With just over 5 weeks to go before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in, the media is working through the 5 stages of grief. There s anger from Don Lemon, denial from media stationed outside of Mar-a-Lago about the fact that they re no longer relevant, and some bargaining and acceptance from the owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos. We ll get to some of that in a minute, but we ll kick it off with some breaking news on drones.
00:02:45.800Listen to this from the governor of Maryland, who just dropped this tweet, Governor Larry Hogan.
00:02:50.960Last night, beginning around 9.45 p.m., I personally witnessed and videoed what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky above my residence in Davidsonville, Maryland,
00:03:03.460I observed the activity for approximately 45 minutes.
00:03:06.500Like many who have observed these drones, I do not know if this increasing activity over our skies is a threat to public safety or national security.
00:03:13.720But the public's growing increasingly concerned and frustrated with a complete lack of transparency and the dismissive attitude of the feds.
00:03:20.300The government has the ability to track these from their point of origin, but has mounted a negligent response.
00:03:25.840People are rightfully clamoring for answers, but aren't getting any.
00:03:28.680We are being told that neither the White House, the military, the FBI or Homeland Security have any idea what they are,
00:03:34.300where they're coming from or who has launched or is controlling them and that they pose no threat.
00:03:39.580That response is entirely unacceptable.
00:03:41.760I join with a growing bipartisan chorus of leaders demanding that the feds immediately take this, address this issue.
00:03:48.440The American people deserve answers and action now.
00:04:38.040And he explained, we don't have control of the domain.
00:04:40.600And if you don't have control of the domain, you have essentially ceded your national security and your personal security to whoever's in your space.
00:04:47.900And we have seen drones used rather effectively by the IDF, by Ukraine, by Russia, not so effectively by Iran.
00:04:55.520But people have got to wonder, what in the world is going on here?
00:05:46.420So I don't know what's going on, but it's very strange how certain the feds seem to be saying they are that it's nothing, whereas honesty sounds more like what Larry Hogan said, you know, what these New Jersey lawmakers are saying.
00:06:00.280Like, we don't know what this is, and we need to know.
00:06:02.880Here's the headline from NBC yesterday.
00:06:07.320Now, key House and Senate lawmakers are demanding that top federal law enforcement officials immediately brief them on these mysterious drone sightings.
00:06:16.020And here is Kirby, right, at the White House yesterday.
00:06:19.600He said that Homeland Security, the FBI, and state and local law enforcement have not been able to corroborate any of the reported visual sightings of the drones.
00:06:30.860He said upon reviewing images of the sightings, law enforcement officials have concluded, quote, these are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully and said there have been no confirmed drone sightings in restricted airspace.
00:06:48.060White House National Security Council telling NBC News, we have no evidence at this time that these reported sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.
00:07:00.060But now you've got New Jersey Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim, New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand sending a letter to the Homeland Security Secretary, who is also a Democrat, as you know, and the FBI director and the FAA head all saying to all these guys, we demand a briefing.
00:07:18.080And some say we could get it as late as or as early as this afternoon, Hugh.
00:07:22.980This is bizarre. I don't remember seeing anything like this.
00:07:26.060No, we have Area 51 to do our experimental stuff. We don't do it in New Jersey.
00:07:30.480But that's not, I don't think it's our team. We don't do it in our team.
00:07:34.480But I will say, why would anyone at the White House expect us to believe them when they told us for two years that President Biden was spry doing jumping jacks and backflips in the Oval Office with Kareem GPR made?
00:07:48.220Why would we believe anything they say? I don't.
00:07:51.780And therefore, when the Intel Committee gets a briefing and Tom Cotton comes out or Mike Waltz comes out of the House and the Senate Intel Committee and says, X, Y, Z, I'll believe them and I'll believe Dean Trump when they get there.
00:08:39.560We're rooting against that, I think. I think that's worse than Iran or the Russians. Am I wrong? Or China?
00:08:46.300I remember Independence Day, they were everywhere at once. But again, they picked New Jersey.
00:08:51.780So this doesn't make any sense to me, unless they're just there.
00:08:56.360No, I don't get it. Like, let's just spend one second speculating on what it could be, because when I first heard about it, I thought, OK, it's probably like some smart MIT college guys who are super effective with drone technology and are having some fun.
00:09:16.620And maybe they're from New Jersey. And so they targeted New Jersey just to see what might happen.
00:09:20.940But this has been going on since November 18th. Right. So we're like going on a month now and it's spreading.
00:09:28.260And even though the feds are saying to all of us, nothing's there, there's nothing confirmed.
00:09:33.700I mean, I know some of the people in New Jersey who say they've seen them.
00:09:36.620A friend sent me a video who I've known for two decades of what she and her husband saw not long ago.
00:09:42.660But anyway, like the feds would know the feds would have investigated this no matter what they're telling us.
00:09:48.780So why would they be lying to us? What what could the explanation be that would cause the government to lie?
00:09:55.340The easiest explanation is it's the Chai comms.
00:09:58.240They let the balloon float across the country, which I believe was the third or the fourth balloon, but the first one that the public saw.
00:10:05.580And this administration does not want to have a confrontation with China as it goes out the door.
00:10:11.140The only people that I think have the technology capability to do this are the Chai comms.
00:10:16.440Unless it's the MIT kids. MIT kids used to blow up the 50-yard line between Harvard and Yale games.
00:10:22.420They would do funny things like that. So they have lots of tricks.
00:10:25.660But MIT is nowhere near New Jersey. I don't think it's the Rutgers people, much as we all love Rutgers.
00:10:31.700They're in the Big Ten. I don't think it's the Rutgers people.
00:10:34.060So I immediately think Chinese Communist Party.
00:10:37.980Could be Princeton people. That's in New Jersey.
00:10:41.440No, they don't really actually do science in Princeton.
00:13:49.200But you know what else corroborates that is that after he's done with Princeton, he goes into the military and goes into combat and is deployed three times, twice for the combat area.
00:13:58.520So there's no reason to doubt that he was interested in the military.
00:14:01.680And there's no reason to doubt that he was qualified to get into West Point.
00:14:05.180So what kind of editorial predicate did they have other than he's the most wounded nominee?
00:14:52.800They come and I posted on X had 300,000 views.
00:14:55.720People are getting to know ProPublica out of this.
00:14:58.980And I think it may have secured Pete Heggs that's confirmation.
00:15:02.580Although on yesterday's program, you're talking to Josh Holmes and the gang from Ruthless, the four horsemen of the apocalypse from Ruthless.
00:15:09.940They were not certain about Pete getting through because hearings are hearings.
00:15:17.540And I remember the Clarence Thomas hearings, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.
00:15:21.560They've come up with anyone, people we haven't heard of yet, right?
00:15:27.540And you're not going to have the chance to do what you did with your colleague from the Daily Mail or your sit down with Pete Heggs that it's going to happen in 72 hours.
00:15:35.220And he's just got to go in Ollie North style.
00:15:40.100I don't think he can wear the uniform anymore.
00:15:50.880And then let's see those Republicans look at Trump and all of his supporters and say, we reject him.
00:15:58.020That we're going to stop him based on whatever comes out of that hearing.
00:16:00.780I mean, we'll see whether it's new evidence when they actually produce somebody on the record to accuse Pete of the things that have been alleged only anonymously thus far.
00:16:09.660I look forward to seeing some former Fox News employee get up there and say, oh, he was drunk.
00:16:24.880I will say I think their hesitancy is based on Joni Ernst, because I think we all think we're going to lose Murkowski, Collins and maybe McConnell.
00:16:40.380And I know she's saying things that are closer to maybe.
00:16:45.560But, you know, as well as I do, I keep calling you to Hugh is a very talented lawyer who went to Harvard and University of Michigan at law school and worked in the Reagan administration.
00:17:56.080And I find it interesting that both you and another former Fox colleague, Geraldo Rivera, who have no obligation to come to the defense of Pete Hexa, have both stepped up to do so.
00:18:37.920I think spouses know each other pretty well.
00:18:40.840But other than spouses, people who work in a network and who do shows together know each other very well.
00:18:49.240You know, whether you're on time, whether you're late, whether you dress well, whether you don't dress well, you know, everything about boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, children.
00:19:00.360It's you just spend a lot of time with your colleagues, which is why when you and Geraldo say Major Pete is great, I listen.
00:19:07.980Yeah, I mean, I spent a lot of time with Pete Hegseth and all I ever saw was a professional, smart, earnest, great guy who cared deeply about the military.
00:19:21.200It's all he wanted to talk about ever.
00:19:23.240I mean, even when you're making casual conversation, that's what he wanted to talk about, the military and what he could do to address their concerns and how their needs weren't being met.
00:19:31.200But truly, even in casual conversation, and I've said this to my audience before, we did have conversations many times at Fox News about whose drinking was getting out of control or who was potentially taking drugs and some we knew were.
00:19:43.820And those people were definitely on the radar.
00:19:46.360We all knew he was never one of the names.
00:19:49.340Pete was on the radar for loving the military and veterans.
00:19:52.480And yes, for being a little randy, I guess we can say, when it came to the women, whatever that's between him and his wife.
00:21:29.280In a city full of battalions of straw men, Josh's argument stands out as a straw man.
00:21:34.220Because it is not responsive to, number one, why did they begin the inquiry when he was a Princeton guy and he did go in the military?
00:21:41.720Number two, why didn't they tell us that West Point had misled them, which is itself rather significant, since he's going to be the Secretary of Defense?
00:21:50.720And if the answer is because they have bad bookkeeping, then you just put it in.
00:23:23.520Some evergreen piece on whether Pete did or did not get into West Point.
00:23:27.940They were just trying to sandbag the guy.
00:23:30.160You know, one of the possibilities and you mentioned it on why they wouldn't even do just a one paragraph or on it is somebody at West Point was the initial source.
00:23:40.660I mean, you think of West Point as being, you know, pro their military.
00:23:43.820That doesn't mean they're pro Pete or pro Trump.
00:23:46.980And if somebody at West Point, you know, if the call was incoming to ProPublica and and, you know, in an attempted smear that they were about to print and didn't because Pete had the records that West Point claimed it didn't have.
00:23:59.680That'd be a reason why you wouldn't say it.
00:24:28.940And the people who are veterans in the cotton, Dan Sullivan, Michael Waltz, they are drilled down on this and they're not going to let it go.
00:24:36.860So the best result for West Point is that ProPublica called us up.
00:26:04.620This is the New York Times' Michael Scher who wrote this on December 9th to a group of fellow reporters who have teamed up to take turns covering the post-election news out of Mar-a-Lago.
00:26:17.240The reason is, he writes, I've reached out to the transition about today's schedule and have not heard back.
00:26:24.780Scher was part of an unofficial press pool set up by the White House Correspondents Association to cover, you know, Trump's team down there.
00:26:31.940But the press is being kept at a safe distance.
00:26:36.820They point out this is very unlike 2016 when Trump let the press stand at the base of Trump Tower and interview all these candidates who are coming in to kiss the ring on their way in and way out.
00:26:47.360But this time, no, he's not really interested in it.
00:26:50.140And Steve Chung has said, hey, I didn't authorize your weird little transition coverage.
00:26:59.300But they lament in this piece, the incoming press secretary, Caroline Levitt and Steve Chung, sometimes don't get back to the shutout, frustrated reporters at all, Hugh.
00:27:13.680And they go on to say that these folks, OK, notwithstanding the fact that they don't know what's happening, they're not sure what's going on with the White House press room seating chart,
00:27:23.920and they can't get straight answers on whether they're going to be where they want to be and were, that they are, quote,
00:27:29.300soldiering on, and that they're doing this, notwithstanding the fact that hotel rooms on the island of Palm Beach are hard to come by and they are expensive.
00:27:40.100So most journalists are exiled about a half an hour's drive in West.
00:28:11.620I make my arrangements to talk to the president through Margo and his personal staff, and they are very professional.
00:28:18.040The Chung organization is very professional, but they are not giving away the candy the way that they did for eight years ago.
00:28:26.440Because eight years ago, they came in thinking that they were going to get a fair deal, and it turns out they don't get a fair deal from these people.
00:28:40.080But no one is owed anything by the president-elect.
00:28:43.440And Megan, if he gave a lot of interviews, do you think we would start getting the one president at a time low back, which they're waiting to unleash on him?
00:29:01.200It's like being bumped from the double wide to the single in the trailers.
00:29:05.620They say, with the West Palm Hilton now officially sold out, some reporters have been forced to retreat to the courtyard by Marriott, out by the airport, Hugh Hewitt.
00:29:19.760The humiliation of these poor reporters.
00:29:24.620You know, I actually prefer courtyard by Marriott because they don't give you expressive machines.
00:29:29.820They give you the old-fashioned Mr. Coffee so that in the morning you don't have to make the espresso machine work.
00:29:35.480I just got to say, for anyone who's ever gone to a convention, you're lucky if you're within 15 miles of the convention center.
00:29:43.320I mean, you just got to travel, travel, travel.
00:30:27.080And depending on what they said, I'd go from there.
00:30:29.360But I would definitely be very interested in the fact that I'd been misled by West Point, which absolutely knows whether Pete Hexeth applied.
00:30:56.240If you're going to West Point, your boss is the Secretary of Defense.
00:30:59.480You would at least use extreme care before responding.
00:31:03.220And in fact, you might want to call the transition team to inform them that you've had an inquiry about the nominee to run the Department of Defense.
00:31:58.780While we're on the subject of journalism, something interesting happened over at CNN, and it's turned into a controversy, and I'd love to get your thoughts on it.
00:32:06.560But Clarissa Ward is considered a star reporter over at CNN.
00:32:14.540And she is doing reporting on Syria and what's happened in the wake of Bashar al-Assad being chased out of the country to Russia and this new Islamist group taking over, you know, like the kinder, gentler Al-Qaeda.
00:32:30.500And she was patrolling through the streets in her reportorial role and says that she came upon a Bashar al-Assad prison facility with one of these new, you know, quote, unquote, reformed Al-Qaeda types with her.
00:32:50.980And that they went into this prison cell and there's a prisoner who is being held by Bashar al-Assad.
00:33:06.480And now, in the wake of this interview, which got all sorts of plaudits all over the internet, people, oh, my God, she's amazing what she did, blah, blah, blah.
00:33:16.080Now some people are raising questions about whether she was misled.
00:33:21.000I think that's the most charitable thing I've seen on there.
00:33:23.380Some have suggested she may have been part of the misleading.
00:40:13.300It's the first time he has heard those words.
00:40:16.280As a paramedic arrives, the shock sets in.
00:40:21.100Jake, I have to say I have been doing this job for nearly 20 years now,
00:40:25.880and that really was one of the most extraordinary moments that I have ever witnessed.
00:40:33.520And folks pointing out online how clean the man looks, the jacket, the pants, the fingernails.
00:40:40.380It's just, and does he have the right energy level for somebody who hasn't had food or water in almost five days?
00:40:50.020I don't know, but I think that there should be an investigation by CNN just to make sure they have not been used by an organization trying to look like heroes,
00:41:02.200notwithstanding their own controversial behaviors.
00:41:05.240It's either a great scoop or a great dupe.
00:44:43.440I think that this collective American experience, which is so twisted to have in the wealthiest nation in the world, all of that pain that people have experienced is being concentrated on this event.
00:45:00.300And it's really important that we take a step back.
00:45:04.020This is not to comment and this is not to say that an act of violence is is justified.
00:45:10.780But I think for anyone who is confused or shocked or appalled, they need to understand that people interpret and feel and experience denied claims as an act of violence against them.
00:46:23.620And Scalise teed off on this because he cannot believe people stand with anyone using violence in any situation and trying to make an excuse on the basis of mythology.
00:46:36.620There are no facts and evidence that have anything to do with UnitedHealthcare or a denied claim.
00:46:44.040And moreover, in the guy's alleged manifesto, he says, oh, they're probably people better qualified than I am to explain exactly what they're doing.
00:49:26.200And in the meantime, if you want to email me about your best Christmas gift, what you're recommending for your fellow listeners and viewers,
00:49:36.700or what you received over the course of your lifetime that you love the most, it's megan at megankelly.com.
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