The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump's New Iran Messaging, with Piers Morgan, Plane Crash Leaves Pilots Dead, and CNN Tries Being a Podcast, with Kmele Foster ｜ Ep. 1279

00:00:00.000 Frozen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes.

00:00:06.380 Sounds like Ojo time.

00:00:08.940 Let's play.

00:00:10.000 Feel the fun with PlayOjo, the online casino with all the latest slots and live casino games.

00:00:13.900 What you win is yours to keep.

00:00:15.220 No wagering requirements, instant payouts, and no minimum withdrawals.

00:00:18.140 Hey, I just won!

00:00:19.420 Woohoo! 1.00

00:00:19.940 Feel the fun, PlayOjo.

00:00:22.280 Honey, forget about lasagna.

00:00:23.520 Let's celebrate.

00:00:24.400 19 plus Ontario only.

00:00:25.240 Please play responsibly.

00:00:25.780 Concerned about your gambling or that of someone close to you?

00:00:27.220 call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connexontario.ca. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius

00:00:33.280 XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn

00:00:44.680 Kelly Show. We are back live in the Red Studio. I'm so happy to be with you. There's a lot of

00:00:49.800 news to get to today, including CNN's attempt to make its on-air talent pretend to be podcasters.

00:00:55.040 This is my favorite story of the day. We'll get to it later. But we begin with developments

00:01:00.820 on the war in Iran, which seem to be changing by the minute. Early this morning, President Trump

00:01:06.120 posting a message to Truth Social, claiming, quote, productive talks are underway with Iran

00:01:11.840 and saying, therefore, he is postponing his own self-imposed deadline to strike Iranian power

00:01:17.320 plants and energy infrastructure. The president two days ago gave the 48-hour deadline,

00:01:23.660 saying if Iran did not open the Strait of Hormuz, he would, quote, obliterate various

00:01:28.200 Iranian power plants, starting with the biggest one first. That deadline would be 7.44 p.m.

00:01:33.240 this evening. In response, Iran then promising to, quote, irreversibly destroy essential

00:01:39.800 infrastructure across the Middle East, even suggesting they may hit desalination plants

00:01:47.280 throughout the region, which would be truly catastrophic for Israel and potentially for

00:01:52.820 the Gulf states. So that's where we stood because Iran didn't open the Strait of Hormuz as demanded

00:01:59.540 by President Trump. And that's where things stood until this morning, thus staring down that 744

00:02:04.980 p.m. deadline, which was looking rather ugly. It caused stock futures to jump and the cost of oil

00:02:12.060 to fall because President Trump came out suggesting we'd reach some sort of a agreement.

00:02:20.260 And then many asked whether this entire thing is about market manipulation.

00:02:24.560 OK, so did we actually reach a stand down with Iran?

00:02:28.380 Did we speak with them?

00:02:29.800 How? Through whom?

00:02:31.960 They're denying it.

00:02:33.280 Iran's foreign minister came out and denied any talks were underway at all.

00:02:37.600 And The New York Times, reporting that the Israeli military, no sooner than Trump had issued that true social, began conducting a new wave of strikes today.

00:02:47.000 And that's extremely important.

00:02:48.680 So Trump says you got 24, you got 48 hours to allow traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

00:02:54.400 Iran says, F you, you, if you strike us in the way you're saying after 48 hours by hitting 0.99

00:03:01.180 our energy plants, we are going to hit the desalination plants throughout the Middle 0.52

00:03:08.040 East, among other targets.

00:03:10.300 And there it stood in detente until this morning when Trump issued his great news.

00:03:15.420 We've been speaking with the Iranians.

00:03:16.640 we've made major progress and I'm going to hold off on my threat. Then the Iranians come out and 1.00

00:03:23.180 deny that we've been having any such talks and say, this is Trump caving because they don't,

00:03:29.120 they know he doesn't want, excuse me, what they threatened. And that this is a sort of taco

00:03:34.260 situation. Trump always chickens out. That's what his critics are saying. It's what the Iranians 1.00

00:03:38.020 are saying. But either way, no sooner does Trump say, okay, we're going to stop our threat and we

00:03:43.980 won't be bombing any of your energy plants or et cetera, then the Israelis drop a couple of bombs 0.51

00:03:49.020 and proceed full steam ahead. Any talk of this war winding down, which comes as welcome news to most 0.94

00:03:55.660 of us, probably sends shivers down the spine of Senator Lindsey Graham, who is still out there 1.00

00:04:02.080 as the main spokesperson for the administration for some reason. It's amazing that Trump, who is

00:04:08.500 generally a communications genius, has seen fit to let this guy be the face of this war.

00:04:14.980 Just yesterday on Fox News, he was calling for U.S. Marines to take Iran's Karg Island,

00:04:21.240 which would be extremely complicated and controversial, comparing the operation to

00:04:26.320 Iwo Jima during World War II. Here's what I tell President Trump. Keep it up for a few more weeks.

00:04:33.740 Take Carg Island, where all of the resources they have to produce oil.

00:04:37.980 Control that island.

00:04:39.360 Let this regime down a vine.

00:04:41.260 Is this going to, though, take Carg Island?

00:04:43.100 Is it going to involve U.S. troops on the ground?

00:04:45.220 Let me just read you something from The Atlantic.

00:04:46.920 It does an assessment on that.

00:04:47.840 They say U.S. troops may well take Carg Island.

00:04:50.180 We believe their ability to do so.

00:04:52.040 But only to endure ballistic missile strikes, drone attacks, petrochemical smoke,

00:04:55.960 all without a reliable means of obtaining logistical support.

00:04:59.700 The result could be a grinding war of attrition.

00:05:01.940 they talk about how far away they would be from resupply. I'm sort of tired of all this

00:05:06.240 armchair quarterbacking. This has been an amazing military operation. God bless the fallen.

00:05:11.880 But it's a difference when we talk about troops on the ground. I trust the Marines,

00:05:15.960 not that guy. I trust DOD. We got two Marine expeditionary units sailing to this island.

00:05:22.820 We did Iwo Jima. We can do this. The Marines, my money is always on the Marines.

00:05:27.640 unbelievable 6,821 uh u.s service personnel died in the battle for iwo jima 19,217 were wounded

00:05:38.040 how dare he speak about it so cavalierly how dare he he doesn't have any kids he's not sending a

00:05:43.700 young son or daughter into battle f this guy congresswoman anna polina luna posting on x that

00:05:50.140 senator graham is acting as if our troops are quote expendable cattle that's exactly right

00:05:55.080 How dare he? And now we learn over the weekend that Rupert Murdoch was one of the main

00:05:59.600 people to be goading Trump into this war. Rupert Murdoch, who is 95 years old, he'll be dead soon.

00:06:07.000 And he, too, is acting as if our troops are, quote, expendable cattle. He won't have to live

00:06:12.620 with the consequences of what he's doing. And good for Anna Paulina Luna, also Republican

00:06:18.100 Congresswoman Nancy Mace, called him out as well. There are now Republicans pushing back on this

00:06:23.220 bloodthirsty lunatic for how jubilantly he wants to send our troops in to fight 0.54

00:06:30.740 his favorite and Israel's battle. Joining me now on all of it, Piers Morgan. He's host of 0.91

00:06:35.920 Piers Morgan Uncensored on YouTube. Sleep is important, yet so overlooked.

00:06:43.240 But let me tell you about Brooklyn Bedding. It's designed and assembled right in Arizona.

00:06:48.040 No middlemen, just top quality and honest pricing.

00:06:51.480 Their mattresses fit every body type and sleep style.

00:06:54.680 Sleep hot, their Glaceo Tex covers,

00:06:57.600 and thermal regulation help keep you cool

00:07:00.040 and comfortable all night long.

00:07:02.000 They're one of the few mattresses endorsed

00:07:03.800 by the American Chiropractic Association

00:07:05.660 for spinal alignment and back health.

00:07:08.140 Plus, they're 100% fiberglass free for peace of mind.

00:07:11.240 And Brooklyn Bedding offers a 120-night comfort trial,

00:07:14.360 love it or return it or exchange it, hassle-free.

00:07:16.940 No wonder they've been awarded the best mattress by CNET and best hybrid mattress by Wirecutter.

00:07:22.260 Go to brooklynbedding.com and use my promo code MEGAN at checkout to get 30% off site-wide.

00:07:27.640 That's brooklynbedding.com and promo code MEGAN for 30% off site-wide.

00:07:32.080 Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout.

00:07:35.380 brooklynbedding.com, promo code MEGYN.

00:07:38.940 Piers, welcome back.

00:07:40.780 Let's just start as journalists with the folly of making this lunatic the face of the war

00:07:47.360 by a man, Trump, who normally is more media savvy than us all.

00:07:52.860 What is happening there?

00:07:54.540 Well, Megan, great to be back on your show.

00:07:56.840 I do not understand any of this.

00:08:00.820 Donald Trump is somebody who the entire world knows campaigned very vociferously

00:08:06.740 and very repeatedly on a ticket of no more engagement in foreign wars, which he felt

00:08:13.500 was way too expensive, both economically and on human life. And he wanted to focus on boosting

00:08:19.980 the American economy. And then a few months before the midterm elections, which are going to be

00:08:24.980 difficult enough as it is for any incumbent president, he launches the biggest attack in

00:08:31.460 the Middle East that we've seen since the Iraq war, possibly even bigger, given the enormity of 0.98

00:08:37.260 what is now coming back by way of Iran's response. It's having an obvious massive impact on not just

00:08:45.080 the US economy, but the global economy. And none of the predictions that we were given in the first

00:08:51.480 few days has come true. In fact, quite the opposite. It looks like the Americans and the 1.00

00:08:57.720 Israeli combined military has been very successful militarily in destroying a lot of Iranian 1.00

00:09:03.800 military hardware. But in terms of tactics in this war, the Iranians have basically held

00:09:10.900 everybody to hostage because they control the Strait of Hormuz and because they know that by

00:09:16.300 attacking their neighbouring Gulf states in places that will really hurt them, to do with their

00:09:21.560 energy plants to do with tourism areas and so on, that they can have a stranglehold over any

00:09:27.920 military. And that's exactly what's happened. And the constant mixed messaging from Donald

00:09:33.220 Trump and the administration, and the very incendiary, gung-ho rhetoric from people like

00:09:38.960 Lindsey Graham, the combined effect of all this, when we can all see with our own eyes

00:09:43.420 how this war is playing out, and it's quite clear the Iranians have not got the abject surrender

00:09:49.900 memo. And I'm not even sure that they have got the memo we're being told about this morning,

00:09:55.320 which is that they're all ready to do a deal. They're showing no sign of any of this.

00:09:59.580 And so I stand here, sit here, scratching my head in incredulity about what of any of this

00:10:09.100 makes any sense at all if you're the President of the United States.

00:10:13.380 Mm hmm. Trump's messaging has been everywhere. You know, we've obliterated them. We've basically

00:10:21.300 won. Oh, we're about to obliterate you and we will win. It's over. You know, we've defeated 0.86

00:10:27.460 them. We've achieved all our objectives. And then we may be sending in ground troops to take

00:10:31.580 Karg Island. It's they have no defenses left. We've destroyed everything. And then you open up

00:10:38.880 the Strait of Hormuz or we're bombing all of your energy plants like you you waited 24 hours and

00:10:44.460 you will get a brand new message from our president meanwhile Iran is sitting over there saying we're 0.91

00:10:50.300 not we are not negotiating we don't know who he thinks he's negotiating with but we didn't agree

00:10:55.140 to anything this is a stand down by the president who realized that we meant it that if he actually

00:11:01.220 did start bombing our energy plants we were going to start attacking the desalination plants

00:11:08.040 throughout the region, which, you know, we've reported in our morning news update this morning,

00:11:13.100 is like you've got several of these Gulf countries, these Gulf Arab countries that have

00:11:17.920 over 90 percent of their drinking water depends on desalination. I mean, that it would be truly

00:11:23.580 catastrophic if the Iranians actually did that, not to mention what knocking out the Iranian 1.00

00:11:30.380 energy plants would do to world energy prices and oil prices. And Iran hasn't budged on the 1.00

00:11:37.200 Strait of Hormuz problem. Right. And you've got no sign of any actual regime change. We know the

00:11:43.820 Ayatollah was killed. We haven't seen his son. So he's presumed either dead or very seriously

00:11:49.220 injured in a way that it's incapacitated him. But regardless of that, the IRGC are still clearly

00:11:54.240 firmly in charge of the country. And we know that because there's been no sign of any uprising

00:11:59.480 by the people, many of whom are very opposed to the regime. But there are two reasons why we're

00:12:04.960 not seeing the uprising. Well, three, I would argue. One is there are bombs obviously flying

00:12:09.440 everywhere, which makes it very unsafe to hit the streets. Secondly, they remember what happened in

00:12:14.160 January when the regime cracked down in the most vicious and vengeful manner against protesters,

00:12:19.920 killing up to 30,000 of them. And three, it's obvious to everybody that the IRGC are completely

00:12:26.320 in control. And there are 250,000 of them. There are 400,000 to 500,000 paramilitaries below them,

00:12:34.420 heavily armed and then there's nearly a million regular iranian army this is you know you're not

00:12:39.380 dealing with some tin pot regime here that's just going to roll over or a regime like venezuela where

00:12:45.500 they were quite happy to do a deal uh here you're dealing with an ideological country fueled by

00:12:51.020 religion which is pathologically opposed to any american uh rule over them in what in any capacity

00:12:58.620 and hates Israel too, who are just not going to be bullied into towing the line in the way that

00:13:04.940 Donald Trump seems to think they are. And they have the weaponry to resist being bullied. But

00:13:10.000 that weaponry is not just military, they've got a lot of military, particularly ballistic missile,

00:13:15.800 which they've now been firing way further than people thought. And that even imperils places

00:13:21.120 like where I am right now in London, in terms of its potential reach. But they're doing it very

00:13:26.360 tactically, smartly, you have to be honest about it, economically, by controlling Australia

00:13:32.620 foremost, where 20% of the world's oil comes through every day, with the way they've gone

00:13:38.020 after the neighbouring Gulf states, they're sending a message that we may not have the

00:13:42.400 firepower you do, but we can strangle you with the economy. And that is proving to the Gulf states

00:13:49.160 and to Europe and to, I would imagine, many Americans, deeply unpalatable and ultimately

00:13:55.760 unsustainable the report just hitting now via the jerusalem post is that iranian parliament

00:14:04.200 parliamentary speaker mohammed bagar galbaif is leading the talks with the united states so it's

00:14:11.020 possible we have found a person to talk to trump had said earlier that um we wouldn't know who we

00:14:18.120 were talking with because who to talk to because we killed them all but now there is the parliament

00:14:24.200 speaker, Mohamed Bagar Ghalibaf, who apparently is speaking with the United States. And let's

00:14:32.320 hope that's true. The latest reports on what the demands were by each side sounded absolutely

00:14:38.920 impossible for reaching an agreement, Pierce, though they often do in the beginning. The

00:14:43.940 Iranians were demanding a ceasefire. Okay. Guarantees that the war will not resume in the 0.67

00:14:49.280 future, okay, maybe, and compensation. They use the word reparations for what we've done over there

00:14:55.840 so far. The U.S. is demanding no missile program for five years, zero uranium enrichment. That's

00:15:02.760 what we wanted beforehand, that they wouldn't agree to. Decommissioning the Natanz, Ifshan,

00:15:06.700 and Fordow nuclear facilities, strict outside observation protocols around the creation and

00:15:11.540 use of centrifuges and related machinery that could advance a nuclear weapons program,

00:15:15.540 Arms control treaties that include a missile cap, no higher than 1,000, no financing for proxies, and those are the basics of the deal.

00:15:26.800 Trump sees the demand for reparations as a non-starter, but somebody on his team suggested, well, we could potentially call it the return of frozen money, returning frozen assets.

00:15:38.400 There are different ways we could wordsmith it to give them their so-called reparations.

00:15:42.660 This is via Axios today.

00:15:44.160 So let's hope that it is true they're finding a way to start talking to one another.

00:15:50.020 The big unknown here and untrustworthy piece of this is Israel, Pierce, who has no desire nor any goal or interest whatsoever in stopping the war. 0.95

00:16:05.160 In fact, from the beginning, this has all been very much in Israel's interest and literally no one else's.

00:16:10.800 Yeah, well, you know, I believe Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, when he was asked point blank, why did America launch a preemptive strike against Iran? And he replied very unequivocally on camera for the world to see that the reason was that the United States had been informed by another country, clearly Israel, that they were about to attack Iran, and that the implication of that would be that Iran would then retaliate against both the person attacking them and against American interests.

00:16:40.520 and that because of that, America had to launch a preemptive strike.

00:16:43.940 It sounded ridiculously convoluted at the time as an explanation and excuse for what

00:16:49.620 was going on.

00:16:50.740 And very quickly, the pressure against the United States and against the Trump administration

00:16:56.540 became so overwhelming that a screeching U-turn and said, well, he never meant to say exactly

00:17:02.220 what we heard come out of his mouth.

00:17:03.720 Actually, no, he meant this, this, this and this.

00:17:05.940 But we all heard it.

00:17:06.760 Marco Rubio is a very smart guy.

00:17:08.580 He didn't say that by accident.

00:17:10.080 And that reinforced the belief that many have. And I share this belief that I think Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, had eight different visits to see Donald Trump in the months leading up to this.

00:17:22.200 And I think he put increasing pressure on Donald Trump about Iran. It was, as Netanyahu said, very openly.

00:17:28.440 They've admitted that. They've admitted that. You don't even have to say you think it. That's a fact.

00:17:32.660 Right. And Netanyahu said it's a 40-year dream of his to do what is now happening. But the Israeli agenda here is very different to the United States agenda and the rest of the world's agenda. The Israelis don't care if there's complete and utter chaos in Iran. They would like complete and utter chaos. They want this regime. 0.71

00:17:50.040 And the Gulf states.

00:17:51.000 And the Gulf states.

00:17:52.440 But the United States' national interest should not mean chaos in Iran, because that will be a stick to beat the U.S. economy with for many years to come, if that's allowed to happen.

00:18:04.480 Not to mention, fermenting, as we saw with Iraq, you know, I opposed very aggressively the war on Iraq in 2003, because I was not convinced about the weapons of mass destruction defense for doing it, and it turned out to be nonsense.

00:18:18.820 And of course, we know what happened in Iraq. Out of the chaos came ISIS, al-Qaeda, all these terror groups who wreaked utter havoc for the next two decades.

00:18:28.960 And the worry about Iran is if you actually achieved one of the supposed mission statements of bringing down this regime, well, what would follow is a very high likelihood of all the disparate groups you have rampaging around a rudderless Iran that you would end up with something appalling like ISIS or al-Qaeda and the equivalent in Iran. 0.65

00:18:50.480 So people have to be very, I think, clear-minded about what is happening here and the potential dangers. It is obvious that Iran's retaliation has been in a way that the Americans and Israelis did not predict.

00:19:04.680 It's also obvious from the way we saw Israel target one of the big oil refineries in Iran

00:19:10.820 that they don't care about having an energy war.

00:19:14.400 But the United States should, and the rest of the world should, because an energy war 0.69

00:19:19.200 which led to Iran attacking, as we've seen, they attacked one of the refineries in Qatar.

00:19:24.960 That was 17% of the world gas, I think, come through that particular refinery.

00:19:30.460 And you mentioned desalination plants.

00:19:32.500 You know, I read something the other day, I haven't independently verified the exact information here, but it's worth reporting as a sort of overview of what could happen, that somewhere like Saudi Arabia, say take a city of Riyadh, 12 million people, they rely heavily on desalination.

00:19:49.420 If you took that plant away and they had no way of desalinating seawater into drinking water, they've only got a few weeks of drinking water available for their entire population.

00:20:01.660 It doesn't take a genius to work out how devastating that could be.

00:20:05.520 So a war on energy plants has always been seen as a red light.

00:20:09.080 But the Israelis have been barreling through that. 0.99

00:20:11.100 And then Donald Trump says, well, they didn't tell me and I don't agree with it.

00:20:15.260 And they promise not to do it again.

00:20:17.080 Does anybody take that promise entirely seriously?

00:20:19.520 Because I don't.

00:20:21.420 And right now, so now you have the Israelis dropping bombs as Trump is saying, oh, we're making great progress.

00:20:27.120 We're doing really well and we're not going to drop the bombs on the energy plants, at least, that we said we were going to.

00:20:31.940 Now it comes out that, again, via the Jerusalem Post, that supposedly we've found somebody, the Iranian parliament speaker, to talk to.

00:20:39.700 But on the tarmac in Palm Beach, talking about this this morning, Piers, President Trump would not say who Steve Whitcoff was talking to on the Iranian side, saying, quote, instead, quote, I can't.

00:20:51.120 I don't want them to be killed.

00:20:53.680 Killed by whom? 0.94

00:20:55.660 The only other country killing people in Iran is Israel.

00:21:01.060 So once again, it's a tacit admission that we cannot control who's supposed to be the junior partner in this whole thing. 0.99

00:21:08.680 why wouldn't we just tell Israel, don't kill them? We're trying to negotiate an end to this war. 0.92

00:21:15.420 A second piece of it is, this being reported by Sky News this morning, an Israeli security

00:21:20.420 establishment source going on record with Sky about Trump's message saying, great news,

00:21:26.540 we're making progress and we're going to hold off on our 48-hour threat to bomb their energy

00:21:30.560 plants, saying, I would approach this cautiously with a grain of salt. It's early Monday morning

00:21:35.380 in the U.S., the start of the trading week. Markets opened higher, based on Trump's statement,

00:21:40.400 largely as expected following the weekend reports that the negotiations and the latest statement

00:21:43.980 by Trump. That said, I wouldn't view this move as a final step. We saw a similar pattern last

00:21:48.660 week. Oil prices have declined, supporting the positive sentiment in the short term. For now,

00:21:53.760 it appears Mr. Trump has bought a few more days, roughly into week four, until the Marines arrive

00:21:58.580 and complete their initial deployment and organization phase. The Iranians are already 1.00

00:22:02.340 denying it. Again, this is quoting an Israeli security person. So that's Israel saying,

00:22:07.520 I don't believe the Trump news. He's just trying to spike the markets. It's full steam ahead.

00:22:13.640 And Trump openly worried that the Israelis are now going to kill the Iranian parliamentarian

00:22:19.300 who we're speaking with. Right. And the Israelis are also openly saying you can't win this war

00:22:23.840 from the air alone. You need ground troops. Well, where are the Israeli ground troops in that case? 0.83

00:22:28.720 because all I'm seeing at the moment are thousands of American ground troops heading over there.

00:22:34.420 And is Donald Trump really going to commit thousands of American ground troops to a war

00:22:39.740 in the Middle East in one of the biggest countries, one of the most heavily armed countries,

00:22:44.180 a country that's already proved itself to be extremely skilful in the way that it's conducted

00:22:48.580 itself in this war against the far superior military? I think that has the potential for

00:22:53.180 complete disaster, takes me right back to 2003 with the war in Iraq, where the full-scale ground 0.57

00:22:59.360 invasion, you could ultimately look back and say that all of it was a complete disaster and cost

00:23:04.920 over a million lives on all sides. I'm not saying this will be the same, but nobody knows is the

00:23:10.920 point. And it looks to me like Donald Trump doesn't know. If you go back and look at his rhetoric in

00:23:15.040 the first 48 hours of this war, it was really gung-ho. This is a clarion call to the Iranian 1.00

00:23:20.680 people rise up now the regime's gone we're going to destabilize everything we're going to take down

00:23:25.800 all their armed forces blah blah blah blah blah yeah here we are now and none of that stuff has

00:23:31.660 happened and you know if i was an american citizen i'd be like hang on you're going to commit now

00:23:37.620 thousands of ground troops to a war we keep being told we've already won to achieve something in

00:23:43.320 terms of neutralizing its nuclear capacity that we were told happened last year uh and all these

00:23:50.020 other excuses unraveling, which we know can't be right because of the contradictory statements

00:23:55.340 that have come since. So I just think that Donald Trump here has lit a tinderbox and he's finding

00:24:01.260 it very, very difficult to put it out. Does he want an off-ramp? Well, I would hope he does

00:24:05.800 because I just think this gets worse the longer it goes on. But what that off-ramp looks like

00:24:12.480 and how he can claim any plausible victory, I imagine is keeping him even more awake at night

00:24:18.680 than he normally is. I mean, my own take on it is I don't care how he claims it. I don't care

00:24:24.700 how insincere it sounds or how untrue it is. I just want him to do it. Just do it. He's very

00:24:31.640 good at it. Look what we did with Greenland. You know, it's like he got the use of some military

00:24:36.440 islands off the coast of Greenland that we already had the use of. We declared it like a big victory

00:24:40.640 that they had rolled over and given us what we wanted when it went. And great. We moved on from

00:24:46.060 Greenland. This is so much more important and so much more consequential if we don't. We are having

00:24:51.620 some massive losses, but we did do some great things when it comes to wiping out their Navy 0.99

00:24:55.580 and wiping out much of their Air Force. And we did take out the Ayatollah, who was a terrible man. 0.85

00:25:00.920 I don't know whether that's going to be great long-term or not, because who knows what's

00:25:04.440 happening with the son, but the son is more extreme than the father. But in any event,

00:25:08.360 there are some ways of declaring a victory and just getting out, Pierce. I mean, that's,

00:25:12.200 To me, that's the best case scenario.

00:25:14.260 The last thing I think I and most Americans want to see is Marines on the ground taking

00:25:20.800 Karg Island or any place else in Iran.

00:25:23.420 This is how the Vietnam War started.

00:25:25.900 That's less we forget.

00:25:27.140 That's exactly right.

00:25:28.100 Go and study history.

00:25:29.140 If you want to see how that started, it began with a few thousand Marines.

00:25:33.120 Right.

00:25:33.420 And we know how that ended up.

00:25:35.880 And the other piece of it is like you were smart to oppose the Iran war, the sorry, the 0.94

00:25:41.260 Iraq war in the beginning. I wish I could say the same about myself. But instead, I spent 14 years

00:25:45.840 of Fox News cheerleading these wars. I mean, cheerleading them. I take full responsibility

00:25:51.040 for doing exactly that. And I mean, in the dark days of these wars, Piers, where we were seeing

00:25:56.260 guys beheaded. We were seeing American troops put in cages and burned to death. We had to do

00:26:03.700 the surge where we doubled down on sending ground troops over there. We created ISIS, all these 0.95

00:26:08.860 national domestic terror threats rising. We all cheerlead our troops efforts on the ground.

00:26:14.740 We accepted all the administration's bullshit that was being shoved down our throats about 0.99

00:26:20.780 Iraq and Afghanistan. It's now since come out that they just lied about Afghanistan and the 0.99

00:26:24.900 alleged successes there for years, for years. And I refuse to be a part of that again. I refuse,

00:26:33.000 especially when the president's own messaging has been a 180 day to day on this and the

00:26:38.480 justification for the war has been all over the board. Now that we're pretending that we went in

00:26:43.260 there saying, OK, it was all about the missiles. No, we didn't even say that. It's like we got

00:26:47.700 over there. We realized they had a bunch of missiles and suddenly retroactively was, well,

00:26:51.440 we're there to stop the missiles. Yeah. Look, nothing that's been said has happened from those

00:26:58.380 initial reasons stated for this war. None of this happened. And the fear I would have is if Donald

00:27:05.600 Trump does the right thing, I think it'd be the right thing to walk away and get out of this as

00:27:10.780 fast as possible and just take the hit. Then you end up with a win for the Iranian regime. It would 1.00

00:27:16.240 feel emboldened. Yes, a lot of the military firepower would have been destroyed, but they

00:27:20.720 could build that back. They would remain intact when regime change was a clear stated aim at the

00:27:26.660 start of the war. The regime would remain intact. The people did not rise up. And you would look at

00:27:31.860 the economic damage they've been able to create by controlling the Strait of Hormuz and by attacking

00:27:38.660 the Gulf states. It should not be underestimated going forward as further emboldening this Iranian 1.00

00:27:43.700 regime. They will think, right, now we know how to hold the world to ransom. We have proven you

00:27:48.880 don't need to have a military that matches the American military, the biggest and greatest

00:27:52.940 military in the history of this planet you don't need to be able to match it you just need to have

00:27:58.720 the control of the energy and to be able to terrorize the gulf states uh in your neighborhood 0.63

00:28:04.200 in a way that drives people expats who live there to drive to leave the country as they've been 0.99

00:28:09.120 doing in their droves or tourists to stay away because that is the future business model of the

00:28:14.540 gulf states i've been out there a lot i like going there very much it's been a very vibrant dynamic

00:28:19.180 forward-moving part of the world, but right now they're paralyzed. People don't want to go there

00:28:25.220 because it's raining with bombs and missiles all the time. And the whole sales pitch of the

00:28:31.280 Middle East, which has come here, it's safe, it's sunny, you can leave your door open at night. I 0.87

00:28:36.940 know friends who live in Dubai, they haven't locked their front door in 15 years. Well, that safety

00:28:41.980 sales pitch clearly right now isn't working. And they know the oil is running out, which has been

00:28:47.780 the main economy economy they've they've had they're replacing it with a sustained campaign

00:28:53.540 throughout the region of tourism based around sport and entertainment primarily and it's been

00:28:58.760 very successful but right now none of that is happening you know british airways uh the airline

00:29:04.020 that i uh use when i fly to the gulf i think i saw that they stopped flying to dubai now till

00:29:09.000 june or july right so this is having real time real time consequences on the the the moving

00:29:17.160 forward business model of the entire region. And Iran knows that. And Iran knows it can do that

00:29:23.800 anytime it wants. It can turn that tap on and off. And if it wants to get into an energy fistfight,

00:29:30.220 then Iran really, I mean, you remember the confrontation with Zelensky and the other

00:29:34.520 about who holds the cards? Iran is showing it holds the cards that matter. And the cards are

00:29:40.200 not necessarily in this war, military cards, they're economic cards and oil cards.

00:29:46.180 That's exactly right.

00:29:47.300 Whether they hold all the cards or not is not, it's irrelevant.

00:29:49.980 They hold enough cards that they're a meaningful player at the table and we're going to have

00:29:53.980 to deal with them.

00:29:54.800 I mean, they are controlling the Strait of Hormuz and Trump clearly cares about it, which

00:30:00.060 is why he made that huge threat, which seemed reckless to many, which resulted in them responding

00:30:06.860 with an even bigger threat of their own to basically starve the entire Middle East of 0.99

00:30:12.760 water.

00:30:13.140 I mean, the number of people who would die if they did what they said they were going to do is chilling.

00:30:18.960 So that's the situation we're in right now.

00:30:21.260 But domestically, I'm sure Trump is looking at what this means politically, which should be a smaller matter versus life and death.

00:30:29.280 But it does matter back home to Americans.

00:30:32.140 And while Americans may not be thinking about, gee, you know, what does Iran mean to me?

00:30:38.400 at least they weren't four weeks ago. And they're certainly not thinking about how can we take over

00:30:42.960 Cuba, which is in the news this morning as well. Like that's our next domino to drop that we were

00:30:47.940 talking with them. But, you know, there may be a military option as well. Like, OK, no one is

00:30:51.980 thinking about how I can improve the lives of the people in Cuba. They are thinking about the

00:30:57.900 economy and Trump's numbers on the economy are dismal. They're dismal. First of all, gas prices

00:31:03.660 are linked to everything. People do care about them as a standalone, but they're also an indicator

00:31:07.920 oil prices in general and gas, of where the economy is going. Gas prices are up $1 from a

00:31:13.600 month ago, $1 per gallon. And diesel prices are up almost $1.50 from a month ago. Everything runs

00:31:20.800 on diesel, everything. All the major trucks you see, all the major shipping you see, the planes,

00:31:25.280 the cranes, literally everything other than probably your sedan runs on diesel. And many

00:31:30.400 of the sedans run on diesel too. And the latest polling to come out on this shows the following,

00:31:35.340 OK, when it comes to, obviously, when it comes to the economy, Trump's numbers are bad.

00:31:40.580 They've been bad, but they're even worse.

00:31:42.520 Trying to pull it up here.

00:31:44.160 They're this is all conflicts.

00:31:46.300 OK, this is his job approval ratings.

00:31:50.320 Overall, 40 percent approve.

00:31:52.060 This is a new CBS poll.

00:31:54.520 Immigration, 45 percent approve, which is his highest number on Iran, just 38 percent

00:31:59.060 approve on the economy.

00:32:00.240 He has a 36 percent approval rating on inflation.

00:32:02.900 it's 33 percent. So you've got two thirds of the United States opposing him, not approving of his

00:32:09.700 job when it comes to the economy and the inflation. And when it comes to this war, we're seeing now

00:32:16.040 some more realistic numbers. You can pull MAGA all you want. MAGA is with Trump. But there are a lot

00:32:21.420 of Republicans who do not consider themselves MAGA. And by the way, Pierce, normally like two

00:32:26.560 months ago, we would have called them neocons. And those people should have approved of this war

00:32:30.220 more than anybody. Now it appears that the coalition has shifted because the non-MAGA 0.99

00:32:34.640 Republicans are only 70% in favor of this war, which means 30% of them are not in favor. Those

00:32:41.360 are not neocons. Those are people who were Republican voters who came over for Trump,

00:32:46.440 who have turned on him. And when you pull the larger group of Trump voters in 2024,

00:32:51.460 there was a poll that just took a look at this. One quarter of the voters disapprove of what is

00:32:57.280 happening in Iran and their opinions on Trump are turning too. So this will have political

00:33:01.740 consequences we need to pay attention to. Yeah, no question. I mean, again, I just

00:33:05.980 question the timing of this six, seven months before the midterm elections. It would already

00:33:10.780 be tough for any incumbent president. Why do this now? And the thing we're not factoring in there

00:33:17.980 to these polls is what will happen in a few weeks and months when the real effect of what is going

00:33:25.560 on right now with Australia 4 Moose becomes clearer. Because when you hold up the supply

00:33:31.040 of fuel to the world, of energy to the world, it takes quite a few weeks to actually manifest

00:33:37.780 itself into food supplies and so on. So I think you're going to see a big spike in inflation

00:33:42.980 this summer running into the fall and the midterms. Now, how's Trump going to talk his way

00:33:49.740 out of that you're going to see inflation rising again you're going to see prices going up again

00:33:56.180 the gas pump you've already addressed none of this is serving the average american and if at the same

00:34:03.200 time the iranian regime that you apparently did this to depose remains intact and it's still just

00:34:10.780 as bellicose and it's clearly still wielding control over things like the strata foremost

00:34:16.180 and the neighboring Gulf states and so on,

00:34:20.440 then I think most Americans would be like,

00:34:22.600 why did we do this?

00:34:24.480 Donald, what's going on?

00:34:26.220 How did this sit with America first?

00:34:28.060 Any of it?

00:34:29.880 That's the thing.

00:34:31.080 I mean, MAGA may go with Trump however he feels,

00:34:35.180 whatever he says,

00:34:36.280 even if it's diametrically opposed from what he ran on.

00:34:39.000 But America first Republicans don't agree.

00:34:42.460 And America first independents don't agree.

00:34:44.040 The independents are the ones who decide elections. Republicans don't like it. Democrats don't like it. But it is the truth. And here's CNN's Harry Enten talking about Trump's economic approval rating among independents right now.

00:34:57.580 Listen here.

00:34:58.180 It's not 10.

00:34:59.120 21st century president's economic net approval ratings at this point in term two among independents.

00:35:04.580 Trump is 48 points underwater.

00:35:07.180 Just one in five independents, excuse me, just one in four independents say that they approve of the job that he is doing when it comes to the economy.

00:35:14.840 His net approval rating on the economy among independents, twice as bad as Barack Obama's was at this point, who was 25 points underwater and double digits worse than George W. Bush was among independents,

00:35:25.460 according to CBS News at this point when it comes to the economy. Look, these are numbers

00:35:30.360 that if I were a Republican running for Congress, I would be shaking in place because there's really

00:35:36.800 nowhere to hide if you're a Republican running for Congress. Pierce, you and I both know while

00:35:42.440 Trump will scoff at these polls and say they're not real, etc., he'll focus on the MAGA numbers.

00:35:47.420 He's not dumb and he sees what we see. And I think it's one of the reasons why he had the reversal

00:35:52.020 this morning i think he's looking at the economic outcome here as opposed to what else is happening

00:35:57.420 militarily what do you think a hundred percent and so he should you know he came in on a mission

00:36:03.720 statement to improve the lives of average americans that's why they voted for him in such big numbers

00:36:09.240 uh they didn't like what happened under president biden and the democrats and they saw in trump

00:36:14.500 the kind of pie piper figure that would come in and he would not go and attack middle eastern

00:36:20.520 countries like some of these predecessors. He would instead focus on domestic issues. He would

00:36:26.740 make America safe by sorting out the border, which he did, and he would make Americans more 0.73

00:36:32.600 prosperous. He'd make them pay less tax. He'd bring down the cost of living. He'd stop inflation

00:36:39.100 and so on. Well, none of this is going to happen. I can tell you, they're right up to the midterms.

00:36:43.680 unless an absolute miracle happens, I cannot see anything but increased financial pain

00:36:50.880 for the average American over the next six months. It just seems to me utterly inevitable.

00:36:56.300 And the same will happen in my country, the UK, and across Europe and across the world.

00:37:00.720 This seismic shock, this is the single greatest shock to the global energy system we have ever

00:37:07.740 seen already. And it's not over. If this was to escalate even further, and I think there's a

00:37:13.040 high likelihood, despite all Donald Trump's statements today, to say, look, it's pretty

00:37:17.000 much over, they want to do a deal. The Iranians aren't saying that. If this carries on a lot 0.99

00:37:22.100 longer than the-

00:37:23.920 Iranians aren't saying it, the Israelis aren't saying it, and we're sending Marines to Iran 0.99

00:37:28.220 right now. Sorry, keep going.

00:37:29.360 No, I just think if you put boots on the ground to add to the mix, I think this could turn into

00:37:33.580 a horror story for Donald Trump. And I just wonder who's advising him. It's like, Mr. President.

00:37:39.480 Rupert Murdoch.

00:37:40.220 Well, I don't know what to believe of who's in his ear or not. All I know is that whoever is telling him this is all going to play out really well, I think needs to probably right now be replaced by people telling him, Mr. President, you have a clear and imminent threat to your ability to control any part of Congress come November.

00:38:01.360 I think it's almost certain he'd probably lose the House right now, and more and more increasingly likely, if this war carries on, he will lose the Senate too.

00:38:10.840 That paralyzes any president.

00:38:13.180 It would make Donald Trump the lamest of lame duck presidents. 0.89

00:38:16.620 He knows it, we know, everyone knows it. 0.89

00:38:18.680 It's how the system works.

00:38:20.380 So, again, I come back to why do it now?

00:38:24.000 Why do it like this?

00:38:25.340 And you forgot the General Petraeus, number one rule of war.

00:38:29.360 How does it end?

00:38:30.720 Petraeus called his book that.

00:38:32.360 How does it end is the first question you should always ask before you go to war.

00:38:37.860 In other words, what is the mission statement?

00:38:40.320 What does victory look like?

00:38:42.580 And we still don't know.

00:38:44.280 You know, if you ask any one of the administration at any given moment of any given day, what

00:38:49.420 is the end game here?

00:38:51.120 What is victory?

00:38:52.320 They can't really tell you.

00:38:54.840 Which is an opportunity.

00:38:57.120 That's an opportunity for us.

00:38:58.500 Just get out then.

00:38:59.640 Just get out.

00:39:00.220 It's fine.

00:39:00.800 You know, we haven't made it so crystal clear that something less of whatever that non-crystal clear thing is would be an obvious loss.

00:39:09.300 So let's just declare victory and get out.

00:39:12.480 I realize it's complicated at this point, but it's only going to be more complicated the longer we wait.

00:39:17.360 And one point I wanted to make for you is so now, according to this this poll, this is a YouGov Yahoo poll that shows 24 percent of Trump voters in 2024 do not support this war.

00:39:29.460 So it's basically one quarter of the Trump voters who voted for him last time are against this war.

00:39:36.540 15% of those say they're strongly against it.

00:39:39.780 And they point something interesting out when writing this up on CNN.

00:39:43.820 They point out that it took until 2006, three years after the Iraq war began, for GOP opposition to start to creep into the high teens.

00:39:56.520 That's where we've started with the Iran war.

00:40:00.260 I mean, 2006 was the darkest days.

00:40:03.660 It was truly like this is second term George W. Bush with the beheadings.

00:40:08.620 That's what was happening.

00:40:09.800 I remember because it was like months before I started my first job ever as an anchor with Bill Hemmer.

00:40:14.580 And the news cycle was so incredibly dark.

00:40:17.320 And Fox News is asking itself, like, how do we get people to tune in?

00:40:20.340 People are being beheaded.

00:40:21.940 And that's what made it creep up into the high teens.

00:40:25.420 Now, here we are in week four of this thing, and you've got 24 percent of Trump voters saying we are against this thing.

00:40:33.420 The president has got to stop this.

00:40:35.460 We don't have to stay over there.

00:40:37.420 All right.

00:40:37.940 I want to shift because I know I only have a short time with you and I've got to ask you.

00:40:41.960 I've got to ask you about what your former place of employment, CNN, is doing to keep up with the Piers Morgans of the world.

00:40:49.720 It appears they are jealous of your numbers and possibly my own.

00:40:53.700 It's incredible what they are doing. They've decided that if they try to make Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper and their sets look more like they are podcasters and in digital media, people will start listening to them again.

00:41:12.340 They've got Anderson Cooper.

00:41:14.060 They told him, take off your jacket and roll up your shirt sleeves.

00:41:16.860 They got him the big microphone that was like Edward R. Murrow style or that you'd see on a podcasting set.

00:41:22.640 Jake Tapper literally did his show from his office with his panels squeezed in on his little couch because he says that's where they do their actual journalism from, Pierce.

00:41:37.520 So they're getting more authentic, they think.

00:41:40.540 And you say what about this desperate ploy to save their ratings?

00:41:45.220 Well, I think flattery is the most impressive thing you can have.

00:41:50.080 Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

00:41:52.800 Having just done seven weeks of filming my show from my sitting room at home

00:41:59.060 because I managed to fall over and break my femur and need a new hip,

00:42:03.840 you and I know, and I've seen, I watch your show very regularly,

00:42:07.160 and not that you're in different locations.

00:42:08.360 it doesn't matter where you are because you can create exactly the same show from wherever you

00:42:12.540 are in the world and i'm the same i've been all over the world doing my show from all sorts of

00:42:16.440 different locations that's the beauty of of the nimbleness of what we now do and we know that our

00:42:22.520 viewers thoroughly embrace that but the difference is we're not mainstream media and they've been

00:42:27.660 very sniffy about all of us and saying oh look at these podcasters no one really cares about

00:42:32.940 there's a whole campaign going on now about no one they're all irrelevant these podcasters and

00:42:38.300 youtubers no one cares and i'm like i've got four kids from 32 down to 14 none of them watch

00:42:45.140 mainstream television at all they all watch youtube they all watch my show your show they

00:42:51.380 watch tucker they watch candace they watch all these shows um increasingly interestingly they're

00:42:57.100 not watching ben shapiro for example i saw the numbers came out a few days ago about the

00:43:02.620 dramatic shift downwards in his youtube numbers i'm not surprised because he's gone from ben

00:43:08.120 shapiro the king of free speech to ben shapiro the guy that says if you say anything critical

00:43:13.040 about israel you must be anti-semitic and we must cancel you um the hypocrisy is real uh but when i 0.85

00:43:18.940 see someone like anderson cooper oh i have to say in my experience of working with him and i lose 0.93

00:43:25.200 that phrase advisedly because he was such a poisonous little backstabber when i worked there

00:43:30.080 watching him rolling his sleeves up with his big old microphone trying to be edward morrow was one

00:43:38.200 of the funniest things i've ever seen i mean at least with jake tapper i found jake tapper's

00:43:42.820 office mesmerizing he's got so much cool stuff in there but really anderson cooper the new ed

00:43:49.060 morrow do me a favor uh you know he's i know it's just completely toe curling but like i said

00:43:56.520 imitation is the best form of flattery they are trying to look like us but they don't I mean 0.78

00:44:02.920 Anderson Cooper never expresses an opinion worth listening to anyway but that's why people turn to

00:44:08.800 us they know what's happening in the news they want to know what to think about what's happening

00:44:13.360 in the news and we tell them we give them strident honest opinion take it or leave it but at least

00:44:19.320 no one is controlling us we're our own bosses we say what we believe in the moment we're not afraid

00:44:25.420 to change our views if facts change we are unencumbered spirits they cannot say the same

00:44:30.980 they're still living are the old the old mainstream media television rules and they are like a

00:44:38.100 straitjacket as you and i discovered so look on one level i've got some great friends at cnn so

00:44:43.340 actually i've always got on very well with jake i get on very well with people like caitlin collins

00:44:47.640 and wolf blitzer and uh erin burnett and others um i've got no issues with a lot of my colleagues

00:44:52.840 set. But I do think they've got an extra sensual problem, CNN, about what they are going to try to

00:44:58.180 do going forward. Because the average age of a CNN viewer is nearly 70. 70! The average age of my

00:45:04.360 viewers and your viewers is about 45. And the reason young people gravitate to us is we look

00:45:10.240 quite cool to them. We're not sitting in conventional mainstream media locations,

00:45:16.060 preaching a kind of mainstream media quiet.

00:45:20.140 It's not the set.

00:45:21.680 It's the person and the messaging.

00:45:24.460 And to your point,

00:45:25.060 like my audience disagrees with me all the time.

00:45:27.300 A lot of them are supportive of this war. 0.84

00:45:29.020 That doesn't mean that they leave.

00:45:30.640 They're interested in hearing ideas kicked around,

00:45:33.140 honestly, by somebody who overall they trust.

00:45:35.980 The problem for CNN is they sacrificed that long ago,

00:45:38.340 and it's going to take more than a set design

00:45:40.140 to get it back.

00:45:41.040 By the way, on the subject of Ben Shapiro,

00:45:42.520 who I know attacked you for absolutely no reason

00:45:44.940 and just doubled down. He's lost 150,000 subscribers over the past year, 150,000 at least.

00:45:51.560 There's a real reason to believe that he may be paying for subscribers and views. Many who study

00:45:56.640 the industry believe that. But I want to show you one thing quickly. He's not only trying to force

00:46:00.540 you into saying what he wants you to say around Israel and this war, et cetera, and me too.

00:46:06.140 He tried it with Michael Knowles, his own colleague over there, where they were having

00:46:09.740 a discussion like a blmer like a blmer he tried to make him say what he wanted him to say here's

00:46:17.320 the example in sot 9 right michael i'll just ask you straight up is candace owens doing something

00:46:21.980 evil by attacking erica kerr i i think that it's wrong to attack erica kerr well no say say the

00:46:26.960 sentence with her name no i'm not i'm i'm not going to dance like a puppet for the podcast

00:46:32.180 you don't have to dance like a puppet but you are dancing pretty quickly i mean there's a lot

00:46:36.320 of tap dancing. I know, I don't think there's any tap dancing. Even if you aren't interested

00:46:40.640 in the podcast, the podcast awards are interested in you. And I think the people who are leading

00:46:43.560 the invective against Candace are her biggest publicist. Make it, say it, BLM, say it. That's 0.98

00:46:50.900 what Ben Shapiro has become, Piers. Yeah, it's like he's all for free speech as long as it's

00:46:56.240 exactly how he tells you you need to speak. And I'm not having it. You're not having it. That's

00:47:03.200 why our numbers are going through the roof as more and more people tune in it's why he's losing

00:47:08.160 his audience and credit to michael knowles who came on my show last week and was great as he

00:47:13.240 always is we don't always agree about everything but he's always a civilized debater he's always

00:47:18.000 an interesting guy he's always well informed he's very intelligent and he just wasn't going to be

00:47:22.260 browbeaten by ben shapiro into saying what ben shapiro wanted him to say and you can have all

00:47:28.800 sorts of views about candace i've candace on all the time we we lock horns about all sorts of things

00:47:34.120 you know i don't particularly like the way she's gone after erica kirk i don't agree with her about 0.68

00:47:38.460 bridget macron being a man whatever it is uh but candace is a very dynamic and popular person in 0.99

00:47:45.820 the space she has strong opinions strong views and i like arguing with her just as i do with you

00:47:51.180 when we had our tear up about bad bunny 42 million people watched one of those clips of me and you

00:47:58.000 going at it about Bad Bunny on our TikTok channel. Anderson Cooper can roll his sleeves up and take

00:48:03.640 all his clothes off. He's not going to get numbers like that. A pleasure, my friend. Thank you so

00:48:11.280 much. I agree with everything you just said. We'll talk again soon. Great to see you. Take care.

00:48:15.940 Piers Morgan, the one and only, one of my inspos for getting into the space to begin with.

00:48:19.960 He wasn't yet in this space when I got in this space, but his no-nonsense, honest approach to

00:48:26.080 the news has defined him for decades. And it was something I admired about Piers back when I was

00:48:31.440 still sort of the more polished anchor, not sharing her own opinions, including the day I got into

00:48:37.440 podcasting back in 2020. I mean, I named him and Tucker as two of my inspirations because they were

00:48:43.020 people who I felt spoke honestly to their audiences, the consequences be damned. Now they

00:48:48.120 would both wind up fired within like two years of that. And that's no accident, right? I was

00:48:54.620 also canned at NBC, though technically it wasn't a firing in any event. I had certainly had my show

00:48:59.820 canceled. Um, so eventually it comes for all of us. If we're going to be super honest about the

00:49:05.940 way we feel, because then we get dubbed controversial and we get dubbed all the terrible

00:49:10.420 things and we have to live with that, unfortunately, but it's worth it. It's worth it for, for living

00:49:15.580 free. My God, it's worth it for living free. I live free. No one controls me. No one,

00:49:24.460 No one.

00:49:25.000 There's no agenda pushing me to say one thing or another, anything other than my own opinion.

00:49:30.740 I don't take any foreign money.

00:49:32.140 I don't take any money from the government.

00:49:33.720 I don't owe any favors to anybody in the Trump administration.

00:49:36.660 Nothing.

00:49:37.620 Nothing.

00:49:38.640 That's why I can give you my unvarnished view.

00:49:40.520 You can take it.

00:49:41.140 You can leave it.

00:49:42.100 I think I have a close enough relationship with my audience that we can get through a

00:49:45.600 disagreement because we have before.

00:49:47.940 But you will not find that when you tune in to CNN or Fox.

00:49:53.240 Now we know that Lindsey Graham and Rupert Murdoch, the two people, the guy who owns the channel and the guy who's the face of it now, were the two biggest boosters, not to mention Mark Thiessen and General Jack Keene, the two biggest boosters pushing this war.

00:50:05.520 Do you really think you're going to get objective analysis now over there on how it's going?

00:50:09.260 Do you?

00:50:10.220 Of course not.

00:50:11.360 I have no agenda.

00:50:12.140 I'll tell you what my bias is.

00:50:14.180 We have to get through it together.

00:50:15.760 We have to get through it together, and you have to get various viewpoints.

00:50:17.860 And I know you can get the opposite any place you want, any up and down the channel over at FNC.

00:50:22.740 Anyway, you tell me whether Anderson Cooper's rolled up sleeves

00:50:25.680 are going to make you tune over to CNN now to listen to his take.

00:50:30.940 I doubt it.

00:50:32.180 Camille Foster's here next.

00:50:34.040 Think about this.

00:50:34.760 In 2006, $20,000 equaled roughly 33 ounces of gold at spot price.

00:50:40.600 At today's prices, those 33 ounces would be worth about $165,000.

00:50:46.680 That's why many smart Americans diversify a portion of their savings into precious metals.

00:50:51.280 And that's why you should consider buying gold from Birch Gold Group.

00:50:54.660 For thousands of years, gold has been a store of wealth.

00:50:57.920 And today, it's a crucial part of any balance strategy.

00:51:00.700 Even better, Birch Gold can help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered

00:51:05.720 retirement account in gold.

00:51:07.520 Just text MK to the number 989898 to receive your free info kit on gold.

00:51:12.340 There's no obligation, just useful information.

00:51:15.260 With an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and tens of thousands of happy customers,

00:51:19.160 let Birch Gold help you diversify with gold. Now that's peace of mind. Again, text MK to 989898 today.

00:51:49.160 at large of Tangle News. Camille, so good to see you. There's a lot to get to. Let's start with

00:51:56.400 President Trump on the tarmac down in Florida before he left Mar-a-Lago on his latest comments

00:52:04.380 on Iran. Watch. Iran's foreign ministry says you're not telling the truth when it comes to

00:52:09.320 productive conversations down the wall. Well, they're going to have to get themselves better

00:52:12.540 public relations people. We have had very, very strong talks. We'll see where they lead. We have

00:52:20.400 points, major points of agreement. I would say almost all points of agreement. Perhaps that

00:52:26.560 hasn't been conveyed. The communication, as you know, has been blown to pieces. But we've had

00:52:30.920 very strong talks. Mr. Whitcoff and Mr. Kushner had them. They went, I would say, perfectly. They

00:52:39.740 want very much to make a deal. We'd like to make a deal, too. We're going to get together today

00:52:46.080 by probably phone. We're doing a five-day period. We'll see how that goes. And if it goes well,

00:52:52.760 we're going to end up with settling this. Otherwise, we just keep bombing our little

00:52:56.940 hearts out. But we're dealing with the man who I believe is the most respected and the leader.

00:53:03.760 You know, it's a little tough. They've wiped out. We've wiped out everybody.

00:53:07.340 Is that the Supreme Leader?

00:53:09.240 No, not the Supreme Leader.

00:53:10.760 You want the enriched uranium before you can end this.

00:53:12.940 We want no enrichment, but we also want the enriched uranium.

00:53:20.640 So they need better PR people.

00:53:23.180 I think they're all getting bombed.

00:53:25.940 And we're going to keep bombing our little hearts out if we can't reach a deal.

00:53:30.080 I mean, I'm going to say something controversial.

00:53:32.100 That's the kind of commentary that actually makes me love Trump.

00:53:34.380 You know, it's like I don't like this war.

00:53:37.220 I'm not in support of this war, but like I've heard he is funny.

00:53:40.920 He is funny.

00:53:42.340 And I don't like Iran. 0.95

00:53:43.820 I'm certainly not rooting for them to win.

00:53:45.800 So he's trying to show some American muscle there in getting them to the bargaining table.

00:53:50.580 They don't want to come.

00:53:52.140 And that's, you know, sort of frank talk from Donald Trump.

00:53:55.860 What do you make of it?

00:53:56.360 Yeah, I mean, the conflicting messages on whether or not they're talking, are they talking?

00:54:01.000 That's a little frustrating, but not at all surprising.

00:54:03.720 I mean, Iran is always messaging in a very particular way, trying to show strength and be muscular in a context like this. 0.60

00:54:10.140 But we've got plenty of reporting that gives us a clear indication that there are a lot of various intermediaries who are having conversations between the two parties trying to help here.

00:54:21.140 The president mentioned Jared Kushner in particular and Steve Whitcoff, who have been having some conversations apparently.

00:54:27.580 And I would fully expect that there are discussions.

00:54:30.880 But everything that we've heard so far, apart from what the president has said, suggests that the two sides are pretty far apart and that we're not anywhere near any sort of resolution.

00:54:40.280 And thus far, even while these conversations are going on, even while he's extended from the 48-hour deadline to add five more days, strikes are still going on, both from the Israelis, from Iran, from the United States, in Iran, certainly in Lebanon as well.

00:54:59.560 So the situation is still pretty precarious.

00:55:02.760 I think a lot of people were very concerned over the weekend that we would see a huge

00:55:06.600 escalation this weekend with some strikes on Iranian energy facilities.

00:55:10.780 And to the extent we're decimating their energy infrastructure, that has huge implications.

00:55:15.160 That's not just a matter of the war.

00:55:17.120 No, that's an attack on Iran.

00:55:19.920 That's an attack on the Iranian people and not just the government.

00:55:23.740 You know, that's not something I think we want to do because we want the Iranian people 1.00

00:55:27.640 to remain on our side, though some are supporting all of our movements because they're so anti-Ayatollah.

00:55:33.460 Speaking of the Ayatollah, Trump mentioned him. We don't know who it is. You know, we know that

00:55:38.880 the old Ayatollah's son got elected to the position, but he may be dead or extremely

00:55:44.480 physically and mentally incapacitated because apparently nobody's seen him. And there are

00:55:48.900 rumors that he's brain dead or actually dead. So who knows? But here's what Trump had to say

00:55:53.760 about the Strait of Hormuz and the Ayatollah.

00:55:56.900 What about the Strait of Hormuz?

00:55:58.260 Who's going to be in control of that?

00:55:59.260 That will be opened very soon, if this works.

00:56:01.680 How soon?

00:56:03.040 And who's in control of it?

00:56:04.240 Will Iran still be able to control the flow of oil?

00:56:06.800 Be jointly controlled.

00:56:09.200 By whom?

00:56:10.640 Maybe me.

00:56:12.020 Maybe me.

00:56:12.560 You want the United States to be in control of it? 0.84

00:56:13.480 Me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is,

00:56:16.240 whoever the next Ayatollah.

00:56:20.460 Maybe me.

00:56:22.100 He's running Venezuela.

00:56:23.380 Yeah. And he may be running Iran and the state of Hormuz or Marco Rubio is another candidate.

00:56:31.480 Marco Rubio should definitely be chosen for this. Maybe me, me and the Ayatollah.

00:56:35.960 And we don't believe there is an Ayatollah. Forgive me, Camille, but I don't feel I don't 1.00

00:56:40.860 feel confident about where it's going. It's it's very difficult to know just what the strategy is

00:56:45.960 here, just where the priorities are. It is interesting that there are so many conversations

00:56:49.900 happening about the economic implications of this conflict, particularly with the Straits

00:56:53.640 of Hormuz, but beyond that as well.

00:56:55.520 I mean, you had Scott Besson on nearly all of the Sunday shows yesterday being the chief

00:57:00.400 advocate for this conflict, but also trying to contextualize the administration, yeah,

00:57:05.180 the administration strategy with respect to the very-

00:57:08.480 The Treasury Secretary.

00:57:09.220 Exactly, which is very, I mean, you would expect State Department, someone from the

00:57:12.400 Department of Defense, maybe the Vice President of the United States.

00:57:14.720 But no, you've got the Treasury Secretary out there talking about the priorities for

00:57:18.480 this conflict, but then also trying to contextualize what seems like a very odd strategy of essentially

00:57:24.740 loosening some of the restrictions that have been placed on Iran, loosening some of the

00:57:28.420 restrictions that have been placed on Russia in the midst of a conflict where both of these

00:57:33.160 countries are essentially parties to the conflict, Iran directly, obviously, and Russia because

00:57:38.320 Iran is an ally of theirs. And there has been clear reporting and statements from Putin and

00:57:44.240 the Russian regime as well, indicating that this is their partner. They're providing them with at

00:57:48.900 least some sort of security support. Certainly the weaponry that we've been taking out for weeks

00:57:55.480 there was supplied by the Russians and the Chinese in many instances. So it's a very 0.58

00:58:00.640 interesting situation. I think it does bring into question some of the earlier claims that there

00:58:06.780 was this kind of existential imminent threat, because the concern doesn't really seem to be

00:58:12.300 that if we stop doing this tomorrow,

00:58:14.180 there's going to be an attack on the homeland,

00:58:16.260 in which case that helps perhaps put into context

00:58:19.460 some of the kind of strange public opinion polling numbers.

00:58:23.020 And by strange, I mean just not particularly supportive

00:58:25.740 of this effort, at least amongst the general public.

00:58:30.060 Yeah, well, they didn't sell it.

00:58:31.780 They didn't take the time to sell it.

00:58:33.440 And after the fact, their rationales kept changing

00:58:36.740 day by day, literally day by day.

00:58:38.520 So people know when they're being spun.

00:58:40.640 But I also think that the reason most Republicans are in favor of this conflict is they hate Iran, not the people, but the government.

00:58:48.460 You know, like they know that Iran has been messing with American troops and interests for the better part of the last 50 years. 0.73

00:58:53.960 So it's just like that's kind of where my husband is. 1.00

00:58:56.000 Like, F Iran, you know, sick of their nonsense and this bullshit. 1.00

00:58:59.480 And like, why wouldn't we bomb them? 1.00

00:59:02.100 We know they're up to no good.

00:59:03.200 They're nefarious and they definitely don't have our interests at heart.

00:59:06.980 I think it's more complicated than that.

00:59:08.520 But I get it, too.

00:59:09.840 I mean, I get that, that attitude.

00:59:12.420 I wanted, I wanted to, you mentioned J.D. Vance not being out there.

00:59:15.860 It is interesting.

00:59:17.060 It is interesting that it's the Treasury Secretary who's doing all the defense, like not Marco, not J.D.

00:59:24.100 And there is a report now today from Bloomberg that says one of the biggest pushers of this war,

00:59:31.500 shockingly, you won't read this in the Wall Street Journal, was Rupert Murdoch,

00:59:35.240 who owns the Journal and The Post and Fox News.

00:59:38.900 And they report that, this is how they write it, Trump's around war drive exposes limits of yes-sir cabinet.

00:59:47.000 Trump's decision to wage war on Iran was partly motivated by pressure from outside allies, while his own White House team stayed more muted.

00:59:55.340 Those privately pressing Trump to strike Iran included Rupert Murdoch and some conservative commentators.

01:00:00.640 We know that that included Mark Thiessen, General Jack Keene, and Mark Levin, famously, of Fox News, among others.

01:00:08.780 Lindsey Graham, I mean, he's in a different category because he's an elected politician.

01:00:13.180 Then they write that Murdoch communicated with Trump several times as he urged the president

01:00:17.360 to take on Tehran, according to one person briefed on their interactions.

01:00:20.940 Then they write some of Trump's closest advisors were more muted, including Vance, Rubio,

01:00:27.140 and Susie Wiles.

01:00:29.020 Few, if any, told him directly that it was an ill-conceived idea.

01:00:33.000 Wiles tried to ensure that he understood his options, while Vance urged top officials to

01:00:37.340 speak candidly to the president about the possibility of war. In private meetings before

01:00:41.580 the attacks, Vance asked questions about how any war would work. And then on the heels of that

01:00:48.060 report from Bloomberg, you get this one from the Washington Post, Camille. Vance has not decided

01:00:54.580 on 2028. Vance has maintained in recent private conversations that he has not yet decided whether

01:01:01.160 he will seek the presidential nomination for 2028, according to two people who have recently

01:01:05.020 discussed the matter with him. One of those people cited Vance's fourth child and said the

01:01:09.560 vice president has put a priority on his family life and is unlikely to make a final decision

01:01:13.560 until he and Usha Vance see how another baby affects their lives. So what do you make of

01:01:21.620 where J.D. Vance stands now in terms of his political future, given everything that's

01:01:26.860 happening? Well, by all appearances, it seems like he has been somewhat sidelined here. It's

01:01:33.340 clear that JD is someone who, based on his previous comments, presumably has some reticence

01:01:39.820 about this conflict. Publicly, his statements have been generally supportive of the administration.

01:01:45.400 But in terms of his future prospects, I mean, all of the reporting about the contest between Rubio

01:01:51.200 and JD have been incredibly difficult to ignore, certainly things that JD and his team have heard.

01:01:57.480 And it would be very strange if he were super bullish on the prospect of running for BP at a

01:02:03.080 time when it seems that he doesn't really have the full support of the president of the United

01:02:06.620 States. He isn't, as we just mentioned, the person who's out there selling what is the most

01:02:11.380 important thing for the administration at this point, this particular conflict, which the

01:02:15.460 president has to, one, hope goes really well, and two, really does need to do some messaging around.

01:02:20.660 So it's a real challenge for J.D. But frankly, I mean, if you are J.D. Vance and you are a

01:02:28.280 principled opponent of this kind of intervention abroad, then you ought to be doing everything

01:02:33.400 within your power, even if it means alienating your boss, to try and advocate against the

01:02:38.900 conflict. That is what leadership requires and looks like. And it isn't clear that that's going

01:02:44.440 on. So one does have to wonder about his viability as a candidate, if that's the sort of perspective

01:02:50.740 that he hopes to embody and the sort of policy priority that he hopes to pursue.

01:02:55.740 okay but here's why i disagree with everything you just said okay tell me i think jd vance is

01:03:03.000 actually in a great position right now because i think there's no question he opposes this war

01:03:06.960 of course he opposes this war he he is a true non-interventionalist i think he's much more in

01:03:12.540 the field of tulsi gabbard joe kent tucker you know was was clear before the election that he

01:03:18.100 would oppose this kind of action and stuck by that principle. But he is doing correctly the

01:03:26.040 job of the vice president, which is to have his bosses back. Now, the real question to me, and it

01:03:31.460 would be a disastrous move politically and otherwise for J.D. Vance to turn on Trump publicly

01:03:35.280 on this war. And so he's doing the right thing by standing by his boss. He, you know, once Trump

01:03:40.200 made his decision, said, I'm on board, and he's been defensive of the president. And I think that's

01:03:44.160 Good. Now, the real question is, when 2028 kicks off, which will be, you know, technically after

01:03:52.040 the midterms, but, you know, realistically within 12 months of that, and he gets the Kamala Harris,

01:03:58.460 Sonny Hostin of the View question, is there anything you would do differently? Like in

01:04:03.620 particular on the Iran war? Sure. That's the moment. What does he say there? And I would submit

01:04:10.200 And in that moment, what he needs to say is, in general, I remain a non-interventionalist.

01:04:19.360 And had I been commander in chief, would I have done what President Donald Trump did?

01:04:23.560 It's hard to say because I wasn't there for every briefing he got.

01:04:27.260 Based on what I knew, probably not.

01:04:29.160 Probably not.

01:04:29.960 But these are the amazing things the president got out of it.

01:04:33.320 And I supported his decision making.

01:04:34.940 and Trump is this unique political figure

01:04:37.340 who has this incredible feel for dangers,

01:04:42.200 for the politics of a given matter

01:04:44.340 and for taking huge amounts of information

01:04:45.920 and coming out with like a key takeaway.

01:04:48.300 So I would never publicly second guess him on it.

01:04:50.740 Something like that.

01:04:51.540 Something that doesn't throw the president under the bus,

01:04:53.460 but telegraphs to everybody.

01:04:54.660 Yes, I would have done that one differently.

01:04:56.260 And here's why I don't think it's gonna hurt him

01:04:58.300 if he answers it that way or whatever,

01:05:00.760 however he comes out of this.

01:05:01.600 Because if you take a look at the polls,

01:05:03.900 So the latest poll, according to Yahoo, YouGov, is 24 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2024 are against this war and the remaining are for it.

01:05:14.600 So he's, you know, what's 25 percent of the voters who voted for him the first time might not do it again.

01:05:21.520 Those people are the isolationists or the non-interventionists.

01:05:25.860 J.D. will be acceptable to them, potentially.

01:05:28.320 I'm not saying guaranteed, but he's potentially acceptable to them.

01:05:30.920 The other 75 are neocons who hate Trump, but like what he's doing.

01:05:37.200 Now suddenly they're warming up to him.

01:05:38.920 And diehard MAGA, which will just follow Trump wherever he leads them.

01:05:43.340 The diehard MAGA, they won't abandon J.D. Vance for answering a question like that, that way.

01:05:49.040 And they will see him as the Trump standard bearer because he was the guy's VP.

01:05:52.760 And he's going to have two more years at this point, two and a half, of loyalty to Trump and backing Trump and being another big face of the administration.

01:05:59.360 So they're still going to love him.

01:06:00.740 it's the neo Connie right wing that won't like JD. And while they're suddenly like,

01:06:06.520 yay, Trump, you know, they don't actually like Trump and JD. They're using Trump to get this

01:06:11.880 war against Iran, which they want. And once they've gotten the war, like there's only so 0.99

01:06:16.580 many other places in the, in the Middle East, they can invade Camille. So like, I don't think

01:06:20.980 they're going to be looking at the next Republican administration as like another tool by which we

01:06:25.260 can hammer. Now they are talking about Turkey. Um, that's a little scary, but let's say they 1.00

01:06:30.300 managed to like put their turkey desires, their war hawk turkey desire to the side. I think even

01:06:35.840 they would even realize, even if they couldn't put it aside, that they can't convince another

01:06:38.740 Republican administration to start another war. Maybe I'm crazy. I believe the last promises.

01:06:43.720 But in any event, this is my long analysis on why I think JD is fine. He's probably in a better

01:06:48.140 position than ever to secure the GOP nomination because the non-interventionalists are not going 1.00

01:06:55.020 to be backing Marco Rubio. I think they're too worried he shares Trump's ability to get pushed

01:07:02.240 by people like Netanyahu. Yeah, see, I do wonder about that particular narrative. I mean,

01:07:08.820 it does seem to me that Donald Trump is a guy who makes his own decisions and choices at the

01:07:13.780 moment. I think he seemed to make some determination that there needed to be action

01:07:18.740 in this particular conflict to the extent he made that decision. Let me jump in on that. Let me jump

01:07:22.760 And then I'll give it right back to you.

01:07:24.600 Recently, we talked about the Brittany Hughes DWI.

01:07:27.240 She used to date Justin Timberlake, who also had a DWI, as luck would have it.

01:07:31.220 Okay.

01:07:31.560 But in any event, Justin Timberlake, according to Brittany Spears' memoir, pushed her into

01:07:35.300 having an abortion of a baby that they got pregnant with.

01:07:38.660 Now, he pushed her and pushed her, and she didn't want to do it.

01:07:40.860 But she says he really pushed her, and she did it.

01:07:43.200 So was that Brittany's decision?

01:07:44.540 Yes, it was.

01:07:45.580 But if Justin Timberlake hadn't pushed and pushed her, would she have done it?

01:07:48.960 No, she wouldn't have.

01:07:50.500 It's the same thing.

01:07:51.340 There's no question Bibi pushed Trump into this. Yes, that doesn't excuse Trump. It was President Trump's decision. Totally, of course. But how does that absolve Bibi Netanyahu for being the primary pusher of this war? It was his brainchild. It was his dream for decades. He was at the White House seven times pushing it. He had Lindsey Graham advising him on how to push it, how to manipulate Trump into it. There's just no question. 0.92

01:08:13.520 And then ultimately, they were the final catalyst of it around when we would do it, according to Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson and Trump.

01:08:20.980 So it's like that doesn't neither man is absolved.

01:08:24.340 Man is absolved.

01:08:25.540 But there's no question that but for Bibi Netanyahu, we would not have done this now.

01:08:29.840 I mean, we've just seen reporting that suggests not only Israel, but also MBS Saudis were generally supportive of some sort of effort like this, some sort of intervention like this.

01:08:39.280 It's not hard to imagine that the White House, having had its success in Venezuela, having previously had its success with Midnight Hammer, imagined a very short and a brutal assault in Iran could be something that could actually produce beneficial results in the region. 0.93

01:08:54.740 And maybe they're reading the tea leaves.

01:08:56.680 Perhaps they're looking at the situation again with Venezuela.

01:08:59.620 You go in, you know that their defenses were provided by two of your major geopolitical adversaries.

01:09:04.620 if you can do something similar in Iran now before, say, they get hypersonic missiles or

01:09:10.340 something like that from China, you might be better positioned to actually achieve some sort

01:09:15.380 of meaningful change and recalibration in the region than by not doing anything at all.

01:09:22.520 Is it possible that there are- Theoretically, yes, Camille, that's possible. But that's not

01:09:26.440 what actually happened. Like in your imaginary world, sure. But we know that the BB influence

01:09:31.460 was real. We know that he was there seven times. We know that he was coordinating with Lindsey

01:09:35.680 Graham. We know that Trump was listening to him. We know Marco Rubio said the imminent threat

01:09:41.800 was Israel was about to attack them and we realized they would attack us in response.

01:09:47.920 Yeah. And I'm not dismissing any of that. I'm also suggesting that it is not entirely,

01:09:53.500 it's not unreasonable to acknowledge that countries have aligned interest and it is not

01:09:59.860 is a circumstance where the administration hasn't had public and prominent disagreements

01:10:06.180 with Israel with respect to the prosecution of this particular conflict, and even with

01:10:10.760 respect to the prosecution of the conflict in Gaza.

01:10:13.540 So I think it's imperative that we are granting this administration agency.

01:10:18.640 I saw Joe Cannon had been making the rounds recently, and in his summary of this particular

01:10:24.640 incident and in discussing Syria and Iraq, he puts somehow the responsibility for those conflicts

01:10:31.240 on Israel. I think that's a mistake. I think to the extent we want to be critical of this 0.88

01:10:35.520 administration, and I have been on any number of things and have been here too, I think it's

01:10:40.180 important to just speak directly and say the president of the United States made a decision

01:10:44.200 to go into Iran. And the president of the United States, to the extent there doesn't really seem

01:10:48.940 like there's a great strategy, to the extent the messaging is wrong, to the extent the emphasis is

01:10:53.160 in the wrong place. That is on him. He's culpable for that. He made the decision. And what will the

01:10:58.400 next administration do? I think that will have everything to do with who ends up getting elected.

01:11:02.860 I don't know that the president is particularly vulnerable to power. And I'd say one last thing

01:11:07.620 about Joe Kent, since I mentioned him a moment ago, the suggestion that there's somehow perhaps

01:11:13.700 some sort of danger to the president and that perhaps that's what he's responding to, that he's

01:11:18.140 not just being kind of pressured, as you mentioned, in meetings, which is totally conventionable and

01:11:22.900 understandable. But the notion that there is somehow some sort of danger or threat to his

01:11:28.540 life or his family's life, and he needs to be concerned about that, and that's why he attacked,

01:11:32.800 I think that sort of thing is just so sensational and over the top that anyone who is making those

01:11:38.040 kinds of assertions, like there ought to be a huge number of question marks just kind of

01:11:42.500 surrounding them and any other statements that they're making.

01:11:46.860 I don't, I mean, he said that to Tucker, that he thought that might have been one of the reasons.

01:11:51.000 Tucker asked him, how do you take a man who ran for 10 years on not getting us involved in any

01:11:55.340 Middle East wars and flip him? How does that happen? And his answer was, you know, the pressure

01:12:01.560 that was brought to bear by Israel and Lindsey Graham and others on Trump, you know, made the

01:12:06.220 case over and over and over and convinced him this could be done quickly. And the dissenters

01:12:09.980 were left out of the room. And now we hear, you know, weren't really saying all that much dissent

01:12:13.940 anyway, like the JDs and the Marcos and the Susie Wileses of the world, maybe not have been in favor,

01:12:19.560 but weren't really making a strong case against it.

01:12:22.300 As far as I know, Tucker was the only one going in there

01:12:24.060 and getting in front of Trump

01:12:24.840 and really making the case against it.

01:12:27.040 He failed, but he tried.

01:12:29.380 So, you know, there's that.

01:12:32.000 And then Joe Kent said the other possibility

01:12:34.080 is that Trump felt he might be threatened.

01:12:38.320 Like he might have skin in the game.

01:12:40.680 Like, do it, do it or else something could happen to you.

01:12:45.040 Like, hate to see something happen to you.

01:12:47.500 Yeah, it's just a little too conspiratorial.

01:12:49.180 Well, I hear that. I hear that. And Joe Kent and I did not go there. But I think, you know,

01:12:55.860 if I'm to give him the benefit of the doubt, Camille, he was the National Counterterrorism

01:13:00.540 Center chief. He's seen a lot of stuff that you and I have not seen. And he knows what,

01:13:10.460 you know, our government and other governments are capable of in a way you and I don't fully

01:13:15.480 appreciate. And he can't really share too many of the specifics about it. But if he's got that

01:13:21.560 concern, I think he's worth listening to. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.

01:13:25.320 We can listen. And perhaps I shouldn't dismiss it out of hand, but I will say extraordinary

01:13:29.800 claims demand extraordinary evidence. And thus far, I haven't seen evidence of that. And I

01:13:34.580 certainly wouldn't expect the relationship with Israel and the United States to be as close as it

01:13:39.220 is if, in fact, that were the case, if that was the kind of pressure that we're being brought to

01:13:43.580 bear. I mean, we find out everything. The president of the United States, you know, can't hook up with

01:13:48.340 an intern without everyone in the country and on the planet finding out about it. I think that sort 0.99

01:13:53.080 of thing, we would hear about it. There would be leaks, undoubtedly. I don't know. I really don't

01:14:00.220 know. I used to feel that, but I just feel like, you know, the number of things that our government

01:14:06.560 has kept secret from us, like just look what's happened with the Epstein files. You know, look

01:14:10.400 at the number of redactions look at the number of loopholes the size of a mac truck you could

01:14:14.500 drive through that law mandating the release of them i just feel like they do hide things um and

01:14:20.520 i i don't know exactly why i don't think we're getting the full story on a lot of the big like

01:14:24.780 there's a lot more to know i think about the butler shooter why don't we you know why why did

01:14:30.140 tucker and miranda devine of the new york post have to break all the news about his social media

01:14:33.680 why didn't we hear why did we just hear from the fbi that a very limited profile and they were

01:14:38.540 gonna leave it at that until tucker and miranda divine broke that they had the same source is my

01:14:42.660 understanding who gave them a leak anyway i'm not i'm not nearly as trusting of government as i used

01:14:48.260 to be and it's really just from years on this earth and in this business that have gotten me

01:14:53.000 there but fair enough um let's keep going because there's more there's more to discuss um i want to

01:14:59.960 talk to you about cbs news because they're a hot mess and they're failing you'll be shocked to hear

01:15:07.840 failing. CBS News hired Tony Dokopoul because they wanted to save their evening news, but it's

01:15:14.840 going a different way, Camille. Brian Steinberg over at Variety dropped a piece just a few days

01:15:20.460 ago, the opening line of which is the following. Suddenly, CBS Evening News is back where executives

01:15:26.780 at the news division behind the show hoped never to return. Viewership for the program, anchored by

01:15:32.900 Tony Dokopoul since the start of the year, has once again dropped below 4 million. I mean,

01:15:37.520 this is the evening news. Remember, this is like the one that would get, I mean, just like 15 years

01:15:42.200 ago, 10 million a night, easily, easily, sometimes 15 million a night, dropped below 4 million,

01:15:48.840 a critical demarcation point that previously spurred alarm at CBS News. They recently scrapped

01:15:56.440 a version of CBS News anchored by Maurice Dubois and John Dickerson after the program shed audience

01:16:02.520 and fell below $4 million on many weeknights.

01:16:05.760 They're back.

01:16:06.940 They did this whole thing.

01:16:08.240 They got rid of those two.

01:16:09.620 They brought in Tony Dokopoul from The Morning Show.

01:16:12.520 Oh, we're redoing it.

01:16:13.540 We're going to have a softer, gentler approach.

01:16:15.700 You know, we've got new management.

01:16:16.640 We've got new anchor.

01:16:17.480 We've got new everything.

01:16:18.400 Pretty soon they're going to be having podcast microphones.

01:16:20.340 We'll get to that.

01:16:21.080 And have him rolling up his sleeves

01:16:22.280 and trying to sound like Joe Rogan.

01:16:25.780 And they're right back where they started from.

01:16:29.660 Variety reporting the following.

01:16:30.920 The overall audience for the program for the first five days ended March 13th, stood at nearly 3.83 million, and at 468,000 in the key demo between 25 and 54, under 470,000 in the key demo.

01:16:48.180 Oh, my God.

01:16:49.020 Like when I was on Fox in the primetime, on cable, which is always much lower than broadcast because you have to pay for it.

01:16:54.740 It's not free when you plug in your TV.

01:16:57.820 Our demo was like 700,000, 800,000, often above that.

01:17:02.820 And this is CBS free broadcast news below 470,000 in a key demo.

01:17:09.280 It's a nightmare.

01:17:09.800 In contrast, World News Tonight, which is the winner in the network evening news shows, is averaging 8.48 million, so eight and a half million, along with about a million in the demo.

01:17:23.040 NBC averaging about six and a half million overall, about a million, 946,000 in the demo.

01:17:29.540 And then they point out that quarter to date, CBS Evening News has shared, has shed 15% of its viewership in the key advertising demo, which is the most sought after audience because it's what pays your advertising rates, which is the only way that they make money.

01:17:50.500 Cable news like Fox gets money from subscriber fees and ads.

01:17:54.580 The networks are in a different place.

01:17:56.080 They need those advertising dollars.

01:17:57.160 And one more fact for you.

01:17:58.140 When Nora O'Donnell ended her tenure at CBS Evening News in 2024 for bad ratings, she left with an audience of nearly 5.4 million.

01:18:07.760 They fired her, reportedly demoted, when she had 5.4, and now he is getting under 4 million.

01:18:16.540 Camille, network news is dead.

01:18:19.680 That's my takeaway.

01:18:20.740 It's dead.

01:18:21.740 You can put Tony in there.

01:18:23.280 You can put Maurice and what's his name in there.

01:18:25.840 you you it's it's not the anchor it's not the management it's the the animal it's dead it's

01:18:34.760 the deer it has a few steps in it but it's been hit by the back truck it's stumbling off to the

01:18:39.800 side of the road and there's no saving it no matter how many rescue teams you send with paddles

01:18:44.980 i mean the the viewership habits have evolved in substantive ways people are watching most things

01:18:51.900 online. They're watching YouTubers. They're watching independent media voices. They're

01:18:57.200 mostly consuming clips. And when you actually take a look at, I mean, brands with vestigial

01:19:02.700 credibility, these old guard media companies, the CBS, NBC, ABC, they have been able to benefit

01:19:11.200 for a very long time from the fact that they had this kind of vaunted post with their broadcast

01:19:15.980 stations over the air, completely free. The reality is that virtually everyone has internet

01:19:21.320 access at this point. And most people are watching clips and younger audiences are unfortunately or

01:19:27.100 not consuming a lot of their news, getting a lot of their news from TikTok and Instagram.

01:19:32.260 Competing with those new brands and emerging brands is not the sort of thing you're going

01:19:38.640 to be able to do if most of what you're doing is depending on the fact that, well, hey, we're CBS

01:19:43.040 News. We're supposed to be important. We're supposed to be relevant. I think it's also

01:19:46.900 important that CBS News, like the New York Times and various other prestigious kind of older,

01:19:53.280 larger media institutions, they're doing a lot of important original reporting.

01:19:57.240 At the same time, however, that reporting gets cannibalized pretty quickly.

01:20:01.060 It is an unforgiving, fast-moving media ecosystem. There are new entrants all the time. There are

01:20:07.260 new voices all the time. And even the kind of negatives, the swirl of negative attention that

01:20:13.520 surrounded CBS since Barry, who was a friend, took over, it's been a real challenge for them

01:20:18.760 to kind of get up from under a lot of that kind of miasma. So one hopes for good things there, 0.85

01:20:26.040 but hope is probably not enough to make all of it work to their advantage, generally speaking.

01:20:33.580 And if you look at what's happening to the clips on-

01:20:35.780 No one could do it. No one could turn around the CBS numbers,

01:20:40.880 and Barry definitely cannot do it.

01:20:43.740 She doesn't even know TV.

01:20:45.320 She's literally never even been a producer in television.

01:20:47.340 Well, I mean, the people who know TV

01:20:47.520 aren't doing particularly well either.

01:20:50.420 Well, let me tell you something though.

01:20:51.540 There is something to know.

01:20:52.780 I mean, broadcast television is something

01:20:54.540 that you actually do need to know a thing or two about.

01:20:56.760 Trust me, I came up under Brit Hume

01:20:58.580 and he's the one who taught me

01:21:00.180 that it's not just journalism.

01:21:03.060 There's a reason they call it broadcast journalism.

01:21:05.620 And the broadcast piece of it is important.

01:21:07.980 And there is something to know about how to do that.

01:21:10.300 she doesn't know any of it. But it's not really her fault. It is not turn aroundable. It is like

01:21:17.460 a sinking aircraft carrier that you're trying to put water wings on and puff, puff, puff them up.

01:21:22.680 It's not going to work. It's an aircraft carrier. It's going to the bottom of the ocean.

01:21:28.720 And it's the same thing over at CNN. We talked about this in our first hour with Piers a bit,

01:21:33.780 but you saw what they're doing over there now to save their ratings, Camille. I mean,

01:21:37.980 it's a nightmare they they've decided to take jake tapper's show

01:21:43.120 and anderson cooper's and make them look like your show in my show they now have the big

01:21:53.160 microphones that we have on our podcasts this is amazing they told anderson to take off his jacket

01:21:59.940 and roll up his sleeves and originally this was the inspo supposed to be edward r merle

01:22:05.200 who used to do his old CBS radio show like this.

01:22:09.620 We have a clip.

01:22:10.480 Here's Anderson without his jacket on

01:22:11.860 and the top button of his shirt is undone

01:22:14.120 for the listening audience.

01:22:15.020 That's cool.

01:22:15.960 Now you're Camille Foster.

01:22:17.520 You've done it.

01:22:20.060 And originally the inspoke Camille was Edward R. Murrow.

01:22:25.040 And here's how he used to look on CBS.

01:22:27.360 You can see it's like-

01:22:28.840 Loose and tied.

01:22:29.440 Other than the suspenders.

01:22:31.360 Yeah, yeah.

01:22:32.040 Okay, so that's what they were going for.

01:22:33.500 Or by the way, CBS also, because CBS just laid off all of its entire radio staff.

01:22:41.000 So CBS radio is closing and a couple hundred people just got laid off, sadly.

01:22:46.000 But this was Edward Murrow.

01:22:47.640 Here he has his jacket on and he's smoking a cigarette.

01:22:49.980 Anderson Cooper is another hundred thousand in the demo from busting out a cigarette on the air, Camille.

01:22:56.760 And Tapper, I guess they didn't want her to look exactly like Anderson.

01:23:00.400 They're trying to mix it up, you know.

01:23:01.540 So like you're tuning in over there and it's like, you know, a day in the life on SiriusXM's Megyn Kelly channel.

01:23:07.080 You'll get a you get a Jesse Kelly. You'll get an Adam Carolla. You'll get a RealClearPolitics.

01:23:11.840 You're going to meet like the variety. They take us into Jake Tapper's office.

01:23:15.780 And here is Jake Tapper explaining why he's hosting the lead from his office.

01:23:21.360 It's not 13. So you're probably wondering what's going on, why we're in my office for the first hour of the lead today.

01:23:29.480 So it's an experiment.

01:23:31.180 This is my actual desk where I do my actual work, not the desk in the studio.

01:23:36.060 And we thought we would bring you into the space where me and my team do our actual journalism and plan the show every day.

01:23:41.700 So here we are giving it a shot.

01:23:43.100 You might also be wondering about the decor, the posters and the kerchiefs and such on my wall.

01:23:49.460 Well, the theme is these are all losing presidential campaigns.

01:23:52.800 And this hobby started 26 years ago after I covered my very first presidential campaign in the year 2000.

01:23:57.880 There's an autographed Gore Lieberman one from 2000.

01:24:02.120 So anyway, this all became a hobby.

01:24:03.900 Here, come back to me here.

01:24:05.120 You'll see this is one of the grand achievements in my collection.

01:24:10.860 It's an Al Smith poster.

01:24:12.980 He lost in 1928.

01:24:14.840 Democrat to Herbert Hoover.

01:24:16.320 Republicans, too, on the wall here from the modern era.

01:24:20.840 Okay, Camille.

01:24:22.240 Were you wondering about the kerchiefs on the wall?

01:24:24.760 A little bit, actually.

01:24:26.100 The decor stands out.

01:24:27.260 I like Jake. I like Jake a lot. I don't think his producers are doing him much favors there. Like that is not a great setup for having a conversation and producing a podcast or doing television. And I don't even know what the distinction between those two things are anymore.

01:24:43.840 In fact, the fact that they are trying so hard to kind of lean into the podcaster aesthetic is telling.

01:24:51.200 I think it's appropriate that they're trying to find things that work.

01:24:55.120 But what they have to understand is that this is not just about aesthetics.

01:24:59.340 In many respects, the reason why independent journalists and independent media, independent news commentators are finding success is precisely because they are not CBS, CNN, MSNBC.

01:25:11.940 people are interested in getting away from those massive kind of establishment productions they

01:25:18.560 they want to know people personally and to the extent anything was working in that clip the fact

01:25:23.280 that i get to see jake's office and he's kind of talking to me about the things that are interesting

01:25:27.540 to him that's actually interesting and it's perhaps a little bit more engaging than the

01:25:32.860 traditional conventional newscast where all of the trappings are similar all of the segments

01:25:38.120 and the breaks are things that we,

01:25:40.040 they seem almost rote at this point.

01:25:42.300 Not to mention the fact that they've got to go to commercial

01:25:44.460 at these very particular times

01:25:46.820 that always interrupt the flow of the conversation.

01:25:49.920 I'd say that those things are far more important

01:25:52.360 than the kind of microphone that you have

01:25:54.540 and the aesthetic of the set.

01:25:56.200 Or your sleeves.

01:25:56.980 Sure, yes.

01:25:57.900 Yes, you only have between 38 and 42 minutes of content

01:26:01.700 in a one hour cable news show.

01:26:03.540 All the rest are ads and you've got to hit your breaks.

01:26:06.360 So it is interruptive, that's true.

01:26:08.120 I have to say, I think there's something very telling about the fact that Jake has pictures 0.97

01:26:14.320 of losers all over his office walls. That is unbelievable. Who would surround themselves 0.98

01:26:24.200 with a bunch of losers as their inspo when they do their job? 0.97

01:26:30.480 Well, he's been, he's been very successful in media, broadly speaking. So I don't begrudge 0.96

01:26:38.840 anyone their particular interests. I want to use the word fetish, but I don't, I don't want to have

01:26:43.640 any sort of, I'm not trying to suggest anything by using it. It's just, you know, appropriate.

01:26:49.920 I have to say.

01:26:50.980 Rhetorical flourish, if you will.

01:26:52.540 It's telling. It's definitely telling. And it's not telling anything good. Here's a little bit

01:26:56.600 more. This is, let's see. Oh, wait. No, this is, okay, here's part of the problem. Anderson Cooper,

01:27:04.680 okay, so not only are they cosplaying as podcasters, but they're on the set for him,

01:27:08.940 and he's got all the CNN fancy tools that we've seen on election night and on his show and the

01:27:14.800 graphics. They have a whole graphics department. Does he use that to show a map when he's talking

01:27:21.180 about the Iranian gas fields? No. They use, I'm going to show the soundbite, but they've got a

01:27:25.800 setup camera which pans to a physical map they're going above his desk on anderson's desk so now we

01:27:32.060 have to like do the bird's eye look down at his desk yeah instead of using the enormous like

01:27:37.900 graphic design tools that cnn has spent millions of dollars to build watch this from the map is

01:27:44.980 so we can't even really see it on this yeah so it's tiny right here just you know where my hand

01:27:49.440 is this is the PARS field right here.

01:27:52.080 And then the Qataris have a field 1.00

01:27:54.260 that is actually geologically

01:27:56.900 part of the same field.

01:27:58.680 And they share that.

01:28:00.440 The majority, as Alex was mentioning,

01:28:02.440 the majority of the area

01:28:03.520 is actually controlled by Qatar.

01:28:05.660 But the Iranians get a large percentage,

01:28:08.900 you know, 70 or 80 percent

01:28:10.300 of their domestic gas

01:28:12.600 actually comes from this field right here,

01:28:14.760 even though they have gas deposits

01:28:16.100 throughout the country.

01:28:17.360 But this is the one that they can exploit.

01:28:19.440 They have a lot of problems exploiting their natural resources because of the sanctions.

01:28:24.660 And that's why they're concentrating on that area, because it's the most workable for them.

01:28:29.460 But with this attack, that calls all of that into question.

01:28:32.240 What do you think President Trump would say to, according to the reporting, to say to the Israelis to stop going after these kind of facilities?

01:28:41.560 This is amazing to me.

01:28:42.540 It's almost like they're embarrassed.

01:28:43.880 Talk about flushing your money down the drain.

01:28:45.020 They're embarrassed by the level of resourcing that they have.

01:28:48.320 I mean, I would love to be able to have the kind of animation budget, the map technology, the displays that you can touch in our studio so that we can do that sort of stuff all the time.

01:29:00.000 It's just, again, the aesthetics aren't the problem.

01:29:04.820 That's not the issue.

01:29:06.060 I think viewers would be happy to see that animated in a more instructive way.

01:29:10.980 What they're actually doing with the map, trying to make it look like it's a kind of lower rent operation, is just distracting.

01:29:17.980 Yes, like a placemat.

01:29:19.100 It is distracting.

01:29:20.240 The next thing, we're going to have the U.S. president's placemat there.

01:29:23.060 Which one is it?

01:29:23.900 Oh, back when we were on this guy.

01:29:25.220 Yeah, I mean.

01:29:25.980 Like you do with your kids in the morning.

01:29:27.760 No, it's a very bad idea.

01:29:28.200 No, they don't get it.

01:29:29.160 And, you know, there's also an irony in it because what we're also seeing now every other day, it seems,

01:29:35.660 from various corners of cable news

01:29:37.760 is discussions about how podcasters are totally irrelevant.

01:29:41.680 Any podcaster who has questions about this war,

01:29:44.040 they have no power, they're totally irrelevant.

01:29:46.520 Meanwhile, they're literally trying

01:29:47.780 to make themselves into podcasts.

01:29:49.780 They're doing their level best

01:29:51.220 to make themselves look not like television shows,

01:29:54.260 but like these podcasters who are, trust us,

01:29:57.120 completely irrelevant with no influence whatsoever.

01:30:01.100 It just doesn't work.

01:30:03.200 It's sad, really.

01:30:04.420 I feel like if I were at CNN, I would definitely leave like ASAP.

01:30:09.160 And if I wanted to start a podcast, that's what I would do.

01:30:12.340 Just start one.

01:30:13.340 But it's harder than it looks, Camille.

01:30:15.280 And, you know, Chris Cuomo tried and failed.

01:30:18.860 Don Lemon's having a resurgence now because he put himself in the news with his little

01:30:22.240 stunt at the Minneapolis church, but not as a podcast, like he's got a YouTube thing going.

01:30:28.100 But it's not as hard.

01:30:29.800 It's not as easy as it looks, right?

01:30:31.500 There's a lot of people who have tried it and already failed.

01:30:33.440 Sure, sure. I'd also say that there's plenty of ways to experiment with podcasts, with independent media, with bringing in new voices, with trying to leverage the CNN or the CBS brand to try to borrow from creators who are already having success in independent media, perhaps bring them into your ecosystem. And I know CBS has been making some strides in that direction. I do think-

01:30:58.400 Not according to the numbers.

01:30:59.160 The attention, well, look, the attention economy is a thing.

01:31:01.840 What's the stride, Camille?

01:31:02.760 People are going to-

01:31:03.200 The numbers reign supreme.

01:31:05.340 Well, they're bringing in the people.

01:31:06.700 Whether or not it works right away

01:31:08.460 is another question entirely.

01:31:10.820 It doesn't matter.

01:31:11.400 And when I was at NBC, we put on a great show.

01:31:13.760 Honestly, we had great guests.

01:31:15.360 They were really smart.

01:31:16.040 They told amazing stories.

01:31:17.340 We tanked in the ratings, so the show went away.

01:31:19.520 Like, that's really what happened.

01:31:20.660 Of course, they said it was about something else.

01:31:22.480 But my point is like, it doesn't matter.

01:31:24.120 It doesn't matter how much you polish that deer

01:31:26.680 before it runs off and dies, it's dying.

01:31:28.560 It got hit.

01:31:29.000 Is it your perspective that broadcast news in general, broadcast television is just kind of completely dead as a result?

01:31:36.100 What's going to take its place?

01:31:37.660 What do you think comes next?

01:31:40.200 Nothing, nothing on the television, nothing.

01:31:42.760 I mean, NBC and ABC still have the remnants of those, you know, 15 million dollar, 15 million viewer programs in the evening.

01:31:51.160 It's all very old people. 1.00

01:31:52.880 So, I mean, by definition, the audience is not going to be around for too much longer with respect to the elderly.

01:31:59.000 I have one who's near and dear to me, my own mom.

01:32:02.540 But that's, you need replacement viewers.

01:32:05.460 That's how you stay in business.

01:32:06.960 That's why the disparity between like getting 8 million

01:32:09.580 at night and only getting like 650,000 in the demo

01:32:12.820 is very alarming.

01:32:13.900 Sure.

01:32:14.320 Like the demo is, that's how you make your money.

01:32:16.860 That means everybody else,

01:32:19.400 like the vast majority of those 8 million

01:32:21.300 for in ABC's case or 6 million in NBC are older.

01:32:26.700 They're, you know, 55 to 85.

01:32:30.220 That's where they are.

01:32:31.160 Those are generally not the ones

01:32:32.360 that advertisers want to target.

01:32:34.040 And again, that's how they make their money,

01:32:35.640 purely off of advertisers.

01:32:37.300 So this is not a sustainable business model.

01:32:39.100 You need the next gen getting addicted to your product

01:32:42.100 and they don't have it.

01:32:43.840 And CNN's numbers are far worse.

01:32:45.840 CNN's overall numbers are what CBS's demo numbers are.

01:32:52.480 CNN's demo numbers are too embarrassing to even speak.

01:32:55.860 they're getting slashies, meaning under 50,000 in the key advertising demo. You cannot sustain

01:33:01.580 a business this way. Mostly it's CNN's online business. They're CNN.com, which has been paying

01:33:07.260 most of the salaries over there. And it's been that way for some time, but these numbers are

01:33:11.080 too dismal to be sustained. The only way forward is to dramatically cut headcount and just actually

01:33:19.580 do podcasts that have five staffers. Yeah. Anderson Cooper has, when I was there, he had over a

01:33:24.680 hundred staffers, 100 for one hour. On the Kelly file, we had 12. On the Megyn Kelly show now,

01:33:32.440 we have five. You just, you can't. It's not sustainable. It's a bad business model. It

01:33:37.880 already failed. And propping it up with one button undone is not the answer. All right,

01:33:46.860 I got to take a quick break. But speaking of Don Lemon, we have news on him that I want to ask you

01:33:50.520 about when we come right back and don't go away. Relief Factor loves hearing from pain-free

01:33:56.080 customers and hopes they can help you next. One user of Relief Factor named Kim wrote to them to

01:34:01.660 say, quote, before trying Relief Factor, I struggled just to make it through my work days.

01:34:06.080 I would collapse on the couch at night, aching everywhere. Within a few weeks of starting Relief

01:34:10.360 Factor, the daily pain began to fade. Now I'm keeping up at work and I still have energy left

01:34:15.880 for my family. There are many stories like Kim's of parents having more love to give, but no strength

01:34:21.680 to do it. Things like that. Relief Factor could be the solution. It eases pain, sure, but it does

01:34:27.220 more than that. It can restore evenings, laughter, and the simple joy of being present. If you have

01:34:32.620 back pain, knee issues, or stiffness slowing you down, Relief Factor could give you your mobility

01:34:37.860 back. Relief Factor is 100% drug-free and targets the inflammation that causes pain, helping you

01:34:43.660 move better, feel better, and actually enjoy life again. Try the three-week quick start

01:34:47.460 for just $19.95. Go to relieffactor.com or call 800-4-RELIEF. Why shouldn't you be next

01:34:53.860 in getting out of pain? Camille Foster is back with me. So Camille, Don Lamont got the New York

01:35:04.220 Times treatment thanks to his little brush with activism and now with the law, where he stormed

01:35:12.780 Minneapolis church. He says he just did it as a journalist, but his statements on scene certainly

01:35:17.940 suggest he was more of a participant than he was neutral observer, just documenting what others

01:35:23.700 were doing. And he's now been arrested on charges that he violated the religious freedom of

01:35:29.700 worshipers in St. Paul, Minnesota. So the New York Times gives him this kind of amusing feature

01:35:36.080 where they talk about how he's on a tour right now

01:35:39.860 with D.L. Hughley.

01:35:41.480 D.L. Hughley, yeah.

01:35:42.660 And yeah, thank you, Hughley.

01:35:45.360 And they're going on a big tour

01:35:48.020 where they're getting about 300 people per venue.

01:35:51.780 Okay, no comment.

01:35:55.260 And Lemon, they write,

01:36:00.540 cradled the mic at City Winery

01:36:02.540 and quoted Representative John Lewis

01:36:04.780 on the nobility of good trouble

01:36:06.200 and appeared to choke up

01:36:08.000 while repurposing a civil rights spiritual

01:36:10.360 that he said his grandmother taught him.

01:36:12.100 I'm not going to try to sing it.

01:36:14.200 Then DL joined him on stage

01:36:16.960 and compared himself and Lemon

01:36:18.320 on a much lower scale

01:36:20.240 to James Baldwin and William F. Buckley,

01:36:24.040 pining for a future progressive Trump

01:36:26.380 to take the White House

01:36:27.640 and counter-govern with equal force.

01:36:30.220 So Lemon replied,

01:36:32.160 should I run?

01:36:33.080 the Lemon heads in the audience, which is what Lemon calls his own fans, roared. It had struck

01:36:42.500 him in Los Angeles, he continued, while he was detained in that holding room, that maybe he had

01:36:47.540 been, quote, been playing at too small a level. Soon enough, Hughley was comparing Lemon to Rosa

01:36:56.840 parks. Okay. All right. All right. Would you like to take it from here, sir? Should I go back to the

01:37:07.200 courtship in Jake Tapper's office? I mean, it's just so much self-aggrandizement there. And it's

01:37:12.260 clear that Don Lemon thinks a great deal of himself and thinks a great deal of himself,

01:37:16.320 both as a journalism and perhaps as a potential politician. I think the thing that I found most

01:37:22.240 interesting about the New York Times piece is it acknowledges the fact that the case against him,

01:37:29.080 there's at least certain dimensions of it that are kind of incontrovertible.

01:37:33.380 At a minimum, you've got this politically aligned group who he was kind of, we don't actually know

01:37:39.780 all the information in the case, but who he had been kind of talking to, he was giving them advice

01:37:44.440 on what to say and what not to say. At some point, this stops looking like journalism and starts to

01:37:49.620 look like coordination. I think the important thing to foreground, however, and I am an advocate

01:37:55.400 of the First Amendment in general, and I know that you are as well. We talked earlier about

01:38:00.520 the prosecution of journalists in other contexts. There's always going to be a certain level of

01:38:06.400 scrutiny that's appropriate when a journalist find themselves in legal trouble when they're

01:38:10.400 journalizing. But in this particular context, there's at least real reasons to ask questions

01:38:16.200 about what is Don Lemon actually up to here?

01:38:19.360 And I know that while he may be a little concerned

01:38:22.460 about his own legal circumstances,

01:38:25.060 there's no doubt about it.

01:38:26.260 This has generally been quite good for him.

01:38:29.320 It's gotten him a tremendous amount of attention.

01:38:31.920 You're not getting Rosa Parks vibes from the sound of it.

01:38:35.700 I'd like to probe why not.

01:38:38.260 And we'll do that on the opposite side of this quick break.

01:38:41.320 Camille, don't go away.

01:38:42.440 But there's a lot more in this article to dissect.

01:38:44.120 If you are looking to make smarter choices for your health this year, consider Riverbend Ranch.

01:38:49.860 Their steaks are not only delicious, they also contain real high-quality protein that helps

01:38:54.080 fuel your body. Beef is a complete protein and contains all nine essential amino acids your

01:38:59.640 body needs to function. It also keeps you fuller for longer, reducing cravings and snacking. But

01:39:05.900 here's the key, not all beef is created equal. The quality of the beef depends entirely on how

01:39:11.040 it's raised and where it comes from. That's where Riverbend Ranch stands apart. For more than 35

01:39:16.860 years, Riverbend Ranch has been building an elite Black Angus herd, carefully selecting cattle for

01:39:22.000 exceptional flavor and tenderness. All Riverbend Ranch cattle are born and raised right here in

01:39:27.180 the USA. They never use growth hormones or antibiotics, and the beef is processed at the

01:39:32.300 ranch in their award-winning USDA-inspected facility. No shortcuts, no middlemen, just

01:39:37.820 incredible, healthy, and flavorful beef shipped directly to your home. Order today at riverbendranch.com

01:39:43.760 and use the promo code MEGAN for 20 bucks off your first order.

01:39:49.680 Hey everyone, it's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on

01:39:55.960 Sirius XM. It's called the Megan Kelly Channel, and it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered

01:40:00.800 with no agenda and no apologies. Along with the Megan Kelly Show, you're going to hear from people

01:40:05.280 like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Jashinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real

01:40:10.360 Clear Politics, and many more.

01:40:12.720 It's bold, no BS news, only on the Megyn Kelly channel, Sirius XM 111, and on the Sirius

01:40:18.620 XM app.

01:40:23.960 Camille Foster of Tangle News is back with me.

01:40:26.980 Just two updates before we resume our Don Lemon discussion.

01:40:30.480 Um, this from our news in the first hour, this from the New York times, this hit today. Netanyahu, this is per the reporter, Edward Wong, who wrote it new from the New York times. Netanyahu embraced a plan by the Mossad chief to ignite a regime change uprising in Iran for a quick victory. He used it to help convince Trump to start the war, despite doubts among some senior US and Israeli officials. It was a critical flaw in war plans.

01:40:58.420 The headline of the piece is Israel thought it could spur rebellion inside Iran. That hasn't happened. It's an interesting look at exactly how Netanyahu convinced himself and Trump that they could do it. Just a quickie regime change.

01:41:11.600 Then there's this, Yashar Ali reporting that the speaker of Iran's parliament, who we reported in the first hour, was, according to the Jerusalem Post, the person with whom we were having these negotiations to like hopefully bring this thing to a close, says no negotiations have taken place and that President Trump is claiming otherwise simply to manipulate markets.

01:41:34.380 So that's the update as of 2 p.m. Eastern on this Monday, March 23rd.

01:41:41.200 Now back to Don Lemon, weirdest transition ever.

01:41:46.260 Okay, so Camille, they go on.

01:41:48.380 Rosa Parks, I mean Don Lemon, gets the treatment and says as follows.

01:41:54.580 First of all, touts his followers on YouTube to the New York Times.

01:41:58.640 And they write that his guest bookings have become starrier since his mix-up with the law.

01:42:08.440 And they reference AOC, who agreed to go on his show.

01:42:14.820 I think they're using that term very loosely.

01:42:18.780 Then this is how Don Lemon interviewed Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

01:42:24.520 Sandy, when you heard about what happened to me,

01:42:27.780 what did you think it's crazy it's the old but enough about me what do you think of me

01:42:36.800 and and um yeah and then they point out that jimmy kimmel invited him on his show he's so

01:42:42.820 he's having his two minutes of fame and he's milking it for all it's worth just like rosa

01:42:47.920 parks did if i'm not i mean if i'm not wrong about my history yeah i mean this is he's he

01:42:55.240 certainly had he had this moment he had a bit of a resurgence this is not a hit piece by any stretch

01:43:00.720 but it is impossible to ignore what the story is actually telling you like when you read the

01:43:06.720 concluding uh paragraphs um the the the writer getting ready to leave the room don asking do

01:43:13.120 you think i'm crazy do you think this will be huge news and and there's the the details about

01:43:18.380 him driving away um with you know helicopters overhead and tons of media and don being

01:43:24.380 particularly pleased that this was him back on CNN again. His name was back in the names of anchors

01:43:31.100 on his old network. This feels like something that is fundamentally about him. And as I said,

01:43:37.060 before we went to break, ultimately, I think this is pretty good for Don Lemon. There is a piece of

01:43:44.260 this that is obviously absurd and another dimension of it that's pretty serious. Again,

01:43:48.240 First Amendment, protections for journalists, incredibly important. You mentioned Tucker

01:43:53.460 earlier who'd been talking about his own entanglement with the Trump administration

01:43:57.820 related to his opposition to the conflict in Iran. And the fact that he says now that he's

01:44:04.080 being investigated by the CIA or something like that. I don't know how true that is. We haven't

01:44:08.400 seen any evidence of that just yet. He was told that. But in either case, that gives one a sense

01:44:13.880 of the tension between power and it being exercised in any particular way when journalists are

01:44:21.800 involved. There are always major questions there and things that anyone who is even remotely

01:44:26.760 concerned about civil liberties ought to be interested in. So I care about that.

01:44:30.720 At the same time, it's impossible to ignore how much Don Lemon is interested in really milking

01:44:37.260 this and taking advantage of it, of how self-interested he is. And the fact that he's

01:44:42.080 just kind of, to the extent there's going to be someone who is the person who we're paying

01:44:48.520 attention to who is the victim who needs to actually be talked about in these contexts.

01:44:54.360 Like Don Lemon is not the guy that you want. And it's interesting that Rosa Parks gets mentioned

01:44:58.700 because there's this woman, Claudette Colvin, who she is the person who was on a bus, who the NAACP

01:45:06.440 had this choice. They could go with Claudette Colvin or they could have gone with Rosa Parks.

01:45:10.900 Claudette Colvin was an unwed mother who was on that bus. Claudette Colvin was not the ideal 0.92

01:45:16.180 person to build a national campaign around. Rosa Parks, on the other hand, didn't have those 0.80

01:45:21.940 negatives. And as a result, we know her name. And people are perhaps are only just hearing about

01:45:27.720 Claudette Colvin because I'm mentioning her in this context. Don Lemon is sort of similar in

01:45:32.260 that regard. He isn't the ideal person. No, he's not similar to Claudette or Rosa. No similarity.

01:45:39.460 He's so self-aggrandizing. It's ridiculous. Tucker told a story about the CIA, 0.99

01:45:43.020 and he's big into exposing government corruption and that kind of thing. But he almost never talks

01:45:48.720 about himself. Almost never. He doesn't like talking about himself, which is the opposite

01:45:54.820 of Don Lamont. Here's just a couple of quotes from the piece. When I asked how he identifies

01:46:01.340 himself in the journalistic streamer influencer space, Lamont said he was agnostic so long as

01:46:06.400 journalists came first. I do consider myself an influencer, he added, because I do think that I

01:46:12.640 have cultural influence and then there's this um he volunteered something his therapist had

01:46:21.620 shared recently he said the therapist you are black history lemon tells the author wow he wept

01:46:31.760 he said but he did not disagree

01:46:34.420 you know we were talking earlier about the networks and the reality is that what whatever

01:46:44.460 don lemon was doing at cnn before there were some guardrails there from an editorial standpoint

01:46:50.180 there were particular standards that they had to try to enforce and independent of all of that

01:46:56.500 out on his own him kind of closely collaborating with the people that he's covering in ways that

01:47:02.440 perhaps might get him into some trouble. Again, I don't know the details of the investigation

01:47:06.280 just yet. This doesn't really seem like the sort of thing that might have happened if he was under

01:47:12.000 that sort of corporate umbrella, if there were people around him who were concerned about his

01:47:17.060 well-being and him having the appropriate legal standing. So to the extent we're talking about

01:47:22.480 independent media, this is the kind of thing that people who are out here creating content for

01:47:28.260 themselves, who are attempting to do journalism on their own, they ought to pay attention to this.

01:47:34.420 It's imperative that you're actually careful. Standards matter. Those details matter. The way

01:47:39.600 that you actually go out and do your job matters. And it's not sufficient for it to be kind of

01:47:44.740 politically well-aligned, for it to be tickling the fancy of the core audience that you have.

01:47:51.020 Like, you actually have to worry about those other things.

01:47:53.020 Most of us know this. Most of us know this, which leads me to the final point about Don

01:47:56.880 lamon which is it's not just that he's self-aggrandizing and in love with the sound of 0.99

01:48:00.740 his own voice he is dumb don lemon lemon is a dumb dumb that i'm sorry he's dumb lamon and 0.99

01:48:08.680 that's just true i'm sorry you didn't have to watch much of his show to know that hello he said 0.99

01:48:13.160 the mh370 plane went into a black hole i remember and clearly the writer of this piece thinks so too

01:48:20.320 because he included this little ditty.

01:48:24.200 The dog whistle.

01:48:24.760 About how, when he, the dog whistle, how he showed up,

01:48:28.620 Don was operating his own lighting equipment

01:48:30.520 from a cell phone and had three dogs,

01:48:32.680 one of whom was wearing a diaper,

01:48:34.680 stirring at Lemon's shoeless feet.

01:48:36.100 My eyes.

01:48:38.080 Then he writes that during an ad break,

01:48:40.700 as the dogs fussed,

01:48:42.460 LeMond retrieved a high frequency whistle

01:48:45.200 and tapped a button.

01:48:47.080 Only they can hear this, he said.

01:48:48.980 It's like a little eep.

01:48:51.440 It's an actual dog whistle.

01:48:53.940 Alison Gollest, his spokesperson as asked,

01:48:56.880 by the way, Alison Gollest is the one

01:48:58.600 who allegedly had the affair with Jeff Zucker

01:49:01.000 while he was married.

01:49:02.000 And he moved her into his apartment building

01:49:04.980 right above the apartment

01:49:06.040 that he shared with his wife and family,

01:49:07.980 which led the ruthless guys to do the

01:49:09.800 knock three times on the ceiling.

01:49:12.340 If you want me, twice on the floor.

01:49:16.780 This is the greatest parlay from a story into a music song ever.

01:49:20.980 I totally missed that.

01:49:21.640 But Alison Gollist, yeah, it was worth your time.

01:49:24.480 She was with Jeff Zucker, maybe still is, I don't know.

01:49:27.300 And now is Don Lemon's spokesperson.

01:49:30.300 And so she says to him, it's an actual dog whistle, she asks.

01:49:35.200 And Don responds, not a whistle.

01:49:38.300 We don't hear it, but they can.

01:49:42.120 Yeah.

01:49:42.780 That's what a dog whistle is, she responds.

01:49:46.780 He protested again. Totally not getting it, Camille. Then she responded again. That's what

01:49:54.800 a dog whistle is, Don. He turned to me, the author, and cackled, feigning humiliation.

01:50:01.460 Don't write that. No, no. I love that. Not a whistle. Only they can hear it. Not a whistle.

01:50:11.320 We don't hear it, but they can. That's why we call it a dog whistle. Don,

01:50:18.380 this is the best part of the piece. Clearly, the author also believed he is an idiot. 1.00

01:50:24.320 Again, not the most sophisticated journalist at all. I think there were questions along those 0.99

01:50:31.000 lines to former colleagues of his that they declined to answer. And look, I want to be fair.

01:50:37.160 I try to be as even handed as possible. I've never been a huge fan of Don Lemons.

01:50:42.480 I will say at least it doesn't seem that he's completely switched his perspectives now that

01:50:47.800 he's gone independent. The same sort of kind of critical line that he was taking, he's taking now,

01:50:53.600 I suppose it's a little bit less. There's a little bit less of a pretense that he's attempting to be

01:51:00.040 objective when he's covering stories. He's very much a partisan. You saw the enthusiasm and

01:51:04.920 excitement when he met with Kamala Harris and tall called her a lemon head, um, which is the

01:51:09.880 weirdest name imaginable to your, to your fandom. Um, so, I mean, this is, this is who he is. He is

01:51:16.140 at this point, just kind of more partisan activist than journalists. Um, and you know, that's fine

01:51:22.560 if that's what you want and that's what your audience wants. That's fine. Again, it matters

01:51:26.820 how you go about doing these things. Um, and that is, I think the, the clear takeaway here,

01:51:32.440 But I'd also say, again, just from the Trump administration standpoint, I don't know that I saw anything in that particular fiasco at the church that rose to the level of criminality. 0.63

01:51:46.020 It looked ridiculous. 0.55

01:51:47.820 How much of it did you watch? 0.92

01:51:48.860 I watched a fair amount of the clips at the time.

01:51:51.340 Certainly I watched the interaction with Don Lemon and the pastor inside of the church who asked him to leave.

01:51:56.900 I think what you do at that point is leave promptly.

01:52:00.700 They've asked you to go.

01:52:03.080 But again, the activists, I think, made a huge mistake going to that church and holding a demonstration during their service.

01:52:09.660 And I think Don Lemon made a huge mistake coordinating all of his activities with them and giving them advice on how to go about doing this sort of stuff and then injecting himself into the story in the way that he did.

01:52:21.360 So it was sloppy.

01:52:22.940 It looked terrible.

01:52:23.680 Not just that.

01:52:24.240 It didn't look like journalism to me.

01:52:26.080 Being told to leave.

01:52:26.600 He didn't leave, which was a crime.

01:52:28.440 He committed trespass 100 percent. And on top of that, knowing that he was not welcome there, that he was violating the law by remaining, he stuck around to justify the protesters behavior over and over to the pastor and others saying this is, you know, this is what the Constitution allows, which is wrong.

01:52:47.180 to, then saying trauma is all part of it, watching crying children flee, terrified,

01:52:54.460 and actually in tears, being held by their parents and running in other circumstances

01:52:58.520 to get away from him.

01:52:59.960 He said trauma is part of it.

01:53:01.860 It's part of the process.

01:53:03.260 That's not what a journalist does.

01:53:04.920 He was a partisan activist inside that church that day, and that's why I firmly believe

01:53:09.440 Don Lemon was properly charged and is likely to be convicted.

01:53:13.060 And those tears he shed for the New York Times trying to make himself look important and in touch with his emotions are going to come back for real.

01:53:21.680 That's my prediction when he actually stands inside that courtroom and has to answer for what he's done.

01:53:26.080 All we really need now is a civil lawsuit by somebody inside the church.

01:53:30.400 There was one, but there was a question about whether the person was even there against him because he did traumatize them.

01:53:36.440 He was part of it and he should be held liable for it.

01:53:39.060 Camille, a pleasure, my friend.

01:53:40.280 Great to see you.

01:53:40.940 Everybody check them out at Tangle News and to be continued.

01:53:45.720 Before we go, though, we have to get to this.

01:53:48.460 As we were on with Camille, the video just dropped of this shocking plane crash that

01:53:54.440 happened last night at LaGuardia Airport in New York City.

01:53:57.340 It happened around 1140 p.m. East Coast time.

01:54:01.600 Again, this is Sunday night leading into Monday.

01:54:04.140 An Air Canada jet carrying more than 70 passengers collided with a fire truck while landing.

01:54:10.580 The pilot and the co-pilot were both killed.

01:54:13.320 Several others were injured.

01:54:15.060 We're told that a flight attendant was ejected from farther back in the plane toward the front cockpit, but is still alive.

01:54:23.780 One passenger on the flight later telling the media, quote, the pilot was trying to break, to break, to slow the plane down to avoid the crash.

01:54:31.460 And that made a huge noise.

01:54:33.360 I've never heard it before.

01:54:34.640 It was like a grinding.

01:54:36.160 You hear the collision.

01:54:37.280 we got thrown forward and everybody's screaming. I guess the flight attendant who was thrown

01:54:44.520 forward was actually ejected while still strapped into her seat. She did survive, but suffered a

01:54:51.000 broken leg. And we're going to bring in our guest, Captain Steve, in a second. But I want to show you

01:54:59.040 the videotape that just dropped online of the flight landing and hitting the fire truck,

01:55:07.380 which you can see very clearly. Okay, so ignore the yellow stripe. Here comes the plane. Where

01:55:12.420 did it go? Here comes the plane. Stand by. Here it comes. There it is. And you can see it's

01:55:17.940 heading for the fire truck, and it goes right over it. My God. Joining me now, Captain Steve

01:55:25.680 of the popular aviation YouTube channel.

01:55:27.840 He's a former commercial airline pilot

01:55:29.720 for American Airlines with over 42 years of experience,

01:55:32.660 including time as a Navy pilot.

01:55:34.600 Captain Steve, good to see you again.

01:55:35.820 How does this happen?

01:55:39.040 Well, it's a tragedy on every level.

01:55:41.300 Obviously, a big mistake was made.

01:55:43.720 They talk on two different frequencies,

01:55:46.260 and that's kind of the setup for this,

01:55:47.980 is that the tower controller would be talking

01:55:50.280 to the Air Canada flight on one frequency

01:55:52.960 and the fire truck on a different frequency.

01:55:55.680 So the pilot on the Air Canada flight doesn't have, he doesn't hear the communication with the truck and vice versa.

01:56:02.720 So the tower controller, maybe busy, distracted, it's hard to say what, clears the airplane to land and the runway is theirs.

01:56:10.640 And then the fire truck calls up and says, hey, we'd like to cross the runway.

01:56:14.620 And maybe he gets distracted, loses sight of the fact that he cleared somebody to land already.

01:56:21.360 And he clears them to cross the runway.

01:56:23.100 And the collision is unavoidable.

01:56:24.560 it was raining last night at LaGuardia, impossible to stop in that shorter runway before you're going

01:56:29.360 to hit that truck. I don't understand how you could make that kind of an error as an air traffic

01:56:37.980 controller. I mean, would it be one controller who's responsible for one runway? So any traffic

01:56:43.820 that's going to cross onto that runway, either a plane or a fire truck, would have to go through

01:56:48.860 that one controller? Yes, typically at that time of night at LaGuardia was after 11 p.m. So my

01:56:55.080 understanding, I was based at LaGuardia for most of my career. Sometime after 11 p.m., the traffic,

01:57:00.460 the volume of traffic really slows down. So they're going to go down to one controller. That

01:57:05.360 same controller is going to work the ground frequency, the tower frequency, talking to

01:57:09.220 aircraft landing and aircraft taking off, and also any other third frequency where there might

01:57:14.400 be a fire truck repositioning from one side of the airport to the other. All three of those are

01:57:18.780 going to be handled by one person and again it sometimes these things come down to simple human

01:57:23.680 error if he just lost track of the sight that fight the sight of the fact that he cleared them

01:57:28.980 to land there wasn't enough time for the pilots then to either go around because once they touch

01:57:35.220 down they're committed and they can't slam on the brakes hard enough in the in the rain to stop

01:57:39.980 and that truck as you can see it's a fire truck and it's not he he can't hit the gas and go fast

01:57:46.380 enough to get across that runway. So once they're both committed, it's a matter of time until they

01:57:51.040 collide with each other. It's awful. It's incredible. But the the guys in the fire truck

01:57:57.760 are apparently fine. The report is that they suffered injuries not believed to be life

01:58:04.260 threatening. So maybe they're somewhat injured, but it's not a life threatening. I mean, how

01:58:09.200 could they possibly have survived that? They were hit by an airplane and the captain and the

01:58:17.540 co-pilot of the airplane died, but the fire truck guys did not. I mean, does that make any sense to

01:58:24.700 you, Captain? Well, looking at the video and how the collision took place, the cockpit takes the

01:58:30.240 brunt of the collision. They're a broadside, a T-bone, if you will, with that fire truck. The

01:58:35.840 firetruck immediately begins to roll and it hits the firetruck towards the back of the firetruck.

01:58:41.620 So let's say that there's two firemen in the front. They give way and the collision, the force

01:58:47.720 of the collision now gives way to the rolling motion. So they're strapped into that firetruck

01:58:52.040 and they're rolling, tossing along with the truck. But they didn't take the full-on blunt impact like

01:58:57.020 the airplane did. That's why I believe both pilots were killed on impact. They had no place to go and

01:59:02.060 no place for the impact to relieve. Then the flight attendant, according to the stories now,

01:59:07.800 is ejected. That flight attendant seat on that particular CRJ 900 sits right behind the cockpit

01:59:14.000 door. It slides out the cockpit, behind the cockpit door. The flight attendant is looking

01:59:18.860 back at the passengers. If that cockpit is completely obliterated, the next layer is that

01:59:25.000 door where the flight attendant is, and she gets ejected, fortunately, in her seat, which is going 0.51

01:59:30.520 to absorb a lot of the shock of the impact when she hits the ground. And only having a broken

01:59:36.300 leg is a minor miracle. It's incredible that she's alive. Yes. They are describing how the

01:59:42.460 passengers helped each other slide down the wing to get out, which is just so scary. I mean,

01:59:47.440 we've all been given those safety briefings, but you kind of listen with one ear if that,

01:59:50.760 you don't think it's going to happen to you. There's one witness, Rebecca LaCourie,

01:59:55.880 who said the plane hit turbulence while descending, and then she felt it break hard

01:59:59.960 and heard a loud boom, quote, everybody just jolted out of their seats. People hit their heads.

02:00:05.820 People were bleeding, which she told to News 12 Long Island. I mean, how would the people jolt

02:00:13.660 out of their seats if they were wearing their seatbelts? Like it's just the impact would have

02:00:17.440 sent them what you don't have your seatbelt on tightly enough or because I can imagine going

02:00:22.600 forward. Sometimes you have those hard landings where you really kind of slam the runway and you

02:00:27.100 do kind of jolt forward, but what's that? Like you'd be going so far forward, you'd hit your

02:00:31.920 head on the seat in front of you. What would happen to the passengers? It would be the same

02:00:35.840 impact as a car T-boning another car. You might have your seatbelt on and cars have a shoulder

02:00:40.520 strap that airplane doesn't. So you're just strapped in with whatever you get across your

02:00:44.320 lap and you're going to go forward and you're going to hit probably the trade table in front

02:00:49.040 of you, which is plastic and hard. That's going to really hurt. Most people don't cinch their

02:00:54.740 seatbelt down real tight for landing they just have it on and connected and so it's loose and

02:00:59.760 so you're going to slide and first thing you're going to do is hit that seatbelt real hard which

02:01:04.020 is going to cause a lot of bruising and some damage and then you're going to hit the seat in

02:01:08.200 front of you so I'm not surprised that there's a lot of injuries and I'm sure that there are a lot

02:01:12.160 of whiplash type of injuries from people hitting their head on the seat in front of them but

02:01:16.200 the good news is they're all strapped in they're not going flying and they're not going to hit

02:01:20.940 anything else. And once that airplane does come to a stop, then they can start the process of

02:01:26.780 getting out of the aircraft. And it doesn't look like there was any secondary fire from any of the

02:01:31.120 fuel tanks. So that's also some good news with this one. Well, isn't it incredible, Captain,

02:01:35.960 that the pilots were dead, God rest them. And so no one was manning the aircraft for the last few

02:01:45.080 seconds of that crash. Like nobody would have been applying the brakes and still it did stop.

02:01:51.740 And though there were 70 on board, only 40 passengers and crew members and the two from

02:01:59.200 the fire truck were taken to hospitals. So, I mean, it's really, it's very scary when you think

02:02:04.340 about the fact that the pilots obviously were no longer in control of the airplane.

02:02:08.240 Right. Well, put yourself in the place of the passengers. That airplane has now collided with

02:02:11.640 the truck. It's coming to a stop eventually, even if there aren't pilots at the brakes up front.

02:02:16.840 The number one flight attendant in front of you has just been ejected from the airplane. I think

02:02:20.500 they have two flight attendants on those CRJs, so there's one in the way back, but that's the 0.96

02:02:24.800 only flight attendant, and you don't know what condition he or she is in. They could have been

02:02:28.520 injured as well. So basically, kind of human instinct, the survival instinct takes over,

02:02:34.020 and once you come to a stop, everybody sort of looks around. You do a self-assessment. Am I

02:02:38.540 hole, am I okay? And you get that seatbelt off and you start going out those exits. Not a lot has to

02:02:43.480 get explained at that moment, but the flight attendants typically in a situation like that 0.76

02:02:47.980 look to the cockpit for direction. They're going to wait for a call from the captain. Well, in this

02:02:53.020 case, the captain and the co-pilot are dead, so they're not going to get any instructions from

02:02:56.280 them. And the passengers basically took over and did the next thing. They did. Their report is that

02:03:03.480 And another passenger, someone named Jack Cabot, 22 years old, said after the plane landed hard, it veered back and forth.

02:03:11.860 No one was driving at that point, he said.

02:03:13.940 Mr. Cabot said that despite the chaos on board, passengers reacted quickly.

02:03:18.560 They opened the emergency door and evacuated, he said, some with their luggage.

02:03:22.740 I mean, the wherewithal to be like, I'm just going to grab my bag from the overhead compartment.

02:03:27.640 I'm not sure that's admirable, but some did it.

02:03:30.340 And then here's the moment where you can hear air traffic control speaking to the relevant parties prior to the collision.

02:03:40.520 Listen here.

02:04:00.340 Cross 4 at Delta.

02:04:01.800 Truck 1 and company crossing 4 at Delta.

02:04:04.820 Frontier 4195 to stop there, please.

02:04:08.500 Stop, stop, stop, stop.

02:04:09.280 Truck 1, stop, stop, stop.

02:04:11.020 Stop, truck 1, stop.

02:04:13.020 Stop, truck 1, stop.

02:04:16.120 Delta 2603, go around.

02:04:17.540 Rumble heading 2000.

02:04:19.160 Chat 646.

02:04:21.740 Chat 646, I see you collide with the vehicle.

02:04:23.680 I just hold position.

02:04:24.380 I know you can't move.

02:04:25.480 Vehicles are responding to you now.

02:04:26.580 i mean you got to feel when you hear that for the air traffic controller that's got to be an

02:04:31.960 air traffic controller's worst nightmare but what what did you hear listening to that clip

02:04:35.960 well i just filmed a reacts video to that exact same audio and my analysis of it was the the

02:04:42.060 controller did keep his head which is extraordinary if you think about it because he's second guessing

02:04:47.940 immediately did i did i set this up to happen but it's like any sporting event you know if you're on

02:04:53.120 the field you can't be worried about what happened four seconds ago you have to be worried about

02:04:56.240 what's taking place right now. So he sees the collision take place in front of him as he's

02:05:00.740 looking out the window. He's got other airplanes coming behind. So they tell Delta, who's about to

02:05:05.480 land, to go around. And so they've got to get instructions to them. And then he's got to get

02:05:10.520 the other fire trucks out there to take, you know, look for people, passengers and so forth,

02:05:15.540 and assess the damage on the runway. All of that is kind of hard to do, especially when you're

02:05:20.580 watching something as shocking as that take place right in front of you. But he cleared the fire

02:05:25.800 truck to cross on Delta. Delta is an angled taxiway, and so it's not a 90 degree crossing across

02:05:32.000 runway four. It's kind of a 45 degree. So for the truck to get across the runway, it would have to

02:05:37.620 turn onto the runway a little bit, straighten out, and then go across at Delta. I don't think the

02:05:43.900 truck ever saw the airplane coming. I'm not sure that they would have even looked out in that

02:05:48.860 direction to see if anybody was coming. Once the tower clears the truck to go onto the runway,

02:05:53.000 they're taking his word for it that somebody's coming or nobody's coming in the runway is clear

02:05:57.680 for them to cross so i think they were probably as shocked as anybody else was and at that point

02:06:02.500 where uh the the air canada flight has already touched down it's too late they can't go around

02:06:09.520 they can't fly over the top of the truck and they also can't stop in the little bit of runway they

02:06:14.220 have left so they probably slammed on the brakes and i'm sure both pilots were on the brakes as

02:06:18.840 hard as they could get but you saw all of the water that they had they had dusted up from their

02:06:23.960 their braking action there was a lot of water on that runway that night and so they're just

02:06:28.200 going to hydroplane right into the side of that truck every knot that you can reduce off of your

02:06:33.620 airspeed is a knot that's going to be in your favor and going to create less force boom right

02:06:40.200 there see all that that's all that's all spray yeah i do see it now now that you call attention

02:06:47.080 to it if if it hadn't been raining i don't know it didn't seem like he had any time if it hadn't

02:06:53.260 been pouring rain do you think there would have been a better chance of survival so i think they

02:06:57.420 would have hit the truck anyway but they would have been going slower when they hit the truck

02:07:00.660 so that that reduces the amount of force the slower you're going uh but because of the water

02:07:05.480 they they just didn't have a chance at all oh god there's more from that from what we're watching

02:07:13.340 there. It's not in the soundbite, but in the audio, a controller can be heard repeatedly calling for

02:07:18.680 the truck to stop after initially clearing the vehicle onto an active runway and then later

02:07:23.640 saying, I messed up following the collision. You can hear a second controller respond,

02:07:29.180 no man, you did the best you could. Then there's a little bit more news, which I'll get to in a

02:07:34.860 second, but question for you, just so you can clarify. When we listened to that soundbite,

02:07:39.780 They kept saying Delta, Delta, Delta, and I thought they meant the airline Delta, which confused me because this was an Air Canada jet.

02:07:46.560 So you're saying the name of the runway was Delta.

02:07:48.860 That's what we're hearing because he never says Air Canada.

02:07:51.280 Right.

02:07:51.760 So they're landing on runway four, but the taxiways are always given alphabetical numbers, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta.

02:07:57.740 And so Delta is the taxiway.

02:07:59.600 It's a little confusing because everybody's used to Delta the airline.

02:08:03.060 If he had said Charlie, you wouldn't have been confused or Bravo, you wouldn't have been confused.

02:08:06.640 But since it's taxiway Delta, it sounds like he's talking to a Delta airline or he's not now.

02:08:11.900 To add to the confusion, there was a real actual Delta airplane behind the Air Canada that crashed and they were about to land, too.

02:08:20.080 And that's the next thing he says is Delta.

02:08:21.920 And he gives a call sign.

02:08:23.000 He tells them to go around.

02:08:24.680 They they fly over the top of all of this and go around.

02:08:28.880 But that was the Delta Airlines.

02:08:30.820 The other was a Delta taxiway.

02:08:32.020 oh so that delta airlines do you do you think they had one of those things that we've all been

02:08:37.120 on where like they're about to land and then they abort the landing they go back up suddenly

02:08:40.760 yep you've you've been there and done that and all of a sudden you're looking thinking you're

02:08:44.360 going to touch down in a second and all of a sudden you hear the power come back up and

02:08:47.080 you're climbing out again and everybody's wondering what in the world's going on

02:08:50.200 eventually the pilot comes on and says sorry folks we had to do a go around they kind of

02:08:54.620 explain it away but that's a last resort that's a last minute thing if there's some reason that

02:08:59.100 the landing is not going to be safe or compromised for some reason, the pilots are trained to go

02:09:03.160 around. It always happens at Logan Airport in Boston. I don't know why. I was based at Logan

02:09:11.220 for a dozen years, and I don't disagree with you about that. Yeah, you're right.

02:09:16.080 Yeah, I don't know if they have short runways or what. Can we watch that? Can we listen to

02:09:20.140 that soundbite again where we hear the air traffic controller? Let's hear that again now,

02:09:23.280 understanding better what Delta means.

02:09:53.280 Stop, stop, stop. Stop, truck one. Stop. Stop, truck one. Stop. Delta 2603, go around. Runway heading 2000.

02:10:02.940 Shot 646. Shot 646. I know he can't move. Vehicles are responding to you now.

02:10:12.160 So, Captain Steve, explain to me, are we hearing him give the truck permission to go on to the Delta runway and then immediately try to take it away?

02:10:19.680 Yes. So he's asking, he's on Delta taxiway. He's asking permission to cross runway four

02:10:26.020 at Delta is what he says. And then he's going to cross at the other side back onto Delta. So he's

02:10:31.960 going to cross the runway. You always have to ask permission before you go on any active runway.

02:10:35.640 He's granted permission from Delta taxiway to cross runway four and reemerge at the other side

02:10:42.820 on Delta. He never gets there because Jazz, Jazz 646 is the call sign of the Air Canada

02:10:49.180 regional jet that crashed into him. They had already touched down at the point where he's

02:10:53.960 entering the runway and the two just were on a collision course and it couldn't be avoided at

02:10:57.320 that point. And so what we hear is the air traffic controller trying to get the truck to abandon

02:11:03.400 because he knows that the airplane cannot abandon. Correct. And so one of the things that I talked

02:11:08.900 about in my analysis video is the air traffic controllers and the pilots are trained to respond

02:11:13.720 to certain commands. The air traffic controller will say, go around, and I'm trained to go around,

02:11:18.920 or he might say, takeoff clearance rejected or takeoff clearance disapproved, and I know to stop

02:11:25.520 then on the runway. The conversation that they have with the fire trucks and the crash trucks,

02:11:31.160 the pickup trucks and the fire trucks on the airport is a little less formal. It's more of

02:11:36.160 just kind of like a talking, yeah, go straight, turn left, turn right. There's not all that

02:11:40.100 formal training. And so, but stop, stop, stop is pretty easy to understand. I'm not sure that

02:11:45.920 stop, stop, stop would have prevented this at all. He was already on the runway. So at that point,

02:11:50.800 if he stops, then he's right there in the middle of the runway. So again, if you don't see that

02:11:55.220 airplane coming and you don't know to gun it and get across, then there's really no hope to avoid

02:12:00.520 that accident. And maybe not stopping saved his life and the other firefighters' life since,

02:12:08.260 as you point out, it was the tail end of the fire engine that got hit, not the front end where the

02:12:12.600 driver was. And I think there were just two on board. A little bit more on this. LaGuardia

02:12:18.560 Airport has just opened, so that's good. It was closed all day. The airport resumed flights on

02:12:23.920 just one runway, reports CNN in line with an FAA operations plan. Much of the wreckage from the

02:12:30.100 crash remained on the runway, the other runway. As NTSB officials began their investigation,

02:12:35.000 there have been some 600 cancellations at the airport today. And this is such a nightmare,

02:12:39.280 Captain, on the heels of what folks are going through inside the airports, thanks to the TSA,

02:12:45.760 you know, work outage, and they're not getting paid thanks to this refusal to fund them.

02:12:51.820 And these poor passengers now, like they're standing for hours and hours and hours at the

02:12:57.240 airport. My husband, Doug, feels so vindicated to going three hours in advance for every flight.

02:13:02.840 Now everybody's got to do that. Only it's like eight hours in advance. And then, you know,

02:13:08.240 making light of it, but like, then this tragedy unfolds at the airport. This, according to what

02:13:13.160 I read is directly related in the view of most to the staffage shortages when it comes to short

02:13:20.800 staffing shortages, when it comes to air traffic controllers, sources telling NBC news that this

02:13:26.340 air traffic controller was working two positions at the time of the crash. And I think that's

02:13:31.160 par for the course for most of our controllers, no? It is. We've known for a long time that there

02:13:36.200 was a shortage of air traffic controllers. You just can't snap your fingers and come up with

02:13:39.740 new air traffic controllers. It takes a long time to train and to train somebody that can

02:13:45.140 handle the traffic at LaGuardia. That's an experienced controller there for sure. And so

02:13:50.340 as a result, and people are people, they've got to take sick time and vacation and those sort of

02:13:55.280 things. There's going to be times during the day where they go to minimum staffing. So 11 o'clock

02:14:01.680 at night, if the traffic pattern is slow and there's not that much going on, again, I don't

02:14:08.140 think this was necessarily due to an overworked controller at the time. I think the controller

02:14:14.840 just lost track of the site that he had given somebody clearance to land and then cleared that

02:14:20.280 truck across the runway. I don't want to assess blame, but I think in the final outcome of this

02:14:25.000 is going to be a lot of human error, I'm afraid. That's certainly how it sounds. And these guys

02:14:32.160 are only human. It's just so infuriating to me because you think of the amount of waste we have

02:14:39.660 and what we spend our government funds on. There's just so much incredible waste. Not to get political

02:14:44.840 with you, Captain, but just look at the amounts that we spend on other countries. And here,

02:14:50.000 if you made air traffic controllers get a really great salary, you'd have people running to sign

02:14:57.520 up to get this training. You'd have to have nerves of steel. You have to be that guy.

02:15:02.160 But you'd have people running to sign up to do it. And instead, we just won't incentivize

02:15:07.160 positions like this. We just decide it's not a problem we're going to focus on because we never

02:15:12.060 see the air traffic controllers and we don't really even think about them until something

02:15:15.800 like this happens. And a lot of times, people will say, well, air traffic controller, eventually

02:15:20.300 they make a six-figure salary, and that's a lot of money. Well, it's not a lot of money if you

02:15:24.340 have to live in downtown New York City or if you have to live in Washington, D.C., you might have

02:15:29.800 to get a second job to make ends meet. So again, you're right. You have to be willing to pay for

02:15:35.800 things. And if there's money there, the people will come out and take those jobs. If not, they're

02:15:39.780 going to go someplace else. The most talented people are. They're going to go someplace where

02:15:43.220 they can put, you know, better things on the table for their family. One ironic thing about this

02:15:48.520 crash making, because a lot of people are asking me, you know, is it safe to fly? And there's been

02:15:52.760 a lot of accidents, and LaGuardia has been in the news a lot recently in this past year.

02:15:56.800 The last fatality at LaGuardia was in 1992. It was a U.S. Air Flight, U.S. Air Flight 405,

02:16:04.240 went off runway 13 on the takeoff roll and ended up in Flushing Bay. 27 people died.

02:16:09.580 That was March 22nd, 1992, to the day.

02:16:15.460 This was 34 years ago to the crash last night.

02:16:19.460 So it's been 34 years since fatalities at LaGuardia, but to the day, March 22nd.

02:16:25.900 Wow.

02:16:26.760 All right, that does make me feel better.

02:16:28.520 How about the TSA shortage?

02:16:30.060 Does that, you know, on the one hand, we, you know, I'm old enough to remember when

02:16:34.600 there was no TSA.

02:16:36.320 Anyone could walk into the airport.

02:16:37.780 Your friend could see you right to your gate.

02:16:40.720 You know, there was no magnetometer like you were good.

02:16:43.340 Just get on board the airplane.

02:16:44.780 That changed after 9-11.

02:16:47.280 Right.

02:16:47.860 And I've heard very smart people say,

02:16:51.520 why do we even need a TSA?

02:16:53.720 Like, maybe this is an opportunity

02:16:55.720 to reevaluate what we're doing here.

02:16:57.820 But then you think about, you know,

02:16:59.640 Richard Reeve with his shoe bomb.

02:17:02.360 You think about what happened on 9-11

02:17:04.080 with the box cutters.

02:17:05.260 and this new idea has been put into the minds of bad guys.

02:17:09.180 We're in the middle of a war right now in the Middle East,

02:17:11.260 which could lead more people to want to retaliate

02:17:13.840 against Americans on planes.

02:17:15.360 You never know that the idea has now been created

02:17:17.720 that you could use an airplane as a weapon.

02:17:20.460 So what do you make of the current shortages

02:17:23.900 happening at TSA?

02:17:25.140 Some 400 have quit or had to quit to go get another job

02:17:29.660 because they're not getting paid.

02:17:30.540 These are not rich people.

02:17:31.440 They need to pay their rent and pay their grocery bills. 0.99

02:17:35.260 And we're not paying them.

02:17:36.080 We're expecting them to work for free, which none of us would ever do.

02:17:38.100 It's just so unfair.

02:17:38.860 But in any event, are we safe given the shortages in TSA, not doing the screening, or at least

02:17:45.840 not in the greatest, the same numbers as we had?

02:17:49.640 And do we really still need TSA?

02:17:52.140 Well, I think the screenings are still good.

02:17:54.260 It might take you a lot longer to get through the screening, but you're going to get the

02:17:57.900 same quality of screening, even though some people have quit and they're not working.

02:18:01.500 I can't blame them, honestly.

02:18:03.500 This is not the first time this year that they haven't gotten paid.

02:18:06.540 And if you're living paycheck to paycheck, at some point, your landlord doesn't care that your employer is not paying you.

02:18:12.020 They want their rent check.

02:18:13.660 And so you've got to put food on the table.

02:18:15.360 And at some point, you've got to go, how many times is this going to happen to this job where I might be making at the top end $60,000, $70,000 a year?

02:18:23.540 And that's after a bunch of years with TSA.

02:18:26.160 You and I are old enough to remember prior to 9-11, there was still security at the airport, but it was private companies that did it.

02:18:32.740 Now, part of, I think, the knee-jerk reaction to 9-11 was, well, we have to do something. And so the government took control of screenings at the airport as though anybody on 9-11 would have been caught by a government screener as opposed to a private screener because all of the things that they did on 9-11 were legal at the time.

02:18:53.500 They didn't bring the box cutters and so forth were not illegal.

02:18:57.280 I think there's a good case to be made for going back to private concerns that do the screening.

02:19:03.440 I think you could manage the expense a whole lot more, get it out of the government's hands.

02:19:08.380 But remember back in 9-11, there was a bloodthirst for getting something done.

02:19:13.320 And so part of it was government takeover screening.

02:19:16.120 Let's go to war in Iraq. 1.00

02:19:17.920 Let's show the world, you know, we're united and all of that.

02:19:21.000 I understand that sentiment. But now, 20, what, five years later, I think it's a time to review some of that stuff. And maybe there's a better path forward.

02:19:30.420 yes i i've told the story before but like we've all had this situation where like my kid had

02:19:38.960 a bottle unopened brand new still with the seal on of johnson's baby shampoo in the backpack and

02:19:46.540 it was like eight ounces instead of four ounces they took it it's like okay you could see that

02:19:51.700 it's a kid you can see that it's sealed like do you like to me it always drives me crazy tsa because

02:19:58.100 It's like, no, that's why they put humans here to enforce these rules so that they can use their judgment.

02:20:05.500 And, you know, a bottle of Johnson's baby shampoo and you say, like, come on.

02:20:10.500 Right. It's just ridiculous the way it is now. 0.91

02:20:13.400 So, Megan, I have to go through the same security of the passengers.

02:20:16.020 See this right here? See, Captain, right?

02:20:18.200 I had to go through the same security, especially over in London.

02:20:20.420 I lost more tubes of toothpaste than I can count because they look at it.

02:20:25.140 They're obsessed.

02:20:26.440 It's over the mount and out it goes.

02:20:28.480 And so those are just the rules.

02:20:30.760 You know, you don't have to like it.

02:20:32.080 You just have to do it sometimes.

02:20:34.100 It is designed to make the whole thing safer, I suppose.

02:20:37.280 But at the same time, it doesn't seem like there's any common sense in any of this.

02:20:41.200 And we could do a thorough review.

02:20:43.600 While they're redoing the air traffic control system around the country, why don't we look at TSA and how we screen passengers getting on and off airplanes?

02:20:51.320 I think that would be well.

02:20:52.760 I also object to calling toothpaste a liquid.

02:20:55.140 It is not a liquid.

02:20:56.020 If you can't drink it, it's not a liquid and you cannot drink a toothpaste.

02:21:00.540 But yeah, they're obsessed with the toothpaste.

02:21:02.120 We've gotten nabbed on that many times.

02:21:04.340 But then there was there were some more reasonable moments where like our one son had a water gun that looked exactly like a serious firearm.

02:21:15.220 Thankfully, they did stop him and they did confiscate it.

02:21:18.420 I'm like, I'll give you that one.

02:21:20.000 Yeah, that would set off an alarm in any TSA.

02:21:22.600 But having said all that, Megan, we just said these people aren't getting paid, they have a thankless job to begin with, they get paid really poor wages, and a little bit of a thank you going through the TSA would be nice.

02:21:35.000 I'm sure everybody is exasperated by the time they get up to the TSA screener.

02:21:39.920 You know, my ambition, I've flown a lot this past week, is to just say, hey, thanks for showing up to work.

02:21:43.820 I really appreciate the efforts you're putting in.

02:21:45.640 I hope you guys get paid real soon.

02:21:48.200 And a little bit of nice goes a long way.

02:21:50.480 that's true maybe slip them a 20 or something too if you can if you can afford it i bet they

02:21:56.220 could use it right now it's such a dereliction of duty by our legislators i'm sorry i'm like

02:22:00.840 to me i blame the democrats because you don't hijack funding for an organization as important

02:22:05.580 as dhs uh to make a point about ice that's something you can litigate at the electoral box

02:22:10.780 the next ballot box you know on midterms on the presidential election but you don't

02:22:15.080 punish the existing workers in the existing department and the existing civilians by

02:22:21.400 withholding funding from a group that is validly established and has a job to do.

02:22:26.120 Captain, I stole the last word.

02:22:27.220 Thank you so much for coming on and giving us your expertise.

02:22:30.240 My pleasure, Megan.

02:22:31.380 All right, Captain Steve, everybody, and check out his channel because you can hear his own

02:22:35.360 breakdown and his own words on his channel of what happened today.

02:22:38.860 And if you're out there, stay safe, especially if it involves the airports and LaGuardia.

02:22:43.420 We are back tomorrow with an NR Day.

02:22:45.860 We'll see you then.

02:22:47.880 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

02:22:50.120 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - March 23, 2026

Trump's New Iran Messaging, with Piers Morgan, Plane Crash Leaves Pilots Dead, and CNN Tries Being a Podcast, with Kmele Foster ｜ Ep. 1279

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript