The Megyn Kelly Show - Terror in Texas and a Possible Clinton Comeback, with Monica Crowley and Briahna Joy Gray

00:00:00.580 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.960 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, and boy do we have a good one for you today.

00:00:17.700 We are going to kick it off without further ado with one of my old pals, Monica Crowley.

00:00:22.680 Yes, we got to get to know each other at Fox News for over a number of years, and then she went to work for the Trump administration, specifically for the Treasury Department.

00:00:33.340 And she's got thoughts on what we're going through right now as a nation when it comes to inflation, when it comes to the economy, which are the most important issues to the voters right now, but are getting precious little, if any, attention from our president and his administration.

00:00:50.220 This, and we're going to get to that in one second, but this, as we learn new details about this awful hostage situation that happened down in Texas over the weekend, which I will bring to you.

00:01:02.360 Monica, thank you so much for being here.

00:01:04.420 Megan, it's such a joy to join you and be back on the air with you, my friend. Congratulations.

00:01:09.480 The show is a huge success, and I'm so happy to be part of it.

00:01:13.180 Thank you, my dear. I missed seeing your beautiful face and hearing your brilliant thoughts.

00:01:17.440 And this is actually right up your alley. I mean, the news today, I was like, my God, we got lucky because it's tailor-made for you.

00:01:23.160 Let's kick it off with what happened at the synagogue down in Texas, about 27 miles outside of Dallas, and we're learning new details today on the suspect.

00:01:30.840 For the audience members who do not know about the story or the specifics, basically, there's a synagogue called the Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue.

00:01:39.420 It's in Colleyville, Texas, half hour from Dallas. A man named Malik Faisal Akram from the United Kingdom, 44 years old, came to America about two weeks ago, lived in a homeless shelter, then emerged, bought a gun on the street, according to President Biden.

00:01:55.260 That's what he said, and went into the synagogue.

00:01:58.080 It's actually just so sad, in a way, Monica. You know, it shows the goodness of those inside the synagogue.

00:02:03.880 This guy comes up, he knocks on the window, the rabbi lets him in, welcomes him, gives him a cup of tea, sits down, have a cup of tea with him.

00:02:13.940 And then the guy raided the services at 11 a.m. while people were praying for people taken hostage, 12-hour standoff.

00:02:21.100 Eventually, the FBI, to its credit, killed the gunman, and no one else lost their life.

00:02:26.540 OK, but the headlines today are, and by the way, two others are now in custody over in the U.K., two teenagers, they say, though.

00:02:33.360 So the plot may be growing, may be wider than just this guy, the unconfirmed.

00:02:38.080 OK, they, people are asking this morning how this guy got into the United States.

00:02:42.500 Apparently, he did have a criminal history in the U.K. Again, he's a 44-year-old man.

00:02:45.840 He had a criminal history in the U.K., and these tourist visas he was here on are supposed to be off-limits to foreigners who have broken the law.

00:02:54.400 And not only was he a convicted criminal over there, but they are now reporting that he was known to MI5,

00:03:01.320 and he was the subject of an investigation as recently as late 2020.

00:03:05.900 But by the time he flew to America, he was no longer subject to an investigation over there.

00:03:10.220 So you tell me what he was doing in the United States and why this guy got a visa.

00:03:15.840 So that's the critical question, Megan, and a full investigation has got to take place that is clean and honest.

00:03:22.480 And we know that the FBI in recent years has experienced a lot of controversy and upheaval and tumult for very good reason.

00:03:30.760 The FBI, at least at the leadership level, and some would argue even further down, has largely been politicized.

00:03:38.260 And we also know that law enforcement at all levels, including the FBI, has been sort of hijacked by woke philosophy and this woke culture.

00:03:49.080 And you can't talk about certain classes of criminals because it's politically incorrect.

00:03:53.980 Well, we know the result of that, and that is rising crime, rising events like this.

00:03:58.960 That could very well be part of an international jihadi plot because you do have these two individuals in the UK who've been arrested as part of this.

00:04:07.860 So we know that when woke philosophy and thinking turns into woke action, particularly with the military and law enforcement, you have a serious problem.

00:04:17.760 And this is the result of what we're seeing.

00:04:20.740 So very, very obvious and I think serious question needs to be asked.

00:04:25.780 How did this individual get into the country where, as you point out, he had a criminal history in the UK?

00:04:32.080 He was known to the UK intelligence agencies.

00:04:36.280 The FBI so far has not indicated whether or not this man was known to them.

00:04:40.900 But I think we can make a pretty good guess about that.

00:04:44.040 So how did he get in?

00:04:45.440 Well, Megan, what we do know is that one of the very first things President Biden did when he entered office was revoke multiple Trump orders of enhanced vetting of foreign nationals coming into the United States.

00:05:01.400 So Trump put into place all kinds of restrictions to come in to make sure that foreign nationals were vetted in the most extreme kind of way.

00:05:10.760 So we weren't letting individuals like this into the country.

00:05:13.940 There's a reason why President Trump didn't have these kinds of attacks when he was president.

00:05:19.400 So the question that everybody should be asking and should be central to any investigation here is, was President Biden's revocation of those Trump era policies on extreme vetting of these foreign nationals?

00:05:34.220 Did that play a role in allowing this man in to commit this crime?

00:05:39.280 Mm hmm. Well, we we need answers with the FBI can't stay silent.

00:05:44.660 Why are the British authorities speaking out about this guy having been investigated by them?

00:05:48.780 But our FBI has said nothing.

00:05:51.780 They won't confirm whether they knew or didn't know so far.

00:05:54.480 And this is after they botched their messaging about this over the weekend, which we can get to in a second.

00:05:59.380 But just want to stay on the latest for right now.

00:06:02.440 Accordingly, according to the Daily Mail and the BBC, this reporting and my five investigates around 3000 subjects of interest and has about 600 live investigations at any given time.

00:06:13.320 All right. So about 3000 subjects on their radar.

00:06:15.900 This guy no longer was, but it wasn't so long ago he'd been on there.

00:06:19.960 There are about 40,000 closed subject of interest cases.

00:06:24.360 And the FBI will not say whether this guy was on our radar at all.

00:06:28.440 So if he had recently been investigated and had a criminal record, the question is, how?

00:06:35.440 How could how could we not know?

00:06:36.740 Because the tourist visa that he applied for and got are it's supposed to be off limits to foreigners who have criminal records.

00:06:42.760 But what I read in the Daily Mail is that they had gone through sort of a bunch of organizations to figure this out.

00:06:50.800 We apparently do ask applicants if they have a criminal record and our Web site claims that we're going to check to see if they have undisclosed criminal convictions.

00:06:59.360 But it appears we might not actually do it because we don't have access to criminal records in the UK's criminal database.

00:07:07.240 So it requires coordination between the two governments, which I don't know if it happened here.

00:07:11.620 There's a there's an MP over there in England saying there seems to have been a dreadful error at the UK and US borders caused by an intelligence failure.

00:07:20.500 And it has to be investigated right away.

00:07:22.940 You know, Megan, every time we hear of an attack here on the homeland or even abroad somewhere in Western Europe, we all pull our hair out and say, how could this have happened?

00:07:33.220 Well, now we've got a different context in the United States because we have a different president in President Biden, and he has chosen a couple of routes.

00:07:42.140 Number one, a catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving Americans behind and creating a power vacuum into which the world's worst bad guys are now entering, including Iran, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, China, Russia, you name it.

00:07:58.540 So that now is the staging of area once again for these kinds of terrorists.

00:08:03.740 Then you couple that with the wide open border and the kind of lax immigration policies that we're describing here in this context.

00:08:11.260 And you have a recipe for these kinds of terrorist attacks within and on our homeland.

00:08:17.880 That's point number one. Point number two, Megan, this is really critical.

00:08:22.160 How many times have we said after an attack like this, I can't believe after 9-11 this is still going on.

00:08:28.660 So after 9-11, we had the 9-11 Commission, and they had two major points that came out of that massive investigation.

00:08:37.920 One was to get Western countries to work together to flag individuals and terrorist organizations so that they could, the UK, for example, could communicate with our intelligence agencies and flag an individual like this.

00:08:53.700 That was number one. Number two, here at home, was to lower the wall between our intel agencies and our law enforcement agencies like the FBI.

00:09:04.920 And once we stood up the Department of Homeland Security, that agency as well.

00:09:09.460 Lower the wall that separated those two so that they could more easily communicate about potential threats here at home.

00:09:17.360 So after that, we were told that both of those things happened.

00:09:23.000 Now, maybe they did, but maybe not to the extent that we need.

00:09:27.620 I know President Trump really tried to resolve that and fix it and get it to a place where we weren't having these kinds of threats.

00:09:34.820 But if those walls have gone back up and if there is gross inefficiency in the way countries are talking to each other and intel and and and law enforcement agencies are talking to each other, well, that better be fixed.

00:09:50.740 And it better be fixed stat because American lives are on the line.

00:09:54.600 Right. Because you have, as you point out, the Biden administration day one, you know, Joe Biden rescinding these Trump executive orders that would have taken a hard look at anybody with criminal past or suspected to be linked with terrorists trying to get into this country.

00:10:09.660 That's why MI5 was investigating the guy. It wasn't that that wasn't a pure law enforcement investigation.

00:10:15.220 That's an intel organization trying to figure out whether this guy is up to a broader no good than just petty crime.

00:10:22.620 And, you know, maybe we'll learn more from the fact that they have two people in custody over there right now.

00:10:27.200 But the FBI's own messaging on this undermined public trust and and made you believe these guys don't get it.

00:10:34.960 You know, are we more interested in being PC than we are in actually getting to the bottom of what could have been a horrific attack on this synagogue?

00:10:43.880 I mean, I'll give the FBI agents on the ground credit for stopping this guy.

00:10:47.960 You know, one person died and it was the shooter, the kidnapper.

00:10:51.980 But in any event, the guy who comes out and gives the statement, the first statement on this special agent in charge, Matt DeSarno, says, quote,

00:10:57.960 We do believe this is Saturday from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue.

00:11:04.420 And it was not specifically related to the Jewish community.

00:11:07.620 But we're continuing to work to find motive and will continue on that path.

00:11:10.640 Well, by 24 hours later, they had to reverse themselves because it was clear the man who stormed the synagogue, the Jewish synagogue,

00:11:17.940 and held four people, including the rabbi hostage while spewing anti-Semitic remarks was he did have anti-Semitism on the mind.

00:11:27.380 And they knew that on Saturday because the guy had made clear he was there to get this Pakistani terrorist released from custody.

00:11:37.600 She's being held apparently in Texas.

00:11:40.200 And her name is Aifa Siddiqui.

00:11:43.520 This woman's not good.

00:11:45.140 She is currently serving an 86 year sentence in this Texas facility.

00:11:50.220 She was convicted back in 2010 of attempted murder, et cetera, in Afghanistan.

00:11:53.560 They called her Lady Al Qaeda.

00:11:56.380 She was once on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list.

00:11:59.280 Not unlike the guy who knocked on the synagogue window and got offered tea by the rabbi and welcomed in and then hurt the people who were praying.

00:12:06.420 This woman came to America, was educated at MIT and got her doctorate at Brandeis.

00:12:11.400 America opens its arms.

00:12:13.060 We welcome these people.

00:12:14.480 Right.

00:12:14.700 It's like, come on in.

00:12:16.360 And then she totally betrays.

00:12:17.980 She got arrested in Afghanistan carrying sodium cyanide, as well as documents describing how to make chemical weapons, how to make dirty bombs, how to weaponize Ebola.

00:12:27.540 Preet Bharara, who prosecuted her, said she wanted to blow up the Statue of Liberty in Grand Central Station.

00:12:32.240 She said, quote, I want to kill as many effing Americans as I can.

00:12:35.280 What a lovely person.

00:12:36.180 Then she attempted to shoot FBI agents and military men who are questioning her in Afghanistan that got her convicted back in the States.

00:12:43.920 And at her trial, she demanded that all jurors and attorneys get DNA tested to make sure that there wasn't a drop of Jewish blood among them.

00:12:50.980 So this is this guy's cause to left.

00:12:52.920 This is why he was in the synagogue to protest her incarceration.

00:12:56.220 And we have our FBI and then the AP repeating the headline and quite a few running with.

00:13:01.360 Well, we don't know what the motivation was.

00:13:02.640 Well, it seems pretty clear.

00:13:03.540 Yes. And we have seen this over and over again.

00:13:07.940 Like it's some big mystery, Megan, as to what their motivation is.

00:13:12.480 Jew hatred, the hatred of the West, the hatred of the infidel is central to Islamist philosophy and belief.

00:13:20.880 And frankly, central to Islamist, radical Islamist action as well.

00:13:26.400 So we're all here in the West 20 plus years after 9-11 still scratching our heads, at least publicly, saying,

00:13:33.160 Gosh, golly, I can't understand why this person would act this way.

00:13:37.180 Why would they target a synagogue?

00:13:38.940 Why would they be screaming, screaming jihadi slogans and so on?

00:13:42.840 It's pretty obvious.

00:13:44.180 And you know what?

00:13:44.740 It's obvious to the American people.

00:13:46.760 They understand.

00:13:48.060 They live through 9-11.

00:13:49.940 They get it.

00:13:50.680 It's common sense.

00:13:52.120 And yet our law enforcement agencies, as well as our military now, to get to my earlier point, they're shot through with woke leadership.

00:14:00.840 They're shot through with this kind of woke philosophy that is damaging their mission.

00:14:06.500 Their mission is to keep the United States, the American people, and America's interests safe and protected, and to advance those interests whenever possible.

00:14:17.680 Instead, they're so bogged down in, it's not even politically correct anymore.

00:14:22.960 It's this dangerous, Marxist, control-oriented language and view that is actually undermining the United States from within.

00:14:33.840 The AP got hit because they just repeated that FBI quote unquestioningly.

00:14:39.860 And I understand as a press member, it's not really your business to restate what the FBI stated.

00:14:46.520 They're reporting what the FBI is saying.

00:14:48.840 But a dose of skepticism was in order given the circumstances that we were watching.

00:14:54.380 And apparently early on on Saturday, they knew this was about freeing this Pakistani terrorist who hates Jews.

00:15:01.860 So some of the reactions online were pretty great.

00:15:06.160 I'll give you one from Isaac Shore of National Review.

00:15:08.660 He writes, sure, for all we know, the guy might have chosen a synagogue because he wanted to spend his last day on Earth hanging out with Jews.

00:15:15.360 Sure, right, that's possible.

00:15:16.900 And the absurdity of like everyone just going with, oh, no, it had nothing to do with anti-Semitism.

00:15:20.500 Kyle Orton writes, this is absolutely absurd from the AP.

00:15:25.160 In an era when the most micro identities receive excess coverage and the most innocent slight can be interpreted as evidence of bias.

00:15:33.300 Even a hostage taking at a synagogue doesn't qualify as hostility to Jews.

00:15:39.480 It's part of the pattern.

00:15:40.680 That's the truth.

00:15:41.340 That's why people are being extra hard on them.

00:15:43.000 Because as Barry Weiss once said to me on this show, Jews don't count.

00:15:47.720 That's what she said.

00:15:48.440 You know, bias against every group matters unless it's whites and in particular Jews because they just they don't rate.

00:15:56.080 They don't count.

00:15:57.820 And they also don't have like strong lobbying efforts with the with the press.

00:16:02.920 And, you know, I would put Christians in that group, too.

00:16:06.340 You know, Christians are very quiet.

00:16:07.800 Christians take a lot of abuse.

00:16:09.700 So do Jews.

00:16:10.620 And yet they don't rate because they're not a protected class in the conversations we all have with the West.

00:16:17.900 And and of course, you know, nobody wants to be called out for going after a protected group like, for example, Muslims.

00:16:26.160 Well, does every Muslim, you know, put on a backpack full of explosives and blow things up or fly planes into buildings?

00:16:32.920 Of course not.

00:16:34.260 But you do have a pattern of behavior when you're talking about the radical is lists that are driven by a specific philosophy.

00:16:42.260 And, you know, Megan, you cannot defeat an enemy unless and until you are willing to call that enemy what it is.

00:16:49.200 If we can't even describe the true nature of the enemy, then we have no hope of defeating them.

00:16:55.020 So the Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, she decided early on that this case, even though it had already been reported that this guy was there to try to get this Pakistani terrorist who's all about hating America and Jews freed.

00:17:11.080 That's why he was there.

00:17:12.000 He was uttering anti-Semitic statements.

00:17:13.680 He was at a synagogue, hello, and had taken worshipers and the rabbi hostage.

00:17:19.120 Knowing all that, she goes on TV and blames white supremacy.

00:17:23.280 OK, not Muslim, radical Muslim terrorism, but white supremacy.

00:17:27.740 I think we have that clip.

00:17:29.480 Let's listen.

00:17:30.240 My biggest concern, hearing that it's at a synagogue, is that this is someone who's intent on committing hate crimes and an act of domestic terrorism.

00:17:42.900 We have seen an incredible rise in rhetoric that is anti-Semitic being trafficked all around the country because we were seeing an exponential rise in hate crimes and an exponential rise in the formation and the membership of these extremist organizations,

00:17:58.380 many of which are white supremacy organizations, and they traffic in hatred against Jews and other minorities.

00:18:05.880 If it does turn out that that is the motivating factor here, it would hardly be a surprise.

00:18:11.920 She goes right to it.

00:18:13.120 It's got to be domestic terrorism, white supremacists, extremists in this country.

00:18:19.880 That's exactly what Joe Biden said, by the way, on Saturday.

00:18:22.240 He said, we still need to learn the motivations, but I will stand against anti-Semitism and the rise of extremism.

00:18:27.980 In this country, hello, he's not from this country.

00:18:32.480 Right, right.

00:18:33.640 And he's not a white supremacist.

00:18:35.480 What she and Biden just did, which is what the left does constantly, is this dishonest and frankly evil indulgence in moral equivalence.

00:18:45.600 That somehow Jew hatred coming out of radical Islamism is the same as maybe like one minor situation in the U.S.

00:18:57.140 that law enforcement has to go deal with.

00:18:59.280 It is not the same thing.

00:19:00.680 The global jihadi movement is not the same thing.

00:19:04.260 And yet they're constantly drawing those comparisons.

00:19:07.940 And whatever white supremacist groups exist in the U.S., Megan, and there are some, nobody is denying that, but they're not on the level of an international jihadi movement that seeks the wholesale destruction of the West.

00:19:22.940 And so to equate those two and to say that they're both on the same level in terms of power and money and resources when the jihadi movement has entire nation states like Iran backing them, it is outrageous.

00:19:37.660 It is dishonest and it is turning Americans into the criminals, right, into the terrorists.

00:19:46.340 That's what Biden's woke FBI is doing.

00:19:48.940 That's what Merrick Garland is doing, whether it's with parents going to school board meetings or whether it's it's somebody going to a MAGA rally to support Donald Trump.

00:19:59.300 Whatever it might be that's done completely legally under the First Amendment, their right to peacefully assemble, their right to free speech, they're equating that with terrorism.

00:20:10.960 And they're doing it to lay the groundwork to actually come after us in a more aggressive kind of way.

00:20:18.580 Don't know what kind of form that's going to take.

00:20:20.960 But trust me when I tell you, they're not saying all of this for their health.

00:20:24.980 I do think they believe it, Megan, but they're saying it for much more nefarious purposes.

00:20:30.640 We all need to be on guard and fight back against it.

00:20:33.940 It's I'm worried for the people of Michigan that they have such a dumbass as their chief law enforcement officer,

00:20:38.500 because it doesn't take two nickels to rub together in between your ears to realize that if the guy is in a synagogue protesting the imprisonment of a Pakistani terrorist known as Lady Al Qaeda,

00:20:49.660 whose main mission at her trial was to keep Jews from the jury and the lawyers pool, it's probably not the white, the domestic white supremacists here.

00:21:00.400 Those folks don't generally protest the imprisonment of Pakistani terrorists like it doesn't.

00:21:07.740 OK, we does it doesn't take that big a leap.

00:21:09.720 Let's open our minds to the many other groups of criminals and bad people who are out there.

00:21:14.120 This one, again, who's now 44 years old and killed by the FBI.

00:21:19.820 So the investigation will continue there.

00:21:21.740 I will say just for the record, when it comes to the president, he was loathe to pronounce a motive, even though we had those circumstances.

00:21:30.440 And I was good with that.

00:21:32.860 I don't think the president of the United States, whether it's Biden, Trump or Obama, who is probably worst of all at this, should be weighing in on these matters until we know what's what.

00:21:42.880 The rest of us, the pundits can do it.

00:21:45.240 The FBI certainly should have had its facts straight and did within 24 hours.

00:21:49.720 But I like it when the president says, I'm not going to weigh in.

00:21:53.520 You know, hope everybody's OK.

00:21:54.760 We'll investigate.

00:21:55.560 OK, we have so much more to get into.

00:21:57.480 Definitely going to get to Monica on inflation now and the latest CBS News poll for Joe Biden.

00:22:03.420 And wait until Monica tells you this is unbelievable.

00:22:06.820 What she believes is the secret Hillary plan to be the 2024 nominee.

00:22:11.760 At first, I was like, this is nuts.

00:22:13.680 Then I read it.

00:22:14.360 I was like, oh, my God, it's brilliant.

00:22:16.560 I think she might be right.

00:22:18.560 It's amazing.

00:22:19.980 And it's next.

00:22:20.620 Don't go away.

00:22:21.080 With me today is Monica Crowley, formerly of Fox News and the Trump administration.

00:22:33.980 And she actually worked for President Nixon for a time to post his time in office, which

00:22:38.220 is another whole cool story about her four years under his tutelage and such a nice guy.

00:22:43.260 And actually, Monica, I didn't realize this.

00:22:44.720 So this is the first time I read this story about you, that when when you were going off

00:22:49.860 to grad school, leaving President Nixon for then former President Nixon, 1994 ish, you

00:22:55.780 asked him for to write you a letter of recommendation.

00:22:58.780 And can you just tell us that story?

00:23:00.180 Because it's cute.

00:23:01.320 What happened?

00:23:02.400 Sure.

00:23:02.720 So it was my first job out of college.

00:23:04.960 And I got it because I took a little initiative.

00:23:07.840 Megan, I know you're always talking about taking some initiative.

00:23:11.560 I read one of his foreign policy books when I was a junior in college, and it just blew

00:23:15.900 me away.

00:23:16.800 So I sat down and I wrote the author a letter.

00:23:19.700 And it's sort of one of the blessings of youth is you never quite think about maybe all

00:23:25.780 of the consequences of your actions.

00:23:27.380 I just thought, you know, I'm going to let this author know that he had really educated

00:23:31.800 and inspired me by writing this book.

00:23:34.120 So I wrote him a letter, happened to be the former president of the United States, never

00:23:39.060 expected a response.

00:23:40.800 But about a month later, I was getting ready to go back to college.

00:23:44.020 And I went to my mother's mailbox, and there was a handwritten note from Richard Nixon in my

00:23:49.040 mailbox.

00:23:50.220 And that just set my entire life and career on a whole other trajectory.

00:23:54.480 But when I started working with him, I realized I needed an advanced degree.

00:24:00.080 And Megan, as an attorney, you'll really appreciate this story.

00:24:03.000 I was set to go to law school.

00:24:04.780 I was accepted at Villanova Law.

00:24:07.200 I was holding my place there.

00:24:09.320 And I was just going to work for President Nixon for the summer, then go to law school.

00:24:13.760 And one day he sat me down and he took his glasses off and he pointed at me and he said,

00:24:18.480 Monica, we have something very important to talk about.

00:24:20.860 And I said, yes, sir, what is it?

00:24:22.320 And he said, you're not going to law school.

00:24:24.960 And I said, excuse me?

00:24:26.680 And he said, Monica, I'm a lawyer.

00:24:29.260 The country has enough lawyers.

00:24:31.240 We don't need another one who has no passion for the law and really doesn't want to practice.

00:24:36.580 He said, it's clear to me that your main passion is American foreign policy and national security.

00:24:41.820 So why don't you go to graduate school and study that instead?

00:24:45.220 So Megan, that was the single best piece of advice I've ever gotten in my life, my career.

00:24:50.340 But when I was applying to graduate schools, I wanted my boss, my mentor, my friend, President Nixon, to write me a letter of recommendation.

00:25:00.220 And I was only applying to a couple of schools because I wanted to continue working with him.

00:25:05.120 So I was applying to Columbia and Princeton and a couple of others.

00:25:10.240 And I came to him and I asked him and he kind of looked at me with a wry smile, sized me up and down.

00:25:17.160 And he said, kid, have a seat.

00:25:18.920 I said, OK.

00:25:20.180 And I sat down and he said, Monica, I'm really honored and flattered that you would ask me to write this letter for you.

00:25:27.720 He said, but given where you're applying, he said, I don't think a letter for me is going to help you.

00:25:35.140 And in fact, I think it's going to hurt your chances.

00:25:38.340 And that would be the last thing that I would ever want to do.

00:25:42.540 So I said, no, no, Mr. President, no, no.

00:25:44.600 And he said, go home and sleep on it tonight.

00:25:46.900 You're not going to hurt my feelings.

00:25:48.700 Come back in the morning and tell me what you've decided.

00:25:51.340 So Megan, the next morning I came back.

00:25:53.260 I thought about it.

00:25:54.180 I prayed on it and I said, you know what, you are my mentor.

00:25:58.200 You're the former president of the United States.

00:26:00.340 And most importantly, you are my friend.

00:26:02.740 And I would be honored if you would write me a letter of recommendation.

00:26:07.200 So he smiled, wrote me a beautiful one.

00:26:09.760 And I ended up going to Columbia, getting two master's degrees and a PhD from there.

00:26:14.720 I love it.

00:26:15.200 So Columbia had no problem back then.

00:26:17.040 That was probably a different type of Columbia than we have than we have today.

00:26:19.800 Just the fact that you'd been at Fox News would have eliminated you if you ever played

00:26:24.560 there.

00:26:25.560 Not that you had been at that young age.

00:26:27.420 But in any event, I love that story.

00:26:29.580 And I love hearing like he he was so vilified.

00:26:33.840 Of course, all the president's men, these reporters today are still trying to get their

00:26:37.460 all the president's men moment, as long as it's a Republican in there, never when it's

00:26:41.840 a Democrat in there.

00:26:42.660 Right.

00:26:43.500 That's right.

00:26:44.360 But he did a lot of great things for the country.

00:26:45.860 So I love that he was your mentor.

00:26:47.100 OK, Joe Biden, he's not quite in the trouble that Richard Nixon was at the end of his term,

00:26:53.340 but he's in serious trouble.

00:26:55.240 It's not the impeachment kind, but it is the I don't get reelected kind.

00:27:00.240 Last week, we closed out the show by talking about the what appears to be, I guess, an outlier

00:27:04.740 poll from Quinnipiac putting his approval rating at thirty three percent.

00:27:08.840 Now there's one from it's CBS News slash YouGov, 44 percent approval.

00:27:14.900 OK, but let me just give you a couple of the line items in this latest poll.

00:27:20.440 Fifty percent of American voters say they are frustrated with his presidency.

00:27:24.400 Forty nine percent disappointed.

00:27:26.360 Forty percent are nervous.

00:27:28.460 Sixty two percent disapprove of how he's handling the economy.

00:27:32.720 Sixty two inflation.

00:27:35.920 How do they think he's handling that?

00:27:37.520 Seventy percent of the American public disapproves.

00:27:40.560 You've been saying for weeks now, this is it.

00:27:42.460 This is the issue.

00:27:43.120 Hello. Hello. It's another version of it's the economy.

00:27:45.160 Stupid. Do you feel he is focusing enough on the economy?

00:27:49.620 Fifty eight percent say he is not.

00:27:52.100 Is he focusing enough on inflation?

00:27:54.160 Sixty percent say he is not it.

00:27:57.880 And by the way, how's he dealing with covid?

00:28:01.480 Sixty four percent of the American public says badly.

00:28:04.140 So it's like it covid, the economy, inflation, they're frustrated, they're disappointed.

00:28:10.840 Some are nervous.

00:28:11.920 And that inflation number of seven percent year to year, which is a 40 year high.

00:28:17.620 You tell me how he gets that down, because if he doesn't get that down, I've heard even top Democrats say he's dead in the water.

00:28:23.800 Yes, I frankly think he's dead in the water now.

00:28:28.460 Nothing is impossible in American politics.

00:28:31.460 So comebacks are always possible.

00:28:33.560 Rebounds are.

00:28:34.900 But it would require a significant course correction by this president and his administration.

00:28:40.200 And I just don't see that in the cards, Megan.

00:28:43.280 Tomorrow, he's going to do a press conference.

00:28:46.180 I can imagine that it's going to be largely scripted.

00:28:49.400 I can imagine that most of the journalists in there are going to have to submit their questions ahead of time,

00:28:55.180 simply because it's clear he's got serious cognitive challenges.

00:29:01.060 Most of the time he's confused and he doesn't he doesn't really stay on point.

00:29:05.800 So I can imagine what you're going to see tomorrow is largely a show that's sort of been rehearsed, if not already well scripted.

00:29:14.600 The problem is for him that all of the energy and activism in his party are on the radical left.

00:29:24.320 So even if he wanted to change course, people in his own party would seek to undermine him and torpedo any kind of movement to the center.

00:29:34.240 Remember, in 2020, he campaigned as a moderate, which I didn't believe.

00:29:39.620 But I guess a lot of people bought that act.

00:29:42.020 They kept him in the basement.

00:29:43.440 So he really couldn't be questioned that extensively.

00:29:47.240 And so I think a lot of people expected that he would govern as a as a moderate, sort of the Joe Biden of his Senate years.

00:29:55.640 And that's why you're seeing the huge drop in his numbers, because not only is it poor performance policy wise, their lives are not better.

00:30:06.580 Americans' lives are much worse than they were under Donald Trump.

00:30:10.740 So it is it is a direct result of their lives being in worse shape, but also the discrepancy between what they expected Biden to be and the actual performance as president.

00:30:25.680 So you're seeing that reflected in the poll numbers across the board.

00:30:29.900 And we can talk more about the economy if you want.

00:30:33.500 Once inflation gets so entrenched as it appears to be now, Megan, it is a very, very difficult and painful proposition to root it back out.

00:30:44.580 We saw it in the early 1980s when President Reagan came into office.

00:30:49.660 Inflation spiked.

00:30:51.680 It was completely out of control.

00:30:55.080 And Reagan and his Fed chair, Paul Volcker, raised interest rates to like 18, 20 percent.

00:31:01.740 You got a massive recession.

00:31:03.700 It was extremely painful.

00:31:05.500 But that was the only way to mop up the excess money in the system and rein inflation back in.

00:31:11.760 They were successful.

00:31:12.880 And then we got a booming economy.

00:31:14.580 But that acute period of time where you have to go through some painful policies in order to get the economy back on track, it looks like that's what we're facing.

00:31:24.640 And that should worry every American.

00:31:27.300 Here's what's crazy.

00:31:28.220 If you're Joe Biden and you realize you're heading for a midterm election where you're you're going to lose the House and you could lose the Senate and you are every day facing a more dismal prospect of being reelected.

00:31:40.940 What do you do?

00:31:41.860 How do you shore up your numbers?

00:31:44.580 Do you tout a voting rights bill that's got zero chance of passing?

00:31:50.820 I wouldn't think so, but that's what he's done.

00:31:52.960 Do you say I'm going to go back to get Build Back Better pushed through?

00:31:57.060 Well, let's look at that CBS poll I just mentioned.

00:31:59.940 Is that what people want?

00:32:01.800 Your opinion of Joe Biden would improve if he passes BBB.

00:32:05.860 Seventy six percent disagreed.

00:32:07.720 No, this is not going to improve his number.

00:32:10.040 He can't do it.

00:32:11.200 He's he doesn't have the support.

00:32:12.700 Joe Manchin's being that clear.

00:32:13.600 But B, that's not what people want.

00:32:16.120 They don't believe that that's going to solve any of their problems.

00:32:18.400 And they're right.

00:32:19.260 And then or C, would you start touting police reform again?

00:32:25.360 Because that's what he's doing.

00:32:28.120 He's now planning executive action on police reform, though he hasn't said what.

00:32:33.520 There's some speculation that's an attempt to build back up his numbers with black voters

00:32:37.380 who supported him 78 percent in April.

00:32:39.840 Now it's down to 57 percent.

00:32:41.600 Black voters don't want the kind of police reform that Joe Biden's been pushing.

00:32:44.360 They don't.

00:32:45.400 The numbers show they they do not want defunding the police.

00:32:48.500 They don't like the chokeholds and they don't like the no knock warrants.

00:32:52.580 But the DOJ has already restricted that.

00:32:54.380 That's done.

00:32:55.060 OK, so they're already he's already cracked down on that.

00:32:57.560 You ask black voters how they feel about defunding the police.

00:33:02.320 I'll give you.

00:33:03.220 Here's a poll just out of Minneapolis where they tried to do this.

00:33:05.900 Three quarters of black voters said the city should not reduce its police force.

00:33:11.400 Black voters were considerably more opposed to the idea of.

00:33:14.360 Then white voters voters were same thing happened in Detroit.

00:33:18.540 Black respondents named public safety as their top concern.

00:33:21.840 They ranked police reform last.

00:33:25.340 The people who want to defund the police are upper west side white women wearing Lululemon

00:33:29.940 who live in high rise buildings and don't have to worry about crime.

00:33:33.340 What is he thinking?

00:33:34.600 None of these things is going to move his numbers in the direction he wants.

00:33:37.900 That's exactly right.

00:33:39.060 Senator Tim Scott actually put forward last year, 2020 rather, after George Floyd, he put

00:33:47.340 forth a police reform bill that was very responsible, had a lot of really good reforms in there on

00:33:54.880 the headlocks and some other things.

00:33:56.620 And the Democrats killed it.

00:33:57.900 So when you talk about these things, Megan, you have to understand Democrats right now,

00:34:03.340 this is not the party of JFK or Bill Clinton.

00:34:06.920 This is a radical party made up or at least driven by the revolutionaries that want a whole

00:34:14.200 revolution in the country.

00:34:16.000 So they want to tear down the existing system, whether it's on police, military, the economy,

00:34:22.640 you name it.

00:34:23.480 They want a completely different country, what Obama once called the fundamental transformation

00:34:28.000 of the nation.

00:34:29.060 So when we talk about this stuff, it's not about policies that actually work for the American

00:34:34.400 people, again, on the economy or policing or whatever.

00:34:37.740 It is about power and control away from you for them.

00:34:42.200 You know, when you mentioned the polling of Black communities, of course, they want some

00:34:48.480 reform, but they don't want a wholesale defunding of their police departments.

00:34:53.360 Why?

00:34:53.880 Because they're the ones bearing the brunt of rising crime, particularly rising violent

00:34:59.680 crime.

00:35:00.320 It's their communities getting decimated.

00:35:02.840 They see it.

00:35:03.940 They have to live it every day.

00:35:05.820 Unlike the elite ruling class that talks about this in ideological terms and has the

00:35:12.180 press, then amplify those messages.

00:35:15.560 So it's virtue signaling and power and control all mixed in one toxic, corrupt ball.

00:35:23.840 So the Democrats are now starting to get scared about forget 2022, about 2024 and the White

00:35:30.600 House and what they're going to do, because they've got, you know, an aged president who,

00:35:36.000 you know, he I agree with you, is facing some cognitive challenges.

00:35:39.100 I heard somebody say it was a joke, but it was kind of funny.

00:35:41.380 They said something like it's been a no good, horrible, terrible, very bad week for President

00:35:44.660 Biden.

00:35:45.260 On the bright side, he's not aware of any of it.

00:35:49.560 Sad but true.

00:35:51.080 OK, so forgive me.

00:35:52.560 It was kind of funny.

00:35:54.420 So you have a theory about how the because we heard Doug Schoen say Hillary's coming back.

00:36:01.660 She's she thinks she can do it and she's going to try.

00:36:04.760 And we've heard more and more people now.

00:36:06.420 I bet we're going to hear from Dick Morris dot com soon that Hillary's coming back.

00:36:10.740 And but you have a I think a really interesting and plausible theory as to how they're going

00:36:15.440 to do it.

00:36:15.920 Explain.

00:36:17.100 So thank you, Megan.

00:36:18.140 I wrote a column last week in The New York Post and it's up at The New York Post and also

00:36:22.700 on my Instagram at Monica Crowley underscore.

00:36:25.460 So you can see it there as well.

00:36:26.740 And I, you know, I have been observing and talking about this woman now for longer than

00:36:33.140 I care to admit, Megan.

00:36:34.560 And I think I know her and her husband and how they think and how they operate pretty

00:36:40.080 well.

00:36:40.580 So I have noticed that Mrs. Clinton is giving a lot of interviews lately.

00:36:46.380 She has also warned the Democratic Party against this radical embrace of of the far left,

00:36:52.780 the Marxists in their party and so on.

00:36:55.140 Um, she also has been having her inner circle try to clean themselves up.

00:37:01.040 So, you know, Bill might be beyond repair in the Me Too era, but he is still out there

00:37:06.620 talking about the Clinton Foundation and their work.

00:37:09.440 Most interesting to me is Huma Abedin, who is her longtime confidant and assistant who has

00:37:16.460 now written a memoir about her life with serial sexster and General Letch, Anthony Weiner.

00:37:22.460 She's given these sympathetic interviews.

00:37:25.200 This strikes me as a cleanup operation, getting Mrs.

00:37:29.200 Clinton ready for a new act, another chapter.

00:37:33.160 And what I propose in the piece, which I realize is going to sound far fetched and it may very

00:37:38.740 well be.

00:37:39.520 And I could be wrong.

00:37:40.580 But don't put it past the Democrats to say, look, we have a very difficult situation facing

00:37:47.700 us for 24.

00:37:49.300 Biden, nobody realistically believes he is running.

00:37:52.640 He just he can't.

00:37:53.900 He simply can't physically, mentally, emotionally.

00:37:56.740 And so he can't do it.

00:37:58.560 Your vice president, Kamala Harris, is historically unpopular.

00:38:03.940 Nobody can stand her.

00:38:06.880 And remember, in the 2020 election cycle, she flamed out before a single primary.

00:38:12.460 She was polling at like two or three percent among Democrats.

00:38:15.760 And that's before the entire country got to know her and has rejected her.

00:38:20.960 So if she stays and runs, she's going to sink like a stone like she did last time.

00:38:25.800 What the Democrats might think about doing is moving Kamala out.

00:38:30.800 She will not go quietly.

00:38:32.700 So they'd have to make her an offer she couldn't refuse, like, say, a lateral move to the Supreme

00:38:39.180 Court if they could get Breyer to retire.

00:38:42.100 Not sure any of this is going to happen, Megan, but they would have to give her something lateral

00:38:47.260 or a huge payoff to get her out.

00:38:49.540 That looks like a win.

00:38:51.120 Right.

00:38:51.620 Exactly.

00:38:52.400 Something better for her.

00:38:54.000 And then move Mrs. Clinton into the number two so she could run as an incumbent.

00:38:59.440 That doesn't mean that Mrs. Clinton is not going to face some real challengers.

00:39:03.900 And she will, like Stacey Abrams, for example, perhaps Michelle Obama.

00:39:08.900 And it's going to be this identity politics feeding frenzy if this happens, because if

00:39:14.160 they ditch the first black woman to be in the White House as vice president, they're going

00:39:19.740 to have to try to make that up.

00:39:21.880 You know, live by identity politics, die by identity politics.

00:39:25.360 So she's going to have to bigfoot some of these comers like Stacey Abrams and perhaps

00:39:30.580 some others.

00:39:31.400 But don't put it past Mrs. Clinton.

00:39:33.420 She still has a huge base.

00:39:35.180 She's got a lot of fans out there, particularly among women.

00:39:38.400 And I could see the Democrats and the Clintons working together to try to plot this out.

00:39:44.740 That farming her off to the Supreme Court seat is the most brilliant thing I've heard.

00:39:51.200 She's, of course, she came into, you know, onto the national scene first because she was

00:39:55.600 this rising star attorney general of the state of California.

00:39:58.180 She's been the top law enforcement officer of a state.

00:40:00.980 So she's, you know, presumably familiar with the law.

00:40:04.100 And there's already pressure for Breyer to retire because they don't want a Bader Ginsburg

00:40:09.480 situation where they wind up with a conservative making the choice.

00:40:12.800 And she would be the first black woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:40:20.580 So think I mean, it's just it's brilliant on so many levels.

00:40:23.860 She's got to know she cannot win the presidency.

00:40:25.960 Zero chance of her succeeding there.

00:40:27.680 The Democrats definitely know that.

00:40:29.120 So they cannot have her be the nominee.

00:40:31.140 And Joe Biden.

00:40:31.860 I mean, I think they'd rather run a Joe Biden who had been committed for that 2024 race than

00:40:37.260 a Kamala Harris, because at least he's got a shot.

00:40:40.380 She has no shot.

00:40:41.340 So how do they get rid of her?

00:40:42.440 How do you solve a problem like Kamala?

00:40:44.280 You turf her to the Supreme Court where she might actually be all right for liberals.

00:40:48.460 You know, they might like they might like what she would do up there.

00:40:50.660 And then you replace her with your next best as Biden's number two, who then you're really

00:40:54.980 thinking is going to be your number one.

00:40:56.120 I think this is brilliant.

00:40:57.300 By the way, my team tells me Dick Morris dot com did say that there is a good chance

00:41:02.980 of a 2024 rematch between Hillary and Trump.

00:41:06.940 My head's going to explode.

00:41:09.140 I know it's insane.

00:41:11.520 In a country of 330 million people, Megan, we keep reaching for the same people.

00:41:18.180 Now, maybe they're the best that each party has to offer.

00:41:21.480 We'll figure that out in a primary season.

00:41:24.060 But I mean, I got to tell you, I think there's there are a lot of people around the country

00:41:28.340 who would like to see the next generation kind of step up and take the reins.

00:41:33.320 But none of those people is last named Clinton or Trump or Trump or stand by.

00:41:39.020 Actually, Trump said some interesting things about DeSantis over the weekend.

00:41:42.220 I'll ask you about that next.

00:41:43.760 And don't go away because Monica Crowley is staying with us.

00:41:46.360 And don't forget, folks, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph

00:41:50.480 Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing

00:41:56.080 to our YouTube channel.

00:41:57.340 Would you do me a favor and actually go subscribe there?

00:42:00.380 We are, I think, 6,000 away now from 300,000, which is a good benchmark.

00:42:05.000 We only started this thing really in July.

00:42:08.040 So it'd be great to get to 300,000.

00:42:10.460 Help me do it.

00:42:11.240 Go ahead and subscribe.

00:42:12.480 YouTube.com slash Megan Kelly.

00:42:13.880 If you prefer an audio podcast, go ahead and subscribe.

00:42:17.120 Download an Apple, Spotify, Pandora or Stitcher for free.

00:42:20.780 And there you will find our full archives with more than 240 shows.

00:42:24.560 Trump kind of going after DeSantis.

00:42:34.640 I mean, Trump, it seems like he's getting ready to run.

00:42:36.740 Who knows?

00:42:37.200 Right.

00:42:37.380 He's very good at manipulating the press.

00:42:39.260 So he we kind of tend to believe what he wants us to believe.

00:42:44.020 But knowing Trump, I mean, why wouldn't he run again?

00:42:46.420 Right.

00:42:46.560 He thinks he's going to win.

00:42:47.640 He's obviously the most popular Republican.

00:42:49.520 Um, and he came out this week and according to Axios called DeSantis an ingrate with a dull

00:42:56.240 personality, said he has no personal charisma.

00:42:59.880 At the same time, Trump confidant Roger Stone calls DeSantis a Yale Harvard frat boy, not

00:43:06.040 honest, not going to be president.

00:43:09.220 Then Trump says, you got to say if you've had the booster shot, it's gutless not to.

00:43:14.080 So DeSantis is the person I think he's talking about because DeSantis won't say, he says with

00:43:19.340 respect to the booster when asked, I've done whatever I did, the normal shot.

00:43:23.620 So unclear.

00:43:25.160 Um, so I mean, these two are probably the two, you know, most likely, right, that the names

00:43:30.700 that most often get mentioned.

00:43:32.500 So what do you make of it?

00:43:34.080 Do you think there's a chance DeSantis could actually unseat Trump if they both run for the

00:43:40.520 nomination?

00:43:40.880 Well, I have to say as a lifelong Republican, Megan, who sees the country on fire, I really

00:43:48.780 hate to see infighting in the Republican party, particularly this far out from the presidential

00:43:54.420 primary season and election.

00:43:56.880 That being said, to answer your question, Donald Trump is still the 800 pound gorilla in the

00:44:02.380 Republican party.

00:44:03.520 He controls the party.

00:44:05.360 He controls the base and he's got one thing that no other politician on the scene right

00:44:12.480 now has with the exception, maybe a Barack Obama.

00:44:15.880 And that is an emotional connection with his voters, not talking ideological, not talking

00:44:23.120 about a political connection.

00:44:24.520 I'm talking about an emotional connection.

00:44:27.640 So his voters really believe in him.

00:44:31.320 They I mean, this is sort of what January 6th was all about, that his voters looked at

00:44:36.520 him and saw someone who championed the forgotten man and woman for five years, that he was there

00:44:42.760 fighting for them and delivered for them while he was president.

00:44:46.040 And they then saw a chance to fight for him.

00:44:50.360 Right.

00:44:50.720 So in this dynamic now, he's got an emotional lock on the party, on the conservative movement

00:44:57.460 and on the base, the populist base.

00:45:00.280 So if he chooses to run, he will be the nominee.

00:45:03.800 If he chooses not to run, then the obvious heir to the America First movement is Ron DeSantis.

00:45:10.980 The problem is that, you know, DeSantis has been hugely successful in Florida.

00:45:16.040 He has shown every other governor, both blue and red, the way through COVID, through the

00:45:21.960 economy and so on.

00:45:23.580 So he's got a tremendous track record to run on here if he if he does, frankly.

00:45:29.080 And and I know President Trump doesn't want competition going into the nomination if he

00:45:35.580 runs, but I think competition makes every candidate better, including Donald Trump.

00:45:41.280 Trump had like, what, 20 fellow candidates in 2016.

00:45:46.540 It made him a better candidate.

00:45:48.620 So I say anybody who thinks that they have a shot at this and they want it, they should

00:45:54.120 run, because even if Trump ends up being the nominee, he will be a better general election

00:46:00.320 candidate, having gone through that process and getting beaten up a little bit than if he

00:46:05.740 simply got coronated.

00:46:07.080 And by the way, that applies to the Democratic Party as well.

00:46:11.200 I know, I think it's interesting because you never Trump.

00:46:13.440 You have a very clear idea in your head of who he is and what he is.

00:46:16.920 And you did even when he first ran.

00:46:18.880 Right.

00:46:19.080 It's like Trump's this larger than life P.T.

00:46:21.360 Barnum type figure who's an entertainer and he's dynamic and he's great on television and

00:46:25.020 he is a ratings machine.

00:46:27.760 And so he will collect a lot of attention.

00:46:30.220 And we knew that going in DeSantis.

00:46:32.000 I don't know.

00:46:32.440 I'm not sure Trump, not in every single circumstance, but he's not bad at picking the one thing

00:46:37.440 that's a person's weakness.

00:46:38.640 You know what I mean?

00:46:39.920 And for him to say dull, no charisma, I don't I can't think of what DeSantis sounds like.

00:46:46.840 What's he like in a debate?

00:46:48.000 Is he is he colorful?

00:46:50.000 Do people want boring over Trump like they did when they chose Biden?

00:46:53.900 I don't know.

00:46:55.580 But I think DeSantis should get himself out there more if he doesn't think that label

00:46:59.580 applies, because so far it's sort of like don't really have the clearest image of you

00:47:04.560 and how you are on the stump, have a very clear image of him.

00:47:08.180 And if he runs, I believe Trump runs, it runs.

00:47:12.480 It's his.

00:47:12.840 It's his.

00:47:13.160 There's nobody who can unseat him in the GOP.

00:47:15.040 Monica, what a pleasure.

00:47:16.500 So fun talking to you.

00:47:18.680 You too, Megan.

00:47:19.580 Thank you so much for having me.

00:47:21.880 All right.

00:47:22.160 Come back soon.

00:47:23.000 And don't don't go away, because up next, we're going to be talking to a top Democratic

00:47:26.960 strategist trying out a new midterm.

00:47:30.060 No, well, she's going to talk to us about the new strategist trying out a new midterm

00:47:34.040 slogan by telling Democrats it's not party leaders who suck.

00:47:36.940 It's you.

00:47:37.700 That's next.

00:47:44.220 Senate Democrats are pressing forward today, debating voting rights bills, the move putting

00:47:49.740 heat on Republicans in an election year, sort of.

00:47:52.200 But it's also shining light on divisions within the Democratic Party.

00:47:56.080 Joining me now to discuss that much, much more.

00:47:58.160 Brianna Joy Gray, former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders 2020 and co-host of the Bad

00:48:04.860 Faith podcast.

00:48:06.760 Welcome back, Brianna.

00:48:07.420 Great to have you.

00:48:08.740 Thanks for having me, Megan.

00:48:10.260 OK, so voting rights.

00:48:12.440 We'll get to in one second.

00:48:13.320 And something fascinating happened with Paul Begala on CNN that I've got to ask you about.

00:48:18.700 I couldn't.

00:48:19.280 This is like it's almost like he knew about your podcast and wanted to serve you up your

00:48:24.300 lead.

00:48:24.660 Right.

00:48:25.020 Because when I thought of you when I heard this, like, oh, my God, a this doesn't seem

00:48:28.720 like a winning message.

00:48:29.500 And B, you're really going to tick off many members of your party, namely the people who

00:48:34.160 vote.

00:48:35.180 So here's Paul Begala talking about the problems with the Democratic Party right now.

00:48:40.020 Do you think that's fair criticism?

00:48:42.000 Did President Biden put more effort into getting infrastructure passed, for example?

00:48:46.880 Well, he he got infrastructure passed.

00:48:49.020 And that's a good thing because success can can breed success.

00:48:52.380 He is putting the full force of the presidency behind it.

00:48:54.520 I think the problem for the Democrats right now is it's not that they have bad leaders.

00:48:58.560 They're bad followers.

00:48:59.800 Oh, it's not the president.

00:49:04.900 It's you, Democratic voters.

00:49:06.960 It's you.

00:49:07.960 What do you make of it?

00:49:09.200 It's an incredible clip, you know, and it speaks to the tone deafness has been running

00:49:13.820 for the party for some time.

00:49:15.940 The reality is that some operatives, many of whom I would say have outworn their welcome

00:49:20.940 that have been a lot around since the House and Clinton years, where they really did feel

00:49:24.660 infallible at the ballot box, are still under the mistaken belief that they never have to

00:49:30.760 interrogate whether or not their own behaviors are affecting the voter population.

00:49:35.580 Look, voters across the political spectrum are increasingly disaffected with politicians,

00:49:40.480 according to polls.

00:49:41.340 And it's no surprise when you look at the gap between what average Americans want, regardless

00:49:47.280 of political affiliation and what people in Congress want.

00:49:50.240 And all the deadlock that we see under Democrats is the mirror image of the priorities that

00:49:55.560 happen under Republican administrations that, again, are very disconnected from what average

00:49:59.800 American working class voters want.

00:50:02.360 It's not unlike what what was happening in the Republican Party before Trump, where you

00:50:06.980 had like what's happening now with the Dems.

00:50:09.100 You had this elitist, more establishment group of, you know, with all due respect to Mitt Romney,

00:50:14.160 Mitt Romney types who were, you know, sort of seemed perfect on paper to become president

00:50:21.140 or, you know, be a leader.

00:50:22.620 But really, we're not connecting with the masses, you know, with the Republican working

00:50:27.520 class, the Democrat working class couldn't get those Reagan Democrats back into the fold.

00:50:32.160 And then we had Trump come come on the scene and just completely blow everything up.

00:50:36.400 And he did connect with them.

00:50:37.800 That's how he won.

00:50:38.640 And now it's like the Democrats are the party of the elite, you know, the Harvard educated,

00:50:44.300 we know better than you.

00:50:45.640 And they don't seem all that worried like they used to be about how people are doing in the

00:50:50.820 unions and whether they're earning, you know, a real livable wage and listening to their

00:50:55.760 real complaints as opposed to being like, shut up and vote Democrat.

00:50:59.020 That's what's good for you.

00:51:00.420 Well, there are real structural reasons as to why this has happened, right?

00:51:03.700 There is no party in America that is truly invested in the welfare and growth and strength

00:51:10.920 of unions the way there used to be.

00:51:12.420 Union rights were decimated over the course of the 70s and 80s by Republican administrations.

00:51:17.640 And third way, neoliberal Democrats didn't do much to step in and save them in the 90s

00:51:22.800 and 2000s.

00:51:24.000 And so now one of the most powerful groups that could stand in defense of workers no longer

00:51:29.200 has the political traction that it used to.

00:51:30.940 At the same time, rules around the influence of money and politics have been corrupted to

00:51:36.640 the extent to which the polls show a Princeton study from a few years ago showed that there

00:51:41.960 is almost no relationship, none between the preferences of American voters and politicians

00:51:47.440 because the predominant preferences that are expressed that get through to politicians are

00:51:54.980 those from lobbyists and special interest groups.

00:51:56.960 And that's not that's not helping anybody of any political party or affiliation.

00:52:01.320 Yes.

00:52:01.700 This is why it's funny, because I feel like people on sort of the Bernie Sanders team,

00:52:07.380 you know, whether it's you or crystal ball or I just have big collection are kind of meeting

00:52:13.700 the more working class Republicans.

00:52:15.820 And the Republican Party itself is becoming the party of the working class in a strange place.

00:52:20.380 Like strange bedfellows are being formed here because it seems like now the Democrat Party

00:52:26.200 has become the party of elite that doesn't really care about the Democrats love unions.

00:52:30.260 They love the union bosses.

00:52:31.580 They don't care about the actual workers.

00:52:33.880 Otherwise, they'd be handling it a lot differently.

00:52:36.640 Well, I think I would be really clear about this.

00:52:38.500 Republicans are winning no awards here.

00:52:40.580 It's a it's a race to the bottom.

00:52:42.200 And the Republicans hate unions altogether.

00:52:44.000 Right, right, exactly.

00:52:45.860 So we you know, it is important that at least under Joe Biden, you have, you know, an LRB

00:52:51.280 that's willing to enforce labor laws, for instance, and matters in the labor disputes

00:52:55.140 and the wave of strikes that we've seen across the country.

00:52:57.640 It matters that Amazon is getting a review of the Amazon workers, rather, are getting

00:53:02.980 a review of whether or not their union efforts were unfairly tampered with by the corporation.

00:53:07.560 Those kind of things matter.

00:53:08.660 And that's why it matters to have, you know, Democrats in office as opposed to Republicans.

00:53:12.540 But I don't identify as a Democrat.

00:53:14.120 And part of the reason why is because, you know, better than the other guy isn't serving

00:53:19.020 the people the way it should be.

00:53:20.960 And the reality is that I had a recent episode with Bhatia Ambar Sargan, who has written this

00:53:24.880 really interesting book about how, you know, media, the way that media is covering working

00:53:30.100 class issues has really affected the way that populations see themselves reflected in

00:53:36.040 politicians.

00:53:37.240 And she has a really interesting and important account about how the failure of kind of populist

00:53:41.360 media has results in what we have today.

00:53:43.500 But one thing that her study and her charts in her book reveal is that there is an incredibly

00:53:48.940 elite leadership on the right as well.

00:53:51.280 Papers like The Economist and The Washington Journal have elite audience as well.

00:53:56.320 And while they might have throw, you know, bow into identity politics every now and then,

00:54:01.840 when it comes to core economic and financial commitments, they always align with the 1%.

00:54:06.640 So what we have is two parties that talk about identity, that have these culture wars, in

00:54:11.380 order to distract from the extent to which both parties, leadership in both parties, are

00:54:15.500 ignoring the needs of a worker.

00:54:17.420 Majorities of Republicans want a $15 minimum wage or higher.

00:54:22.680 You know, Florida voted for a $15 minimum wage at the same time it voted for Donald Trump

00:54:26.740 to be president.

00:54:27.600 By 60%, 60% of Florida voted for one of the $15 minimum wage.

00:54:31.240 And as upset as I am that Joe Biden hasn't fought for it, I'm infinitely more disappointed

00:54:36.640 in Republicans who are categorically ignoring what their base wants as well.

00:54:40.800 I mean, I am with you on the need to take a hard look at why people who are working very

00:54:47.420 hard cannot get ahead in this country anymore.

00:54:49.800 The diminishing American dream is a real thing.

00:54:52.820 And we need to be honest about that and how systems need to change.

00:54:56.480 Why do we have these like oligarchs like Jeff Bezos now, right?

00:55:00.720 Like these people at the top of these massive companies who are just swimming in billions

00:55:05.160 of wealth while their workers are toiling away making crap.

00:55:09.180 I mean, they have no lives.

00:55:10.200 They can't see their families.

00:55:11.080 They don't have good vacations.

00:55:12.440 They don't understand why they have to sacrifice yet another day with their kids so that Jeff

00:55:18.240 Bezos can have yet another home.

00:55:19.960 I get that.

00:55:20.840 I totally get that.

00:55:21.840 But I also think I can argue with you about the minimum wage because I think that that

00:55:26.540 leads to the destruction of jobs.

00:55:28.140 I mean, we've seen it happen time after time where companies, especially with these inflation

00:55:31.040 rates, say, I can't do that.

00:55:32.920 Like, I'm not my margins aren't good enough and I'm I'm not going to be able to make it

00:55:36.960 back.

00:55:37.400 And then I'm just going to have to eliminate positions like I can pay my two people $15 an

00:55:41.320 hour, but I could have had 10 at 10 or $9 an hour.

00:55:46.780 Well, when you look at how much money has been earned by our extremely productive workforce,

00:55:50.880 remember, Americans have only gotten more productive over time.

00:55:55.140 Over the last 30 or 40 years, enormous, an enormous percentage, the overwhelming majority

00:55:59.180 of profits from that productivity have gone to the 1%.

00:56:01.840 Yes, here to your point about there not being enough money to go around.

00:56:06.220 It's the issue is that CEOs, corporatists have been able to keep more profits, steal more

00:56:11.700 profits from their workers who are really doing the labor.

00:56:14.100 Well, I agree with you.

00:56:14.940 Like when I look at Jeff Bezos, I want him to pay as much as humanly possible to every

00:56:18.440 Amazon where, you know, when I see these big corporations, but when it's a smaller business,

00:56:22.140 I just think, you know, they're you can't hit them with those kinds of minimums because

00:56:25.620 their margins are just too small.

00:56:27.140 Like the workers will wind up paying.

00:56:29.400 Well, here's some here's some other, you know, this is an interesting conversation because

00:56:33.560 oftentimes these progressive issues are framed as being anti-worker and anti-small business

00:56:37.960 when the reality is, for instance, having Medicare for all, not making small business

00:56:43.360 owners pay the medical costs for their insurers would be the single biggest boom to small business

00:56:49.260 owners in the history that exists, right?

00:56:52.460 The single biggest cost for small business owners is providing health insurance for their

00:56:56.080 employees.

00:56:56.480 And if instead of having to have employers take it out of people's paychecks and then have

00:57:01.540 Americans paying twice as much that compared to any other similarly industrialized country

00:57:06.660 for worse outcomes medically than other industrialized countries, we simply paid half as much as

00:57:12.680 we're paying to health insurance in taxes for a program that is as well run and is admired

00:57:18.400 as Medicare, i.e. Medicare for all.

00:57:20.760 And that's an enormous business saving.

00:57:22.680 And to your point about inflation, it's important to note that inflation right now is not being

00:57:26.260 driven by spending at all.

00:57:27.620 It's being driven by the supply side issues that are caused by COVID.

00:57:30.940 And what's at the root of those?

00:57:32.020 In part.

00:57:32.380 These policies in the nineties have spent so many of our jobs overseas so that we have

00:57:38.700 to import so much.

00:57:39.720 There's no more storage capacity here in America because everyone has tried to cut the margin

00:57:43.800 so slim that CEOs can earn and so that shareholders can earn and be paid dividends at the cost of

00:57:49.280 the American worker.

00:57:50.320 I don't disagree with that either.

00:57:51.720 I don't disagree with that either.

00:57:53.360 Yeah.

00:57:53.560 Shipping all our jobs over to China has had American workers pay real costs on a number of

00:57:59.000 fronts.

00:57:59.800 It's funny.

00:58:00.280 You know, we do like in no world could I vote for Bernie Sanders.

00:58:03.220 I have to be honest.

00:58:03.840 I don't think.

00:58:04.380 But I agree.

00:58:05.740 Whenever I hear you talk, I'm like, I agree with what she's saying.

00:58:07.780 When I hear Crystal talk, I'm like, I agree with that, too.

00:58:10.120 But then, you know, sort of taken to its logical extreme.

00:58:12.800 Some of these things I'm like, that's where I draw the line.

00:58:14.880 But I'm not a Republican.

00:58:16.420 I'm not a Democrat.

00:58:17.000 Just like you either.

00:58:17.740 I'm sort of like who makes sense and who's reasonable.

00:58:19.700 And I do see the country dividing now into people who are rational and irrational, who

00:58:24.440 make sense and who don't make sense.

00:58:26.380 Then for sure there is an elites versus regular people problem that needs to be completely

00:58:32.940 busted open.

00:58:33.640 And it's it's manifest in my industry and your industry more than any other.

00:58:38.420 Right.

00:58:38.640 And when it comes to government politicians and journalists, they're the least trusted

00:58:42.480 among us because they all have their own skin in the game and the consumer knows it.

00:58:47.120 Yeah, I think that's why you're seeing the proliferation of podcasts, independent media

00:58:53.100 shows like Crystal Balls and Sagar and Jetty's really taking off.

00:58:56.560 You see people like yourselves who have had amazing careers in mainstream media, finding

00:59:00.860 platforms and a huge audience on YouTube and these other places because folks are decoupling

00:59:07.300 from the cable box.

00:59:08.340 I don't know anybody in my generation, I'm 36 years old, who has cable, really.

00:59:13.140 We're all just watching the clips on Twitter to the extent that Paul Begula says something

00:59:17.000 ridiculous.

00:59:18.420 And it's partly because there's no we're not reflected there.

00:59:21.720 I remember at certain points during the campaign, certain folks who were pegged as the, you know,

00:59:27.160 progressive spokesperson, the person who's going to speak for progressives on some of

00:59:30.780 these mainstream news outlets would call me and ask, hey, what do the progressives think

00:59:34.840 about X, Y, and Z?

00:59:35.640 What's what's the line?

00:59:37.080 And I would think you could just ask me off.

00:59:39.880 You could just ask what it is for thousands of people who are out here writing articles for

00:59:43.560 progressive outlets, independent news media, all of these people who have these podcasts

00:59:47.340 and this whole infrastructure.

00:59:48.440 You could just let them on your network, but that's not how it works.

00:59:50.940 Many of us have been officially or unofficially blacklisted.

00:59:53.960 And the viewers notice, the viewers notice that they're not reflected and they're looking

00:59:56.980 elsewhere.

00:59:57.920 You know what?

00:59:58.340 It's funny because I live this to an extent at Fox News where so in the same way the mainstream

01:00:03.420 media doesn't like the Bernie supporters and tries to keep those sort of non quote centrist

01:00:08.340 voices off of the air, really what they mean is elite.

01:00:12.000 I mean, that's truly like the people who are going to protect the one percent are the

01:00:14.400 liberals that they want on television.

01:00:16.160 The same thing was happening at Fox where Fox was very pro like chamber of commerce,

01:00:20.620 you know, establishment kind of thing.

01:00:22.240 And Trump, you know, this totally different animal came on the scene.

01:00:25.380 And at first we didn't know what the hell he was for.

01:00:27.340 Right.

01:00:27.560 It was just like China, China.

01:00:29.140 And you're like, well, OK, I don't know.

01:00:30.680 Who knows?

01:00:31.500 It came together and you came to know.

01:00:33.460 But my point is that Roger Ailes at the time said we need to start peppering the air with

01:00:39.280 not just a dem liberal debate, I mean, a dem Republican debate, but with Trump supporters.

01:00:44.800 That's a different thing.

01:00:46.180 It's not the same as the normal contributors we have here from back then, let's say, the

01:00:51.280 weekly standard.

01:00:52.320 It's a different way of looking at politics and our world problems.

01:00:55.340 And we have to start.

01:00:56.240 And a lot of people didn't like that.

01:00:57.980 They were like, oh, yeah, they're good.

01:00:59.020 They're going pro Trump.

01:01:00.080 It's like, no, it's a it's a different strain.

01:01:02.020 Well, the liberal media would never do that.

01:01:04.580 Right.

01:01:04.980 Bernie, Bernie people are persona non grata on those stations.

01:01:08.040 But I do want to say that there, again, is like a structural reason why that happens.

01:01:11.060 It's not just that, you know, Ailes is more open minded than people at MSNBC or CNN.

01:01:18.040 The reality is that although Trump was very smart to speak in populist terms, and there

01:01:23.400 are a lot of people on the right now who are really understanding that there is an appetite

01:01:26.880 for a kind of economic populism in this country, that is purely rhetorical.

01:01:32.020 We all saw that Donald Trump is no advocate for the working people.

01:01:35.760 He implemented this tax cut for the rich, 85 percent of which went to the top one percent

01:01:41.500 didn't help a single working person in America.

01:01:43.700 Right.

01:01:44.480 And let me just ask you, let me stop you on that.

01:01:46.340 Hold that thought, because I will say I was at NBC at the time and they they they made

01:01:51.740 boatloads of dough on that corporate tax cut.

01:01:54.760 Right.

01:01:54.960 But that but they actually but they did get to give a lot of it back to their workers.

01:01:59.100 They actually did give.

01:02:00.360 I mean, there were a lot of companies that shared some of that with their workers, not

01:02:04.440 all of them, but you put more money in the employers.

01:02:08.400 Yeah, go ahead.

01:02:09.320 The reality is that in the 1960s, the average pay gap between a CEO and a worker was 30 to

01:02:15.560 one.

01:02:16.180 Today, it's over 300 to one.

01:02:18.220 So we can't have these conversations about individual outliers and what this person did

01:02:21.340 or what that person did, it's it's true that there's a huge systemic problem here that

01:02:25.480 has been enabled by the changing of our laws to make it easier and easier for the millionaires

01:02:30.040 and billionaires to get richer and for workers to have no rights.

01:02:32.800 And the reality is that the reason that liberals don't allow any of the kind of Bernie voices

01:02:37.900 on TV is because they're at the end of the day is an alignment between the interests

01:02:42.040 of Donald Trump and the corporatists who have always been in charge, regardless of

01:02:45.740 his rhetoric.

01:02:46.300 And I would urge viewers to be really conscious of the fact that a lot of the people who are

01:02:50.200 using a populist rhetoric right now, when you look at their voting records, when you

01:02:53.700 look at what laws are trying to pass, when you look at whether they're actually advocating

01:02:57.060 for material economic changes that are going to benefit their constituents, there's nothing

01:03:02.220 there.

01:03:02.480 It's all, you know, identity politics being played on both sides of the aisle of distracting

01:03:07.000 the fact that there's a real simpatico between the economic elites in both parties.

01:03:11.600 That's fascinating.

01:03:12.700 I mean, I will say Trump, he studied the Rick Santorum book on how to win back jobs for the

01:03:16.940 American manufacturing committee or some either he studied or somebody read it to him, but

01:03:22.720 he became familiar.

01:03:24.580 He's not big on the reading of the books.

01:03:27.300 He became familiar with the plan.

01:03:28.840 He's admitted that.

01:03:29.860 OK, Trump people.

01:03:32.480 And he did try for American manufacturing.

01:03:35.360 I think the trade war with China was, in his mind, a way of fighting back on behalf of

01:03:39.460 American workers.

01:03:40.040 You can argue to the cows come home about whether it worked or it didn't work, but that was

01:03:43.480 for them and the crackdown he would try to do orally, verbally, rhetorically when our

01:03:49.400 companies would move yet another plant out of the United States and Trump would try to

01:03:53.260 shame them publicly into not doing it.

01:03:55.140 Well, who was that for?

01:03:55.840 It was for the United States.

01:03:56.680 It was for the workers.

01:03:58.180 So there were a few, you know, I could go on.

01:04:00.140 But he he did try in a way that you haven't like I didn't see George Bush doing.

01:04:05.420 I think the Republican Party had settled in very comfortably to being more on a different

01:04:09.340 level when it came to those issues.

01:04:10.920 He was smart to do those things rhetorically.

01:04:13.560 But if I recall the specific examples, there was a lot of bluster in a rally house to keep

01:04:17.760 one factory's jobs in one town and then a bunch of policies that basically allowed a

01:04:22.460 bunch of other jobs to be sent overseas when no one was paying attention.

01:04:25.320 And that's what I'm saying.

01:04:26.100 It's very difficult, especially for the average person who doesn't do what we do and like

01:04:29.220 dig glue to Twitter in the news all day to really follow the follow up of what's

01:04:34.380 going on.

01:04:35.060 But when people feel like their dollar isn't going as far, when people feel like their wages

01:04:39.580 haven't kept up with inflation, not just talking about this recent wave of inflation,

01:04:42.620 right?

01:04:42.920 But the fact that we haven't had a minimum wage raise since since Bush was president.

01:04:48.360 This is the longest period of time in American history since FDR got us a minimum wage in

01:04:53.740 the 1930s.

01:04:54.640 But we haven't had a minimum wage.

01:04:56.540 So we're not talking about separate apart from that, though.

01:04:59.700 Can I ask you separate apart from that?

01:05:00.740 I don't really like government mandates telling private business how they must behave.

01:05:04.080 I love a private business that says I will treat you well because it's in my best interest

01:05:08.260 because I want my workers to stay happy and well.

01:05:12.200 And because happy workers are more productive, they stay longer.

01:05:15.360 I get better work product.

01:05:16.460 Then I get better customers.

01:05:17.420 And my bottom line is better.

01:05:18.920 And that to me is the problem with what we've seen with unions and so on.

01:05:22.200 It's like unions were formed because employers weren't treating them people right.

01:05:25.380 So they had to unionize so that they'd have more bargaining power.

01:05:27.920 Then they did that.

01:05:28.880 Then the people at the top of the unions, along with a lot of these Democrat politicians,

01:05:32.200 totally sold them out.

01:05:33.340 So the workers got screwed yet again.

01:05:35.400 And now they're back in a situation where too many corporations in corporate America

01:05:38.920 are screwing them over again, are taking all the spoils from their labors, shoving them

01:05:43.000 in their own pockets to get their 15th home while these people can't even afford a vacation.

01:05:47.820 And it's bullshit, right?

01:05:49.240 I don't I don't know who the solution to that is.

01:05:52.520 But I think I think I think you're going to tell me it's not Hillary Clinton.

01:05:57.280 And look, I will not dispute that union capture is a big as a huge problem.

01:06:02.200 But the problem isn't getting rid of unions or putting more power in the hands of corporations.

01:06:07.440 Unions are captured in part because of corporations like at the end of the day, the role of government,

01:06:12.940 regardless of how big or small you think it should be, is to protect the people from impulses

01:06:19.220 that are natural to capitalism.

01:06:21.080 Right.

01:06:21.400 It's right there in the name.

01:06:22.240 I understand that people who follow the show are big fans of capitalism, but it's a system

01:06:26.940 that prioritizes profit over anything else.

01:06:29.780 And that's not a subjective statement.

01:06:31.880 That's literally how it's designed.

01:06:33.300 That's how our laws are designed.

01:06:35.020 I'll say as a lawyer, that is literally how it works.

01:06:37.580 So someone has to intervene on behalf of the workers and workers going on strike, realizing

01:06:42.020 their labor power, really showing the country that they are the one that is making American

01:06:46.020 rich.

01:06:46.420 They're the one who built this, you know, is a really powerful tool.

01:06:50.120 And that's why we still have to protect and bolster and rehabilitate labor, as opposed

01:06:55.700 to thinking that, oh, it's flaws.

01:06:57.340 We should throw it under the bus.

01:06:58.640 But Hillary Clinton, let's talk about Hillary Clinton.

01:07:01.200 Well, 100 percent.

01:07:01.780 I've got to ask you.

01:07:02.540 I don't know if you heard, but Monica Crowley had this, I thought, like crazy, brilliant

01:07:06.220 theme or idea on how the Democrats might be trying to might consider subbing her in.

01:07:12.680 I'm going to squeeze in a break because that's a good tease.

01:07:14.940 I'm going to leave it right there.

01:07:16.280 Squeeze in a break.

01:07:16.880 We'll come back and we'll talk about Monica Crowley's assessment of the plan to bring

01:07:21.140 HRC back into presidential politics.

01:07:23.960 More with Brianna Joy Gray in just a minute.

01:07:31.120 All right.

01:07:31.700 So Monica's theory, Brianna, is that the Democrats, she doesn't think Joe Biden will run again.

01:07:37.560 She thinks he's too old, that he knows he can't do it.

01:07:41.280 And so he's he's got to go.

01:07:43.680 So what?

01:07:44.580 So then what?

01:07:45.120 She doesn't think Kamala Harris would ever be the real choice of the Democratic Party

01:07:49.420 because she flatlined when she ran the first time he resuscitated her by making her his

01:07:53.580 VP, but that she's got even less chance than Joe Biden does of winning a second term.

01:07:58.560 And so reading the tea leaves of Hillary, who she did you see her tweet over the holidays?

01:08:05.540 It shows a picture of herself.

01:08:07.400 She tweeted a picture of herself.

01:08:08.700 She says 30 years ago, this picture of her.

01:08:10.500 Like, I don't know why she's picturing picking the very young Hillary looking out to the horizon.

01:08:16.040 It's a profile shot.

01:08:17.500 And it starts with looking ahead to 2022.

01:08:21.840 And it goes on a happy holidays.

01:08:23.480 OK, so between that, Monica says Huma Abedin is out there cleaning up her public image.

01:08:28.300 Hillary did that weird crying of her never read acceptance speech, which I said at the time she's

01:08:33.640 trying to warm up her image.

01:08:35.200 Why?

01:08:36.200 Maybe she's thinking about running again.

01:08:37.780 She says they're going to turf Kamala Harris to the Breyer Supreme Court seat.

01:08:42.560 They're going to convince Stephen Breyer to retire.

01:08:45.580 They're going to fill his seat with Kamala Harris, who is a lawyer.

01:08:48.860 So it's not like, oh, my God, they're getting rid of the first black female vice president for

01:08:53.400 this white woman, Hillary.

01:08:55.380 They give her a great post.

01:08:57.280 And then Hillary just slides right in there as the number two.

01:09:00.060 Then Joe Biden.

01:09:01.320 Oh, I'm not going to run.

01:09:02.620 Hillary's the heir apparent.

01:09:04.240 Go team Clinton.

01:09:05.640 What do you make of it?

01:09:06.880 Yeah, I mean, I've heard stranger stories.

01:09:08.560 I have heard, you know, Biden, I believe, promised to put the first black woman ever on the Supreme

01:09:12.960 Court when he was running.

01:09:14.360 There we go.

01:09:14.820 The rumor is, however, that it's supposed to be Sherilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense

01:09:20.620 Fund, which I think would be a much better choice for.

01:09:25.060 Well, no one's arguing Kamala Harris would be good on the Supreme Court.

01:09:28.040 It's a question of where do you offload her?

01:09:29.680 Yeah, so I hear that as a plan and I wouldn't put it past them.

01:09:33.540 I think you're completely right to observe that she did extremely poorly in the Democratic

01:09:37.260 primaries, that it wasn't clear why Joe Biden was picking her as a VP since black people

01:09:41.200 never warmed to her.

01:09:42.560 One of my colleagues at The Intercept wrote back when I was still there covering the race

01:09:48.380 that Bernie Sanders outpaced Kamala Harris with black voters two to one, despite being

01:09:54.180 unable to get out from under the idea of this Bernie bro mythology, no one ever questioned

01:09:59.140 why Kamala Harris wasn't able to capture the interest of any black voters who didn't literally

01:10:03.240 go to college with her in pledge or sorority.

01:10:05.560 So I can see that happening.

01:10:08.040 Now, there would be some consequences for that because Sherilyn Ifill in some ways has been

01:10:11.980 quieter than I would have imagined on some of Biden's failures to come through on promises

01:10:17.400 that he made explicitly to the black community while he ran.

01:10:20.300 I don't know if you remember, there was that leaked call that Biden had with civil rights

01:10:23.300 leaders last fall, right after the election, that very few people covered in the corporate

01:10:29.120 media because it made Joe Biden look very bad.

01:10:31.260 He basically spoke down to all of the senior black leadership in the country.

01:10:35.200 Al Sharpton was on the call.

01:10:36.800 Sherilyn Ifill was on the call.

01:10:40.680 Cedric Richmond was on the call.

01:10:42.360 You know, everybody was on the call.

01:10:43.680 And he basically told them, you know, blacks are out.

01:10:45.900 Latinos are in.

01:10:46.800 You don't have the numbers.

01:10:47.620 I'm not going to listen to any of your concerns.

01:10:49.520 And Sherilyn Ifill at that time and during that call pointed out a number of things that

01:10:53.420 Biden could do using executive authority because it was before we had won Georgia, before the

01:10:57.120 Democrats had won Georgia and didn't know that they were going to have the Senate.

01:10:59.860 A number of things Biden could do by executive order to advance the interests of people who

01:11:04.860 were protesting all of summer of 2000 and 2020.

01:11:07.060 He completely dismissed it.

01:11:08.460 And even after that call leaked, she said nothing.

01:11:10.420 Everyone continued to run cover for for Joe Biden.

01:11:13.680 And some people speculate that it's because she anticipated getting rewarded by being on

01:11:18.980 the Supreme Court.

01:11:19.840 And I don't know what kind of fur is going to start to fly if those promises start getting

01:11:23.960 undermined.

01:11:24.440 And she's replaced by the extremely Kamala Harris, whose legal career and academic career

01:11:29.900 has been much more mediocre than Sherilyn Ifill's or other people who have sat on the Supreme

01:11:33.940 Court.

01:11:34.220 But what I mean, what do you think is going to happen on the Democrat ticket next time

01:11:40.140 around?

01:11:40.360 But do you think Joe Biden actually will run again?

01:11:42.620 And if he doesn't or isn't capable of running again, they cannot run Kamala Harris.

01:11:49.480 The Democrats.

01:11:50.500 I mean, why would they do that?

01:11:51.820 I know they're into identity politics.

01:11:53.480 I get it.

01:11:54.580 But I mean, why would they have picked her to begin with to be VP?

01:11:56.920 I mean, she was in like a spot where she wasn't actually running anything as the number

01:12:01.260 two, but now this is a for all the marbles she'll lose.

01:12:04.280 That's why they just give it to the Republican.

01:12:06.900 Yeah.

01:12:07.140 So all of the negative press that's been coming out about Kamala Harris that is coming from

01:12:11.500 inside the House, as it were, is suggests that they are trying to set her up.

01:12:16.320 I mean, people have been speculating about the fact that all of the negative press that

01:12:20.400 we've seen wouldn't have been coming out of the White House unless the White House wanted

01:12:24.120 to start to dampen her light, as it were.

01:12:26.460 And there's also been all of the speculation about Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar.

01:12:29.380 What seemed like trial balloons to see how the public would feel about them being her

01:12:36.000 replacement.

01:12:36.500 I mean, Amy Klobuchar was widely thought to be the VP pick until in the middle of the

01:12:40.900 2020 George Floyd protests, and it came out that she was the district attorney when the

01:12:47.740 police officer involved had committed another act of violence against a citizen and she had

01:12:54.860 basically let him off the hook.

01:12:55.900 That it was too politically toxic to pick her in that criminal justice reform environment.

01:13:01.340 So now the time has passed and it's clear that no one's going to do anything anyway about

01:13:04.840 criminal justice reform efforts, no matter how many millions of people come into the

01:13:07.920 street.

01:13:08.320 Maybe they feel like it's safe to have someone like her come back.

01:13:10.540 But I agree.

01:13:11.440 It seems likely that Biden's not going to run.

01:13:14.700 I don't know if you've read the political article recently about whether or not there was

01:13:17.600 going to be progressive challenger to Joe Biden, which is something that I'm much more

01:13:20.900 interested in as a progressive because I'm not interested in any of these corporatist

01:13:24.300 neoliberals trying to shoot their shot.

01:13:28.040 And I heard you sounding you sounded pessimistic that that a third party challenger could really

01:13:35.100 get it done.

01:13:35.760 And I one of the things I want to say to you was what about Trump?

01:13:38.920 Trump was basically third party.

01:13:40.200 Let's admit it.

01:13:40.800 I mean, he was not a Republican.

01:13:42.080 He wasn't.

01:13:42.620 He came in there and he bent the Republican Party to his will.

01:13:46.580 The Republican Party looks nothing today like it did five, six years ago.

01:13:49.900 Thanks to him.

01:13:50.720 So couldn't you have a Trump like figure?

01:13:53.520 I don't think it's going to be Bernie, Brianna.

01:13:55.340 I don't know.

01:13:56.020 He's too old.

01:13:57.100 I don't think so.

01:13:57.640 But someone like Bernie, right?

01:13:59.280 Like with like with Bernie's ideas.

01:14:01.120 But they have to have tons of charisma.

01:14:02.400 He does.

01:14:02.880 I'm not saying he doesn't.

01:14:03.600 But I just has to be like a Trump type figure.

01:14:05.920 He does.

01:14:06.520 He's got the mittens.

01:14:07.560 I get it.

01:14:09.500 Right.

01:14:10.220 Couldn't that happen?

01:14:11.520 And and if it could, does anyone come to mind who, you know, who might fill that role?

01:14:15.460 If not this time around, then next.

01:14:17.280 I think it could happen.

01:14:18.740 I am much less pessimistic on the issue of third parties and other people.

01:14:22.440 I very famously, much to the chagrin of many Democrats, voted for Jill Stein in 2016, because

01:14:27.620 I feel like that's what we need to do to break up the duopoly.

01:14:30.560 I think regardless of how you feel about any individual candidate, people who are frustrated

01:14:34.840 on both sides of the aisle, people who are politically independent, people who don't

01:14:38.320 vote because they don't see themselves reflected in politics, need to figure out how to telegraph

01:14:43.640 their political interest in a more concrete way than just not voting, voting for the other

01:14:50.180 party or sitting it out.

01:14:51.240 And that is a third party, which is why I'm so interested in people like Andrew Yang, who

01:14:55.700 have started this forward push, which is not just a third party effort, but a part

01:14:59.960 and effort that says, let's look at ranked choice voting.

01:15:02.540 Right.

01:15:02.840 Let's look at voting, getting rid of first past the post voting.

01:15:06.140 So neither party can claim, oh, my gosh, you're running as a third party.

01:15:09.060 You're going to be a spoiler.

01:15:10.020 You're evil.

01:15:10.480 You're hurting democracy.

01:15:11.520 No, if we had ranked choice voting, then if your first choice doesn't get 50 percent

01:15:16.080 of the vote, your second choice vote goes to whoever is left.

01:15:19.980 And there's no spoiler effect.

01:15:21.840 And so the Democratic Party's biggest battering ram, which is vote blue no matter who.

01:15:25.200 Oh, my gosh, you're going to let Trump and fascists then is no longer an excuse for them

01:15:29.480 not to actually act on behalf of the people.

01:15:32.500 So I'm interested to hear about what happens with the forward party.

01:15:34.960 And the political article mentioned Marianne Williamson and Senator Nina Turner, who was

01:15:39.040 Bernie's campaign co-chair.

01:15:40.200 I have no idea if any of those people have actual interest, but I'm very interested to

01:15:44.200 see what happens in the next year or so.

01:15:46.800 Yeah.

01:15:47.000 You just had her on, right, Marianne Williamson?

01:15:48.660 She's fun.

01:15:49.780 Yeah.

01:15:50.160 I mean, we had a great interview.

01:15:51.860 And I think that she is probably the last person left standing on the left who hasn't

01:15:58.080 betrayed some of the fundamental progressive ideals that made people really like Bernie.

01:16:02.080 And I think there's something kind of funny in this parallel track that she has with someone

01:16:07.260 like Donald Trump, who was seen as an outsider and seen as someone who was advocating for

01:16:11.060 the working classes, despite himself being very affluent, obviously a billionaire.

01:16:15.600 Now, Marianne Williamson is obviously not a billionaire, but she is someone who has been

01:16:18.360 very successful in a different lane in the same way Donald Trump was as a New York Times

01:16:23.600 bestselling author who millions of Americans know from her long career in that kind of spiritual

01:16:30.060 space.

01:16:31.100 And, you know, something we're talking about on the left a lot is with all the divisiveness,

01:16:35.000 with all of the infighting across party lines, even within the Democratic Party, I think

01:16:39.180 America could use a little bit of dose of that kind of return to spirituality and community

01:16:43.620 and figuring out how, especially in this time of crisis, we can all get through it together.

01:16:46.940 So I'm very interested to see and hear more from her over the course of the next year.

01:16:51.040 A return to spiritual.

01:16:52.840 All I can think of is Trump.

01:16:54.280 Two Corinthians.

01:16:55.240 Two Corinthians.

01:16:57.240 Holding the Bible upside down in front of the burning church.

01:17:00.620 But, you know, Republicans, they used to care about that.

01:17:02.540 They don't care about that anymore.

01:17:03.400 I think the Republicans, first of all, they wanted somebody who could fight.

01:17:06.800 And Trump is 100 percent that person.

01:17:08.580 He was not going to lie down for Fox News, for the establishment, for John McCain, for

01:17:12.720 anybody.

01:17:13.360 And they love that about him.

01:17:15.340 Yeah, I don't I think they've learned you don't really necessarily need to get your

01:17:18.740 religious leadership from the White House.

01:17:21.100 I'm not religious.

01:17:22.060 I'm not a religious person.

01:17:23.440 And, you know, Marianne Williamson is kind of a secular Jew, but it's the spirituality.

01:17:29.400 It's the feeling of disconnect people have.

01:17:31.380 It's everybody being quarantined in their little apartments or in their homes, not maybe

01:17:35.100 going to work or to school as much as they used to.

01:17:37.620 And and not feeling a sense of identity with our American community and what it means to

01:17:43.560 be part of a society and what we owe each other and how we can help support and protect

01:17:47.000 each other during this time.

01:17:48.120 I'd like to see a little bit more about that.

01:17:50.340 Yeah, amen.

01:17:51.380 I hear you on that.

01:17:52.080 I mean, there's so many things, you know, pushing us apart, not just presidential politics

01:17:56.620 and regular politics, but the iPhone, but covid policies, you know, just the way we've

01:18:02.120 chosen to live, getting rid of the bowling leagues and we don't go to church anymore and

01:18:04.820 we just don't see one another.

01:18:05.900 We don't live in these communities that where we interact with other humans as often as we

01:18:09.620 used to.

01:18:10.380 I think it takes a real toll.

01:18:12.280 It's one of the reasons why people are so depressed now.

01:18:14.700 And by the way, on that front, can I just sometimes I just make a note.

01:18:18.120 Of something I just want to raise.

01:18:19.640 It's not necessarily your thing or my thing, but like the CDC's most recent guidance.

01:18:24.220 I hadn't actually taken a look at all of it.

01:18:26.280 You know, it came out on January 6th.

01:18:27.800 Do you know that they're saying we should ban football, banned and all high risk sports

01:18:33.880 and extracurricular activities where there is a high transmission rate, which, by the

01:18:37.920 way, is right now, ninety nine percent of the country.

01:18:39.700 OK, so they don't want banned, no band, no extracurricular.

01:18:42.860 And listen to this.

01:18:43.840 So I'm like, well, what is what's the high?

01:18:45.820 Because they say high risk sports and extracurricular.

01:18:48.640 What do they mean?

01:18:49.940 High risk extracurricular activities.

01:18:52.220 I'm quoting here are those in which increased exhalation occurs.

01:18:58.940 Screw you, CDC.

01:19:00.720 Such as activities that involve singing, shouting, band or exercise, especially when conducted

01:19:06.760 indoors.

01:19:07.540 This is exactly what America needs to be doing.

01:19:09.480 Our kids need to be outside singing and shouting and playing sports and exercising and breathing

01:19:14.940 as heavily as they need to to get those things done, not more distancing, more freaking out

01:19:21.580 and more avoiding things that keep off extra weight, for example, which is a serious comorbidity.

01:19:26.080 Well, I don't know that I would advocate for anybody getting into a room and start singing

01:19:29.280 with each other.

01:19:30.460 But certainly a certain degree of outdoor activity.

01:19:33.240 Look, I'm someone whose mental health requires that I exercise every day.

01:19:36.580 Right. And it's been difficult for me now that it's gotten colder, even in D.C.

01:19:40.100 It's too cold to run outside for me.

01:19:42.540 And so at a certain point, I had to make the decision to go back and start running on the

01:19:45.600 treadmill in my gym.

01:19:46.500 And I go during odd hours.

01:19:47.700 I go late at night, you know, in the hopes of being the only person there.

01:19:51.200 And I'm certainly breathing hard.

01:19:52.460 I wear a mask.

01:19:53.160 Everyone's required to wear a mask in the building.

01:19:55.340 But there are going to be certain kind of tradeoffs.

01:19:57.020 And I understand that there's a healthy skepticism of the CDC recommendations, because from the

01:20:01.100 jump, they have been politically motivated.

01:20:03.020 As a Bernie, as a Bernie campaign worker, I remember when my predecessor on the Bernie

01:20:09.380 2016 campaign, who worked as Biden's spokesperson, Simone Sanders, got on TV right after a CDC

01:20:14.720 recommendation that came down on the Ides of March on right after the last debate on March

01:20:19.700 15th and said it's completely safe.

01:20:21.620 The CDC says it's completely safe to go and vote because there was an interest in the Democratic

01:20:25.360 Party and getting people to vote and pushing Bernie out of the race and ending it early.

01:20:29.280 Whereas, in fact, the CDC had hours before just issued a recommendation that it wasn't

01:20:33.440 safe to go into a ballot booth.

01:20:35.960 It wasn't it wasn't safe to go into a room of more than 50 people or more, which is basically

01:20:39.880 any polling station in most metropolitan areas.

01:20:43.100 Right.

01:20:43.680 And the back and forth about the masks and the back and forth about so many things has caused

01:20:47.300 Americans to be really skeptical about who they should listen to and have to rely on

01:20:51.580 their own common sense.

01:20:52.460 So I think that's another reason why it's important for us to have it as a community, because

01:20:56.120 we do have to take care of each other.

01:20:58.020 We do have to act as responsibly as we we can to help the spread, because there are more

01:21:02.720 vulnerable populations among us.

01:21:04.180 Kids are getting hit hard now.

01:21:05.900 But before there's no, they aren't being understood.

01:21:09.860 And it's it's a tough time.

01:21:11.460 Kids are not getting hit hard.

01:21:12.640 Kids are getting Omicron at an increased rate the same way as adults are getting Omicron

01:21:16.920 at an increased rate.

01:21:17.740 It's it's Omicron spreads irrespective of vaccination status and so on.

01:21:21.480 That's what that's what the CDC is now saying.

01:21:23.180 But these numbers that they're claiming about child hospitalizations are overstated.

01:21:27.460 And even Rochelle Walensky admitted that.

01:21:30.000 So, I mean, I don't like when people use kids as an example of this, I get very upset because

01:21:34.820 they're using our kids.

01:21:36.860 Not you.

01:21:37.200 I'm not saying you, but I'm just saying the politicians are using children and trying to

01:21:40.680 scare parents into bowing to their policies.

01:21:43.580 And it's not right.

01:21:44.820 Most of those kids are in the hospital with covid, not because of covid.

01:21:47.540 Well, let's talk about it's not even the hospitalization rates for me personally, as a young person

01:21:52.400 with no comorbidities, I fear getting covid, you know, knock wood, I feel like I'm the last

01:21:56.500 person in America who hasn't got me yet.

01:21:58.620 But I fear covid in part because of the long covid symptoms.

01:22:01.900 And it's not most people don't have them.

01:22:04.320 And it's relatively rare.

01:22:05.400 But as someone who uses their noggin professionally, to the extent that I do, I have friends who

01:22:09.420 have experienced brain fog and some of these some of these issues.

01:22:12.220 I already am a little ADHD and have some focus issues.

01:22:16.600 And, you know, I think it's natural for people, especially when something is so new and

01:22:19.680 misunderstood, especially some misunderstood in kids, because it hasn't been an issue for

01:22:23.800 kids up until Omicron, really in insignificant numbers to want to just be as careful as possible.

01:22:29.060 Now, there are tradeoffs there.

01:22:30.740 And I think that part of the fight over school closures and all of that stuff is that both

01:22:34.840 sides have very legitimate concerns.

01:22:37.040 Part of the issue is that in America, the only affordable child care for most families is

01:22:41.160 school.

01:22:41.540 So, of course, families are going to be frustrated about the idea of having to keep their kids

01:22:45.820 home while they have to go to work.

01:22:47.120 And there's no paid leave.

01:22:48.200 There's no alternatives for everybody.

01:22:49.400 People are crunched at the same time.

01:22:51.680 Even parents who want their kids to go to school, I think in an ideal world would like

01:22:55.820 their school kids to be going to school in a safe environment where they don't get even

01:22:59.400 the common cold, much less covid.

01:23:01.720 And that's not realistic.

01:23:03.120 I was with you until there.

01:23:04.740 That's not realistic.

01:23:06.000 Your kids go to school.

01:23:06.940 They get the flu.

01:23:07.640 They get stomach viruses.

01:23:08.560 They get weird things like in Patego, whatever.

01:23:10.620 Suddenly they've got a sore on their face.

01:23:12.100 You're like, where the hell is that from?

01:23:14.000 Stuff happens at school.

01:23:15.120 It's part of life.

01:23:15.780 Right.

01:23:15.960 And we accepted this up until recently.

01:23:17.600 It's just it's life, you know, and you go out there and generally the goal is to have

01:23:21.260 your kids get a bunch of shit when they're little so that they build up their immunities

01:23:24.400 and it doesn't come back to haunt them when they're grownups and they're maybe maybe not

01:23:27.300 as well positioned to fight it.

01:23:28.340 But not shit that you can bring home and kill grandma with.

01:23:31.300 That's all.

01:23:31.860 No, but we're done with that, Brianna.

01:23:33.440 I'm telling you.

01:23:34.120 I'm telling you.

01:23:34.540 Listen, I'm the mother of three children.

01:23:35.800 I've been living this for two years.

01:23:36.680 Can we agree that it's not the worst, but that we should all be trying to act with as

01:23:39.040 much consideration and calm?

01:23:40.980 This is this is my point about having a sense of well-being for your fellow man.

01:23:44.640 No, I don't agree.

01:23:45.960 I don't agree.

01:23:48.160 I don't agree.

01:23:48.700 I did it.

01:23:49.280 We did it for two years.

01:23:50.040 For two years.

01:23:50.520 My kids, my little eight year old, he was six when it started.

01:23:53.320 He was actually five because he was about to go into his next birthday, has a fucking

01:23:57.780 mask on his face.

01:23:58.540 And I want it off.

01:23:59.480 I want it off.

01:24:00.660 He's he's not an effective vector of this virus.

01:24:03.880 And if he were, I would keep I would keep him away even even now, not believing that about

01:24:08.240 him.

01:24:08.720 I keep him away from my 80 year old mom because she's in a more vulnerable position.

01:24:11.800 But my mom isn't leaving her house.

01:24:13.380 My mom's scared about covid.

01:24:14.640 But he's in second grade.

01:24:16.640 The second grade.

01:24:18.040 I've done my part for two years.

01:24:19.220 How long does he have to have the mask on his face?

01:24:20.680 Five, ten?

01:24:21.820 I just graduate with it.

01:24:23.320 No.

01:24:24.320 Some people's 80 year old moms live with them and they don't can't afford.

01:24:27.080 I'm sorry for them.

01:24:28.200 They're going to have to make a different arrangement.

01:24:29.760 I did it for two years and I'm done.

01:24:31.260 They can't afford to make it.

01:24:32.900 And that's the point.

01:24:33.600 We live in a country where 40 percent of.

01:24:35.300 Sorry, Brianna, but we can't live like that.

01:24:37.020 We can.

01:24:37.320 A lot of people can't afford to have their kid get the flu and bring it home to grandma

01:24:40.600 because you can die from that, too.

01:24:41.680 40 percent of Americans can't survive a four hundred dollar emergency.

01:24:44.740 There are families routinely who live in one or two bedroom apartments.

01:24:48.560 Multiple generations.

01:24:50.120 They've been given trillions, trillions of dollars by the federal government.

01:24:53.320 To help them through this.

01:24:54.780 And now they're going to send out Bernie.

01:24:56.000 Your guy wants to send out three masks per family.

01:24:57.960 OK, great.

01:24:58.420 Do that.

01:24:59.000 They're giving away the vaccines for free.

01:25:00.320 That's good, too.

01:25:01.320 We have many mitigation measures that they can take.

01:25:04.720 The best is social distancing.

01:25:05.900 That can happen in any school.

01:25:07.560 But I'm done with the masks.

01:25:08.860 If you want to put your kid, not you in particular, but people who love the mask want to put their

01:25:11.960 kids in the mask.

01:25:12.400 I don't have children.

01:25:12.860 I know.

01:25:13.380 I know.

01:25:13.640 So they can go for it all day long.

01:25:14.720 You put the duck mask on or an N95 or a can 95 over it.

01:25:18.140 God bless.

01:25:18.720 And by the way, the doctors where there was just one from Harvard on CNN the other day

01:25:22.480 saying more and more, the medical information is that you putting a mask like that on your

01:25:27.740 face will protect you from what you're trying to prevent.

01:25:31.360 I don't have to do it to my kid.

01:25:33.100 Normal is maskless.

01:25:34.820 Normal is without the mask.

01:25:36.300 We're starting to see masks as the norm.

01:25:38.000 And they're not.

01:25:38.920 And they're damaging to children.

01:25:40.520 They're damaging.

01:25:41.040 Yeah, well, look, I don't have a child, so I don't have a dog in this fight.

01:25:45.460 But I do have parents, friends who are parents who, you know, are home from work.

01:25:50.460 You know, their productivity is being affected because their kid caught COVID at daycare,

01:25:54.740 gave it to the whole family.

01:25:55.980 And now they're not able, you know, they're they're home.

01:25:58.140 Everyone's getting it.

01:25:58.600 They're not allowed.

01:25:58.980 You're going to get it, too.

01:26:00.500 Everyone's going to get it.

01:26:01.500 Omicron is just too contagious.

01:26:03.280 Look, knowing, believing realistically that there are going to be some bad downstream effects,

01:26:07.800 I don't think it's an excuse not to be trying our best to support the members of our community

01:26:11.520 that are more vulnerable than someone like me who can stay.

01:26:14.200 We've done that.

01:26:14.860 Or someone like you whose grandparents can live outside of the home.

01:26:17.440 No, all I'm saying is that for two years we have done that.

01:26:20.560 We shut down society.

01:26:21.520 We closed businesses.

01:26:22.340 We ruined people's lives.

01:26:23.720 Now it's time for focus protection.

01:26:25.720 Keep the vulnerable away.

01:26:27.220 Keep them at home.

01:26:27.980 Yes, be careful.

01:26:28.640 I don't I wouldn't let my kids go around my mom right now because of Omicron.

01:26:32.420 But there is absolutely no reason for my little ones to have those masks on their face

01:26:36.240 or for somebody else to be telling me I have to stick a needle in their arm when they don't

01:26:40.280 need that.

01:26:40.860 That's that's not going to prevent them from spreading the disease, even if they get it.

01:26:44.740 Look, I'm a libertarian socialist and I have some skepticism and concerns about mandates

01:26:50.040 broadly as a general measure.

01:26:52.120 But I also think we wouldn't need as much mandated by the government if we all had a

01:26:56.980 little bit more of a sense of community.

01:26:58.540 That's all I'm saying.

01:26:59.520 Americans have done so much, Brianna.

01:27:01.160 They've done so much.

01:27:02.640 We're two years into it.

01:27:03.940 They have done their part.

01:27:05.360 It's so ungenerous to say something like that.

01:27:07.980 They I've interviewed them.

01:27:09.860 They've lost their entire livelihoods.

01:27:11.860 People who have built, you know, chains of restaurants or change of hair salons done

01:27:15.860 gone in the dust.

01:27:17.700 I had a friend who had built a great dance company helping young girls who are trying

01:27:21.280 to turn their lives around over done.

01:27:23.680 They're not you can't dance now.

01:27:25.200 They're not going to let you do that in New York City.

01:27:26.900 You can't be together in that way.

01:27:28.360 Oh, I mean, we could go on right about the amount of carnage.

01:27:31.660 What I would like and what Bernie was advocating for before the race dropped out was the kind

01:27:36.060 of recurring stimulus checks that could help people afloat, that could help people have

01:27:40.060 rental relief so that when they have to close down their buildings for a time, for a period

01:27:44.000 of time, they're not responsible for all of that back rent.

01:27:47.000 They don't want a government.

01:27:47.960 See, that's where we disagree.

01:27:49.420 That's why I can't.

01:27:50.080 We don't want a government check.

01:27:51.320 They want to build.

01:27:51.960 They want to run and the business that they built.

01:27:55.200 Megan, Walmart and Amazon and all of those companies got a check.

01:27:59.000 But the American Rescue Plan was the largest single upward transfer of wealth in American

01:28:03.840 history.

01:28:04.820 All the big businesses in America got a bailout for COVID.

01:28:08.160 And it's small business owners like the ones you're describing and your friend whose business

01:28:11.640 was shut down.

01:28:12.240 My mom is a small business owner.

01:28:13.340 I'm a small business owner.

01:28:14.440 We didn't get the PPE funding, right?

01:28:17.580 So there is there is already socialism for the rich in their country and not for the poor

01:28:21.340 and working class.

01:28:22.020 And that is the issue.

01:28:23.100 The money is already going out the door.

01:28:24.720 It's just not going to you.

01:28:25.920 So I think we share sympathies here, but I think the reality is we have to keep an eye

01:28:29.840 on the ball of who exactly is the enemy and who exactly is causing all of these conflicts

01:28:35.040 of interest between parents and teachers and workers and employees.

01:28:38.000 It's not the small business owner's fault.

01:28:39.820 It's not the employee's fault.

01:28:41.420 It's the people who are not putting together the social programs that could relieve the

01:28:45.860 strain that's coming down on the 99% and instead funneling all of these tax dollars,

01:28:50.520 funneling all of this money to bail out the millionaires and billionaire class.

01:28:53.620 That's always how it's been done in this country.

01:28:55.020 When it comes to COVID policy, I don't agree with you.

01:28:57.600 I mean, I would say I'll say this.

01:28:58.820 I wish teachers got paid more.

01:29:00.080 I really do.

01:29:00.760 I wish most of our work, our working class got paid more.

01:29:03.900 It's bullshit how hard people have to work for so little return, especially up against

01:29:06.980 inflation like we're seeing and so on.

01:29:08.620 But even before that, I mean, I I do feel for teachers and when it comes to their salary,

01:29:12.800 because they do work hard and they've had to work hard over the past two years in most

01:29:16.240 districts.

01:29:17.020 But I'm not I don't you know, they signed up for it.

01:29:19.780 I didn't make them become a teacher.

01:29:20.980 You signed up for it.

01:29:21.840 You get the summers off.

01:29:22.540 Most of us don't now get back into the damn classroom and do your job like that's that's

01:29:26.380 the way it has to work.

01:29:26.980 I didn't make you choose your job.

01:29:28.260 You volunteered for it.

01:29:29.080 Now go do it.

01:29:29.840 You get a paycheck.

01:29:30.980 That's how you get the paycheck.

01:29:32.140 You do the teaching.

01:29:33.240 And the kids have suffered long enough.

01:29:36.200 I stole the last word.

01:29:37.640 But I love the way your mind works.

01:29:39.560 And I love how weirdly it was like tense.

01:29:41.360 But then we'd come back to areas of agreement.

01:29:43.100 It's like I'm having so many feelings, Brianna.

01:29:45.340 But I learned.

01:29:46.440 And that's my favorite thing about an interview like this.

01:29:48.860 I enjoy this as well.

01:29:49.840 We'll have to have you on Bad Faith Podcast so we can talk a little bit more about why

01:29:52.740 you would never vote for Bernie Sanders.

01:29:54.200 I think we can work around that.

01:29:56.080 Maybe you'll get me.

01:29:57.400 You'll probably convince me just as he's no longer in it.

01:30:01.140 Thank you.

01:30:02.060 All the best.

01:30:02.700 Thank you.

01:30:03.300 Later this week, we've got Goldie Hawn and we've got the guy from Social Dilemma.

01:30:06.700 Don't miss him, Tristan Harris.

01:30:09.600 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:30:11.420 No BS, no agenda and no fear.

01:30:18.860 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 18, 2022

Terror in Texas and a Possible Clinton Comeback, with Monica Crowley and Briahna Joy Gray ｜ Ep. 242

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript