The Megyn Kelly Show - Lia Thomas as ＂Woman of the Year,＂ and Political Hypocrisy, with Kari Lake, Jamie Kirchick, and Eddie Scarry ｜ Ep. 359

00:00:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.700 Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.

00:00:15.820 We have a ton of news to get to today, and we have three great guests to tackle it all.

00:00:20.960 President Biden back from Saudi Arabia where his fist bump with MBS is drawing criticism.

00:00:26.420 And not just from the right. Democrats in the media were out in full force over the weekend critiquing his trip.

00:00:32.220 But 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.

00:00:46.160 Former President Donald Trump has endorsed Carrie Lake, while his vice president, Mike Pence, just endorsed Lake's opponent.

00:00:54.220 Now, 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.

00:01:05.640 The current governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, has endorsed Lake.

00:01:09.760 She's the one who's ahead in the polls opponent. 1.00

00:01:12.640 And he critiqued Carrie Lake during a CNN appearance yesterday.

00:01:16.180 Interesting that you have a Republican governor sitting on CNN ripping on this Republican candidate backed by Trump.

00:01:24.220 Ms. Lake has made waves in the media during her campaign with a CNN reporter, on Fox News with Brett Baer, and on Twitter.

00:01:30.840 And now the former longtime TV news anchor in Arizona joins me today.

00:01:39.700 Carrie Lake, welcome to the show.

00:01:41.860 I am so thrilled to be here, Megan. It's great to be here.

00:01:45.040 Lots happening in Arizona. Who would have thunk that we'd have a duel in the desert?

00:01:49.940 I know. Well, first of all, I love the fact that you were in my line of work and then decided to actually do something for a living.

00:01:58.400 You know, I loved being a journalist. I was a fair journalist, an old school journalist.

00:02:02.920 I learned a long time ago that you tell both sides of the story and you keep your opinion out of it.

00:02:08.060 Sometimes there's three sides of the story, but you basically keep your opinion out of it.

00:02:12.300 You don't try to tell the viewer what they should think.

00:02:15.200 And then somewhere along the way, they started training people to be activists in journalism school.

00:02:20.480 And so I walked away.

00:02:22.160 But 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.

00:02:33.360 And 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.

00:02:44.340 Well, that I can see that because with the way you do battle with the media, suggest somebody who knows it from the inside.

00:02:51.160 You know how dishonest the media can be, how they only want to go to the places that will make you look bad.

00:02:57.620 They don't really want to talk about who you really are.

00:02:59.580 They just want to talk about the latest scandal of the day.

00:03:02.180 And I know you, you know, you were on the other side of that, so you know it better than anybody.

00:03:05.700 But before we get off, get to all that, can I just ask you?

00:03:08.240 So you were from not from, but you spent time in my hometown of Albany, New York on air as well, right?

00:03:13.880 I didn't know you're from there.

00:03:15.620 Yeah, I did.

00:03:16.600 But I did about a year in Albany and then we came back to Arizona.

00:03:19.700 It was my first year of marriage to my husband.

00:03:21.800 And we had a great time in the capital region and covering politics.

00:03:27.060 Talk about dirty politics. 0.66

00:03:28.320 New York is about as crazy as it gets. 0.97

00:03:31.060 Yes.

00:03:31.340 And it was just a wonderful year to spend in New York.

00:03:34.400 But we really missed Arizona and we came back home.

00:03:36.920 Of course you did.

00:03:39.180 Could you have gone from a colder place to a hotter, you know, with all due respect to my hometown,

00:03:44.440 because I'm from Syracuse, first 10, then Albany, the rest.

00:03:47.220 We're freezing our asses off up there and you got smart and went to the greener pasture.

00:03:52.040 They're tough people up there to handle that winter.

00:03:54.540 I'll tell you, never cross a New Yorker. 0.95

00:03:56.640 They handle a tough winter, especially upstate New York.

00:03:59.000 I think we had one snowstorm that year that was 10 inches and we were we were pretty shocked

00:04:04.300 by it.

00:04:04.760 But everyone said, oh, that's nothing.

00:04:06.540 A 10 inch snowstorm is absolutely nothing.

00:04:09.160 It's true.

00:04:09.820 It's a day ending.

00:04:10.600 And why?

00:04:10.940 So, OK, so then you go back to Arizona.

00:04:13.240 You're on the air when you are a major news anchor.

00:04:16.440 You do stay steeped in the news, obviously, and in politics and you get to know the community

00:04:20.940 and all of that.

00:04:21.640 So I kind of like this background for a future politician.

00:04:25.920 It makes sense to me.

00:04:27.060 And that's one of the reasons why I'm preparing for today.

00:04:29.660 I saw one of the local papers.

00:04:31.920 Somebody went and talked to your former colleagues that I think it was one of the Arizona, your

00:04:37.080 Arizona station.

00:04:37.880 And I don't know if you saw it, Carrie, but they were lamenting you going pro MAGA like

00:04:44.280 it was a descent into the KKK.

00:04:48.180 You know, like, sadly, we think it's real.

00:04:51.860 You know, unfortunately, she got sent down the rabbit hole when they put pressure on us

00:04:56.040 to get clicks on social media and she just became became addicted to the clicks.

00:05:00.920 It can't be that you had a genuine attraction to President Trump and his messaging.

00:05:06.280 It has to be you lost your mind.

00:05:09.400 You know, President Trump, in many ways, reminded me of Ronald Reagan, that the president of

00:05:14.260 my youth, I mean, I grew up in the 70s and 80s.

00:05:16.760 So I had Jimmy Carter.

00:05:18.200 And then when I was, you know, I guess it was 10 till I graduated from high school.

00:05:23.160 It was the amazing Ronald Reagan, who actually grew up in a town about an hour from my hometown,

00:05:29.640 obviously a few decades apart, Megan.

00:05:32.000 And so I just I loved his policies.

00:05:34.840 I loved his demeanor.

00:05:36.060 I loved his ability to communicate with the people of America.

00:05:39.920 And most importantly, I loved his policies that brought people together,

00:05:43.440 helped us pull ourselves out of a steep recession.

00:05:47.360 And I love the patriotism of that time.

00:05:50.120 So when President Trump came on the scene, I saw something in him that I hadn't seen since

00:05:54.600 Ronald Reagan.

00:05:55.720 And I love his policies.

00:05:57.760 I love the man that he is.

00:05:59.360 He's a great human being.

00:06:00.980 I've gotten to know him.

00:06:02.160 I call him a friend, even a good friend now.

00:06:04.860 And his family's amazing.

00:06:06.500 The media, however, has disparaged him and tried to destroy him for seven straight years now.

00:06:13.220 And it's so unfortunate.

00:06:14.680 And I see what they're doing because they're doing it to me now.

00:06:18.120 Here I have people who I used to work with who are now trying to destroy me in the media.

00:06:22.920 And I just try to rise above it.

00:06:25.720 I really do, because we have something so big here in a movement unlike they've ever seen in

00:06:31.680 politics in Arizona.

00:06:33.660 And we're at a very important point in our history.

00:06:38.080 And I'm not just talking about in Arizona state history.

00:06:41.300 I'm talking American history and human history.

00:06:43.860 We are either going to, we the people, take back this country and take back our states, 0.99

00:06:48.640 or we are going to forever lose this country.

00:06:51.760 So I don't care about the noise on the outside.

00:06:54.300 I don't care what they call me.

00:06:55.720 I'm on a mission to try to save Arizona and keep it in the right, going in the right direction

00:07:00.620 and save it from becoming, you know, the policies that California had that destroyed that state.

00:07:07.240 Yeah, because Arizona's, I don't know, is it getting a little bluer?

00:07:11.700 You know, they've had a Democrat governor.

00:07:13.480 They, you know, they had Jan Brewer.

00:07:14.940 But like the concern by some of the right is that it's getting a little bluer and that

00:07:19.160 you or Robeson is your main competitor to get the GOP primary nomination could very well lose

00:07:26.460 to the person on the Dem side.

00:07:29.020 No, I mean, no one's going to lose to Katie Hobbs.

00:07:31.400 She's been twice convicted in court for being a racist. 0.99

00:07:34.960 She's cost us $3 million as a state for her racist policies. 1.00

00:07:39.360 When she was secretary of state, she has absolutely dead end policies. 1.00

00:07:44.220 If you like what you're seeing in California, you'd like her policy.

00:07:47.820 So no one's going to lose to her.

00:07:48.940 This race will be run, won, rather, in the primary.

00:07:54.420 And my opponent is lagging far behind us.

00:07:58.300 Our internal polling, we're getting polling every week.

00:08:00.880 We're 12 points up right now.

00:08:02.660 They're trying to act like it's a real race between us.

00:08:05.300 And what it is, is a rhino who's married to a 95-year-old billionaire trying to buy this election. 0.72

00:08:11.840 Absolutely nobody likes her.

00:08:13.780 Nobody's interested in her policies.

00:08:15.540 They're written by the consultants, the John McCain, high-priced John McCain consultants.

00:08:20.700 And she could not fill a living room if her life depended on it. 0.97

00:08:25.220 We are filling arenas.

00:08:27.840 We're filling stadiums.

00:08:29.120 We're filling places to the gills.

00:08:31.760 We're standing room only.

00:08:32.860 We 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.

00:08:44.160 And we have a movement.

00:08:45.180 And she's the most unethical person I've probably met in politics. 1.00

00:08:49.740 And that's saying something, Megan.

00:08:51.640 Robeson, you're a GOP opponent for the nomination.

00:08:54.740 Yes.

00:08:55.740 We uncovered, and it's been uncovered, her ploy to try to make it look like she had grassroots support.

00:09:03.080 Just wrap your head around this. 0.97

00:09:04.600 It's so disgusting. 0.98

00:09:06.000 She obviously has the donor class and the rhino class. 0.95

00:09:08.820 And so they're making the big donations.

00:09:10.320 And that's who she's going to be beholden to.

00:09:12.640 Well, she recognized that we had a massive movement on our hands.

00:09:15.620 And we had thousands upon thousands of grassroots donors donating $20, $50, $100.

00:09:21.920 And she knew she was going to look terrible when she rolled out her donations.

00:09:26.420 So she hired a firm to go and trick people into making donations to her.

00:09:32.020 And they would click, and it was primarily elderly people, they would click on a text message saying,

00:09:37.260 help President Trump get his social media off the ground, or help build the wall in Texas.

00:09:43.740 And unbeknownst to them, when they clicked and made a donation for those type of issues,

00:09:48.540 they were actually making a donation to a rhino running for office in Arizona.

00:09:54.600 And it was a monthly donation.

00:09:56.780 She's had about 1,200 people demand refunds.

00:10:00.120 These are elderly people.

00:10:01.780 Our team have talked to them.

00:10:03.340 They don't even know who the hell she is. 0.99

00:10:05.200 Yeah, she's not team Trump.

00:10:07.140 Yeah.

00:10:07.380 So to suggest, like, I mean, obviously she's trying to parlay, like, my, as a Republican,

00:10:12.120 my support of his policies, but she doesn't have his endorsement.

00:10:15.140 You're the Trump-backed candidate.

00:10:17.040 But the sad thing about doing a tactic like that to try to make it look like you have grassroots

00:10:22.020 support and donors is that she doesn't even need the money. 1.00

00:10:25.920 She's married to a billionaire who's giving her a blank check to run. 0.94

00:10:28.800 And in order to trick the public into thinking she has grassroots support, she tricks senior

00:10:35.560 citizens into donating money to her. 0.99

00:10:38.760 I just find that despicable.

00:10:40.900 Look, I want to win this race because I care about Arizona.

00:10:43.860 But if somebody told me you're going to have to swindle and steal money from Social Security,

00:10:49.720 you know, people on Social Security and elderly people, no, I would never do that. 0.95

00:10:54.400 I'd rather lose than have to swindle senior citizens out of their money. 0.57

00:10:58.460 It's disgusting.

00:10:59.580 We can't have somebody who is that unethical anywhere near the governor's office. 0.97

00:11:03.880 What do you make of the fact, I know you call her a rhino, but she's got a long history 1.00

00:11:08.640 in, you know, conservative administrations, Reagan, I think one of the Bushes, and she

00:11:14.780 just got the endorsement of the sitting governor, Doug Ducey, who came out in an interview on CNN

00:11:19.660 and, as you know, is not your fan.

00:11:22.340 Well, we have a soundbite cut, so I'll let him speak for himself.

00:11:26.080 This is not your guy, as you know, but I'd love to give you the chance to respond to what

00:11:29.860 he said on CNN.

00:11:31.160 I can't wait.

00:11:32.260 Yeah, there you go.

00:11:33.380 Karen Taylor-Ropeson is the real conservative.

00:11:36.000 She's the real deal.

00:11:37.340 She started her career working for Ronald Reagan. 0.65

00:11:40.500 She's pro-wall, pro-gun, pro-life.

00:11:43.480 She's the mother of four.

00:11:44.820 She's been a community leader and a successful business person.

00:11:48.100 Her opponent, on the other hand, bears no resemblance, her campaign or even her personal

00:11:54.680 interactions with me, to anything she's done over the past 30 years.

00:11:59.700 This is all an act.

00:12:01.700 Well, Carrie Lake's misleading voters with no evidence. 1.00

00:12:05.280 She's been tagged by her opponents with the nickname, Fake Lake, which seems to be sticking 1.00

00:12:11.260 and actually doing some damage.

00:12:13.080 So that was just this weekend, your response.

00:12:18.140 Well, I travel this state every day, all day, and he is probably the most unpopular person

00:12:24.580 in the state right now.

00:12:26.000 Democrats hate him, the independents hate him, and the Republicans can't stand him.

00:12:30.000 I'm not going to sit here and trash him, but I will say I'm reading a message that he sent

00:12:36.140 me the day that I resigned from my career.

00:12:38.980 And by the way, I was always fair to him in my career.

00:12:41.360 I interviewed him on several occasions, and I was always fair to him.

00:12:46.080 I took great pride in being an honest journalist.

00:12:48.400 And he said, Carrie, congratulations on your great career to date.

00:12:51.900 You are really one of the good guys, tough, fair, talented, and a real person.

00:12:57.540 Notice he didn't say Fake Lake.

00:13:00.160 It's all in such short supply today, and you will be missed.

00:13:04.700 If I can be helpful in any way, please ask.

00:13:07.560 Excited to see what's next?

00:13:09.000 Maybe Lake 2022?

00:13:10.240 You know where to find me, which is hilarious because I hadn't even thought about ever running

00:13:16.280 for office.

00:13:16.960 But it was after I walked away from my career, Megan, that I put out a video to tell the great

00:13:22.420 people of Arizona why I was leaving.

00:13:23.920 I didn't want them to think I was just leaving to pursue other opportunities.

00:13:28.220 I was leaving because I was very disillusioned with the direction that journalism had gone.

00:13:33.780 It had become propaganda.

00:13:34.840 And after I put that video out, it went viral.

00:13:37.760 And the amazing people of Arizona started reaching out to me in droves, asking me to consider

00:13:43.120 running for office.

00:13:43.960 They said, we need somebody who we trust, who understands Arizona, and who has integrity.

00:13:49.820 And it was only after dozens upon dozens upon dozens of Arizonans reached out that I even

00:13:55.820 considered it.

00:13:56.540 And to be honest, I looked at the field of Republicans running and I saw I saw Karen on that list. 0.97

00:14:01.760 And I said, none of these people can get us past the finish line to beat Katie Hobbs. 0.99

00:14:07.180 And that remains true today.

00:14:09.000 I'm the only candidate who the polling shows will be Katie Hobbs.

00:14:13.380 We can't have a Katie Hobbs governor here because she will destroy Arizona. 1.00

00:14:17.380 And frankly, I think Karen, my rhino opponent, and Katie Hobbs, the socialist running, are

00:14:23.220 the same.

00:14:23.980 They're open borders globalists who want to destroy Arizona.

00:14:28.380 What do you make of the fact that Mike Pence has split from Trump and endorsed Robeson,

00:14:33.940 not you?

00:14:34.740 So there's a split, you know, with you and your opponent, and there's a split with the

00:14:37.520 president and his vice president, former on this race as well.

00:14:41.420 I woke up to that news this morning.

00:14:43.480 It didn't shock me at all.

00:14:44.700 I mean, we're really at a crossroads here in this country.

00:14:48.400 And Arizona is the microcosm for what's happening in this country.

00:14:51.960 We are either going to go the direction of the rhino swamp that President Trump exposed

00:14:58.100 and showed us how dirty it is.

00:15:00.080 And that's Karen, my opponent.

00:15:01.960 We are going to go the socialist, radical leftist Democrat direction.

00:15:07.700 Or we are going to go we the people.

00:15:10.240 And we're going to go America first. 0.90

00:15:12.400 And I think I know which direction Arizona wants to go on.

00:15:15.800 Our polling has showed from day one.

00:15:17.440 We've been up up since day one.

00:15:19.120 We've never slipped down in the polls to any other position than number one.

00:15:23.860 And I've had nearly twenty six million dollars thrown at me in in negative ads and attack

00:15:30.760 ads.

00:15:31.180 I've had the media, including international media, attacking me relentlessly.

00:15:36.380 They only write negative things about you.

00:15:38.540 But I mean, that's one of the things that makes you interesting to me is when every article

00:15:42.520 about a candidate is negative, there's that tells you something about the media, not the

00:15:47.200 candidate.

00:15:48.420 Truly go for those candidates, the one that the media is attacking.

00:15:52.060 But the interesting thing is all of that coming in that incoming.

00:15:55.160 And we have we're still up double digits.

00:15:59.040 Yeah, they don't know what to do.

00:16:00.140 They're in a complete panic.

00:16:01.300 If you looked at Doug Ducey's face in that interview, he looked scared to death, like he

00:16:06.360 knows his days are numbered.

00:16:08.040 He knows his his days for his type of leadership and lack of leadership, actually.

00:16:12.940 And the the rhino establishment section of the party are over.

00:16:17.060 America doesn't want that. 1.00

00:16:18.820 They don't want that.

00:16:19.980 They are over.

00:16:20.800 He's he's leaving because of term limits.

00:16:22.520 So, you know, just in case people are wondering why he's going, he does.

00:16:25.740 His days are numbered as governor, for sure.

00:16:27.960 Just to fill in the polling picture as of Friday, you have this is from Real Clear Politics

00:16:34.660 polling, a plus eight point five average over Robeson, Neely, Tuliani's and everybody.

00:16:42.260 They the last poll is listed as from Ohio Predictive Insights, showing you with just a five point

00:16:47.320 lead.

00:16:47.660 But that's still enormous.

00:16:48.740 Let me tell you about OH predictives.

00:16:50.660 It's it's OH, it's not Ohio, it's sorry, Owens, Owens Harky.

00:16:55.060 And that's what we call an influence pollster.

00:16:58.040 They put out polls.

00:16:59.400 They've been putting out B.S. polls since the beginning.

00:17:02.920 One of the guys on that team was actually on the committee for one of my opponents.

00:17:08.940 And so they try to put up polling, making it look like we're not way ahead because they're

00:17:14.020 actually partnered up with our opponents.

00:17:16.120 You get what I'm saying?

00:17:17.360 Yeah.

00:17:17.620 So they're not reliable.

00:17:19.400 They put out these B.S. polls to try to sway the public into thinking, oh, we're faltering.

00:17:24.500 We're not faltering.

00:17:25.840 We are growing.

00:17:26.800 And as people start to really understand who Karen Robeson is, which is an unethical, swampy

00:17:32.900 woman who married a 95 year old billionaire in order to buy this election. 1.00

00:17:37.740 When they realize that she is who she is and that she's been for giving illegal immigrants 1.00

00:17:44.240 a reduced tuition over American students, that she's voted pro-abortion.

00:17:48.660 She's voted to take away our gun rights. 1.00

00:17:50.800 She's voted 70 plus times for tuition increases on hardworking Arizona families.

00:17:56.480 When they realize who she is, she's actually started to go down in the polls.

00:18:00.580 And our internal polling this week has shown amazing growth for us.

00:18:04.840 And it's also shown that people are waking up to who she is.

00:18:08.140 I want to tell the audience, too, that right before that OH Predictive Insights poll, the

00:18:13.320 last poll prior that we had was two weeks earlier from Trafalgar, which had you up plus

00:18:17.540 12.

00:18:18.380 So and from the beginning, you've been up on this.

00:18:20.960 I mean, like no one's ever been up over you in the Republican primary, at least not in

00:18:25.520 any of the polls I've seen.

00:18:27.120 None of them.

00:18:27.480 But but the problem with respect to your candidacy, as I see it, is can you win the general?

00:18:33.560 Right.

00:18:33.700 And I know you say yes, that the Democrats not going to win.

00:18:36.680 But I wanted to get your your to weigh in on this representative Matt Salmon.

00:18:41.220 He dropped Salmon.

00:18:42.060 He dropped out of the race in June and supported your opponent, Taylor Robeson.

00:18:45.380 And he said the reason was because he fears you will prove unelectable beyond the Republican

00:18:52.160 base in November, because it, you know, among other things, I think some of the Republican

00:18:59.260 side, some who would otherwise run to the polls for you are worried about the whole Trump

00:19:04.300 MAGA contested election piece of it and whether that's going to play well with the general

00:19:10.100 base in Arizona when you get to the general election.

00:19:12.840 Democrats don't want to hear talk about that.

00:19:15.180 Yeah, well, first of all, Matt has saddled up.

00:19:17.860 He's a he's a career lobbyist who saddled up with my opponent, who's also a career lobbyist.

00:19:22.420 It's there's no shock there.

00:19:24.020 I unfortunately, you know, destroyed Matt's plan, which was he was going to try to run

00:19:29.260 for governor again.

00:19:30.000 And he failed miserably.

00:19:32.220 He he ran 20 years ago and lost.

00:19:34.640 And then ever since then, he's been lobbying for all kinds of of unfortunate folks, including

00:19:41.240 the CCP.

00:19:42.320 And when you lobby for the CCP, it's really going to be hard to be governor.

00:19:46.120 So we exposed him for who he is.

00:19:48.340 And and he had to bow out of the race because it was looking so bad for him.

00:19:52.600 So that's that.

00:19:53.940 But the issue is, can I win?

00:19:56.040 The polls have shown I'm the only one who can win.

00:19:58.660 And it's it's actually kind of comical, Megan, because Karen is spending, like I said,

00:20:03.320 $26 million to try to to try to, you know, you know, destroy us and stop us.

00:20:09.260 And the funny part, many of her ads she's running saying that I'm too liberal.

00:20:14.200 And then in some of the ads she's running, I'm too conservative.

00:20:18.040 What is it?

00:20:19.080 Am I too liberal or too conservative?

00:20:20.700 I think that puts me perfectly in position to represent Arizona.

00:20:24.620 They're attacking me because you said you said you're $300 donation to a Democrat 15 years

00:20:29.600 ago.

00:20:30.700 I'm the only one running who's actually been a registered independent at one point in my

00:20:37.500 life.

00:20:37.940 So I think I can relate to the people of Arizona.

00:20:40.260 I've been in the homes of of independence.

00:20:43.340 I've been in the homes of Democrats and I've been in the homes of Republicans for 27 years.

00:20:48.120 I'm pretty sure Arizona news who I am.

00:20:50.900 That's an interesting point.

00:20:52.320 That's an interesting point.

00:20:53.140 In a way, you have the same advantage that Dr. Oz had in and still may have in his Senate

00:20:58.740 race out in Pennsylvania, another another race where Pence and Trump split.

00:21:04.100 But wait, you say you're the only one who can win.

00:21:05.940 But you just said a minute ago that the Democrats definitely losing and that either you or your

00:21:10.480 opponent would beat her. 0.97

00:21:13.060 No, my opponent, I don't think my opponent can beat the Democrat.

00:21:15.980 I really don't.

00:21:16.740 I mean, I am the only one who can beat the Democrat.

00:21:21.460 I'm the only one.

00:21:22.460 If I don't win and we have to put Karen up against Katie Hobbs, I think we may end up 0.89

00:21:29.500 with Katie Hobbs and it scares the hell out of me because then we're all going to be looking

00:21:32.880 for a U-Haul, renting it, loading up and trying to find a red state.

00:21:37.440 This is the reason I jumped into the race.

00:21:39.760 The people of Arizona asked me to get into the race and I looked at the field of people

00:21:44.020 who were running and I said, none of them can beat Katie Hobbs. 1.00

00:21:48.940 They can't.

00:21:49.620 What about and I take your point about you've been a registered independent, but your opponent

00:21:55.780 points out that you I guess you voted for Barack Obama.

00:21:59.060 You've got somewhat of a history supporting.

00:22:01.880 I guess you supported John Kerry.

00:22:03.860 Right.

00:22:04.120 So they say that's why they think you're too liberal, that that you're you're a Johnny

00:22:08.040 come lately.

00:22:08.660 A Jane come lately to the Republican agenda that you didn't support the NRA for years until 0.82

00:22:13.500 you did in 2021.

00:22:14.560 You know, that you're the one who's more wobbly when it comes to true conservative values.

00:22:20.420 It's funny.

00:22:21.260 So so they are saying that and then they're also saying I'm too conservative.

00:22:25.260 Make up your mind, Karen.

00:22:27.380 You know what?

00:22:28.680 Do you know how President Trump won?

00:22:31.200 Ten million Obama voters crossed over to help us elect and get the greatest president ever,

00:22:38.040 Donald J.

00:22:38.500 Trump.

00:22:38.720 And people are waking up every single day, every single minute to the lies of the Democrat

00:22:43.600 Party, the lies of their policy that are dead end policies that destroy our cities, that

00:22:50.280 destroy our states.

00:22:51.800 And so I welcome every single Democrat who has woken up to the lies of that party.

00:22:56.760 You are welcome to come running into the Republican Party.

00:22:59.260 The America first Republicans welcome you.

00:23:01.680 And I want your vote.

00:23:02.920 I've been a registered Republican since I was 18, Megan.

00:23:05.960 And I thank Ronald Reagan for that.

00:23:08.720 Except for four years when I registered as a Democrat and two years when I was registered

00:23:12.880 as an independent.

00:23:14.680 And you know what?

00:23:15.440 I think a lot of people looked at who was running somewhere in between Reagan and Trump

00:23:20.700 and saw a uniparty.

00:23:22.640 And I wanted the wars to end.

00:23:24.320 I wanted the Iraq war to end. 0.98

00:23:25.780 I thought it was started.

00:23:27.500 I thought we were lied to the way it was started.

00:23:29.520 I had two little kids on either hip.

00:23:31.660 And I said, who's going to end this war?

00:23:33.700 And I looked at a guy named Obama and I looked at a guy who I'd covered for 20 years at that

00:23:39.700 point, John McCain.

00:23:41.080 And I knew it wasn't going to be John McCain.

00:23:43.660 Let's face it.

00:23:44.380 We didn't have a lot of good choices.

00:23:45.760 But what I will say is people are waking up to the lies of the Democrats.

00:23:49.340 I welcome them.

00:23:50.460 And if my opponent wants to run millions in ads trying to shame Democrats who are waking

00:23:55.380 up, I think that's a pretty pitiful way to go.

00:23:59.320 That's interesting.

00:24:00.040 That's an interesting response that this this history of being not hardcore partisan in your

00:24:06.320 politics will help you when you get to the general.

00:24:09.080 You know, if you get past the Republican primary, it'll help you in the general because you can

00:24:11.900 look at these Democrats, more and more of whom are saying, maybe I'll cross over and say,

00:24:17.900 I get it.

00:24:18.700 I've been there.

00:24:19.860 I've done it.

00:24:21.460 Yep.

00:24:22.860 Absolutely.

00:24:23.940 And you know what?

00:24:24.860 I just I welcome every liberal, every Democrat who's waking up.

00:24:30.600 This party is not the party you thought it was.

00:24:32.880 And it's not too late to wake up.

00:24:35.100 We don't want our gas prices to get to ten dollars.

00:24:37.520 They're already close.

00:24:38.660 We can't afford food.

00:24:40.040 We're seeing what Democrat policies do.

00:24:42.540 They destroy not only cities and states, but now we're watching with Joe Biden as his

00:24:47.680 terrible policies are destroying our country.

00:24:50.940 And that's why I jumped into it.

00:24:52.480 I have high likability in Arizona because people know me.

00:24:56.300 They trust me.

00:24:56.920 They've invited me into their homes.

00:24:58.220 You don't remain 27 years covering a state.

00:25:01.100 22 at the Fox affiliate, where I was number one pretty much the entire time as the main

00:25:07.000 anchor there.

00:25:07.820 I'm one of the most recognizable faces, probably the most recognizable face in the state right

00:25:12.700 now.

00:25:12.980 I have 90 percent name ID, but it goes beyond that.

00:25:18.520 And, you know, Karen's trying to buy name ID. 1.00

00:25:20.340 I actually have a relationship with the people of Arizona.

00:25:22.880 I was in their homes for 27 years.

00:25:26.040 This isn't just, oh, we know her.

00:25:27.640 It is.

00:25:28.340 We really know Carrie.

00:25:29.580 And so she's trying to now twist things and lie about who I am.

00:25:34.060 And the people aren't buying it because they know me.

00:25:37.720 OK, I want to pause it there.

00:25:39.420 I'm going to squeeze in a break, but I want to tell the audience when we come back, speaking

00:25:42.680 of policy, we're going to talk about the latest immigration numbers, which are just horrific. 0.96

00:25:47.220 We finally got June and it's not good.

00:25:50.760 And this is one of Carrie's main issues. 0.99

00:25:52.660 And she wants to do something about it in Arizona, but it matters well beyond Arizona

00:25:56.520 and most of the mainstream will not touch it.

00:25:59.160 We'll begin there.

00:26:00.100 More with Carrie Lake right after this quick, quick break.

00:26:08.600 A question for you on the polls on the general election, though.

00:26:11.320 I don't know this group.

00:26:12.520 Sometimes when you get to these state polls, they're well known to the people running,

00:26:16.560 but not to people like me who cover more national politics.

00:26:19.080 This target smart poll taken at the end of June, the 28th to the 30th, suggests that

00:26:24.460 the Democrat would beat either one of you, says that she has 46 percent, that you and

00:26:29.500 your opponent both come in around 38 percent, says Hobbs versus Lake would be 51 to 39.

00:26:35.860 Hobbs is favor.

00:26:37.200 Hobbs versus Taylor Robeson, 47 to 41.

00:26:40.800 So a bit tighter, but still shows the Democrat winning.

00:26:43.580 What do we know about that poll?

00:26:44.940 I don't know that pollster.

00:26:46.480 All I know are the polls that I've seen, which are independent, showing that I beat

00:26:51.960 her and the others don't.

00:26:55.120 So I don't know about that poll.

00:26:56.460 I mean, the problem with these pollsters, as you know, and covering politics forever,

00:27:01.620 is that a lot of them are really push polls.

00:27:04.820 They're they're trying to sway the person who they're polling to to answer a certain way.

00:27:09.540 So you really have to be careful when you put forth polling.

00:27:13.200 We're the only campaign putting out our internal polling.

00:27:16.300 That's the good stuff.

00:27:17.360 That's where you say, hey, tell it to me straight.

00:27:19.580 Give it to me straight.

00:27:20.740 I just want to know where we really stand.

00:27:22.820 And we've been putting that out since the beginning.

00:27:25.300 Karen never has.

00:27:26.320 And I know it's because hers is dismal.

00:27:28.600 She tried to throw a poll out last week, which which was laughable, saying that she was 0.72

00:27:33.580 ahead.

00:27:33.940 And we found out what the poll pollster was and what they did.

00:27:37.660 They pulled like 250 landlines.

00:27:40.540 Well, first of all, A, who has a landline and B, who answers the landline.

00:27:44.560 So, you know, the methodology on every poll that she tries to throw out there is questionable

00:27:50.760 and and not good and laughable, to be honest.

00:27:54.160 First, the policies.

00:27:56.620 Let's talk about what's happening in Arizona and in many of these border states, because

00:28:01.120 we did finally get the numbers in June.

00:28:03.260 And while they weren't worse than May, so that we've got that going for us in terms of

00:28:09.180 that's how they have to frame it.

00:28:10.680 We're we're in trouble there.

00:28:12.500 But they're still at record levels and far, far worse than they were a year earlier.

00:28:17.460 Border patrol is getting just swamped with attempted crossings.

00:28:20.820 And the Biden administration has done nothing to change its policies to help.

00:28:24.660 So, you know, states like Arizona are really kind of on their own.

00:28:28.240 It's like you're on your own and dealing with this.

00:28:30.280 And I know you've made the point many times.

00:28:32.220 But believe it or not, you know, you live in New York, you live in Iowa, you live.

00:28:36.480 It's your problem, too.

00:28:37.820 And you need strong lawmakers, governors and so on in these border states or nearby with

00:28:45.400 strong policies.

00:28:46.100 If the feds aren't going to do anything about it's supposed to be a federal issue.

00:28:48.700 But as we all know, when they have a lax policy, it falls to the state.

00:28:51.820 So what do you think?

00:28:53.420 What are the differences between how you would handle it and how Taylor Robeson would?

00:28:57.680 Right.

00:28:57.840 Most people think you get a Republican in there, it's going to be the same.

00:29:01.420 Well, if you like what's happening right now on our Arizona border, then you're going to

00:29:05.420 love her policy.

00:29:06.200 It's doing nothing.

00:29:07.500 It's status quo.

00:29:08.880 It's Doug Ducey's policy, which is lay down like a doormat, let the cartels trample all

00:29:13.800 over you and let the cartels take control of Arizona. 1.00

00:29:16.980 This all happened on Doug Ducey's watch. 0.99

00:29:20.560 Now, I know we have an illegitimate moron sitting in the White House, but Doug Ducey is the governor 0.98

00:29:25.500 of Arizona and the states have the right to protect their citizens. 0.99

00:29:29.740 And damn it, we're going to do it starting January of 23. 0.94

00:29:32.500 My border policy is the strongest border policy that this country has ever seen. 0.98

00:29:37.500 And we are going to take back control of our border.

00:29:40.380 We have a constitutional right to do so.

00:29:42.540 Article one, section 10.

00:29:44.400 When 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.

00:29:53.100 And that is what our Defend Arizona border policy is all about.

00:29:57.660 We have the right to take it on right now, secure our border, and we don't have to wait on the federal government.

00:30:03.180 And Doug Ducey needs to grow a spine and do something about it.

00:30:06.000 I gave him my policy when we came out with it at the beginning of the year, and he did nothing with it.

00:30:11.220 Now he's saying, oh, Karen's going to be great on the border.

00:30:13.720 Well, 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. 0.99

00:30:23.840 Her border policy has – there's no teeth in it. 0.99

00:30:26.980 There's nothing to it.

00:30:27.980 Mine calls for, on day one, we issue a declaration of invasion, and we get the ball rolling.

00:30:34.960 We're going to put boots on the ground.

00:30:36.680 We will be sending our Arizona National Guard troops to the border, and we're going to stop people from coming across, Megan.

00:30:42.680 Right now, the Border Patrol, which is controlled by Biden and his illegitimate administration, they're forced to just process people.

00:30:50.540 We're not going to allow them to do that in Arizona anymore. 0.68

00:30:53.620 When we catch people, when we stop people, we're sending them back across into – back to Mexico. 0.99

00:30:59.180 And 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.

00:31:12.060 But 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.

00:31:21.740 We'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. 0.50

00:31:31.760 I'm a mom, and I'm not okay with fentanyl pouring across.

00:31:35.300 I'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.

00:31:44.860 And 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.

00:31:55.640 On that front, the update on drug seizures, just June compared to May, okay, and May's numbers were horrible.

00:32:05.520 Cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, fentanyl, marijuana by weight were up 25% in June compared to May.

00:32:12.300 Cocaine seizures had increased 62% month over month.

00:32:16.000 Maybe 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.

00:32:30.500 But yeah, it's not just a question of illegal immigrants sneaking across the border.

00:32:34.300 It's the drugs, too.

00:32:35.280 Can I just stop for one second before we go on to acknowledge the word illegitimate?

00:32:39.140 Because that's obviously a hot-button word.

00:32:40.940 I know that Trump believes that, and I know you believe that, too, about Joe Biden and his election.

00:32:44.200 And without re-litigating that whole thing, can we just talk about how's that going to play in the general election?

00:32:50.420 Because as we sort of rounded to earlier, your opponent, if you get the nomination, let me just finish.

00:32:55.040 If you get the Republican nomination, your Democrat opponent is going to hit you with this at every turn, right?

00:33:01.940 Like, is Joe Biden legitimate?

00:33:04.600 Hasn't this already been litigated?

00:33:06.220 Donald 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.

00:33:12.860 But do you think Arizonans want another re-litigation of that?

00:33:18.440 I think they want it litigated initially.

00:33:20.920 We haven't had it litigated.

00:33:22.520 We have a lot of evidence, a mountain of evidence.

00:33:24.820 And every time someone asks me, I'm happy to provide them that evidence.

00:33:28.160 The 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.

00:33:35.860 And we're at ground zero.

00:33:37.560 So I really take issue with anybody from anywhere else in this country trying to come in here and tell us how our elections were won.

00:33:44.200 They were corrupt.

00:33:45.260 And our governor sat there and watched the election be run in a corrupt way, and then he certified a corrupt election.

00:33:53.020 Listen, I just want honest elections for all people.

00:33:55.340 Arizona, if you're a Democrat, independent, or Republican, I want a level playing field.

00:34:00.100 I 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.

00:34:10.880 We 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.

00:34:19.000 We've just got to follow our election laws and our election rules and have a level playing field for everyone.

00:34:26.640 And I think for the Democrats as well.

00:34:28.540 Remember, in 2017, Kamala Harris, I heard it with my own ears.

00:34:33.300 She said she witnessed one of these electronic voting machines being hacked right in front of her.

00:34:39.280 So 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.

00:34:49.720 I know it was honest.

00:34:50.640 That's all we want.

00:34:51.900 Okay.

00:34:52.420 That election was not honest. 0.90

00:34:53.980 It was a disgusting mess.

00:34:55.760 And we're going to fix it when I'm governor.

00:34:57.240 I hear you.

00:34:57.560 But even your Republican opponent says, yeah, no, it wasn't honest and it wasn't perfect, but it wasn't stolen.

00:35:03.740 And that's the difference, right?

00:35:04.860 And just a couple of facts, Biden would have won the national election, even if Trump had won Arizona.

00:35:11.180 Biden won Arizona by about 10,000 and a half.

00:35:14.880 No court found evidence that Arizona's or any state's election results were inaccurate.

00:35:19.020 And Maricopa County, that's where two thirds of the state's votes were cast, has been the most contentious.

00:35:23.340 Republicans could not believe that Biden had scored a 45,000 vote victory in a county that was one solid GOP.

00:35:29.800 But the hand counts there in Maricopa, which started the Saturday after the election, wrapped up two days later.

00:35:35.160 Not a single discrepancy was found.

00:35:36.520 Not one.

00:35:37.080 But Megan, Megan.

00:35:38.460 One more fact.

00:35:39.600 The majority Republican Maricopa County Board of Supervisors hired two separate independent firms to perform a forensic audit of the voting equipment.

00:35:47.100 This is the Sidney Powell Kraken thing.

00:35:49.260 An audit which found zero irregularities.

00:35:51.980 None.

00:35:52.600 And the thing is, back in 2018, back in 2018, that's how Kristen Sinema won. 1.00

00:35:57.500 A Democrat.

00:35:58.120 She won.

00:35:58.480 Things had already been going a little bluer in the state.

00:36:01.460 And not all Arizonas were in love with Trump.

00:36:05.300 So they elected this Democrat, Kristen Sinema.

00:36:07.440 And that's my point is that the regional vote patterns in Biden's victory mirrored those of Kristen.

00:36:14.380 Kristen.

00:36:14.760 We had hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes that were pumped into this election.

00:36:19.020 So, yes, if you count fraudulent votes, you're going to get the same count when you do a hand count.

00:36:23.000 Pumped in how?

00:36:23.600 The problem is we had hundreds of thousands pumped in that should have never been counted in fraudulent.

00:36:28.620 How?

00:36:28.900 How?

00:36:30.720 Mules trafficking them.

00:36:31.980 It's estimated by True the Vote that we had at least 200,000 votes that were pumped in through mules.

00:36:39.040 If you haven't seen 2,000 mules, I highly suggest you see that.

00:36:42.660 I've seen it.

00:36:43.040 I've interviewed Dinesh.

00:36:43.900 We got into it at length.

00:36:45.460 But there's no actual proof of that.

00:36:46.880 Hundreds of thousands of votes with no chain of custody.

00:36:49.160 You cannot count votes with no chain of custody.

00:36:53.180 Where did they come from?

00:36:53.920 There's only supposition in that.

00:36:55.520 He did not.

00:36:56.360 And I did interview Dinesh.

00:36:57.760 And I like Dinesh.

00:36:58.460 And I've been interviewing him for years.

00:36:59.700 But they almost get you there, but they don't close the loop.

00:37:02.820 They don't have video cameras on the voting sites.

00:37:04.680 They can't prove that mules actually changed the vote.

00:37:06.000 Well, and shouldn't that be a big red flag that our Maricopa County drop boxes had no cameras on them?

00:37:12.920 It's a problem.

00:37:13.620 But you can't go back and say from that that the election was stolen.

00:37:17.160 It looks bad.

00:37:18.980 We can litigate this whole thing if you want to spend the time doing that.

00:37:22.420 Well, I don't think people do want to.

00:37:23.880 That's my point.

00:37:24.600 I think people care about their pocketbook issues.

00:37:27.960 They care about inflation.

00:37:28.880 They care about gas prices.

00:37:30.420 They want to move past.

00:37:31.980 Even Republican voters want to move past 2020.

00:37:34.280 And I talk about those issues all day, every day.

00:37:36.960 But what I will say, Megan, we had fraud and corruption in our election.

00:37:41.740 We obviously can't go back in time.

00:37:43.540 But what we can do is shore up our election laws and follow our election laws.

00:37:49.520 And that's what I'm saying.

00:37:50.620 We're going forward.

00:37:51.980 We are going to shore up our election laws so that Arizona has the most secure and honest elections in the entire country.

00:37:59.060 And if you're denying that we had fraud in the 2020 election, you're really not looking at what happened.

00:38:04.440 And my opponent is either has her head in the sand or I don't know what's wrong with her. 1.00

00:38:09.260 She thinks it was just unfair.

00:38:10.600 It was it was fraudulent.

00:38:11.820 There was corruption.

00:38:12.460 But all I'm saying is going I can't go back in time.

00:38:15.240 But going forward, we're going to make sure we get rid of those loopholes for cheating and have the most honest elections in the country.

00:38:21.680 I would love to talk about policy because I have the best policy of anybody running.

00:38:26.120 We have the best policy.

00:38:27.660 And the media refuses to talk about my policy. 0.66

00:38:30.700 They want to talk about a bunch of other garbage rather than cover. 1.00

00:38:35.080 And I don't care about the bullshit, the trend, the drag queen. 1.00

00:38:38.580 That that's such a nonsense story. 0.99

00:38:40.320 It'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.

00:38:51.340 They want to say that you're pro drag queens for children at school. 1.00

00:38:54.640 It's a lie.

00:38:56.000 You've been unfairly targeted on that, in my view.

00:38:58.400 So I don't even want to.

00:38:59.140 I just I would love to talk about my policies.

00:39:00.920 I'm the only person in the country that has a policy to tackle homelessness and restore quality of life.

00:39:07.400 And 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.

00:39:13.400 Otherwise, they feel like the itch went unscratched.

00:39:16.180 Because I think this is legit for Republican voters to try to figure out who they want.

00:39:20.620 There was just a a soundbite that Fox News is running today showing voters in Arizona.

00:39:27.280 These are Republican Trump fans.

00:39:29.680 These are your people saying we got to move past Trump.

00:39:33.440 We got to move on to DeSantis because he doesn't have the same baggage.

00:39:37.000 They're sick of his constant need to relitigate.

00:39:39.880 Right. And so, like, whether you believe it or you don't believe it, the question is, is it politically savvy to keep doing it?

00:39:44.780 Here's just a little bit of what they were saying.

00:39:46.240 If he did, I would vote for him, but I would not recommend he runs.

00:39:51.100 I voted for Trump both times, and I love him.

00:39:55.220 I think he was a good candidate, but I think his time has passed.

00:39:58.740 I couldn't care less about President Trump personally.

00:40:03.120 I prefer somebody different, but if he is the nominee, I'll probably vote for him.

00:40:07.440 We're from Florida. DeSantis is, we're big fans of DeSantis on this one.

00:40:13.240 He seems to be much more common sense and able to communicate better to both sides to get those people back that switch.

00:40:23.320 I'm a DeSantis fan as well.

00:40:25.380 Donald Trump had a great run.

00:40:26.360 I thought he was a great president while he was president.

00:40:27.960 But after the fact, I think we've seen a lot of divisiveness that's come from things.

00:40:33.120 And, 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.

00:40:43.040 What do you make of it? Those are Arizonans.

00:40:45.020 Well, I mean, you probably saw my interview with Fox.

00:40:47.560 First of all, Fox has been having my opponent on since she was polling at two points.

00:40:53.100 She was, like, fourth or fifth place, and they've been having her on.

00:40:55.960 They've obviously picked their horse, and that's who they've picked.

00:40:59.720 And they do not like Trump.

00:41:01.400 They called that election.

00:41:03.200 Within seconds of the polls closing in Arizona, people were still standing in line voting.

00:41:08.360 And they want to make sure they get rid of Trump.

00:41:11.200 And so that doesn't surprise me.

00:41:12.720 I know how to do creative editing.

00:41:14.140 I worked in TV.

00:41:15.860 That's creative editing.

00:41:17.080 You only find people saying what you're trying to bolster.

00:41:20.260 They're trying to bolster that they're trying to say people are sick of President Trump, and they're not.

00:41:26.280 People believe and want to see his policies back.

00:41:29.660 They want to see him back in the White House.

00:41:32.000 Let's talk about homelessness, because that's a problem plaguing not just you, but New York and California.

00:41:38.220 And that is one of the issues that I think can turn some blue voters red, you know, who have just had it.

00:41:43.980 Look at San Francisco, these far-left policies that have really ruined people's lives, homeless people and people who are, you know, well off.

00:41:51.660 So what can there possibly be done?

00:41:55.700 You know, what could you do differently to address that problem?

00:41:58.160 We have an amazing homeless policy, and I'm so proud of it.

00:42:01.580 And it all came about when I was at a gathering of voters in Arizona.

00:42:06.600 And 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?

00:42:17.160 I just want to get the park back.

00:42:19.840 She said, we moved here years ago before we had children because it's beautiful.

00:42:23.720 We have a park down the street.

00:42:25.080 Now we finally have children, and we can't use the park.

00:42:27.600 There's needles there.

00:42:28.720 It's been overrun by people who are homeless and using drugs.

00:42:32.000 And 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.

00:42:41.840 And I said, you absolutely have the right to ask that question, and dang it, we are taxpayers.

00:42:48.700 We pay to build these parks and take care of them, and we should be able to enjoy our communities, the quality of life.

00:42:54.760 And 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.

00:43:06.280 So 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.

00:43:17.680 And we're going to give people the option to get off the street and get help.

00:43:21.240 God 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,

00:43:32.000 get job training, and become a contributing member of society.

00:43:37.760 And 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.

00:43:46.280 We're not going to put up with that.

00:43:47.640 We want to get people help, but we will demand to have quality of life, and that's how we're going to go about our policy.

00:43:53.880 We'll have enough shelter beds for everybody to have a shelter bed, and we're going to ban urban camping.

00:43:59.140 We will not become a city or a state where our streets are lined with tents, and people are using and shooting up on the streets.

00:44:07.440 That's not what we're going to be here in Arizona.

00:44:10.060 It seems so sensible.

00:44:11.240 You know, it's like when you say it, it seems like such a no-brainer, and yet it's happening in state after state.

00:44:17.260 Some people view this as compassionate.

00:44:19.400 It's absolutely absurd.

00:44:20.940 So you know why, though?

00:44:22.100 You know why it's happening?

00:44:23.080 Yeah.

00:44:23.240 Because there's been an industry created around homelessness.

00:44:25.900 And 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.

00:44:36.040 There's no incentive to help that person.

00:44:39.600 It's the same with COVID, same with abortion.

00:44:43.100 You know, you're right.

00:44:43.800 You could go down the list.

00:44:45.700 They're enabling people to continue to use drugs.

00:44:48.140 It's the saddest thing I've ever seen.

00:44:49.680 And 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.

00:44:57.440 That keeps them living on the street.

00:45:00.080 If 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.

00:45:07.320 Just live there, and don't worry about it.

00:45:09.440 Pretty soon, that guest room is going to become a drug den.

00:45:11.480 You 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.

00:45:18.580 I got like a minute and a half left, so a couple quick hits.

00:45:21.580 Who's your favorite female politician? 1.00

00:45:25.160 Ooh, that's a good one.

00:45:27.440 You know, I really, I like Kristi Noem a lot.

00:45:29.700 I was going to ask you about her.

00:45:31.580 I had her on recently.

00:45:32.640 She was great.

00:45:33.820 I like that she did how I, she handled COVID how I think I would have handled it had I been governor, and that is lay it out.

00:45:40.260 Here's what we know.

00:45:41.180 Here's the issue.

00:45:42.340 Here's the risk.

00:45:43.580 Here's what you can do to protect yourself, and you have the information now.

00:45:47.300 Now you go out and decide how do you want to proceed?

00:45:49.800 How do you want to protect your own health and your family's health, and how do you want to handle your business?

00:45:53.960 And she didn't shut down the churches, and she didn't force our children to wear masks.

00:45:58.760 She's got a great book out now called Not My First Rodeo, which is a great read.

00:46:02.160 Okay, next question.

00:46:03.120 She's tough.

00:46:03.800 I love her.

00:46:04.140 We 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.

00:46:15.860 Is that something you would ever consider?

00:46:17.220 Since he's clearly out of running, mate, we do not think Mike Pence will be the guy.

00:46:20.600 I don't think Mike Pence will.

00:46:21.720 You know, it's funny.

00:46:22.520 The same people who are saying, oh, I can't even, I can't even do it.

00:46:26.100 She's not qualified. 0.99

00:46:27.060 All this are now saying, oh, she could be VP. 0.86

00:46:29.380 I'm not looking to 2024.

00:46:31.120 I'm looking to this election.

00:46:32.580 I believe this election is our last election if we don't get it right.

00:46:36.280 If we put a rhino or a socialist in there, we're going to lose our whole state.

00:46:39.940 I am dead focused on saving Arizona.

00:46:43.180 I don't like Washington, D.C.

00:46:44.820 I love Arizona, and I want to save this state.

00:46:47.740 And then I want to, frankly, get out of politics and enjoy my life because I don't want to live in the swamp.

00:46:52.600 I know it is very swampy.

00:46:54.220 She's been saying you could exchange the swamp for the lake.

00:46:57.060 Carrie, it's going to be fascinating to watch.

00:46:58.680 The primaries, is it August 6th?

00:47:01.280 August 2nd, but we have voting season here, so people are voting right now.

00:47:05.060 So get out and vote.

00:47:05.960 Fill out your ballot if it's on the kitchen table or go to the polls August 2nd.

00:47:10.600 And let's bring America First policies to Arizona. 0.97

00:47:14.140 Well, we'd love to have you back after the vote.

00:47:17.740 And all the best to you in the meantime.

00:47:19.720 Thank you, Megan.

00:47:20.400 It was a pleasure to be on with you today.

00:47:22.540 OK, coming up, two authors here in our next hour.

00:47:25.220 Plus, my thoughts on the latest about Leah Thomas, now nominated by her school, University of Pennsylvania, to be the NCAA Woman of the Year.

00:47:34.000 I'm not kidding.

00:47:35.780 And don't forget, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:47:41.640 The full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly.

00:47:45.900 You can get the audio podcast at Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:47:50.100 And there you find our archives.

00:47:51.300 I just want to tell you, too, that Ms. Lake's opponent, Ms. Robeson, is welcome on the program as well.

00:47:56.520 We'd love to hear her point of view on the issues we discussed.

00:48:04.380 We begin this hour with the University of Pennsylvania disgracing itself once again.

00:48:09.380 After 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. 0.80

00:48:28.280 The 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. 0.59

00:48:43.520 This is a disgrace.

00:48:45.820 Leah Thomas is not a woman. 0.97

00:48:48.060 Leah Thomas is a trans woman who lived the first 20 years of her life as Will Thomas, a man.

00:48:54.340 She 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.

00:49:09.260 How 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?

00:49:19.560 This must be some kind of sick joke meant to increase resentment towards trans people.

00:49:25.740 That is one of the reasons it's so stomach turning.

00:49:28.980 Most 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.

00:49:43.560 The 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.

00:49:52.920 As for sports, it's a much trickier debate, given the physical advantages post pubescent boys and men have over women.

00:50:01.680 This used to be a given. It is why we needed Title IX, which is supposed to protect girls' equality in the field of athletics. 1.00

00:50:09.500 But the Biden administration wants to change all that, making it unlawful to exclude trans athletes from girls' sports.

00:50:17.160 It's pushing a reform of Title IX right now that does not yet specifically focus on sports, but make no mistake, it's coming.

00:50:24.940 And 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.

00:50:43.720 The 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. 0.65

00:50:56.140 I 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. 1.00

00:51:04.760 They swam with shorter legs for the most part than the boys, thinner and weaker muscles than the boys.

00:51:09.820 They swam with periods and cramps and bloating.

00:51:13.260 And 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. 0.99

00:51:22.800 Then 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.

00:51:38.040 When they quietly objected, they were called bigots or sent to therapy by their school.

00:51:46.960 Leah Thomas, meanwhile, enjoyed every minute of the spotlight.

00:51:51.960 Thomas 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.

00:52:02.400 No 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. 1.00

00:52:13.700 Shut up about it or we'll ruin your future swimming and professional prospects. 1.00

00:52:19.140 That was the clear message by the university to the women. 1.00

00:52:23.280 Thomas told ABC News she was having a great time.

00:52:25.940 This is a dream come true and that she would love to keep swimming right into the Olympics.

00:52:32.220 To argue against that, Thomas contended, was to be an anti-trans bigot.

00:52:38.020 Thomas went on to crush the 500 freestyle at the NCAA championships and is now the women's title holder. 1.00

00:52:46.100 And there is UPenn yet again ready to shiv Thomas's female teammates with this latest nomination. 0.91

00:52:53.380 Leah Thomas is not woman of the year.

00:52:57.420 That 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. 1.00

00:53:08.140 All right.

00:53:08.600 From cramps to crying to being smaller and yes, often weaker and yet triumphing over it all.

00:53:15.560 Not to a six foot three biological man who within the last two years declared that he was a woman, period.

00:53:25.920 My next guest is Eddie Scary.

00:53:28.980 He's the author of Liberal Misery, How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone, and a D.C. columnist for The Federalist.

00:53:36.720 Eddie, welcome to the show.

00:53:38.360 What better place to start than right here?

00:53:40.880 I mean, with all due respect to trans people and even to Leah Thomas, I understand Leah's desire to compete.

00:53:49.260 This is a gross offense by the University of Pennsylvania on the heels of two years of offenses that they've committed against their girls.

00:53:59.260 Yes, 100 percent agree.

00:54:00.940 And I hope that your entire monologue goes viral.

00:54:03.080 It deserves to be viral.

00:54:04.200 And I will tell you and your audience, I don't know if you knew this or not, that I am a gay man.

00:54:11.020 And I have always taken offense to the idea that somehow we were gays and trans people were natural companions.

00:54:20.040 I mean, I believe this is a free country.

00:54:21.940 And once you're an adult, you can do whatever you want.

00:54:23.920 You can call yourself whatever you want.

00:54:25.900 You can dress whatever you want.

00:54:27.100 But 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.

00:54:37.080 They don't want to talk about their gender and their sex.

00:54:39.040 They just want to live perfectly normal lives.

00:54:41.320 However, 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.

00:54:50.360 This is something you need to accommodate.

00:54:51.860 And 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.

00:55:06.160 In our military, taxpayers now are expected to fund these freak experiments with hormone therapies and actual genital mutilation. 1.00

00:55:16.920 And, yes, I think that the sports element has captured our imagination.

00:55:23.900 But it really is.

00:55:24.860 It really is an offensive topic, and people need to think more about it.

00:55:28.200 Yeah.

00:55:28.760 I said this when they were talking about Rachel Levine, who works for HHS, as the first female four-star admiral to hold this position.

00:55:38.440 And 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.

00:55:53.440 And 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.

00:56:03.040 And 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.

00:56:16.960 And they got to the top of the mountain.

00:56:19.340 You know, they, they created a presence for themselves in medicine.

00:56:22.120 And meanwhile, Rachel Levine, as a man, was over there on the neighboring mountain, going up in a chairlift.

00:56:30.000 And 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.

00:56:35.940 And all the women with the bumps and bruises are looking over at Rachel Levine saying, what the hell?

00:56:40.480 Yeah, you were in the chairlift.

00:56:42.040 This is not fair.

00:56:43.040 It'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. 0.56

00:56:53.280 And to pretend that that erases Leah Thomas's advantage over these women is to engage in a fraud, a crime.

00:57:00.160 And 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.

00:57:08.800 I can't, like, we've lost our ever-loving minds.

00:57:13.300 Well, Bray, and it's bad enough that everyone is expected to participate in these weird fantasies.

00:57:18.900 But, but to shower and rain upon these people, you know, maybe Levine at the HHS, maybe she is actually a really smart, intelligent person.

00:57:29.440 I'll, I'll take that for granted.

00:57:30.740 But to then, to then push it in everyone's face and say, no, these people deserve the recognition.

00:57:36.220 You're going to call, you're going to call them record breakers.

00:57:38.920 They broke the glass ceiling.

00:57:41.680 No, that, that is, as you just said, rubbing salt into the wound and people don't deserve it.

00:57:46.060 And, 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.

00:58:00.220 No, this is, we're just at the tip of the iceberg of this whole thing.

00:58:03.180 But 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.

00:58:14.400 It is, it's, it's, it's very bizarre and I think scary.

00:58:17.920 And 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.

00:58:31.060 Like, like having a man swim against women, a biological man swim against women. 0.98

00:58:36.580 And honestly, I do not believe in my heart that most trans people want that. 1.00

00:58:40.280 If, if UPenn wants to nominate Leah Thomas as trans woman of the year, great, I can get behind that. 0.98

00:58:45.880 I understand that brings with it a whole host of different challenges that Leah Thomas has had to overcome.

00:58:51.740 But this is where the difference between a woman and a trans woman actually does matter.

00:58:57.400 And to eliminate the terminology is meaningful.

00:59:01.300 It really is meaningful and diminishing of the struggles that biological women have overcome. 0.99

00:59:08.220 I'll say this, Riley Gaines, she's at University of Kentucky. 0.95

00:59:12.100 She's a swimmer. 0.99

00:59:12.760 She was also nominated by her school as woman of the year.

00:59:16.180 And there are 577 women nominated.

00:59:19.120 Riley Gaines comes out and says, this makes the NCAA awards absolutely worthless.

00:59:25.380 She 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.

00:59:33.760 And she says, this award combines athletic performance with academics, service and character.

00:59:40.720 What character has Thomas shown other than sheer selfishness and entitlement?

00:59:46.280 And, you know, Eddie reminded me of when Leah Thomas sat down with ESPN.

00:59:50.680 And I mean, not a word of empathy for what her choices have put her her teammates through.

00:59:55.600 To the contrary, it was all about Leah.

00:59:58.820 Watch.

01:00:00.400 The 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.

01:00:12.280 You 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.

01:00:30.000 And then I don't know if you can really say something like that.

01:00:32.580 Trans women are not a threat to women's sports.

01:00:36.720 Really? 0.94

01:00:38.020 Really?

01:00:39.020 Right?

01:00:39.420 What about that hulking man voice?

01:00:40.780 What about character?

01:00:42.280 You know, what about character?

01:00:44.100 Right?

01:00:44.280 Like, why?

01:00:45.320 Why does the empathy only go one way on this issue?

01:00:48.340 And 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?

01:00:58.540 Right.

01:00:59.060 And 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.

01:01:13.560 They 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. 1.00

01:01:18.780 And yet now they're saying, nope, we're actually just going to erase all of that.

01:01:22.920 And 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.

01:01:31.380 And I just wondered to myself, are you even trying?

01:01:33.280 Are you actually even trying to make yourself clear to make us think you're more feminine?

01:01:38.920 Leah Thomas looks like a man. 0.88

01:01:40.580 She's six foot three.

01:01:42.280 And I mean, I know a lot of my listeners like don't call her.

01:01:45.040 She I am perfectly willing to be respectful of Leah's life choices and go with the pronouns that she chooses.

01:01:51.100 And if I met Leah Thomas, I would be supportive and kind to her.

01:01:54.440 But this is a different issue.

01:01:56.540 And this is where we have to draw the line and hold the line, because her attempt to erase the rights of biological women in this sport. 1.00

01:02:05.740 It matters and is worth fighting against.

01:02:08.900 And if we if she considers that disrespectful, so be it.

01:02:12.760 So let me ask you, as a transition, your book's called Liberal Misery, how the hateful left sucks joy out of everything and everyone.

01:02:19.180 I mean, I would say, knowing a lot of liberals, they're not all like that.

01:02:23.140 The woke left is the is the group that does this.

01:02:26.060 So why do they do this?

01:02:27.120 Why? 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? 1.00

01:02:36.540 You know, she's going to do it.

01:02:37.440 Um, 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. 1.00

01:02:44.580 Why? Why do they do it?

01:02:47.000 Well, to your first point, yes, I would not say not every liberal and not every Democrat is miserable.

01:02:52.460 However, if you are a miserable person, you are almost certainly a liberal and a Democrat.

01:02:56.080 And I proved that in my book, Liberal Misery to your second point is you're asking why they do that.

01:03:02.540 There is a psychological factor to this that I that I really wanted to get to the bottom of when I wrote my book.

01:03:09.220 And 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.

01:03:27.340 Liberals 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.

01:03:48.700 And 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.

01:03:58.500 I 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.

01:04:11.040 And 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.

01:04:17.620 And 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.

01:04:34.280 And 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.

01:04:43.780 And 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.

01:04:59.120 Right. 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.

01:05:17.320 Right. 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.

01:05:24.640 And it is it really does cut to the quick on this on this particular topic.

01:05:29.420 We at the Federalist, where I work full time, we do not use the word hypocrisy really anymore.

01:05:34.200 This is hierarchy. This is the idea that I'm special. I get to do things.

01:05:38.420 I get to have a security detail because I'm special. You you are the dirty ones. 1.00

01:05:42.680 You don't get to have the same things that I have. You saw it time and time again. 0.99

01:05:45.660 And I talk about it in my book, Liberal Misery, where some Democrat mayor, attorney general, whatever, would say, everyone, you need to stay home.

01:05:53.780 Don't go out and do anything. You can you can just stay home, wear your mask.

01:05:57.800 And yet what would you would see them at a restaurant? You would see them at a party.

01:06:01.240 And they and I think it honestly did not register in their minds that this was not OK.

01:06:06.060 You're telling people to do something and then you're going and doing it.

01:06:08.640 And 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.

01:06:18.500 They asked him, why are you taking why are you flying private?

01:06:21.660 And he said, well, someone like me can't fly commercial.

01:06:25.180 He really honestly believes. Why don't you understand that? I'm me.

01:06:28.780 I'm important. And I think that's that is another one of those qualities of the left.

01:06:32.760 And if you don't comply with it, they are angry. And of course, this is America. People are free.

01:06:37.220 We're not supposed to work that way. Of course, people are like, no, we're not doing that.

01:06:40.560 We 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.

01:06:50.160 As I cite in my book, I think that it's just another quality, another factor of liberal misery.

01:06:55.860 Mm hmm. Well, I know it's in the news today that Representative Jayapal, she's part of the squad.

01:07:04.640 She's asking for a private security detail, taxpayer funded.

01:07:08.180 She did have a security threat outside of her house. That sounds legit.

01:07:11.680 The guy got arrested. He was with a gun. He was saying threatening things.

01:07:14.520 So I hear that. But this is the same person who's been in favor of, quote, diverting money away from the police.

01:07:20.560 That said, law enforcement as a whole has a culture of brutality, which cannot be denied.

01:07:26.860 And 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.

01:07:38.280 So she has no problem telling Brett Kavanaugh he can't get increased security.

01:07:43.280 But when she has a guy outside of her house, who does she want? 0.97

01:07:46.940 She wants cops and she wants you to pay for the cops and she wants me to pay for the cops. 1.00

01:07:51.360 But 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. 1.00

01:07:59.560 Yep. And I think this is the most shocking development, I think, in the probably the history of our country.

01:08:04.800 I 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.

01:08:14.280 We saw it all through 2020. I write it.

01:08:16.600 There'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.

01:08:27.620 And that's supposed to be totally OK. Because why?

01:08:30.240 Because 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.

01:08:38.640 In 2020, the board, the boarded up storefronts and businesses had started to kind of come down.

01:08:44.200 But as we're leading up to the election, election day, there was this idea that Trump really could possibly win.

01:08:49.900 He might likely win even despite everything that was going on.

01:08:53.480 All those boards in every single Democrat city, every I live in Washington, D.C., so I saw it here.

01:08:58.880 Those boards went right back up, probably twofold. It was even worse because why?

01:09:02.860 It wasn't because there was an anticipation of a Biden victory.

01:09:06.440 It's not that Trump supporters were going to take to the streets.

01:09:09.280 I mean, we saw January 6th, obviously, but they weren't going to take to the streets and then start blowing things up.

01:09:15.380 Those storefronts and businesses, small businesses were boarded up because they thought there was a possibility of a Trump victory.

01:09:21.240 And we have seen now how the left, how liberals and Democrats, how they react when they don't get their way.

01:09:26.440 We're seeing it right now with sitting Supreme Court justice was chased out of a restaurant, threatened to be assassinated.

01:09:33.280 Why? Because some decisions came out of the court that the left didn't like.

01:09:36.700 So 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.

01:09:49.540 And it is interesting to see when the shoe's on the other foot.

01:09:52.200 So 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. 0.99

01:10:04.380 That's how I describe myself. I don't see what the problem is.

01:10:09.320 And proud of it.

01:10:10.300 It's OK.

01:10:11.540 So she was irritated. OK, fine. You know, it's not the nicest behavior I've ever seen.

01:10:16.200 But the thing that got my attention was she was mad at the Capitol Hill police for not doing something to this guy.

01:10:24.100 And it turns out and she posted about it like it's sad that women have to live like this.

01:10:29.380 Hold on. I'm trying to find the normalization of this event and this dismissiveness is dangerous.

01:10:34.400 She went on to say this is not a place that is designed to protect women and added in or LGBT people.

01:10:42.080 And I fear for all the journalists here, too.

01:10:43.500 And the Capitol Hill police, who we now know, were called five times by her staff about this guy.

01:10:51.140 All he was saying was, hey, you're my favorite big booty Latina. 0.99

01:10:54.340 You know, you like abortion, but you don't like me. 0.97

01:10:56.140 Whatever. He's a heckler. 0.97

01:10:57.780 The Capitol Hill police had to release a statement that reads as follows.

01:11:02.040 So she's she wants the cops to be all over this guy, but she doesn't want the cops to be there again in the inner city, etc.

01:11:23.540 And I saw your tweet, which reads as follows.

01:11:26.580 Let the homeless turn public spaces into needle parks.

01:11:29.240 Let the delinquent youth jump the turnstiles.

01:11:32.080 Let BLM season shut down a major street.

01:11:35.060 Call little Jenny from the block. 0.58

01:11:37.100 Thick. Where are the police?

01:11:40.080 We need all men on deck.

01:11:43.020 Right. And I think, again, that the left, including AOC, including the Ilhan Omar's, the most ungrateful refugee in the history of this country. 0.96

01:11:52.440 The 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.

01:12:05.260 We'll say nothing about that.

01:12:06.640 In fact, we'll be in some ways even approving of it.

01:12:09.540 We saw I think it was during during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and that when the verdict was coming.

01:12:14.500 I don't know if it was Maxine Waters or who it was.

01:12:16.840 It was like, yeah, like that's what we need to see more taking to the streets.

01:12:20.400 We need to see more intimidation.

01:12:22.540 They truly, honestly believe that that is OK when it comes from their side.

01:12:26.240 But again, why is that liberals?

01:12:28.460 Just liberals and Democratic voters just tend to profess a greater anger about things.

01:12:33.700 It's very easy to set them off.

01:12:35.600 And again, when it came to my book, when I when I really started thinking about this was because of personal interactions.

01:12:42.000 I 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.

01:13:00.420 And if they don't, I'm going to make you really, really uncomfortable for the rest of the night.

01:13:03.740 I 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.

01:13:13.560 Why is every why is every person, Democrat, liberal that I that I run into and I run into many in Washington, D.C.?

01:13:19.080 Why are they so angry all the time?

01:13:20.960 Well, it turns out that is just their nature.

01:13:22.700 Well, that's part of the problem in Washington, D.C., because you've got the hard partisans there.

01:13:26.040 You 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.

01:13:34.420 But this woke collection gives the party a bad name. 0.74

01:13:37.840 But that's why they're losing.

01:13:38.760 They'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.

01:13:55.440 Because I like when I was growing up, my family voted Democrat because they thought Republicans were for the rich and we weren't rich.

01:14:00.660 Right. 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.

01:14:08.500 Now, we don't want to ask you a question.

01:14:10.400 This jumped out at me when I was looking at the Jaya Pal, whatever, however you pronounce her last name story.

01:14:15.700 So what happened was a 48 year old man allegedly drove past her West Seattle home three times last Saturday, July 9, yelling obscenities.

01:14:24.980 One neighbor told cops she heard the man yell, go back to India. 0.99

01:14:27.680 I'm going to kill you. 0.99

01:14:29.220 She called 911 around 11 p.m. 1.00

01:14:31.400 that night saying someone was outside her house using obscene language.

01:14:33.740 She thought her husband her husband thought he may have shot a pellet gun, but she was unsure.

01:14:38.140 When they got there, they found a man in the middle of the street with his hands in the air and a handgun holstered on his waist.

01:14:44.020 So he had a gun.

01:14:45.440 They 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.

01:14:55.180 OK, so they got him.

01:14:57.320 He was released on jail or from jail on Wednesday.

01:15:00.280 But a hate crime investigation is going on.

01:15:02.140 His his handgun and firearm license were temporarily confiscated over mental health concerns.

01:15:09.040 And all I could think was I would love to ask her.

01:15:14.300 They confiscated his handgun and his firearm license.

01:15:17.900 So they got his gun.

01:15:19.460 Does she feel safe now?

01:15:21.440 He's out.

01:15:22.600 Right.

01:15:23.220 While they do the investigation.

01:15:24.160 Now that she's gotten the gun, does she feel perfectly safe inside of her home?

01:15:29.120 Or 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?

01:15:46.600 And 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.

01:15:56.740 That's the issue here.

01:15:57.920 And him being free without the gun is better than him being free with the gun.

01:16:01.840 But I'm sure she's not feeling so safe right now, even though they confiscated it.

01:16:08.000 All right.

01:16:08.680 For sure.

01:16:08.980 That whole the whole debate, to the extent you can call it a real legitimate debate over handguns.

01:16:13.880 That has nothing to do really with with any well thought point that the left has, that Democrats have over over guns.

01:16:21.080 The mental health issue is something that they almost never acknowledge.

01:16:25.180 That's never a factor here.

01:16:26.500 And they also don't.

01:16:27.920 It's also true that this this the idea that if you have a gun, that's the only thing that somehow makes you makes you a threat.

01:16:35.420 Just as you were saying, as if we're not going to have violence, if you have if you get rid of guns.

01:16:39.900 I mean, the guy who just I forget his name, he was just it was another case of NPR headlines.

01:16:46.860 Unarmed black man shot 60 times by police.

01:16:49.660 This black man one was not unarmed.

01:16:51.700 I forget where this was.

01:16:52.760 It was very recent.

01:16:53.960 He was dry.

01:16:54.960 Do you remember it?

01:16:56.220 Yeah.

01:16:56.440 Was it in Ohio?

01:16:57.200 I'm trying to remember.

01:16:58.220 I think.

01:16:58.680 Yeah, that's right.

01:16:59.300 It was in Ohio.

01:17:00.280 I can't remember his name.

01:17:00.960 I wrote about it at the Federalist.

01:17:02.100 He was not unarmed.

01:17:03.380 He was not unarmed.

01:17:04.560 At police.

01:17:05.820 He shot his gun out the window.

01:17:07.620 You can hear it.

01:17:08.300 You can see it on video.

01:17:09.300 You can hear it on the police body cam.

01:17:11.740 But on top of that, he reached up to 85 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour neighborhood.

01:17:17.540 You know, and like the idea that he could have struck someone, a child walking home, you know, at night.

01:17:23.120 And then he jumped out of his car while it was still moving.

01:17:25.760 You can't tell me that's not a dangerous that becomes a weapon.

01:17:28.840 And yet they're like, oh, he was not unharmed.

01:17:30.500 That was that was excessive force.

01:17:31.800 Well, maybe shooting him 60 times is.

01:17:33.460 But he put everyone around him, himself, the police, any pedestrians that might have been around.

01:17:39.040 He put all of their lives at risk.

01:17:40.860 So this this this hang up on guns, I think I find it just just one of those things that they think that it's politically potent.

01:17:47.300 And maybe it is.

01:17:48.060 I suppose it has had some potency.

01:17:49.700 But now that's that's a whole sham.

01:17:52.200 All right.

01:17:52.340 So before I let you go, what's the solution?

01:17:55.680 Right.

01:17:56.100 Like what's what is the solution to, quote, liberal misery, the name of his book?

01:18:01.520 I think it's here to stay, first of all.

01:18:03.640 And as bad as it's gotten, I think it's only gotten worse after 2020.

01:18:06.660 Did Democrats become nicer people?

01:18:08.440 No, they started prosecuting political, legally prosecuting their political opponents.

01:18:12.880 That's what we're seeing with these January 6 hearings.

01:18:15.360 But I will say at the end of my book, to the idea that there is something to be done about it.

01:18:20.380 Don't feed the animals.

01:18:21.620 You 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.

01:18:29.360 No, the opposite has happened.

01:18:30.800 So do we have to coexist with them?

01:18:32.580 Yes. 0.92

01:18:33.280 Liberal misery is here to stay. 0.96

01:18:34.740 But don't feed the animals.

01:18:37.680 Eddie's last name is scary, but it's spelled with two R's.

01:18:40.640 He's a great writer.

01:18:41.480 So happy to see you connect with the Federalist, another great organization.

01:18:44.580 Eddie's scary.

01:18:45.200 And the book is Liberal Misery.

01:18:47.740 Always a pleasure.

01:18:48.320 Please come back.

01:18:49.700 Thanks, Megan.

01:18:50.320 OK, up next, another author is with us.

01:18:52.920 His name is Jamie Kerchick.

01:18:54.380 And he has written.

01:18:55.160 I 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.

01:19:05.380 So the guy's not particularly ideological.

01:19:07.480 And he's got a fascinating story to tell you.

01:19:09.640 Jamie Kerchick is a columnist for Tablet Magazine and author of The New York Times bestseller, Secret City, The Hidden History of Gay Washington.

01:19:24.080 Jamie 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.

01:19:36.300 Jamie, welcome to the show.

01:19:37.180 Thank you, Megan, for having me.

01:19:39.540 OK, so let instead of me trying to describe it that way, you tell me, what is the book about?

01:19:43.420 What are you trying to bring to light?

01:19:46.060 Well, 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. 0.88

01:20:02.560 And 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.

01:20:16.260 And that's what I've spent the past several years researching and writing.

01:20:21.260 Well, it's fascinating because if you were born in the last 20 years, this may be new information to you, right?

01:20:28.340 I 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.

01:20:39.000 But, you know, I remember the time when it was like that it was not OK to be gay.

01:20:43.720 Yeah. And and if you go back 20, 30 years prior to my birth, it was really not OK to be gay.

01:20:49.940 And to the point where like murders and I mean, other really bad things would happen.

01:20:54.500 In 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.

01:21:02.240 How did so many promising men in government wind up dead before their time by such variously violent means?

01:21:09.140 How did they? I mean, and why did they?

01:21:12.900 Well, suicide, unfortunately, was a leading reason, particularly in the 1950s when there was something called the Lavender Scare. 0.58

01:21:21.060 We're all familiar with the Red Scare, which was the purge of real or suspected communists and leftists in the federal government.

01:21:29.400 There 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.

01:21:39.640 And that resulted in a fair number of suicides. 0.78

01:21:44.240 There 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,

01:21:52.980 you would often be in dangerous places, public parks, public bathrooms.

01:21:57.360 This was an era when homosexuality was criminalized. Right. 0.90

01:22:00.720 And so when you criminalize something, if you look at, you know, prohibition, what happens?

01:22:05.280 It's driven underground into a criminal element. 0.58

01:22:07.940 And you would see a fair number of gay men would be taken advantage of and killed in this way.

01:22:12.700 So, yes, there's there's a vast human toll to the societal homophobia that reigned really for most of the 20th century.

01:22:22.080 And it's something that I document in the book.

01:22:23.940 How did we get so puritanical?

01:22:25.740 You 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,

01:22:33.460 both of whom were believed to be closeted, but, you know, died late in life without ever having taken a wife and so on.

01:22:40.520 Michelangelo was like 90 some anyway.

01:22:42.220 Anyway, so there was at least a look the other way attitude back then.

01:22:46.740 This is the 1500s.

01:22:48.340 Here we are in the 1900s and so puritanical.

01:22:52.480 So, yeah, what happened?

01:22:54.560 Well, so I started the book at World War Two for a specific reason, which is leading up to that period.

01:23:01.180 Homosexuality was a sin. 1.00

01:23:02.500 And that actually answers the main part of your question.

01:23:04.480 Why are we puritanical?

01:23:05.380 Well, this was a country founded by Puritans, right, by very religious people.

01:23:09.000 And homosexuality is condemned in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

01:23:13.760 And so that's where a lot of this comes from. 0.95

01:23:15.540 But homosexuality was also viewed as a mental illness. 0.75

01:23:18.360 And it was also a crime in every state.

01:23:21.100 And many people were arrested.

01:23:23.300 But 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,

01:23:33.640 by which I mean the United States is becoming a global superpower.

01:23:37.280 It's entering this world war.

01:23:38.460 It's building a national security bureaucracy.

01:23:41.400 And it needs to manage secrets, which is a part of running a superpower and having a national security state.

01:23:47.460 And 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?

01:23:55.300 So 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.

01:24:04.600 And that is when this sort of obsession with gays and government and gays and politics really takes off.

01:24:12.080 It's with the rise of the national security state.

01:24:14.920 And I don't think it's a coincidence that I decided to end my book in 1995, which is after the Cold War ends.

01:24:21.440 And that's the year when Bill Clinton lifted the ban on gay people receiving security clearances.

01:24:26.620 You could not get a security clearance if you were gay until 1995.

01:24:30.500 I think about that. 0.92

01:24:32.500 Wow. I think about that.

01:24:33.080 I mean, given the position that Rick Grinnell held under the Trump administration, you know, and it's crazy how far we've come.

01:24:40.320 There'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.

01:24:51.900 I didn't know, first of all, that Gore Vidal had any sort of a relationship to Jackie Kennedy.

01:24:57.240 Oh, yeah. They were related by by I'm forgetting.

01:25:00.920 I think it was his stepmother.

01:25:02.540 Stepdad. Yeah, I think you say a stepfather.

01:25:05.020 He shared a stepfather with her.

01:25:07.680 And he, of course, you know, was this very well-known pundit.

01:25:11.880 And you sort of tell the story about how he thought he was going to run for president.

01:25:14.820 But just for people who like he had the debates with William F. Buckley that were like must see.

01:25:19.740 He was on the left and Buckley, of course, on the right.

01:25:22.740 And well worth your time if you haven't seen any of the documentation of them.

01:25:26.100 But he tells a story about when he went to see JFK with Tennessee.

01:25:30.980 Well, yeah, they weren't at the White House.

01:25:33.280 It was actually in Palm Beach, I believe.

01:25:35.260 And it was in 1960.

01:25:36.860 And he's preparing to run for president.

01:25:38.820 And he and Tennessee Williams are sort of walking behind John F. Kennedy on the beach.

01:25:44.120 And they're sort of admiring his posterior.

01:25:46.520 And Gore Vidal tells this to Kennedy afterwards.

01:25:55.120 And Kennedy's reaction is he's rather flattered.

01:25:57.620 And he says, that's exciting, which I think tells you something about him as a man.

01:26:01.440 Because you have to understand, this is 1960.

01:26:03.700 Most straight men, if they were told this by a gay man, would not respond so charitably or humorously. 0.99

01:26:12.420 And I think it says something about Kennedy.

01:26:15.420 And, you know, he's one of his actually his best friend, Jack Kennedy's best friend was a man named Lem Billings, who was a gay man.

01:26:21.540 They met at Choate in high school, the very fancy prep school.

01:26:27.000 And, you know, Lem came out to him when they were teenagers.

01:26:29.880 And it had no bearing on their friendship.

01:26:31.900 I mean, they were best friends for, you know, their entire lives.

01:26:35.280 And they also, and Jackie Kennedy also sort of cultivated some gay friends.

01:26:40.440 So there's kind of a small circle of gay men around the Kennedys.

01:26:46.200 I also think Jack Kennedy, you know, he had his own sexual secrets that he had to protect, obviously.

01:26:51.320 We now know about them.

01:26:52.400 But at the time, of course, the media, you know, kept all this secret.

01:26:56.120 And so I imagine that Kennedy felt, you know, when he's thinking about gay people, you know, they're there before the grace of God, go I.

01:27:04.560 Right. I mean, they both they both have sexual secrets to keep. 0.94

01:27:07.560 And I think that maybe made him relate more to gay men or perhaps have to be more sympathetic to their plight.

01:27:13.580 So, yeah, you write in the book, Vidal brought along his friend, Tennessee Williams. 0.99

01:27:17.680 As Kennedy sauntered in front of them, Williams turned to Vidal and gaped, look at that ass. 1.00

01:27:23.580 The response, you can't cruise our next president, Vidal replied with mock severity. 1.00

01:27:29.080 Don't be ridiculous, Williams replied. 0.96

01:27:31.300 The American people will never elect those two. 1.00

01:27:33.440 They're far too attractive.

01:27:36.080 Those are fun little anecdotes to think about.

01:27:38.440 So, I mean, what did you learn anything big or new in doing the research, like some closeted person who we didn't know about?

01:27:47.060 You know, like who was the most whose was the most interesting story to you?

01:27:51.600 I'd say there were two stories and they're both, I could say, scoops or sort of things that I discovered.

01:27:57.080 One is a story of a man named Bob Waldron, who was around my age.

01:28:01.160 He was in his mid 30s from Texas.

01:28:03.280 And he worked for LBJ, for Lyndon Baines Johnson, when he was the Senate Majority Leader and then his vice president as an aide.

01:28:09.700 And he would travel with him across the country and around the world.

01:28:12.800 And 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.

01:28:23.680 And this was conducted by the Civil Service Commission, which did these these sorts of procedures.

01:28:29.060 And they discovered that Waldron was gay.

01:28:30.900 And like that, he was gone. 0.93

01:28:32.520 He was kicked out.

01:28:33.920 His White House pass was revoked.

01:28:36.500 He was fired.

01:28:37.160 And 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.

01:28:48.680 And it was about a thousand pages of documents that I had to go through.

01:28:51.660 But it told the story in a really compelling and just tragically sad way.

01:28:56.960 And this was a man who was very close to LBJ.

01:28:59.200 And then he was gone in an instant.

01:29:02.120 And 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. 0.58

01:29:10.880 And I would say the other most fascinating story was what what almost was a scandal.

01:29:16.800 It didn't become a scandal.

01:29:17.780 But 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.

01:29:28.840 And 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.

01:29:41.320 And 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.

01:29:52.520 And this became public. It was really sort of the first scandal of Reagan's political career.

01:29:56.620 So he had this sort of scandal lurking in the background.

01:29:59.920 And this basically came back when these Republicans collected these accusations.

01:30:05.840 And they actually brought them to Ben Bradley, the legendary editor of The Washington Post.

01:30:10.840 And Bradley took it quite seriously.

01:30:12.280 He got Bob Woodward and several other, you know, top-notch reporters at The Post to investigate this story.

01:30:18.340 They went out across the country and interviewed various people.

01:30:21.060 And 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.

01:30:30.820 But it does show you, I think, again, the power of these accusations that they could wield.

01:30:37.060 And I found all this information in Ben Bradley's papers, in his paper collection, which is at the University of Texas.

01:30:43.300 There was just a folder in a box that I came across one day doing my research.

01:30:49.080 And all the notes from the various reporters and the documentation was in that folder.

01:30:53.360 So that was...

01:30:53.960 It's very witch-hunty, you know?

01:30:56.300 I mean, today we do different kinds of witch hunts for people.

01:30:59.360 Like, you know, do you have secret, implicit bias someplace in your head?

01:31:02.680 We'll find you!

01:31:03.980 But this was...

01:31:05.280 This feels very witch-hunty, too.

01:31:07.720 Speaking of, you know, the way the narrative goes today, I wanted to ask you about some of the reaction to the book.

01:31:12.600 Lots of positive reaction from both the left and the right.

01:31:15.860 Hugh Hewitt said, literally, every page is a revelation to me.

01:31:19.260 But then you've got reviews like The Washington Post that felt it was too white and too focused on men.

01:31:25.960 It's just a book about gay men.

01:31:27.980 You focus too much on men. 0.99

01:31:29.940 Well, it's a gay book. 0.96

01:31:31.280 It's a book about gay people.

01:31:32.900 It's about gay men and women.

01:31:33.840 But I'll just say, look, I was writing a book about Cold War Washington.

01:31:37.760 And the reality is, is that people who had power...

01:31:42.000 And that's what I'm writing about.

01:31:42.720 I'm writing about political power.

01:31:44.060 I'm not writing about the local community of Washington, D.C.

01:31:46.680 I'm writing about the federal government, but Congress, Senate, the executive branch, the presidency, the Defense Department, right?

01:31:52.960 The vast majority of people who held political power in our country in this period were white men.

01:32:00.180 There were very few black people, very few women in any positions of seniority in Washington.

01:32:04.740 I 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.

01:32:12.520 But that's not what our history shows.

01:32:15.780 That's not what the facts are.

01:32:17.200 It's not what the facts are.

01:32:18.040 So I was writing about facts.

01:32:20.060 I'm a journalist and I'm a historian.

01:32:21.320 I'm concerned with facts about the way things were, not how we perhaps wanted them to be.

01:32:26.280 Of course, the world that I wanted in the 20th century would have been much nicer to gay people, a more hospitable place for them.

01:32:34.320 But that's not that's not the reality.

01:32:36.020 Unfortunately, it's just so it goes to like the post rates.

01:32:38.500 Unlike earlier secret cities, Kirchik says next to nothing about black Washington.

01:32:43.680 Two black people, it goes on to say, are given a combined total of 17 pages.

01:32:47.920 But that's not enough.

01:32:49.220 They think you should.

01:32:49.960 I mean, it's just, you know, the constant, constant focus on identity.

01:32:53.380 And it's like it's a book about one marginalized group and the torture that they were subjected to.

01:32:58.680 But it's not.

01:32:59.980 You got to get all the identities in there.

01:33:01.680 It's the same.

01:33:02.120 Like, remember, Lin-Manuel Miranda was going through this on Hamilton.

01:33:05.800 Like, no, you know, you gave lots of black actors wonderful roles, but you didn't quite demonize America.

01:33:12.460 It's just like you can't win.

01:33:13.800 So you just got to do your thing, which you've been doing.

01:33:16.000 As I was saying in the intro, you've written for magazines and newspapers across the ideological spectrum.

01:33:21.460 New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal.

01:33:23.660 Oh, this is the example I was saying.

01:33:25.400 Very few people have written for both The Atlantic and The Spectator.

01:33:28.880 I don't think I've ever seen that on somebody's bio.

01:33:31.180 So to your credit, you try to check some of that nonsense and just stay factual.

01:33:35.920 Yeah, I'm sort of ideologically centrist, I guess, in the center.

01:33:40.220 And I, as a writer and a journalist, I'm curious about the world.

01:33:45.120 I want to discover new things.

01:33:47.060 That's what I did with this book.

01:33:48.360 And that's why I try to speak to audiences of various ideological hues, people on the right, people in the center.

01:33:54.960 And I don't think you're going to understand much about the world if you cloister yourself in one sort of ideological box.

01:34:03.240 So 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.

01:34:11.560 Well, it's great.

01:34:12.740 You'll learn something historically, and it reads like a mystery.

01:34:16.080 I agree with that assessment.

01:34:17.360 Jamie, thank you so much.

01:34:18.720 Well, this just in.

01:34:19.940 Representative Jayapal coming out and saying what happened to her with a stalker in Seattle.

01:34:23.980 Well, 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. 0.87

01:34:38.540 And that is what led to this lunatic being outside of her house, threatening her. 0.96

01:34:45.580 So she'll take similar responsibility, I'm sure, for what happened to Brett Kavanaugh with that guy showing up to kill him.

01:34:52.260 I'm sure she's about to release the statement saying, I take it all back.

01:34:56.420 That was irresponsible, and I should have been more careful in my rhetoric.

01:35:00.240 I should never have endangered a sitting Supreme Court justice.

01:35:02.980 Oh, well, wait.

01:35:05.580 It's just it never ends, right?

01:35:07.660 We're going to have much more on that.

01:35:08.860 And then tomorrow we're going to get into the news that just broke on Meghan and Harry.

01:35:12.820 Do 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?

01:35:21.860 And in our global assault on democracy, can you just shut up and be a prince? 0.99

01:35:26.720 Just shut up. 1.00

01:35:27.640 Shut up and raise your little prince. 1.00

01:35:29.640 Start lamenting. 1.00

01:35:30.540 Continue lamenting the lack of title that you wanted for little junior.

01:35:35.620 I liked him better when he was just helping the veterans.

01:35:38.840 What does he know?

01:35:39.900 He's been in the United States a year?

01:35:41.620 OK.

01:35:42.640 Before that, he was running around in his Halloween costume with a swastika on the arm.

01:35:46.340 Now he wants to lecture us about global assaults and democracy.

01:35:50.440 Sit down.

01:35:51.880 OK, so there's my preview for what you'll hear tomorrow.

01:35:54.220 In the meantime, don't forget later this week, we're going to have our friends from the Ruthless podcast back on.

01:35:58.900 Plus, 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.

01:36:07.340 Brett Johnson, he's going to be here.

01:36:09.080 So don't forget to download The Megyn Kelly Show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify and Stitcher.

01:36:14.500 And yes, I do read the reviews.

01:36:16.340 You who wrote wink, wink to me on Apple comments, I'm reading them.

01:36:19.760 I'm telling you, I really do read them.

01:36:21.040 So if you've got something to say to me, you can go there and post a review.

01:36:24.980 Also go to YouTube.com slash Megyn Kelly where we get tons of downloads and we really appreciate it.

01:36:29.660 Thank you all for listening and for watching.

01:36:33.500 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:36:35.400 No BS, no agenda and no fear.

01:36:39.080 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly.

The Megyn Kelly Show - July 18, 2022

Lia Thomas as ＂Woman of the Year,＂ and Political Hypocrisy, with Kari Lake, Jamie Kirchick, and Eddie Scarry ｜ Ep. 359

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript