The Megyn Kelly Show - Steve Bannon on Biden's Cognitive Decline as National Security Threat, Fighting Lawfare Against Trump, and Preparing For Prison

00:00:00.620 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:11.540 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have major, major decisions

00:00:17.920 out this morning from the U.S. Supreme Court, two of them in fact, and a race for the White

00:00:22.380 House where we are no longer even sure who the Democratic candidate will be this November.

00:00:27.340 To say this is a massive news day would be an understatement. Just a little over an hour ago,

00:00:32.860 the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the powers of the executive federal agencies in one ruling.

00:00:39.220 This is a huge decision. And in another rule, the Department of Justice overstepped its use

00:00:45.800 of obstruction charges in its January 6th prosecutions. You guys know this second case.

00:00:52.660 This charge had been used in over 300 cases. We've been discussing it over and over again

00:00:58.780 as a lane that could be very helpful to Trump, a case that if it's overturned could be very helpful

00:01:07.880 to Trump, even though Trump is not a defendant or a party in this particular case, because it goes to

00:01:14.240 whether the heart of the case against Trump in Washington, D.C. that Jack Smith has brought

00:01:21.180 against him in front of Judge Chutkin, whether that the heart of the claim is going to live or die.

00:01:27.300 And the Supreme Court ruled today it dies that the Justice Department had no business expanding

00:01:32.680 this obstruction of an official proceeding charge to try to encompass what the January 6th protesters

00:01:39.420 did. There is zero chance that that ruling won't expand to what Donald Trump did.

00:01:45.400 And so it is a huge victory, not only for these J6 defendants, but for Donald Trump.

00:01:51.440 And honestly, that's the least of his wins in the last 24 hours, as you know.

00:01:57.600 As for the debacle of performance that the president, Joe Biden, put in last night at that debate,

00:02:04.100 at this hour, Mr. Biden remains defiant. Despite what the nation and world witnessed last night,

00:02:11.540 CNN is reporting per an advisor to the president that not only does Joe Biden plan to stay in this

00:02:16.920 race, he wants to do the second debate in September. I'm just there's no there's zero chance of that

00:02:24.020 happening. Zero. And by the way, there's probably zero chance of him remaining the nominee. Of course,

00:02:29.920 he's going to say, I'll stick with it until the party elders all go to him and say, you cannot,

00:02:36.580 you may not, you must not, which, according to reports, may be in the works right now.

00:02:43.800 It's it remains to be seen what the Democratic senior apparatus will do. They've got blood on

00:02:50.180 their hands. They're responsible for what we saw last night. You know, the term, the big lie.

00:02:55.300 This is the big lie that was told to the American public about his ability to sit as the U.S.

00:03:01.520 president for this term. Never mind a second. Politico this morning, citing an unnamed Biden

00:03:08.000 ally in the House as follows, quote, the movement to convince Biden to not run is real. But the

00:03:16.420 president's wife this morning, who, according to every source and every article, is crucial

00:03:21.960 to whether he remains on the ballot. Dr. Jill Biden is still pretending that everything is fine,

00:03:30.080 despite the historical embarrassment her husband brought on himself last night.

00:03:35.100 You heard Joe's heart tonight on the debate stage. He wakes up every morning thinking about how he can

00:03:41.620 make the lives of Americans better. He's the president. We need the president you deserve.

00:03:47.600 Just the mere fact that she's standing up there doing this, right? Like, did Michelle Obama have

00:03:54.740 to do that after Barack Obama whiffed at his first debate in 2012 against Romney? And do you remember

00:04:02.440 Melania Trump coming out and trying to cover for Donald Trump when he didn't have the greatest first

00:04:08.340 debate last season? Why is the first lady coming out to run cover for the commander in chief and

00:04:17.340 leader of the free world? This is an embarrassment. They are not going to get away with it now.

00:04:24.160 They've been getting away with it for three years, hiding or at least trying to hide and deny his

00:04:31.360 cognitive struggles. The don't believe you're lying eyes line is no longer going to work. So where do we

00:04:39.100 go from here and what do we expect now in these critical next four months? There is no better guest to

00:04:47.020 react to what we witnessed at last night's debate than the man who will join me for the full show

00:04:52.320 today. We have an exclusive interview with Donald Trump's former senior advisor, Steve Bannon, who now

00:04:59.320 hosts the hugely popular show Bannon's War Room. This interview will be Mr. Bannon's last before he begins

00:05:06.840 serving a four month prison sentence that is set to start today. A prison sentence that was brought upon

00:05:14.720 him by Joe Biden's Department of Justice after he was found in contempt of Congress for not complying with

00:05:23.340 a subpoena from the J6 committee. Merrick Garland himself was just found in contempt for not complying with

00:05:32.360 his obligations in producing the videotape of Joe Biden's interview with his special counsel, Robert

00:05:40.020 Herr. But guess what? Merrick Garland decided not to pursue himself with criminal charges so he won't

00:05:47.520 be going to prison like Mr. Bannon's about to. Steve Bannon, as I'm sure many of you know, was key to

00:05:54.220 Donald Trump's 2016 election win. And while he's not an official member of the Trump campaign this time

00:05:59.920 around, he is still playing a very key role as the voice of the MAGA movement. So his reaction to last

00:06:06.640 night's debate matters. And there's arguably no better strategist on how to react to massive political

00:06:14.600 shifts than this man. Today's interview on a personal note is extraordinary for yours truly. I think it's

00:06:22.600 safe to say that neither one of us, neither Mr. Bannon nor I would have predicted this interview would even

00:06:27.340 take place a few months ago, hell, even a few weeks ago. And we'll get into that later in the show.

00:06:33.900 Mr. Bannon believes, despite the spin coming from the White House and the president's campaign,

00:06:38.000 that Joe Biden will be replaced on the Democratic ticket. But he believes there is a deeper problem

00:06:43.380 afoot as well. He says what happened last night is now a national security issue. And I agree with him

00:06:48.920 and that there should be congressional investigations into how Joe Biden remains president and who on his

00:06:56.060 staff has been covering up the president's obvious impairment. A cover up aided by sycophant media

00:07:04.580 personalities like MSNBC's Joe Scarborough. It is safe to say that Scarborough has been President

00:07:11.700 Biden's number one defender on TV. And Morning Joe is a show we know Joe Biden himself watches

00:07:18.020 religiously. Joe Scarborough constantly bashes anyone who dares to criticize the president's

00:07:24.840 mental fitness. Once going so far as to tell the president's critics less than three months ago

00:07:29.640 to, quote, F off if they didn't see and agree with the president's brilliance.

00:07:35.100 He might misplace a word here and there, but you talk to him for hours at a time. Is he slower?

00:07:41.960 Does he move slower? Yeah, he's moved slower. Is he stiffer? Yeah, he moves stiffer.

00:07:47.120 Does he have trouble walking sometimes? Yeah, so did FDR. I've said it for years now. He's cogent.

00:07:53.020 But I undersold him when I said he was cogent. He's far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he's better

00:08:01.440 than he's ever been. Start your tape right now because I'm about to tell you the truth. And F you

00:08:07.580 if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best

00:08:18.180 Biden ever. Not a close second. And I've known him for years. The Brzezinski's have known him for 50

00:08:24.180 years. If it weren't the truth, I wouldn't say it. We started our tape. And you're a liar.

00:08:33.320 And you owe the country answers for those lies you told to cover up the fact that our sitting president

00:08:39.820 is non compass mentis. Scarborough this morning is now in a panic. He was snippy and nasty to his

00:08:49.920 co-host and wife on that show because obviously he is, I assume, worried about his reputation,

00:08:58.180 which he has repeatedly undermined being wrong on the facts. And he is even more worried that former

00:09:04.740 president Donald Trump is going to win this race in Scarborough's view, unless the Democrats now

00:09:11.640 replace Joe Biden on the ticket. He's seen the light miraculously. Here's Scarborough this morning.

00:09:21.220 Well, I think I should start by saying without any apologies that I love Joe Biden and Jill.

00:09:34.740 If, however, you believe, as do I, and as do so many people who watch this program and who

00:09:46.840 fear

00:09:50.700 just how dark of a place a second Donald Trump term will take America,

00:09:59.700 then I think it's critical that we ask the same questions about this man I love.

00:10:09.220 I spent three hours with this man, maybe back in March, three hours,

00:10:15.440 cogent, on top of the issues, on top of every issue around the world.

00:10:21.480 Uh, and last night he simply was not on the biggest debate stage ever. And I'll even use the word

00:10:30.000 tragically, tragically did not rise to the occasion last night.

00:10:34.320 And he went on to admit, it is time to reassess whether President Biden is the man for this job

00:10:43.760 and whether he should stay on the ticket. Joining me now with reaction to all of this,

00:10:49.480 Steve Bannon, host of Bannon's War Room.

00:10:54.920 Steve, thank you so much for being here. It's great to have you on.

00:10:57.420 Well, Megan, thank you. And I don't think we could have picked a more historic day,

00:11:02.960 given everything that's, that's gone down and is going to go down.

00:11:06.020 No, I don't think so either. I feel almost shaky this morning about the security of our country.

00:11:12.680 That's the thing I'm most worried about, that we can talk about whether he should stay

00:11:16.940 the candidate for reelection, but how can he remain in office for another seven months?

00:11:23.380 Yes. We've got two wars going. Our troops are at risk and leaders around the world saw what we saw

00:11:30.580 last night.

00:11:33.280 No, I think, I think you got to bifurcate this. I think you got to put the political to the side

00:11:37.460 for a second and we got to figure out that you got to put the country first. And I think you have

00:11:42.000 two, I think you have a national security crisis immediately because you can imagine what the

00:11:47.200 gangsters in Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing were thinking, and you can imagine what our allies

00:11:53.660 or friends in Taipei, Jerusalem, and Kiev were thinking. This is a national security crisis.

00:12:00.560 And part of that is exactly what goes on every day in the White House. Who's making decisions?

00:12:06.180 Who knew about this? And the media concurrence on the, on the, on the coverup. And it's leading

00:12:12.180 quickly. And I think very quickly in the next 48 to 72 hours to our constitutional crisis,

00:12:16.500 this is going to be a major constitutional crisis. There's just impossible for this individual to be

00:12:22.980 the commander in chief. It's just the combatant commanders report to him. He's got obviously the

00:12:27.900 nuclear codes, but you have so much more going on. And look, I think the one in biggest jeopardy

00:12:33.020 right now could be our allies in Taipei and Taiwan. I imagine the CCP that has done everything they

00:12:39.680 can to kind of push us around the streets of Taiwan at the South China Sea about those advanced chip

00:12:45.180 plants are thinking, Hey, why are we going now? So this, I think it encapsulates what the issues we

00:12:52.980 have in this country, but last night, and I got to, you know, give it to Donald Trump because I was

00:12:58.080 adamantly opposed to this debate. I think he did this for the nation. He agreed to do it their time,

00:13:02.620 their rules, all of it. And obviously it was to show this guy, but what he really is. So this is the

00:13:08.980 whole political track to me. And it's going to be, that's going to be a whole firestorm itself, but

00:13:13.960 that's off to the side right now. I haven't heard one Democrat. I haven't heard Pelosi or anybody

00:13:18.280 behind the scenes are saying, but I haven't heard one person put the country first and say, well, hang

00:13:22.400 on for a second. We have the beginning of the third world war, the kinetic part happening on the

00:13:28.480 rims of the Eurasian landmass from Ukraine to Israel, to the Red Sea, to the South China Sea in the

00:13:36.180 Straits of Taiwan. And this is the biggest, we have to deal with this today. I think the, I think

00:13:41.740 President Trump's got to step to the, to the stakes, to the sticks and say, this has to be

00:13:47.300 addressed. And I think that you're going to see Speaker Johnson and others in the house take

00:13:51.980 immediate action on this, on hearings, on subpoenas, on exactly, they ought to, they ought to subpoena the

00:13:57.200 combatant commanders, the Pacific fleet. I hope the Pacific fleet, I hope the Pacific fleet went on high

00:14:02.560 alert last night in the Straits of Taiwan. Yeah. I, you'd have to think if you were an American enemy

00:14:10.840 that you watched that last night and you relished it and that they too had jaws dropped as they

00:14:17.140 watched just how infirm our commander in chief is just how disconnected with reality, his faculties,

00:14:23.620 his ability to communicate. There is zero question. If you had a president Trump back in 2020,

00:14:29.440 who spoke like that and reasoned like that, they would be 25th amendmenting him immediately.

00:14:36.900 So where are the cabinet secretaries, right? Why, why aren't we hearing in the news that there's an

00:14:42.900 immediate meeting of the cabinet secretaries right now to talk about removing him from office?

00:14:51.720 You haven't heard, you haven't heard any of the political leaders. You haven't heard anybody in

00:14:57.020 the house or the Senate. You haven't heard any of the democratic, they control the Senate. You

00:15:02.660 haven't heard armed services. You haven't heard foreign affairs. You haven't heard Intel. Nobody

00:15:07.240 stepped up to talk about the country, not the politics of this. And you certainly haven't heard

00:15:11.200 any cabinet officials. And to be brutally frank, you haven't heard any really media figures. The fact,

00:15:18.060 I started the show today with a guy, as you know him, Scott Jennings, who's one of McConnell's guys,

00:15:22.420 Scott Jennings and Steve Bannon have never, we couldn't agree on the day of the week or the time of

00:15:26.880 day. And Scott Jennings was, uh, was a profiling courage because on CNN, they had Axelrod and Van

00:15:34.200 Jones. They're all, all of a sudden like prescripted, prepared to throw Biden over the bus, talking about

00:15:39.200 over under the bus on the politics of it. And Jennings goes, Hey, hang on for a second.

00:15:44.520 What happens in the white? We've got to talk about the white house. What happens moment by moment?

00:15:48.080 What happens day by day? That's right. And, and, and to your point, the people who have enabled this

00:15:54.660 and covered up for him, our target number one in asking for answers of how, how did this happen?

00:16:00.580 Who knew that's how you put it? That's exactly right. Who knew? Um, but in the meantime, you know,

00:16:07.300 we, we have to deal with a presidential contest in which right now this white house is saying he's not

00:16:12.940 going to step aside, right? That he's not going. And maybe that's true, Steve, because it's very rare

00:16:18.340 for Amanda step down from power voluntarily. And Joe Biden has already been pushed for months. Now,

00:16:25.140 we know from some corners, I mean, James Carville tweeted out last night, I tried, I tried, um,

00:16:30.560 and wouldn't do it. So if he stays, is there any way for the Democrat apparatus to get rid of him at

00:16:39.880 this point? There's a national review has an article up pointing out he's already got 99% of the

00:16:44.940 Democratic parties nominating delegates. So would there be a way of forcing him out?

00:16:51.520 They always talked about, do you have a competing authority? Got to remember, let's step back. This

00:16:54.860 party is a party that shredded the constitution. Look, you're a, you're a lawyer and you know,

00:16:59.340 the constitution, you started covering the Supreme court. This is, we're living in a post-constitutional

00:17:03.620 America because they've shredded the constitution. Uh, they shredded the 2020 election. These people

00:17:09.920 will do anything to hold onto power. So I agree with you. Technically, it looks like that could

00:17:15.020 be tough and particularly with Kamala Harris, but you have a group here that understands that right

00:17:20.400 now, if you go right now, if you go with, uh, if you go with, um, uh, Biden, he's going to lose by 10

00:17:26.980 or 15 points. Uh, we could pick up 56 or 57, uh, Senate seats and pick up last night in the Hill to

00:17:33.080 have democratic operas talking. We could lose 20 house seats. You could pick up another 10 in the house.

00:17:37.320 You could wipe out a generation of democratic politicians right now, a generation of it.

00:17:42.240 And I think those people and their donors and supporters are not prepared to stop for this.

00:17:46.440 I think the process of Biden, and I think that's why it's in tandem with the issues for the country

00:17:52.560 on national security and 25th amendment, the constitutional crisis, the political crisis

00:17:57.060 is going to be, is going to be biting these guys trying to figure out the people around Biden

00:18:02.920 that talk him out of comment. And I think Pelosi is the big one talking about a, uh,

00:18:07.040 staying, then it's going to be the search for the Messiah or the Messiah group of which the,

00:18:11.960 the mainstream media would be all in. And then the honeymoon once they're selected.

00:18:15.500 So if they keep with Biden, there's no chance president Trump should ever get on a debate stage

00:18:20.400 with this guy again. No, no chance. He gave him a shot and not do it. And it's one and done. And,

00:18:25.620 and, and right now it's a 10 or 15 point loss. You're going to pick up 56 or 50 Senate,

00:18:30.140 Senate seats. You're going to have 225, uh, house seats. Uh, you're going to wipe out

00:18:35.000 the democratic party. So if that's what they want and they won't stand for that,

00:18:38.320 their donors won't stand for that. So the political side, and they're searching for a

00:18:42.860 Messiah, whether it's Michelle Obama or, you know, Gavin Newsom, Gavin Newsom, if you think about,

00:18:48.420 uh, the apparatus in the, in the deep state as a Praetorian guard, he did exactly what the Legion,

00:18:54.060 what the generals did when they were shifting out emperors back in, uh, in the middle years of the

00:18:59.680 empire. It was those generals that stepped up and were loyal on the surface,

00:19:03.880 like Gavin Newsom did. He did a soldier's duty last night. He was so positive on Biden. You got

00:19:08.660 to have his back. That's the type of guy they're going to look for a Gavin Newsom, a Michelle Obama,

00:19:13.500 a Gretchen Whitmer, you pick it, uh, maybe, uh, pastor Warnock down in, uh, in Georgia.

00:19:19.580 It's good there, but there, that's, that's a political search that's going on right now.

00:19:24.220 You're absolutely right. When you hear the numbers, as you just laid them out,

00:19:28.800 massive losses in the Senate, massive losses in the house, a complete takeover by the Republicans

00:19:33.700 a generational loss of leadership for Dems. It's an existential crisis for the Democratic Party,

00:19:40.040 what they're going through right now. And so it's in, ultimately it is up to Joe Biden,

00:19:44.460 but there's only so much pressure he could withstand. I mean, if, who would it take to go

00:19:49.500 in there and convince him, Steve, you must step down. You, it's really not up to you for the good

00:19:54.960 of the country. You must step down or we're all going to come out and have a press conference

00:19:59.560 against you. Well, you know, uh, John Hallman said that I had Charlie Spearing on last week,

00:20:05.800 Charlie worked with me at Breitbart and now is the senior, one of the senior political

00:20:09.500 correspondents for daily mail. He had this story last week about how it would take,

00:20:15.000 it would take, uh, a collection of Obama, Clinton, Schumer, and Pelosi to collectively convince Jill

00:20:22.940 Biden in the way you, you know, they would have to meet or talk. And then one of those, uh, would go

00:20:27.780 to Joe Biden and make this transition happen, sell him on the, sell him on the deal. The, um,

00:20:33.380 and I think John Hallman said today on morning, Joe, and these guys laughed at my, they said,

00:20:38.220 look, when it first came out, we said, Oh, daily mail is a British paper, daily mail is a tabloid,

00:20:43.280 et cetera. And they said, entire men admitted, he said, I went to six of my best sources at the

00:20:49.400 senior most levels in the democratic party. And they said, Hey, guess what? This story is

00:20:54.760 directionally accurate that they know it would take that group. And they know that that's how

00:20:59.880 they would, uh, have to do it. Nancy Pelosi, as Hallman said today, because the Clintons and the

00:21:05.360 Obamas have had differences with, with, um, with, uh, Biden before. And, you know, Axios had that

00:21:12.320 story yesterday morning, no coincidences on the day of the debate that said Michelle Obama is not a

00:21:17.600 partisan. She's your niner. And more importantly, she detests the, uh, the feral dog nature of the

00:21:23.780 Biden family. It would have to be Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi is the key person here. She, she's

00:21:28.760 the one that could go make the deal politically to have Biden step aside. And, and the, the truth is

00:21:35.200 these are partisans. These are not as much as they want to say they love Joe Biden. They love Jill

00:21:40.300 Biden. They're partisans. And so when they see those numbers that you just ticked off, they're,

00:21:45.040 they're seeing what you're seeing. They know what the truth is that they're setting Trump up for

00:21:49.440 a landslide victory where his coattails will be enormous. They'll do it. Won't they? I mean,

00:21:56.720 I just don't see them not doing, I don't, I don't see their love for Joe Biden, Trumping

00:22:00.080 their concern for their party. A hundred percent. If you couple politically what has happened,

00:22:05.900 let's leave the national security in the, in the constitutional crisis. If you couple what's

00:22:10.320 happened in the last 24 hours with particularly today, the Chevron deference being overturned and

00:22:15.960 Lawrence tribe coming out and said, you're seeing the death of the administrative state

00:22:19.100 plus the overturning of Fisher, which is going to get into a whole massive investigation of the

00:22:24.600 department of justice and maybe even the federal judiciary. Uh, no, they, they can't, they're not

00:22:29.300 going to sit there and, and particularly, uh, people like the governor of Pennsylvania and other

00:22:34.500 people to aspire to the presidency are not going to sit there and have Trump and MAGA have a sweep

00:22:40.820 to pick up 55. I mean, maybe even get to the point that the Senate with maybe a couple of

00:22:46.140 the conservative Democrats could be filibuster proof and that the house with the investigate

00:22:51.000 with the, with the strength of coming into the house on this MAGA agenda, it's, it's not going to

00:22:55.320 happen. You're going to have these, these, the Democrats play smash mouth and last night they

00:23:00.960 understand that's not sellable. That's not sellable to the American people. Like I said, the crisis is

00:23:05.220 upon us now, but the political crisis, the Democrats, they're going to make a move. And you know,

00:23:09.800 the media, they're going to go through the phases. They'll do this after president Trump's I believe

00:23:15.220 strongly is going to be sentenced to prison on the 11th of July, uh, maybe with deferred reporting,

00:23:20.740 probably with, you know, some sort of, uh, probation suspended sentence under court supervision

00:23:27.240 of Mershon. So he can make sure that, you know, he's got tracks of him going to Wisconsin, Ohio and

00:23:31.700 places where he's got a campaign, Nevada. Um, but then you're going to have the search for them.

00:23:36.460 You're going to have the move on Biden. You'll have the sentence of Trump,

00:23:39.540 which is very different than me found guilty, very different to being indicted. Now he's actually

00:23:43.320 going to go to a prison, uh, on a date certain. And, um, and they're going to use, then they're

00:23:48.880 going to go into the search for what I call the Messiah or the Messiah group. Uh, and then that

00:23:53.400 Messiah group is going to have a, uh, a honeymoon period. Like you've never seen before. The media

00:23:57.760 is going to pile in here because they realize the only thing that stops a landslide by Trump,

00:24:03.860 the America first movement and MAGA is that, and that's where, you know, politically I never,

00:24:10.380 I always thought it was a bad idea to do this. We essentially gave Biden a free option. It should

00:24:14.880 always be who the democratic nominee was going to be. But I think president Trump put the country first

00:24:19.500 feeling that this had to go. And I agree with you. I think the most important thing for the people in

00:24:24.300 the United States is how do we get as a country to 20 January of 2025, that's seven months. And that's

00:24:33.440 going to be probably the longest seven months in the history of this nation.

00:24:37.400 What should the Republicans be rooting for? Right? Like that, that Biden stays the nominee

00:24:44.000 or that they sub in some late nominee, like a Gavin Newsom, who's extremely radical.

00:24:51.320 I like, what should they be rooting for? I think here's what I, what I would advise is the two

00:24:58.240 tracks. Number one, you have to put the country first and let's do that. And I mean, we need a

00:25:03.620 full accounting of exactly what's going on and to try to get ahead of this constitutional crisis,

00:25:08.120 but there must be a change. This cannot go on that, that what, what stood up on that stage last

00:25:13.260 night cannot be the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the history of the earth,

00:25:18.580 particularly, you know, we're on the, today's the 110th anniversary of the assassination of the

00:25:24.560 Archduke in Sarajevo by the Serbian nationals that kicked off the bloodiest century in mankind's

00:25:30.000 history, which people thought was kind of this odd event. We cannot do that. We cannot let history

00:25:34.640 repeat itself. So that's number one. Number two, I think it's very simple. We have to make the pain,

00:25:40.960 the, the lying to the American people, the obfuscation of this, how this was going. And so the search

00:25:46.700 for a messiah and all that, we have to make the pain of the transition so horrible that it sticks

00:25:53.080 to that stench sticks to them regardless of who they bring in. And, and obviously we'll fight those

00:25:58.220 people on their own policies, but the process itself has to become an issue. If we make the

00:26:03.860 process, as Americans go, wait, what in the hell is going on? Have we ever changed out a guy like this?

00:26:07.920 What's going on? Didn't people know about it? You make the process part of the politics and the

00:26:15.200 American people will have complete and total revulsion of this. This is not America.

00:26:20.380 This is not how this Republic, this is not how we grew. This is not how we freed more people and

00:26:24.840 created more wealth and sacrifice more for people throughout the world. That is not what the United

00:26:29.680 States of America is about. And you make it that they put raw, naked politics ahead of the good of

00:26:37.360 this country and her citizens. And that will stick. And I think that can lead to also maybe not as big a

00:26:43.860 landslide against Biden, but a big enough, maybe we don't get 57 seats, but you get 50, 52, 53, 54,

00:26:50.960 and you pick up, you hold the house and pick up a couple of three. And Trump's got the wind to his

00:26:55.720 back for his second term. That's why if I was doing it, that's what I do. Make it, you make the pain so

00:27:01.600 make the process so painful that the American people notice what they did.

00:27:06.840 That's right. That their, their switcheroo will be held against them as well, because they're the ones

00:27:12.260 who put the country in this position. Do you think that all holds true, even if they somehow

00:27:16.660 convinced Michelle Obama to step in? I don't think, you know, I don't need to tell you this,

00:27:24.360 but Mike Allen and Jim Vanderhay are two of the smartest media. I mean, they formed, came from

00:27:28.340 the Washington Post, formed Politico, sold it for a billion dollars and started Axios. I think the value

00:27:32.260 of that's a couple of billion dollars. These are very, very smart people. And they kind of,

00:27:36.480 Axios kind of is the Washington consensus. It's not a random event that they had the Michelle Obama

00:27:43.200 as the scoop and the lead story on the morning of the, the morning of the debate. And particularly

00:27:47.820 the way they framed it, that she, she doesn't like the way the Biden's role. So all the personal

00:27:53.020 problems, all of that, the money and all that, because the Obamas never took a penny. And they're,

00:27:57.820 you know, they're, they're, they're very untainted that way. But also the fact that they,

00:28:01.780 they emphasize the fact that she's not, she doesn't like politics. She wouldn't do this.

00:28:05.600 She's not partisan. She really wants to be a uniter. I think they'll make a hard play for

00:28:10.700 Michelle Obama. I think Michelle Obama is the only one I see that could really make a run at

00:28:14.980 President Trump. And about anybody they pick, I think if we do this transition right and make the

00:28:19.760 process, President Trump will win and I think could win big. But I would think a ticket with Michelle

00:28:26.200 Obama, that's also takes care of obviously the Kamala Harris situation. But I think Michelle Obama

00:28:30.880 and, and, and Gavin Newsom or Michelle Obama and Gretchen Whitmer or, you know, Gavin Newsom

00:28:38.760 and, and Pastor Warnock, some combination of that. But no, I think to me, Michelle Obama would be

00:28:44.300 the most competitive because it would go back to the nostalgia they have for the Obama administration.

00:28:50.220 And clearly Barack Obama, President Obama would be very involved in that campaign.

00:28:54.900 Well, it's interesting, Steve, isn't it? That you've got David Plouffe, Axelrod,

00:28:58.620 Ben Rhodes, all the Obama guys out today saying he needs to go. He can't be the nominee.

00:29:04.180 Just, just, dude needs to go. When CNN came back to the panel, this is what was so, it was too in

00:29:09.920 your face. You came back and you had, you had Van Jones from the Obama White House and you had David

00:29:16.400 Axelrod, his chief strategist. And there was like a script and they were going, essentially,

00:29:21.500 this is more in sorrow than in anger. And they had it laid out right there. And you had on MSNBC,

00:29:26.140 you had Plouffe and the same, the same exact thing. No, it was, it was too much. And obviously

00:29:30.980 there's all been all kinds of rumors about who really is calling the shots in the White House

00:29:34.820 in the first place with Valley Jarrett and Susan Rice and others. So I think the fix is in,

00:29:42.300 I think the fix has been in on this. And, uh, but now it's about, uh, the process right now is

00:29:48.500 important. They, both the national security process and constitutional and the political

00:29:52.700 process, I think we'll run parallel on the awesome interchange. Yep. Let me ask you what,

00:29:57.300 when you say we're facing a constitutional crisis and you said that after I said, should

00:30:00.380 he be forced out under the 25th amendment for infirmity? What do you mean we're heading for a

00:30:06.120 constitutional crisis? I mean that, I mean, it's going to have to be, cause you're going to have

00:30:10.380 to get the combatant commanders as commander chief. He has a whole set of, of, uh, relationships

00:30:16.540 and things that must be done. The 25th amendment here clearly has to be brought up. And I would hope

00:30:22.300 that the, that the service chiefs, not just cabinet members, but service chiefs are coming forward. I

00:30:28.140 would imagine, I would like to know immediately, and I would ask the house armed services committee

00:30:32.700 to call an immediate hearing. I would like to know, uh, what came out of the, uh, the Pentagon last

00:30:38.060 night to the combatant commanders. And I would particularly like to know what the seventh is

00:30:41.180 the seventh fleet on higher alert today than it was last night. If it's not, that's a problem.

00:30:47.340 You've, you've given an open invitation to Beijing. You've given an open invitation to the mullahs in

00:30:51.820 Tehran, and you've given an open invitation to, uh, to, to Putin and the KGB criminals in Moscow.

00:30:58.460 I mean, I think Zelensky already put out kind of a panicked, uh, message today about trying to end

00:31:03.420 the war. This is, this is a crisis of not just in the governance of the country as an entity. It is a

00:31:11.340 national security crisis about what our military apparatus is. And particularly the fact that we're

00:31:17.020 spread over hell's half acre around the rim of the Eurasian landmass in kinetic wars that are going on

00:31:24.060 to two major kinetic wars are going on right now. And the most important one is in a pre kinetic war

00:31:30.300 stage in the South China Sea and Straits of Taiwan. So this is a crisis and this, you're, you're the

00:31:35.660 constitutional lawyer about the 25th amendment, the cabinet members, they have a whole process of doing

00:31:39.740 it, but you also have the military and I think armed services, we, we need transparency right now.

00:31:46.300 We've had last night showed us that the media is part of the problem. Joe Scarborough, I think that,

00:31:53.260 that your, your, your cut was from, from a couple of weeks ago. I mean, they are an active part

00:32:00.060 of protecting this guy. It's a protection racket. So you can't trust any of them right now. March is

00:32:05.660 you can't trust. I think, I think he had, I think he had to visit in March. I think this actually might

00:32:10.460 have come afterwards. He said, I just did this in March. He had to visit March. And then the Wall Street

00:32:14.300 Journal hit it, hit him, uh, hit Biden. And that was Scarborough afterward. Exactly. And look at that.

00:32:19.900 That was adamant. I wear three, I think the best, the shirt you're telling me in a couple of weeks,

00:32:24.300 you got what you got last night. No, it's a lie. All of it's a lie. And so here we have to put the

00:32:30.540 nation first. And I think we have to look at the commander in chief. And I think we have to talk

00:32:34.140 to the combatant commanders. You have to talk to members of the joint chiefs, which are not,

00:32:38.220 the chiefs are really not in the direct line of the combatant commanders, but I think you have to

00:32:42.620 talk to the Pacific fleet and you have to see, look, we just had to carry a battle group to the Eastern

00:32:47.820 Med a couple of days ago. Why? Because of the Persian militias and Hezbollah in, uh, in Northern

00:32:54.540 Israel and in Southern Lebanon, which the Israelis are telling us they're pivoting out of

00:32:59.340 Gaza and they're going to get it on. And that's a real war. That's not a go against a group of

00:33:03.260 terrorists. That's light infantry, close air combat support. And you've got to carry a battle group

00:33:08.140 with another 10,000 American kids in the Eastern Mediterranean. And so now this issue is not

00:33:13.980 about politics. This issue is about the thing itself is about what we are as a Republic.

00:33:19.340 So, and I think people have to be forcing the action here. I think you're going to have to

00:33:22.860 have a forcing function because they're going to try to bob and weave on this. And they understand,

00:33:28.780 I believe that there've been crimes committed, how this was withheld from the American people,

00:33:33.340 what exactly went on, what has been on these meetings, what the media knows about it. I want to

00:33:37.740 see every text message. I want to see every email. I want to know about every conversation,

00:33:41.340 exactly how we arrived at last night. I want to just underscore, as you were talking about the

00:33:47.260 dangers that are posed to us right now, as a result of his infirmity, thinking back on his three years,

00:33:51.740 Steve, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was executed so poorly by a man who was

00:33:56.300 obviously already compromised. This did not happen overnight. No one was held accountable. There

00:34:02.220 was absolutely no one fired whatsoever for that decision and the way it was handled last night,

00:34:07.260 getting up there and saying he hasn't lost a single troop while commander in chief,

00:34:10.860 ignoring the 13 dead Marines. They are in addition to those who were killed more recently in Jordan.

00:34:16.140 And then think about what he was saying in the lead up to Ukraine, to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

00:34:21.900 Well, minor, minor incursion, you know, minor incursion might not result in anything. And then Putin moves

00:34:27.180 in. He's already spouting off on matters with messaging that is not approved, that is not necessarily

00:34:35.340 consistent with policy as approved by our Pentagon. And it's weakening us. It's exposing us. There's

00:34:41.500 already a history of it. So what happens over the next seven months when the man who couldn't even give

00:34:47.020 us a straight answer on the abortion trimesters last night, who couldn't understand the difference

00:34:53.580 between the abortion question and illegal immigration, who conflated the two in a confused and meandering

00:35:01.260 answer, has to deal with these complex issues you just outlined in a way he never could over the next

00:35:08.140 seven months, because it's four to the election, but it's seven until we get a new president sworn in.

00:35:12.780 We're already in danger. Let me just pause it right there for one second. I do have to take a commercial

00:35:17.260 break, but I want to get back to your central point. Who knew and were their crimes committed

00:35:24.860 in the cover up of his problems? And we'll give you a taste of what they'd been saying.

00:35:30.220 Our audience remembers, but we have the receipts and the video as Scarborough told us to keep,

00:35:36.140 which we did to show you more with Steve Bannon ahead on a big day.

00:35:42.780 We have a thousand trillionaires in America. I mean, billionaires in America.

00:35:47.020 And what's happening? They're in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2% in taxes.

00:35:52.620 If they just paid 24% or 25%, either one of those numbers, they'd raise $500 million,

00:35:59.420 billion dollars, I should say, in a 10-year period. We'd be able to wipe out his debt. We'd be able to help

00:36:04.940 make sure that all those things we need to do, child care, elder care, making sure that we continue to

00:36:10.780 strengthen our health care system, making sure that we're able to make every single solitary

00:36:15.660 person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with

00:36:24.780 everything we have to do with, look, if we finally beat Medicare.

00:36:32.780 Thank you, President Biden. President Trump?

00:36:36.220 Oh, my Lord. That is just one of the, to put it charitable, senior moments that Joe Biden suffered

00:36:44.220 last night in front of our very eyes. Steve Bannon is with us today. And Steve, he's the host of Bannon's

00:36:49.260 War Room. There are multiple reports of focus groups who are watching Democratic focus groups with

00:36:55.820 their heads in their hands, cringing. The panic was unfolding fast and furiously amongst the

00:37:01.580 Democratic elite, understanding exactly how bad things were. But to your point, those in the media,

00:37:09.020 those with access to him, those like Joe Scarborough, who've had multiple meetings with him, have been

00:37:14.220 spinning a very different tale publicly for some time. And I'll give you just one example of some of those

00:37:22.140 leaders and sought eight. How many 30 year olds could travel to Poland, get on the train?

00:37:32.780 He is younger than I am. So I don't know what the problem is.

00:37:42.700 But I can tell you, having traveled with him a fair amount, sometimes he's hard to keep up with.

00:37:47.980 Come work out with me in the morning.

00:37:49.340 Oh, my gosh. He's the president of the United States. You know, he I can't even keep up with

00:37:55.260 it. What about the respect for elders thing that we talk about?

00:37:58.460 And he has a steady hand when you look at what's out there right now with Donald Trump.

00:38:04.300 I think his schedule reflects an active person mentally and physically. I don't know what more

00:38:09.820 they're asking for. So they lied. And your question is, should they be investigated? But for what?

00:38:17.580 Well, I think the focus groups that I think we're most that we want to hear from are the focus groups in

00:38:24.380 Moscow, the KGB, the Mullahs in Tehran and the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.

00:38:30.380 That's the focus group that matters right now, not simply American politics.

00:38:33.820 And that's what these lies are. You know, as a young man, I came off sea duty and I was

00:38:38.700 fortunate enough to be an aide or special assistant to the chief of naval operations.

00:38:42.780 First, Tom Hayward and then Jim Watkins back

00:38:45.820 at the beginning days of President Reagan's administration. And I sat in and took the notes

00:38:51.340 as a junior officer for the conferences they had at this thing called the CNO executive board.

00:38:56.620 He was the chief of naval operations and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

00:39:01.500 And he would go over to the Situation Room.

00:39:03.500 These discussions about what you're doing on military activity, on kinetic military activity,

00:39:09.100 when you're putting American young men and women in harm's way in the nation's interest,

00:39:14.460 in respect to the nation, in direct line of fire are enormously complicated.

00:39:19.340 And when you're going through this, it's enormously complicated.

00:39:22.140 You know, 30 or 40, 50 years later, I was able to sit there with President Trump

00:39:26.620 in the Situation Room and see the complexity.

00:39:29.500 This is what this is about. The individual stood up there last night.

00:39:32.540 It's just no way you can handle the complex nature, particularly of modern warfare,

00:39:36.460 now with drones and artificial intelligence.

00:39:38.780 And if you think about it, it's the Chinese Communist Party

00:39:41.980 in the Straits of Taiwan and South China Sea against Taiwan.

00:39:45.980 It's Russia with its vast military resources in the Ukraine.

00:39:50.060 And I'm not a supporter of the Ukraine war at all.

00:39:52.460 But then you've got our ally, Israel, with their back against the wall,

00:39:55.340 not just with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, but really with the more serious threat

00:40:00.140 of of Hezbollah and the Persian militias and Persia and Tehran coming for them.

00:40:04.700 And so you expect me to believe, and particularly with the source people,

00:40:08.940 look at the New York Times this morning.

00:40:10.780 You had Tom Friedman.

00:40:11.980 He had Frank Bruni.

00:40:13.100 He had Nicholas Kristof.

00:40:15.180 You had the most well-sourced people in the New York Times, the paper of record,

00:40:19.740 that are dialed into the national security apparatus and dialed into the White House.

00:40:23.820 And all of them had these.

00:40:25.420 Oh, woe is me.

00:40:26.620 You know, this is terrible.

00:40:27.580 We got to replace him.

00:40:28.540 No, we need immediately for the nation to get in back of this issue.

00:40:34.620 And we can't play around with this.

00:40:37.020 This is why somebody somebody in the Republican side, we need leaders to step up here.

00:40:41.820 This is about leadership. This is not about politics. This is about putting the country

00:40:45.500 first. We need leaders to step up and say, hang on for a second.

00:40:48.700 What exactly is going on here? What did I see? And how are we going to solve it?

00:40:53.100 And then kind of who knew about this and how we got in here?

00:40:56.300 That's why I think the politics is secondary. And I think if people treat the politics as secondary,

00:41:01.020 the American people will say, OK, that's in a very dangerous world at the beginning

00:41:05.660 stages of the kinetic part of the Third World War, I see who the leaders are.

00:41:09.740 I mean, I don't know that whether they'll do that because of their fear of Trump.

00:41:14.860 But you're right that we're definitely seeing something we have never seen before.

00:41:18.460 We pulled some of those New York Times headlines you just mentioned.

00:41:21.100 Tom Friedman, Joe Biden is a good man and a good president.

00:41:24.300 He must bow out of the race. Frank Bruni, Biden cannot go on like this.

00:41:29.020 Patrick Healy, I'm hearing high anxiety from Democrats over Biden's debate performance.

00:41:33.340 Michelle Cottle, Ross Dutat and Ezra Klein, is Biden too old?

00:41:37.900 America got its answer. And then I'll give you this clip from the New York Times

00:41:42.860 daily podcast called The Daily, which is must listen podcasting for virtually all Democrats this morning.

00:41:52.940 After one of Biden's more meandering answers, Trump responds with a quip that really said what

00:41:58.620 everyone was thinking. President Trump, I really don't know what he said at the end of the sentence.

00:42:03.580 I don't think he knows what he said either. Look, saying that I don't know what Biden said

00:42:07.900 at the end of the sentence and I don't know if he does either.

00:42:10.220 Mm hmm. This is the first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

00:42:17.260 It feels like a strong topic for Biden in this part of the debate was going to be abortion,

00:42:23.900 which returned the issue of abortion to the states.

00:42:26.860 Correct. And the moderators bring it up. And it felt like low hanging fruit, an opportunity for Biden

00:42:32.300 to blame Trump for the fall of Roe v. Wade and score some real points on the board. But it didn't feel

00:42:40.780 like that's what happened. No, it didn't. He kind of botched that framing.

00:42:45.020 Which had three trimesters. First time is between the woman and the doctor. Second time is between

00:42:51.020 the doctor and an extreme situation. The third time is between the doctor. I mean, between the

00:42:57.740 woman in the state. He was trying to seemingly make an analogy about trimesters that didn't really come

00:43:03.100 through very clearly. And so that, I think, was a moment where when the moderator brought it up,

00:43:10.300 you would feel Democrats think, OK, this is something that might play better for us than the

00:43:14.780 economy or immigration. But like a lot of things in this debate, Biden just didn't seem to put it

00:43:20.540 together that well. Steve, they would never have done this if they did not believe there was a

00:43:25.980 chance they could get Biden off this ticket, because if they don't think that, then they're just

00:43:30.620 bloodying up their nominee and they really do see Trump as the devil. So they would never do this if

00:43:36.220 they didn't think there was a realistic chance of bouncing him out. Megan Kelly, you just found the

00:43:41.580 buried lead. You're one thousand percent correct. Axelrod and Van Jones would have never said that

00:43:45.340 when they came back. None of it. The New York Times, that podcast is massive. That podcast is massive.

00:43:50.220 That kind of like morning, it sets the morning there. It sets the narrative for the day. No,

00:43:55.100 no, they know they have an issue and they know they kind of they think they have a solution for it.

00:43:59.740 They've never have done this because all that's going to be able to play back. This that political train

00:44:04.700 has left the station, I think. I think you're it's just how you exit. It's all about execution.

00:44:10.380 Now, I think it's zero execution. What do they do about Kamala? Because, you know, for months now,

00:44:19.500 we've had some prominent liberal voices like Sonny Hauston over at the view saying, well, you can't

00:44:26.300 just bounce us out. You can't just take the black female vice president and bounce her out and think

00:44:31.660 we're going to accept that just because you happen to bounce in a female black woman like Michelle

00:44:36.940 Obama. She's not bounceable. And yet, you know, as well as I do, the Democratic Party doesn't like

00:44:41.740 Kamala Harris. Well, and I think they gave her a small tryout last night. Megan, it's pretty

00:44:48.460 extraordinary on a night of a presidential debate, particularly one that's so historic and coming

00:44:53.340 so first that they rolled her outpost the CNN and MSNBC, and she once again failed miserably.

00:44:59.660 You can't even answer a straight question with coherent. I mean, she's only a couple of notches

00:45:04.620 down from the impaired Joe Biden. So these people are all about power. They play smash mouth.

00:45:11.420 And I agree with you. It's a problem, but it's not an unsolvable problem. You have Pastor Warnock

00:45:18.220 in Georgia. You have Michelle Obama. There's not going to be a perfect fit. And that's why,

00:45:22.860 quite frankly, like I go back to the process, we have to make it as painful as possible on the political

00:45:27.420 side. We have to make it as least painful on the countryside with the crisis in the constitutional

00:45:34.460 crisis. We have to make it very painful on the process on the political side. And this is where

00:45:39.580 this comes in. They don't have a simple and easy solution. I don't think they have an elegant solution

00:45:44.300 unless it's somehow Michelle Obama. And they're going to get Sotomayor to step down and put Kamala Harris on

00:45:51.260 the Supreme Court. There will be some three card money to this. But you nailed it. They're not they're

00:45:57.580 not going to come out. These guys, the day before, it's all Biden, Biden, Biden. And then to have that

00:46:03.740 shift. I mean, when you went back to MSNBC on the panel, it was like they were sitting Shiva right there.

00:46:08.940 It was like it was an Irish wake. They were stunned. You contrast that, Steve, with what we saw after

00:46:14.780 the Trump conviction or the Trump indictment, for that matter, where they were positively gleeful.

00:46:19.900 They really looked like someone died last night and it was their presidential hopes. It's true.

00:46:26.060 This just in from Kenneth Vogel, a New York Times reporter. I am hearing that some Democratic donors are

00:46:31.500 backing out of Biden's fundraiser tonight at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan with Elton John.

00:46:36.220 And this this could happen over and over. The first comment is don't let the sun go down on me.

00:46:41.980 I bet the sun is going down on this man's hopes of winning a second term. All right, listen,

00:46:48.220 we've got to talk about so much more, including Chevron. That was huge. What happened at the Supreme

00:46:53.740 Court this morning, the gutting of the January 6th case against Trump by this other case, Fisher,

00:46:58.920 in which Trump wasn't actually named. But we've been talking about this for months on the show

00:47:02.660 as a critical case, maybe even arguably more critical than the question of presidential

00:47:07.380 immunity, which is a long shot to get every single thing he did covered by immunity. But but gutting

00:47:12.840 the J6 case, which, you know, they're trying to fast track would be extremely helpful. And it just

00:47:17.280 happened. So let's pick that up with Steve Bennett next after we squeeze in this quick break. My God,

00:47:22.160 what a day. Would love to know your thoughts on it while I have your attention. Send me an email. It's

00:47:26.480 Megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at MeganKelley.com. And let me know your thoughts on where things go from here and

00:47:32.240 what's on your mind this morning. I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM. It's

00:47:39.000 your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and

00:47:43.460 important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch The Megan Kelly Show on Triumph,

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00:48:29.860 three months free. Offer details apply.

00:48:36.240 As I mentioned at the top of the show, there's a lot of history between yours truly and Steve

00:48:40.520 Bannon, my guest today. Over the years, I think it's safe to say we've been less than kind to one

00:48:45.100 another. He's called me the devil and once threatened to call me from the herd. In return,

00:48:50.440 I've referred to him as a misogynist, not nice stuff. It all started after the GOP presidential

00:48:55.880 primary debate back in August of 2015 when I asked then candidate Donald Trump the now famous question

00:49:02.260 about his past interactions with women. In 2019, Frontline PBS asked if I would take part in a

00:49:09.980 documentary about the 2016 election. Steve Bannon also took part. PBS did a great job detailing what

00:49:17.840 happened in the days and weeks after that debate. The tug of war that broke out, which forever

00:49:24.880 changed the conservative media landscape. Watch. I thought it was an unfair question, but you know

00:49:30.600 what? The answer is just the beginning. Are you going to call Roger Ailes about it?

00:49:34.400 At 3.40 in the morning, he lit up Twitter. Wow. Megyn Kelly really bombed tonight. People are going

00:49:43.660 wild on Twitter. Funny to watch. On the phone with CNN, he went further. What is it with you and

00:49:52.120 Megyn Kelly? She starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions and, you know, you could see

00:49:56.800 there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. Trump recognized

00:50:03.840 that it was a good storyline and he kept fuel going under that fire because he knew some portion

00:50:10.020 of his audience loved to see him challenging, you know, a powerful woman, never mind a woman

00:50:14.520 at Fox. And so he accurately deduced that this would drive his numbers up with some segment

00:50:21.460 of his base. Trump had a powerful ally in the attack on Kelly, the right-wing website Breitbart

00:50:29.880 and its leader Steve Bannon. Fox has chosen a side. It's so evident in that debate that they're

00:50:39.420 there to kneecap Donald Trump, okay? They're there to take him out. And that's when we go,

00:50:44.540 okay, we run 20 stories on Megyn Kelly. I get Tony Lee and Matt Boyle, my two hammers.

00:50:52.960 They go right after Megyn Kelly. We're going to Linsky her, right? We're going to cut her

00:50:56.980 out from the, call her out from the herd and just hit her nonstop. That's when all war broke

00:51:02.180 out. That's when, that's when Breitbart, that's when you had to choose sides.

00:51:06.600 In taking on Fox, Bannon and Trump were inciting the kind of conflict Breitbart readers thrived

00:51:13.360 on. She is a low life. Everyone's, we need to chop her off at the knees. Do not.

00:51:19.000 We look at the comments section. These things are getting 10 and 15,000, 20,000 comments.

00:51:23.200 Megan's a type for a quickie in the men's. The whole Trump, all the Pepes, all these Trump

00:51:27.860 guys were pounding in here. Kelly needs to be put in her place vast and hard by all.

00:51:32.720 It was scary at times. And Breitbart kept lighting the fire over and over. And, you know,

00:51:38.980 I had and have three young kids, really young kids. And the security threats were escalating.

00:51:46.000 And we were doing everything in our power to convey to them that they needed to stop. It was,

00:51:51.800 it was one debate question, just one debate question. And he handled it fine. You know,

00:51:57.260 he did. So get off of it. And they couldn't have cared less.

00:52:03.400 Roger Ailes ran Fox News. Ruthless and powerful, Ailes was a force to be reckoned with.

00:52:13.480 Ailes calls me up and says, you got to knock off these stories. She's crying. She's all upset.

00:52:17.860 She's getting death threats. That sounds like a personal problem. I said, we're not backing off.

00:52:22.200 We're going to, we're going to put more stories up tomorrow. If Kelly can't take the heat,

00:52:26.320 go back to the kitchen. Trump should commission a statue of Miss Kelly on her knees and place it

00:52:30.840 in front of Trump Tower. Under the onslaught, Ailes eventually backed down.

00:52:37.780 Hmm. I would go on to moderate another debate with Mr. Trump during that election season.

00:52:44.080 I eventually went to Trump Tower, had a heart to heart with him and eventually interviewed him

00:52:49.600 for a TV special. And as you know, Mr. Trump also joined us last fall on this show for a fair,

00:52:55.120 but tough interview. But Steve Bannon and I have never spoken to each other ever. So why now?

00:53:03.000 It's because I have come to respect his opinions and yes, even his tactics. Earlier this month,

00:53:11.000 while covering the former president's conviction in the business records trial,

00:53:14.080 brought against him by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, I had a conversation with Harvard professor

00:53:19.240 emeritus Alan Dershowitz about whether Republicans need now to fight fire with fire

00:53:25.200 and start going after political opponents to those who have committed crimes who normally would not be

00:53:31.300 prosecuted, though. Dershowitz argued against this in this exchange that later went viral.

00:53:36.960 Because it's on. The norms have been broken. It's going to continue happening because now

00:53:44.260 they've succeeded. I agree. But you fight a lack of principle with a principle defense. You don't

00:53:51.080 get down into the gutter with them and allow the pendulum. You know who we need? No, I, you know,

00:53:57.320 I thought I'm going to utter words. I never thought I would utter in my life. You know,

00:54:00.880 we need Steve Bannon. That's how I feel today. Bring it on. Get somebody who knows how to fight

00:54:08.260 dirty. Calling the shots. We're losing. They're taking out our people. This is about the presidency

00:54:15.120 and the future of the country. Until lawfare is unleashed on the left, in my opinion, it won't stop.

00:54:24.260 They've breached such egregious lines and norms that we won't restore normalcy without treating

00:54:31.760 fire with fire. It's just that simple. A few days after my remarks, Mr. Bannon said the following on

00:54:37.780 his show. Megyn Kelly and I have gone at it for nine years. And why did I go after her for nine years?

00:54:44.360 Because in 2015, in August of 2015, she took the first shot at Trump and tried to kneecap him right

00:54:49.240 of the box. And you know why? Because she was the most powerful person on television at the time

00:54:54.700 and an amazing talent. That's why she was chosen by Murdoch. But of all the stuff that's come out,

00:55:03.140 she's probably been most on point. We have to go Old Testament. There's a couple of things we have

00:55:08.760 to do. Obviously, and I've been walking through this, we have to build this, we have to do this,

00:55:11.840 but some part of us, some group has to go on offense. She's 100% correct. And Megyn Kelly's

00:55:21.440 100% right. And Professor Dershowitz, these guys are wrong. Obviously, we have to be principled,

00:55:28.960 but we have to be ruthless.

00:55:32.740 And now today, Steve Bannon is my guest. I'm very happy to have him here. Steve,

00:55:37.480 that really takes us back down through memory lane. But I have to tell you, with now all this

00:55:44.840 time to reflect on that whole story and the time that's passed since, I learned so many lessons

00:55:51.200 from all of it, including the following. Number one, politics and political journalism are a blood

00:55:58.060 sport. And you shouldn't be in the lane if you can't take it. It's not to say any of that stuff

00:56:04.900 was pleasant for me or to say it was all great. But I did learn a lot about myself. And I think I

00:56:12.780 got stronger and I understood how to protect myself mentally and emotionally in a way I never would

00:56:18.560 have otherwise. This is the blessing of great challenges that get thrown your way. And while

00:56:24.180 for a while there, I was angry with you and my assistant was very angry with you.

00:56:29.020 I got to the point where I just didn't feel anger at all anymore. And I saw what you were doing in

00:56:36.160 the political lane in a way that was extremely effective against the same, I mean, forgive the

00:56:40.980 term, but enemies that I feel I have on. And I mean that in terms of issues that we're fighting on.

00:56:46.480 And I thought he's a powerful ally. He knows how to win fights and he doesn't care about getting his

00:56:53.140 hands a little dirty, you know, within the lines, but a little dirty and gets results.

00:56:59.580 So I came to the point where I said, I really would like to talk to him. And while I'm not sure

00:57:04.540 my assistant Abigail Finan supports it, I am past all of it and was really looking forward ultimately

00:57:11.940 to this exchange today. How do you see it?

00:57:13.600 I say the same way though. The only, um, the frontline thing was fantastic except the end.

00:57:22.280 And this is what I told Ailes. You were the most powerful person in all media at the time that,

00:57:28.760 that if you go back in time and I just had a different worldview, you know, I'm a, I'm not a

00:57:34.220 conservative. I'm not a Republican. I mean, I'm, I, I register as a Republican so I can vote,

00:57:39.560 but I'm a populist nationalist and our worldview is that you've had a managed back in 16, 15, 16,

00:57:47.860 you had a managed decline of our country by our elites and that the Republican party and

00:57:52.960 particularly Fox news and the Murdochs and a little bit Roger Ailes, who I revered or what we call

00:57:58.540 controlled opposition. And so it doesn't shock me today of where we are as a country in this fight.

00:58:05.120 This is what our belief was back then. And that first debate, remember, it was only, I think,

00:58:10.580 45 days into the, into the campaign. And we were all in for Trump as a, as a, uh, he was going to be

00:58:16.380 the instrument for basically saving the country, stopping, uh, stopping, uh, Hillary Clinton,

00:58:24.280 eventually stopping her from getting Merrick Garland in as a permanent member of the Supreme Court.

00:58:28.320 And I think we were just ahead of the curve at the time. And Fox was the problem. And you as the

00:58:36.840 most powerful member at Fox, and quite frankly, in all media at that time, uh, were, were, were a huge

00:58:43.820 problem. You could have taken Trump out. There's no doubt about it. You came very close on that. If

00:58:48.300 it hadn't been for his just natural quickness. And that's why, you know, it was, it's information

00:58:54.940 war. We're at war. We're not, I'm not a media guy. I'm not a journalist. I've never done journalism

00:58:59.680 in my life. I'm, I'm not, uh, I didn't go to journalism school. This is a, this is an information

00:59:04.980 war. And what shocked me, even with Roger Ailes, who are revered, he still didn't quite get

00:59:12.720 that it was you. I was coming, we were coming, it was Murdoch's, but it was you. And if we didn't

00:59:20.880 stop that, it's like I say today, if you don't stop it, it's the same things happening in law.

00:59:25.800 If you don't stop it, it's going to continue. And we did. And you said, we play inside the

00:59:31.340 lines, hopefully most of the time, but we're not adverse to sometimes playing outside the

00:59:37.900 lines. If it is to, we're about victory. And I remember Roger called me and said, Hey, she's

00:59:43.220 got, you know, at first he sent a Paul, Peter Johnson down. We called first and then he said,

00:59:47.980 I'm going to send my lawyer down and Peter came down and Peter's a good man. And Peter

00:59:51.180 was kind of like implying, you know, threats and lawsuits. I go, Hey, you got to go back

00:59:55.240 until Ailes. We're not going to back off this. What are you talking about? We just started.

00:59:58.720 And here's the thing, you know, Tucker was at daily caller. Uh, Bill Christo was at weekly

01:00:02.940 standard. Uh, rich Lowry was at national review. We had always avoided. In fact, I told people

01:00:09.060 when they came to work for me, you will not be on Fox news. You will never be on Fox news.

01:00:13.720 We don't really have a relationship with them. Cause I told people at the time

01:00:17.360 when after Andrew died and after I've been in the saddle for a while, this is back in 2012,

01:00:21.600 I said, there is going to come a time in the future that we have to go against Fox. And I mean,

01:00:26.260 really throw down hard and we have to be ready for that because they're neoliberal neocons. We're

01:00:31.620 populist, nationalists, America first, and we don't share the same sort of values. They're

01:00:36.640 controlled opposition and we're about saving this country. And so that fight was, I think,

01:00:44.080 a heavyweight title fight and you hung in for a long time. You hung in for a long time.

01:00:48.400 I know it was terrible. I mean, Ailes told me, he said, he says, look, she's, she's got security

01:00:52.920 threats. And I said, dude, you're a $12 billion company. Get her the best security. You know,

01:00:57.680 all the Navy SEALs get a good security because we're not stopping. And you know, we don't think

01:01:03.160 anybody's going to happen because all the pepes are just all talk. But I said, we're not going to

01:01:06.860 stop. And I tried to tell him, I said, Hey, you know, no offense. You're not the most powerful

01:01:12.080 guy. If you want me to talk to a principal, let me talk to her. She's the principal. You're just,

01:01:16.740 you're just, you're just an agent. You're an intermediary. So it was, we had, we had a ton

01:01:22.440 of tough conversations, but we, and if we hadn't won that, Trump would not have been president.

01:01:28.860 Trump would have been gone in 30 days. If that, if that debate and you had continued on,

01:01:33.840 given your, the respect the audience had for you, the, the, the, not the fan base,

01:01:38.800 but you had a central part, like you're sitting in the middle right there for a reason. You were

01:01:42.960 Fox news and you were by far the most powerful personality in Fox news because I'm like even

01:01:47.620 Hannity and O'Reilly, you, you are a journalist, you're a lawyer, you brought the complete package.

01:01:52.320 So now I am, um, uh, it was unpleasant, but we're at war and we're not prepared. I am never prepared

01:02:00.720 to back down. I get it. Like I, with some distance now, I get it. Like it, the stakes are just very

01:02:07.640 high. And I've since learned in the process, in the process of being a public figure to differentiate

01:02:13.820 between Megan Kelly, the person and Megan Kelly, the brand, right? Like this person who's out there

01:02:20.520 public facing with journalism, responsibilities, et cetera. And the attack was on Megan Kelly,

01:02:25.580 the brand. It wasn't, you didn't even know me as a person. It wasn't about what's going on in my

01:02:30.180 personal life or trying to hurt me personally. And I'm the one who put myself in the public arena.

01:02:34.220 And I'm the one who asked that very tough question. And it was, had no right to be free

01:02:40.020 from controversial fallout or negative opinions about me or my question, you know, which I still

01:02:45.040 stand behind. Um, so I, I've just come to see it very differently. Again, I, you look back on how it

01:02:51.220 was at the time and it was traumatic for sure. And we were, we were definitely in danger. Um,

01:02:58.420 but I understood, I understand what's happened because it was about the presidency and the stakes

01:03:03.280 were far bigger than me or, you know, my personal complaints in any event. We had to go through it

01:03:09.840 because there's no way of having you on without taking a little walk down that lane to figure out

01:03:13.560 where we got. All right, we'll take a quick break. There's a tease for you audience. Um, how can we use

01:03:18.760 those Steve Bannon tactics to save our country, to, to fight against the lawfare that's being

01:03:24.820 unleashed against presidential candidates, not to mention people like Steve Bannon, um, and restore

01:03:30.460 some, some sort of normalcy in the country. Well, we'll pick it up there with Steve Bannon.

01:03:36.340 The question is how do we take that Steve Bannon knowledge of how to fight and fight the way the

01:03:44.620 Dems do and fight back against the lawfare campaign that they've unleashed against Donald Trump among

01:03:50.560 others? Well, listen, you've got your, so look at John, you, I mean, John, you, you know, him is one

01:03:57.980 of the most reasoned guys in the, in the Republican legal apparatus. He wrote that piece, I think over

01:04:03.040 at national review, uh, which is had a reputation, not being in the fight club. And he said, it's gotta

01:04:08.840 be, it's gotta be tick for test. We have a constitutional responsibility and obligation

01:04:14.140 to do this because it's not going to stop any McCarthy. They both say what you've said.

01:04:19.220 And when you cut off Dershowitz, I thought it was fantastic. Is it, it's not going to stop until

01:04:24.840 we stop it. And I think you've got all kinds of allies right now. And today I get to tell you the

01:04:30.500 Fisher, a case I think is huge. And you're going to see a firestorm about this. This, this gets back

01:04:35.580 to how Nixon was the case where, in which the J six charge of obstruction of a congressional

01:04:40.940 proceeding was just struck down. Keep going. Yeah. Andrew Weissman on Enron, which is really

01:04:46.400 about documents. They, they, they, they work together. They collude together. They, they,

01:04:50.320 they jury rig this thing. And then they have people run in federal, federal prisons, not just coming

01:04:55.040 after Trump. It's coming after the J six, some of these, quite frankly, innocent J six people that

01:05:00.500 they just, they created this charge and they worked with the judiciary. They worked. This is the

01:05:04.500 scandal of it. And this is why the overturning at six, three is so important. You're going to see

01:05:09.020 collusion between the justice department, people on the Hill, on the J six committee, the justice

01:05:13.940 department and the federal bench and ex parte meetings. This gets back to how Nixon was really

01:05:18.700 removed from office. Remember Jeff Shepard, the, the, the great guy, the guy was a junior guy in

01:05:23.640 Nixon white house council's office, spent his entire life since then going through about how

01:05:28.760 Sirica and the federal bench with the DOJ kind of, you know, cause DOJ was run by Nixon's

01:05:33.820 guys, but the guys down in planet, the, the, the kind of deep state, the administrative state guys

01:05:38.760 plus on Capitol Hill took Nixon out. This is exactly what has happened here. And so we have

01:05:45.900 fighters on our side. That's why I keep saying courage is contagious. When people like you step

01:05:50.300 out there, when people like John, you and John, you and Andy McCarthy are not, uh, are not MAGA are not

01:05:57.000 Trump people. I think you're in a transition, right? So, but we have to unite. You're, you're,

01:06:04.420 you're Trump and MAGA Jason, but that's a journey. And I think this is why people, we have to know

01:06:09.840 we're not in normal times. What happened last night is not normal. It does not happen. It should not

01:06:15.600 happen in this Republic. We're in extraordinary times and extraordinary times require ordinary people

01:06:22.160 to take extraordinary measures. And I think that's where we are today. And that's why I think people

01:06:27.400 are prepared to fight and look, you're going to be bankrupt. You're going to be de-platformed.

01:06:32.180 Yeah. I don't need to tell you, you're going to be de-platformed, de-banked. Uh, uh, the IRS is

01:06:37.000 going to come after you. You're going to have your law license taken away. You're going to be kicked out

01:06:40.500 of the bar. Eventually you're going to be sent to prison. This is the kind of political warfare we're

01:06:44.600 in right now, but that is, these are literally things that are happening to Rudy Giuliani,

01:06:48.040 to John Solomon and to Steve Bannon. We'll get to what they're doing to you in, in one second.

01:06:53.040 But also happened to the women, the 75 year old women, woman at the, at the, uh, at the abortion

01:06:59.800 clinic. I came from a, my blue collar family started, I went to a military school. We had a

01:07:05.080 church there. They eventually helped start a tridentine, you know, Latin mass church back in

01:07:10.400 the seventies that in Richmond, Virginia, the FBI report was kind of about my parents home parish,

01:07:17.920 but looking at all of the traditional Catholic Latin masses who are the grand dunes of the

01:07:22.700 grand dunes, right? As they were, they were raising extremists. What this, what this apparatus has done

01:07:29.560 is the most radical thing that's ever happened in our nation's history. And that's why. Yes. Steve,

01:07:34.900 this is why last night it was so insane at the debate when the one question about misusing the

01:07:39.440 federal government against one enemy, one's enemies, unleashing retribution against one's political

01:07:43.900 enemies went to Donald Trump saying, you know, you threatened that you could, you could engage in

01:07:51.300 some sort of revenge once you're actually the president, as opposed to the sitting president

01:07:54.960 who's doing that to Trump right now. And who tells us that is the Supreme court today. This six,

01:08:02.440 three on Fisher is my, I think this is much bigger than immunity because I think it's huge.

01:08:07.360 It's huge. This is cuts to the heart of the problem of the weaponization and let me just,

01:08:14.160 let me give the, let me give the audience a quick overview of Fisher. So, cause you mentioned it,

01:08:17.200 so we'll get them up to speed and then you can talk about it. So Fisher is a case against one of

01:08:21.480 the J six defendants who's been charged with this obstruction of an official proceeding. And this law,

01:08:26.920 this Sarbanes-Oxley law was put in a place after Enron collapsed and Arthur Anderson,

01:08:31.700 which was Enron's accountant was caught shredding documents that so that they wouldn't have to

01:08:36.680 produce them over to federal investigators. And the Congress decided we need a law to capture that

01:08:41.560 kind of nonsense where they're trying to obstruct an official proceeding, where we're trying to look

01:08:45.560 into the collapse of a bank like Enron. So that's how this charge obstruction of an official proceeding

01:08:51.180 came about. And laws like that are drawn for specific purposes and they can't be a catch-all

01:08:56.980 to cover all kinds of behaviors that might technically mount amount to that decision.

01:09:01.660 So the Supreme court had to look at the language of the statute and say, look, it's got specific

01:09:05.800 examples in there of what would be, uh, obstruction of an official proceeding. And then they have a

01:09:12.120 general catch-all at the end of these phrases. And the question was whether that general catch-all

01:09:15.800 could, could expand the statute to include even things like showing up at the Capitol on January 6th,

01:09:20.580 where they were trying to certify the vote for president and the lower courts that said yes.

01:09:24.900 And the Supreme court today said, no, you cannot do it. This is too far in a six, three decision,

01:09:30.400 which was not the six more conservative justices against the three libs. It was five

01:09:35.460 conservatives, one conservative, Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee in the dissent along with two libs,

01:09:43.700 Kagan and Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee joining the five conservatives in the

01:09:52.080 majority. Extraordinary. But in any event, what this means now is effectively the January 6th case

01:09:58.640 against Trump is dead. There are two other charges. They're BS charges there. I'm just looking it up

01:10:05.440 because I forgot they're so inconsequential conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy against

01:10:09.640 rights, which is this kind of made up thing. But for all intents and purposes, that case is dead

01:10:14.480 that it got killed in Fisher, even though Trump had nothing to do with it. So now you've got

01:10:19.080 Atlanta with Fannie Willis, which is dead. She's going up on appeal on the failure to disqualify

01:10:25.160 her. And I think that appellate court will disqualify her. But the whole thing shut down

01:10:28.400 for now while they do it. January 6th just died today against Trump. Mar-a-Lago is going terribly

01:10:34.180 because they've got a judge who's actually fair and is putting the government through its paces.

01:10:38.020 And we know what happened in New York where he was convicted. And but, you know, in all likelihood,

01:10:42.380 won't actually serve time behind bars, no matter what this judge rules on July 11th.

01:10:46.420 Trump is winning slowly but surely the lawfare because it's so extra legal, Steve.

01:10:51.920 Well, this I want to get back to last night and connect dots here. The Sarbanes-Oxie was

01:10:55.900 obviously about the Internet stocks and you had to, you know, had to have better reporting.

01:10:59.840 The central figure in this in the prosecution was Andrew Weissman.

01:11:03.800 This is my point last night on CNN. Of course, they're going to ask Trump because they would

01:11:08.120 never. They're in on the fix. And MSNBC is worse. When these investigations take place,

01:11:14.340 and there will be investigations of of Elisa Monaco and the attorney general of the United

01:11:20.400 States, exactly how do we get into this situation? Andrew Weissman and their media co-conspirators

01:11:26.460 and collaboration is are going to be a part of this. What what was Andrew Weissman's role?

01:11:30.840 How did they come up with this charge when Weissman's the guy on Enra? I remember he put a Price

01:11:35.820 Waterhouse. I think he had Price Waterhouse going to bankruptcy that was then reversed for what he

01:11:40.700 did of the things he did like Jack Smith in the Enron situation. The connection connective tissue of

01:11:47.640 this is Andrew Weissman. And the question has to be guys like Weissman on the J6, people like

01:11:54.200 Matthew Colangelo, which I believe Merrick Garland perjured himself. You tell me the number three guy

01:11:59.580 in justice takes, goes up to New York, is seconded to New York, and you don't know anything about it.

01:12:05.740 It just, it strains credulity. So no, this all started back in November of 2022. When on that

01:12:12.560 same day, I think a couple of days after Trump announced he was running for president, he had

01:12:16.780 all this activity with the justice party, Matthew Colangelo with, with, with Wade, the boyfriend of

01:12:23.200 then the prosecutor on, on funny will spending eight hours in the White House, all of it. So this is

01:12:29.240 all been a vast conspiracy against Trump and Trump's followers. And people have to know,

01:12:35.740 after note, we're going to do so many positive things when President Trump comes in, like, you

01:12:38.920 know, seal the border, start the deportation, stop the endless wars, stop the, the madness of that clip

01:12:44.400 you played earlier, that, you know, Biden's sitting there saying $50 billion a year for 10 years,

01:12:49.340 $500 billion is going to solve anyway. The, the massive $2 trillion deficits we're running

01:12:55.520 annually. And he has no intention of ever taxing billionaires at 24%. It just, it's insanity. But

01:13:02.380 the central thing we have to do at the same time is we have to begin a fundamental investigation of

01:13:08.480 exactly what happened, what happened on the 2020 election, what happened on J six and what happened

01:13:14.040 with the weaponization under Merrick Garland and the federal bench. It would be time.

01:13:19.260 Well, but the, the one thing about the federal bench that we can take heart in is the Supreme court.

01:13:23.360 Cause right now they're doing the right thing time and time again, they are, which has got the left

01:13:27.100 pulling its hair out. But, but today, what, you know, what's so significant about both of these

01:13:31.960 decisions, the Chevron is the second one, which we can talk about is the Supreme court said, no,

01:13:36.660 they said no to judicial or lawfare overreach by zealous prosecutors who are trying to shoehorn

01:13:45.340 not great, but not illegal behavior into criminal statutes when they don't belong there.

01:13:52.720 This is the Supreme court saying, you don't get to do that. Defendants are entitled to notice

01:13:57.440 of what's a crime and what's not. You can't just arrest people and threaten to put them in jail for

01:14:03.420 years without it being very, very clear what lines they have to cross in order to become

01:14:08.060 within the criminal arena. So that that's what Fisher just did today. Chevron is a different case.

01:14:12.980 And I think probably bigger in its significance and its reach Chevron basically short form is a case

01:14:20.680 that was decided decades ago where the court decided we're going to be super deferential

01:14:24.880 to administrative agencies within the executive branch who are kind of going to fill in the

01:14:30.620 blanks when things are ambiguous about what say the EPA can do, which gave these bureaucrats an

01:14:37.420 enormous amount of power over the rest of us when it came to, for example, enforcing the clean air act

01:14:42.280 or the clean water act. We never elected these people. And yet they were legislating over us to

01:14:47.180 fill in the blanks on congressional statutes. And finally, the Supreme court said, no, we will not be

01:14:54.160 deferential to these unelected bureaucrats. We, the courts are the ones who interpret the laws,

01:14:59.520 whether they are ambiguous or not. Ultimately, it goes back to Congress. If a new legislation must be

01:15:04.820 passed, it was the right decision. It was a long time coming. And it's a huge step in shrinking

01:15:11.420 the administrative state, the deep state, take your pick. But it's a big decision, Steve.

01:15:17.940 Lawrence, try tweeted out immediately after it came over. It came over that the administrative state

01:15:23.400 is dead and it died today. This is a monumental. It's a monumental opinion. And here's please keep

01:15:31.980 in perspective. If Hillary Clinton had won, Merrick Garland was on the Supreme court because President

01:15:38.020 Trump defeated her, Judge Justice, Associate Justice Gorsuch is on the Supreme court. And he is the

01:15:44.340 intellectual leader in thinking this through. People have talked about for years, heard politicians

01:15:48.760 go on all the time and say, we got to cut the bureaucracy. You know, the government's too big

01:15:52.960 there and everywhere. And no action was ever really taken. This is the judicial version of what we're

01:15:59.420 trying to do on Project 2025 and others to deconstruct the administrative state. And this was to go to the

01:16:05.760 heart of it. The Mac daddy, the thing that ties it all, the Leviathan all together is this deference

01:16:11.140 where they basically defer not to the companies, not to individual citizens and their liberty, not to

01:16:16.640 the entrepreneur, but they defer to, they defer to the administrative state, the bureaucrats themselves.

01:16:22.220 And this is why the Leviathan has continued to grow. And this is why it's metastasized beyond all

01:16:27.540 control. This will be the beginning. You will see now we had five this year, administrative state,

01:16:33.220 uh, administrative state, uh, uh, cases. You're going to see five or 10 now every year as it's

01:16:38.740 deconstructed. This is monumental. And the irony that it would come on the day after this fiasco we

01:16:45.280 saw of, of a Praetorian guard administrative state, uh, just, I think it's divine. This is quite

01:16:51.340 providential of how this has happened in the last 24 hours. What a day for Donald Trump and Republicans

01:16:58.500 and people who love the country that the founders never envisioned the executive branch to be so big

01:17:04.740 and bloated and seizing of power drunk on their own power. Never. This is not the way we wanted it. And

01:17:11.120 if you have any concerns about the size of the administrative state being shrunk, um, you'll feel

01:17:16.740 differently once, uh, Joe Biden or once, once president Trump wins, right? These Democrats who don't

01:17:22.460 like the today's decision are going to be thrilled once president Trump gets in there. And it's all of his

01:17:26.640 bureaucrats, uh, who we put in these agencies, but the point is to shrink it down. No matter who's

01:17:30.660 in the presidency, we don't have a King. These people aren't our rulers where they're rulers.

01:17:36.040 Uh, okay. I want to continue the discussion of lawfare because what's happening to you is just

01:17:40.560 mind blowing. This is your, this is your last weekend of freedom. You're going to jail on Monday

01:17:47.920 because of this criminal contempt finding against you because you were subpoenaed by this J six committee.

01:17:54.800 Your understanding was that Trump had clearly asserted executive privilege, which is the president's

01:17:59.940 right. Even arguably it was a point of contention over people who had formerly worked for him. That was

01:18:06.540 ultimately rejected. You were willing to work with them in any event. They said, no, you got prosecuted.

01:18:11.580 You got found guilty. And now where are you going for four months on Monday?

01:18:17.100 Uh, Danbury federal prison, uh, in Danbury can actually requested Danbury. I believe in our

01:18:24.180 checkings, this only happened twice in the history of this Republic once back. And I think in 1950 with

01:18:28.880 the great writer ring Lardner jr. And he went to, uh, my understanding is he went to Danbury when he

01:18:35.020 stood up against the house on American activities committee on the witch hunt for, uh, and don't get

01:18:39.840 me wrong. I'm a big supporter of Senator McCarthy. There were a lot of communists in the state department

01:18:44.380 and the government, but, uh, they were going after certain writers, certain creative people.

01:18:49.520 I think some of that got a little over the top and, uh, and he stood up to him and said, no,

01:18:53.440 I'm not going to do it. He was sent to prison for a year. I've been, uh, you know, I've been

01:18:57.200 ordered to prison for four months. Hey, I spent, uh, three, three and a half, four years on a Navy

01:19:01.460 destroyer. A lot of that time in the, not just Western Pacific, but the North Arabian sea and Persian

01:19:06.120 Gulf back in the hostage crisis and 79. So I I'm fully prepared to go. If look, it's a political

01:19:12.280 persecution. There are other people like the J six guys, because of this bogus, uh, charge have

01:19:18.080 been in prison for years and held even before their court dates. It's the way they roll. If it

01:19:23.100 has to happen, it has to happen. You know, I've had a, uh, uh, you know, it's God's will. If I go,

01:19:27.860 I go, but if I go, I'm ready to go. And quite frankly, we'll make sure that my voice, that the

01:19:32.580 war room does not suffer at all. Uh, they're trying to shut down the war room, obviously, but if Merrick

01:19:37.740 Garland and these guys are determined to do it, they're determined to do it. And we'll just take it,

01:19:41.860 uh, one day at a time. I mean, just so the audience knows we've had attorney general Eric

01:19:47.820 Holder found in contempt of Congress, Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. The question comes

01:19:54.460 after that, when Congress says, okay, they didn't comply with our subpoena within the DOJ. Will the

01:20:00.520 DOJ step in and prosecute this as a criminal matter, as opposed to a civil lawsuit to enforce the

01:20:07.560 subpoena to turn over the documents or the testimony, what have you. And it's very rare

01:20:11.700 for the DOJ to do that. They didn't. In the case of Holder, they, they just said, we're not doing

01:20:16.900 that to Garland. Shock. What a shock. But Steve Bannon, different story. Peter Navarro, different

01:20:22.520 story. These Trump allies and administration officials. So you do have an appeal up to the

01:20:29.220 Supreme court, of course, very unlikely that they will step in. And short of that, Steve,

01:20:34.460 is there anything that would stop this from happening on Monday? Well, the, the case itself,

01:20:39.320 because part of the case is reliance upon your attorney. So there's a very technical about,

01:20:43.720 I think it's Lacavola about, I just depended upon my attorney told me what to do. And I depend

01:20:48.300 upon his judgment. That happens to be a technical aspect that the court, I think is quite interesting

01:20:53.000 in, in, in reviewing. So it's not my appeal on the overall, on the overall case itself with the

01:20:59.320 different areas of, you know, depending upon your attorney, the whole structure, the J6 committee

01:21:04.500 being illegal and still the issue of, of executive privilege with people have been either previous

01:21:11.260 advisors or just American citizens. Remember FDR in World War II would literally not just talk to

01:21:16.800 hundreds of people. He would send people to Europe and think about deals that'd be cut. He wanted more

01:21:21.200 information. And he was never challenged when just talking to average citizens or businessmen,

01:21:25.980 et cetera. So that's all three of those are massive issues. Now the bail is, is, is something

01:21:31.940 else. You know, we argue that, Hey, until I go on bonk to the entire, uh, to the entire appellate

01:21:39.100 court in, in sitting in full, and then until I take it to the Supreme court and see if I get cert

01:21:43.660 that I sure may not have bail, but they'll, they'll make those decisions or whatever decision. I got a

01:21:47.880 great legal team, whatever decisions they make, they'll make, I will continue to pursue this

01:21:52.460 on the merits of the cases all the way through the Supreme court. I'm prepared to fund that.

01:21:56.600 I've told my lawyers that these issues and particularly the situation about depending

01:22:01.820 upon your lawyer for advice, but also the other issues I want to pursue all the way to the Supreme

01:22:06.460 court is about the structure of the J6 committee. Uh, this is one of the things, this is the beating

01:22:11.200 Harvard. Now the house has gotten involved over the last week or so. And if I got to go to prison

01:22:15.960 because of this, then so be it that we at least initiated action. We have to get back to that J6

01:22:20.720 committee. We just can't let it sit there. Let's talk about that. Okay. Because we just

01:22:23.900 learned Trump referenced it in last night's debate that Nancy Pelosi was on camera saying,

01:22:29.420 this is my responsibility, the security at the Capitol. I fail. We failed. We, my team and I,

01:22:35.040 uh, to actually staff the Capitol adequately when we knew that a threat was coming.

01:22:39.720 And we know that because the house is now the GOP controlled house is now investigating

01:22:44.240 what actually happened on January 6th and what happened with this January 6th committee,

01:22:49.260 the, the one that found you in contempt. And so we know that that J6 committee was burying facts

01:22:54.680 that didn't support their narrative. Why should they like their authority to pass judgment on who's

01:23:01.600 in contempt and not complying with what was clearly a corrupt process should be called into question.

01:23:07.760 And yet it seems too late.

01:23:11.300 Well, there's a technicality about that too. That's got to, I think also got to be addressed,

01:23:15.240 but let's go back to the J6 committee. The reason, and they just had the poll in the Washington Post,

01:23:19.260 where president Trump is leading on who's the best guardian of democracy. I mean,

01:23:24.040 there's by a lot among independents, I think it's 13%. And here's the reason is about the

01:23:31.080 structure of the committee. They did not structure it like Watergate. They did not structure it like

01:23:35.360 Iran Contra in the history of the Congress. What you do on these committees is that you have the

01:23:40.120 majority, but then you have a ranking member, a senior member of the opposition party,

01:23:43.800 and they have minority council. That council gets all the documentation, the same as the

01:23:50.120 majority gets, and you can cross examine witnesses. This is what drove the tension in Watergate. It

01:23:55.440 drove the tension in Iran Contra. And that's where they stay in people's minds and had such a huge

01:24:00.160 impact. Nancy Pelosi didn't take Jim Banks and Jim Jordan. McCarthy decided not to press it. She picked

01:24:06.780 in two just apparatchiks in Cheney and Kinzinger, who were eventually, you know, turfed out of the

01:24:13.600 Republican Party. But they had an ABC, as you remember, an ABC news producer came in. And this

01:24:18.840 is the reason the thing kind of laid flat. They thought they were doing great, but it never really

01:24:22.900 got the attention of the American people because there's no traditional courtroom tension there.

01:24:26.740 They just put up, you know, Cassie Hutchison with, you know, Trump grabbed a Secret Service guy by the

01:24:32.400 neck and the thing. It had no traditional tension where the saying, and the case I'm making is that

01:24:38.940 it wasn't structured properly in the first place. It was illegitimate. So how can they be issuing

01:24:43.620 not just subpoenas, but not going after people civilly, which is normally how to do it, but go

01:24:48.660 right to a criminal contempt charge. And I think that's what's all got to get worked out. Like I

01:24:52.880 said, the basic thing of relying upon your lawyer for advice. Number two is the structure of the

01:24:57.520 committee. And number three is still to resolve who can actually the president, who can actually the

01:25:02.280 president talk to? And can presidents exert executive privilege out of their office on

01:25:08.060 things that happened when they were in office? So these are all, this is normally, we're going to

01:25:13.260 get to it. Normally they look at the sitting president and say, do you support this claim

01:25:15.980 of executive privilege? And in this case, Joe Biden said, absolutely not, of course, because they're

01:25:21.520 all for the lawfare. And this is one of the questions back to our earlier discussion of what,

01:25:26.620 what are the Republicans do now? It's, we're not talking about when you and I are talking about

01:25:29.540 fighting fire with fire. We're not talking about finding innocent people and accusing them of

01:25:33.380 crimes they haven't committed just because we don't like their politics. There's plenty of

01:25:37.720 criminals over on the democratic side who don't get prosecuted because we're following norms where

01:25:42.260 we don't normally go after them. There's a question right now, the GOP controlled house is looking into

01:25:46.760 whether the president's son, Hunter, and the president's brother, James, should face potential

01:25:53.840 perjury charges. And while this DOJ is not going to pursue them for that, the, those charges don't

01:26:01.600 expire until 2029. Andy McCarthy was pointing this out in a recent piece. And so we could have a Trump

01:26:06.320 administration that really has to ask itself whether those two should be held to, held to

01:26:10.840 account. To me, that's where, that's where the fight should happen. It's fair game. If you're going to

01:26:15.580 pick Steve Bannon and you're going to get Peter Navarro and you're going to get Trump of all, he's of

01:26:20.840 course the greatest example. Then the other time, the other side has to pay. They have to pay or they

01:26:26.780 won't learn. They're not above board. They're not highbrow. They only understand bare knuckled

01:26:33.140 politics. And I don't know where it stops. I don't know how far out of control we have to get

01:26:38.260 before the lessons been learned. But what do you think? How far down that lane do we go

01:26:42.220 without completely sacrificing the Republic? First off, it all has to be legitimate inside the

01:26:47.520 constitutional rule, obviously. But they're so egregious. This is why people, I think, feel you

01:26:52.680 have to step up and you have to fight fire with fire. Otherwise, they're going to continue to roll.

01:26:56.780 Look, as we speak right now, Anna Polina Luna has a proposal to put, a proposal to put on the floor

01:27:04.220 today. And that's not going to come today. But we understand the Speaker is working with her

01:27:07.900 to put it forward on a charge of inherent contempt since they don't believe the Attorney General

01:27:12.960 will actually go after and prosecute anybody in the Department of Justice about, and particularly

01:27:20.980 Matthew Graves, the DA, the U.S. Attorney for D.C., who prosecuted all the J-6ers on something the

01:27:29.580 Supreme Court just threw at 6-3 and sent all these people to prison for years and destroyed their

01:27:34.840 families and had people commit suicide. He will not go after the criminal contempt charge of Merrick

01:27:40.680 Garland. She's put in inherent contempt. Now, inherent contempt is where the Sergeant-at-Arms

01:27:45.800 can call for the D.C., the Capitol Hill Police, and the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest the Attorney

01:27:50.780 General when he comes onto Capitol Hill and maybe even go down, I think, to the Department of Justice

01:27:56.960 and arrest him. This is where we're going now. And Anna Polina Luna is that new breed of young

01:28:03.460 Republicans that's come in with Trump over the last couple of years that are fighters, like the Matt

01:28:07.500 Gateses, the MTGs, Anna Polina Luna, others who are looking to throw down and just not backing off

01:28:14.020 because their constituents are sitting there going, what are we doing here? We have to start taking the

01:28:19.100 fight to them. So I think this thing is going to get more and more and more intense.

01:28:22.980 Okay. So now I want to, I want to say this about Fisher. I forgot to point out. Um, this means that

01:28:31.360 at least 29 cases where J6 defendants have been put in jail just because of this BS charge are now

01:28:40.720 going to get vacated. Those convictions will be vacated in those men. And I guess women, uh, will be

01:28:45.980 let out of jail. And it could affect, I've, I read up to 115 cases where multiple charges were brought

01:28:52.380 against defendants, including this one charge that's going to go away. Uh, and then we're back

01:28:56.920 to you. Um, well, hang on one second. The rumor has it that justice is trying to think up some other

01:29:03.320 things right now. They're not going to release these people right away. My understanding is that

01:29:06.620 the justice department is going to try to think of something else because to have them released,

01:29:10.980 as you can imagine, is catastrophic. So they're working around the clock to think of something else.

01:29:16.460 These people, can I tell you something, Steve on that front? It's not just with respect to the J6

01:29:20.640 defendants. Listen to Joe Biden moments ago, back on the campaign trial trail, trying to, you know,

01:29:26.020 make people forget about what happened last night when asked about the law fair against Trump. Watch.

01:29:32.360 He's got more trials coming up.

01:29:38.900 Did you hear that? Lock him up, lock him up. Laughes. There's time for that.

01:29:49.440 And again, I go back to the CNN debate. The only question about using government

01:29:53.400 to engage in law fair against one's opponent was put to Trump as a threat of what he might do with

01:29:59.200 completely ignoring. Look at the celebration, right? You've got a hard time given to Trump for saying

01:30:04.580 for his supporters saying, lock her up about Hillary. There they are cheering it. And the

01:30:08.060 president of the United States says there's time for that.

01:30:12.900 There you have it. They can't beat him at the polls. You've seen that they can't even beat him on their

01:30:16.640 key topic of democracy, which, you know, Trump just shows you to his actions. He doesn't. He just

01:30:21.680 says Biden's a bigger threat. He's leading by 13 points among independents and swing states.

01:30:27.360 This is what they've got. This is their last firewall was the law fair when they can't beat

01:30:31.320 him any other way. And they're not going to back off it. People got to understand this. I'm going to

01:30:35.640 go to prison. Other people are going to be bankrupt. These people in prison that have been in federal

01:30:40.080 prisons for years, right? The suicides, the bankruptcies, the families destroyed.

01:30:44.640 They're not going to let them out right away. They're going to fight everything until we fight

01:30:48.680 back. It's not going to stop. It's a good point. I mean, there have been suicides. There have been

01:30:54.000 bankruptcies. There's been a lot of hell that these individuals were put through. And we're not talking

01:30:58.800 about the guys who assaulted cops and so on. They face different charges. These charges are brought

01:31:03.300 against people who showed up, who went inside the Capitol. We've seen the video in some cases of cops

01:31:07.440 waving them in. So make no mistake about it. These charges were misused against people who had no idea.

01:31:12.960 In some cases, they were committing crimes. But I want to get back to you because

01:31:17.560 look, you've never been in jail before. You served your country honorably years ago when you first got

01:31:24.160 started. You had a very successful career, the short time at Goldman Sachs, then went on to become a big

01:31:29.660 movie guy, which I knew at some point then forgot about you, made a bunch of money off of getting early

01:31:35.740 rights to shows like Seinfeld and so on. And now you're going to go into prison with some guys who have

01:31:42.360 committed violent crimes, Steve. I mean, you're 70 years old. It's not it's not Joe Biden territory,

01:31:46.880 but, you know, you're not not a 30 year old guy. Is there any are you scared at all? Like, what?

01:31:52.660 How are you? No way. No way. No way. It's just it's it's it's a. I served my nation in the in my

01:31:59.460 20s on a Navy combatant. I'll serve it in a federal prison in my 70s. If it happens, it happens.

01:32:06.660 Clearly, life will be much easier and doing the show will be much easier and getting our message

01:32:11.180 out will be much easier, you know, out. But again, I've got a great team and an audience. Look,

01:32:16.680 it's also next man up. People have to understand the company. You can't lean on Trump for everything.

01:32:21.400 You can't lean on like Rudy or you can't lean on Tucker. You can't lean on Steve Bannon.

01:32:25.380 You can't lean on Megyn Kelly. It's next man up. People have to understand this popular movement.

01:32:31.040 If you don't bind together and say we're going to stop this madness and we're going to take this

01:32:37.160 country back and we're going to restore this republic to her former glory, it's not going to

01:32:41.520 happen. It's all about human agency and human action. So, yes, I will be off the playing field

01:32:46.440 behind in a federal prison for a couple of months. Right. But this show has got to go on. I tell people

01:32:51.940 don't look at me. Don't come whining to me. It's your responsibility to think about what happened

01:32:56.620 over the skies of Europe with the Eighth Air Force or Normandy or Saipan, this nation that in the

01:33:01.360 revolution, the Civil War, we've gotten ahead because not leaders and not the elites, the American

01:33:06.900 common man and woman were next man up. And if we do that now, we're going to be fine. And trust me,

01:33:12.780 they're looking for a fight. They are they are sick of what's going on in this country. And last night

01:33:18.640 and just having the mass ripped off it and to have all these people for so long cover it up and hide it.

01:33:25.140 They saw the quite frankly, the cadaver. And it was scary. And I think people are saying now we're

01:33:31.060 not going to tolerate this anymore. We're going to fight for our country. So, hey, for me, it's

01:33:34.760 always been like Nelson and Scipio Africana, some victory or death. So this doesn't doesn't faze me

01:33:40.820 one bit. Well, you're going to Connecticut. That's where I live. I'll come by and pay you a visit,

01:33:45.740 find out how it's going. I have to tell you, I blame myself. No sooner do I go on camera saying

01:33:50.480 we need Steve Bannon. Later that afternoon, the headline is Steve Bannon is going to jail.

01:33:55.360 I'm at my power, Steve. I had no idea. I'm sorry.

01:33:59.580 That's OK. No, timing. No, by the way, I'm not having any visitors. I'm not getting any mail.

01:34:04.480 I'm not. I've got a 24. I spend 20 hours a day working on the show or with other groups like get

01:34:10.720 out the vote and people to stop the steal. So that will all somehow continue. I'm not there to,

01:34:16.500 you know, contemplate my future. I'm there to work as hard every day as I work to make sure

01:34:21.260 President Trump gets back in. And it's importantly that we get we take the Senate. We increase our

01:34:27.240 percentage in the House. We take state legislatures. We take school boards back,

01:34:31.160 which are vitally important. Take town. I got to go because I literally have 29 seconds till we get

01:34:35.680 cut off. Quick, quick, quick. Last question. Who should be the VP for Trump?

01:34:40.440 It's I'm indifferent. Totally. I would love I'd love to have a woman, but it looks like it's not going

01:34:44.720 that way. I had I had a long list of women, but it looks like it's going to happen. So

01:34:48.380 I'm indifferent. Fascinating. OK, Steve, what a pleasure. Thanks for being here and all the best

01:34:53.760 to you. Good luck. Thank you, ma'am. What a week. Wow. We're back on Monday with Charlie

01:34:59.240 Clark. Charlie Kirk. Send me an email. Megan at Megan Kelly dot com.

01:35:07.820 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - June 28, 2024

Steve Bannon on Biden's Cognitive Decline as National Security Threat, Fighting Lawfare Against Trump, and Preparing For Prison ｜ Ep. 826

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