The Megyn Kelly Show - The Year of the Parent： A 2021 Megyn Kelly Show Retrospective

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.980 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have a great show for you

00:00:16.380 today. Looking back at 2021 and what we're calling the year of the parents. Parents became

00:00:22.600 political, social, and cultural forces in 2021, and fighting back on behalf of our children became

00:00:29.480 an imperative for many of us. From COVID to CRT to the dangerous effects of tech, we are using this

00:00:37.440 show to look back at some of the highlights of 2021. Interviews with parents on all sorts of

00:00:42.700 relevant topics. First up, we have our friend, Dr. Drew Pinsky, who joined us not long ago with his

00:00:48.960 daughter, Paulina, to talk about what it was like for her to have Dr. Drew as a dad, social media,

00:00:55.780 and society, and much, much more. All right. So I have to tell you that this book makes me feel

00:01:02.080 better about life because if Dr. Drew can raise somebody who's as open and honest about their

00:01:08.300 struggles as you, I feel like I can totally fuck up my kids and they're going to wind up just fine.

00:01:14.780 That's, I think that's just, you can live by that phrase generally. Generally, that is true.

00:01:18.780 I would say the 10 years of therapy helped. Oh, how dare you? Well, so I love this. Okay. So first

00:01:25.680 of all, you were born a triplet. And let me just kick it off there because triplets are still rare.

00:01:30.160 Even with IVF, they're still rare. And how do you think that affected your life? I have theories

00:01:35.740 about this. As the youngest and at the top of the stack, nearest my mother's ribs, I feel like it must

00:01:43.320 have been traumatic for me to have my two roommates exit the womb before me. So my first interaction

00:01:52.740 with the world was my brother's leaving me. That's just my theory.

00:01:57.380 It's true. Gosh, I never really considered that. But you must share everything.

00:02:00.900 I must tell you, I've got to interrupt you, Megan, that there was, Paulina, there was

00:02:03.700 literally 55 seconds between those guys being out and you.

00:02:09.300 Yeah. I always imagine it's like pulling noodles, except it was pulling babies.

00:02:13.360 Oh, nice. Yeah. Ew, right? That's a lot. Really, the true trauma was your mother's. And so I'm sure

00:02:20.400 she's addressed that since. Absolutely. Yeah. Every Christmas, she would say, this wouldn't have

00:02:24.680 happened if I didn't love. You be grateful for Christmas because I'm the one that brought Christmas.

00:02:30.640 Well, and to be fair, we were faced with reduction. Our obstetrician sat down and said,

00:02:39.080 hey, don't have triplets. Don't do it. He goes, here's the data. The marriages don't survive.

00:02:44.020 The mental health of the kids suffer. Don't do this. Have twins. And I'll send you out to UCLA

00:02:48.920 and we'll reduce down to two. Oh my gosh.

00:02:51.000 That was a heavy, heavy, heavy thing we sat with for a couple of days and then just went,

00:02:55.220 we can't do that. Forget it.

00:02:56.680 Right. Right. It's like, so we have to end the pregnancy with one baby or end our marriage,

00:03:03.460 right? Like what kind of a weird choice is that? That's so false. It's not true. I mean,

00:03:07.560 maybe it makes it tougher, but it's not true. Statistically, it was, you know, it was,

00:03:11.260 it was actually, he just handed me the papers and I said, okay, I'll look at him. And, and

00:03:15.360 statistically at the time it wasn't. And I literally felt like a poker player who just took all the

00:03:19.060 chips and go, it doesn't, I'm going all in. We're just going all in. That's it. And it turned out to

00:03:23.320 be a good bet for us. Oh my God. I mean, I had, we did IVF and thank, thank God I was able to use

00:03:29.220 all of our embryos, but that is a tough choice for any parent to have to make. Okay. So let me talk to

00:03:34.020 you about growing up Pinsky because your dad, in addition to being a triple, which, which poses

00:03:43.440 his own, you know, interesting challenges being a triple, but you've got a famous dad and you,

00:03:47.280 you talk in the book about sort of growing older and realizing that you have a famous dad and then

00:03:52.360 he's getting more famous and he's getting busier and you are pretty honest about, forgive me,

00:03:57.980 Dr. Drew, sort of an absentee dad situation and how that was not, that was not easy for you.

00:04:04.740 So it back to the title of the book, it doesn't have to be awkward. Is it awkward to write about

00:04:08.920 that and talk about that with him sitting right there and sort of say, yeah, I needed you and

00:04:12.340 you weren't there. Yeah, I, um, well, I've been working on a memoir for the past five years. So

00:04:17.460 writing about my life as, you know, routine for me at this point. And ultimately because we have open

00:04:23.140 discourse, I've been very vocal about the fact that his workaholism did impact all three of our

00:04:27.700 childhoods. Uh, we were, you know, obviously provided with privileges that are, you know,

00:04:33.100 incomparable for a lot of people in this country. And for that, I'm grateful, but ultimately,

00:04:37.360 you know, there was sort of this opening ma hole, uh, in which, you know, dad wasn't there. He did

00:04:44.940 show up for ice skating competitions. He did show up for football games. You know, he was there for the

00:04:49.000 big events, but the day to day was a little bit more mom's, uh, domain. That's the word I'm looking

00:04:54.880 I would argue. Did you know that? Well, I was aware that I was a workaholic when she's talking

00:05:00.880 really about when they were younger, before I started doing media, when, when I, I would get

00:05:05.280 up at five in the morning and I would struggle to get home by 10 at night. And that was, you know,

00:05:10.080 I had midnight or midnight. Yeah. Well, later it was midnight, but, but it was, it was, I had multiple

00:05:16.300 careers going simultaneously. I, you know, I had an intensive care practice at a hospital,

00:05:20.280 I had an inpatient medical practice and outpatient medical practice. I was running medical services in

00:05:24.600 psychiatric hospital. I was running their addiction services. It was super, super, super crazy for

00:05:29.960 many years. And that's the part where I feel bad that I might've been able to balance things out a

00:05:34.640 little bit better, but that's, you know, that's something I have to bear.

00:05:37.460 Full, you know, back to the radical honesty. Do you think it had anything to do with the fact that

00:05:41.400 you had triplets at home that are, that is hard. And I mean, we, I joke, I had, I used to be married

00:05:46.200 to a doctor before there was Doug, there was Dan, he was a doctor, my first husband and one of his

00:05:49.960 doctor friends. And, you know, it's tough to be a doctor, but one of his doctor friends was saying when he

00:05:53.360 leaves his house in the morning and sort of hits the security code, leaving the kids, all the many

00:05:57.820 kids he had inside, he used to say, ah, time to go to that spa called work.

00:06:05.120 I didn't feel that way so much as I was in a panic. I had, you know, I had a depression era dad

00:06:11.860 that sort of traumatized me around finances. And I lived in a panic for many years that I wasn't

00:06:17.320 going to be able to support this family. You know, all of a sudden, like I said, all the chips were in,

00:06:20.740 we were, we were this family of five. All of a sudden we went from this young, cool couple.

00:06:25.200 We're, you know, on our own, all of a sudden family of five, I just put the pedal to the metal

00:06:30.220 and, and I kind of knew there could be consequence. You know, it wasn't, I was without awareness that

00:06:35.700 my absence could, could have an issue. I, so I did the best I could. I just did the best I could.

00:06:41.080 How do you think it affected you, Paulina?

00:06:42.620 Yeah. One therapist would say, no, I'm just kidding. Um, no, I think for me, um, I think it

00:06:48.900 played out in my romantic life. I think, uh, for a long time I was, uh, just as radical honesty,

00:06:55.160 let's go. Uh, I would, you know, pine over people who were emotionally unavailable, um, ultimately

00:07:01.320 because, uh, I wasn't used to having a parent who is there to meet my emotional needs every single

00:07:07.620 day. What age were you when that stopped? Do you think? Um, because some, I'm asking only because

00:07:14.120 to some extent, most adolescents do that kind of stuff, you know, but did it go well into adulthood?

00:07:19.160 I would say like 26, 27 around the time that I sort of came from. And she's doing what every

00:07:24.360 daughter of an unavailable dad does. Thank God I wasn't abandoning. I didn't leave because that

00:07:29.080 would have been then the preoccupation, but, uh, I'm sorry. Which is what? Put more meat on those bones,

00:07:33.800 drew what she's doing with every daughter of an, which is, which is the, the, you're with their

00:07:39.060 various ways of, of sort of talking about this and thinking about it, but there are things called

00:07:42.320 some people call love maps. They're things that we're fitted with and our family of origin and

00:07:46.480 create those romantic fittedness. And if they were insufficient, the drive to fit that becomes

00:07:53.160 even more powerful. And, um, you know, therapy is the way out of that. I'm grateful that you did

00:07:58.380 that work too. Well, in fact, by the way, I am, there's nothing, you know, I, I know I'm not a

00:08:03.720 perfect parent when I, when I, and when Paulina first told me she was in therapy, I was like,

00:08:07.260 oh my God, I'm so, that's so great. And you're, you're, and you're participating. You can't imagine

00:08:12.320 how many people there are in this country that do go into mental health services, but don't

00:08:17.200 participate. You have to, you have to, you have to be in the, in the experience in order to get

00:08:22.600 something out of it. And I was just so grateful. I thought you were going to say, I was like, oh,

00:08:26.060 thank God you're going into therapy where they'll definitely blame it all on your mother.

00:08:29.380 There was that, but it was more that I was just, I would rather than feeling guilty and sad, I was

00:08:39.020 grateful that, oh my gosh, she's grabbing onto this good. I know I'm not perfect.

00:08:42.660 Totally. I love therapy. I've been in therapy for years and I recommend it if you're at all

00:08:45.860 interested. It's just, it's sort of a gift you give to yourself. Uh, but you, it is one of those

00:08:49.580 things. You only get out of it what you put into it. So if you're going to hold back and you're not

00:08:52.400 really going to put cards on the table, you're not going to get much out of it. And you definitely put

00:08:55.780 cards on the table in the book, in your writings prior to the book. I've been, I've read a lot of

00:09:00.580 them. Um, and one of them is, can we talk about virginity? Because I'm like this girl, she's

00:09:07.120 fearless. So you talk about, you knew it was coming at some point, obviously you're going to

00:09:12.020 lose your virginity and you have, your dad is Dr. True. Awkward, awkward. It doesn't have to be

00:09:17.260 awkward, but you're, tell us what your mom said to you that stayed in your head from eight years. I have

00:09:22.420 an eight year old from eight years forward. We were driving, uh, to ice skating practice,

00:09:28.120 uh, to Burbank, California. We were on the one 34 freeway. And my mom looks at me and said,

00:09:34.820 when you lose your virginity, your father's going to broadcast it on the radio.

00:09:40.780 And somebody consulted me about that. Well, I understand the impetus behind that, right? She was

00:09:46.920 trying to communicate to me that because I was a girl, there was different pressures on me.

00:09:50.320 I would be a topic of discussion. If I messed up, I would be ridiculed. And, you know, I kind of

00:09:56.360 experienced that. I mean, to a certain degree, when I first started writing about my bulimia,

00:10:01.340 you know, the reason it went national is because New York post pulled out the hook of it and was

00:10:05.100 like, Dr. Drew's daughter has an eating disorder. And in that moment it was, you know, almost worse

00:10:10.560 than my virginity being broadcasted on the radio. It was like, yeah, it was kind of the same

00:10:16.620 phenomena, but a deeper secret. Um, but ultimately one is like, everybody eventually loses their

00:10:21.380 virginity. And one is like, shame, shame in some corners still, unfortunately.

00:10:26.440 Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think because I have proximity to my father's platform,

00:10:31.960 it's been very important to me to speak honestly and authentically about these experiences because I

00:10:36.660 can't be the only one, you know, dealing with purity culture or dealing with, uh, eating disorder

00:10:42.800 slash body image issues. And so it's been sort of, um, foundational in my writing practice to

00:10:49.560 practice radical honesty and really be transparent about, you know, what I've been through and,

00:10:55.940 and what it means to be in proximity.

00:10:57.420 And I was just, I was smiling to myself, Megan, because I'm, and I've gotten used to it.

00:11:02.440 I just sort of tighten my, uh, uh, glitial muscles and prepare, prepare, prepare for the,

00:11:08.880 whatever punch comes my way. And, uh, but you have a more authentic relationship.

00:11:13.600 Oh, absolutely. It's been great. And listen, this, and this is forging those adult

00:11:16.920 connections. Right. And, and, and again, that's what our book ended up being about. We, we really,

00:11:20.980 it's not about all this stuff so much, although this does get in the book.

00:11:25.640 That will be in the memoir.

00:11:26.480 Yeah. That's more than memoir. This is, it's more about, it was written, this book was written for

00:11:30.660 sort of, well, we say 14 to 20 year olds and helping them navigate relationships.

00:11:36.800 I want to go back to the story, Paulina, of you as a competitive ice skater. That was a big,

00:11:42.560 big piece of your life for many, many years. And not surprisingly, it, it, I don't know if

00:11:48.360 we can say led to, but involved what ultimately became an eating disorder for you. Very open about

00:11:54.560 that. What would you say caused?

00:11:56.920 I would say that is, it is in the fabric of the ice skating culture. I would say, um, you know,

00:12:03.300 your friends are your competitors and your competitors are your friends. And, you know,

00:12:07.200 I was actually speaking to a childhood friend of mine last night, who's actually in one of my

00:12:11.440 writing workshops. And we were talking about how dieting was a means of bonding with your friends

00:12:17.260 and how you would dole out secrets with each other. Um, I think ice skating honestly is,

00:12:22.820 is on the track of, of needing sort of an exposure like gymnastics. Um, I'm sort of waiting

00:12:28.740 for that moment to happen because I think that it's a really toxic culture. Um, but ultimately,

00:12:34.540 you know, it really fed my performance spirit and that's really where I learned how to be a performer.

00:12:39.260 Um, but ultimately, you know, I couldn't talk about it for years and I couldn't write about it. And it

00:12:45.620 was a very incredibly painful, complicated, uh, relationship, uh, ultimately because ice skating

00:12:51.280 was the foundation of my identity for 13 years.

00:12:54.180 And, and some of those relationships were very powerful and important, the coaches.

00:12:58.500 Oh yeah. I mean, my coach, Erica shore and Barbara Sussman, uh, you know, they are mothers to me and,

00:13:05.780 you know, they fundamentally helped me move through my childhood, my adolescence in a way that,

00:13:11.400 you know, really fostered my spirit. Um, and then, you know, there were the coaches who were like,

00:13:15.640 you know, you gain weight here and, you know, you got to lose weight and all that stuff.

00:13:19.320 But why couldn't you talk about it? Was it the, was it the, the culture of ice skating? Like

00:13:25.540 it's shameful to talk about it or because you didn't want to let it go. You know,

00:13:29.480 if you talk about it, it's the first step toward letting it go.

00:13:32.020 Yeah. I mean, I think that weight loss and thinness is sort of the subliminal, uh, messaging

00:13:37.560 of the entire culture.

00:13:39.280 I mean, you're, you're trying to get off the ground with, you know, incredible things that

00:13:43.960 you're hurtling yourself off the air, uh, on a toe pick and then landing on a toe pick.

00:13:48.600 And then landing on a razor. It's like insane. It's such an insane thing.

00:13:52.040 Yeah.

00:13:52.280 Shouldn't be doing that anyway.

00:13:54.800 No big deal. Um, yeah. I mean, I just have memories of mothers being like, how much do you

00:13:59.860 weigh? My daughter weighs this, you know, like there's very much a, uh, toxic specifically,

00:14:05.740 you know, I, Tanya is my favorite ice skating movie because Alice Janney, Alice and Janney,

00:14:10.120 excuse me, is the quintessential ice skating mother, you know, just like the kind of shrew,

00:14:15.100 like woman with a parrot on her arm, you know, like that is,

00:14:18.600 that is the, you know, when I would walk into the ice rink, there would be a pack of

00:14:23.080 mothers smoking cigarettes and, you know, they would stop whispering when I would walk

00:14:27.080 up and I'd be like, are you talking about me? And these are grown adults. Um, and I

00:14:31.280 was, you know, 14. Um, and so this is why I'm waiting for ice skating to have its day in

00:14:36.900 the sun. Um, ultimately, that's a good point. You should write a book about that. That's really

00:14:40.300 interesting. You should, you should write an expose. You should go contact other ice skaters

00:14:45.060 and get them to talk to you. I'd read that. I'd put you back on. Okay, fantastic. Yeah. I, um,

00:14:50.280 I tried to write a piece about it last spring and nowhere would pick it up. Ultimately, because

00:14:55.080 I think there was an investment in keeping ice skating sort of this pristine princess-like

00:14:59.480 sport.

00:14:59.860 Well, what's interesting to me is the mom thing. That's an interesting observation because

00:15:04.060 it, it, it, what I saw, what it was a way for moms that were immigrant or lower middle

00:15:09.880 class to try to propel their daughters into a different strata and they would not let go.

00:15:14.980 They were just wild about it. So, well, yeah, I mean, one of my dear friends,

00:15:18.660 but your mom, who landed the triple axle at the Olympics, you know, we were in the same preschool

00:15:24.140 together and there's video footage of us at the Esmeralda dance recital. And, you know,

00:15:29.200 I'm like twirling around, flirting with the camera and Mariah's, you know, doing beautiful

00:15:34.180 tondus. And so to me, there was always like a very clear distinction of like who was going to make it.

00:15:39.680 And for whatever reason, I was like, Mariah's going to the Olympics and I'm going to college.

00:15:43.800 Like that is our trajectory.

00:15:46.400 But going to college for ice skating, ice skating is good too, right? I mean, is there,

00:15:49.480 is there an ice skating at college? I don't know. Is that one of those sports you can take to?

00:15:52.780 There is. It's a club sport. And originally I, you know, when I was 14, I was like,

00:15:58.060 I'm going to go to Columbia and be on the ice skating team. And then I kind of gave up on the,

00:16:02.500 the Columbia team, went to Barnard, didn't realize that it was part of Columbia. And then I joined the

00:16:07.220 rugby team. So, okay. That's hilarious. Wow. Yeah. Who probably didn't, very few people have that

00:16:13.780 exact line. So can you talk about this? Your, your mom was not, she was not sort of the working

00:16:23.500 class mom looking to sort of make it for the family through you. You guys had already made it.

00:16:29.080 And it, you, there was some conflict there. Like you write about how, when you told your mom that

00:16:33.760 you'd been forcing yourself to throw up. And one time it was eight times a day when you had stayed

00:16:38.460 home from spring break, her response was, we're going to get your teeth checked. And, and I wondered,

00:16:46.100 is that like, man, you are so honest. Like, it's very brave of you to talk about this,

00:16:50.200 given that your dad's famous and famous for mental health talk and so on.

00:16:54.520 So what, what have your relationship with your mom and how that played into the eating disorder?

00:16:59.500 My mom and I were both invested in ice skating. It was the foundation of our relationship. She would

00:17:06.460 drive me to, you know, every ice rink in Southern California, which is the largest network of ice

00:17:11.620 rinks in the country. Five o'clock in the morning. Five o'clock in the morning. You know, I have memories

00:17:15.380 of being nine and her waking me up at 4am and just dutifully combing my hair and me, you know,

00:17:21.980 manifesting early signs of OCD that would eventually manifest as an eating disorder, but I would make

00:17:27.400 her do my bun eight times and I would just scream at her. And, you know, that was early anxiety

00:17:33.780 playing out, but it was kind of this routine that we were in. Right. And the singular goal being,

00:17:38.280 we got to get her on the ice. We've got to get her to perform. And for a long time,

00:17:41.380 it really was, you know, as a triplet, I needed my thing. Right. My brother Douglas was playing

00:17:47.360 piano. My brother Jordan was good at math and I was the ice skater. And so what became a hobby

00:17:52.140 or an activity was swiftly an identity. Um, and you know, I write about my relationship with my

00:17:58.820 mother, which is, you know, leaps and bounds, more communicative and stronger because I have

00:18:03.940 written about it. Um, and ultimately I think it's a privilege that my parents allow me to write

00:18:08.760 about it and don't disown me. Uh, and you know, I think also what was unusual about my situation is

00:18:16.580 I was sent to a childhood nutritionist, um, from ages 12 to 18. And I think that was really where

00:18:22.880 the nexus of the eating disorder, uh, this culminated, um, ultimately because I was getting

00:18:28.280 waved every, I weighed every week. Um, I was being told what I can and cannot eat. And ultimately I,

00:18:33.540 you know, I have a lot of resentment for that nutritionist because there was never a moment

00:18:38.480 in which she questioned, uh, my motivation or checked in with me or anything. Um, ultimately

00:18:44.780 she was invested in a paycheck, which is a symptom of diet culture. Um, so ultimately, you know, I had

00:18:50.440 my, my go around with diet culture in a very extreme way. Um, and figure skating was the motivation

00:18:58.600 behind that. At least. So how did you get out of it? Because it's so hard to break an eating

00:19:02.940 disorder. I, my freshman year of college started watching other people eat. And I realized that

00:19:13.700 other people were able to feed themselves based on instinct rather than, uh, controlling portions

00:19:20.720 or, you know, obsessively weighing themselves or whatever it was. And so it was because I was

00:19:27.060 taken out of my childhood context that I was able to see that I was the unusual one. And,

00:19:32.680 um, as you cited earlier, um, you know, it was my freshman spring break. I went home and

00:19:38.060 the emotional reality of being home and, you know, trying to differentiate myself as a New Yorker

00:19:43.580 and being in Pasadena and kind of forced back into the space in which I felt like I was a different

00:19:48.560 person. Ultimately I purged eight times in one day. And that was when I was like, Oh, something is

00:19:55.780 wrong here. And so I went to my school's mental health services. They gave me a list of referrals.

00:20:01.880 And thankfully I was paired with an amazing therapist who, um, incorporated feminism into

00:20:10.120 my care. And ultimately I feel really lucky because a lot of the ways we teach, uh, not teach

00:20:15.840 treat eating disorders is by, you know, sending them to a clinic and sort of focusing on gaining weight

00:20:22.200 and focusing on meal control. And I had none of that. It was more like, how do you feel? How do

00:20:28.300 you remain neutral? How do you, how do you feed yourself based on instinct? And for a long time,

00:20:33.660 that meant eating spicy, spicy tofu pad thai every single day. Um, but then, you know, that didn't feel

00:20:39.920 good anymore. Right. And it was because I had spent so many years abstaining and restricting that I kind

00:20:45.140 of went overboard. And then once I started really feeling better about myself and more attuned to

00:20:52.280 myself, I was able to learn how to feed myself based on instinct.

00:20:56.480 Coming up to guests from a show we did in October called moms fight back. You know, where this is going.

00:21:02.520 Stay tuned.

00:21:03.000 Shortly after the insane letter from the national school boards association to the Biden

00:21:14.500 administration, equating parents speaking out at school board meetings to domestic terrorists. We

00:21:20.280 brought on two moms who both identify as current or former Democrats, but circumstances have changed.

00:21:26.880 And Maude Marin and Natalia Marakver's stories reminded us of the power all parents have when they fight

00:21:34.640 back on CRT inspired teaching in schools on COVID and more. Just for those who may not be as up to

00:21:42.180 speed on it as you are. Um, can you explain how Merrick Garland and the DOJ and the FBI got to the point

00:21:50.880 of seriously now taking a look at cracking down on parents like you, me, and our other guests today

00:21:58.460 as potential domestic terrorists? Right. It sounds crazy because it is crazy, right? It's a really,

00:22:06.360 um, the language is over the top and it, the language comes from a letter written by the national school

00:22:12.700 board association, an organization I had never heard of despite being elected to the school board,

00:22:18.260 um, uh, where I live in New York city and Manhattan, um, and having served on that board for, for four

00:22:24.000 years. Um, the, the national school board association wrote this, um, letter to, to president Biden. Um,

00:22:31.580 but I guess it wound up on Merrick Garland's desk, um, saying that they had, they were documenting what

00:22:37.140 they saw as criminal activity of parents at school board meetings. And they explicitly asked that the

00:22:44.760 federal government intervene, uh, by looking at parents as domestic terrorists, their language,

00:22:52.500 not mine. And they explicitly asked the FBI to use among other things, the Patriot act to deal with

00:22:59.220 what they saw as the problem of parents at school boards. And what they're upset about is, is alleged

00:23:06.160 a disturbing spike in alleged harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against board

00:23:14.700 members, but no evidence of that has been provided. And so we went back and we actually pulled the

00:23:19.940 letter. We looked at the 26 individual examples of people allegedly harassing, intimidating, or somehow

00:23:27.920 criminally threatening school board members. And the evidence that they provide mod shows nothing of

00:23:34.440 the kind. There's maybe one or two where you're like, Oh, that was bad behavior. But for the most part,

00:23:39.420 I read these examples. I'm like, I'm very proud of these parents. I'm inspired by these parents who went

00:23:44.920 out to their school boards and stood up to them. Okay. Yes. Some obscenities were yelled. That's not

00:23:50.440 illegal. Um, they were carrying, let them breathe signs at certain, uh, a small disruptive group forced

00:23:57.340 their way inside of the district office. They were politely asked to leave, but refused the horror. Um,

00:24:04.440 one school board may now limit public input after some meetings got quote disorderly. And one man was

00:24:12.420 cited as, as having the nerve to ask if all the board members had their high school diplomas.

00:24:16.420 Okay. I'm waiting to feel the outrage. I'm waiting for it to kick in. Um, here's another one. Uh,

00:24:22.340 grand ledge school board goes into recess due to public disruption. Board meeting had to go into

00:24:27.320 recess twice once because someone went over their three minute time limit. This is their evidence to

00:24:35.320 get the DOJ involved. Uh, a second time was after public comment when two board members were speaking

00:24:40.600 to one another and the audience kept interrupting. So annoying. Uh, one time, uh, another place they had

00:24:48.560 to kick out a resident who refused to wear a mask. Oh, the horror. They started comparing the mask

00:24:55.120 mandate to Nazis. Oh sure. That's, that's cause for the FBI to now get involved. That's sort of loose

00:25:00.920 talk. I mean, you hear that everywhere. It goes on and on. I'm, I can't believe that the DOJ took a look

00:25:09.300 at this and said, we're in. Right. Look, and just to make clear, Megan, like there are, there are

00:25:17.020 behaviors that are inappropriate that people shouldn't do. Inappropriate is not even a bar

00:25:23.800 or the threshold for state law enforcement to get involved. Right. We could all agree that we want

00:25:28.680 people to, um, be respectful or not. Like sometimes protest isn't always respectful, but you,

00:25:35.240 weren't we just told that during the George Floyd protests? Well, yes. Well, yes, there's that.

00:25:39.360 But what I wanted to say is if even if any of, um, the behavior alleged was criminal,

00:25:46.400 we have laws, we have law enforcement, we have state courts that are responsible for and do a very good

00:25:53.440 job of enforcing the laws. I've worked in state court as a public defender, um, representing people

00:25:59.080 accused of crimes, uh, for years. So the, the, the looping in the federal government is really

00:26:06.400 peculiar because it's not how it works. If someone in, in New York state, disorderly conduct is a

00:26:10.980 violation. It's not a crime. Um, you can go to jail for up to 15 days for disorderly conduct in other

00:26:15.720 states. It actually is a misdemeanor, but regardless state, if someone behaved in a disorderly way,

00:26:21.740 such that you thought you should call the cops, call the cops and they can come and make the

00:26:24.760 determination as to whether or not they should make an arrest. That's not what's happening at our

00:26:28.620 school boards overwhelmingly throughout our country. And if, if it does happen, call the police that

00:26:34.900 looping in the federal government is about something else. It's about silencing parents

00:26:39.280 and it's really, really troubling. And there's a reason there's that expression. Well, I'm not going

00:26:45.140 to make a federal case out of it because that's an elevation. That's an elevation. And normally the

00:26:50.960 DOJ would absolutely laugh at this kind of a thing. And the fact that they're taking it on makes me

00:26:56.080 wonder how it was orchestrated in the first place. Did the DOJ request a letter like this,

00:27:01.140 right? Did they, were they just the innocent recipients or did they orchestrate the Biden

00:27:04.780 administration, the whole thing?

00:27:06.880 I was, I was struck by the fact that it took two business days for the highest law enforcement,

00:27:13.720 uh, person in our country, Merrick Garland to respond to the national school board association

00:27:19.800 as if he was just sitting around waiting for incoming from the NSBA. I mean, that's a really

00:27:24.860 fast turnaround. So I'm, you know, I'm suspicious about it. Um, I don't, you know, I don't have any

00:27:31.740 evidence that, that the DOJ was, it was anticipating it or was involved in it. But look, we know that,

00:27:37.800 um, in May when the CDC told us we could take our masks off, um, Randy Weingarten, who's, you know,

00:27:44.600 the head of the teachers union didn't much like that. And then that advice got peddled back. So

00:27:49.500 we know that our government officials can be influenced by, um, by pressure from groups that

00:27:55.940 want them to say different things than they're saying.

00:27:59.380 Meanwhile, you and I both know as attorneys, it's not unlawful to, to even say mildly threatening

00:28:06.480 things. I mean, in order to get to the only kind of speech that really is unlawful. And we went through

00:28:11.480 this with the second Trump impeachment, uh, incitement, I N C I T E meant, um, is it has to

00:28:19.340 be immediate. It has to be obvious that it's about to cause immediate harm to somebody. You can't,

00:28:25.480 you cannot prosecute somebody, which is what they're asking for. And the DOJ is threatening here

00:28:30.260 for saying, I'll get you. If you, if you keep that mask mandate in place or I'm, this is bullshit.

00:28:37.760 And I, I know where you live, uh, even if they pass something that's, uh, you know, whatever

00:28:42.900 controversial that that's not unlawful. And I understand it could make some people feel

00:28:47.160 uncomfortable, but this is no, there's no, the DOJ has no jurisdiction here.

00:28:51.700 A hundred percent. And I'll tell you, I was at a rally yesterday in New York city. They're trying

00:28:55.680 to get rid of the gifted and talented program. Uh, or bill de Blasio has announced that we

00:29:00.280 getting rid of the gifted and talented program in New York city. And a lot of parents are unhappy

00:29:04.920 about it. And we were on the steps of the Tweed courthouse, which is where the department of

00:29:09.520 education is located in New York city, protesting, yelling, holding up signs, making a case, arguing

00:29:16.740 the facts about why we should have more gifted and talented programs and not be eliminating them.

00:29:22.340 That's part of being a good parent. It's part of being a good advocate. It's part of, you know,

00:29:27.980 it's a basic American right to get out there and yell and protest and make demands on your public

00:29:33.300 officials. And honestly, with, with all, but a couple of exceptions, that's all that's alleged

00:29:38.820 in this document. It's not in no way. Is it the stuff we saw the media defending during George Floyd

00:29:45.720 destruction of property and burning buildings and even shootings. It's like, no, I won't put my mask

00:29:51.860 on. Okay. The con the contrast is very illustrative, right? We saw the, the local law enforcement,

00:29:59.400 um, choose to not even prosecute looting and, um, you know, clear illegality in our streets last

00:30:07.080 summer. And now we have, um, the federal government coming in because parents are pissed off about

00:30:12.900 what's happening in their schools and talking about it at school board meetings. The contrast

00:30:17.540 is pretty overwhelming. The other thing is in this letter complaining to the DOJ, which the DOJ now

00:30:22.940 accepts, um, they claim on the subject of critical race theory disingenuously quote, this propaganda

00:30:30.160 being pushed by parents who need Merrick Garland to police their speech. This propaganda continues

00:30:35.800 despite the fact that critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law

00:30:43.040 school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K through 12 class. I, this is so

00:30:50.060 infuriating. This is like, I feel like guys like Chris Rufo came up with a term critical race theory.

00:30:56.360 I mean, it had existed, but they sort of co-opted it to just be the bucket into which all of the crazy

00:31:02.100 race peddling that's going on in our schools would get thrown because there's not a good short form way

00:31:06.720 of referring to it or there wasn't before that. Right. So it doesn't necessarily have to be the

00:31:11.700 capital C capital R capital T race theory taught in law schools in order for it to be the problematic

00:31:17.900 racist messaging that we parents are complaining about. This is such a DOJ, right? It's like,

00:31:23.840 this is such a dishonest way to raise the argument. They know very well what they're teaching in K

00:31:29.580 through 12 and it's all race. Race is the prism through which virtually everything gets taught now.

00:31:36.440 Well, the people who know what's being taught in school are the parents. We've had it in our homes

00:31:40.940 through zoom and we see it in what our kids are reading and we see what's going on. You know, look,

00:31:45.800 critical race theory is a theory. It's not math, right? And it's a theory that says you look at our

00:31:52.820 society and our institutions at our laws through the lens of race. There's nothing wrong with that.

00:31:58.500 It's a legitimate analysis that you can come up with. But what what happens is that everybody who

00:32:04.880 is a proponent of this theory winds up coming up with the conclusion that America is irredeemably

00:32:11.500 racist. I look at some of the same facts. They look up and come up with a different conclusion.

00:32:16.440 Having that conversation about whether or not we teach those conclusions to our kids. It's a

00:32:22.720 legitimate conversation and somewhat incredibly, Megan, I think. And this is why you see with this

00:32:28.720 response to the Merrick Garland letter is the fact that parents on the right and the left, Democrats

00:32:34.360 and Republicans, parents all over are in agreement that they should be able to go to their school

00:32:39.280 board and talk about these issues. People who agree and disagree with me have been showing up

00:32:45.060 at school boards to talk about these issues. So wherever you you know, you may be a proponent of

00:32:49.960 CRT, but you should still be able to come to a school board and talk about it, as should the people

00:32:55.080 who, you know, I would be inclined to agree with who think that it's deeply problematic and should not

00:33:01.660 be in our schools. I feel like I want to say to these folks, OK, I don't know what you're calling it,

00:33:06.600 but why was the diversity group at my old school demanding mandated reading for faculty that said

00:33:14.380 in every classroom where white children learn there is a future killer cop? I don't give a damn

00:33:20.480 what you call that. I don't know. You don't have to put an under critical. Stop teaching that. Stop

00:33:25.060 saying that. Stop filling the heads of the teachers who have access to my children with that racist

00:33:31.080 nonsense. So they can pick whatever label they want. What they want to do instead is say that

00:33:36.560 nothing controversial is being taught and that anybody who wants to go protest at their school

00:33:41.200 board meeting otherwise is a criminal, is a terrorist. We watched a woman on this program

00:33:46.900 last week, I think it was, or when Carol Marco was on, railing in Virginia about, I mean, it was truly

00:33:53.360 disgusting stuff about pedophilia in a school book in the library. I saw that. Yeah. And it was very

00:34:01.440 graphic. This is not like, oh, my virgin ears. I mean, it's deeply disturbing stuff celebrating

00:34:05.840 child abuse, I mean, child sexual rape. And she got up there. She was mad. The mom was mad.

00:34:13.740 She had every right to be. Yes. And this is a woman who could be treated as a domestic terrorist

00:34:18.940 under this new approach because she was mad. She was yelling. She wouldn't stop when they tried

00:34:24.740 to cut her mic. And that's by design. They want people like her to be quiet. Right. I mean, I think

00:34:31.380 that's what's happening is that we see an impulse to silence parents. Right. And the letter is very

00:34:36.740 effective in that way with someone who had wanted to go to their school board and speak up says, wait a

00:34:41.420 second, they're calling parents domestic terrorists. There are plenty of parents who are going to think

00:34:45.840 twice before they sign up to go and speak. And that's a deep problem. It's the chilling of speech.

00:34:52.220 And we are Americans who have a First Amendment that we value or many of us value. I used to think

00:34:57.860 most of us or all of us value. But there's been a strange question mark put on our First Amendment

00:35:04.520 values by some folks who are prioritizing their sort of love of some of these theories over the free

00:35:13.700 speech rights of people who disagree with them. Right. The let's just spend a minute on the scared

00:35:19.120 parents, because I think a lot of folks outside of these very blue cities might be like, what do you

00:35:24.960 mean? Why? Why are you afraid? This is nonsense. You got to go in and fight against that stuff. It's

00:35:29.340 racist. You know, if it were racist against black people, you'd have no problem going in there and

00:35:34.620 fighting it. And it's racist against white people. It's equally bad. Go in there and fight.

00:35:38.440 But the truth is, it's really scary. Because especially in the blue cities, you're talking

00:35:44.180 about, I don't want to lose my job if I'm on the nightly news in a clip saying, quote,

00:35:50.320 the wrong thing. I don't want my spouse to lose their job. I don't want my kid to have it held

00:35:56.260 against him or her. It's complicated. And I feel like they know it. That's why they're doing this.

00:36:03.760 I know something about losing a job, because you said words that weren't approved by ideologues.

00:36:12.740 Right. I had that happen to me. And it came out of literally my advocacy on a school board. I ran for

00:36:20.500 my school board. I got elected. I wound up running for the president of the school board. And I became

00:36:26.900 the president of my school board. And some people liked what I have to say. And some people didn't.

00:36:32.060 That's to be expected. That's normal. But the people who didn't like what I had to say,

00:36:37.720 didn't agree with me, really waged a campaign against me. And that wound up also going to my

00:36:46.420 workplace, where the people in my workplace put out public letters and got my bosses, basically,

00:36:54.380 to sign on to these public letters, saying that because of what I believed, and because of what I

00:36:59.440 wrote, and because I'm white, I couldn't do my job.

00:37:03.980 I know you're in this group. You're in another group with a pal of mine who I absolutely love

00:37:07.100 who's fighting for sanity, too. What's the plan? I'm out here talking about it. Parents are showing

00:37:13.980 up at the school board meetings. Now they're being threatened with being treated as domestic

00:37:17.600 terrorists. So what are the plans being kicked around?

00:37:20.660 I think this is really a good time. I think that there is a groundswell at this point where parents

00:37:28.260 really are starting to question what the mitigations that have been implemented, and especially schools

00:37:34.480 are, and what is absolutely essential, because now it's become a long haul. And they're seeing kids

00:37:42.040 who really are suffering, and there's no end in sight. So we have realized as a group of parents

00:37:50.520 across the country that our biggest disability has been that we're fragmented. We don't have a union.

00:37:58.880 There's no one place where we can go and really just connect and try to implement best practices for

00:38:06.620 kids that really don't vary from California to New York. Kids are kids. They need to be able to breathe.

00:38:11.620 They need to be able to move. They need to be able to be largely unrestricted and feel like school

00:38:17.420 is a place they want to go to rather than a place where they're confined in. So we've started

00:38:23.860 just talking. We talk with parents in California, in Oregon, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, all over the

00:38:33.580 country, and really try to implement an awareness campaign. Obviously, we don't have the power

00:38:41.240 to unmask our children, and that's so frustrating to so many of us. But we can challenge adults to mask

00:38:48.880 like children. And I think that that's harder than most adults imagine. These children have to put on

00:38:56.300 those masks often at 7.30, 8 o'clock in the morning. Many of them in New York City, especially,

00:39:02.420 they don't get breaks. It's explicitly written into the DOE guidelines. No mask breaks. Don't take

00:39:09.180 it off outside. No recess. No gym breaks. So you're, you know, kicking a ball around, sweating in

00:39:15.640 a mask, suffocating, but nobody can really see that. And nobody cares. I mean, that's an incredible

00:39:21.340 message to send to our kids too. But we're trying to raise awareness that this is how kids actually

00:39:27.560 mask. And we're going to have a mask like a kid day, which is going to challenge politicians.

00:39:34.280 Our governor, Hochul, who always appears on camera unmasked and, you know, communicating with,

00:39:41.360 you know, the masses unmasked because she obviously knows how much easier it is to communicate and

00:39:46.680 establish connections unmasked. I'd like to see her mask. I'd like to see reporters mask. I'd like to see,

00:39:54.200 you know, people who are just walking around on the street mask like kids. So 8am to, you know,

00:40:00.100 three o'clock in the afternoon, a 20 minute break for lunch, but a mask the rest of the day. And by

00:40:05.780 the way, you can't just access water anytime you want to, just because your mouth is dry. For instance,

00:40:11.640 in New York City, in some schools, I know that kids are forced to leave the classroom, stand three

00:40:18.500 feet apart at designated times just to get a sip of water. That's what masking like a kid means.

00:40:24.200 And I don't think any adult is experiencing that and that kind of loss of agency.

00:40:28.900 That's a great point. My eight year old just told me yesterday that if he wants to get a drink of

00:40:34.460 water at school, they make him, you can pull down the mask to take the sip. And then before you've

00:40:40.040 even swallowed, you have to have the mask back over your nose. They're putting into these,

00:40:44.360 they're treating these kids like they're, like they've got some hideous communicable disease that

00:40:49.540 any breath caught out into the open could be lethal for one of their, it's not true. And I resent them

00:40:56.240 scaring my eight year old when my husband and I have done such a good job of not doing that,

00:41:00.560 right? Like, it's like we're fighting against the schools on this, not with them.

00:41:05.160 Coming up, my friend, Stephen Crowder joined us to talk about all sorts of topics. He's hilarious

00:41:09.780 and brilliant. But what did he have to say about parenting? That's next. And remember,

00:41:15.240 you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph channel 111 every weekday at noon East

00:41:21.500 and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly

00:41:28.520 would love as a Christmas gift. If you subscribe to our YouTube channel and to our podcast feed that

00:41:35.080 both of those things really help the show out. So I would be grateful if you would do it. And I think

00:41:39.240 you would enjoy it. Sometimes it's nice, for example, to have an audio podcast, subscribe,

00:41:43.560 download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free.

00:41:47.700 And there you will find our full archives with more than 220 shows.

00:41:57.400 Here's a different take on parenting. Stephen Crowder was recovering from a major health problem

00:42:02.660 when his life changed in a different way. He became a parent for the first time to twins. Here's his

00:42:09.240 hilarious and personal take on that.

00:42:12.700 You know what it is?

00:42:13.760 Is, um, I think for like, for me, so I have, so, uh, my little girl, I connect with her more

00:42:21.700 just because, uh, the boy wants his mom and he doesn't really react to me. Whereas with her,

00:42:26.140 I can do a bunch of voices and I do impressions. Like I sang 99 bottles of beer on the wall.

00:42:30.300 And I actually got all the way down with a different impression for every single bottle

00:42:33.220 and she loves it. So I can calm her down and kind of interact with her. Whereas he, he,

00:42:38.380 he wants his mom at this point. Um, so I think for men, when you interact is when you connect with

00:42:43.000 them for me, right away with the birth was, and again, kind of with my temperament was,

00:42:47.820 Oh my gosh, this is, this is real. I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to make sure this,

00:42:52.320 I got to take care of them this way. And yeah, there was, there was love, but it was a really

00:42:55.940 overwhelming sense of responsibility. And keep in mind, they were born a little early,

00:43:00.000 you know? And I, I just remember thinking, how could anyone have children, like have babies like

00:43:06.580 this and, and, and still be pro-abortion? I do remember thinking that like, how could,

00:43:10.440 cause they were born, you know, is twins premature. I'm going, this would be legal.

00:43:14.120 It would have been legal just today in Virginia, uh, to do that. And it really, that to me,

00:43:20.560 uh, was a, I've always been pro-life, but there was this visceral reaction where seeing them and

00:43:25.280 seeing that they're a living thing. And especially with twins, because you can see the personality

00:43:29.900 differences right away. You know what I mean? It's not just a fetus. Uh, it's not just,

00:43:34.820 even earlier. I mean, of course, as you know, early on in the pregnancy that, you know, that

00:43:38.420 whole heartbeat thing is like, you see and hear the heartbeat of this little tiny shape. And it's

00:43:44.580 like, you can debate whether abortion policy is good, bad, legal, not legal to the cows come home,

00:43:48.920 but you can't tell me that that's not a life. I mean, that is that, that's science. That is science.

00:43:54.200 Yeah. No, it could not be sustained outside the mother's womb at that point. But is that the

00:43:57.460 relevant question? There's no, you see that heartbeat, whatever your position was before,

00:44:01.880 it's got to give you some pause. Like, wow. And to be clear, it was very special with my kids,

00:44:06.600 but I'm kind of a, uh, because of what I do and running a business and, you know, having a target

00:44:11.740 on my back with YouTube, the truth is I don't really have the luxury in my life to sit very often

00:44:16.240 and, and enjoy, um, the present moment or feel pity for myself. So I kind of like, okay,

00:44:22.340 I'm the moment I was out of the ICU, kind of like, okay, boom, done, go. Okay. Boom. Don't go.

00:44:27.600 That's what I have to do. Uh, and especially in a landscape, that's constantly changing right now

00:44:33.080 with social media, with the way media is with the bad faith actors, who they are. But, um, it was

00:44:39.440 obviously very, very special to me to, to first, they brought up my, my son first, cause he can only

00:44:44.680 have one person. They have to be the same with the COVID thing. So it kind of had to do one at a time.

00:44:48.200 Um, and also one thing is I, I still can't really hold both of them at the same time because of

00:44:51.820 what's going on with the bars and the rib cage. But, um, it was, uh, yeah, it is one of, I don't,

00:44:58.060 I still, I never really liked kids that much. I still don't love other people's kids, but

00:45:01.580 everyone says my kids are cuter, but the difference is I'm right.

00:45:05.580 And you know what I have to say, they really do get better and better. It's like, I, I feel like in

00:45:10.480 some ways I'm more like a man when it comes to children. Like most of my women friends are like,

00:45:14.840 Oh, when they were toddlers, I'm like, Oh my God, thank God that period's over.

00:45:18.540 My kids now are 12, 10 and eight. And it's so awesome. And it's been awesome for a good,

00:45:22.880 like four years, like eight, six and four was also awesome. I just think people, I don't know

00:45:28.200 whether you're having any of these feelings or not, but if you're not, if you're not feeling like a,

00:45:32.680 yes, nailed it. This is amazing. Just know it actually gets so good when they become more like

00:45:38.660 little people and they can talk and you can see their brains working and they're funny and

00:45:43.420 they fire up things in you and you can relive fun things like your favorite movie. I just just

00:45:47.700 like the next phase of parent, if people need to be told just in case they're not absolutely loving

00:45:51.900 the babyhood phase, I, you know, I appreciate that because a lot of, a lot of people just go

00:45:56.160 like, Oh, it only gets harder. I'm like, I don't really know if that's the case because right now,

00:46:00.580 every two hours, we're trying to make sure that they don't die. That's literally, they lay there

00:46:05.100 and I go, I go, please don't die. How do I make you not die? That's, that's about it. Um, and if

00:46:10.840 people want to know too, I've, it sort of occurred to me, what we think is cute about babies or young

00:46:16.140 children is, is really just the, it's the kind of behavior where if an adult behaved the exact same

00:46:23.020 way, you would think they're an idiot, but to kids, we think it's cute. Like with a baby the other

00:46:27.600 day, she was, she, she just started, uh, she started like finding her hand, you know, she couldn't,

00:46:30.940 and then she kind of finally like, look, she's finding her hand. If your cousin, if your friend

00:46:36.260 Bob was like finding his hand, you'd lock him away. So that's just, that's what we think is cute

00:46:41.420 about them. But I will tell you, there's nothing cuter. There is nothing cuter than we have a, you

00:46:45.680 know, a big, big dog, uh, Joe Lewis. He's a dog of Argentine, 110 pounds. And we figured he was going

00:46:51.000 to be really good with the kids. And of course, to people out there should never leave any dog alone

00:46:55.260 with, with children, particularly big dogs, no matter how good they are. But the,

00:47:00.940 what's there's something so cute about bridled control, a dog that is a protective dog, a dog

00:47:06.400 that is a powerful dog moving gently up to interact with the kids and kiss them and understanding the

00:47:13.420 difference between the little ones. So, uh, Joe Lewis has just been great with them. He's been

00:47:18.860 perfect. And that's been really cool for us to see the interaction. They cry a little bit. He runs up,

00:47:22.960 he checks on them, waits in front of the nursery. We go in, he's like, okay, I've done my job. So,

00:47:27.220 you know, there's, there's a lot of love in the house. That's something a lot of people skip over.

00:47:31.500 Joe Lewis is, he's sort of another version of Steven Crowder, like that, this big, tough guy

00:47:37.620 who takes on all these massive battles and challenges and doesn't back down. But like,

00:47:41.960 there's a softer, more protective, sweet, kind, loving side. I've seen it in you repeatedly.

00:47:49.920 Steven Crowder is brilliant. Trust me, if his political leanings were left wing,

00:47:54.040 he would be hosting one of those late night shows right now. Um, he's kind of like a Greg

00:47:58.220 Gutfeld in that way. Uh, but he's killing it on YouTube. So he doesn't need them in on his own

00:48:02.620 platform. Um, I have to say it, it, it does change, right? Motherhood, parenthood for me now,

00:48:07.760 my kids are eight, 10 and 12. And I have to say, I feel like I'm peaking. I'm peaking in terms of my

00:48:13.240 parenthood experience. My kids are delightful right now. They haven't yet hit the annoying teenage

00:48:18.080 years. Um, so they're, they're awesome. They're super fun to spend time with. And they're out of

00:48:23.720 the toddler years, which were not my faves. Like Abby is much more of a caretaker than I am. But

00:48:28.140 so she enjoys those years a lot. And I'm like, if we could rush ahead to four when you're a little

00:48:34.400 bit more, less, less dependent. Um, so I'm, I'm loving it. Cause I've got my babe, my little guy

00:48:40.760 eight. That's still little. He wants me to lie with him every night. Right. Moms. Don't you love that?

00:48:44.720 We do our little book that we're reading and my older two are like real people. Now you can talk to

00:48:49.600 them about anything and they learn from me and I learn from them, right? Like I've learned a lot

00:48:55.500 from, from all three of my kids, but as they get older and wiser, then they have institutional

00:48:59.920 knowledge of you. Then they can give you a hard time. Then they can give you, you know, life advice.

00:49:04.140 Anyway, I, right now it's never been any better. And of course, because I'm Irish and I'm Catholic,

00:49:10.480 I'm, that just makes me worry about when it's going to fall apart instead of enjoying the moment.

00:49:15.720 And it's, when's it falling apart? It must be soon. Teenagers they're coming for me, but no for

00:49:20.540 the moment it's delightful. And I hope it's delightful for you too. And if it's not, just

00:49:25.340 remember right around the corner, goodness could be coming your way. More coming up on parenting in

00:49:31.580 the age of Tik TOK and Instagram on mama bears who may have flipped Virginia red and much more.

00:49:37.560 We heard from all sorts of parents this year on our show, and you can go back and find all the

00:49:45.780 shows in our archives on YouTube or Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, the SiriusXM app. We're

00:49:50.180 everywhere. Um, one of the first interviews we did after we joined SiriusXM was with Scott Galloway,

00:49:57.380 a fascinating author, professor, and podcast host with a focus on tech. He's also a parent. And we

00:50:04.840 talked about how he grew up and the alarming rate at which boys are ceding ground in the

00:50:09.340 world of education to girls. But we also talked about what it's like to parent kids in the age

00:50:14.460 of social media. It's hugely important topic, right? And all you're ever told is like, no,

00:50:19.000 don't get my phone. Don't feel like, is that realistic? What about if your kid's the only

00:50:22.500 one in the school, right in the class who doesn't have a phone? I mean, that's tough situation

00:50:27.760 to be honest. And we talked about it and we talked about it honestly. How do you deal with

00:50:32.720 it in your household? As Galloway says, it's something every parent is struggling with.

00:50:37.260 And here's part of my interview with Scott. You have more, I don't know, is it fair to say

00:50:43.340 working class roots? I've heard you describe your background in different ways.

00:50:47.660 Yeah. Um, raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died a secretary and, uh, um, you know,

00:50:54.080 was really, uh, Megan transformed by kind of big government, the generosity of California

00:50:59.480 taxpayers and the Regency University of California went to UCLA and Berkeley for undergrad and grad

00:51:03.560 for a total of tuition of $7,000 in the eighties. And even more importantly, back then the acceptance

00:51:09.120 rate at UCLA was 70%. I had to apply twice to get in and now the acceptance rate is 12%. So

00:51:14.120 things have changed a lot.

00:51:16.480 Well, and it was at a point where young men were still going to college. I mean, I think,

00:51:20.220 I know this is one of the things you've been pointing out, but where are all the young men going

00:51:23.220 to college now? They're, they're going another way or I don't know what they're doing,

00:51:26.080 but they're not going to college in anywhere near the same numbers as they used to.

00:51:29.480 It's a really interesting issue. I'm sure you saw the wall street journal article,

00:51:33.160 but it's now 60, 40, um, uh, women to men in college, which sounds bad, but it's even worse

00:51:38.920 when you consider that if you're, if your son shows up to college, there's 50% more women there

00:51:44.300 and seven in 10 high school valedictorians or girls. Some of this is good. Some of this is

00:51:48.600 catching up. Some of this is just warranted, uh, reward for young women and girls who are overachieving

00:51:54.740 academically, but also it signals, I think something very dangerous. And that is men are

00:52:00.160 not attaching to school. They're not attaching to work. They're more, they're more likely to be

00:52:04.940 unemployed, more likely to have opioid addiction. And also this is a strange stat. Uh, in 2008,

00:52:12.260 uh, 8% of men under the age of 30 had reported never having had sex. And while people hear the

00:52:18.500 term in their brain fires, a bunch of different ways, just assume it's a key component of establishing

00:52:22.180 a relationship, that number as of last year is 28%. And the reason why that number is so scary

00:52:28.120 is if men aren't attaching to work, they're not attaching or young men attaching to work, school,

00:52:32.720 or a job, they're very dangerous. Our most unstable societies have what is, uh, uh, too many of the

00:52:38.960 most dangerous person in the world. And that's a young, broken, alone male. So when we hear that

00:52:43.060 men continue to not pursue college, you know, we really do need to look at it. We're producing too

00:52:47.960 many of this cohort. Do you think it has to do any with politics at all with how, you know,

00:52:54.460 in particular, the white male has been so demonized and they know what's going to happen on college

00:52:58.460 campuses. They're at the lowest on the totem pole in terms of economic or socio, I should say status.

00:53:04.060 And I don't know, I'm like, I'm just talking to my friends who are very worried about their son,

00:53:07.660 who's a conservative. He's a senior in high school, but he's been really attacked and demonized

00:53:12.140 by the faculty at his school. And they're thinking it's only going to get worse when he goes to

00:53:15.760 college next year. I think they'll still send him, but I wonder how much of that plays into their

00:53:21.400 unwillingness to put themselves through those four years. I don't think it's discouraging them from

00:53:26.900 going. I think other reasons discourage them from going, but I wouldn't be surprised if it lends to

00:53:32.500 more of them or disproportionate amount of them to drop out. I do think there's an unhealthy gestalt

00:53:37.720 in universities right now where just informally we say at freshman orientation, okay, oppressors

00:53:46.460 over here and oppressed over here. And we start from an unhealthy place of identity politics.

00:53:53.480 And universities have become especially rough and tumble places around this where people's comments

00:54:00.000 are taken out of context. They've made a caricature of it and then they're shamed. And I would argue,

00:54:03.940 Megan, that it's actually their fellow students who are less forgiving than faculty. And I've seen

00:54:08.800 it happen, play out in class where someone makes one false move. And universities are generally the

00:54:14.540 most progressive places in the world. I think we've become really made a ton of progress,

00:54:19.500 being more accepting of people who don't look like us. Where we have failed is we have become

00:54:24.020 increasingly intolerant of people who don't think like us. 2% of the faculty at Harvard identifies as

00:54:28.760 conservative. And universities are supposed to be a place where we debate and have provocation and

00:54:35.060 welcome the dissenter's voice. And around politics, we just don't tolerate it anymore. So I wonder if

00:54:41.060 a lot of young men show up and immediately say, all right, my freshman orientation kind of told me I

00:54:46.120 was an oppressor. Maybe this isn't the place for me. So I do think there's something there. I don't

00:54:51.740 think it's discouraging them from going to college or enrolling them. I think it might be

00:54:55.200 just encouraging them to drop out. I know you've written a book on happiness or just a short form.

00:55:03.060 It's called The Algebra of Happiness, Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love and Meaning.

00:55:07.980 And I do wonder, because I feel like you've written so much on big tech and it's so ubiquitous in our

00:55:13.540 lives and these companies that have all these tentacles and they're manipulating us in ways we

00:55:17.460 don't even fully understand, but we can feel it, whether we know it's as a result of all the hours we

00:55:22.860 spend on Facebook or not. Just how big a role those big tech companies are playing in unhappiness,

00:55:29.540 whether it's of young men or in particular of young women. We'll get to a story that just came

00:55:33.420 out today from Facebook. How meaningful do you think their role has been?

00:55:38.900 I don't even think it's meaningful. I think it's profound. My colleague at NYU, Jonathan Haidt,

00:55:43.220 wrote this fantastic book called The Coddling of the American Mind. And we have an epidemic or an

00:55:48.440 emerging epidemic in teen depression. And he identified two sources of that or two drivers.

00:55:53.900 The first is our fault as parents, Megan. I know you're a parent as well. And that is our concierge

00:55:58.980 or bulldozer parenting has led to this sort of this approach where we use so many sanitary wipes

00:56:04.640 on our children's lives that they don't develop their own immunities. And we developed this princess

00:56:08.300 and the pea generation where they show up to college and get their heart broken or get their first

00:56:12.180 see and literally freak out. The second thing, though, is that social media has been proven and

00:56:19.900 even Facebook knew this and decided to hide it to result in greater levels of depression,

00:56:24.500 that levels of depression in young men and especially young women are correlated with social

00:56:30.180 media use and specifically around Instagram. And it used to be when you and I didn't get invited to a

00:56:35.940 party in high school, it was bad and that happens to everybody. But now you see it play out in real

00:56:39.800 time on your phone. And it's especially damaging to girls and young women because men or boys

00:56:46.160 bully physically and verbally, women or young girls bully relationally. And we've put we've put

00:56:53.580 these nuclear weapons in their hands and we keep waiting for the better angels of these companies to

00:56:58.820 show up. And it just doesn't happen. How could how could they? I want to get to the Facebook news in

00:57:03.400 one second because it's it's confirms everything that you've been saying and we know. But how could

00:57:07.520 they, you know, because, for example, my friend John Stossel, who I love, he's a libertarian,

00:57:12.120 you know, he would be if he were here, he'd be saying they're very successful companies. There's

00:57:16.260 a reason they became so successful. The American people voted, you know, with their dollars and

00:57:20.580 with their eyeballs and with their time. And, you know, therefore, it's clearly what people want.

00:57:26.040 And it's not a place for government to step in and protect people from themselves.

00:57:29.820 So what could they be doing differently that would protect our kids more, but

00:57:33.460 not totally abandon American capitalism in the way it works?

00:57:37.620 Well, I'd be in favor of age gating. I remember when my son posted a video of his handstand on

00:57:42.180 YouTube and he got a like and then all he could think about was checking back on YouTube. And then

00:57:46.820 someone made sort of a snarky comment and it really upset him. And I wonder if 12 year olds should even be

00:57:51.800 on YouTube. I think there's a capitalist argument to be made that if we, in fact, broke these companies

00:57:56.900 up and had more options than one social media network or one search engine, that it might result in

00:58:02.700 emerging players that say there are advertisers and parents who would rather have a video search

00:58:08.360 engine that doesn't radicalize young men. There are, I think we need a photo sharing app that

00:58:13.340 advertises it will not allow people under the age of 16 and it will not allow bullying or it'll come

00:58:18.540 up with some sort of affirmation that doesn't make people feel worse. So I think competition is an

00:58:23.900 answer here. I think regulation is an answer. And if your show, Megan, could be reverse engineered to

00:58:29.520 girls cutting themselves. I don't think this show would survive because I think there are other

00:58:33.840 podcasts and other media personalities that advertisers would rally behind. Unfortunately,

00:58:39.060 in this environment with social media and search, there are no options. So they don't have any really

00:58:43.420 real incentive to be good citizens and attract dollars. So I think the answer is a capitalist argument

00:58:49.060 that your friend was making. And that is we need more competition because there's a lot of advertisers

00:58:52.900 that aren't down with what's going on. And a lot of parents, you know, what choice do you have?

00:58:57.640 I don't want my son on YouTube, but where, where do they go? So I think, I think the capitalist

00:59:02.140 argument is to break them up and competition would solve a lot of this, but I do think we need

00:59:05.480 regulation and educating. The Facebook story out today in the wall street journal, the headline is

00:59:10.940 Facebook knows Instagram. It's the same company is toxic for teen girls. Uh, for the past three years,

00:59:16.740 Facebook has been conducting studies into how its photo sharing app Insta affects its millions of

00:59:22.340 young, young users, about 22 million teens log onto Instagram in the U S every day, 5 million teens

00:59:28.180 log on to Facebook. And they say that they've been doing a study internally, their researchers, and they

00:59:33.840 found Instagram is, is harmful for a sizable percentage of the, of these teens, especially the

00:59:38.780 girls. 32% of teen girls said when they feel bad about their bodies, Instagram brought them there.

00:59:43.880 Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves. They make body images

00:59:48.340 worse for one in three teen girls. That's their own conclusion. Make body images worse for one in

00:59:52.640 three and, um, that they're actually blaming the teens recognize it's to blame for the increase in

00:59:57.680 anxiety, depression among teens reporting suicidal thoughts. 13% of British teens said, and 66% of

01:00:04.580 American users said the desire to kill themselves was rooted to Instagram. I mean, it's bad.

01:00:12.240 Yeah, it's, uh, it, it, it's just frightening. And if you talk to, I'm involved in this wonderful

01:00:16.560 nonprofit called, uh, Jed, which is committed to teen mental health. And a lot of times, unfortunately,

01:00:22.020 your kid is suffering alone. Uh, you don't know they're suffering and they're, they're ashamed and

01:00:27.720 they go into the room and on their phone and they end up making one false move or for whatever reason,

01:00:33.140 they feel bad about themselves or the mob seizes on them. And it ends up in a level of, uh, you know,

01:00:39.180 emotional anxiety in a time when kids are facing increased anxiety from a variety of different factors.

01:00:44.040 What's most disturbing here is that Facebook knew, knew about this and they decided to, you know,

01:00:50.080 the Facebook's innovation is how to overrun government to ignore these concerns rather than

01:00:55.600 saying, how do we address this? What changes can we make? What incentives could we put in place

01:01:00.460 to really try and counteract some of this, these negative externalities? The majority of their efforts

01:01:06.120 are around not making Instagram a healthier thing. And there's some very good things about

01:01:09.920 Instagram. It's about delay and obfuscation. And so just as the cigarette companies were lobbying

01:01:15.280 companies sitting on top of, you know, of a consumer products company, Facebook has really

01:01:20.580 become, um, an organization of delay and obfuscation and government overrun such that they can ignore

01:01:26.740 these types of issues. And this, this just takes it to a new level. I mean, it's one thing,

01:01:30.620 like I said, you know, you have kids, I have kids, you have your world of work, you have your world

01:01:34.400 of friends, you have your world of fun. When something comes off the tracks of one of your kids,

01:01:38.540 the entire universe distills down to that kid. And the thought that this one company

01:01:42.440 doesn't have this sort of empathy or concern for our children, it's just really, it's just

01:01:47.020 continued evidence that this company is bad for the commonwealth. And it's kind of part of what I

01:01:51.100 would call the, the head of the class of a menace economy that is arbitraging depression,

01:01:56.640 circumventing minimum wage laws. It's just more than anything, Megan, it's just really disappointing.

01:02:02.640 Head of a class of a menace economy. Yes. I am dealing with this right now to some extent,

01:02:07.880 because we have three kids, as you point out, I'm a mom, a boy, girl, boy, almost 12, 10 and eight.

01:02:14.680 And my almost 12 year old turns 12 in about two weeks. And years ago, when he started pressuring

01:02:21.500 me for a phone, right, because all these kids have phones, when can I have a phone? My husband and I

01:02:26.360 were like, Oh, when you're 12, when you're 12. And then we learned more, we listened more. And we were

01:02:30.300 like, there's no way he's getting a phone when he turns 12. He's not getting it. Maybe a flip phone for

01:02:35.320 emergencies where you can just dial us. That's it. And now, you know, kids remember. And he's like,

01:02:40.720 guess what I want for my, for my 12th birthday. And I had to say, you're not getting one. And he

01:02:45.020 said, what do all my friends have? They have, they all have iPhones. You know, can I please have an

01:02:48.060 iPhone? And I'm like, you can't have it. You know, I don't, I don't know what to tell you,

01:02:51.440 honey, but dad and I've done more research and you're not getting it. He's disappointed. But what do

01:02:55.540 you, what do you think is, is a dad of two kids who's been watching this industry very closely?

01:03:00.080 Do we, do we get our kids phones? Do we let them to have social media? Cause of course the rent,

01:03:04.260 their reaction is every single one of our, my friends has both.

01:03:08.060 It's a really tough call. And the people who take a purist argument and say no screens until

01:03:13.420 they're 16 and no iPhone. That means they don't have kids because what you recognize is, I mean,

01:03:19.680 it sounds terrible, but at some point you want time for your own, your own screen time. And then also

01:03:25.100 they do get, it's balancing the very real negative impacts of kids on their phones and specifically

01:03:32.360 the social media platforms. And for some of the problems we referenced before it's balancing that

01:03:37.180 versus them being ostracized because there are some positive things. My sons play video games and they

01:03:42.340 do a lot of their socialization that way when they were, when we were remote this summer and they

01:03:47.380 couldn't be with their friends. One way they caught up with their friends was on video games. And I think

01:03:51.040 actually some of that's healthy. And I would argue that video games and there's research to show this

01:03:55.020 aren't as damaging on the psyche or psychological wellbeing of kids. You know, we're struggling

01:03:59.860 with this as well. What we're trying to do is we demand their passwords and we demand to see their

01:04:05.060 activity. So we're never surprised about stuff. And we try to give them some license, even when

01:04:09.660 stuff's a little bit off, off color, if you will. And we're also just putting a certain time limit on

01:04:15.060 it. And we take their phones from them. We give them their phones for, I think it's one hour

01:04:19.320 at night during the weekdays and two hours in the mornings on weekends. And then we take them back.

01:04:24.260 But if you're looking for someone who's figured it out, you'll hear the, you know, the arguments at

01:04:29.140 our house that just prove we have not figured this out. I think every parent is struggling with

01:04:33.080 this. Well, I mean, I should say he has an iPad, but that's only, he can only use that when we're

01:04:38.420 there and he does games occasionally and he had to use it for remote schooling. But we, social media

01:04:43.860 is what we're trying to avoid and YouTube rabbit holes, right? I mean, we've done enough research on

01:04:47.880 what that does and to young girls too, what that does and pulling you into just dark places that we,

01:04:54.260 if I'm there, that's one thing. It's quite another to have it in your pocket all day long

01:04:57.860 when you're that young. And to your point earlier, the Snapchat, that, that, that's the thing that

01:05:03.660 shows you where all your friends are Snapchat. So you can see where all your friends are. And,

01:05:07.780 and like you just said, now you can see, Oh, where's Jane? Oh, where's Donna? Oh, where's Mary?

01:05:13.260 Oh, they're all right here together. And no one's responding to my calls or my texts.

01:05:18.080 And I've been ignored. I've been excluded. It hurts.

01:05:22.220 Yeah. And the question is, uh, you know, I don't know if the answer is just to keep them off it. I

01:05:26.580 think it's, uh, some of it does fall to us to teach them good values. Um, you know, we gave our son a

01:05:32.360 phone at about 13. Um, and we've demanded that he's kind and that he not take bait when people slight

01:05:38.720 him and, and, and we, we review his social, but we do give him his phone and just the utility of it.

01:05:44.260 I mean, if you want your kid to have any freedom and I was always worried that we were not letting

01:05:48.400 our kid out of the house enough, you know, I used to leave at the age of seven or eight and my mom

01:05:52.080 would say be home by 10 and that was about it. Same. Uh, and now, you know, kids like, you know,

01:05:57.700 we practically have them in armored cars, it feels like. So I think giving them their phone so they

01:06:03.180 can walk to, we call it the Avenue down by Atlantic Avenue in Delray beach. I think that's liberating and

01:06:07.900 it's good for them to have independence. It's good for them to walk home in the dark every once in a

01:06:11.620 while and get a little bit scared. Um, and, you know, walk by the house with the strange mean dog.

01:06:16.020 I think some of that is actually good for the kids, but I'm, you know, we're, we're absolutely,

01:06:21.260 you know, we're absolutely struggling with the time, the notion around when and how, and I do think

01:06:27.900 parents and schools have a role here. We're in a night, a lovely school in Florida, and they basically

01:06:33.540 say, you're not allowed to bring your devices. Um, and you can get in trouble for them. Uh, and they've

01:06:38.540 said, and they've said also your activity on social, and I don't know if those will stand up

01:06:42.160 in court and I'm sure it'll be challenged your activity on social. If you bully another kid or

01:06:46.500 do something, then, you know, you're, you, we can take punitive action, uh, against you in the school.

01:06:52.040 I think everyone's trying to figure this out. This is a tough one, but it's what we have to realize

01:06:56.980 is that the company's not going to figure it out. They're, they're going to continue to manufacture

01:07:01.200 this stuff. That's the thing. They're not an ally. Wouldn't it be nice if you knew that Mark Zuckerberg

01:07:05.420 was in some way, your ally in this battle and trying to protect young kids from the damaging

01:07:10.260 effects of it. The addiction that comes from, you know, looking at your phone 45,000 times to see

01:07:15.300 if you have a like and so on. It's hard enough for an adult to resist it. Nevermind a kid.

01:07:20.100 And he's not your ally. I mean, that's really sort of the bottom line that the social media

01:07:24.580 companies are on the other side of this. Yeah, there are, there are some companies. There's a

01:07:28.540 great company called Roblox that was hugely successful. Um, uh, you know, multi-billion dollar

01:07:34.020 market capitalization and they do have a lot of content moderators. It's a game platform for

01:07:37.700 children. You know, about half of kids under the age of 16 have been on Roblox and they are taking,

01:07:42.680 uh, this issue very seriously. I do think, I think Tik TOK, I don't know if you spent much time on

01:07:48.440 Tik TOK, Megan. It seems to me that's a little, a little less toxic or they're trying to China

01:07:53.920 gathering my child's data. Could be, could be. I don't, I personally don't see evidence of that so far,

01:08:00.280 but I think that's always a risk. You have to assume any Chinese company that the data there

01:08:05.320 is probably subject to inspection by Chinese authorities. So I don't want to pretend that's

01:08:10.240 not a, that's not a real issue. Uh, what I would say though, is that when I'm on, when I'm on Tik TOK,

01:08:16.760 it does feel more optimistic. It does feel a little less, you know, you go on Facebook and you go

01:08:22.280 on, uh, Twitter and it feels like the algorithms are just constantly saying fight, fight, fight.

01:08:30.000 And Twitter's, but isn't Kara, Kara's always saying that her kids like Twitter's for old people,

01:08:33.820 mom, like Twitter's not really the popular venue for the, for the youngins, but Facebook is obviously

01:08:40.460 huge and Insta's enormous and not harmless. I mean, I think people see the pretty pictures and

01:08:46.800 it's like, Oh yeah, influencers. And it's like, no. And every, for every one influencer who will post

01:08:51.640 something without a filter to show her actual rear end or face, there's just millions of opposite

01:08:58.820 doing, you know, doing the opposite, right? So you get in a young girl's heads and even with a

01:09:03.300 parent counter-programming, which I'm sure you try and I try, it's hard. Coming up, my conversation

01:09:08.900 with a mama bear who may have personally helped turn Virginia red and give Glenn Youngkin a surprising

01:09:15.340 victory over Terry McAuliffe. In early November, Republicans across the country saw victories in

01:09:24.360 elections big and small, but all eyes were on Virginia and Glenn Youngkin's win over Terry McAuliffe

01:09:30.200 shocked many. What helped push Youngkin across the finish line? One person who is personally involved

01:09:37.080 was Azra Nomani, a Muslim immigrant, single mom, and former progressive who became a self-described

01:09:43.180 mama bear fighting back against what she described as anti-American propaganda in the schools.

01:09:50.340 Can I tell you one of my closest, dearest friends who would describe herself the same way

01:09:54.940 voted yesterday. This is in New York across the board Republican. And it was a moment for her. I

01:10:02.360 think she felt a little teary about it. She felt emotional. It wasn't because she's gone, you know,

01:10:07.660 hardcore pro second amendment. It was because she's a mama bear. Like your shirt says, she's a mama bear

01:10:14.640 like you. This isn't a Republican Dem issue. Yeah. It's such a tragedy that the Dems right now cannot

01:10:22.300 see the humanity of their base because they're so caught up in the politics of Ilhan Omar and Rashida

01:10:28.840 Tlaib and AOC. They're just chasing the extreme. And they've left them behind, the centrists like

01:10:35.320 myself. I, like you said, I only moved to Virginia in December, 2008. I remember it precisely, Megan,

01:10:43.120 because I was living in DC and I needed to find a new place. Well, the election had just happened of

01:10:50.800 2008 and I grew up in West Virginia. So I grew up, you know, really feeling pride in our state of West

01:10:58.420 Virginia being on the correct side of history on the issue of civil rights, slavery, this big issue

01:11:03.940 of slavery. Well, it was only when the state voted for Barack Obama that I said, oh, it's ready for a

01:11:10.440 Muslim immigrant, progressive feminist like me. I raised my son here. And then all of a sudden in June

01:11:17.260 2020, the principal of my son's high school told me that I and the other Asian, mostly Asian, mostly

01:11:23.640 immigrant parents had to check our privileges. And on it goes. You're the perfect person to talk to

01:11:30.140 about this lie. We keep hearing over and over from the mainstream media, from the Democrats all over

01:11:37.380 cable news last night that that CRT is a unicorn. It this is not something being taught in K through 12

01:11:45.060 schools. They say it like it is a factual assertion. They are correcting this nonsense record that

01:11:50.460 conservative crazies, white supremacists keep pushing. I mean, your take on it, because I will

01:11:55.980 tell you, I just said earlier in the show, I don't care what you call. I don't care if they're not

01:11:59.180 teaching the actual legal doctrine that you learn in law. That's not what parents are saying. You're

01:12:03.380 teaching racial division. CRT is a catch all phrase for parents who don't know quite how to categorize

01:12:09.980 the insanity you're delving out. Yeah, my colleague, the president of Parents Defending Education,

01:12:16.640 you've spoken with her. She said, I don't care if you call it magical unicorn theory, right?

01:12:21.260 We are just opposed to it because it's bad news. Like behind me, Megan, is all of the books on

01:12:26.940 Islamism that we would talk about for years, the extremism within my faith of Islam, and how we had

01:12:33.160 to challenge it. Well, now I have here critical race theory and all of the extremism of wokeism.

01:12:38.840 And it is very much real and happening in the state of Virginia. First of all, you know, just to start

01:12:46.940 off with your audience, you know, critical race theory says that we have to look at all issues

01:12:53.980 through the lens of race. It's just very simple premise. So that was a fundamental problem on this

01:13:00.940 issue of my son's school because they wanted to have racial demographics at the school matching the

01:13:05.900 racial demographics of the county. 20% Asian, 70% Asian in my son's school. So right away, they changed

01:13:16.020 admissions. So it's getting in the weeds a little bit here. But I just want to let people know how it

01:13:21.320 is that they started messing with schools through the lens of race. And then one example I have here

01:13:27.260 that I wrote about in National Review, I think you talked about it a bit, is this class called

01:13:33.200 How to Be an Anti-Racist Educator. And I didn't get this into the National Review piece. But the

01:13:41.080 premise of this class that's taught at Marshall High School right now to educators there is,

01:13:48.120 yeah, in Virginia, just right down the road from me here, is that they have to discuss in lesson

01:13:54.240 number six, exploring and understanding white men. So this is, again, looking at people and society

01:14:00.240 through the lens of race. And they use this book, Courageous Conversations. And Courageous

01:14:06.600 Conversations is the bad ideas of this man named Glenn Singleton.

01:14:12.180 That's who they brought to my school in New York. That's one of the schools we left.

01:14:16.660 Yeah. So he, you know, because you know how in Islamism, we had to study where did extremism

01:14:22.640 come from? And then we learned that it's the Muslim Brotherhood, right? It's this guy named

01:14:26.500 Haradawi. Who are the vessels of these bad ideas? And it's this guy, Glenn Singleton. And that's what

01:14:34.500 they are now teaching these courses in here. And they're going to include in the next coming weeks

01:14:40.460 here in Virginia, right down the road from me, the privilege walk, right? You know, all of these

01:14:46.080 anecdotes, Megan, that have just, you know, seeped into our school systems. And it's always bad ideas

01:14:53.400 from really like, you know, not very sophisticated intellectuals who are just now making millions

01:15:02.340 of dollars. And, you know, over here, I have the receipts, the contracts from a neighboring county,

01:15:10.600 Talbot County next door in DC. It's money, it's bad ideas, and it's ultimately trickling down into

01:15:18.180 our schools. And that's what is, that's what we know, we see it every day. As parents, we hear

01:15:23.700 about it. And we're not stupid, you know, we get it. And just like you guys just talked about,

01:15:30.320 we are not going to let anyone get in between ourselves and our cubs.

01:15:36.420 That's right. And you talk about, I mean, in your piece for National Review, which was wonderful,

01:15:41.060 and I recommend it to everybody, Virginia parents have had enough of woke lies at their schools. This is a

01:15:47.680 couple days ago before the election, woke lies. We heard so many more of them. But last night,

01:15:53.960 when CRT is not being taught, it's not being taught, it's not being taught. Okay, well, one of the examples

01:15:58.540 you gave was of that, that anti-racist educator you just talked about, and who the encouragement

01:16:05.340 that people listen to Bettina Love, and promote Bettina Love. We've seen this all over Virginia. We've

01:16:11.080 seen it actually coast to coast. Bettina Love is a problem. This is a woman who says whites need therapy

01:16:16.120 to overcome their racism, ignorance, and history of harm in the school setting, who doesn't believe

01:16:21.360 that children can learn well from teachers of the same race, who says public schools do not see blacks

01:16:27.080 as human, and they're guilty of the systemic anti-blackness and the spirit murder of black and brown

01:16:34.440 babies, that whites are directly responsible for the plight of, quote, dark children. What?

01:16:40.120 I don't care. She is a critical race theorist. But even if those words aren't used, the fact that

01:16:46.560 these Democratic politicians and media pundits will not acknowledge that stuff is trickling down to our

01:16:52.120 children is at their own peril. You tell me it's at their own peril. Yeah. You know, James Carville was

01:17:00.160 a consultant to the Terry McAuliffe campaign, and I signed up for the newsletters. And every day,

01:17:05.460 I'd get, you know, another missive from James Carville or whoever else they brought in. And you

01:17:10.820 know, Megan, that James Carville called out the wokeism earlier this year in the country and said

01:17:16.960 that it was going to cost the Dems. But his voice is not prevailing. And in fact, all of this character

01:17:23.660 assassination last night of the voters of Glenn Youngkin reveal that they are only going to continue

01:17:30.520 to try to smear us. I know Wajahat Ali very well. He is part of the Muslim network in the United States

01:17:38.540 that has now embedded itself in the Democratic Party. And, you know, he was just a kid who would write to

01:17:45.100 me from time to time and say, oh, can you help me place an op-ed in the Daily Beast? Well, now he has a

01:17:51.200 coveted role as a contributing columnist to the New York Times. And he bounds off about all of this absurdity.

01:17:58.660 But Megan, this is really important. And it's like only with you that I can really

01:18:02.820 connect the dots. In the state of Virginia, the Muslim individuals who have been part of this

01:18:11.180 network of political Islam that's called Islamism, they live right here. They're right down the road

01:18:16.660 from the off of Route 7. They have contributed mightily to the Democratic Party. They had as a

01:18:24.080 favor than the Virginia Education Secretary installed during the Northam administration.

01:18:30.220 He became the vehicle through which Ralph Northam saved face from his whole black debate debacle.

01:18:38.140 He was the one who launched this whole war against merit at my son's school. He put in all of these

01:18:44.680 ridiculous ideas about critical race theory and equity. Hala Ayala, the lieutenant governor nominee,

01:18:51.700 she's part of that whole network. They want to keep that unholy alliance alive between the Islamists

01:18:59.940 represented through people like Ilhan Omar and the Democratic Party. And this is a rejection of that

01:19:06.980 alliance. And the Dems are just going to continue to lose if they keep thinking that that is America,

01:19:12.680 because it's not. It's regressive ideas that are actually very illiberal and racist.

01:19:18.240 Yes. And as you know, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been making the same connections and saying exactly

01:19:22.640 what you're saying. And it's bold of you. I know you get blowback for that, but it's bold and it's

01:19:26.680 true. It's factual. Can I show you this is for our listening audience at home. This is a cartoon

01:19:32.740 that embodies the way the press is reacting to the Virginia victory of Youngkin last night. It was

01:19:39.620 retweeted by, among others, Nicole Hannah-Jones. And what it shows is Glenn Youngkin and his little

01:19:45.660 fleece sweater vest, kicking a young black girl. And she's falling and her books are going everywhere.

01:19:54.060 And it says the campaign's final stretch. And in her, I can't see it from here, but the names on

01:20:01.560 the book, what are the words on the books, guys? It says something like, you know, history or racism.

01:20:05.840 You know, it's like her trying to educate kids on history. And he's kicking her and making her fall.

01:20:12.280 And that's how they sum up what your movement is about, what parents defending education,

01:20:18.140 what all these parents who took to the polls last night to try to say, don't divide our kids

01:20:22.780 based on race. Do teach history, but don't teach ones in a presser and ones in a press just based

01:20:28.060 on melanin. That's how they describe the movement. Yeah. You know, I have this signs here because I

01:20:33.840 wanted to just illustrate. I've got a sign that says grannies for Glenn, Democrats for Glenn,

01:20:38.580 sportsmen for Youngkin, parents for Youngkin, because I stood there in the ballroom, about

01:20:45.440 thousand people packed shoulder to shoulder. And I'll tell you, there was me. I voted for Glenn

01:20:51.480 Youngkin. I am a Muslim immigrant feminist, and I am a mother of color. And I am what they are now

01:20:59.480 claiming white supremacy looks like. Beside me was this amazing mom, Suparna Dutta, who came here from

01:21:05.460 India. And she had just dollars in her pocket. And Megan, she was never involved in politics.

01:21:12.420 But the school board, the 12 Democratic school board members in Fairfax County, just ignored her.

01:21:18.320 And Yu Yan, this mom from China, and Himong, another dad from India, just ignored us all these

01:21:24.160 months, just like you just said. You know, they treated us a lot like we were invisible. They would mute us.

01:21:30.820 And we got to have the last word, as you put it last night. And they, Suparna was dancing, Megan. She felt like

01:21:40.660 she had defended the American dream, that she had come sacrificing so much to experience.

01:21:47.980 Asra, I can relate to this. I, I've never been a political activist. I've never been an ideological

01:21:54.240 person. As a journalist, I've always kept my cards close to the vest. This is a different thing. This

01:22:00.360 is about the future of our country, about loving America and teaching a future generation that it's

01:22:05.180 okay to love America. And it's a good thing. And it's about shaming, shaming of one's immutable

01:22:11.640 characteristics in a way that would be very damaging on the psyche of an entire generation of

01:22:16.460 children already facing record suicide rates. If you don't speak out against that, you're complicit.

01:22:21.520 You're complicit. And so I too felt joy to see the message being sent back to these politicians, that parents

01:22:27.900 do get a say, that the parents are the ones in charge. Stay with us. One more parent to get to an emotional

01:22:34.680 and important discussion with a New York City dad who I will never forget.

01:22:43.160 Up next is a dad who joined us in an episode from May before we started on Sirius XM, Triumph Channel 111.

01:22:50.220 Andrew Gutman was not looking to become a household name, but he did because he decided to write an

01:22:56.740 open letter about why he was pulling his daughter out of her New York City private school, Brearley.

01:23:03.320 Been there. And prior to interviewing Andrew, we had interviewed Paul Rossi, the dad at another,

01:23:10.100 the guy at another New York City school who was a teacher, bravely speaking out there. Remember,

01:23:16.040 he taped the head of school because he had a feeling it was going to go south. And then they

01:23:20.740 started to tell different stories about Paul. Both of these guys told similar stories to the ones that

01:23:26.020 I myself have experienced, which is schools that had been reasonable in teaching accurate history

01:23:31.060 before turning into far left social justice machines that try to shame the white students

01:23:38.560 and try to diminish the black students as incapable and to the consternation of parents and, as it turns

01:23:46.840 out, some faculty. New York went 86 percent for Joe Biden. Manhattan did. It is a very, very leftist

01:23:53.980 place. Until now, that didn't manifest in too offensive a way in the school system. This past year,

01:24:01.360 two years, things have changed. And as we now know, it wasn't just in New York City,

01:24:07.160 though that place is a canary in the coal mine. And what happens there tends to spread

01:24:12.140 across the country. And I believe that's happening, too, when it comes to crazy radical trans ideology

01:24:17.460 being taught at schools, CRT, inappropriate sexual content and more. Andrew Guttman saw it and he came

01:24:25.180 on to explain to me why it was so important to him to take a stand.

01:24:29.300 Let me answer this, because I mean, I think certainly this is going to this is where it really is right

01:24:33.280 now, but it's where a lot of these schools that across the country are right now. This was a

01:24:40.040 response posted to your letter by somebody named Claire Potten at seminar.org. And she said, let me

01:24:46.860 just quote in part claims that children are being harmed by critical race theory are a thin cover for

01:24:53.480 returning to a world where white people don't have to feel bad about racism. She says the tribalism

01:25:01.840 and division that the Brearley dad, you claim critical race theory is causing already exists,

01:25:10.640 as does the harm Paul Rossi fears it is causing. Prestigious private schools offer real opportunities

01:25:16.280 to black students, but it can come at a very, very high emotional and intellectual cost to them and

01:25:20.720 their parents. And basically what she's saying is, and this is the end quote, um, that white people,

01:25:26.300 including you and Paul make it all about themselves. That is what white people often do.

01:25:32.860 But in this case, it also shows that these men also understand what's at stake in anti-racism work,

01:25:38.360 their own power and the position of their white children as uniquely authoritative and special

01:25:45.860 in a multi-racial society. Any thoughts on that? Okay, sure. You can, you know, what do you want

01:25:54.660 to, so what do you, okay, I would ask this person and ask this school something, okay, what do you

01:25:57.820 want? What do you want to do? Okay. You want me to admit I'm, because I'm white, I'm guilty. Right.

01:26:02.340 I mean, my, my family, you know, a lot of them perished in the Holocaust. We weren't, you know,

01:26:06.580 we didn't have slaves. Um, we weren't in this country. Uh, we weren't in this, you know,

01:26:10.840 in the Jim Crow era. I mean, all right. So, so what do you want to do? You want to ask all white

01:26:14.940 people to admit what, where does that get you? You know, at the end of the day, this is, this is,

01:26:20.520 you know, the Marxist argument for equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity, which,

01:26:26.080 you know, will destroy every, you know, will destroy us, I think. But, you know, you want to,

01:26:31.740 you're trying to teach a kindergarten kid that they should feel guilty for the color of the skin.

01:26:35.140 And this stuff is in kindergarten. Right. I mean, I heard, I heard of,

01:26:37.960 Oh, I know my mom told me, you know, they, so when my daughter was in kindergarten,

01:26:41.560 they had to do a project. They all given a silhouette of their head, you know,

01:26:45.160 blank head, draw whatever you want, draw, you know, however you look, draw your freckles,

01:26:49.400 draw your hair, whatever you want to draw. Well, this, this exercise apparently in kindergarten

01:26:53.300 this year, uh, they were only given skin color crayons and it was, look, we don't care about

01:26:57.280 anything. The only thing that we want you to focus on is getting your skin tone, right.

01:27:01.000 So this is kindergarten. This is kindergarten. I'd be like, I don't need a crayon. Just leave the

01:27:05.860 paper as pasty as it came. Just going to do an outline of a face. Just as pasty as you think,

01:27:12.440 even pastier. We have to fight this. We're not saying there's no racism. We're not saying we

01:27:19.180 shouldn't teach, you know, the, the, the, the stains in our history. We have terrible stains

01:27:23.540 in American history of slavery and Jim Crow, what we did to native Americans. No question. Right. I,

01:27:29.820 I maintain, I wrote in this followup, which again, hasn't been published. I think we're the least

01:27:33.680 racist country. I think we're the most diverse country in the world. I think we're the least

01:27:36.980 racist. We're the only country or one of the very, very few that is even attempted to address

01:27:42.540 these issues. What are the countries even attempted, right? What are the countries diverse?

01:27:46.380 Like we are, are there issues? Of course, are there, you know, are there racist cops out there?

01:27:49.800 Of course there are, but what benefit is there of telling a kindergarten kid to feel guilty for his

01:27:57.060 or her color of her skin? Where does that get you? What does that do for you? That's my response.

01:28:01.060 They're, they're incapable of paying for the sins of those, of somebody else's fathers. Um, I, I want

01:28:06.440 to, I want to read this piece, uh, just a bit, forgive me a lot of reading today, but there's been

01:28:11.020 some great stuff I've, I've, I've been reading lately. Uh, this is from Ross Kaminsky at the

01:28:15.380 American spectator. And his piece is called the, the cancer of critical race theory. And he says this,

01:28:20.680 he says, he does say that he thinks America is awakening to quote the cancer that is critical race

01:28:25.720 theory. And he says, it should infuriate you that schools across the nation. Keep that in mind.

01:28:31.060 Our audience knows it's not just really these sort of Tony New York schools. It's public schools

01:28:35.960 across the nation, places like Iowa. It should infuriate you that schools across the nation are

01:28:40.680 telling some kids that other kids are evil or that they themselves are evil for things over which they

01:28:46.460 have and never had and never will have control, such as the melanin content of one's skin or the

01:28:54.220 particular shape of one's eyes. And for the distinctly un-American practice of teaching

01:28:59.600 that free speech, critical thinking, and questioning authority are simply indications of one's own

01:29:05.780 irredeemable privilege. And he ends by saying, the problem is that even this initial national,

01:29:12.140 national awakening is very, very late. We are in the midst of a stage four societal cancer.

01:29:19.760 Critical race theory has metastasized from Harvard outward through other universities,

01:29:24.220 and from there into almost every other internal organ of our nation, from businesses to governments,

01:29:30.140 to schools, to everywhere you look. So that brings me to the question that you mentioned when we

01:29:37.200 started. What's next? What do we do? You did the parents at Brearley and everyone else a favor

01:29:44.980 by not staying quiet about it, by going public. So what is next in fighting the stage four societal

01:29:52.960 cancer? Well, let me say first, I 100% agree with what you just read. This is terrifying what

01:29:58.820 is happening. I've had a lot of people reach out to me that grew up in Soviet Union or communist

01:30:05.120 Eastern Europe that had saying, but we left there to come to America. We've seen this movie being

01:30:13.040 played before. This is terrifying what's going on. And we never thought this could happen here.

01:30:16.740 And, and it is, and it's not just critical race theory in schools. It's, it's beyond schools. It's

01:30:22.180 the cancel culture. It's the whole, you know, woke religion. It is incredibly scary. I think if we

01:30:29.060 don't fix it, we go down a very, very dark and scary path. I mean, you know, we end the enlightenment.

01:30:35.540 I think the country cracks up eventually. I don't know when, what do we do? You know, I'm trying to,

01:30:40.220 I'm trying to figure out, look, I've been, I promised a lot of people who reach out to me,

01:30:43.340 and I would continue to speak out on this because I, I believe in it and I will. I'm going to join

01:30:48.220 FAIR and get involved in FAIR, which you mentioned. Seriously, I've had people, people, you know,

01:30:55.240 encourage me to start a school in New York city. And that's something I'm seriously thinking about,

01:30:59.900 but you know, the bigger issue is this. We don't solve, in my view, we do not solve the school issue

01:31:06.260 until we solve the cancel culture issue. Too many parents are too fearful to speak up.

01:31:12.280 And you mentioned, you know, Coca-Cola may be reversing themselves a little bit on this after,

01:31:18.320 you know, the Georgia and baseball all-star game incident. Such cowardice generally in the

01:31:24.280 corporate boardrooms, in these, you know, school boardrooms and administrations, but just such

01:31:30.180 cowardice in these corporate boardrooms to cower to the, you know, the woke Twitter mob here.

01:31:34.720 That has to stop. We need some courageous CEOs and business leaders to say, look,

01:31:40.480 we recognize that our employees are going to have some different opinions on things. Some of them

01:31:45.100 might be controversial. We, we acknowledge that some of those opinions in the day and age we live in

01:31:50.200 are going to wind up on Twitter and social media, and we will not terminate them for their views.

01:31:57.780 We will not, you know, penalize them for their views because they're preventing parents. I've heard

01:32:04.540 this so many times in the last few weeks in these hundreds of emails, they are preventing parents

01:32:08.800 from speaking out on behalf of their children and on behalf of their children's education.

01:32:14.600 So that has to stop. I think we have to solve the cancel culture issue. This is a huge issue. This is

01:32:19.100 not just schools. This is not just critical race theory. This is this, you know, anti-intellectual

01:32:25.060 illiberalism, Marxism. We're going down that path in, in, in, in so many different scary ways. I

01:32:32.080 don't have the solutions, all of them. I don't, you know, most of them, but we need to talk about

01:32:36.000 this. You know, again, I said this earlier, you know, democracy, we, we, we've been led to believe

01:32:40.600 in the media lately that, you know, what is democracy? Democracy is all about how many people

01:32:44.040 vote. Right. And that's why there's such issues over, over who can vote and voting, you know,

01:32:49.060 registration and restrictions and stuff like that. That's not what democracy, that's not what democracy

01:32:53.000 works if people vote. I think it's two things. It's, and I wrote this in the letter, you have to

01:32:57.820 have wise and virtuous leaders. And I think of both political parties, we have very few wise and

01:33:04.540 virtuous leaders. And I wrote that in the context of really being the training ground for these

01:33:08.380 leaders. If they don't learn the education, they're not going to be that, that scary. And the other

01:33:12.880 thing, you know, for democracy to work, you have to be willing to have discussions of these issues.

01:33:19.160 Again, race, COVID, guns, immigration, you know, all these issues, climate change that we're not

01:33:26.980 allowed to discuss. You have to be able to discuss them. So somehow, and, you know, media polarization,

01:33:33.400 you know, is a lot of this, which I don't know how to solve. But if you don't, if you're not willing

01:33:39.740 to discuss these important issues, democracy doesn't work. And that's, I'm really scared. I mean,

01:33:45.220 I'm hopeful that we have, you know, made a little dent. I don't think the dam is broken here on

01:33:49.880 critical race theory, but I think we're starting finally to get people to speak up. And I'm hopeful

01:33:54.800 we make a dent there and this movement continues. But these are bigger issues that we are completely

01:34:01.080 forgetting, losing, destroying, you know, toppling statues of the foundations and principles of this

01:34:07.920 country. And again, that's not to say there aren't stains on this, you know, Thomas Jefferson's

01:34:11.340 controversial. And he should be, and he should be taught it that way. But that doesn't mean you

01:34:15.620 ignore the Declaration of Independence. That is the founding principle of this country. And we should

01:34:19.840 strive to meet it. And maybe we've failed in a lot of ways in our history, but to not teach it and to

01:34:25.080 lose those founding principles. Sorry, I'm preaching here, but to lose those founding principles, that's

01:34:30.040 what's happening. And that's really, really scary, the path we're headed down, I think.

01:34:35.680 Yeah, it certainly is. No, I agree. I said, Mitch McConnell, he was out there just saying,

01:34:42.460 and it was great. I was happy to see him object to the 1619 project, which has been totally discredited

01:34:49.700 being taught in schools. Now, Nicole Hannah-Jones has been given a journalism professorship at UNC.

01:34:58.220 She, yes, they give her a Pulitzer Prize, which a bunch of scholars, black and white, have demanded be

01:35:04.020 pulled back, be revoked, because the 1619 project is so non-factual. It is so counterfactual.

01:35:12.360 And she's totally gotten away with it. Now, instead of having the prize taken away,

01:35:16.740 they're elevating her to a journalism professor at UNC. Anyway, McConnell came out and said,

01:35:22.400 voters didn't ask for this. There is no mandate to teach our children that America is inherently evil.

01:35:31.700 That seems like something that should have been run by us before we innocently sent them back.

01:35:38.040 I wrote this in the letter, and I'll say it here. This country will not survive teaching our children

01:35:44.800 to hate our own country and to hate its history. No other country in the world does that, and that is

01:35:50.040 what we are doing. We will simply not survive as a country. I don't know what happens. We break up,

01:35:54.800 civil war, I don't know. I don't think anyone can predict that. But I'm unfortunately confident in

01:36:00.540 if we teach our children to hate our own country and its history, we will not survive. Or this way

01:36:06.660 of life, the foundation of freedom and liberty and prosperity and equal opportunity, not equal

01:36:12.740 outcome, equal opportunity, which has been the beacon for the rest of the world for 250 years.

01:36:18.440 And yes, we haven't always lived up to it, but we have been the beacon of these principles for 250

01:36:23.200 years. If we teach our children to hate our own country and hate its history, we won't survive.

01:36:29.600 And our way of life will not survive. And that's terrifying to me.

01:36:34.680 I do want to say to people, go to fairforall.org, fairforall.org. And you will see a lot of faces

01:36:43.900 there that you know and love, like Barry Weiss, like Glenn Lowry, like Coleman Hughes,

01:36:48.400 like Eli Steele, John McWhorter, who's coming on the show this week, and so on. Daryl Davis,

01:36:55.380 all there together, me, I'm there, trying to fight back against this and try to make it easier for you

01:37:02.900 to connect with other parents in your schools or businesses or elsewhere who are silently objecting,

01:37:09.100 but don't know how to come out with it publicly, you know, for fear of being canceled or punished.

01:37:14.980 So that is one of our core missions. Go just check it out. I don't make any money off of this.

01:37:19.700 This is not a money-making organization. We're just trying to, it's a group of people trying to,

01:37:23.880 you know, fight for reason and wellness in the country. So I've become a, you know, a preacher

01:37:30.760 for them. I want to proselytize about them. And we're just getting our act together, too,

01:37:35.040 where it's going to grow and it's going to get better organized and all that. But it's a place to start.

01:37:38.400 And I think you'd be amazing. We need just, we need millions more just like you.

01:37:44.140 So I, yeah. So the founder of Bayon, I've met a bunch of times now online and in person,

01:37:49.380 and we're talking about how I can get involved because I absolutely want to get involved.

01:37:54.060 Well, as you heard in our show with Azra Namani in 2021, quote,

01:37:57.460 the parents are the ones in charge. And that should just be the beginning. Listen,

01:38:02.860 I was recently speaking to a group, to the Federalist Society at Yale Law School,

01:38:06.060 and they're just as concerned as, as we are. They're concerned about their own education and

01:38:10.300 their own future. These are young people. So it's not just parents, kids who have been through

01:38:14.960 these systems are now coming out, understanding people are trying to brainwash them and they're

01:38:18.520 thinking. And my message to them is the same as it's been to you and continues to be. Fight,

01:38:24.800 fight. This is the time to stand up and fight. You could sit quietly and let it pass you by

01:38:29.740 and you'll lose. And so will we all. And when we've lost, we'll look around and figure out how

01:38:35.040 it happened. Do you want to be one of the ones who can raise your hand and say, I tried to stand

01:38:40.740 up for what is right? Or do you want to be one who says no one ever called me a name and I remain

01:38:45.780 silent the entire time. And now I must remain silent forevermore. Now's the time. I joke with

01:38:53.020 them. What are you going to do? You're going to keep silent now. You're going to keep silent to get

01:38:55.520 your first job. You're going to keep silent through that. And then 60 years when you're dying in your

01:38:59.460 bed, you can fall off the side saying, I had conservative viewpoints. I was against CRT.

01:39:07.000 Speak out now. It's not too late. This fight is on and we need everyone in it that we can get.

01:39:13.020 So honored to have spent this past year with you guys, to have been trusted by you to deliver the

01:39:18.340 news. We'll be back with new shows on Monday. Have a great new year and we'll talk to you in 2022.

01:39:25.520 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 29, 2021

The Year of the Parent： A 2021 Megyn Kelly Show Retrospective ｜ Ep. 231

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