Ridiculous Anti-ICE Celebs at Grammys, Savannah Guthrie's Mom Missing, and Lemon's "Journalism," with Jesse Kelly, Jonathan Turley, and Matt Murphy | Ep. 1243
Jesse Kelly's Little Red Book is out now, and you can read it for free at JESSICAKELLY.COM. Plus, the latest on the Don Lemon case, and a new book by Jonathan Turley.
00:01:14.580Plus, more follow-up from Don Lemon's indictment for storming a church in Minnesota, St. Paul, to protest ICE.
00:01:21.600The brilliant legal scholar Jonathan Turley will break it down for us.
00:01:26.240He's out with a new book and we'll discuss it with him in an hour.
00:01:30.020Joining me first, however, is our friend Jesse Kelly, who is host of The Jesse Kelly Show, which you can hear on The Megyn Kelly Channel, Sirius XM 111, every weeknight at 6 p.m. Eastern.
00:01:41.120We love serving up that red steak for you every night at 6 p.m. when you officially go on your carnivore diet.
00:01:51.360Jesse's got a new book out today called Jesse Kelly's Little Red Book.
00:01:57.480And get this, you can read it right now for free at jessikelly.com.
00:02:17.520Well, our sponsor, Daily Look, makes that wardrobe upgrade way too easy.
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00:11:37.120Should never make decisions in a society.
00:11:39.520I don't argue with my dog over what to have for dinner.
00:11:42.660And I don't argue with Billie Eilish about how to handle immigration for a country of 300 million people.
00:11:47.920That's not something that would ever happen in a million years.
00:11:50.920And more than anything else, Megan, what they are is because we have such a corrupted system in this country where we have all these cultural institutions that are taken over by these monsters, what they're doing is they're trying to get access to the upper floors of the building.
00:12:08.320And you have to check certain boxes to get access to the upper floors of the building.
00:12:12.620For instance, I want to make sure he gets credit for it.
00:12:14.320The wonderful actor James Woods gave an interview recently.
00:32:36.360It's to honor the observers in Minneapolis.
00:32:39.100You know, they blow the whistles when they see ice come in and they're there to protect their community.
00:32:43.700And they've been doing it for weeks and 30 below.
00:32:45.820And I think that kind of work, it's really great to stop here and to celebrate music and talk about the power of music and to recognize each other.
00:32:54.680But I think the real work is in the streets of Minneapolis right now.
00:33:01.280All right, so we got the hundred millionaire who doesn't want immigration enforcement and we got this guy, Bon, with his little whistle on his lapel, Jesse.
00:33:13.320At a place, we should probably point out, Megan, it's an obvious point, but at a place that is surrounded by more security than anybody has ever seen in their lifetime, they don't want the deportation force of America to remove the child rapists and serial killers from our communities.
00:33:32.620They believe those people should stay there, and yet they live their entire lives surrounded by security.
00:33:39.780If these people ever walk into a Red Lobster, they do so surrounded by security guards.
00:33:45.200If you try to approach them, some gigantic beast is going to pound your head through the table or even attempting to talk to them.
00:33:52.380And yet normal Americans who have to live in communities with these animals from all over the planet, we have people with long criminal records from all over the planet who come here, they hide in blue areas.
00:34:05.020And normal Americans who don't want to be raped, they don't want to be murdered, they don't want to be robbed, they don't want their taxpayer money being swindled by the Quality Leering Center in Minneapolis.
00:34:16.440None of these people actually care about any normal people at all.
00:34:19.980It's all one gigantic virtue signal with your stupid whistles and your out-ice or whatever the stupid pins were and the rest of it.
00:34:29.460And you know who should actually be ashamed, honestly, Megan, is the NFL.
00:34:33.180But you know what? I take that back. That's probably the wrong way to put that.
00:34:36.780You know who should be ashamed? The people who can't walk away from it.
00:34:40.020And I understand the NFL's most popular thing in the world. I totally get all that.
00:34:45.880But if you are going to watch the halftime show with that filthy communist spewing all that crap out there, allegedly in a dress, I would have to question you, to be honest, at this point in time.
00:34:57.580How many times are you going to let the NFL hawk back and spit a big old fat loogie right in your face before you finally stop being treated this way?
00:35:06.400The NFL does this stuff because they can get away with this stuff, because they know no matter what they do, Black Lives Matter, this, and Celebrate Rapist, that, and Bad Bunny, this, that nobody could ever turn the game off for more than 35 seconds.
00:35:21.140And it really drives me crazy at this point in time. It drives me nuts.
00:35:24.820But, you know, I was about to criticize the NFL. I take that back.
00:35:27.880If you can't turn the channel off at this point in time, honestly, that's on you.
00:35:31.560That's right. It is on you. I know Turning Point is organizing its own alternative halftime show.
00:35:38.660When we get the details of that specifically, we'll bring it to you.
00:35:41.460But, yeah, you should not watch the Super Bowl halftime show unless you want to support that guy and his messaging.
00:35:46.580And even if you want to watch the Super Bowl, you turn it off during the halftime.
00:35:49.440Trust me, when I was in cable news, we would get the minute by minutes.
00:35:52.580You'd be able to tell segment by segment what people watched and what they didn't watch.
00:35:56.620And if you turn it off when they get to that halftime show, it will send the NFL a message that you do not support people who do not support our law enforcement officers, including ICE.
00:36:08.340On the subject of, you know, ICE and the ridiculous, you know, the whistle on the lapel as some sort of statement, there was this that hit Twitter today.
00:36:18.320In Minnesota, a bunch of I mean, they look like theater kids.
00:36:23.540Somebody tweeted it out. I thought it was very clever, saying I'm I'm I'm going to have to call for the deportation of all theater kids again, which I have a theater kid.
00:36:31.840So it's tongue in cheek. But it is absurd what they're doing.
00:36:35.720They actually filmed a video of themselves raising the Minnesota, the Minnesota state flag in the model of Iwo Jima.
00:36:46.160They went out there and and like raise the flag.
00:36:50.200It kind of looks like the Somali flag, but it's the Minnesota flag.
00:36:53.120Is it a video that we have you guys that will show up? No, it's a shot. Yeah, it's a shot.
00:37:12.360OK, this is posted by Anton Truer, who is an Ojibwe author, professor and public speaker whose work focuses on indigenous language revitalization, education and cultural understanding.
00:37:23.980A descendant of the Leech Lake and White Earth bands of Ojibwe.
00:37:28.780He's written more than 20 books on Native American history and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, desperate for attention.
00:37:34.960The Battle of Iwo Jima was one of the bloodiest in the war.
00:37:39.580It took place in Japan and our Marines were the ones who raised that flag after having arrived.
00:37:57.720And after this incredibly bloody battle involving some 70,000 of our troops, we won and raised our flag via our Marines.
00:38:05.700And now these idiot know-nothings want to raise the Minnesota state flag as though they're Marines protecting the country again against fascism.
00:38:19.300Yes, that was Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.
00:39:08.820And that's why you see people like Alex Preddy and Renee Good going out in the streets and doing the most bonkers thing, stuff that will obviously get you either hurt or killed.
00:39:21.100And we ask ourselves, we sit back and wonder, how could you do that?
00:39:25.320Of course that's going to end up badly.
00:39:27.420But again, for the easily programmable, Democrat politicians and scumbags in the media over and over and over again telling them they're fighting Nazis, telling them they're fighting Hitler, it leads to action.
00:39:40.860Language leads to mindset and mindset leads to performance.
00:39:44.700And so you tell these people this over and over and over again, eventually they stop scrolling on TikTok and they freak out and they throw their phone down and they get in a car.
00:39:53.280And then gas the engine and slam it into an ICE agent and soon you're dead.
00:39:58.920Your girlfriend doesn't have you anymore to beat up on.
00:40:02.220And now everyone's wondering, how could they do this?
00:40:04.600Well, this happens when you get programmed with this ridiculousness over and over and over again.
00:40:10.000They do all this stupid theater kid stuff.
00:40:12.380Those were your words, not mine, Megan, by the way, but you're so right.
00:40:15.120They do all this stupid theater kid stuff because it's effective on some people.
00:40:20.260And for normal people with jobs and lives and things like that, it's ridiculous.
00:40:24.740But the foot soldiers who go out and march in the streets and blow their stupid whistles and do things to get themselves hurt, they don't have lives.
00:40:35.740You've given them something, a higher cause.
00:40:38.180Everyone wants to serve a higher cause.
00:40:39.980And if you're sitting at home, you're broken, you're soulless, you're drug-addled, you're on your 10th Xanax of the day, and you watch your 18,000th TikTok video telling you Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler, you might just march out thinking it's Mount Suribachi.
00:40:55.840They go out and they do this, and there are real consequences to it.
00:40:59.900And in a word, in defense of actual theater kids, they're kids, and they're in school, and they're doing what they should do, which is extracurricular activities.
00:41:09.280These losers are adults who are cosplaying being teenagers for whom it is appropriate, and these adults for whom it is not are making fools of themselves.
00:42:13.800Does not have to surrender his passport because he has a pre-existing trip that he takes every year, Jesse, to France.
00:42:21.180And he doesn't want to miss his annual vacation.
00:42:24.940So he's allowed to go to Paris, France in his white suit, maybe with his BFF, Karen, and the other Karen to whom he's married, which is a white man, which is shocking because he really fucking hates white men, except for this one.
00:42:38.840And getting treated just like any other felon, any other accused felon, Jesse, I'm sure would have gotten the same thing.
00:42:52.580Aren't we told by the Don Lemons of the world they can't catch a fair shake, that the system's stacked, this is why we need to abolish prisons?
00:42:58.760Seems pretty good to be a black man named Don Lemon in the system's care.
00:43:02.560And Don Lemon is very much enjoying his two minutes of relevance and talking reflectively about what it is that makes him so special.
00:43:14.480Here he is from his own Friday night show in SOT 12.
00:43:18.680We were always taught when I worked in corporate media that the news is a star.
00:44:32.260But now he wants you to know he was a star who drove the news thanks to not just his authenticity, but his honesty, Jesse Kelly, his honesty.
00:44:41.100Well, he's getting famous with no talent.
00:44:44.000And, Megan, you obviously have a much more illustrious TV career than I could ever have.
00:44:48.720But I will tell people this about television because they may not know this.
00:44:52.740The Megyn Kelly show has to be good every five minutes, every 10 minutes.
00:44:56.180You know, you have to be good the whole show.
00:45:00.540Not that you can punt on television, but in television, A block, the opening of the show,
00:45:05.480Your monologue is by far the most important part, and I mean by a mile the most important part.
00:45:11.240That's why any news show you watch, generally, if the host is any good, they will monologue in the A block.
00:45:16.980The biggest indictment of Don Lemon's talent or lack thereof is Don Lemon used to have Chris Cuomo stay over after his show to do the monologue with him.
00:45:29.300That may mean nothing to someone who doesn't understand television.
00:45:32.700I am telling you right now that is essentially giving your television host a handicap sticker because they cannot do the most important thing they have to do.
00:45:43.480That is how talentless and lost Don Lemon is.
00:45:46.500He hung on as long as he possibly could.
00:45:48.620As you said, because he's black and gay, that's two critically important boxes you have to check if you're a company like CNN.
00:45:55.280And now he finally gets arrested and he gets to play the martyr.
00:45:58.100And, of course, some kooky commie judge is going to let him go off to France where he can blow kisses at everybody, and nobody's surprised that Don Lemon is into light cream.
00:46:07.500Either way, Don Lemon's going to get out of this whole thing scot-free.
00:46:11.680The only good news with this whole thing is it's going to cost him a million dollars in legal fees, and that in and of itself is something.
00:46:20.960Yes, he's probably going to end up skating on the whole thing, but a million dollars is not chump change.
00:46:26.660And having to go to court, having to go through trial, having to know there's a possibility that you need soap on the rope for the next five years is enough mental anguish to punish him at least in some way.
00:46:41.720I'm glad we went out and arrested him because just because you have a TV camera doesn't mean you get to engage in acts of terrorism against people worshiping Jesus.
00:46:49.620But maybe we should all be happy, Don Lemon, finally with the church.
00:47:19.420And why shouldn't he be held to account?
00:47:21.380Why do old ladies who show up at abortion clinics to pray have to go through this process and get charged with felonies by Joe Biden and get sentenced to three years in prison?
00:47:33.360And then when Don Lemon violates Part B of the same statute, does he get off just because he had a microphone with him?
00:47:46.480And you cannot have one rule for Nakima, the black lady who led that protest, and a different one for Don Lemon because he had his little microphone on while he was telling people they needed to deal with the trauma.
00:47:59.380That's all part of it, little boy who's crying.
00:48:26.300How many times have you covered a story about somebody who tried to ram an ICE agent and, boom, Democrat jury lets him off scot-free?
00:48:34.600Why are all those wonderful pro-lifers sitting in prison?
00:48:37.400Because they got sent into a communist-controlled justice system where all you had to do was show that you were pro-life and your butt's going to federal prison for five to ten years.
00:48:46.220Whereas a communist who walks into a system like that is never going to get arrested for anything.
00:48:51.160They're certainly never going to go to prison for anything.
00:48:53.240If there's videotape of them doing what they did, they're never going to go to prison.
00:48:57.540I want to live in a country where there's one law for everybody.
00:49:01.140That's the kind of country we used to have.
00:49:03.600But because communists believe in using power to aid their friends and punish their enemies, there are portions of this country where that simply does not exist.
00:49:13.320We have judges in Wisconsin helping illegals escape out the courtroom so they don't get deported.
00:49:18.740We have Daniel Penny in New York City where they tried to send him to prison for protecting people.
00:49:24.880All this was done on camera, by the way.
00:49:26.880Kyle Rittenhouse would be in prison for the rest of his natural life if every single time Dick and Harry didn't have a cell phone and record what actually happened.
00:49:35.120We do not have one law for everybody in this country.
00:49:39.100I wish to God we did, but that's not the world in which we live.
00:49:42.740And if you live in a blue area, I highly suggest you mind your P's and Q's because this has gone all the way down to the cops, the DA's, the city council, the mayor, the judges.
00:50:00.860We need to remind ourselves of the racial element of this.
00:50:07.440There is a reason why I think Don, a reason why Donald Trump not only picked independent journalists, but black journalists in particular.
00:50:14.540Clearly we know there's no love lost between Don Lemon and Donald Trump, that he's been very critical of the president.
00:50:21.180The president, they've gone back and forth.
00:50:23.200But if we go back and undo all the layers of all of this, it was black journalists that were really at the forefront of calling Donald Trump out from the birtherism movement throughout a lot of the things that they saw early before the rest of the press really picked up on some of the things that concerned a lot of black journalists.
00:50:43.720OK, so it's we're going after Don because he's black, Jesse.
00:50:47.720I almost forgot that it was Black History Month and you can just invent black history now in the United States of America, like black journalists were the only ones calling out Donald Trump.
00:50:56.740Look, Jemele Hill is like if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
00:51:02.080She's been doing this throughout her sports career, through her fake journalist career.
00:53:44.6202026 has been a big year for legal stories here on the MK Show.
00:53:48.020Earlier this month, we went to the Supreme Court and heard oral arguments on keeping boys out of girls' sports in schools.
00:53:54.100We're very optimistic that the country will get a win there.
00:53:57.240There's Don Lemon's indictment, plus new arrests in that case today of the church protesters, those who disrupted the service as it went on, that Lemon joined in.
00:54:07.760Today, we have the perfect guest for all of it, and his name is Jonathan Turley, former colleague of mine at Fox News.
00:54:13.040He's a George Washington law professor and the best-selling author of The Indispensable Right.
00:54:40.560All right, so give us the nutshell version of what it's about and why now.
00:54:43.580You know, the book actually looks at the founding and the future of the American Republic.
00:54:50.940The first half looks back at how we created this unique republic that became the most successful and most stable and the oldest democracy in history.
00:55:01.440In looking at that, it explores both the American and French revolutions to explain why one became a stable democracy and one became the reign of terror.
00:55:12.860And the second half of the book looks forward and says, what can we learn from that experience to deal with some of the challenges that are unfolding in the 21st century?
00:55:22.820And they are immense, everything from robotics to AI to global governance.
00:55:28.780These are things that are going to present challenges of a size we have not encountered before.
00:55:34.340But what we are seeing is a sort of crisis of faith on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
00:55:43.020You have law professors and pundits and politicians suggesting that the Constitution is a failure, that we should scrap it.
00:55:51.180And that is something that we've heard before.
00:55:54.580And so this book looks at a simple question that a Frenchman asked in a very popular book in the 1700s.
00:56:02.580He simply asked, who then is this American?
00:56:07.340You know, when we were founded, people were fascinated by this new group of human beings called Americans.
00:56:16.800And we're going to have to try to answer that question of who we were then and who we are now if we're going to face what's coming.
00:56:24.920I mean, I'm actually in the middle of a Ben Franklin biography, the one by Isaacson, and it's really good.
00:56:33.080And it has me asking all the time, God, what would he think if he could see the nation now?
00:56:39.840He wasn't really into it, but he was part of that tradition.
00:56:44.060And, you know, you forget about how puritanical we were and how that word has become universally referred to as negative because they were so judgmental.
00:56:53.420But just you look around the country today, we just finished with the Grammys where everybody's half naked with their body completely exposed and the way they behave up there and calling for us to allow all the immigrants in because, no, you can't have an illegal on a land that is stolen.
00:57:09.840Like, I just think these founders, and you write a lot about James Madison in the book, wouldn't believe their eyes or ears.
00:57:17.300And I think, quite frankly, they'd be horrified.
00:57:19.100Well, Megan, I'm so glad that you raised Benjamin Franklin, who plays a big role in the book.
00:57:24.540The book actually explores much of this history through the eyes of Thomas Paine, who was one of only two figures that played a great role in both the American and French revolutions, the other being Lafayette.
00:57:37.620But it really looks at Paine, who may be the quintessential American.
00:57:42.540You know, he arrived on these shores, a human wreck.
00:57:48.660He had failed in everything he had ever tried in his life, from marriages to being fired at every job.
00:57:54.460And yet, he arrived two years before the Declaration of Independence, and within two years, he was called the penman of the revolution.
00:58:03.520There was only one person who saw anything in that mound of wreckage, and that was a man he ran into in London, Benjamin Franklin.
00:58:14.440And he looked at this penniless, the individual was called a drunkard, he was unkept, he was a total failure.
00:58:24.540And Benjamin Franklin saw something in him and sent him to the United States to write.
00:58:30.160And he ended up writing the first bestseller, Common Sense, that was credited by many with being the spark that caused the American Revolution.
00:58:40.600Even his critics, by the way, John Adams, who didn't like Paine, sort of jealous of Paine, because he was a newcomer, admitted to his wife that in the first meeting with Paine, there was a recollection that there was this odd writer that had, quote, genius in his eyes.
00:58:57.880And I think that's what Benjamin Franklin saw in London.
00:59:02.740Yeah, Paine, who, like, people were kind of talking about revolution, but not taking it seriously.
00:59:07.120And then he wrote Common Sense, and that thing caught fire and gave real voice to it in a way that would be critical to the actualization of us leaving and declaring ourselves an independent nation and throwing off the reins of the king.
00:59:21.120So what do you, like, what do you think, Jonathan?
00:59:23.980Because when I look around today, more and more I hear people jokingly, but, like, kind of wistfully saying we need to break up all over again.
00:59:32.140Like, we're so different left and right in this country now.
01:17:52.940And so they're going to investigate it like other shootings and make a determination if this was unlawful.
01:17:58.780But in terms of the authority, they clearly have that authority.
01:18:02.940Yes. And what we're seeing now, though, is bit by bit what I think looks like judicial coups against the administration on its immigration policy.
01:18:14.060Like this past weekend when we had a judge down in Texas where the little boy was brought, the five-year-old boy who the left made so much news about last week.
01:18:23.560He was taken into federal custody with his dad two weeks ago.
01:18:27.420His dad, DHS says, is an illegal immigrant.
01:18:30.620His lawyer claims he's an asylum seeker.
01:19:23.100So they shipped him down to Texas to the holding facility, and from there he will be shipped back home or would have been had it not been for the intervention of a federal judge down there who got involved and said, oh, no, no, no, no.
01:19:38.460We are actually releasing this little boy and his father and put them on a plane, at least according to NPR, back to Minnesota, where reportedly they are now.
01:19:49.880He released them, definitely did order them released from the federal facility.
01:19:53.320And here, listen to this insanity, Jonathan, in this ruling.
01:19:57.820It's a Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge, Fred Beery, B-I-E-R-Y, on Saturday directing the government officials to release them both, father and son.
01:20:10.580He calls Trump's mass deportation policy ill-conceived and incompetently implemented.
01:20:15.000He accuses the Trump administration of being ignorant of the anti-Kings sentiment of the Declaration of Independence and the Fourth Amendment.
01:20:21.540He says immigration administrative warrants do not pass probable cause muster.
01:20:31.520Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust, that means dishonest, perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency and the rule of law be damned.
01:20:49.740He says the U.S. needs a more orderly and humane policy for deportation, which is a totally inappropriate judgment for a justice or a judge sitting in a robe.
01:21:02.760And he ends it by quoting Benjamin Franklin, our friend, saying the Republican is only being saved by a judicial finger in the constitutional dike.
01:21:09.980He signs the opinion on a day that does not exist, the 31st of February, and then he includes the viral picture of little Liam in his dog snow hat, as well as citations to two Bible verses.
01:21:23.560Professor Turley, you tell me what's happening with his opinion here.
01:21:29.060No, we have seen that before, Megan, and in my view, it is inappropriate.
01:21:33.560And it's chilling for judges to step down from the bench and try to engage in this political debate.
01:21:40.700If he has grounds for his action, he should state them, allow the rest of the debate to occur among citizens and the government.
01:21:48.820You know, in this case, you had what I wrote about earlier as the bait boy hoax, that the boy was being used as bait to arrest the mother.
01:21:57.980Many of the same people who piled on with the false migrant whipping story a few years ago were the very same people that piled on this one, including Harris and other Democratic leaders.
01:22:53.500U.S. District Judge Catherine Menendez, who the angry left in Minnesota, Jacob Fry and co filed a lawsuit in front of her.
01:23:03.600They sued the Trump administration to block the deployment of increased federal resources for the purposes of immigration enforcement, saying it infringed on the state's 10th Amendment.
01:23:11.500Police powers was a violation of equal sovereignty under the Constitution and other bases asking for a preliminary and permanent injunction.
01:26:32.800All right, Professor, let's talk about the Don Lemon case.
01:26:35.980I think you and I may disagree on this one.
01:26:38.020Um, I believe that they were right to charge him because he did go into a church.
01:26:43.740He did behave more as protester than journalist.
01:26:46.480But I think even as a journalist, he is exposed to liability because while he could have gone into some public venue with his microphone, um, he didn't.
01:26:56.060He went into private property, which a church is.
01:26:58.620He was told specifically by the pastor to leave, which he then didn't.
01:27:03.240And unfortunately for Don Lemon, there is a right by churchgoers to be left alone.
01:27:08.900And so while this, these antics might have flown had he been on truly public property, um, they're not going to fly here thanks to the FACE Act and the Klan Act, which protects against conspiracies that violate somebody else's rights.
01:27:22.580And people's right to observe their faith is pretty well established.
01:27:27.440So that's why I think Don Lemon's in a lot of trouble, whether they think he was acting as a journalist or not.
01:27:35.120I obviously disagree with Attorney General Ellison, uh, who told the, the people of Minnesota that the FACE Act doesn't apply to places of worship.
01:27:45.720It only applies to abortion clinics, which is just completely untrue.
01:27:50.480Uh, it most certainly does apply in these circumstances.
01:27:54.260I, my only issue with the, uh, Don Lemon arrest is I think that courts are very likely to view him as engaged in a protected journalistic exercise.
01:28:05.820That doesn't necessarily mean it will be a complete defense.
01:28:09.000We're gonna have to see specifically what the conduct alleged would be to support the indictment.
01:28:17.680I actually talk about this in Rage in the Republic.
01:28:19.720Cause I talk about the press and the, the, the role of the press in what I call mobocracy, you know, that we saw this with the French revolution.
01:28:28.640We see it today where you have journalists that blur the line between the press and advocates.
01:28:35.560And as you know, Megan and J schools now around the country, journalism schools, there's a rejection of objectivity and neutrality in these J schools.
01:28:45.740And so people like Lemon are sort of the face of that movement that, uh, good journalists are advocates.
01:28:52.760Well, that makes this a much more difficult question.
01:28:56.040As you pointed out, was he there as a journalist or as an advocate?
01:29:00.580And so Lemon is going to force that issue.
01:29:03.580It's just that most judges will tend to run home on, uh, this first amendment issue.
01:29:09.500They will view this as a journalistic exercise.
01:29:12.060Now, on the last point, I want to note that you said, well, he was told to leave and that makes this trespass.
01:29:21.300Uh, there was an important case, uh, that was handed down by the fourth circuit, uh, which, um, which held exactly that, that journalists do not have the right to, uh, to, um, uh, to trespass.
01:29:36.660And the problem is that those crimes are often prosecuted by the state.
01:29:43.820Uh, but it's, yeah, trespasses the state.
01:29:46.000Right. So it's clear the governor and the attorney general have no interest in prosecuting people on the left, like Don Lemon.
01:29:53.120But professor, could, could I live with, stick with the FACE Act for now.
01:29:56.760Do you really think that I could go in there with a group of protesters who were trying to block women from getting an abortion?
01:30:21.560I, this is uncomfortable that I would not be charged just because I, I'm a journalist and I have a right to report.
01:30:29.180I, my rights don't give me access everywhere.
01:30:31.460I can't go into somebody's surgery or their abortion clinic.
01:30:35.100And that's written right into the FACE Act.
01:30:37.440And unfortunately for Don Lemon, he did the equivalent of that by going into a church.
01:30:40.780Well, the, the fascinating thing on that point, which is an excellent analogy, is that Ellison himself has interpreted the FACE Act when it comes to pro-life defendants as being unbelievably broad, that he is anything to be obstruction.
01:30:59.180So if you apply the Ellison approach, then you're absolutely, absolutely right.
01:31:03.600It's a really difficult question for a lot of, of courts of when you cross that line as, as a journalist.
01:31:11.320And, uh, you know, I, my only point is that I think in the end, he's going to have the advantage, uh, with these, with these courts.
01:31:20.680But, you know, we haven't even seen this, uh, unfold in terms of the indicted conduct and what will be presented at trial.
01:31:28.900I'm just simply saying that I think that the odds probably favor him.
01:31:33.060They do not favor, in my view, the others who have been charged.
01:32:00.860This is the beginning of what's going to happen here.
01:32:02.820When you violate people's due process, when you pull people off the street and you start dragging them and hurting them and, um, and not abiding by the constitution.
01:32:12.020When you start doing all of that, people get upset and angry.
01:32:16.300And if you remember what the civil rights movement was about, the civil rights movement was about these very kinds of protests.
01:32:25.020And for some reason, in our modern era, people think that in order to have protests, you've got to be, you know, cordoned off to a certain area.
01:32:34.700And, uh, you know, what time you can protest.
01:32:37.900There's nothing in the constitution that tells you what time you can protest.
01:33:13.300Yeah, it's an extraordinary, I'm so glad you, you did show that passage.
01:33:17.580This is a guy who just last night got a standing ovation, uh, in an award ceremony by, uh, folks in Hollywood.
01:33:24.780What they don't show, by the way, when he says that this is supposed to make people uncomfortable is the child being cradled by his father because he's terrified because he came there to a church service and found himself in the middle of a, uh, what seemed to be a building riot.
01:33:38.520And you also do, I think that your point is a good one, Megan, that it is hard to see that as journalism.
01:33:46.920But this is something that the courts are really struggling with in good faith.
01:33:51.260One of the things we've seen from the left in a lot of these protests has been that Antifa and other groups have donned press, uh, um, vests.
01:34:01.460And by simply pulling out their phones, they say that we're press.
01:34:05.400Uh, you also saw this sort of use of legal observer status.
01:34:09.520You know, uh, Renee Good said that she was a legal observer before that shooting.
01:34:14.940I've represented legal observers in courts in protest cases.
01:34:25.740And so we're going to have to, the courts are going to have to sort of weed through this to try to draw some lines here.
01:34:32.820But Don Lemon may succeed in forcing this issue.
01:34:35.620As, as J schools crank out more, uh, activist journalists, courts are going to have to make a decision of when you become more of an activist than a journalist.
01:34:46.220I mean, I, I think it's interesting because we should just know what he was there doing.
01:34:51.520But I don't think my own personal opinion and my legal opinion is it doesn't matter.
01:34:55.320The FACE Act does not have an exception for a journalist.
01:34:58.180If I, as a journalist, go into an abortion clinic with my mic and my camera, I am 100% going to get arrested under a Democrat administration anyway for a, for a FACE Act violation.
01:35:08.320And same as Don Lemon got arrested for going into that church, he conspired.
01:35:56.700And journalists have to obey the law just the same as anybody else does.
01:36:00.820That we don't have some magical shield against the law by the fact that we have press passes.
01:36:06.600Well, I think that's the sort of fascinating thing for me.
01:36:09.300You know, with Rage of the Republic and comparing the conditions that existed at our Declaration of Independence with today, many of those Jacobins, those people that guillotine so many of their fellow citizens were journalists.
01:36:24.100And much like today, they decided that they were advocate journalists and eventually they became little tyrants because they untethered themselves from their professional role.
01:36:37.460We're seeing that same thing happen today.
01:36:41.480And it's something that we need to address.