The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump Shakedown Exposed, and Loser Students Occupy Columbia, with Andy McCarthy, Julian Epstein, Lexie Rigden, and Carrie Sheffield

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00:01:01.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:03.320 Live on Sirius XM Channel 111

00:01:05.380 every weekday at New East.

00:01:12.920 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:01:14.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:16.240 This is the show I've wanted to bring you.

00:01:19.180 I'm dying to get into today's topic

00:01:20.720 with Andy McCarthy to kick things off.

00:01:23.280 And we'll get to him in one second.

00:01:24.480 We're also going to get to the nonsense

00:01:26.200 over at Columbia where it goes on and on.

00:01:28.560 These students have blown right past their 2 p.m.

00:01:30.800 deadline yesterday to go back to school

00:01:32.500 and leave their, quote, encampment

00:01:34.400 and try to be a little normal.

00:01:36.660 And now they're breaking into buildings.

00:01:39.260 This president is so feckless.

00:01:41.760 Don't send your kid to Columbia.

00:01:42.940 Okay, if you do, you're going to get what you know you're going to get, right?

00:01:47.680 Like you're assuming the risk at this point.

00:01:49.520 You just want your child to be a far left activist

00:01:52.060 who doesn't actually want to learn but wants to preen in front of the cameras.

00:01:56.000 And by the way, why are they so unattractive?

00:01:58.000 I really legitimately want to know, why are all the protesters so homely?

00:02:02.360 I don't think they're unconnected.

00:02:03.620 I'm not going to lie.

00:02:04.560 I think attractive, smart people are not drawn to this nonsense.

00:02:07.760 They're living their lives being successful.

00:02:10.240 It's the unattractive and or dumb people

00:02:13.600 who feel the need to do this to feel like they matter.

00:02:16.640 Sorry, hard truths.

00:02:18.500 Elsewhere in New York City, former President Donald Trump is back on trial.

00:02:22.300 It resumed today.

00:02:22.920 It was off yesterday.

00:02:23.600 And now the judge has ruled on the gag order violations, 10 in all,

00:02:29.760 although there's another hearing on Thursday about additional violations.

00:02:34.040 And he has started fining Trump over his supposed attacks on witnesses

00:02:39.260 and says next step was probably jail time.

00:02:43.540 This is a pivotal moment in American history with serious election implications.

00:02:47.640 And so we begin there with truly the smartest legal mind I know,

00:02:50.680 our friend Andy McCarthy of National Review.

00:02:55.700 Andy, welcome back.

00:02:57.020 Megan, great to be with you.

00:02:58.180 I hope I'm not one of those unattractive people who went to Columbia.

00:03:02.920 But no, you're not.

00:03:05.920 I'm telling you, like it's one or the other.

00:03:09.020 If you see an attractive person out there, then they're dumb.

00:03:12.180 But the vast majority.

00:03:16.260 It's hard to watch, though.

00:03:18.780 You know, I went to most of my classes in first year were in Hamilton Hall,

00:03:23.980 which they're now occupying.

00:03:25.520 It's just it's mind boggling.

00:03:27.460 Yeah.

00:03:27.740 Yeah.

00:03:28.020 And absolutely no desire to do anything about it.

00:03:30.200 That president ought to go.

00:03:31.380 Can you imagine I'd be filing a lawsuit so quickly if I were the parent of a student

00:03:35.320 who's just trying to go to class and learn?

00:03:37.260 Yeah, I agree with that.

00:03:39.960 But, you know, I know this is a little off topic, but I have to say,

00:03:44.100 because this is something I've been involved in for more decades than I care to acknowledge.

00:03:50.200 But it's been a crime in the United States since the mid-1990s to provide material support

00:03:56.760 to terrorist organizations.

00:03:58.440 And Hamas and Hezbollah have been designated terrorist organizations since the mid-90s.

00:04:05.020 That's more than justification to open investigations.

00:04:10.540 And what I think they would find in connection with those investigations is that a lot of people

00:04:15.180 who are involved in these so-called spontaneous protests are people who probably don't have

00:04:21.300 a right to be in the United States and who should be removed from the United States.

00:04:26.160 I don't think this is all students or just on-campus agitators.

00:04:30.760 I think there's a lot of outside direction going on here.

00:04:35.660 What does support look like?

00:04:36.800 Could it be just an on-campus protest?

00:04:40.040 Like, what is something more than that required?

00:04:42.640 Well, what I'm saying is two things, Megan.

00:04:44.840 One is what can properly predicate an investigation, after which, once you open an investigation,

00:04:52.400 you find out all kinds of stuff, right?

00:04:55.060 But to make a case of material support, it's basically any affirmative support of a terrorist

00:05:04.280 organization.

00:05:04.860 It can't be something that is constitutionally protected, like merely speech.

00:05:09.200 But if it's recruitment, if it's fundraising, if it's coordinated, forcible activity with

00:05:18.320 outside agents of Hamas, for example, all those things are actionable.

00:05:25.140 If you contribute yourself to an operation that Hamas is trying to pull off that has an element

00:05:32.500 of potential force to it, that would be actionable.

00:05:36.100 But I think the more important thing may be, even if you can't make the criminal case, you

00:05:42.380 have a right to open the investigation.

00:05:44.460 And once you start to screen these people, I think what you're going to find is there's

00:05:47.960 a lot of people who are involved who don't have a right to be here.

00:05:52.660 Well, I mean, this guy yesterday, who was one of the student leaders at Columbia, who was

00:05:57.280 on tape speaking to the Columbia administrators about his desire to kill Zionists and how they

00:06:05.120 should be grateful he hasn't killed any so far, and he thinks he won't, but he might.

00:06:12.200 That'd be where I'd start.

00:06:13.560 I don't know that he has actual terrorist funding, but he certainly has terrorist sympathies.

00:06:18.160 So and he is not alone.

00:06:20.720 Yeah, that's right.

00:06:22.220 But the other point I would want to make about this, though, is that we have a hard time when

00:06:28.940 we're dealing with U.S. citizens who have a right to be here and green card holders who

00:06:33.180 are who are deemed to be U.S. persons.

00:06:35.360 Right.

00:06:35.880 We have to be very careful to honor the line between incitement on the one hand, which is

00:06:43.540 illegal and the espousing of unpopular views, which even if they're obnoxious, you have to

00:06:50.420 let that go on.

00:06:51.220 And that's true when you're dealing with Americans.

00:06:53.680 But if you're dealing with people who don't have a right to be here in the first place,

00:06:58.620 you don't have to hew to that line.

00:07:00.660 And I think we have more than enough people in this country who we can't get rid of because

00:07:05.700 they're they're U.S. persons who are who are causing a lot of problems for us.

00:07:12.140 The thought that we need to import more of that is nuts.

00:07:16.340 And if you want to talk about what has generated this problem, I wrote a book about this called

00:07:24.260 The Grand Jihad about 14, 15 years ago.

00:07:27.960 The Muslim Students Association started in a couple of campuses in the Midwest.

00:07:33.600 They're Muslim Brotherhood tentacle organizations in the United States.

00:07:39.440 They were set up initially by Saeed Khudib, who was in America briefly and later became the

00:07:46.040 head of the Muslim Brotherhood.

00:07:48.780 They started out with about a handful of chapters in the mid 60s in the Midwest.

00:07:56.320 They now have like three, four or five chapters on.

00:08:00.740 I don't want to say every campus in the United States and Canada, but man, I bet it's close

00:08:08.600 to 95 percent of them.

00:08:11.040 And, you know, you let that go for 60 years without addressing it.

00:08:16.680 And they have a program which is anti-American, which is counter constitutional, which is Sharia

00:08:23.440 supremacist, and then you exacerbate that by eviscerating security at the borders so that

00:08:31.700 the crazies can now all come in and find each other.

00:08:34.640 And then you wake up one morning and you wonder why you have a problem on the campuses.

00:08:39.880 Right.

00:08:40.380 You know, I mean, right.

00:08:41.240 The Muslim Brotherhood we've been talking about for years, I don't think young people know

00:08:44.800 about them.

00:08:45.340 I don't think people who didn't live through 9-11 like you and I did and a lot of our audience

00:08:49.560 even know what that is, but or even for that matter, what Sharia is.

00:08:54.420 Right.

00:08:54.580 We've been talking about it for years together, but, you know, Muslim terrorism, thank God,

00:09:01.240 has subsided a bit, at least domestically.

00:09:03.920 So it hasn't captured the news headlines.

00:09:06.540 But coming soon to a theater near you, based on what I see on these campuses, did you see

00:09:11.940 the students all down following the Muslim prayer as they raise the Palestinian flag and

00:09:20.760 they're wrapping themselves in the kafiyas?

00:09:22.680 I mean, I like I've never seen such a thing on American college campuses.

00:09:27.000 No.

00:09:27.580 And they openly support Hamas.

00:09:29.620 I don't know if they know that Hamas has a charter that it, you know, that announced

00:09:36.340 Hamas when it came into being in the 1980s and announces itself as part of the global

00:09:43.060 jihad and the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

00:09:46.980 That's what Hamas is.

00:09:49.260 I think I mean, that's what it is.

00:09:51.240 I think I think they see the other part of the charter saying we exist to destroy Israel

00:09:56.100 and they say, right on.

00:09:57.840 You should.

00:09:58.200 But I agree.

00:09:59.120 Yeah.

00:09:59.340 Genocidal.

00:10:00.320 Yeah.

00:10:00.840 Well, what happened here, Megan, I think, is if you remember at the end of the Bush 43

00:10:05.620 administration, they were actually prosecuting the Holy Land Foundation, which was Hamas's

00:10:11.820 piggy bank in the United States.

00:10:14.140 And all of these Muslim Brotherhood tentacle organizations, including the Islamic Society

00:10:20.100 of North America, which is kind of the graduate program of the Muslim Students Associations,

00:10:24.760 they were all listed in that prosecution, which led to convictions, by the way, as unindicted

00:10:31.160 co-conspirators.

00:10:32.300 And they were proved at trial to be unindicted co-conspirators.

00:10:35.620 Those organizations, when the Bush administration flipped to the Obama administration, they went

00:10:43.200 from targets of investigations to people who were inside the government giving the Justice

00:10:49.680 Department, the military and the intelligence community a new perspective on how to think

00:10:54.900 of Islamic ideology.

00:10:57.400 And they in the Obama administration, the approach which has been continued and I think exacerbated

00:11:06.020 in the Biden administration was we're not supposed to look at ideology at all, because

00:11:11.580 any ideology, if you take it to its extreme, could result in forcible activity.

00:11:17.580 So the only potential terrorism we're allowed to talk about or that we're supposed to talk

00:11:22.240 about is domestic terrorism by, you know, people who wear red baseball caps in the United

00:11:28.760 States.

00:11:29.340 And in the meantime, you have the Sharia supremacists who are actually very blunt about the fact that

00:11:36.560 they hate the West, they hate our Constitution, and they want to destroy our country.

00:11:41.580 I called my book the grand...

00:11:43.400 I'm sorry.

00:11:43.840 Yeah, no, I was just going to say, if Sharia is coming soon to a town near you, it means

00:11:49.100 your women are going to be covered head to toe, honor killings will be back in style.

00:11:54.200 So if a woman, I don't know, is seen having dinner with a man other than her husband, potentially

00:12:00.100 she could fairly be killed by that man, the husband's family or him, and to keep honor in

00:12:05.480 the family.

00:12:06.300 All little girls may be subject to genital mutilation so that their clitoris is removed by scalpel

00:12:13.340 without appropriate anesthesia.

00:12:14.940 This is what you're supporting as you're out there in your little tent, sipping your

00:12:19.520 latte.

00:12:20.600 They're so clueless, Andy.

00:12:22.900 Yeah, they're so clueless that they're running around Morningside Heights with signs that

00:12:28.840 say, you know, queers for Palestine.

00:12:30.740 And I'm thinking, if you're going to be a queer for Palestine, you better be at Colombia

00:12:35.120 because you don't want to be in Palestine.

00:12:37.880 You don't want to be in Gaza.

00:12:39.920 You're not going to have a very long career as queers for Palestine in Gaza.

00:12:44.740 So whatever.

00:12:45.600 There was somebody online, I think it was, I think it was James Woods, who retweeted one

00:12:51.800 of those pictures of the people wearing their rainbow flags and having Palestine signs in

00:12:57.300 rainbow lettering.

00:12:58.540 And he said, I assume this meeting was not on the top of the building.

00:13:01.980 That's exactly it.

00:13:04.040 Right.

00:13:04.480 Well, if anyone actually read books anymore and they didn't feel like reading mine, they

00:13:10.600 should they should read everything written by our mutual friend, Diane Hirsi Ali, who

00:13:15.640 I think is written with more depth on this and what this experience is actually like.

00:13:22.180 And to know that and then to watch these dilettantes on these campuses, it's just the

00:13:29.500 the the disconnect is a little bit much.

00:13:33.020 Yeah, I love I.

00:13:34.200 She's a dear personal friend.

00:13:35.660 I just spoke with her yesterday and she can't believe her eyes as to what she's saying.

00:13:39.320 But she's been warning about it.

00:13:40.780 She's been warning.

00:13:41.680 And so our audience knows, most of them know you.

00:13:43.820 But Andy used to prosecute terrorists for a living.

00:13:46.920 He was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, the most prestigious

00:13:50.100 district in America, and convicted, among others, the blind shake who bombed the World

00:13:55.440 Trade Center the first time around.

00:13:57.260 So he knows what he's talking about.

00:14:00.400 I'm going to you can stay past 1230.

00:14:02.800 Yes, Andy.

00:14:03.900 Yeah, sure.

00:14:05.160 OK, good.

00:14:05.600 So let's just let's get into the campus thing, because this is interesting.

00:14:08.260 I do want to talk to you about what the legal rights are for these students.

00:14:11.440 But I'm just going to bring the audience up to date on what happened overnight.

00:14:15.080 And then we're going to get back to Trump because you've you've got the most salient,

00:14:18.760 sound legal analysis of anybody on this.

00:14:21.360 And your latest piece in particular is helpful.

00:14:24.820 And this audience and I have been trying to figure out what in God's name Alvin Bragg's

00:14:30.440 new theory is.

00:14:31.920 And I think we got there.

00:14:33.320 I read your piece.

00:14:34.660 Now I know we got there because you're in the same befuddled state of realization that

00:14:39.260 we are.

00:14:39.760 So we're going to go deep on it.

00:14:42.140 But let's just spend a minute on the campus stuff.

00:14:44.920 My team has put this together and I want to show it to the audience.

00:14:47.520 Overnight, a mob broke into the university at Columbia, and now they're occupying an academic

00:14:53.260 building.

00:14:53.960 It's Occupy Columbia.

00:14:55.140 Now, the university's only response so far has been to tell students and staff, avoid

00:14:59.860 the campus.

00:15:01.200 Do not collect the benefit of your bargain.

00:15:03.700 Stay home.

00:15:04.640 There'll be no learning here.

00:15:06.380 Shortly before 1 a.m., protesters using metal barricades, chairs, tables and hammers took

00:15:11.760 over Hamilton Hall, named after Alexander Hamilton.

00:15:14.240 You just heard Andy mention this.

00:15:15.920 They then unfurled a banner symbolizing a renaming of the building to Heinz Hall, named after a six

00:15:22.480 year old Palestinian girl in Gaza, notably absent from their new names or any of the American

00:15:27.800 hostages who still sit in some underground tunnels in Gaza, missing limbs, having been

00:15:34.220 potentially raped and tortured, didn't see any renaming in their names.

00:15:38.900 Here's a look at some of the scenes overnight taken by Columbia University student journalist

00:15:42.540 Jessica Schwab.

00:15:43.600 The people united will never be defeated.

00:15:57.340 The people united will never be defeated.

00:16:01.460 unbelievable uh for the listening audience that was the students breaking into

00:16:31.460 that academic hall taking it over slamming doors with tables to make their way in

00:16:36.080 at some point a maintenance worker was seen trying to stop the protesters all by himself

00:16:40.960 at no point where police called in she tried that the head of the university and almost got fired

00:16:46.540 so now she's been cowed reporters on the scene saw zero pushback from authorities in fact the

00:16:51.960 student group behind the encampment posted on social media that hamilton hall had been taken

00:16:56.880 over by a quote autonomous group of columbia community members what does that mean the group

00:17:03.220 said they plan to remain in the building until the university conceded uh all this fight entirely

00:17:08.260 they wanted them to exceed to their demands so far that hasn't happened but they'll probably cave i

00:17:13.840 mean there's only like a month to go and columbia has no spine yesterday a deadline set by columbia's

00:17:19.000 president for the encampment to be disbanded came and went now columbia is vowing to suspend the

00:17:23.240 students inside the encampment but it seems they want uh to hand out the punishments in private so

00:17:29.160 as not to embarrass the little snowflakes who are acting so tough the encampment's leader who has

00:17:35.440 reportedly already been suspended but remains on campus took the letter and wrote columbia will burn

00:17:43.980 in red marker also i ain't reading all that free palestine i'm telling you they're dumb and or

00:17:51.700 unattractive take it to the bank meantime on the other side of the country disturbing scenes at ucla

00:17:57.440 deeply disturbing scenes i couldn't believe this video went everywhere online on x yesterday

00:18:02.780 this is truly shocking a jewish student shared this footage on social media showing himself trying to use

00:18:11.260 the university's main entrance and a bunch of these losers standing shoulder to shoulder i guess in

00:18:18.900 solidarity with hamas preventing a jewish american from accessing his university the young man the

00:18:27.100 jewish man is wearing a visible star of david necklace watch this we are ucla students i have

00:18:33.160 my id right here i'm being blocked off not by the security guard but by you two you three oh look they're

00:18:39.600 making their burger while i'm going this way excuse this is what they do everybody look at this look at

00:18:43.920 this i'm a ucla student i deserve to go here we pay tuition this is our school and they're not

00:18:50.080 letting me walk in my class is over there i want to use that entrance well i can't take it will you let

00:18:54.460 me go in this could be over in a second just let me and my friends go in to class

00:18:59.960 we're not engaging then you can move will you move

00:19:04.260 we're not engaging okay we're going we're going i'm going in i don't i have my hands up i'm not

00:19:13.260 hurting them i'm not hurting them that's what they do that's what they do everybody you guys are

00:19:19.560 promoting aggression you guys are promoting hate where ucla students we deserve to be there

00:19:24.840 they blocked him for the listening audience he tried to get through and a big man came and blocked

00:19:31.660 his way and these feckless protesters with their masks on again i refer you back to the homely

00:19:37.880 comment it's not because they don't want to be identified it's the same people who insisted we

00:19:42.200 mask forever during covid common thread uh we'll take a deep dive on that someday wouldn't let him in

00:19:47.740 now here another video also taken at ucla showing a masked woman chasing down a counter protester somebody

00:19:55.820 who was speaking up for israel and jewish people hitting him on the head and then pointing

00:20:02.160 something at him that appears to be a taser

00:20:05.380 he got attacked he was being shoved he said stop stop stop and then the pro-palestinian lady whips out

00:20:28.740 a taser which you can clearly hear that video taken by independent journalist cam higby higby and god

00:20:35.280 bless these independent journalists and students who are documenting all of this thank you to all of

00:20:39.660 them so to recap the protesters get to ram into universities ransack them uh claim academic halls for

00:20:46.280 their themselves rename them restrict the movements of others on campus prevent them from attending class

00:20:53.460 all without any swift repercussions whatsoever so back to annie mccarthy is any of that legal

00:21:00.400 no the uses of force are not legal blocking people is a use of force so this goes beyond speech

00:21:09.580 this is actual action uh and you know these are seditious crimes they're material support to

00:21:18.480 terrorist organizations and they don't have to be tolerated by these universities i mean they're

00:21:24.500 look they're tolerating a lot that um we wouldn't tolerate within the bounds of what you might say

00:21:33.140 is like the the reasonable i don't know the the curtilage around the first amendment that you know

00:21:40.460 the the penumbras yeah yeah they're they're doing more than than i would do but when it gets to use

00:21:47.080 of force and particularly when the universities which are like in loco parenti right which is not

00:21:54.580 something that's much thought about anymore but they have an obligation while those kids are on campus to

00:22:00.200 protect those students so absolutely people who engage in blocking other students from you know forget about

00:22:09.740 the taser lady the the people who are blocking students from uh access to to buildings on campus

00:22:17.680 should absolutely be prosecuted and here's the question megan where is the biden administration's

00:22:25.260 civil rights unit right for title violations discrimination against jewish students yeah where are

00:22:31.680 there you know it's a crime in the united states to conspire to deny people their rights

00:22:39.440 under law and that includes you know if you have a right to have access to places and you're being

00:22:47.140 stopped particularly if you're being stopped because you're a jewish person and they're not

00:22:52.120 letting you have access that's a civil rights violation and god knows they're afraid andy they're they've

00:22:58.520 opened a civil rights investigation they said it's some 11 universities it's all the ivies and they're just

00:23:03.960 open they've just been opened absolutely nothing is happening school this was going to go on for

00:23:10.440 another month because school ends you know for most campuses late may so they're this is a political

00:23:15.720 decision by the biden administration they don't want to take the heat from michigan and elsewhere who

00:23:20.260 are more pro-palestinian and the youth within the democratic party are too yeah so it's complete bs they

00:23:26.180 just want to say that they've opened the investigation so that they can't be said it can't be said that

00:23:32.220 they're not doing anything but they're not doing anything um and you know that if these were a

00:23:39.760 category of people that they have uh hammered away for four years are domestic terrorists whether it's

00:23:46.920 like maga uh groups or conservative groups parents at uh protesting the woke agenda in their schools

00:23:56.520 the biden justice department would be all over this like white on rice you wouldn't have to ask where

00:24:02.080 they were they'd be there and by the way here's this this just breaking uh miguel cardona of the

00:24:07.800 department of education before the senate right now testifying um per the new york times regarding

00:24:13.560 colombia cardona said the department was doing everything it could quote we're doing a lot we have

00:24:20.340 updated guidance we have a letter in draft right now we have increased title nine investigations

00:24:30.620 we have open investigations i mean that that's just further confirmation of what you just said

00:24:37.160 right who's in cuffs that's what i want to know right i'm glad they have opened who's in cuffs

00:24:42.800 and look why can't the jews get on campus yeah look when i was at colombia it was only seven years

00:24:51.880 when i started there after kent state which was one of the the liminal events of the uh of the anti-vietnam

00:25:00.880 protests so i'm completely sympathetic to the idea that you have to have very measured responses to

00:25:09.500 what goes on at campus that was a historic uh horrible event that that uh in many ways led to the

00:25:17.020 the history that's been written about that period so obviously they have to be very careful about

00:25:22.600 use of force i'm not being cavalier about that but you have to establish order and they're not

00:25:29.200 establishing order and the only way that you establish order is to is to actually take law

00:25:34.980 enforcement action and to my mind megan i gotta say a lot of these kids want to get arrested it's kind

00:25:41.400 of like they're radical chic it's a little credential that they can have but what has to happen here

00:25:46.440 is you got to start expelling people i think yes that's what they're fearful of yep that would

00:25:52.480 be that this would be over in an afternoon if they did that well that's like the students at

00:25:57.540 princeton right they set up two minutes later the guy with a bullhorn went down there and said

00:26:01.980 you're going to get in serious academic trouble you know could be suspended could be worse and they

00:26:06.960 were out of there they're never mind little pristonians oh my god oh what do they think we are

00:26:12.020 colombia we're not going to risk our futures holy crap what if goldman sachs is watching

00:26:16.380 and they find out my feelings so okay we'll continue to follow and we're gonna have more

00:26:21.660 on the show on this too but i gotta switch to trump because you're the guru on what's happening to him

00:26:25.120 right now you know i have to say for the record trump has had his highs and lows he's not a huge

00:26:30.440 fan of national review because they were not huge fans of trump either in 16 or thereafter but there is

00:26:37.060 nobody who i trust more on news about trump or news period the national review that even it just goes

00:26:45.140 to show you like you could he could he might not be your favorite candidate but you could be

00:26:49.380 completely fair toward him if you're a fair-minded journalist lawyer commentator etc and that's the

00:26:55.300 truth about my pals at national review trump should be sending you guys thank you notes every day for

00:27:00.640 what you expose about what's happening to him instead he likes to attack you um okay let's talk about

00:27:07.100 your latest piece which everybody needs to read we printed it out so you can see it here it's called

00:27:12.860 how judge mershon is orchestrating trump's conviction and this is so well said he's the fix is in like

00:27:22.780 i'll tell you something annie some of my team will come to me and say well what about this the you know

00:27:26.940 the government's struggling to prove that and i'm kind of like it's already over like it's over in the

00:27:35.200 way the oj trial was over once they picked that jury and got that judge that's very much how this one feels

00:27:41.560 and judge mershon has done nothing to disabuse you of that notion to the contrary you argue he's

00:27:48.680 reinforcing it every day every day in ways that are blatant and more sly so give us the overview on how

00:27:54.820 well the the fundamental problem with the case is that in the united states under the fifth amendment

00:28:03.300 you have to if you're going to charge someone with a felony you have to do it in a grand jury

00:28:10.140 proceeding where they produce an indictment where it's clear that the grand jury has found probable

00:28:15.720 cause of all the elements of the offense that's charged so the the indictment has to state the

00:28:21.040 offense in this case the offense that has been charged 34 times is the falsification of business records with

00:28:31.980 a fraudulent intent to conceal another crime the other crime is not set forth in the indictment so the

00:28:40.140 indictment fails as an indictment but because the purpose of it is to put a person on notice of what

00:28:46.480 the charges are but even specificity and this is the one that alvin bragg said when he charged the case i don't

00:28:52.860 have to tell you yeah and he does have to tell them i have another column that's out uh that's out

00:29:00.200 today which argues that this is actually the prosecution is a violation of the new york state

00:29:05.280 constitution uh which requires that if you're going to be prosecuted on a criminal statute the criminal

00:29:13.080 statute can't do what this statute does megan which says um if you if you falsify business records to

00:29:21.900 commit another crime and the statute doesn't say what the potential other crime is that's not good enough

00:29:28.740 under new york law you're not allowed to incorporate by reference the new york constitution requires

00:29:34.360 that the legislature spell out the activity that is alleged to be

00:29:41.060 uh it's either wait say that again andy because you faded out you have to spell out the activity

00:29:50.360 that's alleged to be criminal is that what you said correct right so you can you can do it two ways

00:29:57.280 you could in the criminal context you could do it descriptively which is to say you could have a

00:30:02.860 statute that says um if you falsify your business records to conceal a violation of the federal

00:30:11.240 campaign finance laws that would be one way to do it or you could have a statute that says

00:30:18.700 to conceal a violation of 18 u.s code section blah blah blah blah blah blah uh they would they would

00:30:25.880 let that go but what you can't do is just say another crime because that doesn't put the person

00:30:31.560 doesn't put the public on notice of what the statute criminalizes so in other words we have a right to

00:30:38.960 know what's lawful and unlawful what's legal and what's illegal so that we can color within the lines

00:30:45.180 as citizens because we don't want our government to just be able to throw us in jail we want to be

00:30:50.460 able to prevent that by our good behavior and ambiguous laws like this make that an impossibility

00:30:56.140 yes that's right and in fact we talked about sharia a few minutes ago as i argued over the weekend under

00:31:03.340 alvin bragg and and judge murchon's interpretation of this statute the other crime what they what they

00:31:10.920 said here is that bragg can bring in federal campaign finance violations because the statute just says

00:31:18.780 conceal another crime it doesn't specify that it has to be a new york crime which is by the way the

00:31:25.240 only thing that makes sense we're talking about a new york penal statute that a new york prosecutor has

00:31:30.720 to be able to enforce so it's got to be a new york law but what they're saying is nope it just says

00:31:37.080 another crime so it could be any other crime so as i pointed out by their logic it could be a sharia

00:31:42.260 crime it could be a crime against the the penal laws of china for all i know it could be a crime

00:31:48.120 against the you know the the criminal laws of the roman empire because there's nothing in it that

00:31:52.520 says the crime still has to be in existence it just has to be another crime that's ridiculous but

00:31:58.220 it's more ridiculous than i thought it was because over the last couple of days i've done some research

00:32:03.720 into the new york constitution and they're more exacting than even i am what they say is that you can't

00:32:11.580 incorporate by reference if you're going to prosecute somebody under a statute the statute has to

00:32:17.860 describe what is made criminal and it can't do it by vague references to other crimes it actually

00:32:26.820 has to specify the right it has to specify the conduct and it doesn't all right so he gets to

00:32:34.880 the opening statements he has his assistant craig does colangelo stand up there and instead of saying

00:32:42.580 the other crime is trump violated federal election law which is kind of what we'd been expecting he

00:32:51.540 says he engaged in a conspiracy a conspiracy to violate election laws by trying really hard to get himself

00:33:01.580 elected by paying off a porn star who was threatening to come forward this is the alleged crime but you've

00:33:10.720 pointed out trump has not been charged with conspiracy like that's that's not a crime listed in the indictment

00:33:20.680 and so what how does that reshape this case well it allows trump to be convicted of a crime he hasn't been

00:33:30.620 charged with so the way the state has teed this up and judge merchant is is green lighting all of this you would

00:33:39.140 think megan just reading the indictment that you're dealing with 34 business record falsification

00:33:45.900 offenses that occurred from february to december of 2017 then you hear the prosecutors opening the very

00:33:53.060 first sentence he says to the jury is this is a this is a case about a criminal conspiracy

00:33:58.520 and it it's not a case about the criminal conspiracy there's no conspiracy charge in

00:34:04.040 the indictment but that's the way they're teeing it up and what they're telling the jury is that

00:34:10.460 it's a conspiracy to suppress politically damaging information by violating the federal campaign

00:34:20.500 finance laws now just to just to explain how outrageous that that is there is no such thing

00:34:28.380 in new york law as a crime called theft of an election or anything of the sort okay so the first

00:34:39.240 thing to people need to understand is in the law what is a conspiracy a conspiracy very simply is an

00:34:47.420 agreement by two or more people to violate a criminal law so you can't have a conspiracy unless the

00:34:55.880 objective of the conspiracy is actually a crime that's made a penal law by the by the legislature so

00:35:03.400 there is no conspiracy to steal an election there's no such thing what he's saying is that effectively

00:35:11.340 he stole the election because he violated federal campaign finance law now bragg as a state prosecutor

00:35:20.700 has no authority to enforce federal campaign finance laws when that corpus of law was enacted in the

00:35:30.480 1970s congress made the justice department and the federal election commission the exclusive

00:35:37.920 authorities the exclusive agencies for prosecutions of the federal campaign law and they did that for a

00:35:45.880 very specific reason this is very complicated law it's it's collision with the first amendment is

00:35:53.160 fraught with constitutional problems a lot of the statute a lot of what congress has enacted in this area

00:35:58.760 has been thrown out by the courts because of constitutional problems so when congress created these statutes

00:36:05.960 they created the federal election commission to enforce them civilly the justice department enforces them

00:36:12.680 criminally but the point of doing that was to ensure that they are uniformly applied throughout the united states

00:36:22.760 and allowing a state prosecutor to enforce them and make up federal law not only make it up as he goes along

00:36:31.480 but make it up in a way that runs afoul of the guidelines that the justice department the fec have

00:36:37.480 for prosecuting it is the opposite of what congress intended when it enacted these laws so as it stands now

00:36:46.680 is it alvin bragg trying to prove that trump violated the federal election law or is he trying to change it to

00:36:56.760 he's proving that trump engaged in a conspiracy to violate federal election law whether or not he actually did it

00:37:06.440 yeah i think megan it's worse than that what he's trying to do is establish that trump conspired

00:37:13.640 to violate federal election law as defined by alvin bragg as opposed to as defined by the federal election

00:37:22.360 commission and the okay justice department and let me hold you there well let me hold you there okay yes

00:37:28.200 i agree as defined by alvin bragg because i know you guys have had brad smith post at national review

00:37:34.760 we've had brad smith on the show here you cited him in your latest article i actually looked it up we

00:37:41.240 had brad smith on in april of 2023 well i didn't know this i've been watching the trump trial but not this

00:37:47.480 closely um in january of 2024 brad smith tried to submit expert witness testimony or be called be

00:37:57.400 named as a witness for trump in this case as a true expert on election law he was serving on the fec

00:38:03.160 which you mentioned federal election commission under bill clinton and he says there's no violation

00:38:09.880 here he says it's a very complex area of law just like you said which is why they typically leave it to

00:38:14.680 the experts and that the fundamental thing that's been misunderstood as far as i can tell by almost

00:38:20.760 everyone in this case is that it doesn't matter what was in trump's head or michael cohen's head or

00:38:29.560 david pecker's head in making these payments the subjective reasoning for making the payment is

00:38:36.840 irrelevant the only thing the fec or justice would look at is the nature of the payment in general if

00:38:46.440 this is a payment that could only ever be used to advance someone's election then it may be a campaign

00:38:53.720 finance charge fee if it's something that could be used for anything other than one's campaign then it's

00:39:02.360 not within the purview of campaign finance law and he said on this show a hush money payment of course

00:39:10.360 is used by men all the time not just men but even criminal defendants or people who are threatened

00:39:15.640 with nasty information about themselves and there's been testimony at this trial arnold schwarzenegger

00:39:21.720 cut a deal with the national inquirer to protect him rahm emmanuel when he was about to run for mayor

00:39:26.760 of chicago cut a deal with the national inquirer via his brother ari who's a big hollywood agent um

00:39:32.200 bill cosby cut a deal with the national like he wasn't running for office but those first two were

00:39:37.560 to try to bury damaging information so this has been happening for a long time and the reason they

00:39:44.360 those things didn't get charged and the reason trump didn't get charged by the fec by the by the feds

00:39:49.800 the justice department here is because they likely understood it doesn't matter whether trump

00:39:56.200 was doing it to advance his electoral chances all that matters is the nation nature of the payment

00:40:01.480 i'm going to run the brad smith soundbite and on the tail end of it you will hear dave erenberg

00:40:06.360 palm beach county uh prosecutor great guy comes on the show a lot try to come back at brad because they

00:40:12.200 were all on the show together this is episode 522 of the megan kelly show with the john edwards

00:40:17.720 uh rebuttal all right take a listen to thought one let's suppose i decide to run for congress and i say

00:40:24.600 you know i need to be in a debate and and i need a really good suit so i go out and i spend you know

00:40:29.720 two thousand dollars on a suit which i would never otherwise do right it doesn't make it a campaign

00:40:35.240 expense even though my purpose was to do it to influence the election campaign expenditures are

00:40:40.360 things that no one would spend money on unless you're running for office so again it's not the

00:40:44.840 subjective reason why trump made the payment it's the actual nature of the payment itself john edwards

00:40:50.840 was prosecuted by the feds for something just like that he had an outside some rich folks who

00:40:57.560 are paying off his mistress so that he could help win the election they kept paying off the

00:41:02.840 mistress even after the election and he his wife had cancer and it was clear that she he didn't want

00:41:09.160 her to know how then were the feds able to prosecute john edwards under the same set of facts judges are

00:41:15.400 not experts in campaign finance law uh most prosecutors are not and i think it's just a

00:41:20.440 wrong decision there is a lot of supreme court precedent emphasizing that idea that you have to

00:41:25.400 use objective standards for campaign finance law not subjective standards you know sort of the only

00:41:31.160 logical reading of the statute because otherwise you know take a person like hillary clinton right

00:41:36.360 one could at least theoretically argue that everything she did between 1976 and 2016

00:41:41.640 was for the purpose of influencing her election as president

00:41:45.400 so good so clear and so it's very galling to listen to the coverage of this case andy because

00:41:53.320 i don't know if you're having the same reaction i am but i hear all over cnn fox news everybody

00:41:56.760 i hear them getting down to david pecker testified he did it to help trump win he did it to help trump

00:42:04.120 win who cares you could have trump on the stand saying yeah they did it to help me win that was the goal

00:42:10.840 and it still wouldn't amount to a federal election campaign finance violation yeah megan i think this

00:42:17.480 is something that we see a lot those of us who are kind of legal wonks which is this conflation of two

00:42:23.800 things that have to be separated out intent and motive um as brad said here it you don't even get into

00:42:35.240 intent unless you have something that objectively violates you know is a commission of the acts

00:42:42.760 that are required uh in a criminal statute for a prosecution to go forward you don't even have to

00:42:49.000 think about somebody's intent unless you have that and here as he points out these are not technically

00:42:55.560 campaign expenses to the extent they're talking about uh at the edwards case that's a very interesting

00:43:03.080 case to to talk about actually because it proves his point the federal election commission declined to

00:43:10.840 prosecute uh edwards because they thought it wasn't a campaign expense the hush money payments the

00:43:19.080 justice department i think recklessly went ahead and charged him anyway they had a very complex trial

00:43:25.400 the judge didn't uh clearly didn't like the case but he allowed it to go to the jury and then the

00:43:30.440 jury hung on counts they they didn't convict him i think they acquitted him on one and hung on

00:43:36.520 everything else and then the justice department having learned its lesson decided not to re-prosecute

00:43:41.800 the case so i don't think that's really a very strong argument for concluding that what what's happened

00:43:49.080 in the trump case uh is a viable campaign expense but when i say that you have to separate out intent

00:43:58.200 and motive if stormy daniels used the election to to get trump to pay because the election gave her

00:44:09.000 leverage and trump paid her because he was concerned about his chances in the election that goes to trump's

00:44:16.200 motive to pay it doesn't make the expense a campaign expenditure under the campaign finance laws

00:44:26.040 because it's not like polling or get out the vote efforts it's not the kind of an expenditure

00:44:32.440 that would only happen if there was a political campaign stormy daniels could have tried to extort

00:44:38.520 trump to pay for any number of reasons having nothing to do with whether he was a presidential

00:44:43.160 candidate or not it happens that he was a presidential candidate so she tried to strike while the iron

00:44:50.040 was hot and he had an incentive to pay her that doesn't make it a campaign violation

00:44:56.120 the judge refused to allow brad smith and his expert testimony harmeet dylan pointed this out on the

00:45:02.840 show the other day i had missed it it just happened in late march about a month ago uh he said no brad

00:45:08.360 smith cannot take the stand it would be improper to have him instruct the jury in the law among other

00:45:14.360 things well yeah tell tell us what's wrong with that and and if if brad smith can't get up there

00:45:20.360 and speak about the federal election standards how do the actual standards like you objectively look at

00:45:26.680 the nature of the payment not the subjective belief in the person's head how does that get into this

00:45:32.040 courtroom how how does it get in front of the jury so they have the accurate framing of the law

00:45:37.880 but by an utterly inadmissible lawless method the jury in this case is being instructed on federal

00:45:45.320 campaign law by david pecker and michael cohen now it's a black letter principle of the criminal law

00:45:54.280 law that let's say a and b commit a crime together right or what an alleged crime together a decides to

00:46:03.720 plead guilty b goes to trial a's guilty plea is not admissible to prove that b either committed the crime

00:46:13.960 or believed that he was committing the crime yet judge merchant is allowing the district attorney to

00:46:23.240 elicit from michael cohen that he pled guilty to two campaign finance payments and would campaign

00:46:33.320 finance offenses and worse than that bragg's lawyer bragg's prosecutor open to the jury saying that you're

00:46:42.040 going to hear that michael cohen pled guilty to these payments because they violated the campaign

00:46:46.840 finance laws and he went to jail over that now what bragg knows is that my old office the u.s

00:46:55.000 attorney's office for the southern district of new york had bragg dead to rights on four million dollars

00:47:01.800 i'm sorry had cohen dead to rights on four million dollars plus of bank fraud and tax fraud crimes

00:47:09.480 he was going to go to jail over those crimes the campaign finance stuff is trivial compared to those

00:47:18.600 crimes what drove cohen's sentencing guidelines and his prison sentence were the fraud crimes he was

00:47:24.680 already looking at he agreed to plead guilty to two campaign finance violations because he was trying to

00:47:33.000 make himself a saleable witness to the southern district of new york against trump if they had

00:47:40.120 signed him up as a cooperator then the prosecutors the federal prosecutors could have filed a motion with

00:47:46.760 the court to get to get uh cohen out of having to do any prison time at all so that's the reason he

00:47:54.600 agreed to plead to those charges so that's because they were actually no right it was it was an add-on

00:48:01.240 so but this judge is allowing cohen when he takes the stand to say i pleaded guilty to this crime that

00:48:07.320 you're now accusing trump of and allowed already david pecker of the national inquirer to take the stand

00:48:14.200 and say i signed this agreement sort of like a cooperation agreement with the feds uh on these crimes that

00:48:20.760 you're now alleging and yet when trump says i would like to respond by bringing in my own election

00:48:30.200 and a campaign finance official to say i don't really give a damn what they pleaded guilty to

00:48:34.920 or signed a conciliation agreement on i'm here to tell you there was no violation of the law

00:48:41.080 the judge says no right it's even it's worse than that because trump says if you're gonna let

00:48:49.880 cohen say he pled guilty and you're gonna let this other stuff in from pecker i should at least be able to

00:48:55.560 tell the jury that i was investigated by the justice department and the fec and they decided

00:49:00.920 not to charge me for a lot of reasons not least that the campaign finance laws are different when

00:49:07.000 you're the candidate versus when you're a supporter of the candidate he doesn't allow he's not allowing

00:49:12.920 him to put in front of the jury that those agencies that have exclusive authority under the law

00:49:20.200 to enforce these statutes looked at him and decided not to prosecute him and what the judge says about

00:49:26.840 that is well you know there could be a lot of reasons why they didn't charge him how about there

00:49:32.520 could be a lot of reasons why michael cohen pled guilty that don't have anything to do with whether

00:49:37.240 he was actually guilty he makes no allowance for any of that all the rulings are so heavily weighted

00:49:42.520 in favor of bragging against trump all of this doesn't help trump right now but it should help

00:49:48.200 him on appeal which will happen well after the november election i gotta run you're the best andy

00:49:54.520 check him out at national review great to see you megan great i appreciate it thanks so much

00:50:00.200 we're going to stay on legal with two first-time guests to the show right after this but quick break

00:50:03.800 first joining me now julian epstein and lexi rigden julian is a long-time democratic lawyer

00:50:12.120 and consultant who served as chief counsel to democrats during bill clinton's impeachment trial

00:50:17.800 he also has some interesting takes on the law fair happening now against trump lexi is also an attorney

00:50:22.920 who appears regularly on fox news and outkick julian lexi thanks for being here great to see you again

00:50:27.960 julian thank you megan it's great to be back i was just going to say megan it's great to be back with

00:50:32.280 you i'm i'm such an admirer i i watch your program all the time i remember i used to come on with jay

00:50:38.840 secolo uh when you were at fox um and sort of all of the you know the tribal left would always ask me

00:50:45.720 how do you like going on megan's show and i would always say you know she is always in search of the

00:50:51.880 truth she is always incredibly well researched um and i enjoy coming on that show uh probably more than

00:50:58.360 any other show and i i think you've taken it to this show as well sort of the rise of independent

00:51:03.080 journalism you and barry weiss and others i think that it's just a joy to watch you and i i find

00:51:07.560 myself agreeing with 95 of what you say wow thank you so much well you are always an honest broker

00:51:13.320 that's how you got on to you know the kelly file or all the shows that i did you i didn't care whether

00:51:17.000 you were left or right i just cared if you're an honest broker and could stick to facts and and that's

00:51:21.800 you know like what more can we offer the audience and it's such a pleasure to be able to do it long

00:51:25.400 form right on fox you do all this crap you'd come on julian we'd have a three minute hit

00:51:29.960 where you could never do a meaningful legal segment like the one we just did with andy or one we're

00:51:34.920 going to do with you guys so anyway here we are basking in our new glory uh and lexi it's so nice

00:51:40.280 to meet you i've heard the best thing so oh here's the latest from the trump courtroom um which as i

00:51:47.160 mentioned is underway so keith davidson is on the stand now and keith davidson was stormy daniel's lawyer

00:51:53.960 right before michael avenatti um she did not have good luck with lawyers so keith davidson

00:52:01.720 is up there to help establish the alleged scheme that you know they all cut to there he is

00:52:08.840 uh to to make these payments in order to advance trump's electoral chances and they're zeroing in

00:52:15.160 right now on a text keith davidson sent to dylan howard who is david pecker's number two at the

00:52:21.320 national inquirer where keith davidson again this is he represented not only stormy but also

00:52:27.400 karen mcdougall the play playboy playmate with whom trump allegedly had an affair quote don't forget

00:52:32.520 about cohen meaning michael cohen he's saying this to the national inquirer guy time is of the essence

00:52:38.040 the girl is being cornered by the estrogen mafia keith davidson addresses this term in court calling

00:52:44.280 it a very unfortunate regrettable text adding he thinks it was a term that karen mcdougall's

00:52:49.240 associates used during the first meeting he continued that several women were leaning on

00:52:53.480 mcdougall to sign a deal with abc he's trying to rush their payment like pay her off the love of god

00:52:58.920 because the national inquirer did pay karen mcdougall to be quiet then um the new york times continues

00:53:03.960 just stepping back here for a moment the gossip industrial complex which by the way i don't think

00:53:10.440 they can use that term that is a term about the military maybe big pharma i don't think there's a

00:53:15.720 gossip industrial complex but anyway okay fine that's an aside that keith davidson is describing

00:53:21.800 is remarkable and remarkably crass he's out there leveraging his clients sexual liaisons for money

00:53:28.280 and employment opportunities in a way that resembles a mafia shakedown can i just start with this i mean

00:53:33.320 lexi it's all well and good for the new york times to try to preserve the integrity of stormy and or

00:53:39.480 karen mcdougall but there's a reason they had keith davidson representing them and that he was calling

00:53:45.640 the national inquirer to begin with and that is that those women were all too happy to participate

00:53:50.680 in said shakedown as well right exactly they benefited from it too and i mean their reputations have been

00:53:57.240 smeared a bit and i'm sure that they don't want to be in the news as they are yet again because this

00:54:01.960 saga just continues to unfold but they got the benefit of their bargain at the time and you know the way

00:54:08.120 things shook out for everybody involved in this has not been good but you know like i said they

00:54:13.160 got the benefit of the bargain at the time julian what do you make of this whole we just spent an

00:54:18.520 hour talking about with annie mccarthy this rejiggering of alvin bragg's theory that really

00:54:22.440 what happened was they falsified records to cover up an underlying crime and that crime

00:54:27.400 was a conspiracy to violate federal election law even though alvin bragg couldn't directly prosecute a

00:54:33.320 violation of federal election law and he's barred campaign finance officials and experts from

00:54:38.760 testifying a trial about you know on trump's side saying this actually didn't violate federal election

00:54:43.480 law he's just kind of letting michael cohen say i pleaded guilty to it and also david pecker saying i

00:54:50.200 signed a conciliation agreement saying i would cooperate so i didn't get prosecuted for it and so he's

00:54:55.800 basically supporting the notion that there was such a violation and just asking the jury to say do you

00:55:01.160 believe somehow there was a violation well megan i think this is sort of like joseph

00:55:09.000 stalin you show me the man i will show you the crime um this is a case that would never have been

00:55:14.760 brought if the defendant's last name was anything other than trump uh the edwards case was an outlier

00:55:22.280 the justice department got creamed on it uh the michael cohen case the as as andy was saying the southern

00:55:29.400 district of new york got him to plead to an election reporting violation only because they had much

00:55:35.720 stronger tax cases they could have brought uh and they wanted a precedent because they had no precedent

00:55:41.800 and that's the point there there there is there is no crime here non-disclosure agreements are not a

00:55:48.840 crime nor are they reportable under the federal election laws uh there is no precedent for this case

00:55:55.320 the idea of bootstrapping a misdemeanor charge on bookkeeping that expired uh probably in 2019 as

00:56:03.000 a two-year statute of limitations to a federal election law um requirement essentially a reporting

00:56:11.000 requirement um is is just wrong on so many levels that it will likely be overturned let me ask you a

00:56:18.600 follow up on that julian because i think if memory serves you helped clinton during the whole impeachment

00:56:23.000 scandal um that he faced and rich lowry again back to national review has a great piece today posted on

00:56:30.200 how didn't clinton do this too i mean we it's been a while but he had a bunch of women coming forward

00:56:36.840 who they then paid off to not come forward or to not speak to the media at least so that he could get elected

00:56:43.960 yeah well so he was never charged obviously with anything like that but there are plenty of

00:56:50.200 precedent for politicians paying or going to all kinds of extents to keep bad stories out look what

00:56:56.280 the biden campaign did in 2020 with a hunter laptop uh they used extraordinary pressure to get the

00:57:02.360 national security establishment to say it was a russian plan so you know andy has explained quite

00:57:09.720 well why this is not a reporting a a federal election uh violation under the reporting requirements

00:57:18.040 you you cite that brad smith brad smith wrote a very important op-ed in the wall street journal in 2018

00:57:25.960 explaining why hush money is not a reportable expenditure under federal campaign laws and why

00:57:32.520 somebody couldn't be charged with that and under the law you have to have there's an intent requirement

00:57:38.760 so trump would have had to have intended to violate the reporting requirements so nobody has sort of

00:57:45.480 asked the basic question if the chief chief law enforcement officer of the federal election commission

00:57:51.560 is saying that non-disclosure agreements are not reportable how can you possibly say that trump intended

00:57:59.000 to violate a law that federal election enforcement officials are saying is not a violation okay so let me

00:58:05.480 take that on let me take that on because he says i pulled this the um judge mershon decision denying

00:58:11.240 brad smith's testimony and there's a line in there where he says he's rejecting him as a witness and he

00:58:17.800 says uh okay smith was previously precluded from testifying about similar matters in the southern

00:58:23.080 district of new york by judge kaplan judge kaplan reasoned that smith's testimony was as it is here

00:58:28.520 improper because it sought to instruct the jury on matters of law further the testimony defendant

00:58:34.680 meaning trump seeks to elicit from smith here was also rejected in u.s versus suarez a federal case

00:58:41.000 he writes in suarez the court ruled that smith's proposed testimony was not relevant the court agreed

00:58:46.840 with the government that quote whether the laws are commonly misunderstood does not weigh on whether

00:58:54.440 defendants in this case intended to violate campaign finance laws and he says the same holds true here

00:59:03.560 he seems to be saying that whether trump knew this was going to be a violation or wrongly thought it

00:59:11.160 wasn't a violation is irrelevant to him and therefore brad smith doesn't get to tell us this isn't a violation he

00:59:19.400 seems to be boiling it down to if trump thought he was committing a crime or didn't think he was

00:59:24.920 violating a crime like committing a crime that's all i care about not whether in fact the payments were

00:59:31.640 criminal well that goes to in the laws you know megan whether it's a specific intent or a general

00:59:38.760 intent standard uh and the rules under fec are not that clear so i think that is a very narrow reading on

00:59:45.480 the part of the judge but it does go to the fact as to whether this case should be brought at all

00:59:52.040 this is a case again this is a an indictment in search of a crime this is a prosecutor who waited

00:59:58.840 eight years to bring a case on the eve of election on the eve of the 2024 election this is a prosecutor

01:00:05.800 who is deeply conflicted he ran on a platform of going after donald trump there is basically no precedent

01:00:14.120 for a case being brought on this fact situation again i say this is somebody who did not vote for

01:00:19.240 donald trump i did not vote for him in 16 i did not vote for him in 20 uh but what you are seeing

01:00:25.560 is a pattern here of the law being applied to donald trump in a way it would not be applied to anyone

01:00:32.360 else and this looks if this looks like a political persecution or political prosecution it's because it is

01:00:37.960 a political prosecution and the left who has for so long spoken about it and i made this argument when

01:00:44.280 clinton was uh under the gun that no one would bring these type of legal actions against uh somebody if

01:00:51.960 the last name wasn't clinton and i still believe that was the case i believe that was a political

01:00:57.160 impeachment and i believe the legal actions afterwards were also political uh but the same is

01:01:02.040 true here uh and you you can you could look at also the new york uh the the fraud case that was

01:01:09.240 brought by letitia james also a deeply conflicted prosecutor all right let me jump in on this because

01:01:14.200 lexi here's the thing about clinton because you look at this national review piece and it reminds us

01:01:18.520 of bill clinton and you know i lived through this i was a young woman at the time but they were coming

01:01:23.560 out of the woodwork these women when he was running for president in 1992 it truly was like oh there's

01:01:28.280 another one oh i got another one and we all knew that clinton was not a good husband i mean by what

01:01:34.040 we would most i don't know anything about their weird marriage or what their agreement may or may

01:01:37.320 not be but not somebody i'd want to marry um but they did care to suppress these stories because

01:01:44.520 the american populace cared and i think we cared a lot more about extramarital affairs in 1992 than we

01:01:49.240 do today where we've gotten a little bit more tolerant of like somebody's private business whatever um

01:01:55.080 so here this is part from rich's article the clinton campaign fought to silence or discredit

01:02:00.440 women as necessary he says clinton's operatives had the foresight there's nothing like planning ahead

01:02:06.040 to secure affidavits of denial from women rumored to have had affairs with bill clinton the truth

01:02:11.080 didn't matter here of course they just wanted the exculpatory statements and the women were usually

01:02:15.320 happy to sign them who wants the embarrassment of such matters being aired in public so when the star

01:02:20.680 tabloid reported that five arkansas women including one named jennifer flowers had affairs with

01:02:24.600 clinton the campaign was ready according to george stephanopoulos the campaign strategy initially was

01:02:31.480 to attack the tabloid messenger and use previously signed affidavits to undermine the story then

01:02:36.200 flowers shifted from denying the affair to confirming it in detail her story had to be destroyed her

01:02:40.920 background and appearance would provide the hook for the campaign's effort stephanopoulos wrote in his

01:02:45.560 memoir jennifer's red suit and dark rooted hair sent exactly the right message everyone knew what they

01:02:52.280 were doing writes rich lowry which was keeping the truth from the voters in the service of what they

01:02:57.800 considered a higher good quote i couldn't bear the thought of that and that an old dalliance dredged up

01:03:04.280 by a tabloid would curtail the professional experience of my life or the promise i saw in clinton wrote george

01:03:11.160 stefanopoulos can you listen to george stefanopoulos 48 hours ago on his sunday show until now no american

01:03:23.720 president had ever faced a criminal trial the scale of the abnormality is so staggering that it can

01:03:29.640 actually become numbing it's all too easy to fall into reflexive habits to treat this as a normal campaign

01:03:36.920 where both sides embrace the rule of law but that is not what's happening this election year

01:03:41.320 those bedrock tenets of our democracy are being tested in a way we haven't seen since the civil war

01:03:47.240 it's a test for the candidates for those of us in the media and for all of us as citizens

01:03:53.320 this is the problem lexi the american people know they know this your guy did all of the things in a

01:04:02.520 different form but all of the things he's being accused of right now the difference is in the norms

01:04:07.880 he he wasn't put under criminal prosecution by alvin bragg or new york state supreme or threatened with

01:04:13.320 jail time for the hush money for trying to keep the women quiet right he just really essentially

01:04:19.160 got lucky and he was a beneficiary of his time because now that bragg did this the first indictment

01:04:24.360 which by the way was only brought a year ago and now we're already at trial which is in and of itself

01:04:28.280 unprecedented especially when a defendant is out on the street and is not in custody that clinton was

01:04:34.200 just a beneficiary of the fact that nobody did this to him but had there been a politically motivated

01:04:39.000 prosecutor in those instances like bragg who was running on a campaign of getting him they could have

01:04:44.440 looked into this and maybe they could have gotten an indictment and they could have gone to trial and

01:04:48.440 could have seen thrown everything at the wall to see what would stick so by doing this bragg has

01:04:54.600 upended just the de facto precedent that we have in this country where we're not prosecuting our

01:04:59.800 political opponents for stuff like this but it doesn't mean it wouldn't necessarily have been

01:05:03.560 justified based on what happened previously if we're using the playbook now and when he was saying

01:05:09.720 you can't say that buying a woman's silence so you don't get embarrassed in front of the populace

01:05:15.400 right before an election is a crime could there be so many presidents and politicians from

01:05:22.040 schwarzenegger to rahm emanuel to bill clinton to trump who would go to jail if that were an actual

01:05:28.440 crime we're just pretending it's a crime because as julian said the last name here is trump all right

01:05:33.960 let's i want to get to a couple of other things we talked in the first hour about what's happening at

01:05:38.360 columbia and so many other college campuses right now it's absolutely outrageous and just a quick

01:05:43.800 update from columbia where the students have now commandeered one of the academic halls um and

01:05:50.280 they've taken it over by knocking the doors open with tables and chairs and are now in control of

01:05:56.440 university property this just in they other students who are sympathetic to the pro-palestinian protesters

01:06:02.840 are using some sort of a rope pulley system to deliver goods up to the students who have taken over

01:06:10.200 this hall including you cannot make this up tins of cupcakes which you could argue is appropriate

01:06:17.400 given the nature of these folks but i would say given my fear theory that only the unattractive people

01:06:23.160 or dumb are the ones who are doing this kind of protesting you should send some cover-up and some

01:06:27.640 ozempic which would be a smarter and more useful delivery to the protesters julian what do you make of

01:06:34.680 what we're seeing on these college campuses well when you coddle and pander to bad behavior you get

01:06:42.040 more of it you know in january the administrators at columbia sat down with the students for justice

01:06:49.160 in palestine and some other extremist groups and one of them was saying that it was preaching death to

01:06:55.400 israel and you should be glad that i'm not on the street killing jews right now and these are the

01:07:00.600 type of people that the columbia administrators were trying to coddle to or trying to appease that's

01:07:06.360 not their job it's not their job to sit down with with students and listen to their demands about

01:07:11.720 disinvesting from israel the the moral confusion of administrators here is so profound the lack of

01:07:19.720 education from students at these prestigious schools is unbelievable in terms of how they are aligning with

01:07:25.800 the most anti-progressive forces on the globe today um and you know the biden administration i think has

01:07:33.320 in many ways encouraged us you heard kareem jean pierre today say we're not going to get involved

01:07:38.280 in sort of policing decisions the schools have been utterly you know flaccid in terms of uh dealing with

01:07:46.680 students and and outside agitators probably getting funds from foreign sources who are just not only

01:07:52.120 disrupting classrooms but who are you know assaulting jews with flagpoles spitting on them painting

01:07:58.680 swastikas i mean imagine for a minute the tolerance of both federal officials and the biden administration

01:08:05.080 school officials if you had a group of white supremacists who were assaulting black americans

01:08:12.280 saying they should go back to africa uh um sort of all of these other obnoxious things if you were to do

01:08:18.840 an analogy there would be no tolerance for it in a minute but in the same way that the left thinks

01:08:25.560 that israel doesn't have a right to defend itself from what is one of the most horrific genocidal

01:08:31.960 attacks on october 7th uh um and the response to it by the way the civilian casualty ratio has been one

01:08:39.160 of the lowest of any urban warfares ever in history in the same way that uh we have a double standard for

01:08:46.920 israel there's a double standard when it comes to these incredibly anti-semitic uninformed ahistorical

01:08:53.800 um um assaults and attacks on jews on campus universities and it's outrageous and it's just

01:08:59.080 in one of the reasons megan it's one of the reasons that i think that jews are gonna leave

01:09:03.800 the democratic party yeah and some have already uh even my own friends i have tons of jewish friends

01:09:09.800 in and around new york who are all saying i for the first time ever i'm i'm taking in conservative

01:09:13.960 media i like i i i'm no longer watching msnbc like i can't stand the coverage uh new york times

01:09:20.440 just reporting columbia has announced the students occupying hamilton hall will face expulsion we made

01:09:26.200 it very clear yesterday that the work of the university cannot be endlessly interrupted by

01:09:29.560 protesters who violate the rules said a spokesman it's not coming from the president herself ben chang

01:09:35.160 in a statement continuing to do so will be met with clear consequences more warning no action

01:09:40.280 basically nothing's happening i mean how much more do they have to do before the message is you

01:09:45.960 are expelled my empty threats you you did empty threats yesterday they didn't listen now it's truly

01:09:52.760 like the parent like no i really mean it this time you know you put down that toy or mommy's gonna punish

01:09:59.160 you even though i didn't punish you the previous three times lexi yeah how many more janitors do they have

01:10:05.080 to hold hostage for these people to be expelled i mean this is honestly ridiculous the leadership there

01:10:10.520 is they are gutless they are spineless and the big problem with this is that as julian said this would

01:10:15.480 not be tolerated for a right-wing protest there's no way it would be quashed immediately i think the

01:10:21.320 problem is that some of these administrators probably a lot of them kind of have some sympathy for this

01:10:26.920 cause and so they're trying to take a hands-off approach and now it's gotten completely out of control

01:10:31.240 and they don't know what to do and the utter hypocrisy of these students who say number one

01:10:35.720 you have to divest from israel i would like to ask a hundred of those students if they even know

01:10:40.280 what divesting means they probably don't even balance their checkbook who are they to tell a university

01:10:46.040 that it needs to divest from a country they are there to be students i mean all right let me cut let

01:10:51.720 me let me jump in because i want to get to a couple of other things um because we did a lot of israel

01:10:55.960 and there's just a couple of really gold thoughts i need to ask you guys about on capitol hill right

01:11:01.160 now miguel cardona is testifying and he was asked in part about this and he was also asked thank god

01:11:07.160 god bless senator cindy hyde smith of mississippi who had the guts and the smarts to ask him about the

01:11:15.560 title nine abomination that happened 10 days ago she got in his grill these are agency regulations he

01:11:23.320 changed without the help of any lawmakers no lawmaker no representative of ours has blessed

01:11:28.040 these changing the definition of women changing the right of biological men to absolutely in all

01:11:34.600 cases access the locker rooms and bathrooms of young girls k through 12 and college as well listen to this

01:11:42.440 so when a biological male goes into the locker room with biological females you think that that is a

01:11:49.960 safe space for those young girls when girls walk into bathrooms um that's you you may not be

01:11:58.280 recognizing students who are transgender but because you don't recognize them doesn't mean that i don't

01:12:02.600 protect them i think the line of questioning is trying to create division what we're trying to do is

01:12:06.760 protect all we're not trying to create division you just said protecting students is my number one

01:12:11.640 priority also do you feel like that those biological females are protected in that setting the title

01:12:18.840 nine regulations that we have protect all students we can't pick and choose which students we want to

01:12:23.000 protect and for i totally agree all students need protecting but there's a difference in boys and

01:12:29.080 girls and where they change clothes and undress do you agree with that students who are lgbtq have

01:12:35.800 unfortunately historically in our country been under attack and we need to protect no one is attacking

01:12:41.080 anyone right now we are talking about school safety and girls locker rooms and bathrooms so you don't

01:12:47.560 need to change the conversation that somebody's attacking someone it is my honor as an educator

01:12:53.960 to protect students who have been marginalized in our community how about girls girls have been

01:12:59.960 marginalized girls are the victims of over 90 of all sexual assaults it's it goes male to female that's

01:13:05.800 how it goes and he's completely ignoring biological reality there lexi it's like biological boys posing as

01:13:12.680 girls 100 those are girls and so there's no problem i deny there's a problem and he says

01:13:19.160 he's choosing he's he's not choosing to protect a certain person he is choosing he's choosing to

01:13:24.520 protect transgender students that want to use the opposite gender's bathroom i mean so he is and so

01:13:29.880 this is like the tail wagging the dog because there aren't that many of these students out there so the

01:13:35.960 priority should be obviously someone's going to get their feelings hurt in this scenario but the

01:13:41.080 priority should be protecting girls and protecting the sanctity of a women's locker room over protecting

01:13:46.920 the feelings of some of these people who i mean i have sympathy for a lot of them they're obviously

01:13:50.920 struggling with somebody something but that does not mean that should trump the rights of girls in

01:13:55.560 their locker room to feel safe and not have to wonder if there's actually a biological male in their

01:13:59.960 locker room julian do you think democrats are behind this like support this i mean do you think they

01:14:05.800 they think this is a good idea or they're just too afraid about blowback in their lives to speak out

01:14:10.200 more forcefully against it i think a lot of democrats have the common sense to know this

01:14:15.480 is just nonsense the idea that biological men uh can walk into women's uh restrooms or participate in

01:14:22.440 women's sports um look we all think that people that have that may be different from us should be

01:14:27.480 treated with respect should be treated with dignity but this just shows you how far the democratic party

01:14:33.080 has gone from that principle of treating everyone with respect tenderness care dignity to listening to the

01:14:39.640 intersectional left is promoting this dei ideology that if you claim somehow you're oppressed that

01:14:45.880 no rules apply to you and that you as a biological man can walk into a woman's bathroom or play women's

01:14:51.400 sports and most people reject this and this is another reason you look at the cnn poll on sunday

01:14:57.880 that shows trump ahead 49 43 there is a massive realignment that is going on right now with not just

01:15:04.120 jews as we just talked about leaving the democratic party but working class blacks and browns because

01:15:09.240 a lot of this idea ideological left is just such a turnoff and just makes no common sense and sort of

01:15:15.960 you know one of the things that i said at the beginning of the show is i appreciate the real true

01:15:20.280 independent journalists like you like barry weiss like others who are really trying to go at the

01:15:24.680 truth on issues you know you look at the new york times reporting yesterday on colombia and you see a

01:15:29.640 very sympathetic portrayal of the students for justice in palestine even though they are aligned

01:15:35.000 with the most illiberal ideas on the planet earth uh the idea that you should commit genocide on anyone

01:15:40.200 that's just different from you and sort of you're seeing this in i think mainstream media you're seeing

01:15:45.800 it the trump case where people are not treated are not going at the the falsity of the case in an honest

01:15:51.640 way you're seeing it in the club in the student protests where people are not exposing both the foreign

01:15:58.760 sources and the the demented ideology that many of these students are professing and you see it

01:16:05.560 with uh many on the left who are just become too intimidated because of the flying monkeys of social

01:16:11.080 media of just saying what's right and the idea that biological men can walk into women's locker rooms

01:16:17.720 is just wrong but people have become too scared because the activists who have control over social media

01:16:23.480 will shame you uh and and that's why the independent journalists like yourself megan are so important

01:16:30.600 to get sort of the honest get up the honest truth and be able to present both time both sides and i think

01:16:37.240 when people hear the arguments like cardona was just pathetic in that response he was absolutely

01:16:42.280 pathetic and senator heitkampus slapped him down he sounded incoherent and he lapsed into people need to

01:16:49.080 need to be protected everybody agrees that even if you're trans you need to be protected you need

01:16:54.440 to be treated with respect you need to be treated with decency everybody agrees with that that's not

01:16:59.080 the issue he avoided the issue the issue was whether men should be able to go into women's private spaces

01:17:05.960 because they claim that they identify as female that's the question about the girls okay you're very

01:17:11.880 interested in protecting the moral trans students how about the girls how you say you can't pick and

01:17:17.560 choose who to protect how are you protecting girls who are going to be exploited and upset

01:17:25.400 therein lies the rot of the intersectional hard left the moral rot of the intersectional hard left

01:17:31.560 what about the girls how is that defending showing any sensitivity any protection of their basic rights

01:17:38.200 and this is again why i think you're seeing a realignment a massive shift of particularly working

01:17:43.720 class voters um leaving the democratic party and i i think it's in part i mean i believe trump is going

01:17:48.920 to win the election and i think this is one of the reasons that trump will win the election

01:17:54.280 well i think you're right uh he's this issue alone has gotten people like me who are independent and

01:18:00.840 right-leaning but not necessarily the biggest trump fans on earth i mean like i like his policies i got some

01:18:06.440 issues with him personally um trump voters that's this is this is this for me this issue alone has

01:18:13.080 done it but i mean there's we could go down the list on immigration so many others uh the economy all

01:18:17.560 right i gotta run but julian and lexi thank you both so much really appreciate it today thank you

01:18:22.520 thanks megan great to be with you again up next carrie sheffield's incredible story don't miss her

01:18:30.360 i'm megan kelly host of the megan kelly show on sirius xm it's your home for open honest and

01:18:37.480 provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political legal and cultural figures

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01:18:56.600 megan kelly you can stream the megan kelly show on sirius xm at home or anywhere you are no car

01:19:02.920 required i do it all the time i love the sirius xm app it has ad-free music coverage of every major

01:19:10.760 sport comedy talk podcast and more subscribe now get your first three months for free go to siriusxm.com

01:19:17.880 slash mkshow to subscribe and get three months free that's siriusxm.com slash mkshow and get three

01:19:26.600 months free offer details apply our next guest has a remarkable story carrie sheffield was raised in an

01:19:39.000 abusive household her family essentially lived as nomads moving across the country living in motorhomes and

01:19:44.840 sheds but despite it all sheffield overcame her difficult childhood and the mental health struggles

01:19:50.520 she suffered as a result to become a successful broadcaster and columnist she credits her conversion

01:19:56.520 to christianity and the power of forgiveness for her salvation which she writes about in her brand new

01:20:01.880 book motorhome prophecies a journey of healing and forgiveness carrie sheffield joins us now to share

01:20:10.200 more carrie good to see you again how are you hey megan it's been forever i'm back on your fox days

01:20:16.680 it's good to see you yeah likewise i have to say like getting deep into your personal background was

01:20:23.880 revelatory a lot in here that i did not know and good on you for being so open about a lot i mean a lot

01:20:32.520 so you've i should tell the audience like you wound up accomplishing so much academically and

01:20:37.480 professionally and so on but you had a very rough upbringing give us a sketch of why it was so hard

01:20:45.560 yeah it was hard so and yes you're right the book it's called motorhome prophecies

01:20:49.640 a journey of healing and forgiveness and it's called motorhome prophecies because i have seven

01:20:54.760 biological siblings and with our mom and dad we grew up with 10 people for large parts of my childhood

01:21:02.440 in a motorhome and we also lived in sheds and tents my mom gave birth to one of my brothers when the

01:21:08.600 family was living in a tent i took my act exam to go to college when our family was living in a shed in

01:21:14.280 the ozarks with no running water we had to get it piped in with one of those green hoses and we also

01:21:19.960 lived in houses as well so i describe it as careening between a first world existence and a third world

01:21:24.520 existence quite uh periodically and just without any rhyme or reason and it was because my dad claimed that he was

01:21:31.560 basically a mormon prophet he eventually after i grew up was eventually excommunicated from the

01:21:37.720 official church of jesus christ of latter-day saints but growing up he would always evade the spiritual

01:21:42.920 authorities and the religious authorities one of my first childhood memories is the child custody

01:21:48.600 coming to take us away and we were taken to their office and they interviewed us we were brainwashed to

01:21:54.680 say how great our dad was and then he took us out and drove 2 000 miles away from massachusetts to utah

01:22:01.240 so we were constantly on the run um he didn't believe in paying his taxes uh and so it was just

01:22:07.320 it was not a healthy environment and unfortunately two of my brothers developed schizophrenia i struggled

01:22:12.840 with depression suicidal ideation anxiety and i wrote the book right now because we're having this

01:22:19.400 mental health you know people throw around the word crisis a lot i actually think in this case it is

01:22:24.920 approaching this level because we're having the highest depression rate ever we have the highest

01:22:29.800 suicide rate since the great depression since coming out of that in 1941 and in 2022 which is the most

01:22:36.760 recent data that we have almost 50 000 people killed themselves so and three of my siblings have attempted

01:22:43.240 suicide and we've just been struggling with so many of these mental health issues that i think it's

01:22:47.880 important to talk about it especially for men too because men are actually four three to four times more

01:22:53.560 likely to commit suicide than women so these issues are something to discuss not to victimize yourself and

01:23:00.920 i think that's the main takeaway that i hope people get from the book is you're not a victim of your

01:23:05.800 circumstance however we also need to process and we need to heal from the circumstance okay so i want

01:23:12.600 the audience to know notwithstanding that background that you just sketched out there you wound up getting

01:23:17.480 into byu you wound up getting a master's at harvard you wound up a credit risk manager at goldman sachs

01:23:25.080 um were a health care bond portfolio lead analyst on a multi-billion dollar health care bond portfolio

01:23:31.400 at moody's a founding partner at bain capital you had uh traveled to every continent before the age of 30

01:23:37.480 so this is a remarkable turnaround that's before we get to any of your journalism career a remarkable

01:23:44.600 turnaround so how how did you do that yeah well one little clarify i worked for a former uh bain

01:23:52.920 capital founding partner i worked for him his name was ed connard i was a researcher for him um but in any

01:23:57.640 case that was after he left bain capital but the you know it's interesting because i would say i was

01:24:04.120 motivated by two kind of competing forces which i think um kind of torments and also inspires

01:24:11.320 most people there is this desire to succeed to lift yourself above your circumstance for me i saw this

01:24:19.080 abusive situation i was in it was a pivotal moment when i was 17 one of my schizophrenic brothers groped

01:24:24.760 me and tried to rape me and at that moment i knew that i was no longer safe and i am fifth in the birth

01:24:31.240 order i had four big brothers and they were still at home and they were still part of the prophetic

01:24:36.280 mission and after i knew that i was not safe biological male twice my size coming after me

01:24:43.240 i had to go on this exploration of do i i call it my first investigative journalism project is my father

01:24:49.160 a prophet and through that investigation i realized that i did not believe that he was and so i told my dad

01:24:55.800 i need to go away to college i don't want to be here anymore uh and this is what he said in response

01:25:01.720 he raised his hand like he was making an oath and he said i prophesy in the name of jesus you'll be raped

01:25:06.360 and murdered if you leave and you know to be have the the name of jesus spoken over you in a curse you can

01:25:13.560 maybe imagine why i didn't love religion or the name of jesus for a long time i spent about 12 years as

01:25:19.960 an agnostic really angry and bitter at god and in that period that was when i really pushed myself

01:25:26.840 um i took this time you know i would see my roommates going home to mama and clutching their teddy bears

01:25:33.320 and summer breaks and christmas breaks i was not allowed home my dad said my blood changed and i was

01:25:38.040 no longer his daughter and so i took that as motivation to work my butt off and i got five

01:25:43.480 journalism and um i took that as fuel and so i succeeded however as you see quite often when

01:25:51.240 children have child abuse there is still lacking a fundamental sense of just inherent self-worth and

01:25:57.320 so you're always looking for achievements to get that feeling of self-worth and it'll never come if

01:26:01.800 you're relying on the achievements for it so virtually to the point where i just got so burned out that i

01:26:07.320 landed in the hospital and almost died because i was such a workaholic because i didn't have that

01:26:11.800 inherent sense of self-worth because i had allowed the person who had abused me to really take that

01:26:17.320 away from me this year when you held up the book it looks to me it kind of reminded me of jd vance's

01:26:25.160 hillbilly elegy and your story in some ways really reminds me of his story too where he had so many

01:26:33.320 challenges in his nuclear family that he grew up in uh with you know his mother all sorts of issues

01:26:39.160 there not to mention father figures and he through it all he had two really important influence influences

01:26:45.880 his sister lindsey and his mama uh who's his grandmother his maternal grandmother and they

01:26:51.960 made all the difference i mean they i think are responsible large part for the jd vance we all see

01:26:55.800 today who became a u.s senator so did you have somebody like that in your life who made the difference

01:27:02.440 because in there in there was a strong foundation with the moral compass notwithstanding all the

01:27:08.360 challenges that you suffered well unfortunately i didn't have a mama like that uh which i think is

01:27:15.400 why he's a u.s senator and why i was in the hospital nine times and almost died from fibromyalgia so uh but

01:27:23.240 at the same time you know i i think you know ultimately i mentioned that i was agnostic for about 12 years

01:27:31.320 um and that was when i was really angry at god and and the idea of religion and um you know just

01:27:41.080 what i what i i like to now uh eventually through a very unexpected series of events i did become a

01:27:46.680 christian and i was baptized i was able to forgive my dad and scientifically there is this proven impact

01:27:54.840 when you forgive on your body and on your mind um that your life gets better and so i guess for me the

01:28:00.520 biggest kind of turning point was to embrace that and to embrace uh faith in my life that i have faith

01:28:08.280 in you know something above this mess that's this ugly earth that we live in that the the ugly parts

01:28:15.000 of it um and that i can have faith in uh you know a god who loves me versus a god who says i should be

01:28:22.280 raped and murdered you know and so that was really the turning point um i think again going back to this

01:28:28.840 moment in time of why i chose to write the story now is because we're seeing this horrific takeover

01:28:37.000 of psychology and psychiatry which you do a great job of calling it out uh when it comes to you know

01:28:44.040 just confusing children but the the problem is if you look at the data there's so much overwhelming

01:28:50.360 scientific evidence for a healthy faith uh a grounding in in knowledge of god being separate

01:28:57.080 from abusive man-made religion that if you are in a healthy faith community you are 90 percent less

01:29:03.720 likely this is according to a literature review of almost 150 studies in psychiatric times they looked

01:29:09.560 at almost 150 studies and they found 90 of them showed a strong relationship between less substance

01:29:16.360 abuse that means less opioids less uh drug addiction less alcohol overdose and religiosity

01:29:22.920 and there was also they also found uh looking at some other studies in a literature review

01:29:27.960 that the there's almost 70 of them showed the study showed a strong relationship between less

01:29:34.200 depression and healthy religious practice and then harvard school public health found something

01:29:40.280 similar as well as the national bureau of economic research so i could talk till i'm blue in the face

01:29:44.920 about the science behind how faith in god and religious community is so good for your mental health

01:29:52.200 and then on the flip side harvard also found that psychologists and psychiatrists are the most atheist

01:29:59.160 profession and so you have conflict of interest i believe where and they also found harvard school

01:30:07.000 public health as well that patients who are denied good spiritual health care or spiritual needs being met

01:30:14.360 have much less like robust health care outcomes and and their quality of life goes down if they don't

01:30:20.120 have spirituality integrated into their treatment and their care and so that's what i believe is is

01:30:25.640 happening in our country is part of why you know in abigail shire's book she talks about the bad therapy

01:30:31.240 the bad therapy is divorced from spirituality divorced from the judeo-christian foundation

01:30:38.120 and like i'm a christian but one of my endorsers on the back of my book is a hindu a very well-known hindu

01:30:44.200 named deepak chopra um so i believe jesus is the way the truth and life but i also understand this is

01:30:51.160 you know a world where there are many faiths and we are a country uh where we have freedom of religion

01:30:56.920 and i'm more important i'm more interested from a health standpoint in bringing faith and integrating

01:31:02.600 that into our mental health treatment and unfortunately the academy is going the other

01:31:07.160 direction it just seems like we've done almost everything wrong the past 50 years it just feels

01:31:14.680 like everything we did was the opposite you know in terms of pressuring women yes we want equal rights we

01:31:21.720 want the ability to work outside of the home if that's our choice but we didn't want to destroy

01:31:26.040 the nuclear family we shouldn't have been shaming women who would prefer to stay home and raise their

01:31:30.760 children and be you know full-time moms somehow that became out of favor or stigmatized we shouldn't

01:31:38.120 have we didn't want to be to oppress the sexual revolution and all that we don't want to create a

01:31:42.520 generation of women who feel no worth and give it up to everybody and wind up feeling disgusting about

01:31:47.080 themselves in a downward spiral not to mention the parades of public nudity that we have

01:31:51.560 at every turn the thing what's happening in the trans lane you know there's so many areas in which

01:31:58.360 we made wrong choices and i do think the common and largest and most consequential one was the

01:32:05.160 rejection of any sort of religion religiosity spirituality spirituality in public life um whether

01:32:13.960 it's in schools or in courts it's not that we should be deciding cases or teaching classes all through

01:32:21.160 our particular belief system but there was a foundational belief um in terms of social

01:32:27.800 mores and religious tenets that we all agreed on for a long long time that we've completely abandoned

01:32:33.880 we totally have megan and historically our whole education system was built around creating virtuous

01:32:41.960 citizens well when you have the takeover of the left of our educational system they converted that to

01:32:49.400 using the education system not only the university but k-12 as well as a system for indoctrinating

01:32:56.360 people on this idea of class warfare and having the proletariat rise up and so it was more about

01:33:03.960 uh fighting over resources that was what education was to train and equip people to fight over resources

01:33:11.400 and fight over these uh supposed you know suppressor and and suppressed ideologies that's what education

01:33:19.800 is today and it's in that process has been happening now uh for decades if not you know century um

01:33:26.520 and that you read the ideologies of the people who have taken over the education system they weren't

01:33:31.240 even hiding it you know and this is the result we took away this classic understanding of creating

01:33:37.160 a virtuous citizen into creating someone who's fighting with a scarcity mentality over physical

01:33:43.400 resources instead of rooting and grounding them in a spiritual understanding of virtue and who they were

01:33:49.560 in the eyes of god and and just the whole notion of human rights was something that was created

01:33:54.520 in the judeo-christian system and so in some ways my life is sort of a parallel of this because i was

01:34:01.320 i was raised in an abusive uh controlling toxic expression of judeo-christian understanding and it

01:34:10.120 was in in a lot of ways because my dad had been sexually abused as a boy and i have a you know i try

01:34:15.960 to be as compassionate to him one of his first memories is being assaulted by a mormon babysitter from

01:34:21.880 his congregation a female babysitter and he said later on that that led him to be feeling suicidal

01:34:27.480 and unfortunately we don't talk enough about men who are sexual assault victims i think i say in the

01:34:32.440 book that's part of why i think the johnny depp case caught on so much is because he and his sister

01:34:38.040 confirmed it had been a childhood victim of an abusive mother and that's part of why he stayed with

01:34:42.840 amber heard and that's why to hear amber heard mocking him and saying oh no one will ever believe that i hit

01:34:48.440 you um you know it was jarring and it's something that we should talk about more as a society but

01:34:53.960 because i had been raised in an abusive context of judeo-christian understanding or my dad's twisted

01:35:00.680 interpretation of it i threw everything out i threw the baby out with the bathwater and that's exactly i

01:35:05.720 think what you what you're saying about the 60s and so i was in that period of anger and um and to come

01:35:12.040 back and find that healthy middle ground remarkable i don't know how you did that how did you ever you

01:35:17.800 know were you open-minded enough to say yeah you know what i'm going to give it another try i'm going

01:35:21.560 to try christianity and consider faith again well i tried everything else that's what i like to say

01:35:29.160 it was sort of a trial all right krishna yeah i well there's a there's a pastor who died last year he

01:35:36.040 was amazing people called him a modern day c.s lewis his name was tim keller phenomenal author

01:35:42.200 every book every video of his i just devour it whenever i can but he had a book that i think

01:35:47.240 explained what i went through in this period and it's the title is counterfeit gods and each chapter

01:35:52.520 is basically a false god that we worship in instead of god and one is is the god of money you know the

01:36:00.360 god of career the god of dating relationships of marriage and family for women sex for men

01:36:06.040 and it's like i tried all of them and they kept failing me you know like i got laid off because

01:36:11.640 there was a new management that came in and everyone from the old management had a target on

01:36:15.880 our backs and that i became suicidal after that time because i had put that as my my god uh and then i

01:36:22.360 tried dating and relationships i ended up dating really abusive men um unfortunately one was a drug addict

01:36:28.520 behind my back emotionally abusive men one was abusing alcohol um and i accepted it because

01:36:35.720 that's what abused women do the pattern is normal and familiar and it just you know kept failing me

01:36:42.840 and so it really was the process of elimination that i said you know these things are not working and

01:36:48.680 i need something that's more eternal and that's that's how i returned to god this this god's not

01:36:54.920 going to disappoint you uh carrie i'm amazed at your story what you've overcome thank you for writing

01:37:00.440 about it again the book is called motorhome prophecies which is a great great name thank you

01:37:06.040 for taking the risks and for coming on and telling your story thank you megan thanks for having me

01:37:10.920 god bless you yeah all the best you too wow all right tomorrow before we go i want to tell you that

01:37:16.120 we're going to have back on batia angarsargan and the number one thing i want to do when she gets here

01:37:20.760 is play you the extended clip of kamala harris on with drew barrymore it got even worse than the clip

01:37:28.680 we played you yesterday believe it or not it actually went downhill we'll talk about it among

01:37:34.120 other things like hard news don't miss that thanks for listening to the megan kelly show no bs

01:37:43.640 no agenda and no fear

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 30, 2024

Trump Shakedown Exposed, and Loser Students Occupy Columbia, with Andy McCarthy, Julian Epstein, Lexie Rigden, and Carrie Sheffield ｜ Ep. 779

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