The Megyn Kelly Show - Parents Pushed to Breaking Points, COVID Child Abuse, and Why the Corporate Press Hates Joe Rogan, with Dave Smith

00:00:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.800 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. It's Friday. Yes, we made it.

00:00:17.480 What's happening in the world? Well, Canada's Freedom Convoy protest continues with talk of

00:00:22.660 U.S. truckers disrupting the Super Bowl. New York is set to fire, oh, thousands of unvaccinated

00:00:28.840 government workers. Still, they're still holding on to this as of now. And Joe Biden can't explain

00:00:34.580 what what temporary inflation is or when it will end and instead goes after Lester Holt as a wise

00:00:41.140 guy. He's a wise guy. This is another parent is physically assaulted for not wearing a mask.

00:00:46.020 Sure, it's going well, but we're going to laugh instead of cry today. Happy to bring to you

00:00:50.860 stand up comedian, libertarian and host of the podcast. Part of the problem, Dave Smith. Hey,

00:00:57.220 Dave. How's it going? Hey, Megyn. Thank you for having me on. I don't know. I don't know if I

00:01:01.320 can promise to make good on that laughing rather than crying, but we could cry together. That'd be

00:01:05.560 fine. We're going to try it. We're going to try it. I love that part of the problem, by the way. I

00:01:08.760 love because I just whenever there's something it's like hashtag part of the problem and it's a thing.

00:01:12.800 So way to embrace it. Lean into it. Yes, that's the idea. All right. So you are, as I understand it,

00:01:19.860 pretty much a lifelong New Yorker. Grew up in Brooklyn and you're from but like parts Park Slope, which

00:01:25.280 you tell me because I heard you describe yourself as sort of lower middle class, but Park Slope these

00:01:31.080 days is where all the snooty journalists live and it's anything but middle class.

00:01:37.860 Yeah, it was it was a much different area in the 80s and 90s when I grew up there. It was it was

00:01:42.760 coming up. It wasn't like a like a terrible neighborhood or anything like that. But you

00:01:46.220 didn't have to be a multimillionaire to live there as as you do today. But yeah, it was much more.

00:01:53.260 I feel like I was born in 1983 and I think I was like the last generation of like our parents just

00:02:01.680 told us to go outside and play. Yeah. And we just did that. We had block parties. The kids got into

00:02:09.100 fights and there was no, you know, adult around to report back to. You were just expected to kind of

00:02:14.200 handle it. And yeah, and everybody in Brooklyn was from Brooklyn, which is very different than today.

00:02:20.500 Mm hmm. My dad was from Brooklyn, definitely working class. But, you know, he was born in

00:02:26.000 1940. But he was always very proud of it. He loved being from Brooklyn. You'd say that he passed in the

00:02:31.520 80s. But I'd say, you know, we'd say, Dad, you know, what about Brooklyn or New York? Brooklyn is the

00:02:37.040 largest at the five boroughs of New York. It's like part of his identity. But man, I went there to a

00:02:43.240 party when I was at Fox. I don't know, maybe 2013, 2014. I was like, OK, fine. I'm going to see my

00:02:49.860 friends at their townhouse. And you know what I got from like more than one person? How do you sleep

00:02:54.680 at night working for Fox News? And I remember saying, like, I sleep great. The checks, cash.

00:03:00.800 And I feel like we're providing service to the nation. It's like practically getting hissed at

00:03:04.960 when I entered the rooms. Yeah, there's a there is an unbelievable elitism that has come to dominate

00:03:13.240 the wealthy areas in in New York City. And I think probably over the last couple of years,

00:03:19.900 their contempt for the working class has been more on display than ever, even though they consider

00:03:25.260 themselves to be like the champions of the working class. It's a very interesting, absurd dichotomy.

00:03:30.820 Yeah. And the way you champion the working class is to fire three thousand of them for not getting

00:03:36.620 the jab, which looks like, at least as of now, it's going to happen today in New York City for

00:03:41.980 the remaining public service workers who haven't gotten the vaccine, which is so absurd right now,

00:03:47.440 Dave, given that especially at this point in the pandemic, we know the vaccine only helps you.

00:03:53.140 It doesn't help prevent the spread. So there is no public health necessity. The hospitals are not

00:03:57.560 overwhelmed for to insist that people get this vaccine to keep working. Yeah. And what's so

00:04:03.440 fascinating is that it was the the heroes in 2020, way back then, the essential workers, the nurses and

00:04:13.660 the truck drivers or like all these people who were in New York City, they were like giving them

00:04:18.660 applause every day at 6 p.m. when they came home. But now that so a group, specifically the nurses who

00:04:24.440 had worked for about a year and a half, you know, in a situation where almost all of them either got

00:04:31.160 covid or had figured out how to protect themselves from covid, they're all going to get fired just

00:04:36.380 because they didn't want to take this pharmaceutical product that, as you correctly pointed out, is not

00:04:41.780 going to stop you from getting it or stop you from spreading it to other people. And particularly

00:04:46.420 with this Omicron variant, I mean, there's look, I know you're like not supposed to question these

00:04:52.340 things, but I look at the data in Israel where they're 90 percent double vaccinated, 80 percent

00:04:57.540 boosted. They're giving out their fourth vaccine to people 65 and older. And they just in the last few

00:05:04.140 weeks set their their daily record for for new cases and for new deaths. It's just that, you know,

00:05:09.560 the follow the science crowd has no scientific argument for why we should be firing people

00:05:14.860 who don't want to get the vaccine that I was opposed to the mandates when we had Delta and we

00:05:21.540 still could say that the vaccines might provide you with some protection against contracting it.

00:05:27.480 Not really that much, but some some. Certainly we were still using the term breakthrough cases

00:05:33.040 because the vaccine was supposed to stop, you know, them from breaking through. And obviously

00:05:38.480 they weren't as good with Delta from preventing transmission as they were with the original

00:05:42.380 strain of the of the virus. But now it's a joke. Now it's just you fire these guys for what?

00:05:48.380 Now it's just like, well, we kind of set the policy. So we're going to see it through. Why?

00:05:53.240 What's this is just punitive at this point? And we thought Mayor Adams would be a little bit more

00:05:57.180 reasonable so far on covid. He really hasn't been. Yeah. And it was his very first thing that he did

00:06:03.600 when he came in was extend the all the emergency powers. And it's yeah, that was that was certainly

00:06:09.080 disappointing. And it's also as if and I don't mean I'm not presenting this as if this is some grand

00:06:15.000 conspiracy from the very beginning. But as we all know, there are incentives at work here. And it there's

00:06:22.540 certainly these giant pharmaceutical companies who stand to just rake in billions of dollars if you

00:06:27.760 have to continue if you're mandated in order to keep your job or to go to a restaurant or just live a normal

00:06:33.080 life. And so now there's there's all these perverse incentives to keep this thing going when it just

00:06:38.480 makes absolutely no sense. And of course, almost every study confirms at this point that natural

00:06:44.720 immunity is stronger and many of them suggest much longer lasting than than the vaccine. So why would it

00:06:52.720 be that you can't? Hey, if I got a positive test from two months ago, why can't that be good enough to

00:06:59.120 be a citizen with full rights under the law? And on top of that, just the the idea that New York City

00:07:05.700 has actually created this two tiered class system where one group of people do not have basic rights

00:07:12.460 to participate in society the way others do like discrimination under the law. And this is not

00:07:17.940 like, whoa, what are we doing here? This this I agree with you. And I read something you said. I was

00:07:24.580 like, oh, my God, I get this guy. And I and I love what you what you were saying. You're saying the one

00:07:28.580 thing that really gets your blood boiling is when they try to return our rights to us under the

00:07:36.840 following three conditions. You know, it's like they they kidnap your kid and they say, I will do you

00:07:42.320 the favor of returning your child to you if you do the following three things. And then, you know, if you

00:07:49.080 do the following three things, maybe you'll get your kid, maybe you won't. But if they give your kid back to

00:07:52.960 you, you're supposed to say, thank you so much, benevolent leader. Yeah, there's it's like no one

00:08:00.040 thinks anymore in a serious way about what the role of government ought to be and what the nature of

00:08:07.300 rights ought to be. And the idea that the the government can just kind of do what they decide

00:08:14.160 they want to and then reward you with these rights, treating them as if these are like state

00:08:19.220 granted privileges is appalling to me. And the you know, the I remember when Governor Murphy in New

00:08:27.020 Jersey said on Tucker Carlson show back in I think it was in May of 2020 when he asked him, well, where

00:08:33.600 do you get the authority? He had arrested people for going to synagogue. This is where do you get the

00:08:38.020 authority? This is clearly a constitutionally protected. Right. Who gave you the authority to

00:08:41.360 suspend the Bill of Rights? Yeah. And he said, well, I wasn't thinking about the Bill of Rights.

00:08:44.960 He said it was above my pay grade. Yeah, it's above my pay grade. Well, then don't touch it.

00:08:50.220 But it's above your pay grade to to try to undo it. Yeah, no, it's actually exactly your pay grade.

00:08:55.260 This is this is quite literally what you're paid for is is to, you know, run a state government. And

00:09:01.460 you yeah, it's people you you do not have the right to do this. And the idea of rights is is a moral

00:09:07.380 construct. It's not nobody's ever argued that governments are incapable of violating people's

00:09:12.980 rights. But the idea is that you morally are not permitted to do that. And man, if this country

00:09:19.260 is going to survive this whole thing, we really need to get back that idea, which is a big part

00:09:25.240 of why this country was so successful ever. Yeah, I'm trying to I was just looking up the

00:09:30.740 exact quote. But yeah, it was pretty crazy. And Tucker did a great job of that guy. The other night,

00:09:34.780 he had a soft montage where you sort of go through and pick soundbites and put them together

00:09:39.240 of all the craziness that happened during the pandemic with people, you know, just cracking

00:09:45.760 down, like arresting the the paddleboarder in the middle of the ocean. He was alone by himself.

00:09:51.300 And I think it was in California. They arrested this guy. But yeah, to your point, you know,

00:09:56.140 what what did our founders say? You know, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are

00:10:01.300 created equal, that that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

00:10:06.700 And among these, you know, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. OK, these governors and

00:10:12.820 even worse than the governors, it's like these little bureaucrats below them or Fauci or, you

00:10:18.700 know, or Rochelle Walensky, who's never been elected to do anything, started taking them

00:10:24.320 away. And now that they're finally being forced because of the politics. Now they want to claim

00:10:30.040 the science has changed. It hasn't. The politics have changed. Now they're sort of they want us

00:10:34.340 to pat them on the back for returning our unalienable rights to us. Right. It's like

00:10:39.840 the victory lap being taken by these Democrats. Like you're welcome. Like Hakeem Jeffries earlier

00:10:45.040 this week, Biden crushed the virus. No, we do. Who do you think you're kidding?

00:10:51.180 Yeah, no, absolutely. And and the fact is that while you see like the entire corporate press

00:10:56.820 is kind of freaking out about misinformation, disinformation online, what they just refuse

00:11:04.040 to do is have an ounce of introspection and ask themselves, well, why is it that trust in

00:11:09.460 institutions all throughout this country have completely crumbled? And the corporate press

00:11:14.220 is is is one of the biggest ones that has. I mean, trust in media, the numbers of people

00:11:19.880 who are actually even even listening or subscribing to newspapers or watching cable news has plummeted.

00:11:26.020 And this is because it's not just that they're wrong about everything, but they're so dishonest

00:11:31.000 and there's no sense of of admitting it. So, like, you know, if you look at the lockdowns,

00:11:36.560 the original lockdowns, which, in my opinion, were like one of the greatest crimes perpetrated

00:11:41.700 on the American people by their governments. I mean, the Johns this Johns Hopkins study comes

00:11:46.780 out pretty clearly demonstrates they had no measurable effect they did and they destroyed

00:11:51.500 lives. And not just the people who died as a result of them. I mean, the hundreds of thousands

00:11:55.760 of small businesses, the chill that, you know, children who's, you know, have been completely

00:12:00.920 stunted in their development, childhood obesity up something like 50 percent that you would think

00:12:06.300 in a sane society that the people who pushed for those lockdowns and implemented them at the very

00:12:12.560 least should never be near public policy again. And they should at least have to admit, man,

00:12:17.960 we got the biggest thing ever wrong. And but there's none of that. It's just like, oh,

00:12:22.300 the science has changed. But no, we're talking about what the science was back then. While people

00:12:26.500 who were against the lockdowns were completely demonized. That's right. That's right. And people

00:12:31.080 who took to the streets to try to make a point about it were demonized. Whereas then the Black Lives

00:12:35.460 Matter protesters came out and they were celebrated. And that that same thing, you know,

00:12:40.260 leads me to what's happening in Canada, because you mentioned the class issue here. You know,

00:12:45.400 the working class, the Democrats used to be the party of the working class. They're clearly not

00:12:50.020 anymore. They're they're losing working class voters by the boatload. Trump was picking them up. The

00:12:55.400 Republicans continue to pick them up. The Democrats are the party of the elites now, the college educated

00:13:00.860 elites, or at least the ones who don't really give two shits about the working class. And it's kind of

00:13:05.880 manifesting in like a microcosm up in Canada, which I basically consider you a Canadian because I know

00:13:13.380 you went to college in Oneonta. Right. So it's like, yeah. Yeah. Right. I guess that's true.

00:13:20.120 The winters felt pretty Canadian. They're terrible. I mean, I went to Syracuse and I went to Syracuse for

00:13:24.820 college and lived up there, too. So we're basically Canadian. We can speak to this. But what's happening

00:13:29.740 up there is really extraordinary. Right. Like the dam burst. The Canadians took it. Unlike here,

00:13:34.300 there weren't there wasn't as much push pushback, you know, even their conservative leaders kind of

00:13:39.180 abandoned them and shut up and enforced all this nonsense. And it took the working class truckers

00:13:44.260 to say, F this. We're just not going to do this anymore. Yeah. Well, I think also it's probably a

00:13:51.220 combination of that and also that they were pushed a bit further than the Americans were, you know,

00:13:55.800 so you kind of wonder where people's breaking points are. And and it seems constantly like they're

00:14:00.700 the kind of ruling elite is flirting with that. Like, how far can we push you? You know,

00:14:05.800 what if we destroy your business? What if we say we're going to propagandize your children to hate

00:14:09.880 you? Is that you know, like how far before you finally snap? And I'm like, well, no, we're doing

00:14:14.240 something about this. And then, of course, they'll call you a terrorist or a racist or whatever the

00:14:18.660 name is. But one of the things that's really interesting about this, this mass trucker protest

00:14:23.820 and other protesting as well, but specifically with the truckers, is that it's it's very easy

00:14:29.720 for like I was talking before about kind of the elitism in these like wealthy liberal areas.

00:14:35.940 It's very easy for people in today's day and age to be disconnected from how much they sit on top of

00:14:43.940 the work that blue collar workers do. And by the way, I'm including myself in this. I'm not like saying

00:14:49.320 like, I mean, you know, I'm sitting here in like, you know, in my office, in my home, there's heat,

00:14:55.380 there's, you know, there's electricity, there's there's an internet connection, there's all of

00:14:59.100 these things that blue collar workers worked very hard to provide for me, and I just get them. I

00:15:04.980 don't have to think about it that much. And that's true for for all of us. And we're very disconnected

00:15:10.340 from how powerful truckers are, our society still runs on truckers, getting things from

00:15:19.320 point A to point B, and things all fall apart very quickly without them. So it is truly like

00:15:25.260 a kind of reclaiming of power that the working class has that they have not exercised for a very

00:15:32.140 long time. And that, you know, as you pointed out with Donald Trump, carrying the working class vote,

00:15:37.680 that that in itself should have been something to really open people's eyes in America. But of course,

00:15:42.400 no one wanted to examine that. But the working class in this country, and many others across the

00:15:48.860 Western world has been screwed over for decades. And this now they over the last couple years,

00:15:55.540 they have absolutely just been decimated. And so I just I love it. I think it's it's wonderful to see

00:16:01.260 them standing up. I think that, you know, the the party in control, right, the Democrats running the

00:16:06.720 country right now, certainly the media that supports them, they don't they don't really want the working

00:16:11.820 class. They look down on them. Hillary Clinton's deplorables thing was wider than we knew. I mean,

00:16:18.680 it was go back to Obama with, you know, the bitter clingers. There really is a snobbery amongst these

00:16:24.820 so-called elites with their, you know, the Harvard, whatever they they do think they're better. And they

00:16:30.820 think the truckers are dumb, and that they need to be punished for their own good. I mean, right now,

00:16:35.720 the headline this morning, I was just I saw in the Daily Mail before I came in here. Ontario declares

00:16:41.180 a state of emergency. Now this is under President Biden urging Justin Trudeau to get even tougher.

00:16:46.900 Okay, so what are they doing? And this is this is put in place by the conservative, the conservative

00:16:52.380 Ontario premier, which is a weird thing to call a leader anyplace outside of like czarist Russia.

00:16:59.160 But the conservative Doug Ford is saying the drivers can be fined $100,000. Now,

00:17:04.440 they can be jailed for up to a year, these truckers, they're going to have the trucks seized. Okay,

00:17:09.680 good luck with that. And they may revoke the licenses of these truckers. So good old,

00:17:15.180 good old protests in the streets. You know, you're favored or don't depending on your politics,

00:17:19.720 obviously. But this this is going to get more and more problematic because it's not just about

00:17:24.640 the truckers anymore up there in Canada. It's about Canadians trying to push for their own freedoms.

00:17:29.060 And now Americans are forming their own trucker convoy and are ready to push to

00:17:33.580 yeah, it'll be interesting to see where this all goes. And of course, you know, a trucker strike

00:17:40.760 or something like that. These things can be very painful. And I don't think any of us wish more

00:17:45.300 pain on the American people. But I think there's a growing feeling that we're running out of options

00:17:50.820 here. And that there's really that what can the American people do who want to get back to living

00:17:57.340 in a somewhat normal, somewhat free society. And besides move to Florida or South Dakota or

00:18:03.580 something like that, like, what are the options for the rest of us? And it seems like there's not

00:18:07.980 many and this is one of them. But I think what you said there is absolutely spot on. And it's something

00:18:13.300 that just I find like infuriating is this kind of, you know, you see it all the time, even when they're

00:18:19.660 not like, like when the establishment corporate press, when liberal elites talk about their own

00:18:25.880 cultural values, it's almost like this implicit contempt for the working class. You know, the

00:18:32.000 values of like, say, the woke kind of political correctness stuff are, could you think of anything?

00:18:39.380 I mean, has anyone ever been like on a job site or hung out with a trucker or been around working

00:18:44.200 class people? These people do not. This is like, you know, upper middle class university values that

00:18:52.340 the worst thing you can do is like, say something that's offensive to some group. This is not how

00:18:57.180 working class people feel. This is not a representation. And by the way, this stuff is

00:19:01.060 also not a representation of how like working class minorities feel. They're not like this.

00:19:06.220 There's I, you know, I grew up in Brooklyn and I've hung out in like the hood before and stuff.

00:19:09.820 And like these people are not concerned about saying no, no words. They're not concerned about

00:19:13.800 someone hurting someone's feelings. They like offensive jokes. They like all of this stuff.

00:19:18.940 It's this is you, Mr. You know, like Ivy League educated part. You know, it's obviously like

00:19:25.160 someone who's never been through anything in their life that thinks microaggressions are an issue.

00:19:30.840 This is no one who's actually been through something believes that.

00:19:34.520 This is exactly right. This and this, of course, is at the heart of your pal Joe Rogan's huge success.

00:19:40.940 He's an everyman and he understands what the everyman wants to talk about and how they talk and

00:19:47.500 because he genuinely is that person. And I know you've spent the past couple of nights with him

00:19:52.680 in the wake of this whole scandal. So I'd love to ask you after this break about the tale of two

00:19:58.580 Joe's Joe Rogan and Joe Biden getting very testy with Lester Holt last night. He was basically like,

00:20:05.420 Lester, supposed to be on my team. Why would you ask me such uncomfortable questions about

00:20:09.400 my inflation predictions? We'll bring you that in just two minutes. Don't go away.

00:20:15.400 Dave, before we move off of COVID madness, the it continues, right? Even to our point about like,

00:20:29.280 we know this stuff is not working cloth mask. It's a joke. The vaccine protects only you potentially

00:20:34.100 from severe illness that I really do believe. So if you look at the charts on like who's in the

00:20:38.140 hospital, way, way, way, way more unvaccinated getting sick if they get COVID than those who get

00:20:44.700 COVID and who have been vexed. But it's a personal choice. You can't mandate it. Anyway,

00:20:50.320 the school board meetings are continuing, right? And parents have been ticked off about CRT

00:20:54.220 in the schools and the radical trans ideology in the schools and like the totally inappropriate

00:20:59.000 sex messaging for the kids in the schools. And all the while, we're keeping our kids muzzled behind

00:21:03.960 these masks nonstop when we know it's bullshit, especially the cloth mask, which is what all the

00:21:09.640 kids wear, right? So this dad goes, this is upstate New York. His name is Dave

00:21:14.340 Callis and he gets tossed from a school board meeting this year, this, this week because he

00:21:22.000 refused to put his, his mask on. And the security guard went after him like he had just committed

00:21:28.860 a felony. Watch this.

00:21:30.860 Oh, they found him. Look at, they found him. We're in America. Oh, time to look at this. Look at this.

00:21:43.020 Look, what are you doing? What the fuck are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?

00:21:50.960 Is this how you do? What are you doing? Do you put your hands up? Holy crap. Holy crap. That's assault.

00:21:58.180 That is assault. Oh my God. Oh my God. Doing that to the children too. Holy shit. What the fuck are

00:22:08.600 you doing? What are you doing? It's ridiculous. Honestly, you would have thought he was some sort

00:22:17.280 of a kidnapper. Yeah. Those are, I mean, I'm like, uh, I'm uncomfortable saying publicly what I think

00:22:26.520 should happen to, to some of these people. And, you know, it's like we were saying before, like

00:22:31.120 they're, you know, they're pushing people, uh, you know, it's like they, they had that whole, like,

00:22:36.800 um, the justice department said the thing about them being terrorists and stuff like this, the,

00:22:41.160 the concerned parents, which of course is like absurd and so appalling on its face. But,

00:22:46.200 uh, you know, now I have kids, I have two, they're, you know, very young, they're below school age,

00:22:52.000 um, right now, but I can, I can kind of understand a little bit more that, you know,

00:22:57.420 you might make that terrorist claim come true at some point, you know, you're, you're messing with

00:23:03.120 people's children. This is something that people will die for. This is, this is not a joke. This is

00:23:08.800 like, if you're talking about, you want to muzzle my child and propagandize them with an ideology that I

00:23:14.140 detest, that is, that is something that is actually worth dying for. And I, I, I'm, I'm truly concerned

00:23:21.580 about how far they can push good people before they will do things, you know? And of course I'm

00:23:26.860 not advocating anything like that. No, you're raising a red flag saying that you don't want

00:23:30.420 to see it happen. Right. You know, but it's like this, it really is like, um, the mix of everything,

00:23:36.840 what they're doing, you know, there's, there's a lot of things that people can put up with,

00:23:40.020 but you don't come after someone's children and what they're doing to children is, is just,

00:23:47.440 I mean, it's a, I can't express how appalling it is. Yeah, I know. And you're right because you take

00:23:54.260 a man like that. He's not bothering anybody. You know, he's sitting there, he doesn't have his mask

00:23:58.140 on. And in New York state, as of Wednesday, the mat, the indoor mask mandate was lifted anyway.

00:24:03.040 Right. But he happened to be in a school and they haven't lifted another school. Well,

00:24:06.240 that's for the children. You're telling me that guy just randomly sitting, he can sit,

00:24:09.400 you know, next door in a restaurant and with the same amount of people. And that's fine.

00:24:13.420 But him choosing not to put it on at the school board meeting makes it somehow extra viral.

00:24:17.780 He knew that was bullshit. So he took a stand. The cop could have gone over the cop. I mean,

00:24:22.060 I used to date the son of a cop and he, they used to call these sort of pretend cops square badges.

00:24:27.740 So he would have said that square badge, the square badge goes over to him and give him a little

00:24:32.260 bit of power. He becomes drunk on it and decides to tear the father out of there. Like he's really

00:24:37.740 committed a harm and that man's children go to that school. You're right. And you think about

00:24:42.580 how that makes him feel. And we're coming off of two years now of people being shamed for speaking

00:24:48.380 their mind. Michael Brendan Doherty had a great term on the National Review earlier today. Hold on.

00:24:54.100 I wrote it down because it's it's we know we've heard the argument made, but I just like the way

00:24:57.260 he put it. He was talking about Canada. He said they tried to cast the normal left wing

00:25:02.360 culture spells on the truckers. You're racist. You're bigots. I like that. The normal left wing

00:25:08.180 culture spells. And that's what they do to any parent who speaks up, you know, whether it's about

00:25:13.660 masking or vaccine or CRT or the trans stuff. And parents, they are at their breaking point. The kids

00:25:19.920 are at their breaking point. And it's only the politicians coming to grips with that. That is

00:25:25.540 finally changing the policies. Yeah, exactly. And I think what we were talking about before

00:25:32.740 kind of touches on the same thing, you know, where it's like the contempt for working class and lower

00:25:39.240 middle class Americans. I mean, I know like you've you've publicly talked about pulling your kids out

00:25:44.760 of the crazy schools in New York. I'm very fortunate that like my career is going very well. I have a lot

00:25:50.740 of options of what I can do. My children will not be in this situation. But if you're, you know,

00:25:56.760 a working class parent who's already just getting hit really hard with property taxes, you may not

00:26:03.600 have the financial option to do anything else because, of course, you're already forced to pay

00:26:08.440 for the public schools. Maybe you can't afford to move. You can't afford private school. You can't

00:26:12.900 afford these other options. So those people are the ones who are stuck with this. And of course,

00:26:17.000 we know, you know, all I mean, we could spend the entire rest of the show just listing progressive

00:26:22.740 Democrats, you know, who send their kids to private schools. It's like all of them. And so,

00:26:28.720 you know, again, this is who it falls on. This is this is who it falls square squarely on is these

00:26:35.080 like lower middle class working class parents who have no other options but to confront this. And I

00:26:40.200 will I give that dad credit for not clocking that guy. He would have been completely within his rights

00:26:45.220 to he demonstrated, I think, a good amount of restraint. So good for him for that crazy to

00:26:50.720 witness. You know, yes, I did pull my kids and I have to say we had a really interesting guy in the

00:26:55.240 show last week who is he wrote a whole book about how people sort of naturally go along with the group

00:27:03.340 mentality. It's a human instinct to want to belong to the group. It's a survival instinct. You know,

00:27:08.840 it's baked in us whether we want it or not. And it's the thing that makes you not say your opinion

00:27:15.160 when you think the majority is not going to share my opinion. And he was saying in a study after study

00:27:22.840 shows like if you if you say your opinion, you will find out you're probably not in the minority.

00:27:28.220 You probably are the majority. There is a silent majority on a lot of these issues. And you need only

00:27:33.260 speak up and try to see whether it's true. And I will tell you, I haven't told a story, but

00:27:38.100 just this week, I moved my kids. My husband and I moved our kids to new schools. We moved out of

00:27:45.100 New York City because of this stuff. And one my my daughter's school needs a new head of school

00:27:51.740 because the existing head is she's leaving. She's been there a long time. She's, I think, retiring.

00:27:56.260 So they're looking for a new head of school. So we're a little concerned, right? It's like,

00:28:00.300 I don't know what I don't know what we're going to get. This is what actually happened at my

00:28:03.120 boys. Old school. They got a new head of school and he was this far left guy who was very woke

00:28:07.940 and completely changed the, you know, the curriculum. So I don't want to see that happen.

00:28:13.380 So we had a parental Zoom talking about what we all want. This is with the search committee

00:28:17.680 in the new head of school. And I will tell you, there's definitely a point in my life

00:28:21.520 at which I would not have said how I felt because I would have been worried. People would have thought,

00:28:26.440 oh, I'm standing. I'm standing on an issue that's somehow against diversity or something.

00:28:31.840 But I said explicitly, I did it. You know, I said, this is my name. This is how I feel.

00:28:37.660 We pulled our kids from these schools because DEI, you know, while it has a nice name,

00:28:42.640 diversity, equity and inclusion, it's actually really toxic. It's leading to massive division

00:28:47.680 within parents in our old school and children within our own school. The school Dalton now,

00:28:51.900 I have a friend who goes there. Students are sitting by race at lunchtime. They're sitting by race.

00:28:56.000 Um, so I'm like, we don't, we don't want that. We're not looking for quote, a change agent. We

00:29:02.760 actually think things here are going well and we don't want somebody coming in and forcing their

00:29:05.960 ideological politics on our children or our, you know, parent body. And, you know, you put yourself

00:29:11.780 out there a little, right? Lo and behold, you know what happened, Dave? Other parents started

00:29:16.120 raising their hands saying, we agree. We agree. We agree. It wasn't unanimous, but I felt supported

00:29:22.480 and I was like, you know, the guy was right. You need the guy to take the mask off. You need the

00:29:26.580 parents to stand up. You need the person to say the things that are unpopular or the, or that you

00:29:31.720 think are. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I completely agree with that. That's, that's really

00:29:36.420 beautiful. And it reminds me, there's this, uh, this story in, um, in the Soviet union. Uh, I believe

00:29:42.680 it was in 1988, but internet people, you could double check me on that. I might internet a little bit

00:29:47.980 off. You guys, they, they always figure out if you get something wrong, they always let you know.

00:29:51.780 I'll always get, I'll find out on Twitter, but it was the Pope came and visited the Soviet union

00:29:56.920 and he hadn't come in a very long time. Cause as you know, the commies were not too friendly

00:30:00.980 with, uh, with religion and hundreds of thousands of people came out to see him. And a lot of people,

00:30:06.660 uh, who were living in the Soviet union at the time credit, this as being like a big game changer,

00:30:10.860 because it's not just that they came out, but they saw that so many other people still held

00:30:15.640 these like religious views that they were kind of holding secretly because they were afraid of the

00:30:19.920 regime. And there's something about that, like that really, cause you're right. We do have this

00:30:23.860 instinctual desire because of course it makes perfect sense as a survival mechanism. You don't

00:30:28.920 want to be, you know, ostracized being ostracized by the group means you die in most of human history.

00:30:33.980 So of course you don't want that. But as soon as you realize that there's numbers with you,

00:30:38.000 people become much more courageous. And so that's, I do think what we need are people doing what you

00:30:44.720 did there. We need people to be like, okay, I'm going to be the first one. Who's going to stand up

00:30:48.000 and say something. And, and that can really like lead a lot of other people to be comfortable to

00:30:52.740 say, yeah, we agree with that too. Then I just, you know, the thing is like this, this game that

00:30:59.140 they play this trickery where it's like, well, we're just for diversity and equity and inclusion

00:31:02.660 and all of this. It's like, no, what we, what I am passionately against that I will make sure

00:31:08.120 my little girl and my little boy never grow up, um, believing in is racialism because it's poisonous.

00:31:14.540 It's so poisonous to see people as defined by their immutable characteristics. The whole point

00:31:21.420 of, of the history of, of, you know, like the racist movements and anti-racist movements is that

00:31:27.620 the anti-racist movements were always saying race shouldn't be that important. And it shouldn't be

00:31:32.940 the center of the first thing you think about when now, of course you never achieve that completely,

00:31:38.420 but you'd like to, as best as possible achieve a world where like my kids look at some kid and

00:31:45.940 that's not the thing they think of as being the most important defining characteristic about them.

00:31:51.040 They just like judge them as an individual. And so that's, you know, that's what the whole thing

00:31:55.800 is against. It's against this latest form of racialism, which is, it's like pure poison.

00:32:00.060 You know, it's in a way it's, I was thinking about this the other day, because when adults talk about

00:32:05.580 race, they'll say he's white, she's black, he's Asian, right? If you listen to how little kids talk

00:32:12.380 about it, they'll say, um, he's about my height. He has black skin and brown eyes. They, they, their

00:32:22.020 instincts are in no way to define the human with the color or the culture or the race. That's,

00:32:27.420 that's not who they are. We're making them into that. And you, we have to object.

00:32:33.640 Yeah, absolutely. And, and the other thing is that kids are also, um, very malleable. So they

00:32:39.720 follow, you know, their kind of program to follow the lead of what adults said for them. So you can

00:32:44.920 make them into somewhat, you know, as, as is clearly demonstrated. Look, if you look at like what,

00:32:49.780 what, um, public schools, uh, were teaching in the Jim Crow South or what government schools in Nazi

00:32:55.320 Germany or what, you know, in the, you can make kids be very racialist and really see that, uh,

00:33:01.660 very quickly. It's a very, very dangerous game to play.

00:33:05.840 You know what, on that front, uh, in New York city, where's poly prep? Is it in Brooklyn? I'm

00:33:10.860 not sure, but it's in Brooklyn. It's in Brooklyn. Okay. So poly prep is a school that's decided to

00:33:14.820 defy Kathy Hochul's while she's defying basically a court order ruled the indoor mask mandates, um,

00:33:20.740 were illegal. She didn't have the power to do it. And then, and that would have included the

00:33:24.580 schools. And then she appealed and they got a stay of that court's ruling. So it's playing out in the

00:33:30.180 courts. Well, poly prep said, we're taking them off, taking the masks off of our kids, which I was

00:33:35.840 like, um, and, and it's not just happening at poly prep. It's happening at other schools now too.

00:33:42.040 There was a video. Where's this one from Deb? I had my team make it cause I saw it online,

00:33:46.880 um, of the children cheering. Do we have it? Asking my team. Yeah. Okay. Um, I can't remember

00:33:55.260 where this isn't poly prep, but look at this. Okay. This is the children celebrating when they

00:33:59.740 found out in another location that they didn't have to wear their masks anymore. Watch

00:34:03.020 starting tomorrow. Look at that Dave. Look at that. Okay. So my, my point is, so you can see the joy,

00:34:26.500 but, but my friends who have kids in the New York city school system are say the children in New

00:34:33.760 York, a lot of the, a lot of the, my friends, kids and so on are ripping on the kids at poly prep

00:34:38.980 ripping on kids like this. This is Vegas, um, saying they're being totally irresponsible.

00:34:42.840 They don't understand how important the masks are. Can you believe what they've done at these

00:34:47.720 schools, endangering the children? So even the kids at these schools who are being brought up by

00:34:53.440 these total COVID hawks, these paranoid Fauci disciples, um, have been indoctrinated to

00:34:59.880 believe I need this little tiny piece of cloth on my face to be safe. Yeah. Yeah. It was well for

00:35:06.680 that video. It's, it's a very interesting thing. I actually, I saw that one, uh, online and it's like

00:35:11.480 this, it's very strange because you see like these little cute kids celebrating. And so, you know,

00:35:17.280 like right away, it's just like a very pleasant image, you know, little kids dancing and being happy,

00:35:21.440 but then it almost immediately just makes you so furious that they did this to these kids for so

00:35:26.380 long, you know, and I look at it like this. I say, look, just imagine if you could just imagine

00:35:32.780 that COVID didn't exist. Um, like, you know, way back times in 2019 or whatever, you know,

00:35:38.940 and imagine you just said you were going to treat kids this way, you know, over say like the common

00:35:44.660 cold and the flu, we're going to mask them up, tell them about washing their hands, telling them to

00:35:48.380 constantly be in fear of this floating abstraction. That is a microscopic germ. We would all

00:35:55.140 immediately be like, that is an insane form of child abuse. I mean, you're, you're raising kids

00:36:00.460 to be germaphobes. It's, it'd be something on the level of like Munchausen by proxy, you know,

00:36:05.440 like what, what are you doing? You can't raise kids to think about these things all the time.

00:36:09.480 Well, okay. COVID does exist. So we're not living in that hypothetical, but do all of those other

00:36:14.880 concerns just go away. But you know, like we're still doing that to children. And of course this

00:36:20.620 is having like profound effects on, on them and we're, it's going to be generations before we see

00:36:27.120 what the results of, of all of this. And, and we may never be able to completely measure it, but it's,

00:36:32.220 it's, it's really just profoundly tragic what has been done to children over the last almost two years

00:36:38.580 now. And it really, it's a sign of a very sick society. I think that you would ever, you know,

00:36:45.200 like children should be what, what you protect first and foremost, you protect children.

00:36:51.280 Everyone else can suffer before the children do. And the idea that like, like I, I have, you know,

00:36:57.940 older people who I really love, you know, but the idea that we would protect older people at the

00:37:03.440 expense of children, I find to be like profoundly sick and backward then, and all of the old older

00:37:10.060 people, uh, in my life, uh, who, who I love would, they would sacrifice their lives for their

00:37:15.140 grandchildren. You know, like they would, they would give up everything to make sure that their

00:37:19.120 grandchildren had a great childhood. And I, I certainly would do that for my children and

00:37:22.820 grandchildren gladly. So it's just, it's so disturbing. Well, and it would have been one thing,

00:37:28.660 especially on the masks, if we had any real data showing that they work, but we have the opposite.

00:37:33.120 And our leaders, Rochelle Walensky continues to lie about her fake mask studies, which have been

00:37:39.680 debunked. And when independent journalists, smart, honest journalists, like David Zweig of New York

00:37:44.560 Magazine and the Atlantic call her up to say, this study was bullshit. Why, why do you keep citing it?

00:37:50.380 He, he asks more elegantly than I just did. She ignores him. She won't give a response, right? She just

00:37:55.740 says, keep the masks on, keep them on forever. And this is why there was a recent poll showed only 31%

00:38:01.100 of the people trust Fauci at this point, only 13% of the people trust Biden for information on COVID.

00:38:08.980 And we know why we know why. All right, standby. We didn't get to the tale of two Joes, but thankfully

00:38:12.880 we have Dave for the whole show. So we're going to get there shortly. Pay a bill, come right back.

00:38:17.540 And in the meantime, don't forget, you can watch the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph channel

00:38:22.660 111 every weekday at noon East and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube

00:38:27.380 channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, subscribe, download on

00:38:32.640 Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And there you'll find our full

00:38:37.640 archives with more than 255 shows, including some past comedians like Tim Dillon in episode 60

00:38:43.340 and Andrew Schultz in episode 74. I'm just giggling, thinking about a couple of the moments in those

00:38:49.500 shows, both of which I personally went back and listened to, which is always a sign it was a good

00:38:54.220 show, right? If I just want to listen to it on my own free time. So Joe Biden gave an interview to

00:39:05.300 Lester Holt that's going to play during the Super Bowl. They do this every year, right? You choose the

00:39:09.260 network airing Super Bowl. You sit with the host, you give them an interview and a couple of highlights

00:39:13.620 slash lowlights have been released. And here is Joe Biden. I follow the science Joe Biden.

00:39:19.500 President, I follow the science Joe Biden. Take a listen. In recent days, we've seen numerous

00:39:23.880 governors from blue states roll back indoor mask requirements, essentially getting ahead of the

00:39:29.340 federal government, the CDC. Are those governors wrong? Well, it's hard to say whether they're wrong.

00:39:34.980 Here's the science is saying now that masks work, masks make a difference. Should children be required

00:39:40.520 to wear masks in schools? Well, look, when I got in office, only 46 percent of the schools were open.

00:39:46.960 And now 98 percent of them are open and they're wearing masks. What's happening is every day that

00:39:51.980 goes by, children are more protected. We're now on the verge of being able to have shots for

00:39:58.300 children under the age of seven. Are you afraid, though, that some states and cities are moving too

00:40:03.540 quickly to loosen indoor mask mandates? Well, you know, it's I've I committed that I would follow the

00:40:12.080 science, the science as put forward by the CDC and the federal people. And I think it's probably

00:40:19.740 premature, but it's you know, it's it's a tough call. It's a tough call, but might as well side on

00:40:26.320 the side that hurts the children. Let's let's just let's go with the one that hurts the kids the most.

00:40:31.940 Follow the science. Follow the science, Dave. I don't know. He he talks about other states doing it

00:40:36.620 too quickly. You know, maybe a little premature. But three weeks ago, they were calling Glenn Youngkin

00:40:40.860 the devil for doing this. Three weeks later, tough call, maybe a little premature.

00:40:46.680 Yeah, it's a it's a tough call, Megan. I mean, you can't expect the president of the United States

00:40:50.600 to make tough calls. I mean, come on. What do you what do you want from the guy? It's I actually

00:40:56.360 appreciate every now and then Joe Biden blurts things out correctly, which I actually appreciate.

00:41:00.980 He said, I follow the science as the science is dictated by the CDC. You're like, yes, that's

00:41:06.280 actually that's more accurate than just this follow the science idea. And, you know, for him to say

00:41:12.100 like if you really want to have a scientific conversation about this, for him to say, well,

00:41:16.180 only 46 percent of schools were open and now it's up in the 90s. It's like, OK, but that's not really

00:41:22.160 that doesn't give you too much information. I'd like to know of those schools that were open back then.

00:41:28.040 Was there a disaster? Were you know, people dying? Was covid being spread like more significantly in

00:41:35.400 those areas? Because if not, and the answer is no. And then the conclusion from that would be that

00:41:42.100 all of these schools should have been open the whole time. So it's like we're not really having

00:41:47.480 a scientific conversation when you're just, you know, bragging about where the rates are now as

00:41:52.480 opposed to then. The truth is that talking about vaccines for kids five years old, especially with

00:42:00.460 this Omicron variant. I mean, if you have like you said before, the only real argument that's left

00:42:07.700 from the vaccines is that it can maybe make you less likely to be hospitalized or die. But if you're

00:42:13.420 talking about the likelihood of a healthy five year old being hospitalized or dying from covid,

00:42:20.720 I mean, you're talking about I mean, for for overall, it's like ninety nine point nine percent

00:42:28.020 for a for a healthy five year old. It's going to be like just absurdly high odds. What difference are

00:42:35.860 these vaccines really going to make? What are you telling me? It's going to be like ninety nine point

00:42:39.760 nine nine nine. But now it's ninety nine point nine nine nine five or something. The idea that that's

00:42:45.600 like the silver bullet here that changes all of these dynamics is just it's the idea that you

00:42:50.780 could claim that's following the science. It makes no sense at all. Well, it's so crazy, too,

00:42:55.500 because I remember when Trump was running, it was actually he had just lost. It was December of

00:43:02.440 twenty twenty. So he had lost, but he was claiming he didn't lose. And he Joe Biden hadn't yet been

00:43:09.140 inaugurated. And Trump was saying, look, when it comes to covid, we are learning to live with it.

00:43:14.060 We are learning to live with the virus. And Biden was like learning to live with it. We are learning

00:43:19.440 to die with it. I will shut covid down. I will shut down the virus. Now, what did we hear from

00:43:25.780 Phil Murphy this week? The governor of New Jersey? We're learning to live with covid. We need to learn

00:43:32.100 to live with it. It's not going away. It's endemic. And it's time to take these restrictions down.

00:43:36.540 Oh, suddenly he's not the devil. He's not a Glenn Youngkin, Donald Trump devil. It's fine. Tough call.

00:43:42.200 Oh, Biden. I follow the science. It's like he didn't fulfill his promise. And the thing is,

00:43:46.960 it's not because covid cases are at record lows or the deaths are at record lows that any of these

00:43:51.880 governors are doing it or that Biden's now more ambivalent. It's to the contrary. They're still

00:43:56.960 at almost record highs. The case numbers and the death numbers are still very high. It's almost all

00:44:01.360 of the very elderly. But they're still high. He did not shut down the virus. He saw new polling.

00:44:06.620 The governors saw new polling and they're scared shitless. And they should be.

00:44:12.260 Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Right. It's like the science didn't change. It's what changed is

00:44:17.880 people's unwillingness to put up with this stuff. So and it's funny when you mentioned the thing

00:44:22.960 with Trump. I mean, they used to do this all the time where, you know, like it's like if Donald

00:44:27.300 Trump said some really insane things, as you know better than most. And he you know, like there's

00:44:33.040 plenty you could hit him for. But they would always go, you know, crazy when he said something

00:44:38.460 completely reasonable to like, like, you know, it'd be funny, like when he'd be like, you know,

00:44:43.840 NATO was created to contain the Soviet Union and Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. So now we're

00:44:48.760 just subsidizing the defense of rich, you know, European countries. And they'd be like, that's so

00:44:52.520 appalling that you said that. Like, do you have a response? I mean, do you like, you know, right.

00:44:58.700 And so something like this, like we're going to have to learn to live with it was the most

00:45:02.580 just obviously factually correct thing. There's no no one at no like prominent epidemiologist is

00:45:10.320 actually going to argue with you that COVID is going away. It's not. We're going to we're going

00:45:15.680 to learn to live with it. And hopefully the trend that we've seen will continue where the variants

00:45:22.160 continue to be more transmissible, more contagious, but less deadly. That's kind of the

00:45:28.660 best that we can hope for. And there is and there are people way smarter than me,

00:45:32.500 but I've read a bunch of epidemiologists who argue that there is a high likelihood that this

00:45:37.940 will happen because that's kind of what the evolutionary pressure on upper respiratory viruses

00:45:42.300 tends to be that, you know, the virus wants to survive and you're more likely to survive and,

00:45:49.140 you know, spread if you're you know, you make the host less sick. Like the common cold is kind of

00:45:55.180 the ultimate virus. Right. Because it it makes you just sick enough to cough and sneeze, but you're

00:45:58.880 still healthy enough to go to work and cough and sneeze all over everything and spread it around.

00:46:02.860 So that's what we're hoping for. And there does seem to be some indications that it's going in

00:46:07.160 this direction. But yeah, the idea that we were going to get in there and we were going to stop

00:46:12.100 COVID, you know, for for the people who talk about spreading misinformation, that it was just

00:46:17.680 an absolute knowing lie. Yeah. Well, and the thing is, it's fine. I mean, I'm I'm happy to deal

00:46:25.520 with this version of COVID versus the more deadly strain, but we have to get rid of these like the

00:46:30.580 constant testing for everything and the constant vaccine mandates. It's like you can't keep shutting

00:46:34.960 things down because a kid gets COVID for five days or a worker gets COVID for five days. It can't

00:46:39.440 go anywhere. That's that's not going to work. Getting at learning to live with it means they all need

00:46:43.700 to go. All these restrictions, just like the UK is doing. And they'll do it and they'll do well

00:46:48.220 with it. And then we'll ignore it. That's my that's my prediction on how it's going to go. Standby.

00:46:53.180 Up next, we are going to kick off our next discussion with Joe Rogan. I'm fascinated you've

00:46:56.880 been with him the past couple of days in the in the midst of this whole storm. I know he's a good

00:47:01.180 friend of yours. He's been through the ringer this past week. And we will go there right after

00:47:05.760 this quick break. Don't go away.

00:47:07.160 I know a lot of people like they try to size me up. I feel I'll talk about these things. They're

00:47:14.000 kind of like, what team are you on? And then I always have to let them know I'm not on either

00:47:17.720 of your fucking teams. Like I'm not I'm not liberal or conservative. I, I hate all of them. And I just

00:47:25.620 wish there were more people like that. I hate them all. How do you not? Every president of my lifetime

00:47:32.620 is a piece of shit. Every one of them. They should all be thrown out of helicopters. That's the best

00:47:37.320 solution I could possibly find. One way helicopter huts for all of them. Salva lahut. I hate them all.

00:47:45.420 But let's be honest. They're all charming. They're all charming. And that is why Hillary Clinton is

00:47:55.260 not president. I love it. My guest today is Dave Smith, libertarian standup comedian and hosted the

00:48:06.720 podcast. Part of the problem, Dave. I get it. Trust me. I've my audience has heard me say a million times

00:48:12.500 that I don't wear anybody's partisan jersey. I'm a registered independent. And I just there's no way I'm I'm

00:48:18.920 going to register for a party that would put me in the same group as Eric Swalwell on the one side or Matt

00:48:25.140 Gates on the other. It's just not going to happen. No. Hell no. We've got a home for you. We're doing

00:48:30.100 some real cool stuff. Libertarianism. Yeah, that's right. Here. How about this? How about

00:48:34.860 as just a platform on this and end all the stupid wars and the all the covid mandates and all the

00:48:43.300 corporate bailouts, all the corporate welfare and give parents the complete control to dictate where

00:48:49.860 their money goes in a school voucher system and that, you know, no more of the these bureaucrats

00:48:55.940 pushing propaganda on your children? How does that sound? This is why I heard you say you might run for

00:49:01.160 president. You can represent the Libertarian Party better than most. Well, thank you. Is that going

00:49:07.140 to happen? Is that what is that just bluster? I am considering it. There's a lot of people who would

00:49:13.860 like me to to do that, but I haven't I don't know. Well, I love the story because you kind of fell in

00:49:19.740 love with Ron Paul, the father of Rand Paul back in it was like a 2007 debate where he and Giuliani

00:49:25.540 were going after one another over whether the Iraq War made sense. And that was at the height of the

00:49:30.580 Iraq War and the beheadings. And it was terrible, you know, seven right around the surge. And I've heard

00:49:36.320 you tell a story about how that was like an aha moment for you on when it came to your own politics and

00:49:41.240 sort of the beginning of your libertarianism. Yeah, well, I thought he was so you know, I was

00:49:46.320 like a liberal kid at the time. But I thought he was so on point on his arguments about, you know,

00:49:52.600 like what a disaster American intervention in the Middle East has been. And then he kept arguing for

00:49:57.760 like the purest of free markets. And I was like, wow, I really like him on the war thing. So I guess

00:50:02.720 I'll look into this. And then the more I read about it, I was just I was converted. And, you know,

00:50:09.300 as far as the war stuff goes, we're of course, like the, you know, at this point, it's basically

00:50:14.940 universally accepted. You know, I my a good friend of mine, Scott Horton, who he's the editor at

00:50:20.300 antiwar.com. He had this debate. Soho Forum is the organization in Oxford style debate with Bill

00:50:27.760 Crystal, who, of course, I'm sure, you know, and everybody knows is like one of the leading

00:50:32.740 intellectual, you know, neocon hawks. He's like defines neocon. Yes. And there was a question and

00:50:39.040 answer segment from the audience. And one guy asked a question of his of him. And he said,

00:50:44.020 Mr. Crystal, can you point what what is an example of a U.S. military intervention that you can point

00:50:50.980 to that was a success? And he said, well, I think the intervention in the Balkans.

00:50:57.000 So even Bill Crystal had to go back to the 90s to find to find it. Even he cannot argue with a

00:51:06.360 straight face that Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Niger. He can't point to one of

00:51:14.480 these and even pretend that it was a success. But what you can point to is millions of dead civilians

00:51:22.340 in these conflicts, trillions of dollars wasted. So, you know, I mean, I think just Ron Paul,

00:51:28.420 it's hard to argue in hindsight that he was completely on the money with all that stuff.

00:51:33.020 And to me, one of the most fascinating political developments over the last like five years or so

00:51:38.520 is that the right wing in America has become much, much, much more anti-war. And that doesn't get

00:51:46.980 discussed very often. But like, you know, obviously, Donald Trump, at least in rhetoric,

00:51:51.800 was was very opposed to to these wars. But you look at like these kind of big figures like Tucker

00:51:57.140 Carlson and, you know, Laura Ingram and Ann Coulter and like all these people who were like real on

00:52:03.340 board with the neocons have completely turned against that that foreign policy. And, you know,

00:52:09.640 it's and then the corporate press's position is like, why does Tulsi Gabbard and Glenn Greenwald and

00:52:15.220 all these people go on Tucker Carlson show? It must be because they're awful right wingers.

00:52:19.100 You know, it's because they changed their minds on this. And traditionally, Republicans were less

00:52:27.260 interventionalist than Democrats. I think what changed for Republicans like Coulter, Ingram,

00:52:33.480 so on was 9-11. 9-11 changed the way that people were talking about, you know, intervening in foreign

00:52:41.020 countries and starting foreign wars. And I understand that because I was at Fox News during that time,

00:52:45.140 too. And I was just scared, like so many others in the country. It was such a big deal. You know,

00:52:49.700 I know you've talked about it, too, that just the whole mind mindset change to like, get them,

00:52:56.560 get them, kill them there so they don't kill us here. It was like a newfound war footing. And so

00:53:01.800 people sounded a lot more hawkish within the Republican Party and were than they had been.

00:53:07.000 And you always had outliers who were like Glenn. He was always like, no, this is bullshit. What are we

00:53:11.480 doing? Right. Glenn Greenwald and some others. He was never conservative. I'm just

00:53:15.100 saying like he saw reason the whole time. But I think once that security threat died down somewhat

00:53:21.080 and we saw the damage, right, that had just the carnage on our own country, on our own blood and

00:53:27.200 treasure and how it didn't really work out so great in those countries. I mean, reasonable people

00:53:32.340 reassess and they look at their choices and say, did that work for us? Exactly the thing we're talking

00:53:37.960 about right now with the Democrats not doing right. They're just going to be like victory. We'll do it

00:53:42.480 exactly the same way the next time. I think these Republicans are sort of saying, you know, that

00:53:47.440 wasn't right. We have to learn the lessons that were taught to us. And there's so many profound

00:53:53.800 costs that are hard to exactly measure. But, you know, you think just of the fact that, look, the

00:53:59.800 George W. Bush administration and the evangelical right wing in this country went all in on the war in

00:54:07.340 Iraq. And that cost them tremendous political capital. And now you look around where like the

00:54:14.160 left wing controls every single institution and you're like, yeah, well, it's not so great that

00:54:19.880 you went all in on this disaster. Even though the left wing all voted for the Iraq war, too.

00:54:24.240 Well, well, yeah, certainly in the Senate, some of them in the House, not as much. But you're

00:54:29.600 absolutely right about that. But I'm talking more about the people who supported it rather than the

00:54:34.000 politicians. But the other thing that I think right wingers are realizing now is that one of

00:54:40.300 the creepiest things and the biggest threats to this country right now is that the war on terrorism

00:54:44.720 is being turned inward. And the target is right wingers in this really twisted, sick irony.

00:54:53.080 The many of the people who supported the creation of the war on terror now find themselves, you know,

00:54:58.860 realizing that like, yeah, well, when you give the government this power that you create the

00:55:02.840 Department of Homeland Security, you create all of these terrorist provisions, you create these

00:55:07.200 spying apparatuses. That is an awful lot of power to to give the government. And you ignore a lot of

00:55:12.900 lessons of history when you do that. So that's hopefully there's a lesson that can be learned

00:55:17.280 in all of that. Now, I've read that you were raised by a Democratic mom, right? She was she was sort

00:55:23.940 of classic. She was a liberal Democrat. And so and you just said you were Democrat for most of your

00:55:30.160 life until your your rendezvous with Ron and sort of opening your mind to libertarianism.

00:55:35.500 And I was I was just wondering, like, is your mom still a Democrat or what's the you know,

00:55:40.300 what's she is she still around and is she still a Democrat? She's yet she's still around. And she's

00:55:46.080 she's I'm sure she's still registered as a Democrat, but she really is. She I think probably has stayed the

00:55:52.980 same while all the other left liberals around her have changed. So I think that she is appalled by the

00:56:01.180 the insanity of of the left over the last particularly over the last couple of years. But she's really,

00:56:09.680 I think, appalled by the probably a lot of the same things that that I am and that you are.

00:56:15.800 But I don't know. I think there's, you know, she's like a lifelong Democrat. And when you were asking

00:56:21.680 me, you know, to me, I just grew up in that environment. So it was just like a given. It's

00:56:25.800 not like I ever even really examined it. It was just like, well, obviously, you want obviously you'd

00:56:30.900 want you'd tax millionaires more because they don't need the money as much as other people.

00:56:36.220 My Nana and my mom used to say, we're not Republicans are for the rich. We're not rich.

00:56:41.260 We were Democrats. Democrats are for the middle class and the working class. And that, you know,

00:56:46.640 bringing us back to how we kicked off the discussion. But yeah, same because in my family,

00:56:50.740 we were technically registered Democrats, but we were never political. Like we were never,

00:56:54.620 we never even watched the evening news, Dave. We had on the Jeffersons. And then after after my dad

00:57:00.220 died, my mom had on episodes of the Golden Girls. And we I love the Golden Girls to this day because it

00:57:05.200 brings me back. And by the way, did you know that those two women on the show are calling Betty White the C word?

00:57:10.720 Yeah.

00:57:11.260 B. Arthur and Rue McClanahan. I don't know who saw that headline, but I was like, what? They were the only

00:57:16.360 two who didn't like Betty White. Blanche.

00:57:19.100 I did not know that, but I loved that show.

00:57:21.160 It was so good. Blanche and Dorothy. Yeah, Dorothy was B. Arthur. So, you know what I mean? We weren't

00:57:26.700 we. Yeah, you got to pick something because you want to vote. But there's a difference between being

00:57:30.620 a registered Democrat and being truly political.

00:57:33.940 Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I think for me, I was I was never super political. It was just like kind of a

00:57:38.720 given like, well, yeah, I'm not one of the evil, greedy Republicans. So I'm I'm I'm a liberal,

00:57:43.640 you know. And it wasn't until it was it was during the George W. Bush years. I was really opposed to

00:57:50.880 everything he was doing. And then so that just kind of kept me in that liberal world. But Ron Paul was

00:57:56.700 the first guy who kind of offered me an alternative where it was like, oh, there's this other way of

00:58:01.560 looking at the world. That's really fascinating that no one ever taught me about. It's like no one ever

00:58:06.820 bothered to even mention these ideas. Then he was talking about things like the Federal Reserve

00:58:12.460 and the government control of money and how much this distorts the economy and how this is all a

00:58:18.100 big kind of scheme that enriches the big banks and enriches the powerful corporations. And it does

00:58:23.500 nothing but harm the middle class and the working class. And then I'll tell you, I think right now

00:58:28.580 today we're we're living through a lot of that, too. I mean, I really believe if you go back and

00:58:32.900 listen to what Ron Paul was saying in 2007, 2008 and all the way up since then. I mean, it's

00:58:39.700 unbelievable how much he's been proven right on. And he was not taken seriously by.

00:58:44.720 Oh, no, he was killed. They went after. I remember that debate. Fox News was hosting that debate. It was

00:58:50.360 Brick Hume, Chris Wallace and Wendell Gohler, if memory serves. I'm really taxing myself now.

00:58:57.780 Um, anyway, they they he was the thing I remember. He was saying something like,

00:59:04.280 you've got to look at how our interventions overseas have come back to haunt us, you know,

00:59:10.160 and kind of making the case that 9-11 didn't happen in a vacuum. He wasn't trying to justify

00:59:13.700 anything bin Laden did, but he was trying to say, let's help. Let's try to understand it by

00:59:17.680 the foreign policy decisions we have made and how we would react if somebody had done it to our country.

00:59:22.900 And every Republican on the stage was like, you know, I think we at Fox News were like,

00:59:29.160 right, I remember that vaguely. And now you see that's a lot more mainstream, that kind of

00:59:35.300 discussion. And, you know, to me, that leads me to finally Joe Rogan, because this is why he's

00:59:40.820 popular. This is because he will put on the Ron Pauls like today's Ron Pauls, right? Like today's

00:59:45.880 Ron Pauls might be a Robert Malone, you know, or just people who are they sound different than

00:59:50.940 everybody else. And the mainstream all turns on them. And maybe those people are nutcases,

00:59:55.940 or maybe they're just people who have really good ideas and have read. Again, I looked it up.

01:00:01.500 Todd Rose's book, Collective Illusions. He's the one on my show saying, like, maybe your views aren't

01:00:06.200 so minority. Maybe they are majority. People are afraid to espouse them. Right. So it's like Joe

01:00:11.760 Rogan will engage with those people and he doesn't pronounce them correct about all things at the

01:00:17.140 end. He just has an interview. And that served him very well for all these years until he ran

01:00:24.360 headfirst into the there shall be no COVID misinformation dispersed in any corner. You know,

01:00:33.240 the mainstream elitist media has dictated as such. And then they came for him and they failed,

01:00:39.140 but they came or they failed so far. Let's hope it the failure continues. But let's start with

01:00:44.200 how it's been or what you think over the past week, because I know you've been with him. You

01:00:48.060 guys have been doing comedy together. Like how, how he see Ben behind the scenes.

01:00:52.940 He's, he's been great. I mean, it's, it's really funny because people, you know, like people who

01:00:59.280 don't know Joe personally, I mean, and if they don't listen to his show, because I think the people

01:01:04.540 listen to his show really do know him personally. But I'm sure the people who don't could just see like,

01:01:09.180 oh, he's like, you know, he's a, he's a comedian at nightclubs and he's the, like the cage fighting

01:01:14.020 commentator. But if you talk to anybody who knows Joe Rogan, he is a, one of the most genuine,

01:01:20.880 sweet, humble people you'll ever meet. And he's, he's a guy who's like, he's done a lot of,

01:01:28.920 he's a very self-aware person. Does a lot of like meditating and thinking and has conversations

01:01:35.660 with a lot of really interesting people. And he knows who he is. I mean, I was really impressed

01:01:40.220 just how, um, I really admire just how he's handled this whole situation. He was, he was not rattled.

01:01:45.740 Like he's very, he's very sure of who he is. He also like, he's a really lovely family. He's got a

01:01:51.720 really great life. I think he's, he's very grounded. So it was great doing shows with him. And I, and I

01:01:56.360 did the podcast that just got released, uh, yesterday, um, with him and yeah, it was, it's like,

01:02:01.940 it's, it's very interesting as you watch the corporate press go after Joe Rogan with no

01:02:09.540 self-reflection about why it is that this guy is so much bigger than you and so much more trusted

01:02:17.800 than you. You know, there's these CNN shows that are like ripping on him with a 20th of the audience.

01:02:24.660 Yeah. Brian Stelter sitting there. Well, why is it that people trust him? And it's like, well,

01:02:29.280 how much do you think you can get wrong before people stop trusting you? I mean, if you really

01:02:37.080 take a step back and just look at the 21st century, what's been handed to the American people and, and

01:02:44.600 what, you know, and of course all the wars that we were just alluding to, you know, there's,

01:02:48.620 these are real people. People have sent their children over to these wars. You know what I mean?

01:02:52.680 Who have been killed or maimed or come back, you know, a shell of their former self that people,

01:02:58.080 this is, this is real. There, there was the, in 2008, we had the worst economic recession in almost

01:03:04.440 a hundred years. After that, they had the Obama administration disaster after disaster. Then

01:03:11.200 Donald Trump, they're so furious at the system. Donald Trump gets in. And then it, you know,

01:03:15.960 a couple of years later, you have this COVID regime and lockdowns and restrictions and all of this.

01:03:20.960 This has not been a good opening 20 years to the century. And the corporate press has sold all of

01:03:28.040 these policies. Why do you think it is that trust has evaporated? Like it makes perfect sense. And

01:03:33.520 they don't even attempt to look in the mirror and go, Hmm, maybe we didn't really cover the working

01:03:40.480 class and the middle class, just getting totally demolished over the last 20 years. Huh? Maybe that,

01:03:48.020 you know, it's like, they never listened to what was appealing about Donald Trump and what was

01:03:52.440 appealing about Donald Trump to the working class. Wasn't, you know, like the things that they'd harp

01:03:56.980 on. Listen to what he said. He said, I'm going to bring your jobs back. Now he, he didn't,

01:04:03.420 he never really had a plan for it. He wasn't a good president in my opinion, but that was the pitch.

01:04:09.700 Like no one else was even talking to those people.

01:04:12.140 Why can't you say that? Cause we had record low unemployment. I mean, we, the economy was booming

01:04:16.020 under Trump. Uh, wages went up for, for lower. Yes. Wages went up for the working class. I just

01:04:21.040 had Jason Riley on who has a brand new book on this whole thing for, for blacks, for Latinos.

01:04:24.800 I'm like Donald Trump. Listen, I recognize his character flaws. Trust me. Uh, but as a president,

01:04:29.860 when it comes to policy, he actually did do a lot of good for the economy in particular.

01:04:32.780 Well, there were a couple of good things. I mean, I thought the tax cuts, um, were very good. I wish

01:04:37.560 he had gone a little bit further with them, but they weren't the corporate tax cuts were pretty drastic. And I

01:04:41.760 think that really did help with the economy. But the problem, uh, is that, and this is true all

01:04:46.620 through the Obama years. This is basically true. Um, from when Obama took office all the way up till

01:04:52.140 now is that this, the way we've created these quote booming economies and had the stock market

01:04:58.840 looking pretty good. And even unemployment numbers looking pretty good under Donald Trump

01:05:02.200 is that we've had record high government spending and record low artificially, uh,

01:05:07.840 control interest rates. Well, not going to, not going to argue with you there,

01:05:11.920 but so what you have in this situation, right. When you have our, uh, the interest rates being

01:05:16.500 held at like near 0% by the federal reserve is that you have these crazy speculating, you know,

01:05:22.580 because people can't save money. So people on a fixed income get hit, but then you have record

01:05:26.920 high profits in wall street. And then you have of course record, you know, uh, um, high, uh,

01:05:32.220 profits for the politically connected. And so you can make that look nice on a chart. Um, but look

01:05:38.860 at where the richest counties in America are. They're all right outside of Washington DC and New

01:05:43.180 York city. This isn't right. This is, this is not helping the working class. That's fascinating.

01:05:49.240 There's so much I want to dissect there. I mean, it started with our discussion about Joe Rogan and

01:05:54.220 why he's getting it. Let's all start there. Cause whenever you, whenever you make that, when you made

01:05:57.940 that point, whenever I hear somebody sort of make the point that, you know, you should be following

01:06:01.100 Joe Rogan. These are sort of the mainstream doofuses who are like, I didn't get it. We're

01:06:05.040 real journalists. They should be following him or at least questioning why he's so popular in a way

01:06:10.400 that they can emulate as opposed to just condemning him and trying to cancel him. And I always picture

01:06:15.520 Brian Stelter. I picture him without his shirt on walk, walk me, walk with me through it, Dave.

01:06:20.760 I picture him without a shirt on literally gazing at his navel and kind of playing with his navel

01:06:25.640 and like being like, I don't get it. Why would they like Joe Rogan? Why not me?

01:06:30.540 When CNN's a real journalist. That's how, that's sort of how I picture it. It's that clueless navel

01:06:36.080 gazing. Hello, open your eyes, listen to what the American people are telling you. And it's

01:06:43.480 disgusting how they'll use anything to tear you down. And truly he's kind of an example in how

01:06:49.620 even if you're, if you're of the left, because his politics are more lefty, they'll come for you,

01:06:56.120 especially if you're not woke. If you're left and not woke, you can F right the hell off. You're,

01:07:00.720 you're the enemy. And he definitely falls within that category, right? A Bernie supporter who's

01:07:04.940 not woke, done, canceled. A, that's the wrong lefty. B, you have to be woke. C, even if you are

01:07:11.360 all those things, we'll probably cancel you anyway. Yeah. Well, the thing that's really interesting is

01:07:16.680 that the woke stuff, although much of it originated from left-wing thinkers in college campuses,

01:07:22.900 like, you know, critical race theory and stuff like that. But when you see it really being pushed

01:07:28.060 by all of the giant corporations, it's being pushed by the CIA and by the federal reserve and by like

01:07:34.540 really powerful government institutions. And there's a reason for that. And I think that they

01:07:39.740 benefit very much from left-wing outrage being targeted at, you know, Aunt Jemima or, or what somebody

01:07:48.820 said one time, maybe someone made a comment about Halloween costumes or something, you know, really,

01:07:54.100 like really the outrage of the day, but you don't see them targeting that at like record high banker

01:07:59.520 profits. You don't see them targeting that at like declining standards for the middle class and

01:08:04.620 rising standards for the corporate elite, like things that the left would typically care about.

01:08:09.040 All of the energy has been sucked up by these really stupid, really minor issues that they blow

01:08:14.840 out of proportion. You know, who uttered the wrong word once instead of just saying the letter,

01:08:19.680 they said the word, like, even if you think that's wrong, I mean, on what level do you really place

01:08:25.560 this? And one of the things that's interesting that Rogan is like completely open to talking about

01:08:30.120 is like real things that never get covered by the corporate press. I mean, we were talking a bunch

01:08:35.720 when I was on the show about how, you know, you have these think tanks that push for military

01:08:40.820 intervention that are funded by weapons companies, right? It's like, Hmm, what's going on

01:08:46.480 there? How come you will never, ever see a story about that on CNN or MSNBC or Fox news for that

01:08:55.040 matter? None of them. I don't know. I mean, meet the press was brought to you this week by Boeing,

01:09:00.160 you know, like, I don't know, but I don't seem to see ever, ever see mention of this. So while they

01:09:05.640 kind of try to pretend that this is like the fake news on the internet, this is all the disinformation,

01:09:11.180 it's like, I don't know, from from where I'm sitting, there are these really big important

01:09:15.700 stories that the corporate press is just, just refuses to cover. You know, that's really interesting

01:09:22.580 because one of the things that's amazing about Joe Rogan to me is he's entirely self made.

01:09:28.460 Even when he was like moving up the ranks in the numbers and the downloads, you didn't see him all

01:09:33.480 over Fox news or CNN or anybody anywhere else, you know, accepting profiles or he doesn't do it.

01:09:39.940 He doesn't do that. Every single download he has, he's earned organically and it drives the mainstream

01:09:47.720 insane because they can't say the same. It drives them nuts. And I think it drives even some fellow

01:09:54.340 comedians nuts because Trevor Noah of all people went for Rogan. Um, he, he went for him and a national

01:10:05.580 review did a great piece on this. Charles CW cook just, just talked about Trevor Noah. It just saying,

01:10:10.800 this is just disgusting what he did. Um, Rogan defended Trevor Noah when the mob dug up his old

01:10:19.460 comedy routines, which sounded kind of sexist and kind of racist. And this is Rogan's tweet at the

01:10:27.640 time too much for 140 characters, but nothing he said was out of line. And he's a funny dude.

01:10:34.180 F the haters, Noah. That's how he responded when Trevor Noah got in trouble. Here's how Trevor Noah

01:10:40.800 responded when Joe Rogan just got attacked last week. Sound by six.

01:10:45.600 What I found particularly illuminating is, is, is when he says I wasn't being racist. I was just

01:10:52.520 being entertaining. No, Joe, I think you were using racism to be entertaining. You understand what I'm

01:11:00.580 saying? I'm not saying you were trying to offend black people, by the way, but you knew that offending

01:11:05.200 black people would get a laugh out of those white friends that you were with. He's going after him,

01:11:10.780 Dave. Yeah. And it's like, even, even this idea of, you know, well,

01:11:15.600 I think he was using racism to be entertaining. It's like, okay. I mean, he's a professional

01:11:23.140 comedian and one of the absolute best in the world. Like go, I don't know, go look at prior or Carlin

01:11:33.600 or Chris rock or Dave Chappelle or South park or like any great comedy. Like, yeah. Okay. Sure.

01:11:41.540 They use issues of race to, and they create beautiful, hilarious moments with it. But the

01:11:48.060 idea that he's actually, nobody, nobody, including Trevor Noah believes that Joe Rogan is a racist

01:11:55.860 person. Oh yeah. I mean, listen, they're all just posturing. And you could have gone back to say

01:12:01.240 about Trevor Noah. Oh, he is just, he is just using misogyny for humor, right? Because this is,

01:12:08.440 it was Charles CW cook. He called him a moral disgrace for this behavior here among the Trevor

01:12:13.200 Noah jokes that he was getting hit for. He wrote, or he said originally when men proposed, they went

01:12:17.760 down on one knee. So if the woman said no, they were in the perfect uppercut position. He said behind

01:12:22.920 every successful rap billionaire is, is a double as a rich Jewish man. He said, Messi gets the ball and

01:12:28.200 the real players try to foul him, but Messi doesn't go down easily, just like Jewish chicks. And this is

01:12:34.940 Charles's point. He says, if, if they so wished other comedians could have responded to Noah's

01:12:38.960 explanation by saying, when Trevor Noah says, I wasn't being sexist or antisemitic, I was just

01:12:43.840 being entertaining. They could have responded by saying, no, I think you were using sexism and

01:12:47.940 antisemitism to try to be entertaining. Um, that his false offense, right? It's false. I don't believe

01:12:55.860 Trevor Noah thinks Joe Rogan's a racist. I think he wants to virtue signal to his woke audience

01:13:02.420 that he's their champion. He's with them. He's holier than thou he's noble. Joe Rogan's not

01:13:08.140 and underlying all of it is a deep seed of envy. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I think

01:13:15.840 that this it's like, if you want to play this game, like as you're showing you, you can play this with

01:13:21.240 just about anyone who's been a comedian, particularly longer than for the last five years or six years when

01:13:27.100 these rules got written, you know, and, and of course you see a lot of this online where, you

01:13:32.540 know, it's, and it's kind of interesting to see where these things get pushed and where they don't

01:13:36.640 like, you know, if you want to go down and say Howard Stern's hit list, you're going to get a lot

01:13:41.320 worse stuff than you're going to get with Joe Rogan. But of course, Howard Stern is telling everyone to

01:13:45.560 take their vaccine and stay home and follow all of the regime edicts. And so you don't see a big push

01:13:50.960 from the corporate press to take him down. So I think people, this is why Rogan's audience is so big

01:13:55.880 and theirs is so tiny. It's like, people are onto this, you know, it's, it's a really interesting

01:14:01.540 world. Like, you know, and, and like Megan, you've, you've seen it, right? Oh, I mean,

01:14:05.980 now you're doing this show now and you can just do it. You can do the serious show. You can have it

01:14:10.120 online. This is new. I mean, this wasn't around in, in, in the 2012 election, which not that long ago,

01:14:17.840 just going back 10 years, you know, in the 2012 election, there was no, just like podcast that was 10

01:14:23.840 times bigger than the corporate press. Even when I was leaving Fox news in 2000, it was late 16 and

01:14:30.480 I was deciding, what do I want to do? I don't want to keep doing this. So what do I do? Even then

01:14:34.500 this wasn't yet a realistic option for just anybody, you know, it wasn't like, okay, you know,

01:14:39.720 a journalist like, like me, what could I wind up there? Could I make something happen there?

01:14:44.220 It wasn't until my pal, Ben Shapiro came to me in 19 January of 19 around there and said,

01:14:49.540 MK, you should consider this. This is a real business model. Showed me the whole thing. I was like,

01:14:52.660 holy shit. He's right. I'll say one thing about Howard though. I'm sure he said it very fast.

01:14:57.900 He did. He said it super fast and in a very smart way. Howard, all of his stuff was out there. You

01:15:03.540 know, he's like, there's no one who's been out more outrageous than Howard Stern. Nobody. I mean,

01:15:06.900 find me somebody in the public airways who's been more outrageous than Howard. He owned it. He never

01:15:10.700 tried to like make a secret out of it. So it's like, I don't know that you can drudge that up and use

01:15:15.040 it against him because maybe they'll try. It was so long ago and he doesn't do that stuff anymore.

01:15:19.860 And maybe it is that he's more left-leaning in his politics that they won't come for it,

01:15:23.480 but they do. They came for Whoopi. They love to bring down anybody who's rich and powerful.

01:15:28.180 I just think Howard's going to be tough because it's like a man who starts in a movie called Fart

01:15:32.020 Man is tough to bring down with scandal.

01:15:34.640 I just, you know, I agree. I agree. There's, there's private farts, whatever it was,

01:15:38.500 but he did too. I, I, yes. I, I think that was a character.

01:15:42.180 It was, no, he did private parts, whatever. Yes. And Fart Man was a character. Anyway,

01:15:45.860 he opened up like some reward ceremony as Fart Man coming down with the, with the, the,

01:15:50.700 you know, from the ceiling. It was crazy. You can't, it was something.

01:15:54.220 Can't be more outrageous than Howard himself.

01:15:56.400 And, and just to be clear, I mean, I don't believe in any of this. I don't want to see Howard

01:16:00.300 Stern canceled or I don't want to see, you know, Jimmy Kimmel canceled or Joe Rogan or

01:16:04.940 Whoopi Goldberg. I mean, like, I think all of this is insane. And I think it's like,

01:16:08.900 first off, comedians make jokes. The spirit of a joke, whether you like it or not, is to try to

01:16:14.740 get the room full of people to laugh. That is not a malicious intent. That is not something that's

01:16:20.120 done. You're not allowed to talk about intent. Intent doesn't matter anymore, Dave. All that

01:16:24.180 matters is effect is offense, right? That's it. That's what we've been told by, by sort of the

01:16:30.080 woke brigade for years. And that's why it's so interesting to listen to Whoopi defend herself with the ADL

01:16:34.000 guy based on intent. She didn't intend to offend anybody. When Joy Behar, when it came out and she

01:16:39.580 sort of recircled because Don Jr. went on her show and outed the fact that she had done blackface

01:16:44.680 and that ABC celebrated it on the air as recently as 2016. They put her picture in blackface on the

01:16:52.240 air. Remember the time you were the beautiful African woman without anyone batting an eyelash

01:16:56.440 that she said, oh, well, I intended it as an homage and that was fine. Meanwhile, you know,

01:17:02.880 I was over there on NBC saying, does it matter that this real housewife was trying to honor

01:17:07.140 Diana Ross? Should that matter? The intent? Get out, devil, racist, right? It's like who

01:17:13.400 the hell? There is no consistent standard.

01:17:16.540 Yeah. And then it kind of allows it's very convenient that way. It allows people to kind

01:17:20.980 of like, you know, decide who gets hit with this and to what degree they get hit with.

01:17:27.100 And I will agree with you that there is something there's something really infuriating about the

01:17:31.000 people who are like, well, no, but not Whoopi Goldberg because we like her. And you're like,

01:17:35.880 no, listen, there's there has to be one standard here. But I would prefer that the standard be that

01:17:41.500 we don't all act like a bunch of hyperventilating children and allow adults to say things. And,

01:17:48.760 you know, even occasionally that might mean something offensive. But, you know, like there are

01:17:54.340 so many things like examples today were like, obviously your example, that even if you thought it

01:17:59.800 was offensive, which I really didn't, it was mildly offensive at worst. And I kind of feel the same

01:18:06.740 way about what Whoopi Goldberg said. I mean, I'm Jewish. My grandfather is a Holocaust survivor,

01:18:12.200 but I didn't find it a fact. I just thought it was like that was kind of inaccurate. She doesn't

01:18:16.160 really know what she's talking about. Whatever. It's not like she said something like she didn't

01:18:20.520 say, I hate Jewish people and I'm glad that happened to them or something.

01:18:24.200 People love to get on their fainting couches. You know, it's like get off of your fainting couch.

01:18:28.280 You're not fooling anyone. And I do think in the case of, well, Whoopi is one. I was another

01:18:34.680 and Joe Rogan's another. We're literally in the business of having tough conversations. You know,

01:18:39.720 like I brought up the blackface issue because it was in the news because the people were getting

01:18:43.660 canceled and in trouble for doing something that I accurately observed did not cause as big as a

01:18:51.260 stink back in the 70s and the 80s. And then I would later find out even on NBC, which was airing

01:18:55.620 blackface programs within two or three years of the conversation I had. But the point is,

01:18:59.840 if you're in the business of having conversations about culture, about dicey issues, right? Race,

01:19:05.500 religion, all these changes that we're having on gender and so on. How? I'm just going to say it.

01:19:12.680 I've said it before. But how the fuck are you supposed to understand what exactly the guard,

01:19:16.620 the guardrails are, right? Like it stay perfectly within them. You cannot have those meaningful

01:19:20.860 conversations on NBC morning show on The View. You can't do it. The guardrails don't work for

01:19:27.120 truly honest and indeed provocative conversations, which is why one of the many reasons why I'm so

01:19:33.660 much happier being independent. It's too stifling and it's a failing, doomed business model.

01:19:40.300 Yeah, well, I feel the same way. I love being like a comment, a comic and a like commentator

01:19:45.980 who's I do my podcasts and I do other podcasts and I do I self-produce all of my comedy. And like,

01:19:51.440 it's just I don't want to have some corporate job. I don't want to work like that. That's not

01:19:54.480 why I got into this. The whole point of getting into this was I wanted to be able to say what I

01:19:58.160 want to say. But the thing that really I think is like the most profound thing that's so tragic

01:20:03.940 about all of this is that like there are issues that really affect vulnerable people and vulnerable

01:20:12.800 populations. Like I use this example sometimes, but you know, if you're on the Amtrak from New

01:20:18.840 York to Washington, DC, which every single person in the corporate press has been on, like everyone's

01:20:23.940 been on that train. They know the train, the exact train. They all have been on the Accela from New

01:20:28.540 York to Washington, DC, because those are the two like kind of centers. When you come out of the

01:20:32.760 Baltimore station and you look at downtown Baltimore, you see like crumbling buildings. Like,

01:20:40.280 I mean, like just like the, and this is an area that's like basically 100% African American.

01:20:47.020 The schools are abomination. Me or you would kill before we would allow our children to be educated

01:20:55.080 in that environment. Drugs are rampant. Crime is rampant. Like everything is just, it's like a little

01:21:00.800 third world country in the middle of America. And the people there are really suffering. There's

01:21:05.300 little kids who are like growing up like that. And none of this does anything to even pretend to

01:21:11.860 help them. Well, let's be honest. No one cares. It's run by Democrats. It has been for years,

01:21:16.500 as is the state. You can say the same for Chicago, you know, San Francisco, which is going downhill by

01:21:23.000 the minute. There are real policy problems that have led to that result. And you're right. That's

01:21:28.800 right. That's the left's reason for wanting to talk about all this woke shit more than they want

01:21:32.860 to talk about their actual policies. And it's something I don't know. I don't know that they'll

01:21:37.460 ever get honest on it. I don't, I don't know. I'm not sure what it'll take. More with Dave Smith

01:21:41.980 right after this. Fascinating conversation, don't you think?

01:21:49.660 Back to the serious problems plaguing several American cities. I mean, it's not just the blight.

01:21:56.260 And I lived in Baltimore for a year, long time ago, but it was when I was first starting in TV.

01:22:00.820 And it was a disaster. It was like a cute neighborhood right along the water. And other

01:22:06.140 than that, it's just a mess. And the crime was high even then. I remember I moved in, I saw a cop

01:22:11.720 stand on the corner and I said to him, I'm going to make it through the year without getting like

01:22:15.660 shot or mugged or attacked or, you know, hurt. Right. And he goes, you should.

01:22:22.260 What? A little higher degree. That's not very comforting. No, no, not at all. And you mentioned

01:22:31.860 the spending. And that's a totally fair criticism against President Trump and especially against

01:22:37.560 President Biden. It's been out of control. And I realized they're like COVID, COVID. And some of

01:22:43.960 the COVID measures were important, right? Some people did need relief. The government took away

01:22:48.440 their jobs. They stopped them from being able to earn. So they owed those people some,

01:22:52.720 but not not ongoing, never ending checks. Right. Like that. That turned out to be a real problem.

01:22:58.240 And now what do we have after pumping six million dollars? Six. I wish six trillion dollars into the

01:23:04.680 economy at a time when we couldn't afford it. And we'd already dumped so many during Trump.

01:23:09.940 We have record high inflation. We have it's now it's a new 40 year high. Every week we get another.

01:23:15.780 It's a new high. We've broken yet another record. So back to Lester and Joe.

01:23:20.840 They had a little conversation about it, which you can see in full during the Super Bowl if you

01:23:24.540 choose to watch. And as he has been doing lately, Joe Biden got a little testy. He really is kind of

01:23:31.980 turning into the get off my lawn president. It wasn't it wasn't a big deal this time, but he didn't like

01:23:37.880 the question. Here it is. I think it was back in July you said inflation was going to be temporary.

01:23:43.200 I think a lot of Americans are wondering what your definition of temporary is.

01:23:48.080 Well, you're being a wise guy with me a little bit. I understand that's your job.

01:23:52.420 But look at the time what happened was the let's look at the reason for the inflation.

01:23:59.280 The reason for the inflation is the supply chains were cut off.

01:24:04.140 When can Americans expect some relief from this soaring inflation?

01:24:07.160 According to Nobel laureates, 14 of them that contacted me and a number of corporate leaders,

01:24:12.900 it's ought to be able to start to taper off as we go through this year.

01:24:17.020 Oh, my God. Do you feel better? Because the 14 Nobel laureates say might ought to taper off.

01:24:25.160 What? I mean, that's worse than just saying, I don't know when.

01:24:28.300 Yeah, well, that would be more honest. Certainly. I like that he calls him a wise guy like he's using

01:24:34.300 insults out of the 1940s or something. It's just so bizarre. But look, how many of those

01:24:40.580 14 Nobel laureate economists saw the crash of 2008 coming? My guess would be zero of them. And I think

01:24:50.460 that mainstream Keynesian economics is just so out of touch with reality at this point. And no,

01:24:56.460 the supply chain did not cause the price inflation. The monetary inflation is what's led directly to

01:25:03.080 the price inflation. And many of us, myself included, I was talking all about this on my

01:25:08.860 podcast. You can you can find this during March of 2020 and April of 2020, that the idea that we

01:25:14.460 would we would lock down the economy, print trillions of dollars and distribute checks to people

01:25:19.860 was guaranteeing that we were going to see price inflation coming in the next few years in a major

01:25:25.260 way. And then every one of Biden's policies has just been to add to it. I mean, his his energy

01:25:30.500 policy, it's like, well, what do you think is going to happen here? You think this isn't going to make

01:25:33.860 the cost of energy go up? So this is this is a very predictable consequence of what we've done over

01:25:41.120 the last couple of years. And I agree with you that if you're going to kick people out of work, you

01:25:45.200 you kind of incur some obligation to pay them. But the answer to that, the best answer is don't kick

01:25:50.600 them out of work. And this is, you know, this is the the bill is coming due. And the when you talk

01:25:57.840 about the government spending, I mean, look, obviously, the Democrats shoulder a lot of the

01:26:03.460 blame for this. But the Republicans cannot get off the hook. I mean, they railed against Obama

01:26:08.000 for his his spending. And in 2016, they took over control of the House, the Senate and the presidency,

01:26:13.900 and they increased spending. And at that point, it was just like that was and of course,

01:26:18.620 you know, George W. Bush did the same. He had the excuse, I guess, of 9-11. You know, they have

01:26:25.440 the excuse of COVID. Obama had the excuse of the Great Recession. Like there's always an excuse for

01:26:30.680 it. It's never going to be spending before he had the excuse of COVID. That is that is very true. And

01:26:36.820 so, yeah, it's like this is at some point there's going to become a real issue where the dollar is

01:26:44.220 going to lose confidence and which is the global reserve currency. This has huge ramifications.

01:26:49.800 And the truth is that we cannot like we we spend well beyond our means. And the only reason we're

01:26:57.420 able to do it is because people are loaning the American government money. And if people stop doing

01:27:03.580 that, then this whole thing, you know, it's it's a it's a game of musical chairs and you do not want

01:27:09.100 to be there when the music stops. So this is this is a there's there's a reason why for so long in the

01:27:14.540 history of this country, we were on a gold standard and we we were really, you know, like promoted the

01:27:20.800 idea of of some fiscal sanity. This is not this is how nations collapse under, you know, fiscal

01:27:28.280 conditions like this and monetary conditions like that. What's been amazing to me is the inflation.

01:27:33.900 It continues to rise. It's not going away. It wasn't transitory. You know, all these lies get exposed.

01:27:38.380 Um, now some in the left wing press, which is, you know, I repeat myself, um, they're they're

01:27:45.680 playing dumb, like, well, what else could President Obama have done? What would Trump have done

01:27:51.240 differently? Chris Hayes had a tweet like that. I saw some from MSNBC sort of trying to run cover

01:27:55.840 for Biden on this, like, who could have seen it coming? And it's like, well, to your point, you know,

01:28:02.600 your your podcast back in the spring of 2020, there was been there were so many pundits who pay

01:28:07.540 attention to monetary policy who didn't believe in this this monetary policy lie that we could

01:28:12.200 just spend into oblivion and never, ever have it come back to haunt us. It's like the you know,

01:28:18.020 it's like women being told they can have endless brownies and, you know, what red wine and it's

01:28:22.860 never going to show up in your belly. It's not true. It's not true, America. And we did see it coming.

01:28:28.800 And yeah, well, what and what's interesting, too, is that now, you know, it's it's one of

01:28:33.700 these things that people feel like you can't, you can't pretend it's not happening. I mean,

01:28:39.720 like my, my, my, my wife talks to me about it all the time. And but I'm that she does like all

01:28:45.920 like, she knows everything. I'm, I'm an idiot in every single regard, except this, like, I'm able

01:28:50.840 to do this. But everything else, my wife takes care of me, I'd be like naked and alone and afraid if

01:28:55.720 it wasn't for her. But she'll be talking to me all the time. And she's like, Hey, you know,

01:28:58.720 those organic strawberries, they were like four bucks, and now they're like 750. And you know,

01:29:02.580 this is like, I mean, the prices of everything are just going to use a used car right now. Forget

01:29:07.880 that. Yeah, I mean, and so people and this is, again, back to kind of the thing we were talking

01:29:12.940 about at the top of the show, who does this really hurt? I mean, it's not as if like millionaires

01:29:18.660 and billionaires, as Bernie Sanders likes to say, or just billionaires these days. But it's not as if

01:29:23.800 they are really like, Oh, no, you know, the cost of living went up a little bit. But for working

01:29:30.560 class people, this absolutely destroys them. I mean, it's and so that, you know, we have these

01:29:36.100 policies, supposedly in the name of Oh, well, we have to cut these checks to, you know, help people

01:29:42.920 out. But then and then the inflation ends up wiping away everything that they got and more. So it's really,

01:29:50.620 it's very bad for for people in the middle or lower ends of the economy. And to see Joe Biden,

01:29:57.540 I mean, he's clearly never even begun to think about monetary policy.

01:30:02.300 Well, that's why the wise guy comment is obnoxious, because it's like, no, you predicted this,

01:30:07.280 you said this in July, it wasn't true. There are people whose ability to put food on their table

01:30:13.580 depends upon these prices, going back down, settling, right? Where's the accountability?

01:30:20.460 He's saying, do you hold yourself accountable? And what what can you tell these people? And he's

01:30:25.580 so glib, he just blows it off, like everything on him is a political hit job, like you're a wise guy,

01:30:30.240 you know, like, to your point about the 1940s, they're almost expecting like the fake punch,

01:30:33.780 like, buster, right? It's like, no, this is serious. I mean, my mom's I've said this before,

01:30:39.880 my mom is in is in this category. She's on a fixed income. She's 80. Of course, I help her out. So

01:30:44.800 she's not in the same position that most are. But I understand she doesn't like to take my money. So

01:30:49.700 she she'd much rather do it with her own retirement, her own pension and Social Security.

01:30:53.820 She worked hard her whole life. She doesn't like taking from others. What choice does she and do

01:30:58.500 others have now with prices rising to this like 40 year record highs? And he's laughing it off like

01:31:05.400 he's the victim attacked by, you know, the evil Lester Holt. Yeah. And and of course, you know,

01:31:11.040 everybody around Joe Biden and everybody in the corporate press, I mean, none of them really are

01:31:17.920 in that situation. I mean, wouldn't wouldn't it kind of be interesting, almost like if you if you had one

01:31:22.800 like, you know, I'm a pure capitalist, I have nothing against people making money. But wouldn't it be

01:31:26.620 interesting if there was like one anchor of one show on cable news, who like made 60 grand a year,

01:31:33.760 you know, like maybe they want to talk about a lot of different issues. Well, yeah, right. But then

01:31:38.740 like you might you might hear about a lot of different issues. And you do hear about different

01:31:42.080 issues. When you watch the local news, you hear a lot about like the crime that's going on up the

01:31:46.100 block or the or or prices at the grocery store, because this is like these are people who actually

01:31:50.700 live through that the implications of these policies. And, you know, again, and I do think that

01:31:56.180 this was this was true during the entire Obama administration and true during the entire Trump

01:32:01.040 administration is that, you know, they measure these things by like, well, I mean, the stock

01:32:05.240 market's doing good. And even even the unemployment numbers, I mean, are completely misleading. I mean,

01:32:10.400 they don't know they are misleading. They don't count people who have dropped out of looking for

01:32:14.620 work and they don't they have no measure. Like if you're, you know, if you're have some you know,

01:32:21.120 if you're an executive and you lose your job and then you get a job at Starbucks, there's no change

01:32:25.760 in the unemployment numbers. But like there's a pretty profound change in that person's life.

01:32:29.740 I created seven million jobs. It's like what you did was just replace the jobs like those are

01:32:33.900 people who were pushed out of the workforce during the covid lockdowns who are now working again that

01:32:38.940 you didn't create anything. Right. And then with like four hundred thousand small businesses that

01:32:43.600 close their doors for good, if those people go again and get some job, you know, at a restaurant

01:32:48.540 or something, it's OK, that's a new job created. But that's not exactly like the damage has been undone.

01:32:55.360 All right. I got to leave it at that because we're out of time. Last question.

01:32:57.560 Bangles or Rams? Who are you rooting for? I I'm a Jet fan, so I will be sad no matter what happens

01:33:05.100 always. That's guaranteed. Right. As per usual. I guess Rams. So a ringing endorsement. Dave,

01:33:12.500 what a pleasure. I hope you come back. I would love to. Thank you so much, Megan.

01:33:16.980 I got some sad news for you. Just hit the wires that Jim Angle died. Longtime Fox News correspondent and

01:33:24.140 anchor. Seventy five years old. They're not releasing a cause of death right now, but he was among the best

01:33:30.860 and brightest class act and dear, dear man and friend. Wow. He'll be missed. I want to tell you about next week

01:33:38.720 before I let you go. Enjoy the weekend. We have an exclusive interview with Michelle Tafoya, who leaves NBC

01:33:44.800 Sports after the Super Bowl on Sunday and is free to speak her mind. She'll do it right here. Looking forward to

01:33:51.340 that. And as if that were not enough goodness, we've got Victor Davis Hanson, Joan, in the show on

01:33:56.340 Monday, who we always love and our guests, our viewers love. So please, in the meantime, download

01:34:00.800 The Megan Kelly Show so you won't miss it. Subscribe at youtube.com slash Megan Kelly and have a great

01:34:06.160 weekend. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:34:21.340 Thank you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - February 11, 2022

Parents Pushed to Breaking Points, COVID Child Abuse, and Why the Corporate Press Hates Joe Rogan, with Dave Smith ｜ Ep. 260

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