George Clooney is busy trying to look 30 years younger than he actually is with weirdly dyed, jet black hair. He s starring in a play about Edward R. Murrow, because Clooney fancies himself a journalist, you see, and has lots of thoughts on how journalists should do journalism like he does it. Like, like stumbling upon the biggest story of the decade that a sitting president is mentally infirm and ought to be 25th Amendmented right out of office, and then burying it for weeks on end. And then, only after that president humiliates himself on the national stage at a presidential debate and then refuses to step down as the entire Democrat Party watches its electoral chances go swirling down the toilet, finally decides to write an op-ed in the New York Times saying Joe Biden is not up for the job. That s not journalism, it s cowardice, followed by naked partisanship.
00:00:00.500Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
00:00:11.820Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:15.940We begin on the subject of George Clooney, who is busy trying to look 30 years younger than he actually is with weirdly dyed jet black hair, trying his hand on Broadway.
00:00:26.040Anyway, he's starring in a play about Edward R. Murrow because Clooney fancies himself a journalist, you see, and has lots of thoughts on how journalists need to do journalism.
00:00:36.720Like he does it, mainly. You know, like stumbling upon the biggest story of the decade that a sitting president is mentally infirm and ought to be 25th Amendment-ed right out of office, and then burying it, saying absolutely nothing for weeks on end.
00:00:50.800And then only after that president humiliates himself on the national stage at a presidential debate, and then refuses to step down as the entire Democrat Party watches its electoral chances up and down the ticket go swirling down the toilet,
00:01:05.860finally decides to write an op-ed in the New York Times saying Joe Biden is not up for the job.
00:01:12.340That's not journalism, George. It's cowardice, followed by naked partisanship.
00:01:17.980You're not fooling anyone. So, now he's starring in this Broadway show.
00:01:24.820By the way, what's the matter, George? Are the Hollywood roles getting a little hard to come by as you age and get decidedly more smug and self-congratulatory?
00:13:58.000Everyone knew he was not the same man that we had seen before.
00:14:01.780So for him to lecture anyone, anyone, even someone who doesn't have your journalistic record on what fact, telling the truth is, even if it hurts, and what being factual is, is a complete travesty.
00:14:17.180That's the thing, MBD, is you know as well as I do that George Clooney probably consumes news mostly on MSNBC.
00:14:23.840The reason he liked Chris Wallace is because Chris started to openly lean much more leftward in his interviews, etc.
00:14:33.160And he doesn't have any interest, George Clooney, in the Suzette kilos of the world.
00:14:38.700He has zero desire to find out what the COVID lockdowns did to regular Americans and what might have driven somebody to show up at the Capitol on J6.
00:14:48.900Those stories are beneath George Clooney, as does he feel the rest of us are.
00:14:54.720Yeah, and I worry that there's no core of real conviction with George Clooney.
00:14:59.680I mean, his first major kind of political statement as an artist was a movie Three Kings that criticized George H.W. Bush for not finishing the job in Iraq and carrying on an invasion all the way to Baghdad.
00:15:15.080Years later, of course, when it was no longer in Democrats' partisan interest to make an argument like that, he abandoned it like a cheap date.
00:15:24.560So, like, again, there has just been a theme of raw partisanship, but dressed up as higher principle.
00:15:31.800And it just doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.
00:15:38.940Again, like, we shouldn't necessarily be looking to Hollywood for any kind of guidance in politics.
00:15:46.040And what's amazing to me is that if he's going to take the time to lecture American journalists on how to do their job, that now's the time he chooses to do it.
00:16:02.740They went totally silent during the four years of Joe Biden.
00:16:06.460And it's not like he didn't do things to excess.
00:16:09.160It's not like he didn't ignore our laws.
00:16:11.440It's not like he didn't, you know, open the southern border, you know, like all those things.
00:16:16.200He had absolutely no interest in lecturing the press on how to do their job, even though they went totally silent during those years.
00:16:23.580It's only now that Trump's back in office that he feels the need to remind us of our responsibility to truth and integrity.
00:16:31.580Yeah, there are a lot of things that are shrouded in darkness.
00:16:33.900One, the president's condition, which we talked about.
00:16:35.860We're still learning more about what people on the inside knew and saw and did, yeah, by the day.
00:16:42.240The border, again, these were things that were out in the open.
00:16:45.120So the operation to hide them did not succeed because people could see with their own eyes.
00:16:48.880But they didn't acknowledge that, again, until late in 2024, the middle of 2024, that finally realized, oh, this is going to get Donald Trump elected.
00:16:55.940We at least should try to do something about it.
00:16:57.840And then just the insanity of the trans stuff.
00:17:03.200It seems it's brave in the Democratic context for Gavin Newsom to say, oh, yeah, there's a fairness issue for male if a male plays in a female sport.
00:17:12.560They tried to gaslight us all on that.
00:17:14.820They said we're hateful, retrograde, purveyors of disinformation, all the rest.
00:17:19.540But the public could see the truth, which is a big reason that Donald Trump won last November.
00:17:24.040You know, like most of these Hollywood people, MBD, he doesn't have a grip on the facts and he hasn't.
00:17:30.060But he's spoken out about many news stories in an effort to sway public opinion.
00:17:35.100And and probably the one that comes to mind next after Biden was the Breonna Taylor case down in Kentucky where he's from.
00:17:43.320So he came out after these officers executed a so-called no knock warrant, though they did knock and they went into the facility, this this apartment.
00:17:54.500And this woman, Breonna Taylor, was shot and killed as they had a shootout with her boyfriend who was in the hallway and shot first at cops.
00:18:04.220Her boyfriend shot first at cops who had announced themselves in any event.
00:18:10.540He spoke out about it and said her name was Breonna Taylor and she was shot to death in her bed by three white police officers, which wasn't true.
00:18:21.340Breonna Taylor was not asleep in her bed.
00:18:23.980She got up, too, and came out in the hallway and was standing next to her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker,
00:18:29.440as the officers announced their presence, knocked six times and then resorted to a forced entry.
00:18:34.960This guy, Walker, admitted that he fired the first shot and he hit.
00:18:41.620Her ex-boyfriend was up to his neck in drug deals and she was seen on tape with this guy going to retrieve packages with him, going to a trap house and so on.
00:18:50.960The media wants you to believe she was squeaky clean.
00:18:52.760George Clooney wanted us to believe she was she had absolutely no connection to anyone or anything nefarious.
00:18:57.720And that while she was asleep, completely innocent in her bed, three white cops just executed her because she's black.
00:19:51.740I mean, at least, you know, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck made like a penitent film, you know, set in the Middle Ages about sexual assault.
00:20:02.180George Clooney just sidestepped the whole thing as if he didn't know anything about Harvey Weinstein or about the casting couch culture in Hollywood.
00:20:10.960And that's a story he actually could have shown some light on.
00:20:15.760And yet he goes on, you know, the Academy Awards and congratulates himself and Hollywood for, quote, being out of touch with the rest of the country and being ahead of things like, you know, civil rights or gay rights, etc.
00:20:32.180I just, you know, there's no real record of substance there from him where it would have counted.
00:20:39.340Again, it's just he he has, you know, he is a filmmaker.
00:20:59.220Right. Without doing any, you know, homework to look into it.
00:21:03.640Of course, the subject of Kentucky came up with this loudmouth Patti LuPone, and he had to mention the Confederate flags.
00:21:10.340Like, that's the first thing that came to his mind in discussing his home state is the Confederate flags that he sees when he goes back to visit his parents in Kentucky.
00:21:18.660Nice. That's yes, because that's what Kentucky is all about.
00:21:21.840When you think Kentucky, you think Confederate flag and the Confederacy.
00:21:25.800I mean, that's his mindset. I really do believe this guy's obviously his his career is waning.
00:21:34.540I'm convinced he married this Amal Clooney just because he wanted to make himself seem like a more serious person.
00:21:39.340So he found some human rights lawyer that would legitimize him because I guess he didn't feel that way with the professional wrestler.
00:21:45.400And now parades around Hollywood like he's some sort of dignitary, like he's had some ambassador work under his belt.
00:21:53.820It's it's not true. You actually have to study.
00:21:57.180I'm glad he went to Darfur. I'm glad he went to Sudan.
00:21:59.340But I mean, the fact is, George Clooney must not know anything if he doesn't know that I'm a journalist.
00:22:05.340I mean, truly, like not to toot my own horn, but like I think literally anybody who watches the news regularly in America would know that and would have some idea of some of the highlights because they have gone everywhere in certain instances.
00:22:18.580So this is George is being I only watch CNN or MS.
00:22:23.060I'm above it all. But I am in a position to lecture you lowly American losers, especially the MAGA folks on what you need to be a good, informed person.
00:22:34.520So good luck with that and your crappy play.
00:22:37.420OK, moving on to other items in the news.
00:22:40.800Let's talk about Pete Hegseth, who is in day whatever of an ongoing firestorm.
00:22:46.280It's been building for a while, but it's getting, you know, I don't know if it's at its apex now or if we're about to get to the apex, but it's it's climbing where he fired these alleged leakers.
00:22:58.760He accused these three guys. I mean, you know, the Pentagon and Pete signed off of it.
00:23:02.960These three guys at the Pentagon of leaking material that would have included top secret information to NBC News about attack plans in Panama and said, we've gotten our guys.
00:23:13.260We feel satisfied. We're going to continue our investigation. But, you know, I'm satisfied.
00:23:16.860These are the people involved. They've all denied it.
00:23:20.420And then, I mean, got was the subject of a barrage of bad press every day thereafter.
00:23:25.880That happened on Friday. It had this guy over in the comms shop who I guess they really didn't love and he didn't want to be number two in the shop.
00:23:34.600And I guess that's all it was available to him. In any event, he left.
00:23:36.760He wrote a scathing piece in Politico, which is not exactly where right wingers run.
00:23:41.180Don, Don Jr. disavowed that guy and said he's not part of our movement.
00:23:44.280Don't believe this guy. And then the other two or the other three, at least one of them, sat down with Tucker Carlson and said, this isn't about my alleged leaking, which I didn't do.
00:23:53.300This is about my position on Iran and being more dovish.
00:23:56.060The other two haven't really spoken out, I think, other than to deny that they're leakers.
00:24:01.360And now the narrative is building like everywhere because there's not like a strong MAGA media, you know, online and the digital lane.
00:24:09.060You've got MAGA supporters, but there's not like a publication like the Journal or the Post or the Times that's pro-Trump where you can kind of go to hear the MAGA defense.
00:24:19.480So you've got the journal ripping on him.
00:24:21.420This morning, I listened to this podcast.
00:24:22.700Sometimes I listen to Potomac Watch, which is the journal editorial.
00:24:55.980I actually know one of the fired people involved, Dan Caldwell, the one who was on, Tucker Carlson.
00:25:02.480I've known him for about six or seven years.
00:25:05.040I find the idea that he would leak to liberal press absolutely preposterous.
00:25:14.300And I would I would stake quite a bet that he did not leak to NBC at all.
00:25:22.440And certainly that he and certainly that he didn't leak classified information.
00:25:27.420And I believe him when he says he didn't.
00:25:30.360There are you know, there are reports today in Politico.
00:25:32.900There was a long report saying that there was actually less ideology than meets the eye in this internal knife fight that, in fact, it was fueled by jealousy from another Hegseth chief of staff, Joe Casper, who has.
00:25:53.380Right. He was the one who supposedly initiated the investigation that led to the firing of those three staffers.
00:26:02.160And then he is now being pushed into a new role.
00:26:06.580Why? Hasn't been, I think, I mean, I can report that he's not the decision maker, however, I can tell you that.
00:26:17.940So Hegseth was obviously convinced that these three people did something wrong.
00:26:23.440I know Dan Caldwell to be a very loyal person who believes he becomes more effective by serving his boss well and then being handed more responsibility.
00:27:19.040It sounds like these three knew each other and were friendly.
00:27:21.240And we're friendly with Pete, too, which is, to your point, about this might be about or might have at least started with some sort of internal personality clashes or power struggles.
00:27:32.200I mean, these three have definitely been in the same networks together and networks together with veterans networks together that Pete Hexeth was a part of before he became head of the DOD.
00:27:44.100So people who are not privileged in that way may have been jealous of their influence, even if there was no, you know, political content to that jealousy.
00:27:57.160At the same time, there are politics to this.
00:28:00.620And it is interesting to see that there are people now rallying to Pete's side this week who three or four weeks ago were saying that what he did on the signal chat was worth resigning over.
00:28:14.420Is that is that more neo-conny people?
00:28:16.420Because it's very interesting to watch the factions because Caldwell goes on with Tucker and says, what's what really was behind my termination is I am dovish on Iran.
00:28:25.100Do not think we should be bombing Iran through Israel or any other way.
00:28:29.220And and now you have people who would like us to bomb Iran.
00:28:35.240Because they're like they're deducing maybe Pete's on the opposite side.
00:28:40.280Well, I think I think there's fear that who if Pete Hexeth goes, who replaces him?
00:28:45.180And, you know, it could be someone already in the Department of Defense, someone like Elbridge Colby, who has said, like, oh, we can contain Iran.
00:28:58.400You know, that that would be seen as a bigger threat.
00:29:01.840And Colby is a established kind of old school Republican hand.
00:29:08.260You know, he's sort of like out of central casting from, you know, the 1950s through 70s and knows where the bodies are buried.
00:29:15.180He'd be he could be very effective, whereas people may think Pete Hexeth, you know, is not totally in the camp of the restrainers and not totally in the camp of the Hawks.
00:29:29.800But, you know, wants to serve his his president.
00:29:32.380And, you know, the president himself is not hyper ideological on these questions.
00:29:39.100You know, the president is willing to strike Iran, is willing, you know, to take out Soleimani, is willing to bomb them and has said that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon.
00:29:51.100And he's willing to, you know, make the ground shake in order to bring that, you know, bring that fact into existence.
00:31:07.800You know, if some evidence comes out that they actually were funneling top secret information to NBC News, they'd have to be fired.
00:31:14.960Like, I have no idea whether that's coming.
00:31:17.400But I'm just saying, for example, that would be a no brainer.
00:31:20.720And we don't know, but it certainly appears that some faction of these four, that comms guy, Elliott is his last name, or these three accused but denying that they are leakers, are leaking to the press right now.
00:31:36.400Because Pete's on the other end of a battering ram since they got fired on Friday.
00:31:40.080It's like the New York Times had a long hit piece.
00:32:09.840Look, I have 100 percent confidence in the secretary.
00:32:13.680I know the president does and really the entire team does.
00:32:16.440It's one of the most bizarre things about the Hegseth nomination.
00:32:20.360From the very beginning, the media seemed to want to tank it.
00:32:23.440And when they failed and they got confirmed, they decided they wanted to keep on that effort to destroy Pete Hegseth as a man, as a secretary of defense.
00:32:31.920I think that he's brought a certain spirit back to the Department of Defense.
00:32:35.060And if you look at our military recruitment numbers, that's in my in my view, the best testament to his leadership of the military is that for the first time in a very long time, we don't have terrible recruitment problems in the Army, the Navy and the Air Force.
00:32:48.620That's a great testament to his leadership.
00:32:50.840And I wish, frankly, the press talked more about that and not about anonymous sourcing from random staffers.
00:33:09.860So it's like almost meaningless to play those soundbites in all fairness.
00:33:14.000But, at least publicly, Monday and Tuesday, now, or I guess Monday and Wednesday, we've had direct soundbites from the president and vice president saying they are fully behind Pete.
00:33:23.020Yeah. So you're right in what you said at the top of this segment.
00:33:27.180You got this dynamic going in the media where there are headlines about chaos at the Pentagon and there are headlines about headlines about chaos at the Pentagon, right?
00:33:34.840So they want to create this phenomenon.
00:34:49.500Journalists wasn't CC'd on that, so we haven't actually seen them.
00:34:52.220But it just feels to me when you're roping in your wife, your brother, your lawyer, you are someone who feels embattled, doesn't know who to trust, and you're going down to this core of the very most loyal people you have.
00:35:06.980And that's just – you're not going to be able to run the building that way, right?
00:35:09.600He needs some big chief of staff who can really do this job that's probably not within his current circle of trust, but he has to develop trust with.
00:35:36.760This second signal text chain was reportedly with Pete, with his brother, and his lawyer, both of whom are Pentagon employees now, and his wife, who's not, and some other collection, and I don't know who they are.
00:35:51.040Okay, I'm told that what's on there was declassified, that he didn't share any classified information.
00:35:56.740But let me say this, where was this leftist freakout when Joe Biden had Jill Biden at cabinet meetings, sitting at the Resolute desk with his jacket on the back of her chair?
00:36:10.000She shepherded him around to every official function.
00:36:13.300We have no idea whether she was secretly our president, but she absolutely was at cabinet meetings.
00:36:20.380No, and not only that, her close aide was also responsible for guarding the president from staff and from other cabinet members, from the reporting we've seen.
00:36:32.960We saw that after the debate, Hunter Biden then came in and started performing that role.
00:36:49.180You know, one interesting possibility brought up, you know, one thing I think people could look out for in the following days is, are the leaks still coming?
00:37:00.120So, and are they coming from within the Pentagon?
00:37:06.580Okay, so if they are, could it really be these three guys?
00:37:11.940I mean, if they're leaking stuff that's actively in the Pentagon.
00:37:15.420And secondly, Caldwell pointed to the Defense Policy Board, which is not really a well-known institution, but it's, this is something that is filled with Biden-era appointments like Susan Rice, Michelle Flournoy, Michael Hanlon of Brookings.
00:37:32.180Lots of Biden-era people are still on it.
00:37:34.940They haven't met since the Trump administration has taken office, but they all have security clearances.
00:37:41.460They all have access to career employees in the Department of Defense.
00:37:47.460And, you know, that is not an unreasonable place to look for leaks when you're talking, when the news outlets are NBC and Politico.
00:37:56.460I don't think Susan Rice and Michelle Flournoy are going to be on the Defense Advisory Board for much longer.
00:38:02.500Trump, as we all know, has had his hands full.
00:38:04.620But I'm going to make a bold prediction that they shouldn't get too comfortable in their seats.
00:38:10.100Yeah, I was going to say, when this first broke, and they're basically frog-marched out of the building, I thought they had to have receipts.
00:38:15.340There's no way this happened without serious receipts.
00:38:18.440But then Caldwell's denial was so categorical with Tucker.
00:38:22.200As you pointed out, I think, yesterday, Megan, you know, there's some legal jeopardy here.
00:38:26.200So usually if you have exposure, you're not going and talking about it at length with a high-profile interviewer the way he did.
00:38:32.840And then, heck, Seth, in his interview on Fox & Friend with Brian Kilmeade, I thought Brian did a great job, he said something that made my ears perked up.
00:38:39.600He said, you know, and they or others around them might have been leaking.
00:38:54.120Whoever it was, like if it was one of these guys or if it was somebody else that leaked that story to NBC News with, I mean, actual, that the Pentagon had been asked to draw up attack plans for Panama, is going to jail.
00:42:59.660I don't, I think Trump's going to understand what's happening right now.
00:43:02.780And if, now, if there's ongoing problems, if this becomes chronic and it's just like a distraction, then he'll turf him because he's not afraid of firing people.
00:45:32.060Larry David has appeared on Saturday Night Live with Trump and, like, making a joke, like, where he shouts, Trump's a racist.
00:45:42.200And, like, an annoying liberal lefty from Hollywood would.
00:45:47.020And it seemed to be he was self-deprecating on this point.
00:45:50.880And, in fact, one of his – there's a very funny episode of his show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, where he decides that wearing a MAGA hat is a perfect way of getting out of awkward social obligations in Hollywood.
00:46:06.200And also where he goes into a Holocaust museum and steals the shoes that are on display of Holocaust victims because he needs new shoes.
00:46:15.580Like, he's been, yeah, irreverent, certainly when it comes to the Holocaust and, obviously, Trump.
00:46:24.980I mean, you know, arguably, like, there was an episode of a show where he came to discover that his, you know, descendants were not C-O-H-E-N, Cone, but C-O-N-E, Cone.
00:46:39.840And, like, the episode was basically, like, an anti-Semitic tract of him discovering that he was, like, of Christian parentage.
00:46:48.560And then he became, like, a nicer, kinder, gentler, braver, more voluntaristic person.
00:46:55.060I mean, so I always thought of Larry David as someone who, you know, stood aside from liberal pieties in Hollywood and, in fact, made fun of them.
00:48:04.720And look, Bill Maher did the right thing, right?
00:48:06.660Donald Trump, like it or not, is at the center of our national life.
00:48:10.040Bill Maher is a hugely consequential commentator who talks about Donald Trump all the time.
00:48:15.340He should know as much as he reasonably can about Donald Trump.
00:48:18.520And as Winston Churchill used to say, there's nothing like being there, going yourself and seeing yourself.
00:48:24.320And he learned things about Donald Trump, right?
00:48:26.320And they didn't accord with his worldview.
00:48:28.620And unlike George Clooney until the last moment with Joe Biden, he admits it and will admit the attention and say he actually learned something.
00:48:35.520And he's going to share it with his viewers, which is the honest, factual thing to do.
00:48:39.280And the fact is, Donald Trump, in person, he's a professional host, in part, so he can be extremely gracious.
00:48:45.460He's a great one-on-one politician, which accounts for a lot of his hold on the Republican Party, which you might miss unless you know that about him.
00:49:23.000That Trump actually doesn't annex countries and hasn't killed six million people and might actually be somebody who could really help the country out.
01:15:41.880And I can, I know that you realize that, and you're still not giving me anything other than if it's in a school and a sincere religious parent has an objection, that objection is always going to result in an opt-out.
01:15:58.600No matter how, no matter what the instruction is like, no matter what the materials are, no matter how old the kids are.
01:16:06.620And that's the rule that schools everywhere in the country are working under right now.
01:16:11.880Justice Alito, too, also noted that this case involves extremely young children, as young as five, noting that as kids become older, they're better able to make distinctions about what a teacher's presenting.
01:16:23.220But when they're that young, it's a very different story.
01:16:26.580It's really up to adults to filter out what's inappropriate for them.
01:16:32.320Michael, I, I don't, I don't, I don't think this is going to be one of those cases where Roberts goes soft need or Amy Coney Barrett goes soft need.
01:16:40.660I think it's looking like a six to three decision from what I've read so far.
01:16:46.280I mean, ideally, not only that, ideally Gorsuch would then run back and try to rewrite Bostock decision because this is actually a downward consequence of that decision.
01:16:57.960This is him reaping what he sowed so many years ago, which is basically that he's, he said that if you read the 1964 Civil Rights Act with the same squinted Episcopal eyes that he brought to the case, that transgender people have civil rights as, as transgender identity.
01:17:20.960Identity. And of course, the schools in the United States would then follow up with a curriculum to foster respect for the most minority of sexual minorities.
01:17:32.600Of course, this is the downward effect of that.
01:18:04.300I mean, someone, you know, we could have a school of people come along and say, listen, you know, technically when you sit on a chair, there actually is an exchange of molecules between the chair and your, your, your physical body.
01:18:18.220Therefore, there's no distinction between the two and I can throw you out of a window just as easily as I throw the chair out of a window.
01:18:24.900And then I have to come and say, well, my Christian faith teaches me that in fact, a person is a person and a chair is a chair.
01:18:33.160Do we have anything common underlying our law or can any fool theory come out of an academic department and lead to us introducing four-year-olds to leather.
01:18:48.220Daddies and, and drag means give me a break.
01:19:02.080Somebody says, sometimes I use all the pronouns I can think of another book, Prince and Knight grades K through five, a young prince and a knight fall in love after battling a dragon together.