The White House Correspondents Association is reversing course, deciding that we are now in such a, quote, consequential moment for journalism, that they will be canceling their scheduled comedian for their big gala in late April and focusing only on honoring the very important work our corporate media does every day to fight for democracy.
00:01:27.960When I was a very young reporter, I found this exciting before I understood what was what in Washington and back, frankly, when it was relevant and kind of cool.
00:01:36.240I hate to tell the people going, those days are over.
00:01:39.160However, you're now sort of saying yes to what's become a loser party where they can only get the dregs.
00:01:46.440And I urge anybody with, you know, ego and self-respect to say no, no, I'm not going to that.
00:01:54.980And speaking of corporate media, I went over to the New York Times earlier this month.
00:02:01.860I mean the actual New York Times building, the belly of the beast, and sat down for two hours for their, quote, the interview podcast.
00:02:11.920This is part of the biggest podcast in America called The Daily, which the New York Times drops Monday through Friday.
00:02:20.960And then on Saturday, they drop, quote, the interview podcast with millions of downloads per episode.
00:02:27.360And I have some thoughts and some behind the scenes moments for you on what happened, how it came out, and why I did it.
00:02:34.460So let's get into it. Joining me now, the EJs, Emily Jashinsky, DC correspondent for UnHerd and host of Undercurrents,
00:02:42.560and Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon and co-host of the Ink Stained Wretches podcast.
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00:06:38.960And then you could hear all the like, like, and we weren't even on the main floor.
00:06:44.000We were just all like on the podcast floor, but everybody did like a one 80 as it was very funny.
00:06:50.020And the one guy, sort of the handler who was dealing with me before Lulu came in and said, uh, you know, Lulu, she often takes people up into like the, the heart of the newsroom when the interview's over and introduces them to people.
00:07:29.760You can kind of tell when someone hates your guts and they're about to interview you.
00:07:33.120I didn't feel that way about her and the interview itself didn't reflect some, you know, animus on her part or bad faith.
00:07:40.820I thought, you know, she's, I think of the left and came at these issues from the left that was understood and not surprising, but I didn't sit her sit across from her thinking, this is someone who can't stand me.
00:07:53.000And that would have led to a bad interview had I felt that way.
00:07:55.720So that's why I think it, it all worked, you know, it came off fine.
00:08:00.020I was more relaxed and giving her answers.
00:08:02.620And she was a good interview in terms of saying like, tell me about that as opposed to, you know, just trying to hammer me on various things.
00:08:11.120So in any event, it posted on Saturday.
00:08:14.360We'll talk about a couple of the sound bites and a couple of the outtakes just cause those are always fun to know, you know, what happened.
00:08:20.080Um, we released a couple on social media over the weekend and I'll tell you the biggest divide between Lulu and yours truly, which we talked about was she didn't understand exactly what it is.
00:08:33.600People like us do the, the two women I'm looking at and myself, right.
00:08:38.880That like we do offer political commentary and we do offer our own opinions, but we also are journalists, but we all exist in this new ecosphere, right?
00:08:51.040We all have direct relationships with our audiences.
00:08:54.240We're all in new media as opposed to corporate legacy media.
00:08:59.040You know, the free beacon is its own entity, but I mean, Eliana does instinct wretches and is very honest.
00:09:05.400In any event, that was where we really kept tripping wires because she didn't get how I can still call myself a journalist and have endorsed Donald Trump.
00:09:42.380And so, you know, I'm curious what you're doing in that interview because you're setting up the interview in a particular kind of way that perhaps it wouldn't be set up in the mainstream media.
00:09:54.780Well, I'm glad you asked that because I feel like part of our discussion before and today is getting at something that like our wires are crossing your wires and my wires are crossing in a way.
00:10:08.900Like you're kind of looking at me and saying, it's not behaving like a typical journalist.
00:10:14.240And it is still calling itself a journalist.
00:10:16.900And I'm trying to say to you, yes, I'm still a journalist.
00:10:23.880But I'm trying to say to you, yes, I'm still a journalist, but I'm in this new ecosystem where the old rules don't apply.
00:10:32.140You know, I'm in this world with, yes, Charlie Kirk and Dan Bongino and Ben Shapiro.
00:10:38.040But my world is also Joe Rogan with these in-depth interviews and also Theo Vaughn.
00:10:45.440And it's a very large world and how the consumer receives it is by going on YouTube.com on their television screen or going to the vertical integrations on Instagram or TikTok and just taking in content.
00:11:00.100What's the content that you want to receive?
00:11:03.940And so the fact that I'm also a journalist who breaks news and reports on news is like an extra.
00:11:10.260But what's most important in my business now is authenticity, that you are honest with the audience.
00:11:19.880And really, this is a point we just kept coming back to where she she thinks in a way you can be too honest if you get on stage with a political candidate and endorse him and tell people you're voting for him.
00:11:31.020And you think they should, too, that you've crossed a bridge that that burns as you walk across it and you can never return back over to journalism land.
00:11:41.440And I just didn't see it that way at all.
00:11:44.480We had a long debate and a lot of debates about owning one's bias.
00:11:49.340And she didn't understand if you could if you own your bias, like, doesn't that sell your soul, basically, that how can the audience then trust you to rip on your own side?
00:12:01.280And the following soundbite is in that context.
00:12:32.420At least I reported on their stories and did them the courtesy of bringing them to air in front of millions of people and let the audience make up its mind.
00:12:41.320My problem is more with these Democrats who will bury these allegations against their candidates or their candidate spouses and then play holier than thou.
00:13:18.720Right before the election, I ripped on Trump's Madison Square Garden rally as too bro-tastic and got specific about why.
00:13:24.680You have to understand, like, if you haven't sold your soul, you have to be willing to criticize the people, even you, that you admire on your, quote, side.
00:13:35.100And my owning my bias by going out there on stage with Donald Trump and saying, I'm voting for him and you should too, is a bonus when it comes to my credibility.
00:13:45.100Now, everybody has zero doubt about where I stand, and they can filter everything I say through the appropriate lens.
00:13:50.780What typically happens in journalism is they say they have no bias, and then they just work it out in the printed word or on their shows without owning it.
00:13:59.260But the audience knows it, and it creates a distrust and a divide.
00:14:03.540Okay, two, just two points as an addendum, and then we'll get into it.
00:14:08.940So I went on in the one answer, and she did find I have no problem with the way the Times edited the interview.
00:14:14.900This is not a Ben Smith situation where I just thought he just tried to hammer me for his own reasons.
00:14:21.760But I just want to say that, and that one answer where I'm like, what I have a problem with is these people who will go after Donald Trump and play holier than thou when covering him, but will bury the allegations against Democrats.
00:14:36.700And what I said at the end of that, because we have a transcript of it, was, like, I didn't see a lot of questions by the Times or anyone else about why Doug Emhoff allegedly wailed on his ex-girlfriend, the one he dated, right before Kamala.
00:14:48.860Where was the deep investigation into whether he fathered a love child with the nanny and why the ambulance came to her home on the night she lost the baby?
00:14:57.080I've actually reported on both of those stories, which is something about two reporters in America can say.
00:15:02.820And then added just a bit later when she was like, I don't get how you can go out and endorse this guy, understanding he's going to make mistakes, he's going to do things that are wrong, who you know, she says, will have to be criticized because that's the nature of any political leader.
00:15:17.860And I said, you know, see, see, to me, it's funny to hear you ask that, because I guarantee you my audience is going to laugh at this question because they're going to say that is rich coming from The New York Times, which did more to run cover for Joe Biden than virtually anyone else in media.
00:15:35.640I've ripped on Trump endless numbers of times.
00:15:37.900I put my record of ripping on Trump up against the record of anybody in the leftist media of running against Joe Biden or calling out his infirmities.
00:15:46.660Even when Trump was running, one of the reasons why he attacked me after I hosted a presidential debate that he did not participate in is because I raised questions about Trump's mental acuity.
00:15:55.880And I had noticed he was having some word slips saying the wrong thing about Obama when he meant Biden, World War Three when he meant two.
00:16:13.700So to me, it's funny to hear you ask that question because you must not listen to the show that often.
00:16:20.940OK, so having said all that, Emily, your thoughts?
00:16:24.920Well, yeah, I mean, that was a part of the interview that you just played that I was trying to like stand up and clap when I was listening because it was such a great explanation of what people are doing now and where the wires are exactly getting crossed,
00:16:35.460which is that I actually think a lot of even thoughtful people who are coming to this conversation in good faith, like I genuinely think she was, don't totally watch the programs that they're engaging with enough to understand what's really happening and what the relationship is with the audience.
00:16:53.120It's because your audience would hear the question that you just read out and say, what do you mean?
00:16:58.100Like, of course, Megan has to criticize.
00:17:00.960It doesn't matter that Megan went and endorsed Donald Trump.
00:17:03.240She's been criticizing him like three days later.
00:17:06.160It just is a complete and a lot of times it's from these soundbites that go viral is when people who don't regularly listen to a show will dip in.
00:17:14.820And so they kind of think that they understand what happens, but it's really totally different.
00:17:20.760Like your relationship with the audience is totally different than somebody who genuinely doesn't listen to it every day fully understands or, you know, even like three times a week understands.
00:17:29.640And that is where I think it's, you know, I think she thought that you were working with the campaign, cooperating with the campaign, that you were a part of the campaign because you gave that speech.
00:17:42.400When in fact, all you did was be more honest with your audience than a lot of the journalists who are even just straight news reporters who work in their desk at the White House and absolutely know that they are voting for Kamala Harris.
00:17:53.640Come to every question, believe in Kamala Harris, good, Donald Trump, bad every time they sit down and write copy.
00:17:59.340You're just being honest with your audience.
00:18:01.020And that's an improvement for most Americans.
00:18:04.800Yeah, Eliana, this is what I was trying to say to her.
00:18:06.560Like, basically, you guys at The Times are not fooling anyone.
00:18:12.060Everyone knows that you're leftist and everyone who listens to this show knows I'm more on the right.
00:18:19.100And in owning it and just expressly saying this is what I'm going to do in the ballot box and this is what I think you should do, it's really not it's it's not as big a transgression off of where we used to be as she would have us believe.
00:18:33.540Like, there's no one in America who thinks the majority of New York Times staffers voted Trump.
00:18:39.420I think that was a really important part of the conversation.
00:18:46.120And look, for 20 plus years, you know, you can trace it back to Dan Rather in 2004.
00:18:55.500But even before that, when we had these experiences with titans of supposedly neutral purveyors of the news who claimed to be one thing,
00:19:07.440and then there were scandals that showed them to be operating in the service of one political party.
00:19:12.900And so your statement that, hey, disclosing your biases up front actually builds trust with an audience rather than undermining it or undermining one's credibility was, I think, really important.
00:19:27.180And what I think that The Times often misses is that our problem with them, you know, our frustration with them.
00:19:35.640And I say this from the Beacon all the time, like the Beacon, we say we're conservative, like we we own that.
00:19:42.740And our problem with you is that you claim to be down the middle and we know you're something else.
00:19:49.060And that is what is broken trust with audiences and readers.
00:19:52.380So when you don't cover Doug Emhoff and the scandals surrounding him, that's trust breaking.
00:20:00.700If you were to come out and say, like, hey, we don't cover scandals about Democrats because it undercuts our political priors or our mission here.
00:20:17.780I don't understand why they don't, you know, but it's that is why there's this wide open space for people like you and Joe Rogan and others to go build these huge audiences because they're not fooling people.
00:20:32.720Well, Megan, can I breaking trust with people?
00:20:36.140I think that's actually a really interesting part of this, because I I believe that you could fix trust in media tomorrow if the New York Times and even the good faith people like there's maybe 10 percent of journalists can genuinely.
00:20:47.780be neutral and don't have like significant biases in one direction or the other.
00:20:53.260Like there are some people who can do that, but they're very, very rare.
00:20:56.180But the New York Times and The Washington Post just came out tomorrow and said, our reporting, not our editorial side, our reporting leans left.
00:21:03.900The vast majority of our reporters are liberal.
00:21:06.080We think, you know, maybe they put one of those signs in this house, we believe X, Y and Z outside of The Washington Post and The New York Times.
00:21:12.100Like they would fix trust it with their audience, like right off the bat because they do some genuinely decent reporting.
00:21:19.120But the reason they can't do that is that they are all in these cultural bubbles where they don't understand that their biases are biases.
00:21:27.240Like they think this is just a matter of, you know, human rights or decency or civility.
00:21:32.120But they don't understand that actually those are significant biases in one direction or the other.
00:21:36.880So they're in such a bubble that they're not even able to determine anymore what's a bias and what's like actually just the things that are still controversial and contentious outside of their little bubbles.
00:21:48.400And what's, you know, actually just something that's a point of consensus that we all agree on.
00:21:52.300They can't tell one from the other because they're so siloed in what Charles Murray called super zips, New York, Washington, D.C., L.A., where upper middle class educated people disproportionately cluster and are disproportionately powerful.
00:23:21.800I guess what I'm trying to understand is what are the rules of this new world that you are inhabiting?
00:23:27.200Are you sort of making them up as you go along and you sort of seeing what it is?
00:23:31.180Or do you adhere to some of those old values that you used to embrace?
00:23:34.020The only way one succeeds in this medium is by violating all those rules that we used to have in journalism, where you don't really talk about yourself at all.
00:24:04.900And we will survive this just fine, too.
00:24:07.760What the audience wants from me is my authentic self and no filter.
00:24:12.920What they can smell from a mile away is a phony.
00:24:15.600So they have no problem with me endorsing Trump, even if they don't like Trump.
00:24:20.660What they would have a problem with is me pretending I don't have a horse in the race and going out and trying to deliver the news as though I'm completely objective and I'm just as open minded to Kamala as I am to Donald Trump.
00:24:34.740And the secret addendum to that, Eliana, is that is not only actually the rule for me in new media, it's actually the rule for you, too, Lulu.
00:24:52.820I mean, look, I think there's some truth to the idea that they don't realize they're biased, but I'm not totally sure that's that's the case.
00:25:07.920I mean, when you have the CEO of NPR testifying before Congress and saying, yes, we're 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, like it does sort of defy logic that they can truly believe that doesn't actually show up in any of the news coverage.
00:25:33.540But I genuinely believe that woman is there, like, I, you know, I don't remember ever tweeting that, but that sounds right.
00:25:42.660You know, like, I genuinely believe that woman took to the congressional seat last week and was like, I'm not biased and NPR is not biased.
00:26:18.360And I think actually Eliana's point is a legitimate one.
00:26:21.280And one time one thing you hear from the media a lot when you point out those discrepancies is they will say, OK, but it's because like, look at Donald Trump.
00:26:29.740It's because Republicans don't have as many serious people to put forth that aren't trafficking and disinformation.
00:26:39.480But they don't even understand sometimes that like they don't they're completely out of the loop.
00:26:45.000They dismiss as conspiracy theories often when Republicans point out the lies or the pattern of lies that certain Democrats have told.
00:26:53.300Because, again, they will categorically say it's not serious if it's coming from the Federalist.
00:26:58.760It's not serious if it's coming from Ben Shapiro.
00:27:01.040So they don't even understand, like they're not even even able to make those equivalencies.
00:27:04.900You know, they say, well, of course, we don't platform as many Republicans as we do Democrats.
00:27:09.360Republicans have an endemic truth problem.
00:27:11.440And it's like you weren't covering, for example, Biden, as you started with, Megan, like every the White House was suddenly talking about how those these were, quote, cheap fakes.
00:27:20.940And you guys literally like reprinted their press releases for several weeks until the debate.
00:27:27.340Or there's certain storylines like Tara Reid, there's certain storylines that they just check out of because they assume it's how many people literally how many people in Americans can say that they've interviewed both Trump accusers on the sexual assault or harassment front and Tara Reid.
00:27:45.480I literally I might be the only one like the New York Times cannot say that, you know, that's what I was trying to say to her.
00:27:51.180Like there was another part that didn't make the dance where I said, look, to me, it's funny, you know, that you're asking this about me and how I can maintain my ability to criticize him, notwithstanding my endorsement, because I wrote I said, this is the sin of which the left is guilty.
00:28:08.540You know, like no one on the left can really ask this question you're asking me.
00:28:13.680There are very few who actually do raise these questions on their own side and who are willing to go after Kamala and Joe Biden or Barack Obama or, God forbid, Michelle Obama in the way I go after the right and Trump.
00:28:28.380If you listen to my show, you listen for a week, you'll have multiple examples of me raising questions about the way Trump has done something or his team has done something.
00:28:39.240I can see the good he does very clearly, and I have no problem giving him credit for the wins.
00:28:45.760After that, she said, I'll say that Ezra Klein, one of my colleagues, was one of the earliest people to call for Biden to drop out of the race.
00:28:53.660Yes. And I said, where was the Times editorial doing that at any point prior to the debate?
00:28:59.720That was also January. I mean, that was that was January like this.
00:29:03.680And he was only saying that he's old. Ezra Klein was saying Biden's too old.
00:29:08.080He wasn't saying he's lost it. You know, he's like, oh, he's too old to be president.
00:29:12.420And, you know, she said, oh, well, I said, where was that?
00:29:15.600Where's the Times editorial doing that before that debate?
00:29:18.280She said, well, the editorial pages, as you know, are different than the news pages.
00:29:22.580And I said, where was the news coverage? Where was the news coverage?
00:29:25.500Where was Peter Baker documenting the fact that these brain doctors had been to the White House 10 times over the prior year?
00:29:32.100And she said, I'm not going to litigate the Times's coverage.
00:29:34.340And I understood she was not there to defend the New York Times, which I totally get.
00:29:38.320Like she wasn't sent to me to come on my show as a representative of the Times and to defend them.
00:29:43.940She's like, I'm trying to do a nice profile of you, lady.
00:29:47.980And I was basically saying, you can't ask me how I could possibly be fair to Trump, notwithstanding my endorsement, when you're the New York Times.
00:30:08.260And to me, it's just like some of these lines, some of these like that actually is a good example about the cheap fakes, because it's not just what their editorial writers, their columnists were saying.
00:30:20.340I mean, your point is that the straight news coverage is shot through with the bias that should be on the editorial side if there were this traditional neutral firewall, which just doesn't really exist.
00:30:34.160They will tell you in our newsroom every day there's no overlap, but they believe roughly the same things.
00:30:39.860Even if there's, you know, little debates, they believe roughly the same thing.
00:30:43.660So why wasn't there the Peter Baker stories like that's the question we need to have answered about the White House being having doctors coming in and out of it about donors being upset when they saw him in person?
00:30:55.780Like those stories were nowhere to be found.
00:30:57.360Instead, it was the cheap fake storyline on any.
00:31:20.900You know, like neither the editorial nor the journalism side is open minded to any bad news to Democrats that doesn't like dovetail with their worldview.
00:31:29.400You know, like if a Democrat works with a Republican, they might do a negative story on him.
00:31:33.520Right. But like they're not going to cover things that could actually undermine Joe Biden's chances of reelection in an honest way.
00:32:10.840Moving past that particular subject, I do want to show this.
00:32:14.600So we did get into my long history with Trump, Eliana, and, you know, me asking him that question at the debate.
00:32:21.260And then he came after me and she raised a question that a lot of the left cannot.
00:32:26.800And even some on the right who don't love Trump cannot understand.
00:32:31.640Like, they can't understand how I or, frankly, anyone who doesn't totally endorse the way Donald Trump has behaved his entire life or with respect to us or an individual like, let's say, John McCain or the Gold Star families in the first race and so on.
00:32:49.320Can come around to supporting him like they they like this is a genuine inability to understand, like, please explain to me how you can endorse that man.
00:33:21.620But it's just about so much more than that.
00:33:24.520We are talking about how many people dying at the southern border because of the invasion that we've suffered under Joe Biden.
00:33:33.340We're talking about Lincoln Riley, whose killer was led in under Biden.
00:33:36.760We put him on a taxpayer flight down to Georgia where he murdered her.
00:33:40.300I don't give a shit about Trump getting handsy with somebody 20 years ago.
00:33:45.560I want someone who will close the border, which he has.
00:33:48.980I want someone who will keep boys out of my daughter's sports, which he has.
00:33:53.140I want someone who will stand up to the insane DEI policies so that white kids will stop hearing in school that they're born with some original sin from which they cannot recover, which he has.
00:34:04.780And I mean, that right there, Eliana, I mean, that just sums up why so many of us happily, gleefully, hopefully and and just optimistically pulled the lever for Donald Trump in November and remain really grateful to him for the agenda he is unleashing.
00:34:26.400It is just that, you know, anybody on the left still obsessing about Trump and like E.
00:34:33.240Jean Carroll or like when he was a celebrity, but it's just people are dying.
00:34:40.940You know, young women are being killed.
00:34:43.060Young women are being hurt on the sports.
00:34:47.580I actually don't think that that question was about Trump, Megan.
00:34:51.740I think it was about you and I think the question was put to you such it it really was.
00:34:58.420How can you, Megan Kelly, who talk a lot about how about who position yourself as pro woman who talk a bit about how to have a real career and build a family who are certainly like, you know, you're certainly not a wilting violet.
00:35:16.980How can you have that identity, which is very much a public identity and, you know, vote for this scumbag, endorse this scumbag when you have been publicly mistreated on the basis of your, you know, lady parts like a benefit made them a subject of conversation.
00:35:38.600So I took that to be about you and like, you know, a sort of tacit attempt to undermine, you know, your credibility on that issue.
00:35:47.460And I actually thought it was an interesting conversation because it gets to issues that like all voters confront, which are like, what are lesser and more important issues to me that I'm going to vote on?
00:35:58.660And you basically said, like, look, he may have mistreated me personally, like it was a micro and macro thing, but that's just less important to me than other issues the nation is confronting on which I think he's going to perform much better than she would have.
00:36:16.140Like, it's just and I do think there's like an inability on the left to get beyond like, well, he mistreated you.
00:36:24.180How can that not be the main issue that you're going to vote on?
00:36:26.880Yeah, that's right. And I think it's a feeling that the left has in general on Trump.
00:36:33.160And they did include this piece in the interview where she said, what do you think of Trump dismissing the media as enemy of the people and fake news?
00:36:41.780Oh, and let me add, Megan, like we saw Democrats do this with Bill Clinton all the time.
00:36:46.120It was like, oh, whatever. You know, he got handsy with an intern in the Oval Office, but like he's doing a lot of great things.
00:36:53.520And I think that's like a perfectly fair argument to make.
00:36:59.500You know, any conservatives issue with him was he with was he lied under oath.
00:37:03.320But by the same token, I think it is fine for for conservatives to say, like, we don't care that much about his personal conduct from 10 or 20 years ago.
00:37:12.020We don't think that he, you know, never lies, but he's doing things that we think are a lot more important.
00:37:19.460Well, and it's like you look over at the other side, it's like, well, if I vote for Kamala, I could bring in a party that has had a president office who did more than get handsy with an intern.
00:37:30.220I mean, he was getting blowjobs from her at the Oval and while he was married, by the way.
00:37:35.540Fine. OK. And then the woman who was running is married to a guy who's been credibly accused as an abuser and a woman abuser, which the left wouldn't even cover.
00:37:46.340And so it's like, OK, no one is ideal like most of these characters who wind up running for us are ideal.
00:37:52.980Maybe Mitt Romney was ideal, except for the weird dog stuff.
00:37:56.100But his policies weren't ideal. His policies didn't speak to the Republican base.
00:38:00.480Go ahead. This came up in the Hegseth nomination, too, where I can't remember which senator asked him, like, were you unfaithful to your wife?
00:38:07.540And suggested that that disqualified him from being the secretary of defense.
00:38:14.760It was like this. I can't remember who it was, but it was like, are you serious, man?
00:38:19.920Like, right. I mean, you ran with Hillary Clinton for a you ran for president with Hillary.
00:38:26.120How many of these United States senators have been unfaithful to their spouses?
00:38:30.280But there is this, I think, instinct on the left to say, like, these matters of personal conduct, which, frankly, the country is so far beyond.
00:38:39.020Like, yeah, really, you know, it's but ironically, I have to say, in the left's defense, they got that from the right.
00:38:45.400You know, the right used to be the more judgmental, like nobody who's had an affair that party.
00:38:50.020It wasn't until Trump came along that that was completely busted open.
00:38:53.420Remember, the story in 15 was how can evangelicals get behind this guy, this Randy celebrity handsy percent.
00:39:01.680Right. Yeah. Well, also, Trump was the first person to like first high profile person to understand this about American politics, because the Tim Kaine example is fantastic, at least on the right.
00:39:13.760That is to say he brought the Clinton accusers to the debate and put them in like the front row back in 20.
00:39:20.580It was amazing. It was genius, truly genius, because he recognized that his voters and people who could be persuadable to his side, the most important thing he could do was to show that Hillary Clinton does not have the moral high ground when she criticizes his character.
00:39:38.820And that's what the entire stunt was proving is the emperor is wearing no clothes.
00:39:44.420And as soon as you can prove that Trump realizes he can compete on the policy grounds, but it's convincing those persuadables that there is no moral high ground among his his critics.
00:39:54.160And that's absolutely true. It's proven to be true over and over again.
00:39:57.880It's funny because there was another point at which she and I discussed Trump and his attacks on the media.
00:40:02.840And I was saying, like, why are we pretending that we're just like these little butterflies that can't have the wings plucked off?
00:40:09.000Like, we're tough. We can take it's fine. Who cares? Basically, what Trump says?
00:40:14.500Yes, he's demonizing the news media. The whole point would be not to lean in, right?
00:40:21.560Like try to maintain your objectivity and and disprove the accusations.
00:40:27.200You look at a place like CNN, that's where they went wrong.
00:40:30.560Jeff Zucker was like, oh, he's actually giving me ideas to be an enemy of the people, to be fake news.
00:40:36.420Yes, that's how I'll drive my ratings up.
00:40:39.380Yeah. Put your head down and do your job.
00:40:44.500That's it. That's it. We don't have to spend any time really thinking about his names that he's calling us.
00:40:49.620Just do just do the work and try to be fair and try not to have TDS.
00:40:53.660OK, so overall, I think the times for what I thought was a fair interview.
00:40:58.160I liked Lulu. If I see her again, I think it'll be friendly.
00:41:01.680And I think, you know, there was some value to getting in front of the times audience, which, by the way, is having a meltdown over the whole interview.
00:41:09.980If you look at the comments on the times YouTube feed, they're so unhappy.
00:41:14.700They're so mad that I don't believe you, Jean Carroll.
00:41:16.540I don't believe her at all. Not one word.
00:41:19.900Women don't run around laughing about their rapes.
00:41:22.860And by the way, she can't even remember what year it happened.
00:41:32.200OK, anyway, I thank the times for the interview.
00:41:36.500And I thought it was actually a very good conversation.
00:41:38.820And I'll just add one addendum to Ben Smith of Semaphore.
00:41:42.580That's the kind of conversation you and I could have had if you had just asked probative, like open questions to try to get it where media is right now.
00:41:50.300Like she and I actually plowed new ground to have sort of somebody from the legacy media talking to somebody like me who was of that world but now is in the new.
00:41:59.120So it was an interesting conversation because she was open minded and she was honest about like where she was, you know, not getting it.
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00:43:18.100I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
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00:44:21.780I do want to spend a minute on Kara Swisher, who is a tech journalist, very nasty person, who I used to kind of get along with.
00:44:32.640I met her at NBC, where she was a contributor when I was working there, and interviewed her for some tech story involving the Me Too movement.
00:44:43.040I can't remember who it was, but it was like a couple of guys out there in Silicon Valley who were not great.
00:44:47.920And so we interviewed her, and we interviewed a bunch of women who were kind of complaining.
00:44:51.860And so that's the foot on which we got off, which I would say is a leftist foot, right?
00:44:55.740Like she met me doing a more left-leaning story, and therefore she liked me, right?
00:45:00.500Because it's like, great, you're a woman of the right, but you're open-minded to sexual harassment claims, so let's go.
00:45:07.480Well, we maintained an occasional correspondence via text, et cetera.
00:45:11.600And I met her, like, once or twice for a drink.
00:45:14.860And I have to say, like, we got along.
00:45:16.960She's a very tough, ballsy, openly lesbian woman.
00:46:09.420It's like Link has got such a following amongst young, sort of right-leaning people or independent-minded people who have just had it with the weird left.
00:46:19.320Anyway, her podcast, which launched in 2020, I was one of the first people to talk to her about doing a podcast.
00:46:24.180As I've said before, it's consistently one of the most popular news podcasts in the country.
00:46:31.600I think she's just a rage machine, and she has a little act that she takes on the road and screams at women, a lot of women.
00:46:37.780But the idea of what's happening here is a bigger thing, is there's a lot of really interesting independent companies being created, whether they're unconservative or liberal.
00:48:01.600Now, honestly, I was very open-minded to Kara Swisher and understood our politics are very different.
00:48:06.860But, you know, I have a lot of friends who are on the other side of the aisle and would never make those the stakes of a relationship.
00:48:12.040You know where things went south was she didn't like my COVID commentary once I actually did launch the podcast, either on the show or on X, which was then Twitter.
00:48:24.500And I was pointing out that young people were getting myocarditis, especially young teenage men, and dying and suffering the world over as a result of these vaccines.
00:51:19.220I think there's a kind of person that cannot put politics to the side.
00:51:24.900She liked me when she thought I was a Me Too loving NBC News employee.
00:51:29.780And once she realized I wasn't, that I really am more conservative in my worldview, that I would question the COVID vaccines, that suddenly I was too scared to go on with Kara Swisher and must be in bad faith in saying I can't make it after all.
00:51:48.560And not revealing in the first email my personal tragedy, which Abby would never do without my permission anyway.
00:51:55.980It's just to me, this just shows what we're up against.
00:51:58.780And now she's out there like she's a rage machine.
00:52:01.000And what is she talking about weird left?
00:52:13.200Well, I mean, she's just the combination.
00:52:15.900She has a combination that's really, I think, dangerous, which is sanctimonious and closed-minded.
00:52:20.960And when you combine those two things, it's really toxic.
00:52:24.980And it makes for very unhappy people and I think very unappealing media personalities.
00:52:31.060And so I'm not entirely surprised by this, but it's just, I think there's a type of journalist who gets validation and sort of the moral affirmations of commentary.
00:52:41.260And I think, unfortunately, she's one of those people and it's very dangerous.
00:52:57.400You know, it's an interesting question.
00:53:00.760I've always found, like, when I worked at Politico and when I was a contributor at CNN and even in college and that sort of left-wing environment, I found if you keep your views to yourself and don't express them, that's how I've sort of made my way and made peace there.
00:53:20.640And I haven't found people necessarily coming to, you know, a few people, a few people will come and pick fights with you.
00:53:28.880But the trouble comes if you actually openly express your views.