Media Starts Telling Truth About Trump and Kamala, and Gaetz Battle Ahead, with Mark Halperin, Dan Turrentine, and Richie McGinniss | Ep. 948
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 40 minutes
Words per Minute
177.83873
Summary
Mark Halperin and Dan Turrentine join me to discuss the fallout from Morning Joe s trip to Mar-A-Lago and the Democratic response to it. Plus, a look at the anti-Transgender ads that helped elect Donald Trump president.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
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President-elect Donald Trump's disruptor cabinet is taking arrows from all over.
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The Democrats, the media, but I repeat myself, and even from some corners of the right.
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There's a steady stream of negative press about RFKJ, Tulsi Gabbard, and Pete Hegseth,
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but no nominee has quite the amount of knives out for them that Trump's attorney general pick, Congressman Matt Gaetz, has.
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Meantime, we've got a lot of fallout to the morning Joe Grifter's visit to Mar-a-Lago.
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Joining me now, Mark Halperin, editor-in-chief and host of Two Way, and Dan Turrentine, a former Democratic strategist.
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Together, they are hosts of the morning meeting on Two Way's YouTube channel.
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Okay, so I haven't actually spoken to you, I think, since election night.
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And let me start with you on this, Dan, as the Democrat.
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I don't feel like they're fully grasping with what happened, grasping what happened and how badly they went.
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And one of the reasons I don't think they're getting it is because whenever you have somebody pop up to say,
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For example, I don't think the trans issue was a good one for us, like this guy in Massachusetts, Moulton, Seth Moulton.
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Now, he got hammered by me, too, because the very policies he's now lamenting he helped put in place.
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The left should be saying, hmm, maybe the man has a point.
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And instead, what you're getting is attacks on him and denials from the likes of Jen Psaki.
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What I worry about is that in the course of all that soul searching, some Democrats might reach the wrong sweeping conclusions.
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And there are a lot of issues that fall into that bucket.
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But one in particular that stuck out to me is transgender rights.
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Republicans found hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-trans ads this election cycle,
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including one that showed Vice President Harris talking about government funding for gender reaffirming care for prisoners and detainees.
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If that sounds like a particularly obscure issue, it is because it applies to a tiny group of people.
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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.
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Now, these ads created this perception that the issues of trans kids playing sports was dominating schools across the country, which is completely false.
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There are just incredibly few examples of transgender girls playing in youth sports.
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And when we see those examples, there is an evidence that these kids are a threat to safety or fairness.
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No evidence that they're a threat to safety and fairness.
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Tell it to the girl in Massachusetts who had all of her teeth knocked out by a boy on the field hockey field.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If you want to go up to the college level, it's it's a much greater number.
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I mean, so in any event, they're not getting it, Dan.
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Yeah, I think there's two different groups that I would think about here.
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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.
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You know, they're almost like the Japanese soldiers on the island, you know, after World War Two who are still fighting the fight.
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I think if you looked at elected officials, both in Congress, around the states, those thinking about DNC chair, there's silence.
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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.
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OK, that's, I think, fairly safe grounds for the party.
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But I think that those whose job it is to get elected, to win races are doing a lot of soul searching right now.
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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.
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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.
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But I think, you know, those in the media are still going to pound the table.
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I think some of that's they're hoping that they get ratings.
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But I think the party knows that they need to make a lot of change.
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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.
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Let's shift over to what's happening on Team GOP, Mark, because it's so funny to me.
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Trump doesn't have to be doing all these cabinet appointees right now, but he doesn't like being out of the news cycle.
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And he's got two months until he gets sworn in.
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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.
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But as the days pass, it seems like Matt Gaetz's chances are getting slimmer and slimmer.
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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.
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My suspicion is, as you suggested, the Times didn't say Trump himself told him that.
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But I think you and I know that he probably did.
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He's now had a very supportive tweet in the middle of the night from Elon Musk, too, actually.
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And you don't have to withdraw a nominee until the committee votes him down.
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So Donald Trump can just say we're going forward and dare the committee to vote against him.
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But he does have a range of issues with Republicans, including Matt Gaetz has been, you know, comic the insult.
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The insult comic dog attacking Republican senators by name.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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But Trump's comments, I think, tilted the scale for me against saying more likely than not he's confirmed.
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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?
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And if there's any sort of a negative projection, Trump's messaging is along the lines of, gee, that's too bad.
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Like, Trump wants him to be confirmed, and Trump hasn't given up hope but is testing the waters.
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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.
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It's not a, you will confirm him or I will primary your ass and make sure you lose your next election, Mark.
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Yeah, he's not drawn that line with any of them.
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And while Gaetz has clearly been the one in the news this week, on the morning meeting we talk about the controversial five.
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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.
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However, there is deference to any incoming president.
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Donald Trump has revolutionized the Republican Party, even with a somewhat narrow victory.
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He's turned the party into a multiracial working class party.
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Which people on Capitol Hill respect and appreciate.
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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.
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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.
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He doesn't want his entire November, December into January taken up with the media's obsession with confirmation politics.
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No one's asked me for it, but I'm going to give it because I have this microphone.
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I think that if Matt Gaetz falls through and, yes, we've like shifted the Overton window.
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That's all moved, thanks to our debating Matt Gaetz for all his time.
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Then he slides in Mike Davis, frequent guest of the Megyn Kelly show.
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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.
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He said some incendiary things early on when the lawfare against Trump first got rolling.
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The more I looked into him, the more I'm like, oh, my God, this guy's actually very smart.
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Turns out he's actually really smart, has a very impressive legal background, has been very, very loyal to Trump.
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And can I tell you guys, he comes on here and debates Dave Ehrenberg, prosecutor for Palm Beach County.
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And Dave, I think, would be the first to agree Mike's been right about everything, maybe 2 percent.
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He's been right about a lot in a different way.
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But this guy is not only very, very loyal to Trump, but he is brilliant.
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So I'm kind of thinking even though he's a shit stirrer online, right,
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he says stuff that gets him in trouble online, he doesn't actually, as far as I know, have true controversies,
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you know, like we're talking about or about Gates.
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So you tell me, Dan, Gates resigned from Congress last Wednesday when Trump announced him,
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you know, saying now that I'm going to be the nominee, I'm resigning from Congress,
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which put off the release, the public release of the House's investigatory document against Matt
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Gates, which was supposed to come out this past Friday.
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But that thing's going to leak in what it's like.
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I mean, does it have another 24 hours before it leaks?
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I can't imagine it's too much longer than that.
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And I think the issue is not just that Democrats are dying to get their hands on it.
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I think to Mark's point, there are a lot of Republicans that want to see him go down both
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And so there's kind of a collective incentive amongst all these people, whether it's formally
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And of course, if it's leaked, you're likely to get just pieces of it.
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So then people are going to say, you know, what else is there?
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So I have to imagine that this thing comes out.
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And, you know, I think this isn't really a Democratic issue.
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Obviously, they're in the minority in the Senate.
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To me, the bigger issue, and we've talked about this a little bit kind of during this week,
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is does all the MAGA influencers on the right dig in and push, whether Trump is or not, and
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Because I don't think a lot of senators want to start this next Congress going to war with
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It's really hard to go home in the grocery store, town halls, and answer your own constituents
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from your own party about why you're against this guy.
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Of course, for Democrats, it's one of the few instances where we can smile and watch the
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Megan, the thing about Matt, the thing about Matt Gaetz is he's not a normal nominee under
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He's not normal in part because of the downsides, because the allegations against him, because
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he's personally insulted senators, which is not normal for most people in Washington.
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But he's also not normal because MAGA loves him.
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But he's also, and again, you don't have to be a fan of Matt Gaetz to say this.
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And so he's not approaching this the way a lot of people would, which is, oh, what's
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And so he can go into this like a cyborg walking through a storm of fire.
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I'll save it till next hour because I don't want to take up all of our time going through
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the intricacies of the Gaetz thing because there's so many fun things to talk about.
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So once again, Halpern, you're stirring the pot by saying the following about the Hegseth
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nomination to DOD on the two-way show two days ago.
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He was apparently accused in 2017 of sexual assault in a hotel.
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I'm very much, as you know, it's a presumption of grace, presumption of innocence.
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I don't really relish talking about this stuff, but it's out there as something that
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I heard about a couple of days ago and I've heard other stories about him.
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I'm just saying there's going to be more about his life that comes out.
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The campaign sort of is mixed about they knew about it, but they didn't know everything
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I'm just trying to be realistic because on the two-way platform, we try to be realistic
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as you do here about not hiding things from the public that people in
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Some of them are purely personal, but some of them go to questions of judgment.
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And if he goes forward with the nomination, I have every reason to believe that they'll
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I mean, I've definitely heard, you know, things in the personal lane, I would say.
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But I don't, I'm not convinced that can sink you in 2024 MAGA country.
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And Donald Trump has, to borrow the phrase from George W. Bush, he's defined deviancy down.
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What doesn't preclude someone from being confirmed?
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However, the normal assumption that the confirmation gods demand one human sacrifice, say it's
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Matt Gaetz, and therefore the Republican senators will vote for the rest of Donald Trump's nominees.
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I think the dominoes could fall in the other direction.
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And they could say, look, we thought Matt Gaetz was unconfirmable because of X, Y, and Z.
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Now we look at this other person and we say, well, he's supposed to be in charge of the
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We have questions about his capacity to do the job.
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And they could say, look, it's not fair to say Matt Gaetz couldn't be confirmed, but this
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I'm not sure how to handle them as well as Matt Gaetz.
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I'm not sure that he'll want to go through the same fire Matt Gaetz is happy to walk through.
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So is it is if you were teaching a political science course, whether it's 20 years ago
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or now, and you said, OK, students, this person's nominated for this job and here are the charges
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I think some of the things they'd say, no, this person would never be confirmed.
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Senators couldn't possibly look their kids in the eye and say, I said that person could
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But a big part of it would be how they handle it and whether they show deference to the
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Hegseth reportedly didn't tell Team Trump about this woman who accused him of raping
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That's her allegation in a hotel room back in 2017 after he spoke to a conservative Republican
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And therefore, they didn't catch it in their vet of Pete Hegseth because it was private.
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We got into depth in that one yesterday for the listening audience.
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And you should listen to that so you can hear the full defense that Pete's attorney has
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But that's another case in which the Monterey police did not bring charges.
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The woman's husband and kids were asleep down, down the hall in another room.
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And Pete said he had got swept up into some woman's guilt trip over the fact that she chose
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to sleep with Pete Hegseth, big Fox News star, while her husband was asleep down the down the
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And by the way, the thing about that one, Dan, too, is the cops chose not to prosecute if they had found
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And she says she had a date, a rape exam the next morning.
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Yeah, I mean, I think it's always hard when there's allegations and then the authorities don't bring charges.
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You know, in fairness, if it was a Democratic nominee, we'd be saying, you know, pointing to the same
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thing. I think in Hegseth's case, that the challenge really is, look, you've got two wars going on.
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You could have a third, you know, any day over Taiwan.
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I think there's over two million employees that you're overseeing.
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And it's not entirely clear that he is qualified.
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Like to me, and I know to certain Democrats, Noem, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, it's policy differences,
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right? I mean, you just say that Kristi Noem, who's been a two-term governor and a member of
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Congress, isn't qualified to run DHS or that, you know, you disagree with how Tulsi Gabbard
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views the, you know, certain conflicts in the Middle East.
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Hegseth, there's less of a paper trail of both management and, you know, people have talked
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about his involvement with veterans issues, which is commendable, but he's not trying to
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And so I think, you know, there's both the lack of substance, which I think makes some
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And then there's all of this stuff that certainly, while there's no charges pressed, is a political
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So I don't think any of that stuff is going to stop him.
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I think most Republicans will say he's not going to make them read white fragility.
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He's not going to allow, um, I'm a trans person and the, the daughter of two lesbians
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in the promo reels that are put out for recruiting.
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He served as a combat vet in Iraq, in Afghanistan.
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He wrote book, uh, he's written books about it.
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No, that's not something you do at Fox news, but he has an academic pedigree.
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And so, so with these elite Republicans, so I don't think any of that, what you just
00:21:15.160
I think it, if anything, it will be something that has yet to come out.
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I don't think this allegation about Monterey is going to do it either though.
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I will say now there's a little bit more today as CNN's, um, key young lie briefly met
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with the Hegseth accuser, apparently, and offered the following observation in Sop 5.
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He with the alleged victim and we did speak with her, but it was very briefly, uh, we do
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want to stress that CNN is not identifying this woman because she is the alleged victim
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But in that brief conversation, she was visibly distraught at the mention of Hegseth's name.
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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
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from her since that first meeting that I had with her.
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So the bad thing that could happen for Hegseth, Mark, is the woman comes forward, right?
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She had an interaction with CNN and she does the tearful thing and she's perceived as credible
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I mean, that is, that is the thing that almost happened, but didn't quite happen with the
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She wrote a first person thing with the Daily Mail, but she never came out like face and
00:22:43.080
Well, again, every case is different, but Christine Blasey Ford came forward and she didn't derail
00:22:48.120
So I don't think that one situation, no matter what she does, is just positive.
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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
00:23:17.440
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
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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.
00:23:40.200
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
00:23:51.360
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
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There's nothing that can't be survived in this era.
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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
00:25:01.180
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.
00:25:21.120
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.
00:25:58.600
I mean, you heard Cory Booker yesterday came out and talked about support for RFK for what
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
00:26:20.740
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.
00:26:37.840
And Dan, you remember, he went to Kamala, too, and said, do you want to talk?
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
00:26:59.580
And, you know, they will go to their graves that that Jill Stein and the third party candidates
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
00:27:18.520
But, you know, RFK has enough voters that they were meaningful.
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
00:28:14.440
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
00:28:42.160
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
00:28:51.520
Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford and putting him atop the NIH.
00:28:58.420
You guys, there are still a lot of people like yours truly, who are very ticked off about
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
00:29:21.340
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.
00:29:30.960
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.
00:29:49.120
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.
00:30:05.100
Your friends over at morning, Joe embarrassed themselves this week.
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.
00:30:50.220
She's a true loon out there pushing for a boycott.
00:30:53.620
No, uh, now of the MSNBC morning show of the network that she's a contributor at that's
00:30:59.440
Um, so they came out, they said their thing and now they're getting some people being honest
00:31:10.000
Like your friends, John Spicer, who said this on the morning meeting yesterday.
00:31:17.280
Joe says afterwards, we still, we told him we opposed him on this.
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.
00:31:38.600
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
00:31:59.800
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.
00:32:08.160
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
00:32:29.980
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
00:32:41.580
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.
00:32:54.300
Donald Trump was very gracious about 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
00:33:16.160
And I hope people on the left will say now on a consistent basis, policy disagreements,
00:33:23.240
But demonizing the person who won the popular vote and the supporters of that person is just
00:33:30.420
It's not consistent with the kind of country we should be.
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.
00:33:56.760
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
00:34:14.480
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.
00:34:33.820
That's why they licked Joe Biden's boots, then quickly licked Kamala's.
00:34:37.260
Now they're licking Trump's because they can't stand a world in which they're as irrelevant
00:34:44.220
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.
00:34:58.260
That's why you've seen Joe Scarborough migrate out of the Republican Party.
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.
00:35:18.000
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.
00:35:32.260
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
00:35:59.420
Why is he making inroads into literally every single constituency that there is, you know,
00:36:07.800
And and and how can we understand this better and, you know, either try to co-op it or, you
00:36:16.020
Instead, there are still parts of the party, Jennifer Rubin and others, that literally just
00:36:26.640
And like, ha ha ha, we'll be right in in two years.
00:36:33.020
And so I hope, you know, whether Joe Scarborough and Mika in the long run will prove to be successful,
00:36:41.200
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
00:37:00.700
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.
00:37:07.920
You should spend some time in the bath, on long walks, on a horseback, thinking about
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.
00:37:26.540
It didn't please anyone and it didn't make you look good.
00:37:29.580
Um, Dan and Mark will be excused for having sat here through a rant against people they
00:37:36.820
Uh, on the subject of Democrats dealing with the loss, here's one of the things that's
00:37:42.840
The, those people who are coming out as though I tried to warn them, you know, I, I saw this
00:37:59.220
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
00:38:21.520
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.
00:38:31.560
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
00:38:42.420
Now, if any of you, which camera, give me a camera to look at.
00:38:46.840
If any of you out there say, oh, that's just like a conservative, white, Southern guy,
00:38:55.400
As we've said on the show a thousand times, Democrats should be smarter on the women's
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.
00:39:30.840
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?
00:39:39.400
Why isn't she like putting on a hard hat and really talking to people, everyday people,
00:39:46.380
Okay, so that's Katie Couric saying they mocked, they mocked Trump voters and they shouldn't
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
00:40:47.420
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
00:42:18.520
Hillary was a bad candidate, you know, they, they don't want to address the real issues
00:42:22.920
here, both in terms of the democratic party and media bias.
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.
00:42:42.720
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.
00:43:00.300
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.
00:43:11.180
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
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
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
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.
00:50:11.460
For those of us holding our breath for the past several months, we can finally exhale. Doesn't it feel
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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.
00:55:06.100
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.
00:56:42.620
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
00:57:52.680
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
00:58:31.120
have been under the age of consent. Um, she would have been 17 when the age there is 18,
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
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
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,
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.
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.
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.
01:12:12.500
The gas lighting. That's what a ridiculous thing to say about Kamala Harris. Magical, very fierce
01:12:20.700
communicator, but we're all sexist and racist. So she might not be able to get the ball over the
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
01:12:38.980
she wants to run for president and Katie Couric too, who's like, really, I was frustrated with her
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
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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believes that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty,
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The pursuit to serve others is yours. Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon
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University. Private, Christian, affordable. Visit gcu.edu. I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly
01:15:38.820
Show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most
01:15:45.100
interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch the Megan
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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
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,
01:21:07.820
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.
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.
01:30:54.160
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,
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
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
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,
01:37:21.760
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.
01:38:36.280
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
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.
01:39:45.080
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.