Trump vs. DeSantis Culture War, and Sorority Trans Pledge Lawsuit, with Jeffrey Lord, Michael Duncan, Viva Frei, and Vinnie Politan | Ep. 532
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 30 minutes
Words per Minute
194.3068
Summary
On today's show, Megyn Kelly is joined by Michael Dunn and Jeffrey Lord to discuss the settlement between Fox News and Dominion Energy, the Stanford rape case, and the latest in the DeSantis vs. Trump presidential campaign. Plus, a look at the latest on the transgender bathroom debate in North Carolina.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Wednesday.
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In just a bit, we're going to break down the settlement which happened just after we went off the air yesterday
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I did not want this thing to be tried through for very good journalistic reasons.
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And I think it was a great result for Dominion.
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I think it was the right result for Fox, given where they were.
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Nerd Prom doesn't get to spend the next six weeks writing about the cool kids at Fox News.
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I can only imagine the discussion he had at home.
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He's got a book, a podcast, and a column of Vanity Fair going based on this trial, which now has settled.
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Plus, we're going to have a big follow-up to the fake rape story out of Stanford.
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The students were protesting all over campus, saying Stanford supports rapes and rapists.
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She had made up not one, but two fake rape stories, potentially ruining a man's life.
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But we begin today with politics and the increasingly ugly battle between former President Donald Trump
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and as yet undeclared presidential candidate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
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Joining me now, Michael Duncan, co-host of The Ruthless Podcast, flying solo today without the rest of the gang,
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and Jeffrey Lord, a political strategist and contributing editor to The American Spectator.
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Okay, so it's starting to get, you know, a little thorny.
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But we'll kick it off on an issue near and dear to my own heart, which is the madness around the transgender conversation these days.
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Ron DeSantis giving an interview to Benny Johnson, who went down there, spent some time with him walking around.
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We played a clip yesterday, but then Governor DeSantis got really specific on where he stands on this issue.
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And our pal Matt Walsh over at Daily Wire, who's been in many ways leading the charge in this whole thing.
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And he was saying no other candidate has come close to being this direct on this issue.
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Some of this is, yes, it's taking away opportunities and athletics and some other stuff.
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But I think there's also just the issue of, are we going to be a society based on truth?
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And if you take a man and they dress up as a woman and you tell me I have to accept that they're a woman, then you're asking me to be complicit in a lie.
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And right on the nose, like going beyond sports and women's locker rooms and all that.
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Before I bring you in, I'll just play the other side.
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Here's just like a highlight reel of Donald Trump Jr., I think, is in here and Donald Trump himself.
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It's just a mashup of the other guys, including a little DeSantis and their prior positions on this.
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If you're an adult and you want to be trans and you do it, great.
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And if you take a man and they dress up as a woman and you tell me I have to accept that they're a woman, then you're asking me to be complicit in a lie.
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Speak about North Carolina bathroom law in particular.
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If Caitlyn Jenner were to walk into Trump Tower and want to use the bathroom, you would be fine with her using any bathroom she chooses.
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That was from David Reboy, who put it together.
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Just, you know, you can see some lines are being drawn.
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Let me kick it off with you, Jeffrey, since you are new to the program, but I always admired you while you were in Trump as a fierce on CNN as a fierce Trump defender.
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You know, it's like you need both sides represented.
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I'll just say to the audience, this is one of the problems we had last time around at Fox News.
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We were going into the election in 16 and we had all these sort of conservatives on who were more establishment types, who looked at Trump as a joke.
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And sooner or later, Roger Ailes realized we had no true Trump defenders on the show.
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We only had like Republicans who hated him, which really did leave lead to an imbalance that the audience objected to.
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So I appreciate you coming on as a as a full-throated Trump defender.
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Your thoughts on this issue and how it's unfolding.
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Well, I think I think Donald Trump, in one sense, is a bit of a libertarian when he comes to this, you know, just shrug your shoulder, do what you're going to do.
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But I do think on on the other hand, you know, this whole business with Bud Light.
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The the outrage, as it were, that swelled up from the bottom, I think, really says where the country is.
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They may not care about some of this, but for heaven's sakes, they're not going to be pushed into going along with some of it, whether it's on sports teams or the silly business with the beer or what have you, what have you.
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And I just think that that is a major political force here in this discussion.
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And you will see it surface again and again and again.
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I haven't heard Trump talk about this issue lately, Jeffrey.
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But if you were to compare the way I sounded on this issue four or five years ago versus now, I would sound very different.
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And I do wonder whether Trump is going to sound different.
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You know, he was sort of coming after people like David on this, suggesting some of this talk is transphobic.
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But I wonder, do you think Trump is going to sound more like DeSantis in that clip when he does speak about this?
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Oh, I think I think Donald Trump will always sound like Donald Trump.
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He he he used to kid me that I compared him all the time to Ronald Reagan.
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And I think in this case, Trump is not going to be DeSantis.
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He'll be Trump and his own unique take on this, not to mention everything else for that matter, but certainly on this.
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You know, Michael, we had we played the clip earlier this week of Don Jr.
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I'll play just a little bit of it to freshen people's memory, but he was against it.
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Anheuser-Buss totally shit the bed with this Dylan Mulvaney thing.
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I'm not, though, for destroying an American and iconic company for something like this.
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When I actually look into it, I'm not going to blame the whole company for the inaction
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or the stupidity of someone in a marketing campaign that got woke as hell.
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And we looked into the political giving and lobbying history of Anheuser-Busch.
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They actually support Republicans in in woke corporate America.
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And by the way, here's Ron DeSantis on the issue of Bud Light.
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I mean, like, honestly, that's like them rubbing our faces in it.
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And it's like these companies that do this, if they never have any response, they're just
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If you don't have conservative beer drinkers, you're going to feel that.
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Will we ever see you drinking a Bud Light again?
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Well, I think, number one, there's a particular irony of Team Trump, who has been attacking
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Ron DeSantis as sort of this globalist shill for the, you know, the donor set, talking about
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how, oh, well, Bud Light donates to Republicans, so we got to lay off them, right?
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Like there's something dissonant about that, number one.
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I mean, but then also, I think the Trump team has to decide whether they want to be a commentator
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about the issue of culture if they want to engage in the culture war itself.
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And, you know, clearly Ron DeSantis has decided that he's going to be a culture warrior on
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In particular, it animates the base, not just because of women's sports or, you know, the
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Dylan Mulvaney issue, but when it comes to kids, that's where I think, you know, primary
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And I think, you know, also Donald Trump's clearly uncomfortable talking about these sort
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You saw it with the bathroom bill in that clip that you played earlier.
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And so I think what you'll see is he sort of retreats to commentator Trump, and I've
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talked about this a lot on the show, where instead of really engaging on the issue or
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in policy, he's talking to you like a guy on your couch, right?
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And, you know, you see that with Disney, right?
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He's putting up truths about, oh, you know, DeSantis is getting played by Disney again,
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But he's not really talking about the issue itself that animates the fight in the first place,
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which was a Disney coming out against the DeSantis legislation in Florida that the media
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So I think, you know, Donald Trump and his strategy is going to kind of triangulate around
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the culture war and basically criticize DeSantis or other candidates for what he sees as perceived
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missteps in the fight rather than engaging as directly as a Ron DeSantis will.
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By the way, for our audience, if you did not listen to last Thursday's Ruthless, which did
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a postmortem on the Tucker Trump interview and how Trump answered some of the questions
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you missed out, as you guys were talking about how Trump does have this ability to talk to
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And they were like, you know, Tucker said something like, you know, what do you make of
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And he said something like he had the hottest translator.
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And it's also what he does so well on a debate stage.
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It's like you can attack Donald Trump for any number of things that you might want to based
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on, you know, what he did as president or, you know, comments he's made.
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But what he's doing is he's having a meta conversation with the audience.
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And, you know, half the time he's like, can you believe this guy?
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Well, but let me ask you, let me see on this for a second, because this is interesting to
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I think this is going to be one of those issues that the GOP field, they're going to be
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Are you just in the sports locker room bathroom lane on women's rights and versus transgender
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Or are you more in the Matt Walsh, Ron DeSantis field of you can put on a dress all you want.
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To me, that sounds more like a position the Republican Party would be saying at the presidential
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Transgender voters are a very, very small sliver of the populace.
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But I mean, like, are the GOP going to try to go after the woke vote?
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And, you know, interestingly, when I think think back about this, I've met Caitlyn Jenner
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And it, you know, I just found it very interesting.
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So that may in itself tell you a tale about the future here.
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Caitlyn is like poor Caitlyn has no army behind Caitlyn.
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And because, you know, Caitlyn coming out as a woman was one thing.
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Caitlyn coming out as a Republican was the thing that absolutely devastated her friend
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And she's been an outspoken advocate of women's rights in sports.
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Let's talk about the ad wars that are now unfolding between the two guys.
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And of course, there are presidential candidates.
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I should mention Tim Scott appears to be getting ready to throw his head in Nikki Haley's
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So DeSantis was reportedly spotted eating pudding with his fingers, unconfirmed and denied by
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But there was a report that he was spotted eating, eating pudding with his fingers.
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I put this in the column of Mitt Romney putting the dog on the top of the car and Amy Klobuchar
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But Trump has put out an ad making the most of this report.
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Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don't belong.
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DeSantis has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements.
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Like cutting Medicare, slashing Social Security, even raising our retirement age.
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Tell Ron DeSantis to keep his pudding fingers off our money.
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OK, so for the listening audience, you can see the fingers like sticking into the pudding
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But Jeffrey, your take on that that shot across the bow.
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Yeah, well, you know, this is I always say to people, buy popcorn stock because this is
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And for history's sakes, you know, I just think people should chill out and relax.
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I went back and took a look at some of these elections in the past.
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And Megan, back there in 1800, the Thomas Jefferson, John Adams fight for president.
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The Jefferson people accused John Adams, no kidding, of being a hermaphrodite.
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And the Adams people came back by saying Jefferson was a dangerous atheist.
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Um, every four years, this kind of thing goes on, is emphasized now because of social media
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Those of us who watch it for a profession really do like to see all this excitement.
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But I don't think there's anything new about it.
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I think it will get worse before it gets better.
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Bush accused Reagan of being into voodoo economics and he wound up on the ticket.
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Well, let's not forget what happened between Kamala and Joe.
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So, Duncan, what did you you're you're in the business of helping various candidates get elected.
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Uh, you know, number one, it's it's almost like a Democrat attack ad that you would see in any
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general election environment, you know, for the past, gosh, decade against Republicans.
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Um, I would say it's it's it's disappointing, you know, that we have the front runner Donald
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Trump for the Republican nomination talking about how, you know, we're not going to touch
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We're going to strengthen this when the program is going to be insolvent in a decade.
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That's obvious for anybody who's a conservative, um, but it's obviously effective.
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And I think it uses the pudding thing well to sort of wink and nod to the media that he's
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I mean, Donald Trump is very smart with how he uses the media to amplify his message.
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You know, it's not just running in in early caucus primary states.
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It's running in D.C. as well, because he knows that the audience for this ad isn't just
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It's also the media itself, because what he wants to do is get the media to attack Ron
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DeSantis and be like, oh, gosh, I don't know if Ron DeSantis is ready for this, you know?
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And so there's sort of like a little bit of like, you know, the tail wagging the dog here
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I think it's smart, but it's also I mean, the issue itself is really depressing.
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If you're a conservative, you know, no Republican wants to say that they're going to cut security
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I mean, of course, the reality is it's going away.
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I'll tell you guys just the other day we were doing our pitches.
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We have a staff meeting where everybody offers their pitches.
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And Danny, our booker, who booked both of you guys was like, we should do a segment on
00:17:50.400
The 20 year olds don't realize the pot is going to be empty for me.
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Well, one of the other things out of the corner of my eye is my phone here.
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And while we've just been talking, Fox has just posted a bulletin that Robert F.
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has or is about to announce his candidacy for president.
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So in other words, the fight that we're talking about on the Republican side, there is going
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to be some kind of a fight on the Democrat side.
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We just saw on announcement he's polling at 14 percent.
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Is it not for, you know, given the circumstances?
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Well, you know, if he's anything like his father and and full disclosure, when I was 17
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years old, which was just the other day, I think I was a big time Bobby Kennedy supporter
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And I still have my little Kennedy for president button over here on the on the desk.
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He was he was known for being ruthless and out front.
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And, uh, they organized a campaign against Senator Hubert Humphrey in the West Virginia
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primary that accused Humphrey, who had been turned down for World War Two as being a draft
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dodger, you know, to compare him to JFK, the hero.
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Is he just a thorn in the side of Joe Biden for the next year and a half?
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Uh, you know, in 1968, Lyndon Johnson had been cruising along from his reelection in
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64 and Eugene McCarthy, the unknown senator from Minnesota, jumps into the race on the
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issue of the Vietnam War and lo and behold, almost beats LBJ in New Hampshire.
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And then I think he actually did beat him somewhere else.
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And it resulted in LBJ getting out out of the blue.
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So there was always a possibility that there was enough dissent from the Biden world that
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I wouldn't rule it in 100 percent, but it's possible.
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But I think really the reflection in his poll number now is just dissatisfaction with Biden
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You know, if you look at polls of Democrat voters, majorities don't want him to run for
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It's probably the reason why he's been holding off the announcement for as long as he has.
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You know, so look, I think it's a it's a protest vote.
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As of right now, I have a hard time thinking, you know, he'll be able to grow that momentum
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because if it if he really was able to, I think you'd have other people jumping in the
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And then there'd be a talk whispers around Washington.
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You know, it's time for him to step aside for Kamala, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada.
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But it is compelling itself that you keep in that protest vote alone, he can get as much
00:20:55.760
Well, one wonders if he I mean, he's not going to get the Democratic nomination.
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The Democrats don't really like Bobby Kennedy Jr.
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The interesting thing about him is if he managed to run as a third party, he'd get GOP votes.
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He's he sounds more like a Republican on things like covid and government overreach now that
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he does a Democrat, though I've asked him this repeatedly.
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He still considers himself a liberal Democrat, you know, the traditional liberal, not not
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Yeah, but I mean, actually getting ballot access at the presidential level as an independent
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I have a hard time believing he'd be able to, you know, get the money behind a campaign
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I mean, the last person to really do it successfully was Ross Perot.
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And he, you know, he quit his campaign and then he came back and all of that sort of stuff.
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So, yeah, I just I don't put a lot of stock in it, honestly.
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But I think Michael is right here that if he manages to do enough damage to Joe Biden,
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the instant question would be, well, it's not going to be Bob Kennedy and it's not going
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So what is Gavin Newsom doing or what is, you know, fill in the blank major Democratic
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And I think that's when you could see a real change in the shift if he manages to do that
00:22:23.000
And I think psychologically, too, Jeffrey, to that point is like, you know, the Democrats
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are still like psychologically scarred from 2016 and that they let Hillary Clinton walk
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You saw what Bernie Sanders was able to do in that primary.
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I don't think you'd end up in another situation where, you know, the frontrunner candidate,
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Joe Biden, in the situation was as damaged as he could be.
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And they would just, you know, circle the wagons for him.
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They would be too worried about electing Donald Trump again.
00:22:52.440
Well, speaking of Joe Biden, he's he's, you know, misstep every day.
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The politicos of the world continue to celebrate.
00:23:00.820
There was some ridiculous excerpt in I think it was political the other day, like over there,
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But I'm telling you, this is what the Democrats are going to be dealing with.
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My heart, there's nothing our nations can't achieve if we do it together.
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I think he forgot where he was giving the speech.
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I think it was almost like he was trying to transition to some sort of campaign rally and
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I mean, you know, it's embarrassing, but he's been embarrassing for a long time.
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And then, you know, you haven't had anyone really turn on him yet, which is.
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I was thinking of his chocolate, chocolate chip.
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The serious part of that is, and I say this as somebody, my mom, God bless her, started
00:24:07.600
to head down when she was about 96 with dementia and I took care of her.
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But watching her and dealing with her, taking care of her close up, I look at Joe Biden and
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And the thing about this kind of stuff is it gets worse.
00:24:26.060
And it's not a fall off the cliff kind of thing.
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And I think we are watching this in real time with him.
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And you never know when it's going to show up, you know, whether it's Dr.
00:24:38.900
Jill taking him by the hand and leading him in a certain direction or God only knows the
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He kind of wanders around or he shakes hands with people that aren't there.
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You know, this is, you know, it's one thing for people like us to be talking about this.
00:24:54.440
It's another thing when you realize that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping and and Kim Jong-un,
00:25:00.900
you know, are all watching this and calculating accordingly.
00:25:05.940
Here's the here's the excerpt from Politico's Adam Cancran.
00:25:11.180
He wrote as follows, in part, it was here in Ireland that the criticisms he faces at home
00:25:29.080
Wouldn't it be so helpful to have this kind of media behind you when you're running for
00:25:35.860
I think the way I described it on the podcast was it was like, you know, a sophomore in
00:25:41.540
college writing home about their semester abroad, you know, and that's just sort of
00:25:51.180
Now we've taken our little dalliance over into Lane Lefty.
00:25:55.400
Ron DeSantis is now finally starting to fight back.
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You know, Trump is crushing him, crushing him in the polls.
00:26:02.800
I think the real clear politics average has Trump something like 36 points over Ron DeSantis.
00:26:07.660
If you look at all the polls that went into that average, it's like 37, 33, 35, 38, 30.
00:26:12.620
I mean, he's crushing him in these national polls.
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But Trump's also been very much in the news, but it was for being indicted.
00:26:26.460
But DeSantis has been relatively quiet and now he's getting a little louder.
00:26:37.760
He's trying to get some Republican state legislators behind him or Republican congressional
00:26:46.760
Let me ask you first about the change in messaging.
00:26:48.880
He released an ad and it's basically about Trump's negativity toward his fellow Republicans.
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Donald Trump is being attacked by a Democrat prosecutor in New York.
00:27:02.080
So why is he spending millions attacking the Republican governor of Florida?
00:27:05.960
Trump's stealing pages from the Biden-Pelosi playbook.
00:27:13.620
We're not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans.
00:27:32.320
Well, you know, what I noticed about that is Governor DeSantis was here in suburban Harrisburg
00:27:37.620
two weeks ago, and you heard none of that from him.
00:27:42.540
As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure he mentioned Donald Trump's name.
00:27:46.000
He did go after Alvin Bragg and went after the justice system and all of that sort of thing.
00:27:51.760
But he never said a peep other than that about Donald Trump.
00:27:55.680
So that ad, I think, just shows that things are starting to heat up.
00:27:59.280
Now, whether he will be on the stump saying these things himself, that remains to be seen.
00:28:05.340
At some point, I don't know how he can avoid it, but I haven't seen it yet.
00:28:08.720
I thought it was a comeback, Duncan, to what Trump released with the pudding.
00:28:16.780
Yeah, I don't understand the strategy here in, you know, basically making a process argument
00:28:24.060
about Donald Trump to the Republican primary electorate.
00:28:27.560
And you start the ad with five seconds on how, you know, evil the DA in New York is and
00:28:38.180
I mean, if you're going to hit Donald Trump, hit Donald Trump.
00:28:41.340
Don't make a process argument about how, oh, it's unfair what the DA in New York is doing
00:28:47.260
And also it's unfair that Donald Trump isn't attacking him and instead he's attacking Ron
00:28:51.760
Oh, and by the way, I'm going to also try to get to the left of Donald Trump on how great
00:28:59.860
And, you know, I like the tagline at the end, you know, what happened to Donald Trump.
00:29:04.480
And I can I can picture thematically doing a series of ads on that that would be impactful
00:29:09.240
on things like covid or the border wall or, you know, empowering Fauci or guns.
00:29:15.100
There's a whole bunch of things you could do with like this is what Donald Trump said
00:29:19.580
But a process ad about, you know, what Donald Trump should do in attacking, you know, Democrats,
00:29:26.120
I just don't see how that works to Ron DeSantis's advantage.
00:29:30.460
I think Ron DeSantis's advantage is making an argument on electability.
00:29:34.640
And he needs to stay focused on that because, I mean, Donald process argument about Donald
00:29:41.820
I feel like most of DeSantis's behavior makes sense.
00:29:44.780
If you understand his main goal right now is to get the Trump voters.
00:29:47.620
He assumes the establishment GOP is with him and his big challenge is to get those Trump
00:30:01.740
He's he's holding he's fighting with one hand tied behind his back, Duncan, because he
00:30:07.720
They're already a little mad at him for even running the hardcore Trumpkins.
00:30:13.840
Why did Donald Trump get a bump in the polls after he got indicted?
00:30:18.080
And it's because every other candidate in the field was going out there in front of
00:30:21.640
a camera to talk about how unfair this was to Donald Trump.
00:30:24.300
You think Donald Trump, if the situation was reversed, this was Ron DeSantis being indicted
00:30:29.560
You think Donald Trump would get out there and be like, oh, it's so unfair to Ron DeSantis?
00:30:34.960
I mean, look at what Donald Trump is doing on true social every single day about Disney.
00:30:41.120
Oh, geez, I think Ron's really stepped in it with Disney.
00:30:44.000
You know, I mean, so, you know, I think they've sort of manifest these other candidates have
00:30:48.040
manifested that polling bump that Trump has seen, although I think it's receded a little
00:30:52.340
bit, that little bump that he got after the indictment where everyone was, you know, rallying
00:30:57.760
But I think like, you know, if if Ron DeSantis announces a presidential campaign, he has to
00:31:03.080
be succinct and direct with what he's attacking Donald Trump on.
00:31:06.860
Otherwise, you're just going to end up arguing with the Trump electorate for a Trump light
00:31:12.880
And I just don't think that actually sells with the electorate.
00:31:16.080
It's like Bill Maher said, why would we pay to see the cover band when the original is
00:31:21.340
Like, you can't be the Trump cover band and beat Trump that way.
00:31:26.760
So we're starting to see like little tastes of that, like I said, on the trans stuff and
00:31:33.000
I mean, I don't know how that turns out, but I know that the non woke like to see him
00:31:37.560
To me, I don't think the whether he wins is really the point.
00:31:41.060
It's him fighting and trying, which so many in the GOP base feel Republicans have failed
00:31:53.460
When you see a trans figure with their fingers in the pudding, you'll know we're really into
00:32:05.860
When we come back, we turn to the Fox Dominion settlement and some other legal cases, including
00:32:11.440
the the guy who's trans, he's masquerading as a woman who joined a sorority, Kappa Kappa
00:32:23.640
Lots of legal news to get to today with our Kelly's Court guests, including the seven
00:32:31.340
hundred and eighty seven million dollar settlement Fox News reached yesterday with Dominion Voting
00:32:38.240
On that first, before we bring in our legal team, we're joined by our executive producer
00:32:42.080
of this show, Steve Krakauer, who joins us to discuss the media reaction because Steve,
00:32:46.900
he is not a member of Nerd Prompt, but he does write a column, a sub stack and do his
00:32:53.680
own thing for many, many years when it comes to media commentary and following the press.
00:32:56.720
So the media is very sad, they're super sad, a single tear because this thing settled, Steve.
00:33:04.900
Yes, I think that there were two big takeaways for me when this came down about 4 p.m.
00:33:09.580
I mean, literally, you know, they had selected the jury.
00:33:14.420
They were about to come back and do opening statements.
00:33:19.140
And all the people who are there in Delaware excited for their six weeks of of bashing Fox
00:33:24.700
will, you know, have to sadly go home and and find something else to cover for that time
00:33:30.200
and find another way to attack Fox, which they, of course, did, you know, in the hours
00:33:36.060
So, yes, I think there are two big takeaways for me.
00:33:39.700
The idea that the media doesn't get their punching bag here for the next six weeks, the
00:33:44.340
embarrassing moments that may have come from the Tuckers and the Rupert Murdochs being on
00:33:49.680
the stand, a little bit of what we saw with the text messages that have leaked out.
00:33:53.400
But this would have been on a much bigger scale.
00:33:54.960
So they are they are they lose that aspect of it.
00:33:58.320
But then, of course, is the is the number seven hundred eighty seven million dollars is
00:34:03.780
I saw someone like David Frum saying, oh, this is the second largest defamation verdict
00:34:10.280
It's like, well, no, this was not a verdict, but it is obviously a large settlement that
00:34:15.480
And you really break it down from November 8th until about when Tucker went on the air and
00:34:22.240
Eleven days later, there was massive confusion, chaos that was happening inside of Fox, as
00:34:29.360
And for those 11 days, it will cost them seven hundred eighty seven million dollars, it seems.
00:34:34.280
I've noticed that the media has quickly moved to a you forgot to mention they're very upset.
00:34:40.880
The media is upset that Fox was not forced to apologize.
00:34:44.100
Just shows what a stakeholder they are in embarrassing Fox.
00:34:49.960
They got away with instead having to say something to the effect of we acknowledge that the judge
00:34:55.120
issued a ruling saying some statements were false about Dominion in the passive voice, not
00:35:02.160
And I'm sure that was a very difficult sticking point.
00:35:04.880
There's zero chance of Rupert apologizing ever.
00:35:08.820
Yeah, that's important because the early reporting we saw from people like Jake Tapper and others
00:35:13.440
was that Fox was going to have to admit to airing lies on its network.
00:35:18.260
And it gets to the whole Trump era situation of falsehoods, false statements versus lies.
00:35:23.300
And obviously, lies is a very much more subjective version of admitting something that was false
00:35:29.800
And so, yes, there is absolutely no admission by Fox of airing lies.
00:35:34.740
And importantly, they will not have to put anything on the air at all, whether through
00:35:39.920
statements or, you know, on the actual network addressing this story.
00:35:44.280
And I know they paid the money so that they don't have to have to get some sort of admission
00:35:52.180
And obviously not just Dominion, but the entire rest of the media ecosystem had been alleging
00:35:56.500
that this was going to be this big trial about democracy and the big lie and all of that.
00:36:02.580
I love the way the media and look, I'm not excusing the way Fox covered this case and
00:36:07.640
not for a minute, but I'm I love how the media is has cloaked itself in the in these, you
00:36:17.600
Can you like just look what they did to the Covington kid on the steps of the Supreme
00:36:22.820
They had to settle that case because they embarrassed Nick Sandman and tried to make him sound like
00:36:26.960
a villain who was harassing a Native American guy on the steps of SCOTUS.
00:36:30.200
And the truth was exactly the opposite, not to mention Russiagate, MSNBC, Trump's tax.
00:36:34.980
Like we could go down the list of the egregious years long misreporting that these others have
00:36:50.100
MSNBC, Morning Joe, as if this was an isolated incident and as if it is it only that Fox that
00:36:58.920
No, for years, I was just recalling this morning a conversation I had with someone who I consider
00:37:04.920
to be a very smart person, but someone who's clearly of the left, who literally to this
00:37:09.080
day, believes that Donald Trump was elected due to a hacked election, hacked in 2016 by
00:37:17.900
This is something that he believes to this day, seven, eight years later.
00:37:21.080
And it's because of what happened, because of the coverage that happened at the time
00:37:24.600
by MSNBC, by CNN, by The New York Times, Washington Post and others that was never corrected.
00:37:32.100
This is something that has continued for years and years and years.
00:37:35.380
And so it's not excusing necessarily the Fox's coverage of what happened in that moment.
00:37:40.540
Although, as we've described many times on the show, there's a big difference between
00:37:43.940
showing what Lou Dobbs was talking about and the text messages that came out showing that
00:37:49.380
people like Tucker Carlson did not believe that and yet also did not platform that sort
00:37:55.740
And so I think it's a lot more complicated, a lot more nuanced, obviously, than what the
00:38:00.640
And it also allows them to attack Fox in a way that doesn't implicate themselves in a
00:38:06.520
lot of what the problems we've seen with the press over these last seven, eight years.
00:38:10.540
So the most damaging thing for Fox already happened, which was the release of all the
00:38:14.420
text messages, the private internal correspondence.
00:38:20.440
Now, it hasn't changed the relationship between Fox and its audience.
00:38:23.500
As we discussed yesterday, the trust has gone up.
00:38:25.820
However, let's be honest, it has definitely changed the media's perception of Fox.
00:38:33.000
When I was there, the news division of Fox News was respected.
00:38:36.680
And it was the driving engine of the entire channel.
00:38:38.760
And it was the reason why there was a begrudging respect for Fox, even though people didn't like
00:38:45.800
They lost it during during Trump, during the coverage of nine or not 11, 11, but January
00:38:53.620
But the release of these text messages was the final nail in the coffin.
00:38:58.320
It's not respected at all by competitors who used to have to at least tip the hat to the
00:39:05.920
Yeah, I think that, you know, we saw that and we addressed this also yesterday a little
00:39:09.760
bit with the Chris Steyerwald and the Bill Salmon.
00:39:11.740
That aspect of those text messages was was more damaging in the internal side of how I think
00:39:18.200
the broader media thinks about Fox and talks about Fox.
00:39:21.540
Although, you know, in a lot of ways, it feels like once 2015, once 2016 came, the divide
00:39:26.920
between the Foxes of the world and the rest of the media became this giant gulf that that
00:39:32.720
is really representative, I think, of the Trump moment.
00:39:35.680
And and so, yes, the there was a little bit of confirmation bias in a lot of ways by what
00:39:41.640
Certainly, you know, internally among the media, those text messages and what happened with the
00:39:46.620
news division and how it was really after Arizona.
00:39:50.580
I mean, they became the fall guy within Fox as well.
00:39:55.120
But, yeah, this is the kind of thing that they eat up.
00:40:01.080
And that's why Fox should have settled this early.
00:40:06.120
They could have easily settled it for eight hundred million dollars back at the beginning.
00:40:15.660
But my point I was driving toward was, can you imagine if the text messages and internal
00:40:20.820
emails and correspondence between the top anchors at CNN or at MSNBC and the executives there
00:40:26.720
or the Today Show got released in the context of a big lawsuit or some other way, they would
00:40:34.560
That's why it's just so impossible to look at these people like, I'm shocked there's not
00:40:38.780
a journalistic outfit and say, OK, could you like you should take a seat.
00:40:49.380
Well, on one level, I think that that was why, you know, James O'Keefe, when he was at
00:40:53.360
Project Veritas, released all these CNN internal 9 a.m.
00:40:56.760
calls, the call that I used to be on when I was at CNN that Jeff Zucker led.
00:41:00.520
And there was a real big nothing burger for me because it only showed that all these people
00:41:06.300
They actually think that they're in this existential fight with Trump.
00:41:08.820
I mean, it's ridiculous, but that's it's not like they're secretly saying, oh, yeah, we
00:41:13.560
But on the air, we're going to portray it as something else.
00:41:19.420
But the other one, the thing that bothers me the most about the criticism with the corporate
00:41:23.260
press had over these text messages were the kinds of things about the business.
00:41:26.900
People talking about the stock price or the or the loss of viewers.
00:41:32.940
Everyone who works at MSNBC or NBC or anywhere knows that.
00:41:37.240
And it's a joke if they're going to try to say that the things that they do every single
00:41:40.780
day is not about ratings, is not about the bottom line.
00:41:44.160
It's a it's a very much a part of this as as everyone in the business knows that.
00:41:48.920
Yes, that is why the series they were trying to do with Van Jones.
00:41:52.460
I can't remember what it was about, like homelessness or something.
00:41:56.860
That's because no, there's no audience for that crap.
00:42:00.060
And sooner or later, the business realizes I wanted to look good, but I want profits
00:42:05.860
You know, that's why they had to stop going so woke.
00:42:10.140
We're going to bring in the legal side of this story on this topic and many others.
00:42:13.680
Our Kelly's Court panel, David Fryheit, lawyer and YouTuber, better known to his audience
00:42:17.940
as Viva Fry and Vinnie Politan, lawyer and lead anchor for Court TV.
00:42:23.160
So what do you make of the Fox News settlement?
00:42:25.920
First of all, and then I'll ask you about it's coming legal troubles because that's the
00:42:31.720
Like, don't be too disappointed they settled because Smartmatic has still got its lawsuit.
00:42:43.300
Well, this is why Court TV rarely covers civil cases, because it's about money and it's a
00:42:52.800
So while everyone, and this is fascinating to listen to you, Steve, talk about this, how
00:42:57.980
people were making this lawsuit about something more.
00:43:04.820
It was one side trying to see how much they could get, the other side seeing how little
00:43:08.920
they could pay and what was it worth for one side to make it go away?
00:43:14.360
What was it worth for the other side to all of a sudden get all this money that they wouldn't
00:43:19.000
So the big legal takeaway from this is what we should learn is in civil cases, it's always,
00:43:26.160
except in Johnny Depp's trial, except in Johnny Depp's trial, it's always about the money.
00:43:33.100
Yeah, there was a stelter tweet that said, you could argue that Dominion wins, but the
00:43:41.480
Oh, the people relishing in Fox News as the fake news, as though CNN didn't do the Sandman
00:43:47.100
thing, Time Magazine with the Martin Luther King, all of these, Trump removing the Martin
00:43:54.660
This is such a disgusting self-congratulatory lap that all the other media are running.
00:44:04.000
Typically it is, which is why I don't understand how they possibly settled for nearly $800 million.
00:44:09.600
I saw the news and I said, this has to be there.
00:44:14.060
Who on earth settles for 50 cents of the claim the night before trial when a lot of damaging
00:44:19.300
information has already come out, when your risk at a trial is only 2xing your guaranteed
00:44:23.940
settlement, and then you abandon your appealing of the summary judgment that they just got.
00:44:28.200
You abandon your leverage about dragging this out for years and years and years.
00:44:36.020
But my goodness, settling for 50 cents on the dollar of the claim and abandoning all of
00:44:41.600
the other legal recourse, which you would have used as leverage to further negotiate.
00:44:45.500
I don't want to get too conspiratorial, but there has to be something else at play here,
00:44:49.260
like really damning stuff that Murdoch and Al didn't want to be revealed, or some mutual
00:44:54.180
interest that they're both going to have in agreeing to such a monumental settlement.
00:44:58.080
But it's a terrible precedent as far as I'm concerned.
00:45:00.800
I don't think they like their chances on appeal as much as they were saying publicly.
00:45:06.920
Like Keith Olbermann was saying, not something identical, but something similar yesterday,
00:45:11.060
He was saying, I was convinced there was a new, worse email that prompted a Fox offer to
00:45:15.540
settle that Dominion that Dominion has now accepted.
00:45:23.020
When you go to trial, you're not allowed surprises.
00:45:25.980
You know exactly what you have and what the other side has.
00:45:29.080
And, you know, maybe there's some surprise rebuttal witness or something like that, but
00:45:32.740
like there would not be a new email at this point in the proceedings unless something had
00:45:39.880
And there's, there's a constant calculation that you're doing, right?
00:45:43.360
So as the attorneys, you've got to constantly communicate with your client, right?
00:45:48.340
So the client here is Fox and you've got to give them, all right, what are our chances
00:45:54.360
I don't know, were they not happy perhaps with the, with the panel that ended up on
00:45:59.900
Because that's the one thing that happened in court just before the settlement.
00:46:07.100
It's all part of the continuing calculation that you do during a civil case and determining
00:46:12.200
what's our exposure and what's, what's the pain that we'll have if we go forward?
00:46:21.860
How have things changed now that we know exactly who the people are that are going to be making
00:46:28.400
I, in watching Fox from the outside and the inside over the years, my general feeling is
00:46:39.620
They will scare you to within an inch of your life.
00:46:42.120
But then in the, in the last, literally the last minute, they will pay up.
00:46:46.340
They don't actually want their biggest stars, their biggest executives taking a stand in
00:46:54.160
So I think it was a smart move to not put this case in the hands of that Delaware jury.
00:46:59.480
And I know $800 million is a lot, Viva, but it's Rupert Murdoch.
00:47:04.040
He's literally one of the richest men in the world.
00:47:07.740
Well, I said, I made a face earlier, because if I'm agreeing with Keith Olbermann, then
00:47:11.840
I'm going to start questioning my own existence.
00:47:13.640
But the $800 million is a lot, which is why typically the settlements hedge your bets.
00:47:19.840
When you're agreeing to pay 50 cents on the dollar guaranteed, no appeal, no further leveraging.
00:47:25.580
If it's all, if you can afford $800 million, take it to trial and take your, your chances
00:47:30.860
But they're, I mean, and you said like, maybe there was more damage.
00:47:33.280
But your stars, your biggest stars, your top executives have to take the stand.
00:47:38.100
But you know, that, if that was the rationale, then they should have settled this before the
00:47:41.660
discoveries when the damaging information already came out.
00:47:44.640
I mean, if anything, according, as far as I'm concerned, they could have attenuated their
00:47:48.480
bad depositions and their bad discoveries on the stand and said, yeah, we thought, we thought
00:47:52.340
Sidney Powell was crazy, but that's my personal opinion.
00:47:56.360
They could have attenuated their bad discoveries.
00:47:59.260
I think, I think, though, the real problem here is the, the reality, right?
00:48:07.200
The beginning, like, oh, we're going to fight this.
00:48:11.980
You see which way things are going with the judge.
00:48:23.600
Once the trial starts, now things get really weird.
00:48:27.340
Yeah, and you're like, I can see where it's going.
00:48:31.840
800's a lot to us, but it's not that much to Rupert or to Fox.
00:48:36.880
We're going to get to that trans case and many others next.
00:48:38.760
All right, so let's start with this case that's been making a lot of news.
00:48:45.820
It's gotten the attention of Tucker Carlson, among others, and it involves a man down in
00:48:52.080
Daniel Perry, 33-year-old white man, has been convicted of murder in connection with his
00:48:59.220
shooting of a man named Garrett Foster, 28, also white.
00:49:02.180
Okay, so both guys are white, but Garrett Foster was a white man who was a BLM protester.
00:49:07.940
And they encountered one another when Daniel Perry's car found itself in the middle of a BLM
00:49:13.240
protest, and Foster came over to the window, the driver's side window.
00:49:18.220
Some sort of a confrontation or words were exchanged, and Daniel Perry, the 33-year-old,
00:49:25.640
shot and killed Garrett Foster, the 28-year-old white man.
00:49:29.660
He was in Austin, Texas, that's where the rally was happening, and he's just been found
00:49:36.440
All right, well, it might not get your attention, but now there's a big push immediately to have
00:49:41.840
him pardoned, and Governor Greg Abbott has taken this on before there's even been a sentencing.
00:49:46.500
Governor Greg Abbott has personally taken this on and said, do we have sound from him?
00:49:50.700
I can't remember what we got, or it's just a tweet.
00:49:52.860
No, okay, so he said, quote, in a tweet, I am working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding
00:50:00.080
Texas has one of the strongest stand-your-ground laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified
00:50:09.320
He's got to get the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole to recommend the pardon before he can
00:50:15.320
But after he took this stance, after I think Tucker did a segment on it, and it got a lot
00:50:21.340
of attention, all these texts of the accused murderer were released, and they do not reflect
00:50:31.660
Viv, I could see you wanted to say something in my description of the case.
00:50:34.600
Yeah, I think maybe one critical element you missed is that the victim, the person who was
00:50:38.620
shot dead, was open carrying an AK-47 when he confronted Perry in the car, and as per
00:50:46.800
Perry's testimony, it looked like he had the barrel raised, not aimed, that was a little
00:50:52.060
discrepancy in the evidence at the trial, but pointed or lifted in the general direction
00:51:00.300
But yeah, the open carry is the determinant element here as to who provoked who.
00:51:08.780
I followed a bit of the trial, and I've gotten into a debate on Twitter with another lawyer,
00:51:14.320
Branca, who's a self-defense lawyer, who seems to be, yeah, and he's relatively convinced
00:51:19.280
that this was not self-defense, and is challenging people's perceptions of that.
00:51:26.860
I happen to disagree with the judgment, but it is difficult to say, well, I didn't hear the
00:51:31.500
evidence, I wasn't the jury, but I am of the opinion that if you take a wrong decision,
00:51:35.620
wrong turn, or even if you turn deliberately, and your car is swarmed and encircled by
00:51:40.420
protesters, one of whom is carrying a weapon that Perry said it wasn't, I didn't want to give him
00:51:46.520
time to aim, but he said that it was pointed in a potentially threatening manner.
00:51:52.460
I mean, everybody here is playing stupid games, and this is how tragedies happen, but there's
00:51:56.520
a lot of inverted comparisons that you can make to the Rittenhouse case, where Rittenhouse
00:52:00.540
crossed state lines with a weapon, was open carrying, and he was public enemy number one,
00:52:03.500
and here, the same circumstance, the person who ends up getting shot and killed is public
00:52:07.680
victim number one, so there's a lot of ideal, you know, some double standards here.
00:52:12.000
This guy who got shot and killed, Vinny, this Garrett Foster, was there in like the Kevlar
00:52:17.720
vest, he was dressed like he was going to war, this guy, so it's hard to believe that he was
00:52:21.840
just out there for a little stroll, holding up a little placard, BLM, you know, he had the
00:52:26.700
Kevlar, he had the AK-47, how do you even get your hands on that?
00:52:29.820
Hello, that's the gun that all the people who want to take the guns away think everybody's
00:52:36.840
This guy had it, and this guy who's, you know, they're both veterans in the car, you
00:52:46.540
However, the prosecution argued he was intentionally putting himself in the midst of this so-called
00:52:54.640
Yeah, I think that's a key factor, right, because in a self-defense case, what I've seen
00:53:01.040
at Court TV, and we've covered a lot of them, and we've covered a lot of not-guilties, including
00:53:06.480
One distinguishing factor in the Kyle Rittenhouse case was video of everything that happened,
00:53:13.540
It was video, it was audio of everything that was happening that night, painted a much
00:53:17.480
different picture than was painted by the media of what actually happened in the Rittenhouse
00:53:21.900
This one, now you're relying upon witness testimony, and everyone, and every witness
00:53:27.020
in this whole thing obviously has some level of an agenda in the way they're going to see
00:53:32.620
If you're at a protest, you have a perspective.
00:53:37.280
So at the end of the day, we put it in the hands of a jury, and the jury has to make a very
00:53:47.400
It's a Texas jury, but are we in Austin, Texas, or are we in regular Texas?
00:54:01.380
The laws are the same, but the people who are applying the law to the facts of the case
00:54:07.980
Well, but here, so the prosecution wanted us to believe that this guy, that Perry sped
00:54:13.220
up his car, like an attempt to mow down protesters, and then this guy, Foster, was trying to stand
00:54:19.400
up for the fellow protesters, like, hey, what are you doing?
00:54:22.200
And he has a partner or a spouse who was, hold on, his fiance, who's a quadruple paraplegic
00:54:36.280
I don't know if she was right there with him, but the point, they, the prosecution tried
00:54:39.820
to say that the defendant, Perry was, you know, a hothead who gunned the engine, tried
00:54:46.540
to drive into this group of protesters, and then Foster was trying to say, hey, what are
00:54:50.820
But there was expert testimony there saying that the car did not speed up, that the other
00:54:57.360
one expert testified that he was slowing down when his car entered the demonstration.
00:55:04.200
The jury wound up, I guess, I mean, they found against the defendant.
00:55:08.680
So that matters because the Texas Stand Your Ground law, Viva, says as follows.
00:55:14.300
Um, it removes the duty to retreat before using deadly force if the person is in a place they
00:55:30.120
Even speeding up to get through a crowd of protesters.
00:55:32.820
I don't, I don't know that you'd be charged with a crime, but here's the third one and has
00:55:39.360
So the prosecution was trying to say, you did provoke, um, you provoked this confrontation
00:55:47.460
So therefore, Stand Your Ground is not available to you.
00:55:50.000
And the basis of the provocation was allegedly turning his vehicle into the crowd, uh, to
00:55:58.760
Yes, a jury found a verdict of guilty and it's the risk of when you go to court and, you
00:56:04.100
know, Fox News just avoided the risks of, of leaving things in the hand of a jury.
00:56:09.440
Uh, the broader problem might be you leave things in the hands of a jury of a crime that
00:56:14.260
possibly ought not have been prosecuted in the first place.
00:56:17.560
You can't then wash your hands of this unjust prosecution just because of a verdict.
00:56:22.340
Uh, so a jury subsequently ratified the prosecution with, which might be a questionable verdict.
00:56:30.100
Uh, I, but for Rittenhouse, I'd say who would provoke a man carrying an AK 47?
00:56:34.980
Who would provoke, uh, BLM rioters by the evidence, the expert evidence with which the
00:56:39.900
jury heard and didn't take into or didn't, um, retain, he wasn't speeding up.
00:56:46.280
His car got swarmed and encircled at a protest.
00:56:49.460
And we have, we live in a world where despite the guy's texts, which we do need to get to
00:56:55.120
We, we live in a world of, you know, the Rodney King, uh, riots where people were pulled
00:57:00.000
out of their cars and beaten mercilessly, uh, where people are pulled from their cars and
00:57:04.180
shot where we saw what happened during the summer of love.
00:57:06.400
Uh, you know, people randomly shot by the, by, by mobs who are on the street.
00:57:10.480
So you have that always in the frame of the mind to explain the, the rationale of the person.
00:57:16.420
One has to reconcile all of this now, however, with these prior texts, Facebook messages,
00:57:24.540
So the, um, Foster's family has a civil attorney who said, what is governor Abbott doing?
00:57:30.260
We haven't even had the sentencing phase yet and not remind an appeal.
00:57:33.960
And he said, this turns the rule of law on its head.
00:57:38.100
We cannot have governors stepping in before cases have even reached their finality to undo
00:57:45.180
Because if you let, you may like it in this case, cause you, you're anti BLM or you're
00:57:52.120
Um, you're not going to like it in the next one.
00:57:54.260
Cause that, if that's the power of the governor, if that's appropriate action by a governor,
00:57:57.960
you know how many cases they're going to undo that, that you don't want to see undone.
00:58:04.200
And the jury had it say the appellate process is there for a reason.
00:58:12.660
Abbott comes out, takes a strong stance, refers it to this parole board, went on April 10th.
00:58:22.240
Then they release, uh, this guy, Perry, the defendant, uh, his texts and one text, one
00:58:30.580
exchange did get in front of the jury, but it sounds to me with, and I haven't gone in
00:58:34.860
depth on this, but it sounds to me like the judge limited what would get in front of the
00:58:39.700
So it wouldn't be too unfairly prejudicial to the defendant.
00:58:42.120
What was, what was shown to the jury was six weeks prior to the shooting.
00:58:46.000
Uh, Perry had privately discussed, uh, a similar situation that happened between a driver
00:58:52.580
And, uh, he told a friend he had watched the video of it, of a protester getting shot in
00:58:59.220
And Perry said, uh, since that happened in Seattle, the gun would probably go to prison,
00:59:03.840
but if it were in Texas, he'd already be released.
00:59:22.900
Um, they were released by the Travis County judge unsealed by the Travis County judge often
00:59:27.980
made racist comments regularly made clear his desire to kill protesters in the months
00:59:33.200
According to social media posts and texts contained, they say a newly unsealed court document.
00:59:37.820
So I suppose guys, it is possible the jury saw this and just, we didn't see it.
00:59:40.760
I don't know the answer in a Facebook message from May, 2020, just weeks before the shooting,
00:59:44.500
Perry told a friend he might have to kill a few people who were riding outside of his
00:59:48.640
Then said, uh, quote, I might go to Dallas to shoot looters said in a Facebook message
00:59:53.040
two days later, no protesters go near me or my car.
00:59:56.420
The other man replied, forgive me audience replied, can you catch me a Negro daddy?
01:00:04.280
Again, the man he shot was white, but he was at a BLM protest and his fiance was black
01:00:09.720
Uh, he went on to say in another text message, the blacks are gathering up in a group.
01:00:17.980
I wonder if they will let me cut the ears off of people who've decided to commit suicide
01:00:23.840
Uh, went on to compare the black lives matter movement to a zoo full of monkeys.
01:00:30.500
And this is, this is awful, but this is relevant.
01:00:33.220
Again, in April of 2020, he sent out a meme, which included a photo of a woman holding her
01:00:38.200
child's head under the water in the bath with the text quote, when your daughter's first
01:00:46.380
So in other words, a white girl being with a black boy or, you know, interracial marriage,
01:00:55.100
And that's what his victim was in again, do not know it's relevant to find out whether
01:01:03.940
But the point is here he is at a BLM riot and all those statements, my God, my God, who
01:01:10.740
I'll take, I don't think that we can, that we can equate a white person killing a white
01:01:18.020
person with a, as a, as, as a hate crime, as a race.
01:01:25.440
You can talk about general character, but it's clearly irrelevant for the jury.
01:01:29.960
And in this instance, the piece that was allowed in front of the jury, I think is a great issue
01:01:35.080
on appeal, whether or not just hearing that just my team is telling me the jury did not
01:01:39.460
I was right the first time, but all that stuff they didn't hear, but the one that they did
01:01:45.420
Uh, it was more probative than, than prejudicial.
01:01:47.460
I don't know what relevance it had talking about another situation, bombing someone else
01:01:52.740
under different circumstances where someone was, was pulled out of a car.
01:01:56.160
So, um, this, but to me, it's the same analysis as the Rittenhouse case.
01:02:01.120
Everyone trying to make Rittenhouse into a case about race and a hate crime.
01:02:04.280
And I, I kept saying it was, everybody was white.
01:02:07.460
Everybody's white in this case, everybody's white.
01:02:10.440
What, what is the relevance of him being a racist?
01:02:13.640
I get it's a BLM protest route, but the victim.
01:02:17.460
Someone is not, he didn't go there and shoot someone of another race.
01:02:22.360
Um, to me, all that sort of stuff is only relevant if you're charging someone with a hate crime.
01:02:27.540
So, uh, whether it's part of his sentencing, I still don't think it should be.
01:02:39.780
So how does it play when you talk about a pardon?
01:02:44.340
And that's, I mean, that's when you talk about a pardon, it's not, it's not necessarily pure law.
01:02:50.900
It's, does this guy deserve this extraordinary relief of the governor stepping in?
01:02:58.540
One of which there's no defending the statements, period.
01:03:02.060
Uh, in law, even a racist has the right to self-defense.
01:03:06.180
And it's, you know, it goes back to the other arguments of, uh, a felon in, in, in possession
01:03:10.600
of an unlawful firearm still has the right to use that unlawful firearm for the purposes
01:03:16.020
The, the, the racist, uh, text messages, et cetera, I imagine could only be relevant if
01:03:21.360
they want to show some sort of animosity that he had for the victim because the victim is
01:03:27.140
As far as I know, or, or just add a BLM protest.
01:03:30.800
As far as I know, that evidence wasn't deduced.
01:03:33.100
The, uh, other text messages, which I could easily argue for the, you know, the probative value,
01:03:38.300
the relevance to set the frame of mind, this was somebody looking for a fight, not somebody
01:03:43.480
Uh, I can understand that, but again, it's not because he said stupid things or had, uh,
01:03:49.560
even, even if we attribute it to ill intent prior that he wasn't in a position at the
01:03:54.120
current moment where he felt, uh, the need for legitimate self-defense and was entitled
01:03:58.520
Uh, when a mob, if, I mean, this is sort of like victim blaming, like, well, you shouldn't
01:04:06.540
Uh, and if you do that, when they swarm your car with one guy with an AK 47, uh, you just
01:04:10.820
have to take a beating to quote, uh, Binger from the Rittenhouse case.
01:04:18.920
It makes it politically more dangerous to defend publicly.
01:04:21.820
Uh, you just have to bring it back to the evidence as to whether or not, uh, this should
01:04:25.900
have been prosecuted in the first place because there was evidence from the lead investigator
01:04:29.760
that this was basically a political prosecution from the get-go that the lead investigator
01:04:37.000
And he had like a hundred pages of his PowerPoint presentation or whatever it was, uh, removed
01:04:44.200
Screw the jury heard from that expert and nonetheless convicted.
01:04:47.280
It is nuanced, but it gets really politically dirty when they start revealing those text messages
01:04:51.720
because they don't make any, they don't make it very popular to continue defending this
01:04:57.940
And the other thing is, you know, think about yourself in his position, even, okay, maybe
01:05:06.020
You know, if they tried that with me, they get a different result, putting the race stuff
01:05:11.800
That wouldn't mean you'd actually go out there trying to provoke an encounter in which
01:05:16.480
But if some guy comes up to your car in the midst of a BLM protest, riot, you know, whatever
01:05:22.400
you want to call it with an AK 47, and these are military guys, they know that gun.
01:05:27.800
I, I, any big gun, I'd be scared, but an AK 47 and he's wearing the vest neoprene, not
01:05:39.660
Kevlar would have been like bullet would have been ballistic resistant to some extent, but,
01:05:45.200
And then, and then you have to get into the contradicting, uh, uh, evidence that the defendant
01:05:50.160
himself gave Perry, where he said, uh, he was pointing the gun at me, but then in, in,
01:05:54.080
in some deposition or investigation, he said, I didn't want to give him a chance to aim.
01:05:58.580
Look, you're in one of those situations where even if you understand that, like, I mean,
01:06:02.960
what, think about it, Viva, like, did he really have to show that the guy was pointing the
01:06:07.620
It's like, you came over to my car, you confronted me, you got my, me to roll my window down.
01:06:14.860
You had an illegal weapon that could do inflict mass damage in a split second.
01:06:26.180
So yeah, I was where I was at, where I had a right to be under the law, all those things.
01:06:35.200
And I think it was a legal open carry, but yeah, you're in a circumstance.
01:06:41.000
Uh, I'm, no, I'm, I, unless I'm mistaken and maybe the crew could check this out in
01:06:45.700
I think that gun was lawfully owned and it was a legal open carry.
01:06:48.200
Uh, but I'm, I'm open to being wrong because I'm not an expert on that stuff.
01:06:53.200
This is one of those situations also where you can have both sides having a legitimate
01:06:58.040
defense in law of mutual self-defense and like in gauge, uh, gross crowds in the Rittenhouse
01:07:03.980
case where, you know, had he been an innocent bystander who was carrying a gun and saw the
01:07:11.620
Um, you know, there could have been an argument for both parties in their own minds would have
01:07:16.180
been within their rights to use self-defense gross cross.
01:07:20.320
The context was a little different because he chased down Rittenhouse and you know, all
01:07:23.620
that, but you could find yourself in an unfortunate situation where both parties think they're
01:07:27.760
invoking legitimate self-defense and they can in fact raise legal arguments to that effect.
01:07:31.560
But yeah, you get swarmed by a mob and there's a guy carrying an AK-47 with a knife and you're
01:07:36.540
in flip-flops with your, your girlfriend or your wife in your, in the passenger side.
01:07:40.240
I mean, who the heck is looking for that fight to begin with?
01:07:46.040
So now my team is clarifying AK-7, AK-47 type weapon and it was legal.
01:07:51.700
So I don't know what that means in the liberal press.
01:07:54.280
That's an AR-15, which is not the same thing at all.
01:07:57.320
So we do have to dig deeper on some of these facts.
01:07:59.420
The point is any sort of long gun, most people would be scared.
01:08:05.720
I mean, so far, governor Abbott is not backing down.
01:08:08.160
He submitted the request on April 10th or the parole board got the case on April 10th
01:08:12.120
and this stuff came out and he has not changed, uh, his stance.
01:08:16.940
Let's move on to Kappa Kappa Gamma, which is the greatest lawsuit I've ever seen.
01:08:20.800
I mean, this may be my favorite case and I've done so many Kelly's for it.
01:08:25.540
You are welcome America for me, from me for bringing it to you.
01:08:35.260
Seven sorority sisters are suing the Kappa Kappa Gamma fraternity.
01:08:39.800
They say, though it's a sorority, I guess they're all technically fraternities, but claiming
01:08:43.500
that Kappa Kappa Gamma has violated its stated purpose by inducting a transgender member.
01:08:51.340
The transgender member really wanted to be a Kappa.
01:08:55.860
I personally was a Tridelt and this was never an issue at Tridelt, but Kappa Kappa Gamma
01:09:00.760
at Syracuse was the very, very blonde, very, very sweater set, pearl wearing group of gals
01:09:06.940
who had tea while we were throwing back shots, Jell-O shots over Tridelt.
01:09:12.720
So it was a different land back then, apparently, because now Kappa Kappa Gamma has gone trans
01:09:17.780
and I'm sorry, but it's not like, you know, a trans person who's really making an effort
01:09:24.320
to pass as a woman and trying to blend in, like really just wants to be a Kappa.
01:09:31.600
And this trans person, this is a man who wanted to join Kappa Kappa, did the pledging in August
01:09:39.560
and was rejected probably because he has a penis, but he didn't get in.
01:09:46.480
Then he decided to go through the informal process that came a couple months later where
01:09:52.220
it's called like an open bid students through meetups, usually to test for compatibility
01:09:58.240
And you can use that lump of that loophole to get in, though the girls were told there's
01:10:04.680
We will not be offering this person whose name is Artemis a bid.
01:10:09.480
Got to go through these hoops, but Artemis is not coming in.
01:10:11.820
Well, wrong, wrong, because then they did something in coordination, alleged lawsuit with the national
01:10:19.740
chapter that wanted more trans people where they had not an anonymous vote on Artemis, but
01:10:26.960
You had to register your email to offer your vote.
01:10:29.220
And Vinny, the girls felt pressured and they were explicitly told if your answer is no on
01:10:33.480
Artemis, you have to say why specifically it has to be like a personality trait that you've
01:10:41.000
And they felt like they're going to be and they said, or it'll be rejected as bigotry.
01:10:47.860
And then I don't know if you've read the details, but it's absolutely horrifying what happened
01:10:53.840
with Artemis inside the sorority house after that.
01:10:57.700
This is a picture of the girls with Artemis over there on the left.
01:11:00.220
I don't have to point that out because it's blatantly obvious which one of these things
01:11:05.120
So what do you make of the case before we get into the details?
01:11:14.900
Well, I want us to know what the bylaws are with with the sorority and what they're you
01:11:20.140
know, what you agree to when you agree to be a member of all this and what the rights
01:11:30.960
The other part of this is when you get into some of these other allegations, I think that's
01:11:35.140
probably a better route for the sorority members that don't want the new member to be a member
01:11:44.800
And that is some of the behavior that they are alleging.
01:11:54.080
And I want to know what what exactly each side has promised to one another as a member
01:12:00.940
So I think that's that's the first part of the attack for the plaintiffs here.
01:12:12.060
This is a very this is a dangerous position because I don't want to say the wrong thing
01:12:18.940
And and at some point, people are just going to have to I don't say that you lack a spine,
01:12:24.220
but people are just going to have to say I'm going to say it, even if it's going to be
01:12:26.440
unpopular, that might be part and parcel of the problem that got to this in the first
01:12:30.800
People didn't want to vote, not anonymously because they didn't want to deal with the
01:12:36.840
The the the bylaws, as far as I understand, it was a sorority set up for ladies.
01:12:41.780
So this might be Katanji Jackson Brown's like SCOTUS decision.
01:12:45.020
They use that 1871 bylaws say any lady may become a candidate for a membership who shall
01:12:50.600
be of good moral character and above average talent.
01:12:53.240
By the way, Artemis, not for nothing, has a one point nine GPA.
01:12:59.040
This might be the moment when Katanji Jackson Brown gets that expert biologist on the stand
01:13:07.160
It's it's it's it's a no brainer what was intended by the bylaws, the behavioral side
01:13:12.220
of it, because apparently, in addition to not meeting the scholastic criteria, the individual
01:13:16.200
also would sit around the watching the girls change.
01:13:20.080
Basically, this reminds me of this reminds me of the case up in Canada where you had this
01:13:26.760
teacher who purported to be trans wearing obscenely, ridiculously large prosthetic breasts
01:13:34.920
And no, and I'm convinced that this is people trolling.
01:13:38.220
And these are people who are trying to push the limits of what, you know, push the limits
01:13:43.520
Sexual fetishes working themselves out on our children and our sorority sisters.
01:13:49.220
That guy in Canada is a dude who takes off those enormous breasts.
01:13:54.440
It's the most unbelievable report I've ever seen that 10 minutes by the Rebel News was spectacular.
01:14:10.320
Everyone, they all brave and demand their rights until it comes time to, you know, answer questions
01:14:14.980
But what I, you know, a troll as to whether or not it's to push the limits or a troll as
01:14:18.980
in to push their fetishes, you know, we'll just, we're agreeing on the same principle,
01:14:24.040
Um, but, uh, it is, um, I mean, this is what happens when women who have been reluctant
01:14:31.020
to be vocal about defending women's rights, um, you know, in the name of tolerance and
01:14:36.220
the name of, you know, social media virtue signaling sort of, uh, that type of currency
01:14:43.020
And then lo and behold, you now have to change in front of a biological male.
01:14:46.320
It's like, uh, Megan, I've been saying this for a little while, five years ago under the
01:14:51.220
hashtag me too movement, Jeffrey Rush was being canceled because he allegedly exposed himself
01:14:59.780
And now you got Riley Gaines, you got these sorority girls here who are being compelled
01:15:07.340
And you're, they're, they're being in Riley Gaines case, even physically assaulted by men
01:15:17.000
And it takes a, you know, a bit of courage and a bit of willingness to deal with the blowback
01:15:26.040
And if you do it, I wish I had been in this sorority.
01:15:27.760
I wish I had been in this or I, I would have walked right over Artemis and said, what the
01:15:32.480
fuck are you doing with your hand down your pants, get your hand out of your pants right
01:15:35.540
now and get the hell out of this sorority right now.
01:15:38.180
Before I call the police on your ass, you are 100% evicted from the sorority.
01:15:43.000
The only question now is whether you're going to prison.
01:15:48.000
And my next call is going to be to nine one one.
01:15:52.520
Uh, the lawsuit accuses, allegedly the lawsuit accuses.
01:15:57.420
Uh, the him of sitting on the couch in the second floor common area, not studying, watching
01:16:02.520
The women felt uneasy, uh, as he's stared at them without talking for hours.
01:16:08.340
One sorority member walked down the hall to take a shower, wearing only a towel.
01:16:11.080
She felt an unsettling presence turned and saw Artemis watching her silently.
01:16:15.700
The lawsuit alleges that Artemis behaved inappropriately around her, around the sorority sisters on numerous
01:16:20.960
occasions, including once when Artemis had an erection visible through his leggings.
01:16:28.740
Oh, I wonder what was going on beneath that pillow.
01:16:30.960
The complaint alleges that Artemis took photographs of the women at awkward moments when they were
01:16:35.080
not prepared when they were at a sorority slumber party.
01:16:43.680
Uh, oh, apparently he repeatedly questioned the women about what vaginas look like, breast
01:16:49.100
cup size, whether women were considering breast reductions and birth control.
01:16:53.820
I've had this experience with newly trans people myself.
01:16:56.240
They think that women sit around and talk about this shit.
01:16:58.840
That is not what women sit around and talk about.
01:17:00.580
Like, they think this is like what, like fitting in.
01:17:14.760
I can't partake in this portion of the conversation, but Megan, you say I would have called the cops
01:17:19.240
if you're in Canada and you call the cops, like you saw what happened to billboard Chris
01:17:22.980
out in Vancouver where he gets physically assaulted by, by a man at a, and then, and then the cop
01:17:28.760
is there saying, well, you're, you're wearing a billboard that says, you know, children can't
01:17:34.800
I mean, you're not even sure to get justice from the police or the courts.
01:17:39.140
It's what happens when the entire system has been captured by ideology.
01:17:45.280
This is, this should be a sexual harassment suit.
01:17:50.160
And, and, and you bring in the sorority as well for enabling all of it.
01:18:05.780
You made us unable to reject this person who we could identify as a potential pervert.
01:18:10.120
And then we were subjected to his lewd and lascivious behaviors.
01:18:15.500
Other members told the woman that, uh, he appeared sexually aroused after having seen one world,
01:18:21.060
one girl take off her top and stood near the door with his hand over his genitals.
01:18:25.220
Since then, he keeps asking the woman about her romantic attachments.
01:18:29.120
He stood in the back of a sorority yoga class for an hour, watching the assembled young women
01:18:40.660
I really want to punch the people at Kappa Kappa Gamma.
01:18:43.360
Nevermind Artemis who behaved absolutely disgustingly.
01:18:47.720
Should be the subject of a lawsuit, but should 100% be kicked out.
01:18:50.840
And by the way, guys, uh, I'm told that now Artemis lives outside of the sorority house
01:18:56.060
at the moment, but it's slated to live at the sorority in the coming year and often stays
01:19:01.020
there for meals and other secret sorority rituals and events.
01:19:11.360
Everyone walk out of that sorority and leave it with, leave it with one member.
01:19:15.380
But can you believe Megan, we're living in a world where we are expected to describe
01:19:19.860
this individual, the defendant as having, you know, as covered her penis.
01:19:24.440
I mean, this is, this is the absurdity of the world in which we're, it's, it's absurd
01:19:30.260
Um, and people have to appreciate that this is, uh, it is an abuse of people's otherwise,
01:19:40.080
Um, and, and people have, you know, it's not a question of, uh, violence or aggression
01:19:48.500
These, these entities were set up for a specific purpose in the first place.
01:19:53.240
And now you have like the cases, uh, being revealed by James O'Keefe and, uh, OMG media,
01:19:57.140
um, you know, uh, prisoners getting impregnated after trans prisoners are led into women's
01:20:12.300
Um, because we have videotape of Artemis two years ago in 2020 during the COVID pandemic
01:20:20.340
21, um, on camera with, with some panel discussing COVID and Artemis looks and sounds very much
01:20:27.360
like a man who's not trying to pose as a woman.
01:20:30.300
Um, communicating with friends, uh, putting that, you know, social network that you have,
01:20:37.560
uh, from in-person to an online format, uh, would be extraordinary beneficial.
01:20:45.980
And I wish that I had developed that better, but living in a new environment, uh, it was
01:21:01.020
This isn't even really a trans person from the look of it.
01:21:03.420
This is this to me that, that what effort was made there, what suggests to you that this
01:21:08.640
How did they let this person in Kappa Kappa Gamma?
01:21:10.760
If we don't find our voices and start speaking up against this nonsense, we can kiss every
01:21:21.140
We can take off our tops and our underwear and do our yoga in front of perverted men who
01:21:27.200
just want to get off watching us till the cows come home.
01:21:33.600
Find your voices, ladies, and the men who support us.
01:21:40.300
I don't want to deal with this shit at a tried out at Kappa Kappa Gamma in the women's
01:21:45.720
You can be supportive of trans people and what they're going through without surrendering
01:21:56.180
And the whole reason why there were separate sports was to protect women.
01:22:01.020
There there are call Wikipedia a bigot website.
01:22:04.600
There are biological physiological differences between men and women, males and females.
01:22:10.280
The sports were set up to protect Wikipedia for that.
01:22:13.660
I'm just waiting for Wikipedia to edit that entire page that explains the skeletal differences,
01:22:19.020
the muscular differences, the brain development differences.
01:22:21.460
Just wait for that to be bigoted to note science.
01:22:24.340
These divisions were set up to protect women physically, to prevent them from being exposed
01:22:28.740
to certain types of assault that, you know, women are uniquely exposed to.
01:22:35.220
The second these rules start getting bent, the second these rules get violated in the
01:22:41.620
Lo and behold, you end up you are literally locking women up to the to the foxes who are
01:22:47.640
And it's no different with Kappa Kappa Gamma, whatever this sorority is.
01:22:50.600
And there needs to be a great plaintiff's lawyer who's going to take these cases now because
01:23:02.780
You you put people on notice that no, no, no, it's not OK.
01:23:06.560
You can't endanger these women and Kappa should end up paying the tuition for these for these
01:23:13.020
women, for the rest of their undergrad degrees and their grad degrees and should buy them
01:23:21.060
But you need a good plaintiff's attorney who is going to is going to be able to withstand
01:23:26.460
whatever blowback that they have and push forward with it.
01:23:35.400
I'm tempted to dust off my shingle, guys, and go out there and do it myself, although
01:23:39.220
I'm not admitted in Wyoming, but I was admitted in New York and Massachusetts, Illinois, all
01:23:45.500
So, you know, if I really want to put it out, I have to do a lot of CLE in any way.
01:23:50.040
Are you suing state court so Court TV can cover that trial, Megan?
01:23:54.820
You don't want to wire them to the federal court.
01:23:59.120
I just got this whole all this stuff has gotten so insane.
01:24:04.340
As Viva says, we have to start talking honestly about it.
01:24:10.060
Nobody out there wants to take any rights from trans people because they're basic human
01:24:15.440
But what the trans debate has morphed into is basically what I'm calling biological supremacy
01:24:21.560
There are biological, physiological reasons for which divisions were set up, for which, you
01:24:28.640
And we're now basically saying that trans rights, whatever rights that trans people are purported
01:24:35.080
And if someone's rights trump somebody else's rights, we're doing it wrong.
01:24:38.760
And it's just time to have that discussion without feeling guilty, feeling like the social
01:24:43.220
media mob is going to say, you're denying trans rights.
01:24:51.280
And, you know, a lot of people out there have wives and daughters.
01:24:54.000
And you're not just standing up for yourself at some point in time.
01:24:56.440
You're standing up for the future of your children because it really is in peril right
01:25:00.020
Isn't this how Tom Hanks started his career at the sorority game?
01:25:06.560
That was when drag was just good old clean fun.
01:25:09.820
That is one of the benefits of being in the position I'm in now.
01:25:24.320
There's a Kelly's Court update I want to get to in a second, but let me just kick it
01:25:27.480
Soon, he has requested that this wrongful death lawsuit filed against him be dismissed
01:25:35.260
Now, the husband of Helena Hutchins, the cinematographer, sued him for wrongful death or, you know, was
01:25:42.880
Then Helena Hutchins' family sued him for wrongful death.
01:25:49.400
And that is why, Viva, he's claiming it needs to be dismissed.
01:25:52.920
He's like, I already settled the wrongful death lawsuit, as I understand it.
01:25:56.260
And they're saying that the plaintiff must be married to the decedent under California
01:26:01.120
law in order to be compensated for wrongful death.
01:26:04.820
Yeah, I don't know what the details of California law are on this.
01:26:10.840
I mean, at some point you do, you could get sensitive to the fact that you can't have every
01:26:15.300
extended family member suing for the wrongful death of a family member.
01:26:18.180
But the mother and the sister, if I'm going back to my criminal law in Canada, I'm pretty
01:26:24.060
sure they can sue for loss of enjoyment of life.
01:26:26.560
The fact that he settled with the husband is neither here nor there, but you got to give
01:26:32.580
He's not afraid of taking the unpopular position that the lawsuit should be dismissed with
01:26:37.600
prejudice because you weren't close to her anyhow.
01:26:41.920
Yeah, I don't exactly know the nuances of California law, but I'd be flabbergasted if
01:26:45.480
the mother and sibling of someone who was wrongfully killed would not be able to sue
01:26:50.620
And there's another development, I think, that is really, really bizarre.
01:26:57.880
Alec has waived his right to be at his criminal preliminary hearing, which is coming up in
01:27:03.520
And now he apparently has resumed filming the Rust movie.
01:27:12.800
So he can't be at his criminal preliminary hearing for shooting and killing the cinematographer
01:27:21.760
during the filming of Rust because he is going to be filming Rust.
01:27:31.240
That was part of the settlement with the husband is that they have to finish, you know, finish
01:27:36.340
I actually made the prediction that they were never going to resume filming despite their agreement
01:27:40.160
because of the criminal charges that were looming.
01:27:44.860
It's the whole the whole situation is is utterly bizarre.
01:27:47.400
But I don't I as far as I understand, like settling with the husband is not going to eliminate
01:27:51.940
potential lawsuits from others who have claims against Alec.
01:27:56.520
A lawyer, a lawyer for Hutchinson's mother and father and sister who are behind the wrongful
01:28:01.240
They slammed his attempt to avoid responsibility.
01:28:03.100
That was their word saying we're not surprised that he's once again attempting to avoid responsibility.
01:28:07.860
Attorney Gloria Allred, as if on cue, she says it's abundantly clear under New Mexico law,
01:28:15.900
which is where the shooting happened, she says, which will be applied in the California
01:28:20.140
court, that he is responsible for all the harm he did to the entirety of her family.
01:28:26.020
We're we're here to make sure that he's held accountable.
01:28:30.220
I haven't checked New Mexico law, but if they're right.
01:28:32.240
By the way, we looked up more on the AK-47 issue.
01:28:34.820
New an AK-47 is legal in Texas as long as it's been modified to be a semi-automatic and not
01:28:42.180
do the carnage, you know, that it does when used as a true weapon of war on the fields
01:28:49.220
It doesn't undermine the fear of somebody who's looking one in the barrel or even on the
01:29:08.600
We brought this to you in March when I was in Montana with the fifth column.
01:29:13.320
This woman named Jennifer Grease, 25 of Santa Clara, Stanford University employee, accused
01:29:23.960
She was reluctant to bring in the police, but she sat for a medical kit.
01:29:27.840
She gave details about how one time the guy had dragged her into the basement.
01:29:30.880
Another time the guy had grabbed her into a bathroom and brutally raped her, described
01:29:35.700
the man, six foot one, black, looked very much like her co-worker in his late 20s.
01:29:42.640
Her race has not been disclosed publicly, which I really do find interesting.
01:29:51.760
She almost ruined this man's life just because he ticked her off somehow.
01:29:56.160
She said she was upset with him because he gave her false intention and turned her friends
01:30:09.980
And last we knew she was just outed and fired or put on permanent leave.
01:30:19.760
Perjury charges because she filed for benefits for victims.
01:30:23.300
Uh, and she allegedly lied about it, um, in other, in connection with the case.
01:30:27.460
So she's got, she just, uh, had her first appearance, two felony counts of perjury, two
01:30:31.300
misdemeanor counts of making a false crime report.
01:30:34.660
Email me Megan at Megan Kelly.com with your thoughts.
01:30:37.280
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