The Megyn Kelly Show - SCOTUS Secrets During Dobbs Decision, with Mollie Hemingway, and Meghan Markle's FAILED Australia Tour, with Rob Shuter ｜ Ep. 1299

00:00:00.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:12.300 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday. We have a lot to get to.

00:00:17.020 Journalist and celebrity insider Rob Shooter will be here. He's got some big scoops on Meghan and Harry and much, much more.

00:00:23.560 This guy knows everyone and everything inside of Hollywood and is out with a new book.

00:00:28.380 But first, the latest on the war with Iran.

00:00:31.400 The clock is now ticking on the fragile ceasefire, which is set to expire tomorrow night.

00:00:35.700 It's not going well.

00:00:37.040 According to multiple reports, Vice President J.D. Vance will head to Islamabad, Pakistan

00:00:41.300 today for a second round of talks with the Iranians, despite the fact that Iran has not

00:00:45.940 publicly agreed to these discussions.

00:00:49.200 In fact, it seems to not want them, but then kind of telegraphs maybe it's going to show.

00:00:54.200 We don't know whether they're going to show up.

00:00:55.580 At first, they refused to negotiate, saying the U.S. was, quote, insisting on some unreasonable and unrealistic positions, including the ongoing naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

00:01:05.900 They want us to stop doing that.

00:01:07.580 The U.S. over the weekend even seizing an Iranian flagged cargo ship as part of the blockade.

00:01:12.700 It was trying to flout the blockade and found out the hard way that we meant what we said when we said we're not going to lift it yet.

00:01:19.060 But then Reuters today reporting that the regime is now, quote, positively reviewing whether to go to Islamabad. Part of this is because you've got like the one guy who's the speaker of like their parliament, who's more reasonable in the way he talks about negotiations and so on.

00:01:35.460 and you have the IRGC that's also running the country and the messaging. We really don't know

00:01:42.440 which one is more in control. My money would be on the militarized IRGC. And they have a very

00:01:48.120 different agenda and very different messaging. Don't know who's really in control. At some point,

00:01:53.520 I guess we'll find out. President Trump also brushing off the Iranian threats, telling the

00:01:58.360 New York Post that talks with Vice President Vance, Special Envoy Steve Wyckoff, and Advisor

00:02:02.740 Jared Kushner and the Iranians will happen and that if it's necessary, President Trump would

00:02:08.480 meet with the Iranians himself. Look, it's become very clear, very clear, especially thanks to a

00:02:14.100 very in-depth Wall Street Journal report over the weekend, which you should all read. I mean,

00:02:18.780 it was a stop. I've been in news a long time, 25 years. I have never seen a report that in-depth

00:02:25.100 on the number of issues that have been in debate in the public eye on one specific issue,

00:02:31.900 namely the Iran war. It's, I have to say, an incredible piece of reporting. It's by Josh

00:02:36.260 Dossley and Annie Linsky, and it was published on the 18th. It's stunning. But that makes clear

00:02:42.460 that Trump is, I think their word is desperate to bring this thing to a close. It talks all about

00:02:48.500 how he overestimated how quickly he could get in and get out based on the word of Benjamin Netanyahu

00:02:56.000 and the assurances. We learned that in the New York Times last week. It's reiterated here in

00:03:01.140 the Wall Street Journal. He thought he could get in and get out. He was enamored with what

00:03:05.520 happened in Venezuela, exactly as we surmised here on this program, and was surprised and stunned 1.00

00:03:12.880 to see how the Iranians would not roll over. He believed that they could not take over the 0.95

00:03:18.860 Strait of Hormuz. He was surprised and stunned to see that they did, that just one simple drone

00:03:25.220 could potentially stop traffic in the strait. And he is learning the hard way how difficult

00:03:30.920 these people are to negotiate with,

00:03:33.600 nevermind to get them to bend the knee.

00:03:35.660 So his frustration appears to be palpable

00:03:38.560 inside the White House,

00:03:39.720 where the reports from the Wall Street Journal

00:03:41.660 are that when we were trying to retrieve

00:03:44.360 that one missing co-pilot in that flight,

00:03:47.580 he was in an all-out panic

00:03:49.500 and was so worried that he was setting himself up

00:03:52.920 for a Jimmy Carter-like moment

00:03:54.200 that the negotiators around him,

00:03:56.100 the people who were following what the military was doing,

00:03:58.620 wouldn't even update him.

00:03:59.860 They isolated him and ignored him because they thought he might queer the deal somehow.

00:04:06.920 And he was so on edge about his political fortunes, depending on finding this co-pilot or the WIZO, that they then cut the president of the United States out of the ongoing information flow.

00:04:19.640 It's just, it's a stunning report all around and makes very clear what the New York Times

00:04:25.960 made clear last week, which is President Trump was told a bunch of things by Netanyahu.

00:04:30.280 Our own security team told him very different things when he met with them, saying, don't

00:04:35.380 believe him.

00:04:35.840 He's tried to tell everybody this.

00:04:37.020 It's not going to go as easily as he says.

00:04:39.120 And Trump ultimately made his own decision.

00:04:41.180 It's not like Netanyahu made the ultimate decision.

00:04:43.560 Trump did that.

00:04:44.740 He believed Netanyahu and he believed in his own, I don't know, virality.

00:04:49.640 based on what happened in Venezuela, based on what happened with those June nuclear

00:04:54.080 plant strikes in Iran. And, you know, he said, let's go for it. And he learned the hard way,

00:05:01.340 just like every American president who starts a war in the Middle East learns,

00:05:05.140 it's not that simple. The bomb dropping phase of the war, as General McChrystal suggested,

00:05:11.380 is the most enjoyable phase for the ones dropping the bombs. And everything after that is downhill,

00:05:16.980 especially in the Middle East where they're motherfuckers and they love quagmire and they 1.00

00:05:22.420 know how to do it. And that's what we're dealing with right now. President Trump is telling the 1.00

00:05:28.060 Post that there is one non-negotiable demand, quote, get rid of their nuclear weapons. That's

00:05:32.640 all very simple. There will be no nuclear weapon. That's a great demand. We should be praising that

00:05:37.700 if President Trump will stay there, we can end this thing relatively quickly. It's all these

00:05:43.340 other things that the Israelis are demanding, like we've got to get the nuclear dust 0.97

00:05:47.400 that are posing problems, right? The Iranians are like the nuclear dust is 60 feet underground 1.00

00:05:54.460 at Natanz and Fordo and these other sites that we struck back in June covered in layers and 1.00

00:06:01.680 layers of rubble. Like we can't get it. We don't want to get it. It's not safe to get it. And we're

00:06:07.480 certainly not going to be enriching it further. And that is something President Trump said himself

00:06:13.240 two weeks ago. You remember Mark Levin did a big show on Sunday night saying we got to get the

00:06:18.940 dust. We got to go in there and get the enriched uranium. And President Trump posted on True

00:06:24.040 Social right around there that we don't have to worry about that because it's so underground and

00:06:29.260 because he said, President Trump said, we have satellites that have eyes on this stuff and we

00:06:33.820 will know if anybody tries to retrieve it. Well, now it's changed into like this non-negotiable

00:06:39.200 deal term, at least in last week's iteration. And it's one that the Israelis want. It's one

00:06:43.540 that Levin wants. And President Trump had earlier told us it was an unnecessary one,

00:06:47.760 but it wound up in our non-negotiables. Well, now today he sounds a little different

00:06:53.460 because the Iranians have dug in on that saying we're not we're not doing that,

00:06:57.120 not getting any nuclear dust. That's a no. But we believe that there is room to agree on no

00:07:07.200 nuclear weapons. And a negotiation started last week on just how long, how long before they can

00:07:13.940 do enrichment again. They say it's for an energy program. We say, no, it's not. But either way,

00:07:19.320 our main goal is just to delay it, get them to write down and obey with ideally third-party

00:07:24.660 monitoring, although that's not been explicitly discussed, but it must be part of the deal.

00:07:29.740 How long? We want 20 years. They want five. So that's somewhat, you know, that's some progress.

00:07:34.880 If they're giving a number and we're giving a number, negotiation practices would dictate we're going to wind up someplace in the middle. 0.98

00:07:43.020 And this thing could come to an end if we're going to stick to no nuclear weapon, no nuclear enrichment and forget the damn dust. 0.90

00:07:51.200 There were some discussions last week, possibly we'll get the dust. 0.98

00:07:55.420 And then we wanted them to give it to us.

00:07:57.680 And then they said, no, we're going to keep it.

00:07:59.880 And then there was like maybe a third party will get it.

00:08:02.580 And that's what President Trump suggested. 0.93

00:08:04.200 And then the Iranians said, F that. No, we keep the dust. We don't know where the dust stands. Where has the dust settled? We don't know. One of the many things that they will be arguing over, hopefully not, but looks like yes. We'll see based on Trump's elitist messaging. We don't know this week. 0.80

00:08:22.800 okay um it needs to come to an end for so many reasons even if you're in favor of the war you

00:08:29.300 must see that because this war is undoubtedly hurting the gop's already bleak chances in the

00:08:33.780 midterms i mean seriously hurting president trump's not on the ballot but would you like to

00:08:40.180 if you're a republican or a right-leaning independent keep i mean the house seems gone

00:08:45.180 but there's no point in endangering the senate for the love of god we do not want to endanger

00:08:50.700 of the Senate. And we don't want to even lose unnecessary Senate seats. Like even if we don't

00:08:55.820 lose it on the right, you don't want to lose two seats that you wouldn't otherwise have lost 0.55

00:09:00.220 because of Israel and Iran. All right. And this conflict, because we're not set up to do any 0.93

00:09:06.220 better in 2028. In fact, the GOP has many more seats to defend in 2028. So it'd be nice if they

00:09:11.700 could stem the tide of losses, at least on the Senate side come November. All right. Now there's

00:09:17.380 one issue that could have galvanized Republicans, and that would have been the retirement of Supreme

00:09:24.440 Court Justice Samuel Alito. Like if Samuel Alito were to retire and a political battle unfolded

00:09:33.500 to replace him with a strong conservative who needed to get confirmed by the Senate, that's

00:09:39.160 how things work. The House is irrelevant, but the Senate has to confirm the president's choices by

00:09:44.360 51% vote. It could be 50, 50 in the Senate, and then the vice president would cast the deciding

00:09:48.840 vote. So that has a way, especially with the right of galvanizing voters. The right is very

00:09:55.140 motivated by the Supreme Court fights. We'll see if the left is as motivated. Abortion was always

00:09:59.780 their biggest thing, and they lost that. They lost that thanks to the Dobbs decision, which overturned

00:10:04.420 Roe. But will we have a Supreme Court fight over an open seat that might lead conservatives to

00:10:13.420 pressure President Trump to wrap up the Iran war, to protect the Senate at all costs,

00:10:18.380 to get Alito's replacement confirmed as soon as humanly possible before the midterms,

00:10:23.980 doesn't look like it. Fox News reporting today that the 76-year-old Samuel Alito is not

00:10:29.580 planning to retire this year. The reporting is also this term. They use it interchangeably.

00:10:36.680 It's not the same. The term will end in June and the new term will begin in October.

00:10:41.640 He is said to have been already interviewing and hiring his clerks for next term, which would take us into October, and Alito certainly would not retire in October with the midterms one month away because the Democrats could win control of the Senate, and there's no way he's going to retire thinking the Democrats have a shot at stymieing Trump's choice for his replacement.

00:11:06.940 I think he'd either do it now or he would do it after the midterms based on whatever

00:11:11.480 happens then.

00:11:12.740 But forget enough about my point of view.

00:11:15.360 Here to react is someone who has a really informed point of view, especially these days.

00:11:19.900 She knows all about Justice Alito in particular.

00:11:22.960 It's Molly Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Great, Great Federalist and author of the

00:11:28.280 new book, Alito, The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution,

00:11:33.720 which is in bookstores starting tomorrow.

00:11:35.840 Go anywhere, get it on Amazon, pre-order it today

00:11:39.060 so you can help Molly out. 0.99

00:11:40.160 We wanna make sure she hits that bestseller list

00:11:42.940 on the Times, which won't willingly welcome her,

00:11:45.640 but we will shove her on there whether they want her or not.

00:11:49.720 Here's a question for you. 0.96

00:11:51.180 How many brokers does it take to insure your business?

00:11:54.280 If you're like most business owners,

00:11:55.720 the answer is too many.

00:11:58.360 Multiple policies, multiple applications,

00:12:00.900 and no clear view of how it all fits together.

00:12:03.440 And when questions come up,

00:12:04.540 it's not easy to get the clarity you need at all. No one's there for you. But SuperSure changes

00:12:10.260 that. A one-stop shop for all of your business insurance, backed by a team that works with you

00:12:16.440 year-round, not just at renewal. You are not a burden to them. They will take care of you.

00:12:22.860 They want you to be happy. And if you've ever stared at a policy wondering what it actually

00:12:27.500 covers, SuperSure has a fine print fax tool that translates the legal jargon into plain English

00:12:34.260 so you know what's covered and what's not.

00:12:36.740 It's not some shell game

00:12:38.100 that they seem to be enjoying playing at your expense.

00:12:41.020 Right now, you can go to supersure.com

00:12:43.520 and get a full report on your current policies

00:12:45.760 with no obligation.

00:12:47.380 Find out if you're overinsured, underinsured,

00:12:49.440 or somewhere in between.

00:12:50.780 Go to supersure.com, one super agency,

00:12:53.560 one powerful platform, all your policies in one place.

00:12:57.540 Imagine it.

00:12:58.360 Go to supersure.com slash Megan today.

00:13:00.520 That's supersure.com slash Megan,

00:13:02.260 paid for by Supersure Insurance Agency, LLC, a licensed insurance agency.

00:13:08.360 Molly, great to see you. Welcome to the show.

00:13:10.300 It's great to be here with you.

00:13:11.660 What a timely book. I mean, it's crazy how timely it is. What's your reporting on Justice Alito

00:13:19.500 and the prospects of his retirement?

00:13:21.520 So people have been speculating that Justice Alito is definitely going to retire at the end

00:13:26.320 of this term. They've been doing this for about a year. And I keep telling people I don't actually

00:13:31.160 see that happening. I don't know for sure anything is possible, but the reporting that just came out

00:13:37.960 from Fox News and also Jan Crawford at CBS, it matches with my understanding as well. He's not

00:13:43.800 inclined to retire and people should be prepared for that. It's very interesting because I have

00:13:51.540 pretty solid reporting the other way that at least as of about six weeks ago, he was planning to step

00:13:57.720 down, that he wanted to do it. So it's possible he was talked out of it. It's possible he's

00:14:02.160 reconsidering it, or it's possible this is all a head fake. I don't know.

00:14:06.140 I do think there's this thing with Justice Alito in that he's clearly the person on the court who

00:14:11.080 least enjoys the trappings of having that position of authority. And so people, I think,

00:14:16.720 frequently perceive that as his just disdain for Washington, D.C. That's real. He really does not

00:14:23.760 think Washington, D.C. is as great of a place as people seem to think it is. Now, I do want to say

00:14:29.140 one of the many things we love about him. I do want to say that people should not assume that

00:14:34.780 just because the word is that Justice Thomas and Justice Alito are not retiring, that that means

00:14:40.820 there will be no retirements. I, again, don't have inside information, but I would not put it outside

00:14:47.780 the realm of possibility that there might be a retirement at the end of this term. I'll leave it

00:14:52.880 that. Wait, can you say that again? I would not say it's outside the realm of possibility that

00:14:57.960 there will be a retirement at the end of this term, even if it's not going to be Justice Alita

00:15:02.680 or Justice Thomas. Okay. All right. Well, we definitely don't want it to be Justice Alita

00:15:07.080 or Justice Thomas, unless it would cost the GOP the seat, in which case, sadly, they do have to

00:15:11.960 go. This is like a parlor game that we have to play here. I don't really think the Senate is

00:15:18.140 in jeopardy in the midterms. It's just it suddenly could be, given what's happening with the Iran 1.00

00:15:23.620 war. That's what's disconcerting. But if the GOP can hold on to the Senate, then President Trump

00:15:28.700 has another three years, just short of, to find a replacement or, you know, for a conservative

00:15:34.300 justice to step down and for President Trump to nominate and then get confirmed a replacement.

00:15:38.100 So there is time unless the worst happens in November. Well, and let's just point out, too,

00:15:42.280 a lot of the reasons why people are focusing on Justice Thomas and Alito is because they are the

00:15:46.760 two oldest members, the Republican-appointed members of the court. But Justice Roberts,

00:15:52.180 Chief Justice Roberts, is also in his 70s. And so if people want to speculate about people retiring,

00:15:58.720 I mean, David Souter retired when he was younger than Chief Justice Roberts. He had served,

00:16:04.500 I think, less long, about the same time as Chief Justice Roberts has. So I will also say that being

00:16:12.320 that thomas and alito are the most consistently conservative or libertarian justices on the court

00:16:18.220 conservatives who want to replace them should maybe seek other people who might be better to

00:16:24.300 replace yes no those i always say if you're voting any way other than how especially alito is voting

00:16:31.060 you're voting the wrong way like he those two are almost in lockstep all the time they should be

00:16:36.640 your guide it whatever they're doing justice barrett you do it that's why trump put you on

00:16:42.080 the high court but this is very interesting news you're you're suggesting uh you know is that

00:16:46.840 because it's not going to be kavanaugh gorsuch or barrett they're brand new those are all trump

00:16:50.620 appointees and they're they're supreme court young um so the only other conservative would be the

00:16:56.400 chief justice who's less young and probably ready to like sail in the mediterranean with his like

00:17:04.800 he's had 20 years now, like literally, I think it was 2006, right, that he was

00:17:08.480 appointed by Bush, probably would like some family time.

00:17:12.920 Well, in my book, I go through each of the justices and how their jurisprudence compares

00:17:17.120 with Justice Alito's. And Chief Justice Roberts, you kind of have to understand at least some of

00:17:22.420 his frustration. He's the only one of the Republican appointed justices who flat out

00:17:26.980 admits he doesn't really have a judicial philosophy when he comes onto the court.

00:17:30.780 He proves that when he saves Obamacare by rewriting the law.

00:17:35.920 But his big overarching goal as chief justice has been to get the justices to all kind of work together, to have more opinions from the court being handed down as opinions from the court rather than everybody writing their own opinion or concurrence or dissent.

00:17:52.920 And instead, you know, things have kind of gotten a little harried recently, right?

00:17:58.400 You've had the leak of the Dobbs decision.

00:18:00.700 You had just this weekend another leak dating back to 2016 that was totally unnecessary and gratuitous.

00:18:07.420 You have, you know, in my book, I tell the story about how some of the justices, knowing that their colleagues' lives were under threat, knowing that their colleagues' children's lives were under threat, intentionally slow-walked the Dobbs decision by two months, including not just not getting it done,

00:18:26.340 not getting their dissent done so that it could be released, but also including in that dissent

00:18:31.580 a footnote to a decision that was still being worked on by both sides. So they knew that that

00:18:37.960 decision wouldn't come out until quite near the end of the term. Now, this is the opposite of

00:18:43.700 collegiality, when you are knowing that your colleagues' lives are being threatened and you

00:18:48.800 are just slow walking something that could put that all away, because, you know, to explain. 0.94

00:18:53.640 That is that is a piece of stunning news. I want to get into that. The title of the book we're talking with Molly Hemingway is Alito, the justice who reshaped the Supreme Court and restored the Constitution. Hardcover comes out tomorrow. Get your copy today before they're all gone, because trust me, these publishing companies, they always underestimate where a conservative's book is going to go.

00:19:14.460 So you got to go. It doesn't matter who it is. They underestimate. So get your copy now. Order it today, Monday, before it hits on Tuesday. Alito by Molly Hemingway of The Federalist.

00:19:22.720 So can you walk us through that? Because everyone remembers when the Dobbs, the draft Dobbs decision overturning Roe was leaked in 2022. And it was a stunning, stunning moment.

00:19:35.700 but we'd never seen a Supreme Court opinion leaked before,

00:19:38.740 nevermind one as consequential as that.

00:19:41.640 And you report for the first time

00:19:43.580 that the justices who are in the majority,

00:19:47.340 can you just, before we get to the warning,

00:19:49.540 but just talk, because like,

00:19:50.500 when I read this piece of the book, I got chills.

00:19:53.020 Because I never really thought about

00:19:54.360 what it was like to be Sam Alito

00:19:56.060 writing the majority decision in Dobbs,

00:19:59.280 something conservatives have wanted

00:20:01.000 since Roe was decided.

00:20:04.160 you know, back in 1973. And here it is. He's got the votes. The conservatives have the votes for

00:20:10.880 the first time in 50 plus years. He's writing the decision and you spell out exactly like how it

00:20:17.640 went, why he was chosen, how he got the others on board, how quickly they signed on. Can you walk

00:20:25.380 us through a little bit of that? Because it's really, it's really dramatic. Well, it's a

00:20:28.460 dramatic 50 year long story. You know, the moment Roe v. Wade is handed down, pretty much everybody

00:20:33.860 agrees it's slop. Whether you're on the left or you're on the right, people are like, what is

00:20:38.380 this? It's not even trying to be constitutional law. But because it created this so-called right

00:20:44.440 to abortion, there were people who were willing to just hang everything onto preserving Roe

00:20:49.840 so that the abortion regime could continue. There were many efforts to overturn Roe over the

00:20:57.020 decades, most famously in 1992 with the Casey v. Planned Parenthood decision. But three of the

00:21:03.140 Republican appointed justices figured out a way to sort of rewrite Roe. They said, they told

00:21:09.480 everybody, now you have to stop fighting about it. Well, obviously that didn't happen. And so

00:21:13.640 the fights continued. With the Dobbs decision, the court knew by February of 2021 that they were

00:21:21.200 going to take this decision. They didn't announce it for a few months, but that meant that all the

00:21:25.320 justices on the court knew what was going to happen. They hear oral arguments in December of

00:21:30.760 2021. And after that, they meet in conference. That's where just the nine justices gather

00:21:37.120 and they talk about how they're going to vote. So it's pretty clear then that you have five votes

00:21:41.860 to overturn Roe and six votes to uphold the Mississippi law in question. So when you have

00:21:50.420 a majority... Wait, that's too many. Five and four. No. So you had five who were willing to

00:21:57.080 Overturn Roe, but then Roberts would have joined to uphold the Mississippi law, but not overturn Roe.

00:22:02.360 Yes, okay.

00:22:03.040 So that meant that Roberts wasn't in the majority.

00:22:05.540 Now, if he were, he would assign who writes the opinion.

00:22:08.540 But this meant that Thomas was the most senior justice, so he assigned the opinion, and he knew it had to be done perfectly.

00:22:16.800 Well, Justice Alito, who's been on the court now for close to 20 years at this time, he knew how to keep fragile majorities together.

00:22:24.660 And that's important because, you know, again, we just we talked about the Obamacare decision.

00:22:28.980 That was a majority that flipped because the majority wasn't, you know, it didn't stay together.

00:22:34.160 And Thomas knew that Alito could keep that majority together, incorporate everything that each justice wanted and write it in a way that didn't force anyone out.

00:22:44.000 And so he assigns it to Alito and Alito gets it done in such a short period of time.

00:22:48.560 It's unbelievable. You know, this is a this is a landmark case.

00:22:52.480 This is one of the most important decisions in Supreme Court history, and he has a draft

00:22:58.360 done by very early February.

00:23:00.640 And he had, because he'd clearly been working with the other justices, the other justices

00:23:05.640 who were in the majority almost immediately sign on to it.

00:23:09.060 But that means that everyone on the court had the draft by early February, and they'd

00:23:14.660 had 50 years to think about what to do about this issue, and yet they just weren't getting

00:23:20.180 their dissent together for month after month after month. And then it gets leaked in early May.

00:23:27.400 And then there was an actual request by the majority to the dissenters saying,

00:23:35.280 can you please hurry it up? Like, please, with alacrity, finish up your dissents because the

00:23:42.480 longer it's being held in abeyance, the more people think, maybe if I knock off one of these

00:23:50.900 justices, I have a chance of saving Roe. Like the lives of the majority, the conservatives were

00:23:58.180 actually in jeopardy. And we found out the hard way that was true with the guy who tried to

00:24:02.980 assassinate Justice Kavanaugh and said he wanted to kill three of them. So the request was made to

00:24:09.080 the dissenters, the liberals, like, please get it decided, you know, get your dissents written

00:24:14.180 sooner rather than later. And they were basically told to F off. There was zero empathy by the

00:24:20.360 dissenters for the safety of their colleagues in the conservative majority. I mean, it's just,

00:24:26.780 if you remember when the decision was leaked, excuse me, when the decision was leaked,

00:24:32.100 almost immediately you had massive protests, not just at the Supreme Court, but also firebombs,

00:24:39.080 of pro-life clinics and churches, and you had protests at the homes of the five justices who

00:24:46.280 had voted to overturn Roe. Those protests were, you know, people were publicly putting out their

00:24:52.600 addresses. Some of these justices live with their young children. They immediately had to be put

00:24:58.180 under security. They were wearing bulletproof vests. They were dealing with things that nobody

00:25:04.200 should ever have to deal with, and people were being kind of blasé about it. Now, because a

00:25:10.080 decision is not final until it's publicly announced from the bench, even though there were five

00:25:16.000 justices willing to overturn Roe and prepared to do that, it wouldn't be final. If one of them were

00:25:22.680 killed, in fact, Roe would not have been overturned. It was clear that people were trying to either,

00:25:29.100 you know, God forbid, physically harm these people or otherwise intimidate them away from their

00:25:36.460 decision. There are laws on the books against doing this. And yet Merrick Garland and the

00:25:42.240 Department of Justice basically let everything continue, declined to prosecute in any way the

00:25:47.700 people who were trying to affect the outcome. Congress did very little. The media were flat

00:25:52.580 out cheerleading for these attacks on the justices. So yes, they meet in conference and

00:25:58.360 they are asked, you know, Justice Alito asks if, when it's going to be done, if they can speed it

00:26:06.000 up. Gorsuch also is concerned. These people are facing really serious threats. And after that

00:26:12.440 conference, my sources said that Elena Kagan goes to Breyer's office, Breyer's chambers.

00:26:18.880 Why Breyer's?

00:26:19.640 Well, Breyer is a stalwart liberal, but he also is a gentleman.

00:26:25.740 And he was concerned about what was happening to his colleagues.

00:26:29.980 And Kagan reportedly screamed at him not to accommodate any kind of early, you know, any kind of getting that dissent done so that the decision could be released.

00:26:41.820 And the evidence suggests that—

00:26:43.740 It's despicable.

00:26:44.420 It's shocking.

00:26:45.520 and then they finally agree. I'll just say one more thing that I think is just interesting about

00:26:52.100 the inside of the court. When they meet in conference, they actually rate the decisions

00:26:58.880 that have yet to come out as A, B, or C. A means they're totally ready to come out. B means that,

00:27:05.880 you know, you're just wrapping up the final bits, and C means nowhere near done. And in that first

00:27:11.520 conference after the leak, Roberts says that the Dobbs decision is a C. A C. Now, the guys who had

00:27:20.300 the really hard work got everything done by early February, but the dissenters had made it a C.

00:27:27.140 So they finally agree that they're going to get the decision done by June 1st. And they do.

00:27:33.840 Their dissent, I should say, by June 1st. And they do. But when they do it, they put this little

00:27:39.020 like, evil Easter egg in there. They put a footnote to a decision that was not yet ready to

00:27:46.420 come out. Knowing that you can't reveal the outcome of a case that has not yet been publicly

00:27:54.480 announced, it delayed the announcement of Dobbs for another three-plus weeks.

00:28:00.940 Oh, you know those liberals are like, just a few more babies. If we could just give time for a few 0.85

00:28:07.060 more babies to be aborted, we'll be heroes. I mean, that's truly how they look at it.

00:28:11.740 The drama around this is reason enough to buy the book. Again, it's called Alito,

00:28:16.160 the justice who reshaped the Supreme court and restored the constitution by our friend,

00:28:20.260 Molly Hemingway. But this, I just want to read a little bit of when, when Alito wrote the decision

00:28:26.780 from your book, um, you write over his decades on the court, justice Alito, he had learned

00:28:31.680 to be as bold as prudence allows. Alito is not upset when another justice wants to include

00:28:37.280 something that he believes is unnecessary or that tinkers with his prose. Alito had to write

00:28:41.680 in such a way that the holders of these disparate opinions could all sign on to the majority

00:28:46.760 decision. On February 10th, Justice Alito formally distributed his 98 page draft opinion to the eight

00:28:52.460 other justices. About five minutes later, Justice Gorsuch announced he had no edits and would sign

00:28:58.180 the opinion. A few hours later, Justice Thomas said the same. Justice Barrett signed on. And a

00:29:03.460 few days later, Justice Kavanaugh rounded out the five. It was obvious to the other justices that

00:29:08.360 the draft had been circulated before the formal distribution. They were not prepared for how

00:29:13.180 powerful it was and were shocked by how devastating the opinion was to the Roe and Casey regime.

00:29:19.940 It's amazing. My God, that's so powerful just to think about the five of them behind the scenes

00:29:24.580 knowing what they were about to do, something that conservatives had wanted for 50 years and

00:29:30.960 could never cobble together five justices to actually do it or get the right case into the

00:29:37.920 bloodstream, working its way up to the right Supreme Court to do it. Even when Casey went

00:29:42.620 up there, they were betrayed by Sandra Day O'Connor, Kennedy. And so they kept getting even

00:29:47.780 conservatives to betray them until we had Alito and Thomas and the Supreme Court justices appointed

00:29:55.240 by Trump to do the right thing, to finally say, no, this is an abomination of a decision.

00:30:04.020 There is no constitutional right to an abortion, obviously. And we are going to have the temerity

00:30:10.860 and courage to overturn this decision. It's very exciting to read the behind the scenes on it.

00:30:15.680 And then your point about the disgusting media who were just as bad as those dissenters and Kagan who didn't care at all about endangering the lives of the majority.

00:30:25.340 You point out many for scorn, including, of course, before we get to the media, Merrick Garland, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, all of whom they would prefer to see the justices endangered.

00:30:35.660 But then there was Jen Psaki, who you remind us.

00:30:40.180 This is just disgusting because she was Biden's press secretary at the time.

00:30:43.460 And you read as follows.

00:30:44.280 In 2022, Merrick Garland was backed up by the White House in terms of we don't care about the protests.

00:30:49.920 We don't care about what's happening outside of their private homes, backed up by the White House, which consistently refused to condemn protests outside of the justices' private homes or even to discourage them. 0.60

00:31:00.480 This is a Psaki quote.

00:31:02.320 So I know that there's an outrage right now, I guess, about protests that have been peaceful to date.

00:31:08.460 And we certainly continue to encourage that outside of judges' homes.

00:31:13.060 And that's the president's position, said Jen Psaki, Biden's press secretary.

00:31:17.840 We covered that at the time, Molly, but I had forgotten about how low she and the White House sunk when the justices' lives were in danger.

00:31:27.940 Well, and this is a really big issue nationwide is intimidation of federal judges.

00:31:33.500 There are laws that say you cannot try to change an opinion by protesting or threatening a judge or a justice.

00:31:42.500 Merrick Garland had many tools at his disposal.

00:31:45.780 The Biden White House could have said, we think it's disgusting that you're posting the home address of this justice who lives with his wife and children.

00:31:53.720 And as you alluded to earlier, Kavanaugh and his family were faced with an assassin on their street who was trying to murder him and his family.

00:32:04.660 But also, he said he wanted to get two other justices as well, presumably the three Trump-appointed justices.

00:32:13.260 This is not just like a light, ha-ha, funny thing, oh, they got protested, they deserve it.

00:32:18.900 This is about people murderous with rage being incited by incredibly irresponsible people.

00:32:25.960 And the media did play a major role in that, both by underplaying the seriousness of these threats, but also lying about what the Dobbs decision did.

00:32:35.300 It did not say abortion is illegal.

00:32:37.740 It said it's not in the Constitution, and we all know it.

00:32:41.620 And so we should return this issue to the people and their legislatures.

00:32:46.220 That's actually a very modest approach to abortion, certainly much less than what pro-lifers would like to see.

00:32:52.680 But they lied about it and acted like it was this, you know, horrific situation that would lead the country into the handmaid's tale immediately or something like that.

00:33:02.520 Things had sunk so low between the justices and they remain they remain not great.

00:33:08.800 And you report that in the book, citing Justice Thomas, who was asked about court friendships, you point out, speaking to an audience in Dallas.

00:33:19.060 You say a member of the audience pointing to the friendships between liberal and conservative justices asked how that same type of friendship could be fostered in Congress or in the general population.

00:33:29.980 Quote, well, said Thomas, I'm just worried about keeping it at the court now.

00:33:35.780 Noting the former colleagues with whom he had friendships, he said, quote, this is not the court of that era.

00:33:41.880 Yeah. So things, I mean, was it Dobbs? Was that the point at which things flipped from what had

00:33:48.960 been a more cordial court to one that's more fractured now? And over and over, we see the

00:33:53.800 liberal justices openly in more casual forums attacking the conservatives.

00:33:59.760 Right. I would say that my reporting did indicate that there had been previous times where things

00:34:03.840 were a little rough, namely after the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision, the clerks had trouble. There's

00:34:10.440 so much clerk interaction across chambers normally, but they had trouble in that era as well. And I

00:34:16.680 think the Dobbs decision combined with what the liberal justices were saying both before and

00:34:22.600 after that. So it is true that justices strongly fight with each other in their opinions and

00:34:28.560 dissents. They'll make fun of each other. Scalia, Justice Scalia, was really good at this. He once

00:34:34.280 accused Clarence Thomas of drafting a freedom-destroying cocktail, which, to show how

00:34:41.100 little people worried about these types of broadsides in opinions, the next time Thomas

00:34:45.920 and Alito went for a drink, Thomas ordered a freedom-destroying cocktail. You know, so they

00:34:51.100 have fun with each other in their opinions and dissents. But there has been a norm that you do

00:34:59.080 not attack the integrity of the court itself when speaking publicly. And that norm has completely

00:35:05.820 been blown through, unfortunately, by many of the liberal justices who will say that-

00:35:11.360 Kagan, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, Sotomayor.

00:35:15.120 Yeah. And they've been saying that it's political, which is, you know, it's just interesting. We had

00:35:20.620 decades of the court acting as a legislature saying, well, we wish people had voted for

00:35:25.320 this thing, and they didn't. So we'll say it's in the law. That's political. That's when you're

00:35:29.120 a legislature of nine people. Saying this is not in the Constitution, so we shouldn't say it is,

00:35:34.540 is the opposite of political. It's what judges do. But they will get very personally hurt and

00:35:42.220 act in a way that undermines the integrity of the court itself. And that, I think, has soured some

00:35:48.480 of the justices about their interactions with each other, since historically they have always

00:35:53.860 tried to speak well of each other publicly and of the court as an institution, understanding how

00:35:58.980 important it is to the preservation of the republic itself. If you don't have rule of law,

00:36:04.360 you don't have a country, and if you don't have respect for the courts, and if you're doing things

00:36:09.440 to undermine respect for the courts, either by speaking that way or through just completely

00:36:13.640 lawless decisions, that's bad for the country as well. We just saw this week Sotomayor have to come

00:36:21.120 out and apologize for openly ripping on justice Kavanaugh. Right. It was, she was at an event

00:36:28.020 and she said something like, Oh, he's never, he's never met somebody who gets paid by the hour

00:36:32.360 and, uh, not meaning a hooker, uh, meaning like that didn't come out right. But somebody who's

00:36:39.440 like on hourly wages is what she meant. She, he's not really a man of the people. And, uh,

00:36:44.580 that was obviously deeply insulting to him. And she did come out to her credit and in a paper

00:36:50.380 statement issued an apology. And I do think it speaks well of everybody involved. I think the

00:36:55.520 justices who were not Kavanaugh were more outraged by that statement than Justice Kavanaugh,

00:37:02.900 who handles slights fairly well. But the other justices...

00:37:07.000 He'd have to.

00:37:08.120 We've seen what he's had to go through. But the other justices, I think, were truly appalled by

00:37:12.500 that. It was good that she apologized for that. But it's also true. One thing I try to, in the

00:37:19.320 book also be balanced about things. And one of the things I think is worth noting is that each

00:37:25.500 and every one of these justices could be making a tremendous amount of money off the court.

00:37:32.160 They are sacrificing a lot to serve in this role. Justice Alito is the only one who's been a public

00:37:38.840 servant his entire life, I think. Maybe Sotomayor, too. But these are people who really could,

00:37:47.240 like in Alito's case, I'm sure he could be making tens of millions of dollars outside the court.

00:37:51.820 And it's a big sacrifice. And so just it's not appropriate to speak this way about any of your

00:37:58.520 colleagues knowing what people are going through. Not that they don't have positions of immense

00:38:02.260 power that also mean something. Yeah, no, it's, I mean, Alito, Kavanaugh, they've all been treated

00:38:08.540 so horribly. Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh, I'm sorry, Alito and Thomas both attacked for their

00:38:14.720 wives' behavior. You know, just a year or so ago, Justice Alito was in the news because his wife

00:38:20.100 had a don't tread on me flag. Like that was considered horrible and offensive and another

00:38:26.180 flag. I mean, it's like that that's what you've got on Justice Alito, the flags. His wife is

00:38:30.520 flying. I was there when he was confirmed and they reduced his wife to tears because they had been

00:38:37.760 so rough on him over. I think it was like a country club. This is just a screen grab of her

00:38:42.480 in the background or video of her in the background starting to tear up. She was tearing up when 0.97

00:38:46.480 finally a senator, a Republican was trying to rehabilitate her husband because the Democrats

00:38:52.560 have been suggesting he was a member of the Klan because some country club he had membership in

00:38:57.700 wasn't like diverse enough. It's like only leftists will go through your country club and count up

00:39:03.000 like on the number of Hispanics, the number of black people. It's like clubs are based on 0.65

00:39:07.400 demographics of a town or a community. Like what are you supposed to if you move to the town and

00:39:11.840 there aren't a bunch of Hispanics and they don't join your club. What are you supposed to do? Say,

00:39:15.500 I'm not going to join the club. My kids can't play tennis. It's absurd, but that's what they do.

00:39:20.400 They did it back then to him. His wife was reduced to tears when, to his credit, it was Lindsey Graham

00:39:24.640 who finally got the mic and started to say, you know, are any of these things true? And her love

00:39:30.340 for her husband brought her to tears. Of course, what's been just done to Justice Kavanaugh dwarfs 0.99

00:39:35.620 anything that's happened to any of them. Just today, Molly, there's a piece in The Atlantic

00:39:41.800 ripping on Kash Patel, suggesting he's a raging alcoholic who can't do his job. I mean, really

00:39:47.780 incendiary stuff. And apparently they didn't bother to speak to the people around Kash who

00:39:54.200 are closest to him, who have spent the most time with him. They were so excited about their

00:39:58.500 narrative that he's just, you know, some ne'er-do-well. The Atlantic, that's the same

00:40:03.160 publication. It's the same reporter who published the bullshit claims of Julie Swetnick against 0.99

00:40:10.880 Justice Kavanaugh, that he was a gang rapist represented by Michael Avenatti, who is in jail. 0.98

00:40:18.140 He's on, I think, work release right now for his fraud. And that the same like the patterns 0.88

00:40:25.020 continue, which is why the Federalist exists. Well, The Atlantic, I was thinking about it

00:40:31.200 when this story came out and how Kash Patel has responded by suing them. And it is wise to take

00:40:38.920 their information operations seriously. Lorene Powell Jobs reportedly loses $10 to $20 million

00:40:45.860 a year on The Atlantic. And Trump has made fun of her for that. And I'm thinking, losing $10 to $20 0.93

00:40:51.820 million a year when you're a billionaire in order to control elections and run information ops is

00:40:57.980 not really that big of a deal for her, probably. They did the Russia collusion hoax. They did the

00:41:02.940 Kavanaugh rape smear. They've been involved in pretty much every major hoax and info op that

00:41:09.080 we've seen. They invented the suckers and losers op. And you do have to push back against this 0.99

00:41:15.540 strongly. And you do want to have journalism where you're actually citing your sources.

00:41:21.040 I understand. I mean, I just have a book where I recorded or I reported everything on background

00:41:26.940 because I'm interviewing justices and clerks and that.

00:41:29.740 But I think you have to have a reputation for telling the truth.

00:41:33.580 And if you don't, like this reporter who pushed the Julie Swetnick story, as you note,

00:41:38.740 then you have to have better sourcing than what she provided there.

00:41:42.720 And the claim with Julie Swetnick, I always remember, is she said that Justice Kavanaugh 0.68

00:41:48.240 was the leader of a serial gang rape cartel roaming the streets of suburban Maryland.

00:41:54.320 And then last week, they tell us, well, we couldn't run down any of the Eric Swalwell information. We know what your standards are, friends, and we know that these far exceeded those standards that you displayed during the Kavanaugh confirmation.

00:42:06.420 That's so true. Julie Swetnick gets purchased in the Atlantic, but none of Eric Swalwell accusers were of interest to them. We got it. We know who you are.

00:42:14.240 All right, let's shift gears because there's something else that's up your alley. You at The Federalist, and if you're not reading The Federalist, everybody, you should be. They've got so many great reporters over there.

00:42:22.120 Um, Julie Kelly now reporting the latest on the Trump administration's pushback into the Russiagate reporting against Trump back in term 1.0.

00:42:35.640 And this is important because there's never been real accountability for what was done to the president on his first term, the effective ruination of his first term, certainly the attempted ruination of him as a leader, as a politician, as a president.

00:42:48.240 So now he's been having many in the intel community take a look at the files, right?

00:42:54.360 Like Tulsi Gabbard and the CIA, the FBI, like check your files, see what you're finding

00:43:00.560 on Russiagate.

00:43:01.880 And we have found quite a bit on how much collusion there was, how much planning there

00:43:06.920 was to undermine Trump based on nothing, based on absolutely made up nothingness.

00:43:12.340 And here's what Julie Kelly just posted today.

00:43:14.180 CBS News reporting accelerated activity into the Russiagate investigation, quote, former senior intelligence and FBI officials who are cooperating with the DOJ's criminal probe into whether former CIA director John Brennan lied to Congress were subpoenaed over the weekend to testify before a grand jury in D.C.

00:43:35.200 Multiple sources familiar with the matter told CBS the subpoenas went out shortly after the Justice Department appointed conservative Trump ally Joe DiGenova to formally take over the criminal investigation into Brennan after the career prosecutor handling the case was removed late last week.

00:43:51.960 So what this tells me in a nutshell is, while they haven't been able to make the case criminally

00:43:57.260 against former CIA director John Brennan, who I think may have been, I mean, he's one of the top

00:44:02.580 three worst who tried to screw Trump. They haven't been able to get him criminally yet.

00:44:09.560 They're getting closer. That's what that tells me. How do you see it? Because you've been

00:44:13.100 really in depth on this situation. I've been on this story for 10 years.

00:44:17.160 It's been almost 10 years since I wrote my very first story on the Russia collusion hoax.

00:44:22.100 And there are challenges with holding people accountable.

00:44:25.200 People have to be held accountable.

00:44:27.040 If they're not, again, it's sort of good night for the country.

00:44:30.900 If you can engage in this type of unbelievable coup against a duly elected president and

00:44:36.660 have nothing happen to you, you are a joke of a country.

00:44:40.080 But there are challenges, including that there's usually a five-year statute of limitations

00:44:45.080 on the crimes that were committed.

00:44:47.560 We did not even learn how much of a global

00:44:50.640 or grand conspiracy this was in some cases

00:44:53.340 until last year,

00:44:55.140 but after they really began running the operation in 2016.

00:44:59.460 But you also have a DOJ full of career employees

00:45:02.240 who are unfortunately not very good

00:45:05.420 at being impartial and nonpartisan in their jobs.

00:45:09.840 And I mean by that,

00:45:10.920 that when Joe Biden and Merrick Garland said,

00:45:13.400 like, let's see how we can go after Trump. They all said, we'd love to, sirs. And in the case of,

00:45:19.400 okay, we want to hold people accountable for destroying the reputation of the FBI and

00:45:23.240 Department of Justice. Everyone's like, I don't want to have anything to do with that. And so

00:45:26.960 you have very few career people involved, but you also have problems with the outside

00:45:31.840 conservative legal community. You think about how the liberal legal community kind of came up with

00:45:36.900 all the ideas about how they were going to put Trump in prison and how they were going to bankrupt

00:45:40.740 him and anybody who knew him. And they would publish in the Washington Post, hey, what if

00:45:44.900 we kicked Trump off the ballot using this 14th Amendment argument? And they did try to do that.

00:45:50.460 It went all the way to the Supreme Court, and it was shut down. It was such a bad argument that,

00:45:56.000 contrary to what the media told you, that even Ketanji Brown-Jackson was like, well, this

00:46:00.020 seems like you're just trying to disenfranchise, you know, tens of millions of people. But that's

00:46:05.100 not how the Washington Post treated it. That's not how the New York Times treated it or the

00:46:08.460 Atlantic. You don't see the creativity in the conservative legal movement or the energy or

00:46:14.060 the passion from these people. And perhaps that is because a lot of them are establishment-y in

00:46:19.960 a way that does not, then they really just genuinely don't like Trump. But in order to

00:46:24.640 have accountability, which is important for everybody, you have to have that kind of outside

00:46:28.920 counsel. So maybe this is a good- When you get creative as a conservative lawyer, you get

00:46:34.720 disbarred. Well, even on that point, I think one of the great scandals of recent years is that the

00:46:40.460 constitutional lawyer, John Eastman, had to go through disbarment procedures without any assistance

00:46:47.480 from the conservative legal community. And it wasn't just him. There are other people who face

00:46:52.260 this. There was the Project 65, where left-wing donors poured millions of dollars into the

00:46:57.560 project of disbarring people who had legal arguments they didn't like. And people say

00:47:02.260 about john eastman you know they'll say i don't think he should have argued this for trump but

00:47:07.280 you do have to admit that congress actually changed the law to deal with what he had what

00:47:14.120 he was proposing for trump meaning his argument was solid enough that congress had to change the

00:47:19.040 law about the uh electoral counting situation in congress he was the one who came up with the

00:47:24.540 ideas to you know overturn the trump's laws in 2020 or however you want to phrase it but

00:47:29.320 that that was not encouraged as innovative legal thinking that led to his disbarment. I mean, it's

00:47:34.240 it's pretty dramatic. All right. One last thing I want to get to before you have to go.

00:47:38.340 There's a big debate in Washington on the Save Act, right, which Republicans really, really,

00:47:42.500 really want, which would require voter I.D. universally. And the public favors this over

00:47:49.600 80 percent. Some polls put it as high as 90 percent, but the Democrats do not. One imagines

00:47:54.700 because they really don't mind if illegals vote because they tend to vote blue.

00:47:59.560 There's one of the biggest pushbacks and many, many conservatives say, well, we don't want to

00:48:03.920 get rid of the filibuster or change the filibuster in the Senate at all, which is what would

00:48:07.780 effectively have to happen in order to get a vote on this because Republicans don't have the 60

00:48:12.400 votes to get cloture. There's some clever ways around it, but they're not being utilized.

00:48:17.460 And one of the smartest pushbacks, J.D. Vance has used it and others have used it, is if you don't

00:48:22.680 think the Democrats are going to get rid of the filibuster as soon as they go back into control

00:48:26.700 in the Senate. You're crazy. And just in case people were wondering whether that's true, 1.00

00:48:32.120 James Carville weighed in on some of the plans that we can expect if and when the Democrats,

00:48:38.560 who are doing a very good job of staying quiet these days as the Republicans infight over the

00:48:43.480 Iran war, telegraphs what the plan is if and when Democrats are returned to power. Here it is.

00:48:49.260 If the Democrats win the presidency in both

00:48:51.940 Houses of Congress, I think on day one 0.80

00:48:54.020 they should make Puerto Rico

00:48:55.300 D.C. a state and they should expand the Supreme

00:48:58.000 Court to 13. Fuck it, eat our dust 1.00

00:49:00.240 They've done everything 1.00

00:49:02.120 they could, they held

00:49:04.160 up the 22,000 election

00:49:06.220 they stole it, they've stolen

00:49:08.000 Supreme Court

00:49:10.220 seats, they've gerrymandered

00:49:12.160 everything that you can and the only

00:49:14.040 way to fight this is don't run on it, don't

00:49:16.080 talk about it, just do it

00:49:17.580 She said, OK, we've got 54 senators and we've got 13 court members.

00:49:22.360 Thank you. Goodbye.

00:49:24.740 So you tell me whether a party that's going to get D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood plus court packing, whether that party would hesitate in any way to get rid of the filibuster so they could shove everything through with a 51 vote majority and whether that changes any of the calculations we're watching right now in the U.S. Senate.

00:49:42.420 It's not just James Carville. It's a ton of Democrats who are advocating getting rid of

00:49:46.960 the filibuster. The big problem, as a fan of the filibuster, because it protects minority 0.97

00:49:53.380 viewpoints, and I feel like I always have minority viewpoints, the frustration is,

00:49:58.080 why wouldn't the Republicans in the Senate nuke the filibuster and then do all sorts of good

00:50:03.780 things with it? You know, there are all sorts of things that should be done by the Senate that

00:50:08.280 they claim they can't do because they can't pass this 60-vote threshold. But if they were to nuke

00:50:14.680 the filibuster and then actually get something done, I would be much more in favor of them doing

00:50:18.420 it. But regardless, they should be debating. They should get back to the Senate being that great

00:50:23.320 body that debates, like we always were told when we were kids, this is the great debating

00:50:27.480 group of the country. They never debate anymore. And they should be doing that with the Save

00:50:32.880 America Act, and they should be discussing why they don't want to have people prove that they

00:50:38.780 are citizens of the country and have, and that they are who they claim they are when it comes

00:50:42.860 to voting. Well, there may be a way of forcing that actual speaking filibusters, which will

00:50:49.400 change it. And whatever has to be done, we got to get the Save Act passed. Molly, great to see you.

00:50:54.860 The book is Alito, The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution by

00:50:59.720 Molly Hemingway. Go buy it right now before everybody else tries to get it tomorrow.

00:51:04.380 Great to see you. Good luck with it. Coming up next, Rob Shooter on some Hollywood Inside Dish.

00:51:10.460 Traditional home security companies can make the whole process a headache.

00:51:14.200 Expensive monthly fees, long contracts that lock you in for years, and systems that require a

00:51:19.760 technician to come install everything. It can feel overly complicated, but let me tell you about

00:51:25.220 SimpliSafe. They make protecting your home straightforward, and the system is designed

00:51:29.940 to cover everything that matters. What stands out about SimpliSafe is that it's not just

00:51:34.300 one device, it's a complete security system. And it's all backed by SimpliSafe's 24-7

00:51:39.580 professional monitoring agents who are ready to respond and dispatch emergency help if

00:51:44.640 something happens. Over 5 million people trust SimpliSafe every day, and U.S. News and World

00:51:50.380 report ranks them the best home security system of 2026. Consider experiencing peace of mind

00:51:57.880 with SimpliSafe and this exclusive discount. Listen to this right now. You can get 50% off

00:52:04.620 your new system, five zero by visiting simplisafe.com slash Megan. That's simply spelled

00:52:10.220 with an I S I M P L I safe.com slash Megan, where you will get half off. There is no safe

00:52:19.640 like SimpliSafe.

00:52:26.160 Now we turn to the world of pop culture

00:52:27.980 and celebrity news

00:52:29.420 with a longtime reporter in the biz

00:52:32.140 and a first-time guest to this show,

00:52:33.700 but a big star over on our pal

00:52:36.320 Maureen Callahan's show, The Nerve.

00:52:38.680 Rob Shooter is a celebrity reporter

00:52:40.640 and founder of Naughty But Nice on Substack.

00:52:44.080 He spent 15 years as a celebrity publicist

00:52:47.120 representing some of the biggest stars in the world,

00:52:49.500 including Jennifer Lopez and Jon Bon Jovi, many others, before turning to reporting.

00:52:55.480 We've got lots of fun to get to with Rob today, including more from Meghan and Harry's faux

00:53:00.460 royal tour in Australia and The Fallout, some of which we're just learning about.

00:53:05.940 And is Blake Lively really considering moving to the UK? Have things gotten that bad? Yes,

00:53:13.840 they have rob's debut novel is out tomorrow and it's called it started with a whisper based on

00:53:20.780 his time in the entertainment industry rob welcome to the show hey thank you megan i'm a huge fan it's

00:53:26.600 lovely making my debut on your show oh lovely i'm i'm a huge fan of yours too i love hearing

00:53:32.600 with you with maureen i've learned so much from you and i can always tell when you've when you

00:53:37.780 actually know know what you're reporting about because you've actually spoken with somebody who

00:53:42.300 represents the star, who is the star, and you're usually too gracious to actually say it. But I

00:53:46.660 can tell, which is one of the fun things about listening to you and about reading this book,

00:53:50.220 because this book, let's face it, is based on your real life stories.

00:53:53.080 Yeah, it is a novel. So let me just say it is fiction, but it's based on four gossip columnists,

00:53:58.680 four entertainment insiders who get a morning show on a struggling cable network. And for five

00:54:04.540 days a week, they do all the celebrity gossip. But it becomes evident very quickly that the real

00:54:09.380 gossip is not about the stars. It's about themselves. Every one of those characters

00:54:13.540 has a secret. And as the book goes on, those secrets are revealed.

00:54:18.420 That's so fun. We need this just in time for summer. I mean, everybody needs a book like

00:54:22.700 this that they can dig into that's got juicy little tidbits, but a fun plot that moves along

00:54:27.560 just as we go into the summer months. I love this kind of book and I love audio books like this as

00:54:32.780 well. So check it out. You've got to support Rob too. Now, I want to talk about how you got into

00:54:39.260 this industry before we get to like your actual writing because this is not your first book but

00:54:42.680 like how what how do you become celebrity publicist and reporter you start at the bottom so i came to

00:54:48.520 america and i got a job as a receptionist at a big hollywood pr company they were opening up

00:54:54.900 a new york office and they needed somebody to answer the phones this was 20 years ago

00:54:59.020 when celebrities and publicists they didn't have telephones they didn't have cell phones

00:55:02.960 nobody had them we didn't have we didn't have our iphones back then so if you wanted to talk

00:55:07.440 to your publicist if you're a big star if you're Cameron Diaz if you're Whoopi Goldberg you have

00:55:12.420 to call an office and they had to call me and so I answered the phones and said hello and then I've

00:55:18.440 always been a very nosy person a very curious person and so I thought it was fascinating I

00:55:23.400 didn't even know what a what a publicist did I didn't aspire to get this job I didn't grow up

00:55:29.540 wanting to be a publicist I'd never heard of one but where I grew up it was a tough town in Britain

00:55:34.540 a working class town. I thought stars were just born that way. And then I realized from working 1.00

00:55:41.680 in this PR office that they're often created. So I was fascinated by the business. And after a few

00:55:47.480 years, I left the receptionist desk and I became a publicist. I ended up running their entertainment

00:55:53.300 division. Okay. That makes sense. You're in the biz. But the thing that I have seen with a lot

00:56:00.460 of these celebrity publicists that I could never do, and I don't understand how you get past it,

00:56:04.360 is when they are so rude to you,

00:56:06.840 when they just like demand no eye contact,

00:56:10.900 just hand it to me, surf.

00:56:12.360 How do you handle that, Rob, without strangling them?

00:56:15.800 You just have to bite your tongue.

00:56:17.280 I don't think you need to be around celebrities

00:56:19.080 to meet rude people.

00:56:20.680 Part of the joy of this book is that I have a boss from hell.

00:56:23.660 And I think that's probably the most joyous thing

00:56:26.240 about The Devil Wears Prada

00:56:27.600 is it's just really delicious to have somebody awful.

00:56:30.480 I used to work in Pizza Hut when I lived in Edinburgh

00:56:32.520 and I had a boss from hell.

00:56:34.360 in Pizza Hut. And so I think we've all had to deal with these people. Celebrities are particularly

00:56:41.000 rude and they can be particularly nasty. But I grew up in a tough time. You know,

00:56:46.180 if you think celebrities are hard, try going to high school in Birmingham, England. It was a

00:56:50.500 very tough place. So if you can survive high school, I promise you, you can survive working

00:56:55.500 for the Spice Girls or Jessica Simpson. That's a good point. It was a tough... Yes, that's a very

00:56:59.820 good point. Now, again, we're talking with Rob Shooter, and it's S-H-U-T-E-R. His book is It

00:57:05.220 Started with a Whisper. It's a novel based on celebrity culture, and it's a super fun read.

00:57:11.040 You can get your copy today. The book description writes the following about you. They write,

00:57:18.260 Before Jessica Simpson told then-husband Nick that they were getting divorced, she called Rob.

00:57:23.080 Jon Bon Jovi flew Rob to each of his shows on a private jet for the primary purpose of escorting 0.83

00:57:28.040 out press before his fabulous hair flopped rob was responsible for making sure an asian pair

00:57:34.380 was within feet of jennifer lopez at any given moment per her very specific demands now i have

00:57:40.840 heard about jennifer lopez that she also had a thing about having just the right kind of flower 1.00

00:57:45.720 in whatever hotel room she went into as well some sort of rose maybe a pink rose confirm or deny

00:57:52.140 confirmed she was really specific but once again i actually found this sort of um easy to work with

00:57:57.860 i always say after yes the best answer is no people that are maybe really annoy me i i don't

00:58:04.260 know how to deal with that what i loved about jennifer is she set the rules and they were her

00:58:08.480 rules and she paid you well and she expected you to do it and so it was sort of like sort of it was

00:58:14.160 sort of easier to just know what you were getting into she was very consistent she was very tough

00:58:19.900 all the time and I sort of appreciated that you you knew where you stood with her and so yes she

00:58:25.760 has this rider it's almost embarrassing sometimes when I'd send it out when she'd be on the morning

00:58:30.520 shows or when she was doing press I'd always apologize to the booker before I hit send I was

00:58:35.160 always like I'm so sorry that I have to send this it's so awful but I have to send it and so I was

00:58:40.320 in on the joke I'd love to believe that I represented people well and I certainly didn't

00:58:45.240 betray people that paid my rent for a long time. But I also, too, appreciated just how ridiculous 0.57

00:58:50.960 it all was. Is the Asian pear the one that gets its own little skirt in the grocery store? You 0.98

00:58:56.800 know, it has a little outfit that you buy it in? It doesn't. I would say maybe more than once I

00:59:01.220 stole that skirt and I put it on a different pear and she didn't know the difference.

00:59:06.720 I don't know. I never understand why the Asian pear has clothing, but none of the other fruit

00:59:10.440 desk. They're just completely exposed. And when I put it through the little, like the conveyor

00:59:15.140 belt, I'm always like her little skirt. Oh yeah. She feels, I feel like a pervert if it comes off.

00:59:21.200 So, so JLo, she's actually in the news right now because there's a report that she and Ben

00:59:27.780 Affleck are trying to sell their mansion in Beverly Hills that they owned together. It went

00:59:32.760 on the market initially for 68 million in July of 2024. Amazingly, nobody has that money or wants

00:59:39.080 suspend it. So they've lowered the price to a paltry 52 million. And the reporting from TMZ and

00:59:44.320 others is now that, including you, Naughty But Nice, that's your sub stack, that Ben Affleck is

00:59:50.380 just walking away from his ownership in that mansion? This tells you literally what peace

00:59:57.120 of mind costs. We've heard that expression. What does the peace of mind cost? It's going to cost

01:00:01.960 Ben about $30 million. Jennifer is that big a pain in the bottom that Ben is willing to walk

01:00:08.440 away from this so they are divorced this is the last thing that they're sort of tangled up together 0.92

01:00:13.700 with she was making a movie with him kiss of a spider woman which flopped was through his

01:00:18.780 production company so i think they were remaining nice when they were still working together

01:00:23.120 they're now divorced this home is the last detail and anybody who's ever got divorced knows what

01:00:29.580 it's like to just want to be done and so my insiders are telling me ben is just done would

01:00:35.680 he love, would he love to make that money back? Absolutely. But it's just not worth it in the

01:00:40.600 long run. Take the house, take the money. And I don't think they'll ever speak to each other ever

01:00:45.380 again. It's over. I mean, when you just say, you know what, the 26 million is yours, that would

01:00:50.760 have been mine. Like, you know, you're rolling in dough when you're like, eh, you have it. It's not

01:00:55.360 like 200 bucks. It's 26 million, but he's been very successful. Okay. So he's, he's had enough

01:01:02.600 of her and is throwing in the towel. That makes sense to me. You also write about Blake Lively

01:01:08.840 and Ryan Reynolds. And there now is a report that they're thinking about moving to the UK

01:01:16.580 because she's become such a scourge over here in the United States and they know it.

01:01:24.080 Yeah. Yeah. This is a really great story. So this story, it's gone on and it's unraveled and, 1.00

01:01:29.300 And, you know, just as some background here, in my office, whenever we get to interview a big celebrity, five people raise their hands.

01:01:36.620 If I told my team that tonight we were going to the Devil Wears Prada premiere, who wants to go?

01:01:42.020 We've got one spot on the carpet. Everybody that works for me would want to go.

01:01:46.280 That's not true with Blake. For the last 10 years, nobody has wanted to interview Blake.

01:01:51.980 Not my interns, not my senior staff. She's really difficult.

01:01:55.340 And so when this story broke with her and Justin Baldoni, we came at it with a lot of background.

01:02:02.040 Blake is a very, very difficult person who mocks people, who's cruel to people.

01:02:06.720 She's not very, very liked at all.

01:02:09.180 So we're not surprised at how this story has unraveled, how it's going to end up.

01:02:14.520 But as far as moving to another country, my sources are saying absolutely.

01:02:18.960 And the reason is she just can't understand why Americans don't adore her anymore.

01:02:24.440 And Blake can't live anywhere. She can't be around people that don't adore her. So Blake has really closed her circle. She has this very, very small inner circle who all tell her how brilliant she is, how beautiful, how smart she is, including her husband. Her husband's part of this sort of fan group around Blake.

01:02:44.280 That has been shattered by this lawsuit. And I think the most damage Blake has done is maybe not to others or maybe not to her friendships, but to herself here, because Blake, for the first time, as long as I've been covering her, has had to really wake up and smell the coffee, which is people don't like me.

01:03:02.320 Now, if you know that, if you acknowledge that, you're okay.

01:03:07.100 But if you've gone through your life thinking everybody loves you and you're really special,

01:03:11.340 to be told otherwise has shook her to her core.

01:03:14.080 So out of America, we don't deserve Blake.

01:03:16.700 She needs to be somewhere where really they love her.

01:03:20.760 No, well, we don't want her right in America the same.

01:03:23.820 But we wound up with Harry and Meghan and nobody likes them either.

01:03:27.160 We'll get to them in a minute.

01:03:28.600 But the thing about Blake that I was thinking about this,

01:03:30.320 because remember when Hugh Grant

01:03:33.500 had the big scandal with the prostitute? 0.86

01:03:36.140 Yeah. 1.00

01:03:36.520 Was it a tranny prostitute? 1.00

01:03:37.760 It was a tranny. 1.00

01:03:38.340 I can't remember. 1.00

01:03:39.100 Yeah, it was somebody that he met

01:03:40.780 and he went on the Jay Leno show to confirm it.

01:03:43.600 Yes, he was dating Elizabeth Hurley at the time.

01:03:46.000 We got it.

01:03:47.240 Yes, and he was like the biggest star in the world.

01:03:49.680 So it was like a huge deal 0.96

01:03:50.880 that he got caught with this prostitute. 0.94

01:03:52.060 So everybody was stunned and it was a massive scandal 0.89

01:03:54.600 and he went on and he handled it

01:03:56.680 by joking about it on with Jay Leno.

01:03:59.640 And it kind of like took the wind out of the sails of that scandal.

01:04:03.300 People laughed that he could laugh about it, and he kind of shared it with us, and we all kind of moved on.

01:04:08.520 It's not like that for Blake Lively because she's tried to ruin someone, you know?

01:04:14.300 And she almost got away with it, except he hired a very effective PR and legal team to fight back on his behalf.

01:04:24.260 And she kind of got caught once we saw in Discovery all of her texts and so on.

01:04:28.980 And so there's no way out of it for her at this point, Rob. Even if she decides to settle this case before they go to trial next month, it's happening May 19th, which reports are she doesn't want to. No one's in the mind of like, forgive her and move on. I think people are angry over what she's done to him.

01:04:47.320 Yeah, I think you're right. And I would argue, too, it's not just that he's hired a really great team. He has. And so I tip my hat to that. He has the truth on his side, Megan. So this was always hopefully going to come out. I'm still a believer. I want to believe that the truth does prevail. We can disguise it for a while. I've worked with celebrities where we've done a good job of covering stuff up for years, maybe even decades. But ultimately, the truth comes out. And I think that truth is coming out now for Blake.

01:05:16.460 I don't see any way out of this.

01:05:18.820 I don't see any way for her to bounce back.

01:05:21.640 Let's be honest, too. 0.99

01:05:22.680 She never was an A-list actress.

01:05:25.080 She was not Nicole Kidman.

01:05:26.520 And so her movies were not that.

01:05:28.380 She was bigger.

01:05:29.200 And this is why the damage hurts her more.

01:05:32.000 Her persona, her image was bigger than the reality.

01:05:36.640 So if you're really, really talented, it doesn't matter if you were messy.

01:05:40.900 If you're Whitney Houston, you've always got that talent.

01:05:44.060 She's got that God-given bit.

01:05:45.520 Robert Downey Jr.

01:05:46.720 Exactly.

01:05:47.500 And so these people can bounce back. 1.00

01:05:49.260 Britney Spears can't because she doesn't have that talent. 1.00

01:05:51.940 She's never been a great singer. 1.00

01:05:53.260 So all Britney is, is smoke and mirrors.

01:05:55.680 That's what Blake is. 1.00

01:05:56.840 Blake is smoke and mirrors.

01:05:58.420 And so there's no real anchor.

01:06:00.900 There's no real foundation there.

01:06:03.060 So if she loses the veneer, if she loses the illusion of success, which she has, there's

01:06:11.100 nothing else left.

01:06:12.080 She's literally the emperor with no clothes on now.

01:06:14.540 she has been exposed. She can't fall back onto her acting skills. She's not Meryl Streep.

01:06:19.120 She can't fall back onto her brand. She was never Martha Stewart. People bought her products

01:06:25.280 because they liked her. And now we realize we don't like her. There's nothing else left.

01:06:30.920 The blowback that now she's suffering reportedly includes no offers, like the offers have dried up.

01:06:38.500 No one wants to cast her right now. And also there's a report that her husband, Ryan Reynolds,

01:06:43.380 is very concerned that this thing's going to blow up on him

01:06:47.200 if it actually does go to trial

01:06:49.120 because he's likely to be a witness.

01:06:51.080 He was at that now infamous meeting in their penthouse

01:06:55.180 at which she was saying,

01:06:56.280 Taylor and he are her dragons and so on.

01:06:58.840 And he was helping her rewrite the script.

01:07:00.800 So he will be a witness at this trial.

01:07:03.240 And the two of them will be in the news

01:07:05.360 in a very negative way for,

01:07:07.380 who knows how long the trial will take, two months?

01:07:09.320 Yeah, absolutely.

01:07:10.240 Even if it turns out here that he wasn't as bad,

01:07:13.200 that he wasn't a bully.

01:07:14.180 The question is, why are you living with somebody who is?

01:07:17.320 And I think this is why Taylor Swift

01:07:18.580 wanted to get away from this.

01:07:20.160 I don't think Taylor Swift is going to be pulled into this

01:07:22.740 with a smoking gun text, but the question is, Blake has.

01:07:26.300 And so, Taylor, why are you friends

01:07:28.140 with such an awful person?

01:07:29.760 Taylor has distanced herself.

01:07:31.100 It's very difficult for a husband to do that.

01:07:34.020 But now the question to Ryan is, are you fake too? 0.91

01:07:38.800 Are you a mean guy?

01:07:40.480 And so I think, you know, we are who we surround ourselves with, Megan.

01:07:44.440 I've got some really, really rotten friends and I don't see them that often because even though they make me laugh, they're awful people.

01:07:51.880 And so I don't want my, I don't want people to think I'm mean. 0.84

01:07:55.480 And so, like, it's OK to have one or two stinkers in your life. 0.94

01:07:59.000 It's very hard to have a partner in your life that is an absolute stinker and has been exposed as one.

01:08:04.700 And so Ryan now is in a tricky position, which is why he wants this over with.

01:08:09.180 He just wants it done.

01:08:11.660 Who could blame him?

01:08:12.880 We're talking with Rob Shooter.

01:08:14.260 His book is called It Started With a Whisper, delving into morning television and the world of celebrity culture.

01:08:22.360 It's a novel based on no one who you actually know, allegedly, reportedly, as Maureen would say.

01:08:27.240 But we'll see.

01:08:28.420 We'll see.

01:08:28.940 You read it, see if anybody jumps out at you as somebody who you may have read about in the news.

01:08:33.580 But buy it to support Rob.

01:08:36.700 Let's talk about people who are desperate for attention.

01:08:39.500 And I was thinking about that, I confess, when we talked about J-Lo, because I know

01:08:43.720 you've said that it's like J-Lo is really not famous for anything exactly.

01:08:46.420 She's just kind of famous for being famous.

01:08:48.260 She's just kind of keeps herself in the news.

01:08:50.020 And I've said this to my audience repeatedly.

01:08:51.860 There is a reason that you don't see Julia Roberts every time she goes to the Starbucks

01:08:57.520 or to the gym. 0.99

01:08:59.220 She's not calling the paparazzi to let them know she's getting a Starbucks or a gym or

01:09:04.780 going to the gym at this particular time. These stars, you don't have to say specifically about

01:09:08.680 J-Lo, but you tell me, Rob, these stars who we just, oh, happen to catch in the act of living

01:09:14.120 their daily lives are working with the paparazzi. Absolutely true. Let me give you a little bit of

01:09:19.640 a clue, a tip about this. And I have a funny scene in the book about this. If you, if a photographer,

01:09:25.460 if you see a photograph of a celebrity in full head of makeup, looking fabulous, walking through

01:09:31.760 the park, maybe with a puppy or maybe a baby, that is probably staged. If you see a photograph

01:09:38.240 of a celebrity picking their nose at Starbucks, that is not staged. If they've got pimples on

01:09:43.500 their face, then you know it's an actual real picture. No, stars have done this forever.

01:09:48.220 When I worked with Diddy, Diddy was the king of this. So I worked with Diddy about 20 years ago

01:09:53.340 and he was the king of tipping off photographers. When I worked at OK Magazine as the executive

01:09:59.000 editor, we would get calls from celebrities. Celebrities would call themselves. They wouldn't

01:10:02.780 even bother to get their PR people to call. But once again, if the picture's too good,

01:10:07.900 if they look too great, if we're in full hair and makeup, Tom Cruise used to do this. He used to,

01:10:12.760 when he was still talking to Suri, that was a while ago, his daughter, when he was still talking

01:10:16.720 to Suri, there was lots of photographs of Tom in Central Park in full hair and makeup with his

01:10:21.880 daughter. That isn't an accident. That is planned. Such a good dad. Okay. So they are desperate,

01:10:28.460 some of them for attention. And the reason I think this is a good transition into Meghan Markle

01:10:34.960 and Prince Harry is the following. They just completed this Australia tour. They are pretending

01:10:40.340 to still be royals. They're not royals anymore. They had their royal highness titles stripped

01:10:45.160 from them. Obviously, he's born a prince and he remains a prince. His dad is the king of England.

01:10:50.320 She's a nothing glamour wannabe. But here's what's interesting to me. So they go on this

01:10:56.320 sort of faux royal tour to Australia and they pretend that they're still working royals and

01:11:01.540 they walk out on Bondi Beach where we saw that terrible attack on Australian Jews and they're,

01:11:09.920 you know, they're sort of being adored by all these crowds following them. Then she had some

01:11:15.340 seminar with like young women where she was like, oh, be your best self, that kind of stuff.

01:11:19.720 And what I was laughing about watching this, Rob, is that they want us to believe that they can, 0.60

01:11:26.200 they're the only ones who can command this.

01:11:27.740 They're like, they're like Prince William and Kate, you know,

01:11:31.260 they're just as Royal, just as famous and people want to see them.

01:11:34.480 Now you tell me, you in particular,

01:11:36.440 given what you've been doing for your professional life,

01:11:39.640 what celebrity, I mean,

01:11:42.320 talking about like a legitimate celebrity out in Hollywood could not garner

01:11:46.140 this kind of a crowd and attract attention to walk with them on the beach

01:11:51.960 or into an event if they asked for it.

01:11:55.520 Right. Like literally all of them, even the B listers could easily get crowds to follow them and make it look like they are just sort of these world ambassadors.

01:12:05.340 What this is showing us is not that they're these universally beloved people.

01:12:09.580 It's that people really know Harry, have some affinity, probably for the 12 year old version of him and certainly for his deceased mother, maybe some extent his brother and his father.

01:12:21.680 But it's about celebrity and people being interested in it.

01:12:26.560 It's just they're the only ones who do it.

01:12:29.880 There are not, for the most part, Hollywood celebrities who could gather a crowd who are this thirsty.

01:12:36.760 That's what it is.

01:12:37.340 It's about being thirsty.

01:12:38.320 And what I find so interesting about this is that the only thing that makes these two people interesting is the royal family.

01:12:44.440 The one thing they're trying to run away from, the one thing that they say they want no part of, that's all they've got.

01:12:49.660 We're not interested in them for any other reason. Kim Kardashian, you know, a celebrity that we roll our eyes at and we laugh at.

01:12:57.120 But she has created this herself. And so these two have got were given this.

01:13:02.140 They were given it and now they're exploiting it and at the same time saying they don't want to be part of it.

01:13:07.960 So it's so confusing to me what they want here.

01:13:10.900 I think I know what they want, which is they want this fabulous life part time and then they want to earn money the rest of their time.

01:13:19.300 It was the thing that Queen Elizabeth said no to.

01:13:21.660 They pitched being part-time royals, half in, half out.

01:13:25.420 And Queen Elizabeth said, no, that's just not going to work for me.

01:13:28.340 Well, what Harry and Meghan have now figured out, unfortunately, is they do not need the palace approval.

01:13:34.620 He will always be Diana's son.

01:13:36.320 He will always be Harry.

01:13:38.640 People do have a feeling towards him as a little boy walking behind his mommy's coffin.

01:13:44.360 We still all remember that.

01:13:45.720 Her, not so much.

01:13:46.580 But Harry is going to be somebody that we're always going to be interested in. And he's just figured out now that he doesn't need the royals family to be a part time royal. He is a part time royal. He will be now for the rest of his life.

01:13:59.600 And so I'm told from my palace insiders is that they were really angry about this, that they don't want it.

01:14:05.940 But now they're at the point where they're sort of like, let them. What can we do? Let them.

01:14:10.480 They're going to do this again. They're going to repeat this Australia trip in different countries,

01:14:15.560 probably Commonwealth countries, where there will be affection towards Harry and crowds will turn up.

01:14:21.060 And then at the end of it, she'll sell you a pot of jam. But there's nothing the royals can do.

01:14:25.960 you can't stop him from going to a hospital. You can't stop him from going to a women's shelter.

01:14:31.880 And so I think, though, this is going to become boring. This is going to become old news really,

01:14:36.560 really fast. Because once again, the only thing that makes them interesting is the one thing that

01:14:40.980 they are running away from, or at least say they're running away from.

01:14:44.620 So they, but they keep breaking open the same act. She gets in front of this group of women 1.00

01:14:50.440 who gathered to celebrate her at $1,700 a pop

01:14:54.220 and decided to tell them how terrible her life was,

01:14:58.500 how difficult her life has been.

01:15:01.360 It's amazing how difficult her life has been.

01:15:04.680 And she's traveling around with the Prince of England

01:15:08.100 and going back to her multimillion dollar Montecito mansion

01:15:12.160 and touring on the beaches of Australia

01:15:16.180 with throngs of people following her.

01:15:17.900 But she's had it really rough, she wants you to know.

01:15:19.920 And then Harry, you report, is potentially thinking about writing a self-help book.

01:15:29.080 But Rob, we just discussed the other day on this program how he got up there and he talked

01:15:35.280 about how he never wanted to be a working royal because it killed his mother and went

01:15:41.200 on to talk about how he is stressed out.

01:15:45.660 he was in the fetal position and he's basically unable to function. Like he, he actually talked

01:15:51.260 to the, to the crowd about how difficult his life has been and how completely overwhelmed

01:15:56.420 he's been. Like these two, she can't get over some bad press she had. That's the terrible stuff

01:16:02.680 that's happened to her. And he can't get over tragedy that has happened to him, but it was

01:16:07.740 30 years ago, right? Right, right. He's somebody that has recently discovered therapy. And as a

01:16:14.840 Brit, I can admit, the Brits are not good about this. They don't really talk about their feelings

01:16:19.520 very much. And when I first came to America 30 years ago, I was absolutely shocked at

01:16:23.640 how Americans would tell you all their secrets, which is good for me as a gossip columnist. But

01:16:28.820 Harry has recently, recently, recently discovered therapy. And anybody that recently discovers

01:16:35.660 something gets sort of intoxicated by it. We know he's an addictive personality. We know he's got

01:16:41.960 issues in the past and so my insiders tell me that this is where he sees his future he he very

01:16:47.780 much enjoys talking about mental health he's gonna turn into one of those mel robbins type

01:16:53.020 podcasters self yes yes yes it's gonna be it's gonna be one of those things i spoke to people

01:17:00.980 in the publishing world his last book sold really really well they'd love to do a second book with

01:17:05.460 him. And I'm told it's going to be one of those self-help Oprah type books about finding confidence

01:17:12.980 and Megan. Here's the irony, Rob. The people who spend their lives writing about this crap

01:17:19.480 are the last people you should be listening to on how to change your life. People who are well 0.98

01:17:24.700 adjusted and know how to deal with their problems do not spend their time thinking about, oh, this

01:17:28.960 version of therapy and that version. And let me write a whole book about therapy. That's the last

01:17:34.220 person you should be taking advice from. He's clearly miserable, Rob. He's clearly, clearly 0.99

01:17:41.020 miserable. He has not got over. Move on, move on. I think that's what life's about. You know, 0.77

01:17:46.680 we can't diminish the death of his mother, a traumatic experience, but the royal family did

01:17:52.040 not kill her. A drunk driver killed her and she turned down royal protection. So what he's fighting

01:17:58.720 him to get in Britain. His mother passed on. His mother didn't want that anymore. So it's not

01:18:04.100 really accurate what he's saying about his mum. And I think William lost his mummy too. She wasn't

01:18:10.740 just Harry's mum. And William seems to have dealt with it. And so there is a way. I would argue that

01:18:17.920 sitting down and doing interviews, travelling to Australia and being paid to talk about your grief

01:18:24.180 is not the best way to handle it,

01:18:26.820 but it certainly is the Sussex way.

01:18:30.080 Oh, gosh.

01:18:30.840 So then she goes when she's over there

01:18:32.700 onto their version of MasterChef

01:18:35.420 because, you know, 1.00

01:18:36.380 she's trying to make herself into a Martha Stewart, 1.00

01:18:39.080 literally stealing Martha Stewart's recipes. 1.00

01:18:42.580 Maureen and I covered that on our parody

01:18:44.360 we did of With Love.

01:18:46.300 Megan, it's the same recipe.

01:18:47.980 She clearly stole it from Martha Stewart.

01:18:50.700 But so for this,

01:18:51.840 that she gets a guest appearance on MasterChef. 0.82

01:18:54.460 Way to be complicit, MasterChef people.

01:18:57.220 And she's reportedly very upset about this description of her 0.99

01:19:02.460 when she walked out.

01:19:04.180 And I'll tell you why.

01:19:05.160 Here it is.

01:19:06.200 We've had MasterChef royalty in the kitchen before,

01:19:09.740 but no one like this.

01:19:11.220 All the way from sunny California,

01:19:14.000 please welcome to MasterChef Australia,

01:19:16.380 the Duchess of Sussex

01:19:20.680 Meghan Markle

01:19:22.480 oh my lord

01:19:36.760 so the Daily Mail's

01:19:38.860 reporting she's very upset

01:19:40.800 that they called her royalty rob

01:19:42.800 because she's not supposed to be called

01:19:45.020 so i'm sure i'm sure she was really torn up inside by the way they didn't even really call

01:19:49.960 her royalty they just said like royalty in the kitchen like master chef royalty the same way

01:19:54.880 you know you're you're hollywood royalty i i'm i'm journalism royalty whatever like she's pretending 0.94

01:20:01.740 like and this is all bullshit you and i both know she loved being called a royal that's the whole 0.73

01:20:05.960 reason she married harry she loves it i've covered megan for a really long time that episode was 0.98

01:20:10.940 taped it wasn't live she would have stopped them and re-taped the introduction had they not called

01:20:16.980 her royalty the only reason she's on that show is her association with the royal family they didn't

01:20:22.760 hire her because she was on suits when she was a deal or no deal girl she wasn't on master chef i

01:20:28.140 don't i don't resent master chef doing this i've worked in tv you know tv better than anybody it's

01:20:33.440 about ratings that's all they care about and having having her on is going to get ratings even if it's

01:20:38.200 people watching it to hate it and so that's what they're doing here so i tip my hat to them but

01:20:43.860 megan playing a lot it's almost like cosplay isn't it it's like it's like they've dressed up and

01:20:48.520 today we're gonna put a crown on and a cape on and tomorrow we can be nurses and doctors and we

01:20:53.620 can be social workers the next day it's all playing it's all cosplay and people know it 0.89

01:20:59.440 she can't she can't get the normal master chef to put her on like those two are they are poison 1.00

01:21:05.880 here in America, nevermind the UK, where it's even worse.

01:21:09.140 No, no one's going to put them on for ratings, by the way.

01:21:11.360 So like the public has turned on them.

01:21:13.520 That's why they have to go to Australia for this.

01:21:15.580 But she, even there,

01:21:16.880 she reportedly wanted to meet with Steve Irwin's family.

01:21:19.520 You know, of course he died.

01:21:20.560 He's the environmentalist guy

01:21:22.360 who would take us all over the world with the animals.

01:21:24.280 And they would not meet with her

01:21:27.020 because they are reportedly staunch monarchists

01:21:29.940 and fiercely loyal to Prince William and Princess Kate.

01:21:34.460 And they knew that touching these two was absolutely a no-no.

01:21:38.700 So they got the back of the hand.

01:21:40.680 And then, you know what she is, Rob? 1.00

01:21:42.720 She's a disaster tourist.

01:21:44.740 She went to Uvalde after those poor children were killed in that school shooting.

01:21:51.120 And then she went by Princess Diana's death site with her feet up on, like, the window,

01:21:58.700 like, famously playing with her feet, like, where her mother-in-law was killed. 0.52

01:22:03.740 And now she goes, while she's in Australia, to Bondi Beach, where just months ago, all these Jewish Aussies were killed. 0.54

01:22:14.580 And she gets the crowds to follow her. 0.69

01:22:17.380 And look at this brilliant woman who refuses to move off of her. 1.00

01:22:20.260 Look at her. 1.00

01:22:20.860 She's like, you will move around me, bitch. 1.00

01:22:23.040 I love that woman. 1.00

01:22:24.320 She speaks for us all.

01:22:25.740 And then after she does this on Bondi Beach, she posted.

01:22:29.860 She's doing something about her outfits, which a lot of celebs do.

01:22:32.960 no, I don't begrudge her posting. This is what I wore and this is where you can buy it.

01:22:37.520 But maybe not while you were visiting a site of a mass shooting, like, hey, here I am where people

01:22:45.700 died months ago. And this is where you can buy my outfit. It's tone deaf. It's tone deaf,

01:22:52.440 but it's not surprising. They have nobody around them telling them and helping them. That's not

01:22:57.460 by accident they get fired anybody who works with them i know people who have worked with them

01:23:03.260 and they were really difficult and they don't want experts they want yes people and now they

01:23:07.980 have them but you're right to go to bondi beach and to meet with people who are survivors and

01:23:15.300 it's been pointed out too in the australian press she's wearing a striped pajama type top which is

01:23:22.400 very reminiscent of what happened at Auschwitz and during the Holocaust. And so just the lack of

01:23:28.680 sensitivity, just the lack of awareness, it's mind-blowing. But I think this is what narcissists

01:23:37.440 do. This is who they are. In their little bubble, I spoke to some sources of mine

01:23:42.700 who know them and I said, they must be on the joke or they must... No, they're not. We spoke

01:23:48.980 a moment ago about Blake Lively being in her own little bubble until it shattered spectacularly.

01:23:54.580 Meghan's bubble has still not shattered. They think this trip was wildly successful. They're

01:24:00.640 going to use this as a prototype, as a rollout for other countries. And now you can expect to

01:24:06.280 see them going on tour like they're Beyonce or Madonna, except when they turn up in your country,

01:24:12.660 they've got nothing to sell. It is a house of cards, Meghan. You know, when Madonna and Taylor

01:24:17.600 it turns up in london you pay a lot of money and you go and see a great show i get it i just don't

01:24:23.080 get this business model like i don't understand what this is and you know i don't work for them

01:24:28.880 thank goodness and if i did though i'd sit them down and say like who are you like what what is

01:24:34.600 the product what what what are we doing why are we doing this they'd have no answer they they don't

01:24:39.760 know what they're doing all they know is that they are angry royals and that's what they're

01:24:44.000 going to keep talking about but as anyone knows when you keep playing the same song over and over

01:24:50.040 and over it loses its meaning there's there's a reason phantom of the opera drops the chandelier

01:24:55.880 once because the second time it doesn't work it doesn't work it's only impressive good point once

01:25:02.020 they're playing the same too many times over there like oh we just got caught at this children's

01:25:08.240 cancer hospital. And that too, we need to make about ourselves. Like if you want to help children

01:25:14.060 with cancer, go, go, go to St. Jude's. Don't tell us about it. Maybe later you can do an ad,

01:25:22.320 like a free ad for them saying St. Jude's is amazing. Please donate. But it's always about

01:25:27.400 them. She needs to be seen there just like she needed to be seen at Uvalde of all places.

01:25:34.100 They always make it about themselves, which is just so cynical.

01:25:39.040 All right, stand by.

01:25:39.800 Much, much more.

01:25:40.420 We're talking to Rob Shooter.

01:25:41.420 His book is It Started with a Whisper, as you can plainly hear.

01:25:45.280 He's got amazing sources and amazing stories, many of which in some way, shape, or form

01:25:50.020 have allegedly, reportedly made their way into this book, though it is a novel.

01:25:54.400 It is fiction.

01:25:55.500 Hello, lawyers.

01:25:56.280 It's fiction.

01:25:57.320 But check it out.

01:25:58.440 It started with a whisper.

01:26:00.080 Super fun to read.

01:26:01.660 All right, stand by.

01:26:02.200 Coming right back with Rob.

01:26:03.060 We're going to talk about the failing Met Gala and the latest, speaking of morning TV, which his book is about, the latest from what's happening over at NBC.

01:26:13.280 When the dollar's convertibility into gold ended in 1971, gold was fixed at $35 an ounce.

01:26:21.080 Fast forward to today and the U.S. dollar has lost more than 85% of its purchasing power.

01:26:26.180 Gold, on the other hand, has increased in value by over 12,000%.

01:26:29.640 That's why major firms like Vanguard and BlackRock hold significant positions in gold.

01:26:35.220 And that's why you may want to consider diversifying your savings with physical gold

01:26:39.100 from Birch Gold Group.

01:26:40.960 But it starts with education.

01:26:42.700 Birch Gold just announced their Learn and Earn Precious Metals event.

01:26:47.220 This free online event rewards you for learning the basics of investing in precious metals.

01:26:52.240 Sign up to get free silver on your next purchase and get even larger incentives as you go.

01:26:57.140 The more you learn, the more you can earn.

01:26:59.640 But you have to act now as this special event only runs through April 30th. Text my initials

01:27:06.240 MK to the number 989898 to join Birch Gold's Learn and Earn Precious Metals event by April 30th.

01:27:13.640 Go now because there's not much time. Text MK to 989898 today.

01:27:19.420 Paying $70, $80, $90 a month to big wireless for unlimited data is insane, especially when

01:27:25.920 PureTalk is going to give you unlimited high-speed data for just $34.99 a month. Unlimited high-speed

01:27:32.060 data at PureTalk used to start at $55 a month. But because PureTalk is constantly pushing to

01:27:38.120 give you more for less, you can now get unlimited high-speed data for just under $35. How about

01:27:44.520 that? So if you've looked at PureTalk before and didn't make the move, check again. The deal is

01:27:49.700 amazing. And if you're wondering, is PureTalk's network really as good as the overpriced big

01:27:53.900 guys, try it out for 30 days. With no contract and no cancellation fees, you have nothing to lose

01:28:00.080 except all these extra expenses. Their U.S. customer service team is standing by to help

01:28:05.860 you switch in as little as 10 minutes. You just dial pound 250 and say Megan Kelly. That will

01:28:11.420 help you claim this unlimited high-speed data for just $34.99. Again, dial pound 250, say Megan

01:28:19.060 Kelly to switch to America's wireless company, Pure Talk.

01:28:23.900 Hey, everyone. It's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news.

01:28:29.240 I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM.

01:28:32.400 It's called the Megan Kelly Channel, and it is where you will hear the truth, unfiltered, with no agenda and no apologies.

01:28:38.540 Along with the Megan Kelly Show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Jashinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear Politics, and many more.

01:28:47.520 It's bold, no BS news, only on the Megyn Kelly channel, Sirius XM 111, and on the Sirius XM app.

01:28:58.980 Here with me today, Rob Shooter.

01:29:00.760 He's celebrity reporter and author of the novel, It Started With a Whisper, out tomorrow.

01:29:05.780 I'll read you just part of chapter two.

01:29:09.220 Let's see who we think this could be about.

01:29:11.480 As I waited for my client to arrive at her premiere, I slid my little arm into my pant pocket as I always did.

01:29:18.340 My practiced eyes performed a final sweep over the meticulously arranged settings.

01:29:22.860 I knew her tastes, her preferences, her aversions better than I knew my own.

01:29:26.900 The lighting had to be a soft, rosy pink, casting a warm, dreamy glow that was flattering but never obvious.

01:29:33.680 The temperature must remain at a perfect 76 degrees.

01:29:36.560 comfortable enough to feel like a gentle embrace, but cool enough to ensure not a single bead of

01:29:41.440 sweat would betray her. And carnations, heaven forbid, if one of those audacious flowers dared

01:29:47.760 to make an appearance, it would be the end of my career as I knew it. I quickly ran over and

01:29:53.020 opened her car door. A long, impossibly elegant leg emerged first. And then it went, this piece 0.94

01:29:59.620 ends with, she spat out her gum directly into my outstretched palm. I guess it was the only benefit

01:30:05.120 of being invisible. I didn't feel embarrassed. I didn't feel ashamed. I felt numb. Okay, J-Lo,

01:30:11.760 I love 76 degrees too. Oh, no confirmation needed. It's fine. It's just my own supposition.

01:30:19.080 You sounded good. You can read. You sounded great. You sounded great. Will you do the audio

01:30:23.760 version? Will you do my audio book? Keep reading. Keep reading. I would love to. And I'll say,

01:30:29.040 it started with a whisper by rob shooter check it out okay i do want to talk about morning tv

01:30:37.000 in one second but first can we spend a minute on your latest scoop at naughty by nice sub stack

01:30:42.000 on the failing met gala it happens every year on that first weekend of may and we are on our way to

01:30:50.860 another dose of cultural irrelevance and sad past your prime displays walk us through it yeah so i

01:30:58.100 broke a story this morning that the Met has not sold out. It's the first year where they're

01:31:02.280 actually discounting ticket prices. So designers pay hundreds of the horror, the horror. Designers

01:31:08.040 pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a table. But really what they're doing is almost,

01:31:13.020 I don't want to use the word blackmail, but they are buying Anna Winters attention. They want to

01:31:18.040 be in Vogue. However, Vogue is not the magazine that it once was. In fact, if you still read Vogue,

01:31:24.040 you'll see how thin it is a lot of those ads have disappeared and so why are designers paying

01:31:29.700 hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a table to impress somebody who's no longer technically

01:31:34.400 the editor-in-chief when they could spend that money on influencers on different shows the media

01:31:39.820 has changed so much over the last decade over the last five years over the last two years that

01:31:46.120 the reason the met ball was so successful was because of vogue and if vogue is no longer a

01:31:51.820 success. That's going to play out at the Met Ball. Also too, let's add, it's not the ball that it

01:31:57.780 used to be. Now it is about reality stars. It's not quite as glamorous as it used to be, but this

01:32:03.700 is ultimately a business decision. If I am the executive of a massive fashion company, how can I

01:32:11.300 justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a table that is going to give me very little

01:32:17.700 return for that cost. And so the days of Anna Wintour running the world of fashion, which is

01:32:23.920 why this ball was a success, everybody went to kiss her bottom. Nobody cares anymore. Nobody

01:32:29.780 really cares about what Anna Wintour thinks. I can think of five celebrities who are much more

01:32:34.120 powerful in the world of fashion than Anna Wintour. And so the ship has sailed, but the ball is still

01:32:39.660 going on, but it's not the ball that it used to be. It's so true. She doesn't have that kind of

01:32:45.940 power anymore. You'd be much better off if you had $350,000 to waste spending it on getting 1.00

01:32:50.700 Sydney Sweeney to do one post on her Instagram, wearing your jacket. I mean, like it's, it's not,

01:32:57.080 it's not hard anymore and you don't need Anna at all. And now it's become like a subject of just

01:33:01.660 scorn. Now we watch it just to hate everybody who's there, just to rip on them, just sort of

01:33:06.480 laugh at how they've gotten to the party really late and they missed sort of its peak. So like

01:33:11.360 query who would actually go to that and do that. Okay, moving on. The morning television drama is

01:33:18.900 back. And you have a scoop on what's happening over on the Today Show. Tell us what the latest

01:33:24.840 is where Savannah returned beginning late last week or early last week, Monday. Yeah, Savannah

01:33:30.060 returned to the show, I think it was on the 6th. And the show really thought this was going to be

01:33:34.220 a massive moment. Everybody at NBC thought there were going to be hundreds of people, if not

01:33:38.860 thousands of people in the plaza. They'd hired extra security. They thought that this was going

01:33:43.560 to be like a pop concert, like Justin Bieber was in the plaza. A decent sized crowd turned up,

01:33:49.940 but it was not overwhelming. And then the ratings for Savannah's return, they were up, they were up,

01:33:55.480 but they were not up like the show thought it would be. I actually got an email from a publicist

01:34:00.660 at NBC complaining that I was covering Nancy Guthrie's disappearance. And I reminded them

01:34:07.160 that nobody has covered this story more than NBC.

01:34:11.160 And so NBC really lent into this story.

01:34:14.220 I think they did it in a decent way, I hope so.

01:34:17.480 But at the same time, I've got to admit,

01:34:20.120 I'm hearing from people inside the building

01:34:22.180 that there was a little bit of an opportunity here

01:34:25.060 for the network to increase their ratings

01:34:28.300 and to get people really behind the Today Show,

01:34:31.380 which really is neck and neck with Good Morning America.

01:34:33.860 In fact, there's been some weeks

01:34:34.900 when G and May have even beaten the Today Show.

01:34:37.720 And so over there at the moment,

01:34:39.580 the Savannah card, the Savannah moment,

01:34:42.560 didn't quite turn out to be what they wanted it,

01:34:45.940 what they hoped, what they expected it to be.

01:34:49.240 And I think that's because this story,

01:34:51.440 it's a really complicated story.

01:34:53.060 It's a really frustrating story.

01:34:54.640 There's so many pieces of this story

01:34:56.120 that just don't add up.

01:34:57.680 And so NBC was very happy to do a Dateline special

01:35:00.760 and to promote this on the nightly news

01:35:02.660 and the Today Show for weeks and weeks and weeks.

01:35:05.220 But now they're not asking the big questions anymore

01:35:08.360 because they're complicated.

01:35:10.100 None of this makes sense.

01:35:12.960 So the numbers that we have is she came back

01:35:16.540 and for that week, viewers in the overall went up 6%.

01:35:21.640 That's the people who are 55 and up.

01:35:24.340 Demo viewers, 25 to 54, went up 2%,

01:35:28.000 which is not at all, right, just two,

01:35:30.940 which is not at all what NBC was hoping for.

01:35:33.380 They thought it would be this big bonanza, Savannah's back.

01:35:35.620 The problem they have, as I see it, Rob,

01:35:37.500 is Savannah was never a big star.

01:35:41.480 People have empathy for her, great empathy for her,

01:35:43.720 but it didn't make her a big star even now

01:35:47.220 that they really want to watch deliver the news.

01:35:49.140 It's far, far, far from where it was

01:35:51.540 when it was Katie and Matt

01:35:53.340 and the morning show Wars had genuine celebrities.

01:35:58.060 They became celebrities

01:35:59.240 because the shows were so popular, those days are gone.

01:36:02.860 And so they're just trying to glom on to the former glory.

01:36:05.820 And the audience is like, eh, we're not really into it.

01:36:09.060 Yeah, absolutely.

01:36:10.480 I've had dinner with Matt Lauer and Katie Couric,

01:36:13.120 and it was really exciting.

01:36:14.520 When you walked into a restaurant with those two 20 years ago,

01:36:17.240 the restaurant was buzzing.

01:36:19.780 It was brilliant.

01:36:21.200 I've walked with Savannah down the street.

01:36:23.140 I don't think I've had dinner with her, but I've been around them.

01:36:25.820 Nobody recognizes them.

01:36:27.140 It's just a different era.

01:36:28.640 And there's nothing wrong with that, except when you don't acknowledge it.

01:36:33.040 When you talk to the people at NBC, I talk to them about coming on for my book.

01:36:37.600 My last book, I was on the Today Show.

01:36:40.320 This book, they looked down their nose at, they didn't want gossip.

01:36:44.400 They didn't even return my calls.

01:36:46.160 Now, the good news is I'm going to do their competitor, and I'm very happy about doing that.

01:36:50.100 But the Today Show still operates as if it's 2000.

01:36:53.100 They still think that they are the most important game in town, and that's no longer the case.

01:37:00.340 And so wake up, smell the coffee.

01:37:02.540 You can still make a good living.

01:37:04.320 I'm glad that the show is on.

01:37:06.260 I'm glad that they booked guests on the show.

01:37:08.460 But it's not what it was.

01:37:10.160 It's over.

01:37:11.320 Well, it's funny because we know a lot of people in publishing, and truly, not to toot our own horn,

01:37:16.900 but the word on the street is if you want to sell books, you should come on The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:37:20.120 Megyn Kelly.

01:37:20.340 Like they all, all the publishers, they know that.

01:37:23.560 And if, because if we really get behind a book, you know, and we won't do it for everybody,

01:37:28.640 but if we really get behind a book, our audience trusts us and our audience is great and they

01:37:32.960 will buy it.

01:37:33.980 I'm hoping you are right.

01:37:35.580 I know you are.

01:37:36.300 When I told my publisher that I was doing your show, he's a very conservative gentleman.

01:37:40.800 He did a cartwheel.

01:37:41.700 He was so excited that I'm here on this show.

01:37:46.080 He's so, he's so excited about it.

01:37:48.460 You're right.

01:37:48.900 The world has changed.

01:37:49.800 You know, Rob, it's because I put my relationship up with my audience or with my audience up against the relationship that Today Show anchors have with theirs any day of the week.

01:38:00.780 It's just so much more intimate.

01:38:03.040 They know your weaknesses.

01:38:04.200 They know your strengths.

01:38:05.020 They know when you're in a good mood, when you're in a bad mood.

01:38:07.000 Like, it's a shared relationship that's just so much more close and real than you will ever find on morning TV.

01:38:13.860 Yeah, but you also do the work.

01:38:14.720 Let me just reveal to everybody listening, watching, I didn't necessarily want to send

01:38:20.020 you this book.

01:38:20.640 I didn't want to send you the manuscript.

01:38:22.260 I was really nervous about it.

01:38:23.960 And your team was pretty honest.

01:38:25.560 They said, you don't get on Megan's show to talk about a book if we don't read it.

01:38:29.720 She reads every single book.

01:38:32.380 That sounds obvious.

01:38:33.840 That sounds like, oh, that makes sense.

01:38:35.940 It doesn't.

01:38:36.600 It never happens.

01:38:38.200 I have done so many shows.

01:38:39.520 No, I feel like I owe it.

01:38:40.480 Yes, you do the work.

01:38:41.520 I feel like I owe it to the author.

01:38:42.960 If you're if you're going to say, OK, come here first to promote your book and you don't do them the courtesy of actually reading it and knowing what's in there, then, you know, then you're the Today Show.

01:38:51.800 Then you give the person three minutes.

01:38:53.580 You get up and down in a story.

01:38:54.800 The people walk away feeling utterly confused about why this person was there and they don't remember anything about the book.

01:39:00.620 It started with a whisper by Rob Shooter.

01:39:03.120 Right. And you walk away unsatisfied.

01:39:04.820 Then then the author gets no pop as a result of the appearance.

01:39:08.420 And so, like, what was the what was the point of it all?

01:39:10.420 Right. So in any minute.

01:39:11.280 OK, I want to go back to one of the things.

01:39:12.760 So in your reporting, you write about how there's tension now between Savannah and Hoda on the set.

01:39:22.980 And I think that this is very interesting to me because they've been trying to pitch us for a very long time now about how it's all a family and those two are so close.

01:39:31.600 And we saw Hoda make it all about herself when she interviewed Savannah on her first interview back.

01:39:36.240 And that you are getting to the actual truth, which is it is not a family.

01:39:40.680 It is a cutthroat, very nasty industry where everyone's trying to oust everyone.

01:39:47.100 It's vicious.

01:39:47.840 And that's why these environments are the best places to base a novel or a story.

01:39:53.220 It is so cutthroat.

01:39:54.480 I've worked in magazines.

01:39:55.780 I've worked in gossip.

01:39:56.480 I've worked in celebrities.

01:39:57.520 I've had my own morning show.

01:39:58.940 There was nothing more nasty and nothing more cutthroat than a morning show.

01:40:04.400 It was so brutal.

01:40:05.960 Savannah and Hoda have never got along.

01:40:08.740 And it goes back to Matt Lauer.

01:40:10.300 My reporting is, is that Matt did not really like Savannah that much.

01:40:14.580 And to punish her, he promoted Hoda.

01:40:16.940 That's my reporting too.

01:40:18.620 You probably, did I steal that from you?

01:40:20.060 I'm sorry.

01:40:20.560 But at least maybe we have the same story.

01:40:22.020 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:40:23.320 I'm just saying, I've never talked about this before, but that is true.

01:40:26.740 It was Matt.

01:40:27.500 Matt wanted to put Savannah in her place.

01:40:30.180 And what did he do?

01:40:31.240 He brought out Hoda. 0.95

01:40:32.740 Well, when he got fired, Savannah didn't want Hoda.

01:40:35.660 She wanted Willie Geist.

01:40:36.900 And the first few episodes, it's not Hoda.

01:40:38.840 It's Willie, but nobody watched. And so that's why that's why she got the job. So she got the job despite Savannah. These two are not friends. They don't even really like each other. You're never going to see them hanging out. There's tension. There's real tension.

01:40:51.760 Yeah, that's, I mean, one of the many pieces of drama is to see if they can pull off the act. And let me tell you, they did not do it in that interview with Hoden or fake tears that anybody could see. Willie Geist is a fine reporter, but he is as exciting as this piece of blank paper. So it was never going to happen. Unlike our friend Rob Shooter, who's amazing. You've got to check out his debut novel. It is so fun. Truly, trust me, I promise you, you will enjoy it. It's out tomorrow. It's called It Started.

01:41:21.760 the whisper. Rob, thanks so much for being here. And we'll hear you again soon here and on The

01:41:26.540 Nerve. I can't wait to be back. Thank you for being so kind. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

01:41:30.860 Oh, lots of love. That was so fun. What a great Monday. Okay, we're back tomorrow with our pals

01:41:35.860 from National Review. We will see you all then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:41:42.320 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 20, 2026

SCOTUS Secrets During Dobbs Decision, with Mollie Hemingway, and Meghan Markle's FAILED Australia Tour, with Rob Shuter ｜ Ep. 1299

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript