The Megyn Kelly Show - Shocking Jack Smith Doc Dump as Scandal Grows, CBS News Shakeup, Missing Monkeys： AM Update 10⧸30

00:00:00.000 Every child deserves to splash, to laugh, to share adventures with friends, to feel like they belong.

00:00:10.900 But for some, that joy comes with a price tag that's beyond their reach.

00:00:15.440 Help the YMCA bring its transformative programs to those who can't afford them.

00:00:20.160 Because connections, cannonballs, and confidence should never be out of reach.

00:00:27.060 Donate today to your local YMCA.

00:00:30.000 Good morning, everyone. I'm Megan Kelly.

00:00:34.900 It's Thursday, October 30th, 2025, and this is your AM Update.

00:00:39.780 It is bigger than Watergate in the same way that the Pacific Ocean is bigger than your bathtub.

00:00:47.120 Thousands of pages released this week by the House and Senate Judiciary Committees

00:00:51.340 exposing what Republicans are calling the biggest scandal in Washington history.

00:00:56.340 The CBS News shakeups begin as parent company Paramount begins post-merger layoffs.

00:01:03.120 The Federal Reserve moves on interest rates.

00:01:05.740 President Trump not yet satisfied.

00:01:08.120 Do you need some assistance?

00:01:09.660 Is he saying monkeys?

00:01:11.280 And research monkeys on the loose in Mississippi.

00:01:14.700 All that and more coming up in just a moment on your AM Update.

00:01:18.600 As President Trump is settling into his new administration,

00:01:25.420 one of the top Democrats in Congress aiming to undermine the Trump agenda

00:01:28.720 is Democrat Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois.

00:01:31.920 And according to our sponsor, the Electronic Payments Coalition,

00:01:35.740 Senator Durbin has a new plan, a government takeover of your credit card.

00:01:39.860 Today, Americans have thousands of choices in credit cards, but they say

00:01:43.980 Senator Durbin's plan will result in less competition and less security,

00:01:48.140 which means more risk for your credit and your identity.

00:01:51.780 You can learn more for yourself at guardyourcard.com.

00:01:55.480 And you could consider telling your senators to stop Dick Durbin's government takeover of your credit card

00:02:00.780 before it's too late.

00:02:02.640 The House and Senate Judiciary Committees releasing two separate troves of documents this week,

00:02:11.800 each revealing a Biden administration FBI determined to investigate not just President Trump,

00:02:18.520 but the vast majority of the conservative movement.

00:02:21.280 The House Judiciary Committee releasing documents provided by FBI Director Cash Patel

00:02:26.400 showing dozens of Republican figures wrapped up in what was known as the Arctic Frost Investigation,

00:02:33.820 which began as an examination of the alternate slates of electors Team Trump pushed in the 2020 election

00:02:39.940 and developed into Special Counsel Jack Smith's wider probe into interference around the 2020 election,

00:02:47.080 a dragnet that surveilled U.S. senators, financial institutions,

00:02:52.120 basically GOP heavyweights having anything to do with Donald Trump.

00:02:56.400 The Senate Judiciary Committee releasing whistleblower documents containing the actual subpoenas

00:03:01.540 issued by Special Counsel Jack Smith, targeting at least 430 Republican individuals and entities,

00:03:09.080 including media companies like Fox and Newsmax, as well as Turning Point USA,

00:03:14.360 Make America Great Again PAC, eight GOP senators, and private individuals scrutinized in what

00:03:21.280 Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley describes as an FBI fishing expedition

00:03:25.860 to, quote, improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.

00:03:31.000 That probe zeroing in on the GOP's so-called false electors scheme,

00:03:36.340 a plan in which pro-Trump electors in several battleground states submitted alternate election certificates

00:03:42.560 claiming Mr. Trump had won those states in hopes that they would be counted during the January 6th vote certification.

00:03:49.600 The Trump camp describing these as contingent electors to preserve President Trump's legal rights amid ongoing legal challenges to the 2020 election.

00:03:59.480 On Wednesday, GOP senators arguing these latest revelations unveil a scandal as big as any in modern political history.

00:04:07.480 What is revealed in those 1,700 pages of documents, in those 197 subpoenas, is nothing short of a Biden administration enemies list.

00:04:17.960 People need to understand how politicized the Biden administration turned all these agencies.

00:04:23.120 Arctic Frost is Joe Biden's Watergate.

00:04:26.700 Merrick Garland was a fundamentally corrupt attorney general.

00:04:30.540 Jack Smith was a fundamentally corrupt prosecutor.

00:04:34.440 This was a political enemies list from the beginning.

00:04:38.000 In this instance, I can't think of a bigger political scandal in the last hundred years.

00:04:43.660 So if you want to compare it to Watergate, this is a hundred times worse than Watergate.

00:04:47.120 We spoke with CEO of The Federalist, Sean Davis, about the significance of these documents.

00:04:52.600 So Arctic Frost was a wide-ranging, massive investigation basically against the entire national Republican Party infrastructure launched under the Joe Biden administration, namely under the authority of special counsel Jack Smith.

00:05:09.520 And it purported to be investigating January 6th and election interference and stuff like that.

00:05:16.160 But that was all really a pretext to create legal reasons to destroy the Biden administration's entire political opposition in the country.

00:05:26.020 They wanted to destroy their opponents.

00:05:27.940 And they kind of cooked up a whole bunch of reasons, whether it's January 6th or Trump calling shenanigans on the election or what have you.

00:05:38.500 They wanted to use that as a basis to effectively legally terrorize their opposition.

00:05:45.080 The House Judiciary Committee documents contained the FBI information used to justify the investigation.

00:05:51.560 That tranche was difficult to parse, says Davis.

00:05:54.180 But the Senate drop, provided by whistleblowers, contained 197 subpoenas and hundreds of pages of underlying documentation.

00:06:03.740 So it was a massive, massive release that is starting to make clear the full breadth and insanity of this fishing expedition by Jack Smith and the Biden DOJ.

00:06:15.520 It wouldn't surprise me if there's more.

00:06:18.140 They were subpoenaing Trump's campaign, the RNC itself, Trump-affiliated PACs, conservative organizations, legal organizations, individuals.

00:06:29.200 They were trying to find and target and burrow into and learn every single possible thing about what every major figure in Republican politics was doing in the country.

00:06:39.020 They wanted to know who they were talking to, what they were talking about, who they were emailing, who they were doing business with, what their bank records looked like.

00:06:48.000 And this even included United States senators, who clearly had nothing to do, even if this thing is cooked up, they clearly had nothing to do with any of it.

00:06:58.000 Davis says these revelations are worse than the scandal that forced President Nixon to resign from office in 1974.

00:07:05.020 When we had Watergate, what we had was a scandal over a break-in by a handful of people of the Democrat Party headquarters, and they alleged that Nixon knew about it and tried to cover it up.

00:07:19.960 But it was a one-time break-in of a party headquarters on one evening by a handful of people.

00:07:25.540 What we had here was a multi-year fishing expedition using the most powerful tools and weapons in the entire federal government against hundreds, if not thousands of people, including the former and future president of the United States, all his aides, his campaign funders, the organizations that supported him, and the people who worked there.

00:07:46.380 It is bigger than Watergate in the same way that the Pacific Ocean is bigger than your bathtub.

00:07:53.980 Smith's investigation into the electorate's scheme was ultimately rendered moot by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling recognizing presidential immunity for most official acts in office.

00:08:05.400 And not a moment too soon, says Davis.

00:08:08.300 They were demanding financial records, basically any name they could get on from anyone with any real major influence within the national Republican and conservative party infrastructure.

00:08:20.260 So they used it to go after alternate electors in places like Arizona or Georgia.

00:08:26.940 They used it to go after lawyers. 0.75

00:08:29.780 They went after Sidney Powell.

00:08:31.480 They went after Jeff Clark and John Eastman.

00:08:33.600 They used it to go after Donald Trump himself, a bunch of his campaign people.

00:08:37.960 They used it to go after conservative organizations like the Conservative Partnership Institute or American First Policy Institute.

00:08:45.680 They even used it to go after a pillow company called MyPillow.

00:08:49.260 You had the executive branch under a tyrannical DOJ going and just hoovering up legislative records from their opponents in Congress.

00:08:58.840 And I mean, who knows what they were getting from that?

00:09:01.180 Were they figuring out how to defeat Republican legislative strategy?

00:09:05.360 I mean, that's an abomination if that's what happened.

00:09:08.300 What should come of the revelations?

00:09:09.960 We asked Sean Davis that, too.

00:09:12.100 You cannot have this type of behavior go unpunished.

00:09:15.020 So I very much hope that Pam Bondi, the attorney general, understands that the risk that not punishing these people poses to the future of the country.

00:09:24.340 Because you cannot have a country where one party is allowed to do this over and over and over again and nothing ever happens to them.

00:09:31.200 Coming up, hundreds of cuts at CBS News and some big names rumored to be on the chopping block and multiple aggressive medical research monkeys on the loose in Mississippi. 0.67

00:09:44.460 What you need to know.

00:09:45.480 When customers are walking through the aisles of their local Walmart, they're not just picking up groceries or supplies.

00:09:56.060 They are supporting American businesses and their communities.

00:09:59.300 The real story is what's behind the label.

00:10:01.500 With over two-thirds of the products Walmart buys made, grown, or assembled right here in the U.S., buying local is not just stocking shelves.

00:10:09.520 It's about strengthening communities.

00:10:11.680 Because of that commitment, Walmart invested $350 billion in U.S. manufacturing, helping American companies like Fisher and Weezer Specialty Foods, a local Texas business, expand their operations in Fredericksburg, Texas.

00:10:26.020 Hire more people as well and bring their Texas-grown peach jam to a national market.

00:10:30.400 Their story is just one example of how Walmart's U.S. manufacturing investment is supporting over 750,000 American jobs.

00:10:38.780 Businesses across the country are empowered to sell more, hire more, and help their communities grow.

00:10:43.340 From farms to factories to final shopping carts, learn how Walmart is fueling the future of U.S. manufacturing at walmart.com slash americaatwork.

00:10:53.960 Paramount laying off about 2,000 workers beginning yesterday, following its merger with Skydance Media earlier this year.

00:11:05.260 CEO David Ellison writing in a memo to employees, quote,

00:11:08.560 In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization.

00:11:13.740 In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure designed to strengthen our focus on growth.

00:11:21.740 The CBS News division seeing about 100 employees cut, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:11:27.740 Part of a broader restructuring underway at CBS under Ellison, beginning with purchasing independent media outlet The Free Press and installing its founder, Barry Weiss, as editor-in-chief of CBS News.

00:11:39.360 The layoffs were reportedly planned before Weiss was hired.

00:11:43.700 Early steps in the overhaul, eliminating streaming shows, CBS Mornings Plus and CBS Evening News Plus, and closing the South Africa Bureau.

00:11:53.400 The LA Times reporting the Race and Culture Unit, formed in the 2020 aftermath of George Floyd's death, was closed down as well.

00:12:02.480 Two weeks after NBC closed its same department, it was BS window dressing all along.

00:12:09.360 Some of those employees will reportedly be moved to other divisions.

00:12:14.020 The New York Post reporting earlier this week, next on the chopping block, could be some of the longest-tenured 60 Minutes anchors, as Weiss aims to revive the marquee show, once known as the Lion's Den, due to its gold-standard hard-nosed journalism.

00:12:27.840 Bill Whitaker, a possible target, he has been criticized for throwing softball questions, according to The Post,

00:12:33.700 like in his interview with Vice President Kamala Harris just weeks before the 2024 election.

00:12:39.540 I've been covering the border for years, and so I know this is not a problem that started with your administration.

00:12:47.680 Correct, correct.

00:12:48.460 You have accused Donald Trump of using racist tropes.

00:12:53.080 I'm glad you are pointing these comments out that he has made that have resulted in a response by most reasonable people to say it's just wrong.

00:13:02.360 Not exactly Mike Wallace, is he?

00:13:05.580 Earlier this year, parent company Paramount agreeing to settle with President Trump over allegations that interview was edited to unfairly help the Democratic nominee.

00:13:14.020 Scott Pelley, also rumored to be on Weiss's potential list.

00:13:18.280 In March 2024, Pelley humiliated himself in an interview with the Moms for Liberty co-founders, raising concerns about graphic sexual content in books commonly found in school libraries.

00:13:30.580 A very real problem Pelley openly scoffed at and downplayed.

00:13:35.360 Parents send their children to school to be educated, not indoctrinated into ideology.

00:13:40.300 What ideology are they being indoctrinated into?

00:13:42.840 Let's just say, children in America cannot read.

00:13:47.680 They often dodged questions with talking points.

00:13:51.280 You're being evasive.

00:13:52.300 21% of Hispanic students are reading on grade level.

00:13:55.160 You're being evasive.

00:13:55.700 What ideology are the children being indoctrinated into?

00:13:59.700 What is your fear?

00:14:01.040 I think parents' fears are realized.

00:14:03.520 They're looking at these books where sexual discussions are happening with their children at younger and younger ages. 0.55

00:14:09.480 Tiffany Justice read from sexually explicit books written for older teens, but found in a few lower schools. 0.91

00:14:18.880 Most people wouldn't want them in a lower school.

00:14:21.900 But in a tactic of outrage politics, Moms for Liberty takes a kernel of truth and concludes these examples are not rare mistakes, but a plot to sexualize children. 0.99

00:14:35.540 Just over a year later, a case about parents' rights to opt out of insane radical school curriculum went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the parents won.

00:14:45.960 The high court recognizing, contrary to what Scott Pelley told his audience, this inappropriate material is indeed appearing in grade schools in violation of parents' rights.

00:14:57.940 16-year CBS veteran John Dickerson, too, announcing he will leave the network at the end of the year.

00:15:04.220 In September, Dickerson facing criticism for reporting Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin's motive, quote, remains elusive.

00:15:12.380 That was after plenty of evidence had emerged, revealing the shooter's leftist beliefs and deep hatred of Charlie.

00:15:20.260 Bye.

00:15:20.660 The Federal Reserve cutting interest rates for the second time this year, lowering the benchmark rate by a quarter point to a range between 3.75 and 4%, the lowest in three years.

00:15:34.060 Fed Chair Jerome Powell saying interest rate policy is not, quote, on a pre-set course, and another reduction at the next meeting in December, quote, is not a foregone conclusion.

00:15:44.380 Markets mixed yesterday, closing with the Dow down slightly, the S&P 500 flat, and the Nasdaq ticking up slightly.

00:15:52.780 Powell saying President Trump's tariffs have had only a, quote, fairly modest impact on overall inflation, but Americans still feel the pain of higher prices from years past.

00:16:02.680 The reason they're so unhappy about inflation is the inflation that we had in 2021, 2, and 3.

00:16:07.480 Because, you know, you can say that prices aren't going up as much, but that doesn't mean people aren't feeling those higher prices from the inflation we had 2 or 3 years ago.

00:16:18.200 They are, and that's, I think, a large part of why the public, if you sample people, inflation is still very much making people quite unhappy.

00:16:26.160 President Trump, who has long argued for lowering interest rates, making it clear multiple times this week these cuts will not serve as a lifeline for Powell's job.

00:16:35.320 The prices are way down. Mortgage rates are down, despite having an incompetent head of the Fed.

00:16:42.020 I call him too late. He's always too late. He's too late in lowering interest rates. I call him Jerome Too Late Powell.

00:16:48.380 When do you think you'll make a decision on the Fed, last Fed question?

00:16:51.100 I'd say maybe by the end of the year. I think by the end of the year. Early next year, but by the end of the year.

00:16:56.220 We want to get too late out as soon as possible. We want to be too early with too late.

00:17:01.740 Powell's term as chair is set to end in May of 2026.

00:17:06.160 Audience members from Mississippi may want to pay some extra attention to this next story.

00:17:13.880 Authorities are searching for three monkeys still on the loose after a truck carrying research animals overturned on Interstate 59,

00:17:23.300 about 85 miles southeast of Jackson, the state's capital.

00:17:27.000 The crash occurring on Tuesday afternoon.

00:17:29.300 Dispatch audio capturing the moment responders first learned of the emergency.

00:17:33.480 We got 21 monkeys that was on this truck.

00:17:37.800 We got five of them on the run.

00:17:39.680 You need some assistance?

00:17:41.200 Is he saying monkeys?

00:17:42.680 Yeah, so they're going to be some rhesus monkeys.

00:17:45.380 An assessment later revealing six monkeys escaped in total.

00:17:49.160 Some were recaptured and euthanized.

00:17:51.660 It's unclear how many were killed.

00:17:53.880 Video from the crash site showing some loose monkeys crawling through the grass

00:17:57.720 and the debris near the wreckage, including overturned crates marked live animals.

00:18:03.480 It remains unclear what caused the crash or where the truck was headed.

00:18:07.580 Officials continue urging the public not to approach any monkeys and to call 911 if one is spotted.

00:18:15.420 The whole incident reminiscent of the movie Outbreak from 1995 starring Dustin Hoffman and Donald Sutherland.

00:18:22.660 In a remote African jungle, a small monkey is captured.

00:18:28.860 Bound for a pet store in America, the animal carries a deadly virus.

00:18:34.220 The fate of the nation, perhaps the world is in our hands.

00:18:37.400 Many people are dying and are going to continue to die unless we find this monkey.

00:18:41.900 And that'll do it for your AM update.

00:18:46.240 I'm Megan Kelly.

00:18:47.140 Join me back here for The Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 at noon east,

00:18:52.380 on youtube.com slash megankelly, and on all podcast platforms.

00:18:56.040 Every child deserves to splash, to laugh, to share adventures with friends, to feel like they belong.

00:19:11.080 But for some, that joy comes with a price tag that's beyond their reach.

00:19:15.580 Help the YMCA bring its transformative programs to those who can't afford them.

00:19:19.960 Because connections, cannonballs, and confidence should never be out of reach.

00:19:27.280 Donate today to your local YMCA.

The Megyn Kelly Show - October 30, 2025

Shocking Jack Smith Doc Dump as Scandal Grows, CBS News Shakeup, Missing Monkeys： AM Update 10⧸30

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