The Megyn Kelly Show - SBF Arrested, and Trans Activism in Media and Culture, with Victor Davis Hanson, Abigail Shrier, and James Murphy ｜ Ep. 453

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.760 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.040 We have a lot of news to get to today with some of our favorites.

00:00:18.360 Victor Davis Hanson is here, as well as Abigail Schreier.

00:00:22.040 But we begin with the news that Sam Bankman-Fried's media tour has come to an abrupt end.

00:00:28.400 Indeed, it was only a matter of time, as he has been arrested in the Bahamas.

00:00:34.020 The crypto billionaire behind FTX, whose empire has imploded in the last month, they said it was worth $32 billion.

00:00:41.200 Now they're saying they're missing some $2 to $8 billion.

00:00:44.640 They're now facing a litany of criminal charges, and who knows who else might get charged.

00:00:51.680 So what's ahead here?

00:00:53.220 Securities lawyer James Murphy has been following the story closely and joins me now.

00:00:56.980 James, welcome to the show.

00:00:58.920 Thanks, Megyn.

00:00:59.480 I'm really excited to be on with you today.

00:01:02.320 My wife absolutely loves your show.

00:01:05.100 So I'm really looking forward to talking about this fascinating character, Sam Bankman-Fried.

00:01:10.960 Well, she obviously has very good judgment.

00:01:13.180 So good on you for choosing her as your wife.

00:01:16.280 Let's talk about this guy, because it was only a matter of time, I think, before he got arrested.

00:01:20.460 But what did you make of the charges?

00:01:21.740 Explain to the audience what the charges basically say.

00:01:24.840 Will do.

00:01:25.400 There are eight charges.

00:01:28.120 What did I think of them?

00:01:29.780 I think that they were kind of basic, easy charges to make.

00:01:36.720 Of course, everybody expected the wire fraud charge.

00:01:42.280 And there are four varieties of wire fraud charged, both conspiracy and direct action by Sam alone.

00:01:51.260 And that relates to basically lying to customers that he would take in their funds at FTX and hold those funds in safekeeping so that they could hold them there or trade them, trade their account should they wish to do so.

00:02:10.600 Well, that's not what happened.

00:02:13.140 Sam took that money and transferred it to this hedge fund, Alameda, which Sam owns 90 percent of.

00:02:21.760 So he transferred it more or less to himself.

00:02:24.500 And that Alameda acted as a piggy bank for him, essentially.

00:02:30.060 And he withdrew money from Alameda periodically to fund all sorts of things, including but not limited to political contributions, which is also interestingly charged in the indictment violation of campaign finance rules.

00:02:49.360 Specifically, what they focus on is that Sam used proxies in order to give money to candidates.

00:02:58.400 So instead of directly contributing exclusively himself or making corporate contributions, he used proxies.

00:03:06.740 They're not named, but apparently someone is cooperating with the Southern District of New York and fed them that information that he had used other people, given them the money to in turn give to candidates.

00:03:22.940 And then finally, finally, there's the money laundering charge, which alleges that Sam facilitated transactions in or hiding of illicit proceeds of illegal activities.

00:03:41.880 Now, we don't know what kind of activities those were, if it was, we're speculating drugs, arms shipments, evasion of sanctions.

00:03:51.200 These are the things that we wouldn't be shocked to see at an unregulated offshore crypto exchange.

00:04:00.700 Wow. I mean, that last one is a shocker because we hadn't heard anything about that, about him running some blatantly criminal enterprise through which he laundered its money through FTX.

00:04:12.380 So I'm looking forward to hearing more about what he may have been doing down there in the Bahamas at his multi-property estate at the Albany Resort, which is very nice.

00:04:19.520 He apparently owned some 17 apartments. I mean, insane amount of real estate.

00:04:24.320 Right. And now we know where he was getting the dough.

00:04:27.100 Yes. Do we know anything more about whether prosecutors believe this thing was a farce from the get go or whether it just started to fall apart when crypto started to hit hard times?

00:04:37.300 Well, we know more today than we did yesterday. That's for sure.

00:04:41.520 So the SEC complaint says that it started from the very beginning.

00:04:46.880 Just to interrupt, because the SEC is now – let me just interrupt, James, and tell me, because now the SEC has filed civil charges against Bankman Freed as well as of Tuesday, accusing him of misleading investors and committing nearly $2 billion worth of fraud on their customers.

00:05:02.560 So you've got the civil action by the SEC and you've got the criminal action by the federal prosecutors.

00:05:07.740 Sorry, keep going.

00:05:08.440 Right. And the commodities regulator, the CFTC, as well, filed yesterday.

00:05:15.620 So it's typical for these things to be choreographed, that an indictment is unsealed at the same time that these government regulators bring their civil actions.

00:05:29.060 But it's quite clear from all of the complaints combined and from the testimony of John J. Ray yesterday before the House Financial Services Committee that they're all saying this started at the beginning.

00:05:42.360 And the beginning was 2019 when they started up this FTX International Exchange that exempting Alameda from the rules around margin positions started early and that customer funds were used to back Alameda bets from the very beginning.

00:06:07.640 So that was a little bit surprising.

00:06:10.100 It's now cannot be just attributed to, wow, we've got a crypto winter here.

00:06:15.780 Markets went against FTX and they scrambled and did a couple of things they shouldn't do.

00:06:20.940 It sounds like this was the business plan.

00:06:23.900 My God. I mean, just think about it.

00:06:26.040 The number of people who got pulled into this and the number of celebrities who lent their names to this.

00:06:31.320 I saw an interview he gave in which he seemed to be, I can't remember whether, I think it was the Stephanopoulos one,

00:06:36.500 where he tried to wiggle on whether he did have the right to use FTX customer funds to cover Alameda losses to fund those monies over to another company,

00:06:47.780 you know, which we were told is a clear no, no in this type of business.

00:06:52.660 And he seemed to be trying to wiggle, kind of saying, well, there were some agreements by customers.

00:06:59.540 You know, he he was not ceding the point that it would be prima facie illegal for him to take money invested on his currency exchange FTX and use it to cover Alameda losses, his hedge fund.

00:07:11.640 What is that going to be possible for him to argue?

00:07:15.800 But my understanding was it's in writing as the policy on the FTX exchange that they will not use that money for other purposes and that that money cannot be moved around.

00:07:25.740 Yeah, it's absolutely in writing, Megan, and clear writing, not confusing, not small type, very clear.

00:07:34.420 The assets that FTX customers deposit on the exchange are their assets.

00:07:40.220 And it explicitly says that FTX cannot use those assets itself, cannot exercise dominion over the assets,

00:07:50.160 and sure as heck can't give them to an affiliated hedge fund to let them, you know, bet enormous amounts of money on margin.

00:08:00.180 It's very clear that that was a violation.

00:08:03.760 And not only that, you know, maybe, maybe we'll see a defense of, hey, you know what?

00:08:09.220 You got me.

00:08:10.140 It's a breach of contract.

00:08:11.960 So so in essence, sue me.

00:08:14.940 Well, it doesn't work that way.

00:08:17.060 If you receive money from someone and you know you're going to use it in a way that differs from the agreement, that is fraud.

00:08:28.960 And so I think the case, the wire fraud case and the rest of it appears to be quite strong by what was unsealed yesterday in the Southern District of New York.

00:08:40.820 So I don't think that tactic's going to work.

00:08:43.880 But I'll tell you what, this is a very, very smart man.

00:08:48.780 And he stuck to his script in many, many hours of interviews on Twitter and with Andrew Ross Sorkin and George Stephanopoulos and Forbes and the Wall Street Journal and others.

00:09:05.160 He sticks to his script.

00:09:06.560 And that script is this.

00:09:08.620 I'm really sorry.

00:09:10.260 I should have paid closer attention to what was going on there at FTX.

00:09:15.300 And boy, if I ever had it to do over again, I certainly would have dug in deeper to learn the facts about the margin position that my own hedge fund had on my own exchange.

00:09:28.520 But unfortunately, I was paying attention to other things.

00:09:32.020 Distracted, distracted, not deceptive, distracted, not devious.

00:09:37.060 Does that could that work legally now that if a jury were to buy that he was just distracted.

00:09:43.580 This wasn't a fraud.

00:09:44.600 This was like mismanagement by this curly haired kid.

00:09:47.360 Could that work as a legal defense?

00:09:49.240 Yeah, it could.

00:09:50.920 It could work as a legal defense to the criminal charges, which all require intent.

00:09:57.580 But it's not going to work because there are other people involved who we believe are cooperating and will say,

00:10:07.960 I had a conversation with Sam, we all knew there were that he was transferring billions of dollars to back Alameda trades.

00:10:19.920 And not only that, he was he was transferring customer assets to Alameda.

00:10:25.280 And then he himself withdrew some of those assets in the form of loans to himself and to other insiders at FTX.

00:10:34.840 He borrowed well over a billion dollars from his own hedge fund at the same time that he was transferring the assets of FTX customers to that hedge fund.

00:10:47.640 And he approved a loan of over a half a billion dollars to the director of engineering at FTX.

00:10:58.200 Why did that guy need a half a billion dollars?

00:11:01.840 Maybe you could have given him a fifty thousand dollar bonus if he was doing such a great job.

00:11:07.140 Um, and then finally, Megan, the tip off and you know this, what prosecutors love more than anything is to have evidence of an attempt to cover your tracks.

00:11:19.860 That tells you everything you need to know about the mental state of the person.

00:11:24.580 You don't cover your tracks if you think what you're doing is legal.

00:11:28.700 You cover your tracks because you're doing bad stuff that's illegal.

00:11:33.080 And so he had a special software program written for him that provided a backdoor, uh, to the accounting systems there at FTX through which he transferred assets of FTX customers to Alameda.

00:11:50.640 The prosecutors are going to have plenty of evidence on his state of mind.

00:11:55.520 What was this guy, you know, what's your guess as to what he was thinking that he could just make up the money?

00:12:01.720 He could make up the losses, you know, withdrawals, you know, the misuse of funds on the market that crypto would turn back up and no one would be the wiser.

00:12:14.540 Well, it's a great question, and it becomes harder to answer when you learn that this was part of the business plan.

00:12:22.560 This is what they started with is, is having Alameda have access to customer funds at FTX.

00:12:31.040 So they started when, um, you know, there was a bull market for crypto right now, uh, since the beginning of the year.

00:12:39.900 So now for 11 months, we've had a crypto winter bear market, but anyway, when the market was going up, their bets were working.

00:12:48.680 Um, and they were, um, and they were, this gets a little technical, but they were acting as a market maker on the FTX platform.

00:12:55.960 So they were trading against customers of FTX.

00:12:59.880 And we just learned recently that they were trading with an advantage, uh, and that, uh, advantage has to do with how quickly they are seeing orders being placed, uh, so that they can engage in, in rapid high frequency trading as a market maker against what is called regular or sometimes called dumb order flow from regular customers who are entering orders.

00:13:27.600 So my guess is that it worked pretty well, you know, to begin with, but you need capital and they didn't have a whole lot of capital.

00:13:36.040 They started, uh, with some investors, um, out in California, many of whom were active in this, um, initiative called effective altruism.

00:13:49.400 Uh, and they discovered that there was this wonder boy who had made a bunch of money, uh, doing an arbitrage trade, uh, with, uh, a South Korean exchange that traded Bitcoin.

00:14:04.340 So you could buy Bitcoin for cheaper in the United States and other places, and then sell it on the South Korean exchange for hire.

00:14:14.460 So that's called arbitrage and they did very well with that one trade.

00:14:18.620 And so, uh, once you, as a, you know, boy wonder from MIT and, and working at a famous trading shop called Jane street, once you have a track record, you can attract money.

00:14:30.820 And he did, but he needed more and more and more money, uh, to, to, to bet at larger scale.

00:14:37.660 And so they started using customer assets.

00:14:40.480 I mean, it's amazing because you look at Madoff, at least Madoff, we think at some point was running a legitimate business.

00:14:47.800 You know, what he said was that during the housing market collapse in 2008, that's when he lost enough money that he has had to start stealing from some customers in order to give other customers their withdrawn money.

00:14:58.560 This guy, and now we're learning this whole thing may have been a fraud, may, may have been a design fraud from the start, um, backed by people like Giselle and Tom Brady and Larry David, who didn't of course do their homework.

00:15:11.060 Uh, who's the famous tennis player, Naomi Osaka before lending their names to his brand.

00:15:16.260 That's why you have to be so careful before lending your name to a brand.

00:15:21.540 It's not like being the spokesperson for Timex, you know, something that's been around forever.

00:15:26.100 Crypto we know is a little, like, be careful, be careful before you give it your personal endorsement so you can make money off of it.

00:15:33.900 Okay.

00:15:34.380 The guy who's running the bankruptcy process for his company, FTX, who's sort of the CEO now, but he's basically just trying to manage the bankruptcy, is the guy who did the Enron one.

00:15:44.960 John Ray is his name.

00:15:46.600 He was asked a couple of questions yesterday about, um, and he testified before Congress.

00:15:52.120 Sam Bankman-Fried was supposed to as well, but he got arrested, so he didn't, which I'll ask you about in a second.

00:15:57.600 But John Ray showed up and he was asked, um, some questions about SPF's frame of mind.

00:16:03.500 Here's soundbite one.

00:16:04.300 One of the things that Sam Bankman-Fried has said is he had no, uh, no knowledge of commingling of funds.

00:16:14.760 In your eyes, is there any way that Sam Bankman-Fried or senior management wouldn't know about this sort of thing?

00:16:23.200 No.

00:16:23.500 I mean, how does Sam's attorneys, his defense attorneys, deal with this guy?

00:16:32.020 This guy's got access to all the files, understands them, has already been through this with another massive company and another fraud, and he's seen it all.

00:16:40.440 And he's out there throwing this guy to the wolves.

00:16:43.200 It's an uphill climb, uh, Megan.

00:16:49.680 Maybe, maybe we'll see a guilty plea at some point, but I'll tell you, there's a mountain of evidence.

00:16:56.440 I mentioned that back door.

00:16:58.320 That's a really great fact for the prosecution.

00:17:00.840 But two days before the bankruptcy was filed on November 11th, so we're talking about Wednesday, November 9th, Sam's ex-girlfriend, uh, was running Alameda. 0.94

00:17:15.220 She was the CEO.

00:17:16.420 She had an all-hands meeting on Zoom, and she said at that meeting,

00:17:22.280 Hey, everybody, just a heads up, we've been using, um, pros, we've been using deposits of FTX customers to fund our trading, and Sam, I knew about it, Sam knew about it, a couple other insiders, uh, knew about it.

00:17:39.700 Um, so she really doesn't have a great motive for confessing to that in a public forum. 0.69

00:17:46.160 The Wall Street Journal spoke to people who were on the call.

00:17:49.500 Surely there's some recording of this as well.

00:17:54.440 Uh, so there's a ton of evidence, uh, to show that Sam knew exactly, uh, what was happening.

00:18:01.840 And so he's going to find it very difficult to, to get out of this trap that he's made for himself.

00:18:09.160 Well, he seems to be, he hasn't said, is it Caroline Ellison?

00:18:13.000 Is that the name, right?

00:18:14.940 She's the girlfriend who was running Alameda and, or ex-girlfriend, whatever. 0.94

00:18:18.360 It was some, somehow connected romantically at one point.

00:18:22.380 Um, or so we're told she, he seems to be getting ready to blame her.

00:18:26.060 Like I didn't understand.

00:18:26.960 I didn't know what's going on.

00:18:27.620 She was running Alameda.

00:18:28.380 I wasn't running Alameda.

00:18:29.520 He hasn't said Caroline's the bad guy, but he, I've seen enough of him to realize he's getting ready to blame her.

00:18:34.680 Um, and she has said nothing.

00:18:37.080 Unlike Sam, who seems to like publicity more than Meghan Markle.

00:18:41.500 He, she, Caroline has said absolutely nothing.

00:18:44.860 And it's the, the logical conclusion is she's, she's the one she's talking to the feds right now.

00:18:50.000 She's going to be the star witness.

00:18:51.160 What do you think?

00:18:51.620 Um, well, she's been spotted in New York, um, in the last week.

00:18:57.420 Um, so there were rumors that she was in Hong Kong or in Dubai.

00:19:03.240 Um, but she came back to New York. 0.94

00:19:05.800 And so everyone is speculating, uh, that she is cooperating.

00:19:10.720 And that's where all the detail comes in.

00:19:13.420 I mean, there's quite a bit of detail, particularly in the SEC civil complaint.

00:19:18.840 Um, so I think that's a pretty good, uh, conclusion.

00:19:23.460 She hired, um, the Wilmer Hale law firm, uh, which is a terrific law firm.

00:19:30.440 And it, it is somewhat of a signal that she is going to, uh, cooperate and, and make a deal.

00:19:38.140 Um, and so all of the email, all of the messaging, the texts, the notes of meetings are, I believe

00:19:47.540 are going to substantiate exactly what she is saying, as well, of course, as the money

00:19:53.840 trail.

00:19:54.560 Um, so there's no way for Sam to say he did not know what was going on.

00:19:59.580 Although he said, has said that, uh, that he sort of disengaged from running Alameda, even

00:20:06.200 though he owned 90% of it, one of the problems with that posture is some of the loans, some

00:20:13.200 of the over billion dollars in loans that he took out of Alameda, he signed as the lender

00:20:20.880 for Alameda, as well as the borrower for himself.

00:20:25.500 Uh, so, uh, he, he knew everything that was, that was going on, that the evidence is going 0.97

00:20:32.660 to be dumb ass routine is not going to fly. 0.85

00:20:35.420 Here's a little bit more of what this guy, John Ray, again, he's the CEO now getting the 0.99

00:20:40.220 company through bankruptcy.

00:20:41.080 What he told Congress yesterday on, on whether this looks like embezzlement and, um, whether

00:20:47.360 you can trust what you're seeing out of this company, anything that was done prior to John

00:20:51.340 Ray taking over it, listen here, this is really old fashioned and embezzlement.

00:20:56.900 This is just taking money from customers and using it for your own purpose, not sophisticated

00:21:04.100 at all, uh, sophisticated perhaps in the way, uh, they were able to sort of hide it from

00:21:12.540 people, uh, uh, frankly, right in front of their eyes.

00:21:16.680 But this isn't, this isn't, uh, uh, you know, sophisticated whatsoever.

00:21:21.280 This is just plain old embezzlement.

00:21:23.480 In your declaration, you stated that you did not believe that those audited financial statements

00:21:27.340 were reliable.

00:21:28.360 Can you elaborate on why you believe that to be the case?

00:21:31.300 Well, we've lost $8 billion, right?

00:21:33.640 Of customer money.

00:21:34.800 So by definition, uh, I don't trust a single piece of paper in this organization.

00:21:40.420 My God, James.

00:21:42.640 Then just one more to boot.

00:21:44.460 He talked about how to keep the books, they used QuickBooks, which is something a very small

00:21:49.640 business, or as I understand it, even some individuals might use to manage their, uh,

00:21:53.880 their finances.

00:21:54.880 Here's John Ray on that.

00:21:56.100 Sot three.

00:21:57.760 Literally, you know, there's no record keeping whatsoever.

00:22:00.860 It's the absence of record keeping employees would communicate, you know, invoicing and expenses

00:22:06.660 on, on Slack, which is, you know, essentially, uh, uh, you know, a way of communicating for

00:22:12.360 chat rooms, uh, they use QuickBooks, the multi-billion dollar company using QuickBooks, QuickBooks,

00:22:19.320 QuickBooks, uh, nothing against QuickBooks.

00:22:23.220 It's a very nice tool, just not for a multi-billion dollar company.

00:22:27.920 Okay.

00:22:28.440 But here's my question to you.

00:22:29.660 Does that in any way help Sam Bankman-Fried?

00:22:31.880 Like I was just a dope.

00:22:33.920 I was just like, I was just a kid.

00:22:35.880 I wasn't nefarious. 0.99

00:22:37.580 I was just dumb. 0.86

00:22:40.740 That's what he's trying. 0.97

00:22:42.280 And he stuck to it.

00:22:43.520 He stuck to his guns.

00:22:45.160 He's, he's a very, very smart guy.

00:22:47.280 I mean, he went, went to MIT and did, uh, you know, effectively trade, uh, in crypto for

00:22:54.840 a while.

00:22:55.380 And he went to a, a well-regarded, uh, trading firm.

00:22:59.600 But let me just comment on that John J. Ray clip.

00:23:04.200 You need to understand.

00:23:05.420 I watched the whole thing.

00:23:06.760 You know, John J. Ray was exceptionally careful.

00:23:10.340 His answer to 90% of the questions was, Hey, we're, we're studying that.

00:23:15.720 We're investigating that.

00:23:17.580 We're in the process of collecting data, but we're not ready to make any conclusions at

00:23:22.240 this time about whatever you just asked me about.

00:23:25.880 However, when it came to Sam Bankman-Fried, you got a simple declarative sentence, Sam

00:23:34.480 engaged in embezzlement.

00:23:37.300 Embezzlement is a crime.

00:23:38.940 You don't accidentally embezzle.

00:23:41.480 You don't embezzle because you were inattentive. 0.95

00:23:44.180 You embezzle on purpose because you want that money and you've got plans on how you're going

00:23:49.120 to spend it.

00:23:50.480 It's stealing. 0.97

00:23:51.300 I mean, yeah, you're, you're, you're a thief is what he's saying. 0.89

00:23:53.420 That's interesting. 0.94

00:23:54.020 Oh, thank you for the, for pointing that out because I did not watch the whole testimony.

00:23:57.920 So that's fascinating.

00:23:59.160 Let's talk a little bit about the players in the, in the new criminal case against him.

00:24:03.820 The prosecutor, Damian Williams, uh, what do we know about him?

00:24:07.980 And is this SDNY is the Southern district of New York prosecution?

00:24:11.700 Yes.

00:24:12.240 So he is the U S attorney for the Southern district of New York.

00:24:15.720 And Damian Williams is a superstar.

00:24:19.920 Um, listen, listen to this, Megan, Damian Williams was the son of immigrants from Jamaica.

00:24:27.860 He ended up going and moved to the, to Brooklyn is settling in Brooklyn.

00:24:33.220 He went to Harvard, then got a degree at Cambridge, then went to Yale law school, and then clerked

00:24:42.560 at the United States Supreme court for justice Stevens.

00:24:45.480 So in our business, your business and my business or what you used to do, Megan, that's called

00:24:50.940 running the table.

00:24:52.020 There is no way to start a career in the law any stronger than that.

00:24:57.060 This guy successfully prosecuted Sheldon silver, uh, from the, uh, you know, the New York,

00:25:04.700 uh, uh, legislature.

00:25:07.200 He was in charge of the, of the legislature there presided and, um, he's tough, he's energetic,

00:25:14.920 he's legit.

00:25:16.340 There will be no quarter given.

00:25:18.700 I think it's fantastic.

00:25:20.820 This is a great, uh, match.

00:25:23.920 Uh, he's not going to fall for any tricks by Sam or his, uh, or his lawyer and his lawyer

00:25:30.920 is a good lawyer, Mark Cohen.

00:25:32.460 Uh, Mark, um, you know, is, is, uh, known now for having, uh, recently represented Ghislaine,

00:25:41.940 um, I've forgotten her last name now, but Epstein's, uh, uh, procurer, uh, and, and he also represented

00:25:51.820 El Chapo, the, the drug cartel, uh, leader.

00:25:55.240 Um, so he's legit.

00:25:58.000 The judge, uh, comes from, uh, Ronnie Adams, um, in the Southern district.

00:26:03.920 Uh, a judge has already been assigned to the case.

00:26:06.860 Uh, she's very smart.

00:26:08.640 She comes from kind of legal royalty in terms of her family. 0.55

00:26:13.080 Her dad was Floyd Abrams, a very, very, uh, successful first amendment, uh, lawyer who

00:26:19.740 was, uh, kind of the key man in that original New York times, uh, first amendment case, um,

00:26:27.900 Pentagon papers.

00:26:29.340 His, her brother is Dan Abrams.

00:26:31.800 So you, you probably know Dan.

00:26:33.680 He's a friend of ours.

00:26:34.640 He's a TV lawyer for ABC.

00:26:37.000 Uh, her husband worked on the, um, on the Mueller investigation, uh, into, uh, Donald Trump.

00:26:45.140 Uh, so this is, uh, this is a legit family, uh, that's been very active.

00:26:51.060 She's very smart, went to Cornell, also Yale law school.

00:26:54.520 And, uh, uh, you know, finally she did 10 years as a prosecutor in the Southern district

00:27:01.120 of New York.

00:27:02.260 And I'm a big believer, uh, in judges who have been prosecutors because they saw crime up

00:27:09.360 close and personal.

00:27:10.480 They dealt with victims.

00:27:12.280 They understand what police and other law enforcement are up against.

00:27:17.180 And in my experience, that tends to leave an impression.

00:27:21.340 Even if someone falls in the category of quote unquote liberal, if you see someone who prosecuted

00:27:27.620 gang crimes, for instance, for 10 years, uh, it really leaves an impression on them.

00:27:33.260 And I think she's going to be a terrific judge to preside over this. 0.99

00:27:38.180 I don't see, I don't see any hint of politics playing a role so far in this case.

00:27:42.160 She's a fair judge.

00:27:43.540 This is an aggressive prosecutor.

00:27:45.380 He's brought the charges.

00:27:46.560 He, he wants to win.

00:27:47.580 Now that he's brought the charges, he wants to win.

00:27:49.100 He's not, it doesn't want to go easy on this guy.

00:27:50.560 If he'd want to go easy on him, would have cut a deal up front or would have only brought

00:27:53.900 some lesser charges.

00:27:55.720 Um, so we'll see where they go with it.

00:27:57.860 The potential charges brought now, and they could be amended, more could be coming, would

00:28:02.580 have a potential sentence of 115 years.

00:28:05.580 People always get excited to add up the numbers.

00:28:07.400 If they ran consecutively convicted on everything, maximum terms, what's realistic if he were

00:28:12.880 to be convicted on all this stuff and what, what in your view will probably lead, will

00:28:16.680 happen?

00:28:17.260 Like there'll probably be a plea.

00:28:19.660 Um, what would be fair?

00:28:20.960 What kind of time are we looking at?

00:28:23.280 Yeah.

00:28:23.680 The potential sentence for Sam, I've seen that a hundred, 120 years thing.

00:28:28.380 Uh, I don't believe that's correct.

00:28:29.960 The actual answer is infinity years, um, because each count of defrauding a customer is a separate

00:28:39.700 count.

00:28:40.340 So recently Michael Avenatti, uh, was sentenced to many years for defrauding four clients

00:28:48.400 out of $7.6, uh, million dollars.

00:28:51.500 He got over a decade, uh, sentence.

00:28:53.900 So Sam has defrauded more than a million customers and the missing money is somewhere in the range

00:29:02.780 is in the billions.

00:29:03.820 Let's say that maybe eight, 10 billion dollars.

00:29:07.460 So there is this, um, this matrix called the federal sentencing guidelines and they look

00:29:13.780 at, well, how many victims do you have and how much money did you steal?

00:29:17.840 And he is off the charts of that matrix.

00:29:21.060 So the true answer is infinity.

00:29:24.580 However, um, prosecutors may pick and choose the very best, you know, 10, 20 victims and

00:29:33.800 prove those cases up, uh, and use that and whatever is done.

00:29:39.220 I am pretty confident, uh, that, uh, Damien Williams is going to go for a term that lasts

00:29:46.920 significantly longer than an expected life expectancy, uh, for Sam Bain and Freed.

00:29:53.700 So I, there isn't going to be any 10 or 20 year thing here.

00:29:57.800 Oh, wow.

00:29:58.480 That's fascinating.

00:29:59.260 I mean, he's only 30.

00:30:00.360 So, I mean, my husband and I were just discussing this.

00:30:02.740 If he only gets a 10 year sentence, he's out.

00:30:04.960 He's still a young man.

00:30:05.720 He could do it all over again.

00:30:07.580 Uh, he's definitely on a PR campaign in part with all these interviews trying to say,

00:30:11.740 oh, gee, all shocks.

00:30:12.780 Oh, look at me.

00:30:13.440 I'm not a scary guy.

00:30:14.980 And you mentioned the, um, Aaron Sorkin interview of him, they, Aaron Sorkin was thanking him

00:30:20.420 at the end of it and had the audience applauding for him.

00:30:22.780 Andrew, sorry, I screwed up the names, the other Sorkin, um, they had the audience clapping

00:30:27.260 for him for this alleged fraudster, like a Madoff.

00:30:31.080 It was insane, but that's all part of Sam Bankman Freed's plan.

00:30:35.720 Ah, shucks.

00:30:37.300 I'm in earnest and I'm just, you know, look at me. 0.99

00:30:40.760 I didn't mean to turn it, but look at the bad dumb ass over there running Alameda. 1.00

00:30:43.680 It was all her, like, so we'll see, we'll see whether that works in front of a jury when 0.99

00:30:48.220 you're across from Damian Williams.

00:30:50.220 And, uh, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what, um, that was really cringeworthy, um, the applause.

00:30:58.900 And here's why people forget about the human tragedy that this story is.

00:31:05.860 I have received, um, communications from people who tell me I have lost all of my money, my

00:31:16.260 life savings at FTX.

00:31:19.000 And what they're talking about in some cases is less than $10,000.

00:31:25.760 They were wiped.

00:31:26.860 That's their life savings.

00:31:28.000 And it's been wiped out.

00:31:29.680 And I've gotten communications from people who say, I'm considering suicide.

00:31:34.880 You know, I, that, that's kind of hard to, to take hard to deal with.

00:31:40.120 And you, and you try to send an encouraging message back.

00:31:43.900 They really want to hear that they're going to get 80 or 90 cents on the dollar out of this

00:31:49.720 bankruptcy.

00:31:50.540 But these people are really at wit's end.

00:31:53.720 Some of them can't pay their mortgage, can't pay, you know, for their car or food or whatever.

00:31:58.300 This is a human tragedy at quite a large scale.

00:32:02.580 So as I watched the Andrew Ross Sorkin thing end with that applause, um, that was, that was

00:32:09.240 really, really troubling and sad.

00:32:12.680 As I know, so many of these creditors, the smaller creditors were watching, you know, watching

00:32:19.180 what was going on there.

00:32:20.280 And they saw a crowd of mostly very well-heeled Wall Street types in New York, uh, give Sam

00:32:27.700 a round of applause.

00:32:29.260 Oh God, that was really stomach turning.

00:32:31.960 James, thank you so much.

00:32:33.040 Please come back and, uh, keep us updated as the case goes, you know, farther.

00:32:37.560 Cause we're, we're going to have some interesting exchanges on this.

00:32:39.740 I have a good feeling.

00:32:41.440 Absolutely.

00:32:42.560 Megan, this was so much fun.

00:32:44.120 I'd be delighted to come back anytime.

00:32:46.180 All right.

00:32:46.480 And my love to your wife too.

00:32:47.820 Thank you so much, James Murphy.

00:32:49.480 All the best.

00:32:50.480 All right.

00:32:50.720 We're going to be right back with Victor Davis Hanson.

00:32:54.220 VDH is here.

00:32:54.980 Love talking to him.

00:32:55.660 Stand by.

00:32:57.700 A series of new polls showing that if Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to take on former

00:33:06.100 President Donald Trump in 2024, he would win.

00:33:09.460 But do polls like this matter at all this far out?

00:33:13.740 Joining me now, Victor Davis Hanson.

00:33:15.680 Victor's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

00:33:17.920 He hosts his own podcast, The Victor Davis Hanson Show.

00:33:21.840 And he is the author of The Dying Citizen, How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization

00:33:28.040 Are Destroying the Idea of America.

00:33:30.680 It's a great book.

00:33:31.480 I've read it.

00:33:31.900 My husband's read it.

00:33:32.560 We gave it to our neighbor.

00:33:33.660 He read it and loved it.

00:33:34.660 So you guys should check it out.

00:33:35.940 The Dying Citizen.

00:33:37.080 Victor, great to have you back on.

00:33:39.020 Can I just pause before, before we get to the polls, Trump DeSantis, let's just follow

00:33:43.180 up on Sam Bankman-Fried.

00:33:45.060 This guy's in a whole host of trouble.

00:33:47.440 But zooming out as to how this happened, like a fraud from the start and charged now

00:33:53.100 with basically the attempted manipulation of our politicians through some sort of money

00:33:58.880 that, you know, I don't know how he how he mastered or how he managed it.

00:34:02.540 But this guy was playing everyone right from the start.

00:34:06.520 And our politicians in charge of regulation and so on were just like little lapdogs running

00:34:11.180 along for the for the party.

00:34:12.780 What do you make of all of it?

00:34:13.900 Well, he followed a script that we know now is familiar.

00:34:17.080 Elizabeth Holmes did the same thing with Toronto's.

00:34:19.580 And it's that environment between San Jose and San Francisco with a little triangle out to

00:34:25.520 Stanford University.

00:34:27.400 Elizabeth Holmes was a Stanford student that gave her cred, supposedly.

00:34:31.260 She was a big Hillary donor, left wing politics. 1.00

00:34:33.680 She used the Steve Jobs get up of being dressing in black and being young.

00:34:39.380 And that that intrigued him fully, you know, eight billion dollars worth of investment that

00:34:44.080 went down that hole.

00:34:45.100 He came in.

00:34:46.440 He didn't go with the black get up like Steve Jobs. 0.93

00:34:49.800 He went with a bum look, you know, cutoffs, T-shirt, kind of like Mark Zuckerberg's tie dye

00:34:55.160 shirt.

00:34:56.340 And or Elizabeth.

00:34:57.880 I mean, Jack Dorsey's ring in the nose.

00:35:00.760 They all have this get up and they all he grew up on the Stanford campus.

00:35:06.120 I'm on.

00:35:07.060 I'm there and I listened or heard or read his two parents who are left wing law professors.

00:35:13.720 He went to him.

00:35:14.700 He went to prep school, MIT.

00:35:16.420 So did his associate, Catherine Ellison.

00:35:19.400 She went to Stanford.

00:35:21.460 So they had all of the right educational brands.

00:35:24.820 They were from Northern California in some sense.

00:35:27.980 They were left wing.

00:35:29.220 He conned this word, you know, effective altruism.

00:35:32.660 So he kept promising that what was brilliant about his con was it wasn't just the 200 million

00:35:37.640 that he'd given to Joe Biden or congressional candidates, but it was the promises that he

00:35:42.960 was going to give, you know, all of his fortune.

00:35:44.900 And when they looked at this crazy twenty five billion dollars that was worth their mouth

00:35:50.020 water.

00:35:50.480 So he got de facto before the midterm, at least, exemption from the bureaucracies in the

00:35:57.540 administration and from congressional oversight by the Democrats.

00:36:01.440 And then he kind of like Bernie Madoff, just collapsed after the midterms.

00:36:06.060 But I think everything's been politicized.

00:36:08.340 We could have known this before the midterms.

00:36:10.800 And I don't know why he had to be indicted right before he was going to appear and name

00:36:15.680 names before Congress.

00:36:16.900 It might have been wise to wait one day, but I think now he's kind of an embarrassing

00:36:22.260 amulet around the necks of all these left wing people.

00:36:25.220 But he had, I guess what I'm getting at is if you come out of the Stanford embryo and you

00:36:31.360 rub shoulders with left wing politics and you are identified with Silicon Valley and you're

00:36:38.360 an anti-capitalist capitalist by your garb that you wear.

00:36:42.720 And you're absolutely right.

00:36:43.840 He had this nerd, uh, naivete, you know, he, it wasn't like Bernie Madoff.

00:36:49.360 He was, I don't know what I was doing.

00:36:50.560 I was just trying to help people.

00:36:51.760 I'm kind of sloppy.

00:36:52.700 And I, and that, that appealed to a lot of people.

00:36:55.560 And that was a very effective Ponzi fraud because of that.

00:36:59.780 You know, to me, it reminds me of like, I don't want to get personal training services

00:37:04.160 from an obese person and I don't want to get my hair done by somebody who's got bad hair

00:37:09.480 and I don't want to give my money to some guy who's slovenly and can't tie a belt.

00:37:15.160 I just like, there's something I realized that was his shtick.

00:37:18.840 But to me, you know, I, well, I have investments and so on.

00:37:22.120 I would not, I would not give my money to somebody who presents like that down in the

00:37:25.720 Bahamas.

00:37:26.540 That's sketchy.

00:37:27.480 And you know that there's no, there's not gonna be any regulation if it turns out he's

00:37:30.980 a fraudster.

00:37:31.820 And indeed, this is one of the questions.

00:37:34.540 Can he be extradited from the Bahamas?

00:37:36.280 He can.

00:37:36.700 He, I think he's going to be, but he's going to fight it.

00:37:38.960 It's just the whole thing kind of stinks.

00:37:41.120 But because of his effective altruism, everyone looked the other way.

00:37:44.800 And he got all like Tom Brady.

00:37:46.700 I think, I don't know what his politics are.

00:37:48.000 I know he was sort of open-minded to Trump, but you look, it's like Larry David, Naomi

00:37:53.280 Osaka, all these big names who are very left, who are like, yes, use my image.

00:37:59.940 I'll take the payday.

00:38:01.780 And because, you know, you're this effective altruist, I'll back your brand without knowing

00:38:06.860 anything.

00:38:09.280 Yeah, I agree with you.

00:38:11.620 But unfortunately, people who walk the streets of Cambridge, Mass or Berkeley or Palo Alto

00:38:17.340 or Austin, Texas don't.

00:38:18.880 And they've got more money than we do.

00:38:21.280 And that's part of their appeal to themselves that they want to radiate, that they're capitalists.

00:38:27.360 And they feel so guilty about being capitalists that they're going to dress like every man,

00:38:32.580 but maybe even down dress.

00:38:35.000 And that's, you can see them.

00:38:36.800 I mean, if you walk off the Stanford campus and go down Palo Alto, University Avenue, you

00:38:42.000 see these people everywhere.

00:38:43.660 And they're worth billions of dollars and they look like they're homeless.

00:38:46.520 Well, you mentioned Jack Dorsey of Twitter, and he's got this persona with like the big

00:38:51.800 beard and the nose ring, whatever.

00:38:54.200 So he's cool.

00:38:55.160 He's cool.

00:38:55.600 He's got it.

00:38:56.140 He's like, just trying to make everybody happy, make the world a better place.

00:38:59.320 And even now, when Elon tweets out something, Jack Dorsey is quick to be like, yo, bro.

00:39:03.480 Yeah, I got it.

00:39:04.320 I agree.

00:39:04.900 You're right on.

00:39:05.860 He's like, wants to be liked.

00:39:07.360 You can tell by people more than just as far left base.

00:39:10.860 But then you look back at these 2018 clips of him testifying before Congress.

00:39:16.200 We do not shadow ban.

00:39:17.360 No, we don't do that.

00:39:18.620 I mean, unequivocal.

00:39:20.600 And now we know, thanks to the Twitter file reporting that Matt Taibbi is doing and Barry

00:39:25.300 Weiss is doing, they were shadow banning.

00:39:27.140 They've been shadow banning conservatives.

00:39:28.860 I don't know for how long.

00:39:30.060 That's one of the questions to see whether 2018 was a lie or just, you know, it became

00:39:35.080 untrue later.

00:39:36.620 But you can't trust these guys, right?

00:39:39.360 They have an entirely different agenda.

00:39:42.240 They have a political agenda and they have a bigger agenda of making cash off of that political

00:39:47.540 agenda and selling it to their left wing base.

00:39:50.680 Yeah, they do.

00:39:51.320 And he understood after he watched probably James Clapper lie under oath and admit that

00:39:56.180 he lied under oath.

00:39:57.060 John Brennan, who's been active on Twitter, who lied two times under oath.

00:40:01.560 James Comey, who pled that he had amnesia 245 times while under oath.

00:40:07.560 Andrew McCabe, who admits he lied to four federal investigators under oath, that there's no such

00:40:12.960 thing as perjury if you're coming from the right ideological direction.

00:40:17.320 And he understood that.

00:40:18.420 So when he went into that congressional committee, he just lied.

00:40:22.540 He thought they're going to do no more to me than they did to any of these other marquee

00:40:26.680 people on the left.

00:40:27.740 And he was right about that.

00:40:28.800 They didn't.

00:40:29.600 And I don't think they will.

00:40:31.100 I don't think they'll say anything to Anthony Fauci when he just flat out denied that he gave

00:40:35.220 money for gain of function research.

00:40:37.520 And he was just under oath in a deposition brought by these two states attorneys generals.

00:40:41.140 And he he couldn't remember anything.

00:40:44.260 I know nothing.

00:40:45.540 You know, what was it?

00:40:46.240 Sergeant Schultz.

00:40:46.920 Nothing.

00:40:47.880 He reminded me of Robert Mueller when they asked me about the two pillars of his own

00:40:51.920 investigation.

00:40:52.420 Can you tell us about Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier?

00:40:56.120 And he said he didn't know anything about either one of them.

00:40:58.880 Sure.

00:40:59.260 It was just incredible.

00:41:00.680 Right.

00:41:00.920 I don't remember while under oath for these guys is their code for this is what's going

00:41:06.380 to get me in trouble and therefore I can't say it.

00:41:09.120 So but I know I shouldn't lie under oath.

00:41:11.720 Anthony Fauci couldn't remember anything.

00:41:13.480 He couldn't remember targeting the great Barrington doctors, the gain of function research.

00:41:18.700 Oh, I haven't looked at it that well.

00:41:20.180 Really gain of function.

00:41:21.580 The thing that led arguably, at least we think, to this entire pandemic, like it's at least

00:41:27.520 50 percent likely even in their their world, in our world, it's a lot higher.

00:41:31.600 No, I don't.

00:41:32.080 I don't.

00:41:32.400 I haven't really researched it.

00:41:33.500 Why not?

00:41:34.940 I know.

00:41:35.540 And I don't think they think it's lying.

00:41:37.080 I think that their their ends are considered by themselves so morally superior than any

00:41:42.520 means necessary.

00:41:43.460 You achieve them or excusable.

00:41:45.060 I really believe that.

00:41:46.260 And I think they're really fascinated by guys who are really wealthy and kind of make

00:41:50.700 fun of being wealthy, like Sam Bankman-Fried or Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg or Elizabeth Holmes.

00:41:58.580 They kind of like that look.

00:42:01.900 These guys are smart.

00:42:03.480 They understand that if you do two things when you're wealthy, if you cater to left wing

00:42:08.020 causes, you will get exemption from oversight by the left wing bureaucracies and congressional

00:42:15.420 committees.

00:42:16.680 And if you continue to do that, you'll you'll be romanticized in the media and all of them

00:42:22.180 have achieved that.

00:42:24.360 Well, now, Sam Bankman-Fried has said that he gave to Republicans as well.

00:42:28.400 And then when pressed by a reporter, I think it was at Puck, which is a new ish news organization.

00:42:36.260 How much has it been the same to the Republicans?

00:42:38.500 He kind of was wishy-washy and he's admitted, I guess, to trying to keep those more quiet because

00:42:44.060 he understood the left wing wouldn't like that.

00:42:45.960 But he wanted to buy politicians on both sides.

00:42:48.460 And I, for one, would love the list.

00:42:50.180 I want to see the Republicans as well as the Democrats who are taking his dirty money.

00:42:53.960 Right.

00:42:54.120 Like, who did he buy?

00:42:55.360 And let's figure out how this game actually works.

00:42:57.240 Yeah, I don't quite believe him because his mother was an activist that went out to Silicon

00:43:05.240 Valley billionaires and channeled like 60 million dollars in dark money and then spread it around

00:43:12.820 to the most left wing of all congressional races.

00:43:16.020 She's kind of well known for that on campus and all this altruism. 1.00

00:43:21.220 Somehow they ended up with millions of dollars of Bahamas, Bahamas property.

00:43:26.160 I wonder if they paid gift tax on that.

00:43:28.700 One of the I think his father is a tax expert.

00:43:31.540 So I'm very skeptical about all of this altruism.

00:43:36.920 But I don't really know if he gave any that much to Republicans.

00:43:40.100 I want I want the names like you do.

00:43:42.320 But a recent study of the Stanford community shows that 93 percent of people who live in

00:43:49.400 the Stanford zip code gave to Republicans, excuse me, to Democrats rather than Republicans.

00:43:54.780 So I think it would be a small number.

00:43:56.680 I think he threw that out hoping that, you know, there'd be bipartisan support for him or

00:44:01.860 exemption, I should say, for him.

00:44:03.440 Well, that would make more sense.

00:44:06.180 But he as much as he was outwardly saying he wanted regulation of crypto, he thought it was a good idea.

00:44:12.820 The truth is, most people believe that would have just hurt his competitors who are based in America.

00:44:17.940 And that's the reason he wanted it here.

00:44:19.900 He didn't really want it in a way that it would affect him down in the Bahamas.

00:44:22.900 And I don't know whether more regulation is the answer for this whole crypto problem.

00:44:27.040 I just know the whole thing is kind of sketchy and he's sketchy.

00:44:30.740 And it's not to say that you deserve to lose your money if you gave it to him.

00:44:33.280 But he fits the profile of somebody who could easily be too quickly elevated by the left.

00:44:39.080 When somebody is talking about the altruism and donating all the right causes and being

00:44:42.400 elevated by the left wing press, those are red flags.

00:44:45.980 Investors should know that whether the investor is left or right.

00:44:50.400 Yeah, absolutely.

00:44:51.320 Absolutely. And he knew that.

00:44:53.980 He has a very effective shtick. 0.98

00:44:55.740 I mean, this idea that he just pops up, it's all shucks, as you said, he looks like a slob. 1.00

00:45:01.160 And then he acts like he's just bewildered that people would be angry at him when he's 0.87

00:45:06.080 trying to do the world so good.

00:45:07.780 And his only fault was that he was so concentrated on helping things and helping people and helping

00:45:13.380 companies that he just kind of let this Catherine Ellison just sort of, you know, run the business 0.72

00:45:19.780 in. And he had no idea what was going on.

00:45:23.080 And by the way, you're not wrong because he so he's the effective altruist who's going to

00:45:27.740 donate. It's not just that he's going to fund commercials or he's going to make political

00:45:31.300 donations. He's going to actually use the money, his net revenue and donate it to left wing

00:45:38.080 causes. So this is how he keeps the left silence.

00:45:40.040 That was very brilliant. It wasn't just the money he gave.

00:45:42.880 You're right. It was the money he was promising over a long lifetime.

00:45:46.660 And he bought up half the media.

00:45:47.740 He has all these investments in left wing media companies.

00:45:50.500 So that was smart, too.

00:45:51.560 And then on top and then your mention of Elizabeth Holmes reminded me, too, that's she was another

00:45:55.460 one. She's a woman. 1.00

00:45:56.680 She was celebrated for this woman in Silicon Valley.

00:45:59.620 You know, she's young.

00:46:00.380 She's attractive. 0.97

00:46:01.040 And so all these people thought, oh, yes, you know, we're going to elevate her in the same

00:46:04.520 way. You know, we're going to elevate this trans guy who worked for the Biden administration

00:46:09.860 and non-binary. And the guys were running on a luggage stealing spree while he's working

00:46:14.680 for our nuclear facilities.

00:46:16.020 I know. Elizabeth Holmes was a big Hillary Clinton bundler. 1.00

00:46:19.880 I mean, she had big fundraisings for Hillary at her house.

00:46:23.240 And I was at the Hoover. I am at the Hoover Institution.

00:46:25.580 And three of my four of my colleagues were on the board.

00:46:28.940 And I was told, I mean, the word was, if you you were kind of out of it because you were

00:46:35.160 not asked to join this sure thing and become a millionaire by being on our board.

00:46:39.900 But four of my colleagues were on it.

00:46:42.060 And they were very, you know, prestigious names.

00:46:45.100 I don't think they knew the first thing about blood testing equipment.

00:46:48.380 Didn't matter.

00:46:49.020 She was brilliant what she did.

00:46:51.260 You have to be careful.

00:46:52.940 These people, these who commit these massive frauds are brilliant and they will fool you.

00:46:56.980 A lot of them are sociopaths and that they're in the business of fooling you.

00:47:00.500 Right. So it's you don't expect to be able to see right through them. 0.86

00:47:03.980 Victor, stand by.

00:47:04.820 I definitely want to pick up the story about the non-binary Biden official who's up.

00:47:08.840 But like, if you have luggage and this person is nearby, run, grab your bag and run.

00:47:14.760 They're working with our nuclear codes.

00:47:16.320 What could go wrong?

00:47:17.280 Stand by.

00:47:18.440 Be right back with Victor.

00:47:22.300 All right, Victor.

00:47:23.060 So speaking of identity politics, infecting the way we view our potential leaders, whether

00:47:30.000 it's in the community or business or government, Sam Brinton is Joe Biden's non-binary nuclear

00:47:37.840 waste guru.

00:47:39.580 And Sam has now recently been forced out of the administration.

00:47:43.220 At first, Sam was just placed on leave.

00:47:45.460 Now Sam is gone from the administration.

00:47:48.360 They're not making clear whether Sam was fired or left.

00:47:52.300 But here this this is a 35 year old person.

00:47:55.680 They say I can't do the day.

00:47:57.880 I'm sorry.

00:47:58.380 They is already taken.

00:47:59.360 They is not available.

00:48:00.220 An available pronoun to people.

00:48:01.820 Sam is non-binary.

00:48:02.860 Wants us to refer to Sam as they Sam got suspended when the news first broke.

00:48:08.100 And here was the news.

00:48:10.160 OK, first there was an incident in Minnesota.

00:48:14.660 OK, and Sam was accused of stealing somebody's luggage.

00:48:18.480 And this is something we all worry about when our bag is going around the luggage carousel.

00:48:22.300 Somebody going to take my bag.

00:48:23.560 You think it's going to happen inadvertently.

00:48:25.540 You certainly don't want somebody to intentionally steal it.

00:48:28.160 But that's what Sam was accused of.

00:48:29.720 According to the criminal complaint, the authorities called Sam up to say, did you take this woman's

00:48:36.900 bag?

00:48:37.140 Well, and Sam said, I didn't have a bag.

00:48:40.160 No, I didn't.

00:48:40.920 I didn't take anybody's bag.

00:48:42.020 No.

00:48:42.580 And they said, we know that you took a bag.

00:48:46.000 It wasn't yours.

00:48:47.080 And then Sam apparently said, well, I miss you're right.

00:48:50.320 I mistook the bag.

00:48:51.520 I thought that this one was mine.

00:48:54.400 And so it was all in good faith.

00:48:57.180 And then they reminded Sam, no, actually, you didn't bring a bag at all.

00:49:02.860 You actually didn't have a bag.

00:49:03.980 And he said, oh, well, I forgot that I didn't take a bag.

00:49:07.780 And so I took this woman's bag completely by mistake. 0.99

00:49:10.400 And they said, no, we have videotape of you removing the tag from her bag and putting it

00:49:15.240 in your handbag, Sam.

00:49:16.900 So Sam was caught dead to rights.

00:49:18.680 And then there was another incident, Victor.

00:49:21.660 That one was in Minnesota.

00:49:22.580 There was one in Vegas as well.

00:49:24.280 Security footage shows Sam walking through Harry Reid International Airport with the luggage.

00:49:30.040 It was a $320 bag lifted from a carousel stuffed with more than $3,000.

00:49:33.980 With the jewelry, clothes and makeup that did not belong to Sam.

00:49:36.780 Unclear why Sam targeted the suitcase, but it was a luxury brand.

00:49:41.280 And they say Sam pulled the victim's luggage from the carousel, examined the tag, then placed

00:49:45.000 it back, looked in all directions.

00:49:47.060 When it came back again, he pulled it off the carousel and did the same thing.

00:49:50.780 And the cops smelled a rat.

00:49:52.780 One cop saw the newspaper article about what had happened in Minneapolis, went back and

00:49:57.620 checked the security footage and realized this is the same guy.

00:50:00.920 It's a serial thief.

00:50:02.740 And we had him working in the nuclear department of our energy department.

00:50:07.360 And it really, it does raise the question of whether we are hiring based on the right

00:50:11.940 criteria.

00:50:13.940 Yeah, I think all of us are live and let live, Megan.

00:50:17.660 We don't really care what a person's individual sexual proclivities are, as long as it's incidental,

00:50:23.080 not essential to who you are.

00:50:24.560 But once these people privilege that and say that this is how you're going to define

00:50:29.140 me, then it's legitimate to criticize them because of that.

00:50:33.820 And what we're seeing is that they use this transgendered issue or sometimes being gay as

00:50:40.840 a sort of a veneer that under which they can do almost anything and you're not supposed

00:50:46.320 to say anything.

00:50:47.640 Pete Buttigieg is another example.

00:50:49.240 He was always billed as the first gay department of transportation.

00:50:52.480 He just went on maternity leave for two months.

00:50:57.320 And my God, we had supply chains.

00:50:59.580 If you flew over the port of L.A., you would see cargo ships out to the horizon.

00:51:04.420 And you couldn't really function if you took a flight and needed a connection for a long

00:51:08.920 time and you couldn't find a rental car.

00:51:11.480 Gas was inexpensive.

00:51:12.760 And the whole transportation bureaucracy was in a mess.

00:51:16.780 But it didn't matter because Pete Buttigieg was the first gay person and he was married and

00:51:23.640 he was home with his husband.

00:51:25.980 And so they use these lifestyles in a way that is supposed to be, I guess, defer us or

00:51:32.500 deflect from them what they're actually doing on the job, which isn't much.

00:51:36.460 And so and then they get very angry and you object to their performance on the job and

00:51:41.880 you become transphobic or homophobic.

00:51:44.600 But I think they're really pushing it because the idea of the civil rights movement was to

00:51:49.480 make your race or your gender or your sexual proclivities incidental so that we're all just

00:51:56.100 people.

00:51:57.240 And but when you start to privilege that as the essential essence of who you are, then you're

00:52:01.440 going to come in for criticism in a way that I think is legitimate.

00:52:05.600 That the paternity leave thing for Pete Buttigieg.

00:52:09.860 So he took two months.

00:52:11.800 That's what I took for my third child because we were launching my show in the prime time.

00:52:16.860 I took I took two months for Thatcher and I actually got cut open and delivered a baby 1.00

00:52:22.520 out of my body.

00:52:23.700 So we should not be taking the same maternity leave. 0.99

00:52:27.200 Pete Buttigieg and I.

00:52:28.940 No, I know.

00:52:29.740 And I think your job was important, but the nation's transportation didn't depend on you

00:52:34.840 and it did on him.

00:52:37.180 And he didn't seem to care about people who, you know, their trains were ransacked and

00:52:43.040 there were Amazon packages all over the ground in L.A.

00:52:45.920 You couldn't get baby formula.

00:52:49.400 You couldn't.

00:52:50.140 I get on a plane.

00:52:51.460 The plane would fly around because it was looking for fuel sometimes.

00:52:55.100 And you couldn't find a rental car.

00:52:56.880 You couldn't fill up for less than seven dollars a gallon for diesel in California.

00:53:00.880 It was a mess.

00:53:01.520 It is a mess.

00:53:03.000 And he didn't really care.

00:53:04.340 All we heard was that about his sexual orientation.

00:53:07.880 The same thing with Karen.

00:53:10.200 What's her name?

00:53:11.520 Karine Jean-Pierre.

00:53:12.800 Jean-Pierre, the press secretary.

00:53:15.500 She was billed not as a brilliant press secretary or had a distinguished record in journalism, 0.85

00:53:23.460 but as the first gay black woman. 0.97

00:53:27.460 And therefore, you know, when she's not doing a very good job and she's doing a dismal job,

00:53:32.520 then when she has made that declaration of who she is, then you can't say anything because 0.93

00:53:38.780 you're racist or you're misogynist or whatever, or you're transphobic or gay phobic. 0.93

00:53:44.600 But they keep getting burned. 0.99

00:53:45.780 They keep getting burned with these elections.

00:53:47.360 They don't learn.

00:53:48.100 They just this week, they invited a drag queen to the White House for the marriage equality 0.74

00:53:54.640 bill signing.

00:53:55.780 This is an attempt by the Biden administration to reach out to, I guess, the ever important

00:53:59.560 drag queen constituency amongst the Democratic Party.

00:54:02.460 And this person's history, you go back and look at this person's history, this person goes

00:54:09.260 by Marty Cummings and was joined by another drag queen named Brita Filter. 1.00

00:54:16.860 There's probably something I'm not seeing in the name Marty Cummings, but in any event, 0.98

00:54:20.640 Marty Cummings in the past tweeted out, the kids are out to sing and suck D. 0.96

00:54:26.600 This is a person invited to our White House. 0.98

00:54:28.660 This is who the Biden administration thinks that is an appropriate choice.

00:54:31.820 And this other, this Brita, performed for a group of children at Grace Church School

00:54:38.200 in New York, which became controversial because the children later came out and said they felt

00:54:41.740 pressured to dance along with this drag queen like it was OK. 0.90

00:54:45.260 They walked in and they were handed pride stickers and told, take one or you're homophobic.

00:54:50.920 This person Cummings posted a photo showing them with three fellow drag queens and a young 0.80

00:54:54.740 child saying this kid wants to perform with us next year.

00:54:57.560 Drag queen story hours, what they're known for. 0.82

00:55:00.200 They call it a family friendly, friendly event.

00:55:02.560 Sure. 0.95

00:55:03.280 And again, this guy Cummings, the one who said the kids are out to sing and suck D, who's

00:55:07.960 hanging out with the president now, tweeted out in 2020, F the police, defund the police.

00:55:13.660 We want to abolish ICE.

00:55:15.320 And then ACAB, I guess he promoted ACAB, you know, which stands for all cops are B's.

00:55:20.180 So in any event, there's no screening process, Victor, or there is.

00:55:23.180 And they just don't care.

00:55:24.520 I don't understand this because you remember it was Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, almost

00:55:29.360 any issue that was controversial.

00:55:30.940 They always said, we're here to protect the children.

00:55:33.520 This is for the children.

00:55:35.920 We work on the left for the children.

00:55:38.680 And this idea, I mean, this idea that you're attracted to somebody even below the age of

00:55:45.020 consent.

00:55:45.360 We have this new word, you know, minor attraction rather than pedophilia that they're pushing.

00:55:50.360 And so what they're doing is insidiously lowering the bar on the age of sexuality and sexual sensitivity

00:55:57.380 and cognition.

00:55:59.260 And I don't understand that because that used to be the idea that among the left, they told

00:56:03.880 us that childhood was sacrosanct.

00:56:06.220 And if anything, the age of consent was always too low in some of the backward states.

00:56:10.340 And all of a sudden, because of this transgender movement, they're now really, I don't know 1.00

00:56:16.420 what their intent is, but they're really getting their murky.

00:56:21.940 It's a very murky idea now about a child ability to absorb sexuality in the rawest form.

00:56:28.480 And they don't have a problem with it, with these drag shows. 0.99

00:56:31.060 And I think they've kind of crossed the Rubicon on this.

00:56:33.860 I think people in mass are going to revolt against it because they're going to say, you

00:56:37.920 know what, children are not going to sit there and be subjected to this type of language or

00:56:44.720 displays.

00:56:46.200 And I think that's going to be across the political spectrum.

00:56:48.780 So I think they've really overdone it.

00:56:50.160 And they're going to have a big pushback.

00:56:53.380 Another example of somebody getting a complete pass for their prior controversial comments

00:56:58.920 because they're saying the right things to appease the left happened in Congress this

00:57:03.940 week.

00:57:04.220 So here's what happened.

00:57:05.280 There was a congressional hearing and it was being held by the House Committee on Oversight

00:57:10.080 and Reform.

00:57:10.840 Now, the Democratic chair of the committee was said the purpose of the examination was

00:57:16.240 to look at the ongoing threat to American democracy posed by white supremacist ideologies

00:57:22.220 and how the federal government can confront domestic terrorist threats.

00:57:27.420 You know, you're a white supremacist if you're a conservative in their eyes.

00:57:30.940 So, you know, you have to you have to be a little concerned about what the real purpose

00:57:34.440 of the of this hearing was.

00:57:36.680 So who do they call?

00:57:38.040 The Democrats call this woman who's been on our show and in the news a fair amount lately.

00:57:43.620 Her last name is Caraballo.

00:57:46.220 Could be Caraballo.

00:57:47.400 I'm not sure how you pronounce it.

00:57:48.260 But the first name is Alejandra and this is a trans activist who is a Harvard law instructor

00:57:55.540 and a trans activist.

00:57:56.820 As I said, this person appeared in a Washington Post story recently criticizing Elon Musk and,

00:58:03.340 you know, the deterioration of civil discussion and so on in America.

00:58:06.920 This person gets confronted by a Republican, Nancy Mace.

00:58:11.820 She's a more moderate Republican, I would say, trying to call her out on some of this

00:58:17.480 woman's past statements.

00:58:19.740 But to keep in mind, as you watch this exchange, this woman, Alejandra Caraballo, is there to

00:58:24.340 talk about the ongoing threat to democracy posed by white supremacist ideologies and the

00:58:29.300 danger of harsh political rhetoric.

00:58:32.360 The harsh is like harsh political rhetoric.

00:58:34.100 So watch the exchange here between Nancy Mace and this Harvard law instructor. 1.00

00:58:40.060 Is rhetoric on social media a problem and a threat to our democracy?

00:58:45.140 Yes.

00:58:45.640 Another question I have.

00:58:47.340 Do you believe that rhetoric targeting officials with violence for carrying out their constitutional

00:58:53.380 duties is a threat to democracy?

00:58:56.980 Yes.

00:58:57.500 Only a few weeks after the attempted attack on a Supreme Court justice on June 25th, one

00:59:02.460 of the witnesses, Alejandra Caraballo, tweeted out the following in response to a decision

00:59:06.520 on abortion overturning Roe v. Wade.

00:59:08.900 And I'll quote directly from the tweet, the six justices who overturned Roe should never

00:59:13.500 know peace again.

00:59:15.940 Alejandra Caraballo also recently tweeted on November 19th, not even a month ago, that the

00:59:20.680 Supreme Court vested with the judicial power of the United States by our Constitution stated

00:59:25.900 they are not a legitimate court issuing decisions.

00:59:28.880 And also the Supreme Court is an organ of the far right.

00:59:33.620 So my last question today of Ms. Caraballo, do you stand by these comments, this kind of

00:59:38.980 rhetoric on social media?

00:59:41.720 And do you believe it's a threat to democracy?

00:59:43.900 I don't believe that's a correct characterization of my statements.

00:59:47.620 Did you not tweet that, that you thought that the Supreme Court justices should be accosted?

00:59:53.740 What I'm saying is that is not a accurate characterization of my statements.

01:00:00.860 How?

01:00:01.780 How?

01:00:02.340 You wrote it.

01:00:03.180 You tweeted it.

01:00:04.180 You tweet crazy things like that all the time.

01:00:06.220 I would have loved for her to have gotten to this earlier so she could have said exactly

01:00:10.560 how.

01:00:11.280 Exactly how did you mischaracterize your own statements in those tweets?

01:00:14.680 Yeah, you know, this is typical.

01:00:18.620 These are not Democrats.

01:00:19.960 We should remember that.

01:00:20.800 They're not even progressive, whatever that term means now.

01:00:23.800 They're hardcore leftists.

01:00:25.640 And you can really see this 60s idea.

01:00:27.720 When I was in college, everybody said, any means necessary are the old Marxists that are

01:00:32.480 superior ends justify any means to get to them.

01:00:35.740 So they don't see that as hate speech.

01:00:38.220 Just like Chuck Schumer doesn't see anything wrong with going out to the doors of the Supreme

01:00:42.280 Court and yelling, you've sowed the wind, you two, and named Gorsuch and Kavanaugh by

01:00:50.100 name, and you're going to reap the world when you don't know what's going to hit you.

01:00:53.720 And then not, you know, and then we have these people show up at the Supreme Court.

01:00:56.880 Or Joe Biden, who says that half the country is, in effect, voted for Trump, or semi-fascist

01:01:03.160 or un-American.

01:01:03.960 And then he gives a lecture about the same thing, that we have to lower the tempo.

01:01:09.340 So I think that in this new political ideology among the Democrats, it's, you can say whatever

01:01:16.460 you need to affect social change, because the social change that you're trying to institutionalize

01:01:22.860 is so morally superior to anybody else's or to the, especially the ossified Neanderthal 1.00

01:01:28.940 right, that at times you're just going to have to say things, and you're going to have

01:01:32.640 to deny them later.

01:01:34.900 But believe me, nobody on the left is outraged about what she said about Supreme Court justices.

01:01:41.820 Well, that's what I want to ask you.

01:01:44.320 Because somebody, somebody must have gone to Congressman Jamie Raskin and said, hey, just

01:01:53.000 as a heads up, this woman who we're about to call has got some really controversial tweets 1.00

01:01:57.540 recently.

01:01:59.000 This isn't from 10 years ago.

01:02:00.900 This is on June 25th.

01:02:02.920 She tweeted out the six justices who overturned Roe.

01:02:05.400 She'd never know peace again.

01:02:07.040 It's our civic duty to accost them every time they're in public.

01:02:10.740 They're pariahs.

01:02:11.960 They should never have a peaceful moment in public again.

01:02:14.020 I mean, and the thing is, the Democratic representatives in charge of the committee said, no problem.

01:02:19.700 That's OK.

01:02:20.540 She can come and she can come and testify against violent rhetoric.

01:02:24.100 That's what we're going to.

01:02:24.740 She's she's perfect.

01:02:25.940 That's just like Maxine Waters who said, follow people around and get in their faces and the

01:02:31.900 Trump people go to the gas station.

01:02:34.000 And she was lauded for that.

01:02:35.580 They feel that those people are especially committed.

01:02:38.520 And if you have to delude people post facto or you have to contextualize a little bit,

01:02:42.960 that's perfectly permissible.

01:02:44.260 But the main thing that they their takeaway is this person is on our side.

01:02:48.860 They're on the front lines.

01:02:50.040 They're willing to go head to head with conservatives.

01:02:53.340 And sometimes they have to use means that conservatives don't like.

01:02:56.300 And we're going to stand with them no matter what.

01:02:58.720 And that's the ideology.

01:03:00.920 It's so ironic, Megan, because they keep saying that the Republicans have been hijacked and they're no longer Republicans.

01:03:07.540 It's really the Democrats.

01:03:08.880 They're no longer they have no semblance, not just to JFK or Hubert Humphrey, but Bill Clinton's party doesn't exist.

01:03:15.800 These are revolutionaries are hardcore and they're going to use any means necessary.

01:03:21.180 And I think the Republican establishment has no idea what they're up against, whether it goes to balloting, absentee balloting or early voting or the use of dark money, which, you know, they are.

01:03:35.240 I just think that we we have no.

01:03:38.980 We can't envision the revolution in our midst when we look at the border or we look at our foreign policy or we look at energy, all these issues.

01:03:46.420 They have they have in store for us radical changes, radical changes, and they're willing to do almost anything to enact them because they don't have 51 percent of the public behind them.

01:03:56.700 They only have these institutions that they've absorbed.

01:04:00.260 This is why Ron DeSantis is so interesting to so many Republicans, because, yes, he'll he'll say these people are lunatics the way we hear Trump say.

01:04:09.420 But DeSantis almost surgically tries to go after their woke temples one by one, right, whether it's the Disney thing or the the bill in the schools to stop the sexual instruction of, you know, very young children in classroom time.

01:04:25.220 Now he's taking a deep dive at the Florida Supreme Court level.

01:04:27.960 He wants an investigation into the drug companies and they're misleading about the covid vaccine.

01:04:32.800 So so he's actually doing something about each of these things that is irritating to a lot of conservatives.

01:04:38.560 You know, he's not just saying the right things.

01:04:40.980 He's doing the right things.

01:04:41.960 And I would submit to you that's one of the reasons why not one but two polls now are showing him leading the GOP pack for the nomination.

01:04:49.260 We are very early, very early in this contest.

01:04:52.240 But the contest is on.

01:04:53.440 Make no make no mistakes.

01:04:54.580 As we come back from the holiday, it's going to start percolating back up.

01:04:58.620 The candidates are going to start declaring in spring and by the summer, we're probably going to be having debates.

01:05:05.000 So here's what the latest news is.

01:05:07.760 Yesterday, we first saw a poll.

01:05:10.860 It was at a Suffolk University and it was the first to show Trump trailing DeSantis nationally by a wide margin.

01:05:18.460 They did say take it with a grain of salt.

01:05:20.780 Could be an outlier.

01:05:21.980 Thousand registered voters between December 7 and 11.

01:05:24.960 DeSantis, 56 percent.

01:05:26.840 Trump, 33 percent.

01:05:29.300 Again, this is with respect to GOP voters.

01:05:33.760 And it's a good lead for DeSantis.

01:05:36.500 I mean, almost 20 points.

01:05:38.800 Now, Trump was still leading DeSantis, 48.8 to 27.3 in the real clear politics average of all polls.

01:05:45.940 But the most recent poll there was taken a month ago.

01:05:48.020 So that was some good news for DeSantis if he wants to run.

01:05:50.740 Then today we get the Wall Street Journal with its own poll showing DeSantis beating Trump, 52 to 38.

01:05:57.620 Still a big margin among likely, that's the relevant group, likely GOP primary voters saying 86 percent view DeSantis favorably.

01:06:07.640 74 percent view Trump favorably.

01:06:10.580 Those who are very conservative favor Trump, 54 to 38.

01:06:14.900 Those who are somewhat conservative back DeSantis over Trump, 59 to 29.

01:06:19.440 The problem for DeSantis is the moderates don't tend to drive the primary results.

01:06:23.740 It tends to be the more conservative ones who drive the primary winners.

01:06:27.000 So what do you make of all that, that DeSantis has some momentum?

01:06:32.640 I think when people mention DeSantis' name as the real rival to Donald Trump, there were two issues.

01:06:39.880 One was DeSantis shared the MAGA agenda.

01:06:43.420 He had a wonderful record of executing of his governor.

01:06:46.400 But did he have the fire in the belly?

01:06:48.460 Could he have the rallies?

01:06:49.540 Would he go after the left in a preemptive fashion?

01:06:51.800 So with the, you know, the bus trip, it was very embarrassing to the left of Martha's Vineyards, the school board stuff he did, and taking on Disney, and as you say now going to the Supreme Court, he's showing that he is every much as feisty and combative as Trump, but without the baggage.

01:07:12.360 So what Trump had to do was he had to convince people that he, everybody knew he was combative, everybody knew he had a good four years, but would he stop that exhausting psychodrama, melodrama?

01:07:24.760 And I don't understand why he hasn't, other than maybe it's innate to him.

01:07:31.560 But what I mean by that, Megan, was he was coming out as the midterms approach in a wonderful position because he had four years to critique of his own compared to the two-year disasters of Biden.

01:07:44.820 And all of these so-called conspiracies that he'd weighed in on, whether it was a Russian collusion hoax, or Hunter's laptop, or going after him on social media and Twitter, they all turned out to be absolutely true.

01:07:58.580 And he was, you know, he was confirmed in all of his accusations.

01:08:03.660 And then, right before the midterm, for some reason, he attacks DeSantis as his sanctimonious.

01:08:10.120 He hints that he's going to run, which it was not necessary before the midterms.

01:08:14.620 And then he goes after Mitch McConnell's wife in kind of a racialist fashion.

01:08:19.000 And then he goes after Youngkin and says his name sounds Chinese.

01:08:23.780 And then he talks about altering the Constitution.

01:08:27.280 I don't think he meant it, but nevertheless, he said something to that effect to replay the 2020.

01:08:33.120 Then he has his nut, Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, no need to go on about him, at his house.

01:08:40.720 And so the result of it is people are saying, we like what he did.

01:08:45.320 We like his positions.

01:08:47.200 But we can get this now without all of these melodramas with DeSantis.

01:08:53.420 And that's where I think it's reflected in the polls.

01:08:56.980 Pluses for DeSantis and minuses for Trump.

01:09:00.040 But as you say, it's early.

01:09:01.600 And if we had this conversation in 2016, we would probably say, wow, there's a guy named Scott Walker.

01:09:09.400 And he's been a hands-on governor.

01:09:11.380 He took on the teachers union.

01:09:12.940 He's the perfect executive.

01:09:15.360 He's in a purple state.

01:09:16.600 He won over independence.

01:09:17.740 He's got a base.

01:09:18.440 He's going to be.

01:09:19.120 And I was one of those who felt very strongly about Walker.

01:09:23.680 But then when he got him on the debate stage, he kind of fizzled.

01:09:27.040 So we'll have to let it play out.

01:09:28.980 But I think right now, Santos is doing what he what people were wondering whether he could

01:09:34.700 do.

01:09:34.940 And he's doing it well.

01:09:36.060 And Trump is not doing what people wanted.

01:09:40.940 He's really not doing anything.

01:09:42.280 It's been the most non-existent campaign since a campaign was ever declared.

01:09:47.840 He just declared.

01:09:48.620 Yeah, I don't know.

01:09:49.620 I don't understand it.

01:09:50.920 And you think he would be out there every week saying, this is what Biden did on the

01:09:56.980 border.

01:09:57.760 Here's what we did.

01:09:59.180 And here's what we're going to do in the first hundred days when I'm elected.

01:10:02.200 We're going to take the Senate.

01:10:03.320 We're going to take the House.

01:10:04.300 We're going to finish the wall.

01:10:05.920 We're going to deport people who just walk across the border illegally. 1.00

01:10:10.200 Here's what we're going to do.

01:10:11.200 We're going to open up Anwar. 0.64

01:10:12.440 We're going to build, finish Keystone.

01:10:15.380 We're going to have more federal leases.

01:10:16.980 Then we're going to do and go, you know, each week, take a topic and never mention anything

01:10:22.700 negatively about DeSantis or Nikki Haley or Pompeo or anything.

01:10:27.960 Just say, you know what?

01:10:28.700 I have a lot of people who want to emulate the MAGA agenda.

01:10:32.400 That would be a good thing to say.

01:10:33.740 And he could be statesmanlike and his polls would go up.

01:10:37.500 But whoever is advising him or maybe whatever he's thinking, it's almost suicidal.

01:10:43.820 It's designed not to see him win the nomination.

01:10:47.820 Victor, as we're speaking, Donald Trump just tweeted out or my truth social doubt.

01:10:53.340 I'm not sure what this is from.

01:10:56.020 Tweets out a video depicting himself as a superhero with lasers shooting out of his eyes,

01:11:01.540 saying he's making a, quote, major announcement tomorrow.

01:11:05.760 It reads, America needs a superhero.

01:11:07.840 I will be making a major announcement tomorrow.

01:11:11.700 Thank you.

01:11:12.340 With the lasers coming out of his eyes, he's pulling the shirt out, you know, to show the

01:11:16.720 superhero.

01:11:17.360 So we'll see.

01:11:18.320 Maybe he's getting back on the campaign trail.

01:11:20.780 Yeah, I think he knows what he has to do.

01:11:23.060 He has to shut up or be quiet about his rivals and praise them and talk about them with faint

01:11:30.040 praise.

01:11:30.520 And then he's got to talk about his prior agenda.

01:11:33.840 And to the degree he mentions the word validating our election, it's always learn the elections

01:11:38.440 of 2020, but we're not going back.

01:11:40.700 We're going to make sure it does not happen in 2024.

01:11:44.380 We're going to restore the primacy of election day and election night returns.

01:11:48.460 And I think it'll be an interesting race if he does that.

01:11:52.380 I think this is a testament to your power.

01:11:54.240 I mean, no sooner do you say, you know, he should be out there week after week.

01:11:57.360 And immediately we get an announcement.

01:11:59.400 I mean, this is this is a hat tip to you.

01:12:01.680 And you're maybe your power that he's watching you all the time.

01:12:05.740 Somehow I doubt it.

01:12:06.880 But we'll find out because sometimes they contact me to let me know what they think.

01:12:11.160 Victor, great to see you.

01:12:12.440 Thank you.

01:12:13.520 Thank you.

01:12:14.580 All right.

01:12:14.840 Coming up next, Abigail Schreier returns to the program.

01:12:18.180 One of my favorite people.

01:12:19.500 And there's a lot of news to go over with her.

01:12:22.140 Our next guest is independent journalist Abigail Schreier.

01:12:29.040 She is a contributor to the new media company launched by our pal Barry Weiss called The Free Press

01:12:34.120 and author of the must read, must read book, Irreversible Damage.

01:12:41.800 If you have not read Irreversible Damage and you care at all about what the trans community, 1.00

01:12:48.140 the medical community, which is on bended knee to the trans activists, what they're doing to our young girls in particular.

01:12:54.580 You need to get this book right now.

01:12:56.240 And trust me, I've had so many people thank me for recommending this book, Abigail, and thank you for writing it.

01:13:01.680 So thanks and welcome back to the program.

01:13:03.780 Thank you so much, Megan, for having me on.

01:13:06.180 Yeah, it's great to see you.

01:13:07.200 All right. So you've been in on this reporting of the Twitter files and Barry's new The Free Press, which is a new media entity.

01:13:15.060 And so far as I can grasp, pretty much everything Twitter has said about itself on the front of suppression and censorship has been untrue.

01:13:23.880 I mean, they've been censoring and they've been lying about it for many, many years.

01:13:28.820 That's right.

01:13:29.100 They're essentially a censorship regime that was going on and there were two parts to it.

01:13:33.340 There was the part we knew about, which was also biased against non-woke speech.

01:13:38.840 And that was, you know, people who pointed out that the transgender swimmer Leah Thomas was a man and that that was the reason for the unfairness to allow Leah Thomas to compete against women in swimming.

01:13:51.260 People who pointed that out on Twitter, they could get their accounts suspended and they were suspended or banned from Twitter.

01:13:56.920 So that's the part we knew about. And the part that we didn't know about was a second sub-Rosa committee.

01:14:05.100 This was a secret committee within Twitter to suppress non-woke speech, speech of the political right and anything that was non-woke.

01:14:14.340 And it essentially deflated the tires of all non-woke speech so that it would limit the visibility and how many people could see it.

01:14:23.200 Now, the names that have been specifically cited in her reporting are Dan Bongino, who's put on a surge blacklist, Charlie Kirk, Do Not Amplify, Dr. J. Bhattacharya, secretly placed on a trends blacklist, which prevented his tweets from trending.

01:14:40.000 That's insane, Dr. J. I have no idea what Dr. Bhattacharya's politics are and none whatsoever.

01:14:44.500 He just called for a different approach to COVID.

01:14:46.720 Just calling for a different approach got him placed on this trends blacklist.

01:14:52.020 Those are the three names I've heard, plus libs of TikTok.

01:14:54.540 Do we know whether it goes beyond them?

01:14:57.880 Yes, we do.

01:14:59.340 Hopefully there'll be more details in the story we have coming out, but also we're going to look.

01:15:05.640 I'll be going back to the Twitter headquarters and others will continue to reveal what we find on things like COVID policy and gender policy.

01:15:14.180 But these were markers that could be put on accounts at any time by this committee, and they really depressed the reach of political speech in a country that is very divided.

01:15:26.500 We are very evenly divided.

01:15:28.320 Our Senate is almost 50-50.

01:15:30.260 Our House is essentially 50-50.

01:15:32.500 And our presidential elections are very close.

01:15:34.520 So this had a profound impact on the reach of a certain kind of political speech.

01:15:40.320 And, you know, just depressing the visibility in an election cycle or, you know, when these issues are hotly contested can really alter the outcomes.

01:15:50.080 What's infuriating to me is they blocked it.

01:15:52.300 They suppressed it.

01:15:53.820 They lied about it.

01:15:54.940 And then when people like Dan Bongino would say, I think you're doing this, they'd gaslight you saying, no, you paranoid conservative.

01:16:04.220 Grow up.

01:16:05.240 You know, and if you don't like Twitter or the way your tweets are trending, go form your own platform.

01:16:10.660 And Dan Bongino, if I'm not mistaken, did.

01:16:12.900 I think he was one of the founders of Parler or he was at least one of the early adopters.

01:16:16.900 My team will check it out for me.

01:16:18.020 But he was definitely one of the early ones over there.

01:16:19.880 And then look what they do to Parler.

01:16:21.960 Then you have the whole big tech industry work together after Jan 6th to blame Jan 6th on Parler and effectively ruined Parler.

01:16:29.260 So it's this is what conservatives or just people, as you point out, who are non-woke are up against.

01:16:35.000 Yes, and it's very cruel.

01:16:36.140 It's very cruel to make half the country feel like it's insane that its media isn't having the same reach that entire users.

01:16:44.600 This wasn't just individual tweets by someone like Dan Bongino or Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA.

01:16:50.380 It wasn't individual tweets.

01:16:52.360 Entire users, if they were non-woke, if they were of the political right, or if they, as Dr. Bhattacharya, questioned COVID policy, they would be suppressed in a systematic way on media, you know, on Twitter.

01:17:05.180 And we have every reason to believe that the other big tech companies like Google and, you know, which owns YouTube and Facebook are doing the same thing or, you know, very similar things.

01:17:15.480 We know, for instance, that Google marks one, I think it's a third of all PragerU, that's the conservative site PragerU that puts out, you know, incredibly popular videos.

01:17:25.200 One third of them are marked adult only for no reason, for no good reason, so that they can never be viewed in a library and children can't have access to them.

01:17:36.000 Wow.

01:17:36.960 That, I mean, this is, we have to continue following this.

01:17:39.640 Yes, I understand we quote knew, you know, we knew it in the way you just have a feeling and you're certain, but this is the evidence of it.

01:17:47.580 And it's worth paying attention to because we can figure out how they did it.

01:17:49.920 We can hear, we can see the discussions, the reporting on how Trump was suppressed or kicked off Twitter was very interesting, too.

01:17:56.280 It was all about how he didn't violate any policies.

01:17:58.800 They were really struggling because his tweets on Jan 6th didn't violate a single Twitter policy. 0.89

01:18:04.080 And you can see the communications between the Twitter execs like, oh, shit, he actually didn't cross any lines. 0.85

01:18:10.040 And then the Twitter employees revolted. 0.96

01:18:14.040 And they were basically saying, he's out of here or we're out of here.

01:18:17.860 And Jack Dorsey bent the knee, ultimately saying, oh, the collective tweets, you know, I don't know, create an atmosphere that's unsafe, whatever.

01:18:26.480 But you can, watching the sausage get made on this liberal suppression is dark and illuminating at the same time.

01:18:35.340 How about that?

01:18:36.860 I think so.

01:18:37.720 Yes.

01:18:38.140 I mean, you know, these that we've been gaslit for so long.

01:18:42.240 And I think that the reason that Elon Musk called to Barry Weiss and Matt Taibbi and other independent journalists was because, you know, the public no longer trusts corporate journalists in the same way that it does independent journalists.

01:18:55.940 And the only reason the only way to signal to the public that Twitter would no longer be captured, which we're hoping going forward, it won't have the same censorship, though that remains to be seen.

01:19:07.340 The only way to signal that to the public is to bring in journalists who weren't themselves part of in of captured organizations.

01:19:15.100 I'm telling you, it's just like Willy Wonka.

01:19:17.480 He could not bring in another candy maker.

01:19:21.260 He had to bring in someone fresh faced and open minded.

01:19:25.160 OK, the you're probably going to be in this group soon and maybe you already are.

01:19:29.540 But I saw you tweeting about the fact that now that Barry and Matt Taibbi have been doing this reporting, they're being called conservatives by the mainstream press reporting on their reporting.

01:19:41.960 Right. Like, oh, of course, he called some of these conservative.

01:19:44.240 These are not conservatives.

01:19:45.460 I know a lot of conservatives.

01:19:46.600 These are not two of them.

01:19:47.840 They do this to me, too.

01:19:48.900 Every article that quotes me or has a segment of mine, conservative podcaster, Megan Kelly.

01:19:53.100 I'm not a conservative.

01:19:54.000 I'm not even a Republican.

01:19:55.380 I don't know what I am.

01:19:56.140 I'm not political.

01:19:56.720 I'm independent.

01:19:57.660 I have strong viewpoints on various things, but they don't all look conservative.

01:20:00.860 Like, what are they?

01:20:01.440 So but your point in your tweet was they're doing that for a reason.

01:20:06.040 That's right.

01:20:06.400 Twitter and big tech has long been part of a social credit system in which they announced to the world and they're having a profound effect.

01:20:14.160 They're announcing to the world these people don't matter.

01:20:16.760 You can ignore them.

01:20:17.800 You can safely ignore them.

01:20:19.180 And I think that has had reverberations across the country in schools, in school board meetings, in corporations.

01:20:26.720 Where certain people are treated and certain viewpoints are treated as that they're as if they're beyond the pale and not worthy of fair treatment.

01:20:34.700 And it starts with companies like Twitter.

01:20:37.500 And they've been doing this for years.

01:20:39.260 But the mainstream media has very much been echoing this.

01:20:42.020 And the moment they don't like you, it doesn't matter how liberal, very wise or mad to EBR, they get called a conservative.

01:20:48.040 It's just a way of saying, don't bother listening to those folks.

01:20:52.500 Yeah.

01:20:53.000 Even The New York Times had me on their disinformation list over the Paul Pelosi attack because I said I would like more facts.

01:20:58.780 I'm not sure.

01:20:59.320 And they put me in some Republican, some right wing Republican.

01:21:02.560 I'm like, you know what?

01:21:03.180 You go look it up.

01:21:04.340 You're The New York Times.

01:21:05.360 Check it out.

01:21:05.900 You can see my voting records for the past 20 years.

01:21:07.780 I've been registered independent.

01:21:08.880 I have been for two decades.

01:21:10.180 Do your homework.

01:21:10.740 It's a way of smearing you.

01:21:12.780 And I don't consider it a negative.

01:21:14.720 I just don't consider it true.

01:21:16.480 So I completely relate to what you're saying.

01:21:19.820 Something you said about the PragerU video stuck with me.

01:21:23.260 So they're labeled adults only.

01:21:25.600 Like they're not fit for minors, which is a joke.

01:21:28.200 PragerU is a gift.

01:21:29.200 Love those guys.

01:21:30.900 It's exactly the opposite when it comes to the field that you've been writing on for so long,

01:21:35.360 which is the transitioning in particular of our young girls and boys.

01:21:41.320 Those those they they think anything goes for minors when it comes to that very dicey field.

01:21:48.180 And you were calling attention recently to the testimony of Yale's Dr. Meredith McNamara,

01:21:56.540 who testified before the Florida Medical Board about so-called top surgery,

01:22:02.040 which is a ridiculous term for a double mastectomy, which is major surgery.

01:22:07.420 So we pulled the testimony that you were reacting to.

01:22:10.240 So I'll play the soundbite.

01:22:11.100 And then you can tell us what why grabbed your attention here to SOT 11.

01:22:14.900 To be honest, it's so rare.

01:22:17.380 I've never referred a patient for bottom surgery.

01:22:19.920 I don't know of a recent case in which it's been done here.

01:22:28.140 I think what we're dealing with is extremely rare cases in which in which that's done.

01:22:34.560 And to my knowledge, it has not been done under the age of legal majority in my institution.

01:22:39.180 And I believe that's the policies of University of Florida and other institutions here in the state.

01:22:44.360 What about for so-called top surgery or mastectomy?

01:22:47.560 The exact same thing.

01:22:52.220 To be honest, I've never referred a patient for surgery.

01:22:56.020 I've never had a patient express that they desire top surgery.

01:22:58.520 And I've never had to explore that because, again, it's quite rare.

01:23:06.660 What did you make of that, Abigail? 0.90

01:23:08.520 Well, to call top surgery quite rare is ridiculous. 0.87

01:23:11.820 It's the most common surgery that young women go for. 1.00

01:23:15.620 It's the first surgery they want when they declare a transgender identity. 0.99

01:23:19.760 And it absolutely happens to minors, sometimes with parents' consent, sometimes without, depending on the state.

01:23:27.140 But we know that, you know, there are all kinds of, you know, girls as young as 13 have had it for a while, been getting it for a while.

01:23:33.800 We know that now public academic research has come out in the Journal of Pediatrics showing the JAMA has had two articles now showing

01:23:45.440 just how many young girls under 18 are getting top surgery, meaning elective double mastectomies.

01:23:53.620 So it's in no sense a rare surgery for the transgender population and even for minors who declare a transgender identity.

01:24:02.140 But that's why we have to report on these things, because the public doesn't know.

01:24:05.680 And unfortunately, a lot of people are lying to the public.

01:24:09.160 Right.

01:24:09.860 And who's going to you have no idea?

01:24:11.320 You're like, OK, she seems like an expert.

01:24:13.280 She says it's not.

01:24:14.500 You have to be very, very doubtful.

01:24:16.980 So this ties into some other reporting that we've been seeing lately.

01:24:20.120 I'll tell you, it was this is the article's date at 1114.

01:24:22.900 All right.

01:24:23.060 So it's November 14th.

01:24:23.940 And we get the Times, the Journal and the New York Post delivered to our house every day.

01:24:28.240 My husband sees this article in the New York Times.

01:24:31.180 I don't remember if it was on the front page, but it was prominently placed.

01:24:34.180 And the headline was they paused puberty.

01:24:37.560 But is there a cost with a question mark?

01:24:40.040 And we both are like, great.

01:24:42.080 And how the New York Times is actually going to take a look at the downsides of puberty blockers like that's the dawn of a new day.

01:24:50.940 And the article went on to say there is emerging evidence of potential harm to these puberty blockers, talking in particular about bone density growth, flatlining.

01:25:02.060 Many do not fully rebound.

01:25:04.920 They lag behind their peers.

01:25:06.120 There's a heightened risk of debilitating fractures earlier than would be expected.

01:25:12.540 Many physicians are prescribing these to patients even at the first stage of puberty as young as eight years old and then allowing them to progress to cross sex hormones as soon as 12.

01:25:23.120 I'm reading this in the New York Times.

01:25:24.400 This is great.

01:25:24.920 This is stuff I could read in an Abigail Schreier article or irreversible damage.

01:25:28.480 I'm thinking, OK, this is, you know, maybe they're getting more open minded.

01:25:31.700 They talk about how a transgender adolescent in Sweden took these blockers from 11 to 14, no bone scans until the last year of treatment.

01:25:41.540 And then they found osteoporosis, full osteoporosis.

01:25:45.300 And the person sustained a compression fracture in his spine, causing permanent disability.

01:25:51.940 So they did it, OK, and then and then the backlash, right?

01:25:58.780 This is just one example.

01:26:00.080 But Teen Vogue took aim at them right after saying they missed the point.

01:26:04.640 This is an unfortunate piece.

01:26:06.840 There's a they're they're completely missing the seemingly endless pursuit for equitable care for trans people.

01:26:13.020 Um, what's OK?

01:26:16.400 Oh, they say, what is the risk of opting against puberty blockers and allowing puberty to perceive death?

01:26:22.660 The risk is death.

01:26:24.120 They go back, Abigail, to the old. 0.97

01:26:25.640 They're going to kill themselves if they don't get the puberty blockers.

01:26:28.760 The New York Times has done a disservice to our country. 0.93

01:26:31.780 They fail to adequately acknowledge the compounded systemic and direct violence facing the trans community.

01:26:36.280 And as if on cue, within two weeks, we get this through the Times.

01:26:42.880 Transgender Americans feel under siege as political vitriol rises and back to they're going to commit suicide unless they get the help. 0.96

01:26:50.360 They I mean, it's crazy. 0.99

01:26:52.080 They took one risk.

01:26:53.380 They got hit.

01:26:54.240 They reversed course.

01:26:56.020 This is how it goes.

01:26:57.580 I mean, this is the game they play.

01:26:59.640 The risks that I wrote about an irreversible damage, which came out in 2020.

01:27:03.400 I wrote, you know, I was writing the book in 2019.

01:27:06.660 These are something they've known about since the beginning.

01:27:08.760 Doctors have known about.

01:27:09.760 We knew the risk of osteoporosis bone density because they were blocking puberty.

01:27:14.020 We knew that a child who didn't go through puberty couldn't go through sexual maturation.

01:27:17.980 We knew that in just thinking about it, that a child who didn't go through sexual maturation might not be fertile.

01:27:24.580 These were all things that we knew.

01:27:26.380 And these were all risks that they willingly and knowingly downplayed.

01:27:29.880 And the media participated in it and gave cover to them for a very long time.

01:27:34.680 And then when it can no longer be denied because across Europe they are banning puberty blockers in institutes, you know, or curtailing their use in France, England, Sweden, everywhere that they have given these things an honest look.

01:27:47.640 Then, you know, suddenly the New York Times, you know, allows a tiny bit of of truth to to to emerge in its pages.

01:27:57.260 It's it's it's really not an honest broker in any of these conversations.

01:28:01.640 And it's not doing a service to the public.

01:28:04.160 And then they get shamed right out of it and try to post another thing like they have the risks of suicide if you push back at all.

01:28:10.100 They do in the article, I will say, call attention to the fact that I don't think, you know, they're doing it for the reasons you and I would want them to.

01:28:17.820 That the American Academy of Pediatrics says blockers can be provided any time during puberty and hormones from early adolescence onward.

01:28:26.280 The American Academy of Pediatrics.

01:28:28.940 I don't trust anything they say or do.

01:28:30.880 I don't trust them on covid.

01:28:32.220 I don't trust them on this.

01:28:33.800 I've been disgusting, disgustingly disappointed with them and honest doctors like Vinay Prasad are out there saying the same.

01:28:42.520 What do you make of them?

01:28:44.240 Well, you know, we know that the American Academy of Pediatrics is completely captured.

01:28:48.780 We know that a lot of science organizations are a lot of the medical all the major medical accrediting organizations are completely captured.

01:28:55.040 They are committed to woke ideology, often involving denying biology.

01:29:00.320 I mean, they they really are not honest.

01:29:03.180 And what I always tell parents, and this is really important, is trust yourselves, not the experts when it comes to your children.

01:29:10.120 You are the only person or people who care about your child's welfare in an unself-interested way and really trust yourselves.

01:29:19.840 But don't trust the experts.

01:29:21.080 The experts at Cambridge Dictionary, redefining woman.

01:29:27.260 I'm sure you saw this in the news.

01:29:29.120 Yeah.

01:29:29.460 Like I sometimes I don't cover this stuff because it really irritates me.

01:29:32.540 It genuinely irritates me.

01:29:34.560 And I.

01:29:35.500 But I'm going to.

01:29:36.720 They they have added a supplementary definition of a woman that includes transgender individuals.

01:29:42.260 Unclear when the definition was added as of March 2022, they said a woman is an adult female human being.

01:29:49.180 And that was it.

01:29:50.540 Now they say a woman is an adult who lives and identifies as female, though they may have been said to be a different sex at birth.

01:30:03.480 By the way, my my producers are telling me the Marion Webster.

01:30:08.980 They added a secondary definition of female that says having a gender identity that's the opposite of male.

01:30:14.540 And the CDC, the CDC says that that men are capable of breastfeeding and goes on to define chest feeding as a term used by many masculine identified trans people to describe the act of feeding their baby from their chest.

01:30:32.560 They've surrendered.

01:30:33.620 The only ones who haven't so far are Oxford, Collins and Macmillan.

01:30:36.740 What do you make of it?

01:30:37.340 I think these are really significant things.

01:30:40.580 I mean, on the one hand, we read them and we think that's wacky.

01:30:42.680 Everybody knows what a woman is, but they have real impact when you start discussing things like Title IX and Title VII, which enshrine women's rights.

01:30:51.100 And if those rights are no longer reserved to women, if the ability to compete at high levels of sports are no longer reserved to women, you're ending those rights.

01:31:00.720 You're ending those at the eligibility for those athletic scholarships that, you know, these were very hard won rights for women. 0.98

01:31:07.120 So it starts out, it's this quirky sort of queer theory, you know, takeover of our language, but it has very, very tangible rights for women. 0.87

01:31:16.860 And I think it's a very, very serious matter.

01:31:18.920 When you wrote Irreversible Damage, this was definitely in full swing, you know, this trans craze sweeping the nation, especially with our young girls. 1.00

01:31:28.140 You, Deborah So, and a few others were critical in calling attention to this and I think helping to pump the brakes a bit.

01:31:34.460 Where do you think we are now going into 2023 versus where we were when you wrote Irreversible Damage?

01:31:41.140 You know, I feel very good about where things ended up with Irreversible Damage.

01:31:46.200 When we, when, when the book was published, no one was talking about this.

01:31:49.840 There was virtually no dialogue about, in the public sphere, about what parents should do and what risks there were when a teen girl suddenly announces out of the blue that she's transgender.

01:31:59.840 There was no serious discussion of the risks of the medical, of the gender medical regime, and, and they were being actively suppressed by the medical accrediting organizations.

01:32:10.860 So now I think we have a real robust debate in this country, which is always as it should have been.

01:32:16.380 And I'm, I'm very happy about that.

01:32:18.820 And I think that, look, as a country, there's no problem we can't solve if we can talk about it.

01:32:23.700 And that includes pediatric gender medicine.

01:32:26.120 People are going to make all kinds of decisions for themselves.

01:32:28.780 They absolutely have to know the facts.

01:32:32.040 And, and, and, and before the book came out, I, I don't think they did.

01:32:36.360 When you came on the very first time, we'll get the episode number.

01:32:39.340 So the audience that you've got to go back and listen to that.

01:32:41.560 Honestly, you're going on a drive pop on that first interview that we did with Abigail.

01:32:45.340 Cause it was one of my favorites and so illuminating.

01:32:48.600 But one of the, one of the issues was how, if you put your child in the medical community, you see he or she is like, I'm trans.

01:32:56.760 It comes out of the blue because if they really have gender dysphoria, you'll know it from the time they're two, three, it doesn't pop up at 15 or 16.

01:33:03.200 When they start to get a little overweight and they start to get acne and they don't feel like the most popular kid.

01:33:07.500 These are all tells that this claim is based on something else.

01:33:11.040 But we talked about how you bring them into the psychiatric community and they're like the American Academy of Pediatrics.

01:33:17.100 Their knee jerk and their mandate is confirm, confirm, affirm, affirm, affirm.

01:33:21.740 But you mentioned like Sweden and Finland, and they're now going a different route.

01:33:28.180 These are very, very left-wing countries.

01:33:30.020 They're now placing limits on puberty blockers and other treatments saying that we have to examine more fully, among other things, the psychiatric issues that may be going out, the mental health of the patients.

01:33:44.300 That's really important, that switch.

01:33:48.860 Yes, that's right.

01:33:50.020 I mean, we have in this country affirmative care is the standard, meaning the doctor's obligation is always to affirm or agree with the patient's self-diagnosis when it comes to gender dysphoria, the idea that someone has the condition of having a severe discomfort in one's biological sex.

01:34:06.660 In this country, there are actually conversion therapy bans.

01:34:09.760 And what that means is, and I last counted, there were, I think, 22 states.

01:34:14.720 And what that means is that a practitioner, a mental health practitioner who doesn't agree with a young person's diagnosis that they have gender dysphoria or that they're really somehow a boy, if they don't immediately agree, they can be accused of conversion therapy, converting the person out of being transgender, even a minor, and they can lose their license.

01:34:37.900 Now, this is an incredibly, you know, inappropriate incursion on free speech.

01:34:43.340 And I really hope it will one day be challenged in the Supreme Court, that doctors are not allowed to freely give their opinions when it comes to gender dysphoria is really a limitation on their ability to practice.

01:34:56.020 My gosh.

01:34:56.500 And of course, we're lagging behind Sweden and Finland in figuring this out.

01:35:01.600 But Abigail has actual solutions for parents dealing with this with their kids in irreversible damage.

01:35:07.100 Episode 12, go back and listen to it.

01:35:09.440 Great to see you again, my friend.

01:35:10.980 Great to see you.

01:35:11.720 Thank you so much, Megan.

01:35:15.180 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

01:35:17.060 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 14, 2022

SBF Arrested, and Trans Activism in Media and Culture, with Victor Davis Hanson, Abigail Shrier, and James Murphy ｜ Ep. 453

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