The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump's Iran Decision Approaches, Kamala's Strange New Accent, and The Key Vance Factor, with Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke ｜ Ep. 1300

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00:00:30.620 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:42.320 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. So much news to get to today.

00:00:46.620 The Democrats' frontrunner for the presidential nomination in 2028, Kamala Harris, fingers crossed,

00:00:51.960 is speaking out again and revealing yet another accent. She's so great. 0.98

00:00:59.180 May she never leave us. Plus, all eyes on Pakistan at this hour on the question of whether Iran is even going to show up to the latest round of negotiations before the ceasefire with the U.S. ends tonight at 7.50 p.m. Eastern time.

00:01:14.680 The AP reporting this morning that the Iranians are expected to travel to Islamabad for the talks with the American delegation led by Vice President J.D. Vance.

00:01:24.220 But the latest official word from Pakistan's information minister is far less optimistic.

00:01:31.040 He's saying that the Iranians have not confirmed that they will attend the summit.

00:01:35.620 And CNN, just as we came to air, reported that J.D. Vance is still in D.C., has not left, that the status of talks is unclear, reporting that a few hours ago everyone felt the Iranians were coming, even though they were suggesting maybe, maybe not.

00:01:53.020 And then there was an incident with the U.S. Marines boarding a tanker truck in the Indian Ocean, and now it seems less likely than it did this morning.

00:02:02.880 So we don't know. We have no idea.

00:02:05.620 We will wait and find out. And as soon as we find out, we will let you find out, too.

00:02:09.520 This morning on CNBC, President Trump at first sounding optimistic that there will be a deal.

00:02:16.760 Watch. Well, as I said two days ago, when they said they won't send them, I said they'll be

00:02:20.740 sending them. They have no choice but to send them. What I think is that we're going to end

00:02:25.300 up with a great deal. I think it's got I think they have no choice. We've taken out their Navy.

00:02:30.200 We've taken out their Air Force. We've taken out their leaders, frankly, which does complicate

00:02:34.600 things in one way, but these leaders are much more rational. It is regime change, no matter

00:02:40.180 what you want to call it, which is not something I said I was going to do, but I've done it

00:02:45.220 indirectly, maybe, but I've done it. And I think we're in a very strong negotiating position to do

00:02:51.140 what other presidents should have done during a 47-year period. We have 47 years where these

00:02:57.340 bloodthirsty people have been killing a lot of soldiers, a lot of our soldiers and a lot of

00:03:02.780 other people. But the president also saying he does not want to extend the ceasefire, even if

00:03:07.840 progress is being made in the negotiations and he fully expects to begin bombing Iran again.

00:03:15.200 Watch. You're saying that you need a at least the prospects for a signed deal today and tomorrow 0.73

00:03:22.000 or else you would resume bombing Iran. Well, I expect to be bombing because I think that's a 1.00

00:03:32.280 better attitude to go in with. But we're ready to go. I mean, the military is raring to go. They

00:03:37.980 are absolutely incredible. I mean, he keeps doing this. He keeps he ratchets up the rhetoric every

00:03:44.960 time we're at the end of a ceasefire or demanding that they respond to us in some way. And Trump

00:03:51.240 escalates the rhetoric. And that Wall Street Journal article the other day made really clear

00:03:56.240 why he was doing that and really kind of exposed how it's a tactic. And he admitted that it was a

00:04:00.860 tactic to AIDS, who then spoke to the Wall Street Journal. And this also talked about this article

00:04:09.040 about how he is trying to seem unstable and wanted to be as unstable and insulting as possible,

00:04:18.140 believing it could bring the Iranians to the table. That post about a whole civilization will 0.90

00:04:24.020 die. He saw it as a way to spur negotiations in a war. The president was desperately ready to end

00:04:31.280 Axios reporting today that Trump is bored of this war and wants it over whatever, you know,

00:04:40.520 maybe it wasn't the best thing to start if you didn't have the patience to actually see it

00:04:45.460 through. That's that's that's what his supporters of the war might say. I mean, those of us who

00:04:50.300 have been against it from the beginning would like to see it wrapped up, whether it's out of

00:04:53.640 boredom or not, it's really too bad that the cost of American lives isn't the motivator.

00:05:00.860 It's that Trump has moved on to other things because he has the attention span of a gnat.

00:05:07.180 We don't know whether they're showing up. We don't know whether we should believe our president

00:05:10.460 when he says this is happening and this is happening because we know he's manipulating

00:05:15.360 them and us with virtually every statement. Truth does not seem to be relevant. It's really all

00:05:21.160 just tactics. And he doesn't really give a damn that the American people are being dragged along

00:05:26.180 on these tactical misdirections. So I have no idea what to tell you. I don't know what's true.

00:05:32.820 I don't know whether the Iranians will show up. I don't know whether we really will start bombing. 0.94

00:05:36.520 I don't know whether he's so desperate to get a deal that he will give it all away and there'll

00:05:42.280 be no more bombing. Really don't know. We'll find out tonight over into tomorrow and we'll update

00:05:46.720 you then. There was more he said on CNBC, which we're going to go over and hear now to help me

00:05:52.760 break all of it down, are our friends, Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review and Charles C.W.

00:05:58.200 Cook, senior writer for National Review and host of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast. You can find all

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00:07:25.220 guys welcome back so no one knows rich nobody knows even trump doesn't know we have no idea

00:07:34.160 where the iranians are showing up whether the ceasefire is going to end and we really will

00:07:37.740 bomb tonight um it does seem that trump is desperate to get a deal now he definitely does

00:07:42.680 want to bring it to a close that all the reporting supports that no one's reporting anything other

00:07:47.400 than that and when you see his poll approval numbers on the overall job he's doing and then

00:07:52.920 on the iran war you have every reason to believe that that he actually does want to bring it to

00:07:57.920 a quick end now which the iranians know correct which is a problem for us yeah so we don't know

00:08:05.920 if the if the inside players don't know and if trump himself doesn't know there's no way for

00:08:10.480 anyone else to know my guess is that we get an extension of the ceasefire and somewhere along

00:08:16.420 the line here, a JCPOA-like deal, I think it'd be JCPOA plus, probably a little bit better.

00:08:24.720 But I think that's where things, it'll be in the same family as the JCPOA. But look, this whole

00:08:29.720 thing, Megan, it's so Trump. It's just characteristically Trump. Now, the stakes are

00:08:34.760 bigger. It's more consequential. But you can go back to any episode during Trump's rise and his

00:08:41.000 ascendancy. You can go way back to insulting Rosie O'Donnell and is he going to show up for

00:08:45.320 the Iowa debate or not. You know, he enjoys. He did that. He doesn't mind them. At least he loves

00:08:53.340 being at a focus of attention. Everyone guessing, wondering what's going to happen. It's just that

00:08:57.520 this is a war rather than the other controversies we've seen over the last 10 years. To me,

00:09:04.500 there's something very different about this one. And I take your point because I was obviously

00:09:09.320 there for the Rosie O'Donnell moment at the first debate in 15. And then he did threaten to skip

00:09:14.060 Iowa, if yours truly was a moderator. And we spent the whole day out there, Chris and I and our team.

00:09:19.720 I forgot you were the cause of that one.

00:09:22.280 Yeah. Wondering whether he meant it, you know, whether he would or would not show up. He said

00:09:27.400 he was going to be hosting a military fundraiser instead. And we waited to the last minute looking

00:09:31.360 at the doors like, will he come? Will he come? He did not come. He hosted a military fundraiser.

00:09:35.840 And then there was a question about whether he ever gave the military the money.

00:09:38.400 Um, I, my own feeling, Charlie, is that there is, this one's different in that there's just,

00:09:46.580 I think there's a lot of frustration with president Trump right now. Obviously the left

00:09:51.400 hates him, but you've got 80% of independents who are against this war who I don't think are

00:09:55.960 enjoying his little parlor games on like, I'm going to bomb them to out of civilization. 0.97

00:10:01.300 The bombing's going to start. We're going to bomb bridges and threatening some civilian 0.96

00:10:05.440 infrastructure over and over. And I think there's a growing, I don't think, I know from the polls,

00:10:12.060 there's a growing portion of Republicans who are sick of this too, who are sick of him,

00:10:17.340 and who are pissed off about the war. I just don't think it's playing the way his normal

00:10:22.580 too cute by half routine plays. Well, I agree with both of you in so far as I don't think

00:10:29.980 that this is different for Trump. I agree with all the criticisms you laid out, Megan, at the

00:10:35.800 beginning, but I don't think they're new. I think you could apply them to anything Trump has done

00:10:41.080 really in 11 years. But I agree with you that this is perhaps playing differently and perhaps

00:10:46.900 should play differently because this is a war and not something inconsequential, not to downplay the

00:10:53.480 importance of debates. I think they're a key part of our system around elections, but it matters a

00:10:59.460 lot less whether you show up to a debate than whether a serviceman dies. I mean, I think there

00:11:05.200 are a couple of things going on to substantiate that. One is that we are quite late on now in

00:11:11.600 Trump's presidency. If you view it as a two-term presidency back-to-back, we would start to be

00:11:19.260 talking about him being a lame duck, people becoming exhausted with him. But he didn't

00:11:24.120 serve back to back he served with a four-year gap so we're now in year 11 of trump and people

00:11:30.760 are just tired of it and i think with this one the gap between the stakes and his behavior

00:11:40.600 is just difficult to wipe away i mean i have always thought it was amazing that he behaves

00:11:46.840 the way he does in the white house this has been a constant refrain of mine i'll never be president

00:11:51.080 because I moved here from another country.

00:11:53.200 I don't want to be for the record, but I can't be.

00:11:55.820 But if I were somehow parachuted into the presidency, though,

00:12:00.900 I think I would feel the weight of all those portraits on the wall looking at me,

00:12:04.600 and I'd behave.

00:12:05.800 But Trump doesn't.

00:12:07.140 But people can say, and I think this is reasonable,

00:12:09.800 well, okay, but, you know, I get what I want out of him,

00:12:12.360 and it's more important that I get good policy or that the other person loses.

00:12:16.380 But with this one, yeah, it's it's it just seems worse somehow. Now, I should say, I actually think that the policy here hasn't all been bad on Iran. I'm not intrinsically opposed to it, although I have a lot of criticisms as to how it's been done. But yeah, the Real Estate Act probably rubs people the wrong way when it's a war.

00:12:40.040 that's right I think the thing is rich and I'm chief among them I'm very quick to overlook

00:12:47.920 Trump's ethical problems you know his loose talk his weird tweets I don't really care about any of

00:12:55.560 that as you guys know you know how long have we been doing this show together you know five years

00:12:59.660 now I don't get I don't obsess over that stuff it's just for me personally and I know for a lot

00:13:04.960 of people who I listen to on the right I that's almost exclusively where my news comes from

00:13:09.400 it's just hitting differently. They're, they're over it. It's like, you know what? Like you were

00:13:15.460 Epstein, who cares about Epstein? And people were very angry with that. It was, well, you,

00:13:21.200 you did your, you hired all these people for your administration who said it was going to be a huge

00:13:26.100 deal and they were going to get to the bottom of it over the FBI. You had Pam Bondi over Fox news

00:13:30.500 saying, Oh, I've got the file on my desk. Wait until you see what I've said. I've seen. Then

00:13:34.720 you thought you were going to get rid of that story with a two page memo from DOJ FBI and then

00:13:38.680 mock anybody who thought it was still a story because of you and your lieutenants. Like, not

00:13:44.540 cute and started to lose some goodwill. That was last July. And now here we are with him breaking,

00:13:50.580 I mean, one of the top three promises he made that got him elected by a large segment of the

00:13:57.400 populace, right? I mean, there were obviously more hawkish Republicans who wanted him to be

00:14:02.300 more aggressive on Iran. But there was a huge number of supporters who definitely believed him

00:14:08.360 that there wouldn't be another new war

00:14:09.940 and certainly not one in the Middle East

00:14:11.500 and feel deeply betrayed by this.

00:14:14.360 And I don't think his little flippant, you know, act

00:14:18.260 is hitting them the right way.

00:14:20.660 And I think it's in part, that feels disrespectful

00:14:23.900 and the refusal to have sold the war to us at the beginning.

00:14:28.960 And then when he came out

00:14:30.320 and gave that one speech from the White House,

00:14:32.240 it was so meandering, it added no new information.

00:14:34.580 It didn't move the needle at all.

00:14:36.840 Another thing they talked about in the Wall Street Journal piece about how Susie Wiles thought that might help him.

00:14:41.740 It didn't. There was nothing to say. And he didn't say anything.

00:14:44.900 And people are left feeling like, what is this? Like, we're we're starting a Middle East war here.

00:14:50.640 We don't know where it's going to land. We could go nuclear, could go away tonight, which we don't know. 0.80

00:14:55.420 You know, six one way, half a dozen. And he doesn't show us the respect of having a sober conversation about it.

00:15:02.260 Yeah, well, we talked about that at the outset. This is one of my points of skepticism about the war was that there was no effort to sell the American people on it to make a case for it. And if you did make a case for it, then you get an iterative argument where people poke holes in your assumptions and ask questions. What's going to happen to the strait? Right. And then you can say, well, don't worry about the strait. We're going to take care of it. And then people say, well, how are you going to take care of it? We'll get minesweepers. We'll get the Europeans involved. You know, whatever the plan is, but would have forced more planning.

00:15:30.160 So I think the problem is that the case wasn't made to the public, there wasn't adequate planning, and there wasn't enough thought around what might happen to the straight, in part because Trump was overly optimistic about it. And that just brings me back to the point I made at the outset. This thing is characteristically Trump from beginning to end, whether you favor it or you're against it. It's been audacious. He's been erratic in the course of it. It's been overly optimistic.

00:15:57.060 All that's just Trump. And he promised not to launch forever wars, but he's been very consistent over decades.

00:16:06.780 He hates the Iranian regime. He's talked about bombing it, talked about taking Karg Island, what, like 30 years ago.

00:16:14.240 So I think there's a chance that this. 0.51

00:16:16.720 How are we supposed to glean from that soundbite 30 years ago, Rich, that he was going to bomb Iran?

00:16:21.380 Well, he said he was so clear, Megan, forever that Iran couldn't get a nuclear weapon. So personally, I wasn't shocked that he he did this. And I think it could still land in a good place. If we get a JCPOA like deal that's better than the JCPOA.

00:16:40.380 And on top of that, you have the economic devastation that's been wreaked on this regime and some potential, you know, skeptical regime regime change from the air from the outset, as we talked about at the beginning of the war.

00:16:52.600 But there's some chance this regime could fall six, 12 months from now.

00:16:56.120 But anyway, I think it would be a net plus for American national security if the straits open, if they stop enriching for some period of time, which is more than we got from the JCPOA, and they're going to have to spend years rebuilding their military apparatus.

00:17:11.380 Wait, what's more than we got from the JCPOA on enrichment?

00:17:13.680 What's that?

00:17:15.360 What did you say is more than we got from the JCPOA?

00:17:17.580 If they actually cease for some period of time, that would be better than the JCPOA.

00:17:22.900 But then also later on top of that is a devastation that's been wreaked on their missile program, on their military apparatus, on their petrochemical industry, on their economy generally.

00:17:32.860 So that's why I think it'd be a net plus to American national security if that's where we end up. 0.66

00:17:38.320 And I kind of think it is.

00:17:39.660 This is a dangerous regime.

00:17:41.740 It's founded on anti-Americanism, has American blood on its hands.

00:17:46.000 And if you've bought five years, whatever it is, I think that's that's a net plus.

00:17:53.220 Obviously, we disagree. We lost 16 soldiers. We've had hundreds more wounded. We've alienated our allies in the region who are now talking about not letting us have a base in places like the UAE.

00:18:04.980 The military bases don't look good to them anymore because it just makes them a target. Iran can't hit us. So they're hitting all of our friends. 0.96

00:18:11.620 There's been devastation there.

00:18:12.720 They're not going to make the investments that they said they're going to make in the United States.

00:18:15.680 They're going to rebuild their own countries that just got bombed as a result of our war that we didn't consult with anybody about. 0.92

00:18:21.560 And Iran now realizes it has this huge tool that it can use against us and the world, which is control of the Strait of Hormuz. 0.94

00:18:29.280 And they can get it, even Trump marveled, just by dropping a drone. 0.90

00:18:32.940 It's so easy for them, which they've never done before.

00:18:35.920 This was not a problem.

00:18:36.920 This seems to be our number one goal now in bringing this thing to an end, to regain control of the straight, you know, the Western world, which is something we had before we launched the war.

00:18:46.220 So it's just I totally disagree with you.

00:18:49.300 I just think the costs have been enormous and they're not worth the gains.

00:18:52.320 And now the irony that we're talking about, oh, maybe we'll wind up with a deal that's like kind of as good as or maybe slightly better than the Obama JCPOA, which Trump eviscerated on his first term, saying it was the worst deal ever.

00:19:08.740 And now, let's face it, he's begging to have that deal back so he can save face and make it look like this is a win.

00:19:16.520 The very deal he said was horrible and that evaporated because of him.

00:19:22.320 Yeah. But the key difference, though, like Obama didn't bomb Iran and devastate his economy, then cut a deal. Right. After that deal, Iranian power around the region was waxing rather than waning. And we're going to be in a situation where I think its power will not be the same for a very long time. And that's an upside.

00:19:41.220 Okay. The problem we have, though, is if it goes the other way and we don't get a good deal. And now what you have is Iran is more empowered than ever. Now it's emerging as one of the four global powers because it can exercise control over the Strait of Hormuz and hijack the world economy and effectively bring a president to his knees because Trump is the one in there begging right now for a deal, not Iran.

00:20:08.440 They're like, we don't care. 0.83

00:20:10.140 Go ahead and hit yet another one of our ships, which you already sunk to the bottom of the

00:20:13.800 ocean.

00:20:14.240 That's never been our source of power.

00:20:16.240 Go ahead and hit another one of our airplanes. 0.67

00:20:18.620 Go ahead and drop bombs on another military target, all of which you've eviscerated already. 0.99

00:20:22.980 We don't care. 0.98

00:20:24.420 We see you are suffering, you, President Trump.

00:20:28.320 And that's a win for us.

00:20:29.860 The longer we can make this economic pain go on and we can take way more than you can.

00:20:34.500 We're basically suicide bombers over here.

00:20:36.560 We will 100 percent throw our offspring and ourselves on the grenade as long as we can take some of you down. 0.96

00:20:43.000 That's how they are. And the one they're looking at is President Trump and his political fortunes.

00:20:48.460 That's what they're trying to ramp up the pressure on.

00:20:51.220 And that piece of their strategy is working because they are whatever you want to say about them. 0.82

00:20:56.380 Tough M efforts. Yeah, they're religious fanatics, right? 0.89

00:21:00.440 So it's a little bit trying to, this exaggeration, a little bit trying like to negotiate with Khmer Rouge or the shiny path. 0.88

00:21:07.000 So there is a game of chicken there, de facto control of the strait and our blockade, which if the blockade just held for seven months or something, you would have a good chance of just the Iranian state totally running out of cash. 0.96

00:21:20.420 But we can't do that so long as they control the strait, right, because they exact pain on us. 0.98

00:21:25.820 So my guess, again, is that ultimately we'll get a deal. 0.94

00:21:29.840 This will be a big setback for Iran.

00:21:31.860 If you're starting from a blank piece of paper and doing this over again, you wouldn't do

00:21:36.760 it exactly this way.

00:21:37.640 You would do more planning in advance.

00:21:39.740 But again, I think it'll end up being a net plus.

00:21:43.040 I hope you're right.

00:21:44.160 I hope you're right.

00:21:45.140 I'm not one of those crazies who's rooting against us as a result of my opposition.

00:21:49.880 I still want us to win. 1.00

00:21:51.420 I want Iran to fail. 0.99

00:21:52.760 I want only good things for the United States and certainly for our troops. 1.00

00:21:57.000 It's just a question of how and whether the likelihood, what the likelihood is.

00:22:02.280 This just in, Vice President Vance is headed to the White House right now, which last I

00:22:06.980 checked is not in Islamabad.

00:22:10.560 We don't know whether he's going, you guys.

00:22:15.280 U.S. media accompanying J.D. Vance were earlier instructed to be ready for departure at 9

00:22:20.220 a.m. Washington time.

00:22:21.540 but there's been no updates since. And then there was an update from Lucas Tomlinson of Fox News

00:22:28.780 that the vice president is now headed to the White House. That's not great. Again,

00:22:35.800 we don't know whether he'll wind up going or not. And if he doesn't go, it's not happening.

00:22:41.100 He's, you know, he's the linchpin. Charles, did you see the Wall Street Journal piece

00:22:46.280 over the weekend on, you know, President Trump and the alleged fears that have been gripping him

00:22:53.300 as this thing spins it closer and closer to quagmire. It was titled, Behind Trump's Public

00:22:58.900 Bravado on the War, He Grapples with His Own Fears. I haven't read it, but it's been relayed

00:23:04.780 to me by so many people that I feel as if I have. Okay, all right. Because in this piece,

00:23:11.400 It basically it reveals a lot, including that Trump was so erratic around the capture of that second pilot that they had to keep him out of the room as they got the minute by minute updates.

00:23:24.620 They believed his impatience would not be helpful.

00:23:27.780 They talk about how he's been losing his focus over and over, that he does not want a ground invasion.

00:23:35.120 He has fears over that.

00:23:36.280 he has fears of becoming Jimmy Carter, that he does want to seem unstable, which I actually

00:23:42.860 believe. I don't believe the people who are like, it's time that he'd be 25th Amendment-ed.

00:23:46.580 I don't agree with that. I think Trump is, he's not being responsible in his rhetoric. You don't

00:23:51.700 threaten to wipe out a civilization of, you know, civilian population. But I never thought he did

00:23:57.120 it because he really wanted to do that and that he was truly crazy. I did think it was a negotiation

00:24:01.860 tactic. And it does talk about how he remarked to his advisors how impressive the military was

00:24:09.400 seeming in awe of the scale of the bombs. He had done little to sell the American public on the

00:24:15.080 war. He knew that. And he's been frustrated that he's not getting the same kind of praise as the

00:24:20.980 military is. None of this reflects well. And the journal, as we know, Charles, is owned by Rupert

00:24:29.480 Murdoch, who we learned from other reporting, is one of the main people who talked Trump into this

00:24:34.080 war. He was very, very pro, not just Rupert personally, but Rupert personally, but top

00:24:40.360 people from Fox, including General Jack Keane, my old pal Mark Thiessen, and others. So it's

00:24:46.040 interesting that such a piece should come from the journal. Your thoughts?

00:24:48.820 Well, this brings me back to one of my long-standing theories about Trump,

00:24:52.840 which is that he is and will always be a real estate developer and this is a good thing sometimes

00:25:01.840 but in the context of the presidency it can be a real problem for a couple of reasons first

00:25:07.400 because Trump does seem to believe that he can bend reality to his words which when you're

00:25:14.900 dealing with the sandbox which contracts often are can be true in business if you go in and you

00:25:22.560 make your demands, even if you're wild, it can work out, but is much less likely to work

00:25:29.840 in constitutional politics and in global politics as well. And I do think there is some extent

00:25:36.960 here to which Trump has thought that if he just says what he would like to happen,

00:25:43.120 then it would happen. And that's not really how reality works. The second reason is that

00:25:50.020 when you are dealing in real estate especially in a place in New York especially in the 70s

00:25:55.220 and the 80s then saying anything that comes into your head or being wild can help you go into a

00:26:04.640 closed room you talk to people who are probably a little bit surprised maybe intimidated by you

00:26:09.380 and you say crazy stuff and you get what you want and we know that this is one of the reasons that

00:26:15.020 Donald Trump is so rich. But when you're the president, your words matter. So even if you

00:26:19.780 say something that works, you've still said it. I thought this back in his first term when he

00:26:25.920 would praise Kim Jong-un. Yeah, that seems to have worked. But the president of the United 0.98

00:26:32.560 States should not be praising a dictator. Likewise here, sure, maybe it works to say you will wipe

00:26:40.520 out a civilization. I did love that he subsequently wrote, God bless the Iranian people. So they're

00:26:44.800 the same message. He was going to wipe out the civilization and bless them. But he shouldn't

00:26:50.620 have said that. That's not a thing. Even in the context of a great debate, that is not a thing

00:26:55.900 that an American president can say. There are rules. And so when I watch him here, I see somebody

00:27:03.420 who is applying a skill set that is different to that which is expected of the presidency. Now,

00:27:10.360 sometimes that's actually quite refreshing. I'm not somebody who always dislikes this in Trump.

00:27:16.240 I do think sometimes you need a guy who comes to Washington and just sort of says,

00:27:20.120 but that's nonsense. The way you're doing it is stupid and shakes everything up. And there have 1.00

00:27:25.600 been some advantages to having him in our politics as well as downsides, but it's just not going to

00:27:30.500 work here. You do need to build a coalition. You do need to set out your aims. You do need to talk

00:27:36.980 in a way that is appropriate for the presidency. And I just haven't seen that from the beginning,

00:27:41.800 which is what I always describe as the original sin, as this adventure in Iran, which I'm not 0.98

00:27:46.760 intrinsically opposed to. And another thing that plays a role here, Megan, clearly, is the success 0.57

00:27:54.140 of the Venezuelan operation, I think, inclined him to think that this could be easy, short,

00:28:00.600 and very successful as well. I analogize it a little bit to our success in the initial phase

00:28:06.800 of the Afghan war, just taking Kabul and toppling the Taliban made us, George W. Bush, think, well,

00:28:12.200 we can do the same thing in Baghdad, which was a more difficult proposition. Now, both Afghanistan

00:28:16.680 and Iraq involved extensive ground operations, obviously, in a way. We had guys in the ground

00:28:21.380 in Venezuela briefly and Iran as well, but we're not talking about that here. But I think the same

00:28:25.480 thing was at play. I got this incredibly proficient military. We just grabbed this guy dead of night.

00:28:32.340 We can do anything we want. And again, this plays into just Trump's inherent optimism. Like his

00:28:37.180 critics very often, they, you know, focus on the American carnage Trump, you know, that phrase from

00:28:42.640 the first inaugural, he's so apocalyptic and so negative. Now I can obviously, there's an aspect

00:28:47.340 to him, but I think the more pervasive one is just an overwhelming optimism. I talked to him

00:28:52.400 about this once during the lawfare campaign before the 2024 primaries when they're trying

00:28:57.920 to throw him in jail. I was like, do you ever lose sleep at night? He's like, no, I just figure,

00:29:03.380 I assume everything's going to work out. And if it doesn't work out, I'll change course and find

00:29:09.000 some other way out of it. And that's worked for him his entire adult life. And he's applying that

00:29:13.920 here as well, for better or worse. Yes. You know, it's a very interesting point that the skill set

00:29:20.960 that he has rhetorically is just, it's mismatched to the moment. And, and it's, it has served him

00:29:27.420 and us well many times. And even the, you know, unpredictability of taking out Soleimani,

00:29:32.760 which I thought was great. I mean, that guy actually does have American blood on his hands 1.00

00:29:36.160 without question. And maybe it even could have been used here as well. If we had just taken out 0.62

00:29:42.140 the Ayatollah, you know, that, that would have been fraught for sure. You're taking out the 1.00

00:29:46.200 My counterfactual, by the way, runs in the opposite direction, Megan. If I get to have a do-over again, maybe what you do, you don't take the Ayatollah out. Make it clear you're not going to try to kill the regime. Instead, you're doing another 12-day war for two weeks or for three weeks that would perhaps keep the Iranians from going up the escalation ladder and closing the strait. 0.83

00:30:05.660 And then you degrade a lot of stuff and then you can, you know, close the book at your discretion and go away and focus on other stuff, which I think Trump ultimately would want to do. 0.82

00:30:15.020 But once you make it clear this is an existential war for the regime, there's no incentive for it not to take the most extreme steps it can in retaliation.

00:30:23.780 Yeah. And they're enjoying playing it out like they they can take a lot of pain.

00:30:29.260 You know, it's like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. How many times did they waterboard that guy?

00:30:34.180 like he didn't care um and and that's that's the mentality of a lot of these like religious

00:30:41.360 zealots in the middle east they don't care about themselves their pain their loss of life the loss

00:30:47.800 of life of their children in the way we do i mean they'll they'll exact retribution against you for 0.99

00:30:53.540 for you know taking it or risking it but they'll expend their child's life in order to advance the

00:31:00.120 regime. That's what we're dealing with. You know, so it's like it's that's why it's like just don't

00:31:05.060 start it. Just don't don't start something like this. Then you don't risk the escalatory ladder

00:31:09.040 where the next thing you know, they've discovered this thing with the Strait of Hormuz, which has

00:31:12.520 changed the world economy, which is turning our our friends against us. Already we're seeing

00:31:17.900 discussions in Europe about jet fuel over the summer and flights being canceled, like things

00:31:23.900 like that that will drive those poll numbers down even more charles well or do it but build the case

00:31:30.800 we can win this this is not like a war game scenario where we're looking at a potential

00:31:39.280 conflict with china and there are some outcomes where you say we would lose we can win this we

00:31:47.020 are infinitely more powerful than them but and i'm not criticizing this we're not prepared to 0.78

00:31:53.380 do what it would take because the public doesn't want that we could we'd lose a lot of people

00:32:00.740 but we could win this and if if we had been invaded here and the reaction of the public

00:32:08.620 was different we would fight back and we would win and we would lose people and then we would

00:32:15.020 move on so it's not that we're in this situation because we're weak we're in this situation because

00:32:22.080 as you say, we have a desire to stay alive and see our fellow citizens stay alive. And the regime

00:32:33.420 does not. Now, I don't think he would have been able to build a coalition in the way that George

00:32:41.020 W. Bush did after 9-11. I agree. But if Trump had made the case, and over a sustained period of time

00:32:51.220 said, what he now says. Look, this has been a thorn in our side for 46 years. They've killed

00:32:58.040 a lot of our servicemen. They are built atop an ideology that hates us. His slogan is death to

00:33:06.840 America. They are building nuclear weapons. And once they have those nuclear weapons, then they

00:33:13.300 will become like North Korea, essentially immune from our influence. We have to do something about 0.94

00:33:19.800 this. If he had built that case, told people it would cost American lives, told people that it

00:33:27.140 would lead to increased gas prices, and told people that there was a risk of trouble in the

00:33:32.800 Straits of Hormuz, and I think we probably have had a better plan for the Straits of Hormuz if he

00:33:37.820 had done this as a result, as Rich points out, we might be looking at a different calculation.

00:33:42.920 at that point the escalation you're describing is baked in because again it's not for a lack

00:33:50.440 of technical ability we could open the Strait of Hormuz we could own the Strait of Hormuz if we

00:33:55.500 wanted I mean we could go and invade Britain tomorrow when we would win we would own that

00:33:59.500 country if we wanted we just don't want to do that and we don't want to go all out here either

00:34:06.180 and so i think the big problem for him was that he didn't ever make that case he did it in the

00:34:13.240 middle of the night and then as we were talking about earlier rich is absolutely right trump

00:34:17.420 actually has been an iran hawk for a very long time but it is also true that if you ask the

00:34:21.600 average voter who isn't familiar with all of that what they thought he was campaigning on in 2016

00:34:27.460 2020 and 2024 it was no new wars in the middle east that's the vibe that's the tone uh that they

00:34:35.000 heard. And the juxtaposition between those two things just makes this impossible. So I think he

00:34:39.660 set himself up to be placed into this problem, where they can escalate in ways that we are not

00:34:49.080 able, but not willing to counter. Yep, totally agree. You're right. The average person doesn't

00:34:54.960 realize, oh, there was an exception to the promise he made. I mean, I could play you a soundbite that

00:34:59.220 would keep us here for four minutes of Trump saying, no new wars, no new wars, no new wars in

00:35:03.740 the Middle East. These wars in the Middle East keep you bogged down. They cost billions of

00:35:07.540 dollars. It's money we could be spending on our people here at home. They get distracted. They

00:35:13.060 never end well. It's quagmire. I mean, we've got the soundbite. There was no like, but I might

00:35:19.440 launch one against Iran. And by the way, the intelligence was, Tulsi Gabbard testified to this

00:35:25.240 a couple of weeks before we started the war, that Iran was not close to having a nuclear weapon,

00:35:30.000 that our strikes against the three sites with Iranian or with the nuclear facilities had been

00:35:36.140 very effective. As Trump said, they'd been basically obliterated and that they were not

00:35:41.140 close to getting a nuke. And that was one of the reasons why he knew people weren't going to buy it

00:35:45.060 because he'd done those June strikes and we kind of bought what he sold then. And if you bought

00:35:49.500 what he sold then, you were not going to buy that they were close to a nuclear weapon six months

00:35:53.380 later. Here is something Glenn Greenwald pointed out online is a good point. He writes, if you ask

00:35:59.060 15 people who are MAGA followers what the Iran war aim was, you will hear 15 different answers

00:36:04.220 because Trump gave a different goal every day. Here's what he said was his main goal on the day

00:36:09.260 the war started. And he's got a Washington Post headline, Trump, colon, freedom for Iran is goal

00:36:16.400 of major military operation. And I remember that too. That was the initial goal, freedom. They were

00:36:22.500 going to be free. We were going to do regime change. And now he keeps saying that we've done

00:36:26.500 regime change, which we clearly haven't. That's a lie too. And it's so transparent. Honestly,

00:36:32.780 it's one thing for Trump to be like, you know, the economy's hot. It's the hottest it's ever

00:36:38.840 been. And you're like, okay, that's puffery. He wants people to feel good. The better they feel,

00:36:43.480 the more they spend. But like, this is serious stuff. Don't tell me there's been regime change

00:36:49.180 because three guys named Abdul are gone and three guys named Mohammed are now in. That's basically

00:36:56.200 how it is. The only difference, as far as I can tell, is that the three new guys seem more radical

00:37:01.540 than the three old guys, and there's no fatwa against a nuclear weapon. We found one sort of

00:37:07.300 nice guy we can talk to who's the Speaker of the Parliament, but he's not actually in control.

00:37:13.300 You know, you've got the IRGC calling the shots. They seem to be really wanting to queer all

00:37:17.960 deals on ceasefires. And then you've got, I don't know, whoever's still in there, 0.79

00:37:22.380 The Ayatollah's incapacitated son, who may or may not be still alive or in a coma, we have no idea.

00:37:28.460 But he and the people around him are definitely more radical than the dead Ayatollah, according to all the reports.

00:37:33.220 So it's yet another thing we just don't know about.

00:37:36.700 And here's the latest on the numbers.

00:37:40.120 This just came out yesterday via NBC.

00:37:43.460 One third of Americans approve of this war.

00:37:46.920 One third.

00:37:48.460 You've got two thirds of the country who are against this.

00:37:51.000 And the only people who are in the approved category are Republicans.

00:37:56.120 Seventy four percent of Republicans approve one quarter of the Republican Party disapproves.

00:38:02.900 But the share of Republicans who disapprove of the war is higher than the share who disapprove of his job overall.

00:38:10.920 So there's a healthy amount of Republicans who can still, like me, say, I don't disapprove of Trump.

00:38:16.840 I have not abandoned Trump like some of my friends have.

00:38:21.000 But I strongly disapprove of this choice.

00:38:24.040 And he's really trying to start a fight with me and others, and I just refuse.

00:38:27.780 I'm not going there.

00:38:29.080 He enjoys it too much, and it's pointless.

00:38:32.340 But I still approve of his general approach to his domestic agenda.

00:38:37.080 I really would love for him to get back to it.

00:38:39.740 NBC reports that 13% of self-described supporters of the MAGA movement now say they disapprove of Trump's handling of the war,

00:38:48.160 which is interesting that he's lost 13% of like the core, core MAGA, I mean, which I did not think

00:38:53.980 was movable in any way. Anyway, he sees that. And while Trump may tell you he feels so great about

00:38:59.340 the MAGA numbers, 80% of independents, 82% disapprove of this war. 82. It's not a fringe,

00:39:07.760 like the majority, the two thirds of the country wants this to stop. That's why, Rich,

00:39:13.980 Trump wants it to stop. He's listened to Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin and Netanyahu and Thiessen

00:39:21.260 and Keane and all of the much more hawkish people who are in his ear. But that NBC poll and the

00:39:27.980 Reuters-Ipsos poll that came out today and the AP poll and the Pew poll and all the polls that

00:39:32.880 have come out now that all repeat this number, two-thirds disapprove. He sees that too. He's

00:39:37.920 not immune to that by any stretch. Yeah, well, he hadn't, again, as we've repeated over and over

00:39:42.520 again. He didn't build a case for it publicly prior to the launching of the war, and the war

00:39:46.360 wasn't popular at the outset. So usual political physics say support goes down for a war over time

00:39:54.020 rather than growing unless they're really unusual circumstances, or you're winning a smashing

00:39:58.360 victory, and this so far has been fairly inconclusive. On the regime change thing,

00:40:03.820 it's absurd they're saying that the regime has changed. Again, key aspect of Trump's character,

00:40:08.860 He thinks he can bend reality to his words. Benefits to this, downsides. Benefits, it can often get him through obstacles that you would think are going to stop him.

00:40:19.060 Downsides, it's just it's detached from reality, right? So that's what we're seeing here.

00:40:23.780 I think regime change, despite that Washington Post headline, it was something obviously he mentioned in that white-headed initial statement about the war.

00:40:33.420 You know, we hope the Iranian people will rise up after the shooting stops.

00:40:38.700 But there are a lot of other objectives that have been consistent from the beginning, whether it's further degrading their nuclear program or their missile program that have been consistent.

00:40:51.140 And I think we're succeeding on.

00:40:54.600 But I never thought you could change the regime from the air unless you got exceptionally lucky.

00:40:59.380 Then you'd not have any control over what would come next.

00:41:03.420 Now, I think there are signs the regime is fracturing. 0.86

00:41:05.220 This is one reason we don't really know whether we can believe what's coming from the Iranian side.

00:41:09.720 And there's a chance that fracture grows or, you know, as I mentioned earlier, that discontent rises six months, 12 months from now.

00:41:18.700 But to underline a point you were making earlier, Megan, this is a regime that just a couple of months ago slaughtered tens of thousands of people in the streets.

00:41:25.980 We don't know what the actual number is. 0.98

00:41:27.640 So obviously they do not have the best interests of the Iranian people at heart. 0.91

00:41:30.700 So if you're going to lose some bridges, it's not going to affect them. Right. If you're willing to kill your own people and the cause of your regime's own survival, it's not as though infrastructure projects are going to move you as well. 0.98

00:41:42.200 So this, again, goes to something we've all been saying here. These guys, the Iranian regime, they're not real estate developers.

00:41:48.120 They don't have rational calculus the same way we do. They have an entirely different worldview. 0.94

00:41:53.800 Yeah. This just in that Steve Wyckoff and Jared Kushner are also still in the US. The plane that

00:42:06.760 was supposed to take them this morning from Miami to Europe and to Pakistan did not leave until

00:42:12.640 several minutes ago and is now instead making its way to Washington, D.C. So they're heading to see

00:42:18.600 Trump, as is the vice president, and no one is going to Islamabad right now, at least. Doesn't

00:42:24.020 mean it won't happen later today, because the Iranians are still saying, we're not coming. 0.92

00:42:29.520 We're not going to be there. They're mad because we have continued our blockade of the Iranian 0.99

00:42:37.820 ports in the Strait of Hormuz, and they want us to remove that. And Trump, I understand why. He's

00:42:44.260 like that's my that's my pressure point on you i'm not removing that boot off of your neck

00:42:48.460 until we cut a deal and they're like we're not even going to talk about a deal until you

00:42:52.240 move your foot so that's where we are right now um waiting for something here's one other thing

00:42:58.100 he told joe kernan of cnbc charles to your to your point about the president's rhetoric and

00:43:04.900 does it does it work when we're on the subject of war here's thought four and when it's over

00:43:11.140 And it will end when it's over. You know, they want it to be over immediately. And I just looked at a little chart. World War One, four years and three months. World War Two, six years. Korean War, three years. Vietnam, 19 years. Iraq, eight years. I'm five months. OK, five months. I would have won Vietnam very quickly.

00:43:32.520 I would have, if I were president, I would have won Iraq in the same amount of time that we won because essentially we've won here.

00:43:40.940 OK, I mean, people can play games.

00:43:42.980 The Democrats can say, well, we should have done better no matter what.

00:43:46.980 If I did it in one week, they should have said they'd say we should have done better.

00:43:50.680 Look at Venezuela. I took it over in 45 minutes. 0.83

00:43:53.140 It was basically a 45 minute.

00:43:55.180 By the way, a very strong military country.

00:43:58.120 And we took it over in a day.

00:43:59.920 but let's be nice. But we basically took it over in 45 minutes. We took it over during the attack

00:44:04.840 in 45 minutes. So he would have won Vietnam very quickly had he been president. It would have been

00:44:11.740 won. It would have been quick. Charles, thoughts? Yeah, we didn't go to Vietnam today. He is

00:44:17.960 ridiculous when he talks like this. He does it on the economy as well. And I think to your earlier 0.99

00:44:24.960 question. I think this is the sort of thing that is starting to annoy people. The reason that he

00:44:30.120 was reelected was that people believed that the economy would be considerably better under him,

00:44:35.280 and it's not. Now, I don't think that that is necessarily his fault. I think actually we look

00:44:40.060 far too much to our presidents and to Washington DC in general for economic outcomes. Economics

00:44:47.180 doesn't really work like that. But Trump does talk like that. Both parties do, but Trump is

00:44:51.680 particularly brogadacious when he does it. He says, I alone can fix. He says that we're entering

00:44:57.920 a new golden age and so forth. And he's doing the same thing here. And I hear underconfidence

00:45:05.600 in his words. I hear a certain fear, perhaps this relates to the Wall Street Journal piece I didn't

00:45:11.660 read, that Trump knows that from the average person's point of view, again, and I will

00:45:18.800 distinguish this from my own view, which is not against this action per se. And I think the

00:45:24.980 Iranian regime is a real problem. But I think from the average person's point of view, who

00:45:30.200 rationally does not follow politics in the way that we do, but is by no means ignorant,

00:45:37.660 the United States was trundling along. And then all of a sudden, we went into Iran. And now gas

00:45:45.120 prices are 25 plus percent higher that's how they see it and whether we have won or lost or whatever

00:45:53.400 games the democrats are supposed to play and they are playing games of course it's politics

00:45:57.700 the public is going to need to be persuaded that there is more to it than that but they're not

00:46:04.040 being it's just not good enough to go in in the middle of the night give a two minute speech in

00:46:10.380 the middle of the night at mar-a-lago in a trump ad and then to say well we won when people are

00:46:16.560 looking at gas prices and they're looking at an economy that not because of this but in general

00:46:21.440 is not particularly different than it was at the end of the biden administration i just think people

00:46:25.660 find that tiresome because it doesn't pay the bills and trump should understand that and look

00:46:31.860 if he was the sort of person who like you know me says well i look presidents don't run the economy

00:46:39.320 These things are very complicated.

00:46:41.520 Policy changes take years to kick in and so forth.

00:46:45.780 That would be one thing.

00:46:46.760 But he's not, Meghan.

00:46:47.540 We all know he's not.

00:46:48.520 He thinks that things are wonderful and perfect when he's president and they're awful when he's not.

00:46:54.400 And he said it right there. 0.63

00:46:55.760 I mean, I'm pleased he didn't go back to World War II and say that unlike that feckless Eisenhower fellow, he'd had it done in 1942.

00:47:02.720 But it's just quite boring outside of campaigning. 0.85

00:47:06.400 And there's just going to come a point 11 years in at which people say, even when he's right, oh, could you give it a rest?

00:47:14.580 Yeah. You know, Rich, I've been wondering whether Trump thinks his Trump card is this new guy who is in confirmation hearings today to become the new chairman of the Fed, right?

00:47:27.900 that he calls Jerome Powell too late, too late because he won't lower interest rates. And Trump

00:47:33.580 really thinks that's the key to unleashing the economy, that it worked to his advantage in his

00:47:39.360 first term. And he's been begging Powell to do it. Powell won't do it because we still have

00:47:43.120 inflation from Joe Biden. And if you lower interest rates, it tends to drive up inflation.

00:47:48.200 But Trump really believes that it will unleash his economy if he can get interest rates lower

00:47:53.340 to bet on borrowing homes and so on. And this guy's going to get confirmed. He seemed pretty

00:47:59.620 milquetoast today at his confirmation hearings. I haven't heard any rumblings of he's not going

00:48:03.880 to get confirmed. And Powell's term ends in May, I think, right? It's like next month. It's very

00:48:09.120 soon. And so I've been wondering whether Trump thinks that's, again, his Trump card on the

00:48:14.960 economy. Like, I'm taking a beating on these gas prices, but I'm going to have a guy who is much

00:48:20.380 more amenable to my opinions, in charge of interest rates, just in time for the months

00:48:28.380 leading up to the midterms. Yeah, he's probably thinking that. This is another aspect in which

00:48:32.540 he's a real estate developer. Real estate developers always want low interest rates.

00:48:35.720 And this is something Trump's been consistent on the last 10 years. He always wants interest rates

00:48:39.500 lower no matter what. And I think Warsh may agree with him here in the short term, but he is a real

00:48:46.060 pro, Kevin Warsh. He's going to be there for 10 years. He's not a lackey. And it wouldn't shock

00:48:51.760 me if by the end of Trump's term here, he hates Kevin Warsh, too, because he hasn't done his

00:48:57.380 bidding. But I think a lot of, in terms of the midterms, a lot of the economic factors are kind

00:49:03.320 of baked in the cake. The gas prices have not helped, obviously. But it's hard to see huge

00:49:10.840 changes before then. They're changing people's attitudes one way or the other about the economy,

00:49:15.420 and they're dissatisfied about the economy.

00:49:17.260 And this is the key thing.

00:49:19.060 This is what's hurting Trump most, right,

00:49:20.600 is that his strength forever has been successful business guy,

00:49:25.460 knows how to make the economy grow, did it in the first term,

00:49:29.180 especially if you put the last COVID year aside,

00:49:31.740 which people weren't inclined to do in 2020,

00:49:33.920 but were inclined to do in retrospect,

00:49:35.920 and his numbers on the economy are the worst they've ever been.

00:49:39.620 So that's what's driving the midterms.

00:49:42.540 That's what accounts for his approval rating being down.

00:49:45.260 And it's been going down for a year now.

00:49:47.340 I think the approval disapproved crossed in May of last year.

00:49:51.300 It had about a 47 percent approval.

00:49:52.860 It's been down steadily since.

00:49:54.700 But it's overwhelmingly driven by the economy.

00:49:56.900 Now it's in the 30s.

00:49:58.280 Now it's in the 30s.

00:49:59.160 Well, if you go to the average, it's about 40.

00:50:01.900 Yeah, the RCP average.

00:50:03.500 But, yeah, we don't normally see it in the 30s.

00:50:05.980 Like, that's surprising.

00:50:07.160 A year ago, according to the NBC News poll, he was at 45 percent approved, 55 percent disapproved.

00:50:13.840 Now he's at 37% approve and 63% disapprove.

00:50:19.900 There was another poll that just hit today that had similar numbers.

00:50:23.800 They're all starting to come back right around there, you know, high 30s, which is, that's

00:50:27.780 not great, not great at all.

00:50:29.360 Okay, we're going to come back and turn the page and talk about the latest poll that just

00:50:32.780 dropped on Kamala Harris and the other top Democrat contenders and the GOP side and ask

00:50:37.860 you guys what you think.

00:50:39.040 And plus, we've got some amazing Kamala sound.

00:50:41.180 Amazing.

00:50:41.780 Stand by.

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00:51:31.380 it's an nr day here at the mk show go ahead and sign up for nr at nationalreview.com you can get

00:51:44.640 all of their content without the annoying ads and you can get the audio version of their articles

00:51:50.340 it is a great way oftentimes guys i am starting my day putting the makeup on and i just press play

00:51:56.960 on NR article after NR article, and it makes life so much easier, makes news consumption so much

00:52:01.800 easier. And your AI is very good. Not everybody's AI reader is good, but the one on NR.com is. So

00:52:08.960 thank you for that. Okay. There is a new poll out just now from Echelon, likely voters, and it looks

00:52:16.380 at both the Democratic field and the Republican field for 2028. I'm going to start with the

00:52:21.700 Republican field, even though this is because we're adults, so we're good at delayed gratification.

00:52:26.960 because the Kamala Harris sound that I have queued up for you guys is the greatest thing

00:52:30.600 you will see or hear all day. It's a gift from me to you. We have the best sound bites,

00:52:35.360 but delayed gratification. Let's start with GOP since we just got off of Trump and Iran. 0.58

00:52:39.940 They are showing Vance at 42% and Rubio at 14, which is quite a drop down. Rubio had been

00:52:48.480 higher in an earlier poll we had seen. Trump Jr., that's Don Trump Jr., at 10%,

00:52:56.160 And Ron DeSantis at eight percent. Charlie, that's you and your wife and your friends there.

00:53:02.000 There you go. The eight percent there. So Vance, obviously the heavy favorite, given the name recognition and given his current role. 0.96

00:53:08.260 But there's been a lot of debate within Republican circles, Rich, about whether this whole thing.

00:53:14.640 Could sink. I don't think it could make J.D. Vance. I don't know if he comes back from the Middle East with some huge win.

00:53:21.440 they capitulated, they folded, they gave up everything. Maybe, but that's not realistic.

00:53:27.180 So like, this does seem fraught. And we discussed on the show last week, I think,

00:53:31.980 it feels a little like making Kamala Harris the borders are, you know, like,

00:53:36.940 thanks so much for the assignment. Is there anything else I could do instead of this thing?

00:53:44.080 So how do you see this playing out for him? And also just zooming out to what's happening in

00:53:49.720 the Republican Party right now, you know, with the more hawkish neocon group here and then the

00:53:54.240 more isolationist group and the proxy fight over J.D. versus Marco, et cetera. So how do you see it

00:53:59.640 all playing out there? So I don't think anyone's blaming J.D. Vance if the negotiations fail in

00:54:05.360 Islamabad, assuming there's another round, which I think there will be eventually. I think the main

00:54:11.360 political risk to him of the war is somehow getting separated from Donald Trump. And that

00:54:18.720 It hasn't happened yet, right? 0.98

00:54:19.740 Because he's going to the Lama bot. 0.82

00:54:21.200 And J.D. has every incentive to keep that from happening. 0.92

00:54:23.860 If you believe all the reporting in the big New York Times piece on Trump's decision to go to war, J.D. apparently is the only guy actually told Trump his opinion, which I think speaks well of it.

00:54:33.800 He's like, I don't support this, sir.

00:54:35.460 But if you decide to do it, I'll be with you.

00:54:38.020 And all indications are he has been a loyal soldier and Trump's appreciate Trump appreciates it.

00:54:44.260 So the big X factor in terms of 2028 is just Trump for J.D.

00:54:48.140 If Trump decides to don't like him anymore, Trump decides just to screw him for the sake of it, that would be very bad. But I'm doubtful that Marco Rubio will actually run. He's at this incredibly prominent place in American politics and American government. He's doing things that he believes in deeply. We knocked off Maduro. Maybe we're coming around to Cuba when the Iran thing is over.

00:55:14.020 And we're really going to believe that he's going to give all that up, give up the eighth floor of the State Department, which is an awesome space, give up, in effect, an Air Force One that he has on his own, his own version, knockoff version of Air Force One, going, being greeted as a head of state in foreign countries to start driving in a rented car from Pizza Ranch restaurant to Pizza Ranch restaurant in Iowa.

00:55:35.200 Sounds amazing.

00:55:36.100 Probably be upward, you know, an underdog campaign against J.D. Vance, maybe, but I'm kind of doubtful.

00:55:42.020 So refresh my memory on that, Rich.

00:55:44.920 I guess I haven't really paid any attention in the past elections as to who in the administration decides they are going to run for the nomination and whether they have to leave their post.

00:55:55.200 So is that I mean, is it typically like if you're in the administration and you want to run for the primary nomination, you got to leave what, like a year and a half prior to the end of the president's term?

00:56:06.920 Yeah, I don't know what the general rule of thumb is, but I think it's especially fraud if you're the Secretary of State.

00:56:13.400 And the Secretary of State is like a serious job, and supposedly has other jobs too, like National Security Advisor.

00:56:18.380 And he's got National Security Advisor too.

00:56:19.520 Yeah, so you just have to say, I'm giving up the gig of a lifetime for what could be, long shots probably exaggerating it, but, you know, not a certain, you know, clear path to the nomination.

00:56:30.680 And a nomination that, you know, any nomination is worth having because in the abstract it's about a 50% chance of winning.

00:56:35.980 But, you know, he could have a president at 40 percent approval in 2028.

00:56:40.720 It could be very difficult for for Republicans.

00:56:43.360 And he's still young. So I don't know. Maybe maybe he does it.

00:56:46.720 But again, I'm just a little doubtful.

00:56:49.840 J.D.'s got another factor to worry about here, Charlie, which is, you know, as the president's fortunes go, so go your fortunes if you're the VP.

00:56:59.760 You know, it's not like he's an outsider.

00:57:01.360 It's everything Trump has done. He's going to be asked to explain and defend and he's going to be in that Kamala Harris position of like on the view.

00:57:10.940 Is there anything you would have done differently? And President Trump is watching.

00:57:14.440 And if you answer that wrong, you lose the most important endorsement you need.

00:57:19.740 But if you say there's nothing, you turn off an electorate that may be only approving of him by, you know, whatever, some small margin.

00:57:28.020 i think it's a problem on both sides of the coin the reason jd vance is polling at 40 or so i

00:57:35.140 imagine is because people know who he is and the reason that people know who he is is because he's

00:57:39.400 the vice president to trump and so if trump is unpopular then he will be the vice president

00:57:46.480 to the unpopular trump and that will be a problem but as you say if he tries to separate himself

00:57:53.580 from Trump, it will sound silly and unpersuasive. Also, Trump will go after him. And then his

00:58:01.320 fortunes will fall in that lane as well. The reason that Marco Rubio is lower is fewer people know

00:58:08.500 who he is. He's less closely associated with Trump. Now, if you are looking at 2028, that's

00:58:17.840 probably a problem. And if Rubio did run, he might have some of the same problems. But that's

00:58:23.240 probably good news for him if he thinks he might run later on that he's not so closely associated

00:58:29.040 because by that point he would be able to stand up and say well I think Trump got some things right

00:58:32.980 and here are the things that I think he got wrong so I do see this as a big problem for J.D. Vance

00:58:39.820 this is of course why it is extremely rare for vice presidents to win subsequent elections

00:58:48.920 The last one who did it was George H.W. Bush.

00:58:53.820 Reagan was very popular.

00:58:56.080 And Michael Dukakis was not.

00:58:59.400 And Joe Biden did it, but not immediately on the back end of the...

00:59:02.180 Well, that's true. That's true. Sorry.

00:59:03.560 For eight years as vice president.

00:59:05.000 Yeah, I meant directly.

00:59:05.660 And, you know, if you go back in American history,

00:59:08.820 it sort of mostly happens when the president dies,

00:59:11.660 as happened with Franklin Roosevelt and then with Harry Truman.

00:59:15.640 So this is just not a normal path.

00:59:18.160 So even Al Gore could not parlay Clinton's relative popularity into a win in 2000.

00:59:25.780 Well, I say that not because of Al Gore, but because of Bill Clinton.

00:59:28.740 That political scion, that gifted orator.

00:59:30.280 No, I meant because of Bill Clinton.

00:59:32.160 Like even in 2000, I should have said it the other way around.

00:59:34.940 Even Bill Clinton could not push Al Gore into the presidency in the year 2000.

00:59:41.020 I think it's quite clear that if Bill Clinton had been able to run for a third term in 2000,

00:59:47.800 And he'd have had a really good shot. But it just doesn't seem to happen. And so you're looking at intrinsic headwinds. And then the last thing I'd say is those headwinds are made worse by Trump being such a monumental figure, somebody who has dominated the last, at that point, it will have been 13 years of our politics, someone who has an almost cult-like following.

01:00:15.360 So J.D. Vance is going to rise and fall on the basis of Trump.

01:00:17.460 Well, I mean, to your point, Charlie, and I share this with you, whether it's Trump

01:00:22.660 or not Trump, I don't think most people want to be thinking about the president this much.

01:00:26.740 You know, you want a small executive branch.

01:00:30.420 I agree with you on that.

01:00:32.200 And when Trump is in there, you just, you devote so much time thinking about him because

01:00:38.440 he needs the press coverage. It's his oxygen. So he does all the stuff to get covered and the press

01:00:45.900 needs to sell papers and get clicks. So they run, you know, like dogs after the liver snaps. And

01:00:51.620 it's just, it's nonstop, which Trump loves, but I don't think is necessarily good for our country

01:00:57.780 and certainly not good for his would be successor. If, if you have a populace, it's like, I need a

01:01:03.800 break. I need it back. Like, I need somebody super boring who's not going to require any of

01:01:08.060 my attention. And that leads me to the Democrats, Rich. Because J.D. Vance or Marco, whomever it is,

01:01:16.460 maybe it's DeSantis, Charlie, they are going to have the gift of a terrible Democrat nominee.

01:01:24.760 I mean, truly, like, who scares us over on Team Blue? Like, the only people who I think the three

01:01:31.120 of us would like, who would be like, you know, that person would be very effective. We'll never

01:01:34.620 get through the Democrat primary. And so we're kind of in a good position too, because even if

01:01:41.800 our candidate is weakened, thanks to, you know, Trump being so controversial, there's such a mess

01:01:46.660 over there. And let me tell you something, Rich, right now, guess who's leading? I'll tell you

01:01:53.520 who's leading. Kamala Harris is at the top of the field in the latest poll that I just referenced, 0.99

01:01:59.140 echelon at 22%. 0.93

01:02:02.200 Now that's a lot lower than the one we read yesterday where she was at like 42%

01:02:05.820 and next was Gavin Newsom who was in the 20s. So these polls are all over the

01:02:09.940 board. But this one does show her leading at 22. This one shows Newsom right

01:02:13.800 behind her at 21. Buttigieg is third at 12.

01:02:17.760 AOC is fourth at 10. Josh Shapiro, fifth at

01:02:21.460 five. Cory Booker, who definitely is hetero

01:02:25.780 and very happily married, it comes in after Josh Shapiro at four. Mark Kelly of Arizona senator is

01:02:33.340 next at three. And J.B. Pritzker is last at three percent. Well, I guess tied tied for last with

01:02:40.280 Mark Kelly. So it's according to this poll right now between Harris and Newsom and Harris. She's

01:02:46.240 feeling good, you guys. She's starting to feel a little like a little swagger a few months out.

01:02:50.200 You know, Trump's not doing that great in the polls. She's like, how you like me now? So she

01:02:54.840 goes to this like woman, women of color seminar, uh, yesterday, and she's back to dispensing

01:03:02.600 all sorts of wisdom. Let me just show you how she kicked it off. Um, she really wanted people 0.96

01:03:07.700 to have a good morning here in SOT7. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Good morning.

01:03:15.880 Oh, God is good.

01:03:18.540 all right good morning good morning good morning welcome back to power rising

01:03:26.940 it's so hillary it's so hillary clinton like it's uncanny she's so alienating charlie i just can't

01:03:37.740 believe that i have had to spend so much of my adult life with donald trump and kamala harris

01:03:43.320 You know, I am hoping, I'm hoping that the reason that she's leading in the polls is a combination of name recognition, which obviously she should be, and also I think Democrats who wish she'd won.

01:03:59.700 And so they feel like they're answering the question, who do you wish had won the 2024 election?

01:04:05.380 And so they say Kamala Harris, because if they nominate her again, first off, she'd actually probably have a chance.

01:04:11.780 if the republicans really do sink to the 30s but second i just can't go through it again megan i've

01:04:19.980 been a bona fide kamala harris hater now you can do it we can do it together 2014 i mean if you go

01:04:28.460 back and you read my diatribes against her they go back 12 years that i i'd forgotten that i'd

01:04:36.640 forgotten that the she starts off there sounding as if she's drunk she always sounds as if she's

01:04:42.660 totally then she panders then she panders with the preacher stuff and then the laugh i mean

01:04:49.760 there's a little clip and it's everything that is wrong with her and she's at 40 what have i done

01:04:55.060 to deserve this all right hold your hold your fire because we got a lot to get through here so

01:04:59.860 you can't just give it all up on the first answer um rich don't think i didn't save some glory for

01:05:04.800 you i've got multiple sound bites here here she is with i don't know if this is a new accent but

01:05:10.580 it's kind of a new accent and she tries it out a couple times inside eight what gives me hope

01:05:16.080 is that we're gonna win the midterms we're going it's gonna be difficult and to say i'm gonna get 0.98

01:05:25.980 mine also and so don't count on me she's a she's a black woman who does a fake black woman accent i 0.54

01:05:37.860 i don't care you know if you do fake accents here you thought i gave all the goodness to charlie 0.98

01:05:43.680 but no rich lowry she gonna win yeah so if you do fake accents almost by definition you're a bad

01:05:49.560 politician and we're talking about you know trump's upsides downsides in the first segment

01:05:54.020 But one upside is that you can never get him to do a fake accent.

01:05:57.360 You know, he's always himself.

01:05:58.860 Even when he's reading a script that he's not particularly into or believes, you know, he kind of signals that.

01:06:03.340 He walked to McDonald's in a suit and tie.

01:06:06.040 Trump wouldn't change for anyone.

01:06:08.460 He goes to McDonald's, he's wearing a suit and tie, and that's how he just presents himself.

01:06:12.880 Well, and she, the reason she's doing that, Rich, is because she was at the Power Rising Summit.

01:06:19.300 And this is how they describe it. 0.84

01:06:21.020 a convening of black women 0.98

01:06:23.320 harnessing their collective wisdom

01:06:25.380 to create an actionable

01:06:27.060 agenda. Absolutely nothing.

01:06:29.380 Nothingness there. But black women 1.00

01:06:31.460 is the piece you need to hear. 1.00

01:06:33.040 Yeah, so she's got to go 1.00

01:06:35.180 like full black 1.00

01:06:37.080 accent, black scent,

01:06:39.280 and like, we're going to win.

01:06:40.960 Can we hear it one more time? Let's play it one more time,

01:06:43.040 Sadi. What gives me hope, Leah,

01:06:45.500 is that we're going to win the midterms.

01:06:51.020 It's going to be difficult.

01:06:53.300 And to say, I'm going to get mine also.

01:06:58.780 And so don't count on me.

01:07:02.020 Yeah.

01:07:02.920 There's a little more here.

01:07:04.600 Stand by.

01:07:05.160 It's not 11.

01:07:05.880 Watch.

01:07:06.620 It's been a bit controversial, but one of the things I've been saying is this.

01:07:10.000 As I have reflected on what has been going on, I've come to the realization that part of the issue is part of the frailty, I think, of human nature for some, is they are purely transactional people.

01:07:28.080 They're not pretending to be grounded in morals or values or principles.

01:07:33.900 They're not pretending.

01:07:34.960 They're literally not pretending.

01:07:36.140 they're in it for what they can get out of it their mantra is i'm gonna get mine

01:07:43.320 i think it's okay for us to to be a bit transactional too and to say i'm gonna get mine also

01:07:53.000 and so don't count on me to be a voter and be the backbone of the democratic party they should

01:08:03.140 count on the fact we're going to expect and they're going to have to know when they start

01:08:09.100 counting on the vote it's because they better produce if they win honestly i picture somebody

01:08:17.540 like professor carol swain looking at this like how dare you imitate me in this way right how dare

01:08:24.780 you pander to me with these fake, bizarre street accents as though that represents the black

01:08:34.260 experience. But what she was saying there, Rich, is substantively interesting because she's playing 0.65

01:08:39.400 the black woman card to a group of black women, which telegraphs pretty strongly to me. She is 0.56

01:08:45.360 going to run. She's basically saying, don't let them take your vote for granted. We matter and

01:08:51.580 we should get ours. Yes. So she's definitely running. What else is she going to do? It's

01:08:56.280 incredibly condescending, the act there. And it's kind of notable that she called out other people

01:09:00.340 for not pretending to have a core, where she does pretend to have a core, but it's just

01:09:05.880 pretending, right? This is a completely hollow figure. And then also it's a bit rich,

01:09:11.140 lambasting the Democratic establishment for not delivering when she was a senator herself and at

01:09:16.740 the center of democratic politics for a very, very long time. So I got to believe they made

01:09:21.940 her the nominee. Yeah. So I got it now. It was handed to her. She didn't win it. But I got to

01:09:26.600 believe that this is name ID that has her at the top of the polls. If not, it's it's very it's very

01:09:32.520 depressing as an American. But they're in the same position, Rich, as you and I talked about

01:09:37.760 that night that Joe Biden went down in that debate, June of 24. And you came on. It was late

01:09:45.800 at night we were all stunned that he had fallen apart and he was not able to spit out sentences

01:09:51.460 and we said that night he's he's done but we talked about it that night the very thing that

01:09:56.860 would go on to haunt the democrats for the entire remainder of the race which was how are they going

01:10:01.980 to replace the white guy with anyone other than the black woman who is next in line and they 0.98

01:10:09.520 couldn't so they went with her and now who's the number two on this list another white straight

01:10:15.320 Christian dude. Is this Democrat party gonna, I know they won't win, but are they really gonna

01:10:23.480 do that? Because who's the most important voting bloc of Team Blue? Yeah, I think what's different

01:10:30.460 this time is it's not just a Democratic establishment that is soaked in identity

01:10:35.000 politics, scared of its base. It's gonna be actual Democratic voters making the decision. And, you

01:10:40.820 You know, we saw in 2020, Biden is not a great statesman.

01:10:44.140 He was in a reduced state even then.

01:10:45.760 But that was a rational choice compared to the other alternatives.

01:10:49.460 And parties tend, not always, but tend to make rational choices.

01:10:53.160 So she's going to have to go out and win this this time on the merits.

01:10:57.320 And that's a much harder proposition, obviously, than just making 100 phone calls or whatever she did after Biden dropped out.

01:11:04.060 All right. Part of the fun of this woman, Charles, is analyzing the way she speaks. 0.89

01:11:09.220 You know, and I've said before about her that in another life, my partner was Polish and he spoke fluent Polish.

01:11:20.320 And the Polish language is very beautiful.

01:11:22.840 And it does this thing where they say the thing three times like, oh, you're so brilliant.

01:11:28.580 You're so smart.

01:11:29.540 You have so much knowledge.

01:11:30.760 It's like that's the custom in speaking Polish is to say the thing three times, not one time.

01:11:35.460 And I think she's got some Polish in her. 0.86

01:11:38.000 I like only she doesn't and she only speaks English because she's so repetitive and she inserts so many phrases in her sentences that are unnecessary. 0.98

01:11:49.120 And it's, I think, a nervous tick to buy time because she can't think quickly enough on like how I'm going to land this sentence.

01:11:57.220 But here is a little flavor of that in SOT 9.

01:12:01.480 recognizing that at some point this administration will be termed out and there's going to be a whole

01:12:08.000 lot of debris and i would i would caution us against talking about rebuilding with any sense

01:12:18.520 of nostalgia about how things were because even before they weren't working so well for a lot of

01:12:28.540 folks. And so we're going to have to be clear eyed. We're not going to go back to just trying

01:12:34.840 to bring back the status quo, the thing that you worked well in and made you comfortable.

01:12:42.080 We've got to upend some of this stuff to actually get this work done, including, again,

01:12:49.200 health care, child care, what we need to do around housing. There has to be a vision that is about

01:12:54.880 what we do when we're in power because it's one thing to know how to fight the power

01:12:58.840 it's another thing to be in power and own that power and i know everybody in this room knows

01:13:06.760 what it means to be in power and empowered anyway that's how i've been thinking

01:13:12.340 that's how she's been thinking charles

01:13:15.520 i think that's a threat actually you know she just talked about housing you know typical policy

01:13:23.060 But I think when they say, if we win, we're not just going back to the status quo, I think that means they have learned from how Trump's wielded power, and they're going to double down on it.

01:13:32.660 We had this astonishing statement from James Carville the other day.

01:13:35.800 As soon as they get in, Puerto Rico's a state, D.C. is a state, and the Supreme Court has 15 justices.

01:13:42.040 Now, I'm not sure they're going to be able to do all that, but I think that's where they're headed.

01:13:46.980 That's what the tendency is.

01:13:48.100 so on the repetitiveness point i think she thinks that what she's doing is eloquence

01:13:56.980 she reminds me of someone who thinks they can sing but can't and they do all the little moves

01:14:03.740 i think she thinks that she is profound i find her excruciating to watch as a result

01:14:12.280 but i really truly believe that she thinks she's an orator and so the pauses and the

01:14:20.140 searching for the words are beneficial to the audience because she is saying something that

01:14:27.700 is so important and she the accent thing annoys me it's odd i obviously have an english accent

01:14:34.720 americans often like english accents so i was in a barbecue place in south carolina

01:14:40.120 in 2024 and this african-american lady came out and she's she just loved my accent and i said to

01:14:48.540 her no i love your accent i live in the south i love southern african-american accents i just

01:14:55.800 think they sound fantastic i love listening to african-americans in the south talk uh whatever

01:15:02.080 it is about my accent that americans like i like about their accent so what annoys me about kamala 0.99

01:15:08.240 Harris is that she's doing an impression and a bad one. You know, if somebody actually spoke 0.60

01:15:15.720 like that, I'd want to listen to them all day. Rich and I half joke about this. I actually,

01:15:20.820 although she's putting it on two at one level, I actually quite like listening to Jasper

01:15:24.200 Crockett. I actually quite like listening. She's like your girlfriend. I know. I know she is. I

01:15:30.120 think she's pretty too. But I really do. When you need people who really truly come

01:15:36.840 from southern black areas i love listening to them talk um but kamala harris's impression is bad

01:15:45.560 and it's condescending that she's trying to do it for but it's not a problem about it's one of the 1.00

01:15:51.240 few things that is not a problem about kamala harris she just doesn't have that accent that's 1.00

01:15:54.940 not where she's from like it's not her family background she she's from california she just

01:16:00.540 picked up a different vocal band it's not a problem with me i don't sound like a southern

01:16:04.540 person either but like it would be really condescending if i started doing it badly

01:16:09.100 do you ever try to fake an american accent charlie no because i'm this is exactly my point

01:16:13.840 because i'm not now try it give it a try i'm not doing it but i i'm just not of that um so you

01:16:23.320 know it's it's not it's it's not a good or bad thing to have different accents but she

01:16:27.180 don't you think that the point i'm driving at is because it's a bad impression and it's 0.96

01:16:32.320 condescending don't you think that that just sums up in one clip the problem with kamala harris is 0.96

01:16:37.820 that she wants to be someone she's not she wants to be an orator and talk like martin luther king 1.00

01:16:43.640 but she can't do it she wants to talk like the ladies at that event but she can't do it she's a

01:16:50.740 person doing an impression of what she wishes she were and it's why she lost and it's why people

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01:20:05.360 Guys, something very exciting is happening.

01:20:07.800 We'll turn the page from Kamala, sad as that is.

01:20:10.940 This weekend, and that is the White House Correspondents Dinner.

01:20:14.540 Yes, I know you're sad that you're not going this year like me.

01:20:18.700 Actually, no, I was invited by a few different people and said no to everybody because I don't have to do that anymore.

01:20:24.040 Thank God in my new role.

01:20:26.080 But Jake Tapper is going and he's very excited to go.

01:20:29.240 And he has a message for this administration, which he previewed last night on Stephen Colbert.

01:20:36.620 Watch.

01:20:37.660 I like the pocket square.

01:20:38.660 thank you oh yeah so this is a special freedom of the press and freedom of speech practice

01:20:45.300 that's very nice yeah and we're i'm gonna be you know saturday night's the white house

01:21:01.460 correspondence dinner i did not know and um there are a bunch of us that are going to be wearing

01:21:07.340 these these are from the reporters committee for the free press and uh because there might be some

01:21:10.940 guests there that are unfamiliar with uh oh this is the first time this is the first time that the

01:21:18.060 president is going to be attending right now that you say so yes by the way i brought you one oh

01:21:23.940 so isn't that nice rich they're going to stand up and speak truth to power make sure trump knows

01:21:35.780 how important freedom of the press and freedom of speech are in America. CNN.

01:21:41.740 Yeah, I'm not into pin wearing. This is very reminiscent of what we talked about this

01:21:46.280 a month or two ago. Was it the Grammys or something? Everyone was wearing pins. They

01:21:50.440 didn't quite know what the pins were, but the pins stood for some sort of social justice cause.

01:21:55.700 This is pointless and annoying. And that dinner has been pointless and annoying for a very long

01:22:01.440 time. Back in the day, I don't know, 20, 25 years ago, it was kind of enjoyable,

01:22:04.720 But then it got celebrified and journalists shouldn't consider themselves working journalists as celebrities and have the same mores.

01:22:13.620 But but this is this this is very incestuous and annoying event.

01:22:18.900 The worst part about it, Charlie, is not even the actual event, the White House Correspondents Dinner.

01:22:24.720 It's all the events around the dinner where like this magazine wants you to show up and like be photographed at their party.

01:22:33.440 And that, you know, sort of kingmaker wants you to show up at his or her party.

01:22:38.920 And, you know, you got to go kiss the ring at all these parties to try to prove that you're somebody special in Washington.

01:22:44.920 Meanwhile, you're supposed to be a shoe leather, scrappy, hates everyone reporter.

01:22:51.660 That's what that's what a good D.C. reporter is like.

01:22:54.980 They don't want to rub elbows with any of these people.

01:22:57.560 They want to bring all of them down, no matter which party they're in.

01:23:01.080 They're looking for the latest scandal, not for the latest free cocktail and red carpet opportunity.

01:23:08.380 And it's yet another reason to avoid this thing, but it goes on.

01:23:11.940 Yeah, well, I wasn't invited, so I have to slum it here on the beach with my family.

01:23:16.360 But I do think the most annoying part, as you say, is that this only goes in one direction.

01:23:22.520 There's nothing particularly offensive about that pocket square.

01:23:25.600 First Amendment is crucially important.

01:23:27.460 And sometimes Donald Trump isn't good on free speech.

01:23:30.180 It's just that that moment there only seems to happen when a Republican's president, that laughter slash clapping from the audience on Stephen Colbert's show with a journalist who's being smug.

01:23:45.960 They didn't do that when, for example, Twitter and Facebook shut down the New York Post story into the Hunter Biden laptop. They didn't do that when abortion covering journalists were being targeted in California.

01:24:06.180 It's just so one sided. So it's not that Jake Tapper is completely wrong there. It's great to shout at all administrations and all government officials about the First Amendment. It just becomes so annoying when it only happens in limited circumstances. And I think all the people who are clapping in that probably don't know that. They probably think that they're entirely virtuous and that their opponents are entirely evil.

01:24:27.780 What about under Joe Biden when James O'Keefe, who's he is a journalist, he's a muckraker, when he got the FBI raiding his home early in the morning because Joe Biden was upset that he got his hands on Ashley Biden's diary and was considering publishing it.

01:24:44.060 What about when James Rosen was basically frozen out of asking another question for months in the White House press briefing room because he had the nerve to ask about Joe Biden's health and its deterioration?

01:24:55.100 And by the way, it wasn't just him. All the press corps understood they'd be punished by this White House, the Biden White House, if they inquired about Joe Biden's health.

01:25:04.880 I don't remember his little pocket square back then. It's only when it's Trump.

01:25:10.880 And, Rich, to that point, The New York Post reports today that a group of over 250 journalists implored members of the Beltway Press Corps to, quote, forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday.

01:25:23.100 Prominent veteran journalists such as former CBS News anchor Dan Rather.

01:25:28.300 You knew that was coming.

01:25:29.620 Infamous for erroneous reporting on President George W. Bush's military service.

01:25:33.380 Correct.

01:25:34.060 And former ABC News anchor Sam Donaldson both signed the missive.

01:25:38.440 So now we're getting journalism lessons from Dan Rather again, who left this business in shame.

01:25:42.480 The letter aired a litany of grievances against Trump, such as his defamation suits against various outlets, which he's winning.

01:25:49.920 ABC settled that case because George Stephanopoulos said 16 times Trump had been found liable for rape when it wasn't true.

01:25:59.500 That's not some speak truth to power moment.

01:26:02.140 ABC ought to be ashamed of itself anyway.

01:26:04.740 OK, his defamation suits against various outlets, against favoritism toward conservative media.

01:26:10.060 Oh, like that wasn't a thing toward liberal media when we had Obama or Biden in there.

01:26:15.260 And FCC communications chair Brendan Carr's offensive tactics.

01:26:19.400 Another complaint was Trump's decision to pardon the January 6th Capitol rioters, which the letter claims sends a message that attacks on the press will be forgiven.

01:26:28.880 What? This is so absurd.

01:26:31.560 Your thoughts on the pocket square and the unified messaging led by Dan Rather, Rich?

01:26:39.340 Yeah, so they're supposed to be forcibly demonstrating their opposition to Donald Trump.

01:26:42.460 They do it every single day.

01:26:43.880 It pervades all their work.

01:26:46.120 They don't need to do anything at this dinner to reinforce the point.

01:26:50.460 And look, the press, you know, it's oppositional or should be by nature.

01:26:55.480 But as Charlie points out, it just goes one way, right?

01:26:58.600 Joe Biden would have been such a wonderful figure of mockery on every late night show, right?

01:27:05.300 Very bad for the country that he was in, his debilitated state.

01:27:07.460 But there was something kind of funny about it.

01:27:09.240 But Stephen Colbert would never do it.

01:27:11.880 And this is another problem with this dinner, not the most important thing.

01:27:14.360 It's all people inside the bubble, in good graces in the bubble, not even realizing they're in the bubble.

01:27:20.720 So there's no conflict.

01:27:21.860 There's never anything interesting.

01:27:23.440 And all the mockery and disdain just goes in one direction.

01:27:27.040 Can I just add something to that?

01:27:28.340 Well, and Charlie says, I object to the pocket square because they only do it to the one side.

01:27:33.200 Agreed.

01:27:33.980 But the other problem is it does nothing.

01:27:36.700 It's an empty, meaningless virtue signal, right?

01:27:39.880 It's like it's it's worse than nothing because it's meant to make them look somehow above board and like they really care about these issues.

01:27:48.800 Charlie went, you know, Tapper's infamous for completely blowing it on the Biden mental health story, as did all of CNN.

01:27:57.000 They did not care about freedom of the press to do honest reporting until they saw that Biden was imploding and then they found, you know, their spine, shall I say.

01:28:08.740 So their little pocket square isn't going to change anything.

01:28:11.380 They need to look inward for that.

01:28:12.800 Go ahead.

01:28:13.060 Well, I was going to bolster Rich's point and also secos what you just said, which is

01:28:17.800 that they are aware of it.

01:28:20.320 They just think that there is a greater purpose to serve.

01:28:25.220 If you go back and you watch Saturday Night Live from 2019, when Joe Biden was running

01:28:31.160 in the Democratic primary and losing at the beginning, I think he was played by Woody

01:28:36.280 Harrelson. 1.00

01:28:36.880 and he's an idiot he's a senile idiot who doesn't know where he is that's the joke 1.00

01:28:45.300 likewise Kamala Harris is this sort of vain insecure mumbling fool who's constantly taking 1.00

01:28:57.040 pictures of herself and looking at the camera well once Joe Biden had won the nomination for 0.98

01:29:03.940 the Democratic Party, they stopped the sketch. They didn't keep doing it throughout his presidency,

01:29:09.360 even though it was far more relevant by 2023 than it had been in 2019. Likewise, you know,

01:29:16.460 obviously, I write about politics. So I get all of these unsolicited and frankly, unwanted emails

01:29:20.700 from people trying to share opposition research on people they dislike. And in 2019, I got email

01:29:26.580 after email after email from the left about Joe Biden saying Joe Biden was a racist. Joe Biden

01:29:31.820 defended segregation, Joe Biden opposed busing and so forth. That all disappeared as well. And

01:29:37.260 that's what makes this particularly annoying. It's not that the criticisms of Trump that you

01:29:42.240 mentioned from that letter are wrong in every case. And I think some of what Brendan Carr has

01:29:48.340 been doing is bad. It's that the indignation stops the second it doesn't serve the broader

01:29:54.560 political purpose. The mockery stops the second it doesn't serve the broader political purpose.

01:30:00.000 But then when it's somebody on the side they dislike, it instantly goes up to 11, and we're all supposed to clap it as coming from a good place.

01:30:08.120 But it doesn't come from a good place.

01:30:10.240 It comes from a very cynical place in almost every case.

01:30:13.800 To me, it's amazing how they're pretending that the press corps, the White House press corps and beyond, is what it was 20 years ago.

01:30:23.340 Like, this is all such a farce.

01:30:25.800 This is a lie.

01:30:26.660 You know, I I've mentioned this to the audience before, but when I first got in a news, it was 2003 and I got a part time job at WJLA in Washington and I was so excited.

01:30:38.280 It was so thrilling to me. I was still practicing practicing law and I got this job one day a week doing I said I'd work for free, but he did pay me and I loved it so much.

01:30:49.660 And then he invited me to the radio and television correspondence dinner, which is sort of a wider spread like invitation list.

01:30:57.180 And you don't have to work at the White House in order to get invited to that.

01:31:00.500 And it's the it's the dinner featured in broadcast news, which is one of my favorite movies.

01:31:04.720 I love that movie.

01:31:05.900 And I love the William Hurt scene as he's the new anchor in Washington.

01:31:08.900 And he goes up to Holly Hunter and says, it's incredible who's here.

01:31:12.060 And she says, who?

01:31:13.220 And he says, me.

01:31:15.240 That's how I felt.

01:31:16.400 You know, I went.

01:31:17.400 It was so exciting.

01:31:18.700 It was my new business news, and I was taking one step out of the law, and I was thrilled to be doing it.

01:31:24.220 And I looked around, and Sam Donaldson was one of the people I saw.

01:31:27.140 And he was so respected at the time at ABC, saw Supreme Court justices there.

01:31:32.160 It was like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing.

01:31:34.220 They call it nerd prom, you know?

01:31:36.060 And the press back in 2003, Rich, still did have some respect.

01:31:41.080 It really did.

01:31:41.860 It wasn't yet totally fractured.

01:31:43.800 And I remember thinking about my next move, you know, after they made me an offer to that ABC affiliate.

01:31:49.680 And at the time I was like, all right, well, if I'm good enough to be full-time here, maybe I'm good enough to be full-time someplace better than here.

01:31:55.160 And I talked to somebody at MSNBC and at Fox.

01:32:00.500 Like I absolutely would have gone to MSNBC.

01:32:02.880 I had absolutely no qualms about that.

01:32:04.800 It was very different back then.

01:32:06.460 It was like trying to be nonpartisan.

01:32:08.900 I didn't even know that Fox was partisan.

01:32:10.900 I was so clueless about news.

01:32:12.040 but things were just starting to change. And now in 23 years time, the news business is a shadow

01:32:20.760 of its former self. Yeah, absolutely. And similar experience in print, local newspaper in the

01:32:27.060 Washington DC area. And the guy who's a proprietor and the editor, former Washington Post reporter,

01:32:32.120 and he was a curmudgeon, right? He didn't have an ideology. He just wanted to know the facts,

01:32:36.640 wanted you to get them right, and wanted stories. That was it. And as media has become professionalized

01:32:44.660 and these people imagine themselves as their great tribunes of justice, it's a totally different

01:32:54.300 attitude than when we started out. And it's discredited the news, right? Because it's no

01:33:01.560 longer just the facts that we're driving an agenda. We're driving the agenda because the agenda is

01:33:06.440 is deeply just, and we're going to support a narrative that reinforce the agenda. So that's

01:33:13.960 been like a 20-year process. It's a very bad one. Trump accelerated it because they even thought

01:33:19.080 they were more just, and they had to be even more open with their agendas and their narratives.

01:33:24.180 And now we've had this splintering. So certainly the broadcast outlets and all that will never

01:33:28.880 be the same. I mean, I've talked about this before, but I'm very grateful for my time at

01:33:35.660 Fox News. Very grateful. It made my whole career. But I do think sort of cable news accelerated the

01:33:41.880 deterioration in the following way. It had been not openly partisan and the whole media leaned

01:33:47.640 left, but not as openly and perhaps not quite as severely as it does now. And Fox came around as

01:33:53.840 the antidote to that left wing bias and leaned in. And then the others realized that was a very

01:33:59.200 successful business model. They were cleaning the clocks of CNN and eventually MS. And then they

01:34:05.360 they leaned into their partisanship openly and more obviously. And things just got progressively

01:34:12.460 polarized. The broadcast media became more and more irrelevant. And then they started to lean

01:34:17.740 into their bias more openly. And it's not that it's Fox's fault, but it's like the Fox antidote

01:34:23.340 to what was indeed left-wing bias wound up, I think, making the problem, yes, exposed, but also

01:34:28.980 kind of worse in some ways. Or maybe it was just a trajectory the news business on either way.

01:34:34.380 But the fact that Dan Rather is leading this charge, I mean, because in those early days at Fox where I got hired in August of 04, one of the very first stories they put me on was that 60 Minutes 2 piece they were doing on George W. Bush where they had faked papers around his National Guard service.

01:34:53.760 And Dan Rather was leading the charge, and it led to his exit from CBS, and so now he wants to be our moral better.

01:35:00.200 Here's what Trump posted in March, Charlie, when he said he was going to attend because he hasn't been attending these things as president.

01:35:07.120 The White House Correspondents Association has asked me very nicely to be the honoree at this year's dinner, a long and storied tradition since it began in 1924 under then President Calvin Coolidge.

01:35:17.320 In honor of our nation's 250th birthday and the fact that these correspondents now admit that I am truly one of the greatest presidents in the history of our country, the GOAT, according to many, it will be my honor to accept their invitation and work to make it the greatest, hottest, and most spectacular dinner of any kind ever.

01:35:41.320 I just have a feeling that's not how it's going to go down. 0.97

01:35:44.660 I think he's going to walk into open hostility from the little pocket square people.

01:35:50.440 But your thoughts?

01:35:51.220 Well, I don't think that they're going to uniformly affirm that he's the greatest of all time in the White House.

01:35:59.200 I agree.

01:36:00.140 But that is classic Trump.

01:36:02.480 And I actually, in this context, like Trump when he does that, because I think it has a tendency to puncture the bubble. 0.95

01:36:14.660 and the bubble in this instance is a ridiculous one so i like trump when he's like this

01:36:21.560 uh the white house dinner that he's going to is in my view pointless uh i was of course joking 0.88

01:36:30.340 i would much rather stay on the beach with my family uh but he is uh he is hostile to them

01:36:38.240 they're hostile to him and in that sense they they both get what they want right i mean this is

01:36:46.140 it's a pantomime it's a punch and judy show they want to play that role they want to channel

01:36:54.360 watergate they think that that's who they are and then trump thinks he's the greatest president

01:37:00.800 who's ever existed and then the audience sort of watches it uh as a drama and i think this might

01:37:07.940 make this one more interesting than the average. It's amazing, though, right, that Trump can't

01:37:12.040 resist the pull of these people, right? He should be so much bigger than this dinner. He doesn't

01:37:15.800 need to go to this dinner. He shouldn't go to this dinner, in my view. But he can't help calling

01:37:19.400 these people, caring about what they write, what they say, you know, working behind the scenes.

01:37:24.700 So he's such a media creature through and through.

01:37:28.820 As always. Now, we've never had a woman as the guest of honor because we've never had a female

01:37:34.760 president, and that is because we are a nation of sexist pigs. Back to Kamala Harris before we go. 1.00

01:37:41.140 I've got to play SOT 13 and listen to the repetition, too. I do believe America

01:37:47.360 is, can be, and will be ready for a woman to be pressing United States.

01:37:54.940 And I strongly believe, you know, I mentor, as we all do, a lot of people.

01:37:59.660 And one of the things I will say to our young people, and I know we have many here, is don't ever let someone's limited ability to see your capacity to be a limitation on your ambition for yourself.

01:38:17.600 That's their limitation, not ours.

01:38:20.720 And so, again, part of it is I just try to not let other people's problems be my problem in terms of believing and knowing and acting on who can do what.

01:38:36.080 And that's where I land on that.

01:38:41.660 Believing and acting and knowing and also is, can be and will be. 1.00

01:38:47.360 and she's basically everyone's a bunch of sexists that's really what she wants you to know charlie

01:38:53.420 how do you plead well and i love the end of it which was straight from forrest gump where she

01:38:57.920 just exits by saying and that's where i land on that i'm just going to start using that if i'm

01:39:02.580 not really sure i'm going with an answer i'm just going to say maybe when we're doing the podcast

01:39:07.080 rich you know when you don't know when i'm going to finish or not when when i'm unclear i can just

01:39:11.820 say and that's where i land on that this is my new favorite kamala harrisism i've ever heard

01:39:16.900 you are looking for a a way of understanding whether charlie's pausing or done with his

01:39:23.300 points on the editor this could be it you're pro magma i don't even think you could do it

01:39:27.440 discern the pause from the end

01:39:29.620 it's it's funny i guess the other show i don't care i'll just step step on poor charlie but on

01:39:36.640 the editors it's a gentleman's show you are much more polite than i am guys a pleasure to see you

01:39:41.260 thanks so much for being here talk soon yeah um all right so i'd love to hear your thoughts on

01:39:46.880 whether you think Trump should go to the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Does he do them

01:39:52.660 this honor? And how do you think it'll go? You can email me, megan at megankelly.com.

01:40:01.640 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 21, 2026

Trump's Iran Decision Approaches, Kamala's Strange New Accent, and The Key Vance Factor, with Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke ｜ Ep. 1300

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