The Megyn Kelly Show - December 19, 2024


Megyn Kelly Details the Curious Case of Carlos Watson, and Shocking Downfall of the Disgraced Media Mogul ｜ Ep. 969


Episode Stats


Length

52 minutes

Words per minute

160.69998

Word count

8,427

Sentence count

641

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

11

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this special episode of The Megyn Kelly Show, Megyn talks about Carlos Watson and why he might have been framed for a crime he didn t commit. Megyn and her team try to figure out who the real Carlos Watson is and what happened to him.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.
00:00:02.960 Someone is trying to frame us.
00:00:04.960 Until our names are cleared.
00:00:06.960 We're fugitives from interval.
00:00:08.960 Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.
00:00:11.960 Espionage?
00:00:12.960 You still as good a shot as you used to be?
00:00:14.960 Better.
00:00:16.960 Is there love language?
00:00:18.960 We like to walk that fine line between techno thriller
00:00:20.960 and romantic comedy.
00:00:22.960 We make up our own rules.
00:00:24.960 NCIS Tony and Ziva.
00:00:26.960 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.
00:00:30.000 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:32.000 Live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
00:00:42.000 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
00:00:44.000 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show
00:00:45.000 in today's AM special episode.
00:00:48.000 Today, we're going to discuss the curious case of Carlos Watson.
00:00:54.000 This holiday season, millions of families across America
00:00:57.000 will rely on credit card rewards to visit their loved ones.
00:01:01.000 But according to our sponsor, the Electronic Payments Coalition,
00:01:04.000 DC politicians are trying to pass a bill that would lead to the end of credit card rewards.
00:01:09.000 What?
00:01:10.000 They say the Durbin Marshall credit card bill would mandate credit cards run on alternative networks,
00:01:15.000 not the trusted and stable networks you probably use today.
00:01:18.000 And they say there's no guarantee that the convenience,
00:01:21.000 zero liability fraud protection and rewards programs you know and love will remain.
00:01:26.000 The Electronics Payments Coalition says corporate mega stores will make more money
00:01:31.000 while you sacrifice your payment, convenience, rewards and peace of mind.
00:01:35.000 Find out more at guardyourcard.com
00:01:37.000 and consider telling Congress to guard your card and to oppose the Durbin Marshall credit card bill.
00:01:42.000 Learn more for yourselves at guardyourcard.com.
00:01:47.000 Let me take you back to episode 103, back in May of 2021,
00:01:55.000 when I interviewed Ozzy, that's O-Z-Y, media founder, Carlos Watson.
00:02:03.000 All right, we're going to go back.
00:02:05.000 Actually, let's go back even further in time.
00:02:09.000 I had no idea who Carlos Watson was back in 2018 or so.
00:02:16.000 I had left NBC.
00:02:18.000 I was still in my sitting on the couch, figuring things out stage.
00:02:22.000 And he had a booker reach out to me and asked me whether I wanted to go on his show.
00:02:29.000 And I never heard of his show.
00:02:31.000 Like, what's his show?
00:02:32.000 It's on YouTube.
00:02:33.000 Oh, it's exploding.
00:02:34.000 It's big.
00:02:35.000 You know, you, you should, you should go on.
00:02:37.000 I did what I always do in these situations.
00:02:39.000 And I had Abby, my assistant, look into whether this is a real person with a real show.
00:02:44.000 And this is something I should consider.
00:02:46.000 And this is a montage of people he's had on his shows over the years.
00:02:52.000 But this is a sampling that represents what we found when we started looking into,
00:02:57.000 who is Carlos Watson and who does he typically interview?
00:03:01.000 Let's play Sod 50. 0.98
00:03:03.000 Hey, Matthew.
00:03:06.000 Carlos.
00:03:07.000 How are you?
00:03:08.000 I'm good, man.
00:03:09.000 Trying to get my eight seconds on the bull like everybody is.
00:03:12.000 Hey, Scarlett.
00:03:13.000 How are you?
00:03:14.000 Hey, how's it going?
00:03:15.000 Welcome to the Carlos Watson Show.
00:03:16.000 Thank you.
00:03:17.000 Thank you for joining me.
00:03:18.000 You bet.
00:03:19.000 Bill Gates.
00:03:20.000 Hey, Matt.
00:03:21.000 Matt Damon.
00:03:22.000 Hey, Carlos.
00:03:23.000 How are you?
00:03:24.000 You know, with this terrible situation with COVID, I'm at home yelling at the screen like
00:03:31.000 my grandfather used to yell at the professional wrestlers.
00:03:38.000 Okay.
00:03:39.000 So, you know, Bill Gates, big name, tough guest to book.
00:03:45.000 There are a lot of big names in there.
00:03:47.000 And we were told by Carlos's producers what the YouTube traffic was, what the numbers were.
00:03:54.000 And, you know, you sort of just want to make sure that this is up to your level, right?
00:03:58.000 You don't want to go on a show with four viewers.
00:04:00.000 So I said yes.
00:04:01.000 And I did go on Carlos's show a couple of times.
00:04:04.000 Here is one example.
00:04:06.000 Sop 51.
00:04:08.000 Tell me why you started this podcast.
00:04:10.000 I started it because I wanted to be able to talk about the news in an unbridled way.
00:04:15.000 I feel like more and more we're telling people they have to be quiet or they have to use
00:04:19.000 certain words or not use certain words or don't touch that subject.
00:04:22.000 Or if you touch it, you have to talk about it this way.
00:04:24.000 And I don't like it.
00:04:26.000 I don't like cancel culture and I don't like false parameters being put around speech.
00:04:30.000 I'm almost a First Amendment absolutist.
00:04:32.000 And I'm worried about what's happening to the country along these lines.
00:04:37.000 So I think it's worth fighting for.
00:04:39.000 And I wanted a forum that I would control so that I would not be cancelable.
00:04:43.000 Right on.
00:04:45.000 Still feel that way.
00:04:46.000 So, Carlos, let me promote my podcast that you're listening to right now in its infancy
00:04:51.000 on his show.
00:04:52.000 And we became friendly.
00:04:55.000 I never saw him socially, but he had me on a few times.
00:04:59.000 And then eventually I had him on my baby podcast, as I pointed out.
00:05:06.000 It was kind of interesting.
00:05:08.000 I mean, I remember what I was interested in getting Carlos's bio and it was tough.
00:05:15.000 I wasn't really able to.
00:05:17.000 This was still in our audio only days.
00:05:21.000 I was still in my children's playroom.
00:05:25.000 We've grown since then.
00:05:27.000 And, uh, he came on and he was a bit inscrutable, but I tried.
00:05:32.000 Listen.
00:05:33.000 I want to learn how you're thinking, how you came to that, what you would do with that.
00:05:38.000 Would you ever consider something else?
00:05:40.000 Like who moves you and you're always going to end up being surprised, right?
00:05:45.000 Like, you know, and, and, and if you, if you stay in it and you're just with the person,
00:05:50.000 they're going to share something that reminds you that most of us are contradictions.
00:05:56.000 Right.
00:05:57.000 Um, uh, what did, uh, Dr. King used to, he loved that quote that he, there was a famous
00:06:02.000 quote that you say, there's enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue.
00:06:06.000 Right.
00:06:07.000 And I think very few of us are only one thing or the other.
00:06:11.000 Oh, he was telling me something there and I really should have listened.
00:06:18.000 Okay.
00:06:19.000 So that's where we were as of 2021.
00:06:25.000 Then Carlos was running these things called Aussie fests.
00:06:29.000 And it was like, you know, a big gathering of muckety mucks where you'd get together and 1.00
00:06:34.000 have onstage conversations and there'd be all these well-known people out there.
00:06:38.000 And I guess potentially networking opportunities.
00:06:41.000 If you're a networker, which I infamously am not, I'm very bad at networking.
00:06:45.000 I'm usually like, I want to go home and be alone.
00:06:48.000 But anyway, he really, really wanted me to go down to where was it, Abby?
00:06:54.000 What city is in Florida?
00:06:58.000 No, I think it was, it wasn't it like new Orleans.
00:07:00.000 I think it was new Orleans.
00:07:01.000 Okay.
00:07:02.000 Anyway, he wanted me to go down to the Southeast and appear at Aussie fest with him.
00:07:07.000 And, uh, he had his right hand man, Samir call Abby.
00:07:11.000 And he dealt with Abby a million times saying, please, please, please, can we have Megan?
00:07:14.000 She's like, I don't know.
00:07:15.000 She doesn't really like to do these things, but please, please, please, please, please.
00:07:18.000 Carlos would really be appreciative.
00:07:19.000 Okay.
00:07:20.000 So I wound up deciding to do I, every year I do a girl's trip with two of my closest friends.
00:07:24.000 We've been dear, dear friends for 20 plus years from Chicago.
00:07:27.000 I said, maybe they'll come join me down there.
00:07:29.000 I can make a thing out of it.
00:07:30.000 So that's what our plan was.
00:07:32.000 Andrea and Rebecca were going to join me.
00:07:34.000 And we were going to go down to, I think it's New Orleans for the Aussie fest.
00:07:38.000 And we were getting right up to it.
00:07:40.000 And Abigail Finan is a nutcase when it comes to confirming my appointments. 1.00
00:07:44.000 I mean, she will harass you to like the second I walk on stage to make sure that everything 1.00
00:07:49.000 is as it should be in a good way.
00:07:51.000 Not for the person getting targeted, but for me.
00:07:53.000 And, uh, she kept calling Samir and she wasn't getting called back.
00:07:58.000 He'd shoot her note, whatever.
00:08:00.000 It was just kind of weird for an organization.
00:08:03.000 That's supposed to be a professional news organization and independent media company
00:08:07.000 that Carlos had started with this huge YouTube presence and these other shows and so on.
00:08:11.000 And we were getting to the point where I was like, all right, you know, if they don't
00:08:15.000 call us back, I'm not going, it's not really not my problem.
00:08:17.000 It's their problem.
00:08:18.000 And then something hit the news that explained why we'd been getting the runaround.
00:08:28.000 Okay.
00:08:29.000 It was a New York times piece that hit, I think, uh, September 26th, 2021.
00:08:40.000 Okay.
00:08:41.000 September 26th, 2021.
00:08:43.000 So not, not that long after we'd been on each other's shows and so on.
00:08:48.000 And here's the headline of the New York times piece, Goldman Sachs, Aussie media, and a $40
00:08:54.000 million conference call gone wrong.
00:08:57.000 I'm going to read you some of this piece.
00:09:00.000 This past winter, Goldman Sachs was closing in on a $40 million investment in Aussie,
00:09:08.000 a digital media company founded in 2013.
00:09:11.000 And there seemed to be a lot of reasons to do the deal.
00:09:14.000 Aussie boasted of a large audience for its general interest website, its newsletters,
00:09:20.000 uh, its videos.
00:09:23.000 And the company had a charismatic chief executive, Carlos Watson, a one-time cable news anchor.
00:09:29.000 He worked at MSNBC who had worked at Goldman Sachs earlier, early in his career.
00:09:34.000 FYI, he went to Harvard undergrad and Stanford law school, though it does not appear.
00:09:39.000 He practice law for any meaningful time, if at all.
00:09:42.000 Um, and crucially, Aussie said it had a great relationship with YouTube where many of its
00:09:47.000 videos attracted more than a million views.
00:09:51.000 All right, I'm going to pause here.
00:09:54.000 So this is what, this is all consistent with what I knew of Carlos and Aussie media at that
00:09:59.000 time.
00:10:00.000 And what was happening was Carlos was trying to get another round of funding into his
00:10:06.000 company so he could expand.
00:10:08.000 I don't do funding on the Megan Kelly show.
00:10:11.000 I never have.
00:10:12.000 Um, I don't take big investments from outside investors to fund my show or my hiring.
00:10:17.000 I have a partnership with serious, which has been a blessing and it's worked out amazingly,
00:10:22.000 but I don't go to investors to have them give me their money so that I can put the show on
00:10:26.000 the air.
00:10:27.000 It would create more problems than it would ever solve.
00:10:30.000 That's my business model.
00:10:32.000 There are many other places that do take money.
00:10:34.000 The daily wire, you know, has, I know that they have, um, some investors and that's fine.
00:10:38.000 I'm not criticizing him at all.
00:10:39.000 I'm just saying there's different models.
00:10:40.000 And Carlos was more in that model where he was taking outside investment, trying to grow
00:10:43.000 his company.
00:10:44.000 Well, in an effort to do that, he had gone to Goldman Sachs and he had asked for over
00:10:49.000 $40 million and Goldman Sachs will give you $40 million for your media company.
00:10:54.000 If you can show that you are a success and that you're going to make this money plus
00:10:58.000 back for them, they're not in the business of charitable donations.
00:11:01.000 So they were going through this process.
00:11:04.000 And one of the things that Goldman Sachs wanted to do before it loaned Carlos or invested Carlos
00:11:10.000 Watts in Carlos Watts's company was to see more about those YouTube numbers, because that
00:11:16.000 was really the crux of his success.
00:11:18.000 That's where he was putting all his points on the board that plus his alleged newsletter,
00:11:23.000 which he was claiming had 20 million subscribers, which is huge, huge.
00:11:29.000 So they asked Goldman did if they could have a conference call with the YouTube executive
00:11:37.000 responsible for running business with Carlos, uh, for being in business with Carlos, which
00:11:44.000 Carlos said he was with YouTube.
00:11:46.000 Now, normally the way it works on YouTube is you're not in business with them.
00:11:50.000 They have a platform.
00:11:52.000 They'll allow you to come on it unless you really screw up over and over, in which case
00:11:56.000 you could get booted.
00:11:57.000 But it's not really a business relationship in virtually any case.
00:12:03.000 Maybe I think they've been trying to get a business relationship with people like Mr.
00:12:06.000 Beast, right?
00:12:07.000 He's got 300 million subscribers.
00:12:09.000 In general, we're all just visitors perched on their platform and they'll allow us to
00:12:15.000 advertise there and to make money there.
00:12:17.000 And, and they make money, but you know, it's not like they've hired us or they license us
00:12:23.000 or anything like that.
00:12:24.000 So there was a man is a man named Alex Piper.
00:12:28.000 I believe it's a man, um, Alex Piper head of unscripted programming for YouTube originals.
00:12:36.000 Yeah, it's a man.
00:12:37.000 And so Ozzie and Carlos Watson and Samir said, yeah, we'll put you in touch with Alex Piper
00:12:42.000 and he will tell you all about how amazing we are on YouTube.
00:12:46.000 Back to the times article.
00:12:49.000 The scheduled participants included Alex Piper, who was running late for the meeting with Goldman
00:12:56.000 Sachs and apologized to the Goldman Sachs team saying that he had had trouble logging
00:13:03.000 onto zoom.
00:13:04.000 Keep in mind, this is 2021 still.
00:13:05.000 And he suggested that the meeting be moved to a conference call, according to four people.
00:13:11.000 Uh, once everyone had made the switch to an old fashioned conference call, the guest,
00:13:16.000 Alex Piper told the bankers what they had been wanting to hear that Ozzie was a great success
00:13:21.000 on YouTube, make a racking up significant views and add dollars.
00:13:26.000 And that Mr. Watson Watson was as good a leader as he seemed to be.
00:13:31.000 As he spoke, however, this Alex Piper, his voice began to sound strange to the Goldman Sachs
00:13:38.000 team as though it might have been digitally altered.
00:13:45.000 After the meeting, someone in the Goldman Sachs side reached out to Mr. Piper, not through
00:13:51.000 the Gmail address that had been provided by the Ozzie team to Goldman Sachs, but through
00:14:01.000 the YouTube executive, Mr. Piper's assistant at YouTube, they found another way to go directly
00:14:08.000 to Alex Piper.
00:14:10.000 That's when things got weird reading here from the times article.
00:14:13.000 It confused.
00:14:14.000 Mr. Piper told the Goldman Sachs investor who was calling that he had never spoken with
00:14:21.000 her before, even though he had allegedly just had a conference call with her about how great
00:14:26.000 Ozzie was and Carlos Watson.
00:14:28.000 Someone else, it seemed, had been playing the part of Mr. Piper on the call with Ozzie.
00:14:35.000 This is unbelievable.
00:14:37.000 When YouTube learned that someone had apparently impersonated one of their executives at a business
00:14:42.000 meeting, its security team started an investigation.
00:14:45.000 The inquiry did not get far before a name emerged.
00:14:49.000 Within days, Mr. Watson apologized profusely to Goldman Sachs, saying the voice on the
00:14:57.000 call belonged to Samir Rao, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Ozzie and Abigail
00:15:05.000 Finan's friend, who is apparently busy defrauding, defrauding Goldman Sachs.
00:15:13.000 So we couldn't get right back to Abby about my appearance at Ozzie Pest.
00:15:19.000 In Carlos Watson's apology to Goldman Sachs and in an email to the New York Times reporter
00:15:26.000 on Friday, Mr. Watson attributed the incident to a mental health crisis and shared what he
00:15:32.000 said were details of Mr. Rao's diagnosis.
00:15:36.000 See, he's gone nuts is what Carlos said.
00:15:39.000 Samir is a quote to attributed to Carlos is a valued colleague and a close friend.
00:15:44.000 I'm proud that we stood by him while he struggled.
00:15:48.000 And we're all glad to see him now thriving again.
00:15:51.000 Now, I got to tell you, Abigail Finan and I were like, oh, my God, what?
00:15:58.000 He's in a mental health crisis.
00:16:00.000 Like, you got to know, like, Abby has stalked this man and he has stalked her to try to get
00:16:04.000 me.
00:16:05.000 They've had many correspondents.
00:16:06.000 He did not sound like he was in the middle of a mental health crisis or breakdown.
00:16:11.000 So we are reading this like you've got to be effing kidding me, right?
00:16:17.000 This is in the New York Times.
00:16:18.000 Like, holy shit.
00:16:19.000 Close friend.
00:16:20.000 He struggled.
00:16:21.000 We stuck by him.
00:16:23.000 Then he added that Mr. Rao took time off from work after that call and is now back at
00:16:30.000 Ozzie. 1.00
00:16:31.000 But it all appears to have like just happened.
00:16:33.000 So like how much time could he have taken off?
00:16:34.000 Like a few days?
00:16:35.000 Is that like this was years ago?
00:16:37.000 What are you talking about?
00:16:39.000 Mr. Rao did not reply to requests for comment.
00:16:44.000 Okay.
00:16:45.000 Now, this is everywhere.
00:16:51.000 This story is everywhere.
00:16:53.000 And it's a complete professional embarrassment to Carlos Watson.
00:16:56.000 And it made a lot of news in the cable news industry because it's like, well, this guy
00:16:59.000 used to work for MSNBC.
00:17:01.000 He's making some waves.
00:17:03.000 And now it turns out his company may or may not be a fraud.
00:17:06.000 He may or may not be a fraud.
00:17:07.000 We don't know.
00:17:08.000 So he decides to go back home to the NBC universe.
00:17:14.000 And he appears on the Today Show.
00:17:15.000 Carlos does.
00:17:16.000 And he appears on CNBC with Andrew Ross Sorkin, who gets into this call between Samir Rao and
00:17:28.000 Goldman Sachs.
00:17:29.000 Samir, of course, with the voice alteration technology to make himself sound like a YouTube
00:17:35.000 executive.
00:17:36.000 And here's how that went on October 4th, 2021.
00:17:40.000 Your co-founder had a phone call with Goldman Sachs as you were trying to raise money and
00:17:46.000 effectively took them off of a Zoom and then apparently started to impersonate with
00:17:51.000 a fake email address as well, somebody from YouTube.
00:17:55.000 What happened?
00:17:56.000 I don't know.
00:17:58.000 I wasn't there.
00:17:59.000 But I do know that I got a call from the YouTube folks after it saying something strange
00:18:07.000 had happened.
00:18:08.000 And we figured out what happened.
00:18:10.000 I immediately called back to the folks at Goldman right away, not four days later, as
00:18:15.000 I think someone wrote at one point.
00:18:18.000 And and look, it's heartbreaking.
00:18:20.000 It's wrong.
00:18:21.000 It's not good.
00:18:22.000 OK.
00:18:23.000 OK, so he decided that it was all Samir Rao's fault and it wasn't Carlos Watson at all.
00:18:34.000 Now I'm going to jump ahead because ultimately, Carlos Watson and Samir Rao and a third executive
00:18:43.000 were charged by the feds for committing a massive fraud on their investors.
00:18:49.000 And there's news in the case, which is why we are bringing the curious case of Carlos Watson
00:18:54.000 Watson to you today.
00:18:55.000 And I will get to all that in due time.
00:18:57.000 But I want to just flash forward for a moment to the prosecution's.
00:19:06.000 The elicitation of what happened in that call with the YouTube executive.
00:19:12.000 OK, this is what the prosecutors told the jury actually happened, because you heard their
00:19:17.000 Carlos Watson saying it was Samir very sad.
00:19:21.000 You know, wasn't me.
00:19:23.000 It's it's very unfortunate.
00:19:25.000 Here is the source here, the DOJ.
00:19:28.000 And this is in the trial.
00:19:30.000 There was an eight week trial of Carlos this past summer from approximately November 2020
00:19:35.000 through February 2021.
00:19:37.000 Watson and his co-conspirators attempted to induce Goldman Sachs to invest up to forty five
00:19:41.000 million dollars in Aussie by means of material misrepresentations and omissions regarding
00:19:46.000 Aussie's historical and projected financial results, debts and business relationships.
00:19:50.000 Had the full forty five million investment occurred as intended, six million of it would have been
00:19:55.000 paid to Carlos Watson personally.
00:19:58.000 He was trying to get Goldman to invest forty five million and six million of it was going
00:20:03.000 to go into his back pocket.
00:20:06.000 As part of its due diligence, Goldman Sachs executive asked Watson and Rao to arrange a
00:20:10.000 meeting with someone from YouTube.
00:20:12.000 Watson and his co-conspirators claim the online video service had paid Aussie nearly six million
00:20:17.000 dollars in licensing revenue for the Carlos Watson show.
00:20:21.000 This was another misrepresentation.
00:20:23.000 Aussie was never paid by YouTube for Aussie content.
00:20:26.000 Yet another lie.
00:20:27.000 They looked at Goldman Sachs, these bankers and said, not only are we going to put you
00:20:31.000 in touch with the YouTube executive, but that we have been paid six million dollars by YouTube
00:20:37.000 for licensing our amazing show.
00:20:39.000 YouTube doesn't pay two cents to license this amazing show.
00:20:44.000 And trust me, I would take it.
00:20:46.000 They want to pay me six million dollars to license my show.
00:20:49.000 Great.
00:20:50.000 Anywho, not what happened in my case or in his.
00:20:54.000 The difference being I never represented to investment bankers that it did in an effort
00:20:59.000 to induce a forty five million dollar investment.
00:21:02.000 OK, they go on to say that.
00:21:07.000 OK, because Aussie did not, in fact, have any business relationship whatsoever with YouTube.
00:21:12.000 Watson and Rau agreed agreed that Rau would impersonate a media executive at YouTube in communications
00:21:20.000 with Goldman Sachs on January 28th, 2021.
00:21:23.000 Rau with Watson's agreement created a fake email address in the name of the media executive.
00:21:28.000 That's Alex Piper again, which he used to correspond with representatives of Goldman Sachs.
00:21:32.000 On February 2nd, 2021, Rau had a phone call with employees of Goldman Sachs, during which he impersonated said media executive from YouTube,
00:21:42.000 using a voice alteration application that he downloaded onto his cellular telephone to mask his voice during the call.
00:21:49.000 Pay attention here.
00:21:51.000 During the call, Watson was in the same room as Rau and texted Rau instructions about what to say and what not to say on the call.
00:22:04.000 What to say?
00:22:05.000 Can we just can we rerun Aaron Ross Sorkin?
00:22:08.000 He was sitting there telling him exactly what to say as the fake YouTube executive.
00:22:15.000 And now listen to Carlos Watson's explanation again to Andrew Ross Sorkin.
00:22:20.000 Your co-founder had a phone call with Goldman Sachs as you were trying to raise money and effectively took them off of a Zoom
00:22:28.000 and then apparently started to impersonate with it with a fake email address as well.
00:22:33.000 Somebody from YouTube.
00:22:35.000 What happened?
00:22:36.000 I don't know. I wasn't there.
00:22:39.000 But I do know that I got a call from the YouTube folks after it saying something strange had happened.
00:22:47.000 And we figured out what happened.
00:22:50.000 I immediately called back to the folks at Goldman right away, not four days later, as I think someone wrote at one point.
00:22:57.000 And and look, it's heartbreaking. It's wrong. It's not good. It's not OK.
00:23:02.000 Every word of that was a lie.
00:23:06.000 You did know you were there.
00:23:09.000 We figured it out. You did it.
00:23:11.000 There's nothing to figure out. You were part of it.
00:23:14.000 I immediately called back Goldman. It's wrong. It's heartbreaking.
00:23:20.000 I mean, it is wrong. It's not heartbreaking to you.
00:23:23.000 Maybe that you got caught and now your whole fraudulent empire is crumbling.
00:23:28.000 But that's just a taste of how it went.
00:23:30.000 And I must say, though, I am not a fan personally of that anchor.
00:23:34.000 He did a very good job in that interview.
00:23:36.000 He, as I mentioned, also went on with Craig Melvin over on the Today Show and said,
00:23:42.000 Ozzy is restarting. It's we're we're opening back up like seconds after they were shut down because all the employees understood that it was a fraud.
00:23:54.000 And here's how we described its quick soundbite. Listen here.
00:23:57.000 We're going to open for business. So we're making news today.
00:24:00.000 This is our Lazarus moment, if you will. This is our Tylenol moment.
00:24:05.000 No, no, actually. And they did try to reopen.
00:24:08.000 That would not last. You will not be surprised to hear.
00:24:11.000 Now, as I mentioned, he was ultimately charged.
00:24:16.000 The feds did step in and they charged him and his two co-conspirators with.
00:24:22.000 Here's the charges against Carlos.
00:24:24.000 One count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud,
00:24:30.000 which is when you get somebody to fraudulently transfer money to you and aggravated identity theft.
00:24:36.000 And in connection with a years long scheme to defraud investors and lenders to Ozzy of tens of millions of dollars, tens of millions.
00:24:45.000 They estimated.
00:24:47.000 Actually, former COO Samir Rao testified at Carlos's trial.
00:24:51.000 He estimated that investors poured between seventy five million and one hundred million into the company.
00:24:57.000 Those investments wound up worth zero zero because there was no there there.
00:25:06.000 There were almost no YouTube viewers.
00:25:11.000 There was no groundswell of support behind Carlos Watson's Ozzy media.
00:25:17.000 He was posting fake YouTube numbers where he claimed to have, for example, a million views on a video.
00:25:26.000 And those videos would have fewer than a hundred comments.
00:25:31.000 Now, if you get a million views on a video on YouTube, you don't have a hundred comments.
00:25:37.000 I went just just just just look at, for an example, some of ours.
00:25:41.000 One video we posted has four million views.
00:25:44.000 It has one hundred and seventy seven thousand comments.
00:25:46.000 One video has three point five million viewers.
00:25:49.000 It has one hundred thousand comments.
00:25:52.000 You don't post a million dollar or one that gets a million views and have under a thousand comments, a couple of fewer than a hundred comments on it.
00:26:03.000 That's a tell.
00:26:06.000 And it appears they were doing some sort of a scheme where like the video, their videos would pop up in the background of some site you were visiting and you wouldn't even know it was running.
00:26:16.000 And it would count as a view, but it explains the total lack of engagement by the audience because they're not even watching it.
00:26:22.000 And that's why nobody knew who Carlos Watson was.
00:26:24.000 But he was using this scheme to go to people like Bill Gates and yours truly and say, hey, I have this big YouTube presence.
00:26:30.000 Please come on my show.
00:26:31.000 Then the more of us who said yes, the more he'd use our names to go get other big name guests and so on and so forth.
00:26:37.000 OK, but that that is not all that happened inside of his company.
00:26:42.000 Listen to this. The DOJ, OK, talks about in December of 2019.
00:26:51.000 This also came up and trial Watson and his co-conspirators.
00:26:55.000 Hold on. OK, attempted to induce a bank to lend Aussie money.
00:27:01.000 This is before the YouTube thing based on misrepresentations and omissions about Aussie's business.
00:27:07.000 Watson and his co-conspirators sought to secure the loan with anticipated revenues from a second season of an Aussie TV show.
00:27:16.000 However, the contract between Aussie and the show's cable network for the second season of the show was still under negotiation.
00:27:22.000 Courthouse news reports that the channel was the Oprah Winfrey network and the show was, quote, black women own the conversation in which Watson was the host.
00:27:32.000 The DOJ alleges that to induce the bank to make this loan sooner, Watson directed Aussie's then chief financial officer, the CFO.
00:27:41.000 Tripti Thacker to send the bank a fake signed contract between Aussie and the cable network, which, again, we're assuming is own purporting to be signing him up for the second season.
00:27:55.000 So here again, he's going to a bank, trying to get an investment, claiming he had a deal that he did not have.
00:28:00.000 But this CFO, unlike his CEO, Samir, the CFO, Tripti Thacker, refused to do it.
00:28:10.000 He wanted her to come up with a fake signed contract showing he had this deal secured.
00:28:17.000 And she said no. When she said no, Samir, with Carlos Watson's approval reading here, the allegations by the DOJ sent the fake contract to the bank copying Thacker.
00:28:32.000 So, in other words, the woman, the CFO said, I'm not doing that shit.
00:28:35.600 And Samir and Carlos was like, we're like, we don't need her.
00:28:39.000 So they drafted up the fake contract and sent it along and had the the temerity, the stupidity to see see the CFO who had just said, I'm not doing that.
00:28:51.780 Going back to the DOJ's allegation later that day, Tripti Thacker emailed Watson and Rao to say she was resigning effective immediately.
00:29:02.300 She explained, quote, this is illegal. 0.62
00:29:05.820 This is fraud.
00:29:07.260 This is forging someone's signature with the intent of getting an advance from a publicly traded bank.
00:29:12.780 She continued to be crystal clear.
00:29:14.920 What you see as a measured risk, I see as a felony.
00:29:21.780 In subsequent months, Watson and his co-conspirators, again, you're quoting from the DOJ, continued to attempt to induce the bank to lend Aussie several million dollars based on misrepresentations and omissions, including regarding the expected revenue from the second season of the Aussie TV show.
00:29:38.060 During these discussions, the bank requested to speak to a representative of the cable network to conceal the lies about Aussie's relationship with the cable network and the status of in terms of their agreements.
00:29:53.480 Rao, with Watson's approval, created a fake email address in the name of an actual executive of the cable network, again, which we think is own, which Rao used to impersonate the executive and communicate with the bank about the potential loan.
00:30:10.620 This is just unbelievable.
00:30:12.840 This is not like a one-off.
00:30:14.140 It's not like a momentary lapse of ethics.
00:30:16.020 It's like a serial fraud that these two were engaged in.
00:30:23.140 Okay.
00:30:23.780 And then there's another piece that was brought up about the way they lured in this guy, Brad Bessie, who they wanted to be an executive producer at Aussie.
00:30:37.820 And what they told this guy who had been the EP of Entertainment Tonight was, we're going to launch, you're going to be the executive producer of Carlos's new show.
00:30:46.320 It's going to go on A&E.
00:30:48.060 We're hot.
00:30:48.980 It's a hot property.
00:30:50.000 This is June of 2020.
00:30:51.260 And they lure this guy in, Brad Bessie, and he's like, it's on.
00:30:54.660 Great.
00:30:55.100 I'm going to be the EP.
00:30:56.760 I am hired as the EP of The Carlos Watson Show, a daily half-hour interview program produced by Aussie, hosted by Watson, and it's going to be in primetime on A&E.
00:31:09.120 That's what Samir Rao told him.
00:31:12.320 Okay.
00:31:13.100 I think you already know where this is going.
00:31:15.520 Mr. Bessie said he had no contact with A&E executives during the making of the show.
00:31:19.520 They were making it.
00:31:20.540 And when he asked Mr. Watson and Mr. Rao about it, they said the executives wanted to talk only to them.
00:31:25.680 And when Mr. Bessie said he knew several A&E executives and would be happy to reach out to them, they told him, maybe not.
00:31:33.140 Another warning sign, Mr. Bessie said, was that one of the other producers pointed out that A&E had already scheduled the show Hoarders for the very time slot that was supposedly meant for The Carlos Watson Show.
00:31:47.700 Toward the end of July of 2020, Mr. Bessie got in touch himself with an A&E executive to confirm that the channel would indeed broadcast The Carlos Watson Show.
00:31:57.920 That is when he learned it would not appear on A&E, he said.
00:32:02.420 Mr. Bessie said he resigned when he learned that he'd been lied to.
00:32:06.420 And in a farewell email to Watson and Rao, which he shared with The New York Times, he wrote,
00:32:12.020 You are playing a dangerous game with the truth.
00:32:15.140 The consequences of offering an A&E show to guests when we don't have one to offer are catastrophic for Ozzy and for me.
00:32:25.080 This is just absolutely incredible.
00:32:29.300 So all of this comes to a head this past summer when the U.S. attorney, well, first the U.S. attorney charged him, which happened prior to this summer, and then there was a trial.
00:32:41.700 Here is the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, which is Brooklyn, announcing the conviction of Carlos Watson.
00:32:51.000 Take a listen.
00:32:51.440 The jury found that Watson was a con man who lied to investors to get them to buy stock in Ozzy Media and to shower him with money to grow the company.
00:33:04.180 Watson acted as a wizard of Ozzy.
00:33:06.340 He was the public face of Ozzy Media with control over every aspect of the company as it grew from an Internet website to an entertainment platform with grand ambitions.
00:33:17.120 And while pulling the levers behind the scenes, Watson also had a direct hand in every crime committed by Ozzy Media and its executives as it morphed into a criminal enterprise as they became desperate for cash infusions to fuel Ozzy's growth.
00:33:32.620 They alleged at trial that they, by the way, they have a lot of sophisticated investors in Ozzy to Lorraine Powell jobs, of course, because she's never seen a woke project that she doesn't like.
00:33:45.260 Carlos wasn't woke on the air, but he was a black man launching a media company that was supposed to be more centrist in its approach.
00:33:51.500 And he's seeking out for money in 2020, June of 2020 and so on when it was post George Floyd.
00:33:58.500 I mean, people were dying to give Carlos money.
00:34:00.080 So in any event, you had at the trial, people like Alex Piper of YouTube testify, the head of Google, Sundar Pichai, can't remember, I don't know if that's how you pronounce it.
00:34:15.300 I've only ever seen his last name written.
00:34:18.080 They testified for the government saying they never had deals with Ozzy with whom, you know, Carlos was claiming he did have deals.
00:34:25.940 And they never considered buying Ozzy at any price, contrary to Watson's claims to investors.
00:34:32.960 He had said like Google had considered buying and so on.
00:34:36.580 So the prosecutor said that Watson had also assured investors that Ozzy was thriving, even as its cash reserve sank to $19,000 at one point.
00:34:47.400 And it was struggling to pay rent, wages and other basic expenses.
00:34:50.420 But they still wanted to line their own pockets.
00:34:52.900 All right.
00:34:53.120 So all of this goes down.
00:34:54.420 Carlos gets convicted and now he was facing prison time, my friends, prison time of he, the minimum was two years and the maximum was 29, 29.
00:35:13.640 He wanted the minimum, of course, and the government wanted something like 19 years, I think.
00:35:19.760 And the sentencing just happened just prior to the sentencing, which was, was it, what was the actual date of the sentencing, sentencing, trying to find out.
00:35:33.960 But it was, it was very recent.
00:35:36.280 Just prior to the sentencing, guess who, guess who reached out?
00:35:41.820 It was just this past Monday.
00:35:42.660 Guess who reached out to the MK show?
00:35:44.140 Carlos Watson threw his PR person.
00:35:50.160 Yeah.
00:35:50.760 Yeah.
00:35:51.460 By the way, Sumir, whatever, and the other, another person at Ozzy, they're also facing charges and they testified against Carlos at trial.
00:36:00.780 And we'll see how things go out.
00:36:01.720 They'll probably do better than he's doing because they're, they struck a deal.
00:36:04.540 Anyway, Carlos said he wanted to come on the show in advance of his sentencing, which we found very interesting.
00:36:13.740 I mean, I couldn't believe my ears.
00:36:14.800 I was like, is he really going to come on here?
00:36:16.200 I mean, he knows I'm a lawyer.
00:36:17.700 He knows I'm not going to give him a pass.
00:36:19.880 We've covered this before, since he's gotten in trouble.
00:36:23.080 And, uh, we prepared, we got ready.
00:36:26.640 We had, you know, all the research pulled and so on and so forth.
00:36:29.300 And the day of the interview, they canceled to the surprise of no one on our team.
00:36:36.980 And then like a day or two later, he did pop up on a podcast, one you've never heard of called Way Up with Angela Yee.
00:36:50.240 And I will give you a feel for how that went.
00:36:57.540 Okay, hold on.
00:36:59.300 I can't see.
00:36:59.960 I'm looking at my sought list, but what I want here is the soundbite in which he talks about being a black man and how what's happening to him.
00:37:11.720 You and I both know, Angela, that if I were white and I was running a media company that was healthy and hired people and someone in Brooklyn tried to prosecute me, it's like you getting prosecuted, Angela, by Utah.
00:37:25.440 I don't live in Brooklyn.
00:37:26.840 I never had an office there.
00:37:28.060 I never had clients there.
00:37:29.800 I didn't have nothing to do with that except Ben Smith, the white guy who wanted to buy me and his dad, who is a judge.
00:37:37.660 Did I tell you that Ben Smith's dad is a judge?
00:37:40.040 You think all this is accidental?
00:37:42.400 What I'm saying to people is if we allow them to keep snuffing out black excellence, I promise you it won't stop with me. 1.00
00:37:49.840 Oh, my God.
00:37:52.180 God, he's trying to claim they're after him because he's black.
00:37:56.780 This is a desperate man.
00:37:58.620 That nonsense about Ben Smith, he's got to be in his bonnet about Ben Smith, who did this reporting for The Times, you know, was it BuzzFeed, then went to The Times and now has launched Semaphore.
00:38:09.200 We're trying to claim that somehow he had a personal beef against Carlos because, like, at one point BuzzFeed tried to buy Carlos and he wouldn't sell.
00:38:17.560 Meanwhile, Ben Smith had been on my show and we interviewed Ben about this.
00:38:21.300 And here's what he said, just for the record on it, SOT-62.
00:38:25.280 It would not be true that I had offered him money and it's not, you know, he hasn't denied any of the things we reported.
00:38:30.660 And I think that's, it's not really, it's not really all that relevant to the story.
00:38:35.000 I wasn't, I was not privy to a deal that he was talking about with BuzzFeed around the time I was leaving.
00:38:40.700 You weren't involved in that at all?
00:38:43.320 I sent a two-sentence email introducing him to my boss on my boss's request.
00:38:48.080 That was, that was my involvement.
00:38:51.300 And that was it.
00:38:51.940 So Ben Smith, he, I don't, Ben Smith has nothing to do with this.
00:38:54.120 I don't know why I decided to Ben, to blame Ben Smith.
00:38:56.640 And Ben Smith's dad is a judge on New York State's highest court.
00:39:00.860 This is a federal trial.
00:39:02.640 And Ben Smith's dad had absolutely nothing to do with it.
00:39:05.360 I do not know how he took this turn.
00:39:07.840 But you heard that sound, but if I were white and running a media company that was healthy and hired people and someone in Brooklyn tried to prosecute me and then he takes a dodge,
00:39:18.400 it's like you, Angela, you know, you're in Brooklyn and somebody tries to prosecute you in some other jurisdiction like Utah.
00:39:25.280 I don't live in Brooklyn.
00:39:26.580 I never had an office there.
00:39:28.320 I didn't have nothing to do with that except Ben Smith.
00:39:32.660 Why is it?
00:39:33.440 Can we just run it again?
00:39:34.460 Can you run that soundbite again?
00:39:35.420 You and I both know, Angela, that if I were white and I was running a media company that was healthy and hired people and someone in Brooklyn tried to prosecute me,
00:39:46.980 it's like you getting prosecuted, Angela, by Utah.
00:39:49.940 I don't live in Brooklyn.
00:39:51.360 I never had an office there.
00:39:52.820 I never had clients there.
00:39:54.540 I didn't have nothing to do with that except Ben Smith, the white guy who wanted to buy me and his dad who is a judge.
00:40:02.060 Did I tell you that Ben Smith's dad is a judge?
00:40:04.940 You think all this is accidental?
00:40:07.260 What I'm saying to people is if we allow them to keep snuffing out black excellence, I promise you it won't stop with me. 1.00
00:40:15.360 All right.
00:40:16.060 So just first of all, I didn't have nothing to do with that.
00:40:20.780 Okay.
00:40:21.480 Because he's going on a show hosted by a black woman playing the race card. 1.00
00:40:25.460 This Harvard and Stanford law graduate is now, I had nothing, I had nothing to do with that.
00:40:33.200 Okay, Carlos, who do you think you're fooling?
00:40:37.440 You know, the New York Times would be saying, oh, he's just code switching like Kamala.
00:40:41.640 We're going to win.
00:40:42.800 We're going to win.
00:40:43.760 Okay.
00:40:44.080 We hear you talk every day.
00:40:45.620 We know you don't talk like that.
00:40:46.760 Stop it.
00:40:47.800 Ridiculous.
00:40:48.240 But he gets in front of a presumably mostly black audience and he tries to play the race card and sound like that.
00:40:54.980 Okay, sure.
00:40:56.560 If we keep allowing them to snuff out black excellence, I promise you it won't stop with me. 1.00
00:41:02.680 What part was the black excellence? 0.80
00:41:04.500 Was it the way Samir impersonated Alex Piper with voice alteration technology?
00:41:10.900 Is that?
00:41:11.500 Because I think that might be Indian excellence.
00:41:13.260 I'm not sure.
00:41:13.600 I haven't looked into Samir, but it sounds like an Indian name.
00:41:15.980 I'm not sure.
00:41:16.420 I know you were pulling it.
00:41:17.800 Was the black excellence you, Cyrano, DeBergiac-ing it from your phone texting Samir while he did it? 0.53
00:41:23.700 Like, is that what you mean by black excellence?
00:41:26.180 Because that's the kind of thing we actually do want to snuff out.
00:41:29.040 Not so much your straight news interviews, which had you just tried harder, Carlos, might have eventually turned into something.
00:41:37.220 But you decided to shortchange it.
00:41:39.320 You decided to cheat your way to the top rather than doing the long, hard slog that all of us in this lane have to do.
00:41:48.680 And let me tell you, I know of what I speak.
00:41:52.720 Year one on this show, when I went on the Carlos Watson show, when I had Carlos on this show, it was just like that.
00:41:59.820 It was hard.
00:42:00.840 It was hard.
00:42:01.760 You check the downloads.
00:42:03.180 It builds in inches, not miles.
00:42:05.680 You know, it's not like one day you tune in and you've got millions of subscribers.
00:42:09.660 Not at all.
00:42:10.740 It takes years.
00:42:12.640 And it takes a lot of elbow grease and it takes a lot of patience.
00:42:15.400 And I've told you before what I kept saying to my team all throughout that lean period was just keep rowing.
00:42:22.220 Just keep rowing.
00:42:23.300 And then eventually, hopefully, if you have a good product, you hit smooth sailing, right?
00:42:29.660 And things start coming your way and you catch a great gust of wind.
00:42:33.460 Carlos Watson was full of wind and decided to shortchange everything and behave in a criminally fraudulent manner.
00:42:42.600 And it had nothing to do with snuffing out black excellence that he got criminally charged for his crimes. 0.73
00:42:49.260 Nothing whatsoever.
00:42:50.600 By the way, that was a black prosecutor you heard announcing his conviction.
00:42:56.640 As I said, really, really focused on his color now.
00:43:02.220 So at sentencing, he did the same thing when he got up in front of the judge.
00:43:08.700 This was, once again, a big thing that he tried to play about the race card.
00:43:13.800 He told the judge that he was a target of selective prosecution as a black entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, where African-American executives have been disproportionately few.
00:43:25.360 And he called the case, quote, a modern lynching, a modern lynching.
00:43:32.000 So he was sentenced on just this past, like last, last Monday, December 16th, by United States District Judge Eric Comity.
00:43:57.080 And he was sentenced to 116 months in prison, almost 10 years.
00:44:06.820 He was sentenced to almost 10 years in prison, nine years and eight months.
00:44:11.960 Holy shit.
00:44:13.220 I'm like, I'm sorry, I just can't believe that that guy with the YouTube and Samir and Abby and Ozzy Fest and all, like, he's going to jail.
00:44:26.220 Well, sentenced for nine plus.
00:44:27.980 He's probably going to serve around six, to be perfectly honest, with good behavior and all that.
00:44:32.340 And he's crying, boo effing who, uh, with now in the media and elsewhere, trying to get people to feel sorry for him.
00:44:41.080 After he did all this stuff, he wasn't some passive victim of Samir.
00:44:45.860 The prosecution proved to trial that he was in on all of it.
00:44:49.320 And of course he would be.
00:44:50.680 Look at that email with the CFO.
00:44:52.480 He's on there.
00:44:53.720 Can't claim plausible deniability.
00:44:56.120 Uh, the judge actually said that the quantum of dishonesty in this case is exceptional.
00:45:03.160 It's exceptional.
00:45:04.460 And that here's more.
00:45:05.760 Okay.
00:45:06.680 Before you start to feel sorry for Carlos, which I assume you're not, but he got basically the same time, just a little less than Elizabeth Holmes.
00:45:12.480 And the judge understood that comparison and was just fine with it.
00:45:17.260 This is what the prosecution said in their sentencing memo, seeking a stiff penalty.
00:45:24.840 This case is unusual for the audacity, the pervasiveness and the length of Watson's fraud, as well as for his obstruction, perjury, repeated attacks on the justice system and complete rejection of any responsibility.
00:45:37.360 The memo was particularly harsh toward Watson's character.
00:45:40.440 Quote, the history and characteristics of the defendant also weigh in favor of a serious sentence.
00:45:45.980 He is dishonest.
00:45:47.540 The ease with which he lied to victims again and again, and the ease with which he lied on the stand is frankly unsettling.
00:45:56.440 He is manipulative.
00:45:57.780 He is cynical.
00:45:59.140 He is callous.
00:46:00.640 There has never been any indication that Watson feels any empathy for any of his victims, people who believed in him, whom he stole from.
00:46:08.140 In most cases, a defendant accepts responsibility.
00:46:11.560 Watson has done the opposite, not just fighting his case on the merits, as is his right, but taking every opportunity to obstruct, to retaliate, to undermine the justice system and to continue lying and breaking the rules.
00:46:23.960 Watson's history and characteristics thus further support a substantial sentence.
00:46:29.960 The memo also said that it was fair to compare him to Theranos founder, Elizabeth Holmes, who received an 11-year and three-month sentence for defrauding investors of over $100 million.
00:46:42.700 Same number.
00:46:44.060 Although Theranos' product was quite different than Ozzie's, argued the prosecution, the lies that Watson told investors were very similar to those told by Holmes.
00:46:53.040 They lied about revenue and contractual relationships to outside investors while silencing or ignoring concerns raised by employees.
00:47:01.500 Both sets of founders fully embodied the fake-it-till-you-make-it approach and used it as a justification for their behavior.
00:47:08.100 Like Holmes specifically, Watson played up his image as a charismatic founder, drawing investment to his company based on a success story that he knew was not true,
00:47:17.920 all while actively courting as much press and personal attention as possible.
00:47:25.200 It's really pretty incredible.
00:47:28.220 Think about that.
00:47:29.780 He is dishonest.
00:47:31.380 He is cynical.
00:47:33.160 He is callous.
00:47:35.560 The ease with which he lied is frankly unsettling.
00:47:41.480 Let's go back to Sat 52, him on my show.
00:47:47.920 I want to learn how you're thinking, how you came to that, what you would do with that.
00:47:52.900 Would you ever consider something else?
00:47:55.220 Like who moves you?
00:47:56.380 And you're always going to end up being surprised, right?
00:47:59.720 Like, you know, and if you stay in it and you're just with the person, they're going to share something that reminds you that most of us are contradictions, right?
00:48:10.940 That, um, uh, what did, uh, Dr. King used to, he loved that quote that there was a famous quote that you say, there's enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue, right?
00:48:21.460 And I think very few of us are only one thing or the other.
00:48:25.600 A gentleman and a rogue.
00:48:31.060 Maybe that's how he dismisses his own behavior.
00:48:34.300 It's not, it's not just being a rogue to steal, to defraud, to impersonate.
00:48:40.500 But that's next level.
00:48:43.100 That's, those are ethical lines.
00:48:45.220 Even your average rogue doesn't cross. 0.98
00:48:48.360 Once you behave criminally, after this society has given you every advantage, you've gone to Harvard, you graduated from Stanford Law, where you made the law review, you got onto television, you got hundreds or $800 million of investment from some of the richest Americans alive, believing in you, trying to help you build things like your newsletter, which definitely did not have 20 million subscribers.
00:49:14.840 The most successful have maybe 3 million, you, all you should be doing is getting down on your knees and thanking this beautiful country of yours and working hard to earn the respect and the belief in the investment of those people.
00:49:29.460 Instead, you tried to short track it, to short change your journey to the top, like neither a gentleman nor your average rogue.
00:49:40.180 You know, I think back to my own experience of Carlos Watson and I liked him.
00:49:47.380 Like so many others, he fooled me into thinking he's a nice guy.
00:49:50.540 And I've told you this, I, I do not have a good, he's actually not a good guy detector.
00:49:56.780 Doug does.
00:49:57.420 I really need to listen to Doug, but Doug wasn't really involved in any of this, but I do not.
00:50:02.460 I kind of thought Harvey Weinstein seemed kind of nice.
00:50:05.260 I think I've told you he, he wanted Doug to come right for him.
00:50:08.320 And Doug was like, hell no.
00:50:09.620 I'm like, Oh, Duggar, that could be cool.
00:50:10.880 He was like, Meg, he's not a good guy.
00:50:12.480 I'm like, Oh, I don't know.
00:50:13.760 Anyway, there's a long list of people who turned out not to be great that I thought kind of might be, who knows who's in my life right now.
00:50:22.260 But they say one in four people as a sociopath, one in four, is this one of them?
00:50:27.820 No empathy for any of the victims still, as he's caught and he's sentenced and convicted saying, poor me, I feel bad for people, including me.
00:50:38.320 Do you know if somebody like that is in your orbit, if you're doing business with them, if they're a friend of yours, if they're a family member, can you really say you don't have a Carlos Watson in your world right now?
00:50:53.700 Can any of us be sure?
00:50:56.800 A gentleman and a rogue.
00:50:59.140 I don't know, Carlos.
00:51:00.960 I think you went well beyond that line.
00:51:05.380 And I don't feel sorry for you.
00:51:07.480 I feel sorry for the people, even the rich people who gave you their money, believing in you and what you stated was your mission.
00:51:16.880 And I think had you tried harder and longer and been an honest person, you actually, you know, the tragedy here is you might've made it.
00:51:24.280 There actually aren't a lot of people like Carlos in the digital lane doing sort of just straight down the middle news.
00:51:33.160 He wasn't left wing.
00:51:34.620 He wasn't woke.
00:51:35.900 He talked about that stuff, but in a very reasonable way.
00:51:39.160 And I think ultimately that product could have prevailed.
00:51:42.920 To quote the brilliant Gordon Ramsay, what a shame.
00:51:47.620 And that for now will end the Curious Case of Carlos Watson episode.
00:51:54.320 He remains free at the moment on $3 million bond.
00:51:57.860 He is to surrender to prison on March 28th.
00:52:00.900 Any restitution will be determined after a hearing in February.
00:52:06.160 Thank you all for listening.
00:52:07.560 Would love to get your thoughts.
00:52:09.240 The email is megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at megankelly.com.
00:52:14.140 We're back later today with VDH, Victor Davis Hanson.
00:52:17.720 See you then.
00:52:18.060 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
00:52:23.580 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.