Serena Williams' return to Wimbledon, the Democratic primary victory in New York City, and more. Plus, a look at the far-left takeover of the Democratic Party by the socialist candidates in Tuesday s primary elections.
00:00:55.520And while you're at it, check out Footy Prime Daily.
00:00:58.180Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
00:01:09.880Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. NPR is trying to explain
00:01:15.100how they got their story about Justice Samuel Alito retiring so wrong, and it is raising
00:01:21.680more questions than answers. Wait until you hear their explanation. This whole thing feels like a
00:01:29.820punk. Like, am I dreaming? Did this really happen? Plus, we've got a lot of thoughts on Serena
00:01:35.100Williams and her return to Wimbledon. She thinks she's the queen bee. And I'm sorry to break it to0.99
00:01:42.340you, Serena. Those days have come and gone. There are new stars on the court. And while you'll
00:01:47.520always have an important place in tennis. That day has come and gone and you cannot go out there
00:01:54.160and act like you are still queen of the court because you're not. That's later. First, however,
00:01:59.900we've been telling you about the far left socialist and let's face it, communist takeover
00:02:04.420of the Democratic Party, highlighted by three victories of progressive candidates in New York
00:02:08.940City primaries for House seats. But again, the primaries in New York City, that's basically
00:02:13.400the final because Republicans can't win there. But they've been taking down members of the
00:02:19.080Democratic establishment. And now we know it is not just a big city East Coast thing,
00:02:23.620because last night in Colorado, socialist Malat Kiros defeated 15-term incumbent Diana DeGette
00:02:32.280in the Democratic primary for a House seat that represents the Denver area.
00:02:38.060Kiros ran on abolishing ICE, on Medicare for All, on her fervent opposition to U.S. support for Israel,
00:02:45.680and on a trans bill of rights, which she posted on her campaign website.0.55
00:02:51.500I mean, that's kind of par for the course for these Democratic socialists.
00:02:55.720As we discussed when the 3 won in New York City, the official DSA platform includes defunding the Pentagon,
00:03:04.420de-incarceration. So I think like all the prisons would be open, not just defunding police, but
00:03:11.620getting rid of police and also getting rid of the presidency and the U.S. Senate. So
00:03:21.040I'm not exactly sure how they'll govern if they get their way. Maybe just the House of
00:03:26.120Representatives is left over because we're not going to have a Pentagon and we're not going to
00:03:29.820have a Senate. We're not going to have a chief executive or maybe it was. No, sorry. Let me
00:03:35.420correct myself. It was judges. We're going to get rid of judges. Maybe the Senate can stay
00:03:39.560tough to remember which body of the Constitution they would like to strike.
00:03:44.140But good luck with that. It's going to be kind of tough to push through. We on the right,
00:03:48.860we're talking about possibly a constitutional amendment to change the whole birthright
00:03:52.680citizenship. And we're reminded that that takes 38 states. I'm not sure we're going to have 38
00:03:57.040States to abolish whole branches of the government. But this is the crazy that's getting elected now
00:04:05.180coast to coast. Based on this woman's victory speech last night, she does not appear to be
00:04:11.220moderating on her views anytime soon. Watch. We will not wait to take the fight to Donald Trump
00:04:19.420and the oligarchy. We will not wait. We will not wait to abolish ICE and pass Medicare
00:04:28.840for All. We will not wait to put an end to the politics of the past, to get big money
00:04:39.640out of our politics and to reject corporate PACs and AIPAC if we organize
00:04:48.700and show no fear and standing up for what's right that is the message that
00:04:55.060Denver has sent to both parties to Donald Trump and to the entire country
00:05:06.520What is that obnoxious horn that's blowing there? She's 29 years old. She reportedly got booted out of her law firm, Sydney and Austin, for writing an opinion piece or signing a letter early on in support of the Palestinian side in the whole conflict shortly after 10-7 and refused to stand down on that.1.00
00:05:32.200So she's a hero to people who are Israel critical, but her platform goes so far beyond that.
00:05:38.360I love the Medicare for all like, oh, it sounds so lovely.
00:05:40.900So we're going to have socialized medicine is what she wants.
00:05:45.260And by the way, who's going to pay for that?
00:05:47.260Because our country is facing like bankruptcy right now on our debt and we don't have that.
00:05:52.420So I'm just wondering where she's going to get the money for that because, you know, the billionaires, even if we took all their money, we couldn't afford it.
00:05:58.700Joining me now to react to this and much more is Matt Taibbi, editor of Racket News on Substack.
00:06:06.020When you sign your insurance policy, for some brokers, that's the finish line.
00:07:21.820So it's all going to be free. Medicare for all. And we're also going to get rid of ICE.
00:07:27.500So no more policing of illegals. It's basically open borders. They're all for that.
00:07:32.680They don't like cops. They do like illegals. They want somehow to pay for Medicare for everybody in1.00
00:07:38.720the country, socialized medicine. And they're very, very opposed to Israel. And I would submit
00:07:43.640to you, that last point is going, it's the determining factor. It's not the only factor,
00:07:50.200but if you had to rank the things that are driving these elections, I would put it number one,
00:07:55.720because the Democrat Party is just so solidly against Israel right now. But what do you make
00:08:00.540of it? Well, I think you're right about the last point. American politics in recent years has been
00:08:08.180a series of litmus tests. And the most recent one on the Democratic side is clearly the Israel0.89
00:08:15.620issue. If you haven't taken a stance on it, if you're a supporter of Israel, you're really not
00:08:24.720electable anymore in the Democratic Party. And this is a major factor in the DSA's success at
00:08:33.480the primary level, and it spells trouble for the leadership of the party. I mean, we saw what
00:08:39.780happened in New York after the victories of the three Mamdani-backed candidates. When
00:08:46.220Hakeem Jeffries flashed on a television screen, everybody was chanting, you are next, you are next.
00:08:52.760So they're very intent on ousting the traditionalist wing of the Democratic Party.
00:08:59.920Yeah. So how does that play out if they continue doing that? Right. And they I mean, then the battle eventually becomes between them and Republicans, at least in some general election contests.
00:09:15.580I mean, so far this is happening only in like very, very deep blue cities and states for, you know, congressional representation in which Republicans are a joke.
00:09:25.220But I mean, at some point they're going to face them, I guess, in a general election contest if this keeps happening.
00:09:30.980And either way, even if they get elected right into Congress as the new Democrats, they're going to have to fight the Republicans once they go to Capitol Hill.
00:09:37.700And it seems to me that right now Republicans are relishing the thought of that.
00:09:41.420But it could be one of those careful what you wish for situations, Matt, given the way the country's going right now.
00:09:47.300Yeah. So this is what makes it fascinating.
00:09:49.480I mean, I'm not embarrassed to admit that not long ago I was fairly supportive of Bernie Sanders.
00:09:58.480I knew Bernie very well early in my career as a reporter.
00:10:03.200He had me tag along with him in Congress and showed me how everything in the House worked when he this was way back when he was still in the House.
00:10:11.420When he ran for president, the prospect of him becoming the nominee was a really interesting thought experiment for the Democrats in 2016, because it's quite possible that he would have done better than Hillary Clinton at the time.
00:10:26.440The electorate was deeply anti-establishment. Hillary was running as a political insider, which was very unpopular.
00:10:34.220And the things that Sanders was promoting, there was a lot of popularity to a lot of the things that he was calling for, including like abolishing student debt.
00:10:46.740Medicare for all is actually popular with a lot of Democrats.
00:10:52.780The problem with this new crew of DSA candidates, and I know they're technically under the same tent as Bernie Sanders, but they're a very different group of people.
00:11:04.380And I know this, among other things, you know, I studied at a Soviet college.
00:11:10.740I'm old enough to have gone to university in the Soviet Union.
00:11:14.720I'm very familiar with this personality type.
00:11:17.800I took scientific communism in college.
00:11:21.140And so I know the difference between the real thing and what Bernie was in 2016, which he was running as a traditional sort of FDR Democrat.
00:11:33.320He grew up in a poor neighborhood with great reverence for the Democratic Party.
00:11:38.540He clearly loves his home state of Vermont.
00:11:42.340That is not the vibe with this crew that uses terms like seize the means of production very freely.
00:11:50.580And I just don't think we'll see what happens when when they get exposed to the general electorate.
00:11:55.860I think the people are there's going to be a rebuke there, but it will be interesting to see how the party reacts to that.
00:12:03.020I mean, so far, the party's reacting like it's developed a cancer and it wants to cut the tumor out very badly of the core organ.
00:12:10.320The mainstream Democrats seem horrified by the ascendancy of some of these radical leftists, but they're kind of powerless to stop it because they're running normie Democrats against them and they're getting crushed in these deep blue districts.
00:12:27.540like the Democrat Party seems to want something much more radical. And it tends to be in New York
00:12:34.000City, at least so far. And now in this Denver election, the white people, it's the rich white
00:12:38.900people who are voting for them. Like in New York, we saw the blacks and the Hispanics say, no, we
00:12:44.400don't want that. We kind of like cops, actually. They're in our neighborhoods protecting us. We1.00
00:12:50.060like living. We like our kids living. It's the elite white rich people over and over who are
00:12:57.140drawn to this, Matt. Why? Because they don't know, Megan. I mean, I wrote a book about
00:13:05.340Eric Garner, the murder of a police murder. And as a result of that, in doing the research,
00:13:13.480I had to spend roughly two years on the street talking to people in that very spot. Now,
00:13:20.620one of the things that happened after Eric Garner was killed is that the Staten Island and that
00:13:27.480precinct elected to permanently station a squad car right on that spot, right next to the park.
00:13:34.900And the neighborhood, I think, was roughly a 60-40 split in favor of the police being there
00:13:43.140because there were fewer fights, there were fewer disturbances, there were fewer robberies at the
00:13:48.880uh of the stores in the in the neighborhood um and that's generally what you'll hear in poor
00:13:56.120neighborhoods if you talk to people there there is there are people who are very anti-police in
00:14:01.700the projects but there are also people who are very uh frightened and and see crime as a bigger
00:14:07.340problem it's only people who live um who go to you know elite universities and live in very rich
00:14:15.240neighborhoods and don't spend time in those places who who think that police abolition is
00:14:21.840is this idea that's going to be universally embraced by by the poor or prison abolition for
00:14:28.160that matter uh that they just have no real life experience and that that is very typical of this
00:14:34.940type of person it's i mean it's it sounds like a joke that we a modern day america would be
00:14:42.480electing candidates who say, I want to get rid of all the cops. I want to open all the prisons.
00:14:47.780I want the, all the illegals to be able to stay. And I want the public dime to pay for all healthcare1.00
00:14:57.240for all these people, including the illegals and also all trans so-called care, you know, kids1.00
00:15:04.980at the taxpayer. Like that's where we we stop with the similarities on, for example,0.80
00:15:12.680the Vladimir Putin approach to socialism. The conservatism that goes hand in hand with what
00:15:19.960he's offering over there is completely rejected in favor of true leftist radicalism. I'll show
00:15:28.160you just one. I mean, some of the things we mentioned and Putin would take a firm hand on
00:15:32.160policing and he's not for illegals populating the streets of Russia or criminals. But look at this
00:15:39.880picture of this woman who won last night, this Malak Kiros, and the person she was out there
00:15:45.800campaigning with. This is like, for the listening audience, it looks like a transvestite. It looks0.92
00:15:51.780like a drag queen kind of person, a man in a bikini with a huge orange mustache and a huge0.92
00:15:58.440orange head of hair, almost lionesque in its presentation. And she's in his armpit0.99
00:16:04.140with a big hug. There's actually video of the two of them together. It's a soundbite as she gets
00:16:11.000welcomed to the Pride stage. This, well, I guess now last month, since it's July 1st, 5B, watch.
00:16:16.940And that is why today I am personally endorsing for Congress,
00:17:03.100I'm not sure that's the word for that scene, Matt.
00:17:06.320Yeah, I mean, again, these are sort of niche political ideas.
00:17:10.660I understand people talking about it maybe in a common room of a dorm at Columbia.
00:17:17.640or cornell or someplace like that or uh but you know the the ordinary person is going to have a
00:17:25.240tough time swallowing uh so to speak publicly funded uh transitions in places like prisons or
00:17:34.700even you know to bring up a more serious issue putting uh housing biological males in women's
00:17:42.280prisons which is something the aclu as well as the dsa favors you know we had that decision by the
00:17:49.580supreme court yesterday striking down or at least allowing states to bar the participation of
00:17:57.440biological men and women's sports but there was a you know a while there and these dsa pseudo
00:18:04.840intellectuals are all for this where it it was basically verboten for people in the media to use
00:18:12.320the term biological sex or biological male or to mention that or to say that there were two sexes
00:18:18.040um you know the biologist colin wright was essentially kicked out of academics for saying
00:18:25.540that there there are two that that sex is binary and this is not popular either right i mean it's
00:18:32.780It's one thing to advocate for rights for people and to advocate against, say, housing discrimination or, you know, health insurance discrimination, any of those things.
00:18:46.460But it's very different to demand a complete rejection of, say, science and, you know, physical or biological reality.
00:18:57.020Did you see we played it yesterday, but Craig Melvin on The Today Show gave like a trigger
00:19:00.700warning before he read language from the Supreme Court decision referring to biological boys and
00:19:07.060biological girls. Like, you know, I know this is going to upset you, but it comes from the
00:19:11.360U.S. Supreme Court. Here's more. This is CNN's chief legal analyst, Laura Coates. Listen to how
00:19:17.420she referred to the decision and the issues being discussed in it and sought 27. This is a monumental
00:19:22.760decision not unexpected however given how the oral arguments went here was the crux of the issue
00:19:27.240it was whether or not somebody who was assigned the male gender at birth would be allowed to play
00:19:34.300in a traditionally so-called girls sports in a public a high school or of course in the college
00:19:40.280setting so-called yeah and and assigned male at birth is just factually incorrect um i understand
00:19:51.460It's movement speak. But media organizations and, you know, I was I was in traditional media during the period when we first started to be policed about the language that we can that we can use.
00:20:06.180I remember the first time that, you know, it came up in a fact checking meeting that we had to use the term undocumented instead of illegal.
00:20:16.200And once activists figured out that they could have that kind of leverage over media organizations, they started doing it increasingly often.
00:20:26.440And what ended up happening was is that a lot of media people just unthinkingly embraced terms without considering what they really mean.
00:20:37.820Gender-affirming care carries a very, very specific meaning, and it essentially means that you can't embrace the idea that some dysphoric young people, like, you know, say an 11-year-old boy or a girl who feels troubled about their gender identity, that maybe that person might end up being happy about being a boy or a girl.
00:21:07.820Gender affirming, essentially, care, essentially means that you're going to give them the kind of care that's going to make them transition.
00:21:16.060And so using that terminology is very, it's political in itself, in addition to being factually questionable.0.54
00:21:26.220And it's amazing to watch networks apologizing for using the right words.
00:21:33.460Yeah, I mean, it's just such a farce, assigned male at birth.
00:21:37.380assigned male by God. That's more accurate. You'd be better off going there. Let's spend a minute0.97
00:21:44.980on what happened yesterday at the high court. First of all, the Nina Totenberg massive face
00:21:52.240plant is seriously newsworthy. I can't believe what her explanation was. This time yesterday,
00:21:59.800we were talking about the decision and we did point out that Nina Totenberg, who's the Supreme
00:22:04.740court reporter a long time for NPR blew it, not the reporting on the two decisions, but right
00:22:11.420after those decisions, she reported that justice Alito was retiring and she was the only one who
00:22:18.480had it get getting this. Just so people know, I covered the high court for three years for Fox
00:22:22.320news. Get being the first with a retirement announcement is huge in Supreme court reporting
00:22:28.880circles. It's like the mother load that everybody's fighting for. Other than the weird Dobbs leak,
00:22:35.640you don't get advanced copies of decisions. That's not an area in which one reporter can beat
00:22:43.020another covering the high court. This is the whole ballgame. You find out a justice is stepping down
00:22:50.560and you are the first to report it. It's huge. It's the mother load. So she's semi-retired. I
00:22:57.340guess she is retired, which is what I said yesterday, but she came back for yesterday's
00:23:02.480big day at the Supreme Court and she was there and she is the one who reported that Justice Alito
00:23:10.360was retiring. It went up on NPR's website. My team forwarded it to me immediately. I'm like,
00:23:16.300holy shit. I had heard, and I've reported this on the show before, that he is likely to step down.0.99
00:23:22.180I've heard that from people who know. But that's one thing that is totally different from he's a
00:23:30.560retiring. It's happening. There's been an announcement that is a very, very different
00:23:34.840kettle of fish. So she she goes with it. We see it on on our team. I reach out to my own sources
00:23:41.780who say it's not true. And by the time I went back to my team saying my sources saying it's not true,
00:23:46.960So NPR had taken it down. And when we went off the air yesterday, I was saying to my team,
00:23:53.200if that's NPR's error, like if they took a Nina Totenberg canned report on Alito's legacy
00:23:59.040and somebody there had it wrong that he was retiring, then they should publicly come out
00:24:02.960and say so, so that she's not, she doesn't have egg on her face because she wouldn't deserve that.
00:24:07.380I'd be mad as the reporter if that happened to me. Wrong. Totally wrong. That's not what
00:24:11.260happen at all. It was 100 percent Nina Totenberg's fault. And the explanation about how this went
00:24:19.620down, Matt, is so crazy. What happened? Okay. Okay. You've got to hear it. Is this on tape,
00:24:26.040you guys? Because she was going to go on. Oh, it is. All right. It's not 26. Let's listen to her
00:24:31.020explain it on NPR's All Things Considered yesterday. It's entirely on me. It's not
00:24:36.980anybody else's fault. And I've written to Justice Alito to apologize, and I thought I would read
00:24:42.960you most of this letter because it tells you everything. Okay. Dear Justice Alito, there are
00:24:47.360no words to adequately apologize for today's error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my
00:24:53.320fault. I rushed out of the courtroom after the opinion announcements, and when I realized that
00:24:59.960the usual rush of folks after a few minutes had not happened, I asked somebody what was going on
00:25:05.860inside, to which the answer was retirement announcements. I didn't hear the S on announcements
00:25:12.420and assumed something no reporter should ever do, that you were retiring. It was the worst
00:25:19.560professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism. I could go on, but I don't know
00:25:25.460what else to say except that I am so, so sorry, and I am eternally, you know, this was a rookie
00:25:32.240mistake i uh have you heard back from the justice no but i didn't expect to hear back from him it's
00:25:38.080my mistake that's it's unbelievable that that that is truly incredible and uh the fact that they
00:25:50.920they put that on on the air and didn't see that that's even more embarrassing than the mistake
00:25:57.560um yes is is incredible uh how is that helping no exactly i mean being and as you as you pointed
00:26:07.800out this is uh you know this is the mother of all stories for somebody on that beat
00:26:13.440and the last thing you want to do is have to go up on uh all things considered and say boy i really
00:26:20.940you know f that one up um you know that that's a career kind of killing mistake so it has it has
00:26:29.120to be a situation where somebody concretely tells you that it's happening and you you get to ask
00:26:35.660wait just to be sure you're you're saying uh that alito is retiring right like you want to double
00:26:43.120check at least you want to try to check it with you know you're you're playing with the dynamite
00:26:48.360stick. It's it's lit. The fuse is going. You know, you're playing with it. You like you make
00:26:53.660quadruple sure before you hit publish that you've got it. You got it. You heard it. Alito
00:27:01.040announced he's retiring. Is that correct? Any she says it's a rookie mistake. That's an insult to
00:27:07.640rookies. Rookies know you check it out. Check it out. The story, Matt, is that as she was leaving
00:27:16.940the Supreme Court, she heard something about retirement announcements. She hurts. No,
00:27:24.060I rushed out of the courtroom after the opinion announced announcements,
00:27:28.840announcements. And she misheard, she says, an announcement about a retirement.
00:27:35.320And then she what? She just assumed that it was Alito. She doesn't even argue that she heard
00:27:43.460an announcement that said alito was retiring nor did she see who was making the announcement
00:27:49.740nor does she posit that she was in their hearing with her own ears that there was a
00:27:54.420that this is so bad she's either got dementia or she's making it up yeah or she needs to be
00:28:03.820fired for malfeasance i like something smells very wrong with the whole story yeah that that
00:28:09.180story is either not true like it's it's you know somebody else made the mistake and she's falling
00:28:15.220on a sword or something like that or or it's just uh beyond embarrassing i mean it it really speaks
00:28:22.720to what's happened in journalism in the last you know 10 15 20 years you know go back and watch
00:28:29.700all the president's men they were afraid to put out a story that had four sources behind it and
00:28:33.960they still got it wrong uh in the big disaster scene in that movie you would never ever go
00:28:42.180to print with one unnamed source where the source doesn't even tell you what you're you're
00:28:49.040asserting you you can't make uh an assumption about something you overheard uh on npr i mean
00:28:56.580are you kidding me that that that is that is a truly unbelievable media story megan
00:29:02.060it's incredible i i rushed out of the courtroom after the opinion announced after they were
00:29:09.480announcing announcements my my transcript of this is weird um okay i asked somebody what's going on
00:29:14.880inside to which the answer was retirement announcements i asked somebody what was going
00:29:20.780on inside to which the answer was retirement announcements i didn't hear the s on announcements
00:29:29.700so she heard what's going on inside retirement announcement and assumed something no reporter
00:29:37.500should ever do that you were retiring so she her her explanation is that some rando told her
00:29:45.860she didn't even hear it that there were quote retirement a retirement announcement happening
00:29:52.640inside and by her own admission no one said to her alito so i mean even if you were in the
00:29:59.100position that I've been in for the past six months where I do have very good reason to believe that
00:30:03.680Alito is going to be the next to go. You don't know that. If I heard there's a retirement
00:30:12.500announcement from the bench, I'd say, which one? Sotomayor's not in good health. Thomas is the
00:30:18.360oldest. I don't know who it is. Just because I've been told Alito is thinking about going and is
00:30:24.060probably the next to go doesn't mean it happened today and they just announced it and from that
00:30:29.360she went to the npr editors and they they hit print on one of the golden cows of reporting
00:30:37.420they were like we've got it queen nina yeah i mean there are so many things about that that are
00:30:43.500the that are remarkable first of all how does somebody who you worked in that beat for three
00:30:48.400years, you said? Yes. You have sources, I'm sure, that could help you confirm or deny a story like
00:30:56.040that, right? How does this person not have somebody that would pick up the phone if she
00:31:03.180called to help her confirm or deny that story? How did the editors not instantly reject that story
00:31:10.540when they they weighed in. The editors said they trust Nina implicitly. She's so holier than thou
00:31:19.620over there, Matt, that they they just trust Nina now. And they said because she said it was an
00:31:27.820announcement as opposed to like, I have an inside scoop. I've got a source telling me they didn't
00:31:33.880use their like emergency backup system of like triple checking all stories before they go on
00:31:38.440the air because she told them there was an announcement from the bench, like from the
00:32:07.700I'm sorry, but this is totally humiliating for NPR.
00:32:12.260I was saying yesterday, it's akin to reporting the Pope has died when he hasn't died.
00:32:16.860You know, like it's that level error and NPR has no satisfactory explanation.
00:32:25.420Oh, and by the way, Matt, the other piece of this is she she reported the NPR reported his stepping down with its typical bias.
00:32:37.700right? It's the headline was, hold on, I think I have it here. Here it is. The headline is
00:32:42.920Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, retires. What did
00:32:49.140Nina Totenberg write when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died? Justice RBG, champion of gender equality,1.00
00:32:56.800dies at 87. Notice any difference in the tone there? So, I mean, I don't think it was her bias
00:33:03.720that led her to report that Alito was retiring when he wasn't. But she's got a history of not
00:33:09.620calling it straight. And by the way, she's made errors, too. She's the one who reported that
00:33:13.940Justice Gorsuch had refused to put on a mask when the chief justice asked him to around the COVID
00:33:19.960time and that Sonia Sotomayor was so offended she didn't participate in oral arguments in person
00:33:26.140that she did it remotely. And she was wrong. She was 100 percent wrong. She was so wrong that both
00:33:31.240justices, Gorsuch and and Sotomayor, issued a rare joint refutation of Nina's reporting.
00:33:40.480She's had other things that she's just gotten egregiously wrong. This woman's been getting a0.99
00:33:43.440pass for far too long. She's passed. She's passed her her journalism prime, as these mistakes are1.00
00:33:49.160proving. I mean, it's really incredible. And I mean, I think you you could speak to this, too.
00:33:55.840it wasn't that long ago where the the the guiding principle of pretty much everybody who had any
00:34:04.360kind of reporting beat in in media was to avoid the big face plant uh when you did a story the
00:34:11.540your main motivation was to not screw it up uh that was the first second and third things that
00:34:17.620you worried about uh was you know what will happen if i get this wrong uh this could end my career
00:34:24.640this could you know lead to a lawsuit it could all kinds of problems could happen now it's become
00:34:30.960incredibly common for newspapers to make mistakes and either not own up to it at all not issue a
00:34:38.460correction not issue an explanation um or simply uh give an explanation make a correction and have
00:34:47.980there be no consequences for for it whatsoever uh people make make mistakes and nothing happens
00:34:54.000now which is um sort of an extraordinary thing think of all the people in the wmd episode who
00:35:00.360got uh things wrong and were promoted as a result of it and this is this is how that happens
00:35:08.760i just can't stress enough how you understand that is plutonium you're handling if you get
00:35:16.940news like that as a Supreme Court reporter. Like, holy shit, there's only nine of them.0.99
00:35:21.560The retirements are spaced out by years. It's a huge deal when there's a vacancy on the high0.98
00:35:27.000court. If you get a scoop like that, it has to be handled so carefully, so professionally,
00:35:32.820so responsibly. And you would never go to air with it unless you had it cold. I mean,
00:35:39.040I would not go to air with that unless I heard it directly from the justice or the justice's
00:35:43.620spouse. That's it. That is the only two people who could make me do it. Not even another justice
00:35:49.860could convince me to do it. And so for her to say, I misheard from the bench that there was
00:35:58.260a retirement announcement, period, not even about a justice, nevermind this justice. And
00:36:05.580it was she it's just insane i can't get past it so enter of it i'm sorry the the the speed is
00:36:12.980fascinating like that's a huge story it would take more than you know a little bit uh for to
00:36:20.220to get that on air in a normal situation you'd have to double triple check it the editors would
00:36:25.880demand certain steps uh be taken uh but it sounds like uh you know they managed to she went from
00:36:33.460hearing that or allegedly hearing that to going on air with it relatively quickly.
00:36:40.440Yes, her explanation yesterday was that she then spoke with her intern who was at the court with
00:36:48.120her and NPR executive editor Krishnadev Kalamer and told them what she had heard. Kalamer surfaced
00:36:56.340the story that NPR had previously prepared for the day Alito did announce his retirement and
00:37:00.840publish it it's not unusual to have one in the can for all nine justices like god forbid they die
00:37:05.840or they retire so like the background had already been written that's normal but nobody questioned
00:37:10.540her and the the producer here that the calimer i guess it was the editor talked about he said
00:37:17.720she's the preeminent supreme court reporter in the courtroom so i'm assuming that's what she heard
00:37:24.420she's in the room uh so he it was complete deference to her blind deference which is very
00:37:32.540dangerous as they just learned the hard way let me tell you what paul farhi is saying he
00:37:39.100wrote for a long time for the washington post and was like their chief media uh reporter slash
00:37:44.880critic and i when i saw this explanation yesterday i mean my jaw dropped and i tweeted out or posted
00:37:52.740on x omg npr posted an article by nina totenberg reporting that alito's retirement retiring and0.56
00:37:59.540then within minutes retracted escotis denied total shit show that was actually before i'd
00:38:03.200seen the explanation he responds so npr made a mistake recognized its mistake and corrected it0.57
00:38:10.420within minutes what would you have them do other than not making a mistake that
00:38:16.760i i i that that is a literally unbelievable thing for uh you know for an experienced media reporter
00:38:29.240which paul farhi is i mean um i was briefly away at uh from rolling stone when they made
00:38:36.440the error that nearly destroyed the entire organization you know the uva rape story uh
00:38:44.580You know, some of my favorite people were caught up in that disaster.
00:38:50.920People, you know, I'd known for years and it was universally accepted in the media business that it was, you know, it was a mistake to just simply trust the reporter, you know, absent some kind of verification.
00:39:06.760And, you know, it was considered a kind of a warning tale or a cautionary tale for editors that, you know, this is what can happen if you place too much stock in what your reporters tell you.
00:39:23.460You've got to get some kind of confirmation that satisfies you.
00:39:27.480so you know here you have a complete systemic breakdown and you know the washington post
00:39:34.980media reporter isn't interested in that and and what the process that npr like that's that's
00:39:40.980incredible it also speaks to what must go on at the washington post too yeah and you know it's
00:39:47.720quick to defend it like oh what would you have them do like like it's just another like it's a
00:39:51.380error they made on some math claim. Now, this is this is a massive journalistic fail. Don't pretend
00:39:58.480like you don't know that you fully know that. Pull off Paul Farhi. And here's Peter Baker,
00:40:03.780the New York Times White House reporter. No one's more mortified by a mistake than a journalist
00:40:09.720committed to factual reporting. The best own up to it, correct it and apologize for it,
00:40:14.060as Nina Totenberg has done. It's worth remembering a long career dedicated to getting it right.
00:40:18.900OK, look, this is not her first screw up. There have been others by Nina Totenberg, always overlooked by her fans because she's an open liberal reporting with a liberal bent with all the right nasty takes on the conservative justices and the beneficial ones for the libs.
00:40:39.040So Peter Baker rushes to her defense. But I guarantee you, if I went back and worked at Fox News next year covering the high court and made such a mistake about a leftist jurist retiring when it wasn't true, Peter Baker would not be out there saying, oh, she did the honorable thing.
00:40:56.660that's not and that kind of a statement would make a textbook out of you making if you did that
00:41:02.560totally right and and also like they're they're treating her quote mistake as if it's like she
00:41:09.320got burned by a source it happens like this was such an epic failure she she didn't have it
00:41:15.720no one told her that it she made it up we're ignoring the fact that at no point did nina
00:41:21.440Totenberg here. Justice Alito is retiring. She made it up and put it out on NPR, went out to
00:41:30.100all their radio stations. It stood for much longer in the in the ether than it did on their pages
00:41:35.340because they retracted it on their website. But it had already been broadcast because they were
00:41:39.500doing live coverage of the Supreme Court. So it got blasted out across the country. I'm sure
00:41:46.180there are people today who are still confused and think Justice Alito is retiring. And it's very
00:41:50.000telling Matt that at least when she was asked yesterday whether he had responded to her little
00:41:54.380apology, the answer was no, he he did not let her off the hook. He's probably pissed off. There are
00:42:00.380some who are even speculating maybe this whole thing was a trap. Like maybe he had somebody tell
00:42:03.980her or tell a leaker to tell her like maybe some effort to find the Supreme Court leaker. I don't
00:42:10.500know what the game would be, but I'm sure he's not happy. Yeah. And he's he would be right to be
00:42:18.120upset if that's what the process is. I mean, you mentioned being burned by sources. That does
00:42:27.060happen. And that was the first thing I thought of when she was giving that excuse, is that what
00:42:32.580actually happened was that somebody she knows and who's been a good source for her, you know,
00:42:40.520blew her up. And she's covering for that person by giving the story that's so unbelievable
00:42:46.320and embarrassing to her personally that there won't be anybody asking about a source who got
00:42:54.480something wrong. But I just don't think that's possible. If you were going to come up with
00:43:00.380another story about how it was your fault, you would come up with something different than this,
00:43:07.620wouldn't you? I mean, this is just not an adequate explanation.
00:43:14.840No, I don't. There's got to be more. There's got to be another shoe to drop here because it's it's I understand she's their gal for 50 years. I understand she thinks she's the queen bee of the high court. I don't think that. But she thinks that even for that level reporter. This is the end. This should be the end of Nina Totenberg's career. It should. I'm sorry she has to go out on this note, but she does.
00:43:41.340the only reason you know it won't happen is because she's a leftist at a leftist new
00:43:47.160news organization and all these other leftists like paul farhi and peter baker are very quick
00:43:51.920to run cover for her you know so they she's she's not getting any of the flack that you would get
00:43:58.500or that i would get or that anybody at fox news would get if they had done such a thing it's just
00:44:03.440just such an egregious egregious story yeah okay i want to keep going so back to malat kiros okay0.92
00:44:11.680and these democrat socialists because i do i do want to point something out this woman is railing0.88
00:44:17.140about among other things ice she hates ice oh they all all these dsa types want to get rid of ice0.99
00:44:22.900and let me give you a a little a little sampling of that because she sat down with hassan piker0.99
00:44:29.560and give an interview not long ago, SOP 4?0.94
00:44:32.260Abolishing ICE is just one step, right?
00:44:34.340I think there has to be an immediate pathway
00:44:36.740for every single undocumented immigrant1.00
01:05:57.440yeah so it's it's going really well the pride celebrations were exactly what we anticipated
01:06:08.480they would be so megan two observations from pride 2026 and i'm i'm so happy that it's it's
01:06:14.120july 1st now but this first of all it's getting worse and more perverted and more sadistic every
01:06:19.880single year uh when gay marriage became legal i think it was 2015 barack obama pride was like0.96
01:06:27.100I can remember my local news station. They wouldn't let us get political at that time,
01:06:30.520but we were required to be a part of the pride celebration in Tampa, Florida. And all the anchors
01:06:36.480had to be on the pride float. I remember I asked my former CNN producer, now news director,
01:06:41.840how this is not political. And she said, it's just pride. You're celebrating people coming
01:06:46.200out of the closet. And I said, well, yeah, you know, I don't want to lose my job. But I was
01:06:49.340like, you're celebrating what people do. You're celebrating what people choose to do behind closed
01:06:53.540doors what they choose to do in the bedroom and nobody celebrates what i do in the bedroom i wish
01:06:58.200they would have a parade for it they never will okay but but for whatever reason we are all required
01:07:04.080to honor and celebrate what these people do and and if you look at pride parades in in 2013 14 15
01:07:10.840they were they were a lot calmer um i lived in boston and i saw one and i was younger and i
01:07:17.280remember it was santa claus whipping reindeer and the reindeer were men and i remember that
01:07:20.520was the first inkling i had that hey wait a second maybe this is more than just like i had the
01:07:24.240courage to come out of the closet to my parents um but then the other part of this is the violence
01:07:29.340this year we saw that the media won't cover it they do what they always do and that's cover it
01:07:33.660up but these are all very violent by and large and in seattle this past weekend pride went out
01:07:40.100with a bang there people got arrested uh independent journalists that were covering it
01:07:44.300got attacked and then the people that did it who were also pride slash antifa they were arrested
01:07:49.880So these are also very, very violent events by and large.
01:07:54.300It's like you're right, because there seems to be like an increase, like the hockey stick in perversion and criminal behavior at these events.
01:08:03.640And like the country's not in the mood for it.
01:08:06.300Notwithstanding what we saw in Minneapolis, we covered this yesterday morning on our AM Update podcast, which is just news headlines in Minneapolis.0.98
01:08:13.820they're bringing back public bath houses for sex romps amongst gay people. Like that's the open0.91
01:08:22.340goal of it. And they think if you have a judgment on it, you're a homophobe. You're a bigot.
01:08:29.980I don't understand why gay men can't have sex in their own houses and apartments like everybody1.00
01:08:36.300else. Why does it have to happen at a public bath house? These things used to be prevalent.1.00
01:08:41.520They were banned in the 80s amidst the AIDS crisis.
01:08:44.700And here is a local lawmaker in Minneapolis trying to justify why you and I and all the
01:08:51.800other citizens should be in favor of this.
01:08:55.340I think it's important to address this, the weaponization of hyper sexualization of our
01:09:01.320queer communities as a means to also bring forward repressive policies that limits their
01:09:07.180existence and their ability to be in community with each other.
01:09:10.400The idea that this policy has been repeatedly framed as facilitation of brothel or sexual activity as if folks just want to go out and have sex, which, you know what?
01:09:21.580Maybe that might help actually bring more joy into our city.
01:09:27.760But to say that this policy is essentially the facilitation of legalizing brothels is not what's happening.
01:09:39.520Yeah, it's actually exactly what's happening. It's it's in community. Look, I have no problem with people having, you know, having sex with each other, as long as it's consensual. That's, that's, that's a wonderful thing. I agree with the last part. Terrific. Fine. But when she when she all right, all right, I'm pro. But when she says in community with one another, she's referring to gay sex. And you're exactly right. It was in the mid 1980s in New York, Ed Koch, the mayor, then who was a gay man, closed these in New York City, because so
01:10:09.460many people were getting AIDS and we didn't have a cure for AIDS. We don't have a cure for AIDS
01:10:13.800today. You can live with it and you can test negative for it and you don't necessarily pass
01:10:18.160it on to your partner. And that's a wonderful thing. But like this is still a very serious
01:10:21.920disease. And part of the reason these closed in the 1980s in cities across the country
01:10:27.420is because there was no way. Think about a restaurant, for example, if the Board of Health
01:10:32.360wants to go in and find you, they can go in and say, hey, look, you put the buffalo tenders in
01:10:36.240the same fryer as the fish you can't do that and you get a fine or they look at your bathrooms and
01:10:40.740they look at the kitchen cleanliness and that sort of thing there was no real way to do this so there
01:10:45.320was a ton of corruption and a ton of illegality and a lot of these there they were trafficking0.98
01:10:50.300minors in these brothels for gay sex and that's just a fact it makes people uncomfortable in the0.90
01:10:57.000city of minneapolis but that is just a fact and i'm just wondering if like somebody is seriously0.98
01:11:01.780going to apply for a license to like reopen one of these in downtown Minneapolis. Yes, it's
01:11:09.260happening. By the way, Brian Cole Coyle was one of the councilmen who voted to close these clubs
01:11:17.860in Minneapolis, like did not think that the bathhouse was a good idea. He was gay and he0.98
01:11:24.080would later die of AIDS. He recognized this is not a good idea. We should not be encouraging0.83
01:11:28.660this kind of behavior amongst strangers in a bathhouse in public in Minneapolis. And so now
01:11:37.160we're going there again because we have medication that can suppress the HIV virus such that it's not
01:11:44.200as easily transmissible in sexual acts. But this woman is actually out there saying maybe we should
01:11:51.440be encouraging public gay sex because it creates joy for them. And then you hear at the beginning0.99
01:11:59.020of her soundbite, she said, we are, we are weaponizing the hyper sexualization of gay0.96
01:12:05.140people. Like they are hyper sexual, she's saying, and we're weaponizing it by objecting to public0.88
01:12:12.780sex in bath houses by them. This is insane. Straight people don't need to have sex in public0.97
01:12:19.980in a bathhouse or anywhere else. Why do gay people, why, why is it, why am I a bigot if I0.99
01:12:25.740don't want to walk down the street with my kid past a bathhouse where we know there's a bunch1.00
01:12:30.300of gay sex happening inside? Right. Exactly. Right down the street from a school and a police1.00
01:12:34.260station. And then where's the line? What's next? Do they want to make prostitution legal in a place
01:12:40.580like Minneapolis? I mean, that's, that's what this opens. Yeah. For the, for the joy. No,0.98
01:12:44.920this is for the joy. And by the way, I, again, I'm, I think it's wonderful that they have treatment
01:12:49.340for hiv and aids um they didn't have that you know 45 years ago when it broke out in the late
01:12:55.4601980s and millions of people lost their lives and that's a tragedy and they have that now and
01:12:58.740that's great but if you look at these commercials again i will be with my children we will be
01:13:03.860watching like a baseball game and it'll be a commercial where they're they're not normalizing
01:13:08.700treatment they're normalizing hiv aids and somebody's like on a kayak and they're like
01:13:13.600sitting in a jacuzzi and they're at like an art class and a yoga class and that's all terrific0.79
01:13:18.420but the message should still be practice safe sex, right? Like, are we still at that point?
01:13:23.900I think we should be. Yes, absolutely. And here's here's this. There's an op-ed in the
01:13:29.920Minneapolis Star Tribune, which is a far left paper. And the opinion is why repealing Minneapolis's
01:13:36.820bathhouse ban could be a public health win, could be could be a big win for public health. Oh,
01:13:43.660I'm sure it will be. They've lost their minds. This is Tim Wall's estate, of course, and Jacob
01:13:47.540Fry's city and Jacob Fry's been all over the media celebrating this does not feel like a step
01:13:53.760forward to me. On the subject, well, of what we were discussing, Jussie Smollett is back in the
01:14:01.060news, Rob. Jussie Smollett showed up at a Harlem, I guess it was Pride Fest because he was in Harlem
01:14:08.440dancing with some other gay men. And here's what that looked like. And listen to the lyrics if you
01:30:43.440Everyone can take it except for her.0.92
01:30:44.940And then they changed the whole rule where players would now have these mental health
01:30:49.020rooms to get ready in before they had to go play and they'd have psychiatric counseling0.55
01:30:53.000if they needed it, all because of this woman.1.00
01:30:54.700Now she arrives to the U.S. Open in some head-to-toe white kimono, trying to look like, I don't know, some sort of a goddess, some sort of a queen.
01:31:09.300Now she's leaning into her fabulousness, Rob, and we're all expected to get on board and celebrate Naomi.0.94
01:31:16.700me well it's a no i don't respect naomi osaka at all she's not tough she's weak and only somebody0.90
01:31:23.400who is would walk in needing that kind of attention as opposed to somebody who lets the game speak for0.99
01:31:29.240itself so let's start with naomi osaka you first of all the outfit i mean i you just normally would
01:31:35.820wear like your athletic gear when you arrive and you go underneath and you right you get ready and
01:31:41.580then you come out and everyone maybe a tracksuit yeah that's what everybody's done but you think
01:31:45.420about like, I grew up with tennis stars in the nineties, like Pete Sampras, Andy Roddick, Andre
01:31:51.260Agassi. Um, if you go a little further back, like Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe and, and these
01:31:57.440people were competitors and Chrissy Everett, of course, of course. Uh, and you can keep going
01:32:02.080back. Um, what's her name? The one who married Andre Steffi Graff. Oh yeah. She's a doll. Um,
01:32:08.480no, it's, and you look at what's happened and what's changed. They were competitors. You look
01:32:13.040at like Rafa Nadal now and I'm not the biggest tennis fan but you can't not watch these people
01:32:17.160when they're competing in majors because all they want to do is beat each other and you look at
01:32:21.240Coco Gauff and you look at that at the competitors on the women's side I mean really on the men's1.00
01:32:26.740side too and it's just it's like this generation of like little weaklings who can't sit down and0.57
01:32:32.760do a press conference who are making millions of dollars off the court as well in endorsements
01:32:38.860and they can't they're not there for the fans they're there look at me flowing robes like how
01:32:43.280do you want people to react to that like if i brought my daughter if you were there with your
01:32:46.280kids how do you explain that you'd be like well that's just i guess that's what she that's what
01:32:49.520they do i guess that she's wearing that so we have to we have to honor her and clap and and
01:32:53.580and genuflect as well and bow and curtsy yes naomi osaka was part of the like black only
01:33:01.900dinner party that happened during the french open um it's just so outrageous like if you and i had
01:33:08.160a whites only dinner party we we if i was in traditional media would get fired you'd get0.93
01:33:12.940fired from news but you can have a black only dinner party because that's a celebration
01:33:16.440of you know i guess blackness which is allowed but celebrations of whiteness are not no and she0.72
01:33:22.500was big on the blm stuff but you can't ask her questions about clay and she's shy and she needs0.82
01:33:29.140mental health counseling but she's totally entitled to call all this attention to herself0.69
01:33:32.780in a head-to-toe white kimono as she arrives in Wimbledon. And I guess, are we allowed to
01:33:38.920ask about that or not? I'm not clear on the rules on what you can ask Naomi about and what you can't
01:33:44.860because we're all just living in her world. And speaking of the weird behavior around the pressers
01:33:52.280that follow the matches, Rob, which all of the players do, and most of them dislike, at least
01:33:59.300the losers dislike them because you've just lost a match and you really don't want to be asked about
01:34:03.540it. It's hard, but it's part of tennis. They all do it. Serena Williams at age 44 decides to try
01:34:11.720to reemerge at Wimbledon and look hats off to her. She actually is the goat of female tennis. I think0.98
01:34:18.240her numbers are even better than Steffi Graff's. Forgive me, Steffi, if I'm wrong, but they're
01:34:21.240right. They're right. Like, I think they might both have 23 grand slams. Yeah. Crazy ass, you
01:34:25.900know, accomplishments, but age comes for us all. And so Serena tries to go back out there and she1.00
01:34:32.340lost. She got, she got her ass beat in her first round and went down and guess what she refused to0.99
01:34:39.400do? The press conference after the fact, which was considered universally bad form by her.0.99
01:34:47.080She's too much of a diva, Rob. She didn't want to have to submit herself to the questions of0.90
01:34:52.600reporters. And there's a report out today that while she was refusing to do that, she was
01:34:57.620complaining to the Wimbledon organizers who, since she lost removed from her, the ability to use
01:35:04.320five black cars, you know, like the town cars that take you around everywhere where there was one for
01:35:09.100her mom. There was one for her sister. There was one for her trainer. She had five. She lost. And
01:35:13.920they said, we're no longer going to pay for those five black cars. And reportedly she complained.0.95
01:35:18.540she wanted them throughout the tournament period end of report i'm sick of this woman's diva behavior1.00
01:35:23.740and she's worth not millions of dollars hundreds of millions of dollars she absolutely is is the1.00
01:35:28.660greatest of all time on the women's side not only that but just as an athlete 44 years old0.98
01:35:34.800they let her come back and she didn't like come back to the phoenix open they let her come back
01:35:39.320for the first time the first match she's played is at wimbledon which is one of the most prestigious
01:35:43.800tournaments if not the most prestigious tennis event that we have every year um she plays somebody
01:35:50.300who has got a 3 and 13 record i think is ranked something like 80th in the world and then there's
01:35:55.540that little nearly weak handshake right there that drives me crazy you are a leader you are a legend
01:36:01.520in your sport give this young lady a hug i don't know who she is all right give her a hug she just
01:36:06.460beat somebody she grew up idolizing watching and someone she probably never thought she would play1.00
01:36:11.420let alone at wimbledon and what does she do she gives you this little this little wet0.95
01:36:15.500flaccid clam thing after the match because you just lost you've got 39 grand slam wins 23 singles
01:36:21.380wins you're the greatest of all time give this girl a proper handshake and a hug and and congratulate
01:36:26.600her because this is a huge moment for tennis and it's a huge moment in her life whether or not she
01:36:31.040ever wins a match again and then at the end walk into that media briefing room drink your gatorade
01:36:37.200and give a press conference and answer every single question answer every single question
01:36:43.800because this might be your last time doing it go out with grace dignity and style and by the way
01:36:48.520if you did that maybe the tournament will give you those five town cars that you don't deserve
01:36:52.660and that you don't need anymore gas is expensive all right but maybe they would have but because0.98
01:36:56.760you she handled it like a total loser she handled it like a total loser and it's a shame it's a1.00
01:37:02.220shame and it's bad for the sport yes she's got she's got a repeat problem with bad sportsmanship0.99
01:37:08.360here you're right the the mealy uh handshake with the woman who beat her was 20 year old
01:37:12.840australian maya joint um who won and you're right about her ranking i think she's 78th in the world
01:37:17.620she's but she beat serena um she's a lot younger a lot younger and people that's why the older0.88
01:37:24.260players don't do well they can't last serena fell apart in the third set that's what happened here0.61
01:37:29.340You know, of course, she's she's 24 years older than this other girl. Right.0.99
01:37:33.200Foreseeable. And by the way, she took the spot of another girl who could have been there ascending in her career.0.89
01:37:39.240Whatever. She wanted to see her name in lights again. She got it.
01:37:42.160And then those press conferences afterward are mandatory and she refused to go.
01:37:46.320And then it actually came out the Daily Mail's reporting that when Serena tried to come back in 2022, she was beaten there, too, in the first round by Harmony Tan.
01:37:55.640And Harmony Tan said that Serena, after the match, right after, blocked Harmony Tan on Instagram.