It's Friday, and Megyn Kelly is back with a mix of political news and Hollywood gossip, some of it involving yours truly. Megynkelly joins us to talk about her recent trip to the Time 100, why she didn't attend it, and why she doesn't care. Plus, an exclusive interview with Colin Carroll, a former Pentagon official who was fired last week over a leak investigation.
00:17:57.500He was very nice to everybody around him.
00:17:59.760But the truth is, and I've said many times, I don't think what she's doing to Justin Baldoni is in any way fair, gracious, nice, or just.
00:18:09.300And so I couldn't help looking at her the whole night like some sort of twisted mean girl.
00:18:13.520Like, there's something wrong with this person because all the allegations that she's launched against him have fallen apart, virtually every single one of them.
00:18:22.280Now, there's still going to be a trial.
00:18:23.360She'll have her day in court and all that, supposedly.
00:18:25.280But to me, there's something wrong with her to, you know, say the things she said when it's all being disproved, like, on camera, where there's actual evidence.
00:18:35.360So she had the opportunity to go up before the audience and give a speech.
00:18:55.280I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum.
00:19:00.760What I will speak to you separately is the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today.
00:19:06.660Before I say more, I want to warn that I will speak about tonight covers trauma, so please feel free to step away if you need.
00:19:14.080My life was influenced most by my mother sitting here tonight.
00:19:17.940She wanted me to share with you that she is a survivor of the worst crimes someone can commit against a woman.
00:19:24.260My mom never got justice from her work acquaintance who attempted to take her life.
00:19:29.240She has always credited her beating heart today with a story she heard from another woman in a similar circumstance.
00:19:35.520The woman painfully and graphically shared how she escaped, and because of hearing that woman speak to her experience, instead of shutting down in fear and unfair shame, my mom is alive today.
00:19:48.240We don't let our daughters know, but one day we break their hearts by letting them in on the secret that we kept from them as they pranced around in princess dresses, that they are not, and will likely never be safe, at work, at home, in a parking lot, in a medical office, online, in any space they inhabit, physically, emotionally, professionally.
00:20:10.960Never underestimate a woman's ability to endure pain, life's just a bull of cherries, so thank you to every woman whose strength brought life to me and my four children, and thank you to every man, including my sweet husband, who are kind and good when no one is watching, and to all the communities across the gender, age, political, geographical, and racial spectrum who fight every day just to be safe,
00:20:40.640I see you, and I see you, and I share tonight and my influence with you for as long as I have the ability to affect even one other person.
00:20:49.720Okay, Mark. Now, why she would make her whole speech about her mother's trauma from more than 45 years ago, I don't know.
00:21:00.840But that was the darkest view of womanhood in America that I think I've ever heard from a public figure at an awards ceremony like this.
00:21:11.420She goes on, you heard it there, we don't let our daughters know, but one day we break their hearts by letting them in on the secret that we've kept from them,
00:21:23.800as they pranced around in princess dresses that they are not and will likely never be safe, not at work, not at home, not in a parking lot, in a medical office, not online,
00:21:33.400not in any space they inhabit, not physically, not emotionally, not professionally. Thank you.
00:21:38.860Thank you. My God. What did you make of it?
00:21:48.000I mean, look, obviously, to say the obvious, I don't want to minimize the horrible experience her mother had as she described it,
00:21:54.120but tonally, as you said, for the occasion, probably a little bit off key.
00:22:00.680But also, I agree with your view of it, which is don't ever minimize violence against anyone, including women.
00:22:09.300But to say that girls have to be kind of afraid their whole lives rather than strong and empowered and careful,
00:22:17.540I don't know that that would be the consensus view of how to shape the lives of young women.
00:22:24.120To me, it was evidence of how desperate she is to improve her standing in the public eye as a result of this battle she started with Justin Baldoni.
00:25:25.840Not online, not at work, not at home, not on.
00:25:28.440But like, that's just it's a leftist thing, this catastrophizing that we're in this extremely dark world.
00:25:36.360And there's danger around every corner, mostly at the fault of conservatives.
00:25:40.360And to me, it was it almost like was a window on perhaps why she went the way she went with these allegations against Justin Baldoni.
00:25:48.300Maybe maybe she actually did perceive these massive slights at every corner if this is how she views life, you know, that it's everything is dangerous.
00:26:00.000And with lurking people wanting to hurt us, it's there's like a psychosis.
00:26:05.260But it is, in my experience, limited to the left.
00:26:09.000The right has like its conspiracy theories that they love, but the left has this weird, dark worldview about people out to get them and ruin everything around us.
00:26:21.960Yeah, and again, particularly for young people to instill in them, rather than a sense of empowerment and strength and possibility and self-determination, to instill in them a fear that they can never be safe.
00:26:35.120It's just not not the way I think anybody should parent, whether they're kids or boys or boys or girls.
00:27:31.400He was amazing, and I would definitely go see him in concert.
00:27:35.960I think he's having one this Monday night.
00:27:38.500And last but not least at all, I met Demi Moore, who was stunning, and we posed for a photograph together.
00:27:48.720Here we are, and could not have been nicer.
00:27:52.000She was completely friendly to everybody there.
00:27:54.620I have to say to her credit, because she's an A-list star for sure.
00:27:56.940And, you know, some of these people won't deign to speak to anyone other than their little cosseted, collected table, but she was very friendly with everyone there.
00:28:06.000So that's my armchair assessment of the Time 100.
00:28:21.660Okay, speaking, though, of this kind of navel-gazing, self-celebratory event, the nerd prom is tomorrow night in Washington, D.C., the White House Correspondents' Dinner, Mark.
00:28:34.400And I'm sure we've both been to many of these things.
00:28:43.540But there's a time in Washington when you have to do it in your career.
00:28:47.000And it's amazing to me that they're still going.
00:28:49.540This year, President Trump will not be there.
00:28:51.120He doesn't have a good relationship with the media, so there's even less reason to go.
00:28:54.580And you tell me whether these things have long passed their expiration date.
00:29:01.140Well, I mean, I used to like going early in my career because I could see a lot of people, particularly after I moved to New York, which I did a long time ago, and still covered Washington regularly.
00:29:12.600So I liked them just because I could see, you know, 50 people in one night and to reacquaint.
00:29:19.760The overall notion of the thing, particularly with the Republican president, is past its sell date because although Donald Trump has a special relationship with the media, it's always been a bunch of almost all liberal reporters from liberal organizations celebrating their own worldview and not treating, you know, George Bush the same as Barack Obama.
00:29:44.160In addition, it's supposed to be about celebrating journalism and starting in, you know, three or four decades ago, people started bringing celebrities and turned it into something very different.
00:29:55.740So Washington in general is such a boring place that I don't mind a little celebrity and a little bit of excitement.
00:30:02.140But this massive dinner, particularly with Donald Trump in office and the White House Correspondents Association having gone just crazy anti-president, I think they would have been better off canceling it as opposed to doing the version of it they're going to do.
00:30:15.680So here's one of the funniest and most telling takes that I just read before we came to air on NerdProm.
00:30:25.260It's by this guy who writes for Mediaite named Colby Hall, who has his headline is this year's White House Correspondents Dinner serves only to normalize Trump's First Amendment dumpster fire.
00:30:37.580I won't be a part of it. Good for you, Colby. Good for you. He's so self-congratulatory again.
00:30:46.560And he says as follows, President Trump's constant attacks on the media, which is in his first term ranged from petty insults to ominous but contained action against the press, have escalated into a war that mirrors authoritarian states and far flung regions of the world.
00:31:02.820That's why I'm opting to skip this year's weekend. And he goes on to quote certain upset journalists who don't want any part of this.
00:31:14.260They have. OK, let's see. What is there to celebrate? One prominent editor of an influential outlet said the first Trump term was weird enough because the White House didn't engage.
00:31:26.220But his staffers like Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway still really gave a shit.
00:31:30.700Now it's like the current tripe White House truly not performatively hates and is attacking the press.
00:31:37.160Then you've got him quoting another person saying, with Disney bending the knee to Trump, Paramount contemplating doing the same to settle the president's insane lawsuit against 60 Minutes,
00:31:47.180the White House bringing in all these ridiculously sycophantic alt media figures, Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend at all.
00:31:54.020It's an unsettling time to be in news media and an odd time to be celebrating anything.
00:31:59.660Finally, said a longtime cable news anchor to Colby Hall,
00:32:02.500To me, this represents everything that's wrong with both Washington and the White House press corps,
00:32:06.560which is in the midst of a crisis of relevancy, public trust and confidence.
00:32:10.000Having a big black tie soiree does not read right to Americans.
00:32:13.680That's the only point I will cede of those three.
00:32:17.000So the the press is outraged that anybody would go to celebrate.
00:32:21.960The white like it's not a celebration of Trump, but in the era of Trump,
00:32:25.960they're not even allowed to go to this because they hate Trump.
00:32:28.260You know, there's a thing in Politico playbook this morning that I read twice because I thought maybe I was missing a parody.
00:32:35.420But, you know, the parties have already started.
00:33:29.840Let's try covering them fairly and then see what happens.
00:33:32.360Mm hmm. I mean, and Trump, to his credit, like he just announced yesterday on True Social that he was sitting down last night with Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic.
00:33:41.740And he says, like, this is the guy he's he hates me.
00:33:45.140He reported what Trump says is a lie about Trump referring to our dead soldiers as suckers and losers.
00:33:51.260He reported the signal gate controversy, which has been, you know, a big story in Trump's first 100 days.
00:34:20.200You know, the example I've been giving to reporters to kind of try to raise their consciousness is what's one of the things the press is most upset about?
00:34:29.240They're obsessed about upset about the Associated Press not being allowed to cover the White House the way they used to because of their content.
00:34:37.520OK, so what I say to them is, OK, you've turned that into a crisis of the Constitution.
00:34:42.940In the last administration, the Biden folks did the exact same thing to the New York Post.
00:34:47.900They didn't like the New York Post coverage of Hunter Biden.
00:34:50.200And so they excluded the New York Post reporters from covering White House events.
00:34:54.700I'd argue that that was even worse because of the nature of of why they were so angry and because it wasn't covered.
00:35:01.040That wasn't covered anywhere but the New York Post and by people like us.
00:35:04.520And so here you have one president doing something that's ignored and the other president does something pretty much the same, but not quite as bad in my view.
00:35:12.860And it's treated as a constitutional crisis.
00:35:15.220So unless the press comes clean on that, comes clean on Biden's mental acuity loss and the conspiracy to cover that up, it's very hard to see how they think they have the standing to say, this president doesn't like us.
00:35:41.360I don't understand how they think they're going to look better in the eyes of the American people or how a dinner like this makes any sense until they decide to cover every president really tough.
00:35:51.440I'm not saying they should cover Donald Trump lightly.
00:35:54.160What I'm saying is they should cover him tough and fair, same way they've covered other presidents, and they just don't do that with him.
00:36:03.020The headline in HuffPost this morning is,
00:36:06.340HuffPost is bringing workers fired by Trump to the White House Correspondents' Dinner to highlight the Trump administration's scorched-earth attack on vital government functions and its workers.
00:36:16.080HuffPost is bringing guests who have experienced the fallout firsthand, some guy who is a federal watchdog in charge of protecting whistleblowers who Trump fired,
00:36:26.100Rohit Chopra, who headed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until Trump fired him, Andrew Bivens, a USAID employee.
00:36:52.820Before we move on totally from White House Correspondents' Dinners, they haven't always been totally inconsequential.
00:36:59.540And while they'll sit there this year lamenting the fact that President Trump is in the Oval,
00:37:04.720it's arguably because of their little event that he ran in the first place.
00:37:10.680You could make a pretty decent case that had they not had this annual event every year, Donald Trump would still be a private citizen hosting Celebrity Apprentice and running his business.
00:38:38.500I think he was already thinking about running.
00:38:40.100But it certainly, I think, got him resentful of the attitude in that room and the way the Washington establishment laughed at him and treated him like an unserious person.
00:38:50.620And I think no small measure of satisfaction for him off of this night that he's able to then come back to Washington six years later as the elected president of the United States.
00:39:00.660We take you back now to 2011, the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
00:39:06.080And Seth Meyers was that so-called comedian.
00:39:10.100No one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald.
00:39:18.020And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter.
00:39:55.460And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night.
00:40:00.700Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president as a Republican, which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke.
00:40:06.860Donald Trump said recently he has a great relationship with the blacks, though unless the blacks are a family of white people, I bet he's mistaken.
00:40:41.340He gave the best received speech of the whole group in 2011, filled with people thinking of running in 2012.
00:40:48.340And I went on TV the next morning and I said, you may not take him seriously, but take his idea seriously because they have a lot of resonance with the American people.
00:41:29.700But there was another moment regarding Donald Trump that you are famously able to cite in which you were predicting that he might actually win the 2016 presidential election, which did not go over well on the set at MSNBC.
00:41:46.440We've got that queued up for the audience to watch.
00:41:49.200I think you've gone out of your way to find the path, argue for the path, forge the path for him in an argumentative way with your co-host to the nomination.
00:42:00.840Tonight, I thought you were interestingly optimistic.
00:42:05.620Where are you getting the path of positivity you laid out on your broadcast?
00:42:12.200Well, it's not a question of optimism.
00:42:13.400It's a question of looking at the data and looking at what's going on in the battleground states.
00:42:17.540She's still overwhelmingly the favorite.
00:42:19.540If it turns out that she doesn't have the hold on the coalition of the ascendant that Barack Obama had, I think it's possible he could find his way to 270.
00:42:28.300But I think the idea that there's some magical state with magical polls that we don't see where he's ahead in a blue state is completely false.
00:44:12.100I called management and I said, take the clip down.
00:44:17.080And also, because I'm a senior political analyst here, like, trust me, your coverage here should not reflect the possibility that Trump can't win.
00:44:26.140You know, it should reflect the possibility that Trump can win.
00:44:28.660I will say I got something that people might, if they were super generous, consider it an apology.
00:44:36.240Yeah, trust me, they're not big over at NBC on apologies, even when they're clearly owed.
00:44:42.480Okay, later today, I mentioned it at the top of the hour, I'm going to sit down with Colin Carroll, who is one of the guys fired at the Pentagon, one of the three pushed out.
00:44:56.040And then there's also this comms guy who says he resigned voluntarily.
00:44:59.240But the Pentagon saying they forced him out and he's going to tell us his story about why he's going to say, I believe he's not the leaker and that this is not being handled well, nor fairly.
00:45:10.700And I wonder if you can give us your perspective, Mark, on what's happening at the Pentagon, because we have been covering, you know, all the palace intrigue.
00:45:20.240But this is like every day there there's a new barrage of bad press.
00:45:24.000Yeah, look, the palace intrigue is interesting.
00:45:26.740And I'll speak in a second about about the confusion about what's going on.
00:46:29.960I mean, two close friends, one associate, I believe.
00:46:33.120If you do that, I don't know why you'd pick a fight with them publicly, both in terms of doing the right thing, even if you think they did something wrong, but also just as a matter of tactics, because if he attacks them and they are the leakers, they're probably going to keep leaking.
00:46:47.880But I also have people close to them, and you'll be told this too.
00:46:53.160They didn't leak originally and they're not leaking now.
00:46:55.360And I've got sources pointing fingers at other people, saying other people in the administration are the ones doing this, some in the Pentagon, some in the White House.
00:47:04.240And those people and their folks deny it.
00:47:06.940So I've been disappointed in most of the coverage because it's not getting at the mystery here, which is some of the stories of Adam are cheap shots.
00:47:16.360Some I think are quite legitimate to scrutinize.
00:47:18.320But what is driving this endless number of stories?
00:47:37.000So the motive could be you think he's not a good secretary of defense and you want the president to fire him, although I don't know that these stories will achieve that.
00:47:44.780It could be, you know, some people say, well, it's people who are neocons and they don't like the way he's doing things or people on the left from the deep state.
00:47:51.620I can come up with motives, but I cannot come up with any idea, clear idea about who's doing it.
00:47:58.120But as I said, the people close to Secretary Hegseth are quite certain that it's these guys who were the original leakers that got them fired and that they're the ones leaking now.
00:48:08.380But as I said, they deny it, and I consider this to be a mystery as of right now.
00:48:13.800I will probe every angle and the audience will be able to make up its own mind about my guest.
00:48:20.820Do you think Pete Hegseth will survive this, and will he survive as defense secretary?
00:48:29.140Because it's very clear some group of people that's pretty loud is out to get him.
00:48:37.280So I've got what I call the Trump board of directors, okay?
00:48:41.740And the board of directors is Tucker, Charlie Kirk, and Don Jr.
00:48:46.500And if the board of directors supports something, I think generally it happens.
00:48:51.800And I believe all three of them – I know all three of them have been supportive, particularly recently Don Jr. and Charlie.
00:48:59.100They've been very supportive on social media and elsewhere of Pete Hegseth.
00:49:03.580So I don't think the president will be inclined to get rid of him.
00:49:06.740And, of course, he doesn't want to give in to these stories, most of which are published by media organizations he considers hostile.
00:49:12.960I think the only – so I can't invent an offense that Pete Hegseth could be charged with that would cause the president on his own to go past the shoot someone on Fifth Avenue bar.
00:49:25.180I think what will be determinative is when Congress comes back to town.
00:49:29.020I think if some Republicans, like Tom Cotton, for instance, who've been very supportive, if they decide that they don't think he's right for the job, that a change needs to be made, then I think it's possible that the president would listen to that because he knows how important congressional support is for someone who's embattled.
00:49:46.360But if less members of Congress either go public or tell the president they're going to go public, I think he can proverbially shoot people on Fifth Avenue and he'll survive.
00:49:54.680The board of directors will not bend the knee to Tom Cotton.
00:50:07.960But the board of directors doesn't always get their way.
00:50:12.360And I think the board of directors listens to the president.
00:50:14.820And if the president says it's not tenable, then I think the board of directors might stand down.
00:50:20.260But they're not inclined to – and I've got to tell you, again, if you're someone in Trump world and you want something or you want to improve your standing or whatever it is, you want the board of directors on your side.
00:50:32.580It's a very funny way of looking at it.
00:52:29.540There's Taco Tuesday, when player projections get discounted up to 25%, or Flex Friday, where if your lineup doesn't win, you can get your entry back in promo funds.
00:53:02.360But what if you or a partner needs to step away?
00:53:05.240When the unexpected happens, count on Canada Life's flexible life and health insurance to help your business keep working, even when you can't.
00:53:13.500Don't let life's challenges stand in the way of your success.
00:53:26.340Before the break, we left the audience with the thought of why Mark Halperin believes J.D. Vance is turning out to be the most consequential VP in history.
00:53:54.420He's very, as I say, he speaks MAGA, affluent MAGA with a suburban accent.
00:53:59.340He has the ability to talk about the movement and the agenda in a way that, for some years, is easier to understand and appreciate than even the president does, who's a leader of the movement.
00:54:08.960And I think if you look at personnel, policy, the press, he is in every meeting.
00:54:18.480His allies are all over the administration.
00:54:20.700As we talked about last segment, the board of directors are the ones who made him the vice president.
00:54:27.120They're the ones whose advocacy got Donald Trump to choose him.
00:54:30.320So the board of directors loves him, and he loves the board of directors.
00:54:33.960And so I look at everything they're doing, from dealing with Capitol Hill to dealing with foreign governments.
00:54:40.060I think the speeches he gave in Europe that the Europeans are still on their fainting couches over, the speeches he's given domestically are some of the most important speeches that not just anyone in this administration, but anyone in the party has given in the last decade.
00:54:55.320And I can't find a single issue where his influence is not very high.
00:55:01.200Lastly, I'll say, vice president's usually, of course, a big job, but the incumbents who are thinking of running for president, and the last three in that category, Biden, Gore, and Bush 41, the White House operation was built to hold them down because they said the more you're out there meeting with donors, the more you're out there trying to raise your own political profile, the more it might distract or hurt the president.
00:55:28.280This White House doesn't feel that way.
00:55:29.800They like J.D. Vance out there talking to donors.
00:55:32.240They like him out there elevating his profile.
00:55:34.980So he has the platform of the vice presidency to position himself, but also to help the party and to help the administration in ways that I just didn't see with the previous vice presidents.
00:55:47.340Yeah, Trump's confident enough in his own power that he doesn't need to feel threatened by J.D.
00:55:52.720For those just joining us, the so-called board of directors in Mark's view is Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, and Don Jr., who I have a text thread, says Mark, where they weigh in on very substantial matters and advise the president accordingly.
00:56:11.740There's a bit of breaking news that I just wanted to bring up, Mark, and it kind of dovetails on what's happening with the Trump agenda, which we'll talk more about.
00:56:18.200So, as you know, in Trump 2.0, one of the main resistance efforts is the lawfare and trying to shut down all those executive orders, especially when it comes to illegal immigration and these deportations, the various tools that Trump is using to do them.
00:56:32.600So, an extraordinary event in Wisconsin where there was a hearing underway involving a guy, an illegal immigrant named Eduardo Flores Ruiz, 30 years old, from Mexico, who was charged with battery for allegedly punching someone 30 times in the face after they complained about his loud music.
00:57:15.040And they arrived during a pretrial hearing for this guy.
00:57:19.120She asked them to leave and to speak to the circuit court's chief judge, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
00:57:26.860By the time they returned from doing that, the defendant had left.
00:57:33.960And according, again, to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Judge Dugan was believed to have been hiding the migrant and his attorney in a jury deliberation room.
00:57:45.100Some sources told the outlet that, in fact, what happened was she took him and his lawyer to a side door in the courtroom and directed them to a private hallway into the public area where he fled.
00:57:57.440So what just happened yesterday was the judge was arrested by announced by Cash Patel and the FBI, where he wrote just now the FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee on charges of obstruction.
00:58:14.620She obstructed an immigration arrest operation last week.
00:58:17.180We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing him, an illegal alien, to evade arrest.
00:58:33.240He says, thankfully, our agents chased down the perp on foot, and he's been in custody since, but the judge's obstruction created increased danger to the public.
00:58:49.420She was executive director of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
00:58:54.160I'm sorry, I'm a Catholic, but this doesn't come as any surprise that she, as in this role, would be extremely sympathetic to illegals in her courtroom.
00:59:03.060Her attorney has said that she wholeheartedly regrets and protests her arrest.
00:59:23.580Look, Donald Trump is trying to change a lot of things.
00:59:26.280And one of the things he's trying to change, which during the campaign obviously had broad support, is shut down the border.
00:59:32.600And for many Americans, I'd say tens of millions, they have – they give Donald Trump a lot of leeway and his team at DHS and the other departments to say shutting down the border is going to involve – and removing people.
00:59:48.920They're just going to involve doing some things that maybe aren't by the book and that maybe in some cases gets the balance wrong between national security and civil liberties at least a little bit off.
01:00:00.200And for other Americans, including a lot of people in the media and a lot of Democrats and this judge, anything they see that deviates from the book or anything that violates their sense of whether the border should be open is too far.
01:00:13.380That they don't want anything done along those lines.
01:00:16.220And I think – I like having a big, robust national debate about this.
01:00:20.200You see that in a lot of these cases, and this is one that's going to get more attention.
01:00:24.060It's important to say why are the people supportive of this supportive.
01:00:28.280They're supportive because they say we had an open border.
01:00:32.780You talk about undermining American values, American way of life.
01:00:36.340We had effectively an open border for several years.
01:00:39.180And fixing that as quickly as the president has done involves, in the view of some, taking steps that they say are necessary, that other people say go too far and violate different provisions of the Constitution or American law.
01:00:52.600I think this will continue to play out all four years in office because writing and changing things from where they were to where the president wants to get them, it's clear that he's happy and his administration is happy to do things that have never been done before.
01:01:07.660They're openly making the argument on Team Trump now about, you know, we're not really going to be able to provide all these illegals due process.
01:01:30.800If we have reason to believe that you are not a U.S. citizen, and in all these cases, they've got the goods on these guys, maybe not so much on extra crimes they've committed, but they know.
01:01:48.100There doesn't need to be some three-week hearing or, you know, right to counsel on the ACLU filing class actions to stop it all, Mark.
01:01:55.940I mean, that's – it's sort of forcing Trump's hand on, you know what, due process really isn't that important to me when it comes to these illegals and getting them out.
01:02:03.600Yeah, look, and that's the view of tens of millions of people.
01:02:06.260I think the area that becomes important to talk through is what if it violates American law, okay?
01:02:13.340What if there's an actual statute, not a previous administration policy?
01:02:17.540There are people come on two-way all the time that say due process for someone here illegally whose first act in the United States was to break the law, offended that someone who's here illegally would be called a Maryland man, and people say bring him home when this is not his legal home.
01:02:34.520All of those have added up to people saying, including some of the administration, we're not just happy to violate past practice.
01:02:41.400We're happy to violate the law and wait to see if judges hold them to it, but this is, for many, symbolically important, and as you said, Megan, practically, these people do not have the due process rights of American citizens.
01:02:54.420Historically, they've had some, and some Americans say there should be no change, and the president's saying from practical and moral purposes, there needs to be a change, and the courts eventually are going to decide which of these changes are permissible and which are not.
01:03:09.120But there's no doubt, as I said, tens of millions of Americans would say, if you're here illegally, go back.
01:03:17.100You don't get a judge and the right to confront your accusers and, you know, 12 jurors and all of that, because they just don't think that that's where the bar is for someone whose first act in America was to break the law.
01:03:29.780These judges are truly out of control.
01:03:32.020I mean, the fact that that Judge Boesberg in D.C. actually tried to have a contempt hearing and hold the Trump administration in contempt after the Supreme Court had said he didn't have jurisdiction, that the case was improperly filed before him.
01:03:44.340But he was so desperate to punish Team Trump, he went ahead with the hearing anyway.
01:03:49.500He said, you're likely in criminal contempt.
01:03:51.280If you won't prosecute the case, I will appoint a special prosecutor to go after those who disobeyed my order.
01:04:00.580Then now you've got a judge actually releasing the illegal as ICE is there to arrest him as if it's any of her business, what happens between this guy and ICE.
01:04:10.840I mean, openly subverting the president on it.
01:04:13.760And it reminds me of something I wanted to get to in our Pentagon discussion but forgot.
01:04:18.800James O'Keefe, formerly of Project Veritas, and now he runs this OMG network, he did one of his undercover videos on somebody named Nicholas Terza, who's a Department of Defense branch chief, and got this guy on camera, as James does, on how he is determined to undermine Trump and his agenda within the Department of Defense.
01:05:44.880So just on the previous point, and Judge Bosberg, there is issues related to the rights or presumed or stated rights of people here illegally.
01:05:54.280What's mostly at issue, I believe, in these cases, in that case and some others, is the question of whether the administration's disregarding judicial rulings, improperly disregarding them.
01:06:04.740And that's obviously a very dangerous area.
01:06:20.660I'm just saying, in some of the rulings we're talking about, that's the issue.
01:06:24.120It's not about the rights of people here illegally.
01:06:25.880It's about whether district court judge decisions are being disregarded.
01:06:29.620Again, not in that case, but in some of these other cases, in in in inside the federal government, there are deep staters who are just defending the turf of their agency.
01:06:42.960There's liberals who don't like Trump or Trump's policies.
01:06:47.200There's corrupt people who may be taking money from foreign powers.
01:06:51.360And there's people who whose motives are not clear, but who clearly are part of an effort to obstruct.
01:06:57.300And I've talked to people throughout the administration, and they say part of what they're trying to do now is to is to let the decisions be made as they're supposed to be by setting the by following the agenda the president set and by the people at the top of the departments and agencies who are supposed to carry them out.
01:07:14.340And this is this is one of the things I think Donald Trump has done.
01:07:21.120They're making Ronald Reagan look like George H.W. Bush and, you know, an establishment accommodationist.
01:07:27.760They're really trying to find the people who are going to try to continue to obstruct the agenda and get them out of there or corrupt the agenda and get them out of there.
01:07:38.020And I think you're going to see that video is the tip of the iceberg in every part of the government.
01:07:43.560There are people who are hostile to Donald Trump and they're trying to fix that.
01:07:47.240There was some not great polling that came out on Trump via Fox News.
01:07:53.600It's, you know, we're getting the 100 day or celebrating or lamenting the 100 day mark.
01:07:58.760And it showed that it showed that he has a 44 percent approval rating, 55 percent disapproved.
01:08:04.920That's down five points from a 49 percent approval in March.
01:08:09.500On border security, he gets his highest marks.
01:08:11.640They love what he's done at the border.
01:10:24.160I was like just a little bit like one notch, tranquilo, Harry.
01:10:27.300On the president, talking to people in both parties about the polls.
01:10:30.580And and I know a lot of people like to be skeptical of polls and say they're fake if they don't agree with them.
01:10:34.800I tell people in both parties, if your poll party is polling badly or the trend is bad and you just want to say it's not true, there's sometimes there's an outlier.
01:10:43.780But if all the polls are saying the same thing, you do yourself a disservice if you pretend it's not true.
01:10:48.280Where the president's poll numbers are pretty clear.
01:10:51.040And I believe from talking to folks that they're all down in all the categories that you listed.
01:10:56.120I think it's primarily being driven by the tariffs.
01:10:58.200The tariffs are so unpopular and they're so dominating the news about how many people are upset about them.
01:11:06.700And a lot of people in small businesses, large businesses, raising specters of inflation and shortages, etc.
01:11:13.660And and I think if people are feeling bad about the president, then they're going to feel they're going to get more negative answers.
01:11:20.660His numbers have not gone through the floor because the president has a pretty high floor because there's tens of millions of folks, maybe 40 percent of the electorate, maybe a little higher, who will be with him thick or thin.
01:11:32.340So I think what they're trying to do is raise all the numbers by talking about the tariffs in a different way.
01:11:38.640And as we've seen over the last few days, backing off the sort of doom and gloom about the tariffs, saying the tariffs are going to be a long term thing, but they're not going to be forever, that there's not going to be a major trade war with China.
01:11:52.280I think people as the weekends are feeling a little bit better about things.
01:11:55.300And I would suspect that if they keep that up in a disciplined way, his numbers on all topics will go a little bit back up.
01:12:01.500The paradox of Donald Trump, though, is he's got a very a very high floor, but he's also got a very low ceiling, just as there's tens of millions of people who will be for him no matter what.
01:12:11.200There are tens of millions who will be against him no matter what.
01:12:14.440And so the range of of his of his performance reviews, not just overall approval, but on everything, I think it's a pretty narrow band on the Democrats.
01:12:23.500The reason they're so unpopular now is because conservatives and a lot of independents don't like them.
01:12:29.160They think they're still nutsy cuckoo and too far to the left, but they're also not getting very high marks from from the liberals in their own party who are disappointed that they're not doing a better job and a more energetic job in fighting Donald Trump.
01:12:40.640So I think their floor actually could be lower than it is currently seems because they have a very challenging task.
01:12:49.480They have to rehabilitate their image with moderates and centrists and independents and the Republicans they want to reach while not further alienating the far left.
01:12:57.840And that that that that executing on that requires someone typically of the political skill of Bill Clinton.
01:13:05.380And there aren't very many people like that and no one I see in the Democratic Party currently.
01:13:09.860So their brand is being defined primarily right now, I would say, by four people, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and AOC.
01:13:16.820And if you were on Madison Avenue or in some sexy PR firm or brand management company somewhere else in the country, I don't know that those would be your top four draft picks.
01:13:28.540I think Tim Walls would want you to mention him.
01:14:12.600OK, I mean, I guess that's not bad, but he was just the vice presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket.
01:14:18.600I would expect it would have could have gone a little bigger.
01:14:21.240And then he volunteered that Bill Clinton called him in early October and said to him, don't allow them to make you a caricature.
01:14:29.900I'm referring here to Waltz's own campaign higher ups, not Trump.
01:14:34.320You are a consequential governor and that's what you should be running on.
01:14:38.860So I think Tim Walz, I know you don't agree, but he thinks he's still in it, that he could be on your little short list and maybe you're selling him short.
01:14:49.120I just don't know that he's as top of mind as the other four with the media and the Democratic Party and the public at large when they think about who defines the brand right now.
01:15:55.880You know, we said that we were willing to adopt or we wanted to adopt.
01:16:00.300We said that we wanted to adopt without regard for race.
01:16:02.880By the way, anybody who says race is not a thing in this country should experience an adoption process where there are literally different lists.
01:16:09.380If you say that you want a white kid only versus if you say that doesn't matter, like literally a different list.
01:16:43.940So first of all, the list to get a white baby is longer.
01:16:46.380I mean, there are far more white people in America than there are black people.
01:16:53.340So I'm not sure because it's his team that has been lecturing us.
01:16:57.660Like when Amy Coney Barrett got chosen as Trump's latest justice, that it's not OK for a white couple to adopt a black baby or a baby of color because somehow that's like us working out our need to further colonize.
01:17:11.900I don't understand the criticism, but it was all over the Internet when it came out that she had adopted, I think, two children from Haiti, that the crazy woke leftist that he speaks for will tell you you shouldn't do that, that you're depriving this child of a chance to connect to a parent who shares like the history behind this race.
01:17:33.920But now with this crowd, he wants to say we're racist as Americans because the question is asked of potential adoptive parents.
01:17:41.940Do you have a preference on the race of your baby?
01:17:44.720And then he slips and said you get a discount for the babies of color.
01:17:49.840I mean, you you tell me anybody think of anybody on the right who said that.
01:18:13.240I find the whole thing a little confusing.
01:18:15.140I'm not really sure what points he's trying to make that he really wants to make because the points he seems to be making, I don't know that they're true.
01:18:22.780And I don't really understand why he'd be wanting to make them.
01:18:25.180It just it just I find the whole thing.
01:18:27.100I find the whole thing baffling, but there's no doubt that one of the things, you know, people always want to say this is the reason Donald Trump won.
01:18:34.180There are a lot of reasons he won in 2024.
01:18:36.200I think one of the things that tens of millions of Americans have gotten sick of is the way Democrats talk about race and expect others to talk about race.
01:18:45.040And depending on how you interpret what Pete Buttigieg said, said there, there's certainly a moments that a lot on the right would say that just that's just not the right way to talk about it.
01:18:56.140And certainly not the way conservatives could talk about it.
01:18:58.720So they're not the only example of this, of course, and I want to stay on presidential politics and whether this guy's got the stuff.
01:19:06.380But since we're now on the topic of the Democrats obsession with race, Trump is floating a proposal similar to what they're doing in Hungary, where they're rewarding women for having babies over there.
01:19:20.600You can actually avoid paying taxes if you have, like, I don't know, two kids.
01:19:24.860Forgive me, I don't have all the facts at the ready, but it's something like that.
01:19:28.400And J.D. Vance, of course, has been speaking out about this for a long time.
01:19:32.200So is Tucker Carlson, member of the board.
01:19:37.280OK, so it is something on Team Trump that people are looking at how to incentivize increasing the birth rate because it's not what it needs to be for population replacement.
01:19:45.920And one of the proposals reportedly being kicked around is possibly giving women a $5,000 tax break per child.
01:19:54.380None of this has been formally proposed, but reports are leaking.
01:39:51.340However, Donald Trump was investigated by an independent counsel.
01:39:54.920This needs a serious investigation, not necessarily to punish the media and the people in the Biden
01:39:59.740White House, although they deserve to be punished.
01:40:01.980They deserve to have some sanction for what they did, but to understand how it could happen
01:40:06.140and to make sure it doesn't happen again.
01:40:08.040Because what happened was a guy who was showing mental decline in 2017, I saw it with my own
01:40:13.920eyes in 2017, was allowed to be protected by his family, his aides, and the White House press corps, the same White House press corps, organizations,
01:40:24.720and in many cases, the same people now covering Donald Trump, who they participated in the cover
01:40:30.500above Joe Biden with the express intent of not helping Donald Trump.
01:41:11.120And it reminded me of when I sat down with the New York Times recently,
01:41:14.340and she was trying to tell me that they're the vaunted New York Times.
01:41:16.360And I was trying to say, really, where was Peter Baker on the mental decline story?
01:41:20.020Why didn't he figure out that a neurologist had been to the White House 10 times in the past year?
01:41:23.980Don't tell me about the vaunted corporate media being so much better and more reliable than the random podcast host.
01:41:30.940This is the biggest story we've had in a decade.
01:41:33.240And they, if you wanted to be most charitable, missed it.
01:41:36.380But the truth is, actively covered it up.
01:41:39.080Actively covered it up and didn't report when Biden officials called them the few times a few people raised it,
01:41:46.820called them and said, if you keep doing that, you will be cut off.
01:41:50.720That should have been a front page story, no matter if the person said off the record before that or not.
01:41:55.540They should have said, I don't accept off the record.
01:41:57.360And no, you cannot tell us how to cover the president's obvious mental decline.
01:42:01.760So it's one of the biggest stories of all time.
01:42:05.960And I have so much to say about the interview the New York Times did with you.
01:42:10.760But I will say they did not show, I felt the person who interviewed you, did not show an appreciation for why you're successful as contrasts with the way her paper operates on a lot of stories.