The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump Sends National Guard to Portland, and Unhinged Leftist Reaction, with Michael Shellenberger and Leland Vittert

00:00:00.560 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:00:12.240 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, which turned five years old over the weekend.

00:00:19.520 I can't believe it. I just posted a picture on X and on Insta of my first little studio, which was,

00:00:27.360 we were still living in New York City at the time, and I took over just a little corner of my

00:00:31.800 children's playroom. Abby had to get me this desk that was in sort of a triangle shape,

00:00:37.660 so it would fit in the corner. When she got offline, it was like $130. It was very cheap

00:00:44.480 and cheaply made, like that sort of plasterboard, whatever you call that. And that's how we launched

00:00:50.160 this show. It was literally like three staffers, including Abby and me, and she sat in a little

00:00:58.520 beanbag on the floor next to me while I did the show. I was like so crazy five years ago.

00:01:07.740 And now it's just nuts. Now, thanks to all of you, it's just exploded and we're just getting

00:01:11.760 literally like hundreds, I don't know, 150 million views on YouTube a month. Something crazy. I don't

00:01:19.520 Steve Krakauer keeps track of it all. I try not to pay. Yeah, he tells me it's about 150 million views

00:01:24.720 a month. And that's not even counting the podcast downloads and the social media reach of the show.

00:01:31.820 Anyway, I'm super, super grateful to all of you. And as you know, if you've listened from the

00:01:36.020 beginning, as I know many of you have, because I hear from a lot of you saying, I've been there from

00:01:39.940 the start. Of course, that would only be about five of you, but you still email me. Thank you.

00:01:46.220 Then, you know, the show has changed dramatically in that time. And I've changed dramatically in that

00:01:49.840 time. And it's been a fun evolution. You know, I had to get used to giving my opinion and figuring

00:01:55.620 out my opinion on some certain things. And the world has changed dramatically underneath us in that

00:02:01.040 time. And in large part, thanks to all of you who voted Trump back in, restored sanity to our nation.

00:02:07.460 And we're having different issues now. But we defeated, really, we defeated wokeism. It's still

00:02:13.300 lingering out there, like some lunatics are still pushing it. We'll get to some of the ones who are

00:02:17.640 today. But we won. We won that hugely important battle. You know, there are some losers who are

00:02:27.420 still holding on, like, oh, BLM. It's okay. Okay. But it's just been an incredible journey. So thanks to

00:02:36.280 all of you for making it possible. I love you all. And I'm hoping I get to meet some of you out in

00:02:41.300 person on the MK Live Tour. Go ahead and buy tickets. A 10-city tour starts in October,

00:02:46.860 megankelly.com. Okay, we start today with the news as President Trump orders National Guard troops to

00:02:52.700 Portland, Oregon, after months of Antifa and left-wing protesters interfering with, threatening,

00:03:00.740 and even attacking federal agents just trying to do their job. Democratic leaders spent all weekend

00:03:07.440 saying, all is well in Portland.

00:03:10.040 They are not needed in the city. They are not needed here. Oregon has not requested any federal

00:03:18.580 assistance, and nor do we need it. This is an American city. We do not need any intervention.

00:03:25.720 The president will not find lawlessness or violence here. If President Trump came to Portland today,

00:03:31.180 what he would find is people riding their bikes, playing sports, enjoying the sunshine, buying

00:03:38.800 groceries or produce from a farmer's market, as the governor had noted.

00:03:43.500 And we're here as a delegation to say, we do not need and we do not want federal troops here in Oregon.

00:03:53.120 It's about. It's a thriving, wonderful community.

00:03:55.320 And not one time has any Oregonian ever said, you know, we need to fix up Portland. We need to send

00:04:02.240 troops. We need the president to help us. No, they've told me every single time we got this.

00:04:07.240 If you look online, you'll see that life is pretty bucolic in Portland.

00:04:11.600 Is it? Is it bucolic for the ICE agents? I think not. Here are the facts of what's happening outside

00:04:17.840 the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Facility in Portland. Since June, there are usually dozens of

00:04:23.200 protesters in front of the facility every night, at least. It's been boarded up with plywood since

00:04:28.620 June after protesters tried to enter it. The Department of Justice says 26 protesters have been

00:04:34.500 charged with federal offenses committed outside the building, including assault, arson, possession of

00:04:41.080 a destructive device and destroying federal property. Just, you know, just arson. But in Portland, Oregon,

00:04:45.940 that's bucolic. The building has been vandalized with anti-ice graffiti and threats, including

00:04:51.600 pigs, F-ice, shoot-ice pigs, and Nazis. But that's just a day ending in Y for Democrats.

00:05:00.400 Protesters have threatened to dox agents, including making threats like,

00:05:04.200 we're coming for you. Watch.

00:05:06.600 We're gonna dox you. We're gonna dox you. We're gonna dox you. We're gonna dox you. We're coming for you.

00:05:16.340 Now he covers up. Bye-bye, buddy. Bye-bye. Time for Ben. Time for Ben.

00:05:23.000 You would post ICE's fucking faces for the website. I got your face for that site.

00:05:27.880 Oh, my captain.

00:05:29.400 Pick up a book and you'd understand that you're fucked.

00:05:32.600 Okay. So these psychos are wearing gas masks. And you could argue slightly insensitive to the fact

00:05:40.220 that ICE officers have been attacked, shot at, doxed, and genuinely put in fear for their safety

00:05:46.940 since they were given the assignment by the duly elected president to deport the worst first,

00:05:54.200 meaning illegal immigrants who are in this country who have committed additional crimes.

00:05:58.880 That's what they're standing up for. They would prefer these people stay here.

00:06:03.600 Take it up with Joe Biden. He's the one who let them in. President Trump is trying to restore order.

00:06:10.840 I'm sorry, but these people need to get out. If they would just get out, pursuant to the president's

00:06:16.700 order, we wouldn't have to go round them up with Tom Homan and the ICE agents who are literally just

00:06:22.180 doing their job. And who has this time to stand out front of the ICE facility all day? What kind of

00:06:27.820 losers are these? Like doing little rhymes with their stupid little masks and their gas masks,

00:06:32.960 trying to act like bad guys? I mean, if one of these actual ICE agents ever got in a face-to-face

00:06:38.620 confrontation in civilian life with any one of these people, they would run. You know these are just,

00:06:43.740 I don't use the P word, but you know there are a bunch of P words. I'm sorry, but it's obvious.

00:06:48.760 In August, the protesters rolled out a guillotine in front of the facility. I mean,

00:06:52.780 that's just so perfect. Like let's go sophisticated in our violence threats. I just feel like in the

00:06:59.380 South side of Chicago, they've never rolled out a guillotine. Like they, they, they have

00:07:03.980 semi-automatic pistols. That really kind of gets the job done. A guillotine off of their heads

00:07:08.720 with music that said, we got the guillotine. You better run. What, what is that? It's like

00:07:16.480 the sophisticated way of threatening somebody. Like what's next? Like, um, I don't know, like the,

00:07:22.400 the Klaus von Bülow way, like we're going to bring insulin needles and stick them in you when you run

00:07:27.940 away from us. Like how do rich people kill each other? I don't like, what are they trying to say?

00:07:34.140 This is video from the post-millennial news outlet, which has had reporters on scene all summer.

00:07:39.060 Watch. There's their guillotine. It's just a matter of time before one of them loses a finger

00:07:52.340 and then the guillotine goes away. ICE agents telling reporters for the post-millennial,

00:07:56.760 when they leave the facility, they have to speed out of it. So these lunatics do not destroy the

00:08:02.220 SUVs or follow them. They also told the outlet that agents who are minorities take the most verbal

00:08:08.220 abuse from the protesters. We've seen some of that. We saw one video where one, uh, black man was

00:08:14.440 taking a beating just this weekend and the protesters seem to be preparing for the federal troops to

00:08:20.920 arrive. The national guard, some 200 of them. Again, this flyer is popping up around Portland.

00:08:25.980 It reads the government is abducting your neighbors. Are you going to let them with a masked Antifa type

00:08:32.500 holding a crowbar on the front of it? Nice. Very nice. And what about Portland police? Are they

00:08:39.660 helpful? Well, here's video from the post-millennial showing protesters, basically defeating the local

00:08:44.440 police, pushing them back. I'm sorry, no offense to these police officers, but what they, they all,

00:08:50.880 they back up. There's like seven of them. Then they get on their little bikes and they, they ride away

00:08:56.340 as like a couple dozen scores. I can't tell exactly how many of these protesters chant in their faces.

00:09:17.000 What we saw in the video was about seven police officers trying to say back up, back up, back up.

00:09:22.140 And instead they got pushed back, back, back, back, back, and then pedaled, pedaled, pedaled away

00:09:25.460 on their bikes. It wasn't until we saw them backed up by federal troops and wearing riot gear that they

00:09:32.940 actually were able to stand up to these protesters. This has been a lawless city for the better part

00:09:38.020 of five years. And we finally have a president who's willing to do something about it. Joining me

00:09:43.040 now to discuss it is Michael Schellenberger. He's the founder of the public news substack. Well worth your

00:09:48.720 time. He once wrote a book called San Francisco, sorry, San Francisco. He came on the show to promote

00:09:54.040 it when he wrote it. Sicko about how progressives ruin cities like Portland. He's also one of the

00:10:00.060 key reporters we turned to regarding the Russiagate hoax that was perpetrated on Donald Trump and his

00:10:06.640 aides, his top trusted aides by Democrats. And he's got thoughts on the indictment against James Comey

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00:11:12.700 Michael, welcome back. Great to see you.

00:11:14.860 Great to see you, Megan, and happy fifth birthday.

00:11:17.620 Thank you. Thanks so much.

00:11:19.440 It's wonderful.

00:11:20.080 All right. So I can't believe it. Like, we went by in a flash. And I remember you were one of our

00:11:23.540 first guests. We first had you via audio before we had video. And it was, we were talking about

00:11:28.500 your TED Talk on the environment and how you had gone from being this Greenpeace activist,

00:11:33.080 working for Solyndra to somebody who realized, wait a minute, these people don't care about the

00:11:37.560 environment at all, at all. It was fascinating. That's when we first fell in love with Michael

00:11:41.760 Schellenberger. Okay. So now we're looking at what's happening in ICE. You had your finger on

00:11:47.020 the pulse long ago. And it's amazing to me as we watch the Portland authorities, as we saw, you know,

00:11:53.760 in Chicago and elsewhere, these local officials say, we don't want your help. They would literally

00:12:00.000 rather have the rioters out there in gas masks, threatening and assaulting ICE officers.

00:12:07.720 Yeah. I mean, look, I think that what the president is trying to do is to send a strong

00:12:12.240 message that he wants to see state and local governments enforce the law. That's not something

00:12:18.360 that they've been doing on a whole range of issues. Obviously, really different problem in

00:12:22.400 terms of like homicide in somewhere like Washington, D.C. You know, this is a problem. I mean,

00:12:26.740 just demographically, this is a problem of overwhelmingly young black men, you know, in

00:12:30.600 Washington, D.C. I think I looked at the homicide rates and it was over 95% African-Americans.

00:12:37.140 You look at somewhere like Oregon and Portland, you have a problem of massive disorder as a result

00:12:43.420 of allowing large open air drug dealing, drug scenes, what they euphemistically call homeless

00:12:49.620 encampments. But there's nothing particularly campy about it. It's these are extremely violent

00:12:54.760 places of sexual assault and drug overdose and, you know, terrible levels of deaths. You know,

00:13:01.040 it's up to it's 1400 per year. I just checked in Oregon. That's up. That's much higher than it was

00:13:06.980 in 2020. So in that sense, the problem has gotten much worse. I guess the question for the Trump

00:13:12.140 administration is where is this all headed? You know, I think there's been some sense in which

00:13:16.240 they thought that these raids would result in a lot of self deportation. I don't think that's

00:13:21.520 happening. I think that in terms of having police on the streets, I'm 100% in favor. I mean, I think

00:13:26.740 that the police levels need to be much closer to Europe's, which are like 50 to 100% higher than

00:13:32.360 ours, which most people don't realize you need a lot of police on the streets. I'd love to see the

00:13:37.700 Trump administration have a very affirmative, you know, anti-crime mental illness legislation to

00:13:44.560 address the tragedy of, for example, the man that killed the Ukrainian refugee in North Carolina,

00:13:51.420 Irene Zarutska. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing her name correctly. That tragedy, of course,

00:13:55.980 occurred a couple of weeks before the Charlie Kirk assassination. So I think a lot of people sort of,

00:14:00.880 but that is the main event. You have to be able to commit mentally ill people like that man who was

00:14:06.940 identified as schizophrenic 12 or 14 years ago. And then he went on and had 14 additional

00:14:12.000 arrests and prosecutions. And he was on the streets without any mandates that he take his meds or check

00:14:18.780 in or even be in some sort of halfway house, which might've been necessary for him. I would love to

00:14:24.240 see the Trump administration embrace something positive and affirmative like that. I think that

00:14:29.380 a lot of this stuff, I appreciate what he's trying to do to emphasize law and order, which I think these

00:14:34.760 cities obviously need, but I think they need specific things. And right now, I don't think the show of

00:14:40.580 force is going to be quite enough. Well, it's going to turn into a political issue, of course,

00:14:45.180 which I think is what Democrats want, but they're accusing Trump of wanting that. I think Trump

00:14:50.200 genuinely is looking to protect the ICE agents whose mission he genuinely values, and he wants them to

00:14:56.860 be able to do it in peace. I mean, so you tell me why, like, why are these Democrats saying no to

00:15:04.080 additional help? Is it because they don't want to give Trump the win? Is it because they just have

00:15:09.100 they're adverse to law enforcement, no matter the circumstance? Or is it because they actually

00:15:14.660 think some sort of a clash on the street will be helpful to them in undermining Trump?

00:15:20.200 I mean, that latter political question is really interesting. I don't know. I mean,

00:15:24.560 I think that support did go up for the L.A. mayor when she had the confrontation with the president

00:15:30.240 and also the governor of California on her side in the confrontation with President Trump.

00:15:34.320 I think that was good for them, good for their liberal base in California. I suspect it would

00:15:38.920 be very similar in with the governor of Oregon and the mayor. It was interesting. Of course,

00:15:43.380 the mayor of Washington, D.C. said she wanted the help. I thought that was one of the under remarked

00:15:49.740 upon twists of this sort of thing is that they do need more police on the street for sure.

00:15:55.960 I mean, what's behind it all is the radical left that controls the Democratic Party in the on the

00:16:01.860 West Coast, California, Washington, Oregon. I thought we had seen some reforms in the right

00:16:07.420 way in California, of all places. You saw we saw voters, you know, recriminalized fentanyl drug

00:16:12.760 dealing last year. The governor has undermined that legislation. Oregon is just, you know, large,

00:16:19.060 like the big the chaos is really from these open air drug scenes, the what they call the miscall

00:16:25.060 the homeless crisis. The ICE agents, I guess that gets back to this question of what is the Trump

00:16:30.220 administration doing? Does it really think it's just going to be able to self to get all these

00:16:34.020 people to sort of self to deport with this show of force? Or do they really think they're going to

00:16:38.080 get, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people with these ICE raids? I don't I

00:16:43.880 guess I don't understand what the Trump administration is thinking beyond the performative

00:16:49.480 value of these. Because if they really wanted these illegals out, they would implement

00:16:54.600 E-Verify and we would get millions of them out like that overnight. But they won't do it because

00:17:00.940 the Republican Party is do it, right? Yeah, because the Republican Party is still half run by the

00:17:06.080 Chamber of Commerce Republicans who hire all these illegals on their and their businesses and their

00:17:11.100 farms and what have you. And they really don't want to see Trump do that. That's the only reason

00:17:15.240 that makes sense for why he wouldn't do it. But this he likes because it's muscular and it makes

00:17:21.060 him look tough. And it, you know, people would like to see this happen. I mean, I think people

00:17:26.380 on the right are thrilled to see this happen. People on the left act like it's, you know,

00:17:29.620 absolutely horrific what we're doing. And we're back in the middle of Nuremberg trials or we need

00:17:34.260 them for these people. Where where should they look for the illegals? Well, you could make a good case

00:17:41.560 that they should start in Iowa, where I guess they did. And they came upon quite the illegal

00:17:48.020 immigrant. Michael, you probably saw this. But the superintendent of Des Moines, Iowa Public

00:17:57.160 Schools, the largest school district in the state, Dr. Ian Andre Roberts, it turns out, is not only an

00:18:06.900 illegal, but he was he was declared an a and a fugitive with a deportation order in May of 2024

00:18:20.280 under Joe Biden. And still he was in this post as of July 1st, 2023, when ICE agents caught up with him

00:18:29.060 in Iowa. Once they found him in his car, they ID themselves as immigration agents. He sped away.

00:18:35.960 He abandoned the car. This is superintendent of schools in Des Moines. He was found in a brushy

00:18:40.920 area 200 yards away with the help of an Iowa State police canine. Agents found a loaded gun,

00:18:46.300 a fixed blade hunting knife and three thousand dollars cash in his vehicle. The guy has been

00:18:53.880 here illegally for a long, long time. They've told they were told that he has a weapons arrest

00:18:59.600 on his record back in 2020. The disposition of that charge currently unclear. However,

00:19:05.440 he was making almost three hundred thousand dollars a year as the superintendent, 270 grand per year,

00:19:13.340 plus a tax sheltered annuity of 14 percent of that annual salary and six hundred dollars a month for a

00:19:20.380 car allowance and other reimbursements. This is insane. They actually did run a background check on this

00:19:26.240 guy from some private firm. And I guess it came up without showing any of this, which is also

00:19:32.980 disconcerting. So it's amazing to me how widespread the presence of these people who are here illegally is.

00:19:40.980 I love that story. There's so much going on in it, particularly at a time when, as you know,

00:19:46.080 the test scores on reading and math have just gone into the toilet, with the exception of places

00:19:52.200 like Mississippi, which got back to actually teaching what's called phonics or the direct

00:19:57.660 sounding out of syllables, which is actually what writing is supposed to be. You know, the progressive

00:20:04.200 states, the progressives have put in place really anti-learning agenda, also trying to say that the

00:20:10.660 students should be leading their own education, a lack of discipline in the classroom. I mean, we don't

00:20:15.760 know the specifics of that case. It'd be very interesting to look at it. But I just thought, you know,

00:20:19.440 the first thing you look at, it just reminds you of the stuff that Tom Wolfe was writing about in the

00:20:23.440 late 60s around sort of the Black Panthers and how the kind of white liberals and white progressives

00:20:29.960 just got kind of sucked into this because of their white guilt into basically giving power to people

00:20:35.900 that were thugs and criminals and actually murdered people. I mean, this was very well understood in the

00:20:41.600 late 60s and 70s, you know, including with the Weathermen. I mean, the Weathermen, you know,

00:20:45.640 they killed security guards, they killed police officers, they were dealing cocaine, you know,

00:20:50.640 like, and but it was the photo that went out of like all those, you know, nice white lady, you know,

00:20:56.220 school board members that had just empowered. Of course, I'm sure this guy that comes in and tells

00:21:00.700 a big story about race and about that's what they said. They wanted him to be focused on equity.

00:21:08.240 And he just, you know, and so it's just the, you know, it's the it's just the old story. It's just,

00:21:12.240 you know, the, you know, the left is trapped with this white guilt, which imagines that they are

00:21:17.740 somehow responsible for things that they are, they were unrelated to the sins of great grandparents

00:21:23.900 of other people. I mean, it's not even my great grandparents, right? It's like you're sort of

00:21:27.880 somebody else's did some sin. I mean, it's such a racist discourse and mentality. It's always still

00:21:35.920 shocking to me to see how powerful it is. And then to see it penetrate places like Des Moines, Iowa.

00:21:40.980 I mean, you were saying wokeism is completely dead. I was going to pick a fight with you on it a

00:21:46.320 little bit. I mean, I think that I was just with a bunch of very progressive people for just a few

00:21:51.560 days. And they had regressed, if I'm being honest, from where they were in December of last year,

00:21:57.240 December of last year, they were like, okay, we need to read the Wall Street Journal and look at

00:22:00.340 Fox News because of this tremendous, you know, slap in the face of reality that was the November

00:22:06.280 elections and the reelection of Trump. And they're like, well, maybe we, you know,

00:22:09.800 and the whole, when the media, you know, went 180 on Biden, now they're just, they're all back to

00:22:16.880 just Trump as a fascist and, you know, we're the good ones. And it's, and so I'm not so sure that,

00:22:23.080 I think that, the other thing I was going to say about-

00:22:25.140 Is that wokeism or is that just denialism? Like the race obsession, some leftists are always going

00:22:30.660 to have it. The trans obsession, same, but I just feel like they are so disempowered in 2025

00:22:37.780 versus where they were in 2021.

00:22:41.320 No, no doubt about it. I mean, no doubt about it. So yeah, it's, it's sort of both things are true,

00:22:46.080 right? I mean, we're, wokeism is definitely on the decline and it's still, it's all they have,

00:22:53.160 Megan. It's like, it's like that they're, that's like, what else do they have? I mean, I, the trans

00:22:58.380 one in particular, I mean, it's nationwide. It's, you know, only 30% at this point, or 29%,

00:23:04.340 according to New York Times support the awful trans, you know, medical atrocities and only 21%

00:23:10.460 support the sports. And those numbers are going to go down. I think we all do. The race one has

00:23:14.100 persisted, you know, and it's, and you see it in the Des Moines school board. I hope it's a wake up

00:23:19.080 call, but it's just, I think the, the dynamic, we could talk for hours about what is the left and

00:23:25.040 where is the left going and what does it need to do? I mean, my, my view, when I saw those troops in

00:23:30.140 Portland, and I think he's going to do it with Memphis, another city. And he's starting in

00:23:34.760 Chicago. Yeah. I, you know, I, I just think the president needs to deliver. He needs to deliver

00:23:41.020 for people in really concrete ways. It just, it's not, it's not just show business. Like,

00:23:45.900 it's like, he needs to move legislation through Congress. They need to ban the trans medical

00:23:51.840 atrocity. I don't, you know, I mean, you've been so amazing on this issue for much longer than I have.

00:23:57.640 They, that needs to be banned. There's legislation ready to go in Congress.

00:24:01.380 We need mental illness legislation. We need legislation and crime to deal with this. The

00:24:06.660 guy that just think of the guy that killed that Ukrainian woman in North Carolina. That's all

00:24:10.940 you need to think about. I mean, that Charlotte killing is the picture of the problem. It's an

00:24:15.980 extreme manifestation of it, but it's massively untreated mental illness. We're in the midst of a

00:24:20.840 massive psychiatric disorder. We have a kind of, our civilization is creating psychiatric disorders

00:24:27.240 from gender identity dysphoria to sort of, uh, uh, you know, to the kind of the psychopathologies

00:24:33.320 that lead you to want to kill your political opponents. Megan, 34% of college students now say

00:24:38.840 it's okay to use violence to stop a campus speaker. That's pathological. Oh my Lord.

00:24:42.960 It was up from less than 20% in 2020. That's pathological. That's like an emergency. That's

00:24:48.220 like a civilizational emergency. I'd love to see the president and the, and the white house and the

00:24:53.320 administration rise to the occasion with legislation that I think, I mean, if you're thinking about it

00:24:58.780 in a political way, make the Democrats be against that legislation. That's the whole advantage of

00:25:03.960 people might go, Oh, I don't know if it can pass. Okay. If the Democrats kill legislation to deal with

00:25:08.720 mental illness crime, um, you know, I mean, if they, do they need some more help on migration,

00:25:13.820 they can go get that put forward this positive agenda because we're not, I just don't think people

00:25:19.120 buy that those ice raids are sending some military out to kind of protect the ice. I don't think

00:25:24.000 Americans think that's a solution. I don't think they're going to think it's going to deliver for

00:25:26.960 them and it isn't going to deliver. It's not actually addressing the underlying problem.

00:25:31.860 And what's your thought about the underlying problem? Cause I, when I look at the rash of,

00:25:37.040 you know, shootings that we've had and there's a different motivation behind each one, there's no

00:25:42.120 question that there's an increasing trend that trans or trans identified people are committing

00:25:46.440 mass shootings or, you know, motivated at least in part by that. The assassination of Charlie Kirk

00:25:52.860 appears to be the entire motivation. Um, I just, I'm not sure what led to that number of young people

00:26:00.320 on college campuses, 34% thinking that it's okay. It might be okay to use violence to stop somebody

00:26:05.260 from coming on campus. Like if you ask a different person, you'll get a different answer. Alex Berenson

00:26:10.760 will tell you pot has got a lot to do with it. Like today's pot is seriously deeply dangerous and

00:26:18.800 it's being abused. Um, the trans thing is obviously, um, uh, an ongoing theme we've seen in place after

00:26:24.720 place. Some people now focusing in on video games and platforms like discord in the wake of the news

00:26:29.940 that Charlie's assassin was obsessed with that. And, uh, so was, I think the guy who committed the

00:26:36.220 Ascension murders in Minneapolis of the children in the school church. So, I mean, I don't, to me,

00:26:43.860 I felt like the murder of Brian Thompson, the United healthcare CEO by Luigi Mangione was a before

00:26:50.320 and after a moment like that when people didn't condemn it, when it was openly celebrated in the

00:26:55.040 street, when people immediately wanted to have a conversation about, well, insurance companies are

00:26:58.460 bad. At least that was the first moment I realized we had, we were very different than we had been 15

00:27:05.040 years earlier. I mean, the response to Charlie Kirk's assassination, it shouldn't, we shouldn't

00:27:11.580 forget about it. And in fact, we should think about it more, you know, cause it wasn't just

00:27:16.480 the blue haired, you know, left-wing radicals in Boulder and Berkeley, you know, it was in Brooklyn.

00:27:24.020 Um, it was, you know, ordinary normie Democrats and liberals who were celebrating the murder of somebody

00:27:31.180 who said things that, that hurt their feelings. I think you, you were saying, you know, what,

00:27:35.920 what is that? I mean, we have a system that's creating psychiatric disorders. I mean, what is

00:27:41.560 that system? I mean, obviously social media is playing a role. Tyler Robinson, this, the main suspect,

00:27:46.760 almost certain shooter of Charlie Kirk. I mean, he appears to have fallen down a kind of rabbit hole

00:27:53.580 of very weird forms of porn, um, probably social media, um, just a lot of sexual confusion. I just

00:28:03.400 think in another environment, he would have been just a totally normal straight guy. Um, but he wasn't

00:28:09.200 in a normal environment, you know, escaping, you know, fleeing a religion, not having a moral

00:28:15.040 spiritual system to anchor to, uh, it's a crisis. I mean, what can, like when you kind of go the

00:28:21.660 desire to murder somebody who you disagree with, you know, the fantasy of wanting to murder somebody

00:28:28.440 you disagree with, it's disproportionately on the left. We saw that, you know, a huge percentage of

00:28:34.160 people that describes themselves as very liberal and liberal, the, the 34% of college students

00:28:38.620 overwhelmingly very far left. Um, certainly there's certain cases, obviously, where there's right

00:28:43.820 wingers that have similar fantasies, but obviously this is disproportionately, I think we did it. We

00:28:48.240 calculated it as like five to one time, five to one larger, um, among left that wants to see violence

00:28:54.280 against their political opponents. Megan, it comes right out of what everybody's been talking about,

00:28:57.900 which is that, you know, uh, facts don't care about your feelings. It's all this idea that your feelings

00:29:03.320 are so important that if somebody's feelings are hurt because they've heard some, some discordant

00:29:09.500 information because they have the discomfort of cognitive dissonance and hearing a different

00:29:14.580 point of view, that that means that that person should, they shouldn't have to hear it. That

00:29:17.940 person should be censored or they should be killed or assaulted. I mean, that's essentially the logic

00:29:23.760 that is, we have to deprogram. Like we need a positive, this is why I keep coming back to the

00:29:29.960 president because I think the opportunity here, and maybe he can't do it, you know, maybe it's just

00:29:35.120 going to take somebody else. But the opportunity here is to address the public and go, we are

00:29:39.400 producing psychopathologies and we need to deprogram people from these really bad, crazy ideas,

00:29:47.760 including that all white people are responsible for all of the problems in the black community,

00:29:53.060 including the idea that you can change your gender or sex. These things are just not possible.

00:29:57.880 Um, you know, that, that, you know, that you can keep a country by just opening your borders. I mean,

00:30:02.240 people, people have to be reminded of what civilization requires and what it requires to

00:30:06.800 protect vulnerable people. The people that progressives say they care the most about we

00:30:11.140 need that. And I think that it needs to come in the form of a positive, concrete vision that

00:30:15.860 delivers for people. So that's why I keep coming to, this really needs to come from the white house

00:30:20.860 right now. They're just like, Oh, well now we'll have a fight with the Democrats about the shutdown.

00:30:26.020 Oh, now we'll have a fight with the Democrats by sending ice and, you know, military there. I just,

00:30:30.480 it's not good enough. I think that they need to find another gear because the country desperately

00:30:35.260 needs that. I mean, Trump has definitely been messaging on these issues. He just does it in

00:30:39.580 his own particular blunt way. He's, he's not doing it in a, in a way that's designed to reach out to

00:30:46.940 anybody. And I don't blame him. I've got to be honest, cause I don't think they're reach out

00:30:50.540 to a bull. I just don't, I just feel like, you know, Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah just went on 60

00:30:56.360 minutes last night. They took a deep dive into him because the left is loving him right now because

00:31:02.320 when he held that presser, when they announced that Tyler Robinson had been arrested, he mentioned

00:31:08.340 violence against those two lawmakers in Minnesota. He mentioned what happened to Josh Shapiro's house.

00:31:15.140 Um, as though it's like the equivalent, you know, he did the both sides thing. And so now the left is

00:31:21.000 loving Spencer Cox and I'm sorry. It, those are just misrepresentations. Like the guy who attacked

00:31:26.560 Paul Pelosi was not right wing. He was left wing. The guy who attacked the Minnesota lawmakers said

00:31:33.300 he was dispatched by Tim Walls, which of course isn't true, but he's just a lunatic. But if he was

00:31:38.340 motivated by anybody, he says he was motivated by a leftist governor in Tim Walls. These were not

00:31:44.320 right wing incidents of right wing violence, even though the targets were left wingers. It's just that

00:31:49.220 there's no point. If you just want to say left wingers have been attacked. Yes, that's true.

00:31:54.220 But those were not instances of right wing violence. They just weren't. Um, so he's looking to have one

00:32:00.500 of those kumbaya moments. And Trump is more like the, the fist, you know, just like punching things

00:32:05.620 and fighting, which is way more in line with where I am right now. Anyway. Um, I, I just, I don't know.

00:32:13.860 I don't know, Michael, if we, if we can reach out, reach out to the people, if we can bargain with these

00:32:17.600 people, if we can talk somebody out of wanting to kill us. And that's, what's so infuriating as

00:32:21.380 we watch the left wing totally try to deny the motives in these cases, whether, you know, they

00:32:26.840 want to deny that the, the black man who seemed like a total nutcase and had schizophrenia and

00:32:31.400 killed Irina in North Carolina said the thing about, I just got that white girl. We all know he

00:32:36.560 was a nut. We get it, but he did say those words, you know, so where'd he get that from? Why do you

00:32:41.120 think that would be a bonus and ignore Charlie's assassin's motives too? Yeah. I just think there's two

00:32:46.920 separate things. I mean, one is that you've got a radicalized left and it's very problematic. Um,

00:32:53.020 you know, when they engage in violence and they're plotting conspiracies and bombings and attacking

00:32:57.460 ICE agents, that stuff should be disrupted and fought. Antifa, it's an ideology. It makes as much

00:33:03.360 sense to say, we're going to go after anti-fascist ideology as we're going to go after, uh, right-wing

00:33:08.680 populism or. But wait, now how can you say that? Because we see them parading through Portland,

00:33:13.040 like they, they have the signs, they have the outfits, like they seem very real.

00:33:17.780 But they don't have a, they don't have a bank account. They don't have a nonprofit organization.

00:33:22.180 Well, neither did ISIS, but they existed. Yeah. Well, and then, but then the point would be that

00:33:27.260 you should crack down on criminal, illegal criminal activity, which would be, you know,

00:33:32.480 foam. But, but I just think that the, but like, you have to kind of go, Megan, I think you just have

00:33:36.640 to kind of go, what are we doing here? Like, are we trying to, we should definitely be trying to

00:33:40.480 de-radicalize. We should definitely, uh, you know, re-humanize, you know, uh, you know,

00:33:46.260 people who had been de-humanized and called fascists and Nazis. That's serious work that

00:33:50.220 needs to be done. They won't do it. Did you see Gavin Newsom this weekend tweeted out about Stephen

00:33:54.760 Miller, president Trump's top aide. Stephen Miller is a fascist in all caps. Like they're, they are not

00:34:02.520 willing to change the way they debate and therefore they must be defeated, not bargained with.

00:34:08.680 Well, and I think how, how would you defeat them then? I mean, I think that you want to defeat them

00:34:13.360 with the swing vote. In other words, you've got right and left are just in their positions.

00:34:17.960 The president needs to deliver for the people that won the election forum, which were those swing

00:34:23.540 voters. They want to, they are worried about crime. They are worried about people get, you know,

00:34:28.100 being killed on the mass transit, like we saw in North Carolina. Um, you know, they are worried about

00:34:33.360 the chaos and the, and the, just the massive open air drug dealing and whatnot. I mean,

00:34:38.280 even in those cities, 75% of San Franciscans support arresting people, smoking fentanyl and

00:34:43.880 mandating rehab president needs to deliver in a concrete, affirmative way. I'm not suggesting

00:34:49.020 that this is about making nicey nice with the radicalized. No, I know I'm suggesting the president

00:34:54.600 needs to put forward an affirmative legislative agenda in Congress as presidents do to address these

00:35:01.680 real problems in our country, which I would define as a mental illness crisis, which is behind, yeah,

00:35:07.200 the guy that attacked Paul Pelosi, um, the guy that killed the, or yeah, the guy that killed the

00:35:11.980 Iranian, the Ukrainian, uh, refugee on the train. Like that, that's a set, that's a particular thing.

00:35:18.140 It requires making it easier to impose guardianship and rehab and care and yes, jail or prison on people.

00:35:24.760 And then there's, there's something else, which is, I think I'm more, it's almost a, like,

00:35:28.840 I mean, I don't know the president can do it. So I'm not even saying like, I think he can,

00:35:33.160 but I just think, you know what I mean? Somebody to kind of go and give us the,

00:35:36.920 I have a dream speech for what a positive vision of America is and, and how we can be great.

00:35:43.140 The whole slogan is make America great again. And you're sort of like, okay, well, what is that

00:35:46.580 exactly? Like, is it, what are you, what is that other than just sending some police temporarily

00:35:50.980 into cities, you know, picking these fights? I don't think we can get there. I'll tell you,

00:35:55.320 I'll answer the question. We're stuck in the show business part of the,

00:35:58.040 I don't think we can get there without 60 votes in the Senate. I really do. I think

00:36:01.600 if I, if you gave me the magic wand and said, you know, what would you do as you, you're just

00:36:06.020 asking, I think JD Vance should be the next president of the United States after Trump

00:36:11.560 finishes off the second term. JD is a very effective spokesperson for all the principles

00:36:16.960 that you just espoused in a way. Trump doesn't even try to be, you know, Trump is funny. Trump is

00:36:21.900 entertaining. Trump is a great marketer and messenger just in his quick, you know,

00:36:28.040 language where he boils down an issue to five words that even a fifth grader,

00:36:31.600 a third grader can understand. Very effective, very, very, but JD can go really in depth on

00:36:36.860 these issues and really give voice to all the things that you and I just discussed.

00:36:42.080 Um, and if you gave him a six, if you gave him a house majority and a 60 vote Senate majority,

00:36:48.900 then he would get legislation passed. But right now you can't pass anything. You cannot pass anything

00:36:53.080 without 60 votes in the Senate and we don't have it.

00:36:55.860 Make the Democrats vote no on it. Introduce it now. Make the Democrats say no about it. It's,

00:37:02.400 I think the American, the voters aren't going to be like, oh, oh, I don't want you, I don't want to

00:37:05.980 vote for Republicans because they lost a vote in the Senate on something I support. They would say,

00:37:10.520 I would want to, you would want to keep voting for the party that is going to deliver the thing

00:37:14.620 that everybody knows we need to do on. I mean, I mean, it's not even at this point on the left.

00:37:20.340 I don't know what you're saying because let me just say this. We did make them vote. We made them

00:37:24.340 vote on keeping boys out of girls sports. John Thune did force a vote on that in the Senate floor and

00:37:28.180 it got voted down. We couldn't get, we got a vote to have the vote in any event. We didn't have the

00:37:32.340 support because we didn't have enough Democrats to actually hold the real vote. You need 60 to get

00:37:37.060 cloture on any issue and we didn't have it. Is that really going to make the difference next time

00:37:41.520 around? I think the value of doing that is the same value as having them jeer DJ Daniel at the

00:37:48.620 State of the Union address is the same thing as having them applaud flag burning, right? It's

00:37:53.920 these little things that just show it's, it's the same thing in watching them cheer Charlie's

00:37:58.520 assassination bit by bit. They alienate themselves from the normie part of their base such that it

00:38:06.060 increases our electoral chances next time around. And then we really can have a legislation, but right

00:38:10.280 now we can't with less than 60 votes in the Senate. I mean, look, if you have, say three bills,

00:38:15.840 you know, something that bans the transmedical atrocity, something that addresses the long

00:38:20.820 outstanding issue of mental illness and crime, and something that really addresses the pocketbook

00:38:26.120 issues for Americans, bringing down the cost of housing, you know, things that are just,

00:38:30.520 just normie things that people wanted. That's what they voted for when they wanted change. Yeah,

00:38:36.020 they wanted an end to the chaos. They wanted some pocketbook issues. Put three bills up like that. I

00:38:42.780 just think, I think actually it is different. I think voters, you know, the reason you get a no vote

00:38:48.660 from your opponents on popular legislation is so that you can beat them with it over their heads during

00:38:55.580 your entire campaign season. So you have three popular pieces of legislation that address

00:39:00.780 these frankly overdue crisis issues. I mean, we got to get kids into trades. They got to build nuclear

00:39:06.060 plants. Like there's things that we need to be building. We haven't repatriated drones and microchips

00:39:11.360 and pharmaceutical manufacturing. That still hasn't happened. We need the president and to put forward

00:39:17.660 a positive agenda. If Democrats vote against it, then use that in 2026. Use that in 2028. But I think this

00:39:25.280 thing of just, you know, there's a moment here where I think the people that did, I think we're seeing it

00:39:30.280 among young men. You know, the people that voted for Trump are kind of like, what are you delivering

00:39:35.500 for us exactly? Other than a lot of show. I feel like the economy is doing well. We had 3% growth.

00:39:41.960 You know, he is adding jobs. He is deporting illegals, though not in the numbers we would like.

00:39:46.000 I mean, the tariffs actually are turning out much better than predicted. He is delivering things.

00:39:51.000 It's just that's got to trickle down into housing prices. That's going to require some cooperation with

00:39:55.220 the Fed, with which he's had very little. He's now trying to batter the Fed by ousting Lisa Cook.

00:40:00.400 That's good. He's fighting. It's just we've got these obstinate Democrats that are not totally out

00:40:05.760 of power. And until they are, any Republicans legislative agenda is going to be somewhat

00:40:10.280 stymied. All right, let's keep going, because there's a couple things I want to ask you about,

00:40:13.220 including Comey. And then I saw you going off on the possibility of universal ID, which was rather scary.

00:40:19.900 And I didn't think was an American issue, but I think your point is not yet, but it's about to

00:40:25.000 be. So table that, because I first want to hear your thoughts on Comey, as we've seen more meltdowns

00:40:31.860 about this over the weekend, more predictions. I mean, the greatest thing is the predictions that

00:40:36.440 there's going to be turnaround when they get into office. Listen to Eric Swalwell on CNN today,

00:40:45.080 this ridiculous person on the Democrat side. It's not 17. You say last week that your committee,

00:40:51.500 Judiciary, has the power to step in and kind of stop some of this. But how, Congressman,

00:40:56.240 especially being in the minority? Well, first, we're making it clear that we're going into the

00:41:03.520 majority a year from now. We have every intention to do that. And so we will bring oversight,

00:41:09.300 accountability. We will subpoena the Department of Justice, but also private actors who have done

00:41:14.760 these drug deals with the administration, college campuses, entertainment companies,

00:41:20.700 law firms. And so accountability is coming. And so, one, it's all coming out. Two,

00:41:26.780 I hope that deters people from doing more of these deals, these one-offs with the president.

00:41:33.120 So he suggests in this interview that he, once he's returned to power, Democrats once returned to

00:41:38.840 power are going to go after private citizens who enabled Donald Trump. And he lists their

00:41:45.000 college campuses. I mean, so Trump threatens a college campus to not being so anti-Semitic.

00:41:52.980 And they say, okay, we'll try. And he considers that a cave for which he's now going to prosecute

00:41:58.540 them or law firms that went after Trump. And Trump says, I don't want to do business with you if

00:42:03.480 you hire the lawyers who went after me. And the law firms say, we understand that rather than lose

00:42:08.300 all of our federal business, we're not going to actually hire that lawyer. And what, Eric Swalwell's

00:42:13.300 now going to criminally pursue the law? It's an empty threat. But the whole thing's based off of

00:42:19.280 the Jim Comey indictment, where he's trying, as are other Democrats, to sound tough, like,

00:42:24.960 you just wait, we're going to do it to your people, which, of course, misses chapter one of this book.

00:42:32.680 Yeah, I mean, I saw the Times had some, I think it was like that subhead or something like,

00:42:38.300 you know, experts worried this, you know, that Trump's revenge seeking could set off like an

00:42:44.340 abuse of the DOJ. And I was just like, you know, the New York Times at that point, it's like, I would

00:42:49.320 say it's like Pravda, but that's already being too nice. The Times is like part of the deception

00:42:54.180 operation that began in 2015. And 2016, when and this gets the Comey thing, which is really begins

00:43:02.960 with the decision to not prosecute Hillary's emails. I mean, they found the FBI found at least 30

00:43:10.900 instances. I mean, it was probably much more than that of, of just the improper handling of classified

00:43:15.940 information. You know, did they, you know, raid her home and go through her dresser drawers like they

00:43:21.900 did with Melania Trump and President Trump and Mar-a-Lago with a phony, you know, you know,

00:43:28.020 you know, records, you know, supposedly seeking the records. You look at this case, I mean, the

00:43:33.420 Russiagate, the Russia collusion hoax begins out of the Hillary Clinton, the decision by Comey to bury

00:43:41.620 and dismiss the Hillary Clinton email scandal, which I frankly didn't, I mean, Megan, I admit,

00:43:47.180 I'm like, I have a beginner's mind because these are the areas I had not covered. And then the more I

00:43:52.360 looked at it and, you know, I read the Strzok book and, you know, kind of get into it. It really

00:43:57.080 starts with them needing to tarnish Trump in a way to kind of get past this completely corrupt

00:44:03.400 dismissal and this complete corruption of national security, which was just a gigantic influence

00:44:08.120 peddling operation with the Clinton Foundation, not dissimilar to the Hunter Biden laptop influence

00:44:12.920 peddling situation. They go into the Russia collusion hoax. And by them, I mean, Comey and

00:44:18.880 Brennan, you know, the whole squad of deep state, you know, you know, political activists. So that's

00:44:25.540 I thought was interesting. Catherine Herridge put on X that she thinks that the indictment is just a

00:44:30.120 kind of a holding pattern, just a strategy to kind of hold the door open. We're going to go and put a

00:44:34.760 bigger case in front of you. I don't know if it's going to work, you know, like I'm not going to try

00:44:39.600 to make any predictions legally. I think it's probably very difficult. But I do think that the most

00:44:45.800 important thing, I think, as usual, is that the country deal with the fact of this abuse of power

00:44:51.360 by our intelligence agencies. And the fact that, you know, the media isn't really what we thought

00:44:55.940 it was like the New York Times and it's covered the New York Times when I went you go back and read that

00:44:59.720 Comey story from 2017 that is at the heart of his alleged obstruction of justice. Or I think that's

00:45:07.240 what the charges and of perjury. It really was the New York Times participating with Comey to spread

00:45:15.780 misinformation about both the Hillary Clinton email scandal and about what was going on with the

00:45:20.200 Russia collusion hoax.

00:45:21.340 Mm hmm. It's I'm I agree. The with the critics of the indictment, that the indictment as written

00:45:29.020 is not going to hold up in terms of a constitutional muster because it does not give the defendant

00:45:35.240 adequate notice of what he's being charged with. Like they they actually do need to allege what the

00:45:40.920 lies are. This was just a placeholder to get on on the record. But I think the statute of limitations

00:45:46.400 expires tomorrow. So there could be an amended indictment by then. But I just I they are in danger

00:45:54.600 of having this dismissed just on the four corners of the indictment because there's an obligation under

00:45:59.880 the Constitution to provide the defendant with notice of what he's being charged with. I'm not sure

00:46:02.980 this does that because we've all been having to speculate who he lied about, which leak to whom,

00:46:10.180 by whom, who did he authorize to leak about what? Those are very basics that need to be in there.

00:46:17.340 Hopefully this temporary or acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia will do better.

00:46:22.060 Second bite at the apple. OK, can you tell me what's happening on Universal ID that has caught your

00:46:27.180 attention? And then there was a comment I think you made about real ID, which we've already been

00:46:32.080 subjected to in Connecticut and in New York, which is also disturbing. So what's happening with Universal

00:46:37.600 ID that caught your attention? Yeah, I mean, look, first, I had another thing where I'm sort of

00:46:42.920 embarrassed that I hadn't really reported on this before, because, you know, you sort of see it and

00:46:48.160 you realize how dangerous it is just intuitively. The idea that the government is going to monitor your

00:46:54.380 social media and potentially your bank accounts, your vaccine records. And then, you know,

00:47:00.640 so I started poking around because in the UK, the prime minister announced you'd have to have a

00:47:04.880 digital ID to work in the UK. Announced that on Friday. Then yesterday, the Swiss people voted

00:47:11.480 50.6 percent for, OK, a move towards digital IDs. Right. It's like there's still a couple of steps

00:47:19.700 happily before we get to this totalitarian dungeon. But the most incredible thing was I just discovered

00:47:25.220 these videos of Larry Ellison apparently not having his PR handlers, you know, work with him saying

00:47:31.800 explicitly that, you know, we're going to create a city who's describing this as the positive.

00:47:36.620 We're going to be constantly watching and reporting on what people are doing. And therefore,

00:47:42.080 people will be on their best behavior. People should be on their best behavior.

00:47:46.260 It was shocking. And it was in a conversation with Tony Blair. No, thank you.

00:47:49.700 It was very creepy. I mean, I was also shocked. I mean, like I just posted that. I just put up a

00:47:54.980 little video that I had found just like with very limited amount of journalism and research into

00:47:59.540 this. The New Statesman had done an amazing investigative thing about how much money Larry

00:48:04.720 Ellison had given over 100 million, 100, 100 million pounds to Tony Blair's Institute, the former

00:48:09.800 prime minister to lobby for the digital IDs. I just put up this little video and it was like

00:48:14.380 huge amount of I mean, people went absolutely crazy. I think it has like more.

00:48:19.080 We have it. We have the soundbite that you posted. It's from September, 2024.

00:48:24.280 Here's Larry Ellison, who is he just bought CBS made by CNN. He may be one of the owners of TikTok

00:48:30.480 is is one of the owners of the new TikTok. Here he is at 31.

00:48:35.300 Your body cams will be transmitting that the police will be on their best behavior

00:48:40.520 because we record we're constantly recording, watching and recording everything that's going on.

00:48:45.860 Now, citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting

00:48:51.360 everything that's going on. Go ahead, Michael.

00:48:57.800 I mean, yeah, like I that should just send chills up your spine. I don't know how else to describe

00:49:04.140 that. I mean, you know, I've tried to kind of, you know, make try to make the best case for what's

00:49:09.220 going on. You know, people will say to me, hey, it's you know, we're not there yet. We can still stop

00:49:13.860 it. That's I agree with that. So we don't we're not in the totalitarian dungeon yet. But it's clear

00:49:19.600 that this is where they're headed, Megan. I mean, this is what they want. And we do not happening

00:49:24.240 simultaneously wish to live in a surveillance state. The answer to that is no. And it's got to be

00:49:31.020 something that we fight against. Thank you for calling attention to it. I had not seen that either.

00:49:34.920 And he is about to own a huge chunk of our media and social media. He already does.

00:49:40.700 Thank you, my friend. Great to see you. Good to see you, Megan.

00:49:44.680 OK, don't go away. We will be right back.

00:49:46.380 Let's face it. Big tech has gotten too powerful through the smartphones we use every day. They

00:49:52.960 track our every move, decide what we see and even can censor what we say. As you know,

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00:50:02.940 these platforms now hold more control over free speech than the government itself.

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00:50:12.300 silenced or canceled. And this is why the UpPhone by Unplugged was created. It does everything you

00:50:20.280 expect from a smartphone. Calls, texts, maps. We need that. Email. And it even includes its own

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00:50:55.780 today.

00:51:01.680 We absolutely have to keep talking. It's more important now than ever to cower, to hide,

00:51:07.980 to go silent is not the answer. And all I can tell you is there is no fucking way I am canceling

00:51:14.800 one stop on this tour.

00:51:19.080 Not one stop. I'm going. I'm going to stand on these stages and I'm going to say all the things

00:51:25.360 that we say all the time on this show. We're going to make it safe for me. We're going to make it safe

00:51:28.800 for my team and my guests and you. We're going coast to coast and do something really important,

00:51:35.160 which is to say what's true and what's real, to honor him. I really now more than ever would love

00:51:42.100 to see you all face to face. God, I would love to see you face to face. I need to see you face to face.

00:51:48.900 I am doing this tour and I would love for you to join me. Megankelly.com for the tickets.

00:51:58.980 My next guest may be a familiar face to many of you. For years, Leland Vittert was a fearless

00:52:04.760 correspondent and anchor at Fox News. Now he hosts his own primetime show on News Nation called On Balance.

00:52:11.900 But he's on today because he's also the author of a brand new memoir about growing up with autism,

00:52:19.180 a disclosure he only made publicly recently. The book is called Born Lucky, A Dedicated Father,

00:52:26.440 A Grateful Son, and My Journey with Autism. Leland, so great to have you. Thank you so much for being here.

00:52:34.440 Reunited once again, Megan. It's good to be back with you.

00:52:36.700 I remember when you first joined Fox and you were in Jerusalem and you were a war correspondent,

00:52:44.080 like under the worst of circumstances, you were totally unflappable, which is not easy to do.

00:52:51.720 And you write the story in this memoir about how that it was like your dream job to work as a

00:52:57.520 national correspondent for a national news company. And Fox News is like, we do want to hire you.

00:53:03.440 You've got three weeks. Would you be interested in Jerusalem? You're like, sure. But you later

00:53:09.820 found out it's because nobody else wanted it. Right. Yeah. That was the time that Obama had

00:53:14.240 declared peace in the Middle East and Hillary was going to negotiate a deal between the Israelis

00:53:18.320 and Palestinians. Obama had given a speech in Cairo. And then the Arab Spring kicked off.

00:53:23.320 And you and I were together on the air when Hosni Mubarak resigned. And I was in Tahrir Square. I think

00:53:29.820 in Born Lucky, there's obviously most of it's about my childhood and my relationship with my dad and how

00:53:36.520 he dealt with my diagnosis and then adapting me for the world. But one of my favorite stories in the

00:53:42.700 book that's come up a couple of times, Megan, is when you and I were on air during a Gaza-Israel war

00:53:48.540 and there were rockets flying both ways over my head. We were probably on air for 30, 40 minutes

00:53:53.860 together as this battle went on. And I had my helmet clipped right here on my flak jacket.

00:54:00.400 And in the middle of all of the rockets, you said, Leland, your mother has just called and asked that

00:54:06.740 you put your helmet on. I checked with my mom. She says she didn't call. I'm just saying.

00:54:13.300 Well, I think I was standing up for what she wanted.

00:54:15.640 You were channeling my mother.

00:54:18.680 It wasn't just that. So then you finally come back stateside. Next thing I know,

00:54:22.400 you're in Baltimore for the Freddie Gray riots, which were just as bad as what we saw in Jerusalem

00:54:29.600 and in the Middle East. So you were like getting thrown. You must have thought Fox News wanted to

00:54:35.640 do you in with all the assignments they gave to you.

00:54:39.580 Yeah. Well, I write in Born Lucky about my experience thinking about joining the CIA and they

00:54:44.540 had offered me a job to be a case officer there. And I turned it down because I didn't want my

00:54:50.920 parents to worry because of how close of a relationship we have. So instead, I decided

00:54:55.740 to go to the Middle East for Fox News. And what was funny is, is that, you know, at the CIA, you would

00:55:00.340 get two years of training before you went out. Whereas with like Fox, it was a phone call. Hey,

00:55:05.740 head into Egypt in the middle of the revolution. Here's about 30 grand in cash and a sat phone. Good luck.

00:55:11.780 Yeah. You might get, Hey, your hair looks nice when you do it like that. That would be more along the

00:55:17.960 lines of the training Fox could give you before you went to the Middle East, but you did it and

00:55:22.780 you did it so well. You really were unflappable. You were one of the few who really stood out to me

00:55:26.800 as like just completely composed under very pressure filled situations. So it was very interesting to me

00:55:32.680 to read about your backstory. Now, first of all, Born Lucky is actually, that works perfectly because

00:55:39.400 that actually was your nickname growing up. Right. Uh, I grew up, um, introducing myself to

00:55:45.920 everyone as Lucky Vittert because when I was born, I should have been born dead. Um, and you're a

00:55:51.540 mother, Megan, and I know how much, you know, your relationship with your kids mean. I've heard you

00:55:55.460 talk about it. It's so special. And for my mother in 1982, she had a decision to make. Does she get a

00:56:00.780 cesarean section because the doctor said he had a bad feeling or have a natural birth? And she said,

00:56:05.900 I am going to have a cesarean section because if I don't trust my doctor, I should not not take his

00:56:13.620 advice. I should just get a new doctor. So as I'm being born, the doctor screams out, this is the

00:56:20.520 luckiest baby we've ever seen. Oh my God, what a lucky baby. So my mom's in the delivery room. My dad's

00:56:25.160 there and they have that blue curtain where there's a, uh, for the operation. And my mom's hand just like

00:56:30.840 grabs my dad's like this, like a vice. And my dad sort of looks over to the doc. He's like, doc,

00:56:35.640 everything. Okay. And in born lucky, you see this moment in the emergency room where they pull me

00:56:42.240 out and the nurse then goes, this is the luckiest baby ever because the umbilical cord was tied, uh,

00:56:48.420 twice in a knot and then around my neck. So had I been born naturally, I would have been dead. And the,

00:56:53.920 the doctor the next day came up to the room to check on me and they have that little whiteboard,

00:56:58.780 you know, outside a room that says like, you know, Carol Vittert, my mom, Leland Vittert, the kid.

00:57:03.280 Last time I ate, last time I pooped. And he crossed out Leland and said, call him lucky.

00:57:08.540 Oh my gosh. That is such a story. I, okay. So thank God, by the way. And your dad, yeah, I can see him

00:57:15.460 being pretty alarmed. What do you mean? Could you go on? Could you fill in those details a bit doc?

00:57:20.040 Um, so you go on to have a rough childhood and, and you didn't speak for the first three years

00:57:27.460 at all. So finally you said born in 1982. So now you're around 1985 and your parents take you in

00:57:34.160 to the speech therapist and all that. And it turns out you can speak. You just are choosing not to

00:57:38.620 speak. And then eventually they decide to have you tested. And can you speak to that sort of delta that

00:57:45.500 you write about between various skill sets where they try to figure out whether you're on the autism

00:57:50.440 spectrum? So this is the moment in born lucky where my parents are told you need to have your son

00:57:56.220 evaluated, right? Which is the worst thing any parent can hear. So they take me to a medical

00:58:01.620 testing built building. It's, you know, stale coffee, old magazines, whatever. They send me off

00:58:06.380 for a couple of hours. And this woman is the psychologist comes back and says, look, there's

00:58:09.520 a lot of things going on here. Um, he obviously has behavioral issues, um, and can't in any way relate

00:58:16.500 to anyone his own age. Um, and has sensory issues, all sort of what we now would know to be classic

00:58:23.520 signs of, of autism. Um, how old are you here? I'm five and would react really aggressively if

00:58:30.360 in any way touched and didn't understand any kind of social or emotional interaction, um, with kids.

00:58:37.680 But what you're talking about is they, in this testing process, they gave me an IQ test and they

00:58:44.020 figure out on one half of the IQ scale, I'm a genius on the other half. I am mentally retarded to use

00:58:50.960 the parlance of the day. So a spread of 20 points between the two scores, uh, is a learning

00:58:56.200 disability. I had a 70 point spread, right? So yeah. Uh, and the woman said, this is the biggest

00:59:02.180 spread we've ever seen. And it's very difficult to know what's going on inside his mind, meaning

00:59:07.920 my mind. So in that moment in born lucky, my dad goes, all right, what can we do? And the woman

00:59:15.140 says, not much. And then he goes, is there anything we can do? And she says, generally not.

00:59:20.960 So I wrote born lucky because I wanted to give parents, every parent of every kid who's

00:59:27.560 struggling, not just with autism, the hope that my parents didn't have, that they can

00:59:32.360 make an enormous difference and really bring out so much more in their child than what the

00:59:38.560 experts say is possible.

00:59:41.080 Your dad just refused to give up on you. Like he started putting you through, through drills

00:59:48.400 and, and sort of exercises that he knew would serve you well long-term without any special

00:59:53.060 training on his part, just instinct.

00:59:55.000 Exactly. And this story is about my dad. It's really a love letter to him, but he realized

01:00:01.800 that the world wouldn't adapt to me. And he made no bones about the fact that the way

01:00:07.080 I saw emotion and the way I interacted socially was not going to be accepted by the world.

01:00:12.260 And if I wanted to have a fulfilling life and a chance at a loving relationship with a

01:00:16.440 woman, which I now do. And I have a fabulous wife. If I wanted to have a career and be able

01:00:20.280 to count people like you, Megan, as friends, I was going to have to learn how to adapt.

01:00:24.780 So that was this mission of his. And it was everything from 200 pushups, five days a week,

01:00:29.600 starting when I was five to try and allow me to have self-esteem about something I had

01:00:34.660 accomplished because I wasn't going to accomplish anything in school. And I wasn't good in athletics

01:00:38.460 all the way to taking me out to lunch. And like, I would have loved nothing more because I was into

01:00:43.800 the news and politics and everything else to go to lunch with someone like you. And you and my dad

01:00:47.760 would be talking and you'd be talking about your kids. And I'd pipe in with questions about how do

01:00:52.280 you book guests and who writes your scripts and how do you come up with what you're going to say

01:00:55.920 and on and on and on. And in that moment, my dad would tap his watch. And I write in Born Lucky

01:01:01.820 about why it's so important that he tapped his watch without saying, hey, Lucky, be quiet,

01:01:06.620 as most parents would. But tapping his watch was a silent way to communicate to me, hey,

01:01:10.920 stop talking. And number two, bookmark that. Because after we got done with lunch,

01:01:15.820 we'd post-game. And he'd be like, okay, so when Megan was talking about her husband's new book,

01:01:21.740 why did you think it was important to ask about her show? And I'd say, well, I don't know,

01:01:26.200 dad. I was interested in it. Right. But what do you think Megan was interested in at that point?

01:01:29.340 It was this very, very granular minute by minute sort of, for lack of a better term, reprogramming

01:01:37.520 of my brain. Yes, he knew that you had the intellectual aptitude to learn how to behave

01:01:46.120 properly and taught you exactly how to do it, which is pretty extraordinary. What skills were you

01:01:53.880 slower in then? Was it like the social skills? Was it more of like an Asperger's thing, Leland,

01:01:58.760 where like, you know, Asperger's kids struggle socially but may have very high IQs?

01:02:03.380 Yeah. It's interesting because once I was diagnosed, my parents said, we're going to tell

01:02:08.240 no one. My dad didn't want me defined by a diagnosis. He said, if you get special accommodations,

01:02:12.980 if you get extra time, you're not going to operate in the real world. So I don't know how to describe

01:02:18.340 it sort of in a medical term. But in today's world, I mean, you would have said that I had no

01:02:25.940 friends in fifth grade. My dad came to the PE time at school to figure out that they'd put me with

01:02:32.140 the girls because I was bullied and pushed around so badly with the boys. So imagine what that does

01:02:36.560 to a father. In seventh grade, I had been pulled out of that school in fifth grade. In seventh grade,

01:02:44.000 the principal called my parents in, sat them down two weeks into school and said,

01:02:48.300 look, we all here at school, everybody at this school thinks Lucky's very weird.

01:02:55.140 Arrow one through my parents' heart. And then the principal who's supposed to protect me followed up

01:02:59.780 with. And frankly, I think he's pretty weird too. So at that point, my parents realized that

01:03:06.100 everything that was going to happen to me was, in the view of the school, my fault.

01:03:13.520 And what'd they do?

01:03:16.140 Look, my dad became my best and only friend. And I write in Born Lucky how my dad, at about when I was

01:03:22.880 six years old, had decided he was going to quit his job because he said, I realized that you needed me.

01:03:29.200 And I was the only person who could be there for you because no one else would be.

01:03:34.280 And so he became my only friend at the time, now my best friend. And he figured out these ways to try

01:03:40.780 and get me to find the ability to accomplish things that were outside of school, outside of having

01:03:48.600 friends, outside of sports. So that was pushups. It was allowing me to learn how to fly. It was

01:03:55.560 taking me out with friends so I could have some kind of social interaction. But it was also being

01:04:01.760 home for me every day. So in eighth grade, an art teacher decided I wasn't going to be Picasso,

01:04:07.860 I guess. And there's paintings all over the walls and everything. And he was upset with me one day.

01:04:11.320 And he said, you know, Vittert, if my dog was as ugly as you, I'd shave its ass and make it walk

01:04:17.980 backwards. So I see your face kind of reacting to that. And I walked home, as I did every day,

01:04:27.680 4.20 in the afternoon, my dad was there. And you know, so much of Born Lucky of this story is just

01:04:32.700 showing up, is just being a parent. I know you've talked about it on air, how important it is to you

01:04:36.620 to be there at every moment for your kids, because that was what's so important with dad and I. And

01:04:42.740 he'd spend three or four hours putting me back together. You know, I would take out my frustrations

01:04:47.060 and my isolation and my anger at how I was being treated on him. And I didn't know this, Megan,

01:04:52.440 until we wrote Born Lucky, is that almost every night, not every night, but after he would leave

01:04:58.160 my room, he would walk downstairs. So it's now 10 or 11 at night. I was going to sleep. And my mom was

01:05:03.680 probably already asleep or back in her bedroom. And he would sit in the living room in the dark and cry.

01:05:08.480 Oh. Um, and he, you know, he, he felt like he was alone too. And that's the message of the book,

01:05:14.640 right? That parents who are going through this aren't alone. I can't help but think of your last

01:05:22.900 stint at Fox because, you know, you were reporting, it was J6. It was like, it was tough,

01:05:30.800 tough news, especially for Republicans. And the reports were that Lachlan Murdoch didn't like your

01:05:38.240 tone, the way you were handling it, kind of turned on you a bit. And next thing you know,

01:05:42.900 you're, you're out. And I wonder if he knew Leland, like, I wonder if he knew maybe Leland

01:05:49.580 still has like a piece of him that doesn't get the tone perfect, you know, exactly right. But you

01:05:55.480 have to judge this guy overall, overall, unlike his approach to the news and whether he's trustworthy

01:06:00.120 and an honest reporter. I mean, it all landed great for you. I love News Nation, love News Nation. But

01:06:05.940 do you feel like those, you know, that, that your past ever comes back to haunt you on the air?

01:06:13.260 I don't know if my past ever comes back to haunt me. Um, you know, we now know it wasn't that

01:06:19.480 Lachlan Murdoch sort of didn't understand when I questioned Aaron Perini, who was Trump's

01:06:24.460 spokesperson during one of the Stop the Steal rallies I was anchoring on a weekend. And I was the

01:06:29.480 only Fox anchor to aggressively question Trump's claims that he won the election. And that minute,

01:06:36.180 Lachlan wrote an email to the Fox executives and said, Leland's done, right? So it was a little bit

01:06:40.460 like private school. Um, I was kind of invited not to return to Fox. Um, my dad always taught me you

01:06:46.640 can control two things, which is your work ethic and your character. And that to me was just about

01:06:53.440 doing the right thing, right? That I was a journalist and I, I aggressively questioned

01:06:58.800 Democrats in the same way. And I did, um, Republicans too. Um, it's why I love News Nation

01:07:04.580 because I get to go do that. Um, I don't have any ill will towards Fox. I'm, I'm grateful for the,

01:07:11.220 uh, opportunities they gave me. Uh, it's a business. They get to make that decision,

01:07:17.700 which they did. Um, and that's fine. Mm-hmm. Good for you. You handle it very, very high class,

01:07:25.100 uh, very classy way. Good for you. So you did wind up going to college. You wound up finding a

01:07:31.120 beautiful woman. You develop a family, you know, you have a family. So what happened with your wife?

01:07:37.560 Were, were, was the autism still affecting the way you interacted with the world or, or, you know?

01:07:43.440 Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. Yeah. Um, I don't know any other way, right? Everybody,

01:07:50.340 people have asked me that all the time. Like, you know, do you think that the way you are,

01:07:53.780 that you have some superpower? I don't know. I'm just me. Um, and certainly I've tried to adapt,

01:07:58.820 but I think what you may be getting at is it's still a daily, sometimes hourly struggle, right?

01:08:04.300 It's a fight that my dad gave me the tools and said, look, you, you have to be so disciplined

01:08:10.420 in your mind to even today. I have to realize my, my instincts may be wrong and I'll give your

01:08:16.620 viewers and listeners something that wasn't in the book because it happened after we wrote it. But,

01:08:20.120 um, one of the classic characteristics of autism is that you become hyper task focused,

01:08:25.540 like one task, you just cannot be brought out of the focus. And I was just recently around with my

01:08:32.760 father-in-law. We played around a golf. I was late. I needed to get my travel bag packed. I'm trying

01:08:37.400 to pack the travel bag. And this guy who we play golf with comes over to me to talk to me and he's

01:08:41.960 standing up there, you know, out in the parking lot of the golf club and I'm down packing my travel

01:08:46.720 bag. And he keeps trying to talk to me and I'm so focused on packing the bag. I couldn't help

01:08:50.640 myself, but keep doing it. And he kept trying to talk to me and I was so ever blessed rude to this

01:08:55.560 guy. I cannot tell you. Um, and at the end of it, he just walked away. He gave up understandably

01:09:02.860 because I was being so rude. And I thought to myself afterwards, just mortified that it's like

01:09:08.540 after 40 years of this, after working every day at it, sometimes you can't help yourself. But I sent

01:09:14.140 him a long text. I found his phone number and said, I'm so sorry that I was so rude to you. Um, this is

01:09:19.760 just really terrible and awful behavior. I just can't tell you how much I apologize. What I didn't say

01:09:25.860 was, Oh, by the way, it's because I have autism. And that's because that dad never let me use it as an

01:09:31.160 excuse. You didn't tell anybody. You didn't talk about it. He didn't tell me for a long time

01:09:34.660 because he didn't want me to use it as an excuse. The standard was the standard. And that, that was

01:09:40.680 how he decided I would get through the world is because if I was given the ability to define myself

01:09:47.160 by the diagnosis, that then I would. It would be a crutch. My God, that's so profound. This is

01:09:54.220 totally giving me a Shelby Eli Steele vibes where Shelby Steele, of course, is an amazing black scholar

01:09:59.880 and Eli was born and was deaf. And this is, you know, at a time where we weren't nearly as forgiving

01:10:08.120 of these so-called disabilities as we are now. And he just refused to let, um, Eli rely on sign

01:10:16.120 language and Shelby didn't want to know sign language. He wanted Eli to read lips. That was

01:10:21.340 the only way he was going to get ahead in a hearing person's world. And they talked very openly about

01:10:27.540 this again on one of my earliest episodes before we had audio and before we had, um, visual in that

01:10:33.240 first year that the, that the show was on. It was a really sweet story about a dad who he had,

01:10:38.300 he had to go a tough love route. He knew it was gonna be very hard on Eli and it's exhausting on

01:10:42.480 Eli, but Eli is very grateful that his dad made him do it because it did give him this skillset to

01:10:47.440 function in a so-called normal world that he otherwise wouldn't have had. But I mean, I, now I've known you

01:10:52.580 for 15 years and did you join Fox around 2010? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Did not know any of this.

01:10:59.560 I mean, so like, I think your dad did you such an enormous service and I know you feel the same.

01:11:03.820 It's a beautiful love story of, of between father and son. I love that you shared it. Um, so now

01:11:09.300 you've got, did it affect you with the wife and the ladies and that when you started dating or no,

01:11:14.480 you were just, yeah, no, I think it's a very fair question. And in the book, I, there's a little bit

01:11:18.980 of my dating life in there. Um, certainly, uh, my wife, Rachel has an EQ, uh, that's that about

01:11:27.020 that of the temperature of the sun, which probably makes it so that she's willing to put up with me.

01:11:31.820 Um, so that, that part really helps, um, the most wonderful woman. Look, I mean, were there things

01:11:39.920 and ways that I acted when I was younger in dating that I'm not proud of? Absolutely. Um, can I blame

01:11:47.080 autism for that? No, because that's not how I think. And I think you said something really

01:11:51.600 interesting about sort of, you know, a normal world or a hearing person's world. That's just

01:11:57.700 the world we live in. And, you know, there's the debate in the deaf community about cochlear

01:12:01.800 implants, about the ones that allow people to hear that are deaf. And there's this movement in

01:12:06.120 that of like, well, we're not going to, uh, we're not going to do that because that's adapting and

01:12:11.840 I'm deaf and that's just who I am in the same way of like in the, in the autism community.

01:12:16.440 Now there's a, there's a certain community that says, you know, a, you know, autism is

01:12:20.860 awesome. That's your superpower. The world should just understand that about you. Well, okay. Um,

01:12:25.820 I should be able to run a marathon in three hours, but I can't, it's just not the reality

01:12:30.520 of the world. And I think that was what my dad understood. And the story of born lucky is adapting

01:12:36.460 me to the world. And I'm still not fully adapted, right? I just told you that story.

01:12:41.000 None of us is. Yeah. Well, um, you better than most, um, for sure. And it's just trying to help

01:12:49.140 parents understand that their kids can be so much more if they push them and the experts keep telling

01:12:54.140 you not to do it. Mm-hmm. We saw this just last week when RFK Jr. made his announcement about

01:13:01.160 Tylenol in pregnant women as a potential cause of autism. And then, I mean, to be honest,

01:13:08.400 President Trump was the one who came out, was much more explicit about it. RFKJ kind of tried

01:13:12.680 to be more nuanced and Trump was like, don't take it, stay away if you're pregnant. And, um,

01:13:20.240 there was a fair amount of that from some in the autism community saying like, there's nothing wrong

01:13:24.960 with autism. Why are we so focused on identifying it, preventing it and curing it? It's, it's not

01:13:29.600 something that needs to be cured. It's like, okay. I mean, very few parents would wish autism on their

01:13:34.980 child. Who would, who would, I've asked that question so many times.

01:13:37.760 I've said, look, I grew up with autism. It was hell. Was it as profound as it is for some

01:13:42.920 children? No. Was it probably worse than it was for others? Yes. But you'll read Born Lucky and

01:13:48.740 you'll see what I went through growing up. If my wife was pregnant right now, we just got married

01:13:53.940 three months ago. Um, and you gave me a box to check, you know, would this new child, would my

01:14:00.760 child have autism or not? A thousand times out of a thousand you check, no. What is, I don't,

01:14:05.720 that to me is just bonkers.

01:14:08.860 Mm-hmm. Let me pick it up with you where I left it off with Michael Schallenberger as a,

01:14:13.320 as a newsman. We were talking about what do we do now? What do we do with all these, like all these

01:14:19.720 mass shootings, political assassinations, being cheered, Luigi Mangione, Charlie and on. You know,

01:14:28.180 I, I'm much more in a place that the kids would call it based, you know, where I just want to

01:14:32.980 defeat the other side right now. I'm so angry and I, I'm angry at the left for not acknowledging

01:14:36.800 what's really, what motivated this and that they cheered Charlie's murder and now they won't say

01:14:40.580 what the shooter was motivated by. It's just a mystery. We'll never know. It's like what he

01:14:43.840 literally wrote out in the bullying cases, casings. It's just, this stuff is driving me crazy,

01:14:47.220 crazy. But I'm, I am more interested even in my rageful state in what got us here and how do we

01:14:55.540 get out of it? Like, is it just total destruction? Is it mutually assured destruction? Do we have to

01:15:00.500 have multiple political assassinations? You know, something like that to where, where we realize,

01:15:04.480 holy, what are we doing? I don't, I don't know the answer right now. What are your thoughts?

01:15:10.440 I, you're, you're smarter and you've been doing this a lot longer than I have, Megan. I certainly

01:15:14.560 don't have the answers. The one thing I think that it comes back to though, is that you've rightly

01:15:19.920 pointed out a problem that we have, which is this anger on the left and words that are being used by

01:15:29.740 the leaders of the democratic party that clearly inspire some real, very, very messed up individuals

01:15:36.480 to commit violence. And the links to that are very obvious to any fair-minded person. I think the first

01:15:44.140 answer, which is no different than what my dad did dealing with me when I was younger, is honestly

01:15:49.640 can identify and speak about the problem. Now, my dad didn't speak to anyone else about the fact that

01:15:54.820 I had autism, but the idea that we can't honestly discuss that there is a problem with violence from

01:16:01.680 the left right now is kind of wacky and very telling. I think it says that there's a lot more interest

01:16:09.840 in hating Trump than there is in solving any problem that exists. And we saw this even with

01:16:16.300 the RFK junior press conference you're talking about, right? There was much more interest in

01:16:21.400 debating the recommended dose of acetaminophen for pregnant women than there was in acknowledging

01:16:30.000 that finally now we're going to talk about the scientific question of our time, which is

01:16:34.700 why has there been an explosion in autism cases? This is not hard. You know, is Trump and RFK the

01:16:40.880 perfect messenger? No. But you know how many press conferences Joe Biden had on autism? Zero. Zero.

01:16:47.060 Zero. You go from one in a thousand cases when I diagnosed, one in 31 now, three times higher for

01:16:51.700 boys, double that for poor and minority communities. And the scientific establishment is like, we don't

01:16:57.180 know why this is happening, but you know, here you go, everybody's special. Like, this should be a

01:17:03.620 scientific question. Finally, now it is without any sacred cows, which I think is a really important

01:17:07.960 thing. And to your point about the people who just rather hate Trump than, you know, possibly be open

01:17:14.360 to the idea that maybe we found something and could prevent something as troubling as autism.

01:17:19.580 The women all over X, the pregnant women intentionally taking Tylenol just as a middle finger to Trump right

01:17:28.780 after they'd been told that there are serious studies. Dr. Marta McCary of the FDA, who is a

01:17:35.100 legit guy, Johns Hopkins physician for many years said, I think the number was there, there have been

01:17:40.900 40 studies, 13 of which suggested not linked, uh, 27 of which suggested there is a link and said those

01:17:50.240 13 are not good studies. He was not impressed with the methodology. So he said the overwhelming weight

01:17:55.900 is behind the conclusion that there is a link and there's something troubling between pregnant women

01:18:01.800 taking Tylenol and their kids winding up with autism. And in the face of all that, my team put

01:18:06.720 together a montage for people who haven't seen it. It's disturbing. It's up 52.

01:18:11.500 About to take Tylenol for my headache while pregnant, because I don't take my medical advice

01:18:16.780 from a man who doesn't have a degree in science, healthcare, or medicine, and who had a parasitic brain

01:18:23.940 infection and was addicted to heroin for 14 years. Yeah. I'll trust my doctors who have their degree.

01:18:32.020 28 weeks pregnant. You know what I'm going to take? Some Tylenol, the Cetaminophen.

01:18:39.300 It's going to work like a charm and my baby won't have autism.

01:18:42.820 That is so sick, Leland. Yeah. And by the way, the last woman in that segment, um, was a doctor

01:18:58.760 doing that. And this is, so it is, it is breathtaking, right? And I think I should preface

01:19:06.140 this by saying I don't have a medical degree and I am not a scientist as we watch these really

01:19:11.300 disturbing videos and I have the chemistry grades to prove it. So fine. But as you pointed out,

01:19:17.540 this, the science is not settled here. There is a lot of disagreement and whether or not you should

01:19:22.740 take Tylenol as every doctor I've talked to when you're pregnant is really nuanced. The information

01:19:27.680 is really nuanced. Now that nuance was lost in Trump's press conference, but fine. But doing this

01:19:33.080 of taking Tylenol to just prove that you don't believe Donald Trump, why your mother, what would

01:19:39.660 lead a mother, even if there's a 0.0001% chance of hurting your baby now to do something that is

01:19:46.860 completely gratuitous and doesn't help you at all, right? Just to get TikTok clicks that I'm not a

01:19:53.380 parent, but it is beyond me. No, that's mental illness. That's, I mean, that is so sick. And by the

01:19:57.940 way, you know, that woman's so worried about the fact that RFKJ isn't a doctor, right? Okay. Neither,

01:20:02.160 neither was Javier Becerra. He was a lawyer who preceded RFKJ in the role. That was, that was Joe

01:20:08.640 Biden's guy at HHS. Is that, is, I mean, did she take his advice? Because like, if we're waiting for

01:20:14.160 chief doctor to be running HHS, we're going to be waiting a long time. I mean, they usually have

01:20:19.460 doctors running like NIH, FDA, which we do have now. And by the way, those doctors are very open-minded

01:20:26.000 on everything that RFKJ said. It's like, why to know that it's potentially harmful and do it anyway

01:20:31.700 is that doesn't bode well for those babies. It doesn't like long-term, I've got real concerns

01:20:36.620 about those mothers and those babies. I want to cover something else that I saw when the, when the

01:20:41.400 Comey indictment dropped on Friday, this, the, like I was search surfing on cable news to see what,

01:20:49.620 what was going on. And I happened to stumble upon you. And there was a very funny moment between

01:20:55.900 you and your guest. It was representative Steve Cohen. And here's what went down. Sot 53.

01:21:02.840 Letitia James said on camera, I am running to get Donald Trump. And she did. And Democrats were

01:21:09.840 just fine with that rule of law, rule of law. Donald Trump ran on, I am going to get my political

01:21:15.040 enemies and do onto them what they have done to me, which is he doing right now. And you didn't,

01:21:19.320 you didn't mind it when Letitia James did it. You're just justifying it. But when Donald Trump does

01:21:22.720 it, it's terrible. So what's the difference? Well, the difference is because he campaigned on

01:21:27.800 putting prices on grocery stores down the first day, getting control of inflation.

01:21:32.700 He hasn't. Grocery prices are still high as they can be. He's taking healthcare.

01:21:36.500 Oh, come on, Congressman. Come on.

01:21:39.260 So good. So good. You laughed in his face. He's a Democrat from Tennessee. Why'd you laugh?

01:21:45.460 Honestly, I didn't know what else to do. You ask a very kind of reasonable question and you go

01:21:50.060 about the indictment of James Comey and lawfare and the best you have is grocery prices.

01:21:56.520 At that point, hopefully when he got off TV and I say this, would say this, whether it was a Democrat

01:22:02.280 or Republican, hopefully he went to his staff and said, I need to be better prepared for my

01:22:05.720 interviews, right? I need better talking points. Because this was the most obvious question in

01:22:09.880 the world. Second of all, Megan, I really hope sometimes you have better things to do on Friday

01:22:14.880 night at 9 p.m. But thank you for watching. I love it. It makes me very proud. And my mother

01:22:20.940 would be so proud that you watch me sometime. But I think that actually was the whole point.

01:22:27.840 And I'm not an opinion guy. I don't do that. I'm a news guy. But my job is to ask hard questions to

01:22:35.700 both sides. And I think what that sort of proves is that we're at the point where lawfare is the rule

01:22:41.780 of law in America. And people can agree or disagree whether that's a good thing. I think

01:22:46.040 anybody would sort of say that's probably a bad thing. But that's just the world we're in. And

01:22:52.120 Republicans will do on to Democrats what has been done on to them. And it's hard to argue that that's

01:22:58.120 not fair. It's so great that you called him out on it, because those of us who would ask those tough,

01:23:02.820 fair questions don't usually get access to Democrat lawmakers like that. And you did,

01:23:09.500 and you took it. And he was so flat footed in the response that even you, sweet down the middle,

01:23:15.440 Leland, burst out laughing in his face. And I really enjoyed it, Leland. You still got it.

01:23:20.500 And by the way, you are fair. You are a straight news journalist. But I didn't know until I got my

01:23:25.700 hands on Born Lucky that you founded your high school Republican club.

01:23:30.700 Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was out of necessity, right? The way I sort of survived high school was by

01:23:36.280 out of necessity. So I didn't have any friends in high school, and it was having a very difficult

01:23:41.200 time. But the high school I went to was very big on what college you went into. And I certainly wasn't

01:23:45.540 going to get in based on my grades. But they said, you need to have some kind of club on your

01:23:50.920 transcript or resume or whatever it is to get into college. I had no clubs. I had no interest in being

01:23:56.620 a member of a club, and no club had an interest in having me. So I looked through the student parent

01:24:00.720 handbook. It's true. Really true. But I looked through the student parent handbook. I sort of

01:24:07.200 always read the rules, because oftentimes you can have the rules work for you. And in there was a

01:24:13.360 rule you could start your own club. And I realized the only club that wasn't at this school was the

01:24:19.180 Young Republicans Club. I mean, the school I went to was doing diversity walks long before it was cool,

01:24:23.380 right? Like in the 90s. So a repression walks or whatever they're called. So anyway, I decided to

01:24:29.840 start the Young Republicans Club. So I found a faculty sponsor, which you had to get, which I said

01:24:34.200 to the faculty sponsor, we're not doing anything. I just need to be a member of a club. I got three

01:24:37.700 buddies. I got them around. I said, all right, guys, you're going to elect me president of the Young

01:24:41.840 Republicans Club. And then school had an all school assembly every morning where you made

01:24:46.020 announcements. So I got up and I said, the first meeting of the Young Republicans Club will be

01:24:50.240 tomorrow morning. And in Born Lucky, I take you through like people booing in the crowd and on

01:24:55.720 and on and on. Fine. I don't know whether they were booing me or the Young Republicans Club.

01:24:59.480 But I said, tomorrow meeting at eight o'clock, the bell rings at 815, donuts will be served. So I went

01:25:06.800 to Krispy Kreme. I got, I think, 12 dozen donuts. So do the math, 144 donuts, maybe more. Maybe there

01:25:14.480 were like 300 donuts, 600 kids in the school. And the rule was you had to take attendance at

01:25:20.120 the first meeting of the club. So I put out a signup sheet. And if you wanted a donut, you had

01:25:25.440 to sign up. And I was president of the largest club on campus, which is brilliant. Yeah, that was

01:25:32.960 your genius IQ working in your favor. It's so smart. Sometimes you have to, right? Yes. High school

01:25:38.540 kids will show up for free food. And if it's Krispy Kreme donuts, so much the better.

01:25:43.440 Yeah. It worked. And I think that part of Born Lucky is sort of the fight against the

01:25:49.760 establishment and sort of the fight to survive. And I think there's a lot of kids out there who

01:25:54.020 feel like they're fighting for survival, which again, and the whole, you know, going to therapy

01:26:00.420 on national television, I never went to therapy, right? That was part of my dad's thing. You don't

01:26:03.520 go to therapy. You don't sit there and cry about yourself on and on. Don't feel sorry for yourself

01:26:07.820 ever. And he wouldn't let me feel sorry for myself when I left Fox and almost died of COVID. But going

01:26:15.060 to therapy on national television is wonderful and loving and compassionate as you are is not the

01:26:20.160 funnest thing in the world. And to talk about your darkest moments in life. Yeah. But if it can help

01:26:26.340 people, right? If it can tell kids right now who are struggling, you're not alone. And if it can tell

01:26:31.880 every parent whose kid's struggling, like, look, you can make a real difference. You can, in some way,

01:26:35.880 you can do for your child, what Lucky's dad did for him, not turn him into a TV anchor, but let him

01:26:42.520 know how love they are and how much that love means and how much that dedication means. And you can push

01:26:48.660 them to be more than what they are. Wow. So Leland, is your dad still with us? He is. He is with us.

01:27:00.020 And it's interesting, Megan. Like so many heroes, he refuses to be labeled that way. He hates it.

01:27:06.700 He really had a hard time writing the book with me. So I would interview him to get all these stories

01:27:12.140 out. And the only way I could get him to actually open up and tell me everything and not sort of argue

01:27:17.520 about each story being in the book, I said, look, I'm going to write this thing and I'm going to give

01:27:22.600 it to you. And if you don't want me to publish it and turn it in, because I had a book contract,

01:27:26.540 I won't. I did not have a plan if he said no, but I gave it to him and he was going, you know,

01:27:34.620 I just don't know if I want to put all this out there and everything about you. And I said, look,

01:27:38.380 dad, I said, if when I was five, somebody in that medical waiting room where they said,

01:27:46.500 there's nothing you can do. And you said anything. And the woman said, generally not

01:27:50.300 the psychologist. If instead that woman had handed you this book, what would that have meant?

01:27:58.360 If somebody had handed you Born Lucky and he said, I would have read it every week for 10 years.

01:28:05.480 So now he's biased, right? It is our story. But I think that sort of explains why I'm willing to do

01:28:13.820 this and why he was willing to talk about it. See, this is the difference between your dad and my mom,

01:28:18.340 because when I wrote my memoir, my mom was like, I don't think we spend enough time on me.

01:28:23.420 I feel like I only got one little chapter and I'm a bigger star than that, she felt.

01:28:30.760 Well, you know, you bring up actually this excellent point, which is my mother,

01:28:35.220 who absolutely adores you and loves watching you.

01:28:37.980 She sounds so smart. I love her too.

01:28:40.300 She's great. And she was thinking, she actually emailed me after you told me to put my helmet on

01:28:45.020 during that Gaza-Israel war and said, thank God Megan told you to do that.

01:28:49.900 But she doesn't get nearly enough credit. And this, you know, it's a story about my dad and I,

01:28:55.000 and I think that it's a unique relationship. But as my dad wrote in the afterword of the book,

01:28:59.820 you know, she not only had to keep me together, but him together. I mean, she

01:29:03.280 is such a hero in this moment and in this time. And it actually made me think, Megan, about you when

01:29:09.520 you were talking about why you didn't go out on the road more and how you were so careful about

01:29:14.060 how much time you devote to your career and congrats on five years, that you were saying,

01:29:19.620 like, it's so important that I show up for my kids. And that's what the priority is. And I just

01:29:23.780 love that.

01:29:24.260 Big time. No, I have realized, like, there are people in this industry who are extremely well-connected,

01:29:30.660 well-traveled, you know, have unfettered access to positions of power.

01:29:35.880 I'm not one of them because I haven't cultivated that, you know? And I don't know, I guess maybe

01:29:41.900 it's part of being a mom. Maybe it's just part of being a really active parent, you know, it can

01:29:46.680 be mom or dad, but, and some people have older kids. So that's, that's easier for them. But like

01:29:51.900 my kids are still pretty young, 12, 14, and 16 now. And when I look back at the past, at least

01:29:58.540 eight years, you know, I've been very, very present for it. And they will have a memory when they grow up

01:30:03.820 of me having been too present, if anything. And I love that, that that's what I've spent my free

01:30:09.520 time doing. That's why there are very few shots of me on this red carpet and that red carpet,

01:30:15.680 or I'm not flying all over the world without them because I really do want to be there for it. I'm,

01:30:20.620 I'm loving it. It's fun. And they do need me, you know, in the same way you, you may or may not have

01:30:27.700 known how much you needed your parents when you were dealing with this, when you were young and what a

01:30:31.360 difference they were making. Yeah. But a lot of kids don't even realize it, you know, it's just

01:30:34.740 sort of mom and dad are there. It's like, I, I know they need me, whether they're conscious of it or

01:30:40.320 not. And I can feel when they need me and I can feel when my just having been there, like in the

01:30:44.960 car to pick them up after a rough school day made a difference, you know? So it's, that's how I spend my

01:30:49.920 spare time and I, I love it. Yeah. It makes an enormous difference. And I don't think enough parents

01:30:55.400 get that message right about what an enormous difference it makes just that. And I say that

01:31:01.320 about my dad being there every day when I came home from school, um, to put me back together.

01:31:07.360 Um, and in Born Lucky there's, there's these moments of, of how my dad put me back together.

01:31:12.680 Um, and I got to meet him. I got to meet him and, and your mom one of these days. Um, well,

01:31:18.520 such a pleasure catching up Leland. Lots of love and luck. The book is Born Lucky. It's out tomorrow.

01:31:25.960 Let's go make Leland shoot to the top of the times bestseller list. Get it right now. Born Lucky. Wow.

01:31:32.920 What a beautiful story. Thanks for being on. Thanks Megan. Wow. We'll come right back.

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01:35:24.960 So five years ago yesterday, we launched The Megan Kelly Show out of my children's playroom on the

01:35:32.460 Upper West Side. We pulled a little bit from that first episode and here's how things sounded.

01:35:39.600 I need to create a show that I control in which my only fealty will be to the audience and to the

01:35:47.480 truth. So that's why I'm here. You know, I'm sick and tired of the news today. And I hope to be a

01:35:55.740 place that you can come for information that you trust, right? That you know I'm not in the bag for

01:36:00.980 either side or for anybody. And a place in which opinions, even heterodox opinions, can be expressed

01:36:09.020 freely. And we can debate ideas, any ideas, right? And that you guys are sophisticated enough and smart

01:36:16.840 enough to handle it. Yeah, that's still how I feel. And you are smart enough and sophisticated

01:36:25.220 enough to handle it because we've talked about everything. There is not a third rail we haven't

01:36:29.620 touched on this show in those five years. And I feel definitely that I've grown personally and

01:36:36.040 professionally from it. And I hope you have too. I hear that. I hear from a ton of people. And like

01:36:40.960 the number one comment I'll get is, you make me feel less crazy in a crazy world. Like you help me

01:36:46.700 understand that I'm not the nutcase. Like when we just talk about like our opinions and oh my God,

01:36:52.060 wait a minute, I'm not the only one who's feeling this way. And I love that the show has served that

01:36:55.880 purpose for people. And here's to another five and five beyond that. And beyond that, don't retire.

01:37:02.260 Don't retire. When I look around at the people, older people who are like thriving, that's what I see.

01:37:07.820 They didn't retire. They kept working, kept their minds active. Can I tell you, I'm just going to

01:37:14.720 tell you a story because we've been talking for two hours now about what the solution is on what's

01:37:20.040 happening in our society. And I don't have the answer. I'm not going to sum this up with like,

01:37:23.060 and here's the secret answer I've been holding back. But I'll just tell you a story and hopefully

01:37:28.500 this person won't mind it. I went to a birthday party on Friday night for one of my best friends. I love

01:37:34.620 her so much. And she's got a very eclectic, wide group of friends, but it was an intimate

01:37:41.200 dinner party. And among the guests there was the actress Marlo Thomas, who had been married to Phil

01:37:48.240 Donahue for 50 years. Such a dear man. He came on my NBC show. She came too. They were so in love.

01:37:56.080 And when I first, I had met her before, but I never spent an evening socially with her. And when I first

01:38:01.240 met her that night, I thought, oh boy, because I know our politics are different. I thought,

01:38:05.120 I hope this doesn't turn into like, you know, how can you like Trump? And you know how it can go.

01:38:13.080 I totally underestimated her. None of that came up. We didn't do politics at all that night.

01:38:19.280 I think it was a diverse group in terms of our leanings. Didn't come up at all. Instead,

01:38:24.940 we sat around a dinner table and we all talked about what was important to us, how we'd built our

01:38:29.620 businesses, what was, how we'd built our families, how we kept our kids close to us and made sure

01:38:36.020 they didn't drift, you know, too far away or lose touch with what matters. And she had, she's 87 now,

01:38:44.500 the most valuable stories and life lessons for us. She, first of all, she gave us hope for what life

01:38:51.960 could be like at 87. I mean, she is totally physically together. There was no cane. There was no,

01:38:56.680 you know, nothing scary about the way she walked. She was strong and in command going from A to B.

01:39:02.520 Like I, you would never have thought that she was in her late eighties. And secondly,

01:39:07.420 her mind was firing on all cylinders. Her memory for detail, 80 plus years ago, right there and no

01:39:15.280 rambling, forgive me. But you know, sometimes when you're very elderly, not to say she's very elderly,

01:39:19.880 but when you are, you can ramble, not even a hint of it knew exactly how much to give in a story,

01:39:25.940 where to end it, how to, how to deliver it. You know, it was just, she was an inspiration from like

01:39:32.540 that standpoint, but her stories were so inspirational. And she talked a lot about her

01:39:37.520 dad, Danny Thomas, who, you know, was a big, big star and what it was like to grow up his daughter

01:39:41.240 in Beverly Hills and the life that she had and their close, close relationship they had.

01:39:46.900 And the story of how he started St. Jude, which, you know, you, now you see Marlo pushing for all

01:39:54.380 the time. And just when, when you have a longer time, I'm going to tell you the story if I get her

01:39:58.840 permission to share it directly with all the details that she shared. But my point is simply

01:40:03.520 don't give up on your fellow Americans just because they don't share your politics and don't

01:40:09.640 make politics the price you have to pay for engaging with them. You know, I've said it many times

01:40:15.460 before, but it was just another example of it. You don't have to talk about politics with,

01:40:19.180 with everybody. You can have delightful, enriching, meaningful friendships, or in this case,

01:40:26.340 just evenings with people who are diametrically opposed to you when it comes to your politics

01:40:32.940 without even getting into that stuff. And I'm so, so glad that that's how my evening went with her.

01:40:38.920 I would love for more evenings to go like this between all of us so we can see each other's

01:40:42.880 humanity and not make everything about Trump or our fights or the darkest news of the day.

01:40:50.020 And especially with somebody like that, who's been around the block and has some wisdom to dispense.

01:40:55.400 Like what a gift for me as somebody who's obviously considerably younger than she is

01:40:59.700 to be able to receive all that wisdom, which I never would have had access to had I made her

01:41:06.140 politics the issue. You know, so those of us on our side of the aisle need to remember not to do that

01:41:12.120 too. Like to stay open-minded to the humanity and the wisdom and the loving lessons that our elders

01:41:17.660 have to give us, irrespective of who they voted for. And also, I think especially on the Republican

01:41:23.020 side, to remember not walking in with a chip on our shoulder, right? Because I think what a lot of us

01:41:27.500 are used to being the ones getting attacked and being misrepresented and being loathed.

01:41:34.480 And that doesn't mean that they're all like that. Some are like that. And when they show you their

01:41:38.960 colors, that's fine. Okay. You can cut them out. But many aren't like that. Many are totally

01:41:44.740 delightful and don't care. You know, they don't like the way you vote either, but won't make that

01:41:51.960 the stakes if you don't. And maybe we can start learning from those people and start loving those

01:41:57.320 people a bit. Maybe that's just like the glimmer of hope. Anyway, that's the one I have to offer.

01:42:03.360 That actually wasn't what I plan on doing these last seven minutes on, but I'm glad we did.

01:42:07.000 So anyway, huge thumbs up for Marlo Thomas, who is still very much missing her dear Phil Donahue.

01:42:15.060 One of the greatest. I mean, truly, there was no one better at it. Oprah tried to pretend that she

01:42:19.080 was, but no one held a candle to Phil Donahue in the way he would disarm his guests, gently make fun

01:42:26.200 of them, get their guards down, make fun of himself, get the audience fired up only to pull it back in

01:42:32.920 when he realized it was getting to an uncomfortable point. The love you always felt from him, the

01:42:38.100 mockery he did of himself always to put everybody else at ease, one of a kind. Anyway, we'll end it

01:42:44.480 there. Thank you all for joining me today. Tomorrow, Stude Bergier is here. We'll see you then.

01:42:50.760 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:42:55.400 Thank you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 29, 2025

Trump Sends National Guard to Portland, and Unhinged Leftist Reaction, with Michael Shellenberger and Leland Vittert ｜ Ep. 1159

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