The Megyn Kelly Show - Racist Attacks on Clarence Thomas, and Our Culture Today, with Glenn Greenwald, Nancy Armstrong, and Suzy Weiss

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.580 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Friday.

00:00:16.300 We are headed into a long holiday weekend where we celebrate all that is great about this country of ours.

00:00:23.360 And some people are already melting down on Twitter saying there's nothing to celebrate.

00:00:26.960 Oh, well, wait until they see what I've got planned here in my little town in New Jersey.

00:00:31.720 Can't wait to show them how patriotic we're going.

00:00:34.660 And if you're not an America lover, well, on you.

00:00:37.540 All right. You don't have to live here. You don't have to sit around lamenting how terrible we are.

00:00:42.200 Problems, yes. Sure. It's from the beginning.

00:00:45.440 That's natural and we can work on them.

00:00:47.480 But to say this is not a great country is just oblivious and agenda driven.

00:00:52.280 So we have much to be thankful for.

00:00:53.800 However, there are many folks struggling and, you know, that's true because we have record inflation.

00:01:00.840 We have record gas prices and a lot of Americans believe that right now our government is on the wrong track from our political discourse to those prices and the inflation and so on.

00:01:12.460 President Biden, however, says, don't believe your lion eyes.

00:01:15.700 You're happy. You're fine. You're really happy.

00:01:18.440 Seriously. He says no one believes that America is going backwards.

00:01:22.500 Really? Well, I don't know.

00:01:24.820 The only thing that's destabilizing, he says, is the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:01:28.100 You see, all of our problems began last Friday with Dobbs.

00:01:32.000 That's the problem he wants you to know.

00:01:34.120 And of course, he believes that the answer is for you to vote.

00:01:36.500 He wants now the Senate to change the filibuster rules, but just just on the issue of abortion and privacy.

00:01:45.560 OK, now he knows that's not going to happen.

00:01:47.660 So he's really proposing no solution at all.

00:01:50.440 But it's such a precarious post, right, to suggest that we need to change the filibuster rules.

00:01:54.980 The one thing preserving minority rights in the Senate because he doesn't like the Dobbs decision.

00:02:00.100 It's crazy talk.

00:02:02.140 We're going to get to that and plenty more with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, who now publishes on Substack and is with me now.

00:02:15.440 Glenn, great to see you.

00:02:16.380 How are you?

00:02:17.060 Hey, Megan.

00:02:17.560 Great to see you as well.

00:02:19.420 OK, so there he goes.

00:02:20.940 We're going to get.

00:02:21.640 So this is when he said that.

00:02:23.280 Let's get rid of the filibuster.

00:02:24.240 In fact, we have this.

00:02:25.080 I might as well play it.

00:02:26.020 No, we do.

00:02:26.380 We do.

00:02:26.660 Let's listen to it.

00:02:27.580 It's soundbite three.

00:02:28.340 I believe we have to codify Roe v.

00:02:31.620 Wade in the law.

00:02:32.920 And the way to do that is to make sure the Congress votes to do that.

00:02:37.380 And if the filibuster gets in the way, it's like voting rights.

00:02:40.480 It should be.

00:02:41.240 We provide an exception for this.

00:02:43.960 All right.

00:02:44.160 So he's talking about getting rid of the filibuster just for this.

00:02:46.480 And then he went on to clarify he means for privacy rights.

00:02:49.840 Isn't that how the Democrats got into this mess?

00:02:52.840 They got rid of the filibuster for federal court judges, but they said not for the Supreme Court.

00:02:57.260 And Mitch McConnell said to Harry Reid, you will rue the day you did that because you

00:03:01.420 will not always be in charge of this chamber.

00:03:03.240 Then the Republicans took control and they got rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court

00:03:07.460 judges.

00:03:08.380 And that is how we got Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett with votes that were

00:03:14.480 far less than 60, which you would have needed in the past.

00:03:17.040 Kavanaugh only got 50 votes.

00:03:19.800 And that's how the Democrats got the Supreme Court majority, a conservative majority that they

00:03:24.320 hate so much.

00:03:25.020 So now they want to go back to their same old tricks, which similarly will come back to haunt

00:03:30.840 them again, because they even if they did all this stuff, will not always be in charge of the

00:03:35.860 Senate chamber.

00:03:36.860 And the Republicans will use the same tricks against them in the future.

00:03:40.380 Your take on it.

00:03:41.360 First of all, I mean, this is a kind of bizarre, confounding refusal to confront reality that

00:03:47.220 repeats itself in so many other contexts.

00:03:49.280 Whenever I try and get people to understand that censorship is actually quite dangerous,

00:03:54.460 even if they're really happy about the particular individual who just got silenced, the argument

00:03:59.720 I try and make is I know you're really happy with that person who just got banned or silenced

00:04:04.800 because you don't like them.

00:04:05.840 But this system that you're supporting one day will be used by other people, including

00:04:11.100 people who are your adversaries or enemies, and it will come to silence maybe yourself

00:04:17.080 or your own allies.

00:04:18.320 And that's a good reason not to cheer for it.

00:04:21.120 And oftentimes this is very difficult in this kind of very polarized and partisan culture that

00:04:26.840 requires immediate gratification, especially with social media, to look past the next six

00:04:32.400 seconds and think about the implications of the systemic values that you're cheering.

00:04:37.940 The other thing, though, Megan, that I think is important to note is a lot of this is obviously

00:04:43.060 about Democratic Party politics, interneesan Democratic Party politics.

00:04:47.140 The reality is Joe Biden has never really been particularly pro-choice as a politician.

00:04:53.900 He obviously has always identified as someone whose Catholicism guides his politics.

00:05:00.260 He's been a longtime supporter, for example, of the Hyde Amendment, which is very controversial

00:05:04.200 among liberals.

00:05:04.840 It prohibits the use of federal funds to support abortion.

00:05:08.240 He only abandoned that view in 2019 as he was gearing up to run for president.

00:05:12.820 And what's really happening is after Dobbs, most liberal activists are screaming and yelling

00:05:18.000 that the Biden administration isn't taking more radical steps in the wake of that decision.

00:05:23.820 The Biden administration, however, doesn't want to do that because they realize the majority

00:05:27.960 of Americans aren't liberal activists.

00:05:29.720 And with the midterm elections coming up, won't look kindly upon that.

00:05:33.520 So he gave them kind of one crumb, which is to say, look, OK, I'll be in favor of suspending

00:05:39.140 the filibuster, knowing that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema would never approve it.

00:05:43.180 So it was kind of a meaningless crumb to hand the Democrats when in reality, all the things

00:05:47.660 that they're demanding that he do, he really won't do because he wants to win the midterm

00:05:50.800 election.

00:05:51.240 Right.

00:05:52.440 It's all such a legal sleight of hand.

00:05:54.760 And so is AOC jumping up and down and saying we need abortion clinics on federal land and

00:06:00.860 in federal parks and Elizabeth Warren saying, you know, we've got to pack the court or AOC

00:06:06.160 saying we've got to impeach sitting majority conservative justice.

00:06:10.640 These are all lies.

00:06:11.820 They know they're lies.

00:06:13.220 By the way, if AOC has the votes in the House to vote to impeach a Supreme Court justice,

00:06:17.540 go for it, lady.

00:06:18.700 Let's see you do your stuff.

00:06:19.880 Be your influential self because that's all you need to actual impeachment, not for a

00:06:24.180 conviction, which is how it would have to work.

00:06:26.580 But let's great make it.

00:06:28.060 It's all a lie, Glenn.

00:06:29.380 It's so annoying.

00:06:31.560 If you talk to anyone in the House who has served with AOC, including or maybe have been

00:06:36.780 especially members of the Democratic caucus, she's respected by almost nobody.

00:06:41.340 They regard her as a joke.

00:06:42.860 And I don't know if you remember this, but after the 2018 election, she wanted to serve

00:06:51.700 on the Finance and Commerce Committee, which is a very powerful committee.

00:06:55.980 And she ran against somebody from the New York delegation.

00:06:59.460 It's a seat reserved for New York.

00:07:01.440 Kathleen Rice, who had opposed Nancy Pelosi's reelection in 2018.

00:07:05.920 I guess this was 2020.

00:07:07.580 And the Democrats who decide committee assignments voted overwhelmingly to put Kathleen Rice in

00:07:13.000 that place and not AOC.

00:07:14.960 She lost like 47 to 12 because they know that her social media celebrity or her cultural

00:07:19.860 celebrity never translates into anything actually serious about policymaking or anything else

00:07:25.120 like that.

00:07:25.480 So she's on Colbert and she's getting retweeted, but it never goes anywhere.

00:07:29.060 It's purely performative.

00:07:30.860 And she knows that as well, that she's basically her role is to take disaffected liberals and

00:07:36.780 leftists and pretend that the Democratic Party cares about them because there's at least one

00:07:42.760 person, AOC, who gets to rant and rave in a way that's satisfying to them, even though

00:07:47.100 there's no chance that the Democratic Party would ever follow her because they know down that

00:07:51.760 path lies electoral destruction.

00:07:53.640 And as you say, it's just all absurd theater in which all the participants know that.

00:07:59.500 And it's just, as you say, as well, kind of just annoying more than anything else to watch it.

00:08:05.020 Yeah, she is a congressional Kardashian.

00:08:07.620 That's what AOC is.

00:08:09.560 Reformative, platforming, using it just to get her face on TV because she loves attention.

00:08:15.320 But there is no substance there.

00:08:16.600 And if you go back, I am on record.

00:08:18.360 When she first took office, I had an open mind.

00:08:20.740 I said, OK, she's got an unusual background.

00:08:22.520 I got an open mind.

00:08:23.280 She's not exactly my cup of tea, but I'm not going to call her names.

00:08:26.420 I'm going to say that she said a bunch of stupid stuff.

00:08:28.460 I said, OK, she's young.

00:08:29.340 Maybe she's learning.

00:08:30.420 No, she's dumb.

00:08:31.860 I'm sorry.

00:08:32.480 I'm there.

00:08:33.300 She is not a smart person and she won't do the work that's required to get smart, which

00:08:38.180 is particularly galling.

00:08:40.180 Yeah.

00:08:40.460 You know, it's funny.

00:08:41.520 I interviewed AOC during her primary run against Joe Crawley when barely anyone knew who she

00:08:46.640 was because, you know, no one expected Joe Crawley, a very senior member of the Democratic

00:08:50.940 House caucus, you know, in there for 10 terms.

00:08:53.760 I don't think he had visited the Queens district he represented in like 15 years.

00:08:56.940 I doubt he could even place it on a map, but that's how incumbents get reelected.

00:09:01.020 He was a creature of Washington, raising tons of money, talked about as a replacement for

00:09:05.180 Nancy Pelosi, a speaker when if and when she ever decides to fund he retire.

00:09:10.080 Um, and I interviewed AOC and I was actually kind of, you know, I had the same reaction

00:09:15.700 as you guys.

00:09:16.200 I was a little impressed.

00:09:17.580 It was obvious to me that she had a political talent.

00:09:20.540 I like when there are new people on the political scene who have more common experiences.

00:09:25.660 I like Nancy Mace because she worked as a waitress in the Waffle House to support her

00:09:30.120 family.

00:09:30.800 You know, I like people who come from diverse backgrounds who don't have family connections.

00:09:34.640 So I was open minded for that reason.

00:09:36.120 But also, Megan, her whole argument was she wanted to get to Congress and challenge not

00:09:42.360 the Republicans, but the Democratic establishment.

00:09:45.240 That's how she convinced people to vote for her.

00:09:47.580 And the minute she got there, you know, even in the interview, I asked her, would you vote

00:09:50.900 for Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer for their like 110th term is as it to be reelected as

00:09:56.520 as House leaders?

00:09:57.480 And she said, no, no, absolutely not.

00:09:59.240 I think we need a new generation.

00:10:00.560 The first vote she took when she won was voting for Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer.

00:10:05.160 So the whole thing has kind of been a fraud.

00:10:07.400 And I think the reason is what you said, that she just doesn't have any of the discipline

00:10:11.200 or follow through.

00:10:12.960 All she wants is social media pause.

00:10:14.980 And, you know, if that's all you care about, you'll never really do anything particularly

00:10:19.100 disturbing or subversive or unpopular.

00:10:22.360 It's heartening to know that people on Capitol Hill get it, too, even within her own party and

00:10:27.780 see sort of the Kardashian-esque nature.

00:10:30.180 No offense to the Kardashians because they're very good at what they do, but there's not a whole

00:10:33.400 ton of substance there.

00:10:34.560 They're all about Kim Kardashian got a law passed.

00:10:37.700 She was vital to the criminal justice reform by all that.

00:10:40.300 The Trump administration passed working with the ACLU.

00:10:43.240 AOC doesn't even have anything like that on her resume.

00:10:45.780 So it's true.

00:10:46.660 It's almost like an insult to the Kardashians.

00:10:48.740 Kim got Alice Marie Johnson out of jail.

00:10:50.820 And Alice Marie Johnson is an amazing person.

00:10:52.540 That's exactly one of my favorite episodes that we've ever done.

00:10:55.280 So I'll have to give her that.

00:10:57.940 OK, so speaking of people who have been elected 110 times but still think this is their moment.

00:11:02.780 This is their moment.

00:11:04.640 Hillary Clinton has weighed in.

00:11:06.820 And I'm saying that because Chris Salizo, we talked about this yesterday, actually said

00:11:10.260 this is Hillary's moment.

00:11:11.680 Glenn, this is her moment.

00:11:14.200 So she, as you may have seen, has taken a shot at Clarence Thomas.

00:11:18.060 And in a way that's really offensive to me, because if you if you know about Clarence Thomas's

00:11:22.780 background, you know, he grew up in the very racist South and his dad was subjected to

00:11:27.720 awful, awful, you know, racist South behavior.

00:11:30.480 And so was Clarence Thomas.

00:11:31.740 And he's if anything, this is a guy who's an example in how not to leave a life of grievance.

00:11:37.120 You know, he's a guy who ascended based on his own hard work.

00:11:39.840 He's never been somebody to say what was me.

00:11:41.500 And now Hillary Clinton comes out and says the following soundbite seven.

00:11:47.360 I went to law school with him.

00:11:48.880 He's been a person of grievance for as long as I've known him.

00:11:54.340 Resentment, grievance, anger.

00:11:57.180 And the thing that is, well, there's so many things about it that are deeply distressing.

00:12:02.920 But women are going to die.

00:12:04.680 Gail, women will die.

00:12:07.940 Hello, pot.

00:12:08.780 It's like a life of grievance.

00:12:12.020 Hello, Megan.

00:12:14.800 There's so many amazing things about that quote.

00:12:16.760 So, first of all, I don't even believe Hillary Clinton.

00:12:19.760 You know, you went to law school, as did I.

00:12:22.760 It's very uncommon if somebody is in a different class than you, given how large law school classes

00:12:28.380 are for you to really know them in such an intimate and deep way that you can opine on

00:12:33.540 what their personality was like to that degree of detail from 50 years ago.

00:12:39.180 On top of that, Clarence Thomas wasn't even a conservative in law school.

00:12:43.140 It was kind of the beginning of his transition.

00:12:44.640 He got there with fairly conventional views and became a conservative kind of along the way.

00:12:49.100 But beyond that, the two points that I just want to note about that is, number one, needless

00:12:54.780 to say, if some white conservative woman, white wealthy conservative woman spoke of any

00:13:01.240 black politician the way Hillary Clinton just spoke of Clarence Thomas, he's an angry man

00:13:06.680 driven by grievance and resentment, there'd be like a national day of crises over racism

00:13:13.840 declared instantly because that's basically every trope that is used about African-American

00:13:19.580 men for decades.

00:13:21.280 You know, they're angry, they're complaining, they're whiny, they're driven by grievance.

00:13:24.860 And to say that about Clarence Thomas, who whatever else you want to think of him, like

00:13:29.000 we were just saying about AOC or Nancy Mace or whoever, you know, didn't come from wealth.

00:13:33.640 He didn't come from like family privileged.

00:13:35.380 He worked his way up into, you know, Yale Law School and then, you know, a top government

00:13:40.720 position and now a Supreme Court justice.

00:13:43.240 To say that about him of all people, it's just such basic, obvious, racist stereotypes

00:13:49.620 about how liberals talk about members of marginalized groups that they believe they own, who aren't

00:13:55.040 sufficiently compliant and obedient.

00:13:57.300 But the other thing about it, Megan, is I don't know if you saw this, but just last month,

00:14:01.480 Sonia Sotomayor, who has worked with Clarence Thomas.

00:14:04.960 Yeah, go ahead.

00:14:05.740 Like side by side since 2009, talked about how there's no justice with whom she disagrees

00:14:11.540 more.

00:14:11.880 And yet she regards him as one of the most compassionate and empathetic people she's ever

00:14:15.840 met.

00:14:16.180 If you have that, definitely play it because it's the exact opposite of what Hillary Clinton

00:14:19.400 said.

00:14:19.780 This is a classy move by Sonia Sotomayor, and it's one of the reasons why I'm while I

00:14:24.160 might criticize any one of their jurisprudence, I'm I'm pretty defensive of the Supreme Court

00:14:28.160 justices as human beings.

00:14:29.720 They have a tough job.

00:14:30.900 They tend to be very respectful of one another.

00:14:32.760 Not always, but I have a lot of respect for them, having covered them for a long time.

00:14:36.840 And here she is being a very classy lady.

00:14:40.380 Watch.

00:14:40.540 But I suspect I have probably disagreed with him more than with any other justice.

00:14:49.260 And yet Justice Thomas is the one justice in the building that literally knows every employee's

00:15:00.440 name, every one of them.

00:15:03.500 And not only does he know their names, he remembers their family's names and histories.

00:15:08.980 He's the first one who will go up to someone when you're walking with him and say, is your

00:15:15.900 son okay?

00:15:17.440 How's your daughter doing in college?

00:15:20.800 He's the first one that when my stepfather died, sent me flowers in Florida.

00:15:28.320 He is a man who cares deeply about the court as an institution, about the people who work

00:15:37.200 there, but about people.

00:15:41.140 She actually knows him.

00:15:44.280 And you know, it knows him very well.

00:15:46.240 Like they work side by side for 13 years.

00:15:49.120 It'd be like, you know, there's only nine of them.

00:15:50.760 So imagine how closely they work together.

00:15:53.360 So if you hear her saying that, and she has no reason to say that unless it's true exactly

00:15:58.300 because of what she said, he's the person with whom she disagrees most on the court.

00:16:02.180 What is it that we are to think about where Hillary Clinton got this caricature from, given

00:16:08.460 that she doesn't actually know Clarence Thomas at all?

00:16:12.180 I mean, even if they had some passing acquaintance 50 years ago in law school to just to create

00:16:16.780 this image of him that is based on pure kind of caricatures and stereotypes.

00:16:22.460 I mean, if any of if the ideology were inverted, that person would be banned from decent life

00:16:30.740 forever.

00:16:31.280 And I think, you know, there was a lot of stories and Ruth Bader Ginsburg talked about

00:16:35.260 it as well, that actually Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a very similar kind

00:16:39.520 of friendship.

00:16:40.060 They used to go hunting.

00:16:41.140 They would dine out a lot.

00:16:42.780 They often spoke very fondly of one another.

00:16:45.180 And I actually really think that our politics so much is missing exactly that, because I

00:16:54.340 really do believe that most people most people are fundamentally decent.

00:16:58.440 And so often we're denied the opportunity to recognize in one another our common humanity,

00:17:03.820 because we're told that if we have political differences or ideological differences with

00:17:07.700 somebody, we're required to regard them as evil.

00:17:10.560 And very few people outside like sociopaths and psychopaths are really that kind of cartoonishly

00:17:16.160 evil.

00:17:16.540 And yet we're always being encouraged to view one another in that way.

00:17:20.160 So those examples are not just inspiring, but important.

00:17:24.060 Mm hmm.

00:17:24.500 Well, I saw you tweeting about this.

00:17:26.020 I hadn't seen it before your tweet on on the negative list of what people do.

00:17:31.480 Rex Chapman, who is he was very popular on Twitter for animal videos like that apparently

00:17:38.460 he stole from other people.

00:17:39.560 So I kind of thought when I first followed the guy, oh, sweet.

00:17:41.820 He loves animals.

00:17:42.580 OK, yeah, me too.

00:17:44.220 So you follow him.

00:17:44.840 And then he got more and more political.

00:17:46.280 And then the next thing you knew, CNN Plus hired him and he had about two days of shows

00:17:51.740 before CNN Plus went out of business.

00:17:54.440 But this guy with the racist tropes last night on Twitter about Thomas, too.

00:18:00.220 I mean, first of all, I find it quite notable and odd that there were five Supreme Court

00:18:08.120 justices who voted to overturn Roe and a sixth who voted to uphold the Mississippi law with

00:18:12.760 Roberts who didn't vote to overturn Roe.

00:18:15.280 The majority opinion was not written by Clarence Thomas.

00:18:17.620 It was written by Samuel Alito.

00:18:19.420 And yet I would say like 75 to 80 of 85 percent of the angry liberal commentary has focused

00:18:24.820 for some reason on Clarence Thomas.

00:18:26.460 Why is that?

00:18:27.160 And then you look at what Rex Chapman said and he has become, you know, a very popular

00:18:34.220 liberal social media influencer.

00:18:36.580 He's far away from those neutral kind of animal videos that he stole that he caused him to

00:18:40.440 be a popular Twitter figure.

00:18:42.440 He basically has said that Clarence Thomas isn't really black because he doesn't seem to

00:18:47.640 like the NBA since he doesn't show up at the NBA games.

00:18:50.920 I mean, I don't I know that in order to be like genuine new black, you have to like like

00:18:56.640 basketball.

00:18:57.780 But then for me, like the more offensive thing that he did was he said that Clarence Thomas

00:19:03.920 is basically just like a dancing puppet of Mitch McConnell playing, obviously, with very

00:19:09.120 racist stereotypes about how black men can't really think for themselves.

00:19:13.000 He's basically a house slave of Mitch McConnell and then proceeded to post photos of not just

00:19:20.400 Clarence Thomas, but him with Jenny Thomas, who's white.

00:19:24.060 So the first two photos were of that race, interracial married couple.

00:19:28.800 And then the second two photos were of a different interracial married couple who Rex Chapman has

00:19:34.900 identified as kind of the next protege of Mitch McConnell.

00:19:37.780 Yeah.

00:19:38.100 So here you have Mitch spent on the show a bunch of times, the AG of Kentucky and potentially

00:19:42.280 next governor.

00:19:43.680 Exactly.

00:19:44.120 So look at those.

00:19:44.840 It's just like four pictures gratuitously of two different interracial couples claiming

00:19:50.900 that they're kind of captive to Mitch McConnell, who also, by the way, is in an interracial

00:19:55.180 marriage.

00:19:56.620 And the idea that this has now become an acceptable way to demean people, you know, as somebody is

00:20:03.740 in an interracial marriage myself, I did react with visceral disgust and contempt for that.

00:20:09.340 I mean, that is the kind of like thing that you used to hear prior to Loving versus Virginia

00:20:14.580 when miscegenation laws were still popular in many states that like treating the like

00:20:20.200 essentially saying Clarence Thomas is not real, a real black person.

00:20:22.900 He's a race traitor because he not only doesn't like basketball, but is married to a white woman,

00:20:26.980 just like the attorney general of Kentucky.

00:20:29.300 This is repulsive, Megan.

00:20:31.280 Yes.

00:20:31.620 And, you know, this isn't the kind of like subtle racism like I think Hillary Clinton

00:20:35.940 did describing Clarence Thomas that way.

00:20:38.660 I mean, some black men are angry and driven by grievance and resentment.

00:20:41.440 I don't think it should be banned to talk about black men that way, though.

00:20:44.140 Again, I don't think she has any basis other than tropes to do that.

00:20:47.220 But that's at least subtle.

00:20:48.100 This is overt.

00:20:49.540 This is the kind of thing that would get any conservative instantly fired.

00:20:53.640 And yet I don't see any liberal objective.

00:20:55.480 Where's the Twitter censor machine, right?

00:20:56.860 Like Jordan Peterson can't be on Twitter because he said something controversial about Elliot

00:21:00.320 Page, but so he's off.

00:21:02.380 But how is this allowed?

00:21:03.820 How is Rex Chapman allowed to post memes like that or posts like that about a sitting AG,

00:21:08.680 a sitting Supreme Court justice?

00:21:10.400 And it's a OK.

00:21:11.020 It's no problem.

00:21:13.520 Yeah.

00:21:13.740 I mean, if you go onto Twitter and you, you know, dispute the extremely controversial and

00:21:20.020 tendentious core assertion of the new trans movement that trans women are women, if you

00:21:26.000 assert that there are differences, and especially if you are somebody who is resistant to the

00:21:31.260 idea of using proper pronouns, though, I do use proper, I do use pronouns that people

00:21:35.160 choose for themselves because I respect their autonomy.

00:21:37.400 But for people who don't believe in that practice, I think that although I don't agree

00:21:41.900 with it, it should be permitted.

00:21:43.140 But if you do any of that, you're instantly banned.

00:21:45.620 This is way worse.

00:21:47.120 This is, you know, like a kind of violation of a settled norm in the United States for

00:21:52.220 decades that there's nothing shameful or or race traitorous about being an interracial

00:21:58.500 marriage.

00:21:59.060 And he is being very blunt about the fact that he doesn't think that it's so upsetting.

00:22:05.760 And he takes it.

00:22:07.060 He never complains.

00:22:08.220 He doesn't come out.

00:22:09.140 Contrary to what Hillary Clinton suggests, he he's not a man of grievance.

00:22:12.920 You never see him even leaking to the press saying, you know, like, oh, you know, behind

00:22:17.040 the scenes, Justice Thomas was wounded or really doesn't appreciate the attacks on his

00:22:20.320 wife.

00:22:21.060 Never.

00:22:21.800 He doesn't do it.

00:22:22.960 She just can't understand that because that's her life.

00:22:25.680 That's how she's lived her life.

00:22:27.080 And, you know, I think they call it projection in the psychological sphere, though.

00:22:31.020 I don't care to analyze her in that way.

00:22:33.120 We'll be here all day.

00:22:34.860 OK, let's talk about January 6th and the quote star witness and the fallout from her testimony.

00:22:40.460 Now, I know that the media reaction continues to roll in.

00:22:44.220 And I have to say, it's almost getting entertaining.

00:22:47.040 Woodward and Bernstein.

00:22:48.520 Remember when we all loved Woodward and Bernstein, all the president's men, we all watched it.

00:22:53.200 I watched it as a sophomore in high school.

00:22:55.020 And one of the things that made me think I might want to become a journalist someday.

00:22:58.200 It's amazing.

00:22:58.720 And it's a great film.

00:22:59.480 It's a great story.

00:23:00.920 Boy, oh boy, has the same thing that sort of happened to Rudy Giuliani happened to those

00:23:05.180 two guys.

00:23:05.560 You know, like they used to be held so high in most people's estimation.

00:23:09.300 And then the more exposure and the older they get, you're like, reassess.

00:23:13.880 This was their take on the testimony of Cassidy, Cassidy Hutchinson, who went before the January

00:23:21.780 6th committee the other day and told a bunch of stories, some of which have already been

00:23:25.620 severely challenged and seem to be falling apart, some of which haven't.

00:23:29.080 Here's their take.

00:23:29.980 This is Sat 9.

00:23:30.480 She pictured a mad king.

00:23:35.820 The stability of the president of the United States, which incidentally, Republicans have

00:23:40.420 been in the Senate and some in the House questioning his stability since the first days of his

00:23:46.780 presidency.

00:23:47.360 I think in a way, what happened today may mean that the January 6th committee has written

00:23:59.320 Donald Trump's political obituary.

00:24:03.040 Yes.

00:24:03.540 I think it's that devastating.

00:24:06.600 The portrait that was painted today of the president of the United States leaping from

00:24:14.560 the back seat, trying to grab the steering wheel.

00:24:19.520 And allegedly choking his top Secret Service agent.

00:24:23.300 I mean, it's pretty dramatic.

00:24:26.660 Where is that skepticism in official stories that served them so very well five plus decades

00:24:35.120 ago?

00:24:36.600 I mean, it is pretty dramatic, that story.

00:24:39.720 Unfortunately, it also probably is pretty false.

00:24:43.860 You know, the first of all, this entire January 6th committee rate, you know, again, as a lawyer,

00:24:51.140 if you ask any lawyer, they will tell you that you can essentially if you're the only side

00:24:56.420 that's present, if you don't there's no adversarial component to the process.

00:25:00.080 If you don't have someone cross examining your witnesses, questioning what it is you're saying,

00:25:04.000 examining the evidence, presenting other evidence, pointing out the deficiencies in your claims,

00:25:08.860 you can basically convince the jury of anything.

00:25:10.940 If you're like, you're looking good for the death there.

00:25:13.000 Yeah.

00:25:13.440 I mean, that's that's the reason why prosecutors have so little difficulty getting indictments

00:25:17.500 in a grand jury, because there's no one there to contest what they're saying or getting

00:25:20.720 FISA warrants where the Justice Department goes and there's no adversarial proceeding.

00:25:23.940 They always win.

00:25:24.540 Now, you can blame whoever you want.

00:25:27.160 You know, Kevin McCarthy nominated five members to serve on the committee.

00:25:30.620 Nancy Pelosi rejected two of them.

00:25:32.620 Unprecedented for Speaker of the House to reject the appointment by the House Minority

00:25:38.300 Leader, the people he wanted on the committee.

00:25:41.140 You can blame her.

00:25:42.400 You can blame Kevin McCarthy for then not filling those two spots and pulling out all the Republicans.

00:25:47.040 But whatever else is true, this is a committee that has zero dissent.

00:25:50.920 Obviously, they have Adam Kinster and Liz Cheney, but for purposes of this proceeding,

00:25:54.320 they're completely Democrats.

00:25:55.580 They have zero divergence at all from the other five Democrats on the committee.

00:26:00.560 So there's no adversarial component to this proceeding at all, which means that everything

00:26:05.240 that we hear from that committee should be treated with enormous amounts of skepticism for

00:26:09.720 that reason.

00:26:10.660 The story that Cassidy Hutchinson told, which they you just saw people just jumped on and assumed

00:26:17.700 was true, was one that by her own reasoning was a story for which she was not present.

00:26:23.320 This is something she claims to have heard in the midst of very tumultuous and intense

00:26:29.240 and highly paced days following January 6th or on January 6th, which again, by itself

00:26:35.100 should have prompted immense skepticism.

00:26:37.700 On top of which, the story that she told was almost physically impossible.

00:26:41.640 If you look at the design of the presidential limo, which is called The Beast, it's almost

00:26:46.040 physically impossible for Trump to have done what she alleged that he did.

00:26:51.620 And yet the fact that they all ratified it and talked about it as though it had been

00:26:56.100 dispositively proven, it illustrates what the media has basically been doing since Trump

00:27:01.740 descended down that escalator, which is viewing itself as not journalists, but warriors in partisan

00:27:07.540 warfare against Trump and saying and doing anything, regardless of whether it has any connection

00:27:13.000 to journalistic ethics or the truth, if they perceive that it will undermine or harm him.

00:27:17.500 And that is such a vivid and perfect example, given who it is that's doing it.

00:27:21.200 Yeah.

00:27:21.660 Meanwhile, both the head of security and the driver of the beast reportedly already gave

00:27:27.060 testimony to the January 6th committee.

00:27:29.880 And so either they didn't ask these guys about the alleged incident because now they're reportedly

00:27:35.640 ready to dispute this account on the record and under oath.

00:27:39.140 This is what the reporting is.

00:27:40.220 These two guys are ready to come forward and say it didn't happen.

00:27:43.000 He was angry.

00:27:43.700 He did.

00:27:44.000 He did want to go to the Capitol.

00:27:45.280 We knew that he said it in his own speech.

00:27:47.420 But this business about allegedly trying to grab the steering wheel and laying hands on

00:27:51.460 the Secret Service agent, the Secret Service agent having to stop him from strangling the

00:27:55.600 Secret Service.

00:27:56.020 It didn't happen.

00:27:57.720 So these two guys are ready to come forward and they've already given testimony.

00:28:00.980 So either they already gave testimony and they weren't asked about any of this.

00:28:04.340 And then they put on this witness without going back to them who to whom they had access.

00:28:09.160 These are not two people who are not cooperating.

00:28:11.280 Right.

00:28:11.500 So it's like they've interviewed them.

00:28:12.980 So now she comes forward with her incredible testimony, Cassidy.

00:28:16.160 And what do you do if you're a real investigator?

00:28:18.160 You call up the other two guys and say, hey, we just had this explosive testimony.

00:28:21.500 Is it true?

00:28:22.380 You guys are the ones she's saying told her this and experienced this.

00:28:26.260 Clearly, they did not do that or they did do that.

00:28:29.060 And the two guys, you know, crapped on it and they did and they did it anyway, which would

00:28:32.500 be the biggest problem.

00:28:33.660 And I said, was this also possible?

00:28:35.500 The two guys said, yes, it's 100 percent true.

00:28:37.560 And now just under the heat of the of the spotlight are ready to change their testimony.

00:28:41.400 But that seems unlikely.

00:28:43.040 Meanwhile, another Secret Service agent, this is not the one involved, but he's a he's a

00:28:48.440 former agent, went on record with the Washington Examiner and said this kind of interesting

00:28:51.860 quote, there's not a chance in hell a Secret Service agent would put their hands on a protectee.

00:28:57.860 Never.

00:28:58.700 We would not touch them if they decided to lunge at us or hit us.

00:29:02.740 There is no retaliation.

00:29:04.420 That actually has a ring of truth to it.

00:29:07.080 And that story didn't write about Trump lunging and Wolf Blitzer, like tried to strangle him.

00:29:12.940 And, you know, like it was on its face, absurd, Glenn.

00:29:16.280 And then just add to expand on Carl Bernstein, he said she has if she's not contradicted,

00:29:24.800 she has nailed the greatest conspiracy, criminal and seditious against the Republic of the United

00:29:29.660 States since the Civil War and Jefferson Davis.

00:29:34.740 You know, it's so funny, Megan.

00:29:36.360 They this idea that I go.

00:29:38.660 This is the final straw.

00:29:39.620 They wrote his political obituary.

00:29:40.960 This is really been going on since 2015.

00:29:44.120 The funniest article I've ever read was by like the dean of the Washington political

00:29:49.280 core, whatever, Dan Baltz, who when Trump criticized John McCain and mocked him for

00:29:57.100 having been, you know, a POW saying I like soldiers, you know, I wasn't a fan of those

00:30:03.880 comments.

00:30:04.540 Yeah.

00:30:05.020 To put that mildly.

00:30:05.880 But the idea that like Republican primary voters were going to rise up in indignation

00:30:12.820 given all the problems they have in their lives and all the things they're angry about

00:30:16.380 and all the things they're concerned with, that as if they have the same protective love

00:30:21.060 that the Washington press corps had for John McCain is that that was going to end Donald

00:30:24.720 Trump's political career is something you would think only if you're drowning in this

00:30:29.920 extremely insular world of Washington media.

00:30:32.160 Yet you can go read the article in The Washington Post from 2015 when Trump was leading the

00:30:36.720 polls against his GOP rivals saying that this seems to me to be a bridge too far.

00:30:40.700 That's finally going to take Trump down.

00:30:42.600 Obviously, during Russia gate every two months, you know, it was the walls were closing in.

00:30:47.100 This is the last straw.

00:30:48.180 He looks like this is going to go to prison.

00:30:49.700 They've been doing this forever and they're shedding credibility or they've shed all their

00:30:53.840 credibility so rapidly because of this.

00:30:56.420 But they can't stop because the model of liberal corporate journalism that they settled on was that

00:31:02.500 they were going to cultivate an exclusively liberal audience and they know that audience

00:31:08.500 doesn't care if what they're saying is true or false.

00:31:11.680 They just want to have their presuppositions appeased and flattered.

00:31:16.760 And even if you lie about Trump, they actually don't want you to retract it.

00:31:21.200 They get angry if you retract it, which is why, Megan, to this day, all of those media outlets

00:31:26.000 that right before the election spread the CIA lie that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian

00:31:30.460 disinformation, even though we all now know it.

00:31:33.020 I knew then, but everybody now knows it was authentic and confirmed because even the Post

00:31:37.680 and the Times confirmed it never once retracted those claims they spread before the election

00:31:42.780 because they know their liberal readers care about partisan effect and not journalistic truth.

00:31:48.400 And that is what is such a corrupting force here.

00:31:50.460 That was on on display the other day when Peter Alexander of NBC was the first to tweet

00:31:55.420 out my sources, the White House correspondent for NBC.

00:31:58.980 My source is telling me Secret Service agents involved in this alleged story are disputing

00:32:03.600 this and ready to say this did not happen.

00:32:05.820 And if you looked at the comments and the responses from, you know, the mostly liberal left

00:32:09.920 to his tweet, it was like, oh, are the clicks worth it?

00:32:13.240 You're so desperate to get new followers.

00:32:15.480 You it's like it's news.

00:32:17.620 It's directly on point to the very thing that you're reporting today.

00:32:20.800 Oh, you that reminds me you had a great response to this, which I liked and retweeted.

00:32:25.060 Oh, my God.

00:32:25.400 I have to find it because it was so perfect about how all day long left was like bombshell.

00:32:30.500 I'm trying to find it.

00:32:31.320 This is amazing.

00:32:32.180 This is huge.

00:32:32.860 And then Peter Alexander writes that.

00:32:35.980 And then a bunch of people come out and say, no, this isn't true.

00:32:38.780 I have it as well.

00:32:39.880 They're going to dispute it.

00:32:41.040 And they were like, well, that wasn't at the crux of the story.

00:32:43.760 Yeah, here it is.

00:32:44.540 I found it.

00:32:45.980 Glenn, journalists all day yesterday.

00:32:48.380 Trump assaulted his Secret Service agents and grabbed the wheel of the presidential limo.

00:32:52.600 Headline news, smoking gun.

00:32:54.720 Secret Service agents, colon.

00:32:56.300 That never happened.

00:32:57.760 Journalists, colon.

00:32:58.860 That was never an important part of the testimony.

00:33:02.560 I mean, we just watch.

00:33:04.240 Well, I remember people saying, no, it really.

00:33:06.820 We just watch Wolf Blitzer, who called in.

00:33:09.420 You know, they do that when they really think something momentous has happened.

00:33:12.800 They called in not just Carl Bernstein, who's always there, but Bob Woodward.

00:33:16.060 Because, of course, the idea is, you know, we're these are the people who are the authorities

00:33:20.980 to say this isn't Watergate.

00:33:22.240 It's worse than Watergate.

00:33:23.300 And they seized on the most dramatic part of the story, which is that Trump, who's not

00:33:30.080 exactly known for his agility or athleticism, somehow was able to fly across the limo like

00:33:36.960 only Superman could and overpower these extremely strong and well-trained Secret Service agents

00:33:45.020 by grabbing the wheel of the car and lunging at their throat.

00:33:48.080 And clearly, that was the thing about which they were most excited, because if that were

00:33:52.540 true, that is a pretty dramatic story.

00:33:54.620 And then as soon as it got debunked, they were saying, oh, conservatives are just debunking

00:33:59.080 this kind of ancillary detail that nobody cares about in order to distract from the really

00:34:03.020 important part of Cassidy Hutchinson's story, which was what?

00:34:06.140 That like there was ketchup on the wall?

00:34:07.600 So, you know, this this that is like the real kind of, you know, attempt to prevent people

00:34:16.000 from realizing that what they saw didn't actually happen.

00:34:20.500 That's gaslighting in its purest form, like watching journalists all day focus on that one

00:34:25.380 part of the story.

00:34:26.040 And then when it gets debunked, turn around and say, oh, well, that was just a small detail

00:34:29.600 that never really mattered.

00:34:31.060 Immaterial.

00:34:31.620 Same with the January 6th committee.

00:34:32.900 When she got caught, she was contradicted because she said she she wrote this handwritten note

00:34:39.200 that was dictated to her by her boss, the chief of staff, that was essentially going

00:34:43.420 to go out saying anybody not invited onto the Capitol needs to leave right now.

00:34:47.740 And she said that was her.

00:34:49.520 She looked at it and said, that's that's mine.

00:34:51.480 That's my handwriting.

00:34:52.840 And then White House counsel, one of the lawyers came out and said, that's a lie.

00:34:56.280 That's that is my handwriting.

00:34:57.680 I am the one who wrote that.

00:34:59.040 Now, I mean, that's deeply problematic because you do know your own handwriting.

00:35:02.060 And if she's trying to self-aggrandize or make herself seem more important than she

00:35:05.240 was, we need to know that.

00:35:07.180 But instead of actually looking into it, what we got was a note from the January 6th committee

00:35:10.480 saying that's immaterial.

00:35:12.420 We believe her that she's that she's credible.

00:35:14.600 Her testimony was credible.

00:35:15.840 Well, talk about being judge, jury, executioner.

00:35:18.660 You're like, oh, it's great when you get to present the case, present all the witnesses,

00:35:21.820 then tell us whether the witness is believable, then ultimately pronounce the final judgment,

00:35:26.520 which is where this is going.

00:35:27.580 I mean, the whole thing is just so unnerving to anybody who has a semblance of fairness, never

00:35:31.460 mind justice under their belt.

00:35:33.140 But I just want to have one point about that, which is for me, this really underscores a

00:35:41.260 important question that has really gotten ignored, which is why does the January 6th

00:35:48.180 investigative committee even exist when it comes to alleged crimes?

00:35:53.680 The branch of government that is charged with investigating criminality is not the Congress,

00:35:58.760 but the Justice Department and the FBI, because they have all kinds of protection, safeguards

00:36:03.920 that citizens enjoy against what it is that they can do.

00:36:08.040 Congress has very limited power to investigate.

00:36:10.840 They can only investigate if it's in connection with some lawmaking purpose they want to have.

00:36:15.700 So if they want to enact pollution regulations, they get to summon the chairs of various

00:36:20.700 polluting corporations or experts in pollution.

00:36:23.920 Or if they're exercising oversight over the executive branch, you can make the argument maybe

00:36:29.960 that it falls into the latter camp.

00:36:31.600 But what this really is, is the kind of thing that the McCarthy era Supreme Court twice said

00:36:35.720 is inappropriate, which is conducting a political show trial that is really designed to be a

00:36:41.900 parallel investigation to the Justice Department that enables you to do things the Justice Department

00:36:46.280 can't do in order to kind of pressure the Justice Department to bring charges when you think

00:36:52.080 they're not acting quickly enough.

00:36:54.340 And that's exactly what this is about, Megan.

00:36:56.200 They're angry that Merrick Garland didn't charge sedition for over a year.

00:36:59.440 They finally got him to do that.

00:37:00.960 And now they want Donald Trump prosecuted.

00:37:02.800 So all this is, is a parallel Justice Department investigation designed to create criminal charges

00:37:08.700 without any of the safeguards people are supposed to have, including basic adversarial

00:37:13.220 scrutiny over what's being said.

00:37:14.560 I find the whole show trial pernicious for that reason.

00:37:18.400 I agree.

00:37:18.780 And I also think if that's their goal, they're undermining it because they're damaging the

00:37:23.020 witnesses Merrick Garland would need by being so shoddy as investigators, by not calling

00:37:28.940 up the two Secret Service agents to make sure, hey, Cassidy Hutchinson's about to say this.

00:37:32.600 Did it happen?

00:37:33.380 And then presenting her to us as though she would be an uncontradicted witness and that everybody

00:37:37.940 would support her version.

00:37:39.280 So, I mean, if I were Merrick Garland and determined to prosecute, I would be angry at what

00:37:43.720 they're doing right now.

00:37:44.560 All right.

00:37:44.760 I'm going to pause it there, squeeze in a quick break.

00:37:46.740 So much more to go over with Glenn, including the president saying we're we are happy with

00:37:51.100 the direction of the country.

00:37:52.300 Eighty five percent say they're not.

00:37:53.580 And his response is, yes, you are.

00:37:55.600 You are too.

00:37:56.860 Glenn's up next.

00:37:57.640 Before we leave the subject of January six, can we talk about this?

00:38:07.180 Ben Shapiro was raging about this yesterday and was so good on it.

00:38:10.980 Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC has got this piece out there talking about here.

00:38:18.660 Here's what he writes.

00:38:19.820 I think it was in The New York Times.

00:38:22.200 The CEO silence on the January 6th hearings.

00:38:26.000 He's pissed off corporate America is not coming out and taking a stance on the January 6th hearings.

00:38:32.320 Andrew here.

00:38:33.320 I want to speak with you directly this morning, much as I did after the attack on the U.S.

00:38:37.380 Capitol.

00:38:38.080 Who wants to hear from him?

00:38:39.280 OK, after January 6th, corporations across this nation rates to put out news releases

00:38:44.180 condemning the insurrection, as well as the Republican members of Congress who tried to

00:38:48.380 overturn the election results.

00:38:50.140 Many companies pledged to end or pause donating to these politicians.

00:38:53.680 Fast forward to today.

00:38:55.000 Whatever your politics.

00:38:56.500 Yesterday's testimony by a former White House aide about President Donald Trump's actions

00:39:00.020 on January 6th was deeply disturbing.

00:39:02.560 Whatever your politics.

00:39:03.380 It had to be deeply disturbing to you, Glenn.

00:39:04.860 Got it.

00:39:05.140 And yet you will most likely hear only one thing from the business community in the coming

00:39:09.240 days.

00:39:10.360 Silence.

00:39:11.740 Why?

00:39:12.640 I've been spending the past several days at the Aspen Ideas Festival asking chief executives

00:39:18.200 and other leaders that very question.

00:39:20.120 What I hear again and again is that the business community and perhaps the public at large has

00:39:23.820 outrage, fatigue.

00:39:26.040 But there is something else happening, too.

00:39:28.180 Those who do want to speak out are concerned about retaliation from political officials and

00:39:32.840 a significant portion of the public in ways they weren't a year and a half ago.

00:39:36.620 Goes on to talk about various polls that that show Trump remains popular.

00:39:41.560 In many cases, brace yourselves, more popular than even President Biden.

00:39:46.560 Others fear being labeled woke.

00:39:49.580 And he goes on to talk about DeSantis.

00:39:50.920 And then he says, but here's my question for business leaders.

00:39:53.300 After years of talking about moral courage, where is yours?

00:40:01.060 It's unbelievable.

00:40:02.840 I don't even know where to start there, but I think, you know, I think it's so hilarious

00:40:07.800 like how he says Trump's not just still popular, but even more popular than Joe Biden is if

00:40:13.320 Joe Biden is like the, you know, Nero or like on Mount Rushmore.

00:40:17.820 And so the idea that anyone can be more popular than him, let alone Trump, is something that's

00:40:21.520 shocking.

00:40:22.300 But I the thing that this is actually something that, you know, I've been looking at for a

00:40:26.540 while now, is for decades.

00:40:29.440 It was a staple of the liberal left that corporations have too much power in the United States.

00:40:34.920 And the idea of opposing especially the political power that corporations wield through things

00:40:41.040 like donations and lobbyists was foundational to all kinds of liberal politics.

00:40:46.720 And now suddenly, ever since I think you could really trace it back to George Floyd, but even

00:40:52.560 kind of before that with a lot of LGBT issues and the like, what has happened is as a result of

00:40:58.860 Democrats becoming the party of the affluent, which is the dirty little secret of our politics,

00:41:03.200 that Joe Biden didn't win because minorities rose up and voted for him in record number to eject the

00:41:10.020 white nationalists from from the presidency, quite the opposite happened.

00:41:13.820 Trump attracted more Latino voters and African-American voters, Asian voters than any Republican in

00:41:18.640 a decade, whereas Biden won because affluent white suburbanites voted for him who had long for a long

00:41:24.400 time voted Republican.

00:41:25.960 As affluent people become more and more liberal, corporations feel more and more comfortable espousing

00:41:30.960 liberal political ideals, whereas they used to be steadfastly neutral and seeing that liberals

00:41:37.060 are increasingly calling for corporations to throw their weight around when it comes to

00:41:42.780 the democratic process, the way that they demanded that Disney, for example, get involved in the

00:41:47.840 enactment of that law in Florida that was enacted by a democratically constituted state legislature

00:41:54.740 and then signed into law with the democratically elected governor about what, you know, second

00:41:59.140 graders and under can be taught about gender ideology, demanding that Disney did not denounce this.

00:42:05.240 This is a constant refrain now that corporations, which we always wanted to make sure their power,

00:42:11.480 their corporate power was confined to just doing what was in their business self-interest are now

00:42:15.500 suddenly supposed to be ideological and partisan actors on the side of one side.

00:42:20.040 That's incredibly dangerous.

00:42:21.200 That's called you could call it like the literal definition of fascism when corporate and state

00:42:25.580 powers start to to create a union. But at the very least, that's called oligarchy.

00:42:30.140 And yet there's unabashedly an increasing desire on the part of the liberal left for corporations to

00:42:37.720 become heavily involved political actors in a way that's obviously very dangerous.

00:42:43.020 Yeah. What are we going to have? We're going to go down the street and it's going to be all the red,

00:42:45.680 the red corporations and the blue corporations. And you've got to go in depending on what your

00:42:50.640 number says on your wrist, you know, or your your color of your shirt says the one of the stories

00:42:56.900 that Ben was talking about yesterday related to this UK bank, this Halifax bank, which is doing

00:43:01.960 exactly what Aaron Ross Sorkin wants them to do. They tweeted out some photo showing an employee

00:43:07.560 wearing, you know, her name tag. And it said, you know, pronouns, she, her, hers. And it was roundly

00:43:13.840 mocked online, you know, that this bank is bragging about how it mandates pronouns on its employees name

00:43:21.480 tags. And in response to the mocking, the bank tweets out in response, they double down and tweet

00:43:28.580 and tweeted out, we strive for inclusion, equity and quite simply in doing what's right. If you disagree

00:43:34.280 with our values, you're welcome to close your account. A social media spokesperson identified as

00:43:39.840 Andy decided to tell their their bankers. I mean, so basically, I can't keep my money at your bank.

00:43:46.700 If I think your name tags are stupid. This is our future. You know, this is this. I think this

00:43:53.200 touches a little bit on what we were describing earlier about this ability of the Supreme Court

00:43:57.740 justices, Ginsburg and Scalia, now Sotomayor and Thomas, to maintain genuine friendships, respectful,

00:44:04.240 uh, even, you know, kind of affectionate, uh, interactions with one another across ideological

00:44:10.100 divides, which used to be very normal and very common. And now the idea is that if you have an

00:44:16.160 ideological difference with somebody, especially liberals believe this, that if someone supports

00:44:20.420 Donald Trump or someone supports conservative movement, they're not just misguided politically.

00:44:24.200 They're bad people. They're racist. They're white nationalists. They're all those other things

00:44:28.460 such that maintaining any interaction with them is itself immoral. You know, and there's been op-eds

00:44:34.840 even demanding that people renounce their own families. If their families, you know, are bound

00:44:40.100 to be supporters of Donald Trump or, or the conservative movement or hold these certain views.

00:44:44.820 And the reason that's so dangerous is because that does generate this balkanization of society.

00:44:50.560 You know, you had the kind of like pillow companies where there were two pillow companies,

00:44:54.400 one that was supposed to be on the left and one that was supposed to be on the right. So now where we buy

00:44:57.280 our pillows is supposed to be determined by, you know, there's the red pillow store and the blue

00:45:01.580 pillow store. This is begging for a kind of fracturing of our society that is remarkably

00:45:09.600 inflammatory and volatile. And I'm amazed that people want to flirt with that.

00:45:14.120 Yeah. I don't know what, you know, registered independents like me and I think you, what are we

00:45:19.480 supposed to do? Where do we go? Are there going to be like a little line of purple stores like down

00:45:23.420 the middle where we can shop and keep our money and so on? All right. Last question, because I've

00:45:27.900 teased it. President Biden, speaking over in Spain, decided to talk about in response to questions,

00:45:36.320 the fact that 85 percent of the U.S. public thinks the country is going in the wrong direction.

00:45:40.840 And the question that was asked to him was, how do you explain to these people who feel the country's

00:45:45.420 going in the wrong direction, including some of the leaders you've been meeting with this week,

00:45:48.140 part of the G7, who think that when you put all this together, it amounts to an America that's

00:45:53.360 going backward. His response was they do not think that they don't think that you haven't found one

00:45:59.040 person, one world leader to say America is going backward. America is better position to lead the

00:46:03.440 world than we ever have been. We have the strongest economy in the world. Our inflation rates are

00:46:07.760 lower than other nations in the world. And then he goes on to say the one thing that's been

00:46:12.300 destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court on Roe v. Wade. That's the thing,

00:46:19.360 Glenn. Your thoughts on it in the minute we have left. I mean, like if Democrats want to continue

00:46:24.920 to live in this very delusional insular bubble where the only information they get, the only things

00:46:31.160 they hear are things that they get from progressive activists and progressive media employees on Twitter

00:46:37.160 increasingly becoming the same thing, they can do that and they're going to march right into complete

00:46:41.040 destruction in November. All polling data shows that for very good reason, Americans feel

00:46:46.220 suffocated economically. And if your strategy is really going to be to send politicians and rich

00:46:52.060 celebrities out to tell them that that's unwarranted or that they need to suffer for good cause,

00:46:57.060 good luck with that. But I think that they're just digging their own grave with it.

00:47:00.560 Yeah, it's not going to work. It didn't work on inflation is transitory. It didn't work on

00:47:06.740 we're not having a crime surge and it's not going to work on this either. Glenn,

00:47:10.000 always a pleasure. Always happy to be with you, Megan. Thanks. Talk to you soon.

00:47:14.920 You as well. Okay. So up next, if you have a kid who misbehaves, a kid who drives you crazy,

00:47:20.020 a kid who constantly gets in trouble in school, well, wait until you hear what it might be when

00:47:25.900 my friend and filmmaker Nancy Armstrong joins us right after this break.

00:47:29.820 Does your child struggle with problems at school, with getting booted out of the classroom,

00:47:39.760 with behavioral issues at home? Do they drive you nuts? Can they not sit still at the dinner table?

00:47:45.520 So on and so forth. Well, then this next segment may be for you. My pal Nancy Armstrong is with me now.

00:47:52.400 She's an Emmy nominated producer and the executive producer at Happy Warrior Media. And she executive

00:47:59.680 produced a game changing documentary called The Disruptors. I love this film. She was inspired to

00:48:08.320 make the film as a result of her family's experiences navigating life with ADHD, which someone in your life

00:48:16.500 may have, and you might not even know it. She joins us now. Hey, great to have you here. Thanks for

00:48:22.520 joining us. Hey, Megan. Thanks so much for having me on. Oh, the pleasure's all mine. Okay. So I love

00:48:28.160 that you, you use celebrities at the beginning of this documentary to sort of show people that extremely

00:48:34.720 accomplished household names have ADHD and have used its upsides to achieve great heights. But the film

00:48:43.940 itself is really about regular people. It profiles regular families who are struggling with all of

00:48:49.400 this. And to me, the place I want to start with is your own. Because you have a regular family.

00:48:56.200 Your husband is featured in the film a bit. But you talk about your son, Jack, who I also know,

00:49:03.040 who's delightful. But when he was little, maybe less delightful. And you noticed some behaviors that

00:49:09.660 you were struggling to sort of understand. Yeah, I mean, it was really a struggle pretty

00:49:15.280 early on. We knew something was definitely going on with him. Something was definitely different,

00:49:20.000 but we didn't know what. And I mean, we got kicked out of mommy and me class when he was a toddler.

00:49:25.500 All the kids were sitting very calmly in their mother's laps in the room. And Jack was running

00:49:30.100 around the circle and turning off the music. And she just asked us to leave. And we cried all the way

00:49:35.520 home. And I really didn't understand what was going on, particularly being a first-time parent.

00:49:40.800 And then it took years to get diagnosed. And no one ever mentioned ADHD, oddly. He had all of the

00:49:46.280 symptoms that are the sort of the classic hallmark symptoms of ADHD, distractibility, hyperactivity,

00:49:51.880 and impulsivity on a pretty high scale. But it wasn't until he was eight years old that we finally got

00:49:57.380 a real diagnosis. And at least then we knew what was going on and that we could get help.

00:50:02.880 Mm-hmm. Now, your husband, Tim Armstrong, is featured in the film as well. And he has ADHD.

00:50:08.440 So at the time that you were wondering about Jack, did you know that Tim had it?

00:50:13.500 No, not at all. In fact, Tim was basically diagnosed in the room when the diagnostician

00:50:18.460 was telling us about Jack's symptoms. He was running off the list of all the

00:50:21.840 symptoms of ADHD. And Tim's hand kind of goes up. And I looked at him like, what now? What,

00:50:27.320 you know, what's happening? He said, I have all those symptoms. And the diagnostician said,

00:50:31.240 well, it's hereditary, which it is highly heritable trait. So that was kind of the beginning of his

00:50:36.660 diagnosis journey and finding out that he had ADHD. And then our girls were also diagnosed,

00:50:41.300 but we kind of missed their diagnosis for a long time because girls present so differently than boys.

00:50:46.720 They're not as hyperactive. They're more inattentive type. They can also be hyperactive,

00:50:51.360 but they don't present the same way as boys. And oftentimes we miss it. And they misdiagnose girls

00:50:57.400 with anxiety or depression. And, you know, they can kind of white knuckle it through K through five.

00:51:03.360 And then when they get to middle school, a couple of things happen. Their hormones kick up,

00:51:07.860 which can really exacerbate symptoms of ADHD. And also they're going from one class, one teacher to

00:51:13.460 six classes, to six teachers, six binders. Oh my God, the binders. I fought very hard for my daughters

00:51:20.500 to have one binder because there was no way they could be successful with all those binders.

00:51:24.380 Right. Because you make a good point in the school setting. These schools are not set up

00:51:28.660 for children with this challenge. In fact, it's to the contrary. And so the frustration that these

00:51:35.780 kids are feeling and they don't know why they're feeling it must be immense with what they wind up

00:51:40.920 thinking most of the time is I'm not smart. I can't do it. Yeah, that's what was happening in

00:51:46.820 school. And it's really sad. Actually, everyone is set up to fail in a school environment.

00:51:50.640 The kids are set up to fail because it's kind of this assembly line approach to education.

00:51:54.680 which is deadening to kids with ADHD. And teachers are also kind of set up to fail because

00:51:59.280 they don't have the requisite amount of education to really help kids with ADHD. And it's 10% of the

00:52:05.100 students they're going to have in every class. So I hope this film goes, you know, a long way toward

00:52:10.240 a first step in education for teachers who really don't understand ADHD and inspiring further education

00:52:16.540 because it's so important. Teachers can have a profound effect on your child's life in a super positive

00:52:22.200 way if they understand what your child is dealing with. And we showed that in one instance with

00:52:26.580 will I am in the film where Mr. Wright understood his talent and and gave him a lot of positive

00:52:32.260 feedback. And that was a formative moment for him. What most kids experience is a ton of negative

00:52:37.640 feedback. And that is really demoralizing. And they end up thinking that they're stupid and not

00:52:42.640 capable. And that's really a tragedy.

00:52:44.880 There's one doctor in the film, this this jumped out at me when I watched it. He says that these

00:52:51.320 kids are misunderstood. He said it breaks my heart because they receive such negative feedback from

00:52:57.280 their world. And it's it's really not their fault. They're I mean, I was just saying in the tease

00:53:03.080 ants in the pants, can't sit down at dinner, can't stay still, can't focus on the lesson plan,

00:53:08.040 constantly getting thrown out of the class. That's part of the problem, constantly getting booted from

00:53:11.040 the class. Then they're behind. Then it exacerbates everything. But their day to day experience is

00:53:15.460 frustration being told they're bad. They hear it from their parents, loving parents, but who are

00:53:20.760 frustrated. They hear from their teachers. They hear from their band leaders. They hear in every

00:53:25.300 circumstance to the point where they wind up believing it, that there's just something wrong with

00:53:29.080 them. Well, the the manifestation of ADHD oftentimes is behavioral. So in other you know,

00:53:36.300 otherwise they look like normal kids, but their behavior is very outside the norm and disruptive,

00:53:42.760 which is, you know, kind of gives way to the title of the film. But they end up thinking that

00:53:47.920 they are incapable and they and they get such negative feedback. And it's it's really not these

00:53:54.140 are their formative years. So they're going into adulthood with this very negative view of themselves.

00:53:58.580 And so it's very important to get diagnosis and treatment, I think, so that they know what they're

00:54:03.060 dealing with. They can work, you know, they can find treatments and solutions that help them along

00:54:07.600 the way. And also that people in their environment understand that this is neurological. That's kind of

00:54:12.460 the biggest problem we face as a society with ADHD right now is that there's a deep disconnect between

00:54:18.180 what the public thinks about ADHD, which is that it's just bad parenting and bad kids. And what we know

00:54:24.500 from decades of research and hundreds, if not thousands of studies, we know it's neurological 100%.

00:54:30.120 We know what parts of the brain it affects. We know it's highly heritable. And now we know from,

00:54:35.420 you know, experts all over the country that even though ADHD does have challenges that need to be

00:54:41.520 managed, it also has some pretty impressive strengths. And if you can find a path in life

00:54:46.260 to activate and accelerate those strengths, it can be a big asset. But you have to be diagnosed and

00:54:51.740 treated and you have to find ways to manage the challenges.

00:54:55.180 Oh, I mean, after I watched the film, I remember emailing you like, I kind of want it.

00:54:58.920 I wish I had it, you know, in some ways, because like a lot of these things, there's a great

00:55:03.620 flip to the flop. You know, there's there are definite upsides to these same, quote unquote,

00:55:08.860 negative characteristics. And one of the points you make in the film is that you've got somebody in

00:55:13.560 there saying it's it's got the word disorder in it. There's a there's a deficit in it. You know,

00:55:18.640 there's something wrong with you. You're sick. But the film, you know, presents another option.

00:55:23.740 It doesn't doesn't ignore the downsides of having ADHD, the challenges of it, but also gives hope

00:55:29.960 because it's like I think a lot of parents like you are probably frustrated at getting kicked out

00:55:35.020 of the mommy and me and all the things that follow with behavioral instances. But it could mean your

00:55:40.440 child is facing enormous upside once you get a handle on this and learn to channel the gifts that

00:55:46.000 come with this into the right lanes.

00:55:47.740 And that'll never happen without diagnosis and treatment. I mean, what what all of the

00:55:53.780 superstars in the film had in common was parents that stood behind them 100 percent and never gave

00:55:59.360 up on them. And they also had education to to get on that path that they wanted to get on to be

00:56:04.660 successful. But we find, you know, people that are entrepreneurs have ADHD. It's they have creativity,

00:56:11.380 curiosity, energy. They're not risk. They're not risk averse. So they take big swings.

00:56:17.620 At things. And they're good in high stimulation environments like ER rooms or as surgeons or

00:56:24.700 firefighters. They they will not do well in a cubicle. That's not a path for them. But if they

00:56:29.720 can find a path that stimulates them, that's very exciting to them, they can really have an incredible

00:56:35.400 trajectory. Hmm. OK, so speaking of some of the celebrities, we pulled just a small clip that shows

00:56:41.660 some of the better known names explaining what it's like to have it, because I think now we have a lot

00:56:47.100 of people out there out there wondering, do I have it? Do I have a high energy? I can be distracted.

00:56:51.520 So this is a this is a clip of some folks describing what it's like. I spend my every waking

00:56:57.820 moment trying to get outside of my own head because it's a mess in there. It's very busy.

00:57:02.740 Your brain is always firing. You're firing at a thousand miles an hour. You're eight cylinders by

00:57:07.180 cylinders. Twenty four, seven, three sixty five. It is like I'm juggling 20 balls, but I don't remember

00:57:13.760 where they were in the air. I'm just there trying to kind of catch all these balls. And I remember

00:57:18.000 nothing. Imagine somebody sitting on the keys of the computer. That's what your brain is like.

00:57:25.340 That's ADHD. That last one was Steve Madden. That's such a great descriptor that helped me.

00:57:32.100 Right. Like just constant, constant, constant info. And you can't mute it. You can't like there's no

00:57:37.580 muting it, I guess, without medication. Well, there's ways to focus. I mean, they

00:57:43.500 they also have this hyper focus, which is the ability to really go very deeply into a topic

00:57:48.860 for a long period of time, longer than someone without ADHD. And I think, you know, the the

00:57:54.200 misnomer about ADHD is that they have a deficit of attention. They really don't. They have too much

00:57:59.020 attention. While we while a normal neurotypical person can just focus on what they're supposed to

00:58:03.780 focus on, someone with ADHD is finding exactly the same amount of attention to something over

00:58:08.920 here that has nothing to do with this moment. So they it's like they have the difficulty focusing

00:58:13.440 their attention, but they have too much attention is really what it is. So how do you know? Right.

00:58:17.920 How do you get that diagnosis? Because now we've got a lot of parents out there saying

00:58:20.880 I have it and all my kids have it, too. Yeah. Yes. This describes everyone I know.

00:58:26.520 The pandemic did not help in terms of ADHD. I mean, there was a real uptick

00:58:30.740 in ADHD, partly because I think that the pandemic and the shutdown and being online schooling that

00:58:38.020 really exacerbated symptoms of ADHD. You know, online learning isn't really good for anyone,

00:58:42.460 but it's especially horrible for kids with ADHD. They just they don't learn anything. And so that

00:58:49.120 was really probably horrible for parents with kids who have ADHD. But that's you know, that's really the

00:58:55.080 the the diagnosis is so important so that they can understand really what's going on with them.

00:59:01.800 And so hard right now because you can't get in to see physicians or somebody who would be in a

00:59:06.140 position. I guess you go to a neurologist. So you can't get in and the wait lists are long. And so

00:59:11.760 it's like it exacerbated it. And it also made it harder to get it diagnosed and treated the pandemic.

00:59:16.480 Yeah. I mean, well, that's the problem initially is that there there are a dearth of clinicians in

00:59:23.220 ADHD. So what needs to happen is that primary care physicians and pediatricians need to become

00:59:29.120 an accredited first line of defense because there aren't enough clinicians on ADHD. And,

00:59:34.040 you know, in Australia, I I'm speaking to people all over the world. And there's this woman in

00:59:38.680 Australia that says she knows she has ADHD, but it's an eight month wait to get in to see someone.

00:59:43.920 So people are turning to social media or online sites, which may or may not be

00:59:48.360 the right way to go. And so that's really a huge problem is that we really do not have enough people

00:59:52.940 to help. The doctor tick tock is is never, never a good idea. So can you just expand, though,

00:59:59.180 because I'm going to show a clip of sweet Hogan, who is his experience is indicative of so many

01:00:04.480 kids and parents. But can you expand a little bit on the differences between how it manifests in boys

01:00:09.800 and girls? Because when we get to Hogan, you'll see, you know, he's big and their confrontations,

01:00:15.900 you know, in terms of his physicality and so on. That's not going to happen with ADHD girls.

01:00:21.300 Yeah. I mean, with girls, it is. Exquisite sensitivity to rejection, it's hypersensitivity,

01:00:27.680 it's emotional impulsivity that's very problematic when you are in friendships. So they where girls really

01:00:35.500 struggle is in friendships sometimes because they're highly emotional. And, you know, it's all

01:00:40.600 psychological with girls. So that's an area that's really different with girls. And also,

01:00:44.920 again, they just don't present the same amount of hyperactivity as boys.

01:00:49.200 Well, that's fascinating, because it's like, if, as you say, if it really manifests in middle school,

01:00:53.420 when the school challenges change, how are you supposed to discern that from the normal hormone

01:00:59.300 surge and kind of difficult behavior we all expect to get from our tweens and teens?

01:01:07.260 Well, it's the degree to which it causes an impairment. Like you said, everyone is distracted

01:01:11.280 every once in a while, or everyone is hypersensitive every now and then. But it's the degree to which it

01:01:16.780 is an impairment in in multiple settings. And it's kind of becoming chronic and really interfering with

01:01:22.640 their life. That's a good point. I remember talking to my my own therapist, my kids were little,

01:01:27.880 and I was trying to figure out whether everything was right and was anything normal or abnormal

01:01:32.420 and so on. And he used to say, if there's a problem with your child, you don't have to go looking for

01:01:37.620 it. You will know, you know, and that has proven to be true in my own life. OK, so one of the families

01:01:43.360 featured in in the documentary is the family of Hogan. And this is a clip that shows this is not unusual

01:01:49.980 that this child, 13 years old, had an incident at school that led to some very bad results that won't be

01:01:57.020 totally unfamiliar to parents of kids with ADHD watch.

01:02:01.560 This week, I got suspended from school for some stuff that I did. I was just kind of messing

01:02:07.240 around in class.

01:02:09.300 I got a call from a police officer Friday afternoon, 330.

01:02:15.280 What happened was that he was walking down the hall playing with a friend. They were kind of pushing

01:02:20.780 each other horseplay. And that kid, like, pushes Hogan against the wall. And Hogan comes back and

01:02:29.500 pushes him because it hurt. And then that kid just popped him in the face. And Hogan is about to start

01:02:34.840 crying. He's in the middle of the hallway. And he's embarrassed. Like his thought is, I'm going to go to

01:02:41.000 the bathroom and cool off and I'm going to go to class. But the teacher says, no, you can't go.

01:02:47.060 He keeps walking in with his head down. And then she blocks the door.

01:02:53.040 Yeah. Or holds out her hand and he just kept walking through.

01:02:57.480 Um, and she pressed charges on him.

01:03:03.060 Hmm. He basically went to, you know, sort of school jail after that. And it's so hard to get them right

01:03:11.160 tracked after an incident like that.

01:03:14.340 Yeah. I mean, that was really awful thing to happen to Hogan. He's such a sweet kid. And I have no doubt

01:03:19.440 he's going to go great places in life, but you can see how you can get on the wrong track. You know,

01:03:25.740 one thing happens, you end up in this special school. Now you've got this thing hanging over

01:03:30.540 your head and you can see that snowballing, you know, if, if kids don't, and they know that Hogan's

01:03:36.480 diagnosed and the teachers know he's diagnosed, which seems particularly unfair about this

01:03:39.880 particular incident. But if you kids are not undiagnosed and the teacher just thinks they're

01:03:44.660 willful or badly behaved, then they get put in a special classroom. From there, they get, you know,

01:03:50.120 you know, start acting out and get into the juvenile detention system. And then from there,

01:03:54.500 you can get into the criminal justice system and they, you know, there's anywhere from 25 to 40%

01:03:59.100 of prison inmates have ADHD, which is, which is undiagnosed or has recently been diagnosed. So

01:04:04.900 if we could have caught those kids earlier, if we can catch everyone earlier that has it,

01:04:10.040 just think of, you know, how many more amazing people we could have being super productive in

01:04:14.320 the world and using their talent instead of ending up, you know, in a bad situation.

01:04:18.760 Well, and in that situation, as you point out, the teacher knew, so it's especially bad,

01:04:21.860 but where the teachers don't know, it's got to be something in the back of their heads.

01:04:26.460 But I have sympathy for them because the documentary shows us how even some of the moms,

01:04:34.400 I feel so bad for these moms. They, they beat themselves up once they get the diagnosis. It was

01:04:40.220 Zara's mom. She's one of the girls featured. And she was so sad when she realized, she looked back

01:04:45.880 on how she'd been interpreting her child's behavior. And I mean, I feel like we've all

01:04:51.080 been there where she, she talked about how she felt like there was an intention to like upset her

01:04:57.760 or dis disobey her or antagonize her. I think maybe then the word she used that the daughter

01:05:03.100 was intentionally doing that. And only once she sort of started to understand what her daughter

01:05:07.860 was actually going through and how it affects a girl's mind, did she start to get tougher on her

01:05:13.580 own self as the mom? Like, Oh my God, there was a better, different way. I could have handled that.

01:05:19.860 Yeah. I mean, I, that's one of the saddest things is so much parental guilt. You know,

01:05:24.560 parenting is hard anyway, but raising a child with ADHD is like parenting on steroids and parents have

01:05:31.400 so much guilt about getting it wrong and about losing their patients. I mean, I've had that myself.

01:05:36.340 I'm not a naturally super patient person, but I've had to kind of really learn. And it's a growth

01:05:41.740 journey for parents. And if you can just hang in there and really try to understand where your

01:05:47.020 child is coming from and support them as best you can and never stop believing in them, the rewards

01:05:52.340 of that can be, you know, really wonderful. It's very, it's a high intensity, but highly rewarding

01:05:58.360 thing to parent a child with ADHD, but the parents have so much guilt. And I get all these letters,

01:06:03.620 you know, now that the film is out from all over the world from parents who are just

01:06:07.160 so relieved to see themselves in the film, to see other, to have this community, to see other

01:06:12.840 parents that are in the same struggle as they are. And that's really what we wanted for the film.

01:06:17.620 You know, I, I partnered with the dream team of documentary filmmaking talent with Stephanie

01:06:22.020 Sooktig and Kristen Lazor. And we, we had the intention to make the film for parents, for children,

01:06:27.840 for families, because they didn't have a film like this before. And we really wanted this to be kind

01:06:32.620 of the first step towards really opening the door to understanding this a little bit better.

01:06:38.280 The one mom is talking about how she, she would go to the school and drop off apology notes for

01:06:43.260 her child. She felt bad about how she dealt with like his refusal to get his stuff together and get

01:06:47.760 into the car. And then we got to go. And the time is what the time is. And you have other children too

01:06:51.580 need, you know, the family can't cater to the one child at all times. And I mean, I feel like we can

01:06:57.420 all relate to that, but this is, this is a good sort of reminder for people that,

01:07:02.620 it may be more than just your child behaving in an annoying way. It's worth looking into because

01:07:08.180 if it is ADHD, there are real coping mechanisms that you can, you can use. And yes, therapy could

01:07:15.120 be one different parental reactions and behaviors and approaches could be one. And medication is one.

01:07:21.080 And this is where we get to the, you know, Tom Cruise, these parents who are medicating their

01:07:26.240 children and they don't know anything about the drugs. And now we've sort of flipped because people

01:07:30.800 start abusing things like Adderall, you know, because they want to stay awake and active and

01:07:36.140 thin that those drugs get a bad name. Whereas they, I know have been very helpful in your own family and

01:07:42.780 in these families that you feature. And you say, it's basically a game of trial and error by parents,

01:07:47.940 but you, you try to de-stigmatize the meds.

01:07:50.360 Well, we really tried to be agnostic when it comes to medication. It's a very personal choice,

01:07:56.100 whether or not to try medication for your child. And, you know, there's a toolbox of things you can

01:08:00.960 use to, to help mitigate the symptoms of ADHD and medication is one of them. And it's just important

01:08:06.220 to know the research behind it. There are, you know, 22 longitudinal studies that show that kids who

01:08:12.080 use these medications are not predisposing themselves to, to use drugs, which is one of the concerns.

01:08:17.360 There are 35 studies that, that show that using these medications over time leads to the brain

01:08:24.160 kind of wiring up more normally, more neurotypically over time. So those are really

01:08:28.980 positive. And they've done more studies on these medications for ADHD than any other drug you will

01:08:34.440 ever take because we use them with children. And I think they are abused, but they're not really

01:08:38.960 abused by people with ADHD. They're abused by non ADHD people, because when you take a stimulant and you

01:08:45.400 have a neurotypical brain, it does give you a high. When you take stimulants as an ADHD person,

01:08:51.240 it calms you down. So it's, you know, usually kids don't even really want to take medication.

01:08:56.600 They don't love the idea of it, but they want to be able to focus in class. They don't want to be

01:09:01.360 impulsive and, and get in trouble with their friends and get in trouble with their teachers. So

01:09:05.480 that's their motivation to take medication if it works for them. And like you said,

01:09:09.760 it's trial and error, or we call it trial and examination, because you may have to try

01:09:13.900 one, um, one type of drug. And then if that doesn't work, you have to tweak the dosage or

01:09:20.360 try a different one. And that's a very, very uncomfortable process. And I've been through

01:09:24.100 that and it's really, really awful. But when you then finally find the one that works, it's this

01:09:29.160 tremendous relief because they can have target symptom relief without any downsides. And that's

01:09:34.100 really, you know, it's a tremendous lift for those kids. Well, and I think that's, that's a nice thing

01:09:39.960 to know too, is that you could be using the drug to get yourself off the drug. I mean, it really could

01:09:44.900 help solve the brain problem to where you don't need anything eventually. Um, I want to end with

01:09:51.000 the upsides because, you know, you're talking about the kids who, and the, and the sort of the

01:09:56.020 feedback that they get as kids, as children, that they're problematic, that there's something wrong

01:10:00.340 with them. And, you know, it can be very damaging that plus these great gifts that are there as

01:10:05.400 well. Maybe they're not being called that or identified as that yet of like great creativity

01:10:09.420 and great energy, um, and abilities to do super focusing explains to me why there are so many

01:10:17.360 super successful people with ADHD, because you tend to like, if you have all those gifts, you know,

01:10:21.960 the creativity and the drive and the focus and all that, and then people crap on you for years and

01:10:26.020 years, you probably will be a big success because you're driven. You have issues you need to

01:10:31.760 overcome. I always worry that like, I'm, I need to create more issues with my children. If I want

01:10:36.920 them to be very successful, I need to damage them more. I mean, I'm doing my part. I think I need to

01:10:41.780 do more. I used to think that when I was like, you know, screaming bloody murder at the top of my

01:10:45.740 lungs, but probably, you know, I, I've gotten to a place now where I, I almost never raised my voice

01:10:50.080 just because, you know, I think that, that I, someone has to stay calm and the relationship in my

01:10:55.080 kids are very excitable people. So, but I do want to touch on the one thing that you said, which is,

01:11:02.320 um, that kids with ADHD tend to have to try so much harder to be good at what they're doing

01:11:09.280 because they're particularly if they've been undiagnosed and even if they have, even if they're,

01:11:14.120 um, undiagnosed and unmedicated, even if they are diagnosed, they still have to work harder.

01:11:18.940 And so their pedal speed is very fast. And when they go into adulthood and their brain matures,

01:11:24.800 and things get a little easier, they still sort of have this very fast peddling speed. So they're

01:11:31.240 working on a higher frequency and then they're, you know, they're, they're able to leverage the

01:11:35.800 skills of their brain. So they go like this. And, um, I think that's really fascinating. And I think

01:11:41.260 we saw that with so many people on the documentary that Scott Kelly felt terrible. Yeah. Scott Kelly,

01:11:47.140 the astronaut, I interviewed him when I was on NBC and he talked about how he was a straight C student.

01:11:53.340 He just, he did not do well in school. And you have this image of astronauts like, oh, I could

01:11:57.480 never be an astronaut. You'd have to get straight A's and A pluses in every scientific course you ever

01:12:01.200 took. Nope, not necessarily. And he's a great example of this. He's a great example. And he, you know,

01:12:07.780 his grandmother told him he was stupid and he would never learn to read. And, you know, but that whole

01:12:12.180 thing with getting C's, it's very interesting. David Nealman, who's the founder of JetBlue and many other

01:12:16.600 jet companies, he always, he only got C's and he felt really dumb growing up. And even when JetBlue went public,

01:12:23.340 many years ago, he said, he just drove home still feeling like the loser from high school because

01:12:27.780 it was so ingrained in his head that he wasn't good enough and wasn't good as good as everyone

01:12:31.680 else. And so I think that is kind of an internal motivator. If you can flip it to that, if you're

01:12:36.420 negatively motivated, not everyone is. So, um, but that's interesting that so many people had that

01:12:41.820 struggle. I am because I'm Irish. So we respond to just being insulted and, you know, it doesn't upset

01:12:47.360 us. It just, you know, we're like, I knew it. Yeah, you're right. Good things can happen. If

01:12:52.380 you try to turn it around, Nancy, such a pleasure. I really, really love the film. It's already won

01:12:56.940 a bunch of awards. It's called the disruptors. It's available now on Apple TV and iTunes and YouTube,

01:13:03.540 Google play, Amazon, and more promise you, you will love it. I promise you the disruptors. Check

01:13:08.160 it out. All the best, my friend. Thank you so much, Megan. Okay. Coming up after this break,

01:13:13.020 we are going to meet somebody who I've wanted to meet and who you may know, whose name you

01:13:17.560 may know. Her name is Susie Weiss. You recognize the last name. You probably know of her sister.

01:13:24.340 Why is Susie here? I have to stay tuned to find out.

01:13:31.040 Joining me now, Susie Weiss. Susie is a former New York Post reporter and a contributor to Common

01:13:37.640 Sense on Substack. She is also the younger sister of Common Sense's founder, Barry Weiss. Susie,

01:13:46.020 I am so excited to meet you and to have you here. Thanks for coming on.

01:13:49.980 Me too, Megan. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, you look a little like Barry. I've read so much

01:13:55.120 of what you've written, but I've never seen you. That's fun. This is so fun.

01:13:58.040 You have the same face and voice. It's terrifying.

01:14:01.820 Talent must run in the family because I read your stuff. I'm like, how's this girl 27? This is crazy.

01:14:07.420 Your writing is beautiful. Your thought process. 27 on Tuesday, Megan. I'm 26 still.

01:14:12.800 Oh my God, sister. Don't even get me started. Okay. I'm in my what? Fifth decade now? 51. I

01:14:17.220 always, I hate to do the math. Is that considered your fifth or your sixth decade? I don't know.

01:14:20.560 Whatever. I didn't go to the fancy schools like you did. All right. So Susie writes for Barry Weiss

01:14:25.600 for her Common Sense. And you should never miss a Susie Weiss piece because they're very insightful,

01:14:30.620 way beyond the wisdom any self-respecting 26-year-old should have. You should have been out partying

01:14:35.420 more and not developing that beautiful brain. But we'll get to that later in life. So the piece that

01:14:40.800 really got our attention, they're all good. But the one I really wanted to talk to you about was

01:14:44.400 the piece you did on David Sabatini. And just to set it up for our audience, we've been covering on

01:14:49.940 this show the weaponization of Me Too. And it's happened to Roland Fryer, this brilliant Harvard

01:14:57.440 professor, happens to be a black professor there. I think the youngest tenured black professor in

01:15:03.780 Harvard's history, who's been completely railroaded out of his prestigious opportunities there over

01:15:09.760 trumped up Me Too charges. Joshua Katz, this just happened to him at Princeton, a similar situation.

01:15:15.520 And Ilya Shapiro was not Me Too'd out of his Georgetown law position. But he did send out just

01:15:22.020 a poorly worded tweet about Ketanji Brown Jackson that basically wound up costing him his opportunity

01:15:27.320 there. And when they finally gave him a like, well, we guess we'll let you start. To his credit,

01:15:31.560 he said, forget you. This is doomed and didn't go. And that brings us to David Sabatini, who I think

01:15:37.780 might be the worst case of all. I'm horrified by what you wrote. Not only did I read it, I then

01:15:44.180 listened to it, you know, the audio of it. And then I shared it with everybody I knew. I want everybody

01:15:49.840 to go to Barry Weiss's Substack and read this. But Susie's going to walk us through the basics of the

01:15:53.680 story here. So who is David Sabatini?

01:15:55.720 Right. Thanks, Megan, for that setup. David Sabatini is the most important scientist you've

01:16:02.360 never heard of, right? So he studies something called the mTOR pathway. He discovered it when

01:16:06.640 he was a graduate student. I don't really know about the mTOR pathway. I think it would take

01:16:10.360 a PhD to explain. The important thing to understand is that the mTOR pathway, which Sabatini and his team

01:16:17.080 of 39 researchers worked on, is essential to understanding cells and eventually the cure for cancer.

01:16:23.280 Okay. So I think when we talk about overreach in the Me Too movement, we tend to think of

01:16:27.820 producers or comedians or whoever it is. But I think it's a different story. And I think it requires

01:16:34.920 a big magnifying glass when you're talking about someone who could potentially save the lives of

01:16:41.680 millions of people with his research. So David Sabatini had a consensual relationship with a

01:16:47.120 colleague. It didn't end well. She later claimed that he harassed her. And now,

01:16:52.460 one of the country's most important scientists who was getting something like $4 million in funding

01:16:58.480 from places like the American Cancer Society and the Pentagon. And he had won every science prize

01:17:04.280 under the book. He was expected to win the Nobel as well. He's collecting unemployment. So he's

01:17:08.800 unemployed and unemployable. And it's just a kind of crazy story. And it goes from MIT to

01:17:16.220 NYU who was thinking of hiring him. And it's a piece of what's happening in our whole culture.

01:17:22.500 And it shows who has the power. Is it the people at the top? Is it the Robert Grossmans who run NYU's

01:17:27.980 medical school? Or is it a graduate student who claims that they'd be unsafe if David Sabatini

01:17:33.300 were to continue doing his research in New York?

01:17:35.500 Hmm. My gosh. All right. So let's walk through it till people understand

01:17:39.000 the slow murder of David Sabatini's professional career. I mean, this guy's the anatomy of a takedown.

01:17:45.420 It really is. And we need this guy. And so like I look, you know, of course,

01:17:48.180 I'm very open minded to somebody's me to claim. I don't think I have to prove that to anybody.

01:17:52.360 Right. But this is horrific. And what it sounds like to me, this is my opinion,

01:17:57.620 is an affair that didn't work out. And somebody who decided she'd been jilted and wanted to get him.

01:18:03.680 And boy, she did. And in this environment, you know, somebody like this woman who's very well

01:18:08.960 credentialed saying the things she was saying about him, she's going to have a lot of power.

01:18:13.400 So this woman had a consensual affair with him. There was an age difference. He was 50. She was

01:18:17.440 29. He had split with his wife. There was no allegation of like extramarital stuff or whatever.

01:18:22.100 And he ran a lab at MIT and she was coming in. She was coming in to run her own lab at 29. Is that

01:18:28.440 correct? That's right. So David was a principal investigator at his lab at MIT. And

01:18:33.480 Kristen Knauss, who he had an affair with, was also an incoming principal investigator. Usually

01:18:38.120 you don't get that position when you're so young. MIT has this sort of special program through the

01:18:42.780 Whitehead Institute. So I won't deny that David Sabatini, as a rock star in his field,

01:18:47.280 had more power than her. But technically, according to the Whitehead Institute, where they both worked,

01:18:52.980 the only, you know, the only rule he broke was not disclosing that he had a consensual relationship,

01:19:00.240 which violated their consensual relationship policy. So as much as this is about, you know,

01:19:06.340 maybe a jilted lover, maybe someone who wanted to take another person down, I think it's also about

01:19:11.080 what happens when we litigate sex to this degree, when an affair becomes so procedural and your boss

01:19:19.360 is involved in it. I mean, we're trying to like, can I, can I say for the record, I will distinguish

01:19:24.700 this from, for example, Jeff Zucker at CNN, who had a consensual affair with a colleague who was his

01:19:30.380 underling, who he continued to promote up the ranks over other young women who worked at CNN.

01:19:35.720 That's a deep problem. That's an ethical problem. This was not that situation. She had already gotten

01:19:42.000 this position of running her own lab and the policy against consensual affairs amongst the people in

01:19:48.000 these positions didn't even kick in until after they'd already begun it. So, you know,

01:19:52.360 whatever, he basically got hung up on a technicality.

01:19:56.440 Right. So there's that technical aspect of it. And then there's the fact that according to this

01:20:00.720 250 page report that I reviewed, where they brought in these criminal investigators, including a DA to

01:20:07.860 investigate David Sabatini, a former state attorney, he violated their consensual relationship policy,

01:20:14.600 which is the technicality. And then there was a lot of mushy language about how he violated the

01:20:19.020 anti-harassment policy because his behavior created a sexual undercurrent in the lab.

01:20:24.640 They said his relationship exacerbated things because of her, because of his, quote, indirect

01:20:30.440 influence over her and ran afoul of the spirit, if not the letter of the policy. So because you have

01:20:36.580 these like bricks of legalese, you can find a way so that if you swore in the lab, that could count as

01:20:42.760 harassment because it could make someone uncomfortable. So we have the technicality

01:20:47.380 aspect of it. And then the the bad behavior in the lab, which is what they really needed to get

01:20:51.740 him kicked out, because if that's what makes it about the whitehead itself and everyone I spoke to

01:20:57.020 about, you know, a dozen and a half people who worked with David Sabatini say that his lab is the

01:21:02.400 gold standard, that women there weren't uncomfortable, that it just wasn't in the air. So that's what where I

01:21:08.120 think the whitehead really overstepped. Well, this was one of the conclusions in their report. This is

01:21:13.560 from your reporting that they found Sabatini's propensity to praise or gravitate toward those

01:21:20.420 in the lab that mirror his desired personality traits, scientific success or view of science above

01:21:27.860 all else creates additional obstacles for female lab members. OMG, because because a woman can't believe

01:21:35.260 that science above all else is the correct way to approach work at a science lab. You know,

01:21:40.420 they're just way too concerned with having babies. I have no idea. I think that line really jumped out

01:21:46.920 at me, too. Yeah, it was absurd. The absurdity of this. So that so they come out with this report,

01:21:51.100 all these people brought in to investigate him. And he was, forgive me, dismembered. I mean,

01:21:57.220 piece by piece. He lost everything. I mean, some of those guys I mentioned had like a year's

01:22:04.340 suspension or like Roland lost control of his lab at Harvard, where they did all these great studies

01:22:09.820 on like police officers and, you know, black men and so on. Roland is a black man. So that happened.

01:22:14.940 But he wasn't totally fired. Ultimately, the guy at Princeton was. But David, I mean, it was swift

01:22:22.180 and it wasn't just the lab, the professorship at MIT to talk to us about what happened to him.

01:22:29.460 His prizes got taken away. His funding got taken away. When you're a scientist at this caliber,

01:22:35.100 you're really reliant on these huge institutions, huge research labs. It's not like a writer who could

01:22:39.880 just go start a sub stack and do something else. You know what I mean? If they if they have to leave

01:22:43.960 the mainstream. So David got his got his funding taken away, got his prizes taken away. He was on

01:22:50.740 the board of a ton of startups in the Boston area that were biotech startups with, you know,

01:22:56.320 missions like looking for the cure for cancer. And he tells me he wasn't living in his house because he

01:23:01.240 couldn't stand the sound of the FedEx envelopes dropping into his mail slot, which was invariably

01:23:07.120 another institution or startup or whatever it was cutting ties with him. He lost about 35 pounds.

01:23:14.500 He doesn't sleep anymore. And, you know, the real loss, I think, is to all of us. I mean,

01:23:20.900 this was a guy at the prime of his life. And now he's shuffling around, taking care of his 11 year

01:23:26.460 old, whom he shares custody of with his ex-wife and really doing nothing. And I think that is

01:23:32.180 as much as loss to him, a loss to to the country. And this is you say he can't build his own. And that

01:23:40.200 that struck a chord because I know that's Barry's thing. You know, she's been saying that

01:23:43.820 Ben Shapiro says, I believe in it as well. Like, don't let them cancel you, you know,

01:23:47.900 build your own thing. Like Barry started a whole new university because just to try to create an

01:23:52.240 alternate. But this is not really an area in which that's all that possible. He can't cure cancer

01:23:59.900 from your living room. Yeah. And you need the influx of students at prestigious places who

01:24:07.100 want to go to the prestigious places because they're more likely to get published at those

01:24:12.680 prestigious places. So it's this like sort of crazy ecosystem. And when NYU thought, you know,

01:24:18.060 maybe we could try and pick this guy up, they learned the hard way that a vocal minority of their

01:24:23.540 postdocs and graduate students were not going to let that happen.

01:24:26.660 This is a horrifying piece of the story, too. Let's talk about this. So David's there avoiding

01:24:31.560 the FedEx is losing 35 pounds, losing his hair. He can't sleep. He can't eat. Everyone has severed

01:24:38.900 ties with him again. There's not even an allegation that he inappropriately touched somebody. He had a

01:24:43.980 consensual affair, which they said violated the policy. And, you know, that's about it. I mean,

01:24:49.900 maybe some sort of a bro culture they said was in the lab because he used to have whiskey tastings.

01:24:54.020 That's it. That's it. So he lost everything because of that. And so he reaches out to a

01:25:01.540 friend at NYU and she was open minded to him and then take it from there.

01:25:06.840 Right. Daphna Barsigai, who runs science at NYU, called up her friend David Sabatini to check in

01:25:12.660 on him. And he was sort of saying, I'll never work again. And she was saying, you're David Sabatini.

01:25:17.240 You're going to work again. Like you're the man. And he was like, well, would you hire me? And she

01:25:22.760 was like, oh, OK. So then that started NYU going through the process of vetting this guy. And Daphna

01:25:29.540 said something really beautiful, I think, to me, which was, you know, it was incumbent upon us to

01:25:33.940 check out these allegations for ourselves at the risk of depriving generations of his scientific

01:25:38.680 discoveries. And what they did was they obtained the Whitehead report, which hasn't been made public,

01:25:44.020 but which I've read. And they sent it to three other lawyers who all said that David Sabatini

01:25:50.340 was completely denied due process here. They thought it was just kind of a sham investigation,

01:25:56.420 frankly, so that when it leaked that NYU was considering hiring Sabatini, it leaked to Science

01:26:02.040 Magazine, a huge protest erupted at NYU. I went to the protest and I spoke to one student and I said,

01:26:09.900 you know, if David's where should a David Sabatini go, this brilliant scientist? And she goes,

01:26:14.040 prison. Like, they just want nothing to do with him. And they think by NYU hiring them,

01:26:19.580 it just shows that all they care about is prestige and research dollars and that they don't care about

01:26:24.680 their, you know, the safety of their postdoc. So after NYU students protested, NYU stopped the

01:26:32.680 process of vetting Sabatini to potentially hire him. And then, you know, before you get to that,

01:26:38.640 I know where you're going. But before we get there, this is from your piece. NYU shared the

01:26:43.880 Whitehead report with several outside lawyers who all concluded he was not afforded due process,

01:26:48.660 as he mentioned. Postdocs at the medical school were threatening to retract papers. Faculty had been

01:26:55.000 ostracized for not publicly blasting Sabatini. Andrew Hamilton, NYU's president, sent a letter,

01:27:01.660 quote, strongly advising that the medical school not go through with hiring Sabatini, writing,

01:27:08.220 quote, faculty at the university and elsewhere have been told not to work with us. And also,

01:27:13.320 speakers are being told not to come here. And then it goes on to say that on May 3rd, NYU announced,

01:27:20.840 after careful and thorough consideration, it will not be possible for him to become

01:27:24.220 a member of our faculty. And then let's talk about the NIH.

01:27:30.840 Right. So NYU gets about four hundred seventy million dollars. No, excuse me, it's five hundred

01:27:38.260 million dollars in grant money. Four hundred seventy of that is for a study on long COVID. And Daphne

01:27:43.200 Barsigai is sort of like the arbiter of all of this money. And this is a person who's never had a

01:27:48.460 complaint against her in her entire career. A lot of anonymous complaints are filed to the NIH

01:27:53.360 about Daphne Barsigai, who is now being audited for, you know, her involvement in all the NIH money

01:28:01.380 because of the potential that she creates an unsafe environment in her lab. So I think going back to

01:28:07.520 your original point, Megan, about the overreach of Me Too, what we have here is a lot of policies

01:28:12.720 that were enacted, a lot of anonymous complaint boxes, a lot of avenues that you could, you know,

01:28:19.320 lodge a complaint if something happened to you. I think there's a potential and maybe we're seeing

01:28:24.620 it here in the Sabatini case that those avenues are being taken advantage of.

01:28:28.340 Mm hmm. I mean, the fact that not only does he get booted from MIT and every single organization

01:28:35.660 that he was associated with, including some of the organizations he founded, they all severed ties

01:28:39.960 with him. But then the university that considers hiring him, the person there gets investigated by

01:28:47.080 the NIH herself. People start writing in complaints against her that which would totally out of the

01:28:51.520 blue. And now the NIH is looking at possibly withdrawing that funding. That's next level. I

01:28:57.160 mean, that's mafia shit. That's scary. And if and if you really think about it, the NIH funding,

01:29:04.020 they changed their policies around Me Too, because basically, before, you know, historically,

01:29:10.380 there was a game of pass the harasser. So if a researcher brought in a lot of money, the institution

01:29:15.840 wouldn't be as likely to investigate them for doing something wrong in their lab. But now with the

01:29:22.380 change of policy, the institution is almost incentivized to prove that something untoward happened

01:29:27.160 in the lab so that they could kick out the harasser, in this case, David Sabatini, and keep the grant

01:29:32.480 money for themselves. They're more likely to be able to transfer the name of the grantee if they're

01:29:37.900 able to prove sexual harassment. So it's sort of like, you know, watching. So, you know, we're laying

01:29:45.660 in the bed that we made, I think, in a big sense. But the NIH money part of it is really fascinating to

01:29:52.980 me. And frankly, I think while we were all talking about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, this was the Me Too

01:29:58.200 story that that really should have gotten our attention. And if the NIH turns on you as a as

01:30:04.360 an academic institution, you're dead. You're dead. That's where your funding comes. Like you know,

01:30:09.620 he Sabatini's he was already in his professional coffin. This was the nail because no one will look

01:30:16.080 at him now, not just because NYU got scared and got away, but because the NIH basically came in and

01:30:21.040 said, we will ruin you if you even consider him. And it's not just that. It's not just Sabatini.

01:30:26.680 It's his lab members who loved him, who were told by the Whitehead brass, including Ruth

01:30:33.440 Lehman, who runs the Whitehead, that if they went against the Whitehead's ask not to contact

01:30:40.020 David Sabatini, not to help him, not to be communicate with him in any way, they wouldn't

01:30:44.820 want to jeopardize their NIH funding, basically. So I talked to all of these people who say David

01:30:48.980 Sabatini changed their life. He's the most brilliant scientist. He's a pillar. None of them would go on the

01:30:52.860 record with me. Why do you think that is? It's because they're afraid of they're scared of going

01:30:58.320 where he is and not being able to get NIH funding, which one of them described to me exactly, as you

01:31:03.420 said, as as a death sentence. Well, if they're going to do it to this woman who runs the NYU program,

01:31:08.760 who didn't have a blemish on her record and all she did was sort of recommend him,

01:31:12.900 who wouldn't they do it to? Exactly. And it's and it's interesting because on one hand,

01:31:18.540 you have Whitehead publicly saying, you know, we're just trying to protect trainees from this

01:31:23.960 monster. But then on the inside, you have them saying, we're going to we're going to make your

01:31:29.680 life very difficult if you try and save your your old boss. Right. Because didn't they they said that

01:31:35.500 they couldn't. Right. Didn't they mandate that the people in his labs not speak, even if they wanted

01:31:39.960 to, even if they wanted to offer a positive testimonial and not to be in touch with him?

01:31:44.500 That's right. They were told not to be in touch with him. And I mean,

01:31:46.700 they were in the middle of multimillion dollar experiments on ovarian cancer. There were half

01:31:52.720 used reagents in the lab. I mean, this guy was just kicked out, told not to enter the building.

01:31:57.840 And this lab, which was, you know, publishing more papers than, you know, any other lab in the

01:32:03.820 building was just dismantled. And another fold of this is that a lot of these trainees are immigrants

01:32:11.600 and they don't want to jeopardize their visas. So they're even less likely to speak out because

01:32:16.980 they just want to be in America doing their work. Does he know what happened to his lab or any of

01:32:23.220 the projects he was working on? He really doesn't know. Another scientist, I think his name is Jonathan

01:32:30.760 Weissman, but I would need to double check. He got put on a few of the grants and I think they were.

01:32:36.980 They were they were wound down. But, you know, the papers are still coming out that he worked on,

01:32:42.720 but he has no idea what became of the lab in short. So now, I mean, the only thing that's

01:32:47.380 available to him realistically is the law. And I understand he he has filed a lawsuit. So how's

01:32:53.660 where are we with that? That is like in prediscovery, I believe. And David knows it's going to take

01:33:00.880 probably a minimum of five years to get his day in court with this. But he fired filed a defamation

01:33:06.500 lawsuit against his accuser, the Whitehead and Ruth Lehman. And then, of course, she filed a

01:33:13.620 counterclaim. And, you know, those those claims are online and you could read them. And they're

01:33:18.300 pretty they're pretty incredible documents. He should go hire Camille Vasquez, the Johnny Depp

01:33:23.900 lawyer. That's who it's a defamation case. I know. I don't I do what I would do for him.

01:33:32.800 Yeah. Well, you know, I'm thinking, like, how can we help him? And I'm thinking, like,

01:33:36.080 maybe Vivek Ramaswamy can help. Like, he's been amazing. And he's in this field of, you

01:33:40.720 know, medical technology. That's how he made his money. And he wrote, you know, was his book.

01:33:46.040 It was like anti woke, whatever. Well, I think that's what it was like. It's somebody like

01:33:50.020 that. We need to we need a guardian angel to step in and help fund him and make this

01:33:54.320 an independent lane available to him. Yeah, I agree. But, you know, it goes back to

01:33:59.340 building a whole new world and building incentive systems that would make the best and brightest

01:34:05.940 minds in the country want to work under David Sabatini in a lab, maybe funded by a billionaire

01:34:11.360 and not by Harvard or the Koch Institute or whoever it is. And I think that that is the wheels

01:34:18.500 of that are slowly turning, but unfortunately, probably not as fast as David Sabatini needs

01:34:23.080 them to. All right. Last question before I let you go. How I think you're one of four

01:34:27.660 in your in your family. That's right. How did how are you all this way? And how did your

01:34:32.740 parents raise daughters like this? Oh, my God, Megan. No, me and Barry have two middle

01:34:38.540 sisters who are totally normal and aren't doing crazy articles that get them in trouble all the

01:34:43.940 time. They're awesome. They're they're both new moms. They live in Pittsburgh with my parents.

01:34:50.000 And yeah, me and Barry are just either something good happened or something very, very bad happened.

01:34:55.780 We're still trying to figure it out. Something very, very good. I know I remember reading

01:34:59.820 something you'd written when you were much younger and it was something to the effect of

01:35:02.240 I was is very different as I was the youngest. And instead of my parents waiting up all night to

01:35:07.300 make sure I made it home by curfew, it was more like don't wake us up when you sneak in

01:35:10.580 the middle of the night. Yes, yes. That story from a million years ago. Oh, I'm still really

01:35:17.560 proud of that story. But it was great. Yes, yes. I guess we were moths to a flame. We just can't

01:35:24.240 stop. My dad also writes a lot of columns for The Wall Street Journal that I think are really

01:35:27.640 fabulous. But if everything had gone according to plan, me and Barry would be selling carpet

01:35:31.500 in Squirrel Hill where we grew up. So I don't know what happened, but I'm happy to be here.

01:35:36.220 Let's be glad it didn't. You are welcome here anytime. And everybody should check out

01:35:40.140 common sense if they haven't already. What a pleasure, Susie. So nice to meet you.

01:35:43.520 Thank you so much, Megan. It was a pleasure to be here.

01:35:45.800 OMG, next week, you've got to listen. Download now. Sammy the Bull admits to being part of 19

01:35:51.340 murders, turned on John Gotti and the Gambino crime family, and he's here. See you then.

01:35:57.560 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:36:10.140 Thanks for listening to The Megan...

01:36:11.140 Thanks for listening.

The Megyn Kelly Show - July 01, 2022

Racist Attacks on Clarence Thomas, and Our Culture Today, with Glenn Greenwald, Nancy Armstrong, and Suzy Weiss ｜ Ep. 349

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