The Megyn Kelly Show - Megyn's Time 100 Recap, Trump's Board of Directors, and Dems' Sagging Poll Numbers, with Mark Halperin ｜ Ep. 1057

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00:00:31.200 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:42.520 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.840 It's Friday and we have a great mix of political news and Hollywood gossip,

00:00:51.660 some of it involving yours truly.

00:00:53.140 We also wanted to let you know that we are soon going to be dropping an exclusive interview

00:00:57.980 with Colin Carroll.

00:00:59.400 He is one of those Pentagon officials fired last week reportedly over a leaks investigation.

00:01:06.660 But was it actually something else?

00:01:08.680 He will tell his story in full right here and we will drop it for you just a bit later.

00:01:14.620 He hasn't spoken out yet publicly, so this will be the first you'll hear from him.

00:01:19.620 And I think you're going to find his testimonial very compelling.

00:01:23.880 But first, last night I did go to the Time 100.

00:01:28.120 You remember yesterday I was still a little bit on the fence.

00:01:30.480 Do I go? Do I not go?

00:01:32.480 I don't totally believe in these big, you know, red carpet galas.

00:01:37.880 I've been to very, very many of these.

00:01:40.300 And I don't know.

00:01:42.720 I just had mixed feelings about it.

00:01:45.840 It's very self-congratulatory, right, to go to something like that.

00:01:50.000 And it's also not true.

00:01:52.820 You know, I said this last night with all due respect to Time.

00:01:55.860 I don't think they really do pick the most influential people in the country.

00:01:59.720 You know, I think it's really like a PR event for Time.

00:02:03.040 And that's fine.

00:02:04.000 You know, I don't want to be ungrateful.

00:02:05.520 I mean, I appreciate being named again, but it's I have to be honest.

00:02:09.920 These things, they're very navel-gazy.

00:02:12.820 And it's I don't know.

00:02:14.920 Can I tell you, I looked around last night.

00:02:16.420 There was not one other conservative in the room.

00:02:18.540 Not one.

00:02:19.640 Not one.

00:02:21.760 You'd find like the occasional civilian who'd come over and be like, hey, I'm one of, you know, your kind.

00:02:27.200 But like not as soon.

00:02:29.040 Now, they did name some.

00:02:30.680 Like J.D. Vance was named and some other people who, you know, were named as Joe Rogan.

00:02:35.220 I mean, he's not conservative, but, you know, he voted for Trump.

00:02:37.660 Anyway, they weren't there.

00:02:39.420 But I mean, of the 100, I'd say about six or seven leaned right.

00:02:45.620 It's just the way it is.

00:02:46.780 It's the way it is in media.

00:02:47.880 It's the way it is in New York.

00:02:49.660 And so it's just, you know, the things are awkward.

00:02:51.480 Plus, let's face it.

00:02:52.500 What do we do on this show but criticize the media left and right and up and down all day every day?

00:02:57.700 And half of them were there.

00:02:59.580 So that's awkward.

00:03:01.440 It's awkward.

00:03:03.020 All right.

00:03:03.600 We're going to get into all the stories in just a minute.

00:03:06.460 And along for this ride with me today is Mark Halperin.

00:03:10.420 Mark is editor-in-chief and host of Two Way on YouTube.

00:03:13.900 And now starting next week, he's the host of a brand new show on the MK Media Network.

00:03:19.260 It's called Next Up with Mark Halperin.

00:03:22.660 It launches on Tuesday, okay, this coming Tuesday.

00:03:26.480 So go ahead and subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts, okay, for free, at NextUpHalperin.

00:03:33.740 All right?

00:03:34.080 Just Google that or search that in your podcast search bar or in your YouTube search bar.

00:03:38.460 NextUpHalperin on YouTube, on Apple, Spotify, all social platforms, NextUpHalperin.com.

00:03:45.880 Go ahead and subscribe and follow now so you don't miss anything that Mark reports because

00:03:50.980 he's always got exclusives and he's always way ahead of the rest of the pack.

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00:05:18.740 Mark, great to see you.

00:05:20.060 Megan, great to see you.

00:05:20.960 Really happy to be part of this and grateful to you and all of your team for making me a

00:05:25.400 part of it.

00:05:26.440 Oh, the pleasure has been all ours.

00:05:28.460 All right, I want to show the audience the trailer for Next Up, because I love it, and

00:05:33.180 the ending's really cute, too.

00:05:34.220 Watch this.

00:05:35.120 Breaking news.

00:05:35.760 Breaking news.

00:05:36.540 Breaking news.

00:05:37.180 I just love breaking news.

00:05:39.260 According to my sources, President Biden has agreed to step down as a Democratic nominee.

00:05:44.220 Oh, man.

00:05:45.080 She's in a lot of trouble.

00:05:46.340 I'm not saying she'll lose all six, but she's endangered.

00:05:48.640 Scott Bessent, according to a well-placed source, will be the Treasury Secretary.

00:05:52.220 We're reporting first.

00:05:53.180 My Relentless Focus is on what's next up, what you want to know, and what you need to

00:05:58.540 know.

00:05:59.080 I'm Mark Halperin.

00:05:59.820 My new program is called Next Up.

00:06:02.220 It's part of Megan Kelly's Media Network, and I'll be releasing new episodes every Tuesday

00:06:06.460 and Thursday, starting April 29th.

00:06:08.880 This is independent media, not corporate media.

00:06:11.280 My best reporting from the best sources, and my fresh analysis, plus newsmakers, and sophisticated,

00:06:17.240 smart, and fun conversations.

00:06:19.500 Everything that gives you an inside look at what's next up.

00:06:22.780 Be the first to know who and what are next up.

00:06:28.460 What's next up in my house?

00:06:30.500 Next up is...

00:06:31.480 These guys.

00:06:32.520 Make sure you like and subscribe.

00:06:36.760 All right.

00:06:37.460 Who is that sweet baby? 1.00

00:06:39.760 That's my little boy, James, who every time I'm doing something on Two Way, and I'm sure

00:06:44.260 he'll say the same thing about Next Up, always says, is this another boring politics show?

00:06:49.320 And he looks at my number of followers compared to the people he watches on YouTube, and he

00:06:55.060 thinks I'm kind of a loser because he's watching people with millions and millions of followers.

00:06:59.380 So I decided if I got him a little bit invested in Next Up, maybe he'd cut me some slack for

00:07:05.220 the first few episodes.

00:07:06.800 Yeah.

00:07:07.200 No, same.

00:07:07.660 My kids, they watch like a Mr. Beast video, and it's got like 100 million downloads, and

00:07:13.000 they're like, Mom, you know, you really got to step up your game.

00:07:14.860 Like, yeah, sure.

00:07:16.040 100 million.

00:07:16.820 Same.

00:07:17.980 That can't be the goal. 1.00

00:07:18.780 Same thing in my asshole. 1.00

00:07:20.420 Okay. 1.00

00:07:20.880 So let's start with the Time 100, and then we can talk about that other ridiculous gathering

00:07:24.380 that's happening this weekend.

00:07:25.320 So I know you've been, this is, I've, the way it works is like you get inducted, and

00:07:32.320 then they invite you back as like, you know, one of the members.

00:07:36.240 Like a reigning, like a reigning Jeopardy champion.

00:07:38.980 Yeah, exactly.

00:07:39.820 So I've been a few times because I got inducted back in 2014.

00:07:42.900 And I got to be honest, when they inducted me again this year, I was like, did they forget

00:07:48.980 that they already put me on this list back in 2014?

00:07:51.380 I don't even know if you, can you, can you be inducted twice?

00:07:54.060 I have no idea.

00:07:55.120 You can.

00:07:55.760 You can.

00:07:56.280 Yeah.

00:07:56.700 And then I found out it wasn't a mistake, which I thought it was, might've been.

00:08:01.120 Anyway, so that's fine.

00:08:02.780 But I had to tell you, Mark, I really did wrestle with, like, I don't really, the people at Time

00:08:07.560 were absolutely lovely.

00:08:08.500 I should say that up front.

00:08:09.500 They were really nice up and down the line.

00:08:11.500 And like, did not sense one iota of hostility toward me, given my political views.

00:08:18.420 You know, they, they did nothing other than make me feel welcome and were super kind.

00:08:21.700 And I appreciate that.

00:08:22.560 But the nature of the gathering is just off-putting to me.

00:08:26.480 Whereas when I first went in 14, I was a little bit more starry-eyed.

00:08:31.240 It was very cool.

00:08:32.300 It felt like something to me.

00:08:33.860 You know, I, it felt like, wow, I've accomplished something, which, you know, I hadn't, I, I'd

00:08:39.340 launched my primetime show.

00:08:40.400 That was good.

00:08:40.960 But I get, even then I wasn't one of the most influential people.

00:08:45.040 And, um, you go and you, you get asked, like, what does it mean to you to be one of the,

00:08:52.100 it's like, oh God.

00:08:53.320 And so I, I wrestled with whether I should go on the red carpet and give interviews.

00:08:58.140 I definitely was going on the red carpet for a picture.

00:09:00.300 For sure.

00:09:00.860 I wanted to do that.

00:09:01.800 But, but you also have to choose whether you want to talk to the, you know, the press

00:09:05.720 that's there, like Daily Mail and Extra and all those folks.

00:09:08.700 So you, you'll, you'll hear a little bit of that struggle as I sat and spoke to Extra TV.

00:09:16.700 Here's a soundbite.

00:09:19.260 Congratulations.

00:09:19.820 I want to know when you first found out that you were on the list, what was your reaction?

00:09:25.020 I kind of laughed because I've been, I've been here before and then I was canceled and

00:09:29.040 now here I'm back again.

00:09:30.180 And so that was good.

00:09:32.220 What does that say to you?

00:09:34.380 It says that nobody decides who gets canceled other than the American public.

00:09:40.960 Okay.

00:09:41.640 So Abigail Fine and my assistant insisted that we play that soundbite, which we did because

00:09:46.480 she was with me through the set cancellation.

00:09:48.960 But, you know, overall it just felt a little embarrassing, right?

00:09:53.400 To be walking around with people pretending that, that, that this is real, that this really

00:09:59.020 is the 100 most influential people and that somehow you've moved up in some imaginary power

00:10:06.840 grid.

00:10:07.960 Yeah.

00:10:08.800 Um, first of all, I'm like you, any event that I can't wear sneakers to the bar is high

00:10:12.760 to get me to get dressed and go.

00:10:14.940 Um, look, I worked at time.

00:10:17.360 This, this event, I'll, I'll use an in play word.

00:10:19.900 It's a scam.

00:10:20.780 It's an advertising play.

00:10:23.080 They, they use the leverage of a hundred plus years of, of a great journalism brand.

00:10:28.180 And they say to famous people and influential people, come be at the dinner and you can

00:10:33.440 tell people you're one of the hundred most influential people in the world.

00:10:35.840 Then they say to their biggest advertisers, come sit at a table.

00:10:39.340 You can sit with a Nobel prize winner and Megyn Kelly.

00:10:41.640 It's, it is, I, I won't say it's corrupt, but it is not an exercise in journalism.

00:10:46.780 It's an exercise in stroking and, and cultivating advertisers.

00:10:50.660 Yes.

00:10:51.440 Yes.

00:10:52.240 Right.

00:10:52.740 Of course.

00:10:53.760 And, uh, you know, when, when you're there, it's very clear cause you look around and it's

00:10:57.640 like, all right, some people there have accomplished so much like Simone Biles.

00:11:01.460 She was there.

00:11:02.140 She spoke.

00:11:03.080 She's impressive by anybody's measure. 1.00

00:11:05.460 I mean, she's just incredible.

00:11:07.360 She's been through a lot too.

00:11:08.520 And, you know, total respect.

00:11:09.940 But then you had people like Blake Lively who was there with her husband, Ryan Reynolds,

00:11:15.560 by the way, they were there.

00:11:17.100 I think she was inducted the first year I was inducted to, we're on the same path with

00:11:21.140 these people.

00:11:22.480 And Blake Lively has been in some movies and some, some successful TV shows, but in no

00:11:28.980 world is this person, one of the most influential people in America.

00:11:33.960 This is part of what you say is the scam.

00:11:36.640 And here is another thing I was wrestling with.

00:11:40.000 I knew if I went and I gave interviews on the red carpet, Mark, I was going to be honest

00:11:45.720 in response to the questions, which as you know, is a hard no for these things.

00:11:52.000 Like that's not the goal.

00:11:54.000 You don't be honest.

00:11:55.400 You just like play it straight.

00:11:56.960 You're supposed to say you're in love.

00:11:58.420 I'm in love with the other 99 and I'm the least accomplished. 0.99

00:12:02.700 That's right.

00:12:03.380 I'm so honored to be here.

00:12:05.320 Maybe I shouldn't go over to the people and give an interview, but then I was like, ah,

00:12:10.720 F it.

00:12:11.440 So I did.

00:12:12.280 And I was asked by the Daily Mail about Blake Lively.

00:12:16.100 And here's how that went.

00:12:17.580 So who are you most looking forward to seeing the night?

00:12:20.400 Well, I'm definitely hoping for some sort of a selfie in the distance with both Blake

00:12:24.820 Lively and Meghan Markle since they provided me with so many hours of content.

00:12:28.440 There's a lot of controversy right now with Blake being on the Time 100 list.

00:12:33.740 It's a ridiculous joke.

00:12:35.120 She shouldn't be there. 0.99

00:12:35.880 She has no influence over anything.

00:12:37.160 Right.

00:12:38.260 I mean, what do you think of when you read headlines like every day about her?

00:12:42.780 I mean, I think she launched a fake Me Too allegation against him and she's lived to regret doing

00:12:50.660 it because virtually every allegation she has made has fallen apart.

00:12:54.420 And so for her to be honored for doing that, to try to ruin a man over absolutely nothing

00:12:57.840 is a scandal.

00:12:59.180 Yeah.

00:12:59.420 And obviously they're looking for big stars to come here and generate pages on their magazines,

00:13:04.660 but that was very wrong.

00:13:06.400 Right.

00:13:07.380 Are you going to be avoiding her inside because she's expected to be here with Ryan?

00:13:12.280 I have a feeling she's going to be avoiding me.

00:13:15.000 I won't be avoiding anybody.

00:13:16.580 I'm good.

00:13:18.620 And what do you think of her new movie, Another Simple Favor?

00:13:22.460 People are saying she's shooting with Anna.

00:13:24.540 Do you believe that?

00:13:25.620 I couldn't care less, but I do care when people bastardize Me Too allegations against

00:13:31.060 people who don't deserve it.

00:13:33.340 And I think notwithstanding the fact that they can lawyer up with very powerful PR people

00:13:39.140 and lawyers and so on, we have to be very clear eyed on what looks real and what doesn't

00:13:43.500 and call it out when it isn't.

00:13:45.080 Otherwise, no one who's actually experienced these things is going to be believed.

00:13:50.060 So, you know, now today there are a bunch of headlines about that and me specifically

00:13:57.440 hitting her on what I said, I believe, is a fake Me Too claim against Justin Baldoni.

00:14:02.860 Go ahead.

00:14:04.120 Well, I was going to say, in all fairness, Megan, you brought up Blake Lively, not the

00:14:08.000 Daily Mail.

00:14:09.220 Well, she said, who are you excited to see?

00:14:11.800 So that's one person.

00:14:13.420 I know.

00:14:13.560 I know.

00:14:15.200 Look, you know, as you said originally, it is not the 100 most influential people in

00:14:21.280 the world.

00:14:21.700 Far from it.

00:14:22.420 I would say every year there might be two or three people who could arguably be on that

00:14:27.220 actual list.

00:14:28.460 Yeah.

00:14:28.940 But there is no universe, none, where Blake Lively would be on the list.

00:14:34.400 And I was not surprised you said what you said.

00:14:38.040 And I was not surprised that a lot of the media found it interesting.

00:14:40.800 Yeah, because it's very rare to have a red carpet comment along those lines.

00:14:46.200 Correct.

00:14:46.700 And I don't mean to be impolite, but I got it.

00:14:49.920 I'm not going to lie.

00:14:51.000 It's like I'm very outspoken about my opinion on this person on this show.

00:14:55.240 Millions of people have already heard it.

00:14:56.860 And in no world was I going to stand there and try to pretend like I didn't feel that

00:15:01.600 was just would have been a farce.

00:15:02.880 But I have to tell you, it's pretty cathartic to say how you really feel.

00:15:06.000 It's like I just said what was real.

00:15:08.880 Like I did it.

00:15:09.720 And it's very funny because you can see Doug, my husband, in the background like,

00:15:13.260 OK, here we go.

00:15:14.880 This is happening.

00:15:17.120 Then there was another interviewer.

00:15:19.780 Yeah, go ahead.

00:15:20.260 Sorry.

00:15:21.060 It'd be the equivalent if you won an Oscar.

00:15:22.580 And rather than going up and saying how honored you were to be to win over the other four

00:15:27.020 nominees, if you said, you know what, in thinking about the five performances, I definitely

00:15:31.040 deserve to win.

00:15:31.920 It would be it'd be break, breaking, breaking the fourth wall in the same way or more, more

00:15:38.300 likely, like none of us really deserves to be here. 0.96

00:15:41.080 This is ridiculous. 0.71

00:15:42.280 I should be here. 0.91

00:15:43.380 Bad year in my category.

00:15:44.560 It's a bad year in my category.

00:15:46.260 And you four shouldn't be here either.

00:15:47.780 They asked me about my recent dust up with George Clooney, who rather than like focusing

00:15:53.880 on his waning acting career, is commenting on yours truly and my journalism.

00:16:00.000 And I had a little response to him on the show the other day.

00:16:03.380 And here's that exchange when that came up.

00:16:05.940 You don't on your show also shy away from controversy.

00:16:10.060 I saw that you addressed George Clooney's comments.

00:16:12.920 Why did you feel the need to respond?

00:16:15.240 Oh, because it's too delicious not to.

00:16:18.860 Honestly, George Clooney trying to advise me on how to practice journalism.

00:16:22.480 Take care, honey.

00:16:23.740 OK, you know what?

00:16:24.500 He should call me up.

00:16:25.400 I would love to talk to him about it.

00:16:26.820 He's obviously got thoughts on me.

00:16:28.380 So let's do that.

00:16:29.700 That'll be fun.

00:16:31.560 So, Mark, it was basically a night of antagonism.

00:16:35.940 Yeah, and I mean, you know, taking on Blake Lively is one thing.

00:16:40.240 Clooney is like taking on royalty.

00:16:42.660 So, again, you're one of the few people with the courage and the reality to say what you said.

00:16:49.500 And I think, I hope people, I mean, obviously people think it's interesting because you did it.

00:16:54.640 But I hope people focus on at least somewhat on the substance of what you said,

00:16:57.940 because he has gotten a free ride for the arc of what he did.

00:17:02.060 Yeah, I mean, beta royalty.

00:17:04.220 That's the truth.

00:17:05.320 Beta royalty.

00:17:06.020 At best, like Maureen says about Meghan Markle, beta royal or Harry.

00:17:10.320 Meghan Markle was not there.

00:17:12.320 She actually only wound up participating in the summit leading up to the big event,

00:17:17.240 which I was invited to, but declined to go.

00:17:19.560 Had I known we might have crossed paths, I might have reconsidered it.

00:17:22.900 But it's probably best for all that we did not.

00:17:25.080 I mean, the last thing I want to be honest with you is for her to, like,

00:17:27.880 come over and give me a hug. 0.99

00:17:28.880 And then I'd feel bad about being honest about how, you know, ridiculous she is. 0.99

00:17:32.420 So I think I might have dodged a bullet there.

00:17:34.720 On the subject of Blake Lively, before we leave the Time 100, she was there.

00:17:39.520 And I did manage to get my selfie, which you heard me reference there, with Doug and yours truly in the foreground.

00:17:45.760 And she's in the back. 0.81

00:17:48.080 You can see her right there.

00:17:49.140 She's right behind me.

00:17:50.360 And she's—you can see the side view. 0.66

00:17:52.480 She's having a chat with somebody.

00:17:53.900 She's an absolutely beautiful woman.

00:17:55.740 She was with Ryan Reynolds.

00:17:56.920 He was there.

00:17:57.500 He was very nice to everybody around him.

00:17:59.760 But 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.

00:18:09.300 And so I couldn't help looking at her the whole night like some sort of twisted mean girl.

00:18:13.520 Like, 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.

00:18:22.280 Now, there's still going to be a trial.

00:18:23.360 She'll have her day in court and all that, supposedly. 0.98

00:18:25.280 But 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.

00:18:35.360 So she had the opportunity to go up before the audience and give a speech.

00:18:38.660 You know, they pick one or two.

00:18:39.860 Like I mentioned, Simone Biles was one. 1.00

00:18:42.740 Blake Lively is another. 0.88

00:18:44.060 She decided to make the whole thing about her mother's rape.

00:18:49.480 Here's a bit.

00:18:51.280 What does influence mean?

00:18:52.800 How we use that matters.

00:18:55.280 I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum.

00:19:00.760 What I will speak to you separately is the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today.

00:19:06.660 Before 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.

00:19:14.080 My life was influenced most by my mother sitting here tonight.

00:19:17.940 She wanted me to share with you that she is a survivor of the worst crimes someone can commit against a woman. 0.99

00:19:24.260 My mom never got justice from her work acquaintance who attempted to take her life. 0.59

00:19:29.240 She has always credited her beating heart today with a story she heard from another woman in a similar circumstance.

00:19:35.520 The 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.

00:19:48.240 We 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.

00:20:10.960 Never 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,

00:20:40.640 I 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.

00:20:49.720 Okay, Mark. Now, why she would make her whole speech about her mother's trauma from more than 45 years ago, I don't know.

00:21:00.840 But 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.

00:21:11.420 She 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,

00:21:23.800 as 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,

00:21:33.400 not in any space they inhabit, not physically, not emotionally, not professionally. Thank you.

00:21:38.860 Thank you. My God. What did you make of it?

00:21:42.720 How long did she go on for?

00:21:45.340 Like 10 minutes.

00:21:47.140 Yeah.

00:21:47.600 Like seven.

00:21:48.000 I mean, look, obviously, to say the obvious, I don't want to minimize the horrible experience her mother had as she described it,

00:21:54.120 but tonally, as you said, for the occasion, probably a little bit off key.

00:22:00.680 But also, I agree with your view of it, which is don't ever minimize violence against anyone, including women.

00:22:09.300 But to say that girls have to be kind of afraid their whole lives rather than strong and empowered and careful,

00:22:17.540 I don't know that that would be the consensus view of how to shape the lives of young women.

00:22:24.120 To 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.

00:22:36.580 She's really taken a serious hit.

00:22:38.920 You know, she thought she was going to file this Me Too claim against him and sort of, you know, with the Human Rights Group

00:22:43.820 and get the New York Times to write about it, and she was going to be elevated as a Me Too heroine.

00:22:48.080 And instead, he lawyered up and he got a great one, happens to be my own lawyer too, Brian Friedman,

00:22:54.360 and started fighting her back on each and every claim.

00:22:57.320 And as I've said, they started to fall apart.

00:22:59.740 I mean, we've covered it extensively on this show.

00:23:02.420 And so the public opinion of Blake Lively has gone down precipitously.

00:23:06.360 She has a whole legion of people who no longer like her at all. 0.99

00:23:10.060 And my own belief is she used her mother's rape to try to improve her standing with a certain section of the populace.

00:23:20.040 Like, feel sorry for my mom, feel sorry for me, because I understand trauma.

00:23:25.500 And the wink and a nod piece of it was I, too, am a victim.

00:23:31.840 And, you know, like the torch has been passed.

00:23:34.360 And just like every woman and little girl, I and my children and all of yours, too, the females,

00:23:40.300 have to live in fear that they will never be safe anywhere.

00:23:44.360 Thanks a lot for coming.

00:23:45.520 I'm Blake Lively.

00:23:46.700 I mean, it was just, I thought, such an obvious manipulation of her image.

00:23:51.900 She used her mother and the mother's supposed trauma. 1.00

00:23:55.820 I have no idea what happened to the mother.

00:23:57.800 And I thought it was just one of the most cynical displays.

00:24:00.940 Yeah, I look, I thought it probably not as close as you, but I followed it really closely.

00:24:05.640 It's an interesting story and is compelling.

00:24:07.060 And I agree with you so far based on what we've seen publicly.

00:24:10.760 A lot of the things she said just are not backed up, but not just by documented evidence,

00:24:15.060 but by other people who had insight into what happened.

00:24:17.920 And clearly, she's super concerned about her public image.

00:24:21.540 And clearly, whenever she goes out now, she's got the opportunity to try to shape it and reshape it.

00:24:27.960 And I agree.

00:24:28.980 I agree with you.

00:24:29.680 This seemed like a self-conscious attempt to recast her image at a time when she went on offense

00:24:36.240 and now she's very much on defense.

00:24:38.080 You know, the last bit of it reminded me of we did a segment a couple of weeks ago, a month ago,

00:24:42.720 on Bill Weir, who's at CNN as their like climate reporter now.

00:24:47.040 And he admitted that both in 2020 when his kid was born and then again in 2024 on Earth Day,

00:24:53.620 he wrote a letter to his son.

00:24:55.820 And it was like, I'm very sad that the water that you drink will be covered in toxins,

00:25:02.740 that the ice cream you try to eat will melt in a world that's too warm and dying.

00:25:08.020 It was the darkest stuff, Mark.

00:25:10.440 And that's like, I can speak to this.

00:25:12.740 I'm a mother of two boys and a daughter.

00:25:15.180 And in no world am I privately sitting here waiting in fear as I watch my daughter prance around in princess dresses.

00:25:22.360 When am I going to have to tell her she'll never be safe?

00:25:24.920 There's no place.

00:25:25.840 Not online, not at work, not at home, not on.

00:25:28.440 But like, that's just it's a leftist thing, this catastrophizing that we're in this extremely dark world.

00:25:36.360 And there's danger around every corner, mostly at the fault of conservatives.

00:25:40.360 And 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.

00:25:48.300 Maybe 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.

00:26:00.000 And with lurking people wanting to hurt us, it's there's like a psychosis.

00:26:05.260 But it is, in my experience, limited to the left.

00:26:09.000 The 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.

00:26:21.960 Yeah, 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.

00:26:35.120 It's just not not the way I think anybody should parent, whether they're kids or boys or boys or girls.

00:26:42.100 I'll say this.

00:26:43.360 I saw Ed Sheeran again.

00:26:45.100 I interviewed him at NBC, and he was completely charming then.

00:26:48.880 And once again, completely charming last night.

00:26:52.000 Gail King was there, and she was working the tables that had celebrities at them the way a bride works her wedding. 1.00

00:26:59.500 I mean, she did not skip somebody who was famous. 0.91

00:27:02.680 It was ridiculous.

00:27:05.200 Most of us leave the-

00:27:06.440 You know, Gail's in the always-be-booking mode. 0.99

00:27:10.160 Yeah, I mean, but most of us leave the celebrities alone, I have to say.

00:27:12.980 It's like, there's something a little pathetic about running after them, like, as a supplicant, like, please, please talk to me.

00:27:20.080 Obviously, she did not feel that way. 0.78

00:27:21.660 We had the other musical entertainment.

00:27:27.080 He was great.

00:27:28.240 My gosh, now I'm going to forget his name.

00:27:30.360 Miles Smith.

00:27:31.400 He was amazing, and I would definitely go see him in concert.

00:27:35.960 I think he's having one this Monday night.

00:27:38.500 And last but not least at all, I met Demi Moore, who was stunning, and we posed for a photograph together.

00:27:48.720 Here we are, and could not have been nicer.

00:27:52.000 She was completely friendly to everybody there.

00:27:54.620 I have to say to her credit, because she's an A-list star for sure.

00:27:56.940 And, 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.

00:28:06.000 So that's my armchair assessment of the Time 100.

00:28:09.320 Again, my thanks to Time.

00:28:10.580 I don't mean to sound like an ingrate.

00:28:12.040 I just have to be honest about my feelings and the whole thing.

00:28:14.780 I'm glad you went.

00:28:15.740 Glad you went.

00:28:16.400 Yeah.

00:28:16.960 Yeah, me too.

00:28:18.200 Doug and I had fun, and we met some nice people.

00:28:20.660 We loved our table in particular.

00:28:21.660 Okay, 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.

00:28:34.400 And I'm sure we've both been to many of these things.

00:28:37.320 They are a complete bore.

00:28:40.700 They're just absolutely painful.

00:28:43.540 But there's a time in Washington when you have to do it in your career.

00:28:47.000 And it's amazing to me that they're still going.

00:28:49.540 This year, President Trump will not be there.

00:28:51.120 He doesn't have a good relationship with the media, so there's even less reason to go.

00:28:54.580 And you tell me whether these things have long passed their expiration date.

00:29:01.140 Well, 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.

00:29:12.600 So I liked them just because I could see, you know, 50 people in one night and to reacquaint.

00:29:18.300 So for me, that was good.

00:29:19.760 The 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.

00:29:44.160 In 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.

00:29:55.740 So Washington in general is such a boring place that I don't mind a little celebrity and a little bit of excitement.

00:30:02.140 But 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.

00:30:15.680 So here's one of the funniest and most telling takes that I just read before we came to air on NerdProm.

00:30:25.260 It'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.

00:30:37.580 I won't be a part of it. Good for you, Colby. Good for you. He's so self-congratulatory again.

00:30:46.560 And 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.

00:31:02.820 That'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.

00:31:14.260 They 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.

00:31:26.220 But his staffers like Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway still really gave a shit. 0.98

00:31:30.700 Now it's like the current tripe White House truly not performatively hates and is attacking the press. 0.98

00:31:37.160 Then 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,

00:31:47.180 the White House bringing in all these ridiculously sycophantic alt media figures, Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend at all.

00:31:54.020 It's an unsettling time to be in news media and an odd time to be celebrating anything.

00:31:59.660 Finally, said a longtime cable news anchor to Colby Hall,

00:32:02.500 To me, this represents everything that's wrong with both Washington and the White House press corps,

00:32:06.560 which is in the midst of a crisis of relevancy, public trust and confidence.

00:32:10.000 Having a big black tie soiree does not read right to Americans.

00:32:13.680 That's the only point I will cede of those three.

00:32:17.000 So the the press is outraged that anybody would go to celebrate.

00:32:21.960 The white like it's not a celebration of Trump, but in the era of Trump,

00:32:25.960 they're not even allowed to go to this because they hate Trump.

00:32:28.260 You know, there's a thing in Politico playbook this morning that I read twice because I thought maybe I was missing a parody.

00:32:35.420 But, you know, the parties have already started.

00:32:37.600 They start on like Wednesday night.

00:32:39.140 And they quote a reporter saying that all the reporters are hugging each other

00:32:43.440 and the hugs are lingering a little longer than usual because everybody is so upset.

00:32:47.940 They're also traumatized by having to cover a Republican president.

00:32:51.620 I mean, again, this this goes back to the Biden years and the Obama years.

00:32:57.140 The thing that's so obvious that they just won't admit is that the central dynamic here is not some of the things they claim it is.

00:33:06.640 The central dynamic is they've covered Republican presidents, particularly this one, hostily for decades.

00:33:12.540 And they want to they want to be treated exactly the same way they are treated by Barack Obama or Bill Clinton.

00:33:19.100 And they just they're just not going to be treated that way.

00:33:22.240 And and it's possible that even if they change their behavior and weren't biased, maybe the Trump administration wouldn't change.

00:33:28.360 But let's try it and see.

00:33:29.840 Let's try covering them fairly and then see what happens.

00:33:32.360 Mm 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.

00:33:41.740 And he says, like, this is the guy he's he hates me. 0.99

00:33:45.140 He reported what Trump says is a lie about Trump referring to our dead soldiers as suckers and losers. 0.98

00:33:51.260 He reported the signal gate controversy, which has been, you know, a big story in Trump's first 100 days. 0.98

00:33:56.460 And yet he still sat down with him.

00:33:59.100 You know, it's like Trump.

00:34:00.560 Look, he and he and I were on the outs for nine months.

00:34:03.380 He still sat down with me.

00:34:04.500 He didn't actually even like the interview.

00:34:05.800 But then, you know, he to his credit, he will give you second and third and fourth chances in the press.

00:34:13.800 They just hate him.

00:34:15.180 They hate his politics, Mark.

00:34:16.620 It's not about what he says about the press.

00:34:19.440 No, of course.

00:34:20.200 You 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?

00:34:29.240 They'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.

00:34:37.520 OK, so what I say to them is, OK, you've turned that into a crisis of the Constitution.

00:34:42.940 In the last administration, the Biden folks did the exact same thing to the New York Post.

00:34:47.900 They didn't like the New York Post coverage of Hunter Biden.

00:34:50.200 And so they excluded the New York Post reporters from covering White House events.

00:34:54.700 I'd argue that that was even worse because of the nature of of why they were so angry and because it wasn't covered.

00:35:01.040 That wasn't covered anywhere but the New York Post and by people like us.

00:35:04.520 And 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.

00:35:12.860 And it's treated as a constitutional crisis.

00:35:15.220 So 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.

00:35:28.040 He doesn't appreciate us.

00:35:29.120 He doesn't appreciate what we do.

00:35:30.940 So all presidents don't like their coverage.

00:35:34.080 All presidents do things to the media that I wish they wouldn't do.

00:35:37.840 But the double standard is so strong.

00:35:40.540 I don't know.

00:35:41.360 I 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.

00:35:51.440 I'm not saying they should cover Donald Trump lightly.

00:35:54.160 What 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.

00:36:00.920 Mm-hmm.

00:36:01.540 I should say this.

00:36:03.020 The headline in HuffPost this morning is,

00:36:06.340 HuffPost 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.

00:36:16.080 HuffPost is bringing guests who have experienced the fallout firsthand, some guy who is a federal watchdog in charge of protecting whistleblowers who Trump fired,

00:36:26.100 Rohit Chopra, who headed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until Trump fired him, Andrew Bivens, a USAID employee.

00:36:33.280 I mean, okay.

00:36:34.700 Not the role of the media.

00:36:36.160 That's not the role of the media.

00:36:37.840 Right?

00:36:38.740 Like, take a stand.

00:36:40.780 Take a position, HuffPost.

00:36:41.900 That's great.

00:36:42.400 Just own it.

00:36:42.960 In any event, it will go forward, and I'm sure we'll enjoy the pictures and stories that come out of it and cover it right here.

00:36:52.200 Okay.

00:36:52.820 Before we move on totally from White House Correspondents' Dinners, they haven't always been totally inconsequential.

00:36:59.540 And while they'll sit there this year lamenting the fact that President Trump is in the Oval,

00:37:04.720 it's arguably because of their little event that he ran in the first place.

00:37:10.680 You 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.

00:37:23.700 And do you care to explain why?

00:37:25.940 And then we will play the soundbite.

00:37:28.320 Well, look, one thing I do have liked historically about the dinner is the comedy.

00:37:32.880 When the professional comedians have been good, I think it's been great.

00:37:37.240 And I think presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama were brilliant.

00:37:42.080 I think they worked on great routines with their teams.

00:37:47.500 I thought their delivery was great.

00:37:49.060 I really enjoyed being in the room for those comedic stylings.

00:37:52.700 In 2011, Donald Trump attended the dinner.

00:37:57.320 I don't know how many others he's attended before he ran because he wasn't a big Washington guy.

00:38:03.180 And in fact, when I ran into him that night before the comedian spoke, he did what he always did to me.

00:38:08.880 Whenever I saw him anywhere in the country besides New York, he offered me a ride home.

00:38:12.980 He always was saying, come fly back to New York.

00:38:14.980 I didn't because I was staying on to go to parties afterwards.

00:38:17.540 But that night, he was a big topic of the comedian's routine.

00:38:24.900 And he didn't like it.

00:38:26.480 He could just tell from his face.

00:38:27.840 And maybe you'll have that in the clip.

00:38:29.620 Some people say he was so angry at how he was treated at that dinner that that's what caused him to decide to run five years later.

00:38:35.680 I don't think so.

00:38:36.380 I've talked to him about it.

00:38:37.440 I don't think that's the reason.

00:38:38.500 I think he was already thinking about running.

00:38:40.100 But 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.

00:38:50.620 And 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.

00:39:00.660 We take you back now to 2011, the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

00:39:06.080 And Seth Meyers was that so-called comedian.

00:39:10.100 No one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald.

00:39:18.020 And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter.

00:39:23.720 Like, did we fake the moon landing?

00:39:30.460 What really happened in Roswell?

00:39:34.120 And where are Biggie and Tupac?

00:39:36.280 You, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership.

00:39:44.360 And so, ultimately, you didn't blame Little John or Meat Loaf.

00:39:51.080 You fired Gary Busey.

00:39:55.460 And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night.

00:40:00.700 Donald 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.

00:40:06.860 Donald 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.

00:40:22.600 I mean, utter contempt for him there. 0.97

00:40:27.320 And who could blame him for being genuinely pissed off?

00:40:31.020 Yeah.

00:40:31.300 I mean, they treated him like a joke.

00:40:32.640 And, of course, as you know, Megan, that's how he was largely treated.

00:40:35.700 It's that same year that he spoke at CPAC.

00:40:38.560 It's really how I got to meet him originally.

00:40:40.200 He spoke at CPAC.

00:40:41.340 He gave the best received speech of the whole group in 2011, filled with people thinking of running in 2012.

00:40:48.340 And 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.

00:40:56.180 And that's how he felt about himself.

00:40:57.860 He didn't feel, of course, like he was a joke.

00:41:00.340 He sat at the dinner.

00:41:01.460 I think he was sitting at the Washington Post table pretty close to the stage.

00:41:04.580 And here you have the sitting president of the United States and Seth Meyers making fun of him.

00:41:09.840 And he did not like it.

00:41:12.000 I don't think it's what caused him to run in some linear way.

00:41:14.800 But I definitely think it was part of his psychology of saying, I'm going to prove that I'm not a joke.

00:41:20.800 I'm going to prove that I'm a serious person.

00:41:22.520 And, of course, five years later, he did.

00:41:25.740 So you were not only right about that in that moment.

00:41:28.840 You've been right about a lot.

00:41:29.700 But 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.

00:41:46.440 We've got that queued up for the audience to watch.

00:41:49.200 I 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.

00:42:00.840 Tonight, I thought you were interestingly optimistic.

00:42:05.620 Where are you getting the path of positivity you laid out on your broadcast?

00:42:12.200 Well, it's not a question of optimism.

00:42:13.400 It's a question of looking at the data and looking at what's going on in the battleground states.

00:42:16.580 I agree with Steve.

00:42:17.540 She's still overwhelmingly the favorite.

00:42:19.540 If 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.

00:42:27.120 I think that's fair.

00:42:28.300 But 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.

00:42:35.780 He's ahead in Iowa.

00:42:36.640 That's it.

00:42:38.220 Oh, that's so delicious.

00:42:40.040 That is, you got written up by the hateful media matters for, you know, the nerve to predict something like that. 1.00

00:42:47.740 And the smug Nicole Wallace, like, you're an idiot. 1.00

00:42:51.020 There's no way he's winning. 1.00

00:42:52.360 And you had it.

00:42:53.440 It was worse than that.

00:42:55.420 MSNBC took that clip.

00:42:57.040 And I was like, I think my title was Senior Political Analyst at MSNBC at the time.

00:43:02.220 I had a show on Bloomberg and a contract with NBC.

00:43:05.160 They put on the website that clip of Brian making fun of me for saying Trump might win.

00:43:11.100 And the headline was something like, Brian Williams schools Mark Halperin.

00:43:14.480 And I was like, guys, I work here.

00:43:17.720 Like, don't put on a clip mocking me.

00:43:20.960 And then, of course, I'll spoiler alert, Trump won.

00:43:25.680 And as I said, I thought Hillary Clinton was probably going to win. 0.77

00:43:28.700 But I thought Trump had a pretty good chance.

00:43:30.100 And in the days between that clip, I think that was like a week before Election Day, maybe.

00:43:34.040 In the intervening days, I grew more confident that he might win.

00:43:37.540 And, you know, I don't know how many rallies of Donald Trump Brian covered.

00:43:42.940 I covered Trump rallies that year in 30 states.

00:43:46.400 And so it seemed obvious to me that he might win.

00:43:49.420 And yet that clip was probably the most extreme example of what I experienced for most of the year,

00:43:55.740 as I told people, as I started doing in 2011.

00:43:59.000 Do not underestimate the resonance he has with tens of millions of people.

00:44:04.920 I'm sure they came back and apologized to you and thanked you for your insight after Trump won.

00:44:10.520 So funny you should say that.

00:44:12.100 I called management and I said, take the clip down.

00:44:17.080 And 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.

00:44:26.140 You know, it should reflect the possibility that Trump can win.

00:44:28.660 I will say I got something that people might, if they were super generous, consider it an apology.

00:44:34.840 But I never got an actual apology.

00:44:36.240 Yeah, trust me, they're not big over at NBC on apologies, even when they're clearly owed.

00:44:42.480 Okay, 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.

00:44:56.040 And then there's also this comms guy who says he resigned voluntarily.

00:44:59.240 But 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.

00:45:10.700 And 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.

00:45:20.240 But this is like every day there there's a new barrage of bad press.

00:45:24.000 Yeah, look, the palace intrigue is interesting.

00:45:26.740 And I'll speak in a second about about the confusion about what's going on.

00:45:31.380 It's important, right?

00:45:32.400 It's one of the hardest buildings in the world to run.

00:45:35.020 It's a huge bureaucracy.

00:45:36.300 Say whatever you want positive about Pete Hegseth, he does not have the normal experience to do this job.

00:45:42.840 So he's going to have to rise to the occasion to do the job well.

00:45:46.220 In most stories I report on, sometimes I'll have dissenting voices about, you know, what is it A or is it B?

00:45:53.000 Who's telling the truth?

00:45:53.840 Who's not?

00:45:54.640 But usually there's one kind of through line of, well, this seems to be what's going on.

00:45:58.220 I am baffled here because I have top shelf sources saying all these stories are coming from these four guys.

00:46:05.120 They're all annoyed they were fired.

00:46:07.340 They're all just talking every day to the press leaking as they did originally, which was their offense for being fired.

00:46:12.460 And that once they shut up, the stories will stop.

00:46:16.060 I'll say I don't understand Pete Hegseth's posture.

00:46:19.140 He went after them very hard publicly.

00:46:21.460 If you've fired people and remember, the three who were fired are his friends.

00:46:26.500 If you fire your friends.

00:46:27.580 Two out of three.

00:46:28.880 Yeah, two out of three.

00:46:29.960 I mean, two close friends, one associate, I believe.

00:46:33.120 If 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.

00:46:47.880 But I also have people close to them, and you'll be told this too.

00:46:51.640 They say absolutely not.

00:46:53.160 They didn't leak originally and they're not leaking now.

00:46:55.360 And 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.

00:47:04.240 And those people and their folks deny it.

00:47:06.940 So 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.

00:47:16.360 Some I think are quite legitimate to scrutinize.

00:47:18.320 But what is driving this endless number of stories?

00:47:21.620 I cannot figure it out yet.

00:47:23.760 I know.

00:47:24.480 There's no—we wrestled with this the other day.

00:47:26.700 There's no clear motive.

00:47:29.320 If you look at the leaks that have come out, it's not easy to understand what the ideological objective would be.

00:47:36.720 Correct.

00:47:37.000 So 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.

00:47:44.780 It 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.

00:47:51.620 I can come up with motives, but I cannot come up with any idea, clear idea about who's doing it.

00:47:58.120 But 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.

00:48:08.380 But as I said, they deny it, and I consider this to be a mystery as of right now.

00:48:13.800 I will probe every angle and the audience will be able to make up its own mind about my guest.

00:48:20.820 Do you think Pete Hegseth will survive this, and will he survive as defense secretary?

00:48:29.140 Because it's very clear some group of people that's pretty loud is out to get him.

00:48:36.900 Yeah.

00:48:37.280 So I've got what I call the Trump board of directors, okay?

00:48:41.740 And the board of directors is Tucker, Charlie Kirk, and Don Jr.

00:48:46.500 And if the board of directors supports something, I think generally it happens.

00:48:51.800 And I believe all three of them – I know all three of them have been supportive, particularly recently Don Jr. and Charlie.

00:48:59.100 They've been very supportive on social media and elsewhere of Pete Hegseth.

00:49:03.580 So I don't think the president will be inclined to get rid of him.

00:49:06.740 And, of course, he doesn't want to give in to these stories, most of which are published by media organizations he considers hostile.

00:49:12.960 I 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.

00:49:25.180 I think what will be determinative is when Congress comes back to town.

00:49:29.020 I 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.

00:49:46.360 But 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.

00:49:54.680 The board of directors will not bend the knee to Tom Cotton.

00:49:59.460 He's – they don't like him.

00:50:02.460 Yeah.

00:50:03.720 One member – at least one member of the board likes him.

00:50:06.280 I won't say which.

00:50:07.960 But the board of directors doesn't always get their way.

00:50:12.360 And I think the board of directors listens to the president.

00:50:14.820 And if the president says it's not tenable, then I think the board of directors might stand down.

00:50:20.260 But 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.

00:50:32.580 It's a very funny way of looking at it.

00:50:34.920 And you're not wrong.

00:50:35.760 I agree with your assessment.

00:50:37.220 This may sound weird, but I would also move J.D. Vance over there because typically vice presidents are powerless.

00:50:43.260 But he's not.

00:50:44.400 He's on that board.

00:50:45.240 Well, I call him the ex-officio member of the board because he is the vice president.

00:50:51.420 But I agree with you.

00:50:52.300 He's on the board.

00:50:53.040 They're all on the same text chain.

00:50:54.380 It's one of the most undercover stories in the administration.

00:50:56.920 Those guys are texting in that group but in other groups all the time.

00:51:01.400 Never been anything like that in American history because, of course, texting hasn't been around much.

00:51:05.780 And historically, you haven't had outside people.

00:51:08.740 Last I checked, Charlie and Tucker and Don Jr. did not have government IDs.

00:51:13.000 But they are in the rhythm every day of projects that need projecting and that the board of directors pays attention to.

00:51:20.700 I think the vice president is the most powerful vice president of our lifetime.

00:51:24.120 And that means passing Dick Cheney and Al Gore, for instance, Walter Mondale.

00:51:27.860 Wait, hold that thought.

00:51:28.660 All of them.

00:51:29.100 Hold that thought.

00:51:29.600 I want to hear more on that.

00:51:31.120 But I have to squeeze in this break.

00:51:32.540 So we pick it up on the opposite side of this on why J.D. Vance is the most powerful vice president in history.

00:51:38.800 Mark is here today.

00:51:39.580 He is promoting his new show, Next Up, with Mark Halperin.

00:51:44.100 It's a brand new podcast.

00:51:45.300 It starts on Tuesday.

00:51:46.680 Go subscribe on YouTube and subscribe on all podcast platforms.

00:51:50.800 You're going to love it.

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00:53:26.340 Before 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.

00:53:40.760 Why?

00:53:40.940 After less than 100 days, fewer than 100 days.

00:53:43.820 Everybody likes him for the most part.

00:53:47.220 And he's very good at publicly and privately dealing with the president.

00:53:50.720 He's a very smart guy, as you know.

00:53:54.420 He's very, as I say, he speaks MAGA, affluent MAGA with a suburban accent.

00:53:59.340 He 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.

00:54:08.960 And I think if you look at personnel, policy, the press, he is in every meeting.

00:54:17.340 He often gets his way.

00:54:18.480 His allies are all over the administration.

00:54:20.700 As we talked about last segment, the board of directors are the ones who made him the vice president.

00:54:27.120 They're the ones whose advocacy got Donald Trump to choose him.

00:54:30.320 So the board of directors loves him, and he loves the board of directors.

00:54:33.960 And so I look at everything they're doing, from dealing with Capitol Hill to dealing with foreign governments.

00:54:40.060 I 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.

00:54:55.320 And I can't find a single issue where his influence is not very high.

00:55:01.200 Lastly, 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.

00:55:27.080 And they didn't want that.

00:55:28.280 This White House doesn't feel that way.

00:55:29.800 They like J.D. Vance out there talking to donors.

00:55:32.240 They like him out there elevating his profile.

00:55:34.980 So 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.

00:55:47.340 Yeah, Trump's confident enough in his own power that he doesn't need to feel threatened by J.D.

00:55:52.720 For 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.

00:56:06.880 And that rings very true to me.

00:56:09.320 OK, so that's J.D.

00:56:11.740 There'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.

00:56:18.200 So, 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.

00:56:32.600 So, 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.

00:56:53.520 Go back home to Mexico. 1.00

00:56:55.480 OK, that's me.

00:56:56.240 That wasn't the judge.

00:56:57.040 Anyway, he was facing misdemeanor battery charges in Wisconsin and was there in court on a hearing.

00:57:03.080 ICE agents arrived in that courtroom.

00:57:07.700 It belonged to Judge Hannah Dugan, D-U-G-A-N, of the Milwaukee County Circuit.

00:57:13.600 She's a Democrat.

00:57:15.040 And they arrived during a pretrial hearing for this guy.

00:57:19.120 She asked them to leave and to speak to the circuit court's chief judge, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

00:57:26.860 By the time they returned from doing that, the defendant had left.

00:57:33.960 And 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.

00:57:45.100 Some 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.

00:57:56.580 He fled.

00:57:57.440 So 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.

00:58:14.620 She obstructed an immigration arrest operation last week.

00:58:17.180 We 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.

00:58:33.240 He 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.

00:58:41.120 We'll have more to share there soon.

00:58:42.980 And sure enough, you look up this woman's bio, and it's, she used to be a poverty attorney. 0.94

00:58:48.440 She's a dem.

00:58:49.420 She was executive director of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

00:58:54.160 I'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.

00:59:03.060 Her attorney has said that she wholeheartedly regrets and protests her arrest.

00:59:11.700 Not sure what that means.

00:59:13.440 It was not made in the interest of public safety, and we want the court to release her.

00:59:17.060 She was released from custody, awaiting further proceedings.

00:59:19.700 But wow, I mean, that's hardball.

00:59:22.900 Yeah.

00:59:23.580 Look, Donald Trump is trying to change a lot of things.

00:59:26.280 And one of the things he's trying to change, which during the campaign obviously had broad support, is shut down the border.

00:59:32.600 And 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.

00:59:48.920 They'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.

00:59:58.820 And they're fine with that.

01:00:00.200 And 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.

01:00:13.380 That they don't want anything done along those lines.

01:00:16.220 And I think – I like having a big, robust national debate about this.

01:00:20.200 You see that in a lot of these cases, and this is one that's going to get more attention.

01:00:24.060 It's important to say why are the people supportive of this supportive.

01:00:28.280 They're supportive because they say we had an open border.

01:00:31.560 You talk about lawlessness.

01:00:32.780 You talk about undermining American values, American way of life.

01:00:36.340 We had effectively an open border for several years.

01:00:39.180 And 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.

01:00:52.600 I 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.

01:01:06.600 Mm-hmm.

01:01:07.660 They'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. 0.91

01:01:15.060 It's just – it's not realistic.

01:01:16.540 Trump was saying it's going to take 200 years if you have many trials for each one of these people.

01:01:20.500 And so it's a new argument.

01:01:22.660 It's totally fair in my view.

01:01:24.120 It's like did Lakin Riley get due process before illegals killed her, you know, an illegal? 1.00

01:01:29.780 It's not practicable.

01:01:30.800 If 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.

01:01:40.320 They know who's here illegally. 1.00

01:01:41.620 Those are the ones they're starting with.

01:01:43.000 There's not a doubt that they don't belong here.

01:01:46.100 That's all you need.

01:01:46.980 You're out.

01:01:47.460 Goodbye.

01:01:48.100 There 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.

01:01:55.940 I 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. 0.99

01:02:03.600 Yeah, look, and that's the view of tens of millions of people.

01:02:06.260 I think the area that becomes important to talk through is what if it violates American law, okay?

01:02:13.340 What if there's an actual statute, not a previous administration policy?

01:02:17.540 There 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.

01:02:34.520 All of those have added up to people saying, including some of the administration, we're not just happy to violate past practice.

01:02:41.400 We'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.

01:02:54.420 Historically, 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.

01:03:09.120 But there's no doubt, as I said, tens of millions of Americans would say, if you're here illegally, go back.

01:03:15.400 When we catch you, you go back.

01:03:17.100 You 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.

01:03:29.780 These judges are truly out of control.

01:03:32.020 I 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.

01:03:44.340 But he was so desperate to punish Team Trump, he went ahead with the hearing anyway.

01:03:49.500 He said, you're likely in criminal contempt.

01:03:51.280 If you won't prosecute the case, I will appoint a special prosecutor to go after those who disobeyed my order.

01:03:58.120 I mean, that's just one example.

01:04:00.580 Then 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.

01:04:10.840 I mean, openly subverting the president on it.

01:04:13.760 And it reminds me of something I wanted to get to in our Pentagon discussion but forgot.

01:04:18.800 James 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.

01:04:42.460 Here it is.

01:04:44.000 I'm assuming that you're...

01:04:45.560 The same guy who tried to overthrow an election is just, like, truly setting us down a path with dictatorship.

01:04:51.820 He's illegitimate.

01:04:53.040 Dictatorship.

01:04:54.120 He's purely immoral, breaking every war.

01:04:56.020 We're going to resist him.

01:04:57.160 Everything he does.

01:04:58.420 I'm a very...

01:04:59.940 Going to resist Trump.

01:05:01.000 And I've never been that patriotic.

01:05:03.040 Your least favorite thing about Trump?

01:05:05.240 Oh, that he's...

01:05:06.120 That he utterly lacks any moral principle.

01:05:09.340 The worst thing about him is his utter lack of moral principle. 1.00

01:05:12.460 The second worst thing about him is how stupid he could be. 1.00

01:05:16.760 So it's been confirmed by the Pentagon that he was indeed in that position and has now resigned since James O'Keefe posted that video. 1.00

01:05:26.360 But here's the truth.

01:05:28.980 There are people just like that everywhere.

01:05:32.400 They're on the federal bench.

01:05:33.520 They're on the bench in Wisconsin.

01:05:35.640 They're...

01:05:36.020 I mean, at the Department of Defense, who will actively work as Resistance 2.0.

01:05:42.860 That's what's happening.

01:05:44.440 Yeah.

01:05:44.880 So just on the previous point, and Judge Bosberg, there is issues related to the rights or presumed or stated rights of people here illegally.

01:05:54.280 What'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.

01:06:04.740 And that's obviously a very dangerous area.

01:06:08.040 But that's not what I'm arguing.

01:06:09.080 My point is, you lost the case.

01:06:11.700 The Supreme Court said this was improperly filed in your courtroom.

01:06:15.000 That's the end of your decisions, whether you're mad about them disobeying you or not.

01:06:20.140 Yeah.

01:06:20.660 I'm just saying, in some of the rulings we're talking about, that's the issue.

01:06:24.120 It's not about the rights of people here illegally.

01:06:25.880 It's about whether district court judge decisions are being disregarded.

01:06:29.620 Again, 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.

01:06:42.960 There's liberals who don't like Trump or Trump's policies.

01:06:47.200 There's corrupt people who may be taking money from foreign powers.

01:06:51.360 And there's people who whose motives are not clear, but who clearly are part of an effort to obstruct.

01:06:57.300 And 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.

01:07:14.340 And this is this is one of the things I think Donald Trump has done.

01:07:18.360 That's with Elon Musk and others.

01:07:20.120 That's most unprecedented.

01:07:21.120 They're making Ronald Reagan look like George H.W. Bush and, you know, an establishment accommodationist.

01:07:27.760 They'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.

01:07:38.020 And I think you're going to see that video is the tip of the iceberg in every part of the government.

01:07:43.560 There are people who are hostile to Donald Trump and they're trying to fix that.

01:07:47.240 There was some not great polling that came out on Trump via Fox News.

01:07:53.600 It's, you know, we're getting the 100 day or celebrating or lamenting the 100 day mark.

01:07:58.760 And it showed that it showed that he has a 44 percent approval rating, 55 percent disapproved.

01:08:04.920 That's down five points from a 49 percent approval in March.

01:08:09.500 On border security, he gets his highest marks.

01:08:11.640 They love what he's done at the border.

01:08:12.900 55 percent approve, 40 percent disapprove.

01:08:15.840 On immigration, it's about tide, meaning more, I think, the deportations.

01:08:20.540 It's got to be speaking to that because it's just immigration general has approved 47, disapproved 48.

01:08:26.740 Foreign policy, he's down 14 point.

01:08:29.200 There's a 14 point gap.

01:08:30.680 The disapprovers are winning 54 to 40.

01:08:33.580 The economy, he's down 18 points.

01:08:37.020 Disapprovers, 56 percent.

01:08:38.660 Approvers, 38 percent.

01:08:40.260 Uh, tariffs, they don't like the tariffs.

01:08:44.360 Disapprove, 58 percent.

01:08:46.160 Approve, 33 percent.

01:08:48.400 Inflation, bad.

01:08:50.300 Disapprove, 59 percent.

01:08:51.580 Approve, 33 percent.

01:08:54.280 Only 59 percent of voters are unhappy.

01:08:56.480 59 percent of voters are unhappy with how things are going in the country.

01:09:00.740 But that's much better than Joe Biden was doing, which was any place from 68 to 70 plus.

01:09:06.200 Um, but just as the Democrats listen to us go through those numbers and think, oh, maybe there's hope.

01:09:13.100 You take a look what's happened over there.

01:09:14.880 And I'll kick it off with Harry Enten, who breaks down the data in the following clip.

01:09:18.760 Saw 10.

01:09:19.140 This, I think, is a revolt.

01:09:23.880 A revolt that is going on within the Democratic Party right now.

01:09:26.960 Democrats undem leaders in Congress.

01:09:29.120 The belief that they will do the right thing when it comes to the economy.

01:09:32.100 Last year at this time, 80 percent believed that the Democratic leaders in Congress would do the right thing when it comes to the economy.

01:09:37.820 And keep in mind, this is Democrats.

01:09:39.260 Look at where we are now.

01:09:40.380 That number has been slashed in half to just 39 percent.

01:09:44.520 Holy Toledo, that is the lowest number by far in Gallup polling.

01:09:49.320 The lowest previous was just 60 percent, which is 21 points higher than this.

01:09:53.960 Democrats hate, hate, hate, hate what their congressional leaders in Washington are doing right now on the key issue of the day.

01:10:01.520 The economy and their confidence has fallen through the floor.

01:10:04.740 I love his body motions.

01:10:06.640 I love how he gives it his all.

01:10:08.540 The upward, downward, left, right.

01:10:10.500 So what do you make of all that with both Trump's numbers and the Dems?

01:10:15.380 Well, Harry's a friend of mine.

01:10:16.640 And whenever I see him, I say, Harry, tranquilo.

01:10:19.140 It's a little a little overexcited.

01:10:21.280 But I know that's just a shtick.

01:10:22.800 I know.

01:10:23.260 I know.

01:10:23.640 People like it.

01:10:24.160 I was like just a little bit like one notch, tranquilo, Harry.

01:10:27.300 On the president, talking to people in both parties about the polls.

01:10:30.580 And 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.

01:10:34.800 I 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.

01:10:43.780 But if all the polls are saying the same thing, you do yourself a disservice if you pretend it's not true.

01:10:48.280 Where the president's poll numbers are pretty clear.

01:10:51.040 And I believe from talking to folks that they're all down in all the categories that you listed.

01:10:56.120 I think it's primarily being driven by the tariffs.

01:10:58.200 The tariffs are so unpopular and they're so dominating the news about how many people are upset about them.

01:11:04.900 Businesses upset about them.

01:11:06.700 And a lot of people in small businesses, large businesses, raising specters of inflation and shortages, etc.

01:11:13.660 And 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.

01:11:20.660 His 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.

01:11:32.340 So I think what they're trying to do is raise all the numbers by talking about the tariffs in a different way.

01:11:38.640 And 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.

01:11:52.280 I think people as the weekends are feeling a little bit better about things.

01:11:55.300 And 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.

01:12:01.500 The 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.

01:12:11.200 There are tens of millions who will be against him no matter what.

01:12:14.440 And 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.

01:12:23.500 The reason they're so unpopular now is because conservatives and a lot of independents don't like them.

01:12:29.160 They 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.

01:12:40.640 So I think their floor actually could be lower than it is currently seems because they have a very challenging task.

01:12:49.480 They 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.

01:12:57.840 And that that that that executing on that requires someone typically of the political skill of Bill Clinton.

01:13:05.380 And there aren't very many people like that and no one I see in the Democratic Party currently.

01:13:09.860 So their brand is being defined primarily right now, I would say, by four people, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and AOC.

01:13:16.820 And 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.

01:13:28.540 I think Tim Walls would want you to mention him.

01:13:31.080 He he was sure.

01:13:32.860 Profiled as you saw on the Atlanta.

01:13:34.240 Honorable mention.

01:13:35.740 Yeah.

01:13:35.880 Yeah.

01:13:36.240 And he says here's the following.

01:13:39.200 They say Walls is a big metaphor guy.

01:13:41.220 For instance, he refers to his delirious vice presidential campaign as his 90 day eras tour, the Taylor Swift tour.

01:13:49.920 It's a good line, but even the Atlantic writes as follows.

01:13:52.440 But an imperfect metaphor.

01:13:54.680 Taylor Swift's eras tour reinforced her rolling dominance. 0.99

01:13:57.800 Waltz's ended abruptly and badly.

01:14:01.080 They talk about how he had a good crowd when he spoke recently at the Youngstown to your performing arts center.

01:14:08.580 2,800 people.

01:14:12.600 OK, I mean, I guess that's not bad, but he was just the vice presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket.

01:14:18.600 I would expect it would have could have gone a little bigger.

01:14:21.240 And then he volunteered that Bill Clinton called him in early October and said to him, don't allow them to make you a caricature.

01:14:29.900 I'm referring here to Waltz's own campaign higher ups, not Trump.

01:14:34.320 You are a consequential governor and that's what you should be running on.

01:14:38.860 So 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.

01:14:47.380 I don't disagree that he thinks that.

01:14:49.120 I 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.

01:14:56.820 But he'd be in the top 10.

01:14:58.980 How about Pete Buttigieg?

01:15:00.700 Because he went on Andrew Schultz's podcast and I just don't see this guy doing it.

01:15:08.940 I got to be honest.

01:15:09.800 But he said the following.

01:15:11.640 I mean, talk about controversial.

01:15:13.900 The left won't write 10,000 articles about this because he's on their team.

01:15:17.860 But trust me, if someone like me or Tucker Carlson ever spoke like this or anybody right of center, they'd be killing them.

01:15:27.580 Take a listen.

01:15:28.220 It's SOP 13.

01:15:30.580 Of course.

01:15:31.160 So we're in what's called a surprise adoption scenario.

01:15:33.720 So we literally, we got, I was at work.

01:15:37.000 I was traveling.

01:15:37.880 We got a phone call.

01:15:39.020 Chasten called me.

01:15:40.120 And the next day we were in a rural Midwestern hospital holding him in our arms and they were like one day old.

01:15:46.460 Like it was like that, like just from like normal life to like, and by the way, it's twins, which was amazing.

01:15:52.880 You didn't know it was twins before.

01:15:54.780 We were just on a list.

01:15:55.880 You know, we said that we were willing to adopt or we wanted to adopt.

01:16:00.300 We said that we wanted to adopt without regard for race.

01:16:02.880 By the way, anybody who says race is not a thing in this country should experience an adoption process where there are literally different lists.

01:16:09.380 If you say that you want a white kid only versus if you say that doesn't matter, like literally a different list.

01:16:17.340 What is that?

01:16:17.900 What do you mean by that?

01:16:19.120 The list for white kid only is longer.

01:16:23.480 And not only that, there was actually a discount or you didn't have to pay a deposit on the fee.

01:16:30.700 This is like how it works.

01:16:34.660 There was a discount for the babies of color.

01:16:38.680 That's what he said.

01:16:39.520 And then he tried to correct it to you didn't have to pay a deposit.

01:16:42.640 There's so much in there, Mark.

01:16:43.940 So first of all, the list to get a white baby is longer. 0.78

01:16:46.380 I mean, there are far more white people in America than there are black people.

01:16:53.340 So I'm not sure because it's his team that has been lecturing us.

01:16:57.660 Like 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.

01:17:11.900 I 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.

01:17:33.920 But now with this crowd, he wants to say we're racist as Americans because the question is asked of potential adoptive parents.

01:17:41.940 Do you have a preference on the race of your baby?

01:17:44.720 And then he slips and said you get a discount for the babies of color.

01:17:49.840 I mean, you you tell me anybody think of anybody on the right who said that.

01:17:54.200 I don't care who it is.

01:17:55.020 Could be somebody as likable and almost universally loved who's on the right and happens to be in a gay marriage as Guy Benson. 0.98

01:18:01.180 They'd be killing him.

01:18:04.180 Yeah, I mean, look, I don't agree with you.

01:18:06.000 I don't disagree at all, of course, with the point about the double standard.

01:18:10.480 I've listened to what he said.

01:18:11.780 That's the third time I've heard it.

01:18:13.240 I find the whole thing a little confusing.

01:18:15.140 I'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.

01:18:22.780 And I don't really understand why he'd be wanting to make them.

01:18:25.180 It just it just I find the whole thing.

01:18:27.100 I 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.

01:18:34.180 There are a lot of reasons he won in 2024.

01:18:36.200 I 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.

01:18:45.040 And 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.

01:18:56.140 And certainly not the way conservatives could talk about it.

01:18:58.720 So 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.

01:19:06.380 But 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.

01:19:20.600 You can actually avoid paying taxes if you have, like, I don't know, two kids.

01:19:24.860 Forgive me, I don't have all the facts at the ready, but it's something like that.

01:19:28.400 And J.D. Vance, of course, has been speaking out about this for a long time.

01:19:32.200 So is Tucker Carlson, member of the board.

01:19:35.500 Charlie Kirk, member of the board.

01:19:37.280 OK, 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.

01:19:45.920 And one of the proposals reportedly being kicked around is possibly giving women a $5,000 tax break per child.

01:19:54.380 None of this has been formally proposed, but reports are leaking.

01:19:58.640 That's where The View picked it up.

01:20:01.620 I'm sorry, Mark Halpern, but you're going to have to comment on them.

01:20:04.340 Here is the discussion they had the other day.

01:20:07.760 When I look at something like this, these proposals, I want to know why and I want to know who's making them.

01:20:13.980 And so when I looked into that, they're saying that the U.S. birth rate is declining.

01:20:18.960 However, in 2024, there was a 1% increase in U.S. births.

01:20:23.540 But that increase was with Hispanic mothers and Asian mothers. 0.98

01:20:30.780 So they don't seem to be concerned about that increase.

01:20:36.600 They seem to be more concerned about a decrease in other populations.

01:20:41.360 Say it.

01:20:41.900 No, I think I said enough.

01:20:44.160 But it's not based on, though.

01:20:45.120 And so, well, it's just based on a study.

01:20:50.060 And so the other thing I will-

01:20:51.460 But have they said that anywhere?

01:20:52.500 I mean, I feel like it would be fair.

01:20:54.100 It's just a-

01:20:55.060 Fair to home.

01:20:55.700 It's just a-

01:20:56.260 Have they said that this is to target only white families?

01:20:59.080 I didn't say that.

01:21:00.120 We have to read between the lines.

01:21:01.760 I just gave the stats.

01:21:02.440 I'm not going to say it.

01:21:03.280 Without economics, they're wanting people to pay in.

01:21:06.120 I'm just giving facts.

01:21:09.080 Okay. 0.96

01:21:10.300 So the suggestion is he wants to do this because he wants more white babies. 0.95

01:21:14.980 Just a quick fact check.

01:21:16.660 Because they're saying that the birth rates are-

01:21:19.540 He's unhappy that, like, the whites aren't having more babies versus the Asians and others.

01:21:26.860 And yet, if you look at the birth rates that are down, it's whites and blacks. 0.92

01:21:30.300 Whites and blacks are down. 1.00

01:21:31.880 Yeah. 0.97

01:21:32.260 So it makes no sense.

01:21:32.880 Birth rates are down.

01:21:33.700 Yeah.

01:21:34.300 Birth rates are down.

01:21:35.080 I think they're like 1.2-something average.

01:21:38.520 Yeah.

01:21:38.580 And they need to be more like 2.2.

01:21:41.240 I believe they have that close to right.

01:21:42.960 This is just about having enough workers, enough people to support the social security

01:21:46.520 system.

01:21:47.220 The alternative is to have more immigration. 0.98

01:21:49.680 And I think that the president's inclination, and I think a national consensus, to have more

01:21:54.960 legal immigration would be there if we can get the border under control.

01:21:59.320 So there's two possibilities to have the right number of workers and other people contributing

01:22:05.400 to society.

01:22:06.220 Either more legal immigration or higher birth rates.

01:22:09.440 And so I don't think anyone in the Republican Party of any responsibility is thinking about

01:22:15.820 this in terms of race.

01:22:16.820 It's a math game.

01:22:18.160 It's a math problem.

01:22:19.860 And there's no one who's going to say, you only get the money if you're white.

01:22:23.380 This would be a universal policy.

01:22:26.020 And it's something that responsible leaders are going to have to think about because the

01:22:30.660 birth rate's just not high enough right now in the country.

01:22:32.840 The numbers are as follows.

01:22:36.140 They're up for Hispanics and Asians, for whom the number of births rose 4% and 5% respectively

01:22:44.760 year over year.

01:22:45.860 But the number of births declined 4% for Black women, 3% for American Indian and Alaska Native

01:22:52.960 women, and declined less than 1% for white women.

01:22:56.020 So if anything, it's declined more for Black women than it has for white women. 1.00

01:23:03.880 So if Trump wants to incentivize random women to have more babies, you'd have to be thinking,

01:23:09.140 yes, he is looking at the populace that's having the fewest, which would be Black people,

01:23:13.520 which does not dovetail at all with Sonny's and Joy's argument. 0.99

01:23:17.700 It's just all so ridiculous.

01:23:18.980 So back on the subject of Pete Buttigieg, whatever, Buttigieg, and whether he's on the list or

01:23:26.460 AOC is really on the list.

01:23:28.440 I mean, I realize we're a long way off from 2028, Mark, but are they starting to form like

01:23:34.800 exploratory committees?

01:23:36.800 Is it, they've got to be thinking about it.

01:23:39.840 Yeah, no formal committees, but they are thinking about it and they have to start taking some

01:23:43.740 steps.

01:23:44.060 And of course, we'll see a big, you know, unofficial cattle call in the context of the

01:23:48.660 midterms in a year when we see who's asked to campaign for candidates on the ballot, who's

01:23:54.460 asked to raise money for candidates on the ballot.

01:23:56.680 I think the main thing about the field, and I'd apply this less to Pete Buttigieg than most

01:24:01.260 of the others, but I would apply it to him.

01:24:03.420 People who handicap these folks, I think, are overestimating their readiness.

01:24:08.500 Most people who run have been performers on the national stage as politicians, or as in

01:24:15.640 the case of Donald Trump, as celebrities or television stars for a long time.

01:24:21.680 And it takes a lot to perform at that level.

01:24:25.080 And I think people underestimate the degree of difficulty of being a successful presidential

01:24:29.820 candidate.

01:24:30.800 Pete Buttigieg, the reason I say he's close to the front of that line is he's done a lot

01:24:34.500 of media.

01:24:35.320 He's been a cabinet secretary.

01:24:36.860 He understands more than AOC does, more than some of these governors who get talked about,

01:24:42.600 what it means.

01:24:43.700 When Barack Obama was in that kind of pre-presidential phase, he went on Meet the Press, he went on

01:24:49.560 Monday Night Football, he went on The Tonight Show, and he performed at a top level, just

01:24:54.860 as a performative matter, on all those places.

01:24:57.580 There's performance, there's policy, there's pressure.

01:25:01.620 These are the things that people say, well, they've been a governor, they can do that.

01:25:06.740 Or they've been a senator, or they've been a business person.

01:25:09.240 No.

01:25:10.160 It's what separates the people who actually make it.

01:25:12.680 In every case, people who've won have been part of what I call the national conversation,

01:25:18.820 capital N, capital C.

01:25:21.040 AOC hasn't done that.

01:25:22.680 Buttigieg has just done it more than most, but not at the level the people who've been

01:25:25.900 nominees and presidents have done.

01:25:27.820 And I think that applies even more so to almost everybody else who I hear mentioned.

01:25:33.000 It doesn't mean they can't do it.

01:25:35.080 But starting now, let's say now they started and really tried to put themselves out there,

01:25:40.240 it would be for a far shorter period of time than everyone, everyone in my career who's

01:25:47.260 been the nominee of either party or elected president.

01:25:50.260 So you're not that impressed with the potential Democratic field?

01:25:53.780 I'm not at all impressed with it.

01:25:56.580 Not at all.

01:25:57.420 Because of the standard I'm talking about, it really is not as easy as some people seem

01:26:04.260 to think it is.

01:26:05.280 And I look at, for instance, Governor Shapiro.

01:26:07.480 I was very high on him.

01:26:09.360 And I still think he's probably in the top five of likely to be the nominee.

01:26:13.240 And I still think potentially he's a formidable candidate.

01:26:15.740 Although I had board member Charlie Kirk on two-way the other night, and he was very down

01:26:20.860 on Shapiro, Governor Shapiro was vetted for, as Kamala Harris is running me, and got a lot

01:26:27.120 of scrutiny, more than anybody else, certainly more than Tim Walz.

01:26:30.240 A half dozen or more opposition research stories dumped on his head.

01:26:34.200 I was unimpressed with how he and his team handled those.

01:26:37.660 And if you talk to people in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who watch him every day, he's

01:26:42.900 certainly a smooth operator at times.

01:26:45.200 He's certainly liked by people like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, who have some judgment

01:26:49.500 about what it takes.

01:26:50.500 But he has not proven so far to me to be a red light performer on the national stage.

01:26:56.440 And again, he's someone who's close to the front as the governor of a big state, an eastern

01:27:00.740 state, who's had some moments in the national spotlight.

01:27:04.160 But no, I'm not impressed with this group at all.

01:27:07.060 And when I asked Charlie to name three formidable potential Democratic candidates, I think the

01:27:13.600 only one he named was the governor of Kentucky, and he's my poster child for how wrong I think

01:27:20.540 most people are as they evaluate these candidates.

01:27:22.840 He's got no experience on the national stage, none whatsoever.

01:27:26.440 He's got limited experience even in his own state.

01:27:28.860 Yeah, sorry, Andy Beshear.

01:27:29.800 So if he said to Andy Beshear, go on Monday Night Football, sit in the broadcast booth with

01:27:35.700 the announcers, go on The Tonight Show, go on Meet the Press, or maybe your show would

01:27:41.140 be a better equivalent today.

01:27:43.560 I would invert my eyes because I don't think he could ace those.

01:27:47.960 And that's one of the gauntlets.

01:27:50.940 Could he do an interview with Tom Friedman or somebody on foreign policy?

01:27:54.580 Could he go to the NRA or some other group and give a big speech?

01:28:01.220 It's just, as I say, it's not as easy as people seem to think it is.

01:28:05.240 And just objectively and subjectively, no one who's talked about, no one has the level of

01:28:11.980 experience on the national conversation as John Kerry did or Mitt Romney did or Al Gore

01:28:19.540 or John McCain or Donald Trump, even out of politics, it's not even really not even close.

01:28:26.620 How about Gavin Newsom?

01:28:28.680 Well, it's a great example.

01:28:30.460 He's got it, right?

01:28:31.880 Governor of a massive state, tons of media, doing this podcast now.

01:28:37.120 I'm higher on him.

01:28:38.560 And by the way, he's on the second episode of Next Up next week on Thursday.

01:28:43.020 That'll be fun.

01:28:43.540 He is underrated, not just by people on the right, but by people in the press.

01:28:51.040 I think he has been part of the conversation.

01:28:53.680 He's a pretty confident guy.

01:28:55.380 But I'm less certain he's going to run than other people are.

01:28:59.020 I think he's got family issues and other issues.

01:29:02.360 And running from California is tough because of the time difference.

01:29:06.500 So, but yes, Gavin Newsom, by the metric I'm talking about, part of the national conversation,

01:29:13.560 he is, and again, I'm not his spokesman.

01:29:16.420 I see why some people don't like him.

01:29:18.200 But he is a much more moderate, much more centrist, thoughtful, policy-oriented person

01:29:25.940 who really does think about the future in ways not all politicians do than he's normally

01:29:30.380 giving credit for.

01:29:31.260 I see the flaws people see.

01:29:32.700 I disagree.

01:29:33.840 Totally disagree.

01:29:34.760 He's radical when it comes to the trans issue.

01:29:37.760 He's as radical as they come, only outdone by Tim Walz.

01:29:40.760 Yeah.

01:29:41.420 Yeah.

01:29:41.680 On some issues, he's very far left.

01:29:43.420 But on a lot of issues, like dealing with homelessness, dealing with urban problems,

01:29:49.760 I'm not saying he's executed perfectly.

01:29:52.200 I'm not saying he's executed perfectly.

01:29:53.820 But if you asked him his actual positions on crime, you'd hear moderate.

01:29:57.960 Look what he did as mayor of San Francisco.

01:29:59.140 You'd hear moderate on the trans issue, too, but it's a lie.

01:30:01.400 I look forward to hearing the interview, nonetheless, because I trust you won't give him a pass.

01:30:07.360 Stand by.

01:30:08.000 We're going to take a break, and we will come back with Mark in just a minute.

01:30:11.920 He's host of Next Up with Mark Halpern.

01:30:14.480 You can go and subscribe now.

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01:31:48.320 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.

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01:32:42.540 A little bit more coming in on this judge in Wisconsin who just got arrested by the FBI

01:32:56.460 for escorting an illegal who was in her courtroom facing assault charges out of the courtroom trying

01:33:03.800 to avoid an ICE arrest.

01:33:06.040 That is the allegation.

01:33:07.740 And Pam Bondi was just on Fox News talking about it.

01:33:10.480 Here it is.

01:33:10.840 And to set the stage for you and Sandra, this was truly horrific.

01:33:15.980 This guy was in court being prosecuted by a state prosecutor for domestic violence battery.

01:33:22.120 He had beat up two people, a guy and a girl, beat the guy, hit the guy 30 times,

01:33:27.800 knocked him to the ground, choked him, beat up a woman so badly they both had to go to the hospital.

01:33:33.080 And, John, you know, it's so rare for victims to want to cooperate.

01:33:36.140 They wanted to cooperate.

01:33:37.180 They were sitting in the courtroom with the state prosecutor.

01:33:41.280 The judge learns that ICE was outside to get the guy because he had been deported in 2013,

01:33:46.640 came back in our country, commits these crimes, charged with committing these crimes.

01:33:51.020 Victims in court.

01:33:52.440 Judge finds out.

01:33:53.460 She goes out in the hallway, screams at the immigration officers. 0.53

01:33:57.000 She's furious, visibly shaken, upset, sends them off to talk to the chief judge.

01:34:02.600 She comes back in the courtroom.

01:34:04.680 You're not going to believe this.

01:34:05.580 Takes the defendant and the defense attorney back in her chambers, takes them out of private

01:34:10.540 exit and tells them to leave.

01:34:12.000 While a state prosecutor and victims of domestic violence are sitting in the courtroom.

01:34:17.780 Mark, this story is currently topping the Washington Post website, drudge report, the Wall Street

01:34:27.260 Journal.

01:34:28.140 This is going to grow.

01:34:29.000 It's going to get bigger over this weekend and could turn into a firestorm, which is good for Trump.

01:34:34.180 Yeah.

01:34:34.480 I mean, look, it's an incredible story.

01:34:36.520 Just anybody with a nose for news can tell you it's there's a gee whiz element to this.

01:34:40.840 But, you know, this woman thought she was going to run the Underground Railroad, and I think 0.99

01:34:44.760 she's going to regret it if the charges are true.

01:34:47.960 It's an extraordinary step for a judge to take.

01:34:50.380 And as you said, this is this is going to be a long running drama and her background will

01:34:55.080 be scrutinized and what exactly she chose to do and maybe who who aided her.

01:34:59.500 But if the allegations are true, it's it's a it's an extraordinary thing for anyone to

01:35:04.160 do.

01:35:04.560 But for a judge, an officer of the court to do, I think she's going to have a lot of trouble 0.99

01:35:08.500 if these things really did happen the way the attorney general says they did.

01:35:12.700 What's so perfect about it is she's doing allegedly explicitly and physically what

01:35:18.760 these other judges are doing with their pens, right?

01:35:23.460 Like inserting herself in a way that ensures that this illegal will go free and will be set

01:35:30.820 back out onto the streets of America with no consequences for any bad actions.

01:35:36.000 That's that's how a lot of us feel these federal district court judges are behaving from coast

01:35:41.720 to coast.

01:35:42.720 So it's it's just going to undermine what the ACLU is doing, the American faith in the

01:35:47.520 judiciary.

01:35:48.340 I think it's a story that the U.S. Supreme Court will know about and be upset by.

01:35:53.380 It's just bad on every level for Team Blue.

01:35:56.440 I know the wheels of justice grind slowly.

01:35:58.800 I was once a litigant in a case that took 21 years to resolve twice to the Supreme Court.

01:36:04.340 Things take a long time.

01:36:05.700 I wish the Supreme Court was going to move faster on all these things.

01:36:08.840 I think there's just too much that's going on that the Trump administration is is going

01:36:13.760 up to the line and in some cases appearing to go over the line.

01:36:17.220 Maybe the court will say that's fine, but maybe they won't.

01:36:20.280 And there's just too much happening that's that's now unresolved.

01:36:22.820 And and I agree with the with the notion that these district court judges are not super legislators

01:36:28.660 unto themselves, not just for their jurisdictions, but for the whole country.

01:36:31.900 I think that's a dangerous thing, regardless of ideology and and and to leave these district

01:36:37.240 court decisions sometimes where they're saying they apply nationally out there waiting for

01:36:41.700 the Supreme Court to get to the appellate process, to accept the case, to schedule arguments,

01:36:46.200 to have the cases argued, to go back and forth.

01:36:49.380 We have some of these issues pertaining to immigration, to Doge, especially.

01:36:53.980 I just think the normal timetable is just not right.

01:36:56.320 Yeah, no, it's not.

01:36:58.620 And it can't be sustained in this way.

01:37:01.000 It was Joe Biden who caused a huge portion of this problem by opening up the southern

01:37:05.720 border.

01:37:06.040 And we're all dealing with the effects of it in our real lives.

01:37:08.360 And Trump is a policy matter.

01:37:10.360 We don't know for sure whether it was the Joe Biden or whether it was some aid around

01:37:14.600 Joe Biden, since the stories are leaking out left and right now about how mentally infirm

01:37:21.120 he was and how hard the left worked to cover it up.

01:37:24.920 There's like four or five books coming out now on this particular subject.

01:37:29.640 And even lefties are asking lefty lawmakers about it.

01:37:35.200 Elizabeth Warren sat down in a podcast called Talk Easy on Sunday, and it did not go well

01:37:42.500 when this subject came up.

01:37:44.100 Here's here she is. 1.00

01:37:45.100 Do you regret saying that President Biden had a mental acuity?

01:37:50.680 He had a sharpness to him.

01:37:52.160 You said that up until July of last year.

01:37:55.460 I said what I believe to be true.

01:37:58.040 And you think he was as sharp as you?

01:38:03.320 I said I had not seen decline.

01:38:08.780 And I hadn't at that point.

01:38:10.780 You did not see any decline from 2024 Joe Biden to 2021 Joe Biden?

01:38:15.100 Not when I said that.

01:38:17.500 You know, the thing is, he, look, he was sharp.

01:38:24.860 He was on his feet.

01:38:26.560 I saw him live event.

01:38:28.480 I had meetings with him a couple of times.

01:38:30.840 Senator, on his feet is not praise.

01:38:35.340 He can speak in sentences, is not praise.

01:38:38.580 All right, fair enough, fair enough.

01:38:41.480 Look, it is, the question is, what are we going to do now?

01:38:48.540 Okay.

01:38:50.040 Good for you, Sam Fragoso, for asking the questions for listening audience.

01:38:54.100 At one point, she says, I said what I believed.

01:38:57.160 And she kind of cocks her head to the side and raises her eyebrows like, got it.

01:39:01.120 And he did exactly the same head cock and look back at her, like, let's go, lady. 0.61

01:39:07.380 I've got you. 0.99

01:39:08.400 So what do you make of it?

01:39:10.380 This is the biggest sham in the history of the media, because you didn't need, you don't

01:39:16.700 need to say to Elizabeth Warren, did you have in some private meeting, did you see this?

01:39:21.640 Watch C-SPAN.

01:39:22.700 He spoke to a dead congresswoman, okay?

01:39:25.700 Yes.

01:39:26.060 And I mean, you know, it's a joke.

01:39:28.840 It's a joke.

01:39:30.020 It's a joke to be on the head of the pen and say, did you see it?

01:39:33.380 The question is, why did you participate in a conspiracy of silence with the media and

01:39:38.740 the bullies on the Biden team to deny what we could all see with our own eyes?

01:39:43.640 And you think about the things Donald Trump has been accused of.

01:39:48.480 Books can be written.

01:39:49.820 Authors don't have subpoena power.

01:39:51.340 However, Donald Trump was investigated by an independent counsel.

01:39:54.920 This needs a serious investigation, not necessarily to punish the media and the people in the Biden

01:39:59.740 White House, although they deserve to be punished.

01:40:01.980 They deserve to have some sanction for what they did, but to understand how it could happen

01:40:06.140 and to make sure it doesn't happen again.

01:40:08.040 Because what happened was a guy who was showing mental decline in 2017, I saw it with my own

01:40:13.920 eyes 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,

01:40:24.720 and in many cases, the same people now covering Donald Trump, who they participated in the cover

01:40:30.500 above Joe Biden with the express intent of not helping Donald Trump.

01:40:34.640 So I find this to be just appalling.

01:40:37.840 And I know why you played the clip, and it's a great clip.

01:40:39.960 And I look forward to more instances where people are asked to be held accountable.

01:40:44.140 But she shouldn't be able to get away to saying, I never saw it, because of course she saw it, because of course she sees C-SPAN.

01:40:52.780 Yeah, everyone saw it.

01:40:53.980 It was everywhere.

01:40:54.880 That was another thing.

01:40:56.840 Buttigieg on that podcast was like, you know, I'm really worried about the state of journalism,

01:41:01.200 that people might mistake some podcaster for an actual journalist that's got the whole weight of a newsroom behind him.

01:41:08.760 As if, you know, that we can trust.

01:41:11.120 And it reminded me of when I sat down with the New York Times recently,

01:41:14.340 and she was trying to tell me that they're the vaunted New York Times.

01:41:16.360 And I was trying to say, really, where was Peter Baker on the mental decline story?

01:41:20.020 Why didn't he figure out that a neurologist had been to the White House 10 times in the past year?

01:41:23.980 Don't tell me about the vaunted corporate media being so much better and more reliable than the random podcast host.

01:41:30.940 This is the biggest story we've had in a decade.

01:41:33.240 And they, if you wanted to be most charitable, missed it.

01:41:36.380 But the truth is, actively covered it up.

01:41:39.080 Actively covered it up and didn't report when Biden officials called them the few times a few people raised it,

01:41:46.820 called them and said, if you keep doing that, you will be cut off.

01:41:50.720 That should have been a front page story, no matter if the person said off the record before that or not.

01:41:55.540 They should have said, I don't accept off the record.

01:41:57.360 And no, you cannot tell us how to cover the president's obvious mental decline.

01:42:01.760 So it's one of the biggest stories of all time.

01:42:05.960 And I have so much to say about the interview the New York Times did with you.

01:42:10.760 But 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.

01:42:21.100 Oh, well, thank you.

01:42:22.960 I think I like that.

01:42:24.060 I appreciate that.

01:42:25.900 We got to leave it there because we're going to run out of time.

01:42:28.140 But I want to remind the audience.

01:42:29.460 It's called Next Up.

01:42:30.380 They've got to check it out.

01:42:31.300 Go subscribe.

01:42:31.920 Support Mark.

01:42:32.540 We want this to be a success for all of our sakes.

01:42:34.720 We need honest journalists like him out there, supported and able to tell the news honestly to the audiences nationwide.

01:42:42.920 So it's going to be a big success, I'm sure.

01:42:44.700 Thanks to all of you.

01:42:45.400 Next Up.

01:42:46.420 And don't forget, we are going to be dropping a bonus episode.

01:42:50.980 It's coming with one of the men fired last week from the Pentagon.

01:42:55.020 This is the first time he will be telling his story about these leaking allegations.

01:42:59.640 Don't miss it later today.

01:43:01.580 Have a great weekend, everyone.

01:43:04.720 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:43:06.620 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 25, 2025

Megyn's Time 100 Recap, Trump's Board of Directors, and Dems' Sagging Poll Numbers, with Mark Halperin ｜ Ep. 1057

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