A truck plows into a crowd at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing at least 5 people and injuring more than 40. Jason Whitlock and Jesse Singleton react to the attack and the aftermath of the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
00:00:00.480Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.640Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:14.860We are beginning at this hour to learn a bit more about the awful attack last night on people attending a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
00:00:25.120A community tradition they have been doing every year for the past 60 years.
00:01:10.620Fox News is reporting at this hour that the driver of the truck is a thirty nine year old man with a long criminal history who was out on bond, that he's being questioned by police.
00:01:23.040Right now, the early reports first, they said they might be terrorism.
00:01:38.460And we will keep you updated on any new developments as they happen over the next two hours.
00:01:41.940And while you may have taken a break from the news over the weekend, the left wing media did not.
00:01:47.940They were in overdrive reacting to Friday's acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse.
00:01:52.240And to those of you who experienced that with us, thank you so much for being there with us while it happened.
00:01:58.620It was pretty extraordinary after our in-depth coverage of it all week to have it unfold live on the air while we were at the mic.
00:02:04.300And, you know, the YouTube response has been great.
00:02:07.060And we appreciate you guys sort of trusting us with those moments.
00:02:09.360But there were the usual media attacks on the jury and the system in the country this past weekend that Kyle Rittenhouse is a white privileged.
00:02:18.460OK, you know, he's the poor kid of a single mom, but OK, he's got white skin.
00:02:23.180So I guess that just makes him privileged in our society.
00:02:25.200That's you know, you know that line vigilante, domestic terrorist, nationalist led off by a judicial system built on white supremacy.
00:02:40.780But the media managed to sink to new lows as well, claiming now that anyone, anyone who goes out and protests in support of Black Lives Matter is going to be hunted down and killed.
00:02:50.240There's no one better to react to this insanity than Jason Whitlock.
00:02:55.760Also, Jesse Single will be here later on the media coverage of the trial and the case.
00:03:00.260Plus, President Biden admitted that he did not watch one second of the trial, but felt very convinced and comfortable saying he was angry over it.
00:03:09.640He watched nothing, but he's very angry and concerned over the verdict.
00:03:12.960Well, thank you for your totally uninformed opinion.
00:03:15.340And when asked if he stood by equating Kyle Rittenhouse with white supremacists, the president deflected and suddenly didn't feel it was appropriate to answer the question.
00:04:11.320I mean, the media, it wasn't unexpected that they were going to lose their minds after completely misrepresenting this case from the start.
00:04:18.440You know, I mean, for a year since August 2020, when it happened, they've been telling us that this white kid, Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three white people, is a white supremacist because he was trying to keep the peace and help others at a Black Lives
00:04:56.960This jury sent the final and loudest warning to white America about the dangerous rise of white nationalist terror in this country.
00:05:04.460Like if I'm walking around and I'm a white nationalist, you know, coward little kid when they are 15 and I see somebody drive by with a Black Lives Matter bumper sticker and I feel threatened, I can open fire.
00:05:16.160This country was built on the idea that white men had a particular kind of freedom from the slave catchers on the right to inflict violence in the name of protecting property.
00:05:30.740Anyone who supports Black Lives Matter should be very afraid.
00:05:33.620Now we can see people baiting violence to have a reaction, very serious problem for activism, because now we're being told that someone can cross state lines with a semi-automatic rifle and kill people.
00:05:50.760Today, what we were told was that white self-defense trumps everybody else's sense of safety and protection.
00:05:57.360The fact that white supremacists roam the halls of Congress freely and celebrate this little murderous white supremacist.
00:06:13.120You matter so much that the second you start to get a sense that you do, a man will grab a gun he shouldn't have in the first place and travel all the way to another state just to quiet you.
00:07:05.460He was there the night before, but they all have the same talking points because it's an orchestrated strategy to cast everything in this racial camouflage.
00:07:16.900So that they can actually execute their real agenda, and that is to demonize and to paint the American narrative arc as one that has focused on racial injustice from start to finish.
00:07:32.900And it's an argument they're trying to make to justify a rewriting of the Constitution, a dismantling of Western civilization, a dismantling of Judeo-Christian values that used to define this country.
00:07:49.840It's, it's, it's talking points that have been distributed to all of the useful idiots of corporate media and all the people in collusion with China and big tech with all the billionaires that want to move America to make it more like communists run China.
00:08:08.680And, and so I, as stupid as it sounds and as stupid as they sound and as tempting as it is to laugh them off, they're executing a strategy that's working right now.
00:08:20.940They have us all talking about the lies that they propagate and we can never have a discussion about the truth.
00:08:28.600And, you know, the truth is that America's narrative arc actually bends towards justice and that this country through the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights was embedded with certain Judeo-Christian values that set up a conflict between good versus evil and good was winning for about 200 years.
00:08:53.100Uh, but here in the last 50, 60 years, evil is winning and, and they've, they're, they're corrupting American values so that they can argue we need a new constitution and that we were founded on racism and nothing has ever changed.
00:09:09.420And this country doesn't work, even though people from around the world are beating down doors, black people included beating down doors to get in this country.
00:09:17.260They got a successful propaganda campaign going on that none of that's true and this is the worst place on earth.
00:09:25.600It's so crazy when you hear the misinformation and also this, this type of talk, um, MSNBC's Jason Johnson, uh, was the one who kicked off that butted soundbite saying Kyle Rittenhouse was, was about to kill those two guys with no consequences because they were race traitors.
00:09:44.240The two white guys who got killed. They were race traitors who stood against the core conceit of white supremacy. What? What? No, I love it. Even Nicole Hannah-Jones, um, she tweeted out in this country, this is after the verdict, you can even kill white people and get away with it if those white people are fighting for black lives.
00:10:04.780This is the legacy of 1619. Sure. I'm sure convicted pedophile, the guy who loved to rape nine year old boys. Um, Joseph Rosenbaum was there and was running around yelling the N word, uh, that night. I'm sure he was there fighting for black lives.
00:10:20.120Who are they kidding me that they were race traitors trying to stand against the core conceit of white supremacy supremacy? They wanted to, they wanted violence. They wanted to participate in riots. They wanted to cause trouble. Nobody, none, not one of those guys who got shot that night was there to support black lives.
00:10:35.700I wish that people would ask themselves like, well, hold on. We're throwing black lives matter rallies, but we're attracting white people with long criminal records. We're attracting pedophiles to that. That's who's coming to align with us or to participate in whatever it is we're doing.
00:10:56.540That should make you question yourself because again, over social media, you'll see anytime someone says something, particularly if you're black, if you say something that has any conservative values, any religious values, they'll say, you should judge who's supporting you. It's all Trump supporters. And therefore you must be wrong or you must be.
00:11:17.640Well, if pedophiles and domestic abusers and other people with criminal records are the ones coming out and supporting you, doesn't it say something about your message? If, if every time there's a black lives matter rally, there's a high percentage, half the time there's looting, there's arson, there's violence, there's mayhem. Doesn't that say something about you and your organization?
00:11:43.420Because Dr. King and that generation from the 1950s and 60s had all kinds of protests, all kinds of protests and faced incredible racial hostility. But those protests weren't marked by arson, violence and looting by the people allegedly supporting Dr. King and them.
00:12:05.560So the Black Lives Matter crowd should be asking, what kind of energy are we putting into the air that pedophiles are running to join us and that every one of our martyrs or virtually, virtually every one of our martyrs has a long criminal history?
00:12:22.820What is it about your organization that attracts that group and picks those types of martyrs and heroes to rally around? They should be asking some questions of themselves.
00:12:36.300There was some crazy talk. Now, the Cuomo brothers both felt the need to weigh in. Andrew Cuomo, disgraced, deposed, forced to resign New York governor, said today's verdict is a stain on the soul of America, sends a dangerous message about who and what values our justice system was designed to protect.
00:12:53.940You mean the very same justice system that's coming after you criminally now? I guess you don't like it. I understand.
00:12:58.280His brother Chris on CNN says it's hard to believe that somebody chasing you is going to beat you to death. Really?
00:13:04.680What about when they put their their hand on the barrel of your AR-15 while yelling F you after having just told you that they were going to kill you?
00:13:11.520Is it hard then? Is it hard to believe when they chase you and then they beat you with their skateboard in your head?
00:13:16.480How about the third guy who chased him and then pulled out a Glock on Kyle Rittenhouse?
00:13:20.620That's really not so hard to believe somebody might beat you to death or hurt you.
00:13:24.180I mean this so he tweets out president of the NAACP or said said actually I think it was on MSNBC that this was worse than the Emmett Till trial, that the Kyle Rittenhouse trial was worse than the Emmett Till trial, the trial of white men in Mississippi who who tortured poor 14 year old Emmett Till for daring to speak to a white store owner and then was killed and put in the river.
00:13:53.060And he's the he's the young man whose mom insisted on having an open casket funeral so America could see what had happened to her son.
00:14:15.380isn't willing to say in pursuit of political power to analogize Kyle Rittenhouse in this verdict that involved four white men, four white men got into a conflict.
00:14:52.420And I don't know which one this is, but there are videos of people getting brutally beaten in Kenosha, Wisconsin during those that week of rioting and violence that we saw there.
00:15:06.960Citizens that try to protect their property, their business, try to protect themselves, surrounded by swarms and gangs.
00:15:14.980And if Kyle Rittenhouse didn't have a gun and wasn't willing to use it, if they had knocked him to the ground and he was unable to defend himself, there was going to be a swarm of people beating and brutalizing him because that's what we saw happening in Kenosha during this time.
00:16:30.760If we can question Kyle Rittenhouse, why he was there, blah, blah, blah.
00:16:35.060We should be allowed to question George Floyd and some of his behavior that contributed to what eventually the tragic events that took his life.
00:17:15.580We've heard from so many in the media, so many of our politicians right on up to the president, that Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist.
00:17:23.380We heard this long before that now infamous shot of him in a bar with members of the Proud Boys, which we'll get to in a second, became public.
00:17:33.000They called him a white supremacist because he showed up at at this protest and he was not on the side of the rioters.
00:17:41.820And by the way, I just want to make clear for that he did show up at this bar when he was let out on bail.
00:17:48.120And he was there with his mom and another family member.
00:17:51.880And there were members of the Proud Boys there.
00:17:54.080And the Proud Boys surrounded Kyle and asked for a photo with him.
00:17:57.720It is at the time he was 17 years old.
00:17:59.700His lawyers say he didn't know who this was, didn't know the Proud Boys from anybody.
00:18:03.820They got a photo with him and they all were doing the OK sign, which, according to some, in some circumstances can be a symbol of white power.
00:18:19.780They scoured Kyle Rittenhouse's social media to find any evidence.
00:18:23.680The prosecution, his lawyers turned over everything, all of his phones, all of his social media.
00:18:27.400They didn't find one piece of white nationalist propaganda or white supremacist propaganda or following of any accounts that might support or anything about Proud Boys.
00:18:37.720All they have on him is he showed up that night and he wasn't on the BLM side.
00:18:56.800So finally, he has the chance to speak.
00:18:58.920And Tucker's going to have him on tonight for his first interview at 8 p.m. on Fox.
00:19:03.380And here's a promotional clip in which not only does the alleged white supremacist not sound like a white supremacist, he says it's a BLM supporter.
00:20:24.460People need to be honest about what the evidence is and is not against Kyle Rittenhouse, both in this case and when it comes to the white nationalist charge.
00:20:32.880By the way, the other piece of that is the Anti-Defamation League reportedly scoured all of his social media and determined that there were no connections to any extreme movements or white nationalist groups and so on on any of those accounts.
00:21:58.320There was absolutely no evidence Kyle knew who those guys were, what the Proud Boys are, what that OK symbol has come to mean in some circles.
00:22:05.700But for the rest of America, it still means, OK, that's it.
00:22:11.000OK, so based on that, he gets called a white supremacist.
00:22:14.920If you're on the left, you've probably called him that.
00:22:17.580And Joe Biden was asked by reporters this weekend about whether he'd like to disavow that and what his reaction was to the jury.
00:22:25.360And here was his first reaction before he had his handlers write him a paper reaction.
00:22:29.360Listen, I just heard a moment ago, I didn't watch the trial.
00:22:34.540So I stand by your past comment waiting to him to white supremacy.
00:22:42.060Well, look, I stand by what the jury has concluded.
00:22:46.560The jury system works and you have to abide by it.
00:22:49.480And then he came out, Senator, afterward in a paper statement, clearly written by somebody else and and changed his message to, oh, wait, I'm angry and concerned.
00:22:59.340While the verdict in Kenosha will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included, we must acknowledge the jury has spoken.
00:23:06.280Meanwhile, he didn't watch any of the trial.
00:23:08.500Well, Megan, Joe Biden does need to apologize to Kyle Rittenhouse publicly for slandering him as a white supremacist.
00:23:16.120There's no evidence at all of that or that Kyle Rittenhouse harbored any racial animus.
00:23:22.180As you described, he went to Kenosha, where his father lives, to help protect property and persons when the Democratic authorities in charge in Wisconsin refused to do so.
00:23:36.840Kyle Rittenhouse had every right to be on that street just as much as the three criminals who assaulted him and perhaps tried to kill him.
00:23:45.520And certainly as much as the hundreds of rioters and looters.
00:23:49.860So Joe Biden should not be angry and concerned about this jury's verdict.
00:23:55.240What makes me angry and concerned is that you have Democratic authorities all around the country who have ceded streets in so many cases to left wing militias.
00:24:06.240And the history of what they did in Wisconsin, just not only refusing to call in the National Guard when they knew that there were going to be riots the night of the Jacob Blake now deemed lawful shooting by police.
00:24:17.720But the governor there was inciting people with tweets trying to pile on a rush to judgment in that case, which was later ruled a justified shooting not only by the Wisconsin Wisconsin AG, but by Merrick Garland.
00:24:31.100And so they were pouring fuel on a fire.
00:24:33.540And that is why Kyle Rittenhouse felt like he had to be there.
00:24:36.680Doesn't mean you have to agree with his presence, but that's why he felt like he needed to be there.
00:24:41.300And then the jury agrees that all he did that night was defend his own life when it was threatened repeatedly.
00:24:48.280Can I ask you, though, about we played a soundbite in our first segment of the media reacting and still white supremacist, white supremacist.
00:24:56.300Here's some of the political reaction just to give you a flavor.
00:25:00.140Representative Cori Bush yesterday or it was over the weekend, the judge, the jury, the defendant.
00:25:17.920America today, you can break the law, carry around weapons built for a military, shoot and kill people and get away with it.
00:25:22.340That's the message we've just sent to armed vigilantes across the nation.
00:25:25.240Then you've got this lunatic, New York Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, who's chairman of the DCCC Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, saying it's disgusting and disturbing that someone was able to carry a loaded assault rifle into a protest.
00:26:02.960You tell me whether this is sincere belief by these people or they just want to stir the pot to sort of animate some faction of their base.
00:26:12.240Well, many of them are deeply ignorant and uninformed, Megan.
00:26:17.140As you said, Sean Patrick Maloney couldn't even get the basic facts straight that Jacob Blake was not, in fact, killed.
00:26:23.220He was shot in part because he resisted arrest, an arrest that was started because a female associate of his had called the police, fearing for her own safety.
00:26:34.320Rather, Jacob Blake walked around the vehicle and tried to receive retrieve a knife from it.
00:26:40.560So these people can't even get their own basic facts straight.
00:26:44.160I would also say that a lot of these kind of foolish charges of white supremacy or racism on a matter that had really nothing to do with race are just a veiled attack on the Second Amendment rights of every American to defend himself and to defend his family.
00:26:59.700In the end, that's what Scott or Kyle Rittenhouse was doing.
00:27:03.820He was present on the streets of Kenosha with others trying to protect property and persons.
00:27:11.380And when they're threatened with death, as Kyle Rittenhouse apparently was by the demented child rapist who ended up assaulting him or was being assaulted or threatened by other criminals as he was, he has every right to defend himself.
00:27:26.340Every American has every right to defend himself and his family and his property.
00:27:32.400That's really what the left is attacking here is our Second Amendment rights and our right to protect ourselves.
00:27:38.260You know, what's interesting, Senator, is the narrative is now shifting in some corners on the left.
00:27:42.200And the more centrist left, I guess, that realizes they can't really blame this on white supremacy.
00:27:47.880I mean, forget, you know, Cori Bush and MSNBC.
00:27:50.780But, for example, The New York Times, The Daily, which I listen to their podcast by hosted by Michael Barbaro.
00:27:56.820I like keeping an eye on the left and the right.
00:27:58.700See what they're saying in both pockets of the media.
00:28:00.320They, by the way, just said two out of the three assailants coming after Kyle Rittenhouse were unarmed.
00:28:05.740I think Kyle didn't feel that Anthony Huber beating him over his head with a skateboard was unarmed, nor did they mention, you know, in that particular phrase that he was reaching for Kyle's gun.
00:28:17.180OK, but anyway, they shifted and I'm hearing the discussion shift to the problems, really, self-defense laws meeting open carry laws.
00:28:27.140The problem is, you know, we had these self-defense laws that were meant really to cover you in your home if somebody tried to burglarize you or hurt your family.
00:28:35.340But we're really supposed to be able to be used by somebody out on the street with an AR-15 who's basically asking for trouble.
00:28:44.740So I see that's that's where they're going to go with it.
00:28:47.200They're going to try to crack down on these laws that allow open carry, that apply self-defense out in the public square if you're armed and so on.
00:28:55.360I think that's exactly right, Megan, is that the left is going to try to crack down on every American second man at right to defend himself and herself.
00:29:05.080Again, Kyle Rittenhouse and anyone else who's a law-abiding citizen with a firearm that night had a right to defend himself, other innocent civilians and defend the property that those rioters were trying to destroy.
00:29:17.920It is very alarming that you have the left today trying to defund the police, trying to delegitimize our law enforcement system and then to deprive Americans of the right to protect themselves.
00:29:29.020And that's what ultimately the Second Amendment is about.
00:29:31.340Sure, it protects our right to keep and bear arms for things like hunting or skeet shooting, but that's not what our founding fathers had in mind.
00:29:38.740They knew that every person has an inherent right to defend himself and his family and his property.
00:29:43.680And if more Democrats are going to continue to allow rioters and looters to rampage through our streets, to break into stores and go on stealing sprees, as you've seen again in San Francisco in the last couple of days, then it's thank goodness we have that Second Amendment right.
00:30:01.040Thank goodness we have the ability to keep and bear arms and to protect ourselves and protect other innocent lives.
00:30:06.320Because in the end, as much as we depend on law enforcement to deter crime, to catch criminals, to prosecute them in the heat of the moment, in most cases, when the police are minutes away, every second counts.
00:30:23.000And that's why people have the right to defend themselves.
00:30:25.440When our country was founded, it was very rural.
00:30:28.460There weren't huge urban centers and people did have to defend themselves.
00:30:32.200It wasn't so you didn't pick up a phone and call 911.
00:30:43.180You know, not everybody needs to be armed, right?
00:30:45.020It's like, well, why don't you try talking to people who live down in rural Arkansas or Texas or along the southern border where you've got illegal immigrants coming across armed, connected with cartels, looking to hurt anybody who gets in their way.
00:30:58.380And now, even in busy cities like Kenosha, Wisconsin, where you have a governor or a mayor who won't send out the police, who won't call up the National Guard, which is what happened in the wake of the Jacob Blake shooting on night one, you're going to see that same lawlessness and people left to their own devices.
00:31:19.000Unless the Dems enforce the law, including against rioters and looters, people are going to be left with no choice.
00:31:25.600Yeah, and if someone like Kyle Rittenhouse or other concerned citizens had been at riots in New York City or Chicago or Washington, D.C., cities and states with draconian and, in my opinion, unconstitutional gun laws, what we probably would have seen is a murder trial of the death of the person who was defending innocent lives and property because they wouldn't have been able to carry a firearm.
00:31:51.600But thank goodness the state of Wisconsin, like so many other states, to include mine, recognizes that every American has the right to keep and bear arms, to include carrying them outside the house, to defend themselves, because when seconds count, the police are minutes away.
00:32:06.060And for the record, Kyle Rittenhouse is not on camera running around just randomly shooting people.
00:32:10.260You know, this whole nonsense of him being an active shooter.
00:32:12.220He had the opportunity to do that many, many times, and he didn't.
00:32:15.640And in fact, was was trying, was yelling friendly, friendly, friendly when he was being chased by Joseph Rosenblum at Rosenbaum.
00:32:27.440So let's just talk for a minute before I move on about.
00:32:31.400I just how pernicious this is, Senator, because I know it's like kind of make fun of the political left and these, you know, sort of race baiters who are constantly pulling, you know, that trick.
00:32:42.720Oh, everyone's a racist, a white supremacist.
00:32:45.480John Cass, who we love Chicago, he used to work for the Chicago Tribune.
00:33:17.240A kid like that wouldn't survive five minutes.
00:33:19.120The media that twisted and shaped the facts to suit a political narrative and politicians who benefited from narrative support would have moved on with their lives.
00:33:28.800And as they heaped glory on themselves, Rittenhouse, if put in a state prison, would be dead or wish he were dead every minute of his life.
00:33:37.660He says, don't forget what these politicians, prosecutors and media have done, because if you do, you're inviting the next mob to grab Lady Justice and bend her to their political will.
00:33:54.300And I want to point out that the jury should be commended for doing what is always a difficult job under extraordinary circumstances.
00:34:01.360You know, the jury is often the jury is an institution in our society is often portrayed as a check and a balance on the executive branch, on prosecutors in particular.
00:34:11.540And it is that, as we saw in this case, you had what I think borders on prosecutorial misconduct to include prosecutorial incompetence.
00:34:21.040If you remember when the prosecutor held the rifle up and had his finger on the trigger, one of the most basic violations of gun safety practices.
00:34:28.820But the jury is not just a bulwark against an overreaching executive and prosecutor.
00:34:47.980But thank goodness we live in a country in which each of us is, if accused of a crime, can be judged by a jury of our peers, not by the mob.
00:34:55.780So that's right. Social justice, mob justice does not reign inside a courtroom.
00:35:02.260The laws govern and actual justice reigns inside our legal courts.
00:35:07.140And it drives the media and the political left crazy.
00:35:13.640I'm going to ask Tom Cotton right after this break about a push now, including from Democrat Jerry Nadler, to have Kyle Rittenhouse prosecuted at the federal level by Merrick Garland's DOJ.
00:35:24.560And there's plenty more to talk to Tom Cotton about.
00:35:27.640Lots going on with, speaking of Merrick Garland, the FBI now doing something with respect to parents, tagging them for potential threats against school board members.
00:35:40.040And Senator Cotton's been making a lot of it.
00:35:41.660We'll ask him about his letter to Merrick Garland.
00:35:44.320And remember, everyone, you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips when you subscribe to my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly.
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00:36:06.760There you'll find our full archives with more than 200 shows, including our show from Friday when we were live on the air as the Rittenhouse verdict came in.
00:37:17.200All three of the persons who were assaulting Kyle Rittenhouse and whom he shot are white.
00:37:22.060So it's not clear to me what a white shooter and three white people who were assaulting him could possibly provide the grounds for a federal civil rights charge.
00:37:33.640If anyone is going to be engaged in further legal action here, I would think it would be Kyle Rittenhouse against all of the media companies that slandered him.
00:37:43.460And for that matter, Joe Biden, who was a private citizen last year when he used his megaphone to accuse Kyle Rittenhouse falsely and without evidence of being a white supremacist.
00:37:52.260That'd be more likely to be the legal action you see, not some specious lawsuit from Merrick Garland.
00:38:28.620It's not like Nick Sandman of Covington, where all he did was stand on court steps and get his picture taken and then got smeared by CNN and others.
00:38:36.780Kyle found himself on in the news for a year because of something, you know, he did.
00:38:41.620So I don't know. I'm not sure what his chances would be in a courtroom because I think they'd probably find him a limited public figure.
00:38:46.440Anyway, I'd still like to see him try because he was really wrongly maligned.
00:38:50.000And as John Cass points out, the stakes are so high.
00:38:53.000If you just give them a pass, they're going to keep doing it.
00:38:56.540The media and the politicians, they have no skin in the game. None.
00:39:00.520Yeah, that's right. And, you know, you may be right on your legal analysis, Megan.
00:39:05.540You're certainly a much smarter lawyer than I ever was.
00:39:08.300I'm such a good lawyer. I had to quit the law and join the army.
00:39:11.040But I'd say this. If I was sitting in if I was sitting in Comcast's corporate executive suites,
00:39:16.700I'm not sure I'd want to try my hand with the jury of Kyle Rittenhouse, Seuss, NBC and MSNBC or the way they've defamed him for the last year.
00:39:24.280That's a good point. He's being very kindly modest because he went to Harvard Law and I went to Albany Law.
00:39:30.340No offense to my alma mater, but Tom Cotton does not have trouble in the in the intellectual department.
00:39:36.580OK, let's talk about Merrick Garland for a second, because now there's a report by The Wall Street Journal that they are now issuing what are called threat tags directed by the head of FBI's criminal division
00:39:47.500and the head of FBI's counterterrorism division, that they are now flagging all assessments and investigations into potential criminal threats, harassment and intimidation of educators with a, quote, threat tag.
00:39:58.860This is, again, back to Merrick Garland's enthusiastic embrace of the National School Board's push to treat parents as criminals, possibly domestic terrorists.
00:40:08.380And Garland told the both bodies of Congress that he wasn't going to do that, that he was only going to get out and go after violence and threats of violence.
00:40:15.720Andy McCarthy, who I trust, says the threat tag is basically just an organization system for the FBI to organize parents into like, you know, OK, the FBI guy in California doesn't know what is happening with the FBI guy in Virginia.
00:40:27.920So they all have a massive file if they just tag us all with these threat tags if they're trying to find all the parents who have been bad.
00:40:35.620So it doesn't make me feel any better. And to me, it's just proof that they are going forward with this.
00:40:40.360As Merrick Garland said, it is real. It wasn't just an appeasement of the national school boards or of Joe Biden in a momentary lapse.
00:40:46.680They really want to come after parents who get out of line at these school board meetings.
00:40:51.540Yeah, Megan, I think they're dancing to the tune of the school board associations, radical leftists, who its own board is repudiated now by rescinding the letter that kicked all this off.
00:41:00.560But I also think they were acting in concert with the teachers unions, people like Randy Weingarten, who shut down our schools for more than a year and are forcing toddlers to wear masks when they go back to preschool or pre-K or kindergarten.
00:41:14.240I mean, Merrick Garland has proven to be totally out of his depth as the attorney general.
00:41:18.940Maybe he was a good judge when he could sit up in an ivory tower and read and write about the law with five employees who worship the ground he walked on.
00:41:24.780But to be in charge of our Department of Justice, 150,000 employees on sensitive matters, like investigating parents who go to school boards to complain that their schools are closed and their kids have to use remote learning or complain that their kids have to wear masks in classes or they're being indoctrinated to hate America is far beyond, far beyond his skill sets to succeed in that job.
00:41:44.900So what he's doing, I'm afraid, is deferring to the radical leftists that they've installed in the Department of Justice that do want to crack down on parents who are merely going to school boards to complain about what they see as misguided policies.
00:41:58.380This is just one example of the politicization of the Department of Justice.
00:42:02.100That's why I've said Merrick Garland should resign in disgrace.
00:42:05.120It's crazy. I mean, I heard you saying to him, thank God you're not in the Supreme Court.
00:42:09.200Remember that when Barack Obama couldn't get him, you couldn't get him a confirmation hearing because Mitch McConnell stopped it.
00:42:15.320And it was like, well, you know, the Republicans could do worse with a Democratic appointed nominee to the Supreme Court than Merrick Garland.
00:42:22.900He seems pretty moderate. You know, like even some Republicans seem to like the guy.
00:42:27.700Now that you actually see him in office, you tell me, but he seems much further left than I thought he ever was.
00:42:35.120He's both ideologically to the left and he's incompetent.
00:42:39.840Again, he's letting these radical ideologues run his department.
00:42:43.080But Megan, we have it on pretty good authority from sources inside the FBI that they did not take seriously the school board association.
00:42:49.260In fact, they kind of laughed it off until they were directed by Merrick Garland's front office at the Department of Justice to take it seriously.
00:42:55.880And that's why Merrick Garland sent out a nationwide memo to all of his U.S.
00:42:59.060attorneys directing them to come up with a plan on what they were going to do to crack down on parents and sick the feds on them when they went to a school board to complain about that board's policies.
00:43:07.340Well, and he had a couple of reasons to do that, right? His boss, Joe Biden, wanted it done.
00:43:11.960We've seen that because he coordinated with the school board association on the letter.
00:43:15.400Joe did. Biden did before it ever got to Merrick Garland.
00:43:18.140And to Merrick Garland is conflicted on this.
00:43:20.940His son in law makes tens of millions of dollars.
00:43:23.520His organization does off of pushing CRT materials in in these schools, which is in large part what the parents are yelling about at the school board meetings.
00:43:34.260It would be much better for his family if they went away.
00:43:36.720And he did. He wouldn't even answer whether he had sought an ethics opinion on that, even though his own ethical rules required that of him.
00:43:45.720Yeah, and it really does get back to that point, Megan.
00:43:48.540So many on the left are gaslighting Americans and parents by saying, oh, critical race theory is not taught in schools.
00:43:53.480But it really does get back to teaching kids, no matter what their age, at what level of intellectual sophistication, that race is the most important thing about you.
00:44:03.580That there are certain races that are oppressive and certain that are victimized.
00:44:06.880That's why, for instance, up in northern Virginia, another element of the parental backlash was when they shut down AP and gifted and talented programs or when they stopped admissions at public, restricted admissions at public high schools like Thomas Jefferson.
00:44:24.180They did those things, again, because they were unhappy that there are so many Asian Americans in those classes and not enough black kids.
00:44:31.460It all gets back to the left's obsession with race and trying to indoctrinate kids as young as pre-K to see the see the world through the eyes of race.
00:44:41.840That's why Ibram X. Kendi, one of the charlatans who promotes critical race theory, has a children's book.
00:44:49.300That's crazy. Who would ever subject their child to that?
00:44:52.000I mean, he he had one of the tweets out in the wake of the in-house verdict.
00:44:57.620They're fighting to maintain white male supremacy, which is to say they are defending law and order, defending their America, where white men can rule and brutalize without consequence.
00:45:37.120We segregate by race in response to the verdict.
00:45:39.620The diversity and equity and inclusion group announced it, saying we're creating space for our community to process the not guilty verdict.
00:45:45.760In the case where Kyle Rittenhouse, an Illinois native.
00:46:11.480Yeah, and, you know, Megan, this is so often the case in these riots, whether they're in Kenosha or in New York or in Minneapolis.
00:46:20.820It's many times minority owned businesses that are being destroyed, barbershops or sandwich places or dry cleaners, oftentimes that don't have enough insurance to cover the damage.
00:47:47.340But I want to start with James O'Keefe and what Merrick Garland's DOJ is doing to him.
00:47:51.020He's the guy behind Project Veritas, which is sort of it's a journalistic outfit, but it agitates mostly left leaning entities like CNN or certain politicians, the Biden administration or big tech.
00:48:03.860And then suddenly we see James O'Keefe's associates, two of his employees, had their homes raided by the FBI looking for Ashley Biden's diary.
00:48:14.840What appears to have happened is a year ago while he was still a candidate, she appears to have left her diary behind in a hotel room and somebody found it.
00:48:23.080And then they were sort of peddling it to people, you know, journalistic outfits.
00:48:27.800O'Keefe was one of those people who was on the receiving end of the offer.
00:48:32.200He actually wound up turning it over to law enforcement a year later, right after he publishes a couple of negative reports about the Biden administration, about big tech and the vaccines.
00:48:51.580Have you're a journalist or support journalism at all for a president and his DOJ to be doing this to a journalist is outrageous.
00:48:57.000And your point in writing a letter to the DOJ about this was what?
00:49:02.440Well, Megan, I wanted to highlight this incident, which you just laid out well.
00:49:06.920You know, there's still some things we don't know, but everything about it smells rotten.
00:49:09.800And it seems almost designed to deter anyone daring to think about sharing or publishing any information that's critical of the Democrats and certainly critical of Joe Biden and his family.
00:49:20.520The Garland Justice Department has insisted they follow their own regulations, but they just filed a document in court on Friday that also disputed that Project Veritas can be considered a journalistic organization.
00:49:33.460I don't know how to square that circle.
00:49:35.660But I think this is a case of pretty clear Department of Justice overreach against a political critic of the president.
00:49:44.560As you said, they use no-knock warrants to raid some of these homes.
00:49:49.440It is so early in the morning when there's no risk of destruction of evidence.
00:49:54.340I mean, when you've already conducted raids in the days beforehand, obviously, if someone had destroyed evidence, they would have had more than enough time to do so.
00:50:03.480When James O'Keefe's lawyers asked the Department of Justice not to pilfer through his phones and devices, they refused, forcing him and his lawyers to go to court.
00:50:12.400And the court probably ordered them to stop doing that if they were doing it and referred it to a special master.
00:50:17.920So everything about this case suggests the Department of Justice has violated its own regulations, has targeted political critics of the president who are a journalistic organization, even if you don't like the nature of journalism, and has used what you might call the process as the punishment here.
00:50:36.760So anyone who is involved in this, I think, has a lot of explaining to do.
00:50:42.240And if they don't want to explain it right now, then I would just be – I'd tell them to be mindful that when Republicans are in charge of the Congress again in 14 months, they're going to explain it then.
00:51:01.640No, they haven't, but the lack of a response is, in a way, its own response, or that document they filed on Friday is its own response, in which they claimed they followed their regulations when they were investigating journalistic organizations.
00:51:14.940But then they said that Project Veritas is not a journalistic organization.
00:51:18.480Imagine, imagine, Megan, the outcry, the outcry if the Department of Justice had done something like this to the New York Times or to CNN.
00:51:26.800It would be nonstop wall-to-wall coverage.
00:51:30.380And that's – in this administration, just imagine if the Department of Justice had done this in the last administration to those organizations like the New York Times that are often viewed as nothing but a conveyor belt for people inside the Department of Justice or elsewhere in government to leak information.
00:51:47.000Which brings me to another troubling part of this case.
00:51:50.480How did the New York Times know about these raids almost immediately?
00:51:54.480It's pretty clear the Department of Justice has been leaking sensitive, confidential, or attorney-client information to New York Times, again, in an effort to intimidate and embarrass the president's critics.
00:52:08.080I mean, Joe Biden was not even president when this diary went missing, however it went missing.
00:52:13.400And the allegation from whoever got their hands on it was trying to shop it around was that there was explosive material that would be very damaging to Joe Biden in the diary.
00:52:32.820And you put out in your letter that the Department of Justice doesn't even have jurisdiction over such a thing, such a small alleged crime, the theft of a diary.
00:52:40.720By the way, the journalist is never on the hook unless the journalist does the stealing him or herself.
00:52:45.980You know, we publish stuff all the time as journalists that we get from somebody who did the stealing.
00:53:38.320It's like you're trapping young girls across state lines.
00:53:41.980What federal law could possibly have been implicated?
00:53:44.320And if it was, as I write my letter, the National Stolen Property Act, Megan, well, it's got a $5,000 threshold.
00:53:50.720Is someone's personal diary really worth $5,000?
00:53:54.260And then finally, even if it is, the feds don't bring every case just because there is a federal case.
00:54:00.380They often defer to local authorities or they decline to prosecute it at all.
00:54:04.040So apparently, if you're the daughter of a presidential candidate, you can have the Department of Justice sicced on your dad's political critics because your diary wound up in someone else's hands.
00:54:17.400And if you're the son-in-law of the sitting attorney general, you might be able to sic him on parents objecting to your critical race theory agenda in schools, and then he won't even answer any questions about it.
00:54:31.660And I heard you say recently on, I think it was Fox, I can't remember, but you were saying that if China invades Taiwan, we should be prepared to shoot down their aircraft and sink their ships.
00:54:42.720And, you know, the conventional wisdom in response to that is, but we won't because we don't want another conflict and we're too weak to get in a conflict with China, which is sort of a, that squares the circle.
00:54:55.680Because the fact that we're projecting weakness and the debacle that we had in Afghanistan is what I think you believe might lead China to do this in the first place.
00:55:04.100So how likely do you actually think it is that China would actually invade Taiwan?
00:55:08.400Well, Xi Jinping has made it clear that he views this as part of his personal legacy to solve what they view as a 75-year-old wound before he might leave office in 2027.
00:55:20.880I think it could be much earlier than that, Reagan.
00:55:22.560I think it could be next year after the Olympics where the party of Congress in which Xi will presumably be anointed with his third term in office.
00:55:29.400And I think by being unwilling to say explicitly that we will come to Taiwan's defense, and if necessary, we will sink Chinese ships, we will shoot their aircraft down, and we will target the missile fields on mainland China they're using to attack Taiwan.
00:55:43.260We simply make that attack, that invasion, more likely.
00:55:47.300The most effectual way to preserve the peace, as George Washington said, is to be prepared for war and for your adversaries to know that you are prepared for war.
00:55:55.060We send exactly the opposite signals, both with our policy decisions these days and by not explicitly condemning.
00:56:04.320But something weird is happening right now with China.
00:56:06.600They kind of have to be a little good until the Beijing Olympics, right?
00:56:10.120Because they don't want to see an international boycott of those Olympics.
00:56:13.480And I know that that's something that you're now calling for, not just a diplomatic boycott, which the administration has said it might consider, where it won't send its officials.
00:56:22.340But, you know, the athletes can still go, you want a full boycott, just given their human rights abuses, I gather, and the one to two million Uyghurs in concentration camps and effectively being tortured.
00:56:33.220And now we get news of this star tennis player.
00:56:37.040Her name is Peng Shui, who was formerly world number one, ranked number one on women's doubles, I think it was.
00:56:57.200She posted online that she didn't consent at first.
00:56:59.280She was crying the entire time that this one former member, again, of the Communist Party over there, that his wife was guarding the door while he sexually assaulted her.
00:57:07.980She says, I'm still going to speak the truth about us.
00:57:10.000Within minutes, the post was taken down.
00:57:11.620She disappeared. Search engines in China are scrubbed of her.
00:57:14.980Even text mentions of her are flagged by state surveillance.
00:57:19.720And it's only when finally the White House spoke out and said something like, we're concerned, that then they put out some video of her over the weekend.
00:57:44.040Yeah, well, Megan, first off, I do want to commend the organized tennis for standing up to the Chinese Communist Party, unlike LeBron James and the panda huggers at the NBA.
00:57:56.120On the broader question of the Olympics boycotts, I called last week for a complete and total boycott of the games to include our athletes, their coaches, their staff.
00:58:06.940Calling for a diplomatic boycott is basically just standing by the status quo.
00:58:11.400It's extremely unlikely that any official delegation will be traveling to Beijing during their given their coronavirus lockdowns.
00:58:17.120I first began to raise alarms about this question last summer when I began to study more carefully about the risks our own athletes might face.
00:58:27.200That's the first and primary reason to call for the boycott.
00:58:29.880I sent the Biden administration a letter.
00:58:31.680They wrote me back in restricted channels, even though there's nothing classified in that letter.
00:58:35.460They're just embarrassed that they have no answer to protect our athletes from ubiquitous electronic surveillance or from DNA harvesting to advance the Chinese Communist Party's advanced biotechnology program.
00:58:47.120Or simple hostage taking, as China showed itself more than willing to do to get back a senior Huawei executive earlier this year.
00:58:55.500The administration has no plan to protect our own athletes and coaches and staff.
00:59:00.460That's why we should leave the civilized world in boycotting the games.
00:59:04.020A second reason, as you point out, Megan, is that this is a government that is today, not in the past, not allegedly, but today, engaged in genocide against religious and ethnic minorities in its country.
00:59:40.780It is more than possible right now to rebid these games to another country.
00:59:45.600I mean, there's probably half a dozen countries in Europe right now that have the ski slopes and the ice rinks and the other facilities that are needed to conduct these games in a civilized nation.
01:00:23.780Well, you know, Megan, this is just an ongoing saga from the Chinese Communist Party directing their ire at me.
01:00:31.260Last year, I was sanctioned for pointing out that the Wuhan coronavirus almost certainly originated in labs in Wuhan that studied the coronavirus.
01:00:40.700So, you know, my wife and I have not been able to take our second honeymoon to China.
01:00:44.520And I guess I won't be attending any of these games.
01:00:47.500The Biden administration doesn't announce a diplomatic boycott either, since the Chinese Communist Party seems to take an inordinate interest in my criticisms.
01:00:56.880So you couldn't get your civilized world.
01:00:59.880You couldn't get your op ed published in The New York Times on, you know, keeping order during the Black Lives Matter riots that we saw in summer 2020.
01:01:08.280That was the reason that that guy, the editor, you know, he got he got, you know, pulled because he wanted it.
01:01:40.300And Schumer says it'll pass by Christmas.
01:01:42.980I certainly hope it doesn't pass by Christmas or Thanksgiving or any other time, because it would be terrible for American families at a time when folks are paying more for gas than they have in many, many years on the drive to grandma's house or can't even get the food they need for Thanksgiving or the presents for Christmas.
01:01:58.320If they can, they're paying historic rates for it.
01:02:00.480The last thing we need is trillions of dollars of more spending.
01:02:56.880We had them both on together and you will love it.
01:02:59.400They're hilarious together and brilliant apart, too.
01:03:02.180He's also the author of The Quick Fix, Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social ILS.
01:03:08.480And Jesse's been tracking the media coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse since right after the shooting last year.
01:03:12.820So, Jesse, have they learned their lesson?
01:03:15.940Now the jury of 12 people have come out and said, not guilty in all charges.
01:03:20.900Did the media get the message, wise up and start owning the many lies that it has been telling us for the past year and a half?
01:03:28.040Unfortunately, I've seen a lot of doubling down so far.
01:03:31.620And, you know, I don't want to overstate this because I do think along the way there was some good journalism, you know, by outlets like The Times and The Washington Post and The New Yorker.
01:03:39.620But especially when it comes to more opinion-oriented pundits, it really does seem like they're doubling and tripling down on the idea that Kyle Rittenhouse was a dangerous white supremacist vigilante who was just seeking to cause trouble.
01:03:52.720And there's just very little evidence to support that account.
01:03:55.040Mm-hmm. Yeah, The Times, I agree, they did better than cable news, but that's really not tough to do.
01:04:00.920I mean, that is thinnest kid at fat camp.
01:04:04.800The Times early on criticized Kyle Rittenhouse for, quote, lionizing the police.
01:04:09.220Social media showed strong support for officers.
01:04:12.340So? So? What is that? Why is that relevant?
01:04:14.680New York Magazine, terrible, said Trump's leap to defend Rittenhouse is pathological.
01:04:20.400Or it's a deadly message that he wants to send to future would-be racial justice protesters.
01:04:25.040In other words, suggesting Trump wants anybody who shows up at a Black Lives Matter innocent protest with no violence to know that they could get shot with impunity.
01:04:33.800I mean, utter nonsense. We could go on.
01:04:36.480Daily Beast printed out, teen vigilante kills unarmed Kenosha protester who threw a plastic bag at him.
01:04:42.060Oh, you mean the convicted pedophile who was telling him, I'm going to kill you if I get you alone, and then was grabbing for his gun and saying, F you, while he did.
01:04:49.460Like, the misrepresentation, Scarborough said that he unloaded 60 rounds on people.
01:04:54.180I wonder why, you know, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy came out.
01:04:57.580I wonder why a deranged white nationalist Trump supporter, deranged white nationalist, would show up to a protest with a rifle and start shooting people.
01:05:07.080So there are so many examples of it, of it, Jesse.
01:05:09.380And now that, to me, you tell me, but I feel like they can't let it go because it's too important to them, the narrative that we are a white supremacist nation, that Kyle, just because he has white skin, despite his socioeconomically disadvantaged status, is privileged and has to be held up there and protected by said white nationalist system.
01:05:27.160Yeah, I think the sort of tribalistic psychology here is really weird.
01:05:30.560I mean, a lot of the folks who, in my view, did the worst and most dishonest takes on Kyle Rittenhouse, I agree with them on most political stuff.
01:05:46.440I have to recite my, you know, showing that I'm on the right side.
01:05:49.420The point is, there's this tribal poll where you need to show you're one of the good ones by trying to one-up the last guy about how much you hate Kyle Rittenhouse.
01:05:57.120And I think that's really, that's not how good journalism and good punditry work.
01:06:02.040You need to look at the facts, at what actually occurred.
01:06:04.380You can't speculate or try to mind-read someone.
01:06:28.980There will be somebody trying to put Kyle in jail for the rest of his life, and he will have a defender, and both sides will be represented.
01:06:35.380And there's no reason to try for a year to poison the jury pool against him.
01:06:41.480Well, I mean, the reason is you get attention, and you get retweets, and you get page views for writing inflammatory stuff.
01:06:48.060And there's a lot less of an appetite for sort of good, in-depth journalism.
01:06:52.180So when I mentioned the Times, there was a New York Times Magazine article that really attempted to carefully explain what happened that night.
01:06:59.060And, you know, I was a staffer at New York Magazine.
01:07:04.200Generally speaking, a piece like that, that represents tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of work and resources on the part of the Times,
01:07:11.020it's not going to get you as much attention as, like, a really inflammatory column that gets shared both by people who like it and who hate it.
01:07:20.620And, of course, the deliciousness early on of trying to tie it all to Trump was too much to resist.
01:07:28.600And I don't believe Trump should have commented on this case, just like I don't believe Barack Obama should have commented on Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin.
01:07:34.640And I don't think Biden should have weighed in on this case either, right?
01:07:37.620I just think, like, especially when you're the president or running to be, you have a special obligation to stay the hell out of it because you have a lot of influence.
01:07:44.220And it's unfair to the person who's on trial.