The Megyn Kelly Show - Lori Lightfoot Voted Out, and Murdaugh Closing Arguments, with Mark Steyn, Dave Aronberg, and Eric Bland ｜ Ep. 503

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00:00:45.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:47.660 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:57.460 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:59.060 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:01.240 Happy March 1st.

00:01:03.980 15 years ago today, I married Doug Brunt.

00:01:08.040 The single best decision of my life.

00:01:10.520 I'm not afraid to tell you.

00:01:12.180 We got married at Ohica Castle on Long Island, New York.

00:01:15.820 It was a perfect winter day, just like today.

00:01:18.620 The light snowfall, those fat, fluffy flakes outside the window.

00:01:23.120 As inside, we burned wood fires and we topped the tables with cherry blossoms just coming

00:01:30.180 into season.

00:01:31.340 It was my second marriage, Doug's first.

00:01:34.020 And I actually feel lucky that it was a second marriage for me.

00:01:36.520 I went in eyes open, having learned a lot about what it takes to make a marriage work and probably

00:01:42.160 even more important, a lot about myself.

00:01:45.180 What do I really want in a man? 1.00

00:01:47.420 How do I want to communicate and be?

00:01:51.040 Those are things you need to think about.

00:01:53.140 When I met Doug, I was confused at first.

00:01:56.120 He was different from what I thought I wanted.

00:01:58.120 More reserved.

00:01:59.380 Less cocky.

00:02:00.620 I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

00:02:02.600 He was kind.

00:02:03.360 He was smart.

00:02:04.400 He was strong, but not in a domineering way.

00:02:06.840 And in no way intimidated by me or my strength.

00:02:09.900 He was a gentleman raised by loving, thoughtful parents in the Philadelphia suburbs.

00:02:15.600 The kid who got the all-around best guy award at his private high school.

00:02:19.760 And if you know him, you're not surprised by this.

00:02:22.120 The kind of guy who never bullied anyone, who fought his way out of desperate shyness

00:02:26.160 as a young boy to a man who, yes, writes for a living, which certainly appeals to his

00:02:30.840 time as an avid young reader who spent lots of time alone, but also is now hosting his

00:02:35.820 very own podcast, Speaking and Interacting with Others for a Living.

00:02:41.240 It's called Dedicated with Doug Bruntman.

00:02:43.120 It's about books and authors, and it's great.

00:02:46.700 Our romance was a whirlwind.

00:02:48.060 Fourteen months after we met, Doug asked me to marry him.

00:02:51.440 Within six months of that, we were married.

00:02:54.320 Three kids later, still going strong.

00:02:57.340 I watched some of our wedding video, which we're showing you here this morning, believe

00:03:00.640 it or not.

00:03:01.080 I cried as my friend and stylist Sarah did my hair, and I saw the part with the vows.

00:03:07.860 Kelly Wright, my dear friend from Fox News, was our minister.

00:03:11.960 I cannot get through this video without crying.

00:03:15.980 But why?

00:03:17.460 Because it's so optimistic, isn't it?

00:03:19.520 There's something so beautiful about love and commitment to the promise of building a

00:03:24.960 life together all the days of my life.

00:03:27.520 Over that 15 years, we've suffered loss.

00:03:31.680 His dad, my sister, my nana, to name a few.

00:03:35.500 We've seen our careers go through massive highs and lows.

00:03:38.500 He left his CEO job to write full time.

00:03:41.320 I had very weird public battles with men like Trump, Ailes, and Putin.

00:03:46.680 The NBC thing was traumatic.

00:03:48.680 More so on Doug than on me, because it's always worse seeing the ones you love suffer and knowing

00:03:53.900 there's nothing you can do.

00:03:55.340 But in the end, it all brought us closer together.

00:04:00.000 We spent a lot of hours holding each other, doing nothing, just hanging, being with one

00:04:04.940 another.

00:04:06.080 We refused to let the stressors cause strife between us.

00:04:09.740 He's always been my number one supporter, and I have always been his.

00:04:13.580 Any constructive feedback is gentle and from a loving place.

00:04:17.500 More typically, our instincts are to defend the other avidly and fight any attackers.

00:04:22.780 Creating three humans feels like an accomplishment, not going to lie.

00:04:25.740 All parents know you look at your children and you think, oh my God, I will never do something

00:04:30.460 more meaningful than this.

00:04:33.300 Not a day goes by that I don't look at Doug and say, thank God.

00:04:38.260 Thank God I am doing this with him.

00:04:40.780 Thank God I don't have to do this alone, as so many single parents do. 0.98

00:04:45.040 Parenthood is incredibly rewarding, but it's tough in a lot of ways.

00:04:48.140 It tries your patience, your energy, your anger management skills, your wisdom, your sense

00:04:53.240 of justice, and more.

00:04:55.940 The reprieve of having a partner for it all is a gift from above and one to be treasured

00:05:01.600 and protected.

00:05:03.080 The family unit is worth fighting for.

00:05:06.640 That love you built this whole thing on is worth nurturing.

00:05:11.460 Fifteen years in, what I want to say to the young women of this country is, this is where

00:05:17.500 the pot of gold is.

00:05:19.340 Not in random sexual partners who don't give a damn about you.

00:05:22.740 Not in weird new sexuality titles that pronounce you will sleep with anyone and everyone and

00:05:27.180 often at the same time.

00:05:27.980 Not in an all-in profession that asks so much of you, there is no time for personal connection.

00:05:35.440 The thing, the thing that matters is finding meaningful connection in your life.

00:05:42.800 Even just one can be life-changing.

00:05:46.000 Ideally, I would say romantic love, but it could be in another way too.

00:05:50.600 To have that partner with institutional knowledge of you, who makes your coffee in the morning

00:05:55.280 or puts a flower on the bed or moves you to the inside of the sidewalk so you're not

00:05:59.980 by the traffic.

00:06:01.440 Who calls you out on your BS and is quick to hug you after an argument.

00:06:05.840 Who laughs at himself and lovingly at you too and helps remind you not to take any of

00:06:10.700 this too seriously.

00:06:13.040 Nothing in my life has been as fulfilling to me as that relationship and the goodness that

00:06:17.400 stems from it.

00:06:18.880 The beauty and the love I see and feel toward my kids, it all started there.

00:06:23.260 It started there.

00:06:24.240 It started on this day, all those years ago, in something so good, it could only ever lead

00:06:29.640 to more goodness and joy.

00:06:32.280 It's something Doug and I created, and you can do the same.

00:06:36.880 If you're alone and you don't want to be, take a risk.

00:06:41.260 Join a book club or the newcomer's club or take music lessons or something to get yourself

00:06:46.520 out there and start meeting people.

00:06:48.920 Stay open-minded.

00:06:50.780 Maybe the package doesn't arrive just as you expected it to.

00:06:54.240 Try, fail, try again.

00:06:57.240 Stay open-minded again.

00:06:58.640 If you know that you have stuff to work on that's preventing you from meeting someone,

00:07:03.320 work on it.

00:07:04.220 Get therapy like I did after my first marriage, often.

00:07:07.860 Maybe group therapy, which I did too. 0.63

00:07:09.660 I remember asking my lady, Amy, how screwed up am I?

00:07:12.040 But I worked on it, and I did better.

00:07:16.360 Put that excess energy into yourself.

00:07:19.080 Build a more solid you, and then the more solid partners will come.

00:07:23.560 Trust me.

00:07:25.160 And if you're in a marriage, especially one with children, here's your reminder that it's

00:07:29.540 worth the effort.

00:07:30.980 Use a generous lens on your spouse.

00:07:33.340 Speak your peace with kindness.

00:07:34.740 And in those moments where you inevitably forget all that, recover quickly and apologize even

00:07:40.940 faster.

00:07:42.400 As Dr. Laura says, wake up and ask yourself each day, what can I do to make his day better?

00:07:47.300 How can I make him happy?

00:07:49.300 It all comes back to you.

00:07:51.720 It's an investment in all the things you likely hold most dear.

00:07:56.060 Doug, thank you for asking me to marry you on that beautiful fall day at the beach in September

00:08:03.260 of 2007.

00:08:05.360 Thank you for meeting me down that aisle on Long Island on March 1st, and for walking next

00:08:10.840 to me ever since.

00:08:12.920 Should our lives be long or short, as the Queen said, from this point forward, our kids will

00:08:18.180 always know.

00:08:19.360 We spent them well because we were together.

00:08:22.200 Somehow in the vast universe, we found each other.

00:08:24.840 We loved each other.

00:08:26.060 And we treated each other well.

00:08:28.300 That's something in today's world.

00:08:31.220 It's everything, in fact.

00:08:34.280 Happy anniversary, babe.

00:08:36.560 So now we're going to turn to the news, the news of the day.

00:08:40.660 And there's plenty to get to.

00:08:42.560 Joining me now, my old pal from the Kelly file, Mark Stein.

00:08:46.580 He's a conservative journalist and host of his own show called The Mark Stein Show, which

00:08:50.800 you can find on YouTube.

00:08:52.580 Mark, great to have you here on Doug and my special day.

00:08:56.060 It's a pleasure to have an old pal in the room.

00:08:58.700 I don't know that I can follow that, Megan.

00:09:01.920 That was absolutely lovely.

00:09:04.280 I will say, though, that I was a bit confused when you started talking about the 15th anniversary,

00:09:10.720 because, in fact, it is 15 years since you first interviewed me.

00:09:16.280 2008, it was the Obama-McCain campaign, and you had some show, a pre-election show on it,

00:09:24.840 like three in the afternoon or something.

00:09:27.000 And you interviewed me, and I walked off the set thinking, this interviewer is pretty good.

00:09:34.860 Where'd she come from?

00:09:36.620 And so that's my 15th anniversary, and I'm a little bit disheartened to find that you're all about this Doug guy 15 years later,

00:09:44.440 because being interviewed by you was the highlight of my 2008.

00:09:48.060 Oh, well, happy anniversary to you and me as well.

00:09:51.140 I didn't realize we had that special bond.

00:09:53.440 But, yes, I remember that.

00:09:54.700 I was doing the America's Newsroom with Hemmer, but then they gave me this special election show that we were working on.

00:10:01.660 And that was super fun.

00:10:02.420 I met a lot of great political voices, and you would go on to become a big star at Fox and somebody who I always –

00:10:08.100 like, this is how I know when somebody's good.

00:10:10.260 Do I turn up the volume when he's on or she's on?

00:10:12.740 Because usually you sit in your office and you don't have the volume on.

00:10:15.520 And whenever you come on, I turn up the volume.

00:10:17.400 Because you're worth listening to.

00:10:18.160 You always say something that's unexpected.

00:10:20.340 That's not true of all pundits, Mark.

00:10:22.740 No, and you always listen, which isn't true of about 98% of interviewers.

00:10:28.780 So there's that, too.

00:10:31.000 The secret sauce.

00:10:32.580 All right, so let's kick it off on a light note since I began the show on sort of a light note.

00:10:36.860 From one very functional and healthy, well-off, you know, well, mentally well family to one that's pretty much the opposite, and that is Harry and Meghan.

00:10:46.120 I don't doubt that they care for one another.

00:10:48.440 They appear to actually love one another, I think.

00:10:51.180 At least he loves her.

00:10:53.100 But they're having some problems today, Mark.

00:10:55.220 It just hit the news that they are being evicted from Frogmore Cottage, where they don't live.

00:11:03.200 So I'm not sure why we use the word evicted.

00:11:04.840 But apparently, King Charles is given the keys to the cottage to Prince Andrew, and Harry and Meghan are angry.

00:11:15.440 The update was, I'm trying to get this because Omid Scobie, their personal stenographer, he reports to be a journalist.

00:11:20.660 He is reporting that sources close to the couple informed him they're in shock, and at least two members of the royal family are appalled.

00:11:30.300 He does not name who those sources are, but the Sussexes are known to be close to Princess Beatrice and Eugenie.

00:11:36.960 Those are Andrew's daughters.

00:11:38.860 A friend of the couple tells Omid Scobie it all feels very final and like a cruel punishment.

00:11:45.460 Well, good.

00:11:46.460 That's how I feel.

00:11:47.320 Good.

00:11:48.140 What do you think?

00:11:48.860 Yeah, I do, too.

00:11:50.240 I mean, it's a lovely place.

00:11:52.460 It's not really a cottage in the sense that most people who live in cottages would think of it.

00:11:57.120 It's rather grander than that.

00:11:58.860 I happen to love Frogmore.

00:12:00.680 I love the Frogmore Mausoleum, where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are buried in their fabulous sarcophagus.

00:12:08.600 And I don't like the idea of the great Queen Empress and her consort being within range of Harry and Meghan,

00:12:16.440 who have basically – they didn't burn bridges.

00:12:20.900 They basically poured gas on them and set the whole town alight.

00:12:28.660 Harry's book is not the – Harry's book is basically, in large part, a daddy-dearest book, to go back to the one that Joan Crawford's son wrote that started this whole thing.

00:12:41.620 And you can't be a little – just like you can't be a little bit pregnant, you can't be a little bit in or out of the royal family.

00:12:49.740 It's a job.

00:12:50.920 It's a job that's actually quite important if you think that systems of government are important.

00:12:56.440 And if you think it's all about you, as opposed to, you know, being somewhere in New Zealand and putting a medal on the royal New Zealand whatever officer,

00:13:07.140 you're wrong. 0.83

00:13:08.260 And you're temperamentally unsuited for that job.

00:13:12.400 The king has a responsibility to his millions and millions of subjects around the world. 0.80

00:13:20.020 And that means that when you've got some crazy guy opening up on you, at a certain point, you have to cut the crazy guy loose.

00:13:26.860 It's so true. 0.84

00:13:28.260 So now, here's the irony.

00:13:30.260 You know, they did try to have it both ways, a little in, a little out.

00:13:33.400 Want to keep the security.

00:13:34.500 Would love to keep the cash flowing.

00:13:35.940 Certainly want to keep their titles.

00:13:37.140 But we want to be in the Montecito mansion, not really having to do any ribbon-cutting ceremonies because those are beneath us and annoying.

00:13:44.000 And we want our privacy, of course.

00:13:45.820 You know, as the South Park now has so beautifully mocked them for, we want privacy.

00:13:51.240 Stop looking at us while they do their tours, their media tour, their Netflix and all that.

00:13:56.340 And now, on that front, Mark, Harry is going to do some sort of struggle session with the trauma expert on Saturday.

00:14:08.440 You can buy tickets for $33.99.

00:14:12.220 $33.99.

00:14:14.140 You can watch him do his struggle session with this trauma expert.

00:14:19.040 Oh, and get a copy of his book, if you so care.

00:14:21.620 So much for the private life for these two.

00:14:24.700 Yeah, I think if you're really interested in privacy, you don't write a book that has, I believe, 48 mentions of what in Britannic slang he calls his todger.

00:14:39.820 I don't actually, I'm not sure if that's a word you could, I'm not sure if that's a word you could say in American broadcasting, but I've just done it.

00:14:49.760 This is, he, this is the complete lie at the heart of it.

00:14:54.160 Meghan Markle, who was an actress in a rather undistinguished television series, thought that marrying into the royal family would make her an A-list celebrity.

00:15:07.600 And when it didn't really make her an A-list celebrity, she got bored with what she had to do.

00:15:13.200 And she decided that she and Harry would then go to Hollywood and become A-list celebrities.

00:15:19.380 And they're not, they can't act, they can't dance, they can't sing.

00:15:23.020 Well, what are they famous for?

00:15:24.460 They're just famous because they happen to be rather minor members of a ruling family around the globe.

00:15:32.280 And that's the only thing they got going for them.

00:15:35.160 So they left not for, oh, we want to be private.

00:15:38.020 We want, we can't handle it with all these photographers looking at us, but pay $33.99 and you can have, watch me doing a therapy session.

00:15:47.240 And you never know, I might talk about my private parts for another 48 times.

00:15:51.540 Although you'll have to pay premium for that.

00:15:53.860 That's only if you say, if you subscribe, $78.99.

00:15:56.760 I'll talk about my private parts for another 48 times.

00:16:00.180 It's the, the lie at the heart of this is that they wanted, most members of the royal family are private.

00:16:06.380 Most Americans have never heard of the Duchess of this and the Marchioness of that and, and, and the Countess of whatever.

00:16:15.560 They want to be celebrity.

00:16:19.080 They want to be photographed.

00:16:20.420 They want to be famous.

00:16:21.460 They want to be on Netflix, but they have the disadvantage that they have no talent.

00:16:27.480 Yeah.

00:16:27.880 It's a problem that they're, they're, we're all seeing now.

00:16:31.720 And the latest polls show, one more thing, I mean, then we'll move off of Harry and Meghan, but one, one, the latest poll show, they've lost all support.

00:16:39.520 They used to be holding on in America. 0.72

00:16:41.440 Then they lost, they lost all of Great Britain.

00:16:43.340 They were underwater with the approval ratings over there, but they were holding on in America until the Netflix special and the book spare.

00:16:50.800 I mean, these two, they, whoever they have advising them on PR, they keep blaming that person, you know, and then replacing that person with a new person.

00:16:58.900 It's not the PR people.

00:17:00.200 No one can solve this for you.

00:17:01.640 You too.

00:17:02.100 It's you too.

00:17:02.860 It's you.

00:17:03.320 And so here are the latest numbers.

00:17:05.020 His popularity has sunk 48 points since December.

00:17:11.300 He now has a net approval rating of minus 10.

00:17:14.300 So he's underwater.

00:17:15.120 He was minus seven in just in January.

00:17:18.380 So he's still going in the wrong direction.

00:17:20.240 Her approval rating is down 40 points.

00:17:23.200 He's down 48.

00:17:23.900 She's down 40. 0.74

00:17:24.980 Her net approval is minus 17.

00:17:28.200 She was minus 13 in January.

00:17:29.920 So they're both continuing to slide and Prince Andrew is now above them.

00:17:34.780 He has a net approval rating of minus two.

00:17:36.880 They've managed to go below Prince Andrew who hung out with Jeffrey Epstein.

00:17:41.420 Yeah, I think that it's, that actually is an accomplishment to rehabilitate his Royal Highness, the Duke of York.

00:17:50.740 Because Prince Andrew, I would say, is actually one of the most unlikable members of the royal family.

00:17:55.100 So that's a, that's an impressive thing to do.

00:17:57.920 You know, the tragedy here is that, is that Harry actually had a connection with people.

00:18:04.280 He represented New Zealand, I think at the, whatever it was, the 70th, 75th anniversary of the Battle of Montecito.

00:18:11.420 In Italy.

00:18:12.440 And when you saw him with all these New Zealand veterans, they loved him as one of them, as a soldier of the Queen to other older soldiers of the Queen.

00:18:25.360 And, and that was something real and authentic.

00:18:28.620 And he has destroyed that to become this woke, whinging loser, being tarted around at Netflix and Disney events. 0.87

00:18:41.080 And he will, he will come to regret it very quickly. 0.87

00:18:44.680 And the thing about it is that it's increasingly looking like there's just no way back for him.

00:18:49.620 Mm-hmm.

00:18:50.860 Yeah.

00:18:51.180 This is certainly not it.

00:18:52.220 $33 to watch him in a therapy session.

00:18:54.340 No thanks.

00:18:54.800 I'm good.

00:18:55.260 I'm busy.

00:18:55.840 I have a plant to water.

00:18:58.140 But I'll, you know, check back in with you.

00:18:59.360 I didn't even know you, I didn't even know you could monetize that, Megan.

00:19:03.280 You know, I mean, that's, that's like, oh, I've got a bit of a problem with my hernia.

00:19:08.360 I think I'll charge people, you know, $47 to, for me to go and see my doctor while she

00:19:14.620 ponds about my hernia or whatever.

00:19:16.400 I mean, that's what he's reduced to.

00:19:19.360 It's true.

00:19:19.880 What's next?

00:19:20.440 Let's, let's see him get his planner's wards taken off.

00:19:22.580 Terrific.

00:19:23.120 How much can you get for that?

00:19:24.520 You know, he's soon going to be on that cameo service where you can pay $15 to have him wish

00:19:28.360 you a happy birthday.

00:19:30.080 Yeah.

00:19:30.440 No, no, I know.

00:19:31.640 I, I know people who do that and I can't, I think that's the most, oh yes.

00:19:36.240 For, for, for $17, I'll, I'll wish your granny a happy birthday. 0.92

00:19:41.760 You can get Harry and Megan, but you have to pay like 32 bucks.

00:19:45.420 I think that's the market rate we've established.

00:19:48.080 Refund, refund.

00:19:49.540 Somehow they'll find a way to make it all about them.

00:19:52.120 Okay.

00:19:52.600 So let's move on to news, real news, not Harry and Megan news.

00:19:55.840 I don't know if you've been following what's happening with the Chicago mayor race, but it

00:20:00.260 was a bombshell last night.

00:20:01.840 And, and here's, you can speak to it, even if you're not following Chicago politics, because

00:20:05.920 what's happening there is happening in a lot of places.

00:20:08.660 Um, she's out mayor. 0.90

00:20:11.100 Lori Lightfoot is out.

00:20:13.580 And this is how the Chicago sun times talked about it this way.

00:20:16.520 Four years ago, she was a darling among national Democrats.

00:20:19.420 The first openly gay black woman to serve as mayor of Chicago and only the second woman

00:20:24.200 to do so in the city's history, her popularity soared during the pandemic and so on.

00:20:29.400 But you know what else, sword crime?

00:20:32.360 And this woman didn't know how to fight it, didn't understand the value of good policing 0.99

00:20:38.360 and of supporting the cops to the contrary.

00:20:41.080 She threw them under the bus at every turn. 0.99

00:20:43.240 And as I tweeted last night, this is a city that is essentially bathed in blood now. 0.97

00:20:47.620 And her closing message, Mark, was to remind people she's a black woman. 0.98

00:20:52.860 She's a black woman. 1.00

00:20:54.100 People don't normally support black women. 0.99

00:20:55.900 And if you don't support somebody like me, who's a black woman, stay home. 0.68

00:20:59.880 Turns out that didn't work for her. 1.00

00:21:02.100 Now, there's two other people who have to have a runoff. 1.00

00:21:04.080 One guy ran to the right of her.

00:21:07.720 It's a former public school chief named Paul Vallis.

00:21:10.680 And he ran on public safety.

00:21:13.060 Then there's another guy who's a black progressive who got the backing of the Chicago Teachers

00:21:15.960 Union, Johnson.

00:21:17.980 He does not use the defund the police rhetoric.

00:21:21.000 He's argued for police resources to be redirected to the city's social service agencies.

00:21:26.900 But he's not as rabid as Lori Lightfoot is and has been.

00:21:31.180 And she's out.

00:21:32.260 So what's your perspective on it?

00:21:34.300 Well, when you said she's the first openly gay black woman to be mayor of Chicago, the

00:21:41.160 qualification for being mayor of Chicago is that you should be able to be mayor of Chicago.

00:21:47.740 And she failed that test.

00:21:50.260 And so if you happen to live on the receiving end of her policies, it's not really any consolation 0.99

00:21:57.140 that she's an openly gay black woman. 0.82

00:21:59.480 You know, when this whole identity politics thing started, we sort of assumed it wouldn't

00:22:06.280 go to anything that mattered.

00:22:08.320 So that if some professor at some college you've never heard of is the first openly gay black

00:22:14.100 woman, or if some NPR host is the first openly gay black woman, who cares?

00:22:20.940 But when it's things like being mayor of Chicago or like being your hernia surgeon, as I was

00:22:28.340 saying a minute ago, or like being the pilot of the Delta flight that's flying you from JFK

00:22:34.060 to LAX, then if you can't do it, being the first openly gay black woman isn't really any

00:22:41.320 consolation.

00:22:42.300 And that's why, I mean, I can't even, I don't even know why we're still talking about this,

00:22:48.680 because we've had all the first this and the first that.

00:22:52.000 And the result in Chicago is the wreckage you see all around, the ruination of a great city.

00:22:59.960 At a certain point, people have got to move beyond, if you're excited about the first openly

00:23:05.000 gay black woman, get a new album, watch her new movie. 1.00

00:23:09.100 But when it's something that's going to wreck your life, like the first mayor of Chicago, 0.99

00:23:14.340 you need someone who can do the boring, boring, boring job of municipal chief executive, which

00:23:22.000 isn't anything to do with identity politics.

00:23:24.340 I lived in Chicago for five years after law school and you could eat off the sidewalks.

00:23:30.220 It was so clean and well run back then under Mayor Daley.

00:23:34.360 I mean, it was a well oiled machine and now it's disgusting.

00:23:39.420 She's helped make it that way.

00:23:41.540 She is to Chicago what de Blasio is to New York, two people who took a once great city

00:23:47.160 and ruined it because while she wasn't as loud on the defund the police front, as we've

00:23:51.980 seen in other cities, some other mayors, Baltimore, et cetera, she was defunding them. 1.00

00:23:56.380 She was quietly defunding them and not replacing retiring offers, some 400 of them.

00:24:01.560 And you need cops if you want to fight crime.

00:24:04.420 And the crime in her city has been out of control.

00:24:07.080 Here's just some of the numbers for people not paying attention recently.

00:24:11.560 Violent crime there up 40 percent since she promised during her inaugural address to this

00:24:17.460 is via The New York Post to stop the epidemic of gun violence.

00:24:20.120 OK, up 40 percent since then.

00:24:22.720 Under her, Lightfoot, Chicago recorded 695 murders at the end of 2022, 695 and 804 the

00:24:31.460 year prior, a level not seen there in a quarter century.

00:24:36.340 In 2022 alone, the city saw more than 20,000 cases of theft in the first three weeks of 2023.

00:24:42.320 Crime rates in the city have skyrocketed by 61 percent sexual assaults, robberies.

00:24:48.560 I could go down the lift, car thefts, murders, all of it, Mark.

00:24:52.580 And she wants to run around talking about her identity and lecturing people that if they 1.00

00:24:58.160 can't get behind it, then they should stay home because probably they're bigoted and sexist. 1.00

00:25:02.920 Well, I don't know Chicago as well as you do, but I lived there for, I think it was four

00:25:09.080 or five months, basically, at the Intercontinental Hotel when my friend Conrad Black was on trial

00:25:15.500 in that city.

00:25:17.340 And Conrad and I liked to eat down the other end of the Magnificent Mile at what was Barack

00:25:22.580 Obama's favorite restaurant at that time.

00:25:25.480 And we would then, you know, at two in the morning when they kicked us out, we would stroll

00:25:30.260 up that Magnificent Mile without a care in the world.

00:25:34.220 It was a perfectly safe city.

00:25:36.040 As you said, you could eat off the sidewalk.

00:25:40.080 And I just started noticing that my little shrunken world of Chicago, all the violence

00:25:46.400 had suddenly percolated through to.

00:25:48.980 Like, I think it was the Nordstrom that's across the street from the Intercontinental

00:25:53.920 got broken into and trashed.

00:25:56.600 And even that restaurant down the other end had some problem going on.

00:26:02.240 And at that point, you can't do it.

00:26:04.200 It's like you're not containing all the violence, the crime, the shootings to particular neighborhoods

00:26:09.940 that people know to avoid.

00:26:11.740 When it's on the Magnificent Mile, basically, it's everywhere.

00:26:16.060 And she did that.

00:26:17.080 Daly wasn't the most likable guy.

00:26:19.400 But as you said, he was he's a machine.

00:26:21.420 You said he had a well-oiled machine.

00:26:23.360 He was a machine politician and the machine delivered.

00:26:27.160 And that's actually what's happened in a lot of these Democrat municipalities is that the

00:26:31.580 machine can't deliver anymore.

00:26:33.560 So life is hell for all kinds of people who thought the corrupt well-oiled machine would

00:26:40.520 manage to take care of it for them.

00:26:42.980 Right.

00:26:43.080 People start, you know, seeing the murder rate increase.

00:26:46.460 They start seeing things.

00:26:47.780 There's a reason they call that that part of Michigan Avenue Magnificent Mile.

00:26:53.600 It is was spectacular leading into this beautiful row of apartment buildings called the Gold Coast.

00:27:00.460 I mean, absolutely pristine and the place you'd love to just walk around and see the twinkly

00:27:05.560 lights and think maybe someday I could make it here and have that kind of effect on you.

00:27:09.580 And now, I mean, I was there about a year and a half ago and you do have to walk around even

00:27:13.520 Mag Mile very differently.

00:27:15.100 You got to watch out.

00:27:16.180 You got to hold your bag tight.

00:27:17.120 This used to be only areas of Chicago, never mind this place, thanks to her and her response.

00:27:23.560 And we've seen this in city after city.

00:27:25.460 This is why Chesa Boudin got recalled as the DA of San Francisco.

00:27:29.420 This is why the L.A.

00:27:31.840 DA almost got recalled.

00:27:33.380 This is why in all these blue, blue cities and blue, blue states, you're seeing blue,

00:27:37.680 blue voters start to look at their leaders and say, you're not doing a good job.

00:27:42.640 You might need to be recalled or replaced because you get messages like this.

00:27:46.000 Lori Lightfoot came out and blamed the victims in 2021 of the smashing grabs, you know, where

00:27:51.540 they go into the department stores.

00:27:54.000 She blamed the victims saying too many retailers had failed to hire private security.

00:27:59.980 You know, like, it's not my fault you're not protected.

00:28:02.360 It's your fault.

00:28:03.080 You should you should make the expenditure.

00:28:04.740 And then there was this recently, Mark, where she was upset about the street vendors, you

00:28:11.480 know, the people out in like the kiosks.

00:28:13.420 She was like, why?

00:28:14.600 Why are you taking cash?

00:28:16.000 You know, you should only do a credit card business.

00:28:17.740 Here's that soundbite.

00:28:18.500 Just to remind the audience, SOT10.

00:28:21.440 Heard a lot of rhetoric here.

00:28:22.540 A lot of soundbites, but not a lot of concrete solutions.

00:28:26.040 And your solution is?

00:28:27.100 We have been in Little Village working with those street vendors to help them make sure

00:28:32.440 that their money is secure.

00:28:33.980 Not use money, if at all possible, using other forms of transactions to take care of themselves.

00:28:39.400 No, this is crazy talk because this is the normal aspect of metropolitan life.

00:28:48.740 You stop at a street vendor, you get a kebab or whatever, and you hand over a crumpled bill.

00:28:54.000 And she's saying that part of normal life is not possible in this city.

00:28:58.700 And the thing about this is, it's true in, as you mentioned, it's true in a lot of other

00:29:04.180 Democrat cities.

00:29:05.040 I first visited San Francisco when I was 18, and I thought this was a dream city.

00:29:12.200 I thought it, you know, I bought into all that Tony Bennett rubbish about leaving your heart

00:29:18.220 in San Francisco. 0.89

00:29:19.120 The last time I went there, it was hell. 1.00

00:29:22.240 It was a filthy, ruined, garbage dump. 0.96

00:29:26.800 And I wouldn't, and where the hotel doorman tells you to be careful you don't step on needles 0.96

00:29:33.160 in the street around the fancy hotel.

00:29:36.900 And I just thought, I have no desire to come to this city again. 0.95

00:29:41.120 And the thing about this is the Democrats believing the rubbish here, you know, all the pieties 1.00

00:29:47.400 about, you know, defund the police and all the rest, it affects everything.

00:29:52.420 Burlington, Vermont, which is nobody's idea of a great city, although there was a book written

00:29:58.300 about it back in the late 90s by a prominent writer who said it was the model of the future.

00:30:05.920 Well, now it's not even safe to, because of the homeless, because of the drugs, because

00:30:11.900 of the crime, it's not even safe to walk around little old Burlington, Vermont at night.

00:30:17.000 There's no town too small that going along with all this rubbish doesn't eventually kill.

00:30:25.000 And once you kill a city, bringing it back is, you know, extremely difficult. 0.84

00:30:29.360 Yeah, but you have to start with safety.

00:30:31.960 You can't get anywhere without safety.

00:30:34.020 Former Attorney General Bill Barr was on this show not long ago, and he had been the Attorney

00:30:37.900 General under George W. Bush, too.

00:30:40.640 And he was talking about he had written this memo that is now considered controversial, but

00:30:45.680 he stands by every word talking about how you fight crime.

00:30:49.940 How do you clean up cities from these murder rates and these theft and robbery and carjacking

00:30:54.820 rates?

00:30:55.180 You know what you do?

00:30:56.540 You fund the police.

00:30:58.540 You arrest the criminals.

00:31:00.800 You get DAs willing to prosecute them.

00:31:03.160 You keep severe penalties on the books, and then you give them real sentences that they

00:31:07.680 have to serve.

00:31:08.700 You lock up the felons and keep them there.

00:31:11.860 That's how you do.

00:31:12.940 You not only do you punish the criminals and keep them off of the streets from law abiding

00:31:16.600 citizens, but you deter crime that way.

00:31:19.340 The recipes right there, it's just now considered racist.

00:31:22.380 So people like Lori Lightfoot don't want to pursue it. 0.76

00:31:25.580 They'd rather let their citizenry, including large portions of the black population, die 1.00

00:31:30.360 at the hands of these felons. 0.97

00:31:32.340 Well, they're the they're the first victims of these kinds of policies because the wealthy

00:31:38.000 can insulate themselves from the predations they loose on the general population.

00:31:44.500 So you can have fancy pants San Francisco liberals who then decide, oh, you know, it doesn't matter 0.96

00:31:53.140 for me.

00:31:53.820 I've got a gated community.

00:31:55.440 I've got home security and all the rest of it.

00:31:58.280 So you can turn a blind eye to the fact that the poor people are the first victims of bringing 0.75

00:32:06.500 in these kind of policies.

00:32:07.860 And I have no idea why they are allowed to do it.

00:32:12.120 When you have things, it's perfectly obvious.

00:32:15.400 All the crime.

00:32:16.280 This is basically true across the planet.

00:32:18.760 It doesn't matter whether you're talking about some township in Africa or in India or whether

00:32:25.500 you're talking about a particularly bad suburb in Belgium or Germany.

00:32:31.120 It's a tiny number of people who cause most of the crime.

00:32:36.500 And if you let them get away with it.

00:32:39.140 So if you do as New York and other cities have done and say, well, yeah, if you break

00:32:44.180 in, if you just walk into a store and you steal whatever it is, 300 bucks worth of merchandise,

00:32:49.780 we're not going to do anything about it.

00:32:52.440 Then you purport to be stunned suddenly when now people are stealing 700 bucks of merchandise.

00:33:00.220 Well, you incentivize that.

00:33:03.140 Once the criminal fraternity finds it's got a comfortable environment to operate in, oddly

00:33:09.280 enough, crime gets worse.

00:33:11.660 Yeah, it flourishes.

00:33:12.600 And now all these other Democratic mayors and governors, leaders should take note.

00:33:18.040 If Lori Lightfoot can lose first black gay woman to be mayor of Chicago, if she can lose,

00:33:23.980 so can you.

00:33:25.360 So can you pay attention.

00:33:26.620 All right.

00:33:26.780 Mark Stein stays with us after this quick, quick break.

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00:33:36.060 Until our names are cleared.

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00:33:39.820 Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.

00:33:43.580 Espionage?

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00:34:30.240 I'm sure you saw the news over here that now the Department of Energy is saying it is more likely than not that COVID originated in that Wuhan lab in China.

00:34:44.320 And not from some pangolin in the market as Fauci and others have been trying to stuff down our throats.

00:34:50.240 So, yeah, of course, I mean, none of us that's been paying attention is surprised.

00:34:55.160 But Fauci actually gets cornered and he weighs in on this and in a in a couple of interesting ways.

00:35:01.500 OK, so he he spoke with a magazine and we have part of that.

00:35:06.660 So some of the some of his comments with the Boston Globe are off cam, but some are on cam.

00:35:11.900 So let me give you what's on cam first and his messaging in the wake of this report.

00:35:16.280 It's not one.

00:35:16.820 We must all keep an open mind as to all possibilities until one definitively nails down what the origin is.

00:35:26.380 I don't see any data for a lab leak.

00:35:29.680 That doesn't mean it could not have happened.

00:35:31.800 And that's the reason why I keep an open mind.

00:35:34.200 We may not ever know.

00:35:36.740 Do you do you keep an open mind really?

00:35:38.880 Because the record does not reflect that at all.

00:35:41.380 No, that's not consistent with his texts and emails and other communications in the very early days of this thing.

00:35:54.880 What what where as you say, it's not normal to be this far into a new pandemic and not to know where it came from.

00:36:04.300 And, you know, certainly in 1665, they knew roughly where the ships that brought the Great Plague to London had came had come from.

00:36:14.060 They could do it in the 17th century.

00:36:16.560 They can certainly do it today.

00:36:18.360 And it hasn't been done.

00:36:19.240 And this is what's bad.

00:36:20.280 It hasn't been done today for political reasons, because for whatever reason.

00:36:25.040 And the obvious reason is that because this lab actually is funded indirectly with U.S. taxpayer dollars.

00:36:34.900 In a grant Fauci approved.

00:36:36.620 Fauci approved.

00:36:38.140 Which Fauci approved.

00:36:39.660 And that's that's why in a sense, I'm sympathetic to Chairman Xi and the Politburo when they blame this thing on the Americans, because there are American fingerprints on this COVID.

00:36:51.700 So if you take the COVID seriously or it's killed millions of people all over the world, then you should be concerned about where it came from.

00:36:59.480 And instead, what happened is the people who wrote about this very moderately were demonized, their reputations trashed, their careers ruined.

00:37:11.060 Matt Ridley, who was a colleague of mine at The Daily Telegraph and is the most temperate fellow on Earth.

00:37:18.240 He's a Viscount.

00:37:20.280 His forebears have sat in the House of Lords for however long it is.

00:37:24.620 And he's not someone who goes full crazy and thinks that this is the WHO trying to depopulate the planet or anything like that.

00:37:34.280 He's the most moderate person on Earth.

00:37:36.920 And he said over two years ago, the balance of probability is that it came from this lab in Wuhan.

00:37:44.720 And the problem here is that that the gain of function research that Fauci signed off on that was being done on that lab makes makes this a disaster with American government fingerprints on it.

00:38:00.020 Mm hmm. You're exactly right. Fauci, who has been working very closely with the Chinese for the past 20 years, approving all these joint projects and research over there, has got his fingerprints all over that lab.

00:38:12.400 This gain of function research and this this sisterhood that we formed with the Chinese when it comes to these types of projects.

00:38:19.040 So that's why he's defensive. You can't. It's amazing. We even look to him for a reaction on this.

00:38:24.260 He's he's guilty. Like you can't go to the guilty party and say, hey, do you think you did something wrong?

00:38:29.900 No, you've got to go to outside sources and say, what do you think Fauci's role was?

00:38:32.800 What was our role? Was the Chinese role? And now he comes out, Mark, and says this.

00:38:36.440 This is behind the paywall and the magazine. Not so not on camera.

00:38:39.460 He says the only way we'll know is if China opens up and we get American scientists, Canadian scientists, Australian scientists to go there and do the kind of surveillance in the wild.

00:38:51.280 The problem is that they've attacked the Chinese so badly. 1.00

00:38:55.900 Yeah, that's the problem. We've been too mean to China, you see. 0.98

00:39:00.520 And so now we have only ourselves to blame that they won't let us into the lab.

00:39:04.760 No, he he knows that lab inside and that lab, by the way, it's a great place to do so-called gain of function research because it has the security protocols of the average American dentist's room.

00:39:19.640 Now, when I go to my dentist and they're all wearing all the gear and protecting themselves as they brought about in my mouth, I think that's a little excessive.

00:39:29.680 But if that's the best you can do when you're you've got a coronavirus lab, I laughed when you said the word pangolin, because pangolin was like the word to all the clever people for, you know, most of 2020 into 2021. 0.94

00:39:46.760 Oh, you know, these crazy people saying it came from a lab.

00:39:49.760 Everyone knows that it just jumped from a bat to a pangolin.

00:39:53.400 Well, what is a pangolin? Do you have a pangolin?

00:39:55.660 Can you go to the Humane Society and get a pangolin who's been abused by a bad pangolin owner?

00:40:02.780 Pangolin, pangolin, pangolin, pangolin, pangolin.

00:40:05.620 And Fauci and co actually were putting in basically a conscious pangolin operation as their cover.

00:40:13.860 Well, it's now safe to forget you ever heard the word pangolin, at least until, you know, the next variant comes along.

00:40:21.840 So it's not just Fauci trying to stir up our sympathies for for China or for those who misled us on this pandemic.

00:40:29.400 It's also the White House.

00:40:30.780 Corrine Jean-Pierre wants you to know if you're mad at Fauci, you're really not being helpful.

00:40:35.100 It's really not helpful.

00:40:36.820 Here's what she said.

00:40:38.840 The political attacks on someone like Dr. Fauci, these attacks have been counterproductive.

00:40:44.640 They have not been helpful.

00:40:45.640 This is someone, again, who has spent his almost entire career fighting for the well-being, the health of the American people.

00:40:53.360 And you've been grateful to Dr. Fauci's wisdom.

00:40:56.700 So be quiet.

00:40:59.540 Yeah.

00:41:00.680 Basically, I find this very odd because basically he was doing his job.

00:41:05.600 I think he started doing that job in like 1968.

00:41:09.780 So he's basically the J. Edgar Hoover of public health.

00:41:13.860 There is no way that in a normal, healthy government bureaucracy, that guy would have been doing his job for over half a century.

00:41:25.460 Now we have a great walk, the great walk back in Ink across the Western world and all this. 0.84

00:41:35.040 And that, oh, yes, well, mistakes were made, but we didn't know too much about.

00:41:39.660 The guy who'd been doing the job since 1968 certainly knew that the policies he imposed and which a lot of the rest of the West followed were basically a rejection of all virological policy.

00:41:53.960 I mentioned the Great Plague of London, 1665, but you can take the Spanish flu a century ago.

00:42:00.180 It was a rejection of public health policy on these kinds of virological problems that the guy who'd basically been in office since 1968 certainly knew about.

00:42:13.760 And this idea that we're going to have a modified walk back and we're not going to blame anybody.

00:42:19.300 You know, they talk about following the whole must follow the science, must follow the science.

00:42:25.020 Like we're all zombies.

00:42:26.440 Once you actually read the they they unleashed a big bunch of the UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, his WhatsApp messages.

00:42:36.980 Two million of them yesterday, I think it was.

00:42:41.400 And when you plow through them, you realize, actually, there's no science to follow.

00:42:46.580 They're making it up as they go along.

00:42:48.720 And what they did made things worse, caused all the old people to die in New York care homes, ruined the mental health of a generation of children, 1.00

00:42:58.440 imposed all these deaths and injuries from vaccines, from medical procedures that nobody under, you know, unless you've got a serious underlying condition,

00:43:11.180 nobody under 70 needed to take a lot of this.

00:43:14.700 Everything they did, every decision they made, made things worse.

00:43:19.820 In the United States, a German businessman still can't get on a plane from Frankfurt to JFK without having all these booster, booster, booster shots up to date.

00:43:29.960 There's no science behind that.

00:43:31.720 It's absurd.

00:43:32.380 At all.

00:43:33.000 None whatsoever.

00:43:34.240 No, I saw you.

00:43:35.220 You were raising questions about are these boosters even safe?

00:43:38.680 You know, are people dying because of these boosters?

00:43:40.420 Very good question.

00:43:41.340 There are very well respected doctors here who have been saying, especially if you're a young man,

00:43:46.300 you don't need that booster and the risks outweigh the benefits.

00:43:50.720 And people like Fauci continue to push this stuff with impunity.

00:43:54.060 So it is helpful, Kareem, for us to hold him to account and to keep a tally, a running tally of his falsehoods.

00:44:02.480 I mean, that's what's actually happening, I think.

00:44:05.020 But even to be charitable to Fauci, his mistakes.

00:44:07.460 Let's be super charitable and say he's wrong about virtually everything.

00:44:11.800 All right, listen, I have to get this in.

00:44:13.420 Otherwise, I'm not going to forgive myself today.

00:44:14.860 But we're speaking about health care.

00:44:17.120 You're speaking about nursing care and so on.

00:44:19.540 I don't know if this is the solution, Mark, but our president over here, he's got some strong thoughts on how to improve the nursing community.

00:44:27.420 He made remarks on Tuesday in Virginia about protecting Americans from high health care costs.

00:44:35.040 And this is where he went with that.

00:44:40.020 Pearl Nelson, military. 0.99

00:44:41.640 She'd come in and do things that I don't think you'll learn in medical school, nursing school. 1.00

00:44:47.400 She'd whisper in my ear.

00:44:49.020 I couldn't understand him.

00:44:50.220 She'd whisper, she'd lean down.

00:44:52.340 She'd actually breathe on me to make sure that there was a connection, a human connection. 0.90

00:44:57.200 She even went home and brought back her pillow.

00:44:59.680 I love this, Megan, because Pearl Nelson is I love Joe Biden's fantasy life, because just like corn pop sounds like one of the sharks or jets in Summerstock West Side Story that he saw in Baltimore.

00:45:17.020 So Pearl Nelson is the perfect name for a nurse in a daytime soap opera of 1958.

00:45:24.980 It's just his fantasy life is so much better than his actual life.

00:45:31.680 And what I find interesting is the whole trick to being a politician, if anyone ever asked, I would say that after years of having people traipsing through my state of New Hampshire, the whole trick of being a politician is to have that default, that mechanism in your gullet that tells you when not to say things that are tonally wrong.

00:45:52.300 They're creepy or whatever.

00:45:54.220 And he has that thing has completely broken down.

00:45:59.740 And so some blameless non-adunnerian nurse, Pearl Nelson, wherever she is, if she exists, whispering in Joe Biden's ear and teaching him to whisper in all the ears he creepily whispers in. 1.00

00:46:14.680 Pearl Nelson is the proverbial Canadian girlfriend. 1.00

00:46:18.660 Pearl Nelson does not exist.

00:46:20.460 She never did exist.

00:46:21.600 This didn't have, but you're right.

00:46:23.280 This is like his imprint for all the weird stuff he would do to like all these 12-year-old girls and 30-year-old women ever after, right?

00:46:32.620 She would breathe on me.

00:46:34.600 What is he saying?

00:46:35.340 She would come in and do things I don't think you learn in nursing school. 1.00

00:46:38.500 She'd whisper in my ear.

00:46:40.200 She'd whisper.

00:46:40.780 She'd lean down.

00:46:41.940 She'd actually breathe on me to make sure there was a human connection. 1.00

00:46:45.580 Pearl ought to be brought up in charges, first of all. 0.59

00:46:47.440 Yeah, if she taught, if she taught, there's a reason they don't teach it in nursing school, particularly. 1.00

00:46:56.560 But particularly, it's one thing if you're in the hospital, you can't really, I was in the hospital.

00:47:01.900 When you're like that, all wired up, you can't really do anything about it.

00:47:05.100 But these poor little seven, eight, nine-year-old girls he's breathing in the ear of can't really do anything about it either. 0.92

00:47:11.640 So you should cut it out.

00:47:13.080 It's a good point, right?

00:47:14.540 You're their helpless victim.

00:47:16.100 Pearl, who knows how many people she hurt? 1.00

00:47:18.480 All right.

00:47:19.980 Before I let you go, I only have a minute left, so I apologize for that.

00:47:23.520 But you're no longer with GB.

00:47:25.400 Basically, the crazy Ofcom cracked down on your comment about vaccines that I just mentioned.

00:47:31.020 Yeah.

00:47:31.420 And he had a dispute with GB.

00:47:32.720 Now you're on your own.

00:47:34.020 But Ofcom, can you just spend a minute on Ofcom and how insane that system is, Mark?

00:47:37.760 That's the UK regulator, and it's one reason why so many television current affairs discussions aren't worth watching.

00:47:46.700 Because they think everything should just be done in a sterile, partisan way.

00:47:51.560 So you have a ding-dong, a punch and Judy, between the conservative guy and the socialist guy,

00:47:57.140 or if it's Northern Ireland, between the loyalist guy and the Republican guy.

00:48:02.000 And it's such a sterile, it's no way to actually conduct a conversation into anything that matters.

00:48:10.540 And the management, you mentioned this at the top of the show with regard to a certain other broadcaster,

00:48:17.300 they preconceded, they pre-caved.

00:48:21.420 And at a certain point, you just don't want those kind of managements in your life right now, as you well know, Megan.

00:48:27.500 Now you are free.

00:48:28.260 Yes, I love not having any corporate overlords.

00:48:30.300 Absolutely love it.

00:48:30.840 So for people who want to support you, Mark, as an independent broadcaster now,

00:48:34.580 again, can you give us the website?

00:48:35.620 How can they find you?

00:48:36.320 Make sure that you're supported.

00:48:37.720 It's S-T-E-Y-N, online, that's as in Stein with a Y, 0.53

00:48:43.260 as in why do I have to listen to this snotty, hoity-toity foreigner telling me everything that's wrong with America. 1.00

00:48:50.080 Steinonline.com, and you can watch today's show and tomorrow's show right there.

00:48:55.660 Great.

00:48:56.220 I'm looking forward to it.

00:48:57.180 Always love hearing your voice.

00:48:58.520 Thank you for being here.

00:48:59.420 Come back anytime.

00:49:01.500 Always a pleasure, Megan.

00:49:03.200 And happy anniversary.

00:49:05.300 All right, we'll be right back with the latest on the Murdoch trial.

00:49:08.780 The jurors are off site today.

00:49:11.200 They took a visit to Moselle, Alex Murdoch's house.

00:49:15.200 This is fraught, fraught, especially for the prosecution.

00:49:18.220 People predicting this could be another OJ visit, you know, by the jury's situation.

00:49:21.900 We'll get into it.

00:49:22.440 Closing arguments underway right now in the double murder trial of disgraced South Carolina attorney, Alec Murdoch.

00:49:33.520 Earlier this morning, the jury went off site from the courthouse visiting Murdoch's 1700 acre hunting estate known as Moselle.

00:49:42.740 That is where the murders happened there.

00:49:44.860 The jury spent time at the dog kennels, which were the scene of the crime.

00:49:50.200 Joining us now to discuss Dave Ehrenberg, state attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida, and from South Carolina courthouse where it's all happening.

00:49:57.460 Attorney Eric Bland, founder and partner of Bland Richter.

00:50:01.720 They have had a role in at least one lawsuit against Alec Murdoch.

00:50:06.520 Welcome, guys, to Kelly's Court.

00:50:07.920 Great to have you.

00:50:09.420 Hey, thanks for having us.

00:50:10.880 Great to be with you, Kelly.

00:50:12.320 So what an eerie morning to take the jury to Moselle.

00:50:14.800 The defense wanted it done.

00:50:16.020 The prosecution objected, but the judge said it's fine.

00:50:18.920 They can go.

00:50:20.160 The prosecution, I'm sure, Eric, was worried about an OJ situation, right, where, you know, we now know Johnny Cochran went in there.

00:50:27.820 Restaged OJ's entire house, took down all the pictures of the white women, put up pictures of black women, OJ with his black friends.

00:50:34.360 You know, it just made him look like he was much more a part of the black community than he'd ever been.

00:50:38.400 I don't know how you could do that to Moselle in a way that would help the defense.

00:50:41.720 But that was the concern.

00:50:43.040 The judge overruled it.

00:50:44.200 The jury went.

00:50:45.020 What do we know about how that went?

00:50:47.280 Well, I think the greater concern was it wasn't an apples and apples type of jury view.

00:50:53.300 If it really was going to have meaning, it should have been done exactly at the time of night at about 845 or anywhere from 8 o'clock to 10 o'clock at night.

00:51:04.120 And so that the jury can see the darkness and how dark it is in this rural area of our state.

00:51:10.660 Plus, hear the quiet.

00:51:13.480 So that, I think, was the concern of the prosecution.

00:51:17.280 Plus, you know, there's been a number of trees that have grown in the last two years.

00:51:22.720 That that's the problem.

00:51:24.660 Hmm.

00:51:25.180 You know, this can cut both ways, Dave, because taking the jury to the scene where, you know, a double murder took place.

00:51:32.680 You know, you may not know for sure who did it, but, you know, two people were killed here.

00:51:36.940 A 22 year old young man and his mother.

00:51:40.200 He was shot first.

00:51:41.480 His mother presumably saw him die.

00:51:44.280 Um, that's tough.

00:51:46.720 That's got to be emotionally rattling for the jury.

00:51:49.580 And I know the defense all along has been leaning into let them see the autopsy photos.

00:51:54.440 Let them see how horrific this crime was, because no one will believe that a father could do it.

00:51:59.420 A father could do it to his own son.

00:52:00.960 A spouse could do it to his own wife.

00:52:03.300 Um, the Wall Street Journal reporter, uh, it's Valerie Barleen.

00:52:08.000 She's part of the randomly selected press pool that visited Mazzell after the jury went.

00:52:11.960 That's all the judge would allow.

00:52:12.960 She writes, we had roughly 14 minutes to view the kennels and shed.

00:52:16.660 It's a heavy place to visit.

00:52:18.740 The property has stood vacant for 20 months and the grass is high.

00:52:22.160 Some items seem to be left where they fell, including a deflated football behind the kennels and a tube of sanitizing wipes in the shed.

00:52:28.520 There's a yellow hose wrapped haphazardly in the spot described by one witness, the caretaker for the dogs.

00:52:34.080 There are no animals in the kennels and so on.

00:52:36.080 The feed room, this is where they were shot, feels haunted, only 10 foot deep and six feet wide, according to the measurements that goes on.

00:52:45.760 I wonder what you think the risks are to the defense of bringing the jury there.

00:52:51.220 Yeah, Megan, you bring up a good point.

00:52:54.560 It's one thing to hear about a crime scene.

00:52:56.920 It's not a thing to be there and to smell it and to see it.

00:52:59.840 It really brings it home.

00:53:00.960 And that's why I was surprised that prosecutors didn't want to go there.

00:53:04.920 I think there's some valuable evidence that could help prosecutors.

00:53:07.780 For example, why didn't Alec Murdoch take his car and just drive down the road that the jurors will see, which is an easy drive to the kennels instead of just calling and texting and then taking off to his mother's.

00:53:21.800 And I think that's important for the jurors to see how close the kennels are to the house from that road.

00:53:27.660 It was so easy for him because the main gate is not that far off.

00:53:31.040 So just to just to fill that in, because if he allegedly wanted Maggie home to go visit his mom, why and he purports to have wanted Maggie to come with him when he visited his mom, your point.

00:53:44.100 And he said, oh, I texted her.

00:53:45.360 I text her.

00:53:46.180 Prosecution theory is she was already dead.

00:53:47.500 You already murdered her when you were sending those texts. 0.95

00:53:49.200 They were cover.

00:53:50.080 And your point is they'll see what an easy jaunt it would have been for him to say, hey, Maggie, come with me.

00:53:55.100 I'm going now.

00:53:56.580 Yeah, there's a road directly from the house to the kennel.

00:53:59.360 And when you go out, apparently it's a really quick trip.

00:54:03.260 It's not going far out of your way.

00:54:04.860 So why wouldn't he just drive there?

00:54:06.840 Why would he just give up after texting and calling?

00:54:09.400 Also, I mean, I know it's not relevant to your question, but I mean, I think it is sort of interesting how he tried to create this alibi by sending these text messages and phone calls 10 minutes after the murders.

00:54:19.280 I mean, how convenient.

00:54:20.620 It shows you what a sociopath this guy is. 0.97

00:54:22.580 Mm hmm.

00:54:23.900 The the jury doesn't yet have the case, but the prosecution is in the middle of closing arguments right now.

00:54:31.120 I have a soundbite of how that's going, which I'll play in one second.

00:54:34.360 But first, Eric, I heard you on my friend Nancy Grace on her podcast, which I listen to every night.

00:54:39.120 I love you guys all on the Nancy Grace podcast.

00:54:41.100 Thanks. And you were saying, given the fact that you you represent the family of the housekeeper who died on the property and who Alec said to her sons, don't worry, I'm going to sue myself, basically, on your behalf.

00:54:55.920 I'm going to give you the money.

00:54:57.140 Turned out he got four point three million dollars.

00:54:58.860 He didn't give those boys one cent and you stepped in to help those kids.

00:55:03.800 OK, so that's your kind of role.

00:55:04.980 And given that role, you have a lot of connections in this whole case.

00:55:08.280 And yesterday there was mystery about a possible note.

00:55:12.820 A note did go to the judge.

00:55:14.660 Both counsel for the defense and the prosecution talked to the judge about it.

00:55:18.680 We don't know.

00:55:19.380 But there was reporting that there somebody overheard them say it was about a juror.

00:55:24.200 We can't really afford to lose many more jurors.

00:55:26.400 They only have two all.

00:55:27.120 No.

00:55:28.000 So we got to protect the remaining jurors.

00:55:31.140 And you had heard a rumor about what it might be about.

00:55:34.180 If you could tell us what that was and whether you think that wound up being true, because

00:55:37.640 right now, as far as I understand, the current jury remains seated as it was 24 hours ago.

00:55:43.160 Yeah, you know, I have a podcast, Cup of Justice.

00:55:46.960 It's a highly rated podcast and we get a lot of good tips.

00:55:50.860 And I've gotten very close to Creighton Waters during this trial.

00:55:54.220 In fact, I trade tweets or texts with him beginning at five o'clock in the morning to seven

00:55:59.880 o'clock almost every morning where we, you know, strategize.

00:56:03.400 And he'll ask me a question.

00:56:04.580 What do you think?

00:56:05.180 And he's so receptive, just like Dave, I'm sure, is during a trial to take anything that

00:56:11.080 somebody is going to give and maybe it makes sense.

00:56:13.800 And one of my listeners said that there was a rumor that one of the jurors possibly had

00:56:19.760 made some statements during the trial, which would indicate where that juror was leaning.

00:56:25.720 Now, I don't know any truth to that.

00:56:28.480 I'm told that that person may have sent an email directly to the judge.

00:56:35.020 And that's all I know.

00:56:36.720 There's nothing that's been released.

00:56:38.620 And that morning we also had a delay in getting the closing argument started when there was a

00:56:46.860 at the bench meeting that lasted about 12 minutes.

00:56:50.000 And I had heard that maybe something happened at the cell.

00:56:54.020 So we have a, you know, a number of different things going on.

00:56:57.120 And this judge wants to you're hearing a play in the black background.

00:57:01.200 He wants to land this plane.

00:57:02.700 He wants to deliver the evidence in this case to the jury because it's gone on far too long.

00:57:07.940 So, Dave, do you think we should assume that that did not pan out?

00:57:11.960 Because, you know, as Eric was saying on Nancy's show yesterday, the rumor was that this juror

00:57:16.080 had said, I think he's innocent.

00:57:18.080 And if a juror says that in the course of a trial or I think he's guilty in the course

00:57:21.940 of the trial, they're gone.

00:57:25.280 It's over for that jury.

00:57:26.420 You're balanced.

00:57:27.720 And so in this case, it would be the prosecution who would say she's gone or he's gone.

00:57:32.100 The fact that that didn't happen, I would I would assume suggests they didn't they

00:57:36.680 weren't able to confirm any of that.

00:57:39.260 Correct.

00:57:39.880 So that's good because you don't want jurors to make up their minds for all the evidences

00:57:44.340 and to communicate that to other jurors.

00:57:46.460 That's where really where it's a no, no.

00:57:47.920 You can have your own thoughts, but you can't communicate that to others.

00:57:53.100 And so I think that's probably a false rumor.

00:57:55.480 I'm glad that Eric reported it because you want this trial to be as fair as possible.

00:57:59.660 I was concerned by the reports that two jurors were crying when Alec Murdoch took the stand

00:58:06.060 as direct examination.

00:58:07.400 That to me was a problem.

00:58:09.200 Prosecutors never want to see that.

00:58:10.500 But that was a Thursday.

00:58:11.800 Alec Murdoch Friday.

00:58:13.260 Alec Murdoch, when he was under a withering cross examination, was very different.

00:58:18.020 He wasn't as sympathetic.

00:58:19.520 He was combative. 0.99

00:58:20.780 You saw him for the liar that he is. 0.81

00:58:23.220 And hopefully those jurors who were crying on Thursday had a different opinion of him on 0.72

00:58:28.160 Friday.

00:58:29.300 I'm scared, guys.

00:58:31.640 I think he did it.

00:58:32.760 I've said this openly in my analysis as a lawyer who's been watching this case as he

00:58:36.760 did it.

00:58:37.140 But I'm scared the jury might not get it.

00:58:40.060 I just think, you know, he was kind of charming up there, Eric.

00:58:43.520 And I realized that the cross brought out some very valid points about what a bad guy this

00:58:47.720 is.

00:58:48.100 He was kind of charming.

00:58:49.300 And he talked to the jury in their language, in this real colloquial way, like I'm bonding

00:58:54.540 the brother, you know, John Marvin.

00:58:56.720 He was really likable, too.

00:58:57.940 He's kind of vouching for Alec.

00:58:59.800 I'm worried this jury is not going to be able to get past that Murdoch name and how nice

00:59:04.340 this man seemed and just sort of chalk it up to, well, financial crimes, that doesn't

00:59:09.160 mean he killed them.

00:59:10.860 Well, from John Marvin's standpoint, you know, Dave and I would have asked the same

00:59:14.800 exact four questions.

00:59:16.480 Do you love your family?

00:59:17.580 Do you love your brother?

00:59:19.480 It would hurt the family name if your brother was convicted of double murder.

00:59:23.280 And oh, by the way, he didn't tell you for two years that he was at the kennel.

00:59:26.720 And I would have sat down and that would have neutralized John Marvin.

00:59:30.040 As far as Alex goes, you know, this is a referendum on Alex.

00:59:35.260 This trial started out as a scientific trial.

00:59:37.860 We thought it was going to be about blood, DNA and GSR.

00:59:41.220 Then it moved to a technological trial of phones, of phone mapping, of videos, and then

00:59:48.180 OnStar.

00:59:49.360 And now after last Thursday and Friday, it's a referendum on Alex.

00:59:53.380 Are you going to believe him?

00:59:54.480 Look, he said that everybody in this trial has lied.

00:59:58.760 Blanca lied about the Vineyard Vine shirt.

01:00:01.200 Shelly Smith lied about the blue tarp and about the 30 to 40 minute conversation that they

01:00:06.280 supposedly had.

01:00:07.000 Mark Tinsley lied about the meeting they had at the trial lawyers association about the

01:00:12.060 Mallory Beach case.

01:00:13.720 Sled has lied.

01:00:15.320 Marion, the sister-in-law, has lied.

01:00:17.620 T.C.

01:00:18.100 Smith, the African-American sheriff yesterday, who said he never asked me permission to carry

01:00:24.480 a badge or a blue light.

01:00:26.200 And of course, the media has lied. 1.00

01:00:27.940 And Alex has told you, I'm a drug addict, I'm a thief, and I'm a liar. 0.98

01:00:32.000 And it's only when the devil was at the door, Megan, did he say, hey, I admit I was at the 0.93

01:00:38.880 kennel, even though I never told my son, my only living son for two years.

01:00:43.260 I lied to him about the last conversation and meetings and dealings with your mother and

01:00:49.000 your brother.

01:00:49.800 But because I've told you that today, you need to believe me and not anybody else.

01:00:55.940 And I just think I believe he's guilty.

01:00:58.860 I believe that there's at least 10 jurors that believe he's guilty.

01:01:03.000 And if people are going to listen to the judge's instructions and they're going to have to deliberate,

01:01:08.620 it's my hope that people will keep an open mind and let the evidence show you that he did it.

01:01:17.700 Look, if you brought Cyril Wecht, Henry Lee, or the best pathologist that Dave has ever used,

01:01:24.280 the conclusion would be the same.

01:01:26.440 All the evidence points to Alex.

01:01:29.640 And nobody else.

01:01:31.300 10 jurors, why, instead of 12?

01:01:33.220 Well, I think that there's always two jurors that may be swayed by a closing argument and

01:01:40.860 they walk into the jury room.

01:01:42.780 I've heard a lot of people say, well, I think he's guilty, but I don't think the state proved

01:01:46.900 it.

01:01:47.120 So let's say two people walk in there with that concept of I do believe he did it, but

01:01:53.060 I don't think the state met its burden.

01:01:55.020 Then it's up to the other 10 jurors who had their own set of two eyes and two ears to educate

01:02:00.880 those people and hopefully they have an open mind.

01:02:03.860 The problem that we have in these kind of cases is if people have a closed mind and they

01:02:09.040 refuse to deliberate and they refuse to listen to reasonable arguments, remember, it's reasonable

01:02:16.200 doubt and Dave will talk about that.

01:02:18.640 It's not any doubt.

01:02:20.120 It's got to be a justifiable, reasonable doubt.

01:02:24.980 You know, we all have doubts in life, but then they may be irrational and not reasonable.

01:02:29.560 Dave, what do you think about that?

01:02:31.160 This is not a case where I think I don't maybe I'm wrong, guys, but I feel like you're

01:02:36.140 a juror who's just like, I like him and I don't believe a man would do that to his son

01:02:39.860 as well.

01:02:40.220 And why you have it.

01:02:41.640 Yeah.

01:02:41.840 The defense gave you enough outs, enough reason to question that you could credibly go that

01:02:49.140 way and possibly withstand the pressure from those other jurors.

01:02:53.400 It's not how I would vote, though.

01:02:55.980 To be honest, I've always been more prosecution oriented in my my approach to these cases.

01:03:00.940 It's not to say they never get it wrong.

01:03:02.260 But I mean, this one, I feel like, yes, it's mostly circumstantial, but it's overwhelming

01:03:05.280 circumstantial evidence that he did it.

01:03:08.340 Let me just jump in and show you part of the prosecution's closing argument.

01:03:12.780 It began shortly after 12 p.m.

01:03:14.740 This is lead prosecutor Creighton Waters at the beginning of his closing argument.

01:03:20.560 And after an exhaustive investigation, there is only one person who had the motive, who had

01:03:30.340 the means, who had the opportunity to commit these crimes, and also whose guilty conduct

01:03:40.180 after these crimes betrays them.

01:03:42.180 The defendant was the one person who was living a lie.

01:03:48.140 The defendant is the person on which a storm was descending.

01:03:51.620 And the defendant is a person where his own storm would actually mean consequences for Maggie and Paul

01:03:59.760 and consequences for those who trusted him.

01:04:03.760 And that person is the defendant, Richard Alexander Murdoch.

01:04:07.940 Pretty good, Dave.

01:04:10.920 And that stuff is just chilling.

01:04:12.900 And the theater of it won't be lost on the jury either.

01:04:15.760 They realize what they're in the middle of right now.

01:04:17.740 Yes, and you saw how Waters leaned into the motive there because he knows it's probably the weakest

01:04:24.840 part of the state's case.

01:04:26.560 Why would a father slaughter of his beloved son?

01:04:30.280 By all accounts, he had a really good relationship with his son and his wife.

01:04:34.680 And as a prosecutor, as you know, Megan, it's not uncommon, sadly, for someone to be on trial

01:04:39.700 for killing a spouse, but to kill their own son. 0.61

01:04:43.040 And that's why the defense tried to make their whole case on, hey, this is about reasons.

01:04:47.740 And look how much this family loved each other.

01:04:51.380 Why would he do that?

01:04:52.740 To me, when he took the stand, it helped the prosecution develop the motive because he himself

01:04:59.540 said, Alec Murdoch, that he was so paranoid from opioids that that led him to nonstop lie

01:05:08.160 for the last year and a half, to lie to everyone because he was so paranoid.

01:05:11.900 But I guess he's paranoid enough to lie, but not paranoid enough to kill.

01:05:17.740 That sounds like selective paranoia to me.

01:05:20.200 And so he gave, I thought, the prosecution a lifeline to say, hey, look, if jurors, if

01:05:26.460 you don't believe that he had the motive to kill based on the financial reasons, well,

01:05:31.420 how about the reasons of opioid abuse?

01:05:34.340 So I think that Eric is right that I think it's more likely than not he is convicted.

01:05:38.720 But I think there is a very decent chance there will be a hung jury.

01:05:43.340 I think it's unlikely he'll be acquitted.

01:05:45.620 Oh, yeah.

01:05:46.600 Yeah.

01:05:46.880 Do you have a chance?

01:05:47.720 Let me ask you, let me ask you, because.

01:05:50.400 They did do a good job.

01:05:52.000 They slipped it in here and there and the whole Paul Paul thing, he never called him that

01:05:57.160 before.

01:05:57.600 Before, in all the interrogation videos, he referred to him as Paul, his son, Paul.

01:06:01.280 Now suddenly he's in front of the jury.

01:06:02.360 It's Paul, Paul and Mags.

01:06:04.420 So Alec did his best.

01:06:06.360 The family did their best.

01:06:07.480 His witnesses did their best to try to create this image of a very happy family.

01:06:12.000 Pictures, birthday parties and so on.

01:06:14.860 They did a good job.

01:06:16.440 And while I heard Nancy talking about how you can't step foot down there, you know, when

01:06:20.640 you land on the plane without hearing about how Maggie was unhappy, the wedding ring was

01:06:24.960 found in her car under the floor mat and they weren't living together and they were likely

01:06:29.380 headed for a divorce and she might have had to get a forensic accountant. 0.99

01:06:33.100 None of that ever got before the jury.

01:06:34.980 In fact, what the jury heard was from Maggie's sister who said it wasn't a perfect relationship,

01:06:40.300 but she was happy.

01:06:41.420 She was happy.

01:06:42.200 So that's that's on the defense side, right?

01:06:45.640 Like the jury is going to be saying they had a happy marriage and he really seemed to love

01:06:50.640 the son.

01:06:51.720 What kind of a human being would kill a son they love and a wife they're happily married

01:06:57.840 to because they're in a panic about reputation and money? 0.97

01:07:02.720 Well, a family annihilator would, a narcissist would, and a modern day monster would.

01:07:08.060 You know, I've said on TV, Megan, that he's a 90-10 guy.

01:07:12.200 90% of the time he's a loving husband, a great father, a great friend, jovial will be around.

01:07:21.440 It's the 10% of the time that nobody knew existed in this guy.

01:07:25.300 You know, the devil works in the dark.

01:07:27.400 And so Alex worked with cousin Eddie.

01:07:29.740 He obviously had a drug habit that very few people knew about.

01:07:34.200 I can't imagine that his law partners would have condoned it because it would expose the

01:07:38.840 law firm to tremendous liability in letting him handle in cases.

01:07:44.520 But the fact of the matter is he you're looking for rational explanation of why a father would

01:07:50.500 kill a son. 0.79

01:07:51.520 Motive is not an element of murder. 0.95

01:07:53.160 And sometimes it's a problem-solving reason to commit murder.

01:07:58.220 In our eyes, it's an irrational reason.

01:08:00.520 We would say, really?

01:08:01.860 That's what you were doing?

01:08:03.980 But if you saw his real income in 2016, 17, 18, and 19, and 20 kept decreasing, and his big

01:08:13.720 cases kept decreasing.

01:08:15.460 He needed big cases to be able to steal money.

01:08:18.040 So when you have that perfect storm of your real income decreasing, and then your theft

01:08:24.900 income decreasing, he became desperate.

01:08:28.280 And like Dave said, the drug paranoia can now be whipsawed against him.

01:08:34.560 And I believe in his mind, he thought he had a perfect reason to kill Paul.

01:08:41.080 I don't know what the reason would be for Maggie.

01:08:43.780 Look, it could have been a mercy killing for Paul.

01:08:45.720 Paul was facing 20 to 30 years, and he was going to get it for that boating accident with

01:08:52.560 Mallory Beach.

01:08:54.140 And Paul is a 5'8 guy, redhead from a privileged family.

01:08:59.440 Dave knows just as good as I do that in the big house, that's not going to be an easy time

01:09:04.180 to pull 20 to 30 years.

01:09:06.620 And maybe he decided in his own way that he was going to ease the pain for Paul.

01:09:13.120 Look, the roadside shooting wasn't about Alex trying to commit suicide.

01:09:17.720 All that was, was an attempt to divert the authorities away from thinking that he was

01:09:23.820 a suspect. 0.95

01:09:24.800 He's a narcissist. 0.85

01:09:26.200 He doesn't want to die.

01:09:27.840 Let me ask you a question about the roadside shooting, because this is something that's

01:09:30.480 always stuck in my craw and you're close enough to this case to answer it.

01:09:33.120 Um, I'll tell you, frankly, the, the woman who she's my friend and she's my hairstylist.

01:09:38.340 Her name is Sarah.

01:09:39.460 And she's a, like a lot of women, she's an armchair crime solver. 1.00

01:09:43.040 And she asked me a very good question about cousin Eddie, the guy who Alec had shoot him

01:09:48.100 roadside three months after the murders of Paul and Maggie.

01:09:51.720 You know, we think it's because he was trying to make it look like, oh, there's this random

01:09:54.860 killer on the loose.

01:09:55.720 He's after all the Murdochs, including Alec.

01:09:58.020 Alec's not the murderer.

01:09:59.020 Alec was almost a murder victim.

01:10:00.120 And he says, no, he admits now that he had cousin Eddie do it, but he said, I was trying

01:10:04.860 to get him to suicide me, to me, you know, to kill me so that, um, my, my remaining son

01:10:09.540 would get a $10 million life insurance policy. 0.94

01:10:11.340 She has a very good question.

01:10:12.740 And that was, is cousin Eddie, some sort of sharp shooter from, you know, like the army

01:10:19.740 Rangers.

01:10:20.240 Like how did cousin Eddie, if this was prearranged with Alec and he didn't actually want to die,

01:10:25.600 he just wanted to make it look like somebody was after him.

01:10:27.400 How did cousin Eddie manage, like graze his skull without getting the bullet in the skull

01:10:33.940 accidentally, right?

01:10:35.160 Do we give cousin Eddie that much credit?

01:10:39.220 Well, I think that people where I, I live, um, Megan know how to kill.

01:10:44.860 And if they wanted to kill, they would know how to do it.

01:10:48.160 Um, whether there was a struggle with the gun and it grazed his head.

01:10:52.160 I think, um, the, the whole thing is Eddie is part of that 10% of his life.

01:10:58.020 He laundered $2.2 million worth of checks that I discovered from back of America from

01:11:03.900 2018 through after the week of the murder through cousin Eddie, cousin Eddie purchased

01:11:09.680 the drugs for him.

01:11:11.400 Cousin Eddie obviously was on the side of the road.

01:11:13.820 And, and look what this man did, the waste of law enforcement resources.

01:11:18.420 He, he made them get a sketch artist and he sketched a photo of a potential assailant

01:11:25.260 that looked like Connor cook.

01:11:27.120 And he had a dimple on the chin at the whole time.

01:11:29.840 He knew it was cousin Eddie the same way.

01:11:31.880 He wasted the state's resources for two years, proving that he was at the kennel and he never

01:11:37.780 did.

01:11:38.000 And, and oh, by the way, just so you understand this 11th hour Mia Coppola, where I come clean,

01:11:43.800 he, he entered a plea of not guilty in every single financial crime, even one that was charged

01:11:51.460 two months ago.

01:11:52.860 So the jury needs to be made aware that this, you know, guy that you saw in the witness stand,

01:11:58.980 sure.

01:11:59.540 He was congenial when he talked about his drug use and it was sympathetic.

01:12:04.000 And he came and said, I, I did take money from these victims and I let them down.

01:12:09.880 He never apologized.

01:12:11.420 He never used the word apologize, but then the real personality came out when Creighton

01:12:15.940 was questioning him on the murder facts.

01:12:17.820 You saw the gears spinning in his head of how do I come up with these answers?

01:12:22.900 Did I say, did I check, uh, check the pulse before I made the 911 call?

01:12:27.820 Or did I check the pulses after, if I checked them before, there's no way that I could check

01:12:32.540 Paul's pulse, turn them over, phone falls out, put it back in, go check on Maggie and

01:12:38.360 then make the call within 17 seconds.

01:12:41.320 Um, the timeline is always killed him in this case.

01:12:44.900 Once he was placed at the kennels.

01:12:46.720 All right.

01:12:47.600 I take all that, but I did not hear an answer to whether cousin Eddie was that good a shot.

01:12:52.280 I'm sorry.

01:12:52.900 Like Dave, he was, he was, he was, he could graze the skull, but not penetrate this guy.

01:13:00.180 Like we are giving cousin Eddie, who seems to be a rather messy guy, a lot of credit.

01:13:04.780 Go ahead, Dave.

01:13:06.000 Yeah.

01:13:06.480 There's one theory out there that Alec Murdoch wanted to frame cousin Eddie for the murders.

01:13:11.580 And so he arranged for this and then he thought he was going to kill cousin Eddie, that, that

01:13:16.600 cousin Eddie would die and that he would lay it all on him. 0.92

01:13:19.120 But the gun went off because they're so incompetent and it's grazed Alec in the head.

01:13:24.040 That's just one theory out there.

01:13:25.500 There are a lot of them that are possible.

01:13:27.300 I like that one.

01:13:27.960 That's possible.

01:13:28.780 Yeah.

01:13:29.200 You know what?

01:13:29.960 If you're Alec Murdoch, that makes sense. 0.99

01:13:31.500 Kill off cousin Eddie. 0.97

01:13:32.700 He's a character that you don't need in the movie of this cousin Eddie would definitely be 0.99

01:13:36.240 expendable.

01:13:36.840 Go ahead, Eric.

01:13:37.440 And Megan, he, he told the sled that cousin Eddie was not responsible for the murders

01:13:44.360 of Maggie and Paul.

01:13:45.480 And he also said that the, the Cowboys were not responsible for it.

01:13:49.620 So this third party guilt that the defense has been trying to put before the trial and

01:13:54.940 that there were two shooters, um, he eviscerated that.

01:13:58.440 And oh, by the way, the cartel, when they come to kill you, they don't borrow your weapons

01:14:04.280 or steal them.

01:14:05.180 They bring their own, Dave, please.

01:14:07.980 You're in Florida.

01:14:08.960 They don't miss.

01:14:09.780 They don't miss.

01:14:10.840 They come with pistols.

01:14:12.060 They don't use shotguns and they kill you.

01:14:14.540 And those guns are gone.

01:14:15.840 They don't steal weapons from you.

01:14:17.720 Isn't that correct, Dave?

01:14:19.160 A hundred percent.

01:14:19.820 Correct.

01:14:20.340 You don't have a series of five, two hit men walking onto your property just at the right

01:14:24.900 time, stealing your guns because they come unarmed.

01:14:27.820 His explanation made no sense.

01:14:29.920 And I think it will be used against them.

01:14:31.340 And remember the defense doesn't have to put on a defense.

01:14:33.960 They don't have to say a word, but they put this stuff on.

01:14:36.840 They let Alex say his crazy theories.

01:14:38.860 And I think that will be used against them.

01:14:40.880 Another reason why I thought that his testimony will come back to haunt him.

01:14:45.140 Okay.

01:14:45.560 But what about, what about this?

01:14:47.740 What about they clearly put Alec on the stand chiefly because we knew it was him at the

01:14:51.980 kennels.

01:14:52.300 He denied all along that he'd ever been down to the kennels with Maggie and Paul, where

01:14:55.500 they were killed.

01:14:56.240 And the reason he denied that is because he didn't want to place himself at the murder

01:14:59.320 scene.

01:14:59.820 But then unbeknownst to him, and this is the most chilling part of this whole case, if

01:15:03.540 you ask me, his son essentially fingered him.

01:15:08.060 His son caught his murderer, his own dad.

01:15:12.220 And the way he did it was without the dad knowing the son videotaped the dogs at the

01:15:18.040 kennel four minutes before we believe he was murdered.

01:15:21.460 And on that tape, we can't see Alec Murdoch, but we can hear him.

01:15:26.160 And witness after witness took the stand and said, I'm a hundred percent certain that's

01:15:30.600 Paul Murdoch, Maggie Murdoch.

01:15:32.280 And that's the voice of Alec Murdoch.

01:15:34.460 So he had no choice at that point, he felt, but to take the stand and try to explain that,

01:15:42.740 yes, it was his voice because the jury was 100 percent going to find that.

01:15:45.920 And then to explain what had been introduced already as his lie.

01:15:49.440 He was on tape denying it to cops.

01:15:52.060 And to me, that's just the most eerie part.

01:15:54.000 If this jury concludes guilty, it's because Paul Murdoch solved his own murder.

01:15:59.940 Exactly.

01:16:01.420 You are correct.

01:16:02.580 Yeah.

01:16:02.680 Paul solved his own murder.

01:16:05.080 And that is Paul's lasting legacy.

01:16:07.940 He was able to get his father convicted and hopefully convicted of murder because of that

01:16:12.080 video.

01:16:12.360 Without that video, I don't think there would be a conviction.

01:16:15.060 It's because of that video.

01:16:16.280 And so when I think what happened was his lawyers, Alec's lawyers did not want him to

01:16:20.780 testify.

01:16:21.440 But Alec realized this was a major problem for his case.

01:16:25.640 And so he said, I can do it.

01:16:27.300 I want to do it.

01:16:28.020 I'm going to explain it away.

01:16:29.480 But he didn't think it through all the way because when he said, look, I was

01:16:32.680 paranoid from the drugs, then it created a new motive.

01:16:35.400 Well, OK, the drugs made him kill.

01:16:37.940 And so when he took the stand, it opened up all these new things out there.

01:16:42.080 Like, for example, when he said that I was paranoid of SLED, state law enforcement.

01:16:47.420 Well, OK, but at the 911 call, you lied right before SLED was involved when the local police

01:16:55.820 officer showed up on the body camera.

01:16:58.220 You can see you lied to him.

01:17:00.260 If you're so paranoid by SLED, why are you lying to everyone else, including your own

01:17:04.240 family?

01:17:04.800 And this is a guy who's not paranoid of the police.

01:17:08.060 He had privilege.

01:17:08.940 He had his own badge that he showed off.

01:17:11.540 He had it hanging from his pocket when he went in to the hospital after Mallory Beach was

01:17:16.220 killed. He had it on his dashboard.

01:17:18.540 He loaded up his car with blue lights.

01:17:20.620 Let me tell you how obnoxious that is.

01:17:22.060 As someone who drives around in a car with blue lights, you can't do that.

01:17:26.440 And so here's a guy who thought he was above the law.

01:17:29.620 He thought he had privilege.

01:17:30.940 The whole paranoia thing is just a way to try to get out of what should be a conviction.

01:17:36.740 Eric, you know, it jumped out at me the other day.

01:17:38.580 Let me just make this point and then I'll give you the floor. 1.00

01:17:40.200 I mentioned this to our audience, but the other thing he didn't anticipate was I wasn't

01:17:45.680 a big fan of all the open ended questions that that Waters asked him on the cross.

01:17:50.260 I like that.

01:17:50.780 You know, I'll drive the narrative.

01:17:52.280 I'll tell you what the story was and you either say yes or no.

01:17:55.180 But some of them paid off.

01:17:56.460 And one of them was asking him whether he remembers the last conversation he had with Maggie and

01:18:03.780 Paul four minutes before their murder when he was down there and allegedly leaving the

01:18:08.700 kennels. That's what he wants us to believe, as opposed to staying there and shooting them.

01:18:11.600 And he didn't.

01:18:13.080 That is not possible.

01:18:14.420 That is not possible that that a father and a husband four minutes before their family is

01:18:20.040 murdered wouldn't remember his last words to his own son, to his own wife.

01:18:25.920 And it's also not possible that he would then take the witness stand in a case like this

01:18:30.480 and not spontaneously offer to the jury.

01:18:33.620 I'll never get past the survivor's guilt.

01:18:36.240 Why didn't I stay?

01:18:37.940 Why?

01:18:38.260 Maybe I could have protected.

01:18:39.360 That's how an actual dad who had just been through what his story is would have reacted.

01:18:47.340 Megan, listen, I've been married 35 years.

01:18:50.560 I remember the first time and where I was when I got my first kiss from my wife.

01:18:56.320 I will never forget it.

01:18:57.940 I would never forget being with my wife and my son the last moments they were alive.

01:19:03.940 And just just so you know, if I did come up and my wife and son were brutally murdered,

01:19:09.220 I would still be clutching them together today.

01:19:12.340 Jaws of life couldn't have removed my arms from them, let alone me getting up and start

01:19:20.220 making phone calls to brothers, to friends of Paul.

01:19:25.140 Remember, the two facts in my mind, which mean, which shows guilt, he didn't call his only

01:19:31.460 surviving son for 42 minutes to tell him that his mother and his brother were brutally murdered.

01:19:38.600 He spoke to Paul's friends.

01:19:40.340 He texted a groundskeeper and told him to fix the sunflower seeds.

01:19:45.460 He did a Google search of a restaurant.

01:19:48.980 He looked at a text stream of a girl in a bikini.

01:19:51.840 And then he waited two and a half years to tell his son, I actually been lying to you for

01:19:58.900 two years, son.

01:20:00.260 I was there when your mother and your son died.

01:20:02.880 Yeah, I was there.

01:20:04.720 No father.

01:20:05.980 Do that to a child. 0.84

01:20:07.800 All right.

01:20:08.180 So in this segment, we've been tough on Alec Murdoch and we've all been more prosecution

01:20:13.160 oriented.

01:20:13.900 But the defense has been scoring blows.

01:20:16.360 They are out there fighting, fighting like Alec Murdoch's life depends on it.

01:20:20.200 And we're going to play you some of that in our second segment and get into where the defense

01:20:24.300 made its best points and, you know, whether it could potentially be enough.

01:20:29.360 More with Eric and Dave right after this quick break.

01:20:31.140 One of the defense's main lines of defense is that this shooting wasn't done by one person

01:20:40.280 and could not have been done by one person.

01:20:43.800 There were two people at the scene.

01:20:46.020 And by the way, we think they were really short, not six foot four as Alec Murdoch is.

01:20:50.780 And to that end, they introduced this testimony from Tim Palmbach.

01:20:56.520 He's a defense crime scene and blood spatter expert, kind of talking about how that could

01:21:01.940 have gone down.

01:21:02.520 It's SOT-19.

01:21:04.600 My opinion is the totality of the evidence is more suggestive of a two shooter scenario.

01:21:09.240 And so I think minimally, minimally, that shooter is getting covered with this material, getting

01:21:16.320 more or less the shock wave of that effect, and more than likely getting hit with at least

01:21:21.060 something that could have done injury, a bone fragment and or a pellet fragment.

01:21:27.220 Therefore, I think that particular shooter for a brief period of time is kind of out of this.

01:21:34.380 It's not as if they could instantaneously suffer that, drop the shotgun, run to wherever

01:21:39.680 the blackout rifle is, pick that up, and then in any kind of a reasonable time period, engage

01:21:47.140 in a meaningful assault, an effective assault, able to shoot straight and make hits.

01:21:53.960 All right, Dave, that's the theory.

01:21:56.120 It couldn't have been done.

01:21:57.260 The first shooting of Paul would have been so traumatic, dramatic, and consequential.

01:22:02.260 It was not possible for one person to do them both.

01:22:07.980 Yeah, and that's a problem for the state because it gives jurors, as you mentioned, the hook

01:22:14.720 where they could find some reasonable doubt because the jurors are either going to convict

01:22:19.460 him or not based on whether they find that he is a liar and someone who could have done

01:22:25.120 such a horrible thing.

01:22:26.080 And if they liked him, if they felt sympathy for him and were crying on Thursday, then

01:22:31.800 they just have to point to, well, that one expert said there was no blood spatter and

01:22:38.380 two people had to commit this crime.

01:22:40.280 And that's the reasonable doubt.

01:22:41.300 Now, if that expert didn't hold any sway, then just liking this defendant would not be

01:22:46.840 enough.

01:22:47.120 They have to hold their hat on something.

01:22:49.120 And the defense gave them something to hold their hat on.

01:22:52.620 And I think the state overwhelmed the defense with their evidence.

01:22:56.220 I think they did provide a case that proved his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

01:23:01.480 But if jurors want to like this guy and want a reason to try to acquit him, they've got

01:23:08.120 it.

01:23:08.960 All right, Eric, what do you make of Dr. Ellen Reimer?

01:23:12.820 She is the pathologist who conducted the autopsies of Maggie and Paul.

01:23:18.060 And I will tell you that her affect is very strange for somebody on the outside, you know,

01:23:25.100 watching this case.

01:23:26.260 Now, this is the nature of her job, I imagine, because she's done 5,000 autopsies.

01:23:30.640 So she's gotten to this place where she talks about dealing with dead bodies like it's you

01:23:34.580 and me talking about what we put in our coffee in the morning.

01:23:37.080 But it was kind of jarring when you first heard her on direct exam talking about the autopsy.

01:23:41.560 Oh, here's where the bullet went in and here's what a part of the brain matter got blown

01:23:44.780 out.

01:23:45.060 But it was like, oh, my God, OK, remember, the jury doesn't have the same background you

01:23:48.540 do.

01:23:49.380 And I do think this this matter, though she's a consummate professional, is coming back to

01:23:53.880 haunt the D.A., the prosecution, because the defense is making such a big deal out of

01:23:59.060 had to be two shooters.

01:24:00.320 They they're arguing that Paul was shot at close range, that they put the gun, the rifle,

01:24:06.740 the shotgun against his head and pulled the trigger.

01:24:10.140 And the prosecution's rebuttal using their pathologist, this woman, Dr. Ellen Reimer,

01:24:16.280 is basically that's impossible.

01:24:19.160 Forgive me.

01:24:19.700 But but basically, Paul's head would have been blown off if they had done that.

01:24:24.000 And that's not exactly what happened.

01:24:25.780 But Dr. Reimer is like she can't really bring it home.

01:24:29.820 She's very sort of technical in her words.

01:24:32.840 She doesn't speak like a regular Joe or Jane.

01:24:35.380 And I think they're struggling.

01:24:37.660 Here's just a little bit.

01:24:38.580 We pulled just an interesting moment from Harputlian.

01:24:42.080 He's the defense attorney, lead defense attorney's cross of her, where he's trying to like refer

01:24:46.960 her back to like these seminal treatise on these gunshots, these wounds that are up close

01:24:51.460 and why she didn't follow it.

01:24:54.340 Here's how that went.

01:24:55.080 At two feet, is there any gas left or is it all dissipated like this picture shows?

01:25:02.260 Well, you know, what we have here, if there was more gas, if there was a contact wound to

01:25:07.320 here.

01:25:07.760 It's not a contact wound.

01:25:08.360 I understand.

01:25:09.780 The gas, you know, you're wanting me to say yes or no.

01:25:13.420 Yes or no.

01:25:14.020 And I can't because I have the knowledge to explain how this relates to examining the body.

01:25:20.080 I don't give theoretical talks or, you know, I don't start looking up in this book while

01:25:26.200 I'm doing an autopsy.

01:25:27.140 I use my practical reasoning and my experience and knowledge.

01:25:31.940 How do you think she's playing?

01:25:34.960 Megan, pathology and doing autopsies is every bit as much of an art as it is a science.

01:25:43.080 Certain pathologists have their own sequence of events on how they reach their conclusions.

01:25:48.580 I differ than you, surprisingly.

01:25:52.320 She's quirky.

01:25:53.280 We want our pathologists and our coroners to be quirky.

01:25:56.260 They're not people people.

01:25:57.920 They like to put their headphones on or put ACDC on the speakers and then start cutting

01:26:03.520 and sawing and doing what they do and do their dizzle.

01:26:07.000 That's who she is.

01:26:08.340 You could tell she's a little quirky because she spends a time alone with dead bodies.

01:26:13.060 And don't forget, Dr. Pombok directly contradicted the expert du jour who played all five positions

01:26:21.620 on the offensive line for the defense, Mr. Sutton, the accident reconstructionist who was

01:26:27.260 originally on the boat case.

01:26:29.060 He said that it was an upward shot.

01:26:31.460 Dr. Pombok contradicted him and said it was a contact wound shot from the head down.

01:26:37.880 So we went from a 5'2 vigilante to a 6'4 middle linebacker who's shooting down.

01:26:46.400 And I just think it's spitballing.

01:26:48.720 It's almost throwing spaghetti on a wall and seeing what's going to stick.

01:26:52.260 I'm not saying that they didn't posit a possibility that there could be two shooters, but there

01:26:58.320 could have been 10 shooters.

01:26:59.620 And Dr. Kinsey, in the rebuttal testimony, said it could be one.

01:27:04.220 I can't rule out that there could be more.

01:27:06.500 But the fact of the matter is, it makes no sense.

01:27:09.840 Listen, the FBI and SLED have confidential informants all over this state.

01:27:15.080 If there was a vigilante shooter or there was a cartel shooting, they have feelers out there.

01:27:21.240 Listen, if two people shoot somebody, the only way you could keep a secret is kill the other one.

01:27:25.760 Two people, somebody would have spilled the guts or somebody would have traded information

01:27:29.360 on this killing over the past two years.

01:27:31.640 Again, all of the evidence leads to Alex because an innocent man doesn't lie on fundamental

01:27:39.240 facts that would have aided police to find out who the killers were if it wasn't him.

01:27:46.060 Very powerful argument.

01:27:47.460 Yes.

01:27:47.960 All right.

01:27:48.220 But here's what we'll stay on.

01:27:49.500 I want to be fair to the defense.

01:27:51.020 Another theme of theirs, Dave, which is SLED, South Carolina law enforcement blew this case.

01:27:57.020 They were sloppy.

01:27:57.940 It was disgusting. 0.80

01:27:59.140 It was poorly handled.

01:28:00.000 They didn't secure the scene.

01:28:01.520 People were traipsing all over it to the point where even the brain matter of Paul was left

01:28:08.700 over for Alex's brother to find the next day.

01:28:12.660 Here's John Martin Murdoch testifying to that.

01:28:15.700 It's SOT 17.

01:28:17.480 I walked over to the feed room and y'all have heard the descriptions.

01:28:23.360 Y'all saw it.

01:28:24.060 I've never seen pictures, and I've told them before coming to this court that I was not

01:28:27.560 going to see pictures.

01:28:29.320 But y'all can imagine what I experienced.

01:28:31.700 It had not been cleaned up.

01:28:33.040 I saw blood.

01:28:34.340 I saw brains.

01:28:35.240 I saw pieces of skull.

01:28:37.340 And when I say brains, it could just be tissue.

01:28:40.140 I don't know what I was saying.

01:28:42.040 It was terrible.

01:28:45.620 And for some reason, I thought it was something that I needed to do for Paul to clean it up.

01:28:55.000 I felt like it was the right thing to do.

01:28:58.380 I felt like I owed him, and I started cleaning.

01:29:02.240 And I can promise you, no mother or father or aunt or uncle should ever have to see and

01:29:12.760 do what I did that day.

01:29:16.680 Dave, your thoughts on that?

01:29:19.880 It is criminal defense lawyer 101 to blame the investigators, especially when you have

01:29:25.560 a relatively weak case.

01:29:27.540 I mean, we saw this from the O.J. Simpson trial.

01:29:29.620 If all else fails, just blame the investigators.

01:29:33.160 And that's what they're doing here.

01:29:34.460 And it's expected.

01:29:36.580 But a reason why law enforcement was kind of sloppy was that from the beginning, Murdoch

01:29:41.920 had special treatment.

01:29:43.620 He was a big name in the community.

01:29:45.300 They treated him with kid gloves.

01:29:46.840 And so, I mean, yeah, could they have done it better?

01:29:50.220 Sure.

01:29:50.540 But it doesn't take away from the core question of why did Alec Murdoch lie from day one about

01:29:58.200 the death of his son and his wife?

01:30:01.240 As Eric said, if you want to help these investigators do their job, you don't lie to them.

01:30:06.000 You don't make it harder on them.

01:30:07.340 On one end, you're saying they're sloppy.

01:30:08.920 On the other end, you're saying, yeah, I lied to them, so I made their job even harder.

01:30:12.080 So, in the end, this verdict will depend on whether the jurors buy his new story that he

01:30:19.720 waited a couple years to tell for the first time on the stand, that the reason why he

01:30:24.560 was so deceitful all along was because the drugs made him do it.

01:30:28.700 And really, this case comes down to that.

01:30:30.980 A lot of this other stuff, to me, is window dressing.

01:30:33.720 Yeah.

01:30:34.060 You're not wrong about that.

01:30:35.320 Go ahead.

01:30:35.600 Megan, I've never met a criminal defense attorney that liked an accident scene.

01:30:41.600 He's never stood up in court and said, you know, I have no questions of this investigator.

01:30:46.340 I think he did a brilliant job on securing the scene and preserving the evidence.

01:30:50.640 If they took 500 photographs, Dick would say they should have taken 1,000.

01:30:54.520 If they did clay prints of 10 footprints, he should have said they should have done clay

01:31:00.240 footprints of 20.

01:31:01.260 Again, just like pathology, it's an art, not a science.

01:31:05.860 But all of the evidence, even if more was garnered from the scene, still pointed to Alex because

01:31:12.220 the timeline, to me, the most powerful evidence was OnStar.

01:31:16.740 OnStar couldn't lie.

01:31:18.100 It's satellite evidence.

01:31:19.200 You can't say, well, it's a cell tower and there's bad reception.

01:31:23.340 I felt like I was driving in the car.

01:31:26.120 Didn't you, Dave, on that OnStar with Alex as they were going through it?

01:31:29.480 Didn't you feel like it each stopped?

01:31:31.080 But why?

01:31:31.620 Explain for the audience that hasn't been paying that close attention to why the OnStar

01:31:35.340 was so critical.

01:31:36.460 It was when he drove his car from his house, we believe, after the murders, over to his

01:31:40.400 mother's house and then back.

01:31:43.200 As Dave said, look, if your whole purpose, and you made a somewhat misstatement, he brought

01:31:49.160 Maggie to Mazzell to go visit the father because the father was dying. 0.77

01:31:54.640 He was in hospice and was taken to the hospital.

01:31:56.840 That was the whole purpose of Maggie coming from Edisto Beach to Mazzell. 0.97

01:32:01.340 And as it turns out, he doesn't go visit the father.

01:32:04.700 He goes and visits his mother twice.

01:32:07.600 And Dave said he could have easily just taken a small left turn and gone out the other driveway,

01:32:12.780 make sure that Paul and Maggie were OK.

01:32:15.140 But what he did is he started with his alibi by getting on that phone at 906, calling Chris

01:32:21.720 Wilson, texting Chris Wilson, calling John Marvin.

01:32:25.520 And when he drove, I've been to Mazzell.

01:32:28.300 I've been on that property and I've been down that road before it was paved.

01:32:31.900 You can't go 80 miles an hour on a country road that has no streetlights because deer will

01:32:37.180 come out from everywhere.

01:32:38.520 The on-star showed exactly how long it took him to get to Almeda.

01:32:44.680 He went straight.

01:32:45.680 He accelerated up to the point of 80 miles an hour and an average speed of 64 miles an hour.

01:32:52.620 He got to Almeda.

01:32:53.940 It doesn't show him parking in front of the house.

01:32:56.540 It shows him going all the way behind on this pristine emerald green grass where he supposedly

01:33:03.160 parked.

01:33:04.100 He stayed for 19 minutes.

01:33:06.140 Of course, he tried to tell Shelly Smith it was 30 to 40 minutes because that would have

01:33:10.640 blown his timeline.

01:33:12.100 He then got back in his car and on star showed he stopped at the end of his driveway to do

01:33:18.100 more text messaging is what the state posited.

01:33:21.640 He claimed that his phone had dropped down into the under his seat.

01:33:25.100 He was looking for it.

01:33:26.320 And then on the way home, as we were driving with him, he slows down the 40 miles an hour

01:33:31.540 and he chucks Maggie's phone out of the window into the woods and then he speeds up again.

01:33:39.220 Now, cartel members aren't going to take Maggie's phone.

01:33:41.680 They're going to leave it right there.

01:33:42.820 They're never going to touch the phone.

01:33:44.880 Why did he take the phone?

01:33:46.060 Why does the prosecution argue he took Maggie's phone?

01:33:52.360 Paul's phone remained with Paul, but the prosecution argues he took Maggie's and then

01:33:56.500 chucked it midway home.

01:33:58.620 He couldn't take Paul's phone because he put his blood on it because he grabbed it and then

01:34:04.460 he stuffed it back in the pocket.

01:34:06.160 I don't know.

01:34:06.880 There's no reason when a man's in a frenetic state like he must have been in on trying

01:34:13.200 to clean himself up, take that shower, get rid of the the sea comb green shirt, rot the

01:34:19.560 guns up into the tarp.

01:34:21.440 He was in a manic, frenetic state.

01:34:23.960 So, you know, I don't know.

01:34:25.860 Do you know, Dave, why they posited he took the phone?

01:34:29.720 You know, I don't think they ever came up with an explanation.

01:34:32.080 One thing, Megan, is that it's a real pity that the phone, when Alec apparently threw

01:34:39.360 it out the window at 42 miles an hour, that the phone didn't turn on.

01:34:43.840 Sometimes a phone will turn on, you know, the screen will come on.

01:34:46.060 If that had happened, then they would have located the exact time not only the phone turned

01:34:53.040 on, but where Alec's car was.

01:34:55.960 And this case would have been solved in a minute.

01:34:58.320 But but because the phone did not turn on, that's Alec's lucky break here.

01:35:03.840 He was able to claim, no, it wasn't me.

01:35:05.520 I wasn't the one who threw the phone out the window.

01:35:07.920 It was the murderer, the alleged murderer.

01:35:10.220 I mean, I'll say something else about John Marvin Murdoch's testimony.

01:35:13.800 He's Alec's brother.

01:35:14.960 The other thing that was good about it for the defense, and I hear you, Eric, on the cross,

01:35:18.840 you know, you love your brother.

01:35:20.000 If he gets convicted, it's not so good for your family or all the reputation.

01:35:23.080 I get it.

01:35:23.680 But John Marvin was very likable and seemed kind of sweet.

01:35:29.440 And you're looking at him and you're thinking, that's the brother.

01:35:32.640 How far could the two apples have fallen?

01:35:35.300 Like there he loves Alec.

01:35:38.020 He's kind of vouching for Alec in being willing to be a defense witness.

01:35:41.760 He knows what Alex accused of, but he's here on his behalf.

01:35:45.680 Couldn't be.

01:35:46.520 You know, it's just I think it's even more about his demeanor and his likability than it

01:35:51.320 is anything else.

01:35:52.200 Am I wrong?

01:35:52.760 But he wasn't there for the key three hours.

01:35:56.300 The material facts are between 7 o'clock and 10 o'clock at night.

01:36:02.280 So even Buster wasn't there.

01:36:04.580 I get it that their testimony shows we support our brother.

01:36:08.320 It was more for appearance purposes for the jury to see Buster and John Marvin and his

01:36:14.300 brother Randolph and Lynn, his sister, sit behind him the entire trial.

01:36:18.900 And then for both the Buster and for John Marvin to get on the stand, it sends a signal to

01:36:23.960 the jury.

01:36:24.780 Hey, these guys are insiders and they're still testifying for him.

01:36:29.040 So it's more appearance as opposed to what he said.

01:36:32.580 That's what I think.

01:36:33.380 Just just a final word.

01:36:35.260 They're taking a break now for the lunch and the prosecutor is still in the middle of closing.

01:36:39.140 So it's probably going to be a long one.

01:36:40.260 Otherwise, they wouldn't have interrupted his closing for lunch.

01:36:42.380 And we are told the jury will deliberate on weekends and that this judge is Judge Newman

01:36:49.900 is known for holding juries.

01:36:51.100 He will not let them off the hook too early if they struggle to reach a verdict.

01:36:55.100 This is according to a reporter at Avery Wilkes.

01:36:57.360 He won't let the jury off the off the hook too early.

01:36:59.420 So, you know, if it's a hung jury, they're going to have to be really hung.

01:37:02.380 They're going to have to dig in there. 0.74

01:37:03.680 Dave and Eric, thank you.

01:37:04.620 Thank you both so much.

01:37:05.300 We'll be back tomorrow.

01:37:09.520 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:37:11.380 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - March 01, 2023

Lori Lightfoot Voted Out, and Murdaugh Closing Arguments, with Mark Steyn, Dave Aronberg, and Eric Bland ｜ Ep. 503

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