Rittenhouse Takes Stand, COVID Overreach, and Lemon's Accuser Responds, with Sharyl Attkisson, Coleman Hughes, Robert Barnes and Dustin Hice | Ep. 200
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 29 minutes
Words per minute
183.97173
Harmful content
Misogyny
5
sentences flagged
Toxicity
36
sentences flagged
Hate speech
16
sentences flagged
Summary
Kyle Rittenhouse takes the stand in the trial of his accuser, Don Lemon, who accuses him of sexually assaulting him in a bar in the Hamptons, New York, in July 2018. Megyn and her co-host discuss the extraordinary moment in the case, as well as the incredible testimony from Kyle.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have an unbelievable show
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for you today. Truly unbelievable. An extraordinary moment just happened in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
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They put him on the stand. No one was expecting him to take the stand, but he just did. And we've
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got a couple of just incredible highlights for you, which we'll play momentarily. And
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we happen to have the lawyer who was representing Kyle Rittenhouse up until a week ago with us
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today. So we'll get to that in just one minute. But we begin today with a very upset Don Lemon
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and his equally upset lawyer. Turns out they watch The Megyn Kelly Show and feel rather
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unhappy about the interview we did with the man accusing Don Lemon of assaulting him in
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a bar in the Hamptons in July 2018. Now, Don's lawyer doesn't like it when one refers to this
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case as an alleged sexual assault. We actually called it an alleged assault of a sexual nature
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on the show, which it is. But I am happy to just refer to it as Dustin described on this
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show on Monday. That time, Don Lemon allegedly put his hand in his pants, rubbed himself aggressively
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and shoved two fingers into a stranger's face while asking, do you like pussy or dick? P or D,
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P or D. Lemon's lawyer took to the press yesterday to try to portray herself as some sort of tough
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gal. Sad. I mean, I remember being that lawyer trying to sort of make yourself sound tough.
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I get it. I get it, sister. By claiming that she had fired off a nasty gram to yours truly,
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except she didn't actually do that. She just sent it to the press because that's what she really
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cares about, trying to convince the public that Don Lemon is not a pervert. I get it. These are
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deeply disturbing allegations. But we're not going to be threatened out of doing our job.
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We're going to continue to cover this story, including the January trial, because it's news
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and we will continue, as we always have, to shed light on stories of alleged abuse and assault,
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irrespective of politics or threats or of the celebrity status of the defendant.
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As mad as the attorney, who, by the way, spends her spare time trying to make it as a legal commentator
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on. Wait for it. CNN is at your humble correspondent. She's really ticked off at Dustin Heiss,
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who she accuses of lying about a number of things in our interview and in this case.
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Now, look, I have no dog in this hunt. I wasn't in that bar three years ago,
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and ultimately it will be up to a jury to decide what happened that night.
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But I do appreciate evidence as a recovering lawyer myself. And Lemon's attorney pointed to
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some that we are happy to consider. It's quite piecemeal, selectively called from the record,
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as lawyers do, with snippets of deposition testimony without the full transcript,
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photos with no context and so on. But we wanted to know more. So we contacted all parties and
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invited them on. Lemon's lawyer, so bold in the press earlier this week, suddenly got very shy
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and didn't respond, though the invitation is still open. You can come on anytime you want to.
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But Dustin Heiss and his attorney agreed to come back on the show and answer all of our questions.
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So good news, Don and Don's lawyer. You want to talk more about this case in the press?
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And so do we. Joining me now, Dustin Heiss and his attorney, Robert Barnes.
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Hey, guys, thank you very much for being back, Dustin. And nice to have you here, Robert.
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So let me just start with her first denial. You told me on Monday, Dustin, that Don Lemon's team
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offered to settle the case for four hundred thousand and in total made three settlement offers.
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She has now denied that, saying they have made no settlement offers other than an eight thousand
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dollar. It's called an offer of judgment, basically nuisance value. So who's lying?
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She is. I got three separate settlement offers, four hundred grand in the first beginning before
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it all went to the public. And then sometime after that, another I believe it was twenty five thousand
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dollars and then some of the eight thousand dollar nuisance or whatever she calls it.
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OK, so one for four hundred thousand, one for twenty five thousand and one for eight thousand.
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Correct. OK, so what the four hundred thousand one was offered prior to you filing the lawsuit.
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Correct. OK, now they say that you offered to pay a key witness in the case who we discussed
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on Monday. His name is George Ganales in exchange for his testimony. He's your main and I believe
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only witness other than yourself. I mean, you're going to testify that this happened to you.
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And George, we talked about this on Monday and he gave an interview to Fox News dot com
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has said he saw the whole thing and that you're telling the truth. They say that you offered to
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pay him for his testimony and that you failed to produce the texts showing that in discovery.
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OK, here's an example. On March 24th, 2019, they have a text where you write to him,
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you know, if I get money, I'll take care of you, my dude. And George testified at his deposition.
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I'm assuming that that Dustin meant he'll give me something if he wins something.
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Then there's a text shown to George in his deposition where you say, Dustin, you say we're
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celebrating after all this shit. George says any word on that. You say, I got you. I'm a man of my
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word. George again at his deposition. I guess he's insinuating if he gets anything, he'll take care of
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me money wise. And then another text. You, Dustin, to George, you're the star witness.
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LOL, George, I'm in you. You know, I'll take care of you. So these do sound like offers to pay
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George for his testimony. Why did you do that? Well, George took a huge risk in speaking out on
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me. He had only known me for a few weeks prior to the incident happening. And, you know, and quite
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frankly, he suffered a lot of damage because he lost a job working for a celebrity. And one of the
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reasons why a lot of people don't want to speak out is because they're fearful of what the
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repercussions would be. So you were aware of the fact that he might be reticent given the
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blowback he might get in the Hamptons with the celebrity community? Correct. Is that what you're
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saying? Blacklisted. If you speak out against celebrities, it's like taboo in the Hamptons.
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When you came on on Monday, you suggested that he'd been fired from a job with a very well-known
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celebrity after the Fox News dot com article with him hit. We now know from the deposition
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transcripts, the pieces that we've seen that celebrity was Madonna. So you're saying Madonna
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got wind of his Fox News dot com article and fired him. Correct. We did. How does he know
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it was related to the interview? He from what I gather, he had a publicist read. I Googled
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him or something and his name came up as a witness and she's she fired him because of that.
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Now, I'm going to ask your lawyer this in a second, Dustin. But why didn't you produce
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those texts between you and George in the course of discovery? They suggest this was you trying to
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hide evidence. Quite honestly, I had hundreds and hundreds of texts and Facebook messages and I
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gave them I gave my attorneys at the time my passwords to go through and look, find whatever
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they can. I produced everything that I willingly had and knew about. I wasn't trying to hide any
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evidence from them. Robert, what about that? Because they're asking for the case to basically
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be thrown out because they say Dustin hid evidence. Well, it's a case of confession through
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projection because the only party who has failed to produce meaningful text, DM, social media
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information, emails, phone messages is Don Lemon, who's produced almost nothing claims. He has nothing
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at all that could possibly be pertinent or relevant to this case or to any other accusations or allegations
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that have been made against him in the past. So the only person that's hiding information and hiding
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documentation is Don Lemon himself. Dustin has produced hundreds and thousands of text messages,
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DMs, personal accounts, social media accounts, everything imaginable. He has overproduced, quite
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frankly, whereas Don Lemon has produced next to nothing. So it's mostly a case of them projecting onto
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Dustin what Don Lemon himself has been up to. But you did delete your Twitter. I think you told me that
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two on Monday, Dustin, but then you restored it, as I understand. Yeah, I mean, I did that to just
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avoid bully tactics from people. And I, I, to my knowledge, I was thought I was putting it like,
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you know, deactivating it where I could go back on, but I ended up deleting it. But there was nothing on
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there about CNN. Again, I never paid any attention to CNN, except for being bored one day and having a day
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in Atlanta where I went and toured the studios. And, um, prior to that, I'd only watched, you know,
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Anthony Bourdain and, and never paid any attention to Don Lemon or. Yeah. Now there's absolutely zero
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evidence that I've seen that suggests you had any sort of a focus on Don Lemon prior to this encounter
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in the bar. Okay. Let's talk about Isabel. There's a witness named Isabel who was in the bar on the night
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in question. She's a friend of yours. And you texted George asking about what this woman Isabel
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might say about this case. And George responded, quote, she knows it happened, but she would 100%
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lie to protect Lemon. He then goes on. This is George again. I would try and move away from her.
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She's a C word and we'll try to ruin this. Ruin what? What specifically was the concern there?
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Well, so George and Isabel had a relationship somewhat, I guess you could call it over that
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summer. And, um, she is a resident of Sag Harbor as are her parents. And at her high school graduation,
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uh, they, her parents know Don Lemon, their friends are acquaintances. And at her high school
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graduation, they even got Don Lemon to speak at her high school graduation. So she's well aware of
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everything that's transpired. But, um, you know, I don't, because of their close relationship with him,
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I don't know if George and her, they, they were not dating anymore. And he, he said he implied that
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she would be willing to, um, lie on his behalf. Yeah. I mean, he says that in, in writing in the same
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text exchange, she would 100% lie to protect Lemon, but she, she will try to ruin this. Basically what
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the other side suggests is that this kind of sounds like two witnesses settling on how to keep out
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testimony that may conflict with what you and George were going to say. Is that fair?
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Well, she's well aware of what happened. She was with us almost every night and the constant
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harassment and, you know, um, antagonizing I got from being out. She's, she saw, witnessed it,
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you know, the lemon drops and people tossing lemons full, like real lemons across the bar at me.
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Um, you know, not jokingly, but to me, it wasn't very funny.
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What do you make of the fact that she apparently testified? She doesn't believe George did witness
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this exchange. She believes George was talking to her at the time this took place and that George
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Well, George was right next to me when it happened. So, I mean, I don't, I can't speak to her
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All right. Let's talk about that because, um, one of the things that they are pointing to is that
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George at his deposition wavered a bit on his testimony. He's your star witness. Again,
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you're the real star witness, but he's all, he's your best and only, uh, he testified at his
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deposition repeatedly. I looked at the, just the pages that their lawyer submitted. I haven't read
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the whole deposition transcript. I'm sure there's stuff in there that's good for you too. Um, anyway,
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he testified at his deposition repeatedly that he did see Don Lemon rub his genitals and then your
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face, but she kept coming at him over and over and over. And later he did waiver, um, ultimately saying
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that he wasn't sure if he actually did see Lemon touch you saying, quote, I'm not 100% sure if I
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saw it or not point for Don Lemon. No. I mean, I can't speak to it to that deposition, but George
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saw it all happen. And he was, he actually was the, one of the ones that, uh, teased me and
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antagonized me about it more than anybody. Cause he was my boss. And every day I went into work and
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he'd be like, you know, two fingers up and edge, you know, I can't speak to that, but I can tell
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you that I did over 10 hours worth of deposition. And by the end I was feeling a little shaken and,
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and, uh, despondent to say the least. Yeah. Well, these things can be unpleasant. That's for sure.
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Robert, what do you make of that? Because, you know, George repeatedly said it happened and
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happened and happened. I saw it. And then as time went on, he did waiver and started saying,
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I don't know. I'm frustrated. You asked me so many times. I'm not sure. You know,
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you think you see it and you say it so many times over and over, and then you're not sure
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whether you imagined it. He said that. Yeah. It's basically a case of a lawyer
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badgering about every tiny little subcomponent. And what George is talking about is just one
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component of it. What has been undisputed throughout this case is that George has from the get go long
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before any of the texts that they're complaining about has always said what happened is what Dustin
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said happened. Indeed, there's going to be evidence to trial that Isabel said the same thing.
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So if she gets up and tells a different story now, uh, even though she lawyered up in these
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proceedings, actually ended up with the, one of the magistrates assigned our case at one point was on,
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was part of the law firm that was representing her. So there's been a lot of interesting developments
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in this case, but, uh, what all of the evidence is that I have found supports Dustin's story.
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One hundred percent. Hmm. Uh, by the way, we should tell the audience, we asked George,
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we tried to reach out to George to get him to come on. No luck, uh, on that front, but he
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were told stands by his story that he is going to testify on your behalf. Um, let's talk about
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these pictures. So you and Isabel one night after the alleged assault went while still in the Hamptons
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summer of 2018 to Don Lemon's home, went on his lawn and seemed to have a hell of a time, uh, posing
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with lemons. There's one shot of you with a lemon in front of your crotch. Um, there it is. And his,
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his team is suggesting you at this point in time are suggesting you were undergoing severe emotional
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distress, that you suffered suicidal ideations, that you were in fear for your safety and that
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these do not reflect a man in that mental state. What say you? Well, this was one of the darkest
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times of my life. And I know it might seem like that through those pictures, but, um, you know,
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there is no guide guidelines or handbook on how to deal with what you're going through,
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especially when you're, uh, being harassed and antagonized and ridiculed and teased about
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something that happened to you and you're around all your peers. Um, that particular night, um,
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if I remember correctly, we, we had been drinking and, um, Isabel knowing knew where Don Lemon lived
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and everybody's like, Oh, here's some, here's some lemons. And they threw it across the bar at me.
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And I was holding a lemon and we walked about two blocks away and took some pictures there. And
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quite frankly, I, I don't, I can't tell you what my thought process was. Then I just was trying to
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fit in, in a place where I was kind of laughing stock and a joke. Um, but you know, I, again,
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there's no way that there's no guideline to like get through this. And, um, when I finally got back to
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Florida and processed all the stuff that happened on a daily and nightly basis is when it really
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started to affect me. I mean, I have to say, I can understand Robert, the need for a male,
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a straight male who's been approached in this way in a bar, according to him. And all of his friends
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are sort of giving him jazz about allegedly having this encounter with a man who's openly gay,
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just trying to laugh it off. I mean, I don't know if you obviously shouldn't have gone on Don
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Lemon's property. But, uh, I, what do you make of it? Cause it's those pictures in front of a jury,
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they may not play so well. Well, it's a very common defense tactic to take this path. And,
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uh, but anybody that's, I've been representing victims of assault and abuse and harassment
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for more than 20 years. And this response is actually quite common. People are trying to get
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back the power that they lost when they were either assaulted, harassed, or abused, because that at core,
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almost all, whether it's sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual assault, all of it is more
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about power than it is about sex. And down deep, it's the power that you're, that's stolen from you
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and your ability to try to recover that people respond to a wide range of manners. So it's not
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a surprise at all. What's interesting is all of these stories that the defense is highlighting
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are stories where everybody believes what happened to Dustin happened to Dustin. And because otherwise
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the stories make no sense, otherwise the jokes make no sense. Otherwise the harassment make
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no sense. And so it's just further proof that Don Lemon is guilty and he should step up to the
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plate and accept responsibility for it. Well, what do you, why can't, why couldn't it be that Dustin,
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you know, I'll play devil's advocate that Dustin made up this story. This is what his lawyer,
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Lemon's lawyers, Dustin made up the story, told everybody the story. And that's why Dustin was
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getting mocked. And Dustin was willing to take that bullet for an eventual payday.
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It's just, why would people spend all this time mocking and harassing and making jokes and doing
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all of this over a story that's not true? It doesn't really make sense. And from my understanding
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of talking to all of the people that have been involved in this, all of them believed it was
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true. And so they may, one or two may be trying to change their story. Now we'll see if they'll
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actually testify to that. But the net effect of it is their behavior only makes sense if the underlying
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story is true. And there's only one side in this case that's scared of a jury trial. And that's
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Don Lemon's side. They're the ones begging the court not to allow a trial by jury. If they think
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they're right, if they're this confident, they should want a jury to vindicate and validate their
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story. But instead, they're begging the court not to allow a jury to try this case.
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Dustin, you made some unkind posts about Don Lemon. One, forgive me, called him a cocksucker.
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Forgive me. And also, it appears, although I guess I should ask you that there's one photo,
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it's the lower photo that's cut off in this picture we're showing, we'll show to you where
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the it's a ID. A ID is written over. It looks like aid maybe is part of, I don't know, AIDS. I'm not
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sure what that means. And his team is sort of pointing at this saying, you know, you were hostile.
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You were potentially mocking his sexuality. Can you respond to this? Why did you do this?
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Yeah, I mean, wouldn't anybody be hostile if they went through what I went through when he did to me?
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I, you know, I've gone through a range of emotions through this has happened. And it's ranged from
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anger and hate and just despising him. And although I don't like him anymore, I've just
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gotten past the point of anger, because what's the point in putting posts out there in the echo
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chamber? And, you know, the other thing is, if, you know, when he when he rubbed my fit, his genitals,
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and then rubbed my face, if he had had some kind of STD or something like that, you know, that could
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be he could have smeared it, for lack of a better word on my face. And it's just something that was
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really disgusting. And I was angry and speaking out on it. I mean, you heard you heard me say at the
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top, his lawyers taking issue, what we described it as an assault of a sexual nature. Do you consider
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this a sexual assault? It's you've sued him for assault. But do you consider this to have been
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a sexual assault? Absolutely. I mean, like I just said, you know, if he has some some kind of disease,
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then I could have put that in my face. And then on top of it, if I would have done that to him,
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they would have called this a hate crime, you know. So if there's just it's it was disgusting and
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repulsive. And I've had to deal with it now for over three, three years. And it's just amazes me that
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they're fighting it like this and denying. Robert, they CNN has inappropriately, in my view,
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injected itself into this controversy, has no business representing Don Lemon in this way.
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It has a responsibility to its own employees not to telegraph that it does a knee jerk defense of
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someone accused of this kind of disgusting behavior. He needs his own PR person, his lawyer
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or whoever else she wants to use. Fine. That's that's different. But CNN doesn't belong here.
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I wonder what you think about how CNN has behaved in this whole case.
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Well, I mean, one of the reasons why I got involved in the case is here you had one of
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the most powerful media networks in the world waging war against a bartender from the Hamptons
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who was assaulted. And by the way, the definition of the assault meets the definition of sexual assault
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under the federal rules of evidence, as we've already actually litigated in this case. And so I was
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offended by that because here you have a powerful media institution trying to crush a little guy,
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not try to investigate to get to the bottom of it, not try to resolve it, not try to mediate it
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if they're going to get involved, but instead come to bat for their million dollar anchor and to
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support lies against an innocent kid. And it's sort of it's deeply morally offensive how they've tried
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to leverage their power and their influence to sort of bully and intimidate just an ordinary person.
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And, you know, it's a story that happens in the Hamptons a lot. A lot of people get run over by the
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powerful and the privileged in the Hamptons and it's time somebody do something about it.
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What do you make of I know you weren't his lawyer at the beginning of this case,
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but is it your understanding that Lemon's team offered four hundred thousand dollars to settle
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this case? I can't speak to any settlements that might have confidentiality attached to them,
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and I was not part of it at the time. So I'm unaware of what settlements were or were not offered
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anyway beyond what might be privileged or confidential. But I'll put this settlement out there.
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Don Lemon's people say that this case is about money. Dustin has authorized me to offer a
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settlement that if he confesses and apologizes, we'll dismiss the case entirely with prejudice
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without a penny, nickel, dime or dollar being paid. So if they're serious about rectifying and
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remedying this, they can take action. This case isn't about money. It's about justice.
00:21:49.060
How about the polygraph? Dustin says he took one that he passed. Have you seen that?
00:21:53.400
I have not personally seen it, but I'm aware from prior counsel that that's the case.
00:21:57.260
Okay. And what about, like, why did you took this case? You represented him. You're a legit lawyer.
00:22:04.640
You've taken on very big cases. And often in a case like this, sadly, a guy like Dustin would wind
00:22:10.780
up with sort of second tier counsel. You're not. So why are you involved in this?
00:22:15.540
Because basically what unites all of my cases, they're underdog cases. This was an ordinary,
00:22:20.260
everyday person being crushed and bullied by the system, often lawyers helping to facilitate that.
00:22:25.900
And that just offends me to the core of who I am. And so he needed defense. I wanted to see him get
00:22:30.660
a defense. I can't always equalize the playing field, but I do what I can to do so. And particularly
00:22:35.660
in circumstances like this. Was Don Lemon deposed in this case? Yes, he was. And do you believe his
00:22:43.560
testimony was truthful? No, I believe he committed perjury in his deposition. I believe he will commit
00:22:49.100
perjury again at trial because I'll be calling him as a witness and I'll be able to prove it.
00:22:54.220
And so we'll see if he repeats the same lies at trial. But if he does, we'll catch him in a second
00:22:58.800
act of perjury. Do you think this will go to trial in January as scheduled? Yes, I do.
00:23:04.200
Wow. And do you have any surprises up your sleeve? I'm sure you don't want to tell us what they are,
00:23:08.320
but do you have any surprises for Don Lemon at the trial? Yes. Don Lemon's people are talking a lot
00:23:12.420
about witnesses. They should remember that impeachment evidence and impeachment testimony
00:23:16.460
I don't have to disclose until Don Lemon lies on the stand. But if he does, we will catch him and
00:23:21.680
we will prove it at trial. Can you tell us how he perjured himself? I'd rather save that so that
00:23:27.300
see if Lemon repeats it at trial. Well, listen, I want to reiterate that the lawyer,
00:23:32.640
the tough talking lawyer, look, I get it. She's trying to act, you know, I'm truly I used to be that
00:23:37.020
person. I used to practice law and especially as a woman, you try to act super tough like, yeah,
0.99
00:23:41.340
OK, whatever. It's fine. She can come on any time. Dustin's come on twice now. Don Lemon,
00:23:46.300
you're welcome to happy to have an open, honest discussion with you about all the proof in your
00:23:51.220
case. And you can tell us whether you did or did not do what Dustin has alleged in great detail.
00:23:56.980
Same for his lawyer. Both are welcome. And listen, Dustin, you're a stand up guy. You came back. We
00:24:02.500
called you up, said, do you want to come talk about this? You said, absolutely. I'll be there.
00:24:05.720
Robert as well. And we're grateful for your for your willingness to come on. Thank you.
00:24:10.140
Now, listen, we want to tell you that Robert is staying with us for breaking news in the Rittenhouse
00:24:14.680
trial. Robert was up until a week ago an attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, and he has plenty of insight
00:24:20.240
into what we just saw. An extraordinary morning in the trial of Kyan Rittenhouse as he took the stand
00:24:26.280
against all odds. Nobody believed this was going to happen in his own defense and some fireworks
00:24:30.680
taking place right now. Stay tuned. We'll get to it.
00:24:33.120
In an extraordinary turn of events in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Kyle Rittenhouse has taken the stand
00:24:45.660
today to testify in his own defense this morning when asked about the circumstances that led to him
00:24:52.440
shooting Joseph Rosenbaum. Now, keep in mind, he shot three people. Two were killed. One was injured.
00:24:59.800
The third has taken the stand against Kyle Rittenhouse at this trial.
00:25:04.820
And so we're talking about the first man that he did shoot and kill, Joseph Rosenbaum.
00:25:10.520
Of course, Kyle says he was there to provide medical help. He wasn't there to cause havoc,
00:25:14.640
but havoc did ensue. Kyle broke down on the stand while recounting being surrounded and cornered
00:25:21.820
right before that shooting took place. This led to the trial having to be paused. Watch this.
00:25:28.180
When you step back from Mr. Zeminski, what's your plan?
00:25:33.780
My plan is to get out of that situation and go back north down Sheridan Road to where
00:25:45.320
And did you get back? Were you able to go in a northerly direction?
00:25:53.260
Once I take that step back, I look over my shoulder and Mr. Rosenbaum, Mr. Rosenbaum was
00:26:08.220
And I was cornered from in front of me with Mr. Zeminski.
00:26:53.460
We're going to just take time for our break anyway. You can just relax for a minute, sir.
00:27:05.780
Still with me is Robert Barnes, who, in addition to his work on Dustin Heiss's case that we just
00:27:10.600
discussed, has previously served as Kyle Rittenhouse's civil attorney up until recently,
00:27:16.680
Robert, thanks for sticking around. My goodness. He is such a young kid and is in so much trouble
00:27:25.840
as a result of this night. Let me just ask you first for your overall reaction to the fact that
00:27:29.920
he took the stand and really struggled to control his emotions.
00:27:34.220
Yeah. I mean, my view is I think people who recognized it correctly is it's PTSD.
00:27:39.440
Kyle, that night, they saw him white as a ghost as the witness testimony, pale, sweating profusely.
00:27:45.940
He spent the next three weeks when he was in jail awaiting extradition, vomiting every single night,
00:27:52.060
couldn't keep anything down. So it's someone that experienced extreme trauma because he's a very
00:27:57.280
naive, innocent kid. You know, he didn't really think anyone would cause him any harm. And
00:28:02.100
everything that happened that night is still a complete shock to him, to his core. And, you know,
00:28:07.480
he's been mischaracterized and lied about by the press extensively when he's just a nice,
00:28:13.700
innocent, blue collar kid who's now, you know, put under the gun because of, in my view,
0.92
00:28:20.720
Mm hmm. The can I just show the audience just a sample of the media? I mean, the media has been so,
00:28:27.680
to say, closed minded on the possibility that he may not be this guilty killer.
00:28:34.220
Here's just a sampling of how the media has handled its coverage of this.
00:28:37.240
Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17 year old vigilante. Kyle Rittenhouse, the vigilante. Kyle Rittenhouse,
00:28:44.260
the armed teenage vigilante. A 17 year old vigilante, arguably a domestic terrorist,
00:28:49.900
picked up a rifle, drove to a different state to shoot people. Kyle Rittenhouse,
0.90
00:28:53.680
a guy who's deeply racist, went with weapons to a Black Lives Matter protest,
0.79
00:28:59.180
looking to get in trouble. He did. He murdered a couple of people. Rittenhouse,
0.90
00:29:02.580
the 17 year old kid, just running around, shooting and killing protesters.
00:29:09.080
You see the 17 year old who was radicalized by Trumpism, took his AR-15 to Kenosha and became
0.91
00:29:15.740
a killer. A white, Trump supporting, MAGA loving, Blue Lives Matter social media partisan,
0.51
00:29:24.820
17 years old, picks up a gun, drives from one state to another with the intent to shoot people.
0.97
00:29:30.140
A 17 year old boy who drove across state lines with an AR-15 and started shooting people up,
00:29:43.980
My God, Robert, this is not even an attempt to be fair.
00:29:50.020
And there's a lot of people that are going to face a lot of libel lawsuits,
00:29:52.920
that the only reason why they haven't been sued yet is because of the trial. And once the trial is
00:29:57.860
over and the acquittals that should come with it, I'm sure Kyle will seek some relief and remedy
00:30:03.240
from some of those people if they refuse to correct and retract. But when even the young Turks is
0.99
00:30:08.520
admitting they got it completely wrong, maybe Joe Scarborough and some others need to start
00:30:14.600
Not bloody likely, not if history is any indicator. So Kyle breaks down on the stand. He's clearly
00:30:20.680
struggling. PTSD is probably spot on. He talked about how the well, there's a there was a lot
00:30:27.920
today. The shooting of Rosenbaum was the first shooting and talked. You heard a bit about there
00:30:32.200
about how he was threatened by him, how he had been specifically threatened by Rosenbaum. Want to get
00:30:37.600
the specifics here? Hold on. He says Rosenbaum threatened to kill him two times prior to the fatal
00:30:42.940
moment, said, if if I catch any of you efforts alone, I'm going to effing kill you. I'm going
0.99
00:30:50.020
to cut your effing hearts out and kill you in words. And he also testified earlier he had a bullet
1.00
00:30:56.720
bulletproof vest, but he gave it to his friend because his intention was only to help people to
00:31:02.180
provide first aid. Can I ask you what he's doing on the stand? Because the test, the trial to me has
00:31:07.960
been going well for him. The prosecution's struggling to make its case. The witnesses like
00:31:13.940
Richie McGinnis of The Daily Caller, who was an independent journalist there, testified about how
00:31:19.720
the probably most contentious, forgive me, shooting that took place was an attack on Kyle and really
00:31:27.120
gave him grounds for self-defense and on and on each each one of the shootings. The defense has managed
00:31:32.380
to get the foundation in for for a directed verdict for for self-defense finding. So why
00:31:37.880
why is he on the stand? Yeah, the two areas of disagreement I had with the defense team was I
00:31:43.840
believe that there needed to be extensive jury selection. They chose to go otherwise and pick
00:31:48.560
a jury in less than a full day. And the other was I didn't think there was any necessity to put Kyle
00:31:53.480
on the stand. I believe that the testimony would be as it has been, which proves every aspect of
00:31:58.920
self-defense without the necessity of putting him on the stand. And particularly a young kid who's never
00:32:04.280
been through this before, you're taking a lot of risks, put him on putting him on the stand,
00:32:08.260
subjecting him to cross-examination of a long-standing prosecutor. And the more innocent
00:32:13.420
someone is generally the, you know, they, they struggle sometimes on the stand. It's, you know,
00:32:17.620
Bill Clinton can lie very effectively. Your innocent kid can be telling the truth and people totally
00:32:22.620
misunderstand it. And so that's why I was not in favor of him taking that risk, but hopefully it
00:32:28.660
doesn't backfire on him because the kid's as innocent as any human being I've ever had the privilege of
00:32:33.040
defending. There's the first guy who was shot, this Rosenbaum, who was a nutcase from the sound.
00:32:38.320
I mean, this guy was a convicted child molester. He was just out of the mental facility. He was
0.92
00:32:42.960
running around looking for trouble in, in a way, Kyle Rittenhouse wasn't even arguably,
00:32:46.880
this guy was a troublemaker. And the testimony has all been that this guy threatened Kyle. He chased
00:32:51.600
Kyle. The, the evidence just came out that he was, um, that he was hiding behind some sort of
00:32:56.280
trash receptacle, like lying in wait. And then, I mean, I just don't think there's any chance
00:33:01.300
of a murder conviction, intentional homicide on that guy. Then there's the second guy,
00:33:06.640
Huber, um, who attacked Kyle with a skateboard. And, you know, that too is deeply problematic
00:33:12.600
because he was attacking him. Whatever was in Huber's mind about whether Kyle was a good guy or
00:33:17.540
back, a bad guy. I don't, I don't know that it's going to matter. And then there was this
00:33:21.780
extraordinary matter with a moment with this third witness who he shot, but didn't kill Kyle
00:33:26.580
shop. Um, gauge is his first name. And the, the defense got a Perry Mason moment with this guy
00:33:35.320
on the stand yesterday. I think it was watch what happened. When you were standing three to five feet
00:33:42.700
from him with your arms up in the air, he never fired, right? Correct. It wasn't until you pointed
00:33:50.320
your gun at him, advanced on him with your gun. Now your hands down pointed at him that he fired,
00:34:01.540
And there's, there's the reaction shot of the prosecutor with his head in his hands. I mean,
00:34:06.620
that's ball game on his count. Is it not? Oh, great. I mean the, between Richie McGinnis's
00:34:11.780
testimony that Rosenbaum yelled F you and then went for the gun and Kyle didn't shoot until then
00:34:16.860
Grossowitz testimony that, uh, he was afraid Anthony Huber was going to kill him with that
00:34:21.720
skateboard. Then Grossowitz's own testimony that Kyle didn't shoot until he put, put up his gun and
00:34:27.500
pointed it right at him. You couldn't have a cleaner, neater case of self-defense. And that's
00:34:33.200
why he should be acquitted of all of those charges. And I didn't think it was necessary for him to take
00:34:37.840
the stand, but hopefully, uh, the jury understands and sees him for the innocent kid that he is.
00:34:43.040
Right now, just an update from my team on what's happening inside the courtroom. Um,
00:34:47.140
the prosecutor's trying to link Kyle, his playing of the video game call of duty to the shooting.
00:34:52.620
He's asking about Kyle's same gun as the one in the video game. And the purpose of the game is
00:34:57.260
to quote, to shoot everyone. And Kyle's saying, it's just a game. It's not real. I mean, if that,
0.95
00:35:02.780
if this is what they've got, you know, I mean, they're trying to paint him vigilante. You were going
00:35:06.580
there enjoying, you know, just the prospect of randomly shooting people, but the evidence doesn't
00:35:10.900
support that. Then, then my team's telling me the judge is currently yelling at the prosecutor
00:35:15.620
saying, quote, I'm not sure what you're trying to do here. When the prosecutor asked Kyle, why he
00:35:21.100
chose to stay silent after the incident until now, the judge is saying that is part of the justice
00:35:26.980
process. Kyle has no obligation to speak out. It's called the fifth amendment. What do you,
00:35:33.220
what's going on? What's the story with this judge?
00:35:35.000
The, the judge is a no nonsense judge been on the bench almost half a century. That's why he
00:35:40.200
intersperses stories with between Romans and the Bible. And when he was at a judicial conference 30
00:35:45.520
years ago, uh, you know, old school judge, I call him a Southern judge who happens to be up in
00:35:50.280
Wisconsin. The, and he's a no nonsense guy. And what the prosecutor just did is violate Kyle's
00:35:56.300
fifth amendment rights. So basically the, the, because you're not allowed to comment on a client
00:36:01.260
or defendant ever, ever taking the fifth at any point in time. And just because he's waived it
00:36:06.360
now and taken the stand, you still can't comment on him taking it previously. So what he just did
00:36:11.120
is guarantee that if there is a conviction, it will be set aside because of the questioning,
00:36:15.940
Hubert, just, uh, the questioning that Binger just did.
00:36:19.060
Right. Exactly. You're not allowed to do that. That's pretty, pretty steadfast. And the judge,
00:36:23.280
well, maybe the judge just saved, uh, the case or a mistrial by saying, you got to stop that.
00:36:29.420
That's not allowed. So what's the story with the jury? Uh, do I haven't read much about them?
00:36:34.260
What, what, what's the makeup and how do you think that plays in?
00:36:38.160
Well, one of the areas of disagreement between me and defense counsel was, uh, I thought as long
00:36:42.780
as a jury was picked that presumed Kyle innocent, Kyle would definitely be acquitted, but that required
00:36:48.540
because of the extensive pretrial publicity, when we pulled it, two thirds of Kenosha jurors presumed
00:36:54.200
Kyle guilty. So I thought it was very important to do a very probing jury selection
00:36:59.200
and void are the way that took place in the McMichael Arbery case, which took two weeks in
00:37:03.460
Georgia. Uh, unfortunately they took less than a day. So they kind of got, uh, basically
00:37:08.480
at the end of the day, they'd wrapped and they'd already picked their jury. There's 18 jurors.
00:37:13.000
Six of them are alternates. We don't know which ones publicly are the six alternates. Uh, it is,
00:37:17.980
it represents Kenosha. Kenosha is a very blue collar town, uh, an ethnic immigrant, hot,
0.88
00:37:23.160
hodgepodge of, you know, a substantial Italian Polish. Uh, there's a, I know a Mexican American,
00:37:28.420
uh, juror that's on there. So the, and that generally represents and reflects the community.
00:37:33.040
It's like a blue collar extension of Milwaukee and Chicago that sits right in between the two of them.
00:37:37.800
And so a random jury was usually a mistrial jury, uh, or a split verdict jury, uh, in the polling data.
00:37:45.620
Uh, so hopefully they got a better jury than that. Uh, but they'll probably need a little bit of luck
00:37:49.840
because they didn't, uh, neither side put a lot of effort into jury selection that I could see.
00:37:54.640
No, that's cardinal rule in, in, uh, in practicing law. You got to know as much as you possibly can
00:37:58.620
about your jurors and how it might be likely to go for you. We've got the soundbite. Now the judge
00:38:05.900
Why would you think that that made it okay for you without any advanced notice to bring this matter
00:38:11.940
before the jury? You are already, you were, I was astonished when you began,
00:38:19.840
your examination by commenting on the defendant's post arrest silence. That's basic law. It's been
00:38:26.660
basic law in this country for 40 years, 50 years. I have no idea why you would do something like
00:38:32.140
that. And it gives, um, uh, well, I'll, I'll leave it at that. Oh boy. That's not a good moment for
00:38:40.600
the prosecution, Robert. It's extreme misconduct. And this is a prosecutor that is misused and abused
00:38:46.560
judicial proceedings to lie about Kyle all the time to, in the name of trying to introduce evidence
00:38:52.100
or argue bail when it had nothing to do with either. He was trying to inflame the court of
00:38:56.880
public opinion with false news because he knew the local media could reproduce and reprint and
00:39:02.040
republish anything he put in a court file with complete legal immunity from libel, even though
00:39:06.660
it was libel. And he himself couldn't be sued because he put it in a court file. And he's been lying
00:39:11.260
about this kid all the way through. He's been violating basic rights all the way through, but
00:39:14.440
that is egregious. That's, that's a, that's worthy of disbarment and suspension. You go up and comment
00:39:20.400
on a person's fifth amendment rights in the beginning of a cross examination in a way that
00:39:24.740
every prosecutor has known as the judge said for 50 years, not to do, he should be disbarred from the
00:39:30.800
practice of law and he definitely shouldn't be a prosecutor anymore. Wow. That's a big one. So any
00:39:35.620
prediction at this point on how this case, I know how you want it to come out, but how it's likely to
00:39:40.440
come out in your view. I still think that it will be acquittals based on the evidence. Uh, and I
00:39:46.160
believe that even at, at worse at this point, what the judge left off the table, but was about to say
00:39:51.520
was that the whole verdict can now be set aside if there's any adverse verdicts because of the
00:39:55.960
prosecutor's bad conduct. And maybe the prosecutor deliberately threw the case, uh, because he
00:40:00.880
understands the risky faces, uh, from an acquittal. And he's getting hammered. I mean, the witnesses
00:40:06.480
are hammering the prosecutor suggesting that he, he pushed them to change their testimony. And the,
00:40:11.880
the, you know, the, you saw the cross examine of cross examination by the defense of one of the
00:40:16.540
prosecution star witnesses gauge the guy who got shot and survived has not going well for the
00:40:20.940
prosecution. And today appears to have been the worst yet. Robert, what a pleasure. Thank you so
00:40:25.720
much for being here. We really appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Coming up, a Megan Kelly show,
00:40:30.120
all-star pairing. We're really excited. We get such a list guests today. I'm excited. Coleman Hughes
00:40:34.400
and Cheryl Ackeson, two of my favorite guests from our first 200 shows. Cause this everybody
00:40:40.360
is our 200th show. So it's sort of a special day for us too. Great day to have such an A
00:40:46.120
list lineup of guests for you. I'm joined now by Cheryl Ackeson, investigative reporter and host of
00:40:57.940
full measure with Cheryl Ackeson and Coleman Hughes, author and host of conversations with Coleman
00:41:03.900
I'm so excited to have you both here. They said, who do you want for your 200th episode? And I said,
00:41:08.760
I know, I know who I want. Just two different perspectives, two super smart, thoughtful people.
00:41:14.200
And so thank you for being here on our special day. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.
00:41:18.360
All right. Let's kick it off with Kyle Rittenhouse cause it's breaking news. Um, he, he took the stand.
00:41:22.740
We've played some of the sound here. He is talking about, again, he, in total, he shot three people,
00:41:27.420
two of whom died. Joseph Rosenbaum was the first. Anthony Huber was the second. Uh, and the third
00:41:33.560
was this, um, Gage Grossbaum. I forgive me. That last name's a toughie. Uh, Grossgrutz. Okay. Um,
00:41:41.120
Gage, I guess we'll just go with, and Gage is the one who admitted on the stand that he was not shot
00:41:45.480
by Kyle until he, Gage had, had fired, had pointed his own weapon at Kyle, which was a big moment for
00:41:52.740
the defense. Here's Kyle again, surprisingly on the stand today at age 18, talking about the first
00:41:59.320
shooting, Joseph Rosenbaum, the man who was mentally disturbed, um, and what happened with
00:42:05.260
him. Listen, person who threatened to kill you. We now know it was Mr. Rosenbaum, correct? Yes.
00:42:10.880
Before August 25th of 2020, had you ever seen him before? I did not. Had you ever done anything
00:42:18.440
to upset him? No. Now, you said he threatened to kill you twice. Yes. Describe the first time.
00:42:28.040
The first time was me and Ryan Bolch were a little bit north, towards the north corner of
00:42:39.380
59th and Sheridan, and Mr. Rosenbaum was walking with a steel chain, and he had a blue mask around
00:42:48.420
his face, and, um, he was just mad about something. Me and, me and Mr. Bolch were asking people
00:42:56.200
if they needed medical help, and then he screamed, if, sorry for my language, he screamed, if I
1.00
00:43:01.460
catch any of you fuckers alone, I'm going to fucking kill you. And that was directed at
1.00
00:43:06.980
you and Mr. Bolch? It, it, it was directed at both of us, what I believe. And there was
00:43:12.240
a second occasion where he threatened you? Yes. Um, the second time was outside of the
00:43:18.780
car source. Um, and I, I don't think, I don't know if it was directed towards me, but I heard
00:43:24.540
it. He said to, I believe it was Joanne Fiedler, Dustin, Colette, and, uh, another guy. He's,
00:43:34.240
he was screaming. He said, I'm going to cut your fucking hearts out and kill, I'm not going to
1.00
00:43:45.120
repeat the second word, but kill you and words. Hmm. Guys, I know that you're not lawyers, but,
1.00
00:43:51.760
and we just had the lawyer on, but I will say the way the press has covered this is not being
00:43:56.320
reflected at all by, by the testimony we've heard, even when the prosecution was presenting its case,
00:44:01.460
crazed vigilante, domestic terrorist murderer, he's charged with intentional homicide. Um,
00:44:07.140
and I just wonder whether any of that will change now after this testimony, Cheryl, as a journalist,
00:44:11.320
I'll, I'll start with you. You know, we have such a long littered list of the media covering
00:44:16.420
something in a one-sided, terribly one-sided fashion, no excuse for it. If you're following
00:44:21.020
basic journalism rules, and this is yet another one and yet another reason why you cannot at the
00:44:26.920
front end of any incident claim to know as a journalist, nor should you claim to know or judge
00:44:32.660
what happened at an event, even when you have video of something so often it proves wrong.
00:44:37.660
The hands up, don't shoot narrative that was proven completely false by the Obama justice department
00:44:42.840
said that that was false. A lot of people still think that that's true, that he was holding his hands
00:44:48.020
up when he was shot. Um, you want to go back to the FBI, the Atlanta bombing, the FBI blamed poor
00:44:54.340
Richard Jewell for the bombing only to later admit that he had actually tried to come to the rescue
00:45:00.100
in advance when he saw a suspicious package. This is just yet another case. I noticed the same thing
00:45:05.620
you did on the front end. There was a rush to judgment by many in the media, very unjournalistic
00:45:10.360
coverage. And I'll be speaking to another journalism college next week. And these are the stories I try to
00:45:16.400
tell them to get them to suspend the notion that they have to make a decision or tell the public what to
00:45:21.960
think on the front end of an episode, just based on someone's usually ideological perspective.
00:45:28.400
The thing here, Coleman is, I mean, Black Lives Matter, um, Jacob Blake, that that's the man who
00:45:34.440
was shot by police that led to the rioting in Kenosha. Um, so while Kyle is white and the three
0.94
00:45:40.380
people he shot were white, there is races in the background here because it happened at a BLM
00:45:46.860
March and it was in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake. And so that affects how the media
00:45:52.480
covers it. Totally. And, and part of the reason why people so quickly pounced on this story is because
00:46:01.720
on a superficial level, it seemed to confirm the Black Lives Matter narrative, which is, you know,
00:46:09.200
on the, on the, on the same day that a black guy gets shot in the back, this white guy out here
00:46:14.420
holding an AR-15 is, uh, you know, shoots three people, tries to turn himself into, into the
00:46:21.340
police and the police won't even arrest him when he comes, you know, asking to be arrested. So it
00:46:26.920
seemed like on its face, if those are all the facts you knew about the case, you'd say, look,
00:46:32.540
just another example of the double standard that racist American police hold, uh, blacks and whites.
00:46:39.840
Yeah. Right. Too, too good to be true. And, and, and then the evidence came, we're just going to
0.66
00:46:45.760
squeeze in a quick commercial break. I'd like to pay the bills here on Sirius XM Triumph channel 111
00:46:49.400
and pick it right back up right there in 60 seconds. Don't go away.
00:46:58.740
I want to tell you the latest is the prosecutor has moved on to questioning Kyle Rittenhouse about
00:47:04.480
the hollow point ammo he used. Kyle's saying he doesn't know much about ammo. And now the judge
00:47:09.580
has stopped the prosecutor again, calling for a lunch break. So they are paused. I think we have
00:47:15.260
the soundbite of him going over the video games, which is such a weird angle. Let's just listen to
00:47:21.080
this. The types of weapons that are used in first person shooter video games, correct?
00:47:28.620
I don't really play first person shooter video games. I have, but I believe there's a variety of guns,
00:47:34.180
including shotguns, pistols. There's guns in video games that resemble all guns.
00:47:39.800
Isn't it true when you would hang out with Dominic Black, you'd play Call of Duty and other first
00:47:45.920
person shooter video games? Sometimes. And those are games in which you use weapons like AR-15s to
00:47:52.700
pretty much shoot anybody who comes at you, correct? It's a video game where two players are
00:48:00.520
playing together. I don't really understand the meaning of your question, to be honest.
00:48:07.980
Isn't one of the things people do in these video games, try and kill everyone else with your guns?
00:48:13.000
Yeah, it's a video game. It's just a video game. It's not real life.
00:48:23.460
Coleman, I'm looking at you as we run the soundbite doing this with your hands on your face,
00:48:28.360
which is exactly how I feel. What is he? What? What? What?
00:48:31.200
Well, he knows that there is this very shallow talking point that's been going around in the
00:48:36.540
culture that anyone who plays first person shooter games like Call of Duty has no way of separating the
00:48:44.760
game from real life and is just being coached by video games to become a mass murderer.
00:48:49.420
And it's so far removed from the reality of what it is to play a video game. But obviously,
00:48:54.380
the prosecution knows that many people just have this idea in their head. So if they can subliminally
00:49:00.700
try to paint him as someone who's been desensitized and made into a psychopath by playing Halo and Call
00:49:08.320
of Duty, then they can just lessen the sympathy for him, which is a very, very dirty tactic.
00:49:15.940
It reminds me of the clip in Working Girl, where Joan Cusack goes over to Melanie Griffith's
00:49:23.380
character who's pretending to be an executive. And she says, sometimes late at night, I dance
00:49:28.160
around in my underwear. Doesn't make me Madonna. Never will. Like a lot of us do fun things at home,
00:49:34.680
like video games and watch movies and weird things that we do to entertain ourselves. And it doesn't
00:49:39.360
have any reflection on what we're then going to believe about ourselves or do in real life.
00:49:44.020
And I realized Kyle Rittenhouse showed up at that protest. But the fact that he played Call of
00:49:47.900
Duty, I mean, there are a lot of guys who play Call of Duty who don't then want to actually
00:49:52.100
shoot real human beings. Cheryl, I don't know. I think that's this guy's been watching to too much
00:49:57.300
far left media because this is sort of how the left talks about guns. Like if you see too much of
00:50:03.180
them or you're around them, you're going to inappropriately use one. Well, I think it's fair
00:50:09.080
to say that almost nobody who plays those type of video games becomes a mass shooter or mass killer,
00:50:15.960
particularly because of the games. But just statistically, almost nobody who plays those games
00:50:21.220
goes out and shoots people. So, you know, he's he seems to be the prosecutor. He's looking for any
00:50:27.460
avenue. Like Coleman said, that may resonate with one juror or two jurors who think maybe they think
00:50:34.820
that about video games. Maybe that'll mean something to them and influence how they feel and what the
00:50:39.000
kind of person they think Kyle is. This is a case of government overreach. I realize I don't think
00:50:45.420
Kyle Rittenhouse should have been there that day. He shouldn't have put himself in the middle
00:50:48.720
of a very dangerous situation. He had no business as a 17 year old kid injecting himself. It was up
00:50:54.200
to law enforcement, whether they were prepared to do it or not. And it he made a lot of bad decisions.
00:50:59.380
And so did those around him. But this is not this is not a murder. This is this guy should be acquitted
00:51:04.220
in my legal view. May I say something that when you have a situation and this is what I've seen the
00:51:11.480
last couple of years where the public at large loses their confidence in the idea that their law
00:51:16.820
enforcement and their leaders are going to uphold the law and do the right thing. That's the sort of
00:51:22.200
chaos I think that comes of it. It creates a situation in which people, some of them say,
00:51:27.240
well, nobody else is going to do the right thing or what I think is the right thing. Therefore,
00:51:30.920
I have to step in. That creates an eminently more dangerous situation. But I blame our leaders and
00:51:37.240
our public officials for getting us to that place in the first place.
00:51:41.160
I mean, but you could make the argument the other way, too, right? Like if how many times are the
00:51:45.420
cops going to break the rules or, you know, violate the law and and, you know, take a man's
00:51:52.000
life unjustifiably. And then we ask people in the black community to take it and not to riot.
00:51:58.060
You know, I mean, like lawlessness is lawlessness. And, you know, allowing more lawlessness because
00:52:04.760
of the first lawlessness is not the solution. As a lawyer, I've always said what binds us together
00:52:09.480
really is the rule of law. Like what keeps us as a civil society other than the rule of law,
00:52:15.260
this sort of agreement we have that we're going to follow it. And I realize that there are all
00:52:19.340
sorts of breakdowns in the system left, right and so on. But the answer is not to take the law into
00:52:23.820
your own hands. You take them to court, as they used to say on people's court. But listen, when it
00:52:28.840
comes to government overreach, I want to ask you both about this crazy case today, this week involving
00:52:35.800
James O'Keefe, right? The guy behind Project Veritas. He says he's an investigative journalist
00:52:42.500
and he's done a lot of investigative journalism that's been extraordinary, doesn't always get it 100%
00:52:46.740
right, but he gets it right a lot of the time. The left hates him. The media hates him. And his
00:52:52.080
targets are always, well, for the most part, left leaning CNN and others. But nuts what happened to
00:52:58.240
him this week. His organization had two reporters see their homes raided by the FBI. And then James
00:53:07.960
O'Keefe's home was raided by the FBI. What did they do? Did they steal government files? Did they
00:53:12.860
somehow get CIA material? They weren't. They allegedly had Ashley Biden's diary, which is OK.
00:53:21.820
It was apparently she lost it or someone took it from her before he even became president.
00:53:26.280
The question is what the FBI is doing investigating this at all. And here is James O'Keefe explaining
00:53:33.200
what the heck happened. Listen. Late last year, we were approached by tipsters claiming that a copy
00:53:40.260
of Ashley Biden's diary, we had never met or heard of the tipsters. The tipsters indicated the diary
00:53:45.560
had been abandoned in a room in which Ms. Biden stayed at the time and in which the tipsters stayed
00:53:50.300
in temporarily after Ms. Biden departed the room. The tipsters indicated that the diary included
00:53:56.640
explosive allegations against then candidate Joe Biden. We took steps to corroborate the authenticity
00:54:02.220
of the diary. At the end of the day, we made the ethical decision that because in part we could
00:54:07.760
not determine if the diary was real, if the diary in fact belonged to Ashley Biden, or if the contents
00:54:13.700
of the diary occurred, we could not publish the diary in any part thereof. We attempted to return
00:54:20.000
the diary to an attorney representing Ms. Biden, but that attorney refused to authenticate it.
00:54:25.440
Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner.
00:54:30.240
We never published it. Now, Ms. Biden's father's Department of Justice, specifically the United
00:54:35.440
States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, appears to be investigating the
00:54:40.840
situation, claiming the diary was stolen. We don't know if it was, but it begs the question,
00:54:47.380
in what world is the alleged theft of a diary investigated by the president's FBI
00:54:53.380
and his Department of Justice, a diary? This federal investigation smacks of politics.
00:55:02.220
Cheryl, he's not the only one who's been the subject of government overreach under an administration
00:55:12.780
Well, just an example of picking and choosing, which again, when the public starts to see they
00:55:17.200
cannot trust or they don't think they can trust their public officials and law enforcement officials
00:55:22.100
to do the right thing, or at least apply justice even handedly, it creates this chaotic situation.
00:55:27.700
And yes, I still have my lawsuit going over the government's intrusion of my computers.
00:55:32.720
It's when I was at CBS News. And the Department of Justice continues to defend the guilty agents.
00:55:38.020
They just, about a week ago, according to court documents, authorized the hiring of private
00:55:43.120
counsel. I would assume that's a taxpayer expense to defend one of the guilty agents,
00:55:47.600
a former Secret Service agent who's been in prison for other corruption, not even related to the
00:55:53.500
spying on me and other Americans, but other corruption that he was convicted of. But he's
00:55:57.680
being defended with your tax dollars. And I asked myself, why is the FBI not raiding the homes
00:56:02.940
of the agents who took the word of unauthorized sources and started a political investigation
00:56:10.500
against the president of the United States or a major candidate? Why aren't their homes being raided?
00:56:15.040
Why aren't the homes of the FBI agents who falsified wiretap documents? You know, when there was an
00:56:20.720
examination to see if there were other lapses in wiretaps, in addition to what we know happened
00:56:26.600
with one of them being doctored by an FBI lawyer, it was found that every wiretap application the FBI
00:56:33.560
made had what they called deficiencies. Why aren't the homes of those agents being raided? Why aren't the
00:56:38.580
people who are improperly wiretapped being told and being made whole and whatever was gathered on them
00:56:44.700
destroyed? So again, it's this picking and choosing. One thing, Megan, I note how if as he describes it
00:56:51.940
as accurate, how careful James O'Keefe was in trying to corroborate that information that he said that
00:56:58.600
came to him and why he decided not to publish it. Look at that contrasted to the media's behavior when
00:57:04.820
it came to this uncorroborated information that they peddled for more than two years they were so wrong
00:57:10.320
about. And yet total lack of care on Russiagate. Yeah. The thing is, the the media is not going to
00:57:17.700
care, Coleman, because they don't like James O'Keefe and he does target mostly people on the left.
00:57:24.480
But if this had been Ivanka Trump's diary and Donald Trump sick to the FBI on a reporter who found himself
00:57:34.620
the recipient of it, who had already called law enforcement to say, we've got it, do you want it?
00:57:39.420
The media be covering this very differently. Yes. James O'Keefe, you know, his content over the
00:57:46.020
past year has really made him an enemy of the left. And, you know, sometimes that's just because he's
00:57:51.720
actually getting really embarrassing videos that are just genuinely interesting. And other times it's
00:57:58.160
because he's, you know, slanting and manipulating the truth in ways to embarrass people. But I mean,
00:58:05.620
there's been a huge double standard with the treatment of Biden's family and Trump's family.
00:58:10.440
I remember, you know, obviously the New York Post story about Hunter Biden, which got censored from
00:58:16.440
Twitter because, you know, there was allegedly there was nothing there worth really looking at.
00:58:22.880
Just if you change the name Hunter Biden for Don Jr., you have to imagine how much the media would
00:58:28.620
have been all over a story where Don Jr. was in Eastern Europe, potentially doing cocaine and,
00:58:35.680
you know, all kinds of stuff. So, yeah, this is just another example of the double standard
00:58:40.760
that's been used to treat the Biden family and the Trump family.
00:58:45.340
And honestly, just executive overreach. And we were told that Trump was this terrible
00:58:49.040
authoritarian who wanted to take control of all aspects of our lives and beware, you know,
0.96
00:58:53.540
beware the evil big orange man. And what we've seen so far with Joe Biden, this the moderate,
00:58:58.900
the guy who was going to be sort of, you know, just not Donald Trump, just be not Donald Trump
00:59:02.240
and it'll be a win is a lot of executive overreach. The FBI has no business doing this.
00:59:07.420
This is she was she was not the daughter of a president when she lost her diary or left it behind
00:59:13.820
and somebody took it. Whatever. I mean, it's a nightmare. It's why most of us either don't write
00:59:17.760
in a diary as public figures or would never take it out of our little bedrooms when we leave.
00:59:24.400
But in any event, the FBI has no business being involved in this case. And Joe Biden, Cheryl,
00:59:28.920
we've seen now, of course, he he knew that the the landlord, the rent debate, the landlord eviction
00:59:37.000
thing was extra legal. But he handed down that order anyway, stopping the evictions, even though
00:59:43.020
he knew it was going to get overruled just to just because that's the policy he wanted.
00:59:46.140
He knew it wasn't lawful. And then just this week, he lost in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on his
00:59:52.200
covid mandate, the OSHA rule and so on. Finally, they put it in writing. It got challenged in the
00:59:56.860
Fifth Circuit, which is the Court of Appeals for Louisiana, Mississippi and a couple of other small
01:00:02.360
southern states. And he lost and he came out and said businesses should move forward with the
01:00:07.020
requirements despite the court ordered pause. That's what the White House spokesperson said.
01:00:10.860
So forget that court ruling. They paused it. They said it's not constitutional and we have to hold
01:00:15.500
it until the courts can further adjudicate. And he's basically flouting that, too.
01:00:19.500
Well, can you imagine if that were President Trump and there had been a lower court decision or an
01:00:23.780
appellate court decision that was probably working its way somewhere else? And if he had just declared,
01:00:29.100
don't listen to the courts, you know, that would have been just roundly discussed and criticized
01:00:34.820
and dissected. And yet when President Biden does it, it's just almost as if, well, I don't know from
01:00:41.200
a legal standpoint, Megan, you know more than I do, if he has the right to do that. I was asked
01:00:46.320
in the past couple of years when there is a court that makes a decision like that, does the executive
01:00:52.020
branch have to go along or are they not co-equal and can the executive branch continue to resist something?
01:00:58.340
No, they are. No, they are not. The court has the ultimate say on what the law is,
01:01:05.620
Marbury versus Madison. And they have said the law does not allow this mandate and it's been
01:01:10.300
temporarily stayed. So it cannot be enforced until this goes up to the Supreme Court or the Fifth
01:01:15.160
Circuit lifts its stay. And he knows that he knows that very well. Well, I believe the whole game has
01:01:21.660
been since the start. I believe President Biden announced this in September and it was a long time
01:01:27.240
before that temporary rule came out recently. And I think they know that even if this gets overturned
01:01:34.100
ultimately in court, the game is that many people in anticipation of this have already gone ahead and
01:01:40.720
gotten their vaccine. So a lot of money has been made. A lot of coverage has been had because of the
01:01:46.620
anticipation that this would happen, whether or not it's ultimately challenged and is a loser doesn't
01:01:51.860
matter in that aspect. So the covid overreach continues day by day. And and thankfully now
01:02:00.220
we're starting to see a few more articles, even in the left leaning press, questioning the never ending
01:02:05.320
mask mandates in particular for our children. And now the buzz about possible vaccine mandates for
01:02:11.720
kids as young as five. We're seeing the city of San Francisco saying that you can't your kid cannot
01:02:18.640
they cannot let me. I want to get my facts straight that they there. I got it in front of me.
01:02:24.380
They announced last week the city will require children in that age group five to 11 to show proof
01:02:27.840
of vaccination to enter restaurants, sporting events, swimming pools and more. Mayor Bill de Blasio
01:02:32.360
in New York said, yep, I'm looking at the vaccine mandate for your five year old, too. Seems like a good
0.99
01:02:36.260
idea. New York School of American Ballet informed parents via email on November 4th. All students and
01:02:42.000
they enroll children as young as six must receive the covid vaccine by January. But
01:02:48.040
this is an experimental vaccine still for children, that this does not have FDA approval,
01:02:54.700
unlike the MMR vaccine and all the other things that we do have to get our kids to send them to
01:02:58.360
school, which I happily did. And I wonder whether this is finally sort of the the overreach that's
01:03:05.580
going to that's going to stop the covid madness, Coleman. I mean, I know you've been covering this
01:03:09.820
a lot on your show with various doctors and experts about covid and the ethics behind where we're
01:03:15.880
going with this. What do you think? Yeah, well, I think the question of vaccination for adults and
01:03:21.320
vaccination for children is very different. And I don't think we can just automatically apply our
01:03:30.540
policy about whether it makes sense to get vaccinated as an adult to children. And certainly the
01:03:38.600
the masking, you know, there just has to be a line here somewhere. And we can all draw that line in
01:03:45.500
different places. But ultimately, we have to have a science based conversation about what the actual
01:03:52.100
relative risks are for different populations, right? Not every population is going to be need to be
01:03:57.360
treated like 60 year olds, you know, 60 plus with with an autoimmune. And so at some point, that line,
01:04:06.980
the risk becomes so low that we we really have to just allow people to live their lives. The question
01:04:14.440
is, is that 12 year olds? Is that, you know, who is that exactly? So but there are some people that
01:04:21.340
are not even willing to have that conversation. It's just going to be vaccination until the end of
01:04:28.120
time, masks, masks until the end of time, because it's become a symbol of people's political
01:04:32.900
affiliation at this point. And now there's mission creep. If I go into the grocery store and I say to
01:04:38.100
Doug, can you just wait outside here with the car for two seconds? I'm just going to get a loaf of
01:04:41.320
bread and some milk and, you know, whatever, some eggs. And then I'm in there and, you know,
01:04:44.940
it's like exciting. And you see all like the food that you could get. You could be this great mom
01:04:49.260
who provides the best snacks and so on. And it takes too long. And I get the text from him
01:04:53.160
that reads mission creep. I've gone, I've gone off mission and he knows it. That's what's
01:05:00.240
happening now. Rochelle Walensky is no longer focused on just fighting COVID. She just wants
01:05:05.360
the mask for everything. There's just more and more masks. Here she is this week with what I
01:05:10.740
believe is a call for forever masking. Do we have a soundbite? Listen.
01:05:19.260
The evidence is clear. Masks can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 by reducing your chance
01:05:26.320
of infection by more than 80%. Whether it's an infection from the flu, from the coronavirus,
01:05:32.420
or even just the common cold. In combination with other steps like getting your vaccination,
01:05:38.780
hand washing, and keeping physical distance, wearing your mask is an important step you can
01:05:44.120
take to keep us all healthy. Get vaccine facts. We can do this.
01:05:52.020
It's never going to end. The common cold. What business is it of hers if I get the common cold?
1.00
01:05:59.380
She never interfered in my common cold before, and I don't want her to interfere now. Never mind flu.
01:06:05.760
We've been managing to live on this earth for a long time before Rochelle decided we needed to be
01:06:10.480
forever masked. And by the way, even like the mask now, the CDC is refusing to offer any guidance
01:06:18.000
on when the masks can come off. They were refusing. They were specifically asked and said,
01:06:22.180
no, we're not going to do that. It's never going to stop without civil disobedience at this point,
01:06:27.060
Cheryl. Well, there's so much to say. I'll just make a couple of points. Rochelle Walensky is the
01:06:32.600
same person who falsely claimed that people who have been fully vaccinated cannot spread COVID. CDC
01:06:38.360
ultimately had to retract that. Her agency is the agency that got caught by Congressman Thomas
01:06:43.580
Massey, admittedly by their own admission in a phone recording, falsely telling doctors in the
01:06:49.060
public that the studies from Pfizer and Moderna showed if you have natural immunity from COVID
01:06:53.940
infection, you should still get the shot because it's effective. The studies didn't show that. And
01:06:58.780
they kept, even after they admitted that was false, they kept telling doctors that and telling the
01:07:03.240
public that. So there's a whole lack of confidence in the range of advice we're getting from CDC.
01:07:07.660
It is so slanted and one-sided to the exclusion of the discussion of natural immunity. CDC has been
01:07:14.140
hiding its estimate of the naturally immune, those who've had COVID infection since May 29th,
01:07:20.040
when it was at 120 million plus. Since Delta, it's obviously much higher. It's probably the vast
01:07:26.420
majority of Americans. And yet, as they push the vaccines harder, as knowing the vaccines are wearing
01:07:32.420
off fat like anybody hoped, they're still at the same time refusing to address natural immunity,
01:07:39.260
lumping all of the unvaccinated people in together to make the stats look as bad as possible,
0.74
01:07:44.240
without acknowledging that the safest, the vastly by far safest people, according to hard data and
01:07:50.740
studies, including a lot from Israel, are the unvaccinated who have natural immunity from a COVID
01:07:56.560
infection. That's what the study has said. Can I just ask you quickly, you've been reporting on the
01:08:02.500
overstatement of the death numbers, and actually had some fascinating stats out of, was it Arizona,
01:08:07.300
the coroner out there? This was, oh gosh, where was I? I was in Colorado. So in a small town in Colorado,
01:08:12.380
but the story branched out and showed that in California and in other places, they've acknowledged
01:08:17.320
that their death stats are overstated by, as in Colorado, 50%, if you count only the deaths that they
01:08:25.040
really think are caused by COVID versus the deaths of people who happen to have COVID, like the murder
01:08:30.940
suicide that this coroner said the state counted in her county, a murder suicide was counted as COVID
01:08:37.580
deaths. And they would not take that off when she objected, because they said, well, all the states are
01:08:41.540
doing it. There are car accidents, there are heart deaths, there are alcohol overdoses, all counted
01:08:47.400
as COVID deaths. And when you call those out, to Colorado's credit, they had so many coroners complain,
01:08:52.980
at least you can see a subset of those on the website, the death count goes down about 50%.
01:08:59.260
This is why you got to listen to Cheryl's podcast too, because, and her show, because she goes into
01:09:05.640
great detail about how this coroner sees an update for her county saying that there were these COVID
01:09:13.080
deaths. And she's like, no, there weren't, there weren't COVID deaths. Why does it say that? She looks
01:09:16.860
into it. She sees that a murder suicide has been categorized as death from COVID. And Cheryl went back and
01:09:22.860
take a look at the death certificate to see like, did the coroner put something on there? You know,
01:09:26.360
suggesting could be no, no, she didn't. And the coroner's like, this is bullshit. It was a bullet.
1.00
01:09:31.760
It was not COVID. And yet, these are the numbers that are used to keep those masks on us interminably
01:09:39.280
and mandate these vaccines for five-year-olds and so on. It's infuriating. Listen, we have much more
01:09:44.060
with Cheryl and Coleman. So Cheryl, you did an extraordinary piece of reporting, because right
01:09:55.160
now they're saying they've abandoned the search for herd immunity when it comes to COVID, that it's no
01:09:59.080
longer possible. And really, we're just gonna have to live with this as an endemic and so on.
01:10:02.880
Um, you took a hard look at the Amish, good old Amish, and they went a totally different route
1.00
01:10:12.340
than the rest of us when it comes to fighting this. Just set it up a little, because I'm going
01:10:16.520
to run a clip. Well, a couple of months ago, I had read in Associated Press and other publications
01:10:23.060
that the Amish were the first to have achieved herd immunity, the Amish population and Lancaster, PA,
01:10:29.080
because they don't do masking, isolation, vaccines, hospitals, nothing. And therefore,
01:10:35.720
they had immunity. And by the way, when Delta came through recently, they claim they don't know
01:10:40.460
the guy, my source, who's in contact with pretty much most of the people there, claims he doesn't
01:10:45.840
know anybody who died of Delta or who even got sick in recent months. So they claim a very strong
01:10:52.600
natural immunity reaction. I point out in my story, this is impossible to prove because they don't
01:10:58.180
take tests for it. This is all just what they think. But there is no spike in their coroner
01:11:03.740
records. There is nothing to disprove what they're saying, much as many people want to try to
01:11:08.420
rain on this story. And by the way, Megan, this has been censored as out of context, all of the
01:11:14.860
false things by big tech. But our YouTube channel for Full Measure, where this is posted, we don't
01:11:19.660
publicize that channel because we try to drive traffic to the Full Measure website. It's got 1.3
01:11:25.440
million views now because people are finding this information when they know other people are
01:11:31.000
It was fast. I mean, just the shorter version of the report is is has got millions of views. You
01:11:35.280
got to check it out and preferably not on YouTube. Go to Cheryl's website. But let's just watch a little
01:11:43.140
We made more money in the last year than we ever did. It was our best year ever.
01:11:49.380
Did the Amish really find a magic formula? They say yes, and they don't care who doubts it.
01:11:55.440
Yeah. All the Amish know we got herd immunity. Of course we got herd immunity. When the whole
01:12:01.720
church gets coronavirus, we know we got coronavirus. Yes, we think we're smarter than everybody. I
01:12:08.060
mean, shouldn't be bragging, but we think we did the right thing.
01:12:12.020
He talked about, Cheryl, how they went to church and similar to the way we used to do at the Catholic
01:12:17.020
Mass, they all drink out of the same chalice. And he's like, we all got it. You know, we all got it.
01:12:22.900
And that's the way we chose to deal with it. We didn't shut one thing down. He said the remedies
01:12:27.420
that were being pushed by the government went against everything we stood for and we stand for
01:12:32.160
hard work, being with family, taking care of the elderly, going to worship services. And you can see
01:12:37.480
why they were like, oh, no. And was it the better course of action scientifically? And many, many
01:12:42.560
people, including scientists, not the public health officials you normally hear from, but many
01:12:47.240
independent scientists say yes. Not that anybody wants someone to get sick with COVID. Not that
01:12:52.560
I'm advocating or anybody's advocating that you go try to catch it, but it's, it's taking its natural
01:12:58.200
course anyway, even with the vaccines, many people are getting it. And the fact is the unrecognized
01:13:03.560
fact when it comes to public health officials, it leaves people with a great deal of immunity,
01:13:08.340
according to a growing body and consensus of scientific research. But yes, in May of 2020,
01:13:14.440
they had a very important church, holy ceremony or holiday that they decided to go ahead and go to
01:13:22.560
church. And as he, as you said, they all drink out of the same cup. Many of them got sick and they
01:13:28.600
assumed and believe it was COVID based on the symptoms. And they let this run its course.
01:13:33.500
People stayed at home instead of going to the hospital. They took visitors because they said not
01:13:37.940
taking visitors is worse than dying. Not working is worse than dying to them. And then they said,
01:13:43.880
by and large, it was mostly done with in their community by about the fall time period without
01:13:49.340
them ever having taken any extraordinary measures. I'm ready to become Amish. Who's with me?
01:13:58.160
It sounds pretty good. Plus, it's just a simpler life. You have to work very hard, however.
01:14:03.240
Meantime today, Coleman, we saw Aaron Rodgers in the news, of course, you know,
01:14:06.540
he's getting hit for suggesting he had immunity, but not actually having been vaccinated. And now
01:14:11.340
today, the ire of the media has turned on actor Matthew McConaughey, who's considering a run for
01:14:18.620
Texas governor. And therefore, we are we've started to listen to his policy prescriptions.
01:14:24.360
This is also kind of odd. But, you know, if Trump can do it, why can't Matthew McConaughey do it?
01:14:29.920
And here's what he said that has now had even our current surgeon general respond to it. Listen.
01:14:36.540
He just said we can vaccinate kids. Are we going to do we need to trust? I want to trust
01:14:44.940
in the science. I think that there's any kind of scam or conspiracy theory. Hell no, I don't.
01:14:50.620
No, I don't think there's any kind of we all got to get off that narrative. There's not a
01:14:54.520
conspiracy theory on the on the on the vaccines. These are scientists trying to do the right thing.
01:14:59.340
And then people say, yeah, the big farmers making the money they can. Fine. That's that's that's as
01:15:04.260
well, if that's true. OK. It's scary right now. I'm not vaccinated. Mine, I'll tell you that you're
01:15:12.580
not. I'm not vaccinating mine. I want to get more. I've been vaccinated. My wife has been vaccinated.
01:15:18.080
We have a high risk person in our household. My mother is 90 and she's immune compromised.
01:15:23.040
So why why don't you want your kids to be vaccinated?
0.62
01:15:30.040
We run we go slow on vaccinations anyway, even before COVID. Now, mind you, I've chosen we've
01:15:36.540
quarantined harder than any of our friends have and still are two years later. I don't want to.
01:15:45.040
Maybe I'm trying to just keep it from my mom. OK, so we've been doing just a heavy amount of testing
01:15:51.100
when and everywhere we can. We even take the ones that take the ones with us out of the box where we
01:15:55.360
can do them in our house everywhere we can with anybody we come in contact with.
01:16:01.060
Try to do things outdoors. I'm in a position, though.
01:16:05.800
Where I can do that, and I understand that not everyone can do that.
01:16:11.460
I don't I can't I couldn't mandate having to vaccinate.
01:16:17.740
You can't mandate having to vaccinate. The funny thing is for the listening audience in the middle
01:16:22.500
of that where he's like, why wouldn't you vaccinate your kids? McConaughey pauses.
01:16:26.980
He puts on his sunglasses in the middle of the interview.
01:16:30.660
What do you guys has got to try that before this show is over and rubs his hair, which is slicked
01:16:35.180
back. It's like it's funny watching these actors, right? Like you never know. Is this act
01:16:42.200
Well, anyway, the surgeon general comes out, Coleman, and says vaccinating your children
01:16:46.860
is safe. I go by my friends, Marty McCary and Nicole Safer, both of whom have been on
01:16:53.760
the show. They had a piece in The Wall Street Journal saying if you're agonizing about whether
01:16:58.040
to vaccinate your child, your young child, be reassured. The risk is extremely low either
01:17:03.560
way. If you haven't vaccinated, if you don't have vaccinated. But man, we react to people
01:17:07.760
like that as though they're the devil incarnate.
01:17:12.600
Yeah, well, I think I think that is that is right at the end of the day. It's probably
01:17:16.580
going to turn out that for kids, the choice is not that important. And so, you know, if
01:17:23.300
I had kids, I'd probably err on the safe side. I trust the vaccines. I think they're safe and
01:17:28.000
effective. On the other hand, I'm not sure it's worth expending much energy trying to get
01:17:36.220
other people to vaccinate their kids. I think we are getting to the point where the we're
01:17:43.240
focusing on lower and lower and lower risk parts of the population, and it risks very
01:17:49.600
quickly becoming ridiculous. And it already has in many cases. You know, this is it's just
01:17:54.900
so hard for people to walk the line between a rational, safe policy to protect lives and
1.00
01:18:00.840
just idiocy. You know, it's the difference between masking indoors during 2020 and masking
0.98
01:18:08.220
outdoors in 2021. Like these are one makes perfect sense. And one is just you being an idiot,
01:18:15.460
basically. And people have have a lot of trouble distinguishing a from be there.
1.00
01:18:21.860
It's time to let let go. Just let it go. Now, one thing that nobody's letting go of is the
01:18:27.700
election results from a week ago, a week and one day. The Republicans are still dancing in the
01:18:32.220
streets thinking that they have a some sort of a mandate or they have a great harbinger of things
01:18:36.220
to come as we head into 2022. And the Democrats, many of whom are to me, sound like they're still in
01:18:42.560
denial about why they did so poorly at the polls on Tuesday and whether the parents who went to the
01:18:47.520
polls and said education is most important to me are just a bunch of white supremacists or
01:18:51.700
actually caring parents who have legit concerns. And it seems like the Dem Party is sort of
01:18:56.500
divided between the more moderates and the more progressives on a lot of this front.
01:19:00.700
The media, however, not divided. The media has decided that what this was about was white
01:19:07.620
supremacy, white rage. And we put together a little soundbite. In fact, we stole this. I'm going to admit
01:19:13.480
from my friends over at Fox on talking about how what really happened on Tuesday was a bunch of dog
01:19:20.420
whistles. Listen. And when he pushes talking points that are meant to flirt with and stoke white
0.68
01:19:27.560
backlash, he does so in a coded way with dog whistles about education. The racial animus
01:19:32.980
that is teeming with the dog whistle messaging. Racial language and dog whistles, quite frankly.
01:19:42.380
Some of it was dog whistle. Yeah. Right. Some of it was dog whistle racism. Horrible racist dog
01:19:50.680
whistles from the GOP. Dog whistling. So, Coleman, dog whistle. Your thoughts?
1.00
01:19:58.880
So I think there is a very real problem that parents all around the country are facing in the wake of 2020,
01:20:06.340
which was a reckoning over race and racism, which is that there are rogue teachers that
01:20:16.300
have been educated at highly, highly progressive teachers' colleges, which are sometimes even more
01:20:23.320
progressive than elite colleges for students, for undergrads. And in the wake of 2020,
01:20:30.640
many have felt empowered to basically indoctrinate their students with their own personal values that
01:20:38.680
have nothing to do with the curriculum. And parents understandably take exception to this because
01:20:45.600
you're encroaching on a parent's role, right? If you're my kid's history teacher,
01:20:52.900
it's not for you to say, to say a black kid, you are by definition a victim of white supremacy.
0.98
01:21:01.380
All people of color are by definition victims of white supremacy. These are the kinds of things
0.75
01:21:06.000
some of these rogue teachers will say in class, as if that's relevant to their learning of U.S.
01:21:13.940
history. And if you're a white kid, you have to acknowledge that all white people have white
0.69
01:21:22.060
privilege. It's like, okay, these are discussions parents can have with their kids. It's not relevant
01:21:27.600
to a history curriculum. And parents feel like they are losing control of how their kids learn
01:21:34.740
about race to these teachers that present themselves as experts, but are really just
01:21:39.700
radicals that newly feel empowered because of the climate of the country. And I think that's a major,
01:21:46.320
that's a lot of what parents mean when they say they care about education.
01:21:50.480
They're afraid to go to parent teacher conferences and risk being the one person or the first person
01:21:57.680
to say something about this because the magical accusation of racism is just too powerful.
01:22:04.540
Like if you get accused of being a racist, every word you say in defense of yourself seems to dig you
01:22:11.000
in a deeper hole. And nobody really wants, you know, people, it takes a uniquely kind of brave person
01:22:19.320
to speak up in that setting. So I have a lot of sympathy with parents that feel like their children's
01:22:25.560
educations are getting out of their hands and that are voting for that in the ballot box.
01:22:30.080
Mm hmm. I wonder, Cheryl, because I don't think the media can be shamed out of its, quote,
01:22:36.040
support or, quote, allyship of what they believe is a noble cause, you know, CRT or whatever you
01:22:42.660
want to call it in schools, wokeness. I even though the media definitely wants Democrats to win,
01:22:48.040
I just don't know that they can be shamed out of the way they cover these issues.
01:22:52.320
Well, yeah, I think it's a larger problem. It's more systemic than that. And you and I have talked
01:22:57.460
about this in the past and I've written books about it. It's so ingrained in the way news is being
01:23:02.780
covered. And journalism students in many places are being taught how to cover news so different
01:23:08.320
than when I went to journalism school and different than even 10 years ago that I'm not sure they think
01:23:15.120
it needs correcting because the goal is not necessarily to fairly represent different sides
01:23:19.560
and views and facts. The goal now has turned into convincing people that there is a right path and
01:23:25.500
that you as the journalist or media person knows the path and they ought to take it. But I will ask you
01:23:31.500
something, Megan. Wasn't there an exit poll? I have no doubt the education thing is big. I live
01:23:37.040
in Loudoun County, Virginia. Oh, and I have no doubt there's something big going on across the country
01:23:41.820
regarding these issues you bring up. But wasn't there an exit poll that said the number one issue
01:23:47.080
in Virginia was the economy? And I think education was like third.
01:23:52.420
I thought it was second, but you could it could be right. Yeah, you could be right. For sure. It was
01:23:56.280
it was on the top of the list where it's usually down low. But yeah, it wasn't at the very top.
01:24:00.980
But I think the economy is still just such a big factor that kind of took a backseat in the news
01:24:07.400
coverage. People have noticed, at least in my lifetime, I'm not a political analyst, but this is
01:24:12.240
the biggest swing I've ever noticed in economic factors in the short time period after a new
01:24:18.260
president was elected. And I think a lot of people are seeing that and worried. And I think one thing
01:24:24.280
they're concerned about is that when asked, the administration has no described plan for fixing
01:24:30.520
any of these things that are brought up. They seem to simply say this is just how it is and how
01:24:35.780
things have to be. So their plan is to spend more big factor to their plan is to spend. We went over
01:24:40.620
this yesterday, spent the show on economics. But yeah, the inflation is going to go up. And the
01:24:45.240
administration actually just said that again today. It's going to go up. They don't know when it's going
01:24:48.720
to stop. Your prices are going up. The supply chain problem hasn't been solved. And they're about to
01:24:53.460
they're trying to push through another several trillion dollar spending plan.
01:24:56.420
So you're going to feel that, too. This while we're fighting oil pipelines, trying to stop the
01:25:01.440
flow of oil as the gas prices are up, we're begging Saudi Arabia for oil that we don't really need.
01:25:05.700
All of that's factored into those concerns about the economy. But getting back to schools, Coleman,
01:25:10.020
it's of course, we've known that this is the problem in at the college level for a long time.
01:25:14.060
In this past year, it's been really exposed at the K through 12. But, you know, to me, it never I never
01:25:18.840
fail to see the sort of innate racism in the anti-racism approach. There was a story in the news just
01:25:25.580
yesterday about an Arizona State University professor who's getting rid of his traditional
01:25:30.280
grading system. We're seeing this more and more saying it's racist. And he says he's demanding
01:25:35.700
an end to white supremacy by grading papers based on effort. He says white students have privilege
01:25:40.800
because they embody the habits of white language already. He is a professor of rhetoric and
01:25:47.120
composition. And he and his wife recently launched an anti-racist teaching endowment.
01:25:50.760
And he says labor based grading labor based structurally changes everyone's relationship
01:25:57.500
to domination standards of English that come from elite masculine masculine heteronormative
01:26:04.200
ableist white racial groups of speakers. I don't I mean, I'm offended by this on behalf of all the
0.68
01:26:12.940
friends I have who are people of color. Like they're not able to participate in standard grading
1.00
01:26:18.920
because why? Because it's white ableist and racist grading on it. You know, it makes me emotional just
0.98
01:26:28.360
thinking about that. I'm picturing myself as a kid and all the other, you know, students of color in
01:26:35.160
the class not having the benefit of really an education. Like so people come from different backgrounds.
01:26:43.260
Some kids have their parents over their shoulder teaching them math better than, frankly, better
01:26:49.540
than their teachers. A lot of kids don't have that. A lot of kids are only going to get the rigorous
01:26:58.020
training in how to think and the essential skills of the mind. They're only going to get that in school.
01:27:05.280
And to say to kids of color, you actually can't compete. You can't compete with the white kids and the Asian
1.00
01:27:12.100
kids. We are not going to expect you. We're not going to demand the the rigorous standards of critical
0.93
01:27:18.240
thinking. We're going to grade you based on this touchy feely bullshit, which really means, you know, if you
0.98
01:27:25.660
fail, we're going to say that you passed. Because it makes us feel good right in this moment. And it just kicks the
0.97
01:27:33.080
can down the road. And then, you know, we and then everyone's sad when kids graduate from high
01:27:40.280
school and they can barely read. And it's like, this is really giving up. This is giving up on kids
01:27:47.260
of color. And it is it's no laughing matter. It's really, really. So it just disturbs me to my core that
01:27:56.660
this is preached in the name of anti-racism, because in effect, it is the most racist thing possible.
01:28:03.080
Mm hmm. Right. It's looking at black kids and other kids of color saying, you can't you can't do it.
01:28:11.060
You do not like the way you give someone a gift is not to exempt them from all standards,
01:28:16.600
in particular, the standards that are crucial to the development of their mind.
01:28:23.860
Coleman Hughes, there's only one Coleman Hughes. He's a unique, special guy. And if you don't
01:28:31.660
believe me, go back to my very first I was like episode nine, I can't remember what we had Coleman
01:28:35.920
and Glenn Lowry on together. And I told a lovely story about Coleman and everybody loves you. So
01:28:41.220
it's a pleasure. Cheryl, always so great hearing your insights and people have got to check out full
01:28:45.200
measure. I had so much fun going on there and just watching your reports and your videos.
01:28:48.560
It's so great how you're so fact based. And she has a really great recent report on the people who
01:28:54.380
have who have made billions off of the whole pandemic. Some of those on the list are pretty
01:28:59.120
surprising. Guys, thanks so much. Thanks, Megan. Thanks for having me on, Megan. You can check us
01:29:03.620
out on YouTube as well. YouTube dot com slash Megan Kelly. You download us as a podcast any place you
01:29:08.560
get your podcasts and we'll do it all over again tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly