The Megyn Kelly Show - Media Covers for Fetterman's Impairment, and Left Turns on Islam Film, with Victor Davis Hanson and Meg Smaker ｜ Ep. 411

00:00:00.560 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.120 Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have a great show for you

00:00:16.320 today. Later, we're going to be joined by a documentary filmmaker who we told you about

00:00:20.700 last week. She was recently profiled by The New York Times, and now she is speaking out because

00:00:26.300 her film about accused Islamic terrorists who were held at Gitmo, she thought it was

00:00:32.740 going to be a darling of the left. It started out being a darling of the left until they

00:00:36.320 decided, actually, we hate it. It's racist. They had to look around the room to see who

00:00:40.500 said it was racist after they said it was amazing, including people like Abigail Disney.

00:00:46.160 Absolutely loved it. Executive produced it. Yes, it's brilliant. Then everybody was like,

00:00:50.120 it's racist. Oh, yes, it's racist. I hate it. God, they're weak. She's now been essentially

00:00:55.660 blacklisted by the industry and worse. And we we talked about this when it happened with

00:01:00.780 Matt Taibbi. Now Meg Smaker joins me to dive into the story. I've watched the entire film,

00:01:05.440 and I'm actually really excited to bring clips of it and get into this with her for you guys.

00:01:11.120 But we begin today with the new reporting about the border. Oh, this story and that whipping

00:01:17.020 migrant controversy. Some outrageous details. Details are coming to light that point to the

00:01:22.420 Biden administration, Secretary Mayorkas of DHS, knowing we knew that he threw those border agents

00:01:28.220 under the bus. We thought it was before he had the facts. Now it's we find out it's even worse. He had

00:01:34.220 facts showing him that they did not whip anyone. And not only did he ignore those facts, he went out

00:01:41.960 publicly, misrepresented them and condemned these agents as though it were otherwise. I mean,

00:01:49.460 it's really kind of stunning the cynicism of his behavior. We're going to get into that. We're

00:01:55.640 going to get into the inflation numbers, which are terrible. And there's no better person to talk

00:01:59.220 about all of it than one of our favorites. Victor Davis Hanson is here, senior fellow at the Hoover

00:02:03.540 Institution. Victor, this Mayorkas situation is dark. We only know that he was told the truth that 1.00

00:02:16.380 there was no whipping of migrants because the Heritage Foundation filed a FOIA request on documents

00:02:22.980 and they got the documents showing that one of Mayorkas staffers had sent him before two,

00:02:28.880 two and a half hours before he publicly addressed the nation. The report from the photographer from

00:02:35.520 Reuters who said there was no whipping that that isn't true. Some of the angles on the on the shots may

00:02:42.520 look at may make it look that way, but it's not what happened. He saw that and nonetheless went out

00:02:48.840 and addressed the public with a very different message as a reminder. Here's what Mayorkas said.

00:02:56.220 Soundbite 10. We, our entire nation, saw horrifying images that do not reflect who we are,

00:03:03.880 who we aspire to be, or the integrity and values of our truly heroic personnel in the Department of

00:03:11.500 Homeland Security. The investigation into what occurred has not yet concluded. We know that

00:03:18.240 those images painfully conjured up the worst elements of our nation's ongoing battle against

00:03:24.840 systemic racism. Wow. The, again, the account of the photographer, Paul Rachi, who took the viral

00:03:33.000 photographs, said, quote, I've never seen them whip anyone. He, the Border Patrol agent, was swinging it,

00:03:40.660 meaning the reins, but it can be misconstrued when you're looking at that picture. Two and a half

00:03:45.800 hours later, Mayorkas sounded very different. And at the same time, said the agents are being placed

00:03:52.360 on administrative leave. And, and they were then investigated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

00:03:58.100 Protection. Um, and just for extra good measure, Victor, he said at the time, um, that they had

00:04:04.920 ceased the use of horse patrol units in the area and, uh, and that those agents would be on

00:04:11.580 administrative desk duty, not working with migrants for the foreseeable future, knowing that it was a

00:04:17.180 lie. So what do we make of it? Well, I think in the short term, in a cost benefit analysis,

00:04:25.040 he asked himself, where are the rewards and punishments? If I come out and say what I know

00:04:30.560 to be true, what's the result of it? And that is the popular culture, the immigration, illegal 0.98

00:04:36.520 immigration lobby, you know, entertainment, social media, that whole group will attack me. And more

00:04:42.840 importantly, my employers will attack me. But if I go on and lie and sort of praise the people I'm

00:04:48.900 attacking by saying they're, you know, most of them are pretty good, then I'm going to be fine.

00:04:54.580 In fact, I'm going to be lauded and I'm going to be either praised or promoted someday. And then if

00:05:00.560 anybody finds out that I was lying, that'll be way in the future and people will forget about it.

00:05:07.340 But right now I'm going to be echoing or resonating what the president is saying, you know,

00:05:11.860 and so that's one thing. And the second is, this is a systematic, using his word systematic or

00:05:18.440 systemic, we're using, this is a policy where they want open borders. So anything that contributes to

00:05:24.140 that by deprecating the enforcement by their own employees or stopping the wall or anything, it fuels

00:05:31.760 this three, three and a half million influx. And that's what they want. It's not that the border is 0.59

00:05:38.440 porous. It doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't mean that they pick and choose which laws to enforce or

00:05:44.280 reject. There is no immigration law. They destroyed it. And I don't know what else to say about it. I don't

00:05:51.860 think it's ever going to change until the people who are coming across turn out to be conservatives or

00:05:57.920 they're fleeing, the majority of them are fleeing communism in Cuba or Venezuela or something. And then the

00:06:03.620 Democratic Party thinks, wow, we don't want to import these people. That will stop it. But anything

00:06:08.320 else won't as long as they're in power. You're exactly right. It depends on where they're coming

00:06:13.320 from and how they're going to wind up voting if they ever get the right to vote and wind up at the

00:06:17.460 ballot box. I agree with you. If all these immigrants come from Venezuela or Cuba and wind up voting in any 1.00

00:06:23.840 anti-dictatorial way, they're going to fix the border problem really fast.

00:06:29.040 Yeah, you can see it. You can see already with the Mexican-American voting that's starting to

00:06:34.980 really flip and not just gradually, but suddenly. And you can see how they deprecate people down by

00:06:41.240 the Rio Grande Valley running for office or where I live in the San Joaquin Valley. And when they look

00:06:47.580 at Latino activists on the left, as we saw in the LA City Council, they're kind of mute. Joe Biden and

00:06:55.920 the administration and the Democratic hierarchy didn't weigh in at all. But had they been anybody

00:07:01.200 else, they would have. Had they been conservative Latinos and they were talking about Oaxacans and 0.93

00:07:06.940 the way that they talk about, or Blacks or Whites or Gays, they would have blasted them.

00:07:10.840 So it's not that they're pro or, you know, that's not, I think we've got to get beyond the idea that

00:07:18.780 they're pro-minority or they're pro any particular tribal or ethnic or racial group. They're just pro

00:07:24.760 people who are leftists that promote their agenda. And they can turn on people that were their former

00:07:31.980 allies in a heartbeat.

00:07:33.640 Well, the push to bring immigrants to these more blue sanctuary cities has really made a difference.

00:07:42.060 I mean, the newspapers here in the New York area are really focusing in on this. Governor Hochul of

00:07:48.080 New York said on Wednesday that she wants a federal response to what's happening in New York, which has

00:07:54.420 received some 18,600 asylum seekers. That's how we let people in now. We just say everybody's seeking

00:08:01.500 asylum. So we've gotten almost 19,000 asylum seekers here. And she says, we want a federal

00:08:07.840 response. We want the feds to take ownership of this crisis and we'll help. But this belongs to

00:08:13.800 the federal government. But Joe Biden's not taking that that bait. Mayor Eric Adams has declared an

00:08:20.320 emergency over it. And he says every community should expect migrants after city homeless shelters 0.99

00:08:25.080 have hit record numbers. These kids are going into the schools. There are no Spanish speaker

00:08:29.080 speaking teachers, but maybe one here or there. They don't know what to do with all these kids.

00:08:33.920 So, I mean, it's working out brilliantly. I understand this is pain being felt by the

00:08:38.880 communities and the kids and so on. But welcome to your world. Welcome to the world of the people

00:08:44.400 who live in border states.

00:08:46.420 Yeah, I mean, the same subtext is there that the wealthy white and the wealthy diverse populations

00:08:52.860 have been theoretically for open borders, but they're segregationists. They don't want anything to do

00:08:58.880 with them. And I can tell you that on my avenue where I live, there are more people living in

00:09:04.080 one residence than went to Martha's Vineyard in total. And I can tell you down the whole avenue

00:09:10.300 in southwestern Fresno County, there's probably more thousands that have gone into New York City

00:09:16.120 and no one cares. Nobody said a word. Nobody cares about Central California schools, the impact they've

00:09:22.520 had. Nobody cares about M13. Nobody cares about the resulting crime. Nobody cares about

00:09:30.000 hit and run where half the accidents in Fresno County, the driver leaves the scene of the accident.

00:09:36.180 Nobody cares, Megan. But once this particular protected cadre is affected, then you really see

00:09:42.460 something. I think it's important to realize that their outrage is kind of symmetrical to their

00:09:50.880 advocacy. They're very loud. They put signs, you know, this house honors immigrants. And they get 0.99

00:09:57.900 furious when anybody uses the word alien. And then they get furious when they actually see someone. And

00:10:02.460 you get the impression that the entire edifice that they have of promoting illegal immigration is some

00:10:09.620 kind of projection. It's some kind of way of squaring the circle that they don't feel comfortable

00:10:14.460 with people outside their class or maybe even their race. And so I think it's a way of

00:10:21.220 squaring their own guilt because they just get hysterical when they come to Martha's Vineyard or

00:10:27.240 New York. But they're also hysterical and demanding that these people be allowed to come to other

00:10:32.640 communities that are very poor and don't have their resources.

00:10:36.480 Remember how they wouldn't use the word crisis when the illegal immigrants were only along the 1.00

00:10:41.760 southern border? It's only once they show up in Martha's Vineyard in New York, in D.C., that now

00:10:47.080 they say it's a crisis, a humanitarian crisis. One must be declared and must be treated accordingly.

00:10:51.740 OK, what's changed? Just the location of the immigrants. But that is what you just said is the

00:10:56.680 perfect segue into what's happening. I find this fascinating with the L.A. City Council.

00:11:02.840 OK, the L.A. City Council president is named Nuri Martinez. She's a Democrat, and she's all over 0.99

00:11:12.220 the news today and yesterday because she made some racist comments about another board member's son.

00:11:19.500 The board member is a white man who has a husband. I don't know his race, but they have a black son.

00:11:25.700 And Nuri Martinez, again, Democrat, head of the council, was caught on tape making racist comments

00:11:34.400 about that man's black child. We have the audio in which she uses. Forgive me, it's a Hispanic slur

00:11:41.940 that I'd never heard, but apparently it it means. And forgive me for this, too.

00:11:46.080 So she calls him a, quote, little monkey. So here she is in Sat 11.

00:11:52.320 And then there's this white guy with this little black kid who's misbehaved. 0.99

00:12:00.520 Este niño has no, he's, they're not even as, yeah, no, they're not doing, the kid bouncing

00:12:06.140 off the effing walls on the floor, practically tipping it over. There's nothing you can do

00:12:11.300 to control him by ese changuito. They're raising him like a little white kid, which I was like, 0.88

00:12:16.780 this kid is a beatdown. Like, let me, let me take him around the corner and then I'll bring

00:12:20.600 him back. Now, this woman has been forced to step down from her leadership position, 1.00

00:12:26.220 but is still maintaining her spot on the council. She says she's taking a leave of absence.

00:12:30.440 Oh, now she's just resigned. OK. And the other two who sat there and listened to it,

00:12:34.780 they're under fire as well. Joe Biden wants them all gone. This is the same woman, Victor,

00:12:41.040 the same woman, Nuri Martinez, who in July of 2020 called Trump's policies on immigration

00:12:47.740 absolutely racist and said, once again, his racist policies against immigrants, people of color and

00:12:54.520 the constitution come to light. We'll see him in court again where he's not doing so well as of

00:12:59.400 late. She was the big sponsor of defunding the racist cops and LAPD, according to her, 1.00

00:13:06.920 wanting to slash up to one hundred and fifty million dollars from their budget. You know,

00:13:11.680 the communities be damned. She was going to virtue signal and talked about how we cannot talk about

00:13:17.200 change. We have to be about change. Then it came out that the LAPD had been providing 24 hours security

00:13:24.860 outside of her home for the previous two months. The same day that that became public, they ended

00:13:32.440 that security detail that she's exactly like Mayorkas. Let me virtue signal publicly. But behind 0.95

00:13:40.200 the scenes, I know what I'm saying is false. You know, her accusations of racism and so on. And I've

00:13:46.120 got something I want to cover up about myself, just like these Democrats on their immigration policies.

00:13:52.580 Yeah, I think it's in her case, when you heard Mr. Cedillo and De Leon and the union organizer,

00:14:01.180 you could really get into the rot of tribal politics because what they're what prompted all

00:14:06.300 those racist outbursts where they were furious that their particular group, i.e. elite Latinos,

00:14:11.460 did not have as much power commiserable with their population as blacks did, especially and to a 0.98

00:14:17.040 lesser extent white. And they were they were trying to to organize a solid front so they could oppose 0.65

00:14:23.640 the blacks. So what the point was that they don't represent people. They only represent people who look 0.99

00:14:28.560 like them. And that's the ultimate manifestation of the left wing diversity and woke movement is each

00:14:35.340 person is supposed to identify by their their superficial appearance. That's essential, not

00:14:40.060 incidental to who they are. In their case, I went back and looked at that whole transcript. There wasn't

00:14:45.780 any group that they didn't attack. They attacked blacks. They attacked gays. They attacked whites. They 0.94

00:14:51.120 attacked Jews. And the other thing was, these are not minor people. Martinez was heralded as a first

00:14:59.700 Latina head of the city, the future of Los Angeles. Cedillo was a was an old democratic politician.

00:15:07.760 I've heard of him for years. De Leon ran against Dianne Feinstein for Senate. So this was the creme de

00:15:15.440 creme of the Latino movement. And they even made fun of Oaxacan native indigenous peoples, who was the

00:15:23.200 primary group that has immigrated where I was. They said they didn't even wear shoes. And so you get this

00:15:29.340 idea that this whole diversity monstrosity that there's these 67% white, solid white racists, and then 0.52

00:15:38.580 there's all of these groups that are victimized by it is just absurd. People are people. And as someone

00:15:45.560 who's lived in my entire life in the Latino community, I can tell you that the Latino community is no more 1.00

00:15:51.780 exempt than any other community in terms of racist outbursts. And the funny thing was, the left

00:15:59.840 doesn't really know what to do with it. And they first, Megan, did you notice that the first thing

00:16:04.900 she did, she didn't resign from being a city council member, only her rotating chairmanship. And then she

00:16:11.240 tried the diversity out where she said, I was frustrated because of my advocacy of marginalized

00:16:18.880 community, uh, communities or people of color. And she's almost is saying, I'm look, I'm Latino.

00:16:25.440 And as a victim, I can never be a victimizer. And that that's the sort of the subtext of the whole

00:16:32.120 thing. It really does make you wonder, because how many stories have we done where the people preaching

00:16:38.860 loudest, most, most loudly about Trump's racism or the immigration policies, racism, or whoever's

00:16:45.460 racism turns out to be a raging bigot behind the scenes. As you point out, she, she rips on

00:16:51.820 everybody. She, she was talking about going through Koreatown saying, you know, who's really in

00:16:56.820 Koreatown. I see a lot of little short, dark people. She insults the looks of the people. She goes after 1.00

00:17:02.400 the Jews, as you point out. And then she comes out and basically just says, oh, my record speaks for

00:17:06.780 itself. Well, like defund the police. Is that supposed to save you from referring to a black child

00:17:11.420 as a little monkey? You think that's going to save you? And now the White House comes out

00:17:16.580 and they go on offense, right? They say, oh, yes, she should be. She should resign. And the two people

00:17:22.160 who sat there saying nothing, also Democrats, should resign. But listen to the tag on from

00:17:27.320 Kareem Jean-Pierre soundbite 14. The president is glad to see that one of the participants in that

00:17:33.980 conversation has resigned, but they all should. He believes that they all should resign. Here's the

00:17:40.300 difference between Democrats and MAGA Republicans. When a Democrat says something racist or anti-Semitic,

00:17:47.220 we would we we hold them. We hold Democrats accountable. When a MAGA Republican says something

00:17:54.000 racist and or anti-Semitic, they are embraced by cheering crowds and become celebrated and sought

00:18:00.780 after endorsements. Oh, my God. I think she meant to exclude the sitting president of the United States.

00:18:07.960 That's where you start. I was thinking when I heard that that's where you start, because Joe Biden

00:18:12.920 became infamous for saying that Barack Obama was the first black presidential candidate that was

00:18:18.440 articulate and basically could finish the sentence. Then he went before a very esteemed group of black

00:18:23.940 professionals and said Mitt Romney was going to put you all in chains as if they were still an

00:18:28.880 slave mentality. And then he went in and, you know, those two podcast hosts, he called one of them a

00:18:35.200 junkie and he said the other was you ain't black. And then just not too long ago, he said to a high

00:18:41.340 ranking assistant down, I think it was in Louisiana, he said, this is my assistant. This is my boy here.

00:18:47.080 And so he can't help it. And of course, he used to brag on James Eastland, the segregationist that he

00:18:54.740 said nurtured him. And he said at one point, he's never called me a boy as if that was something in

00:19:02.080 his honor. But Joe Biden has a long history and we didn't get into the donut shop stuff he did. And one

00:19:08.460 of the reasons he withdrew from the 2008 campaign beyond his mediocrity was that he couldn't stop talking

00:19:14.960 about race. And then we get into the gosh, Megan, the corn pop stories about how he got a particular

00:19:20.880 six foot custom made chain. He took on corn pop in the black gang. And then he went back and all 1.00

00:19:27.380 these black children looked at his little golden hairs and touched them on his leg. It was right 1.00

00:19:32.520 out of something out of Uncle Remus. I mean, it was really embarrassing. I mean, you look you need look

00:19:37.640 no further than our sitting vice president to find out what the Democrats think about Democrats who

00:19:42.800 are racist. She called him racist during a presidential debate. And then he made her

00:19:48.940 his running mate to buy her silence and get a woman of color on the ticket. And she was so outraged about 0.98

00:19:57.260 his racism. She promptly forgot that opinion and said, oh, me, I get to have my name in the lights and

00:20:04.080 I get to have this amazing title. I'll do it. Never mind. She doesn't care about his alleged racism

00:20:08.760 or she didn't mean it when she said it. Either way, she's not a sincere person. These are the

00:20:13.920 people lecturing us at every turn about how we need to behave. That leads me to something in the

00:20:21.280 news this week that I'm genuinely curious on your take on. And that is Herschel Walker, right? When she

00:20:27.480 she's he's become everybody's favorite punching bag on the left. He and now Kanye West. I believe her

00:20:33.900 anti-Semitic reference was to Kanye West because he's in the news for making those comments about

00:20:39.180 I'm going to go Defcon. He said Defcon, but I think he meant Def Def with an F con whatever on Jewish 0.81

00:20:45.960 people. So there's Kanye in the news being called an anti-Semi and there's Herschel Walker with his

00:20:52.700 long history of not behaving very well when it comes to the women and the children in his life.

00:20:58.440 How are you thinking about those two situations? Well, I mean, Herschel Walker was always a

00:21:05.460 problematic candidate. He'd never run for office. He hadn't been vetted. He was unacquainted with

00:21:11.780 politics. And he had a lot of, as you said, he was a star and a hero in Georgia politics, young,

00:21:19.020 handsome, wealthy. And he didn't show good judgment. He did a lot of things that he regrets and he should

00:21:24.800 regret. And so then he runs for office. And, you know, as one person said to me, it's our guy with

00:21:31.820 a flawed record versus their guy because Warnick has his own whole past, as we know, about his ex-wife

00:21:38.520 and her allegations that he mistreated her or he was even violent with her or his camp counseling

00:21:44.140 problems. So it's a mess. And I guess we're at this point, we're down to two candidates that are

00:21:50.320 flawed that have personal problems. And one of them is an experienced, savvy politician of the left.

00:21:59.880 And one of them is a fresh face that's pretty honest guy, but he's not nearly as acquainted

00:22:07.980 with politics and we'll see who wins, but they're both flawed candidates. And then as far as Kenya West,

00:22:15.860 I listened to that, I listened to Tucker's interview and there were elements that I thought were noble,

00:22:23.600 his religiousosity and all of that. But when he, he did say things about the Jews and he keeps talking 0.66

00:22:30.940 about people in shady corners that are hurting him. And then at some point you have to just stop

00:22:37.200 and say, wait a minute, you by your own admission are the wealthiest African-American person in the

00:22:44.400 history of civilization. And you have enormous influence. You grew up in a middle-class family.

00:22:52.460 Your mother was highly educated. Your father was an entrepreneurial sort and life has been very good

00:22:59.460 to you. And yet he kept, he kept, I don't know how to put it. It's like Meghan Markle talking from her

00:23:07.260 Montecito estate to Opa about her months at her Montecito estate about their shared racism. At some

00:23:14.380 point, the wealthy, wealthy, wealthy billionaire African-American class, they're not convincing when 0.99

00:23:20.940 they try to suggest there's a whole array of enemies that are out to get them as Kenya West did.

00:23:26.320 So I, I, I, I didn't get on the conservative bandwagon to the same degree because he sounded at

00:23:32.600 moments conservative, because he kept saying that, you know, when you heard that interview,

00:23:39.100 even without knowing that some of the anti-Semitic comments had been pruned, you know, that following

00:23:44.980 up, he was going to say something more, more overt, which he did when he said he was going to go on

00:23:49.300 DEFCON, DEFCON 3 against the Jews. And that's DEFCON or any Armageddon imagery in, in association with 0.94

00:23:57.300 the Jewish community is not a wise thing to do. You know, I think it was, um, Megan McCain who, 1.00

00:24:03.820 she had a good point, which is conservatives are constantly saying that they eschew the celebrity

00:24:08.640 of Hollywood and they have no use for these stars until one of them deigns to say, I'm a Republican

00:24:14.100 or I'm a conservative. And then you see all these people rush to celebrate this person and say,

00:24:19.460 oh, look, see this man or this woman's on our team and then forgive all their, you know, sins or

00:24:23.920 their comments or whatever. It's like, be consistent, either you're pro or you're anti-celebrity.

00:24:31.300 And I think Trump got in when he was getting near the reelection cycle and Candace Owens and Kanye

00:24:39.160 and all these African-American advocates and the Kardashians went to him to decriminalize this and

00:24:45.220 decriminalize this and, and unfair incarceration. A lot of that was true, but a lot of the people

00:24:50.940 that were released, it wasn't just that they had used drugs or so they had a long record and whether

00:24:58.200 Trump knew it or not, he was endorsing some of the protocols that have resulted in this revolving

00:25:05.120 door. He lowered the bar on incarceration and started really in an effort to redress a grievance,

00:25:11.600 but it went way too far. And now we, the logical manifestation of that under the left is

00:25:18.520 you commit a felony or you threaten somebody with an act. So you break up something or you throw

00:25:23.400 somebody in the subway and you're out the same day. And so when he, I, uh, all of this that we're

00:25:32.120 watching right now, Megan has censored speech because when we look at the crime statistics of the last two 1.00

00:25:38.560 years, we, and the conservative side rightly point out that the vast majority are victims are people of 0.93

00:25:46.420 color. And, and I think interracial crime is only about six to 8%, although it's five times more 1.00

00:25:53.260 inordinate of people of color versus whites and vice versa. But that being said, we don't talk about

00:26:01.080 the race of the, of the victimizer or the, of the assailants. And it's been overwhelmingly asymmetric

00:26:08.280 when we have about four or 5% of the population are African-Americans from 14 to 50. And yet 55% 0.79

00:26:16.400 of all the violent crime is committed by that very small percentage. And we don't talk about it.

00:26:22.100 And yet we just say to ourselves, well, it's so, this is a crisis because the victims are all

00:26:27.440 African-American. It doesn't matter what color people are, who are the victims. They're victimizing 1.00

00:26:31.960 that particular group. If you could reach them, or you had a paradigm, or you had some policy

00:26:37.880 that they committed crimes commiserate with their population, you wouldn't really have a violent crime

00:26:44.320 problem in the United States. It would be comparable to some of the safest cities in the world,

00:26:49.740 but we can't say that. And that's, what's very frustrating because what we're doing is when you

00:26:56.120 look at these crime stories in major newspapers or major media outlets that have the comments below them

00:27:03.880 and they're uncensored, it's amazing. They're almost absolutely racist. And what people are reacting

00:27:11.440 is if you're not going to mention the race of the assailant, and yet the assailant is vastly

00:27:18.620 overrepresented, I'm going to get angry. And we're creating a, I think, a dangerous situation when 0.99

00:27:25.680 you can't talk about something rationally and humanely, and you put it into the shadows of

00:27:31.220 commentary. People are very angry. And I just looked at the FBI hate crime statistics. They're

00:27:38.360 not even posting them for 2021 or 20. They have to go back to 2019. But even then, these are hate

00:27:46.600 crimes. The African-American community has doubled their numbers in the general population as assailants. 1.00

00:27:53.380 And when, so when Joe Biden says, or Mark Milley, or Lloyd Austin, white rage and everything,

00:27:58.560 and you look at the so-called white population and hate crimes, 67 to 70% of the population is

00:28:05.040 committing 50% of the hate crimes. But that's not the narrative they're advancing. So then the public

00:28:11.100 knows that. And you create the cynicism that's not healthy. Six or seven. Six or 7% of the population

00:28:17.000 is committing the hate crimes. Yeah. Yeah. And this is something that Glenn Lowry has been talking about

00:28:22.840 for quite some time now saying, be careful with this white cops are killing black men with impunity

00:28:30.100 and on the hunt for black men. And he's been saying, do we really want to get to a situation

00:28:33.940 where we start to take a hard look at the racial makeup of the felons who commit violent crimes in

00:28:39.640 this country? Because it's not going to end well, right? For these people who want to do that.

00:28:43.700 And he's been really open about that in the same way that you just were. I want to make two points,

00:28:48.140 and then I got to squeeze in a break. One on Herschel Walker. I did think it was an interesting

00:28:51.580 point that the left seems to think they're going to outrage or call hypocrisy on the right if they

00:28:56.760 vote for Herschel Walker, despite the fact that he may have, he denies it, paid for an abortion

00:29:01.960 for a woman that he was seeing. And so many conservatives I've been reading have been pointing out,

00:29:06.920 okay, not ideal, but do you have any idea how many more abortions there will be if Raphael

00:29:14.420 Warnock maintains this Senate seat? Like this abortion may or may not have happened at Herschel

00:29:20.340 Walker's, you know, on his dime, but it's in the past. And this is a guy who's really openly pro

00:29:26.200 abortion, Raphael Warnock or the Democrats are, and we don't want to help that. I thought that was an

00:29:30.560 interesting point. I think that's a good point. Right. And then secondly, I mean, I agree that

00:29:36.180 their personal liabilities, I think, balance each other off. And then it's just a question of who do

00:29:41.140 you want to exercise power? And I'm terrified of warning. So I would, I would vote for Herschel

00:29:46.980 Walker in a second. On the subject of Trump and criminal justice reform, there have been some

00:29:51.960 reports that he may regret that, that he thinks that was pushed on him by Jared. And he's not,

00:29:57.400 he doesn't, he doesn't feel good about having done it anymore. And that is in part, I'm sure,

00:30:01.900 because now a couple of years later, we have the numbers on the recidivism rate of those who got out

00:30:08.080 of jail, you know, went back and committed more crime. And time after time, we have seen

00:30:13.280 criminals let out, thanks to that legislation, committing violent felonies. So, you know,

00:30:19.460 when you actually take a hard look at that attempt at appeasing some on the left with criminal justice

00:30:25.160 reform, it gets uncomfortable quickly. It does. It does. And it didn't even achieve its purpose of

00:30:32.280 appeasing them because they looked at that weakness or that, uh, concession as weakness

00:30:37.800 to be exploited, not as magnanimity to be reciprocated. Well said. All right. Pause there.

00:30:43.600 Victor Davis Hanson stays with us when we come back after a very, very quick break.

00:30:53.080 So we talked a little bit about the Georgia Senate race. Let's talk a little bit about the one in

00:30:57.120 Pennsylvania and John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate giving his first sit down since his

00:31:03.240 stroke, though. Other other reporters are coming out now saying, I talked to him. I talked to him

00:31:07.280 as far as I understand. This is his first real interview since he had a stroke with NBC News.

00:31:12.960 And it's been fascinating to watch what's happening to this reporter, Dasha Burns at NBC. I never knew her

00:31:18.880 when I was there, but she comes out and explains what happened when she sat with him. Didn't reflect

00:31:25.040 particularly well on him, but it was factual. She was, as a reporter, telling us what the

00:31:30.000 circumstances were like around the interview. And, um, she had, when she sat with him, he had to use

00:31:36.060 closed captions. Her questions had to be translated onto a computer screen where they would pop up so he

00:31:43.040 could read them as opposed to process them auditorily. Here she is talking about, uh, that the screen that

00:31:49.020 he was looking at, uh, was transcribing my questions so he could read them in real time

00:31:55.160 because of that auditory processing issue. He has a hard time understanding what people are saying.

00:32:00.380 Once he can read it though, he, he can, uh, understand, but I'll say even those small moments,

00:32:06.100 as you know, Peter behind the scenes, you know, when you're having some of that small talk before

00:32:10.080 an interview during some of those conversations before the closed captioning was rolling, it wasn't

00:32:15.740 clear that he could understand what we were saying. Okay. So now she's gotten all this pushback

00:32:21.560 from reporters universally on the left. Here's one for a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune review,

00:32:27.420 Ryan Dedo. What if a deaf person was elected or a Senator became deaf as if she's, this is an example 1.00

00:32:33.900 of Dasha's ableism in pointing out the fact that he couldn't process well without this computer

00:32:41.200 translation. Um, then you've got New York magazine reporter saying he's not at all. He's not at all

00:32:47.100 impaired. She interviewed him for the print magazine. Kara Swisher wrote on Twitter. Sorry to say I talked

00:32:51.980 to John Fetterman for over an hour without stop or any AIDS. This is just nonsense. Maybe this reporter 0.96

00:32:57.120 is just bad at small talk on and on it goes, but Victor, you get to the actual interview and it's very

00:33:04.120 clear. He was struggling even with the closed captioning. Listen to soundbite nine. Are you

00:33:11.600 committed to showing up on October 25th to debate your opponent, no matter what happens?

00:33:17.640 No, I'm not. I'm not concerned. Uh, I believe that's another opportunity to be transparent

00:33:23.540 and people can make their own decisions, uh, you know, during the debate. Sorry to clarify. Are you

00:33:29.200 committed to showing up on October 25th? And no matter what, no matter what your opponent says or

00:33:34.140 does. Well, yeah, of course I'm going to show up on the 25th. What do you make of it? I don't

00:33:43.800 understand their analogies. If you vote for somebody that has an incapacity, such as mayor, the New York

00:33:50.060 Patterson, I think was blind. You know what, you know that, and you factor that in, but he has,

00:33:55.620 he wants it both ways. He says he's not impaired at all. So then all of a sudden when he gets into

00:34:00.700 the public realm and people wonder if he's going to be in a caucus, he'll be able to understand things

00:34:06.300 or the give and take in a heated Senate exchange where you can't have captioning, then all of a

00:34:12.940 sudden he says he needs captions. So he, he says he's not disabled, but he is disabled. If he's disabled, 0.97

00:34:19.140 then the voters can, you know, make the necessary adjustments. They can adjudicate whether that's

00:34:23.620 something they should think about. But when you deny it and you say, you're perfectly fine,

00:34:28.820 which he's done for most of the campaign. And then all of a sudden you need an aid. And then

00:34:32.960 somebody comes back and says, you're trashing disabled people. It doesn't make it incoherent.

00:34:38.260 And remember, this is the same left that told us that Donald Trump was in need of an intervention

00:34:44.200 that he was so non-composmentas. I remember Rod Rosenstein was going to wear a wire with Andrew

00:34:49.520 McCabe to show the cabinet that he needed a 25th Amendment intervention. We had a Yale psychiatrist,

00:34:56.000 I think her name was Bandy Lee, that went before Congress and they just lauded her. And she said that

00:35:00.240 there needed to be an intervention with a straitjacket because Trump was not coherent.

00:35:05.160 We had Mark Milley saying, you know, that at some point this erratic and not sane president might

00:35:11.380 necessitate him contacting the head of the People's Liberation Army in China to warn him.

00:35:17.220 So they're perfectly capable of making telediagnosis to some people and impugning that

00:35:23.540 they're cognitively challenged, except when it's in their case. But I think if he had just said,

00:35:30.000 look, I had a stroke and from now on, I'm going to need some aids, but I think eventually I'm going

00:35:35.620 to get over it, but there's going to be a rough patch. And this is what I can do and not do.

00:35:40.200 I think he wouldn't have had the trouble, but it was denial, denial, denial. No, I'm not going to

00:35:44.160 release my medical records. No, no, no. And then how dare you suggest that I'm impaired? That's not

00:35:49.560 going to work.

00:35:51.660 Somebody was pointing out this same empathetic media treated Senator Mark Kirk very differently

00:35:56.280 after he had a stroke. Chicago Tribune coming out saying, we will not be endorsing him because he

00:36:00.980 had a stroke because of his stroke. It's in the headline. When you watch this interview with

00:36:06.620 Fetterman, I have to tell you, just as a lay person and not a doctor, I'm concerned. I've been

00:36:13.080 watching him repeatedly on the campaign trail and the highlights. And he constantly, it's not just

00:36:17.580 about the auditory processing. He constantly messes up his words. He can't say the words

00:36:23.680 properly. He doesn't seem to have an understanding of where the conversation has gone. We showed a clip

00:36:28.300 of him on Chris Hayes, completely misunderstanding, garbling his answer entirely, even after he

00:36:33.900 understood the question, his answer made no sense. Here's another soundbite from his interview

00:36:37.960 with the, with the NBC where he, he's struggling on the word pronunciation. It's sound by eight.

00:36:44.680 Uh, and it, I always thought I was pretty empathetic. Uh, uh, emphatic. Uh, I think I was very,

00:36:53.420 excuse me, empathetic. Uh, I don't know. I, and he refuses to release his medical records.

00:36:59.240 If he's so fine, why wouldn't he release his medical records?

00:37:03.460 Well, we know why he's had, uh, AFib. He's got heart issues. He's had high blood pressure. He's

00:37:09.320 had a stroke. He's cognitively impaired, and he's not going to release those medical records because

00:37:14.540 any neurologist would be honest and say that he's got cognitive issues that make communication

00:37:19.900 difficult. But in a weird way, what they've done is they have juxtaposed him versus Dr. Oz. So Dr.

00:37:27.580 Oz is supposed to be an all-knowing empathetic, to use his word, doctor. And they've almost said,

00:37:33.480 how dare Dr. Oz, a doctor of all people, suggest that he's cognitively impaired rather than saying

00:37:39.180 maybe he would really know that he's cognitively impaired. But they've turned it, they flipped it

00:37:43.280 upside down that Oz of all people shouldn't dare suggest that he has a physical impediment because

00:37:50.440 doctors are supposed to be so understanding. And the other subtext of it is we're not listening to

00:37:57.220 any, we're not hearing anything about his record, but he's probably the most radical of all the

00:38:01.300 left-wing Senate candidates this cycle. I mean, by what he says about crime and letting people out

00:38:07.440 and second chances, even in the case of violent crime, and you go back and look at his record of

00:38:12.700 as a small-town mayor and it's disaster, and he hasn't done anything other than destroyed things that

00:38:18.980 he's come in contact with, and yet nobody's talking about that. Not to mention as a parole board member.

00:38:23.960 Yeah. Yeah. We're focusing on Fetterman, the victim.

00:38:27.780 Yeah. It's not unlike what's happening at the presidential level when it comes to Joe Biden's

00:38:32.140 mental health and the gaslighting that we get every day, right? That there's nothing wrong and

00:38:36.380 they're not going to submit him to a cognitive test and that we shouldn't believe our lying eyes.

00:38:40.360 Even the latest poll shows 65% of Americans, including a growing number of Democrats,

00:38:45.100 have real concerns about his mental health. He sat with Jake Tapper of CNN. Tapper asked him about it,

00:38:51.160 and his answer was basically, just look at what I've accomplished. Nobody's accomplished what I've

00:38:55.040 accomplished in my first two years. But as the interview went on, there were questions. And then

00:39:01.500 he took to the campaign trail. Well, it wasn't the campaign trail. He was in Colorado. So perhaps,

00:39:08.580 I can't remember whether this was actually a campaign speech or not. In any event,

00:39:12.020 he made the following gaffe just yesterday, speaking about his son, Bo. Listen here, SOT 6.

00:39:18.020 Just imagine. I mean, it's sincerely. I say this as a father of a man who won the Broad Star,

00:39:25.340 the Conspicuous Service Medal, and lost his life in Iraq.

00:39:29.680 All right. So it's about some monument he was out there. In any event, Bo Biden did not die

00:39:33.420 in Iraq. I mean, this happens all the time with him.

00:39:39.620 Yeah. You know, it's very strange that the New York Times wrote about it, but it's almost

00:39:43.380 eerie because he has such a record. But when he was young of lying, I mean, he was disqualified

00:39:49.060 or dropped out of the 1988 primary election because he made up his resume. He made up his speech.

00:39:56.000 He lied about his credentials. He's lied about everything. It's just a habit of him.

00:40:00.940 And so now when he does it, people, instead of saying that he's cognitively impaired, which has

00:40:05.880 accentuated that streak within him, they just say, that's old Joe, just old Joe, the story. I think

00:40:12.560 they said the storyteller, the storyteller. And it kind of disguises the fact that he's

00:40:18.120 cognitively challenged. And it's a larger issue, you know, because when you look at

00:40:23.540 this hierarchy of the party of youth and vigor and diction and rhetoric, that's what we're told,

00:40:30.620 the educated intellectuals that run the left. You look at Nancy Pelosi, she said, you know,

00:40:35.460 bring them immigrants. They need to come down here. We need people to pick the crops. And then when 1.00

00:40:40.480 she got into Taiwan, I think she got confused. She said, China is one of the freest societies in

00:40:46.280 the world. I don't think she meant communist China. She said a lot of crazy things. And then you got

00:40:50.640 Kamala Harris, who is not cognitively challenged, but she's got a vocabulary that's very limited.

00:40:56.540 And she just repeats herself. It makes no sense. And you add into the mixture of Fetterman,

00:41:01.320 and you start to see that they have a gerontocracy at the top, a Dianne Feinstein,

00:41:08.720 James Clyburn, Joe Biden. And then they haven't developed younger politicians,

00:41:15.880 because they've just stayed there so long. And the younger ones they have developed

00:41:20.440 tend to be not advancing on the basis of merit, because Kamala Harris, by any, you know,

00:41:27.780 by any reasonable meritocratic standard, shouldn't have been a vice president candidate. And you

00:41:31.560 looked at that field that ran, and you look at Bernie's, you either had an age agent person,

00:41:37.140 Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren, I think is 73, or you had somebody like Julian Castro or Beto or

00:41:44.880 Spartacus that was not up to stats. No, that's right. And it's to your, to your point about Kamala

00:41:52.300 Harris. She was on late night with Seth Meyers, taking the tough questions in a very difficult

00:41:58.060 setting the other night. And I mean, this is one of her classic word salad, empty vessel answers.

00:42:04.660 Here it is, SOT 15. But I mean, truly, when you, you know, when you see our kids, and I truly believe

00:42:13.780 that they are our children, they are the children of our country, of our communities. I mean, our future

00:42:19.460 is really bright, if we, if we prioritize them, and therefore prioritize the climate crisis and the

00:42:27.720 need to address. Oh, my God, Victor. She believes the children are our future, teach them right,

00:42:33.500 let them lead the way. Yeah, also, all we have to do is to ask the left to apply their old Dan

00:42:39.100 Quayle standard. Because remember when Dan Quayle, who sounded like, you know, Cicero compared to her,

00:42:45.220 but every time he made a gaffe, they were, you know, he should be taken off the ticket, he's,

00:42:52.120 he should be removed from office, because he can't finish the sentence. But it's the same old

00:42:58.400 asymmetric thing. And I guess it gets back to the fundamental truth of the left, they feel that

00:43:03.260 they're so morally superior, because they're for egalitarianism of result, that any means necessary

00:43:09.200 or contradictions are allowable in pursuit of that goal. But it's, it gets pretty flagrant when you

00:43:15.580 see how they don't talk about her inability to communicate. Well, last but not least, you've been

00:43:21.200 sounding the alarm for a while now about how this woke ideology should not make its way into certain

00:43:27.300 industries like the pilot industry, the medical industry. And yet we have this per Chris Ruffo out of

00:43:35.400 the University of Minnesota as the medical students graduated. They've changed the Hippocratic

00:43:41.760 oath quite a bit. Listen to this soundbite 16. We commit to uprooting the legacy and perpetuation

00:43:50.820 of structural violence deeply embedded within the healthcare system. We recognize inequities built by

00:43:58.180 past and present traumas rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, the gender binary, ableism,

00:44:05.400 and all forms of oppression. As we enter this profession with opportunity for growth,

00:44:11.760 we commit to promoting a culture of anti-racism, listening and amplifying voices for positive

00:44:18.240 change. We pledge to honor all indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized

00:44:24.820 by Western medicine. Break out the peyote.

00:44:28.440 I wonder if that includes hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.

00:44:33.700 No. I don't think so.

00:44:35.120 Not unless we can get Elizabeth Warren to endorse it. Then they're going to reevaluate

00:44:38.400 indigenous healing.

00:44:41.920 It's funny, but it's kind of scary when you have a sophisticated society that depends on all of these

00:44:47.360 skilled professions. And now you're systematically destroying meritocracy and you're substituting it

00:44:53.740 with tribal concerns. I don't know where it all ends, but when they talk about systemic impediments

00:45:02.340 in medicine, they don't really mean it because what was about 2%, 0.2% of the population is now about

00:45:10.960 3% in the case of transgendered individuals that want surgery, many of them below the age of 16. And some

00:45:18.140 of them in some states advocating to be able to have very dangerous drugs that have a lot of long-term

00:45:25.480 effects or irreversible surgeries that the left used to say was part of big pharma or the medical

00:45:32.480 malpractice industry. They're green-lighted. And why are they green-lighted? Because they're the

00:45:38.380 flip side of what he was just talking about. He's saying, we don't want these things in medicine,

00:45:43.740 but by inference. But we do want these things that aren't going to be examined empirically. And

00:45:49.460 that's what's really scary about it. And so you get the impression if, you know, I had a bad case of

00:45:55.240 COVID and I've had it for about six months. And as he's saying to me that I shouldn't go to a

00:46:00.920 university center, I should just get on the internet and take a bunch of what, indigenous stuff? Because 1.00

00:46:05.340 it's all over the internet.

00:46:07.000 Then you wouldn't be a bigot, just like the University of Minnesota.

00:46:09.560 It's the incoming class, I should say. They're going to graduate in 2026. And their defense is,

00:46:15.460 this came from the students. Well, there should have been some grownups in the room to remind them

00:46:20.120 that there is a gender binary and that their focus is on the wrong thing.

00:46:25.880 There's a long history of how this is insidious. You know, in the Soviet Union, when Stalin wanted to

00:46:33.080 build, you know, drain the Caspian Sea or something, they always said, he's a brilliant architect and

00:46:39.860 communist architects, because they serve the people should be listened to, and they were all incompetent.

00:46:46.100 And anytime you have an ideology that starts to intrude into science, and you and I have always said,

00:46:53.120 well, they'll always do it with a complete teacher, because they have contempt for comparative

00:46:58.540 literature. But they'll never do it with airline pilots or nuclear reactor operators. But I'm afraid

00:47:05.760 that they will.

00:47:07.500 Yeah, yeah, exactly. It seems to be going in the wrong direction. We got to pay attention.

00:47:11.360 And we have to fight. Victor Davis Hanson, so good to see you. Thank you for coming on.

00:47:16.120 Thank you for having me.

00:47:17.760 Up next, we will be back with the filmmaker behind this new documentary about

00:47:21.980 accused terrorists at Gitmo, who went to terrorist rehab, and why the left is now trying to cancel her.

00:47:28.120 Filmmaker Meg Smaker was ecstatic when her film, Jihad Rehab, now titled The Unredacted,

00:47:39.480 was invited to screen at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in January. A month later,

00:47:45.180 the festival was apologizing for, quote, hurting members of the community by deigning to show the

00:47:50.320 film. The documentary has since been blacklisted. I saw it, and it's spectacular. Meg joins me now to

00:47:57.620 discuss the controversy and her incredible movie. Meg Smaker, welcome to the show.

00:48:02.600 Hi.

00:48:03.460 Let's just help the audience get to know you, because I think it's fascinating.

00:48:07.240 You're a chick firefighter, which is pretty cool. And you're the daughter of a firefighter.

00:48:11.960 I don't think I'd say a chick firefighter. Firefighter is okay.

00:48:14.360 I said it. I said it. Listen, we talk all the time on this show about how it's not that easy. I know

00:48:19.440 the standards are designed mostly for male firefighters, and it can be hard for some women to meet them. 0.62

00:48:23.700 You did. You've been doing it. You've been training others on how to do it. And you got

00:48:27.760 firefighting in your blood, which winds up being kind of relevant to what to you coming to this

00:48:32.860 movie. But how did you become a firefighter? Yeah. So I really when my dad's a firefighter,

00:48:41.300 but that's not why I became a firefighter. I grew up at the firehouse and all that stuff. But

00:48:45.520 when I moved out, I moved in with five guys in this small apartment. And one of them was a

00:48:52.540 seasonal firefighter, and he would talk about it. And the way to describe it is every day is

00:48:56.900 different. You get to work in a team. It's like you're constantly learning new things. And yeah,

00:49:02.460 I really that really appealed to me. And so how old were you? 18? Wow. Yeah. And what was it hard

00:49:12.680 incidentally to meet like the standards? Was it or did you know, did they accommodate you in any way?

00:49:18.280 Or did you have to? Okay, here's the thing. There's there's certain things you should accommodate

00:49:21.340 for. But like when you run to a burning building, you need to be able to pick up a 230 pound man.

00:49:25.480 If you can't do that, then you then you shouldn't there's no that you shouldn't be dropping the

00:49:29.620 standards in a job like that. Especially because people's lives are on the line. So in the beginning,

00:49:34.880 when I was in the fire academy, I started training and we were doing the physical agility and I was

00:49:40.500 like the bot at the bottom. I was still making the bare minimum, but I was at the bottom. And then

00:49:44.780 I hired this personal trainer, like I took all my savings and I hired a personal trainer. And just

00:49:51.000 before the fire academy every day, I would get up at like 4am and train with him for like,

00:49:55.440 two hours and then do that every day. And then we'd go to the do the PT at the fire academy. And so I'm

00:50:00.920 probably working out like, around four hours every day, except for the one day a week. And then

00:50:06.820 as it went on, I became probably I was in the top third of the physical agility. So I was in the top

00:50:13.320 third of the people in my in my class. So I beat out, you know, a lot of the other guys, which was

00:50:20.040 you, which was good and bad. A lot of people were a lot of the guys were angry at that. And they

00:50:24.560 accused me of like doing steroids and stuff. Cool. Okay. I mean, you know, you're getting good

00:50:29.060 results when people are accusing you of being on steroids. Yeah. All right. So good for you. So you make it,

00:50:34.980 you make it. And then what year was that that you were 18? Oh, man, you're gonna age me. I see. I'm

00:50:41.600 42 now. God. Uh, to 1998. That was a good year. So this is relevant, because just a few years after

00:50:51.460 that was 911. And, you know, the firefighters were the ones who took it worse than any other

00:51:00.020 professional group rushing in to save worse than the cops, worse than the MTA, uh, authorities. It

00:51:05.480 was firefighters who were killed when those buildings collapsed on them running toward the

00:51:09.460 danger. And you really wrestled with what's happening. Why did this happen? Can I believe

00:51:18.180 what I'm being told about this story by the media and so on? And unlike virtually everybody else in our

00:51:23.420 country, you took some extraordinary actions to go figure it out. Tell us what you did.

00:51:30.020 Yeah. So I was a firefighter in California during 9-11. And, um, after it happened, there was such a

00:51:38.560 huge shift, both in my firehouse and then the American society in terms of, uh, just how people

00:51:45.900 were reacting and nothing that I saw on like mainstream media, uh, kind of answered the burning

00:51:50.980 questions generated from that day. So my dad always said, there's only three types of people in the

00:51:56.420 world. Those that when you hit them, they hit you right back. And those when you hit them, they run

00:52:01.360 away. And those that when you hit them, they ask, why did you hit me? And I've always kind of been in

00:52:06.580 that third camp. So I started reading books about Islam and the history of the Middle East and everything

00:52:12.960 that I was reading about the Middle East and Islam directly contradicted what I was seeing on TV.

00:52:18.480 And I realized that both of those sources of information were someone else's through someone

00:52:24.360 else's filter. And so in order for me to truly understand, I needed to remove the filter,

00:52:28.820 which meant I had to go and try to figure it out for myself. And so about, it was a little over six

00:52:34.220 months after 9-11, I, uh, went to Afghanistan to try to figure, you know, answer some of those

00:52:41.220 questions. And, um, I was just immediately humbled by my own ignorance of the world. And I don't,

00:52:48.080 I don't know, like, I don't know if you remember what you were like when you were in your early

00:52:51.560 twenties, but I was very self-assured and thought I knew everything. And then, um, you know, going to

00:52:58.060 a place like Afghanistan and spending time with people there and, you know, I, family there took me in

00:53:03.480 and housed me and fed me and clothed me and treated me as one of their own. Meanwhile, my country is

00:53:08.860 bombing their country. And I had been told like, these people hate you because you're freedom and

00:53:14.300 these people, um, you know, want you dead. And, and they treated me with nothing but kindness and

00:53:19.980 hospitality and grace. And I think that was a kind of a come to, for lack of a better word, come to

00:53:25.780 Jesus moment for me. But can I ask you, were you staying with, you know, Taliban? Were you staying 0.99

00:53:31.020 with Al Qaeda? No, not that, no, no, no. The Afghan people, yeah. Cause you know, it's like the Afghan

00:53:36.140 people were not demonized. I mean, in some corners, yes, but they fought with us.

00:53:40.980 Yeah. But I mean, on the news back then, I don't even, I don't know if you remember the

00:53:44.140 coverage right after nine 11, there was pretty painting in broad strokes for what I mean by

00:53:48.620 that is right after nine 11 happened, we, uh, were told who did this right. Al Qaeda. 0.66

00:53:54.980 But soon I believe that like the narrative then went outside of that. So it wasn't just Al Qaeda. It

00:54:00.660 was like Afghans and then it was like Muslims. And then we have to be scared of all Muslims. And it 1.00

00:54:05.460 kind of kept on growing in terms of who, um, the enemy was. And I think that, uh, even though

00:54:13.760 the people who, you know, took care of me while I was in Afghanistan, the families who helped me out,

00:54:19.260 like they weren't involved in any of this, their country was still quite devastated. Like I stayed

00:54:24.020 in a village, um, near Masha Harif once. And, uh, it, in that village, there literally just been

00:54:31.360 like a week before a huge, uh, American bomb drone strike, whatever. And it had taken out

00:54:35.900 an entire, um, house on the block that I was staying and, uh, the whole entire family had

00:54:40.740 been killed. And so what was really interesting for, it was a realization for me to realize

00:54:46.820 at, because of that, the kind of cycle of violence. So fair enough, these people were living in their

00:54:51.440 homes and their, and in their, in their village and everyone in the neighborhood was going about

00:54:56.340 their day. And then the bomb hit and this entire family was killed. And, um, then everyone in the

00:55:04.100 whole village kind of knew who did it. And so you had these people killed. And now the people in the

00:55:10.580 village are very upset with the people who dropped the bomb, which was us, which is America. And so

00:55:14.880 some of those people then probably became radicalized because of that. And it was just like,

00:55:18.460 we hit them, they hit us, we hit them, they hit us. And it was just like this cycle of

00:55:22.660 violence and hate. And I think that I ask you a question about that. Cause cause I do,

00:55:26.880 I get it, you know, as somebody who's definitely been more pro military for most of my adult life.

00:55:32.880 Um, I feel like, were they outraged that they were harboring Osama bin Laden who brought down our, 0.80

00:55:39.040 our twin towers and 3000 Americans were killed. Cause like, that's why that house got bombed, 0.98

00:55:43.500 you know, military strikes aren't always precise, but there's no, I'm not like, here's the thing.

00:55:48.760 There's war, war is like, war. I don't care who you are. The war is not clean. There's not,

00:55:54.680 there's not like people aren't intending to kill innocent people. But what I'm saying is,

00:55:59.820 is that basically, um, when, when you're, you're assuming that people in Afghanistan all have like

00:56:08.300 TVs in their house and they're watching CNN, they realize what's going on. A lot of people

00:56:11.680 who I met had no idea about this political game of bring and ship that had developed and had no

00:56:18.540 association with Al Qaeda and didn't even know that. Like, I think that the, I'm sorry, I did not

00:56:28.120 wake up. It's nice. So my brain's kind of fried today, but what I'm trying to say is that when

00:56:34.580 you're talking about, um, people living in a small village in Afghanistan. And I think your question

00:56:41.360 is like, they, well, they knew what was going on in their country. And so they were, was that what

00:56:46.900 you're saying? It's just, I'm sorry that somebody in a house that was innocent died in the war,

00:56:53.540 but it's hard for most people to get past the fact that 3000 innocents died here.

00:56:58.220 Um, Oh, and I'm not saying they should, I like as a firefighter, no, that was a horrific event,

00:57:02.540 but I'm just trying to demonstrate that like there, this violence, I realized the cycle of

00:57:07.820 violence, right? Like I get it. That's a fair point. And I should point out to the audience

00:57:12.720 that, you know, you, you talk to these guys who are at Gitmo and you know, you press them on nine

00:57:18.380 11 and, and to your point, one of the extraordinary admissions I found it extraordinary was they say

00:57:24.980 like they didn't actually even realize what nine 11 did until they were shown video of it at Gitmo.

00:57:33.020 It's like, you think you picture bin Laden there with, you know, Kalisha Muhammad and others

00:57:38.100 planning and plotting and then celebrating as the video came in. That's not how it went. These,

00:57:43.260 these guys were recruited in a much different way and weren't connected with nine 11 in the way that

00:57:47.380 we would have assumed. So let me just keep moving it forward. Cause, um, I want to make sure

00:57:51.880 we get to the film. Um, so you have this experience in Afghanistan where they treat you beautifully.

00:57:56.200 You're defended by this Afghan family when some people have questions about you and then you do

00:58:01.780 something extraordinary, even more extraordinary. You moved to Yemen. All I could think of was Chandler

00:58:06.560 Bing on friends when he was trying to get away from that needy girlfriend. And he's like,

00:58:11.320 I'm moving to Yemen. Like no one moves to Yemen. No American moves to Yemen. So you did. 0.97

00:58:17.480 How, how did that, like, why? I think most people, uh, association with Yemen is pretty

00:58:22.840 limited to either obviously friends or the USS coal bombing. I think this is the two things that

00:58:27.160 people say that they usually bring up about Yemen. Um, so, uh, for me, the whole kind of

00:58:33.840 wanting to understand thing, um, they, my time in Afghanistan made me realize how ignorant I was of

00:58:40.740 the world. And the way that I wanted to remedy that is to kind of educate myself through trying to

00:58:46.020 understand different people's cultures and see the way that the world, the way they did and their

00:58:50.300 language. And so I moved to Yemen to study Arabic and, and, uh, was there for almost five years.

00:58:56.100 And for me, the reason I chose Yemen is because, uh, I'm very lazy when it comes to learning languages. 0.73

00:59:02.300 And I knew if I moved to somewhere like Syria or Egypt, there'd be a big population of expats there

00:59:08.660 that I would just be lazy and speak English with, but there wasn't really in Yemen. And so I went there to

00:59:13.660 learn the language and the culture and, um, yeah, try to basically understand, uh, this

00:59:21.880 someone else's perspective, someone else's kind of, um, culture and view of the world and to try to

00:59:28.660 just educate myself. Cause I do think that it's really until I learned Arabic and right now my

00:59:34.480 Arabic is absolute shit. Cause I haven't, you know, if you don't use it, you lose it. So it's been, 1.00

00:59:37.600 it's been a while, but, um, Oh, can I, I can swear. I can swear. Um, yeah. So I think for me,

00:59:47.680 the way I describe me learning this language is, um, you know, I traveled a lot before and when you

00:59:53.700 travel to a place, it's kind of like going into a house and being in the foyer of a house and you're

00:59:58.280 allowed to see, you know, the pictures on the wall and, you know, the family photos. But when you learn

01:00:04.340 a language, you then can like invited in to the rest of the house where you can go to the living

01:00:09.660 room and you can go to the bedroom and you can look in the sock drawer and you're, you're given

01:00:12.700 more of like an intimate access to a people and a culture and, and a place. And for me learning

01:00:19.700 the language and I never got to the level where I could read the Quran in Arabic. I, I would, that

01:00:25.600 was just way too hard for me. I got to the, I was able to read that Da Vinci code in Arabic.

01:00:29.480 Like that's how, that's how good. That's all the extent of my Arabic. You, you like a challenge,

01:00:34.180 Meg. That's the, so far, this is the theme of our discussion. This is a woman who likes a challenge.

01:00:39.060 You, um, I know you said at one point or wrote it at one point after, I mean, we don't even had time

01:00:45.840 to get into the fact that you were kidnapped in Columbia for 10 days. I mean, it's a, your life has

01:00:51.060 been so crazy. You've done so many amazing things. Um, but you said something effective. This is part of

01:00:57.460 the catalyst that pushed me on this lifelong journey of trying to understand the world's

01:01:01.580 evildoers, pirates in Somalia, warlords in Afghanistan and terrorists in Saudi Arabia.

01:01:07.080 Somehow it's like a safety blanket. Like if I can understand a thing, then it's no longer so scary

01:01:13.700 to me. That completely clicks with me. That explains a lot. And you really immersed yourself

01:01:20.460 and all of this would become hugely helpful to you in getting access to this facility originally

01:01:27.440 called jihad rehab, uh, colloquially, um, that would be the basis of this film. So you,

01:01:35.000 I understand we're in Yemen and you heard mention of this place in Saudi Arabia where they were

01:01:39.780 essentially rehabbing terrorists. Saudi Arabia had created this facility. You were like,

01:01:45.720 I gotta know more. I, you know, now the audience knows enough about you to know, like, yes, when

01:01:51.000 you say you gotta know more, you really gotta know more and you do something about it. So you go to

01:01:55.260 Saudi Arabia. Now you decide to make a documentary film. And amazingly, while the New York times had

01:02:00.600 done a story on this facility and some other publications, no one got the kind of access you

01:02:05.660 did probably because your familiarity with the language and so on over a year, you, you have access

01:02:11.760 to this facility on a, on a very intimate level. Um, and wind up following four guys in particular,

01:02:20.360 um, for the course of 12 to 16 months, the Mohammed bin Nayef counseling and care center in Riyadh. And

01:02:27.680 so that must've been extraordinary for you just to be given that kind of access.

01:02:34.680 So how did that come about? Did the guys agree to be the subjects of the documentary? Cause I'm sure a lot

01:02:39.640 of them were like, Oh no. Yeah. So, um, it's, it's a bit of, I'll try to cliff note version that. So

01:02:46.280 it took me a year to get the access that I got. Um, it was a lot of, uh, back channeling, um, uh,

01:02:54.600 back and forth between people at the ministry of interior and, uh, just, it took really, really long

01:02:59.520 time. And what you have to understand about places like Saudi Arabia is they never tell, you know,

01:03:04.320 they just throw hurdle after hurdle after hurdle after hurdle, after hurdle, after hurdle in front

01:03:08.400 of you until, uh, you kind of just give up. And, um, you know, like I was talking to someone the

01:03:14.760 other day, I'm like, I, I am very bad at a lot of things. I can't spell, I'm horrible at like fixing

01:03:19.540 a car, but I got tenacity for days. So I was like up to the challenge and, um, got to the point where,

01:03:27.160 um, I emailed them and then they, you know, I think in the exchange was like, you know, we asked

01:03:32.400 everyone in the El Hire prison, which is this, uh, uh, prison that's exclusively for terrorists.

01:03:39.360 Um, and then we asked everyone to rehab center and no one wants to talk to you and no one wants

01:03:42.580 to be a part of your film. And then I emailed them back. I'm like, well, let me, let me just,

01:03:47.140 can I just meet with them? Like, I'll just meet with them. And if they, you know, let's just,

01:03:51.360 let me, let me ask them. And so, uh, basically they, we went back and forth for a while and then

01:03:58.860 finally they acquiesced. And then, and then came the hurdle, which was you can go to the El Hire

01:04:05.560 and you can go to the rehab center, but you're not allowed to film one frame unless these men

01:04:12.520 agreed to film with you from the jump. Meaning that I couldn't spend weeks trying to gain their

01:04:17.740 trust in order to, you know, see if they wanted to be on this project. They had to agree from day one,

01:04:22.780 which they knew was never going to happen because most of these guys have either just come back from

01:04:27.480 Guantanamo and after being tortured from, you know, the country that I belong to, or they just

01:04:32.600 came back from Syria fighting with ISIS. Um, and, and they were right. You know, when I sat down with 0.62

01:04:38.780 a bunch of these different groups, you know, I sat down with a group of, uh, older Al Qaeda guys and

01:04:43.220 started speaking to them in Arabic and they wouldn't even look at me or acknowledge my presence.

01:04:47.940 I met with a group of younger ISIS guys, same thing, but then something very serendipitous happened.

01:04:54.540 Uh, Saudi Arabia had just taken its first batch of non-Saudi nationals into the rehab program and

01:05:03.080 they just happened to be from Yemen. And so when I sat down with them and I started talking, I had

01:05:09.660 put on my thickest, you know, Yemeni accent I could muster. Um, their heads popped up and they're like, 1.00

01:05:16.400 why, why do you speak our mother tongue? And I told them I used to live in Yemen and they're like,

01:05:20.400 where? And I said, in the old city near the Sila. And then they're like, wait, we went near this

01:05:24.700 place. And I was like, yeah, the best Fasa restaurant, all of the Yemen. Sorry, I should 0.99

01:05:28.440 have muted that. Um, but yeah, I think that like there began this immediate rapport and we started

01:05:35.360 talking and we talked for hours and, you know, talked about Yemen because they hadn't been back

01:05:40.000 in over 15 years to their home country. And, um, at the very end of it, I said, you know,

01:05:45.420 does anyone like would let anyone like to speak to me one-on-one and I would love to hear more about

01:05:51.180 your individual stories. And a couple of hands went up and then, uh, I talked to those guys and

01:05:57.980 then word spread spread to a rehab center, um, that, you know, Meg wasn't a, like a, like a normal

01:06:03.020 journalist. She was like a white Yemeni and kind of doors opened up. And, um, I wound up interviewing

01:06:07.880 about a hundred over, over 150 of these guys of that 150, only 30 were interested in doing the

01:06:15.700 project of that 30, only 12 were interested in doing the project without having their face blurred

01:06:20.540 or being disguised. And for me, it was imperative to be able to have the audience, you know, look at

01:06:24.980 these men in the eyes to have that kind of like understanding and human connection. So, um, yeah,

01:06:30.980 it was, it was a myriad of like slumdog millionaire moments all put together and then luck,

01:06:36.080 if that makes sense of getting access to this place. Like the footage, my jaw dropped as I was

01:06:42.360 watching it. Like it's incredible what goes on at this facility, right? Cause it's like, well,

01:06:46.120 how do you rehab someone who's an accused terrorist or even in some cases an admitted terrorist? How

01:06:51.520 do these guys came from Gitmo and they'd been fighting on the battlefields, right? It's like,

01:06:55.900 how do you rehab somebody? Like, it's like, how do you take, forgive the analogy, but it,

01:07:02.080 for those who have admitted being part of Al Qaeda, somebody who's like a trained pit bull,

01:07:06.580 trained to hurt others and get the dog to no longer attack. Right. And it's honestly,

01:07:12.500 a lot of, well, I would say in terms of the rehab program, and this is something that surprised me

01:07:16.620 and I think surprised a lot of people when they watch it. So I was expecting to go there and it

01:07:20.420 just be religious classes. But a lot of these guys who were coming from Guantanamo, um, went in when

01:07:26.300 they were like, you know, went to Guantanamo when they were like teenagers or early twenties and

01:07:30.560 they'd been there for 15 years. And so a lot of these classes are not like, yes, there's classes

01:07:35.120 to teach them about their religion and D and D radicalize them. But there are also classes on

01:07:39.180 like counseling to treat their PA PTSD from Guantanamo or other things like teaching them

01:07:45.840 how to survive in the world we have now. Like what is the internet? Cause when these guys went in

01:07:49.900 in Guantanamo, there was no Facebook, there was no Google. It's amazing. And so they don't real

01:07:54.460 realize like the change that the world has had. So it's not just rehabilitating their idea of what

01:08:00.880 Islam is and, and what jihad is. It's also kind of giving them life skills. So when they leave the 0.61

01:08:06.380 center, they can actually function in the, in the current world in terms of, you know, they teach

01:08:11.160 there's classes there that where they kind of teach them how to find a wife. Right. Cause a lot of 0.98

01:08:16.020 guys are quite old for being single in their world. And I don't know if there's, there's a clip,

01:08:21.300 I think I sent you where, um, there's a class and in this class, stand by, let me show it. Let me

01:08:27.300 show you. This is one of my favorites. Like this is the, the teacher, uh, speaking to the, those who

01:08:33.840 are in the therapy, the would be reformed jihadists about, um, how one is the woman's studies class.

01:08:40.720 Just FYI. Oh, this is a woman's studies. Okay. Here, let's play it. So 17. 1.00

01:08:43.860 Oh, no, this is not it. This is, that's a different one. This is a, sorry about that.

01:08:53.500 Do we have that one cut you guys? No, we didn't have that one cut. All right,

01:08:57.120 but I'm going to tell you what this guy said. Cause actually it's an Arabic and the clip we do

01:09:00.460 have. And he, he says as follows and Meg does captions on the screen during the movie. So you

01:09:05.880 won't need me when you actually watch the film. He says, these three parts are what Sigmund Freud talked

01:09:11.720 about in his psychoanalysis. This is a long lecture. So focus on this. Maybe there's a

01:09:16.080 topic that Muhammad and I will differ on. It's not like if your opinion was different than my opinion

01:09:20.880 that I would grab a gun and shoot you because your opinion isn't right. I respect your opinion

01:09:26.360 and you respect my opinion. There must be respect and acknowledgement between people. I have to tell

01:09:31.100 you, Meg, I absolutely love that clip. That's the, like, okay. So they do color there. They do art

01:09:38.580 therapy. They do. They get the guys swimming. They, uh, take them camping. They play charades.

01:09:45.480 They talk about how to treat women, but they also say, if there's a disagreement,

01:09:50.060 you don't take out your gun and shoot the other person. They cover the basics.

01:09:53.580 That clip that you just were about to play. Wasn't that marriage class? It was,

01:09:56.220 it was called the interpersonal skills class where they teach them about like, Hey, listen,

01:10:00.820 um, you're going to meet people who are not going to ascribe to the same beliefs that you do.

01:10:04.440 And just because if I'm going to disagree with you, does that mean I'm going to pull out a gun and

01:10:08.300 shoot you? And so it's, it's teaching them how to have conversations with people that they disagree

01:10:11.840 with and have, and like teaching them critical thinking skills. And, um, the, the marriage class,

01:10:17.920 the other clip, um, is him trying to give them advice on how to find a wife and what to look for

01:10:24.080 when you're, when you're finding, when you're looking for a wife and it's things that you really

01:10:27.640 wouldn't expect to see in a rehab center. And again, these, these, he says like dress nicely for her.

01:10:32.760 He's teaching these guys like dress nice and make yourself look good. Make yourself smell good.

01:10:36.440 I wish you had that. I thought I'd said it to you. I wish you had that. I might've been in Arabic.

01:10:39.940 Some of the ones in Arabic we didn't cut cause it's, you know, hard on radio. Um, yeah. So

01:10:44.360 basically the, uh, the marriage class and, um, and the interpersonal skills class, and there's a

01:10:50.440 class where they teach them how to, uh, make a budget. So some of the guys, so I should back up here.

01:10:56.020 The reason why there's four characters in the film is after interviewing about 150 of these guys,

01:11:01.360 I started to see a pattern and they would not all of them, but the majority of them would fall into

01:11:06.060 one of four categories, right. In terms of the motivation. The first one, I think that most

01:11:11.000 Americans are familiar with is the cause, right? So that would be Abu Ghanem in the film where he

01:11:15.880 talks about seeing Muslims being persecuted and killed in Bosnia. And he felt compelled to like 1.00

01:11:22.300 go and protect Muslims and defend his fellow Muslims. So he left Yemen and went to go fight in Bosnia.

01:11:27.740 And that, that is the, you know, the main kind of, uh, idea about that most people have about why

01:11:35.220 people join this group is like, they think it's a religious duty. But when I talked to them, a lot

01:11:39.340 of them had, it had no, nothing to do with the religion. So for example, Nadir, um, he was having

01:11:46.640 hard time finding work and making a living and someone offered him to basically, and he basically

01:11:51.840 became a career jihadist where he would get like Al Qaeda and these groups, they actually pay and they give

01:11:56.480 you a stipend and they give you houses and stuff like that. And so for him, it was economic

01:12:02.040 necessity. And the next motivation that I found a pattern for was peer pressure. So that was Ali, where

01:12:08.040 his brother was in this, his brother, one of the characters in the film, their brother was, um, an

01:12:12.560 instructor at Alfredo training camp and then became a leader in Al Qaeda. And he kind of pressured his

01:12:17.680 brother into going to this training camp. And then the last motivation is, is mostly age dependent

01:12:23.820 of the younger guys sense of adventure. And that's Muhammad where he, you know, says, you know,

01:12:28.520 I was young and I was bored and I didn't want to go to school. And this guy offered me a ticket to go

01:12:32.520 to Yemen and shoot rockets. And so like, yeah, like I was 19 years old. And, um, so all those four 0.96

01:12:39.060 different causes, you know, the, or four motivations, the cause, um, economic necessity, peer pressure,

01:12:46.280 sense of adventure. And, um, I mean, there's exceptions, but those are most of the reasons

01:12:51.880 why, you know, guys talked about joining these groups. And there was also a definitely undertone

01:12:56.380 of like wanting a sense of belonging and wanting to find a sense of purpose. But what was really

01:13:01.720 interesting to me is when, you know, I have a lot of friends in the military and I had a lot of

01:13:06.480 friends tell me that they joined up after 9-11, which, you know, that's the same thing as joining

01:13:10.220 for the cause. You want to defend your country. I had a lot of friends who, you know, um, live in states

01:13:15.920 and places where the military is a really good job with, you know, benefits and, and, and whatnot.

01:13:21.320 You know, that's economic necessity. A lot of friends of mine, like went into the military to

01:13:25.000 help pay for college again, economic necessity. And then I had friends of mine.

01:13:28.480 Not everybody is thinking holy war and, you know, fight the infidel. Some are like, I need three meals 0.98

01:13:33.900 a day and my brother's in it and saying it's a good organization. And you point out in the film

01:13:39.120 that they intentionally go after the 15 to 25 year old set because they're young and influential,

01:13:43.760 easily influenced, I should say. And it starts to make sense. Here's a question I have for you.

01:13:51.220 Um, I think I shared with you that one of my friends was over and watching part of it with me.

01:13:55.320 And she was like, and this is hardcore Trump supporter, you know, MAGA. And, and her response

01:14:00.100 was, am I supposed to feel sorry for them? Cause I'm starting to feel sorry for them. I don't want

01:14:03.700 to feel sorry for them, but I am starting to feel sorry for them. And it raised an interesting

01:14:07.200 point, right? Cause it's like, you definitely humanize these guys and you point out on the

01:14:13.500 screen what they were accused of doing at Gitmo. Also that they were never actually tried or convicted

01:14:18.660 of said things. Um, but you start sort of catch yourself saying, wait a minute, I feel sorry for

01:14:26.460 him until I remember that this guy was captured on the battlefield trying to kill our guys and maybe

01:14:31.620 we did kill our guys. And then the charades and the art therapy and all that other stuff starts to

01:14:40.140 seem far less cute. Right. So how do you reconcile those two things?

01:14:46.280 Yeah. Well, when we were talking before and I was talking to different motivations,

01:14:49.280 when I had those conversations with guys and I like saw the kind of commonalities between

01:14:55.580 the men that joined this armed group of, of terrorists and men that wanted to go and join the

01:15:02.800 military to see the world for the adventure or pay for school, or because they thought they wanted to

01:15:07.620 defend their country or because they're come from a military family. Right. And everyone else

01:15:11.140 in their family is, is part of this. And what I realized that it wasn't about good and evil,

01:15:16.680 but it was about time and circumstance. Right. And so I think when you're talking about

01:15:22.620 watching the film and being very conflicted at times, you, you feel very empath, very empathetic

01:15:28.180 for the guys. And at times they say things that really piss you off and that really, you really

01:15:32.200 like, like take you in a place where you're just like, no, that's not right. And I think for me,

01:15:36.920 it was imperative to show the complexity of their situation and the complexity of who they are.

01:15:43.600 Right. Because at the same time, you know, there's this very famous Dostoyevsky quote that says

01:15:49.720 the easiest thing in the world is to denounce the evildoer. The most difficult thing in the world

01:15:57.720 is to try to understand him. And for me, that's what this film was trying to do because,

01:16:03.320 you know, we, as I was making this film, it reminded me of this story. My dad told me when

01:16:09.200 I was younger about starfish. And he said that there was this fishing village that had a problem

01:16:13.840 with invasive starfish. And one day the, the, the, all the fishermen got together and decide to like

01:16:20.400 kill all the starfish. So they collected them up, cut them up into three, four, five pieces,

01:16:24.840 not thinking they were dead. They threw those pieces back into the ocean. And what inevitably

01:16:30.940 happened is the starfish, like, because starfish regenerate it, like the starfish population exploded

01:16:36.840 where there was one starfish for another five. And it just devastated the local fishing economy.

01:16:41.160 The moral of the story being, when you try to fix a problem, you do not understand.

01:16:46.820 You usually make it worse. And the day after 9-11, most experts put the number of Al-Qaeda members

01:16:53.160 around 400. And when I started making this film, um, 2016, 17, those same experts put the number at

01:17:01.080 around a hundred thousand, if you include a lot of the Al-Qaeda affiliate groups. And so basically

01:17:07.000 the United States have starfished the shit out of the middle East. So last two decades, 0.83

01:17:11.340 because we don't understand these men and we don't understand their motivation.

01:17:15.180 And I think that what I was trying to do with this film is not like, it's just, it's just be able to

01:17:21.180 create a piece of work where we can like really understand these men on a human level and all

01:17:25.620 their complexities with all their different motivations.

01:17:27.300 It's not about creating empathy. It's about creating understanding and so that we don't keep

01:17:32.560 making the same mistakes over and over here or elsewhere.

01:17:37.240 Yeah. And even if you're like a, even if you're a person who is very kind of, um, like I have,

01:17:42.740 I have friends of mine who are in the military who watched this film and, um, it was a really well

01:17:49.200 known vet had watched this film and messaged me and said that he would never admit this to anyone,

01:17:55.020 but, um, he missed war and he, he missed, um, but he didn't miss the fighting or anything like

01:18:00.660 that. He missed the camaraderie and the brotherhood and the sense of purpose.

01:18:04.300 And he said, since he got back to United States, he hadn't found that. And then,

01:18:09.200 and then until he saw my film, he hadn't seen that. And what was really disarming for him is

01:18:13.940 that he saw the thing that he said, he's like, I realized after watching your film that I had way

01:18:19.200 more in common with the men in your film and the people that I was fighting and the people who

01:18:24.640 actually sent me to war. And what I mean by that is like, he was saying that like, when he saw the

01:18:30.840 film, it was very healing for him because he'd always kind of like wondered who these men were and

01:18:36.280 who these men were that he was sent to kill and seeing this film and the impact on him. And also

01:18:42.120 I would say like the impact on the Yemeni community who've been able to like both help

01:18:46.560 with the film and watch it because my executive producer is Yemeni. And he kept on saying, you know,

01:18:51.120 one of the reasons I got involved in this project is because you talk about things that are really

01:18:55.240 important to the Yemeni community and people, you know, being from Yemen being thrown in Guantanamo

01:18:59.760 mass, Yemen being bombed. And he's like, I look at the mainstream media and people are talking about

01:19:05.060 Syria and they're talking about, you know, the Ukraine, but no one ever talks about Yemen.

01:19:09.280 Everyone always ignores Yemen. And so it's really interesting for me to have those two groups,

01:19:14.960 the Yemeni community and the vet community watch this film and both respond to it in very positive,

01:19:19.760 different ways. We, uh, we had Dakota Meyer on the program. We've had him on a couple of times,

01:19:24.380 but we did an in-depth piece on him that we aired on Memorial day. And, um, he talked about the moment

01:19:29.320 where he was saving all those guys, uh, our Afghan brothers in arms and his own, um, American troops

01:19:37.000 that he was serving with. And he talked about this moment where he got into this sort of one-on-one

01:19:43.960 fight with, uh, one of the bad guys with a gun and it was Dakota or this guy. And he had the thought,

01:19:49.620 like, this may not be an evil guy, you know, like this guy's doing what I'm doing. He's here

01:19:54.720 kind of for the reasons I'm here. Um, but it was a him or me situation. And, you know, he,

01:20:01.420 he fought for his life, but it was a very, it was a, it was a great startling and very telling

01:20:06.160 admission from one of our most respected and decorated veterans on the psychology of a soldier

01:20:12.940 and what happens and, you know, trying to understand the other side, even in the moment

01:20:17.300 of your own possible death or his. All right, let me squeeze in a quick break, Megan. We'll come

01:20:22.020 back. We'll talk a little bit about the backlash, um, that you've received and what's next. And in

01:20:28.100 terms of getting this film out there and getting people to actually see it since it's been blackballed

01:20:32.740 by those in charge.

01:20:36.460 We have like the, the small party and I saw him, the father, my wife.

01:20:43.040 Then he asked me, do you have the wife? I say, no. I said, okay, I have the female. I have my daughter.

01:20:55.960 She cute, you know, and I talked to her. She didn't know about censor.

01:21:02.740 You know, it's a different age. I'm 35, I'm 19. I'm kind of looking for my, the new life.

01:21:18.340 So I can see my children in the school, like I can take care about my, the new family.

01:21:24.820 This is what I think now, you know.

01:21:34.820 Would it be okay to film your wife?

01:21:37.420 No, no, no, no. Never. Never.

01:21:40.500 For me. It's not good to take the picture of the women. 1.00

01:21:44.960 The arc of the storyline for Muhammad and others is somewhat heart, heartbreaking.

01:21:54.460 They, they changed leadership. They had a change of leadership in Saudi Arabia and the center,

01:22:00.140 which was rehabbing terrorists from Saudi Arabia, accused terrorists from Yemen. Now, suddenly,

01:22:07.160 Yemenis were not allowed to work in Saudi Arabia. And so these guys who went through the whole rehab,

01:22:12.360 and they all talk in the film about how the importance of staying busy, how they understand

01:22:16.420 how important it is to stay busy, to get a job, to get a wife, to, you know, have, have a full life

01:22:22.540 so you don't get pulled back into this other life. And now, effectively, they can't because they're

01:22:28.560 Yemenis and they can't leave Saudi Arabia. So they have to stay in Saudi Arabia. They can't work. 1.00

01:22:32.560 And we can see even in our own country how that doesn't lead to good things. You know, young men

01:22:36.520 who aren't allowed to get jobs or can't get jobs. It doesn't lead to anything good here. It would be

01:22:41.080 crime there. It could be terrorism. And so anyway, Meg does a great job of bringing you the personal

01:22:46.760 stories of these guys and shows you, of course, we don't know the end result, but shows you the

01:22:50.780 struggles that they face because of their own backgrounds and because of where they live and

01:22:55.660 because of the lives that they're living. I thought it was very, it was heart-wrenching.

01:23:01.460 The whole story, my God, you feel anger. You feel empathy. You feel conflicted. You

01:23:08.260 wrestle with your own feelings, as I said before. And when it showed a Sundance, people were floored

01:23:13.800 by it, floored by it. Your executive producer, one of them, Abigail Disney, I know sent you an email

01:23:19.000 saying it's freaking brilliant, freaking brilliant. And that was before the left wing started to freak

01:23:24.680 out and say, not freaking brilliant. This is about, quote, white savior tendencies, yours, I guess,

01:23:33.240 saying that it's Islamophobic, that it pushes American propaganda, and that they, this is Abigail

01:23:41.680 Disney's description of the backlash. I failed, failed, and absolutely failed to understand just

01:23:48.140 how exhausted by and disgusted with the perpetual representation of Muslim men and women as terrorists

01:23:53.200 or former terrorists or potential terrorists. The Muslim people are. That was a failure of empathy 1.00

01:23:59.000 and respect on my part, and therefore the gravest of failures. So in no way does this film suggest

01:24:04.820 all Muslim people are terrorists or potential terrorists. It takes a look at one group that was 1.00

01:24:09.860 accused of being terrorists that was at Gitmo and talks about the rehab center and the way forward.

01:24:14.340 That's what this film does. Were you stunned by how this Islamophobic narrative started to take over

01:24:23.260 as soon as the film hit?

01:24:25.840 Yes and no. And what I mean by that is, so you have to understand that the attacks on the film didn't start

01:24:30.640 at the actual festival. When people, after people saw the film, the attacks on the film started before

01:24:36.320 anyone had seen it. And so, for example, the announcement went on, I think, December 9th of

01:24:42.800 last year, and the film didn't play until like six weeks, almost two months later. I think it was

01:24:47.140 January 22nd. And so in that time, you know, the amount of vitriol and anger that was directed

01:24:55.980 this film that no one had seen and no one had met me, it was really, really shocking because we'd done

01:25:02.620 so many screenings before Sundance. And we, with the Muslim community, with, with, we had guards 1.00

01:25:07.920 at Guantanamo, we had MAGA people, we had really liberal people. We really did a lot of test

01:25:12.740 screenings because we knew that this was such an important topic to get right, but also that the

01:25:16.700 film was going to be probably attacked, but we thought from the alt-right. And so we're preparing

01:25:21.540 for that. But when the attacks initially came, I actually understood it at first because no one had

01:25:27.680 seen the film and they saw that there was this, you know, non-Muslim white woman who made a film

01:25:32.360 about terrorism. And they thought probably that it was like every other film about terrorism that

01:25:36.800 is very sensationalistic, that is very fear mongering, that does reinforce negative stereotypes.

01:25:41.940 And I think that they, because they hadn't seen it, they assumed that this was the case. And so those

01:25:47.580 initial, you know, accusations of film were from a place that I actually understood. Because what you

01:25:53.080 have to realize is when, when someone has that much hate and that much anger and vitriol for a piece

01:26:02.100 of work as a film that they've never seen or a person like me that they've never met,

01:26:06.680 one thing that I learned in the fire service is, so for example, I went on a call once and this kid

01:26:12.440 had really seriously injured his hand and we showed up and the mom was crying and the kid was bleeding

01:26:17.780 out. But the father was irately mad. And we show up and he starts yelling at us like, how, like,

01:26:23.440 where the fuck have you been? You're so fucking incompetent. I'm like, whoa, dude. And he was just

01:26:27.800 really hammering into this the entire time we were trying to help his kid. We finally got the kid

01:26:32.340 patched up and we put him in the ambulance. And when they were out of earshot, one of the firefighters

01:26:38.120 said, you know, that guy's fucking lucky I didn't deck him. And then my captain, because he was an older

01:26:43.360 and wiser man than we were, turned around and had this, this is about to be a teachable moment look

01:26:49.460 on his face. And he said, listen, you have to understand in this job, you're exposed to people

01:26:54.880 who are going through the worst traumatic moment of their lives. And even though this man was angry

01:27:01.900 at you and he was yelling at you and he was furious at you, it wasn't about you. And what he said,

01:27:08.240 it's like, everyone processes trauma differently. Everyone, you know, some people cry, some people

01:27:13.100 laugh and some people get angry. And this man was angry and that's how he was processing trauma.

01:27:17.940 And so to your point, what I mean by that, to your point, I just want to tell the audience that

01:27:23.240 more than 200, 230 filmmakers signed a letter denouncing the documentary. A majority had not

01:27:30.200 seen it. So, I mean, that's the point you're making. Yeah. And I, I think the reason why there

01:27:35.260 was so much vitriol is I will say for this, like, you know, when a person I consider my sister is

01:27:39.560 Muslim and she's told me over the years about her experience in the United States, being a Muslim

01:27:44.300 woman who wears the hijab and having that experience over the last 20 years is a type of trauma.

01:27:49.600 And so when these people lashed out at me at first, I was actually quite, I understood it. So I was

01:27:54.360 like, oh, like if you're a Muslim in this country and have experienced this kind of bigotry for the

01:27:58.460 last 20 years, and then you see a film about terrorism at Sundance, it's supposed to be this

01:28:03.200 progressive liberal place. You assume it's like all the other films about terrorism. Of course,

01:28:07.760 that makes sense that people would lash out at this film.

01:28:10.300 But they stayed mad even after they saw it. It's not like they saw it and said,

01:28:14.440 we've changed our opinion. They did see it, but that's what I will say. That's what I originally

01:28:19.340 thought. I changed my mind later when I found out more information. But what I wanted to say,

01:28:24.160 because I know we don't have that much time left, is two things. One is that the reason we're

01:28:29.000 talking right now and the reason why people in the States are even, you know, aware of this film,

01:28:35.760 just other than the New York Times article, is because there's been a group that

01:28:39.160 has helped, they helped me make a screening in the United States. They paid for me to

01:28:45.580 screen the film in LA. And from that screening, a lot of words spread about the film and what it was

01:28:51.300 and what it wasn't. And that was a group called Fair for All. And I think that you're familiar with

01:28:56.760 them. I just want to give them a shout out because I have done two interviews.

01:28:59.200 I keep on forgetting to do it.

01:29:00.760 No, no, no. Fair is awesome. And they stood up for you. But what's been so disheartening is how

01:29:05.440 even after people have seen this, now they're accusing you. I mean, the woman who ran Sundance,

01:29:10.760 she came up with all sorts of roadblocks for you, saying, I need to see the consent forms from

01:29:15.200 the detainees. I need to see your plan to protect them. Now they've come out and said that two of the

01:29:20.660 four men featured were not aware that the film was being released. There's been a lot of false.

01:29:27.620 There's been a lot of false and misleading information put out into the world, especially

01:29:33.780 from this one group called CAGE. And you could Google them and see who they are.

01:29:38.640 It's like CARE, only with former accused.

01:29:42.020 No, no. CAGE is a group in the UK. And how it was described to me is it's a group of former

01:29:51.500 Guantanamo detainees. And it's an activist group. And I didn't know who CAGE was. And so how

01:29:57.600 they were described to me when I met, when I talked with people who knew about them,

01:30:00.740 they said this group attacks any, they're trying to push a narrative that everyone in Guantanamo

01:30:05.800 was innocent and never did anything wrong. And yeah, no one was charged, but there were people

01:30:10.420 not Guantanamo who did do stuff. And obviously you can see that in my film. Yeah. But like they

01:30:15.780 will attack any book or any film that challenges that narrative.

01:30:19.220 Yeah. So it's no surprise that they're mad.

01:30:20.240 What about the specific allegation, Meg, that is it true for just for the record that two of the four

01:30:25.720 were not aware the film was being released publicly. And they said one said one, they claim

01:30:30.320 one told you he didn't want to be featured in the film at all. That's what that's the

01:30:34.120 allegation. No, no one ever told me they they wanted me to take them out of the film. We had

01:30:38.200 one guy stop filming with us. And that was Abuganam in the film. And basically, I he was the most

01:30:43.080 of all the four guys. He was one that was most eager to join the project because he wanted to send

01:30:48.020 a message like his whole when he talks in the film, the whole reason he did the film is because he

01:30:52.740 wanted to let people know what happened to him with Guantanamo, how horrible the American 0.97

01:30:56.380 government was to them and how hypocritical they were. And once he finished delivering

01:31:00.420 that message, he didn't want to talk about anything else. And so all these other questions

01:31:04.720 I kept on asking him was like, I don't want to talk about that. And then he's like, all right,

01:31:07.860 I've said what I need to say. I'm done. He left the project.

01:31:10.000 Yeah, like never. Well, why exactly were they so terrible to you? Let's what what got them so

01:31:14.960 angry? Let's let's go back to that.

01:31:16.620 But I but I but I wanted to say that, like, you know, this film, I think the what I will say about

01:31:22.360 all the accusations being thrown at this film, the best weapon against those accusations is just to

01:31:28.240 watch the fucking film. The best defense is the film itself, because when you see it, you realize

01:31:32.580 that 99% of these accusations are not true. And if you actually do a deep dive and you find out who

01:31:39.120 Cage is and where all this misinformation is coming from, they're not good actors. They're they're a group

01:31:44.340 of people who said that Jihadi John was a beautiful person and a nice man. And and they

01:31:50.120 have a lot of assorted kind of history. And so I think that when you're talking about the

01:31:56.880 accusations on this film, I would encourage people to do their due diligence and see where

01:32:01.820 this all originated from. And it was a group called Cage and they have an open letter about

01:32:05.040 the film where they straight up lie about it. Let's move on because I only have a couple minutes

01:32:08.440 left. Yeah. What do you make of things like this from Jude Chahab, a Lebanese American filmmaker

01:32:12.760 who writes, when I, a practicing Muslim woman say that this film is problematic, my voice

01:32:20.660 should be stronger than a white woman saying that it isn't point blank. Like your opinion

01:32:26.840 that it's fine isn't worth much because you're not Muslim, notwithstanding the fact that your 1.00

01:32:32.500 executive producer, one of them may be. Yeah, I think that, you know, the when you make

01:32:39.320 a film and you put it out into the world, part of the process is you're going to get criticism and

01:32:44.340 people are going to going to go on Twitter and disagree with you. And that's fine. And I think

01:32:48.860 that that I'm okay with. But there's a difference between tweeting something like that and then

01:32:54.760 hiring lawyers to intimidate investors and executive producers off the project and intimidating

01:32:59.900 and bullying people and things like that. And I think for me, like I'm okay. Like if Jude

01:33:05.340 believes that, then that's, that's her right to believe in her right to express. And I encourage

01:33:09.400 people to have those kinds of dialogues. I would love to sit down with her and say like, Hey, like

01:33:13.820 having, I'm, I'm, you know, having never been to this rehab center and having never been to Saudi

01:33:19.280 Arabia and have me having been there for three years, making this film and having experts on this,

01:33:25.420 you know, film who like have won Pulitzer prize and best lane authors and know this, this subject

01:33:30.600 matter. Do you think that like our opinion about the film doesn't count because we're,

01:33:34.820 we're not the, the right, you know, group, you know, that we're not Muslim. And I, that's, 0.92

01:33:40.380 I would really want to know her opinion because, you know, Lawrence Wright is a Pulitzer prize

01:33:45.620 winning bestselling author. He watched the film. And, um, I think that, you know, I'm to, to my

01:33:51.160 knowledge, he's not Muslim. And I think that, I think the conversation is something that I would 0.99

01:33:56.620 love to have with Jude. I think that criticism is something that, that I, I, I, I, I welcome.

01:34:01.180 People without an agenda have, have given it rave reviews. Uh, Zaid Jelani, who we know and

01:34:06.920 like, and has been on the show said, this is about compassion, not bigotry. Uh, that Roger

01:34:11.300 Ebert.com incredible indie wire and undeniably vital film, film companion, nothing less than

01:34:17.000 extraordinary. Atlantic journal constitution points out number one film at Sundance this

01:34:20.840 year. Variety calls it thought provoking, a miracle and an interrogative act of defiance.

01:34:25.420 I could go on even Lorraine Ali, a television critic for the LA times who is Muslim says,

01:34:30.540 this is a humanizing journey through a complex emotional process of self reckoning and accountability.

01:34:35.680 Um, last thing before I let you go, how can people help you if they want to support your

01:34:39.940 filmmaker, if they want to see the film, cause I know you're, you have no money. You don't come

01:34:42.960 from family dough. You're trying to get it distributed since everybody's canceled you.

01:34:47.500 How can they do that? Meg? 1.00

01:34:49.180 Yeah. So I, like you said, don't come from money and I'm trying to self distribute the film now,

01:34:53.580 but that takes resources. So I made a GoFundMe page. And if you go to my website,

01:34:57.480 jihadrehab.com and hit donate, that will take you to the GoFundMe page. And hopefully we're

01:35:02.020 going to get money together to make a trailer and get a poster and hopefully put it in a couple of

01:35:05.940 theaters so people can go and see the film and make up their own mind. And yeah, I really looking

01:35:11.140 forward to hopefully getting the film out into the world. Fingers crossed.

01:35:14.940 Can they see it yet? Can they see it? Like if they go to jihadrehab.com, is there a way to see it

01:35:18.980 online yet or no, not yet? No, not, not yet, but it will be playing, um, this month, uh, October

01:35:25.360 because we were able to fair help me out. And they, um, were able to sponsor a screening in L in LA,

01:35:32.040 actually in Glendale this coming month. So for the week, um, of October 28th, starting October 20th

01:35:38.340 for one week, it will be playing at the Lemley in Glendale. And it's like the only place you're

01:35:43.020 going to be able to see it in the entire world. Cause that's all we can afford.

01:35:45.680 Only place for now. I feel like this film will see the light of day. It will get distributed

01:35:50.960 once people give it an honest look and thank you for coming on and talking about it and for taking

01:35:56.540 the deep dive. I learned a lot and I appreciate it. Thank you, Megan. Appreciate it. All the best.

01:36:01.120 Don't forget to find out more at jihad rehab.com. This film is fascinating and will definitely be a

01:36:07.400 conversation starter. Thanks for joining us today. Tomorrow, Tulsi Gabbard is here. She has left the

01:36:13.580 Democratic Party, but she is back right here. She has not left us. You're not going to want to miss

01:36:18.340 that. In the meantime, oh, and by the way, Kelly Skort, we've got a lot to go over. Meantime,

01:36:22.480 download the show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, or Stitcher at youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. You can

01:36:27.400 watch if you would like. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.

01:36:33.400 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:36:43.580 Once you're done.

01:36:44.300 Bye.

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01:36:52.680 Bye.

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01:36:55.360 Bye.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - October 13, 2022

Media Covers for Fetterman's Impairment, and Left Turns on Islam Film, with Victor Davis Hanson and Meg Smaker ｜ Ep. 411

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