Rahm Emanuel on How the Dems Lost Their Way and Trump's Immigration Successes, Plus, Mark Halperin, Link Lauren and Dan Turrentine | Ep. 1112
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 44 minutes
Words per Minute
200.18045
Summary
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel joins the Megyn Kelly Show to discuss his life, career, and future potential political career. Megyn talks with Rahm about his political career and why he thinks he could run for president in 2028.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show,
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coming to you live today from the SiriusXM headquarters in New York City.
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We are only six months into President Trump's historic second term,
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but that has not stopped speculation about who's going to run for president in 2028.
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I gave a speech, as you guys know, last week out in Vail and everyone there wanted to know
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who's the likely next Republican and who's the likely next Dem.
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I don't have a crystal ball, but I keep seeing the same names you guys are seeing.
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And over on Team Blue, one name keeps coming up is Rahm Emanuel.
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He was Obama's one-time White House chief of staff.
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He certainly has a top-shelf political resume and is deeply connected to the Democrats' massive
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And unlike some of the loons over on the other side, he's a centrist.
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We've talked about his potential candidacy many times here on The Megyn Kelly Show.
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He's made a lot of enemies inside the Democratic Party over the years,
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and we'll ask him about how that might affect his potential chances.
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A lot of you may have some kind of extra car just sitting around.
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Maybe it's that second vehicle collecting dust in the driveway.
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Or maybe, yes, it's the one that hasn't moved in months and you're not even sure it still runs.
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Whatever it is, if you are not using it, you could be donating it.
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They've been doing this for over 30 years, taking a million vehicle donations by this point.
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You're going to wonder why you didn't do it sooner.
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You donate your car, running or not, and Cars for Kids will turn it into funding for children's programs across the country.
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And let's not forget the jingle, 1-877-CARS-FOR-KIDS.
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I would sing it, but I don't remember the tune.
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Joining me now to discuss his life and career and future potential political career is Rahm Emanuel.
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So what are you doing here on the Megyn Kelly Show?
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I thought we were going to have brunch or something.
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But you, you know, a lot of Democrats won't come on this show because they don't want to talk to somebody like me.
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Well, I mean, you kind of started it because you've brought me up before.
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And I thought, well, if you're going to bring me up a couple of times, I'll come on the show.
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Since my favorite subject is me, I thought I'd do that.
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And, you know, you say from Team Blue, which is fair.
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There's Team USA before there's Team Blue and Team Red.
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I'm going to talk about what I think and also, you know, kind of just rip the mask off.
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Let's start with this because, you know, I came of age as a reporter at Fox News and my show.
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And my friend Sean Hannity used to refer to you every night as Rom Deadfish Emanuel.
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I don't know how much time, but I'll cycle it fast.
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I'm political director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign.
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And he said that if he gets within a single digit, he's going to take a second mortgage.
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We go from 36 down, 24 down, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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He's just four or five points, six points, narrowing it, narrowing it.
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The Republicans winning, but the Democrats closing in consistently over two months.
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And the campaign manager figures out that the pollster had pulled the wrong group.
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And obviously we weren't going to win a lot of races, but to symbolically win in 1988, Jack
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Kemp's seat would have bigger, bigger than a single district.
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And it was too late then with seven days to go to really impact Dave Schwartz goes on to lose by a few points in a presidential year.
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So myself and a number of people sent the Democratic pollster a dead fish for costing us a seat.
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And opens it up, stinking, da-da-da-da, sends me this long, eight-page, single-spaced letter of how horrible it was working for me.
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And then this moment in time becomes kind of mythological of that.
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Did you like the reputation or you don't like it?
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Not you, just because you work at Fox doesn't capture who you are.
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When it comes to other people's kids, I'm also quick to a tear.
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My kids always say, you're not allowed to talk about us, grandpa or dad.
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And I did do it because he cost us a seat because he was, he made a mistake.
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And I'm unmerciful in that sense when it came to winning.
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This is your show after all, is I'm a middle child.
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And I always joke, the middle children wrote a book, War or Peace.
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But I think this is actually to your advantage in capturing this nomination, because I think
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the country likes a strong man, even though we were kind of pretending we didn't for a
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And I think Democrats are in need of a strong man.
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I mean, I think too many in the party have gone along with the like, no, we have to be,
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you know, everyone's toxically masculine and we have to overcorrect the other way.
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Yeah, I still don't, I don't know the words to kumbaya.
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So here's my, my thing is, one is when I'm having work for both President Clinton and President
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And if you look at it, and also an avid reader of presidential history, history, and in
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general, there are three qualities of president and a presidential candidate have to project
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Nobody, if you look at history, Kennedy versus Nixon, just go through it, we never nominate
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the weaker or the more indecisive or the less optimistic, just full blown.
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Second, and then that's on a comparative basis.
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And I do think there's a currency in our party, and this is my theory of the case, at least,
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where both candor, authenticity, and strength have a currency and have a blame.
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I might, I kind of say that, and then there was an article the other day, and it's, I forgot
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what paper was, either the Washington Post or Politico, that said Democrats were studying
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You either are who you are or you're not, and I'm comfortable with who I am.
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They're studying, too, how to speak to young men.
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Well, one is, there's a simple, they've lost it with young men for a whole host of
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And the other thing is because, for, you date your time there, I'd say, basically COVID
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forward, maybe even a little before that, our party had everybody, including ourselves,
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Like, it was so PC, you couldn't even, God forbid you had thought privately to yourself,
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and you were scared and jumped, and literally you had this kind of flinch all the time.
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And people didn't, and not just young men, it was also, if you look at the data, even
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young women were tired of basically just a PC-type thinking and talking about stuff, and
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also this idea that you had to walk on eggshells.
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But the truth is, Republicans have the same kind of thing where people jump on them all
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You know, I mean, if you criticize President Trump within the Republican Party, depending
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Though I think the Republicans are more fractured and always have been than Democrats.
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It's always, I feel like Democrats stick together.
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You know, we both admire the other parties' sense of loyalty.
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So you feel like Democrats are more fractured internally, in general, as a group, than
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Well, it's kind of Mark Twain's original, I'm a part of no organized party, I'm a Democrat.
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Look, I think Democrats, as you can see recently, have a little bit of a firing squad in the
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Take a look recently, people, you can say whatever you want, and I have my disagreements, a lot
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of them, countless with President Trump, but he has brought us a level of discipline and
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On the big, beautiful bill, which I have my own criticisms of, people have voted for
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something they criticize, and now, as soon as they've done it, they're trying to earbrush
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He's now introduced, trying to eliminate all the Medicaid cuts that he just voted for.
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There's an example, A, of what kind of loyalty he's brought.
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Do you feel like the Dems have changed on the over-the-top PC language police?
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And that's trickled down into my kids' single-digit education all the way up through high school.
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Well, some elements, yes, and some elements, this is what does, when you get to education,
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well, I mean, to me, you know, at another point in my life, early before I decided to
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go into public service or politics, I was going to be an early childhood educator.
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And there is this kind of, you know, the fundamentals of education we have missed.
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We now have the worst reading scores in 30 years, the worst math scores, and we're focused
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on everything but the most important thing, which is why you have three children.
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Why parents send kids to school to support the type of education we also try to do at home.
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And we've gotten focused, as I said, on things like bathroom access rather than classroom
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We've gotten focused, and I'm sensitive, to one person's pronoun versus the other 35 kids
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in the class that don't know what a pronoun is.
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And I'm sorry, 35 kids not knowing what a pronoun is, having your worst reading scores
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and math scores in 30 years, we have a crisis on hand.
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Going back to Ronald Reagan's time where Bloom wrote the report, A Nation at Crisis, we're
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back to where we started, and we better focus on the priority.
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And I do think, not just Democrats, but everybody, from the naming of a school to bathroom access
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And the fundamental, we've lost sight of, you know, the forest for the trees.
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And I think that's really, and we're supposed to be the adults and take care of our kids
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We need to work on the basic reading and math scores.
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But I feel like the Democrats are the ones who introduce things like pronouns and the
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And those of us on what I call the side of sanity stood up to say, no, you're not putting your
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six foot tall boy in my daughter's eighth grade soccer class or gym, gym class.
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And that doesn't make me the one trying to ignore what's important about math and reading.
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And we have a, and I want to say one thing here, and I do a shout out for Mississippi.
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I would say we're taking this at large because they've shown with some of the toughest
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constituencies, poor kids, children from single-parent homes, black kids, to make major gains in
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But there's also politicization, culture wars by Republicans on what topics we're allowed
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to talk about, how we're allowed to talk about them.
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Do I think Democrats led that in kind of this whole pronoun debate?
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And that's why they basically, and it's gotten us sidetracked.
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And we're stuck in a cold, not only a party, but more importantly, a country.
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And it's why, I'll be honest, I have my own view on what I would do on education.
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And we should get kids ready with AI capabilities.
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We have a massive post-COVID attendance problem.
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And I would have a national, more than 7%, you repeat the client.
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And absenteeism in a lot of the big cities is up to 30% right now.
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You have kids graduating high school with a 20% absentee rate.
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They don't have the skills to go on to college, and it's going to be remedial education.
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Like R for reading and using the Mississippi example to blow it up nationally, take it to every state.
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Parents should know where their kids are every grade level on national standards and where their kids' schools are at meeting those national levels for every grade.
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To me, if you do that type of thing, we can start to focus again on the most important thing.
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Why I as a parent of three, why you as a parent of three, why a parent of two, one, whatever.
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That's why parents move, like I say, as a mayor of the city of Chicago.
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You know how you knew a neighborhood was doing well?
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On the real estate forum, they would say they're here in this school district.
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That meant that school district became a magnet for that area.
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And to me, that's the most important thing because we live in a time where you earn what you learn.
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And we need to ensure that every child has a chance to live up to their potential.
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So, and it only, it starts at school, but I would also, I used to, I fundamentally believe this now.
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There are three doors a child walks through that will explain their future.
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The front door of the home, the front door of the school, and the front door of the place of worship.
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And if those three doors are aligned, I don't care your zip code, I don't care your family background, I don't care your income.
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And I think we need to get back to that kind of a focus.
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I just, I have my doubts because my own experience has been with a, you know, a rising, as they say, about to go into sixth grade, ninth grade, and 10th grade-ers.
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There's just been so much ideological nonsense shoved down their throats.
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That's, that's where we were up until we fled in 2021 to get away from that and move to Connecticut.
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Now, obviously, New York City private schools are elite schools.
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They don't have to worry about reading scores and math generally there.
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But my point is, in these schools, my boys' school, they took three weeks to devote to transgenderism.
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Three weeks at an all-boys' school trying to get these boys to spend time on whether you're sure you're a boy,
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might you not be totally sure, raise your fist, five if you're totally sure, four if you're only a little.
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I mean, it was crazy showing them videos of men and boys and skirts and dresses and makeup.
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So it's like, to me, it's so much more than a culture war.
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You're messing with a child's mental health when you're doing it.
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There's, look, again, I'm going to get back the three doors.
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They come from a loving, I don't know you, they come from a loving home, and they have the support.
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They, basically, school backs up the education of a child, which is my one, if I can't take a side note.
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It's a horrible term because it assumes that, no, every child's homeschooled.
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The school reinforces the capabilities that the home nurtures.
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And the other door, the place of worship, which is important for a child's total character development.
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Now, was and is and does it continue cultural wars?
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Things that are like topics like slavery that are totally kind of trying to be earbrushed out of history books.
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The fact is, we teach kids, and we should basically focus on the fundamentals and get back to the fundamentals.
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I do think, as it relates to, and I did this as mayor, 2016, ambassador I worked with, you've got an issue, and you're working through on your pronoun, et cetera.
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But it is not the preoccupation for the rest of the class.
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So you want the schools to stop pushing that stuff.
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I get, look, in 2016, I signed and passed the ordinance to the city council as it relates to bathroom access.
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But in that, just to be clear, in that you were on the side of the trans people having access to the bathroom of choice.
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I'll give you that Trump was also on that same side back in 2016, but has changed.
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No, my position, no, not from an inclusive standpoint.
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My point is, though, it's not the dominant issue.
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Well, that's why I'm trying to nail you down on where you are.
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I got what you're trying to do, and I'm trying to be the ballet dancer I was.
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But you know, if you're going to really run for this position.
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When I was an ambassador to Japan, trans people working in an embassy, we worked on what our job was.
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I respected what you made a choice, and also they're an adult.
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And a parent has a right to speak up at the school about this.
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My point, though, on this whole subject, though, Megan, we are talking about – let's give you an example.
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We're spending now, I don't know, eight minutes on this.
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That's only because you won't give me a straight answer.
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We can move on if you give me a straight answer.
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Let me give you – let me give you – I'll give you a rapid fire.
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If our kids go to public schools – to schools in elementary education in America, we're talking about 0.01 percent.
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But I know people who have been hurt by the boys who are participating in the sports and so on.
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As a father of both a son and two girls, they are fundamentally physically different.
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So let me just ask you a couple things quickly.
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So do you believe boys should be able to play in girls' sports?
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Do you believe that kids under the age of 18 should be able to be put on puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones?
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I think parents have to make that decision themselves.
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I think that is too – a child is too young at 18 to make that decision.
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It has to be made with a family and that choice.
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I think before somebody makes a life decision, they have to think twice about that.
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So you disagree then with the Tim Walz policy in Minnesota where a child who doesn't get affirmed by his parents can go into Minnesota and get jurisdiction there and get the parental decision overruled?
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And I'm also slightly both – I have two minds – not two minds, but two strains that influence an opinion.
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One, this is a life decision and a child can't make that decision.
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You have to have some moral development and character and judgment and foundation for that.
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Two, parents have to be involved in that and I think that's for them to make – I don't think the public should be in that space.
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What if – I mean there are some parents out there who are completely whacked in the head.
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Look, I – and the other – and I left this out, but I want to repeat it is I have a son and two daughters and they are physically different.
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Why did all the Democrats bail off of that point?
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The couple came out right after the election and they said what you just said and then they got browbeaten and then they started to walk about.
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And, you know, I used to say this to President Clinton and President Obama.
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And don't assume just because somebody is screaming at you they represent more than their own voice.
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Ken, should we be putting men in female prisons?
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Why don't more people in your party just say that?
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Because I'm now going to go into a witness protection plan.
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And NAFTA because I know you were – you had a role in NAFTA.
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And NAFTA has become so controversial now, this North American Free Trade Agreement that
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had the net result of shipping a bunch of American manufacturing jobs overseas or down
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And it's become super controversial with both parties.
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You can look back and find, you know, in-depth articles in the New York Times and, of course,
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over on National Review and the Wall Street Journal about what this has done to American
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manufacturing, my friend Tucker and many others have made this like a central plank that they
00:24:10.480
want in discussions, which is how bad American cities have become, you know, how you step
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out of the train station, Union Station in Washington, and you're stepping over homeless
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You know, I went out for a premiere of a TV show in L.A., literally stepping over homeless
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encampments just to get to the building, like open-air drug markets in some cities in
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California and further north in the Pacific Northwest.
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Here in New York City, you know, you've got human excrement on the street.
00:24:48.240
Um, it's – those are – those days are behind it.
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But this is my principal question to you, okay, because Tucker and many others will use
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that as an opening to say, and therefore, why are we giving money to Ukraine?
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But I think, you know, there's another question to be asked, which is, does it have to do with
00:25:06.120
Is this condition of our cities really to blame on the feds, or is it to blame on Democrat
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mayors in those cities and decisions like NAFTA that outshipped all the jobs that kept
00:25:17.380
So let's go – you've got like seven questions there, so let me try to peel through all eight
00:25:23.020
One, first let me give a shout-out that's being lost in the national debate to cities.
00:25:29.680
We're on course right now, and I talked to the mayor of Baltimore, Birmingham, Lower
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Rock, and Cleveland in the resume, probably the lowest homicide rate in recorded history.
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Baltimore's experienced the lowest homicide rate right now since 1968.
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Nobody's been more spoken about that, and you can go through my tenure.
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And I disagree with you on this one point, that crime is on both homicide rates, violent, and
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They said that last year, and it was debunked by the FBI.
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Just – anyway, you can look at the – we're going to – you and I are going to disagree
00:26:27.360
Now, as it relates to homeless encampments, I think municipalities, mayors have been way
00:26:37.600
As it relates also to drug markets, way too permissive in a culture, not just for businesses,
00:26:43.220
but most importantly for families and for children.
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And I think that the example of mayor in San – at least what I've read, the mayor in
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San Francisco, I think, has got now the right approach to how to handle both of these issues.
00:26:57.840
I can say this as – I was ambassador to Japan, came back for the Asia-Pacific Conference
00:27:03.260
When a city wants to clear out homelessness, all of a sudden it happens when you have a bunch
00:27:08.300
So when their own residents want it, you should actually be as vigilant as you were when foreign
00:27:13.620
Well, and you tell me Japan doesn't have this problem in its cities.
00:27:16.640
That's a – they also have a different type of social system and a different – that's
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a longer conversation than when this show permits.
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Second piece, and I would just not have a permissive culture in that.
00:27:28.000
And Portland has now realized the wrongs of their ways, parts of Seattle.
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Well, you cannot allow a zone for open, quote-unquote, drug markets.
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It then becomes a permission slip to a whole host of other type of social and criminal aspects.
00:27:48.140
Now, two things that I think are really important.
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One is, I think there was – as the president himself kept basically the structures of NAFTA
00:27:58.100
and after the – by the end of President Clinton's term, just a fact, there were 300,000
00:28:05.780
Now, I think there was a mistake made, and no doubt about it.
00:28:09.620
You can't leave Peoria, Battle Creek, Racine, Kenosha to confront on their own.
00:28:17.340
There was not enough support, not enough investment.
00:28:19.140
America has always succeed, always succeed when you invest both in America and Americans.
00:28:24.940
That's why I'm big about education, big about the investments in technology and in our strengths.
00:28:30.060
The bigger challenge, I would say, is not so much NAFTA, but is what happened with China.
00:28:36.660
That's where you really had a fundamental and big swaths of America were left basically to
00:28:45.000
fend for themselves against the PRC, the Chinese Communist Party, and their strategy.
00:28:52.600
Now, do I think everything should be cleaned up?
00:28:55.020
You've learned certain things after a certain point vis-a-vis NAFTA, et cetera.
00:29:01.040
Both parties have kept it in place, the basic structure, because it's better to have,
00:29:05.600
as Ronald Reagan said, two neighbors that are allies working with you, because that's
00:29:09.820
a large economy and also brings the capacity to focus on other parts of the world.
00:29:14.860
Second, though, China coming into the WTO without all of us hoping they would stay as strategic
00:29:22.240
competitors, not realizing that President Xi in 2012 decided that China was going to become
00:29:28.920
And that unchecked, as you can see right now, both with the United States and the European
00:29:33.700
Union dealing with China, that is where we've had a major devastation to the United States.
00:29:38.820
So what would you say to men in those cities like Detroit wondering where their manufacturing
00:29:50.480
And my basic point is when we are short right now, not tomorrow, not looking to the future,
00:29:55.820
which we are also short, massive amount of investment in carpenters, electricians, plumbers,
00:30:05.660
You can't AI that away and you can't get it to China.
00:30:11.180
Yeah, I'm going to tell you one thing we did in Chicago that I think should be a national
00:30:16.480
And you have to hire career counselors, et cetera.
00:30:20.280
You could not get, we made it a requirement starting your freshman year, we gave you support.
00:30:25.020
You could not get your high school diploma without showing a letter of acceptance from
00:30:31.300
either a college, community college, a branch of the armed forces or a vocational school.
00:30:35.380
You had not just the Kelly children and the Emanuel children, but every child had to have
00:30:41.660
We changed the high school from a diploma driven to a career college driven.
00:30:53.600
If you look at the American history, there are three great periods of economic growth,
00:31:03.460
There are the universal high school education turn of century and the GI Bill.
00:31:08.820
You could also add probably a fourth NASA in the science and engineering and basic STEM as a
00:31:14.820
When you invest in Americans, America succeeds.
00:31:17.600
Just to be clear, just to be clear, because there's a lot of my audience, understandably,
00:31:21.500
has questions about whether the modern day college education is a worthwhile thing.
00:31:30.300
So I wanted to pick up on the last thing you said, which is vocational education.
00:31:34.500
Like how to fix cars, how to go to beauty school.
00:31:38.140
Everything from carpentry, electrician, operating engineer, bricklaying, painting.
00:31:46.280
Like in my high school in upstate New York, we had the BOCES program.
00:31:49.700
And you could actually do that in your ninth through twelfth grade education.
00:31:52.220
We created a high school in Chicago for exactly that.
00:31:55.400
And you also, one of the things we did in our community colleges, we had dual credit,
00:32:00.420
So we brought community college classes into high schools and kids went from high school
00:32:11.860
But it's a requirement to get your own high school diploma.
00:32:15.900
Your kids are going to know because they grew up in your home.
00:32:21.900
They're going to know where, if you ask your children, where are you going to be in four
00:32:26.500
I just got to be honest, in the city of Chicago, which is true across the country, not just
00:32:30.100
Chicago, some kids, four weeks is their plan, not four years.
00:32:34.860
And making them think past high school, making it a requirement, stepping in where it's not
00:32:40.660
having at home, socializing this idea starting your freshman year is essential.
00:32:46.020
Number two, I happen to think investing dramatically in the most promising technologies of tomorrow
00:32:55.540
And so that's part of not only you've got to build these data centers, you've got to
00:33:00.660
build the submarines that we need to confront China.
00:33:09.780
And the truth is, the mistake of the last decade, the best thing I can say about President
00:33:13.560
Xi is he woke us up about a decade ahead of time.
00:33:18.660
We have to start investing quantum computing, AI, biomedical, take alternative energy, take
00:33:25.720
all the promising technologies of tomorrow, massive investment in the research side, what
00:33:30.580
I call that, the brains part, and massive invest in the broad side so we have the capacity
00:33:37.040
And if you start with AI education in school, every child, every student will have the basics
00:33:43.660
and fundamentals to succeed as you look around the corner.
00:33:46.420
Unless the AI has already eaten us all by the time the children get this program.
00:33:50.700
Let's talk about immigration, because this is another issue in schools and elsewhere that
00:33:55.900
I mean, in New York right now, it's crazy the number of translators they have to have in
00:33:59.580
the public schools, what the kids who are American born are having to deal with.
00:34:04.000
Why do you think Joe Biden let between 10 and 20 million illegals into the country?
00:34:08.220
So there's one is, let me start with what I think the challenge is.
00:34:13.660
Um, and I'm not sure why Biden did that or the Biden White House.
00:34:19.200
You're also, and I want to preface, it's not your audience knows this.
00:34:24.180
My grandfather on my mother's side, 1914 comes to America.
00:34:29.460
We're a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.
00:34:44.060
We want people from around the world who want a better tomorrow.
00:34:47.000
People like from Asia, from Latin America and Africa who want to come here and start a
00:34:59.140
And I just know is recent Gallup data all about how the numbers on immigration have flipped
00:35:03.440
on Trump, the people reacted to the chaos on the border.
00:35:08.100
Now, President Trump went from basically being the voice of order to the inspiration behind
00:35:13.560
They do not like what he's doing in Los Angeles and around the country.
00:35:17.700
They see him now the inspiration behind disorder.
00:35:20.900
And I think if I was in for the Democrats, we have no disagreement on confronting illegal
00:35:28.360
We should be for let's have a discussion about legal immigration, because there's a break.
00:35:33.960
Why did Biden let 10 to 20 million illegal immigrants?
00:35:37.080
They were not focused on what they should have been focused on.
00:35:39.200
The border should never allow to be out of control.
00:35:43.340
You're also talking to the person that for President Clinton was responsible for Operation
00:35:46.980
Gatekeeper in San Diego, Operation Safeguard in Nogales, Arizona.
00:35:56.440
I disagree with allowing chaos at the border that where people can flaunt the laws, as
00:36:04.380
We're a nation of laws and we're a nation of immigrants.
00:36:09.120
You can't allow disorder at the border and assume that it's going to be any respect for
00:36:15.080
Do you think would you change any of President Trump's border enforcement mechanisms if you
00:36:24.020
I do think it's a mistake to call out, you know, I say this five years President Trump's
00:36:30.380
room, you know, first term, the first six months of his, the only place he's ever called
00:36:50.020
All the states basically participate in making sure if you have a criminal element who is
00:37:00.320
You have people going to Home Depot to get a job.
00:37:05.620
You have people trying to go to a place of worship at the Catholic Church.
00:37:12.840
Problem is, and this is why President Trump's also numbers have flipped on this in the country,
00:37:20.620
The latest Gallup poll shows a shift in support on President Trump for his deportation program.
00:37:28.440
You've endorsed the border policies, but not the deportation policies.
00:37:31.180
And I'm also, to then get back to where I was, there is a split in the Republican Party
00:37:38.160
Chamber of Commerce, Republicans still want more.
00:37:40.120
And if Democrats were smart, said, we're good with you on illegal as it relates to the
00:37:45.340
Now, let's talk about legal, because that's where the wedge is in the Republican Party.
00:37:53.960
And some would say, therefore, not electable by Democrats.
00:37:57.280
Like, I can see Rahm Emanuel, if he gets past the primary, appealing to some more centrist,
00:38:04.340
But that, you know, I had Mark Halpern on the program recently.
00:38:08.160
And he was saying, you know, your biggest problem is going to be getting past the primary
00:38:11.500
because with the Democrats who have moved to the left, who are endorsing Democratic socialists
00:38:22.380
You know, President Clinton wasn't who we know him to be.
00:38:25.020
President Obama primaries will prove something and we'll prove something.
00:38:27.460
As I like to say, given the fields, we're all stuck at that big number, 3%.
00:38:33.640
But, you know, sometimes when you say on the let's say just say, quote unquote, the progressive left.
00:38:38.900
Who, as you noted, or as Mark has noted, have a problem.
00:38:43.620
Was it the free community college if you earn a B average in high school you have a problem with?
00:38:53.320
And the inspector general said that and did a report on it.
00:38:59.960
So when Rahm was mayor of Chicago, there was an officer involved shooting of a black man named Laquan McDonald.
00:39:06.520
And there was a tape of the incident that was kept quiet, kept not accessible by the public by a decision by you for a year.
00:39:15.500
And then ultimately you can correct me when I'm done.
00:39:17.560
And then ultimately you released it and it did show that the officer was to blame and that he shot when he shouldn't have.
00:39:23.580
And then there was an immediate drop in polling in support of you by especially the black and Hispanic communities in Chicago.
00:39:29.960
And some have never forgiven you for not releasing the tape earlier.
00:39:34.480
As your lawyer, you know what the rules are as it relates in the middle of an investigation.
00:39:42.320
Laquan's uncle is a pastor on the West Side, big supporter of mine.
00:39:46.240
And there's not a day or a week that goes by that I don't rethink what ifs.
00:39:57.540
And I thought I had fixed the system beforehand.
00:40:09.340
And responsibility not only to fix it, but to also get the place of the city in a better place.
00:40:15.580
There were seven attempts at police reform before I got there.
00:40:19.960
And the other thing is, you know, Joe Ferguson, the inspector general, went through it, said I followed.
00:40:35.240
If you got the FBI, the U.S. attorney investigating, city's investigating, state is investigating.
00:40:42.100
If you unilaterally make a decision, you hamper a criminal investigation.
00:40:49.740
If you don't do it, you only drive the wedge between the police and the community even further.
00:40:54.480
And so you're caught between this Solomon-like choice.
00:40:59.380
What I hear you saying is you think it's explainable.
00:41:01.260
You think this is not a deal breaker for you and Democrat primary voters.
00:41:04.860
Look, I have the responsibilities I did when I got Senate confirmed for Ambassador to Japan.
00:41:13.380
And if you're looking for 100 percent, nobody is.
00:41:19.180
And that's going to be true for anybody who's a chief executive.
00:41:21.920
Tying together the possibility of you as the Democrat nominee with our previous discussion
00:41:28.460
on illegal immigration, you may be aware that Hunter Biden has some thoughts on you.
00:41:33.560
Shared with a podcaster I do not know and have never heard of.
00:41:44.240
This guy's a comedian and journalist and YouTuber.
00:41:48.060
And Hunter had some thoughts on you, among other issues.
00:41:55.400
And he's somehow convinced all of us that these people are the fucking criminals.
00:42:00.720
White men in America are 45 more times likely to commit a fucking violent crime than an immigrant.
00:42:06.760
And the media says, well, you got David Axelrod and, you know, Rahm fucking Emanuel.
00:42:13.600
And so we got to understand that these people are really mad.
00:42:18.780
Rahm, the only people that fucking appealed to those fucking white voters was Joe Biden, 81 years old.
00:42:25.700
And he did because not because he appeased their fucking Trumpian sense, but because he challenged it.
00:42:32.280
And he said, you can be an 81-year-old Catholic from fucking Scranton that doesn't understand it,
00:42:37.520
but still has empathy for transgender people and immigrants.
00:42:40.020
And nobody said, oh, Joe Biden's going to turn us into a socialist state, no matter how much they said it.
00:42:45.480
But these guys think that we need to run away from all values in order for us to lead.
00:42:51.620
How are we getting those people back from fucking El Salvador?
00:42:57.780
Neither you nor I have failed to utter that word in our past.
00:43:10.020
I could see that on a sign, like a lawn sign for you.
00:43:21.500
I think we're giving this more time than it's due.
00:43:28.840
You have a son who's blinded by his own love for an effect and loyalty for his father.
00:43:34.980
And I get that, but not the first phone call I'm going to make for a strategery.
00:43:40.820
He's also been out there and said it there in part that the saying the only reason that
00:43:44.960
the Dems lost last presidential election is because they weren't loyal to his father.
00:43:49.300
Megan, as you probably know, there's a lot of stories about Dems have to now start swearing
00:43:54.840
to look like they're normal or something like that.
00:44:06.520
We spent two minutes, way too much time on that.
00:44:08.720
I'm not, this isn't about Hunter, but I know your brother Ari, according to the Jake Tapper
00:44:13.500
book, was very outspoken about getting Biden off the ticket, saying he cannot do it.
00:44:21.940
You're not your brother's keeper, but you're Joe Biden's ambassador to Japan.
00:44:33.440
But I was honored that President Biden selected me.
00:44:37.040
So here's my thing is, look, one that everybody said, oh, it was a cover up or whatever.
00:44:47.280
If it was a cover up, the American people were in on it because they had their own opinion.
00:44:50.360
Number two, does this look like subtle, quiet, reserved?
00:44:59.660
I mean, just look, Oval offices are very seductive, been in and out of them with two
00:45:08.820
White House is one of the challenges they have is not to be as insular as they become.
00:45:13.800
It's pretty clear that that both of those qualities played a role here.
00:45:23.840
Um, and, uh, it's pretty clear if you look at the data, it was a winnable race.
00:45:29.960
And the real, uh, challenge in my view is why Democrats failed.
00:45:34.600
It was not going to be a blowout race, but you could, the, the data was there and the
00:45:40.340
capacity was there to win and the Democrats fumbled it.
00:45:50.660
Look, 70% of the country thought it was heading in the wrong direction.
00:45:53.840
That's kind of architecturally built in for a challenger.
00:45:57.040
But the day Kamala Harris takes over, the Democrats are down, Biden, Harris are down eight.
00:46:04.720
By the time you get to the, her debate with Joe, with Donald Trump, she's up three.
00:46:10.240
She was running on the economy, running on what I think is the most important issue, that
00:46:31.500
And we went off on all these other tangentially.
00:46:37.060
And when Kamala Harris spoke to it, she goes up plus three.
00:46:40.800
After the debate, she wanders off into this democracy thing.
00:46:45.140
So in a weird way, when she makes a break with Joe Biden and says, I'm going to be the future.
00:46:56.520
But all the answers of, I don't distinguish my agenda at all.
00:46:59.720
And then basically debate or from the view performance, she basically, I'm going to be continuity.
00:47:07.000
So to me, it tells you that, no disrespect to Hunter Biden's analysis, that this was winnable.
00:47:21.920
I think the Iraq war, the financial meltdown of 08, China into the WTO unchecked, and COVID have fundamentally not only upended our politics, upended our economics, upended our schools.
00:47:43.560
Third, one, Iraq was built on a lie and a deception, and people responsible for it have never been held accountable.
00:47:52.080
As somebody who in the Obama administration argued for Old Testament justice, the bankers should have been slapped silly on the South Lawn, line them up, and just beat the living crap out of them.
00:48:04.900
They were arguing for their bonuses, and people lost their homes.
00:48:07.340
Number three, what we talked about China earlier still applies in this conversation, which is they were cleaning our clocks, and we left America basically unilaterally disarmed to face off against China by themselves.
00:48:20.000
And COVID also, and this is where I think Democrats have made a mistake, we donned the jacket of the establishment, follow the science, follow the science, when it's pretty clear, like, take schools.
00:48:30.660
COVID, as it relates to young kids, wasn't what it was related to people that were either both ill or much older.
00:48:38.880
And now we have an absentee rate of 20%, and we look at our shoes and we don't want to talk about it.
00:48:42.700
So when you look at those four things, that is, to me, the biggest structural challenges of our society, our economy, and our democracy.
00:48:52.280
Is it possible for a cisgender, heteronormative male, who happens to be Jewish, to get the Democrat nominee for president in 2025 America?
00:49:04.580
Well, that's going to be up to the Democratic voters, but I'm going to make the best case.
00:49:14.880
When I ran for Congress, my predecessors were Dan Rosankowski, Roman Paczynski, Frank Annunzio, Rob Vukovic, Flanagan, and along comes Rahm Israel Emanuel.
00:49:30.860
I want to say, I've had Nazi insignia sprayed on a fence.
00:49:37.180
And I've seen, I still don't know, somebody go clean it up.
00:49:43.060
I've seen people look past, not past faith, or more importantly, not past my faith, because it is who I am.
00:49:49.480
My name is Rahm Israel Emanuel, not according to Hunter Biden, but it is who I am.
00:49:54.000
So I look at that, and my faith and my Jewish education is what led me to public service, and I'm very proud of it.
00:50:03.200
Now, by way, I am the only person who's ever gone toe-to-toe with Bibi Netanyahu.
00:50:13.740
I support it as a Jewish democratic nation, a sovereign nation.
00:50:19.120
But I am willing, when I disagree, speak about that.
00:50:24.300
I do, because in the end of the day, our party believes in both economic kind of equality and also equality in a political system.
00:50:34.580
And this country, this idea, and I say this, I want you to hear, my grandfather came here from Ukraine with nothing.
00:50:45.640
That his grandson, that he used to call a schmuck, could be both a chief of staff to a president, a senior advisor, elected to Congress, the mayor of the city that we called home, and then represent America over.
00:50:57.280
This is the greatest country in the world, not because of my success, but because of the story and the permission that it has allowed somebody whose own grandfather didn't have a bucket to spit in and a window to throw it out of, could provide that opportunity.
00:51:13.160
And I'll close on this, because we didn't get to this amount of family.
00:51:17.520
My parents, in our family room, had my grandmother's purse with her and my two great aunts' passports.
00:51:27.280
And on either side of that purse were the black and white photos of my aunts, uncles, cousins, a mom and dad's side who never made it to this country.
00:51:48.380
And I think the country, as a father with two kids in the armed forces, will respect that.
00:51:55.420
You should talk about your dad and your grandpa and your kids.
00:51:59.720
Thank God it was only a minute because I was close to tears there and I see the Kleenex right there.
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00:54:09.420
Okay, we've got some friends on the show joining me now to recap what we just saw and talk about all the latest headlines as well.
00:54:18.420
Let's get to it with two of the hosts on the MK Media Podcast Network.
00:54:21.900
Mark Halperin, host of Next Up with Mark Halperin.
00:54:25.740
He's host of Spot On with Link Lauren, along with former Democratic strategist Dan Turntine, a co-host of The Morning Meeting on the Two-Way YouTube channel with Mark.
00:54:37.540
I didn't know which hour to look forward to more, but I'm just like, this one's here.
00:54:43.340
Let's pretend we didn't talk about the Rahm Emanuel interview during break and give me your fresh impressions.
00:54:51.100
I mean, I think considering this is like early in the game, no one's going to be perfect at this point.
00:54:56.960
I thought when you asked him about the workforce and the economy, I thought even on immigration, right?
00:55:01.460
You heard the echoes of Bill Clinton, a nation of laws, a nation of immigrants.
00:55:08.880
He, you know, when you tried to talk to him about the border and everyone coming in, he said, I don't know why they didn't do it, but they shouldn't have.
00:55:16.680
I thought the one issue where he was a little bit was the transgender.
00:55:25.260
And when I think about people who understand what you need to do to win, that is somebody who understands what it takes.
00:55:32.000
I think for me, maybe it's a generational difference, but half the electorate is going to be Gen Z and millennials by 2028.
00:55:38.620
And when you think of Rahm Emanuel and you Google him, every picture of him cavorting with the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bidens.
00:55:45.280
He looks like politics as usual, and he looks like the embodiment of the swamp.
00:55:49.140
And even in the interview, I felt he came across a little smarmy trying to control the interview.
00:55:56.640
You've been in politics for decades, the upper echelons of politics.
00:55:59.540
And you can't give straight answers on these questions that we want.
00:56:02.200
And you kept asking about men in women's restrooms and in girls' bathrooms.
00:56:08.800
But then Kamala Harris, part of the reason she lost were those swing state ads on taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for inmates.
00:56:18.640
And you might think they're culture war issues, but they're still going to galvanize voters.
00:56:27.580
I've known Rahm since your senior year in college, so I've known him a long time.
00:56:32.180
Dan is right that Rahm graded on a curve against some of these other people who were talked about.
00:56:37.140
His level of sophistication, his level of confidence, his level of understanding the intersection of politics, politics and the press.
00:56:43.880
It's light years ahead of almost any other Democrat, not just thinking of running for president, but almost any Democrat active on the national stage.
00:56:51.940
There are so many issues related to Rahm that make it almost impossible to imagine him actually being the nominee, not only because he's at, as your questions teased out, he's crosswise with the base.
00:57:05.140
He's a longtime political figure, made millions, you know, in investment banking.
00:57:11.460
He's not on paper what the party is currently looking for.
00:57:15.100
So I think he showed his best and his worst with you.
00:57:17.900
And I think you asked him about all the right issues that teased that out and put it in Sharper.
00:57:23.060
So from my perspective, but I'll say one thing about yesterday before I get to my perspective.
00:57:29.140
You know, I'm talking about the first time around.
00:57:31.080
So there is the possibility that even though you've got baggage and you've got party affiliations and you've got all the connections for 50 years.
00:57:44.460
Yeah, we've got Mom Donnie now, like they are next mayor here.
00:57:52.500
So I thought we had a very cordial first 48 minutes together.
00:57:57.300
I mean, and we kind of laughed about it after the fact that we're sure meeting number two will be a little bit more.
00:58:05.260
No, people like Rahm Emanuel did not come on Fox News.
00:58:12.060
You know, we touched on some hot button issues, but we kept it cordial.
00:58:15.080
I really wanted the audience to get to know him.
00:58:16.660
And I wanted to see if he would say normal things to me without me, like beating him over the head or him beating me over that.
00:58:23.240
And I was amazed at some of his direct answers.
00:58:26.740
Like, yes, he wiggled on the trans thing for quite a while.
00:58:30.080
But in the end, when we did our little lightning round, he did give me a couple of points.
00:58:37.740
I have a son and two daughters and they are physically different.
00:58:43.140
Why did all the Democrats bail off of that point?
00:58:45.200
The couple came out right after the election and they said what you just said.
00:58:54.020
And, you know, I used to say this to President Clinton and President Obama.
00:59:00.300
And don't assume just because somebody's screaming at you, they represent more than their own voice.
00:59:04.220
Can, should we be putting men in female prisons?
00:59:23.200
Why don't more people in your party just say that?
00:59:25.340
Because I'm now going to go into a witness protection plan.
00:59:30.560
I mean, listen, you guys know, I realize that wasn't, like, hugely, like, a huge breakthrough.
00:59:36.280
We all talk about what's true and what's real every day.
00:59:38.400
But for a guy who wants to be the Democratic nominee, that was pretty bold.
00:59:42.280
Well, I think the overarching thesis and takeaway from the interview is just how broken the Democrat brand is.
00:59:51.080
He's like, oh, wait, men and women have biological differences.
00:59:59.680
But he's going to have a hard time in the primary because the Democrat party has been co-opted by this, like, loud, progressive, vocal minority.
01:00:09.540
He might have some good ideas and he seems strong on some issues.
01:00:12.560
But I don't think he has a prayer in a primary.
01:00:19.680
Even hanging out with you might come back to haunt him.
01:00:23.580
The first is the party after the election said, we know we need to make change.
01:00:27.360
Now, anytime anyone's attempted to do it, as he said, the base has yelled.
01:00:34.040
He's going to have to do these sister soldier moments.
01:00:41.380
Rahm's other challenge is he's going to have to throw some bones to the base.
01:00:44.800
And where he chooses to do that, because the problem for Rahm is the energy is in the base
01:00:52.280
You asked about a very sensitive issue that he has with the black community.
01:00:56.560
He's going to have to figure out, and I have no doubt he's thinking about this, where am
01:01:00.720
I going to lock arms with them and unapologetically charge against Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and
01:01:09.660
They're inching up to that sister soldier moment.
01:01:12.140
Gavin Newsom on the podcast with Charlie Curran.
01:01:16.800
He then, you know, and was really kind of struggling until the immigration thing propelled
01:01:30.500
And I have no doubt when he does, he'll move forward aggressively.
01:01:44.660
He's not George Bush, and he's not Donald Trump.
01:01:48.080
He's a super talented staffer, which he once was.
01:01:50.780
He was a super talented candidate for mayor, super talented DCCC head.
01:01:57.100
He's talented, but he's not their category of talented.
01:02:01.760
So can someone less talented than those four guys, all of whom stood up to their party and
01:02:08.480
Simultaneous, make people in the base feel good and stand up to people in the base.
01:02:13.460
I just don't know that Rahm is talented enough to do that, except he's running against a
01:02:19.640
So he might be talented enough to do it, but he's not in their league.
01:02:22.240
But I will say the people he's running against, let's say it's like AOC, Gavin Newsom,
01:02:28.600
Maybe if I watched it, I would get a different feel.
01:02:30.380
But listening to it, it was kind of like low energy Jeb Bush, kind of like that sort of
01:02:39.620
I guess in this interview, it just felt kind of like low to me.
01:02:42.180
And he's kind of like, yeah, I'm thinking about that.
01:02:43.660
So I don't know if he has the star power and charisma to tap into the sort of like populism
01:02:47.300
on the left that the right has had for so long.
01:02:49.420
And then to go to what you mentioned, the reason President Trump caught fire in 2015 and 16
01:02:53.880
is because he was willing to call out the elites and the establishment in his own party,
01:02:58.340
these neocons and who've been running the party for, you know, 15, 20 years.
01:03:01.640
I don't know if Rahm is going to be able to do that because the left likes, but he has
01:03:06.120
And the left likes to cast purity tests way more than the right.
01:03:08.780
You said one thing we disagree with, or we don't like this one little thing.
01:03:15.000
I'm not sure whether any Democrat who's not woke is going to get nominated next time around.
01:03:26.180
I know normies like you, Dan, would like it to be, but I just don't think it can happen.
01:03:30.040
The only thing is our party's history, we flirt with these very progressive candidates,
01:03:35.420
Howard Dean, you know, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Sanders in 16 and both of
01:03:41.880
Our history is we back off and go with the safe candidate.
01:03:45.600
Now, our party is more left than we were in the past.
01:03:49.220
And at some point that may come to an end, that pattern.
01:03:53.380
But as a party, we tend to value victory and who we think has the best chance way more than
01:04:04.380
What was the most obvious question you were going to ask him?
01:04:07.440
What was the thing he should be prepared for more than any other?
01:04:17.620
So he basically tried to avoid answering until you wouldn't let him, right?
01:04:21.660
That to me, I mean, how he could have been relative, maybe he thinks that was the right
01:04:26.020
But to me, that seems unprepared, not just mechanically unprepared, but if he's not ready
01:04:31.120
to confront that issue with you, what's he waiting for?
01:04:34.580
Yeah, you know for sure I'm going to be asking about that.
01:04:36.300
He also, he did, for the record, endorse minors getting puberty blockers into cross-sex hormones,
01:04:43.200
meaning they get sterilized for life, they lose sexual function, as long as their parents
01:04:48.460
agree, which is not what the side of reason believes at all.
01:04:55.300
Well, but he could say on reflection, I think it was a bad idea.
01:05:02.420
But he did not say that a man could become a woman.
01:05:05.260
And he said men shouldn't be in women's prisons.
01:05:07.620
And he seemed to say men shouldn't be in women's sports.
01:05:09.780
He's kidding himself if he thinks, I believe, he can say, that's not the focus.
01:05:15.200
That's never going to fly with me or anybody else.
01:05:17.520
Like, I'm sorry, whether it's hubris, we'll decide what the focus is.
01:05:21.280
Like, that's the one advantage of having this job.
01:05:24.920
Yeah, but I mean, I'm saying, literally, having done all these presidential debates, I'm sorry,
01:05:34.540
By the way, we're trying to win back the working class voters for whom that was a bigger issue
01:05:38.640
It's just, it's the cultural, do you understand us?
01:05:45.000
We then lost them economically in the last 10 years.
01:05:48.760
And I don't want to just be negative about it, about him.
01:05:50.900
Because again, I think he's more talented than almost anybody else who might run.
01:05:54.860
What he gave you was a bunch of tactical replies.
01:06:10.600
There was no, you know, again, to go back to the question of authenticity.
01:06:22.440
On the hard ones, I thought it was all just tactical.
01:06:24.320
The one place I disagree with you, though, Mark, is on the vocational training stuff.
01:06:33.340
Well, but we fumbled over what we want to do on the economy, like to no end.
01:06:37.980
But he just, to me, he's not trying to show his heart on those things.
01:06:43.400
I wonder whether he'll have it improved to the point that he can sell it.
01:06:48.060
Because, look, Gavin Newsom suffers from a different problem.
01:06:58.740
Right after Kamala is Gavin, who's up there, I think, single, like maybe nine.
01:07:08.660
So he's right that there's no real frontrunner.
01:07:11.840
And we don't think Kamala Harris is actually going to run for president again.
01:07:14.260
So it's really him and Gavin maybe looming up there.
01:07:21.260
To me, he's just such an obvious snake oil salesman who will say anything depending on who's across from him.
01:07:26.920
I just think people will be able to see through that from a mile away.
01:07:30.440
And they might like the steady Eddie with a couple sharp elbows, Rahm fucking Emanuel, Rahm Deadfish, whatever it is.
01:07:39.900
Well, my thing with Gavin Newsom is he can't even call his wife his wife.
01:07:45.220
And then he was against men and women's sports for a minute in the Charlie Kirk interview.
01:07:52.480
So if Rahm Emanuel can have black and white straight up answers for things, just be straight with the American people.
01:07:57.460
And to go to your point, Dan, the left and the mainstream media constantly like to tell Americans what issues are important to them.
01:08:06.160
Well, these millions of moms turned out for President Trump because it was a big deal.
01:08:10.900
This is food isn't going to decide this election.
01:08:14.900
So every issue matters now, especially with social media.
01:08:17.380
I think Rahm's got to fine tune some of these answers.
01:08:19.760
The other thing is, can I tell you, I was thinking about this last week.
01:08:22.900
You know, right before the fall of the Roman Empire, the culture completely imploded with debauchery and no connection to faith or something bigger than oneself and all these, you know, not caring for the weak or, you know, for unborn babies at all.
01:08:38.860
Like we're back there in some ways with like throuples and people trying to normalize pedophilia with the minor attracted person label and the cutting off of children's genitals in the name of like equity and inclusion, dividing us by race, trying to make little girls boys when they're not like all this stuff.
01:08:58.160
You can dismiss it as culture wars, but I actually think it's the degradation of a cohesive society.
01:09:05.200
It's what happens when you remove faith as a guiding principle of any society.
01:09:13.700
Like it's fine to just dismiss it as like, oh, you're sweet little culture.
01:09:18.920
So like if we don't fight back against it, we're going to completely lose everything that's dear to us.
01:09:23.480
I don't know if he knows that or if he's just too much of a Democrat to really see that.
01:09:28.600
He travels in circles where these things are not as big a deal.
01:09:32.880
What do you make of Gavin Newsom, though, against him?
01:09:39.760
Because in the interview I did with him on the MK Media Network, he talked about his daughter being upset that she had to be followed around by one security person when she went out.
01:09:51.480
She said, he said, his daughter said, when are you going to leave office so I can stop this?
01:09:58.960
He doesn't even know the daughter's damn mania.
01:10:06.000
Oh, Jennifer Schiphol-Nusom, first partner, does not want him to run.
01:10:12.240
If he does run and it's him against Rom, then I think you will see an elevated debate.
01:10:20.240
I think those two guys will have a serious conversation about the party.
01:10:22.980
With all due respect, this is a guy who sleeps with his campaign manager's wife.
01:10:27.300
He's an alcoholic who kind of lied about going to rehab and we're suddenly like, he's father of the year.
01:10:31.660
His daughter really doesn't want him to run for president.
01:10:35.560
And they'll still make his daughter play against a boy in sports, even though he gives lip service that he won't when he's interviewing.
01:10:40.360
I mean, I don't know how he can't be thinking seriously about it and leaning towards it, given the last month and a half that he's had.
01:10:46.920
I mean, we can all debate whether what he advocated for with the L.A. riots was smart or not.
01:10:53.760
I don't think anyone's had a better last month as a Democratic candidate for 2028 than Gavin Newsom.
01:11:03.100
But the party now, like if you read articles when he went to South Carolina, you look at focus groups, what does everyone say?
01:11:12.580
He now has this communications team where he's trolling J.D. Vance.
01:11:20.100
He's not speaking our language, but you have to acknowledge that he's out there swinging.
01:11:23.520
Well, he is speaking the language of Donald Trump, which is nonstop front foot in your face.
01:11:31.740
And our base, just as the Republican base, craved it in 15 of like, oh, my God, he's not apologizing on immigration or any of this stuff.
01:11:38.680
We can again, we can debate good general election strategy.
01:11:41.280
But I don't know how you go to South Carolina and Jim Clyburn says, I like this guy.
01:11:53.300
There's four factors that I think get lost in the conversation about running for president that I don't know that he'll do as well in.
01:12:00.260
And I'm very bullish, more bullish than you two are on his skills.
01:12:02.900
One is, what are the early states they're going to vote?
01:12:05.880
But if the early states are include Iowa and South Carolina, let's see how he does.
01:12:13.040
He should be able to raise a ton of money as governor of California.
01:12:21.280
Is he willing to get up every day with his young kids and living on the West Coast and do the 10 things that's necessary to do to run?
01:12:27.940
And then the last thing is, how do you handle a crisis?
01:12:30.560
How do you handle a political crisis when they come at you?
01:12:33.060
I don't think we've seen him handle political crisis particularly well.
01:12:42.500
Like, remember that thing where he was on the cell phone and a lady was trying to talk to him?
01:12:48.860
Look at how Donald Trump handled Access Hollywood.
01:12:52.340
Look at how Bill Clinton handled Jennifer Flowers in the draft.
01:12:54.980
Look at how Barack Obama handled Reverend Wright.
01:12:58.280
Like, I just don't see in him someone who digs deep when that stuff happens.
01:13:03.180
So in those four areas, he's not as great as he's been in some of these other things, as Dan pointed out.
01:13:08.760
And I just think there's reason to be skeptical that he's going to play at that level.
01:13:12.460
I'll tell you something about Rahm that we didn't get into today.
01:13:19.960
He won't be running against Trump, notwithstanding what Steve Bannon says.
01:13:23.580
And so, but every Democrat is still going to run on Trump, right?
01:13:27.920
Like, whoever it is, whether it's J.D. or Marco or it could be Tulsi, who knows?
01:13:33.300
So I think he'll also appear as a fighter because he'll be out there saying the nastiest things possible about Donald Trump.
01:13:39.780
And I do wonder, though, like, how's that going to go?
01:13:42.800
Because I don't think Rahm Emanuel or Gavin Newsom or anybody else I've heard of on Team Blue
01:13:48.740
has the oratory skills of J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio, who are, I just think, going to eat their opponents alive.
01:13:58.220
And either one of those guys will kill them unless they increase their game by the time they get out there.
01:14:03.660
Well, even Gavin Newsom, they thought he was going to do great in that debate with DeSantis.
01:14:07.140
They're like, DeSantis, they're going to wipe the floor with him.
01:14:09.080
Newsom's this snake oil salesman, greasy guy, talker.
01:14:21.460
And I think that's what happens when you press Newsom.
01:14:25.460
He was pressed very delicately about eight-year-olds transitioning and cross-sex hormones for kids.
01:14:31.320
It was a lot of this sort of air traffic controller, Bob Fosse, jazz hands.
01:14:36.760
And so Gavin Newsom, I don't even think it's a guarantee.
01:14:55.020
Because I've said this before, but my CIA guy, Phil Houston, invented the deception detection program there.
01:15:03.560
Hands above the midline is a tell, if coupled with another sign of deception, that you're lying.
01:15:08.400
It has to be two signs of deception within five seconds of asking the question.
01:15:16.520
He's outed bad guy terrorists who we thought were working for us.
01:15:20.440
He's found double agents within the CIA who we thought we were using against another country, but really, they'd been turned against us.
01:15:33.240
But just FYI, hands above the midline can be a tell if it's coupled with another sign of deception.
01:15:38.540
I do it all the time, but I'm not a real blonde.
01:15:45.120
It has to be coupled with something else, like a verbal attack.
01:15:48.740
Like, how could you ask me that kind of a question?
01:15:54.580
He's a character who would say stuff like, maybe someone should interview you.
01:16:01.880
So that's enough about Rahm Emanuel and Gavin Newsom.
01:16:04.400
This is a long way off, although kind of it's not.
01:16:11.360
President Trump has been in there for six months.
01:16:12.920
Can I say one more thing about the very first question you asked him, why are you here?
01:16:18.980
He should have said, I want to reach every American.
01:16:21.120
You have a huge audience of people who have been trending Republican, and I want to win them back.
01:16:32.020
If he's serious about reaching your audience, I just thought that was kind of disrespectful.
01:16:42.700
We can't let people who voted for Donald Trump vote Republican in four years.
01:16:49.680
I just think the reason that George Bush and Donald Trump and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all won is because they ran simultaneously appealing both to their party and to a general election electorate.
01:17:01.660
And he just seemed to me just missed the opportunity to do that.
01:17:05.260
He told me before the interview, and I don't think he would mind if I repeated that because he seemed to suggest he might tell the story himself, that he was here in part because his sister-in-law listens to the show and heard me say something nice about him.
01:17:23.840
Blended family could have done an answer like that.
01:17:25.580
So he was like, well, maybe she'll give me a fair shot and I'll go over there.
01:17:29.380
And so, listen, when he comes back, we'll see if he does better, if he takes these pieces of advice to heart.
01:17:34.260
But I want to talk about Trump because there's been a very interesting development now within the intel community around Trump.
01:17:44.840
And I just want to say, as on all things, I am a truly honest broker on this.
01:17:52.680
Like who she is accusing of what, for instance.
01:17:54.920
No, whether she's right and Matt Taibbi, who I love, is right, that this is a bombshell and it's terrible and people really could go to jail.
01:18:05.020
Or whether Andy McCarthy at National Review, who I love and respect and who's a totally honest broker too, is correct, that this is a complete nothing burger and she's totally off and apparently hasn't read her own CIA director's release of last week.
01:18:20.720
And that he would suggest she hasn't really been following the Russiagate scandal because everything she just told us is old.
01:18:30.680
But just to set it up for the audience, this is very complex.
01:18:32.640
On Friday night, Tulsi Gabbard went on Fox News and said that she'd found documents that she was releasing that show, in sum and substance, that one day the intelligence community under Barack Obama was ready to come out and say that the Russians did not interfere in the 2016 election and really had no part in it.
01:19:01.780
Then Barack Obama pulled them all into the White House.
01:19:05.540
And then literally the next day, they were like, Russia interfered to help Trump and leaked it to all the reporters, Washington Post.
01:19:15.360
And the suggestion is that Obama turned to them and said, I'm not having a report coming out of you guys saying that they didn't interfere.
01:19:23.840
Our whole narrative is that Hillary would have won had it not been for the Russians.
01:19:30.880
And that then the intel community did it and the subservient Washington Press Corps ran with it.
01:19:37.520
And that's how the narrative really took off, that the Russians had gotten Trump elected.
01:19:43.640
OK, so Andy McCarthy's point in response is, OK, you're talking apples and oranges.
01:19:49.960
What they said prior to the Obama meeting was we've seen nothing to suggest the Russians hacked election machines, even though they tried in a couple of places, but that they didn't they were not able to do anything technical technologically that would have altered the outcome in election with with raw vote.
01:20:09.380
Then they have the Obama meeting and then they come out and it's true that their report that they issued then was all about the ways Russia did interfere, like fake articles about Hillary, bots that circulated negative news about her and they hacked the DNC mail, which is how we have a lot of the admissions we have from her and her terrible family.
01:20:36.160
And while she is producing now emails that do show they were ready to say no interference when it comes to election machines prior, that we kind of knew everything that she's saying already.
01:20:56.880
Spells out in great detail exactly what happens when you have some of the most
01:21:02.340
powerful people in our country directly leading at the helm of President Obama and his senior most national security cabinet, James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper and Susan Rice and others essentially making a very intentional decision to create this manufactured politicized piece of intelligence with the objective of subverting the will of the American people.
01:21:30.720
The list goes on and on about the consequences of President Obama and his senior cabinet members politicizing intelligence once again.
01:21:40.800
And I say these words very clearly to enact what was essentially a years long coup subverting the will of the American people.
01:21:49.920
One of the other points Andy made was that he's not a fan of Tulsi.
01:21:54.180
But he's also saying it's not a surprise to him that Tulsi Gabbard would try to exonerate Russia entirely and instead blame America, right?
01:22:01.440
Like sort of say Russia didn't do anything whatsoever.
01:22:06.160
Russia did do some things, but it didn't cost Hillary the election.
01:22:11.660
But that we're now sort of manufacturing something for press clicks and possibly indictments that may not be there.
01:22:26.060
I'm not sure what she's doing because I think what she's trying to argue is it wasn't determinative to the outcome.
01:22:43.140
Now, the question was, did the Trump campaign collude?
01:22:45.660
Robert Mueller ruled there was no definitive proof that they colluded.
01:22:48.680
But I'm not sure what I almost get the sense that what she's saying is like they didn't try to interfere in the election.
01:22:54.860
And what's also fact is the Obama administration the last month of the campaign was aware of what was going on and struggled.
01:23:04.280
If we do, it's going to look like we're trying to tip the scales.
01:23:07.480
After the election, they huddled and said, we need to get out both as like a PSA.
01:23:12.300
Hey, Russia, you tried to do this and we're aware of it.
01:23:19.400
I think that latter part they wanted to put out into the kind of, you know, mainstream to be like someone needs to go look at this.
01:23:26.980
And he didn't want, you know, he wanted and he wanted everyone to know that he he did this.
01:23:33.600
If there's real signs of crime or now, then by, you know, goodness, put it out and let the public see it.
01:23:43.300
And it's it's very smart people who I normally trust are in diametric disagreement on it.
01:23:48.100
If she sees a crime, she's got to say who and what law they broke.
01:23:52.840
I'll pick up on a point Dan made, which I know because I did a lot of reporting on this.
01:24:00.360
They didn't want to let the Russians go on called out in public.
01:24:03.820
But they also didn't want to be accused of trying to make it seem like the Russians were doing something.
01:24:09.660
They were pretending the Russians were doing something to help Hillary.
01:24:11.960
I actually think there's 19 things you could list that, say, cost Hillary Clinton the election.
01:24:17.800
You don't know what would have happened otherwise.
01:24:19.640
But I think Russia helped helped Trump win substantially, not through collusion, but because they wanted Trump to win.
01:24:28.100
What she's playing up is that they somehow broke the law in trying to protect Hillary Clinton.
01:24:32.960
And again, she's suggesting they manufactured it.
01:24:35.060
She's she's basically suggesting this is the same thing as covid, where the scientists went from.
01:24:44.340
And then after Fauci and Collins browbeated them, they came out and they were like, it's definitely not from a lab.
01:24:51.960
They they they're they're people associated with Barack Obama who leaned into collusion without a doubt.
01:25:00.600
But mostly what they said was the Russians interfered with the election.
01:25:07.540
Everything comes full circle because Tulsi was accused by Hillary Clinton and the Obamas, I believe, of being like a Russian asset.
01:25:13.580
And she went on The View and said she's owned by Russia.
01:25:16.640
And Tulsi was coming out saying, I'm nobody's puppet.
01:25:23.040
But, yeah, no, I think this is a little bit of cosmic karma.
01:25:24.900
She gets to now come out and say, ha, look at what we've just uncovered in these files.
01:25:29.360
Maybe by the end of the day, we'll have more information because I read on the way over here.
01:25:38.300
I think it was a weird Friday night to make the announcement with everything going on.
01:25:43.120
They put out news that's bad for them heading into a weekend after a holiday.
01:25:47.020
They put out news that's good for them on Friday night.
01:25:57.980
Let's take a break, and then we will discuss where we are in Epsteinpalooza.
01:26:03.480
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01:29:19.280
So, you were saying before the break, it's fancy here, isn't it?
01:29:30.740
The same guy has been driving me and my family for like since I started at Fox.
01:29:37.240
And he was dropping me off today and he said, you know, Megan, you've been coming to this same location.
01:29:41.820
Because Sirius is right across from Fox and right across from NBC.
01:29:48.460
You just, as long as you can spit a watermelon seed far enough to hit the other building, that's good for you.
01:29:53.880
You know, it's like this is media central and it does bring back a lot of memories.
01:29:57.300
Anyway, so we were saying before the break that possibly the Tulsi Gabbard thing was a head fake to change the topic of conversation from Epstein.
01:30:07.460
Because what the the the two intervening things that seem bigger around Epstein, one is the Wall Street Journal story, which rallied MAGA back towards the president.
01:30:16.880
And the other is the announcement of the filing to release.
01:30:20.120
That's the grand jury transcripts to be released.
01:30:22.260
I think those two things did the most to take the steam out of it for the media, even though the New York Times now seems obsessed with reviving it.
01:30:31.000
I don't think we're going to learn much from the grand jury, you know, files at all.
01:30:34.520
And I think the Trump administration knows that.
01:30:36.200
So, you know, he says, oh, nothing I do will ever satisfy them, which is true.
01:30:45.880
But secondly, on the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal hit piece, it was so lame.
01:30:52.020
It was the best thing Trump could have asked for.
01:30:55.280
But even if he had it, like there's nothing we on the right hate more than the left's fake news hit pieces on Donald Trump.
01:31:08.080
Like we have all had it up to here with the with the false attacks on Donald Trump.
01:31:12.420
And so the best thing that the left, and I include the journals report in that, could have done was just be quiet and let it stay a Trump slash influencer problem.
01:31:21.280
Don't help because that only makes people on the right want to drop it and defend him.
01:31:29.140
I'm very interested in what the truth about Epstein is.
01:31:32.780
You try to tell me the whole scandals about Donald Trump.
01:31:38.360
We know that we would know that by now if it were true.
01:31:40.720
I will not be your truth warrior on that because I know it's not right.
01:31:44.360
But I do want real answers in the underlying scandal.
01:31:47.220
You know, I just feel like the left really wants to tie Trump to Epstein more closely.
01:31:51.080
And I think that's what the Wall Street Journal really was about.
01:31:53.060
I mean, I just have a hard time believing he's sitting there drawing and doing this.
01:31:58.400
And then there's also still this narrative online that, you know, maybe Trump visited the island.
01:32:01.700
I'm like the guy doesn't even stay in hotels that don't have his name on it.
01:32:04.620
I certainly don't think he visited the island, but they want to keep tying Trump to Epstein.
01:32:08.380
I think J.D. Vance is still looking like a winner because he doesn't seem as mired down in the Epstein stuff.
01:32:12.900
J.D. Vance, I don't think he's spoken about it as much.
01:32:15.060
He's now rallying around the president with the Wall Street Journal story as he should.
01:32:18.400
So I think going into 2028, I don't see this Epstein stuff having really any bearing on the election.
01:32:22.560
He brokered the peace between the FBI guys, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino and Trump.
01:32:28.840
And because Trump was mad at them after the like she goes or I go thing with Dan.
01:32:38.400
Trump is making these decisions about what the country learns about something people are really interested in.
01:32:45.600
He was close friends with the person at the center of this.
01:32:48.600
I think the Wall Street Journal story, if true, speaks to that.
01:32:53.440
I've never heard of Donald Trump flying on anyone else's plane ever flies on his plane.
01:33:00.440
Again, I'm not assuming facts, not in evidence.
01:33:04.020
I'm not saying he did anything improper, but he was close friends with the guy for 15 years.
01:33:08.160
And so he should really be recused from this in terms of the public interest and confidence in decision making.
01:33:13.520
So any story that illustrates or claims to illustrate their closeness, I think, just speak to that.
01:33:19.600
He shouldn't be the one deciding these things because they're bad as good friends.
01:33:25.220
My own feeling is not that Trump has something to hide in these files.
01:33:29.900
But I do believe Trump probably has some powerful donors and or friends.
01:33:37.640
Is that the question, it dies down if there's nothing, if there's no more new oxygen.
01:33:41.900
But I think we've all probably heard there are more stories in the works.
01:33:49.200
But I think, to Mark's point, they were close friends.
01:33:54.160
We're sitting in, you know, one of them right now.
01:33:56.720
If there's another story and it starts to get closer to him, then I think this continues to have more oxygen and people start, you know, it brings it back in front of the public.
01:34:05.800
And to Mark's point, people start thinking, is Trump hiding something about his friends or about him or what is it?
01:34:15.920
If Trump had just stayed consistent with the base, and this had never been Trump's issue.
01:34:21.060
You know, he really hadn't been touting Epstein on the campaign trail, though his son touted it many, many times, and so did his top deputies and his emissaries out on the campaign trail.
01:34:29.360
But if Trump hadn't done that weird answer at that cabinet meeting and then gone on the attack against the MAGA base, nobody would be thinking this is like a Trump scandal.
01:34:40.200
They just, he's making it, he's so defensive on it, it's making people be like, whoa, there's the target right there.
01:34:49.380
When I look at President Trump, I think, is he bored, right?
01:34:51.920
Sometimes I look at him and go, is he bored by something?
01:34:55.320
And I think President Trump, because he doesn't live on X, because he has Fox rolling 24-7, that's what he watches, they're not really covering Epstein that much.
01:35:02.720
And I don't think he really gets everything that's happening on X in the podcast space with the discussion around Epstein.
01:35:07.940
I think President Trump is also frustrated because he had weeks of just consistent winning, right, when it came to the border, the Iranian nuclear facilities, going down to Texas with the grieving families.
01:35:17.540
But President Trump had weeks and weeks of winning.
01:35:19.980
And then now he's like, you guys want to talk about Epstein, this loser scumbag?
01:35:23.000
His attorney general should not put out that memo.
01:35:29.940
Even what's so funny to me is at that FIFA soccer game, Pam Bondi was in the box.
01:35:34.740
And now he's stealing Rupert Murdoch five days later.
01:35:36.440
But, yeah, I think Pam Bondi's not going anywhere.
01:35:42.240
And so I don't see her going anywhere anytime soon.
01:35:45.680
Because I believe Trump likes her and doesn't want to switch out his AG.
01:35:58.940
Like with the Mike Waltz situation, I don't think he's going to give a dog a bone right now and give you the body and the head that you want.
01:36:04.460
Could I see her going and being moved and shifted down the road?
01:36:07.120
So I don't see it happening now in the dog days of summer.
01:36:08.720
And my information is that she's miserable anyway.
01:36:14.240
It's so remarkable, too, because he's so culturally deft.
01:36:17.560
He so has his finger on the pulse of his base, of what's being talked about around the country.
01:36:23.320
This is the first time in 10 years that I've just seen him on the wrong side of this.
01:36:27.300
Repeatedly, to your point, he's dug in about it.
01:36:31.120
You would just think he's so smart and so clever that he would see this.
01:36:34.600
He'd shift other than, you know, throwing out something like the Russia with Pelosi Gabbard.
01:36:43.080
Because as a Democrat, I just am like, whoa, you're so on your back foot.
01:36:51.240
But in a way, it kind of reminds me of what happened at Fox with the Gretchen Carlson investigations.
01:37:01.320
We all knew she got fired because she had terrible ratings and she wasn't popular.
01:37:04.780
But then she dug up this Me Too allegation, which we were all like, oh, sure, whatever.
01:37:08.980
You know, even I was like, there's no way that's why she got fired.
01:37:12.060
And even though I knew what Roger had done with me, to me, not with me, years earlier.
01:37:17.940
But what was happening in that case was Roger had managed to limit the investigation into Gretchen's allegations to only the team that worked with her on her show, which would mean he would never get that the investigators, Lachlan and Rupert and their lawyers would never get to the women who actually had stories.
01:37:43.200
Like, I don't think we're going to hear anything from those grand jury files regarding any Trump friends, any super rich New Yorker or Floridian who because, you know, Julie K. Brown, as annoying as she is, was on was it Ross Do Thoughts, whatever his last name is, Douthat's podcast over the weekend.
01:38:01.440
And she was once again reminding us all that there he is believed, Jeffrey, to have trafficked girls to third parties, to other rich men.
01:38:16.700
As, like, having made Jeffrey super rich, super fast, other than just Les Wexner, the Victoria's Secret guy, other than him.
01:38:25.740
And it just really got me thinking again about the fact that there really are reports.
01:38:29.840
There are women out there who can point the finger at a third man or a fourth man or a fifth man.
01:38:34.700
And I got dollars to donuts that those names probably aren't in the grand jury.
01:38:38.880
But the point of it was to just say we're doing something.
01:38:41.100
We're for disclosure and see where the story goes.
01:38:43.980
And from their point of view, I hope it goes away, which it could.
01:38:51.540
And then they made noise for, like, six hours online.
01:38:59.620
Like, if we learn something new, we learn something new.
01:39:05.980
Because, you know, my own feeling is I didn't like how Trump handled this, especially last week.
01:39:14.400
I still think he's incredibly good for the country.
01:39:19.620
So, like, you look at the fact that Trump is getting boys out of girls sports.
01:39:28.400
Well, that matters way more to me than about Epstein.
01:39:31.080
But there are people in Coramaga for whom, you know, this is a very big issue.
01:39:35.200
And it speaks not to just, like, their conspiratorial nature.
01:39:37.640
But, like, the system that protects corrupt rich guys and shits on the little people.
01:39:47.040
I think it's huge because, look, the last three elections have been games of inches.
01:39:52.060
Trump barely wins in 16, barely loses in 20, barely wins in 24.
01:39:55.600
As you just said, for the first time in 10 years, Trump and his movement have been defending
01:40:06.540
You know, Charlie Kirk saying, I trust the government.
01:40:11.540
And for these younger people, and I give Trump tons of credit to get all these young people
01:40:16.580
to buy into him, to buy into MAGA, to believe in him.
01:40:19.500
But they're saying, wait a second, this is no different than what we kind of heard during
01:40:25.560
You know, some people go back to the Iraq War, and Rahm kind of touched on all these different
01:40:35.360
Not that they're rushing to us Democrats yet, because we have a huge trust problem with them.
01:40:39.500
But for the first time, we've been about change.
01:40:48.960
Maybe Elon Musk and his America Party, maybe they'll get a couple.
01:40:54.240
If I'm President Trump, right, he's looking at these polls that even CNN is running that
01:40:57.300
he's gone up the last week or two, even with all the Epstein stuff.
01:41:00.100
And I think one of the takeaways is, even if they're really loud voices on X and in the
01:41:03.800
podcast space, they might not have as much effect on these polls and in the broader
01:41:08.300
I think for President Trump, because he's not living in those online spaces, he's like, I'm
01:41:17.860
I don't think it's so much the friends or there's some secret thing he's hiding.
01:41:24.320
Some piece of Trump genuinely believes this is a Democrat conspiracy, that this is a long
01:41:33.520
But I think he there is a piece of him that does genuinely believe this is like some sort
01:41:40.160
I was told by a few people that there is a belief.
01:41:43.520
This is not confirmed that there's a belief that there were some like poison pills put in
01:41:48.280
the files by the Biden team before leaving office that that would make it such that Trump
01:41:57.980
And even the Trump, even President Trump intimated it credible.
01:42:00.880
I want them to put out the credible documents is what President Trump keeps saying now when
01:42:07.000
And so I think he's just worried there could be some stuff in there that's supposed to paint
01:42:14.460
Why don't you just love me the way I deserve to be loved?
01:42:17.320
I think he's so bored in the news that he's watching isn't covering Epstein at all.
01:42:21.140
And his aides might be coming to him saying, this is really big online.
01:42:27.140
So Mark Halpern, does it affect him in any way, shape, or form or no?
01:42:32.000
I think it's the 485th lesson that we all should be humble and remember that Donald Trump understands
01:42:46.920
And he can do stuff and say stuff that other people can't.
01:42:52.000
I was talking about this with someone yesterday.
01:42:56.540
I think by, you know, a couple of weeks, we won't even be discussing this.
01:42:58.960
Well, maybe that's why they released it when they did.
01:43:02.240
But I was just amazed that they released it during such a slow news time when the media
01:43:10.460
If they're super sophisticated, maybe they figured out it can burn out over the summer.
01:43:14.660
Same way BBB is going to burn out by the time we actually get to the midterm.
01:43:27.360
Tomorrow, we've got another MK Media star, one of the EJs, Emily Jashinsky, will be here