The Megyn Kelly Show - May 21, 2025


Media Covers Up Their Role in Biden Cover-Up, and Rubio Goes After Dem Senators, with Victor Davis Hanson | Ep. 1077


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 59 minutes

Words per Minute

174.8988

Word Count

20,913

Sentence Count

1,541

Misogynist Sentences

13

Hate Speech Sentences

64


Summary

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's new book about Joe Biden's cognitive decline was widely panned by conservative media outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, and Axios. We talk to Victor Davis Hanson, a Hoover Institution Fellow and author of The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation, about why the media got it wrong.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Your business doesn't move in a straight line.
00:00:02.840 Make sure your team is taken care of through every twist and turn
00:00:05.980 with Canada Life Savings, Retirement and Benefits Plans.
00:00:09.660 Whether you want to grow your team, support your employees at every stage
00:00:13.120 or build a workplace people want to be a part of,
00:00:16.200 Canada Life has flexible plans for companies of all sizes
00:00:19.400 so it's easy to find a solution that works for you.
00:00:22.840 Visit canadalife.com slash employee benefits to learn more.
00:00:26.540 Canada Life. Insurance. Investments. Advice.
00:00:31.200 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
00:00:42.560 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:45.840 Wow, just a ton, a ton of reaction to our interview yesterday with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson
00:00:51.500 on their book about Biden's cognitive decline.
00:00:54.500 But it seems the media still has not learned its lesson.
00:00:59.160 You're shocked.
00:01:00.400 Plus, Secretary of State Marco Rubio blasting Democrats on Capitol Hill yesterday
00:01:04.600 in some must-see fiery exchanges.
00:01:08.460 He's so good.
00:01:09.760 He is better than ever, Marco Rubio.
00:01:12.600 And you watch him and you think,
00:01:14.360 is it going to be J.D. or is it going to be Rubio as the likely frontrunner when Trump is done?
00:01:20.480 I don't know. We have a depth, a depth of talent to choose from.
00:01:27.100 So here to help us break it all down is Victor Davis Hanson.
00:01:30.760 He's senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of the book,
00:01:34.080 The End of Everything, How Wars Descend Into Annihilation.
00:01:37.500 PrizePix is a great place to turn your sports knowledge into cash.
00:01:42.960 With millions of members,
00:01:44.520 PrizePix has made daily fantasy sports accessible to anyone who's interested.
00:01:48.960 You just pick more or less on at least two players for a shot to win up to 2,000 times your cash.
00:01:55.640 Enjoy the basketball playoffs with PrizePix.
00:01:57.940 Don't miss your last chance to add your favorite players from the court to your PrizePix lineup.
00:02:02.080 Whether it's points, rebounds, assists, take your pick of more or less for your shot to win today.
00:02:08.680 Sign up now and get 50 bucks instantly when you play five bucks.
00:02:12.460 You don't even need to win to receive the $50 bonus.
00:02:15.240 It's guaranteed.
00:02:16.420 The basketball playoffs are officially here and the action is heating up on PrizePix.
00:02:21.160 They offer Venmo, Apple Pay, MasterCard, and more for quick and easy deposits into your account this sports season.
00:02:27.060 Download the app and use code MEGAN to get $50 instantly after you play your first five bucks.
00:02:33.860 Code MEGAN to get $50 instantly after you play your first $5 lineup.
00:02:39.000 PrizePix, run your game.
00:02:41.920 VDH, welcome back.
00:02:43.220 Great to have you.
00:02:45.220 So a ton of reaction to the exchange we had with Tapper and Thompson,
00:02:50.860 who I felt a little bad for because Thompson really did try to cover Biden's mental decline.
00:02:55.300 And really, I didn't even get to mention it, but yesterday, he did a great job, Thompson,
00:02:59.520 for Axios of trying to follow up with Kamala Harris on all of her reversals when she ran in 2024 from Kamala Harris in 1920 and got stiff-armed.
00:03:10.020 But man, he did try.
00:03:11.860 So for a large part of yesterday's interview, he was just sort of a bystander as I tried to press Jake Tapper
00:03:17.740 on how he can be the one who unearths, you know, the truth of this cover-up, of which many people think he was a part, right?
00:03:26.300 So we had a backing change over that.
00:03:29.720 He ultimately wound up admitting he got it wrong.
00:03:32.800 Conservative media got it right.
00:03:34.140 Here's a bit of that in Sat One.
00:03:35.380 And Alex and I are here to say that conservative media was right and conservative media was correct
00:03:42.900 and that there should be a lot of soul-searching, not just among me, but among the legacy media to begin with,
00:03:51.320 all of us, for how this was covered or not covered sufficiently.
00:03:55.800 100%.
00:03:56.480 So, I mean, I'm not here to defend coverage that I've already acknowledged I wish I could do differently.
00:04:05.380 So, Victor, he's out there on this media tour.
00:04:09.780 And now what we're seeing is media outlet after media outlet cover this book like, oh, new revelations.
00:04:21.840 It appears that President Biden was in significant cognitive decline for those four years
00:04:28.040 and sort of taking the opportunity that the book offers to totally whitewash their own role in helping cover for him during that time.
00:04:39.780 Your thoughts on it?
00:04:41.860 Well, what Jake Tapper doesn't tell you is he just, he didn't just deny that Joe Biden was cognitively impaired.
00:04:51.140 He really was rude and attacked people who said that he was.
00:04:55.440 And I remember that Laura Trump.
00:04:56.880 He didn't, he cut her off and he made fun of her and he said that she was basically a cruel person.
00:05:02.920 He knew that it wasn't just a matter of a stutter.
00:05:05.900 And he did that on numerous occasions.
00:05:07.420 So, that was number one.
00:05:09.320 And then number two, he could have come forward any time after Joe Biden left office or even after he was stepped down.
00:05:19.840 He didn't.
00:05:20.260 He only came forward really as in connection with this book.
00:05:23.860 And then three, if you think about it, he can say all he wants post facto about an apology, but he's going to profit enormously off the, I guess it's a conspiracy or it's either incompetence that he was a central part of.
00:05:39.340 And yet, it's easy to say, well, we're sorry, we're doing, but he's shown nothing, I think, that suggests that he wouldn't do it again.
00:05:47.400 And that's what, there's not, nobody's going to resign, nobody's going to pay a professional price, nobody's going to say, you know, I'm discredited, I just need to take a leave of absence.
00:05:58.780 It's, when you compare all the journalists that they destroyed during the Me Too phenomenon in 2019, and then you compare it to this, this makes that look just like amateurish.
00:06:12.540 You know, I'm not, I'm not trying to deprecate the seriousness of sexual harassment, but they went after everybody and they destroyed entire careers and people never recovered from that.
00:06:23.880 Some of them were just sort of randy.
00:06:25.980 They didn't really, I mean, they weren't criminally guilty of anything.
00:06:29.680 They weren't Harvey Weinstein.
00:06:31.520 It was kind of a witch hunt against something, think of Kavanaugh and others.
00:06:35.840 But this was much worse because this was the president of the United States.
00:06:41.320 He had all sorts of, I mean, if you look at what this president did, he destroyed U.S. deterrence with the debacle in Afghanistan.
00:06:50.240 He told Putin he wouldn't react unless it was a, basically if it was a minor invasion.
00:06:56.340 He distanced himself from Israel.
00:06:59.940 He took the terrorist designation off of the Houthis.
00:07:03.520 He empowered Hezbollah.
00:07:04.900 He was responsible, I think, for two theater wars on his watch.
00:07:08.980 He had hyperinflation and now we're, we're, we're starting to say, well, maybe he didn't do any of it.
00:07:14.580 The auto pin, maybe he didn't even know who he was pardoning.
00:07:17.980 Maybe he didn't even know where he was.
00:07:19.900 And then it gets worse, Megan.
00:07:22.060 You know, you can say all you want if you're a doctor that after 70 men don't get PSA, but that's, that's average American men over 70.
00:07:31.080 And most of the people I know, I'm 71, they do.
00:07:34.340 But the idea that the president of the United States wouldn't, nobody's going to believe that.
00:07:38.680 And nobody believes that he didn't have a serious problem that was covered up.
00:07:44.320 And that, that was part of the, it's, so what I'm getting at is, let's say multi-layered, multi-faceted effort to delude the American people for cheap political purposes.
00:07:54.960 It involved his medical team, involved his staff, involved the surrogate people who were really running the country, and it involved the media.
00:08:04.280 That cheap fake, cheap fake, that was a talking point for six months, that if anybody questioned him or they looked at a video where he was lost or wondering, they said it's cheap fake, cheap fake, cheap fake.
00:08:16.240 And they were relentless.
00:08:16.820 And who else has apologized besides Jake Tapper?
00:08:20.860 No one, exactly.
00:08:22.600 And now they're using, they're using him.
00:08:24.680 It's kind of infuriating to watch them pretend like this is a real aha moment for them to read this book.
00:08:31.220 Like, gee, for the first time now, I'm really seeing it.
00:08:35.100 Like, I'll give you this from the Washington Post, which was all over the cheap fake narrative.
00:08:43.040 I mean, I could give you headline after headline that I researched in preparing for the Jake interview.
00:08:47.420 But Washington Post, trust me, was one of the worst offenders on that cheap fake narrative.
00:08:51.660 Now they have an editorial board post online.
00:08:54.620 If Biden was too frail for his job, voters should have been informed.
00:08:59.520 Yes, they should have by you.
00:09:04.120 This is, it's just like the New York Times.
00:09:06.740 We were lied to on COVID.
00:09:09.620 These newspapers of record after the fact, like, well, the government should have told us we were lied to.
00:09:17.720 Yes.
00:09:18.000 And many of us knew you don't trust the government on things that may look, that may make it look bad.
00:09:24.800 You, you press the claims, you ask others, you go around the lying liars who lie to try to bring the real story to your audience.
00:09:33.600 And none of you did that because you had an agenda.
00:09:36.780 You were totally on board with the whole deceptive scheme.
00:09:41.100 They were, and they knew that if they told the truth, the vindictive staff would call them up and say, we're not going to let you, we're not, you're not going to get a question or you're not going to be allowed to interview or you're not going to be in the press room.
00:09:53.940 And they folded like a tent.
00:09:55.580 The question I would have for Jake Tapper is twofold.
00:09:59.560 Would you have apologized and said that you feel humility if you hadn't written this book?
00:10:06.180 In other words, you were just one of the many people who have not apologized.
00:10:10.240 And two, is your apology central for this book's sales?
00:10:18.560 In other words, what if you didn't apologize and you just said, I wrote a book and this is what happened.
00:10:23.140 There was a conspiracy and I didn't have any part of it.
00:10:26.620 Wouldn't that hurt your interviews?
00:10:28.600 Would you get, would you get booked by people?
00:10:30.960 Because people would say, well, he's writing a conspiracy and he's unapologetic.
00:10:35.920 He was part of it.
00:10:36.780 But what I'm getting at is he's only apologizing because he's in a process of making several million dollars off it, off of something that he was culpable for.
00:10:47.440 And he knows that if he didn't apologize, his interviews, his book tours and his sales would be impaired by it.
00:10:54.240 So the apology is central to give him a second chance or some type of contrition so that people will say, well, he feels bad and he was the one that kind of exposed it now.
00:11:09.440 But he wouldn't apologize if he hadn't written a book and he wouldn't apologize unless he thought it was central to the book's success.
00:11:17.680 He said he called her a few months ago, which was obviously post-debate.
00:11:23.900 And, you know, the tide, there's no question that it was while he was writing the book that he called her.
00:11:29.260 No question at all.
00:11:29.960 So here's a little bit more where we got into why he didn't, why he did not cover the infirmity much earlier.
00:11:37.300 Sop 2.
00:11:39.060 It could only ever work if you allowed it, if the press allowed it.
00:11:43.820 Some of us tried not to and some of us were complicit.
00:11:46.600 The Biden White House did not like me.
00:11:50.320 Okay.
00:11:50.680 This is, I do not have great connections with the Biden White House.
00:11:53.840 Well, clearly you have a lot of sources.
00:11:55.260 You say you talked to over 200 sources for this book.
00:11:57.420 So you have some you could have called and worked.
00:11:59.960 I know that's the point, is that they were not being honest.
00:12:04.640 That's the point.
00:12:05.100 Well, how did the Wall Street Journal get it in June of 2024?
00:12:07.660 And Jake Tapper and CNN couldn't find sources for this story then before he dropped out?
00:12:12.880 Annie Linsky and Siobhan Hughes did an amazing job in their reporting.
00:12:18.900 And they should be heralded.
00:12:20.700 And I heralded them.
00:12:21.620 I had them on my show right after the debate to talk about their great reporting.
00:12:25.860 But Annie Linsky.
00:12:26.380 After the debate.
00:12:26.880 But you did not put them on when they published that story,
00:12:29.120 which was before the debate.
00:12:30.740 Correct.
00:12:31.220 If we're going to do this, let's just stick to the facts here.
00:12:34.440 Okay.
00:12:35.620 When there is a damaging report.
00:12:37.480 That's what I've been doing all along.
00:12:39.700 I'm talking about what you just said.
00:12:41.240 One of us didn't miss the biggest story of the century when it comes to presidential politics.
00:12:45.220 And one of us did.
00:12:48.780 The business about the Wall Street Journal reporters.
00:12:51.740 And with all due respect to the two reporters on that story, I meant what I said yesterday.
00:12:56.320 Everybody who read that story was like, okay, somebody's finally doing it.
00:12:59.400 It was in June of 2024, Victor.
00:13:01.840 We'd all been covering this at length in conservative and independent media for years by that point.
00:13:08.260 For years.
00:13:09.400 I mean, it's like, great.
00:13:10.680 They finally took a shot and they got some Republicans to go on record in that piece,
00:13:14.900 which immediately was dismissed because it was only Republicans who were on the record.
00:13:18.260 But now he wants to pretend that like, well, that was a watershed moment when finally the Wall Street Journal got a couple of people to go on record about the infirmity.
00:13:26.940 It's like, oh, please, they were very, very, very late to the party.
00:13:30.900 And Jake did not book them right after that report hit, which was early June.
00:13:35.580 He didn't put them on at all.
00:13:37.260 He put on a Democrat co-chair of the Biden campaign and then didn't vigorously cross-examine him with all the evidence,
00:13:45.560 not just what was in the journal report, but all the evidence that we had seen of Mr. Biden's infirmity.
00:13:50.780 You know, like this revisionist history around like when we knew is infuriating because all of us know it was there.
00:13:58.380 It was in front of our very eyes for years.
00:14:01.300 Well, CNN was a platform.
00:14:03.180 Maybe not he not to the same degree, but he he he was complicit.
00:14:07.520 CNN was a platform to attack the Wall Street Journal and to attack people who said that even as late as they did.
00:14:14.780 And they still do it.
00:14:16.020 They were doing it until the announcement of the book.
00:14:18.340 And we haven't heard the thing that I think is most critical is if he has all of these auto pin pardons and no one has really asked him,
00:14:30.480 why did you pardon Dr. Fauci or why did you pardon Adam Schiff?
00:14:35.140 There's been no journalistic follow up asking Joe Biden and all of these.
00:14:40.300 I guess he's desperate for money and he's doing these post tenure interviews.
00:14:45.860 Nobody asked him, did you remember this tenure?
00:14:47.980 Did you remember this too?
00:14:49.540 And the second big question is if Jake Happer wants to redeem himself, he could write a long essay now.
00:14:55.380 Who was running the White House?
00:14:57.220 We need names.
00:14:58.080 Who were the people?
00:14:58.800 Well, he did name names.
00:15:00.160 He did.
00:15:00.820 I asked him that.
00:15:01.760 They were in the book.
00:15:02.540 I asked him and Alex Thompson and they gave us names.
00:15:04.460 It was Mike Donilon.
00:15:05.740 It was this guy, Steve Ricchetti and a couple of others.
00:15:08.900 Jill Biden.
00:15:10.080 He's also said Hunter Biden.
00:15:11.640 By rule, I don't mean the actual agents that were doing it, but who was thinking up the initiative?
00:15:21.460 Who said, let's get out of Afghanistan like this?
00:15:24.280 Who said, let's distance ourselves from Israel?
00:15:27.080 Who said, Janet Yellen, don't worry about inflation?
00:15:31.320 Who was the one that weaponized the FBI?
00:15:34.100 We know Anthony Blinken did the 51 intelligence authorities, but were they Obama operatives or who were they?
00:15:40.900 Who was the person?
00:15:42.920 The book does say Anthony Blinken understood that he would be standing in for Biden on virtually anything having to do with foreign policy.
00:15:50.100 The book points out that Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, whose name had been forgotten twice, he kept calling him Steve, Biden did,
00:15:58.320 was well aware of Biden's deterioration and was part of the inner circle.
00:16:04.260 They talk about Anita Dunn, who had that special governmental employee status, same as Elon had.
00:16:10.000 That just kept getting renewed and renewed and renewed, so she didn't undergo much scrutiny, was one of the inner circle.
00:16:16.040 She knew.
00:16:17.140 They don't really take a lot of aim at Kareem Jean-Pierre and Jen Psaki.
00:16:20.740 Gee, I wonder why.
00:16:21.880 But there's no question they knew.
00:16:23.660 I mean, they were as close to the inner circle as you could get.
00:16:27.040 But so, you know, they don't say, like, this is the person who made the decision for X, Y and Z.
00:16:31.600 But we do now at least have names.
00:16:33.080 And if somebody on the left who's got access to the two guys like Mike Donilon, if they don't do their jobs now and get that man in front of a camera,
00:16:43.540 stick a mic in his face, Steve Ricchetti, too, and find out what they knew and when and why they're guilty of this cover up,
00:16:50.600 then it's yet another dereliction of duty.
00:16:53.060 See, I think a lot of people, fairly or not, feel that it wasn't just a cover up.
00:17:00.220 But if you look at the mechanisms by which Joe Biden got the nomination, because it was evident in 2020.
00:17:07.780 Cory Booker on the debate stage said, I don't know what he's talking about when Joe Biden would flub or forget his mitt.
00:17:13.680 So they knew as early as 2020 and then Jim Clyburn changed the date of the South Carolina primers.
00:17:22.220 So he was coronated.
00:17:23.280 In fact, the Democratic Party didn't really have an open nomination for eight years.
00:17:27.940 He was nominated and he was nominated and, you know, and then he was coronated and then he was removed.
00:17:37.340 And then there's there's been no Democratic action.
00:17:42.160 Yeah, well, it's it's it's very frustrating now to watch the gaslighting continue because there was gaslighting in this book.
00:17:49.040 And for me, it was cathartic to be able to confront Jake with some of that.
00:17:53.280 And, you know, to his credit, he came on the show and he said yesterday he knew I was going to give him a hard time and he showed up anyway.
00:17:59.280 A lot of people thought he was going to cancel.
00:18:00.560 And I was saying to them, he's not going to cancel.
00:18:02.240 He'll be here.
00:18:02.760 And he took his licks like a man.
00:18:04.800 And I respect that.
00:18:05.700 I do.
00:18:06.060 I respect that.
00:18:07.140 But now what's happening is extra infuriating because CBS, The Washington Post, CNN, they're all using this to make themselves sound like these doe eyed, innocent.
00:18:21.540 G.
00:18:22.060 Oh, gee, I've just learned so much.
00:18:24.160 The ladies on The View.
00:18:25.940 I've learned so much from this book.
00:18:27.840 And it's not that there aren't new revelations in the book, but it's it's a farce because the underlying narrative is what is truly important.
00:18:36.260 And they all knew, like The Washington Post having the nerve to come out and say, we voters should have been informed.
00:18:43.440 That's literally your job.
00:18:45.720 This is the paper that broke Watergate.
00:18:48.000 They were so vigorous in their testing of presidential lies when it was a Republican in there.
00:18:55.120 But now that they had Biden, a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory, they lost all curiosity, Victor.
00:19:03.480 But see, I think I think it goes back.
00:19:05.940 I don't I don't want to belabor the point, but I think we've never seen anything like the Democratic Party of 2020 when all of the candidates just disappeared.
00:19:13.980 And then the dates were changed and he had he had not won a single caucus, not New Hampshire or Iowa.
00:19:20.180 Then he was coordinated and then they used the COVID-19.
00:19:24.940 He was in the basement.
00:19:26.320 And so what I'm getting at is from the very beginning, they knew that he was old Joe Biden from Scranton, this ossified centrist.
00:19:34.700 And that was very useful for them.
00:19:36.500 And then a group of people who otherwise would have had trouble pushing the most progressive left wing agenda really in modern memory found this waxen effigy very helpful.
00:19:48.540 It wasn't that they were covering up because they were astounded at how debilitated he was.
00:19:54.240 And they had to make the it was more we know he's debilitated, but Jill and Hunter and the Obama people, this is kind of an opportunity to push through a more radical third term of Obama.
00:20:08.500 So they knew it all along when he was nominated.
00:20:11.740 And that's why they could go to him and say, you're going to get out.
00:20:15.280 And he will look at this, Victor.
00:20:16.640 Look at this.
00:20:17.220 This is April 2020, April 2020, OK, before the 2020 election, which was in November, of course.
00:20:25.820 Here is Joe Biden.
00:20:26.780 Oh, do we have this?
00:20:27.380 You guys are.
00:20:27.760 I don't know if we pulled this over.
00:20:28.800 Pull over stop five from yesterday.
00:20:30.220 But I'll show you Joe Biden on CNN in April 2020.
00:20:34.020 Standby before we get to that.
00:20:35.240 I'll show you one other.
00:20:36.540 Here is Brian Stelter.
00:20:38.700 Now that they're now now CNN is out there saying, oh, gee, you know, we learned a lot about his infirmity.
00:20:45.720 My gosh, this is shocking.
00:20:46.680 Well, here's CNN back in June 19th, 2024.
00:20:51.500 This is before the debate on these so-called cheap fake videos that the rest of the media was dishonestly portraying, using to portray Joe Biden as infirm.
00:21:01.540 Sat Nae.
00:21:03.160 We've been worried for years about AI deep fakes, that computer generated images are going to trick people into believing something that's totally false.
00:21:09.640 Cheap fakes are a little bit simpler.
00:21:11.200 They're cheap.
00:21:11.880 They're just distorted, out of context videos, chopped up in certain ways.
00:21:15.580 That's what the Biden administration and the Biden campaign is so worried about right now.
00:21:19.200 But make no mistake, they are worried about this.
00:21:21.060 This is a real problem.
00:21:22.200 This is not some made-up fiction.
00:21:24.100 The videos are oftentimes made up, but the problem is real.
00:21:27.000 And now, here's more, okay, because CNN today out there like, gee, oh, wow, they're interviewing Jake like this is all new to them.
00:21:34.820 Let me just give you a couple of examples.
00:21:36.580 August of 21, Chris Saliza.
00:21:38.260 He's upset because Republicans are hitting this issue.
00:21:44.880 He says, to raise doubts in voters' minds about Biden and his age in particular, this is the sort of gross, lowest common denominator politics that drive people away from public life.
00:21:55.700 Chris Saliza got it so wrong.
00:21:57.160 He's one of the only ones to actually come out because he had to go independent.
00:22:00.000 And he got fired from CNN to say, okay, sorry, I got it wrong.
00:22:04.520 Now I would like to be one of the ones who apologize.
00:22:07.500 We have that?
00:22:08.100 Okay, let's watch.
00:22:10.380 This is a guy who is the president of the United States for four years and thought and ran for a second term, at which point he would have been in his mid-80s had he won and served.
00:22:20.940 So that to me is a really serious conversation about how did we get to this point, given that there were a lot of signs that suggested that Joe Biden definitely should not have run for a second term.
00:22:34.440 How did we get to this point?
00:22:35.920 It's a media story.
00:22:36.720 We got here because of you.
00:22:37.980 It's a politics story.
00:22:38.780 It's a sort of transparency story.
00:22:42.540 Because of you, Chris Saliza.
00:22:44.300 And CNN, here's a couple more, Victor.
00:22:46.160 Here, July 12th, 2022, not for nothing, but it was a month prior to that that the Megyn Kelly show did a full two-hour show on Biden's mental decline, including by interviewing one of the foremost dementia experts in the world.
00:22:57.840 But here's a month after that, CNN's John Harwood taking issue with the allegations that he was not cogent and capable.
00:23:03.620 What's true is the presidency is a hugely taxing job mentally and physically and that Joe Biden is old.
00:23:09.300 What's not true is the trope pushed in conservative media that Biden is not currently mentally capable of doing the job.
00:23:17.100 The president is engaged and acute.
00:23:21.260 February of 23, John Avalon of CNN.
00:23:25.100 Republican slurs that Mr. Biden is mentally impaired are fear-mongering politics.
00:23:31.540 June 25th, 2024, two days before the presidential debate that would seal Joe Biden's fate.
00:23:38.240 Oliver Darcy on CNN lamenting how, for years, MAGA media has been portraying Joe Biden as a senile, mentally incapacitated elderly man who cannot remember what he had for breakfast, let alone run the federal government.
00:23:53.580 That might sound like an exaggeration to those who don't tune into Fox News or listen to talk radio, but it's been a real and constant theme in the right-wing media universe.
00:24:01.760 To support the narrative, these outlets and personalities have seized on Biden's verbal gaffes while ignoring Trump's and presented out-of-context video clips to their large audiences, a deceptive but effective strategy.
00:24:15.680 Okay, that's CNN.
00:24:18.860 That was CNN, who now is using the Jake Tapper book to act like the guy in Casablanca.
00:24:26.000 Shocked, shocked.
00:24:27.320 There's gambling going on in here.
00:24:28.700 Yeah, and these are the same people, if you recall, in 2019 and 20, they hauled up, and the media went gaga, they hauled up a Yale psychiatrist, Bandy Yee, and they brought her before the Senate, and she telediagnosed Donald Trump as mentally unfit.
00:24:45.540 And she wrote a book about it, and they lauded her, and she was all over the media that she said that they needed an intervention.
00:24:53.180 And then we also had this weird psychodrama between Andrew McCabe and Rod Rosenstein.
00:24:59.380 They were going to wear a—Rod was going to wear a wire, and the FBI interim director was going to go in and trap Donald Trump and record him speaking.
00:25:10.780 And this was going to be proof that he needed to be 25th amended, be moved.
00:25:18.180 And all of the left media got in this fury, and finally Donald Trump took the Montreal cognitive assessment, because he was so worried that people had started with this narrative.
00:25:28.400 And so these were the same people who thought there was nothing unethical about diagnosing somebody as cognitively unfit who obviously wasn't, if you look at those long rally speeches and constant interviews and impromptu and ad hoc repartee that Trump did every single day, 20-hour days.
00:25:47.060 Let me just tell you one thing on that, Victor, and then I'll give you back the floor.
00:25:50.780 Two weeks after Jake Tapper had on Laura Trump and gave her such a hard time saying, like, how dare you try to cognitively diagnose Joe Biden?
00:26:01.720 And two weeks after that, he had on Mary Trump and allowed her to make the case that they ought to be able to diagnose Donald Trump and his, you know, weird mental problems in her mind because it was obvious and because she had some sort of a background in psychiatry or psychological, whatever.
00:26:19.640 Two weeks later, he let Mary Trump do it.
00:26:22.280 Yeah, and I think when you look, I went back and looked at a lot of the debates, and when you look at the 2000, not 2020 debates on the Democratic primary, when Joe Biden would say things, the other candidates were stunned sometimes.
00:26:39.160 They had no comprehension of what he was saying, and if you look at Bernie and Buttigieg were the only people who had won a caucus, and then all of a sudden, Jim Clyburn changed a South Carolina date.
00:26:49.700 Presto, he was gone. Buttigieg stepped down, Warren stepped down, Sanders stepped down, and then it was old Joe Biden, and then all these news came out that he was actually a moderate, and then he was going, then he went in the basement, and that was a useful vessel, and that's why they really didn't have an open primary.
00:27:09.020 They didn't have an open primary in 2024. They put Harris without an open primary. He lived by the kind of, he was nominated by a coup, and he was deposed by a coup, but the point is, what we thought was a debility, and he was kind of an empty vessel and struggling with cognitive problems.
00:27:29.340 I think the hard left wing of the Democratic Party found this useful and advantageous, because they could wheel him out in certain cases. He could say stuff, and then if you look what he did at the border, we have never had anybody who destroyed a border and invited in 10 million people.
00:27:48.720 It was just lunatic. We never had anybody who printed $7 trillion. We never had anything like, since maybe 75 in Vietnam, anything comparable to that Afghan pullout. It was just, Majorca, it was like an alternate reality listening to Majorca's talk for four years.
00:28:06.260 And so they got what they wanted. That's what my point is. I really think they found him useful, because he put a thin veneer for as long as he could maintain it.
00:28:17.780 And then when he was no longer useful, and they said, you know what? We can't push this left wing agenda anymore, because he can't even function as a veneer. They got rid of him. They just deposed him.
00:28:28.880 They just called him in a room and said, you're done. And if you complain, we made you, we got you nominated, and we have the right to get rid of you.
00:28:35.940 And then there was no primary. There was no other candidates. I think Joe Manchin, for a nanosecond, said he might consider running, and it was over like that.
00:28:45.560 Yeah, look what they did to Dean Phillips. Look what they did to Bobby Kennedy. They were like, there will be no comers whatsoever. We've got our man.
00:28:51.540 And only when he imploded on stage in front of our very eyes live did they have to admit the jig was up.
00:28:58.600 Two things I want to show you. First, I mentioned that soundbite on CNN. This happened on CNN in 2020, where he could not function in talking about the coronavirus. Watch this.
00:29:12.840 Kinds of things that have to be done. You know, there's a, during World War II, you know, where Roosevelt came up with a thing that, you know, was totally different than a, than the, it's called, he called it the, you know, the World War II, he had the war, the war production board.
00:29:34.940 Oh, my God. And then, and then there's this. So, to the point you were just making about who was governing the country, who really was the president.
00:29:44.560 President Trump weighed in on this a bit yesterday. He's on Capitol Hill trying to get support for his big, beautiful budget bill. And he took a moment to make the following point. Watch this.
00:29:54.340 Look, it's a very sad thing what happened, but I really wanted to start looking into this whole thing with who signed this legislation, who signed legislation opening our border.
00:30:03.380 I don't think he knew. I said, there's nobody that could want an open border. Nobody. And now I find out that it wasn't him. He auto-panned it.
00:30:12.360 Who was operating the auto-panned? This is a very serious thing. We had a president that didn't sign anything. He auto-panned almost everything.
00:30:19.720 He opened the borders of the United States of America. And I kept saying, who would do such a thing, allowing criminals to pour in from all over the world?
00:30:29.120 You know who signed it? Radical left lunatics that were running our country. And the auto-panned signed it.
00:30:34.480 And they didn't want him. And they were disappointed in getting him because they wanted Bernie Sanders.
00:30:39.720 And then after about two weeks, they said, wait a minute. This is a gift. He'll do anything.
00:30:46.380 That's amazing. Victor, that's basically what you were just saying. The president totally agrees.
00:30:50.200 He was absolutely right. And that is the biggest scandal. And I think they need to call in everybody on every pardon and ask who operated the auto-panned, who was there and what they did.
00:31:04.700 They need to do that. And they need to do it right away.
00:31:07.600 And then the other big scandal, and they don't stop because now we are told that the most observed, most diagnosed, most monitored man in the world did not have a PSA test for, what, 11 years?
00:31:24.100 Since 2014. That's what they want us to believe.
00:31:26.200 And by the way, just by the way, so the audience knows, this was put out, again, by, quote, the Biden office, not by a doctor, not by Dr. Kevin O'Connor, who was his handpicked by Jill Biden, loyalist doctor throughout his term, but just, quote, the Biden office.
00:31:43.200 Let me see a doctor assuring us with his name that that's true as somebody other than Kevin O'Connor, ideally, but at least Kevin O'Connor, let's see him come out to the cameras and do a full throated press conference on this.
00:31:57.580 And then maybe we'll start listening. But, quote, unsigned by the Biden office, I'm convinced is a lie.
00:32:04.020 No, it is. And I know, I think you, everybody knows people over, I'm 71, and I can tell you that no urologist in the world, if you want a PSA test, they will give you a PSA test.
00:32:19.620 And if he has one in 2014, was it, we just need to know the results. Was it negative? Was it positive? Was it high? Was it low?
00:32:29.400 They don't see that. That's what's interesting.
00:32:31.400 So just just they don't they say he last had a PSA test in 2014. They don't say what the results were.
00:32:37.620 They do say this was the first time he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which doesn't mean he didn't have a sky high PSA in 2014 that he just chose to treat quietly.
00:32:48.320 There are pictures of bruises on his hands throughout his presidency.
00:32:51.760 There had been speculation at the time. Was he getting some sort of IV treatment when he was going home to Rehoboth Beach Beach House all those weekends?
00:32:58.340 Was he getting some sort of treatment? You know, all of those questions are unanswered. Go ahead.
00:33:04.220 And they're going to they need to get Dr. Conner and they need to bring him in very politely and put him under oath and said,
00:33:10.900 did you in the last 11 years to your knowledge, but especially when you were the White House physician, did you give either a PSA that was officially recorded or did you do a PSA that was privately recorded that you for your own diagnostic purposes?
00:33:28.800 Did you? Yes or no. Under oath. And I just don't think any and I don't want to be a doctor at all,
00:33:35.860 but I don't think any doctor in the world would believe that the president of the United States had not had a PSA.
00:33:43.060 And when you look at Obama's medical records, you look at Donald Trump's medical records, that's their PSA.
00:33:49.340 And I just don't believe that's true. And I think they don't. Yeah, it's true.
00:33:52.680 They don't believe. And they want us to believe that he didn't do the testing.
00:33:55.840 And they talk about like the PSA, like it's some sort of difficult thing to do.
00:34:00.080 It's literally just an extra box on your blood test.
00:34:02.240 And by the way, I have real questions about whether a normal annual blood test would not have shown any abnormality if he had cancer raging through his body, aggressive metastasized bone cancer or prostate cancer.
00:34:15.660 I'm not sure what the answer is to that.
00:34:17.940 But Dr. David Samadi was on the program on Monday, world-renowned prostate surgeon.
00:34:22.940 This is what he does.
00:34:24.060 He operates on men with prostate cancer and said there's no way that they could have said like they did.
00:34:30.480 And again, the statement from the Biden office that he has the kind of cancer that is responding to hormones if they hadn't been giving him hormone medication for prostate cancer, that there's zero chance.
00:34:44.200 It's not those of us who are not cancer doctors didn't that didn't jump out at us.
00:34:47.620 I just figured there's something about this kind of cancer they can see in your blood work.
00:34:51.420 Oh, it's type A that will respond to hormone treatment.
00:34:54.520 No, he said that's not true.
00:34:56.080 The only way you could say it responds to hormone treatment is to have tried the hormone treatment and to have seen the PSAs go down, down, down.
00:35:04.660 So they lied.
00:35:05.760 They lied in that statement.
00:35:07.540 No one's raising this.
00:35:09.000 No one's pointing this out.
00:35:10.740 No, nobody's pointing it out.
00:35:12.480 And who knew about it?
00:35:13.700 Who knew?
00:35:14.240 Are you trying to are they trying to say that no one who was with him every single day had no knowledge that he was seeing some pretty that he was going somewhere for treatment?
00:35:23.320 Or somebody was coming in or Joe, I just don't believe that's just impossible to believe.
00:35:28.820 And so this is the scandal under scandal.
00:35:31.800 And are they going to come out and finally tell the truth about it?
00:35:34.680 Are they going to say, look, the president of the United States was elected with cancer and hit it.
00:35:42.200 And the cognitive ability, was it separate?
00:35:45.000 Was it connected with the there's so many questions.
00:35:48.060 And you get the impression there, their whole solution to this is, well, he's gone.
00:35:53.820 He's not president.
00:35:54.980 We're looking forward.
00:35:56.600 We don't look backward.
00:35:58.020 We're all done.
00:35:58.860 Now we can go back to performance art, Tesla rioting.
00:36:03.660 We can go swarm ice stations.
00:36:06.920 We can do all this other stuff and just concentrate on Donald Trump, the Hitlerian figure.
00:36:12.120 And you guys just there's nothing here.
00:36:14.260 Forget about it.
00:36:15.000 These were the two biggest scandals.
00:36:17.400 And I think in any president's, you know, we had FDR who tried to mask at Glover, Cleveland, JFK.
00:36:25.600 But nothing like this, nothing like this compounded the cognitive problems, the medical treatment.
00:36:32.200 And then he wants the American people.
00:36:34.020 And there's thousands of urologists in the country.
00:36:36.820 What do they think when they hear this this concocted explanation?
00:36:41.200 They know that it's completely illogical, impossible, fantastical.
00:36:46.420 You know what I mean?
00:36:46.980 It doesn't make any sense.
00:36:48.460 So why would they issue it that nobody would believe it?
00:36:52.020 And that's exactly right.
00:36:53.180 They're just banking on more complicity once again.
00:36:55.400 And they're going to get it as you've got, you know, David Axelrod on CNN saying this coverage of his mental infirmity needs to be muted or set aside.
00:37:03.120 Hakeem Jeffries, it's conspiracy theories, all this talk.
00:37:06.660 Go ahead.
00:37:07.160 Why did they announce it just two or three days before the book came out?
00:37:11.620 To tamp down the discussion around this book.
00:37:13.540 That would make perfect sense to try to guilt people out of discussing the big cover up, attempted cover up.
00:37:19.100 So in other words, and this is what I think we're all thinking, they use the serious medical condition and they use it as leverage and for their own political purposes.
00:37:31.480 And then in addition to that, they were quite willing to demonize anybody who saw what they were doing as the real insensitive people, not themselves, who were using cancer as a way of deflecting attention from a very incriminating book.
00:37:46.840 I think that's right on brand.
00:37:49.040 I mean, in preparation for yesterday's interview, we went back and started pulling all sorts of stuff.
00:37:53.520 And I'm going to show you, I mean, there's a pattern.
00:37:54.900 There's obviously a pattern of lying by this White House around anything related to Joe Biden that makes him look bad, but especially his cognitive decline and the measures that those around him were going to cover it up, which is exactly the same theme as we are discussing now with respect to this prostate cancer diagnosis.
00:38:11.880 Joe Biden having a medical issue and those around him suspected of trying to cover it up here is TJ Ducklow, deputy press campaign press secretary for the campaign.
00:38:25.560 We don't have that one.
00:38:26.520 OK, we're going to bring it over.
00:38:27.860 He was on with Brett Baer and was talking about his use of the teleprompter in public events and Brett pressed him.
00:38:38.600 We'll get to it. Hold on. Before I get to that, I'll stick with this to start.
00:38:43.720 It was OK. Yeah. The videos.
00:38:46.140 We have that, right, Debbie? Yeah, we've got that.
00:38:48.640 Here is Joe Biden during the campaign trying to challenge Donald Trump.
00:38:53.980 And you can see for the listening audience multiple jump cuts in this tape, meaning you see him talking straight to cancer camera and then from the side he's being shot and then back to straight to camera.
00:39:05.340 And then you see him from the profile. And that means there are more than one camera on him.
00:39:09.780 And it's a way of hiding the person's multiple flubs of what appear to be a very simple script.
00:39:18.320 Here it is.
00:39:20.100 Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020.
00:39:22.680 Since then, he hadn't shown up for debate.
00:39:24.440 Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again.
00:39:26.840 Well, make my day, pal.
00:39:28.460 I'll even do it twice.
00:39:30.120 So let's pick the dates, Donald.
00:39:31.900 I hear you're free on Wednesdays.
00:39:34.620 Now, it was obvious what they had done.
00:39:36.260 We talked about it on this show explicitly.
00:39:38.780 Many others did as well.
00:39:40.200 Here was Morning Joe reacting to it.
00:39:43.520 Well, make my day, pal.
00:39:45.300 I'll even do it twice.
00:39:47.160 So let's pick the dates, Donald.
00:39:48.760 I hear you're free on Wednesdays.
00:39:51.140 Oh, wow.
00:39:53.760 Yeah.
00:39:54.420 And now watch today, Morning Joe.
00:40:02.300 Now, one thing in your specific case, Joe.
00:40:06.260 Our reporting indicates that Joe Biden, who, as you know, is a frequent viewer of the show, saw when David Ignatius wrote that column in, I think, August 2023, saying that Joe Biden should not run for re-election because of what he had been hearing about this.
00:40:21.340 You largely agreed that you had been hearing things about this, but that there was really no alternative, that Kamala Harris was not up to the job.
00:40:27.960 That's what Democrats were telling you behind the scenes.
00:40:29.860 Joe Biden saw that.
00:40:31.900 Joe Biden said to staffers that he wanted to convince you that you were wrong.
00:40:38.040 And he focused on you like you were a constituency, like you were farmers in Iowa, like you were the Kiwanis Club in New Hampshire.
00:40:45.440 And he made sure that you thought differently.
00:40:47.420 Former Joe.
00:40:47.620 He made sure that you thought differently.
00:40:50.140 I think he did this with a couple people.
00:40:52.120 I think he did it with Meacham.
00:40:53.620 He might have done it with Eben Asnos.
00:40:55.360 He knew that there were people that had to be convinced that he was fine.
00:40:59.220 And he tried to prove that to you.
00:41:02.800 How embarrassing.
00:41:04.960 How embarrassing.
00:41:06.600 Yeah, I don't think he had to prove anything.
00:41:08.300 I think they willingly volunteered.
00:41:09.940 I don't think they were coerced at all.
00:41:13.720 I remember Meacham and Scarborough, they volunteered how cognizant and how, you know, how alert, how powerful, how strong Biden was.
00:41:28.500 And I don't think Joe Biden, this idea that they were targeted is just silly.
00:41:33.420 But they had people volunteering for that role.
00:41:37.060 Exactly.
00:41:37.660 He didn't need to.
00:41:38.380 And again, in a way, it's more running cover, right?
00:41:41.920 Like, this exchange, while it may be true, is a way of letting Scarborough off the hook.
00:41:48.300 Like, there was a fraud perpetrated on you, poor Joe, that, you know, no man could have seen through, which is another lie.
00:41:58.640 I know.
00:41:59.220 I don't think, you know, in 2020, I wrote about Joe Biden hiding in the basement, that he was cognitively impaired.
00:42:06.240 I did that.
00:42:06.700 I got so many hate letters and people from Stanford University.
00:42:10.300 And, you know, in one case, I was called up before the Faculty Senate for what I was writing or what I had said on Fox.
00:42:18.820 And I, and you get, there were so many people, there were 50, 60 people who independently said, this is, this is something very wrong with this man.
00:42:29.340 He should not be president.
00:42:30.600 And the manner in which he has been nominated and the manner in which he is campaigning in 2020, we've never seen anything like it.
00:42:37.580 I always said, this is not the 19th century in a log cabin where you just sit out in the wilderness and watch the thing pass you by.
00:42:45.240 It was, it was incredible.
00:42:46.600 He would be, go to a, it was almost like a drive-in movie.
00:42:49.920 He was in a car and then all the other people, like 20 people in cars honking their applause.
00:42:54.220 And it just kept going on.
00:42:56.380 The more that you tried to point it out, the more hatred you would incur from letters and text and everything.
00:43:03.880 And it wasn't just, to be frank, Megan, it wasn't just the left that was angry.
00:43:09.020 It was the, it was the Republican establishment said, don't say that you're, that's cruel.
00:43:14.620 Just tamper.
00:43:15.500 It was, it was really, it was really something else.
00:43:19.080 And that's why people are so bitter because these people who attacked people who tried to not just tell the truth,
00:43:26.000 but to inform the nation that this was an unprecedented conspiracy and we'd never seen anything like it.
00:43:33.080 And it was very dangerous because we did not know who was responsible for this radical agenda that, that was far more radical than Obama.
00:43:42.020 And Obama could have never pulled that off because he was suspect as a radical himself.
00:43:47.280 But the use of this, this ossified figure from our past that had passed himself off as a moderate and an aged moderate was a useful vessel.
00:43:57.620 And when you wrote about that, people got, they accused you of being insensitive, mean, hating old people.
00:44:04.820 It was, everybody incurred that hatred.
00:44:07.520 So it's really frustrating to see all these people come out of the woodwork now and say, well, you know, I knew it, but I didn't quite want to say it.
00:44:16.920 But I, I, I feel humiliated.
00:44:18.640 It does because you know, they're going to do it again.
00:44:20.860 They're doing it again with the medical story and they will do it again and again and again.
00:44:25.760 There's no consequence.
00:44:26.820 I don't know anybody who's, have you, you know, anybody who's resigned because of this?
00:44:31.060 Is Scarborough going to resign?
00:44:32.800 Is he going to say, you know what?
00:44:34.500 I tried to convince all of you in America of something that was clearly false and I apologize and I resign.
00:44:42.300 I don't think he's going to do that.
00:44:43.540 No, he didn't sound very contrite when he sat down with Mark Halperin yesterday.
00:44:46.920 At all.
00:44:47.880 And he'll never admit that he wasn't fooled for one second.
00:44:52.600 He knew, he knew what we all knew.
00:44:54.520 They all knew.
00:44:56.380 That's what's so galling about this whole thing.
00:44:58.600 I wanted to show that TJ Ducklow thing just because it's so irritating.
00:45:03.540 We knew that Joe Biden was using teleprompters during campaign events back in 2020 during COVID.
00:45:12.420 And now it's come out that not only were they using multiple cameras so they could do the jump cuts.
00:45:16.940 I read this to the audience yesterday from the book, but just as a refresher, this is from the book Original Sin.
00:45:21.920 Biden often couldn't make it through one or two minutes without botching a line or two in certain five minute video addresses to compensate for it.
00:45:31.820 Aides filmed Biden with two cameras instead of one.
00:45:34.660 If he messed up, the edit was less obvious with a jump cut.
00:45:37.300 Other politicians used jump cuts, but Biden aides noted to themselves how much more often they had to use them for him.
00:45:43.780 When they recorded videos, much of the footage was unusable.
00:45:46.460 The man could not speak, said one person involved.
00:45:48.920 It wasn't his stutter.
00:45:50.260 It was his inability to find words, to remember what he was saying, to stay on the train of thought.
00:45:54.520 Aides would sometimes make the videos in slow-mo to blur the reality of how slowly he actually walked.
00:45:59.280 Every shoot was anxiety-inducing for Biden's team.
00:46:03.540 Doing the videos without the extra camera would have been impossible.
00:46:07.580 At times, the president had such trouble communicating that the videos were unsalvageable and the Biden team just opted not to release them.
00:46:14.420 At other times, they released video whose heavy editing was so obvious that they immediately regretted putting them out and on and on.
00:46:22.500 And then it did come out that he was using the teleprompter to do, well, notes that he just read off of for donor events.
00:46:31.080 And then the teleprompter for campaign events where he, even in those instances, couldn't always be relied upon to just read the text that was in the prompter.
00:46:39.700 And here is T.J. Ducklow with Brett Baier in 2020 on the use of the prompter.
00:46:45.900 Has Joe Biden ever used a teleprompter during local interviews or to answer Q&A with supporters?
00:46:53.700 Brett, we are not going to engage—this is straight from the Trump campaign's talking point.
00:46:57.520 But yeah, they're using it.
00:46:58.160 And what it does, and what it does, Brett, is it's trying to distract the American people.
00:47:01.900 I'm just—
00:47:02.340 Brett, they talk about it every day because they don't have a coherent argument for why Donald Trump deserves re-election.
00:47:07.580 But you can't answer the question?
00:47:09.080 Brett, I am not going to allow the Trump campaign to funnel their questions through Fox News and get me to respond to that.
00:47:16.900 It's amazing.
00:47:18.380 In other words, they were using—
00:47:19.500 The lies, the abject lies.
00:47:20.680 They were using cheap fakes all the time.
00:47:23.480 So they were projecting onto other people what they were doing.
00:47:27.120 Yes.
00:47:27.340 They were cutting videos and rehearsing things and lying about teleprompters.
00:47:32.640 Then Brian Seltzer gets on and says—and Jean-Pierre says, this is cheap fakes.
00:47:37.800 They knew that term because that's exactly what they were doing.
00:47:41.620 And again, I don't know where you go from this.
00:47:45.380 Another thing that's mystifying is that if— Joe Biden is now a private citizen, but he was president of the United States.
00:47:53.160 And I think at some point, somebody has to try to tell us what was going on.
00:47:58.700 And was it—and I don't—people can speculate, but I don't know if anybody that has medical expertise has ever said, was it a result of two serious aneurysm operations?
00:48:11.420 Was it—what was it?
00:48:13.460 Because we're just going to fade into history now.
00:48:18.080 We know with FDR that he had polio or maybe Jean-Barre syndrome or something like that.
00:48:24.600 At least that people knew that at the time.
00:48:27.980 He tried to hide it, yes.
00:48:29.500 But we look back in history, and we can see what was wrong with Woodrow Wilson.
00:48:35.240 He had a serious stroke.
00:48:36.520 But are we going to—in 20 years from now, are people going to say, I had no idea, but Joe Biden was non-compos mentes?
00:48:43.840 Was it because of medication for, you know, advanced metastasized prostate?
00:48:49.100 Was it Parkinson's?
00:48:50.280 Was it dementia?
00:48:51.120 Was it Alzheimer's?
00:48:52.380 But we're never going to know what it was.
00:48:54.040 It just all disappeared.
00:48:55.320 He left office, and it's like, okay, it's all over with.
00:48:58.840 You don't dare talk about what's going on.
00:49:01.180 It's over with.
00:49:02.000 We're looking forward.
00:49:03.280 He may have had a little problem with cognition.
00:49:05.380 That's where we are right now.
00:49:07.780 It's really galling, and they're not going to stop.
00:49:11.100 I mean, they're never going to fully own their behavior.
00:49:13.000 They're just going to move on.
00:49:14.400 Memory hole it.
00:49:15.740 You know, like, I covered the cover-up when it hit the news.
00:49:20.380 You know, when that Tapper book came out, I did cover it.
00:49:23.440 I was shocked, and it was terrible what they did to us.
00:49:26.800 They're just going to join the parade of victims who have been misled by this White House like
00:49:32.660 they're actually among us.
00:49:34.780 It's all Russian collusion, laptop disinformation, same old thing.
00:49:39.260 Same thing.
00:49:40.580 All right.
00:49:40.780 We have much more to get to, including an extraordinary meeting that's happening right
00:49:43.940 now.
00:49:44.220 I'm just getting breaking news from the White House where President Trump is confronting
00:49:47.440 the president of South Africa with what Mr. Trump says are videos supporting his claim
00:49:54.260 that there's a genocide against whites going on in South Africa right now.
00:49:58.000 The South African president seems dumbfounded and not happy and not in agreement that he's
00:50:05.060 actually seeing what Trump says he's seeing.
00:50:07.560 This is amazing.
00:50:08.580 We're going to get into that story next.
00:50:09.920 Don't go away.
00:50:10.320 Here's an idea for someone who has everything.
00:50:12.900 Hot salt.
00:50:13.860 Yes, I said it.
00:50:15.120 Hot salt.
00:50:16.120 Exquisite, savory heat.
00:50:18.000 Now you're interested, so let me tell you about Firecracker Farm, a wonderful little family
00:50:21.900 company that makes hot salt a delightful spice-infused sea salt.
00:50:25.940 It has the perfect amount of heat and amazing flavor that makes everything taste better.
00:50:30.280 Word's getting out, and people are loving it.
00:50:32.620 That's because it's made with love.
00:50:34.840 People can feel it and taste it.
00:50:36.780 It's a small batch family operation, so supplies are limited.
00:50:39.760 It comes in sleek stainless steel push grinders, plus you can take them anywhere.
00:50:44.700 When you run out, they have refills.
00:50:46.340 A little too spicy for you?
00:50:47.680 Just mix it in with some regular sea salt to tame the heat, but you won't need to.
00:50:51.920 It's blended to perfection.
00:50:53.660 Honestly, it's the best thing to happen to food since fire.
00:50:56.380 So what are you waiting for?
00:50:57.760 Go to firecracker.farm right now and use code MK at checkout for a special discount.
00:51:03.760 Firecracker.farm, code MK.
00:51:06.240 Get some hot salt before it's all gone.
00:51:08.320 You're going to thank me.
00:51:09.760 Your business doesn't move in a straight line.
00:51:12.880 Some days bring growth.
00:51:14.400 Others bring challenges.
00:51:16.020 But what if you or a partner needs to step away?
00:51:18.900 When the unexpected happens, count on Canada Life's flexible life and health insurance
00:51:23.740 to help your business keep working, even when you can't.
00:51:27.160 Don't let life's challenges stand in the way of your success.
00:51:30.520 Protect what you've built today.
00:51:31.980 Visit CanadaLife.com slash business protection to learn more.
00:51:36.760 Canada Life.
00:51:37.760 Insurance.
00:51:38.700 Investments.
00:51:39.560 Advice.
00:51:40.040 This just breaking, Trump accepted the jet from Qatar, putting out the following statement
00:51:50.140 from the Pentagon.
00:51:51.060 The Secretary of Defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal
00:51:57.000 rules and regulations.
00:51:58.280 The Department of Defense will work to ensure property security measures and functional mission
00:52:02.820 requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the President of the United
00:52:07.020 States.
00:52:07.580 For additional information, we refer you to the U.S. Air Force.
00:52:11.320 This was controversial, is controversial because they, um, Qatar's got a very checkered history
00:52:19.700 when it comes to terrorism in the United States, for one thing.
00:52:22.520 Can this plane be secured in a way that will satisfy everyone that they're not listening to
00:52:27.360 the President of the United States and his security team while on board it?
00:52:31.180 Um, and because it looks like lining the pockets of this particular president, it's worth
00:52:36.420 400 million.
00:52:37.600 He says, it's not a gift to me.
00:52:39.760 It's a gift to the United States or in this case to the Pentagon, but he'll be riding on
00:52:44.460 it soon.
00:52:45.340 And only when it came under fire, did he then say, oh yeah, we'll leave it for other presidents
00:52:53.480 to use too after I'm done with it.
00:52:55.700 And then when it gets retired, it will go to the Trump presidential library.
00:53:00.280 I won't be flying around on it.
00:53:01.880 In other words, post my presidency.
00:53:04.300 Now, I don't know whether he'll live up to any of that, but right now it appears we've
00:53:08.860 accepted a $400 million gift from Qatar.
00:53:12.200 Your thoughts?
00:53:12.640 You know, it's very, it's a very complex story because there's so many different narratives
00:53:18.320 like Senator Mullins said that it was discussed during the Biden administration.
00:53:22.160 I don't know if that was ever confirmed or not, but the more you read about it, it's kind
00:53:27.980 of a white elephant.
00:53:29.060 It's a 2013 plane and it's the latest 747, but they haven't been making them for 12 years.
00:53:36.480 So they're kind of white elephants in the sense they're a good plane, but they're very
00:53:40.220 hard to maintain and to operate with extra pilots.
00:53:45.400 They're huge.
00:53:45.900 They take an enormous amount of fuel.
00:53:49.260 Most people that have large jets prefer a 757, 777, 787.
00:53:55.940 So they're kind of a white elephant.
00:53:57.480 As I understand, they had it on the market, Megan, since 2020 and no one wanted it.
00:54:02.920 And there was a rumor that they gave one to Turkey, the other one.
00:54:06.820 And so the problem is that you get the impression that they wanted to unload this white elephant
00:54:13.160 that you really, I mean, it was, it was configured in a way that wasn't really practical for
00:54:17.960 people.
00:54:18.620 And then when Trump said, I think that was not wise to say that it would be given to
00:54:23.140 the foundation.
00:54:23.740 He could have said one of two things.
00:54:25.860 Well, we have a plane and if you, if the air force doesn't want it or other presidents
00:54:32.280 don't want it, then we'll do what Reagan did and just put it out there and not fly it because
00:54:37.480 who in their right mind would want to fly around the United States with a gas guzzling out of
00:54:42.400 date, hard to maintain, expensive to operate jumbo jet.
00:54:46.640 And I think he would have, uh, he would have avoided a lot of the problems.
00:54:51.900 Maybe that's his position.
00:54:53.060 Now, the other thing is gutter always does this.
00:54:56.360 Uh, anybody, they built that out led, uh, air force base.
00:55:02.320 We didn't build it.
00:55:03.320 They built a billion dollars.
00:55:04.840 I've seen it.
00:55:05.560 It's huge.
00:55:06.740 And they just presented it to us.
00:55:08.660 And the military, I wrote at the time, is this wise to take this big gift because they
00:55:13.860 looked on one side to Iran and then they looked at the Gulf and they were saying, we're going
00:55:18.280 to play both sides and we're going to be the conduit between terrorists and legitimate
00:55:24.000 governments and Iran and the Saudis and the Sunni monarchies.
00:55:28.740 But this is a precarious position.
00:55:31.080 We have Al Jazeera.
00:55:32.020 So we want protection.
00:55:33.560 So we're going to build this billion dollar base and give it to you.
00:55:37.420 And you don't have to spend a penny.
00:55:39.220 And that's what we did.
00:55:40.360 And then they came back and we said, well, we need this and we need more and we want a
00:55:44.220 bigger run.
00:55:44.620 They said, fine, we'll do a mill, another billion dollar.
00:55:48.100 So this is a long history that we've had with them.
00:55:51.160 And, uh, I think what was behind it was that Donald Trump cemented all these deals and he
00:55:58.180 did one with guitar gutter and they thought we're going to compromise them or we're going
00:56:02.580 to give a gift.
00:56:03.440 And it didn't look good to turn the gift down.
00:56:05.620 But if you look at the actual value of the plane and what you're going to have to do
00:56:10.140 to it, and the, it'll probably the time to refit this plane might not be that much quicker
00:56:16.560 than the two Boeings that are on order anyway.
00:56:18.720 So I don't quite understand that there's no utility.
00:56:23.620 There's no upside is what I'm saying either in the plane itself or, and I guess the only
00:56:30.000 explanation I can think is Donald Trump is transactional.
00:56:33.300 He didn't want to offend his host by turning down something that they had already tried to
00:56:38.600 give to Turkey and successfully and has no market value because no one, no one wanted to
00:56:43.620 buy it.
00:56:43.940 Well, I mean, the report said that Trump was very unhappy with air force one and even some
00:56:47.960 of the reporters writing on it said it had gotten really kind of rickety, you know, like
00:56:51.620 the takeoffs were very bumpy and yes.
00:56:53.740 Yeah.
00:56:54.200 And it's, it's like a, you know, aircraft carrier in the sky and you know, Trump is used
00:56:58.600 to flying on a luxury plane and he didn't like this.
00:57:01.060 And suddenly this gift is offered and that plane is absolutely stunning and gorgeous.
00:57:05.200 And I can see why he was like, hell yes.
00:57:07.280 That looks like a much nicer way to spend the next four years, right?
00:57:11.020 I mean, I think, I think he just has to, I just, I just think he's going to have to
00:57:15.040 say that if he wants to get out of it, he's going to have to say the U S military has taken
00:57:19.960 gifts.
00:57:20.640 We watched this country very carefully in my first term, I was very tough on it.
00:57:25.420 And the rules are, it's going to be a air force jet.
00:57:28.240 It's if it, if the two Boeings are still tardy, the next president will use it, it'll be retrofitted
00:57:35.820 and it's just the stop got measure.
00:57:38.720 And if they want to give it to the Trump foundation, we will accord it the same, uh, status that
00:57:44.660 Ronald Reagan did with the 747 that's at the library.
00:57:48.620 Legally, it looks like it's okay because it would be a violation of the emoluments clause.
00:57:53.720 Um, if it were a gift or a fee for service situation, unless Congress approved it, that
00:57:59.420 Congress didn't approve it, but they're arguing at the DOJ, this isn't a gift to Trump.
00:58:04.080 It's a gift to the Pentagon that will stay government owned until it's retired and that
00:58:09.220 he's not performing any service to receive it.
00:58:12.600 There's no, you know, quid pro quo with Qatar.
00:58:15.220 That's the argument.
00:58:15.960 I mean, that doesn't answer the question about whether this is, this feels ethically wrong.
00:58:20.520 It puts us in a position where we're somehow beholden to Qatar, which most Americans don't
00:58:27.060 want.
00:58:27.380 It just feels kind of gross.
00:58:28.860 It does.
00:58:30.120 And I think it raises a larger question that Donald Trump was very successful in pointing
00:58:36.660 out the corruption of the Biden family consortium.
00:58:40.420 They were into everything, $30 million, Hunter on the plane, Burisma, uh, the quid pro quo, sweetheart
00:58:48.560 deals on his taxes, his, this friend that paid his bills.
00:58:52.560 And so now that he's a second term lame duck, you get, you're getting the impression there's
00:58:58.620 a lot of people around him that are, uh, heavily involved in the Middle East, in the Gulf states with
00:59:07.100 investments, hedge funds, joint ventures.
00:59:09.360 And I think it would be really wise for him because he's staging a very controversial
00:59:15.020 counter-revolution that's very necessary.
00:59:18.760 In other words, he's looking at economics, cultural life, social life, military life,
00:59:24.260 diplomat, and he's trying to reset the entire progressive agenda.
00:59:27.960 No, no Republican has tried that.
00:59:29.820 And what I'm getting at is there's a very thin margin of error and he can't afford any
00:59:35.880 distractions.
00:59:36.640 And if he would, I think they need some ethics or, or someone just to separate all the people
00:59:42.220 around him.
00:59:43.160 And I'm not going to mention names, but you hear almost daily, not just in the left-wing
00:59:47.480 press, that someone is entering a joint venture or a hedge fund or an investment fund or a private
00:59:55.080 club or something.
00:59:56.800 And you've got to be very careful about all that.
00:59:59.360 That's all.
01:00:00.240 You've got to be very careful.
01:00:01.180 You have to have an outside adjudicator say, you know what?
01:00:03.540 We're not going to do that.
01:00:04.500 We have to be above suspicion.
01:00:06.780 Yeah, I know.
01:00:07.680 Exactly.
01:00:08.220 It's just, it just feels like, okay, it was rickety.
01:00:10.800 Like it was bumpy.
01:00:11.600 Okay.
01:00:11.880 But obviously it was safe and may not be the most wonderful Air Force One it's ever been,
01:00:16.800 but it's damn sight better than most people's flights.
01:00:19.020 I can tell you that right now.
01:00:21.220 Anyway, it's happening.
01:00:22.460 So there you go.
01:00:23.620 Moving on to Marco Rubio.
01:00:25.880 He gets, he goes in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday.
01:00:28.780 And it was a thing of beauty.
01:00:30.440 Victor, it was a thing of beauty.
01:00:32.320 He, he was so good.
01:00:34.620 This truly is Marco Rubio in full flower, as they say, he's better than ever.
01:00:42.380 He really is sharp and like verbal, verbal jujitsu in a way he was not doing even 10 years
01:00:50.060 ago.
01:00:50.340 Every time you get him when you sit down interview in the hallway of Capitol Hill now in front
01:00:56.040 of, uh, you know, these congressional committees, just a plus plus level aptitude and ability
01:01:02.340 to process his thoughts and take on multiple arguments at once.
01:01:05.600 Like it's one guy under fire from all sides and he's got it.
01:01:09.240 It's very impressive.
01:01:10.300 I have to say, um, here he is in an extraordinary exchange.
01:01:14.360 So these guys were up against it because he was on this committee.
01:01:18.540 Rubio has what?
01:01:20.180 20 plus years in the U S Senate.
01:01:21.720 He knows how it works there.
01:01:23.780 He can't be bullied.
01:01:25.160 He knows the points of order better than anybody.
01:01:27.060 So Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the one who went out to visit Abrego Garcia at
01:01:33.100 the El Salvadorian jail, used his entire seven minutes instead of probing to get answers,
01:01:39.420 just to grandstand, just to say what he thought about how terrible Marco Rubio, who was confirmed
01:01:44.780 unanimously as Trump's secretary of state, the only person in Trump world to get that
01:01:49.460 kind of a vote.
01:01:50.020 Um, he just railed on him and said how horrible he was and ended it with this little spike
01:01:56.700 the ball in the end zone moment of like, I'm, I'm ashamed I voted for you.
01:02:00.520 And I, I take back my vote if I could.
01:02:03.100 And Rubio, most witnesses would be like, okay, Rubio was like, oh no, I'm talking.
01:02:08.500 I'm taking the microphone and went right to the chairman and said, Mr. Chairman, I want
01:02:12.900 my time.
01:02:13.500 Then, then Helen tried to stop him.
01:02:15.680 He took it.
01:02:16.660 He got that microphone.
01:02:18.020 He went off.
01:02:18.980 It was great.
01:02:20.360 Here's some of it.
01:02:22.740 And I have to tell you directly and personally that I regret voting for you for secretary
01:02:27.460 of state.
01:02:28.300 I yield back.
01:02:29.940 May I respond?
01:02:31.260 You may say.
01:02:32.000 Well, first of all, your regret for voting for me confirms I'm doing a good job.
01:02:35.400 Well, I'd like to, I can't respond to everything he said because much of these are untrue,
01:02:38.560 but I'll go through a few.
01:02:39.400 First of all, I'm actually very proud of the work we've done with USAID.
01:02:42.520 For example, I don't regret cutting $10 million for male circumcisions in Mozambique.
01:02:48.600 I don't know how that makes us stronger and more prosperous as a nation.
01:02:51.560 We spent $227,000 for Big Cat's YouTube channel from USAID.
01:02:56.360 We spent $14 million for social cohesion in Mali, whatever the hell that means.
01:03:01.360 In the case of El Salvador, absolutely.
01:03:03.820 Absolutely.
01:03:04.660 We deported gang members.
01:03:06.520 Gang members, including the one that you had a margarita with.
01:03:09.040 And that guy is a human trafficker.
01:03:11.220 And that guy is a gangbanger.
01:03:13.340 And the evidence is going to be clear.
01:03:15.040 In the days to come, you're going to see who you went to.
01:03:16.880 Senator, please, Secretary Rubio has the floor.
01:03:19.660 Chairman, he can't make unsubstantiated comments like that.
01:03:22.720 Senator, Secretary Rubio has the floor.
01:03:24.720 You had your time.
01:03:25.460 Secretary Rubio should take that testimony to the federal court of the United States
01:03:28.320 because he hasn't done it under oath.
01:03:30.020 Here's another point, okay?
01:03:32.520 There is a division in our government between the federal branch and the judicial branch.
01:03:36.460 No judge and the judicial branch cannot tell me or the president how to conduct foreign policy.
01:03:42.120 And he went on.
01:03:43.340 It was beautiful.
01:03:45.340 Yeah, it was.
01:03:47.520 And, you know, when you look at who is really articulating this counterrevolution
01:03:54.680 is Scott DeSant in economics and Marco Rubio in state.
01:03:58.320 And without those two guys, I think they'd be in trouble because they have a reassuring calm,
01:04:03.940 but they're very tough and they don't back down.
01:04:06.320 And they're not afraid of controversy.
01:04:08.480 And when you sent Rubio down to Panama, after all the media was going crazy,
01:04:13.280 we're going to invade Panama.
01:04:14.460 And he went down there and he just solved the problem, soothed everything over,
01:04:19.120 but did not back down.
01:04:20.680 I wish, because I do think they have so many balls in the air.
01:04:26.600 They've got the Ukraine war.
01:04:27.840 They've got the Iranian nuclear negotiations.
01:04:30.700 They've got the hostages with Hamas.
01:04:33.980 And I think they need to, I know that Wolkoff is a special envoy, but no special can be doing
01:04:41.260 all of that.
01:04:42.500 Yeah, Witkoff, excuse me.
01:04:43.700 And it would be very wise, I think, if all of that was bundled back into the State Department
01:04:50.320 and Rubio himself, and let Rubio pick the special envoys and operate, just outsource,
01:04:58.240 because he's very competent and he's on the same page with Trump.
01:05:02.640 But I just, I think the American people feel that when he is conducting 100% of our foreign
01:05:09.340 policy to the degree that it's delegated by the president, it's reassuring.
01:05:14.020 And he doesn't make slips or gaffes.
01:05:16.800 So I, and I understand he's probably the most powerful Secretary of State, given the national
01:05:21.720 security portfolio that we've had in a long time.
01:05:24.900 But I wish that these major negotiations, and there's three or four of them that have
01:05:31.020 got global and historical importance, that he was the point man on it.
01:05:37.200 And I think that would be wise.
01:05:39.260 He is 53 years old.
01:05:41.660 J.D.
01:05:41.940 Vance just turned 40.
01:05:46.320 They're, they're both very formidable.
01:05:49.240 J.D.
01:05:49.480 Vance much more aligned, I think, with the restrainer wing of the Republican Party.
01:05:54.780 But Marco Rubio has been talking that talk too.
01:05:57.140 But he's closer to Trump, I would say, on foreign policy, where he's, he feels the restrainer
01:06:02.940 influence and doesn't reject it and sees its wisdom, but isn't afraid to bomb Soleimani.
01:06:09.320 You know, that's Trump.
01:06:10.200 And also, I would say Rubio, who's not afraid to be very strong in his language about, for
01:06:14.400 example, Hamas and what they did to Israel, who has no quarter for Iran.
01:06:20.740 And that's where there is a little split between some of the hardcore restrainers
01:06:24.200 and that may include J.D.
01:06:26.280 And guys like Marco.
01:06:27.500 So you're kind of seeing the future of the Republican Party develop and, you know, come
01:06:32.780 into its own.
01:06:34.040 And Mark Halperin was on Fox last night making the following point about those two.
01:06:38.000 Watch this, Sot 9.
01:06:38.880 When he was back in the Florida legislature, he was tagged as someone destined for, you
01:06:44.580 know, a national profile and his presidential campaign disappointed his supporters.
01:06:48.840 But he is just one of the stars of this administration.
01:06:51.640 Even if you don't agree with his policies, his knowledge of policy, his knowledge, his
01:06:56.480 rhetoric, his confidence and his winning over MAGA.
01:06:59.660 He went a rough spell with MAGA over immigration.
01:07:01.800 And now he is one of the heroes of the movement.
01:07:04.140 And I said earlier today, I'll say it again.
01:07:06.660 I really do think J.D.
01:07:08.100 Vance and Marco Rubio could end up being a preordained ticket in 2028, unlike we've ever
01:07:12.900 seen before.
01:07:15.400 I mean, you can dream, Victor.
01:07:17.060 That would be amazing.
01:07:18.600 It would.
01:07:19.520 And I've been amazed by Mark Halperin that he's really come into his own after.
01:07:24.680 Yes.
01:07:25.160 Yeah.
01:07:25.580 Yeah.
01:07:25.780 I've been really.
01:07:26.680 Everyone subscribe to Next Up with Mark Halperin.
01:07:28.680 It's out there as part of our MK Media network.
01:07:30.180 Yeah, he's been.
01:07:31.960 I think he's very good.
01:07:33.400 But the thing that Marco Rubio kind of, you said the two wings, I guess I think what you
01:07:43.020 would call it is Jacksonianism.
01:07:44.780 And Walter Russell Meade has used that term a lot.
01:07:46.840 In other words, the idea is that we don't look for optional military engagements in the
01:07:51.440 Middle East.
01:07:52.140 We don't want ground troops.
01:07:54.060 We don't want to slay dragons overseas.
01:07:56.000 But we're going to be no better friend and no worse enemy.
01:08:01.040 And if you screw around with the United States, we're going to retaliate disproportionately.
01:08:06.280 And that was Soleimani.
01:08:07.400 That was Baghdadi.
01:08:08.660 That was the Wagner group in Syria.
01:08:10.820 And when Trump left, he had really established the idea with North Korea, with the Houthis,
01:08:17.360 that he was unpredictable, but he would retaliate.
01:08:20.880 And if he retaliated, it would be disproportionate.
01:08:23.000 So don't provoke him.
01:08:25.160 And that was why Jake Sullivan bragged just, I think, three days before October 7th.
01:08:31.100 He said, our portfolio in the Middle East is the calmest I've ever seen it.
01:08:35.540 What he was really unknowingly saying is that we have eroded this the last three years, but
01:08:41.760 it was so strong that people still felt that the Trump-Jacksonian policy was in effect, even
01:08:48.120 though we delisted the Houthis as a terrorist organization, even though we tried to beg the
01:08:52.720 Iranians to get back in the nuclear deal, even though the Afghanistan disaster, even though
01:08:58.820 we distanced ourselves.
01:08:59.880 And that finally ran out, is what I'm saying.
01:09:02.020 And they destroyed what had happened.
01:09:04.860 But Rubio really does represent a nice fusion of mega neo-isolationism or non-interventionism
01:09:12.780 and deterrence.
01:09:14.740 And I think that's why he's getting a higher profile, because he seems to me, just as an
01:09:22.220 outsider, to reflect more the natural inclinations of Donald Trump.
01:09:26.900 Donald Trump does not want to get on the land board.
01:09:28.420 And Trump keeps mentioning him.
01:09:29.220 Trump, like when Trump talks about the future of the Republican Party and somebody says,
01:09:32.860 is it J.D., is it J.D.?
01:09:34.140 Trump keeps saying, J.D.'s great.
01:09:36.060 Marco Rubio is great, too.
01:09:37.500 Like he keeps making space for him.
01:09:40.340 And Donald Trump thinks it's as a businessman.
01:09:42.740 He thinks war is bad business.
01:09:44.900 Blowing stuff up is not what he does.
01:09:46.860 And he thinks it's a waste of time.
01:09:49.280 But at the same time, and that's a MAGA strain.
01:09:52.420 But at the same time, he understands that if you broadcast your MAGA, MAGA, MAGA, MAGA,
01:09:57.420 and it's not worth getting involved, people are going to involve you.
01:10:01.720 And the only way you can prevent that is from time to time show force that makes your deterrence
01:10:07.880 credible.
01:10:08.460 And that's what Rubio and I think Trump agree on.
01:10:10.600 Let me ask you something about, speaking of foreign policy, what's happening now with
01:10:14.520 Russia and Ukraine.
01:10:15.700 It's not going very well, the attempts to end this thing.
01:10:18.560 We signed this minerals deal with Ukraine, but Trump and Putin spoke the other day and
01:10:24.900 Trump came out and said, you know, all sort of flowery.
01:10:27.960 Oh, great.
01:10:28.600 We had a great talk.
01:10:29.200 Great talk.
01:10:29.660 But Putin came out was like nothing.
01:10:32.200 Nothing much happened.
01:10:32.920 You know, like kind of no change.
01:10:34.520 And now I'm looking at the New York Times here on the front page.
01:10:39.540 Their headline is Trump's shift on Ukraine.
01:10:41.660 You all fix it.
01:10:42.500 U.S. backs off Putin splitting with allies.
01:10:45.000 They report as follows.
01:10:46.840 Mr. Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine and other European leaders after his call with
01:10:52.680 Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump told Zelensky after his call with Putin that Russia and Ukraine would
01:10:58.740 have to find a solution to the war themselves.
01:11:00.640 Just days after saying that only he and Mr. Putin had the power to broker a deal.
01:11:06.140 So that I mean, if that's the case, because, you know, the other piece of this is
01:11:10.920 hold on.
01:11:12.380 I just want to get the exact reporting right.
01:11:14.520 They say.
01:11:16.780 OK, unless he again reverses course, Monday's developments left Mr. Putin with exactly what
01:11:23.220 he wanted, not only an end to the American pressure, but the creation of a deep fissure inside
01:11:29.020 NATO between the Americans and their traditional European allies who say they are going ahead
01:11:34.100 with sanctions anyway.
01:11:35.740 The point that they seem to be making is that Trump's giving up whatever leverage he has
01:11:40.040 on Putin.
01:11:40.740 He just pulling out of it.
01:11:42.060 The U.S. just pulling out of this thing means pulling out of our support for Ukraine,
01:11:45.600 which means likely possible collapse of Ukraine.
01:11:49.340 Putin, I mean, he could keep it going.
01:11:51.660 He could take over all of Ukraine if we don't have any involvement there.
01:11:55.060 It would be up to the Europeans, which no one wants to hear if it's their country's
01:12:00.640 fate.
01:12:01.460 So what do you make of where we are right now on that conflict?
01:12:04.660 Well, after what we saw in Afghanistan, I don't think Donald Trump is going to pull all
01:12:09.120 support out of Ukraine.
01:12:10.300 That would be a disaster.
01:12:11.260 He'd be blamed for it.
01:12:12.180 He's not going to do that.
01:12:13.560 I think what is holy, holding up everything, I think Donald Trump realizes now belatedly,
01:12:20.140 but it's still only been 120 days versus a three-year war, that Vladimir Putin's challenge
01:12:27.720 is that even though he has all of the assets in his favor, he's got 10 times the GDP, 30
01:12:36.140 times the area, four times the population.
01:12:38.880 He has suffered a million casualties, dead, wounded, and missing.
01:12:42.580 Probably there's a million and a half total.
01:12:44.240 And his military has been really destroyed, his GDP has been warped, and he wants out of
01:12:51.500 it.
01:12:51.980 But he's got to tell the apparate, the military and people that it was worth it.
01:12:58.060 And so far, what he sees that he's gotten out of it for the million casualties is he's
01:13:04.860 advanced 40, 80 miles and places beyond Crimea and Donbass.
01:13:10.200 He's institutionalized that he's not going to give them back.
01:13:12.740 And he's got that Ukraine won't be in NATO.
01:13:17.520 But he doesn't think at this point, given the blunder that he committed, that he can
01:13:23.800 go back to the people that have the power to get rid of them.
01:13:26.420 And there are people that have the power to get rid of them in Russia, that they're not
01:13:30.360 going to accept that.
01:13:31.780 And yet he can't go on because he is bleeding.
01:13:35.520 Maybe he's got more resources and he can bleed out Ukraine first.
01:13:39.360 But he's damaged the Russian military for probably 10 years.
01:13:44.980 And we've never seen anything like this in Europe since Stalingrad in 1942.
01:13:51.920 It's got more casualties now than Stalingrad.
01:13:54.460 And the weird thing about the whole thing is Donald Trump gyrates and fluid, but he is
01:14:01.760 the only president.
01:14:02.640 I'd never heard a word in 2014 from Obama about Crimea and Donbass or from Biden when
01:14:10.280 the fighting about the human cost.
01:14:12.500 And they never...
01:14:12.920 Biden said, well, what's your strategy?
01:14:14.820 Just give it what it takes.
01:14:16.440 But there was never anything.
01:14:17.800 This is horrific.
01:14:19.100 A million and a half people dead, wounded, maimed.
01:14:22.080 For what?
01:14:23.320 And Trump, so he really does.
01:14:25.500 That's all he talks about.
01:14:26.940 It doesn't make any sense.
01:14:29.000 And so I think psychologically, whether he knows it or not, he's invested in it.
01:14:33.480 And then more importantly, he's learned that Vladimir Putin started the war.
01:14:38.980 Vladimir Putin has objectives.
01:14:40.640 And no one, not even Putin, knows at what point he can stop the war and stay in power.
01:14:46.500 And I have a feeling that if we just persevere a little bit longer, and I don't mean give
01:14:53.980 it whatever it takes, that there will be a point where Putin will negotiate.
01:15:00.280 But Trump is in a very difficult position because the MAGA majority of the party wants
01:15:07.160 to cut completely off and just say, let the Europeans do it.
01:15:11.020 The Europeans claim they're going to put 40,000 troops.
01:15:15.220 They won't do that.
01:15:16.100 I can guarantee you they will not do that.
01:15:18.620 And they say they're going to give them $200 billion.
01:15:21.100 I can guarantee you they're not going to do that.
01:15:23.000 All they're going to do is attack the United States and then hope that we intervene in the
01:15:28.780 way that we have.
01:15:29.540 And then they piggyback on.
01:15:31.280 So whether we like it or not, the existence of Ukraine as an independent nation depends on
01:15:37.020 us.
01:15:37.380 And that's very hard to reconcile with the MAGA doctrine that we don't get in the affairs
01:15:44.240 of others.
01:15:45.120 And when you add that Russia's got 6,000 deliverable nuclear weapons and almost daily threatens to
01:15:52.640 use a tactical nuclear weapon.
01:15:54.260 The whole thing is a mess.
01:15:55.360 But I still think that the only chance for this thing to end is for Trump to find out how
01:16:04.040 much Putin is going to take before he stops.
01:16:07.920 And I think he can't give in to Putin, but he's got to convince him no more.
01:16:14.120 You've got Crimea.
01:16:15.060 You've got Donbass.
01:16:16.140 Go back and tell everybody you institutionalized that.
01:16:18.740 And it was not determined until you win.
01:16:22.280 Go back and tell them that, yes, Ukraine will not be in NATO.
01:16:26.040 Go back and tell them there's a DMZ here and we'll have a ceasefire basically where the
01:16:30.560 battle line.
01:16:31.120 But you're not going to get any more.
01:16:33.520 All you're going to do is find yourself killing innocent people and your own people for what?
01:16:39.960 And I think-
01:16:40.580 Trump has come out.
01:16:41.340 I mean, he goes between like, I'm out and I'm going to put secondary sanctions out there.
01:16:47.020 I'm not going to do business as the United States with any bank that does business with
01:16:52.020 Russia, which he knows actually would hurt.
01:16:54.520 Now we're talking.
01:16:55.360 That is the one thing that Biden would not do.
01:16:58.620 It's very ironic because everybody said the only thing that will stop Russia is a secondary
01:17:04.000 boycott, that people who deal business with Russia will not be doing business with us.
01:17:09.440 And that's very rare to do.
01:17:11.260 It's very rare in history.
01:17:12.400 But if you do that, it's almost like a declaration of war because it's, it is final.
01:17:17.980 It's what we did that with Japan and, uh, you know, it was pretty tough in Pearl Harbor.
01:17:24.200 Not that we did, you know, that we deserved it, but we, we made the decision when we cut
01:17:30.040 off all oil and cut off all banking and finance and shipments that we were ready for a new phase
01:17:38.120 with Japan and it was a wise thing to do, but it's ironic that people are criticizing Trump
01:17:44.060 as too soft on Putin, but he's the only one that has even broached the subject of the only
01:17:49.520 thing that would stop Putin that would really stop Putin.
01:17:53.280 Well, that's where we are today.
01:17:54.940 Uh, it's very slow going.
01:17:57.140 All right, let's shift over to the white house where something extraordinary just happened.
01:18:00.920 You've got the leader of South Africa.
01:18:03.240 Now what's been happening in South Africa is, um, post apartheid, it seems very much like
01:18:08.940 the shoes now on the other foot and they're perfectly happy to discriminate against the
01:18:13.100 8% of South Africans or citizens who are white.
01:18:16.780 And, and to be honest, it looks like they're enjoying discriminating against these 8% white,
01:18:22.260 um, sins of the father and so on.
01:18:24.560 That's their justification.
01:18:25.320 So now Trump has let some, it's 59 South African white farmers and their families come to the
01:18:32.900 United States saying that they're refugees fleeing persecution.
01:18:37.040 And he's used the term genocide.
01:18:39.400 And we've been doing our own research to find out what exactly is happening in South Africa,
01:18:43.360 because unlike Jake Tapper, we don't just take the word of the president.
01:18:47.720 Sorry, Jake, but the left, I should say left wing reporters.
01:18:50.860 Uh, we actually started kicking these claims and trying to figure out whether they were true.
01:18:54.420 And we can't support genocide so far based on what we've seen, but there is 100% threatened
01:19:02.280 violence and there has been some violence against farmers, though they don't distinguish in the
01:19:08.220 numbers that they release, uh, when it comes to race.
01:19:11.640 So there's no way that we have been able to figure out of knowing exactly who's, who's died.
01:19:16.640 What we know is the following, and I'm going to get to what's happening at the white house.
01:19:19.720 I'm just giving the audience some background.
01:19:21.340 Um, overall, there is consensus that there's some violence occurring against white farmers
01:19:26.340 in South Africa.
01:19:27.280 It is disputed just how much and, um, how big a problem this is, uh, via the nonprofit
01:19:33.920 Afra forum, which is a South African land forum that focuses on the interest of Afrikaners.
01:19:38.580 They said in 2022, there were verified 333 attacks on South African farms, including 50 murders.
01:19:44.580 The year before that, 415 attacks, 55 murders, but they're not broken down by race.
01:19:52.280 However, we do know that, uh, whites in South Africa own about three quarters of the farms.
01:19:58.560 So if you're seeing all this violence on farms and you know, that whites own three quarters
01:20:05.340 of the farms, the odds are good that a lot of whites are being killed or at least were
01:20:10.100 in 2021 and 2022 via the federalist in 2024, April through September, uh, citing South African
01:20:19.200 police stats.
01:20:20.380 There were 197 reported farm murders, uh, and 154 attempts and nearly 600 total cases
01:20:28.960 of assaults on farms.
01:20:31.020 Okay.
01:20:31.680 So all of that is pretty good evidence that there are white farmers being killed or attempted
01:20:36.920 murders on those white farmers.
01:20:39.200 FYI, the UN defines, uh, genocide under the article two of the, uh, convention as a crime
01:20:45.940 committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole
01:20:50.020 or in part or in part.
01:20:52.600 So it's open to interpretation.
01:20:54.560 And so what happened now is the South African president Rama Foza shows up to the white house
01:21:01.680 because they have deals they want to negotiate.
01:21:04.620 We're mad that they turned in Israel to the Hague for war crimes in Gaza, and they would
01:21:11.600 like to do more business with us, but we are also saying we're not going to have economic
01:21:16.220 meetings and summits in South Africa because you're, you're doing this and we object to
01:21:20.220 it.
01:21:20.420 So this was an attempted, you know, reconciliation of sorts when this guy comes over here and
01:21:26.040 sits down with president Trump in the oval.
01:21:28.880 Okay.
01:21:29.380 Now here comes today's developments.
01:21:30.900 President Trump stayed now reporting here from the New York times stage a video screening
01:21:37.340 in the oval showing some kind of documentary that purportedly shows violence against white
01:21:42.120 farmers in South Africa.
01:21:43.760 The delegation from South Africa sitting in silence, watching, looking somewhat bemused and
01:21:48.960 perplexed.
01:21:49.600 According to the times they write, this is an extraordinary scene.
01:21:52.580 The Trump team clearly came to the meeting, prepared to play videos backing up what the times
01:21:56.680 describes as their false claim that there are mass killings against white South Africans.
01:22:02.280 As an aside, the times is very upset as is most of the left wing that Trump has given
01:22:07.560 refugee status to these 59 white South African citizens.
01:22:11.720 They are convinced it's because they have white skin.
01:22:14.560 Suddenly they're very concerned about refugees coming into the United States.
01:22:18.180 Not the 3 million that Biden allowed, but the 59 that Trump allowed because they're white.
01:22:24.720 And before I show you what happened today at the, at the oval, let me show you at least a little
01:22:30.640 bit of how the New York times has been covering this ongoing, um, problem and, and their take
01:22:37.880 on it.
01:22:38.240 We're going to play.
01:22:38.840 It's a little on the long side, but let's play 11 C from their New York times podcast,
01:22:42.760 the daily, which aired on Monday.
01:22:45.380 For decades, white South Africans ruled with an iron fist, overseeing the country's cruel
01:22:53.680 system of racial oppression.
01:22:57.100 So why is President Trump now welcoming them to the U.S. as victims?
01:23:04.300 Today, John Elago on how the MAGA movement became obsessed with Afrikaners.
01:23:11.680 And if you think about it, this is the perfect thing to capture Trump's eye, because if we
01:23:20.280 look at his ascendancy to the presidency, part of his whole pitch was to be this president
01:23:27.120 who would ensure that the forgotten white man would be taken care of, right?
01:23:33.320 That we would fight back against sort of this demographic shift, these demographic changes,
01:23:38.220 these brown people coming into our country and invading our borders.
01:23:43.600 Trump's presidency and his whole political identity has always had an element that has
01:23:49.340 really spoken to the folks all around the world who embrace these sort of theories, these
01:23:55.100 feelings that white people are under threat.
01:23:58.680 And so here he had an example.
01:24:03.180 South Africa could now be the example that he points to and says, like, this is what could
01:24:08.200 come for us here in America.
01:24:10.440 And how much has it been about circumstances within the United States, the perceived threat
01:24:16.780 level against white citizens here?
01:24:19.820 In other words, is this about the tale of the Afrikaners or that cautionary tale that Trump
01:24:27.360 and those around him feel it represents to white Americans?
01:24:32.420 Okay, so you get the flavor, Victor.
01:24:37.660 They're upset that the refugees are white.
01:24:40.000 That's not allowed.
01:24:40.920 Your thoughts on it before I take you to Inside the Oval and some more of what we heard.
01:24:45.780 Well, one thing we did know is they applied for refugee status before they got here, and
01:24:50.760 they were granted that.
01:24:52.440 We know that the first thing Joe Biden did was say that refugees who came to the United States
01:24:57.760 could declare, if they, I shouldn't say refugees, anybody who came to the United States could
01:25:02.640 declare they were refugees after they got here.
01:25:05.180 And they got rid of the idea that under the first Trump administration, you had to apply
01:25:09.280 for refugee status in your home country.
01:25:11.800 So first of all, what they're basically saying is, and this is a racist thing, what they're
01:25:17.420 saying is, if Donald Trump has people who apply for refugee status and he allows them in,
01:25:23.040 say, 60-something, 70, maybe even get to 100, and they happen to be white, that's proof of
01:25:29.500 racism.
01:25:30.320 But if we let in 10 million people and maybe 3 million have applied for refugee status after
01:25:36.580 they got here and we let them in, and the vast majority are not white, that's okay, but
01:25:44.800 we can't make these people apply in their own country and they're under 100.
01:25:48.980 And so what I'm getting at is, the left is, it opens another issue very quickly, Megan,
01:25:56.060 and that is people have using the word white in kind of a racist context I haven't seen
01:26:02.020 in recent times.
01:26:03.900 I'll give you just a few examples.
01:26:05.900 We had Caitlin Clark in The Foul the other day and she was called a white gal.
01:26:11.280 And then we had Jasmine Crockett talk about she didn't trust the Democrats not to nominate
01:26:17.600 white boys.
01:26:18.660 And then we had Ilian Omar, a tape service where she called basically white men the greatest
01:26:24.500 terrorist threat.
01:26:26.000 And so the left has taken this idea and we saw it with Millie and Austin said, white privilege,
01:26:32.060 white rage, white supremacist, we're going to ferret out in the Pentagon.
01:26:35.700 They found no, by the way, that Pentagon report that finally surfaced found no such systemic
01:26:40.720 white racism in the military.
01:26:42.280 But it did, it did account for 45,000 people not joining the military.
01:26:47.440 And the data shows that they were overwhelmingly white males who fell under the DEI and they
01:26:53.040 were under suspicion on unjustifiably.
01:26:55.580 And by the way, they were the demographic that died at double their numbers in the general
01:27:00.740 population in Afghanistan and Iraq.
01:27:04.140 So we just basically alienated them.
01:27:06.440 And then when we got rid of DEI, they came back.
01:27:09.680 So it's been the bar, like everything else with the left, the bar has been lowered.
01:27:15.500 And you can just now say that Donald Trump is a white racist.
01:27:19.500 If that were true, there was a Rasmussen report, as you know, came out two weeks ago about the
01:27:24.800 first hundred days.
01:27:25.800 And what was interesting about that was 39% of African-Americans said they approved of the
01:27:31.580 first hundred days, 62% of Hispanics said they did.
01:27:35.840 And they were much higher than whites.
01:27:38.580 And so if Donald Trump is a racist and he's favoring white immigrants as refugees, why in
01:27:47.720 the world are people of color supporting him far more than any other Republican candidate in
01:27:54.220 modern memory?
01:27:54.920 And I think what we're seeing is that the Democratic Party and the left realizes that their boutique
01:28:02.480 issues, transgenderism, open borders, no deportations, basically DEI, pro-Hamas, appeals to nobody.
01:28:15.200 And they are a party of the very, very wealthy, bi-coastal elite and the subsidized poor.
01:28:21.720 But my point is African-Americans and Hispanics are starting to look at a Jasmine Crockett or
01:28:28.480 an AOC in the same way working white people look at the architects, a Senator Holland or
01:28:36.900 a Nancy, but they don't feel connected with them.
01:28:39.620 And what's getting them really angry is Donald Trump is appealing to people in terms of middle
01:28:45.480 class solidarity that trans, that kind of transcends race.
01:28:50.280 And that's really hurt them.
01:28:52.040 And they're very angry about it.
01:28:53.500 So they've got to keep trying to tell their former constituencies, he's a racist, he's a
01:28:58.420 racist, he's a racist, white boy, white boy, white boy, white males, white males, might
01:29:02.900 privilege, and they drive it into the ground and it has the opposite effect.
01:29:06.880 People are sick of it.
01:29:08.460 And they know that they do not, they don't appeal to working class Hispanics or blacks.
01:29:12.620 They don't care about them.
01:29:13.740 They dump illegal immigrations and immigrants in the inner city.
01:29:16.860 They don't care about the Rio Grande communities that were impacted.
01:29:21.540 And even out in California, there's news today that Governor Gavin Newsom can't make his budget.
01:29:27.440 And it's because he's opened up their public health care system to all these illegals who
01:29:31.160 have flooded across the border.
01:29:32.260 And he won't admit that it's his policy of making taxpayers pay for their health care that's
01:29:37.460 bankrupting him.
01:29:38.400 He's blaming it on Trump's tariffs, but we are seeing the consequences to these disastrous
01:29:43.780 policies.
01:29:44.640 I'm speaking in California, 50% of all the births in California, 50% are on Medi-Cal, our version
01:29:51.900 of Medicaid.
01:29:53.200 40% of everybody in this state is on Medi-Cal, 40%.
01:29:57.740 27% of our population, resident, citizen and innocent was not born in the United States.
01:30:03.640 And so if you look at California's budget 40 years ago, it was about 7% to 10% Medi-Cal
01:30:11.000 and about 30% infrastructure.
01:30:13.040 That's flipped.
01:30:14.400 And so all of this tax money, 13.3%, highest income tax, highest gas tax, 10th highest sales
01:30:21.680 tax.
01:30:22.460 What did it get us?
01:30:23.460 It got us the lowest ranking in infrastructure, bottom 10 in public schools, half the nation's
01:30:29.780 homeless, one third of people on welfare, 21% below the poverty line.
01:30:34.240 And Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown accelerated that and they're stuck because they can't
01:30:40.220 And now they want to blame Trump, which is just so rich.
01:30:42.480 No, they can't say, well, we have 13.3% income tax.
01:30:45.320 We got to raise it because 300,000 people are leaving every year that pay that.
01:30:50.280 Right.
01:30:50.500 And so they don't know what to do.
01:30:51.120 And they replace them with people who have no jobs, who are living on the government
01:30:55.780 dime.
01:30:56.440 So all the earners left and now all the glommers are there trying to live off the government
01:31:01.060 dime.
01:31:01.380 And he's too much of a, you know what, to admit his policies got Californians in this
01:31:06.660 boat.
01:31:06.800 So he's blaming orange man back.
01:31:09.060 And he's in a big trouble because why these legislatures are all elites along the coast.
01:31:14.020 We've had a transformation here in the center of the state and the north of the state in
01:31:19.160 the Inland Empire where middle-class Mexican-American people, and that's 46% of the population, are
01:31:25.980 increasingly taxpayers, middle-class, and they're tired of it.
01:31:30.340 They can't find a doctor.
01:31:31.640 They can't find a doctor.
01:31:32.780 They can't buy insurance.
01:31:33.940 They can't afford gas.
01:31:35.360 One quarter of our population can't pay their power bill.
01:31:38.340 They're in default.
01:31:40.040 And all they see in the news is Trump trying to get these people out of the country and
01:31:43.780 people like Chris Van Hollen going to visit them in their El Salvadorian jails.
01:31:48.500 All right, I've got to squeeze in a break.
01:31:50.100 And we will be right back because there's more to do.
01:31:52.600 And we've got to show you some sound rights from inside the Oval on that South African
01:31:55.860 thing.
01:31:56.080 Let me tell you about Financial Yield Solutions, Inc., known as FYSI.
01:32:01.000 If you are handling your own books or you have a bookkeeper, you risk inaccuracies, missed
01:32:06.320 deductions, and blind spots in cash flow.
01:32:09.480 FYSI's team of seasoned accounting professionals, corporate, and tax attorneys handle every journal
01:32:14.980 entry, bank reconciliation, and month-end close with unmatched precision, delivering clear
01:32:20.460 and timely financial reports that keep you in control.
01:32:24.140 They've weave advanced tax avoidance strategies into your bookkeeping so you can capture every
01:32:29.400 deduction before you file and plug you into their network of industry leaders and referral
01:32:33.820 partners for real-world growth opportunities.
01:32:37.100 Set up your free consultation to learn how FYSI's experts will transform your books into
01:32:42.460 a growth engine and accelerate your business to the next level.
01:32:46.740 Act now to claim your free $5,000 business assessment.
01:32:51.080 It's available only for a limited time.
01:32:53.240 Visit FYSI.com slash Megan.
01:32:55.780 Use promo code Megan or call 800-877-4000 today.
01:33:00.220 I would like to introduce you to a new brand of Angus beef.
01:33:04.480 You can order it directly from Riverbend Ranch, which is located just a few miles from West
01:33:09.460 Yellowstone, Montana.
01:33:11.300 Riverbend Ranch raises their cattle a lot differently than most ranches.
01:33:15.060 For example, they never use artificial growth hormones or antibiotics.
01:33:19.260 They track the health of every animal from the day it is born and can guarantee that it has
01:33:23.880 been healthy every day of its life.
01:33:25.760 And they handle their animals humanely and with respect.
01:33:28.460 But most important is the quality of the beef.
01:33:31.780 You'll find it as tender and flavorful as the finest restaurants.
01:33:36.260 And that's because they have spent the last 35 years selecting cattle for tenderness and
01:33:39.880 flavor, aging their beef to perfection for 21 days.
01:33:43.800 The result is some of the most tender and flavorful beef you have ever tasted.
01:33:48.220 You cannot buy beef like this in a grocery store.
01:33:50.480 And since it is shipped directly from the ranch to your home, you get a much better price than
01:33:55.180 going through the middlemen.
01:33:56.040 Order directly from RiverbendRanch.com.
01:33:59.820 Use promo code MEGAN to get 20 bucks off your first order.
01:34:03.860 That's RiverbendRanch.com, code MEGAN.
01:34:07.600 And be prepared.
01:34:08.900 Once you taste it, you're going to be coming back for more.
01:34:11.360 Again, that's RiverbendRanch.com, code MEGAN.
01:34:14.540 Your business doesn't move in a straight line.
01:34:18.080 Some days bring growth.
01:34:19.600 Others bring challenges.
01:34:21.220 But what if you or a partner needs to step away?
01:34:24.100 When the unexpected happens, count on Canada Life's flexible life and health insurance
01:34:28.960 to help your business keep working, even when you can't.
01:34:32.280 Don't let life's challenges stand in the way of your success.
01:34:35.720 Protect what you've built today.
01:34:37.180 Visit CanadaLife.com slash businessprotection to learn more.
01:34:41.960 Canada Life.
01:34:42.980 Insurance.
01:34:43.940 Investments.
01:34:44.760 Advice.
01:34:45.240 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.
01:34:51.100 It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and
01:34:55.820 important political, legal, and cultural figures today.
01:34:59.160 You can catch The Megan Kelly Show on Triumph, a Sirius XM channel featuring lots of hosts
01:35:03.700 you may know and probably love.
01:35:06.500 Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.
01:35:12.980 You can stream The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM at home or anywhere you are.
01:35:17.920 No car required.
01:35:19.600 I do it all the time.
01:35:20.660 I love the Sirius XM app.
01:35:23.240 It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more.
01:35:28.940 Subscribe now.
01:35:29.660 Get your first three months for free.
01:35:31.900 Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free.
01:35:37.380 That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free.
01:35:43.760 Offer details apply.
01:35:44.840 VDH is back with me, and I skipped this one on Marco Rubio's appearance before the Senate
01:35:54.900 Foreign Relations Committee.
01:35:56.540 But the issue of immigration and these so-called refugees came up in his exchange with Tim Kaine.
01:36:03.980 And in particular, they got into a bit on these Afrikaners.
01:36:08.180 Watch a little bit of that in Sat 10.
01:36:09.540 I'm going to ask you, what's a well-justified fear of persecution?
01:36:14.480 Yeah, they thought their farms were being burned down and they were being killed.
01:36:17.180 I think that's a pretty good justification for wanting to come.
01:36:19.500 They're afraid for their lives.
01:36:20.380 And should it be applied in an even-handed way?
01:36:22.860 That's an easy question.
01:36:23.460 No, our foreign policy doesn't require even-handedness.
01:36:26.920 It requires prioritizing the interests of the United States.
01:36:29.160 That phrase says you are entitled to entrance as a refugee if you demonstrate a well-justified
01:36:34.500 fear of persecution.
01:36:36.040 No, no, you're not entitled.
01:36:36.880 So can you have a different standard based upon the color of somebody's skin?
01:36:40.300 Would that be acceptable?
01:36:40.920 Well, I'm not the one arguing that.
01:36:42.120 Apparently you are, because you don't like the fact that they're white.
01:36:44.140 I'm just asking you to say that that would be unacceptable.
01:36:46.060 Well, no, I would say that the United States-
01:36:47.660 That would seem to be a very easy thing to say.
01:36:48.840 The United States has a right to pick and choose who they allow into the United States.
01:36:51.780 Even based on the color of somebody's skin, you're saying?
01:36:53.640 You're the one that's talking about the color of their skin, not me.
01:36:57.000 He's so good.
01:36:58.100 He cannot be bullied.
01:36:59.160 But that's just to give you a flavor for how the Democrats sound about these 59 South African
01:37:05.480 citizens.
01:37:05.980 So here, the president of South Africa shows up in the Oval.
01:37:09.200 And first, what happens here in South 40 is President Trump shows them video of what
01:37:17.100 President Trump says are burial grounds in South Africa.
01:37:21.240 Watch.
01:37:22.900 Now, this is very bad.
01:37:24.700 These are burial sites right here.
01:37:29.160 Burial sites.
01:37:30.480 Over 1,000 of white farmers.
01:37:35.480 And those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning.
01:37:41.640 Each one of those white things you see is a cross.
01:37:44.760 And there's approximately 1,000 of them.
01:37:52.080 And there's a family of white farmers.
01:37:53.080 And those cars aren't driving.
01:37:56.360 They're stopped there to pay respects to their family member who was killed.
01:38:00.120 Uh, and it's a terrible site.
01:38:03.800 I've never seen anything like it.
01:38:06.260 Now, this is the New York Times' description of this.
01:38:08.840 This is an extraordinary scene.
01:38:10.660 The Trump team clearly came to the meeting prepared to play videos backing up their false
01:38:14.340 claim that there are mass killings against the white South Africans.
01:38:18.220 Ramaphosa began by turning to the video and smiling, visibly surprised.
01:38:22.000 He had been sitting in his seat silently keeping his eyes elsewhere.
01:38:24.760 I'd like to know where that is, because this I've never seen, says Ramaphosa, suggesting without
01:38:30.040 directly saying it, that Trump is being misled.
01:38:32.300 And this video is from somewhere other than South Africa.
01:38:36.080 Then he tried, the South African president, to explain land law.
01:38:40.260 Uh, and Trump had an interjection of his own when that happened here in SOT 43.
01:38:47.740 We've got to deal with the past.
01:38:50.800 The government, and as your government also has the right, to expropriate land for public
01:38:56.120 use.
01:38:57.160 And you're doing that.
01:38:58.080 And, uh, what, we've never really gotten underway with that.
01:39:02.480 And we, we are going to be doing so.
01:39:04.320 You're taking, you're taking people's land away.
01:39:06.720 We have not.
01:39:07.420 From them.
01:39:07.660 And we have, and those people in many cases are being executed.
01:39:11.440 They're being executed.
01:39:13.000 And they happen to be white.
01:39:14.840 And most of them happen to be farmers.
01:39:17.400 And that's a tough situation.
01:39:19.320 I don't know how you explain that.
01:39:20.820 How do you explain that?
01:39:22.660 They're taking people's land away.
01:39:25.080 And in many cases, those people are being executed.
01:39:27.820 And in many cases, it's not the government that's doing it.
01:39:30.220 It's people that kill them and then take their land.
01:39:33.120 And by the way, there's no question that in January, South Africa passed a law that makes
01:39:40.220 it legal to seize privately owned land without compensation.
01:39:44.280 Um, that's very clear.
01:39:46.060 That is the law now in South Africa.
01:39:48.780 So all of that goes down between the two of them.
01:39:51.440 President Trump's trying to make a point.
01:39:53.180 The South African president's rejecting it, but President Trump is showing video.
01:39:57.440 And then this guy, I guess it's a professional golfer named, uh, Goosen, his last name, Ratif
01:40:04.540 Goosen.
01:40:05.080 He was brought along by the South African president.
01:40:08.620 He's supposed to be a witness for him, but the more he talks, the worse it seemed to get
01:40:14.680 for the South African president's claim that there's nothing to see there.
01:40:19.020 Listen to him.
01:40:21.080 I grew up in an area in South Africa that is a farmland area, Polakwani.
01:40:26.660 And, um, yeah, there is some issues up there.
01:40:29.860 Obviously, uh, my dad was a property developer as well as a part-time farmer.
01:40:35.080 And, yeah, some of these, uh, buddy farmers got killed.
01:40:39.240 Um, the farm is still going.
01:40:41.920 My brother's running.
01:40:43.120 But it's a constant battle with farms trying to get, they're trying to burn the farms down
01:40:47.900 to, uh, chase you away.
01:40:50.080 So it is, it is a concern to try to get water.
01:40:52.700 So is your family and your brother, do they feel safe on the farm?
01:40:56.680 They live behind electric fences, you know, try and be at night, uh, safe.
01:41:01.800 Um, but it is, it is constant whenever you leave that, that something could happen.
01:41:08.600 And, uh, um, you know, both of them has been attacked in their houses.
01:41:14.720 My mom's been attacked in the house when she was 80.
01:41:17.400 So it is, it is, um, uh, difficult.
01:41:20.580 So he's white, by the way, your thoughts on that in our last minute on Sirius XM, we'll
01:41:25.940 carry this over on pod.
01:41:27.920 Yeah, I think everybody knows that the left's attitude is that because three generations or
01:41:33.440 two generations earlier, there was apartheid, everybody who is descended from the white minority
01:41:38.920 that exercise power is still culpable for everything.
01:41:43.380 And while they might say, well, that's too bad, they don't really regret what's going
01:41:47.840 on.
01:41:48.320 They feel that it's sort of divine punishment.
01:41:50.660 They're not going to do anything.
01:41:51.860 We have reasons though, to separate ourselves more from South Africa besides just, and that's
01:41:56.880 one reason, but they are the most, one of the most anti-Semitic, anti-Israel countries
01:42:02.320 in the world, at least on their voting record in the UN.
01:42:05.120 They're no friend of the United States.
01:42:07.260 You know, they're going to go, they're going to play this out the way that Mugabe did in
01:42:11.080 Rhodesia.
01:42:11.580 They understood they had a history of kind of an apartheid too there, not kind of, but
01:42:16.520 an actual one in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe.
01:42:19.720 So they got rid of all of the white farmers.
01:42:22.440 They were a net food exporter and then they were not self-sufficient to food.
01:42:26.920 And that's the trajectory that South Africa is going to be.
01:42:31.540 And so they've got a problem and it was a very advanced, sophisticated country, but it was
01:42:36.260 an apartheid country.
01:42:37.460 So they don't know quite, they're a little bit confused because they have that Zimbabwe
01:42:41.460 example before them.
01:42:43.400 So they're not as, they're not as overt and they're going after white farmers, but
01:42:49.160 basically their attitude and the attitude of the international left is that they get a
01:42:55.200 blank check to do whatever they want because of the history of apartheid.
01:42:58.280 And nobody, yeah, that's just a fact.
01:43:01.520 It's not, and what Rubio was basically saying, how in the world can you let in 30 million
01:43:08.220 people from all over the world, the vast 99% are not white and will allow them to apply,
01:43:14.900 come in here as economic refugees, but then claim they're political refugees.
01:43:18.960 And we didn't object and you did this.
01:43:21.620 And now you're saying that it's racist to let in 60 something people when you let in
01:43:27.140 millions of people that were not white, deliberately not white because of the 1965 immigration laws.
01:43:32.440 So what are you, so you can't reason with them.
01:43:35.580 And I think Rubio understands that.
01:43:37.040 He doesn't want to argue with them.
01:43:39.060 They're just ideologues and they're racist too.
01:43:42.360 They really are.
01:43:44.080 So here is, here's one of the soundbites that we're told Trump played for the South African
01:43:50.780 president.
01:43:51.240 Um, it is the listening, listening audience from June of 2018.
01:43:56.260 Um, and the, you will hear in this soundbite, the head of South Africa's EFF party, uh, being
01:44:03.740 interviewed by a somewhat incredulous interviewer from a documentary.
01:44:08.260 Listen here to Sat 12.
01:44:09.780 There's no crime I've committed.
01:44:11.900 I've never slept a white person, nothing.
01:44:16.500 I've never called for their slaughter.
01:44:18.480 I've never called for their killing.
01:44:20.180 At least for now.
01:44:22.520 I can't guarantee the future.
01:44:23.860 Yeah, but I mean, you'd understand somebody watching that.
01:44:26.980 They freak out.
01:44:28.020 It sounds like a genocidal call.
01:44:29.800 Ah, cry babies.
01:44:31.440 Cry babies.
01:44:32.160 I'm not calling for the slaughter of white people, at least for now.
01:44:34.920 I'm saying to you, not under my leadership will we call for the slaughter of white people.
01:44:42.320 I don't know who's coming after me.
01:44:44.060 I will not speak for them.
01:44:46.440 Amazing.
01:44:47.160 And by the way, that's Julius Malema.
01:44:49.000 He's still the leader of this EFF party, which is still the fourth largest party in South
01:44:54.880 Africa's National Assembly, holding 39 of the 400 seats.
01:44:58.140 His official title is president and commander in chief of the EFF.
01:45:01.560 Doesn't sound like a great place to be if you are white.
01:45:05.340 And one other thing, Victor, the South African, this is via Katie Pavlich on X, the South African
01:45:11.260 minister of agriculture confirmed in the Oval today that white farmers are being killed and
01:45:18.080 that it's a serious problem, that it's a serious problem.
01:45:22.140 They know that.
01:45:23.440 I think Trump's attitude is the right one.
01:45:25.440 He's he's just saying, you know what, we have no animosity toward you.
01:45:30.260 We just don't want to have close relations with you, given what you want to do.
01:45:33.740 If you want to do that, fine.
01:45:34.860 We're just not going to talk.
01:45:36.260 You're going to be like Venezuela or Cuba.
01:45:38.380 And I think given what the attractions of students coming here and the U.S. market and
01:45:45.200 U.S. aid, I think that's the right attitude.
01:45:47.240 It's not to get into argument with you because they'll just deny it.
01:45:49.980 Just say, you are practicing a reverse apartheid.
01:45:54.620 We know that.
01:45:55.560 And you won't do anything about it.
01:45:57.140 But go ahead.
01:45:57.940 You're just not going to.
01:45:59.800 We're not going to have close relations.
01:46:01.340 You're not going to get aid.
01:46:02.260 You're not going to get a trade deal.
01:46:03.620 You're not going to send students here.
01:46:05.060 And I think that's that's the proper attitude.
01:46:07.480 And we should have that's a good attitude toward China, too, with their 300,000 students
01:46:12.620 that are here.
01:46:14.080 Trump has a lot of leverage.
01:46:15.760 He's really shocked people in the United States because they all said China has leverage.
01:46:20.460 This country has leverage.
01:46:21.760 They don't.
01:46:22.760 They have all these students that want to come here.
01:46:24.920 They have all these green card holders that want to come here.
01:46:28.540 They all get foreign aid.
01:46:30.420 They get technological expertise transfers.
01:46:33.800 And he has all the cards and he knows it.
01:46:36.400 And that's why he showed it.
01:46:37.260 He can just say, you know what?
01:46:38.160 We have no animosity toward you.
01:46:39.680 None at all.
01:46:40.480 But what you're doing is wrong.
01:46:41.840 And we don't want you to be a friend of the United States until you change.
01:46:45.380 I think you'll have results.
01:46:46.780 And we are going to accept these white farmers as refugees, even if you don't like it, which
01:46:50.980 this guy, Ramaphosa, has called them cowards.
01:46:53.960 He says they're cowards for fleeing.
01:46:55.740 You should stay there and let us take your farms.
01:46:58.000 And you'll have to live behind electric barbed wire.
01:47:00.360 And we might murder a few of you, too, like that guy, that that golfer, supposedly a witness
01:47:05.120 for the South African government saying, yeah, you know, they attacked my mother.
01:47:08.620 They attacked my two brothers.
01:47:09.680 They're living behind electric fences.
01:47:11.260 But yeah, OK, I'm here on whose behalf again.
01:47:13.980 Let me show you this other thing, Victor.
01:47:15.820 Elon Musk participated in this South Africa Qatar Economic Forum.
01:47:21.500 Sorry, this Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday via Zoom.
01:47:26.420 And of course, he's from South Africa.
01:47:28.360 And this interviewer tries to get up in his grill.
01:47:33.120 Her name is Michelle Hussain.
01:47:35.440 She works for Bloomberg.
01:47:37.680 And Elon has been railing about what's happening in South Africa, including how racist the laws
01:47:43.500 are now, like one that affected him directly.
01:47:46.160 He's got Starlink now, this Internet service that has come to the rescue in war-torn areas
01:47:51.980 and elsewhere.
01:47:52.740 And he's trying to bring it to South Africa.
01:47:54.760 And he says that he couldn't because South Africa has a law, the so-called Black Economic
01:48:01.460 Empowerment Laws, that in many cases require any company doing business there to have at
01:48:07.120 least 30 percent Black ownership, which is like, so if you're a white owner of Starlink,
01:48:13.940 like Elon, even if you're South African by birth, it's a no, you can't, you can't bring it.
01:48:18.880 So he's unhappy about that.
01:48:21.020 And this Bloomberg's Michelle Hussain gets an interview with Elon at the Qatar Economic
01:48:26.900 Forum, again, via Zoom.
01:48:29.240 And let me show you a couple of soundbites of how that went.
01:48:33.580 Hold on, maybe we only have one.
01:48:34.760 It's 11A.
01:48:37.880 Bloomberg broke news today that the South African government is working around the rules on Black
01:48:42.940 ownership in order to allow Stalin, and that is being done on the eve of the visit that
01:48:48.480 President Ramaphosa is going to make to the White House.
01:48:51.940 Do you recognize that as a conflict of interest?
01:48:55.280 No, of course not.
01:48:56.620 First of all, you should be questioning, why are there racist laws in South Africa?
01:49:00.200 That's the first problem.
01:49:01.660 That's what you should be attacking.
01:49:02.740 It's improper for there to be racist laws in South Africa.
01:49:06.780 The whole idea with what Nelson Mandela, who was a great man, proposed was that all racers
01:49:12.420 should be on an equal footing in South Africa.
01:49:14.420 That's the right thing to do, not to replace one set of racist laws with another set of racist
01:49:18.380 laws, which is utterly wrong and improper.
01:49:20.680 And then here's the follow-up, 11B.
01:49:25.220 Now I'm in this absurd situation where I was born in South Africa, but can't get a license
01:49:28.800 to operate in Stalin because I'm not Black.
01:49:31.800 Well, it looks like that's about to change.
01:49:37.520 I just asked you a question.
01:49:39.140 Please answer.
01:49:39.960 Does that seem right to you?
01:49:41.320 Well, those rules were designed to bring about an era of more economic equality in South Africa.
01:49:50.100 And it looks like the government has found a way around those rules for you.
01:49:55.540 Ask your question.
01:49:57.580 This is your interview.
01:49:59.240 Everyone wants to hear from you.
01:50:00.600 Ask your question.
01:50:01.360 Yes or no?
01:50:02.340 Not for me to answer.
01:50:04.920 I have got a question for you about your government work and the amount of savings.
01:50:10.580 Why do you like racist laws?
01:50:13.340 This is not for me to answer.
01:50:15.400 Come on.
01:50:15.980 Yes, it is.
01:50:16.300 Now, you wouldn't be trying to dodge a question.
01:50:18.640 You have to ask the question.
01:50:20.240 I don't ask my question.
01:50:21.260 No, you answer mine.
01:50:23.860 So good, Victor.
01:50:25.740 She's not going to answer because she agrees with it.
01:50:27.800 The odd thing is we have somewhat similar laws here that on public construction, a certain
01:50:32.740 number, percentage of, I think we saw that with the Obama library, that there is an idea
01:50:40.020 that Black-owned businesses are guaranteed a particular percentage of a particular.
01:50:44.620 Oh, yeah.
01:50:45.380 Look what's happening in Hollywood.
01:50:46.360 You can't get your film nominated for these awards unless you have a certain quota of
01:50:51.980 Black, minority, LGBTQ, whatever employees working for you.
01:50:56.740 Yeah.
01:50:57.380 And the question that I would have is, does this help the majority of citizens of South
01:51:02.300 Africa, all of these laws, and to discourage foreign investment and to go after these people
01:51:07.180 who, right, they've been there for nine generations, some of them, and they're very good.
01:51:12.300 They're some of the best farmers in the world, and the foreign exchange they earn and the
01:51:17.020 bounty they produce helps everybody in the country.
01:51:19.860 And to get rid of them and kill them or drive them off the land and put people on there that
01:51:24.280 don't have that expertise, we know what happened because we saw it in Rhodesia.
01:51:28.660 There has to be a trend, there has to be some type of mechanism where if you really want
01:51:34.700 Blacks to be better farmers, have internships or something, or have, I think over half the
01:51:39.640 land in South Africa is owned by the government anyway, then have government land sold to people
01:51:44.820 who qualify, you know, as adept farmers.
01:51:48.340 But it's not going to happen.
01:51:51.940 And South Africa is the polar opposite of Israel.
01:51:54.740 The international community idolizes and overlooks all of the felonies of South Africa, and
01:52:02.740 they idolize them because of Mandela and apartheid and all of that.
01:52:06.580 I understand that.
01:52:07.420 And then they magnify everything Israel does and hate Israel.
01:52:11.340 And you can usually see a person's political ideology on those two barometers.
01:52:15.940 They hate Israel and they idolize South Africa.
01:52:18.420 And if you try to argue with them that Israel is a functional, progressive democracy in South
01:52:24.420 Africa is not, they don't care.
01:52:27.100 It's race, race, race, race, race, race, race.
01:52:30.020 Last topic, because you're the perfect person to ask about James Comey and his little walk
01:52:36.920 along the seashore where he just innocently, surprisingly stumbled upon seashells arranged in
01:52:44.700 the numbers 86, 47.
01:52:47.500 Now, he's trying to promote a book, and he's gotten himself a lot of free media coverage.
01:52:54.160 The latest was on MSNBC, where he went on Monday.
01:53:03.680 And here is what he said in SOT 24.
01:53:07.780 You are back in the middle of a political firestorm.
01:53:11.000 Yeah, for walking on the beach with my wife.
01:53:14.540 So I don't know how we ended up here.
01:53:16.460 It never occurred to me that it was any kind of controversial thing, but that's the time
01:53:20.260 we live in.
01:53:21.020 As a kid, it always meant to leave a place, to ditch a place.
01:53:24.360 I said, that's really clever.
01:53:25.760 So then she said, you should take a picture of that.
01:53:27.460 And I did.
01:53:28.400 And I posted it on my Instagram account and thought nothing more of.
01:53:32.560 I regret the distraction and the controversy around it.
01:53:36.100 But again, it's hard to have regret about something that, even in hindsight, looks to me to be
01:53:40.500 totally innocent.
01:53:42.440 Totally innocent.
01:53:43.280 I've got to show you one more.
01:53:44.500 Here he is on Colbert late last night, Tuesday night.
01:53:48.120 Look at this, SOT 22.
01:53:50.540 Is this Instagram?
01:53:52.440 Instagram, yeah.
01:53:52.860 You grabbed this.
01:53:53.960 You were walking on the beach.
01:53:55.040 What happened?
01:53:55.780 You were walking on the beach, and you saw this on the beach?
01:53:58.320 Yeah, my wife and I, Patrice, were walking on the beach and saw those numbers in shells
01:54:02.900 on the beach.
01:54:03.540 You didn't do this.
01:54:04.200 Somebody else did this.
01:54:04.980 Yeah, somebody else did it.
01:54:05.800 We were on a walk, preparing for this week, the rollout of my book.
01:54:09.260 She looked at it and said, why'd someone put their address in the sand?
01:54:12.500 All right.
01:54:13.760 And then we stood at it, looked at it, trying to figure out what it was, and she'd long
01:54:17.620 been a server in restaurants.
01:54:18.980 And she said, you know what I think it is?
01:54:20.280 Yeah.
01:54:20.760 I think it's a reference to restaurants, when you would 86 something in a restaurant.
01:54:24.240 Right, it's off the menu.
01:54:25.160 Yeah.
01:54:25.580 I said, no, I remember when I was a kid, you'd say 86 to get out of a place.
01:54:29.240 This place stinks, let's 86 it.
01:54:30.800 I was a bartender.
01:54:31.740 You would 86 a customer if they were getting drunk.
01:54:33.780 Like, that's 86, I'm just like, give them a low proof alcohol, something like that.
01:54:38.020 Yeah.
01:54:38.360 And so I said, I think it's a clever political message.
01:54:41.340 And she said, you should take a picture of it.
01:54:43.360 I said, sure.
01:54:44.020 And then she said, you should Instagram that.
01:54:46.120 And boom.
01:54:46.520 No, that's not quite the story, is it?
01:54:50.180 Because what was unique about that entire exegesis, he never mentioned the word 47, not once.
01:54:57.940 He didn't say, he just said 86.
01:55:00.180 No, you know that while it is a common vernacular to say you're going to kick somebody out of
01:55:05.320 a bar 86, that in the last two decades, it's taken on another connotation to eliminate somebody.
01:55:11.080 And it has.
01:55:11.880 And he's the head of the FBI, and he knows that better than anybody.
01:55:15.480 And he knows that he took that picture to put it on there to generate controversy and
01:55:22.280 to reflect his visceral hatred of Donald Trump, whom he blames for ending his corrupt career.
01:55:27.860 And it was going to be publicity for the book.
01:55:30.440 And it worked out pretty well for him, he thinks.
01:55:32.880 But remember, Megan, this is the guy who hired Christopher Steele and basically is an FBI contractor.
01:55:40.400 He used the Steele dossier, which was completely bogus, to get FISA warrants.
01:55:45.000 His lawyer, one of the FBI lawyers, Kevin Clinesmith, forged a document.
01:55:50.480 He himself had a conversation with the president of the United States, which was confidential.
01:55:55.020 He turned around, recorded it on the FBI device, leaked it.
01:55:59.120 He bragged that he had ambushed, his FBI agents had ambushed Michael Flynn on a bogus Logan
01:56:05.440 Act and destroyed Michael Flynn's career.
01:56:08.580 We also know that he said that Hillary Clinton, he took on the role not just as an FBI investigator,
01:56:15.160 but for some reason as a prosecutor.
01:56:17.400 A virtual attorney general in the 2016 election said Hillary Clinton was guilty of transmitting
01:56:24.860 classified files, maybe destroying subpoenaed evidence, but no jury would convict her.
01:56:30.740 And therefore, as a now he as a attorney general, he was not going to prosecute her.
01:56:35.980 Loretta Lynch just abdicated.
01:56:37.680 So he was the he was the iconic person of why Kash Patel is going to shut down.
01:56:43.600 There's that the building is unsafe anyway, but he's going to shut down the FBI headquarters
01:56:48.040 because he looks at Robert Mueller and he says this guy came before the House Intelligence
01:56:52.220 and denied he even knew GPS or steel dossier, the catalyst that got him appointed.
01:56:57.400 Then we had Comey, which we just mentioned.
01:56:59.640 The third guy in that succession was Andrew McCabe, interim director.
01:57:04.180 He lied on four occasions to federal authorities, three times under oath, was fired.
01:57:08.700 Then we had Christopher Wright, who gave us, you know, monitoring traditional Catholics,
01:57:15.540 going to school board meetings, monitoring people, the performance art, Mar-a-Lago raid,
01:57:22.280 et cetera, et cetera.
01:57:23.380 So that whole last 20 years of FBI directors, I'm not even mentioning Peter Stroke or James A.
01:57:30.260 Baker, who was using, as you remember, Twitter and Facebook were involved in the 2020 election,
01:57:37.060 sensory news.
01:57:38.140 They had the laptop for a year.
01:57:39.700 They knew it was authentic, and yet they let the 51 intelligence authorities lie to the American
01:57:45.580 people on the verge of a debate.
01:57:47.280 That whole thing was corrupt, and now they're going to shut down the office, transfer the
01:57:52.240 1,500 employees somewhere else.
01:57:54.720 But James Comey basically inherited, as did Mueller, as did McCabe, as did Christopher Wright,
01:58:03.880 an iconic institution.
01:58:05.620 And when they got done with it, they had ruined their reputation because of their behavior.
01:58:10.980 It was in tatters.
01:58:11.960 Yeah, it is.
01:58:12.660 They were unethical, and they were weaponized.
01:58:15.840 And there was something very wrong with having that.
01:58:18.300 Almost one-third of all the agents were located somewhere in the Washington area.
01:58:24.160 And you might argue that all the crime is there, but it's not the violent crime, one-third of the
01:58:29.820 country, and they need to be dispersed, and maybe Cash Patel can take the headquarters,
01:58:34.200 not put it in Virginia, but put it in Oklahoma City or Kansas in the center of the state,
01:58:39.400 and get it out of that toxic environment in Washington.
01:58:43.060 We will have more on that tomorrow when we're joined by Michael Knowles on what Cash said,
01:58:48.460 and a little bit more on James Comey as well.
01:58:50.640 In the meantime, VDH, thank you.
01:58:52.280 It's wonderful talking to you.
01:58:53.480 Great to see you.
01:58:54.200 Thank you for having me, Megan.
01:58:55.540 Oh, my gosh.
01:58:57.560 What a show.
01:58:58.360 So much going on right now.
01:58:59.480 It's just like every day, right, with the Trump administration, but the media, too.
01:59:04.200 There's so much.
01:59:04.660 We haven't even gotten to the fact that CBS News is imploding.
01:59:07.220 I mean, completely imploding.
01:59:08.520 We'll get to that tomorrow.
01:59:10.380 There's a lot.
01:59:11.600 Hegseth yesterday announced a full-fledged investigation into the withdrawal from Afghanistan,
01:59:16.300 the disastrous withdrawal.
01:59:17.780 Good for him.
01:59:18.980 There's a lot.
01:59:19.800 We'll tackle all the rest of it and whatever helps us between now and then tomorrow with
01:59:23.680 Michael Knowles and Anna Kasparians back, too.
01:59:25.920 Okay, see you then.
01:59:29.680 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.
01:59:31.540 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.