The Megyn Kelly Show - True Cost of Tech Censorship, and Celebrity Corruption, with Sharyl Attkisson and Tom MacDonald ｜ Ep. 311

00:00:00.000 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.

00:00:02.800 Someone is trying to frame us.

00:00:05.160 Until our names are cleared.

00:00:07.700 We're fugitives from interval.

00:00:09.480 Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.

00:00:12.840 Espionage?

00:00:13.560 You still as good a shot as you used to be?

00:00:16.540 Better.

00:00:17.400 Is there love language?

00:00:18.860 We like to walk that fine line between techno thriller

00:00:21.360 and romantic comedy.

00:00:24.180 We make up our own rules.

00:00:25.940 NCIS Tony and Ziva.

00:00:27.400 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.

00:00:30.000 When I found out my friend got a great deal

00:00:32.300 on a wool coat from Winners,

00:00:33.920 I started wondering.

00:00:35.640 Is every fabulous item I see from Winners?

00:00:38.500 Like that woman over there with the designer jeans. 1.00

00:00:41.400 Are those from Winners?

00:00:42.920 Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings.

00:00:45.400 Did she pay full price?

00:00:46.740 Or that leather tote?

00:00:47.760 Or that cashmere sweater?

00:00:48.980 Or those knee-high boots?

00:00:50.440 That dress?

00:00:51.220 That jacket?

00:00:51.880 Those shoes?

00:00:52.900 Is anyone paying full price for anything?

00:00:55.840 Stop wondering.

00:00:56.760 Start winning.

00:00:58.080 Winners.

00:00:58.460 Find fabulous for less.

00:01:00.840 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:02.660 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:01:06.180 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:01:13.560 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Friday.

00:01:16.540 Don't you just feel better on Fridays?

00:01:19.020 Aren't you just in a better mood on Fridays?

00:01:21.060 It's just like, like, I don't know.

00:01:23.760 I know a lot of people work the weekends,

00:01:25.440 but still, there's just something in the air on the Friday.

00:01:27.780 It's like, yeah, okay, good things are coming my way.

00:01:30.880 It's a little bit more freedom.

00:01:32.060 Um, uh, more joyful people everywhere.

00:01:35.540 So that's how I'm feeling.

00:01:37.060 Uh, we're going to start today with a trigger warning for all the snowflakes out there.

00:01:40.080 Or as Debbie, Canadian Debbie called herself the other day when she was, she was saying

00:01:44.460 she was, I don't know, too afraid to run some clip or whatever.

00:01:47.320 She goes, I'm just a snowball.

00:01:48.820 Oh, I'm like, that is not a thing, Debbie.

00:01:54.940 Of course, then she reminded me she lives in Canada where it's like, everything's, 0.98

00:01:58.360 everything's bigger when it comes to snow.

00:02:01.100 Uh, you'll understand why I'm giving you this trigger warning, uh, in our second hour

00:02:04.640 when we bring on rapper Tom McDonald.

00:02:07.840 Man, I've been immersed in his music lately and it's fascinating stuff and he's a fascinating

00:02:11.880 guy.

00:02:12.440 So looking forward to that.

00:02:13.800 But first, uh, someone backed by special request, my own Sheryl Atkinson is going to

00:02:18.740 join us in one second.

00:02:19.720 Um, what on earth is happening at the Department of Homeland Security?

00:02:23.200 We talked about this a little yesterday.

00:02:25.380 Secretary Mayorkas appeared on Capitol Hill.

00:02:27.680 Couldn't answer a pretty simple question about suspected terrorists who have infiltrated

00:02:31.600 our border.

00:02:32.340 Seems like something that he should know about, but perhaps he's too focused on his new disinformation

00:02:37.320 board that for some reason DHS feels the need to be in charge of.

00:02:42.040 The Department of Homeland Security, yes, they will be running our disinformation board that

00:02:47.880 critics are likening to George Orwell's Ministry of Truth in 1984.

00:02:51.600 Here to talk about it all, investigative reporter Sheryl Atkinson.

00:02:56.300 She is the host of Full Measure on Sinclair Television.

00:03:04.100 Sheryl, welcome back to the program.

00:03:05.780 Good to have you.

00:03:06.560 Great to be here.

00:03:07.260 Thank you.

00:03:07.760 I hope you don't mind if you hear a little, uh, bit of dog noises during the interview

00:03:12.680 because they either lock her out and she's going to scratch and bark or she's in here 0.99

00:03:17.020 and she might do a little of that.

00:03:18.940 No worries at all.

00:03:20.200 You know, I was thinking at one point I'm going to let my little Strudwick make a guest 0.98

00:03:23.500 star appearance on this show and people are going to finally get to see the menace who's

00:03:26.820 been ruling my life for a year.

00:03:28.460 Uh, so yes, I'm in favor of dogs, especially the well-behaved ones.

00:03:32.960 Sheryl, um, what could possibly go wrong with DHS and its, its ministry of the disinformation

00:03:39.180 department that's going to be run by some woman who thought the Hunter Biden laptop was 1.00

00:03:44.680 disinformation?

00:03:46.200 I mean, I just don't understand why this doesn't occur to them.

00:03:50.440 She's holding up the George Orwell book, 1984.

00:03:52.440 This is so classic.

00:03:54.800 It's literally mapped out in 1984, which I've been reading and rereading in the last couple

00:04:00.560 of years, partly for my books.

00:04:02.080 And I was starting to watch one of the movies, 1984 last night.

00:04:06.840 I just can't fathom that it doesn't occur to them, the similarities and the parallels that

00:04:13.000 they're following and either doesn't occur to them or doesn't bother them.

00:04:16.940 And smarter people will have to ultimately decide this.

00:04:19.800 And you probably know more than I do, but common sense tells me this is unconstitutional.

00:04:26.180 It's certainly un-American for a government entity to step in and determine or decide who

00:04:31.300 can say and think what things and what qualifies as disinformation, not to mention the obvious,

00:04:37.820 which you already pointed out, the people so far that are in charge or coming up with

00:04:42.520 this idea are some of the biggest purveyors of disinformation, proven disinformation.

00:04:46.400 That's not even in dispute in the past couple of years.

00:04:49.800 What the heck is going on?

00:04:51.940 So my team put together this clip of the woman who's going to be running this thing, 0.99

00:04:56.280 Nina Jankowicz, which they sometimes they say, don't watch it until the show. 0.98

00:04:59.980 Just watch it with the audience.

00:05:01.800 Listen to it for the first time with the audience.

00:05:03.560 And that's going to happen now.

00:05:04.800 This is her singing a song about disinformation.

00:05:09.420 And it's from February 2021.

00:05:11.920 It's how you hide a little hide a lie.

00:05:14.240 It's how you hide a little hide a lie.

00:05:15.800 It's how you hide a little hide a lie.

00:05:17.140 When Rudy Giuliani shared that intel from Ukraine.

00:05:20.220 Or when TikTok influencers say COVID can cause pain.

00:05:23.540 They're laundering disinfo when we really should take note.

00:05:26.600 And not support their lies with our wallet, voice or vote.

00:05:29.600 Oh, information laundering is really quite ferocious.

00:05:32.740 It's when a huckster takes some lies and makes them sound precocious by saying them in Congress.

00:05:37.360 Or a mainstream outlet service.

00:05:39.380 Information's origin seems likely less atrocious.

00:05:41.740 Oh, my God.

00:05:46.680 Cheryl, did that just happen? 1.00

00:05:49.480 Nutty.

00:05:50.200 It's just nutty.

00:05:51.980 With her British accent. 0.55

00:05:53.460 She's very she's a good little singer. 1.00

00:05:55.160 I'll give her that.

00:05:56.320 And I like her.

00:05:57.160 I like her pizzazz, her flair.

00:05:59.300 I really don't want her censoring me because she doesn't seem to have two nickels to rub together in between her ears from the look of it. 0.98

00:06:06.920 I don't think she should be in charge of what I say on the Internet.

00:06:09.840 But I'm thinking, Megan, that one of the other big takeaways from this, naming her, naming this agency or whatever it's going to be.

00:06:18.800 It's proof, in my view, what we already knew was that Twitter was acting in that capacity as our other big tech outlets.

00:06:27.040 If Twitter were still acting in that capacity, I don't think we would have seen this rushed, hurried announcement of something no one's had a chance to look at or really consider.

00:06:35.180 But this is the backup plan with the notion that Twitter is now not going to be able to act is one of the biggest censors and information shapers that we've had since 2016.

00:06:45.560 The timing is very coincidental, isn't it?

00:06:48.940 I mean, no sooner does Elon announce he's got a deal than suddenly we get this announcement.

00:06:55.220 And in the midst of Elon's attempt to buy it, we had Barack Obama last week trying to lecture us all on how disinformation is such a huge problem.

00:07:03.880 Purveyor of lie of the year, mind you.

00:07:05.460 Not just little lie, not just occasional lie.

00:07:08.040 Lie of the year.

00:07:08.720 You've got to tell a big whopper in order to get that designation.

00:07:12.020 That's the man now who is spending his post-presidency lecturing us about disinformation.

00:07:16.440 And then the other shoe drops with this announcement post Elon's official announcement on Monday.

00:07:22.240 Is it worth backing up just a little bit because I dissected this for one of my books?

00:07:27.340 The beginning of the notion that someone needed to step in and curate our information is not that old.

00:07:33.140 In 2015, there was little to no talk about such things.

00:07:36.580 And in September of 2016 is when this idea was first introduced on the national stage in its current form with fake news in its modern form used by a nonprofit called First Draft, who I learned was actually funded by Alphabet.

00:07:52.340 The parent company of Google started up at the beginning of the election cycle, generating and creating the notion of fake news.

00:07:58.640 And then within a couple of weeks, then President Obama gave a speech at Carnegie Mellon that said, for the first time I heard anybody say something like this, that somebody needed to step in and start curating our information in this wild, wild west media environment.

00:08:14.900 And I remember at the time, Megan, going, what?

00:08:18.380 Like no one's asking for that.

00:08:19.940 And slowly, well, actually rather rapidly, but slowly over time, it's all almost as if we've come to accept that instead of we're arguing the terms, instead of arguing that that is even done at all.

00:08:32.420 The third parties influenced by government and corporations are determining what we can see and hear and think.

00:08:37.240 This is why it's such good news that Elon Musk will be in charge of at least one of these major social media companies.

00:08:45.140 At least there's going to be one where there appears to be somebody who's on the side of free speech running it.

00:08:52.720 And prior to this week, we didn't have that.

00:08:56.120 It's true.

00:08:56.720 And I was wondering if you had any recent experiences, because I sure do, with social media.

00:09:02.740 Have they shaped or censored or banned some of the stuff that you've been reporting on and doing interviews about?

00:09:10.700 Well, we had to be very careful with our we interviewed RFK Jr. a couple of weeks ago, and we knew very well he's been stricken from the Internet.

00:09:19.060 I mean, he's been banned from Twitter and Instagram, Facebook, YouTube.

00:09:23.280 So he's been basically erased.

00:09:26.560 So our goal was to get him on the air in a way that could live.

00:09:30.440 Right. We didn't. It was pointless for us to do an interview with him that would then just get banned.

00:09:35.120 You know what I mean? Like that's pointless.

00:09:37.080 So we understood we had to be careful with it and we had to sort of cross certain T's.

00:09:41.580 But man, it's like it would have been nice to just have a conversation with him without having to worry about the censors.

00:09:48.180 You know, I mean, we are kind of getting a little, I don't know, un-American.

00:09:52.120 It's starting to feel a little un-American.

00:09:53.360 Well, this is the goal. And I've talked about this before.

00:09:57.440 The ideal for the propagandists and the censors is we just start censoring ourselves so they don't really even have to step in.

00:10:05.360 And I can't tell you how many journalists and news organizations, executives have told me over the past couple of years,

00:10:11.240 they don't publish what they want to publish, even though they believe it's true or a valid viewpoint or a valid scientific study because they are self-censoring in order to survive on what they see as these powerful platforms that are crucial to them being a thing.

00:10:27.140 They're afraid that if they cross a certain line and get canceled, as one of them told me, what sort of pyrrhic victory is it to be able to report the truth, but then to be canceled entirely?

00:10:39.240 So here all of us are trying to dance around the truth or certain viewpoints or scientific studies in order to please the censors who are improperly censoring to begin with.

00:10:50.120 And that's a really dangerous place I think we find ourselves in.

00:10:53.580 Hmm. My team has reminded me RFK Jr. is on Twitter. It's the one platform he's been allowed to remain on.

00:11:00.260 You know, one of the things that we did to sort of keep the interview up was to put a bunch of links to the CDC, the WHO, all that, you know, at the end of our interview on YouTube.

00:11:12.920 Honestly, Cheryl, I don't care. It's like that doesn't bother me.

00:11:16.040 A lot of our audience is like, oh, what's that doing there?

00:11:19.440 You know, those organizations have lied to us from the beginning. Agreed. I know that.

00:11:22.940 But to me, it seems like a small price to pay to get your interview posted and and to have it remain up on YouTube.

00:11:30.960 I don't own YouTube. I don't have a right to be on YouTube.

00:11:34.200 YouTube has every right to shut me down and say, I don't want you on here.

00:11:37.140 It's not pleasant. I don't want it. I would consider it viewpoint discrimination.

00:11:40.320 But they have every right to do that. So if they're basically going to say you can put on this guy we think is part of the disinformation dozen and it's it saves my interview to throw a couple links at the end.

00:11:53.380 Or, you know, sometimes they throw up the little for information on covid.

00:11:57.120 You know, you see that underneath the video. Go to whatever.

00:12:01.300 I don't care. It's different.

00:12:03.200 That's different to me than what you're talking about, though, where you actually don't ask the tough questions or you steer clear of the third rail subjects because you're afraid for good reason that they're going to shut you down.

00:12:15.000 Well, I agree. But think about it. You and I both know and I do the same thing when we're posting CDC information, we are posting disinformation in some cases that we know is not true or has proven to be inaccurate or is put out by people who have been sorely misleading, if not entirely wrong.

00:12:32.240 And I've done some expos. I don't know if you interview Congressman Massey when he caught CDC and top executives and scientists who he recorded on the phone, admitting that they were putting out false information about covid vaccine being effective in people that had already had covid.

00:12:48.640 And they admitted this to him and then continued on. So you can only say this is an intentional intent to mislead.

00:12:54.520 Went on to put out in public the same disinformation over and over again after they acknowledged it was untrue.

00:12:59.980 And yet here we are then having to post links to these sources that we know are disproven for more disinformation, protect our ability to say things that we believe are true.

00:13:09.880 Right. So we're trying to correct the disinformation, but we have to make sure we we include a link to the disinformation organization in order to get our correction of the disinformation aired.

00:13:20.800 It's true. It's sad. Now, what about that, Cheryl?

00:13:24.220 Because that's one of the things with the stats coming out this week saying over 50 percent of the population has had covid and over 75 percent of children have had covid.

00:13:37.700 They did testing, I guess, through like Quest Labs, that kind of thing.

00:13:41.500 Like they were looking at people's blood like you weren't going in necessarily to have your blood tested for covid.

00:13:46.340 But they were making sure like what percentage of those get in the country who gave their blood for whatever reason have it.

00:13:54.260 Anyway, the point is, most kids have had it and a majority of adults have had it.

00:13:59.060 And I heard on The New York Times podcast The Daily this week, they're like, but that's not it doesn't mean we have herd immunity or we're never getting herd immunity because different variants, yada, yada.

00:14:08.680 But I do wonder, what do we think is the next move from these same officials who have been pushing the vaccines on us, despite the fact that they knew in particular and people who already had covid?

00:14:21.400 This was not necessary. What's their next move now?

00:14:24.640 You know, now that covid is waning, do they do they double down?

00:14:28.900 Do they keep firing people? Do they keep kicking kids out of school who don't get it?

00:14:33.280 The L.A., you know, public school system.

00:14:35.580 Do they say you can't come back next year with it?

00:14:37.480 Like, I really wonder whether politically they're going to have the backing to do that and whether the news media is still willing to go along with it.

00:14:49.380 That's a great question.

00:14:50.400 I kind of separated into two because I don't know and can't even understand how some places with now quite a bit of data and evidence in showing that schools that shut down fared no better and perhaps fared worse than schools that never did.

00:15:04.480 I reported on places that never shut down, period, after the initial spring of 2020.

00:15:12.020 I was at 2020. Yeah. Yeah.

00:15:13.840 And had no big issues, in fact, had fewer than those who stayed shut down and pushed vaccines and masking and so on.

00:15:20.880 So with all the evidence, it's hard to understand on what basis people are still doing that.

00:15:24.840 But separately, I think the vaccine track goes to where their internal documents in the past have always shown they want to go, which is a perpetual system of boosters and annual shots and perhaps mixing it with the annual flu shot so that this is something that generates billions and billions of dollars over the long term.

00:15:44.160 But it takes constant convincing and propaganda in some cases, if you will, to try to convince people they need something that is questionable.

00:15:52.460 And let me go back to flu shot, because most people don't know this.

00:15:56.140 And I didn't before I covered all these stories.

00:15:57.840 I thought, you know, I'm fully vaccinated. My kids fully vaccinated.

00:16:00.540 I didn't know any of this stuff till I started digging in.

00:16:03.340 But it turns out flu shots, as I learned 15 years ago, are ineffective in the elderly and potentially harmful.

00:16:10.640 And the government knew that from multiple studies, but didn't believe the science, their own science, and set out to do a definitive study that adjusted for all these confounding factors at the end of which they thought it would show flu shots prevent deaths in elderly.

00:16:24.820 Instead, there was an inverse relationship.

00:16:27.780 Deaths were higher since many millions more elderly were getting flu shots.

00:16:31.740 And the government scientists who did the study wanted to come out and talk about it.

00:16:35.520 They thought it was very important.

00:16:37.180 They acknowledged they were biased pro flu shots because these are all vaccine supporters.

00:16:41.640 They were stunned at the findings and were not allowed to talk about it when I tried to interview them for CBS.

00:16:47.660 One of the scientists who was independent at Harvard did do an interview with me, said all of these things.

00:16:52.400 I've reported on the study, but I remember saying to a top government official at the time, what are you going to do now?

00:16:58.840 Are you going to tell elderly people not to get the shots?

00:17:01.720 Because it carries some slight risk.

00:17:03.180 And at the time, there have been stories about old people standing in line and fainting, you know, trying to get their flu shots and getting sick.

00:17:09.920 And this official said to me, we can't take flu shots away from old people now.

00:17:14.900 We've spent so much time and money and years telling them they need them.

00:17:18.580 They'll be suspicious if we tell them they don't need them now.

00:17:21.080 So what we need to do instead is start vaccinating children with flu shots who don't really need the flu shots because they're not hurt by flu typically, but they carry it to the elderly.

00:17:30.860 And then he said, Megan, the hard part is going to be convincing parents to get a shot to their children that their children don't need.

00:17:38.160 Lo and behold, within the next year, it became a suggested and then, you know, more than suggested vaccine for the childhood vaccine schedule on the basis of what I've told you.

00:17:47.920 But instead, they told the public, your kid needs this shot.

00:17:51.680 Kids are dying of flu.

00:17:53.420 You know, the whole narrative changed.

00:17:55.360 I see that playing out with the COVID vaccines as well.

00:17:58.960 We've been told that by our own doctor.

00:18:01.240 Our own pediatrician says that's the thing.

00:18:03.180 That's the shot they should get.

00:18:04.820 And that if they get flu, they should be taking the Tamiflu right away because flu really can kill children in a way.

00:18:12.080 Like he worries more about that than he worries about COVID.

00:18:14.580 Right. This is actually the first I'm hearing that that that may be part of a propaganda war.

00:18:22.080 Well, and I can send you the studies later.

00:18:24.060 There's not even a question about the effectiveness in the elderly.

00:18:27.260 And then what I told you was told to me behind the scenes then came and came to pass.

00:18:31.940 But I think that, you know, it's the moneymaker for them.

00:18:35.020 And I'm not saying that's the only motivation, although that's the fiduciary duty that vaccine companies do for their shareholders.

00:18:40.380 They have to make money and do what's best for the money interests.

00:18:43.500 But the moneymaker for them, as they've acknowledged in internal documents in the past, is if they can get a recommended shot that's on the flu schedule or on the vaccine schedule for children or, for heaven's sake, on the annual schedule, that is just money they calculate out into the future so far that that's just the gold standard for them.

00:19:06.060 Well, you know, what's frustrating to me is you've got Rochelle Walensky still in charge at the CDC.

00:19:12.400 And she was asked about, OK, what about this study?

00:19:16.640 Right. The CDC is the one who reported this information that 75 percent of children and teens have been infected, at least as of February of this year.

00:19:23.900 The numbers are probably up now, right, since February.

00:19:27.140 More than half of the U.S. population has antibodies for COVID as of the end of February.

00:19:33.100 And the question was, so, you know, should people feel good, like that they're protected to some extent against future illness?

00:19:41.820 Those people who have had it, we don't know whether that protection has waned.

00:19:46.180 We don't know as much about that level of protection as we do about the protection we get from both vaccines and boosters, adding that the agency still encourages those with detectable antibodies from prior infection to get vaccinated.

00:19:59.620 So it's like we do know that the vaccines wane quickly that we know from the vaccine companies and the studies that have been done.

00:20:07.840 It wanes quickly. That's why they keep having to recommend all these boosters to us.

00:20:11.800 That's why Anthony Foucher has been shot four times in the arm, that is.

00:20:15.540 And and so for her to then say, oh, well, we don't know how long natural immunity lasts.

00:20:20.940 It's like, number one, that's because you refuse to study it.

00:20:25.300 You refuse. Only the Israelis have studied it. 1.00

00:20:28.380 Other countries have studied it, but not us.

00:20:30.460 We've been woefully deficient when it comes to actually looking into these things that might be counter to the narrative or the decision they've made to just take one track, which is push vaccines.

00:20:41.460 So that's number one. But number two, if you don't know, how do you know that it doesn't last longer?

00:20:46.520 I mean, I know very well you can get covid if you've already had covid and you get get covid if you've already been vaccinated.

00:20:51.620 But if she doesn't know, how can she just continue resorting to get the vaccine, which we know wanes?

00:20:59.280 Well, more information from her that's proving not to be true.

00:21:02.300 That's completely inaccurate if she said that, because there is more data on natural immunity by definition than there is on vaccine immunity, because the vaccines came out far later.

00:21:13.080 There is longer data going out to study the people who first had covid and are still immune than there is for data who on people who had vaccines a year later plus and may or may not be immune.

00:21:25.340 So what you said is true. The vaccine immunity we know wears off quickly, thus the boosters.

00:21:30.760 And that was always expected on the front end, by the way, which I reported back in spring of 2020, based on experts who helped develop the vaccines, the RNA vaccines.

00:21:38.920 That's what they do. They wear off fast. They don't work particularly well.

00:21:42.300 That's why we've never had a successful RNA vaccine before.

00:21:45.940 But then the notion that natural immunity, which is well established, is some kind of wild card.

00:21:50.640 I've gathered on my website, Sherlockson.com, if you go under health, I believe I have a whole link to dozens and dozens and dozens of peer reviewed published studies that establish longstanding natural immunity that goes far past vaccine immunity.

00:22:06.080 There may be a study or two that is inconclusive or shows something slightly different.

00:22:11.900 But the vast bulk of the studies done by a variety of experts around the world say the same thing.

00:22:17.560 This is not in dispute. So to hear if the head of CDC is still saying that, either she's misinformed or continuing to intentionally give out bad information.

00:22:27.460 So she's she's like an automaton. I mean, she just can't stop herself. Vaccines, vaccines, vaccines. 0.90

00:22:33.780 She and Fauci are just one trick ponies now. It's like, I don't need to listen to them ever again.

00:22:38.220 I know what they're going to tell me. Get boosted, get. Well, screw you.

00:22:41.480 I got boosted and then I got covid refund refund. 0.99

00:22:44.560 You know, I'm just like and I'm everyone's had that experience at this point.

00:22:48.000 So here's my question to you. Where are we now as.

00:22:51.480 Because, you know, at the height of the Delta breakout and then Omicron was not that severe, but it was everywhere.

00:23:00.480 They were really pushing the mandates, the vaccine mandates, people getting fired.

00:23:05.280 You know, the very nurses that we call heroes are getting fired, even though they had covid for saying, I don't want the vaccine.

00:23:10.600 They never pulled them. The vaccine mandates, as far as I know, they haven't gone away.

00:23:15.280 I mean, I've been watching for that.

00:23:16.660 But the only ones that went away were the ones struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court is unconstitutional.

00:23:23.240 But we still see some vaccine injuries.

00:23:26.240 We've had people on our show discussing some pretty severe injuries they've gotten from the vaccines verified by the CDC.

00:23:33.640 It's not made up. It's not psychological.

00:23:37.220 And so I wonder, because I know you've done a fair amount of reporting on vaccine injuries and like the VAERS system and all that.

00:23:43.060 Where do things stand with that? And are people able in any way, any meaningful way now to to report any vaccine injuries?

00:23:52.560 Well, people should know that you can do it.

00:23:56.260 Your doctor may not do it, particularly if they're supposed to.

00:23:59.260 They're required to by law to report an adverse event after vaccination.

00:24:03.640 It's not up to them to determine whether the vaccine caused it or not.

00:24:07.520 This surveillance system is to pick up is supposed to pick up all potential adverse events so that something that was previously unrecognized might be recognized.

00:24:15.800 So it defeats the purpose to have a doctor say on the front end that wasn't caused by vaccine.

00:24:21.420 I'm not going to report it. But too often that happens.

00:24:24.720 Nurses have been fired from their jobs for reporting these events that they see in emergency rooms that they could or could not be related, but that are required to be reported.

00:24:34.460 And I interviewed one of them on one of my podcasts.

00:24:36.700 So there are a lot that are slipping past that are not being captured.

00:24:41.540 So you can report them yourselves and you should just so that this is something that can be lifted into the system, even if it's not being officially done.

00:24:49.800 Your health professional can do it. You can do it.

00:24:51.740 It's not that hard. You go to VAERS.gov and fill out a report, fill out the information you know.

00:24:58.300 If you don't know the lot number and the details, you don't have to fill that part out.

00:25:01.440 Just to clarify that. So it's not that hard because somebody was recently saying it's very hard to post on there.

00:25:07.520 Is that just a friend? But but is it not that hard?

00:25:11.340 Let me go back and think of, you know, before I knew how to do it, it probably was more confusing to me than it is now, obviously.

00:25:18.440 But I think if you go to VAERS, VAERS.gov or VAERS.org, you will find report an adverse event.

00:25:25.360 And if you click on that, there's a computerized way and it may be confusing because they ask for stuff you may not know, like the lot number, but you can leave it blank.

00:25:34.460 So maybe to me, that's the most confusing thing if they're asking for details you don't have.

00:25:38.920 But fill out what you have, at least put that information out there.

00:25:42.580 And other, you know, the government doesn't go through that.

00:25:45.320 They go through, in my views, some of them for the purpose of trying to pretend those aren't related.

00:25:50.140 But there are good people that have access to that database and journalists and some good FDA scientists, for example, that look at that with in mind trying to identify previously unidentified adverse events.

00:26:01.680 One more important thing.

00:26:03.040 A lot of people I hear say, well, I got the vaccine a couple of weeks ago.

00:26:06.980 I'm fine.

00:26:07.920 So I didn't have any adverse events.

00:26:09.380 They don't understand that scientists have long established some vaccine adverse events can manifest weeks, months or years later.

00:26:16.420 So it's important to report anything that happens and let somebody decide in the future based on patterns, whether that could be related.

00:26:23.780 This is one way we learned Viagra caused blindness.

00:26:26.940 And I broke that story internationally by looking at the database of medicine.

00:26:31.320 It was so clear.

00:26:32.620 The government didn't want to see it and they didn't have people looking at that, in my view, carefully enough.

00:26:36.740 But it was so obvious that it was causing blindness.

00:26:41.020 That's unbelievable.

00:26:41.840 That's I mean, it's great news, I guess, for unattractive spouses because it's like he wants he can perform.

00:26:48.680 It doesn't matter any longer.

00:26:50.840 Sorry.

00:26:51.460 Bad joke.

00:26:52.400 The website is VAERS, V-A-E-R-S dot H-H-S dot gov.

00:26:58.960 VAERS dot H-H-S dot gov. 0.92

00:27:01.380 All right.

00:27:01.920 Let me on the subject of our government and untrustworthiness talk about what's happening at the southern border for a second, because I know you covered this and we've been wanting to get on the air.

00:27:12.580 We haven't yet.

00:27:13.540 In this past week, Texas National Guard member Bishop Evans, a 22 year old specialist, was killed trying to save migrants crossing the Rio Grande.

00:27:23.220 And it's got a very strong current and at risk to himself.

00:27:26.420 He jumped in to try to save them and was killed himself.

00:27:30.580 It's so sad.

00:27:31.700 And it's just yet another.

00:27:33.140 I mean, we literally just had the head of the Border Patrol on last week talking about how this is a very dangerous area.

00:27:38.600 People are dying.

00:27:39.360 Americans are dying. 0.97

00:27:40.700 Migrants are dying. 1.00

00:27:41.480 And this is not just a, oh, people want to come to America.

00:27:45.600 Don't be so, you know, harsh.

00:27:48.160 No, this is not the way.

00:27:50.120 And there are really good reasons for having a tough border, including the safety of those who need to protect it and those who want to cross it.

00:27:58.220 And this is a case that helps prove it.

00:28:01.340 Jen Psaki was asked about this.

00:28:04.540 And here is how she responded this week.

00:28:07.000 Soundbite 20.

00:28:08.840 Does the White House feel at all responsible?

00:28:10.660 And what more can you offer to people who, you know, are on the border, in border communities, who are experiencing loss and trials like this?

00:28:20.800 Well, of course, we are mourning the loss of his life.

00:28:24.600 And we are grateful for the work of every National Guardsman.

00:28:27.840 I would note that the National Guard worked for the states.

00:28:30.920 And so he is an employee of the Texas National Guard.

00:28:34.420 And his efforts and his operation were directed by there, not by the federal government in this effort, in this apparatus.

00:28:42.360 We've long stated that our immigration system is broken.

00:28:45.420 There needs to be more done to invest in smarter security, to have a more effective asylum processing system.

00:28:50.840 And we would welcome any efforts for any elected officials to work with us on that.

00:28:55.340 Got it, Cheryl.

00:28:57.760 He worked for Texas.

00:28:59.780 He wasn't a federal employee.

00:29:01.100 Who cares?

00:29:02.020 Why did Governor Abbott have to send him?

00:29:04.460 Why?

00:29:04.940 Well, that's the question.

00:29:06.460 I agree.

00:29:06.900 I thought that was a strange answer that seemed to imply, well, that operation wasn't our thing.

00:29:12.100 But of course, it was their thing because it was done solely because the federal government isn't following the law and doing what it's supposed to do and protecting our national borders.

00:29:21.380 And this is a little bit like the disinformation or the Ministry of Information that we're now starting up.

00:29:27.480 It makes no sense if you're looking at even are there well-meaning people that simply think this is the best policy?

00:29:34.840 They certainly know the numbers of people that have come through who are, as Donald Trump accurately said, whether people like it or not, thousands upon thousands of convicted rapists, killers, sexual assaulters, all kinds of criminals.

00:29:48.580 That stuff is tracked with specificity to the extent that it's known when these people come across.

00:29:54.640 And there's a huge record of that.

00:29:56.900 Secondly, as you said, we are basically exploiting the poor people who come here that are not drug traffickers and bad people by letting them think they can come in.

00:30:06.260 They're putting their lives at risk, paying a ton of money.

00:30:09.040 And we're making the drug cartels richer beyond their wildest dreams by making sure that money goes into the pocket because these cartels charge every person that comes across the border a fee, thousands upon thousands of dollars.

00:30:21.820 And in the end, we're finishing the end of the trafficking operation for them, the cartels, for free by transporting the illegal border crosses to their final destination at no charge to the cartels or to them, but to U.S. taxpayers.

00:30:37.120 It just makes no sense.

00:30:38.600 On the subject of who's coming across the border, there was news this morning and there was a there was a feisty exchange on Capitol Hill about it.

00:30:49.200 We're going to play it after I squeeze in a quick break and we'll come right back to Cheryl Ackeson, the one and only Cheryl Ackeson. 1.00

00:30:56.780 And she's amazing. She's fearless. She's intrepid. And there's a reason that she's done so well on her own since leaving CBS.

00:31:03.660 Now she's with Sinclair, but she's created her own lane and the people are flocking to her for very good reason.

00:31:15.500 So, Cheryl, there was news this week that among the record numbers of people who are now trying to cross the southern border, some with success, some not so much.

00:31:25.100 We have caught at least 42 people encountered is the word they're using, 42 people encountered who were on the terrorist, the terror no fly list, OK, for being suspected terrorists.

00:31:40.580 So Jim Jordan had Secretary Mayorkas of DHS in front of him yesterday on Capitol Hill and tried to find out what happened to those 42 people.

00:31:49.540 Were they released into the country? Were they sent back home? Were they turned back on the spot?

00:31:54.680 Not what happened to them. You would think that the head of the Department of Homeland Security.

00:32:00.880 This is the reason this group was born. Right. This is after 9-11. That's when we created this.

00:32:06.360 Would have an answer to what happened to those people on the no fly list and that every Democrat and Republican on that committee would have an interest in hearing Mayorkas answer fully to that question.

00:32:18.220 But you would be wrong. But you would be wrong. Here's what happened.

00:32:20.940 42 illegal immigrants were encountered at our border on the terrorist and no fly list.

00:32:27.500 Are any of them still in our country?

00:32:28.860 The gentleman's time has expired.

00:32:30.060 This is an important question for this committee. Are any of them still in our country?

00:32:32.860 Congressman, I will deliver to you a response with respect.

00:32:36.420 No, no, no. That's a simple question. Are terrorists on people on the terrorist watch list, no fly list?

00:32:40.620 Are they still in the United States that you've encountered on the border?

00:32:43.740 Congressman, some of them may be still in detention.

00:32:46.700 So I will provide you.

00:32:47.380 Have any of them been released?

00:32:49.020 The gentleman's time has expired.

00:32:51.120 This is critical for the-

00:32:52.280 The chair recognizes-

00:32:52.900 You got 42-

00:32:53.820 Have they been released?

00:32:55.020 Can you-

00:32:55.280 Will the gentleman answer that question?

00:32:56.600 Congressman, I will provide you with the-

00:32:58.100 Thank you, Madam Chair.

00:32:58.620 They may have been released.

00:32:59.860 Thank you, Madam Chair.

00:33:00.900 Ranking member, I believe it is my time.

00:33:03.440 Madam Chair, if I could just one second. 0.88

00:33:04.800 No, the gentleman's time has expired.

00:33:07.320 We want to know if terrorists, people on the terrorist watch list, have any of them been

00:33:10.980 released and he won't answer that question?

00:33:12.440 Mr. Secretary, it is, Mr. Jordan, it is my time.

00:33:14.900 But this is about people.

00:33:16.040 It is my time.

00:33:16.820 The gentleman's time has expired.

00:33:18.640 Pretty important question.

00:33:20.500 Well, the Democrats on that committee didn't think so.

00:33:23.240 They moved right on.

00:33:24.480 No one was interested in getting to the bottom of it.

00:33:26.780 A Republican leader ceded some of his time back to Jim Jordan so he could ask a follow-up.

00:33:31.280 And he did know better.

00:33:32.900 Mayorkas didn't know.

00:33:33.700 He does not know the answer sitting there in front of that panel.

00:33:37.260 You'd think, especially when you're going there for an accountability exchange, that's

00:33:41.460 the time to bone up on the facts that might matter or have your info in front of you.

00:33:46.840 You know, why didn't he know?

00:33:48.020 I, too, am disturbed by the fact that it was a shoulder shrug from this guy.

00:33:52.100 Well, if you don't want to give the information, you don't get briefed on it before the hearing,

00:33:55.720 right?

00:33:56.560 And number two, I saw this happen one time.

00:33:59.220 And as an aside, I hate this system that both Democrats and Republicans have agreed

00:34:04.620 to, where they each get a couple of minutes for a question and they go back and forth,

00:34:09.220 Democrat, Republican, and they don't have enough time to dig into anything.

00:34:12.980 So anytime you would stand to potentially learn something, you can't possibly because it's

00:34:17.620 the other guy's turn.

00:34:18.720 This was not always how the hearings were conducted.

00:34:21.060 But it's been that way for a while.

00:34:22.380 I saw one hearing a long time ago where someone couldn't answer something and whoever was

00:34:27.860 doing the questioning said, will you call them now and find the answer?

00:34:32.020 And they sat there while the person testifying.

00:34:34.680 I wish someone would have said that to him.

00:34:36.380 We will pause.

00:34:37.780 Get someone on the phone that has that information and we'll wait.

00:34:41.600 You know, that would be amazing.

00:34:43.540 It's not going to happen.

00:34:45.000 Well, that's part of the frustration when we saw the Rand Paul exchanges with Dr.

00:34:48.140 Fauci, right?

00:34:48.740 He just as ran to be scoring points like, did you or didn't you call those people and

00:34:54.360 tell them to reverse their opinions on whether this started in a lab?

00:34:57.560 And he would just say, this is more disinformation from you.

00:35:02.040 This is what you do, Senator.

00:35:04.260 And then it'd be like time.

00:35:05.680 Look, so these are good questions, but there's never there's never an answer.

00:35:09.800 And then when they don't follow up, you know, we don't it's like it just goes away because

00:35:13.840 unless they they're very willing to blow off congressional subpoenas.

00:35:17.660 And when you're not the party in power, you have limited abilities and so on to actually

00:35:20.720 get information.

00:35:21.940 All right.

00:35:22.180 So speaking of power in Washington, this weekend is the Washington.

00:35:28.180 It's the White House Correspondents Dinner.

00:35:30.820 And this is when all the people who think themselves important connected to covering the White House

00:35:36.380 get together with it will be the president, the Jen Psaki's of the world and the people around

00:35:42.960 the president. And typically they involve invite just to make it extra gross Hollywood celebrities

00:35:49.180 so that they have a bit of glam added to it.

00:35:52.560 They call it nerd prom.

00:35:54.120 And it's happening this weekend.

00:35:56.700 Politico in advance of this does an in-depth report on the White House press corps today.

00:36:02.380 And what is it is lamenting, Cheryl, is that White House reporters in the Biden administration

00:36:09.720 are bored.

00:36:12.120 There are no good stories to cover.

00:36:14.960 It's just kind of bland.

00:36:17.200 And there's nothing to really sink your teeth into it.

00:36:20.380 I was pulling my hair out.

00:36:22.180 Right.

00:36:22.500 Are you kidding me with the economy in the state that it's in the southern border in the states

00:36:27.780 that the state that it's in, crime in the state that it's in, you know, crazy talk about

00:36:33.060 forgiving student debt and so on?

00:36:34.480 Like there's it's boring.

00:36:36.440 He's boring.

00:36:37.460 But this White House isn't boring at all to any reporter who's paying attention.

00:36:42.220 I think that's true.

00:36:42.960 And I think that sort of describes what's wrong with these dinners.

00:36:46.860 I've just been shocked over the years from when I was a young journalist attending my first

00:36:52.320 ones that they are so overtly partisan, some more than others.

00:36:57.120 But certainly the past 10 to 15 years, no doubt about it, that the whole viewpoint of

00:37:03.060 almost everybody who attends, as well as those who put on the dinners and who are chosen to

00:37:08.300 speak, it's just shocking.

00:37:10.320 And I'm going beyond the White House correspondence dinners.

00:37:12.440 There's several of them that happen that you know about in D.C. every year.

00:37:16.580 And I went to one a couple of years ago.

00:37:17.960 I wrote up some of these dinners for my last book.

00:37:20.080 It was just so stunning.

00:37:21.860 The speakers who are chosen, who overtly and this, you know, they don't try to make a

00:37:26.980 pretense of, we'll give various sides or we'll stay away from politics.

00:37:30.500 They overtly advocate for or against a candidate.

00:37:33.640 It's always the Republican they're against.

00:37:35.620 It's always the Democrat they're for.

00:37:37.840 They say amazingly biased things, speaking to a room of journalists, that even the journalists

00:37:44.340 who tend to lean left in Washington, D.C.

00:37:47.980 I've been at some of these dinners and then gone to the ladies room after a speaker and

00:37:51.900 seen other journalists just shaking their heads at the stuff that was said by the person

00:37:56.620 that was hired to come and speak or the other speakers, and that we're all just sort of sitting

00:38:01.460 there applauding and clapping.

00:38:03.920 These are I think these are problematic.

00:38:05.660 Yeah, I think so, too.

00:38:07.920 And they they really just reveal what we already knew, which is that there's way too much chumminess

00:38:14.460 when a Democrat is in power between the media and the administration.

00:38:20.100 And Trump was right not to go to these things.

00:38:23.300 He didn't go to any of them in his four years of being president.

00:38:26.360 And I think that was the right move.

00:38:28.140 It's not I know that their argument is, oh, we can check our partisanship.

00:38:31.340 We can check our our skeptical relationship supposed to be for one night and get along.

00:38:37.880 But it's too incestuous.

00:38:39.940 It it can't be checked right now.

00:38:42.300 It just serves as a confirmation for everything that the average American has seen, which is

00:38:46.920 the press is all the way up the bottom of a Democratic president, absolutely loathes a

00:38:51.960 Republican president.

00:38:53.060 And what these people want more than anything is to be part of the cool crowd.

00:38:57.420 They want to be in, you know, on something special, something with Hollywood, you know,

00:39:04.760 sort of flair, but the power of the presidency and they want to feel important.

00:39:10.200 And so really, it's the press and it's celebration of those things.

00:39:13.500 And by the way, they're doing it at a time with record inflation and so on, where the

00:39:16.140 average Joe is really struggling to pay his bills, especially like his grocery bill and

00:39:20.140 his car payment.

00:39:21.240 And I don't know that they want to see these people in their black tie outfits, rubbing elbows

00:39:24.380 with celebs and Joe Biden and Trevor Noah, who's the comedian.

00:39:28.780 Well, the comedians to me got progressively less funny.

00:39:32.060 They were just commenting on things they didn't like or hated about generally Republicans.

00:39:38.640 And Donald Trump, like you say, there was no in situation for him to attend any of these

00:39:44.120 dinners.

00:39:45.040 It's not like you say that partisanship is checked.

00:39:47.980 And I was at least at least two speeches during this time period given at these dinners where

00:39:53.420 journalists were actively encouraged by the speakers, actively told and lectured that it

00:39:58.900 was their job to take out Trump.

00:40:01.000 It was their job to make sure he didn't get elected a second time.

00:40:04.400 I mean, these things were said without balance, with nobody raising an eyebrow.

00:40:10.240 I'm sure some of the listeners like I raise my eyebrows did.

00:40:13.780 But in general, there was nothing said.

00:40:15.440 These speakers just said what they said as if everybody agreed with them.

00:40:18.780 It was pretty stunning.

00:40:20.420 This is I'm just looking this up.

00:40:22.560 This remember Michelle Wolf on Sarah Sanders.

00:40:25.180 That was one of the more caustic ones.

00:40:28.800 Yeah.

00:40:29.220 Yeah.

00:40:29.580 Where she says, I actually really like Sarah.

00:40:32.420 I think she's very resourceful, but she burns facts and then she uses their ash to create 0.97

00:40:37.000 a perfect smoky eye.

00:40:38.640 Like maybe she's born with it, but maybe it's lies.

00:40:41.900 It's probably lies.

00:40:43.320 And went on to make some really inappropriate, like dark, dark jabs about Sarah Sanders and

00:40:52.600 others.

00:40:52.840 And I mean, we always see this when it's a Democrat or when it's a Republican president.

00:40:56.780 George W. Bush just got skewered.

00:40:59.200 You get somebody up there like a Seth Meyers.

00:41:00.980 It's never some comedian because some comedians do lean right and will be at least equal opportunity

00:41:06.860 jokesters.

00:41:07.660 They don't get invited.

00:41:09.120 It's got I mean, the Trevor.

00:41:10.380 No one's going to laugh at anything Trevor Noah says because he's a not funny.

00:41:13.380 But all of the jokes will come at the expense of the of the Republicans.

00:41:16.200 I have been at dinners in the past a long time ago.

00:41:20.680 I don't remember if it was Bob Saget or I don't remember who someone did a great speech.

00:41:25.220 It was funny.

00:41:25.880 It was very fairly or very nonpolitical.

00:41:28.120 It was about family and it didn't have to do with the people in charge.

00:41:32.400 I thought that was tasteful.

00:41:33.900 I'll tell you the first one I was really uncomfortable at, Megan.

00:41:36.940 I don't know if you were at this one.

00:41:38.040 Remember Don Imus when, pardon me, when Bill Clinton was president, Don did let Bill Clinton

00:41:45.480 have it.

00:41:46.440 And those journalists were not used to anything like that.

00:41:48.720 Nothing I don't think has ever happened since then.

00:41:50.860 I was pulling at my neck and sweating.

00:41:53.100 He was saying such he was sweating terrible things about Bill Clinton.

00:41:57.180 I think that's the last time they had a comedian or a speaker that said anything like that about

00:42:03.180 Democrats.

00:42:03.960 Since then, it's always been about Republicans.

00:42:05.620 But in general, that's just super awkward.

00:42:08.040 I mean, you're there with these political figures sitting at the table with Democrats

00:42:12.740 and Republicans because that's what happens there.

00:42:15.080 And you're watching and people are laughing at jokes that are at the expense of the people

00:42:18.960 who are your guests at the dinner.

00:42:21.220 Well, I think it's it's the it's the gridiron dinner where the motto is singe, don't burn

00:42:25.880 as the comedian.

00:42:27.040 And that's what the motto should be at the White House, too.

00:42:29.960 You know, when you've got the president sitting there, Joe Biden, Donald Trump or whomever,

00:42:33.360 some respect should be paid to the office.

00:42:36.060 And it should be a singe, don't burn kind of thing.

00:42:38.860 And what Michelle Wolf did was she burned in a way that was mean to Sarah Sanders and 0.95

00:42:44.700 others.

00:42:45.220 And that's what you don't want to see.

00:42:46.660 That's what I predict.

00:42:47.660 You know, we we certainly would have seen if Trevor Noah had been there during the Trump

00:42:50.840 years.

00:42:51.220 Right.

00:42:51.540 Trump was right not to show Joe Biden will be there.

00:42:54.200 Uh, whatever CNN will be there because they will not be anchoring their shows on CNN plus

00:42:58.620 Cheryl, just want to show the audience this. 0.98

00:43:01.300 If you go to CNN plus today, this is what you will see.

00:43:05.920 Let's see.

00:43:06.680 Put it on the board and I'll tell the audience at home what we're looking at now is a stand

00:43:10.900 by as we get it on the board.

00:43:11.960 Um, it's a black square.

00:43:15.060 It's a sad little black square that reads this video is unavailable right now.

00:43:21.840 Please try again later, but you shouldn't because it's not coming back.

00:43:25.560 CNN plus is not coming back and, and the video is not coming back.

00:43:29.980 And apparently the final moments of CNN plus were with a sad wolf blitzer, which to me

00:43:36.400 seems so perfect.

00:43:37.580 And I'll tell you why, Cheryl, um, I'm sure I've told the story before, but when Jeff Zucker

00:43:43.600 first took over CNN, I was in Roger Ailes office and Jeff Zucker called Roger Ailes to thank

00:43:50.740 Roger for having said nice things about him in the press and Roger, who is so quick and

00:43:56.920 such a, you know, whip smart and, you know, with his comebacks and so on said, um, well,

00:44:01.600 I didn't say them because they're true.

00:44:03.420 I said them to make myself look good.

00:44:06.460 Jeff Zucker.

00:44:07.940 Oh, okay.

00:44:08.980 Right.

00:44:09.540 And then, um, he said, well, do you have any advice for me on starting this job?

00:44:14.500 And Roger said, well, I could certainly use some more wolf blitzer, which of course,

00:44:23.200 when he was being facetious, he's a competitor and he understood that that would not be good

00:44:28.060 for CNN because with all due respect to wolf blitzer, no one needed more wolf blitzer.

00:44:33.700 And it's, so that's why I see this as just the perfect bookend to what Roger saw all those

00:44:40.280 years ago when Zucker took over, no one needed more wolf blitzer.

00:44:44.560 Roger saw it.

00:44:45.840 Jeff Zucker didn't see it.

00:44:47.160 He's the one who launched this doomed product.

00:44:50.160 Wolf didn't see it.

00:44:51.100 No one needed more Brian Stelter.

00:44:53.660 No one needed more Don Lemon.

00:44:55.160 No one's even watching those programs on the main channel, which they get essentially for

00:44:59.240 free because it's bundled in their cable channel.

00:45:02.640 And, um, to me, there was just sort of a perfect, I don't know.

00:45:06.960 There was an irony in the fact that wolf was the one, the final one to sign off your thoughts

00:45:11.340 on the demise of, by the way, it's on the one month anniversary of its launch of a very

00:45:16.220 young product.

00:45:17.200 Well, they didn't give it much time, but I don't think it was going anywhere.

00:45:19.960 You know, I worked at CNN back when it was a news organization, and I really think they

00:45:24.840 have a big opportunity because as much as their reputation has been destroyed in recent

00:45:28.900 years, as I recount in one of my books, among the mostly progressive people I interviewed

00:45:33.820 who worked at CNN, who think it's just a terrible product now.

00:45:37.700 I still think the name is big enough that they could turn it around.

00:45:41.440 And there is a market for people that want it to be just the news, you know, like it

00:45:45.860 more like it used to be.

00:45:47.800 I'd love to see them do really do something like that, recognize what's happening and,

00:45:52.760 and, you know, make it work.

00:45:54.880 Me too.

00:45:55.580 Uh, they've got a long way to go, but that more from that Politico article talking about

00:45:59.280 the, the current white house and how it's so boring to cover because there's no news.

00:46:03.140 One reporter who wished to stay anonymous says to Politico, Jen Psaki is very good at

00:46:09.820 her job, which is unfortunate that she just so good.

00:46:15.280 She gives us nowhere to go.

00:46:17.660 And then they went on to say, to point out in the article that, uh, there's a new bio out

00:46:21.560 on Jill Biden put together by two respected AP journalists and that new bio sold 250 books

00:46:31.900 in its first two weeks, 250 Cheryl, the interest isn't there.

00:46:39.360 I'll give you the last word.

00:46:41.340 Agreed.

00:46:42.020 You know, we're in a big transition time.

00:46:44.340 And my last word, pardon me, I would say is the big theme about all of this is have those

00:46:50.700 who really want to direct the conversation, stop other conversations.

00:46:55.440 Have they gone so far that people are now seeing things for what they are?

00:46:59.380 Are people who are sort of on the sidelines and didn't think they cared?

00:47:02.940 Have they been turned into activists by seeing in your face so much of what's going on now

00:47:08.460 that seems so absurd and contrary to logic and common sense?

00:47:13.060 Maybe that pendulum is beginning to swing back in a different direction, back toward more

00:47:18.020 sanity when it comes to our information and censorship and all the things that have gone

00:47:23.260 so wrong.

00:47:24.420 Yes.

00:47:25.040 Reason is starting to prevail.

00:47:27.920 Cheryl Ackeson, what a pleasure.

00:47:29.340 Thank you so much.

00:47:29.940 It's great to talk to you.

00:47:31.340 Thank you.

00:47:32.300 And remember folks, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel

00:47:37.180 111 every weekday at noon East and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our

00:47:42.860 YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.

00:47:46.300 If you prefer an audio podcast, subscribe, download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher,

00:47:52.280 or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:47:54.340 Now they say it's follow, follow over on Apple or wherever.

00:47:58.140 And there you will find our full archives with more than 300 shows.

00:48:02.560 First of all, the guy has over 1 billion views on YouTube, a million monthly streams on Spotify,

00:48:12.500 and he's got the ability to knock artists like Cardi B and Dolly Parton off of the charts.

00:48:18.840 Rapper Tom McDonald's become a polarizing figure to some in the hip hop world, but clearly he's

00:48:23.260 got a message that resonates with a lot of people.

00:48:25.260 Super excited to have him here.

00:48:26.480 Before we get to know Tom, for those of you who don't know him, here's a taste of one of

00:48:30.140 his most popular songs. Listen to the lyrics that's been viewed over 27 million times on

00:48:37.320 YouTube. It's called Fake Woke.

00:48:38.900 We're ashamed to be American. You should probably love it. Cause you have the right to hate it and not get

00:48:43.760 stoned to death in public. As children, we were taught how to walk and talk, but the system wants

00:48:48.300 adults to sit down and shut up. Cancel culture runs the world. Now the planet went crazy. Label 0.96

00:48:53.180 everything we say is homophobic or racist. If you're white, then you're privileged. Guilty by association.

00:48:58.200 All our childhood heroes got me toot or the rapist. They never freed the slaves. They realized that they

00:49:02.880 don't need the chains. They gave us tiny screens. We think we free cause we can't see the cage.

00:49:06.380 They knew that race war would be the game they'd need to play. For people to big teams, 0.98

00:49:10.080 they used the media to feed the flame.

00:49:24.960 I love it. Tom, welcome to the show. Great to have you here.

00:49:34.940 Hey, Megan. Thanks for having me.

00:49:37.020 So I, what, I feel like we have something in common, which I said this about myself just the

00:49:40.420 other day. Um, I love to touch the third rails and you clearly do too.

00:49:47.140 Yeah, I've been doing my best for sure.

00:49:49.220 Yeah. But you weren't always this way. And I think your, your evolution. So your personal

00:49:54.120 journey to getting to this place has been really fascinating. And it's, it's been traumatic. I mean,

00:49:59.440 you suffered a major trauma that was not unrelated to your willingness to be so bold now today.

00:50:09.140 Yeah, correct. Um, yeah, it was, uh, you know, I spent a lot of time making the same, you know,

00:50:15.620 sort of types of music that a lot of rappers make and about the clothes and money and cars and girls

00:50:21.460 and parties and, and sort of, you know, that whole type of lifestyle. And, uh, unfortunately, um,

00:50:28.800 I was kind of living that lifestyle and it, it ended up in, um, sort of a prolonged, uh, stint of

00:50:37.540 alcoholism and alcohol abuse, um, which ultimately led to sort of like a mental unraveling. And I had a little

00:50:44.820 bit of a breakdown that lasted, uh, the better part of a year. Uh, and I went home and stayed with my

00:50:51.160 mom and she sort of helped rehabilitate me and was going to the doctor and meditating and exercising

00:50:57.880 and put me on all these different kinds of pills and trying to just put the pieces back together.

00:51:02.600 And, uh, when I finally ended up doing that, I, you know, I'd spent nine months, uh, acutely

00:51:09.260 mentally unwell. And in that period, I really got to know a lot about myself. Um, you know,

00:51:14.820 what I wanted to talk about my music, who I wanted to talk about it to, uh, how I wanted to do it.

00:51:20.460 Um, and you know, so it completely changed everything about my music career. Um, and, and,

00:51:28.940 and it helped me sort of reframe my life. And it's really odd that sometimes the worst things that

00:51:36.220 happen to you end up being the best things that happened to you because not only did that,

00:51:40.840 did not only did that affect my, my music career in a very positive way, it made me like a better

00:51:47.140 man. I learned a lot about myself and how to treat the people around me. And, um, and it taught me a

00:51:52.860 lot about empathy because I was always so headstrong and stubborn and, you know, just lace up your boots

00:51:58.400 a little tighter and, and, and, and, and get on with the day, be a man, et cetera, et cetera.

00:52:03.360 And, you know, for nine months, I felt like a boy, I was weak and trying to put the pieces together.

00:52:10.380 So it taught me a lot about myself. It taught me a lot about what I wanted to do with the rest of my

00:52:15.060 life, knowing that it could end at any moment. And, um, you know, that, that bred songs like fake

00:52:22.300 woke and snowflakes and deer rappers and the things that sort of, um, blew me up over these last few,

00:52:27.160 four years. Yeah. Having your own encounter with frailty is helpful. It's helpful to one's

00:52:34.140 perspective, but just to take a dip into what you said, the listening to hip hop and, you know,

00:52:40.800 growing up a fan of it and listening to a lot of it, it, it wasn't exactly the healthiest place for

00:52:45.080 you. I mean, this is what you address in dear rappers of two in 2016, which I understand it was

00:52:50.000 like your first big exposure. And, um, I think that's worth spending a minute on. So, because I don't

00:52:56.120 listen to a lot of hip hop, I have to be honest, but what I hear it, I agree. It's, it's not the

00:53:01.000 most uplifting messages, you know, it's like countries like got sad songs that have like a

00:53:06.060 positive message at the end, like heartbreak, but it'll take you to the good place in the end.

00:53:10.220 My impression of a lot of the hip hop songs is like, like you say, like it's about money and it's

00:53:15.020 about drugs and it's about things that we shouldn't be valuing. And it's not to say it drove you into this

00:53:20.380 dark place, but it sounds like it certainly didn't help.

00:53:24.100 Yeah. Um, you know, and that's, that's kind of what, um, dear rappers was about the first song

00:53:30.760 that sort of blew me up in 2016. It was, uh, it's, it's about the music and the lifestyle that it's,

00:53:40.060 um, sort of influences it's, it's younger demograph to have. Like, um, I haven't looked into

00:53:48.700 the hip hop demograph, uh, recently, but I remember a couple of years ago when I looked

00:53:54.800 into it, it was like 14 to 20 year old white American youth. Um, so I mean, that's pretty 0.99

00:54:05.140 young, like this pretty young, pretty influential kids. Um, and you know, to somewhere things

00:54:12.940 took a turn, like it used to, you know, hip hop traditionally was about, you know, fighting

00:54:18.220 the power and being against the man and having your voice heard. And, um, you know, it's,

00:54:23.500 it, there was a lot of like, it spoke a lot about a lot of social issues and power to the

00:54:30.000 people and stuff in its, in its beginnings. And then somewhere along the way, it sort of

00:54:35.760 like started veering into, it was ultra sort of violent and you had like sort of the gangster

00:54:43.660 era of everything. And then it kind of went from there into this new version of what hip

00:54:50.080 hop is, which is a hyper commercial, um, marketing vehicle for a bunch of different products.

00:54:57.320 And it seems to lean pretty heavily on, uh, like prescription pill abuse and party culture

00:55:04.720 and like all of these things. And it's just, it's sort of evolved, not all hip hop, but, but,

00:55:09.940 but a lot of hip hop, it's sort of morphed in. Yeah. It's, it's sort of morphed into that

00:55:14.300 zone. Um, and for me, you know, I'm looking up to these guys, um, as you know, I want to

00:55:23.280 be a musician, musician one day. Um, and I think that these guys are cool and I'm looking

00:55:28.340 up to them and their actions and what they're telling me is cool is influencing the way that

00:55:32.540 I'm living my life. Um, whether immediately on the surface or subconsciously, it's having some

00:55:39.240 sort of effect on me. Um, and then, you know, when deer rappers happened to bring it full circle,

00:55:44.260 um, I was living in like an old rundown shack with, with mice and cockroaches in the house

00:55:51.920 in, uh, a less than savory neighborhood, uh, in South central. And there's water coming through

00:55:58.640 my ceiling and my girlfriend and I like can't afford groceries and rent, uh, you know, every

00:56:06.380 month. Cause like a lot of times we're having to make the choice. A lot of times we're living

00:56:09.600 by candlelight for four days cause we can't keep the power on. Uh, I told people a lot

00:56:14.100 of times, like it just sticks out of my mind. I used to plug my fridge into an extension cord

00:56:18.960 and run the cord out the back door and plug it into my neighbor's garage. So the food didn't

00:56:23.800 spoil, uh, when our power got cut off. So it was grim. Um, and like, it was not totally

00:56:31.620 the result of, uh, me treating myself poorly. And, um, but it was, it definitely contributed.

00:56:40.140 Um, so at that point, you know, I, I remember sitting, turning on the computer or the radio

00:56:45.400 or whatever it was and hearing, uh, a big sort of mainstream rapper, one of these entities that I

00:56:53.060 had looked up to in the past. And I heard them sort of like, uh, complaining about their life.

00:56:58.740 And for whatever reason, it really irritated me. Um, because I was like, yo, you're somebody that I

00:57:05.500 look up to. You have at that point in time, from my perspective, you have everything that I would

00:57:12.280 give anything to get a taste of. Um, and I don't want to hear you complaining. So I, you know, I

00:57:20.020 literally, it was like, I think God must've been looking down on me that day because I had half a

00:57:26.140 cigarette left, uh, and I've since quit smoking, but I went and sat on the front porch with this

00:57:31.920 half a cigarette and started smoking. And by the time that cigarette was done, um, I had written,

00:57:38.420 I just started writing Dear Rappers. Um, and I started writing this sort of open letter to the 0.99

00:57:43.320 hip hop community, um, about what I was seeing, uh, from the outside looking in and it didn't take

00:57:49.960 any longer than 15 minutes. I don't even remember stopping to think about any of the words. It was like,

00:57:55.080 it was seriously like God knew that I was in a situation and he like spoke through me for 15

00:58:03.400 minutes. It was the easiest song I ever wrote. And it was the song that changed mine and Noah's

00:58:07.220 lives. I remember getting up from the stair and walking into the house and I said, Nova,

00:58:12.160 I just wrote the song. It's going to change everything. Wow. Um, all right, wait, let's not,

00:58:16.380 let's not, let's not keep the audience in suspense any longer. Let's let them hear just a bit of

00:58:21.680 Dear Rappers. This is sound by eight. These days, it's like, you don't have nothing left.

00:58:25.820 Your music feels kind of like you're trying to write a check. Everything is digital. I mean,

00:58:29.540 no disrespect, but I'm paying even more and you give me even less. What the fuck? You taught me 0.99

00:58:33.600 to think, you taught me to grow. You taught me the things to survive on my own, but now you teach

00:58:37.500 me to drink. You teach me to smoke. You teach me to think every woman's a hoe. I don't want your 1.00

00:58:41.860 Xanax bars or your fancy foreign cars. Throw your money in my face and try to tell me that it's art. 0.56

00:58:50.220 No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. Just a drug addict on TV.

00:59:00.240 Hmm. What I love about your songs is you're very open about yourself, your journey, your views.

00:59:09.500 And that brings me to flash forward, you know, a few years later, sober, where you decided to make

00:59:16.780 some different choices after those ones we just discussed and change your life. And that I went

00:59:22.920 and looked at the comments to, to the song online and it's, it's beautiful. Like the, the number of

00:59:29.680 people you've helped with this song. And I can see, especially for a guy, for guys, oftentimes they

00:59:35.340 don't want to admit weakness. They don't want to admit, you know, they're struggling coming to terms

00:59:39.880 with an alcohol addiction or a drug addiction. It's very hard. You don't want to give up the thing

00:59:44.200 and you don't want to admit that you're too weak to give up the thing. And, um, sober was incredibly

00:59:49.560 powerful and very revealing. This came in 2020. This has got 13 million views. Uh, and let's just

00:59:56.880 listen to a bit of that. It's sound by 11. What up y'all? My name's Tom. Little while back was an

01:00:02.120 alcoholic. Had a mental breakdown like a year ago. Came close to put me in a coffee. Damn. After the

01:00:08.040 hooker I loved. After I did all the drugs. After I finally got fired for showing up late to the job, 0.95

01:00:12.920 hella tired and drunk. After the oxys, I put up my nose with my boss on the oil rigs when I was young. 0.99

01:00:17.740 After my ex cut a wrist and the cops thought I stabbed her and beat me and put me in cuffs. After I

01:00:21.900 totaled my car trying to run from the cops with a kilo of coconut chung. After I drank till I rotted my teeth 0.92

01:00:26.700 on my head, got infections in all of my gums. After I couldn't get hard cause the vodka and

01:00:30.680 porno sedated me till I was numb. After I couldn't escape from the basement, I rented and went to go

01:00:35.220 live with my mom. After I cheated on people I needed and lied trying to hide from the guy that I was.

01:00:39.920 Then I got sober. The madness was over. Now I am proud of the man I become.

01:00:44.240 Ah, that is amazing. That's a, that's amazing poetry, lyricism, music, all of it. And that,

01:00:51.320 I mean, that clearly came from someplace deep, Tom.

01:00:54.480 Yeah. I haven't listened to that in a long time.

01:00:56.700 But, um, yeah. Uh, I just,

01:01:04.480 it's just so scary to look back at that time in my life and know that, um, I was so close to

01:01:11.740 part of me. I was so close to, uh, not making it out of that. Like it's just, it's horrifying to

01:01:20.480 look back on. Um, I probably haven't listened to that song in, you know, two years. That's always

01:01:25.680 been a difficult one. Um, I probably haven't listened to it since around the time that I

01:01:30.520 wrote it. Um, a lot of those songs are difficult, difficult to like write, you know? Um, and then

01:01:36.120 they're horrifying to put out into the world. Um, because you're just, you're being totally

01:01:42.800 vulnerable to it. Like millions of strangers, uh, which is terrifying. Um, so after you kind of get

01:01:50.340 through that, um, those phases, writing it down, putting it out into the world, you feel like you

01:01:55.560 sort of crossed the finish line and sometimes you just don't ever want to look back. So I, uh, you

01:02:00.200 know, you did it, you know, like for a reason, you know, and maybe you don't know what the reason is

01:02:04.380 at the time. I know you say you, you do it for yourself. You do it for your fans too. You're not

01:02:08.480 doing it for money. You're not writing about pimps and hoes and all that. You know, like you're 1.00

01:02:12.580 writing about real shit like that you personally are going through and you're, you've emerged 0.97

01:02:18.620 as like, I forgive me. Cause I know you don't want to be seen as like right wing or left wing, 0.95

01:02:22.780 but like you've kind of, you're to me, you're almost like a Jordan Peterson in a way you're

01:02:27.060 like a Jordan Peterson, right? Like in your own way, like you're a huge compliment. Well, I,

01:02:32.080 that's how I see you, but in a different genre, you know, like you're speaking to same kind of guys

01:02:36.700 who have just felt ignored and like they didn't matter. And now society's shitting on them at every 0.96

01:02:42.520 turn and they're being told they're terrible because of their skin color or their gender or 0.99

01:02:46.560 stuff they have no control over. And it does drive people to feel depressed and down and disaffected.

01:02:54.820 And, and even in some cases, suicidal, that's the truth. That's one of the reasons why these

01:03:00.060 messages are so pernicious. And so you come back and you offer your own journey and then take the

01:03:06.840 extra step of making yourself not, you'll tell me whether it's, it's intentional,

01:03:11.960 intentional, not, but then controversial because you do the thing where you say,

01:03:16.000 screw all these messages. This is all bullshit that we're being fed. 1.00

01:03:20.300 Yeah. Um, well, first of all, I just have to, one more note about silver. I just have to say that, 0.99

01:03:26.900 uh, um, I think that it's so important, uh, especially these days, I think there's probably

01:03:32.880 more mental unwellness, addiction problems, um, depression, et cetera. I think there's probably

01:03:38.360 more of that going on now than ever before, especially when I was going through it because

01:03:43.240 of COVID and lockdowns and mandates and, and, and, and the state of world affairs is like,

01:03:50.700 you know, it's causing a pretty lot of heightened tensions and anxiety going on in the world right

01:03:55.660 now. Um, and I think that it's so important. Um, we're all glued to our phones all day long

01:04:02.720 and we're staring at our phones and we're seeing all of these pictures of these people. Like I look

01:04:07.140 that we look up to, like I looked up to those rappers and we're seeing, you know, photos of

01:04:13.260 these celebrities, actors, musicians, athletes, and there have these perfect lives and these perfect

01:04:18.120 smiles and perfect Instagrams and perfect Facebooks and Twitters, and they're just doing

01:04:22.360 everything right. And I think that further compounds how a lot of us are feeling, uh, in the world right

01:04:29.400 now. And I think it's just so important, um, for more celebrities to stand up. They, all of these

01:04:35.900 people that have a platform, they all have audiences. There's people in their audiences who don't feel

01:04:40.840 well. There's people in their audiences who are, are, are, are down on their luck or, are economically

01:04:46.320 disadvantaged or depressed or anxious or a million different things. And they don't feel well. And it's

01:04:53.240 so important for celebrities to stand up and say, um, and I hate the word celebrity, but it's so important

01:04:58.940 for people with a platform to stand up and say, Hey, like me too. I don't feel well either. And

01:05:04.000 that's okay. And it's totally normal for you guys to not feel well. And all of the stuff that you're

01:05:10.300 seeing online, the smiles and the houses and the cars and the, and the, and the, and the happiness

01:05:15.480 that you're looking at through your computer, through your phone screen. Um, what, all we do is

01:05:21.500 post the good times, but we have a lot of bad times too, and we don't feel good either. I just think

01:05:25.220 that's so important. Let's have to say that. Um, and who knows, maybe somebody with a platform

01:05:32.080 watching this says, you know what, he's right. I'm going to take a stand and I'm going to stand

01:05:36.900 up for people who are unwell. Um, I just think that's so important. Um, well, I have to say,

01:05:41.900 this is one of the things I've been, this is the one, one of the, uh, upsides of the very ugly

01:05:47.820 Amber Heard Johnny Depp trial is, it's just a reminder that these people who you think have perfect

01:05:52.400 lives, they don't, they, they have just as many and probably more problems than you do. Um, they

01:05:59.640 just live in nicer apartments and those nicer apartments don't make any of those things any

01:06:03.480 easier for them. And it should, and you should not want these lives. You should not. I mean,

01:06:07.700 like you go, you go to church on Sundays, you see your family, you, you raise your kids, you keep

01:06:12.520 them close. You try to teach them good values. You're doing it right. You know, you're, you got 17

01:06:17.500 houses and you know, a billion dollars and you're big movie star. And you're in his case,

01:06:22.820 writing about what you want to do to your dead wife's corpse. And in her case, you're cutting 0.83

01:06:27.400 off the fingers of the man you're supposed to love. You're like, this is not a life. Anyone

01:06:32.840 should want to emulate or envy ever. Right. And just to take it one other, we love the movie family,

01:06:39.180 man, you know, with Nicholas Cage and Taylor Leone. We watch it every Christmas. It's such a good,

01:06:43.060 good, good movie. And, uh, he it's about this wall street guy who like gets to see a glimpse of what

01:06:49.240 his alternate life would have been like if he had just married his high school sweetheart, Taylor

01:06:53.080 Leone and lived in New Jersey and be, and have been a tire salesman. So he gets this glimpse where he

01:06:59.080 goes back and he gets to live that life. And she, and he says to her, you know, I just, I want a life

01:07:03.860 that, that people envy. And she says to him, they have this great marriage and these great kids and

01:07:09.980 nothing special, but just, they laugh a lot. And she said, they already do envy us, right? Like

01:07:15.840 that's that we need to be reminded of that. We need to be reminded about these, the rappers and

01:07:20.880 the stars and so on. They don't, they don't have it all. Precisely. And, and what you just said,

01:07:25.720 like the, the, the, the family and the house and the happiness, um, of, of a regular, humble,

01:07:33.360 normal functioning family and life. Like that's, that's not the happiness that they try to sell you.

01:07:39.140 So people don't realize when, when they say, Oh, I want it all. A lot of people don't realize you

01:07:44.920 already have it all. It's just, it's just not the all that they've tried to sell you on screens for

01:07:49.780 the last 20 years. Well, that's so true, Tom. So true. There's all sorts of nuggets of wisdom

01:07:56.020 in Tom's lyrics, his work. Um, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll have more with a rapper

01:08:01.660 Tom McDonald, including his song that now has 27 million views on YouTube. I can't even fathom that

01:08:09.700 cannot even fathom. Uh, that's next.

01:08:15.660 Rapper Tom McDonald is here and man, he has been tearing it up independently. He hasn't sold out to

01:08:21.800 any record label. He's had plenty of offers. He wants to be independent and do his music his way.

01:08:28.640 And really that's the only way to be able to say the things that you're saying in today's day and

01:08:33.980 age. Otherwise you get fired, you get canceled. I mean, I'll ask the audience. You tell me audience

01:08:40.000 members could, could Tom McDonald be with a record label and release. This is not white boy. That was 0.73

01:08:46.260 controversial. You can tell by the name. Um, but this is people so stupid. 27 million views.

01:08:52.720 Listen to these lyrics. You tell me whether a record label would allow this man. It used to

01:08:57.100 be cooler to slip a bird to the system. And now it's trendy to be triggered and pretend you're a

01:09:01.280 victim. It's my race. It's my weight. It's because I'm a Christian. I hate the internet and anyone who

01:09:06.040 has an opinion and everybody angry. If you say white K fine, pass me the brush and I'll paint my face to 1.00

01:09:11.800 the shades. Right. Let's talk about abortion. Sorry. Tell me how this works. Bacteria is life on Mars, 0.76

01:09:16.760 but a heartbeat is in life on earth. Weird. Okay. The whole staff is loving this time. You've got all

01:09:43.220 these new fans. All the women on my team were like, what, who's Nova? How long have they been 1.00

01:09:47.560 together? Um, so let's just spend a minute on that. You, you cannot, right? I mean, you, you would

01:09:54.660 not sell out to a record label, but you really can't, right? Yeah. I think even if I wanted to

01:10:00.000 at this point, uh, I don't think anybody would take me. Um, but, uh, no, I mean, it's just, I just

01:10:06.860 never, even when, you know, I was making the other type of music, I've just never wanted, um,

01:10:12.400 to be a part of a record label. I've always been kind of like a lone wolf. Um, it's more,

01:10:17.880 you know, I don't think it's any secret that the music industry sort of like takes advantage of

01:10:23.200 dreamers and robs artists and exploits them and kind of like bleeds them dry. So like, not only is

01:10:28.340 it more like financially lucrative, um, given it's a lot more work, so like 20 hours a day for like the

01:10:34.760 last 10 years, um, uh, you know, given it's a lot more work, but, uh, financially speaking,

01:10:40.540 it's a lot more lucrative, artistically speaking. Um, I have no shackles. Um, I am able to say

01:10:48.780 whatever I want, however I want, whenever I want to whoever, like there's no rules. I have complete

01:10:55.160 freedom, um, in terms of the art. So I get to maintain all of my artistic integrity. I don't have

01:11:02.480 to bend to anybody else's wishes. I don't have to take orders from anyone. There's no, um, you know,

01:11:07.340 there's no share or shareholders or, uh, anything that goes along with these big corporations. I,

01:11:14.800 there's nothing affecting me. I'm the brand. I'm,

01:11:17.340 and there's no pressure on you to put out product that you only half hearted about. Like you,

01:11:22.360 you can take weeks off at a time, just could do it when you're inspired, you do your thing. And when

01:11:26.780 you're not, you don't. Yeah. It's, uh, you know, it, I, I, my girlfriend was signed to record

01:11:36.000 labels for a long time. I've seen the effect that that has on somebody. I've seen somebody's

01:11:41.220 passion and love turned into their job. And I've seen how detrimental that is for the art and the

01:11:47.920 person involved. It's horrible. It's like the death of a part of the person. Um, so it's nice.

01:11:56.080 I don't have to, you know, I'm the manager. I make the beats. I write the songs. My girlfriend shoots

01:12:01.040 the videos. She edits the videos. We design all the merch. We design the, the, the, um,

01:12:06.880 the album artworks. We designed the single covers. We like from every aspect of this

01:12:13.140 is controlled by us. Um, just as a reminder again to the audience, this is, this started in 16 when

01:12:20.260 he was in the mice infected, infested apartment. Like this didn't like, he just did it himself.

01:12:26.200 He just started speaking and writing and rapping and doing all the stuff. And by the way, a word on

01:12:31.360 Nova to my staff, LA weekly called her violent, but talented in a 2013 article after she, after she 1.00

01:12:39.980 told them she had punched 25 people in the face in her lifetime. Accurate. Accurate.

01:12:47.140 Do not mess with Nova. I think that's the greatest resume ever, but kind of amazing.

01:12:53.860 It's, it's incredible. So, but she's like, I mean, she's worked with, um, when she was signed

01:13:00.180 to Def Jam, she worked with the biggest producers in the world. Like the people producing Britney Spears

01:13:05.980 and, and NSYNC and like writing for Beyonce and writing for Rihanna. And like, she's done it all

01:13:13.820 in this business as far as top tier execution of music within the industry at the highest level.

01:13:21.100 She's been there. She's done it. Um, and you know, I've watched, I've been friends with Nova

01:13:26.080 for 15 years. Um, and we've been together, uh, romantically for five or six and I've never

01:13:34.080 seen her more unhappy. Um, than when she was going to the studio seven days a week, had a schedule to

01:13:42.700 be there, had to be there. Uh, you know, they lied to her. She said, this is the type of music I want

01:13:47.980 to make. And I want to be this type of artist. And they said, cool, gotcha. And then they were

01:13:52.820 like, Hey, you know, like, let's do this one radio song. Let's do one radio pop song. You down with

01:13:57.900 that? And she was like, like, okay, if that's, if that's what we have to do, let's do it. And then

01:14:02.640 they did one and they were like sick. We just, let's do 15 more now. And it was just like torture

01:14:08.040 for her. She hated it.

01:14:09.100 These writers, it's like these writers, Tom, who are like huge in their, you know, in their

01:14:13.860 genre, it often happens in the mystery genre. And then they are under all this pressure from

01:14:19.640 their publishers to put out more and more work. And so you see like by James Patterson,

01:14:23.440 but it's not really by James Patterson. It's by some other guy who's like, and also Tom Jones,

01:14:28.880 you know? And it's like, James had nothing to do with it. He just let you use his name.

01:14:32.620 And so it all gets corrupted. It's like, I liked the artist, but this isn't really the artist's

01:14:37.980 work. Let me ask you a question. Um, you did stick a toe into the mainstream when you gave an

01:14:43.780 interview to Rolling Stone. I wonder if you regret it. Cause man, they were so snarky. They were kind

01:14:48.740 of jerks. I don't, you, you tell me how you thought, but I was like, wow, they, they sound 1.00

01:14:53.460 unkind. Uh, they came out this week, Rolling Stone, how to become a MAGA rap kingpin without

01:14:59.060 believing what you're saying by, uh, Alice Hines, it looks like. And they're, they're basically my,

01:15:05.580 they're evidence against you that you don't believe what you're saying is that you're basically

01:15:09.280 like, I didn't take a position on a, I don't, I haven't said how I feel about abortion. Um,

01:15:15.180 I'm just sort of pointing out the hypocrisy of these positions in songs. Like I just played,

01:15:19.820 you know, where it's like, okay, life, a bacteria on Mars is life, but you know, heartbeat in a belly

01:15:25.040 is not, you know, like this is why she thinks you don't believe what you're saying.

01:15:28.900 Yeah. I mean, um, you know what, this, this, this is honestly how I feel. Um,

01:15:37.580 at the end of the day, um, Rolling Stone has historically documented, uh, the important

01:15:47.180 characters of music. Um, so, you know, whether they liked me or don't like me or, uh, agree with

01:15:54.740 me or disagree with me or reported on me in a wildly inaccurate and out of context way. Um,

01:16:02.460 I'm at the end of the day, you guys thought that I was important enough to be in your magazine.

01:16:06.740 You're not going to hurt my feelings. I don't get my feelings hurt by this type of stuff. Um,

01:16:11.200 so it's just kind of like, there's been many times in the past, um, where I'm Rolling Stone is a

01:16:20.660 notoriously sort of left leaning publication. It's been many times in the past where somebody

01:16:26.000 from a left leaning organization has reached out and had claimed that they were going to give me a

01:16:33.840 fair shake. Um, and ended up not at all. And, um, that's what happened in that article. I gave somebody

01:16:44.720 the benefit of the doubt and I think they took advantage of it. And I think it's unfortunate.

01:16:50.340 I feel like I was taught a lesson about like not being able to trust, uh, you know,

01:16:55.720 Trust no one. Yeah. But in the face, in the face of, you know, I feel like I'm a pretty open book

01:17:04.300 and, um, I don't know. I feel like when I give somebody my word, like you have my word. If I say

01:17:11.300 that I'm going to be there and I'm going to help you or whatever, I'm going to be there. I'm going to

01:17:15.340 help you or whatever. Um, so it's just foreign to me to say one thing and then do something

01:17:21.480 completely different. And I think that's what happened and it's unfortunate, but I still think

01:17:25.420 it's a great piece of press and, um, you know, I'm not losing any sleep over it.

01:17:30.680 Your next song needs to be dear journalists, dear reporters for go from dear rappers to dear

01:17:37.000 reporters. Trust me. The song bad press has already been written.

01:17:40.800 Oh my God. That's going to be the mantra of my life. I can't wait. Please, please come on when

01:17:47.100 you drop it. Would love to help you promote it and anything else that you're interested in

01:17:50.980 promoting time. You're amazing. You're incredibly talented. You're a seer. And, uh, I think that's

01:17:55.400 why you have these huge, huge following. So if people want to subscribe on a YouTube, like I just

01:18:00.780 did, what's the best way for them to find you on YouTube or how do they get you? Yeah. Um,

01:18:05.420 so if you just go on YouTube and just search Tom McDonald, you should see a, a mass of

01:18:10.580 different music videos that have pissed people off. So, um, just click on, click on whichever

01:18:15.480 one speaks to you and then hit subscribe. So that's youtube.com slash Tom McDonald official

01:18:20.340 on Instagram. I'm hangover gang on Facebook. I'm, uh, facebook.com slash Tom McDonald official

01:18:27.740 Twitter. I am Tom McDonald and my website is hangovergang.com. If you want to grab albums,

01:18:33.960 t-shirts, stuff like that. Awesome. And, uh, listen, he's got a new, a new album out called

01:18:38.980 the brave in God. We trust highly recommend. It's already got over 7 million views and it'll

01:18:43.900 be climbing cause it's inspirational as are you. Thanks for being here, Tom. Thanks for

01:18:47.940 having me, Megan. I'm a big fan. Thank you. I appreciate it. So cool. Don't miss Monday

01:18:52.640 because the ruthless guys will be back. Looking forward to that. Have a great, great weekend.

01:18:56.680 You guys. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

01:19:03.840 Bye.

01:19:28.180 Bye.

01:19:29.720 Bye.

01:19:30.540 Bye.

01:19:30.720 Bye.

01:19:30.780 Bye.

01:19:31.100 Bye.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 29, 2022

True Cost of Tech Censorship, and Celebrity Corruption, with Sharyl Attkisson and Tom MacDonald ｜ Ep. 311

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