The Megyn Kelly Show - Media's Faulty ＂Fact-Checking,＂ and Trump's Path to 2024 Victory, with Ben Shapiro, Joseph Massey, and Robert Cahaly

00:00:00.000 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.

00:00:02.960 Someone is trying to frame us.

00:00:04.960 Until our names are cleared.

00:00:06.960 We're fugitives from interval.

00:00:08.960 Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.

00:00:11.960 Espionage?

00:00:12.960 You still as good a shot as you used to be?

00:00:14.960 Better.

00:00:16.960 Is there love language?

00:00:18.960 We like to walk that fine line between techno thriller

00:00:20.960 and romantic comedy.

00:00:22.960 We make up our own rules.

00:00:24.960 NCIS Tony and Ziva.

00:00:26.960 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.

00:00:30.000 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:32.000 Live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:42.000 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:43.000 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.000 I hope you and your family had a happy Easter.

00:00:47.000 If you celebrated a lovely weekend with your families.

00:00:50.000 I did have a really nice time with the fam.

00:00:53.000 And I did go to church.

00:00:55.000 And it was absolutely lovely.

00:00:57.000 Absolutely lovely.

00:00:58.000 Okay, we have a great show lined up for you today.

00:01:00.000 Later, we're going to be joined by a pollster for the latest on 2024.

00:01:04.000 There have been a bunch of polls since the State of the Union suggesting that Joe Biden is having a bit of a comeback.

00:01:10.000 That his numbers are getting a little bit better, especially in the swing states.

00:01:14.000 So we're going to take a hard look at that and find out whether it's true.

00:01:16.000 And if so, why?

00:01:18.000 And then later, our favorite poet, Joseph Massey is back with us.

00:01:23.000 Remember Joseph?

00:01:24.000 They tried to cancel him.

00:01:26.000 The poetry world is evil.

00:01:29.000 You may not know this.

00:01:30.000 You know how everything is woke.

00:01:32.000 Restaurants are woke.

00:01:33.000 Starbucks is woke.

00:01:34.000 Poetry is woke.

00:01:36.000 And Joseph Massey was a beautiful poet doing beautiful work who got targeted and then completely annihilated by these evil people.

00:01:45.000 And slowly but surely, you, people like you and you, actually you, have been rehabilitating Joseph's career and making it possible for him to do even something as unique as poetry in an independent lane without the support of these evil, woke jerks who tried to ruin him over an allegation that was made by an ex-girlfriend with whom his relationship ended badly.

00:02:11.000 Anyway, I love when he's on, we'll look at some of his poetry and just some of, just the way Joseph makes me feel.

00:02:17.000 That's what I love about reading his work and looking at his photography.

00:02:20.000 Just the way you feel.

00:02:21.000 You feel like a different version of yourself, a better version of yourself, more contemplative, more thoughtful, more hopeful, which is kind of interesting because Joseph, you know, I think he would describe himself as somebody who struggles with depression.

00:02:33.000 Anyway, we'll get to him.

00:02:35.000 But we begin with somebody who is very sparky.

00:02:39.000 He's, he's, he's, he's not usually writing about the darkness or the light.

00:02:44.000 He's usually bringing it, bringing his a game from his studios now in Nashville, Tennessee, Florida, formerly of LA.

00:02:51.000 And that is Ben Shapiro.

00:02:52.000 You may have heard of him.

00:02:53.000 Uh, he's my pal and he runs the daily wire or at least founded the daily wire.

00:02:57.000 And there's a lot to go over with him.

00:02:59.000 President Biden embroiled in an Easter controversy.

00:03:01.000 There's so much, let's just get to it.

00:03:04.000 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.

00:03:07.000 Someone is trying to frame us.

00:03:09.000 Until our names are cleared.

00:03:11.000 We're fugitives from interval.

00:03:13.000 Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.

00:03:16.000 Espionage.

00:03:17.000 You still as good a shot as you used to be.

00:03:20.000 Better.

00:03:21.000 Better.

00:03:22.000 Is there love language.

00:03:23.000 We like to walk that fine line between techno thriller and romantic comedy.

00:03:28.000 We make up our own rules.

00:03:30.000 NCIS Tony and Ziva.

00:03:32.000 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.

00:03:36.000 Ben Shapiro's with us today.

00:03:37.000 Ben, great to see you.

00:03:38.000 How you doing?

00:03:39.000 Hey, doing pretty well.

00:03:40.000 Hope you had a great Easter.

00:03:41.000 I did.

00:03:42.000 Thank you very much.

00:03:43.000 Um, okay.

00:03:44.000 I want to get to this series that you are doing the divided states of Biden.

00:03:47.000 Cause I know second episode takes a hard look at fentanyl, which is something I really want

00:03:51.000 to discuss, but I, I want to start with something that happened on another podcast this morning.

00:03:55.000 Um, I don't know if you ever listened to the daily, right?

00:03:58.000 The New York times is the daily, but I always listened to it.

00:04:01.000 Cause it's just interesting.

00:04:02.000 I listened to morning wire.

00:04:03.000 I like it, you know, from all different sources.

00:04:05.000 And today's, the daily is amazing.

00:04:08.000 It's amazing.

00:04:09.000 They have my, on my old pal, Jim Rutenberg, who I really like.

00:04:13.000 I have to say he's definitely more leftist, um, and definitely thinks journalists should

00:04:18.000 be covering Trump in a way you and I don't think is appropriate, but he's a good guy.

00:04:22.000 So he goes over there on the daily and he speaks, um, with a reporter about what happened,

00:04:28.000 Michael Barbaro between NBC and Ronna McDaniel.

00:04:32.000 And they're trying to do a sincere look at why it imploded and became such a huge controversy

00:04:42.000 and their musings on the position that modern day media is in.

00:04:48.000 I found so entertaining and I think you will too.

00:04:52.000 So I'm going to kick it off with a rather lengthy clip of that show and get your reaction.

00:04:56.000 Take a listen.

00:04:57.000 How do we capture him, cover him for all of his lies, all the challenges he poses to democratic

00:05:04.000 norms, yet not alienate some 74, 75 million American voters.

00:05:11.000 You've got tens of millions of Trump supporters seeing what's really basic fact checking.

00:05:16.000 These look like attacks to Trump supporters.

00:05:18.000 Trump in turn is calling the press, the reporters are enemies of the people.

00:05:22.000 So it's a terrible dynamic.

00:05:24.000 Mm hmm.

00:05:25.000 And when January six happens, it's so obviously out of control.

00:05:30.000 And what the traditional press that follows traditional journalistic rules has to do is

00:05:34.000 make it clear that the claims that Trump is making about a stolen election are just so

00:05:40.000 abjectly false that they don't warrant a single minute of real consideration once the reporting

00:05:46.000 has been done to show how false they are.

00:05:49.000 And I think that American journalism really emerged from that feeling strongly about its

00:05:54.000 own values and its own place in society.

00:05:58.000 But then, you know, there are still tens of millions of Trump voters and they don't feel

00:06:03.000 so good about the coverage and they don't agree that January six was an insurrection.

00:06:08.000 How is NBC?

00:06:09.000 How is CNN?

00:06:10.000 How is CNN?

00:06:11.000 How are any of these TV networks?

00:06:13.000 If they have decided that this is their mission, how are they supposed to speak to people who

00:06:18.000 believe something fundamentally untrue as a core part of their political identity?

00:06:25.000 Nobody wants to be seen as wearing a jersey in our business.

00:06:29.000 No one wants to be wearing a jersey in our business.

00:06:32.000 But maybe what they really have to accept is that we're just sticking to the true facts.

00:06:38.000 And that may look like we're wearing a jersey, but we're not.

00:06:41.000 And that may at times look like it's lining up more with the Democrats, but we're not.

00:06:46.000 We're going to tell you the truth, even if it means that we're going to lose a big part

00:06:51.000 of the country.

00:06:54.000 We're going to tell you the truth.

00:06:56.000 That's our mission at The New York Times and NBC, even if it means we're going to lose

00:07:01.000 a big part of the deluded country, Ben, that just won't accept what we tell them is, quote,

00:07:09.000 truth.

00:07:10.000 What do you make of it?

00:07:11.000 I mean, it's just so self-righteous.

00:07:13.000 And this is the game that the media have been trying to play for decades at this point

00:07:16.000 is that they are overtly on the left, but they just identify the truth with their

00:07:20.000 political perspective.

00:07:21.000 And this means that if they're just repeating left wing talking points, then we're all supposed

00:07:25.000 to take that as gospel truth, as real statement of fact.

00:07:29.000 The reality is that there used to be a time when members of the media tried to remove their

00:07:33.000 bias, I think a little bit from from their coverage.

00:07:35.000 I think that time ended probably during the Obama administration when the media basically

00:07:38.000 decided they were an adjunct to the Obama White House.

00:07:41.000 And now that's become so obviously clear, especially in places like MSNBC, where you have this revolving

00:07:46.000 door where Jen Psaki, while she is the White House press secretary, is negotiating for a

00:07:50.000 contract to host a TV show on MSNBC and just moves right from one to the other.

00:07:55.000 You see this sort of stuff at MSNBC all the time.

00:07:57.000 Again, it would be better if MSNBC just said, listen, we're a left wing network.

00:08:00.000 And because we're a left wing network, we don't feel like employing Ronna McDaniel.

00:08:03.000 That'd be perfectly within their purview.

00:08:05.000 The issue for MSNBC and Ronna McDaniel is that they keep suggesting that they're actually

00:08:10.000 a news network.

00:08:11.000 NBC News keeps suggesting they're a news network.

00:08:13.000 Well, if you're a news network, then the proper answer to the Ronna McDaniel supposed

00:08:16.000 conundrum is you hire her, you have her on, and then you have somebody on who rebuts what

00:08:20.000 she's saying if you think what she's saying is false.

00:08:23.000 But they don't even want to expose that to the light of day because the idea, I guess, is

00:08:27.000 that if she makes the argument and then you rebut the argument, that her argument is so fully

00:08:32.000 untrue that can't even have a hearing.

00:08:34.000 Well, that's weird because Ronna McDaniel, from what I've seen, actually does not suggest

00:08:38.000 that the election was stolen in the way that Donald Trump does.

00:08:41.000 I believe that her position on the election is that the election was rigged by changing

00:08:45.000 all the rules, that the election was rigged by not allowing Hunter Biden's laptop to be

00:08:49.000 covered by the media and all the rest of this.

00:08:51.000 But I'm not aware that Ronna McDaniel has actually taken right now, as of now, the position that

00:08:56.000 there were actual voter fraud questions so significant that Donald Trump won the election except

00:09:01.000 for voter fraud.

00:09:02.000 She may have taken that position in the past.

00:09:03.000 That's not something that she's taking right now.

00:09:05.000 So it's sort of a weird take.

00:09:06.000 I think her position is unfair, but not stolen.

00:09:08.000 Keep going.

00:09:09.000 Right.

00:09:10.000 Exactly.

00:09:11.000 So because of that, they have to come up with some excuse why she is a difference in

00:09:14.000 kind, and they can't.

00:09:15.000 And so what they're coming back to is this idea that they are the sole repositories of

00:09:19.000 fact.

00:09:20.000 And you can hear it even in that clip where they're moving from, we covered January 6th, we covered

00:09:23.000 the elections and nihilism.

00:09:24.000 And then anybody who says it's not an insurrection is somehow in the land of fiction.

00:09:29.000 Well, wait a second.

00:09:30.000 I don't actually believe the January 6th was an insurrection because an insurrection typically

00:09:34.000 involves, say, the military involving itself in a coup at the behest of one of the members

00:09:39.000 of the government.

00:09:40.000 It doesn't involve a bunch of people who are either committing criminal trespass or rioting

00:09:44.000 in the Capitol building, immediately thrown out within two hours.

00:09:47.000 And then the country goes on.

00:09:48.000 That's just called a riot.

00:09:49.000 Does that mean that I am now purveying something that's not a fact?

00:09:51.000 It seems to me that my characterization of that, which is similar, I think, to yours

00:09:54.000 and to a lot of people's, is much more accurate than simply labeling something an insurrection

00:09:59.000 the way the media does.

00:10:00.000 That's a political analysis point.

00:10:02.000 But you can see the conflation of the label insurrection with fact.

00:10:05.000 That kind of speaks to the whole thing.

00:10:07.000 Yeah.

00:10:08.000 And, you know, Trump hasn't been charged with insurrection.

00:10:11.000 That's not one of their favorite claims on the January 6th defendants.

00:10:14.000 But they say it like it's fact.

00:10:17.000 And if you disagree it was an insurrection, how are we going to reach these people?

00:10:20.000 I mean, we want viewers.

00:10:21.000 That's what they were lamenting in the larger piece that, like, maybe MSNBC doesn't need

00:10:25.000 more right leaning or independent viewers.

00:10:27.000 But big NBC, they want them.

00:10:29.000 So how are you supposed to speak to these people?

00:10:31.000 I mean, like, what are you supposed to do?

00:10:33.000 And especially when they see fact checking of Trump as an attack.

00:10:39.000 Fact checking him looks like an attack.

00:10:42.000 Ironically, as they're having this conversation, Kristen Welker, the anchor of Meet the Press,

00:10:49.000 is over there doing a little of this so-called, quote, fact checking.

00:10:54.000 Now, this soundbite I'm about to play is making the rounds in the mainstream media today because

00:10:58.000 the left is outraged about the way she describes Trump's attacks on the daughter of Judge Merchant,

00:11:06.000 who's overseeing the Stormy Daniels Hush Money case, who's a political operative.

00:11:10.000 She's a progressive.

00:11:11.000 She's connected with this far left organization that got Adam Schiff and others elected.

00:11:16.000 And her personal Twitter account has definitely taken shots at Trump, though her team is now claiming she deactivated that.

00:11:22.000 And that's now somebody else.

00:11:23.000 But you can see why Trump might have looked at the account and said it's her.

00:11:26.000 It's got a picture of him behind bars.

00:11:28.000 Anyway, that's the background of the clip you're about to hear.

00:11:30.000 Kristen Welker kind of brushes past it and the left wanted her to make a bigger deal out of it.

00:11:35.000 I want you to forget that piece of it for right now.

00:11:37.000 Take a listen at the very beginning to Kristen Welker's so-called fact check that I guess we lunatics see as an attack

00:11:45.000 or won't just fucking accept because Kristen Welker says it's so.

00:11:50.000 Take a listen.

00:11:51.000 Meanwhile, this week, the former president stepped up his attacks on the judge and his family in the New York Hush Money case

00:11:58.000 after that judge imposed a partial gag order on Mr. Trump less than three weeks from the April 15 start date in that trial.

00:12:07.000 And now Trump is asserting that none of the trials should, quote,

00:12:11.000 take place during my campaign, falsely calling the criminal proceedings election interference.

00:12:17.000 There it is.

00:12:18.000 It is yet another reminder that we are covering this election against the backdrop of a deeply divided nation.

00:12:25.000 Got it.

00:12:26.000 To call the criminal trial's election interference is false.

00:12:29.000 Right.

00:12:30.000 I mean, it is it is 100 percent election interference that when Donald Trump says the hush money allegations were brought about about the 2016 election.

00:12:40.000 And I checked the calendar and it is currently 2024.

00:12:43.000 I mean, that's a that's a real hot take there from Kristen Welker.

00:12:47.000 But but you're exactly right.

00:12:48.000 I mean, the basic way that the media now report these things is that our opinions are the facts.

00:12:53.000 And if you don't like our facts, that's because you actually are a fact rejecter.

00:12:57.000 And that's a really stupid way to cover this sort of stuff.

00:12:59.000 Again, it really is not that difficult, actually, to cover President Trump in all of his varieties.

00:13:04.000 He says things that are not true a lot.

00:13:05.000 And I'm talking to somebody who co-hosted an event for him a couple of weeks ago.

00:13:08.000 You know, he obviously says things that I disagree with a lot.

00:13:11.000 But I think the other half of this is that the same media that will declare that it's an absolute 100 percent fact that the hush money trial is not election interference against Trump in a state where the prosecutors have vowed to go against Trump for years.

00:13:23.000 The same people who will say that will not cover a single lie that Joe Biden ever tells.

00:13:27.000 They put Daniel Dale, the fact checker at CNN, in witness protection for several years there when Joe Biden was first president because he had to disappear from the scene.

00:13:35.000 Then then Donald Trump gets nominated and suddenly Daniel Dale's back on your TV every night doing his long litany of misstatements or lies from from President Trump.

00:13:42.000 And we can see the double standard be one thing if you were saying we're going to call out all the lies.

00:13:46.000 If you did that, then I'd be like, OK, I get it. Maybe I maybe I'm mischaracterizing something here or there, but at least you're attempting.

00:13:52.000 They're not even attempting anything. Joe Biden, according to these folks, is an absolute truth teller who requires no fact check when he does say something wrong.

00:13:59.000 It's just a mistake. When Donald Trump says something wrong, it's because he's a malicious attempt.

00:14:03.000 He's a malicious coup d'etat destroyer of democracy.

00:14:08.000 Mm hmm. It's amazing to listen to her. I mean, it wouldn't take much for someone to say, hold on, that's opinion.

00:14:15.000 That's not fact. You don't you don't say which is not which is false, that it's election interference.

00:14:19.000 That's that is a very hotly debated topic amongst the electorate right now.

00:14:25.000 And virtually every Republican and most independents would say it is election interference, especially that bullshit claim she's talking about, the stormy Daniels hush money one.

00:14:34.000 So for her to just slide it in there like it's it's just not OK.

00:14:38.000 And then at the same time, have this discussion over on The New York Times about how I don't know why these morons don't just accept fact checking for the truth offering that it is.

00:14:49.000 You know, we're just going to have to, I guess, try to find a way of speaking to these people or not.

00:14:53.000 That's the real big debate underscores so much that's wrong with media today.

00:14:58.000 Today. OK, much more news to get to, but I do want to switch to the piece that you're doing now, the divided states of Biden.

00:15:04.000 It's a new docuseries over the dailywire.com.

00:15:07.000 Episode two focuses on fentanyl. This I don't know a person who hasn't been affected by this.

00:15:13.000 I don't know a person who has not. It's either your friend's college kid or your friend's friend's college kid or something you just read in yesterday's paper that you found deeply alarming.

00:15:23.000 I had to warn your kids about, but it's come up in most everybody's life. Fentanyl. It's everywhere.

00:15:28.000 It's the new opioid crisis, except it's proving to be even more deadly.

00:15:34.000 And yet not. Not necessarily getting the five alarm fire universally among Americans around it that say opioids did once we realized what they were doing to us.

00:15:47.000 So you've taken a deep dive on fentanyl. Can you just just like highlight the problem for us?

00:15:53.000 Like what when you did because I know you visited various towns and you actually got your arms around the problem.

00:15:57.000 So just highlight the problem. OK, so the problem of fentanyl poisoning and I'm calling it poisoning here for a reason.

00:16:03.000 And that is a huge number of people who die of fentanyl overdose are not overdosing in the way that you would think of an opioid overdose where somebody is doing heroin and they actually inject too much heroin and then they die.

00:16:12.000 A lot of people who are dying of fentanyl poisoning don't even realize they're ingesting fentanyl.

00:16:16.000 They think that they're taking a Vicodin or they think that they are taking a Xanax or they think they're taking an Adderall.

00:16:20.000 And it turns out that it's laced with a grain of fentanyl. Fentanyl is incredibly cheap.

00:16:24.000 It's incredibly easy to produce. A huge amount of it is moving across our southern border, thanks to the Mexican drug cartels, which are getting the precursor materials from the Chinese government, which is shipping it over to Mexico.

00:16:34.000 It is then being created in a lab in Mexico by Chinese nationals who are then putting into Chinese made pill presses.

00:16:41.000 They are then distributing that to the drug cartels who are taking it across the border and selling it in mass quantities.

00:16:47.000 And it's killing over 100,000 Americans a year.

00:16:49.000 It's now the number one cause of death for Americans between the ages of about 18 and 40, more so than gun wound, more so than car accident.

00:16:57.000 That's how prevalent it is. And again, it's pretty much everywhere.

00:17:01.000 It's very difficult to get your arms around it specifically because there are so many different versions of fentanyl that are now coming across the border.

00:17:07.000 The easiest thing that needs to be done, obviously, is to close the border.

00:17:10.000 And that's the exact same thing that the Biden administration won't do.

00:17:13.000 So these two issues are deeply intertwined with an open border.

00:17:15.000 It is literally impossible to stop the fentanyl epidemic from entering the country.

00:17:19.000 And there's a lot of focus in the United States on caring for people who actually become addicted to fentanyl.

00:17:23.000 But the reality is, once you're addicted to fentanyl, it's almost impossible to get off of fentanyl.

00:17:27.000 The number of people who are fentanyl addicts who end up getting off of fentanyl, the last stats I saw were below 2%,

00:17:34.000 which means there's only one way to stop this, which is to stop it right at the source.

00:17:38.000 And that means you actually have to shut the border.

00:17:40.000 Joe Biden's border policy is dramatically designed to do everything but stop it at the border.

00:17:46.000 And he's leaving the border wide open.

00:17:47.000 I mean, we're talking about like 25-mile stretch.

00:17:49.000 I've driven them, 25-mile stretches, the most heavily trafficked parts of the Arizona border by drug traffickers,

00:17:54.000 completely wide open, totally in the control of the Mexican drug cartels.

00:17:58.000 So why?

00:18:00.000 Why are they lacing drugs like Adderall and Vicodin with fentanyl?

00:18:06.000 I mean, the answer for that usually is if you can get someone to take a little bit, it's incredibly addictive.

00:18:12.000 It's 50 to 100 times more powerful than a typical opioid or heroin.

00:18:16.000 And so that means that if you can get somebody to take a little bit of fentanyl, apparently the high is amazing,

00:18:21.000 but it doesn't last all that long.

00:18:23.000 And now you've got them hooked for life.

00:18:24.000 So that's an acceptable loss for drug dealers.

00:18:26.000 If you can get a teenager hooked on fentanyl but it means another teenager dies, well, for these drug dealers, that's fine.

00:18:31.000 They're totally okay with that.

00:18:33.000 Some states are doing what they call drug-induced homicide prosecutions, which is something every state should take up.

00:18:39.000 They're basically saying if you're a drug dealer and you deal somebody fentanyl and the person dies of the fentanyl,

00:18:43.000 we are going to charge you with murder, which is exactly what they should do as opposed to treating it as kind of a normal drug offense.

00:18:48.000 This sort of weird hard division that we've made in American criminal law between drug distribution and homicide,

00:18:54.000 that needs to be obliterated when you're talking about a drug as deadly as fentanyl that is being put in, again, things like marijuana.

00:19:00.000 People will be smoking a joint and they'll get fentanyl.

00:19:02.000 And if they have the fentanyl in the marijuana, they can die from that.

00:19:06.000 You offer the following stat in the piece.

00:19:09.000 In 2022, fentanyl overdose deaths doubled from 2019.

00:19:15.000 I mean, this is becoming more deadly by the minute.

00:19:19.000 And kids who are little right now are aging up into the age where they may make a stupid decision on a college campus or, you know, via.

00:19:26.000 You can get these drugs over the Internet so easy via Snapchat.

00:19:29.000 You order a drug, it shows up at your house and you're dead.

00:19:32.000 You're dead. Your kid is dead over these dumb ass decisions that kids used to make.

00:19:36.000 And they weren't smart, but they they weren't deadly.

00:19:40.000 And it's happening more and more.

00:19:41.000 It's happening across income strata.

00:19:43.000 I mean, the poor, the rich, all of them are dying from this thing.

00:19:47.000 What like are there certain areas that are more problematic than others?

00:19:52.000 Because I know you went to, for example, Camden, New Jersey, which jumped out at me because that's one of those community policing towns that just five years ago they wanted.

00:20:00.000 They wanted credit for being super safe thanks to their community policing as opposed to just crackdown policing.

00:20:07.000 Yeah, I mean, what they actually did in Camden is they lied about it.

00:20:10.000 They actually went to the county policing.

00:20:11.000 They said we got rid of our city police and they just ingested into the county police.

00:20:14.000 And then now they're actually starting to try to use a little bit of broken windows theory, I think, to try and gain control of the city.

00:20:20.000 But the city is completely out of control.

00:20:21.000 I mean, Camden is a crime center.

00:20:22.000 They always come back.

00:20:23.000 That always fails and they come back.

00:20:26.000 That's right.

00:20:27.000 And so what you see there in Camden is total open air drug use.

00:20:31.000 You see that in Kensington.

00:20:32.000 Obviously, there have been a lot of films, a lot of filming done in Kensington, which is an area of Philadelphia.

00:20:37.000 You make a turn off what looks like a normal street in Kensington onto Kensington Avenue.

00:20:41.000 And suddenly you're going like two straight miles of people who are walking around like zombies, openly shooting up on the streets.

00:20:47.000 People who in many cases have open wounds, people who are missing limbs specifically because in order to keep the high of fentanyl,

00:20:53.000 people have started mixing it with an animal tranquilizer that's known on the street as trank.

00:20:57.000 And that actually tends to rot your flesh.

00:20:59.000 And so you see like entire city blocks of people like Phil.

00:21:03.000 It looks like a zombie apocalypse.

00:21:04.000 It's totally crazy.

00:21:06.000 It's totally insane.

00:21:07.000 Hold that thought because we have some of that from the docuseries.

00:21:10.000 Again, this is the divided states of Biden.

00:21:12.000 You can find it on the dailywire.com.

00:21:14.000 And here's video of Kensington, Pennsylvania, along the lines of what Ben described.

00:21:18.000 Holy crap.

00:21:21.000 I've never seen anything like this in my life.

00:21:24.000 It's a whole block.

00:21:26.000 It's these blocks of people.

00:21:28.000 Shooting on the knee.

00:21:32.000 Holy crap.

00:21:37.000 Jesus help him.

00:21:40.000 It's just miles of drug addicts.

00:21:53.000 People who are missing limbs and toes and fingers.

00:21:56.000 You're seeing people who are bent over at the waist because the drugs have done such horrific things to their body,

00:22:01.000 they're not capable of standing up straight.

00:22:03.000 It looks like something out of The Walking Dead.

00:22:05.000 They're shooting up right now.

00:22:09.000 She's shooting right into her foot.

00:22:11.000 And this guy's scratching it where undoubtedly massive flesh wounds from.

00:22:15.000 Frank.

00:22:16.000 Oh, my God.

00:22:18.000 It's hard to believe that's the United States of America.

00:22:20.000 It is.

00:22:22.000 And again, all of this is, in fact, if not preventable, mitigatable.

00:22:26.000 All you have to do is close the southern border.

00:22:29.000 Joe Biden's border policy has been to basically allow the drug cartels to flood one area of the border with illegal immigrants.

00:22:35.000 Joe Biden sends the entire border patrol over to process that group of illegal immigrants, leaving the rest of the border completely unoccupied.

00:22:41.000 And at that point, the Mexican drug cartels will smuggle a few guys over with backpacks filled with fentanyl.

00:22:45.000 Again, this stuff is so powerful.

00:22:47.000 It's so easy to transport.

00:22:49.000 You're talking about tons, literally tons of fentanyl entering the United States every year.

00:22:53.000 And it takes a grain, two grains of fentanyl to kill somebody.

00:22:56.000 So what what is the solution?

00:22:58.000 You mentioned cracking down on the criminal law on those who would lace a drug with fentanyl without disclosing that.

00:23:05.000 So, I mean, that's really going after the cartels and I guess those who pimp their poison here domestically shutting down the border so that this isn't as easy, though.

00:23:13.000 That's, of course, easier said than done, no matter who's president to actually shut it down, has proven very problematic for, you know, Republicans and Democrats alike.

00:23:23.000 So what what do we do? Is it awareness?

00:23:25.000 You know, is it like pressure tactics on kill?

00:23:28.000 Yes. I mean, there is going to be more of that.

00:23:30.000 We actually believe it or not, we actually may be back in terms of drug use to the days of just say no, because there was this long period in American history, mainly when I was growing up and really until until now, where I was like, OK, well, it's just a joint.

00:23:43.000 What's the big deal? And the answer right now is that it used to be that if you if you had a joint.

00:23:47.000 Yeah, I'm not a big advocate of marijuana.

00:23:50.000 The first of all, marijuana now is significantly more powerful than than even when I was a kid.

00:23:54.000 But the the chances that you may die from taking any street drug just because you don't know the source are so much higher than they have ever been any time in American history that the idea of getting kids away from drugs totally is now a thing.

00:24:07.000 It's going to have to be abstinence from drugs.

00:24:08.000 And then, of course, there's the international stuff you can do.

00:24:10.000 We need to be putting significant financial and economic pressure on China, which is the source of the precursor materials.

00:24:16.000 We put pressure on them not to actually directly manufacture the fentanyl and just send it directly to the Mexican drug cartels.

00:24:21.000 And so they stopped doing that. Instead, they basically took the ingredients and started sending all the ingredients separately to Mexico, where it's then processed in Mexico and then imported into the United States.

00:24:31.000 We need to be taking serious economic measures against China to force Xi to crack down on on the fentanyl creation in China.

00:24:38.000 Hmm. It really is like playing Russian roulette.

00:24:41.000 Now you try a pill, you're really taking your life in your hands.

00:24:44.000 It is not the same as having a beer or, you know, the nineteen ninety five version of trying a joint.

00:24:51.000 It is. It's just not your kids need to know.

00:24:53.000 And you need to know. Again, it's called the divided states of Biden.

00:24:56.000 And you can check it out at the dailywire.com or let's let's talk about some other news.

00:25:00.000 As we went to the weekend, Joe Biden was having this massive fundraiser.

00:25:04.000 He raised, he says, twenty six million dollars with former presidents Obama and Clinton.

00:25:10.000 I really was struck by it.

00:25:12.000 I mean, I said to the team before we did the show on Thursday, really, you can see the split screen here of these three former presidents in New York celebrating themselves, raising money and Trump going to the wake of this fallen police officer.

00:25:25.000 Of this fallen police officer who was shot by this repeat offender who was out with no bail and should have been behind bars.

00:25:32.000 And it got even worse as the day went on because we saw a huge hole in Biden's schedule and said, you know, he could go.

00:25:39.000 He could get out to Long Island in the day and still go to his fundraiser at night.

00:25:42.000 And we didn't know what he was doing. And then it became clear he was doing the podcast with these three celebrity comedians, Will Arnett, Sean Hayes and Jason Bateman.

00:25:54.000 And they sat down with these. This is what Joe Biden did instead of going to the wake.

00:26:00.000 And President Trump went to the wake. And I realize everything that the politicians do these days is political.

00:26:05.000 You know, Trump surely did not go there purely out of the goodness of his heart.

00:26:09.000 He's not a dumb politician. He understood.

00:26:11.000 But you know what? He still gets credit for it because he's trying to show his support for law enforcement.

00:26:14.000 He's trying to send a message that this is a priority for me.

00:26:17.000 And Joe Biden sent a very different message.

00:26:19.000 In the meantime, every day what we get, Ben, is a message that Trump is the evil one.

00:26:23.000 Trump said the not nice thing about the judge's daughter.

00:26:25.000 Trump is somehow uniquely bad.

00:26:27.000 And Joe Biden is somehow uniquely good or as special counsel Robert Herr put it, well-meaning.

00:26:32.000 Right. That's his critic.

00:26:33.000 That's as much as his official critical says, well-meaning, but elderly.

00:26:37.000 And I just couldn't get over what a missed opportunity it was for the president

00:26:41.000 and how, as a mother, I can't help but feel I'm going to hold it against him.

00:26:45.000 Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure how many times Biden can make this mistake.

00:26:48.000 I mean, we saw this with East Palestine, Ohio as well, where Biden wouldn't go out there to the scene of the train spill.

00:26:54.000 But Trump would. Trump went there and he was distributing resources and getting people Big Macs.

00:26:58.000 Trump does have a very good political instinct for these sorts of situations.

00:27:03.000 And as you say, politicians are politicians. He's not going to every funeral in the country.

00:27:07.000 But he does understand that symbolism matters.

00:27:09.000 And when you go and you show sympathy for a fallen police officer and you say the crime needs to be brought under control.

00:27:14.000 And meanwhile, Joe Biden is parting it up with celebrities.

00:27:17.000 That is not a good look.

00:27:18.000 And it's very reminiscent of 2016 when Hillary Clinton was so assured of her own victory that she was doing her DNC videos of Elizabeth Banks singing fight song.

00:27:26.000 And meanwhile, Donald Trump was running around talking to like actual normal Americans, not at Radio City Music Hall.

00:27:32.000 You know, these are bad split screens for Joe Biden.

00:27:35.000 By the way, I think there's a bad split screen for Joe Biden to just be on stage with the former two presidents who are Democrats because he is older than both of them.

00:27:41.000 Bill Clinton left office when I was 17 years old.

00:27:44.000 And Bill Clinton is still younger than Joe Biden is today.

00:27:47.000 Barack Obama looks like he is still breathing and alive on that stage.

00:27:50.000 Joe Biden looks like he's stumbling around, doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

00:27:53.000 You know, it's it was really bad look for him.

00:27:55.000 And again, I don't know who Biden thinks he's appealing to.

00:27:58.000 My guess is that the campaign knows this, which is why they didn't actually just release a lot of tape from this sort of star studded celebrity event.

00:28:05.000 But they need to get money from a bunch of New Yorkers.

00:28:07.000 And so they have this Stephen Colbert on stage interviewing these three guys.

00:28:10.000 That's not a good look for Biden.

00:28:11.000 Biden Biden is bleeding support, but he's not bleeding support, by the way.

00:28:14.000 Everyone's talking about he's bleeding support from the progressive left.

00:28:16.000 That's why he's going to lose.

00:28:17.000 The reason if he loses, he is going to lose is because he is bleeding support from blue collar white voters.

00:28:23.000 That is actually where he outperformed in 2020 vis a vis Trump.

00:28:26.000 Trump did better in cities in 2020 than he did in 2016.

00:28:30.000 He didn't do quite as well among suburban voters and rural voters, actually, in some areas.

00:28:35.000 Joe Biden did better than expected in those areas.

00:28:37.000 But those are precisely the areas where Joe Biden is absolutely bleeding, which is why he's trailing anywhere from three to six points in Michigan.

00:28:43.000 If Joe Biden loses Michigan, this election is over.

00:28:46.000 He is in serious, serious trouble.

00:28:48.000 And it's not going to help him hanging around with glitzy celebrities, having Lizzo sing for him while Donald Trump is out there visiting with with the families of slain cops.

00:28:56.000 Yeah. And here was Trump discussing what he saw as Biden's reluctance to go on Fox and Friends on Thursday.

00:29:03.000 So I think that politically he can't support the police.

00:29:07.000 I think he's also making a mistake.

00:29:09.000 But I think politically his is his base won't let him support the police.

00:29:15.000 And I support the police, I would say, at the highest level of any president by far, maybe double or triple.

00:29:21.000 And they knew that. That's why when I walked into that funeral parlor, it was it was like love.

00:29:29.000 They didn't even call the family.

00:29:31.000 They could have called. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know.

00:29:35.000 Even a call would be perhaps says, I'm not sure they'd take his call. Right.

00:29:39.000 I'm really not sure they'd take his call.

00:29:42.000 That's right. All he had to do was call. I mean, they actually did let New York Governor Kathy Hochul go.

00:29:48.000 New York City Mayor Eric Adams go. The family said it's fine. These are Democrats.

00:29:52.000 They didn't they didn't try to make it political. The family didn't.

00:29:55.000 If president if the sitting president, Joe Biden, never mind the other two who were with him, Obama and Clinton, said we'd like to pay our respects to Officer Diller.

00:30:03.000 You don't think the family would have said, you know, yes, it would be an honor.

00:30:08.000 They're not they're not even blaming the mayor for the policies, although they are.

00:30:12.000 But they allowed him to speak. They certainly wouldn't blame the president.

00:30:15.000 So it was just he didn't want to be there. Ben, he wanted to be with Jason Bateman.

00:30:20.000 That's the bottom line. That's why I don't buy it.

00:30:22.000 It's like it's the same guy who checked his watch when the bodies came back to Dover after Afghanistan.

00:30:26.000 And it will let the damn White House dogs bite two dozen Secret Service agents with really serious wounds and didn't give a shit.

00:30:34.000 He enabled his drug addled son to go do business for him so he could line his own pockets throughout his post vice presidency and possibly during same guy.

00:30:44.000 You don't you don't get to hear those facts on NBC, the fact checker of us all.

00:30:49.000 Yeah, the big lie about Joe Biden is that he's a deeply empathetic person.

00:30:53.000 I think that's actually fallen away pretty dramatically for the American public.

00:30:56.000 If you look at his polling stats when he first took office, he was in the mid 50s.

00:30:59.000 He's a pretty popular guy when he first took office. And then it quickly became apparent that this is a person who really cares much more about himself than pretty much anyone else.

00:31:08.000 And that became mostly apparent during the Afghanistan pullout when he obviously cared nothing about the Afghan allies who were being left there to be murdered by the Taliban or American troops who'd been blown up.

00:31:17.000 He saw his members of his administration going around and talking about what a wonderful pullout it was and how basically no Americans died, despite the fact that 13 American service people were killed in the line of duty by terrorists because of the failure of that pullout.

00:31:28.000 This is Joe Biden. I mean, this is the same guy who every single time he is talking with any family member of a person who died.

00:31:35.000 He starts dragging out the story about Bo and and he'll do it with like service members.

00:31:40.000 He'll be talking about a service member who is killed in the line of duty.

00:31:43.000 I was talking with the family and he'll talk about how his son was killed in line of duty, which isn't even true.

00:31:47.000 This kind of idea that Joe Biden is an empathetic elderly gentleman.

00:31:50.000 I don't think a huge number of Americans by that outside of Democratic bases.

00:31:54.000 And that's a real problem for him, because if the race was supposed to be in 2020 between nice old man Joe Biden and crazy nut job Donald Trump, who's mean and only cares about himself.

00:32:04.000 Well, that's not the race in 2024 in 2024.

00:32:07.000 It's whatever you think of Trump versus Joe Biden, a not particularly empathetic, deeply angry, somewhat addled old man who has been really bad on policy.

00:32:16.000 That is not a good race for Joe Biden. I've said for years that when it comes to presidential races, it really is about who the race is referendum on.

00:32:24.000 If the referendum is if the race is referendum on you, you're going to lose.

00:32:27.000 In 2016, it was actually Hillary, not Trump. In 2020, it was Trump, not Biden.

00:32:32.000 In 2024, it seems pretty clear, actually, that this is going to be a referendum on Biden, not Trump.

00:32:37.000 Hmm. I really think Trump just needs to stay out of the spotlight.

00:32:41.000 You know, not I'm not talking about Officer Dillard's wake, but his numbers are starting to tighten a bit.

00:32:47.000 We're going to get to that in our next segment.

00:32:48.000 But don't you think, Ben, the smartest move for Trump is to just not say too much, you know, that the people who can't stand Trump are suburban women.

00:32:57.000 They can't stand him. And being reminded of his bombast and his natural personality and his willingness to pick fights may fire up the base.

00:33:05.000 But it totally alienates the group he really needs to get out and vote for him.

00:33:11.000 Well, actually, what he really needs to do is get a bunch of Democrats not to vote for either.

00:33:15.000 Right. And the only way to do that is to stay out of the limelight.

00:33:18.000 The turnout in this election cycle is going to be way lower than it was in 2020 because everybody voted by mail six months in advance of the election in 2020.

00:33:26.000 Usually in every presidential election, you add somewhere between two and four million new voters to the voter rolls in terms of how many people vote in a presidential between 2016 and 2020.

00:33:35.000 That number jumped by over 20 million. That is not going to be duplicated this time.

00:33:38.000 You're going to get way lower voter turnout, particularly in a lot of areas where Joe Biden needs the voter turnout.

00:33:43.000 Joe Biden is counting on his voter turnout to be higher because Trump gets people to the polls on the Democratic side of the aisle.

00:33:49.000 But here's the thing. Trump doesn't need to do anything to get people like me to vote for him.

00:33:52.000 I'm going to vote for him. My family is going to vote for him. And I think everybody that I know is probably going to vote for Trump.

00:33:57.000 But there's a group of people who will not vote for Joe Biden because they actually don't care all that much about Joe Biden.

00:34:02.000 They don't like him very much who might show up to vote if, again, this turns into a referendum on Trump.

00:34:07.000 So ironically, what Trump needs to do is run Joe Biden's 2020 campaign.

00:34:10.000 He needs to go to a basement and do nothing for like seven months and he'll be president again.

00:34:15.000 Yep. And even with the criminal trials, just he doesn't actually have to fan it.

00:34:19.000 Yet the media will do their part and the right wing media will cover the other side.

00:34:23.000 And Trump doesn't have to put himself in the middle of each and every one of those news stories.

00:34:26.000 And yet and yet that doesn't sound like President Trump to be down in the basement.

00:34:33.000 OK, I'm going to take a quick break and then I want to talk to you about your fundraiser for Trump,

00:34:37.000 because I think that's very interesting. More of Ben Shapiro right after this quick break.

00:34:41.000 What's the theme this year? This is something close to your heart.

00:34:44.000 It is. You know, I've been a teacher for over 30 years. So this is egg-ucation.

00:34:48.000 What are some of your favorite memories, Mr. President?

00:34:51.000 Well, my favorite memories are a little girl who's having trouble with her eggs.

00:34:55.000 She looked at me. She's about three years old. Can you help me with the credit?

00:34:59.000 Can you help me? I gave her a push. That's my favorite.

00:35:03.000 What is so special about this egg roll?

00:35:05.000 Well, what's so special is just open and this is the people's house.

00:35:10.000 And I can expect from over 40,000 people to be here. The largest ever.

00:35:14.000 Look, I think we're going to find out that what happened is a consequence of the crisis we had in health is going to have a lasting effect.

00:35:23.000 And we just got to get people to move again. We're ready.

00:35:27.000 I mean, I think the country is ready to come together in a way that I've never, I mean that sincerely.

00:35:32.000 What are your favorite memories about this place?

00:35:35.000 Our kids jumping in bed with us, our grandkids when they're down here, just sneaking up and jumping in bed with us.

00:35:41.000 That's my favorite memory.

00:35:42.000 Oh, boy. That was President Biden today on NBC ahead of the annual Easter egg roll at the White House.

00:35:48.000 Was I the only one who cringed when he was like, my favorite memory is of that little girl?

00:35:52.000 What? Oh, God, what?

00:35:54.000 And then it landed with the story of, will you help me, Mr. Point?

00:35:59.000 Is it OK? Whatever. Ben Shapiro's back with me now.

00:36:02.000 They're airing the Divided States of Biden over at TheDailyWire.com.

00:36:06.000 Right now you can sign up to be entertained and learn something about our country.

00:36:11.000 So I guess that didn't persuade you, Ben Shapiro, because as I understand it, you are voting for Donald Trump.

00:36:17.000 Not only that, but you went from being, I mean, I think it's fair to say a Ron DeSantis supporter, promoter during the primary process to a full on Trump supporter now.

00:36:26.000 That was something I mean, those of us who listen to you know you were saying you would do that all along.

00:36:31.000 You were saying I'd rather have DeSantis, but I'll support Donald Trump if he wins it.

00:36:35.000 So it shouldn't come as a surprise, but it has come as a surprise to some.

00:36:39.000 Explain that.

00:36:40.000 Yeah, I'm not sure, again, what what, as you say, why it's surprising that I voted for Donald Trump in 2020.

00:36:45.000 The Republican primaries were over effectively after Iowa.

00:36:48.000 And once President Trump had locked up the nomination, it's time to get on the get on the bus because it's either Trump or Biden and there are no other choices that are available.

00:36:57.000 And so Donald Trump was a much better president than Joe Biden.

00:37:00.000 It is that simple to me.

00:37:01.000 Again, I've been very open to my criticisms of President Trump on character, on policy and some of the things that he says.

00:37:07.000 Bottom line is that from 2017 to 2019, he was an excellent president.

00:37:11.000 The first three years of his presidency were great.

00:37:12.000 And then the fourth year was blemished by obviously covid and then the and then the George Floyd riots.

00:37:17.000 So if I have a choice between 2019 and 2024, when the world is on fire, when when Joe Biden is not in control of our border, when George when Joe Biden has facilitated the worst inflationary economy of the last 40 years, when Joe Biden has led to massive conflict in the Middle East, massive conflict in the middle of the European continent.

00:37:35.000 Like, I'm not sure why that's such a difficult choice.

00:37:39.000 And when I decided to co-host the fundraiser for President Trump, obviously, the one of the ideas there was not just that that I was giving my own money to the Trump campaign, but it was also, I think, a sign to to a lot of maybe hesitant Republicans that that guys like the primaries are now over and whatever issues you have with Donald Trump that may have arisen from the primaries.

00:37:56.000 And again, I've said multiple times on the show that if Ron DeSantis had been in when when the primaries happened in Florida, I would have voted for him.

00:38:03.040 I think he's the best governor in the country and I think he would have made the best president, but he wasn't the guy.

00:38:06.840 And so because he's not the guy, Donald Trump is the guy.

00:38:09.040 And that means that, again, there's only two guys on the ballot who really have a shot of being president of the United States.

00:38:13.380 And Donald Trump is the one that I'm supporting, obviously.

00:38:16.680 What do you make of, you know, this weird feeling and messaging by some on the online right that it's a no?

00:38:24.080 Like if you weren't in support of Trump during the primary process, you're some sort of a charlatan if you're a Johnny come lately to the Trump train in the general.

00:38:33.840 I mean, frankly, I think that's a dumb political position.

00:38:36.180 I mean, you're going to need as many supporters and voters as you can get if you want Donald Trump to become president again.

00:38:41.660 So this sort of like if you weren't with him all the way, if you weren't if you weren't wearing the red hat from day one when he came down the escalator in 2015, then, you know, we're angry at you.

00:38:50.000 So I haven't received too much of that. But but if there is some of that, I would say that's not very politically astute.

00:38:55.120 Donald Trump doesn't treat anybody that way. I'll tell you that.

00:38:57.900 I mean, when I had the event with with Trump, I mean, we had a conversation about it and he literally said, you know, he's a Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro.

00:39:04.140 You're a big Ron DeSantis supporter, big DeSantis supporter.

00:39:07.460 But now you're going to love us even more. I think you're going to love us even more.

00:39:10.360 We're not going to hold that against Donald Trump doesn't feel that way.

00:39:13.000 I'm not sure why you would. OK, so you there were no fences to mend.

00:39:18.640 But in any event, the fence is secure. Unlike that other southern border, I've got to ask you about the recent departure of Candace Owens.

00:39:25.280 I know it's a subject that you probably don't want to discuss, but I would be remiss if I didn't at least go there.

00:39:29.700 She left. It made tons of news. The right loves to eat its own.

00:39:33.980 So they loved this. You know, either Ben's bad or Candace is bad, but somebody's bad and we love it.

00:39:39.400 It's like the right likes to eat the left and they love to eat their own.

00:39:42.600 They have absolutely no instinct for like self-preservation over on the right or like keeping their own coalition together.

00:39:46.800 It's kind of interesting to watch. But I'm sure that whole thing was rather unpleasant.

00:39:50.240 It's now spun into a debate about whether The Daily Wire is pro-free speech.

00:39:56.200 The accusation is you are until it comes to Israel. How do you respond?

00:40:01.080 I mean, what I will say is that we have a wide variety of positions on Israel right now inside The Daily Wire.

00:40:05.380 Matt Walsh obviously is another one of the hosts at The Daily Wire.

00:40:07.580 He and I wildly disagree about what America's Israel policy should be.

00:40:10.820 Matt is much more isolationist. He basically believes the United States has no real interests in the Middle East.

00:40:16.220 And thus, the United States should not be providing material support to anyone, including the state of Israel.

00:40:21.880 Matt obviously is well within the sort of group of hosts that we have here at The Daily Wire.

00:40:27.420 So clearly, whatever is going on is not about Israel specifically.

00:40:30.900 That's really all I have to say about it as far as the free speech of it.

00:40:33.100 As I've said before, The Daily Wire is a publisher, not a platform.

00:40:36.960 I would never call for anyone to be ousted from an actual platform, X, YouTube.

00:40:41.460 Even people who are, I think, absolutely horrific human beings.

00:40:45.320 I've never called for any of them to be ousted.

00:40:46.940 In fact, I've called for them to have their accounts restored if they've been banned.

00:40:49.960 That's not the same thing when it comes to publishers.

00:40:51.660 Publishers obviously have to decide what sort of things they wish to pay for the publication of.

00:40:56.040 And when it comes to hosts and publishers parting ways, obviously, there will be a non-meeting of the minds.

00:41:03.860 That's pretty much all I can say on that.

00:41:05.900 This is why I don't go into business with anybody else, Ben.

00:41:08.180 This is why I like to just be on my own little island here.

00:41:12.700 You know what I'm saying?

00:41:14.980 Well, you've done really well on that island.

00:41:17.580 Well, it's good to have partnerships.

00:41:19.280 I love working with The Daily Wire, and I have never found you guys anything other than pro-free speech.

00:41:23.500 And the defense of it doesn't mean you have to be in business, as you point out, with people, no matter what they say.

00:41:28.280 And I think Candace will do fine on her own.

00:41:30.720 It wasn't a good match.

00:41:31.960 I, for one, applaud the separation for a number of reasons.

00:41:36.240 Okay, but moving on.

00:41:38.180 That's Candace.

00:41:39.260 You mentioned Lizzo a moment ago, and I would really like to talk about her.

00:41:44.680 She had such a good time with Joe Biden, she quit music.

00:41:48.240 She had such a delightful time spending time with Joe Biden, raising money for him.

00:41:53.500 That she's bailed from music altogether.

00:41:55.920 I don't know if we have a soundbite from her.

00:41:57.540 Here's a bit of her performance.

00:41:58.840 Okay, this is maybe her last performance ever in SOT 6.

00:42:03.360 Radio City Music Hall!

00:42:06.720 We got three presidents in the building tonight.

00:42:10.680 That sounds like a put, put, put party to me!

00:42:14.080 So everybody, clap your hands!

00:42:17.000 Well, if you didn't like that, you're not alone.

00:42:23.480 Because apparently she got trolled after the performance and has announced online she quits.

00:42:29.080 All she wanted to do was make people happy, Ben.

00:42:31.560 And she's sick and tired of being trolled.

00:42:33.980 It feels like the world doesn't want her.

00:42:36.200 So she's out.

00:42:37.540 Do we believe this?

00:42:39.520 No, not for, not for five seconds.

00:42:41.360 I mean, I assume that at some point she's going to want to make money again.

00:42:43.780 And she does have a lot of fans.

00:42:45.340 I mean, to pretend that she's not a very popular artist is, is really silly.

00:42:48.200 So if she feels that the trollery is too much for her, so much so that, that she has to quit,

00:42:53.420 I would suggest that that's cutting off her nose to spite her face, obviously.

00:42:57.420 But yeah, celebrities being head cases is nothing new.

00:43:00.500 You know, but to me, it's like, okay, so this is what she stated.

00:43:06.980 All I want is to make music and make people happy and help the world be a little better

00:43:09.900 about it than how I found it.

00:43:11.120 But I'm starting to feel like the world doesn't want me in it.

00:43:13.300 I'm constantly up against lies being told about me for clout and views,

00:43:16.260 being the butt of every joke, of the joke every single time, because how I look.

00:43:21.000 My character being picked apart by people who don't know me and disrespecting my name.

00:43:24.820 I didn't sign up for this shit.

00:43:26.280 I quit.

00:43:26.680 So she has been accused in multiple lawsuits by dancers and people around her of being

00:43:32.160 an abusive bully.

00:43:33.380 And that'll play out in the court system as it will for anybody who gets sued.

00:43:36.660 But to me, this is like, okay, I'm starting to feel like the world doesn't want me.

00:43:41.860 Why?

00:43:42.600 Because you get trolled.

00:43:44.800 Have you ever been trolled, Ben?

00:43:45.860 I don't know if you've ever been trolled by anybody.

00:43:47.580 Has anybody ever?

00:43:48.220 Never.

00:43:48.700 Never in history.

00:43:49.880 No.

00:43:50.440 I mean, Ben, she's been trolled with like constant death threats and videos of people pretending

00:43:54.960 to really hurt him.

00:43:55.760 I've seen them.

00:43:56.680 And frankly, so have I.

00:43:58.060 I've been trolled by the president of the United States.

00:43:59.640 It happens kind of often, actually, to this day.

00:44:02.580 You have to put on your big girl pants and take it like a man or a woman.

00:44:06.580 So I really have to tell you, I have almost no patience for this kind of bitching and moaning

00:44:12.120 from this woman who probably has well over $100 million at this point.

00:44:16.380 Why?

00:44:17.040 Because the vast majority of Americans freaking love her.

00:44:20.300 But because some people don't and some people are petty, she wants us to feel sorry for her.

00:44:24.920 Well, I don't.

00:44:25.580 Well, there's also this routine that happens all the time now, which is you step in the

00:44:30.180 arena and you say something provocative and then you get blowback for saying the provocative

00:44:33.240 thing.

00:44:33.860 And then you're a victim because you received blowback for saying the provocative thing.

00:44:37.260 And you and I say provocative things fairly often and people get angry at us.

00:44:40.440 And that's just the nature of the business.

00:44:41.660 I mean, Lizzo took the position when she first kind of burst onto the scene that beauty is

00:44:46.200 the same in all forms and that there was nothing particularly unhealthy about being extremely

00:44:51.440 overweight, for example.

00:44:52.620 And so a lot of people were like, well, that's not true.

00:44:54.400 In fact, as sort of a role model, what you would try to encourage young girls to do is

00:44:59.540 to be healthy.

00:45:00.100 And it turns out that being 100 pounds overweight is not particularly healthy.

00:45:03.320 And she decided that she was going to make that an issue.

00:45:05.520 People didn't agree with her.

00:45:06.500 And then she got very upset with them because people are trolling online.

00:45:09.580 Yes, people are trolling online.

00:45:11.020 Yes, the world would be a nicer place if there weren't as much trolling online.

00:45:14.400 Is that a reason for people to have this sort of I am a victim style meltdown?

00:45:18.960 Not really.

00:45:19.700 I mean, has it ever occurred to you, Megan, that you were going to literally quit your

00:45:22.140 entire industry because people were making fun of you and memeing you online?

00:45:25.060 And that'd be that'd be, I think, a strange take for you.

00:45:28.060 I mean, I would have been out long ago, long ago.

00:45:30.920 And the other thing is, like, you're at a presidential fundraiser.

00:45:35.840 What do you think is going to happen?

00:45:39.120 If you there a couple of years back, I think it was Ashley Judd showed up to cheer for the

00:45:45.600 Tennessee.

00:45:46.760 It was I don't know if you call the volunteers, if the if the basketball team is called the

00:45:50.140 Vols, but she was cheering for her team.

00:45:52.160 She's from Tennessee.

00:45:53.180 And she was like, the amount of vitriol I got online after posting a photo of myself.

00:45:59.060 Yes, that's sports.

00:46:00.300 People are divided.

00:46:01.300 You're in the middle of the game and you're rooting for one team and people are rooting for

00:46:04.600 the other.

00:46:04.800 And that's effectively what Lizzo did.

00:46:07.080 But because she's Lizzo, we're not supposed to criticize her.

00:46:10.400 You see these Hollywood celebrities, they want their cake to eat it, too, as well.

00:46:13.240 Right.

00:46:13.440 Like, I get to put my big toe into politics, but you don't get to criticize me for doing

00:46:17.640 it.

00:46:18.540 Yeah, well, that's also the nature of online.

00:46:20.320 And then this kind of ridiculous thing where people pretend that the online world doesn't

00:46:23.800 exist, but then it really, really matters an awful, awful lot.

00:46:27.060 Let's be real about this.

00:46:28.100 I mean, that's what Twitter is.

00:46:29.400 Twitter is people dunking on each other all day long and being as mean to each other as humanly

00:46:32.900 possible in ways they wouldn't in normal conversation.

00:46:35.360 If Lizzo wants to have a better life, what she should do is log off and go, you know,

00:46:38.200 touch some grass or something.

00:46:39.820 But, you know, apparently that's not something that you want.

00:46:42.000 By the way, I advise everyone to do this.

00:46:43.860 Everyone should take X.

00:46:45.420 Listen, I love Elon.

00:46:46.680 I think X is a great source of a lot of information.

00:46:48.360 Also, you should you should probably look at X a lot less often and your life will be significantly

00:46:52.880 better for it.

00:46:53.920 And this, I think, is true for pretty much everything up to and including Lizzo.

00:46:57.060 Yeah, I know.

00:46:57.800 I always get concerned when I see people who I really like having posted, you know, 200

00:47:01.760 posts over the weekend.

00:47:03.220 It's like, wait, what are you doing?

00:47:04.540 And the weekend especially is the time you should be with your family and being outside,

00:47:07.920 not being on X all day.

00:47:08.900 Um, OK, let's talk about Megan Rapinoe before you go, because she's decided that it was time

00:47:15.060 to shame, uh, U.S.

00:47:17.420 women's soccer star Corbin Albert.

00:47:20.700 OK, Corbin Albert made the mistake, Ben, of liking some posts that have been described

00:47:27.460 as anti-LGBTQ.

00:47:28.960 They don't seem anti-LGBTQ at all to me.

00:47:32.180 They seem to be sort of promoting the idea that there might be some unfairness with men

00:47:37.220 playing in women's sports.

00:47:39.500 And, uh, Megan Rapinoe decided to respond by saying online, for people who want to hide

00:47:46.580 behind the phrase, my beliefs, I would just ask one question.

00:47:49.940 Are you making any type of space safer, more inclusive, more whole, any semblance of better,

00:47:56.260 uh, but or bringing the best out in anyone?

00:47:59.740 She wrote, because if you aren't, all you believe in is hate and kids are literally killing

00:48:04.700 themselves because of this hate.

00:48:06.860 Wait, wake the F up.

00:48:08.940 And now Corbin Albert has apologized for liking and sharing the quote, offensive, insensitive

00:48:16.260 and hurtful post.

00:48:17.200 She was immature.

00:48:18.460 She was disrespectful.

00:48:19.200 And she's really disappointed in herself.

00:48:21.780 Everyone should feel safe and respected everywhere and on all playing fields.

00:48:27.060 Oh, just vomit.

00:48:28.420 Just bags of vomit.

00:48:29.340 I mean, when Megan Rapinoe said, I love this kind of crap from people like Megan Rapinoe.

00:48:33.980 Everyone should feel safe and respected.

00:48:35.500 And if you disagree with me, I'll murder you.

00:48:38.220 That's legitimately the angle.

00:48:40.760 It's like, oh my gosh, all views.

00:48:42.820 Everyone should feel so welcomed and tolerated except for you because you said that Megan

00:48:47.920 Rapinoe is the worst person.

00:48:48.960 She's just the worst person.

00:48:50.120 And how people don't find her utterly insufferable.

00:48:52.300 Again, the only reason that people pay attention to Megan Rapinoe is because she was a soccer

00:48:57.860 star in a league, in a female sport that people watch once every four years.

00:49:02.820 And then we all have to pretend that we care about for the other three years, 364 days.

00:49:08.100 And come on.

00:49:10.260 Everyone's a victim, including Megan Rapinoe.

00:49:11.840 Such a victim that she gets to lord it over you and destroy your life if you like the wrong

00:49:15.620 tweet that says something, for example, about biblical values.

00:49:18.840 You do that and then you must be brought, you must, you must be forced to atone on bended

00:49:23.460 knee in front of Megan Rapinoe.

00:49:24.940 People are so obnoxious.

00:49:26.760 I know.

00:49:27.220 And when did, quote, more inclusive become universally good, right?

00:49:33.480 More inclusive in women's sports of men is not a good thing.

00:49:37.940 And guess what?

00:49:38.720 Speaking about safe spaces, it genuinely isn't one if we become, quote, more inclusive in

00:49:44.320 this way in our sports.

00:49:45.760 So to you, Megan Rapinoe, Ben Shapiro, thank you, sir.

00:49:49.700 The Divided States of Biden, a great documentary over the Daily Wire.

00:49:53.960 You'll love the Daily Wire in general, not just for that, but for my new cartoon, which

00:49:57.160 is coming out over there.

00:49:58.540 Check it out.

00:49:59.280 All the best, Ben.

00:50:03.280 We have just over seven months to go before Election Day, and many on the left are touting

00:50:08.480 some new polling, showing President Joe Biden is gaining some ground on former President

00:50:14.420 Donald Trump in the critical swing states.

00:50:17.440 But should we believe the headlines?

00:50:19.820 And are they relevant seven months out?

00:50:22.900 We've been looking at polling long, far longer than these last seven months.

00:50:28.160 So I think they're interesting, no matter who's leading.

00:50:30.840 And that brings us to today's guest.

00:50:33.180 Robert Cahaley is the founder and chief pollster for the Trafalgar Group.

00:50:37.920 Robert, great to have you.

00:50:39.200 Welcome back to the show.

00:50:41.040 Hey, it is awesome to be here.

00:50:43.400 And you do such a great show.

00:50:46.640 And so I'm just honored to participate in it.

00:50:49.540 Oh, thank you very much.

00:50:50.940 All right.

00:50:51.120 So you're going to help us make sense of these numbers, because last week, last Tuesday,

00:50:55.560 we got the latest round of polling from Morning Consult and Bloomberg, and that round of polling

00:51:02.580 showed things a lot tighter than we thought they were in the swing states, or at least

00:51:08.300 than it had been.

00:51:09.300 It showed that Biden was still trailing Trump overall among all voters in the seven battleground

00:51:14.920 states, likely voters, that is, and that's important, but that he had tightened things.

00:51:20.200 He had tightened things in most of the states.

00:51:22.220 Wisconsin now, Biden leading Trump by one.

00:51:26.720 In February, Biden been trailing Trump by four.

00:51:30.660 Michigan and Pennsylvania now, the two men tied at 45.

00:51:35.200 In February, Trump was up two in Michigan.

00:51:37.860 Trump was up six in Pennsylvania.

00:51:40.640 Nevada now, Trump is now up by two, but he'd been up by six in February.

00:51:46.440 Arizona now, Trump ahead by five, but in February, he had been ahead by six.

00:51:50.960 North Carolina now, Trump ahead by six.

00:51:53.740 In February, he'd been up by nine.

00:51:56.540 And Georgia was a state that had good news for Trump in that polling, where Trump expanded

00:52:00.840 his lead from six to seven points.

00:52:04.560 So this got some Trump supporters a little worried that, you know, the Democratic machine is now

00:52:10.600 kicking into gear.

00:52:11.680 And if those things keep tightening between now and November, they're feeling uncomfortable.

00:52:16.800 Should they be feeling uncomfortable?

00:52:19.660 Well, you know, the one thing about all these polls is that they are not representative of

00:52:27.200 what's going to happen on election day.

00:52:29.640 They can't even begin to predict that.

00:52:31.760 What they can predict is kind of a snapshot of where the race is.

00:52:37.160 But also, you need to take some perspective of always look at who's doing it and what their

00:52:46.520 agenda is.

00:52:47.460 You know, I always fight this thing.

00:52:50.440 Well, you're a Republican, so your poll's a lean Republican.

00:52:55.380 All right.

00:52:55.640 Well, let's just say you accept that.

00:52:57.580 So, is it not also fair to say that left-leaning universities and media outlets both will lean

00:53:05.340 left?

00:53:07.240 What I had been saying earlier was I felt like that they had created a situation where Biden

00:53:17.300 was doing very, very bad as kind of a kind of push him out the door.

00:53:23.800 And then as soon as Biden gave the State of the Union and they realized they were stuck

00:53:30.300 with him, I said, you watch.

00:53:32.180 All these things are going to improve.

00:53:34.900 And it's, you know, on our podcast, which is called Polling Plus, that Matt Towery and

00:53:41.300 I host together, and we talk every week about what's going on.

00:53:45.480 And this is literally something we've been predicting, that they had Trump artificially

00:53:50.540 high, trying to move Biden out the door, and that they're going to tighten it all up now.

00:53:56.560 So, you know, you just got to look at the agendas involved and the track records of the people

00:54:04.320 doing the polls.

00:54:05.300 So, I mean, that does matter because especially, you know, I'll take my hat off to the polls like us

00:54:14.620 that put our stuff out there within a couple weeks of the election so that we can be rated

00:54:21.620 by the different services.

00:54:23.040 Now, some of these guys will talk all summer and all fall, but you just wait.

00:54:29.760 The last few weeks, they'll go dead silent because they don't want to be held accountable

00:54:34.160 for what they've been saying.

00:54:36.180 And so, you know, when it comes to things like Emerson and New York Times, those guys like us

00:54:44.620 stick their neck out there and put those polls in public and are judged on them.

00:54:51.620 And, you know, each year have good years or bad years.

00:54:55.120 But, you know, there's a lot of these.

00:54:58.520 This is the example of one that you probably won't hear a thing from in the last three weeks.

00:55:03.300 Oh, that's so interesting.

00:55:04.920 Okay.

00:55:05.100 I want to pay attention to that now.

00:55:07.200 You guys did a poll for us, which we appreciate.

00:55:10.080 Thank you very much.

00:55:10.880 Just to take a temperature at the national level between these two men and beyond, because

00:55:15.800 you included some third-party candidates.

00:55:18.200 What did you find?

00:55:20.520 Oh, well, what we found is kind of what we've been seeing other places.

00:55:25.840 We had Trump at a three-point lead, and then we had Kennedy, and Kennedy, I think it was

00:55:35.760 just a little over five.

00:55:37.000 Like I said, that poll's about two hours old.

00:55:39.420 So I haven't even had a lot of chances.

00:55:41.660 Okay, I have it in front of me.

00:55:42.880 I have it in front of me.

00:55:43.680 So what it says is, it's showing Trump, you're right, about three points up over Biden.

00:55:48.400 Three and a half.

00:55:49.120 Three and a half.

00:55:49.480 43.1 to Biden at 39.8.

00:55:53.460 This is likely voters.

00:55:55.320 RFKJ at 11.4, which is just amazing that he's at 11.4.

00:55:59.820 It's like, well, he was just banned from even participating in the public conversation two

00:56:05.020 years ago, and now he's polling third in this race.

00:56:07.800 Cornel West at 1.7, Jill Stein, 0.8, and undecided 3.1%.

00:56:13.700 Go ahead.

00:56:14.080 Well, he got a big boost of earned media when named a running mate, and so we've seen across

00:56:23.220 the border, amongst some very credible polls, Kennedy making those kind of numbers, and

00:56:30.500 meeting over 10%.

00:56:32.640 And it literally was a little surprising to me that he did that, but there was a significant

00:56:40.940 amount of earned media that came with that, and so I expected there'll be a bump.

00:56:45.620 I think he may settle back down a little bit, but I think there's definitely a bump based

00:56:51.080 on all that earned media.

00:56:52.820 Well, this is why we're going to see an all-out assault against RFKJ over the next seven months

00:56:57.720 by the Biden campaign, which I think accurately deduces he's a much bigger threat to Joe Biden

00:57:02.560 than he is to Trump, and they need him to be eliminated.

00:57:05.120 They keep reminding us, well, the Kennedy family doesn't like him.

00:57:07.880 Okay, all right.

00:57:09.320 I mean, I think the independents who are saying, I'm not voting Dem, are not that persuaded

00:57:14.960 by the Kennedy lore.

00:57:16.300 People, the Democrats need to come to terms with the fact that not everybody remembers

00:57:20.180 the 1960s as well as Joe Biden does.

00:57:24.300 Oh, that is for sure.

00:57:26.360 You know, one of the things, and this is what I've been pointing out for about a year and

00:57:32.160 a half, is the difference between, and now I'm hearing everybody else say the same thing,

00:57:37.120 The difference between 2016 and 2020 was Jill Stein.

00:57:42.580 Jill Stein's margin in every state was larger than Trump's margin of victory.

00:57:48.540 So third-party candidates can make a difference.

00:57:51.160 That's amazing.

00:57:51.400 Can you say that again?

00:57:52.480 Say that again.

00:57:53.580 Jill Stein's margin, the votes that she got in those swing states, like Michigan, like Wisconsin,

00:58:03.760 was larger than Trump's margin of victory.

00:58:10.140 And so without Jill Stein, there's no guarantee that that happens that way.

00:58:14.760 So, you know, when it was a two-person race, you have people who are just like, well, I don't

00:58:24.060 like, there's a certain amount of people who say, well, I don't like either one, but hold

00:58:28.800 their nose and vote for Biden.

00:58:30.780 And in 2020, they did that, one, because he had a reputation of being a little more of

00:58:37.460 a moderate, can work with everybody, Democrat, and that is the way he ran his primary race.

00:58:45.240 And that's frankly why he won.

00:58:47.640 Now, he has not governed that way.

00:58:51.220 But so a lot, you know, a lot of those people who really weren't crazy, but he's the one,

00:58:55.720 even some disaffected Republicans just said, well, I'll just vote for Biden.

00:59:00.780 Well, now, when there's another choice, when the people who don't really like Trump or Biden

00:59:10.480 don't have to hold their nose and pick one, and they can vote for anybody else, those numbers

00:59:16.800 come right off Biden, because they were ending up with Biden last time.

00:59:22.640 And so it doesn't really matter who it is.

00:59:25.260 Anybody that has any kind of media and name recognition is going to pull from Biden.

00:59:33.800 Add to that, that he, probably Kennedy was pulling a little bit from Trump in the beginning,

00:59:40.640 but as soon as he named that running bait, it was almost a signal to Republicans that this

00:59:48.580 is not somebody you can support.

00:59:50.080 So if you're a conservative Republican who's not crazy about Trump and very well-eyed Kennedy,

00:59:56.300 that running mate just convinced you, nah, you can't do that, because she is not in the

01:00:03.040 middle.

01:00:03.800 She is very much on the left.

01:00:06.740 Well, that's, I mean, just to play it out, that's if Trump dies, right?

01:00:13.240 Or if RFKJ dies, if RFKJ dies, right?

01:00:15.840 Like, that's when you have to worry about her.

01:00:17.300 You have to worry about him for picking her, too, for sure.

01:00:19.380 Why did he pick her?

01:00:20.480 She's pretty far left.

01:00:21.420 Why would he do that if he's more in the middle?

01:00:23.460 But I do think you're right.

01:00:24.740 I think RFKJ definitely hurts Biden more than he hurts Trump.

01:00:27.760 But he's there as a threat to Trump, because if Trump goes too far off the rails in the

01:00:31.680 next seven months, he is an acceptable option to some Republicans who aren't diehard conservatives.

01:00:40.340 Like, if you just don't like Trump and you like him more than Biden, but he really pisses

01:00:45.300 you off for whatever reason over the next seven months, you say, I just can't do it.

01:00:48.160 I just can't.

01:00:48.860 I can't vote for the guy.

01:00:49.820 There's RFKJ, who said all the right things on COVID in the minds of, you know, a lot

01:00:55.720 of the Trump base, who is against the military industrial complex.

01:00:59.620 You know, like this guy, there's a lot of appealing about him.

01:01:03.040 So Trump has to watch it a little because RFKJ is in the race in my view.

01:01:08.600 Absolutely.

01:01:08.780 Let me ask you about this piece by my old pal Doug Schoen, a Fox News lifelong Democratic

01:01:15.060 operative, good guy.

01:01:16.700 And Carly Cooperman co-authors it in the Hill.

01:01:18.640 So the title, the title is opinion is a Biden comeback quietly underway.

01:01:24.920 He says, unless you're deeply immersed in politics, you likely missed a major development

01:01:28.820 over the last three weeks.

01:01:29.900 It's dated today, by the way, since his state of the union speech, President Joe Biden has

01:01:34.320 seen a market reversal of his fortunes since Biden addressed the nation early March polling

01:01:39.840 shows he's gaining ground.

01:01:42.100 Trump now leads Biden by only one percentage point in the real clear politics polling average.

01:01:47.120 That's Trump's smallest lead since January.

01:01:50.020 And he goes through some of them.

01:01:51.420 In the Quinnipiac poll released last week, Biden led by three points, led, that is, by

01:01:57.360 three points, bringing the total to 12 national polls now showing Biden leading Trump since

01:02:03.780 the state of the union.

01:02:05.340 Moreover, the bounce is not being seen just in national polls, but also battleground states

01:02:09.100 that will determine the winner.

01:02:10.820 In Wisconsin, Biden now leads Trump, a five-point swing in Biden's favor since February.

01:02:16.560 And he starts to go through those polls from Bloomberg Morning Consult that I just went through

01:02:22.120 with the audience.

01:02:23.340 It is really amazing how much air that one poll has got.

01:02:28.700 It's amazing.

01:02:29.520 Well, I mean, then the thing is, because there's not a lot of state polls going on right now.

01:02:37.220 And so, you know, they throw this out and it's just red meat.

01:02:43.260 Well, yes, but it's also interesting because Biden's kind of seemed close to dead.

01:02:51.180 And there is like a little sign of life here.

01:02:55.220 I personally am having some difficulty believing that this amazing state of the union that we

01:03:01.660 did not see is the reason for this.

01:03:04.520 Your explanation is the first one I've heard that makes sense.

01:03:09.560 Oh, I think it's completely artificial.

01:03:12.540 And it was like, just like in the, let me give you an example.

01:03:15.340 In the primaries, and this was something Matt and I were saying before.

01:03:19.800 Or, you know, in December, they said, I was like, our polls and Matt's polls all showed

01:03:28.480 that much tighter.

01:03:29.620 And as you might know, we had the number one poll in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina

01:03:34.840 of the people who polled, you know, the actual candidates.

01:03:40.540 And what we said, we were always tighter than them.

01:03:43.520 And they had these artificial high numbers.

01:03:46.400 And they would say, why are they doing that?

01:03:48.280 Well, they're doing that so on election night, they can go, well, Trump may have won, but

01:03:53.360 he certainly is not meeting expectations.

01:03:57.500 And sure enough, that's exactly what they did, except for he did exactly what we thought he

01:04:04.000 would do.

01:04:04.960 I think, you know, it's kind of like in the stock market, like a pump and dump.

01:04:08.860 I mean, this is, it's, it's all, a lot of this is artificial.

01:04:14.820 Hmm.

01:04:15.560 So you're saying that, I mean, because like I, when I worked at Fox News, I really trusted

01:04:19.800 our polling outlet.

01:04:21.040 People thought, oh, it's a Fox poll.

01:04:22.860 People who were on the left.

01:04:24.380 No, no.

01:04:24.940 But I always laughed at that.

01:04:25.980 Fox works very hard to keep that even.

01:04:27.380 Yes, to keep it very even.

01:04:29.620 So I never, ever suspected them of waiting the poll unfairly.

01:04:33.500 They, they really wanted to get it right.

01:04:35.760 They didn't want to get it right for the Republican.

01:04:38.820 You know, it's like pushed on.

01:04:40.280 You're telling me there's a fair amount of pollsters out there who are more partisan,

01:04:43.940 who actually do put a little thumb on the scale.

01:04:45.800 And it could even be a thumb on the scale in favor of Trump, because net, net, they know

01:04:50.600 it'll make Trump look bad, like he didn't hit expectations or, oh, look, now Biden's

01:04:55.060 closing this, you know, lead that we told you existed, but might not have.

01:04:58.880 Right.

01:04:59.680 And it's less the thumb on the, it's just how you, you know, it's how you do it, how you

01:05:05.040 weigh it.

01:05:05.520 You don't have to do a lot to kind of move things where you want them.

01:05:11.540 If, if, if your goal is not to actually represent what you found.

01:05:17.480 Um, and, and so we do see some of that and it, it's out there and there's no question it

01:05:24.260 is.

01:05:24.580 And, you know, and there's some, there's some groups that I would never say that, uh, uh,

01:05:32.800 you know, there's groups I feel very like, I feel like Fox, if anything, errors on the

01:05:38.100 side of being, uh, fair to the Democrats.

01:05:41.540 And you're right that they never are in the tank for Republicans, uh, just straight

01:05:47.560 up, but pretty much they're right down.

01:05:50.020 You know, I feel like that's, they do it.

01:05:52.760 They do a good job.

01:05:53.880 Uh, New York times, he had a very good job.

01:05:56.900 Emerson college.

01:05:58.180 I mean, just, I, I think Emerson college is just the best.

01:06:03.260 I mean, when it comes all these universities, media polls, that that's the one I put the most

01:06:08.620 stock in, um, they've been the most accurate of the last few years.

01:06:14.040 And, uh, I think very highly of the work and they don't mind sticking their neck out and

01:06:19.700 putting something out there for election day.

01:06:22.920 Speaking of Fox news, they just concluded a poll of registered voters and did, uh, it was

01:06:27.320 conducted March 22 through 25 on the election.

01:06:30.940 It showed in a Biden versus Trump head to head.

01:06:34.080 Trump is up 0.5.

01:06:35.640 He's up 14 points among independents in a five way race.

01:06:41.000 It showed Trump up 0.5, uh, five points total.

01:06:44.380 And this one showed him up 0.5 or five points, sorry, up five points, like five, five percentage

01:06:50.500 points over Biden, Trump, um, um, yeah, 43 Biden is 38 in, in that five way.

01:06:57.220 That's when Shannon, Shannon brain was going over Sunday.

01:07:00.400 Yeah.

01:07:00.940 I remember that.

01:07:01.740 And in the head to head matchup, Trump with 50 Biden with 45.

01:07:05.420 But then one of the interesting things about the poll was they got into some other questions

01:07:09.620 like what was the biggest failure?

01:07:14.860 What has been biggest failure of the Biden administration, top response, immigration and

01:07:19.060 border security by far 31% said that second of a distant second.

01:07:25.040 Now is inflation in the economy at 17%.

01:07:28.300 Then the next question, what has been Biden's biggest accomplishment?

01:07:32.760 The number one answer was nothing.

01:07:36.020 He's made things worse.

01:07:37.600 38% that's kind of like, that's kind of like make you hate losing on the above.

01:07:44.380 That's not good.

01:07:45.440 That's not a good, but I do think it's interesting now because there was a long time during Biden's

01:07:50.040 presidency where the economy outranked everything immigration, especially amongst Democrats was

01:07:55.140 not even two or three.

01:07:56.720 Now it is number one for both parties.

01:07:59.060 Can I, but let me just, let me, but let me ask you a question on that because what some

01:08:03.600 believe, like my pal Doug Schoen is that the people not caring as much about the economy

01:08:08.900 as they did is why his poll numbers, Doug Schoen believes are rebounding Biden's.

01:08:15.540 First of all, they, I think that is complete misnomer that what I'll tell you, the reason I believe

01:08:26.900 this is, is first immigration touches everyone, whether it's, uh, you know, the, the people

01:08:37.060 come into big cities and, and, and the rising crime, whether it's, uh, fentanyl, you know,

01:08:44.640 it, it just, it touches everyone.

01:08:47.680 That there, there, there's no community that feels immune from immigration.

01:08:52.380 However, you know, we've been talking about the fact that there seem to be kind of two

01:08:57.300 justices, but there's also two economies out there.

01:09:00.860 You know, if you work for the government or you work for an industry, uh, that is now kind

01:09:09.640 of a Biden favorite, you know, whether it's alternative energies or any, you're doing great.

01:09:18.580 But the working families are, are, are going to the gross store and putting on the credit

01:09:25.220 cards and that has not changed.

01:09:27.500 And credit card debt is an all time high defaults that are all time high car rates.

01:09:33.480 Uh, the, I mean, car repossessions all time high.

01:09:38.440 These are things that tell you where the real economy is.

01:09:42.040 You know, an average person will tell you something is wrong.

01:09:45.440 Everybody can tell you about a store or restaurant they've been to, they can't find anyone to

01:09:53.520 work or have, they had to wait an extra hour for an Uber because there's not enough people

01:09:59.160 driving.

01:10:00.160 There is a complete, there's so many people who are not participating in this economy.

01:10:08.740 And, you know, like I said, there's two economies that those who are in these industries that

01:10:13.920 are funded or those who are getting paid by the government or some kind of government

01:10:22.460 assistance, they feel one way about things and about the government and about the economy.

01:10:28.600 But, you know, average working families feel completely differently.

01:10:33.420 And if they want to go all the way to this election, thinking that everything's fine with

01:10:38.820 the economy, they're going to get a shock.

01:10:41.980 And that explains a lot of working families, uh, a significant amount of Hispanics, uh, and

01:10:49.520 African-Americans and young people all fall in to the people who are having trouble, uh,

01:10:56.600 either finding work or, uh, making ends meet.

01:11:01.860 And that's why you tell me, Robert, but I believe that's why the Biden's messaging, the

01:11:08.400 Biden team's messaging to young people saying climate change, student loan quote forgiveness,

01:11:14.640 which is a lie, um, and looking at blacks and Hispanics and saying, um, they demonize immigrants

01:11:22.740 or they demonize black people.

01:11:25.400 They're racists, you know, come with us.

01:11:28.200 We love DEI.

01:11:29.700 That's why none of that's working because all those groups are like, look at my wallet.

01:11:38.100 Exactly.

01:11:38.660 And, and, and the thing is that that is, these are all the people who are affected by this

01:11:45.920 economy and this crazy inflation, you know, when, when you, when, when you, it, it's going

01:11:52.440 to break your heart when you, you know, I, one of the grocery stores I go to is, is lots

01:12:00.020 of different people from different backgrounds.

01:12:02.300 And I, I mean, just to watch people, you know, lady put out some cash and say, well, this is

01:12:08.440 all I have.

01:12:09.060 Can you put the difference on this credit card?

01:12:11.120 And if it doesn't work, can you use this one?

01:12:13.400 I mean, that's sad.

01:12:16.160 And that is the real world right now.

01:12:18.780 And these people are paying like 30% or some of the stupid credit cards.

01:12:23.780 Yep.

01:12:24.400 That's right.

01:12:25.200 Where, where do you live?

01:12:27.200 Well, I, I, I live kind of in two places.

01:12:30.040 I have a residence in South Carolina, which is where I'm from and grew up.

01:12:35.420 And, um, we, we're also hang forward in Atlanta.

01:12:39.320 So, uh, I, I've burned up by 85, uh, between the two, uh, every week.

01:12:45.880 Okay.

01:12:46.680 My, my husband and I have an ongoing debate about the grocery stores and, uh, he's in

01:12:51.440 love with the Acme, the ACME, the Acme up by his up.

01:12:54.760 Well, he loves the Acme.

01:12:56.080 Doug has a love affair with the Acme.

01:12:57.660 I haven't really found one that I absolutely love.

01:13:00.300 Like whole foods is okay for some things, but it's kind of, I know why Doug doesn't

01:13:03.940 like it and why a lot of people don't like it as a bad parking lot where we are.

01:13:07.520 Anyway, I just wondered, but I'll tell you what the best grocery store I've ever been

01:13:12.500 in in my life is Wegmans in upstate New York.

01:13:15.100 It is absolutely beautiful.

01:13:17.900 They have such a wide range of like, they've got the fancy stuff.

01:13:21.100 If you want to do the whole foods, are they, and they have the more economical stuff.

01:13:24.080 If you're on a tighter budget presentation is beautiful.

01:13:26.960 The aisles are wide.

01:13:28.240 That's what I really care about.

01:13:29.340 I don't like playing games of chicken when watch walking down the aisle.

01:13:32.580 Um, I want to talk about the, you know, in the South, we have Publix and with Publix

01:13:38.020 is in both the places I live.

01:13:39.720 And it, it, it, it, it, it feels like what you're describing of Wegmans.

01:13:43.960 It's it, you know, you got a choice.

01:13:46.860 You can buy the Publix or lower brand, or you can buy the most high end stuff, you know,

01:13:52.480 five different, uh, flavors of blueberry cheese.

01:13:56.780 I mean, whatever you want.

01:13:57.720 That's how it should be.

01:13:58.400 That's how it should be.

01:13:59.280 Because while I might want some of the organic fruit from the whole foods, generally, I don't

01:14:03.260 want to be surrounded by the people who shop there.

01:14:05.100 So it's a, it's a real conundrum.

01:14:07.080 Um, okay.

01:14:08.280 I got to talk to you about the black before I let you go.

01:14:11.640 Clearly, clearly team Trump thinks that there's some vulnerability for Biden on the bat on the

01:14:16.940 black vote.

01:14:17.840 And clearly Joe Biden sees it too.

01:14:20.720 Because even though they'll say the black vote's never going Republican.

01:14:24.900 And I don't even think Republicans are thinking it's going to go Republican.

01:14:28.020 It's just about eating away at the numbers that normally go down.

01:14:30.540 Um, Joe Biden released this ad he and Kamala Harris called price targeting black voters just two weeks ago.

01:14:38.280 Uh, watch this at 25.

01:14:39.820 As bad as Trump was, his economy was worse, and black America felt it the most.

01:14:45.700 He cut health insurance while giving tax breaks to the wealthy and big business.

01:14:49.420 He stoked racial violence, attacked voting rights, and if reelected, vowed to be a dictator and, quote,

01:14:55.620 get revenge.

01:14:56.620 We can't go back.

01:14:58.000 As president, I put money in pockets, creating millions of new jobs, and capped the cost of

01:15:03.540 insulin at $35 a month.

01:15:05.280 There's a lot more to do, but we can do it together.

01:15:09.320 All right, so there's Biden trying to appeal to black voters, and here's Trump doing the same.

01:15:15.600 Here's his version.

01:15:17.220 Biden's letting Mexican cartels pump drugs and fentanyl into our streets.

01:15:21.440 He's busing rapists and murderers into our communities.

01:15:23.940 And the crooks in Congress are handing out our tax dollars to illegals.

01:15:28.080 Biden promised to help us, but his policies are making things worse.

01:15:31.760 But he doesn't care because he takes our votes for granted.

01:15:35.280 President Trump will protect our daughter's sports teams and stop the sexualization of

01:15:40.040 our children.

01:15:40.960 Trump will declare war on the cartels and stop the flood of drugs and crime into our communities.

01:15:46.500 President Trump, delivered for us before, and he'll do it again.

01:15:52.420 To the viewing audience, that was just a picture of Trump because it's a radio ad.

01:15:56.740 So what do you make of it?

01:15:58.160 They're both obviously admitting that the black vote, at least in part, is in play, in particular

01:16:03.420 black men, though the latest polling that we were just talking about shows, let's see,

01:16:08.820 in a head-to-head match, Biden versus Trump.

01:16:12.580 Let's see.

01:16:13.720 Biden has 71 percent of the black vote.

01:16:15.780 Trump, 26.

01:16:17.080 Which, people need to understand, those numbers are, like, amazing for a Republican to get

01:16:21.820 26 percent of the black vote in this polling.

01:16:24.340 And all the other polls show it about the same.

01:16:25.720 It is impossible for Biden to win.

01:16:27.080 It is impossible for Biden to win if that number stands.

01:16:31.040 Oh, that bad.

01:16:33.920 Well, I mean, you know, obviously, you know, the Hispanic vote, too.

01:16:37.820 But what you're seeing, I mean, first of all, good for the black community for saying, you

01:16:45.680 cannot take us for granted.

01:16:48.140 We've been saying this for the longest time, is that, you know, the squeaky wheel gets the

01:16:54.320 oil.

01:16:54.880 And I am so, it is so deserving that the whole idea of a monolith or, you know, what Trump

01:17:04.680 said to the guy, you know, if you don't vote for me, you ain't black, I mean, that's just

01:17:12.200 ridiculous.

01:17:13.760 And that is offensive.

01:17:15.060 And this whole idea that you need to earn the vote is very important.

01:17:23.980 But, you know, we've been saying for the longest time, everybody keeps talking about, well,

01:17:28.120 what is he going to do about suburban women?

01:17:29.960 What is he going to do about independence?

01:17:31.500 Well, one makes it very clear.

01:17:32.960 If Trump does over 25% for the black community, over 40% for the Hispanic community, none of

01:17:42.000 that other stuff matters.

01:17:43.700 The Biden coalition is destroyed and he cannot win.

01:17:47.980 Wow.

01:17:48.820 Is that possible?

01:17:50.240 Is this a mirage?

01:17:52.760 Well, I mean, these are both numbers that have been creeping up.

01:17:56.220 I mean, Trump did better with these groups in 2016 than Republicans used to do, than better

01:18:05.540 even than when he did in 2016 in 2020.

01:18:09.300 And, you know, he's on record to do the best again.

01:18:15.460 I mean, you've got to go back to Richard Nixon in 1960 to get anywhere that a Republican has

01:18:21.520 done better than what Trump is doing with these communities.

01:18:25.440 Why did Richard Nixon do so well with black voters?

01:18:29.140 Well, it wasn't that he did so well.

01:18:32.300 It was that up until 1960, black voters tended to be Republicans.

01:18:40.860 Martin Luther King was a registered Republican.

01:18:43.640 I mean, frankly, you know, when you, when you study it, Nixon did a little less than, than

01:18:50.780 what had been happening in the past.

01:18:53.020 And, you know, the historical things that I read says that, that, that, the fact that

01:19:00.400 Kennedy called Martin Luther King when he was, when he was in jail and Nixon was vice president

01:19:10.020 and could have really done something to help and didn't really kind of set the tone.

01:19:15.640 And then, you know, after 60, that, then that they started being, once they realized that

01:19:21.300 it was kind of going the other way, then they kind of put it in high gear and, you know,

01:19:25.860 initiated what, you know, it was called the Southern strategy.

01:19:28.520 But that was, you know, through those times, it was very much more likely that African-American

01:19:37.480 voters would be voting Republican, that this was kind of a switch that, that stuck from

01:19:43.640 the sixties on.

01:19:45.280 Man, for 60 years.

01:19:48.100 And yet, and yet here we are with one Republican candidate appealing to them and making the

01:19:55.300 hard play and pointing out the things, the ways in which he believes his policies changed

01:19:59.240 their lives.

01:19:59.920 I got to run, Robert.

01:20:00.820 It's been a pleasure.

01:20:01.720 Thank you for doing the poll for us.

01:20:03.160 It is always a pleasure.

01:20:04.160 And thanks for coming on.

01:20:05.340 Ah, hope to see you again soon.

01:20:07.340 Thank you.

01:20:08.220 And we look forward to it.

01:20:09.860 Thank you.

01:20:11.080 All the best.

01:20:11.920 Okay.

01:20:12.160 Coming up, our favorite poet, Joseph Massey, who's putting out a new book.

01:20:17.720 And dare I say, it is perfect for either your mom or your dad coming up this Mother's or

01:20:23.880 Father's Day.

01:20:24.600 And I'll get into why I think that.

01:20:26.600 But as I was reading it, I was thinking, this is actually a totally beautiful gift.

01:20:29.580 And it's a, it's an unusual gift.

01:20:31.560 They won't be expecting it, right?

01:20:33.620 It's not a mug.

01:20:34.720 It's not a picture frame.

01:20:36.440 Um, it's a gift of beauty and thoughtfulness and one that communicates your, your love,

01:20:42.940 but like your consideration too.

01:20:46.240 Clearly you'd have to put some thought into it.

01:20:48.160 And in doing all of that, you will also support Joseph, which is a mission that's near and

01:20:53.040 dear to my own heart.

01:20:53.800 So he's up next.

01:20:54.900 You're going to love him.

01:20:56.420 I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM.

01:21:00.260 It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and

01:21:05.300 important political, legal, and cultural figures today.

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01:21:40.500 Go to SiriusXM.com slash MK show to subscribe and get three months free.

01:21:47.100 That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free.

01:21:53.240 Offer details apply.

01:21:59.140 I want to turn our attention now to some poetry with our favorite poet, Joseph Massey.

01:22:04.800 The Woke Poetry World tried to cancel Joseph back in 2018 to hear his full story.

01:22:11.040 You can and should listen to him on this show in episode 298.

01:22:16.520 The bottom line is poetry people are mean.

01:22:20.680 They are an angry group.

01:22:22.620 It's amazing.

01:22:23.820 They're nasty.

01:22:25.400 Certainly they were to our friend Joseph.

01:22:27.300 But he came back.

01:22:28.760 He emerged victorious from that attempted cancellation

01:22:31.440 and now publishes the most wonderful poems under his own imprint.

01:22:36.880 He's self-published and he's been doing very well with this.

01:22:40.660 He's not, you know, going to buy a private jet anytime soon,

01:22:43.520 but he's supporting himself and he doesn't need those cretins.

01:22:46.940 His new book, A Career Retrospective, which I'm very happy about

01:22:51.180 since we weren't really paying that much attention to Joseph

01:22:53.200 before, ironically, he got canceled,

01:22:56.000 is called Decades, Selected Poems.

01:22:59.360 And it's out right now.

01:23:00.500 Joseph, welcome back to the show.

01:23:02.160 Thank you, Megan.

01:23:02.780 It's great to be here.

01:23:04.540 Okay, so how can everybody get the book?

01:23:07.280 On Amazon.

01:23:08.940 Amazon offers the best deal for self-published authors

01:23:12.080 in terms of royalties.

01:23:14.780 So that's the best place to get it.

01:23:17.620 Okay, get it now.

01:23:19.080 Decades, Selected Poems.

01:23:20.760 I feel strongly this would be a good gift for a mom or a dad.

01:23:23.780 Coming, you know, Mother's Day is in May,

01:23:25.780 Father's Day is in June.

01:23:26.660 They have enough time to get it.

01:23:27.740 Because, as I said in the tease,

01:23:30.800 your poetry makes me feel something,

01:23:33.560 something other than confused,

01:23:36.040 which is how I feel when I read the poetry

01:23:38.980 of a lot of the people who now have turned on you.

01:23:43.200 Yeah.

01:23:44.200 Yeah.

01:23:44.680 Well, my poetry seeks to find some clarity in the world

01:23:49.000 and to make things less confusing

01:23:52.680 and to celebrate the mystery of being awake in the world

01:23:58.480 and finding a certain kind of prayerful rhythm

01:24:02.960 to just one's being present.

01:24:07.860 And I find that's something that's not,

01:24:10.880 people don't engage in that enough now.

01:24:13.500 There are so many distractions

01:24:15.000 and so many very toxic uses of language.

01:24:21.020 A good poem can, for lack of a better way of putting it,

01:24:24.700 be a kind of palate cleanser.

01:24:26.420 And not to call my book a palate cleanser,

01:24:30.200 but maybe in a way it is.

01:24:32.380 But it's also, I would hope,

01:24:33.900 a good companion for someone

01:24:36.080 who wants to engage in language

01:24:39.660 that is not being used to sell them something

01:24:42.820 or to manipulate them

01:24:45.320 in some kind of horribly negative way

01:24:47.820 or to tribalize them more than they already are.

01:24:51.280 I really aim for,

01:24:53.920 and this is a very romantic notion,

01:24:55.480 but I aim for a certain kind of purity in my work.

01:24:58.980 I feel like I've complained before

01:25:00.960 that when you scroll X,

01:25:02.360 sometimes you inadvertently get exposed

01:25:05.780 to like teenage child beatdowns

01:25:09.620 or some sort of animal abuse.

01:25:12.320 And it's awful.

01:25:13.580 You don't want to be exposed to that

01:25:14.740 just willy-nilly

01:25:15.820 while you're just getting your morning newsfeed.

01:25:17.820 Your tweets, your substack, your poetry

01:25:20.580 are the opposite of that.

01:25:22.940 You come across a Joseph Massey thoughtful tweet,

01:25:26.300 a post now it's called,

01:25:27.860 or your poems,

01:25:29.100 and you think,

01:25:30.180 oh, this is exactly what my brain

01:25:31.880 and soul and spirit need.

01:25:33.780 Just like a moment,

01:25:35.720 a beautiful photograph

01:25:37.020 because you're an amazing photographer too,

01:25:38.580 or like a pause with some words

01:25:40.820 to capture something we all feel

01:25:43.000 when we see this particular site

01:25:44.900 out on the street,

01:25:45.620 but we have no words to get there.

01:25:47.380 We don't know exactly how we feel

01:25:49.700 until we read the Joseph Massey take on it.

01:25:51.700 That's what I love about,

01:25:52.820 especially your connection to nature.

01:25:56.300 Oh, thanks so much.

01:25:57.420 Yeah.

01:25:57.820 Yeah.

01:25:58.040 I consider my presence on X,

01:26:00.800 I consider it to be kind of like a,

01:26:02.640 like a protest against the modern world

01:26:05.760 and where it's heading.

01:26:07.020 I know that the,

01:26:08.260 I'm usually not posting things

01:26:11.660 that are going to be most engaging

01:26:14.760 to the algorithm,

01:26:15.860 but that's kind of the point.

01:26:20.140 And it's part of the pleasure,

01:26:21.700 pleasure of using a platform like that

01:26:24.220 is being essentially disruptive

01:26:28.120 with content

01:26:30.640 that is not inherently disruptive at all.

01:26:33.420 I hate seeing those videos as well,

01:26:36.820 especially kids being bullied.

01:26:38.440 It makes me physically sick.

01:26:41.380 And there's more and more of that on X

01:26:43.440 because that's what gets the,

01:26:45.280 gets the views.

01:26:46.460 But yeah,

01:26:47.900 I will continue to,

01:26:49.420 to continue staging my one man protest

01:26:52.500 against toxicity on social media.

01:26:57.800 Well, that's one of the beauties

01:27:00.160 of having been thrown into it, right?

01:27:03.460 Having been thrown to swim

01:27:05.940 in the stew of toxicity

01:27:07.220 is you hate it

01:27:08.900 in a particularly vicious way.

01:27:12.060 And you can either channel that

01:27:13.500 into bitterness and awfulness,

01:27:14.760 or you can channel it

01:27:15.480 into beauty and light

01:27:16.700 like you've done.

01:27:18.460 Again, we'll just,

01:27:19.840 I want to keep reminding the audience,

01:27:21.260 first of all,

01:27:21.900 if you want to follow Joseph on Twitter,

01:27:23.120 he's at, or X now,

01:27:24.500 at J Massey with an E M A S S E Y poet

01:27:28.240 at J Massey poet.

01:27:29.540 The book is called decades,

01:27:31.140 selected poems,

01:27:32.120 decades, selected poems.

01:27:33.560 If you don't mind,

01:27:34.380 I'm just going to read them part of one

01:27:35.860 because there's so many to choose from.

01:27:38.080 I like, I,

01:27:39.000 I don't know,

01:27:39.820 even know how,

01:27:40.440 like when I was looking at them,

01:27:42.700 I'm like, I said,

01:27:43.520 I don't know how I'm going to choose,

01:27:44.800 but this is just from prologue,

01:27:47.260 previously unpublished long poem.

01:27:49.060 And it's got a few different sections.

01:27:50.760 And I'm, if you don't mind,

01:27:52.200 Joseph,

01:27:52.380 I'm going to read the part about snow.

01:27:53.880 Not at all.

01:27:54.500 Not at all.

01:27:55.400 As a,

01:27:55.740 as a former Syracuse,

01:27:57.200 New York girl and Albany,

01:27:59.280 I love snow.

01:28:00.520 It reads as follows.

01:28:02.620 Snow in slow streaks,

01:28:04.660 animates a skeletal tree,

01:28:06.900 quiet enough now to hear the heavy flakes

01:28:09.200 landing on a pile of leaves

01:28:10.820 into a vortex of dead leaves,

01:28:13.920 vivid red and yellow.

01:28:15.580 The day evaporates.

01:28:17.400 On the other side of an impassable patch of woods

01:28:20.760 cut through by a Creek,

01:28:22.460 I see a steeple and the cross caught up in fog,

01:28:25.880 a patch of moss on a stone wall,

01:28:29.080 like a lantern lit with the last light.

01:28:32.240 At empire's end,

01:28:33.740 I watch sparrows rip apart the bread thrown across a lawn.

01:28:37.560 Then I'll keep going.

01:28:38.880 And there's sub five.

01:28:40.200 First Sunday of Advent.

01:28:42.080 Inexplicably,

01:28:44.440 the scent of jasmine threads the night air,

01:28:46.700 cold air,

01:28:47.820 closer now to winter than the depths of fall.

01:28:50.800 Nothing's in bloom but a dumpster overflowing

01:28:52.900 and a few chimneys.

01:28:54.680 It must be the wood smoke that thins into imagined jasmine.

01:28:58.700 Walking home,

01:28:59.960 streetlights dim,

01:29:00.860 I see as far as I can think.

01:29:04.140 And here the season begins in the dark,

01:29:06.840 waiting for the word to emerge,

01:29:09.160 like the amber glow in a window at the end of the road.

01:29:16.020 Beautiful, Nick.

01:29:16.280 That just takes me right back.

01:29:18.280 Thank you.

01:29:18.700 No, what you wrote is beautiful.

01:29:19.980 It just takes me right back

01:29:21.520 to so many moments of my childhood, Joseph.

01:29:24.920 You know, when you're a kid,

01:29:26.420 you're, if you're doing it right,

01:29:27.640 you're outdoors all the time.

01:29:29.960 And all these words you wrote,

01:29:31.900 you take them in through your senses,

01:29:34.460 your eyes and your ears and your sense of smell

01:29:36.920 and the feeling on your skin.

01:29:39.780 And they're in there.

01:29:41.240 They're in there to this day,

01:29:42.460 all these years later,

01:29:43.340 but you lose connection.

01:29:44.940 You don't have the words to describe them.

01:29:46.880 And then you read the words.

01:29:48.160 And like smelling a scent 40 years later,

01:29:51.700 that brings back the thing immediately.

01:29:53.840 These words bring back the experience.

01:29:56.580 And it's what I absolutely love about your writing.

01:30:00.380 So what is it?

01:30:01.760 Why, how did you get this connection to nature?

01:30:04.160 Like, are you, were you always an outdoorsy guy?

01:30:08.040 No, I did not grow up in areas that were

01:30:12.700 nothing but nature,

01:30:15.780 but they were always adjacent to nature.

01:30:18.600 I grew up my early childhood outside of Philadelphia

01:30:22.040 and I loved playing in the creeks

01:30:26.340 and the little patches of woods

01:30:29.420 that were probably, you know,

01:30:30.860 the creeks were most likely polluted.

01:30:33.120 But I was surrounded by refineries,

01:30:35.720 oil refineries and things like that.

01:30:37.460 But I think what always struck me from a young age

01:30:39.940 was how nature is so indomitable.

01:30:44.120 And despite being as a young child

01:30:46.540 in a landscape full of refineries and factories

01:30:49.200 and pollution,

01:30:51.240 you could see and feel it in the air.

01:30:54.240 Nature still was always bounding forward.

01:30:57.840 And there was an inherent beauty to that.

01:31:00.220 I didn't have these particular thoughts as a kid,

01:31:02.360 but it stuck with me.

01:31:03.640 And I did live for 12 years

01:31:06.140 on the coast of Humboldt County, California,

01:31:09.140 one of the most geographically beautiful places

01:31:11.820 I've ever lived in.

01:31:14.440 And that kind of,

01:31:16.420 those poems are throughout decades.

01:31:19.920 And most of them are from books

01:31:21.660 that have been taken out of print

01:31:24.000 by publishers that just ghosted me

01:31:28.400 after I was canceled.

01:31:29.460 So it's good to have that work back in print.

01:31:32.140 Yeah, good for all of us.

01:31:34.960 That one image,

01:31:37.560 walking home, streetlights dim,

01:31:40.500 I see as far as I can think.

01:31:42.520 And here the season begins in the dark,

01:31:44.880 waiting for the word to emerge

01:31:46.220 like the amber glow in a window

01:31:47.940 at the end of the road.

01:31:49.740 I remember a time when I was just 12,

01:31:53.200 which is my daughter's age now,

01:31:55.260 in Albany, New York.

01:31:56.440 It was a frigid winter,

01:31:57.580 as they all are and were,

01:31:59.820 especially, you know, some odd years ago,

01:32:02.020 back in 1983.

01:32:04.240 And it was that.

01:32:05.940 It was like independence.

01:32:08.200 The night was falling.

01:32:09.940 I was walking on my own.

01:32:11.840 The snow was coming down.

01:32:14.220 And all those feelings of like,

01:32:16.740 I'm on my own.

01:32:17.920 I'm on the cusp of,

01:32:19.840 you know, not exactly adulthood,

01:32:22.100 but, you know, getting there.

01:32:23.700 And womanhood.

01:32:26.740 And somebody else could have said,

01:32:28.780 this is dangerous,

01:32:29.440 but I'm out here

01:32:30.420 and I'm connected with God

01:32:31.880 and with nature.

01:32:32.940 And yes, hopefully the word will come.

01:32:35.900 And, you know,

01:32:36.780 shepherd me through this next phase of life.

01:32:38.600 It's just,

01:32:39.380 it's so everything that you think about

01:32:41.660 resonates with me.

01:32:43.700 Now, I do want to ask you

01:32:45.180 how you are doing,

01:32:46.600 because you've moved into a new apartment.

01:32:49.740 You've got Jarvis, your cat.

01:32:52.580 And hard up,

01:32:53.640 when I met you,

01:32:54.340 you were basically in the basement.

01:32:56.220 I think that's where your Substack name came from.

01:32:58.240 Not basically.

01:32:59.040 I was in the basement.

01:33:00.380 You were.

01:33:00.820 And now you're moving up

01:33:02.560 and you were not a rich man,

01:33:04.180 but you literally moved up in the world.

01:33:06.320 Did you not?

01:33:06.820 It seems like things are going a bit better now.

01:33:10.860 They're going much, much better.

01:33:12.560 Certainly thanks to being on your show

01:33:14.760 and my social media following growing.

01:33:20.460 I've been able to sell books

01:33:22.300 and Substack subscriptions

01:33:23.840 that have helped me move from the basement

01:33:28.300 to a second floor apartment

01:33:30.420 with, you know, livable conditions.

01:33:34.380 I was not living in a very nice place.

01:33:38.040 I mean, it was,

01:33:39.180 well, I'll just leave it there.

01:33:41.040 And so life has gotten so much better.

01:33:43.800 And I hope anyone out there

01:33:45.040 who's being canceled or has been canceled,

01:33:47.640 you can come back.

01:33:49.720 It takes a lot of work,

01:33:51.260 especially if you're an artist,

01:33:53.260 but you can do it yourself

01:33:54.480 and you can reclaim the audience you lost.

01:33:59.100 All the tools are there for us,

01:34:01.280 for artists,

01:34:01.880 if they want to break free

01:34:03.120 from the mainstream structure

01:34:07.080 of how people generally become successful

01:34:09.580 in the literary world.

01:34:10.580 It's obsolete now.

01:34:14.500 Yeah, you can if people support you,

01:34:18.080 if you get the word out.

01:34:19.220 And that's why I really urge the audience

01:34:21.200 to support Joseph.

01:34:22.120 I please, please, please.

01:34:23.580 The book is Decades,

01:34:25.760 Selected Poems,

01:34:27.360 A Career Retrospective,

01:34:28.720 and it's by Joseph Massey.

01:34:30.400 You can get it on Amazon,

01:34:31.460 get it now.

01:34:32.480 And wouldn't it be a thing

01:34:33.600 if we drove it right to the top

01:34:35.080 of Amazon's list?

01:34:36.020 And dare I even posit

01:34:37.300 maybe even the New York Times

01:34:38.980 where all your snooty,

01:34:41.020 bitchy poetry friends

01:34:42.340 would eat their hats

01:34:43.700 to see you rise again to the top.

01:34:46.940 Before we go,

01:34:47.820 I've got to ask you

01:34:48.520 about some of those terrible people.

01:34:50.480 I saw you posted something

01:34:51.980 about one of their poems lately,

01:34:53.800 which is a lovely little ditty

01:34:55.360 called The Jesus Fridge,

01:34:57.660 which is, I guess,

01:34:58.840 pushed by the Academy of American Poets

01:35:00.720 talking about some fridge,

01:35:02.880 as far as I can tell,

01:35:04.340 that didn't work.

01:35:05.040 And then the light came back on

01:35:06.840 like Jesus

01:35:08.740 and writes as follows,

01:35:10.880 the collision of the mundane

01:35:12.440 and mechanical

01:35:13.320 with the long-haired

01:35:14.740 and the sanctimonious.

01:35:17.000 This is a George Floyd moment

01:35:19.200 for both Israelis and Palestinians.

01:35:21.760 What?

01:35:22.200 Wait.

01:35:24.380 I've got questions

01:35:25.440 about the real poetry world.

01:35:27.320 So maybe the Academy of American Poets

01:35:29.660 and you needed a divide, Joseph.

01:35:31.220 It doesn't seem like

01:35:31.980 that was ever destined to work out.

01:35:33.300 They completely deleted

01:35:36.060 all of my work

01:35:37.040 that they published over the years

01:35:38.260 and I'm so glad they did

01:35:39.480 because they've turned into nothing

01:35:40.920 but a political arm

01:35:44.780 for the totally toxic, woke stuff

01:35:50.480 that's taken over the art world.

01:35:52.080 And it's totally exemplified

01:35:53.800 in The Jesus Fridge,

01:35:55.420 which is one of the worst poems

01:35:56.720 I've ever read.

01:35:57.380 And it's written by a professor

01:35:59.220 who I think teaches creative writing

01:36:01.100 and is an editor

01:36:03.060 of a once-esteemed press.

01:36:06.200 I think Pitt, you know, Pitt Press.

01:36:08.700 Yeah.

01:36:09.000 And it's just,

01:36:09.780 and the poem was published

01:36:11.060 on Good Friday

01:36:12.060 by this organization

01:36:14.300 that just received $5.7 million

01:36:16.840 from the Mellon Foundation

01:36:18.340 to publish crap like that

01:36:21.520 that is more about

01:36:23.340 the political agenda

01:36:24.400 and I think absolutely

01:36:26.540 about offending Christians.

01:36:28.640 These are very nasty people

01:36:30.860 who no longer care about the art

01:36:32.860 but care about the political,

01:36:35.340 the political jab

01:36:38.080 that they can make with poetry.

01:36:40.160 And that's a pretty perverse thing.

01:36:42.460 Yeah, this guy goes on to say

01:36:45.400 a George Floyd moment

01:36:46.760 for both Americans

01:36:47.540 who sympathize with Israel

01:36:48.620 and those who sympathize

01:36:49.740 with Palestinians.

01:36:52.160 It's a holy fuck moment

01:36:53.340 for anyone who cares

01:36:54.180 about human life.

01:36:55.580 Upstairs, the bathtub

01:36:56.440 is filling with blood.

01:36:57.600 Goes on.

01:36:58.000 I mean, this is fine.

01:36:59.260 They have no problem

01:36:59.980 with Jeffrey McDaniel.

01:37:01.240 But you,

01:37:02.260 they've got a problem with

01:37:03.080 because your relationship

01:37:03.900 with your ex ended badly

01:37:05.300 and she decided to go

01:37:06.480 just full bore against you publicly.

01:37:09.260 And there's no amount of penance.

01:37:11.200 That was 18.

01:37:11.960 So you can never go back.

01:37:14.500 You remain scrubbed and canceled.

01:37:16.320 There's no redemption

01:37:17.400 in the haughty world of poetry,

01:37:20.200 which is where all of us come in

01:37:23.040 because we are collectively

01:37:24.120 giving them our long

01:37:25.920 and elegant middle fingers

01:37:27.680 because we're on Team Joseph Massey.

01:37:30.060 Okay, don't forget.

01:37:31.500 It's called Decades.

01:37:33.160 Selected Poems available now.

01:37:35.020 I'm going to be going there

01:37:35.760 and buying a bunch myself.

01:37:37.500 And you should subscribe

01:37:38.520 to his sub stack

01:37:39.340 at poetrydispatches.com.

01:37:41.960 And support his work there.

01:37:43.440 All the best to you, my friend.

01:37:44.780 Thanks.

01:37:45.520 We'll see you all tomorrow.

01:37:48.660 Thanks for listening

01:37:49.500 to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:37:50.800 No BS, no agenda,

01:37:52.440 and no fear.

01:37:53.360 We'll see you here.

01:37:57.960 Bye-bye.

01:38:02.600 Bye-bye.

01:38:12.200 Bye-bye.

01:38:13.000 Bye-bye.

01:38:13.560 Bye-bye.

01:38:14.280 Bye-bye.

01:38:15.040 Bye-bye.

01:38:15.840 Bye-bye.

01:38:16.240 Bye-bye.

01:38:16.580 Bye-bye.

01:38:17.240 Bye-bye.

01:38:17.740 Bye-bye.

01:38:18.500 Bye-bye.

01:38:19.020 Bye-bye.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 01, 2024

Media's Faulty ＂Fact-Checking,＂ and Trump's Path to 2024 Victory, with Ben Shapiro, Joseph Massey, and Robert Cahaly ｜ Ep. 754

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