The Russiagate ‘Scandal’ and Media’s Shaming of the Unvaccinated with Glenn Greenwald | Ep. 162
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 34 minutes
Words per Minute
190.27817
Summary
On today's show, Megyn and Glenn discuss the latest in the ongoing saga of the Russiagate scandal, and the new indictments handed down against Michael Sussman, a prominent cybersecurity lawyer who worked for Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Transcript
00:00:00.480
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.680
Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show on a Friday. Joining me today,
00:00:17.400
Glenn Greenwald, one of my very favorite people, a brilliant, brilliant journalist,
00:00:22.040
and just all-around good guy. He's the co-founder of The Intercept, author of
00:00:27.360
Securing Democracy, and a Substack journalist. We've got so much to cover from the new crisis
00:00:33.060
at our southern border, the rising two-class system in America that pins the mask against
00:00:38.160
the unmasked, updates on General Mark Milley's communications with China, and now he's speaking
00:00:43.100
out in his own defense, and incredibly new proof today that the endless Russiagate scandal was,
00:00:50.400
as we now know, a setup. But wait until you hear the evidence that's just come out. Glenn,
00:00:55.400
so good to have you here. Thanks for being here.
00:00:57.360
Always happy to be here, Megyn. I think in addition to that very generous introduction,
00:01:01.620
I also need some kind of indication that I'm a very special friend to the show,
00:01:06.320
since some of your listeners may not know that I was actually the first guest,
00:01:09.760
the debut guest, that helped launch it. I'm very proud of that, and I'm thrilled to see your success.
00:01:16.060
Thank you. We owe it all to you. Really, we should have had you on the first day of the serious
00:01:20.360
All to me, maybe like 80%. You've also done a lot of work for the show, too.
00:01:25.120
Well, you know, you actually were an inspiration when I started the podcast because our conversation
00:01:29.800
was so good. It remains one of our most downloaded episodes, our very first podcast ever,
00:01:34.460
September of last year, that I was like, I am doing the right thing. This is what I want to be doing.
00:01:40.220
Long-form conversations with smart people from whom I can learn. I don't have to get up and down on the
00:01:45.120
story in two minutes. You know, it was sort of a taste of what was to come.
00:01:49.960
That's nice. Yeah, I totally agree. I think this format brings out the best in everybody.
00:01:54.320
All right. So let's talk about the news of the day, which is which begins with a guy named Michael
00:01:58.500
Sussman. This story is incredible, and I recommend that everybody read. Well, you should read Andy
00:02:03.620
McCarthy on National Review, no matter what, because he's brilliant. But especially if it involves
00:02:07.280
something legal, he's always got great insights. And he has a great piece today that walks us through
00:02:11.460
what the story is with Michael Sussman. Broad brush. Here's what's happened. We've gotten an
00:02:17.100
indictment now in the John Durham investigation. He was the special counsel appointed to look into
00:02:22.200
how the hell did Russiagate happen? How did we have, you know, all of these accusations being hurled
00:02:28.360
around and an impeachment and all of this based on a bunch of nonsense. So we have the special counsel,
00:02:33.960
John Durham, looking into it, and he has just secured a grand jury indictment. His investigation is not
00:02:39.340
over, but he had to do it because the five year statute of limitations against this one guy was
00:02:43.160
about to run this Saturday or Sunday. So he's gotten an indictment against Michael Sussman.
00:02:48.840
Who is Michael Sussman? He's a prominent cybersecurity lawyer who happened to work for Hillary Clinton's
00:02:55.260
campaign, who went into the FBI five years ago and said, basically, there's there's a problem.
00:03:04.600
There's a back channel communication based on our expertise between Trump Tower and this Russian
00:03:11.820
bank that's essentially a front for Vladimir Putin and then did not disclose to the FBI that he was
00:03:19.760
working for the Clinton campaign. He went in there, Glenn, like, I'm just a public servant. I'm just a
00:03:25.080
cybersecurity expert who sees a who sees smoke where there must be fire FBI. And he's speaking to the
00:03:31.240
general counsel, the FBI at the time with whom he had a relationship and didn't disclose any of his
00:03:36.080
campaign ties. And apparently, according to the FBI, anyway, he's denying it when asked specifically
00:03:42.260
deny that he was representing the Clinton campaign. And what Andy McCarthy's reporting shows us because
00:03:46.640
he read the whole indictment is at the same time the guy was denying his relationship with the Clinton
00:03:51.780
campaign. Glenn, he was billing his very time meeting with the FBI back to the Clinton campaign.
00:03:58.540
So it seems like they've got him dead to rights if they can prove any of this. And all of this tells
00:04:04.560
us what. So this is the second indictment that the Durham investigation has uncovered or extracted.
00:04:13.480
The first one took place in January when an FBI lawyer pled guilty to having lied to the FISA court,
00:04:20.400
submitting altered documents to the FISA court in order to persuade that court to issue warrants to allow
00:04:27.240
them to spy on Carter Page, who, as everyone might remember, was a former official of the Trump
00:04:33.060
campaign. It was somebody that Russia gators and liberal fanatics adamantly believed was about to
00:04:39.300
be in prison, that he was a Russian agent. And when the Mueller report came out, they said they couldn't
00:04:43.860
find any evidence that Carter Page ever was acting as an agent for the Kremlin. But they lied to the
00:04:49.660
FISA court. The FBI did. And Durham got a guilty plea from the FBI lawyer who actually altered
00:04:55.260
documents to convince the FISA court to let them spy. So this is the second time now that he's found
00:05:00.720
alleged criminality, not as part of the alleged Trump Russia collusion that consumed the media and
00:05:06.560
our politics for four years or more, but as part of the origins of that scandal. Who is it that created
00:05:12.480
that scandal? And how is it that it got disseminated? And so the fact that, you know, people there were so
00:05:19.040
many media frauds, Megan, as part of the Trump Russia story that I think people have forgotten them all.
00:05:24.080
But this issue about Trump supposedly having a secret server that allowed him and his organization
00:05:30.240
to communicate with this Russian bank was very consequential during the 2016 campaign,
00:05:36.380
in large part because they got one journalist, Franklin Foer, who used to be the editor-in-chief
00:05:42.040
of the New Republic at Slate now, who wrote an article ratifying it all. They got Hillary Clinton
00:05:48.820
herself to issue a statement during the campaign, tweeting it saying, this is extremely disturbing.
00:05:55.220
We know that Jake Sullivan, who at the time was with the Clinton campaign, is now Biden's national
00:05:59.300
security advisor, was deeply enmeshed in this story. And then you had all of these Russiagate
00:06:04.560
personalities on TV who profited so much from pushing this conspiracy theory, Chris Hayes and
00:06:10.120
Natasha Bertrand, who now is at CNN, all of those MSNBC people who for two years claimed
00:06:17.060
that this story was very substantial. And one of the things the indictment says, and I think it's
00:06:22.180
the reason why they're so angry at this lawyer who went to them and pushed it, was the FBI quickly
00:06:28.640
concluded that there was actually no evidence to it, that this was a very ordinary kind of internet
00:06:34.140
activity, that there was no evidence there was any communication, let alone a clandestine server
00:06:38.380
between Trump and the Russians. So the FBI learned very quickly that the story was false, but let
00:06:44.580
the media for two years treat it as though it were real. And they're now kind of trying to scapegoat
00:06:51.060
this lawyer who definitely is to blame by saying, oh, he tricked us. If he had told us the truth that
00:06:57.100
he was working for Hillary Clinton's campaign, we wouldn't have even looked at it. We would have
00:07:01.180
known it was just a political trick. But by hiding from us the fact that he was working for the Clinton
00:07:06.180
campaign and pretending he was just an ordinary citizen, we spent our time and resources chasing
00:07:10.760
it down, but quickly realized there was nothing to it. Mm hmm. This is what Rick Grinnell just said
00:07:15.560
on Fox News. He was like, he's basically thrown the hooey card on the claim by the FBI that they
00:07:21.240
didn't understand right from the get go that this guy was a Hillary Clinton campaign operative and was
00:07:27.540
not there as just Joe Good citizen. Here's Rick on Fox the other night.
00:07:32.320
I don't believe that the FBI officials were duped by an outside lawyer working with Hillary Clinton
00:07:39.960
who lied about his client inside the FBI. The Russian collusion investigation continued,
00:07:46.380
not because some lawyer lied to them about who he was working for, because the FBI leadership
00:07:53.160
knew this information was wrong. They knew it was made up. They continued the investigation because
00:07:59.760
it would help Hillary Clinton. Mm hmm. And that's what you're saying. But that doesn't really help
00:08:05.020
Michael Sussman today because you can't lie to the FBI, even if the FBI was like, this guy's probably a
00:08:10.780
liar. You can't do it. And they have a new problem to deal with, which is this investigation. Right. I
00:08:16.100
mean, John Durham, he he didn't waive any right to to pursue this claim. And so Michael Sussman is going
00:08:22.500
to have to answer for, you know, mistruths that he offered to the FBI. But it's beyond that, Glenn.
00:08:28.100
Right. Because what they allege is that this guy, Michael Sussman, was working for the Hillary Clinton
00:08:32.860
campaign and for another client and the other clients unnamed. But apparently this other client
00:08:38.440
expected to get an important government cybersecurity position in the Hillary Clinton administration.
00:08:44.240
And this guy, this unnamed guy, ran a tech company and the FBI or John Durham, I should say, his people
00:08:51.300
have spoken, I guess, with the employees of this tech corporation who say our boss made us run extensive
00:08:57.120
queries regarding Donald Trump and his campaign and their databases. And we were uncomfortable doing
00:09:03.600
this kind of spying because, you know, we knew it was wrong. But our boss is a very powerful person
00:09:10.060
and made us do it. And we went to our boss and said, you know what? The evidence is pretty weak.
00:09:14.660
This is a weak sauce. Like, as you point out, this is sort of very benign server activity that you're
00:09:21.200
trying to claim as a link to Russia. And that that executive was like, I don't care because basically
00:09:26.320
this is a political project. So this is what we have here is this tech exec who wanted a job in the
00:09:31.680
Hillary administration and Hillary campaign, the Hillary campaign lawyer, very connected with the
00:09:37.380
Clinton campaign, using privileged access to nonpublic information. This is from Andy McCarthy
00:09:43.200
now for political purposes. They concoct it into a political narrative that they know is baseless,
00:09:49.220
but they can convincingly spin it to suggest Donald Trump is in cahoots with Putin.
00:09:54.380
They simultaneously peddle it to lie to the media and the FBI. By the way, they got it placed in the
00:10:00.880
Steele dossier to the infamous Steele dossier. And the FBI opens an investigation of Donald Trump
00:10:06.980
because team Clinton, team Clinton has made it happen. It's all there, black and white.
00:10:14.680
Yeah. I mean, there's so much there. And to me, the overarching point of everything you said,
00:10:19.380
of what Andy McCarthy wrote, of what Rick Grinnell said on Fox, to me, the overarching point is that
00:10:25.440
whatever wrongdoing there was on the part of Trump related actors, most of which, if not all of which
00:10:34.920
took place, not prior to the Mueller probe, but during it, almost all of the convictions
00:10:39.160
were process crimes. If they lied to Mueller, they covered up evidence, things like that.
00:10:43.660
No one was convicted or even charged on the core allegation that launched the entire scandal and
00:10:50.260
launched the Mueller investigation, which is, did any Americans criminally conspire with the Russian
00:10:56.120
government to interfere in the 2016 election? That was the core foundational claim that the Clinton
00:11:02.740
campaign made that led to that four year scandal. And not only did Robert Mueller close his
00:11:08.340
investigation by indicting zero people, zero Americans on that central claim, he also issued
00:11:15.100
a report in which he said he couldn't find any evidence to establish any criminality with regard
00:11:19.320
to that. So what I think this is starting to show is that there was real criminality in connection with
00:11:24.980
Russiagate. And during the 2016 campaign, it just is the, the, the criminality and the corruption
00:11:31.200
was done by those who propagated the Russiagate conspiracy theory and peddled the scandal, both in
00:11:38.660
politics and law and in media and in government and not the people who they spent all that time
00:11:43.300
accusing. Let me just make a couple of quick points, um, on, on some of what you just said. So
00:11:48.260
as to Rick Grinnell's point that like, he seriously doubts that the FBI really believe that,
00:11:53.880
uh, this Clinton lawyer, David Sussman was just some average citizen, kind of like a whistleblower
00:11:58.420
on his own accord going in. Of course, that's the case. You know, David Sussman was a partner
00:12:05.540
in Perkins Coie. Is it David or Michael? I think it's Michael. Michael Sussman. Michael Sussman.
00:12:09.700
I think David. How many Sussmans are there? Okay. Michael Sussman. Keep going. Yeah. So he's a
00:12:14.060
partner in Perkins Coie, which is a huge Wall Street or Washington law firm as well. That's highly
00:12:20.980
connected to the democratic party. One of the partners in that firm is Mark Elias,
00:12:25.840
who has received a lot of social media stardom over the last four years. He was the general
00:12:30.380
counsel to the Clinton campaign, the lead lawyer in the Clinton campaign. He served in the same role
00:12:35.980
during the John Kerry campaign in 2004. So the idea that there's a partner at this law firm
00:12:41.900
that is very intertwined with the Clinton campaign and the democratic party for years and years and years,
00:12:47.080
one of the most influential in Washington, just happened to stumble on this information as a private
00:12:51.740
citizen, of course, is something that the FBI would never have believed. But I, you know, for me,
00:12:58.300
Megan, I keep getting back to the fact that what to me, this really is more than anything is a media
00:13:04.480
story. You know, when I was at the Intercept in 2016, when the story was published, we immediately,
00:13:09.620
all of us, even the kind of hardcore liberals said, this story doesn't add up at all.
00:13:14.180
There's zero evidence to justify a claim, but this incredible. And we actually published an
00:13:20.100
article by four journalists, all of whom have extensive technology tech experience and analyzing
00:13:25.260
internet data. And it essentially said the story has huge evidentiary holes in it. But MSNBC and CNN
00:13:32.160
and the Atlantic and the New Yorker and the New York Times were all off and running with it.
00:13:36.380
And it became a major part of the campaign. So we can debate the legalities of it. I mean,
00:13:42.600
it is interesting. The question of whether lying to the FBI should be a crime is something that was
00:13:47.640
debated, at least for me, during the Michael Flynn prosecution. I actually agree with Ruth Bader
00:13:54.240
Ginsburg and other longstanding liberals on the court that it shouldn't be a crime to lie to the
00:13:59.680
FBI without more conduct to it. Otherwise, the FBI can kind of lure you into becoming a criminal like
00:14:05.240
they did with General Flynn by saying, tell us about that conversation. And you should have the right
00:14:09.640
to deny to the FBI that you've done something you've actually done. But leave that debate aside.
00:14:14.740
I took that side with the Michael Flynn case. It's still my view. It's Ruth Bader Ginsburg's view.
00:14:19.580
That's not the prevailing view. The prevailing view is if you lie to the FBI, you're a criminal.
00:14:23.220
That's how they prosecuted General Flynn. They prosecuted Martha Stewart that way.
00:14:26.640
And they're now prosecuting this Hillary lawyer that way. So, you know, I still think, though, that the story is
00:14:32.500
a political and media scam, that it was the media who participated in knowingly disseminating a story
00:14:39.200
that had no basis in evidence from the start because they thought that it could manipulate
00:14:43.900
the outcome of the election in Hillary Clinton's favor.
00:14:47.600
Mm hmm. Yes. No, I agree with you. So and I don't even think that that the Durham investigation
00:14:52.900
is all that interested in Michael Sussman. They had to pull the trigger on this because the statute of
00:14:56.700
limitations was about to expire. But I think he much would have preferred to come out with a full
00:15:01.260
kit and caboodle when he's done and say this is these are all the wrongdoers and this is how they
00:15:05.460
concocted this narrative. But what's interesting about this case is that the indictment tells the
00:15:09.640
story. You know, for for the first time, I think we get in great detail where John Durham's going,
00:15:14.800
what evidence he's found. And you have it exactly right. This is going to be a sweeping indictment
00:15:20.120
used not in the criminal sense, but possibly of the Hillary Clinton campaign and how she and her media
00:15:25.540
and legal operatives unleashed this entire false narrative on all of us. And the media desperate
00:15:33.680
to bring down Trump ran with it, completely checked their skepticism, their willingness,
00:15:39.400
their their responsibility to investigate and went with any story from the Steele dossier to all of this
00:15:45.760
nonsense without bothering to check because it was too good.
00:15:49.900
Yeah, I mean, that to me is the one of the principal scandals of the Trump years in the
00:15:57.620
Trump era is what happened to American journalism. I've always been a critic of colleagues in the
00:16:03.080
media. I've always had different views about how journalism should be done than a lot of people in
00:16:07.600
kind of the corporate world of media companies. But my views of them radically changed as a result of
00:16:15.960
their conduct during primarily the Russiagate scandal when I saw their willingness to, and this
00:16:23.300
isn't an exaggeration, relinquish and sacrifice every pre-step of journalistic ethics and limitations
00:16:30.700
on what we're supposed to do as reporters in this monomaniacal pursuit to first help Hillary Clinton win
00:16:36.700
and then when she didn't to destroy Donald Trump's presidency. And it really is true, Megan. And I saw it
00:16:42.760
from the inside. I saw it from reporting on this story for four years at the to the exclusion of almost every
00:16:48.660
other that it wasn't just recklessness that they just weren't careful enough and how they were vetting this
00:16:54.160
information. Anytime the CIA or the FBI or Adam Schiff or other Democrats on the committee on the House
00:17:01.200
Committee or the Senate Committee investigating Russiagate leaked to them information that was
00:17:05.420
incriminating about Donald Trump, they would instantly publish it without caring whether it was true or false.
00:17:11.820
It wasn't that, oh, they looked and they didn't do such a good job. It was they didn't care. They
00:17:17.400
wanted information in their hands, in part because it served their political interests, but in part it
00:17:23.000
also served their pecuniary interests. You know, I know you've talked about this before. In 2015,
00:17:28.940
MSNBC and CNN both were on the brink of collapse. Nobody was watching their shows. The New York Times was
00:17:35.860
having serious financial difficulty. Trump in general, but Russiagate in particular, was a huge
00:17:42.600
boon to their to the whole media industry. People, you know, were not just watching cable news at record
00:17:50.200
rates for years because of their fears of Vladimir Putin and his relationship with Donald Trump and this
00:17:54.780
conspiracy theory that he had taken over our country through blackmail, through the Steele dossier and the
00:17:59.920
Blake. They were buying books and making many, many people rich who were peddling these conspiracy
00:18:05.340
theories. The people who wrote it most, like Natasha Bertrand and others, got promoted. She started a
00:18:11.540
business insider, then moved to the Atlantic. Now is at CNN on television. It was great for all of their
00:18:16.740
careers. It was great for the industry. And it also served their political interests of destroying
00:18:20.200
Donald Trump at the expense of all of our politics. Our politics was swallowed up by this fake scandal,
00:18:26.340
hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars spent chasing a non-existent scandal. And they were
00:18:33.200
lying and disseminating knowing lies the entire time, both the political circles of the Clinton
00:18:37.960
campaign and their allies in the security state and their media partners. And that to me is the huge
00:18:45.160
scandal. The the lies told by the media over and over, democracy dies in darkness, Washington Post.
00:18:51.600
OK, I look forward to their front page article about what what we've just learned and what we've been
00:18:55.840
learning about the John Durham report and where it's going. But look at look at MSNBC. You mentioned
00:19:01.060
Chris Hayes. Rachel Maddow has never backed off of that. She was as deep into all this nonsense as
00:19:07.140
anyone. There was a report report. She was just renegotiating her deal with MSNBC. They reportedly were
00:19:12.260
trying to get her to stay for thirty five million dollars a year. That's what that kind of lying gets
00:19:18.260
you. Thirty five million dollars a year at the NBC empire. OK, there's no accountability. There's no
00:19:24.700
disincentive to keep doing it. And people who watch her think that she's the most credible
00:19:30.020
person in news. You know, there's I would say there's four journalists who were most responsible
00:19:37.160
for this Trump Alpha Bank story, which the indictment itself. And remember, this indictment
00:19:42.560
was issued by John Durham, who's a longtime respected prosecutor, but with the approval of
00:19:47.480
Merrick Garland, Biden's attorney general. So there's zero partisanship going on in the
00:19:52.020
German investigation, at least so far as we know. But certainly Merrick Garland approved this
00:19:58.300
indictment. And this indictment says that this story was fake and that the FBI concluded early
00:20:02.560
on that it was fake. The reporters most responsible for pushing it, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Natasha
00:20:08.640
Bertrand and Frank Fowler, not one of them, not one, has even acknowledged this indictment or
00:20:15.600
mentioned it, let alone held themselves accountable for what they did in light of these new facts.
00:20:21.040
Why? Because they know their jobs don't require that. They know that their viewers don't care
00:20:26.720
if they tell lies as long as those lies serve the right political side. That is the warped incentive
00:20:33.220
scheme that has been created. I mean, you know, look, I was close friends with Rachel Maddow for a
00:20:39.480
long time. I used to go on her show all the time. She's an extremely smart journalist, an extremely
00:20:44.120
smart human being. But over the last five years, she became probably the single most partisan
00:20:51.060
loyalist on television, even more than some of the people on Fox who I would put into that same
00:20:56.360
category, willing to say or do anything as long as it advanced the cause of undermining Donald Trump.
00:21:02.540
And as a result, she made one falsehood after the next, peddled one insane conspiracy after the next,
00:21:08.980
theory after the next. You could watch her virtually crying on TV, talking about how Vladimir Putin is
00:21:13.460
going to cut off all the heat to people in North Dakota. I mean, crazy, crazy stuff that got debunked
00:21:20.880
over and over. She was the prime champion of the Steele dossier that has been now wildly discredited.
00:21:25.540
And as you say, not only didn't she suffer any repercussions, she got richly rewarded. And that
00:21:31.280
was the incentive scheme that has now been created, which is if you lie on behalf of American liberalism,
00:21:37.180
that is the way to succeed and thrive in journalism. And that's what's so deeply concerning.
00:21:41.040
Right. That's the thing. I don't even know that. I was going to say she was used. She was used by
00:21:45.520
them. But I think that's too generous to her. I think she was on the inner circle. She she
00:21:50.380
understood. I don't think she was duped. I think she understood that there was very good reason
00:21:55.540
to doubt all of this. But she's so agenda driven and perhaps driven to line her own wallet that she
00:22:01.980
didn't care. Yeah. You know, it's always hard to know other people's motives. Right. I mean,
00:22:07.300
it's hard to know our own. But sometimes it could just be that you become such a fanatic,
00:22:12.820
right? You become so fanatical and convinced that your cause is just that you lose willingly
00:22:20.300
any moral constraints on what you do. You just tell yourself, I never need to pull back and ask
00:22:26.380
whether what I'm doing is right or whether what I'm saying is true. Because what I know foundationally
00:22:32.080
is that my cause is so just I'm such a deeply good person that anything I do is justified kind
00:22:38.420
of a means justify and then justify the means mentality. And I think that was at least part of
00:22:43.780
of what her and so many other people in media ended up getting swept up. And some of them are just
00:22:49.320
dumb. Some of them are just kind of susceptible to group thing because they don't have very good
00:22:52.940
critical faculties. Yeah. A lot of them are. And they're kind of worse. Yeah. All right. Now I have
00:22:59.160
to take this opportunity to give my husband, one of my husband's books, a shameless plug. He's he's
00:23:04.060
an author. His name is Doug Brunt. And he wrote a book called The Means, as in the means justify the
00:23:08.400
ends. And it's about politics and media and how party people within both of those groups too often
00:23:14.660
have that very mentality. And it's a great novel that sort of takes you in depth on a presidential
00:23:19.360
campaign. Anyway, it was a bestseller. You'll love it. All right. I am joined by one of my favorite
00:23:23.820
people, Glenn Greenwald. We're going to pick it up with him after the break on a couple of things.
00:23:27.000
Mark Milley now speaking out in his defense. We'll tell you what he's saying. And we're going to dive
00:23:31.300
into immigration because a new crisis has sprung up along our southern border, a surge of 10,000 people
00:23:37.260
under a bridge right now. It's a humanitarian crisis. What is the Biden administration doing
00:23:41.540
about it? Plus, Don Lemon is now calling for the shaming and shunning of some Americans. We'll get into
00:23:48.240
that. Stay tuned. Welcome back, everyone, to The Megyn Kelly Show, joined today by Glenn Greenwald,
00:24:00.060
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. I want to turn out of the southern border. 10,000 immigrants have
00:24:05.820
arrived in Del Rio, Texas over the last few days. And the FAA has implemented a two week temporary
00:24:12.580
flight restriction over the area. So no news drones can get proper footage right now of this unfolding
00:24:19.480
crisis. Glenn's got some thoughts on that and says everyone who cares about journalism should be
00:24:24.620
demanding an explanation. And yet they're not. So let's just frame up the crisis before we get to the
00:24:31.080
the the ban on the airspace. Glenn, already we've got illegal crossings at a 20 year high,
00:24:37.540
21 plus year high. Thousands of Haitian immigrants that are down there right now. They cross the Rio
00:24:42.740
Grande. They're sleeping outdoors under a bridge in South Texas. It's being described as a humanitarian
00:24:47.560
emergency. Customs and Border Patrol is saying this is unprecedented, an unprecedented logistical
00:24:53.620
challenge. They don't they take they don't know what to do. How are they going to take care of all
00:24:57.100
these people? There's like a bunch of port-a-johns. That's about all they have. They have no running
00:25:00.100
water. They got nothing. This in the midst of a time in which in July we had 200,000 people
00:25:06.380
apprehended at the border. That was a record in August. We had another 200,000 people apprehended
00:25:11.420
at the border and only half of those were returned to Mexico. So that's a net of just 200,000 people
00:25:18.560
coming into the United States. And, you know, sure, I'm sure they're being processed right now.
00:25:24.040
In reality, what happens is they say they want asylum. We say, OK, show up for a court proceeding
00:25:28.980
and only 15 percent ever get asylum. And then they're released back out into the United States.
00:25:32.620
So the system is completely messed up from the get go. But this is happening because they believe
00:25:38.720
Biden's going to give them a pass, that they're going to be able to stay in the United States.
00:25:42.020
This is their one chance. Now they're here. We don't know what to do.
00:25:44.940
Yeah. I mean, you know, there is an element of truth to the argument that in a lot of these
00:25:50.620
countries like Guatemala and El Salvador and Nicaragua, the United States has been interfering
00:25:56.480
in those countries for a long time, often fueling civil wars and over engineering coups. And that
00:26:02.840
a lot of the suffering that these people confront in these countries can be attributed to the fact
00:26:07.360
that our own government has been a cause, not the only cause, but a cause of instability in that
00:26:14.000
region based on the Mondo Roe doctrine that we control out in America. So you can make the argument
00:26:18.640
that we have some responsibility to the people in these countries. Like, you know, like a lot of people
00:26:22.880
believe we have responsibilities to certain people in Afghanistan after having been there for 20 years,
00:26:27.720
who we made promises to after destabilizing their country and the like. So that's an argument that
00:26:32.080
I think we can debate about what is our responsibility? Should we be helping those countries? How do we
00:26:36.260
help them? The problem is, is that this issue of immigration was probably the single most politicized
00:26:42.640
one during the Trump years. Whenever I would try and get answers from people, what is it that Donald
00:26:47.160
Trump has done that is so morally evil that justify these comparisons to like Adolf Hitler that make
00:26:53.280
him the worst president in the world in your view, things that you said about George Bush, but now
00:26:56.920
you like Bush and say that about Trump, they would instantly say his cruelty in terms of his treatment
00:27:02.720
at immigrants. And so Biden made this a big campaign issue, started the Democrats saying,
00:27:06.720
we need to welcome these people. We need to be more humane to these people. And they heard that
00:27:11.000
message as you should come. If you come, we will welcome you. And you don't need to debate that.
00:27:16.960
That's what they say. And so the Democrats extracted a huge amount of political capital
00:27:21.800
and political gain, manipulating the emotions of these immigrants who are fleeing for a lot
00:27:26.880
of times very good reasons. Their country is drowning in crime and joblessness and all
00:27:32.980
other kinds of problems. They're not evil people for wanting to leave. But the Biden administration
00:27:36.900
played with their emotions by encouraging them to come, but then doing absolutely nothing to
00:27:42.980
process them and hoping. And it turned out that it would be the case that the media would
00:27:46.800
lose interest in everything that's happening at the border now that Donald Trump is no longer
00:27:51.060
president. That's exactly right. And she, Kamala Harris, was basically saying, OK, I'll do it.
00:27:56.240
I'll be the person who takes care of the root causes of corruption down in Latin America. And
00:28:01.640
forgive me for not remembering whether it was Guatemala or Ecuador, but she was like,
00:28:05.460
I'll speak truth to power. I will hold you accountable. And the president was like, it was not
00:28:13.060
me. I'm good. And then all this corruption started to unfold around him. All these stories started
00:28:17.480
coming out about his corruption. She was like, I do not hear a thing. I don't know. Never mind
00:28:22.120
all that stuff I said. So we're not holding anybody accountable for anything. We're not addressing root
00:28:27.000
causes and we're not addressing acute results right here at our southern border. It's basically Greg Abbott
00:28:32.900
who's going to have to deal with this by himself. You know, it's so interesting is the
00:28:36.880
politics, the way the politics have changed around immigration is so fascinating to me.
00:28:41.080
When I, you know, I first started writing about politics in 2005. That was when I kind of
00:28:45.480
transitioned out of being a lawyer into being a journalist. And back then, the idea of what they
00:28:51.240
called comprehensive immigration reform was being championed by George Bush and Dick Cheney.
00:28:55.960
And it was viewed as kind of a pot by the Chamber of Commerce and big business and,
00:29:01.180
you know, international capital to flood various markets with cheap labor in order to undercut
00:29:09.160
unions and undercut the American worker because people who are pro-business wanted a huge flood of
00:29:15.980
immigrants because they wanted the labor market to be as saturated as possible so that wages would
00:29:20.340
decline. And people on the left, like Bernie Sanders and labor unions, were famously
00:29:25.920
anti-immigrant as were a lot of civil rights groups on the grounds that the people who are going to
00:29:31.780
suffer most from this uncontrolled immigration were likely to be African-Americans, American citizens who
00:29:37.720
are black who are going to lose their jobs as a result of this glut of immigrants. And now it's virtually
00:29:43.560
unmentionable, taboo on the left, to even raise the question of whether it's fair to American workers,
00:29:51.400
the people that the left is supposed to represent, or fair to these immigrants to have this huge flow
00:29:57.800
of thousands and tens of thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of people coming from the
00:30:02.400
region in which I live, South America and Central America, that the United States is absolutely
00:30:06.440
completely ill-equipped to handle. And you see a humanitarian crisis, but also the more that enter,
00:30:11.620
the more the American worker is harmed. And the politics have changed so dramatically that if you're a
00:30:17.120
Democrat, if you're a liberal, even if you're on the left, you have to see it through like an identity
00:30:21.420
prism, that either you're a racist or you're in favor of uncontrolled immigration. And I think that's
00:30:26.860
really distorted the debate. All right, stand by, because we're going to be right back with Glenn
00:30:39.700
Welcome back, everyone, to The Megyn Kelly Show. I'm joined now by Substack journalist Glenn Greenwald,
00:30:44.480
and we're going to dive into General Mark Milley, because in recent days, this guy's been in some
00:30:49.500
hot water over revealed communications with his Chinese counterparts. And Glenn, he is coming out
00:30:55.440
today and defending himself. This is, and keep in mind, this comes from a new book that's coming out
00:31:00.140
from Bob Woodward and Bob Costa. No more Woodward and Bernstein, now it's Woodward and Costa. And so we
00:31:06.400
haven't seen, I haven't confirmed any of this stuff. No one has, but this is what they report, that
00:31:10.880
Milley basically subverted the chain of command and conspired with the Chinese to let them know that
00:31:18.440
if Donald Trump launched a nuclear attack or some other attack in his waning days in office, that
00:31:23.280
Milley was in charge and he'd make sure it didn't happen. And that he looked at all of his top
00:31:29.180
generals and said, you understand, procedure runs through me if Donald Trump gives such an order.
00:31:36.040
I think it's best that I reserve my comments on the record until I do that in front of the
00:31:40.620
lawmakers who have the lawful responsibility to oversee the U.S. military. I will go into any
00:31:45.100
level of detail that Congress wants to in a couple of weeks because he's supposed to be speaking to
00:31:49.680
them. But apparently he's saying that he believes his behavior was perfectly within the duties and
00:31:54.620
responsibilities of his job as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, saying that these calls are routine
00:32:01.100
and we're done to reassure both allies and adversaries in this case in order to ensure
00:32:06.720
strategic stability. Seems like just another way of saying I did it, but I had a good reason to do
00:32:14.340
This was, I think, a really underrated dynamic in the Trump years, which is right from the beginning,
00:32:20.740
there were all kinds of reports about the CIA purposely undermining Trump. They would celebrate
00:32:27.540
it. In the media, they would say the CIA has decided that there's certain classified information
00:32:33.280
they don't trust Trump to have because they're afraid he'll pass it to Russia or handle it
00:32:38.560
irresponsibly. There were stories about Trump ordering troops to be removed from Syria and
00:32:44.200
Pentagon officials and CIA officials deceived him into believing they had when, in fact, they just
00:32:49.160
kind of moved them around, believing that it was a bad choice and their decision making was
00:32:53.360
better. And so there was always this, you know, fine line that the media had to walk between
00:32:59.700
cheering these generals, you know, like John Kelly, who was the chief of staff of President Trump and
00:33:05.860
General Mattis and H.R. McMaster, who was an national security advisor, heralding them for saying
00:33:11.920
these are the people who are going to save us from Trump. And then on the other hand, saying, oh,
00:33:16.860
there's no such thing as a deep state in the United States. Only crazy conspiracy theorists
00:33:22.620
believe that when the whole idea of a deep state, which comes from decades of foreign policy scholarship,
00:33:29.360
is that if you have a democracy on the surface, but in back of it, have this kind of permanent
00:33:35.820
military and intelligence apparatus that acts as a backdrop or a safeguard against a president who was
00:33:43.280
elected doing bad things, that's what a deep state is. It's something there that will override the will
00:33:49.060
of the elected leader by exercising their own judgment about what's best for the democracy.
00:33:54.300
This is what happened repeatedly. And this seems to me to be to be what happened here, which is
00:33:58.320
this was not a case where General Milley called a concerned adversary or other country worried about
00:34:05.380
something to reassure him. He was calling the Chinese to essentially tell them that he would go behind
00:34:11.820
Trump's back if Trump was doing anything that he thought was too threatened to the Chinese and
00:34:16.960
would tell them about it without permission and would act to stop Trump. That is an extraordinary
00:34:23.360
thing to do because it's to take away some civilian control of our government and hand it to the
00:34:28.780
military. Yep. And now you've got it's I think it's 26 Republican representatives, a retired general
00:34:36.340
calling for a military treason probe of General Milley saying, look, this is blatant disregard of
00:34:42.260
civilian control. He gave aid and comfort to America's principal adversary, the Chinese Communist
00:34:46.940
Party. His pledge to China is nothing less than outright treason, they say, to conspire with a
00:34:51.620
communist, malfeasant, hostile and genocidal government about our intentions or lack thereof with utter
00:34:57.800
disregard to the implications of said promise on our national security or our service members. It's
00:35:02.680
nothing short of craving at best and treasonous. I mean, that's the thing that I can't get past,
00:35:06.000
Glenn. If Milley did this, it's telegraphing so much to the Chinese, right? It's basically saying,
00:35:12.760
I got a guy in the Oval Office who's a nutcase, who in his waning days in office might launch a
00:35:17.660
nuclear attack on you. Now, maybe Milley's counterpart over in China was grateful for the
00:35:23.040
information, but who the hell knows what the Chinese would have done with that information? Who
00:35:26.360
knows whether they would have had plans to grab some of our guys so that if they were in a hostage
00:35:30.060
situation or wanted to create one to sort of hold over our heads or if they scrambled some sort of jets
00:35:34.620
or if they moved some aircraft carrier? I have no idea what the Chinese did, but you can make a good
00:35:39.880
argument that we were less safe after Milley's phone call to his Chinese counterpart than we were
00:35:45.220
beforehand. And I do feel like this guy, he might not only need to lose his job, he might wind up in
00:35:50.900
cuffs. Look, I mean, beyond all that, like, do you trust Mark Milley more than Donald Trump, which is
00:35:57.200
the debate that they want to have? Because they know a lot of people view Donald Trump as this kind of
00:36:01.940
maniacal figure, especially after he lost the election and was mentally decomposing or whatever
00:36:07.900
they claim. There's the founders in drafting the Constitution foresaw the possibility that the
00:36:14.960
elected president would become mentally imbalanced or unstable or otherwise incapable to exercise the
00:36:20.720
duties of his office. And there's a provision in the Constitution about how you handle that.
00:36:26.420
The 25th Amendment, which is the cabinet can initiate those proceedings, the Congress can,
00:36:31.020
you can remove or temporarily suspend a president if they're actually, you know, kind of crazy in the
00:36:37.080
way that Mark Milley was suggesting to the Chinese Trump had become. He didn't do any of that. He bypassed
00:36:42.280
all of those constitutional processes, those democratic safeguards to basically seize control of the levers of
00:36:49.240
power on his own, even though nobody elected him. And so, you know, I've been trying to think of an
00:36:55.120
analogy to convince people who hate Trump to find this alarming. So, you know, you can imagine, say,
00:37:00.660
in 2011, when Obama and the Obama administration really wanted to get involved in the NATO war in
00:37:06.880
Libya to take Gaddafi out. Obama didn't really want to, but Hillary Clinton did and Susan Rice did and
00:37:12.760
Samantha Power did and convinced him along with the French and the British to do it. And there was a big
00:37:16.800
debate at the time. And the Republicans who controlled the House actually voted against authorizing
00:37:22.260
that war and Obama ignored that and went ahead with with bombing Libya anyway. And to this very day,
00:37:27.660
Libya is a huge mess as a result. Imagine if a right wing general inside the Pentagon had called
00:37:33.420
Gaddafi during that debate and said, hey, I just want you to know that anything Obama's planning with
00:37:40.140
this war that I'm against that I think is crazy and will unleash a huge crisis. And in that area and
00:37:45.660
in Europe, I'm going to tell you about in advance. You'll never be taken by surprise by anything that
00:37:50.660
we do. And I also give you my word that I'm going to do everything to stop Obama from executing this
00:37:58.080
war, even though he is my commander in chief and under the Constitution, I'm duty bound to follow
00:38:02.300
his orders. That would be treason, clearly calling an enemy of the United States with whom we were at
00:38:07.340
war and vowing to give them inside classified information and to subvert the president in order
00:38:13.540
to protect that country. That's exactly what General Milley did here. So whether it's illegal or not
00:38:19.420
is something that I don't want to rely on Bob Woodward and Bob Costa's book in order to conclude,
00:38:23.840
I'd like to see a process that investigates that and surfaces the evidence. But politically,
00:38:29.260
it seems extremely dangerous, not just that it happened, but that so many people seem comfortable
00:38:35.180
with it. Mm hmm. Yeah, I was talking about this with Michael Smirconish on his show on SiriusXM
00:38:40.840
earlier today. And he was saying, and I agree with him, Milley probably is the source. Milley's
00:38:46.380
probably Woodward's source. Milley wanted to make himself look good. Milley thought an adoring
00:38:50.560
liberal base would think this is amazing that, you know, he was the stalwart. He was the he was
00:38:55.020
the barbarian at the gate, right, to prevent the the evil Trump from doing something awful.
00:39:00.340
And I think, you know, I'm I'm hoping that cooler heads who can put their politics to the side will
00:39:06.060
prevail and say, prevent protecting us from the duly elected commander in chief is not your job. And in
00:39:13.220
fact, it may have been treasonous. And it's absolutely grounds for you to be removed.
00:39:18.380
But what's happening, Glenn, is a collective yawn right from Biden on down. And and in fact,
00:39:26.240
that letter I was referencing from the Republicans says the corporate media is reporting the story,
00:39:31.600
quote, as if America were rendered a great service by General Milley. By the way, that's what Milley's
00:39:36.620
been counting on, I believe, if he's the source. And we just took a quick look. Here's I mean,
00:39:41.740
CNN analyst Mark Hurtling said what Milley did was ensure the guard where the guard rails were in
00:39:47.260
place. I give him high marks for this based on what's described in that book. MSNBC analyst,
00:39:52.180
retired General Barry McCaffrey. It's part of the deterrence of unwanted combat. It says,
00:39:57.360
I think we ought to be fortunate. We got this Princeton grad tremendous combat officer,
00:40:02.580
extremely intelligent, law based, trying to safeguard the transition to a duly elected
00:40:07.360
President Biden administration. That's where the media is going with this. It's dangerous on many
00:40:12.660
levels. It's despicable. These are the same people who spent four years screaming about democratic norms
00:40:21.080
and about the threat to the constitutional order that the Trump administration poses. And yet here they
00:40:29.140
are explicitly, not implicitly, explicitly advocating that the person who, whether you like him or not,
00:40:36.980
is the person who is duly elected by the American people in a free and fair election in 2016 to be their
00:40:42.240
president, in their view, has such poor judgment and is intellectually inferior to people like Mark Milley,
00:40:48.740
who went to wherever, Princeton or whatever, and who studies the sacred text of white rage and white
00:40:54.680
fragility, that it is legitimate and even desirable to clandestinely transfer power from the person the
00:41:03.460
American people erroneously elected and instead put it in the hands of somebody who's the guardian of the
00:41:09.660
republic who nobody elected. That, Megan, this is, you know, it's kind of like the thing that ties
00:41:14.660
together everything we've discussed since we started today, which is the reality is, is that the liberal
00:41:21.600
sector of the United States, led by the vast majority of the corporate media, which identifies with
00:41:27.640
American liberalism and serves its agenda now, genuinely believes that Donald Trump and the
00:41:34.240
Trump movement are inferior to them intellectually and morally and are a grave threat to the United
00:41:40.260
States. And therefore, anything they do, anything they do in the name of stopping him, whether it's
00:41:46.520
disseminating lies, whether it's deceiving this FBI, whether it's, you know, consuming our country in a
00:41:52.160
fake scandal for four years, whether it's allowing generals to subvert and ignore presidential orders,
00:41:58.280
they believe it's all justified because they're battling against a group of people, half the
00:42:03.700
country that they regard as their inferiors. And that is the spirit that's animating what they're
00:42:08.840
saying. And who knows whether General Milley might have thought, you know, we got the 25th Amendment.
00:42:14.120
Maybe I should do something with that if he saw Trump decompensating. Right. I have no idea what went
00:42:18.940
through his head. But that really wasn't an available option to him, if that's what he in fact felt,
00:42:25.000
because that card had been played so many times, just like the impeachment card had been played so
00:42:32.460
many times to have actually rendered something like impeachment, kind of a shoulder shrug yawn
00:42:38.800
situation, like another impeachment. OK, this is what they do now. But you couldn't you can't do 25th
00:42:44.460
Amendment now because they said that from almost day one of Trump's presidency.
00:42:49.260
They completely burned all of their credibility with the public justifiably. You know, I think
00:42:55.200
there's a good analogy to that, which is there really is racism in the world and there really
00:43:00.780
is misogyny in the world. And there really is homophobia and transphobia and anti-Semitism in
00:43:05.820
the world. But if you get to the point where you exploit those concepts and weaponize them cynically
00:43:12.140
over and over for political advantage by just calling any one of your political adversaries a white
00:43:17.260
supremacist or accusing reporters who are reporting on you of being misogynistic the way that Jennifer
00:43:22.940
Rubin of The Washington Post did today because Politico was going to report on her, or if you accuse
00:43:28.320
anyone who questions or criticizes the Israeli government of anti-Semitism, you drain those
00:43:32.580
concepts of all their meaning. It no longer stings because people come to believe that that just
00:43:38.400
gets tossed around and that when it does, it no longer is meaningful. They trivialize those concepts.
00:43:43.100
That is absolutely what has happened, that what happened with these constitutional safeguards
00:43:48.240
like impeachment, they trivialized it and toyed with it and played with it for so long. They
00:43:52.340
impeached them twice over trivialities. And as you say, they constantly talked about using the 25th
00:43:58.660
amendment against him to sow doubts in the public mind about his mental stability that maybe we don't
00:44:03.960
know. We weren't there. Maybe the way that Trump handled his election defeat was so kind of
00:44:10.940
unhinged that it got to the point where there were questions about his mental stability in the 25th
00:44:16.080
amendment might've been a viable process. I don't know. But as you say, we don't know it wasn't an
00:44:21.000
option because they burned their credibility to do that. You know what? It's if Trump really was
00:44:27.180
having mental faculty decline in a meaningful way at that time or thereafter, I would like to know
00:44:32.200
it would be relevant to the media, be relevant to the country as he might run again. But none of that
00:44:36.460
will ever be taken seriously. Now, none of the, none of that will be, it'll all be seen as a
00:44:40.040
political move against him. Thanks to things like this. And just for the record, the notion that
00:44:44.400
Trump was going to unleash war against China in his last few days in office, this, this president was
00:44:49.800
going to do that. It makes no sense, Glenn. So one does have to wonder what the hell was Millie doing?
00:44:54.200
Like, why would he have been doing such a thing?
00:44:57.160
You know, it makes so little sense for so many reasons, including the fact that the charge against
00:45:02.480
Trump was that he was always too soft on China, that he wasn't sufficiently confrontational with
00:45:07.900
them at the start of the COVID pandemic, that he seemed to like the leaders of China or respected
00:45:13.960
them in that Trumpian way for being strong and tough. But he also prided himself on the fact that
00:45:19.540
he was the first president in decades. And whatever you think about him, this is just indisputably true,
00:45:24.420
that didn't start a new war. He didn't get the United States into a new war in the four years of
00:45:29.800
his presidency. You have to go back many decades to find a president about whom that's true. So
00:45:34.900
the idea that in his last days, an office was just like randomly start a war with China,
00:45:38.940
which he really never exhibited much animosity towards to begin with is, I mean, it's incomprehensible
00:45:47.220
that that could possibly be true. And, you know, the problem again is, is that I just don't trust any
00:45:52.500
of these people anymore. I don't trust what the Washington Post and the New York Times say, or what,
00:45:57.740
you know, generals and intelligence officials and governments say, I wish I did. It would be so
00:46:03.460
much better if we could. But we just don't. But I have to say, I feel like we're never going to know.
00:46:08.560
You're selling yourself short because you didn't trust these people ever. Really,
00:46:12.540
it's been 20 plus years since you trusted any of them. And we've all just gotten a lot smarter lately,
00:46:17.680
thanks to you and others like you. All right, stand by. Up, we're going to talk about with Glenn
00:46:21.860
Greenwald about Don Lemon now calling for the shunning and shaming of Americans who don't believe
00:46:26.440
exactly as he does. We'll get into it. Welcome back, everyone, to The Megyn Kelly Show. I'm joined
00:46:35.580
today by Substack journalist Glenn Greenwald, also a Pulitzer Prize winner. The wedge dividing
00:46:42.000
Americans into this COVID caste system, you know what I'm talking about, right? It's growing larger
00:46:46.880
by the day. And Glenn recently published a Substack piece on the visual class division at the Met Gala.
00:46:53.240
But I have to tell you, before we get to the Met Gala, Don Lemon, Don LeMond, as Tucker calls him,
00:47:00.160
on Wednesday night, took it to a new level. He was taking aim at the some 46 percent of Americans
00:47:07.080
who are not fully vaccinated. And he wants them to know, Glenn, he wants you to know and me to know
00:47:13.380
he's had it. Here he is just the other night. I think we have to stop coddling people when it comes
00:47:20.700
to this and the vaccine saying, oh, you can't shame them. You can't call them stupid. You can't
00:47:25.820
call them silly. Yes, they are. The people who aided and abetted Trump are stupid because they
00:47:30.760
believed his big lie. The people who are not getting vaccines, who are believing the lies on the
00:47:36.200
Internet instead of science. It's time to start shaming them. What else? Or leave them behind.
00:47:41.200
So it's time to start shaming people, Glenn, because our moral arbiters, Don Lemon and Chris
00:47:47.820
Cuomo, know better. Yeah, those intellectual and moral giants, Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo,
00:47:53.800
are going to guide us in our choices and punish us if we don't instantly submit to their superior
00:47:58.380
wisdom. You know, I feel in part so enraged hearing that, just that condescension for so many
00:48:06.920
millions of people for the crime of not immediately agreeing with their point of view. But I also think
00:48:12.620
it's really important to hear them say that, that openly and that explicitly, because that is how
00:48:17.560
they think. And, you know, I don't know what your experience has been, Megan, but, you know, in terms
00:48:22.280
of the question of the vaccine, I did decide early on that I was going to take the vaccine, but I was
00:48:28.300
very happy that I had the ability to inform myself about all the pros and cons and read as much as I
00:48:34.600
could and make that decision for myself in consultation with my doctors based on my age
00:48:39.480
and my health and every other consideration. And, you know, my husband had a different set
00:48:44.200
of choices. He actually had COVID. He's a little bit younger. So we debated whether he should take
00:48:49.500
it given the natural immunity that he had. And we were happy he he had that choice. He took it
00:48:53.420
today. My 14 year old son got the vaccine. In fact, he just got it while we've been talking. I just
00:48:58.000
got the picture. And I still am in doubt about whether that was the right thing to do. You know,
00:49:02.200
we ultimately decided he should. But given that he's 14, do you know that 74 million people in
00:49:08.540
the United States, 74 million are 18 years or younger? And the grand total of people who have
00:49:15.840
died from COVID since the beginning of the pandemic 16 months ago who are 18 or younger is 362, 362 out
00:49:24.780
of 74 million, a virtually non-existent risk for children who are now injecting with this vaccine,
00:49:32.060
despite not knowing the long term risk. So I hope people get vaccinated. I believe in the vaccine,
00:49:37.800
but I would want to be persuaded to take it and not bullied or coerced. And what they're going to do
00:49:43.340
is they're just it's going to backfire because the more you hear people like Don Lemon telling you
00:49:47.940
that you're stupid if you don't obey, the more the instinct is to just purposely defy what he's telling
00:49:53.880
you to do. That's how we got Trump in the first place. And they still haven't learned that lesson.
00:49:59.220
I want to talk about Don Lemon for a second. Don Lemon thought that that Malaysia airplane was
00:50:05.080
sucked up by a black hole. Don Lemon thought a woman being allegedly raped by Bill Cosby could
00:50:11.060
have stopped it by biting his penis while she was being forced to perform oral sex. Don Lemon's an
00:50:15.400
idiot. And Don Lemon is in no position to be lecturing anyone when it comes to morals,
00:50:21.300
nor is Chris Cuomo. Right. Chris Cuomo decided to dismiss all of the accusers against his brother,
00:50:26.860
whose claims were backed up and verified by independent witnesses as part of, quote,
00:50:31.340
cancel culture. He didn't give a shit about any anything his brother had done and is in no
00:50:35.760
position to lecture us. Don Lemon is credibly accused of shoving his hands down, fondling his
00:50:39.540
own balls and then rubbing his hands along the face of a complete stranger in a bar witnessed by a
00:50:45.640
bartender who is independent, not connected to either man. OK, there's a lawsuit about it right now.
00:50:49.420
Lemon denies it. But I don't want to hear from Don Lemon on morals, on stupidity,
00:50:55.120
which he is an expert on. I don't want to hear from him at all. And this is a pattern for him.
00:51:00.160
Yes, you're right. It's important that we see them say it so that we know what they really think
00:51:03.600
about half the country. But we've had many lessons from Don Lemon when it comes to that.
00:51:08.260
Who could forget this now infamous segment that he had with Rick Wilson and the guy,
00:51:14.300
I forget how you pronounce his first name. Forgive me. But here they are talking about
00:51:19.700
Trump voters before the election. Listen, that Donald Trump couldn't find Ukraine on a map if
00:51:24.140
you had the letter U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it. He knows that this is,
00:51:29.720
you know, an administration defined by ignorance of the world. And so that's partly him playing to
00:51:36.320
their base and playing to their audience. You know, the credulous boomer rube demo that backs
00:51:42.040
Donald Trump that wants to think that Donald Trump's a smart one in there. Oh, y'all elitist are dumb.
00:51:50.720
You elitist with your geography and your maps and your spelling, even though my math and you're reading.
00:51:56.880
Yeah, you're reading, you know, your geography, knowing other countries, sipping your latte.
00:52:11.480
And those those Democrats with their maps, they think they're so smart. Look at him. He's crying.
00:52:16.760
He's laughing so hard. All right. Forget Don Lemon. I've had enough of him. But this is not it's not just
00:52:20.820
Don Lemon. It's not just Chris Cuomo, Glenn. It's a lot in the so-called elite media who are
00:52:26.400
disturbingly in control of popular thinking. And, you know, I think the important thing to remember
00:52:33.240
is that the history of the coronavirus pandemic is one of grave error. You know, in January,
00:52:42.040
the World Health Organization endorsed the claim of the Chinese government that there was no evidence
00:52:46.960
of person to person transmission in order to downplay the pandemic. In February and March,
00:52:52.680
Fauci and the World Health Organization said that not only was wearing masks unnecessary,
00:52:56.400
if you were asymptomatic, but that it could actually be harmful. And they told us that for
00:53:00.900
several months. For five months in the beginning of 2020, they said it's your moral duty to stay
00:53:06.460
home and not go out for any reason, even to go to a deserted beach. If you do that, you're sociopathic
00:53:11.140
and killing grandma. And then suddenly the Black Lives Matter riots happen. And they told us it was
00:53:16.680
our moral duty to go participate in densely packed street protests because racism was a greater threat to
00:53:22.880
the public health than the coronavirus pandemic. And then, of course, for an entire year, we were told
00:53:28.400
that you're not even allowed to suggest that we don't know the origins of the coronavirus, whether it
00:53:34.120
came from a lab in Wuhan or whether it jumped species from bats or other animals. And now suddenly
00:53:40.540
everyone recognizes that we have a real debate about that. So over and over, there are decrees from the
00:53:46.440
really smart people who stop at the idiots who don't obey has been nothing but one of one error
00:53:54.260
after the next in competence and ineptitude. And yet they still continue to be so enamored of their
00:54:00.420
own intellect that they actually want to now structure a society, Megan, no exaggeration of
00:54:05.940
segregation, where you are a second class citizen. If you don't adhere to their judgment about what
00:54:12.440
substances you should put into your body, regardless of how old you are, regardless of your health
00:54:16.700
condition, regardless of whether you've already had COVID once or more and thus have natural
00:54:20.760
immunity, they want to prevent you from having a job, from going into public places, from going on
00:54:25.440
an airplane. They really do want a society where disobeying their superior judgment results in severe
00:54:32.060
restrictions on your life, your ability to talk on the internet, your ability to express yourself.
00:54:36.940
It is such an authoritarian mindset grounded in extreme condescension toward the intellect and
00:54:43.960
morals of anyone who doesn't see the world as they see it. The only way around it is to be an Afghan
00:54:49.120
refugee or someone sneaking across the southern border, none of whom is required to get a vaccine.
00:54:53.640
That's that's your only way to avoid the big thumb of the federal government. But you're right. And
00:54:58.760
their judgment is everywhere. I mean, there was a there was an article out on the Daily Wire today
00:55:02.680
talking about how Amazon temporarily in error. It was human error, Glenn, censored an advertisement
00:55:09.060
for a new book coming from the Heritage Foundation that's critical of Black Lives Matter. It's called
00:55:13.540
BLM, the making of a new Marxist revolution. Oh, you know, it was a mistake. We didn't really mean to
00:55:18.320
censor the ad, but, you know, it's been rectified. That mother of the fallen Marine killed with 13
00:55:23.780
service members in Afghanistan while trying to evacuate people. She was critical of Joe Biden. She got her
00:55:29.620
Facebook account suspended and her Instagram post taken down. Oh, it was done in error that we didn't
00:55:35.880
mean to do that. Michael Flynn's wife just got her account suspended or canceled by Chase Bank
00:55:41.720
because they didn't think it would be good for their reputation to do business with her. Oh,
00:55:46.220
sorry. That was a mistake. You know, that was done in there. Why do all the errors always go
00:55:50.080
against one particular party or people with one particular viewpoint or ideology?
00:55:55.040
I mean, this is what I'm saying is, you know, there was a recent announcement from PayPal,
00:56:01.820
which is now, you know, central to our financial system. A lot of people need PayPal in order to
00:56:07.520
earn a living, in order to transfer money and pay bills and receive money that they are now partnering
00:56:13.360
with the Anti-Defamation League, which used to be a well-respected organization against anti-Semitism
00:56:17.820
and has since earned a well-deserved reputation for being just a liberal advocacy group,
00:56:23.180
kind of like the ACLU and others. And they're going to defer to who the ADL says is an extremist
00:56:29.480
and cut off their ability to use PayPal. So we're going to have segregated financial services,
00:56:35.840
segregated social media accounts, different ways that people can or can't access the media. Just
00:56:41.160
this week, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Adam Schiff each separately wrote a letter to Amazon
00:56:48.100
complaining about certain books that Amazon was quote unquote promoting because they're bestsellers
00:56:53.460
that are about COVID and contain information that those politicians believe is misleading or
00:56:59.180
otherwise unproductive. And they're essentially demanding that Amazon censor it. Censorship has become
00:57:05.460
one of the dominant priorities of the Democratic Party. I mean, they've hauled CEOs of Twitter,
00:57:12.140
Facebook and Google to their committees three or four times in the last year to explicitly demand that
00:57:17.020
either censor more or suffer regulatory and legal reprisals. So this is becoming a really dangerous
00:57:23.380
political faction. Speaking of people throwing out, you know, ridiculous claims, you mentioned Jen
00:57:31.600
Rubin today of the Washington Post. They're so-called conservative at the Washington Post. Such a joke,
00:57:36.540
just like Nicole Wallace and Steve Schmidt are MSNBC's conservatives. What? I don't know that story.
00:57:43.260
What is she doing? So the Politico was writing an article on the obviously bizarre fact that Jen Rubin
00:57:51.680
has become the single favorite columnist for the Biden White House. They retweet her more than any
00:57:57.380
other journalist by far. They pass around her articles more than any by far because she is basically
00:58:03.180
a more loyal spokesperson for the Biden White House than Jen Psaki is. So they love her.
00:58:08.200
And Politico did an article on how unlikely it is that she would serve that role, given that she
00:58:14.620
was one of the most vicious critics of Barack Obama, you know, claiming that he was his allegiances were
00:58:20.260
to Islam and not to the United States. Every toxic attack on Obama she was voicing because she was a
00:58:26.860
huge fan of Mitt Romney just eight years ago. And now suddenly she's the leading Democrat.
00:58:30.180
So they sent her, you know, a request for comment and she wrote back this deranged email to Politico
00:58:36.300
and it's at the top. It said off the record. They didn't agree to that. She just proclaimed it.
00:58:41.920
Basically was this rambling message saying, oh, of course you people at Politico are yet again
00:58:47.160
attacking a powerful woman. Your misogyny is so evident, you know, accusing them of just being
00:58:52.680
misogynistic for reporting on her bizarre trajectory from, you know, GOP propagandists,
00:58:59.200
lover of Mitt Romney to the leading propagandists for the Biden White House. And she just pulls out
00:59:04.040
this misogyny accusation out of nowhere. And they published the email and near attend another Biden
00:59:09.320
White House officials accused Politico of having breached on off the record agreement, which they
00:59:14.480
never actually met entered with her as a journalist, you know, making you someone can't just send you
00:59:18.840
an email and put it at the top off the record that then you have to agree that they're allowed to
00:59:23.180
order you not to report it. So that was that was the little controversy of which she knows very
00:59:28.980
well. Jennifer Rubin knows and Neera Tanden knows, too. But the sort of the overall elitism
00:59:34.140
in all of this and the and the the one sided censorship when it comes to points of view or
00:59:40.300
behaviors, right, what have you, it's it's evident everywhere. And you've been on this sort of
00:59:44.220
elitism for a long, long time and you've lived it. Unlike AOC and her stupid dress, you've actually
00:59:49.760
been consistent in pointing it out and calling it out when you see it. And it's everywhere when it
00:59:54.340
comes to go to COVID. I saw you had a great piece not long ago talking about how when it comes to
00:59:59.040
COVID, they refuse that sort of the press and those in charge refuse to apply the cost benefit analysis
01:00:03.880
to any of these COVID debates. You know, it's like the elites can run to the mountains and to the
01:00:08.420
beach and to Florida to avoid all of these restrictions that they're imposing on people.
01:00:13.040
But it's the poor working class that have to stick around and suck it up. And you had a bit in there
01:00:17.580
about Nancy Pelosi and mask restrictions. And I guess it was a fundraiser not too long ago. What
01:00:23.660
happened with her? Yeah, so Nancy Pelosi had a fundraiser for rich donors to the Democratic
01:00:30.880
Congressional Campaign Committee, the DCCC in Napa, the very upscale wine region near San Francisco,
01:00:38.180
where she has her sprawling mansion. And it was an outdoor event. But it was held about a month after
01:00:46.840
Los Angeles County had reimposed its mask mandates for large outdoor gatherings. And San Francisco had in
01:00:53.480
place just a few miles away where she lives and where liberals govern a mask mandate that says that
01:00:59.240
you should wear a mask anytime that you're in close contact with large numbers of other people, even
01:01:03.540
outdoors. And yet this event was a huge number of rich Democratic donors, almost all of them white,
01:01:11.340
sitting at tables one on top of the next, like not a molecule of social distancing. In fact,
01:01:17.060
I would have been uncomfortable, regardless of COVID sitting that close to people, you know,
01:01:23.140
even before COVID, they were right next to each other, breathing on each other, talking to each
01:01:27.560
other. And then she was up front, speaking, they were listening, sort of not one of them, Megan was
01:01:34.080
wearing a mask of the rich white donors who were seated at the table before even eating, they didn't
01:01:38.680
have food. And then they had servants, almost all of whom are non white, walking around bringing water,
01:01:44.040
you know, getting ready to serve the food, and they were all masked. And this is something that
01:01:49.100
has become very commonplace now where the kind of servant class has to wear a cloth over their face
01:01:54.980
all of the time, while somehow people who are in richer or more elite positions don't have to,
01:02:02.180
they're allowed to show their face. And that doesn't seem very scientific to me. I don't understand how
01:02:07.400
people who are working hourly wages are more vulnerable to transmitting or contracting a virus
01:02:14.020
than people who are wealthier in an elite position. It's something we saw at Obama's
01:02:18.660
birthday party, where his 400 closest friends partied in the indoor tent with no mask while
01:02:23.020
the waiters and servants wore masks. And then we saw it again at the Met Gala, where AOC was walking
01:02:28.940
out of, you know, the Met Gala, and there was a servant carrying the train of her gown. She was unmasked,
01:02:36.120
waving like royalty to the adoring fans. And the servant behind her was wearing a mask. And it just is a
01:02:42.720
very kind of vivid illustration of this growing chasm between cultural, political, and financial
01:02:48.700
elites on the one hand, and the way that ordinary people on the other are treated that most people
01:02:53.380
in this country are very well aware of. And sadly, all of our kids are in the surf class,
01:02:59.800
and all of them, they will be the ones masked and holding the train of AOC's dress. And that's exactly
01:03:04.960
the way she wants it. And then when called out on her ridiculous hypocrisy, I've been trying to get
01:03:10.360
this quote on the air for three days. I finally remembered to pull it, Glenn. This is this is her
01:03:15.100
defense after she took an appropriate rhetorical beating for her nonsense. In response, okay, wait,
01:03:21.680
here it is. I thought about the criticism I would get. But honestly, I and my body,
01:03:27.760
I and my body have been so heavily and relentlessly policed from all corners politically,
01:03:37.660
since the moment I won my election, that it's kind of become expected and normalized to me,
01:03:44.340
you see that she's just like Jennifer Rubin, no abuse that she takes from the press or any criticism
01:03:49.580
she gets is real. It's just part of the ongoing policing and abuse of her and her body. Because I
01:03:58.000
presume she's a woman, she's a woman of color. She's, you know, a woman standing up for socialism
01:04:02.340
by putting weird letters on a weird dress. Well, yeah, the second part of the statement even
01:04:07.400
makes more explicit that that is what she's saying. She said, you know, a lot of this discomfort and
01:04:12.760
anger about what I did is just people's discomfort from having a woman of color be in power. She blamed
01:04:18.780
it on white supremacy and misogyny. She described her and her designer, who is engaged to someone who's in
01:04:28.200
the family of the family that founded Lehman Brothers and who's close to a billionaire, if not
01:04:31.900
a billionaire, as a working class immigrant. She emigrated from Toronto, you know, the trek from
01:04:39.260
Toronto to Manhattan is a very, very arduous one where people face all kinds of trauma and dangers.
01:04:45.200
And she made that trek and arrived safely in Manhattan with her, you know, billionaire boyfriend.
01:04:50.540
So, yeah, of course, that was the response. And, you know, honestly, what you're saying,
01:04:55.660
I, you know, my view as a parent has changed in a lot of ways, for instance, becoming a parent,
01:05:00.660
it does infuriate me that my kids have to wear masks all day in school for nine hours and not
01:05:06.120
see each other's faces. And, you know, despite the fact that the risk is so low. And then I watch AOC
01:05:11.440
traipsing around on a red carpet with no mask of any kind, nor do any of the other celebrities near
01:05:18.120
her have it. You just see that it's not about anything scientific. It's about social control and
01:05:23.420
creating a cast of people who believe they're exempt from the rules they impose on everybody else.
01:05:29.300
Oh, it's infuriating. We've got to discuss the Met Gala because I want to get a little bit more on
01:05:37.540
that. But I also want to talk about there's this new series. OK, you may not have heard about this,
01:05:42.460
but it's called it's it was it's coming out on CBS or it was and it was going to be about activists.
01:05:47.200
Right. And it stars Usher, Julianne Hough and Priyanka Chopra Jones, Jonas. And I cannot wait
01:05:54.320
to tell you what's happened to it and why I'm very much in favor of them not hosting an activist
01:05:59.640
show. We'd love to know your thoughts on General Mark Milley in the in the meantime,
01:06:04.020
on his less than ethical phone call. We're going to take your calls in just a minute.
01:06:06.880
Give us a call here. Eight, three, three, four, four. Like Syracuse is 44. That's why we put that in
01:06:11.160
there. Megan, M-E-G-Y-N, like O-B-G-Y-N, but M-E-G-Y-N. That's a whole story, too. Thanks to my
01:06:17.660
mom. Eight, three, three, four, four, six, three, four, nine, six. Call in now. We're going to take
01:06:22.720
your calls shortly. Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show, everyone. It's Friday, so I'm ready to answer
01:06:31.220
your calls and have some fun. Do you want to send a message to Don Lamont? Thoughts on the border?
01:06:36.860
Maybe a personal question about my life or career? We'll see. Call me at eight, three, three, four,
01:06:42.480
four. Megan, M-E-G-Y-N. That's eight, three, three, four, four, six, three, four, nine, six. In the
01:06:49.020
meantime, back with me is Substack journalist Glenn Greenwald. So Glenn, I had to ask you because I
01:06:54.500
have been to the Met Gala and it was just as insufferable as you would think, but I thought it
01:07:00.060
was it. I didn't realize that Anna Wintour a couple of years ago was sad about the Met Gala and really
01:07:06.660
thought that there was a massive problem with it and did something to fix it. Can you tell us what
01:07:11.700
that was? Yeah, it was in 2014 and she started believing that it was insufficiently exclusive,
01:07:19.340
that people who didn't deserve to be there were able to get in because in her view, the ticket
01:07:24.980
prices were too low. They were only $15,000 a ticket and she felt that enabled kind of a certain
01:07:31.180
form of riffraff to be able to vandalize her event. And so she raised the prices to $25,000 a
01:07:38.860
ticket in order to maintain the high level that she believes the Met Gala should exhibit.
01:07:44.620
Oh, my God. And meanwhile, they're like, this is a charity event. This is a charity event. And
01:07:48.100
that the charity they're supporting, it's like the Mets costume wing. They talk about it like trying to
01:07:55.500
defend the $35,000 a ticket that it's now by saying like it's it's for like it's like starving kids in
01:08:00.860
Africa. No, it's to help the costumes at the Met have more money in better cases. Yeah, well, that was
01:08:07.460
you know, that was the joke of AOC's going is that, you know, it's probably like one of the most vulgar
01:08:13.500
testaments to the excesses of capitalism and inequality that has been conceived of since, you know,
01:08:21.640
the parties of Louis XIV and the French aristocracy. And obviously, she just wanted to go because she
01:08:28.500
wanted to hang out with Rihanna. And instead, you know, but she also wanted to keep her socialist
01:08:33.680
street credibility. So at the last second, she's like, hey, why don't we just spray paint, you know,
01:08:38.460
tax the rich on my dress as though like any of those liberal celebrities are going to be offended by
01:08:43.620
that message. And that way, I'll get to, you know, make my presence there something noble.
01:08:48.600
Um, but yeah, you know, there's there's been articles in like town and country and sort of the
01:08:53.720
the magazines of the landed gentry about how the Met Gala used to be the best of high society.
01:09:01.200
And now it's been vulgarized by the fact that celebrities go who don't even care about the
01:09:05.940
Met and probably don't even know what they're raising funds for. But you're right. If AOC is
01:09:09.380
going to go to a charity gala, you would think it would be to help homeless people or people on the
01:09:14.980
verge of eviction or something like that, as opposed to buying more extravagant costumes for
01:09:20.960
the Met. Yes. And by the way, when I went to the Met Gala in the bathroom at the Met, there were a
01:09:26.460
bunch of people whose names you would know, like pretending to be humping one another. Very classy
01:09:32.340
event. And then the men's. So I went into the women's restroom and I saw that men and women in
01:09:36.980
there doing that. All names you would know. And my husband went in the men's restroom and we met,
01:09:41.660
you know, afterward. And there were two very well known people snorting cocaine off of the bathroom
01:09:46.380
in his bath. It was like, oh, this is very classy and exclusive and a well done. Now, one of the groups
01:09:52.540
that Anna Wintour is obsessed with is tennis players. And so it's no accident that, you know,
01:09:56.620
she's had Roger Federer there. She had she had Naomi Osaka there this year. And I wanted to spend a
01:10:02.680
minute talking to you about that, because Naomi Osaka was not only at the Met Gala, but she also wound up
01:10:08.780
on time's most influential people this year, along with Meghan and Harry. I mean, it's crazy to me,
01:10:14.220
Glenn, that you've got Alexi Navalny on there as one of the world's most influential people. And he
01:10:19.980
really has been along with like Harry and Meghan, Meghan Markle, like a C-list actress who wound up
01:10:26.460
marrying a prince and royal life was too hard for her. So they ran kicking and screaming to their 14
01:10:30.780
million dollar Montecito mansion. OK, so that's who's on the list of the time 100 this year.
01:10:35.760
But I do have to tell you, I've been fascinated to talk to you and hear your thoughts on on sort of
01:10:41.800
Naomi and Meghan, for that matter, two women of color in very, very prominent positions who you
01:10:48.420
are not allowed to criticize at all. And you tell me why that is. Yeah, you know, well, so it's
01:10:56.180
interesting. Tennis has been, you know, probably the sport that has played the biggest role in my life.
01:11:01.780
When I was young, I was obsessed with watching tennis like my childhood hero was Martina Navratilova.
01:11:07.020
I was actually actually signed a contract to do a film about Martina Navratilova, along with
01:11:11.780
Reese Witherspoon. And then Martina made some comments about the trans movement and whether
01:11:16.960
trans women should be able to participate in sports that got her kicked out of a bunch of LGBT groups
01:11:21.440
and kind of rendered radioactive. And so the project was killed. So I've been really interested in
01:11:26.880
tennis for a long time. I have a couple of friends who play professionally on the on the circuit now.
01:11:31.780
And when Naomi Osaka made that announcement about how she was going to refuse to do press
01:11:39.020
afterwards, the press conferences that are mandatory for every player, you know, she sort of said,
01:11:44.380
well, find me, go ahead and find me as though like her wealth, which is vastly greater than almost every
01:11:49.900
other tennis player means she just gets to buy off having to abide by the same rules as the other
01:11:55.280
players who can't afford to get those fines. And the sympathy that was so overwhelming in her favor,
01:12:03.360
as though the minute you utter the term I'm suffering or I'm engaged in mental health or a
01:12:08.680
young woman of color meant that she's the marginalized person. When in reality, Naomi Osaka
01:12:13.980
is one of the most powerful people on the planet. She's one of the richest people on the planet. She
01:12:18.940
is the highest earning female athlete in the world. She made $55 million last year. She's well on her way
01:12:24.920
to being a billionaire. By the time she's 30, a billionaire, she carries incredible cultural
01:12:30.600
cachet. But if you criticize her or Meghan Markle, and you just told the story of Meghan Markle,
01:12:35.380
you get accused of bullying because they're supposed to be looked at as these weak and marginalized
01:12:41.880
people, which A, is incredibly ironic to talk about strong women athletes as being these fragile
01:12:48.880
little China dolls who crumble at the minute you criticize them. But I also think it exhibits the
01:12:55.540
kind of framework that we've been taught to see the world through, which is class is totally irrelevant.
01:13:01.860
So if someone's extremely rich, it doesn't really count as a metric for how you evaluate them. The only
01:13:07.140
things that matter are gender and race. So a black woman who's on her way to being a billionaire at
01:13:13.260
the age of 23 is supposed to be considered marginalized and less powerful than, say, some
01:13:19.000
out-of-work white coal miner in West Virginia whose entire community has been ravaged by the opioid
01:13:25.860
epidemic and who hasn't had a decent job in 20 years because it got shipped overseas. It's such a distorted
01:13:31.720
way of looking at the world, but people like that are the beneficiaries of it.
01:13:35.460
That's so well said. So well said. And that the one that really, incident that really showed it
01:13:41.400
with Naomi was when she had that moment, she got emotional at a press conference after all the
01:13:46.140
nonsense, after she said she's an introvert and she can't deal with press and so on and so forth,
01:13:49.600
but then went on the cover of Time and went on the cover of Sports Illustrated and was the last
01:13:54.260
person who she lit the Olympic torch. Now she's at the Met Gala. Now she's Time 100. She has a Barbie.
01:14:00.080
She had a documentary made about her. But this one little guy from, I think it was like some
01:14:03.560
Cincinnati sports paper says to her, like, you know, how do you reconcile all the media appearances
01:14:09.160
plus what you say is an introverted nature? And she was like overwhelmed. And then her her agent
01:14:15.880
came out and he was like, he's a bully. He's disgusting. Came after this poor guy probably
01:14:20.780
makes a 40 grand a year if he's lucky. And he and the media went with that. He was her bully.
01:14:25.960
I mean, there's no job more difficult than working for a local paper, especially in like a smaller
01:14:31.280
midsize town like Cincinnati. And then you're a sports columnist on top of it. So you're totally
01:14:35.900
dispensable. I'm sure he makes exactly what you said, maybe even less. He has no job security at
01:14:42.000
all. These papers close more often than they hire and lay off huge numbers of people. He has a very
01:14:47.480
precarious job. That's very difficult. He probably has to write, you know, 20 articles a week. So just
01:14:52.700
working day and night. And he I don't know if you heard it, the audio, but the question was asked
01:14:56.960
so respectfully. Yes. And it was a very valid question. It was just like, hey, you on the one
01:15:02.100
hand, you say you have a great deal of problems dealing with press. But on the other hand, you're
01:15:06.040
doing a lot of press for these other ventures. Like, how do you as you say, how do you reconcile
01:15:10.220
that? She burst into tears, left the press conference, did come back. But then to call him who is as
01:15:18.440
marginalized as it gets in society, her bully, even though most people couldn't dream of having
01:15:24.360
life like Naomi Osaka, shows that really distorted prism through which everyone insists we we view
01:15:30.840
the world. The hypocrisy of it. I mean, it just it it drives me nuts and it drives me nuts that Meghan
01:15:35.420
and Harry are out there saying, be kind, be kind as they stick the knife into the royal family while
01:15:40.000
Prince Philip is dying and say somebody in the family is a racist. And by the way, they didn't care
01:15:44.180
if I was about to kill myself. But be kind, everyone be kind. And by the way, protect the
01:15:48.380
environment. Oh, wait, I'm just going to go on this private jet and go off for my polo match in
01:15:52.040
Aspen, which is what Prince Harry did while he's lecturing us about preserving the environment.
01:15:56.720
I mean, and how they want their privacy, except for their 50 million from Netflix and Spotify.
01:16:01.140
And now the Time 100 and the airbrushed cover, which I was saying on GB News the other night,
01:16:05.540
was absolutely perfect because it reduced him, made him smaller, which is exactly what's happened since
01:16:09.840
he married her, made airbrushed away all of their realities, right? Like their flaws, whatever they
01:16:15.360
may be, whether it was receding hairline or what have you. That's exactly what they want done and
01:16:19.460
what they're doing in their sort of PR campaign. I could go on. But I got to tell you about this one
01:16:24.140
thing. OK, this is Debbie Murphy, our producer. She's really been wanting us to get to this.
01:16:28.520
She also is one of those hard, trodden immigrants from Canada. God knows what she had to do to get here
01:16:34.160
from there. Actually, she went the other way is the truth. OK, CBS is now scrapping its competition
01:16:40.640
show, The Activist, after backlash and turning it into a documentary. This is from the website
01:16:47.080
Mediaite. They had they'd been launching the series called The Activist, and it was going to be a model
01:16:52.880
for a competition show where they showed a wide audience the passion, long hours and ingenuity that
01:16:58.840
activists put into changing the world, hopefully inspiring others to do the same. Well, even the
01:17:04.940
far left Glenn didn't like it. I mean, the right, I'm sure, was rolling its eyes. And but the far left
01:17:10.100
said this is performance activism. That's not the real thing. We can't have a show about that.
01:17:16.180
And the thing that jumped out to me about this is just perfection. And it is still going to be a
01:17:20.820
documentary. So we're still seeing these people. It's going to be hosted by Usher, Julianne Hough and
01:17:27.920
Priyanka Chopra Jonas. OK, now, Julianne Hough got in trouble a couple of years ago. I know this.
01:17:35.320
I saw it after I left NBC because she actually wore blackface. She went as one of the characters
01:17:39.800
from Orange is the New Black. She wore blackface on Halloween. It was photographed by many people
01:17:44.360
had to do a big public mea culpa. Priyanka Chopra Jonas endorsed skin lightening and got in a lot of
01:17:51.000
trouble over for endorsing this cream in India to make your skin lighter, which, you know, is sort of a
01:17:55.460
racist thing to do because it suggests that lighter skin is better than darker skin. And Usher was
01:18:00.020
repeatedly infected or was accused and sued many times of repeatedly infecting women with herpes
01:18:04.820
without telling them, as required under the laws of several states. So these are the three.
01:18:12.040
I'm sorry. Couldn't be more perfect in a way. They should be interviewed by Don Lemon and Chris
01:18:19.060
Cuomo about their new show. Yeah, I mean, the backlash to it was so intense. I think it was one
01:18:26.760
of the most ratioed tweets on Twitter when they unveiled it. And it's very rare to see a show that
01:18:32.000
planned and that promoted have to be radically reworked because, as you say, it wasn't just one
01:18:37.620
sector of the society that reacted with revulsion. It was pretty much everybody thought it was the most
01:18:44.340
preposterous thing in the world that you're going to take social activism and turn it into some kind
01:18:49.200
of like commercialized competition led by celebrities. Those in particular. It's amazing.
01:18:55.760
And, you know, it's just it's a good reminder because we do get lectured at every turn in our
01:19:01.360
lives now, whether you're, you know, trying if your wife gets canceled at the bank or your book doesn't
01:19:07.500
get promoted or, you know, even if you're a black conservative, you can't get your films made.
01:19:12.660
Just ask Shelby Steele. Right. Who's like had had real trouble getting his his movie. What killed
01:19:18.400
Michael Brown on Amazon? It's just a reminder that the people judging us all the time are frankly
01:19:24.640
human. They make mistakes. They do and say stupid shit, just like everyone does. And we used to be
01:19:31.140
at a place in our society where we understood that and we weren't so awful to one another about it.
01:19:36.000
Glenn. Gosh, I love talking. I could talk to you every day of the week. We got to do like a
01:19:39.600
co-host situation because you're so interesting. Thank you for doing this.
01:19:43.200
I love being here, Megan. It's always great. I'm always happy to come back anytime.
01:19:46.640
Yeah. I'm going to take you up on that. All right. Up next, we're taking your calls and we
01:19:50.580
have a special announcement up next. I'm excited to bring to you. Call us in. Let us know what you
01:19:55.200
think about the 10,000 immigrants waiting to cross. Well, they've crossed our southern border and
01:20:00.100
they're sitting there under a Texas bridge right now. Or let us know whether you think General
01:20:04.500
Mark Milley should be tried for treason. 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-446-3496.
01:20:16.400
Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly show, everyone. Our phone lines are open at 833-44-MEGYN. That's
01:20:22.660
833-446-3496. And we have a very special first caller today and it involves a special announcement
01:20:32.300
that we want to bring to you about our executive producer, Steve Krakauer, who you may know if
01:20:38.640
you've been listening to our podcast this past year. He's not with us this week for a very good
01:20:43.440
reason. He and his wife just had a baby. They have a new daughter named Mia. Steve, how are you?
01:20:52.120
Hi, Megan. First time caller, long time listener. This is exciting to be on this side.
01:20:56.700
Congratulations. We're so happy for you. And how is it going so far? We're showing some pictures
01:21:03.340
of you and the babe. Oh, thank you so much. Yes, it's going well. You know, this is our second
01:21:08.120
child. It's been five years. We had our son, Jack, five years ago, almost for the day. And
01:21:14.120
Mia came Monday. Everyone's doing really well. You're kind of piecing together about three hours
01:21:19.400
of sleep or so a night. So I'm a little bit delirious, but otherwise it's been going great.
01:21:23.500
She's doing great. And mom's doing well. And I was just kind of a bystander, but very happy
01:21:28.500
with everything. Everything went OK with the delivery? Everything went OK. Yeah. I mean,
01:21:33.460
it was it was pretty smooth. I mean, you know, I say that as someone who was just kind of sitting
01:21:37.020
in the chair next to my wife. It was so easy for me. I know, exactly. They were trying to get me to
01:21:42.180
cut the umbilical cord. I was like, please do not give me the scissors. And it was just I just wanted
01:21:46.660
to kind of be a moral support. I don't want to have anything, you know, potentially go wrong.
01:21:50.360
But everything went well. I was there to cheer up. That totally reminds me of Doug. He was he is not
01:21:56.900
somebody who deals with needles or blood very well at all. He was like, I'm going to stay on this side
01:22:01.120
of the drape, right? I'll be on this side of the drape. Exactly. I just looked right at Megan. I
01:22:05.500
was not I was not looking anywhere else. I was like, just look at me. Lock eyes. I'm not looking
01:22:09.540
where I'm going to. I think that's very smart. But Steve's wife is named Megan, too. I think it's
01:22:14.640
very smart because let's let's face it. I mean, a good husband wife relationship has to have,
01:22:18.920
you know, a lot of things that in order to make more babies, you need to be able to look at the
01:22:23.140
other person and think, think certain thoughts that are tough. If you see certain things.
01:22:28.740
Yes, I just wanted to, you know, just keep my focus. I did my part, which was very minimal,
01:22:34.920
the best of my ability. But no, it was great. Everyone's doing well. And yeah, it's been,
01:22:39.680
you know, it's just sort of getting the getting back into the into the mode of having a newborn now.
01:22:44.220
Which is challenging, but also fantastic. How about Jackson? How he how is he doing with baby
01:22:49.280
Mia? It's funny. And he's been, you know, he's real, real cute about it, you know, talking about
01:22:53.720
how how excited he is. And he's wearing his, his new brother's shirt yesterday, the soccer practice,
01:22:58.840
but he's very like nervous around her. He we haven't even gotten to be the point where he can like
01:23:03.520
hold her. He's I think he just thinks of her as she's like very fragile, and he doesn't want to,
01:23:08.820
you know, do anything that's gonna mess up. So he's been very cautious. Although I think I think
01:23:12.640
we're gonna we're gonna approach that this weekend. Perfect. Good. That's not a bad way
01:23:18.100
to start off when you've got a little toddler at home and introduced to a new baby. So have you been
01:23:22.440
listening to the show? What critiques? How do you think we're doing without you?
01:23:26.120
I have no, it's been so interesting. I have to say, you know, I, I would listen to some of Brett
01:23:31.560
Weinstein on Spotify. And I got some YouTube with the fifth column guys yesterday. And I actually was
01:23:36.780
on Wednesday, I was in the car. And I was like, let me turn on and there was Scott Galloway. It was a
01:23:41.100
great conversation. I loved it. And so yeah, it was it was very unique to kind of be for,
01:23:46.040
you know, a year of being behind the scenes. And now being kind of a listener and a fan.
01:23:51.240
I thought it was a great week of shows. I was playing Greenwald before I got on it.
01:23:54.360
That was great. Awesome. Well, we've had a couple of technical snafus, which now I can't blame on you
01:23:58.760
because you're not here. But you know, we're working it out. As you know, we're a new show. We don't
01:24:03.100
don't haven't figured we haven't figured everything out yet.
01:24:05.940
That's right. Week two, I still will take the blame. You know, I'll still serve in that role.
01:24:11.200
Well, we can't wait for you to come back. Debbie's doing a great job holding on the
01:24:14.120
fort without you. But everyone misses you. And just so much love to you and Megan
01:24:18.020
and little Jackson and newest little Mia. We love you guys and wish you all the best.
01:24:22.760
And don't even think about us other than as a as a source of news and entertainment
01:24:26.460
until you come back. That's right. I'll be I'll be a consumer still. But no,
01:24:30.640
thank you to everyone there. I'm excited to get back. But now I'm going to go back to Mia.
01:24:35.480
Yeah. Much love. The newest member of the Devil May Care media family, little Mia Krakauer.
01:24:41.820
All right. We're going to take our first caller as well. And we're our phone lines are still open.
01:24:45.880
So you can call in. We've got a good chunk reserved today. We're figuring that out as well.
01:24:49.120
833-44-MEGAN. That's 833-446-3496. All right. Let's talk to let's see Dale in Iowa.
01:25:00.660
Hey, Megan. I am a 12 year veteran of the U.S. Army. I'm a first time caller, but a longtime viewer
01:25:06.500
and listener from America Live. Kelly File, your podcast and your book Settle for More is still one
01:25:12.440
of my favorites. Thank you. I'm calling regarding General Milley. And yes, the call to China is
01:25:19.700
problematic. But to me, the call to if it's true that Speaker Pelosi called him and then he met with
01:25:28.000
all the people that report to him and then reached out to the command generals of whether it's Pacific
01:25:34.060
Command, Central Command, the fleet. To me, that's illegal. He is prohibited by law
01:25:42.000
from he has no command authority. He's an advisor to the president. So if he did that, that would fall
01:25:48.580
under the UCMJ. Obviously, you're a lawyer. That's the military's code of justice. So if that's true,
01:25:58.140
then he should be tried under that for potential court martial. Then the call to China, whether
01:26:06.720
it's again true that the secretary that Miller, secretary of defense at the time, and he made
01:26:14.260
that call, then we were talking about in the area of treason. Yeah. I mean, I hate to throw that word
01:26:21.080
around, but I have to say, I think you're right. I think this circumstance warrants it. It's like,
01:26:26.580
I mean, if you're if calling up the Chinese and telling them there's some there might be something
01:26:31.040
off with the sitting U.S. president and you're going to stop a potential military strike against
01:26:36.320
them is a treason. I don't really know what is. And we better get to the bottom of this. I mean,
01:26:42.600
the Republicans are not in control of the House at the moment, but I don't see how the Democrats
01:26:46.720
blow this off and don't have any hearings on this. I mean, they are going to have him in front of them
01:26:50.800
next week. So you can guarantee that there's going to be questions about it. We'll see what Milley
01:26:54.660
says. But this this looks terrible and is a dangerous, dangerous precedent. I think, you know,
01:27:00.260
honest Democrats will admit that, too. All right. Let's talk to Gene, number caller number four,
01:27:07.580
who's got some thoughts on Don Lemon. Hey, Gene. How are you, Megan? So good to hear you on the
01:27:13.500
radio. I miss you on TV and you're a beautiful and talented voice that needs to be heard. And
01:27:20.260
now you come on right after Glenn Beck on my drive home or drive to work and here in Texas. And
01:27:26.380
I'm glad you're on the radio. That's nice. I love thinking of that.
01:27:30.000
Love thinking about you down in Texas and my other friend up in Iowa, you know, like out in the
01:27:34.700
heartland and outside of the coastal elites. Just get in the news in a way that you trust. I
01:27:39.840
appreciate it. Thank you. You bet. Yes. I have a brother who is a veteran that has chosen not to get
01:27:48.100
the vaccine for religious reasons. And, you know, for our for this administration and for Don Lemon,
01:27:57.940
you know, you know, basically, you know, basically telling people that they're as bad as the Taliban,
01:28:04.600
you know, because they don't want to get the they don't want to get the vaccine.
01:28:09.980
And the entire thing, you know, the entire time, you know, during the debacle in Afghanistan,
01:28:16.680
you know, both women and Maddow as well, all they could talk about was mask mandates,
01:28:22.020
you know, about a vaccine that, you know, back in a year ago, they would never want to touch.
01:28:30.120
Yes. You know, it had something to do with Trump. And now it's just the hypocrisy.
01:28:35.400
It's it's overwhelming. Yeah. It's plain as a nose in your face. 100 percent. You know,
01:28:42.480
one of the soundbites we didn't get to today was Joy Reid going off about how, yes, I did have my
01:28:46.540
doubts under Trump of the vaccine. She was one of the people who stoked those doubts and others.
01:28:50.780
And now they want to look at all the others who have some doubts, not based on that nonsense about
01:28:55.440
like Trump's going to do something to the vaccine, but about, you know, based on a year of Fauci misleading
01:29:00.080
us and reversing himself and say, oh, you're a bunch of rubes. You're also dumb. We know better.
01:29:05.040
And it is it is infuriating and it is maddening. I feel the same. I'm like,
01:29:10.900
who are these people to lecture to us? And by the way, all of the media censorship has played
01:29:15.560
into it as well. Right. Because the people don't trust the media. They think that some
01:29:18.960
hidden truth is being hidden, you know, concealed from them. It's better. It's better to let people
01:29:25.020
figure it out for themselves. But we've decided to go a different way. Anyway, I appreciate the call.
01:29:31.220
Thank you very much. Right now. I want to talk to you. Let's see. Looking for Ron from North Carolina.
01:29:37.080
Hey, Ron. Hey, Megan. Good to talk to you again after 10 years.
01:29:43.580
I was on your talk show or not your talk show, your midday news show, November of 2011 on the
01:29:50.420
baby Lisa case. I'm a private investigator. Oh, my God. Ron, that's so crazy. Can I tell you,
01:29:55.440
I was just talking about that case the other day with two people who were involved in it. Now,
01:29:59.540
we may do an update on that. Oh, it's so nice to talk to you again. Thank you for being here.
01:30:03.740
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I was actually heavily involved in that. You I don't I don't want to bore the
01:30:10.460
listeners with it. But you interviewed me on the missing phone part of the case. And, you know,
01:30:17.020
that somebody allegedly made some phone calls. And actually, ironically enough, it was the only
01:30:23.420
time I was on because Bill Stanton, the guy who was trying to do some investigations, told one of
01:30:30.100
your producers that if I was ever on again, he would not appear on your show. Oh, I love wild Bill
01:30:35.800
Stanton. I don't I don't know. Well, what's on your mind today? Well, I just want to see if you
01:30:42.800
you're going to do I know, you know, you're in a different medium now and want to see if you're
01:30:47.440
going to do any follow ups on that. It's still very open here. And I was actually called in the
01:30:53.580
FBI's office a few months after you and I spoke and was told to stop interviewing people on the case.
01:30:59.760
I'm a former news, news director, radio news. And that's kind of how I got involved with this
01:31:06.960
through that. And I'm being a private investigator here. And that's crazy. Hey, we don't want you
01:31:13.320
talking to any more people of potential interest. And we also don't want you to admit publicly that
01:31:17.880
we even talked to you today. Oh, well, yeah, I can see you took that direction very well.
01:31:23.100
Well, we may we may indeed do a follow up on baby Lisa. People may remember this is this little 10
01:31:30.260
month old baby that was taken from her crib in the middle of the night. I mean, seemingly without a
01:31:35.160
trace, no fingerprints were found on the windowsills, on the cribs, on anything. And everyone thought it
01:31:40.160
was the parents. But there was no proof of that. And she she never was found. Let me go to Kevin in
01:31:47.360
New York, who's got a question, as I understand, about journalism. Hey, Kevin.
01:31:51.040
Hey, Megan, you know, every time I hear congrats, by the way, in the show and all that, and every
01:31:56.400
time I hear you throw out your name and spell it, I remember you saying this a while back, I forget
01:32:00.760
who said it, but someone aggravated you by calling you Medgen. Yeah, I can never forget that story.
01:32:07.040
Anyway, when it comes to, you know, you mentioned like Don Lamont and the others, and even on all
01:32:13.100
sides and stuff. I just wonder, you know, what is the who is in your opinion, other than yourself,
01:32:17.780
who could be like the neutral? Who is it possible to have a neutral person to have some kind of like
01:32:22.800
journalism summit to get everybody all these characters from whether it's, you know, you know,
01:32:28.880
TV or radio or wherever, and just have it out? Wouldn't that be fun? And that would possibly
01:32:34.100
broker that who would just do battle? You mean like a like a Hannity versus Maddow type of situation?
01:32:40.080
Oh my God, wouldn't that be great? Because it just, it seems to be, it's all, it's very frustrating to
01:32:45.380
have it like every, you know, four years or eight years when you have like a national, you know,
01:32:50.600
presidential debate, and you get to see all the bullshit flat right out on in the open. It seems
01:32:56.280
that should happen more often now. Yeah. Well, it's funny, because I don't know if anybody's ever
01:33:00.060
going to do that, because everyone's so like, they're well paid, and they're well healed, and they
01:33:03.960
don't want to have to subject themselves to that sort of cage match. But I will say, picking up on
01:33:09.260
a couple of calls that we've had now, and your point, someone asked me recently whether I think
01:33:14.260
we could get back to objective journalism and less partisanship. And I don't think so,
01:33:18.280
because I think not only did the media totally reveal its bias in the past election and under
01:33:24.580
Trump, they revealed their hatred, their hatred for the other half of the country, right? For anybody
01:33:30.240
who's not a far left progressive. That's tough to forget. Even if they start reporting in a way that's
01:33:35.040
more fair, you know they hate you. And that's a deep, deep, ongoing problem. Listen, I'm so excited
01:33:42.500
to talk to you guys. I've never had a show where I get to talk to the viewers and the listeners,
01:33:45.360
and I appreciate it. And I don't want you to miss the show next week. On Monday, we're going to have
01:33:49.960
Dr. Drew here, and we're going to talk about anything and everything. And then next Friday,
01:33:55.100
my pal Tucker Carlson's coming on the show. Really looking forward to that. Today's show is going to be
01:33:59.520
available on any podcast platform for free and on YouTube at youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. Thanks, everyone.