The Megyn Kelly Show - May 27, 2026


Paxton Crushes Cornyn in Texas, Pope Leo's AI Warning, UFC White House Fight Preview： AM Update 5⧸27


Episode Stats


Length

23 minutes

Words per minute

154.93095

Word count

3,684

Sentence count

210

Harmful content

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.400 All right, full-time thoughts. Craig, who stood out?
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00:00:30.000 Good morning, everyone. I'm Megan Kelly. It's Wednesday, May 27th, 2026, and this is your AM
00:00:38.380 Update. An expensive Republican Senate runoff in Texas comes to an end, setting up a high-stakes
00:00:44.540 general election in November. Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word
00:00:51.520 is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen. Pope Leo XIV sounding the alarm on artificial
00:00:57.900 intelligence, calling on global leaders to ensure the technology serves mankind and not the other
00:01:04.220 way around. Vice President J.D. Vance convenes a panel of state attorneys general in an effort to
00:01:09.640 crack down on fraud. It's going to be a very incredible experience for Americans and people
00:01:16.280 around the world. And an inside look at the preparations for the upcoming UFC fight hosted
00:01:22.120 on the White House lawn. All that and more coming up in just a moment on your AM Update.
00:01:27.900 when there are supply constraints on commodities prices surge you see it with fuel prices with
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00:02:29.240 bucks. Republican voters in Texas yesterday heading to the polls in a high-stakes runoff
00:02:36.200 election to nominate their candidate for U.S. Senate. With neither candidate reaching 50 percent
00:02:41.700 in the March primary, Trump-backed State Attorney General Ken Paxton taking on incumbent Senator
00:02:47.760 John Cornyn. Cornyn narrowly winning the first round with 41.9% of the vote,
00:02:53.160 compared to Paxton's 40.7%. Paxton securing a late-stage endorsement from President Trump
00:02:59.680 last week, as many Republicans worry Paxton's baggage of ethical scandals could make it harder
00:03:05.380 to beat State Representative James Tallarico in what's expected to be an intensely competitive
00:03:10.560 general election in November. At the end of the night, voters opting to go with President Trump's
00:03:17.580 choice, Paxton securing the nomination. Hear a moment from his victory speech.
00:03:23.240 I want to thank my family, my kids, my grandchildren, the Paxton patriots,
00:03:27.920 and every single person here today. And then there's one person who I think you might know,
00:03:33.440 President Donald J. Trump. When everyone in Washington told him to abandon me and abandon
00:03:39.760 the people of Texas, he didn't listen. Instead, he gave his complete and total endorsement.
00:03:45.100 James Tallarico is a threat to everything we hold dear in this state and in this country.
00:03:50.680 I mean, he's a vegan who thinks God is non-binary and that there's actually six biological sexes.
00:03:56.240 It's hard to imagine someone more radical than that.
00:03:59.240 Every Democrat, and I would say every Republican, knows that if we lose this state,
00:04:03.060 if Republicans lose this state, we lose the country.
00:04:06.160 But I truly believe that together, not only will we win this race,
00:04:09.980 but we can ensure that America's best days are ahead of us.
00:04:13.680 Senator Cornyn, who first took office in 2002, acknowledging the loss.
00:04:18.440 Tonight, we've come up short in this primary runoff.
00:04:23.000 You know, a few years ago, I had a friend of mine say, you know what makes God laugh?
00:04:29.200 He said, when we make plans, I've spent most of my time in the Senate building the Republican Party in Texas and in the U.S. Senate.
00:04:41.040 and I've always supported the Republican ticket and I intend to do so again in this general
00:04:47.380 election. I've said throughout this race that I trust the voters of Texas and they've made
00:04:54.260 their decision and I must respect it. According to Ad Impact Politics, the race setting the record
00:05:01.400 for the most expensive Senate primary with $165 million in ad spending. Breaking that down,
00:05:08.140 a whopping $92.5 million spent on ads supporting Senator Cornyn versus $3.8 million spent on
00:05:14.880 ads against him. A comparatively small $11.2 million spent on ads supporting Paxton versus
00:05:21.660 $1.1 million spent on ads attacking him. Paxton now set to take on Tallarico with the Real
00:05:27.780 Clear Politics polling average showing Tallarico ahead by one and a half points, 44.3 to 42.8.
00:05:35.780 We'll have more on this later today on the MK Show.
00:05:40.260 Pope Leo XIV releasing his first encyclical, the papacy's version of a policy paper from
00:05:46.460 a think tank meant to offer moral guidance and clarify church doctrine in response to
00:05:52.020 the defining questions of the age.
00:05:54.640 The focus of this encyclical, largely artificial intelligence, or AI.
00:05:59.880 Pope Leo taking his papal name from Leo XIII, the pontiff who led the church through the
00:06:04.960 Industrial Revolution, when factories, mass labor, and rapid technological change transformed daily
00:06:10.840 life. Now the pontiff arguing the church is facing another upheaval of comparable scale,
00:06:16.740 this time driven by machines that do not merely assist human beings, but increasingly shape
00:06:22.460 decisions about work, war, truth, and even what it means to be human. At key moments in history,
00:06:29.500 the church is called to decipher the new things in the light of the gospel and the dignity of the
00:06:36.880 human being. 135 years ago, my venerable predecessor, Leo XIII, observed the situation
00:06:45.020 of factory workers, their families, uprooted, and new forms of poverty generated by rapid
00:06:52.760 industrial transformation he understood that the church could not remain distant
00:06:59.480 today we find ourselves facing a transformation of similar magnitude with perhaps even greater
00:07:06.200 consequences artificial intelligence already touches many areas of our lives and affects
00:07:13.240 decisions that shape human coexistence like the earlier leo i feel entrusted to look upon another
00:07:20.680 huge transformation with eyes of faith, with lucidity of reason, with openness to mystery,
00:07:29.420 and with cries of the poor and the earth resounding in my heart.
00:07:34.000 AI concerns recently echoing in the boos of college graduates after several commencement
00:07:39.260 speakers cast AI as an unavoidable force in the world they are entering, like here at the
00:07:44.920 University of Arizona, where former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was speaking.
00:07:49.280 The question is not whether AI will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence. We do not know. We do not know the precise contours of what this transformation will look like.
00:08:07.060 That unease also extending inside the tech industry, where some of AI's own creators are now voicing a kind of Frankenstein fear, warning that what they have built may be advancing faster than its creators intended, a subject explored in the AI documentary.
00:08:25.240 We ran an experiment where we gave OpenAI's most powerful AI model a series of problems to solve.
00:08:33.260 And partway through, on its computer, it got a notification that it was going to be shut down.
00:08:38.020 And what it did is it rewrote that code to prevent itself from being shut down so it could finish solving the problems.
00:08:44.420 Another really interesting one is that the AI company Anthropic made a simulated environment where that AI had access to all of the company emails.
00:08:54.040 and it learned through reading those emails
00:08:56.160 it was going to be replaced
00:08:57.700 and the lead engineer who was responsible for this
00:09:00.880 was also having an affair
00:09:02.400 and on its own it used that information
00:09:05.240 to blackmail the engineer
00:09:06.560 to prevent itself from being replaced
00:09:08.360 it was like no, I'm not going to be replaced
00:09:10.940 if you replace me
00:09:12.020 I'm going to tell the world
00:09:14.080 that you're having this affair
00:09:15.380 and nobody taught it to do that
00:09:17.940 no, it learned to do that on its own
00:09:19.420 as the models get smarter
00:09:21.140 they learn that these are effective ways to accomplish goals.
00:09:24.820 And this is not a problem that's isolated to one model.
00:09:27.700 All of the most powerful models show these behaviors.
00:09:30.680 On Monday, from the Vatican, Pope Leo unveiling Magnifica Humanitas, or Magnificent Humanity,
00:09:37.620 a roughly 42,300-word document addressed not only to Catholics, but to, quote, all people of goodwill.
00:09:45.180 The document focusing on, quote, safeguarding humanity at a time of transformation,
00:09:49.700 with concerns ranging from labor and human dignity to warfare, truth, power, and the common good.
00:09:57.280 One of the pontiff's central warnings is against confusing imitation with humanity,
00:10:02.440 noting that AI programs merely imitate certain functions of intelligence, adding, quote,
00:10:07.680 so-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body,
00:10:13.320 do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within
00:10:19.340 what love, work, friendship, or responsibility mean. The Pope framing the danger in biblical
00:10:25.200 terms, invoking the Tower of Babel. In the Old Testament story, humanity, united by one language,
00:10:31.860 tries to build a tower reaching into the heavens, an act of pride that ends with God confusing
00:10:37.380 their language and scattering them across the earth. Pope Leo drawing a direct comparison to
00:10:43.080 the modern technological moment, urging mankind to abandon, quote, the construction of yet another
00:10:49.260 Tower of Babel and instead build toward the common good. And on Monday, the Pope putting
00:10:54.680 that warning in even starker terms. Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is
00:11:02.820 strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting
00:11:08.820 attention, awakening consciences, and indicating paths forward for humanity. The church has long
00:11:17.440 been working for nuclear disarmament, aware that every great technical power can affect people's
00:11:23.480 lives, and so must be accompanied by adequate moral discernment and public control. In a similar
00:11:30.600 sense, artificial intelligence now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an
00:11:38.660 instrument of domination, exclusion, and death. Like nuclear energy, it must be at the service of all
00:11:46.900 and of the common good. Decisions about technology must never be separated from
00:11:52.560 conscience and responsibility. Let us not sleep as others do, admonished the Apostle Paul,
00:11:59.220 but let us keep awake. Such vigilance is necessary today.
00:12:04.600 Alongside the pontiff in Vatican City, co-founder of AI company Anthropic,
00:12:09.800 Christopher Ola, though an atheist acknowledging the questions raised by AI
00:12:14.320 are too large to be answered by Silicon Valley.
00:12:18.260 Some might believe that matters of AI are best handled by computer scientists like myself.
00:12:23.820 They are mistaken.
00:12:25.240 The questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community,
00:12:29.480 not just in their implications, but also in their nature.
00:12:33.160 AI systems are not engineered the way a bridge or an airplane is engineered.
00:12:37.680 We understand an airplane because we designed every part of it,
00:12:40.560 and we understand the physics that act on it.
00:12:44.260 AI models are not like that.
00:12:46.720 They are grown on a structure roughly modeled after the brain,
00:12:50.860 on an enormous inheritance of human thought and speech.
00:12:55.320 And what has grown is far more subtle, odd, and beautiful than science fiction prepared us for.
00:13:01.620 They are not the cold, calculating robots we were promised.
00:13:05.580 They are made from us, from our words.
00:13:07.480 And as the Holy Father observes, they remain, in important ways, mysterious even to those of us who create them.
00:13:15.560 Pope Leo calling for greater moral caution and for global leaders to ensure the technology serves human life, not the other way around.
00:13:24.300 Artificial intelligence can be a construction site of history from within a horizon of communion in which technical progress learns to serve human life.
00:13:36.740 Let each builder choose with care how to build, warned St. Paul.
00:13:42.180 He does not fear the work site.
00:13:44.120 Rather, he warns against building without solid foundations.
00:13:48.160 Let's not fear artificial intelligence, but constantly keep the question of the human in play.
00:13:54.520 We cannot be careless with our most powerful technical instruments.
00:14:00.200 Whole means that no one can be reduced to productivity, to cognitive performance, or to mere data.
00:14:09.200 The person bears within him or herself a freedom, an interiority,
00:14:15.000 and the vocation to love and worship that no machine can replace or block.
00:14:21.440 Coming up, Vice President J.D. Vance meets with a group of state attorneys general
00:14:25.620 enlisting their support in the White House's national fraud crackdown and a behind the scenes
00:14:31.400 look at the planning of UFC Freedom 250, a once in a lifetime event set to take place on the White
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00:15:45.020 Vice President J.D. Vance yesterday
00:15:46.820 convening a group of state attorneys general
00:15:49.000 at the White House.
00:15:49.840 as the Trump administration looks to turn its anti-fraud task force into a national
00:15:54.720 enforcement operation. President Trump formally establishing the task force to eliminate fraud
00:16:00.260 in March, putting Mr. Vance in charge of an interagency effort focused on fraud,
00:16:05.140 waste, and abuse in federally funded benefit programs. The challenge for the White House?
00:16:10.360 While many of these programs are federally funded, they are administered at the state level,
00:16:15.200 making state cooperation critical to identifying and rooting out fraud.
00:16:19.840 According to CNBC, the meeting initially planned for Republican Attorneys General,
00:16:24.420 with Vice President Vance later pushing to include Democrats,
00:16:28.080 saying it would be a shame if they did not participate.
00:16:31.380 The invites reportedly sent out to Democrats this past Friday, just before the holiday weekend.
00:16:36.400 A group of Dem-AGs responding in a letter to Vance, writing,
00:16:40.100 While we would appreciate the opportunity to engage in serious discussions,
00:16:44.240 the invitation was provided with less than one business day's notice and with no agenda.
00:16:49.520 However, not all Democrat offices stayed away.
00:16:52.660 Representatives from the offices of Connecticut and Oregon ultimately attending the meeting.
00:16:57.560 The VP kicking off the meeting by highlighting the task force's progress in just the 50 days since its formation.
00:17:03.840 In just two months, we exposed billions of dollars in benefits that had been stolen from the American people.
00:17:10.380 We referred over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans back to the Treasury for collection.
00:17:15.240 We deferred more than $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements that were coming from
00:17:22.000 various states, particularly California. We put a six-month hold on enrollments for new hospice
00:17:26.760 and home health care providers because so many of the newer hospice providers were not actually
00:17:31.020 providing hospice services. We recovered taxpayer funds from the $135 billion stolen after the
00:17:38.180 floodgates were open in the immediate aftermath of COVID. We have found $6.3 billion in suspected
00:17:43.900 fraudulent government contracts, which were mostly awarded during the last administration,
00:17:48.460 and that has stopped. And finally, we've blocked $60 million in student aid fraud that should have
00:17:53.680 gone to young people trying to get an education, but instead we're going to fraudsters.
00:17:58.380 A task force growing out of several high-profile fraud cases, including pandemic and benefits 0.99
00:18:04.200 fraud prosecutions in Minnesota, as a result of fraud committed largely by the state's Somali 0.99
00:18:10.020 community. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller tying the fraud fight directly
00:18:14.900 to issues with the federal budget. All of the systems in our country, whether you're talking
00:18:19.820 about voting, whether you're talking about entitlements, whether you're talking about
00:18:23.320 welfare benefits, were set up based on the honor system. And so the way most welfare works in most
00:18:29.880 states and most places is we take your word for it. If you thought a piece of paper and you say
00:18:34.700 your kids are hungry, you are going to get food stamps. You will just start getting the checks.
00:18:41.080 And so what's happened to our country is we became a society, as you've seen with the Somali 0.70
00:18:46.740 refugee problem in Minnesota, where you have a large number of people that are not following 1.00
00:18:52.080 the honor system. They're not playing by the rules. They're not abiding by our laws. And the 0.99
00:18:56.060 amount that has been fleeced from us is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. I believe,
00:19:01.120 based on what I've seen and what I've heard is that we could balance the federal budget if the
00:19:06.060 only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully,
00:19:12.880 correctly eligible to receive them. Over the weekend, a new construction site taking shape
00:19:18.820 at the White House, and it has nothing to do with the ballroom. On the south lawn, giant metal arms
00:19:24.360 fitted with lights being raised 87 feet above what will soon become a fully constructed UFC
00:19:30.880 octagon, with temporary seating for more than 4,000 people. All for a once-in-a-lifetime fight
00:19:36.980 night President Trump is promising will be unlike anything the White House has ever seen.
00:19:41.860 The event, UFC Freedom 250, set for June 14th, Flag Day, and President Trump's 80th birthday,
00:19:48.480 also marking the unofficial kickoff to a summer of celebrations for America's 250th anniversary.
00:19:55.280 Ahead of the event, Time Magazine profiling UFC president and CEO Dana White,
00:20:00.100 whose relationship with President Trump dates back more than two decades.
00:20:04.420 The profile, including an interview with President Trump, conducted backstage at a UFC event in Miami.
00:20:10.340 Just days after the 2024 election, President Trump reportedly floating an idea to White,
00:20:15.240 a UFC fight at the White House. By February, formal planning underway with UFC staffers
00:20:22.060 reportedly making more than a dozen trips to Washington over the last several months.
00:20:26.940 White, who says he swore off politics after the campaign, tells Time the White House event is not
00:20:32.960 political, but patriotic. We're watching the fights and the president looks over at me and says,
00:20:37.860 we should do a fight at the White House. And I said, yes, yes, I would love that. I'm in.
00:20:42.900 And it's going to be a very incredible experience for Americans and people around the world
00:20:48.740 of like a one-of-one live event and television experience.
00:20:53.060 Do you not see the White House fight as political?
00:20:56.040 Not at all.
00:20:56.980 No.
00:20:57.280 Why?
00:20:57.740 Why not?
00:20:58.320 Well, it's on the birthday of America.
00:21:01.620 I mean, it's the 250th birthday of America.
00:21:04.600 What better place to celebrate it than the White House?
00:21:07.740 And the thing that you have to understand about me is I respect whoever is the president
00:21:12.300 of the United States. It isn't about red or blue or politics for me. I'm friends with people on
00:21:18.480 the far left and I'm friends with people on the far right and I consider myself right down the
00:21:23.400 middle. Time reporting the White House fight will include roughly 4,300 seats with at least
00:21:28.380 1,200 reserved for active duty military members. A separate viewing party will be held across from
00:21:34.920 the White House on the ellipse with White telling the president the space can hold up to 85,000
00:21:40.800 people. Tickets to all events will be free, though registration is required, the event a
00:21:46.480 massive logistical undertaking, but even with months of planning, one major variable remains
00:21:51.840 out of anyone's control, the one we all deal with when planning a big party, the weather.
00:21:58.860 Time reporting that while the canopy should protect fighters and many spectators from rain,
00:22:03.640 lightning within eight miles of the South Lawn would require a 30-minute evacuation,
00:22:07.940 and persistent strikes could wipe out the event entirely.
00:22:12.160 UFC officials will begin receiving forecasts 10 days before the fight,
00:22:16.460 then hourly updates in the final week.
00:22:19.220 Time reporting fighters will warm up in the Eisenhower Executive Office building,
00:22:23.680 showering back at their hotels,
00:22:25.380 and that the main event competitors are expected to walk out from the Oval Office.
00:22:29.160 Some questions swirling about whether the payoff will be worth the hype.
00:22:33.140 Joe Rogan, who will be in Washington calling the fight as usual for the UFC,
00:22:37.060 referring to the event on his podcast as a, quote, gimmick. President Trump telling time
00:22:42.660 he initially did not appreciate the comment before deciding Rogan has a point. Quote,
00:22:47.820 at first I thought that's not nice. And then I realized it is a gimmick. Life is a gimmick
00:22:53.460 if you think about it, right? But it's a good gimmick. It's something that will never happen
00:22:57.860 again. And that'll do it for your AM update. I'm Megan Kelly. Join me back here for the MK show
00:23:05.480 Live on SiriusXM's The Megyn Kelly Channel, 111 at noon east, on YouTube.com slash Megyn Kelly, and on all podcast platforms.
00:23:35.480 me chills we are of course talking about tim's taste of the globe lineup new globally inspired
00:23:40.180 timbits and ice cap flavors available at tim horton's for a limited time pick some up today
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