Former NFL sideline reporter Michelle Tafoya joins The Megynkelly show to discuss why she's leaving The View and what she plans to do next. Plus, a new court filing lays out new evidence linking Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to an alleged Russian spy ring.
00:00:00.440Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.760Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.
00:00:16.500It's Valentine's Day, so happy Valentine's Day.
00:00:20.740Sadly, as we know, there's still no love lost, however, between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
00:00:26.340And there is just a stunning, stunning new court filing laying out how Special Prosecutor John Durham believes that the Clinton campaign spied, spied on Trump both before and after he became president.
00:00:42.380I mean, specifically saying that they managed to hack into his computer in the executive office of the president.
00:00:50.120Okay? If that's true, someone's going to jail, someone other than the lawyer, who right now they're allegedly getting this information from.
00:00:58.180This is enormous. We don't know whether it's true, though.
00:01:01.320So we're not going to be a Rachel Maddow and assume it is.
00:01:04.680She's gone the other way on Russia the whole time.
00:01:07.240We'll tell you what is being alleged when one of our favorite people, Victor Davis Hanson, joins us in our next hour.
00:01:14.980But first, we begin with an exclusive interview today as one of the best in the business calls it a day after the Super Bowl.
00:01:23.480Michelle Tafoya is widely regarded as the top sideline reporter in all of sports.
00:01:30.280She recently made waves discussing off-the-field topics.
00:01:34.700You may know her if you're not a sports fan from when she appeared on The View a couple of months ago.
00:01:39.900And it was wonderful. It was like, wait, who is that voice of reason over there who is incredibly smart, armed with facts, not afraid of these other women,
00:01:50.760especially on dicey issues like race, the NFL, Colin Kaepernick.
00:01:57.040She was battling the co-hosts over everything from COVID to critical race theory.
00:02:01.620And for those who do not know Michelle, there's just a tiny bit of that.
00:02:05.300Why are we even teaching that the color of the skin matters?
00:02:09.940Because to me, what matters is your character and your values.
00:02:12.900Yes, but you know, you live in the United States.
00:02:15.380You know that color of skin has been mattering to people.
00:03:22.340And weirdly, because I like to think about myself that way, Michelle, but I don't think if I were to retire from a career, let's say at NBC or elsewhere, that everybody, every single person would be saying such nice and laudatory things the way they have about you.
00:06:19.900And I'm tired of people trying to tell other people that it's a farce or that it's not real or here's why you can't succeed instead of telling people why you can succeed.
00:06:32.560And so I just I can't keep it to myself anymore.
00:07:06.240And so whether it's a run in the future or not, I am going to stand behind people and with people and I am going to let my voice be heard, which is just something that you can't do when you're a very public, silent reporter on a sports slash entertainment show that is supposed to just make people happy.
00:07:23.100And NBC was great about saying, look, go, you know, say the things you want to say.
00:08:28.000You know, I will say that, you know, I will say this.
00:08:31.980Bob Costas, my former colleague at NBC Sports, is that person, is more liberal and did some halftime essays during Sunday Night Football over the years that drew some ire from some of our fans.
00:08:45.240And I think what fairly NBC wanted to avoid was taking off their fans of the sport, of the game, of this opportunity to escape that stuff.
00:09:05.700But but since then, you know, since the wokeification of ESPN and NBC and all these sports in general, I just wonder whether they would be saying, you know, if you wanted to go out there and be like BLM and, you know, trans swimmers should swim and all that stuff.
00:09:22.700I just can't imagine them silencing you.
00:10:10.800So, like, I have told the story before, but one time I was talking to my therapist and it was shortly after I left NBC and I had just like launched Instagram.
00:10:19.380And I don't know how many followers I have on Instagram.
00:10:22.660You know, I really just post dog photos on there.
00:10:25.060And occasionally if I do something fun, I'll put something up there.
00:10:27.580But I didn't have very many followers.
00:10:30.340And literally at that moment, Jennifer Aniston had posted one photo and gotten like eight million followers in a day.
00:10:43.320But my therapist was laughing because he's like, you talk about the most divisive issues in America for a living.
00:10:52.580He's like, she does silly comedies with people who are literally called friends.
00:10:59.200You know, so I get I get the hesitance, you know, the hesitancy about putting you out there with your political opinion.
00:11:05.400I wish more news organizations would do that.
00:11:07.480I wish more sports organizations would say that.
00:11:09.620But it does seem to be especially dicey in the eyes of a lot of these execs if you're a conservative because they know instantly you're going to alienate the entire left.
00:11:19.440The left will not tolerate a conservative newscaster.
00:11:21.980The tolerant left will not tolerate conservatives.
00:11:27.000And that's just something that I've learned the hard way.
00:11:48.040No, that's the God's honest truth, because you're smart.
00:11:50.840You're, you know, look, we talk about things that matter.
00:11:55.040And that's what's that's what scares me right now is that not enough people are talking about things that matter.
00:12:02.400And if you know, I'm amazed at just people that I talk to now and then how little they know about what's going on in the world, in this country, the things that really should be affecting them and opening their eyes.
00:12:17.760And it's not happening and you go, it must be that the message isn't getting presented the right way or by the right people.
00:12:25.660And so I guess I hope I'm not thinking too highly of myself.
00:12:29.960But I do think of myself as sane and and someone who maybe can help convey the message.
00:12:39.440And that's why you've done so well when the chips are down in like clutch moments.
00:12:42.860And so when I remember the one I'm not a sports person, but that when the one coach collapsed on the field during the halftime, that made national news and you handled it so beautifully.
00:14:34.880And I'm grateful for this opportunity because it lets me continue to get that message out that that's what I do want to do, that I want my voice to be out there.
00:14:42.640But I and it's purely out of I remember someone sat me down once and said, there are three reasons people run for office.
00:14:52.580Number one, they want popularity or number two, they want popularity or number three, they really want to serve.
00:14:57.980And I said, well, for me, it's I really want to serve.
00:15:00.600I I'm a I'm a huge believer in the power of what this country is built on.
00:15:06.320And I'm terrified for my kids and their kids and yours and everybody else's that, as you put it, the fabric is going to get torn apart to a point where we're not recognizable anymore.
00:15:17.480And I believe there are enough people to save it, but also people are being silenced or afraid to speak out.
00:15:27.260The number of friends I have that say, I don't want to talk politics.
00:17:06.120So, yeah, wherever I am, wherever I land, whether it's in my the principal's office at my kid's school, because I think they're being taught something that I don't agree with.
00:28:20.140And I know that's what this was for Aaron.
00:28:23.120And nobody works harder than that man.
00:28:26.040And so to see him able to do it, to achieve that final play and then to be able to soak it in, it was it was really it was beautiful to watch.
00:28:35.580All right. Now I'm getting emotional because I'm thinking about you and I'm thinking about that was your last Super Bowl.
00:28:40.300Like that was a culminating moment for you, too.
00:28:43.140I don't know why I'm feeling emotional about this, but I but like it was a big night for you, too.
00:28:47.820And and to spend your last night reporting on the sidelines at the Super Bowl and celebrating whoever's win, probably in your view, although you're from California.
00:29:48.920I'm in the kind of right outside of a tunnel and I'm looking at the whole stadium is beautiful, by the way.
00:29:54.300And I'm looking at it and I'm looking at the lights and I'm looking at this place where I've spent the last 25 years of my life as kind of like my workplace.
00:30:03.200And that I would never stand right there again in that role with that kind of view and that kind of access and that kind of excitement and that kind of feeling.
00:41:21.180Because I because, you know, I get it.
00:41:22.660And I know you've been saying I don't want to be known as the best women's sports reporter.
00:41:26.720I want to be known as the best sports reporter.
00:41:28.120And that's been the key to your success.
00:41:29.540You why would you put these things in your way that are sort of made up constructs of I mean, yes, there are men and there are women, as you said.
00:41:40.540But I don't go and battle just women in my industry.
00:42:15.020So then my real marriage to Doug didn't start until I was 37.
00:42:18.460So I was kind of getting long in the tooth for the babies.
00:42:21.500And I could relate to your frustration and trying to get pregnant and so on.
00:42:25.940But I did want to circle to the part of you wound up you had you had one biological child who was just like a surprise after all your IVFs and miscarriages and some very tough times.
00:43:02.900And and it's just been the greatest gift I've ever been given.
00:43:09.380And I hope I do get to meet her mother face to face someday.
00:43:12.980And if she wants to, we will do that because I want to thank this woman for giving me the greatest gift I've ever had the pleasure of having in my life.
00:46:14.500And at the risk of sounding like I'm just blowing smoke here, you've been a big influence on my career and my decision making about all of this.
00:46:39.220OK, I want to tell the audience that up next we are bringing on Victor Davis Hanson and we're going to bring you what we're going to try to break down this rather complex story in terms you can understand, because it's if true, it's huge.
00:46:53.280It could definitely result in criminal charges for a whole host of people.
00:46:57.100And it's being completely blacked out by most in the mainstream media.
00:47:01.800And trust me, if the shoe were on the other foot and and Donald Trump had been accused of spying on Hillary Clinton's winning White House campaign, it would dominate the news cycle everywhere.
00:47:15.200Here to discuss the Clinton campaign's alleged spying on Donald Trump's campaign and on him while he was in the White House, as well as many other items in the news.
00:47:32.600My pal Victor Davis Hanson, the Martin and E. Lee Anderson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
00:47:46.480These are allegations and a report that he is getting ready to say that or is pursuing claims that the Clinton campaign attorneys paid a tech company to infiltrate Donald Trump's campaign headquarters, a Trump Tower and the executive office that he held in the White House.
00:48:08.380His computers wanting to create a connection with Russia, hoping to find a connection with Russia, and if none existed, hoping to create a narrative that one nevertheless existed.
00:48:23.340This is the Daily Wire's Cabot Phillips did a good job explaining this today.
00:48:27.480This goes back to a meeting that the Clinton campaign lawyer, Michael Sussman, had with the FBI back in 2016, two months before the election.
00:48:35.460Sussman's been indicted for lying to the FBI, saying, I have no client.
00:48:38.820I'm just here to give you information about Donald Trump's connection to Russia.
00:48:42.140Meanwhile, it turns out he did have a connection.
00:48:43.600He worked for the Hillary Clinton campaign.
00:48:45.820So he's already been charged with that.
00:48:47.340But more information appears to be coming out of Sussman.
00:48:49.940Durham now says Sussman presented information to them and that Sussman was working with a tech executive to obtain this data from Trump in very sketchy ways that they infiltrated data from Trump's private residents during the campaign.
00:49:06.500And then after the campaign hacked into hacked into the executive office, trying to dig up dirt on Trump and if none existed to create it.
00:49:19.960And, you know, the one layer deeper on the Durham investigation into what Hillary was up to when Trump was running and sitting as president?
00:49:28.660Yeah, I think we go back to the times that it explains how audacious they were, because remember that Durham is just basically saying, well, you build them and you actually said alpha on your your charge that you charged.
00:49:42.240You were working for Perkins Coe, and I guess you charged the DNC, who was being, you know, funded with the Hillary campaign campaign money.
00:49:52.160So it's pretty evident that they felt that they were exempt from any scrutiny.
00:49:56.280The other another really bothersome angle to that, Megan, is that the FBI seems to be almost in cahoots with the with the Clinton campaign, but because this was seated and the FBI was investigating.
00:50:09.080And we know that the FBI at one time paid Christopher Steele as an informant, even though that wasn't their idea.
00:50:16.660They were put on to Christopher Steele by people within the DNC or Perkins Coe via Glenn Simpson, etc.
00:50:24.560So it also raises this question, and this is all in light of the Hunter Laptop and the going after James O'Keefe, that what is the FBI doing now?
00:50:33.580It seems to be a retrieval or an auxiliary of the DNC and Democratic candidates.
00:50:40.580And then the other thing is, Donald Trump, we all and I shouldn't say we all, but the country considered him unhinged when he said that they've been wiretapping me or putting wires.
00:50:51.100And everybody said, what an archaic way of thinking.
00:50:55.040And he apparently had been tipped off because, remember, he moved out of Trump Tower or he ceased communicating.
00:51:02.420I went back just when I heard this story also, Megan, just a final thought.
00:51:07.160And I was amazed at how many people, the New York Times especially, but also the Washington Post and major columnists that kept getting angry that this was not leading to a conviction or this was not being a scandal that would destroy the transition of Trump or even the presidency.
00:51:25.660So nobody has come out and said, I'm sorry that we published accounts of this and we took the FBI and basically Mark Elias seeding the media.
00:51:36.620Nobody's ever said it, just as they've never renounced Christopher Steele.
00:51:40.500And I don't think they ever will either.
00:52:04.960So you raise a really interesting point.
00:52:07.160If this was happening, if if what because what they seem to be alleging is that there was a contract with an outside tech firm to to run servers and monitor and or monitor servers.
00:52:20.280That were being used inside the White House and that whoever this so-called unnamed tech executive is, instead of just doing that, actually started mining data and farming it off to some university researchers with the goal of finding dirt that would show Trump had a connection with Russia.
00:52:39.180That was somehow illicit while he was the sitting president.
00:52:41.880And so that whatever he kept can do it, kept doing that.
00:52:47.420Now, the question is, if that were happening, wouldn't our intelligence officials have known about it?
00:52:53.500Wouldn't the FBI know if that were happening to a sitting president?
00:52:56.840Never mind prior when he was running, when it was just the campaign.
00:52:59.780And why wouldn't they, Victor, have raised it with Trump, with the president at the time when it was going on?
00:53:09.940Well, I think the answer to that, Megan, your second question is is found in something James Comey said when he met in a private conversation with the president of the United States as the director of the FBI.
00:53:20.600And he assured the president that he was not the object of an ongoing FBI investigation, which he knew to be untrue, that he was.
00:53:28.860And second, he went immediately out into his vehicle and used an FBI apparatus, a communications device, a pad, I guess, and then recorded it all.
00:53:38.920And then subsequently, when he was fired, he leaked that.
00:53:42.000So the FBI, for a variety of reasons, this is just one of the very minor ones, but for a variety of ongoing reasons, whether it's missing FBI phones during the Mueller investigation or Mueller staggering the ex-FBI head, staggering the dismissals of Stroke and Page so there didn't seem to be any connection between them.
00:54:04.620They were reassigned rather than fired for their unprofessionalism or James Baker talking to sources and probably leaking it to Yahoo or other sources right before the 2016 election.
00:54:19.500And then we have Kevin Clinesmith submitting a fraudulent doctored document.
00:54:24.600So we could go on and on, but there's something existentially wrong with the FBI.
00:54:28.480And I don't know if it's confined to the Washington echelon, but they seem to be an extension of the progressive movement or the DNC or whatever democratic administration is in power.
00:54:41.800And they don't seem to, when we look at what they have done with Hunter Laptop, they had that in their possession.
00:54:47.300They sat on it and they didn't come out because they were pressured because of the campaign.
00:54:52.500The election was approaching in 2020, and then they kind of had more performance art with James O'Keefe, who hasn't been charged yet for all of the publicity that seems to have been provided to the New York Times that almost immediately aired that story.
00:55:07.680So I don't know what to make of it because we all have respect for our investigatory agencies.
00:55:14.000But I think it's a larger trend that all of us that are traditional, who have traditionally supported the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the Pentagon, they have lost the support of half the country.
00:55:27.420And it's not just me, you know, pontificating.
00:55:30.260If you look at the latest poll, the Pentagon, only 45% in a recent Reagan Library poll expressed confidence in the military.
00:55:37.860When you look at the polls of the FBI, it's even more dismal.
00:55:40.500And when you have people like James Comey, 245 times saying he can't remember while under oath or Andrew McCabe on three occasions lying under oath to federal investigators or John Brennan on two occasions lying under oath about the CIA tapping into Senate computers or that drone operations did not have any collateral damage or James Clapper lying under oath.
00:56:06.720And he in fact, he said that I gave the least untruthful answer when he said the NSA doesn't spy on people or Adam Schiff, the same thing.
00:56:15.820And so this is all a narrative that that we've lost confidence in what were very traditional American institutions.
00:56:24.420This all appears in a John Durham motion in support of alleging conflicts of interest in the case.
00:56:29.320So no one's been there haven't been new indictments handed down, but there absolutely could be, you know, Trump known for his hyperbole on a lot of issues may not be wrong when he says this is worse than Watergate.
00:56:43.020I mean, if this pans out, if if she and her campaign were actively spying on the sitting president on his campaign for president, then on the sitting president and working to create dirt that would possibly bring him down, she definitely could be facing criminal charges.
00:57:01.660She or whoever they can actually pin it on. And this would be an enormous, enormous, enormous ethical and legal breach.
00:57:08.860We're not there yet, but that's what's being alleged. Essentially, we'll hear we'll see the names filled in.
00:57:13.720But just by way of info, Victor, back in 2016, people are now pulling up her old tweets and it was October 31st, 2016, right before the election.
00:57:27.080She tweets out computer science scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump organization to a Russian based bank.
00:57:38.600Oh, which computer sciences are those, Hillary? Right. I mean, now we're getting a better picture.
00:57:44.740Then she shared a statement from her campaigns, then senior policy advisor, Jake Sullivan.
00:57:48.800He's now national security advisor. This guy saying as follows a couple of highlights from what he was saying.
00:57:53.260They're stoking the fire. This is the point I'm going for.
00:57:56.240This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow.
00:57:59.920Secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia.
00:58:05.100It raises even more troubling questions in light of Russia's masterminding of hacking efforts that are clearly intended to hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign.
00:58:13.420Hello, pot, meat kettle. And here's the last one.
00:58:16.440Can only assume federal authorities will now explore this direct connection.
00:58:20.200Oh, really? You can only assume that can only assume federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing probe into Russia's meddling in our elections.
00:58:30.320Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign lawyer Sussman is in there telling the FBI, I've unearthed it.
00:58:35.300This is the thing. You've got to look into it. No, I have no client.
00:58:38.400It's not the Hillary Clinton campaign. I'm just a good citizen.
00:58:41.400And now we know all this other stuff was happening behind the scenes.
01:01:12.580Especially when she said, I mean, she went around for most of 2016 suggesting that Donald Trump, I shouldn't say suggesting, explicitly saying Donald Trump was not legitimately elected.
01:01:23.840They had all of those people, celebrities, grade B celebrities, making those commercials to reject the electors and have them defy their constitutional duty and reject Trump.
01:01:34.120And then almost immediately she said she was part of the resistance, she said.
01:01:41.020And then when Joe Biden, in the closing days of the campaign, she suggested to him not to accept the results of the election if he lost.
01:01:51.040And then she, of course, during Trump's administration, said he was illegitimately elected.
01:01:54.640What I'm getting at is that there's this psychological mechanism of projection.
01:01:59.340She seems to project Russian collusion when she's using Russian-related sources herself.
01:02:05.220She seems to suggest that it's dishonest, and it is, and it's probably illegitimate to question a sanctioned U.S. election.
01:02:13.780But that's what she does all the time, sort of like Stacey Abrams.
01:02:17.960And then finally, you know, we all feel that Trump goes over the top.
01:02:26.520But if you or I or any of us in our own profession had been subject to what he was,
01:02:31.820subject to where they tried to destroy his campaign by the use of a fake Russian-related dossier
01:02:38.900and a discredited British spy who's not supposed as a foreign national to participate,
01:02:44.240and then Hillary Clinton through three firewalls, the DNC, Perkins Coie, and GPS was funneling dirt against Trump.
01:02:52.660And they tapped Michael Flynn's communications, and we're going to charge him with archaic statues that somehow he was communicating during the transition with foreign leaders, which they all do.
01:03:04.300And then we went right into Mueller for 22 months, found nothing, and then we went into Ukraine.
01:03:09.800And in light of what's happened to Ukraine and what's in light of what the Biden family revelations are about Ukraine, that first impeachment seemed very dubious.
01:03:19.820So I don't think any president has been subject to such an array of illicit amount of attacks as Trump.
01:03:27.240But because he's so controversial himself, he doesn't benefit from sympathy that's accorded to someone that's been on the receiving end of such illegal activity.
01:03:37.560You know, I'm thinking right now of the election fraud claims, none of which he was able to sustain in court.
01:03:46.220But a fair amount of Republicans believe that the election was stolen.
01:03:50.700And this story kind of helps you understand how they got there.
01:03:54.660If you're paying attention to anything that's not mainstream, because the mainstream buries this story, and any story is about Durham, or they mock Durham.
01:04:01.900Um, you, you think it's a joke, you think it's made up, you don't think Hillary spied on Donald at all.
01:04:08.800And you think he's some sort of weird conspiracy theorist who whenever anything bad happens to him, he just blames, you know, sort of some boogeyman, whether it's Hillary or somebody else or Comey.
01:04:20.120She, her campaign, I mean, there's an indictment alleging that her campaign was up to no good and trying to create this connection.
01:04:26.920Even before today, we knew that, um, not to mention all the things you listed, Carter Page ruining his life and so on.
01:04:32.680And then you get to the election and Trump is saying, no, I'm telling you that they stole it.
01:04:36.940And a lot of these people who have seen him proven right time and time again and been told by the media, don't be so stupid, you know, there's no way, are like, we're not listening to you anymore.
01:04:51.620Yeah. And that's not your impression or my impression.
01:04:55.440Remember that notorious Time Magazine article where they were bragging that Martin Zuckerberg had injected $419 million in preselected precincts and swing states.
01:05:06.340And they really absorbed the role and the job of state registrar employees.
01:05:12.380They kind of took it over and they added more mailboxes.
01:05:16.900But the point of that article was they use, they use the word conspiracy as in good conspiracy.
01:05:22.960We had a good conspiracy of changing the election laws in key states, A.
01:05:27.340And then they said, B, we injected multimillion dollars in swing state precincts.
01:05:33.260And what I thought was the most disturbing was they said that we were able to modulate the demonstrations, i.e.
01:05:40.800And Tifa and BLM all of a sudden in August and September and October started to taper off that 120 days.
01:05:47.760That was so it was really getting the middle class swing voter very upset.
01:05:52.220And they admitted they admitted in kind of a braggadocio article that this is what they were doing.
01:05:57.660And yet if anybody on the right or center had written that article, they would have been called a conspiracist.
01:06:03.580But they were so arrogant and haughty after the Biden win.
01:06:07.000They were they were bragging how they just manipulated with the help of money.
01:06:12.000And they cited people in the street, demonstrators and the CEOs.
01:06:16.880And it's amazing because I used to consume my information and say, all right, well, I know where not to go.
01:06:23.000You know, I'm not going to go on Reddit to get my info as a news person.
01:06:25.980And I'm not going to I'm going to take in sources from the far left and the far right and the center left and the center right and just sort of make up my own mind about where the truth is.
01:06:33.900And now it's almost as if I'm getting to the point where I feel like I need to avoid the mainstream altogether.
01:06:39.880It's just they look at YouTube as though it's full of disinformation.
01:06:47.640I go back to 2016 when Trump got the nomination and then during the campaign and right after the election of 2016, Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times, Jorge Ramos of Univision, Christian Amon Forbes, CNN.
01:07:02.720And they all had the same narrative that traditional journalism could no longer sustain itself because Donald Trump posed such an existential threat to the election process, to global warming, to the border.
01:07:18.980And all of them had a different take, but they had the same conclusion that journalists must be activists.
01:07:23.960And that was replicated by the ACLU said the same thing almost.
01:07:27.180And so we entered a new era of journalism that they were going to be activists.
01:07:33.020Remember, the Shorenstein Center at Harvard in the first 90 days said that the mainstream media, as well as cable news, was 93 percent negative of the Trump administration.
01:07:42.540They'd never seen anything approximating that.
01:07:45.060So I think a lot of people just said the media by choice, and you can see it with CNN especially, its implosion, decided to be an arm of the progressive movement.
01:07:57.420And it's disturbing because, you know, as I get older, my 68 years old, and all of these institutions that we all used to think were apolitical, the corporation, Wall Street, social media, Silicon Valley, K-12.
01:08:14.720We knew the university was, but entertainment, Hollywood, they've all become biased in the sense that they don't believe because they think their ends are so noble or morally superior to everybody that any means necessary, even if it disrupts their professional code, it's okay and it's justified.
01:08:34.980There's not going to be anybody who apologizes about this Alphabank episode, just like Christopher Steele is unrepentant.
01:08:46.340They bury it and it goes away unless you seek out alternative media, unless you turn off CNN and try to find yourself a fox, which most Democrats, they are watching it, but sort of the hardcore believers, maybe not.
01:08:59.760And so the people who need to get the information about what she did, allegedly, aren't getting it.
01:09:07.800I've got to talk to you about your piece, Our Elite is No Elite at All.
01:09:12.660I was thinking about it last night as I watched sort of the crowd shots at the Super Bowl and who's who of, you know, celebrity and political culture.
01:09:20.360And you've got to hear what Victor Davis Hanson has to say on that.
01:09:29.760So, Victor, I'm looking at sort of the collection of, you know, our betters last night at the Super Bowl and the Super Bowl halftime show.
01:09:39.720And I'm thinking, okay, this is this is the so-called elite.
01:09:42.140This is the who's who of Hollywood and sports and so on.
01:09:45.980It's like, okay, half the fans in the audience, whatever, Ben Affleck and so on, have had problems so bad they made national news for weeks.
01:09:55.360You know, alcoholic cheating, serial cheating on the wife.
01:09:59.300And then they got these singers out there who are celebrated, who have written songs at a time where we're seeing record murders of police celebrating cop killings.
01:10:10.120I mean, you know, people accused of felonies left and right.
01:10:12.920I'm thinking, okay, I don't to me, they don't feel that elite, but I guess I'm supposed to listen to these people.
01:10:17.660Well, it's fine to sing and to act and for me to sort of take in the music and take in the acting, but the society wants us to believe they're more than that and treats them like they're more than that.
01:10:27.760And you had a great piece about how the elites aren't.
01:10:36.580And we have a definite, maybe traditional point of view.
01:10:39.480So when we see Dr. Dre go up there and mention in his lyrics, anti-police, and I don't know if Kendrick Lamar said it or not, I couldn't tell, but he had the don't hate the popo or something, the police.
01:10:52.680And then you have a record number of police killed and you're banning people like Kate Smith singing God Bless America.
01:10:58.400There's obviously a point of view that the counterculture or people who have, they have gripes against the origins or the progression or the current state of America.
01:11:12.560Apparently they don't like what it is and this is an avenue.
01:11:15.120But what's different is this was a national celebration, whether we like it or not, the Super Bowl is sort of a national celebration of Americana.
01:11:23.020And yet for these performers and the people that you mentioned to have such a negative or not a very impressive record themselves, that's one thing.
01:11:33.240And then there's also an abstract standard.
01:11:36.460When we look at all of these people and we say, okay, let's see what this generation that calls itself an elite has done.
01:11:43.880When we look at the Oscars today and we look at qualities of films in the 40s and 50s and we look at comic books or Marvel comic book remakes, or we look at hip hop compared to, I don't know, jazz or folk music.
01:12:00.180Or we look at this generation's, I don't know, high speed rail in California versus the construction of the Hoover Dam.
01:12:08.140Or when I look at the university curriculum, which I was a part of for 40 years, and I see that today's people at places like Stanford University have no idea who Dante is.
01:12:20.760If you ask him what Plato wrote, they wouldn't know.
01:12:23.500And then I look at scholarship and the quality.
01:12:26.020I don't see any improvement, and yet it's juxtaposed to this self-important, arrogant view that they're somehow path breakers and they've created this wonderful new America.
01:12:37.000And then this is all aside, Megan, we're looking at the national news, and we've had the greatest, this generation gave us the greatest humiliation since 1975 on the rooftop of Saigon and Kabul.
01:13:18.800No, you make a great point because you take aim at, you know, the Kardashians, their elites.
01:13:24.320They've reached this by merchandising and popularizing larger than normal posteriors, you write, posting selfies of their ample boobs and butts.
01:13:47.020And that's why people like Michelle Tafoya do need to be careful about speaking out about their conservative values because these industries will punish her where they wouldn't punish somebody who is necessarily going, you know, equally left.
01:14:01.400Like center left, maybe far left, they'd punish, but they would never punish center left.
01:14:07.760The arts by nature and academia have always been left center.
01:14:11.760But what's different now is they have projected the idea that they are in control.
01:14:17.300And this is the mainstream, even though there's no there's not very much popular support.
01:14:20.800And most people don't have an ideology, the 80 percent in the middle, but they react to perceived momentum or pressure.
01:14:28.320And they want to be part of a winning team, sort of like no fans when the 49ers are 0 and 10 and pack stadiums when they're 10 and 0.
01:14:37.200But the left has created this illusion that they control all these institutions and therefore the majority of America are with them.
01:14:43.480And so I think it's very incumbent upon people to keep trying to remind America that they don't have popular support and that they have an agenda that's by any abstract measure, empirical standard is unsustainable.
01:15:15.500But if there is a if there is a referendum on all of this and is a large Republican victory, not that I'm trying to be a megaphone for the Republicans, I think it will have a profound effect.
01:15:28.900It will be sort of like the McGovern era came to a terrible close and then people started pointing fingers and then the Democratic Party went to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and went back.
01:15:40.340But I think they have to have a political rebuke or this will continue.
01:15:45.900Following up on that, I did read you're a registered independent, which I am as well.
01:15:51.920Because some people might be surprised you're not a Republican.
01:15:54.260You know, I grew up in a Democratic household and I'm speaking from this farm that was been in my family since 1870 house right where I'm speaking as 150 years old.
01:16:06.860And we were all agrarian, small farmers.
01:16:43.920And then I saw what we have been talking about, that the Democratic Party is becoming really a party of the mega rich or the upper, upper middle class and the very poor.
01:16:53.980And that the middle class now is gravitated toward the Republicans of all different races.
01:17:00.100So I guess that's, it was tradition or habit that I didn't register as Republican.
01:17:06.220But there were certain things, I'll be candid, a little bit candid here, during the Bush years, and I don't know how to say it, but in the business that I got into writing, there were a certain type of Republican pundit, intellectual, that was condescending to people.
01:17:24.640And I felt they didn't have a familiarity with the muscular classes.
01:17:27.880They didn't get out of New York or Washington.
01:17:29.880And they always were talking about, if we just had capital gains, if we can just privatize Social Security without ever having people that their lifeblood was Social Security.
01:17:40.300So even though I was in some ways more conservative than, especially on the border, they were always telling, I got attacked from all these Republicans.
01:17:49.440When it gets down to $2 an hour, they won't come.
01:17:51.520But so I just thought that I got kind of tired of the Republicans.
01:17:58.060And then, you know, Trump, everybody makes fun.
01:18:00.840But he did bring a nationalist populist flavor to traditionalism and said the middle class, when he started using the word our, our farmers, our workers, I thought that was, you know, for all of the criticism of him, there is a movement in the Republican Party to reflect the middle class.
01:18:49.160When you're talking about the difference between the muscular class, I like that, and the so-called elites, I was thinking about the crime rates.
01:18:55.680Because, you know, time and time again, we see these politicians who live in gated neighborhoods push for these soft-on-crime DAs, not just politicians, George Soros.
01:19:04.980He's not living in a crappy neighborhood.
01:19:07.000He's got homes all over the world, and they're amazing.
01:19:09.720Getting soft-on-crime DAs like Alvin Bragg elected in Manhattan, where the crime rate continues to spiral.
01:19:17.460I just mentioned it because it's closest to me, and I've been there for, you know, over almost 20 years until recently.
01:19:22.300And there is a horrific case in the news today.
01:19:28.040On Friday, we ended the show with this horrific case of, oh gosh, it was another terrible crime where this man came up behind this woman with a baseball bat, a homeless, crazed man, and just swung.
01:19:39.700It was out of Seattle, swung at her head like it was a baseball coming at him, and cracked her skull, and she went to the hospital.
01:19:45.660That now we have something, not totally similar, but another homeless, deranged guy, that's what the papers tell me, in New York.
01:19:55.620The New York Post has exclusive video of it, which, well, it's not of the crime.
01:20:26.400Slowly, he's following her behind and sort of waiting for her to take her next move, so she doesn't see him following her up stairway after stairway.
01:20:34.040And then she, when she opens the door to her own apartment, he manages to follow her in and stabs her to death repeatedly.
01:20:43.580And the landlord of the building says, we have Alvin Bragg to thank this guy.
01:20:48.660He was out on no bail on a crime he had just committed because this DA doesn't believe in bail and doesn't believe in locking people up.
01:20:58.980I mean, even in a lot of the serious cases, never mind the misdemeanors, and I think the one that he was locked up on wasn't one of the ones that Bragg will lock you up for.
01:21:09.300Well, I mean, deterrence makes the world go round.
01:21:12.980And after the George Floyd death, there became the dominant narrative, which was false, that the police routinely and systematically and serially shoot unarmed black people.
01:21:25.860In fact, of the 11 million arrests per year, African-Americans that come in custody of that group of 11 million people are no more likely to be shot by police than our other groups of the 11 million that are arrested.
01:21:41.400And so, in reaction and that hysteria of that looting and protesting, and we had 35 deaths, $2 billion in property damage, I think there were almost 2,000 police officers injured.
01:21:56.200There are these narratives of defund the police and the Sorrells-funded DAs, especially in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but also other where it's St. Louis, Baltimore, Chicago.
01:22:06.500And out of that conundrum, we got no deterrence, so that the criminal, in a cost-of-benefit analysis, decided that if he was going to commit a crime, there was very little likelihood that he was going to be arrested.
01:22:19.540If he were going to be arrested, very little likelihood he was going to be put behind bars awaiting indictment.
01:22:26.360And if he was indicted, he was probably going to be found innocent or charges dropped.
01:22:31.600If he was convicted, there was very little likelihood that he was going to jail for traditional sentencing.
01:22:38.460And out of that step-by-step analysis, and people that I know of commit crimes, I know some of them, they're very bright people, some of them.
01:22:45.500They just decided that the chances were that it was much more lucrative to hurt or maim, or whether that's defined in material or psychological or satanic terms, whatever term we use, than face punishment.
01:23:08.280So I know a lot of Asian American people will write me and they'll say to me, or call me, and they'll say, why don't you write that in the big cities, that the African American male demographic is committing these crimes against Asians at a greater propensity than their 6 or 7% of the population.
01:23:29.000And indeed, the FBI statistics show that in terms of hate crimes, the last year we had it.
01:23:37.160In fact, I've given a lot of interviews to Chinese language, Taiwanese groups, and this is a big hot topic in that community, that African American males are committing anti-Asian hate crimes at a record level that is not proportionate to their demographic percentages.
01:24:03.300And it's the same thing in universities right now, Megan, that we have something called the Clery Act, that because of a tragic death a few years ago, the federal government passed a law that said anybody on a campus that was a suspect or had a criminal record or came in contact, the campus police had to report any crime, any suspect.
01:24:24.240And they had to give a full description of the suspect.
01:24:28.200That simply disappeared, that noncompliance.
01:24:30.580In fact, the Trump administration fined universities several million dollars that they were deliberately.
01:24:35.580And so when I get things today, and I get them almost daily because I'm an emeritus from the CSU system and I work at Stanford University, if we had gone back two years ago, we would have said bike stolen or gun used or shots fired.
01:24:51.460And witnesses said the suspect, and they would describe the suspect very clearly, clothes worn, ethnic background, male or female, et cetera.
01:25:00.540Now they just say suspect, description, unknown.
01:25:05.400No, we've seen that in the national media and the New York Times.
01:25:07.600And I think your point is that I think if I understand what you're saying, and I agree entirely, is they have weighed in and decided that the safety, in this case, of a co-ed who's may have walked across a campus at night is not as important as virtue signaling that they don't want to be appearing to inordinately arrest somebody or demonize somebody of a particular race.
01:25:30.820And therefore, they're erring on that side, and they don't really care about the other people.
01:25:35.700Well, I mean, that's what I'm worried about.
01:25:38.440To your point, too, that the woman, the Asian woman who was shoved in front of the New York City oncoming subway train and, you know, to her death, she was shoved by a black homeless man.
01:25:48.380And the New York Times blacked out much of his history of crime and wasn't showing his picture.
01:25:58.180You know, they don't talk about the race and they don't show the picture because they're trying to sort of snuff out that dynamic where, you know, very well that if it had been, you know, a white man committing a similar crime on a person of color or anybody, you know, with some sort of more minority cultural background, they would have highlighted it.
01:26:14.620This is this appears to be policy for them.
01:26:17.400And I realize it's it's you you cross a line when you just gratuitously put up every criminal accused of random crime and just keep saying, and this is a black person and this is a that's misleading to a lot of white people commit crime, too.
01:26:29.880But this is a new dynamic, this black on Asian hate crime problem.
01:26:34.980And we do no one any favors by ignoring it.
01:26:37.760I mean, it's we've seen a pattern with respect to it.
01:26:40.200And as you point out, the FBI has, too.
01:26:41.700Now, Al Sharpton commented on not the race angle, but the increase in crime, because you don't you don't have to be the victim of something as horrific as this poor woman in Chinatown to to feel the crime creeping up in your neighborhood.
01:26:54.340If you live near a big city, he's complaining about just going to the pharmacy and half the goods are locked up.
01:27:01.120And I'd love to know, actually, if my audience is experiencing this in more rural parts of the country.
01:27:14.460So Al Sharpton goes on MSNBC to complain about this and then gets he takes a shot from Nicole Hannah-Jones, who's on the side of, you know, basically the criminals.
01:27:25.080But let's listen to Al and then I'll tell you what Nicole said.
01:27:26.980You go to a local pharmacy, Dwayne Reed or Wright, any of them, they have the little button there.
01:27:35.240You hit the buzzer and the guy comes over and unlocks your toothpaste.
01:27:39.460I mean, we're talking about basic stuff.
01:27:41.400What did I miss that we now have to lock up toothpaste?
01:27:44.600He's got a challenge there because there is a debate in the criminal justice system.
01:27:48.900And there are those that are concerned, including me, about overloading the system in the jails with petty crimes.
01:27:55.540But at the same time, you cannot have a culture where people are just at random, just robbing and stealing and is out of control and is put on the front page of newspapers, which only encourages others to do it.
01:28:09.860OK, so that now Nicole Hannah-Jones of the 1619 Project writes as follows in a tweet.
01:28:16.380This drumbeat for continued mass incarceration.
01:28:20.200That's how she sees what he said is really horrific to watch.
01:28:23.700A person stealing steak is not national news, and there have always been thefts from stores.
01:28:29.620This is how you legitimize the carceral state.
01:28:36.100Well, it's predicated that she's an elite and she would not say that if somebody went into her upscale apartment and looted it like they do Walgreens.
01:28:45.400So all of these elites pontificate with the assumption they're never going to be subject to the consequences.
01:28:52.000And these are the consequences of our own ideology.
01:28:54.620Al Sharpton is very ironic because for years he advocated policies that their logical trajectory would lead to where we are now.
01:29:02.100In case of Hannah, if I could just very briefly talk about Nicole Jones, this is a person from the very beginning she entered the university.
01:29:12.380She wrote a letter at the University of Notre Dame and said that white people were civilizational bloodsuckers.
01:29:24.020Of course, we don't use the term white-black in the way the left created a word white-Hispanic when they wanted to demonize George Zimmerman and the Trayvon Martin.
01:29:35.260He was not half Peruvian because that wasn't a narrative.
01:29:40.000But my point is that when you look at her career, she said during the 2020 riots that the property theft was not really theft because it was sort of, I guess that was a Marxist take on property owning.
01:29:54.020And then she has become the folk hero of re-dating iconic events in America.
01:30:02.860And she basically said that America was created because it wanted to keep holding slaves unlike the British that were supposedly going to emancipate.
01:30:15.420In fact, some of the strongest anti-slavery movement in the world had come from abolitionists in the north.
01:30:20.940But the point I'm making is, and then recently, she tweeted and she gave another lecture in the Civil War when she said, and we go back to, and she's saying basically it was racist because we didn't have it earlier.
01:30:32.420But she said that the Civil War started in 1865.
01:30:38.060And I thought to myself, you're the expert on the founding date, and you're wrong by four years when the Civil War, which is the most important racial, slavery, political, military conflict in history.
01:30:51.980And you don't even know when it started.
01:30:53.400And then she finally came into the news that she was offered at the University of North Carolina a tenure position.
01:31:15.600And then she went to Howard University, and apparently $20 million in various grants followed her to that position to endow her professorship.
01:31:43.980They're not part of a tribe in America.
01:31:46.640And you make your own destiny, and you're responsible for your own actions.
01:31:50.920And you should be criticized when you're found wanting.
01:31:53.760And she's got a record of very hysterical and angry and factually incorrect statements.
01:32:02.620And yet she wants to be considered a scholar worthy of instant tenure when she goes to a university.
01:32:08.500Victor Davis Hanson, nobody's got your memory, your recall of the facts, and your ability to use them in response to the right questions and the right inquiries.
01:32:22.660I want to tell you, tomorrow we're going to take on an issue that a lot of our listeners and our viewers have been asking us to talk about.
01:32:27.880Several states now are seeing legal challenges as these states take away the mask mandates, right, especially in the schools and elsewhere, where parents of kids who they claim are immunocompromised are filing lawsuits to try to stop the masks from coming off.
01:32:44.820So tomorrow we're going to hear from an attorney, from some parents, and a school board member pushing back on this tactic.
01:32:52.940And is this likely the next wave of the battle?