The Megyn Kelly Show - Michael Knowles on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Entitlement and Victimhood, and the Woke Drift in Schools

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00:00:30.980 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:33.160 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.400 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.560 Today, Michael Knowles.

00:00:48.160 He is one of the most popular podcasters out there.

00:00:51.240 He is with Ben Shapiro's operation.

00:00:53.380 He is what you might call a whippersnapper.

00:00:56.740 I think he's only 30 years old.

00:00:58.280 He went to Yale and somehow described himself as to the right of Attila the Hun.

00:01:04.200 How'd that go?

00:01:05.320 Right? We're going to ask him.

00:01:06.960 But he's written books.

00:01:08.620 He's been very out there with his commentary.

00:01:11.180 He's totally fearless.

00:01:12.320 And he's funny.

00:01:14.240 So we're going to talk to him about all the latest in the craziness with the cancel culture.

00:01:18.300 You would not believe.

00:01:19.060 Like, just when you think it's dying down, it isn't.

00:01:21.840 By the way, you can no longer have a Jeep Cherokee.

00:01:23.960 Otherwise, you're a racist.

00:01:25.360 So we're going to get into some of the stuff that has happened as of late.

00:01:28.680 Enjoy Reed's latest attack on Tim Scott and other things when he joins us in one minute.

00:01:33.960 So stay tuned for that.

00:01:34.840 We'll be right back.

00:02:04.840 My brother said, you know, I can foresee Joe, Joey.

00:02:09.280 I think we got it covered.

00:02:10.880 And when he was little, what they didn't foresee was that he would call himself Jojo, which somehow got turned into Dojo.

00:02:18.680 And we all called him that for years.

00:02:22.580 Dojo.

00:02:23.160 That is a superb nickname.

00:02:24.840 That is a really, really good nickname.

00:02:27.420 You do have to think it through, right?

00:02:29.040 You have one child.

00:02:29.740 You have to think it through.

00:02:30.620 Like, what could they potentially be called?

00:02:32.920 I did.

00:02:33.420 You know, when he was born, we really liked the name Simon.

00:02:36.200 And, you know, what's the nickname?

00:02:38.520 It's a sigh, I guess.

00:02:39.660 So I like this idea of my son is like an old Yiddish man in a shtetl somewhere in Lithuania, you know.

00:02:47.200 And did you go with Simon?

00:02:48.700 Absolutely.

00:02:49.280 Oh, yeah.

00:02:49.640 We actually have called him Little Psy, depending on how sort of much like an old man he looks at the time.

00:02:55.280 Our middle child, Yardley.

00:02:56.800 I actually didn't think that through.

00:02:58.020 I didn't think there'd be a nickname for Yardley.

00:02:59.720 And what we all call her is Yards.

00:03:02.060 Yards.

00:03:03.160 That's great.

00:03:04.460 Okay.

00:03:04.840 What does that conjure up?

00:03:05.760 But I like it, right?

00:03:07.140 I like the full name Yardley, too.

00:03:08.680 That's a very nice name.

00:03:09.800 You know what?

00:03:10.360 I like it, too.

00:03:11.200 And it's funny because she wants to know where her name came from because her older brother, Yates, got his name from Doug's dad.

00:03:17.860 And so she's like, where did Yardley come from?

00:03:20.600 And I don't know, but I have said before, I'm pretty sure because the name came to me.

00:03:25.240 And I'm like, how?

00:03:27.100 And I'm pretty sure it came to me from the movie Christmas in Connecticut, which I watch every Christmas time.

00:03:33.080 It's this old, like, 1947 movie with Barbara Stanwyck.

00:03:35.920 And there is a very fat, old, bald man named Alexander Yardley.

00:03:40.500 And I think she's his namesake.

00:03:43.160 That is great.

00:03:44.360 Have you told her?

00:03:46.000 Yes, she's aware.

00:03:46.940 She'll actually say, Yates will say, like, I'm named after my grandpa.

00:03:50.360 And she'll say, I was named after an old, fat, bald man from a movie.

00:03:54.220 In the movie.

00:03:55.480 That's really funny.

00:03:57.060 So I like Sigh.

00:03:58.080 Okay.

00:03:58.400 So let's talk about the latest news on Piers Morgan and Meghan Markle because this saga goes on.

00:04:03.320 I love it.

00:04:03.620 And I know people, like, a lot of people aren't that into, like, the royals per se.

00:04:07.640 But this has just turned into the ultimate example of victimization culture.

00:04:11.020 And now it's a free speech thing, right?

00:04:13.200 Because Piers threw down, walked out, and has basically thumbed the middle finger at Good Morning Britain and ITV, though it's not clear whether he was pushed or he jumped.

00:04:25.680 What are your thoughts?

00:04:26.260 Right.

00:04:27.220 I absolutely feel for Piers Morgan.

00:04:31.520 I never thought that I would say that.

00:04:33.420 But I absolutely do.

00:04:36.840 It seems to me that Meghan Markle is the most sophisticated biological weapon that America has ever produced.

00:04:43.000 And it's very sad.

00:04:45.780 I think it's revenge for the War of 1812.

00:04:47.660 But in a way, she's kind of the voice of a generation, you know, the kind of generation that would rather play a Disney princess than be an actual princess.

00:04:57.240 She had to Google the national anthem of the country into whose royal family she was choosing to marry.

00:05:03.760 You know, it doesn't get any more entitled than that.

00:05:07.260 And, you know, I'm not one of these conservatives that believes, you know, oh, last time I cared about the royals was 1776.

00:05:15.560 I think it's actually the English monarchy has served this wonderful purpose.

00:05:20.120 Queen Elizabeth is one of the most important and admirable women on Earth.

00:05:25.540 It's a representation of the nation itself.

00:05:28.320 And it's very fitting that now you have a member of the royal family and this American woman that he married attacking the nation because we as a civilization seem to sort of despise ourselves these days.

00:05:42.140 So I'm not surprised that you'd see it.

00:05:44.740 You raise a good point.

00:05:46.400 She, Queen Elizabeth is, she might be the living opposite of Meghan Markle.

00:05:52.660 She's all about duty, service, country, stiff upper lip, don't explain anything, you know, just forge forward.

00:06:01.900 And Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are somehow emblematic of this narcissistic, it's all about me and I'm always a victim.

00:06:11.480 And, you know, so feel sorry for me and I don't like the service.

00:06:16.020 I don't it's it's hard to smile on the on the Australian tour.

00:06:20.960 Right.

00:06:21.420 Like she's actually thinking we're going to feel sorry for her because while she was getting her silver royalty service back at the hotel room, she had to go out and dance and hold hands and smile.

00:06:30.860 Right. Right. Right. It's it's a total it's not that she is averse to duty so much as she was oblivious to duty.

00:06:42.400 She was oblivious to the idea that and I suppose this is true of a lot of people today, both in the States and in Britain.

00:06:49.740 We have a culture that views politics primarily through rights.

00:06:53.940 And there are different traditions of this.

00:06:56.420 You know, conservatives have a certain view of rights and the left has another view of rights.

00:06:59.740 But if you if you view politics primarily or exclusively as a matter of rights, then it's only a matter of time before it becomes a politics of entitlement.

00:07:09.320 The only way that a politics that recognizes rights works is if the politics also recognizes duty, obligation, loyalty, affection for your family and ultimately for your country.

00:07:22.340 Because patriotism is merely an extension of filial piety for the affection that you feel for your own country.

00:07:29.060 And it's it's really sad to watch this happen as Prince Philip, you know, is in the hospital fighting off his this this infection when the queen is what, 94 now, 95, has served her country admirably.

00:07:43.540 It seems to me that Meghan Markle bought the lie that a lot of people buy about something like the English monarchy, which is that it's all about prancing around in castles and riding horses and, you know, going on duck hunts or something.

00:07:58.060 It's a very difficult life of duty.

00:08:01.940 You know, you and I can wake up in the morning and do basically whatever we want to do.

00:08:06.400 We want to change jobs.

00:08:07.580 We can do that.

00:08:08.620 And if we want to go marry somebody, we can do that.

00:08:11.100 And when you are born into the royal family, you there are a lot of privileges to go with that, obviously, but there are a lot of restrictions.

00:08:20.300 There's a lot of duty.

00:08:21.520 That is your place in life.

00:08:23.600 And you serve a very important role as a symbol of the country.

00:08:27.960 And I think they were absolutely shocked to learn that certainly she was shocked to learn this.

00:08:33.040 And he apparently didn't provide her any help.

00:08:34.860 How could she have been shocked how we knew from over here?

00:08:38.500 I mean, it was obvious to everyone.

00:08:39.940 How could it not have been obvious to her, especially when she had access to someone the rest of us didn't?

00:08:45.340 The prince.

00:08:46.380 I'm sure he told her.

00:08:47.820 And for her to now claim, like, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, it's not believable.

00:08:53.880 You know, instead, she goes out there.

00:08:56.420 And the thing that it's been driving me insane is that, look what's happened, Michael.

00:09:01.620 We have 2.6 million people dead.

00:09:04.900 We have record unemployment in Great Britain.

00:09:07.920 We have 10 million people unemployed here in the United States.

00:09:11.220 And we're supposed to care about what title her kid is going to get?

00:09:16.100 Well, I don't.

00:09:17.540 I don't care at all.

00:09:18.600 I want her to shut up and go away.

00:09:20.000 You know, Megan, I think you're being terribly unfair here because Megan told us herself that she had nobody around her who could tell her anything about what it's like to be a royal.

00:09:31.560 Nobody like, for instance, the prince that she was marrying.

00:09:34.220 And, you know, really to complain about having to learn the national anthem or to complain about having to learn the hymns before your wedding into the family that runs the Church of England just represents a narcissism that I do think is emblematic of the culture.

00:09:51.660 The only sort of benefit of the doubt I'm giving her is that she has been raised in a culture in the United States in particular that is so focused on the self that she, I don't think, could really see past that.

00:10:08.880 And the moment that she, you know, encountered the reality of duty, of being a civil servant with a tiara on rather than some, you know, Hollywood starlet, which I think she thought was going to be the life of a royal.

00:10:23.180 Then she left.

00:10:26.160 She ditched and she dragged her husband with her.

00:10:27.880 And it was so sad to see every so often in the interview, you know, Harry would say, well, you know, darling, I think, and she'd say, shh, stop it, Harry.

00:10:35.800 I'm answering now.

00:10:36.980 Allow me.

00:10:37.740 Well, I mean, I, I, and she definitely played, you know, the race card.

00:10:41.640 That was very clear.

00:10:42.720 And yes, it sounds like there was somebody who apparently said something racist within the royal family.

00:10:47.820 We don't know because Oprah didn't probe more.

00:10:50.980 And I mean, I was saying earlier that I'm not sure we should just go with this because it's such a scurrilous allegation.

00:10:56.760 Like in a court of law, you'd have to back that up.

00:10:58.660 That would not have been admissible the way it was elicited by Oprah.

00:11:01.520 You'd have to have a foundation who said it, where, who heard it, you know, and you'd have to get the details of it.

00:11:06.380 But I'm not sure we should accept it just because it was such a broad sweep.

00:11:10.280 I'm not sure we've got the evidence, but let's say we do.

00:11:13.040 So what she's proven is that there is one person in her husband's family who is concerned about skin color and sounds like they may be a racist.

00:11:20.240 How does that lead you to pull up stakes from the entire monarchy, to leave the country, to arrest the prince away from his family, to go back to the United States, which, by the way, we were told is also a racist country by woke people like Meghan.

00:11:35.340 Okay, so somebody is kind of douchey over there in the royal family.

00:11:39.560 I get it, but what she's really complaining about, what she really was upset about, was the mean press, which to me is just so weak.

00:11:49.200 I'm sorry.

00:11:49.900 I know the press is nasty.

00:11:51.600 I've been on the receiving end.

00:11:53.240 Of course.

00:11:53.760 But come on.

00:11:55.160 Come on.

00:11:56.100 And by the way, you think it was nasty then?

00:12:00.020 Wait till you see what they're going to do to you now.

00:12:02.080 Right.

00:12:02.380 Now that you don't even have the semblance of palace protection.

00:12:05.260 It's simply not credible.

00:12:07.320 I mean, the allegations she's making about race are not credible.

00:12:10.300 Her apparent inability to memorize a national anthem is not credible.

00:12:14.500 She's an actress.

00:12:15.260 Her job is actually to learn her lines, right?

00:12:17.520 You know, none of these things.

00:12:19.860 The understanding that the press is going to come and attack you, right?

00:12:22.480 She's been in the public eye for quite some time.

00:12:25.800 So I don't really think that's credible.

00:12:27.140 Also, don't you think if the royal family had a real problem with Meghan's race, which, by the way, no one would even know her race.

00:12:34.740 I mean, she is what we call in Hollywood ethnically ambiguous.

00:12:39.240 My mother, who I mentioned earlier, my mother had much darker skin than Meghan Markle.

00:12:44.520 But if you can claim in any way some sort of victimhood, that carries social currency.

00:12:49.780 But don't you think that if the royal family had some problem with Meghan's race, that they would have mentioned this before Prince Charles walked her down the aisle?

00:12:57.460 Don't you think they would have mentioned this before they welcomed her into the family?

00:13:00.660 Did they just learn their biology a couple of months ago?

00:13:04.280 Did they just, oh, my gosh, they might have a child?

00:13:06.660 Well, goodness.

00:13:07.140 Well, here's the other thing.

00:13:08.560 So let's say somebody had this thought in their head, like concern about how dark the child's skin was going to be, right?

00:13:15.560 Not good.

00:13:16.300 Not good.

00:13:16.860 But what actually matters in life is not whether somebody might somewhere harbor a racist thought, a sexist thought, a transphobic thought, but whether they act on those thoughts.

00:13:27.520 Right.

00:13:27.960 And as far as I can see, the royal family's behavior had nothing to do with race.

00:13:32.920 They embraced Meghan.

00:13:34.080 They embraced Archie.

00:13:34.980 They did not withhold a prince title for that kid because his mother is multiracial, is biracial.

00:13:41.480 Not at all.

00:13:42.120 All the facts that have come out say the kid never had any entitlement to become a prince.

00:13:46.800 That was known for 100 years.

00:13:48.760 Long before Prince Harry met Meghan, they knew his kids would not be princes until his dad took the throne.

00:13:55.280 Then it would be up to him and his wife about whether to bestow that title or accept the title bestowed by the king.

00:14:00.620 So there's nothing.

00:14:02.720 She's got nothing to prove that anyone behaved in a racist way.

00:14:06.900 There was one racist comment, allegedly.

00:14:08.660 So I was like, from that and her mean press coverage, we've spun into this narrative of like, now you've got the head of BLM, one of the founders of BLM, calling for, quote, a boycott of the royal family.

00:14:20.380 Right.

00:14:20.600 Right.

00:14:20.920 I don't know exactly how that boycott's going to work.

00:14:23.380 But this is so emblematic of our culture, Meghan.

00:14:26.120 And there's actually a joke going around right now that, you know, the left was so angry about George W. Bush's foreign policy of bombing the Middle East.

00:14:35.060 And then they were so happy when Obama and Biden decided to bomb the Middle East because it was a woman manning the drones.

00:14:42.560 You know, it was it was a person of color dropping the bombs and the bombs had a rainbow flag and the BLM sign on it.

00:14:48.520 What what has happened increasingly is that we have shifted away our focus from actions to words.

00:14:57.660 And this comes with the shift wrought by call it political correctness, call it wokeness, call it whatever you like that.

00:15:03.880 The shift from old moral codes to new speech codes, the undermining of old standards of behavior with this new sort of lexicon that we all have to adhere to.

00:15:14.080 Jen Psaki, my favorite current White House press secretary, we get such a kick out of Ms. Psaki.

00:15:20.600 She was just confronted with this this problem that Joe Biden is facing on the southern border where the the numbers are far worse.

00:15:28.500 The children are being separated from their parents.

00:15:30.680 They're being put in cages.

00:15:31.820 It's it's an identical policy to everything that the left ever accused Trump of doing.

00:15:36.560 And they said, do you have a messaging problem?

00:15:39.000 And she said, no, the past administration had a moral problem.

00:15:42.540 Well, what's the moral problem?

00:15:44.180 The two policies are almost identical, but it's the the intentions, the deep seated beliefs.

00:15:51.460 The actions might be the same, but something something there is different.

00:15:56.100 That's right.

00:15:56.740 Well, I mean, and I want to get into the immigration thing with you in a bit.

00:15:59.240 But before we before we before we leave the the royals, I wanted to talk about the Piers Morgan piece of it, because the other thing that the woke left does is everything boils down to one's lived experience.

00:16:13.420 And they they don't care about facts like like hard facts that put the lie to someone's claim are now dismissed out of hand is just contrary to one's lived experience.

00:16:25.980 And it's very frustrating to argue with somebody like that.

00:16:29.840 Right. Because it's like, how are you supposed to make any progress if that's some sort of trump card they can always throw out on you?

00:16:35.400 And Piers Morgan, I watched that segment, which preceded his walk off the set.

00:16:41.340 And he was angry.

00:16:42.500 He was talking to their weatherman, the Good Morning Britain's weatherman, who forgive me, I think he's mixed race.

00:16:48.840 I know he's a person of color. And the weatherman was trying to make a similar point in response to Piers point about the kid was never entitled to be a prince.

00:16:58.280 And she she misled us. And we've got that clip.

00:17:01.060 I don't think most people have heard this. This is a lot of people are playing why he walked off or showing Piers his walk off.

00:17:06.140 But here's what preceded it. Listen, Megan just got it wrong.

00:17:09.920 Archie hasn't been prevented from being a prince because of his skin color.

00:17:13.600 And that's been now believed by Americans on national television there. And that is damaging.

00:17:19.520 But again, do you know what? It's their lived experience.

00:17:23.080 And no, it's not true that Piers is their lived experience.

00:17:26.400 And again, this is this is where the confusion comes in.

00:17:28.880 How do you sometimes identify covert racism?

00:17:32.720 It's actually quite hard because it's not there.

00:17:34.360 But Alex, on that one, it's not true.

00:17:37.280 It's so frustrating. What are you talking about covert racism?

00:17:40.940 He was never entitled to the title. Black, white, purple.

00:17:44.560 He wasn't going to get it. It's not her lived experience. It's her imagination.

00:17:49.460 Megan, those are just your deeply ingrained implicit biases.

00:17:53.620 Don't you know that King George V understood in the early 20th century that someday down the line,

00:17:59.540 there would be this boy who was in the line and he was one eighth black.

00:18:02.780 And this was all just to promote white supremacy or some some other such evil.

00:18:07.920 This problem is widespread.

00:18:13.920 I mean, you see it everywhere from the Smithsonian Institution describing the phrase objective reality

00:18:19.320 or objective truth is white supremacy.

00:18:20.980 You see it to this dismissal of facts here in in the royal family.

00:18:28.060 It comes from an undermining of our faculties of reason and will.

00:18:32.180 It actually does tie into this issue of political correctness because political correctness asserts

00:18:38.360 that by changing words, you can change reality, that words, which are symbols that we use to communicate

00:18:43.640 with one another, they actually have no tie in.

00:18:46.740 They have no relation to some objective reality outside of themselves.

00:18:50.420 So we can just construct any sort of reality that we want to quote Hamlet when he's feigning madness.

00:18:56.740 It's all just words, words, words.

00:18:59.940 And so you see this expressed in a lot of cockamamie left-wing theories during the 1960s and 70s in the academy.

00:19:07.280 But what this redounds to is you cannot tell me that my suffering is not real.

00:19:14.040 The suffering of the individual, the claim to grievance is the only thing that I can know.

00:19:19.100 I feel, therefore I am.

00:19:21.700 And you can present all the facts in the world.

00:19:24.580 We're simply not speaking the same language.

00:19:26.580 And this is why, by the way, if you want to have a civilized politics,

00:19:29.540 you need to be able to agree on the meaning of words and the things that words refer to.

00:19:34.340 That's how we persuade one another in a republic.

00:19:36.660 When you can no longer do that, when you cannot communicate,

00:19:40.560 then you have lost your mode of politics.

00:19:42.540 When you lose speech, you lose that mode of politics.

00:19:45.420 And politics merely becomes a bunch of interest groups grunting at one another,

00:19:49.620 which is sadly what politics in the West would appear to have decayed to.

00:19:52.800 Well, so after this 14-minute exchange, you could sense Piers' frustration.

00:19:58.260 And I must tell you, I felt it too.

00:20:00.480 I'm sure our audience listening right now is feeling it too.

00:20:03.600 It isn't, first of all, what does that even mean it's her lived experience?

00:20:07.320 She made it up and therefore we're supposed to say it's true?

00:20:11.260 It makes no sense.

00:20:12.480 So then Piers-

00:20:13.040 It's her truth.

00:20:13.480 Ultimately, so then Alex Beresford is the guy's name, which is very close to Alex Berenson.

00:20:19.480 They should not be confused.

00:20:20.700 Alex Beresford is the weatherman for Good Morning Britain, who I am told by my team,

00:20:25.320 has publicly said that his mother was white, I think, and his father was black.

00:20:29.760 So he was still poking Piers and he was suggesting that this entire criticism by Piers boils down

00:20:37.400 to the fact that Piers doesn't like Meghan because, as Piers has told everybody, Meghan

00:20:41.560 ghosted him years ago.

00:20:43.040 She sort of, in his view, used him to work her way up the ladder in Great Britain and

00:20:48.820 getting contacts that were well-known and then ghosted him as soon as she met Harry.

00:20:53.720 And so that was Alex's attack on Piers right before he walked off the set.

00:20:56.720 And then he called Piers a name.

00:20:57.920 And I understand that you don't like Meghan Markle.

00:21:01.640 You've made it so clear a number of times on this program, a number of times.

00:21:06.940 And I understand that you've got a personal relationship with Meghan Markle or had one

00:21:11.920 and she cut you off.

00:21:13.580 She's entitled to cut you off if she wants to.

00:21:16.660 Has she said anything about you since she cut you off?

00:21:19.200 I don't think she has, but yet you continue to trash her.

00:21:22.440 OK, I'm done with this.

00:21:23.620 No, no, no.

00:21:23.960 Sorry.

00:21:24.400 No, sorry.

00:21:25.460 Do you know what?

00:21:25.800 That's pathetic.

00:21:26.100 You can trash me, but not my answer.

00:21:27.160 No, no, no.

00:21:27.600 See you later.

00:21:28.160 I'm being...

00:21:28.800 Sorry.

00:21:29.740 Can't do this.

00:21:30.220 This is absolutely diabolical behavior.

00:21:33.700 I'm sorry, but Piers spouts off on a regular basis and we all have to sit there and listen.

00:21:39.640 6.30 to 7 o'clock yesterday was incredibly hard to watch.

00:21:45.060 Was it?

00:21:45.540 I don't know.

00:21:46.200 So he's diabolical.

00:21:47.200 So he's diabolical because he didn't want to sit there and have a conversation that was

00:21:51.540 not being conducted in good faith and with guardrails that would adhere to fact, whatever

00:21:58.380 the facts were.

00:21:59.640 And by the way, Meghan Markle may not have criticized Piers publicly for, you know, over the course

00:22:04.580 of, you know, after she ghosted him, but we now know that she was the one who called

00:22:08.160 the station herself to complain about his statement that he didn't believe her because with respect

00:22:14.760 to her claim that she was suicidal, she purportedly said she was very concerned about others with

00:22:21.060 mental health issues, hearing that kind of thing.

00:22:23.440 Now, by the way, at no point did Meghan claim that she is currently having those feelings.

00:22:27.140 She was recounting a feeling she claimed she had a couple of years ago and Piers, a couple

00:22:33.180 years later, was saying, I'm not sure I believe anything she says.

00:22:36.160 I actually don't believe anything she says, which is a view he's entitled to have.

00:22:39.100 So now we know she personally had a hand in what became this huge kerfuffle leading ultimately

00:22:44.540 to his departure.

00:22:46.220 But diabolical, that was his behavior for not willing to have the convo.

00:22:50.040 I was so glad that Piers walked off that set.

00:22:52.980 And I think some American conservatives might be a little confused by it because, you know,

00:22:56.800 we love to talk about the free marketplace of ideas.

00:22:59.660 And, you know, the only answer to bad speech is more speech.

00:23:01.920 And we've got to stay in the fight and debate these things.

00:23:04.500 You are not in any way obligated to engage in a debate in bad faith.

00:23:10.860 When you when you say that this person talking to Piers was not acting in good faith, that

00:23:15.740 is the key here.

00:23:16.800 They were not debating ideas.

00:23:18.480 They were not there was no persuasion that was going to go on here.

00:23:21.840 This was a character assassination, a petty personal attack on Piers Morgan.

00:23:26.880 And I loved his expression.

00:23:28.540 He just said, sorry, mate, you can trash me, but not on my own show.

00:23:32.620 And I think conservatives have a lot to learn about that.

00:23:36.580 You know, we we seem always to give in to the left on the guardrails of the conversation.

00:23:42.660 We always seem to give the left their premises and we debate according to their premises.

00:23:47.500 And Piers said, no, thank you.

00:23:49.860 You know, it's it's it's a losing battle.

00:23:52.260 It's a trap.

00:23:53.000 And he tried.

00:23:53.920 He tried for 14 minutes.

00:23:55.700 It wasn't like he just said, you're not somebody I can talk to because you're not dealing in fact.

00:24:00.060 He listened to it back and forth and it got personal on Piers' show and he kind of had it.

00:24:04.160 And clearly, I mean, I said this before, but clearly he had had something with his own team behind the scenes prior to going out there on the set.

00:24:10.300 I could tell it.

00:24:10.920 I mean, just from having been a TV anchor, I could read it on the look on his face.

00:24:14.740 Clearly, before he went out there, somebody ticked him off.

00:24:17.920 And who knows what they said?

00:24:19.280 I'm sure they were chastising him over his remarks.

00:24:22.660 And Piers is Piers.

00:24:24.020 You don't want Piers.

00:24:24.980 You shouldn't have hired Piers.

00:24:25.860 He was his quintessential self that day.

00:24:28.900 And now he's basically, I don't know, he seems like he might be kind of enjoying thumbing his finger at everybody because he is a free speech advocate.

00:24:36.380 He wrote a whole book about this.

00:24:38.680 And here is what he told the press who hounded him on the street yesterday.

00:24:42.800 I believe in freedom of speech.

00:24:44.660 I believe in the right to be allowed to have an opinion.

00:24:48.360 If people want to believe Meghan Markle, that's entirely their right.

00:24:51.780 I don't believe almost anything that comes out of her mouth.

00:24:55.920 And I think the damage she's done to the British monarchy and to the Queen at a time when Prince Philip is lying in hospital is enormous and, frankly, contemptible.

00:25:06.860 So if I have to fall on my sword for expressing an honestly held opinion about Meghan Markle and that diatribe of bilge that she came out with in that interview, so be it.

00:25:18.340 Although the woke crowd would have thought they think that they've cancelled me, I think they'll be rather disappointed when I re-emerge.

00:25:27.740 Good for him.

00:25:29.120 I love it.

00:25:29.700 Right?

00:25:29.900 It's like when this kind of thing happens, I feel like everyone needs to speak up.

00:25:33.140 He needs to say, no, I won't be cancelled, right?

00:25:37.020 And I'm not sorry because he wasn't sorry.

00:25:40.040 And the rest of us, I mean, I tweeted in his favor a couple of times this whole week, and I went on a bunch of British television to defend him because we've been talking on this podcast, Michael, about how it's not enough when the mob comes for somebody to just not join the mob.

00:25:55.460 If that's the best you can do, then we'll take it.

00:25:57.560 It's better than joining the mob.

00:25:58.720 But what we really need is people who are able to fight back against the mob, to stand up for the one being mobbed.

00:26:06.780 And you don't have to agree with him about whatever he said.

00:26:10.720 You just have to stand up for the principle of free speech and against mob rule.

00:26:14.700 I think the way that we persuade people to do that is by showing the reality of what we call the cancel culture because a lot of the time, I think the reason people don't speak up is that they feel that they can hold on to their old privileges, the privileges that the sort of dominant liberal order gave to them.

00:26:36.540 You saw this great example over the past week with one of the musicians in the band Mumford & Sons.

00:26:43.100 He had complimented.

00:26:44.140 It was so sad.

00:26:45.200 He complimented Andy Ngo's book detailing how awful Antifa is.

00:26:48.840 Andy Ngo has gotten brain bleeds from Antifa.

00:26:51.400 He has seen it really firsthand, did excellent reporting.

00:26:54.940 And he said, oh, I liked the book.

00:26:56.060 And now they're trying to cancel him for it.

00:26:57.920 And what did the musician do?

00:26:59.540 He issued an apology.

00:27:02.180 And it was the worst thing he could have done, not even as a matter of truth and justice, but even for himself.

00:27:08.700 He's getting this bad advice where people are going into his ear and saying, don't worry, just lay low, apologize to the mob, appease them a little bit, and then they'll forgive you and you can go back to your old popularity.

00:27:20.680 And that just won't happen.

00:27:22.700 There is no forgiveness in this culture.

00:27:25.880 Sir Roger Scruton, speaking of wonderful Englishmen, the late Roger Scruton said that in order for us to have civilization, we need confession and we need forgiveness.

00:27:38.100 You need to be able to say, whoops, I did something wrong, and you sacrifice your pride.

00:27:41.820 And then the rest of society has to be able to say, okay, I forgive you, and you sacrifice your resentment.

00:27:46.340 And then you can get along together and have a country.

00:27:48.860 That would appear to be on its way out.

00:27:51.560 America used to be the land of second chances.

00:27:53.320 I don't even know if we're the land of first chances anymore.

00:27:55.880 As these radical ideologies are advancing.

00:27:58.440 And so in that world, any kind of weakness, any sort of apology to the mob, it's not only going to set you back, but it's certainly going to set back the cause of the traditions that we all cherish and want to maintain.

00:28:11.380 Let me ask you about that.

00:28:12.620 So you're the banjo player at Mumford & Sons, hugely successful.

00:28:16.620 I guess they describe Mumford & Sons as more folksy.

00:28:19.980 I didn't realize that that was the area that, you know.

00:28:23.640 Kind of like a pop folk.

00:28:24.960 Genre for them.

00:28:25.900 But okay, they're awesome.

00:28:27.360 And it's a great gig.

00:28:28.460 They're succeeding, right?

00:28:29.720 It's a huge band.

00:28:31.100 So they come to you and they say, we can't really, there's nothing going to work with our lefty folk people for you to be an Andy Noe fan.

00:28:38.200 And you kind of got to, like, you got to fall on the sword if you have any chance of staying with us.

00:28:44.480 I mean, most people, it's hard to be a musician.

00:28:47.700 It's hard to find, you know, to hit success.

00:28:50.180 Most people would do it, would do what he's trying.

00:28:53.040 I get what he's trying to do.

00:28:54.200 I feel bad for him, but I get what he's trying to do.

00:28:56.700 Don't you?

00:28:57.580 I totally get what he's trying to do.

00:28:59.880 The thing he doesn't understand is he's already out of the band.

00:29:03.700 The thing that he doesn't understand is he's already lost whatever he had.

00:29:08.120 And so the choice is not, do I stand firm and lose my gig or do I capitulate and degrade myself and then get my gig back?

00:29:16.580 I think that choice is over.

00:29:18.300 The only question is, do I lose my gig and keep my dignity or do I lose my gig and grovel to the people who are going to destroy my career?

00:29:24.960 Oh, my God.

00:29:26.080 So that's a very interesting thought, first of all.

00:29:28.420 I'm going to need to sit with that.

00:29:30.000 I really am.

00:29:30.620 I'm, of course, thinking about my own personal history, but I wish we had known each other then.

00:29:36.880 This is true, I think, of a lot of people.

00:29:40.100 Because this kind of culture came on us so fast that the old way of thinking was, you know, apologize, sort of.

00:29:45.900 It's okay.

00:29:46.340 It'll work out.

00:29:47.540 I just think in the last number of years, that has really changed.

00:29:52.520 That rug has been pulled out from under our feet.

00:29:54.900 And that's a pretty negative social change.

00:29:57.520 No, my friend Melissa Francis says, she goes, M.K., you killed apologizing.

00:30:03.700 I mean, your incident was kind of one of these moments where you looked at it and you said, what?

00:30:09.980 Nothing about this makes sense.

00:30:12.000 The alleged issue, I call it the non-traversy itself, doesn't make sense.

00:30:16.820 But then even the reaction, the apology, the culture had snapped.

00:30:22.700 Something in the culture had snapped.

00:30:24.260 And look at the effects that it's had now, you know, into the future.

00:30:28.420 Yeah.

00:30:28.680 I've said before, I really felt through the whole thing like people were gaslighting me.

00:30:32.160 You know, I know what I said is factually true.

00:30:34.940 And yet there's nobody out there, almost nobody, defending me.

00:30:37.920 By the way, Piers Morgan was one of them who openly did defend me.

00:30:41.340 Ben Shapiro, your colleague, boss, is another one.

00:30:44.480 But very few.

00:30:45.780 And so I was really like, I'm being gaslit.

00:30:47.460 So I guess I did step on some huge landmine that was very culturally blind of me.

00:30:51.960 You know, like that's sort of the, and I had been so beaten down by my year and a half at NBC.

00:30:55.160 At that point, it was like, I was just a little pulp of my formal, of my real self.

00:31:00.660 Up next, I am going to play you a soundbite that you will not believe.

00:31:05.480 Stay tuned.

00:31:06.160 It's from Chris Harrison, the host, now sort of turfed host of The Bachelor.

00:31:12.340 I mean, just flogging himself on Good Morning America with Michael Strahan.

00:31:16.680 It was shocking.

00:31:17.700 It was a shocking exchange.

00:31:19.600 If you haven't heard it, you will.

00:31:21.280 Stay tuned.

00:31:21.620 While we're talking about groveling and pathetic and apologies, oh my God, have you seen what's

00:31:32.880 being done to Chris Harrison of The Bachelor?

00:31:36.320 You know, you'll be shocked to hear that I'm not a nightly Bachelor viewer, but I have heard

00:31:42.480 about this.

00:31:42.960 This is a real, it's become an international incident from some tabloid TV show.

00:31:48.360 So it's, it's so cringy.

00:31:50.840 So let's just get people up to speed.

00:31:52.680 My understanding of it is somebody, a woman on the show.

00:32:00.060 Yeah.

00:32:01.120 It came out that in 2018, so not that long ago, when I guess she was in college, she went

00:32:05.500 to something called like a plantation party.

00:32:08.460 It's totally inappropriate, right?

00:32:09.800 It's just like, okay, 2018, it's probably not a good idea.

00:32:12.820 And it came out and she was deeply apologetic.

00:32:16.680 She was embarrassed, right?

00:32:17.720 And Chris Harrison, who hosts The Bachelor, was asked about it in an interview and he

00:32:22.560 basically said, yeah, plantation-themed frat party in college.

00:32:26.460 And he basically said, well, cancel culture, you know, was it wrong then or is it just wrong

00:32:32.580 in 2021?

00:32:33.480 And he was trying to make the point of like, you know, we sort of always have this perfect

00:32:37.560 2020 hindsight and are we beating up on her too much, right?

00:32:40.540 So that was his knee-jerk reaction.

00:32:41.860 Well, he actually said, we should have Grace, right?

00:32:46.700 Yep.

00:32:46.900 Well, F that.

00:32:48.460 Grace, what?

00:32:49.900 So he was removed from The Bachelor.

00:32:54.080 I don't, he's not officially fired yet.

00:32:55.580 As far as I know, he's been, quote, taking a break and is not on The Bachelor show.

00:32:59.900 He's hosted for like, I don't know, 45 years.

00:33:03.740 It's been forever.

00:33:05.040 Since the Hoover administration, right.

00:33:07.020 Right.

00:33:07.320 So it's already kind of like, ah, the whole thing is making me feel uncomfortable.

00:33:10.680 And I'm like, Chris Harrison, hey, when did he become controversial?

00:33:14.400 And then he went on Good Morning America with Michael Strahan last week.

00:33:19.900 And I was like, every muscle in my body was clenched watching it.

00:33:24.160 It was so uncomfortable.

00:33:26.900 He looked like a hostage.

00:33:29.600 I was like, blink twice if you can hear us, Chris.

00:33:31.940 Are you okay?

00:33:32.420 Are they giving you food and water?

00:33:34.000 So just listen, because we have a clip.

00:33:36.320 Listen to this.

00:33:36.980 A lot of people, and I'm wondering, why would you defend Rachel Kirkenell?

00:33:40.520 I am an imperfect man.

00:33:41.980 I made a mistake.

00:33:43.440 And I own that.

00:33:45.440 I believe that mistake doesn't reflect who I am or what I stand for.

00:33:54.020 I am committed to the progress, not just for myself, also for the franchise.

00:34:00.440 You said, quote, is it not a good look in 2018, or is it not a good look in 2021, because they're

00:34:08.240 the big difference.

00:34:09.720 So what is the, to you, what is the difference?

00:34:12.540 Or is there one?

00:34:13.660 There is not.

00:34:14.400 Antebellum parties are not okay.

00:34:19.660 Past, present, future.

00:34:23.220 Knowing what that represents is unacceptable.

00:34:28.440 I am saddened and shocked at how insensitive I was in that interview with Rachel Lindsay.

00:34:35.920 And I didn't speak from my heart.

00:34:37.780 And that is to say, I stand against all forms of racism.

00:34:42.360 And I am deeply sorry.

00:34:44.660 I'm sorry to Rachel Lindsay.

00:34:46.820 And I'm sorry to the black community.

00:34:49.220 So you are the right person to lead this franchise into the future, you feel.

00:34:53.620 I plan to be back, and I want to be back.

00:34:56.300 This interview is not the finish line.

00:34:59.040 There is much more work to be done.

00:35:01.040 And I am excited to be a part of that change.

00:35:03.560 A lot more work to be done, Chris.

00:35:04.780 I cannot agree with you more on that.

00:35:07.180 You guys know, his apology is his apology.

00:35:09.100 But it felt like I got nothing more than a surface response on any of this.

00:35:13.980 And obviously, he is the man who wants to clearly stay on the show.

00:35:18.120 But only time will tell if there is any meaning behind his words.

00:35:21.960 Megan, do you remember at the end of Breaking Bad?

00:35:25.920 Spoiler alert, but the show has been out for a while.

00:35:28.260 Greatest ever.

00:35:29.380 I mean, truly magnificent TV.

00:35:31.980 And at the very end, Walter White, this sort of villainous guy, his brother-in-law,

00:35:38.000 cop brother-in-law, is about to be killed by the drug dealer.

00:35:41.640 And Walter is pleading for his life.

00:35:43.320 And he's saying, no, just do this, Hank.

00:35:44.980 Don't, no, just say this.

00:35:46.420 Say you'll do this.

00:35:47.380 And Hank looks at him.

00:35:48.200 He says, Walter, you're the smartest guy I know.

00:35:49.880 And yet, you don't realize that this guy decided to kill me 10 minutes ago.

00:35:55.180 You don't realize that this is all for naught.

00:35:59.600 You know, listening to that interview, what he first said when he defended this girl and

00:36:05.760 said, you know, look, have some grace and different times, whatever.

00:36:10.320 That was a defensible man.

00:36:12.360 That's an upstanding man who's actually standing up for somebody and standing up against a mob.

00:36:16.120 The guy who went on that TV show is despicable.

00:36:18.780 I mean, that it's a shell of a man, a shell of a man.

00:36:22.060 The only way they can really beat you in this sort of woke cancel culture, look, they can

00:36:26.980 take your job, they can take your money, they can take your reputation.

00:36:29.380 But the only way they can really beat you is when they get you to degrade yourself.

00:36:34.520 And sadly, they succeed at doing that a whole lot.

00:36:38.380 It was like I had so many feelings when I watched it.

00:36:40.520 Like, obviously, every line was scripted.

00:36:43.340 You know, you could just tell.

00:36:45.340 And he went on to say that he's, of course, now working with a diversity trainer.

00:36:50.400 Oh, my goodness.

00:36:51.040 I mean, like, oh, my.

00:36:52.220 A certain male gesture comes to mind.

00:36:53.920 Do you know the male gesture I mean?

00:36:55.540 As a matter of fact, I do.

00:36:56.860 I'm well acquainted.

00:36:57.660 I don't believe him.

00:36:59.260 And even though I thought it was not graceful of Michael Strahan not to let him off the

00:37:03.980 hook a little, I can't say I disagreed with Strahan's assessment.

00:37:07.600 It didn't seem sincere.

00:37:09.120 I think he was right about that.

00:37:10.760 Of course, it was insincere.

00:37:12.440 You now you're you're initially in this moment where you disagree with the guy.

00:37:17.780 You say, well, I have a different view on antebellum parties for, you know, I disagree

00:37:21.600 with him.

00:37:22.280 OK, but now it's not just that you have a disagreement with this guy and you think that he's a bad fellow

00:37:26.580 and, you know, has bad motives.

00:37:27.720 You also know he's a liar.

00:37:30.100 He has actually given you a reason to criticize him.

00:37:33.460 I don't think the previous criticisms were legitimate at all, but he has now given you

00:37:37.080 a legitimate reason to criticize him.

00:37:39.500 And so the mob wins.

00:37:41.380 Right.

00:37:41.640 And I'll be shocked if he actually does return to the Bachelor franchise, to your point about

00:37:45.960 the end of Breaking Bad.

00:37:48.000 But, you know, the thing is, you look at things like this and you think, OK, I mean, no, I

00:37:52.280 don't think many people are going to support an antebellum party.

00:37:54.780 And 2018 wasn't that long ago, but it was before this crazy, insane, woke revolution

00:37:59.880 we're having.

00:38:01.440 You know, it was sort of the beginning because I mean, I left NBC October of 2018.

00:38:04.860 I feel like that was that was one of the first things to happen in the crazy revolution.

00:38:09.040 Right.

00:38:09.360 It was.

00:38:09.740 But but but the same people who are trying to tell us that Chris Harrison is suddenly

00:38:14.520 a raging racist, a bad man who has to lose his show over.

00:38:21.120 Well, could we be more graceful?

00:38:22.760 I don't know if the standard was the same then are trying to tell us that the Jeep Cherokee

00:38:29.080 is offensive and has to lose its name.

00:38:34.100 That's happening and Jeep, I think, is going to do it.

00:38:38.460 Oh, well, of course, because you see, in the name of anti-racism and anti-white supremacy,

00:38:42.680 we need to erase any vestige of any culture that that is non-white.

00:38:47.740 I mean, first of all, you know, on the point of this party, you're not allowed to have a

00:38:51.680 party about the South, you know, the big skirts or anything, but you're allowed to have a

00:38:55.400 toga party.

00:38:56.100 And last I checked, there was a whole lot of oppression and slavery in ancient Rome.

00:39:00.720 Perhaps someday you won't be able to have a toga party.

00:39:03.360 Perhaps these these cultural mores, these standards are changing so rapidly because

00:39:09.000 they're not really about any just standard.

00:39:11.540 They're really just about the imposition of the rule itself.

00:39:14.640 The fact that these cultural radicals can get you to acquiesce and do their bidding.

00:39:21.720 That's, you know, I think sort of the the first thing that we need to come to grapple with.

00:39:27.220 Um, well, I don't I don't know anything about like a plantation party doesn't sound like

00:39:31.600 a good idea to me.

00:39:32.500 I have to say, like, right, like I'm pretty loose about like not slapping people on the

00:39:37.500 hands on non PC stuff.

00:39:39.380 That one seems rather obvious.

00:39:40.780 But I also think she was a dumbass college student and an apology should be enough.

00:39:45.860 Right.

00:39:46.220 She's this girl shouldn't have her life ruined.

00:39:47.820 And Chris Harrison, who was trying to throw her a bone and accept the apology, he shouldn't

00:39:52.100 have his life ruined.

00:39:52.960 And he's been critical to that whole franchise.

00:39:55.400 And now it's like, F you, you're done.

00:39:58.380 Well, and just, you know, just think about all the things that you have done in your own

00:40:03.960 life.

00:40:04.640 You say, gosh, well, that wasn't so great.

00:40:07.160 Oh, I messed up there.

00:40:08.740 Oh, I did something wrong to this person.

00:40:10.800 And think about how you have been forgiven for those things and how you would like to

00:40:14.340 be forgiven.

00:40:15.060 And of course, it would be nice to extend that grace to other people.

00:40:17.940 But we are caught up in this particular ideology.

00:40:22.140 It's a truly, this is sort of the essence of progressivism, whereby the past is always

00:40:27.960 bad and the present is always a crisis and the future is always going to be wonderful.

00:40:34.700 And so if you defend in any way, anything in the past, which means if you don't go along

00:40:40.280 with the progressive political agenda, then they'll find some reason to go after you, some

00:40:45.840 reason to cancel you.

00:40:47.240 And unfortunately, people who do not speak, I think people who spend all their time in

00:40:51.940 politics kind of understand that and they're better equipped to deal with this mania because

00:40:56.620 maybe some people have seen it coming.

00:40:58.420 But for most people who don't spend that much time, you know, browsing political philosophy

00:41:02.540 in the news all day long, this will be a surprise to them.

00:41:06.700 And I mean, that is what has created the cancel culture.

00:41:09.320 Mm hmm.

00:41:10.880 And I want to follow up on that one second, but I do want to just round out so people

00:41:15.820 know a UCLA law professor, Berkeley law professor and Berkeley doctoral candidate wrote an open

00:41:23.580 piece saying, look, Jeep has signaled that it's open to granting the Cherokee Nation's request

00:41:28.580 to change the name of the SUV.

00:41:30.260 And then they point out that non-Indians have for years co-opted Indian culture and identity.

00:41:34.920 For example, the game of cowboys and Indians being played ad nauseum by children forever

00:41:40.940 as one example.

00:41:42.320 And then they go on that the other the other point they make, brace yourself.

00:41:46.920 Guess what else is racist?

00:41:48.420 The Eskimo pie.

00:41:50.480 Are they taking our Eskimo pies?

00:41:53.080 You can kiss your ass goodbye if you like it.

00:41:55.080 Oh my gosh.

00:41:55.900 It first came out in 1921.

00:41:58.180 They say the cheery icon of an Alaska native child wearing traditional cold weather clothing

00:42:03.740 has traveled around the globe.

00:42:05.680 This happy go lucky imagery has circulated more broadly than knowledge of Alaska's complex

00:42:11.480 colonial history, ignoring the sovereignty of the indigenous peoples of Alaska.

00:42:15.940 You racist.

00:42:16.780 You put down that pie right now.

00:42:18.720 I would like to state for the record, I am not now, nor have I ever eaten an Eskimo pie.

00:42:24.320 I do not want to be marred with the allegation of racism.

00:42:28.380 You know what's so ironic about this, though?

00:42:31.260 Not that the left and the people pushing this particularly care about the irony, is you

00:42:37.280 erase Cherokee.

00:42:38.220 What are you going to replace it with?

00:42:40.060 Some sort of generic English name?

00:42:42.920 You know, so then you've erased Cherokee from the culture.

00:42:45.820 Even consider the more famous example of the cancellation of Aunt Jemima, because Aunt Jemima

00:42:51.520 is allegedly racist.

00:42:53.880 Aunt Jemima is a character, is a black character that was played by a black woman, which most

00:43:00.860 people know.

00:43:02.300 But what a lot of people don't know is that Aunt Jemima was a character created by a black

00:43:06.220 comedian, a black comedian in the late 19th century named Billy Kersands, who was part

00:43:11.520 of the minstrel theatrical tradition, which is now obviously very politically incorrect.

00:43:15.680 But you have a black writer creating a black character for a black actress.

00:43:20.660 And in the name of racial justice, some white marketing executive at a corporation is going

00:43:25.160 to cancel all of that.

00:43:26.900 Isn't there something perverse about that logic?

00:43:29.980 A hundred percent.

00:43:31.400 And by the way, my team is telling me that actually they're getting rid of the name Eskimo

00:43:36.540 pie.

00:43:37.180 That's fine.

00:43:38.000 No.

00:43:38.600 I don't.

00:43:39.220 What's the net?

00:43:39.800 What's the new name?

00:43:40.540 I'm trying to look at this.

00:43:41.340 Eddie's pie.

00:43:42.240 What is it?

00:43:42.820 E-D-Y.

00:43:43.600 Eddie's pie.

00:43:44.080 Oh, Eddie's or E-D-Y's?

00:43:45.700 E-D-Y's pie?

00:43:46.480 That's it?

00:43:46.660 There it is.

00:43:47.120 See?

00:43:48.420 Oh, yeah.

00:43:49.160 E-D-Y's, right?

00:43:50.160 E-D-Y pie.

00:43:50.880 That's the ice cream brand.

00:43:51.760 I think it's E-D-Y's.

00:43:53.280 You would have hoped they'd at least rename it Inuit pie.

00:43:56.340 But no, absolutely not.

00:43:57.880 It's E-D-Y.

00:43:58.280 They just replace it with a sort of generic American term.

00:44:01.200 And there go the Eskimos.

00:44:03.200 No, it's gone.

00:44:04.500 And the thing is, what I was going to say is, all right, so this girl on The Bachelor, she's

00:44:08.780 done.

00:44:09.100 Chris Harrison, I guess he's done.

00:44:11.020 But remember, we just had a story in the news this week or last week about the incoming

00:44:16.500 editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue, Alexi McCammond.

00:44:20.560 And this girl, she sent out some dumbass college tweets that were anti-Asian.

00:44:24.740 She was making fun of Asian eyes.

00:44:26.940 I mean, there were definitely racist tweets.

00:44:29.200 And she, like, there was an uprising.

00:44:32.960 20 people at Teen Vogue wrote, like, screw her.

00:44:35.920 You know, she shouldn't be here.

00:44:37.140 But Vogue stood by her, right?

00:44:39.020 She's young.

00:44:39.860 She's black.

00:44:40.960 I think she's 28 years old, young woman.

00:44:43.340 So this wasn't that long ago, right, that she was in college.

00:44:45.780 Let's remember.

00:44:47.640 And she's OK.

00:44:49.260 She's going to keep her job.

00:44:51.280 She worked for Axios before this.

00:44:52.760 But Anna Wintour and all the others are going to stand by her.

00:44:56.140 Chris Harrison, white guy, not so much.

00:44:59.340 Well, of course, because it is really not about a standard.

00:45:02.700 There is no universal standard that's being applied here.

00:45:05.580 It's not, as Adrian Vermeule, the Harvard law professor, says, it's not hypocrisy.

00:45:11.660 It's hierarchy.

00:45:12.720 There is a new sort of hierarchical caste system being imposed upon American politics, which

00:45:19.240 is a really dreadful sort of thing and antithetical to the culture that we all want.

00:45:24.420 But it's very effective.

00:45:25.720 And I think conservatives are actually sort of missing the point here.

00:45:30.180 When we dismiss these things, we laugh about it.

00:45:32.300 We point out the hypocrisy.

00:45:33.980 We giggle at the absurdity.

00:45:35.860 PC, wokeness, cancel culture.

00:45:38.240 Yeah, it's absurd.

00:45:39.300 Oh, my gosh, it's crazy.

00:45:40.540 It's also a cogent political strategy that has been ruthlessly effective for decades at

00:45:45.840 this point.

00:45:46.460 And it appears to be accelerating.

00:45:49.200 Everything we do to try to stop it seems, if anything, to help this process advance.

00:45:54.220 Mm-hmm.

00:45:55.880 Well, I mean, another example was Joy Reid, who's constantly making racist and inappropriate

00:46:00.160 remarks, anti-gay remarks, you name it.

00:46:03.540 She came out last week and called Tim Scott, Senator Tim Scott.

00:46:07.540 She said he's only there at this Republican event to, quote, show a patina of diversity,

00:46:12.940 a patina of diversity.

00:46:14.160 So offensive.

00:46:15.440 And Tim Scott responded by saying, to your point, Michael, and I quote, we need to take

00:46:21.240 these comments seriously.

00:46:23.280 Woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy, end quote.

00:46:28.160 And this is not the first time she's called him a token.

00:46:30.700 She's like, that's just fine, I guess, because Joy Reid has black skin.

00:46:35.900 She also, by the way, called Justice Thomas Uncle Clarence, right?

00:46:39.680 Obviously, another name for Uncle Tom.

00:46:41.700 Just fine because of her skin color.

00:46:44.660 And I think that leaves most people sitting back saying, what the hell are the rules?

00:46:49.260 Yeah, yeah.

00:46:49.860 Well, you know, this brings up such an important point because the rules now are that the logic

00:46:56.880 doesn't matter and the arguments you make don't matter.

00:46:58.800 It just matters what the person who makes those arguments looks like.

00:47:02.280 So Joy Reid gets to say certain things, but, you know, I don't get to say other things.

00:47:07.240 Whatever.

00:47:09.160 This gets to the left's understanding of free speech, which I think was articulated very well

00:47:15.800 by Herbert Marcuse, father of the new left.

00:47:18.620 He wrote infamous essay in the 1960s called Repressive Tolerance.

00:47:22.480 And the thesis is you can't tolerate intolerance and therefore you got to shut up all the conservatives

00:47:27.760 and you need to encourage speech from leftists.

00:47:30.540 And we've, you know, we've dismissed this on the right for many decades and said, oh, it's perverse.

00:47:34.140 It's awful.

00:47:34.480 There is a sort of logic to it.

00:47:37.900 The logic is that all free speech regimes have some standards.

00:47:42.500 There's some things you can't say.

00:47:43.480 Some things are off limits.

00:47:44.300 That's always been true in America.

00:47:45.680 It's always been true everywhere else.

00:47:47.580 And what the Joy Reads of the world are saying is, yeah, we support racial tolerance, but Clarence Thomas laboring under a false consciousness is actually setting that back.

00:48:00.480 And so we can be as vicious to him as we want.

00:48:03.180 Tim Scott, same thing.

00:48:04.260 We can be absolutely vicious.

00:48:05.920 And according to our understanding of speech, that is totally coherent.

00:48:09.520 I think that if conservatives don't recognize the logic that the left is using here on speech, if we just keep uttering platitudes about, you know, free marketplace of ideas or whatever, I don't think we're ever going to stop it because their perception of free speech is actually, I think, a little bit keener and their strategy is obviously much more effective.

00:48:29.820 And they don't, they have such a blind spot as to how regular Americans feel and live.

00:48:36.380 And of course, the silent middle is too afraid to speak up.

00:48:39.760 But I was thinking about it just this week when it's, so it's Women's History Month now, right?

00:48:44.240 Now that we're in March, it's Women's History Month.

00:48:46.360 And there is this woman, God, she annoys me.

00:48:48.900 Her name is Jill Filipovic or Filipovic.

00:48:51.240 Oh, yes.

00:48:51.800 I don't know.

00:48:52.540 Right?

00:48:52.900 With an F.

00:48:53.580 And she went after Rush Limbaugh after he died.

00:48:56.280 She was one of the people who wrote an article and she went after Ben Shapiro.

00:48:59.260 She wanted Ben's article about, you know, his remembrance of Rush to be all about Rush's alleged sexism.

00:49:04.780 That's how she wanted Ben.

00:49:06.380 Anyway, so she wasn't a Rush Limbaugh fan.

00:49:09.100 Okay.

00:49:09.440 She doesn't have to be, but she's the gender.

00:49:11.480 She covers gender for the New York Times.

00:49:13.660 And literally she, she spent time tweeting on March 10th.

00:49:19.640 Okay.

00:49:19.980 Here's the tweet.

00:49:20.920 And now I'm really going to get myself yelled at.

00:49:23.700 But I think the issue of example setting for a kid is a totally fair one.

00:49:28.680 What example are you setting when dad works for pay and mom does the care work at home?

00:49:34.320 Lots of reasons not to want to set that example for a child.

00:49:38.860 Oh, my God.

00:49:40.580 Right?

00:49:40.840 So I tweeted out two things on this, which I'll read.

00:49:43.860 This is idiotic, disgustingly judgmental.

00:49:46.480 Stay-at-home moms are setting a great example just as moms working outside the home are,

00:49:50.340 as long as they're loving and engaged.

00:49:51.780 This sanctimonious guilt trip is sexist bullshit, whether from a man or a woman.

00:49:57.280 Ladies, do not listen to this moron.

00:49:59.620 And my follow-up was, also, any woman trying to pit stay-at-home moms against moms working

00:50:04.580 outside the home has no business calling herself a feminist or covering gender for the New York

00:50:08.340 Times.

00:50:09.080 Hey, Jill, you called Rush Limbaugh a woman hater.

00:50:11.940 Look in the mirror.

00:50:13.500 She loves women so long as they're living their lives exactly as Jill would like them

00:50:19.740 to.

00:50:20.340 Yes, but, you know, this has a long history among feminists.

00:50:24.700 When I saw her tweets about this topic, I thought, wait a second, you're telling me that

00:50:28.980 now if you want to stay home and raise your family, that it is wrong for you to do that

00:50:33.700 and your husband has every right to make you go to work.

00:50:36.120 It doesn't quite sound like women's liberation to me.

00:50:39.620 It seems like there's a bit of a bait and switch, but it goes all the way back to those

00:50:43.200 second-wave feminist debates between Betty Friedan, the American feminist, and Simone de

00:50:48.440 Beauvoir, who are a very famous French feminist and the strumpet of Jean-Paul Sartre.

00:50:52.960 And they were disagreeing over whether or not women could stay home and raise kids if they

00:50:58.860 wanted to.

00:50:58.880 Wait, can I just pause you?

00:51:00.260 Yes.

00:51:00.520 What is the strumpet of Zilke Ferdin?

00:51:02.380 So there's a very vicious, awful philosopher in the 20th century named Jean-Paul Sartre.

00:51:09.820 And the irony of feminism, I guess this is one of the examples of the irony of feminism,

00:51:15.100 is that Simone de Beauvoir, most famous feminist in the world, was basically the jilted common

00:51:20.500 law wife of this philandering derelict named Sartre.

00:51:25.200 But somehow this was presented as very empowering.

00:51:28.300 And it actually, she explains this in an interview with Friedan.

00:51:32.420 Friedan says, well, look, if some women want to work, that's good, you know, and if some

00:51:35.620 women want to stay home, that's good too.

00:51:37.280 And Simone de Beauvoir says, no, we cannot give women the option to stay home with their

00:51:43.680 family.

00:51:44.620 Because sure, a handful of women who really want to go out and work, they're going to

00:51:48.460 go work.

00:51:49.060 But most women, if given that choice, are going to stay home and raise their kids.

00:51:54.220 And that is not liberating.

00:51:56.580 If we want to liberate women, we have to force liberation upon them.

00:52:01.900 And I think when you understand that fact, which goes far beyond feminism, goes to basically

00:52:07.240 the whole left program today, when you understand that they believe in their heart of hearts that

00:52:12.880 they need to force liberation on you, seems like a contradiction in terms, all of this kind

00:52:18.500 of highfalutin talk starts to make a little bit more sense.

00:52:22.240 It's infuriating.

00:52:25.140 I hate when they try to pit moms against each other.

00:52:28.060 It's as though some one version is better or one is a bad example for children.

00:52:34.100 Screw you, Jill.

00:52:36.540 Now, meanwhile, you should read Barry Weiss, as everybody knows, because she's brilliant

00:52:40.060 and she's got her own sub stack now, which everybody should subscribe to.

00:52:43.980 And she actually put this one out on City Journal because I think she needed some just to make

00:52:47.400 sure she had all her ducks in a row and her reporting and backups and all that.

00:52:50.020 But she had this crazy, good, incendiary piece about schools that hit this week.

00:52:57.640 And one of the schools she talked about is here in New York, Grace Church.

00:53:03.240 It's very Tony, very sought after.

00:53:06.480 And they are getting rid of, they're banning the use of the terms mom and dad and boy and

00:53:13.360 girl to the point where if you read a book about like, I don't know, little boy blue,

00:53:18.780 you know, you're not allowed to say the word boy.

00:53:21.840 You have to they say you have to substitute the name.

00:53:24.020 And I don't know what little boy blue's name is like you have to be like, this is a this

00:53:28.240 is a story about little Bob blue.

00:53:30.780 And you can't say mom and dad.

00:53:32.880 You have to say caregivers or generic parents.

00:53:36.640 And you can't say nanny or babysitter either.

00:53:39.460 It's like it goes on.

00:53:40.840 So we've gotten to the point now where you're just not even allowed to say boy and girl in

00:53:45.520 these classrooms, Michael.

00:53:46.500 I just think are we getting to the breaking point?

00:53:49.040 Well, this it does show you, I think, why the right and part of the left has gotten so

00:53:55.680 focused on this transgender issue because the transgender problem, gender dysphoria, as a

00:54:03.260 psychological matter affects very, very small number of people.

00:54:06.620 It is it seems to be spreading as a social contagion.

00:54:09.120 But in terms of the psychological issues, very rare.

00:54:11.760 And so why are we spending all our time talking about how we can't say boy, we can't say girl.

00:54:15.960 The boy's got to go to the girl's room.

00:54:17.240 The boy's got to be able to compete on the girl's track team.

00:54:20.180 The reason we're focusing on that is because it gets to the fundamental distinction in human

00:54:25.660 nature.

00:54:26.700 There is, you know, it's funny that we talk about racism so much.

00:54:29.780 There's really very little distinction between the races.

00:54:32.020 But there is a distinction between men and women that men and women traditionally understood

00:54:37.420 are complementary to one another.

00:54:39.320 You know, they go together.

00:54:40.920 Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.

00:54:42.500 But somehow we go together.

00:54:43.800 There's never going to be a war between the sexes because everybody's sleeping with the

00:54:47.440 enemies, as the old adage goes.

00:54:49.560 So you if you can obliterate that fundamental distinction, then you really do have control

00:54:56.740 over a society.

00:54:57.460 Then you really can remake society, as has been the plan of leftists going back even further

00:55:03.480 than Marx.

00:55:04.080 Whitaker Chambers, the ex-communist, ended up being one of the guys to convert Ronald Reagan

00:55:09.220 to be a conservative.

00:55:10.380 He said Marxism, communism, it's not a new ideology.

00:55:14.060 It's actually the second oldest faith of it's the alternative faith of mankind that began in

00:55:18.440 the garden when when the serpent told Eve, ye shall be as gods.

00:55:23.260 And by the way, it has a relation to our free speech debate.

00:55:27.700 And I think it shows the constraints of free speech, inevitable constraints.

00:55:32.060 You're going to have to limit certain things.

00:55:33.880 Because if we believe as a society that boys are boys and they cannot become girls, then we

00:55:41.360 are going to refer to boys as he.

00:55:44.380 We're going to use that language.

00:55:45.700 It's going to affect the way we perceive the world and how we talk to one another.

00:55:48.460 If you believe the new fashionable idea that actually there's no such thing as sex and

00:55:52.940 boys can be girls and girls can be boys or whatever, then you're going to refer to boys

00:55:56.880 in dresses as she.

00:55:58.200 You're going to communicate different ways.

00:55:59.980 You're going to perceive the world differently.

00:56:01.440 If our country can't agree on the most basic things, then we cannot have a country.

00:56:08.460 And I think it's why the left has spent so much energy on this issue.

00:56:11.160 And I think it's why people on the right who kind of see what's what's going on are spending

00:56:15.240 time fighting back against it as well.

00:56:17.640 Well, I don't know why it has to cross over to intolerance toward pre-existing beliefs,

00:56:25.280 language and, you know, science.

00:56:28.300 I like I I actually am not somebody who doesn't accept.

00:56:33.720 Right.

00:56:33.860 If somebody says if somebody born, you know, designated male at birth and they're they're

00:56:38.840 a boy and then they say, I want to live my life as a girl and I feel that I am a girl.

00:56:42.500 I will respect that.

00:56:43.560 I will absolutely use their pronouns of choice.

00:56:46.460 You know, my own belief is that there are two sexes.

00:56:48.940 I'm a science person.

00:56:50.120 I believe that there are two biological sexes, male and female.

00:56:52.640 And then there are people who just feel like they're not in the right body.

00:56:56.180 They identify more with the other sex.

00:56:57.600 And that's fine by me.

00:56:59.520 But stay out of my lane.

00:57:01.400 Don't fucking tell me we can't have women anymore.

00:57:03.820 I'm sorry, but I like that's bullshit.

00:57:06.820 Yeah.

00:57:06.960 And don't tell me we can't have boys and girls.

00:57:08.960 And don't tell me if I want to use those turns terms.

00:57:11.220 It's because I'm transphobic.

00:57:12.580 And and honestly, I know I have trans trans people in my family.

00:57:17.240 I know trans people.

00:57:18.580 I don't know one who is in favor of this bullshit.

00:57:22.020 It's like their activist lobby.

00:57:25.140 Well, that's or even just self-flagellating super woke liberals are driving us to make these

00:57:30.820 decisions that I don't know who wants this.

00:57:33.760 No, of course, it's always going to be some white marketing executive canceling Aunt Jemima,

00:57:38.560 right?

00:57:38.720 This is not some cry from the oppressed masses.

00:57:42.080 Whenever they would come up that they would want to rename the Redskins, there would always

00:57:47.300 be public polls of Native Americans.

00:57:49.080 And they never cared.

00:57:50.520 None of them cared at all about the Redskins.

00:57:52.600 It was only woke white liberals.

00:57:54.160 And it's the same thing here with the transgender question.

00:57:56.860 And actually, you don't just need to take my word for it.

00:57:59.460 You can look at the way that the left has used these identity groups.

00:58:02.960 So, yeah, I don't I don't think that people confused about their sex are particularly militant,

00:58:07.980 at least not not in my experience, not the ones that I know.

00:58:10.820 But for decades, we were told in defense of homosexual rights leading up to the redefinition

00:58:18.120 of marriage, we were told actually a pretty simple argument.

00:58:20.760 People are born with innate sexual desires and innate sex, and you can't change that.

00:58:27.480 And you're born this way.

00:58:28.760 And so a compassionate society is going to accommodate that and tolerate that, ultimately,

00:58:33.580 even to the point of redefining marriage.

00:58:35.480 I I totally understand that argument.

00:58:38.160 And that argument ultimately was successful.

00:58:40.200 And then the very same lobbies undercut that argument with the gender question because they

00:58:46.300 came out and they said, actually, there is no such thing as sex.

00:58:49.100 And not only is sexual orientation mutable, but actually sex itself is mutable and you

00:58:53.600 just need to have some cosmetic surgeries and then you can be the other sex and nothing

00:58:57.600 is fluid and nothing is fixed at all.

00:58:59.280 And you say, well, wait a second.

00:59:00.440 You just gave me the exact opposite argument.

00:59:04.340 And now you're giving me this new one.

00:59:06.240 But both of them are designed to obliterate the old understanding that we had, the old standards

00:59:12.300 on these things.

00:59:13.200 And I think that this is a feature of woke leftism.

00:59:17.260 I don't think it's a bug.

00:59:18.320 I think it's a feature.

00:59:19.240 George Orwell talks about this in 1984, which these days has been skyrocketing up the best

00:59:26.260 seller charts on Amazon.

00:59:27.860 I think it tells you a little bit about our culture book written 70 years later.

00:59:31.280 It's back up at the top.

00:59:32.180 What Orwell says in 84 is the totalitarian tyrannical regime rules through new speak, which is a sort

00:59:39.240 of political correctness.

00:59:40.300 It rules through surveillance.

00:59:41.840 But most of all, it rules through double think and double think is his word for the regime

00:59:47.600 forcing you to hold mutually contradictory ideas in your head at the same time.

00:59:52.120 The born this way argument and the there's no such thing as sex argument.

00:59:56.060 If the regime can force you to hold both of those ideas at the same time, in Orwell's words,

01:00:02.280 you lose your capacity and willingness to reason and getting back to your excellent point earlier

01:00:08.560 on when we can't reason.

01:00:11.240 Then all we have is our lived experience and our grunts and our interests and politics

01:00:16.780 collapses.

01:00:17.540 In a second, I'm going to ask Michael about his new book that he's got coming out.

01:00:21.300 Unlike his old book, we're really hoping that there'll be something in there.

01:00:24.340 His April 2017 book was called Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a comprehensive guide.

01:00:29.860 It had a table of contents, had an extensive bibliography, and it had 266 empty pages.

01:00:36.380 It sold like some crazy amount.

01:00:39.920 Like initially, I think it was 60,000 copies.

01:00:42.280 So it's up above that now.

01:00:43.560 But we'll get into it in one second.

01:00:46.260 I want to bring you, before we get to the ad, a feature we have here on the Megyn Kelly

01:00:50.100 show known as From the Archives.

01:00:52.260 We thought this one would be timely because it's about Piers Morgan.

01:00:56.700 This is where we direct you to a show from our library that we think you should check

01:01:00.080 out again.

01:01:00.580 And Piers was one of our early guests.

01:01:03.160 This is actually episode 16 we're talking about, talking about a friend of the show,

01:01:07.260 Piers, who has been in the news quite a bit this week, as you've already heard.

01:01:10.780 He walked off his UK morning show, Good Morning Britain, where I've been a guest many times

01:01:14.960 and I enjoy the show, and he never came back.

01:01:18.080 Here's Piers on our show on October 28th.

01:01:21.240 We're at this place now where I think one of the polls showed on college campuses the

01:01:25.400 vast majority want a constitutional amendment to ban hate speech.

01:01:29.940 They want it to be not covered by the First Amendment, which is so absurd because, of course,

01:01:34.800 the First Amendment is necessary not to protect speech you like, but speech you do not like.

01:01:41.100 No one's trying to shut down speech everyone loves.

01:01:44.380 Well, that's the whole point, isn't it?

01:01:46.200 Is that I regularly, I follow lots of people on Twitter whose opinions I don't agree with

01:01:51.540 precisely so I hear something outside of my own kind of echo chamber.

01:01:56.200 And I urge everybody else to do the same.

01:01:58.120 When you only follow people on social media that agree with you, you start to develop this

01:02:02.960 very tribal entrenched view of things, which doesn't allow for any nuance or any movement.

01:02:08.580 But it gets really insidious when universities, colleges around America, we're having the same

01:02:15.240 problem in this country.

01:02:16.560 When they decide that even someone like Bill Maher is unacceptable and has to be no-platformed

01:02:23.620 because he's held a shining light to wokery and all things around it, when that starts

01:02:29.480 happening, you really think, well, hang on, who are you going to allow to speak?

01:02:34.460 And what kind of education are kids going to be getting in these universities?

01:02:39.660 What are they going to be taught if they find everything offensive, if they're triggered

01:02:43.540 by everything and they can't even have a speaker like Bill Maher, who's a liberal, come and

01:02:48.500 talk to them, let alone a bona fide conservative?

01:02:52.240 I don't know where this takes education.

01:02:54.940 I don't know where it takes students.

01:02:56.320 I don't know where it takes democracy.

01:02:58.600 But I do know it's taking it, as I say in the book, into a dangerous place where coronavirus

01:03:03.580 has been appalling.

01:03:05.480 But it will be, historically, pandemics tend to blow out in about two years.

01:03:09.940 And then where are we left as a society?

01:03:12.560 Because if we don't wake up, which is the title of my book, if we don't wake up to this

01:03:16.700 problem, I think the attack on free speech over time after all this will end up being far

01:03:23.700 more dangerous than any virus.

01:03:25.520 He called it, he's living it, and we need to stop it.

01:03:29.820 I've got a feeling Piers is not going to be silent for long, and that is a very good

01:03:33.380 thing.

01:03:34.120 And this has been From the Archives.

01:03:36.940 Back to our interview after this.

01:03:46.140 In a world in which, you know, the messaging, the public messaging is all about how you've

01:03:51.080 been victimized and it's all about your identity and not about, you know, your brain and how

01:03:55.060 you think about the world is just, you know, you were born a victim if you have a certain

01:03:58.060 skin color, certain, you know, lady parts or what have you.

01:04:02.400 It's just such a self-defeating message.

01:04:06.200 And like that, it explains why people are depressed.

01:04:09.200 And they, you know, the people who are pushing for these woke identity politics, they have

01:04:12.200 nothing to replace it with.

01:04:13.180 Once they get rid of, you know, they shove critical race theory down our throats and

01:04:18.260 they're making everybody say there's no more gender.

01:04:21.020 I don't know what kind of world we live in other than, do you feel as sorry for me as

01:04:25.620 I do?

01:04:27.120 Right.

01:04:28.040 Right.

01:04:28.440 I mean, there was a great Babylon Bee headline about Meghan Markle, which said-

01:04:33.240 Oh, I saw it.

01:04:33.780 It was amazing.

01:04:34.220 It was so great.

01:04:34.840 And Meghan Markle inspires millions of girls around the world to show them that no matter

01:04:39.000 how rich, beautiful, and famous you are, you still can be oppressed.

01:04:44.700 Because that obviously has social currency.

01:04:47.040 The way that you know that victimhood now carries social currency is that you have so

01:04:54.240 many people pretending to be races other than white.

01:04:58.580 The Rachel Dahl is all example.

01:04:59.900 There have been plenty of these cases.

01:05:01.140 Professors at NYU, people who are pretending to be a non-white race.

01:05:05.460 Well, if there were such a thing as white privilege, as the left is currently describing

01:05:09.860 it, certainly people would be going in the other direction.

01:05:12.320 Linda Sarsour, who is a radical leftist woman, she famously said that she began to sort of

01:05:21.040 lean into her Islamic identity because she didn't want to just be a boring white woman

01:05:27.160 in New York any longer.

01:05:28.520 There was a big push that she was actually quite supportive of during the Obama administration

01:05:32.720 to create a new racial group, MENA, Middle East and North Africa.

01:05:37.680 Traditionally speaking, people from those areas, when race mattered, were classified as

01:05:42.720 white in the United States.

01:05:44.700 The push to create a new racial category to declassify people as white would seem to me

01:05:50.240 pretty clear that the privileges and the social advantage are very much in the other direction

01:05:56.400 and they are justified by claims of victimhood.

01:05:59.100 So people want to embrace an identity that will be traditionally oppressed, but if you

01:06:07.580 are actually in a group that's been historically marginalized, like Latinas, Latinos, and you

01:06:14.380 vote Trump, then you lose your person of color identity.

01:06:17.980 Then you are multiracial white.

01:06:20.480 Yes, that's right.

01:06:21.380 You're a white Hispanic.

01:06:23.180 It's so complex.

01:06:24.440 And by the way, to your point, Abigail Schreier was on the show, who wrote Irreversible

01:06:27.740 Damage, which every living human being should read.

01:06:30.620 And she was saying it's no longer cool to be a lesbian.

01:06:34.540 We're losing lesbians to the trans thing because it's not cool enough.

01:06:38.780 People are looking for an identity that is kind of sexy.

01:06:42.000 And they're like, oh, lesbian, yawn.

01:06:44.400 Same thing with gay.

01:06:45.560 It's like, nah, boring.

01:06:47.400 You got to find something more interesting, right?

01:06:49.520 Right.

01:06:49.940 No, it is.

01:06:50.520 And you see this reflected in social scientific surveys, which I'm sure is what Abigail was

01:06:57.040 referring to.

01:06:58.200 What's funny is that, you know, our culture is so prideful.

01:07:02.200 We're so arrogant and we're so stupid.

01:07:05.840 We are so ignorant, even of our recent past and certainly of our ancient past.

01:07:11.200 There is no new idea under the sun.

01:07:14.300 And what has come up, these new crazy gender theories or whatever, this is just the reemergence

01:07:19.940 of an ancient heresy.

01:07:21.200 I mean, very specifically, the transgender thing is the reemergence of a heresy called Gnosticism.

01:07:27.400 Gnostic dualism.

01:07:28.500 This idea that my true self has nothing to do with my physical body.

01:07:33.140 I might look like a guy and I got an Adam's apple and a deep voice, but actually deep down,

01:07:38.000 I'm something else.

01:07:39.500 And the flip side of this heresy is another crazy idea that is being pushed these days,

01:07:44.980 which is materialism.

01:07:46.580 The idea that I am only my body.

01:07:48.940 You know, our loves, our hopes, our dreams, our affections, they're all just illusions.

01:07:52.440 It's our brain pistons firing all wacky to delude us.

01:07:56.860 And therefore, we don't need to worry about a moral order.

01:07:59.300 And, you know, if it feels good, do it is kind of the prevailing moral idea.

01:08:03.600 So those two versions of humanity, those two ideas about us are currently being advanced

01:08:10.920 at the same time, even though they're polar opposites.

01:08:13.840 And they obviously miss the truth of the situation, which is, Abigail might say, is the truth of

01:08:17.800 the complexity of sexuality or the complexity just of our nature, which is we are soul and

01:08:23.700 body.

01:08:24.280 We are spirit and physical.

01:08:26.840 And those things are together and they're inseparable on earth.

01:08:29.620 And gosh, isn't this a complex world that we live in?

01:08:32.620 It would seem that that answer, the only non-simplistic answer, is the only one that people are no longer

01:08:38.300 willing to engage with.

01:08:40.440 I know.

01:08:41.060 It's like tolerance isn't enough.

01:08:43.440 It has to be total abandonment of the world order we knew.

01:08:48.260 You know, you can't be a woman anymore.

01:08:52.160 Women aren't the ones with breasts or who menstruate.

01:08:55.340 And you can't even say, oh, gosh, what was the one that somebody was telling me?

01:08:59.820 You can't even say, like, it's the woman who gives birth.

01:09:03.020 I don't know.

01:09:03.280 It went on.

01:09:03.900 Like, every day there's a new rule.

01:09:05.620 And I just feel like, no, I don't accept.

01:09:07.220 I disagree.

01:09:08.460 I will protect my ability to say I'm a woman.

01:09:10.920 And I don't really give a damn if it offends you.

01:09:13.320 But this whole conversation is reminding me.

01:09:15.660 We cut this clip because what we saw the other day, our whole team was laughing.

01:09:18.420 But this kind of nails it.

01:09:19.820 It's this he's a comedian, Ryan Long.

01:09:22.540 Oh, he's playing like modern therapist talking to this, you know, distraught young woman about

01:09:30.120 life in today's day and age.

01:09:32.060 Listen, a lot of therapists will tell you how to get your life together and what you can do

01:09:36.000 differently, but they rarely ever focus on what the world could do differently.

01:09:39.600 That is your family's fault.

01:09:40.700 That's society's fault.

01:09:41.960 Whoever you are, there's things working against you.

01:09:43.840 It's my job to find those things and help you base your entire identity around them.

01:09:47.880 I've been feeling pretty lonely lately.

01:09:49.980 Have you tried posting online about what men can do differently?

01:09:53.020 I was dating this one guy, but then I fucked his best friend in his bathroom at his birthday

01:09:58.680 party.

01:09:59.380 If he can't take you at your worst, he doesn't deserve you at your best.

01:10:01.940 And society needs to change its views on women at their worst.

01:10:04.940 I now understand the world needs to change the way it looks at hot messes.

01:10:08.760 I think I've been smoking too much weed.

01:10:10.680 You've actually been smoking the perfect amount.

01:10:12.560 And am I correct in saying you use it to self-medicate?

01:10:15.020 93% of New Yorkers go to therapy.

01:10:17.060 So whether you're born in the wrong place with the wrong parents, the wrong amount of motivation,

01:10:20.820 the wrong gender, you want energy to be focused on who's to blame for that happening rather

01:10:24.640 than be antiquated, what you can do about it.

01:10:28.220 I love it.

01:10:29.220 He totally hits the nail on the head.

01:10:31.060 It reminds me of this observation that struck me a few months ago.

01:10:35.420 We always hear about institutional racism and institutional oppression.

01:10:39.820 So then I started thinking about the institutions.

01:10:42.720 We've got big tech, the government, the universities, Hollywood.

01:10:48.240 Uh, you know, high education, low education, all this, these institutions, the left controls

01:10:55.860 every single one of them.

01:10:57.800 So if there is institutional racism, don't you think that the people who are making that

01:11:03.660 claim, maybe they should look at themselves.

01:11:05.560 I mean, all of us more broadly, if society is really the problem, you know, the system,

01:11:10.020 if that's really the problem and it explains everything that's ever gone wrong in my life,

01:11:14.100 what is society?

01:11:16.880 Last I checked, society is just all of us, right?

01:11:19.900 At some point, don't you have to look in at yourself and say, gosh, maybe I am not only

01:11:26.380 a victim, but I am an active person.

01:11:29.380 You know, that one of the most bigoted aspects of this whole, uh, woke racialist idea is the

01:11:36.040 idea that only white men, straight white men are, they're the only fully human people because

01:11:43.580 they're the only people with will and intellect and any agency at all.

01:11:48.360 This is their theory, right?

01:11:49.820 And if you, if you in any way deviate from that identity group, then you don't really

01:11:55.040 have a will.

01:11:55.720 You don't really have ability.

01:11:57.000 You don't really have any agency.

01:11:58.720 That is the worst possible thing that you can tell a kid.

01:12:02.180 It's the worst possible thing that you can tell anybody who you hope to develop into

01:12:07.780 a flourishing human being.

01:12:09.540 And it's truly white supremacy, that white supremacy, that could be right out of the mouth

01:12:13.760 of David Duke, um, which is what's scary.

01:12:16.540 No, no, you're right.

01:12:17.160 They don't look at their own institutions.

01:12:18.380 It's all, they think all the racism is at Fox news and NASCAR and WWE.

01:12:22.160 And those are the, those are the institutions we need to focus on.

01:12:25.800 And now, you know, conservative media online.

01:12:29.000 Um, I don't know.

01:12:30.320 I think that people are starting to get to their breaking point because they've really,

01:12:34.540 like when you start telling you, you know, schools, you cannot refer to mom and dad.

01:12:39.000 I just think people are going to be pushed to the brink.

01:12:41.720 And when you look at the larger situation in the country right now, you know, I think

01:12:46.780 Biden has gone so much more woke than we thought he would.

01:12:50.440 So it's like, we went from Trump who fought this nonsense to Biden, who we were told is going

01:12:55.220 to be this sort of milquetoast moderate who's leaning way into this stuff at a time when

01:13:01.960 he's pushing for amnesty, right?

01:13:05.060 For the 11, 12 million illegal or people who are in the country illegally right now and

01:13:09.320 documented, um, where people are swarming across our Southern border and he's doing

01:13:13.280 very little about it, right?

01:13:15.040 The press is giving him a complete pass.

01:13:17.820 Unemployment is still 10 million people still unemployed, right?

01:13:20.220 So it's like the COVID lockdowns remain in place, easing a little, but as we get people

01:13:25.000 vaccinated, we're still being told masks possibly through 2022, right?

01:13:29.620 I just think, how much are you trying to try people?

01:13:32.560 Like what, how much should we be expecting of the American people to take?

01:13:36.060 Well, you know, we were promised a return to normal.

01:13:39.800 And the first thing he does is nuke women's sports and obliterate the border and tell us we

01:13:44.580 have to lock ourselves up for two years.

01:13:46.040 But that would be the new normal.

01:13:48.540 I mean, this is, this is something that really worries me when you hear people in public health

01:13:53.060 or people who are politicians talk about the new normal.

01:13:56.900 We all laugh about that.

01:13:58.200 We say, we're not going to wear the masks forever.

01:13:59.960 We're not going to social distance.

01:14:01.900 What an Orwellian phrase, if ever there was one forever, but, but we sort of are right.

01:14:07.380 The way that you get norms is when you just do certain things for a long enough period of

01:14:11.420 time, then that becomes normal.

01:14:13.660 And I had a fear that this would happen with Biden because Joe Biden, and I don't mean

01:14:19.520 this to sound as insulting as it will.

01:14:21.980 Joe Biden is nobody.

01:14:24.640 Joe Biden, I don't think he's had an original thought in his entire life.

01:14:28.600 That's why he had to drop out in 88 because he was plagiarizing everybody else's thoughts

01:14:32.460 and lying about his record.

01:14:33.800 It's true.

01:14:34.160 I think he is a glad handing politician who kisses babies and smiles for photos.

01:14:40.440 And what he is if in office is an empty suit and an avatar for the political winds.

01:14:47.360 He wakes up in the morning, licks his index finger, he puts it high in the air, figures

01:14:50.940 out which way the wind is blowing.

01:14:52.220 And then he just goes in that direction.

01:14:54.500 And unfortunately now, because the left, I don't think that he is speaking for the majority

01:15:00.920 of Americans.

01:15:01.400 I don't think the majority of Americans want to nuke women's sports and open up our borders.

01:15:04.520 And every poll shows that I'm right about that.

01:15:07.180 But what is really blowing in that direction is the institutional power now in the country.

01:15:14.140 Now, this is something I actually detail it a bit in my upcoming book, Speechless.

01:15:17.940 The way that the left has attained influence in this country is very subtle.

01:15:24.120 It's through what a communist theorist, Antonio Gramsci, called a war of position rather than

01:15:30.580 a war of maneuver.

01:15:31.660 It's not just, you know, they advance and they retreat and they advance.

01:15:34.320 They take positions of power in all of the institutions and then they exercise that power.

01:15:40.960 So the reason I think that no one's really worried about Joe Biden's obvious cognitive decline

01:15:47.300 right now is because nobody thinks that every day he's making all the most important decisions.

01:15:52.540 He is an avatar for this political establishment, this system that could operate without him

01:15:59.360 or with him or with him some of the time.

01:16:01.380 It's operating in a way on its own.

01:16:03.460 You mentioned you're having a book come out.

01:16:05.720 Is this one actually going to have words?

01:16:08.340 Well, you know, Megan, I decided after my bestselling blank magnum opus, Reasons to Vote

01:16:14.040 for Democrats, I thought it would be a curious challenge to write a book with words.

01:16:18.880 And furthermore, I thought it would be funny if for my second book, I wrote a book that is

01:16:24.760 actually about words.

01:16:26.400 So the title of that book is Speechless.

01:16:29.460 I just turned in my final draft to the editor.

01:16:32.540 It is in a way providential, I guess, that the book happens to be about exactly what is

01:16:38.100 going on right now.

01:16:39.220 How we got here through this political correctness regime, which a lot of people date back to

01:16:44.440 the 80s.

01:16:45.020 I think it actually goes back further to the 20s and why conservatives have been so feckless

01:16:49.880 at opposing it.

01:16:51.280 It seems like anything we do, political correctness advances.

01:16:55.080 And I think it's because it lays a trap for conservatives where we either go along with

01:16:59.220 their crazy new standards or we abandon standards entirely.

01:17:02.240 Either way, PC wins.

01:17:04.000 And I will tell you, though, Megan, I will tell you, writing a book with words, I admit

01:17:09.920 this fully, all humility.

01:17:12.600 It's much harder than writing a book without words.

01:17:14.660 I'm glad I did it.

01:17:15.560 It was edifying, but it's trickier.

01:17:17.920 It's so much trickier.

01:17:19.720 So I do think the reason people like Republicans and others, the left too, which I think is

01:17:25.880 largely with us, that they go around, they went along with it for so long because no

01:17:31.380 one wants to be called a racist or a sexist or a homophobe or transphobe.

01:17:35.640 They don't, for too long, back to the discussion we had at the top, we have all been assuming

01:17:40.960 that our critics are operating in good faith.

01:17:44.420 Right.

01:17:44.760 And I think the big reveal over the past couple of years now that they've reached too far is

01:17:51.560 they're not, they're not.

01:17:54.080 And just because they throw these terrible names and labels at you doesn't mean it's true,

01:18:02.220 even if they have a critical mass on their side saying the same.

01:18:05.360 They've got their army, but the silent middle, the silent majority, they're our army.

01:18:11.860 And you just have to keep reminding yourself of that.

01:18:14.760 Right.

01:18:15.140 And this, I think this, you know, I don't want to be called racist thing is a big issue

01:18:20.140 here.

01:18:21.040 I'm not so worried about being called racist anymore because I know that I'm not racist.

01:18:25.440 Racism is an offense against human dignity.

01:18:27.460 That's why it's wrong.

01:18:28.180 So that's why I'm not going to do it.

01:18:29.520 Done.

01:18:29.800 I don't care what these people, these crazy people call me, but it's a, it's a real fear.

01:18:34.160 It's the worst thing that you can possibly be called in the country right now.

01:18:36.780 And so what, what happens is there's only two responses that you can have to PC if you're

01:18:41.660 in any way, not a leftist.

01:18:43.960 The one is you go along with it, right?

01:18:46.240 You just say, okay, I'll start using the new words and doing whatever you want me to

01:18:49.380 do.

01:18:49.920 And then the second way is to say, okay, look, I don't want to go along with your new words,

01:18:55.800 but I am not going to make any substantive claims myself.

01:18:59.360 You do whatever you want.

01:19:00.960 I live and let live and you get rid of all the standards.

01:19:03.980 But the problem here is the whole point of PC is to get rid of the old standards.

01:19:10.580 This, an example that really jumped out to me about this was some months ago when drag

01:19:14.980 queen story hour was in the news.

01:19:16.620 I guess this was before COVID drag queen story hour is this event where, where transvestites

01:19:22.640 will come in and twerk sexually dance in some cases for toddlers.

01:19:27.700 And some conservatives said, you know, this is a bad idea.

01:19:31.460 And there were other writers who I think were a little bit squishier who came out and they

01:19:35.840 said, no, actually it's a blessing of liberty.

01:19:39.700 And at the heart of this is a kind of radical skepticism.

01:19:42.100 It's this trap of PC that we've been talking about, which is the argument here was that if you

01:19:48.380 say that we shouldn't have drag queen story hour, then the left might say that we shouldn't be able

01:19:53.760 to go to church on Sunday, you know, cause they're just, they're both sort of similar things.

01:19:57.780 First of all, they're already telling us we can't go to church on Sunday.

01:20:01.420 We've been dealing with church closures from the state for a lot of the COVID pandemic.

01:20:05.380 But also, are you telling me that we really do not have the moral conscience, the, the

01:20:12.520 act of judgment to be able to say drag queen story hour, not so good going to church, probably

01:20:19.020 pretty good.

01:20:19.680 Are we really not able to distinguish between right and wrong and true and false and good

01:20:24.200 and bad?

01:20:24.620 Because if we're not able to do that, then the left has already won.

01:20:30.020 The woke people have already won.

01:20:31.920 We've already been defeated.

01:20:32.960 And, uh, like, uh, Hank lying there on the ground and breaking bad, uh, we just don't

01:20:38.460 know it yet, but it's, it's already happened.

01:20:41.400 Yeah.

01:20:41.920 And I mean, how do we lie down so easily to it?

01:20:44.820 You know, I, I tweeted out this little picture a week ago that summed it up saying, how do we

01:20:50.020 get to the point where, um, wet ass P word is song of the year, but we have to cancel Dr.

01:20:57.840 Seuss as too offensive to be seen.

01:21:01.040 Like what the hell has happened to our country?

01:21:04.140 Talk about double standards.

01:21:05.440 It makes sense to me, Megan.

01:21:06.400 It actually makes sense to me in that.

01:21:08.160 I mean, you even think just on the music front, they, they always want to cancel that, that

01:21:12.280 Christmas song, you know, baby it's cold outside.

01:21:14.340 They say that is sexually very transgressive, but it's a me too homage.

01:21:19.320 It's a me too homage, but, but wet ass P word, you know, that, uh, that's perfectly wonderful.

01:21:23.780 But the reason for this, of course, is because those things have a purpose, uh, you know,

01:21:29.380 what the left has, has wielded very effectively now for at least 50 years is sex is licentiousness,

01:21:35.760 right?

01:21:35.920 If you arouse people's sexual appetites and you get them always so ready and raring to

01:21:40.700 go, then they're going to be less in command of their higher faculties that the founding

01:21:44.820 fathers knew this.

01:21:45.700 This is why, uh, there were huge prohibitions against obscenity for most of our nation's

01:21:50.380 history, theoretically, it's still on the books.

01:21:52.400 And I, I also understand why eBay is going to ban Dr. Seuss, certain Dr. Seuss books,

01:21:59.940 but they won't ban Mein Kampf.

01:22:01.800 I understand why Amazon will ban Ryan T. Anderson's humorously titled, but actually scholarly book

01:22:08.400 when Harry became Sally, but they, they won't ban Mein Kampf because Hitler and Mein Kampf do

01:22:16.020 not pose any threat to the left's agenda.

01:22:18.940 No serious person looks to, uh, Hitler for, uh, wisdom, you know, other than a handful

01:22:25.340 of skinheads or something.

01:22:26.640 Actually, the left benefits by keeping Mein Kampf in circulation, if only to make it more

01:22:32.280 forceful when, when the left calls all their opponents, literally Hitler and Nazis.

01:22:37.260 Uh, whereas Dr. Seuss really is influencing impressionable young minds.

01:22:41.560 And so if he in any way contradicts the, the orthodoxies of the day, you got to get rid of

01:22:47.580 that guy because the left, the left is always trying to get a hold on that, the common sense.

01:22:52.260 This is why they care so much about education.

01:22:54.980 You know, they can't answer Ryan Anderson's book about transgenderism.

01:22:58.020 So they, they have to ban that.

01:23:00.300 That's not hypocrisy.

01:23:01.340 It's actually a pretty clever strategy in, in my mind.

01:23:04.140 It's such crap.

01:23:05.300 You know, it's like, I grew up reading all those Cinderella, sleeping beauty, damsel in distress,

01:23:10.680 must be rescued by the prince.

01:23:12.460 Old women are witches and hags.

01:23:14.580 I get it.

01:23:15.060 Like I, I read all that.

01:23:16.660 It worked out fine for me.

01:23:18.200 I didn't see myself as a damsel in distress ever.

01:23:20.820 Like that shit is not like those character traits are not formed by stupid children's

01:23:25.940 books.

01:23:26.560 And I mean, as much as you can put, like, I mean, you remember when I was at NBC, uh,

01:23:31.240 Savannah Guthrie wrote along with Noah Oppenheim's wife, a book called princesses wear pants.

01:23:36.620 And I put her on cause you know, she was a colleague.

01:23:39.160 Like I remember thinking to myself, like, this is so stupid because like, yeah, they

01:23:43.740 might, or they might wear frilly dresses and there's nothing wrong with that.

01:23:47.760 You can wear the frilly dress and the little Mary Janes and have your hair done up into

01:23:52.680 big curls and you can still be an ass kicker.

01:23:55.640 And I think like, if this is the problem that Jill Filipovic has or whatever her name

01:24:00.220 is, that some people just have an image of, of empowerment looking only one way.

01:24:05.080 And if that's not reflected in your children's books, if Dr.

01:24:07.440 Seuss has something that might be mildly offensive to some, we have to get rid of it.

01:24:11.100 Otherwise the damage, it'll be immense.

01:24:13.480 All right, now wait, I still have the last word on that, but I've got to ask you, because

01:24:16.080 I, I, I know we have a, a limited time, but I just listening to you and all your amazing,

01:24:21.020 like smart references.

01:24:22.600 I know you went to Yale and I didn't know that prior to studying up for this interview,

01:24:26.980 but how did you get so smart?

01:24:28.780 That is very kind, Megan.

01:24:30.860 It's all, uh, uh, just a performance, you know, I just memorized a few.

01:24:36.360 No, I, well, I, I really appreciate that.

01:24:37.840 I actually, I have a serious answer to it too, which is because we're, we're in this culture

01:24:43.580 where people are, the curriculum are being totally destroyed.

01:24:47.700 You know, good books are being taken out and replaced with total nonsense.

01:24:51.320 And, and we're always being told, you can't say this, you can't think this.

01:24:54.260 I find that if you just read a book every now and again, if you just to turn off the

01:25:01.940 mainstream media, I mean, I'm, I'm sure you can speak to this, uh, you know, just the

01:25:06.280 same, uh, you will learn much more about certain things because there, there is, uh, as Ronald

01:25:12.620 Reagan famously said, the problem with our, our opponents is not that, uh, you know, they,

01:25:17.500 they don't know anything.

01:25:18.320 It's not that they're ignorant.

01:25:19.200 It's that they know so many things that aren't so.

01:25:21.100 So for instance, you have the 1619 project comes out and says, America was founded to

01:25:25.380 protect slavery.

01:25:26.820 You don't need to be a member of Mensa.

01:25:28.960 You don't need to get a perfect SAT score to find out that that's just total nonsense.

01:25:33.400 That's just not true.

01:25:34.320 Really.

01:25:34.680 You just need to read like two articles or a book and you will know that's crazy that

01:25:38.580 the, uh, current fashion to get rid of Christopher Columbus, say he was this awful worst person

01:25:43.860 in the world.

01:25:44.420 If you just like read up a little bit on the guy, you'll find out that isn't true.

01:25:48.040 I think that the, the dominant left-wing narratives that were, were being told, they're forceful

01:25:53.500 because they've got the weight of propaganda behind them.

01:25:56.500 You know, they've got institutional power.

01:25:57.860 New York Times spent millions of dollars promoting the 1619 project, but the arguments themselves

01:26:03.400 are pretty shallow.

01:26:04.500 They're really, you know, they, they're, they're made of paper.

01:26:07.040 And if you, if you just, uh, poke at them a little bit, you know, if you investigate a little

01:26:11.840 bit, I think that just about anybody will be able to, uh, to re-educate ourselves and

01:26:17.840 realize that a lot of what we're being told just isn't true.

01:26:21.040 Now, where did you grow up?

01:26:23.000 I grew up in New York.

01:26:24.740 I grew up in a very liberal County, Westchester County in a very liberal state, New York, and

01:26:30.460 with very liberal friends and went to a very liberal school, then moved to LA, very liberal

01:26:34.760 city.

01:26:35.080 I, I have no idea how I ended up to the right of the Till of the Hun.

01:26:39.580 How did this happen?

01:26:40.440 I don't know.

01:26:41.080 That's scientists will wonder for years.

01:26:43.200 Are your parents conservative?

01:26:45.160 No, my, my mother was sort of, uh, you know, uh, centrist, I guess she, uh, she wanted to

01:26:51.960 vote for Clinton in 96.

01:26:53.560 And Megan, I kid you not, I was six years old and I was a political junkie though.

01:26:57.600 And I, all I knew from watching that, I don't know how this was the case.

01:27:01.660 My grandfather used to teach me, uh, it's a grand old flag and things like that.

01:27:05.460 So maybe I learned it from him, but I, in 96, I pleaded with my mother.

01:27:10.100 I said, please vote for Bob Dole.

01:27:13.240 I think I was, I was the only guy in the country who was really enthusiastic about Dole and all

01:27:17.740 I, except for Bob Dole himself.

01:27:19.340 Bob Dole is going to vote for Bob Dole.

01:27:21.480 Exactly.

01:27:22.320 And, uh, but all I knew is Dole was a war hero and Clinton was a draft dodger.

01:27:26.200 That's all I knew about the whole race.

01:27:27.380 And I begged and I begged and she got such a kick out of it that she actually let me go

01:27:31.860 into the voting booth with her back when we had physical voting booths.

01:27:36.100 And she, she let me pull the lever for Bob Dole.

01:27:40.120 So I guess I'm actually confessing to election fraud right now on air, but that was my first

01:27:45.540 vote for Bob Dole when I was six years old.

01:27:47.560 And, uh, but she was kind of, you know, moderate Republican.

01:27:50.160 If that, she liked some Democrats.

01:27:51.800 My father, kind of a moderate Republican, but he's voted for Democrats too.

01:27:55.580 Uh, so I don't know.

01:27:57.740 I, I, you know, I'm, I'm, uh, slightly to the right of, uh, Genghis Khan.

01:28:01.580 So how that happened, I don't know.

01:28:03.360 I do think that left-wing places such as Yale or, you know, living in New York city or Los

01:28:09.160 Angeles, they kind of either bring you along with the dominant view or they force you to

01:28:16.460 really think about what you believe.

01:28:17.880 So, you know, you, if you go into that and you got the ideological bullets flying every

01:28:22.400 day, you're going to discard some of your beliefs.

01:28:24.800 You're going to change some of your beliefs and others.

01:28:27.460 You're going to dig more deeply into, you're going to investigate more.

01:28:30.260 And in a way, I, I actually think conservatives have an advantage in these, in these left-wing

01:28:34.960 institutions because they have to know what they think.

01:28:38.580 They have to be able to explain it.

01:28:41.460 Whereas, did you own it?

01:28:43.240 Did you own it?

01:28:44.000 Like, were you open?

01:28:45.080 Yeah, I, I was open.

01:28:46.240 I came out, you know, I, it's much harder these days to come out that way, you know, than

01:28:50.320 sexually.

01:28:50.620 It gets better.

01:28:51.480 It gets better.

01:28:52.080 Does it?

01:28:52.840 I don't, well, that's the only question.

01:28:54.060 I don't know about that, but, but I did, I came out and I, I actually became much, much

01:28:58.940 more conservative.

01:28:59.760 You know, I was sort of that fashionable fiscal conservative, social liberal, as, as people

01:29:04.760 would say.

01:29:05.260 And then I became much more so, you know, some people say conservatives want to return to

01:29:09.420 the 1950s.

01:29:10.340 I think over time it's become more like the 1350s, you know, you really, you really dig

01:29:15.060 into these things.

01:29:16.080 And at the time.

01:29:16.860 Did you have friends?

01:29:18.240 Shockingly, I did.

01:29:19.600 I don't, I don't know how.

01:29:21.140 I think part of the reason was because, you know, I, I was involved.

01:29:26.240 I did a lot of activities.

01:29:27.260 I was in the theater.

01:29:28.580 I was in student government.

01:29:29.620 I was taking a bunch of classes, political things.

01:29:31.980 And it was during the age of Obama.

01:29:34.380 So people were less on edge, you know, whenever, whenever the left is in power, they tend to

01:29:39.740 be a little bit nicer.

01:29:40.720 I've found only a little bit.

01:29:42.360 But the other reason is because people knew me, right?

01:29:47.560 If, if you know somebody, especially if you get to know them a little bit before you know

01:29:51.340 their politics, then the caricature that's in your mind, that's been implanted there by

01:29:56.820 the media and the educational systems of the evil, awful conservative, it just doesn't

01:30:02.100 click, right?

01:30:02.760 Because you know, you've got this real thing in front of you.

01:30:05.580 You say, no, I, I like this guy.

01:30:07.300 I like Michael.

01:30:08.020 So, you know, I don't know how that's going to work.

01:30:10.020 And they come up with all sorts of explanations.

01:30:11.920 One thing I have found though, is I had lots and lots of friends.

01:30:15.320 I had a great time.

01:30:15.980 I got invited to lots and lots of parties in college and in all these liberal places,

01:30:20.080 but, uh, out of sight is out of mind.

01:30:23.680 And I've found the, the only people that I've known from all those places who've really

01:30:28.160 sort of turned on me, say awful sorts of things because of my political views.

01:30:32.080 They're the ones that I don't, I just don't see anymore.

01:30:34.620 And so it's, it's much easier to retreat to this awful caricature that you're told by

01:30:40.260 the media.

01:30:40.720 I think, you know, if, if we had more, more interactions with, with the left, I think that

01:30:45.700 would really crack some of the propaganda.

01:30:47.660 Yeah.

01:30:48.260 I mean, uh, I've said before that I think one of the ways to fight racism is to expose

01:30:53.140 people of different races to other people of other races who are awesome, right?

01:30:57.400 Like that just sort of embeds a positive view in your head.

01:31:00.740 And the same is true with conservatives and liberals.

01:31:02.880 Try to surround yourself.

01:31:03.720 They don't have to agree with them, but just if they're likable, if they're kind, if they're

01:31:07.580 good people, it can, it can be a step.

01:31:10.300 You know, I just had, um, Andrew Schultz on the program saying that we should dance.

01:31:14.160 What we need is to dance, but just like lean into something that's kind of fun and like

01:31:19.100 less political and not quite as divisive and not so self-serious, you know, I mean,

01:31:24.100 Chesterton had this great line.

01:31:25.600 He said, the, the angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.

01:31:29.300 You know, we don't need, it doesn't always have to be this tedious sort of everything's

01:31:33.440 a grand political statement that this happened in the seventies.

01:31:36.300 You know, the, the radicals did say the personal is the political.

01:31:39.340 So all of our personal interactions had to be opened up to public scrutiny, but can't

01:31:44.120 you just sort of let it go for a little bit, you know, in the long run, we're all dead.

01:31:48.320 We're here together.

01:31:49.260 We're all broken.

01:31:50.380 Can't one have a, I guess, getting back to our earliest conversation, can't one have

01:31:54.700 it just a little bit of grace and, uh, hopefully get along with our, our countrymen.

01:31:59.460 I hope so.

01:32:00.440 Now, I think we can end this by doing a big favor to Meghan Markle, who is back in the

01:32:04.560 United States and Prince Harry for that matter and spare them.

01:32:07.880 You know, I, I'm not going to sing the national anthem cause that's too big, but you know,

01:32:11.080 I also love grand old flag.

01:32:13.560 So I think let's sing it.

01:32:14.600 Let's, could you know it?

01:32:16.140 Gladly.

01:32:16.960 You're singing it with me.

01:32:17.580 It's a grand old flag.

01:32:19.060 It's, it's a high flying flag and forever in peace may she wave.

01:32:25.840 I think the delay is a little tricky.

01:32:27.440 So don't forget to subscribe to the show because on Monday, we're going to have Victor Davis

01:32:34.980 Hanson.

01:32:36.220 Cannot wait to talk to him.

01:32:37.640 We were going to put him today, but we taped with Michael Knowles same day.

01:32:42.300 And he was so fiery about these current events, including the Royals that we were like, he's

01:32:46.180 got to go on Friday because I don't, I don't have it in me to ask Victor Davis Hanson about

01:32:50.840 the Royals.

01:32:51.540 I don't, there are, there are limits to what I can do.

01:32:53.640 So, and these news cycles have timeliness issues.

01:32:57.500 So we knew you'd enjoy Michael.

01:32:59.240 And then we'll get to sort of the godfather of commentary, Victor Davis Hanson, the one,

01:33:06.100 the only, the enlightener, the illuminator on Monday.

01:33:10.820 So excited.

01:33:11.420 Been trying since we launched to get Victor.

01:33:14.100 I'm not, I don't feel the need to ask him why he said no for so long, but the point is

01:33:17.920 he said yes eventually.

01:33:19.180 And you'll get to hear him on Monday.

01:33:21.620 In the meantime, have a great weekend.

01:33:23.640 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:33:27.320 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:33:32.060 The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - March 12, 2021

Michael Knowles on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Entitlement and Victimhood, and the Woke Drift in Schools ｜ Ep. 75

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