The Megyn Kelly Show - Potential Biden Impeachment, and Explosive Revelations About Obama, with Rep. Wesley Hunt and David Garrow ｜ Ep. 605

00:00:00.000 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.

00:00:02.860 Someone is trying to frame us.

00:00:05.160 Until our names are cleared.

00:00:07.700 We're fugitives from interval.

00:00:09.480 Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.

00:00:12.840 Espionage?

00:00:13.560 You still as good a shot as you used to be?

00:00:16.580 Better.

00:00:17.400 Is there love language?

00:00:18.860 We like to walk that fine line between techno-thriller

00:00:21.360 and romantic comedy.

00:00:24.180 We make up our own rules.

00:00:25.940 NCIS Tony and Ziva.

00:00:27.400 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.

00:00:30.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:32.540 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.120 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:43.920 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.700 It is being called perhaps the most discussed piece of journalism

00:00:49.840 so far this year.

00:00:51.900 And we have an interview with the man at the center of it.

00:00:55.420 David Garrow is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian

00:00:58.460 and author of the book Rising Star,

00:01:01.380 The Making of Barack Obama.

00:01:03.480 Have you read the Tablet magazine piece with him?

00:01:07.240 If not, listen to today and then go back and read the piece.

00:01:10.880 Well worth your time.

00:01:12.420 Tablet interviewed Garrow and boy, did it make headlines.

00:01:16.060 Among them, Garrow, again,

00:01:17.840 who did this comprehensive biography on Barack Obama,

00:01:20.740 saying that the former president

00:01:23.060 is as insecure as Donald Trump,

00:01:26.480 calling Obama's own memoir a work of fiction,

00:01:30.020 discussing Mr. Obama's apparent anti-Semitism,

00:01:33.000 and as if that's not enough,

00:01:34.400 his gay fantasies.

00:01:36.640 Garrow's here today to tell us all about it firsthand.

00:01:39.640 That's coming up.

00:01:40.260 But we begin today as key GOP leaders weigh

00:01:44.620 whether to open an impeachment inquiry

00:01:46.940 into current President Joe Biden

00:01:48.860 with one of the people who will have to vote on that

00:01:51.880 if it actually goes forward.

00:01:53.600 Joining me now is Congressman Wesley Hunt of Texas.

00:01:57.280 Representative Hunt, it's great to have you here.

00:01:59.360 Big fan.

00:01:59.860 Listen to you on the Ruthless program.

00:02:02.420 And those guys are your fans as well.

00:02:04.480 Thanks for being here.

00:02:05.900 But thank you so much for having me, Megan.

00:02:07.340 Really appreciate it.

00:02:08.240 Really appreciate it.

00:02:09.020 Oh, my pleasure.

00:02:10.260 Okay, so let's start with that

00:02:11.820 because you had Senator Mitch McConnell,

00:02:14.400 the minority leader over in the Senate,

00:02:17.180 weighing in on this just this week,

00:02:18.920 saying this is not a good idea.

00:02:20.480 This is not good for the country.

00:02:21.800 He said, you know, I said this during the Trump two impeachments,

00:02:24.220 that this was going to be taking us down a slippery slope.

00:02:26.780 And it's not good for the country to be doing

00:02:28.440 impeachment of this guy, impeachment of that guy.

00:02:31.040 Kevin McCarthy's only saying an inquiry,

00:02:33.720 like sort of figuring out whether we want to proceed

00:02:35.840 with articles of impeachment against Joe Biden.

00:02:37.920 So where do you stand on it?

00:02:39.560 So I've said this a few times on various shows.

00:02:42.540 It's my opinion that even politically,

00:02:44.060 this might not be the smartest move for us to impeach Joe Biden.

00:02:47.740 And I say that because this is the worst approval rating

00:02:51.240 that we've had for a president in modern history.

00:02:54.340 We want this guy to run against the GOP nominee in 2024.

00:02:59.520 We want him to be as wounded as possible.

00:03:01.360 And I don't want to rally the troops around him.

00:03:04.380 With that said, I got to say, he's done enough.

00:03:08.340 He has earned impeachment.

00:03:10.640 And at some point, we as a country have got to look at this corrupt administration,

00:03:15.720 this corrupt Biden family.

00:03:17.360 And at some point, we got to say, you know,

00:03:18.920 maybe it may not be in our best interest politically.

00:03:21.800 Maybe it might not be in our best interest,

00:03:24.280 as Leader McConnell was saying,

00:03:26.580 to continue to divide the country.

00:03:29.000 But then at some point, we are seeing millions and millions of dollars

00:03:32.440 being funneled to this family through Joe Biden's son by using his influence

00:03:37.120 influence and literally peddling our country away to other countries.

00:03:41.720 At some point, enough is enough.

00:03:43.760 And if articles of impeachment are brought to the floor,

00:03:46.700 Wesley Hunt will be a strong yes.

00:03:49.180 So let's talk about it, because yesterday, James Comer,

00:03:54.120 head of the Oversight Committee, who's been all over this.

00:03:56.200 And thank God, you know, thank God, because this needs to be exposed.

00:03:59.380 Whether you love Joe Biden or you don't, this needs to be exposed,

00:04:03.700 showing that by his tally, the number is now up to $20 million in payments

00:04:08.120 from foreign sources to the Biden family and their business associates.

00:04:13.220 Um, most of this was during his term as vice president,

00:04:17.660 payments from Russia, from Ukraine, from Kazakhstan.

00:04:22.100 And this is so if you take let's let's table the FBI form 1023,

00:04:27.940 which said Joe Biden got a $5 million bribe from the Ukrainians

00:04:32.060 to get that prosecutor off of Burisma's back. 0.97

00:04:34.520 And Hunter was on that board.

00:04:36.400 And not to mention a $5 million bribe to Hunter as well, alleged.

00:04:40.160 Let's table that.

00:04:41.160 They don't they haven't been able to prove it yet.

00:04:42.720 The memo itself says they'll never be able to prove it.

00:04:44.900 It says that the payments were made in such an obscure way.

00:04:47.660 Good luck finding them.

00:04:48.840 But if you look at what we do know, Representative, I'm curious,

00:04:52.780 because we know that millions of the IRS whistleblower said it was over 17 million.

00:04:58.920 Now, Comer's saying it's 20 million that went to the Biden's Hunter

00:05:02.040 and other family members during Joe's vice presidency from these foreign companies

00:05:06.580 who are paying for nothing other than access.

00:05:09.120 Hunter has no skills.

00:05:10.500 He has no.

00:05:11.500 Jim Biden.

00:05:12.340 Zero was providing no services.

00:05:14.400 So it's really just it's just access.

00:05:17.160 So we know that happened.

00:05:19.380 But it all happened while he was vice president, not president.

00:05:23.740 So how do we impeach him for it?

00:05:24.920 So even though it may have happened while he was a vice president, what we do know is that Hunter Biden has continued to use his name and use his family to funnel money to his family.

00:05:36.200 Basically, Hunter Biden has been his errand boy for the past, you know, six, seven, probably longer than that, probably for the past 20 years, even while he was a senator.

00:05:43.900 Your question is very interesting, though, you know, in terms of him being the vice president.

00:05:47.500 And is that an impeachable offense?

00:05:50.040 I would like to think that this just didn't stop when he was the vice president.

00:05:54.920 I would like to think that over the course of the past few years, this behavior has continued.

00:05:58.760 And I think if we just look a little bit deeper, we're going to find even more nefarious dealings with with Joe Biden while he was current president of these United States of America.

00:06:09.720 But what's really frustrating to someone like me is to think that we have a family that we know for a fact has gotten millions of dollars from a Ukrainian national energy company in Burisma.

00:06:21.820 And now we are giving the Ukrainian government hundreds of billions of dollars of our taxpaying money.

00:06:29.240 And if we don't think that that's a conflict of interest and now we are not entering the realm of this being an issue of national defense, then I really don't know what is.

00:06:38.000 We've seen a smoking gun. We already have the receipts.

00:06:41.840 And look, if this is not about actually introducing articles of impeachment, OK, that's fine.

00:06:47.940 It still is up to us on the Judiciary Committee.

00:06:51.140 It's up to us, we in the halls of Congress, to make sure that the American people are well aware of what this president has done in this country, well aware of his son's actions, and to make sure that we decide very, very cautiously and very, very carefully in 2024.

00:07:06.520 This is we the people. Now you know everything about the Biden family.

00:07:12.660 Please choose wisely.

00:07:14.680 Because you've got Joe Biden, according to these allegations, his family at least, taking millions from these Ukrainian oligarchs.

00:07:22.040 And now we've got, as you point out, all this funding of Ukraine.

00:07:24.520 You've got the relationship with the Chinese and the total disinterest in pursuing anything with respect to their spying on us or their spy balloons, not to mention the origins of COVID. 0.95

00:07:33.780 And then you have this Russian oligarch's wife. 1.00

00:07:39.160 She was the former first lady of Moscow, Yelena Batterina.

00:07:43.440 And we knew this before, but there's an interesting sequence on this.

00:07:46.880 So follow me on it.

00:07:48.020 It's not that Joe Biden's going easy on Russia.

00:07:50.200 We all know, you know, he's he's on the Ukrainian side in that whole battle.

00:07:52.920 But this particular woman who gave three point five million dollars to one of Hunter Biden's shell companies, three point five million dollars back in 2014 when Joe was vice president, she managed to escape Barack Obama's sanctions on Russia after they annexed Crimea in 2014.

00:08:12.940 And she managed to avoid President Biden's broader sanctions against Moscow's business elite and oligarchs after their invasion of Ukraine.

00:08:22.720 This woman, I mean, that was a full dragnet he laid down, Biden did on the Russian oligarchs after they invaded Ukraine. 0.55

00:08:29.100 But not this lady who had given his son three point five million dollars.

00:08:33.620 And while we don't have proof Biden cashed in any of those checks, we do have the Hunter laptop talking about how 10 percent goes to the big guy.

00:08:40.580 The big guy.

00:08:41.240 Yeah.

00:08:42.020 Yeah.

00:08:42.260 Oftentimes on Judiciary Committee, we talk about a two tier justice system.

00:08:48.080 Ma'am, I cannot believe you.

00:08:49.480 By the way, you've done this perfectly.

00:08:50.520 You have laid out the case as to what's wrong with this family perfectly.

00:08:55.440 And thank you so much for this.

00:08:57.000 Could you imagine if this were anyone else?

00:08:59.660 Could you imagine if this were Donald Trump Jr.?

00:09:02.220 Could you imagine this for any other former president?

00:09:04.340 What would be happening right now?

00:09:05.800 Not just to his family, but to the president himself.

00:09:08.200 This is absolutely insane.

00:09:09.800 And the American public is sick of this two tier justice system. 0.85

00:09:13.120 If you're going to turn a blind eye to this, then we have to stop indicting former presidents if we're not going to indict this current president.

00:09:20.520 If we're going to continue to turn a blind eye to the nefarious actions of Hunter Biden, then that means we're going to turn a blind eye to the nefarious actions of basically any other regular citizen in this country, regardless of whose son you are.

00:09:33.380 And I think the American public are absolutely sick and tired of watching these people get away with literally literal highway robbery.

00:09:42.080 When is enough enough?

00:09:43.620 We keep laying out these cases.

00:09:45.360 We keep seeing the smoking guns.

00:09:47.000 We keep we have receipts.

00:09:48.540 We are seeing the millions and millions of dollars being funneled through this family.

00:09:52.760 When is enough enough?

00:09:54.220 If the average citizen doesn't get this kind of treatment, then what makes Hunter Biden so special?

00:09:59.920 Remember, they were so mad that Ivanka Trump got an expedited approval of I think it was like a patent or a trademark application in China while Trump was president.

00:10:10.900 OK, so that seemed to be somewhat taking advantage of the role her dad had.

00:10:14.780 I don't remember the exact circumstances, but let's give him that one for the purposes of this discussion.

00:10:19.040 Where are those same people now?

00:10:21.480 Where is their interest in what in the 20 million dollars minimum we know that all the Bidens were getting while this guy was the sitting vice president?

00:10:30.640 And then it's not like he left the world stage.

00:10:32.540 He's the sitting president right now.

00:10:34.460 But the thing on the on the payment from the Russian wife is is interesting to me because that came out in 2020.

00:10:41.660 The fact that this woman, Yelena Batterina, had said three point five million to Hunter, his shell company, three point five.

00:10:49.020 We learned in 2020.

00:10:49.840 And what do the Democrats say when that came out?

00:10:51.960 They said, oh, it's unconfirmed.

00:10:53.360 That's unconfirmed.

00:10:53.960 You have no proof of that.

00:10:55.020 That's just like Republican pie in the sky.

00:10:57.760 Well, now what's happened is Comer got the bank records and he's it's proof.

00:11:01.520 It's that happened.

00:11:03.140 And now the response from the Democrats is that's old news.

00:11:05.700 Everybody already knew that they don't care.

00:11:09.880 No, they don't.

00:11:11.440 Do you remember the debate that that that President Trump had with with with within candidate Joe Biden?

00:11:16.740 And he asked him President Trump asked him specifically about his dealings, 100, 100 Biden's dealings.

00:11:22.940 And did he know about this?

00:11:24.700 And Joe Biden lied on national television to the entire world.

00:11:28.960 He said, oh, I have absolutely nothing to do with Hunter Biden's dealings.

00:11:32.720 I have absolutely nothing to do with his business deals.

00:11:34.640 I know nothing about it.

00:11:35.860 I've never traded anything.

00:11:37.140 I've never traded my name for nothing.

00:11:38.980 He didn't talk about the Biden brand.

00:11:41.000 He didn't he didn't talk about Hunter Biden's qualifications to be on Burisma's board.

00:11:44.780 None of this stuff.

00:11:45.340 He said, I had nothing to do with this.

00:11:47.100 And now we have bank statements.

00:11:49.540 Now we know who the big guy is.

00:11:51.600 Now we know he was in the room when Hunter Biden was calling in these favors.

00:11:55.560 And he was saying that basically my father is sitting right here next to me.

00:11:58.940 You better do this.

00:12:00.780 At what point do these people just stop lying and just say, yeah, you know what?

00:12:07.080 We're caught.

00:12:07.740 It was us.

00:12:08.360 Let's just try to move on from this.

00:12:09.780 They were on the take.

00:12:10.860 They were on the take.

00:12:11.580 They were clearly on the take.

00:12:13.740 Yes.

00:12:14.220 Yeah.

00:12:14.740 I mean, we have we haven't yet established that with respect to Joe Biden, other than Hunter's references on his laptop.

00:12:20.020 But with respect to the other Bidens, for sure, this another thing that Comer's memorandum proves is that in April of 2014, I mean, anybody doing business with a Kazakhstani oligarch when their father's the sitting vice president?

00:12:32.780 It's like red flag, red flag, Kazakhstani oligarch Kenneth Rakijev wired the exact price of Hunter Biden's Porsche to a bank account used by Archer and Biden.

00:12:45.100 And that's in addition to the million dollars a year he was getting from the Ukrainians via Burisma. 0.87

00:12:49.740 But he I mean, so he got they bought they bought his Porsche.

00:12:53.520 They paid a million dollars a year out of Ukraine.

00:12:55.560 All this other million, three point five million from the Russians.

00:12:58.000 And Barack Obama sat by and did absolutely nothing about this.

00:13:03.060 Joe Biden sat by and did absolutely nothing.

00:13:05.840 Joe Biden ran for office as president as the new squeaky clean version.

00:13:09.780 You know, he was going to be scandal free, just like Barack Obama, unlike the back in the room.

00:13:14.160 The adults are back in the room.

00:13:15.480 Yeah, the adults are back in the room.

00:13:16.840 And now, you know, what we have from the media is just a collective yawn.

00:13:22.300 Like there's no there there.

00:13:23.460 I went to Politico this morning.

00:13:24.920 You were coming on.

00:13:25.840 You know, you're a politician.

00:13:26.600 I always like to check Politico.

00:13:28.060 What's happening?

00:13:29.220 Every single headline is about Trump.

00:13:30.900 The indictment.

00:13:31.700 Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.

00:13:32.860 His spats with Jack Smith.

00:13:34.580 His whether he's going to debate.

00:13:36.220 There's nothing, nothing about any of this.

00:13:39.020 This is the dishonesty of the media that we're seeing, especially the media from the left.

00:13:45.040 And what I what I always like to articulate, especially when I'm talking to people right

00:13:48.080 here in my own district, a lot of people are very, very frustrated with the media and their

00:13:52.100 lack of intellectual curiosity if it if it doesn't adhere with their agenda.

00:13:57.760 But I tell people all the time, do you know that the media right now, especially the left,

00:14:02.140 they have a lower approval rating than the halls of Congress?

00:14:04.700 And that's that's actually really bad.

00:14:06.500 It's really low.

00:14:07.120 It's hard to do.

00:14:07.600 No one believes them anymore.

00:14:09.200 No one believes them anymore.

00:14:10.220 So we have to stop blaming the liberal media for them not reporting on these things.

00:14:14.480 And it's up to us to take our message to the people through our social media outlets,

00:14:19.340 through shows just like yours and doing exactly what you're doing by articulating what's wrong

00:14:23.560 with our system.

00:14:24.520 This is how we get around this.

00:14:25.900 And it's working.

00:14:27.520 And I know it's working because right now, President Trump is up 18 points against Joe

00:14:31.640 Biden amongst independents.

00:14:33.500 And this is very early polling.

00:14:34.880 And it's only going to get worse from here because the average American is looking at

00:14:38.820 all this and they're saying, you know what, I don't really care how I feel about President

00:14:42.820 Trump.

00:14:43.260 I don't really care about about what happened in the past.

00:14:46.220 What I do know is that we have a two-tier justice system.

00:14:49.440 We are going after a former president and we are making we are making a victim of a of

00:14:54.500 a of a of a former president.

00:14:56.680 That's that's a political opponent of the current president.

00:14:59.820 And we are sticking the DOJ, the FBI on him with all these charges.

00:15:03.880 And we know they're all bogus.

00:15:05.820 What's going on in our country?

00:15:08.160 It's resonating.

00:15:09.240 It's working.

00:15:09.900 And even if Politico, Politico or CSNBC or CNN, even if they may not report on it, we

00:15:15.840 are reporting on it.

00:15:17.080 You are reporting on it.

00:15:18.560 And it's working and it is resonating.

00:15:20.600 We are fed up.

00:15:21.320 We are sick of it.

00:15:22.020 Peter Ducey of Fox News had a moment to shout a question at Joe Biden about Devin Archer's

00:15:28.080 testimony.

00:15:29.220 I've got thoughts on how this went down.

00:15:30.600 I'm going to play for the audience.

00:15:31.460 Here it goes.

00:15:32.060 And then I'd love to get your take on it.

00:15:34.420 There's this testimony now where one of your son's former business associates is claiming

00:15:39.900 that you were on speakerphone a lot with them talking business.

00:15:43.880 Is that what?

00:15:44.580 I've never talked business in any way.

00:15:46.440 And I know you'd have a lousy question.

00:15:48.280 Well, what do you?

00:15:49.120 Why is that a lousy question?

00:15:50.620 Thank you, Mr. President.

00:15:56.380 OK, so can I give you here's my back of the envelope.

00:15:58.740 Take on that.

00:15:59.400 Peter Ducey failed.

00:16:00.400 I like Peter Ducey.

00:16:01.580 Thank God for Peter Ducey.

00:16:02.540 He's the only one who asked him tough questions.

00:16:04.260 But that was a fail because that that wasn't consistent.

00:16:06.960 If I were a lawyer, I would.

00:16:08.020 I mean, I am a lawyer.

00:16:08.680 But if I were in a court of law, I would have stood up and said assumes facts, not in evidence.

00:16:12.420 That's not what Devin Archer said.

00:16:13.880 He didn't say they discussed business.

00:16:15.380 The whole thing was he'd call in during the business meeting.

00:16:18.100 He glad hand.

00:16:18.900 And it's basically just a show of, hey, I'm Joe Biden and I'm sanctioning this entire discussion.

00:16:23.900 But he's smart enough not to say, like, so are we getting the three point five million,

00:16:29.080 madam, you know, wife of the mayor of Moscow?

00:16:31.800 So it's just a lesson in reporting.

00:16:34.000 I think like you have to be very precise.

00:16:36.020 You have to know exactly what was said.

00:16:37.620 You have to stick with the actual facts alleged.

00:16:39.580 That wasn't the right question.

00:16:40.880 And unfortunately, the president got to wiggle out of it and look like the one who was adherent

00:16:44.880 to the facts.

00:16:46.100 Meanwhile, we know that's not true.

00:16:47.580 I mean, honestly, I've said, Representative, I said, go right to him and say, why, when you

00:16:51.280 were the sitting vice president of the United States and in charge of investigating corruption

00:16:56.140 in Ukraine, did you allow your son to sit on a corrupt Ukrainian company's board?

00:17:01.380 Why would you do that?

00:17:02.460 And what explanation do you have for that for the American people?

00:17:04.940 Just zero in on that one.

00:17:06.980 Yes, that's the way to do it.

00:17:10.020 I think Peter Doocy, he had that he had that one shot to try to get as much as he could in.

00:17:13.780 I can't I can't agree more with you, but I still think to the average American, they

00:17:18.320 watch that.

00:17:19.140 And at the end of the day, we know he's lying.

00:17:22.000 Now, you are absolutely correct.

00:17:23.220 Did what Joe would Joe Biden ever say?

00:17:25.920 Yes, I sanctioned three point five million dollars.

00:17:27.940 Yes, I'm responsible for 20 million dollars.

00:17:29.960 He's never going to say that.

00:17:31.720 But I think the insinuation that he is even on the phone call, the fact that his son can

00:17:37.480 say, hey, my dad's going to call you and my dad's going to be on this call.

00:17:41.720 And all he says, hi, hi, I'm Joe Biden in a very slurred Joe Biden way.

00:17:46.480 That's all that that's all that's needed to know that these oligarchs and these people 0.79

00:17:50.180 can pay for access to the United States of America.

00:17:53.780 That's all they needed.

00:17:55.040 And we know better than that.

00:17:56.520 But I think you're absolutely right with your line of questioning and being precise.

00:17:59.960 When you're dealing with people that are that are this squishy and this wiggly is something

00:18:03.700 that we have to be very, very careful of.

00:18:05.320 Yeah, this this woman, this the former wife of the mayor of Moscow, she had dinner with

00:18:11.580 them at Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C.

00:18:14.200 When the hell else is the wife of the mayor of Moscow going to have access to the vice president 1.00

00:18:20.640 at a dinner?

00:18:21.520 It's absurd.

00:18:22.980 Just the mere fact that Hunter was able to orchestrate that, tell told her everything

00:18:27.040 she needed to know.

00:18:28.080 And now we're just all going to ignore this like it was absolutely nothing.

00:18:31.940 You know, on your subject, on your subject of Trump, I think you're absolutely right.

00:18:36.000 I, as you know, when he was running for office the first time I asked him that debate question

00:18:42.000 about the way he's referred to women.

00:18:44.000 Right.

00:18:44.400 That was controversial.

00:18:45.220 And Trump's tweets were controversial.

00:18:46.900 But the truth is, like now it all just seems so small ball now that he's been president of

00:18:52.380 the United States, now that he's under indictment three times and facing a fourth, the two tier

00:18:56.980 system of justice.

00:18:58.140 And yet the media is kind of still on the name calling game.

00:19:02.420 And to me, like I see it very differently now.

00:19:05.100 I love my question.

00:19:06.480 Still, I stand by it.

00:19:07.400 But I'm just saying, like today, all over the media is the fact that he kind of referred

00:19:12.560 to Chris Christie as a fat pig.

00:19:14.380 Not exactly, but kind of.

00:19:15.920 Here's what he said.

00:19:17.500 And like without any acknowledgement of what Chris Christie has been calling Donald Trump.

00:19:22.400 All right.

00:19:22.800 Here's what happened.

00:19:24.120 It's not for.

00:19:26.040 He's eating right now.

00:19:27.280 He can't be violent.

00:19:28.460 Sir, please do not call him a fat pig.

00:19:30.780 That's very disrespectful.

00:19:31.840 Don't call him.

00:19:34.560 See, I'm trying to be nice.

00:19:36.280 Don't call him a fat pig.

00:19:38.820 OK, so is it a nice.

00:19:41.380 I mean, it's not that nice.

00:19:43.540 But Chris Christie's basically said, I mean, every chance he gets, he calls Trump a criminal.

00:19:47.740 I'd rather somebody call me a fat pig than a criminal.

00:19:51.900 Absolutely.

00:19:52.660 And this is and this is theater.

00:19:54.140 This is politics.

00:19:54.880 If President Trump gets this better than anybody else, he knows how to properly attack his opponent

00:20:00.560 to drive their polling numbers down to get them out of the race.

00:20:04.040 And that's exactly what he's doing.

00:20:06.060 If we've watched any, if we've known anything over the course of the past few years, President

00:20:10.100 Trump is kind of the master at painting someone as something.

00:20:13.060 And then they are done and not just done.

00:20:15.620 Really, at the time, their political career is actually going to be in jeopardy for the future.

00:20:20.340 And that's all this is.

00:20:21.680 This is actually a very smart play by President Trump.

00:20:24.460 If we can, if he can even show some compassion by saying he's not a fat pig, but he's out

00:20:29.260 eating.

00:20:29.760 It's so tongue in cheek.

00:20:31.560 And it's so, it's so tongue in cheek.

00:20:33.960 And even watching it, I cannot help but laugh.

00:20:36.960 I think that's where a lot of Americans understand how President Trump operates.

00:20:41.720 It's I being one of them.

00:20:42.720 I watched that and I just kind of smiled at this program.

00:20:45.460 I was like, oh, that's a very, it's a very savvy move by a person that's, that's a, that's,

00:20:50.740 that's an expert at branding.

00:20:52.460 And he is going to brand, uh, of all his opponents, uh, at, at, at, at some point to

00:20:58.080 make sure that he is going to be the victor in 2024.

00:21:01.140 It's, I mean, it is, it's like, don't go there, right?

00:21:04.420 Like if you, if you're going to get nasty with him, he's going to get nasty with you.

00:21:08.100 That's just the way it's going to be.

00:21:09.220 And also, and also, I appreciate you, you're bringing up Chris Christie.

00:21:12.040 He has said a lot of horrible things about President Trump over the course of the past

00:21:16.340 few years.

00:21:17.080 This is simply a response to that.

00:21:18.880 Yeah.

00:21:19.320 Big time.

00:21:19.560 So it's like, then it falls flat when he tries to sort of take the high road and like, I'm

00:21:23.700 the one who's above all this.

00:21:25.160 Here's actually Christie's response in SOT 5.

00:21:31.160 I've known him for 22 years is I am so in his head.

00:21:35.460 What's he doing talking about me?

00:21:37.000 It's because now I'm in second place in New Hampshire.

00:21:39.420 And if he looks at everything I've done in my career and what he wants to talk about is

00:21:44.520 the way I look fine.

00:21:46.540 Because I'll tell you this, there are tens of millions of Americans who have struggled

00:21:50.600 with their weight the same way I struggle with my weight.

00:21:53.200 And they look at somebody who talks like that and they say, that's a child.

00:21:57.460 That's a child.

00:21:58.300 So let him keep talking.

00:21:59.120 You want to say something?

00:22:00.560 Two weeks from tonight, show up.

00:22:03.220 I'll be on the stage.

00:22:04.360 He punches the defenseless.

00:22:07.860 What do you make of that?

00:22:09.820 He punches the defenseless.

00:22:11.840 Chris Christie, again, you've already articulated this.

00:22:14.480 He has said so much.

00:22:15.520 He has been running his mouth for the past few years against President Trump.

00:22:18.380 And President Trump is simply fighting back.

00:22:20.660 That's who President Trump is.

00:22:22.180 He is a fighter.

00:22:23.200 And trust me, if you punch him, he's going to punch back twice as hard.

00:22:26.360 And why would President Trump show up to a debate when he is up 35, 40 points in almost

00:22:33.560 every single poll?

00:22:35.140 That doesn't make sense.

00:22:36.240 It doesn't help him.

00:22:37.680 And if Chris Christie thinks that he's second in New Hampshire right now, but if by second

00:22:41.680 you mean you're still 35, 40 points behind the front runner, then fine.

00:22:46.000 You're a second.

00:22:46.700 You're a distant second.

00:22:47.620 You are literally the first loser.

00:22:48.820 And if he's going to continue to try to talk tough and continue to try to punch at President

00:22:53.560 Trump, he's going to eventually pay the piper.

00:22:56.660 And look, if he wants to be the victim right now and complain about his weight or his laziness

00:23:02.760 or his struggle with weight, that's fine.

00:23:05.600 But we all know that's not what we're talking about here.

00:23:08.100 We are talking about President Trump fighting back at somebody that has been talking trash

00:23:12.100 about him for the past few years.

00:23:14.080 That's all this is.

00:23:15.160 And you cannot fool me.

00:23:17.520 I know what you're saying.

00:23:18.200 I don't think there's one heavyset Trump supporter who actually is going to be offended

00:23:23.700 thinking, oh, he must think I'm a fat pig.

00:23:26.220 Like he's using these very derogatory terms to insult somebody who he can't stand.

00:23:31.520 It's not about his Trump.

00:23:33.060 I mean, Trump's admitted that he himself has got a bit of a weight problem in the past.

00:23:36.860 He's not going to talk about.

00:23:37.960 Yes, yes.

00:23:39.300 All right.

00:23:39.520 So now speaking of the debate, Trump went on with Eric Bolling on Newsmax last night and

00:23:44.060 was asked about this.

00:23:45.060 And here's what he said about whether he's going to participate at the August 23rd Fox

00:23:48.960 News debate.

00:23:49.300 Yeah, I've already decided and I'll be announcing something next week and I wouldn't sign the

00:23:54.900 pledge.

00:23:55.460 Why would I sign a pledge of people on there that I wouldn't have?

00:23:58.180 I wouldn't have certain people as, you know, somebody that I'd endorse.

00:24:02.360 So they want you to sign a pledge.

00:24:04.020 But I can name three or four people that I wouldn't support for president.

00:24:08.780 But I don't have to use that right now.

00:24:11.020 I don't want to do that.

00:24:12.060 I don't want to do that.

00:24:12.760 There's no reason to insult them.

00:24:15.320 So he says he's made his decision about whether he's going to attend the GOP debate.

00:24:19.980 He's going to announce it next week.

00:24:21.320 The head of the RNC has said he's got to tell them within 48 hours because it's not that

00:24:25.940 easy to just pop up a lectern.

00:24:27.580 I would challenge that.

00:24:28.680 I was at a debate that Trump skipped and we to the last second had the lectern ready to

00:24:33.780 go now, he had not yet been the sitting.

00:24:36.120 Yeah, he had not yet been the sitting president.

00:24:38.200 It is more tricky.

00:24:39.280 The Secret Service protection and all that, you know, they follow the former presidents.

00:24:42.340 But do you do you think he will go?

00:24:44.540 Do you think he'll go?

00:24:46.760 You know, I can never speak for President Trump.

00:24:48.320 You know, he makes up his own mind.

00:24:49.580 But but if I were guessing, I just I don't see why this would help him out at this point.

00:24:57.440 He has done a very good job this campaign.

00:24:59.760 He has run a very solid campaign.

00:25:01.500 He has clearly surrounded himself with people that know what they're doing.

00:25:04.740 And he is taking this run very seriously.

00:25:07.580 Even watching that clip, you know, to kind of show that restraint when asked, you know,

00:25:11.360 what three people would you not want to see the president of the United States or be or

00:25:15.780 would you not endorse?

00:25:17.180 I thought to myself, wow, he wouldn't even name these people.

00:25:20.280 President Trump is laser focused on getting our country back and talking about the things

00:25:25.200 that actually matter.

00:25:26.500 He's talking about making us safe again and securing our border and getting our economic

00:25:31.480 status back to where it should be prior to COVID and making sure that people can afford

00:25:36.040 to live in this country again.

00:25:37.620 He's focused on these things.

00:25:39.480 And so by going on a stage against people that you're up 30 points against, that doesn't

00:25:44.140 help you.

00:25:45.040 It doesn't it doesn't it doesn't change the fact that I think the average primary voter

00:25:48.820 has already made up their minds.

00:25:50.980 And Megan, my wife is from a small town in Iowa.

00:25:53.460 I was just in Iowa last weekend.

00:25:54.920 I'm going to be in Iowa next weekend.

00:25:56.960 Iowa is Trump country.

00:25:59.000 So what if you if you already and I and I mean, driving around that small town, seeing

00:26:04.480 the people in Iowa being around my in-laws, it's absolutely apparent that these people

00:26:09.460 want somebody to walk in here on day one and get our country back heading in the right

00:26:15.040 direction.

00:26:15.660 And he cannot run again after this.

00:26:18.260 It's critical to get him back.

00:26:19.820 He knows that.

00:26:20.580 So getting on that stage and getting into getting into a debate with Chris Christie, it's not going

00:26:25.280 to help anything.

00:26:26.480 Last but not least, I saw you at a hearing recently bringing up the gender issue and I

00:26:32.740 was cheering you.

00:26:34.860 You know, there's there's a cartoon that goes around on the Internet.

00:26:37.700 It's some meme where the little child is saying to the parent, it's a girl, I think, saying,

00:26:43.000 Mommy, I think I'm a boy.

00:26:44.200 And her response is, but no, honey, you're a girl.

00:26:47.460 And the caption is good parenting.

00:26:50.680 It's called parenting.

00:26:51.400 Right.

00:26:51.840 Like people are injecting these doubts into our children's heads, like teachers that

00:26:56.560 happened in our own school where teachers tried to inject doubts didn't work.

00:27:00.720 But every week they were asking my son and his other classmates whether they were sure

00:27:04.660 they were still boys in the third grade weekly.

00:27:08.520 And we left that school.

00:27:09.940 I mean, it's just absurd.

00:27:11.100 But I saw you talking about the absurdity of letting these minors make these life altering

00:27:17.900 decisions that is not disclosed, that they will be infertile, that they will mutilate

00:27:22.880 their bodies in a way that is not reversible.

00:27:25.840 And this is how you put it in a clip that went viral.

00:27:29.900 Sot one. 0.58

00:27:32.220 What would happen if we affirmed every thought that our children have?

00:27:38.140 I'd like to show you a food pyramid.

00:27:40.620 Now, I know what you're thinking.

00:27:41.460 This is not the FDA's approved food pyramid.

00:27:45.020 This is the food pyramid, according to my four-year-old and my two-year-old daughters.

00:27:51.280 If my children had their way, they would have ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner and

00:27:56.380 for every single meal in between.

00:27:58.940 Oh, the wisdom of children.

00:28:02.260 But in the same country, we know that children are mature enough to make adult decisions that

00:28:07.500 will impact the rest of their lives.

00:28:09.400 That's why we have parents.

00:28:13.200 It's beautiful.

00:28:14.800 It was actually so beautifully said, but it's scary the path we're on, you know, because

00:28:19.580 so many on the other side is weirdly it's become a political issue where these Democrats

00:28:24.440 seem to think it's like a liberal thing to allow the four-year-olds to tell us whether

00:28:29.840 they're girls or boys.

00:28:32.460 This is ridiculous.

00:28:33.460 And it's kind of sad that we're even here at this country, but here we are.

00:28:37.480 So I don't care how we got here.

00:28:39.580 This is the fight that we have.

00:28:41.020 We've got to step up and make sure that we secure the future for this country by fighting

00:28:45.360 these kinds of culture wars.

00:28:47.780 I am a combat veteran.

00:28:49.440 I'm a West Point grad, flew 55 combat air missions in Baghdad, Apache pilot.

00:28:53.760 I fought for the rights of people and adults to make their own decisions.

00:28:58.940 If you're an adult, if you're a mature adult and you want to use your own money to transition

00:29:04.140 to whatever you want with your body, I cannot stop you, knock yourself out.

00:29:07.700 That's what I served in combat for.

00:29:09.560 Our children are different.

00:29:11.540 How dare us allow other people to mutilate our children and allow them to make these kinds 1.00

00:29:18.860 of decisions before they reach the age of being an adult?

00:29:24.540 It's wrong.

00:29:25.680 It's actually child abuse.

00:29:27.640 And the only thing we are stating here is the obvious.

00:29:30.680 We cannot allow children to make adult-like decisions.

00:29:35.100 That's why we are adults and that's why they are children.

00:29:37.860 That's why you cannot go in the military until you're 18 years old.

00:29:40.620 That's why you cannot drink alcohol until you're 21 years old.

00:29:43.460 And if you can't do these things until you are deemed to be an adult, then why would we

00:29:48.000 allow you to change your gender before you are of the age to make adult-like decisions?

00:29:53.580 That's all I'm saying.

00:29:55.060 I am not transphobic.

00:29:56.720 I'm not scared of people that want to transition.

00:30:00.800 What I'm saying is this.

00:30:02.120 Our children should not be making these decisions and we as adults need to act like it.

00:30:07.700 Here, here, and the medical community that allows it ought to be punished in my view.

00:30:12.180 Yes, they should.

00:30:12.480 Right now, the news today is that the American Academy of Pediatrics is going to be reviewing

00:30:16.520 its gender-affirming care.

00:30:19.220 But as they say that, they have no choice.

00:30:20.960 The UK has already reversed itself on this.

00:30:23.100 Sweden has reversed itself saying we are not giving hormones to people under 18.

00:30:27.260 You know, puberty blockers into cross-sex hormones sterilizes children, period. 0.61

00:30:31.700 So they're reviewing it.

00:30:32.840 And now finally we say, OK, we'll review it.

00:30:34.280 But at the same time, they say, oh, but we reaffirm our gender-affirming care policy.

00:30:38.140 You know, everything we're doing is right and we're going to do a review, but everything we're

00:30:41.060 doing is right.

00:30:41.820 So we'll just see about that because more and more bold, brave, honest politicians like

00:30:46.580 you, Representative Wesley Hunt, are trying to hold them to account.

00:30:49.620 Thank you.

00:30:50.140 Thank you for it.

00:30:51.460 We will.

00:30:51.720 All right.

00:30:52.020 Well, hopefully you'll come back.

00:30:53.180 We look forward to continuing the conversation.

00:30:55.140 Any time, man.

00:30:55.700 Thank you so much for having me.

00:30:56.620 Really appreciate it.

00:30:57.260 And God bless you, ma'am.

00:30:58.620 Oh, you as well.

00:30:59.420 Thank you for your service.

00:31:00.400 Thank you.

00:31:00.500 All right.

00:31:01.500 We will be right back with journalist David Garrow.

00:31:04.660 You're not going to want to miss this.

00:31:06.460 I'm excited for this interview.

00:31:11.380 In a moment, I'm going to be joined by author and historian David Garrow.

00:31:15.740 But first, just a bit of background on his incredible span of work.

00:31:19.740 In 1986, Garrow released Bearing the Cross, a biography of Martin Luther King Jr.

00:31:25.800 For it, he won a Pulitzer Prize.

00:31:27.680 In 1994, he wrote Liberty and Sexuality.

00:31:31.460 It is considered the definitive account of the fight for abortion rights in America.

00:31:36.460 In 2017, Garrow wrote the book Rising Star, The Making of Barack Obama.

00:31:42.520 He interviewed over a thousand people during a nine-year period, including the then president

00:31:49.080 himself, for over eight hours.

00:31:51.880 He unearthed documents from every stage of Mr. Obama's life, before politics, and tracked

00:31:57.660 down a previously unknown girlfriend, someone who had never spoken to the press before.

00:32:02.940 Now, a new tablet magazine interview with Garrow is making its own headlines for Garrow's incredibly

00:32:09.700 frank assessment of how he views the former president's rise and continued stature in the

00:32:15.080 Democratic Party, among other things.

00:32:17.500 David Garrow joins me now.

00:32:19.580 David, so nice to meet you.

00:32:20.740 You are the most talked about person on the Internet right now, and that's a feat, sir.

00:32:26.680 So well done.

00:32:28.000 Thank you.

00:32:29.860 All right.

00:32:30.640 So Rising Star hit in 2017.

00:32:33.340 And maybe you can explain to the audience why do you think we are talking about this six

00:32:38.860 years later, as opposed to when it hit?

00:32:42.580 Why didn't it go totally viral and dominate the headlines?

00:32:45.340 Well, when Rising Star was first published in May of 2017, you know, Barack had left office

00:32:54.120 four or five months earlier, and we were in the early stages of the Trump presidency, you

00:33:02.180 know, following that astonishing 2016 election.

00:33:06.360 One of the times that I went to see Obama in the Oval Office was in early December, and while

00:33:17.340 our conversations were officially off the record, it was very clear then, my previous visit had

00:33:25.300 been in October before the election.

00:33:27.240 It was very clear then, in early December, how shell-shocked the White House was that Trump

00:33:36.480 would be the next president.

00:33:38.800 And I think that took a lot of air out of the room, so to speak, because Barack really, you

00:33:46.440 know, disappeared from public view once he left office in January of 2017.

00:33:53.100 I mean, everything disappeared from the headlines other than Donald Trump from the moment Trump

00:33:59.800 won for the next, well, you could argue till today.

00:34:02.960 So I see the point.

00:34:04.720 But wasn't there an issue with people not publishing it or excerpting it?

00:34:13.100 Or was that with respect to the King revelations from the FBI tapes?

00:34:17.120 No, I didn't encounter any opposition or pushback.

00:34:25.340 I mean, Rising Star made the New York Times bestseller list for at least one week when it

00:34:31.420 first came out.

00:34:33.260 And generally speaking, I was very happy with the review attention.

00:34:39.220 The Washington Post named one of the 10 best books of 2017.

00:34:43.620 So I think there was, you know, certainly, you know, Barack's, you know, disappearance from

00:34:51.640 the public stage after having been maybe all too visible day after day after day for eight

00:34:58.520 years.

00:34:59.700 So I don't feel any chagrin about that at all.

00:35:06.340 OK, yeah.

00:35:07.600 So I confused my facts because I know that when you did your reporting on what those FBI

00:35:12.760 tapes showed of Dr.

00:35:14.580 King and what allegedly happened with a rape victim, they were less interested in that.

00:35:19.600 And it was a shocking revelation.

00:35:20.760 We can get to it later.

00:35:21.820 Let's stay on Barack Obama for now.

00:35:23.280 So one of the one of the big gets that you got was you tracked down not just Barack Obama's

00:35:30.940 ex-girlfriend, but somebody to whom he had proposed marriage not once, but twice.

00:35:35.440 And the story she told you about why their relationship ended kind of reframes a narrative that Barack

00:35:44.520 Obama himself was trying to pitch to us in his in his book, Dreams for My Father.

00:35:49.400 So can you explain that story to us and how you found the ex-girlfriend?

00:35:52.380 When Barack first really came to successful attention as a presidential candidate in early

00:36:01.860 2008, I was intrigued.

00:36:05.640 And so I was living in Britain at that time.

00:36:09.040 I ordered a cheap paperback copy of Dreams from My Father and actually read most of it on

00:36:16.120 a holiday in Portugal.

00:36:19.800 And right from the get go, it's pretty clear that it's not a work of history, that it's

00:36:27.480 telling his life story.

00:36:29.640 But it's transparent that most of the characters have pseudonyms or are composite figures.

00:36:38.300 And so that very much intrigued me.

00:36:41.920 And for the balance of 2008 into early 2009, up through when he was inaugurated, I sort of

00:36:49.380 read everything I could long distance about his life up through when he went into the U.S.

00:36:57.620 Senate in 2005.

00:36:58.760 And then in March of 2009, I made the decision to start doing interviews focused on his years as a

00:37:08.040 community organizer in Chicago, 1985 to 1988, because that's really the centerpiece of Dreams

00:37:14.980 from My Father.

00:37:16.200 I mean, I wanted to solve this large number of mysteries as to who were these people that

00:37:23.280 he'd worked with.

00:37:24.160 And so my focus very much was on the organizers who hired and trained him, the local people

00:37:32.440 in the far south side community with whom he worked.

00:37:36.180 And so I did several years of legwork of tracking down people.

00:37:41.880 And, you know, for folks who are like living in a public housing development, they're not 0.98

00:37:49.200 the easiest people in the world to find.

00:37:51.160 You know, if you've gone to Harvard Law School, as Barack did, it's pretty easy to find Harvard

00:37:57.280 Law School classmates.

00:37:59.440 But that work on the far south side, finding these people who knew him as a young man, you

00:38:06.160 know, before he got into politics, was deeply rewarding.

00:38:10.200 Some of these folks had spoken to a reporter or two, but many of them had not been found.

00:38:17.300 Now, to your particular question, during most of that time that Barack was working down in

00:38:25.680 Roseland at Alkill Gardens, he was living in Hyde Park, the integrated community around

00:38:32.780 the University of Chicago.

00:38:34.540 And it was public record information that he had had a girlfriend with whom he lived for

00:38:42.380 a big chunk of that time, someone who was a graduate student at the University of Chicago,

00:38:48.000 though no journalist had ever named her.

00:38:51.400 Now, as someone who spent, you know, all my adult life in universities, as anyone who has

00:38:58.680 done that would know, you can find a student directory in the university library for any given

00:39:06.240 year.

00:39:06.540 And so knowing Barack's address, the address at which he lived in those years, I had Alex

00:39:15.140 Lerner, my young University of Chicago research assistant, go to Regenstein Library, you know,

00:39:22.280 pull the student directories for, you know, 1986, 1987, 1988, and let's see who else lives at

00:39:30.360 that particular address.

00:39:31.520 So that's how I found Sheila Yeager, the woman with whom he lived.

00:39:36.000 We also found this nice couple that lived directly above them, who were both professors at North

00:39:41.940 Carolina State University.

00:39:43.460 I went and talked with them, too.

00:39:45.000 And they had, you know, nice memories of knowing Barack and Sheila from the laundry room in the

00:39:50.000 apartment building.

00:39:52.160 It's so fascinating, because, of course, we're used to people doing these exhaustive bios and

00:39:59.120 deep dives on our presidents.

00:40:01.940 And yet you were the first to find Sheila Yeager and her response upon you.

00:40:08.040 I mean, a Pulitzer Prize winning author contacting her was something to the effect of, I'm so glad

00:40:12.920 it's you who found me.

00:40:14.820 And she really did have a story to tell.

00:40:17.140 I think the you tell me what you think.

00:40:18.580 But I think the reason the story about why they broke up, the real reason, according to

00:40:22.360 her, is they diverge on the stories about why they grew up, why they broke up is resonating

00:40:28.600 because people already, especially in the Jewish community, had a suspicion that Barack Obama

00:40:33.640 may have a strong anti-Semitism in him.

00:40:36.900 Anybody who sat in Jeremiah Wright's church for as long as he did would be suspected of

00:40:42.220 this because he would rant about his anti-Semitic views.

00:40:46.800 And that's sort of where her story takes off.

00:40:50.480 So what was the story she told you about how they broke up and how does it differ from what

00:40:57.140 Barack Obama said in his 1995 memoir, you know, Dreams from My Father, about why he broke

00:41:03.480 up with the pseudonymed version of Sheila?

00:41:07.260 Well, Megan, two things.

00:41:09.260 First, I have a very positive opinion of Jeremiah Wright.

00:41:14.520 Um, he, uh, said any number of, uh, unpleasant, wacky things.

00:41:23.260 Um, but perhaps the person who was the greatest formative, uh, influence on my life, uh, was

00:41:31.640 the late Jim Cohn, James H. Cohn, the founder of Black Liberation Theology.

00:41:36.580 Um, people view Jim as a radical.

00:41:39.900 Jim was a lovely person.

00:41:41.020 And I'd say the same thing about Jerry Wright.

00:41:44.320 Uh, people view Jerry as, uh, a dangerous radical.

00:41:48.720 Uh, but to me, as someone who has spent much of my life immersed, uh, with Martin Luther

00:41:55.120 King Jr., um, Jerry is, Jerry during his time in active ministry, uh, was very much a combination

00:42:04.980 of, of Dr. King and, and Jim Cohn.

00:42:07.420 Um, now that's not to defend everything Jerry said, because particularly that, um, one time

00:42:13.340 at the National Press Club, uh, with Barbara Reynolds, um, he said some offensive things.

00:42:18.280 But, uh, it's certainly a part of my King training that we do not judge people, uh, by the one

00:42:27.040 or two, uh, worst things that, uh, uh, happened in the course of their lives.

00:42:33.220 Um, um, Sheila Yeager, um, is half Dutch, half Japanese.

00:42:43.200 And it's important, uh, to, to highlight in the context of, of what David Samuels in the

00:42:50.600 tablet interview, uh, really, uh, very much, uh, predominantly focused on that Sheila's

00:42:57.960 paternal grandparents, uh, uh, in the Netherlands, uh, during the World War II, uh, actively worked

00:43:05.760 to protect, uh, uh, uh, Jewish people.

00:43:08.700 Um, and, and they are enshrined, uh, if that's the right word, uh, at the memorial to heroes

00:43:17.280 of the Holocaust in Israel.

00:43:18.900 Um, so that family history for Sheila is very important.

00:43:22.780 This is from the tablet, uh, magazine interview that writing that what you documented after

00:43:28.880 tracking down Sheila was an explosive fight over a very different subject from the one that

00:43:33.440 Barack Obama said ended their relationship in Sheila Jake Yeager's telling the quarrel

00:43:38.100 that ended their relationship was not about his self-identification as a black man.

00:43:42.220 Sheila's white.

00:43:43.100 And the, the impetus was not about a play regarding the American black experience, but an exhibit

00:43:48.880 at Chicago's Sparris Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann at the time that Obama

00:43:55.340 and Sheila visited the Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a black mayoral aid named 1.00

00:44:00.740 Steve Coakley, who in a series of letters organized by Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam accused

00:44:05.980 Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against

00:44:11.580 African-Americans and Yeager's recollection.

00:44:13.980 What set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple's relationship was Obama's

00:44:17.480 stubborn refusal to condemn black racism. 0.61

00:44:21.380 He, he would not condemn these comments and she was upset that he would not condemn Coakley

00:44:27.480 in the end, they broke up.

00:44:29.400 So this seems to be her saying, you know, that maybe not that he's antisemitic, but he's certainly 0.98

00:44:35.000 not going to, not going to condemn, um, these particular comments about that seem antisemitic

00:44:42.420 because they came from a black man.

00:44:43.820 So that's David Samuel's, you know, summary account.

00:44:48.000 Um, I won't quarrel with it in full, uh, but I'm not at all sure that Sheila would, would

00:44:54.920 100% endorse, uh, that summary.

00:44:57.720 Well, you're saying if she was upset about it because she's got the Dutch heritage and

00:45:02.060 I understand, I mean, the Dutch did a lot to, to try to save, you know, the Jews that

00:45:05.960 they could, but like, that seems to be the reason that it resonated with her.

00:45:10.680 She was offended.

00:45:12.260 Yes.

00:45:12.680 And I, I should say too, that I, I think it's, it's accurate to say that Sheila, because

00:45:16.560 she's half Japanese, uh, does not identify herself as white.

00:45:21.160 Okay.

00:45:22.160 Um, all right, standby because, uh, there's much, much more to get to.

00:45:25.920 I got to squeeze in a quick break and we'll come right back with David Garrow, who stays

00:45:28.880 with me.

00:45:29.580 Don't go away.

00:45:34.160 David, just to pick up on the Jeremiah Wright thing.

00:45:36.260 And I don't know Jeremiah, right?

00:45:37.860 Never heard him referred to as Jerry.

00:45:39.080 Um, you know, there, we don't have to revisit that.

00:45:43.660 He's a lovely person.

00:45:45.500 Okay.

00:45:45.980 He may be lovely, but I remember the goddamn America and the chickens have come home to 1.00

00:45:50.280 roost on nine 11.

00:45:51.420 Not lovely, not at all.

00:45:53.140 And the reason people thought he was antisemitic was he said the reason that president Obama

00:46:00.080 had not spoken with him in a long time was quote, this is from him directly.

00:46:04.660 Them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me. 1.00

00:46:06.900 I told my baby daughter that he talked to me in five years when he's a lame duck or in 0.97

00:46:11.140 eight years when he's out of office, they will not let him talk to somebody who calls

00:46:14.720 a spade what it is.

00:46:15.900 I said that from the beginning, he's a politician.

00:46:18.040 I'm a pastor.

00:46:18.640 He's got to do what politicians do.

00:46:20.640 So them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me. 1.00

00:46:22.900 Sounds about as antisemitic as somebody would ever openly get in modern day America.

00:46:30.200 Granted on that one quote, Jeremiah was very hurt.

00:46:36.900 And angry about how Barack treated him once Barack began running for president.

00:46:45.720 Um, they had been very close.

00:46:48.580 Barack and Michelle were married by Jerry at Trinity United Church.

00:46:53.300 Um, and, uh, I don't normally say things like this, but, um, if, if Barack ever had a quasi father's

00:47:04.700 figure in his life, it was Jeremiah.

00:47:07.660 Um, and Jeremiah's work at that church, uh, for decades, uh, was just superb.

00:47:14.980 Um, that congregation, uh, had a, a, a huge positive presence on the far South side of

00:47:22.000 Chicago.

00:47:22.800 Um, so that's why on balance, I very strongly, uh, defend, uh, Jeremiah.

00:47:30.320 Um, uh, he understood my background, uh, in, in King world with movement people, um, and

00:47:40.240 introduced me to, to members of his congregation so that they could speak to me about Barack

00:47:44.880 and Michelle.

00:47:45.440 Um, and it, it bears saying that, um, once, uh, Barack and Michelle were married and Barack

00:47:52.480 began in Illinois politics, uh, they weren't doing much of anything at Trinity Church.

00:47:58.180 They were not active, uh, weekly members of the congregation.

00:48:02.540 Uh, Jeremiah's impact on Barack back 86, 87, 88 was very important.

00:48:10.920 Um, but, um, I think it's fair to say that, that Reverend Wright, uh, was, was, was hurt,

00:48:18.820 uh, by how Barack, uh, increasingly distanced himself, uh, as his political ascent, uh, went

00:48:27.600 up and up.

00:48:28.740 Right, right.

00:48:29.140 As he became a potential political liability.

00:48:32.540 But you write in, in the book about how he doesn't really have, he doesn't hold on to

00:48:37.200 people like he doesn't have the long term relationships that you would typically see.

00:48:43.360 You compare him to Jack Kennedy, uh, who was very different.

00:48:46.440 Can you talk about that?

00:48:48.440 Yeah.

00:48:48.720 I mean, um, I, this is what I said to David Samuels in the interview.

00:48:52.060 I mean, no, no matter what we say about president Kennedy and some of his behavior, uh, in the

00:48:57.320 White House with young women, uh, is, you know, atrociously. 1.00

00:49:02.140 Oh yeah.

00:49:02.820 Um, but, um, Jack Kennedy was intensely loyal, uh, to people who'd been with him going back

00:49:10.740 to the high school.

00:49:11.820 Um, one of his closest friends, Lem Billings, was an openly gay man in the 1950s, in the

00:49:18.960 1960s, uh, living in part at the White House in the early 60s.

00:49:24.280 Um, uh, Dave Powers, Kenny O'Donnell.

00:49:28.080 Um, I have very mixed feelings about President Kennedy, but his loyalty to people close to

00:49:36.020 him, uh, was, was, uh, sky high.

00:49:39.460 Um, Barack Obama, on the other hand, um, he remained quite close to several of his high

00:49:46.320 school buddies, uh, from Hawaii, like Mike Ramos.

00:49:50.020 Um, but the people with whom he remained close were, were not people who, uh, ended up going

00:49:57.040 to Harvard Law School, um, and becoming, uh, you know, almost public figures, uh, you know,

00:50:04.280 because of, of Barack's, uh, achievement as, as the first African-American president of,

00:50:09.960 of the Harvard Law Review in, in 1990, 1991, uh, when multiple major, uh, papers and magazines,

00:50:17.520 uh, wrote profiles of him way back then.

00:50:20.880 Um, and in particular in Illinois, um, the people who were just essentially, uh,

00:50:27.040 uh, to Barack's, uh, ascent in Illinois politics, uh, Dan Shulman, uh, Carol Harwell, um, one

00:50:38.500 would expect more long-term loyalty, uh, from the average human being.

00:50:46.440 But he's, he moves up, he sort of moves up on the social ladder and finds new friends

00:50:51.280 instead.

00:50:52.160 I mean, you point out that even Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod only go back to 2003 with

00:50:58.600 him and that, you know, he quickly sort of fell in with the Beyonce Jay-Z kind of crowd

00:51:06.620 and enjoyed his time on the yachts, which turns out was a, was a personal goal of his.

00:51:12.940 The, the two things he once said he most wanted were, it wasn't a yacht.

00:51:16.580 What were the two things?

00:51:18.540 Oh, a valet in an airplane.

00:51:21.680 Okay.

00:51:22.220 Who wants a valet? 1.00

00:51:23.140 That's a British thing.

00:51:24.000 That's not what, what American man is thinking about getting a valet?

00:51:26.860 Like, what do you mean?

00:51:27.620 Valet, like a valet who dresses you or like a valet who passes, who parks your car?

00:51:32.940 No.

00:51:33.380 And, and as, as we tragically saw just a few weeks ago with the drowning on Martha's Vineyard,

00:51:38.880 uh, how many people have 24, seven personal chefs, uh, living with them?

00:51:46.100 Uh, I mean, I don't think that's true of, of all former presidents.

00:51:51.860 I doubt very much that Jimmy Carter over the years has had a, has had a personal chef.

00:51:57.220 George W.

00:51:58.040 Bush does not either.

00:51:58.900 Um, but what I, what I should say is that, um, and this goes back to, to the, uh, Obama

00:52:08.120 first term presidency, when I was interviewing, uh, scores and scores of people, uh, black people

00:52:14.320 in Chicago, whom had known, uh, Barack and Michelle back then, um, you know, even during

00:52:20.240 the presidency, this, this outsized interest in, in hanging with celebrities, uh, began to

00:52:27.360 appear, um, and the accurate summary is, is that black Chicagoans were not astounded that

00:52:37.900 Barack, uh, developed this, this interest in, in somehow elevating himself, uh, by hanging

00:52:46.740 with celebrities, uh, but they were very disappointed and pained, uh, that Michelle, uh, was a part of,

00:52:57.360 part of this change because they rightly quite understandably had always viewed Michelle as,

00:53:05.440 as this clue, perfect product of, of working class, uh, South side black Chicago, uh, coming 0.89

00:53:15.340 from a humble, but, but very hardworking family, both her dad and her mom, uh, her brother,

00:53:22.240 likewise, uh, Craig, uh, became very successful as a basketball coach, um, and so for Michelle

00:53:29.380 to lose that grounding, uh, uh, I think a lot of people in black Chicago found, uh, just

00:53:37.920 inexplicable.

00:53:39.480 Hmm.

00:53:40.720 You, um, write about how there, there wasn't a ton of loyalty.

00:53:46.120 There wasn't a ton of loyalty, nor interest in the pitfalls that came to the lives of some

00:53:53.760 who supported him.

00:53:54.680 And in particular, the end of one of their lives, um, right.

00:53:58.860 Talking with, um, tablet about Claire Sediak, forgive me, Sediak.

00:54:05.720 Okay.

00:54:06.280 Who died at age 50, leaving behind a four-year-old.

00:54:10.060 And what, why is the story of Claire interesting to you?

00:54:14.260 Springfield is, is a small town, uh, politically small town.

00:54:18.920 Um, and particularly, uh, in the world of the Illinois state Senate back then, uh, relationships

00:54:26.840 and friendships were bipartisan.

00:54:29.340 Um, uh, a number of, of, uh, state Senate staffers who, who were officially Republicans,

00:54:36.360 uh, worked closely, helpfully with Barack, um, and it bears emphasizing, uh, that Barack

00:54:44.740 himself in Springfield, this is a very important aspect of his life story, uh, that Barack was

00:54:51.420 very active and outgoing in working and negotiating and making deals with conservative Republican

00:55:00.680 lawmakers, uh, lawmakers, uh, lawmakers more conservative, uh, than most of the folks he

00:55:08.000 was dealing with in the U.S. Senate or U.S. House as president.

00:55:12.880 Um, and Barack's success in Springfield, um, lay in the fact that he was both personable,

00:55:19.620 uh, and bipartisan.

00:55:21.560 Um, Barack's most strained relationships in Springfield were with other black Democrats, um, 1.00

00:55:30.140 guys from the hood, let us say, um, who very explicitly didn't think Barack was black enough.

00:55:38.200 Um, that was, uh, a, a predominant theme, uh, in Chicago politics, especially when Barack

00:55:45.920 unsuccessfully, uh, challenged incumbent Congressman Bobby Rush, uh, in a congressional primary in,

00:55:52.700 in 1999-2000, uh, Barack was, was defeated by really a humiliating margin.

00:55:59.740 Getting 31% of the vote, uh, in part because the Rush campaign did, uh, a very powerful job of,

00:56:07.740 of painting Barack as this, uh, uh, multicultural, uh, uh, newcomer from, uh, Hawaii and Indonesia.

00:56:15.900 Um, but in the world of Springfield, um, when, uh, uh, someone, uh, has a life crisis,

00:56:24.480 a medical crisis, um, the community pitches in, um, and everybody contributes through,

00:56:31.320 uh, uh, GoFundMe, uh, uh, type of, uh, of, you know, web contributions.

00:56:37.140 And you can, you can skim those contributions.

00:56:40.140 Um, there was a, a fellow who was very helpful to Barack named Matt Jones, uh, several years

00:56:46.540 ago developed a very serious cancer.

00:56:48.580 Um, and when I went to that contribution page, um, you know, I may have given, say, $50.

00:56:55.580 I mean, I had a very nice, you know, hour and a half, two hour interview with, with Matt Jones.

00:57:00.060 Um, but you could go down that list and see everyone in Springfield, uh, Democrats and Republicans

00:57:07.340 had all kicked in to help support, uh, the Jones family.

00:57:11.360 Um, same thing when Claire Sudouk died, uh, back in, in the year 2000, uh, she had been

00:57:17.740 the head finance person on Barack's, uh, 2003, 2004 Senate race, uh, a crucial early figure.

00:57:25.640 Um, and you, again, you go down the list of contributors on that page.

00:57:30.220 Um, and it's everybody who worked on that Obama campaign, not the candidate, but everyone

00:57:36.100 who worked on the campaign.

00:57:38.640 Not so, not Barack.

00:57:39.980 I mean, why, why do you think that is?

00:57:43.140 He's not a generous person.

00:57:44.300 He's not a loyal, like what, what does that show you?

00:57:47.700 Um, the most poignant example of this is, is Dan Shulman.

00:57:53.300 Um, Dan is a, a really lifelong, uh, Illinois political operative, uh, was on the state Senate

00:58:00.900 staff when Barack first got to the state Senate in 1997.

00:58:04.200 Um, and Dan ended up devoting years of his life to advancing Barack, um, uh, 365 days a year.

00:58:15.060 Um, and Barack could not have made his rise through Illinois politics, uh, without Dan Shulman.

00:58:23.260 Um, and that's not just Dave Garrow saying that you could find 500 people, uh, in Illinois who'd

00:58:30.260 say the exact same thing, uh, particularly people from Springfield.

00:58:33.220 Um, and Dan gets sort of pushed aside in, in 2004 in the Senate, uh, campaign, uh, recall how

00:58:42.940 Barack goes from, uh, a sort of unknown third rank primary candidate, uh, to winning that

00:58:52.660 Democratic senatorial primary in early 2004 and then his speech at the summer 2004, uh,

00:59:02.800 Democratic National Convention, uh, is what helped to national celebrity states.

00:59:09.440 Uh, but Dan, uh, you know, again, I think the average human being, uh, the average politician,

00:59:17.440 uh, would have shown, uh, much more loyalty to Dan Shulman, uh, than was the case with Barack.

00:59:24.520 We skip past the question of the girlfriends without mentioning one of the other

00:59:28.000 barn burners.

00:59:29.660 And that is, there was another girlfriend that he had whose letters with Barack were produced

00:59:36.580 to you.

00:59:36.980 She gave you letters between the two of them, except for the one paragraph that would then

00:59:42.600 wind up going public via other means, um, via Emory University.

00:59:46.720 And you sent a research down there to go researcher to go print what was in that paragraph in the

00:59:52.160 letters that were given to you.

00:59:53.140 It just said a paragraph about homosexuality.

00:59:56.200 This has made a lot of news, but it, it turns out that he was writing to his then girlfriend.

01:00:01.580 This is, you know, back in the younger years about how he had repeated fantasies of having

01:00:07.360 sex with men. 0.74

01:00:09.680 Now, what do you make of this?

01:00:11.600 It's like, it's like, is Barack Obama a gay man?

01:00:15.980 Is he a bisexual man?

01:00:17.280 Like what, what is your takeaway of the significance of that paragraph and why she didn't want to

01:00:24.480 produce it to you and why no one's really gone there on the reporting, even though it has been

01:00:29.220 out there that once it was made public via Emory.

01:00:32.580 Um, several things, Megan, um, both Alex McNair, who was Barack's girlfriend of 1981 to 1983,

01:00:42.040 uh, and Genevieve Cook, who was his girlfriend in, in New York, uh, in 84, 85, uh, both, uh,

01:00:51.180 shared with me, uh, all the letters, um, that Barack had, had written them back then.

01:00:56.760 Uh, Barack was very much someone who was sending handwritten letters and postcards, not just

01:01:04.640 to girlfriends, but to other friends, uh, during the 1980s.

01:01:08.440 Uh, this sound, this may sound very quaint, uh, to younger people today who, uh, the idea

01:01:14.720 of, of people actually mailing handwritten letters, uh, to the postal service.

01:01:19.140 This is how we used to have to do it.

01:01:20.700 We didn't have email.

01:01:21.840 We didn't have texting, right?

01:01:23.180 Like, even when I got together with Doug in 2006, he would write me letters.

01:01:27.980 I would write him letters.

01:01:28.700 I mean, it's like not so long ago we used to do that.

01:01:31.980 Um, so when I first went to see Alex McNair out Eastern Long Island, um, sort of in 2009,

01:01:39.500 2010, so Barack is president.

01:01:41.740 Um, so Alex let me read, uh, and, and take very detailed, uh, quotational notes, uh, from

01:01:50.140 all those letters, but she redacted one paragraph, uh, said it was too sensitive, uh, you know,

01:01:57.120 for while he was president, uh, said it was about homosexuality.

01:02:01.480 Um, and then after Rising Star was published in 2017, uh, it was announced that Alex had

01:02:09.880 sold these letters, uh, to Emory University.

01:02:13.260 And there were a number of news stories, uh, the Atlanta paper, the New York Times, uh,

01:02:19.040 published stories about these letters.

01:02:21.380 Uh, but none of the stories made any reference to this paragraph that had been, uh, redacted

01:02:27.680 from me.

01:02:29.420 Um, and so I asked one of my oldest friends, Harvey Clare, K-L-E-H-R, uh, who's a very distinguished,

01:02:36.580 uh, historian of American communism, uh, has been a professor at Emory his whole life.

01:02:41.580 Uh, I asked Harvey to, to go to the Emory archives, visit the Emory archives, uh, they

01:02:47.420 wouldn't let even Harvey make a photocopy, uh, of that page in the letter.

01:02:52.740 Um, and so Harvey had to copy down the missing paragraph, you know, pencil and paper, um, and,

01:02:59.400 and emailed it to me.

01:03:01.140 And so that language about Barack telling Alex that he regularly fantasized, uh, about relations

01:03:09.280 with men, that's in the paperback edition of rising star, uh, which was published in

01:03:15.240 2018.

01:03:16.040 Uh, but I believe only one, uh, fairly obscure, uh, conservative website, uh, mentioned it at

01:03:26.220 the time.

01:03:26.600 Uh, so I'm, uh, frankly bemused, uh, that that has been sitting in public view, uh, in the

01:03:34.940 paperback of the book for, uh, over five years now, uh, before most people, uh, decided they

01:03:41.100 wanted to discover it.

01:03:42.560 Right.

01:03:42.960 Well, I mean, you can bet everything that if Trump had some letter in which he talked about

01:03:50.060 repeatedly fantasizing about having sex with men, it would be everywhere to me as a member

01:03:56.880 of the media, this just seems like the media running cover for him on, this is something

01:04:00.700 that would be embarrassing potentially to him and that they, they don't want to embarrass

01:04:04.020 Barack Obama.

01:04:05.500 Well, I mean, certainly in the context of when Emory, uh, put out the story in 2017 of, of

01:04:13.540 having acquired the letters, uh, one might think that the journalists, uh, covering that

01:04:19.620 would actually read the letters in full.

01:04:22.800 I mean, now perhaps Emory didn't encourage them to do that.

01:04:26.420 Uh, maybe they were shown only selected portions, um, but it's the same thing with, uh, you know,

01:04:33.840 my, uh, finding Sheely Yeager, uh, in 2009, um, you just have to have the, the, uh, uh, historical

01:04:43.680 discipline or the historical motivation, uh, to go to the library and, and read things.

01:04:50.220 Mm. That's crazy. What you seem to be expecting of journalists. I don't understand this high

01:04:56.500 bar that you've set to a little round there too. There too, to me, it's like the elevation

01:05:04.240 of Barack Obama was important to the left in this country. It was important to them. It was,

01:05:10.500 you've made this point too, that they were working something out of their own about their own history,

01:05:15.260 their own feelings, race, and so on. And factoring in, um, you know, yes, point taken that, uh,

01:05:22.800 Sheila is half Japanese too, but also half Dutch. Uh, so she looks white. So I white ish 0.66

01:05:29.820 ex-girlfriend, uh, fantasizing about having gay sex. That was not part of the program that no one

01:05:36.860 would have any interest in that. They only wanted to elevate the 2004 democratic national convention

01:05:42.980 speaker. There is no black, uh, red America. There is no blue America. There is only the red way, 0.74

01:05:48.100 whatever the United States of America. And he would go on to govern in a very, very different way as

01:05:52.860 even he would ultimately admit. Um, the Obama presidency turned out very different, uh, than what

01:06:03.920 people who'd known Barack back in Illinois politics, uh, would have expected. Um, and indeed,

01:06:10.740 as you just emphasized in terms of that 2004, uh, democratic convention speech, um, uh, Barack was in

01:06:19.420 no way, uh, up through that time, uh, someone who, uh, uh, embraced, uh, or advocated, uh, what we now,

01:06:29.800 what we nowadays call identity politics. Um, uh, Barack during those early years was much more,

01:06:37.600 uh, uh, someone in the Dr. King tradition, uh, of a multiracial, uh, progressive coalition.

01:06:46.360 Uh, that's the, the Barack Obama who was, you know, running for the U S Senate running for the

01:06:52.180 presidency. Yeah. What happened? I think there's no question. I may have said this to,

01:06:58.940 uh, uh, the David Samuel's, uh, perhaps not, but my, uh, three days of conversations with

01:07:07.820 President Obama, uh, in the Oval Office, uh, left me with the very clear, uh, feeling and belief

01:07:17.900 that the experience of the presidency had made him blacker. That by 2016,

01:07:27.380 he is much more consciously identifying as African-American than he was in say, even 2008.

01:07:37.680 Now, I think that that change in Barack's feelings was the result of how much, uh, over the top

01:07:48.860 hostility, uh, was directed towards him, uh, from the right, uh, during his presidency.

01:07:56.300 Um, I think one of the major mistakes that the Obama White House made was in not releasing the

01:08:04.440 quote unquote long form, uh, birth certificate, uh, very early on, uh, when birtherism, uh, was first

01:08:13.340 challenging, uh, Barack's birth in Hawaii, uh, with these loony notions that he was born in Kenya or

01:08:20.560 Indonesia or wherever. Um, I think the fact that Barack is this multiracial figure, uh, someone with

01:08:29.820 a truly African father, uh, someone who spent two or three years of his young adulthood in Indonesia,

01:08:36.820 uh, because his, uh, mother's second husband, his stepfather, uh, was Indonesian. I think the fact that

01:08:46.260 this, that Barack was this sort of multinational multiracial figure, uh, made him seem more

01:08:54.920 unfamiliar, uh, to some people, uh, than had he been, uh, just a, an, you know, average, if we can

01:09:03.460 say, uh, U S raised, uh, African-American man. Hmm. Right. So he was, I mean, he's a mixed race guy from

01:09:12.120 Hawaii, uh, but why wouldn't he have just submitted the long form birth certificate? I mean, why, like

01:09:19.360 he could have put that to bed quickly and relatively easily, but he didn't. Yeah. Correct. Uh, I think

01:09:27.900 it was, I think they refused to take it seriously that they thought this was so crazy that it would

01:09:35.800 be, uh, you know, wrong to, to give this the time of day. Well, politically that was a, an unforced

01:09:44.860 error. It was, it was self-harming. David, I definitely want to talk about MLK, but before we

01:09:52.200 close out the Obama discussion, one of the comments you made, um, to Samuels was that

01:09:58.060 this sort of chasing after wealth status, celebrity friends, it leaves one hollow.

01:10:07.380 I think that's true. I think that's true for any man or a woman president or not. It's probably not

01:10:11.920 an unusual feeling for someone who runs for president because let's face it, you've got to

01:10:16.480 be a little nuts to want to be president, especially in today's day and age. You just, it's just such,

01:10:22.500 such an extraordinary sacrifice and your life changes dramatically, especially if young,

01:10:26.220 young children and all the things. So when you, when you look at Barack Obama, is that what you see

01:10:31.360 someone who is hollow? How would you, how would you describe him in that way?

01:10:37.260 I view him as a disappointing figure. Um, it was certainly a disappointing presidency,

01:10:42.180 um, you know, particularly in the foreign policy realm, uh, you know, where there were multiple,

01:10:48.260 um, uh, instances of, of, you know, grave disappointment, Syria,

01:10:53.960 Crimea back in 2014. Um, but in terms of a post-presidency, let's not forget Jimmy Carter.

01:11:01.300 Um, now Jimmy Carter, needless to say, did not have a successful presidency either. Um, but ever

01:11:08.280 since leaving the white house, um, you know, Carter, uh, built a tremendous life of public service.

01:11:15.680 Um, so there's, there's, there's a model out there, um, that you could follow, uh, if you're

01:11:21.940 Barack Obama, um, you know, not, you know, hanging with, you know, Jimmy, I doubt Jimmy Carter has ever

01:11:27.600 met Jay-Z or Beyonce. Um, there's, there's, there's another path to take, uh, if you're a progressive

01:11:34.780 Democrat and wants to, uh, continue living by the values that you once had.

01:11:41.620 Hmm. Why, why isn't he? I mean, he's not living that life. He stayed in DC for a long time. He's

01:11:47.880 at Martha's Vineyard. He's more in the see and be seen lane.

01:11:54.280 Uh, again, I, I said earlier, Megan, uh, uh, in black Chicago, people are, are most surprised that

01:12:03.900 Michelle, uh, did not keep them grounded, uh, in who they once were.

01:12:09.080 Hmm. I guess they were expecting too much of her. Uh, maybe they misjudged her and what's

01:12:15.740 important to her as well. Um, okay. So let's talk about Dr. King because you are the biographer.

01:12:23.120 I realize a lot of biographies have been written on him, but you, you want to pull a surprise for

01:12:27.600 your work. And it, it made a bunch of headlines. I think it was 2019 when you, did you get access to

01:12:37.120 the actual FBI tapes or transcripts of the tapes? Maybe just set it up for us so that the audience

01:12:43.140 knows what we're talking about. Cause you wrote the biography and we knew that the FBI had taped

01:12:47.200 him. And then what happened, what, what happened in the addendum, like the 26, 2019 reporting that led

01:12:53.160 to that, that, that revelation? Certainly, this is a little bit complicated. So bear with me in 2018,

01:13:00.920 the national archives, uh, put up on the web, uh, hundreds of thousands of pages of intelligence

01:13:08.940 community documents, uh, that back in the 1970s had been shared with congressional privately,

01:13:16.980 secretly shared with congressional investigating committees. That's pursuant to the 1990, 1992

01:13:24.560 Kennedy assassination records act, uh, which some viewers will be familiar with, uh, because

01:13:32.780 everything that went to the congressional investigating committees was then given to the

01:13:38.740 national archives. Now, one of those committees looked into the FBI's harassment of Dr. King,

01:13:45.200 another of the committees looked into the King assassination as well as the Kennedy assassination.

01:13:51.080 So in this JFK records act, humongous amount of material, there's a lot of stuff about Dr. King

01:13:59.700 that's been released in dribs and drabs over the years. Uh, the 2018 release, uh, was especially notable,

01:14:09.720 uh, because it included a lot of unredacted material based on the FBI's wiretapping and microphone

01:14:20.020 bugging of Dr. King. Now, part two of the complications. Back in 1997, a federal judge put under court seal

01:14:32.160 for 50 years, all of the raw materials from the King wiretaps and hotel recordings. Those sit in a vault

01:14:43.420 at main archives on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC. The court seal expires at the end of January, 2027.

01:14:52.400 Okay. And so you, you got access in a way that no one else has to what's in there. It's a preview of

01:15:02.200 what we're going to see in 2027. And the shocking revelation to me and to many was that Dr. King

01:15:10.020 allegedly witnessed and potentially egged on the rape of one of his congregants by one of his

01:15:22.400 colleagues. Is that correctly stated? Uh, not one of his congregants. Dr. King, uh, did not view

01:15:32.460 women as the equals of men. And that was manifest in his treatment of women who worked in his civil

01:15:41.760 rights organization. Uh, Dr. King was also myself and other biographers believe never of a monogamous

01:15:49.940 person. Um, there's a superb, very recent, uh, new King biography by my, my friend and colleague,

01:15:56.540 Jonathan I, E I G titled just King. Uh, John's is, is a very nice, important updating of my bearing

01:16:04.780 the cross. Dr. King also had, uh, certainly by 1964, a serious drinking problem, a binge drinking

01:16:14.080 problem. Um, and he had a set of friends, male friends, uh, most of them, uh, fellow pastors who

01:16:23.840 were his sort of party companions and they would do, uh, group parties, uh, would be a tasteful way to say

01:16:32.140 it. The first time that the FBI records Dr. King in a hotel room by putting up, having microphones

01:16:39.840 installed in, in, in the lamps in the hotel bedroom is at the Willard Hotel in Washington in, in early

01:16:46.880 1964. And the fruits of that recording, according to the FBI documents, uh, involved one of King's,

01:16:57.560 uh, fellow preacher buddies, uh, forcing himself upon a woman, uh, a woman, black woman who, uh, 0.99

01:17:04.840 worked at the Philadelphia Navy yard. Uh, we've known, uh, the basics of that story, uh, for over

01:17:11.880 40 years. Uh, there's a garbled version of that story in my 1981 book, uh, Before Bearing the Cross,

01:17:19.420 the FBI and Martin Luther King. Uh, but what was new in the 2018, uh, National Archives release was that

01:17:28.080 King himself was allegedly in the room, uh, uh, when this other pastor, uh, forced himself on this

01:17:36.000 woman. Um, now I'm always ambivalent about stressing, uh, that King could be very drunk at

01:17:46.240 times because it sounds like, you know, we're making a sort of frat house or frat boy excuse. Oh,

01:17:51.380 he was just drunk. Well, um, that was a problem for King. Um, uh, you know, King was under tremendous

01:18:00.040 public stress, um, always in demand, uh, always feeling pressure. Um, and the drinking got worse

01:18:07.340 as, as the years went by. You know, to me, it offers a more complete picture of the man who's been

01:18:14.900 almost deified and there, you know, no one is perfect just to put it in very simple terms,

01:18:20.600 not even Dr. Martin Luther King. Uh, you know, no one is perfect. It's not to excuse anything he did,

01:18:26.880 but you know, we need to have that understanding when we look both at the figures who we've, you

01:18:34.420 know, lionized on of the left and the left could bear this in mind when looking at the figures on the

01:18:40.280 right of whom they are so quick to condemn when they make a misstatement or a misstep,

01:18:44.960 uh, just as human nature. Uh, I love the discussion. I look forward to reading the

01:18:50.920 whole book and I'm sorry that I failed to do so the first time when it came out rising star.

01:18:55.240 David, thank you so much for all of your great, great work. And we look forward to reading you more.

01:19:00.560 Thank you, Megan. All the best. And thank you all for joining me today. I want to tell you that we

01:19:05.920 have a new episode coming out as an extra weekend show that's out Saturday morning. See you soon.

01:19:13.560 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - August 10, 2023

Potential Biden Impeachment, and Explosive Revelations About Obama, with Rep. Wesley Hunt and David Garrow ｜ Ep. 605

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript