The Megyn Kelly Show - ＂Political War＂ Coming For Trump in 2025, and Christmas Traditions, with Steve Bannon and Doug Brunt

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00:00:31.000 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:42.880 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:45.140 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Friday, our last live broadcast before the Christmas break.

00:00:52.480 And may I just say before we get started how grateful I am, and I know my staff feels too,

00:01:00.000 toward all of you for making the show what it is and making it possible for us to do it to you every day

00:01:06.800 and bring the show to you, the news to you, in the way that we think is appropriate, special, and all too rare.

00:01:13.740 So, couldn't do it without the support of all of you listening and watching.

00:01:17.540 Feel very grateful to you all. Feel especially hopeful this time of year, as I know a lot of you do too, as we're now, you know, what, a month away.

00:01:26.560 Actually, it's a month from today that Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States.

00:01:32.400 And it happened despite overwhelming odds against him and despite a media that is entirely against him.

00:01:38.880 And I think it happened thanks to honest brokers like the ones who listen to this show,

00:01:43.380 who are in the market for actual news, real facts, yes, opinion, but based on real facts and not misleading bullshit on one side or the other.

00:01:53.340 So, thank you to all of you very much.

00:01:56.400 We've got two great guests today.

00:01:58.360 I'm so excited about the guests we have to end out the year.

00:02:02.220 The two B's, Bannon and Brunt.

00:02:06.060 My husband, Doug Brunt, will come up in our second hour.

00:02:09.480 And my team has prepared a special holiday quiz for me to take,

00:02:13.860 showing how well I know Doug's Christmas traditions and memories.

00:02:17.980 I have not yet seen it, but I plan to ace it.

00:02:20.720 So, we will see how that goes in hour two.

00:02:22.720 All right.

00:02:24.660 And in our first guest, we have another important B, which is Steve Bannon.

00:02:29.260 And here's where we're going to start.

00:02:30.820 As I said, we are now one way, one month away from the inauguration of Donald Trump 2.0.

00:02:36.200 And even before that day arrives, the Democratic Party remains in crisis.

00:02:39.880 They don't know what they're doing.

00:02:41.060 Why are they talking about 2028 already?

00:02:43.200 My God, would you just still do an honest retrospective on why you lost 2024 before you start?

00:02:49.760 I mean, fine.

00:02:50.900 But like if I were a Democrat, I'd be a little annoyed.

00:02:52.720 They don't know what to do.

00:02:55.320 Mabeling Donald Trump Hitler didn't work.

00:02:57.660 America's Mussolini, nah.

00:03:00.240 The American public didn't buy it.

00:03:02.020 So now, for now, they've come up with a new way to try to irritate Donald Trump

00:03:08.600 and to break apart a really important and potentially even holy alliance

00:03:16.100 between Donald Trump and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk.

00:03:21.820 The latest line, Trump is nothing more than Elon's puppet.

00:03:27.500 They got scared because President Musk told them.

00:03:35.400 President Musk said, don't do it.

00:03:39.620 Don't do it.

00:03:40.700 Trump looked tiny yesterday.

00:03:42.480 He looked like a very little man.

00:03:44.080 The shadow president, Elon Musk.

00:03:46.020 But the daddy they really fear and the daddy who really leads them right now.

00:03:49.940 Donald Trump looks tiny right now.

00:03:52.800 He looks small compared to Elon Musk.

00:03:55.120 Welcome to the Elon Musk presidency.

00:03:57.460 This is an unelected oligarch who appears to be running our government.

00:04:03.740 Okay.

00:04:04.480 I thought Joe Biden was the president.

00:04:06.460 I mean, technically, isn't he still the president?

00:04:08.060 But it's obvious what they're trying to do there, and I'll talk about it in one second.

00:04:12.000 But last night, my first guest today, Steve Bannon, spoke about what the Democratic Party

00:04:16.860 should expect from the incoming administration when President Trump actually takes office,

00:04:22.320 when he, Bannon, appeared at Turning Point's America Fest in Phoenix.

00:04:26.640 And typically, for Steve, he did not hold back.

00:04:30.380 The political class is infected with a malignant cancer.

00:04:35.140 That cancer is bipartisanship.

00:04:38.080 Was there any bipartisanship in Scott Pressler going around for the last four years

00:04:44.540 and changing the makeup of the electorate in Pennsylvania or in Arizona?

00:04:49.620 Was there any?

00:04:50.300 No.

00:04:50.920 The conversation is over.

00:04:53.160 Remember, President Trump came back from the political dead and on the shoulders of

00:05:00.060 the most powerful populist movement in the history of the world, brought in every demographic,

00:05:06.620 every ethnicity, every gender, and every part of the country, and won a landslide victory

00:05:12.100 all the battleground states, every demographic, and the popular vote.

00:05:15.660 We have nothing else to discuss.

00:05:18.120 It's only about the execution of President Trump's plan.

00:05:21.740 All we hear in the mainstream media is how they have to have quiet time.

00:05:25.760 And they got psychologists over at the State Department patting them on the head.

00:05:29.360 They're too tired.

00:05:30.600 There's no resistance because they can't take any more.

00:05:33.600 Fuck you.

00:05:34.620 We're going to go win.

00:05:40.500 Steve Bannon joins me now.

00:05:42.020 He's host of War Room, which you can watch on Real America's Voice, Rumble, X, and all podcast

00:05:47.520 platforms.

00:05:47.900 He's also a former chief strategist for President Donald Trump.

00:05:51.740 For those of us who have been holding our breath for the past several months, we can

00:05:55.440 finally exhale in the wake of this presidential election, right?

00:05:59.080 Work can finally be done on the major issues that this country's facing, and one of the

00:06:03.320 most significant is our national debt.

00:06:05.540 Look, the fact is our nation's broke, and that debt is a house of cards that cannot be

00:06:09.160 quickly dismantled by anyone.

00:06:11.240 So the strategy remains the same when it comes to your investments.

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00:07:02.100 Steve, welcome back.

00:07:03.700 Thank you, Megan.

00:07:04.320 Thank you for having me.

00:07:05.460 Great speech, and thank you for embodying what many of us are feeling there, especially

00:07:09.380 at the end.

00:07:10.640 It's like, OK, spare me on the unity.

00:07:13.400 That's what Joe Biden promised us when we took office.

00:07:15.700 We knew he didn't mean it.

00:07:17.480 You're advocating a more honest approach.

00:07:20.560 No.

00:07:21.260 Exactly.

00:07:22.040 You know, it was totally phony about what they reached out to in 2021.

00:07:27.120 They were trying to crush people with lawfare, bankroom, debank them.

00:07:30.160 We just won a sweeping mandate, and it's time to execute the mandate.

00:07:34.040 I mean, one of the reasons you have this fiasco on Capitol Hill in the last 48 hours is still

00:07:39.080 the reflex position or the default position of our political class on the conservative

00:07:44.700 and Republican side is always to reach out and to work and really submit to the Washington

00:07:50.740 cartel mentality.

00:07:52.100 And President Trump, we want a mandate.

00:07:54.260 It's only about executing.

00:07:55.720 And we don't have a lot of time to get ready for that.

00:07:57.320 Like you said, we're 30 days away, and we got to get on it like day one.

00:08:01.580 I mean, his list of to-do is just huge.

00:08:03.400 And that's what the focus should be, not this phony unity.

00:08:07.100 Look, to me, they essentially are telling you the 2020 election was stolen for the simple

00:08:13.380 reasons that they're treating Trump like the president all over the world.

00:08:17.780 Biden has kind of faded.

00:08:19.000 Now you have articles coming out in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

00:08:21.420 Well, he never really was president.

00:08:22.820 He was infirmed from day one.

00:08:24.260 They knew it.

00:08:25.160 Nobody invoked the 22nd Amendment.

00:08:26.580 So this is, to me, Megan, look, I think we go, I think we're part, we're partisans.

00:08:32.560 We should go ultra partisan, at least for the first six months to a year to get the agenda

00:08:37.040 done and no prisoners.

00:08:40.580 All right.

00:08:41.280 Let's spend a minute on what's happening on Capitol Hill, because it's confusing, I think,

00:08:45.180 to the average person who does not pay a lot of attention to continuing resolutions

00:08:50.240 or these end of year budget wars that always seem to wind up the same way with them saying,

00:08:57.140 just fund it, just fund it under the same terms as we've been funding it.

00:09:01.080 So in a nutshell, what's happening is we're going to run out of money to fund the government.

00:09:06.180 They tried, including Speaker Johnson, spearheaded an effort to try to continue the existing funding,

00:09:12.780 but with some hikes like pay hikes for Congress and ongoing funding for some very controversial

00:09:19.440 organizations, but just to sort of kick the can down the road to March and the Republicans,

00:09:26.280 some 30 of them in the House who never vote for these, who just always say, this is so

00:09:31.000 irresponsible.

00:09:31.600 What are we doing?

00:09:32.840 We, you know, we have enormous debt and deficits.

00:09:35.800 We're not going to support this necessitated Speaker Johnson, he would say, reaching out to

00:09:41.400 some Democrats to get approval for this bill that necessitated all the spending extravaganda

00:09:48.400 extravaganzas because they won't support it unless they get some of their favorites in

00:09:51.580 there.

00:09:51.920 And the whole thing wound up a very ugly nightmare that was about to be shoved through.

00:09:56.620 And then Vivek and Elon, who are running Department of Government Efficiency, Doge's extra

00:10:02.080 governmental watchdog on spending stepped in to say, what are we doing?

00:10:06.800 Why are we doing this?

00:10:09.060 And that there was blowback.

00:10:10.820 And then Trump dropped in with another message, which I'll get to in one second.

00:10:14.540 Anyway, the whole thing blew up.

00:10:16.180 It all blew up.

00:10:17.620 And now they might have a new deal that's like a very slimmed down version of all this.

00:10:22.720 But for the people at home who are lost already with me, with this back and forth, Steve, what

00:10:26.660 is the bottom line?

00:10:27.600 What do they need to know?

00:10:29.660 But here's what I think is important.

00:10:31.680 The fiscal year of the government runs out on September 30th.

00:10:34.940 The appropriations of the budget all should have been done.

00:10:37.180 Because of the election year, the kind of Republican establishment wanted to kick the

00:10:40.720 can down the road.

00:10:41.460 So they started with the CR even on October 1st.

00:10:45.320 And what we know from October and November, from the numbers that have been put out by

00:10:48.820 the government, we've had the two biggest deficit months in recorded history, $674 billion

00:10:56.380 of deficits in the first two months, but going to be almost $800 billion to a trillion

00:11:01.800 dollars in the first 90 days of this fiscal year.

00:11:04.400 Right now, we're adding about a trillion dollars of new debt through deficits every 100 days.

00:11:11.420 I called this a year ago, and this is what's happened.

00:11:13.520 The projection, Megan, for 400 days from now, basically the one-year anniversary of President

00:11:19.220 Trump's inauguration on the 20th, is $40 trillion in debt.

00:11:24.020 So in that context, this whole thing of another CR, because people would just say, let's get

00:11:29.100 this thing sorted now, the CR was to kick it into past January 20th, so President Trump

00:11:35.040 would have an attempt with Russ Vot at OMB, in Vivek, in Elon at Doge, to actually come

00:11:41.880 up with the House members and actually come up, because all taxes and all spending have

00:11:46.500 to come from the House, according to the Constitution, that President Trump would have a thing to...

00:11:51.100 So this is going to be a very simple, kick it into past 20th and maybe give him a couple

00:11:57.680 of months, let's say March, because we hate CRs.

00:12:01.700 What happened, and you saw Johnson spending all this time with Elon, and he's going to UFC,

00:12:07.100 he's walking into the UFC, you know, the UFC, he's at the Army-Navy game in the box.

00:12:13.160 He's spending a ton of time with President Trump in Mar-a-Lago, and with Vivek, and Elon.

00:12:18.620 And what happens is he drops this thing the other day that needs to be voted in 24 hours,

00:12:23.460 it's 1,500 pages.

00:12:25.720 It is, and remember, the CR itself, because when you do continue resolutions, you're just

00:12:30.380 basing it upon the approved spending from the previous year.

00:12:34.100 So the CR, for the 90 days in any one quarter, is about a half a trillion dollars in spending,

00:12:41.800 or almost, you know.

00:12:42.460 On top of that, he layered on new spending of about $300 billion.

00:12:46.420 This is an $800 billion, almost a trillion-dollar package.

00:12:49.960 So, but worse, 80% of it was Hakeem Jeffries.

00:12:53.980 And if you look at the 1,500 pages, you're a lawyer.

00:12:56.800 This is a highly negotiated legal document.

00:13:01.380 It's ready to be made into a law, not an executive order.

00:13:04.600 This is a law.

00:13:05.520 It's 1,500 pages in total giveaway to the Democrats.

00:13:08.680 I mean, bio labs in Ukraine, more stuff on the pandemic, more stuff backing Fauci.

00:13:13.400 The Global Engagement Center, the thing that you and Mike Pence and others ran about all

00:13:18.400 the time, that's fully funded for another year.

00:13:21.460 This was 80 to 90% of Democratic priorities.

00:13:24.600 And now we know, as we peel it back, that Schumer, McConnell, Hakeem Jeffries basically

00:13:30.660 negotiated with this guy, and he didn't tell anybody.

00:13:33.240 The problem is, he dropped it on people, another $800 billion in spending.

00:13:38.080 Nobody planned on, never got Trump in the loop, never got Vivek and Elon in the loop.

00:13:43.260 And then lied about it, even on Fox.

00:13:45.080 He goes on Fox and Friends in the morning, says, well, I talked to, I'm going to message

00:13:47.780 Shane with Vivek and Elon.

00:13:49.680 And I walked him through that.

00:13:51.000 We only have a couple of votes in the House and that, and they're all fine with this.

00:13:53.980 Well, they weren't fine with it at all.

00:13:55.360 And the more you peel it back, it's terrible.

00:13:57.420 So that got thrown out.

00:13:59.820 And then you had this whole fiasco.

00:14:02.160 And President Trump, I think, feeling he wasn't being dealt with straight, started to put some

00:14:07.260 demands, particularly said, I want to increase the debt ceiling.

00:14:10.500 I don't want to get too technical, but there's a number of instruments called reconciliation

00:14:14.260 that will take place early in President Trump's second term, that the debt ceiling issue can

00:14:20.160 be incorporated in there.

00:14:22.180 And I hope what they're doing, first off, if this has got to be what it is to shut the

00:14:25.740 government down, let's just shut it down and wait till Trump gets there.

00:14:28.620 And they're going to try to extract as much pain on the American people.

00:14:32.280 They're going to shut.

00:14:32.820 They're going to tell TSA to go home, although TSA are vital personnel.

00:14:36.980 They're going to shut down the airports over Christmas.

00:14:38.960 I mean, Biden would extract a lot of pain from the American people.

00:14:42.000 But I think you've got to say at some point in time, enough is enough.

00:14:45.940 Now, it turns out, Megan, up there, I think what they're intended now is it looks like

00:14:50.600 they're going to break it down into three separate bills, a clean CR that just kicks it

00:14:55.400 like they should just 90 days with nothing.

00:14:57.960 It just says we're going to continue the spending, kick it out to March 20th, which was the original

00:15:02.820 plan.

00:15:03.800 Then this farm bill, because the farmers are under pressure and the banks there are not

00:15:07.920 getting paid.

00:15:08.740 It'll be a separate bill, 10 or 20 billion for the farmers.

00:15:11.800 And then the last will be the relief of FEMA, which normally would have to have an offset

00:15:16.600 because we have tough decisions to make.

00:15:18.460 And I'm not sure the FEMA money is not there.

00:15:20.720 They're just not paying it.

00:15:21.600 Biden's just putting the screws.

00:15:22.960 110 billion.

00:15:24.720 110 billion.

00:15:25.460 Normally, we would have offsets for that.

00:15:27.500 That's an offset measure.

00:15:28.840 But because in the hurry, and I said, listen, this is how you get 40 trillion of debt.

00:15:33.600 And I'm not so sure FEMA doesn't have the cash right now.

00:15:36.340 I think that's a Biden regime putting the screws to MAGA and Western North Carolina and

00:15:41.220 Florida.

00:15:42.680 But be as it may, there'll be a separate vote on that.

00:15:44.660 And what I understand the latest, just when I sat down with you, is that the cuts and

00:15:49.980 offsetting cuts and the debt ceiling will be dealt with in the first reconciliation, which

00:15:54.620 will be about the border.

00:15:55.580 And I would hope that that's there in the 20th.

00:15:59.000 Bottom line for your audience, we have a very dysfunctional system.

00:16:02.980 And Johnson's got to go.

00:16:05.120 Maybe we can talk about that.

00:16:06.200 But it's not just individuals.

00:16:07.580 It's not just personnel.

00:16:09.500 We have a systemic problem.

00:16:11.580 And the systemic problem is we are like a heroin addict.

00:16:14.800 We are addicted, addicted to federal spending.

00:16:18.660 It's the cause of inflation.

00:16:20.060 And it's going to destroy this country of everything Trump's got to do, stopping these

00:16:23.480 endless wars, seal the border and deportations of the 12 to 15 million.

00:16:28.700 The one that's the toughest is to the intervention to break the addiction to spending and to get

00:16:33.940 our hands around, to get our arms around this, this, this out of control, you know, budget

00:16:40.480 and national debt.

00:16:42.260 Or when you're around the Christmas tree with your husband, look at your children and just

00:16:46.840 understand that we're passing them a catastrophe and a crisis that will make 2008 in the Great

00:16:53.200 Depression look like garden parties.

00:16:56.100 Part of the problem is, you know, most of the spending is on entitlement spending and no,

00:16:59.880 no politician, including Trump wants to touch that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.

00:17:05.200 So, yeah, when politicians tell you that, that is a problem.

00:17:09.960 Listen, the little guy out there, he has one thing.

00:17:13.280 He has a contract.

00:17:14.540 He has a contract for Social Security.

00:17:15.900 It's 1200 bucks a month.

00:17:17.080 And he's got he's got the Medicare.

00:17:18.820 It ain't a lot, but it's what he's got.

00:17:21.260 And he's not going to give it up.

00:17:22.820 Well, he's been look at this fiasco last 40 hours.

00:17:24.940 Why would you trust a politician say, look, just let's get into the entitlements.

00:17:29.900 We're going to sort it.

00:17:30.440 Now, the people that say that the politicians say that don't want to do the hard work and

00:17:34.920 discretionary spending.

00:17:35.820 We have a trillion and a half dollars of discretionary spending, right?

00:17:39.000 That you have to attack that.

00:17:41.180 You have to start that.

00:17:42.720 You have to start there.

00:17:43.800 And look, I was a naval officer for eight years.

00:17:46.260 I spent four years at sea under destroyer.

00:17:47.820 My daughter, as you know, is a West Point grad that served in Iraq.

00:17:50.920 We're hawks, but we're not endless war hawks.

00:17:53.580 You've got to start with the Defense Department.

00:17:55.000 Defense Department's budget has to be cut.

00:17:56.800 It just has to.

00:17:57.840 You can't have a tree.

00:17:58.660 We have now an NDAA at nine hundred billion dollars.

00:18:01.880 We can't afford it.

00:18:02.940 The social programs have to be restructured.

00:18:05.200 Once we get discretionary spending and people see that we're serious, we're serious people

00:18:10.480 and it's going to be pain.

00:18:12.600 There's no doubt there's going to be pain.

00:18:14.100 There is going to be pain.

00:18:15.220 All the easy decisions were 10 and 20 years ago.

00:18:18.440 We now have a balance sheet, 36 trillion of debt, increasing by a trillion dollars every

00:18:23.820 hundred days.

00:18:24.640 So all the easy things are gone.

00:18:27.160 It's now down to the heart.

00:18:28.480 Inflation is not going to go away while you have this massive spending because the debt

00:18:32.380 increases and you've got to refinance a third of it every year.

00:18:36.580 This is pretty.

00:18:37.460 The math here is not that complicated.

00:18:39.580 It's the political will.

00:18:41.240 And hopefully, President Trump, he's got Scott Besson.

00:18:43.960 He's got DeRos.

00:18:44.680 He's got a great team, but people that back President Trump and people that are coming

00:18:51.640 to our movement now, particularly working class African-Americans and Hispanics, have

00:18:56.340 got to understand that the country needs a reorganization economically and particularly

00:19:01.620 about this federal government or we're not going to be a republic in another decade.

00:19:07.140 You saw this from the assassination on the street.

00:19:09.360 They shot a guy in the back.

00:19:10.920 Some rich kid shot a guy in the back.

00:19:12.360 And if you look online, 95 percent of these of these kids online, that's their living

00:19:17.600 experience.

00:19:18.100 I'm not saying it's proper.

00:19:19.880 I'm saying that's where it is.

00:19:22.180 We have two choices in this country.

00:19:24.080 We need to go down this MAGA revolution, this populist nationalist revolution that's

00:19:27.760 peaceful.

00:19:28.520 That's now getting more and more people involved in it, more and more ethnicities, more

00:19:32.320 color, more races and more economic groups, the working class, medical class.

00:19:36.160 Or you're going to have a French revolution.

00:19:38.060 You can see it coming and you can see, particularly for them, a cold-blooded assassination.

00:19:43.080 So the stakes couldn't be higher.

00:19:45.400 And that's why this Christmas, I hope everybody steps back and really thinks where we're going

00:19:50.420 with the direction of this country.

00:19:52.280 So interesting.

00:19:53.320 Well, Elon stepped in and objected to what Speaker Johnson was about to do.

00:19:57.400 And it appears to have halted it and gotten it slimmed down to what you just said, this

00:20:02.520 more three-point plan, taking care of the farmers, the hurricane relief, and just booting this

00:20:08.160 whole, you know, CR thing, the continuing resolution until a couple months after Trump

00:20:13.220 takes office, where they'll have to deal with it then.

00:20:15.800 But in the meantime, as I said in the intro, the left seems to smell an opportunity here

00:20:21.560 of dividing Trump and Elon.

00:20:26.360 They've been doing it for a while.

00:20:27.920 They see that Elon's been quite a presence at Mar-a-Lago and on President Trump's initial

00:20:32.040 meetings.

00:20:32.860 And they know exactly that Trump has a big ego, like every president.

00:20:37.280 And they're trying to manipulate him psychologically by saying, oh, really, Elon's the president.

00:20:43.380 Really, he's truly the president.

00:20:45.540 He was tweeting about it himself.

00:20:47.780 One second, let me find it on my phone.

00:20:49.820 Elon was today and seemingly unhappy about the manipulations that we're seeing.

00:20:55.580 So here's what happened first.

00:20:57.260 It was Pramala Jayapal, a member of the squad who tweeted out, it's not clear who's in charge.

00:21:04.620 She's got a picture of Elon at the Resolute desk.

00:21:07.980 And it's not President-elect Donald Trump.

00:21:10.960 Shadow President Elon Musk spent all day railing against Republicans' CR, succeeded in killing

00:21:15.900 the bill, and then Trump decided to follow his lead.

00:21:18.660 Then somebody retweets this and says, for awareness, note the language here.

00:21:23.380 It's a very intentional strategy.

00:21:24.760 The goal is to weaken Trump and Elon by fomenting tensions between them, by jabbing Trump about

00:21:29.740 not being the alpha.

00:21:30.900 The idea is to provoke him, to sideline Elon and defray the relationship.

00:21:35.040 And Elon retweeted that saying, that is exactly the goal.

00:21:38.760 The political and legacy media puppets all got their new instructions yesterday and are now

00:21:43.740 parroting the same message to drive a wedge between Donald Trump and me.

00:21:47.600 They will fail.

00:21:48.860 You agree that's the strategy right now?

00:21:51.780 That is the strategy.

00:21:53.280 I want a different one thing.

00:21:54.520 I think that also, because we're a populist movement, and like even when I went to prison,

00:21:58.480 it's next man up.

00:21:59.280 When the history of this age is written, they're not going to talk about Elon Musk or Tucker

00:22:05.980 Carlson or Steve Bannon or Megyn Kelly or Roger Ailes or Sean Hannity or anybody.

00:22:11.960 They're going to talk about Trump, the age of Trump, and they're going to talk about this

00:22:15.400 movement, this populist movement, this MAGA movement.

00:22:17.420 It was a reaction of the people.

00:22:19.480 Now, Elon was out and ahead of it, but the revolt from the folks, as soon as they understood

00:22:24.640 what was going on, was enormous, and they blew up their congressmen on the phones and

00:22:29.260 with the text messages, et cetera.

00:22:31.140 Now, to Elon, what he's, I think, presented and offered to the country is pretty extraordinary.

00:22:38.260 We've talked about deconstructing the administrative state now for eight or 10 years in the Trump

00:22:43.060 movement.

00:22:43.460 Before that, Megan, you always know that all the conservatives wanted limited government,

00:22:46.780 a small government.

00:22:47.460 Nothing happened.

00:22:48.180 The government expanded until President Trump came along.

00:22:50.680 The government was just out of control.

00:22:52.380 What Elon Musk gives you in Vivek is a very sophisticated way to go about this and to bring

00:22:58.080 all the best management techniques out of Silicon Valley and kind of the modern American

00:23:03.400 entrepreneurial enterprise.

00:23:05.940 And that is unique and extraordinary, and we've got to put that to work.

00:23:09.040 What the media is trying to do is obviously trying to separate these two guys and make

00:23:13.200 them a competition.

00:23:14.220 And nothing could be further from the facts.

00:23:15.960 And what's happened over the last 48 hours is they broke the traditional, the 1,500-page,

00:23:23.800 $350 billion giveaway to the political class and to their clients and their puppet masters.

00:23:30.060 And so I thought this was extraordinary.

00:23:31.960 We just have to make sure with the new ecosystem on the right, you know, your show, the streaming

00:23:36.880 services, the new radio programs, the social media, particularly using Twitter as a platform

00:23:42.640 and other platforms.

00:23:44.220 We just have to make sure we get the word out there.

00:23:46.200 Our audience, like your audience, they hunger for details.

00:23:49.160 They hunger for the receipts.

00:23:50.320 They hunger for the facts.

00:23:51.640 They want to use this as part of their agency.

00:23:53.420 So it's more incumbent than ever that we really deliver more information, more facts,

00:23:58.940 and make it actionable so that people can use their agency.

00:24:01.920 So I feel pretty good about it.

00:24:03.240 I think President Trump laughs this off.

00:24:05.800 But you see that, to me, that's kind of a last.

00:24:08.560 If that's what the best they got to play, bring it.

00:24:11.460 If the best you got to play is that there's two sun kings and only one sky, right?

00:24:16.660 If that's what you got, then bring it.

00:24:18.760 So because I think Elon and President Trump have a great relationship.

00:24:23.480 Elon put real money to work on the ground game.

00:24:26.020 He didn't come in.

00:24:27.040 As you've seen him so many times, Megan, particularly when you're at Fox, all these

00:24:30.500 donors come in.

00:24:31.100 They want all these fancy advertisements.

00:24:32.960 He came in and put money in back of working class people going door to door.

00:24:37.600 I think he understands fully what's going on.

00:24:39.520 And I expect great things out of this.

00:24:41.700 I watch him with Trump at these events.

00:24:43.800 And I think one thing, if Trump did not want him there, he would not be there.

00:24:48.560 Trump's not shy about kicking anybody out of his orbit.

00:24:52.200 And if he doesn't want to share these events or the spotlight with Elon Musk,

00:24:56.120 he'll tell him to get out.

00:24:57.860 Trump is not a shrinking violet, even though Elon's huge and really helped him out.

00:25:02.360 I mean, I think he understands Elon supports the movement.

00:25:04.520 It's not all about one man.

00:25:06.660 It's about the movement.

00:25:07.880 So he has an ally, I think, probably for life there.

00:25:10.260 It's not to say there could be no personality clashes, but the media is clearly trying to

00:25:13.960 drive a wedge between them.

00:25:14.980 And I think it's great Elon responded on the record.

00:25:17.740 Let me follow up on something he said about Speaker Mike Johnson.

00:25:20.320 So the conventional analysis is that he was doing pretty well prior to this, that he had

00:25:25.480 managed to make himself into one of the critical Trump orbit people, that when we saw pictures

00:25:30.480 tweeted out at the UFC events of the so-called Avengers, you know, Tulsi, Elon, Vivek, J.D.,

00:25:36.820 Trump, he was in there.

00:25:38.460 He was kind of like the extra, like in the back.

00:25:40.360 And me too, me too.

00:25:41.640 And that even the political convention now is big change for him in 24 hours.

00:25:48.160 And he's probably not going to survive as Speaker.

00:25:50.400 So you said he's got to go.

00:25:52.140 Why?

00:25:53.860 Well, first of all, he lied to everybody.

00:25:55.600 It's a bald face lie.

00:25:56.520 Look, I took a lot of grief early.

00:25:58.460 I think it was, it all blends together now.

00:26:01.100 The first morning of this when the 1500 pay, because people said, oh, you know, no, he's

00:26:04.980 Trump's speaker.

00:26:05.840 Trump loves this guy.

00:26:07.080 He's very close to Trump.

00:26:08.880 And I told people, this is like about 20 people contacted me because I was coming out

00:26:12.100 off the chain on this thing.

00:26:13.160 I said, I know President Trump.

00:26:15.060 He's going to love him until he doesn't love him.

00:26:16.740 And when he understands all the facts that he was lied to and misrepresented and Johnson

00:26:22.560 dumped this thing, 1500 pages of a $350 billion giveaway to Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer

00:26:29.400 and Mitch McConnell, he's not, he's not, once he understands the facts, he's not going to

00:26:34.040 be in love with him when the guy can't deliver.

00:26:36.460 He wants people that can deliver in the billets that they have.

00:26:39.340 And Johnson is, you know, he kind of came as a compromise after, after McCarthy.

00:26:44.360 McCarthy, remember, McCarthy was turfed out about the same topic, spending.

00:26:48.460 So no, and I wasn't sure about taking him on because what we have now, Megan, with this

00:26:54.080 CR was the, or these are baby steps.

00:26:56.880 This was supposed to be so easy to bring a clean CR.

00:27:00.100 The hardest core of the ultra mega fiscal conservatives, right?

00:27:04.320 Would agree.

00:27:04.960 We, and we hate CRs, but kick it down the road clean till President Trump comes in and

00:27:10.220 then vote best and the entire team can work with it.

00:27:12.820 We're good with that.

00:27:13.900 We will, we will, you know, hold our nose and do that this time.

00:27:17.560 That, that was some, this is a baby step compared to what has to happen starting January 20th.

00:27:22.800 Not, not just the investigations, ending these wars, deporting 15 million people.

00:27:27.540 The, the, the fiscal and economic issues before us are almost catastrophic.

00:27:33.720 President Trump can thread the needle, but you needed to be like the British call it a

00:27:37.720 close run thing.

00:27:39.200 You all have to be in sync.

00:27:40.960 You all have to have communications.

00:27:42.940 Nobody can hide the football.

00:27:44.680 Here's how bad they did it.

00:27:46.020 In this 1500, as you mentioned in your opening monologue, they included a pay raise from themselves

00:27:51.240 from $173,000 to $243,000, plus they got out of paying anything for Obamacare and they

00:27:58.360 weren't upfront with it.

00:27:59.240 They stuck that in the 1500 pages.

00:28:01.180 I think that was tucked into a paragraph on page 900.

00:28:05.100 They tried to slip that in there without being upfront and saying, Hey, we haven't had a

00:28:09.120 COLA increase.

00:28:10.100 I'm not saying you give it to them, but if they came and presented it like adults, Hey,

00:28:13.280 we haven't had a COLA increase in 15 years.

00:28:16.180 People need to do this because they can't pay for their kids to go to school.

00:28:18.820 The American people said, well, no, you're not getting a pay raise, but at least you

00:28:22.740 would understood it.

00:28:23.580 They tried to hide that.

00:28:25.640 That's that Washington mentality of, of hide the football.

00:28:28.480 So no, Johnson's got to go.

00:28:31.460 The important thing for your audience, we have a deeper problem than just one guy.

00:28:35.300 It's not about, it's just like in taking the government apart and deconstructing.

00:28:38.680 This is not about all these memes out there about you're fired.

00:28:41.840 It's not about people.

00:28:42.840 And it's not about research into, you know, the sex of crickets at Iowa state university.

00:28:48.820 This is billets and programs programmatically departments, billets, you know, boom, this

00:28:54.920 has to be big hunts of stuff that we're just not going to do anymore.

00:28:58.020 It's the, it's the scale and scope of a nanny state in the scale and scope of an American

00:29:03.000 empire that our founders and framers never bought into.

00:29:06.440 So Johnson's a, a symptom of the problem.

00:29:10.540 He's not the problem himself, but he, there's no doubt he's got to go.

00:29:13.460 In fact, I would, our audience today would support a short term that just kicked to January

00:29:18.800 3rd to remove him as speaker and then get a new speaker and then come back and try to

00:29:24.740 cut these deals.

00:29:25.420 Now, Matt Boyle, as we came on your show, Matt Boyle just reported, I think there's 25 now

00:29:32.180 congressmen.

00:29:33.220 They're saying that absolutely under no circumstances will they vote for Mike Johnson.

00:29:37.000 So he's, he's politically, he's yesterday's news.

00:29:40.640 He's history.

00:29:42.240 Senator Rand Paul was suggesting a new speaker of the house could be Elon Musk.

00:29:47.220 It doesn't actually under the constitution have to be a sitting member of Congress.

00:29:51.580 Is there any world in which that happens?

00:29:54.300 It is under the constitution though, that you have to be a natural born citizen to be president.

00:29:58.640 Remember the, the speaker of the house is who in the line of succession.

00:30:01.860 Now I asked Mike Davis about this because this came up yesterday, MTG did this and Rand Paul

00:30:06.820 and Rand Paul is a very serious guy.

00:30:09.580 He could take the billet.

00:30:11.260 You don't have to be in Congress.

00:30:12.420 You don't have to be a natural born citizen to actually take the bill of speaker of the

00:30:15.540 house.

00:30:16.320 If an issue came up a succession, but the vice, you know, the, something had the president,

00:30:20.520 the vice president couldn't take it.

00:30:21.560 He'd come to the speaker that you would have in there that would get kicked immediately to

00:30:25.220 the president pro tem of the Senate, which is the third in the line of succession.

00:30:28.600 And they would take it, but no, Hey, I'm open to,

00:30:31.860 I'm open to any solution.

00:30:33.960 I actually happen to think it's a certain elegance to that because of the, uh, because

00:30:38.300 of the situation with Doge and how Doge is going to participate this, et cetera.

00:30:41.960 I think Elon said, I think he's already said he, he, he's not interested, but it's that

00:30:46.980 outside the box thinking.

00:30:48.440 I kind of love right now because we have to think outside the box and we have to be able

00:30:52.420 to do extraordinary things in an extraordinary time.

00:30:56.180 Yeah.

00:30:56.860 Elon's pretty busy doing all the things that made him Elon to begin with, but I like it

00:31:01.780 too.

00:31:02.000 Just as an idea, just bringing in an outsider to take a look at that organization, same

00:31:05.460 way where he's looking through Doge at the government and say, this thing's all messed

00:31:09.800 up.

00:31:10.100 It hasn't been running well for 20 years.

00:31:11.840 I would be, I would be very comfortable with Megyn Kelly as speaker.

00:31:14.420 I mean that.

00:31:15.840 No, you know, why could you have?

00:31:17.600 No, because you have common sense, you're tough as nails and nobody's going to be able

00:31:21.540 to BS you, right?

00:31:22.840 So I, I, I'm all in for that and I'm serious.

00:31:26.360 They put up Megyn Kelly and said, Hey, we want Megyn Kelly, uh, down there.

00:31:31.440 And I think it's time we had a conservative to right wing woman, uh, in charge of things.

00:31:36.440 I'd be very supportive of that.

00:31:37.700 In fact, I may, I may, I may throw that out to us this afternoon on my show.

00:31:40.660 Trump would support it a hundred percent.

00:31:46.980 No doubt about that.

00:31:48.720 I mean, the one comfort I'd have is, you know, I certainly could, I'd be the smartest person

00:31:53.120 there.

00:31:53.420 So that's exciting.

00:31:54.240 I'm very concerned about the people getting elected to our Congress today.

00:31:58.040 All right, let's keep going.

00:31:59.380 Um, what's going to happen with Trump's cabinet picks because they already got one scalp,

00:32:03.680 Matt Gaetz.

00:32:04.480 They were dangerously close to getting Pete Hegseth could still happen, but they're, they

00:32:10.080 don't love RFKJ.

00:32:11.440 They're saying Tulsi is a spy for Russia.

00:32:14.760 Um, so what's going to happen?

00:32:17.580 And they're not crazy about cash at FBI, which is, you know, when your legal background, how

00:32:22.720 important that is.

00:32:23.400 Look, to me, it's very simple.

00:32:25.100 And I'm very upset that Gaetz was allowed to drop out or dropped out or whatever, because

00:32:29.500 he, he did, he did provide a function.

00:32:31.760 He drew fire from everybody.

00:32:33.620 We wouldn't know Pete Hegseth's full name if Matt Gaetz was still there, uh, which I think

00:32:38.700 I've been, listen, it is about President Trump picked a team.

00:32:42.140 He wants that team.

00:32:43.380 And this is why I threw in so hard for Pete last week.

00:32:46.000 I mean, you know, Pete from Fox, um, we threw in so hard for Pete last week because they

00:32:50.740 were talking about Ron DeSantis or the, and my point was, Hey, you can't have two, your

00:32:54.420 first two out of the box.

00:32:55.820 You can't let them take out.

00:32:57.220 If we do this, they're going to, they're going to get to Tulsi.

00:32:59.720 They're going to get to Bobby Kennedy.

00:33:01.140 They're going to get to cash.

00:33:02.280 And then all of a sudden you've got, and you hear him talking on TV that they, what

00:33:05.740 they want to do is normalize Trump.

00:33:07.900 They want to take Trump away from the, he's a blunt force instrument that's giving blunt

00:33:13.060 force trauma to the system.

00:33:15.280 And that's what we need right now.

00:33:16.380 We need that armor piercing shell and he needs his people up in back of it that have a kind

00:33:20.980 of an angle of attack on this thing.

00:33:22.540 And so to me, you've got to lock in hard and you got to push everybody over.

00:33:27.320 This is why I say flood the zone.

00:33:28.580 When, when the new Congress is sworn in on the third, I would tell them we're going

00:33:31.880 to do the confirmation hearings on the fourth and get all six or seven or eight of them

00:33:36.620 up there and let's get on with it.

00:33:38.180 Let's flood the zone.

00:33:39.240 Let's overwhelm the system and continue on the, well, the system, I want to be on offense

00:33:43.860 here.

00:33:44.200 I want to be pushing the football.

00:33:45.780 I want to be moving the chains.

00:33:47.340 Sometimes it gets a little too passive and we let the media, as you know, this is an information

00:33:51.360 war.

00:33:52.100 When you let them get and start leaning into it and not on their back foot, they're going

00:33:56.660 to crush you because they have all these massive apparatuses, right?

00:34:00.860 We, we don't have that.

00:34:02.040 We have a, we have audiences and we have audiences of activists that will turn out and not go

00:34:07.080 suck their thumb because we're going to have some, you're not going to win everything.

00:34:10.580 The power we have is the resilience of working class and middle-class people that are down

00:34:14.860 for the fight.

00:34:15.960 This is why we should be on offense all the time.

00:34:18.180 And I hope that they pick up the pace a little bit on these nominations and really force their

00:34:24.360 will on the Senate to get these things done, have your confirmation hearings, but let's

00:34:28.200 get on with it.

00:34:29.140 And I would love to have president Trump, at least half the cabinet, at least the national

00:34:32.600 security and finance guys all approve by the time president Trump takes the oath.

00:34:38.080 And then right after that, bang, bang, bang, you, you just swear in, you know, 10 to 12 people.

00:34:42.540 Um, so talk about the more moderate to, you know, in quotes, Republican senators who are

00:34:50.360 risks, you know, you've got Collins and Murkowski, you've got McConnell who can't stand Trump.

00:34:54.540 And then you've got Ernst who I realized her language has changed around Pete, but I have

00:34:59.120 to tell you, Steve, I've got real doubts about whether she's ultimately going to vote for

00:35:01.840 him.

00:35:02.560 Um, I don't think she's a yes yet.

00:35:04.300 I think all she's, I've heard her say she's going to do is commit to, you know, seeing him

00:35:08.140 through the hearing and I don't even know if she cares about her political future in

00:35:14.140 the way the average animal in DC does.

00:35:16.940 So I don't know.

00:35:18.420 What do you think?

00:35:19.440 I agree with you.

00:35:20.180 I think, I think there's some issues.

00:35:21.620 I keep saying that no one should be just because we had a good week with Pete.

00:35:25.760 And I think he's making a fine impression up there.

00:35:28.300 Look, it's pretty extraordinary.

00:35:30.320 Folks should know for a part for people because the constitution, it is advice and consent that

00:35:35.760 the Senate is essentially built after the House of Lords.

00:35:39.300 When we formed the Republic, it's really been the human resources department that they're

00:35:44.400 one of their big function is judges and, and, and U S attorneys and all obviously, uh, all

00:35:50.240 the, um, you know, uh, 1,000 of the 4,000 people that come in to run a new government, 1,000

00:35:56.180 of those are Senate confirmed.

00:35:57.420 That's a huge, and that's what they're supposed to do their due diligence.

00:36:00.620 So the advice and consent they can do.

00:36:02.840 I'm very worried.

00:36:03.900 And people say, Oh no, these guys are going to get through now.

00:36:06.960 It's pretty extraordinary to have a party when you're in charge of the Senate to actually

00:36:11.480 vote against nominees.

00:36:12.560 It's pretty extraordinary.

00:36:13.800 It has only happened a handful of times.

00:36:15.740 So I think, I think, but given custom and tradition, this shouldn't happen, but I have

00:36:21.000 the same fear you have that people are lying in wait.

00:36:24.100 Now, number one, as you just mentioned, who's in cycle, you know, the Tillis's of the world

00:36:29.000 and the, and the, uh, Cassidy's and the Joni Ernst there, you have to put where you have

00:36:34.280 to is, is, is maximum political pressure, right?

00:36:37.700 On the possibility of primaries or ultimate defeats.

00:36:40.660 And for the rest, I think you've got to get up close and personal.

00:36:45.700 President Trump is going to have to work this.

00:36:47.580 This is one where I don't, I don't think he should have gotten involved in the housing.

00:36:51.040 He got sucked into it because of Johnson's incompetence and malfeasance on this one.

00:36:55.900 He's going to have to, at the end, he's going to have to whip some votes.

00:37:00.000 And, and, and I think there's going to be some horse trading at the end that some people

00:37:04.160 are going to get stuff to get these through, but it's, listen, president Trump is, uh,

00:37:09.700 is, you know, an extraordinary character, unique in American political history.

00:37:14.100 That cabinet is extraordinary.

00:37:16.380 You've got, you've got Bobby Kennedy from democratic royalty.

00:37:19.720 You have Tulsi Gabbard, who I think the world of, who is a democratic congressman and kind

00:37:25.040 of a progressive, but principally one of the leaders of the American first movement as

00:37:30.180 overall intelligence, where even the CIA reports to her, uh, you have Pete Hexitt, who's a

00:37:35.700 combat vet, but we've never had a combat vet at that age actually run the Pentagon.

00:37:40.380 That's now the biggest industrial complex in the world.

00:37:42.780 And you have Kash Patel, who I think has a tremendous record in, in, uh, in, uh, counterintelligence,

00:37:49.560 uh, terrorism, all that, which you need in the FBI, but has made a point that he's going

00:37:54.000 to restructure the FBI.

00:37:55.100 And quite frankly, he sees that there are going to be a number of areas that we have

00:37:59.640 to do serious investigations on.

00:38:01.400 So these are all outside the box picks.

00:38:03.960 And that means you're going to have to do some, it's a heavy lift, but you have to do it.

00:38:08.100 I think president Trump will eventually be involved here and actually whipping the votes

00:38:11.820 as we get down to the end.

00:38:13.020 Cause I share your absolute concern that this is a long way from over folks.

00:38:17.060 I really think when it comes to Pete, the key is yes, political pressure, pressure on some

00:38:21.580 of them, but you know, McConnell, um, I don't know if that would work on him and Ernst, same

00:38:26.060 thing.

00:38:26.400 But I do think somebody like Joni Ernst cares deeply about what the rank and file troops

00:38:31.540 think and want.

00:38:32.580 I actually do think even if she's thinking I've got reservations, if she hears from enough

00:38:37.120 rank and file guys and gals that they want him, they want an actual soldier, an actual

00:38:42.460 warrior to take over and look out for them.

00:38:44.340 She could be persuaded by that.

00:38:45.780 And it's starting to happen.

00:38:46.680 You're starting to see more and more do it.

00:38:48.140 Also for your audience, I, I do not, at the end of the day, I think you're going to have

00:38:53.120 one or two Democrats folks.

00:38:54.460 I watch Fetterman, watch Fetterman who had many America first in MAGA leanings.

00:39:00.800 He's obviously got some very progressive stuff on the social side, but his position on the

00:39:05.660 takeover of us steel by the Japanese, his economic, a lot of his economic positions, this

00:39:10.600 guy wrote Kahana in the house and particularly Fetterman in the Senate.

00:39:14.460 He's, he's very pro-Israel, supports President Trump's policies in the Middle East.

00:39:21.100 Fetterman could be a guy that, and I think he already said it was Pam Bond.

00:39:25.460 He's already said somebody he's already met with and he's a yes.

00:39:27.780 I see him as a potential yes on a Tulsi Gabbard, right?

00:39:32.040 I see him as a potential yes on a Bobby Kennedy.

00:39:34.180 So Fetterman and maybe one other Democrat may be there to give you some headroom that you

00:39:38.800 not normally have and not be held up by Mitch McConnell.

00:39:41.280 I mean, Mitch McConnell is, uh, is going to have a gun to our head on this thing.

00:39:45.080 There's no doubt about that.

00:39:46.560 He's shown enormous courage, Fetterman, in dealing with the, uh, the Israel issue.

00:39:50.960 He does not care how many people protest outside of his home or his office.

00:39:54.140 He's runs out there with his Israeli flag and he's in your face about it in a way that

00:39:58.880 I think a lot of people admire.

00:40:00.020 So yeah, uh, he could be, he could be one to watch.

00:40:03.000 All right, let's talk about agenda.

00:40:04.660 You mentioned at the top, I mean, how long do you think Trump has to really get things done?

00:40:09.760 Six months outside a year, but six and first, the first hundred days, first six months, you

00:40:15.380 got to be getting all three.

00:40:16.940 You got to get the, he's got to personally get involved in the, in the, in the bringing

00:40:21.260 to a conclusion, the Ukraine war.

00:40:23.620 And I think also this Middle East situation, particularly with the Persians getting close

00:40:27.480 to a nuclear weapon, as he weren't warned about.

00:40:29.500 Um, and I think on the border, the first reconciliation, Miller and Holman, the deportations, building

00:40:35.280 the wall, and then the financial and economic crisis.

00:40:38.060 He's got, I think outside a year, I would put it as for planning purposes, a hundred days

00:40:44.680 to six months, you got to get on with it.

00:40:46.280 And I mean, this is my point.

00:40:47.300 You got to be driving this thing every day.

00:40:49.740 I wouldn't even take off if we were on the team, I wouldn't even take off even Christmas

00:40:54.400 day.

00:40:54.740 Now I'd be, I'd be grinding every second of every day because they're, they're, they're

00:40:59.440 lying in wait.

00:41:00.120 And remember, they're going to put a billion dollars in back of Hakeem Jeffries to flip

00:41:04.180 a handful of seats in the house, uh, in, uh, on the house side in 26.

00:41:08.840 And the first thing Hakeem Jeffries is going to do, cause he promises it to his donors, impeach

00:41:12.400 Trump.

00:41:13.040 We're not out of this.

00:41:14.240 We're far from being, even everything we accomplished, extraordinary.

00:41:18.840 You and everybody on the media side in this new ecosystem, inspiring people, the people

00:41:23.820 coming out and doing this, a people's victory, but November 5th, you got to understand that's

00:41:28.240 just the, like that gets you to the table to start the fight and it's going to be brutal.

00:41:33.440 They're going to pull out, they have, they will pull out every stop.

00:41:36.140 You've already seen this and what they've tried to do, President Trump and their goal

00:41:39.580 and objective is to flip the house in two years.

00:41:44.020 And Hakeem Jeffries, the first thing he'll move is impeachment on Trump and maybe many people

00:41:48.000 in the cabinet.

00:41:49.100 So folks have got to understand this is, this is a political war and we're at the very

00:41:54.220 beginning of this.

00:41:55.140 This is, don't think the great work we did on November 5th means anything to these people.

00:42:00.200 They could care less.

00:42:01.580 They're going to fight with every tool they have, uh, and legal tool, political tool,

00:42:06.780 information tool, deal from the bottom of the deck, do things that are unfair.

00:42:11.280 So it's, uh, and not, and I'm not even talking about our foreign enemies, the Chinese Communist

00:42:16.020 Party, the Persians, the KGB in Moscow.

00:42:19.340 This is, uh, and oh, by the way, you got 10 to 15 million illegal aliens just on Biden's

00:42:24.380 watch.

00:42:24.720 I'm not even considering the people here before just as watch.

00:42:27.500 So stakes are high.

00:42:29.780 Let's say six months to the outside.

00:42:32.560 What, how does he do it?

00:42:35.260 How does he attack immigration in particular?

00:42:36.900 Because what we'd love to see, of course, is an actual law, an actual law that, that

00:42:41.580 tightens the procedures that make sure some of these Trump policies become law and the

00:42:45.540 next president has to abide by them, especially if, you know, it's a Democrat, but he, we

00:42:50.180 don't have 60 votes in the Senate.

00:42:51.520 We only have, you know, 53, which makes it tough because the Democrats could filibuster

00:42:55.840 it.

00:42:56.040 Maybe, maybe not given that the temperature on immigration is so hot right now.

00:43:00.260 And even democratic voters wanted to see a crackdown, but so what, what exactly on immigration

00:43:05.780 do you want him to do?

00:43:06.900 Well, this is what gets back to this concept called reconciliation.

00:43:10.200 They have this thing, it's too technical to get into, but there are this instrumentality

00:43:14.320 called a reconciliation where you don't have to get cloture in the Senate.

00:43:18.600 You don't have to get the 60 votes.

00:43:19.860 It's majority.

00:43:21.060 They come up every so often.

00:43:22.520 It's kind of a reconciliation of the budget there.

00:43:24.200 Technically, you've got to really thread the needle to use them.

00:43:26.660 But we actually have the ability to do two reconciliations as currently interpreted, I

00:43:32.240 think, by the parliamentarian in this, after Trump is, is, is, is, takes office.

00:43:38.300 And the talk is to use one reconciliation immediately right after his inauguration.

00:43:45.340 And that is solely for the purpose of the border and immigration.

00:43:49.320 And you only need 51 votes.

00:43:50.800 So you get the change that you need, right?

00:43:53.340 And this is legislation.

00:43:54.520 So Trump hits you with 50 executive orders, just like we did in 16, and like Biden did

00:44:00.600 to reverse it.

00:44:01.240 So you've got all these executive orders, unwinds all the madness of Biden.

00:44:05.000 You've also got a reconciliation bill that you jammed through with a majority.

00:44:09.360 And that's got not just some changes, but as importantly, it gives Holman and Miller some

00:44:14.180 real powder.

00:44:15.640 You're not going to, it's nowhere in these budgets to start the deportation of these people.

00:44:19.680 People are saying it's going to cost 800 billion a year.

00:44:21.960 It's not, but they at least get some powder to, to, to build the wall, to do other security

00:44:27.080 in the border, to help in those areas in the Southern border and actually in the cities.

00:44:31.480 Cause every, every town's a border town now, every state's a border state.

00:44:34.940 So it's, it's taking on the sanctuary cities.

00:44:37.820 There's resources and money in, in a law that's done and that's done day one.

00:44:42.740 I hope by the 20th, that's what they should be working on or shortly thereafter.

00:44:47.140 And that gives, and that begins the process.

00:44:50.100 I also think, and we can't be fantasists here.

00:44:52.960 You know, I want all 12 to 15 million gone, not just the criminals.

00:44:56.120 I think you start there.

00:44:57.340 I believe you have to have a sit down and some of this is happening behind the scenes.

00:45:03.160 You have to go to the frontline countries in Central America.

00:45:06.020 You have to get the Mexicans involved.

00:45:07.700 And she's already said in the last 24 hours, I'm prepared to take guys back, but you have

00:45:11.980 to sit down with them and work out arrangements that, you know, even economically we're going

00:45:17.400 to help here.

00:45:17.860 Cause we're going to, we're going to be sending a lot of people back and we just don't want

00:45:22.080 to, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're empathetic people, right?

00:45:25.540 We're not cruel people.

00:45:26.600 We're just not going to do this and give them a bus ticket.

00:45:28.560 It's not going to work like that.

00:45:30.200 So, and you want to take that, you want to take that club out of the media's hands.

00:45:33.900 I think he does some sort of summit, Mar-a-Lago, rear Grand Valley, you pick it.

00:45:37.520 But we start a formal process of how beyond the criminal element, you start getting these

00:45:42.980 people to take back, you include, I think a couple of South American countries, like

00:45:46.740 for instance, where the Haitians, hundreds of thousands of Haitians have been there.

00:45:50.420 There's a way to do this.

00:45:52.000 The guy you want in a room to do that is Donald Trump.

00:45:54.120 This is a big deal.

00:45:55.500 You get reconciliation, you get money, start a formal process.

00:45:59.160 Trump gets guys in the room.

00:46:00.600 You start the second formal process.

00:46:02.180 By the time you're six months to nine months into this, by Labor Day, we've got traction.

00:46:08.580 This is happening, right?

00:46:09.880 The border's sealed.

00:46:10.980 People are not coming across.

00:46:12.000 We stopped playing the games on the migrant situation, asylum.

00:46:15.180 All those games are stopped.

00:46:16.700 And you've begun a process of the criminals and the others that he talks about from the

00:46:20.920 insane asylums.

00:46:21.740 That's in movement.

00:46:23.100 Plus, countries are your partners to take these folks back and to work it out.

00:46:27.540 And if they don't, then you talk about the tariffs.

00:46:29.920 You bring the tariffs, you bring economic nationals or access to the American market.

00:46:34.860 Remember, our market is the most lucrative market in the world for countries.

00:46:37.800 So you have to, you got to negotiate.

00:46:39.940 And Trump will use, he and Navarro, Navarro, and he worked this out in 18 and 19 with the

00:46:44.880 Mexican government.

00:46:46.160 So, but that priority is, and that's that lane.

00:46:50.240 And that's got to hit, you got to hit that hard.

00:46:52.360 You got to hit it fast.

00:46:53.060 You got to hit it right away.

00:46:54.380 Okay.

00:46:54.800 What about investigations?

00:46:56.280 Because we've seen a couple of things bubble up recently.

00:46:58.940 There's been buzz around Liz Cheney, who we now have reason to believe may have behaved

00:47:03.020 inappropriately with a key witness in the J6 hearings with respect to her attorney.

00:47:08.600 There have been allegations made that she interfered in an inappropriate way.

00:47:11.800 Then you've got Fannie Willis, whose disqualification was ordered by the Georgia appellate court yesterday.

00:47:19.040 Thank God that was the right decision.

00:47:20.660 And, you know, there's real questions about the behavior of some of these people who have

00:47:24.840 been the main chief antagonists of Donald Trump.

00:47:28.440 There's a split on whether he should go after them.

00:47:31.480 You know, he said success is the best revenge.

00:47:34.360 Not sure I'm inclined to do it, but he's filed lawsuits at least against certain media personnel

00:47:39.240 and Seltzer, well, the Des Moines Register.

00:47:41.300 So what do you see happening on the investigation or, quote, retaliation front?

00:47:47.200 So you have the three lines of work that are major.

00:47:49.380 Stop the wars, get the finance and debt in shape, the economy growing again in the border.

00:47:55.060 Then you have to have, and this is not about personal revenge, because people in the Financial

00:47:58.840 Times think Susie Wiles has quoted, quite rightly, that the best revenge is the golden

00:48:03.760 age of Trump and the sunlit uplands.

00:48:05.640 I agree with that.

00:48:07.080 However, this is not about Trump.

00:48:09.400 It's not about Steve Bannon went to prison or Peter Navarro or Tina Peters or anything.

00:48:14.420 We have to do this for the country.

00:48:16.920 This can never allow to be happened.

00:48:18.760 This can never, we can't allow this to ever happen again.

00:48:22.000 The Washington Post, excuse me, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, Megan, as you

00:48:26.860 know, over the last 72 hours has been reporting and the Daily Mail puts up a lead.

00:48:32.200 Now from people in the White House, they don't know if Biden was even in charge

00:48:35.560 from day one.

00:48:37.100 The investigations, number one, on the vast criminal conspiracy from the Justice Department

00:48:42.680 and the FBI to New York State to Fannie Willis to all of it on the vast criminal conspiracy

00:48:47.780 against President Trump with lawfare has to be with complete open sunshine exposure.

00:48:53.940 That has to be investigated.

00:48:55.640 It just does, whether it's at the House, at the Justice Department and the FBI.

00:48:59.640 But also we have to get into this entire situation of the Biden White House.

00:49:03.800 Why was the 22nd Amendment called?

00:49:06.080 We have to never allow these games to be played again.

00:49:09.400 And by the way, on the vast criminal conspiracy, I do believe some media people are going to

00:49:12.860 be brought into that because I think once you start looking at text messages, once you start

00:49:16.580 looking at emails, I think you're going to see that people, that there were people, as

00:49:21.280 you know, MSNBC and some of these publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post

00:49:26.900 that were in on this.

00:49:28.060 And so I think the investigations, we need this for the American people.

00:49:31.300 That's kind of a sidebar that's going to take its own momentum.

00:49:33.900 But you see the people he's put in the Justice Department around Pam Bondi.

00:49:37.520 If you see Cash Patel, we're not going to back off.

00:49:40.900 We owe this to the country.

00:49:42.780 This does not have anything to me about going to prison with Liz Cheney, with the illegitimate

00:49:47.100 committee.

00:49:47.700 But we have to get to the roots of what that was.

00:49:49.800 We have to get to J6.

00:49:51.420 Sunlight.

00:49:52.040 About security.

00:49:52.680 I call it a Fedsurrection.

00:49:54.900 The only way to do it is complete open sunshine.

00:49:59.960 That's clever.

00:50:01.040 Steve Bannon, what a pleasure.

00:50:03.100 Merry Christmas.

00:50:04.200 Happy New Year.

00:50:05.280 So glad you'll be spending it with your family and not in that ridiculous prison.

00:50:09.220 Great to have you.

00:50:10.680 Madam Speaker, it's got a ring to it.

00:50:14.960 It's got a ring to it.

00:50:16.520 I've got enough problems in my life, Steve.

00:50:18.280 And an Irish gal on top of it, it's got a ring to it.

00:50:21.080 I think I'm a ring to it.

00:50:23.840 Happy Holidays, my friend.

00:50:25.220 See you in the new year.

00:50:26.380 Merry Christmas.

00:50:27.080 Thank you, Megan.

00:50:28.240 To you, too.

00:50:29.000 All right, we'll run that plan by Doug Brunt, my husband, who's up next.

00:50:31.420 Are you overwhelmed with back taxes or unfiled returns?

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00:51:48.700 To round out a big year, I'm joined by the person who's been by my side every step of the way.

00:51:53.560 My husband, Doug Brunt.

00:51:55.680 Hey, Dugger.

00:51:56.220 Hi.

00:51:56.840 Happy holidays.

00:51:57.720 And to you, what do you think of a Speaker of the House?

00:52:00.000 I don't want you to do that.

00:52:03.380 But our new friend, Steve Bannon, thinks I should.

00:52:05.640 I think you do an excellent job, but I prefer things up here, kind of as they are.

00:52:09.540 Yeah.

00:52:09.940 You think it would not improve our quality of life?

00:52:12.120 No.

00:52:12.340 Maybe you can zoom in.

00:52:13.260 If you can zoom into the house, that would be great.

00:52:14.940 It is the kind of job.

00:52:16.040 No, wait, it's not.

00:52:16.940 So on your podcast, which is called Dedicated with Doug Brunt, where you're a writer, you're

00:52:20.980 an author, you talk about books and you talk with famous authors, you always serve a cocktail

00:52:24.980 and you've brought Dedicated to us today.

00:52:27.720 What are we having here, sir?

00:52:28.580 We're having eggnog.

00:52:29.740 I saved the nutmeg till the very end.

00:52:31.900 We can't have soggy nutmeg with our eggnog.

00:52:34.800 And I actually poured out the very last bit of our Jack Carr Warrior Proof Whiskey here.

00:52:41.820 So Jack, if you're out there, it would be a real Christmas miracle if another one of

00:52:44.780 these showed up.

00:52:45.440 It's delicious.

00:52:46.820 The Jack, the whiskey?

00:52:47.780 Yes.

00:52:48.200 It's great stuff.

00:52:48.840 It's crazy.

00:52:49.540 It's powerful.

00:52:51.040 He came on my show and we had that and we were flying by the end of the show.

00:52:55.040 It was an hour and a half of drinking whiskey on the rock.

00:52:57.300 Yeah.

00:52:57.460 A little goes a long way, but cheers.

00:52:59.440 Merry Christmas, honey.

00:53:00.080 Merry Christmas.

00:53:00.860 Love you.

00:53:01.340 Thanks for being here.

00:53:02.080 Eggnog is really good.

00:53:09.420 Warrior Proof Eggnog.

00:53:10.580 And only if you have one cup, because it's not about getting drunk.

00:53:14.500 We've done that in the air.

00:53:15.740 It's about the waistline.

00:53:17.820 Remember that one year?

00:53:18.940 That's right.

00:53:19.700 So this is reduced fat eggnog.

00:53:21.440 I remember that year.

00:53:22.300 You and I were, by Christmas Eve, we were like, had put on about 15 pounds.

00:53:26.140 We were fat.

00:53:26.680 Yeah.

00:53:26.980 We were fat.

00:53:27.540 We'd gotten fat and we were looking at each other like, hmm, something's going on.

00:53:31.020 Maybe it's a little different.

00:53:31.500 Maybe it's the eggnog.

00:53:32.580 We've been having it like every night.

00:53:35.200 This is years ago.

00:53:35.880 We didn't even have kids yet.

00:53:36.720 We were back in our Chelsea apartment.

00:53:38.600 And yeah, we realized that even the low fat has got like 400 calories a glass.

00:53:44.240 Something ridiculous.

00:53:45.240 It was a pretty bloated Christmas.

00:53:46.540 Now we have like, well, this is a special occasion, but now we have one when we like trim

00:53:50.780 the tree.

00:53:51.480 Yeah.

00:53:51.820 That kind of thing.

00:53:52.380 Yeah.

00:53:52.720 Got to save your moments there.

00:53:54.940 All right.

00:53:55.160 So we're getting excited.

00:53:56.600 Tomorrow we're leaving and we're going to go to Montana, which is where we spend the holidays.

00:54:00.920 Now we've been doing that for what, nine years?

00:54:02.900 Yeah.

00:54:03.360 Gosh.

00:54:03.700 Yeah.

00:54:03.960 With the kids.

00:54:04.620 And we always have a white Christmas there because whether it's manufactured snow or not.

00:54:08.660 There's always snow.

00:54:09.740 There's always snow.

00:54:10.240 Might not always be skiable, but there's snow.

00:54:12.020 Last year was not good snow.

00:54:13.560 It was normal.

00:54:15.240 It was natural snow, but it was crappy skiing.

00:54:17.400 But this year we've got La Nina.

00:54:19.580 So I'm feeling pretty good about it.

00:54:20.660 Yeah.

00:54:20.880 But there's a ton.

00:54:21.540 I just, there was something like 30 inches the other day.

00:54:23.580 So there's tons of snow runs will be open.

00:54:26.040 And I think they're getting snow right now.

00:54:27.360 And tell the audience, have you completed all of your Christmas shopping?

00:54:31.620 I did a little today.

00:54:32.860 I've got a little more coming.

00:54:34.060 Yep.

00:54:34.400 I did.

00:54:34.860 Truly.

00:54:35.200 Did you take Thatcher?

00:54:36.520 He's going later with me.

00:54:37.940 Our 11 year old said, mom, I really want to go down to like the main drag there to,

00:54:43.880 to do some Christmas shopping today.

00:54:45.460 And he needs Doug to take him because he got it.

00:54:47.620 He's got to get it done relatively early.

00:54:49.200 Today wasn't a big shop.

00:54:50.000 It was like a little stocking stuffer for you.

00:54:51.980 Just FYI, doing one thing.

00:54:53.580 Did you do that because of what's in the news today?

00:54:55.900 No.

00:54:56.240 There's something in the news today saying seven out of 10 women, moms, you know, and

00:55:00.600 wives wake up on Christmas day to find their stocking empty or they have to do it themselves.

00:55:06.900 Their husband never fills their stocking.

00:55:08.740 And somehow Santa just focuses on the kids.

00:55:11.740 That was not in response to that.

00:55:13.160 I just, I remember last year I wrote a letter.

00:55:15.880 So this year, you know, it's, there might be something in addition to a letter.

00:55:20.120 Oh, well, you know how much I love a letter.

00:55:22.820 There's something in the news today also talking about how, like the vast majority of Americans

00:55:27.700 want to change Christmas traditions.

00:55:29.600 They're kind of over having a turkey and doing what we all do, which is like overbuy or get

00:55:36.100 stressed out by money, whatever, one of those problems.

00:55:38.920 And that one of the things people would prefer is letters, like handwritten notes to gifts.

00:55:47.700 It's on the top 10 list of things that people might prefer instead of a gift.

00:55:51.660 I mean, I feel like that was written for me.

00:55:53.220 Yeah.

00:55:53.480 I agree with that.

00:55:54.520 I think.

00:55:54.780 And you were always that way.

00:55:55.620 You're like, you're fine with flowers, but flowers in the absence of a card or something

00:55:58.820 like that is just sort of a too perfunctory.

00:56:01.380 And I agree that the turkey thing that could go, you know, it's, I'm not that big on the

00:56:05.920 turkey.

00:56:06.360 Half of it's always overcooked and dry.

00:56:08.000 And you're like, oh my God, I get this white meat down.

00:56:09.760 You got to cover with gravy, like a burger would be fine.

00:56:11.920 Yeah.

00:56:12.100 Eat whatever you want on Christmas.

00:56:13.300 I don't know.

00:56:13.820 I think, um, we've, it has gotten too commercialized and then you feel all stressed out about getting

00:56:18.140 the right gifts.

00:56:19.220 And then by the time you're done, you kind of feel the way you feel when you've overeaten

00:56:22.700 on at a big holiday meal, you know, like I've supported American capitalism and ideally

00:56:29.060 some small businesses.

00:56:30.640 And I think people around me will be happy, but this feels excessive, right?

00:56:35.720 Like it just always, no matter how big or small you go, it feels kind of just excessive.

00:56:39.220 It's gone a little hallmarky, but I do love certain movies.

00:56:42.040 Like there is something about a fire and a tree and the smell of pine needles and some

00:56:46.760 of those old movies, like the really old time movies that that is awesome to, especially

00:56:51.300 in the run up.

00:56:51.780 You got to start those early in December.

00:56:53.140 So we got to talk about that.

00:56:53.880 So, so far our family started right after Thanksgiving with our holiday, like shows that

00:56:58.900 we watched.

00:56:59.360 We watched Rudolph, which led to a segment on the show talking about what a bully Santa is.

00:57:04.720 And he is a bully in that movie.

00:57:06.460 There's something Santa's gone mean in the Rudolph movie.

00:57:09.220 And then we watched Santa Claus is coming to town.

00:57:11.880 You're, you're really more of a, you're without a Santa Claus guy.

00:57:15.180 That's true.

00:57:15.940 Right?

00:57:16.440 Yes.

00:57:17.020 The heat, my, like, what is it about that?

00:57:19.700 It's memory.

00:57:20.420 Wow.

00:57:20.580 You're really like, this is, this is a foreshadowing for later in the show, but.

00:57:24.140 Oh, good tip.

00:57:25.320 Yeah.

00:57:25.920 We're going to do the quiz and I don't know a lot of the answers.

00:57:28.160 They just gave me the questions and I was like, actually, this is going to be hard,

00:57:30.400 but keep going.

00:57:31.640 I love that when it just brings back those memories of lying on the floor.

00:57:34.720 Where I grew up, we had a fireplace.

00:57:36.100 It was a small little family room and there wasn't enough seating for everybody.

00:57:39.840 So a lot of times we just had throw pillows on the floor.

00:57:42.240 We'd all lie on the floor like cats.

00:57:43.720 The beanbags, the broom beanbags.

00:57:44.420 And we'd watch these old movies by the fireplace and the tree especially made it crowded.

00:57:48.340 You know, we're all sort of barely fitting in there.

00:57:49.800 But that Heat-Mizer, Freeze-Mizer, Year Without a Santa Claus movie, I just love the song as

00:57:55.780 a little kid and it's just always stayed with me.

00:57:57.960 And even though it's really for the little kids, it brings me right back to those moments

00:58:02.860 of, you know, early, well, sort of mid-late 70s of, you know, lying on the floor by a fire

00:58:08.160 in the Christmas tree.

00:58:09.560 Well, it's funny because I did a segment with the, as you know, the guys from the Ruthless

00:58:12.960 program.

00:58:13.620 Love those guys.

00:58:14.340 On best movie, best Christmas movie, our favorite Christmas movie.

00:58:18.120 And they said things like, um, uh, Christmas Story was one of them.

00:58:22.500 Smug went with Godfather, which is not.

00:58:25.780 And, uh, Duncan picked Four Christmases, which I had never seen.

00:58:29.180 And you had never seen.

00:58:30.600 You were convinced we had seen it.

00:58:31.980 And we.

00:58:32.420 I was confusing it with another one.

00:58:33.700 Fred Claus.

00:58:34.320 I was confusing.

00:58:34.880 Or The Holiday, which you hated.

00:58:36.620 That was terrible.

00:58:37.220 Yeah.

00:58:37.380 Oh my God.

00:58:37.880 That was torture.

00:58:38.600 That was when John said.

00:58:40.740 John Sharp was like, what, I wonder what those lucky saps down in Guantanamo are doing.

00:58:44.860 John is this Australian guy.

00:58:46.160 After we walked out of that movie together.

00:58:47.720 Yeah.

00:58:48.300 Anyway.

00:58:48.940 Um, so we watched Four Christmases with Sissy Spacek, Vince Vaughn, and Reese Witherspoon.

00:58:55.380 And it was cute.

00:58:56.040 I liked it.

00:58:56.620 Yeah.

00:58:56.920 Yeah.

00:58:57.300 And relatable in some ways.

00:58:59.600 What do you mean?

00:59:00.540 Just going back to all the, the different families and all the dysfunctions, like the

00:59:04.180 special dysfunctions that can happen.

00:59:06.540 I hope they're not watching this.

00:59:07.180 Well, you know, like fun, beautiful dysfunctions.

00:59:09.480 Not as dysfunctional as that.

00:59:10.820 It was hyperbolic.

00:59:11.700 Well, one of the people who makes a special guest star appearance in that movie is an EP of

00:59:16.520 it.

00:59:18.340 Oh yeah, that's right.

00:59:19.160 Which was, that was, I think Holmes's favorite movie, if I'm not mistaken.

00:59:22.720 Anyway.

00:59:23.440 Um, or Ashbrook.

00:59:24.740 Anyway, I love it.

00:59:25.620 Yeah.

00:59:25.760 And Holmes was a Christmas vacation.

00:59:27.000 So this led to a whole thing on the show about favorite Christmas movies and what gets you

00:59:32.840 in the mood.

00:59:33.220 And our viewers wrote in, I asked them what their favorite movies were and wrote in by

00:59:37.480 droves with their various submissions.

00:59:40.060 And I mentioned how we always watch Christmas in Connecticut.

00:59:42.820 And I still love Christmas in Connecticut so much.

00:59:46.200 Barbara Stanwyck and she like that, um, Stanley Greenstreet, who is, uh, he plays Alexander

00:59:52.240 Yardley.

00:59:52.560 Yardley.

00:59:52.880 Okay.

00:59:53.020 Yeah.

00:59:53.300 Yeah.

00:59:53.680 Um, anyway, and somebody wrote in, actually multiple people wrote in, if you like those

00:59:59.120 old time black and white movies and we don't love all of them, but like some of them are

01:00:03.340 great.

01:00:03.680 There's something so atmospheric about it.

01:00:04.960 It just takes you back and makes you feel away.

01:00:06.940 That you should try shop around the corner.

01:00:09.000 So thank you to the audience who suggested that because we watched it early in the morning

01:00:13.940 yesterday and today, or two days this, this, this week we woke up super early and we had

01:00:17.700 it on and it was so cute.

01:00:19.440 Yeah, that was nice.

01:00:20.160 And I did not make the connection that you later told me about, about you got mail.

01:00:24.300 It was the inspiration for that movie, but it had a great, it was a Jimmy Stort movie

01:00:28.220 that I'd never seen.

01:00:29.280 And there's something so charming about Jimmy Stort on the screen.

01:00:32.380 Yes.

01:00:32.800 It was awesome.

01:00:33.260 All right.

01:00:33.440 We have a clip for those of you who have never seen it.

01:00:35.380 Take a look.

01:00:36.200 Reading tall stories on a criminal.

01:00:38.040 Yes.

01:00:38.400 Do you mind?

01:00:39.240 No, no.

01:00:40.240 I just didn't expect to meet you in a cafe with Tolstoy and it's all quite a surprise.

01:00:44.900 I didn't know you cared for high literature.

01:00:47.480 There are many things you don't know about me, Mr. Kralik.

01:00:50.940 Uh-huh.

01:00:53.380 Have you read Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky?

01:00:57.120 No, I haven't.

01:00:58.120 I have.

01:01:00.960 There are many things you don't know about me, Mr. Kralik.

01:01:04.200 As a matter of fact, there might be a lot we don't know about each other.

01:01:07.380 You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find

01:01:11.640 the inner truth.

01:01:12.760 Well, I really wouldn't care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly

01:01:16.860 what I'd find.

01:01:18.240 Instead of a heart, a handbag.

01:01:20.740 Instead of a soul, a suitcase.

01:01:23.360 And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter.

01:01:26.940 Which doesn't work.

01:01:28.380 Well, that's very nicely put.

01:01:32.500 So the whole premise is that they work together and they don't like each other, or do they?

01:01:41.120 Because each has a secret pen pal with whom they're having somewhat of a romantic blossoming.

01:01:46.860 And well, if you've seen You've Got Mail, you know how it ends.

01:01:49.260 But you said when we were watching it, there's something really soothing about Jimmy Stewart's

01:01:54.240 voice.

01:01:55.080 Like, about Jimmy Stewart in general.

01:01:56.700 Yeah.

01:01:57.040 And it's distinctive.

01:01:57.820 His voice is unlike any other voice in the movies.

01:02:00.540 You immediately get it.

01:02:01.460 You know, some people have a fairly, like Morgan Freeman's got an amazing voice and you pretty

01:02:04.460 much know his as well.

01:02:06.120 But Jimmy Stewart has one of those.

01:02:07.540 You know exactly who it is and it sort of turns you into that place immediately.

01:02:14.260 What's amazing is that movie was made in 1940.

01:02:17.540 1940.

01:02:18.380 Think about that.

01:02:18.980 So that's 85 years ago, almost 85.

01:02:24.420 That's incredible.

01:02:25.380 And we were talking.

01:02:25.980 So Doug, we turn it on and it's like, it is charming.

01:02:28.520 So we have a little Christmas tree in our bedroom this time of year, which I love and highly

01:02:33.800 recommend.

01:02:34.620 And in the morning, we turn on the lights and we make a coffee.

01:02:37.640 We have a little coffee maker in the room and we sit there in our bed and we have coffee

01:02:40.960 and we chat.

01:02:41.480 It's actually many days, the only time we have to really catch up before everything goes nuts.

01:02:45.960 And this time of year, sometimes we'll put on like a cute movie.

01:02:50.200 I remember last year we watched Serendipity.

01:02:52.900 Oh, that's right.

01:02:53.520 That was a good one.

01:02:54.220 That's a great one.

01:02:54.860 Notwithstanding that John Cusack is a prick, but you can suspend your disbelief.

01:02:58.700 And this year, so we were watching that.

01:03:02.380 And you said to me, the setting's beautiful.

01:03:05.860 We've got a little Christmas tree going.

01:03:07.220 We've got our coffee, the black and white film.

01:03:08.900 And you go, everyone in this movie is dead.

01:03:12.160 Even the babies.

01:03:12.980 Oh my God.

01:03:16.580 When that fact dawns on you, it's like our mothers were born in this era, you know?

01:03:21.680 And when that dawns on you, how old it is, you know, how long cinema has been a thing

01:03:26.400 in America, you know, go back to the early days.

01:03:28.620 It's all, they're all dead.

01:03:29.940 They're all gone.

01:03:30.760 Sweet thought, honey.

01:03:31.460 Yeah.

01:03:31.800 Well, you know.

01:03:32.580 So they might, the babies might still be alive.

01:03:34.640 But the thing that always strikes me is that you knew my Nana very well, who died at 101.

01:03:39.220 Uh, right before Trump was elected, it was, um, it was 16, October of 16, but she was born

01:03:45.220 in 1915, 1915.

01:03:46.960 And I look at that.

01:03:47.880 I'm like, Nana was 25.

01:03:49.540 There's someone we've known in our lifetime very, very well was alive and vibrant when

01:03:56.660 this black and white 1940 film was made.

01:03:59.600 It's weird to think about.

01:04:00.600 It's totally crazy.

01:04:01.360 Which reminds me, the Sikorsky helicopter, people, anyone who's, who's, uh, looked at

01:04:06.260 military helicopters.

01:04:07.700 I just met this guy, Igor Sikorsky Jr.

01:04:11.040 He had read the diesel book and he emailed me and he said, Hey, I've got all these stories

01:04:14.280 about my dad.

01:04:14.900 He was a contemporary of Rudolph diesel and you know, let's meet.

01:04:18.380 So I, I went and went to the new England air museum and there's a whole Sikorsky wing

01:04:22.740 there.

01:04:23.000 We walked around and got this total, I mean, Igor Sikorsky Jr.

01:04:25.960 walks in there and he's like a rock star.

01:04:27.460 Everybody was, you know, running out to meet him.

01:04:29.500 And how old is he?

01:04:30.280 He's 95 and he looks at this photo and he shows me it's of Tsar Nicholas II, a young

01:04:36.700 Tsar, you know, years before world war one even started and Tsar Nicholas II is talking

01:04:41.440 to some other man in the photo.

01:04:43.520 And my new friend, my new pal, Igor points at the man in the photo and goes, there's dad.

01:04:49.180 And I'm like, Oh my God, he has some personal connection to so much history going back.

01:04:53.900 And he's like, you know, you really need my brother, Sergei.

01:04:56.180 He's got, he's a treasure trove of information about aviation and the, you know, the interwar

01:05:00.260 period and the pre-war period.

01:05:01.640 I'm like, Oh, that sounds great.

01:05:02.340 And he goes, he turns a hundred in a couple of weeks.

01:05:04.140 He's flying in for the party.

01:05:05.480 I'm like, Oh my God, what are these, what are these Sikorskis eating?

01:05:08.540 Right.

01:05:09.200 We need to find out.

01:05:10.220 No, it was funny because, uh, you saw him and then you had a second, as we called it

01:05:14.020 a play date.

01:05:14.440 I'm like, Doug's got another play date with his new best friend, but what a fascinating

01:05:17.740 man.

01:05:18.260 Yeah.

01:05:18.460 And you said he was sharp, was attack.

01:05:19.760 He remembered everything.

01:05:20.840 He was rattling off dates of the interwar period.

01:05:23.000 You know, in 1938, this was happening in 1928, the Bremen flew across and they, you know,

01:05:27.300 they met Babe Ruth at Yankee state.

01:05:28.680 He just knew all this incredible information.

01:05:31.260 I was at the, at the ready.

01:05:32.840 See, now these are the fascinating interactions that Doug has and he reads amazing books.

01:05:37.900 And then he writes amazing books like the mysterious case of Rudolph diesel, which you should

01:05:41.260 all buy for Christmas.

01:05:42.320 It's still crushing it.

01:05:43.560 Amazingly.

01:05:43.920 It's still doing so well.

01:05:44.780 It's still selling pretty well and you know, events keep popping up here and there that

01:05:48.500 I'll go do.

01:05:49.220 It's gotten a little bit more into the diesel community.

01:05:51.800 I did a trucking, uh, radio show the other day.

01:05:54.800 It's been big with the Marine community and yeah.

01:05:57.420 So it's, it's been really fun to see that story get out there.

01:05:59.500 Yeah.

01:05:59.660 So it's still available for you.

01:06:00.880 It's, it's, it's, uh, available in paperwork too.

01:06:03.380 So you can get paperback so you can get the cheaper version if you want, though.

01:06:06.380 It's, it's bargain at any price, mysterious case of Rudolph diesel, by the way, may I just

01:06:12.400 say, I just want the audience to see how much I've, I have drunk so far.

01:06:16.000 We're actually having this.

01:06:17.000 And it's like one tiny, it's like a half an inch of this glass.

01:06:21.960 And I already feel a little woozy that, that Jack Carr whiskey is not messing around.

01:06:28.460 By the way, these are the Al Smith dinner glasses.

01:06:30.080 I don't know if you can tell all the frosting on the outside of the glass now, but.

01:06:33.040 Oh no.

01:06:33.780 Debbie Murphy just reminded me.

01:06:35.080 I have a lot of reads after the show.

01:06:36.480 Don't get drunk.

01:06:37.320 I got to sip it slowly.

01:06:38.780 Sip it slowly.

01:06:39.200 It's like we're going into the holiday period.

01:06:40.540 So I got a lot going on anyway.

01:06:42.480 Um, okay.

01:06:43.140 So let's, let's go through a couple of things.

01:06:45.860 I want to go through a story that happened before I get too intoxicated to us yesterday

01:06:51.540 on Christmas gifts.

01:06:52.740 Oh yeah.

01:06:55.180 Is this my camera?

01:06:56.680 You guys, I have a lost all focus.

01:06:58.060 This is my camera, right?

01:06:59.080 For the, for the thank you radar.

01:07:01.000 Um, I'm drunk already.

01:07:02.520 I've lost all control of the show.

01:07:04.560 Okay.

01:07:05.000 So, um, I never get Christmas gifts for the kids teachers.

01:07:10.820 And in my defense, I won't be too much of a sexist pig about it.

01:07:13.980 Doug never does either.

01:07:15.340 Just cause I'm the mom doesn't mean it has to be me.

01:07:17.340 Right.

01:07:17.740 Right.

01:07:18.320 For the record.

01:07:19.260 But let's face it.

01:07:20.360 It's always the moms.

01:07:21.380 So, um, I had dinner with some friends here in town a couple of weeks ago and there were

01:07:26.940 four of us and two were like, you never get gifts for the teachers that like around Christmas.

01:07:31.040 I'm like, no, like never.

01:07:33.260 I'm like, no, my friends are like, oh, okay.

01:07:34.880 They weren't passing judgment.

01:07:35.820 They were, but they were surprised.

01:07:37.140 And there was another mom there who was like, oh no, me neither.

01:07:39.880 And she's a working mom.

01:07:41.000 And she, and she was like solidarity.

01:07:43.140 Right.

01:07:43.760 But it's stuck in my craw.

01:07:45.020 Like, oh my God, our kids are the only ones going in there.

01:07:48.000 All this is bad.

01:07:49.180 I need to get some gifts.

01:07:51.060 Well, long story short, I decided to get like a bath bomb, you know, like one of those

01:07:58.220 round, looks like chalk bombs that you throw into your bath.

01:08:02.680 And it makes into, into this like soothing, fun kind of bubble bath ish thing.

01:08:06.920 And I had Abby order me the one that I found online so I could try it first, make sure I'm

01:08:11.040 not giving away something disgusting.

01:08:12.640 And then I also saw this thing online.

01:08:14.620 It was really cute.

01:08:15.600 It was like lab test tubes, you know, like what you'd see in a science lab.

01:08:19.940 And they had these labels on them.

01:08:22.580 Okay.

01:08:22.980 Take that down for now.

01:08:23.780 And, uh, so I tried that out too.

01:08:27.700 And that was the, the winner.

01:08:29.100 I'm like, that's actually really cute with the test tubes.

01:08:31.480 So Abby bought like a few of them.

01:08:34.500 She had them wrapped.

01:08:36.000 And yesterday the kids were leaving for school.

01:08:38.240 Yardley was going with you and the boys were going with me.

01:08:40.420 And, and I remembered, I'm like, oh, take your gifts.

01:08:44.160 I've got, I've, I'm on top of it this year.

01:08:46.680 So you and Yardley leave with one for her teacher and the boys each have two female teachers.

01:08:51.520 So they had their two and two and Thatcher was like, what do you mean test tubes?

01:08:57.660 I'm like, oh, they're, there's like, they look like lab test tubes.

01:09:00.380 And he's like, well, what's written on them?

01:09:02.160 And I was like, I don't like little messages.

01:09:03.780 Like one said spirit guide, you know, it's cute.

01:09:07.080 So I just, I pulled up the website just so they could look at it while I was getting them

01:09:10.780 ready and getting myself ready to leave.

01:09:12.260 And I look over at them and Thatcher, who's 11, has eyes like silver dollars.

01:09:19.400 And I'm like, what?

01:09:20.960 And Yates, who's 15 goes, well, I certainly hope tube number two isn't in the gift.

01:09:25.640 I'm like, oh, what's, what's in tube number two?

01:09:30.280 So I take a look at my own phone that they're looking at.

01:09:32.900 And tube number two reads in big writing, get naked.

01:09:39.560 Oh my God.

01:09:41.560 Oh my God.

01:09:42.780 Which we almost had our 15 year old.

01:09:44.360 Yates was like, I don't want to give her this.

01:09:45.840 And 11 year old boys take into their teachers.

01:09:49.840 And then I took another look at the rest of the selection.

01:09:52.760 And there's one that reads, it's, it's, what is it?

01:09:57.120 What is it?

01:09:58.120 Intoxification?

01:09:59.520 Intoxify?

01:09:59.920 Intoxify and one that reads, uh, tranquilize.

01:10:03.720 It was like, it was basically like, get, get naked, get drunk and get drugged.

01:10:10.160 Merry Christmas.

01:10:11.140 Yates and Thatcher and Yardley Brown.

01:10:12.960 Like, oh my God.

01:10:14.780 So now I'm like, it's too late to save Yardley, but I can still save the boys.

01:10:19.860 So I decide there's such nice gifts.

01:10:21.700 I'm, I'm actually still excited about my gift that I take out the steak knife and I start

01:10:26.080 to try to perform a surgery on it, Duggar.

01:10:28.120 And I try to get in there.

01:10:29.260 So like, cause I still had my own test kit up in the bathroom and I was like, there are

01:10:33.120 some innocuous tubes.

01:10:34.280 I could replace the offensive ones with the innocuous ones.

01:10:37.200 So I sent Yates up to get the innocuous tubes and I was like, I can't do it.

01:10:41.360 There's so many layers.

01:10:42.300 It's been so beautifully wrapped, the tissue paper and then the real paper and lots of tape.

01:10:46.240 And I'm like, I can't, I said, Thatcher, it's probably okay.

01:10:49.900 Don't you think maybe we could just, you know, we could just go with it as is.

01:10:53.580 Thatcher's like, I don't think it's okay, mom.

01:10:58.580 Like, please don't make me give that to my teacher.

01:11:03.040 So we replaced the boys with some candles and Yardley's teacher got the special holiday

01:11:11.220 brunt message of get naked, get drunk and get drugged.

01:11:14.820 Yeah.

01:11:15.360 Happy new year.

01:11:18.200 I did send her a note and she was a very, very good sport.

01:11:21.260 She laughed and thought it was hysterical, but there are some things you have to admit

01:11:24.500 you're not good at, especially when you're a working mom and like gift giving is on the

01:11:28.420 list.

01:11:28.800 You didn't need to, you do all the holiday shopping.

01:11:31.000 If no one, kids aren't listening to this, I'm assuming you do all the holiday shopping

01:11:34.080 around here for us.

01:11:35.340 So it was, I did a little bit this year.

01:11:37.380 I did some, I did a couple.

01:11:38.660 Yeah.

01:11:39.020 Well, I, you're starting to get angry.

01:11:40.960 No, no, no.

01:11:42.440 You've offered to help many times, but I don't like it when you help.

01:11:46.460 You've got, you've got your system.

01:11:48.080 I'm happy to see your system sore.

01:11:51.280 Well, the other problem is Doug and I have a philosophical disagreement about Christmas

01:11:56.040 where it's like, I'm like, they, I like a lot.

01:12:00.600 And Doug's like, these four would make everyone really happy.

01:12:03.440 Yeah.

01:12:03.600 And they'll get used.

01:12:04.520 There's such a volume with you that they like, you get lost in the amount of presents.

01:12:07.760 They never get used at least two, like three years later, there's a closet full of stuff

01:12:10.660 we never opened.

01:12:11.320 Look, Santa brings a lot already.

01:12:12.840 And I supplement.

01:12:14.120 That's right.

01:12:14.680 Because I like the look of excess.

01:12:16.580 It could be something small.

01:12:17.480 It could be like a little nerve football, but I wrap it because it's, it's just so fun to

01:12:21.140 walk down and see that, you know, big thing under the tree.

01:12:24.500 Right.

01:12:24.700 Like the who's out of whoville.

01:12:25.780 There's got to be volume down there.

01:12:26.980 That's kind of how I feel about it.

01:12:28.500 Yeah.

01:12:29.620 Okay.

01:12:30.940 Let's talk about, well, the drinks, we do the eggnog, we do what else?

01:12:35.940 What do we typically have a Christmas drink?

01:12:39.000 You and I, are you talking to me or Debbie?

01:12:40.340 You.

01:12:41.020 Uh, yeah.

01:12:41.960 I mean, we have eggnog kind of right up to it.

01:12:45.340 And then I know it kind of depends what we're feeling.

01:12:47.480 It doesn't have to be like a special thing.

01:12:48.880 It could be a martini or Manhattan or whatever.

01:12:50.580 All right.

01:12:50.820 How about special?

01:12:51.840 Is this on my list?

01:12:53.040 Traditions?

01:12:53.560 I don't want to step up.

01:12:54.320 Are we doing the quiz right now?

01:12:55.180 Let's do the quiz.

01:12:55.720 Let's do the quiz.

01:12:56.920 No, stop.

01:12:57.760 Don't do the quiz.

01:12:59.980 Yes.

01:13:00.300 Do the quiz.

01:13:00.940 Okay.

01:13:01.720 Honestly, like, I don't know when I got to be such a lightweight.

01:13:05.260 I used to be able to hold my liquor dugger.

01:13:07.620 Okay.

01:13:08.300 So here is the instruction.

01:13:11.460 MK, read the questions and give us your answer.

01:13:15.380 Doug, the producers and Peko will confirm if you are correct.

01:13:18.180 Okay.

01:13:19.280 Number one, what is Doug's favorite Christmas memory?

01:13:22.380 Well, I feel like you might've just told it.

01:13:23.880 Is this with our family or his family or his whole life?

01:13:29.980 Okay.

01:13:32.260 I guess I should tell you how I answer it.

01:13:33.640 It was like, it's our family.

01:13:36.260 You're never going to get this really.

01:13:37.500 It's sort of.

01:13:37.740 I know.

01:13:37.980 This is a tough one.

01:13:38.980 There's too many.

01:13:39.840 You want me to tell you?

01:13:40.780 Yeah.

01:13:41.100 I give up.

01:13:41.880 I already am failing.

01:13:43.300 I'll give you a hint.

01:13:44.160 Because one Christmas Eve.

01:13:45.660 They bugged me.

01:13:46.940 You got a bugger.

01:13:47.600 I got F.

01:13:48.260 All right.

01:13:48.400 Let's see if you can get it after this hint.

01:13:49.460 One Christmas Eve, there was an 11th hour, literally at 11 PM Christmas.

01:13:54.020 The one, the only thing that matters.

01:13:55.880 I know it.

01:13:56.260 I know it.

01:13:56.820 Oh, it was terrible.

01:13:58.260 And then it was wonderful.

01:13:59.280 Yeah.

01:13:59.640 But this involved Yates.

01:14:00.880 Yes.

01:14:01.300 Who we asked.

01:14:01.900 He's our eldest.

01:14:02.580 Now he's 15.

01:14:03.520 But at the time he was like four.

01:14:05.320 And we had seen Polar Express.

01:14:07.100 And we had asked him like, is there any special thing?

01:14:09.420 Any special toy?

01:14:10.240 Anything?

01:14:10.660 And we asked this weeks in advance.

01:14:11.960 Weeks in advance.

01:14:12.580 And he was like, no, no, no.

01:14:13.660 He was little.

01:14:14.360 Maybe five.

01:14:15.200 Anyway.

01:14:15.800 No, no, no, no, no.

01:14:16.560 And it was literally 11 o'clock Christmas Eve.

01:14:20.800 And he had just like woken up from his slumber and like toddled out.

01:14:25.600 And he was like, I thought of what I want.

01:14:27.680 And it's the only thing I want.

01:14:29.160 It's the only thing I care about.

01:14:30.500 And of course, we're like, the window has closed, sir.

01:14:33.400 And he's like, I want the bell.

01:14:36.720 I want one of.

01:14:37.400 A silver magic bell.

01:14:38.720 From Santa's reindeer.

01:14:39.900 From Polar Express.

01:14:41.080 Yeah.

01:14:41.360 He had just seen Polar Express.

01:14:42.280 We were like.

01:14:43.860 Yeah, we're screwed.

01:14:44.940 The one thing he wants.

01:14:46.120 Right down the street from Dwayne Reed, right?

01:14:48.380 But Dwayne Reed was closed on Christmas Eve and didn't have the Christmas bell.

01:14:53.280 So we were like, he's not going to get it.

01:14:55.020 This is so sad.

01:14:55.740 Oh, well, you know, he waited too late.

01:14:56.980 Maybe he'll learn in the future.

01:14:58.020 But like, it is sad.

01:14:59.260 So then you go to set up the train.

01:15:01.300 We had just bought a train for underneath the Christmas tree.

01:15:04.660 And we had purchased a Polar Express train.

01:15:08.980 And lo and behold, in the box was the Christmas Santa's reindeer.

01:15:15.840 It was a Christmas miracle.

01:15:17.040 Bell.

01:15:17.240 It was a true Christmas miracle.

01:15:19.040 Yeah.

01:15:19.160 Like the little add-on was a perfect silver bell.

01:15:21.360 Exactly what he wanted.

01:15:22.280 It was amazing.

01:15:22.800 It's crazy how he's like, he did that for many years.

01:15:26.240 I think the buzz was unjust.

01:15:28.140 Yeah.

01:15:28.360 You kind of nailed that with like a little help.

01:15:30.900 Oh, nice.

01:15:32.460 All right, good.

01:15:32.960 Okay, the next one.

01:15:33.820 What is the best Christmas gift Megan ever gave Doug?

01:15:37.300 I mean, we don't give gifts to each other.

01:15:40.660 This goes, all right, another hint goes back years, I think more holistically.

01:15:44.780 Is this when we first met?

01:15:46.120 Yeah.

01:15:46.620 Okay.

01:15:47.380 Was this the replacement of your entire wardrobe?

01:15:49.940 The entire wardrobe gift that you gave me?

01:15:52.120 Yes, this is that.

01:15:55.340 When I first met Doug.

01:15:57.360 Yeah, there we go.

01:15:57.980 Oh, yes.

01:15:58.620 We're two for two.

01:15:59.320 He was not a good dresser.

01:16:00.620 You've heard the story.

01:16:01.600 Yellow golf shirt and high-waisted khaki pants.

01:16:06.180 When we first met, this is not an appropriate outfit for anyone's first date.

01:16:09.960 And so, yes, I was extremely generous on our first Christmas, even though I didn't really

01:16:12.880 have much money back then.

01:16:14.460 Yeah.

01:16:15.040 Exactly.

01:16:15.540 So it was box after box of new clothing and new clothing.

01:16:18.740 By the way, so the ending of this story is full vindication for me because you're reading

01:16:23.480 the Wall Street Journal one day.

01:16:25.000 So you would say back then, like, you know, your ex, she was blocking you.

01:16:27.980 She was just trying to make you look bad.

01:16:29.240 She was sabotaging you for other women by making you wear these terrible outfits.

01:16:32.520 That's why you came to me in that condition.

01:16:34.040 So for all these years, I'm like, wow, I look so much better now that I'm dressing properly.

01:16:38.360 And then you're reading a Wall Street Journal article that's talking about men's fashion

01:16:41.980 and the low, they're sort of gold sexy or silver sexy, gold sexy, platinum sexy, and

01:16:48.120 it sort of described outfits at each tier.

01:16:50.020 And then it gets to black diamond sexy, which is the most sexy you can be as a guy to dress.

01:16:55.160 And under black diamond sexy was literally khaki pants and yellow.

01:17:01.360 It was like a hundred percent, like weirdly, you've always phrased it in this weird way.

01:17:04.280 It even got the phrasing right.

01:17:05.480 It's as though you wrote it.

01:17:06.780 And I'm like, you're the saboteur.

01:17:10.140 You've been sabotaging me for the last 20 years.

01:17:13.980 So that was, that came around.

01:17:15.920 That was the funniest thing ever.

01:17:17.680 Okay.

01:17:17.820 Number three, Doug's favorite Christmas song or favorite Christmas movie scene?

01:17:24.120 Well, the movie, I already said that.

01:17:26.400 You're without a Santa Claus.

01:17:28.300 Hello, where's my bell?

01:17:28.980 I'm waiting for the ding, ding, ding.

01:17:30.380 There we go.

01:17:31.020 There it is.

01:17:31.540 Favorite song?

01:17:32.680 Oh, I know your favorite song.

01:17:33.960 It's, don't say it.

01:17:35.680 It's by Dean Martin and it's Marshmallow World.

01:17:38.700 Ding, ding, ding.

01:17:39.680 Oh my God.

01:17:40.520 We're three for three.

01:17:41.520 A little slow.

01:17:42.200 It's like we actually know each other.

01:17:43.300 This is not the Bing Crosby version.

01:17:48.980 No, this isn't it at all.

01:17:50.380 I just want my ding, ding, ding.

01:17:51.560 You know, they got the right song, but yeah, you're right.

01:17:53.360 Dean Martin.

01:17:53.680 It's by Dean Martin.

01:17:54.560 Dean Martin instead of you.

01:17:55.500 Okay, but thank you for trying, team.

01:17:57.020 Okay, number four, Doug's favorite thing to eat or drink at Christmas.

01:18:01.200 Are we drinking it right now?

01:18:02.400 Yeah.

01:18:02.800 Yeah, okay.

01:18:03.580 Oh my God, are we five for five?

01:18:04.960 Yeah, hello, ding.

01:18:05.700 Where's my ding?

01:18:08.480 Is my team drunk too?

01:18:09.760 Did you also pour for them?

01:18:11.620 All right.

01:18:12.340 Five, traditions from Doug's childhood that he's carried over to your own family.

01:18:16.220 Well, do we already cover that one or is there something else?

01:18:19.740 No, I mean, it was, it was, again.

01:18:22.000 Is it shopping at the last minute?

01:18:23.180 No, it's just like the annual big trip that my-

01:18:25.180 Yeah, no, no, no, I know about it.

01:18:26.300 You and your siblings would go to the mall.

01:18:28.060 Oh, no, that, but well, I meant like a vacation trip.

01:18:29.860 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:18:30.520 Also that.

01:18:30.880 Oh, I think I ruined the ding.

01:18:32.160 Okay, okay.

01:18:33.360 Number six, traditions Doug hopes your own children will do with their kids one day.

01:18:38.680 Hmm.

01:18:41.320 I don't know.

01:18:42.340 I mean, oh, I've got one.

01:18:44.860 I've got one.

01:18:45.880 Is it how they all sleep in the same room the night, Christmas Eve?

01:18:51.360 I mean, even if this is not what you said, I know you believe that you want this.

01:18:54.540 So they sleep in the same room on Christmas Eve.

01:18:56.560 And then in the morning before they come upstairs to get us, they say a prayer together, which

01:19:01.140 is, they came up with this on their own.

01:19:02.660 They told us about it after a couple of years after doing it.

01:19:05.460 And then they come right to our room.

01:19:07.100 We walk out together.

01:19:08.420 That's awesome.

01:19:09.280 Yes.

01:19:09.740 That was not the one though.

01:19:12.280 This was more like day to day.

01:19:14.080 This is less Christmas theme.

01:19:15.000 Just, just the fact that we have dinner together as a family, six plus nights a week.

01:19:19.240 Yeah.

01:19:19.820 Thank you, Dr. Leonard Sacks.

01:19:21.100 Hopefully they do that.

01:19:21.740 Yeah.

01:19:21.900 We're reinforcing how important that is.

01:19:23.920 Okay.

01:19:26.740 Let's see.

01:19:27.380 Okay.

01:19:27.600 Seven.

01:19:28.100 What are Doug's hopes for the new year?

01:19:30.680 And he always has the same hopes.

01:19:32.200 Like everybody stays well.

01:19:34.500 Everybody thrives.

01:19:35.300 I feel like that counts.

01:19:36.500 I said, we stay on the same upward trajectory as a family.

01:19:39.280 Yeah.

01:19:39.560 See, I, I, I'm nailing it.

01:19:41.560 Yeah.

01:19:42.400 Okay.

01:19:43.040 Uh, eight.

01:19:43.460 If Doug could change one thing from the past year, what would it be?

01:19:48.100 Well, I think we'd both like your mom to be feeling better.

01:19:51.520 Oh my God.

01:19:52.240 You got it right.

01:19:53.120 Yeah.

01:19:53.280 This is going to bring the room down, but I said for both of our moms to be in better

01:19:55.520 health.

01:19:55.880 Yeah.

01:19:56.200 That's amazing.

01:19:56.660 You got that right away.

01:19:57.480 Yeah.

01:19:57.900 I guess it's pretty obvious, but not to diminish how amazing it is that you got that.

01:20:01.600 Well, I have another candidate.

01:20:02.940 Not good.

01:20:03.540 What?

01:20:03.640 I have another candidate.

01:20:06.280 Oh God.

01:20:07.120 Are you, is this where we're going?

01:20:08.520 Yes.

01:20:11.440 Oh my God.

01:20:12.100 This is the best.

01:20:12.780 I'm going to fortify myself for this one.

01:20:14.840 So we went to Scandinavia in June.

01:20:19.160 A family.

01:20:20.820 We went to Sweden, uh, Norway and Denmark.

01:20:25.400 And we, when we got to Denmark, we went to the big amusement park there that everybody

01:20:29.140 goes to.

01:20:30.420 What's it called again?

01:20:31.760 I don't know.

01:20:32.480 We went there.

01:20:33.980 Gardens.

01:20:34.520 I don't remember.

01:20:35.300 Everyone.

01:20:35.660 Anyone.

01:20:35.940 It's yeah.

01:20:36.520 It's the one.

01:20:37.120 It's the one that Disney world was based on.

01:20:39.620 And, um, we went on this very, very mild.

01:20:45.820 That's already.

01:20:46.660 This is fake news.

01:20:47.920 Roller coaster.

01:20:49.040 It was rough.

01:20:49.700 It's called the root of bond.

01:20:51.340 And it's very, it was so mild.

01:20:54.380 Like you didn't even have the shoulder harness.

01:20:56.280 It just had the lap, you know, like just the lap bar where you hold.

01:21:00.020 And there was a man operating it.

01:21:01.940 Like the brakes required his foot.

01:21:04.020 It was a manual break.

01:21:04.960 I mean, how dangerous could it be quite frankly.

01:21:07.180 And so, you know, the roller coasters will take your picture when you're on the roller coaster.

01:21:11.980 Well, it took our picture and, and we went and saw it at the little, the little screen.

01:21:16.540 And I'm just going to show you the first picture that we saw.

01:21:18.680 We went down to see the screen now here.

01:21:20.200 You can see, Oh, Tivoli gardens.

01:21:21.580 That's what it was.

01:21:22.000 I can see.

01:21:22.920 Um, so you can see there's yours truly.

01:21:25.260 And I'm next to our son, Thatcher.

01:21:27.260 And you can see, I'm really enjoying myself.

01:21:28.780 I love the root of bond.

01:21:30.360 But you can see Doug is behind me and it's unclear whether Doug is enjoying it quite as much as Thatcher and I are.

01:21:36.340 And they are the two kids who are behind him.

01:21:38.380 And then we scrolled in the, the list of photos that you could purchase, which I did by the way.

01:21:43.760 And look at.

01:21:48.460 You know, as you get older, like the inner ear goes a little and, uh, yeah, you know, I've been, I've been developing this nice relationship and friendship with Jack Carr.

01:21:58.980 He's going to see it as like, I'm out, but I can't, you know, lost all respect.

01:22:05.820 So do you remember how that went for me when I was white?

01:22:09.240 Like when you got off, my God, you know, by the way, as we get out, they tell the story that like the 85 year old queen had recently been on and loved the ride.

01:22:17.600 And we get off and we wander over like, you know, it was one of the rides.

01:22:25.360 Not every ride has the thing where the, you can go buy the photos afterward.

01:22:28.080 So we wander over and you see it on the wall.

01:22:31.060 And that was the end of it.

01:22:32.140 Like there was no talking to you for like a week.

01:22:34.400 You were doubled over laughing for the rest of the time you were, we were there.

01:22:38.160 I was at a 90 degree.

01:22:39.160 I'm like, I just need to distract her for like 20 minutes.

01:22:41.680 Cause you can only buy it for a certain window of time.

01:22:43.580 I'm like, let's go over that way.

01:22:45.320 And you're like, no, no, no.

01:22:46.220 We're going to buy that photo right now.

01:22:48.380 And then for the rest of the trip, you just any, like anything could spark the memory.

01:22:53.160 And you were gone for 20 minutes, laughing, doubled over.

01:22:56.700 At which point I realized you had become my bully.

01:22:59.460 You said you're my bully.

01:23:04.000 It's so funny.

01:23:05.080 If you guys are listening on SiriusXM or on a podcast, you've got to go to youtube.com.

01:23:08.660 Go to about, I don't know, 90 minutes into the show and look at this picture because it's so out of character for you.

01:23:15.140 That's what made it so funny.

01:23:16.440 Oh, nice save.

01:23:17.160 Thank you.

01:23:17.240 No, truly.

01:23:17.760 You're always so composed.

01:23:18.820 You're always strong.

01:23:19.600 You're always our defender, our leader.

01:23:21.240 And, uh, there you were genuinely scared and horrified.

01:23:25.880 Yeah.

01:23:26.220 It was just like, and then, so I, I was like, I can do better.

01:23:29.600 I'm going to go back on that damn thing and I'm going to look composed and good.

01:23:33.580 And I whiffed again.

01:23:34.820 The second time is still like, got me go.

01:23:36.600 I'm going to send these pictures.

01:23:37.540 It took me three times to look like I was, you know, enjoying it.

01:23:40.680 I'm going to send those to the, to the team too.

01:23:42.540 No, it was four times.

01:23:43.560 FYI.

01:23:44.020 Oh my God.

01:23:44.540 Yeah.

01:23:44.720 Yeah.

01:23:44.860 And, um, yeah.

01:23:46.060 So he tried again and it failed.

01:23:47.660 And then, and then, uh, the final time you nailed it.

01:23:50.580 Nailed it.

01:23:50.900 Yeah.

01:23:51.180 You look totally, totally comfortable.

01:23:53.180 Um, okay.

01:23:53.880 Stand by.

01:23:54.340 Let's see.

01:23:54.920 Um, okay.

01:23:57.660 Nine.

01:23:58.580 Finish this sentence for Doug.

01:24:00.160 It's not Christmas without.

01:24:03.700 Hmm.

01:24:07.200 Hmm.

01:24:08.540 Stradwick eating something.

01:24:10.680 He shouldn't be check Christmas this year already.

01:24:13.800 Oh, that's a tough one.

01:24:15.660 I don't, I, Montana, Christmas in Montana, the fam.

01:24:18.480 I can't remember everything I said.

01:24:19.460 I listed a couple of things here, like watching wonderful life and watching family man with

01:24:24.220 Nicholas cage.

01:24:25.000 Yes.

01:24:25.760 Um, not, not good enough.

01:24:31.180 I said, I can't remember what else I said.

01:24:33.160 Even I failed that one.

01:24:34.120 Okay.

01:24:34.500 Yeah.

01:24:34.900 I, I, so it's equal.

01:24:36.280 Okay.

01:24:36.760 10.

01:24:37.540 How early does the family start Christmas shopping?

01:24:39.540 The family.

01:24:40.500 How early does the family?

01:24:41.460 Ladies, how early does the family start?

01:24:43.660 Thank you for, uh, including me.

01:24:45.060 The family starts maybe like two weeks before, because if you don't, if you wait too long,

01:24:50.180 you can't get anything on Amazon.

01:24:51.580 Yeah.

01:24:51.840 I think I said within December, you start everything.

01:24:53.700 Yeah.

01:24:54.140 There we go.

01:24:54.840 Yeah.

01:24:55.020 Thank you.

01:24:55.480 Thank you very much.

01:24:56.680 Um, I do think we should talk about it's a wonderful life and then we'll take a quick

01:24:59.980 break because that is one of our family traditions and it, I love it.

01:25:05.080 It's my favorite family tradition.

01:25:06.500 Here is a clip from the wonderful movie.

01:25:08.680 It's a wonderful life to my big brother, George, the richest man in town.

01:25:14.540 Oh, my God, George, remember no man is a failure, he has friends.

01:25:35.060 Thanks for the wings, both planes.

01:25:38.260 That's a Christmas present from a very dear friend that way.

01:25:44.540 Look, daddy, teacher says, every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.

01:25:52.820 That's right.

01:25:54.560 That's right.

01:25:57.540 That a boy, Clarence.

01:26:02.760 You gave me a little chill just watching that.

01:26:04.900 Yeah.

01:26:05.160 Jimmy Stewart at the best.

01:26:06.340 Right.

01:26:06.620 And Donna Reed is so good.

01:26:07.880 She's so beautiful.

01:26:09.460 Um, so we decided to make the most of this movie.

01:26:12.600 I've told the audience this story before, but for those who don't know, do you want to explain

01:26:17.020 what we do when we watch it as a family?

01:26:18.620 I mean, this is real.

01:26:19.460 You drive this.

01:26:20.120 I love it.

01:26:20.620 And you make sure it happens every year as you do with all this stuff.

01:26:23.260 You make sure the family is doing all the, uh, all the good things.

01:26:26.140 But we throw salt, you know, there was, is it Martinelli?

01:26:29.140 What's the name?

01:26:29.900 Martini.

01:26:30.520 Martini.

01:26:30.920 Yeah.

01:26:31.120 So we throw salt and we just have all the traditions and we make the noises.

01:26:34.100 There's a scene where he gets married and they're like, and she, Donna Reed shows up

01:26:38.000 with Jimmy Stewart and she's like, you know, bread that this house may never know hunger

01:26:41.460 or salt that they never, it may never be bland or whatever it is.

01:26:44.520 And we ring the bells when the angels, you know, all the, all the fun little traditions

01:26:47.600 throughout the movie and the whole, the kids get into it.

01:26:49.400 And it's one of those things that brings us all five together, uh, it's so fun, really

01:26:53.980 magical sort of Christmas moment.

01:26:55.240 I went to this, uh, a showing of it in Chicago years ago, like 20 years ago with some friends

01:27:00.720 and, um, we saw them like they did this in the theater.

01:27:04.120 They treated it like the Rocky who are a picture show.

01:27:05.860 And I love, love, love you guys should totally do this with your families.

01:27:09.060 So you put on the, on the movie and every time Mr. Potter comes on, what do we do?

01:27:13.860 You boo, you hiss.

01:27:15.400 Yeah.

01:27:15.820 You hiss.

01:27:16.440 And every time Clarence comes on, it's an a bell.

01:27:19.120 You ring the bell.

01:27:20.120 And every time, um, I love how I'm like the kindergarten and what do you do?

01:27:24.400 Listen, Kamala.

01:27:27.220 Kamala.

01:27:31.080 That's exactly right.

01:27:32.420 It's, it's, it's not my inane stupidity as it is with her.

01:27:35.860 It's this Jack Carr whiskey.

01:27:38.280 Anywho.

01:27:38.840 Um, and then we throw salt and we throw bread at that scene where they go visit Mr. Martini

01:27:44.880 and he's getting a home and you know, she does the toast.

01:27:48.240 And, uh, I don't, it's just so fun.

01:27:49.680 Like the whole thing is like, it's just a fun way to watch the movie and we all look forward

01:27:53.440 to it.

01:27:53.600 Yeah.

01:27:53.820 It is fun.

01:27:54.480 That's one of our Christmas.

01:27:55.840 Jimmy Stewart.

01:27:56.940 Once again.

01:27:57.640 Yeah.

01:27:58.180 Very calming.

01:27:59.080 All right.

01:27:59.640 Stand by quick break back with more right after this.

01:28:03.680 I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM.

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01:29:00.580 Offer details apply.

01:29:01.660 Why do the ads seem so funny to me when I've had something to drink?

01:29:10.780 I mean, you have a great sense of humor.

01:29:12.580 I think you find humor in just about anything.

01:29:15.080 I do.

01:29:15.440 It's true.

01:29:17.040 Okay.

01:29:17.640 So speak.

01:29:18.180 And that is the reason why Strudwick is allowed to remain with our family.

01:29:22.580 Oh my God.

01:29:23.220 Yeah, I know.

01:29:23.660 You have to laugh or cry.

01:29:24.680 Yes.

01:29:24.940 So today he had yet another terrible piece of behavior.

01:29:29.780 Do you care to share?

01:29:31.660 He ate chocolate covered popcorn out of a sealed bag.

01:29:35.500 And someone gave us as a gift.

01:29:36.720 Yeah.

01:29:36.820 Like, how do you even smell it out of a sealed bag?

01:29:38.680 But he finds it.

01:29:39.500 He eats it.

01:29:40.240 It's supposed to be life threatening, but he's indestructible.

01:29:42.280 There's no, he's totally fine.

01:29:44.120 He's fine.

01:29:44.680 So this, this one involves Abigail Finan, who there, Moose Munch, who received the gift

01:29:50.880 from one of our friends of the show.

01:29:52.880 And very nice.

01:29:53.880 Thank you.

01:29:54.580 Adam Carolla, by the way.

01:29:56.020 And we really appreciate that.

01:29:57.740 He'll be thrilled to know Strud enjoyed it.

01:29:58.900 Well, I mean, you know, honestly, frankly, better him than me, because I love that stuff

01:30:03.220 would have gotten right to the website.

01:30:03.940 You had to save it for the eggnog.

01:30:04.920 Exactly.

01:30:05.700 And, uh, she was like, I don't know what I was thinking.

01:30:08.700 She, I've got to read you the, what she, what she wrote because she was so mortified.

01:30:12.640 She knows Strud too well.

01:30:14.960 She's yelling in the other room.

01:30:16.660 I said, Hey, did you take a picture?

01:30:18.860 Because we always post it on the website with Meg Storm.

01:30:22.180 And she wrote, no, I was so stressed out.

01:30:24.200 I didn't.

01:30:24.760 I literally sprinted back because I was like, WTF, Abby, you don't leave like a leftover

01:30:30.420 sandwich on the counter.

01:30:31.440 And you left a large Harry and David gift basket there.

01:30:34.760 It's really an egregious mistake.

01:30:36.520 Unbelievable.

01:30:37.000 Unbelievable because what her sin was leaving anything on the kitchen counter because she

01:30:42.480 knows exactly what happens almost instantly.

01:30:45.460 Can't leave for two minutes, two seconds.

01:30:47.600 And yet neither of us, we were like, he's fine.

01:30:50.640 You're good.

01:30:51.160 Yeah.

01:30:51.480 And sure enough, hours later, he's a hundred percent.

01:30:54.280 Totally.

01:30:54.860 There's nothing wrong with Strud.

01:30:55.800 Sugar-free gum, chocolate, grapes, whatever.

01:30:58.220 He eats it all.

01:30:58.860 All the stuff we were told would kill him instantly.

01:31:01.140 He's absolutely fine.

01:31:02.300 Like now the vet is like, you're not bringing him in.

01:31:04.820 We're like, no, he's fine.

01:31:07.880 We're good.

01:31:08.580 We'll save the $5,000.

01:31:09.900 Thanks.

01:31:10.320 Yeah.

01:31:10.600 We don't recommend this plan at home.

01:31:12.020 We don't know if your dog's indestructible, but our dog is unbelievable.

01:31:15.520 And plus at some point, Darwinism kicks in.

01:31:17.480 It's like, I mean, we're how many thousands of dollars in the hole?

01:31:20.100 I mean, it's, you hesitate to even hazard a guess.

01:31:23.680 Now you did bring three books with you today, sir.

01:31:26.260 Why did you do that?

01:31:27.140 You have some helpful hints.

01:31:28.240 These are my Christmas recommendations of great reads.

01:31:31.220 It covers the gamut of reading interests, I believe.

01:31:34.740 The first is our friend, Nelson DeMille, who recently passed away, a dear friend and a

01:31:39.400 mentor to me and a great friend to you.

01:31:42.180 He wrote a book called The Charm School, and this came out in 1988, just after the wall

01:31:46.860 came down.

01:31:47.260 It's ironically.

01:31:48.000 So it's, but the Russia stuff is back in vogue.

01:31:49.740 So it's, it's about a Russian spy training school.

01:31:53.920 So it's almost like the show American, the Americans with, um, Carrie Russell and the

01:31:59.060 other guy, Matthew Reese, Matthew Reese, which is a terrific show, but this is even better

01:32:01.940 than that.

01:32:02.780 And, um, it's just a great read.

01:32:05.040 There's so many people writing thrillers now.

01:32:07.460 Um, no one, and they all revere Nelson as, as just such a great inspiration to them.

01:32:12.940 And no one does it as well as Nelson has done it.

01:32:15.660 I recommended it to, um, my trainer who is a younger guy.

01:32:21.260 He's married with a family, but he's younger than we are.

01:32:23.720 And he couldn't put it down.

01:32:25.060 Like he, he was like, what else does Doug have?

01:32:27.300 I'll read anything Doug recommends.

01:32:28.840 It's great.

01:32:29.000 I mean, this one, I just cannot go wrong.

01:32:30.700 It's one of the best thrillers ever done.

01:32:32.320 Nelson DeMille is awesome.

01:32:33.560 We miss him.

01:32:34.100 We love him.

01:32:35.160 Uh, we truly, uh, uh, sad when he left.

01:32:38.740 He was a real inspiration to me.

01:32:39.840 It's hard to believe he's no longer with us.

01:32:41.480 Yeah.

01:32:42.740 Uh, the next also by a friend this, so this is different.

01:32:45.280 This is a bit more of a literary work.

01:32:46.680 Amor Tolles, I think is one of the best writers working today.

01:32:49.900 He's written a number of novels that people might recognize a gentleman in Moscow or rules

01:32:54.580 of civility or Lincoln highway and a friend of yours and a good friend and, um, just a

01:32:59.340 terrific writer.

01:32:59.960 I love it.

01:33:00.160 So, oh, by the way, as you know, for writers that I, whose work I respect, I, I like to

01:33:05.840 get the hardcover first edition of the book.

01:33:07.880 So this is the first edition of the charm school by Nelson came out in 88.

01:33:11.340 Uh, this is a more recent book by Amor and, uh, it's one novella and a few short stories.

01:33:17.040 It's, it picks up on Eve, who was a character in, um, rules of civility.

01:33:21.100 It's called Eve in Hollywood and some short stories.

01:33:23.080 So it's easy to, you know, pick up and read a 30 page porch, uh, short story in here.

01:33:26.720 And Amor's writing is really, it's just so good.

01:33:29.100 He's a little more literary, uh, type, but it's just fascinating.

01:33:31.780 Still page turning.

01:33:33.200 And then the last one is Barbara Tuckman.

01:33:35.360 She is the OG of narrative nonfiction, narrative history, the stuff that Eric Larson and David

01:33:41.100 Grant are doing so well.

01:33:42.180 Now, what I'm trying to do with diesel, she's a mysterious case of Rudolph diesel.

01:33:46.900 Thank you.

01:33:47.620 Plug, plug.

01:33:48.760 And, um, she is just amazing.

01:33:50.980 She's sort of the godmother of that whole genre in modern narrative nonfiction.

01:33:56.120 And so this is called the Zimmerman telegram.

01:33:58.180 And it's really the biggest reason we got into world war one.

01:34:02.540 The people say the Lusitania and the submarines, but Lusitania happened long before we entered

01:34:06.160 the war.

01:34:06.440 This actually happened right before it.

01:34:07.780 And it's about the foreign secretary for Germany named Arthur Zimmerman, who sent a telegram

01:34:13.320 down to Mexico saying, go invade the U S and distract them over on the Western hemisphere

01:34:18.200 while we fight this war over here.

01:34:19.840 This is world war one while we fight this European war.

01:34:22.320 And if you do that, we're going to give you, you know, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico back.

01:34:26.160 Wow.

01:34:26.520 And so he's trying to enlist the Mexicans to fight us in world war one and we, and the

01:34:30.780 British intercept it and let us know about it.

01:34:33.460 And of course, uh, that gave us all the, uh, the, uh, reason to enter the war.

01:34:38.720 Um, but as she, her writing is so it's like crackling, incredible prose, um, just really

01:34:45.400 beautiful writing and a great, great ripping story.

01:34:48.620 So I was picking Thatcher up from school yesterday or dropping off school.

01:34:52.500 And I said, um, guess who's coming on the program tomorrow?

01:34:54.800 Oh, he said, who?

01:34:55.740 And I said, Doug Brunt.

01:34:57.080 He said, Oh, and, uh, I said, what do you think I should ask him?

01:35:00.480 And he said, you should ask him, what will it take for people to know that diesel is

01:35:06.820 a proper noun that should be written with a capital D first of all, so sweet.

01:35:13.060 Our 11 year old thought of that.

01:35:14.980 And what do you think is, you know, this guy who you've kind of brought back to life and

01:35:19.640 generated a whole new conversation on with your book, the mysterious case of Rudolph

01:35:22.640 diesel, what do you think it'll take to, to make people know that a movie, a movie, that's

01:35:28.520 what it's going to take.

01:35:29.140 If the book gets adapted to the movie, then it just sort of breaks into a whole new stratosphere,

01:35:32.280 but it's true.

01:35:33.060 He, he, everyone passes the word diesel multiple times a day at a filling station on a train

01:35:38.720 on a Marine outboard engine or something like that.

01:35:41.280 And not an outboard, more, more a Marine engine inboards that they tried outboards, but it,

01:35:46.200 you know, you never misspell Ford with a lowercase F or Chrysler or Benz.

01:35:50.760 A lot of people don't know there was a Rudolph diesel behind the diesel engine.

01:35:54.160 And, you know, as, as people who are familiar with the book or the story know, he disappeared

01:35:58.100 right before world war one.

01:35:59.700 And he was a huge celebrity at the time, even though his name has really been kind of scrubbed

01:36:03.680 from history.

01:36:04.740 And there were theories about what happened.

01:36:06.560 He disappeared on an overnight passenger ship going from Belgium to great Britain in the middle

01:36:09.860 of the night in the North Sea.

01:36:11.900 And there was, there were new headlines in newspapers around the world, some speculating

01:36:16.500 murder, that it wasn't an accident or suicide, that he was murdered either by John Rockefeller

01:36:21.340 or Kaiser Wilhelm II, the emperor of Germany, for reasons that the book gets into.

01:36:25.440 You could not have a U-boat or a submarine without diesel power.

01:36:28.220 So every Navy was scrambling for diesel.

01:36:30.200 And this was 1913 in the middle of the Anglo-German arms race.

01:36:34.320 Everyone was needed diesel's help to build a Navy program.

01:36:36.680 Separately on the Rockefeller side, diesel advocated flexibility with regard to fuel.

01:36:41.060 You can run the diesel engine on recycled kitchen grease, as Willie Nelson did, or on

01:36:45.000 vegetable or nut oil.

01:36:45.860 And he was saying, I can break the American fuel monopoly, and I don't need a law to do

01:36:49.700 it.

01:36:49.860 I can do it with my technology.

01:36:51.260 And so he was a threat to both.

01:36:52.700 There were theories of murder.

01:36:54.100 The book is sort of a biography, but it also turns into this Agatha Christie murder mystery

01:36:59.140 in the last quarter of the book that solves the case.

01:37:02.020 So good.

01:37:02.580 And that's why it's doing so well, because it's a fascinating story, and Doug solves a

01:37:06.540 mystery.

01:37:07.440 All right.

01:37:07.860 Final thing.

01:37:09.460 The first guest today was Steve Bannon, with whom I, and frankly, we, have a very interesting

01:37:16.540 history.

01:37:17.240 The audience is well aware by this point.

01:37:19.240 What did you think following Steve Bannon, and how are you feeling about that whole thing?

01:37:24.320 I hold a grudge a little longer than you do, perhaps.

01:37:28.820 Longer than Abigail Finan?

01:37:29.980 She's the longest.

01:37:30.600 She and I are pretty aligned on this.

01:37:32.600 I think, you know, particularly when it comes to attacks on you, I think you're pretty quick

01:37:35.980 to shake that stuff off.

01:37:37.020 I take a little longer, but I do view Steve Bannon a lot differently than I did nine years

01:37:41.240 ago.

01:37:41.640 And I think a lot of that came from an interview Trump did in this campaign season that you

01:37:46.100 and I have talked about privately, which I can't remember who the interviewer was,

01:37:51.140 but I can paraphrase both sides of it.

01:37:52.640 He was asked, you know, why do you like this?

01:37:54.800 Why do you behave like such a bastard half the time?

01:37:57.440 And he answered, you don't understand.

01:38:00.720 Nobody gets attacked the way I get attacked.

01:38:03.120 Nobody faces as much incoming and oppositional bias that I face, and I have to fight it my

01:38:09.660 way.

01:38:09.980 This is how I fight.

01:38:11.280 And that's how I'm going to have to do it.

01:38:12.660 And I see Bannon somewhat in that light now, too.

01:38:16.560 You know, he's fighting these wars.

01:38:19.320 I mean, look at the Stephanopoulos disgrace most recently.

01:38:21.660 You know, he clearly knew the distinction between what was true and what was a lie.

01:38:25.720 He, as the judge sees, deliberately chose the course of lying to gut Trump.

01:38:30.620 And so he faces that stuff all the time.

01:38:34.040 But, you know, even seeing it in that light, you know, so I see Bannon more through a tactical

01:38:41.040 lens than a personal lens.

01:38:42.340 I saw it more personally back then.

01:38:44.320 He did make a mistake back in 2015, 16.

01:38:46.640 You know, when you had that debate question for Trump, the one that led to the Rosie O'Donnell

01:38:51.620 flare-up, that was a legitimate question.

01:38:54.620 You know, you asked him on the woman issue.

01:38:56.700 Trump was about to get a year-long hammering from the Clinton campaign on that issue.

01:39:00.740 And any good journalist would have gone after it.

01:39:04.180 And so it was a fair question.

01:39:06.180 You hit every Republican on the stage that night.

01:39:08.640 You hit all the Democrats, too.

01:39:10.580 And I can see how Bannon, you know, because not only did he perceive you as an enemy at that

01:39:15.960 point, he named you enemy number one and declared war.

01:39:20.020 And I can see how that went down.

01:39:21.940 You know, he's fighting a war.

01:39:23.380 He's got all these hot zones.

01:39:24.600 And someone asked a tough question like that.

01:39:26.200 The reaction is, it's on.

01:39:28.140 Now I'm coming after you.

01:39:29.240 So I can see how it happened.

01:39:30.600 But if he had taken a beat, he would have recognized you were not an enemy.

01:39:34.720 You were a honest broker and a tough journalist doing the job.

01:39:38.700 And that, at that time, was a huge opportunity for him because the only places Trump could

01:39:42.800 go then was either sycophants or enemies, you know, and neither was going to move the

01:39:48.040 needle for him in a big way.

01:39:49.680 You were the only down-the-middle fair place you could go to make the case.

01:39:52.640 And he should have said, let's go make the case there.

01:39:54.500 Because the reason he correctly perceived that you are the most powerful voice in news then,

01:40:02.500 and you remain that today.

01:40:03.520 Because, like, if Trump does something stupid tomorrow, you'll hit him.

01:40:05.660 And if he does something great, you'll praise him.

01:40:06.840 And that's why you remain, you know, it's not, I think he was right to find you the most

01:40:12.060 powerful, but I don't think he was right about why.

01:40:14.540 It's not charisma or your oratory skills.

01:40:17.220 It's your credibility.

01:40:18.220 I will say in his defense, their other strategy of making me like an enemy who they were not

01:40:24.060 afraid to bash worked very well and really communicated one of the core messages of Trumpism

01:40:30.320 and MAGA, which is there are no sacred cows.

01:40:33.400 We'll go after anyone.

01:40:34.700 Which is a really valuable message.

01:40:37.460 Like, that is what the MAGA core wanted to hear.

01:40:41.320 It wasn't about hatred for me or Fox.

01:40:43.340 It was just like, yes, be that wrecking ball.

01:40:46.540 Like, we too have no sacred cows.

01:40:48.620 The sacred cows are the ones held by an establishment that loathes or ignores us.

01:40:54.800 Look, I get it.

01:40:56.600 And listen, if Steve Bannon hears what I said, a response he could have is, I just had a

01:41:03.720 better 2024 than anyone could ever have imagined.

01:41:07.580 You're going to second guess anything I've ever done.

01:41:09.620 You got to be joking, you know, and that would be a fair point.

01:41:12.740 I just, I feel like there was an opportunity there to make the case.

01:41:18.440 You know, you were the one place where they actually could have made a case where millions

01:41:20.940 and millions of people, like, because you will call balls and strikes, people know that

01:41:26.960 what you say on this show is true.

01:41:29.140 And if he comes on here and makes the case, he could say, look, you know, there's plenty

01:41:33.340 of people.

01:41:33.740 There are plenty of wrecking ball opportunities.

01:41:36.680 This was maybe a different kind of place where he could have made the case.

01:41:40.260 There was no, nowhere they could have gone.

01:41:42.440 I mean, really everyone was in one of the two camps.

01:41:44.700 Everyone was in Stephanopoulos.

01:41:45.900 I mean, another thing that's so crazy about the Stephanopoulos thing, only by hair was

01:41:52.240 he not moderating that ABC debate.

01:41:54.120 Can you imagine?

01:41:55.020 I mean, it's, it's always David Muir and George Stephanopoulos fighting behind the scenes

01:41:59.080 for who gets the big political gigs and maybe Muir edged him out by hair because he's never

01:42:02.840 worked in the democratic machine.

01:42:04.340 But Stephanopoulos gets plenty of big political gigs where he's supposed to be a straight

01:42:07.780 journalist.

01:42:08.300 It could have been him.

01:42:09.620 And you're right.

01:42:10.200 Practically, it didn't really matter.

01:42:12.220 Muir, I'm sure, feels the same way about Trump that Stephanopoulos does.

01:42:15.060 And I would love to see his text messages around the debate, you know, uh, so that,

01:42:20.240 that is why, you know, Bannon is fighting.

01:42:22.080 And again, fair point.

01:42:23.280 He's like, I, to your, he may, he may say exactly what you just said and he'd be right.

01:42:28.360 I mean, how can you question a guy who just had the 2024 that he had?

01:42:32.580 Well, I know Steve Bannon actually had a rough 2024 in some ways, but I mean, his show is

01:42:35.940 great.

01:42:36.360 He's great.

01:42:36.780 But yeah, there was the whole prison sentence, which is part of the reason why he's like

01:42:39.600 F these guys.

01:42:40.140 I know he's saying it's not about personal retributions, but, but retribution, but you

01:42:45.360 couldn't blame him if it were, because what happened to him was grossly unfair.

01:42:48.220 Well, you know, the other thing that's, that people are talking about a lot now is how Trump

01:42:50.880 was not, he won in 16, but he wasn't set up for success as well.

01:42:54.940 And what if you were not enemy number one, but they had made a case there because by fighting

01:43:00.020 you, they did alienate a lot of people and they lost some support.

01:43:03.160 Do you mean you and Abby, my team?

01:43:04.920 Among us.

01:43:05.600 Yeah, we're, we're two of the most important, of course, but, uh, if he had made a case

01:43:10.420 there, you know, Trump banned the whole campaign.

01:43:13.040 He won.

01:43:13.540 There's nothing, like there's nothing to second guess.

01:43:15.060 But that's, that's my point though.

01:43:16.080 The first years he was not set up as well as he could have been.

01:43:18.660 I mean, there's a lot of talk about how, you know, those years were rough.

01:43:21.320 What if he had articulated his case in a way that he had more support going into the administration?

01:43:25.540 How he is now.

01:43:26.140 Exactly.

01:43:26.680 Like he's, he's got a lot of, you know, clear air in front of him now.

01:43:29.980 He did not in 16.

01:43:31.300 That's interesting.

01:43:32.160 I don't know.

01:43:32.580 I, I feel like I am, it's so funny to me, the arc of my own story with Steve, because

01:43:38.580 I really couldn't stand him.

01:43:40.920 I, I took it very personally when he was coming for me and that, you know, in that PBS documentary

01:43:46.160 and just with time, I really just separated from those personal feelings.

01:43:52.020 It wasn't that they went away.

01:43:53.880 It was like a separation, you know, like they were still there and I understood why I had

01:43:58.760 them.

01:43:58.980 I didn't conclude that I was wrong.

01:44:01.000 I just no longer felt, you know, the energy around them.

01:44:05.140 And that morning that we started talking about, like, should we talk to him?

01:44:09.540 I asked you, cause Abby was like, absolutely not.

01:44:12.000 Never.

01:44:12.300 I'll never allow it.

01:44:13.220 And you and I had, had that talk over our coffee that morning in, in the bed, you know,

01:44:17.600 chatting.

01:44:18.040 And you were like, I don't feel it either.

01:44:19.480 That, that animus toward him anymore.

01:44:21.140 It's just, we have so many common enemies and he's such an effective fighter.

01:44:24.360 Yeah.

01:44:25.180 You know?

01:44:25.700 And he's smart, man.

01:44:26.940 He, he knows the landscape.

01:44:28.060 He knows how all the pieces are moving together.

01:44:30.320 He sees a few steps ahead.

01:44:31.520 And I, I like you, the personal feelings were on the wane and I started to appreciate him

01:44:38.000 more as a tactical fighter.

01:44:39.680 Yeah.

01:44:40.120 All right.

01:44:40.520 Now I have two other points I want to get to on the subject of George Stephanopoulos.

01:44:44.540 There was a funny and interesting exchange over on the podcast of our pals, the real clear

01:44:49.740 politics guys, um, Andrew Walworth, uh, Tom Bevin and Carl Cannon.

01:44:55.120 And they were talking about Stephanopoulos and just the ridiculous, like, as soon as he

01:45:00.180 committed this error that cost them, I mean, error is being charitable.

01:45:02.920 That cost them $16 million.

01:45:04.880 ABC news re-signed him at a reported, it could be 19 million, could be 20 million, could be

01:45:09.940 25 million.

01:45:10.660 Those are the three numbers I've seen reported per year.

01:45:13.040 I mean, this, it's ridiculous.

01:45:14.580 It's a total state sanction of his kind of journalism, which means ABC news likes it and

01:45:20.200 wants a whole lot more of it.

01:45:21.300 Well, great.

01:45:21.740 You're going to get that.

01:45:22.880 Anyway, they started to get into a discussion about anchor salaries and this one in particular

01:45:27.780 for Stephanopoulos and listen to this exchange.

01:45:31.060 I heard it organically last night.

01:45:32.860 He's going to be making, you know, around 20 million a year, which in any other business,

01:45:37.320 if you were responsible for, you were negligent in your job and cost your organization $15

01:45:46.040 million via a lawsuit, you probably wouldn't be rewarded.

01:45:53.100 At that salary, he's sort of mid-range, I think, for anchors.

01:45:57.260 I mean, it's not really, yeah, for the morning shows.

01:46:00.120 These anchors, they work very hard, long hours.

01:46:03.700 Come on.

01:46:04.680 And they have a lot of responsibility.

01:46:06.660 They've got morals, clauses that they have to live up to.

01:46:10.660 Andy, please.

01:46:11.760 What would McLaughlin say?

01:46:12.980 Megan Kelly is going to light you up.

01:46:17.420 We're going to be on her show next week.

01:46:18.640 He's going to back in her doghouse, isn't he?

01:46:22.120 That did not require a Nostradamus level of foresight to know that you're going to light

01:46:26.760 that up.

01:46:27.460 Well, first, he got lit up the last time because he said Kamala Harris was like Winston Churchill,

01:46:33.060 which Andy and I sparred over, which is crazy talk.

01:46:36.680 But I was laughing about this.

01:46:39.920 And I love Andy.

01:46:40.680 He's a great guy.

01:46:41.440 And that's a fun podcast to listen to if you want straight politics and analysis.

01:46:44.480 I really enjoy it.

01:46:45.180 But I don't have a problem with Stephanopoulos' salary, obviously.

01:46:50.420 I love to see news people paid well if they deserve it.

01:46:54.180 But I do think enormous money in news can have the effect of separating the anchor from

01:47:01.560 his or her audience, you know, from people who have real struggles.

01:47:06.060 And I've actually asked myself like why a couple.

01:47:10.320 Okay.

01:47:10.580 So a couple of things.

01:47:11.280 Why didn't that happen to me?

01:47:12.580 Because I have made a lot of money in this business and I've got some thoughts on that.

01:47:15.740 But secondly, you know, to suggest what George does is hard work, I think is absurd.

01:47:21.400 I love you, Andy, but that's absurd.

01:47:23.480 I look around at my own family.

01:47:25.280 You know, my mom, lifetime nurse at the Albany VA.

01:47:28.440 My stepfather, my dad who died when I was young, was a professor.

01:47:31.240 But my stepfather was a plumber.

01:47:33.040 My stepsister is a nurse who works overnight ICU care.

01:47:36.500 My stepbrother is a cop.

01:47:38.140 Like these are people.

01:47:39.640 I mean, my cop stepbrother puts his life on the line every day and now he's retired, but

01:47:43.600 he was for, you know, 20 plus years.

01:47:46.160 You know, my mom and like dealing in blood and guts and lives and real trauma every day,

01:47:51.020 like the amount of shit that these people have to deal with.

01:47:53.420 Like these, nevermind a plumber, speaking of dealing with shit.

01:47:56.460 But my point is simply like news anchors like George Stephanopoulos at Network News have

01:48:03.980 a red carpet rolled out for them when they show up to work.

01:48:08.360 They've got tons of producers coming out of their ears who want to make their lives better.

01:48:13.620 He has to wake up a little early.

01:48:16.260 This is nothing to be remarked on.

01:48:17.820 And the morals clause, usually they're so, you know, so they're written such that you

01:48:23.700 really have to commit a crime almost to really be bounced on them or be a complete asshole.

01:48:28.760 That's why most people don't get bounced off of them.

01:48:30.540 That's nothing to live up to.

01:48:31.980 It certainly doesn't justify the enormous salary.

01:48:34.040 They do it because they give the anchor a fraction of what they earn.

01:48:39.100 You know, I, on the Kelly file alone, the last year I was there, I know Fox made over

01:48:42.620 a hundred million dollars in the advertising.

01:48:44.020 So I made a nice salary there, nowhere near even what George Stephanopoulos was making

01:48:48.580 there, but that's just because they, you're a moneymaker for them.

01:48:51.960 Yeah.

01:48:52.240 The idea that every morning news anchor is putting in a ton of hours of prep and work

01:48:56.580 is, is a joke.

01:48:57.840 I mean, Strahan is probably working pretty hard on the NFL side of what he's doing.

01:49:01.540 And the amount of time he puts in on his GMA gig is tiny, but about what every other

01:49:07.120 network morning news anchor is putting in.

01:49:09.220 It's not a big lift.

01:49:10.280 You're handed all these cue cards of the questions to ask.

01:49:12.940 You don't, if you have an author on, they don't read the book.

01:49:15.400 They're handed a couple of questions that the producer writes for them about the book.

01:49:19.040 It requires almost no prep.

01:49:20.920 I think, I don't, I remember reading something, Katie Kirk would sort of prep the morning she

01:49:23.940 got in or something like that.

01:49:25.300 I don't know all the stories, but it's not a big lift.

01:49:27.620 Cable news is actually a lot harder of a lift.

01:49:30.080 So Stephanopoulos probably works harder than the average morning network anchor, you know,

01:49:35.740 cause I think he cares about knowing the news and knowing who the politicians are.

01:49:39.220 And you know, he's, he's got to have some expertise and he got to stay abreast of all

01:49:41.620 that, but really once you're steeped in it, it's just incremental each day.

01:49:45.200 It's not a huge lift each day to prep for that.

01:49:47.100 You sort of, you've got your sort of standing start already going.

01:49:50.800 So that, that whole, I, and I, by the way, I don't believe that the salaries are, you know,

01:49:58.040 it's hard to bring somebody down.

01:49:59.960 Stephanopoulos is already up at those levels.

01:50:01.700 Thanks to having been in the game for years and years.

01:50:04.920 I don't think people who are newer to it, whoever replaces Hoda is not making that money.

01:50:08.740 No.

01:50:09.200 Well, that was Carl's point.

01:50:10.520 He was saying you, you can't get an anchor for 8 million who would do a great job.

01:50:14.360 Come on.

01:50:15.020 And he was absolutely right about that.

01:50:16.340 I do think, especially in this failing news industry, the mainstream, the cable news

01:50:20.120 industry, both of whom are hemorrhaging, hemorrhaging audience, um, these salaries should be rectified

01:50:27.040 to, you know, bring them back down to the commensurate levels.

01:50:30.680 My team did analysis for me.

01:50:32.400 Actually, I have it here.

01:50:33.280 It's actually really devastating what's happened to, you know, nevermind network news.

01:50:37.700 They used to be in like 5 million, 6 million a morning.

01:50:40.520 Now they're down to like two and a half million.

01:50:43.120 Their audience has been cut in half in the morning news.

01:50:46.120 Is that, that's the overall, right?

01:50:47.380 So the demo number is probably even uglier.

01:50:48.660 Yeah, probably even uglier.

01:50:49.700 And in cable prime time, listen to this.

01:50:52.020 We, we pulled the numbers.

01:50:53.140 So prime time, we compared 2016 to 2024 at FNC.

01:50:58.100 I was in the prime time in 2020, uh, 16.

01:51:00.500 This is the key advertising demo of 25 to 54.

01:51:03.200 The average for 2016 was almost 500,000, 481,000 in the key demo of 25 to 54 year olds this past

01:51:11.420 year.

01:51:11.620 So it's comparison, you know, 16 to 24, those are both big election years involving Trump.

01:51:16.260 So they should be comparative.

01:51:17.780 Um, so 2024, the average demo on Fox, which is the number one network was almost 300,298.

01:51:25.460 So it's almost a 200,000 difference, 183,000.

01:51:30.760 They lost almost 200,000.

01:51:33.980 That's 40% of their key audience in the demo.

01:51:38.120 And they're number one.

01:51:39.800 Look at CNN in 2016, the demo, the average was 423,000 this past year, 151,000.

01:51:48.680 That's a loss of 272,000 in their audience, which if my math is correct is 35% of their

01:51:57.600 audience.

01:51:58.500 Um, Oh wait, I just conflated a couple of numbers.

01:52:01.460 Uh, yeah, no, no, no, no, I have it right.

01:52:03.380 And then MSNBC 16, they averaged 270,000 in the key demo this past year, 137, which is

01:52:14.100 a loss of 50% of their audience.

01:52:20.080 They're hemorrhaging by the way, the Kelly file, our average in the demo, when we were

01:52:26.860 on air that year was 569,000, which made us number one in all of cable news, which is

01:52:34.620 why I get so horrified when they talk about now the average in the, in the MSNBC is getting

01:52:40.520 down towards slashies under 50,000.

01:52:45.300 My average was almost 570,000 in the key demo.

01:52:49.920 Cable news is a shadow of its former self.

01:52:54.180 So is broadcast.

01:52:55.300 So these numbers like the Stephanopoulos number are now a joke.

01:52:59.160 They're just disproportionate to the work.

01:53:00.940 It doesn't support those kind of salaries at all.

01:53:02.540 I mean, the big three anchors of the networks, that's been a long, long decline.

01:53:06.360 Cable, cable news really had its heyday from like, Oh, I don't know what you think, but

01:53:10.220 I would say Oh five to really 15, 16, 17, something like that.

01:53:14.780 That was sort of the, the little later, maybe like 10, the Trump administration, the Trump

01:53:19.640 show of 2016, 17, 18 really hid an underlying systemic problem.

01:53:25.900 Agreed.

01:53:26.520 People were leaving, people were cutting cords and leaving cable.

01:53:29.460 You know, the Trump show sort of kept the numbers looking good for a little while there,

01:53:32.280 but now we're seeing it, you know, how, how bad the problem is.

01:53:34.760 Agreed.

01:53:35.320 Okay.

01:53:35.780 Last but not least, I'm jumping around, but I feel like we missed something important on

01:53:39.620 our Christmas traditions.

01:53:41.800 And it involves one big night during our trip to Montana and we all look forward to it.

01:53:48.760 Yeah.

01:53:49.360 I think.

01:53:51.780 Sometimes the neighbors don't if they attend.

01:53:53.640 And, uh, what is it?

01:53:56.240 Costume night?

01:53:56.860 Yeah.

01:53:57.180 Yeah.

01:53:57.380 Yeah.

01:53:57.520 Yeah.

01:53:57.740 Yeah.

01:53:58.180 Yeah.

01:53:58.380 Yeah.

01:53:58.540 Costume night.

01:53:59.180 We had a few people, if you come over, I mean, you got to participate.

01:54:01.240 So some people are not really comfortable putting on some ridiculous costume, but we love

01:54:04.940 it.

01:54:05.220 But nine times out of 10, it's just us five and Ken, your brother, uh, who we love.

01:54:09.640 He's one of the core six.

01:54:10.940 And, um, we've done so many fun things.

01:54:13.500 We did Wonka one year.

01:54:15.580 We did Gilligan's Island one year.

01:54:17.960 We did the 10 commandments.

01:54:19.640 Cobra Kai.

01:54:20.780 That was awesome.

01:54:21.820 And so the way it's worked most years, not all you did Gilligan's Island.

01:54:25.780 That's actually in New Jersey because I love costumes year round.

01:54:29.140 That's in New Jersey where I made you wear a purple suit because we just did like a fun

01:54:32.640 colors.

01:54:33.220 You like the zoot suit, right?

01:54:34.360 Yeah.

01:54:34.600 We did a fun colors party, but I love the costumes year round.

01:54:37.240 But so in over the Christmas season and people could do this at home too, it happens to be

01:54:42.480 yours truly.

01:54:42.940 Cause I love costumes, but I'll come up with a theme and nobody knows what the theme is

01:54:46.980 except for me.

01:54:49.180 And we get to costume night.

01:54:51.600 Yeah.

01:54:51.980 Abby knows she's critical.

01:54:53.140 And Yezzy who helps us with the costumes.

01:54:55.520 And, uh, what we'll do is I order fun backgrounds for like the main family room.

01:55:00.560 Everybody has to stay in another part of the house and I set up the stuff and then I set

01:55:06.000 out everybody's costumes on their beds and I say, okay, it's, it's time.

01:55:10.360 And everybody goes to their bedroom and they see the costume and they, the, the big theme

01:55:14.240 is revealed.

01:55:15.040 They put on their costumes and then we meet in the family room and then we don't really

01:55:18.900 do anything other than have a fun dinner and a fun night.

01:55:21.280 But we're all in the Incredibles.

01:55:23.400 That was another good one.

01:55:24.320 Yeah.

01:55:25.040 When we're all the kids were sort of age appropriate to, you know, Thatcher looks like little dash.

01:55:29.080 Totally.

01:55:29.720 Perfect.

01:55:30.200 Yes.

01:55:31.060 So do you have any guesses on what this year's theme is going to be?

01:55:34.740 Oh my gosh.

01:55:36.600 Can I have a hint?

01:55:37.600 Is it connected to anything?

01:55:39.160 No hints.

01:55:39.700 No forecasts.

01:55:40.880 I'm like Ruth Bader Ginsburg with the abortion.

01:55:43.160 Oh my God.

01:55:43.600 Confirmation hearing question.

01:55:44.520 Is it like a rollercoaster theme?

01:55:46.380 The Richard Bonnet.

01:55:48.000 Oh, how did I miss that?

01:55:49.500 My gosh.

01:55:50.820 Well, so no guess.

01:55:52.360 No guess.

01:55:52.960 But I will reveal to the audience when we get back what we did.

01:55:57.720 And it is on point for the year that we've had.

01:56:02.220 And it's something that everyone will love.

01:56:05.040 Maybe we could all be political leaders.

01:56:06.480 Like we'll have a speaker of the house.

01:56:07.720 I did consider that.

01:56:09.660 But then I thought no one's going to want to go as Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

01:56:14.900 So I xnade it.

01:56:16.660 Anyway, I think you're really going to enjoy it.

01:56:18.520 I'm excited.

01:56:19.360 I can't wait to show you, the kids, and ultimately the audience what we did.

01:56:24.240 In the meantime, to our lovely audience, God bless you all.

01:56:28.100 Merry Christmas.

01:56:29.280 Happy Hanukkah.

01:56:30.520 Happy New Year.

01:56:32.200 Looking forward to coming back to you.

01:56:34.500 I'm really looking forward to two weeks off with just the fam.

01:56:36.460 But as you know, I always miss the show.

01:56:38.720 It's like a little, it's like this thing inside of me that needs to happen each day.

01:56:42.660 And when I don't get to do it, I feel like, ugh.

01:56:45.140 But we do have plenty of new content for you while I'm gone.

01:56:48.080 We are doing a true crime Christmas.

01:56:50.420 And then we'll be back right after the new year.

01:56:53.500 So, Duggar, thank you for making this possible as well.

01:56:56.160 Pleasure to be here.

01:56:56.920 Merry Christmas.

01:56:57.720 Love you, babe.

01:56:58.400 Love you, honey.

01:56:58.980 Love all of you as well.

01:57:00.720 Send us an email at megankelly.com.

01:57:04.140 And happy holidays.

01:57:06.460 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:57:10.920 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:57:13.480 Thank you.

01:57:13.720 Thank you.

01:57:14.080 Bye-bye.

01:57:14.340 Bye-bye.

01:57:17.460 Bye.

01:57:25.440 Bye-bye.

01:57:26.080 Bye-bye.

01:57:26.940 Bye-bye.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 20, 2024

＂Political War＂ Coming For Trump in 2025, and Christmas Traditions, with Steve Bannon and Doug Brunt ｜ Ep. 971

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