Time Magazine has named its Person of the Year. Can you guess who it is? Do you have a thought in your mind of who it should be? And Gavin Newsom is making his 2028 plans official as he rolls out his prebook tour.
00:20:52.820Turning Point USA was, I mean, I don't think there was a more important organization in getting Donald Trump elected last time around in terms of get out the vote,
00:21:01.600especially when it came to young people.
00:21:03.420Charlie delivered the youth vote to Trump in a way we hadn't seen Republicans win for many years.
00:21:11.400They've taken a ton of donations since Charlie's death, and Erica is determined to lead that organization into the next decade as robustly as Charlie would have.
00:21:20.220So them constantly being under attack by Candace and her followers for having had something to do with Charlie's death, which is her theory, among other theories, actually could have somewhat of an impact, but will it?
00:21:35.820And that's where this has devolved, because people like Tim Pool are openly warring with Candace, saying, F you.
00:21:42.020He says he's calling her terrible names, saying this is going to cost us the midterms.
00:21:53.960And I really do wonder, if you think this, that comes right on the heels of this big divide over Israel within the conservative movement that really fractured the movement in part, does it have a role, guys?
00:22:05.420I mean, or is it really just about Trump's approval rating, tariffs, quote, affordability, and all the traditional stuff that would decide whether Republicans win or lose as the party in power?
00:22:17.940Who would like to take that gem first?
00:23:49.080I do think, though, Megan, when you talk about sort of the youth movement and how Charlie had it unified and moving in one direction and moving toward Trump.
00:23:58.280Trump was the cool guy to vote for in 2024 in a way that we hadn't seen in a long time on the Republican side.
00:24:06.100That that has kind of frayed and the Israel piece has divided the party in the aftermath of 2024.
00:24:17.540And that could have an impact on Republican turnout among young voters and on the margins, though.
00:24:25.240Certainly in 2026, it's going to be more, you know, it's going to be a low turnout election.
00:24:30.260So every vote's going to matter as as they always do in midterms.
00:24:34.140But I just don't think this Candace Owens thing, it is it's pretty dramatic because it is so, as I said, in my opinion, it's despicable what she's doing and it's getting a lot of headlines.
00:24:45.980But in terms of its its impact on the Republican Party overall, I don't think it's going to have much.
00:24:51.720I'll say one of the thing to your point.
00:24:54.440You know, Trump became like the cool guy to vote for in 2024 among the youth, in large part, thanks to Charlie and Turning Point.
00:25:03.200And that also did, in part, depend on Charlie himself.
00:25:06.740Like Charlie, when I was talking to his staff when I went out there to host his show, I think this happened live on the air, but they were talking about how Charlie loved listening to classical music.
00:25:18.600He they kept trying to play country music for him out there.
00:26:48.980Well, I think Tom's basically right about if you talk about the midterms and then in 2028, a lot will come down to who the candidates are and candidate quality really matters.
00:27:02.420So we'll see who the Democrats put up.
00:27:05.140But I do think that this split about around Israel, especially for young people, is something to keep an eye on, maybe not in 26, 28, but in the long term.
00:27:18.980And I do think that what I've seen from talking to young people, especially young men who really identified with Charlie Kirk, that this part of the message is resonating, this sort of anti-Israel message.
00:27:33.620And that, you know, dangerously close to anti-Semitism if it isn't straight out anti-Semitism.
00:28:06.240If it were Trump versus Harris all over again, would they really vote for Harris Republicans because the right is divided over these things that we've gone through?
00:28:34.400I think that if I were a Republican, certainly looking at the midterms, but certainly in looking at 2020, it's just I'm not sure the Americans will vote again for anybody who's had anything to do with anything in politics in the last four years.
00:28:49.000They're going to be looking for something.
00:28:49.960Well, you're really damned if you get into it, and you're damned if you don't get into it.
00:29:02.640And she was a black woman and a conservative, and that was the novelty.
00:29:06.680Well, when she first started, I think she was a Democrat.
00:29:08.740When she first got started, she told me that when she came on.
00:29:12.680But her prominence, you know, left, but she grew out of that.
00:29:15.540Her prominence came when she was considered a conservative, and then she turns out to be something of a nut on Israel.
00:29:23.560And probably, you know, a lot of people think, me included, a bigot when she talks about Israel.
00:29:29.220And then it turns out that Erica Kirk hinted at something else, a third problem with her, which is that she's making money off attacking the memory of Charlie Kirk, that she's a cynic, that she's in this for the money.
00:29:42.160And the point I'm making is that she shouldn't answer these nutty conspiracy theories.
00:29:49.920Candace Owens is trying to taunt her into coming on her show.
00:29:53.640Why should she even dignify this vile, this crazy conspiracy theories?
00:29:59.980She's just throwing stuff out there and hoping it sticks to the wall.
00:30:02.840But if you're, there's going to be, you know, a couple of million people, young people who were eligible to vote in 2028 that weren't eligible in 2024.
00:30:13.640And she's undoing, and not just her, I think Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, they're undoing some of this, the good that Charlie Kirk did.
00:30:22.240These are young people on college campuses or high schools and workplaces, and they're coming into politics and they've become politically aware and they're thinking, okay, everything my left-wing teachers told me may not be true.
00:30:34.880Maybe, you know, and they're deciding what they believe.
00:30:39.960This is, if people on the right say the exact same things about Israel that your left-wing, you know, Hamas promoting teacher told you, it gets in the way of the message.
00:30:51.020A conservative would support Israel because Israel's a democracy.
00:30:55.380It's not necessarily true at all, Carl.
00:30:57.660It doesn't make anyone a bigot because they've got criticisms over Israel.
00:31:02.620Israel's just at the tail end of a very bloody, awful two-year war where they were extremely aggressive and a lot of innocents died.
00:31:09.740And that's why young people are turning on Israel, not because of pundits out there saying things about Israel.
00:31:16.080Well, you know, this country, we were attacked, you know, in Pearl Harbor, and we killed more people in Japan and Germany, civilians, in a day, an average day, than Israel killed in two years.
00:31:30.400So I don't think this is about civilians in Gaza.
00:31:33.360I think it's, I think it's, it's anti, it's the colonial, it's the colonizing, you know, narrative that the left has pushed.
00:31:40.940And you wouldn't think conservatives, you wouldn't think conservatives would fall for it.
00:31:44.800Do you think a conservative would say, wait, let me get this straight.
00:31:47.240There's 22 countries in the Middle East.
00:31:48.900They're all dictatorships, except Israel.
00:31:51.200Israel's a friend of the United States.
00:31:53.340This has been conservative policy since 19.
00:31:55.360I agree with all that, but there's a reason, like, do you think J.D. Vance is a bigot?
00:32:00.360No, I don't think J.D. Vance is a bigot, but I don't, I don't hear him saying this crap that Tucker and Nick Fuentes and Kenneth Owens are saying.
00:32:08.500I don't hear him spitting conspiracy theories.
00:32:11.560But do you have any doubt in your mind that he would be less of a friend to Israel than Marco Rubio?
00:32:31.760I think Marco's probably closer to Trump on foreign policy than J.D. is.
00:32:36.100But J.D. is, I think, the future of the party.
00:32:40.720And I think it was either you or Andy said, to your point, the 50 or the under 50 crowd now, even in the Republican Party, has turned on Israel.
00:32:52.460It was just the young people on the left and independent.
00:32:56.660And now in the Republican Party, the youth has turned on Israel.
00:32:59.720This is not all because of podcasters.
00:33:02.480It's, I would submit to you, because of Israel, because of Netanyahu, because of the messaging around the war, and because of the Iran strike, which the younger generation is against.
00:33:13.420They're like, fuck you and your never-ending wars, and your willingness, your trigger finger willingness to put me in them.
00:33:42.140Yeah, and the polling shows a plurality of Americans all across any demographic age, any party, think that America has a place to leadership in the world.
00:33:52.160So, and I asked them, Rachel Hoff, who was the director of the, what's her title, Tom?
00:33:59.100But anyway, she presented the poll to this group, and we had her on our show, and we asked her.
00:34:03.200So, it doesn't sound like, it sounds like the average mega voter is a lot more internationalist than the mega leadership.
00:34:09.580Well, that doesn't necessarily mean they want war, or they want to start bombing more countries and get, like, I think that's where the divide is.
00:34:16.940Like, there's some resentment toward Israel because they feel like they're going to drag us into a war.
00:34:29.020They just want us to, like, not give them the red light, but either, like, give them the green light or stay out of their hair because they obviously can take care of their own business.
00:34:38.120With the Iran thing, it was a different story.
00:34:39.960You know, they did need us on that, and we went in, did what Trump thought was right, and that was the end of that, at least for now.
00:34:46.160I'm not that interested in Israeli politics, to be perfectly honest with you, but I am interested in whether it's going to cost Republicans elections, especially with young people, because we can't handle a Kamala Harris as president.
00:34:58.740And there's rumors she's going to run again.
00:35:01.300I don't think we can handle a Gavin Newsom.
00:35:31.580Are you practically a Getty when you're, like, you're on, like, Getty, John Paul Getty is, like, your basic uncle, you're in all the family photos.
00:35:41.000Gordon Getty was his godfather, I think.
00:35:45.600But he's still trying to do the poor me, I'm like this poor kid who had the misfortune of having to hang out with rich kids when I was growing up.
00:35:53.920And he's just dropped a new book, and he wants you to know you're going to love his book because he's amazing, and he is super open in his book.
00:36:21.440It's a story about living between two worlds, one of wealth and privilege, and the other of more modest upbringing, the outsider on the inside, the interloper who learned to feel comfortable in many rooms, a story of self-doubt, and, yes, ambition.
00:36:36.120I hope that whatever your opinions of me are, openness, the honesty I felt in writing this and living it will resonate.
00:36:45.080The openness, my openness and my honesty.
00:36:48.300He also says, this is a truly vulnerable book.
00:37:06.200So, Megan, I don't know if your listeners know this, but we have a running gag on our show that every time the name Gavin Newsom is mentioned, you have to take a drink.
00:37:48.440You know, he did that podcast where he tried to portray himself as – you know, he's eating mac and cheese and peanut butter sandwiches.
00:37:54.840You know, I mean, it was preposterous, and he got blasted for it.
00:37:59.980And so – but I think he's trying to overcome this idea that he's this elitist, West Coast elitist, and he can really connect in the heartland, and he's got these working-class roots and all of that stuff.
00:38:53.740So he's trying to get that stuff out on his own terms before there's some expose.
00:38:59.460Well, it wouldn't be from the New York Times or the Washington Post, but maybe from a conservative outlet sort of detailing some of his dirty laundry.
00:39:05.520So he's trying to manage his image heading into 2028.
00:39:08.760And we'll see whether he's able to do that.
00:39:11.980But he's clearly running, and he's clearly putting all the pieces in place to make a run at the nomination.
00:39:18.080And I got to say, in my opinion, he'd probably be the favorite.
00:40:48.960My mom was 19, pregnant and divorced a few years later with two kids, came from no money, and just hustled, you know, worked hard, grinding every single day, two, two and a half jobs, no bullshit.
00:41:02.420Part-time bookkeepers, she did restaurant, that's how I got into the restaurant business, and it was just, like, hustling.
00:41:06.760And so I was out there kind of raising myself, turning on the TV, started, you know, just getting obsessed, you know, sitting there with, you know, the Wonder Bread and five stacks of, you know, peter butter and stuff.
00:41:21.740Man, it's like the White Steak Bob story.
00:41:38.200Some of this we knew, but some of this is new to me.
00:41:40.220So his late father, William, former associate justice on the California Court of Appeals, served as an attorney for the Getty's billion-dollar fortune.
00:41:47.180William Newsom was so involved with the Getty's, he helped personally deliver the ransom payment in response to the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III.
00:41:56.520I love and know you guys pretty darn well.
00:41:58.400I don't think I'd be the one who'd give the ransom payment if, God forbid, somebody got you.
00:42:03.480I'd be willing, but I probably wouldn't be the first choice.
00:42:07.060Gavin's parents divorced when he was three, but William and Gavin did get big money from their Getty ties from a 2003 San Francisco Weekly article.
00:42:17.780The Newsoms also each have owned stock in Getty Images, which is a $1.6 billion conglomerate that owns a number of 70 million photographs and illustrations.
00:42:28.740And also, in 2001, William, the dad, brought Gavin, the son, into a Hawaii beachfront real estate investment in which his initial $125,000 stake soared to more than $1 million in just six months.
00:42:41.060And then listen to this, two additional facts.
00:45:09.920For those of us who are self-made, it's stolen valor.
00:45:13.660Those of us who actually did have to eat mac and cheese and boxed wine and all the bullshit for years, never knowing whether we'd be able to afford the clothes that we're sitting in today.
00:45:54.180I think that he has an authenticity problem, and he's trying to solve it by being even more inauthentic.
00:46:03.840And I think that's the problem here, is that I agree with you that if he just came out and sort of was honest about the mistakes he's made in life and the things that went well and things that didn't go well, people might be interested in that.
00:46:16.800But he seems incapable of that, and I think his slickness is both his superpower and his Achilles heel, because I think people see through it.
00:46:27.040But nonetheless, he is at the top of most of the polls that we're looking at right now.
00:46:33.400He's coming off this great big win on the redistricting in California.
00:46:37.420He's set himself up as the anti-Trump.
00:46:41.040The rest of the field is kind of fumbling while he seems to be moving forward.
00:46:45.980So he's a formidable politician, no matter how you look at it.
00:46:51.420And he's got to run it on his record in California.
00:46:54.060I think that's what people really care about, not his—
00:46:59.120Which is also not great, but he's pulling a Jasmine Crockett right now because she launched her U.S. Senate campaign by just like—she defines herself around Trump.
00:47:07.700It's all Trump's criticisms of her, right?
00:47:58.980And, yeah, I think that's bad politics.
00:48:04.640I think they're responding to a White House post that said something about its cuffing season or cuffing season or something like that.
00:48:12.700But, look, he has been very active on his team on social media and in a way that, quite frankly, a lot of people, myself included, thought was really kind of cringy and hokey.
00:48:25.020But, nevertheless, if you operate under the theory that any publicity is good publicity, he has been able to keep himself in the news and at the top of the heap of the Democratic Party, even while Kamala's been doing her book tour and trying to get her reset and get back in the game.
00:48:42.020And you've got J.B. Pritzker, my governor here in Illinois, who's been battling Trump in Chicago and all that.
00:48:48.140And so Gavin Newsom has managed to stay relevant.
00:48:53.900The question is, you know, we're so—it's so early now.
00:48:57.820Like, is there—can people be overexposed?
00:49:00.920Can Gavin Newsom—can we get too much of him too soon where people are just like, oh, I can't handle any more Gavin Newsom?
00:49:15.160Do you guys remember—it was only a year ago, two years ago, Ron DeSantis was his foil in the Republican Party, and he picked fights with DeSantis everywhere he went.
00:49:27.640He showed up in Simi Valley at the Reagan Library for the first debate, Trump deciding quite properly, as it turns out, that he wasn't even going to dignify these people in the debates.
00:49:38.340Trump treated himself as the nominee in waiting, and that turned out to be right.
00:49:41.660But we didn't know that at the time, and Newsom came down, he's the governor, said, what are you doing here?
00:49:45.860He's told people, well, I'm the governor of the state, and it's a beautiful library, and I just want to welcome all the press and the Republicans to, you know, the Reagan Library.
00:49:54.640And, of course, then he had—the real reason he was there is to set a trap for Ron DeSantis, who he thought was going to be the nominee, and he was going to be the rival.
00:50:04.800And they debated, and you guys said—but the thing about Sean Hannity that was so interesting to me, Hannity moderated the debate, and Hannity agrees on issues with everything Ron DeSantis said and nothing Gavin Newsom says.
00:50:18.020And yet Hannity clearly liked Gavin Newsom more than he liked Ron DeSantis.
00:50:21.180And that was the first clue to me that this guy had the kind of charisma, maybe, that would translate to a presidential run.
00:50:28.820It was Sean Hannity who gave me that idea.
00:52:04.980Please play responsibly, 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.
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00:52:15.760Back with me now, the guys from Real Clear Politics, which you can get as a podcast on YouTube or listen live every day at 11 a.m. Eastern on the Megan Kelly channel.
00:52:35.380So you may not know this, but on December 12th at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., they will present the Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in Political Journalism.
00:52:49.240And not only are none of us Time's Person of the Year, but none of us are getting a Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Political Journalism.
00:53:03.000Why isn't Susan Crabtree getting one of these awards for all the breaking stuff she did around Butler and since then on the Secret Service and so many inside Washington stories or just RCP in general, which has a great stable of reporters?
00:53:19.260Why aren't you getting it instead of, I'm not kidding, Rachel Maddow?
00:53:42.940She was on one of the late night shows just last week.
00:53:45.420Like, I think that Russia coverage I did has been proven pretty true right now since they're literally taking Kremlin talking points to strike the Ukraine deal.
00:53:58.580Nothing you said was true and you never owned it.
00:54:00.740She's getting recognition for political, her excellence in political journalism, Carl.
00:54:08.680From, it's, the award will be handed out by the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism, which is a part of the USC in Los Angeles.
00:54:16.860And the reason they say these people are getting one is, quote, the message is that these winners, by honoring these winners, is that the press is not the enemy of the people.
00:54:29.040It's the firewall between the public and disinformation, abuse of power, and corruption.
00:55:15.060I think you are not living in the planet most Americans are, which is why this kind of extremism, this anti-white extremism, is losing popular support.
00:55:27.180This is what happens when white people don't talk about it, is you have racist dog whistle tropes like this.
00:55:33.700I did not come on this, on this show to sit here and argue with another white man.
00:55:38.880That's one of the reasons that we don't even engage with white men at race to dinner.
00:55:44.400So, you know, because quite honestly, if white men were going to do something about racism, you had 400 years.
01:23:29.540Well, that helps with all costumes and wigs.
01:23:31.640But no, so the other piece of costume tonight is just to order a background from Amazon.
01:23:36.660So if you go on Amazon and you type in Ten Commandments or you type in Back to the Future backdrop, you will pull up so many options for $40 or under.
01:26:30.840And you know firsthand, when I am working on these books, Simon & Schuster and I spend time on the font.
01:26:36.140Like, it's got to match the mission, and, you know, it's your first chance to set the tone, set the atmosphere for the audience that you're engaging.
01:27:25.260It's the same as Bill Bratton's broken windows policing.
01:27:27.820You know, you walk into a neighborhood that's full of broken windows and graffiti on the walls and trash on the streets, and that creates a mindset and an atmosphere for crime.
01:27:35.580And Bratton and others before him have proven that if you fix the windows, paint the walls, clean up all the trash and have this beautiful neighborhood, you prevent crime before it starts.
01:28:19.440It was the Jordan Peterson soundbite on Instagram where he was saying, yeah, it's great to go to St. Bart's or Aruba and have a margarita down on the beach.
01:28:49.420With so many more of our waking hours are spent around that table or that coffee mug than they are down in, you know, Aruba with a mocktail.
01:28:56.940And they're small and they're often overlooked and it's not, we don't think it was a big deal.
01:29:01.460And yet we really do need to invert how we think about that because that's the biggest deal.
01:29:05.400As Peterson points out, that's 80% of your life, those little moments that add up.
01:29:09.740And so it's, you know, long way of saying I think that's the same thing Rubio is getting at of like, this is the font they're going to be staring at for 10 hours a day.
01:29:17.720Like this is an opportunity to set an atmosphere, to set a tone.
01:30:19.140And life provides so many opportunities.
01:30:21.340It could be just nothing, but like we're constantly making fun of ourselves, you know?
01:30:26.100And I have noticed, I mean, you and I have had these little sidebar conversations when one of our kids isn't hanging in that department.
01:30:33.120Like he gets made fun of, and you can see like he's a little pissed off that he got a little made fun of.
01:30:37.580And we're like, that's not, I mean, we don't pounce on him at that point, but we're like, it's, you know, that's, that's a sign that we need to keep doing that until he gets a little better at that.
01:30:46.800Otherwise he's going to, you know, it's not going to work out come college dorm days.
01:32:57.100But we had a very funny thing happen with our love of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang over our Thanksgiving holiday where we have the family come for fake Thanksgiving.
01:33:04.980Not the actual day, but it makes it easier on everybody who needs to travel.
01:33:08.100And we split the family into two groups to play charades.
01:33:12.520And our side was coming up with the clues for the other side.
01:33:17.800And then they came up with their clues for us.
01:33:20.420Now, unbeknownst to our opponents, who are also family members, our family is obsessed with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
01:33:27.180We know a lot about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
01:33:28.700We've seen that movie truly hundreds of times.
01:39:27.280Why would you want to spend time with that?
01:39:27.700Which, by the way, it used to be like the newspaper the next day was kind of stale from yesterday's news.
01:39:31.580You know, the immediacy cut because of cable.
01:39:33.900And now, you know, by the time it's made it through the producers and packaged and written and ready for primetime cable evening news, it's so old.
01:40:11.820No, one big Tyrannosaurus Rex, only not as scary.
01:40:14.420All right, we're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be back with Doug Brunt, who is here promoting his new book, which you can get on preorder, The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel.
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01:41:59.980It was a very tough booking for me, but I made it this morning over coffee.
01:42:02.900He is here promoting his soon-to-be-released The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel, Romanov's revolutionaries, and the Forgotten Titan who fueled the world.
01:45:28.980Steve Bannon was involved with Seinfeld?
01:45:30.240Steve Bannon went from the Navy to the Navy to Harvard Business School to Goldman Sachs to Hollywood.
01:45:35.640Bannon told me, I just found this out like a month ago, that not only did he buy the movie rights, but he was so pissed off by how bad the script was they got out of a very fancy script writer that he went off in a little dark room by himself and wrote a Liar's Poker screenplay himself.
01:46:52.740So he ends up actually writing financial articles under a pseudonym for a while.
01:46:58.240But then he comes out with Liar's Poker, which is an amazing book.
01:47:00.500This reminds me of a story when I was practicing law where we had a client who came to us already having had a default judgment entered against them.
01:47:09.020Like, they had blown off this complaint repeatedly.
01:47:12.060And the plaintiff got a default judgment against them because they failed to defend.
01:47:15.700Then they called us and said, will you help us?
01:47:17.640So I was a low person on the totem pole.
01:47:19.260So they sent me in there like, go get this default judgment vacated for our client, which is an uphill battle.
01:47:24.020So I went in there and it was very contentious.
01:47:28.140And the other side, the plaintiff did not want the default judgment to go away.
01:47:32.260And the judge gave me a super hard time because the client had been completely derelict and defending.
01:47:37.920And it was just a funny and tumultuous time in my career.
01:47:42.500So long story short, they vacated the default judgment.
01:47:44.860And the court wrote this opinion, like in writing that you can still look up now, where he really praised me and the oral argument, but he completely dumped on my client.
01:48:08.580And of course, the seasoned lawyers were like, this is not a great opinion for our client, who now is like being ripped by a court on the record repeatedly for its dereliction of duty.
01:49:32.220Students, they write, you hear students with disabilities.
01:49:35.260It's not kids in wheelchairs, one professor at a selective university told the magazine.
01:49:39.160It's rich kids getting extra time on tests.
01:49:42.820Even as poor students with disabilities still struggle to get necessary provisions, elite universities have entered an age of accommodation.