00:03:02.660And right at the top of that is Oak Street Beach, which kind of kicks off the area that people
00:03:07.860go to and look at and hang at and lots of people getting engaged there with the John Hancock
00:03:15.020building in the background. Well, about seven or eight miles just north of that
00:03:18.060is Loyola Beach where she was with her friends, minding her own business on a spring evening.
00:03:26.100And prosecutors say that Sheridan and her group were walking near this beach when Gorman told
00:03:32.320her friends, she saw someone hiding behind a lighthouse. And that's when an armed man dressed
00:03:38.020in all black, wearing a mask, emerged, causing the group to flee. Can you imagine how terrifying
00:03:45.440that would be? The man then fired at the fleeing group, hitting Sheridan in the back with a bullet
00:03:53.800exiting from her neck, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. Absolutely heartbreaking.
00:03:59.120For what? For what? Because this pig illegal was in this country with no business being here.
00:04:09.620Police were able to track the suspect down to his apartment using surveillance footage
00:04:13.980where they recovered a .40 caliber handgun. A shell casing from the scene matched the gun.
00:04:20.940So they've got the guy. Now, what we've learned about the alleged shooter has been all too
00:04:26.280familiar after Joe Biden's disastrous open border policies let in millions of unvetted
00:04:33.740illegal immigrants to this country. That's what Donald Trump was trying to clean up
00:04:40.180in places like Minneapolis when all hell broke loose because you had protesters wanting to keep
00:04:46.620men like this here in the country and tried to paint people like the ICE agents who were trying
00:04:53.380to keep girls like Sheridan safe as the bad guys. According to the Department of Homeland Security,
00:05:00.820this suspect is named Jose Medina, a 25-year-old fucking loser, illegal immigrant from Venezuela.
00:05:09.940I'm sorry, but I'm angry. I am sick and tired of reporting on young American girls being killed
00:05:16.760by illegals from Venezuela, sick and tired of it. Her poor family, 18 with her entire life in front
00:05:28.600of her. For what? Why? There were so many opportunities to prevent this. Joe Biden
00:05:36.460closing the border, Democrats allowing President Trump to deport the illegals who had been let in
00:05:44.280here. Governor Pritzker allowing Trump to send help to the state of Illinois in preventing crime,
00:05:52.880which he said he had in hand and that it was safe. Remember when he was walking along
00:05:57.760that very lakefront? Governor Pritzker giving an interview to a local Chicago news reporter
00:06:03.260talking about how it was safe and he was going to reject Trump's offer. There were so many
00:06:08.880opportunities to prevent this. And the system failed Sheridan Gorman and her family.
00:06:16.640DHS says Border Patrol apprehended Medina back on May 9th, 2023.
00:06:23.240But the Biden administration released him into the country. Then he was nabbed again,
00:06:30.340as is so often the case with these illegals. He was nabbed again on June 19th, 2023 for
00:06:36.840shoplifting in Chicago really didn't take him long to continue breaking our laws. And once again,
00:06:42.380he was released. And there does not appear to have been any coordination with ICE or any calling
00:06:48.540of ICE to let them know that they had arrested an illegal. Chicago is a sanctuary city,
00:06:55.860Illinois sanctuary. They wouldn't have done. They have a policy against doing that. And there's
00:07:00.420absolutely no report that they that they violated their policy and actually did something to protect
00:07:04.700their community by letting ICE know that they had arrested somebody for shoplifting who wasn't
00:07:08.920supposed to be here. Now this guy Medina's been charged with first degree murder
00:07:13.700and multiple other felonies. What good will that do? What good will that do? Who even cares?
00:07:24.320Great. Shove him in a jail for the rest of his life. Fine. That's where he belongs. Or ship him
00:07:29.720back to Venezuela. I really like, who cares? She's dead and she can't be brought back. Her family is
00:07:38.040in massive amounts of pain and no guilty verdict or deportation or combination of the two is going
00:07:48.980to change that. How many other daughters have to die before we realize what Joe Biden did and
00:07:57.760the hard truths about what must be done to rectify it.
00:08:03.120You know, we moved on from Minneapolis so quickly because of the hysterics from the
00:08:07.720Dems, especially in the wake of Renee Good and Alex Preddy injecting themselves into
00:08:13.980that lawful law enforcement operation and getting themselves killed.
00:08:20.080Trump backed down because the polls started hemorrhaging for him with independence.
00:08:24.420That was a that was a smart political calculation.
00:08:27.460I'm not going to lie. I see exactly why I did it. It made sense to me politically.
00:08:32.840But what quietly happened in the days and weeks after that, it wasn't really publicized,
00:08:37.760especially because soon thereafter, you know, the Iran thing exploded and so on,
00:08:43.120was we seeded the battle. You know, there was a battle even within DHS and certainly within the
00:08:49.500country on whether we were just going to go with worst first, Tom Holman style, which is, you know,
00:08:53.560I love Tom Homan. He's a patriot. Or cast a wider net and try to deport all of the illegals here, the ones who hadn't yet committed a violent crime, the ones like this guy.
00:09:06.920And those of us who wanted a wider net lost. That's what happened. The administration is not admitting that.
00:09:14.000They know that especially Republican and independent voters do say they want everyone gone.
00:09:19.900But when you actually have to do the hard work of making it happen, the public gets squeamish because it looks like what it looked like in Minneapolis when you have a local Democratic governor and lawmakers who decide to hashtag resist.
00:09:35.600You know, the Hohman efforts, the Kristi Noem efforts were working well in other cities.
00:09:40.220But Minneapolis decided to make a point, sanctuary city, and the media was on board.
00:09:47.940They made martyrs out of those two interferers,
00:10:49.060Sheridan Gorman should be alive and well today and thriving in Chicago, taking in the sights and the sounds of that vibrant, dynamic city and coming of age in it with her young friends.
00:11:01.920And Joe Biden and all the Democrats who supported his reckless, needless, inexplicable open border have blood on their hands.
00:11:12.760i i genuinely take no pride pleasure or joy in rubbing their faces in that i i wish we on the
00:11:23.980right who objected to these this border situation what was happening had been wrong that it was
00:11:29.060somehow it worked out somehow these people just became law-abiding citizens who wanted to pay the
00:11:34.020bills and send money home to their families it was always bullshit yes there's some small
00:11:38.920collection who wanted that and didn't break the law. But let's be honest, as Trump said infamously
00:11:44.140at the bottom of that escalator, they're not sending their best. He knew it then. He knows
00:11:50.380it today. There are political realities that caused him to change, quietly change without
00:11:55.260admitting it, that policy. And more Americans are going to die as a result of what Joe Biden did
00:12:02.080and these Democrats, what they did in Minneapolis.
00:12:07.280Sheridan's family releasing a statement that reads, quote,
00:12:10.700this is the loss of a daughter, the loss of a sister,
00:12:13.940the loss of a future filled with milestones that will now never come.
00:13:51.040It took him until Monday to post on X, quote, Sheridan Gorman's murder is a tragedy, and the person responsible must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.
00:17:49.960So from what I've been told, what police investigation has turned up so far, what they've been able
00:17:57.140to share with me and with Loyola University. We don't believe there is cause for broader
00:18:01.940community concern. Okay, some actual concern over Sheridan Gorman would be nice, madam.
00:18:09.140Someone may have been in the wrong place the wrong time last Thursday.
00:18:14.300The wrong place, wrong time. What? What is she saying? She may have startled
00:18:20.340the man. You mean the illegal immigrant who was there with a mask on who chased her?
00:18:27.140and shot her from behind? What are you saying? She has completely recast what happened
00:18:34.840as just an accidental startling, leaving out, of course, that this was an illegal to begin with.
00:18:43.280Now that she said something that outrageous, even the Chicago press is calling her saying,
00:18:51.580Are you are you a fucking idiot? Sorry, that's my term. And she's gone totally dark. She won't
00:18:57.560take calls. Her office won't respond. Get out there and do better, ma'am. This is you owe this
00:19:06.840to your constituents. You owe it to Sheridan. How dare you paint it as this? Oh, an accidental
00:19:14.000startling, you know, by by some law abiding citizen who happened to have his gun. He chased
00:19:20.340her. He shot her as she was running away. She did absolutely nothing wrong. How dare you?
00:19:29.500We were planning on leading with this story all morning, and we're working on our opening here.
00:19:36.480And about a half an hour before we went to air, something heartbreaking happened.
00:19:44.220We received an email to our show account. You can email me, Megan, at MeganKelley.com.
00:19:50.340That goes to our show account. And I have a great gal named Meg Storm who takes in all the emails for me and then sends them to me. And the email that we received took my breath away. It was from a friend of Sheridan's mom, Jessica. The mom is Jessica.
00:20:07.780It turns out Jessica went to our show in Westchester this past fall when we took the show on the road.
00:20:18.420Jessica's friend Stacy sent along these photos.
00:25:57.660It's the wrong place because Chicago doesn't cooperate with ICE, because the state of Illinois doesn't cooperate with law enforcement on immigration.
00:26:10.220Why was it the wrong time? Because it was a few years after Joe Biden let in maybe 10 million or more unvetted illegal immigrants.
00:26:20.500and republicans aren't off the hook either um republicans have basically said and donald trump
00:26:28.180has basically indicated that there's not going to be enforcement in workplaces like um you know
00:26:36.160agriculture or meatpacking or um in the hotel business in the hospitality industry
00:26:44.200and this just creates these zones of lawlessness and and you know this can touch anyone i mean i
00:26:52.400grew up in a hometown where a mother and daughter were killed by a drunk driving illegal immigrant
00:26:59.680as they were exiting a dance studio um and they were buried together uh this was in 2009
00:27:07.660in Brewster, New York. And, you know, the illegal Guatemalan immigrant who did that
00:27:16.460had, you know, been known to local law enforcement for years, as many of illegal immigrants were
00:27:23.140known, just for living rowdy and lawlessly in an illegally rented apartment, you know,
00:27:30.080rented to many, many men beyond legal capacity by a landlord who was profiting illegally
00:27:35.980and hired out to do illegal labor um this is a kind of the lawlessness spreads and this is the
00:27:44.700the price of it in the end is you know people think it's just we're getting cheap labor cheap
00:27:52.300exploitable labor you know uh landscapers and meat packers and people that work at hotels
00:27:58.300quietly we do but we also get this lawlessness this this we also get the new york times
00:28:06.980The New York Times reported we get violation of child labor laws because the Biden administration let in so many illegal immigrants who were minors that couldn't be put anywhere.
00:28:17.340And they were put to illegal work and dangerous work in this country.
00:28:22.260It's an offense against the laws we make and the laws we make to live in a decent society.
00:28:29.960And we're basically saying that these people should live indecently.
00:28:34.140And then we pretend to be shocked at the crime that happens as a result. It's beyond reckoning. And, you know, I think this should be hung on every politician who wants to back off of this effort to bring law and order to our society, to bring people into legal conformity, to live in a republic as full citizens.
00:29:01.740and uh that means not being preyed upon by criminal aliens uh it means not being undercut
00:29:09.480in the labor market it means you know uh it means a land that's governed by our laws
00:29:16.900and you know this is just a truly awful story and you are so right to drive home the the
00:29:30.000the faces the the real names behind the story because otherwise it's just going to become
00:29:38.600you know a statistic just you know no we're not going to let it just dismissed as i i like i said
00:29:46.560we were going to cover this anyway but knowing jessica's part of the mk show community and came
00:29:51.500out to the tour with her friends like i i refuse i over my dead body will this story fall out of
00:29:56.560the headlines now. I will make sure. I will absolutely make sure. And if J.B. Pritzker has
00:30:01.100the balls to actually run for president without making this a massive mea culpa before, during,
00:30:09.360and potentially after, I'll be all over him. I mean, we'll call his office every day. I don't
00:30:13.920care. This is so, I'm sick and tired of this. I've talked to too many of these moms. You know,
00:30:21.800when I think about, you know, Jessica attending to our show in White Plains where we talked about
00:30:28.100a lot, that was with Tucker Carlson. We talked about a lot, including illegal immigration. And
00:30:32.280she's sitting there and listening to this discussion and having no idea that her daughter
00:30:37.180and her family will be the victims of one of these people in just a few short months. It makes my
00:30:42.340stomach turn. And Rich, it's not just a problem with illegal immigration. As I point out, you know,
00:30:48.200So why was this guy like lingering where young people fraternize on the lakefront in a mask with a loaded gun while he's an illegal with an arrest record?
00:31:02.040Because I'm going to guess if they had adequate police presence there, they wouldn't have let somebody who is clearly an illegal who I guarantee you spoke very little English, if any, sit there with a mask and a loaded gun where our youth hang out.
00:31:15.000And all I can think about is that that interview that J.B. Pritzker gave to the local.
00:31:19.820We actually pulled it. It's the local NBC5 Chicago.
00:31:22.040Her name is Marianne Ahern, and she pressed him on the violence in Chicago.
00:31:27.360This is months ago, September of 2025.
00:31:30.820And listen to how cavalier Governor Pritzker was.
00:31:33.840Listen, you're going to hear people, especially this past weekend, 54 shot, seven dead.
00:31:40.580Yeah, they're going to say the city's not safe.
00:31:43.240Would you ask your friends to ride the L after midnight or after, you know, nine o'clock at night even to come down to the city from O'Hare?
00:32:08.940Yeah, so this is a classic instance also of why a broken windows approach to policing makes sense. You police small acts of disorder to keep worse things from happening. So if you just basically don't have tolerance for strange guys hanging around with loitering in masks in places they shouldn't be, this might not happen.
00:32:29.880And I have a friend who was nearly attacked by someone in New York City.
00:32:33.960It was in a public park where a bunch of kids were out drinking as rich.
00:32:37.680How do we stop things like this from happening?
00:32:40.940You stop the drinking and then people are out of control and something worse doesn't happen.
00:32:45.520And one reason, Megan, just going back to the foundational point here, that the left can't properly account for these incidents, can't tell the truth about them, can't express the appropriate outrage is because the wrong people are the victims and the perpetrators.
00:32:59.880right? So the illegal immigrants are a victim class. They are high up there in the hierarchy
00:33:05.460of victims for the left. So they can't process when an illegal immigrant commits a crime like
00:33:11.020this. It reminds me a little bit of the Muslim bomb throwers in New York City a couple of weeks
00:33:16.160ago where all the headlines and a lot of the commentary suggested that it was the anti-Mamdani
00:33:21.860protesters who must have been responsible for the bombing, right? Instead of the Muslim guys
00:33:26.640Yeah, Akbar. And same thing here. This guy was a menace, never should have been in the country. He's an illegal immigrant. It was a horror and a disgrace. And they can't get there just because once they hear illegal immigrant. And of course, they won't even say that phrase, undocumented immigrant. It's it's let's let's not cast aspersions on on these people.
00:33:48.620Well, they won't they won't even go that far. First of all, I totally agree with everything you just said. And this this progressive Democrat, Maria Haddon, who we played the soundbite from wrong place, wrong time.
00:34:00.640I guarantee you the message would have been totally different had Sheridan been black. Now the hierarchies change again.
00:34:07.320Now she's invested shot in the back now. Oh, yeah, exactly. Now, because now, like I'm sure in this woman's mind, any black American is actually valued more than a white American.
00:34:17.800And when you're doing the progressive hierarchy, illegal immigrant, brown skin from Venezuela definitely is over white girl from Westchester, but is not over black girl from Chicago.
00:34:29.640And I guarantee you this is the way Maria had in things.
00:34:32.720And so she would have expressed outrage.
00:35:02.380This is a bunch of words that say nothing other than she's utterly unqualified.
00:35:07.280This is this is like progressive speak for nothingness, a servant leader with a background
00:35:13.580in community organizing and participatory democracy. Maria has become an independent
00:35:19.120progressive champion of the people in city council who advocates for not just her word,
00:35:24.080but communities across Chicago. Before becoming Alderwoman, Maria Haddon was the executive
00:35:28.440director of Our City, Our Voice. Again, more gobbledygook coming your way. A national
00:35:33.400nonprofit organization she founded to enable communities and local governments across the
00:35:38.600country to redesign democracy for more empowered and equitable participation. What? Here it goes
00:35:46.200again. Her expertise in public participation is grounded in grassroots organizing efforts
00:35:52.840for social change. She goes on. She's a member of local progress, a movement of local elected
00:36:00.340officials advancing a racial and economic justice agenda through all levels of government. It goes
00:36:07.480on and on like this for paragraphs, Rich, to your point of there's she she's a know nothing
00:36:14.620who has advanced only one thing throughout her entire career. And it appears to be some racial
00:36:20.600hierarchy, which she is now applying to Sheridan Gorman, a dead constituent who is 18 and deserves
00:36:28.120better. Yeah. So Antonin Scalia said the longer the introduction for someone at an event, the
00:36:33.520less consequential they are. And if you apply the same rule to a bio, this person is a total
00:36:39.480non-entity. It's all meaningless phrases and all suggesting, right? It's just another way of saying
00:36:45.280she has this perverse racialist view of looking at the world that you outlined, where the whites
00:36:51.400are the oppressors. If a white girl is victimized by a terrible crime, she was in the wrong place
00:36:56.340at the wrong time, kind of by definition. It is a twisted and perverse way to look at the world.
00:37:03.520here is uh mbd this same older woman maria hadden um on january 21st on she's talking about holocaust
00:37:14.180remembrance uh holocaust remembrance resolution listening here stop three holocaust remembrance
00:37:20.400day and the visits that i've gone and all the efforts for lifting up the stories of the survivors
00:37:26.420and of the people who didn't survive I think are core to the American experience that I have as
00:37:34.520well because as a black American we are always looking to our past to center ourselves in the
00:37:43.720fights that we also still face we have a president in this land that is demonizing people that don't
00:37:51.420look like him. We've seen that before. And right now we have ethnic cleansing, xenophobia,
00:37:59.280anti-blackness, anti-poverty happening and being carried out by our government. They are acting
00:38:07.500against us. They are stealing our people. They are kidnapping them and they are trampling our
00:38:12.420rights. And what's next? Okay. Where's that passion to blame government when we really need
00:38:21.360it and the government happens to be Democrat? I mean, if you ever catch yourself saying that
00:38:29.360you're inspired by the Holocaust stories because they remind you of your own story, just stop
00:38:35.840Center yourself. Stop talking. Yes. I mean, and by the way, her background suggests another
00:38:42.640angle to the story, which is also underexplored. So I bet you if you go and look at the background
00:38:50.720of the nonprofit organizations she's been a part of, I would bet you anything. They are listed
00:38:57.880as a partner organization to another nonprofit that coordinates services for illegal aliens.
00:39:05.840In every region of this country, there are nonprofit organizations funded by leftist billionaires that connect churches, immigration lawyers, illegal landlords, illegal employers, other nonprofits.
00:39:24.620And basically what they do is they engage in kind of a legal conspiracy to evade the law.
00:39:35.840Each of them knows who is, you know, a mandatory reporter or who is obliged by the law to say this or that or who is not obliged to say this or that.
00:39:48.460And so everyone is coordinated to protect illegal landlords from inspections, illegal employers from law enforcement, or to guide people the right way, to coach illegal immigrants not to incriminate themselves if they're asked questions by law enforcement.
00:40:16.800and I would bet you anything that the same people donating to this Alderwoman's campaign
00:40:23.560donate to these organizations, work for them, and profit from them. I mean, that's the other
00:40:28.820thing is that they're protecting a massive profit center for not just the illegal landlords and
00:40:35.640illegal employers, but also for the lawyers and the other nonprofits who justify themselves to
00:40:43.800their donors by saying, I helped 300 people this year basically evade law enforcement.
00:40:50.620And now, unfortunately for Maria, we are going to start digging. Now we're interested. So she's
00:40:56.940not going to be able to just coast along as Chicago alderwoman responsible to no one. We
00:41:01.200will be calling attention to whether she's connected with such groups and what else she
00:41:05.680has to say. She's not going to get away with leaving it at wrong place, wrong time. I don't
00:41:09.920care if we have to call her office every single day for the next year. That's what's going to
00:41:13.620happen. This woman will amend that statement to offer the proper empathy, or she will never stop
00:41:19.500hearing from us. This is insane. We can't allow them to get away with this. And the media so far,
00:41:24.420Rich, has been predictably awful. NR had an article about it yesterday. So far, though,
00:41:31.740just FYI, the Washington Post, zero coverage, zero. The AP, zero. NPR, zero. The New York
00:41:42.020Times coverage from Sunday says suspect in Chicago students killing was in US illegally.
00:41:48.820DHS says, OK, that's not bad. Then there's a sub headline. Sheridan Gorman, 18, was killed last
00:41:54.280week near Loyola University, Chicago. The Trump administration has sought to highlight crimes
00:41:59.800committed by undocumented people in its deportation campaign. It's Republicans pounce
00:42:06.120with different words. And then you guys pointed out in your editorial how the Chicago Tribune,
00:42:12.780they went with, okay, first of all, they failed to get this Medina's immigration status into their
00:42:18.920headline. And it's missing from the article about his arrest entirely more than 24 hours after that
00:42:26.880status had been revealed by DHS. So they just refer to him as Rogers Park man in Loyola slang
00:42:33.820Rogers Park man. Then finally, there was a follow up story that makes a reference to the fact that
00:42:39.140he was here illegally. And yet it still does not name him, doesn't name him. CBS, no better
00:42:45.640reporting suspect due in court in Chicago shooting that killed Loyola University freshman Sheridan
00:42:51.520Gorman. Readers had to wait until the 10th paragraph to find out he was here illegally.
00:42:58.480This is like, so that's the New York Times with Republicans pounce. Chicago Tribune won't even
00:43:04.300tell you he's an illegal. CBS waits until the 10th paragraph. And that's better than WAPO,
00:43:11.160AP and NPR, which ignored the story altogether. Yeah. So it's not just burying the lead. It's
00:43:17.660suppressing the lead or pretending the lead doesn't exist because it's of intense interest
00:43:23.960to people that this guy is an illegal immigrant, but they don't want to acknowledge it because
00:43:27.360they share largely the worldview that we've been talking about.
00:43:31.940And that subhead you read, I think, from the New York Times, that's the kind of coverage
00:43:36.540you're going to get in a couple of days, right?
00:43:38.760It's all going to be a Republican's pounce kind of coverage.
00:43:42.320And going back to that older woman, you know, the viewpoint she has, and this really underlies so much of this, is basically the old line, first they came for whoever, and then they came – first they came for the Jews, then they came for you.
00:43:57.300That's how they think of illegal immigrants.
00:43:59.100First they come for illegal immigrants, and this is the cusp of a massive totalitarian fascist crackdown.
00:44:07.120So they view guys like this as the equivalent of Anne Frank, right?
00:44:11.480They should be protected. Not only should they not be arrested, they should be affirmatively protected, hidden in someone's metaphorical attic because it's inherently wrong and fascistic to enforce our borders and immigration laws.
00:44:25.640It's so infuriating. I mean, it just feels like nothing's going to change. It really does.
00:44:31.520Like he's going to get J.V. Pritzker. He will get away with this. You know, I mean, he will. He's probably running for president at any CNN debate because they don't give the Dem debates, the primary debates I'm talking about, to Fox News.
00:44:44.380They don't give them to the Megyn Kellys of the world. They don't give them the Rich Lowry's and MBD's. They give them to CNN and MSNBC.
00:44:49.640No one's going to ask him. No one is going to ask him this question because it's team blue that's in favor of the open border and not holding anybody to account.
00:44:59.940They'd much rather talk about Alex Preddy and Renee Good than Sheridan Gorman.
00:52:01.700I'm going to continue to pray for those victims.
00:52:03.340Will you take this opportunity to apologize to Sheridan's parents for the policies that you promoted that directly caused her death?
00:52:14.300That suspect would not be in the city, would not be in the country, but for your policies.
00:52:18.960Will you take this opportunity to apologize to Sheridan's parents?
00:52:20.700Well, again, I believe that we're all grieving the loss of Sheridan and other folks who have lost their lives because of sentence violence.
00:52:28.040And let's just be very clear, between the Safety Act and the Welcoming City Ordinance,
00:52:33.460the Welcoming City Ordinance was passed 40 years ago by the first black mayor in the history of
00:52:36.940Chicago. And the Safety Act was passed under the governor at that time, who was a Republican,
00:52:42.260Governor Rauner. Thank you for your questions.
00:52:45.540So you will not apologize to Sheridan's parents.
00:55:00.900This is not for public consumption, but ultimately did so because Democrats wanted him to know
00:55:06.340because others have lived through similar experiences and because his mother's behavior
00:55:12.040influenced his leadership style. You see, he says, it explains why I always sought to solve
00:55:19.000problems. I had to anticipate a problem or a pain point before there was a blow up.
00:55:26.360There was this exchange when CBS's Gayle King pressed him on that passage last month.
00:55:32.220Watch. My mom taught me to be a fighter. My mom taught me to be someone who looked out for others
00:55:37.300And in many ways, and I hope she's able to see this one day.
00:55:41.300My mom is the hero in that book, and I would not be here but for what she taught me.
00:55:48.060OK, remember, like the Kennedys of the world where they had more family drama than any
00:55:53.560family ever born in America, and they shoved it under the rug like good American people?
00:56:00.920Like, I was going to say Presbyterians, which is what Doug is.
00:56:04.440but no, they're Catholic, like you and me, MVD. And they also believed in shoving baggage away.
00:56:09.700That was the way to do it. There was lots to discuss and blame your problems on or to relate
00:56:14.320to people with. But there used to be a stiff upper lip, like vein running through American
00:56:20.000politics. And it's gone now, at least for the Democrat Party. Yeah, it is. And the contrast
00:56:26.520with the Republicans couldn't be more stark. I mean, you have Donald Trump, who ran as a
00:56:31.920successful billionaire real estate developer who recovered from multiple bankruptcies you know
00:56:37.120never let him get down before him you had mitt romney you know another entirely successful
00:56:43.740businessman and a grandfather to like an entire tribe of young businessmen and successful
00:56:51.660people and before him war hero john mccain you know um survivor of hanoi hilton and uh
00:57:00.940someone who'd never cried about it either um and now you get democrats basically
00:57:07.680trying to run and say uh i'm not privileged like i'm not in any way privileged you guys like um
00:57:17.180you know governor andy beshear who likes to take pot shots at jd vance and talks about like oh you
00:57:23.540know he's he's making fun of my people the poor appellations you know it's like your people like
00:57:29.480you grew up in the governor's mansion like you right couldn't have been a child of more privilege
00:57:35.140than he was um you know it is this this weird thing of like um there's a kind of
00:57:45.860bonding and heroism in mental dysfunction and um you know the struggle to cope with life as it is
00:57:57.240uh, that is really, yeah, kind of embarrassing. Like talk to your life coach about it. Or like,
00:58:03.820you know, if you, if you, if you no longer have the big giant Kennedy's clan family,
00:58:08.620like, I don't know, just, just pour it into chat GPT. Like don't bother the whole about it.
00:58:15.840I actually have several girlfriends who do that and they are convinced chat is like giving them
00:58:20.520really good advice, but I, I agree with what you said. And it was actually a very important point.
00:58:25.120It was a very important point about that. This is actually not a healthy thing to do,
00:58:30.040like to spend all this time ruminating over your childhood trauma. You know, like you said,
00:58:37.400tell it to your therapist or whatever, but I don't even know if that's a great idea. I have
00:58:40.640a great therapist who doesn't allow this kind of thing at all. Like whenever you sort of give him
00:58:44.700a pity point, he redirects you to like forward looking action. You know what I mean? Like
00:58:49.860choices you can make that assume personal responsibility. And I love him for that,
00:58:54.400But we don't do rumination. And this is what the Democrats want to do. They want to do it from public office. They want to do it while we're running for public office. They consider themselves the empathetic ones, Rich. This was a very widely circulated clip of Abigail Schreier, who wrote a great book about the dangers of rumination and went on Joe Rogan and discussed it. And listen to how she explained it here.
00:59:14.800You know, I never really considered that until your book
00:59:18.380Until I heard the title of your book and I read the synopsis of it. I never really considered it
00:59:25.960Thinking about your problems all the time and talking about your problems all the time
00:59:30.780Literally make the problems grow. That's right. I mean, it's the number one symptom of depression is what they call rumination
00:59:38.260This pathological obsessing over your pain. Yeah, that's why stuff like exercise
00:59:43.840That's one of the reasons, aside from chemical reasons, one of the reasons that doing anything, you know, that running errands is good for your mental health, getting out of your house and accomplishing anything is good for you.
00:59:55.200But sitting around talking and thinking about your problems, that's a bad habit.
00:59:59.640And the best cognitive behavioral therapists and others, you know, the dialectical behavioral therapists, the ones who do really well with depression, the first thing they do is try to break that bad pattern.
01:00:11.060But a lot of therapists just indulge it.
01:00:13.840So, I mean, it's an interesting psychological discussion, right, Rich?
01:00:16.840But it's like it actually is relevant because this is what the Democrat Party writ large has been doing for years now.
01:00:24.160I mean, how long would it take you to find 20 TikTok videos of leftist women crying about their made up problems or their fake disorders or listing?
01:00:35.200And there'll be multiple. It's not going to be one thing.
01:00:37.260It's going to be like five disorders that they've got that they need you to know about, which make them special, which just leads on to the cycle.
01:00:43.280And then they have to elect leaders now who are starting to talk like them as opposed to pull up your bootstraps, you know, put your big girl pants on and get out there.
01:00:53.220Yeah, they've all driven and participated in this culture of therapy.
01:00:55.920And not only is it not good for you, I assume that Josh Shapiro's mother is still living.
01:01:01.420If you have to say, oh, I hope she'll one day see that what I said in my book wasn't insulting to her and that she's the actual hero.
01:01:12.080Wait, wait, there's more on that. Wait, let me just add to that, Rich. Forgive me for the interruption. But on Mother's Day last year, he posted on X, Axio's pointing out this was evident. He expressed gratitude to his mother-in-law, quote, who showed me unconditional love. What did he say about his mom? She raised me to care about the world around me.
01:01:39.060We could have put a gun to my head and I never would have said a disparaging word about her.
01:01:44.280So there's also this is part of our culture where we think being revelatory and being authentic or quote unquote authentic are healthier and more courageous.
01:01:54.700And I just don't think that's necessarily true.
01:01:56.480And this was really brought home to me.
01:01:57.560I went to Hyde Park, home of FDR, a while ago, and they showed us his study.
01:02:04.440And, of course, he was paralyzed after this awful bout with polio.
01:02:08.220And what he would do when visitors came in, he would – they'd roll him down a ramp.
01:02:13.840The ramp would collapse, and it would be normal stairs when the visitor came.
01:02:17.960And they'd roll him behind a desk, get him into a chair, and he'd play around with the stamp collection.
01:02:24.000He could only do it for like 20 minutes or so.
01:02:25.720And the person would come in and have no idea there was anything wrong with him. He was such a bubbly personality that he would just talk the whole time and no one would think, oh, he's not walking around the room or he's not really moving. And after 20 minutes, the person would be ushered out. The steps would go up the ramp. And that was artifice, but also extremely courageous. He'd give speeches standing with his arms almost giving out because he was so obsessed with not seeming like a victim.
01:02:51.040And a more recent example of this, MBD mentioned John McCain. I was covering him, I don't know, I think it was in 2000. And I was on the press bus with McCain, early stages of campaign where you're really intimate with the candidate. And all the reporters have left. And I left my notebook or something or tape recorder. So I went back after all the reporters were supposed to have left this van. And he was sitting in the back with an aide combing his hair. And I asked someone, why is an aide combing his hair? He can't lift his arms above here.
01:03:17.400But he didn't want people to know. He didn't want to advertise that because he was not a victim. Right.
01:03:22.880So that's the way in which I think this whole approach to life and how people deal with hardships is misbegotten.
01:03:32.040That reminded me of something that happened in the Fox News.
01:03:35.160Forgive me because I'm not going to remember the guy's name right now.
01:03:37.060But we were covering Bridgegate with Chris Christie, remember, where they intentionally shut down the traffic over the bridge.
01:03:42.880And everybody was very angry at Chris Christie and it kind of ruined his presidential chances.
01:03:46.760It was a big scandal years ago. Anyway, we were having a Democrat politician from New Jersey on
01:03:52.540to talk about the scandal. And we were broadcasting from a Fox News tent in Times Square, not from the
01:03:57.860Fox News studio, because we were hosting the Super Bowl that year at Fox. And it was like a
01:04:01.740promo. There's footballs everywhere. I was like, get excited. So whatever. We were a little off
01:04:05.240site in a weird venue. Well, he comes over. He sits. He goes like up the stairs. He comes. He
01:04:11.400sits next to me. And, um, during the segment, I'm, I'm interviewing him and he's not looking
01:04:17.020at me. He keeps looking into the camera, which you should look in the camera when you're remote.
01:04:20.920Like you guys are, you know, that it's weird if you're not looking at the camera, but if we're
01:04:24.340sitting together on the set, you should look at the anchor. Cause that's what the audience
01:04:27.240understands conversation will look like. Well, he wasn't looking at me. He kept looking at the
01:04:30.880camera. And then like when we, when we had a moment, like where it would, the mics were down
01:04:36.060and somebody else is talking, I'm like, it's okay. You can look at me just to try to make
01:04:39.680the shot look better. Long story short, I later found out he would have looked at me, but he was
01:04:45.620blind. He was blind. He's legally blind. He actually had had like, normally he would be
01:04:53.740using a cane. Someone unbeknownst to me, cause I wasn't watching, helped him get on the set very
01:04:58.240subtly. And I felt so bad that I had been like telling him where to look. No one told me he was
01:05:05.900blind. I called him right after the segment. I'm like, please forgive me. I had no idea. And he
01:05:12.220was so sweet. He was like, I didn't want you to know. He was like, I don't want anybody to know.
01:05:16.660I like to sort of just deal with it and project as well as I can that I'm a seeing, sighted person.
01:05:22.900And then of course, because I have this thing of sticking my foot in my mouth all the time,
01:05:27.440I'm like, did you see that article in the New York Times this morning? I just kept saying the
01:05:32.100word c you know like you triple down like stop somebody stop me anyway yeah you know who's who's
01:05:38.420one of the great contemporary american figures in terms of exemplifying this anti-victim hood
01:05:43.800mentality we're talking about is thomas soul right you read about thomas soul and yes people
01:05:49.080discriminated against him facing racism and his attitude was always f you it's on you not on me
01:05:56.120right yes and and if we had more of that across the country it'd be a very good thing
01:06:00.540and speaking of incredible black scholars and leaders from whom we can learn a lot
01:06:06.140Eli Steele and Shelby Steele and his son Eli the same uh Eli's he can't hear and he came on the
01:06:13.140program once it was when we were just an audio podcast actually reduced me to tears when I found
01:06:18.080out like he wanted to do it we didn't have video you guys so you couldn't see me he couldn't read
01:06:22.440my lips. So he had to put on like this device and he was using his cochlear implants and he was
01:06:29.280struggling to hear what I had to say, all of which I did not know. You could tell, obviously I knew
01:06:34.680he had a hearing problem because he, the way he speaks is a little off. And, um, but he then
01:06:40.980confessed at the end of the interview, um, you know, thank you so much for having us. I really
01:06:45.320appreciate you letting us promote their documentary, which everybody should go see called
01:06:49.540What Killed Michael Brown. It had been banned from Amazon. And it's a great, great look at
01:06:53.140Ferguson, Missouri and race relations in America and what really got us here. And I said, I'm going
01:06:58.080to make a confession to you. I almost, I almost canceled because I wasn't sure if the audience
01:07:03.600is going to be able to understand you. And he said, I can, I want to tell you that everyone
01:07:08.580else did. Everyone canceled us as soon as they found out about my problem. And then we had this
01:07:14.920long discussion about how his dad, Shelby, another civil rights leader, but more heterodox than his
01:07:21.000thought, like Thomas Sowell, refused to do sign language. He insisted that Eli grow up learning
01:07:27.360to read lips. He wanted him to be able to function in a hearing world. It's just such a different
01:07:32.060mindset than what we're seeing now. And not to pile on to Josh Shapiro, because back to our
01:07:49.260He's doing it too. And so is J.B. Pritzker, like literally one of the richest men in the world
01:07:57.540wants us to remember his childhood trauma. And I'll give you the examples here. Here's Gavin
01:08:01.500Newsom. He also has a new book, Young Man in a Hurry. In it, he recalls having dyslexia and how
01:08:08.180As Mother Tessa tried to console him over his struggles in school, Rich, she said something he recalls as no crueler words could be spoken.
01:08:41.360It was actually real and gave me hashtag goals.
01:08:45.280And he says after his parents' divorce, his father, Bill, was often absent, Rich, leaving
01:08:51.720Gavin, looking to give his father reasons to be a bigger part of his life.
01:08:57.980So there he was, poor, average Gavin with a cruel mom and an absentee dad, leaving him
01:09:05.260just looking to find someone, a father figure to be a bigger part of his life. Well, what do we
01:09:09.940know was actually true in the case of Gavin Newsom? This is how he found himself. This was
01:09:14.200his solution. And it was actually a really, really great one. Take a look at the magazine article that
01:09:18.960documented exactly how Gavin Newsom dealt with his very cruel mom and his absentee dad. Here it
01:09:25.220is for listening audience. He appears in a magazine and it's titled Children of the Rich.
01:09:29.620and he is there with all the gettys all the getty children rich like another american iconic family
01:09:37.380like the asters like the vanderbilts and he wants us to feel sorry for him because his mom said
01:09:42.100one thing trying to make him feel better about his dyslexia that he thought was insensitive
01:09:46.480and his dad was somewhat absentee after the divorce boo fucking who yeah this guy is never
01:09:53.900going to convince anyone. He suffered any hardship. By the way, the harshest thing I've
01:09:59.400heard recently that any parent has ever said to a kid that we're all inspired by the U.S. hockey
01:10:03.700victory in the Olympics, prior victory in 1980, the coach of that team, Herb Brooks, was cut from
01:10:08.680the 1960 U.S. Olympic team. That team goes on to win the gold medal while he's sitting there
01:10:14.220watching at home with his dad. He was the last guy cut from the team. And after they win the
01:10:18.500gold medal, his dad turns to him and said, son, I think they cut the right guy. And this inspired
01:10:25.220him to be very tough on that team in 1980 and whip it into shape and win a gold medal
01:10:29.760another way. But I'm not shedding any cheers for Gavin Newsom. And if he wins the presidency,
01:10:37.360it's because the entire country looks at the example of California and says,
01:10:40.860it's OK to be below average, Governor Newsom. Yeah, right. The mother was actually sugarcoating
01:10:47.400it. MBD, J.B. Pritzker has not written a memoir, but he has spoken openly about losing his dad,
01:10:54.740Donald, to a heart attack when he was seven. That's sad. And his mother to alcoholism when
01:11:00.000he was 17. All right. Those are legit tragedies. He recalled his mother in an interview with the
01:11:06.020New York Times, Sue, trying to explain her alcoholism when he was eight or nine, promising
01:11:11.160to overcome it. But unfortunately, he said, she was never able to. It overcame her and took her
01:11:18.700life. That is very sad, but it's going to be a very tough sell because the reason J.B. Pritzker
01:11:25.400is telling this story, MBD, is because he literally has had one of the most privileged
01:11:31.680lives a human being can have on earth in the modern day world. He is the heir to the Hyatt
01:11:40.620Hotel fortune. He is rolling in dough. I mean, it's everywhere around him and it always has been.
01:11:49.060And so now he has to find another way to make us feel sorry for him because his dad died when he
01:11:55.560was young and his mom was an alcoholic, which I'm sorry, but that actually is a very common story
01:12:00.400in america and i i just i don't see it happening where people are going to say notwithstanding the
01:12:05.960billions he's just like me yeah it's not gonna make him relatable in any way and it is sad in
01:12:16.640a way i mean i think that you know it's not just a reflection of of you know individual bad character
01:12:23.260But I think it shows a society that, one, is careless with people's reputations, right?
01:12:31.040That, like, people are careless with their parents' reputations.
01:12:35.520And it's also one, I think it reflects a loss of faith in, you know, providence that, you know, the kind of bedrock belief that nothing is going to happen to you in this life without the loving permission of God behind it.
01:12:52.040And if you believe that, then all of the tragedies in your life are in some way ordered to your final good and salvation.
01:13:02.400And that's why people write their memoirs at the end of life usually, because that's when it becomes clearer that these obstacles, tensions, or tragedies actually brought about something great or good or necessary in their life over the long run.
01:13:22.040But instead, we get this wallowing in the pain, which, again, does no one good. And I think it's literally a drag, like literally an emotional drag, but also like a spiritual drag down from a noble tradition of honoring our parents and having faith in that our life has a meaning and that these tragedies give it that meaning to something else,
01:13:51.180like more nihilistic more despairing and you know like the only way we can relate to each other is
01:13:58.140through wallowing in meaninglessness and in upset and terror at the universe it's uh all right i
01:14:05.940have a follow-up for you i have a follow-up for you though is there any chance that this is playing
01:14:12.100the long game because they're calculating their likely opponent is either someone named jd vance
01:14:20.180or someone named Marco Rubio, both of whom have amazing origin stories that are legit and pretty
01:14:26.780well-known at this point. Yeah, I think that is a huge part of it. And, you know, Vance and Rubio
01:14:33.540both now have kind of, their stories are kind of merging in some ways. Like, you know, the story is
01:14:41.900like, I come from a working class background. I come from people that struggled and saw struggle.
01:14:48.600And yeah, there might've been a year where Vance lived in a house that was in total income, got to six figures. A lot of working class families live like that. If you're an, you know, if you're a rigger, if you're in some, you know, uh, kind of dangerous factory work, but of course, you know, you're also then dependent, uh, people that in your whole community depend on you to help them out when they have less.
01:15:13.340And those are powerful stories. You know, the barman's son in the case of Marco Rubio or, you know, again, in the case of Vance, the son of an alcoholic, another absent father, but someone who rose up and like used the existing institutions of American meritocracy to rise above.
01:15:38.620um that's much more powerful than anything andy beshear is going to tell you it's like i grew up
01:15:43.780in the man in the governor's mansion and then i graduated into it like woohoo like what yay me
01:15:49.800i mean a lot of stories are homecomings but it's usually not that literal um and you know and it's
01:15:58.140the same thing with with pritzker which is like i was born to basically the progressive aristocracy
01:16:05.220And now my family gives money to the progressive aristocracy across the rest of the country.
01:16:11.420I mean, it's, again, not that inspiring.
01:16:16.160One thing that was unusual about the rise of Donald Trump, among many others, there's just zero of this.
01:16:24.200I'm sure his father said, like, really harsh things about him a lot, right?
01:16:28.200His brother goes the wrong way, becomes an alcoholic, Trump's at military school for a while, right?
01:16:33.660But zero of this. And his his story was like, I know how to fire people. And I know I know how corrupt politicians are because I've worked the system so I can fix it. Right. So it was none of this attempt to create.
01:16:47.480Trump's attitude is exactly the opposite, Rich.
01:17:15.460at when we fought for that one year when I was at Fox. And then we did a special, like a special
01:17:20.800that aired on Fox broadcast channel, you know, not that FNC, but the broadcast channel. And it
01:17:27.360didn't do that well because it was across from like a series finale of some major show that
01:17:31.240everybody loved. It did fine, but it wasn't like gangbusters. I talked to him the next day. You
01:17:35.740would have thought it was the Superbowl ratings. The way he was like, oh, the numbers are huge.
01:17:39.460I'm like, this is so funny. He knows exactly what the numbers are. He knows that they weren't huge.
01:17:43.320And he knows we lost, I think, to CBS because of this series finale. But it's just Trump. You know, he just he's going to say it was amazing and it was awesome and it was wonderful, even if it wasn't, which is exactly the opposite of the instinct of all these Democrats who were like, boo hoo.
01:17:58.700My mom was mean in that one comment that one time Trump could be out there like they shot me in the head.
01:18:07.560They tried to put me like he does complain here and there, but just usually with a sense of humor and a way of like trying to expose what the other side is, as opposed to make you feel sorry for him.
01:18:18.140All right. I want to keep going because I'm interested in the J.D.
01:18:21.300Marco thing in light of what we're seeing right now in the Republican Party.
01:18:24.400And you guys are great people to ask about this, because I would say, just knowing you both, Rich, you're probably more on the like hawkish side of the party and MBD is probably more on the non-interventionalist side.
01:18:36.960And right now the party's having, I don't know if you call it a civil war, a fight.
01:18:42.220Republicans love to fight with each other.
01:18:44.260I mean, like it's the thing on the right.
01:18:47.240They never march along to party orders.
01:18:50.060Unfortunately, they're not like the Democrats.
01:18:52.120They're like individualism and we have disagreements. Let's hash them out. Let's fight. And then they lose elections badly. And they're like, oh, shit, we need to get along for a little while. So where do you see the current battle going?
01:19:05.300How about that one, MBD? Because right now, the conventional wisdom is that the more neoconny, more hawkish wing of the party that which had felt out of favor with Trump, you know, they had thought Trump was more of a non-interventionalist with some some hawkish instincts.
01:19:19.800We had Soleimani, we had al-Baghdadi. And then, of course, prior to now, we had the Iranian nuclear plant strike in Venezuela. I don't think even they were anticipating full scale war with Iran.
01:19:30.560So they're feeling that like their star is ascendant, their worldview is ascendant, and the non-interventionalists are on the, you know, descend or irrelevant entirely.
01:19:43.320But they make up some 20 percent of the party, that latter group at least, and young people in particular lean towards non-interventionalists.
01:19:52.180So where does that leave the Republican Party now, its future and its and the likely battle to come on the presidential nomination front?
01:20:01.120I think so much depends on how successful this operation in Iran really is.
01:20:11.440There's just you've seen the polls that while Republicans are broadly supportive of the president and his mission in Iran, they're worried.
01:20:21.300They're worried about gas prices. They're worried about the war dragging on, and they're worried about mission break.
01:20:28.880And that's why the president is out there kind of every few days saying, like, it's almost over, or it's four or five weeks, or we basically finished the job already, but it's not finished yet.
01:20:42.520you know there's he's obviously conscious of this dynamic and you know the latest poll i saw today
01:20:49.460was only 66 percent of republicans really backed the president on the war in iran that's actually
01:20:56.760a very low number for donald trump uh or for any republican president in a major initiative
01:21:02.660you know there's there's always a tendency when a pollster calls you up and asks you know do you
01:21:09.460support this or that you know i think most people go into those conversations thinking
01:21:13.920i don't want to accidentally help the side that i'm against so even if i have a problem i'm going
01:21:20.560to kind of hedge towards the president and my party uh but but you know you're seeing six
01:21:27.460support in a party very little in the democratic party very little among the independents you know
01:21:34.880if you are ben shapiro or mark levin or some of these commentators who are saying like i want to
01:21:41.740take ownership of this and we're the ones who really own and define trump presidency now
01:21:47.040and the america lasters are this tiny rump that doesn't matter anymore i think you're basically
01:21:53.980saying like we're in charge of a minority a party that's going to swiftly be in the minority in
01:21:59.280November. And I'm not sure how that's going to work out for them. I mean, I, you know, if you
01:22:07.080see the poll numbers for the president and his party sinking as low as they have been among the
01:22:13.100general public, you know, I don't think that's the time to take the wheel and say, I'm the driver
01:22:18.900now. I'm the one steering this car because it's about to crash. How do you see it, Rich?
01:22:25.300So I think there are a couple unknowns, right? The big one, which MBD led with there is how does this end? Is it perceived as a success or is it perceived as a failure? That will make a huge difference. And then there's kind of the internal game.
01:22:40.220So J.D. Vance obviously, at the very least, is not enamored of this operation, whether he opposes it or not.
01:22:47.180We don't know. But does Trump kind of appreciate him keeping his head down and basically being a team player?
01:22:53.340So that's a benefit to the ultimate competition for a Trump endorsement.
01:22:58.480Or, you know, if it goes wrong and J.D. has kind of proved right, does Trump resent that?
01:23:03.280You know, it's very difficult to to know or game out exactly how that interaction is going to go down.
01:23:10.800And then with with Rubio, I had a connected person who was making a very good case that I hadn't thought of quite this way recently, just saying he's not going to run.
01:23:21.080This is a guy who is at the pinnacle of his power. He's at the hand of a very powerful president. Pursuing priority is very important for him. Iran's one, but Venezuela is much more of one. And Cuba's at the top of the list and has an ability to be a legacy-shaping secretary of state.
01:23:43.760So really, in about eight months from now or nine months after the midterms, is he going to say, forget it, I'm quitting all that, I'm giving all that up, and I'm going to the pizza restaurants in Iowa and living there for the next year and a half, and what might be an underdog campaign against the J.D. Vance, who's a favorite?
01:24:02.900Why would he do that? So I think a lot of people are thinking Vance Rubio. I'm not sure whether Rubio is going to be in that equation unless, you know, there's some inside track we're not aware of.
01:24:13.500And and Trump's really bonded with him. And there's some chance that he could give his nod formally or informally to Rubio.
01:24:20.000That would be a game changer. But otherwise, if you're Rubio, you're sitting very pretty right right now and you're still young and have a lot of time.
01:24:27.940rich you tell me how the more hawkish wing of the party would feel about jd vance
01:24:35.000i think there there'd be a lot of disquiet over jd vance but at the end of the day
01:24:40.800you know if someone's the party's nominee uh the the alternative is going to be worse right
01:24:47.480if he's running against aoc or gavin i mean they'll probably be less hawkish uh than than he
01:24:53.780is even. So people, there's very little alternative to getting on board. But there's
01:25:00.660certainly be disquiet, because I think in some respects, J.D., I don't know whether he actually
01:25:06.420thinks this or whatever, express it. But I imagine that he might think of himself a little bit as
01:25:12.780Trump is the John the Baptist ideologically with this more populous, non-interventionist approach
01:25:18.100that Trump's kind of on board with, but not always, as we've seen with Iran. And J.D. is the
01:25:23.460pure version, right? He's, he's the ideological savior. He's, he's working the logic all the way
01:25:28.880to, uh, it's, it's end point. And there gotta be a lot of people who weren't, weren't a huge on
01:25:35.500Donald Trump to begin with, but have, have, uh, warmed up to him, especially after this, who are,
01:25:39.780who are going to not like the idea of, of a J.D. Vance nomination.
01:25:45.340Oh yeah. I mean, that's one of the things I saw you write this week, MBD was like, it's,
01:25:49.260It's kind of funny to watch those same people like the Ben Shapiro's of the world who never, who was literally a never-Trumper, now try to claim ownership of him.
01:25:58.000Like, yes, this is, you know, I'm MAGA.
01:26:02.540And looking at sort of the more non-interventionalist wing of the party, which was something Trump had repeatedly said he would be pursuing.
01:26:09.260No war in the Middle East, no wars, no new wars, no war with Iran, he even said, as like theirs and casting that wing as though they didn't know Trump at all and they've never been really pro-Trump or MAGA.
01:26:20.880Yeah, I mean, you can go through YouTube clips, you know, the Trump Vance ticket promoted itself as the peace ticket, etc. And that didn't mean completely no military action whatsoever. But he was absolutely a critic of long drawn out wars in the Middle East that didn't yield anything.
01:26:43.840and you know you can find a clip from the 1980s where he talks about what we could do to iran but
01:26:50.620that doesn't eliminate what he said at every campaign stop and rally um and and the fact is
01:26:58.300like the reason that mark levin in 2015 said he would never vote for trump the reason
01:27:04.860ben shapiro said he'd never vote for trump is because trump was invoking this other republican
01:27:12.160tradition, which, you know, has roots in the party, you know, going back to before World War II
01:27:17.580of not wanting to plow under every other boy from the heartland in order to fulfill some kind of
01:27:27.000dream of global dominance. And, you know, that part of the party is still with us and it's never
01:27:37.320really gone away uh and it's kind of risen up after people have looked at the you know what
01:27:43.640what does it cost us to try to manage the middle east into our um you know into behaving the way
01:27:53.360we want it to um you know that there's a paradox to power right that you know like uh and there's
01:28:00.500a paradox to security you know like one man might think like the only way i can be truly secure
01:28:05.720is if I install cameras in all my neighbors' houses
01:28:08.820to make sure I know exactly what they're doing
01:35:31.380Now, it's true that the planning process was truncated. All the kind of downsides of this are very Trump. If you want to look at it in a negative way, impulsive decision, over-optimistic about it. We're talking about his optimism earlier. There are upsides to that. No planning process, a very truncated planning process and kind of erratic goals.
01:35:52.180that's all trump this this has all the hallmarks of a trump operations which is why the buck stops
01:36:00.180with him on this you know no one else is responsible he's responsible he's the one
01:36:05.140decided to to launch it and it's understandable why he did it and again it's very characteristic
01:36:10.240so i i just don't i don't get the effort to kind of get the blame or the credit whatever you want
01:36:17.500to consider off on someone else. This guy, this is a guy who I have no interest in doing that.
01:36:22.460But I also find it weird that some people don't want to acknowledge that Israel did push for this
01:36:27.420war very, very hard. You don't have to take Megyn Kelly's word for it. Netanyahu is all over the
01:36:32.760papers and on video saying exactly that. Like we know that's true. I don't know why you tried to
01:36:38.720make it so serious. Rich Lowry, back to the video. Sot 15 MBD, I got something for you.
01:36:47.500bad twerking mbd it's spring break in america and down in florida and some towns they are
01:37:06.900cracking down on the twerking as illegal as now indecent exposure and inappropriate and um i want
01:37:15.680to know whether you are a pro or against, because I think those girls may not know anything about
01:37:20.240the Ayatollah, but they definitely know how to eat properly and buy a good bikini.
01:37:27.920Yeah, I mean, listen, the glory of American life is that Americans pursue happiness
01:37:37.000however they want to, and they're not being instrumentalized into some global mission
01:37:45.480where they have to care about the Ayatollah