The Megyn Kelly Show - Media Starts Telling Truth About Trump and Kamala, and Gaetz Battle Ahead, with Mark Halperin, Dan Turrentine, and Richie McGinniss ｜ Ep. 948

00:00:00.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

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

00:00:15.160 President-elect Donald Trump's disruptor cabinet is taking arrows from all over.

00:00:20.520 The Democrats, the media, but I repeat myself, and even from some corners of the right.

00:00:25.580 There's a steady stream of negative press about RFKJ, Tulsi Gabbard, and Pete Hegseth,

00:00:31.200 but no nominee has quite the amount of knives out for them that Trump's attorney general pick, Congressman Matt Gaetz, has.

00:00:40.260 Meantime, we've got a lot of fallout to the morning Joe Grifter's visit to Mar-a-Lago.

00:00:46.180 Joining me now, Mark Halperin, editor-in-chief and host of Two Way, and Dan Turrentine, a former Democratic strategist.

00:00:52.580 Together, they are hosts of the morning meeting on Two Way's YouTube channel.

00:00:57.200 The October 15th deadline has come and gone.

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00:01:54.760 Mark, Dan, welcome back to the show.

00:01:57.680 Thanks for having us.

00:01:58.560 Megan, great to be here.

00:02:00.720 Okay, so I haven't actually spoken to you, I think, since election night.

00:02:05.300 And let me start with you on this, Dan, as the Democrat.

00:02:09.440 I don't think the Democrats are getting it.

00:02:11.720 I don't feel like they're fully grasping with what happened, grasping what happened and how badly they went.

00:02:20.220 And one of the reasons I don't think they're getting it is because whenever you have somebody pop up to say,

00:02:25.980 For example, I don't think the trans issue was a good one for us, like this guy in Massachusetts, Moulton, Seth Moulton.

00:02:33.700 He gets hammered, hammered.

00:02:36.700 Now, he got hammered by me, too, because the very policies he's now lamenting he helped put in place.

00:02:41.360 But that's a different issue.

00:02:42.480 The left should be saying, hmm, maybe the man has a point.

00:02:47.400 Maybe we went too far.

00:02:48.740 And instead, what you're getting is attacks on him and denials from the likes of Jen Psaki.

00:02:54.960 I'll show you Sat 21.

00:02:57.040 What I worry about is that in the course of all that soul searching, some Democrats might reach the wrong sweeping conclusions.

00:03:04.360 And there are a lot of issues that fall into that bucket.

00:03:06.420 But one in particular that stuck out to me is transgender rights.

00:03:10.040 Republicans found hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-trans ads this election cycle,

00:03:14.760 including one that showed Vice President Harris talking about government funding for gender reaffirming care for prisoners and detainees.

00:03:22.040 If that sounds like a particularly obscure issue, it is because it applies to a tiny group of people.

00:03:27.740 Another one of the lines that ran over and over again in those ads and throughout right wing media is this idea that America is faced with a crisis of boys playing and girls sports.

00:03:37.240 Now, these ads created this perception that the issues of trans kids playing sports was dominating schools across the country, which is completely false.

00:03:47.420 There are just incredibly few examples of transgender girls playing in youth sports.

00:03:53.340 And when we see those examples, there is an evidence that these kids are a threat to safety or fairness.

00:03:57.320 No evidence that they're a threat to safety and fairness.

00:04:02.080 I mean, my audience knows that's a lie.

00:04:04.320 Tell it to the girl in Massachusetts who had all of her teeth knocked out by a boy on the field hockey field.

00:04:09.820 Tell it to Peyton McNabb, who now has permanent paralysis on her arm thanks to being slammed in the head by a male player posing as female. 1.00

00:04:17.420 Tell it to the girls in Wisconsin who saw a male come in, completely intact male, naked parading around at 18 years old in their locker room as the freshman girls are trying to take a shower.

00:04:25.700 There have been multiple instances where girls actually have been hurt, never mind the thousand or so where they've lost medals and additional where they've lost scholarships.

00:04:35.740 And this I'm talking mostly K through 12.

00:04:37.820 If you want to go up to the college level, it's it's a much greater number.

00:04:41.580 I mean, so in any event, they're not getting it, Dan.

00:04:44.540 Why aren't they getting it?

00:04:45.380 Yeah, I think there's two different groups that I would think about here.

00:04:49.820 I think the punditry class and Jen is a friend of mine and we respectfully disagree on this is going to be the last to get it.

00:04:58.920 You know, they're almost like the Japanese soldiers on the island, you know, after World War Two who are still fighting the fight.

00:05:04.680 I think if you looked at elected officials, both in Congress, around the states, those thinking about DNC chair, there's silence.

00:05:13.960 If you look at the left and you look at, you know, the AOCs of the world, J-PAL and others, and just look at social media, they're talking about we're going to defend abortion rights.

00:05:24.320 OK, that's, I think, fairly safe grounds for the party.

00:05:28.320 But I think that those whose job it is to get elected, to win races are doing a lot of soul searching right now.

00:05:36.360 And I think there is a lot of agreement that on cultural issues, the party is adrift, that what they're advocating for is not popular with, you know, large segments of the country.

00:05:49.160 I think where the fight is going to occur is more on the economic message, the kind of Bernie Sanders wing versus the Bill Clinton wing.

00:05:58.280 But I think, you know, those in the media are still going to pound the table.

00:06:02.720 I think some of that's they're hoping that they get ratings.

00:06:05.580 But I think the party knows that they need to make a lot of change.

00:06:10.340 Well, I hope for their sake that they do it.

00:06:12.540 I feel like I win either way beyond this issue, because either they change and they come over to my side of reason or they don't change and they keep losing.

00:06:20.260 Either way, it's OK by me.

00:06:22.460 Let's shift over to what's happening on Team GOP, Mark, because it's so funny to me.

00:06:28.060 Trump doesn't have to be doing all these cabinet appointees right now, but he doesn't like being out of the news cycle.

00:06:34.280 And he's got two months until he gets sworn in.

00:06:36.680 And so he's like, Matt Gaetz, how about let's let's name Matt Gaetz right now, not to mention RFKJ and Tulsi, all of whom I like.

00:06:45.540 But as the days pass, it seems like Matt Gaetz's chances are getting slimmer and slimmer.

00:06:52.560 There was a comment by Trump to The New York Times today saying he puts Gaetz's chances at less than even for getting confirmed, which seems to be a telegraph to the to the public and to The Times that Trump anticipates Gaetz failing to get the necessary votes.

00:07:09.480 How do you take it?

00:07:11.400 Well, that's pretty good read.

00:07:12.980 My suspicion is, as you suggested, the Times didn't say Trump himself told him that.

00:07:17.720 But I think you and I know that he probably did.

00:07:19.840 Matt Gaetz is a fighter.

00:07:24.240 Matt Gaetz has MAGA on his side.

00:07:26.120 He's now had a very supportive tweet in the middle of the night from Elon Musk, too, actually.

00:07:32.120 And you don't have to withdraw a nominee until the committee votes him down.

00:07:36.460 Right.

00:07:36.700 So Donald Trump can just say we're going forward and dare the committee to vote against him.

00:07:42.180 But he does have a range of issues with Republicans, including Matt Gaetz has been, you know, comic the insult.

00:07:49.840 Comic the what is it?

00:07:51.120 The insult comic dog attacking Republican senators by name.

00:07:55.800 I suspect, even though he's not been super outspoken, that Mitch McConnell would never vote for him and Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, which means they have to get every other Republican senator.

00:08:06.180 And since there's a dozen reasons to vote against Matt Gaetz, if you're a Republican senator who doesn't like Matt Gaetz, it's hard to see him being confirmed.

00:08:15.320 But I don't rule it out because, as I said, if Donald Trump sticks by him and if Matt Gaetz wants to use his very prodigious talents to try to figure out how to get 50 votes, I don't rule out that he can do it.

00:08:26.280 But Trump's comments, I think, tilted the scale for me against saying more likely than not he's confirmed.

00:08:32.140 Now, what I'm hearing is that Trump is actually speaking to senators who might be on the fence and asking, do you think he can get confirmed?

00:08:43.080 And if there's any sort of a negative projection, Trump's messaging is along the lines of, gee, that's too bad.

00:08:49.960 He's a good guy.

00:08:50.700 Like, Trump wants him to be confirmed, and Trump hasn't given up hope but is testing the waters.

00:08:57.580 And to me, that telegraphs that Trump understands the Senate is a separate body that he doesn't control and isn't maybe going to go full jihad on them if they don't get behind Gaetz.

00:09:09.120 It's not a, you will confirm him or I will primary your ass and make sure you lose your next election, Mark.

00:09:15.840 Like, do you see it the same way?

00:09:17.520 Yeah, he's not drawn that line with any of them.

00:09:21.000 And while Gaetz has clearly been the one in the news this week, on the morning meeting we talk about the controversial five.

00:09:26.860 There's four other nominees who I think if it were a secret ballot and the senators could just vote how they wanted, none of the five would be confirmed.

00:09:35.940 However, there is deference to any incoming president.

00:09:38.500 Donald Trump has revolutionized the Republican Party, even with a somewhat narrow victory.

00:09:43.420 He's turned the party into a multiracial working class party.

00:09:47.520 Which people on Capitol Hill respect and appreciate.

00:09:50.620 So I think that it's possible that he'll stick with Gaetz in order to allow the senators to say, OK, you didn't want Matt Gaetz.

00:10:00.420 Now you've got to vote for the others.

00:10:01.720 Because, again, although I think they're more likely to be confirmed than not in the other four cases, they are all controversial, not just for Democrats in the media, but for some Republicans as well.

00:10:11.040 And that means he can't take for granted.

00:10:13.400 He doesn't want his entire November, December into January taken up with the media's obsession with confirmation politics.

00:10:20.540 I have a master plan of my own.

00:10:24.340 No one's asked me for it, but I'm going to give it because I have this microphone.

00:10:27.580 I think that if Matt Gaetz falls through and, yes, we've like shifted the Overton window.

00:10:32.600 I get it.

00:10:33.080 You know, like what's acceptable?

00:10:34.400 What's controversial?

00:10:35.220 What's too controversial?

00:10:36.060 That's all moved, thanks to our debating Matt Gaetz for all his time.

00:10:40.060 Then he slides in Mike Davis, frequent guest of the Megyn Kelly show.

00:10:44.100 I'm telling you, this guy, he works for this legal group called the Article 3 Project, and he clerked for one of the Supreme Court justices.

00:10:52.080 And he's brilliant.

00:10:53.360 He said some incendiary things early on when the lawfare against Trump first got rolling.

00:10:57.980 And I was like, who is this guy?

00:10:59.640 This is crazy talk, what he's saying.

00:11:01.400 The more I looked into him, the more I'm like, oh, my God, this guy's actually very smart.

00:11:04.180 Turns out he's actually really smart, has a very impressive legal background, has been very, very loyal to Trump.

00:11:09.820 And can I tell you guys, he comes on here and debates Dave Ehrenberg, prosecutor for Palm Beach County.

00:11:14.960 And Dave, I think, would be the first to agree Mike's been right about everything, maybe 2 percent.

00:11:22.200 Dave got him.

00:11:22.960 No offense to Dave.

00:11:23.740 He's been right about a lot in a different way.

00:11:25.260 But this guy is not only very, very loyal to Trump, but he is brilliant.

00:11:30.300 So I'm kind of thinking even though he's a shit stirrer online, right,

00:11:33.600 he says stuff that gets him in trouble online, he doesn't actually, as far as I know, have true controversies,

00:11:39.160 you know, like we're talking about or about Gates.

00:11:41.140 I'm hoping he slides in Mike Davis.

00:11:42.760 OK, there's my theory.

00:11:43.800 Thanks to my microphone.

00:11:45.400 So you tell me, Dan, Gates resigned from Congress last Wednesday when Trump announced him,

00:11:52.760 you know, saying now that I'm going to be the nominee, I'm resigning from Congress,

00:11:57.100 which put off the release, the public release of the House's investigatory document against Matt

00:12:05.220 Gates, which was supposed to come out this past Friday.

00:12:07.520 But that thing's going to leak in what it's like.

00:12:10.540 Tick tock.

00:12:11.160 Here we are at noon on Tuesday.

00:12:13.840 I mean, does it have another 24 hours before it leaks?

00:12:16.420 I can't imagine it's too much longer than that.

00:12:21.160 And I think the issue is not just that Democrats are dying to get their hands on it.

00:12:25.260 I think to Mark's point, there are a lot of Republicans that want to see him go down both

00:12:29.320 in the House and the Senate.

00:12:31.460 And so there's kind of a collective incentive amongst all these people, whether it's formally

00:12:36.460 released or it's leaked.

00:12:38.500 And of course, if it's leaked, you're likely to get just pieces of it.

00:12:42.640 So then people are going to say, you know, what else is there?

00:12:46.520 You need to put the whole thing out.

00:12:48.220 So I have to imagine that this thing comes out.

00:12:52.120 And, you know, I think this isn't really a Democratic issue.

00:12:56.040 Obviously, they're in the minority in the Senate.

00:12:58.000 To me, the bigger issue, and we've talked about this a little bit kind of during this week,

00:13:02.320 is does all the MAGA influencers on the right dig in and push, whether Trump is or not, and

00:13:11.840 insist that Gates be confirmed?

00:13:14.020 Because I don't think a lot of senators want to start this next Congress going to war with

00:13:20.100 everybody online.

00:13:21.800 It's really hard to go home in the grocery store, town halls, and answer your own constituents

00:13:27.320 from your own party about why you're against this guy.

00:13:30.760 So that's what I think is very fascinating.

00:13:33.600 Of course, for Democrats, it's one of the few instances where we can smile and watch the

00:13:37.220 other side be uncomfortable.

00:13:39.580 Megan, the thing about Matt, the thing about Matt Gaetz is he's not a normal nominee under

00:13:44.920 siege.

00:13:46.040 He's not normal in part because of the downsides, because the allegations against him, because

00:13:51.000 he's personally insulted senators, which is not normal for most people in Washington.

00:13:55.380 But he's also not normal because MAGA loves him.

00:13:58.440 He's a MAGA superhero.

00:13:59.500 There's a personal and emotional bond.

00:14:02.280 But he's also, and again, you don't have to be a fan of Matt Gaetz to say this.

00:14:06.500 People don't realize he's brilliant.

00:14:08.680 He's strategic.

00:14:10.000 He's tough.

00:14:11.140 He's very savvy and realistic.

00:14:14.120 And so he's not approaching this the way a lot of people would, which is, oh, what's

00:14:17.320 going to happen to me?

00:14:18.140 What's going to happen to my family?

00:14:19.720 What lies are going to be told about me?

00:14:21.460 He's dealt with this for the last many years.

00:14:23.720 And so he can go into this like a cyborg walking through a storm of fire.

00:14:30.700 He doesn't care.

00:14:32.720 All right.

00:14:33.420 And I have more to say on Matt Gaetz.

00:14:34.860 I'll save it till next hour because I don't want to take up all of our time going through

00:14:38.860 the intricacies of the Gaetz thing because there's so many fun things to talk about.

00:14:43.400 All right.

00:14:44.600 So once again, Halpern, you're stirring the pot by saying the following about the Hegseth

00:14:50.740 nomination to DOD on the two-way show two days ago.

00:14:55.420 I think it was, or maybe it was yesterday.

00:14:56.940 I don't know.

00:14:57.120 Whatever.

00:14:57.440 Here it is.

00:14:59.460 He was apparently accused in 2017 of sexual assault in a hotel.

00:15:04.740 I'm very much, as you know, it's a presumption of grace, presumption of innocence.

00:15:08.360 I don't really relish talking about this stuff, but it's out there as something that

00:15:13.400 I heard about a couple of days ago and I've heard other stories about him.

00:15:16.840 And again, I don't want to be provocative.

00:15:18.500 I'm just saying there's going to be more about his life that comes out.

00:15:22.140 It's not clear to me.

00:15:23.080 The campaign sort of is mixed about they knew about it, but they didn't know everything

00:15:26.560 about it.

00:15:27.200 The transition, not the campaign.

00:15:30.120 Okay.

00:15:31.200 Other stories.

00:15:32.180 What do you mean?

00:15:33.880 Well, I'm not stirring the pot.

00:15:35.180 I'm just reporting.

00:15:35.940 I'm just trying to be realistic because on the two-way platform, we try to be realistic

00:15:39.040 as you do here about not hiding things from the public that people in

00:15:43.340 political and media circles know.

00:15:45.440 Megan, you know a lot of people at Fox.

00:15:46.920 You know the same story as I do.

00:15:49.060 Some of them are purely personal, but some of them go to questions of judgment.

00:15:53.940 And if he goes forward with the nomination, I have every reason to believe that they'll

00:15:58.480 be made public in some form or another.

00:16:01.820 Do you think any of that matters?

00:16:03.780 For sure.

00:16:04.200 I mean, I've definitely heard, you know, things in the personal lane, I would say.

00:16:08.700 But I don't, I'm not convinced that can sink you in 2024 MAGA country.

00:16:15.360 No question.

00:16:16.700 And Donald Trump has, to borrow the phrase from George W. Bush, he's defined deviancy down.

00:16:23.820 What's acceptable?

00:16:25.300 What doesn't preclude someone from being confirmed?

00:16:28.500 However, the normal assumption that the confirmation gods demand one human sacrifice, say it's

00:16:36.660 Matt Gaetz, and therefore the Republican senators will vote for the rest of Donald Trump's nominees.

00:16:41.380 I'm not 100% sure that'll happen.

00:16:43.660 I think the dominoes could fall in the other direction.

00:16:46.100 And they could say, look, we thought Matt Gaetz was unconfirmable because of X, Y, and Z.

00:16:50.840 Now we look at this other person and we say, well, he's supposed to be in charge of the

00:16:55.060 of the Uniform Military Code of Justice.

00:16:57.580 He's supposed to be leading all these people.

00:16:59.600 We have questions about his capacity to do the job.

00:17:01.700 And now here's a slew of personal accusations.

00:17:05.040 And they could say, look, it's not fair to say Matt Gaetz couldn't be confirmed, but this

00:17:09.960 guy can be.

00:17:10.700 Not all the charges are created equal.

00:17:12.540 I'm not sure how to handle them as well as Matt Gaetz.

00:17:15.020 I'm not sure that he'll want to go through the same fire Matt Gaetz is happy to walk through.

00:17:18.680 So is it is if you were teaching a political science course, whether it's 20 years ago

00:17:25.580 or now, and you said, OK, students, this person's nominated for this job and here are the charges

00:17:29.960 against them.

00:17:30.840 I think some of the things they'd say, no, this person would never be confirmed.

00:17:35.420 Senators couldn't possibly look their kids in the eye and say, I said that person could

00:17:39.160 be Treasury Secretary or Pentagon chief.

00:17:42.060 I think it's unknown.

00:17:43.260 But a big part of it would be how they handle it and whether they show deference to the

00:17:47.500 president.

00:17:47.860 And I'm not sure that they will.

00:17:49.540 They might, but I'm not sure.

00:17:52.240 Hegseth reportedly didn't tell Team Trump about this woman who accused him of raping

00:18:00.080 her in a hotel room.

00:18:02.440 And frankly, it looks like drugging her.

00:18:04.920 That's her allegation in a hotel room back in 2017 after he spoke to a conservative Republican

00:18:10.540 women's conference.

00:18:11.460 And therefore, they didn't catch it in their vet of Pete Hegseth because it was private.

00:18:18.340 It was just between Pete and his accuser.

00:18:21.860 And that's another case.

00:18:23.360 We got into depth in that one yesterday for the listening audience.

00:18:25.980 And you should listen to that so you can hear the full defense that Pete's attorney has

00:18:30.540 offered.

00:18:30.800 But that's another case in which the Monterey police did not bring charges.

00:18:35.220 The woman's husband and kids were asleep down, down the hall in another room.

00:18:42.760 And Pete said he had got swept up into some woman's guilt trip over the fact that she chose

00:18:49.460 to sleep with Pete Hegseth, big Fox News star, while her husband was asleep down the down the

00:18:54.920 lane there in the hotel.

00:18:56.360 And she didn't want to tell him the truth.

00:18:59.180 And by the way, the thing about that one, Dan, too, is the cops chose not to prosecute if they had found

00:19:05.220 date rape drug in her system. 0.99

00:19:07.660 And she says she had a date, a rape exam the next morning.

00:19:10.640 They 100 percent would have prosecuted him.

00:19:12.980 So to me, that one smells and it smells bad.

00:19:17.560 Yeah, I mean, I think it's always hard when there's allegations and then the authorities don't bring charges.

00:19:23.600 You know, in fairness, if it was a Democratic nominee, we'd be saying, you know, pointing to the same

00:19:28.260 thing. I think in Hegseth's case, that the challenge really is, look, you've got two wars going on.

00:19:35.000 You could have a third, you know, any day over Taiwan.

00:19:38.080 It's the largest of all the departments.

00:19:40.540 I think there's over two million employees that you're overseeing.

00:19:44.720 And it's not entirely clear that he is qualified.

00:19:47.680 Like to me, and I know to certain Democrats, Noem, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, it's policy differences,

00:19:55.580 right? I mean, you just say that Kristi Noem, who's been a two-term governor and a member of

00:19:59.260 Congress, isn't qualified to run DHS or that, you know, you disagree with how Tulsi Gabbard

00:20:04.900 views the, you know, certain conflicts in the Middle East.

00:20:08.220 Hegseth, there's less of a paper trail of both management and, you know, people have talked

00:20:13.820 about his involvement with veterans issues, which is commendable, but he's not trying to

00:20:18.780 be the head of Veterans Affairs.

00:20:20.640 And so I think, you know, there's both the lack of substance, which I think makes some

00:20:25.180 Republicans nervous.

00:20:26.440 And then there's all of this stuff that certainly, while there's no charges pressed, is a political

00:20:32.580 headache right now.

00:20:34.720 So I don't think any of that stuff is going to stop him.

00:20:37.180 I think most Republicans will say he's not going to make them read white fragility. 0.61

00:20:41.440 He's not going to talk about white rage.

00:20:43.700 He's not going to allow, um, I'm a trans person and the, the daughter of two lesbians

00:20:48.900 in the promo reels that are put out for recruiting.

00:20:52.680 And that's good enough for them.

00:20:54.780 He served as a combat vet in Iraq, in Afghanistan.

00:20:57.720 He served his country honorably after nine 11.

00:20:59.560 He wrote book, uh, he's written books about it.

00:21:01.740 He's toured, he's spoken about it.

00:21:03.660 Um, management.

00:21:04.660 No, that's not something you do at Fox news, but he has an academic pedigree.

00:21:08.080 The left would like.

00:21:08.860 And so, so with these elite Republicans, so I don't think any of that, what you just

00:21:13.620 said will, will wind up hurting Pete.

00:21:15.160 I think it, if anything, it will be something that has yet to come out.

00:21:18.960 I don't even, I don't even know.

00:21:20.340 I don't think this allegation about Monterey is going to do it either though.

00:21:24.420 I will say now there's a little bit more today as CNN's, um, key young lie briefly met

00:21:30.580 with the Hegseth accuser, apparently, and offered the following observation in Sop 5.

00:21:37.460 He with the alleged victim and we did speak with her, but it was very briefly, uh, we do

00:21:43.740 want to stress that CNN is not identifying this woman because she is the alleged victim

00:21:48.640 of a sexual assault.

00:21:50.220 But in that brief conversation, she was visibly distraught at the mention of Hegseth's name.

00:21:57.180 Uh, she said that she didn't know what she could say.

00:22:00.540 And before saying anything, she had to consult with her attorney and we have not heard back

00:22:05.920 from her since that first meeting that I had with her.

00:22:09.100 So the bad thing that could happen for Hegseth, Mark, is the woman comes forward, right? 0.92

00:22:16.720 She had an interaction with CNN and she does the tearful thing and she's perceived as credible

00:22:23.980 by enough people that they say, I can't do it.

00:22:27.580 I mean, that is, that is the thing that almost happened, but didn't quite happen with the

00:22:32.280 Doug Emhoff accuser, right?

00:22:33.780 She came out anonymously.

00:22:35.800 She wrote a first person thing with the Daily Mail, but she never came out like face and

00:22:40.500 voice on cam.

00:22:43.080 Well, again, every case is different, but Christine Blasey Ford came forward and she didn't derail

00:22:47.240 Brett Kavanaugh.

00:22:48.120 So I don't think that one situation, no matter what she does, is just positive.

00:22:52.320 Took her best shot, man.

00:22:53.340 I will.

00:22:54.520 I'll say this.

00:22:56.240 If Pete Hegseth had his exact resume, but wasn't a Fox host and a friend of Donald Trump,

00:23:01.300 I don't think he'd be plausibly considered to be a secretary of defense.

00:23:05.020 And I don't know that being friends with the president-elect and being a weekend cable news

00:23:09.220 host upgrades you to qualified in the view of traditional qualification or in the view

00:23:15.580 of most Republican senators.

00:23:17.440 So again, I think he could handle some of these things in isolation, but if they're inclined

00:23:23.340 to vote against him because of his lack of management experience and his non-traditional

00:23:29.300 experience, again, I don't think he'd be nominated if he weren't a Fox host.

00:23:33.540 And that's just not a qualification to be secretary of defense.

00:23:36.540 Then I think there's a chance he'll go down.

00:23:39.300 It's just, it's not.

00:23:40.200 Now, I will say one of the things they're looking at quite closely is having strong deputy

00:23:44.720 secretaries, a strong deputy attorney general, other people who can handle more of the traditional

00:23:50.280 management function.

00:23:51.360 And that's, and that's potentially a reasonable model.

00:23:54.660 But I think the senators are going to want to know what the package looks like and be confident.

00:23:59.480 And I'll say one more time, it depends on how the nominee handles it.

00:24:03.700 If they're willing to fight, if they're skilled in front of the committee, if they're, if they

00:24:08.060 have skilled people speaking on their behalf, what you can withstand is not, is not predetermined.

00:24:14.520 You can withstand anything if you handle yourself well and convince the American public and the

00:24:20.160 senators that you still should be confirmed despite either allegations or proven facts against

00:24:26.220 you.

00:24:26.740 There's nothing that can't be survived in this era.

00:24:29.560 Being the host of a Fox show will help him.

00:24:32.240 Absolutely.

00:24:32.900 Absolutely.

00:24:33.660 He's a professional talker.

00:24:35.180 And Tulsi is well set to handle that.

00:24:37.560 And RFKJ obviously has done nothing but take criticism for a decade plus.

00:24:42.840 So of the nominees, the controversial ones, you know, the disruptors, who do you think is the most

00:24:49.280 likely not to make it?

00:24:51.720 Mark and then Dan.

00:24:53.740 Exa.

00:24:56.220 I agree.

00:24:57.560 I completely agree.

00:24:59.600 Yep.

00:25:01.180 I think Gates is, I think, as we've talked about here, the last few minutes, I think that

00:25:07.300 the MAGA world is going to dig in on Gates, even if the president is a little less.

00:25:13.320 And I think RFK Jr., like if I were the Democrats, I would tread very, very carefully.

00:25:19.460 I think his vote was material.

00:25:21.120 I think we hear it on our show, the number of people who were his supporters who were

00:25:26.680 previously Democrats up until a few years ago and have left the party in kind of frustration.

00:25:31.440 And I think Noam and Gabbard, it really, they're substantive disagreements.

00:25:37.580 There's no real issue of whether or not they're qualified.

00:25:41.160 And those to break off four Senate Republicans in that instance would be surprising.

00:25:45.820 But that's a very interesting rationale that the Democrats are going to need to get behind

00:25:50.800 some Dems, the RFKJ for HHS, because their voters like him.

00:25:56.840 Oh, absolutely.

00:25:58.600 I mean, you heard Cory Booker yesterday came out and talked about support for RFK for what

00:26:04.680 he's trying to do in terms of food.

00:26:07.220 And Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, came out about not mandating all vaccines.

00:26:13.900 I think there are a lot of Democrats who now realize it was a huge mistake to go to war

00:26:19.520 against RFK.

00:26:20.740 And they feel like they drove him into the open hands of Donald Trump.

00:26:24.720 And kudos to Trump for recognizing the opportunity, finding a way to work with him, and really

00:26:30.740 making him feel comfortable on the Trump campaign.

00:26:34.140 And that's what winning campaigns do.

00:26:36.640 It's so true. 0.84

00:26:37.840 And Dan, you remember, he went to Kamala, too, and said, do you want to talk?

00:26:42.980 Do you guys want to talk to me?

00:26:44.300 And she was like, no.

00:26:46.220 It's unbelievable.

00:26:47.500 I mean, it's just it is unbelievable that the party did this.

00:26:52.360 And look, I understand you, I worked for Hillary Clinton, not on her 2016 campaign, but a lot

00:26:58.020 of my friends did.

00:26:59.580 And, you know, they will go to their graves that that Jill Stein and the third party candidates 1.00

00:27:04.400 cost her the election.

00:27:05.520 And so I think going into this campaign, the the the operating principle within the party

00:27:12.080 was seek and destroy all third party candidates that may in any way, shape or form negatively

00:27:17.400 impact the race.

00:27:18.520 But, you know, RFK has enough voters that they were meaningful.

00:27:22.560 They were material.

00:27:23.620 And they they didn't just like RFK.

00:27:26.780 They dislike the Democratic Party.

00:27:29.320 They're disillusioned with it.

00:27:30.820 They're angry.

00:27:31.960 And that is a problem.

00:27:34.420 Here's it's a perfect example of the gap.

00:27:36.700 Sorry.

00:27:37.860 It's a perfect example.

00:27:39.160 It's a perfect example in between the gap between the Democrats, the media and real people.

00:27:44.280 You didn't read any stories in the in the dominant media about the risks Democrats were

00:27:49.720 taking by driving Bobby Kennedy out of the party, by trying to keep him off the ballot.

00:27:54.260 You didn't read any stories about how that was anti-democratic.

00:27:57.900 But real people saw that real people who come on two ways say I might have voted for the

00:28:03.580 Democrats, but what they did to Bobby Kennedy was so outrageous that not only turned them

00:28:08.800 against the Democratic Party, but I believe it built Bobby Kennedy up into kind of a superhero

00:28:13.020 in their eyes.

00:28:14.440 And that's why his endorsement of Donald Trump, in part, why was so impactful, because he was

00:28:19.340 seen as an example of the extreme intolerance of Democrats towards dissent and the Democrats

00:28:26.880 extreme effort to protect first Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from competition.

00:28:31.180 The, um, they also wound up downgrading the Democrats as protectors of democracy after

00:28:40.580 what they did to RKJ.

00:28:42.160 So like they shot themselves in the foot on one of their own favorite issues.

00:28:45.020 The other thing about RKJ that I like and I'm excited about is there's talk about him

00:28:49.980 taking Dr.

00:28:51.520 Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford and putting him atop the NIH.

00:28:55.900 That would be so amazing.

00:28:58.420 You guys, there are still a lot of people like yours truly, who are very ticked off about

00:29:04.280 the COVID insanity and Dr.

00:29:07.740 Jay Bhattacharya to, you know, with much risk to his own reputation, he was beloved and in

00:29:12.740 these elite circles came out and pushed back at a critical time and they tried to ruin this

00:29:19.040 guy.

00:29:19.420 Fauci tried to ruin him.

00:29:21.340 And that that's reflected in the emails that got released thanks to the Republican house.

00:29:25.580 So it'd be wonderful to see that guy who's not anti-science.

00:29:30.000 He's pro-science.

00:29:30.960 He's the one who didn't let an ideological agenda lead him into just accepting what was

00:29:35.980 being spoon fed to these guys to see him elevated.

00:29:39.820 And that essentially would also be RFKJ saying, I realize I am not a doctor.

00:29:44.500 I don't need to be a doctor to run the NIH.

00:29:46.980 Catherine, Kathleen Sebelius, is she a doctor?

00:29:49.120 Um, anyway, he's, it's him basically saying, but I will find smart doctors where they need

00:29:55.700 to be to run the medical facilities that, um, that health and human services overseas.

00:30:00.300 So I like that whole thing.

00:30:01.680 Okay.

00:30:02.120 Let's talk a little bit about media.

00:30:05.100 Your friends over at morning, Joe embarrassed themselves this week.

00:30:09.560 Mark Halperin embarrassed.

00:30:11.580 They haven't been the same since you, you no longer appear on that show.

00:30:13.940 They need you that you, you were the magic glue to keeping some sort of sanity over there.

00:30:19.660 Um, we talked to the audience yesterday about them going out there and they went to Mar-a-Lago

00:30:24.000 and they bent the knee and no one's happy about it.

00:30:28.000 I mean, imaginary people that Joe Scarborough talks to are allegedly happy about it as he

00:30:32.180 keeps telling us each morning, but no actual people from the left or the right.

00:30:37.640 The right doesn't want this reconciliation and can't believe Trump even took the meeting

00:30:41.700 and is in no position to give them any quarter.

00:30:45.120 And the left, you've got the lunatics like Jennifer Rubin, who's an MSNBC contributor. 1.00

00:30:50.220 She's a true loon out there pushing for a boycott. 1.00

00:30:53.620 No, uh, now of the MSNBC morning show of the network that she's a contributor at that's

00:30:58.100 paying her salary.

00:30:59.440 Um, so they came out, they said their thing and now they're getting some people being honest

00:31:07.700 about how controversial it was.

00:31:10.000 Like your friends, John Spicer, who said this on the morning meeting yesterday.

00:31:15.660 Here's my problem with this.

00:31:17.280 Joe says afterwards, we still, we told him we opposed him on this.

00:31:21.460 We opposed him on that.

00:31:22.700 Well, I still say, get in the back of the line calls.

00:31:25.180 There are people who fought hard for president Trump.

00:31:27.040 They get to shake his hand first, not these people who spent seven years, as Mika said,

00:31:32.080 trashing the guy, lying about him, defaming him.

00:31:34.980 This was a pure transactional ratings play.

00:31:38.600 This was Joe Scarborough realizing that his ratings are down 40%, 49%.

00:31:42.700 Comcast wants to spin them off and then worried about whether or not they're going to continue

00:31:46.420 to afford their place on wherever it is.

00:31:49.200 Nantucket, Palm Beach, all those places.

00:31:51.460 So I was frankly disgusted by this.

00:31:55.860 Spicer with a truth bomb.

00:31:57.280 Mark Halperin, where is he wrong?

00:31:59.440 All right.

00:31:59.800 So first of all, there are, they are my friends, so I will not make this personal.

00:32:03.920 You and I have some friends in common and there's some people we differ about.

00:32:06.680 They are my friends.

00:32:08.160 I wish that before the election that every MSNBC host had said, let's see, Trump may not win.

00:32:15.640 We don't think he's going to win, but he's going to get like 47% of the vote.

00:32:19.620 So maybe we should think about basically half the country thinks he's the right choice.

00:32:24.760 What should that mean for how we talk about him, how we talk about his ideas, how we talk

00:32:28.880 about his supporters?

00:32:29.980 I think that should have been done for months rather than waiting until after the election,

00:32:34.660 because I think they have put themselves in a position now where people on the left are

00:32:39.580 angry that they're normalizing Trump.

00:32:41.580 I say the people on the left, I'd say the 50% of the people who voted for Trump helped

00:32:45.500 normalize him, probably more than Joe and Mika have.

00:32:48.400 And the people on the right are resentful that they're doing it.

00:32:52.540 Here's the reality for me, though.

00:32:54.300 Donald Trump was very gracious about the meeting.

00:32:57.260 Donald Trump took the meeting.

00:32:58.720 He did an interview with Fox where he's very gracious about it.

00:33:01.920 And although it's easy to tally up points and to and to raise questions about people's

00:33:07.940 motives, I think it's better for the country to have communication with the president-elect

00:33:13.340 by everyone in the media.

00:33:15.040 He should be held accountable.

00:33:16.160 And I hope people on the left will say now on a consistent basis, policy disagreements,

00:33:22.120 let's discuss them.

00:33:23.240 But demonizing the person who won the popular vote and the supporters of that person is just

00:33:29.000 not it's just not a good idea.

00:33:30.420 It's not consistent with the kind of country we should be.

00:33:33.700 I have a little prediction for you.

00:33:36.000 This won't last.

00:33:37.960 I've been through this before.

00:33:39.700 The ratings always tank for the cable channel that was most behind the losing candidate.

00:33:45.160 Fox News in 2012 was a bloodbath after Romney went down.

00:33:50.700 Our ratings went off a cliff.

00:33:52.840 I remember being in the meetings.

00:33:54.380 Even Roger was in a panic at that moment.

00:33:56.760 He came back to heights we had never seen before.

00:34:00.640 So and the way that that happened was Barack Obama started actually governing in his second

00:34:06.380 term and doing a bunch of controversial things.

00:34:08.500 And then Fox got chugging again and wound up figuring out that it's actually better for

00:34:13.000 their ratings to be in the opposition.

00:34:14.480 Now, that may or may not be true in the era of Trump, where he just lifts everybody.

00:34:18.440 But in any event, my point is they they're not going to get the same returns by being

00:34:24.020 fair and balanced about Trump, even though they desperately want access to power.

00:34:29.680 I believe this is why they went there for two reasons.

00:34:31.940 They desperately want access to power.

00:34:33.820 That's why they licked Joe Biden's boots, then quickly licked Kamala's. 1.00

00:34:37.260 Now they're licking Trump's because they can't stand a world in which they're as irrelevant

00:34:42.020 as they are.

00:34:43.220 Don't believe me.

00:34:44.220 Look at their ratings and the voters who ignored their claims of Hitler.

00:34:49.220 So that's that's one of the reasons why they did it.

00:34:51.660 But once they start chugging again, their court viewership is very left.

00:34:55.960 That's who watches that show.

00:34:58.260 That's why you've seen Joe Scarborough migrate out of the Republican Party.

00:35:01.660 Now he's so-called independent.

00:35:03.080 And he's obviously a Democrat.

00:35:04.760 He's not really independent.

00:35:06.060 What what what Republican is he voting for anyway?

00:35:09.140 And the machine will do what it does, which is force them to continue to go to the left.

00:35:13.520 This thing veers to the left.

00:35:15.000 All media veers to the left, especially MSNBC.

00:35:18.000 All their cocktail parties, all their friends will veer them back to the left.

00:35:22.100 They will get absolutely no points for saying anything nice or fair about Trump, and they

00:35:26.540 will do what they've been doing for nine years, which is back on the bashing train.

00:35:30.480 Dan, am I wrong?

00:35:32.260 Yeah, I mean, I think it to me, it's embarrassing that the party, the Democratic Party and folks

00:35:38.780 on the left are bashing them as like, how dare you talk to Trump?

00:35:42.660 How dare you kind of insinuate that you're going to modify how you view him?

00:35:47.640 I mean, to Mark's point, what is still missing with a large segment of the party is to step

00:35:54.300 back and ask, why is Donald Trump so popular?

00:35:57.500 What is his secret sauce?

00:35:59.420 Why is he making inroads into literally every single constituency that there is, you know,

00:36:05.420 demographically, geographically?

00:36:07.800 And and and how can we understand this better and, you know, either try to co-op it or, you

00:36:13.300 know, short circuit some of his progress?

00:36:16.020 Instead, there are still parts of the party, Jennifer Rubin and others, that literally just

00:36:21.240 say, dig in.

00:36:22.540 We are right.

00:36:23.480 They're wrong.

00:36:24.420 History is going to prove it very soon.

00:36:26.640 And like, ha ha ha, we'll be right in in two years.

00:36:30.440 And to me, that's just basically idiotic.

00:36:33.020 And so I hope, you know, whether Joe Scarborough and Mika in the long run will prove to be successful,

00:36:40.120 you know, courting Trump.

00:36:41.200 Obviously, I think you're much more likely that they will not be.

00:36:44.080 But the party has to stop saying these black and white, we're right, they're wrong speeches

00:36:49.640 to everybody.

00:36:51.800 I have a message for Joe and Mika.

00:36:54.040 You have no influence.

00:36:55.440 This election proved it.

00:36:57.160 Look at your ratings.

00:36:58.240 They're in the toilet for a reason.

00:37:00.700 If you had any influence whatsoever, would this have been such a blowout?

00:37:04.340 You thought you could persuade the electorate to stop him.

00:37:06.920 You failed.

00:37:07.920 You should spend some time in the bath, on long walks, on a horseback, thinking about

00:37:14.760 that reality.

00:37:16.020 And then, then reevaluate.

00:37:17.960 You're still dealing with the trauma of realizing how irrelevant you are.

00:37:21.440 You should really just soak that in and then come up with your game plan.

00:37:24.280 You shot from the hip.

00:37:25.380 It wasn't a good idea.

00:37:26.540 It didn't please anyone and it didn't make you look good.

00:37:28.960 That's my own take.

00:37:29.580 Um, Dan and Mark will be excused for having sat here through a rant against people they

00:37:34.200 like, or at least Mark does.

00:37:35.660 Uh, okay.

00:37:36.820 Uh, on the subject of Democrats dealing with the loss, here's one of the things that's

00:37:41.940 bothering me.

00:37:42.840 The, those people who are coming out as though I tried to warn them, you know, I, I saw this

00:37:49.540 coming.

00:37:50.480 Nobody listened to me or equally bad.

00:37:54.100 Almost God, she was annoying. 1.00

00:37:56.340 Wasn't she?

00:37:57.000 God, she stunk. 0.85

00:37:58.140 She, she really wasn't good.

00:37:59.220 Like where you, there are people like you, Dan, who came out before the election and

00:38:05.000 sounded exactly the way you sound right now, right?

00:38:07.940 Like able to defend your party where it's appropriate and able to poke holes in the

00:38:12.360 strategy where, but now what we're getting from these leftist commentators is I was the

00:38:18.340 whisperer.

00:38:19.200 I, I was the Trump voter whisperer.

00:38:21.520 Listen to me, explain to you now all the things that I secretly knew.

00:38:24.920 I think the morning Joe crew is in this mashup, but take a look at this side.

00:38:28.780 South in 23.

00:38:31.560 Every Democrat that we have ever sat down with dinner with over the past five years who

00:38:36.300 have kids that go to colleges say their kids are afraid to speak in class because they'll

00:38:41.700 be canceled.

00:38:42.420 Now, if any of you, which camera, give me a camera to look at.

00:38:45.660 Boom.

00:38:46.160 I'll look at that one.

00:38:46.840 If any of you out there say, oh, that's just like a conservative, white, Southern guy,

00:38:53.300 da-da-da, that's what you're losing.

00:38:55.400 As we've said on the show a thousand times, Democrats should be smarter on the women's 1.00

00:38:59.800 athletics thing.

00:39:00.500 85% of Americans oppose men transitioning after puberty and competing against women.

00:39:08.440 The election that we just had was a repudiation of the status quo, an overly regulated system

00:39:16.560 that is no longer responsive or delivering for the needs of the people.

00:39:20.700 When you did see stories about Trump supporters, they were often mocking them.

00:39:26.580 They were interviewing them.

00:39:28.760 They didn't understand the issues.

00:39:30.840 They were kind of making light, making fun of them.

00:39:34.260 Like, why isn't Kamala Harris going out and talking to more factory workers? 1.00

00:39:39.400 Why isn't she like putting on a hard hat and really talking to people, everyday people,

00:39:45.740 a little bit more?

00:39:46.380 Okay, so that's Katie Couric saying they mocked, they mocked Trump voters and they shouldn't

00:39:55.700 have done that.

00:39:56.600 She was on Bill Maher's Club Random Podcast, April 14th, saying this, SOT 16.

00:40:01.840 And I feel like, to your point, Bill, the socioeconomic disparities are a lot and class

00:40:10.620 resentment is a lot, and anti-intellectualism and elitism is what is driving many of these

00:40:18.980 anti-establishment, which are Trump voters, or anti-establishment voters.

00:40:26.080 So I think that is a huge problem that we have to address.

00:40:32.080 I mean, globalization and the transition from an industrial to a technological society.

00:40:40.060 I mean, I, I, and I don't know if you've ever been jealous of some, what someone else

00:40:45.900 has or resentful.

00:40:47.420 It is such a corroding and, um, bitter, almost bile feeling.

00:40:58.380 They're anti-intellectual and they're bitter and jealous, but now she's going to be the whisperer

00:41:05.680 of the Trump voters, Mark, and bring us home to try to understand them better and, and condemn

00:41:11.180 people who were too judgmental and dismissive of them.

00:41:15.240 Megan, I'm a little bit sad that you left Brian Stelter out of that mashup, uh, because

00:41:20.900 I think he's been, he's been amazing in writing.

00:41:25.200 I was curious to see how he would deal with analyzing the media coverage.

00:41:30.480 And he wrote this long thing that was devoid of the actual problems.

00:41:36.220 And I think it goes back to fundamental credibility and awareness.

00:41:41.420 They've been pretty muted since the election, but until they come clean on their role in the

00:41:46.680 conspiracy to cover up Joe Biden's mental acuity decline.

00:41:49.520 I think it's just fundamental that it's going to be a challenge to add any credibility.

00:41:55.700 And so far, there's been nothing on that until they come clean on how newsroom, the, the,

00:42:02.340 the actual qualitative and quantitative analysis of how negative their coverage was towards

00:42:07.080 Donald Trump and his voters is very difficult to have credibility.

00:42:11.460 They, it is, it is so much like what happened in 2016, where, as you said, they want to say

00:42:17.220 what Kamala was a bad candidate. 0.99

00:42:18.520 Hillary was a bad candidate, you know, they, they don't want to address the real issues 1.00

00:42:22.920 here, both in terms of the democratic party and media bias.

00:42:26.540 So I hope it's better.

00:42:28.720 I hope somehow it gets better, but the leading newsrooms have done nothing to account for the

00:42:34.300 failure and I suspect it will continue and they'll just go back into resistance mode.

00:42:40.940 I think that's absolutely right.

00:42:42.720 It's the, the nerve, Dan, like they're, you know, they're anti-intellectual.

00:42:47.900 And now she's like, I really wish people had just, you know, paid more attention to them.

00:42:52.780 And she's like, Oh, now she's at Kamala Harris with her word salad answer.

00:42:56.360 She endorsed Kamala Harris.

00:42:57.480 She openly endorsed Kamala.

00:42:58.920 Like, okay.

00:43:00.300 I don't remember you being honest about her word salad.

00:43:02.600 Some of us endorsed candidates and also were able to be honest about their problem areas.

00:43:09.560 That, that is what happened.

00:43:11.180 Like if you want to go into opinion journalism, you must continue to thread that needle or you

00:43:16.600 should just declare your connection to journalism totally dead.

00:43:19.640 Yeah, this one hits home for me because, uh, this was a tough, uh, last year for me as I started

00:43:28.920 speaking out more kind of in the media, as I joined, uh, the, the morning meeting, I got a lot

00:43:36.020 of feedback from democratic friends when I started speaking out, but going all the way back to March

00:43:41.820 that Joe Biden's age issue was real and legitimate, uh, talking about the inroads that Trump was making

00:43:48.820 with Latinos and black men, because there was lots of data publicly and privately that he was making

00:43:55.260 these inroads. And when Kamala Harris got the nomination, I said, after her convention speech,

00:44:01.060 I thought she missed the mark that she was not filling in the details of what she would do for

00:44:05.640 people. Um, I said, after the, uh, debate that I thought that while she might have, uh, you know,

00:44:12.640 scored a lot of points against Trump, she ultimately lost the debate because she didn't say what she 1.00

00:44:19.220 would do for people. The number of Democrats on the Harris and Biden campaigns at the DNC and just in

00:44:27.360 general who sent letters or, you know, emails and texting, like, you're not being helpful. Like,

00:44:32.800 what are you doing speaking honestly like this? And I just said, look guys, if you have data that

00:44:38.540 shows I'm wrong, like I will trumpet it anywhere and everywhere, but everything I'm seeing is that

00:44:45.800 she is struggling and Biden was struggling. And so Megan, to your point that all these people are now

00:44:52.280 coming out and say, Oh, well, we knew this and we've been talking about it. And it was, you know,

00:44:56.420 they are right. It was obvious for all to see her weaknesses and frankly, the party's weaknesses,

00:45:03.860 but there was such a collective, if we give an inch, it's helping Trump and we can't dare do anything

00:45:11.560 that doesn't prop her up to the point where I used to joke with people. Do you want me to be Baghdad 1.00

00:45:17.640 Bob and say the sun rises in the West? The answer is yes. Yeah. I mean, if that's, and we, we have a line

00:45:23.160 in the morning meeting that if that's what you want, there are plenty of places for you to go to

00:45:27.240 get that, but it's just not who we are. And so look, I hate that. I mean, I wish I was wrong,

00:45:33.940 right? I wish Harris had won, but you know, it, it does kind of really get me. And I guess I should

00:45:39.960 just laugh that all these people are now saying that they knew this was coming all along. And the

00:45:45.300 last thing I will say is it drives me nuts. People who say this was not a winnable race.

00:45:49.600 I believe it was absolutely winnable. I believe if you looked at the data that a lot of people

00:45:55.980 didn't like Biden or Trump, when Harris came into the race, there was general openness to her.

00:46:02.440 And if you watch focus groups between July and October, there was excitement for Harris.

00:46:08.060 There was kind of a like, okay, when am I going to hear from you about what you're going to do for

00:46:12.020 me? Then there's frustration with Harris after that debate. And by October one or so,

00:46:17.040 it turned to anger and voters threw their hands up. And you can just see the evolution of the data

00:46:22.920 to the point where, as we talked about the last few weeks of the campaign, I think we did with you

00:46:27.720 and on our show, I don't know how she's going to now turn this Titanic, right? She had all these

00:46:32.800 opportunities and she lost, but I never heard once on MSNBC or the New York times or any of these places

00:46:39.580 until maybe the last week, the New York times ran that story, like over a weekend, she's having

00:46:44.960 problems with black men and Latinos, but nobody was willing to say this. Sorry, that was a little

00:46:51.880 bit of a rant. No, you're exactly right. I want to support you with that Democratic official who's

00:46:56.720 been making the rounds. She was on with Rich McHugh at News Nation. She was on with Will Cain

00:47:00.160 on his podcast, Lindy Lee, I think her name is. She's been very upset about all the donations that

00:47:06.380 she wrangled for the Democrats and for Kamala with promises of a much better outcome, or at least 0.98

00:47:13.020 you know, best guesstimates of a much better outcome and the reckless spending. And she said

00:47:17.920 what you just said. She said, if you are going to take a position along the lines of what you just

00:47:22.620 said, that might be more nuanced. You can't get booked on MSNBC or CNN that they will, they will

00:47:28.500 cancel you because they only want to hear fluffing, you know, which is not a nice term, but that's kind

00:47:33.300 of what is expected. Um, I'll give it to you in one second, Mark. I just want to say this Katie

00:47:38.240 Couric now who's like having the come to Jesus moment. Here are some of her show names prior to

00:47:43.540 the election. Gwen Walls on why this is the most important election of our lifetime.

00:47:48.820 Why Donald Trump is a fascist and what that means all about abortion and what's at stake in the 2024

00:47:54.800 election, how to save democracy with John Favreau and Tommy Veeder of Pod Save America, left-leaning,

00:48:00.260 you know, Obama guy. So, you know, hashtag part of the problems, Katie, you know, you might try

00:48:06.840 having on a Republican or somebody who actually does understand Trump. And even now, Mark,

00:48:11.280 the solution over on places like ABC where used to work is, oh my God, we got to find an actual

00:48:17.060 Trump supporter and put them into the seventh chair on the view. That'll do it. Like that talk

00:48:23.720 about like a bandaid on a cancer. Yeah. I mean, Sean and I and Dan laugh at the, like the Sunday

00:48:33.040 morning public affairs shows, they still are having a bunch of Democrats and then one anti-Trump

00:48:38.060 Republican on their roundtables to analyze the election. You know, um, it's really good for the

00:48:45.200 country. I think that he won the popular vote because it, it, it takes away the Democrats blaming

00:48:50.700 not Kamala Harris, but the electoral college. But I think that, that the, um, the problem is again,

00:48:57.780 you cannot go around saying fascist and Hitler and then turn 180 degrees. All of a sudden,

00:49:03.080 they're going to have to come to terms with, with what's what's before them. But I wish they would

00:49:08.160 be, I wish they would be more open to booking and then not book those people. And then, and then gang

00:49:12.480 up on them on the, on the, on the roundtables, right? That that's not going to solve the problem.

00:49:17.340 If you book the people and then simply attack them for supporting someone who they will continue to

00:49:22.140 call names or shame them the way Abby Phillips did over on CNN. Um, sure. Michael Singleton, who,

00:49:30.520 who is trying to refer to trans girls, which is not a thing as boys. No, no, you will not disrespect

00:49:38.740 them. It's like, they don't get it. It's just too massive a problem I've maintained all along.

00:49:43.600 It cannot be extracted from the party. I'm telling you, Dan, you people are going to have to do what

00:49:49.600 we did to the never Trumpers. They must be excised from the party removed and put over here and then

00:49:55.560 ignored, or you have no future. Great to see you both. Say hi. Thank you. Good to see you.

00:50:01.180 For me too. Thank you. Thank you, Megan. All right. We'll be back with that additional piece of

00:50:05.980 data. I wanted to give you a Mac gates and then Richie McGinnis, author of a new book, riot diet.

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00:51:12.300 Okay. So I wanted to follow up on Matt Gaetz. It looks like, I mean, truly, we're going to have

00:51:20.180 this leaked report from the House Investigatory Committee at any moment. Just before we came to

00:51:27.340 air, there was a report that it had been hacked already off of, I guess, the congressional website

00:51:32.200 or some website, and that it's going to be put out. And that they saw in the hacked alleged report

00:51:40.300 that among those who testified before the House was a woman who, though she is no longer 17,

00:51:47.980 says she was 17 at the time she had sex with Matt Gaetz. And that there was money exchanged by Matt Gaetz

00:51:59.100 and either this woman or other young women who were 18 or so. So there's two allegations that

00:52:07.140 he had sex with a minor and that he paid for sex with 18 year olds and possibly with the minor as

00:52:14.640 well. That he allegedly trafficked the minor by moving her across state lines. And that we're

00:52:22.020 going to read about all of this, including the firsthand testimonial from this woman who is no

00:52:25.860 longer 17, but was at the time. The allegation was that he had sex with her when she was 17.

00:52:30.620 Then he learned after the fact that she was 17. Then he stopped the relationship. Then it resumed

00:52:36.160 after she turned 18. Now, the media is in overdrive trying to prove all of this. What you need to know

00:52:42.820 is that the DOJ was unable to. The DOJ walked away from any criminal charges against Matt Gaetz because

00:52:49.480 it did not feel that it had credible witnesses. And I'm going to circle back to that after I show you

00:52:55.800 what's happening in the media. And I am making no representation that Matt Gaetz will make it through.

00:52:59.800 You heard the guys from two way. They think he actually might. We talked about the report in

00:53:04.600 political and want to correct myself. It's not that Trump spoke to the New York times and said

00:53:08.300 Gaetz has a less than less than even odds of being confirmed. It's that the New York times reported

00:53:14.480 that Trump has indicated that. So it's a little different. Trump didn't say it to them directly,

00:53:19.820 but they're all reporting is that Trump also wants a fight. And he's been asking Senate Republicans to

00:53:26.100 at least give his pick a shot, arguing that Gaetz is just the man to fix the DOJ. That was per Senator

00:53:34.020 Kevin Cramer, Republican from North Dakota, to reporters on the Hill yesterday. So he's still

00:53:40.040 in the mix, this Matt Gaetz, and the media is not going to take this sitting down. It's definitely not.

00:53:45.500 So we will go through what they're putting out there for public consumption. Where did I do it?

00:53:52.820 Oh, I got here. My sound bites there. They're everywhere. There's a lawyer named Joel Leppard,

00:53:59.360 and he represents two young women who are not the one-time 17-year-old in question,

00:54:08.000 but they're somehow connected to her and are claiming to have been at some of the parties

00:54:13.020 that she and allegedly Matt Gaetz attended. And this guy went on ABC News on Monday and said the

00:54:21.620 following. How many times, how many parties your clients went to and had sex with Representative

00:54:29.420 Gaetz? Well, not all of them were parties, but approximately perhaps 10 times, 10 to 15 times,

00:54:34.900 I think was the testament about the number of times they might've had sex with Representative Gaetz.

00:54:39.020 So Mr. Gaetz paid them for the tickets to come to New York for the trip. He was there with another

00:54:45.100 female individual already. And so they went to Broadway shows and things like that and met him,

00:54:51.180 went to the Fox News studio, I believe. And they went to Broadway shows while they're there.

00:54:57.080 What show did they see? I'm just curious now.

00:54:59.120 Pretty Woman.

00:54:59.620 About a sex worker.

00:55:00.980 Yeah. I had not even thought about that.

00:55:04.300 Interesting.

00:55:06.100 Hmm. Okay. So that's him saying he's got two 18-year-olds, or they were at the time,

00:55:11.520 who were at drug-fueled sex parties and that they had sex with Matt Gaetz, who brought them

00:55:20.220 to New York City for this and to watch his Fox News appearance and to go to a Broadway show.

00:55:26.180 That's the allegation. Um, the only thing in there that would be illegal if true is if he paid for

00:55:33.180 sex because these two girls he's representing, he says, were of age. Drug-fueled party doesn't

00:55:39.660 tell me anything. Does, did Matt Gaetz take illegal drugs? Did he ply, um, women against their will with

00:55:46.600 drugs? I didn't hear that. So, so far what I hear is potentially solicitation of prostitution.

00:55:51.200 Um, then he went over to CNN and said more. Listen, Asad, too. This is about the 17-year-old.

00:55:59.820 When she was walking out to the pool area, she observed to her right Representative Gaetz having

00:56:04.240 sex with her friend who was 17 at the time. And on this question, she's absolutely sure.

00:56:08.800 She's absolutely certain that she observed, uh, seeing her friend and Representative Gaetz

00:56:13.120 having sex against what she described as a game table of some sort.

00:56:16.580 Does your client have any idea as to whether Matt Gaetz knew about the age?

00:56:21.720 Yeah. So she testified to the House that, that Representative Gaetz did not know her friend's

00:56:25.660 age at the time they had sexual intercourse. And when he found out about, uh, um, her age,

00:56:32.120 that Representative Gaetz stopped having sexual intercourse with her. And he only started the

00:56:36.200 sexual intercourse interactions later on when she turned 18.

00:56:39.260 So then it continued again.

00:56:40.720 That's correct.

00:56:42.620 Okay. So there he is saying that Matt Gaetz allegedly was seen by his clients having sex

00:56:51.520 with a then 17-year-old. Um, the age of consent, I think in New York is 17. The age of consent

00:56:59.420 in Florida is 18. I believe they were in New York, but I guess we'll, we'll get the full vetting

00:57:07.280 of exactly where they were and when, uh, in any event, uh, if it's, if they were in New

00:57:12.300 York as the, as he alleged in that first appearance, these, this person would have been

00:57:17.440 at the age of consent. Uh, okay. Then here's more from Joel Leppard, the attorney for these

00:57:26.320 other two who talked about payment and how it was handled on CNN on Monday.

00:57:31.420 He had paid also your clients for sex. He was paying for sex.

00:57:36.100 The testimony, uh, before the house was yes, that, um, Representative Gaetz paid my client,

00:57:41.400 uh, both of my clients for sexual favors throughout the summer of 2017 to all the way to the beginning

00:57:47.900 of 2019.

00:57:49.820 And, um, how did he, how did he pay them?

00:57:52.680 Those were primary through Venmo and PayPal payments. There was one payment, uh, through

00:57:57.800 Grubbs and Gates, uh, adopted son through his PayPal Nestor, the adopted, the adopted son

00:58:02.820 payments would come there too. There was only one payment that it was tested by too.

00:58:07.900 So that's some of what we're likely to hear about, read about when we see this leaked house

00:58:12.700 report, which undoubtedly will hit the presses shortly and we'll take you through it. But so

00:58:18.140 far we have him allegedly transporting a minor, a 17 year old across state lines for the purpose

00:58:24.040 of having paid sex with her. And, um, possibly if any of that happened in Florida, she would 0.99

00:58:31.120 have been under the age of consent. Um, she would have been 17 when the age there is 18, 0.61

00:58:36.200 which presumably would have been why in this story he stopped having his relations with her

00:58:41.640 until then she hit her 18th birthday. Those are all allegations. Matt Gaetz denies them all.

00:58:47.800 Now that sounds pretty bad. Certainly doesn't sound like our next attorney general.

00:58:52.700 However, if it's so bad, and if you've got all these witnesses ready to testify,

00:58:59.580 why, why were charges not brought? And that leads me to, first of all, a great report by Molly

00:59:04.940 Hemingway of the Federalist, which hit two days ago, November, November 17th. And you should definitely

00:59:09.600 go to the Federalist and read it. House probe into Matt Gaetz relies on witnesses DOJ found lacked

00:59:14.360 credibility, but she links in that piece to a Washington post piece from September 23,

00:59:22.700 2022. And when it was updated, oh yeah. Okay. So that was the date it was hit and updated. And

00:59:29.720 that is the Washington post explaining why the DOJ did not want to charge anybody gates in connection

00:59:37.940 with any of these allegations. And the headline there is career prosecutors recommend no charges

00:59:42.100 for gates in sex trafficking probe. And I want to go with it with, with, through it with you.

00:59:47.780 Okay. This is before they had officially decided not to bring charges, but they did officially decide

00:59:52.880 not to bring charges shortly after this. They say career prosecutors have recommended against

00:59:57.640 charging Matt Gaetz in a long running sex trafficking investigation, telling justice department superiors

01:00:02.900 that a conviction is unlikely in part because of credibility questions with the two central witnesses.

01:00:08.680 It is unlikely federal authorities will charge gates in connection with this probe, which focused on

01:00:17.640 his alleged involvement with a 17 year old girl several years earlier. Gates 40 has repeatedly denied

01:00:24.320 wrongdoing saying he never paid for sex. He has also said the only time he had sex with a 17 year old

01:00:29.240 was when he too was 17. Okay. Investigators set out to determine if the congressman paid for sex in

01:00:40.840 violation of federal sex trafficking laws and have examined his dealings with the then 17 year old.

01:00:46.280 People familiar with the matter have said earlier this year, a federal grand jury in Orlando heard

01:00:51.360 testimony from associates of Gates's, including an ex-girlfriend. So not only did the DOJ start looking

01:00:58.060 into this, they convened a federal grand jury and it does not appear that any true bill was returned

01:01:04.220 or that that went anywhere. They write in the Washington post, the ex-girlfriend, the 17 year old

01:01:10.300 was among several women on a trip. Gates allegedly took to the Bahamas in 2018. That has been a particular

01:01:17.780 interest to the investigators. The 17 year old at issue was also on that trip though. By the time she was

01:01:24.120 by that time she was already 18 or older. She's been a central witness in this investigation,

01:01:29.240 but people familiar with the case say she is one of two people whose testimony has issues

01:01:35.720 that veteran prosecutors feel would not pass muster with a jury. So the 17 year old at the crux of all of

01:01:44.280 this has been deemed not credible by the DOJ, by career prosecutors there. The other is a former

01:01:51.560 friend of Gates's, Joel Greenberg. And you're going to need to listen to a thing or two about Joel.

01:01:59.060 He's a former tax collector for Seminole County, Florida. You know, Gates is from sort of the panhandle

01:02:04.080 area of Florida. He, Greenberg, pleaded guilty last year to sex trafficking of a minor and a host of other

01:02:13.320 crimes as part of a cooperation deal with authorities. So this guy was on the hook criminally and then

01:02:18.540 started talking about whom else he could give up to the authorities. Greenberg was first charged in 2020

01:02:24.820 with fabricating allegations and evidence to smear a political opponent. He made shit up to hurt someone

01:02:35.400 who was opposed to him in politics. That's what he was already charged with and dealing with when he

01:02:43.680 pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of a minor. Prosecutors continued to investigate and added charges

01:02:51.020 to Greenberg's case. He ultimately agreed to plead guilty to six criminal charges, including sex

01:02:56.140 trafficking of a child, aggravated identity theft, and wire fraud. Sounds like a very upstanding

01:03:01.700 citizen. In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the other 27 counts against Greenberg

01:03:08.540 and recommend a term within the federal sentencing guidelines, which are usually less than they could

01:03:14.620 get under the statutory maximum. If Greenberg provided substantial assistance in building other cases,

01:03:23.140 prosecutors might ask a judge to deviate below the minimum required penalty, according to Greenberg's

01:03:27.680 plea agreement. It was in exploring Greenberg's conduct that investigators came upon evidence.

01:03:34.980 They came upon it. Hmm. Could it have been from Greenberg? Potentially implicating Gates in sex

01:03:41.640 trafficking. Prosecutors had been exploring whether Greenberg paid women to have sex with Gates and

01:03:50.540 whether the two shared sexual partners, including the 17-year-old girl at issue in Greenberg's case.

01:03:58.200 Gates, who represents a mostly conservative district in Florida's panhandle, is known as a strident

01:04:03.720 defender of former President Donald Trump. Why is that relevant, Washington Post? What's that doing in

01:04:08.040 here? Huh? The investigation into him was opened during the Trump administration and proceeded with

01:04:13.520 the approval of then Attorney General William Barr. Greenberg has been providing investigators

01:04:18.720 information about Gates since last year. Just FYI, I am omitting all of the Washington Post's sourcing,

01:04:25.560 virtually all of which is according to a person familiar with the matter. You can see it in the

01:04:29.020 original report if you so choose. Then this, Greenberg's credibility would be a significant

01:04:35.420 challenge for any prosecution of Gates, in part because of one of the crimes Greenberg admitted

01:04:41.520 to, which was fabricating allegations against a school teacher who was running against him to be

01:04:49.500 a tax collector. Now, we heard that earlier in the piece. Remember? I paused and I read it to you

01:04:55.560 that he was charged in 2020 with fabricating allegations and evidence to smear a political

01:05:00.940 opponent. That's bad. He's got a history of doing that. Is that what he's doing to Gates?

01:05:05.500 Then they raise it again here, saying his credibility is going to be a problem because

01:05:08.940 he admitted to fabricating allegations against a school teacher who was running against him to be

01:05:13.060 a tax collector. What exactly were the allegations that Greenberg fabricated? Washington Post. Walk us

01:05:19.720 through it. And they do. Greenberg had sent letters to the school falsely claiming that the teacher

01:05:27.100 had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student. A similar allegation to the Gates case.

01:05:35.980 Yeah, think? Yeah. A lawyer for the school teacher commented to the Washington Post saying,

01:05:44.560 no one is going to believe anything that Joel Greenberg says by itself. His statements would

01:05:50.840 have to be corroborated by testimony or evidence. So that is Greenberg and this alleged victim,

01:05:58.920 the 17-year-old, though there's less in this report on why the DOJ deemed her not credible.

01:06:05.580 But she was deemed not credible. And so was Greenberg, the two people against

01:06:10.640 Matt Gaetz and who got this whole thing against Matt Gaetz started.

01:06:14.780 Are the two women that this other lawyer, Joel Leppard, the guy who was on ABC, CBS,

01:06:23.760 and CNN, as I just showed you, are those, is that lawyer connected with Greenberg at all? I don't

01:06:28.940 know. Are those two young women connected with the not credible Greenberg or the not credible 17-year-old?

01:06:35.940 I don't know, but they're saying they were there when the alleged sex acts happened,

01:06:41.400 that they witnessed them. So I'm going to guess they know her and they're all running in the same

01:06:46.500 circles. And I'm also going to guess they potentially suffer from the same credibility

01:06:50.120 problems that the first two do. Look, I don't know what happened with Matt Gaetz. There's a lot

01:06:57.000 around this guy, a lot. And he's also reportedly been on the house floor bragging about his libido

01:07:06.220 and stamina. And, you know, he sounds like a crude guy. I'm not, there's no point in pretending

01:07:11.340 otherwise. But accusing him of criminal behavior is something else entirely. And I do believe that

01:07:21.040 if this DOJ had Matt Gaetz in the crosshairs, they would have done everything in their power to

01:07:25.940 actually see through those charges. And the fact that they didn't, because let's be clear,

01:07:31.600 while the investigation may have gotten started, while Trump was still president, this is 2022

01:07:36.440 when they recommended no charges. That was Joe Biden's Department of Justice. That was Merrick

01:07:43.500 Garland's Department of Justice. There is zero chance those guys would have given up on the chance to get

01:07:51.600 Matt Gaetz if they thought they were anywhere close. And it's obvious this guy Greenberg could be of no

01:07:58.580 help to them. What a hot mess he would be. But there must be similar problems with the 17-year-old

01:08:03.380 because standing alone, just being a sex worker wouldn't do it. There'd have to be more. So we

01:08:09.800 really need to take all of this right now with a hefty dose of salt, not a grain, but like a boulder

01:08:17.420 of salt. Because look, these may not be credible people at all. This whole thing could be a shakedown.

01:08:25.660 The guy reportedly wanted Matt Gaetz, Greenberg, to help him get a pardon. And Matt Gaetz rebuffed

01:08:32.240 him. And then suddenly he's opposed to Matt Gaetz and giving up Matt Gaetz in these discussions with

01:08:37.280 the cops, with the DOJ. It stinks. It stinks to anybody. Want to read the whole report? Have no

01:08:44.500 doubt we will. But between now and then, remember the boulder, the boulder of salt. Okay, one other

01:08:51.340 thing. We talked in the first segment about Katie Couric and we need to follow up on her. So you

01:08:58.100 heard the soundbite in which she was talking about, you know, the disrespect of the Trump voters and the

01:09:04.560 way like they'd make fun of his voters as opposed to going out there and like talking with the guy in

01:09:10.120 a hard hat. Okay. You were the one who was calling them anti-intellectual, but fine. Now I guess

01:09:16.160 maybe you see you were part of the problem. She went on. That was not the only Katie Couric

01:09:20.440 insight into how things went so wrong for Kamala. In this interview with Jen, Dora, the explorer,

01:09:29.600 Saki, she, she offered more and so did Saki. Listen. Like Brad summer, which was cool. Didn't

01:09:37.780 work. Young people didn't turn out. Although there was that three week blackout period, which I honestly

01:09:42.780 could not understand that was making me crazy just from a consumer. I didn't understand. I also

01:09:47.340 don't. What was that? And again, I think she really did well in so many areas and I, I, I, but, but I was

01:09:54.760 frustrated by her inability to really succinctly answer questions at times, Jen, and to kind of like,

01:10:01.220 if she was asked about changing the, uh, the Supreme court at that CNN town hall, she, she had an

01:10:09.200 opportunity to talk about ethics and what, you know, Alito and Clarence Thomas were doing. And

01:10:14.540 she answered like in one sentence and then like went on to something that had nothing to do with

01:10:19.340 the question. You know, people notice that. And it's like, answer the goddamn question, please.

01:10:25.180 This is my kind of like unsolicited advice to every person who may run for president down and think

01:10:31.520 about why are you running for president? Oh, Dora that you, you really stepped up your game from your

01:10:39.840 last gig here to dance the kitty cat dance. We need to scratch our kitty paws, stomp our feet and wag 1.00

01:10:49.320 our kitty tails. It's her. I'm sorry, but it's her. I cannot take this person seriously. They need to stop

01:10:59.820 and think about why they want to be the president. You probably should have told her that while she 0.96

01:11:05.700 was still running. Instead, we got drivel like this from you at the DNC, Jen Psaki.

01:11:12.300 This magical, charismatic quality in person. She just, that was fierce and fearless.

01:11:18.300 Like an, in my view, an undervalued talent. Um, she's a very fierce communicator. That's who she is, 0.99

01:11:26.260 but there is a character out there. There is, it's almost like public opinion hasn't caught up with

01:11:33.120 what she is doing out there. And also we live in a country that is sexist and racist. 1.00

01:11:39.340 Okay. So now, you know, she really should have thought about why she wanted to be president

01:11:45.660 so she could be more clear in her messaging in town halls and so on with Katie Couric.

01:11:50.100 But, but I thought she was a very fierce communicator. Very, not just fierce, very fierce,

01:11:55.460 fierce. Back to Dora. She's four. Jen Psaki has the communication abilities of a four-year-old. 0.99

01:12:02.080 Maybe we'll circle back. We'll circle back to what Kamala Harris could have done. Very fierce

01:12:07.300 and also magical. She's a magical, fierce, very fierce communicator. 1.00

01:12:12.500 The gas lighting. That's what a ridiculous thing to say about Kamala Harris. Magical, very fierce 1.00

01:12:20.700 communicator, but we're all sexist and racist. So she might not be able to get the ball over the 1.00

01:12:26.420 line. That clip is gold. That's a gold clip. So then she's on with Katie Couric and it's like,

01:12:34.160 you know, she really should have stopped to get the mermaid. I mean, to, to decide why 1.00

01:12:38.980 she wants to run for president and Katie Couric too, who's like, really, I was frustrated with her 0.99

01:12:47.000 inability to answer the tough questions. Like why didn't she answer the tough questions? I mean,

01:12:52.880 another question is why didn't you ask them, Katie? Because we remember your interview with Kamala

01:13:00.140 Harris. I recently learned you're only five, two. Is that true? That is absolutely incorrect. Okay.

01:13:06.720 I am five, four and a quarter. Okay. And I'm five, three and a half and with heels,

01:13:11.840 which I always wear. I'm five, seven and a half. Thank you very much. Okay. Wikipedia,

01:13:14.900 you're wrong. And we need to correct that. I've said this to my team. Like what? I don't know

01:13:19.520 where it came from. I've, I was five, two, when I was 12. They say I'm five, one on my Wikipedia page.

01:13:26.220 How tall are you? Five, three and three quarters. Right. And shrinking. It's like,

01:13:30.620 literally, you, they just want to just make us smaller in every way.

01:13:36.720 They want to make us smaller in every way, right? You are constantly being unfairly diminished,

01:13:43.540 like by the Jen Psaki's who say you're a magical communicator, very fierce, but sexists and racists.

01:13:51.900 So you never know. Um, like I said to Dan Turrentine, they're not getting it. The postmortem

01:13:57.960 is not going well over on team blue. Good luck to you in your future endeavors. Are we going to take

01:14:03.400 a break? And then we're going to come back with my pal, Richie McGinnis. Who is Richie McGinnis?

01:14:06.720 Well, he has been all over the country over the past five, six, seven years in the midst of all

01:14:13.680 the riots that he's been on what he calls a riot diet in his new book. He did the Antifa stuff.

01:14:21.760 He's gotten bruised and bloodied. There was an iconic photo of him in the midst of the J6 stuff that 1.00

01:14:28.180 made it to the times. And then they called him an insurrectionist. Like Richie has been through it.

01:14:33.340 And, uh, he's here next to talk about that new book, riot diet. Don't go away.

01:14:38.340 Grand Canyon university, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona

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01:16:23.560 slash MK show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three

01:16:32.280 months free. Offer details apply. Back in 2022, we had Richie McGinnis, then a journalist and former

01:16:43.460 video director of The Daily Caller, on the show for an exclusive interview. He spoke to us just months

01:16:48.360 after his testimony as a key witness in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Richie was in Kenosha the night

01:16:55.200 of the violence doing what he does, which is document these riots, put himself right in the

01:17:00.160 middle of the danger. And the Rittenhouse shooting unfolded right in front of him. His reporting that

01:17:05.880 night launched him into the national spotlight in a way he did not ask for. Richie was not only a

01:17:11.500 witness to the violence in Kenosha during the summer of 2020, but he was on the ground for nearly every

01:17:17.120 major instance of violence we saw that year. He was at Lafayette Park in D.C. when protesters tried

01:17:24.480 to bring down the statue of President Andrew Jackson. He captured Seattle's Capitol Hill

01:17:29.520 autonomous zone known as Chaz on his camera and so much more. He was one of the very few real 0.83

01:17:36.620 journalists who put his life at risk. Every day, these things were being ignored because they didn't

01:17:41.660 look good for the left. But Richie would go in the midst of these to bring us the events in real time.

01:17:46.940 Well, now he's out with a new book that tells it all. It's called Riot Diet. Great name. One man's

01:17:53.420 radical ride through America in chaos. And in it, Richie shares never before heard stories of America's

01:17:59.860 unrest during the summer of 2020, which some have connected to the election results earlier this

01:18:05.880 month. Richie, welcome back to the show. Great to have you. Thanks for having me on, Megan. I don't

01:18:11.780 know how I'm going to fall off the door. I'm Katie Couric, but you know, I'll try. You're going to try to do

01:18:17.320 your best. You're more like Bob the Builder. I would give you something. How many parents out

01:18:24.400 there fell asleep night after night with Bob the Builder? Can you fix it? Anyway, why did you

01:18:32.260 self-publish? This is interesting to me. Well, I in 2022, when I quit my job at the Daily Caller at

01:18:38.300 the end of 2022, I started seriously writing this book and I was shopping it around to publishers and

01:18:43.960 agents. And they all told me a couple of different things. The first one was that Trump was never

01:18:48.580 going to make it through the primary and he wasn't going to be the candidate. And I think in media,

01:18:53.060 people have a tendency to think what they want to happen is what's going to happen.

01:18:57.060 And I knew that was not going to be the case. You know, I saw that his base was still firmly in line

01:19:03.340 with him. Even, you know, everybody thought January 6th was the nail in the coffin. And I was also told

01:19:07.740 that I had to write it, pick a side, basically sell it either to the left or to the right.

01:19:12.600 But my story covering both the BLM stuff and then all the MAGA unrest after the election,

01:19:19.000 it's the story of being caught in between protesters and police, prosecution and defense,

01:19:24.460 and the left and the right. You know, my job was, my lane was to go on the ground, whether it's the

01:19:28.680 Proud Boys or Antifa, or I call them the Umbrella Gang, the guys who use umbrellas as shields, and,

01:19:35.080 you know, just show the audience what's happening without commentary. So they were wearing this,

01:19:40.520 they said this, and this is what happened. So if the police were beating up on the protesters,

01:19:44.880 we'd publish it. If the Proud Boys were beating up on somebody, we'd publish that. And same goes

01:19:50.320 for the left-wing agitators as well. So, you know, the way that I wrote the story was really just like

01:19:54.800 what I saw on the ground. And there's some personal anecdotes in there as well to tell you

01:19:59.980 why I went there, why I worked at the caller in the first place, the Daily Caller in the first place,

01:20:04.700 and why I aimed my camera where I did, and why I often ran up there.

01:20:09.360 So what have you learned? How would you summarize what you learned?

01:20:13.540 I would say that the main lesson that comes from the book is that, you know, the human beings who

01:20:18.640 are on the ground were all, whether they were from the left or the right, they were all desperate

01:20:24.140 enough to go to the streets in the first place. So there was a profound discontentment among all

01:20:30.300 political ideologies. And the thing that I learned was how those people were used in short little

01:20:36.260 soundbites as cannon fodder for political agendas on both sides. And I'm just trying to like paint

01:20:42.120 the picture of what I saw on the ground, who they were, what they said, why they said they were there,

01:20:47.460 and then let the audience decide for themselves.

01:20:49.900 How do you distinguish between what you saw during the BLM riots, for example, and like the pure

01:21:00.020 Antifa stuff? Because I realize Antifa was probably at the BLM stuff too, but like that,

01:21:05.780 they're not entirely the same.

01:21:07.820 That's correct. And that line that you just drew right there was obviously

01:21:11.800 muddied quite often during the actual unrest. And I think that did a disservice to the actual

01:21:18.160 portrayal of what was really going on. It was the simple reality was that there would be I think

01:21:24.240 Portland is the best example, there'd be 5000 protesters out on a given night, they would come

01:21:28.840 out right at sunset. And they'd hear the speeches. And then there'd be about 500 people left over by

01:21:36.280 midnight smashing into the fence with the express intention of bringing the police out, and then

01:21:42.300 getting into confrontations with them in front of whatever cameras were rolling. And the other thing

01:21:47.320 about Antifa that's different from the Proud Boys is that if you go up to somebody and you're like,

01:21:51.160 Hey, man, are you Antifa? They're not going to say yes. You know, so occasionally you see an Antifa

01:21:55.720 flag. Occasionally you see a little patch. But I call them the umbrella gang in the book, because

01:22:01.200 you know, you can tell who went out there with the express intention of agitating police, because they

01:22:06.460 bring umbrellas, they bring gas masks. The Portland chapter is called the Battle of the Leafblowers,

01:22:10.960 because they had leaf blowers to blow the tear gas. And then it was actually so successful that the DHS

01:22:16.900 officers actually got their own leaf blowers. So our most viral video in Portland was these DHS

01:22:22.920 officers basically on the other side of the fence, aiming their leaf blowers at the, I guess it's

01:22:29.420 safe to call these guys rioters, aiming their leaf blowers at each other. That is so annoying. Just

01:22:34.540 the sound of the leaf blower would make me leave the protest. Nevermind if they were using it to blow

01:22:37.860 tear gas at me. I mean, you and I have talked about this before, but you have been in grave danger at

01:22:44.540 these events. This is, and obviously Kenosha would be the top example, I think, but you kept doing it.

01:22:51.960 You kept going back in and back in and back in and to the point where Richie, now I look at you as a, like a

01:22:56.820 war correspondent. I think, I don't think you've escaped unscathed from all of it. What do you think?

01:23:03.400 I would agree with that. And that's a lot of what the book tells is the personal side of the story,

01:23:08.260 which is, I'm the middle of three boys. So I'm used to getting knocked around. I play ice hockey

01:23:13.240 and I'm a surfer. So, you know, I'm used to some degree of chaos, but in the midst of it, you know,

01:23:20.340 our mission was so simple. Just go to wherever this stuff is going down and show everybody what's

01:23:27.000 happening. And I thought it was all going to stop after the election, but obviously that wasn't the

01:23:31.460 case. I think Kenosha was obviously the most jarring example. And Joseph Rosenbaum, who was the first man

01:23:38.820 killed, was shot right in front of me. And I actually carried him to the hospital. And I didn't

01:23:44.160 know who that man was at the time that the shooting took place. So, you know, the after action was,

01:23:49.140 oh, this guy did all these terrible things. He sexually assaulted minors, which he was convicted

01:23:54.720 of, served time for. But what wasn't included was the fact that Joseph Rosenbaum was sexually abused

01:24:00.720 by his stepfather and the kids that he sexually abused. Some of them are in jail for the same

01:24:04.980 crimes. And there's, there's this intergenerational tragedy associated with not only like the general

01:24:12.700 majority of people that are out there desperate enough to take to the streets, but also Kenosha

01:24:17.180 specifically, Kyle Rittenhouse, absent father, Jacob Blake, absent father, Anthony Huber, who was the

01:24:22.960 second man killed, absent father, and Gage Groskowitz, who had his bicep shot off, absent father as well.

01:24:29.620 So there's, I think, a much deeper spiritual sickness in our country that is not addressed

01:24:35.960 by, you know, just these kind of surface level, Joe Biden is a poopy pants or Trump orange man bad.

01:24:41.820 And so I wanted to delve deeper beneath the surface level, what about ism of the Trump era and just

01:24:49.760 kind of show the audience, not only my own personal struggles with what I experienced, but also the

01:24:54.700 struggles of the people who were in the streets and were affected by these American tragedies.

01:24:58.480 I mean, you did not have an absentee father and you write about losing him and being there with

01:25:06.980 your brothers and his beautiful blue eyes and just coming to terms with his passing. You think about

01:25:14.340 that in the context that you just offered it, you know, of how lucky you were to have him and gone

01:25:19.400 too soon, but how lucky you were to have him. Otherwise you would have been out in those streets

01:25:22.540 potentially for a much different reason, Richie, given your natural courage and, you know, that

01:25:28.820 you're drawn to chaos as a reporter, like a moth to a flame. Absolutely. And that's why I included

01:25:36.660 that anecdote. I told Shelby Talcott, my coworker who was on the ground with Jorge Ventura as well for

01:25:43.520 most of these riots. And I told her the day after the shooting, uh, when Joseph Rosenbaum died, he had

01:25:49.460 gray eyes, but I saw my dad's blue eyes when I, when I replayed it in my mind. And the key distinction

01:25:57.000 there is that when Joseph Rosenbaum passed away, I saw him, his eyes filled with regret and him going

01:26:04.920 to a place that he did not want to go. Whereas with my dad, you know, he saw the nurse leave the room

01:26:10.120 and decided that with his entire family around the bed, that that was his time to, uh, to go.

01:26:18.720 Mm-hmm. A friend of mine, I won't say who it is because I don't have his permission to share the

01:26:23.400 story, but he told me about losing his dad and that he and, um, his family, they were around him. And he

01:26:29.340 was an elderly man when he passed that, um, he looked at the son who our audience would know and said,

01:26:36.180 um, it's not so bad. And he said, the son's name, it's not so bad. It's actually really not so bad.

01:26:41.620 And it's just, it was the sweetest story because it's this dad on his way to the other side,

01:26:46.200 even with his last few breaths, trying to make it better for his child, for the people who loved

01:26:53.460 him. I'm just tearing up just thinking about it. It's such a sweet gesture. Um, and yet you've been

01:26:58.700 right in the midst of people going out due to their own choices, no question due to their own

01:27:02.960 choices, but also their own circumstances who exit under very different, you know,

01:27:08.180 in a, in a very different situation. And I think this is so interesting because every time we see

01:27:14.660 one of these riots, we usually see a New York post report after the fact, which I enjoy showing who

01:27:20.340 it was. You know, you see like, they've got blue hair, they've got weird gender things going on. 0.99

01:27:26.760 And they are almost always rich nine times out of 10 in these, you know, faux faux tests. You know,

01:27:33.180 I don't know if they're the real riots where you get the rich ones, but they've all got like academic

01:27:37.120 pedigrees that would match up with any cabinet level person seeking a job right now. And I wonder

01:27:43.220 about that piece of it, Richie, like what's your experience? They mostly meet this other profile

01:27:47.340 that you're talking about with like, or I don't know, you, I'll let you put it in your own words.

01:27:51.680 What, what would you say is the average profile, the folks who are drawn to this?

01:27:55.500 Well, definitely if the BLM side versus the MAGA side, the BLM side is much younger.

01:28:00.200 And I think it's everybody from the rich kids that you described to people who have nothing else out

01:28:07.140 there. But I think the commonality between all of them is the fact that basically you had a media

01:28:13.920 who was drumming up all of this anger and effectively, you know, the common factor, I actually talk a lot

01:28:21.140 specifically in the Chaz about how the unifying factor was not necessarily, you know, Black Lives

01:28:28.860 Matter per se, so much as if they wanted to get the crowd riled up, they wouldn't say all cops are

01:28:34.600 bastards. They would say, do you guys like Donald Trump? And they'd say F no. And so there was really

01:28:42.040 like this never Trump aspect. And I think that that transcended all class lines because culturally,

01:28:49.700 you know, never Trumpism has become, I guess, half of America. And so I guess the answer to that

01:28:57.340 question would be like, I usually wouldn't be asking these people like, hey, are you rich or are you

01:29:02.440 poor? But I think a lot of these kids were, you know, living in there with their parents, living

01:29:07.580 the ideal stereotype, living in their parents' basement. And they felt like they didn't have the

01:29:12.600 same opportunities afforded to them that were afforded to their parents. And so I think that that

01:29:17.400 pervades across all the entire political spectrum, where, you know, people feel like they're not

01:29:23.880 better off than the previous generation. And I think that really, that ultimately is a class-based

01:29:31.680 issue. And so when everything was focused on race and everything was focused on orange man bad,

01:29:36.200 we really lost the plot, which is black, white, brown, whatever. Everybody felt like they didn't

01:29:44.380 have the opportunities that Americans once had. I feel like those people are all

01:29:50.800 voting for Donald Trump right now. I feel like most of the people you just listed probably went

01:29:55.520 to the polls for Trump. Absolutely. And that's why I knew that Trump was going to win in 2016

01:30:01.580 and why when 2024 came around and they rolled out Kamala Harris. I mean, Kamala Harris and Tim

01:30:08.180 Wallace is like almost a direct, it was the exact same campaign that Hillary Clinton ran. And so

01:30:14.580 Donald Trump, like him, you can say whatever you want about his personal whatever, but he ran on a

01:30:20.980 platform as a change candidate. And that's what people wanted. And there was a reason why Bernie

01:30:25.140 Sanders had such widespread support in 2016. And obviously the WikiLeaks emails showed that the

01:30:31.340 Clinton campaign sandbagged him. And so I think you can only push, kick that can down the road for so

01:30:35.920 long before people realize like, wait, are you really going to fix anything? And Kamala Harris

01:30:41.860 being asked that question of, would you do anything differently when she was on The View? And her being

01:30:46.440 like, as if she didn't expect that kind of question at all on the campaign trail.

01:30:51.840 There is nothing that comes to mind.

01:30:54.160 I don't think so, you know, but I did spend time at the border as well. And I think that was a key issue

01:30:59.200 as well, where it was in your face. I mean, you can only pull the veil over everybody's eyes until

01:31:05.240 the issue becomes too big to ignore. And so you saw her pivot in terms of her policy saying, oh, 0.99

01:31:11.620 we're going to secure the border. When after for three years, they were saying, there's there's no

01:31:16.300 problem here. I went to the border during Joe Biden's administration. And I saw people literally,

01:31:20.880 where would they go? Oh, they'd go in the gaps in the wall. So I'd fly the drone up and see the people

01:31:25.780 coming in through the gaps in the wall. And I talked to literally hundreds of border patrol agents

01:31:30.900 and every single one said, yeah, a wall would definitely be a big help to fix the problem.

01:31:37.460 It's it's a no brainer. And hopefully Trump will resume that when he takes office.

01:31:43.340 The the BLM riots were of particular note. I mean, those were so jarring to many of us just to see the 1.00

01:31:50.900 level of anger post George Floyd, people saying the worst possible things about cops in a way that

01:31:56.900 was just so untrue and unfair and, you know, forcing people to raise their fists and say black

01:32:03.100 lives matter out in the streets, interrupting them at their outdoor dinner spots, which we were forced

01:32:08.440 to eat at right during that time because of covid. And it didn't, in fact, get violent. You're seeing

01:32:14.180 some of that here. The clashes with the cops by their nature would be charged, given what they were

01:32:19.760 protesting over. Was that unlike anything you'd been to, like describe how the BLM riots compared

01:32:25.600 to the others? Absolutely. It was so I covered a fair amount of civil unrest during the Trump years

01:32:32.620 running the video for the Daily Caller, and there would be little skirmishes here and there. But

01:32:37.580 really, the level of tribalism that I saw on the ground during that summer, I think a lot of it was

01:32:44.300 supercharged by what you mentioned, which is everybody was forced by government mandate to stay at home

01:32:49.120 businesses were shuttered. And people who didn't have, you know, the opportunity to work remotely,

01:32:55.800 either lost their jobs or still had to go out there. But this whole government basically telling

01:33:03.600 you, OK, you have to do this, put on a mask, sit down, shut up. And then finally, in May, you know,

01:33:10.160 everybody had been locked down for a couple of months. And I think that really just amplified the

01:33:15.540 level of, I guess, pent up frustration that there was. And there's what I call like Lord of the

01:33:20.500 Flies effect, where if you go out there and you're protesting and you're out there with good intentions,

01:33:25.380 all of a sudden somebody bumps into the police shields and they get pepper sprayed. You see that

01:33:30.640 person get pepper sprayed and then you get pepper sprayed and a whole different part of your mind

01:33:35.620 turns on. And it's really easy for people to sit at home and say, oh, I would have done this or I

01:33:39.960 would have done that. But there really is a primal part of our modern brains that we kind of ignore

01:33:45.780 exists. And when I was out there in those kind of violent situations, you see that turner on.

01:33:51.120 And that's when things get really scary, because in those chaotic situations, it's always the one

01:33:56.100 who's either the biggest and the strongest or the most well armed who's going to prevail.

01:34:01.240 That's why most mothers say to their sons, do not go to that. You're not going out there.

01:34:05.800 Or sometimes it's a daughter too. But yeah, of course she did. That's what a normal mom would 0.98

01:34:10.940 say to anybody, any son trying to put himself in the middle of that. Reminded the audience I'm

01:34:15.180 talking to, Richie McGinnis. And the name of the book is Riot Diet, One Man's Radical Ride Through

01:34:21.180 America in Chaos. You can get it on Amazon. Richie, what about the protests in Minnesota? They were such

01:34:28.640 a big deal. Well, to some extent anyway, during the early part of Tim Wall's being nominated as her

01:34:35.620 running mate. And he made the decision not to interfere on night one and then barely on night

01:34:43.180 two as Minneapolis was burning because he didn't want to be seen as heavy handed. And, you know, we had

01:34:49.940 a police precinct burn. Like, can you speak at all of the emotional toll that took on the citizens

01:34:56.980 there? Well, I could definitely say I went there, I guess it was in October of 2020, and the city was

01:35:02.520 still dead. And the blocks that had been burned were still just charred out rubble. And we went

01:35:09.020 to George Floyd Square, which was still effectively an autonomous zone. So cops did not go in there.

01:35:13.720 And it was like a mini version of the Chaz that was still going on in October. But with respect to

01:35:19.720 what happened with Tim Wall's right when the riot started, he actually came out and did exactly what

01:35:24.600 the mayor and governor of Seattle of Washington did when they ceded the police precinct to effectively

01:35:34.600 just armed protesters for a number of weeks. He said, you know, we want to call in the National

01:35:42.280 Guard, but we also don't want to escalate things by bringing out law enforcement in huge numbers.

01:35:47.640 And I think that that's the key mistake that was made time and time again in these Democrat run

01:35:53.140 cities, which is like, well, Trump wants the National Guard. So we basically are going to do

01:35:59.380 the opposite of whatever that is. And like I said, in these kinds of situations, it doesn't take much

01:36:05.080 for that spark to light a flame. And when you have people outnumbering police, I mean, it's very easy

01:36:11.760 for what happened in that police precinct and was burned to the ground. It's very easy for that kind

01:36:16.580 of chaos to really unfurl. And so Tim Walls, actually, Trump did commend Tim Walls on the way

01:36:22.920 that he dealt with Minneapolis. Although if you look within the state government, the Republican

01:36:27.760 state senators had a much different tune. They had a lot of problems with the way that he handled it.

01:36:32.120 Like you mentioned, he the National Guard was called on Tuesday. Sorry, the mayor asked for

01:36:37.860 National Guard on Tuesday. And Tim Walls, actually, they were technically present on the Thursday

01:36:43.800 night that the police precinct burned on May 28th, I think it was. But just like in Kenosha,

01:36:50.720 the National Guard was there too. The question is, is what are they protecting? And they're not

01:36:55.780 protecting the small businesses, they're protecting the courthouse, right? So there's a miscommunication

01:37:01.900 between the law enforcement on the ground and the politicians up top, who effectively, I think,

01:37:08.940 were trying to avoid any kind of confrontation between police and protesters slash rioters that

01:37:16.060 would be bad optics. And that's ultimately, I think, what happened in so many of these cities,

01:37:21.120 including Kenosha.

01:37:21.760 I really think if I were an executive running a state or a city, I'd be more worried about

01:37:26.200 dead citizens than bad optics. And if you send in enough power, you're going to be able to keep

01:37:33.020 control even of an outraged crowd to see a large police presence there. So what would you advise?

01:37:38.560 So President Trump is going to take office again on January 20th. We don't know what the next four

01:37:43.300 years will have in store for him. But if there is rioting along the lines of anything we've seen

01:37:48.480 over these past four or five, I don't know, Richie, what would you tell him to do?

01:37:52.020 Well, I think when the National Guard is there and when you see these guys in camouflage,

01:37:57.840 that certainly has a way of tamping things down. But even on a deeper level, I just think that people

01:38:05.200 need to recognize, especially now, that Donald Trump isn't just this fringe guy who's going to

01:38:14.980 destroy the country and realize that, you know, part of America, actually, he won the popular vote

01:38:22.720 and believes that Donald Trump is an agent for change and they voted him in. And so this is a

01:38:28.900 democracy and democracy dies in darkness, for lack of a better word. So, no.

01:38:34.260 So they tell us.

01:38:36.160 Yeah.

01:38:36.280 Richie also was there on January 6th. We discussed that in our last episode together,

01:38:40.280 uh, which was episode three 83 in August of 2022. Highly recommend you go back and listen to that

01:38:47.380 one too. And the blow, some of the blowback that Richie's gotten from some, even on the right,

01:38:51.460 he's gotten, no one likes Richie except for our audience and me and my family and your family.

01:38:58.620 Just, but that's, that means you're doing journalism, right? Richie, honestly,

01:39:01.560 um, all the best you. So then go to amazon.com and get the book. Yes.

01:39:06.200 Yep. Amazon will have it on bookshelves. Uh, it's just me and the lowly pigeon that I,

01:39:10.780 the pigeon press that I started and, uh, not, not a cocky peacock or a penguin who can't fly.

01:39:16.400 You know, this is, this is the pigeon who's on the streets just delivering message from the leg 0.87

01:39:21.120 of the pigeon straight to the people. So there's no, no corporate interference in between. So we'll get

01:39:25.620 it on. So yeah. So you might have to wait a little bit to get it, but get it support Richie

01:39:30.220 and, uh, you know, the dangerous risks he's taken to bring us the story ought to be rewarded in some

01:39:35.240 way, shape or form. It's called riot diet. One man's radical ride through America in chaos.

01:39:41.660 Richie McGinnis. Thank you. Thank you, Megan.

01:39:45.080 Mom. Um, okay. We're going to stay on the Gates news and all the disruptor reporting. I'm sure we'll

01:39:51.000 have an update for you tomorrow. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. 0.95

01:39:57.600 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - November 19, 2024

Media Starts Telling Truth About Trump and Kamala, and Gaetz Battle Ahead, with Mark Halperin, Dan Turrentine, and Richie McGinniss ｜ Ep. 948

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