The Megyn Kelly Show - Media's Failed Pushback on Power and Ridiculous COVID Restrictions, with Nick Gillespie and Tara Henley

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.920 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.040 Lots to get to on this Monday morning as tensions ramp up at home and abroad.

00:00:20.160 President Biden is reportedly going to make a decision this week about whether to send thousands of U.S. troops to Eastern Europe and the Baltics.

00:00:28.400 And here at home, the uptick in crime has now led to the death of a young, newly married New York City cop.

00:00:35.500 This police officer was married in October, 22 years old, had everything going for him.

00:00:40.360 His partner, meantime, clinging to life right now after being shot in the head.

00:00:44.980 Joining me now to discuss it is Nick Gillespie. Nick is the editor-at-large for the Libertarian Reason magazine.

00:00:52.180 Nick recently had this to say about the state of our nation, quote,

00:00:54.380 What we're facing in America is not a pandemic or economic malaise or resurgence of inequality, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, or lack of options, food, shelter, you name it.

00:01:05.260 What we are facing is a crisis of meaning.

00:01:08.580 Nick, great to have you here. How are you?

00:01:10.320 Thanks for having me.

00:01:11.960 Despite not having real transcendental meaning in my life, I'm doing very well.

00:01:16.120 So thank you for having me.

00:01:17.620 So what does that mean, a crisis of meaning?

00:01:19.320 You know where that came from? I write a lot at Reason magazine.

00:01:23.180 I write a lot about politics and culture, and I think we're in a particular stage now where politics is toxic and all-consuming.

00:01:31.520 And those things are not, you know, they're linked.

00:01:33.900 When politics becomes everything, they become toxic.

00:01:37.680 And I think we are looking for politics to give big meaning to our lives in a way that politics can never provide.

00:01:45.280 But we keep doing that rather than looking for meaning outside of politics, in our interactions with people, building businesses, building communities, helping people, and things like that.

00:01:57.280 And so I think we're in a particularly bad moment right now because politics is everything, and that makes us hostile.

00:02:05.420 It polarizes us, and it also ultimately keeps us from living the lives that actually would give us some kind of community and some kind of forward optimism.

00:02:15.280 When you say politics, do you include, like, culture?

00:02:19.100 I mean, I've heard it said.

00:02:19.960 Absolutely.

00:02:20.820 Yeah, and I agree that a lot of these sort of woke leftist activists, they think of themselves as the next Rosa Parks because they're trying to get women redefined as bodies with vaginas.

00:02:32.260 Something I literally saw this weekend in a magazine.

00:02:35.520 Okay, like we're cadavers that just happen to have female lady parts.

00:02:38.660 But they think that they're Rosa Parks or some sort of earth-shifting activist because they're policing language in a way that a lot of us find offensive.

00:02:47.600 Well, and that when you can't escape from politics in any part of your life, at a certain point in the early 70s, German student feminists were famous for castigating men who urinated standing up.

00:03:02.360 So at every point of your life is subject to some kind of political scrutiny.

00:03:08.560 There's some, you know, I mean, there's some cause for that, but then it becomes totalitarian in the strongest sense of the word.

00:03:14.820 You are not allowed to have bad thoughts because that might give rise to bad speech.

00:03:19.220 And so now we have to police your mind.

00:03:21.040 I don't think it's simply a function of the left, but I think in its most successful and its most visible form right now, it is this kind of woke activism that is everywhere.

00:03:32.860 And it makes it hard for people to talk because you might say the wrong thing, and then you don't want to think the wrong thing, et cetera.

00:03:40.040 And it puts us on our heels as a society.

00:03:42.960 And we just don't, you know, you can't live your life if you're constantly worried about saying the wrong thing or thinking the wrong thing and then doing the wrong thing.

00:03:51.540 Mm hmm. You you've you sort of have a point just in your writings about how we're blessed to be living in a great period, really.

00:04:01.160 I mean, if you look back at the 20th century and they always had big crises or big, massive shifts going on in society to focus on or bring them together from the Industrial Revolution to the Great Depression to World War Two.

00:04:13.020 And then the post World War Two recovery period where we were settling down, we were having families, we were sort of living in the new America.

00:04:19.040 Those are sort of some golden years in some ways, not in all the 60s came in the civil rights era, the 70s, the gas lines.

00:04:28.380 No, but it was great. I mean, also, like, you know, I and I realize you you may have a more jaded view of the 60s than I do.

00:04:34.700 But, you know, the 60s is when civil rights actually became a reality or the civil rights revolution was was fulfilled in in 64 and 65.

00:04:43.780 Blacks became more part of the country. Women, you know, by the end of the decade, women and gay people were able to start living their lives more fully.

00:04:51.700 I think, you know, it's it we've been expanding opportunity. We've been expanding wealth and resources, you know, throughout our lifetimes.

00:05:00.020 And it's kind of great. And what I was arguing, that was a long Twitter thread that, you know, kind of went viral.

00:05:06.440 What I was saying in the piece you were quoting from at the beginning is we have you know, we're very high up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

00:05:14.060 We're at the tip of the pyramid, really. And, you know, clothes, food, shelter.

00:05:18.780 You're these things are basically covered for the vast majority of people in America and in North America and in Europe.

00:05:26.320 And then we're left with, you know, the question of, well, what do you do with all of this freedom?

00:05:31.080 What do you do with all of this opportunity? And I think we're shirking the responsibility of building something positive.

00:05:36.920 And we're trying to make everything into a political battle where some minority that gets enough votes and enough power can say to everybody else, you have to live my way or get out.

00:05:47.000 Mm hmm. Yep. Well, that's the problem. So, I mean, even, you know, getting into the more recent era after the Cold War, we wound up having 9-11 and that that kept us together fighting the war on terror for a number of years.

00:05:57.420 And now it's like we do live in a pretty good time where people are suddenly they've just decided to treat 2022 and the year before it as though it were still 1964 when it comes to civil rights, when it comes to women's rights.

00:06:11.180 And those of us, I didn't I wasn't alive in the 60s, but I was pretty closely born to them.

00:06:16.700 And I understand the progress that was being made back then. And I've lived the progress for 50 years looking around, saying you're ignoring reality.

00:06:23.440 You're creating problems because you appear to need drama.

00:06:27.240 Right. I mean, this is, you know, one of the problems, I think, with a lot of liberationist movements is that they get to a point where they can no longer accept progress.

00:06:36.740 And so you do have a lot of people who are acting as if it's 19, it's 1952 rather than 2022 in terms of opportunities, in terms of the, you know, the mass eradication of kind of structural racism in American society where, you know, schools were segregated, housing, you know, was completely segregated by law, not by custom and things like that.

00:06:59.700 So much has improved. And it doesn't mean like, OK, we've had enough progress. We can stop talking about that.

00:07:05.400 But if we are going to live in a world where we're acting, you know, we're describing Bull Connor's America in a world where people are, you know, so free and so liberated.

00:07:15.480 It keeps us from actually taking advantage of the opportunities that are in front of us.

00:07:20.780 And even something like the pandemic, you know, COVID, COVID is real. It is awful.

00:07:25.980 It has killed, you know, over 800000 Americans, which is mind boggling.

00:07:29.820 You know, in two years, it's killed more people, you know, than were basically killed in the Civil War, World War Two, you know, from an American perspective.

00:07:37.320 But what's also great about that is that we developed vaccines that are safe and effective and widely distributed almost immediately.

00:07:45.840 We could have done it even faster if, you know, the CDC and the FDA were kind of put to the sideline or were not given a monopoly on how to do public health responses.

00:07:54.720 But the fact is, you know, we're in an exceptional moment where there is a great amount of freedom, agency, autonomy, economic possibilities.

00:08:04.540 And we are litigating the smallest, weirdest kind of, you know, issues that we we should be moving past.

00:08:12.660 Yeah. It's like a marriage that's too good.

00:08:15.020 And one of the spouses just decides to nitpick the other one over the small bullshit where it's like you have a great relationship.

00:08:22.360 What are you doing? Right. Like you're ruining it for no his sideburns.

00:08:26.940 You know, he just won't do what I want him to do about the sideburns or something.

00:08:30.920 And yeah. So like you're focusing when you have everything in front of you, you're focusing on things.

00:08:35.840 I am also worried that we you know, the 21st century and I was born in 1963.

00:08:40.380 So I'm 58 and I can remember, you know, thinking about what's the 21st century going to be like.

00:08:45.020 And I was excited that I was going to get to live in a new century and all of this kind of stuff.

00:08:49.700 And the 21st century has been very disappointing to me in some ways.

00:08:53.940 I mean, it's great. You know, people are wealthier.

00:08:55.900 You know, things like the Internet. You know, I mean, it's just it's a fantastic technological world.

00:09:00.420 But we are living in what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben talks about, like a consistent series of what he calls states of exception in liberal democracies.

00:09:12.040 He's picking up on a Nazi philosopher who talked about how, you know, you can you can take over liberal democracies, constitutional democracies by kind of ginning up a state of exception.

00:09:23.460 Where you say in order to protect the liberal order, a limited government, a lot of freedom, you know, free markets, things like that.

00:09:31.320 You you create a state of exception and then say, well, in order to save society, to save this great society, we have to suspend the rules because there's an emergency going on.

00:09:40.400 9-11 provided that, you know, and then that was running out of juice.

00:09:44.340 Then the financial crisis came. Then there were, you know, crises on the border.

00:09:49.360 So we have to suspend certain types of things. Then COVID comes.

00:09:53.060 And we in the 21st century, we have been living in a consistent set of states of exception that say, you know what, you can't you know, we need the government to be bigger.

00:10:02.120 We need the government to be doing more, to be regulating more, to telling you more how to live.

00:10:05.980 And then you have these people who are kind of, you know, what are they called, you know, the types of fish that get onto onto sharks and things like that and feed off them.

00:10:18.260 And now you have a lot of people, you know, trying to become host or, you know, parasites on big government and direct it to their preferred way of living, which worries me.

00:10:28.000 This is, for me, the major battle is, you know, we live in a country where in 2019, we spent $4.4 trillion, the federal government.

00:10:36.900 In 2021, we spent $6.8 trillion. The government increased by 50%. It shoveled so much money into the economy.

00:10:45.760 That's why we're having inflation. Politicians on the right and the left are talking about trying to regulate every transaction that we have on some level.

00:10:53.300 And that's the fight I think we should be having.

00:10:55.960 Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more. It used to be that we'd spend a couple trillion dollars.

00:11:00.400 It would make headlines for months. The debate over it would dominate every news cycle.

00:11:04.480 Now it's a rounding error.

00:11:05.860 No, yeah. I mean, you know, the infrastructure bill or whatever, you know, or the COVID relief bill was too small.

00:11:11.980 And now people are redoing the economic crisis and saying the problem with Obama's stimulus, you know, which came in around $800 billion was that it was too small.

00:11:21.340 It's like, no, no, it's not that.

00:11:23.480 It's like, you know, we have been, you know, if there's inflation anywhere, it's just in this, you know, the idea that the government needs to be spending even more than it does in order to change things.

00:11:34.260 And it doesn't help with that. Like we are doing phenomenally well.

00:11:38.360 And I think, you know, this is for me, one of the problems with politics. It's a zero sum game.

00:11:44.380 And, you know, you get enough votes and you can force everybody to live the way you want to.

00:11:49.280 And I think the promise of America rarely realized, but it's the ideal is that, no, what we do in America is we squeeze politics down to the smallest part of our lives.

00:11:59.140 There's certain things. I'm a libertarian. I'm not an anarchist. I believe there is a role for government in the provision of certain types of goods and services and structuring certain parts of society.

00:12:08.380 But the American ideal is that we squeeze that down to the smallest amount possible so that people are free to kind of create themselves and innovate their lives, inform the communities, you know, and the lives and the jobs and the businesses they want.

00:12:21.880 And that's the vision that I want to see us kind of pursuing going forward.

00:12:26.040 This is on our show. We pride ourselves on being one of the only shows out there that gets I mean, we'll have people from the established right, from the Trump right, all the way over to the, you know, considered left.

00:12:37.080 We've actually had a couple of woke people on, but for the most part, I stay away from the wokesters.

00:12:41.840 But last week we were talking to Breonna Joy Gray, who she calls herself a libertarian socialist.

00:12:47.180 She's a Bernie gal. She worked on his campaign. Very thoughtful. Great gal.

00:12:52.040 But she was making the point we had an argument over covid and the restrictions and the kids.

00:12:56.260 And I was saying they've done their part. It's enough on the children with the masking and all the nonsense.

00:13:00.480 And she said, you know, no, she said, don't you understand, you know, they need to sacrifice for the for the good of the community.

00:13:06.720 You know, it's for the good of the community. I kind of told her, look, I'm done.

00:13:09.720 The children are done for the good of the community. Like we want to do good of the community.

00:13:13.120 You could do that from any angle. Why don't why don't you sacrifice for the good of my children?

00:13:16.880 Why don't why don't the old people say I'm going to sacrifice?

00:13:20.080 I'll take a risk so that your children could have a normal life.

00:13:22.420 That kind of thinking spins us into places. I certainly don't want to go.

00:13:26.220 No. And, you know, I mean, one of the stark realities of covid and the, you know, the reaction and the response is that children.

00:13:34.760 And by that, you know, I'm old enough where I'll say anybody under 30 is a child and certainly anybody under 20, right?

00:13:40.260 Or 21. You know, they have borne in many ways the toughest price.

00:13:44.860 They have had their lives and their views, you know, just massively disrupted.

00:13:49.060 And it's not clear, you know, when that's going to end.

00:13:51.200 I mean, places like Flint, Michigan are still saying, you know, we're going to do online schooling indefinitely and things like that.

00:13:57.320 And these are the people who are the least likely to be harmed by covid or to, you know, anything.

00:14:01.560 And we were we were making them pay the biggest price.

00:14:04.720 I don't know how that's going to play out down the road.

00:14:07.840 You know, I look at those pictures. There was a famous shot that got widely circulated of a marching band or a school band in Washington state where schools had reopened.

00:14:19.620 And it was kids, you know, in the brass section in these plastic zippered bubbles.

00:14:25.060 Oh, my gosh. You know, the trumpet and the saxophone. And it's like, wow, man, we have really screwed up.

00:14:30.500 I started one of the first big stories. I've been a reason forever since 1993.

00:14:34.160 The magazine itself has been around since 68. But I wrote a story about that in 1997 or 98 called Childproofing the World.

00:14:42.380 And I was saying, you know, on every level, kids in America were doing better than ever.

00:14:47.240 But we were talking about them as if they were living in Mad Max beyond Thunderdome.

00:14:51.400 You know, it's this horrifying world where they were going to be made mentally ill by heading soccer balls or eating too many hot dogs or they were going to be abducted on the street.

00:14:59.780 I mean, it was insanity. And we are still in that world like we're literally in some places putting kids in, you know, zippered up bubbles supposedly to protect them from a disease that is dangerous, but is not going to harm them in any meaningful way.

00:15:16.680 I mean, we have it so backwards. And again, this is, you know, for me, politics, you know, when you come when it comes down to covid, you know, there's a period where, you know, people didn't know very much what was going on.

00:15:28.220 We have a good sense of that. We have vaccines. What should be done now is, you know, people can take their own risk level and act accordingly.

00:15:37.480 If you don't want to go to a business that doesn't require masking or vaccine mandates, then don't go there.

00:15:43.520 If you don't want to get vaccinated. And I think if you don't want to get vaccinated, you're, you know, and you're not immunocompromised or something, you're you're wrong.

00:15:51.720 You're stupid. You're taking a chance that you shouldn't do it.

00:15:54.020 What if you have? Well, I know. Well, you know what? I've I've had covid twice and I have three vaccines.

00:16:00.440 So, you know, I but what I'm saying is the point isn't that my decision shouldn't be, you know, the thing that rules your life.

00:16:07.980 You can devolve risk taking and risk assessment down to the individual level and then let people live the way they want to.

00:16:15.120 And that is a better world, even if it means, you know, my preference is not always going to be, you know, followed.

00:16:21.580 But that's what a free society is. You know, where you like you tell it to this girl, tell it to this girl, because this past weekend in D.C., they had a march in in favor of freedom and against the mandates.

00:16:34.940 And there were some 50,000 people reportedly who showed up to say we're anti mandate.

00:16:39.220 A lot of these people are pro vaccine. They're anti mandate.

00:16:41.500 Some of them are. Some of them are not. And I consider myself I'm anti mandate.

00:16:45.780 I'm pro vaccine. I, you know, I've watched a bunch of footage from that.

00:16:48.960 And there's people like Robert Kennedy, Jr., who has been anti vaccine.

00:16:52.380 He wrote a discredited and ultimately pulled story from Rolling Stone years ago about how MMR vaccines caused autism, which was faith, although he describes false research.

00:17:02.800 I agree with that. I agree. And we've done a lot of reporting on that, too.

00:17:04.980 But I will say it was fascinating profile by him in Rolling Stone just this past weekend by Rolling Stone.

00:17:11.620 It was I think it was a spin. It was a spin.

00:17:15.180 Anyway, he in that he says he's not anti vaccine and I guess has moderated some of his MMR vaccine.

00:17:23.200 Yeah. Well, in any case, his original stance undermines his criticism of the current vaccines, because we're all like you hated even the good ones.

00:17:30.160 You know, like this is a good one, too, but like more controversial because it's more recent.

00:17:33.540 No. And also, you know, let's let's not talk about him or any kind of anti vax person either.

00:17:38.820 You know, a big problem right now is that and this is also something I read a lot about the the loss of trust and confidence in major institutions, particularly government, but also the private sector and also in philanthropy, things like the Catholic Church.

00:17:52.860 The handling of the knowledge of what was going on about COVID and how to deal with it coming out of people like Anthony Fauci, the CDC and the FDA has been terrible.

00:18:04.340 And they really have done such a disservice by not being square with people, not being honest with people and, you know, kind of pursuing a noble lie strategy where, you know, Fauci and other people would say, you know, like masks are useless.

00:18:19.060 Don't wear masks. And then they, you know, admit later, oh, well, we didn't want people to buy personal, you know, PPE because we might have needed it for other people.

00:18:27.600 You know, we learn now that there was a stockpile of N95 masks that the government was holding on to until recently.

00:18:34.080 And it's kind of like, wasn't this the emergency that you pull out all the stops, the CDC and the FDA, especially when it came to kind of really fast tracking vaccines.

00:18:44.020 They put it vaccines into one process, but they still took their time to kind of really hustle through all of the safety requirements and everything.

00:18:54.100 Well, it's it's amazing to me once they got there, they really hit their stride.

00:18:58.440 Wait, let me finish the point I was trying to make about the rally in Washington this weekend.

00:19:01.560 So they show up there and what do they what do they want?

00:19:04.400 They're they're not saying no one should take the vaccine, whether you have RFK Jr. there or not.

00:19:08.940 That's not what the message was. The message was pro freedom and to get government off our backs and to get rid of these mandates.

00:19:14.860 And they had firefighters who've been fired.

00:19:17.300 The heroes a year ago now fired because they wouldn't take the vaccine and medical workers.

00:19:21.120 Same deal. And look at this lunatic from I I guess I'm just assuming she's from the left.

00:19:27.680 She's definitely a Trump hater. Listen to how she viewed the people, their firefighters, nurses and so on, pushing that message.

00:19:35.060 Watch. Watch.

00:19:37.060 $100 are going to pay for the police to shut down the road so that these fucking white supremacists can party and have a hell of a time celebrating their loser president.

00:19:52.060 Loser Trump! Go the fuck home! Stop invading our territory! Go the fuck home! Take your loser president and shove him up your ass!

00:20:04.060 Yeah, I think I double the Xanax. I double the Xanax on her prescription.

00:20:10.800 But this is what happens, right? This is I just had a great, great dinner on Saturday night in New York with a bunch of new friends to me.

00:20:19.020 And it was, let's say, 11 women who all of them, except for me, were established liberals, like campaign for Joe Biden type liberals a year, 14 months ago.

00:20:34.080 All of them. And they've all been red pilled there.

00:20:36.580 Why? Because of the erosion of freedoms in COVID. Some of them are also onto the CRT stuff and objecting to that.

00:20:42.480 But my point is, all of them are angry. They're not white supremacists like this lunatic is yelling.

00:20:49.600 They're pissed about what's being done to their kids, the erosion of freedoms, how too many Americans are rolling over and letting it happen.

00:20:55.540 You know, complete submission as opposed to fighting when fighting is necessary, when it comes to our civil liberties, our freedoms, the things that made us proud to be in America not too long ago.

00:21:04.520 And I do believe this is going to have massive electoral consequences eventually.

00:21:09.020 It did already in Virginia. And when we get to those midterms, November 8th, it's going to again.

00:21:14.620 Yeah. And, you know, Gallup has shown that, you know, over the past year, there's been basically the biggest swing ever from kind of people predisposed to voting for Democrats to going to Republicans.

00:21:26.180 And, you know, my only concern with that is that, OK, let's vote out the current people in the Democratic Party.

00:21:33.000 But then you're you're voting in the Republicans who, as we'll recall, a couple of years ago were voted out because they were terrible in their own way.

00:21:41.120 And for me, it depends on the crisis of the day. The one today is liberty.

00:21:45.540 Well, I agree with that. But it's you know, it's also like this is the problem from a libertarian point of view is that, you know, my my load star,

00:21:54.380 my north star is freedom, individual liberty, autonomy.

00:21:58.760 Neither party is giving that, which is also helps to explain why over the course of the 21st century,

00:22:03.460 we have had what political scientists like Morris Fiorina at Stanford talks about is unstable majorities.

00:22:11.560 Each party, you know, they're becoming more and more extreme.

00:22:14.220 They're not they're nominating more and more extreme people who less and less stable.

00:22:18.240 Yeah, they, you know, and they they you know, they they push through their agenda in the first couple of years.

00:22:23.840 They're in office and then they get voted out every two, four or six years and they get replaced by people are like, OK,

00:22:29.600 this might be our only shot. So we're going to go whole hog and dump a bunch of stuff into the system that alienates people.

00:22:35.920 You know, when you look back at the first two years of Obama's administration, he got he was handed a blank check.

00:22:42.440 He got everything he wanted. And the Democrats got kicked to the curb, you know, in the midterm elections.

00:22:48.100 Something like that is going to happen to Joe Biden, who also got into office partly because people were voting against Trump.

00:22:54.480 They were not embracing Joe Biden's agenda. And while it's good to see people punished for overreach,

00:23:01.320 what I'm concerned about is that we're not working as a society.

00:23:04.280 And neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party seem to be working to come up with an agenda that is legitimately pro-freedom

00:23:11.320 and will produce a consensus that a lot of people can live with.

00:23:16.080 You know, we need I think we need a government that does fewer things, but does those few things well.

00:23:21.440 Nobody is talking about that right now. Everybody you get into office and then you settle a bunch of scores

00:23:26.320 and you get kicked out a couple of years later. Nick, you're going to have to find your your favorite

00:23:31.400 Republican, your favorite libertarian. That's as close to passing for a Republican as you can find.

00:23:37.800 You're going to have to make him wear the the R on his chest for the jersey and run him.

00:23:43.920 Because right now, as you know, I know, you know, no third party can win.

00:23:47.640 No libertarian can win. It's like the closest thing you got is somebody masquerading as something else.

00:23:52.820 What I'm what I'm excited about over the past couple of years, including the turn against, you know, the covid overreach,

00:23:59.720 which goes into business, it goes into medical medicine and public health.

00:24:03.200 It goes into school policy. People are pushing back against that.

00:24:06.500 So I think that's good. And there are you know, there are serious libertarian reforms over the past 30 years,

00:24:12.680 the past 50 years, things like drug legalization, the end of certain kinds of institutional racism,

00:24:18.440 the deregulation of markets, you know, so that we have things like Amazon, the growth of the Internet.

00:24:24.920 There are a broad variety of wins, you know, that have been happening that are consistent with the libertarian world.

00:24:32.540 Electorally, that's not the case. But, you know, I with my colleague, Matt Welch, who I believe has been on your show.

00:24:38.700 We wrote a dozen or 10 years ago called The Declaration of Independence.

00:24:42.440 And it started with the insight that, you know, fewer and fewer people were identifying as Republican and Democrat and right, you know,

00:24:49.800 and more as independent. Right now, Gallup is showing nearly record highs of that because 42 percent independent,

00:24:56.800 I think, 23 percent Dem and 27 percent Republican.

00:25:00.260 Yeah. Yeah. Something along those lines. And, you know, it takes really slow politics is a lagging indicator of where society is.

00:25:07.840 But people are done with these parties. They were their current identities were, you know,

00:25:12.640 they're a kind of bundle of special interests that were kind of hammered out in the late 90s or even in the 70s and 80s.

00:25:19.340 And that world that they speak for doesn't exist anymore.

00:25:22.260 And we need we need parties that are, you know, that are new and modern and that actually speak to what life is like in America.

00:25:28.880 And I think give people more freedom while also offering the kind of support that everybody wants to see for, you know,

00:25:35.540 people who are down on their luck or who need, you know, a hand up and things like that.

00:25:40.220 We may be headed there. You know, the parties.

00:25:42.320 This is one of the things I talked with Brianna about, which is the sort of ends of the party seem to be going around to the place where they're meeting.

00:25:49.320 You know, they the Bernie voters are not that dissimilar from the Trump voters.

00:25:53.720 There was a lot of talk about that during the election.

00:25:55.360 And there's a reason for that. These parties and their broad platforms don't really represent everyone.

00:26:00.460 It'd be great to see more options. Wait, stand by, Nick.

00:26:02.960 I'm going to squeeze in a commercial break. We'll be right back with Nick Gillespie talking liberty.

00:26:08.300 Don't miss that.

00:26:15.220 So, Nick, speaking of a pox on both their houses, right, the Republicans and the Democrats,

00:26:18.740 this is why I've said to my audience many times I don't wear a partisan jersey.

00:26:21.640 I just I I'm I've been a registered Democrat.

00:26:23.920 I've been a registered Republican, but I've been a registered independent for the vast majority of the past 20 years.

00:26:30.240 And while it doesn't allow you to vote in some primaries in some states, I don't care.

00:26:34.080 I just don't care. I just I refuse to put their jerseys on.

00:26:36.820 There's just too many disgusting people in both parties I don't want to associate with and ideas.

00:26:40.980 I don't just like whatever. I'll make up my mind issue by issue.

00:26:43.360 I'm not accepting platforms. I don't think it's honest.

00:26:46.820 No judgment against people who do.

00:26:48.320 It's just for me. It's like I'm too all over the board in my politics to do that.

00:26:51.340 But you wrote about how you hope you hope we see a repeat of Trump versus Biden in 2024 writing, quote,

00:27:01.480 I hope they face off again because it will be the third time in a row where the parties are like, please kill us.

00:27:07.600 It's either from your podcast or your your your written pieces podcast.

00:27:11.880 OK, I love that. I think you're right.

00:27:13.620 I understand that there's deep love, especially for Trump.

00:27:16.320 But my God, we have to keep running the same near oxygen, oxygenarians over and over.

00:27:21.400 This is the best we can do.

00:27:23.240 Yeah. I mean, it is.

00:27:24.760 You know, it's the personification of parties that are, you know, dead, you know, and they're just paper mache at this point.

00:27:31.860 They need to be pushed over and gotten rid of and built from the ground up.

00:27:35.740 You know, neither of these guys can deliver what America needs.

00:27:40.420 You know, I mean, they're just not with it.

00:27:43.140 And, you know, Trump Trump is losing support among Republicans, according to various kinds of internal polls.

00:27:50.780 His support among likely Republican voters is at an all time low, which makes sense.

00:27:56.060 He's you know, he's tried in two elections.

00:27:57.800 He's never gotten more than 47 percent of the vote.

00:28:00.220 He's not going to get more than 47 percent in 2024.

00:28:03.720 Biden, you know, has the stink of one term all over him that can always turn around.

00:28:09.040 But Biden, you know, like Trump, they are always looking backwards to try and recapture, you know, that moment in time when they were young and they thought the country was great.

00:28:18.680 And they're just not up to the task of governing in a world that is, you know, incredibly diversified, incredibly decentralized, where America's role is important in the world.

00:28:29.420 But nobody is going to be a global hegemon anymore, where people identify in different ways with overlapping identities.

00:28:37.820 You know, these guys are just not going to cut it.

00:28:39.900 Unfortunately, I don't really see anybody in either party who I think is going to deliver on a, you know, on the vision of government that I think we're ready for.

00:28:49.520 And that when you're in a networked age, when you're in an international age, when you're in a world where power is more decentralized than ever.

00:28:57.500 I don't see that. Yeah.

00:28:58.740 I don't see people who are willing to go in that direction from either party either.

00:29:02.380 So that's you went on to say the Democrats may have it rougher because they have to get rid of two people, quote, because there are two dead bodies in the White House.

00:29:08.640 Yeah. I mean, certainly we have our questions about Joe Biden.

00:29:13.360 Kamala is alive and well, but not nearly prepared to hold the office, never mind a vice president of president of the United States.

00:29:20.440 Yeah. No, she she doesn't seem, you know, particularly with it.

00:29:24.160 And it does seem like they're trying to keep her under wraps.

00:29:26.620 You know, and again, what I you know, I care less about politicians, personalities and more about their programs.

00:29:32.700 Her problem is, you know, she's kind of a shapeshifter when she was attorney general and, you know, at a major political figure in California.

00:29:41.980 She was all about arresting, you know, pot dealers and things like that.

00:29:46.120 When she became vice president and was running for that, she would joke about her pot use and things like that.

00:29:50.880 And what we need is a leader in a country where, you know, something like 70 percent of people think pot should be legalized and people are moving in the idea of allowing people intoxicants of their choice.

00:30:01.560 And then you hold them responsible for the behavior that they commit on intoxicants.

00:30:06.080 You need somebody better than Kamala Harris.

00:30:07.960 She doesn't seem to have the ability to kind of be true to anything, but she's an old school politician.

00:30:14.560 She wants to control people's lives.

00:30:17.100 And that ship has sailed.

00:30:18.640 We now have so much, you know, we have so much wealth.

00:30:22.380 We have so much freedom.

00:30:23.420 We have so much technological innovation.

00:30:25.540 Now, more than ever, individual Americans can live their lives the way they want to.

00:30:30.160 You know, we can eat what we want.

00:30:31.440 We can grow what we want.

00:30:32.720 We can marry who we want.

00:30:35.120 We need the government to kind of recede and just kind of help people who need help and kind of keep, you know, general order.

00:30:41.780 We don't need people micromanaging every aspect of our lives.

00:30:44.900 But I think both parties are kind of invested in that old 20th century model of governance and not on the minor drug use prosecutions.

00:30:55.260 But in many other ways, I'm more with the former Kamala Harris.

00:30:59.520 I mean, right now with the crime wave sweeping the country, just a solid remarkable stat before I came on the air.

00:31:06.620 We used to cover, you know, the Chicago crime waves all the time.

00:31:09.180 And, of course, it's been in the news this past year because you see BLM out there protesting, you know, the death of one black person in the street saying every life matters.

00:31:18.260 Say his name.

00:31:19.100 Say his name.

00:31:19.700 And they do nothing about what's happening in Chicago.

00:31:22.900 The vast majority of the victims there are black.

00:31:25.660 The vast majority of the perpetrators in those murders are black as well.

00:31:28.580 And there's just not a peep.

00:31:29.780 And in fact, if even if as a as a black pundit, if you try to draw attention to it, they'll attack you as, you know, sort of the Black Lives Matter, you know, activist crew.

00:31:38.600 It's so wrong.

00:31:39.340 But the stat was that they they hit a 25 year high in the murder rate last year in Chicago, in Chicago, they reached 800 murders and no one seems to be paying much attention.

00:31:51.800 But we are seeing a willingness to look the other way in Chicago's D.A., Kim Fox, a willingness to look the other way in L.A., in San Francisco's D.A., in R.D.A., in New York City.

00:32:03.380 And just this past weekend, four cops were shot, two are dead, a 22 year old cop shot dead, his partner clinging to life.

00:32:10.700 Another cop shot dead.

00:32:12.560 These two cops in Harlem went in.

00:32:14.840 A mother had called the cops on her 47 year old son in the apartment saying she was concerned.

00:32:20.800 And they come in.

00:32:21.980 He, of course, had a long criminal history and they walked down the hallway.

00:32:25.700 He came out of the bedroom shooting and they had no chance.

00:32:28.460 I mean, the gun that the perpetrator used against this poor 22 year old cop, there's no chance he had modified it in a way that is illegal to make it more like closer to a machine gun.

00:32:38.860 Basically, just rapidly firing away a semi-automatic cannot.

00:32:42.960 The D.A., Alvin Bragg in New York City, we're showing a picture of it now, has had this attachment to it.

00:32:47.640 The D.A., Alvin Bragg, has just said just last week he's no longer going to be seeking the death penalty.

00:32:52.880 And you shoot a cop in New York before.

00:32:54.720 Yes, before Alvin Bragg was there, you could face the death penalty.

00:32:57.000 You murder a child or torture a child under the age of like 14, I think it is.

00:33:01.800 You could have faced the death penalty.

00:33:02.800 Now, no.

00:33:03.640 So they're taking this.

00:33:05.760 I think it's different than libertarianism, though, what they're doing.

00:33:08.420 This is like, we're just not going to prosecute crime anymore.

00:33:10.920 That's not what libertarians want.

00:33:12.520 No, no.

00:33:13.220 And, you know, a couple of things about this.

00:33:15.260 One is, you know, I remember New York in the 70s and in the early 80s.

00:33:19.960 And it was, you know, it was a rough place.

00:33:21.380 The crime we're seeing here in some ways is increasing things like murder.

00:33:25.640 Other violent crime is going down.

00:33:27.180 Certain types of property crime is down.

00:33:29.780 And it's important.

00:33:30.600 Carjackings are at an all time high.

00:33:32.140 Yeah.

00:33:32.540 But we're, you know, it's also important to recognize that we are not back in, you know,

00:33:36.660 the kind of Gotham City of, you know, John Lindsay or Abe Beam.

00:33:40.320 But I agree with you.

00:33:42.120 And I also believe in a lot of the criminal justice reform.

00:33:44.980 I'm not a fan of cash bail.

00:33:46.360 I think that's usually used in a punitive way that does not actually have positive outcomes

00:33:51.960 and things like that.

00:33:53.160 I do think we need police.

00:33:54.520 And I think police need to be focused on actual, you know, violent crime and property crime

00:33:59.760 that gets, you know, that destroys the ability of communities to live well.

00:34:03.240 And there is a lot of abdication of that, of that, you know, what's going on with that

00:34:08.480 kind of stuff.

00:34:08.920 And as important, when people start to sense that there is a crime increase and the powers

00:34:16.300 that be in the media and especially in law enforcement and in city government, you know,

00:34:21.220 keep saying, no, there's nothing to see here.

00:34:22.860 There's nothing to see here.

00:34:24.300 You know, that freaks people out.

00:34:26.040 And, you know, civilization is more resilient than we often think it is.

00:34:30.120 But like, you don't want to be adding, you know, you don't want to be lighting more and

00:34:34.000 more kind of matches on Tinder that can really destroy things.

00:34:37.660 One of the things that I find disturbing is, you know, in New York City, I live in NoHo,

00:34:44.520 you know, the drugstores here and all through the city, you know, they're starting to put

00:34:48.320 things like Atkins diet bars and deodorant sticks behind lock and key because of shoplifting.

00:34:56.500 And it's just the right aid on 50th in Hell's Kitchen just shut permanently close up the right.

00:35:00.580 It's their main grocery, their main pharmacy.

00:35:02.320 What is going on with that?

00:35:04.420 That's troubling.

00:35:05.160 And this is the type of thing where I think, you know, a lot of the policies that were credited

00:35:09.520 to Rudy Giuliani and things like stop and frisk, I think they were discriminatory and

00:35:14.600 I don't think they yielded the right results.

00:35:17.400 Having said that, I think having police presence or people understanding that if you break a crime,

00:35:23.360 there will be consequences for it.

00:35:25.840 Immediate, intense, near-term consequences, this is how you stop crime.

00:35:30.520 And not many people are talking about how do you bring that back so that, you know,

00:35:35.520 most criminals are, you know, they follow incentives like other people.

00:35:39.220 And if you make it easier to get away with crime, you're going to have more crime.

00:35:44.660 And we need to be having a frank discussion about that.

00:35:47.760 Especially when you have a DA announcing he's not going to come after you for certain things

00:35:50.440 and you don't have to worry about it.

00:35:51.360 And like, and lowering the penalties on something like killing a cop is not a good idea.

00:35:56.500 Just to, just to put some, some names with the stats, a eight-year-old girl fatally struck

00:36:02.580 by a bullet while walking with her mother in Chicago this past weekend, third grade, eight-year-old

00:36:07.580 girl, Melissa Ortega struck in the head by one of several rounds fired by a male suspect

00:36:12.340 toward a 26-year-old known, uh, by, uh, known gang member.

00:36:16.420 So one gang member possibly shooting at another.

00:36:19.140 And as we've seen so many times in Chicago, little girl, look at this little girl.

00:36:23.060 She gets caught in the crossfire.

00:36:24.400 Disgusting.

00:36:25.200 The police officer, um, in New York, um, want to get his name for you.

00:36:30.600 It just had in front of me, but I'll make sure Jason Rivera, Jason Rivera is the 22 year

00:36:35.940 old who just got, who just got married in October.

00:36:39.080 His wife tweeting out, uh, or putting up on social media.

00:36:43.040 Now your soul will spend the rest of my days without me, throughout me, right beside me.

00:36:49.280 Uh, I love you till the end of time.

00:36:52.460 Wow.

00:36:53.100 So you forget, you know, these are real people who are the victims of these policies and these

00:36:59.640 criminals.

00:37:00.280 And too many times in New York and LA and so on, we've seen it's homeless people who the

00:37:04.360 city was like, let's get them out of the homeless facilities, like the mental facilities.

00:37:08.380 That's wrong to keep them locked up.

00:37:09.920 And it's like, okay, well, they need a place to go.

00:37:12.240 You have to make sure that there is not set loose on the populace to unleash crime left

00:37:16.400 and right.

00:37:16.780 And that's what we're seeing in city after city.

00:37:18.980 I think, you know, Chicago is a particular example of you can point to the crime, but

00:37:23.240 you can also point to the education system.

00:37:25.300 You can point to the finances of the city, uh, the, uh, you know, care of roads and everything.

00:37:31.960 Chicago is a failed city.

00:37:33.660 Um, and it's more, you know, crime is one big element of that and you can't rebuild a

00:37:39.560 city of crime is growing and it's out of control, but you know, it should be a model for people

00:37:44.320 to look at and figure out how do you get around that?

00:37:46.480 Because Chicago is collapsing as a city.

00:37:49.520 Um, and that should be, you know, a subject of concern for everybody.

00:37:53.320 Again, I'm a libertarian, not an anarchist.

00:37:55.300 I think government should be doing certain things and it should be doing them well.

00:37:59.120 And you have in a place like Chicago where it's not doing that.

00:38:02.540 I lived, uh, for a good chunk of the past 12 months, I was in LA, I was living in Venice,

00:38:07.600 California, uh, where there is a serious problem with homelessness and kind of, uh, you know,

00:38:13.540 public drug addiction, um, and mental illness.

00:38:16.720 And the city is not really doing anything to address it, uh, which is really, really bad.

00:38:23.520 I mean, that, you know, that drives out people.

00:38:25.720 It makes it impossible to start or maintain businesses.

00:38:28.980 It means people start thinking about, okay, I'm going to go someplace like in Texas or

00:38:33.220 Florida, um, you know, the cities and governments need to take this stuff seriously.

00:38:37.860 And they don't partly because they're too busy doing everything else.

00:38:41.720 Um, you know, and instead of things like maintaining basic order, you know, giving people access to

00:38:46.760 decent schools, uh, you know, keeping the roads clear, you know, the garbage picked up.

00:38:51.460 These are the things that government should be doing and all too often they're, you know,

00:38:55.200 they're fancifully trying to, uh, you know, structure everything in a utopian way, um, so

00:39:00.740 that they, you know, they don't do the core functions of government.

00:39:04.040 Okay.

00:39:04.560 Up next, I want to ask you whether we think, um, that, that Joe Biden is about to involve

00:39:10.920 the United States in another war, this one in Ukraine, because of a verbal gaffe.

00:39:16.580 He committed a last week's presser, uh, as the white house announces, they're considering

00:39:20.840 between one and 5,000 American troops, uh, over not in Ukraine, but around it and up

00:39:27.040 to potentially 50,000 American troops heading that way in one of his considered plans.

00:39:33.360 Nick is right back after this.

00:39:34.900 And remember folks, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel

00:39:39.200 one 11 every weekday at noon East and the full video show and clips.

00:39:43.000 When you subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly, if you prefer

00:39:47.120 an audio podcast, subscribe, download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you

00:39:52.180 get your podcast for free.

00:39:53.240 And there you will find our full archives with more than 240 shows.

00:40:03.840 President Biden's wing, several options now with respect to Ukraine, as Putin's got some

00:40:09.580 100,000 troops amassed along the border. Uh, one of the options is deploying thousands of troops

00:40:16.240 to Eastern Europe and the Baltics, um, as well as warships and aircraft, uh, to again, NATO allies

00:40:23.820 in the Baltics and Eastern Europe region, not into Ukraine. Um, and I wonder whether this is all one

00:40:29.580 massive cover for his gaffe at last week's presser, your thoughts.

00:40:34.300 Uh, you know, it wouldn't be the first time that, uh, we were improvised into major, uh, conflicts,

00:40:40.200 uh, uh, by all accounts, Barack Obama, uh, talked about a red line with Syria, uh, which he improvised

00:40:46.600 and it ended up, you know, helping to extend a disastrous foreign policy intervention in the

00:40:51.120 Middle East. I don't have a lot of trust in Joe Biden. I was glad that we pulled out of Afghanistan

00:40:56.080 and, and, you know, it, it went poorly, but it had to be done. Um, but Biden, uh, you know,

00:41:02.000 Biden is an internationalist. I worry about this. We, this is one of the things we need

00:41:06.600 new thinking on. Uh, you, you don't have to be an isolationist, uh, in order to, to want to reduce

00:41:12.820 the, uh, footprint of America's military around the world for two reasons. We can't afford it.

00:41:18.020 And we tend not to do very well when we start getting involved in other battles. This, you know,

00:41:23.760 NATO should have been completely rethought or gotten rid of at the end of the cold war.

00:41:27.940 It was, it was fought to contain the Soviet union or was created to contain the Soviet union,

00:41:32.980 which doesn't exist anymore. NATO needs a major rethink. Biden's foreign policy, I think is going

00:41:38.600 to be, you know, on the disastrous side, especially if, you know, as you're suggesting, and I think

00:41:44.700 there's reasons to believe if he's not exactly sure what he's talking about, you know, but then

00:41:49.180 you commit and then you feel a need that you have to do this. Um, I'm very uncomfortable about all of

00:41:53.760 this. Yeah. That I feel like he said, if I'm not mistaken, during Obama's Barack Obama's

00:41:59.140 presidency, he said something about how he would negotiate it. He would negotiate with like the

00:42:02.720 Ayatollah. I can't remember. It was some very controversial world leader. I think it was from Iran

00:42:07.680 and, um, it was clearly a gaffe. I remember Charles Krauthammer pointing this out on special

00:42:12.780 report when I'd saying it was a gaffe for which he was roundly criticized. Then he made it into policy

00:42:18.240 just to, just to pretend it wasn't a gaffe. Oh no, no. I met what I said. That was definitely

00:42:22.220 thought through. And to me, this is what's happening here. He, he's, he's committed a

00:42:27.560 verbal error by saying out loud that a minor incursion wouldn't necessarily be a big thing

00:42:32.640 for us. And now he's got to act like he, now he's actually got to behave as though any sort

00:42:37.700 of, cause nobody really believes that there's going to be a massive incursion into Ukraine.

00:42:41.980 Apparently even the Ukrainians don't believe that Putin normally behaves if not pleasantly

00:42:47.600 rationally. And he hasn't been running around just willy nilly for no reason invading countries.

00:42:54.440 You know, you could talk about what happened in Georgia. You could talk about what happened

00:42:56.600 with Crimea. So the odds of him just invading Ukraine and trying to take over, I think are

00:43:00.380 slim. But if you're talking about 50,000 American troops, 50,000.

00:43:05.020 Yeah. One of, one of, you know, one of the great libertarian victories of the past 20 years,

00:43:09.960 then unfortunately it was paid for with the, you know, the bodies of countless, you know,

00:43:14.220 people in the countries we invaded, but also American forces is that America needs a better

00:43:19.300 and different foreign policy. We are not good at occupying countries for decades. We don't do that

00:43:25.340 well. Um, and again, this is another type of conversation that should be having, but it's not

00:43:31.180 going to be, it's not going to happen as long as the parties are run by these octogenarians who are

00:43:36.140 stuck in a cold war mentality who don't, you know, when you think about Donald Rumsfeld was going to

00:43:40.920 be the great transformational figure in American defense, what a disaster, because that's a guy who

00:43:47.100 was stuck in 1974. He was fighting battles from the Ford administration. We need real thinking about

00:43:52.860 this that goes away from the idea that either we don't intervene anywhere, anytime, you know, even with

00:43:58.220 economic power or we have to be the world's policemen. And I, you know, Biden is clearly,

00:44:03.320 I mean, he's, he's the last gasp of so much in the 20th century. And I don't mean that just totally

00:44:10.020 critically. It's just, you know, the world he lived in doesn't exist anymore. It would be better for him

00:44:15.880 to spend his golden years, you know, raising his grandkids or something like that. Uh, you know,

00:44:21.440 then, then commanding the American military into the, you know, deep into the 21st century.

00:44:26.940 All right, let's leave it on a happy note. Got about a minute or two left. The one good thing

00:44:31.820 of the COVID mania you were touching on at the end of our blog is a renewed commitment among many

00:44:38.280 to liberty, to, to saying no to big government, to, to remembering how important these liberties

00:44:45.300 that we were afforded by our God, by, by our humanity are. Yeah, I, I, I completely agree. And,

00:44:53.420 you know, one of the things that, that also, you know, freedom comes with responsibility.

00:44:57.660 And I think one of the, if we can make this the big lesson of the pandemic is that we are now

00:45:02.900 responsible, you know, we want expert help. We want, you know, we want the government doing

00:45:07.460 things like speeding up the creation and the dissemination distribution of vaccines that are

00:45:12.360 safe and effective, but ultimately we want to be in charge of our lives. We want to be able to live

00:45:18.180 the ways that we do peacefully. You know, and, and, you know, that takes a lot of responsibility.

00:45:23.940 And I think Americans, you know, there was a period two years ago where for basically the first time

00:45:29.520 Gallup found that a majority of Americans wanted the government. They said, you know, the government

00:45:33.760 should do more to help people, you know, that businesses and individuals usually do. That was

00:45:39.040 for one year right after COVID hit. It has gone back down to now it's a majority of people saying

00:45:44.040 government is trying to do too many things that needs to be the lasting lesson from COVID, which

00:45:49.420 is that, you know, we are, uh, we have our, you know, our freedom and we have our responsibility

00:45:55.300 and we are going to build the worlds that we want to live in peacefully and make everything better.

00:46:01.220 Amen. It's funny. Cause at that dinner with my, my new gal pals, we were talking about how we have

00:46:06.980 told our kids to, you know, it's okay. We're going to make it through this, try not to make it too big

00:46:10.560 a deal out of the mask mandates. We think it's a big deal, but we haven't encouraged them to think

00:46:14.820 that, but we're all, a lot of us are changing the messaging now to note there's a time to comply

00:46:20.960 and there's a time to fight. And we're there now. We're at the time to fight. Nick, come back. Would

00:46:25.940 you? I will. Thank you so much. Coming up. She quit a top Canadian media news outlet in a very public

00:46:32.080 way, speaking out on their crazy left coverage. She's here next.

00:46:40.560 Over the past few years, we have witnessed a number of journalists who have decided to say

00:46:45.480 goodbye to corporate overlords and go it alone. Sick and tired of the agendas and the lack of

00:46:50.640 thoughtful discourse in the newsrooms all across America and the world for that matter. And my next

00:46:55.600 guest is one of them. She recently quit her job in dramatic fashion saying her former employer has

00:47:00.600 gone far too woke at the expense of stories that matter to most people. Tara Henley is a former

00:47:07.860 CBC producer and now Substack writer. And she joins me now. Tara, so Canadian broadcast company,

00:47:13.220 you're, you're Canadian and you were at CBC for a number of years, which is, it's publicly funded,

00:47:19.100 right? I mean, for the most part, they're, they're funded with taxpayer dollars.

00:47:21.640 It is funded by taxpayer dollars indeed. Yeah.

00:47:23.980 Okay. So you, you kind of, I mean, it reminded me of Barry Weiss who, who gave me her first podcast

00:47:28.420 interview after she quit. And basically, you know, she went out in a blaze of glory and, um,

00:47:33.780 she just completely, like she could have quietly left and started her Substack. Um, she wanted

00:47:39.360 people to know what was happening at the New York times. She didn't want to go quietly. She's not

00:47:42.880 the quiet type. If you know, Barry, it's awesome. Um, and neither are you. So what, what did it for

00:47:48.760 you? Cause you'd been there for a number of years. I had, and you know, that letter actually had a big

00:47:53.840 impact on me. And so I think what it was for me, I had been there since 2013 with a break to write

00:48:00.120 my book. I had worked in both the Toronto newsroom and the Vancouver newsroom, uh, on separate

00:48:05.620 occasions twice. And I had worked in the producer pool. So working between a lot of different shows.

00:48:10.900 So I was very familiar, uh, with the network and got a really good gauge on what things were like.

00:48:15.700 Now the woke worldview had always been in the building. Uh, but in recent years that, uh, view

00:48:23.260 has become more pervasive and it has become more extreme and it had become more and more difficult

00:48:29.120 to get more diverse viewpoints on the air. And so, you know, like many things, it was, it was sort

00:48:35.280 of like a death by a thousand cuts. It was many, many things over the course of two years. I pushed

00:48:41.440 back daily within, you know, meetings and within the organization. I did not feel like that was

00:48:47.900 accomplishing much. And, uh, I began to feel like the, you know, broadcaster was not necessarily

00:48:55.220 serving the public interest. And I was getting more and more feedback from the public that that

00:48:59.360 was the case. And so I felt compelled when I left to start this conversation, to draw attention to

00:49:06.720 what I had been seeing and experiencing. And, uh, I didn't think it was going to get talked about

00:49:11.840 otherwise. And so I felt compelled to say it publicly. All right. Now I confess that even though

00:49:15.980 I've been in American television for some 20 years now, I have never watched one minute of Canadian

00:49:20.640 Broadcasting Corporation television, like sitting in front of a TV. I'm sure I've seen clips. I don't

00:49:24.940 know what it's like. I don't know whether I assume it's biased. I had an interview with a comedian who

00:49:28.640 told me he was on fire in Canada, but they told him there's no way they could give him a show because

00:49:32.500 he was a white guy. Um, yeah, exactly. I love him. He's brilliant. But I don't, I don't know. I like

00:49:39.120 I, if you told me you've quit NPR, I'd be like, Oh yeah, I get it. So how was it always

00:49:44.140 significantly tilted to the left in its coverage? I think what we have seen in sort of the last two

00:49:51.600 years, uh, since the murder of George Floyd, which was horrific, there has been a, uh, sort of

00:49:56.960 significant move to the left. And so you, you have seen that with a number of top down policies that

00:50:02.980 have happened from leadership, but you have also seen it sort of with the influence of Twitter on

00:50:07.340 the newsroom. And, uh, so there, the internal sort of movement has been dramatically left,

00:50:15.200 but it, it really has been within the last two years. I think that the last two years,

00:50:20.260 it has really been quite a lot more difficult to get diverse viewpoints on the air.

00:50:24.800 Diverse viewpoints and meaning more right-leaning to counterbalance whatever leftist narrative they're

00:50:29.520 putting on. Yeah. And I don't even just mean politically. I mean, uh, sort of educational

00:50:33.380 background. Uh, I mean, religious background. I do mean political background,

00:50:36.980 but I also mean sort of within the big issues of our day, even, you know, within the race

00:50:41.220 conversation, there's many, many viewpoints on that. And we were sort of striking one note in

00:50:46.680 my opinion. And as I was doing a lot of research on my own and exploring independent media and

00:50:52.020 exploring a lot of the different voices out there, I was really starting to see that the

00:50:56.240 views, um, were quite limited in terms of their scope. So now what, what's your political

00:51:01.680 background? I mean, as a, as a journalist, you know, sometimes you don't wear it on your sleeve,

00:51:05.200 but were, did you come to this with any political stripes?

00:51:10.360 Yes, I am far left. Uh, and I think that is what made this experience so surprising to me

00:51:15.680 is that I am far left and I do agree with a lot of the aims of the far left and have supported a lot

00:51:21.820 of leftist policies and principles. Uh, but I also am someone who reads a lot and listens a lot and

00:51:29.540 interviews a lot. And I feel like it's really, really important to read and listen and interview

00:51:34.900 across the political spectrum. I have also learned a lot from conservative thinkers in the last two

00:51:40.480 years as well. And so I feel very open to different viewpoints and I feel like it's very important to

00:51:45.480 represent different viewpoints, particularly in this moment of political polarization that we're in

00:51:50.480 right now, that I think it's really important to be looking across the aisle and to be trying to

00:51:55.480 understand things from different perspectives. You know, you're just, I said at the top of the hour,

00:52:00.180 uh, last hour, I had a dinner this past weekend with, uh, several, almost a dozen new friends to

00:52:05.560 me. One, one of whom was my core friend. And, um, they were all, all leftists, not, not leftist,

00:52:11.640 but liberal, liberal, all of them in New York city, all voted for Joe Biden. Um, some campaign for Joe

00:52:16.700 Biden. All of them are ready to vote Republican this time around. They're, they're so angry with what

00:52:21.760 they've seen in particular with respect to COVID policy in New York, which is madness. I realize

00:52:26.680 I'm speaking to a Canadian. So I, what's happened up there is insanity too. I have two, two gals on

00:52:32.640 my staff who work for me in Canada. So I, I get the updates to them. But my point is it's crazy in

00:52:37.300 New York as well. Um, so they've been sort of red pilled through the whole process in the same way

00:52:42.220 you have, but would say, okay, I guess I'm more Republican now, but I did nothing. I, I changed no

00:52:47.920 views like the party left me. And that's what you seem to be saying about your old employer.

00:52:53.680 Well, it, I think this is happening to so many people on the left right now. I think it's such

00:52:57.500 a broader conversation. And I, I I've been hearing a lot from people on the left who feel the same way

00:53:01.960 as well, that they feel like they have no political home at this point. And the problem I think is that

00:53:07.080 this sort of new brand of far left kind of thought is, is, is not really consistent with what the old

00:53:13.940 left believed. You see this a lot in the conversation around censorship and free speech.

00:53:18.340 You see it a lot in the conversation around race and a lot of the views that are being put forward

00:53:25.280 on race are, are quite new in terms of the left. And so I think that what's happening right now is

00:53:30.880 that this sort of far left kind of woke collection of views is, is quite out of step with most of the

00:53:38.220 public. And I, it's difficult to unpack because it presents itself, um, as incontro, incontrovertible

00:53:45.420 truth for one, and also with basic decency. And how do you untangle that from, you know, the greater

00:53:52.960 aims in society? I mean, I think most people would agree. We are all for racial justice. We are all for

00:53:58.980 trans rights. We are all for women's rights. I mean, there, these are big, broad ideas, but the way that

00:54:05.100 the left is approaching them right now, uh, come with a lot of liberalism with a lot of censorship

00:54:11.120 and with a lot of intolerance to how we get there, the views on how we achieve these goals. And those

00:54:17.860 things are up for debate. They should be up for debate, particularly in newsrooms, particularly in

00:54:23.320 newsrooms. Yeah. Oh, I mean, there was a, there was an open apology by one news station overseas. I'm

00:54:31.980 trying to remember where it was. They openly apologized, uh, to their viewers for not being

00:54:36.840 more skeptical of the information they were being given by their government leaders on COVID that

00:54:42.060 they had just been taking the information and reporting it without skepticism. And it, it wasn't

00:54:48.440 true. They had been inflating the case numbers, the death numbers they hadn't been doing the old

00:54:52.440 died with COVID as opposed to of COVID. And so it is, it's been a massive problem in media

00:54:59.580 with journalists, not being skeptical, skeptical enough, lionizing leaders like in this country,

00:55:05.940 Anthony Fauci, who's not been elected to do anything. He's just been appointed, but now is

00:55:10.720 our King and, and, and maddening. But the press has a duty to be more skeptical. The press has a duty

00:55:16.320 to be basically assholes in dealing with government officials. That's what we get paid to do. We're

00:55:21.060 not there to kiss their ass. We're there to make life uncomfortable for them.

00:55:24.860 Absolutely. I'm so glad that you raised that point, Megan, because I believe that was a Danish

00:55:29.820 newspaper and that story really struck me because this was one of the things that I was arguing for

00:55:35.540 a lot in our story meetings is, you know, since when do we as journalists take government's word

00:55:41.620 on something? Since when do we just go, okay, that's fact. Um, and you could go right down the

00:55:46.320 line with that. You could, you know, talk about that with pharmaceutical companies. You could talk about

00:55:50.060 that with, um, experts. You know, you can talk about that with the debates that are going on in

00:55:54.420 science right now. Science, there's never been a consensus in science before it's unnatural to have

00:56:00.940 some sort of presentation of consensus. Science has always had a ton of arguments. And the fact that

00:56:06.240 we're, we haven't been seeing those or airing those publicly in the last two years is really a

00:56:11.440 problem. But as you say, you know, journalism is an adversarial role. And I think, I think this is

00:56:17.760 part of, um, what's getting lost is that we are meant to be hypercritical. We are meant to be

00:56:24.260 adversarial. We are meant to be aggressive. We are meant to question everything all the time.

00:56:28.440 It is not a natural state for journalism to, to not do that. And I think part of what's happened,

00:56:34.720 um, you know, just as people are burnt out, people are exhausted, people are tired, people have been

00:56:39.880 afraid, uh, people have been isolated, particularly here in Toronto where we had really, really long

00:56:45.820 lockdowns. Um, so I think that's playing a role in it, but I also think that the Twitter culture

00:56:51.400 is playing a massive role as well because people have been so isolated and online all the time that

00:56:56.860 the influence of Twitter is now outsized. Twitter definitely promotes specific narratives about all

00:57:03.520 of the stories that we're covering every day. And stifles, stifles entirely different ones. Like

00:57:08.800 you can't even get it on the air. Nevermind to have a debate.

00:57:12.320 Well, and I think these things are happening in subtle ways. Sometimes I think that, you know,

00:57:16.400 you have really high interest level for some stories in a story meeting, whereas you have very low

00:57:20.960 interest level for others. You know, you've been in many story meetings, you know, there's some

00:57:24.860 stories are a much harder sell than others. You know, there's, especially if you have less kind of

00:57:29.720 viewpoints in a story meeting, it's, it's, you know, more difficult to get more nuance.

00:57:34.280 I also think, and this is something that I I've talked about somewhat is that the labor practices

00:57:40.080 are really playing into this as well. So you have media now using precarious labor. My employer,

00:57:45.480 my former employer did that. It was, you know, I don't know the exact number at this particular day

00:57:49.780 and time, but I, it was usually around a quarter of the workforce was precarious.

00:57:53.720 Meaning what does that mean? Are you talking about, I don't, I don't know what you mean by precarious

00:57:57.560 workforce. Yeah. So, uh, at the CBC, a good portion of the workforce is not a permanent

00:58:02.840 employee. So they would either be on contract or they would be working day to day. And the number

00:58:08.860 is usually around a quarter. I don't know what the number is today exactly, but it's, it's a large

00:58:13.400 portion of the workforce. And so particularly the people that are working day to day without

00:58:17.780 contracts, they would be sitting in story meetings, auditioning for their job day after day after day.

00:58:23.620 And that does not lend itself to, you know, the sort of attitude you and I were speaking about a few

00:58:29.040 moments ago about that adversarial fighting for stories, you know, arguing, looking for new

00:58:34.520 perspectives, challenging. You can't do that if you don't have permanent employment.

00:58:39.680 That's interesting. Yeah. You, your typical journalist, you know, of yesteryear was like

00:58:44.260 the grizzled guy who had a bottle of bourbon in the bottom of his desk, who was subversive and he was

00:58:49.340 smoking a cigarette and he would challenge anybody. And he hated, he hated his colleagues and he hated the

00:58:53.280 government, but he loved his pen and his audience, you know? And now a lot of that has changed for the

00:58:58.820 better. It's fine. The bourbon is fine. Cigarette doesn't bother me, man, woman. That's good too.

00:59:03.040 But this bootlicking situation into which we've grown is dangerous. It's dangerous for the way

00:59:10.840 society works for people's lives, leading to that apology in that Danish newspaper. But I also think

00:59:16.540 part of it is, I don't know how it is in Canada, but our media is controlled by big pharma. I mean,

00:59:20.500 big pharma's got drug ads everywhere and they're reticent to cross them. I mean, I, I know that.

00:59:28.660 I've, I have lived that in my past life is one of the reasons why I own my own company now.

00:59:32.800 Um, but they control a lot here and most of these TV channels and a lot of print outlets don't want

00:59:37.800 to cross them. I don't have any experience with that. I don't, I don't see that influence the CBC

00:59:43.600 of big pharma. And, you know, again, CBC is a public broadcaster, so publicly funded. So I don't

00:59:48.020 have any experience with that, but I do think right now in the public, you know, public opinion,

00:59:52.840 there has been very little criticism and debate about big pharma during this last period of time.

00:59:58.640 And I think that's really unhealthy. Um, I also think that, you know, when, with the way that

01:00:03.840 science has been covered in the last couple of years, it's almost as if there is the goal of just

01:00:09.700 like explaining the science to people, as opposed to looking at science as an endeavor, like any other

01:00:15.420 endeavor where they say science is a verb. It's not a noun. And some people in science are going to be

01:00:21.240 in conflict of interest. Some people in science are going to be corrupt. Some people are going to

01:00:25.340 be making human errors. Some people are going to be exhausted and burnt out. I mean, this is

01:00:29.520 an endeavor like any other endeavor and should be criticized and scrutinized in that way.

01:00:36.240 So it was there anything in particular, I'm just wondering, like if you, if you asked me for

01:00:39.620 particular instances of woke bias at NBC, I could give them to you. Conservative bias at Fox News,

01:00:45.700 I could give those to you as well. What, was there anything in particular that comes to mind,

01:00:49.600 like that you saw or a straw that broke the camel's back?

01:00:52.700 Well, there was many things. I mean, I think that the fact that the housing crisis affects

01:00:56.820 so many people and so many people I know personally, and I felt it was undercovered.

01:01:01.020 That was certainly an issue. I also felt that the opioid crisis did not get the attention that

01:01:06.160 it deserved. That was a difficult sell in the newsroom. People felt that was quite a depressing story.

01:01:10.880 So those were, were some of the broader stories. I also felt, you know, billionaire wealth didn't get

01:01:15.720 any coverage at all. In the pandemic, we've seen Canadian billionaires increase their wealth by

01:01:20.960 about 68%. It's a big story that has a lot of ramifications. It wasn't getting covered.

01:01:26.320 So those are some of the things that I felt weren't getting covered. The other things were

01:01:30.260 school closures. Until very recently, we just weren't hearing debate about that. And that is something

01:01:36.220 that I think is just a massive change in society and needs to be, you know, robustly debated and

01:01:44.480 discussed and defended if that's what we're going to do. Personally, I don't think that school closures

01:01:49.820 are a good public policy at all. I also felt that with the lockdowns, that there just wasn't enough

01:01:55.720 debate about that. And we weren't hearing any views that were critical of the government lockdown.

01:02:00.700 Are the schools still closed?

01:02:02.120 They are open as of today, but they were just closed for two weeks again. And this is the first

01:02:08.160 time this last period of two weeks where I've seen more public discussion and more media discussion

01:02:13.320 about it, but it really has not gotten the debate it deserves. And then the vaccine mandates were

01:02:19.260 another one that I, you know, I felt personally like it was not a logical sort of public policy.

01:02:28.120 And the reporting I was doing did not line up with sort of the public conversation on it.

01:02:34.060 And so-

01:02:34.380 Look at this. They're sabotaging you to this moment. They just turned off your lights.

01:02:37.520 They're listening.

01:02:39.100 Tara, they're still there on your shoulder trying to sabotage you. This is insane.

01:02:44.320 So Megan, in Toronto right now, we are in a form of lockdown. So I'm speaking to you

01:02:48.420 from the common room in my condo building so that my little puppy does not make noise.

01:02:53.440 Oh, thank you. Trust me, Ben, I get it. I can relate.

01:02:56.620 Those are a lot of examples. Another example that was a personal example for me,

01:03:01.640 because I cared quite deeply about it, was the Dave Chappelle Netflix controversy. You know,

01:03:06.420 I started my career in hip hop. I spent the first six years reporting in hip hop. And

01:03:11.020 Dave Chappelle very much comes from that world. And I felt, you know, here's a huge global comedian

01:03:18.720 who has so many fans, millions of people watch that special. He's very beloved in the public and

01:03:24.600 very beloved in the comedy world. And I just didn't see that perspective represented.

01:03:29.120 The coverage was very one sided. And that one in particular stood out to me. So I think the

01:03:35.540 thing that tipped me over the edge were the vaccine mandates and the Dave Chappelle coverage.

01:03:40.380 The CBC did give us a statement. I'm sure you've read something similar. They respectfully disagree

01:03:45.560 with your perspective. They say a few minutes on Google will surface countless recent CBC news

01:03:50.360 stories on the very subjects that Tara claims were ignoring from the housing crisis and affordability

01:03:54.880 to the epidemic of drug overdoses. They say they were nominated for Canada's highest journalism

01:03:59.060 honor. OK. And they say that it's some of their programs keep track of the gender, race and location

01:04:06.160 of people who appear to make sure they're representative of the Canadian population.

01:04:09.740 That's that relates to another allegation you made in your peace out letter where you basically said

01:04:13.880 they're asking the race of guests who are coming on. I have to like Google around on the internet to

01:04:18.380 try to figure out this is a black guy. Is this a black woman? I need to make sure my numbers are right

01:04:22.660 or I can't just have, you know, I don't know. I can see why most networks say you don't want just

01:04:28.000 one race on the air. Like if every face is a white face, you can't have that. Right. So I see their

01:04:33.320 defense there. But what are you saying that they've got like a quota system now? Because they deny that.

01:04:38.660 Yeah. So basically what I was referring to is is after sort of the George Floyd incident,

01:04:44.880 basically what they decided to do was to pilot content tracing projects throughout the service.

01:04:51.300 So they were public about that. The one that I was involved in was not public. So I sat on a

01:04:56.500 committee for this. And basically the idea was across current affairs to to take a look at what

01:05:03.100 the demographics of our guests were on air. The problem being was because it was not a public

01:05:09.340 project. We were not able to ask people who we were interviewing how you know what their racial

01:05:15.860 background was. And so, as you mentioned previously, we're on Google, we're on social media trying to

01:05:21.300 guess, which is quite a fool's errand in a city like Toronto, which is so multiracial.

01:05:27.460 As for the diversity. I have to mention it's fraught with peril. Fraught with peril.

01:05:32.100 It's a very strange way to approach it. Now, in terms of the broader question of diversifying our

01:05:37.560 newsrooms, I do support that. I think that's very, very important. What I was objecting to

01:05:41.960 was the sort of obsession with racial diversity and the lack of focus on other kind of aspects of

01:05:50.440 diversity. So a narrow in kind of definition of what diversity is and the implication being

01:05:56.280 that if you have a different skin color that you automatically have a different perspective.

01:06:00.500 And so I reject that premise while affirming the idea of diversifying our newsrooms. And

01:06:05.900 really what I'm calling for is more diversity, not less more viewpoints, you know, more people of

01:06:12.480 different economic backgrounds, more people of different religious backgrounds, more people of

01:06:17.040 different political and geographical backgrounds. I want more fulsome diversity. That's what I was

01:06:22.280 looking for. So has there been any fallout to you personally from this from leaving and, you know,

01:06:27.780 saying why? I mean, have any of your lefty friends left you? I have not lost any friends over

01:06:34.280 this. No. I have had, you know, of course, when you're in the eye of a media storm like this,

01:06:41.280 it is a very surreal experience. I think one of the things that has really stood out to me is just

01:06:45.720 the volume of mail that I'm getting, Megan. Like, it's just, I've never experienced anything like

01:06:50.620 this before. I'm hearing from people all across the country who are very concerned about the direction

01:06:55.520 that our media is going, who don't feel served by the media, who don't feel like the media speaks to

01:07:00.580 them and the issues that they care about. I've also heard from journalists all across the country,

01:07:04.880 some of which in my old, you know, newsroom and in colleagues across the country who are happy that

01:07:12.240 I've raised this issue, who are happy that I have started this conversation. So it's been about 95%

01:07:19.220 positive. It's been a really kind of incredible thing to live through to get that level of communication

01:07:25.380 with so many people all at once. And then, of course, there has been some difficulties on

01:07:30.040 Twitter, of course, as you would expect. Of course, that's not the right forum. But, you know,

01:07:34.000 it's to me, it reminds me of I mentioned this. Dan Wooten came on last week to talk about Prince

01:07:38.620 Andrew and his new legal troubles. But he works for GB News, Great Britain News, GB News over in the UK.

01:07:44.680 And they're they're not Fox News, but they're a more fair and balanced alternative to the BBC.

01:07:50.420 And I go on with Dan once a week because I support their mission. I they, too, are trying to reach

01:07:57.560 the forgotten masses of the UK whose viewpoints don't seem to matter right to the to the people

01:08:04.040 who are in charge and controlling the programming who get glossed over like they're nothing right

01:08:08.300 like they're, quote, deplorables to borrow a term. So I it's an important mission. And if these big

01:08:13.260 companies were smart, right, like the BBC's of the world and the Canadian broadcasting corporations of

01:08:18.660 the world, they, too, would just listen, write and expand. Don't get defensive. Listen, readjust, try to

01:08:25.320 make more room in your programming. OK, you can cite some examples. I get it. How about more? How about

01:08:31.220 more? Can't you do better? Right. Like fold those people in. You'll do even better. I'm going to pause

01:08:34.840 it there because I really want to get into one of the biggest stories that you've been pursuing or sort

01:08:40.060 of narratives that you've been pursuing over the past few years, which is what the hell happens when

01:08:44.420 you're thirty nine, you're single, you're childless and you realize you've been sold a bill of goods

01:08:50.000 about having it all. Stand by.

01:08:57.740 So, Tara, you wrote a book last month, just about last year, March of 2020, called Lean Out. And this is

01:09:05.540 this is from the publisher. In 2016, journalist Tara Henley was at the top of her game working in Canadian

01:09:10.380 media. She had traveled the world interviewing authors and community leaders, politicians and

01:09:14.940 Hollywood celebrities. But when she started getting chest pains at her desk in the newsroom, none of

01:09:20.760 that seemed to matter. It was not, thank goodness, a heart problem. It was anxiety. Yeah, anxiety. And so

01:09:31.060 what were you realizing at that point? Oh, my goodness, Megan. So I the day that I sort of had to

01:09:38.140 take a step back from the newsroom. This is, I guess, five years ago, quite quite a while back now,

01:09:45.020 maybe even a little longer. I was in the newsroom and I was on a call. I was interviewing a executive

01:09:52.840 coach who was walking clients through burnout. That was my assignment for the day, burnout and

01:09:58.820 work related stress. And he was telling me how many of his clients were experiencing such extreme stress

01:10:04.920 that their bodies were physically breaking down. And Megan, while I was on the phone interviewing

01:10:09.880 him, I was holding my chest to keep the chest pains from overwhelming me. I know, like just one of those

01:10:16.960 crazy moments. So I was having very intense chest pains and I did have to take time off. And as a

01:10:24.200 result of that, went on this sort of journey with the book and really learning about anxiety. And it comes

01:10:30.040 to be, as I did the research, it's much, much bigger societal problem and started to look at some

01:10:35.200 of the systemic things that are contributing to it. But as you alluded before, I also started to

01:10:40.680 look a little bit, I think this was my beginning of questioning identity politics, was looking at

01:10:45.940 feminism and at the role and the position that so many of us professional women find ourselves in

01:10:51.200 these days, which is to have, you know, great, successful, fulfilling careers, but not necessarily to have

01:10:57.560 personal lives that are satisfying. And I, it was something I was hearing from people all across

01:11:02.560 the board at the time I was working on the book and that, you know, this idea that we can work like men

01:11:08.260 and achieve like men, but also sort of do all the things that our mothers did as well is I think an

01:11:15.720 unrealistic expectation and a kind of a false bill of goods.

01:11:20.520 Mm-hmm. I couldn't, I couldn't relate to that more. I totally agree with that. I mean,

01:11:24.300 I wrote my book in 2016 called Settle for More and it was about my life and sort of my own

01:11:31.160 philosophy towards succeeding. And Settle for More is based on a Dr. Phil saying, which I heard

01:11:37.080 many moons earlier, that goes as follows. The only difference between you and someone you envy

01:11:42.340 is you settled for less. And so what I meant by settle for more, if you look at the book, it shows

01:11:48.300 this is you have to figure out what more means for you, right? Not, not what society tells you.

01:11:55.000 What does more mean? And my book actually closed in 2016, as I was trying to decide whether to stay

01:11:59.580 at Fox or what to do with more right now for me means more time with my family. And then I left

01:12:05.840 and I went to NBC to try to do like a daytime show so that I could be home with them and so on.

01:12:10.180 So by then and now I have managed to strike a balance where I am raising my own children,

01:12:14.760 but it's not true that you can reach, for example, in my situation, the pinnacle of cable news

01:12:20.440 beyond in the prime time, which I had to leave my house at 3 p.m. I didn't get home till almost

01:12:24.580 midnight and, and feel like a great mom. That was not true in my case. I never saw my children.

01:12:31.520 My nanny was lovely. My husband's amazing, but I didn't care. I wanted to be there. I didn't want

01:12:38.620 to miss it. And it was a lie told to me by society that I could manage both at the same time. For me,

01:12:45.560 if you want to prioritize your career and being a present involved mother, those two things were

01:12:51.420 not possible to do simultaneously. I think that's so interesting. And I think the idea goes back to the,

01:12:57.920 to the feminist movement and what they kind of prioritized and what they chose to emphasize was

01:13:03.720 women's ability to compete in the labor market, but that is just one part of us as women. And that

01:13:09.960 is only one way of achieving equality. And, you know, one of the things that bothered me so much

01:13:14.380 around the conversation around this, that the Sheryl Sandberg conversation around this,

01:13:18.860 that it was our job to sort of be leaders and be more ambitious and take a seat at the table. And,

01:13:24.460 you know, that was, it was ignoring another form of leadership in that women are often the glue that

01:13:30.600 hold society together. And there are all kinds of things we do to be leaders in our communities and

01:13:35.660 our families. And those, that form of leadership, whether it is taking care of people who are sick

01:13:40.760 or taking care of children or, you know, taking care of community members and bringing people

01:13:45.660 together, that is another form of leadership and a really important one, particularly in this crazy

01:13:51.200 moment in history that we're in right now.

01:13:54.540 So I do love Cheryl. I have to say she's a friend of mine and I realized that her book has become

01:13:58.940 controversial, but I think, I think what she, one of her main messages was if you want to be a gunner

01:14:02.940 at work and you want to get ahead, this is how you do it. You do have to lean in. You have to be more

01:14:06.520 aggressive. Some women do lean back. We're less likely to raise our hands first and all that kind

01:14:11.120 of stuff. And she did offer some good advice in there on, you know, how could you do it? What are

01:14:16.240 you probably doing that self-sabotaging that effort? But what I object to is now we've switched

01:14:22.940 into a push. Like, I don't, they give motherhood a nod, you know, they know that they have to,

01:14:27.580 but it's just a nod if that sort of the modern day messaging, but it's all about STEM. Like the

01:14:33.340 little girls, they, they've got to go on to become the next NASA scientist or somehow they've,

01:14:37.360 they've settled for less, right? Like what if they don't like science? What if they genuinely

01:14:41.780 aren't good at it? What if it's not that the teachers are teaching the little girl she's,

01:14:45.260 she's less than what if she really just doesn't have an aptitude or a taste for it? Now there's like

01:14:50.740 a judgment unless you're, you're going that way. You've somehow failed. You've failed the

01:14:55.700 feminist movement. You've failed to advance womankind that I object to just as much.

01:15:01.380 I know. And it's, it's a, it's sort of a perplexing thing because I do think that we,

01:15:07.180 what we really want is equality and we want the ability to sort of pursue lives of meaning and

01:15:12.580 purpose on our own terms. But the idea that that is going to look one way for all women is,

01:15:19.120 is a fallacy. And I think that there are many, many ways of having a meaningful life. And one of the

01:15:24.440 things that I really came to in my book is just how important social connection is and how important

01:15:30.340 family in particular is. And that's something that is really getting lost in the present moment.

01:15:35.620 And it's really, you know, during the pandemic, it's, it's been so exacerbated that when we do not

01:15:41.540 have really close, fulfilling, rich social connections, we, we really fall apart as people

01:15:47.160 and as a society. And I think it's important to get back to that.

01:15:50.540 So you wrote, um, this is, this is again, back, uh, I'm, I'm not exactly, oh, this is part of your

01:15:57.520 documentary, I think, cause you did a radio documentary on this issue. Um, okay. I want

01:16:02.340 to quote as daughters of the feminist revolution. We'd been told that we didn't need to seek out

01:16:08.020 marriage and motherhood. Our job was to go to school, get a career, fulfill our potential.

01:16:12.260 The rest would fall into place, but lots of times it didn't. And as we live this new narrative out,

01:16:17.400 it dawned on us that the timeline didn't make sense. So true. You go on exactly how were exactly

01:16:24.520 how were we supposed to push our careers with long office hours and around the clock, smartphone

01:16:29.620 accessibility. And at the same time, find someone to build a life with and then marry them and get

01:16:35.760 pregnant and care for small children. It concentrated too many life events in our early thirties. Um,

01:16:42.320 it's true. You're supposed to do it all. And even in, I was on the opposite end. I started it all in my

01:16:46.640 late thirties and it's just, just as hard to get it done in your forties, but like the system worked

01:16:52.240 maybe a little better when we had the babies, like maybe in the twenties. And then we sort of

01:16:55.680 focused on the career more in the thirties, but trying to do it all at the same time. Uh,

01:17:01.080 I don't want to say impossible, but it's crushing. It's crushing.

01:17:06.380 It's total insanity. I mean, I think back to my early thirties and I mean, I was working 12 hours a day,

01:17:12.340 14 hours a day and, you know, very, very focused and very driven. And I did have friends who,

01:17:18.960 who did have children in that time period. And my goodness, Megan, their lives were so, so, so intense

01:17:25.660 because it wasn't as if the demands at work let up at all. And it wasn't as if the home demands let up

01:17:32.880 at all, or the relationship demands. It just, it's too many things all at once. It's just too many demands.

01:17:39.140 And some people are able to do it. And I, you know, again, their lives are very, very hectic

01:17:45.760 and stressful. And I don't know if that's what we want for everybody or if that's what we want for

01:17:50.140 the next generation of young women. I, I often talk to young women about, uh, about this issue. And

01:17:56.140 my advice is often to prioritize relationships. I think that's probably the most important thing.

01:18:01.600 I wish somebody had said that to me when I was in my early thirties, it just wasn't on my radar at

01:18:06.360 all. And as a result, I did not have children and I do feel very sad about that. Um, but I think

01:18:11.500 that that's something that we have to be really honest and really forthright about that with the

01:18:15.540 next generation is letting them know that, you know, the chances are, if you are working the way

01:18:20.380 that we all work, that those things don't naturally just fall into place. It's too many demands all at

01:18:25.260 once. Yeah. And there is, there is a biological clock that we have to be realistic about. I mean,

01:18:30.860 that's just true for women. I have so many friends who are 40 and realizing that I, I'm not getting

01:18:37.420 good numbers back and I don't, it's not the way I thought it was going to be. And you're right. So

01:18:42.220 if like you want to actually have your own biological child, there's no question. There's a, there's a

01:18:46.940 window and you, it has to be prioritized if that's your goal. But so, so were you, you were, you were

01:18:53.140 unmarried and you didn't have children when you wrote it and now what you're 46, 47. So did you

01:18:57.840 manage to change your situation? Did you, did you find love? Like, what did you do?

01:19:01.780 I did find love for, for, for a period of time. And then that relationship ended right before the

01:19:06.560 pandemic, actually. Right before I moved back to Toronto. And so I had the experience of dating

01:19:12.400 a bit during the pandemic, which I have to say was very surreal. It was a lot, Megan, it was a lot of

01:19:19.420 masked outdoor walks. Oh my God. Will you be like, can you pull that down just for one second just so I

01:19:24.660 can see what I'm looking at here? Let's see before I make any further decisions to see your

01:19:29.460 actual face. But also I found it, I did find it really interesting. And I, I felt so much empathy

01:19:36.000 for, you know, the men that I met who I was having coffee with and getting to know because the pandemic

01:19:42.620 was just very, very difficult on people in general, but I had the sense that it was quite difficult on

01:19:47.060 men in particular. Women are just so much more socialized. And I just really noticed that,

01:19:52.920 you know, the men that I was meeting and listening to were just feeling quite isolated socially and

01:19:59.300 that the pandemic was really taking a toll. Well, that complicates it too. It's like, you don't want

01:20:04.080 them to choose you out of desperation. Like I need, I need company for the love of God. No, no,

01:20:07.960 this is, that's not going to be the basis of a good. I just found it an interesting journalistic

01:20:11.760 exercise at the end. I mean, it was just really interesting to hear how many people were sort of

01:20:16.240 dealing with, with the stresses all around us and how they were, how they were dealing with it.

01:20:21.020 So do you think if, I mean, I realize you're not an expert, but do you think we're headed for

01:20:26.980 a 1950s style revolution where women in much larger numbers say it wasn't such a bad situation

01:20:36.380 for more and more women at then back then it wasn't exactly always a choice, but for more and more

01:20:41.200 women to choose staying at home and building their life around the family. And it doesn't mean you're

01:20:48.860 like getting slippers on your husband every morning and evening, though it could, if that's your thing.

01:20:54.060 It's like, I choose to make the home my priority and, and get a lot of fulfillment out of that.

01:20:59.220 And that's a recognized, acceptable social choice. I wonder if we're going to see more and more women

01:21:03.880 go that way. You know, I don't know what we're, what we're going to see going forward, but I do have

01:21:09.080 a real sense. I mean, I think that we're witnessing a real crisis in society right now. And that's really

01:21:14.220 what I have been responding to for the last couple of years is I, the political polarization,

01:21:19.020 the fragmentation, the, the, the real sense that we're, we're losing liberalism, that we're,

01:21:25.220 we're losing some really fundamental aspects of our society. My basic contention, I think that this

01:21:31.480 kind of fragmentation comes back to the break between men and women that we have seen in the

01:21:36.560 last couple of decades. And so I don't know where that goes from here. I know that most people I talk

01:21:41.800 to are, are very unhappy with the state of affairs that they, you know, either they're single and

01:21:47.800 finding that quite difficult or they're married and stretched so thin with family responsibilities

01:21:52.740 and work, but whatever the situation is, it's a, it's an unsustainable state of affairs right now.

01:21:58.540 And so where does that go? I mean, does that mean we're going to see sort of a backlash against

01:22:03.400 the sort of careerist thrust in our society?

01:22:07.400 And not just from women, but from men too.

01:22:10.600 Exactly. I hear that from a lot of my male friends that they're, they're just not up for the level of

01:22:15.900 intensity that so many of our jobs require now and that we're losing really, really important things

01:22:21.680 as a society. We're losing community. We're losing family. We're losing love. We're losing children.

01:22:26.060 We're losing big, big things here. And so I do think you're right that there's something brewing.

01:22:31.320 I just don't know what direction that's going to go.

01:22:33.220 I also feel like a factor that plays into this is what we do to our children now, you know,

01:22:38.640 K through 12 education, because right now it's a grind there. They're so stressed out there that

01:22:47.420 so much is put upon them. You know, back when I was a kid, granted it was the seventies and my parents

01:22:52.680 really didn't give a shit. They're like, fine, you're good. You know, you, you figure it out and

01:22:56.760 get back to us and let us know how it works out. Um, but that actually had a lot of advantages.

01:23:01.340 I did not go off to college. I did not go to Ivy league college. I went to Syracuse. It was fine,

01:23:04.780 but I did not go off even remotely stressed out. I was like, yeah, it was fun. I had a fun

01:23:09.160 first 17 years and I'm looking forward to another fun four years here. No, I was never the top of my

01:23:14.960 academic class. When I got to law school, I started taking things seriously, but I'm saying

01:23:18.340 we send these kids off now just completely stressed. They have to play in three sports and they have to be

01:23:24.620 in 10 clubs and they have to get straight A's. Otherwise they're a loser. And the kids do it to the other

01:23:30.080 kids. It's not just the parents. So we kind of robbed them of all this joy and free love and

01:23:36.300 energy and then put them through the grinder of, you know, college and post-grad school and then

01:23:42.420 expect them to be energized and ready to go for 20 years, working 14 hours a day. Indeed. I mean,

01:23:49.280 I think the pressures on young people right now are just immense. And when you look at the,

01:23:53.380 the economy and the way things go and how competitive things are, and then you look at the housing

01:23:58.000 market, how expensive it is just to find a place to live. I mean, these are major, major pressures on

01:24:02.880 young people. Plus then you have social media and you have the pressures to appear a certain way. And

01:24:08.080 you know, the kind of pylons that happen to young people all the time on social media, it's, it's not

01:24:12.720 healthy. It's not healthy at all. Um, and I do, I do worry about that next generation. I'm, I'm with

01:24:18.220 you. I, I, I, I'm a child of, uh, hippie parents. And so my childhood was sort of that mix of quite

01:24:26.520 a lot of freedom. And then also quite a lot of eye rolling. I feel like I've been criticizing

01:24:30.400 progressives my entire life. Um, on the other hand, I did have a lot of freedom and I was able to

01:24:36.940 travel a lot and do a lot of things and was kind of ready for adulthood and energized and ready to meet

01:24:43.220 those challenges and resilient and had a lot of, um, yeah, resiliency on board. And so I do worry

01:24:50.360 that we're, you know, coddling young people now and at the same time, coddling them and giving them

01:24:55.960 this unsustainable set of affairs to work with, with, with jobs and in housing and all the rest.

01:25:02.080 Well, I had Tristan Harris, who is one of the stars of the social dilemma on Netflix a few years ago.

01:25:07.320 He's an insider at Google, an ethicist within Google, uh, who left. And it has really ever since

01:25:13.080 been calling very publicly for more ethics in tech and in social media in particular.

01:25:16.980 But one of the things he was saying was one of the big problems in the way we're raising kids

01:25:21.360 today is the lack of free time and ability to make your own decisions and fail and so on. Right.

01:25:27.640 And then the kids get older and they don't have those life skills. It was either him or it was

01:25:31.940 my free speech guy from fair. I can't remember. They were both making similar points, but they were

01:25:35.440 brilliant. Um, not from fair, from fire, fair and fire. They're, they're similar, but slightly

01:25:40.920 different than their purpose. Anyway, my point is the kids need free time and they need to fall.

01:25:45.200 They need to make their own decisions. They need to resolve their own fights and they need time to

01:25:48.560 just veg and be stupid and watch dumb programming. Um, and they don't need three sports and 10 clubs

01:25:54.580 and perfect days to get ahead in life. Getting a Harvard degree is not all it's cracked up to be.

01:25:59.120 Trust me, it doesn't guarantee you anything. Um, and if you can work on your kid's EQ,

01:26:03.900 you know, their emotional intelligence and not just their IQ, uh, it's, it's just as valuable an asset.

01:26:09.040 Um, anyway, and it can lead to greater happiness as well. Tara, I, I love your choices and I think

01:26:15.480 it's going to work out well for you. Now you've got, you're on Substack. I feel like something's

01:26:19.000 going to happen for you in the love department. You should probably come down here to America a

01:26:22.240 few times because we got a lot of hot men in America. I'm just saying they're like great.

01:26:26.600 Um, and I think it's going to go well. Let's check in like in the not too distant future and we'll see.

01:26:31.660 Oh, that sounds great. Megan, let me thank you. I listened to your show. It has been just such a

01:26:36.100 great thing during the pandemic. I really appreciate how many new points that you represent.

01:26:40.120 And I, I think it's a really good show. So thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. All right.

01:26:44.480 We'll come back soon. Thanks again. She was great. So refreshing, right? Thanks to our guests for

01:26:49.700 joining us today. Thanks to all of you for listening. We appreciate it tomorrow. Our pal Abigail Schreier

01:26:55.360 is back with us. Love her to talk about the latest in that story of the transgender swimmer, uh,

01:27:01.800 at UPenn and how, you know, this is a biological man swimming as a woman who just lost, lost to a

01:27:09.820 biological woman swimming as a man. And now there's a report they may have colluded to make that happen.

01:27:17.820 We'll bring you all the sort of details, um, as the NCAA once again, punts all responsibility. So it

01:27:25.340 doesn't have to take a stance. Uh, we'd love to have you tune in for that. In the meantime, please download

01:27:29.720 the show, the Megan Kelly show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher. You can get it for free

01:27:34.040 and go to youtube.com slash Megan Kelly and subscribe. If you do me that favor, uh, thanks

01:27:40.840 to everybody for listening. I am still reading the reviews. Even the ones that are like, if you

01:27:43.800 really read these reviews, you'll read it on the air. I'm not going to necessarily do that,

01:27:47.060 but I do read them all. I swear. I see you. Uh, and thanks. I appreciate it.

01:27:53.560 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:27:59.720 Thank you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 24, 2022

Media's Failed Pushback on Power and Ridiculous COVID Restrictions, with Nick Gillespie and Tara Henley ｜ Ep. 246

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