The Megyn Kelly Show - New Trump Derangement Syndrome Examples, and How CNN Smeared a Navy Veteran, with Piers Morgan, Zachary Young, and Vel Freedman ｜ Ep. 991

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

00:00:42.760 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Friday.

00:00:47.080 What a week. What a week I'm having, but in a good way.

00:00:52.020 Especially busy for President Donald Trump who got right to work after taking office on Monday.

00:00:56.540 as we've been discussing. Yesterday he signed another flurry of executive orders,

00:01:02.240 including one that got all of social media talking to declassify all remaining documents

00:01:08.240 related to the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK Jr.

00:01:15.080 Can you believe we haven't yet released those?

00:01:17.780 I mean, this happened in 63 and 68 before I was born, before a lot of us listening to this were born.

00:01:26.340 They're still being kept a secret by that. I mean, it's like, it's long overdue.

00:01:29.780 It's kind of ridiculous that we're even having to beg for these things.

00:01:33.940 Plus, a vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as Department of Defense Secretary is expected to happen late tonight.

00:01:40.600 And it's going to be a close one, and the Democrats are still slinging mud up until the 11th hour

00:01:46.540 as we've got to look at the Republicans who are likely to vote against the nomination.

00:01:50.760 I also want to tell you that later in the show, I'm going to be joined by Zachary Young.

00:01:54.540 Who is Zachary Young?

00:01:55.960 Well, first, this is his first long-form interview.

00:01:58.440 And he is the military veteran who just successfully sued CNN for defamation,

00:02:05.080 winning a $5 million compensatory damages award from them.

00:02:10.300 And they were about to move on to the punitive damages phase where they were recommending the experts

00:02:14.280 something like $120 million, at which point CNN settled this case.

00:02:21.080 So this will be his first long-form interview.

00:02:23.240 And I'm looking forward to discussing with him what it is CNN did to him and why they were so unapologetic.

00:02:32.440 The jury saw it differently.

00:02:34.680 Okay, but here to kick us off today is Piers Morgan.

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00:03:52.240 Piers, welcome back to the show.

00:03:53.560 How are you?

00:03:54.460 Megan, great to see you.

00:03:55.740 I'm extremely well, thank you.

00:03:57.940 It's great to see you, too.

00:03:58.860 So just as a practical matter, I'm curious because I knew you broke away and you did the YouTube thing.

00:04:05.720 But does this mean you're not working with Rupert anymore or what does this mean?

00:04:10.300 Well, what it means is I have basically acquired my YouTube channel.

00:04:14.140 So I had a three-year deal with Rupert Murdoch and News and I had a very good chat with him about what I wanted to do.

00:04:20.700 I didn't want to be just a talent for hire anymore when it came to the deal being renewed.

00:04:25.360 They made me a very generous offer, which I said, look, it's very generous.

00:04:29.220 I'm really appreciative, but I actually want to own my own business.

00:04:33.280 And like you, I think we've both worked out that the future is not traditional linear television or traditional newspapers or any of the kind of legacy media, for want of a better phrase.

00:04:45.720 Anyone under 40 is now consuming almost all of their news, opinion and comment from shows like mine, shows like yours.

00:04:54.720 And individuals who are creating their own kind of media entities and using YouTube as the main platform to do that.

00:05:02.000 And I think that this is the future.

00:05:03.620 And I've got three sons, 31, 27, 24.

00:05:06.960 They don't watch conventional television.

00:05:09.160 They get all their social media and in particular via YouTube channels like yours and mine.

00:05:15.200 So I think it was a logical thing to do.

00:05:17.580 I don't even think it's a risk.

00:05:18.920 You know, we've done the hard yards, you and I, I think in building our personal brands and people, I think, like to hear what we have to say.

00:05:26.460 They like the interviews we do.

00:05:27.620 They like the debates we put on.

00:05:29.620 And this is absolutely, to me, the future.

00:05:32.180 And I think more and more people will take the leap and come with us on what is a pretty exciting journey.

00:05:37.560 I totally agree with you.

00:05:39.660 And one thing that's great about YouTube and this other format is people can consume it the way they want.

00:05:45.400 If they want to watch the whole show, they can watch the whole show.

00:05:47.720 If they prefer to just watch sort of the hot clips or the things that interest them that were in the show, it's so easy for them to do it.

00:05:54.860 It's just such a, it's, it caters to the, what is the desired user experience so much better.

00:06:00.200 Yeah, and I would add to that, that they can watch it when they want to.

00:06:04.780 You know, the younger generation do not want to be beholden to conventional schedules.

00:06:09.840 You know, when I first started doing my show, I was doing it on YouTube, but also on a linear platform called Talk TV in the UK, which didn't last very long because it wasn't the kind of appetite for it that Americans have for cable newsletter night.

00:06:22.880 And that was fine because I could see that the numbers on the YouTube version were going through the roof and that was completely unencumbered by any kind of artificial schedule.

00:06:33.020 You know, before I was trotting into a television studio at 8pm every night here in London and there were advertising breaks and there'd be an hour.

00:06:42.040 So maybe you get 47 minutes of airtime all broken up and you're like, why are we doing it like this?

00:06:47.040 Why don't we just forget about the linear thing?

00:06:49.280 Most of our audience actually don't want it.

00:06:51.460 They're all gravitating to a YouTube version of what we're doing here, which doesn't have any ad breaks in real time.

00:06:57.840 We can go as long as we want and people can watch it whenever they feel like.

00:07:01.260 And that has been, I think, the absolute eye opener, not just for me, but for a lot of people in the industry.

00:07:07.040 So with the recent election in America, the more people watched the election night on YouTube than watched it on cable and broadcast.

00:07:15.200 And the latest numbers I saw as well a few days ago said that I think it's about 11 and a half, 12% now of American television watchers watch television on their smart TV through the YouTube app.

00:07:28.420 That's an amazing statistic.

00:07:30.140 And that means at this rate, I think the cable number is about 18%.

00:07:33.820 The network number is about 23, 24.

00:07:36.520 Well, that means that very soon, probably in two years maximum, YouTube will be the number one way that most people watch television.

00:07:45.180 They'll be watching it through the YouTube app on their smart TV.

00:07:48.180 It's a revolution that's happening actually very quickly.

00:07:51.000 It reminds me of music.

00:07:52.780 You know, when it went from vinyl to digital, everyone thought it would take years.

00:07:56.520 Actually, when it happened, the revolution came very quickly.

00:08:00.040 And you're seeing the same with newspapers.

00:08:01.800 I used to be a newspaper editor for many years in the UK.

00:08:05.720 Print versions of newspapers are basically dying out very quickly.

00:08:10.300 The digital versions will survive for those who work out a good digital strategy.

00:08:14.980 But this is all because young people, they live in a digital world, as you know.

00:08:19.100 So many people have told me that they watch this show on their TV via YouTube.

00:08:25.960 Like they just, you know, we all have the YouTube app.

00:08:27.560 We have the Netflix app, whatever.

00:08:29.080 You just go to the YouTube app and you watch it like you watch a regular television.

00:08:32.000 They don't really even see a difference between linear television and the YouTube options now,

00:08:36.800 except in content and presentation and who's there.

00:08:40.920 You know, because you can do a lot more and say a lot more and approach it very differently and more authentically

00:08:45.300 on YouTube than you can if you were on conventional television.

00:08:49.100 Which is why, I mean, not for nothing, but didn't you think it was so weird that Dr. Phil

00:08:54.680 decided to buy a linear TV channel to launch?

00:09:00.400 I'm like, I love Dr. Phil, but what is he doing, right?

00:09:03.640 And it's, I don't think it's doing very well.

00:09:05.420 And he's now starting to toy with having more of a presence in the digital lane.

00:09:09.800 But it's just that whole Oprah model is dead.

00:09:13.000 It's yesteryear.

00:09:14.120 It's like playing with lanterns when we have electricity.

00:09:17.100 Why would you do it?

00:09:17.840 Well, the interesting thing, I think, is it's a generational thing.

00:09:21.300 I mean, the average age now of cable news watchers in America is 70, which means a lot of their regular viewers are 80 or 90.

00:09:28.900 If you think about it, that's the average age.

00:09:31.460 It's a similar dynamic, I think, with people who buy print newspapers.

00:09:34.960 So, you know, the print newspapers in America that have done quite well, mainly thanks to Donald Trump, actually.

00:09:40.760 But if you look at, say, the New York Times business model, the reason they've managed to survive and thrive when others have really struggled is because of their digital strategy, which, again, was fueled almost exclusively by that first four years of Donald Trump's term in office.

00:09:55.700 So I think that everyone's working out what their future game is going to be.

00:10:00.420 But if you're not in the digital space now in the media, then you are, frankly, a bit of a dinosaur and you've got to wake up.

00:10:07.380 You asked me at the start whether I'm still working with Rupert Murdoch.

00:10:10.500 He absolutely gets this.

00:10:11.680 And, in fact, news are retaining a slice of the advertising revenue for the next four years on my YouTube channel.

00:10:18.360 And I'll continue to appear when I come to the States on Fox on all the shows there, The Five and so on, which I love doing.

00:10:25.180 But they understood that, you know, I believe, rather like you do, I think, you know, when you've built up a YouTube channel that has, you know, both of us have over 3 million subscribers now.

00:10:34.820 This puts us in the top five or six people in the world right now who are in the news opinion debate space and we're on YouTube.

00:10:43.920 And, you know, I'm sure that you would have similar numbers to these, but I've done some interviews.

00:10:47.820 I did a guy called Basim Youssef, who's the Egyptian version of Jon Stewart.

00:10:52.240 He was the biggest star on Arabic TV.

00:10:55.720 And he came on my show just after the Israel-Hamas war started.

00:10:59.320 So 23 million people watched that interview on my YouTube channel.

00:11:05.640 I then did him again in Los Angeles, a much longer, more thoughtful interview.

00:11:09.320 And another 12 million watched it there.

00:11:11.900 Similarly, I did an interview with the real-life stalker from the Baby Reindeer saga.

00:11:18.480 That was amazing.

00:11:19.900 Incredible story.

00:11:20.600 We loved that.

00:11:21.580 Yeah, and the only interview she's ever given, Fiona Harvey.

00:11:24.220 And she made some extremely damning claims about Netflix and about the reality and said,

00:11:30.580 look, you know, in the series, which has now been decorated with a string of awards,

00:11:34.820 you might have noticed in the last few weeks, in the actual reality, she never went even to court,

00:11:40.440 let alone be convicted of any crime of stalking.

00:11:43.720 So it'd be really interesting whether it carries on winning awards,

00:11:47.500 but ultimately Netflix have to give this lady a massive check for a pretty serious defamation. 1.00

00:11:52.980 So that one got another 16 million viewers on our YouTube channel.

00:11:58.040 But interestingly, as you know, it's not just about the YouTube channel.

00:12:02.100 It's about X.

00:12:03.140 It's about Facebook.

00:12:04.360 It's about TikTok.

00:12:05.640 We have one clip on TikTok from that interview, which has now been watched 36 million times.

00:12:11.680 It was a clip of me asking her, were you in love with it, with Richard Gad,

00:12:16.100 who's played himself in the series and is the supposed victim of her stalking,

00:12:20.460 even though she never got committed of a crime.

00:12:21.960 So I think the point I'm making is you would never get those kind of numbers for interviews on conventional television.

00:12:29.540 Those days are long gone.

00:12:31.200 You used to in the great old days when television was the only medium and there was no internet,

00:12:35.660 you would get stratospherically big numbers.

00:12:37.800 Michael Jackson interview, I remember getting 40, 50 million.

00:12:41.460 Those days are gone.

00:12:42.720 You will not get that on anything on conventional television.

00:12:46.380 But on YouTube now, you can see these seriously big numbers.

00:12:51.400 It's fascinating and it's so fun.

00:12:53.340 And we're so lucky to be over here.

00:12:55.300 It's fun, isn't it?

00:12:55.900 That's the thing I'm doing.

00:12:57.340 It's just fun, right?

00:12:58.480 You and I, I think we wake up and we're not now beholden to any bosses.

00:13:03.600 We can pretty much do whatever we like.

00:13:05.500 There's a wonderful freedom about it.

00:13:07.460 It is fun.

00:13:08.360 And you can basically talk about whatever you want to talk about.

00:13:11.580 And if people like you as a personality, or even if they like to dislike you, but they find you compelling,

00:13:18.420 whether it's me, you or Tucker or whoever it may be who's out there doing this,

00:13:23.360 they at least have total freedom themselves to watch us when they feel like it, in the way they feel like it.

00:13:29.620 They can watch us on their phone, on their laptop, whatever they want.

00:13:32.100 It's a whole new world and it's being driven by young people who I think have an even greater desire and thirst for information and news,

00:13:41.560 but they're not going to get it off conventional media.

00:13:44.660 Well, I think the names you mentioned, you and Tucker and I, were never meant to be constrained.

00:13:50.140 You know, it was just, that was never going to hold.

00:13:53.440 It didn't hold in any of our cases.

00:13:55.580 We all got booted from different organizations for just being too outspoken.

00:13:59.120 And so I feel like it's landed where it should.

00:14:02.480 And thank God this ecosystem rose up and I think was in part developed, at least in the news lane, not originally, but in the news lane by folks like us.

00:14:10.500 And thank God, right?

00:14:11.760 Necessity is the mother of all invention.

00:14:13.820 Something you mentioned about CNN I wanted to ask you about.

00:14:16.860 As I mentioned in the intro, in the second hour, we're going to have on the guy who just successfully sued CNN for defamation and won big.

00:14:23.460 And one of the things I saw in the packet as I was preparing for that interview is they appear to have a much lower bar for what can make it onto their air than they do for what can make it onto CNN.com, like their digital website.

00:14:42.280 The defamation standard is the same.

00:14:44.880 You don't, you know, he has to prove the same whether he's been defamed by an anchor or, you know, a producer writing for the website.

00:14:53.040 But I was kind of shocked at how lazy and lackluster CNN apparently is about what goes out on what most people know CNN for, which is its airwaves, all this internal correspondence, which we'll get to, on how it's like, it's very sloppy, it's full of holes.

00:15:11.580 But like, yeah, it's fine for CNN.

00:15:13.200 We just can't put it on digital.

00:15:15.500 What do you make of that?

00:15:16.240 I mean, you used to work at CNN, but what do you make of that?

00:15:19.060 Yeah, I think it's a very interesting point.

00:15:20.520 I mean, what is, I think, probably a bigger picture interest to me is this follows the big payout by Jules Stephanopoulos and ABC to Donald Trump, which was 15 million or whatever it was.

00:15:32.800 You're beginning to see quite big payouts for people who've said things on air, on cable news, and now being held a proper account for it.

00:15:42.220 Many people think that's long overdue.

00:15:44.320 So I think that people are probably having a very nervous time now in cable news.

00:15:49.900 If the day isn't just saying whatever you feel like, with no accountability for it, they're long gone.

00:15:55.120 And I think that you're now seeing people on the receiving end going on the attack legally and exercising their rights to say, no, this is wrong.

00:16:03.780 You've defamed me.

00:16:05.080 And by the way, if you do that, you're going to pay a lot of money.

00:16:08.360 And they're all running scared.

00:16:09.660 They're all settling.

00:16:10.860 You know, the CNN went to court to defend itself.

00:16:13.320 But the moment he got to punitive damages, they bailed because they knew it might be really horrific to deny that figure.

00:16:19.280 ABC bailed in a way that I think horrified a lot of their staff, but actually quite rightly, because George Stephanopoulos repeatedly, in that interview, repeatedly defamed Donald Trump and repeatedly said that he'd been convicted of a crime he hadn't been convicted of.

00:16:34.800 And if you're going to do that, I'm sorry, it doesn't matter who you are.

00:16:37.900 You know, if you and I did that on our platform, we would also be susceptible to people suing us for defamation.

00:16:43.600 There shouldn't be some sort of loftier-than-thou rule that just because you work for one of the legacy media, you work to different rules.

00:16:50.540 So I think the worm is changing very quickly here.

00:16:54.740 And people are being held up.

00:16:55.960 It would have been really interesting in the Russia collusion mayhem of the first two years of Trump's term of novice.

00:17:02.060 If he decided to go after all those networks and all those journalists who perpetuated what turned out to be a complete myth for two years,

00:17:10.080 A, he would have ended up extremely rich. 0.99

00:17:12.180 And B, it might have nicked it in the butt because, you know, at the time a lot of us were saying, you were saying, I was saying, that this is ridiculous. 0.99

00:17:19.520 There is no actual hard evidence to support this. 0.98

00:17:22.560 And yet it's dominating the news agenda now for years and turned out to be a nothing burger of monumental proportions,

00:17:31.240 but a nothing burger that caused Donald Trump a lot of damage.

00:17:34.360 And, you know, it would have been really interesting if he'd sued at the time about that stuff because it did turn out to be nonsense.

00:17:40.060 And he knew it was nonsense because he was the one that was being accused of it.

00:17:45.040 I know there's been absolutely no proof of it.

00:17:47.020 You've got just this week, well, last week before the inauguration, AOC saying, I'm not going to the inauguration because I don't support rapists.

00:17:54.360 That is a defamatory statement.

00:17:56.440 She didn't make clear that's opinion.

00:17:57.860 She said it as though it were a matter of fact.

00:18:00.020 It isn't.

00:18:01.180 And I really think he should give some serious thought to suing her.

00:18:03.880 She wasn't on the legislative floor.

00:18:05.760 She was sitting in her apartment doing a little Instagram.

00:18:08.260 You can't get away with that.

00:18:09.440 You can't a term like he's a rapist or he's committing potential treason in working with the Russians. 0.58

00:18:17.980 Like news organizations have just and politicians, for that matter, given up all the guardrails that we used to observe.

00:18:26.340 You know, we used to at least try to be more careful.

00:18:28.940 I still try to be careful.

00:18:30.660 I'm certainly never trying to be reckless out here.

00:18:32.600 I'm very relentlessly fact based and not to say we're always perfect.

00:18:35.780 But, you know, if you make a mistake, you clean it up and you do it transparently.

00:18:38.840 I've seen you do that, too.

00:18:40.440 There is an irresponsibility that's taken hold of certain of our news organizations when it comes to Trump and politicians, too.

00:18:47.660 It's no accidents.

00:18:48.660 It's usually about him, Pierce.

00:18:50.500 That is really kind of unprecedented.

00:18:52.280 Yeah, it is.

00:18:54.420 And you're completely right about AOC.

00:18:55.920 She brazenly repeated in a private capacity, as you say, not on the floor of the house or anything like that.

00:19:03.740 She did it in her own home to the world on her account.

00:19:07.320 She put it out there repeating the exact same defamation that George Sepulopoulos had said on air that cost ABC $15 million.

00:19:15.400 So if you're going to be that brazen, you know, think about what a judge or a courtroom would make of that.

00:19:21.140 They'd say, well, you could hardly pretend you didn't know.

00:19:23.700 This has literally been a massive headline grabbing settlement in the last few weeks. 0.83

00:19:29.360 And you've decided that it doesn't apply to you, that somehow you are on some superior plane to George Sepulopoulos, which allows you to call Trump a rapist and get away with it. 0.76

00:19:40.460 Well, if I was Trump, I'd call her bluff. 0.98

00:19:42.540 I'd sue her.

00:19:43.300 And by the way, he'd win, just like he did with ABC.

00:19:48.060 And so I do think that you need to have more of this accountability.

00:19:51.620 And people will say, well, what about free speech?

00:19:53.540 It's not about free speech.

00:19:55.120 It's a bit like what I said about the real-life alleged stalker from Baby Reindeer.

00:20:00.560 If Netflix is going to put out, I love Netflix, a very successful company.

00:20:04.440 I use it all the time, just to be clear.

00:20:06.700 But Netflix is going to broadcast a seven-part series, which they say at the start of it, this is a true story.

00:20:15.020 So every time you logged on to watch an episode, this is a true story.

00:20:18.620 And then you say in that true story that Richard Gad, who's the writer and who's the guy who plays himself in the series, if you then depict him being forensically stalked by this woman, who then gets convicted and put in prison, and it turns out they claim has already had a previous prison sentence, and none of that is true, then little wonder that she's now taken out a massive lawsuit against Netflix.

00:20:45.820 But why would Netflix do that?

00:20:47.840 You know, why would you call it a true story without, A, doing the due diligence of whether actually this was true, or B, worse, you know it's true, but you don't care?

00:20:57.380 And there's a little bit of that about Donald Trump, isn't there?

00:21:00.040 Well, a lot of that about Donald Trump, which is, I think a lot of journalists feel they can say whatever they like about him, and that's fine.

00:21:06.180 And I think what he did with the Stephanopoulos case is put a line in the sand and say, right, if you guys are going to defame me on fact, and you mentioned earlier, you try and stick to facts, you're a lawyer by background.

00:21:19.700 I'm a newspaper editor by background.

00:21:22.120 We know how important facts are.

00:21:24.080 It's not to say we've always been faultless ourselves, but it's to say we understand the importance of veracity.

00:21:29.440 We don't come from the Meghan Markle, my truth school of bogus facts.

00:21:35.480 No.

00:21:36.060 We come from the facts are actual facts.

00:21:39.540 Now, you can then, if you take a fact, you can then comment as you wish about it.

00:21:44.880 You can interpret a fact any way you like.

00:21:47.280 You can be as opinionated as you want.

00:21:49.500 Right, but what you can't do is do that about something which isn't true, because then you're just defaming people.

00:21:56.280 And, A, there's no point in that, because you lose trust with your viewers if you keep doing that.

00:22:01.600 If they know you're saying one thing, but actually it's not true, and you repeat that, I think you're pretty dead in the water as a broadcaster who'd be taken seriously by anybody.

00:22:10.460 But, B, why do it?

00:22:12.880 You know, in AOC's case, she's done that deliberately.

00:22:15.360 She's almost taunting Trump.

00:22:17.520 Come and sue me. 1.00

00:22:18.360 And if I were him, he probably hasn't got time or information, but if I was him, I would.

00:22:22.960 I'd call her bluff.

00:22:24.240 Call her bluff, exactly.

00:22:25.060 All she had to do was say alleged.

00:22:27.340 I mean, she would have been covered if she had said alleged rapist, but she didn't want to because it wasn't as powerful, didn't sound as despicable.

00:22:35.180 And so she really put herself out there on a limb.

00:22:37.920 On the Netflix front, they continue to do this.

00:22:41.060 And I feel exactly as you said.

00:22:42.620 I watch Netflix all the time.

00:22:44.280 I enjoy Netflix.

00:22:45.120 I don't agree with the politics of the guy who owns Netflix, but they continue to do this to people, and it's really wrong.

00:22:53.260 They say it's a true story, and they lead you to believe, and like you point out, in Baby Reindeer, they had the actual guy to whom this allegedly happened as the star.

00:23:03.340 So you believe he's telling, it's like, oh, it must be true.

00:23:05.480 It's a firsthand account.

00:23:06.400 And then they also did this long thing on the Central Park Five and the prosecutor, Linda Fairstein, whose reputation they absolutely ruined with this.

00:23:18.120 And her critics have tried to ruin her over and over and over, and they put on, thanks to Ava DeVornay, the celebrated leftist director, a bunch of things about Linda that weren't true, that were made up, and they were forced to admit it when she sued them.

00:23:34.560 So that's been an ongoing litigation, or it was for a while now.

00:23:38.440 She actually wound up on my husband Doug's podcast, which he does about books.

00:23:42.280 It's called Dedicated with Doug Brunt.

00:23:43.940 And Linda Fairstein talked a little bit about this, where she really hasn't at all.

00:23:49.160 In 2019, Netflix did this docuseries called When They See Us by Anna DuVarnay about the Central Park Five, which is an event from the 80s.

00:23:59.420 And you were at the DA's office at that time, and they attributed words and actions to you that you say and neither said nor did.

00:24:09.100 And so you sued.

00:24:12.120 Yes, for defamation.

00:24:13.200 Sued for defamation.

00:24:14.440 The judge looking into this went to DuVarnay and said, well, where's your source material for these scenes where Linda said and did these things?

00:24:22.600 Her response was, well, it's not a documentary.

00:24:24.460 It settled, and the settlement required Netflix to pay a million dollars to the Innocence Project, and they had to change the messaging when you stream this.

00:24:33.000 Up front, the messaging now says inspired by and fictionalized, you know, events are fictionalized here.

00:24:38.860 Because DuVarnay admitted, actually, that she invented, invented is the word she used, my dialogue and invented my actions.

00:24:48.540 The Netflix flicks executives asking, did she really do those things?

00:24:54.380 Did she, being Feirstein, really do those things?

00:24:57.460 And no, I invented it because I figured that's what she would be like.

00:25:05.360 Somebody who never met me.

00:25:06.980 So what was her inspiration for the invention?

00:25:09.560 How did she even get onto your name?

00:25:11.940 She just decided, this is the character I'm going to have represent these.

00:25:16.660 I can't tell you because I don't know her, but I would think because I was the visible person, I was the known name as a best-selling author.

00:25:26.940 And the other characters who really worked on the case weren't known to anybody, and it was just a good way to take a shot at me.

00:25:35.900 In any event, it's wrong.

00:25:38.040 Netflix, people are watching this thing at home without, you know, they're not like in forensic examination mode.

00:25:44.360 They're taking in entertainment and accepting that if they're told a true story, that's what it is.

00:25:49.720 It's really irresponsible. 0.96

00:25:51.480 Well, it is when you've got a woman involved who, look, for what it's worth, having interviewed her, I think she's a pretty unpleasant troll. 0.76

00:26:00.340 I heard from other people who've been on the receiving end of her trolling that it could be pretty unpleasant.

00:26:04.340 Do you mean Linda Feirstein or baby reindeer lady?

00:26:06.500 Oh, I'm talking about baby reindeer.

00:26:08.280 Okay, I was going to say because I love Linda Feirstein.

00:26:10.600 I don't even know Linda Feirstein.

00:26:12.720 She's a pastor.

00:26:13.200 But, no, Fiona Harvey, who was the alleged stalker in the baby reindeer series, the real-life woman behind that, you know, in her case, she was leading a normal life. 0.90

00:26:24.640 Now, she's not, you know, like I say, she could be a pretty unpleasant troll. 0.98

00:26:27.420 I know people have been on the receiving end. 0.72

00:26:29.620 But that doesn't make you a criminal stalker.

00:26:32.420 And there's a big difference between the two things.

00:26:34.840 And the moment that the Netflix story drama dropped on, I say drama, they didn't bill it as a drama.

00:26:40.420 Well, they billed it as a true story.

00:26:41.560 But at the moment, it was a dramatized, supposedly factual account of what had happened.

00:26:46.860 But the moment it dropped, she was identified almost immediately because they literally used-

00:26:52.260 Oh, it was easy.

00:26:53.040 A little bit of phraseology from her then tweets, now posts on X.

00:26:57.540 They'd used the exact wording of her posts in the series.

00:27:02.060 So people just tapped them into Twitter as it was at the time.

00:27:05.500 It was my hairstylist, who's an amateur crime solver, had it within two minutes.

00:27:10.680 Within two minutes.

00:27:11.280 So they immediately realized it was this woman, Fiona Harvey.

00:27:13.800 Her life then becomes completely turned upside down and destroyed to the extent she couldn't leave her house because people were bombarding her with hate, turning up on her doorstep, calling her, shouting abuse at her, and so on.

00:27:26.600 Because they believe the version of events in the series.

00:27:29.840 Now, like I say, she's not a particularly, you know, she's not someone you warm to or you feel particularly worried for because I've seen the stuff she sent people and it's pretty unpleasant.

00:27:40.140 But I would categorize it like I would a troll on Twitter, on X, right?

00:27:44.700 It's that kind of stuff.

00:27:46.340 That does not make you a criminal.

00:27:48.580 And she has not, through anyone's proof so far, passed the bar of criminality.

00:27:54.320 And yet in the series, like I say, they don't only say at the end he gets charged and convicted of stalking Richard Gadd.

00:28:00.820 They also throw in for good measure that she had a previous conviction for stalking somebody else.

00:28:05.700 Now, I interviewed the person that was supposedly part of that story.

00:28:09.780 And she's a lawyer from Scotland who confirmed that actually, no, she never got convicted of stalking her.

00:28:14.980 There was a warning letter from police, but again, a very different thing.

00:28:18.580 So I was able to be careful with criminal convictions.

00:28:21.440 Wait, can I ask you a question about her?

00:28:22.660 Because I'm always I'm always afraid to interview anybody who's been accused of stalking or convicted of stalking, which I realized is not her case, because I don't want to pick them up.

00:28:34.780 You know, like they have this weird gravitational pull.

00:28:38.340 And if you spend time with a stalker, especially as a public figure, Pierce, you're you're waving the red flag to the bull.

00:28:46.760 Did you have any concern about that?

00:28:49.400 I did.

00:28:49.980 But funny enough, I never heard anything from her.

00:28:53.560 And so people people kept saying to me, I hope you didn't give her your phone number.

00:28:57.040 But I used to joke and say, no, I gave her Don Lemons just to annoy him, which is not true, obviously.

00:29:02.380 But but it was I mean, I never heard another word from her.

00:29:06.280 And she had ways of probably getting communication to me.

00:29:09.680 So that but that what that told me is very interesting.

00:29:12.460 You ask that question, because what it told me was that she probably is not a she's not a stalker.

00:29:18.140 Stalkers don't behave like that.

00:29:19.740 Stalkers never give up.

00:29:20.880 In her case, both with Richard Gad and the previous person she was accused of harassing the moment the police got involved at all.

00:29:30.700 She stopped.

00:29:31.400 Now, stalkers don't stop.

00:29:33.280 You know, a very good friend of mine is a top broadcaster in the UK has had a stalker for 25 years.

00:29:40.520 And it's been relentless, despite this person going to prison several times for stalking her.

00:29:45.760 And real stalkers are so demented, they never stop their obsession.

00:29:50.740 So I guess why I really don't believe she's one of those.

00:29:54.360 Not only is she not a convicted stalker, I don't think she behaves like an actual stalker.

00:29:59.120 That doesn't mean to say she's squeaky clean or a particularly nice person.

00:30:03.000 But, you know, you cannot build a whole hugely successful, very profitable Netflix series that you call a true story by telling the viewers who are watching this woman is a convicted criminal.

00:30:17.080 If she's not, if you do, that is a serious defamation.

00:30:21.080 That's what we call defamation per se, where you don't even have to prove damages.

00:30:24.340 The court will presume them if you say somebody is a convicted felon and they're not.

00:30:28.740 All right.

00:30:29.320 Well, that's the whole thing is fascinating.

00:30:31.380 I was very into that baby reindeer series and I learned a lot.

00:30:34.160 I couldn't, I thought the interview with her was riveting, Pierce.

00:30:37.280 While we're on the subject of the media, there is in the news today, because we're kind of talking about the Trump derangement syndrome in the media too,

00:30:45.920 is a confession by someone at The Intercept, which is the news organization that Glenn Greenwald helped found.

00:30:54.980 You know, it's on the left and it had a certain POV.

00:30:58.360 And then it just went so crazy that Glenn left it in a blaze of glory, but it continues on.

00:31:05.240 And there is a guy there named Jim Risen, who Glenn says they, they hired just to be sort of a counterpoint to some of what Glenn was saying.

00:31:13.420 Glenn always thought the Russiagate stuff was nonsense.

00:31:16.140 So they bring this guy on to say, oh, Russiagate, Russia, you know, it's real, it's real, it's real.

00:31:20.620 And he's got TDS, Trump derangement syndrome.

00:31:23.480 So he goes on the Internet Intercept Briefing podcast.

00:31:27.680 And I swear, I think he speaks for so many journalists in and around D.C.

00:31:31.900 Take a listen to South 7.

00:31:33.820 Are you more concerned about what's happening?

00:31:36.700 Are you, is this what you expected?

00:31:39.300 I've actually been so depressed since the election that I've been trying to avoid, ignore the news as much as possible.

00:31:45.820 But that's pretty impossible, really, to ignore it completely.

00:31:50.240 And I think it's going to be as bad as I anticipated, maybe worse. 0.93

00:31:56.080 Trump has appointed a bunch of lunatics and conspiracy theorists to positions of power. 0.94

00:32:03.800 And he's turned the government over to oligarchs. 0.88

00:32:08.740 And so I don't think it's going to, I think it's going to get bad really, really fast.

00:32:13.120 But I'm trying to, as I said, trying my best to watch sports.

00:32:20.240 OK, on top of that, I hear on The New York Times' podcast The Daily this morning

00:32:25.940 that Trump, in revoking the security clearances of people like John Bolton, 0.98

00:32:30.260 is intentionally sending a message to Iran that they should kill him.

00:32:34.480 So the media is not handling it well, Pierce. 0.58

00:32:37.020 They are not coping with his re-election and inauguration very well.

00:32:42.120 Well, you're missing my favorite of all, which I'm sure you've discussed at length this week,

00:32:46.320 the Elon Musk supposed Nazi salute.

00:32:49.160 Because the guaranteed thing is that at some stage, the Democrats, liberals,

00:32:55.060 whoever you want, the woke left, at some stage will turn everything back to Hitler and Nazis, 0.79

00:32:59.500 which is their obsession.

00:33:00.880 Everybody knows that Elon Musk is not a Nazi and doesn't want to support the Nazi party 0.52

00:33:06.160 and despises Hitler like the rest of us decent folk.

00:33:10.880 They all know that.

00:33:11.880 And yet they've managed to take his signal, which, as he's explained, in the moment and

00:33:17.720 afterwards was from my heart to you.

00:33:20.300 And all right, as I said in my post on X, it was probably ill-advised to do it the way

00:33:25.460 he did it because I knew what would happen. 0.96

00:33:27.760 But that doesn't change the fact that it was all bullshit and that obviously he wasn't doing 0.99

00:33:32.260 a Nazi salute. 0.99

00:33:33.400 And yet the left could not stop themselves from reverting back to the same playbook that

00:33:39.400 cost Hillary Clinton her election campaign in 2016.

00:33:44.780 It cost Biden or Kamala Harris, as it turned out, but Biden before that and then Harris,

00:33:50.400 this one as well.

00:33:51.540 Because the reality is, the moment you start using Hitler and the Nazis about Trump or his

00:33:58.380 supporters, you're just telling most right-minded people that you have lost your mind and that 0.99

00:34:04.440 your Trump derangement syndrome is so advanced and so pathetic that you would genuinely equate 0.99

00:34:11.980 people who support a guy like Trump who has never ordered the Holocaust of anybody and isn't 1.00

00:34:18.280 going to, let alone murder 6 million Jews and 12 million people.

00:34:23.220 In fact, he's an anti-war president, which for a Republican is pretty unprecedented in modern

00:34:29.020 history.

00:34:29.920 Somebody who wants to end wars, not stop them.

00:34:32.120 And yet they compare him to one of the worst genocidal maniacs in the history of the planet 0.79

00:34:38.440 and that anyone who supports him is a fascist, a Nazi and so on. 0.90

00:34:42.140 And you would have thought they'd learned their lesson, Megan, by what happened in the election.

00:34:48.280 That when you get a shellacking that big and people from every single ethnic group, you 1.00

00:34:54.080 know, whether it was, you know, blacks, whites, Latinos, whether it was Jews, Muslims, you name

00:34:59.860 it, women, men, old, young, everyone gravitated to Trump in bigger numbers.

00:35:05.040 Because as he put it in his victory speech, they understood that underpinning what he's about

00:35:09.740 is a core of common sense.

00:35:11.740 The Democrats have lost an ability to understand what common sense is. 0.99

00:35:16.300 They sound nuts.

00:35:18.660 And whether it's them trying to persuade us that biological men should compete in women's 0.97

00:35:24.680 sport, because of course they should, when the rest of us all know it's utterly insane

00:35:29.380 and grotesquely unfair, or whether it's saying that Trump and his supporters are a bunch of 0.99

00:35:34.480 Nazis, whatever it is, it sounds like the ideology and thinking of a lunatic. 0.98

00:35:40.640 And that guy, you just have-

00:35:41.840 Not to mention that, just think about like the weird articles we've seen over the past

00:35:45.640 year or two about how men can chest feed, showing the torture of these little babies trying to 0.67

00:35:50.560 get milk out of a man's breast. 1.00

00:35:53.540 Ridiculous. 1.00

00:35:54.160 Of course they can't. 1.00

00:35:55.540 Of course they can't.

00:35:56.440 This is, and what I hate most about it is that the gender-specific language has been eradicated

00:36:03.960 at the altar of far-left wokeism, to the extent where, just a little example, but it really

00:36:09.600 annoys me, I always fly with British Airways.

00:36:12.120 Wonderful airline, fly the flag for my country, I love it.

00:36:15.360 And I usually fly to America on it and have a great time.

00:36:18.780 But they used to always say, and I used to love this, a soothing accent would come on

00:36:22.720 from the pilot.

00:36:23.880 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

00:36:25.800 I will be flying your plane today.

00:36:27.920 I'm captain, sir.

00:36:28.820 It sounded, well, obviously the British accent, as you know, Megan, always sounds so sophisticated.

00:36:34.180 And it's always-

00:36:34.960 Very pretty.

00:36:35.420 And charming and erudite, all those lovely things.

00:36:38.860 But never mind that.

00:36:40.040 It was the fact that he would greet ladies and gentlemen.

00:36:42.400 That used to be fine.

00:36:43.880 That used to be something which was perfectly normal, because the vast majority of human

00:36:49.400 beings are ladies or gentlemen, and identify as such.

00:36:53.460 But now they're not allowed to do it.

00:36:54.980 Now there's been an edict put out that they have, they cannot be specific about gender.

00:37:00.640 They can't say ladies and gentlemen, because there might be somebody sitting at the back

00:37:04.360 who's offended because they don't identify as a lady or gentleman, to which I say, what

00:37:10.960 about my right and the vast majority of passengers' right who want to be identified as lady and

00:37:17.580 gentleman?

00:37:18.120 What happens to our rights to be identified how we want to be identified?

00:37:23.180 What has happened in the last few years is that a small minority of people have been

00:37:28.840 catered for to such a ridiculous degree that all language has had to be changed to accommodate

00:37:34.900 them, even if the vast majority of people want the language to stay the same.

00:37:39.940 Trump is ending that quickly.

00:37:41.840 And I'm so glad to see it because actually it's been one of the worst things about wokeism is this

00:37:48.500 gender neutrality coming into every aspect of life and the pretense that somehow people who give

00:37:55.160 birth are not women and mothers.

00:37:58.580 People who breastfeed are not women and mothers.

00:38:03.080 Men don't breastfeed. 0.92

00:38:05.000 That's it.

00:38:06.260 End.

00:38:06.500 Yes.

00:38:07.580 We're just uterus havers. 0.98

00:38:09.360 There is something in the news about the UK and schoolchildren.

00:38:12.320 The UK has been just as bad on the trans stuff as the United States.

00:38:18.840 And they had the whole Tavistock clinic, which thankfully closed where they were transing kids. 1.00

00:38:24.140 And it's still going on.

00:38:25.700 They don't they need an edict like the Donald Trump executive order.

00:38:29.020 But at least they've seen the light on the puberty blockers and the cross sex hormones, 1.00

00:38:33.160 which we have not, even though the vast majority of Americans now oppose puberty blockers for

00:38:37.580 kids, according to latest polls.

00:38:39.320 But we're behind the UK when it comes to that.

00:38:41.100 But here's something that was in the news.

00:38:43.000 I want to ask you about UK schoolchildren.

00:38:44.840 Now, schoolchildren are about to be shown this documentary about this so-called trans teenager. 0.93

00:38:50.520 And it's it's about a teenage girl who's, quote, transitioning into male, which is not possible

00:38:58.180 using a breast binder and starting testosterone.

00:39:01.520 It's going to show in classrooms in the UK in February to promote LGBTQ history month.

00:39:06.960 And it's funded by the national lottery.

00:39:10.840 Here is a clip.

00:39:12.600 Stand by.

00:39:15.040 This is you in four years time.

00:39:17.660 Yes, this is how you sound.

00:39:19.040 And I think back to you often.

00:39:21.760 I remember you, the bully teenager who didn't think you'd make it to 16.

00:39:26.020 And I know you're thinking that right now.

00:39:28.040 Well, I'm here to tell you that you made it.

00:39:30.960 Well, I'm going to say exactly what you're thinking right now.

00:39:34.620 You're a boy.

00:39:35.600 And on the 21st of December 2017, you started testosterone and changes started happening.

00:39:41.580 Very soon, your family realized that this is how you are happiest.

00:39:44.840 And they're all calling you Ben.

00:39:46.020 I'm referring to you as he now.

00:39:47.880 Oh, yeah. 0.99

00:39:48.220 Yeah, you're a gay man. 0.95

00:39:50.380 You found yourself. 0.99

00:39:52.140 So really what I wanted to say is in four years time, you will have a hairy stomach,

00:39:57.840 a deeper voice, a slightly more defined jawline, broader shoulders, a different name.

00:40:02.740 You've had partners who appreciate you as you are.

00:40:05.020 You've done three standup gigs.

00:40:06.340 You've traveled the country telling people your story and showing them the great man you've become.

00:40:10.220 You are the happiest you've ever been.

00:40:13.580 This is unbelievable.

00:40:15.860 They're bringing this into classrooms there, Piers. 0.98

00:40:19.540 Yeah, it's ridiculous. 0.96

00:40:20.660 And can you imagine if you did a heterosexual version of that? 0.96

00:40:25.000 The outrage that would be erupting from the LGBTQ plus community, that they were being offended and insulted in this way by having a straight version of that in classrooms. 0.95

00:40:38.920 So there's an absolute hypocrisy here as well.

00:40:42.380 But never mind all that.

00:40:43.880 None of this stuff should be in classrooms.

00:40:46.140 You know, we learned nothing.

00:40:47.740 Keep this stuff away from classrooms.

00:40:50.680 You know, because apart from anything else, what you end up with, you know, I'll tell you one little story about a school in the south of England, which I happen to know quite well.

00:40:58.640 And they got a thousand pupils and when the gender fluid craze was sweeping through the world, and particularly in Britain, but also America as well, 98 pupils, I was told out of a thousand, began identifying as gender fluid.

00:41:14.780 Now, when I heard that, what was quite obvious to me was two things.

00:41:19.300 One, they didn't know what they were really doing.

00:41:21.660 And secondly, that if you asked the question today, how many of them are still gender fluid, the answer would probably be almost zero, which is, guess what, exactly what's happened.

00:41:31.780 In other words, young kids will pick up fads and they'll run with them.

00:41:35.460 When David Bowie was a massive rock star in the 70s and was a slightly cross-dressing guy who wore makeup, lots of kids at school began doing the same to emulate their hero. 0.59

00:41:44.800 That's what young teens in particular do.

00:41:47.320 But what you mustn't do as a society, I don't believe, and I'm sure you share this view, you don't put this kind of stuff into classrooms to get inside young, impressionable minds in some positive pursuit of what you think you're doing is positive, but actually could have a very, you know, discombobulating, confusing effect on these young minds at the same time.

00:42:12.300 I really just hate it. I've got four kids. I don't want my kids anywhere near this stuff.

00:42:19.200 It's a social contagion and it's one that could lead to sterility, not to mention the numerous problems that overtake you physically when you go on puberty blockers.

00:42:28.940 Forget cross-sex hormones as a young person.

00:42:31.940 Then they parade it out there in a way they would never do with anorexia, with cutting.

00:42:35.940 Can you imagine a video like cutting? If you're stressed out and depressed and anxious, it can really be a relief for you to just take a knife and start slicing your body up.

00:42:46.160 And then in four years, you might feel a whole lot less anxious.

00:42:49.800 You'll have scars all over your body and you might actually be playing with fire on your life.

00:42:53.880 But I'm telling you, you'll feel less anxious.

00:42:56.700 Look at me, covered in scars.

00:42:58.240 This is exactly the same equivalent thing of that.

00:43:02.360 I cannot believe they're putting this in classrooms.

00:43:05.040 But then I can, because we were at a school in New York, a private school, where they were celebrating and promoting trans ideology in the third grade, which is one of the reasons why we left.

00:43:15.780 All right, wait, let me shift gears. There's a lot more I want to get to.

00:43:18.340 What do you make of the Trump order declassifying JFK, RFK and MLK files finally?

00:43:24.380 Yeah, I think it's fantastic and long overdue.

00:43:28.080 And I'm sure it's been driven by RFK Jr., who I've interviewed many times, including talking to him about this very issue.

00:43:34.480 And this is the guy whose father was assassinated, whose uncle was assassinated, and he's never really got the answers himself.

00:43:40.700 And it is ridiculous that something that happened back in the 60s, both of these assassinations, that there should still be anything held from the American people.

00:43:50.500 The American people have a right to know absolutely everything about their presidents and about their leading politicians.

00:43:57.380 Here you've got two of the most famous and charismatic politicians in American history, and, of course, Martin Luther King as well.

00:44:03.860 So three of them are going to be three of the most pivotal political figures of modern American times.

00:44:08.640 And yet there still remain all sorts of conspiracy theories, all sorts of unanswered questions about all of their deaths.

00:44:16.440 And the best way to try and deal with that, as always, is to be completely transparent and to let everybody see absolutely everything that's in those files and work it out for themselves.

00:44:28.320 The moment you start hiding stuff, the moment you start suppressing the truth from the public, that is what fuels conspiracy theories.

00:44:36.560 Every single time, nailed down, if you let the public know, as they have done for many decades, that we are not showing you some of these files because it might be dangerous for American national security or whatever, it's a load of hogwash.

00:44:49.840 The reality is there's a duty to be transparent about these things.

00:44:54.160 The American people, and the world, frankly, have a right to know.

00:44:59.520 Here's Trump signing the EO and with an interesting closing comment yesterday.

00:45:05.420 Lastly, sir, we have an executive order ordering the declassification of files relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

00:45:18.080 That's a big one, huh?

00:45:20.340 A lot of people are waiting for this for a long, for years.

00:45:23.020 A lot of people are waiting for this for decades, and everything will be revealed.

00:45:30.080 Give that to RFK Jr.

00:45:32.980 Yes, sir.

00:45:36.480 I think it's a great thing.

00:45:37.780 I think it was clearly the right move.

00:45:39.560 It's like, my God, we're generations removed.

00:45:41.680 Let's just have the truth. 0.91

00:45:42.580 I don't actually, unfortunately, expect any smoking guns because I don't think these people are dumb enough to put one in writing and keep it in a government file.

00:45:49.020 And if it were already in there, knowing that declassification was very much in the news for the past 10 years, it would have been pulled and destroyed.

00:45:55.120 But still, whatever.

00:45:56.240 Let's take what they have.

00:45:57.920 He also appears yesterday pardoned 23 pro-life protesters.

00:46:03.840 We've seen this in our country.

00:46:04.940 We've seen it in your country.

00:46:05.920 I saw that poor woman who was literally just praying in her head outside of a U.K. abortion clinic, and she got arrested because the cop was like, what are you doing here?

00:46:17.100 You're standing here.

00:46:17.800 She was like, I'm praying inside my head.

00:46:20.360 She was, and she got arrested. 0.84

00:46:22.500 We've seen the same stuff happen over here.

00:46:24.800 There is, some of the people who are being released are, one was a Holocaust survivor who was protesting quietly outside of an abortion clinic.

00:46:35.380 Here's one, Eva Edel, singing with other protesters at a Nashville abortion clinic in 2021. 0.90

00:46:43.160 This is not one of the ones that she was indicted in, but you can see that she is sitting in a wheelchair with the purple blanket.

00:46:49.660 We'll look here.

00:46:49.980 Okay, so my own take on it, Pierce, is I assume they're violating law.

00:47:19.400 I don't actually take the time to look it up, but there is generally a time, place, and manner of restriction around abortion clinics that doesn't allow you to go in, doesn't allow you to disrupt the experience for a woman going in there.

00:47:30.280 Okay, fine.

00:47:30.920 What the police should do is go remove those people.

00:47:33.080 They should get them out and enforce the law in that way.

00:47:36.340 But to actually throw these people in jail and treat them like they're hardened criminals, they gave real jail sentences to so many of these people, and I support the pardon.

00:47:46.360 What do you think?

00:47:47.720 No, I completely agree.

00:47:48.860 I think that my criteria is all these things, and it applies to the January the 6th rioters, protesters, whatever people want to call them, and Trump's pardons.

00:47:58.740 I actually came down with J.D. Vance on that and not Donald Trump.

00:48:02.740 I would not have pardoned the ones who perpetrated acts of violence against the police.

00:48:07.240 And I have the same view of the anti-abortion protesters.

00:48:10.300 If they're protesting peacefully, that is the basic intrinsic right of every American citizen, to have the right to exercise your right to peacefully protest.

00:48:19.420 And if you've transgressed some, you know, little local law about trespass or whatever it may be, fine.

00:48:26.800 As you say, remove them.

00:48:28.580 If they're then violent towards the police who are removing them, then that's a different thing.

00:48:33.680 If they're not, then that's where it should be left.

00:48:36.780 And I just think we're seeing a lot of it in the UK where people are being arrested and charged and sometimes in prison for putting comments on Facebook and so on.

00:48:45.740 And my criteria with them is if they are actually organising violence, and you can see that in what they're writing, if they are genuinely organising violence or they're perpetrating it, that is one thing.

00:48:58.080 If they're not, they're expressing perhaps very unpleasant views or, you know, nasty views, whatever it may be, or they're, you know, using language that people don't like.

00:49:06.980 That is not an imprisonable offence to me.

00:49:09.500 That's your free speech right to be obnoxious, to be unpleasant and all these things.

00:49:14.680 So the dividing line for me always is violence.

00:49:18.160 And it doesn't matter whether you're a BLM rioter or a January 6th protester or an anti-abortionist or whatever it may be.

00:49:24.800 If you cross the line into violence or you are orchestrating violence or planning it, that is one thing, and you should feel the full force of the law.

00:49:34.280 If you're peacefully protesting, then you should be left alone to peacefully protest.

00:49:40.500 Yeah.

00:49:41.320 I think even it's like some of these cases, like six, five years in prison, three years in prison, several years in prison.

00:49:51.080 Like, if you really want to make a point with the 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, which, I mean, truly, this is what we're doing, 89-year-old Holocaust survivor.

00:50:03.940 Maybe you say you have to do one day of community service now.

00:50:08.120 Like, you've got to go out there, and I don't know what an 89-year-old could do in community service, but I'm sure it's something.

00:50:12.420 Answer phone banks for some charity.

00:50:14.600 That I can live with.

00:50:16.120 You know, like, I think most people who know they're going to break the law and do this at an abortion clinic are prepared to accept something like that.

00:50:21.680 I think most of them would even take a day in jail, you know, sort of civil disobedience style.

00:50:26.080 But five years in prison for praying? 0.98

00:50:28.500 This is ridiculous. 0.96

00:50:29.840 So good for Trump on that. 0.82

00:50:31.440 And now we must get to the most important news of the day, obviously, when the two of us are together.

00:50:35.520 And that is Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.

00:50:38.000 But we actually do need to talk about the fact that Vanity Fair has turned on them, Piers.

00:50:45.740 Vanity Fair with a hit piece on her in particular, writing all about how she's a diva, which some of us have known and have been talking about, and how people can't handle working for her.

00:50:59.940 How, okay, I want to get the quote.

00:51:03.200 Let's see.

00:51:03.800 Stand by.

00:51:06.660 Okay.

00:51:07.600 Two sources say a colleague with ties to archetypes, her podcast, took a leave of absence after working on three episodes, then left Gimlet, the podcast producer, altogether.

00:51:16.700 Several others described taking extended breaks from work to escape scrutiny, meaning from her, exiting their job or undergoing long-term therapy after working with Meghan.

00:51:26.340 The person who interacted professionally with her says, I think if Meghan acknowledged her own shortcomings or personal contributions to situations rather than staying trapped in a victim narrative, her perception might be better.

00:51:41.580 And going on to say the prince and the prince and the starlet, according to Vanity Fair, have become local villains in Montecito.

00:51:50.000 Quoting someone is saying they are the most entitled, disingenuous people on the planet.

00:51:55.100 They move from England to get away from the scrutiny of the press, supposedly, and all they do is try to get in the press in the United States.

00:52:03.600 So what does all this tell us?

00:52:04.820 What it tells us is, rather comically, that when you have this couple who, remember, on their website, it says that they're all about compassion.

00:52:15.280 They're compassionate people.

00:52:16.800 They're also all about mental health and helping people with mental health.

00:52:20.460 They've been very vocal about that recently, about the perils of online trolling and the effect it has on people's mental health.

00:52:26.200 And yet here we are with Vanity Fair, the Hollywood Bible, the thing that Meghan was most thrilled about getting the cover of a few years ago when she got engaged to Harry, which went down very badly with the palace at the time, I can tell you. 0.78

00:52:40.080 But now it reveals that actually she in particular is a nasty little bully who sends staff into therapy. 0.99

00:52:46.940 Think about that for a moment.

00:52:47.980 This also follows all the stories about her bullying staff over here in the UK, which is unresolved.

00:52:55.180 You know, NDAs stopped all that stuff coming out.

00:52:57.860 But she bullied people in a very unpleasant way over here. 1.00

00:53:01.920 So it's no surprise to people who work at Buckingham Palace.

00:53:05.120 They saw and witnessed all this here. 1.00

00:53:07.440 So I just showed, look, they're a pair of hypocrites. 1.00

00:53:09.780 They're a pair of chancers, as the Spotify guy called them, a pair of effing grifters. 0.98

00:53:14.580 And they're desperately trying to maintain some kind of future as a renegade royal couple when they're no longer part of the royal family.

00:53:23.460 The royals don't talk to them.

00:53:25.220 You know, the king does not talk to his own son.

00:53:27.940 None of the senior royals talk to these two.

00:53:30.240 They are total pariahs in the family because the only currency they have is trashing the royal family and the monarchy.

00:53:37.420 And every time they try and do something else, nobody cares.

00:53:40.480 No one cared about their podcast series.

00:53:42.980 Nobody cared about the polo series recently.

00:53:45.120 Nobody cares about any of it.

00:53:46.620 All they want to hear is the dirt.

00:53:48.280 And these two for five years have reveled and wallowed in royal dirt for vast amounts of money. 0.93

00:53:54.620 And that's what makes Prince Harry's ongoing campaign against the UK newspapers, which had another flare up this week, so laughably hypocritical.

00:54:03.480 Because he talks about intrusion into royal privacy.

00:54:07.720 And yet, if you ask any senior member of the royal family who has invaded your privacy the worst, it's Prince Harry.

00:54:15.980 It's the guy who gave the inside track for money to Oprah, to Netflix, to his publishers, to anyone who would pay top dollar.

00:54:27.160 This guy invaded the privacy of his family.

00:54:30.020 And yet, he has the goal to present himself as some great standard bearer of ethics and decency when it comes to royal privacy.

00:54:39.860 Do me a favor.

00:54:41.940 Right.

00:54:42.620 Sooner or later, everybody turns on them.

00:54:45.100 It seems like just all they need is exposure.

00:54:48.100 All they need is time.

00:54:49.720 She's bullied almost all of her staff out of the job. 1.00

00:54:52.980 They all wind up leaking to the press.

00:54:54.560 What a horrid nightmare she was to work with.

00:54:56.560 And the other piece in the Vanity Fair article, which was amazing, was about him and how neither one of them showed up with any ideas on what to do.

00:55:07.700 Like, actually, how are we going to earn all this money?

00:55:09.580 And that one of the ideas for the podcast that he had was that he would get people like Vladimir Putin and Mark Zuckerberg to sit with him.

00:55:20.400 But it wasn't because because he said everybody's got damage in their childhood and I had damage in my childhood, too.

00:55:27.600 So you're thinking, OK, all right, I guess he's going to use that to bond with them.

00:55:30.820 No.

00:55:31.540 The conclusion was that their experiences had made them into sociopaths, according to Harry.

00:55:37.980 And he wanted to explore how they became sociopaths, but he remained totally normal and was not, quote, one of these bad guys.

00:55:49.120 And the Vanity Fair pointing out trying to get a season's worth of world famous sociopaths to talk about how they developed sociopathy would be what is referred to in access journalism as a booking challenge.

00:56:01.220 I mean, they're just so completely deluded.

00:56:06.780 That's the thing that always strikes me.

00:56:08.640 It's utter delusion. 1.00

00:56:10.640 And they're also just shocking hypocrites. 0.98

00:56:12.800 So do you remember when they were lecturing us all about carbon footprint and climate change? 0.97

00:56:17.480 And then they were using Elton John and George Clooney's private planes like taxi services.

00:56:22.120 They actually, on the day of her half a million dollar baby shower in New York, attended by all the great and good ladies of New York,

00:56:29.960 that was the same day that from their then Twitter account, they lectured the British people about poverty.

00:56:37.100 I mean, you couldn't make it up.

00:56:38.880 And now what's happened, I mean, what's most laughable of all in a sort of horrible way is that she's got this new series where she's trying to be the new Martha Stewart,

00:56:48.320 where she's going to be cooking in her fancy mansion for all her fancy friends, very fancy food.

00:56:54.740 Can you imagine a less appropriate thing in California right now than this fake princess, this duchess trading off the title she got given by an institution she's trying to ruin? 1.00

00:57:08.320 Actually, it's prancing about in this kitchen in a multimillion dollar mansion with her famous friends in California,

00:57:15.820 when 12,000 to 14,000 people have just lost their homes in the most horrendous fires that the city's ever had in Los Angeles and that the state's ever seen.

00:57:26.780 It is so unbelievably inappropriate that that series could go ahead.

00:57:30.880 But I bet it does.

00:57:31.820 Yeah, they're saying it's actually going to pick up in March now, as opposed to the January launch date.

00:57:37.800 I'll tell you, as somebody who's got friends out there, they can't get apartments even to rent.

00:57:41.500 The rental market has tripled.

00:57:43.360 People are taking advantage of this terrible circumstance of their neighbors.

00:57:46.620 You've got to pay a year up front and rent.

00:57:49.080 It's like they're not going to be in a mood for, you know, Megan and her Martha Stewart imitation in March any more so than they are now.

00:57:58.860 Pierce, always a pleasure.

00:58:00.340 We will see you over on YouTube.

00:58:02.320 Looking forward to it.

00:58:03.780 Great to see you, Megan.

00:58:04.740 Just to say it's available now, Pierce Morgan Uncensored, in America on all your normal podcast sites.

00:58:10.500 So get watching and give me your views.

00:58:13.400 Awesome.

00:58:13.960 Always entertaining and definitely uncensored.

00:58:16.640 It's a pleasure, Pierce.

00:58:18.000 When we come back, as I mentioned, we're going to have this Navy vet who successfully sued CNN for defamation.

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00:59:46.760 Last week, we told you about the blockbuster defamation verdict against CNN.

00:59:55.000 Jake Tapper's show The Lead in 2021 ran a report by a reporter named Alex Marquardt that accused Navy veteran Zachary Young of exploiting, quote,

01:00:06.880 quote, desperate Afghans by demanding, quote, exorbitant fees and operating in a, quote, black market while offering evacuation services after Joe Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

01:00:21.060 CNN scrubbed the report from the Internet, but we have it here, which you can watch for yourself.

01:00:25.720 As CNN's Alex Marquardt has discovered, Afghans trying to get out of the country face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.

01:00:37.440 What is the U.S. doing that you know of to try to get you and your family out?

01:00:41.960 Unfortunately, they are not doing now anything.

01:00:44.620 Up to 31st, they said everything is closed and it's finished.

01:00:48.800 We did not receive anything back from U.S. Embassy or from any other organization.

01:00:54.200 So he went online where he found a man named Zachary Young, who is one of many advertising evacuations from Afghanistan, posting just this week, we can deliver.

01:01:04.960 One LinkedIn user posted messages with Young where Young said it would be $75,000 for a car to Pakistan.

01:01:12.420 He told another it would be $14,500 per person to get to the United Arab Emirates or Albania for another $4,000.

01:01:21.040 Prices well beyond the reach of most Afghans. 0.97

01:01:23.900 We got Young's number and called, but he didn't pick up.

01:01:27.480 In a text message, he told CNN that Afghans trying to leave are expected to have sponsors pay for them.

01:01:33.220 If someone reaches out, we need to understand if they have a sponsor behind them to be able to pay evacuation costs,

01:01:39.080 which Young says are highly volatile and based on environmental realities.

01:01:43.680 Young repeatedly declined to break down the costs or say if he's making money.

01:01:48.260 And the lower third for the listening audience has got the stuff about black market and exorbitant fees.

01:01:55.440 I mean, it's a fascinating story, except it's not true.

01:01:59.560 Despite what the report and its onscreen chyrons, being the lower third on your screen, showed, Young did not operate in a black market.

01:02:07.160 He did not advertise to Afghans, he did not charge exorbitant prices to Afghans, and he did not exploit Afghans.

01:02:15.000 What Young did was save dozens.

01:02:17.680 And if that report were not bad enough, what CNN was doing behind the scenes and what they were saying about this guy Young was even worse.

01:02:26.380 You just saw CNN's Mark Hart tried to make the phone call to Young.

01:02:31.580 Well, thanks to Discovery in the case, we have the video of him filming his reaction shots to this.

01:02:39.880 Watch this.

01:02:46.800 Okay.

01:02:49.440 They roll on that.

01:02:51.800 Oh, well.

01:02:54.300 Theater.

01:02:54.740 Theater.

01:02:56.380 Theater.

01:02:59.380 Theater.

01:03:00.280 Not news.

01:03:01.100 Theater's great.

01:03:01.700 I love theater.

01:03:02.480 It's super fun.

01:03:03.360 It's not news.

01:03:05.380 And you don't really generally get sued for doing fake things on stage on Broadway.

01:03:11.020 It's kind of the nature of the business.

01:03:12.940 It's not the nature of our business.

01:03:15.340 This is not the only problem.

01:03:16.920 Texts show this guy, Marquardt, writing,

01:03:19.940 We gonna nail this Zachary Young M-F-er. 1.00

01:03:23.180 And other CNN employees calling him a shit, an a-hole, and a shit bag. 0.99

01:03:29.280 This is relevant because in a case like this, you generally have to prove that they behaved with some malice, depending on whether the court finds Mr. Young a public figure. 0.99

01:03:39.440 And those would be exactly the kind of texts that would suggest there is some.

01:03:44.940 And take a look at your screen here.

01:03:46.500 Producer Michael Conte said Young had a, quote, punchable face.

01:03:51.580 He was asked about this text in his deposition, and he did not back down.

01:03:55.680 Watch.

01:03:57.520 So I paused the video here at three minutes and eight seconds.

01:04:02.400 And there's a photograph on the screen.

01:04:04.540 Do you understand that to be Zachary Young?

01:04:06.420 I understand that to be Zachary Young.

01:04:09.220 Do you think he has a punchable face?

01:04:13.220 Yeah.

01:04:13.700 So, why do you think that?

01:04:20.160 Probably the smirk in the sunglasses.

01:04:24.200 This is not what you would call a good witness for CNN.

01:04:28.200 I think it's unbelievable.

01:04:31.480 The jury awarded Zachary Young $5 million in compensatory damages.

01:04:36.660 They just, this just happened.

01:04:39.080 And they were set to give him even more in punitive damages.

01:04:42.840 That's the phase of the trial that they were about to move on to.

01:04:46.360 They found CNN liable.

01:04:48.320 They gave him $5 million compensatory.

01:04:50.260 And now they were about to debate just how big the punitive damage award would be when Young and CNN entered into a confidential settlement.

01:04:59.200 CNN, for its part, released this statement.

01:05:01.240 We remain proud of our journalists and are 100% committed to strong, fearless, and fair-minded reporting at CNN.

01:05:07.680 Though we will, of course, take what useful lessons we can from this case.

01:05:12.340 Zachary Young joins me now, along with his attorney, Val Friedman, here for his first long-form interview.

01:05:18.460 Guys, thank you so much for being here.

01:05:20.840 Zachary, thank you for your service.

01:05:22.860 And first, just tell me how you're feeling right now with like about a week to breathe after this whole thing wrapped up.

01:05:28.680 Well, thanks for having us.

01:05:32.680 It's been a long road the last three years of getting to trial.

01:05:38.200 And then, of course, the two-week trial was quite intense.

01:05:42.420 Just got back to Austria on Saturday.

01:05:45.580 And my wife and I are still trying to decompress and really understand what just happened.

01:05:53.120 So we're definitely very glad that it's over.

01:05:56.020 We're very happy with the outcome.

01:05:57.700 Val, can you just put into perspective how unusual this is to get this kind of defamation award against an organization like CNN?

01:06:08.520 Sure.

01:06:09.060 I mean, we're trying to track down exactly when the last time it happened was.

01:06:11.960 But it seems that a national media organization like CNN has not been held liable for punitive damages in the past 50 or 60 years.

01:06:20.100 So it's quite rare.

01:06:21.580 And, Megan, as you touched on in the beginning, has to do with what needs to be proven to hold a media company to account like that.

01:06:28.860 Was Zachary deemed a public figure or a limited public figure?

01:06:34.020 Because, you know, if so, CNN would have more protection.

01:06:39.580 And when we report on people who are public figures, we really can't be sued for defamation as news people unless we do it.

01:06:46.940 We commit errors with what's called actual malice.

01:06:49.800 So what was the standard that the court implied here, Val?

01:06:52.300 So they tried, but they failed.

01:06:55.400 So he was not called a public figure.

01:06:57.940 And so to get liability on the underlying count, meaning for the jury to say you have to pay him your compensatory damages, the $5 million, we only had to show negligence.

01:07:07.280 But in order to get the punitive damages award, you have to show malice.

01:07:11.560 It's the same standard.

01:07:12.780 So the jury, when the jury eventually found that CNN should be liable for punitive damages, they had to have found that CNN knew what they were publishing was not true or had at minimum substantial doubts as to whether it was true.

01:07:29.200 They published anyways, despite knowing it was true or probably not true, and that they did it with a primary intent to harm Zachary.

01:07:36.460 And so the jury had to find both those things and did find both those things in order to hold CNN liable for punitive damages.

01:07:43.760 Wow.

01:07:44.320 Wow.

01:07:44.800 OK, so then that's when you settled the case.

01:07:47.620 And I'll get back to Zach to tell the story in a minute, but I'm just kind of interested in the legalities of it.

01:07:52.740 So I'll stick with you, Val, for a minute.

01:07:54.800 So that's when you settled the case.

01:07:56.220 But you didn't settle it earlier, not because CNN didn't try to settle it.

01:07:59.660 They did try to settle it, but you guys would not settle it.

01:08:03.820 So what was your thinking on that?

01:08:05.940 Because defamation cases are tough.

01:08:09.700 You know, they are tough.

01:08:11.380 By the time we were forced to attend the court-ordered mediation, CNN asked the court to force Zach to come in from Vienna in person for that meeting.

01:08:22.000 They said they wanted to take it seriously.

01:08:24.580 But I got to tell you, it wasn't really legal strategy.

01:08:27.960 We gave Zach advice.

01:08:29.300 We told him we thought he had a really strong case.

01:08:31.940 The evidence here was overwhelming in our view that CNN had committed defamation, had it done so maliciously.

01:08:38.540 But it was really Zach that wouldn't settle.

01:08:41.060 He said he had to, you know, I think he told me there were two things he wanted to accomplish.

01:08:44.820 One, he needed to clear his name because they had slandered him internationally to millions of people.

01:08:50.280 And the second is he thought this was a very rare opportunity to kind of expose wrongdoing and bad actors in the media and just kind of try to course correct a little bit.

01:09:01.600 And he he's a patriot.

01:09:02.960 He's always been a patriot.

01:09:04.040 He was a Navy vet.

01:09:04.920 He worked for, you know, the CIA for a long time.

01:09:07.980 He's not supposed to talk about it, but it came out at trial.

01:09:10.980 And he this was just one more way he was serving his country.

01:09:14.880 He would not say, Zach, I as a news person myself now, I'm not I'm not huge on, you know, suing news people for defamation.

01:09:24.000 Of course, like it's scary there before the grace.

01:09:26.260 But this is so egregious.

01:09:27.980 I mean, I can't imagine a case in which like I've never texted with my producers this way about somebody that we're reporting on, like with such disgust and animus.

01:09:38.240 And then gone out with a report that my internal producers were telling me was, quote, full of holes like Swiss cheese and not even worthy to make the website.

01:09:49.720 But they'd let me say it on the air.

01:09:51.500 I'd be scared shitless to actually front a report like that.

01:09:55.220 And then when the person sued me to do anything other than completely fall on my sword and say, oh, my God, we got everything wrong.

01:10:04.200 I'm deeply sorry to Zach.

01:10:05.760 And frankly, I probably would have put you on the air to let you tell me to my face in front of my audience how wrong I was.

01:10:11.800 That's that's truly how I would have handled it had I ever been in such a terrible situation.

01:10:16.280 But all you got out of CNN from what I read is and we'll get we'll go we'll do the backstory in a second was like this generic sort of Pamela Brown sitting in for Jake Tapper, anodyne, milquetoast, correction and generic like we're sorry.

01:10:36.260 Is that basically all you had prior to filing the lawsuit?

01:10:38.980 It is. And, you know, now that I understand more about the legalities, I understand why they did it.

01:10:46.480 It wasn't a sincere correction or apology.

01:10:50.080 And in fact, when we depose all of CNN's witnesses, more than a dozen, including their corporate rep, they all retracted their apology.

01:10:59.480 They said that they disagreed with it.

01:11:01.460 They they were never consulted about it.

01:11:04.240 The reporters, the editors, the CNN corporate rep, and that it was made for legal reasons by lawyers.

01:11:12.840 So that was pretty disturbing to hear.

01:11:15.960 And it's it's a position that they maintained all the way up through trial.

01:11:20.240 We gave them opportunities to, you know, say something like we made some mistakes.

01:11:26.380 We could have done better.

01:11:28.360 We could have done more journalism.

01:11:29.860 We could have used different words, but they didn't.

01:11:33.140 They doubled down all the way up until the very end.

01:11:35.940 And for me, I think that was the most disturbing part was that even faced with this lawsuit and the overwhelming evidence that we had in discovery, they still couldn't say that they made a mistake.

01:11:48.960 And even now you read this statement that CNN put out after the decision, they said that they stand behind their brave journalists and they're proud of it.

01:12:00.460 They're proud of them.

01:12:01.240 And they'll take whatever lessons they can away from this experience.

01:12:04.680 I don't know what that means.

01:12:06.420 But you mentioned, you know, why didn't we settle years ago?

01:12:10.180 So this was very important to me to expose what happened, because if it if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

01:12:17.460 And I think that more often than not, this is the way that mainstream media gets away with it.

01:12:23.480 They they settle, they sweep it under the rug and you never know the details.

01:12:27.160 So Val and I were were very transparent from the beginning three years ago that we wanted to take this all the way to the end.

01:12:34.740 And then, of course, we went through the experience with discovery.

01:12:38.520 And I I didn't understand in the beginning how bad it really was.

01:12:42.160 All the internal messages about arranging my funeral, nailing me, the concern from editors saying this story is 80 percent emotion, 20 percent obscure fact, full of holes like Swiss cheese.

01:12:57.160 And they talked a lot about this internal mechanism called triad, this quality control system.

01:13:02.940 And they tried to make a big deal out of it during the trial that, you know, they this the story went through that process and they approved it to me.

01:13:12.220 That doesn't make it better. It makes it worse.

01:13:14.380 So I'm glad about the outcome.

01:13:17.200 I really hope that, you know, it got some visibility.

01:13:21.280 I know that the media didn't want to talk about the case for the first few years, not because they weren't aware of it.

01:13:27.620 But, you know, talking about defamation is a sore sore subject in American media.

01:13:32.660 They're afraid. But that's right.

01:13:34.140 They're afraid for the reasons I said.

01:13:35.980 But it's like if you if you approach your job earnestly and you do it's not to say you'll never potentially defame somebody.

01:13:42.940 It's like you talk about people for a living. There's always that risk.

01:13:46.280 But you have to have trust that you're when your heart's in the right place and you have an honest approach to each of your stories that will rule the day because the defamation bar is high.

01:13:55.580 It's high. So, you know, it's like if you're quick to correct and you're honest about did we make a mistake and do I owe this guy an apology?

01:14:02.880 Did I screw it up? In my experience, you'll be fine.

01:14:05.920 You'll be fine. And by the way, you know, you can times that by 100 when you're dealing with, you know, a former veteran, a veteran, because it's like there actually is a reputation there to harm.

01:14:18.940 Like you've got to be extra careful. You're talking about somebody who's served his country honorably like you really could could hurt such a person.

01:14:25.760 I want to I want to show this the correction by Pam Brown, which was aired months later.

01:14:32.640 The report, I think, was November of 21. And then the the correction came March of 22.

01:14:40.600 And then that corporate representative, the CNN senior VP, I think, at trial saying everybody on the editorial team disagreed with the correction.

01:14:51.700 Watch these back to back, 28 and 29.

01:14:53.660 And before we go, a correction in November, we ran a story about Afghans desperate to flee the country who face paying high sums beyond the reach of average Afghans.

01:15:06.000 The story included a lead in and banner throughout the story that referenced a black market.

01:15:11.740 The use of the term black market in the story was an error.

01:15:15.260 The story included reporting on Zachary Young, a private operator who had been contacted by family members of Afghans trying to flee the country.

01:15:24.220 We did not intend to suggest that master Mr. Young participated in a black market.

01:15:29.600 We regret the error. And to Mr. Young, we apologize.

01:15:33.840 Do you recall the Pam Brown apology?

01:15:35.700 Yes.

01:15:36.040 And you testified about it yesterday. Do you recall that?

01:15:38.020 I did.

01:15:38.360 And I believe you said essentially that you did it to try to avoid a lawsuit, right?

01:15:42.260 Yeah.

01:15:43.280 So CNN is not really sorry, right?

01:15:48.860 Here's how I look at it.

01:15:51.080 And I think CNN made a decision based on what Mr. Young and you had brought forward that it would make sense to do this correction.

01:15:59.420 Editorially, I think you've heard that people don't think that what they did misrepresented anything editorially and they don't agree with our legal department.

01:16:11.440 Because the legal department was saying you've gotten it wrong.

01:16:17.600 And also the standards department, Val, looked at the report before it hit air and said that I think they're the ones who said Swiss cheese.

01:16:27.340 I'm just looking at my my notes here.

01:16:29.780 Internal communications at CNN saying, OK, it had approval from Triad, which is senior editors of CNN who story vet and their editorial team known as the row.

01:16:41.440 So standards editors and lawyers and that the internal communications showed that there was CNN employee Allison Hoffman saying this story was, quote, pretty flawed and we should consider forgoing the right, meaning on CNN dot com and just having the video programmed.

01:16:59.180 CNN employee Tom Lumley, Lumley texting, quote, my fundamental question is not answered, but on TV it's less of a problem.

01:17:06.440 Dramatic, silhouetted, silhouetted interviews and it zipped along so less glaring and exchanged between this guy, Tom Lumley and CNN employee Megan Trimble.

01:17:17.060 Lumley, it's an incomplete story, in my opinion.

01:17:19.320 Trimble, it is.

01:17:20.480 I can see why it could make a quick hit video.

01:17:23.860 Lumley, it needs more reporting.

01:17:25.720 We don't really know what's going on.

01:17:27.160 Trimble, but it's not fleshed out for digital.

01:17:29.860 Again, here again for the audience that they're making a distinction between what they'd show their audience on air and what they'd put on CNN dot com.

01:17:35.560 Lumley explained that, quote, the TV package was watchable because it had interviews with people scared for their families, but the story is full of holes like Swiss cheese.

01:17:44.600 Trimble agreed that, quote, the story is 80 percent emotion, 20 percent obscured fact.

01:17:49.280 LOL.

01:17:50.420 Lumley tells senior editor Fuzz Hogan TV piece was a good watch, but for digital, I have too many outstanding questions.

01:17:59.760 Wow. So, Vel, it looks like notwithstanding this strong opinion amongst the standards people, like this is not ready for air.

01:18:08.680 CNN aired it.

01:18:09.760 And if I were to get these CNNers in front of me today, they'd be saying, Megan, we didn't make a mistake.

01:18:15.760 Other than the chyron that said black market and suggesting that Zach was part of that, we didn't do anything wrong.

01:18:22.400 That's right. I mean, I would say I think Tom Lumley and Megan Trimble were editors in digital.

01:18:29.400 The the triad is their three part review, which includes legal standards and the row, and they all approved it. 0.99

01:18:38.040 Fuzz Hogan, one of the members of triad, is one of the ones that called Zach a shit. 0.98

01:18:43.040 So, you know, you're right in that everyone would defend it. 0.99

01:18:47.520 We made a point of asking every CNN witness on the stand.

01:18:50.640 Are you sorry?

01:18:51.680 Would you do it again?

01:18:53.160 Each one of them said we're not sorry.

01:18:55.080 We would do it again.

01:18:56.520 And that helped with our punitive damages argument, which was you heard.

01:18:59.280 We turned to the jury.

01:19:00.000 We said you heard they all said they do it again.

01:19:01.840 They all said they're not sorry.

01:19:03.800 Of course, they're going to do it again.

01:19:05.520 I do want to say one thing.

01:19:07.160 I have a lot of respect for Adam Levine, who was the corporate rep you just saw.

01:19:11.440 He his documents were super clean.

01:19:13.840 He didn't participate in any of the, you know, kind of name calling of Zach or anything like that.

01:19:19.560 And then he became CNN's corporate representative and was asked to defend, which is an impossible position because CNN's lawyers took one look at the clip and immediately issued an apology to try to take advantage of the retraction statutes that give some protection to media if you offer a retraction.

01:19:36.280 But then CNN decided its legal team decided it wanted to defend the peace and claim it wasn't an error.

01:19:42.760 It was tough, but fair.

01:19:44.040 Well, if it was tough, but fair, why did you apologize?

01:19:46.840 And so he was asked to defend this absolutely impossible position, which was on the one hand, CNN issued an apology.

01:19:52.840 But on the other hand, they're not sorry.

01:19:54.720 But, you know, I thought he was honest.

01:19:57.040 I thought he was forthcoming.

01:19:58.120 And, you know, it was it's a tough position to be in.

01:20:01.520 But, you know, some of the others did you think of what did you think of Alex Marquardt and his testimony, the reporter who caused all the trouble?

01:20:10.120 You know, in my opinion, he was not forthright.

01:20:12.200 He speaks very well.

01:20:13.720 You know, he's a he's a star.

01:20:14.960 He's a TV star.

01:20:15.760 So he speaks very, very well.

01:20:16.920 I mean, you're using that term very, very generously, Val, but go ahead.

01:20:21.120 He's CNN's chief national security reporter.

01:20:24.040 So I thought he speaks well, but I thought under cross-examination, he kind of folded.

01:20:29.960 And he had he had an inability to kind of own his own words.

01:20:33.440 So you show that theater trip clip, Megan, where he, you know, declares his own reporting theater.

01:20:40.840 And in cross, I kept asking him, so you included theater and he wouldn't say it.

01:20:45.200 No, it's B-roll.

01:20:46.120 It's this pickup shots.

01:20:47.800 And I eventually got to the point where I said to him, you just can't own your own words.

01:20:51.000 Can you write?

01:20:51.720 You just can't stomach the fact that you called this theater.

01:20:55.440 And he eventually came up with an excuse for it.

01:20:58.240 He claimed that he was mimicking John Lovitz from SNL, who he claimed played this like

01:21:04.080 master thespian who would say theater.

01:21:07.240 And then during his direct, we were able to look up basically every SNL episode where the

01:21:13.200 master thespian appeared and see that the line wasn't theater.

01:21:16.400 It was acting.

01:21:18.120 And so we were able to come back and expose that as a lie as well.

01:21:21.640 And it just, I mean, his just veneer just shattered.

01:21:24.540 And so I think he came across as not credible, as arrogant, as not a truth teller.

01:21:30.440 And the jury held him to account.

01:21:32.060 Here he is on the stand saying he was very proud of this defamatory report.

01:21:39.760 You said you were proud of this one, did you not?

01:21:43.640 Yes.

01:21:44.880 You still proud, Mr. Markhard?

01:21:46.600 I am.

01:21:46.960 Would you do another piece like this, Mr. Markhard?

01:21:50.680 I would.

01:21:52.100 Would you like to apologize to Mr. Young, Mr. Markhard?

01:21:54.820 I don't feel I need to.

01:21:56.520 Because he deserved to be nailed?

01:21:58.900 No, because the story that we did was... 0.98

01:22:00.320 Because he deserved to be nailed? 0.95

01:22:01.700 No, sir. 0.99

01:22:02.320 Because he was a mother effer?

01:22:03.860 No, sir. 0.98

01:22:04.400 Because he was an S-bag? 1.00

01:22:06.680 Is there a question?

01:22:07.700 Yes, sir.

01:22:08.520 What is it?

01:22:09.700 You don't want to apologize to him because you thought he was a S-H-I-T bag, correct? 1.00

01:22:15.260 I don't feel the need to apologize to him.

01:22:16.940 I didn't say that to him.

01:22:18.000 Correct or not?

01:22:19.000 Correct.

01:22:20.080 Because he is an a-hole? 0.76

01:22:23.760 I don't feel the need to apologize. 0.98

01:22:25.480 Because he has a punchable face?

01:22:27.620 I don't feel the need to apologize. 1.00

01:22:28.900 Because he's a parasite that needs to be exterminated, sir? 0.99

01:22:31.600 None of these things were said to Mr. Young. 0.99

01:22:33.760 Your Honor, we have no further questions.

01:22:35.840 Oh, my God.

01:22:36.380 This is such a disaster.

01:22:37.460 I'm sorry, but having tried cases, even if this is a tactic, even if the tactic is we

01:22:44.020 did nothing wrong, so I have nothing to apologize for. 0.86

01:22:46.000 Yes, there was some shit talk behind the scenes, but I didn't say it to Mr. Young's face. 0.99

01:22:50.260 You go in there hat in hand, hat in hand, and say, this was dumbass behind the scenes talk. 0.99

01:22:59.580 We actually, at the time, believed he was a bad guy. 0.94

01:23:02.700 That's why we were talking like that.

01:23:04.540 Now I realize we had it wrong.

01:23:07.440 That's why we issued the correction.

01:23:09.440 And I'm very sorry.

01:23:11.140 That's really the only correct posture there.

01:23:13.940 And then you could maybe say, but technically, the only thing that was wrong was black market,

01:23:18.180 whatever their defense wound up being.

01:23:19.980 And this was totally approached the wrong way in a testament to his arrogance.

01:23:23.940 And frankly, the arrogance of CNN, because any smart boss would have said, Alex, you're about

01:23:31.340 to cost us millions of dollars, potentially a hundred million if they had gotten a punitive

01:23:36.320 for the love of Christ.

01:23:38.140 Try to look sorry.

01:23:39.840 OK, sorry, Zach.

01:23:41.240 So let's go back to the original problem.

01:23:43.680 So you're you're in Afghanistan.

01:23:46.500 And explain to me what you were doing, because you were charging money to evacuate people.

01:23:53.880 But as I understand it, the error was you weren't charging Afghans.

01:23:59.140 The fees, in your view, were not exorbitant.

01:24:01.700 And you were dealing with groups like non-governmental organizations, NGOs, saying, do you need my help

01:24:09.340 in getting your people out?

01:24:10.920 And those are the ones who were paying you, not some black market op.

01:24:16.240 That's right.

01:24:17.160 And it's an important distinction.

01:24:18.760 I wasn't running any black market operations.

01:24:21.600 I didn't break any laws.

01:24:23.540 I was providing a very valuable service to companies that needed my help.

01:24:28.960 And they were very happy to have a real option to get their people out of Afghanistan. 0.96

01:24:36.260 CNN knew about that.

01:24:37.880 They knew about Audible.

01:24:39.000 They knew about Bloomberg.

01:24:40.180 So they had they had the information that were that were using guys like you to get their people out

01:24:45.960 because they, you know, Audible, like the podcast company.

01:24:49.160 Is that what you mean?

01:24:49.880 They're not capable of sending in a former Navy SEAL to go get their their people out of Afghanistan. 0.93

01:24:55.600 These are these are large companies that have, you know, global access to former SEALs and former

01:25:02.300 Delta Force operators.

01:25:03.400 They have people all over the world.

01:25:05.360 And at the time, I was one of very few that had a real option.

01:25:08.960 So they were happy to be able to pay me to do this.

01:25:12.300 This very important and very difficult job.

01:25:14.800 We learned through discovery that CNN never, never even bothered to try to contact Audible.

01:25:22.820 Mr. Mark Hart on the stand explained that he just didn't think it made any sense that Audible would be interested

01:25:27.700 in rescuing people from Afghanistan.

01:25:30.840 But he didn't bother to try.

01:25:32.700 He didn't even give them a call.

01:25:34.400 So he had this preconceived narrative for a story about Afghans being exploited by predators.

01:25:41.540 Presumably, I had a punchable face.

01:25:44.720 So I I played the role of the villain for his for his fiction and very, very little of it was.

01:25:51.980 Yeah, his theater.

01:25:52.940 And they pointed to a few clips that were technically correct.

01:25:57.600 He had screenshots of correspondence for me quoting prices.

01:26:02.280 But the way that they laid it out in the in the clip made it look like I was charging Afghans these these fees and made it sound like I was a criminal.

01:26:12.040 So two pretty big errors that I don't think were covered up by the fact that they did accurately quote a few prices that I put out there.

01:26:20.320 And again, just looking through discovery from start to finish the way that it was, it was about black markets and extortion from the beginning before they even had a story before the investigation.

01:26:32.440 And that's just that happens to be exactly where yet we where he ended up two weeks later before going to air two hours before I told him that a lot of the stuff he was about to say was was not correct.

01:26:44.600 And I would need some time to provide thoughtful comment.

01:26:48.440 He just ignored it and they went on the air.

01:26:51.000 So how long did they give you to respond to this hit piece they were preparing on you?

01:26:56.960 Under two hours, under two hours.

01:26:59.460 And there were there were a lot of questions in there that would have required careful consideration, including my former affiliation with the Central Intelligence Agency.

01:27:08.160 I would have had to reach out to some people and get some guidance on how to answer that when confronted by a reporter.

01:27:14.600 So that he didn't pump the brakes.

01:27:18.020 You know, we we can tell through discovery that he didn't want to pause the story.

01:27:23.000 It wasn't hot news.

01:27:24.840 It wasn't time sensitive.

01:27:26.660 And he was upset that I wrote back.

01:27:29.620 He said.

01:27:31.820 When I actually responded to him, he said, effing young just texted.

01:27:37.580 So actually something like that.

01:27:40.520 He said, yeah, he wrote for F sakes, effing young just texted when you finally responded.

01:27:47.700 You know, you're a news reporter and you're supposed to be trying to get information from your source.

01:27:52.240 Your source, the subject of your story, writes back to you.

01:27:55.460 And his immediate response to one of his colleagues is FFS, which he testified meant for F sake, effing young just texted.

01:28:03.140 I mean, he he laid it, but he didn't use the euphemism.

01:28:06.080 He used the straight up, you know, the curse words.

01:28:08.240 He was not happy that Zach had reached back out to him.

01:28:12.120 He he didn't want to be bothered by you with your side of the story.

01:28:16.580 He was too excited to get you, which is what the text reflect.

01:28:20.480 We're going to get this MF-er. 1.00

01:28:22.660 And it was obviously a designed hit piece.

01:28:26.320 So you testified on the air or at the trial that this had real effects on your life and your business.

01:28:36.760 And it is a unique skill set.

01:28:38.680 You know, I mean, I've interviewed Eric Prince.

01:28:40.480 It's a it's a unique skill set to know how to operate in this kind of theater safely and to do something as risky as evacuations.

01:28:48.800 I think that's why you charge money for it.

01:28:52.080 And people like companies like Audible are willing to pay for it.

01:28:55.360 But when that all went away as a result of this CNN report suggesting you're some sort of a dark force on the black market, taking advantage of hurting people.

01:29:05.380 And here you are talking about what happened in your life.

01:29:09.640 It's not 24. 0.99

01:29:11.400 You're like a total failure.

01:29:12.420 I've had some time now to try to recover. 0.99

01:29:19.000 I've been in psychotherapy.

01:29:20.900 I've been put on medication.

01:29:24.920 Multiple medications.

01:29:27.260 I initially on antidepressants.

01:29:31.620 Wasn't enough.

01:29:32.940 Still couldn't sleep.

01:29:34.180 Still can't sleep.

01:29:36.280 Still have panic attacks.

01:29:37.520 So they had to put me on stronger medication and put on stronger medicine for sleep and panic attacks.

01:29:44.100 They all have side effects.

01:29:45.500 I don't have the energy that I had before.

01:29:50.740 It's affected our intimacy.

01:29:51.960 It's affected our intimacy.

01:29:52.040 Zach, can you explain how the CNN report caused that for you?

01:30:17.940 It's hard to explain unless you've actually gone through it.

01:30:26.680 You know, there was the professional damage that CNN caused, but that was not nearly as severe as the impact that this has had on my family.

01:30:35.520 My wife, my mom, not being able to tell them that things are going to be okay, that I can recover from this, that it's not as bad as it sounds.

01:30:48.020 Because, you know, as it turned out, it was a lot worse than I thought when I first saw the video.

01:30:55.300 How so?

01:30:56.020 What do you mean?

01:30:56.260 Well, it's not good for anyone to be labeled a criminal all over the world on CNN.

01:31:04.680 But for me in particular, with my very, very small group of professionals, professional contacts, it's nuclear.

01:31:13.820 It's radioactive.

01:31:15.740 Eric Prince is another one of my contacts.

01:31:17.620 And I wouldn't expect Eric to be able to or want to work with someone who has that label attached to them.

01:31:27.980 You know, my contacts work for defense contractors.

01:31:32.480 They work for governments.

01:31:33.720 And they care about reputations.

01:31:35.580 They have human resources departments.

01:31:37.320 So if they're bringing me forward for work or project, and someone Googles my name, you know, prior to this outcome anyway, this is what they find.

01:31:50.000 It's human trafficking, black market operator. 0.84

01:31:53.300 And no company is going to take that risk.

01:31:55.800 And I wouldn't expect anyone to put their name next to mine.

01:32:00.080 And that was the devastating impact that it had over a three-year period.

01:32:06.580 People used to come to me for important work.

01:32:11.480 And the outcome, the immediate outcome of this broadcast was no one would take my calls.

01:32:17.720 That has improved somewhat since the lawsuit.

01:32:21.800 We have had some media.

01:32:22.780 And I'm hoping that now that we have a jury verdict and my name has been officially and legally cleared and CNN has been exposed for making up lies about me, I'm hoping that that has some mitigating effect.

01:32:39.620 But we'll see what the future holds.

01:32:44.380 Can you comment on the fees that we showed in that report?

01:32:49.420 They say they were exorbitant, $75,000 for evacuation by car, $14,500 per person to get to the UAE or Albania.

01:33:00.880 Having absolutely no idea what it costs to evacuate somebody from Afghanistan, I have no context for those numbers.

01:33:09.160 Neither did CNN, because we asked all of their witnesses, more than a dozen,

01:33:14.020 how much I should have charged, how much it should cost to evacuate someone from a failed state or a war zone.

01:33:20.200 And nobody had any idea.

01:33:22.480 And a few of them, including Mark Hart, said any amount of money would be too much, anything north of zero.

01:33:29.240 So while it may be defensible as a matter of opinion, the term exorbitant,

01:33:35.380 I can tell you in the world of defense contracting, 100% margin in a place like Afghanistan, even during the best of times, is not unusual at all.

01:33:48.860 This says $75,000 for one vehicle, five to six passengers, Kabul to Peshawar.

01:33:54.460 So it was for multiple people, just so the audience understands that wasn't for one person.

01:33:58.720 Keep going, Zach.

01:33:59.240 That's right.

01:34:00.900 And it's misleading if you read it in a vacuum, you know, $75,000 for a vehicle.

01:34:07.500 It's not, this isn't Uber.

01:34:10.040 There's a lot of operational planning and work and precision that goes into an emergency evacuation from a place like Afghanistan after the Taliban took over.

01:34:19.140 So there was a lot baked into it.

01:34:21.660 And I never had any issue sensitizing clients like Bloomberg and Audible with real security professionals working for them.

01:34:31.100 They understood this.

01:34:32.480 They came primarily from the special operations backgrounds.

01:34:36.080 And, you know, it's something we didn't really need to discuss.

01:34:38.920 They got it.

01:34:39.460 But when a CNN reporter sees the number $75,000 for transportation, you know, they thought it seemed excessive.

01:34:47.400 And it was interesting, we learned through Discovery, they got all of my pricing and all of my profits.

01:34:55.280 I think it was about a 65% margin on average that I was charging clients who were happy to pay.

01:35:03.000 CNN's margins are about 40% for what they do, just as a basis for comparison.

01:35:09.780 Interesting.

01:35:10.640 It's nowhere near as dangerous.

01:35:11.740 No, not, not very dangerous, you know, report, creating fiction from your studio in Washington, D.C.

01:35:18.840 But according to CNN, my prices were exorbitant.

01:35:23.520 That was an interesting thing.

01:35:25.900 Sorry.

01:35:26.580 That was an interesting thing.

01:35:27.560 I thought that came out of trial is, you know, the reporters sort of exhibited this disgust for Zach because he had profited off of the situation in Afghanistan.

01:35:36.400 Mind you, he was charging corporations and NGOs who were happy to pay for this service and had no qualms about it.

01:35:43.660 Everyone was happy.

01:35:44.420 The corporation was happy.

01:35:45.340 Zach was happy.

01:35:46.160 The people rescued rescued from Afghanistan were happy.

01:35:49.220 But CNN decided that their reporters that this was disgusting and this was horrible and Zach deserved punishment for it.

01:35:56.220 And at trial, we kind of brought out this hypocrisy, which is some of you all, including Mark Hart, are war correspondents, right?

01:36:03.400 You go into war, you're paid to report on war.

01:36:06.180 CNN advertises its own advertisements and sells advertisements while it's reporting on war.

01:36:12.100 Both CNN's reporters and Zachary Young were paid by corporations to operate in war zones.

01:36:18.160 No one's saying that what CNN is doing isn't appropriate to report on war and no one should be saying that servicing corporations to evacuate people from war zones is a problem either.

01:36:28.900 And yet CNN turned, it was just so hypocritical, just turned this, like, hatred on Zach as a result of what he was doing.

01:36:38.300 And I think that really appealed to the jury, this idea that, you know, they were hating him, they were going after him, they were maliciously targeting him. 0.75

01:36:46.060 And this was one of the reasons why, and it was completely hypocritical.

01:36:49.520 I mean, it's so crazy because I think about, you know, even my own show, if I had a correspondent who was over in Afghanistan, and let's say it's not a war correspondent, it's somebody there who's just reporting on international relations, and this happens and I need to get him out.

01:37:04.200 It's my responsibility as the company owner to get him out.

01:37:07.240 I'd be thrilled to have an option like Zachary.

01:37:11.020 Like, great, I would have no idea where to even begin.

01:37:14.540 I'm not going over there.

01:37:16.120 I'm not qualified for this.

01:37:17.340 So I need to hire somebody who's got a background that's appropriate, that he knows what he's doing, was in the Navy, was in the CIA, knows the region, knows how to do risky ops to rescue my person.

01:37:28.200 That is definitely worth something to me.

01:37:30.140 And it's not going to be $500.

01:37:32.440 That's obvious.

01:37:34.000 I'm not, you know, I think it had to be a political agenda or maybe Maureen Callahan was on the show when this verdict broke.

01:37:41.500 And I think she was the one suggesting, boy, they gave Joe Biden a bigger pass on this disastrous operation than they did you at CNN.

01:37:52.420 Like, maybe it's transferred anger.

01:37:54.380 You know, it's easier to blame you as doing something wrong than their leader who they didn't want to criticize.

01:38:00.180 I don't know what the motivation was.

01:38:01.620 But, I mean, the jury didn't seem to care.

01:38:05.920 They thought it was personal.

01:38:07.240 And I think on that they were right.

01:38:08.380 Stand by, because I want to tell the audience what has happened to Alex Marquardt since this happened, since this whole, you know, dispute arose.

01:38:17.800 And we'll ask Zachary to give us a feel for how much he got.

01:38:23.720 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.

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01:39:24.820 So right now your credibility with me, Mr. Axelrod, is about none, if you understand that.

01:39:29.760 I do.

01:39:30.280 I certainly do.

01:39:30.960 And I apologize for you to go that way.

01:39:33.220 And let me say this.

01:39:34.060 I mean, y'all made a lawyer like that in Philly or New York or D.C. or wherever the heck it is or Miami.

01:39:40.220 We don't lawyer like this around here.

01:39:41.860 That was the judge in Zach's trial against CNN, laying into CNN's lawyer, who also happens to be named David Axelrod.

01:39:54.340 It's not the David Axelrod you know from their commentating.

01:39:57.700 Vel, why was the judge so mad at CNN in that clip?

01:40:01.720 Sure.

01:40:02.200 So a couple days earlier, CNN had asked Zach a question and sprang a surprise document on us.

01:40:11.800 That's, as you know, Megan, that's not supposed to happen in litigation.

01:40:14.840 Both sides.

01:40:15.440 It's not trial by ambush.

01:40:16.600 We're supposed to disclose things to the other side and you have a due process right to prepare.

01:40:20.360 They obtained this document.

01:40:24.060 We didn't know that they had it.

01:40:26.160 And it purported to be this consulting agreement between Zach and another company.

01:40:30.240 And they were using it as this bombshell evidence that Zach lied.

01:40:34.000 And he did have people that gave him work after the segment aired.

01:40:38.580 And we immediately objected.

01:40:41.080 We've never seen this document before.

01:40:42.980 And we went to sidebar with the judge.

01:40:44.900 And Mr. Axelrod told the judge that this had, I don't remember his exact words, but something along the lines of this, like, by sheer luck, we obtained this document.

01:40:53.620 And, you know, it just kind of landed in our lap.

01:40:55.880 And, you know, it's so crucial to the case.

01:40:57.920 We have to be able to use it.

01:40:59.320 And the judge allowed them to use it, notwithstanding that it wasn't disclosed and didn't allow us to consult with Zach before it was used.

01:41:07.180 And when he was confronted, when Zach was confronted with it, he explained it perfectly.

01:41:11.200 And he said, listen, this is not a commercial agreement.

01:41:13.860 This is simply an agreement to hold my security clearance.

01:41:16.800 I've never done any work for this company.

01:41:18.560 You have seven years of my bank records.

01:41:20.520 You've got all of my tax returns.

01:41:22.140 You see no income has come.

01:41:23.660 This is just an arrangement to hold a security clearance because that's the way it works.

01:41:26.880 When you leave the government, a corporation has to hold your clearance.

01:41:30.140 A couple days later, the CEO of that company wrote to us.

01:41:33.700 He told us that essentially Sienna had lied to us and that it didn't fortuitously or by luck come into their hands.

01:41:40.080 But they had issued a subpoena to that company.

01:41:42.640 They had not told anyone they had issued a subpoena.

01:41:44.980 They had obtained the documents.

01:41:46.920 They had made a partial production of them using only one of the documents.

01:41:51.460 Turns out in that correspondence, this company informed CNN that Zach no longer had a security clearance as of 2022, something we didn't even know anymore.

01:42:00.720 Then CNN, knowing that, put an expert on the stand to testify that because he had a security clearance, he could still get more work.

01:42:07.740 It wasn't a problem.

01:42:08.660 They knew he didn't have one.

01:42:09.700 We didn't.

01:42:10.260 And so when we found all this information out, we filed a motion with the judge and we said, look, we've been massively prejudiced here and we were very careful not to ask for any kind of sanctions or anything like that.

01:42:22.560 We asked for one thing.

01:42:23.420 We said, can we get the CEO to testify?

01:42:25.240 Because technically we didn't notify him, but they got this document surreptitiously.

01:42:29.100 They didn't tell us they got it.

01:42:30.300 They told you yesterday that it fell in their lap based on basically luck that wasn't true.

01:42:36.100 And, you know, when a judge believes that a lawyer, which we call like an officer of the court, you have duties of candor and ethical obligations not to lie.

01:42:44.080 People like saying lawyers are liars, but we're not.

01:42:47.080 You're not supposed to.

01:42:47.840 You have to be very honest.

01:42:49.060 Not in court.

01:42:50.000 Yeah.

01:42:51.180 And, you know, when a judge believes that he's been lied to, that's the reaction you get.

01:42:56.040 And, you know, I think Judge Henry very reasonably believed, we believed it too, that he had been lied to.

01:43:00.920 And he flew off the handle saying, you know, you just lied to you.

01:43:05.160 You misrepresented to me where this document came from, how you got it.

01:43:08.480 You know, you accused Mr. Young of lying in his deposition.

01:43:12.260 He didn't.

01:43:12.880 You accused him of lying, committing a fraud in the court.

01:43:15.360 He didn't.

01:43:16.120 He answered every question honestly, including when you surprised him, right?

01:43:19.860 He says, did you sign this document with this and this company?

01:43:22.900 And Zach said, yeah, I did.

01:43:24.280 And then he went to impeach him, which, Megan, you know, you can't, you know this, but I'm

01:43:28.720 not sure the audience is proper.

01:43:30.500 Yeah.

01:43:30.940 You can't impeach a witness if they tell you the truth.

01:43:33.060 There's nothing to impeach with.

01:43:34.940 So it was, you know, Judge Henry flew off the handle at CNN's lawyer, basically feeling

01:43:39.940 that he had lied to him.

01:43:41.380 And that's why he said to him, look, your credibility with me is about zero.

01:43:45.060 Wow.

01:43:45.920 Wow.

01:43:46.300 That's stunning.

01:43:46.980 I did not know all that.

01:43:48.660 So, Zach, let me ask you this.

01:43:50.100 Was there any point during the trial?

01:43:51.780 Because I realize, you know, you, you, it sounds like you had the opportunity to settle

01:43:56.040 this before you went to trial.

01:43:57.280 You didn't.

01:43:58.080 You wanted to make a point.

01:43:59.100 Was there a point during the trial at which you could have settled it?

01:44:02.200 Like, because there's risk, you know, while you're, you're not, you're not 100% sure

01:44:06.240 as the plaintiff or the defendant, how the jury is going to come back, a jury of six in Florida.

01:44:10.300 You liked your chances in this particular jurisdiction, which was more red leaning and 0.59

01:44:15.240 probably not full of a ton of CNN lovers, but okay, fine.

01:44:18.840 I'm sure they would have found in CNN's favor if the evidence so showed.

01:44:24.220 So did you consider settling during the course of the trial?

01:44:28.960 No, I didn't.

01:44:30.980 And, you know, Bell reminded me frequently throughout the trial that that was always an option,

01:44:35.640 that CNN was ready to talk.

01:44:37.420 Um, but as I mentioned earlier, that, that wasn't my motivation for doing this for the

01:44:42.240 last three years.

01:44:42.840 I really wanted to expose what happened.

01:44:45.800 Um, I didn't want CNN to be able to just sweep it under the rug with a settlement and

01:44:50.040 an NDA and never be held accountable.

01:44:52.420 So I wanted to take it to the jury for a, for a decision.

01:44:55.620 And that's what we got.

01:44:56.840 It wasn't without risk.

01:44:58.540 Uh, juries are notoriously impossible to predict, but, um, that was a risk that I was willing to

01:45:05.440 take and that Bell was supportive of.

01:45:08.740 And I think a lot of lawyers probably wouldn't have been, um, you know, he invested three years

01:45:15.160 of, of his time and his firm's time, not just him, but we had probably about nine attorneys

01:45:22.140 on the case.

01:45:22.880 So the, the amount of work that was put into this over a three-year period is, is astonishing.

01:45:27.860 So Bell was always, uh, always had my back and was comfortable taking it to the very end.

01:45:34.320 So, uh, it, it was the perfect combination for us and I, I'm very happy with the outcome.

01:45:41.100 Um, and I'm also relieved that we don't have to spend two more years, uh, in appeal.

01:45:47.260 Um, yes, so, of course.

01:45:49.360 So, so when the jury stood up, cause you're always on pins and needles when you're waiting

01:45:53.500 on a jury, it's the worst feeling.

01:45:56.040 It's just terrible.

01:45:57.060 They, they call you back in there with a verdict.

01:45:58.840 So you, you stand up to hear the verdict, I assume, or you're, you're sitting there.

01:46:02.660 And, um, when they said that they found CNN liable and they were awarding you $5 million,

01:46:09.780 what was that like?

01:46:14.240 Um, I, I wasn't surprised.

01:46:16.980 I mean, just looking at the facts, like, I don't know how they could have come to any other

01:46:21.960 conclusion about defamation per se, defamation by implication and, and malice.

01:46:29.240 Um, I don't know how you could show more actual and express malice.

01:46:35.540 Um, so I, I wasn't surprised with the outcome at all, but, um, you know, it's definitely been

01:46:43.620 very taxing going through this process for three years, going through the trial.

01:46:47.720 And I knew that CNN, you know, I, I, I felt like they probably had enough and I, I hoped

01:46:54.460 that they had learned their lesson.

01:46:56.540 Um, now that I've had some time to reflect, uh, over the past two days, I'm not sure they

01:47:01.960 did when I saw the statement that they made, that they still stand behind their brave journalists.

01:47:06.320 When I consider the fact that Alexander Marcard was promoted to chief national security

01:47:12.620 correspondents during this lawsuit promoted, if that's how they handle, you know, making

01:47:19.320 a mistake of this magnitude, I can't, I can't say that they learned any mistake from it.

01:47:24.440 Uh, but at least I, I feel like I've done my part to expose it.

01:47:27.900 I know Vel did his part and you know, what happens from this point on is, is really up

01:47:33.380 to the media and if they want to do the right thing and take an honest look in the mirror

01:47:37.600 and realize that there is room for improvement, that this isn't something that should happen

01:47:41.620 ever to anyone, whether it's to a politician or a normal person like me, it's not something

01:47:48.000 that should ever happen and it doesn't need to.

01:47:50.640 So I, I hope that that's the outcome that it has, but, um, our, our progress is done in

01:47:55.940 this.

01:47:56.960 Vel, how were you able to sue in Florida, right?

01:47:59.240 And CNN is based in Atlanta and it sounds like Zach was overseas.

01:48:02.780 How'd you get this case in Florida?

01:48:04.920 Yeah.

01:48:05.400 Uh, well, you can sue anywhere. 0.79

01:48:07.000 The defamation is published into any county it's been published into.

01:48:10.700 So CNN has been, it's been published into Florida.

01:48:13.660 Also CNN has affiliates in Bay County, which, uh, allow for venue in Bay County as well.

01:48:18.680 And Zach's business, which was an original plaintiff was incorporated in Florida.

01:48:22.640 So we had a few nexus to Florida and that's why we, we, we, we,

01:48:25.940 we brought it there, uh, by the way, I wanted to comment on one thing.

01:48:29.380 I'm, if I remember correctly, and I think I do, the jury was, uh, 50, 50, it was 50%

01:48:35.180 Republican and 50% Democrats.

01:48:36.760 So this wasn't like, yeah, it didn't pull, uh, judge Henry was very, uh, liberal.

01:48:41.980 And in my opinion of granting strikes for cause to CNN, for anyone that kind of expressed

01:48:47.620 skepticism over CNN or media, they ended up with a very fair.

01:48:51.780 You're out, sir.

01:48:54.240 You should have seen the hands that came up, Megan, when they said, when, you know, CNN's

01:48:57.760 lawyers asked that who here thinks CNN's fake news.

01:48:59.860 And I mean, oh my God, so many hands.

01:49:04.100 They did it to themselves.

01:49:05.480 They did it to themselves.

01:49:07.000 If that same jury eight years ago would not have done that.

01:49:11.540 CNN did that to themselves and I watched it happen.

01:49:14.320 Um, so tell me Val, what happened with the punitive damages would like, where were you

01:49:20.080 on that?

01:49:20.560 Cause you were, had they already said, and he's entitled to punitive damages and now we

01:49:24.700 will deliberate the number.

01:49:26.940 That's right.

01:49:27.580 So in Florida is this unique process where you break the trial into two phases.

01:49:33.060 CNN has a right to do this in the exercise that it's called bifurcation. 0.98

01:49:36.560 And so in phase one of the trial, the jury determines, are you liable for defamation per

01:49:43.040 se?

01:49:43.320 And by implication, they said, yes.

01:49:45.280 How much money do you owe because of that?

01:49:47.380 And they said 5 million.

01:49:48.360 And then are you entitled to punitive damages?

01:49:51.880 Does CNN need to be punished? 0.62

01:49:54.120 And they answered that question.

01:49:55.280 Yes.

01:49:56.160 So that that's phase one.

01:49:57.800 They said liable for defamation, pay him $5 million and we're going to punish you, which

01:50:02.560 then means we roll into a phase two where it then becomes, well, what is a proper punishment

01:50:08.460 for CNN?

01:50:09.220 And to do that, you need to understand how much CNN is worth, right?

01:50:12.200 Because if you give Bill Gates a $10 speeding ticket, he's not going to learn his lesson.

01:50:16.940 He'll just speed through the rest of town, right?

01:50:18.820 And you need to, you need to impose an actual punishment.

01:50:21.680 And one of the phrases we were looking for was, you know, like in order to make a difference,

01:50:25.520 you got to make a dent.

01:50:26.640 And this is a behemoth company.

01:50:28.560 I mean, like as phase two progressed, the evidence came out that CNN makes $2 billion

01:50:33.640 in revenue a year, right?

01:50:35.100 I mean, this company is worth a lot of money, brings in a lot of money.

01:50:38.320 It is on a decline, but it's still bringing in a lot of money.

01:50:41.060 And how do you punish someone who's worth a billion dollars or is bringing in $2 billion

01:50:45.500 worth of revenue per year?

01:50:47.580 And so phase two began us presenting evidence of how much CNN is worth and how much they could

01:50:53.800 afford to pay without bankrupting them, but punishing them.

01:50:57.100 And I think, I think our expert ended up saying they bring in about $5 million in revenue

01:51:02.580 a day.

01:51:03.400 A proper mode of punishment is to kind of put somebody in timeout where they no longer,

01:51:07.240 you know, you dock their pay, so to speak.

01:51:10.420 And I think the question from us that happened shortly before settlement was reached was,

01:51:16.140 you know, could they afford a month timeout, you know, about 30 days of revenue at $5 million

01:51:20.520 a day, which is about $150 million.

01:51:21.980 And the expert said, yeah, no problem.

01:51:26.260 And so I think, you know, that was the phase that was going on.

01:51:29.300 And then had it continued, we would have eventually gotten in front of the jury and said, this is

01:51:34.000 how much we think you need to pay to punish, you know, to make CNN be punished for their

01:51:38.760 conduct and to deter anyone else from doing something similar.

01:51:42.860 We never got there.

01:51:43.640 And didn't they, it made news that somebody from CNN testified, or maybe it was your expert

01:51:49.300 about the, just the, the downward spiral of revenues that CNN is facing now, which was

01:51:55.540 kind of interesting.

01:51:56.200 Do you remember what that was, Val?

01:51:58.500 Yeah, I think it was like 400 million downs in the last couple of years or something like

01:52:03.600 that.

01:52:03.800 It was our punitive damages expert who was tracking their revenue from 2020.

01:52:07.840 I think it was 2021, 22 and 23 and showed, you know, a drop in income.

01:52:13.480 He did explain though, that, you know, even though they are steadily losing money, they

01:52:19.200 still can't afford to pay a significant amount of money.

01:52:22.020 Oh yeah.

01:52:22.700 Well, maybe they'll, maybe they'll go up now that they've moved Jim Acosta to midnight.

01:52:27.220 And we'll have to wait to see, to see whether that makes.

01:52:30.680 You didn't show that clip, but Jim Acosta aired the segment at issue in the case and talked

01:52:35.720 about black markets before there were these teaser trailers.

01:52:39.440 You know, one of the issues in the case was, what are the gist?

01:52:42.360 Like, forget about what the actual words are.

01:52:44.220 Like when you watch the whole thing, what do you walk, what's the impression you walk away

01:52:47.240 from?

01:52:48.000 And one of the things we used to prove the gist were these teasers that they would play

01:52:51.760 before the video aired.

01:52:52.920 And it was said stuff like, you know, how desperate Afghans are being preyed upon, you

01:52:58.020 know, being demanded to, they pay big time to get out.

01:53:00.960 And we said, what's better to summarize what this is about than their own teaser trailers.

01:53:05.300 And Jim Acosta gave one of those teasers and then played the segment.

01:53:09.060 So he was, he was featured in our, in our case.

01:53:12.260 I mean, as I will tell you, as having been an anchor in cable news for a long time, in

01:53:17.060 this case, I don't blame Jim Acosta.

01:53:18.920 I really, I don't know.

01:53:19.740 Maybe you disagree or I don't blame Jake Tapper either because there's no way they wrote

01:53:24.300 the intro scripts tossing to Alex Marcotte.

01:53:26.820 Normally the way that would work is the field reporter would come up with a report and the

01:53:30.700 editors and the producers back at home base would say, what is the story?

01:53:36.400 And then the writer on the show would write the intro.

01:53:38.960 The executive producer would approve it.

01:53:41.220 Sometimes if the anchor has time, they'll just edit it for voice.

01:53:45.580 But you're not really doing the reporting as the anchor at the anchor desk.

01:53:49.920 In that instance, it's the field reporter and the producers at your network that you are

01:53:53.540 relying on, and that's why it's so egregious that they promoted that guy, that they, knowing

01:54:00.440 you, cause you filed your lawsuit before they promoted him in, he was promoted in September

01:54:05.360 of 2023, right?

01:54:06.500 Val, he, they, they well knew by that point that he had gotten them in this trouble.

01:54:10.880 It's worse.

01:54:12.140 That promotion happened shortly after we filed our motion for leave to add punitive damages.

01:54:17.200 So, but I agree with you, meaning we did not depose Jake Tapper until the punitive damages

01:54:22.260 section of the case that talked about like how much revenue the Jake Tapper show brought

01:54:26.440 in and things like that, because for the same reason you just laid out, we don't really

01:54:30.300 think Jake Tapper had anything to do with the defamation and he was tagged in a lot of

01:54:34.240 the media coverage, but really this was an Alex Markhart and other story.

01:54:38.200 Tapper was the anchor.

01:54:39.120 He was handed a script, you know, he read his script that he thought was vetted properly.

01:54:43.560 And so he ended up making some of the most damning statements, but I think Zach agrees

01:54:47.740 with me that, you know, we don't blame Jake Tapper for what occurred.

01:54:50.840 But for Markhart, his contract negotiations came up and we actually, CNN moved at what

01:54:58.520 we call a motion and eliminated, keep this out of the case.

01:55:00.860 And they were successful over our objection.

01:55:04.520 So what happened is we filed our motion for leave to amend, to add punitive damages, which

01:55:08.760 is essentially a motion where we take all the bad evidence of the case.

01:55:11.620 We put it in front of the court and we say, this is really, really, really bad conduct.

01:55:15.360 You should allow us to seek punitive damages, punish CNN.

01:55:18.340 And the court acts as a gatekeeper to say, yes, this is really bad.

01:55:22.240 We'll let you see if you can get it from the jury or no, this isn't bad enough.

01:55:25.220 You're not going to let the jury take it.

01:55:27.140 And as soon as they got that motion within a few weeks or a month, they paused Alex Markhart's

01:55:32.380 contract negotiations, conducted an investigation for about a month and then ended that investigation

01:55:40.240 by promoting him and giving him a raise.

01:55:43.280 And we said, what is better proof that a company needs to be punished than the fact that they

01:55:48.340 are rewarding these wrongdoers as opposed to, right?

01:55:52.020 But the judge kept it out.

01:55:53.180 He said, it's too prejudicial.

01:55:54.580 I'm not going to lie.

01:55:55.240 Wow.

01:55:56.280 Wow.

01:55:56.660 OK, so in the midst of this, damage experts saying 120 million, that might do it.

01:56:03.000 CNN, I imagine, knocked on your door again and said, can we please put this to bed and

01:56:08.680 spare Zachary the pain of two more years of this matter in an appellate court, et cetera,

01:56:15.680 et cetera.

01:56:16.360 And so finally, Zach, you decided to settle the case.

01:56:19.540 I know that the number is confidential, but how can you describe it to us?

01:56:24.840 As you said, it's confidential, but I feel like I've been vindicated.

01:56:34.300 We got the jury verdict.

01:56:37.240 We accomplished everything that we wanted to accomplish.

01:56:41.500 And I didn't see the point of dragging it along for two more years in appeal.

01:56:47.200 I felt like we had already achieved victory.

01:56:51.260 And I really was looking forward to just getting on with my life.

01:56:54.860 So let me ask you, let me ask you this.

01:56:55.940 Technically, yeah, it was a sub.

01:56:57.540 Did you go, did you have a McDonald's like quarter pounder and cheese?

01:57:02.100 Did you have like a real filet and a nice steak?

01:57:05.400 Or did you go for the full surf and turf?

01:57:09.240 It was actually a filet from the hotel.

01:57:11.320 Probably the same thing that I had for most nights that I was there.

01:57:16.240 But I sleep a lot better.

01:57:19.740 Good, you do.

01:57:21.860 Do you sleep better?

01:57:23.180 Do you really?

01:57:23.740 That's good.

01:57:25.020 I do.

01:57:25.920 The last few nights, especially.

01:57:28.880 Didn't sleep much during the trial, but not as little as Vel.

01:57:33.040 He was pulling all-nighters several nights out of the two-week period.

01:57:36.440 I don't know how he did it.

01:57:37.920 I've never seen anyone be able to perform under such conditions.

01:57:41.920 I mean, lawyers, it's just a different breed.

01:57:45.500 I love lawyers.

01:57:46.300 I really do.

01:57:46.840 I know I'm in the minority, Vel, but I just think lawyers are freaking tough.

01:57:52.460 People don't understand how stressful it is.

01:57:54.980 The depositions, it's so combative.

01:57:57.580 A real adversary.

01:57:59.180 I mean, I don't compare what we do to military guys like you, Zach, but there's a real adversary 1.00

01:58:04.640 standing up there trying to convince the judge you're an idiot, and he really is out to get 1.00

01:58:09.040 you and undermine you and make you look stupid. 1.00

01:58:11.400 You have to be ready for everything. 1.00

01:58:12.780 I don't know, in the same way some of these adrenaline junkies wind up losing their adrenal

01:58:18.020 gland, it's got to happen to some lawyers, too, Vel.

01:58:22.280 I agree.

01:58:23.160 I agree.

01:58:23.720 Yeah.

01:58:23.980 I tell Zach it's the closest civilians like us, like me, will ever get to war because I

01:58:29.300 don't have the guts to do what he did.

01:58:31.980 And I can't thank you enough for that service, Zach.

01:58:34.340 But that's the closest we get to these boardroom wars. 0.88

01:58:37.360 But yeah, you're right.

01:58:38.040 I mean, and it's not just the other guy, right? 1.00

01:58:40.060 There's a team of lawyers behind the scenes working to make you look like an idiot, and 1.00

01:58:43.960 you've got your team working to make you not look like an idiot, and that's really what 1.00

01:58:48.000 ends up, you know, coming forth. 1.00

01:58:49.860 It's a battle of wish.

01:58:52.260 It was interesting to watch, but I wouldn't want to do it again.

01:58:54.700 I can't let this end without asking a question about the difference between digital and TV.

01:58:58.420 Is that explained, Vel?

01:59:00.660 Like, I don't understand.

01:59:02.140 Maybe you can shed some light on why CNN thinks, apparently, according to these notes, it might

01:59:07.720 be okay to air this Swiss cheese full of holes report on their television network, but not

01:59:14.140 on dot com.

01:59:16.300 Yeah, it was odd to us, too.

01:59:18.200 I mean, there's some additional language about, oh, on TV, it was like silhouetted figures,

01:59:22.820 and it zips along.

01:59:23.960 And they tried explaining it at trial, saying, well, there's more space on digital, so it's

01:59:28.580 got to have more content.

01:59:30.600 But when you look at the actual red lines of what they created versus the TV script, it's

01:59:36.200 really basically the same.

01:59:37.720 In fact, Tom Lumley characterized it as a slight recast off of the digital segment.

01:59:43.200 So my feelings are with yours, Megan.

01:59:45.000 I don't understand how they think that there's a difference in standards that they can kind

01:59:48.700 of do something on TV that's substandard.

01:59:50.800 But then when they put it in print, it's got to be better.

01:59:53.000 And we use that extensively to show that the video segment itself and the digital article

01:59:57.840 were both, you know, had more holes in Swiss cheese, were 20% emotion, 80% emotion, 20%

02:00:03.120 obscured fact.

02:00:04.320 And we asked Thomas Lumley on the stand.

02:00:06.000 I said to him, what is an obscured fact other than a lie?

02:00:09.340 Right.

02:00:09.580 And, and his response was like, you know, he couldn't, he couldn't respond.

02:00:15.920 So yeah, I'm with you.

02:00:17.000 The poor guy is like, oh, why didn't we settle?

02:00:19.820 Why are we, why am I here?

02:00:21.780 So Zach, now what?

02:00:23.040 Now you say that people are like, you didn't work.

02:00:25.920 You didn't work for a couple of years.

02:00:27.280 So now you've gotten a settlement and you've gotten your name cleared.

02:00:30.920 Do you think you can go back to doing what, I mean, not the Afghan evacuations.

02:00:35.400 That's, that's over, but like, what's next for you?

02:00:39.660 I'm hoping that I can recover from it professionally.

02:00:42.560 I've had a lot of outreach the last few days, especially people, uh, former colleagues that

02:00:46.960 I haven't heard from in many years, three years to be exact, um, that had watched the

02:00:52.600 trial and are aware of the outcome.

02:00:54.400 So I, I'm hoping that I can get back to doing what I, what I like to do.

02:00:59.180 Um, but it's, it's still too early to tell.

02:01:01.960 It's only been a week.

02:01:03.700 You're going to hang with your dog.

02:01:04.800 I understand you got a dog named Misha, who you love.

02:01:08.540 I do.

02:01:09.160 I spent a lot of time with Misha.

02:01:10.720 We went, uh, on a long rollerblading around the city today, this morning.

02:01:15.420 So where do you live?

02:01:16.720 It's in Vienna, Austria.

02:01:19.920 Very nice.

02:01:21.340 That that's a nice, that's a good life choice.

02:01:23.020 And your wife too.

02:01:23.760 She, she's still with you.

02:01:25.260 Are you guys okay?

02:01:26.880 She's still with me.

02:01:28.220 She's, uh, you know, been through all of this with me.

02:01:30.600 So she's very happy to have it over with.

02:01:32.920 And we're still trying to figure out what life, uh, is going to look like after this.

02:01:37.940 Good.

02:01:38.540 Good.

02:01:39.040 Well, I, I have something to say.

02:01:41.040 I think that no matter what CNN says outwardly, I guarantee you inside the company, this was 0.99

02:01:47.400 a holy shit moment. 0.97

02:01:49.700 And I bet you they did do some revision of their protocols and, uh, maybe, uh, maybe another 0.97

02:01:55.520 chat with their reporters about what's okay to express in a text and what's not.

02:02:01.480 Um, but it would just be human instinct to try to shore up your reporting and be like

02:02:06.420 super careful after something like this.

02:02:08.220 So even though they're not saying it publicly, Zach, I, I bet you they're doing it and that's

02:02:13.160 because of you.

02:02:13.860 So good luck to you.

02:02:15.440 Thank you.

02:02:16.220 Uh, congratulations to both of you.

02:02:17.780 And thanks for telling your story here.

02:02:19.920 Thank you.

02:02:20.540 Thank you for having us.

02:02:21.780 All the best.

02:02:24.700 Wow.

02:02:25.340 What a story.

02:02:27.760 Gosh, it's just so, you know, I met what I said at the beginning.

02:02:31.460 I don't take delight in seeing another news organization be found liable for defamation.

02:02:36.220 It's, you know, it's thin ice for any journalist because we're in the business of reporting on

02:02:42.940 other people.

02:02:43.880 That's our business.

02:02:45.140 And what business never makes a mistake?

02:02:47.920 What business gets it right?

02:02:49.240 100% of the time.

02:02:50.980 Right.

02:02:51.380 So it's like, but the law protects us in a lot of ways.

02:02:55.620 Like the, the standard to prove defamation against a news organization is high.

02:03:00.500 And, um, in nine times out of 10 cases, if you screw something up and someone's angry

02:03:06.540 with you over your report, they will come to you and ask you for a correction and say,

02:03:12.300 here's what you got wrong.

02:03:13.300 So you actually in, in like a lot of, unlike a doctor who cuts out the wrong organ in journalism,

02:03:19.240 you usually do have the chance to cure, which is such a privilege, right?

02:03:23.960 So like you got a second bite at the apple to go back and say, did I F it up?

02:03:28.220 Let's check with my people.

02:03:29.640 Let's make sure we didn't do this guy wrong.

02:03:32.620 And it, at that point, if you choose to stand by the story, you own it, you own whatever comes.

02:03:38.420 I mean, really at the first instance, but really at that second point.

02:03:41.060 And it's such a weird set of circumstances where CNN winds up giving this half-hearted

02:03:46.340 apology, which obviously was insincere.

02:03:49.180 And then by the time that they get to trial saying, we didn't mean a word of that.

02:03:52.340 We're not apologetic.

02:03:53.740 He does have a punchable face.

02:03:56.160 How did anyone think that was going to work?

02:03:59.940 I don't, I don't know.

02:04:01.720 Uh, good for that guy.

02:04:03.000 And I hope he rebuilds his life.

02:04:04.740 Thank you all for listening.

02:04:06.180 What a week this was, have a great weekend and we'll see you Monday.

02:04:13.760 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.

02:04:16.080 No BS, no agenda and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 24, 2025

New Trump Derangement Syndrome Examples, and How CNN Smeared a Navy Veteran, with Piers Morgan, Zachary Young, and Vel Freedman ｜ Ep. 991

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