The Megyn Kelly Show - Rise in Crime, Corporate Cowardice, and Media Hypocrisy in America, with Bari Weiss and Brandon Tatum

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00:00:31.220 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.460 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.440 Great show for you today. I'm excited for this two hours.

00:00:48.820 In our second hour, I'm going to be joined by Brandon Tatum.

00:00:52.460 Brandon is a former police officer turned outspoken conservative

00:00:55.680 behind the popular YouTube channel, The Officer, The Officer Tatum.

00:01:00.300 He's out with a new book, Beaten Black and Blue,

00:01:03.420 Being a Black Cop in an America Under Siege.

00:01:07.360 But we begin today with my friend Barry Weiss,

00:01:10.260 founder of Common Sense on Substack, host of the podcast,

00:01:14.080 Honestly, and author of the book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism.

00:01:18.140 Barry, great to have you back. How are you?

00:01:20.160 I'm great. Great to be here, Megan. I dried my hair for you.

00:01:23.000 Oh, nice. I want to tell you something. We'll get to this in a minute, but a lot of people

00:01:27.180 will talk to me about various whatever in the news. And if you knew how many people came up to me and

00:01:32.540 said, you know, Barry Weiss says we have to get out of this with courage. Courage is the way out

00:01:38.360 of this, what our country is going through. And so I love it because it just shows your influence

00:01:42.860 grows. It's resonating for people to be able to sort of quote. I realized that was sort of in the

00:01:47.960 headline, but for the people to be able to just repeat it back shows you're having an impact and

00:01:52.700 you're really connecting with people. So I hope you're feeling that.

00:01:55.480 Thank you. Thank you. I had a wonderful experience in an airport the other day that gave me a sense

00:02:02.340 of that where someone, I was, you know, screaming into the phone and some guy comes up and taps me

00:02:08.180 on the shoulder and is like, I recognize your voice. Are you Barry Weiss? And I was like, yes,

00:02:12.740 are you a hater or not? And anyway, it was very sweet. And we ended up having breakfast together.

00:02:18.600 And anyway, he was on his way to, hi Jordan. He was on his way to a psychedelics conference. It was

00:02:23.020 really interesting and fun. But you know, you don't get in COVID, you don't get that sense as

00:02:28.240 much. So I'm a huge extrovert and being able to actually now begin to interact with people is,

00:02:35.920 is really wonderful. I just, I was at Duke University last week speaking and

00:02:39.900 caught a sense again of like, oh, wow, people are actually reading and listening to these things.

00:02:44.760 Yes. A hundred percent. I'll tell you, I had a, not exactly a similar experience,

00:02:48.300 but I was at the grocery store with my daughter the other day and there was this man

00:02:52.100 and he was staring at me. And I mean, he was really staring hard. It was a hard stare

00:02:57.260 and it wasn't breaking. And he looked away for like one second, but then he looked back and the,

00:03:01.440 and the hard stare would resume. And I mean, obviously at this point in my career,

00:03:05.320 it's not totally unusual for, I can see, you know, somebody's recognizing me or asking,

00:03:10.180 is that her, you know, that kind of thing. And you kind of know that look, but this guy

00:03:14.560 was just in, and like, it just wouldn't take his eyes away. And it was awkward. And I was looking at

00:03:19.680 my daughter, like, don't, don't, don't stare back. Look away. Let's look over here. And finally,

00:03:24.000 like we got into the grocery store and it continued. And finally I said to him, can I help you? Is there,

00:03:29.460 do you need something for me? I'm like, maybe I'm misunderstanding the whole situation.

00:03:33.480 And he was like, Oh, I was just wondering if you were Megan Kelly. I'm like, Oh my Lord,

00:03:37.520 it is the, it is the, is it her wreck? You know, like people, it's fine to do that and

00:03:41.960 appreciate the support, but you got to break the stare. You got to look away. You got to pretend

00:03:45.980 like it, right. It's like a protocol. You got to say something or buy the person a drink. There's

00:03:50.560 a protocol. Yes. There's a protocol. Yes. Agree. There was no lunch between us. Cause I was like,

00:03:55.340 could be, could have all, the police could be here soon. It's unclear.

00:03:58.560 But you're, but I do feel, I mean, one of the things that I feel is that there's so many haters

00:04:06.920 online. And so you sort of over index for that in real life, but most people that are haters online

00:04:14.000 are cowards in real life. And in my experience, the only kind of people that have ever come up to me

00:04:18.840 are, are perfectly wonderful and lovely people. I thought, I think it's interesting. You describe

00:04:24.320 yourself as a, as a huge actor extrovert. Like how, when did you realize that about yourself?

00:04:31.400 Only when I realized that other people were introverts, I did. I thought that was like the,

00:04:36.740 the only way, not the only way to be, but it's a little bit like when you grow up in your family

00:04:42.080 context, all you really know is your family context and that's, what's normal. And then you

00:04:46.860 sort of move out into the world and you're like, Oh wow. People grew up in wildly different

00:04:51.240 circumstances with wildly different experiences of family life, obviously. But you know, when you're

00:04:56.700 a kid and then, you know, all of a sudden you're in like fourth, fifth grade, you start to understand

00:05:00.200 that. Yeah. I mean, I think that that's one of the things that propelled me into a career in

00:05:08.100 journalism, to be honest with you. Like I love interacting with people. I love talking to people.

00:05:13.620 I love slipping into other people's experiences and, you know, at its best, you know, trying to be

00:05:21.620 as empathetic to those experiences as possible and understanding the way that they experience and

00:05:27.620 move through the world. So yeah, that's, that's a huge reason. I think that, that I'm a journalist

00:05:34.640 beyond the fact that I'm, you know, sort of like not an expert in anything, but very curious about lots

00:05:42.280 of things that makes you inclined toward this kind of career. Yeah. I mean, honesty helps too. And

00:05:47.660 you've got that as well. It's funny to me because I still don't know what I am. I don't think I'm an

00:05:52.400 extrovert, but I don't think I'm an introvert either. You know, I, I do not get the feeling of

00:05:56.760 like people. I want to be with them. You know, I'm much more like I'm happy in my house with my,

00:06:03.060 with my people and I don't have any obligation to perform or be on or, you know what I mean?

00:06:08.240 Yes. But before you became Megyn Kelly, the kind of person that people

00:06:13.360 Google in a supermarket or a bar, like that is understandable now that you're a public figure

00:06:19.500 and the pressure to like, not be on. I mean, that's horrible to always feel like you have to

00:06:24.000 be on. But before that, right, before you were, you know, noticed, don't, I mean, I, it would be

00:06:31.580 from having met you the one time I would definitely characterize you as an extrovert or someone or an

00:06:38.580 introvert that performs extremely well as, as one. Yeah. I know. I never actually looked at that as a

00:06:44.980 line of demarcation because I've been in the public eye now for, you know, 17 years, but you're right.

00:06:49.920 Cause I think back on the college version of me, the law school version of me, that person was

00:06:55.000 probably more outward facing and more excited about dealing with, you know, random parties,

00:07:02.460 random rooms, random. Yeah, exactly. And now you're right. Especially having been at Fox News

00:07:07.500 for 13, 14 years and lived on the Upper West Side. I am a little like with the eyes batting

00:07:11.920 whenever anybody walks by, like, I'm going to get it. They're going to get, you know, they're not

00:07:14.780 actually going to hit me, but you do, as you say, you may over index, but I think on the Upper West

00:07:19.020 Side, maybe I had it exactly right. It unclear. So now I am a little bit more like I'm a news person.

00:07:25.080 I'm controversial. You know, I do believe the lovers outnumber the haters, but you always

00:07:29.180 have to be on guard. Yeah. Yeah. You do have to be on guard, but also it's, I thought about

00:07:35.940 this a lot because I, in a weird way, being disliked, at least by some corners of the internet,

00:07:45.960 I think has made me a better person. If that makes sense. It does. Do you know what I mean?

00:07:53.020 Like, I, I'm like, oh, always have to tip 25%. Never can, you know, never, never want

00:08:00.440 to complain. I thought it was going a different way.

00:08:02.800 No. I mean, like. Now I actually have to behave well.

00:08:06.020 Well, I, I, it's like, I think in general, like, you know, my entire history has been

00:08:10.240 poured over and I'm like, there's not that many skeletons actually, given how, how, you

00:08:15.880 know, deep people have dug into my past, but you know, it also can make you a little

00:08:20.920 crazy. Like I remember we were, Nellie and I were living in our rental in New York and

00:08:26.200 the water wasn't working. There were two bathrooms. The water wasn't working in one

00:08:30.100 of them. And she was like, I'm going to call the super. And I was like, no, you can't call

00:08:33.600 the super. And she was like, are you crazy? Of course I'm calling the super. And I was

00:08:36.360 like, no, no, like we can't complain. Like we can't ever be perceived to be, you know,

00:08:43.200 Karen-ing, although that wasn't a term two years ago in any way, it's just not worth it.

00:08:48.420 And she looked at me and was like, no, no, we're paying for this apartment. The water

00:08:52.640 isn't working. Of course we're calling the super. And it was a little bit of a moment

00:08:56.500 for me of like, oh, I've taken this too far.

00:08:58.380 Yeah. You've crossed, you've crossed to readjust. Yes.

00:09:01.240 You've crossed over to the other side.

00:09:02.720 Well, that's funny. I, I, uh, I've knowing you as, as to the extent I do, you are a natural

00:09:09.200 extrovert. I was just talking about Rush Limbaugh, about how you'd watch him get in front of a room

00:09:13.580 of people and his chest would puff out and he would feed off the energy in the room. And I can see that

00:09:19.260 in you. And it's in part why you, you were sort of born for this moment, Barry, you, it's like

00:09:26.280 everything that's happened to you made you the perfect, one of the perfect leaders for this

00:09:31.540 anti-woke pushback. You know, you're more traditional liberalism. You're the fact that

00:09:38.200 you're in a lesbian relationship, which I want to get to in a minute, because I hear there's news.

00:09:43.120 Um, I, I like for people to break their personal news on the show. Um, but I'll get, I'll get to

00:09:49.180 that one second. But anyway, but then you're, you're unfortunate experience with the New York

00:09:54.060 Times where they tried to bully you and you walked out like Khaleesi, um, you know, with the fires

00:09:58.180 burning all of it. Right. It's like, you have to be the extra who, who else would create a new

00:10:02.840 university? You know, only you, Megan, when I'm feeling low, I'm realizing I just need to call

00:10:08.220 you. I feel like I'm looking at my funeral. This is amazing. I'll show up all over again.

00:10:15.340 It's very nice. I don't know if I, um, I don't know. It's, it's hard to sort of like look at yourself

00:10:21.880 while you're being yourself. And if you become, you know, you, you, it can be a total, um,

00:10:29.980 I don't know. I think it can become like navel gazing and narcissistic and just try and just

00:10:34.440 try and do the right thing and live out your values. And the thing that I think is amazing

00:10:38.180 about this moment and, you know, we're on a medium that proves it is how much is possible right now in

00:10:45.720 terms of just starting your own thing, starting your own institution, whether it's a podcast,

00:10:52.100 you know, or a media company or a new university or a new school. And as soon as I sort of shifted

00:10:59.380 my gaze from desperately trying to reform and shore up, obviously decayed institutions, uh, to

00:11:10.580 completely focused on building new things and throwing whatever weight I have between behind

00:11:19.680 other people that are building other things that I believe in, like the more sort of like optimistic

00:11:26.540 and elevated I have felt. And, you know, there's a lot to be pessimistic about in the world right now,

00:11:33.740 which I'm sure we'll get into, but you know, a lot of people ask me like, aren't you so down?

00:11:38.560 Aren't you so down? I have to tell you, like I was despondent in the last year that I was at the

00:11:43.280 times. And I feel so like energized and excited right now about what's possible. And a hundred

00:11:51.120 percent of that has to do with the fact that I've just totally changed my, like where I am putting my

00:11:57.680 energy. You know, um, just in case you had any doubts about leaving the New York times.

00:12:03.140 And I, I know that you don't, um, I'm sure you saw this because it's, it's getting a fair amount

00:12:09.700 of, of pickup, but there has, there is a guest essay. This is dated December 5th. Uh, that's

00:12:15.840 getting some blowback now for good reason. And it's the, the, the title of it is, is my little

00:12:20.820 library contributing to the gentrification of my black neighborhood. This is written by a woman named

00:12:27.060 Erin Aubrey Kaplan describes herself as a journalist and author who grew up in the South central section of

00:12:32.300 Los Angeles and nearby Inglewood. Now this essay is all about, you know, those little, I don't know

00:12:37.780 if you read it, but you know, those little, um, I did. Yeah. It's, it looks like a mailbox, but really

00:12:42.220 it's a little book station that you can take books from in front of somebody's front lawn, or I guess

00:12:48.440 potentially leave books. Um, they're cute. I've seen them and she, she thought so too.

00:12:54.160 We were actually thinking about building one on our front lawn with just Abigail Schreier's book

00:13:00.400 and other canceled people's other, other books that have been controversial. Um, not sure that's

00:13:07.140 the best move in terms of personal security. Uh, but I think it would be a very cool move for

00:13:12.360 anyone that's listening to this and wants to stir up a little bit of a conversation in their

00:13:17.500 neighborhood. I'll tell you what happened to that, that little mailbox, uh, slash library. What

00:13:22.560 happened around the corner for me growing up, there was a mailbox that people decided to target. I don't

00:13:26.620 know why it must've looked imminently wreckable and people kept like running their cars into it or

00:13:31.520 some kids knocked it down with a shovel. And so finally the owner built like a sort of rectangular

00:13:37.260 box and filled up the entire base with concrete, with just a little slit up top for the, for the

00:13:43.120 mail. And so kids who had been eventually intentionally targeted the mailbox, then filled up the little

00:13:48.400 space with more concrete. You can't win. That's amazing. So maybe you're right. Don't, don't tempt

00:13:57.740 them. There's no reason to intentionally antagonize. All right. So Aaron is really wrestling with her

00:14:04.080 little mailbox or her little library because, um, she said, look, I was excited to put this outside.

00:14:09.980 I thought Inglewood, my town deserved it. Um, and then something horrible happened quote one morning,

00:14:16.980 glancing out my front window. I saw a young white couple stopped at the library. Instantly. I was

00:14:23.860 flooded with emotions. She's black astonishment and then resentment and then astonishment. And my

00:14:30.460 resentment, it all converged into a silent scream in my head. Get off my lawn. She goes on. The truth

00:14:37.480 was I hadn't set it out to appeal to white residents. She says, what I resented was not this specific

00:14:44.900 couple. It was their whiteness and my feelings of helplessness at not knowing how to maintain the

00:14:51.140 integrity of a black space that I created. I was seeing up close how fragile that space could be.

00:14:58.480 She goes on to write how fragile my feeling of being settled is. It didn't matter that I own my house

00:15:04.540 as many of my neighbors do. Generations of racism, Jim Crow, disinvestment and redlining have meant that

00:15:11.120 we don't really control our own spaces. In that moment, I had been overwhelmed by a kind of fear,

00:15:17.540 one that's connected to the historical reality of black people being run off the land they lived on,

00:15:24.220 expelled by force, high prices, or some whim of white people. She never fully reconciles, uh,

00:15:31.760 the feelings, but what she ends up concluding is that black presence has value. And it is increasingly

00:15:40.260 important to maintain and grow black space and to be thoughtful about the integrity of a black space.

00:15:48.340 And of course, Barry, all I could think was, can you imagine if this were a white person saying any

00:15:54.860 of this about maintaining the integrity of one's white space and how white presence has value? Your

00:16:02.940 thoughts on it? My thoughts when I read, when I read the article was just the idea that you can write

00:16:09.900 a sentence in public, in the paper, in the most important newspaper in the world, regardless of

00:16:16.560 what you think of it. The idea that you can write, what I resented was not this specific couple.

00:16:22.660 It was their whiteness and my feelings of helplessness and not knowing how to maintain

00:16:27.280 the integrity of a black space that I created. The idea that it is acceptable and not just acceptable,

00:16:33.320 but laudable to say something like this about a large chunk of the population and to reduce people

00:16:40.660 to their race or to the amount of melanin in their skin and demonize them because of it,

00:16:47.280 right? It's the, the way that she dehumanizes these people. It's not that she resented them as

00:16:51.660 people or human beings. She resents them because of an immutable characteristic about who they are.

00:16:56.260 I don't know what that is other than racism. And the fact that that has become completely normalized

00:17:03.340 is, is very scary. I mean, it's fun to like make fun of this article and it's easy to dunk on it,

00:17:10.380 but it's actually like quite chilling to me. And it's, it's just bald and unrepentant racism.

00:17:18.340 The other part of it that jumped out to me, Megan, and we were talking about it in, um,

00:17:22.480 the slack for my company the other day, as we all read it, of course, is the idea that she says,

00:17:29.880 it didn't matter that I own my house as many of my neighbors do. Generations, as you just said,

00:17:35.400 of racism, Jim Crow, disinvestment and redlining have meant that we don't really control our own

00:17:39.740 spaces. The sort of denial of history that's built into that, the notion that you are sort of

00:17:49.680 collapsing time between 2021 and pre civil rights era, you know, or posts post civil rights era,

00:17:59.660 Jim Crow. Okay. But, but the idea that you are basically saying that nothing has changed,

00:18:05.200 that the state of my life, because of these, just because of America's ugly and disgusting history

00:18:12.540 with racism, what that does is it erases the heroism and the progress that civil rights leaders

00:18:21.380 in this country made. And it erases, frankly, their sacrifices. And the idea that a person today

00:18:28.300 is sort of the same as a person that was subjected to redlining and yes, generations of racism and yes,

00:18:36.760 being, you know, and Jim Crow and all of the rest of the things she cites to me is just morally

00:18:42.920 perverted. And frankly, like it's revising history in a way that denies the very people that if you

00:18:52.140 were in a conversation, I imagine with this writer that she would, that she would point to as her

00:18:56.600 heroes. It's, that's a great point because she's, she skips right over the whole civil rights movement,

00:19:02.560 you know, the voting rights act and all of the legislation that was put into place

00:19:06.900 and decides that she's in exactly the same position that black people in the Jim Crow South

00:19:13.380 were in. And it's, and it's absurd and there's nothing a white person can do that she's okay

00:19:18.620 with. She criticizes white flight from neighborhoods after we got rid of things like redlining and,

00:19:23.720 and, and, you know, Roger has got a great point, a great responsive essay out saying,

00:19:28.040 do you know why white people did engage in white flight? Because the law didn't allow them to stop

00:19:34.760 black people from moving in. And some of the racist ones were like, well, I'm out of here.

00:19:38.620 So she doesn't, she doesn't like that. You know, we did change is his point in the, in the, in this

00:19:42.900 country. Not everybody fled, fled. And, um, she doesn't want the, the whites to flee the, the mixed

00:19:49.700 communities, the more diverse communities, but she also doesn't want the whites to be in the diverse

00:19:53.280 communities, right? Like where exactly are the white people supposed to live to make Aaron

00:19:57.780 happy that I remain unclear. Well, if you haven't listened to it, it's actually worth listening

00:20:04.260 to just a few episodes. There was a podcast series that the times put out called nice white parents.

00:20:10.080 I thought it was a kind of brilliant headline to be honest with you, but I listened to it and what

00:20:14.520 it was about was a school in New York. Um, a, I believe it was a public charter school, but I might

00:20:22.840 be screwing it up. It might've been a magnet school. And it was essentially demonizing white

00:20:29.480 parents in the school who tried to get, um, increased, uh, donations to the school. And it was

00:20:36.640 basically, it's worth listening to because it's exactly this catch 22 you're saying the parents were

00:20:43.080 demonized for being a part of the school, being involved in the school and trying to make the school

00:20:47.600 better. And that was unacceptable because that somehow was paternalism. It was, you know, it was

00:20:55.160 somehow like vestigial white supremacy, or it was, um, gentrification, but then, okay, so you don't want

00:21:04.640 the parents to be involved in school. You want them to go to another school and we'll know that's white

00:21:08.900 flight. That's racism. So there's literally no way out in, in the logic laid out both in that podcast

00:21:17.400 and in this op-ed that you just mentioned. The, um, Rod in his piece says, um, Kaplan, uh, reflects

00:21:25.800 on the fact that she sounds pretty racist, but then reassures herself that it's just fine because

00:21:29.960 reasons. I'm quite sure he writes that anybody in the New York times newsroom who read this and thought,

00:21:35.160 hang on, that's racist knows by now to keep that opinion to themselves if they want to keep their

00:21:41.240 job. And I was thinking about Don McNeil, the, the COVID reporter who lost his job because somebody was

00:21:48.740 raising with him an incident involving someone uttering the N word. And Don in recounting the

00:21:54.760 story said the N word in trying to quote the original story. And he wound up getting fired.

00:21:59.900 And by the way, his replacement over the, at the New York times, when it comes to covering COVID

00:22:04.300 has made about 40,000 mistakes. And that's my overstatement in the same way she overstates the

00:22:08.980 children's deaths, um, by 400% or whatever. I mean, so the person, the young diverse woman,

00:22:15.820 they replaced him with, um, isn't really holding up her end of the job, but you can't object to this

00:22:21.900 sort of racist messaging in the New York times or you're the racist. But that's in part because

00:22:28.660 racism itself has been redefined. And I think that's something that people aren't really fully

00:22:34.240 appreciating. Racism, right, is not bigotry or personal bigotry against someone because of the

00:22:41.180 amount of melanin they have or don't have in their skin. Racism is about prejudice plus power. And

00:22:47.320 therefore in this new definition of racism, well, white people are in power, at least historically,

00:22:53.440 according to this definition. Therefore it's not actually, it's a contradiction in terms,

00:22:58.600 according to this new view of things for there to be racism against white people. It's an

00:23:04.040 impossibility. And I think once people sort of grok that change, they'll start to understand how

00:23:10.120 things like this, while morally upside down are justifiable inside the realm of an institution or a

00:23:18.080 culture that is completely redefined what racism is. Yep. And that is why people like Aaron can push

00:23:24.480 for segregated, segregated spaces and for taking out the sins of the father on today's generation of

00:23:31.920 white Americans who may have done absolutely nothing wrong or racist a day in their life.

00:23:37.580 That's why they're okay with having little kids treated as Jim Crow himself because of their white skin,

00:23:44.640 because someone's going to have to pay. Um, and you've got generations of people who were never

00:23:50.320 black slaves wanting reparations from people who never had slaves. And if you object to that again,

00:23:59.000 see point number one, you're a racist. And there's kind of a distinction, like there's a really reasonable

00:24:07.720 conversation that should be had, I believe in the political realm about whether or not, like,

00:24:13.820 I think the question, for example, of reparations as a federal government policy is a conversation

00:24:19.520 that should be had and should be debated. But the idea that we should sort of force five, six, seven and

00:24:27.780 eight year olds to carry them out, and to make them avatars of their race, and make them feel as if they are

00:24:38.480 born into either victimhood or oppressor status based on that. That to me is not just wrong on the

00:24:49.260 level of damaging psychologically and socially and culturally for those individual children,

00:24:55.320 but it is also like setting us up for increasingly entrenched positions on race, which is terrifying to

00:25:07.280 me. The idea that you would want to tell an eight and nine and 10 year old boy, a white boy, that your

00:25:14.820 race is the thing that matters most, and your race is the thing that actually gives you power over these

00:25:20.800 other people in your class. That to me sounds like a KKK talking point. Yeah, exactly right. There's much

00:25:29.100 more to go over. I want to get into the crime spree that we're seeing across the nation, and the White

00:25:35.060 Houses, and now the media's excusing of it in ways, I guess they're predictable, but they never cease to shock me a

00:25:42.300 little.

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00:26:15.320 Here with me today, Barry Weiss, founder of Common Sense on Substack, which you should definitely

00:26:26.320 subscribe to, and host of the podcast, Honestly, which you should also subscribe to, because she's

00:26:31.600 always interesting, entertaining, and fact-based, and just brilliant, all-around brilliant. For her

00:26:36.220 young, young years, I don't even like to think about how much younger than I am you are, Barry, but

00:26:40.060 it gives me hope that- I'm so old, Megan. I'm so old.

00:26:43.020 It gives me hope that there's going to be somebody carrying on once, you know, the reaper comes for

00:26:46.980 me. Okay. Let's talk about Kai. I met a kid the other day after a talk, and he was so lovely and

00:26:53.940 smart. And I said, oh, what year of high school are you in? And he was like, I'm in medical school.

00:26:59.260 And I'm like, oh, that's how old I am. Okay. So I'm terrified because I love Charles C.W.

00:27:05.980 Cook of National Review. I just, he's so, he is so smart and is

00:27:10.060 British accent really helps. But I just love the way he talks about the news. And I've had him on

00:27:14.560 the show many times. And one day I made the mistake of going into territory that got to age.

00:27:20.580 And he is, he is, I think, 35 years old, right? Abs, did we determine he's 35 is exactly your age?

00:27:26.000 He's Abby's age and he's 35. And I mean, I, I'm like, I don't understand it. I'm used to looking up

00:27:33.120 to these amazing brains and intellect. Like they're supposed to be older than I am. And I'm supposed to

00:27:37.460 be striving to get there by the time I'm that age. I'm like, all hope is lost. I'm completely

00:27:42.220 screwed. If I haven't done it by now, I'm not going to like all the years of reading I should

00:27:45.620 have been doing. It's too late. Now I can, I can barely, I could, I could catch up to like the

00:27:49.620 sixth grade version of Charles C.W. Cook at this point.

00:27:52.720 Megan, you look better than every single one of us. So just, just, just cruise on that, babe.

00:27:58.260 Well, thank you. All right. I'm going to hold onto that. Thank you. That is something.

00:28:00.540 That is everything. Okay. So let's talk about crime because it is spiraling. We've seen violent

00:28:10.400 attacks, tons of shoplifting, these mobs smash and grabs where they, they all like all these cars

00:28:15.760 sort of block the entrance to a massive store. And then dozens of people run in, smash the display

00:28:21.160 cases and take the things. The White House, when asked by Peter Doocy, Jen Psaki blamed the pandemic,

00:28:27.300 not defund the police, not soft on crime policies by elected DAs, but the pandemic, right? And

00:28:36.320 apparently on CBS this morning, the other day, they played a clip. This is courtesy of Jonathan

00:28:40.900 Turley.org. I love Jonathan Turley played a clip of a man nonchalantly clearing a shelf of hair care

00:28:47.200 products into a garbage bag and then riding his bike out of a Walgreens. And one of the co-hosts

00:28:53.720 insisted, it just seems like an act of desperation. I mean, you're not getting rich off of what you

00:28:59.540 take from a Walgreens going on talking about how sad that was. And I've got to say, how does she

00:29:06.580 explain the Louis Vuitton? Well, exactly right. It was, um, it was the, I don't know. I actually

00:29:11.940 don't watch CBS. Desperate for luxury handbags. Well, this is what Turley says. He says it also appears

00:29:17.080 that pandemic sustenance gatherers felt compelled to grab $79,000 worth of purses from a Givenchy

00:29:22.980 store. Purses certainly do appear to be a COVID necessity across this accessory deprived nation.

00:29:29.500 When a gang hit, when a gang hit Burberry's on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, they ran past an

00:29:35.120 assortment of clothing to grab high price purses too. What are the criminals going to do without their

00:29:39.760 Givenchy bags, Barry? Single tier.

00:29:42.720 I'm realizing I've never pronounced that brand name correctly. So I'm not even going to try and

00:29:48.340 say it now. Um, it is, I mean, we live in LA as you know, which is the other day there was a horrible

00:29:58.020 video of a, of a mom very near us who was sort of manipulating a stroller into her house when these

00:30:06.360 two robbers like surrounded her and, you know, broad daylight, you know, in a nice neighborhood

00:30:12.440 in LA. They said the average price of a home there was $1.9 million. Keep going. Yeah. So, so this is

00:30:19.820 happening in much more, you know, raised in ways as we've all seen the videos of, but tell me how

00:30:26.500 there's not a connection. Let's take the example of San Francisco, you know, where the district attorney,

00:30:31.860 Chesa Boudin has announced and you know, that, that, that, uh, stealing things under, I think it's

00:30:38.340 a thousand dollars. Yeah. We'll be prosecuted. How's that connected to the pandemic? You would

00:30:45.680 think that there might be a connection between that publicly announced policy and the fact that

00:30:51.680 now when you go into a Walgreens and you want to buy head and shoulders, a clerk needs to come and

00:30:56.240 unlock it for you. What are you trying to tell us about your scalp? I just, I am a head and shoulders

00:31:05.320 girl. I don't know why it's not a dandruff thing. It's a, it's a smell thing. And I do not believe

00:31:12.020 in fancy hair care and skin products. I think if you just stick to head and shoulders instead of

00:31:17.040 fill for your entire life, you will be fine. This is my controversial opinion. No, you're in good

00:31:22.240 company. I, I, when I went to the Reagan ranch, uh, Ronald Reagan, his like, it's preserved for when

00:31:26.900 he and Nancy lived there. And there was a bottle of head and shoulders and Reagan shower. See how

00:31:31.400 much you have in common. You really have been red pilt. I mean, I didn't think we were going to get

00:31:37.760 into skin and hair care. Hey, you're the one who raised it. Well, I'm simply saying that, you know,

00:31:44.520 I use head and shoulders, Megan, as an example, because it's not exactly a desirable shampoo. Okay.

00:31:50.180 Why would people be stealing? It's not, it's, there's no shea butter in head and shoulders.

00:31:55.000 It's full of chemicals. And yet even head and shoulders, you need to get under lock and key

00:32:01.400 in San Francisco. So, you know, it's the idea that this is about the pandemic is it's, it's

00:32:07.500 risable. It's lunacy. Everyone knows that it isn't. And, you know, I think that we're going to

00:32:13.100 start seeing a, a, a backlash to the fact that, you know, we could pick any statistic from all of

00:32:19.560 these cities. The, the, the homicide rate in Philadelphia, I think is the highest that it's

00:32:23.660 been since 1991. I think Alec McGillis from ProPublica, who's been an amazing reporter on

00:32:27.980 this subject, tweeted that the other day. It's everywhere and everyone's feeling it. And one

00:32:33.980 of the ways that I know that it's real is, you know, I am, I am not a gun fan. I'm quite scared

00:32:40.540 of guns. I've shot a few times in my life and coming to LA, you know, most of our friends

00:32:46.800 are liberal and most of our friends, an increasing number of them either have guns or considering

00:32:53.260 getting guns. And this has been shocking to me, um, as someone from, you know, a family

00:32:59.360 that never would have imagined having a gun, um, how normalized that has become. And I'm not

00:33:06.000 talking about among political conservatives. Yeah. A lot of people hate guns till they need

00:33:10.980 one. And then you're desperate to get your hands on one for self-defense. If the cops are not going

00:33:15.380 to show up, if they're going to blue fluid out, because yet another news cycle has told everybody

00:33:19.520 they're awful and racist and so on, crime's going to go up. If you defund police departments,

00:33:24.480 like we saw in New York, where they took a billion dollars in funding away, they get rid of, uh,

00:33:29.280 plainclothes officers on the street and so on. Crime goes up. I mean, it's another point

00:33:33.880 Turley was making in his piece saying, uh, he, he cited this 1968 famous study or article by the

00:33:39.120 University of Chicago economist, Gary Becker, who wrote about crime and punishment. And basically the

00:33:43.160 calculation that he reached was criminals make decisions based on both the certainty and severity

00:33:49.100 of punishment. So you can increase the certainty of punishment. You can say you are a $2 crime.

00:33:56.420 You are getting punished. We're coming for you and lower the level of punishment. And that will deter

00:34:01.720 crime. Or you can, you could raise the level to a thousand dollars. Uh, and then we'll, we'll shoplift

00:34:08.500 you or we'll, we'll punish you shoplifters. Uh, but then you've got to have super high levels of

00:34:13.480 punishment, right? So if you do take that thousand dollars worth of good goods, you're going to jail

00:34:17.460 guaranteed for two years, right? But we're doing exactly the opposite of all of all of this. And

00:34:21.540 then when asked about responsibility or policies or what have you, the Biden administration both blamed

00:34:26.740 the pandemic and then cited president Biden's support of law enforcement of local law enforcement

00:34:33.600 as a reason why they're definitely not to blame. I, is there anybody who believes that?

00:34:41.580 Not that I know. Even your friends out there. No, no, but it's also, I mean, it is, it is like,

00:34:47.660 this to me is one of the reasons that independent journalists are killing it the way that they are

00:34:54.720 and why readers are so desperate for their reporting is because this is the story right

00:35:02.200 now. This is all anyone I know is talking about. I mean, there are other things, of course, COVID

00:35:06.720 mandates and all the rest, but you know, when you start to feel unsafe or you start to feel that your

00:35:13.560 family is unsafe, none of the rest of the culture war stuff matters. Foreign policy doesn't, none of this

00:35:20.060 matters. People care first and foremost about keeping themselves and their families safe. And

00:35:25.360 once that starts to shift and once people start to feel like the state doesn't have a monopoly on

00:35:32.740 violence and instead they're sort of ceding ground, then it becomes really uncertain and scary. I mean,

00:35:38.300 we were walking in West Hollywood the other day, it must've been 10 or 11 AM, walking to a coffee shop.

00:35:45.380 There was a guy walking down the street, nice neighborhood, just swinging a machete.

00:35:50.060 Oh, wow.

00:35:50.460 In the middle of the street. And thank God there was a guy walking his dog. I was like,

00:35:56.340 don't go down that street. There's a guy swinging a machete. I don't have my phone,

00:35:59.360 but would you guys, you know, call the police? And I called the police and it was, and it was like,

00:36:04.600 it was like talking to the DMV. They were like, can you wait at the corner until we come and

00:36:09.920 apprehend this person? And I'm like, no, I'm an unarmed woman with a dog and my wife. And

00:36:19.660 this guy is swinging a machete. No, I'm not going to wait. Sorry.

00:36:24.340 So thanks, but no. Meanwhile, AOC is out there saying it's, this is fake news that, uh, there,

00:36:31.000 there are no smashing grabs and that there's not a crime wave, uh, sweeping the nation. Okay. I mean,

00:36:36.340 to me, that reminds me of, and, and the reaction, you know, from CBS and so on and, and the white

00:36:41.400 house, it reminds me of what's happening economically, right? Like, no, you should be,

00:36:45.660 you should be celebrating the Joe Biden economy. You know, look, look at all he's done. The

00:36:49.420 inflation, eh, it's transitory. It's not really a big thing. Oh, let's celebrate a two cent decrease

00:36:54.540 in the price of gas over a week. Yay. Yay. Go Joe Biden. Something that was, that was a joke,

00:37:01.160 uh, that was a chart that was put together as a joke. And then his, uh, chief of staff tweeted it

00:37:05.560 out like, yay. And the D triple C celebrated, retweeted it. You know, the D triple C sent it out

00:37:10.200 like, yes, go Joe Biden for a two cent reduction in the price of gas. But the point is there,

00:37:15.600 the gas lighting by the administration and some of the media of the American public on the economy

00:37:20.240 isn't working because people do feel the difference in their pocketbook when it comes to,

00:37:24.720 you know, I want this thing and it costs more than it used to. Um, not to mention, you know,

00:37:28.560 the, the job numbers forever. Yeah. It takes forever. The supply chain, right. They're lying to us

00:37:33.080 about the ships that are in the port. They're like, Oh, things are getting better. And then you find out

00:37:36.840 the truth, which is they've just changed the way they count the number of ships that are in the

00:37:40.500 ports off of LA, the, the, the numbers and the situations just as bad as ever was. And the same

00:37:45.140 thing with crime. It boils down to don't believe your lying eyes. Believe me, Joe Biden and his media

00:37:51.020 sycophants. I mean, what can I add to that? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, but it's like this on so many

00:38:00.380 subjects. It's like, do you trust your ears and your eyes and your own experiences of the world,

00:38:09.240 or do you trust, you know, whatever the, the convenient slogan that is being trotted out that

00:38:15.520 day is. And I think increasingly the, the chasm between those things has just grown so wide, um,

00:38:23.780 that that like the sloganeering is just not as effective as it, as it used to be.

00:38:30.000 That's right. People are seeing the truth. Well, Barry unleashed a truth bomb on her sub stack about

00:38:36.220 American companies and China and, uh, took aim among others at this one particular billionaire

00:38:42.920 hedge fund guy who I've been dying to get to this guy, Ray Dalio, who he's, he's absolutely fascinating.

00:38:48.720 Oh my God. All right. Let me squeeze in a break. Cause I do have to pay my bills and we'll pick it up

00:38:52.660 there right after this break. Cause we had Ennis Cantor freedom on the show yesterday,

00:38:55.980 and he's one of the few exercising your favorite word courage. Uh, don't go anywhere more. Barry

00:39:01.200 Weiss coming up on China, also her new university and much, much more. And remember you can find the

00:39:06.020 Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel one 11 every weekday at noon East and the full video

00:39:12.740 show and clips. When you subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. If you prefer

00:39:17.580 an audio podcast, you can subscribe and get the show for free. Just subscribe and get the downloads

00:39:23.440 Apple, Spotify, Pandora stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And there you can check out our

00:39:28.140 full archives, including our full interview with Barry. The first time she came on, which was such a

00:39:33.600 heartfelt, lovely exchange. And if you don't already love her, you're going to, after you listen to

00:39:38.540 that. So our troubles with China continue Barry, um, that we still have not come to understand the

00:39:52.980 truth about star tennis player, uh, Peng Peng Shui, um, who's gone missing. Although the Chinese have put

00:40:00.020 out videos of her that are very suspicious. She does not appear to be living on her own free will and

00:40:05.180 saying things into camera of her own free will as the women's tennis association accurately deduced.

00:40:11.560 And they are the only ones who have refused to take the word of the CCP of, uh, even the IOC,

00:40:17.680 the international Olympic committee, which is like, we've talked to her. She's good. And that's a corrupt

00:40:21.500 body. And the women's tennis association is like, no, we'll be satisfied when we've talked to her.

00:40:27.440 We want to talk to her. And it's been awesome to see. I have to say Serena Williams, even Naomi Osaka,

00:40:33.000 who I've criticized in the past, showed a lot of courage. She was one of the first to tweet out,

00:40:37.080 you know, this is wrong. Like we need to get to the bottom of this. I can't say the same for the

00:40:40.660 leaders in the NBA other than, you know, Ennis Cantor freedom, who was on the show yesterday. He,

00:40:45.560 he stands alone in the NBA, which is amazing. He's amazing. But that's a, that's an organization

00:40:51.580 that, that collects tons of money from China. So they don't want to, but so did WTA. They make a lot

00:40:57.340 of money off of China too, but they took a principled stand because one of their own

00:41:01.100 is clearly being hurt after having accused a communist party official of having sexually

00:41:06.200 assaulted her. So you took aim at all of this. The headline of your piece was women's tennis has

00:41:11.380 balls does wall street because it's not just, um, the NBA, this guy, Ray Dalio. Okay. Ray Dalio is a

00:41:19.240 hedge fund guy. He's in Connecticut with me. Uh, and he was asked about this China, it's human rights

00:41:25.520 abuses. We didn't even touch on, you know, the Uyghurs, the ethnic genocide and so on, uh,

00:41:29.640 their record in China and how he thinks about it when it comes to his many investments. And here

00:41:34.360 is what he said. I can't be an expert in all of those, uh, those particular dynamics of,

00:41:41.220 of that. Um, I really have no idea. And then I look at the United States and I say, well,

00:41:46.540 what's going on in the United States and should I not invest in the United States because other

00:41:51.300 things are not our own human rights issues or other things, you know, and I'm not trying to make

00:41:56.200 political comparisons. But I think that those things are different than some of the things we

00:42:00.540 see happening in China. People aren't, uh, the government isn't disappearing people, for example.

00:42:06.500 Um, okay. Look, you want to get into the policy of disappearing people. I'll give a little bit of

00:42:15.000 a perspective of that. Okay. What they have is an autocratic system. Um, and, um, one of the,

00:42:22.120 uh, leaders described it, he said, um, that, uh, the United States is a country of individuals and

00:42:29.800 individualism. Um, and that's what it's, and that's what it's about. He said in China, it's an

00:42:36.200 extension of the family. He said, and as a top down country, what they're doing is that it's that kind

00:42:41.620 of like a strict parent. They behave like a strict parent. And the notion of whatever they're doing

00:42:47.600 in terms of calling in people and then, um, and then, uh, behaving in a certain way, that's their

00:42:54.060 approach. What is he saying? He's dissembling. He, he, he knows exactly what's going on in China

00:43:00.120 and, you know, we can pick on Ray Dalio and he deserves it because he beclowned himself with

00:43:05.340 Andrew Ross Sorkin last week. But really that, that could just as easily be, you know, the CEO of

00:43:13.480 Marriott or Apple or Coca-Cola or Nike or the NBA, we could go on and on and on. What this is

00:43:22.640 representing is the fact that anyone with Google knows what's going on in China. We know that it is

00:43:30.380 a country that is carrying out a genocide against the Uyghur Muslim population. We know it's a country

00:43:36.240 that disappears people. Peng Shui, the tennis star being only the most recent. We know it disappeared

00:43:41.540 scientists and doctors who tried to tell the truth about the nature of COVID and tried to warn the

00:43:47.740 world. Disappeared them. We know it disappears people like the Hong Kong booksellers. We know

00:43:53.200 it disappears someone. For example, I recently did a podcast with a guy called Desmond Chun. Disappeared

00:43:58.440 his ex-wife, Whitney Dwan. She's still disappeared. So we know that this is the nature of an increasingly

00:44:05.660 totalitarian regime that, by the way, is also using technology to master creating a society

00:44:13.100 that's basically a panopticon in which all of its citizens are surveilled and kept on a social credit

00:44:18.600 system. Yes. All of that is known. All of that is known to Ray Dalio. He's an extremely sophisticated

00:44:23.700 guy who is managing $150 billion. He's a guy who's written a book called Principles, which is hilarious

00:44:30.860 when you're watching that clip. So that's Ray Dalio. But the point, right, is that he knows exactly what's

00:44:37.020 going on. Everyone knows what's going on, but they are choosing money over morality. That's it. It's a

00:44:44.080 very simple thing. And so we have gotten so immune. We've gotten so numb to the perversion of that bargain

00:44:52.260 that when someone like the WTA chief, Steve Simon, steps out and says, no, we're actually not going to

00:45:01.360 play in China until the CCP explains where Peng Shui is. He said in his unbelievable statement,

00:45:09.260 it's not acceptable and it can't become acceptable. And if powerful people can suppress the voices of

00:45:15.380 women and sweep sexual allegations of sexual assault under the rug, then the basis on which my

00:45:20.240 organization was founded, equality for women would suffer an immense setback. It's like,

00:45:24.960 well, you read that and you're like, isn't that so obvious? It's like, it feels like you're drinking

00:45:29.460 fresh water. But the reason it feels like that is because we have gotten so used to the idea that

00:45:37.560 companies just, you know, close their eyes to the reality of what's going on there. And if you

00:45:44.140 contrast this with, I'm sure you'll remember, Megan, Daryl Morey, the general manager of,

00:45:49.900 do you remember this, the NBA?

00:45:51.060 Houston Rockets.

00:45:51.620 Yeah.

00:45:52.420 Exactly. The Houston Rockets, when he tweeted something very sort of mundane milk toast about,

00:45:59.660 you know, freedom for Hong Kong, which was great, but essentially got, you know, run out of his job

00:46:04.280 because of it. And, and, you know, and chided, you know, from stars throughout the league, including

00:46:11.260 people like LeBron James. Yep. Um, and I, I just find it, um, I, I, I, I'm, I find it unbelievable

00:46:19.180 that, you know, the idea I love the headline is, you know, women's tennis has balls. It's like,

00:46:25.940 yeah, they have more balls than all of wall street. Yeah. And they, and this guy, Steve Simon,

00:46:30.760 I imagine makes a lot less money than Ray Dalio does.

00:46:33.700 It's amazing to me that we pretend it doesn't happen. We do business with China. We are going

00:46:41.080 to the Olympics with China. We're going to do a diplomatic boycott where we're not sending our

00:46:46.020 politicians in response to which the world said, yawn, who cares? Who gives a damn whether our

00:46:52.760 politicians show up? The question, how do you send a message? You don't send the athletes, but it's,

00:46:57.560 you know, we don't want to hurt the athletes, you know, who have been training and so on.

00:47:00.380 One's a life opportunity for a lot of them, but we've, we've done almost nothing, uh, certainly

00:47:05.460 not in this administration to try to send any message to them that we disapprove of anything

00:47:09.440 they've done. We're, we're acting more like Ray Dalio than we are like Steve of WTA.

00:47:15.120 Exactly. But thanks to people like Steve and Ennis Cantor, who I know is now Ennis Cantor

00:47:20.100 Friedman, you know, maybe the tide is starting to turn and going back to the beginning of the

00:47:24.620 conversation, Megan, about courage, things only change when people stand up and say,

00:47:29.860 no, this cowardice is wrong. And I'm going to stand up and make an example of myself and my

00:47:35.000 institution, come what may, even if it means we're going to sacrifice some money for it.

00:47:39.760 Um, real quickly, cause we are up against a hard break. You're married. I knew that you and Nellie

00:47:44.300 were engaged. When did you get married? We actually got married a while ago, but it, once I, once I left

00:47:51.940 the times, we looked at getting healthcare for me separately. And then we thought, what are we doing?

00:47:57.080 Like, let's get married. We got married in a strip mall in Encino. It was a hilarious situation. And

00:48:04.060 we basically decided, let's not tell anyone cause we want to have a huge party after COVID. And we

00:48:08.280 don't want to give anyone an excuse not to come, but it's been a year COVID still going on.

00:48:13.220 Yes. And, and it became too difficult not to say she's my wife. I know. I kept hearing my wife. I'm

00:48:18.640 like, wait a minute, wait a minute. She's my wife and we're building a company and we're having the

00:48:22.700 time of our lives. Mazel. Uh, very happy for you both. So much love and, uh, all the best with that,

00:48:28.660 with the column and with the podcast. And we'll talk again soon. Barry Weiss, everybody up next,

00:48:33.140 Brandon Tatum. Don't miss him. Uh, you'll love him.

00:48:35.780 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show. Joining me now, Brandon Tatum. He's a former police officer

00:48:46.640 and the outspoken YouTuber behind the channel, the V officer Tatum. He's also the author of the

00:48:52.840 brand new book, beaten black and blue, being a black cop in an America under siege. Intriguing,

00:48:59.460 right? Brandon, thank you so much for being here. How are you? Thank you, Megan, for having me. I'm doing

00:49:03.560 well. So you started out as a killer athlete. You were killing it in, on the, on the football

00:49:11.800 field, right? I'm trying to make sure I understand. Cause I'm not a sports person.

00:49:16.820 Yes, that's, that's correct. I was an all American football player in high school. I had scholarships

00:49:21.660 to every university. Uh, I played in a U S army, all American game for the top players in the nation

00:49:26.320 and ended up going and playing football in college. Okay. And where were you raised? And like,

00:49:31.580 what were your parents like? So my parents were, I could say I was raised in a somewhat of a broken

00:49:38.680 home. My mom and dad spit it up. Uh, they were both great parents. They loved me. Um, they did

00:49:43.180 the best to raise me the right way. My father was a firefighter. He was a firefighter my entire life.

00:49:47.660 He just retired a couple of years ago after 35 years of honorable service. Uniquely enough, my mom

00:49:53.420 drive trucks. Uh, she, she would not stop working at this point. She drive, uh, 18 wheelers. So,

00:49:58.800 you know, my family is, is very dynamic, but I did grow up and, and I was exposed to a lot of

00:50:04.100 violence growing up. I was exposed to a drug dealing and people using drugs, family members

00:50:09.360 going to prison. So I had a pretty, uh, dynamic upbringing, but my parents did the best they

00:50:14.320 could to, to put me in the, in the best position possible. And I know politically you, you've said

00:50:19.620 that you were raised to, to understand that you are a Democrat. Like that was sort of the

00:50:24.400 only option on the table, uh, in, in your family. Right. It's almost like breathing air. If you,

00:50:30.500 if you grew up where I grew up at and you black, you a Democrat and the Republicans are racist,

00:50:34.640 white people with no justification, no explanation, no detail. You are a Democrat period.

00:50:41.340 And so you go, uh, to, you got a full athletic scholarship, university of Arizona, 2005. Uh,

00:50:47.820 you, you, you earn your degree. You, um, decided to try your hand at the NFL draft that didn't work

00:50:54.040 out, but you at least were hoping to join the NFL. I have to, I cannot skip this past this point

00:51:00.400 without asking you about Colin Kaepernick. Cause I know I'm going to, I'm going to get to your

00:51:05.160 totally viral video about him. This is one of the first things that made you a star,

00:51:08.240 but before we get to that, so Colin Kaepernick says guys like you who want to go into the draft,

00:51:12.160 who at least those who show up at the NFL combine, allow themselves to be examined,

00:51:15.020 um, physically are basically modern day slaves subjecting yourself to slave owners. Forgive

00:51:20.360 me. I've got to show just a clip of it for the audience members who have not seen this from his

00:51:23.740 new series. Um, which I think is on Netflix. I watched the whole thing. Trust me, don't do it,

00:51:29.280 but here it is. Before they put you on the field, teams poke pride and examine you searching for any

00:51:37.720 defect that might affect your performance. No boundary respected, no dignity left intact.

00:51:45.020 And on it goes from there where he compares being in the combine to pictures of slaves and so on.

00:52:07.680 Um, as a, as a man who wanted to play in that organization, your thoughts on it?

00:52:11.760 Well, first and foremost, if this is modern day slavery, uh, please sign me up and sign everybody

00:52:16.420 in my family up. If you can make millions of dollars to do something you love. And this guy,

00:52:20.540 I try not to say words that my mom wouldn't be proud of me saying about this guy, but he is

00:52:26.220 absolutely out of his mind. It is ironic that he is claiming these things about the NFL yet. He is

00:52:32.800 trying to be in the NFL. He sued the NFL for discrimination against them. He's tried to go to

00:52:37.760 multiple tryouts claiming that they want to allow him back in the NFL when the NFL is supposed to be

00:52:43.320 riddled with slavery as if white players don't enter the NFL draft as if white players don't

00:52:48.820 compete in the combine. I mean, the dumbest guy on planet earth has to be, uh, Colin Kaepernick,

00:52:53.640 but the NFL provides wonderful opportunities for young men who, uh, living are living out their

00:52:59.200 dreams and get paid a lot of money to do it. Okay. So back to when you were a football star,

00:53:04.000 the NFL did not work out for you and you decided, um, to join the Tucson, Arizona police department.

00:53:10.560 Now, is it true that this came about after you just on a whim went up to a cop and said,

00:53:15.900 Hey, can I go on a ride along with you? Well, it's kind of like that back to the NFL,

00:53:21.420 just real quick. You know, I didn't get drafted in 2010 after I was promised by the Oakland Raiders

00:53:26.380 that they would draft me and I was devastated. And I tried out the next year, um, to no avail things

00:53:32.940 that still didn't work out. And I had an incredible guy who was a mentor to me. And he had told me I

00:53:37.620 need to put an X on the calendar and transition when, you know, if things are not working and I

00:53:42.640 cannot keep falling for a dead end career. So I decided to look at other options and I never thought

00:53:48.820 about being a police officer at all. Um, I was growing up, I didn't really have a good relationship

00:53:53.360 with police officers. I wrote this in my book. And when I was eight years old, I got arrested for

00:53:58.520 smoking marijuana in a vacant house. So I didn't have this good rep, you know, feeling about police.

00:54:03.300 It took me to get saved because I got saved in 2008 while I was in college. And I started to,

00:54:08.880 to really see things from the lens of, of Christ. And that's why I even gave policing an opportunity,

00:54:14.220 but I apply for everything in the city of Tucson, hoping I get a job somewhere. Um, and at the time

00:54:18.940 I had a small son and they happened to call me back and I was shocked. I thought they were calling me

00:54:25.100 cause I was in trouble for something, but they called me to finish the application. And then

00:54:28.940 I randomly pulled up on an officer named Sean Payne, um, and said, Hey man, can I do a ride

00:54:34.020 along? And then the rest is history. Wow. So how long were you an active police officer?

00:54:39.500 About six and a half years. Okay. And during that time, did you, I'm sure you spent every day with

00:54:45.780 other cops. Did you experience a bunch of racism or see racism or hear racism or, you know, find

00:54:51.680 yourself immersed in a system that was systemically racist? Well, well, Megan, according to what they

00:54:59.200 talk about today on some of these news platforms and these, uh, race hustlers, you would think that

00:55:04.680 a person like me being black, it was only 12 black officers on our police department, uh, mostly white

00:55:09.360 and Hispanic that I would see racism riddled everywhere. Matter of fact, I would have been

00:55:12.840 discriminated against, but that's not true. I've never met a racist police officer. Do they exist

00:55:17.720 somewhere in the ether? Yeah. I'm sure there's somebody out there that, uh, that, that shouldn't

00:55:22.380 even be wearing a badge. But, uh, from, from my experience, I never saw a racist police officer.

00:55:27.540 Um, I will say that there's some people who may be race racially insensitive, meaning that they don't

00:55:32.160 grow up in the culture to understand, um, certain cultures of people. And that goes all different ways,

00:55:37.320 you know, black, white, Hispanic, um, people are human and, you know, some things like that I've seen

00:55:43.420 occur. But for the most part, these are just people who want to, you know, save their community,

00:55:48.860 who want to do good things in the community, who want to serve and protect, who want to just go home

00:55:53.240 at the end of the day. It's not even that drastic. It's just simple. People want to do a work that God

00:55:58.160 has called them to do and then see their family at the end of the day. So you eventually, um, among

00:56:04.900 your other duties start with being a spokesperson, like the P the public information officer for,

00:56:08.880 for the police force. And I, I'm guessing realized I'm pretty good at this. Like I'm not so bad front

00:56:14.140 of the camera and, um, started speaking out more and more. But I think the way a lot of people first

00:56:19.680 got to know you or saw you was that completely viral video you posted about with your thoughts

00:56:24.760 on Colin Kaepernick back to him. Um, 70 million views is 70 million that I can't even that I can't

00:56:33.660 get my, you gotta be normally a Kardashian to get that kind of following, um, on any sort of

00:56:38.860 social media, but let me show a clip of what we're talking about and why it became so popular.

00:56:45.600 You're talking about a flag that represents hard work, dedication, blood, sweat, and tears,

00:56:52.360 sacrifice. And the thing that makes me most upset is that you have these people

00:56:58.720 who turn around and take a knee and want to attribute all the negativity to the flag and the anthem,

00:57:05.720 but don't want to attribute the positive. Listen, if you feel that the American flag represents

00:57:10.680 negativity and slavery and all this other stuff, then you have to give credit and credence to a flag

00:57:16.660 that have given you an opportunity to go from cornfields and picking cotton to being the president

00:57:22.360 of the United States of America. Going from being, being segregated, can't go to proper schools,

00:57:29.360 can't vote, taking you from that point to now and you're making millions of dollars to play sports.

00:57:33.600 And you know, who's watching you white people? I'm, I'm, I'm sick of y'all coming up with these

00:57:39.100 lame excuses. Wow. So where did that come from? This, you know, this kid raised by Democrats,

00:57:46.100 you have to be a Democrat, think like, you know, it doesn't sound like some Democrats feel this way,

00:57:49.780 but you know, there tend to be more on the wokeism Colin Kaepernick side. What, what happened?

00:57:53.940 And how did you get to be a man who thinks that way and thinks for himself? Yeah, I think I got

00:58:00.460 to attribute a lot of it to God because I wasn't always like that. You know, I was, I was a complete

00:58:04.960 mess before I got saved, but then I also have to give credit to the people that I work with because

00:58:09.880 some of my friends on the police department would encourage me and point me in the right direction

00:58:14.520 and say, look, man, you're not a Democrat. Look at the things that you believe. This is not alignment

00:58:19.620 with the Democrat party. And you're, you're probably more of a Republican conservative.

00:58:24.320 And, you know, I saw people like Ben Carson and I finally opened my eyes to, to the Republican side

00:58:29.400 of things. And then I, and when I woke up to it, it just inspired me to be like, I need to tell the

00:58:35.420 truth and, and, and, and tell everybody what I know now. And I felt kind of disrespected and played

00:58:41.780 because why weren't people telling me this when I was growing up? Why did I get lied to?

00:58:46.320 And when I see people like Kylie Kaepernick come out and spew the very thing that I felt

00:58:51.220 oppressed me growing up, I said, you know what? I'm going to expose these people. And, and, and

00:58:57.160 the fact that I was a police officer served with my life alongside of people of all races,

00:59:02.900 we're serving every day to protect people and we don't get paid hardly any money and I'm grateful.

00:59:10.160 And so it makes me incredibly upset when people like Kylie Kaepernick, who's raised by a white family,

00:59:14.580 who, who is the epitome of the dying sport of racism, having a family, take you in, take care

00:59:20.960 of you, help you become the man that you are. And then you crap on the country. I mean, I I'm old

00:59:25.600 enough to remember that our ancestors fought so we all can have equality in this country. The flag

00:59:31.940 represent progress. All the people who died with the, with the hope dream, wish vision of the next

00:59:38.760 generation to have something they didn't have. And to spit on all of the suffering that they went

00:59:43.880 through and the triumph that they overcame or the triumph that they had is so disrespectful.

00:59:49.720 It literally made blood vessels pop out of my eyes because I was so upset about the lies.

00:59:55.900 Wow. I mean, I understand shortly thereafter you, you partnered with Candace Owens on,

01:00:01.880 on Blexit. I mean, you, you were serious about getting this message out. And I have to say, I,

01:00:06.460 I saw a lot of that reflected in, uh, I love Larry Elder and his movie, Uncle Tom.

01:00:10.880 Um, and you had a lot of prominent black voices coming out and saying, I didn't realize that there

01:00:17.100 were black leaders with a totally different way of thinking about our experience. People like Thomas

01:00:21.820 soul who, you know, for disturbing reasons is not exactly a household name, right? It's like

01:00:27.320 people have to go searching. And I wonder listening to you talk about like Ben Carson,

01:00:30.880 if, if you think this is why the left finds people like Ben Carson, like Larry Elder,

01:00:36.180 so threatening, because not only are you, are you and Ben and all these other guys saying things that

01:00:42.480 they don't want said, but you're an example. You know, if you can see it, you can be it. You're

01:00:46.500 giving people a different way to think. And so you're a much larger threat.

01:00:49.580 A hundred percent. I mean, they are living a lifestyle and building a house on the sand of

01:00:58.060 falsehood, racism and oppression and discrimination and all these things that they do happen in isolated

01:01:03.980 situations, but you, you're talking about they're inconsequential in 2021 for your success and to be

01:01:10.520 somebody. And the thing is that these Democrats, they thrive on having you oppressed and down and

01:01:16.120 thinking that the world hates you so they can be your savior. So they can create a situation where

01:01:20.580 the government is now your God. The government is who you look to, not individuality, the way our

01:01:25.820 founding fathers believed this country should be operating under. So they need you to be oppressed.

01:01:30.260 They need you to think the white man is bad and have division. Because if, if, if we came together,

01:01:36.020 everybody of all races, all cultural backgrounds came together with the unifying fact of truth.

01:01:41.320 I mean, we're unstoppable. It would be minimum, limited government. We will flourish and more so

01:01:47.900 than we do today. And these people couldn't line their pockets, um, with, with this victimhood

01:01:53.000 narrative. But, um, when I see people like Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Candace Owens, you know,

01:01:58.900 I'm just incredibly inspired. And I think we inspire a lot, another, uh, a large population of black

01:02:04.940 people in this country amongst everybody else, but a large number of black people to say,

01:02:09.000 I never heard that sign. I never, I never knew that there was another side to this matter of fact,

01:02:14.220 not only is there another side, there's an intellectual argument to disprove everything

01:02:19.540 that I believe growing up. And now I'm free. I can be who I want to be. I can actually live

01:02:25.100 the American dream and not be oppressed. Wow. It's inspirational just to listen to. And it's so

01:02:30.960 upsetting that it's not taught. And even to utter it, even if, even by a black man or a black woman

01:02:36.380 would be considered racist in most schools in America, you know, I mean, obviously Candace

01:02:40.800 gets called, called the names. Larry's been on the show many times. I mean, literally was called

01:02:45.000 the black face of white supremacy when he was running for the California gubernatorial spot.

01:02:49.580 It's crazy. You have to have a thick skin. You know, as I've, of course, I've been subjected to

01:02:54.000 these names too, as a white woman who doesn't pussyfoot around the issue of race. Um, but it's worse,

01:02:59.560 it's far worse if you're a black man or a black woman speaking out about these things,

01:03:03.180 you take it in a particular way. Right. And I think that I come from a lineage and some black

01:03:09.100 people should acknowledge this. They come from a lineage of strength and overcoming adversity. And

01:03:13.680 so they should be able to do it even more. So the more backlash you get, the better equipped you

01:03:18.600 should be because your ancestors, some people, not everybody, but your ancestors came from humble

01:03:23.940 beginnings. And that's what drives me is that I'm not a coward. You know, my father raised me to be a

01:03:30.440 man. My father was an example of a real man. You know, I remember he always have this saying

01:03:35.020 because when he first started on the fire department, there was some racism that was

01:03:39.060 on the fire department and discrimination. And I remember him saying that he told the people that

01:03:44.840 worked for him that would do things to him and say, you better watch how you treat me because

01:03:48.580 you'll be working for me one day. He didn't cry and quit the job and want to protest. He said,

01:03:54.020 you know what? I'm going to bust my tail and I'm going to become the chief. And that's what my dad did.

01:03:58.280 He became the chief of the fire department. So I came from, you know, a lion, uh, background,

01:04:05.340 you know, we're a family of lions. And, and I wish that more black men, especially would,

01:04:10.640 would think about these things and say, look, I'm a lion in this, in this world. I'm not a coward.

01:04:15.340 I'm not a sheep. I'm not going to fold at the sign of adversity. Um, I welcome adversity

01:04:19.860 because that's going to make me better. That's going to sharpen my iron so I can go out and make a

01:04:24.400 difference in this world. But we have too many cowards today, like Colin Kaepernick and others

01:04:28.820 who are at the, at the first sign of adversity, they cry and they fold up and they complain

01:04:33.180 instead of doing something about it. You know, there's a saying, I want to make a bumper sticker,

01:04:37.320 uh, that, that is succeed anyway. And it's something I say to myself, to my fellow women who,

01:04:43.300 you know, sort of can get hung up on their own issues when it comes to power imbalances in the

01:04:48.000 workplace. And it's not to say that there aren't any, you know, for sure. I've recognized some of that.

01:04:51.620 Um, but it's succeed anyway. But if you say that now, right, if you said that I was just giving a

01:04:58.280 speak to some friends at the Federalist Society and at Yale Law School, and some were making the

01:05:02.760 point, if you said something like that to most of the kids and professors at Yale Law School,

01:05:07.660 they would immediately call you a racist. They'd be pushed to have you kicked out. You can't say

01:05:12.700 overcome your obstacles. It's like, what are you saying? That's a denial of the systemic

01:05:16.340 racism that's all around us. You're not an anti-racist. You're part of the problem, et cetera.

01:05:21.620 Yeah. And that's the problem with our society to a certain degree. You know,

01:05:25.040 not everybody in society is completely brain dead, but you know, some of these people are

01:05:29.100 completely brain dead. I mean, you, two things can occur at the same time. You can say that there's

01:05:34.240 systemic issues. If you believe that to be true, I don't find that to be prevalent enough to, for me,

01:05:39.840 even talk about, but if some people believe that there's systemic issues or things that are holding

01:05:43.720 them back, that's fine. And like you said, succeed anyway. We acknowledge what you feel. Now,

01:05:48.700 what are you going to do about it? Are you going to sit around and cry all day? Are you going to sit

01:05:51.960 around and complain? The thing that makes me mad about some of these people who will advocate for

01:05:56.320 inner city growth or whatever they, the social justice warriors, is that when you look at these

01:06:01.640 things, you say, how long are you going to wait for the world to change? You can change yourself

01:06:06.280 instantaneously. You can go in the mirror today and say, I'm going to be a better person. I'm going to

01:06:10.960 treat people properly. I'm going to go hard on my job. I'm going to make sure that I do things

01:06:15.260 with integrity so I can prosper. You can do that today. They want to wait until every person in

01:06:21.600 America somehow loves everybody the way they think they should. That's not going to happen.

01:06:27.200 There's going to be racist people in this country till we all die and the world has ended. There's

01:06:32.740 going to be people, and racism is not just white versus black. Black people can be incredibly racist.

01:06:36.800 I grew up around nothing but black racists, but stop waiting on everybody else to change. Stop

01:06:42.540 waiting on these systems to change. Be a part of the change. If you think the judicial system

01:06:47.160 is problematic, go to school, get a degree, become a judge, become a lawyer. If you think policing in

01:06:52.980 America or the police aren't doing well in your community, they're not doing what you think is

01:06:56.320 right, become a police officer like I did. Work your way up the ladder, become a lieutenant, become a

01:07:02.680 captain, become an assistant chief, and then ultimately become the chief of police or a sheriff, and then you

01:07:07.480 can dictate the change you want to see. I just can't stand these people that sit around and

01:07:12.180 complain and hope that everybody else becomes, you know, the person they want to be. You can do it

01:07:17.560 yourself. It's so true. Succeed anyway. You can see why Brandon needed a career in front of the camera

01:07:24.040 and getting his voice and his message out. I mean, no offense to the police department and the position

01:07:27.960 of PIO, but the 70 million people have spoken, and you can read more of Brandon. He's coming back

01:07:34.180 after this break, but remember, the name of the book is Beaten Black and Blue, Being a Black Cop in an

01:07:39.240 America Under Siege. We're going to pick it up after the break with Jussie Smollett and that trial and

01:07:45.700 some thoughts on Chris Cuomo. Joining me at this time is Brandon Tatum. Brandon is a former police

01:07:57.880 officer and author of the brand new book, Beaten Black and Blue, Being a Black Cop in an America

01:08:03.300 Under Siege. Great, great title and cuts to the heart of what I'm sure you and a lot of cops have gone

01:08:08.820 through this past two years as we saw, you know, one of the lasting images of the whole post-George

01:08:13.480 Floyd summer is all the white women in their Lululemon getting in the face of black cops and

01:08:19.280 calling them racists, right? I mean, talk about the world being turned on its head, Brandon. It must

01:08:24.100 have been incredibly frustrating for you and your colleagues. Yes, it's absolutely hypocritical. I

01:08:29.960 mean, everybody's, everybody with a, with a, with a reasonable mind wants to see things change and

01:08:35.820 want everybody to be treated equally. Nobody likes bad cops. Not one person I know, you know,

01:08:40.760 they, I wouldn't be their friend if, if they did like bad cops, but I don't know anybody that will

01:08:45.200 say, yeah, I support bad cops. But when you're dumb enough to go out and cry about racism and you're a

01:08:52.940 white person spewing hatred towards a black man as if he don't exist. I mean, you are, you are,

01:08:59.020 you're falling in the category of the uninformed, misinformed and evil. These people are evil.

01:09:04.960 In my opinion, and it, and it flies in the face of an argument. And I think that's why the Colin

01:09:10.660 Kaepernick video went viral and why things go viral when people talk about these things, because

01:09:14.980 the hypocrisy is so apparent in these situations that it flies in the face of the mission that

01:09:20.520 these people claim that they want to accomplish. One of the cases, some people point to as an example

01:09:25.740 of the fact that it's not that we've run out of real racism, but it's not necessarily a bad sign

01:09:30.620 that somebody, a black man looking for attention, like Jussie Smollett would have to make up a story,

01:09:35.860 right? To get attention. It's not a bad sign about the country that he, you know, in, in old school

01:09:40.680 America, about 50, certainly 70 years ago, he would had plenty of examples to just show for real.

01:09:46.120 But Jussie Smollett is accused of making up a fake attack, a hoax attack on him in Chicago in the

01:09:51.580 middle of the winter. He hired two black guys, which was his first mistake, right? It was like,

01:09:55.160 why don't you hire two white guys if you're trying to make this about white supremacy? But okay,

01:09:58.480 he hired two black guys to attack him. And now the trial, I will say it took a little bit of an

01:10:03.640 interesting turn yesterday. He's on the stand right now, by the way, and it was yesterday as well.

01:10:07.540 He is trying to suggest that this was a real attack, that he didn't give them money to hurt him. He gave

01:10:12.740 them money to, I don't know, get food, whatever it was, but for legitimate purposes. And now when the

01:10:19.040 two brothers who testified against him and said it was a hundred percent of the hoax, we ran through it,

01:10:23.220 we did a rehearsal. One of them was asked by Jussie's lawyer, something like, when did you first

01:10:28.100 know you were gay or when did you feel first feel attracted to Jussie? And, and the brother was like,

01:10:34.120 um, cause it's two brothers who were in on it. Um, the one guy said, I, I'm not gay. I don't know

01:10:39.560 what you're talking about. Um, so when Jussie's on the stand, Jussie is saying he had this relationship.

01:10:46.140 The guy's name is Bola Asandario. Um, he had a relationship with Bola. It was sexual that they had

01:10:52.200 gone to like a bathhouse, a gay bathhouse together. They had a private room. They,

01:10:56.280 they fooled around. They did drugs. If that's true, then Bola did lie on the stand, which would

01:11:01.800 definitely undermine his testimony. Um, the other side is denying it, but I do think it's kind of

01:11:07.980 interesting that we're still watching this and that there are still some in the media and Jussie

01:11:13.180 himself who claim this whole thing was real. And if you question it, you know, see the point that's

01:11:19.500 always made you're all racists. Well, this guy, I, you know, I said, I, maybe I need to recant a

01:11:26.180 statement. I said, Colin Kaepernick is the dumbest person. I think Justice Moulet has moved in the

01:11:30.900 first place as the dumbest person on planet earth. I mean, you literally have receipts of payment.

01:11:36.140 You have video of them going and doing what you had asked them to do. There's video of a rehearsal

01:11:42.760 before the fact. And then I think he wants people to forget that he said it was two white people that

01:11:48.620 beat him up. And there was two black people that beat him up on camera that he set up.

01:11:52.620 And I don't understand for the life of me, why he chose the dumbest scenario ever created.

01:11:58.760 You're a black man in Chicago, which is heavily Democrat in the middle of the night, negative

01:12:04.700 20 degree weather. And some white dudes are going to randomly beat you up with MAGA hats on saying

01:12:10.140 it's MAGA country and put a noose around your neck. And then you go home and you still have the

01:12:15.000 little string noose around your neck. Like who would make something up like this other than a

01:12:20.580 narcissist, a person who deserves to go to prison? I mean, this guy is, is, is shameful to be honest.

01:12:27.700 I mean, all jokes aside, this is shameful. Unfortunately, this happens more often than

01:12:32.620 people imagine because racism is such a dying sport in America. People have to recreate it in order for

01:12:38.700 them to validate, you know, who they've created, you know, themselves to be.

01:12:42.700 Couple of points on it too. The, the, and under this elaborate tale, the two men who just happened

01:12:48.000 to run into you, this, you, the star of empire, Jussie Smollett just happened to have a noose on them

01:12:54.260 and a can of bleach, which they dump over you. And they recognize you even though, you know,

01:12:59.500 let's face it, Jussie Smollett wasn't that big a star. Um, so yeah. And the prosecutor showed,

01:13:04.760 uh, he had testimony from one of the brothers saying, I barely got the rope around him. Like

01:13:08.480 it would happen also so fast. I kind of just had to throw it toward him. And then they show pictures

01:13:12.460 of Jussie walking into his house. It's perfectly around his neck and it's tightened all the way up.

01:13:17.240 And the implication was very clear. He, he put it there. He tightened it. He wanted to make it look

01:13:21.820 as bad as possible. And by the way, one of the interesting things is the only avenue against these

01:13:27.400 two brothers who testified that Jussie had that he was using and his lawyer was using early on was

01:13:32.700 they're, they're homophobic. They were against Jussie because he also happens to be gay.

01:13:38.720 So it was a hate attack, you know? Okay. They're black. So maybe it wasn't the black thing,

01:13:42.680 but he's gay. So it was, it was the gay thing. And then the defense is the one who's saying,

01:13:48.960 actually they were gay too. This is the worst lawyering I've ever seen. This is as stupid

01:13:56.360 as they come client and lawyers. I don't know where it's going to go, but you know, what's been,

01:14:01.820 what we've been seeing, Brandon is the same media that propped him up. GMA did a full half an hour

01:14:06.300 interview with him, Robin Roberts, the whole bit. They've said a bub kiss. I think a media research

01:14:11.980 center did the, uh, the numbers. It was like 22 seconds of coverage on ABC. Uh, NBC was like 178

01:14:17.980 seconds of coverage. CBS has zero. They're not so interested in covering the trial of the guy who

01:14:24.080 allegedly made this up as they were about the guy, um, when he was allegedly making it up.

01:14:29.420 Yeah, this is egregious though. I mean, we, we expect our media to be fair and balanced and

01:14:35.420 just tell the truth. I mean, you don't have to have a dog in the fight, just report the dog on

01:14:39.220 news. You reported the news that he was lying, you know, of him lying. And then when he, when he

01:14:45.320 gets found out, you don't report anything that to me is biased journalism. And that is the problem

01:14:51.000 that I see us facing in America today is that people are biased. They got it. They pick,

01:14:54.800 they pick a side. I mean, Stevie one that can see that this was not a real story from the beginning,

01:15:00.180 even in his interviews. And, and, and maybe because I'm a former police officer and I've

01:15:04.280 interviewed a lot of people and they lie, everybody lie to you every day, almost, um,

01:15:07.880 that you could tell he's lying. You could tell by the way he's looking down and looking around and,

01:15:12.440 and, and the consistency of his story and the way his story flows on camera is indicative of a

01:15:19.020 person who's being disingenuous and is creating these realities that didn't ever happen.

01:15:23.360 There's a difference between a person imagining something and repeating it than a person who

01:15:28.080 actually lived a scenario and then having to express himself afterwards. But the media should

01:15:33.320 be ashamed of themselves. We can show that to you because we've actually pulled a minute soundbite

01:15:37.140 from that interview he gave on GMA. Watch Jussie Smollett, uh, in all his glory.

01:15:44.880 As I was crossing the intersection, I heard empire. And I don't answer to empire. My name ain't empire.

01:15:53.360 Uh, and I didn't answer. I kept walking and then I heard empire. So I turned around and I said,

01:16:01.360 did you just say to me? I mean, I see the, uh, attacker, uh, masked. And he said,

01:16:11.360 this MAGA country punches me right in the face. So I punched his ass back. And then, um, we started

01:16:18.740 tussling, you know, it was very icy and we ended up tussling by the stairs, uh, fighting, fighting,

01:16:26.000 fighting. There was a second person involved who was kicking me in my back. And, uh, then it just

01:16:33.580 stopped. And I, then I looked down and I see that there's a rope around my neck, which I hadn't

01:16:38.860 obviously noticed it before. No, because it was so fast. You know what I'm saying? It was so fast.

01:16:43.760 Brandon, it was so fast. You didn't notice they put a noose around him.

01:16:48.800 Yeah. They got NASCAR speed throwing a noose around him. You know, it's just, I mean,

01:16:53.940 like I said, when you see, you listen to him and if you have spent any time interviewing people

01:16:58.580 or talking to individuals and you hear people's genuine testimony of traumatic events that they've

01:17:03.720 gone through, there's a lot more detail in some of these, you know, a guy yelled at me and then

01:17:09.020 he just punches me in the face. And then I'm on like on the ground and then somebody else jumps in

01:17:13.040 and I'm getting kicked in the back. And then there was a noose around my neck. Like if that really

01:17:16.840 happened to a person, they're going to have a lot more intricate details about the feeling that they

01:17:22.180 had about, you know, different things that they observed from the assailants. You know,

01:17:27.020 you would think that he would get emotional to some degree. If a person is beating you,

01:17:32.420 I guess they weren't trying to kill you, but they were beating you and putting a noose around your

01:17:35.480 neck. But I mean, this just speaks to the idiocy of these people who have gone far left in this,

01:17:43.420 in this lunacy world that they have to create things like this. And this is the sad part,

01:17:48.620 Megan, because I see this same character in a lot of people. The tennis player, Serena Williams,

01:17:54.640 had this character. Lance Armstrong had the character. Justice Millett has the same character.

01:17:59.560 People who are narcissistic enough to lie to your face and then try to hurt other people who disagree

01:18:07.600 with the lie until they get completely found out. Serena did it when she was at the match and she

01:18:15.360 had got caught cheating. And she tells the gentleman that was in charge that he's sexist. She has children

01:18:22.240 and trying to hurt somebody and be evil to another person, knowing that you are in the wrong. And

01:18:28.280 that type of person to me is, I would say the individual that I dislike the most is somebody

01:18:35.000 who can't be honest and people who lie and hurt others just to cover up their own lives.

01:18:40.200 That's right. I forgot about the Serena thing. It was where the ump said that her coach was making

01:18:45.480 hand signals to her, which is a no-no. And she denied it and she played the cards. And then the coach

01:18:51.680 admitted it. The coach was like, oh, I was making the hand signals. So it was like, okay.

01:18:56.100 In your book, you make the very accurate point that the media helps create the divide,

01:19:01.980 the racial divide that we've been feeling and dealing with over the past two years in a very

01:19:06.520 in-your-face way. And I couldn't agree more. And it's no accident that the George Floyd video,

01:19:12.440 as awful as it was, was played nonstop in, you know, leading up to a very contentious

01:19:19.640 presidential election, right? I mean, it happens every four years. If you pay attention to these

01:19:24.480 things, you see that the media picks a case, the Democrats pick a case, and they put it on loop

01:19:29.080 to try to make an impact, especially with black voters who are important to their base.

01:19:33.840 And I wonder, because I know you've got a lot of thoughts in the media and you were kind of,

01:19:37.220 and are now kind of in the media, commenting on the news and so on, what you think about the

01:19:41.700 Chris Cuomo thing? Because I've been watching it. I'm not a Chris Cuomo fan, and I'm certainly not

01:19:47.500 an Andrew Cuomo fan. But I do see, I'm going to give him one point here, which is he came out,

01:19:56.000 it's getting tense between Chris Cuomo and CNN, because he seems to be taking aim at Jeff Zucker.

01:20:01.380 They fired him, fine. I agree with the firing. He did so many things during his time at CNN that

01:20:06.140 justified it. I mean, the fake emergence from the basement, when we all knew he'd been out and about,

01:20:10.560 we'd seen pictures of it in page six and elsewhere of him throughout the Hamptons. He's fake acting

01:20:14.960 right there. Your trust with your audience is done. Just all the hype that he had done. He was

01:20:20.020 already accused by two women of harassing them. His old executive producer at ABC went on the record

01:20:24.740 and came on the show to talk about what he did to her. Another, his executive producer of Cuomo

01:20:28.420 primetime asked to leave the show because of his bullying, and she got bounced off to the digital

01:20:32.740 property, is no longer producing in primetime because of him. Why do people keep forgetting that,

01:20:36.720 by the way? Just go do your research. There's Shelly Ross is not the only woman

01:20:40.040 who had accused him. And now you see that he was helping his brother diminish these women,

01:20:45.040 cancel culture, accusing Andrew. And he said, try to diminish it. And then it turns out he was up to

01:20:49.640 his neck in it. I mean, he was doing oppo research and specifically testified, I would never do oppo

01:20:54.020 research. Then you see the truth, which is, yes, he did oppo research on them. He contacted all of

01:20:58.320 his sources. He was trying to run down stories, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But my point to you,

01:21:02.180 Brandon, is I think Jeff Zucker did know virtually all of this and made clear in May,

01:21:07.920 I'm disappointed in him, but it was a mistake. I'm not going to punish him. And so not much has

01:21:12.840 changed. Yes, he was doing more than what's disclosed to the public. But I something smells

01:21:18.200 to me. I just feel like there's something there's something more here because I understand that Jeff

01:21:24.100 Zucker was very well informed of what Chris Cuomo was doing. And that's what Chris Cuomo is saying.

01:21:29.920 Everything I did, I disclosed. And CNN is now calling him a liar publicly, saying this is why he was

01:21:35.800 terminated for violating our standards and practices, as well as his lack of candor.

01:21:40.220 And so anyway, I smell something fishy. And I wonder what your thoughts are on the whole thing.

01:21:47.220 Well, I'm not shocked at all. I mean, when you have a network that's reporting complete false news,

01:21:52.720 a lot of the time completely lying about people, you know, the thing that they did to Joe Rogan

01:21:56.600 was absolutely out of control and they never corrected it. They doubled down time and time again.

01:22:02.120 And it was Sanjay Gupta came on to Joe Rogan's show and completely lied. And, you know,

01:22:07.820 when you see them having character like that, what's to say that they wouldn't care that their

01:22:13.040 top stars and the people that are raking in the money aren't doing nefarious things? It's the same

01:22:17.460 thing in the NFL. It's across the board. There's a vested interest in protecting the image and

01:22:22.500 protecting the bank account. And so I remember when Ray Rice beat his girlfriend up in the elevator,

01:22:26.920 knocked her unconscious. The NFL had the video of that. They knew he did it. And then when it hit the

01:22:31.840 public, they had to go and save face and fire him from the NFL. Same thing with Cuomo. Same thing

01:22:37.320 with Governor Cuomo. I mean, people already know that they're doing this. They have so much power

01:22:43.260 and influence that at some point you can't do anything about it. And then when it when the cup

01:22:48.740 is overflowing to the point in which they cannot cover for him anymore, when more accusations come

01:22:53.680 out, people with substantive evidence that they're doing nefarious things, they have to then act to save

01:22:59.380 face. It's not about Cuomo. It's about money. If he is going to make them lose money, then they got

01:23:05.280 to let him go to save, you know, the equity in their company. And I hope that people understand

01:23:10.800 this. I mean, it's not about journalism anymore. It's not about covering stories anymore. It's about

01:23:15.160 getting these ads and you want to get people watching your stuff and you want to get them,

01:23:19.620 you know, feared and scared and enthralled and drama so they can come on. You can sell them

01:23:27.120 advertising. And that's what these media organizations do. So I'm not shocked that they

01:23:31.240 knew what Cuomo was doing and that they held on to him because he was making money. And when that

01:23:36.220 when that's begin to change, they say, oh, we got to throw you under the bus and act like we never

01:23:40.180 knew. And yeah, all of the above. Now, that makes perfect sense, right? Because it's like

01:23:44.340 he wasn't allowed to interview his brother, the then governor of New York on CNN during his time at

01:23:51.540 CNN. That had been the longstanding policy because they accurately recognized what a conflict of

01:23:56.260 interest that would be, how journalistically unsound it would be. And then they sensed

01:24:01.280 opportunity during the height of the pandemic when the press was lionizing Andrew Cuomo and they

01:24:06.280 sensed dollars. You know, you can see the little dollar signs right in the executive's eyes like,

01:24:11.340 yes, money making cable news. Let's do this thing. So they bent their own rule. Let him put on Andrew.

01:24:17.020 It went as disastrously as you could have hoped with absolutely no hard questions,

01:24:21.000 no probing of the scandal that was already starting to envelop the sitting governor.

01:24:25.940 And anyone who was paying attention could see this is an obvious dereliction of duty.

01:24:31.220 And the dereliction continued. Right. I mean, it was in the meantime, Chris Cuomo's getting tests that

01:24:35.120 nobody else could get through his brother COVID test that should have gone to the dying nursing

01:24:38.800 home patients. But he took it anyway. And, you know, the lie about the basement and all that stuff.

01:24:44.520 And none of it led to any accountability whatsoever. CNN was happy to cash the checks they got during

01:24:51.260 that time. And only now when Chris Cuomo's been dinged up repeatedly by his own missteps. Now are they

01:24:57.940 like, eh, we're going to cut bait now. Now now we're shocked, shocked that he was, you know, dealing

01:25:03.420 with his brother and his brother's aides. I don't excuse what Chris Cuomo did for one second.

01:25:06.960 Definitely fireable offenses. But I just wonder who else has responsibility for what went on there.

01:25:12.780 Yeah. And the funny thing is they probably got a whole bunch of other ones that are probably in

01:25:17.720 the pipeline to get exposed. You know, Don Lemon communicated with Jussie Smollett when all this

01:25:22.900 stuff came out. I mean, Don Lemon has had accusations against him, allegedly. And, you know, all of these

01:25:28.620 people are wicked. Like you could just tell how they present themselves on television. A person with

01:25:34.500 integrity is going to present with integrity. And you can see that genuineness in that person's

01:25:39.480 character. When you have somebody who's so nasty on television, who's so condescending, who seems to

01:25:45.960 be off his rocker. And I would ask Don Lemon, and I think he's next in line, but Don Lemon, he used to

01:25:52.680 be a different way. He used to call out the BS and he got backlash for it. Now he's swung to the far

01:26:00.120 left woke rhetoric into where he's, you can't even listen to him. He's insufferable to listen to on most

01:26:06.780 issues. And I feel like when you see a person's character change that much on television, then

01:26:11.840 they are not being genuine to themselves. And I feel like they treat other people in a similar

01:26:16.560 manner. I think that's why I became popular because people can see I'm genuine. I'm just being me. I

01:26:21.700 don't have no agenda. You know, nobody writes checks for me. I do my own thing. And that protrudes.

01:26:28.300 People can see that. And, you know, I think it makes people authentic. And I feel like that's why

01:26:34.280 people watch you, Megan, is because they can see that you're authentic, unapologetic. And I remember

01:26:38.840 when people were mad at you, you know, not too long ago for the Halloween thing. And it's like,

01:26:46.280 but it is what it is. You're going to tell the truth and people are not going to like it,

01:26:50.820 but people respect when you say how you really feel. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I certainly try.

01:26:56.240 And, you know, it's funny because a very well-known personality out there whose name you would know if I

01:27:01.460 were allowed to say it, but I can't share. But this person's beloved by most of America sent me

01:27:05.660 a text after the NBC thing and said, your only problem is that you tell too much of the truth.

01:27:14.100 She's like, she basically said, you tell the truth too much, right? Like if you edited,

01:27:19.120 you wouldn't get yourself in such trouble. But it's not in my nature. You know, I'm like a moth to a

01:27:23.760 flame. I feel like you can relate. You know, it's like the more you tell me I can't talk about

01:27:26.900 something, the more I want to talk about it. The more you say this is a whole body of thought that you

01:27:31.100 can't espouse, I want to espouse it. And that was a great example of that whole thing. It was like,

01:27:36.220 no, I know what I saw growing up in the seventies and the eighties. I know, I know that people were

01:27:40.560 wearing brown face to a Halloween party to emulate Michael Jordan, who they loved. And people were not

01:27:47.740 running around trying to cancel them. That it wasn't always the thing. Billy Crystal opened the

01:27:52.820 Oscars in blackface. He did. How did that happen on ABC news? You know, NBC was producing shows with

01:27:58.420 characters wearing it, like, you know, on Tina Fey shows and so on. A few years before I made the

01:28:03.900 comment that this used to not be as big a deal. And then all hell broke loose when I said it. And

01:28:08.200 there are all sorts of reasons for that. But, you know, the lesson is speak truth and deal with the

01:28:12.980 consequences. And hopefully in a just world, if you keep getting yourself back up, you'll land in a

01:28:17.420 better place. You know, you'll be surrounded by better people. You won't be with these nutcases who

01:28:21.200 don't like you and don't want you and blah, blah, blah. It's easy for me to say now that I've

01:28:25.100 steadied the ship. But it was a rough couple of years. It's not just the media. It's also our

01:28:30.380 political leaders. And I've been thinking about it this week because we covered the Kyle Rittenhouse

01:28:34.660 case very, very closely on this show. And of course, Joe Biden weighed in on that, calling him a white

01:28:40.200 supremacist and so on. And even earlier, I've heard you talk about the Jacob Blake case, which preceded

01:28:44.580 Kyle Rittenhouse. You know, he was the black man shot seven times by the cops. Kamala Harris went to

01:28:50.360 visit this guy who had been resisting arrest, pulled a knife on the cops and said she was

01:28:54.780 proud of him. So what happens after he's found not guilty? We see we don't think it's related,

01:29:01.140 though. The guy who ran down those people in the parade a few days later in Waukesha, Wisconsin,

01:29:05.040 did have some very anti-white sentiments on his social media. He was a black man who mowed down

01:29:10.140 white people. The media lost total interest. They had no interest in covering if the races had been

01:29:15.420 reversed. My God, can you imagine? And guess who's not going to visit the victims of the Waukesha

01:29:21.340 attack? Kamala Harris. She's not going out there to tell anybody she's proud of them.

01:29:26.020 And Joe Biden's White House says he has no plans either to go. Right. They're not going to go visit

01:29:30.540 the dancing grannies, families, the older women, part of that troop who were killed or the family

01:29:37.620 of the little kid, the eight year old who was killed because it doesn't play for them politically.

01:29:42.260 Right. Yeah. And I think it was I couldn't I was so upset when I saw Kamala Harris go visit Jacob

01:29:50.600 Blake, given the fact that these people get on and they talk about women's rights and protecting

01:29:56.360 women. And and Jacob Blake, the whole reason the police showed up there because he had sexually

01:30:02.700 assaulted his baby mama and was restricted from the area. And he showed up at our house and she called

01:30:08.480 the police looking for help because this guy was violent against her and did her wrong, pretty much.

01:30:15.460 And the cops showed up. And then, of course, he did what he did against them. And Kamala goes to see

01:30:20.040 him. He's such an innocent man. George Floyd. Now, two things can occur at the same time. I think

01:30:25.380 Chauvin was a complete idiot. And I wrote that in my book. He's an idiot. You don't kneel on a guy's

01:30:29.880 neck until he dies. And then you still kneel on his neck after he didn't pass away. You're an idiot.

01:30:34.780 Now, George Floyd was an idiot, too. This guy had been arrested. I don't know how many times

01:30:41.180 he one of his arrests. He did a home invasion on a pregnant woman and put a gun to her stomach.

01:30:45.620 This is not a good person. This is not a person that people should be admonishing and making

01:30:50.820 statues of this guy. It's OK to say he was done wrong and justice was served by the officer going

01:30:57.700 to jail. But my God, you guys make him out of a God and forget all of his previous transgressions.

01:31:03.420 I'm going to say this, and I know people might not like this, but the same thing happened with

01:31:07.740 Ahmaud Arbery. Like, you can agree or disagree with the way the trial went, but why are they

01:31:12.180 posting pictures of him when he was in middle school? This guy, well, it was actually high

01:31:15.980 school, but this guy was not the same kid that you see on that picture. Even if you believe that

01:31:22.220 he was wrongfully killed, why present an image and lie and create this scenario of hatred and

01:31:29.160 dysfunction. The McMichaels, they show their mugshots. They don't show the picture of Travis

01:31:34.360 McMichael being in the Coast Guard. They don't show pictures of Gregory McMichael, his father,

01:31:38.560 being on the police department. He honorably served for multiple years. They don't show that.

01:31:42.760 They have an agenda. And back to the politicians. These people are so disingenuous. I don't see how

01:31:47.860 people don't see through them at this point. They never stand up for kids in the inner city that get

01:31:53.340 murdered by other black people and gang violence. There's more kids that have been shot

01:31:57.400 in the inner city. More minors have been shot than have died from COVID-19 in this country.

01:32:03.180 And not one post, not one t-shirt, not one statement, not one press conference about any

01:32:09.120 of this. They claim they care about black lives. They had Jacob Blake, but they don't say nothing

01:32:14.120 about some of these other young boys that get killed. And I've done stories on plenty of them.

01:32:18.580 Young people getting shot in the head and doing homework, drive-by shooting. It was a kid that got

01:32:23.280 shot 20-something times outside of a bus stop just the other day. They will never make a statement

01:32:29.600 about them. They will never talk about those issues. And so it makes me feel like that they

01:32:33.920 have an agenda. And that agenda is brainwashing a lot of people. Police brutality in America

01:32:41.000 isn't what they say it is. I mean, they're completely making it up. Police interact with

01:32:45.000 about 300 million people a year. And it's rare when you couple the interactions with actual

01:32:50.760 interactions going violent. I know it because I've been there. It's not many interactions

01:32:54.540 will turn violent or even fatal, but they make up the scenario. White people get shot twice as much

01:32:59.960 as black people. White people get shot almost twice as much as black people unarmed. We have never seen

01:33:04.800 an unarmed white person presented on television as a victim of police brutality. We hardly ever see

01:33:10.440 that. So they're complicit in pushing an agenda to get votes, in my opinion.

01:33:16.280 Brandon, I'll leave it on a funny note. I told this story a couple weeks ago, but I was explaining

01:33:21.220 to my kids the story of we were talking about Kyle Rittenhouse. We were talking about cops. We're

01:33:25.840 talking about Jacob Blake. They're little. They're 8, 10, and 12. And I said, yes, 300 million

01:33:31.280 interactions and 10 million arrests a year and very small number, you know, 13, according to The

01:33:35.940 Washington Post in 2019. There's a bug in the studio who were unarmed and killed by police,

01:33:44.360 black men. And my eight year old looked at me and his reaction was, mommy, people need to be good.

01:33:50.960 They need to be good. He was like, that's a lot of 10 million people arrested, 300.

01:33:56.500 And, you know, it's like out of the mouths of babes, right? Like personal responsibility. He was

01:34:00.500 kind of getting it. OK, so I got to go, but I want people to be able to find you. All right,

01:34:06.100 they're going to buy your book. It's Beaten Black and Blue. Remember that, Beaten Black and Blue,

01:34:10.780 Being a Black Cop in America Under Siege. And where can they find you online? Because I know

01:34:14.960 you've got a huge YouTube following. Yeah, just The Arcitatum. You put The Arcitatum in Google or

01:34:20.140 whatever search engine that you use, you'll find all of my social media platforms. That book is

01:34:24.280 available at beatenblackandblue.com. It's available on Amazon. And I really appreciate

01:34:29.660 you having me on, Megan. I really do. Oh, the pleasure was all mine. I hope you come

01:34:33.220 back, Brandon. Thank you. And good luck with it. Thank you. Don't forget to tune into the show

01:34:36.960 tomorrow because Dana Lash will be here. And I'm really looking forward to talking with her about

01:34:42.220 this school shooter. You know, this case happened on Friday, going into the weekend. Now they've

01:34:48.140 arrested his parents, trying to charge them with a crime. Got a lot of thoughts on it. She's a true

01:34:52.600 gun expert. So we're going to get into it. Break it down for you. Very fair. In the meantime,

01:34:57.080 download the show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher. Go to youtube.com to watch it.

01:35:01.120 Thanks, guys. See you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:35:05.760 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 07, 2021

Rise in Crime, Corporate Cowardice, and Media Hypocrisy in America, with Bari Weiss and Brandon Tatum ｜ Ep. 216

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