Trump sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. Megyn Kelly reacts to the swearing in of Donald J. Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden's departure from the White House, and the reaction from supporters in the Capital One Arena.
00:00:00.520Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at New East.
00:00:12.300Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. How happy are we?
00:00:18.340Today we're broadcasting from Washington, D.C., where our prayers have been answered.
00:00:22.180It is official. Joe Biden is gone. Kamala Harris is gone.
00:00:25.760Everyone is cleaned out of the White House press office, and Donald Trump is the 47th president of the United States.
00:00:32.940J.D. Vance, the vice president. Right now, it happened.
00:00:37.600The day began at St. John's Church, where Donald Trump, his family, and incoming top officials worshipped and demonstrated that class and grace are back in the White House.
00:00:48.300Look at Melania, this incredible hat. Absolutely stunning.
00:00:52.540All right, so here we got a little fashion info for you.
00:00:56.620Lippis. It is a guy named Adam Lippis who designed that beautiful dress.
00:01:03.540And then the hat was by Eric Javits, another New York-based designer.
00:01:08.600Lippis is 52. He rose to prominence as a creative director for Oscar de la Renta, but since 2004 has his own company.
00:01:15.080He also used to design for Target, so good for her for getting a guy who is close to being a man of the people.
00:01:22.200Mr. Trump and Melania then took a brief visit over to the White House, where President Biden was heard saying two words to President Trump, welcome home.
00:01:32.680This lovely little piece of jargon came just after Mr. Biden announced pardons for Dr. Fauci, the January 6th Committee, General Mark Milley, and many, many others to protect them from, quote,
00:01:46.360So baseless and politically motivated investigations, because who would want to be the target of one of those?
00:01:52.100And just before he pardoned five, count them, five members of his family with about 15 minutes to go in his presidency, Mr. Biden for the last time using his power to protect those around him.
00:02:05.460Yeah, I mean, we did Hunter in advance, and then he did brother, Jim, and the sister and the in-laws and basically anyone named Biden other than his daughter, Ashley, who, as far as we know, has a substance abuse problem, but no criminality in her life.
00:02:21.820Okay, so at noon, his presidency did come to an end per the U.S. Constitution.
00:02:26.320Trump's began, and take a listen to the reaction from Trump supporters in the Capital One arena here in Washington.
00:02:32.560It's where, I can't remember what they're called, but the hockey team and the basketball team play here inside, thanks to the extreme cold here.
00:02:42.140It is freaking cold in Washington as the new president entered the Capitol building on Capitol Hill.
00:03:07.900So what you're seeing, they're not anywhere near the action, right?
00:03:11.420The president's walking into the rotunda on Capitol Hill a couple miles away, and so there were people who were in that room, then there were people who were in the overflow room inside the U.S. Capitol building.
00:03:22.420And then these folks in the Capitol One building, which is the sports arena, were overflow, overflow, and you would have thought they were right in front of him, given those cheers.
00:03:32.220The enthusiasm in this town right now is palpable.
00:03:37.000And here is the moment it became official, when Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, swore in Donald J. Trump as the 47th president.
00:03:49.840Please raise your right hand and repeat after me.
00:03:53.540I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear.
00:03:56.460I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear.
00:43:05.600We got to assume like Biden didn't write this.
00:43:07.920But we can't expect him to have any level of self-awareness.
00:43:12.080But I just pulled it up on my phone where he says that he's protecting them against baseless and politically motivated investigations.
00:43:22.200And he says they wreak havoc on the lives, safety, and financial security of targeted individuals and their families.
00:43:28.500Even when individuals have done nothing wrong and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage their reputations and finances.
00:43:40.120You know, that is and he called it the worst kind of partisan politics.
00:43:46.260You know, coming from the ostensible leader of a party that pioneered and used lawfare as its primary electoral strategy, it really is galling.
00:44:06.940They always said Trump was going to do it and he may have egged on his crowds to say, lock her up.
00:44:13.500But he then actually didn't sick the Department of Justice on his political enemies when he got in there.
00:44:19.080And I think said to advisers like, I'm not actually going to do that.
00:44:22.740But now, what leg do they have to stand on if Trump wants to go in and preemptively pardon his entire White House staff and go after his political enemies?
00:47:04.600We were saying, like, he could pardon himself, but only for the federal crimes, not for those state prosecutions in New York or in Georgia.
00:47:09.820Well, guess what, Dr. Fauci and J6 committee members and General Milley, you're all in the same position.
00:47:15.380And, you know, somebody was pointing out online, let's be real.
00:47:18.420Well, if they were prosecuted by the feds in Washington, D.C., not a one would be convicted of anything, given the jury pool here.
00:47:51.180And what's I think even just from a big picture perspective, we don't want to lose our sense of shock at this type of like banana republic behavior.
00:47:58.040And James Biden, I had actually, like, in the Biden tornado of corruption over the last half decade, forgotten that he had completely—he's obviously lied to Congress.
00:48:06.980And James Comer recommended that he be prosecuted.
00:48:10.040He recommended it to Merrick Garland's Department of Justice, so obviously dead on arrival, but would have pursued it had James Biden not been pardoned.
00:48:16.500Because James Biden said—he said straight up that Joe Biden did not meet with their business partners while they were seeking a deal with these Chinese businessmen.
00:48:49.740My family and I are deeply grateful for the president's actions today.
00:48:52.680After 43 years of faithful service in uniform to our nation, protecting and defending the Constitution,
00:48:57.360I do not wish to spend whatever remaining time the Lord grants me fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights.
00:49:04.860I do not want to put my family, friends, and those with whom I served through the resulting distraction, expense, and anxiety.
00:49:12.000How are you any different from Donald Trump, who's 78 years old and really didn't want to spend the time he had left fighting for his freedom in four different jurisdictions?
00:49:23.180All of these Democrats—I assume, I don't know what Milley is, but he certainly sounds like a Democrat, and he behaved like one at the end of Trump's term—want such sympathy for themselves.
00:49:41.680Like, they don't—it doesn't occur to them that they may have contributed to the problem.
00:49:45.940They're still unwilling to admit that, and that's what I saw from Gayle King, too, when she's out there waxing poetic about how she doesn't see any people of color at Trump's inauguration.
00:49:56.380It's like, you're missing the entire point.
00:49:57.940You were still missing the entire point.
00:49:59.400The House of Celebrity Apprentice just beat you in an election twice.
00:50:23.000Or, like, those guys who work at the banks on Wall Street who just kind of went along with, no, I definitely want to hire another woman for sure, even though the three weakest people on my team happen to be female.
00:50:39.600No, but honestly, like, that's why there was such a backlash to Caitlyn Clark owning her white privilege when she was recognized as Time's Athlete of the Year.
00:50:52.740What I heard from everybody, my audience, my friends, my colleagues, was we don't have to do that anymore.
00:50:59.920We won a whole presidential election and a House and a Senate so that we don't have to do that anymore.
00:51:06.220And that's why Trump is just such a breath of fresh air.
00:51:08.700He comes in and he's like, you know, he dropped some swears yesterday at the Capital One Arena.
00:52:31.800It's so, I don't, like, what is it that's so attractive about that photo?
00:52:35.480I just don't know how Republicans got the upper hand in the culture war.
00:52:39.140Again, like 2012, it was the Republican autopsy was saying that you needed to moderate in order to win voters.
00:52:45.180And here we are, it's 2025, and Donald Trump, a man who spent his life as a Democrat, has completely shifted the cultural tide to what Eliana was saying.
00:52:53.380All of these, it came to be called wokeness, but all of this sort of cultural progressivism, some people call it cultural Marxism, had started stacking up slowly in our institutions.
00:53:41.980And how are they going to deal with this?
00:53:46.360Like the women's studies departments that have completely sold out to the trans lobby, how are they going to handle the fact that they can't insist on preferred pronouns, that there's an executive order saying there are only two genders?
00:54:03.100But it'll be like how these things actually get implemented and the pushback legally and culturally and as a practical matter are still a big question mark for me.
00:54:15.000Like that's going to be a big storyline over the next coming weeks and months as Trump actually gets to work.
00:54:20.760And of course, the immigration thing is going to take top slot on the news channels because already today, already today they are showing and circulating videos, have you seen it, of the so-called asylum seekers, you know, alleged asylum seekers being told CPB1 has been shut down.
00:55:08.080We just went through the new New York Times Ipsos numbers.
00:55:10.880So those those images, I think they may ultimately have a little bit of you may see that showing up a little bit in public opinion polling.
00:55:17.880We saw that back in 2017 during the kids in cages false narrative.
00:55:21.360But I don't think it's going to work the way the media thinks it will.
00:55:24.600I wonder is they are definitely not in favor of closing the border or finishing off the border fence.
00:55:30.700But Trump didn't lose because he had restrictive immigration policies.
00:55:34.440And in, oh, God, you know, in 2016 or 2020.
00:55:38.080He didn't lose because of kids in cages.
00:55:39.880And I think now he knows how important it is.
00:55:43.520I'm not sure those images will be particularly damaging to him.
00:56:04.860And like he said, there's only so many times you can tell people what the price of bread is.
00:56:09.480But, you know, you see what's happening at our border.
00:56:11.600And look, you know, the reason I think somebody like, you know, Tucker Carlson, who's obviously a big fan of Trump, is so devoted to him is he expects to see that border closed.
00:56:23.780Like his top surrogates and closest people to him and including his family members, they want that border closed.
00:56:31.920And it's not just happening at the border.
00:56:33.840As we've seen in the past four years, it's happening in New York City and it's happening in Chicago and it's happening in Colorado.
00:56:40.800And that's why I think he got coast to coast support for this policy nationally is that like DEI and the gender ideology that trickled down to touch, you know, all Americans.
00:56:55.180So did this immigration crisis where it was everywhere and continues to be.
00:57:01.260And that's why the other piece of this is Tom Homan, who's heading up the deportation force.
00:57:05.620He said that he there was a report that he was going to start in Chicago.
00:57:10.220But the administration is being cagey about where they're going to start because they don't want all the illegals to flee from one city to the next.
00:57:16.940I think they want some element of strategic ambiguity.
00:57:20.620Yeah, right. Exactly. Like we used to have in Taiwan.
00:57:31.260And I do expect the media to make a huge sob story out of this like, oh, poor.
00:57:36.980But they're setting the stage, you know, Homan and others now have been rejiggering the narrative to there's no such thing as family separations.
00:57:45.720The families are welcome to leave with the illegal.
00:57:49.040It's not our obligation to leave the illegal here so that he or she can stay with their family who may or may not be here lawfully.
00:57:55.700That is that's the choice of the family.
00:57:58.240And I heard I think it was Kristi Noem say at her confirmation hearing when somebody gets arrested and they have to go into prison, we don't talk about family separation.
00:58:07.700It's like, right, you you're going to have to leave your family because you did something wrong.
00:58:54.280Plenty of sources can tell you that if you actually talk to people on the border.
00:58:57.260So when you see these sob stories, they are representing even worse stories when you let them in.
00:59:03.320I mean, we have to have a process and Tom Homan is somebody who came out of the Obama administration to the conversation we were having earlier about just rolling back the clock to before Obama dramatically upended the way that immigration worked in this country via executive orders in particular.
00:59:18.400But he's someone who's a great example.
00:59:20.240Like the Trump administration isn't necessarily like aggressively devising these innovative policies.
00:59:25.560They're literally just going back to a baseline.
00:59:42.940Does it feel like an emergency where you are standing?
00:59:47.240Feels no different than 20 minutes ago or 30 minutes ago or an hour ago when we got here early this morning, Rachel.
00:59:55.180The one practical change that we do know that has gone into effect here is that that CBP One app that was put into place by the Biden administration, part of their efforts, stated effort to have a more fair, safe, humane, orderly process at the border has been discontinued by the Trump administration and President Trump.
01:00:21.820But you know who you know who I want to hear from, who has I think has his finger on the pulse of, you know, all immigration changes is probably not him.
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01:03:33.840I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.
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01:07:53.000He served as a Marine for five years, I think it was.
01:07:55.600And, like, to see him up there and to see his loving mother, who I'm sure this is by far the greatest accomplishment she's seen in her own life, you know?
01:08:04.360I mean, her daughter Lindsay's great, too, but this is remarkable.
01:08:14.720J.D. Vance just turned 40 a few months ago, which is why he has toddlers up there with him.
01:08:19.920And that's another piece of the wonderful moment, which is we're going to have him, for God willing, decades to come.
01:08:26.240And if all goes well, he could be the person to whom Trump passes the baton in four years to keep this whole thing going.
01:08:34.100So, anyway, for me, by far the number one moment.
01:08:37.380You know, there's another aspect of that.
01:08:39.820I looked at it and saw something different, which is interesting.
01:08:41.960But there were a lot of storylines colliding in that moment, which is that he chose Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court Justice, to administer the oath to him.
01:08:54.500And his wife, Usha, clerked for Kavanaugh, I believe, on the D.C. circuit.
01:09:00.620And then she clerked for John Roberts.
01:09:02.200So she was a clerk to the two guys who were up there administering the oaths of office.
01:09:07.140And I had a conversation with J.D. way back when, before he ran for any kind of office, who relayed the impact that Kavanaugh's ordeal had on him and sort of the way he saw things.
01:09:22.900Well, Trump played a big role in sticking by Kavanaugh and getting him elected to the court.
01:09:27.420And Kavanaugh is also a longtime friend of Amy Chua's at Yale.
01:09:31.700And her daughter, I believe, also clerked for him.
01:09:34.480So he's sort of a central figure in all of this.
01:09:37.600And it was really nice to see him up there sort of tying it all together.
01:09:45.860And I thought both of those guys have come under serious fire from leftists who are out to ruin them.
01:09:52.820J.D., there was a period where even the Republican Party was saying he's not going to make it, that they're going to pull him after Trump named him, that he wasn't going to survive childless cat lady.
01:10:02.460And by the way, for the record, I said from the beginning, you people are fools.
01:10:13.940And so there was a poetic justice to Kavanaugh being the one to administer the oath to J.D. today.
01:10:19.080Well, and I think if you told venture capitalist author J.D. Vance that in 2025, Brett Kavanaugh, like tell him, you know, what year was that, 2018 when the Kavanaugh stuff happened?
01:10:30.220And tell him in November of 2018 that in just seven years, you will have your hand on the Bible and Brett Kavanaugh will be the man swearing you in as vice president of the United States.
01:10:40.240I mean, J.D. Vance's story is so irresistible that even Ron Howard made a Netflix movie about it.
01:10:45.900And as we were just before he was a known Republican Trump supporter.
01:10:49.060Right. And it just it gave me chills as you were walking us through his background, Megan, because, you know, that doesn't get to have that doesn't happen to a lot of people.
01:10:56.860It actually doesn't happen to a lot of people in our politics anymore because of the way upward mobility and things have gotten stagnated and he beat the odds.
01:11:04.280And there he is. He has the story that I think the press would be slobbering over right now if he were a Democrat.
01:11:27.140They were talking about how Donald Trump stands for white supremacy.
01:11:29.640Not a lot of people of color except second lady of the United States and the children.
01:11:34.160Right. In fact, you guys, can we pull can we pull over the soundbite of J.D. Vance in my interview of him in 2017?
01:11:40.900On when I said, are you going to run for office and his reaction to it?
01:11:45.840I think you guys can probably find it.
01:11:47.200We've played it before, but it's a great one when I interviewed him back then.
01:11:50.980So I feel like I we can almost say exactly what he would have said.
01:11:55.500He wouldn't have believed that, you know, there was it was clear when I sat with him in 17 that he was possibly contemplating a future in politics because he had just left Peter Thiel and working for him in Silicon Valley.
01:12:05.980And he told me one of the reasons he left is here he is, you know, this Midwestern guy from Ohio who didn't have a lot of travel in his life growing up, if any, Kentucky, as we know, down in the holla.
01:12:17.120But he goes out to San Francisco and he said people are openly defecating on the streets.
01:12:27.080So he comes back home and he started, you know, this sort of initiative where he was going to help people like him get out into the workforce.
01:12:35.020And it never really went anywhere, but it always seemed like a placeholder to sort of rejigger the next step.
01:12:40.760Um, and he and Usha were just starting their children, their, their family.
01:12:46.320His wife was clerking too and had a newborn baby while she clerked for the court.
01:12:50.840And he played a big role in helping, helping her out while she was doing something else.
01:12:55.640That's why it's so insane when people are trying to say that he doesn't like women.
01:12:59.460It's like how, what kind of a husband who's very accomplished in his own right and went to Yale law school and worked in Silicon Valley would be that supportive of his very busy wife.
01:13:09.060Who's pregnant with their child, who then is clerking on the Supreme Court.
01:13:45.380I have to say it's a delight to see somebody who is incredibly stylish and sophisticated and classy resume this role.
01:13:55.960I am sick of the Vogue's of the world trying to make Corrie Jean-Pierre and her alleged style a thing.
01:14:03.860Jill Biden, who I grant you, uh, you know, has been a lifetime partner to Joe Biden.
01:14:10.580I can't say good partner given that she allowed him to run for reelection, but prior to now, she seems like she was okay.
01:14:15.760But for his infirmity, trying to make her in a fashion icon, Melania Trump, an actual supermodel who is about six foot four in this, in this video we're watching now.
01:14:24.480So never in Vogue, never on the cover of Vogue and man, just the elegance of that.
01:14:30.340That my, my favorite thing though, we were like the memes about the hat because she, she, they were like, she's taking a list of all the enemies.
01:14:40.200She's under that hat, like, and you, and you, and you, and then people went wild.
01:14:45.460Cause Trump, when he came out to be sworn in, tried to give her a kiss and he couldn't get to her face.
01:14:50.560Or maybe he was just doing the polite thing that sometimes our men do or like, you're all made up and they don't totally make contact.
01:15:12.800Actually, we talked earlier in the show about how Oscar de la Renta was sort of openly posting on social media about how they addressed Usha and Ivanka.
01:15:21.000And if I'm remembering correctly, it was only like Dolce & Gabbana that would dress Melania during the first term, something like that.
01:15:26.940And now I'm so fascinated that these brands actually want to be associated with, right?
01:15:31.340Like they're not just saying like, oh, hey, we did this, but don't tell anyone.
01:15:35.140Like they're going out there and posting it to their own marketing platforms.