for Republicans though, because she's, she's a motivator for the GOP base.

01:03:06.080 Yeah, very much so. I mean, Brian Kemp, people don't appreciate it. He won a majority of the

01:03:11.440 Hispanic vote, a majority of the Asian vote, a third of black men. He really dominated the race

01:03:17.360 against Stacey Abrams. It was remarkable what he did. And a lot of it had to do with her as a

01:03:22.320 candidate. She was deeply alienating. Now she was never actually going to win the race. Kemp was very

01:03:28.080 popular, did a very good job handling COVID and the economy. The moment she lost the race though,

01:03:33.160 was back in February when she posed for a picture with a bunch of kindergartners and they were all

01:03:38.300 in masks and she wasn't. And that kind of set the stage for the rest of the election.

01:03:43.640 The worst. That was one of the worst pictures of all the Democrat hypocrisy.

01:03:47.860 And by the way, she attended it for about a week before she apologized. She would dogmatically refuse to

01:03:51.740 apologize for it. And that just, that did untold damage for her. And so you're right. She's not on

01:03:56.700 the ballot now. It really is a base mobilization effort and Warnock's voters are more enthusiastic

01:04:02.060 for him than most Republicans are for Walker. Wow. December 6th. And now they are going to be

01:04:08.400 allowed to early vote this Saturday. There was a question about that. A legal challenge was

01:04:12.800 filed by the GOP, but the Democrats prevailed and the early voting will commence beginning

01:04:17.740 this Saturday. Is the rule the same in Georgia as it has been nationally, which is

01:04:22.440 the early voting tends to benefit the Democrats? Yeah, it does. Now, Republicans in the last week

01:04:28.520 of early voting tend to show up more. And so like, for example, in this general election,

01:04:32.800 the Republicans actually outpaced the Democrats a little bit. It's a question of the margin.

01:04:36.820 Democrats show up in large numbers early Republicans later in early voting. The question is how many

01:04:42.960 Republicans will go do it. A little difficult too, because it is starting the Saturday after

01:04:47.200 Thanksgiving. People are going to be out of town, coming back into town. You'll probably see

01:04:52.380 a bigger Republican surge later in the week. But again, they're going to have to rely on Kemp's

01:04:57.100 ground game because the national Republicans and the state Republican Party have not done anything.

01:05:02.940 One of the untold stories here is that the state Republican Party has so alienated itself from

01:05:09.140 Brian Kemp and the entire state GOP that donors are now not giving money to the state GOP. They're

01:05:14.860 giving it to a leadership pack set up by Brian Kemp. It doesn't help that the state party chairman

01:05:20.160 tried to find primary opponents for Brian Kemp and every other statewide elected official.

01:05:25.140 Is those this is because of the whole split with Trump trying to find votes in Georgia and trying

01:05:30.760 to boot camp. And he didn't he hates camp. And so the Georgia GOP was split into the camp.

01:05:36.760 It really was that the chairman won't resign. And so instead of trying to force him out,

01:05:41.120 Kemp's just set up a leadership pack and all the donors who would go to the GOP are now going to

01:05:45.000 Kemp. Wow, it's amazing that that worked. So let's talk Trump. Well, before we do before we

01:05:49.980 talk about his effect on this, do you want to offer a prediction? I don't know if you want to,

01:05:55.460 but will you? You know, I honestly I don't have a good read of it. I my sense is that Warnock

01:06:01.160 probably wins. The polling seems to suggest that the polling is not very good, though.

01:06:05.980 There's just a greater enthusiasm for him than the GOP right now. If Herschel Walker wins,

01:06:12.360 Brian Kemp needs to get a lot of credit for it, given his ground game effort. I do kind of think

01:06:17.900 Kemp would like Herschel Walker to win at this point just so he can give more of a big middle

01:06:22.880 finger to Donald Trump that Kemp can do things that Trump can't do. All right, let's talk Trump,

01:06:30.000 because the thing that we're not talking about yet is one of the reasons Raphael Warnock is a

01:06:35.360 senator is because Trump told people to stay home and not vote in that last election where these

01:06:40.820 Democrats were running against Republicans and control of the Senate was in the balance.

01:06:45.200 And Trump infamously, after he lost and refused to accept it, spoiled the vote in Georgia like a

01:06:51.860 kid who took his ball and went home and wanted everybody to leave the party with him. And a lot

01:06:55.840 of Georgians did. They did walk out and they did refuse to vote, or at least that's the narrative.

01:07:01.220 And that's why we we have two Democratic senators from the state of Georgia, one of whom is now

01:07:06.500 battling to keep his seat, Raphael Warnock. So Trump's not doing that this time. So what effect

01:07:12.700 is that likely to have? Well, you know, the Republicans still have to get their head back

01:07:16.860 in the game. You know, I've said the number so many times I can give it to you. There were 700,000

01:07:21.740 people who voted in the general election in 2020. Precisely 427,205 of those 700,000 were Republicans

01:07:31.440 who voted in the general and never showed back up in the runoff. 427,205. The Republicans know who

01:07:39.260 those people are. And if they can try to mobilize them, assuming they voted in the general and get

01:07:44.400 them out, they've got a numbers game that can matter. They're trying to put that loss behind

01:07:50.500 them. And again, this is the first time Republicans lost runoffs in Georgia since the 1990s. It was kind

01:07:55.880 of a big red flag for Democrats when Republicans started winning runoffs in the late 90s that they were

01:08:01.100 surging as a party in the state. If the Democrats run this one and they win it, it's kind of a sign

01:08:06.500 again for the Republicans that Democrats really are growing in the state. They need to do something.

01:08:12.320 I can't maybe can get them to turn out. Trump certainly is going to turn out a lot of suburban

01:08:17.040 Atlanta against Herschel Walker. Right. Trump gets them to turn out in a different way now. But we're

01:08:21.780 hearing reports he's angry. Who knows? I always do a Trump report with an asterisk when it comes from the

01:08:26.240 mainstream. Right. But the especially Rolling Stone, which hates him. But they're reporting

01:08:30.980 that he's very angry that he hasn't been asked to go to Georgia, that he really feels that he would

01:08:36.300 rally that base if you want to get the base out. He's the man to do it. And but he's reportedly being

01:08:41.960 told, please stay where you are. Please don't come to Georgia. Yeah, look, everyone I know who has

01:08:48.100 come into contact with his advisors or him has advised him to please don't come to Georgia, send money,

01:08:53.020 not him. I don't believe Rolling Stone's reporting, but I do know that he has been told

01:08:57.980 you would do more harm than good if you went to Georgia. He also doesn't want to come into a state

01:09:03.460 if Walker might lose and have the Republicans pin that loss on him as well. So he's got some incentive

01:09:08.040 to stay out of it and just send money. The problem is he's not sending that much money. He spent more

01:09:12.980 money trying to defeat Brian Kemp than he spent on anything else, including beating Liz Cheney.

01:09:17.580 I think he spent a total of 15 million trying to help his candidates out of 100 million raised.

01:09:22.020 He spent 15 nationwide on candidates in the general election. Spending some more of his money would

01:09:28.020 be good, particularly since he can't spend his super PAC money on himself for 2024. Spending it

01:09:33.880 now as best he can would probably earn him some goodwill. Hmm. What about the Twitter announcement

01:09:39.780 that he's coming back on? Elon Musk has allowed him back on Twitter. He's already running his own

01:09:44.920 social media platform, Truth Social, and he has said he doesn't see the point of rejoining Twitter.

01:09:49.900 But I saw you tweet out when they allowed him back on. There goes Georgia. Why? Why do you think

01:09:55.000 that? Yeah, look, if Trump comes back on Twitter, suddenly all the news stories go back to being

01:10:00.660 about him. I don't think it's a coincidence that in August after the Mar-a-Lago raid, you saw the

01:10:05.780 Republican generic ballot collapse as Trump became the central focus of the news again. He comes back

01:10:11.280 on Twitter and starts tweeting. He becomes the central focus of the news. The media, of course,

01:10:15.740 want him to be the central focus of the news. I think that stirs up those suburban voters in

01:10:20.340 Atlanta who don't like him. If he stays off Twitter, I think that's actually a good thing.

01:10:24.540 And frankly, he does want to build Truth Social. They're what have their SPAC and their SEC filings

01:10:30.740 for IPOs and the like. Might as well stay there and try to grow that site.

01:10:34.200 The interesting thing is he announced, was it last week? Was it last Monday? Was it a week ago

01:10:40.960 yesterday? And he's done absolutely nothing. Yeah. What's what's he done? Usually you kick off your

01:10:46.540 your campaign. You like barnstorm the nation. You do the rallies. Nothing. Absolutely nothing,

01:10:52.640 which I think supports the theory that this was an attempt to get on get on the record as a candidate

01:10:58.360 before the DOJ makes up its mind. Yeah. So I have I've got two views on that. One is,

01:11:04.480 yes, he wants to be a candidate before that happens. And the other is I don't think it's

01:11:08.680 a coincidence that he started openly talking about this within 24 hours of the Politico report that

01:11:14.660 Ken Griffin, the hedge fund billionaire, was deciding to align with Ron DeSantis. And I think

01:11:20.140 he wanted to get out and try to stop the pivoting of billionaires away from him for 2024. It's a money

01:11:26.200 game for him. He doesn't like to spend his own money. He'd like to spend other people's money.

01:11:30.340 So get out there, declare your candidate, open your funds so everyone can give you donations.

01:11:34.800 And also, you've got to keep in mind, he did raise that hundred million dollars for Save America

01:11:39.620 PAC. And you can't spend money in the leadership PAC on yourself. So the only way to redirect those

01:11:46.080 funds is to get donor permission to redirect them. And you have to have a presidential fund in

01:11:50.620 order to direct them into. So he had to do it and might as well make a big splash of it.

01:11:54.960 So you think he's trying to get the money that was donated to his PAC that was supposed to be

01:11:59.580 spent on other people transferred into his presidential campaign so it can be spent on

01:12:04.680 him? Yeah, I think so. You can spend legal fees out of a super PAC on yourself, but you can't spend

01:12:11.920 campaign funds to promote your candidacy from a super PAC like that. You have to start your own

01:12:17.320 presidential fund, your own candidate campaign committee, and then you can move the money.

01:12:22.360 You just have to. It's a very simple process to get donor permission, and then you just move the

01:12:26.800 money over to the new fund. But you have to be a declared candidate before you can do that.

01:12:32.020 Well, so that plus his ongoing legal battles, if he's allowed to use the money for legal battles,

01:12:36.320 would explain why he wasn't spending it during the midterms on all these Republicans in very tight

01:12:41.900 races. Right. And the RNC, I guess, a month or so ago, signaled that they could no longer pay for

01:12:48.480 his legal fees. So he needed to do something, move it all into a presidential campaign fund and you

01:12:53.840 can do it all. Keep in mind, your legal fees that you pay for out of your super PAC aren't related to

01:12:58.640 prosecution and investigation. They're related to other legal matters about campaigns. So if he

01:13:03.680 wants to cover the costs out of his campaign funding, he had to announce he was running for

01:13:08.740 president and move the money over there. This is also interesting. I hadn't even considered any of

01:13:13.860 this as the angle for why he announced because the RNC is not allowed to pay the legal bills of

01:13:20.020 anybody once they have declared because they're supposed to be neutral amongst the many candidates

01:13:26.080 who might be trying to get their nomination, the GOP nomination. So at the point at which Trump

01:13:32.260 declares, he can no longer get the RNC's money. But the RNC had already told him the money is done

01:13:37.620 prior to that. And he so he doesn't have a lot of money. I mean, he doesn't and he doesn't like

01:13:43.580 to spend his own money. So he doesn't have that much money that he wants to spend on his own legal

01:13:47.700 battles. The RNC shut off the spigot and he's got a pot of money sitting there, but he can't use it

01:13:52.800 for any of these fights unless he gets it pushed into a presidential fund. Yep, that's it.

01:13:59.380 That's so interesting. That explains a lot. You mean finance rules that they're they're cumbersome

01:14:03.960 and confusing, but the bottom line is you put it in your presidential account. You can spend it on

01:14:08.280 pretty much anything, including paying yourself a salary. Wow. So Eric is a lawyer in addition to

01:14:13.280 as many other talents, I should tell the audience just in case they're wondering how you know all

01:14:16.840 this. That's really interesting and it makes perfect sense. And he definitely is going to need

01:14:21.620 money for his legal defense as it looks very much like he is going to get indicted by the special

01:14:28.320 counsel who was just appointed. Do you disagree? You know, yeah, I think he probably will because

01:14:33.720 these people have no humility. It'd be good for the country if they just moved on. I mean,

01:14:37.960 even the Trump administration moved on from Hillary Clinton. They should move on from Donald Trump.

01:14:43.280 Can I ask you something? So I had a bunch of boys at my son's school come help me with the prep for

01:14:48.620 the midterms. It was fun. It was fun for them. It's fun for me. And these are young, young guys.

01:14:53.340 You know, they're 17 years old or so. And we talked a little bit about the DOJ and the possible

01:14:57.740 indictment of Trump. And I was saying that I think it would be absolute travesty. I think it would

01:15:04.320 make us feel like a banana republic. We don't run around indicting our former presidents in the

01:15:08.420 United States of America, even even if they've crossed an ethical line and potentially even a

01:15:12.800 legal one. I mean, it would have to be so egregious and wrong that the whole country was in favor of

01:15:17.300 it. Otherwise, it just looks like persecution, because if you really want to comb the records of

01:15:22.160 people like the Clintons and potentially the Obamas and beyond for legal lines crossed at the end of

01:15:29.840 their term or thereafter, you could find them. And one of the 17 year old boys looked at me and said,

01:15:35.980 no, no, if he broke the law, he should face the same consequences as anybody else. Right. Like if you

01:15:43.420 or I broke the law, we'd get indicted. Why shouldn't he get indicted? It sends the wrong message. And I

01:15:48.220 appreciate this kid's perspective. You know, he's young. He's sort of looking at the world more

01:15:51.940 idealistically. Right. Like, no, he broke the law. He should be held account. I don't know, Eric. I

01:15:56.360 think it to me. I do. I see the legal argument that he had the right to declassify, that potentially

01:16:02.900 he he had some right to at least copies of these documents. I don't know whether he would win or

01:16:08.360 lose on the merits, but let's assume for this purpose that he broke the law and that it's clear

01:16:13.360 that he broke the law and keeping those documents down there and potentially lying under oath in a

01:16:16.860 declaration that he'd return them all through a lawyer. And when it wasn't true, do you think

01:16:23.500 the country could get behind that kind of a prosecution? No, I don't think so. You know,

01:16:28.360 Bill Clinton lied and was never charged with perjury and brought in during the investigation

01:16:34.380 of Monica Lewinsky. Hillary Clinton wasn't truthful when it came to her emails. It really does look like

01:16:41.120 a tit for tat. And also, you and I have not had the Justice Department spend multiple years and the

01:16:47.560 Attorney General in New York multiple years investigating us, trying to find something.

01:16:52.900 You spend that much money on any of us. They're going to find something. They clearly were out to

01:16:57.660 get him. Yeah, I do think there was probably some wrong done. Is it enough to warrant the prosecution

01:17:04.660 of a former president? I don't think so. And I realize there are a lot of people on the left who say

01:17:09.280 absolutely bury him under the jail. Justice denied is justice not served, except we actually do have

01:17:15.700 a history in this country sometimes of recognizing that you can't commit justice if you're going to

01:17:23.100 also burn it all down in order to get justice. What's left of the country if you do this? And

01:17:27.680 for the greater good, sometimes you've got to say, yeah, just go away and we'll leave you alone. And

01:17:33.060 frankly, I do think if Trump just went away and said, look, I'm out, all of this does go away. But

01:17:38.340 because he wants to run again, they're hellbent on stopping him. All right. And Eric has a theory

01:17:43.440 on why the DOJ is likely to indict him right after this. Let's squeeze in a quick break and then we'll

01:17:51.240 come back with why you think they're about to do it. So, Eric, you think you know why the DOJ is about

01:17:59.600 to indict Trump, and it's not because of their moral principles and how deeply offended they are

01:18:05.740 that he kept documents he might not have had. He shouldn't have had down in Mar-a-Lago.

01:18:09.920 Yeah. Look, I got to say, some people still think, oh, the Department of Justice, it's about politics.

01:18:15.380 It's not. I mean, they have been rounding up pro-lifers who protested outside abortion clinics

01:18:20.620 in the last few weeks before the election. They haven't investigated the fire bombings of various

01:18:25.420 pregnancy centers. They won't enforce the law on protesting outside Supreme Court justices' homes.

01:18:30.260 This is a very political Department of Justice. And back in August, I mentioned this earlier,

01:18:35.400 you saw all the Republicans circle the wagons around Donald Trump when the Mar-a-Lago raid

01:18:40.200 happened. You saw independent voters turn away from the GOP. The generic ballot collapsed. And

01:18:45.340 now suddenly you see a lot of Republicans saying, hey, this Ron DeSantis guy, maybe we should go with

01:18:52.060 him and win. Stan Greenberg, who's the most prominent Democratic pollster, came out Friday morning and said

01:18:58.360 in his polling, if DeSantis ran, not only would he beat any of the Democrats, but he'd win a majority

01:19:04.020 of the Hispanic vote for the first time ever. And late Friday afternoon, suddenly we may have to

01:19:09.600 indict Donald Trump and get you Republicans to circle the wagons around him again because they're

01:19:14.740 scared to death of Ron DeSantis. So yes, they want to indict him for all these other things, but really

01:19:19.280 the icing on the cake is this will also get the Republicans to stand by their man and maybe not

01:19:25.020 look at another candidate. So you've got Cora Maga definitely rooting for Trump. You've got the

01:19:30.820 media rooting for Trump. You've got the DOJ rooting for Trump, the Biden White House rooting for Trump.

01:19:35.660 And the Democrats just in this past midterm elections spent a bunch of money on Trump-like

01:19:41.000 candidates in the primaries because they, as it turns out, accurately predicted they would be easier

01:19:46.640 to defeat in the general election. And there is absolutely no reason to think they're not going to

01:19:51.700 press replay on that same approach to the game. Yeah. I mean, listen, they literally did pick

01:19:58.340 multiple Republican candidates in primaries by attacking them as being too Trump-like.

01:20:03.860 So why not try to pick the Republican presidential nominee doing the same thing that people fell for

01:20:09.160 it once? I mean, was it a fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me or whatever.

01:20:14.780 They're going to try to do this again. And this time by making it all about Trump.

01:20:19.580 Do you think that prior to the midterm elections, I think most Republicans would have been outraged

01:20:27.420 at an indictment of President Trump? They really would have been angry whether they like Trump or

01:20:33.680 not. Post the midterms, do you think the calculation has changed? A little bit for a number of Republicans.

01:20:41.360 Yeah. Look, I would have been one of the people before the election saying this is designed to shape

01:20:45.980 the election. After the election, it's hard to make that argument. If they have reasonable grounds,

01:20:52.360 yes, go for it, I guess. And a lot of the country, half the country just about is probably going to

01:20:57.800 be deeply upset about it. If they really, really do think there really is some nefarious law broken,

01:21:03.560 I guess go for it. There will be some Republicans who are like, just get this over with as quickly as

01:21:09.200 possible. Don't drag it out. Remember, you can be in prison convicted of a crime and still run for

01:21:14.120 president of the United States. Hmm. I do wonder, because I think even though a lot of GOPers have

01:21:22.020 switched to DeSantis and are, you know, I don't think those are necessarily the core MAGA faithful.

01:21:27.420 But I think those people, I don't know, they're kind of done with Trump. There's a lot of anger

01:21:32.260 toward Trump in the non-core MAGA. And I'm not sure how loudly they'll object, you know, if he gets

01:21:39.840 indicted. I got to tell you, the weirdest thing that's happened to me in radio is for the last

01:21:44.780 number of years, if I ever criticize President Trump, I get a massive, angry backlash on radio.

01:21:51.240 I can watch the phones light up. And over the last year or so, it's kind of faded away. And after the

01:21:56.300 midterms, a lot of the exact same voices, a lot of the exact same people call in and say, yeah,

01:22:01.740 probably time to go to Ron DeSantis and move on from this. And after his announcement, right after

01:22:07.900 the midterms, that did kind of rub a lot of Republicans the wrong way that he wasn't

01:22:12.400 willing to accept responsibility. So, yeah, the core MAGA people, they're never going to leave

01:22:17.220 him. They love him tremendously. I kind of understand why. But there's more of the rest

01:22:22.360 of the Republican base. They 13 percent of the Republicans voted Democrat in the midterms,

01:22:27.380 according to the exit polls. There's clearly a large portion of the party that wants to move

01:22:33.040 to the future.

01:22:33.560 Hmm. It's going to have to be a very large portion of the party to get past Trump in a

01:22:37.760 primary. Meanwhile, we've been talking about on the show and whoever it is, if it's not

01:22:42.660 Trump, if it's DeSantis, even if it's young Ken, who's pretty milquetoast, they are going

01:22:47.560 to Trumpify him. You know, there was a piece out just was it yesterday? What's today? It's

01:22:52.240 1121. Is that today? Yesterday. My God, is it is it 1122? How did we get to 1122?

01:22:58.440 All your turkey people.

01:22:59.940 Right. Thank you. As somebody who once failed to do that until the day of, that's an important

01:23:05.260 reminder. The Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin, just one of the most hateful people in all

01:23:12.600 of media, has a piece out that reads, beware. DeSantis is as much a threat to America as Trump.

01:23:20.460 This needs to be their Republican. She goes on to talk about how he's terrible and he's

01:23:24.940 this that the profile of him is one of a constitutional ignoramus, a bully and a strong

01:23:30.420 man. Voters should be forewarned. So really, you know, it is true that whoever they pick

01:23:35.780 indicted, not indicted, you know, with Trump's history of tweets or not, they'll Trumpify him.

01:23:41.200 You know, so I joked actually in 2020, the day after the election, that congratulations to Donald

01:23:48.160 Trump. Your favorabilities in the press will only go up from here. And poor thing, the next guy

01:23:53.020 will be you as the second coming. And it's happening. They they every Republican is redeemed

01:23:58.640 the moment he loses. Mitt Romney was a racist. And then suddenly it was he's so much better than

01:24:03.140 Donald Trump. And now it'll be, well, this guy's a dangerous Donald Trump because he's smart and

01:24:08.300 savvy. Interestingly enough, by the way, a month ago, Jim Rubin wrote about Ron DeSantis and said that

01:24:13.620 he was a nothing nobody outside of the MAGA right and no one would vote for him outside of the MAGA

01:24:19.520 right. And yet suddenly he won majority of Hispanics and a significant portion of Democrats.

01:24:24.200 So if Jim Rubin says something, I swear she is the example of Washington Post clickbait.

01:24:30.700 You would think Jeff Bezos wouldn't rely on the clickbait of an idiot to boost the traffic of the

01:24:36.120 Washington Post. But they clearly do. She when you think Trump derangement syndrome,

01:24:41.380 that's who comes to mind. The Lincoln Project people and Jennifer Rubin. She's lost her mind over

01:24:47.280 Trump. Has taken every position under the sun and every position she used to hold when Romney was

01:24:53.200 running for president. She now holds the exact opposite because of Trump. It's the weirdest

01:24:57.020 thing, including moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. She was one of the loudest advocates

01:25:01.660 of it when Mitt Romney was running for president. The moment Trump did it, she's like, this is a

01:25:05.300 terrible decision. He's evil. It must be stopped. Or let me switch gears and talk to you about Paul

01:25:10.000 Pelosi, as I know you've been following this and covering it. And as I mentioned, you're a lawyer.

01:25:14.320 Very interesting development in this case. Body cam footage has now been shared. I'm trying to say

01:25:25.800 with it's NBC Bay Area. OK, so NBC currently has Miguel Amadeur on suspension because he reported

01:25:34.480 that, among other things, Paul Pelosi opened the door for the police when they got there and that he then

01:25:42.340 turned and walked toward his attacker and not toward the police. And that 22 minutes had passed

01:25:48.000 before he called 911 and there was no understanding of what had happened during those 22 minutes. OK,

01:25:52.700 those are some of the things that NBC's Miguel Amadeur reported. And they pulled the report saying it

01:25:59.100 wasn't up to their standards without getting specific and then suspended him. Now, NBC Bay Area,

01:26:05.500 not controlled by the master NBC doing their own reporting, says they spoke with a source familiar

01:26:10.720 with the Pelosi investigation, who personally viewed the body camera video recorded by the officers

01:26:16.200 responding to the Pelosi home and that the body cam video shows Paul Pelosi opened the door for police,

01:26:24.100 despite what the DOJ put in its complaint against the attacker, which says as follows.

01:26:32.380 I'm trying to get exactly that SFPD officers responded to the Pelosi residents at 231 a.m.,

01:26:40.320 that two officers knocked on the front door. The two officers who approached the door had their

01:26:45.180 body worn cameras activated. And here's the thing that the DOJ did. And I missed this because

01:26:49.640 originally the DOJ had said through the FBI that Paul Pelosi opened the door. But now in their

01:26:55.260 indictment against the guy, the DOJ says the two officers opened the door to see the foyer of the

01:27:01.680 Pelosi residents. And there was Pelosi and DePOP jointly grabbing a hammer. OK, so they've changed

01:27:07.680 their story that the FBI, which is part of the DOJ, the FBI originally said Pelosi opened the door.

01:27:14.140 Then they change it in the indictment to know the cops opened the door. Then the NBC has to pull its

01:27:19.900 report for saying it was Pelosi who opened the door, among other things in that report. And now we're

01:27:25.600 back to NBC, the local reporting. Pelosi opened the door. What is happening?

01:27:31.220 You know, damage control. It's interesting. They waited until after the midterm election to come

01:27:37.240 out and say all of this stuff, walking everything back. What a weird story. I don't dispute,

01:27:43.540 don't deny Paul Pelosi was attacked. It appears the guy was nuts, came into the home. I don't really buy

01:27:49.540 into the weird conspiracy theories that continue to crop up about this stuff. But clearly there was a

01:27:55.200 damage control mode there. And my personal theory, I don't think it's a conspiracy, is that in the

01:28:00.780 run up to the election, Democrats were aggressively talking about authoritarian Republicans, cruel, mean,

01:28:06.920 bad, violent. This happens to Paul Pelosi. The last thing they needed was to have it turn out that

01:28:14.160 Paul Pelosi opened the door for the police and walked back inside because that would have diminished

01:28:18.820 their ability to talk about the crazy, authoritarian, violent Republicans. So they

01:28:23.340 quiet the story down until after the election. And now we get to know the truth. Very much like,

01:28:28.520 by the way, the Mar-a-Lago raid in August, right after the election, turns out nothing of consequence

01:28:33.480 was in the stack of stuff. And they think he did it because of ego. Wait until after the election for

01:28:38.200 these things because they needed a narrative. It's unbelievable. I mean, again, I'm still irritated by

01:28:44.860 the New York Times calling me a purveyor of misinformation in connection with this story.

01:28:49.740 And when you look deeper in the article, my sin was questioned whether all the facts were being

01:28:54.220 revealed by the San Francisco police. Yes, I did do that. And I continue to have those questions.

01:29:00.160 By the way, they listed me as a Republican, which is not true. I'm an independent, something they

01:29:04.380 refuse to correct. As a talk show host, I'm a journalist. And this is a news program with news

01:29:09.340 commentary, which is how it's classified on the podcast services, which they know because they

01:29:13.920 have their own, The Daily, hosted by a journalist named Michael Barbaro, who does interviews and

01:29:18.600 commentary on the day's news. They just they don't deal in facts. And the reason they included me and

01:29:24.500 many others who had just said something doesn't seem right about this story is because they wanted

01:29:29.120 to get the narrative out to that this the right wing, which they put me as part of, is evil and says

01:29:36.260 stuff that leads to attacks, whether it's against Paul Pelosi or this situation that we saw, this

01:29:43.020 horrendous nightclub attack down in Colorado. Their first instinct is to find anybody who they

01:29:49.060 think is right leaning and blame them. Right. I mean, look, I've been figuring out how to cover

01:29:54.820 the Colorado shooting, and it's appalling that the wall to wall commentary on MSNBC and even some

01:30:01.020 shows on CNN is that while the right provoke this attack by questioning drag queen story hour,

01:30:06.940 they can't acknowledge the culpability of the actual criminal. It's got to be Republicans

01:30:12.960 provoked it somehow. I get the sense they're overplaying their hand. It's a little bit absurd.

01:30:18.620 For example, back here in Georgia, Herschel Walker's running an ad with the NCAA female swimmer who was

01:30:24.900 forced to have a boy in the locker room with her. And we have it. We have it. Stand by. Let me let me

01:30:29.880 play it. And then you tell me what they're doing with it. Here it is. Side 11.

01:30:33.160 Riley Gaines, a 12 time NCAA All-American. And I'm Herschel Walker. For more than a decade,

01:30:38.560 I worked so hard. 4am practices to be the best. But my senior year, I was forced to compete against

01:30:45.120 a biological male. That's unfair and wrong. A man won the swimming title that belonged to a woman.

01:30:51.280 And Senator Warnock voted to let it happen. Warnock's afraid to stand up for female athletes.

01:30:56.660 Herschel Walker stands up for what's right.

01:30:59.200 Go ahead, Eric.

01:31:00.580 Well, don't you know he ran that ad after the shooting in Colorado? So he's glorifying the

01:31:05.540 violence in Colorado and Republicans are the cause because of ads like that, the violence in Colorado,

01:31:10.580 even though the ad didn't come out until after the attack. It's this bizarre, ghoulish

01:31:14.860 need to blame Republicans for every violent thing in America. The ad's totally legitimate.

01:31:20.880 It makes a really good point that someone shot people in a gay nightclub in Colorado during a drag

01:31:28.600 queen time has no bearing on the legitimacy of that ad. And yet, if you watch MSNBC, it's all tied

01:31:35.100 together. Well, the other is it's clearly an attempted muzzle on views with which they disagree.

01:31:41.800 This whole thing like Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire has. But he's the one who did. What is a woman?

01:31:47.140 He and many others on the right have said we object to the mutilation of minors. We object to these

01:31:54.060 cross sex procedures on children who are incapable of providing consent. And for the most part,

01:32:01.220 none of them objects to what an adult does. Right. That's not really the argument coming out of any

01:32:06.220 conservative circles. And we object to drag queen story hour for minors. We don't think it's

01:32:11.400 appropriate for schools to shove this kind of sexual behavior in front of the kids. It's confusing

01:32:16.280 and so on. They take a situation like this where this club where the attack happened was going to

01:32:20.920 have a drag queen celebration the next day, again, for adults, as far as I understand, and try to say

01:32:26.780 that's Matt Walsh's fault. That's because he objects to this thing. Maybe this person heard Matt

01:32:32.260 Walsh, even if they had. But there's absolutely no evidence that none, none whatsoever. The shooter.

01:32:36.220 But even if the shooter had heard that, you cannot use a legitimate argument on a very divisive social

01:32:41.820 issue to say you caused violence in the mind of a crazy person. And therefore, you can never

01:32:48.220 voice your objections again because your positions are dangerous. Yeah. You know, it's the hypocrisy

01:32:54.460 here is no one held Elizabeth Warren to account when she called for Christian pregnancy centers to be

01:32:59.880 shut down. And the next day, people started firebombing them. No one held Rachel Maddow or Bernie Sanders

01:33:05.520 accountable for James Hodgkinson's mass assassination attempt on Republicans. And no one

01:33:10.340 should. But by God, the moment a Republican says something they don't like, that Republican's words

01:33:14.940 are responsible for the violence of every random crazy person in America. I do think most Americans

01:33:20.600 understand that. But inside this Democratic bubble where much of the mainstream media exists with them,

01:33:26.120 that seems to be a valid way to go after Republicans. I don't think not only is it going to work,

01:33:31.040 but I think over time, much like calling everything racist that isn't, you wind up actually doing real

01:33:37.060 damage by people tuning out all the legitimate claims, too. All right. Last question. What are

01:33:42.780 you doing for Thanksgiving? And what makes it special for you? OK, so normally we have my entire

01:33:48.940 family come here and I do all the cooking. I do all the cleaning. You know, I love to cook and we're

01:33:53.600 actually going to go take care of my in-laws. They've been under the weather. They'll do some of the

01:33:56.940 cooking. But I'll do pies and I actually have the best gravy recipe on planet Earth. And I will be

01:34:01.980 making the gravy and the chocolate pie and the buttermilk pie dressing. And then my father-in-law

01:34:08.220 does the turkey. My mother-in-law does the other stuff. My wife is a master of desserts. By the way,

01:34:13.240 I've got to say hi to my wife who has no idea I'm doing this. She's in her car. I guarantee you

01:34:18.280 listening and had no idea I was going to be on with you. I didn't tell her. How is she doing,

01:34:23.080 the beautiful Christy? You know, she's doing great. She had her last scans two weeks ago.

01:34:28.780 Everything is still good. We do it every three months. There's really no cure for it. But the

01:34:34.180 tumors aren't growing. So she has this rare form of cancer in her lungs. But she's doing remarkably

01:34:40.160 well. She has a Harley and tattoos and a shotgun. And I'm scared of her. Perfect. Well, much to be

01:34:47.680 thankful for. I'm so glad she's doing well. And you are as well. And there was so much like

01:34:52.340 flack thrown your way after 2016 and Trump and that whole thing. And it's great to see you so

01:34:58.180 successful and just rocking it on all fronts. All the best to you.

01:35:03.340 You too. Happy Thanksgiving.

01:35:04.760 Yeah, to you too. All right. When we come back, a special treat. My pal Doug Brunt,

01:35:09.980 my husband, actually made some interesting news on his podcast dedicated with Doug Brunt involving

01:35:16.280 Johnny Depp. That's next.

01:35:21.120 So my partner in life, Doug Brunt, my husband made some news on his new podcast dedicated with Doug

01:35:28.440 Brunt from what you might consider an unlikely source, Paulina Portskova, the supermodel of the

01:35:34.780 1990s. I mean, she was, as he points out in the podcast, one of those people who first name only,

01:35:39.520 that's all that was required. She wound up marrying Rick Okasik of the cars. And she's been fascinating to

01:35:45.200 watch over these many years. He dropped the podcast today. And in their exchange,

01:35:51.120 he asked her about her time acting with Johnny Depp, who you may be aware was absolutely demonized by

01:36:00.300 many in the press and by his ex-wife, Amber Heard, in connection with domestic violence

01:36:06.060 allegations she made and so on that a jury rejected. But very different thoughts here from

01:36:12.600 Paulina Portskova. Take a listen.

01:36:14.500 Your career expands, of course, beyond modeling. So you've done tons of TV and film. In 1993,

01:36:19.400 you did a film Arizona Dream with Johnny Depp. And so in 93, he's a year or two older than you. And

01:36:26.780 maybe you guys were late 20s. He was 30 or something like that. And you were younger.

01:36:30.480 But in 93, Johnny Depp was like the number one heartthrob in the world as a man. And you were

01:36:36.300 probably number one as a woman. Did you guys connect in some way on that level of celebrity and that level

01:36:42.780 of interest coming in that was really sort of sexually charged interest?

01:36:46.360 We did connect as friends. And I really actually Johnny was the was a person, one of the first

01:36:55.740 people that taught me what sort of a non judgment of of people around the people that you work with is

01:37:05.520 like because we were on the set and the Arizona Dreams was filled with huge movie stars. It was Faye

01:37:11.020 Dunaway. That was Jerry Lewis, whose wife I'm playing in the movie. Lily Taylor, Vincent Gallo.

01:37:19.140 I mean, it was like a star studded cast. And so a lot of egos on the set. And Johnny, who was the

01:37:26.960 world's biggest heartthrob at that time, did not act like one. He was really kind. He was really kind

01:37:34.160 to the electricians and to the crew and to, you know, the could you see it as he walked around,

01:37:40.560 you know, to get lunch or something. People would be like, oh, my God. I mean, for certain stars like

01:37:44.720 Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, you, like people lose their minds when they get around them.

01:37:50.280 Again, on a movie set, people know how to how to be around movie stars. You know, they're they don't

01:37:57.200 lose their minds. And Johnny was so nice. He was so kind to the people around him that he sort of

01:38:03.440 became everybody's friend. He was just like genuinely liked by everybody on the set. And I really took note

01:38:09.260 of this. I thought, you know, he where he went, he created a little calm space around him of gentleness,

01:38:16.760 of niceness, of kindness. And people really responded to that. And I thought I sort of that

01:38:22.740 stuck. I was like, I want to do that. I want to be like that. You know, and we all did you ever ask

01:38:28.600 him about it or tell him this observation that you'd made?

01:38:31.540 Um, I don't think so. I think what I did tell him was that I had a lot of respect for him because

01:38:38.880 he could be off in Hollywood doing really big Hollywood movies. And instead, here he was in

01:38:45.960 Arizona doing a weird little independent film. He did make cool choices with his work.

01:38:51.760 Yeah. And he, and he, he did John Waters, Crybaby. And, you know, he, he, he made some really

01:38:57.780 interesting, different, cool choices. And I, I really respected him for that.

01:39:02.420 Yeah. He seems like a true artist.

01:39:04.880 So pretty interesting, right? And we remember how the world lost its mind when Kate Moss took the stand

01:39:09.880 at that trial. Here's another supermodel talking about her very positive experience with Johnny Depp.

01:39:14.760 Just kind of interesting to hear the behind the scenes take on who he was when he could have been a

01:39:18.860 complete, you know, jerk and wasn't, you don't hear that about every star. Uh, anyway, it's called

01:39:24.200 dedicated with Doug Brunt. You'll love it. He's got a great one with William Finnegan from last week

01:39:27.700 that's going on fire, but Paulina dropped today. Check it out. You'll love it. And listen, we're

01:39:32.060 going to be, uh, we'll be back tomorrow with a special deep dive on Alec Baldwin and the latest

01:39:36.300 on that movie set shooting, which I think you'll, you'll enjoy. And we look forward to seeing you

01:39:40.520 then. In the meantime, download the show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher. That is the

01:39:44.280 Megyn Kelly show. In addition, dedicated with Doug Brunt and check us out at

01:39:47.460 youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - November 22, 2022

Legacy Media Discovers Hunter's Laptop, and Warnock vs. Walker, with Clay Travis and Erick Erickson ｜ Ep. 440

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