Former Fox News anchor Carrie Lake joins Meghan on the show to discuss her campaign for governor of Arizona. She talks about how she got her start in politics, why she decided to run for office, and why she's running for governor in 2020.
00:00:00.540Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.700Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.
00:00:15.820We have a ton of news to get to today, and we have three great guests to tackle it all.
00:00:20.960President Biden back from Saudi Arabia where his fist bump with MBS is drawing criticism.
00:00:26.420And not just from the right. Democrats in the media were out in full force over the weekend critiquing his trip.
00:00:32.220But we begin today with a GOP gubernatorial race in Arizona that feels a bit like a referendum on 2020, 2022, 2024, and for the Republican Party.
00:00:46.160Former President Donald Trump has endorsed Carrie Lake, while his vice president, Mike Pence, just endorsed Lake's opponent.
00:00:54.220Now, this happened in Pennsylvania as well, but the race is a lot tighter out in Arizona, and it's Trump's endorsed candidate who is ahead in the polls.
00:01:05.640The current governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, has endorsed Lake.
00:01:09.760She's the one who's ahead in the polls opponent.
00:01:12.640And he critiqued Carrie Lake during a CNN appearance yesterday.
00:01:16.180Interesting that you have a Republican governor sitting on CNN ripping on this Republican candidate backed by Trump.
00:01:24.220Ms. Lake has made waves in the media during her campaign with a CNN reporter, on Fox News with Brett Baer, and on Twitter.
00:01:30.840And now the former longtime TV news anchor in Arizona joins me today.
00:02:22.160But I loved it was the greatest gift ever to cover this beautiful state of Arizona for 27 years and and wrap my arms around the biggest issues that we face here and get to know the people.
00:02:33.360And I'll tell you, the skills I learned on my job and the information I was able to learn have equipped me so perfectly for this run for governor.
00:02:44.340Well, that I can see that because with the way you do battle with the media, suggest somebody who knows it from the inside.
00:02:51.160You know how dishonest the media can be, how they only want to go to the places that will make you look bad.
00:02:57.620They don't really want to talk about who you really are.
00:02:59.580They just want to talk about the latest scandal of the day.
00:03:02.180And I know you, you know, you were on the other side of that, so you know it better than anybody.
00:03:05.700But before we get off, get to all that, can I just ask you?
00:03:08.240So you were from not from, but you spent time in my hometown of Albany, New York on air as well, right?
00:08:32.860We had a group of 1,000 people a couple months ago in Tucson, which is one of our most liberal cities, who came out to see us because they like our America First policies.
00:29:44.400When the federal government fails us at the Guarantee Clause, Article four, section four, there is a remedy right there in that beautiful document called the U.S. Constitution.
00:29:53.100And that is what our Defend Arizona border policy is all about.
00:29:57.660We have the right to take it on right now, secure our border, and we don't have to wait on the federal government.
00:30:03.180And Doug Ducey needs to grow a spine and do something about it.
00:30:06.000I gave him my policy when we came out with it at the beginning of the year, and he did nothing with it.
00:30:11.220Now he's saying, oh, Karen's going to be great on the border.
00:30:13.720Well, if she's so great on the border, why don't you take her policy, which is a bunch of talking points that the high-priced McCain consultants she's hired have come up with.
00:30:23.840Her border policy has – there's no teeth in it.
00:30:27.980Mine calls for, on day one, we issue a declaration of invasion, and we get the ball rolling.
00:30:34.960We're going to put boots on the ground.
00:30:36.680We will be sending our Arizona National Guard troops to the border, and we're going to stop people from coming across, Megan.
00:30:42.680Right now, the Border Patrol, which is controlled by Biden and his illegitimate administration, they're forced to just process people.
00:30:50.540We're not going to allow them to do that in Arizona anymore.
00:30:53.620When we catch people, when we stop people, we're sending them back across into – back to Mexico.
00:30:59.180And most of these people aren't even coming from Mexico, but they're coming through Mexico, and we're going to need to have the cooperation of the Mexican government, and we will work and play hardball with them until we get that cooperation.
00:31:12.060But in very short order, as we start constructing President Trump's wall, we're going to finish it here in Arizona using the materials that the federal government abandoned on our border.
00:31:21.740We're going to take those back, and we're going to use those materials that we, the people, paid for, finish the wall, and we're going to stop people from coming across illegally in Arizona.
00:31:31.760I'm a mom, and I'm not okay with fentanyl pouring across.
00:31:35.300I've talked to way too many moms and dads on the campaign trail who've lost a 19-year-old, a 22-year-old, a child to fentanyl poisoning.
00:31:44.860And the fact that Joe Biden and Doug Ducey is sitting there doing nothing and allowing the cartels to control our border is disgusting, unconscionable, and they really should be run out of office.
00:31:55.640On that front, the update on drug seizures, just June compared to May, okay, and May's numbers were horrible.
00:32:05.520Cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, fentanyl, marijuana by weight were up 25% in June compared to May.
00:32:12.300Cocaine seizures had increased 62% month over month.
00:32:16.000Maybe you could argue that that means we're doing better, but this is all the Border Patrol agents doing the best they can, being outmanned and underpaid, and then criticized at every turn by the Biden administration for the work that they do do.
00:32:30.500But yeah, it's not just a question of illegal immigrants sneaking across the border.
00:33:06.220Donald Trump, he would have won the presidency even if he'd won Arizona, or if, you know, like going on and on and on, even if he'd lost Arizona and so on.
00:33:12.860But do you think Arizonans want another re-litigation of that?
00:33:18.440I think they want it litigated initially.
00:33:22.520We have a lot of evidence, a mountain of evidence.
00:33:24.820And every time someone asks me, I'm happy to provide them that evidence.
00:33:28.160The media has failed us on reporting on the biggest story in our lifetime, which is a stolen election, a rigged election, and a corrupt election.
00:33:45.260And our governor sat there and watched the election be run in a corrupt way, and then he certified a corrupt election.
00:33:53.020Listen, I just want honest elections for all people.
00:33:55.340Arizona, if you're a Democrat, independent, or Republican, I want a level playing field.
00:34:00.100I don't want people taking ballots and stuffing ballot boxes, and I don't want mail-in ballots floating around out there and sitting on top of mailboxes and people then filling those out fraudulently.
00:34:10.880We don't want another case where we have 740,000 ballots that have no chain of custody, that can't be authenticated, yet were counted.
00:34:19.000We've just got to follow our election laws and our election rules and have a level playing field for everyone.
00:34:26.640And I think for the Democrats as well.
00:34:28.540Remember, in 2017, Kamala Harris, I heard it with my own ears.
00:34:33.300She said she witnessed one of these electronic voting machines being hacked right in front of her.
00:34:39.280So we want every election to be fair, where Democrats go to bed at night, Republicans go to bed, independents, and they go, well, either my guy won or my guy lost, but I can sleep.
00:35:39.600The majority Republican Maricopa County Board of Supervisors hired two separate independent firms to perform a forensic audit of the voting equipment.
00:35:47.100This is the Sidney Powell Kraken thing.
00:35:49.260An audit which found zero irregularities.
00:38:40.320It's like they're just the only policy because you because at one point you had a friendship with somebody who was a drag queen and enjoyed occasional performances as an adult at like a birthday party.
00:38:51.340They want to say that you're pro drag queens for children at school.
00:38:59.140I just I would love to talk about my policies.
00:39:00.920I'm the only person in the country that has a policy to tackle homelessness and restore quality of life.
00:39:07.400And before we get to that, though, because let me finish up this one topic, you know, as a news anchor, we need to close the loop for the for the audience.
00:39:13.400Otherwise, they feel like the itch went unscratched.
00:39:16.180Because I think this is legit for Republican voters to try to figure out who they want.
00:39:20.620There was just a a soundbite that Fox News is running today showing voters in Arizona.
00:40:26.360I thought he was a great president while he was president.
00:40:27.960But after the fact, I think we've seen a lot of divisiveness that's come from things.
00:40:33.120And, again, I wouldn't vote for him in a primary, but the policy that he was able to do, I would probably vote for him in an election, but not a primary.
00:40:43.040What do you make of it? Those are Arizonans.
00:40:45.020Well, I mean, you probably saw my interview with Fox.
00:40:47.560First of all, Fox has been having my opponent on since she was polling at two points.
00:40:53.100She was, like, fourth or fifth place, and they've been having her on.
00:40:55.960They've obviously picked their horse, and that's who they've picked.
00:41:17.080You only find people saying what you're trying to bolster.
00:41:20.260They're trying to bolster that they're trying to say people are sick of President Trump, and they're not.
00:41:26.280People believe and want to see his policies back.
00:41:29.660They want to see him back in the White House.
00:41:32.000Let's talk about homelessness, because that's a problem plaguing not just you, but New York and California.
00:41:38.220And that is one of the issues that I think can turn some blue voters red, you know, who have just had it.
00:41:43.980Look at San Francisco, these far-left policies that have really ruined people's lives, homeless people and people who are, you know, well off.
00:41:55.700You know, what could you do differently to address that problem?
00:41:58.160We have an amazing homeless policy, and I'm so proud of it.
00:42:01.580And it all came about when I was at a gathering of voters in Arizona.
00:42:06.600And we had a mother who, she raised her hand to ask a question, and she said, I feel so bad asking this question because I'm a compassionate person, but what can you do about homelessness?
00:42:28.720It's been overrun by people who are homeless and using drugs.
00:42:32.000And I thought, oh, my gosh, how sad that she didn't feel she could even ask that question without being castigated for being, having no compassion.
00:42:41.840And I said, you absolutely have the right to ask that question, and dang it, we are taxpayers.
00:42:48.700We pay to build these parks and take care of them, and we should be able to enjoy our communities, the quality of life.
00:42:54.760And if we let the quality of life slip because we allow our homeless population to grow out of control like they did in California, then we will become a state with hallowed-out cities where nobody wants to live or work or have a business.
00:43:06.280So we brought together some of the greatest minds, and we put amazing policy together on homelessness, and we are going to actually put some money into mental health programs and addiction programs.
00:43:17.680And we're going to give people the option to get off the street and get help.
00:43:21.240God did not envision any of us living in the depths of despair, and we are going to help people pull themselves up from the depths of despair, get off the drugs, get help for their mental illness,
00:43:32.000get job training, and become a contributing member of society.
00:43:37.760And for those who refuse that, for those who say, no, I just want to live on the street, use, and take advantage of the system, life's going to become very difficult for them in Arizona.
00:44:23.240Because there's been an industry created around homelessness.
00:44:25.900And whenever you create an industry around a problem, a lot of people see dollar signs, and they go, wow, for every homeless person we're helping, we're getting $10,000, $15,000, $20,000.
00:44:36.040There's no incentive to help that person.
00:44:39.600It's the same with COVID, same with abortion.
00:44:45.700They're enabling people to continue to use drugs.
00:44:48.140It's the saddest thing I've ever seen.
00:44:49.680And rather than, you know, you look at, you've seen the video, I'm sure, out of California, where they're giving them drugs, and they're giving them needles, and giving them a little bit of food.
00:45:00.080If you've ever had a loved one who's been an addict, and you say, hey, look, why don't you come and live in our guest room, and you don't have to do anything.
00:45:07.320Just live there, and don't worry about it.
00:45:09.440Pretty soon, that guest room is going to become a drug den.
00:45:11.480You have to have skin in the game, and we're going to require that people put some skin in the game, and we are also going to help them.
00:45:18.580I got like a minute and a half left, so a couple quick hits.
00:45:21.580Who's your favorite female politician?
00:46:04.140We have questioned whether, since Trump very much backs you and you very much back him, whether there could be a Carrie Lake vice presidency under another Trump administration.
00:46:15.860Is that something you would ever consider?
00:46:17.220Since he's clearly out of running, mate, we do not think Mike Pence will be the guy.
00:47:20.400It was a pleasure to be on with you today.
00:47:22.540OK, coming up, two authors here in our next hour.
00:47:25.220Plus, my thoughts on the latest about Leah Thomas, now nominated by her school, University of Pennsylvania, to be the NCAA Woman of the Year.
00:47:51.300I just want to tell you, too, that Ms. Lake's opponent, Ms. Robeson, is welcome on the program as well.
00:47:56.520We'd love to hear her point of view on the issues we discussed.
00:48:04.380We begin this hour with the University of Pennsylvania disgracing itself once again.
00:48:09.380After a season of dumping on its female swimmers, forcing them to compete against a biological man who now says he is a woman, forcing them to share a locker room with said swimmer, dismissing their and their parents' concerns summarily at every turn, even telling the female swimmers what they needed if they objected to the trans swimmer was therapy.
00:48:28.280The university now sticks a final thumb in the women's eyes, nominating this trans swimmer who goes by the name Leah Thomas as the University of Pennsylvania's NCAA Woman of the Year.
00:48:48.060Leah Thomas is a trans woman who lived the first 20 years of her life as Will Thomas, a man.
00:48:54.340She only decided to transition in 2020 after swimming three seasons as a middling competitor on the men's team, ranking in the mid 500s on the women's team the very next year, ranked number one.
00:49:09.260How does a person who lived 20 years as a man, two as a woman, and in those two stole several female swimming records, wind up anyone's woman of the year?
00:49:19.560This must be some kind of sick joke meant to increase resentment towards trans people.
00:49:25.740That is one of the reasons it's so stomach turning.
00:49:28.980Most trans people, and I know plenty of trans people, including in my own family, want to be left alone and not have their gender constantly discussed or made somebody else's cause or to worm their way into a sport in which they know they have a physical advantage.
00:49:43.560The law has already changed to make sure that trans people may not be legally discriminated against because of their gender identity in the workplace setting.
00:49:52.920As for sports, it's a much trickier debate, given the physical advantages post pubescent boys and men have over women.
00:50:01.680This used to be a given. It is why we needed Title IX, which is supposed to protect girls' equality in the field of athletics.
00:50:09.500But the Biden administration wants to change all that, making it unlawful to exclude trans athletes from girls' sports.
00:50:17.160It's pushing a reform of Title IX right now that does not yet specifically focus on sports, but make no mistake, it's coming.
00:50:24.940And Team Biden has already made clear that's what they think is fair, not to create a third category for trans swimmers, not to find a more fair way of letting them compete, but to making the girls' team accept biological men who say they're trans women in their swimming lane and other sports.
00:50:43.720The female swimmers at UPenn worked hard as young girls to make it in swimming, to make it to Ivy League swimming in the case of UPenn, swimming at the elite level.
00:50:56.140I mean, not for nothing, but they swam with growing breasts, growing hips, more fat on their bodies, less upper body strength than their male competitors.
00:51:04.760They swam with shorter legs for the most part than the boys, thinner and weaker muscles than the boys.
00:51:09.820They swam with periods and cramps and bloating.
00:51:13.260And the women on that team and the others at the college level did it all, despite these relative physical disadvantages when compared to their male colleagues.
00:51:22.800Then at UPenn, in the course of one year, they saw their medals, first place finishes, NCAA tournament spots and records stolen from them by a person who was a crappy male swimmer on the men's team months earlier.
00:51:38.040When they quietly objected, they were called bigots or sent to therapy by their school.
00:51:46.960Leah Thomas, meanwhile, enjoyed every minute of the spotlight.
00:51:51.960Thomas was allowed to swim with the women only because the NCAA only required one year of hormone suppressant therapy for a trans woman to compete in women's sports.
00:52:02.400No one cared about the fact that Thomas is over six feet with far greater lung capacity, wingspan, muscle and bone mass, et cetera, than Thomas's female competitors.
00:52:13.700Shut up about it or we'll ruin your future swimming and professional prospects.
00:52:19.140That was the clear message by the university to the women.
00:52:23.280Thomas told ABC News she was having a great time.
00:52:25.940This is a dream come true and that she would love to keep swimming right into the Olympics.
00:52:32.220To argue against that, Thomas contended, was to be an anti-trans bigot.
00:52:38.020Thomas went on to crush the 500 freestyle at the NCAA championships and is now the women's title holder.
00:52:46.100And there is UPenn yet again ready to shiv Thomas's female teammates with this latest nomination.
00:52:57.420That title belongs to one of the women who dealt with all of the physical and emotional challenges and opportunities that come with being an actual woman.
00:53:38.360What better place to start than right here?
00:53:40.880I mean, with all due respect to trans people and even to Leah Thomas, I understand Leah's desire to compete.
00:53:49.260This is a gross offense by the University of Pennsylvania on the heels of two years of offenses that they've committed against their girls.
00:54:27.100But this whole trans issue, and as you were saying, there are so many who do not want you in any way to, like, they don't want to talk about it.
00:54:37.080They don't want to talk about their gender and their sex.
00:54:39.040They just want to live perfectly normal lives.
00:54:41.320However, there's this segment of our culture, a very large and becoming very domineering segment of our culture, that says it's not so much about acceptance.
00:54:50.360This is something you need to accommodate.
00:54:51.860And as you were saying in your monologue, that this now means every other woman, actual woman in the locker room now needs to be okay with a biological male there, seeing them, seeing them being seen.
00:55:06.160In our military, taxpayers now are expected to fund these freak experiments with hormone therapies and actual genital mutilation.
00:55:16.920And, yes, I think that the sports element has captured our imagination.
00:55:28.760I said this when they were talking about Rachel Levine, who works for HHS, as the first female four-star admiral to hold this position.
00:55:38.440And I was making the point of, okay, Rachel Levine, like Leah Thomas, lived the first, I think, 55 years of Rachel Levine's life as a man, came up in medicine as a man during a time when it wasn't that easy for women in med schools.
00:55:53.440And so women who got into med schools, you know, back in the, whatever it was, would have been, I guess, late 60s, early 70s, they, they, it was a tough haul.
00:56:03.040And so they climbed this mountain, and they climbed it despite boulders coming down on them and cuts and bruises and all sorts of physical challenges and emotional challenges and intellectual challenges that were thrown their way, that weren't necessarily thrown the way of their male counterparts in med schools.
00:56:16.960And they got to the top of the mountain.
00:56:19.340You know, they, they created a presence for themselves in medicine.
00:56:22.120And meanwhile, Rachel Levine, as a man, was over there on the neighboring mountain, going up in a chairlift.
00:56:30.000And you go out and you see, they see each other at the top, and Rachel's being celebrated as the first woman to ever do it.
00:56:35.940And all the women with the bumps and bruises are looking over at Rachel Levine saying, what the hell?
00:56:43.040It's the same thing for Leah Thomas, who was Will Thomas, who's got all of the physical attributes of a male swimmer, minus one year of hormone therapy.
00:56:53.280And to pretend that that erases Leah Thomas's advantage over these women is to engage in a fraud, a crime.
00:57:00.160And now the University of Pennsylvania adds salt to the wounds of these still reeling women by saying she's the woman of the year, Eddie.
00:57:08.800I can't, like, we've lost our ever-loving minds.
00:57:13.300Well, Bray, and it's bad enough that everyone is expected to participate in these weird fantasies.
00:57:18.900But, but to shower and rain upon these people, you know, maybe Levine at the HHS, maybe she is actually a really smart, intelligent person.
00:57:41.680No, that, that is, as you just said, rubbing salt into the wound and people don't deserve it.
00:57:46.060And, you know, this is nothing to say of when we're getting to the issue with children and talking about children and how, you know, affirming the, these ideas they have in their head because they're confused or because they're maybe suffering from certain anxieties or neuroses.
00:58:00.220No, this is, we're just at the tip of the iceberg of this whole thing.
00:58:03.180But again, there's this culture we have that is becoming so dominant now where we have to pretend and all accommodate these very, very few people that what, what they're saying is true is not true.
00:58:14.400It is, it's, it's, it's very bizarre and I think scary.
00:58:17.920And I, I really hate that there will be backlash against the trans community as a result of these lunatics who are making these decisions at UPenn and elsewhere because people will think, oh, you know, these trans people, they think they, you know, they have the right to be everywhere.
00:58:31.060Like, like having a man swim against women, a biological man swim against women.
00:58:36.580And honestly, I do not believe in my heart that most trans people want that.
00:58:40.280If, if UPenn wants to nominate Leah Thomas as trans woman of the year, great, I can get behind that.
00:58:45.880I understand that brings with it a whole host of different challenges that Leah Thomas has had to overcome.
00:58:51.740But this is where the difference between a woman and a trans woman actually does matter.
00:58:57.400And to eliminate the terminology is meaningful.
00:59:01.300It really is meaningful and diminishing of the struggles that biological women have overcome.
00:59:08.220I'll say this, Riley Gaines, she's at University of Kentucky.
00:59:19.120Riley Gaines comes out and says, this makes the NCAA awards absolutely worthless.
00:59:25.380She comes out and says, by the way, this is this Riley finished behind Leah Thomas in the 200 freestyle at the NCAA championships this year.
00:59:33.760And she says, this award combines athletic performance with academics, service and character.
00:59:40.720What character has Thomas shown other than sheer selfishness and entitlement?
00:59:46.280And, you know, Eddie reminded me of when Leah Thomas sat down with ESPN.
00:59:50.680And I mean, not a word of empathy for what her choices have put her her teammates through.
00:59:55.600To the contrary, it was all about Leah.
01:00:00.400The women who signed the letter anonymously said that they absolutely supported your right to transition, but they simply think it's unfair for you to compete against cisgendered women.
01:00:12.280You can't go halfway and be like, I support trans women and trans people, but only to a certain point where if you support trans women as women and they've met all the NCA requirements.
01:00:30.000And then I don't know if you can really say something like that.
01:00:32.580Trans women are not a threat to women's sports.
01:00:45.320Why does the empathy only go one way on this issue?
01:00:48.340And why is there no responsibility asked of the trans community for some sensitivity to women and their right to compete on a fair playing field?
01:00:59.060And it's very strange that this is a position that is so beholden and so elevated by the left in our society that, well, they used to be the feminists.
01:01:13.560They were the feminists who said, we've got to protect women, make sure women have all the full rights and entitlements that men have in this country.
01:01:18.780And yet now they're saying, nope, we're actually just going to erase all of that.
01:01:22.920And that just that clip is so funny to me because I'm sure many of your listeners and many of your viewers have I've never actually heard or seen Leah Thomas talk.
01:01:31.380And I just wondered to myself, are you even trying?
01:01:33.280Are you actually even trying to make yourself clear to make us think you're more feminine?
01:02:27.120Why? Why do they why does UPenn stick the finger in the eye and say, not only does she get to compete and take all the titles and so on, which is a no brainer?
01:02:37.440Um, she's woman of the year and screw every other woman who had to suck it up and race against her and all the other women in the other sports that you buy.
01:02:47.000Well, to your first point, yes, I would not say not every liberal and not every Democrat is miserable.
01:02:52.460However, if you are a miserable person, you are almost certainly a liberal and a Democrat.
01:02:56.080And I proved that in my book, Liberal Misery to your second point is you're asking why they do that.
01:03:02.540There is a psychological factor to this that I that I really wanted to get to the bottom of when I wrote my book.
01:03:09.220And I just so happened I had no idea until I started researching it that there's all this data, all these surveys, all these studies that actually prove in every facet of life, every question you could ask a liberal, a Democrat, an independent and a Republican conservative across the political spectrum.
01:03:27.340Liberals and Democrats will time and time again, be the ones who are most likely to say they are unhappy, they are unhappy with their lives, they are they're more likely to block someone on social media because they said something they didn't like, they're more likely to express dissatisfaction with their marriage, with their for their friends, their families, where they live, their jobs, over and over and over again.
01:03:48.700And this goes through a course of years. And I noticed it in my own personal interaction. That's what really made me want to write the book is especially going into 2020.
01:03:58.500I kept coming and having these social interactions, oftentimes with strangers, sometimes with friends who decided they didn't want to be my friend anymore because of things I believe and things I said, simple arguments that should just be a matter of a difference of opinion.
01:04:11.040And you see it your way, I see it fine, but we're still hopefully we still believe each other are good people. No, that was not not not the case.
01:04:17.620And to find all this data that backed it up. And that's why also I was adamant of using the word misery for the title, because misery is something that spreads misery is something that the people there's a phrase for it misery loves company, that's something you want other people to feel and other people to experience because you have it.
01:04:34.280And that that's the case I'm making with liberal misery. Why do they want people to feel this way? Because that's what misery does. And that's that that is a quality that is on the left and exclusive to the left.
01:04:43.780And the hypocrisy, you know, like these people who are constantly lecturing the rest of us on how, you know, we need to be non bigoted, i.e. accept Leah Thomas without objection or in women's force, whatever you always see the other side of them.
01:04:59.120Right. Like whether it's Jill Biden suggesting Hispanics are unique as little tacos, which I saw you tweeted about that to these leftist politicians who want to defund the police unless they're facing a security threat, in which case they need private security tax payer funded details.
01:05:17.320Right. And I'm not the first person to make this point. I'm sure you've heard the point, but it has become so eye opening.
01:05:24.640And it is it really does cut to the quick on this on this particular topic.
01:05:29.420We at the Federalist, where I work full time, we do not use the word hypocrisy really anymore.
01:05:34.200This is hierarchy. This is the idea that I'm special. I get to do things.
01:05:38.420I get to have a security detail because I'm special. You you are the dirty ones.
01:05:42.680You don't get to have the same things that I have. You saw it time and time again.
01:05:45.660And I talk about it in my book, Liberal Misery, where some Democrat mayor, attorney general, whatever, would say, everyone, you need to stay home.
01:05:53.780Don't go out and do anything. You can you can just stay home, wear your mask.
01:05:57.800And yet what would you would see them at a restaurant? You would see them at a party.
01:06:01.240And they and I think it honestly did not register in their minds that this was not OK.
01:06:06.060You're telling people to do something and then you're going and doing it.
01:06:08.640And I really believe I think this was captured so well with that clip that became very popular of John Kerry, the special climate envoy for the Biden administration.
01:06:18.500They asked him, why are you taking why are you flying private?
01:06:21.660And he said, well, someone like me can't fly commercial.
01:06:28.780I'm important. And I think that's that is another one of those qualities of the left.
01:06:32.760And if you don't comply with it, they are angry. And of course, this is America. People are free.
01:06:37.220We're not supposed to work that way. Of course, people are like, no, we're not doing that.
01:06:40.560We have a difference of opinion. But I think the anger and bitterness and resentment of the left that you see time and time on the left and that is is proven, borne out through studies and data.
01:06:50.160As I cite in my book, I think that it's just another quality, another factor of liberal misery.
01:06:55.860Mm hmm. Well, I know it's in the news today that Representative Jayapal, she's part of the squad.
01:07:04.640She's asking for a private security detail, taxpayer funded.
01:07:08.180She did have a security threat outside of her house. That sounds legit.
01:07:11.680The guy got arrested. He was with a gun. He was saying threatening things.
01:07:14.520So I hear that. But this is the same person who's been in favor of, quote, diverting money away from the police.
01:07:20.560That said, law enforcement as a whole has a culture of brutality, which cannot be denied.
01:07:26.860And she and AOC were among the 27 House Democrats to reject enhanced security measures for Supreme Court justices after all the protests at their homes and so on.
01:07:38.280So she has no problem telling Brett Kavanaugh he can't get increased security.
01:07:43.280But when she has a guy outside of her house, who does she want?
01:07:46.940She wants cops and she wants you to pay for the cops and she wants me to pay for the cops.
01:07:51.360But she doesn't want women in the inner city who have a guy outside of their houses with a gun to have the same right.
01:07:59.560Yep. And I think this is the most shocking development, I think, in the probably the history of our country.
01:08:04.800I honestly believe that that there is one side of our politics in this country that actually believes that political violence has become OK and it has become justified.
01:08:14.280We saw it all through 2020. I write it.
01:08:16.600There's like two chapters in my book dedicated to this where rioting, violence, vandalism, destruction of public and private property, bashing windows of small businesses in.
01:08:27.620And that's supposed to be totally OK. Because why?
01:08:30.240Because one side said we're upset about about the way things are going, you know, and probably you you remember this was just another example.
01:08:38.640In 2020, the board, the boarded up storefronts and businesses had started to kind of come down.
01:08:44.200But as we're leading up to the election, election day, there was this idea that Trump really could possibly win.
01:08:49.900He might likely win even despite everything that was going on.
01:08:53.480All those boards in every single Democrat city, every I live in Washington, D.C., so I saw it here.
01:08:58.880Those boards went right back up, probably twofold. It was even worse because why?
01:09:02.860It wasn't because there was an anticipation of a Biden victory.
01:09:06.440It's not that Trump supporters were going to take to the streets.
01:09:09.280I mean, we saw January 6th, obviously, but they weren't going to take to the streets and then start blowing things up.
01:09:15.380Those storefronts and businesses, small businesses were boarded up because they thought there was a possibility of a Trump victory.
01:09:21.240And we have seen now how the left, how liberals and Democrats, how they react when they don't get their way.
01:09:26.440We're seeing it right now with sitting Supreme Court justice was chased out of a restaurant, threatened to be assassinated.
01:09:33.280Why? Because some decisions came out of the court that the left didn't like.
01:09:36.700So this, again, I think is the most shocking development that we have seen in this country, where the left, one side only, honestly, truly believes that a certain type of political violence, when it comes from their side, it's totally justified.
01:09:49.540And it is interesting to see when the shoe's on the other foot.
01:09:52.200So AOC, we talked about this on Friday, was irritated by a heckler who went up on Capitol Hill and said she was a big booty Latina and made some other questionable comments about her.
01:10:04.380That's how I describe myself. I don't see what the problem is.
01:11:43.020Right. And I think, again, that the left, including AOC, including the Ilhan Omar's, the most ungrateful refugee in the history of this country.
01:11:52.440The idea that harassment is OK if we say it's OK, if it's targeting the people we don't like, a sitting Supreme Court justice, chase them out of a restaurant, make him and his family feel completely unsafe, which they are.
01:12:35.600And again, when it came to my book, when I when I really started thinking about this was because of personal interactions.
01:12:42.000I bet every maybe not everyone, but a lot of your viewers and a lot of your listeners are going to say, you know, I've gone to a party before the person who got the when politics came up, when it became contentious, it was the liberal who honestly who really showed up thinking that, one, what they have to say matters to everyone should agree with it.
01:13:00.420And if they don't, I'm going to make you really, really uncomfortable for the rest of the night.
01:13:03.740I ran into that so many times through 2020 and just to find that that there's all this data, all these surveys, all this, all these studies backing up that idea, that that that feeling I had that.
01:13:13.560Why is every why is every person, Democrat, liberal that I that I run into and I run into many in Washington, D.C.?
01:13:20.960Well, it turns out that is just their nature.
01:13:22.700Well, that's part of the problem in Washington, D.C., because you've got the hard partisans there.
01:13:26.040You know, like I have so many liberals in my life who aren't like this at all and who who would love this book and who will laugh right along you and me at these outrageous stories.
01:13:34.420But this woke collection gives the party a bad name.
01:13:38.760They're losing Hispanic voters and they're losing more center minded liberals in New York City, even because of this craziness, whether it's the covid authoritarianism or their positions on things like, you know, Latinx and like all that stuff is a turnoff to just normal people who may vote Democrat.
01:13:55.440Because I like when I was growing up, my family voted Democrat because they thought Republicans were for the rich and we weren't rich.
01:14:00.660Right. So it's like more and more people are sort of opening their minds to the red party messaging because the blue party sounds insane.
01:14:08.500Now, we don't want to ask you a question.
01:14:10.400This jumped out at me when I was looking at the Jaya Pal, whatever, however you pronounce her last name story.
01:14:15.700So what happened was a 48 year old man allegedly drove past her West Seattle home three times last Saturday, July 9, yelling obscenities.
01:14:24.980One neighbor told cops she heard the man yell, go back to India.
01:14:45.440They said the man knew who lived at the residence and wanted to pitch a tent on their property and that he was going to target a victim of Indian descent.
01:15:24.160Now that she's gotten the gun, does she feel perfectly safe inside of her home?
01:15:29.120Or does she think the guy's mental health might bear some further digging into and possibly some restraint and that she might actually need a private security detail with guns like the less incessant focus on the handgun as the source of all evil?
01:15:46.600And if we could just scrub the nation of the 400 million guns we have, that somehow we're not going to have to deal with violence anymore or murders or what this guy's mental health is the issue.
01:18:21.620You saw in 2020 that giving them what they want, giving them the White House, giving them all of Congress, that this is that in any way your life would get better.
01:18:55.160I mean, he's like the only person I've ever read who's written for both like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic, but also National Review, like all over the board.
01:19:05.380So the guy's not particularly ideological.
01:19:07.480And he's got a fascinating story to tell you.
01:19:09.640Jamie Kerchick is a columnist for Tablet Magazine and author of The New York Times bestseller, Secret City, The Hidden History of Gay Washington.
01:19:24.080Jamie has collected and recounted in amazing detail the immense contributions and sometimes unjust and tragic outcomes of gay men and women serving in our federal government in the 1940s and onward.
01:19:39.540OK, so let instead of me trying to describe it that way, you tell me, what is the book about?
01:19:43.420What are you trying to bring to light?
01:19:46.060Well, during this period that I write about, which is really the Cold War or really World War II until the end of the Cold War, there was no greater secret in Washington or American politics that was more dangerous or more destructive to a political career than being gay.
01:20:02.560And so I figured that this would make a fascinating subject for a book and just exploring all the many ways in which homosexuality impacted American politics, the scandals, the personalities, how the presidents dealt with it.
01:20:16.260And that's what I've spent the past several years researching and writing.
01:20:21.260Well, it's fascinating because if you were born in the last 20 years, this may be new information to you, right?
01:20:28.340I mean, I was born in 1970, so I grew up in a time when if you were a gay man, you were probably closeted for most of your teenage existence and then ideally found the strength to come out.
01:20:39.000But, you know, I remember the time when it was like that it was not OK to be gay.
01:20:43.720Yeah. And and if you go back 20, 30 years prior to my birth, it was really not OK to be gay.
01:20:49.940And to the point where like murders and I mean, other really bad things would happen.
01:20:54.500In fact, from The New York Times review of the of the book, it reads, this book is also a whodunit to rival anything by Agatha Christie.
01:21:02.240How did so many promising men in government wind up dead before their time by such variously violent means?
01:21:09.140How did they? I mean, and why did they?
01:21:12.900Well, suicide, unfortunately, was a leading reason, particularly in the 1950s when there was something called the Lavender Scare.
01:21:21.060We're all familiar with the Red Scare, which was the purge of real or suspected communists and leftists in the federal government.
01:21:29.400There was a gay purge as well, as many, if not more people were purged from the government just for if they were suspected of being gay.
01:21:39.640And that resulted in a fair number of suicides.
01:21:44.240There were also murders in the sense that, you know, in this era of time, if you were a gay man and you were looking for sex,
01:21:52.980you would often be in dangerous places, public parks, public bathrooms.
01:21:57.360This was an era when homosexuality was criminalized. Right.
01:22:00.720And so when you criminalize something, if you look at, you know, prohibition, what happens?
01:22:05.280It's driven underground into a criminal element.
01:22:07.940And you would see a fair number of gay men would be taken advantage of and killed in this way.
01:22:12.700So, yes, there's there's a vast human toll to the societal homophobia that reigned really for most of the 20th century.
01:22:22.080And it's something that I document in the book.
01:22:25.740You know, I just got back on vacation in Italy and there were there was a fair amount of time, obviously, talking about Michelangelo and Da Vinci,
01:22:33.460both of whom were believed to be closeted, but, you know, died late in life without ever having taken a wife and so on.
01:23:23.300But the reason why I started the book around World War Two and why I think it made for a rich subject to study is that around World War Two is when homosexuality becomes securitized,
01:23:33.640by which I mean the United States is becoming a global superpower.
01:23:38.460It's building a national security bureaucracy.
01:23:41.400And it needs to manage secrets, which is a part of running a superpower and having a national security state.
01:23:47.460And it's believed that gay people will be more susceptible to blackmail because they have this terrible secret that they will do anything to protect, right?
01:23:55.300So if there's a gay government official, the fear is that he could be easily blackmailed by the Soviet Union or the Nazis or whomever we happen to be fighting at that time.
01:24:04.600And that is when this sort of obsession with gays and government and gays and politics really takes off.
01:24:12.080It's with the rise of the national security state.
01:24:14.920And I don't think it's a coincidence that I decided to end my book in 1995, which is after the Cold War ends.
01:24:21.440And that's the year when Bill Clinton lifted the ban on gay people receiving security clearances.
01:24:26.620You could not get a security clearance if you were gay until 1995.
01:24:33.080I mean, given the position that Rick Grinnell held under the Trump administration, you know, and it's crazy how far we've come.
01:24:40.320There's also some fun, interesting stories about names people will know in the book, like Gore Vidal going to the White House with Tennessee Williams.
01:24:51.900I didn't know, first of all, that Gore Vidal had any sort of a relationship to Jackie Kennedy.
01:24:57.240Oh, yeah. They were related by by I'm forgetting.
01:28:03.280And he worked for LBJ, for Lyndon Baines Johnson, when he was the Senate Majority Leader and then his vice president as an aide.
01:28:09.700And he would travel with him across the country and around the world.
01:28:12.800And then in the weeks after the Kennedy assassination, Waldron was preparing to join the White House staff when there was an investigation, because you have to go through a background check, obviously, if you're going to join the White House staff.
01:28:23.680And this was conducted by the Civil Service Commission, which did these these sorts of procedures.
01:28:29.060And they discovered that Waldron was gay.
01:28:37.160And I was able to obtain the Civil Service Commission report of their investigation, as well as an FBI investigation that they also did into Waldron.
01:28:48.680And it was about a thousand pages of documents that I had to go through.
01:28:51.660But it told the story in a really compelling and just tragically sad way.
01:28:56.960And this was a man who was very close to LBJ.
01:29:02.120And it just showed you the power, again, that homosexuality had in the public imagination that someone's entire life and career could be destroyed over it.
01:29:10.880And I would say the other most fascinating story was what what almost was a scandal.
01:29:17.780But in the summer of 1980, just a couple of weeks before Ronald Reagan was nominated to be president, there were a group of sort of liberal to moderate Republicans who didn't like Reagan because he was a conservative.
01:29:28.840And they basically collected these sorts of scattered accusations from various people, alleging that Reagan was being controlled by a right wing anti-communist homosexual cabal.
01:29:41.320And it sounds kind of crazy, but you have to remember, you know, in 1967, when Reagan was governor, he did fire two men on his staff who were accused of being gay.
01:29:52.520And this became public. It was really sort of the first scandal of Reagan's political career.
01:29:56.620So he had this sort of scandal lurking in the background.
01:29:59.920And this basically came back when these Republicans collected these accusations.
01:30:05.840And they actually brought them to Ben Bradley, the legendary editor of The Washington Post.
01:30:12.280He got Bob Woodward and several other, you know, top-notch reporters at The Post to investigate this story.
01:30:18.340They went out across the country and interviewed various people.
01:30:21.060And they ultimately didn't publish a story about it because they discovered that, yes, there were a couple of gay men who worked for Reagan, but there was no, you know, nefarious conspiracy going on.
01:30:30.820But it does show you, I think, again, the power of these accusations that they could wield.
01:30:37.060And I found all this information in Ben Bradley's papers, in his paper collection, which is at the University of Texas.
01:30:43.300There was just a folder in a box that I came across one day doing my research.
01:30:49.080And all the notes from the various reporters and the documentation was in that folder.
01:31:44.060I'm not writing about the local community of Washington, D.C.
01:31:46.680I'm writing about the federal government, but Congress, Senate, the executive branch, the presidency, the Defense Department, right?
01:31:52.960The vast majority of people who held political power in our country in this period were white men.
01:32:00.180There were very few black people, very few women in any positions of seniority in Washington.
01:32:04.740I think our country would have been a much better place if we had more women and people of color in positions of power in the 20th century.
01:32:12.520But that's not what our history shows.
01:33:48.360And that's why I try to speak to audiences of various ideological hues, people on the right, people in the center.
01:33:54.960And I don't think you're going to understand much about the world if you cloister yourself in one sort of ideological box.
01:34:03.240So as long as I can continue doing it, I will continue writing for publications on the right, on the left, in the center, whoever will publish me.
01:34:19.940Representative Jayapal coming out and saying what happened to her with a stalker in Seattle.
01:34:23.980Well, it's President Trump's fault that he unleashed, he mobilized all of that violence and white supremacy using the tools of the federal government, bans on Muslims, bans on trans folks, et cetera.
01:34:38.540And that is what led to this lunatic being outside of her house, threatening her.
01:34:45.580So she'll take similar responsibility, I'm sure, for what happened to Brett Kavanaugh with that guy showing up to kill him.
01:34:52.260I'm sure she's about to release the statement saying, I take it all back.
01:34:56.420That was irresponsible, and I should have been more careful in my rhetoric.
01:35:00.240I should never have endangered a sitting Supreme Court justice.
01:35:07.660We're going to have much more on that.
01:35:08.860And then tomorrow we're going to get into the news that just broke on Meghan and Harry.
01:35:12.820Do you believe these two had the nerve to go to the United Nations and try to lecture us all on the United States at rolling back constitutional rights?
01:35:21.860And in our global assault on democracy, can you just shut up and be a prince?
01:35:51.880OK, so there's my preview for what you'll hear tomorrow.
01:35:54.220In the meantime, don't forget later this week, we're going to have our friends from the Ruthless podcast back on.
01:35:58.900Plus, we're going to have one of the most notorious cyber criminals ever who switched sides and is now helping the FBI and others catch the bad guys.