The Megyn Kelly Show - Truth About Twitter Files, and Amber Heard Appeals, with Michael Knowles, Arthur Aidala, and Mark Eiglarsh

00:00:00.000 When I found out my friend got a great deal

00:00:02.160 on a wool coat from Winners,

00:00:03.760 I started wondering,

00:00:05.440 is every fabulous item I see from Winners?

00:00:08.560 Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.

00:00:11.260 Are those from Winners?

00:00:12.780 Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings.

00:00:15.260 Did she pay full price?

00:00:16.600 Or that leather tote?

00:00:17.600 Or that cashmere sweater?

00:00:18.500 Or those knee-high boots?

00:00:20.300 That dress?

00:00:21.080 That jacket?

00:00:21.740 Those shoes?

00:00:22.780 Is anyone paying full price for anything?

00:00:25.800 Stop wondering.

00:00:27.000 Start winning.

00:00:27.940 Winners.

00:00:28.520 Find fabulous for less.

00:00:30.680 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:32.520 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:41.920 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:43.560 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.

00:00:46.560 I hope you had a great weekend.

00:00:47.760 I have to tell you,

00:00:48.640 we had a great weekend in the Kelly Brunt household.

00:00:51.180 I tweeted this out.

00:00:51.960 We went to see The Music Man on Friday night with our kids.

00:00:55.340 You know how you're always looking for Broadway tickets

00:00:57.020 if you're coming to New York.

00:00:57.900 You never know what's good, what's not good.

00:00:59.660 It's tough to know.

00:01:01.480 This was so fun.

00:01:03.660 I would go just me and Doug.

00:01:06.260 The two of us would have been totally delighted there.

00:01:08.980 But if you have kids in particular, you'll have so much fun.

00:01:12.000 Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.

00:01:14.180 It was A-team all the way.

00:01:16.520 Totally enjoyed every second of it.

00:01:18.660 So super, super fun.

00:01:20.640 And saw some dear friends on Saturday and just had such a nice time.

00:01:24.640 It's great to, this time of year, one of the great things about it is the excuse to get together with friends and family who you may not have seen.

00:01:30.940 You know, whether it's Christmas parties or office parties or what have you.

00:01:33.460 So take advantage of it.

00:01:35.340 I know you're tired, probably like me.

00:01:37.120 You work hard.

00:01:38.060 You got kids.

00:01:38.920 Like, you don't want to go out.

00:01:40.400 Trust me.

00:01:41.340 Most nights I'd rather sit at home watching a Christmas special this time of year.

00:01:44.360 But I made myself get up and go out.

00:01:46.200 And I was very happy to do it, even though I have a touch of social anxiety.

00:01:50.120 So if I can do it, you can do it.

00:01:52.580 Do it.

00:01:53.780 Okay.

00:01:54.260 In just a bit, we're going to be joined by two people who never give me anxiety.

00:01:57.560 They only bring joy into my life.

00:01:59.060 And that's Arthur Idala and Mark Eiglash for Kelly's Court.

00:02:02.600 Lots of interesting cases to get to, including Amber Heard, who just filed quite the appeal in the Johnny Depp case.

00:02:08.760 But first, on Friday night, Elon Musk entrusted our pal Matt Taibbi with the so-called Twitter files.

00:02:17.060 The Twitter files.

00:02:17.860 He had a bunch of documents that he found when taking over the company, and he decided to release them to Matt Taibbi.

00:02:24.440 Great choice.

00:02:25.220 Independent journalist who doesn't have any particular acts to grinds other than with dishonest media.

00:02:30.800 So good call.

00:02:32.840 Taibbi prefaced his 36 tweets as a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out of the control of its designer.

00:02:42.140 The tweets show proof of suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

00:02:46.160 Okay, we knew that.

00:02:46.880 We knew that it was suppressed, but it was.

00:02:48.620 So there's a lot of color behind the scenes on the discussions that went on about it.

00:02:53.040 The entire thing was readily dismissed by the media, as you know, when the story broke, as Russian disinformation.

00:02:59.800 Our own government.

00:03:01.480 We were told Russian disinformation.

00:03:04.440 Remember all those former CIA and intelligence officials who said it's Russian disinformation.

00:03:08.680 But Twitter was the first one to say it's disinformation.

00:03:11.140 Twitter went before the so-called experts.

00:03:14.040 So what did we actually learn here?

00:03:16.000 Is it big or is it not big?

00:03:17.780 Here to discuss that and more is host of the Michael Knowles show over at the Daily Wire, Michael Knowles.

00:03:24.180 Michael, great to see you again.

00:03:25.100 How are you?

00:03:25.480 Megan, wonderful as always to be with you.

00:03:28.040 Thank you for having me.

00:03:29.180 Oh, it's great to see you.

00:03:29.980 So, okay.

00:03:30.900 I will be honest.

00:03:32.140 I did not see huge new news in there.

00:03:35.420 To me, it was color, additional color, but not that many new additional facts.

00:03:41.620 But all the color that came out was pretty damning to the internal discussions at Twitter

00:03:47.020 and just could further confirms that they suppressed this story really without much of a care at

00:03:52.460 the top levels for whether doing so was the right thing, was the moral thing, had any journalistic

00:03:57.520 integrity to it.

00:03:58.960 And there was a knee jerk instinct to simply suppress it, I think, because it was bad for Joe

00:04:04.340 Biden.

00:04:04.600 Um, and I'll just, I'll, I'll just give the audience the, uh, what I see is sort of the

00:04:09.940 biggest reveals.

00:04:11.440 And that was, here's one Matt released this, as I said, in like 36 tweets, number eight said,

00:04:19.540 um, by 2020 requests from connected actor actors within the Biden campaign and Twitter to delete

00:04:27.160 tweets were routine.

00:04:29.040 One executive would write to another more to review from the Biden team.

00:04:32.780 The reply would come back handled.

00:04:35.540 Uh, now Matt points out quickly thereafter, both parties had access to these tools.

00:04:38.720 However, the Trump was, Trump White House was doing it and the Biden campaign were doing

00:04:42.420 it.

00:04:42.880 They're all pressuring Twitter and Twitter is exceeding, but it wasn't balanced.

00:04:47.600 He says it was based on context.

00:04:49.560 And, uh, Twitter is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, meaning

00:04:53.540 Democrats.

00:04:54.040 So there were more channels and ways to complain open to the left.

00:04:57.260 Okay.

00:04:57.720 That's not a huge reveal, by the way, we're told that most of the things that were connected

00:05:02.200 in that more to review from the Biden team.

00:05:03.900 And then the reply coming back handled was about Hunter Biden depicts, which are all over his

00:05:09.020 laptop.

00:05:09.900 And I understand the Biden team did not want those appearing all over Twitter or for that

00:05:14.180 matter, in the New York Post.

00:05:15.480 Uh, so, okay, get it.

00:05:17.080 We're not yet in smoking gun category.

00:05:20.300 We're not really yet even in gun category.

00:05:22.240 But then he says, um, the following that to suppress this laptop story released by the

00:05:29.080 post, that decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge

00:05:32.660 of CEO, Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal policy, uh, and trust Vajaya Gaddy playing

00:05:39.960 a key role.

00:05:41.200 They just freelanced.

00:05:42.600 It is how one former employee characterized the decision.

00:05:45.980 Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn't

00:05:51.100 going to hold, but no one had the guts to reverse it.

00:05:54.880 You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gad,

00:05:59.820 Gaddy and former trust and safety, uh, chief, your old Roth comms official Trent and Kennedy

00:06:06.040 writes, I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe.

00:06:12.580 They, they realized they didn't have the justification to suppress it.

00:06:17.520 They suppressed it anyway.

00:06:18.920 The answer is unexplained.

00:06:21.760 I think we can accurately deduce it was politics.

00:06:24.260 What did you make of it?

00:06:25.580 This is the bombshell from the Twitter file story.

00:06:29.140 It's nothing to do with Hunter Biden.

00:06:31.840 It's nothing really to do with Twitter.

00:06:34.540 It's actually about us.

00:06:36.180 The news from the Twitter file story is that we are not crazy.

00:06:40.640 Okay.

00:06:40.800 The news from the Twitter file story is that they have been gaslighting us for years at

00:06:47.220 this point.

00:06:47.760 And we can finally now see, not only did they suppress the story, which everybody knew, but

00:06:53.820 they knew that it was wrong to suppress the story.

00:06:57.320 They knew that they were not only on shaky ground, but they didn't have a single leg to

00:07:00.980 stand on.

00:07:01.660 The, the decision to prohibit Twitter users from privately messaging the story, not just

00:07:08.360 from posting it on their public feeds, but from privately messaging it was a category

00:07:12.660 previously reserved only for child pornography.

00:07:15.940 And the Hunter Biden laptop did include pretty dodgy pornography.

00:07:19.820 Who knows if the girls were 18, but that, that was not the file that you couldn't send.

00:07:23.720 It was the New York post story that you could not send either.

00:07:27.040 So now the new category at Twitter was that you, you could, you could not send a child pornography

00:07:33.260 or something that would be severely damaging to Joe Biden in the lead up to an election.

00:07:36.960 Now, I think that all polls and statistics are basically nonsense, but there was a poll taken

00:07:41.620 after the election, which showed that 12% of Biden voters would not have voted for

00:07:45.900 Joe Biden had they known about the laptop story.

00:07:48.400 So that would have been enough to sway the election.

00:07:50.260 If you're the sort who believes statistics and polls, certainly the Twitter people, the

00:07:54.400 people who are running this believed that this would help Joe Biden.

00:07:57.940 And then this gets to the question of Jack Dorsey.

00:08:00.300 What did he know?

00:08:01.300 Apparently nothing.

00:08:02.300 While the cat was away, the mice played that they were all bickering about this.

00:08:07.020 The people with the power on the safety and trust team, uh, were not listening to the

00:08:10.740 people on the communications and policy team, and they were just doing basically whatever

00:08:14.440 they wanted to do.

00:08:15.740 And then you had the lone Democrat in America, Ro Khanna, Representative Ro Khanna, who writes

00:08:20.680 into Twitter.

00:08:21.620 This was so egregious that you had a Democrat congressman writing in and saying, hey, fellas,

00:08:26.640 we're getting a little pushback here on Capitol Hill on account of you're obviously rigging

00:08:31.400 the election here, and you have no justifiable argument for why you're doing that.

00:08:36.700 Can you explain?

00:08:37.920 And then we see in the Twitter files, a response from Vijaya Gaddy, who says, well, you understand,

00:08:43.240 it's, it's because of our policies here and, and because we think this could be unsafe and

00:08:49.040 harmful.

00:08:49.120 And, and then you get Connor responds and says, right, but you know, the first amendment, you

00:08:55.140 know, these principles of free speech that our country is based on, this really doesn't

00:08:59.540 look good.

00:09:00.120 And the reason that it is a political matter is because Twitter is not nearly a private

00:09:04.960 company.

00:09:05.920 Twitter represents the public sphere square.

00:09:09.060 So in the public square and at least notionally self-governing republic, that is where we make

00:09:14.160 our laws.

00:09:14.660 We persuade our fellow citizens.

00:09:16.060 So if half the country is booted out of the public square, or if the conservative point

00:09:21.540 of view at the crucial moments is not permitted to be spoken in the public square, then you've

00:09:26.180 got a takeover of the political order.

00:09:28.260 And by the way, Twitter is the smallest of these big tech companies and forget about the

00:09:32.340 Twitter files for a second.

00:09:33.760 You know, there are some liberal journalists who are responding to this, this report and

00:09:38.340 saying, well, there's no evidence that the Biden administration, you know, or the government

00:09:42.980 really played any role here.

00:09:44.780 This was just Twitter libs making their own decisions.

00:09:47.100 But we do know that the government was putting their fingers on the scales in the social media

00:09:53.020 censorship because Mark Zuckerberg admitted on Joe Rogan's podcast that the FBI warned

00:09:58.020 him to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, the very same story we're talking about.

00:10:02.160 So we know that that is all happening.

00:10:04.880 Now we just know that we know.

00:10:07.460 Now we've got the receipts provided by Matt Taibbi.

00:10:10.520 And it's very funny that Matt Taibbi, a liberal journalist, although he's more independent

00:10:15.560 than most liberal journalists, but the man is not on the right, that the reaction to

00:10:19.880 his exposing this widespread corruption at a crucial moment for our political order from

00:10:25.880 the journalists on the left is to say, how dare you, Matt Taibbi, expose the truth and

00:10:32.780 speak truth to power?

00:10:34.300 So this is where I feel like the story is today.

00:10:36.120 And perhaps we'll learn more in what Elon says is coming, more to Matt and also Barry

00:10:40.640 Weiss now.

00:10:41.440 So I look forward to reading both of those submissions on Substack and learning more and

00:10:46.040 am open minded to more.

00:10:47.840 Thus far, there isn't a smoking gun.

00:10:49.360 It's more color on a story we already knew, which is Twitter's abhorrent behavior with respect

00:10:53.380 to the Hunter Biden laptop story, which The New York Post had exclusively a couple of weeks

00:10:57.600 before the election and which Twitter not only suppressed, but as you point out, refused to allow

00:11:02.220 people to even share privately on their Twitter DMs.

00:11:05.300 If I wanted to send it to you because we follow each other via DM, Twitter would not have allowed

00:11:10.220 it.

00:11:10.520 I mean, it's insane.

00:11:11.300 As you point out, the standard for that previously was something illegal.

00:11:14.480 And internally, the communications that we've just seen now make very clear they did not

00:11:19.820 know whether this was hacked.

00:11:21.480 They had a suspicion that it was hacked, backed up by nothing, by absolutely nothing.

00:11:28.300 There was one exchange that was interesting in which the when I get the titles right, former

00:11:34.000 global communications VP Brandon Borman seemed to be having some hesitation over their suppression

00:11:40.500 and asked, can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?

00:11:44.860 I think he means like the policy to suppress hacked documents.

00:11:48.140 And James Baker, the controversial former FBI general counsel who'd been involved in the

00:11:53.900 bureau's Russian collusion, ridiculous investigation, and from there went to head Twitter's legal

00:11:59.900 ops, he responded by saying it's reasonable for us to assume that they may have been hacked

00:12:07.940 and that caution is warranted.

00:12:10.460 It's reasonable for us to assume they may have been hacked and caution is warranted.

00:12:16.880 Caution might have included.

00:12:18.440 We are not sure whether of the providence of these documents.

00:12:22.940 There has been an allegation made that there may have been some hacking.

00:12:27.040 We were not able to verify that.

00:12:28.300 But the New York Post, one of the nation's oldest newspapers, is claiming that it wasn't

00:12:32.020 right.

00:12:32.680 No, they suppressed.

00:12:34.200 They suppressed because they wanted to suppress because they understood full well that it could

00:12:38.720 cost Joe Biden votes.

00:12:40.240 That's really where we are.

00:12:41.080 But your point about the media is the real scandal here.

00:12:44.340 Go ahead.

00:12:44.540 By the way, even the hacking defense that you heard from some of these hacks at Twitter,

00:12:50.300 pun unintended, is a weak argument when we're talking about journalism.

00:12:55.800 And you see that from Ro Khanna in Congress.

00:12:58.260 You know, this lone Democrat who said, guys, we're getting a lot of pushback on the free

00:13:02.100 speech.

00:13:02.900 Ro Khanna says, even if the materials were hacked, you wouldn't apply this principle to

00:13:07.600 any other journalistic story.

00:13:09.260 I think the insinuation is you'd have no problem publishing some piece that were damaging to

00:13:17.380 Republicans if it were hacked.

00:13:18.680 The New York Times has no problem publishing information, even if the source of that information

00:13:22.740 is somewhat dubious.

00:13:24.060 You're only applying this here.

00:13:25.200 Trump's tax returns, Sarah Palin's emails.

00:13:28.340 We can go back to the Pentagon Papers.

00:13:30.520 The journalist is not held accountable for publishing hacked materials unless the journalist

00:13:34.760 participated meaningfully in the hack or encouraged the hack in the first place.

00:13:39.080 The New York Times knows that Twitter understood that they didn't care.

00:13:43.180 Keep going.

00:13:44.420 Of course.

00:13:44.880 Of course.

00:13:45.560 And so that falls apart.

00:13:47.480 It doesn't matter, though.

00:13:48.280 It was a Twitter conclusion in search of a justification.

00:13:52.400 And that's why, as their justification kept falling apart, and Matt Taibbi points this

00:13:56.680 out very well in the Twitter files, the Twitter leadership decided to double down on the error.

00:14:03.900 It's an old principle known to New Yorkers and Italian-Americans in New York in particular.

00:14:10.540 I remember I could hear some of my relatives say this.

00:14:13.340 Deny till you die.

00:14:15.100 You get caught in a bad action, and you just don't give up the game.

00:14:19.300 And so I think that is the effect of the Twitter files.

00:14:21.800 As you say, there's no new news here.

00:14:24.320 It just shows us we are not crazy.

00:14:26.680 And Donald Trump is reacting in a very aggressive way to this, but rightly so, because what he

00:14:33.720 has been saying for years has now been revealed.

00:14:37.040 There is mass corruption going on.

00:14:39.260 There was a rigging of the election, whatever you want to talk about the details.

00:14:43.460 And so he's furious.

00:14:44.700 I think a lot of people will be furious, too, because now we know for sure what we already

00:14:49.140 knew.

00:14:49.940 That's the thing.

00:14:50.740 So I want to get to what it's really done is triggered the same people who ignored the

00:14:55.780 story and supported the suppression of the story in the first place.

00:14:59.600 They're very triggered that more color on the story is coming out and that Elon Musk gave

00:15:04.580 the story to Matt Taibbi, an independent journalist.

00:15:07.260 Trigger, trigger, trigger.

00:15:08.200 We'll get to that one sec.

00:15:09.400 You mentioned Trump, and I want to stop there.

00:15:11.360 He understandably is angry, honestly, like Trump, of course, over the top rhetoric and response.

00:15:16.220 You can take it to the bank with him.

00:15:18.140 But who could blame him?

00:15:20.140 Who could blame him?

00:15:21.400 The media is so excited to talk about his absurd proposed resolution to this problem.

00:15:27.700 They skip right over what was done to him.

00:15:31.360 He was running for president.

00:15:34.060 He was trying to get reelected as president of the United States.

00:15:37.740 And this is more proof that there were massive media organizations colluding to stop it, whether

00:15:44.580 it was Twitter suppressing the story or Facebook suppressing the story.

00:15:48.340 And so Trump tweets out a massive fraud of this type of magnitude allows for the termination

00:15:54.680 of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.

00:16:00.280 Well, that's not true.

00:16:02.400 It's not true.

00:16:04.120 He undermines himself.

00:16:05.460 He doesn't need to go that far.

00:16:06.840 You know, he should just make the point that what he's been saying all along, which is this

00:16:10.920 was not a free and fair election, has been further validated.

00:16:15.500 Megan, no matter what one thinks of Donald Trump, I think we all need to agree he always

00:16:20.700 needs to go that far.

00:16:22.020 It is just intrinsic to who the man is.

00:16:24.560 He will always go as far as one can possibly go.

00:16:27.760 I was reading his response, which, as you say, he is given to hyperbole in his rhetoric.

00:16:34.280 That is just a fact of his oratory and approach to politics.

00:16:37.980 But when he makes this statement, a massive fraud of this sort allows for the upending

00:16:44.060 of all of our rules, including the Constitution, it depends on what the meaning of the word

00:16:50.240 allows, allows, not to sound too much like Bill Clinton here.

00:16:54.240 But if what he is saying is prescriptive, that now as a result of this expose, we will have

00:17:01.040 either the immediate reinstatement of Donald Trump as president or a snap election like you

00:17:05.560 might have in a parliamentary system, obviously that is not going to happen.

00:17:09.440 But if allows is being used here in a descriptive way, saying that the fraud that we have seen

00:17:15.540 perpetrated by our most powerful institutions, including the government, but also the media

00:17:21.340 and also big tech and all the rest of it, if given that fraud, this allows for the upending

00:17:28.060 of our constitutional rules.

00:17:29.840 That actually is a descriptive fact.

00:17:32.220 You did see that happen.

00:17:33.440 You saw the upending of election laws in Pennsylvania, for instance, in 2020.

00:17:38.620 You see the upending of the rules governing our public square.

00:17:42.520 You see that in particular in the Twitter files.

00:17:45.280 And so if the point that Trump is making, which I think one could read into it, whether or not

00:17:49.700 that is what he is implying or not, if what he is saying is that our government is not currently

00:17:57.760 operating like the bill up on Capitol Hill, like we were taught in civics class, like

00:18:02.220 we read in the Constitution, that is simply a fact.

00:18:05.160 And it's up to conservatives now either to do what we always do, which is fight the previous

00:18:11.220 war and complain about how things aren't exactly the way that they were at the end of the 18th

00:18:15.480 century and how upset George Washington would be.

00:18:18.140 Or we can fight the war that we are currently in and recognize that the lowercase c constitution

00:18:23.780 that governs our country is a little bit different than what we read on the parchment.

00:18:27.080 And engage in in the system that we do, in fact, live in.

00:18:31.480 That's what you saw Elon Musk do.

00:18:33.980 Elon Musk put his money where our mouths were, and he just bought up Twitter and exposed files,

00:18:39.280 mostly because he was irritated that they banned the Babylon Bee.

00:18:42.540 Well, whatever the man's motivations, he is engaging in that real political system.

00:18:47.460 And it was expensive to do.

00:18:49.300 It's shedding a lot of light.

00:18:50.560 And I think conservatives need to react in much the same way.

00:18:53.900 Well, don't forget the New York Times suppress the story.

00:18:55.700 The Washington Post suppressed the story.

00:18:57.680 They went along with, oh, it's hacked, hacked, disinformation, disinformation.

00:19:01.720 And it took months for them to come around.

00:19:04.700 CBS two weeks ago finally ran a report saying, oh, we've been able to verify that the laptop

00:19:10.480 was real after Leslie Stahl looking Donald Trump in the face and saying, that can't be verified.

00:19:15.320 It can't be done.

00:19:16.680 So the mass media all participated.

00:19:19.440 It wasn't just Twitter.

00:19:20.360 Twitter was first, but all of them agreed, we're not going to publish this information.

00:19:25.560 We're not even going to look into it.

00:19:27.000 And it was verifiable, as we now know, because they've all gone on to verify it.

00:19:31.080 So what does Elon Musk do?

00:19:32.700 He's in a pickle, right?

00:19:33.640 He's got to find somebody who will report the truth.

00:19:36.960 You know, it's like Wonka.

00:19:38.160 He couldn't bring any adults into the factory to take over because they would have wanted to

00:19:42.740 do it their own way.

00:19:43.940 They'd already proven they couldn't just be loyal to Wonka.

00:19:46.500 So he had to go outside.

00:19:48.160 He had to go to children.

00:19:49.540 Elon Musk was in a similar position.

00:19:51.740 He couldn't go to The New York Times.

00:19:53.180 He couldn't go to The Washington Post.

00:19:54.480 They'd already shown their their bias against reporting anything fairly on this story.

00:20:00.040 So he had to go to an independent journalist like Matt Taibbi, who will not do what Elon wants.

00:20:05.460 He will do what the facts show.

00:20:07.160 That's what Matt Taibbi is over.

00:20:08.420 He's loyal to none of these hacks.

00:20:09.780 He's known for sticking a finger in the eye of these corporate people.

00:20:13.080 So if that's what it had shown, you know, with respect to Elon or anybody else, that's

00:20:17.640 what he would have reported.

00:20:18.940 But he is under such attack right now.

00:20:21.920 Michael, Matt Taibbi, just for reporting what the files show.

00:20:26.720 The richest part of this whole story, as far as I'm concerned, is the media.

00:20:31.660 It's as I say, the story is about us and how we're not crazy.

00:20:34.840 And then the news that's that we're seeing is in the news itself, because the line that

00:20:40.640 you're seeing leveled against Matt Taibbi coming from people like Wajahat Ali, coming

00:20:44.860 from people like Ben Collins at NBC, coming from all of these blue checks in journalism

00:20:49.260 is they say, Matt Taibbi is now a PR flack for the richest man in the world.

00:20:56.420 He, this guy, he used to be a good journalist, but now he's nothing but a spokesman, a tool

00:21:02.860 for the richest man in the world.

00:21:05.000 And I think, you know, fellas, you work for NBC, you work for this outlet, you work for

00:21:11.680 that outlet, you work, I mean, and really we're talking about the entire journalistic

00:21:14.720 establishment.

00:21:17.160 Collectively, you're talking about powerful entrenched entities that are much, much richer

00:21:21.260 than Elon Musk.

00:21:22.500 Elon Musk has a lot of money, but he is one guy.

00:21:24.840 OK, and Matt Taibbi is reporting an actual story that all of you people not only didn't

00:21:30.620 uncover, not only didn't investigate, but actively worked to cover up for interests that are far

00:21:36.760 more entrenched, far more powerful and far richer than Elon Musk.

00:21:41.560 So before you accuse Matt Taibbi of something, how about you take a look in the mirror and look

00:21:47.020 at your own corruption?

00:21:48.980 That is such a good point.

00:21:50.640 It's what choice did he have?

00:21:52.380 What was he going to what was going to happen if you went to The New York Times or to The

00:21:56.100 Washington Post or to NBC with this story?

00:21:58.440 They would have done exactly what they did before.

00:22:00.660 Only they had even more reason to do it this time around, because now their own reputations

00:22:05.700 were already invested in the oh, this is disinformation, right?

00:22:09.060 Like now they've they've embarrassed themselves already by going along that line.

00:22:13.900 They're not going to be running to report how bad their embarrassment really should have

00:22:17.940 been, how it really was being wrongly suppressed and they went along with it.

00:22:22.160 So he goes to Taibbi and then you get like that guy, Ben Collins at NBC, who tweets out

00:22:26.920 the following Elon Musk paid forty four billion to discover what we already knew.

00:22:30.980 Content moderation is messy and involves whole teams of people with a range of viewpoints trying

00:22:35.260 to appease different political factions.

00:22:36.660 He then gave leaks in quotes to Substack Man to present it as a blockbuster.

00:22:44.600 What a prick Ben Collins is.

00:22:46.500 Substack Man, Matt Taibbi.

00:22:48.840 I mean, honestly, what has Ben Collins ever done?

00:22:50.900 What is I never heard of him?

00:22:52.220 I never heard him and ever until he's been saying all the social justice bullshit lately.

00:22:57.060 Matt Taibbi, I mean, we could go down the list of all the great reporting he's done.

00:23:00.640 His his his quotes and his journalism are on the back of several books because they're

00:23:04.700 so clever and insightful on and on it goes.

00:23:07.600 He's made it as an independent to the point where he's trusted by both sides.

00:23:10.600 He is of the left, but he's a guy who could appear on Fox News as well.

00:23:14.720 Ben Collins should take a seat because Substack Man just got a great scoop.

00:23:19.100 And even if you don't think there's a smoking gun in it, there's no question that it's a

00:23:22.880 major scoop for Matt.

00:23:24.160 And rather than saying, hey, let's see what he has.

00:23:26.320 Why attack him unless you're feeling defensive about your own positioning on it?

00:23:32.360 Well, of course, Matt Taibbi's report here just exposes all these guys, Ben Collins in

00:23:37.900 particular, but the rest of them as as total hacks.

00:23:41.320 But you can see the hackery even in the way they've changed their tune on the story.

00:23:47.020 In 2020, we were told that this story was so explosive and dangerous that it had to be

00:23:52.900 actively suppressed by the people who control our public square.

00:23:56.000 Some of the most powerful people on earth.

00:23:57.900 You couldn't even private message it.

00:23:59.940 And now we're told, oh, it's a nothing burger.

00:24:02.660 This is the classic Clinton PR strategy.

00:24:05.780 The Clintons for their entire career going back to the 80s, they would say, oh, here's

00:24:12.500 a scandal.

00:24:13.620 No, it isn't.

00:24:14.800 What do you mean a scandal?

00:24:15.860 No, there's no scandal.

00:24:17.140 Stop asking me about that scandal.

00:24:18.500 There's no such thing as a scandal for months and months and years and years.

00:24:21.660 And then finally, when they couldn't deny it anymore, they would say, oh, that's old

00:24:24.420 news.

00:24:25.120 Oh, forget about it.

00:24:26.000 Who cares?

00:24:26.540 At this point, what does it matter?

00:24:28.260 And so when we talk about these people sounding like PR hacks, which is the accusation against

00:24:34.580 Matt Taibbi, these establishment liberal journalists are using all of the tactics of PR professionals.

00:24:43.160 I just think the difference here is that they're they're not doing it very well.

00:24:47.180 They're not convincing every anybody, hence the need to resort to insults and ad hominems.

00:24:52.720 Well, what's what's left to come left with a shoe that's left to drop is what contact

00:24:57.240 was there between Twitter and the FBI?

00:24:58.780 And what warnings did the FBI give Twitter about this Hunter Biden, quote, unquote, disinformation

00:25:04.940 on this laptop?

00:25:07.200 Right.

00:25:07.420 Because we know they spoke to Zuckerberg over at Facebook specifically in advance of this

00:25:12.800 or about around this.

00:25:14.380 And what what happened with respect to Twitter at the time?

00:25:18.120 That that'll be someplace in here.

00:25:19.840 Elon is apparently overwhelmed with information and a company he's trying to turn around and

00:25:24.680 so on.

00:25:25.180 And so he kind of just it sounds like he gave a document dump to Taibbi.

00:25:28.760 And so we'll see in the coming days.

00:25:30.600 He's saying that we're going to get more information.

00:25:32.040 I'm looking forward to that and to more media embarrassment.

00:25:36.020 Meanwhile, can I just end with this as we leave the laptop discussion that the the legally

00:25:40.800 blind.

00:25:42.500 Computer repair guy in Delaware who found this thing to begin with, well, you know, Hunter

00:25:47.320 Biden left it in twenty nineteen like a dope like the dope that he is.

00:25:51.240 And the guy found it and figured out what was on it.

00:25:55.040 And gave it to Rudy Giuliani.

00:25:57.660 And in addition to the FBI, he gave it to the FBI.

00:25:59.880 They did nothing.

00:26:00.880 Then he gave it to Rudy Giuliani, who gave it to Miranda Devine of The New York Post.

00:26:04.560 He comes out and makes a good point.

00:26:06.980 Listen to him.

00:26:07.580 I think this is on Fox.

00:26:08.800 Sot one.

00:26:10.340 I basically was financially ruined by Twitter last year.

00:26:14.480 I tried to save my career because Twitter labeled my actions hacking.

00:26:18.320 I went after them in a defamation suit.

00:26:20.080 I think, though, ultimately the goal from the opposition was to make sure that Twitter would

00:26:26.180 cut up, cut my legs off and make sure that I would never have an opportunity to fight

00:26:30.520 my battles in the court of law again.

00:26:32.020 And so obviously watching Elon release this material over Friday night was very exciting

00:26:39.440 for me because what I felt like I knew the whole time was true.

00:26:44.180 And I feel vindicated.

00:26:47.600 It's a good point.

00:26:48.920 You forget about the smears against that guy in this narrative that it was all hacked,

00:26:53.440 you know, that everybody knew and there wasn't much of a dispute that it that he was sort

00:26:57.640 of ground zero for the release of the laptop.

00:27:00.100 But this speculation that it was a hacking did impugn that man unfairly.

00:27:03.840 No, it's a great point.

00:27:05.560 And it's vindication for him in particular.

00:27:08.060 And it's vindication for all of us.

00:27:10.940 My problem is rather than be vindicated after the fact, I would much prefer to win in real

00:27:17.360 time.

00:27:17.820 And so, yes, I feel vindicated in my suspicions on Twitter and big tech censorship.

00:27:23.500 Yes, I feel vindicated on the COVID misinformation that we were all told on the origins of COVID,

00:27:29.960 on the efficacy of some of those treatments and the masks and all the rest of it on the

00:27:33.420 involvement between the NIH and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

00:27:37.220 Yes, I feel vindicated on the Russia hoax.

00:27:39.320 Yes, I feel vindicated on the FBI spying on Trump's campaign.

00:27:42.880 I feel vindicated on all these things.

00:27:44.200 But I'd rather stop being vindicated and start winning.

00:27:48.060 And so the question for the Republicans and for the conservatives right now is, how do we

00:27:52.320 stop the next one?

00:27:53.800 How do we stop just uncovering problems and corruption two years later and prevent the next

00:27:59.720 liberal operation that is probably underway right now?

00:28:04.400 One one piece of that is making a big deal out of the exposure of the other side's bad

00:28:12.080 acting.

00:28:12.400 You know, I mean, it is important that the general population hear about this, about these

00:28:17.760 discussions, about CBS and The New York Times and Washington Post ultimately verifying what

00:28:22.160 was unfair, verifiable, not for for no other reason than this.

00:28:26.960 It should shame those organizations or at least make them slightly more reluctant to repeat

00:28:33.040 the same behavior the next time.

00:28:34.620 You know, you don't get mulligan after mulligan after mulligan.

00:28:38.180 You know, you get the one.

00:28:39.960 And this was a huge one.

00:28:41.880 This really was a huge one two weeks before a presidential election.

00:28:44.660 So it's important for those of us who are not beholden to, you know, the politics of

00:28:50.080 the left to hold them to account so that the word gets out and so that they know we're

00:28:54.640 watching them and and are very well aware that we will embarrass them again and it'll

00:28:59.240 be worse and it'll grow.

00:29:00.500 And at some point it won't be ignorable by anybody who's not, you know, a partisan hack

00:29:05.140 in the media.

00:29:05.800 All right.

00:29:06.160 More with Michael Knowles after this.

00:29:07.320 Meghan and Harry just dropped a longer trailer for their big Netflix documentary, which is coming

00:29:13.460 out this Thursday and next Thursday, like the double.

00:29:17.180 Wait until you see this, folks.

00:29:18.780 Don't go away.

00:29:23.300 Michael, they're back.

00:29:26.020 I guess they weren't satisfied that their first trailer was titillating enough that it

00:29:30.680 didn't get enough people talking about them, which is always their goal, even though they

00:29:33.760 really want privacy.

00:29:34.660 OK, that's what they want.

00:29:35.500 Could you just take a seat and stop talking about it because they want their privacy?

00:29:38.520 They released yet another go at a trailer trying to get people to watch the documentary.

00:29:46.600 I have air quotes up about Meghan and Harry Kardashian's part two.

00:29:53.020 OK, here's the latest attempt.

00:29:55.900 It's really hard to look back on it now and go, what on earth happened?

00:30:01.160 You hear that?

00:30:02.280 That is the sound of hearts breaking all around the world.

00:30:04.940 She's becoming a royal rock star.

00:30:07.100 And then everything changed.

00:30:13.780 There's a hierarchy of the family.

00:30:16.180 You know, there's leaking, but there's also planting of stories.

00:30:19.380 There was a war against Meghan to suit other people's genders.

00:30:24.120 It's about hatred.

00:30:25.340 It's about race.

00:30:26.600 It's a dirty game.

00:30:28.740 The pain and suffering of women marrying into this institution, this feeding frenzy.

00:30:33.520 I realized they're never going to protect you.

00:30:40.380 I was terrified.

00:30:42.260 I didn't want history to repeat itself.

00:30:49.260 No one knows the full truth.

00:30:51.700 We know the full truth.

00:30:52.640 Oh, my God.

00:30:57.160 There's so much to say.

00:30:59.140 I mean, first of all, like they want to pretend that they had nothing to do with this.

00:31:03.640 It's really just their story, but it's told through somebody else's vision.

00:31:07.200 The fact that she's including in there that she was a royal rock star.

00:31:10.580 OK.

00:31:11.100 All right.

00:31:11.560 Got it.

00:31:12.120 And then everything changed just in a snap.

00:31:15.800 Everything changed.

00:31:17.280 What what could it have been?

00:31:19.280 What could it have been that changed?

00:31:21.040 Could it have been you guys being narcissistic jerks at every turn, bullying members of the

00:31:27.200 palace, complaining constantly if not every piece of press was complimentary enough of

00:31:32.300 you being nasty to William and Kate?

00:31:34.560 I could go on.

00:31:36.020 But there's a reason the press turned on her that has nothing to do with, as the clip

00:31:40.000 says, hatred and race.

00:31:43.360 What did you make of it?

00:31:44.940 Megan, you know how when people have problems in life and, you know, everybody goes through

00:31:50.720 problems when people just consistently seem to have problems at every single stage with

00:31:56.540 like all of their relationships and circumstances.

00:31:59.940 And usually that's everybody else's fault.

00:32:03.380 Right.

00:32:03.640 That could never possibly be the person who is the only common thread here, as some have

00:32:09.360 suggested Meghan Markle might be.

00:32:11.680 I don't really even understand what the object of the whining is here.

00:32:18.560 You mentioned and they mentioned racism.

00:32:21.980 I always thought that was the most laughable part of Meghan Markle's international self-pity

00:32:27.600 party, because if you looked at Meghan Markle, you would have no idea that she's black.

00:32:31.620 I am significantly darker than Meghan Markle.

00:32:34.500 My Sicilian family is significantly darker.

00:32:37.000 That one always seemed so preposterous.

00:32:39.440 But then I loved Prince Harry there.

00:32:41.020 He says, you know, in this family, my accent's not that great.

00:32:44.640 I'll just turn it to Paul McCartney.

00:32:45.120 Yeah, she was good.

00:32:45.800 I was into it.

00:32:47.060 Thank you so much.

00:32:48.060 Well, you know, in this family, there's always a little bit of a hierarchy.

00:32:51.720 In my mind, when I hear British people, they all just sound like Paul McCartney.

00:32:55.840 And so if the point is that Harry is second banana here to Prince William, yeah, buddy,

00:33:03.720 that's true.

00:33:05.000 That's the way it goes.

00:33:06.100 And so, yes, Meghan is going to be second banana to Kate.

00:33:10.020 That's what you signed up for.

00:33:11.640 Did Meghan Markle Google the royal family before she accepted the wedding proposal?

00:33:16.240 Oh, she would have you believe she didn't.

00:33:17.920 She would have you believe she had no idea who Prince Harry was.

00:33:20.700 Oh, Prince who?

00:33:21.460 Who are you?

00:33:21.940 Who's Lady Diana?

00:33:22.860 What?

00:33:23.080 I never heard of it.

00:33:23.600 No, that's really what she has to believe.

00:33:24.880 No, I'm not ringing a bell.

00:33:26.080 Of course.

00:33:26.500 It's absurd.

00:33:26.800 So she went prince hunting and she got her prince and then pretended that this is not

00:33:32.040 what she wanted whatsoever.

00:33:33.660 And now they just whine all the time.

00:33:36.980 I am not watching the documentary, you'll be shocked to hear.

00:33:40.980 I am watching The Crown.

00:33:42.640 I love The Crown.

00:33:43.800 Overall, quite a good show.

00:33:45.120 It does show the similarities between Meghan Markle and Princess Diana, actually, by the

00:33:49.740 way, but not in the way that I think Meghan's fan or two would like.

00:33:55.300 But what you take away from watching The Crown and from following the royal family for the

00:34:00.780 reign of Queen Elizabeth is that that woman might be the only admirable person in that

00:34:06.720 whole family.

00:34:07.500 I do think William and Kate have really stepped up and they've shown a lot of dignity and

00:34:12.040 restrained and done a lot to rehabilitate the royal family.

00:34:16.180 But when you look, especially in those early days, the only person in that family who seemed

00:34:21.200 to have any sense of duty, of obligation, class, decorum, was Queen Elizabeth, surrounded,

00:34:27.880 especially in the 90s, with all of those insane scandals of these royals who can think of nothing

00:34:33.240 more than themselves.

00:34:34.520 And it's a consequence, I think, of the modern view of politics on the left and even on the

00:34:39.740 right, which looks at politics predominantly through a lens of rights and entitlement.

00:34:45.160 You know, I am owed this.

00:34:46.560 This is my right.

00:34:47.640 But that is not the traditional conservative understanding of politics.

00:34:51.460 And it's not the point of the monarchy.

00:34:52.920 The point of the monarchy is duty, obligation, suppressing one's personality to take on the

00:34:59.820 role as a sovereign and as a representative of the whole country.

00:35:03.800 And these narcissists are just completely incapable of it.

00:35:07.400 And so they are going to be singing their sob song for the next several decades.

00:35:13.320 And I think we're going to be over here.

00:35:15.580 Well, we're going to be playing the soundtrack, I think, with the world's tiniest violin.

00:35:18.880 Yes, that that's her pain and suffering that she lost her voice.

00:35:25.420 What did you think was going to happen when you thought of marrying a prince?

00:35:29.260 You only thought about the castle and you forgot about what would also happen, which is

00:35:34.620 you're no longer allowed to spew your woke nonsense because the royal family is about more

00:35:39.900 than themselves.

00:35:41.420 They represent a huge constituency that doesn't want to hear their political views, whether

00:35:46.340 you're named William, whether you're named Kate, Elizabeth, Philip or Meghan Markle.

00:35:52.060 And so her pain and suffering at losing her voice really is none of our concern.

00:35:56.320 We don't give a damn.

00:35:58.120 Secondly, the notion of I and then everything changed.

00:36:03.400 OK, if everything changed like that, then it wasn't racism.

00:36:07.760 It wasn't racism because there wasn't a day when you were like, surprise, I'm mixed race.

00:36:13.020 Right. It was like they knew the press went nuts when they first covered the fact that

00:36:18.040 Meghan and Harry were together.

00:36:19.300 Her mixed race background came out.

00:36:21.520 OK, great. It was celebrated.

00:36:23.120 I was at NBC.

00:36:24.160 We did all these segments.

00:36:25.600 Everyone did all these segments on how the royal family was modernizing, you know, bringing

00:36:29.620 fresh faced Meghan Markle into the equation.

00:36:32.520 An American divorcee mixed race.

00:36:35.340 OK, the press loved her.

00:36:37.360 And in today's day and age, they freaking love that narrative.

00:36:39.680 Nobody was like, oh, my God.

00:36:41.500 Right. So what was it?

00:36:43.440 The media did turn on her.

00:36:45.140 Why? If it was racism, what was it?

00:36:48.180 How did they go from loving to hate?

00:36:50.100 Could it possibly have been her own behavior?

00:36:53.900 This is the thing this woman never gets.

00:36:56.120 And her husband is just as clueless.

00:36:59.320 You know, it reminds me of a line that my friend Andrew Klavan said about bigots.

00:37:04.200 He said the problem with bigots is not even that they're wrong about the other guy.

00:37:10.100 Very often, bigots have a point about the other guy.

00:37:12.840 It's that they can't see their own flaws.

00:37:15.180 They can't recognize that they partake of the same fallen human nature as all the people

00:37:19.240 that they're willing to castigate.

00:37:20.760 And you see this with narcissists.

00:37:22.740 You see this with the people who just think that everything is and ought to be about them.

00:37:29.200 But when you take on that role, you are taking on a life of service.

00:37:34.080 Uneasy is the head that wears the crown.

00:37:36.100 And that's true even of those who wear the tiaras.

00:37:38.680 The point is to suppress one's personality and actually to serve the public.

00:37:44.120 And it's such a damning reflection on the age that we're living in

00:37:48.500 that people would rather play a princess in a movie than be an actual princess.

00:37:55.160 You had an actress get a taste of the real thing.

00:37:58.320 And what did she do?

00:37:59.360 She said, I want to go back to the artifice.

00:38:03.240 And she says, they'll never protect you.

00:38:04.780 She's talking that, you know, they'll never protect you.

00:38:06.680 She realized that meaning, I assume the royal family against the press.

00:38:10.740 Hello.

00:38:11.560 The press does what it wants.

00:38:15.100 The royal family cannot suppress the press.

00:38:18.040 Sorry to break it to you.

00:38:19.480 But the press is its own independent entity.

00:38:21.900 And the royal family, do you think royal family wanted to see all the Prince Andrew

00:38:25.920 articles that were out every place?

00:38:27.980 Do you think they loved seeing the Diana and Charles articles day after day after?

00:38:32.680 No, the royal family is just as limited as any other public figure

00:38:37.040 in suppressing negative stories about it or any member of it.

00:38:41.820 She misunderstood that.

00:38:43.540 She thought they had some massive power to make all the negative press about her go away.

00:38:47.460 And they don't.

00:38:48.480 It's called life in the public eye.

00:38:49.840 The castle, the servants, the staff, the fame.

00:38:54.660 It comes at a price.

00:38:56.120 And maybe indeed it was too much for her.

00:38:58.060 But why couldn't she have just said that instead of lashing out about against everyone around

00:39:02.600 her who had given her all those lovely things, right?

00:39:06.360 They fast tracked her into that family.

00:39:08.280 And instead of showing an ounce of gratitude, she's been playing the victim ever since.

00:39:12.760 Don't get me started on the codependent husband who is just as bad.

00:39:16.200 OK, let's turn the let's turn the page as I understand.

00:39:20.520 But how do you really feel, Megan?

00:39:21.920 I feel I got a lot of thoughts on this.

00:39:23.780 I got a lot of thoughts.

00:39:25.120 Let me just tell you something, Michael.

00:39:26.380 I was cleaning out my house the other day and I found my Megan and Harry mug.

00:39:30.360 I was there for the wedding.

00:39:31.840 I had a Megan in here.

00:39:33.020 I would.

00:39:33.320 Those were nicer times.

00:39:34.360 I was rooting for them.

00:39:35.700 I really thought it was going to be a lovely union.

00:39:37.860 Things have changed.

00:39:38.540 OK, they are not in the running for Time magazine person of the year, at least not so far as

00:39:45.100 I understand it.

00:39:46.360 And who is in the running among those on the finalists?

00:39:49.400 It's, of course, Zelensky.

00:39:50.960 He's probably going to get it because it's time around protesters.

00:39:55.900 That's a good.

00:39:56.440 I like that idea.

00:39:58.520 Liz Cheney.

00:40:00.300 OK, and here's the one that's really got the folks over at Morning Joe upset.

00:40:06.240 I'll just play you the soundbite number 10.

00:40:09.900 I'm going to read the shortlist.

00:40:11.280 Hold on.

00:40:12.320 This makes sense.

00:40:13.800 Xi Jinping.

00:40:15.040 This makes sense.

00:40:16.580 The U.S. Supreme Court.

00:40:18.020 This could make sense.

00:40:19.420 Elon Musk.

00:40:20.760 Liz Cheney.

00:40:22.340 Volodymyr Zelensky makes sense.

00:40:25.000 Mackenzie Scott.

00:40:27.480 Protesters in Iran makes sense.

00:40:29.940 Ron DeSantis makes no sense to me.

00:40:32.220 Gun safety advocates.

00:40:33.660 In any, in any, in any, not just on this list.

00:40:35.740 By the way, in general.

00:40:37.340 Yeah.

00:40:37.820 By the way, that was a blanket statement.

00:40:42.120 What?

00:40:43.000 And the time guy had to go on to explain.

00:40:46.420 I don't.

00:40:47.120 Are you familiar with what happened in Florida on voting day in November?

00:40:52.320 And the fact that he is at least one of the top favorites for the Republican nomination.

00:40:56.640 He's changing the face of politics down there.

00:40:58.600 Now, he wasn't.

00:40:59.360 He clearly wasn't a DeSantis fan, but she just she doesn't.

00:41:02.320 She doesn't get it.

00:41:03.360 Like, doesn't make any sense to her at all.

00:41:05.980 Well, because she understands that if Liz Cheney were, for instance, to get the award,

00:41:11.220 that would be wonderful for Liz Cheney's two constituents.

00:41:15.300 Unlike Ron DeSantis, who has not only led in this remarkable way in Florida, and you saw

00:41:22.400 the results of that on election day, but has almost singularly united the Republican Party,

00:41:28.020 the Trump factions and the kind of anti-Trump factions seem to be coalescing behind this

00:41:33.300 man.

00:41:33.680 Whether that can keep up for two years remains to be seen.

00:41:36.000 But yeah, why would we ever want to talk about that guy who is now, according to polls in

00:41:40.360 Iowa, New Hampshire, obviously Florida, is leading on Donald Trump, who is the presumptive

00:41:46.100 Republican nominee, the former president, universal name recognition for 40 years.

00:41:50.940 Yeah.

00:41:51.140 Why talk about that guy in Florida?

00:41:52.440 What's he ever done?

00:41:53.880 Well, I mean, of course, it just goes.

00:41:55.400 It's just a little preview of what's to come.

00:41:57.260 He's a loser.

00:41:58.160 He hasn't done anything.

00:41:59.260 And to the extent he's done anything, it's incredibly controversial and bad.

00:42:02.520 And he's Trump 2.0.

00:42:04.360 Morning Joe will switch to that just very soon.

00:42:07.060 As soon as they see DeSantis beating Trump in all the polls and they learn they have to

00:42:10.600 let go of Trump if that ever happens, that'll become the new narrative.

00:42:14.160 But it's so funny to me that she skips right over Liz Cheney.

00:42:16.560 Like, sure.

00:42:17.120 OK, I get that.

00:42:18.120 But Ron DeSantis, who it turned the entire state of Florida, which used to be a critical

00:42:22.780 swing state in presidential elections, red.

00:42:25.400 I don't get it.

00:42:26.440 Why?

00:42:27.160 What?

00:42:28.080 It is amazing.

00:42:29.380 Juan Williams made this point the other day.

00:42:31.180 Juan Williams, obviously, a Democrat.

00:42:33.800 Name me a politician in the United States who has had a better year than Ron DeSantis.

00:42:39.900 Whether you're a Democrat, Republican, moderate, you can't name one.

00:42:43.780 I can't think of a single politician who has had a better year.

00:42:46.400 So if you're just looking at the man of the year and you're not putting Ron DeSantis in

00:42:51.980 contention for that, I think you've revealed your cards.

00:42:55.440 Yeah.

00:42:56.060 All right.

00:42:56.480 Last but not least, we have to discuss Tampax.

00:42:59.700 Of course.

00:43:00.920 Of course.

00:43:02.940 They they're in the news.

00:43:04.940 And Michael has thoughts.

00:43:06.900 They when there were rumors that Twitter was going to go bankrupt and it was going to be

00:43:10.480 offline almost, you know, any moment they decided to tweet.

00:43:15.220 And I've seen Tampax tweet before.

00:43:17.760 It's like, why is my tampon tweeting at me?

00:43:21.900 And they they tweeted out.

00:43:25.120 Hold on.

00:43:25.640 I want to make sure I get it correct.

00:43:27.500 You don't want to you don't want to misspeak for the tampons.

00:43:31.140 Exactly.

00:43:31.500 So they say refused to let Twitter shut down before we shared this tweet.

00:43:40.220 And then they tweeted, presumably to Elon, you're in their DMS.

00:43:47.440 We're in them.

00:43:49.840 We are not the same.

00:43:50.820 So, you know, you know, Tampax, you're disgusting.

00:43:54.540 And a lot of people feel the way you feel with the face and don't understand why Tampax

00:44:00.020 is getting political.

00:44:02.020 Like, could you just sit down there and absorb?

00:44:05.800 That's your one job.

00:44:08.020 It's a reminder to everybody.

00:44:11.880 You you don't need to tweet everything that pops into your head, especially if you're a

00:44:18.040 feminine product, you don't and presumably you don't even have opposable thumbs in that

00:44:22.600 case, with which you tweet.

00:44:24.580 You don't have to do it.

00:44:26.380 You don't have to chase edginess all the time, which is what social media impels us all to

00:44:31.980 do is you just always want to say the next edgiest thing.

00:44:35.140 And pretty soon you're saying all sorts of madness, probably with which one does not even

00:44:38.840 agree.

00:44:39.540 But but you don't have to do that all the time.

00:44:41.780 And also, not everything has to be sexual.

00:44:44.980 I know in our culture, everything has to be sexual now.

00:44:48.660 I know that in our culture, story time at the library for some reason is sexual.

00:44:52.340 I know I get it.

00:44:53.600 But some things don't have to be some things.

00:44:57.000 If the tampons just keep doing their job, that will be fine.

00:45:01.340 They'll keep selling.

00:45:02.540 I don't need those images in my head or on my timeline.

00:45:06.520 That's the thing.

00:45:07.340 It's like one more thing that got political that didn't need to.

00:45:11.240 Why do we have to think about politics when we watch NBA basketball?

00:45:14.080 When we watch the Super Bowl, when we watch the Academy Awards.

00:45:17.760 Now I got to think about politics when I put a tampon in.

00:45:21.220 No, no.

00:45:22.340 This is where we draw the line.

00:45:23.680 They've gone too far.

00:45:24.800 Procter & Gamble, you've lost your minds.

00:45:27.920 They've lost it.

00:45:29.060 And I, for one, I'm boycotting Tampax.

00:45:31.940 I don't know.

00:45:32.720 I will.

00:45:33.200 I am going to in the future.

00:45:34.600 I will be buying zero Tampax products.

00:45:37.440 Playtex it is.

00:45:38.360 I got to figure out whether they're owned by Procter & Gamble, too, because it's over between

00:45:43.080 me.

00:45:44.380 I didn't know my tampon was thinking about me.

00:45:47.140 Very disconcerting, actually, when one thinks about it.

00:45:49.300 And that it had an agenda up there.

00:45:50.880 It's thinking about how to manipulate me.

00:45:52.460 It thinks it has an advantage because it's in there.

00:45:54.620 Thank you for that.

00:46:01.080 Thank you for that.

00:46:01.860 That was as fun as I thought it would be.

00:46:03.400 Well, I learned about that story from you.

00:46:04.840 So thank you.

00:46:05.680 Thank you.

00:46:06.760 The Michael Knowles show is always that entertaining.

00:46:09.220 You should watch it if you're not already.

00:46:10.800 Not to mention following him on Twitter, where you might want to unfollow the Tampax and follow

00:46:16.420 Michael Knowles.

00:46:17.540 Great to see you.

00:46:19.000 Megan, as always, wonderful to be with you.

00:46:21.000 See you next time.

00:46:21.540 OK, coming up next, we turn to Kelly's court and the appeal Amber Heard just filed in her

00:46:28.740 case against Johnny Depp.

00:46:29.920 We have a full analysis of her arguments and whether they are likely to hold water.

00:46:34.260 And don't forget, folks, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph

00:46:37.720 Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing

00:46:41.860 to our YouTube channel, YouTube dot com slash Megan Kelly.

00:46:45.320 If you prefer an audio podcast, you can follow and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher,

00:46:52.280 wherever you get your podcast for free.

00:46:54.520 And while you're downloading us there, go ahead and download Doug Brunt, dedicated with Doug

00:46:58.200 Brunt, whose podcast is En Fuego, where he interviews top authors, including Paulina

00:47:03.580 Portzkova, Nelson DeMille, Lee Child, and on and on.

00:47:07.320 You're going to find our full archives on our website and you can see Doug Brunt's on his

00:47:11.800 as well.

00:47:15.320 Now it's time for Kelly's court.

00:47:17.220 So many hot cases to get to, including actress Amber Heard officially files an appeal over

00:47:21.500 the Johnny Depp defamation verdict.

00:47:23.720 And we will go through her grounds.

00:47:26.440 Good Morning America anchors TJ Holmes and Amy Robach get pulled off the air today amid allegations

00:47:33.100 that they have been having an affair.

00:47:35.900 They're both married to other people and jury deliberations are underway in the Harvey Weinstein

00:47:40.500 trial right now out in Los Angeles.

00:47:43.720 Joining me now to discuss it all.

00:47:45.500 Mark Eiglarsch, a former prosecutor, now criminal defense attorney and Arthur Idala, trial attorney

00:47:50.820 and managing partner at Idala, Bertuna and Kamens.

00:47:54.260 And Arthur represents Harvey Weinstein in the New York case.

00:47:59.500 He was a trial attorney in that case, which did not go Harvey's way, but it is going up on

00:48:03.400 appeal right now to the highest court in New York state.

00:48:06.720 It's called the Court of Appeals.

00:48:07.640 That's our highest court and looks pretty good.

00:48:11.660 I have to say, like, better than you might want if you don't like Harvey Weinstein, Arthur.

00:48:17.600 Yeah, well, I guess I just have to start off by saying, like, I have no objectivity on this

00:48:22.040 case, right?

00:48:22.700 No, we know.

00:48:23.360 We know.

00:48:23.640 Since I met Harvey in May of 2019, maybe even April of 2019.

00:48:29.860 But the fact that in a nutshell, he was acquitted of certain of the charges in Manhattan, but

00:48:36.460 he was sentenced to 23 years on the ones he was convicted of.

00:48:40.480 So what's happened since then is we argued, my partner, Judge Kamens, argued in front of

00:48:44.200 the appellate division, and all of the media reports were that those five judges, the first

00:48:49.120 time it was an all-female panel, five female judges in the appellate division, they all

00:48:54.160 seemed to be going after the prosecutor and the trial judge.

00:48:57.520 And it seemed the headlines of the papers were like things going Harvey's way.

00:49:01.260 And then they came out with a 63-page opinion, which is a very long opinion, saying, well,

00:49:06.220 yeah, the judge made all these mistakes, but we're going to let it go.

00:49:10.140 And that was obviously quite upsetting.

00:49:12.820 And then to our shock, and I'm going to use that word shock, the most conservative judge

00:49:17.940 on the Court of Appeals, we wrote a letter to the Court of Appeals, and one of the judges

00:49:22.360 gets, the judge it was assigned to was Judge Janet DeFiori.

00:49:26.220 She's the chief.

00:49:26.860 She, in 1.8% of the time, has ruled for the defendant.

00:49:32.380 The rest of the time, she rules for the prosecutors.

00:49:34.780 And when we got the letter saying, yes, there are issues that need to be debated here in the

00:49:39.420 Court of Appeals, we were shocked.

00:49:41.420 Diana Fabi, who wrote the letter to the judge, screamed kind of with joy that, yes, we will

00:49:48.840 be going up to the Court of Appeals.

00:49:50.500 There's a high likelihood, actually, that I'm going to be arguing the case in Albany.

00:49:55.220 I want to see this.

00:49:56.040 When is it?

00:49:56.860 Oh, we don't have it scheduled yet.

00:49:57.940 We don't have a date.

00:49:58.940 Our brief is due in about two weeks, and then they have about two months to reply.

00:50:03.200 So it'll probably be in the spring.

00:50:04.700 There is one little piece of news that has also taken place.

00:50:08.040 The judge that tried the Harvey Weinstein case, Judge James Burke, he was just up for reappointment

00:50:13.680 by the mayor.

00:50:14.820 And the mayor has a committee of 14 lawyers and retired judges.

00:50:19.020 And he did not get reappointed.

00:50:21.780 They took all the feedback from all the lawyers of the last decade, and there was a vote.

00:50:28.400 And the vote was that he did not deserve reappointments, which to say that's not going to play a role

00:50:34.000 in the seven judges on the Court of Appeals would be a little naive.

00:50:37.700 And just to jump in, just to jump in, Arthur, to sum it up for the audience that hasn't been following it as closely,

00:50:43.240 one of the biggest errors you claim that that judge made was, as we call prior bad acts evidence, right?

00:50:49.380 Like the allowing of all these women who had nothing to do with the trial to take the stand and say,

00:50:54.460 me too, me too, me too, because that creates a prejudice against the defendant that, well,

00:50:59.640 if he did all that stuff, he must have done the stuff he's being accused of.

00:51:02.640 But there's usually an exception to that general evidentiary rule if you're offering all the others

00:51:07.480 to prove a pattern.

00:51:09.100 And that's what the prosecution argued in your New York case.

00:51:12.820 And that's what the prosecution's arguing out in the L.A. case, too, that there's a pattern.

00:51:16.640 So do I have the basic grounds for the appeal and the argument, right?

00:51:20.860 I mean, that's one of the big grounds.

00:51:22.380 The other big ground is, look, this is all in New York and in California.

00:51:26.020 This is all he said, she said.

00:51:27.800 In other words, Mr. Weinstein, in both cases, acknowledges the encounters.

00:51:33.640 It's just, was it consensual or wasn't consensual?

00:51:36.400 And in the New York case, the judge was going to allow, I think it was 26 other bad acts,

00:51:42.800 having nothing to do with with sex crimes, having and having nothing to do with arrests.

00:51:48.480 But he had a fight with his brother and he punched him in the nose.

00:51:51.620 He had a fight with his his manager and left him on the side of the road.

00:51:56.240 All of these crazy things that normally would never come in.

00:51:59.280 So Harvey wanted to testify so bad, so badly.

00:52:03.380 He wanted to take the stand.

00:52:04.580 But the judge's ruling was so severe and so out of the ordinary that he couldn't.

00:52:10.040 And that's another big issue that I think the Court of Appeals is going to look at.

00:52:13.980 So here, that's all the setup for what's happening in L.A., where the jury is out right now.

00:52:18.600 They got the case Friday afternoon.

00:52:20.600 After lunch, they deliberated for a few hours Friday afternoon and they just resumed out in

00:52:25.520 California.

00:52:26.560 The verdict could come at any time.

00:52:27.860 So we're officially on Verdict Watch, because now, Mark, if Arthur wins in New York, Harvey

00:52:34.380 Weinstein could be a free man.

00:52:36.820 And then this L.A.

00:52:38.840 verdict really matters.

00:52:40.800 But it's raising some of the same issues that they had in New York.

00:52:45.420 Right.

00:52:45.660 And many of us might say knee jerk.

00:52:48.300 It wouldn't be me.

00:52:49.020 But, you know, who cares?

00:52:50.500 Why don't they just let everything in?

00:52:53.160 Shouldn't the jurors really know the truth?

00:52:55.320 And the reality is the answer is no, because think of any of your loved ones facing a trial

00:53:01.200 for fill in the blank.

00:53:03.260 And somehow a very open minded liberal judge says, sure, we'll just let everything in,

00:53:09.040 every bad act that that person did.

00:53:10.580 And I'm not saying that's what happened with Harvey.

00:53:12.100 I'd like to know from Arthur the specific acts that he believes should not have been brought

00:53:16.640 in other than the one that he mentioned.

00:53:19.520 But it would be unfair.

00:53:21.220 This is about having a fair trial, not just for Harvey Weinstein.

00:53:24.780 Because if we change the rules, we lower the burden of proof, then when we want protection,

00:53:29.960 when we want protection for our loved ones, it's not there.

00:53:32.960 So that's the bigger issue here.

00:53:34.980 OK, but out in L.A., they also, as I understand it, allowed prior bad acts.

00:53:39.320 But even if you put that to the side, though, the testimony of the women in the Harvey L.A.

00:53:45.780 case is getting sliced and diced in a way we've seen before.

00:53:51.020 And it's somewhat disconcerting.

00:53:53.000 But you you got to listen to it because the defense is making points.

00:53:57.340 They're scoring a lot of points, in my view, as they cross examine woman after woman, including

00:54:02.280 the wife of the sitting governor, Jennifer Newsom, is one of the accusers saying she was she says

00:54:09.540 it was a sexual assault, a rape by Harvey Weinstein in a hotel room back in 2005 at the Beverly Hills

00:54:15.060 Hotel.

00:54:16.140 The defense says this was transactional sex and regret is far from rape.

00:54:23.300 They said Siebel Newsom continued to email Harvey for meetings after the alleged rape and asked

00:54:32.300 if there were movie roles she could audition for.

00:54:35.220 They say she only turned on Harvey when it, quote, became trendy and to, quote, join a movement.

00:54:42.500 So without getting into those characterizations, I'll go to you on this, Arthur.

00:54:47.920 The fact that several of these plaintiffs had ongoing relationships with him after the alleged

00:54:53.740 sexual assault, it's complicated these relationships, but that could definitely play with the jury.

00:55:00.680 Yeah.

00:55:00.840 And it's very, very similar to what happened in New York.

00:55:04.220 And, you know, don't forget, he was acquitted.

00:55:06.660 He was the biggest case that they wanted was Annabella Shura because that the judge could have

00:55:11.720 given him life without parole.

00:55:13.200 Now, at 60, at 70 years old, giving someone 23 years, I think that's life without parole.

00:55:18.600 But they wanted that life without parole.

00:55:20.740 And they found they found her unbelievable.

00:55:22.820 And you know who her backup witness was, her corroborating witness was that Harvey did this

00:55:27.360 to her was Rosie Perez.

00:55:29.140 And so the two real celebrities that testified against Harvey, he was found not guilty of.

00:55:35.360 But listen, at our trial, one of the women who he was convicted of, we have an email after

00:55:41.460 the alleged assault saying, Harvey, my mom's in town this weekend.

00:55:44.500 I really want you to meet my mother.

00:55:46.060 She's going to love you.

00:55:46.960 I want her to know all about us.

00:55:49.040 But there's a big difference between January and February of 2020 in the world, a big difference.

00:55:54.860 And now in terms of the Me Too movement, we literally had people outside the courthouse

00:56:00.180 screaming about Me Too and convict Harvey while the jury was in the courtroom.

00:56:05.560 That has definitely died down.

00:56:07.360 It has definitely warded things down.

00:56:09.440 And hopefully the jury in L.A. doesn't feel the kind of pressure that I know the jury in

00:56:15.120 New York felt to hand out some sort of a conviction.

00:56:18.220 I think that that evidence is compelling to a jury anyway.

00:56:21.960 There's many reasons why people would have contact with those who they claim abuse them.

00:56:26.820 But to an average juror, that is a huge issue that we can raise as defense attorneys.

00:56:33.160 Why, if somebody raped you, would you then have contact?

00:56:37.760 Why would you initiate contact?

00:56:39.820 As a prosecutor, you've got to ask your alleged victims these questions.

00:56:44.200 And you need to do it in such a way where you're almost questioning, like, well, why?

00:56:50.260 Why would you do that?

00:56:51.400 And let them explain to the jurors.

00:56:53.540 And if they're satisfied, then they can get over that issue.

00:56:56.640 That's right.

00:56:57.000 I mean, it's it's uncomfortable because if you're dealing with an actual rape victim,

00:57:02.220 you feel like such a bad guy doing a cross-examination like that.

00:57:05.220 But you have to because believe all women is ridiculous.

00:57:09.820 It's absurd as a moral principle and it's absurd as a legal principle, even more so.

00:57:14.900 So there's this one woman out there.

00:57:16.140 By the way, I should mention the jury.

00:57:17.260 Our crack producer, Canadian Debbie, tells me that there are nine women, not sorry, nine men,

00:57:22.060 three women on the L.A. jury that many of them said they did not hold strong or any opinions

00:57:26.400 about the Me Too movement when questioned during voir dire when being selected.

00:57:29.720 One of the female jurors said she was on the fence about Me Too and her questionnaire saying,

00:57:33.560 I believe most women, but not necessarily all.

00:57:36.040 And at least one of the men said he was not worried about negative reaction,

00:57:39.760 who may say the verdict sets back the cause of women if they find in favor of Weinstein.

00:57:44.940 So if I can say, to your point about cross-examining some of these women on these issues,

00:57:51.600 when Harvey and I first started our relationship, it was my suggestion.

00:57:56.600 I was like, you need a woman.

00:57:58.020 You need to bring a woman onto this team to do some of these cross-examinations.

00:58:02.000 Not all of them, but to do some of them.

00:58:04.160 And Donna Rattuno came on and boy, I mean, she called BS on some of these women in a way.

00:58:09.420 I have no problem saying I would not feel comfortable doing so.

00:58:12.320 But she was just like, really? Really?

00:58:15.160 He did this to you on Saturday.

00:58:17.140 You took him up on his offer to fly you to see your friends on first class flight in LA on Sunday.

00:58:23.340 You came back the following Saturday.

00:58:25.300 And according to your testimony right now, you then had consensual sex with him?

00:58:29.500 What are you going to do? You have a bridge to sell us?

00:58:31.980 You know, she was able to do that.

00:58:33.060 Arthur, can I ask you something?

00:58:34.060 Arthur, let me ask you this.

00:58:35.660 I'm glad I'm asking this question and not answering it.

00:58:38.060 But how come you couldn't have done that same cross?

00:58:40.520 If Harvey said, no, Arthur, you're my guy.

00:58:43.800 I don't need anyone else.

00:58:45.740 Why couldn't you have done that?

00:58:47.800 So I crossed the first eyewitness, not a victim.

00:58:52.540 But she was saying she was an eyewitness to the, I believe, the Annabella Shura thing.

00:58:56.780 And I made her cry, OK, during my cross-examination.

00:59:00.720 Not hysterically, but she got upset.

00:59:02.860 The judge, like, went a little nuts on me.

00:59:05.400 Miss Roydala.

00:59:06.000 And I wasn't yelling or anything like that.

00:59:07.960 I was just asking her quick.

00:59:09.080 I was calling BS on a lot of her line of questioning.

00:59:12.420 And there are all these women jurors.

00:59:14.240 And you just feel this.

00:59:15.680 It's just such a balancing act that I think men have to do so that you don't appear to be a bully.

00:59:21.660 That you don't appeal to be a, you know, basically in New York and in L.A., the word bully comes up all the time.

00:59:27.260 Harvey Weinstein was a bully.

00:59:28.360 Harvey Weinstein was a bully.

00:59:29.580 I think Harvey Weinstein was actually a bully.

00:59:31.640 But there's a lot of real estate between being a bully and being a rapist.

00:59:34.580 So I didn't want to come off as being a bully during an aggressive cross-examination.

00:59:40.340 As I said, Mark, the very first witness I cross-examined was crying on the stand.

00:59:44.800 The judge made me sit down because, you know, she was so upset.

00:59:48.780 I will say, I think a New York jury can take that dynamic a lot more easily than an L.A. jury.

00:59:52.600 I mean, New Yorkers are tough.

00:59:53.800 They're like our life is getting bullied.

00:59:56.320 We're bullies and we're bullied on a daily basis.

00:59:58.580 It's New York.

00:59:59.280 It's the New York way.

00:59:59.920 L.A. is more like her feelings, sensitivity.

01:00:03.660 This this is just one highlight on the subject that we're discussing.

01:00:07.420 One of the massage therapists who's accusing Harvey in L.A., she alleged that he assaulted her after one treatment she gave him.

01:00:16.180 She twice agreed to treat him again.

01:00:19.400 This is I mean, I get it.

01:00:21.060 I get it because he's extremely powerful.

01:00:24.180 Well, I get I get having an ongoing relationship of some sort.

01:00:27.280 I got to say, I'm struggling to understand locking yourself in a room with a man where no one is there to protect.

01:00:33.700 Like, that's that's a little OK.

01:00:35.760 That's tough to understand.

01:00:36.920 But in any event, this is what the prosecution is up against in this trial.

01:00:41.820 And I've got to spend some time on Jane Doe.

01:00:44.320 Number one, some of the women have outed themselves like Jennifer Newsome.

01:00:47.500 So it's OK to talk about their identities and others haven't like Jane Doe.

01:00:49.960 Number one, she was the biggest focus of the prosecution's final rebuttal.

01:00:54.940 The on Friday.

01:00:56.400 And they say her her allegations carry the most charges.

01:01:00.300 The the prosecution's argument was that Jane Doe.

01:01:02.620 Number one would would not have been able to describe Weinstein's genitalia if she had not been sexually assaulted by him.

01:01:10.640 Now, the the look of Harvey Weinstein's junk, forgive me, has been discussed a lot.

01:01:17.000 And it's so disturbing.

01:01:18.920 So trigger warning for the audience.

01:01:20.880 Trigger, trigger.

01:01:21.800 During her testimony, Jane Doe, number one, spoke at length about Weinstein's testicles on the stand.

01:01:28.220 She tearfully told the jury that Weinstein demanded demanded that she suck his.

01:01:33.280 OK, well, I have to say it because it's it's his balls or forced her to perform oral sex on him.

01:01:40.520 Rehashing the graphic detail, she said he forced me to do what he asked.

01:01:43.280 I was crying and so on.

01:01:44.960 But during cross-examination, one of Weinstein's attorneys, Alan Jackson, asked Jane Doe, number one, how Weinstein's forgive me, audience, balls were in her mouth.

01:01:53.740 If Weinstein, as it turns out, does not have testicles.

01:01:59.320 Oh, my God.

01:02:01.060 He doesn't have testicles.

01:02:02.180 I know.

01:02:02.500 I know too much about this, Megan.

01:02:04.040 More than I would ever want to know in my life about any man.

01:02:06.280 Where are they?

01:02:07.460 Where are they?

01:02:08.720 What happened to them?

01:02:10.360 They're like on the side of his body.

01:02:12.160 They're actually there, but they're not in the scrotum.

01:02:15.480 They're inside of his body.

01:02:18.060 But he had the same, it says inside his weight, my my Canadian Debbie says, because of an infection, his testicles were taken from his scrotum and put into his inner thighs.

01:02:29.180 Right.

01:02:29.480 That's what I said.

01:02:30.000 He had the same infection that killed who was the head of the Muppets?

01:02:38.780 Jim Henson.

01:02:39.600 Had Jim Henson not gotten that disease, Harvey Weinstein would have died.

01:02:43.300 They only knew how to treat him because Henson had that disease and he almost died.

01:02:47.220 And yes, that is something that they had to do.

01:02:49.420 Thank you, balls historian.

01:02:51.000 Can we go back to the relevance of these things?

01:02:54.200 Well, it's identification.

01:02:55.900 That's the relevance is the identity.

01:02:57.320 Right.

01:02:57.520 And I think it's powerful testimony because they are so unusual and she knows them and she can describe them.

01:03:03.700 And that is the only way she would have known.

01:03:05.200 But she described them wrong.

01:03:06.900 That's the point.

01:03:08.160 He was basically saying you couldn't suck them.

01:03:09.780 You can't put them in your mouth.

01:03:10.560 Yeah.

01:03:11.120 They're in his leg.

01:03:13.120 You can't put them in your mouth.

01:03:14.520 That's the issue, Mark.

01:03:15.640 And that's why a lot of this stuff is like, if you look at all these in both states, New York and California, if you look at all of the statements and you dissect them, they're like three or four different stories.

01:03:29.420 They're not little inconsistencies.

01:03:31.140 They're a major inconsistencies like the one of which we speak right this second.

01:03:35.320 You cannot put those testicles in your mouth.

01:03:38.020 Sorry for saying that on Kelly's court here.

01:03:40.320 But just.

01:03:41.440 I won the bet.

01:03:42.260 I knew he'd say that.

01:03:43.140 My apologies, my apologies to the audience.

01:03:45.880 I apologize.

01:03:46.860 They're all politically correct terms here.

01:03:49.400 It became it became, you know, important legally.

01:03:52.080 And this woman said, I always told the detectives that Weinstein had abnormal testicles.

01:03:57.200 I recalled that he didn't have one.

01:03:59.260 It was like empty skin.

01:04:00.640 So that I mean, that's pretty consistent.

01:04:02.460 Like you could think you could say testicles and mean like empty sack.

01:04:06.260 OK, sorry.

01:04:06.920 We've gotten way too down the rabbit hole.

01:04:08.660 But in any event, we are going to find out, I think, soon there was just a hung jury in the trial of another celebrity, Danny Masterson, out there in L.A.

01:04:17.820 And that was that was a case that I don't know.

01:04:21.640 We weren't sure how that one was going to go.

01:04:23.020 But now that they have a hung jury there, we'll see a hung jury for Harvey would be a huge win, would it not?

01:04:28.780 Meg, I want to ask you one question about your your feeling on this, because I'm pretty sure how I know what Justice Scalia's feeling would be on this.

01:04:37.280 If you're going to take the stand and you're going to you're going to accuse someone of a crime that that's going to put them in jail, to put them in jail for the rest of their life, like basically the death penalty.

01:04:49.560 Don't you think you've got to give your name?

01:04:51.680 Don't you think you have to say who you are if you're going to do that to somebody else?

01:04:55.900 Yes, I do.

01:04:57.220 I do think so.

01:04:58.040 I mean, this Jane Doe stuff is just I understand it in the in the initial accusation parts.

01:05:04.400 And if someone's going to take a plea and it's all going to be quiet, that's one thing.

01:05:08.560 But if you're going to go take the stand and you're going to point at someone and say he raped me and I want him to go to jail for the rest of his life, then people need to know who you are and what your background is.

01:05:18.540 And if someone pops up and says, wait a minute, this person did this, made the same false accusation against me.

01:05:24.140 You need to do investigations.

01:05:25.360 I don't know. I just Jane Doe doesn't seem an American way.

01:05:28.320 There's another side to that, Arthur.

01:05:30.200 And all you have to do is plug in someone you care about and understand what they would go through, certainly in a high profile case by coming forward.

01:05:38.060 And I think it would.

01:05:38.600 But if you're going to come forward, you have to do that.

01:05:40.960 I mean, that's what the Crawford decision from the United States Supreme Court is about.

01:05:44.980 Confrontation clause means you are going to confront someone face to face.

01:05:49.200 Confront without giving the public their name so that so people can.

01:05:52.500 Well, it's a public hearing.

01:05:53.560 It's a public event.

01:05:54.820 It's a public courtroom.

01:05:55.980 So that everything is public except their name.

01:05:58.940 And his name, like he's out there.

01:06:01.940 He can't do Jane Doe or John Doe.

01:06:03.920 Like he's being publicly accused.

01:06:05.560 I do think and I understand the dynamics.

01:06:07.100 Trust me.

01:06:07.680 And I do think there are some cases where we should protect anonymity, especially where a woman is subjected to.

01:06:12.700 Yeah, potential abuse, ongoing abuse.

01:06:15.000 You know, her name getting out there could endanger her.

01:06:17.320 There are certain circumstances.

01:06:18.360 But as a rule, I don't I I see your point.

01:06:22.340 I think it's only fair if you're and I had wrestled with this to some extent in my own life.

01:06:28.040 Back in the Fox News case, I remember most of the women were like, I don't want Roger to know that I'm that I'm talking.

01:06:35.240 I don't want him to know that I came forward to the investigators.

01:06:38.760 And I remember having this discussion myself and saying that's not fair to him.

01:06:44.060 He he gets to know who's accusing him.

01:06:46.900 And, you know, if I'm going to be on that list, he gets to know that I'm on that list.

01:06:50.560 It's just it's only fair because he's got to now going public is a different thing.

01:06:54.180 But I see your point.

01:06:55.400 It's fraught.

01:06:56.620 OK, let's move on, because there's so many other cases that we have to get to.

01:07:00.140 Amber Heard.

01:07:01.380 Amber Heard has filed her appeal in the defamation verdict.

01:07:05.160 She is arguing just a couple highlights that the exclusion of some of her therapy notes in which she reported being abused by Depp resulted in an unfair trial.

01:07:16.460 They were ruled inadmissible by her judge.

01:07:19.160 She argued that the trial should have taken place in California, not Virginia, where the couple lived together.

01:07:25.180 He filed in Virginia because that's where The Washington Post has offices and they have a more favorable defamation statute for him.

01:07:31.760 And now she wants a reversal or a new trial.

01:07:37.080 So what do you make of her chances?

01:07:39.980 Go ahead, Mark.

01:07:40.520 Not on those issues.

01:07:42.220 You know, as Arthur said earlier, you know, the appellate court, they're generally not in the business of reversing convictions.

01:07:48.300 And, you know, they'll say something is error, but then say, well, it's harmless error.

01:07:53.620 It wouldn't have made a difference.

01:07:54.800 And I think if they find either the venue issue or the notes not being admitted to be problematic, they're going to say, well, that wouldn't have made a difference in the outcome of this case.

01:08:04.660 Well, I think the venue issue that stands on all four.

01:08:07.860 That's not a problem at all.

01:08:09.540 If he's allowed to file in the venue that's more favorable to him, then he's allowed to do that.

01:08:14.240 But the what's admissible to a jury regarding those notes is very much in the discretion of the trial judge.

01:08:22.900 We don't know exactly what those notes say or I don't.

01:08:25.980 Wait, I do.

01:08:26.500 I just got an update on that.

01:08:27.640 I just got an update.

01:08:28.400 I'll tell you what's in them.

01:08:29.320 OK, here's the update that we just got.

01:08:31.800 I asked Canadian Debbie.

01:08:33.560 Why were the therapy notes ruled?

01:08:35.520 Canadian Debbie.

01:08:37.100 Canadian Debbie.

01:08:38.080 She's got all the answers.

01:08:38.960 She used to be American Debbie till she married a damn Canadian, then had a bunch of damn Canadian children.

01:08:43.060 Now she lives in damn Canada.

01:08:44.840 Um, so Hurd's legal team was unable to admit the documents into evidence due to hearsay.

01:08:51.100 What's allegedly in them there in June of 2022, Hurd gave NBC numerous documents from a doctor for a Dateline interview.

01:08:58.900 She said they represented years.

01:09:00.760 This is her quote, years and years of real time explanations of what was going on.

01:09:04.180 She says there is a binder worth of years of notes dating back to 2011 from the very beginning of my relationship that were taken by my doctor who I was reporting the abuse to.

01:09:14.340 One 2012 instance, according to Dateline, in which Depp allegedly, according to her, hit her, threw her against a wall and threatened to kill her.

01:09:21.820 Eight months after that, Depp allegedly ripped her nightgown, threw her on the bed.

01:09:25.200 In 2013, he allegedly threw her against a wall and threatened to kill her.

01:09:28.720 So she wanted the notes of her speaking to the therapist, the therapist writing the notes down to be admitted.

01:09:34.760 Um, technically that's double hearsay.

01:09:36.580 Yeah, it doesn't come in legally.

01:09:39.120 Again, I don't think that the court's going to find that it was error.

01:09:42.260 And I certainly don't think it would have made a difference.

01:09:44.840 These jurors didn't find her believable.

01:09:47.340 She screwed up.

01:09:48.160 She chose to just deny things that she should have admitted.

01:09:51.800 You put the poop in the bed.

01:09:53.900 Just say you did it and say you're embarrassed.

01:09:56.260 Just admit the things that you did like he did.

01:09:59.520 And you would have been found to be more credible.

01:10:01.620 But the fact that they found her void of credibility certainly hurts her chances on appeal.

01:10:06.400 That's so true.

01:10:07.500 Wait, Arthur, now listen to this one.

01:10:09.000 So the other thing that I found interesting on her appeal, she she claims that you remember

01:10:14.420 how the jury did find for her on one count they found for him on all of his counts that

01:10:20.380 that he had been defamed by her.

01:10:22.220 And she cross sued against him saying you defame me by saying that you didn't abuse me and that

01:10:28.420 I was a lunatic.

01:10:29.040 And they said, no, no, no.

01:10:32.040 Oh, wait, there's one that we say, yes, he did defame you.

01:10:34.620 His his agent defamed you.

01:10:36.440 And that's attributable to him.

01:10:38.400 And she said that cannot be reconciled with the jury verdict in favor of Depp.

01:10:45.920 She said to find in favor of Depp, the jury had had to have concluded that Depp did not

01:10:49.500 abuse Ms. Hurd and that Hurd knowingly lied in accusing him of abuse.

01:10:53.500 I agree with that.

01:10:54.480 But she goes on to say, but to find in favor of Hurd, the jury must have concluded that

01:10:59.020 Hurd told the truth about being a victim of domestic abuse by Depp.

01:11:02.660 Accordingly, the verdict against Hurd cannot stand.

01:11:06.080 So I pulled that one piece of the verdict that went her way.

01:11:11.780 All right.

01:11:12.060 And this is this is the story.

01:11:13.900 First, just as a reminder, he was awarded 15 million by the jury, 10 million in compensatory,

01:11:18.420 5 million in punitive, and they awarded her 2 million in compensatory.

01:11:23.120 Hold on a second.

01:11:24.100 Where is it?

01:11:25.840 Oh, OK.

01:11:26.840 He's saying it's an inconsistent.

01:11:28.360 But here's the thing.

01:11:29.380 Depp's representative, Adam Waldman, had defamed her, she said, when he called her abuse claims

01:11:35.340 a hoax in a British newspaper.

01:11:37.100 But that claim went on to say that this is the one where they basically said she he made

01:11:46.260 up the story that when the police were coming to his apartment or to her apartment, she ran

01:11:51.720 around knocking things over and trying to make it look like abuse had just happened.

01:11:55.300 This is what this guy, Adam Waldman, allegedly said, that Amber Heard ran around trying to

01:11:59.420 create the look of an abuse scene.

01:12:01.540 And that's how crazy she was.

01:12:03.600 She, you know, knocked shit over and like spilled wine.

01:12:06.560 And the jury said, we don't think she did that.

01:12:10.080 When you look deeper into what that claim actually says, it does not undermine a conclusion

01:12:14.140 that her abuse claims were false.

01:12:17.080 It's not an inconsistent market ideal sometimes where a jury comes back guilty on one thing

01:12:24.440 and not guilty on the other end.

01:12:25.980 You can't, you know, you can't find the guy not guilty of possessing a gun, but guilty

01:12:29.860 of shooting the guy in the head, right?

01:12:31.200 It's an inconsistent verdict.

01:12:32.620 But here, because of the facts scenario you just laid out, that's not going to, that's

01:12:36.280 not going to.

01:12:36.560 I'll tell you one thing I find, I find slightly compelling, but it's not going to affect her

01:12:40.900 appeal.

01:12:42.060 I do find it interesting that a British judge made a finding that there was abuse in this

01:12:49.040 relationship.

01:12:49.420 And that's in here.

01:12:50.180 Yeah, just to point that out, Mark, tell us why you're telling us that.

01:12:52.840 I know it's in there and I know she's raising that issue, but I don't think it's going to

01:12:56.680 help because a factual finding made by a judge across the pond, another trier of fact, has,

01:13:03.980 I think, almost no relevance to what this jury is, you know, what they decided.

01:13:09.280 So to say that another judge somewhere else found that there was merit somehow means that

01:13:15.740 she didn't get a fair trial because she was allowed to write about abuse.

01:13:19.080 I don't agree with that.

01:13:20.140 But from the court of public opinion, my feeling going into this trial was, well, can't she

01:13:25.920 write that op-ed piece about her experience because she feels abused?

01:13:30.940 There's certainly enough that a judge found it to be in another place.

01:13:35.540 Why can't she have that freedom of expression?

01:13:39.360 And now, now is when you bash me, Megan, and say, because she lied all about it.

01:13:42.900 Well, he's she is raising both of those issues, Arthur.

01:13:47.280 She's saying what he said.

01:13:48.640 A judge across the pond said he did abuse me or that there was at least enough that I

01:13:52.920 can say that he abused me.

01:13:54.680 It's not defamatory for me to say it.

01:13:57.020 And then secondly, she's raising this claim, saying I am allowed to have an opinion.

01:14:03.220 The if it's just opinion.

01:14:04.420 If I say, you know, I think so and so has an STD, it's just my opinion.

01:14:10.860 That's not actionable.

01:14:12.020 But if I say so and so has an STD, right, then I like this argument before Arthur gives

01:14:16.820 this.

01:14:17.080 I'm telling you from day one, as an advocate of the First Amendment, this to me was the

01:14:22.640 most compelling argument that she had, that whether she whether she technically is found

01:14:27.820 to be an abuse victim by a jury or not, it's not about that.

01:14:32.640 It's her experience.

01:14:33.860 And if he yells at her and he throws stuff that she can write from her experience to

01:14:40.480 be an abused victim, she can write that as a legal matter under the First Amendment as

01:14:46.880 a legal matter.

01:14:47.480 That's the thing, Arthur, because well, and who knows, because maybe the jury doesn't have

01:14:51.280 to explain what it found was or was not abusive.

01:14:55.840 You know, they may not have believed any word she said about alleged abuse.

01:15:00.420 And so maybe they concluded your your opinion is based on absolutely nothing.

01:15:05.060 You can't like that was an opinion.

01:15:06.580 It was too close to fact.

01:15:07.740 But but anyway, back to my example, I believe so and so has an STD is OK.

01:15:12.040 So and so has an STD is much more problematic if he doesn't actually have it.

01:15:17.200 And she's trying to say my experience was I was abused.

01:15:20.300 That's opinion.

01:15:20.780 And she says in here that holding that that this was not protected opinion, if allowed to

01:15:26.200 stand, undoubtedly will have a chilling effect on other women who wish to speak about abuse

01:15:29.640 involving powerful men.

01:15:32.040 And, you know, Megan, as you know very well, I've been living with this defamation stuff

01:15:37.000 with Professor Dershowitz and that whole thing.

01:15:39.160 I mean, when I say living, but I know more about this than I would ever want to know.

01:15:43.500 And she does have a leg to stand on.

01:15:46.260 But I want to go to what Mr. Eichler said in the very beginning.

01:15:49.580 Appellate courts need really smoking guns to to flip a jury's verdict.

01:15:55.560 Our whole system is supposed to be set up so that the citizens make the decision, not

01:15:59.840 the judges.

01:16:00.780 Yes.

01:16:01.020 Could she say, look, a judge across the pond said this and therefore I can't be that

01:16:06.240 crazy?

01:16:06.820 Yes.

01:16:07.260 Is that enough?

01:16:08.500 Is that no?

01:16:09.300 I mean, in my opinion, that is not going to be enough for them to flip to flip the verdict.

01:16:14.000 Let me just jump in there.

01:16:14.820 I totally agree with that.

01:16:16.360 Different evidentiary standards, different legal standards.

01:16:19.280 That judgment in no way precludes this Virginia judgment.

01:16:22.420 But speak to that second thing about opinion versus fact and how the alleged chilling effect.

01:16:28.100 Well, as Mark is saying, I mean, we want people to be able to speak there to speak their heart,

01:16:34.460 right, to speak what they really feel.

01:16:36.840 But if you speak what you really feel and what you're saying is an outright lie is an outright

01:16:43.060 lie, well, then you lose you lose that privilege that we have as Americans.

01:16:48.320 If that outright lie is going to then hurt someone and really hurt them in a way that's

01:16:53.700 demonstrable, not that it hurt their feelings, but where they've lost money, they've lost

01:16:58.220 jobs, they've lost family members.

01:17:00.220 People don't speak to them anymore.

01:17:01.700 And, you know, I mean, that's why we got a decent outcome with Mr. Dershowitz's case.

01:17:07.080 You did get a good outcome with the Mr. Dershowitz thing where that the woman, just to update our

01:17:11.120 audience, we've brought you this news, but she withdrew her claims.

01:17:14.420 He dropped his claim against her.

01:17:15.840 And she said she may have misremembered the incident with Alan Dershowitz, which is as

01:17:21.720 good as you're ever going to get as a defendant in a case like that.

01:17:24.160 But wait, wait, there was an important point I wanted to raise about the opinion.

01:17:28.280 Oh, Mark, when you're being accused of defaming someone, which is what Amber Heard was,

01:17:34.800 Johnny Depp accused her of defaming him.

01:17:37.100 There is something like defamation by omission, where let's say one of these incidents did

01:17:44.780 happen where, you know, the notes, as she she claims, reflect he hit her.

01:17:50.700 He threw her against a wall.

01:17:51.460 He threatened to kill her.

01:17:52.260 Not good.

01:17:52.760 And abuse.

01:17:53.360 Yes.

01:17:54.100 But let's say for every other day of their relationship for five years, she was abusing

01:17:59.000 him.

01:17:59.620 She was she cut off his finger.

01:18:01.040 She did all the terrible things to him to go into The Washington Post and say, I am the

01:18:05.500 face of domestic violence in America.

01:18:08.960 This is what it looks like.

01:18:10.000 I am an abuse victim that still could be legally problematic because I think it's defamation

01:18:16.380 by omission.

01:18:17.260 You were the chief abuser.

01:18:18.360 And there's very much the chance that that's how this jury felt.

01:18:22.820 Best case scenario for her best.

01:18:25.720 Yes, but I want to clarify something.

01:18:28.060 She never said and I'm not saying that you're saying she's saying that, but she didn't come

01:18:32.800 out and say, I'm the face of domestic violence.

01:18:34.940 Those were not her words.

01:18:36.220 I read her words carefully and I invite everyone to carefully read the op-ed piece.

01:18:42.160 It was her feeling that she was a domestic violence victim.

01:18:45.720 If 98% of the time she was the abuser, but 2%, 0.2%, she had the experience of feeling like

01:18:54.820 a domestic violence victim.

01:18:56.640 What she's saying is not untruthful.

01:18:58.960 It's different if somehow people feel, well, you're being misleading and that, you know,

01:19:03.720 come on, your hands are dirty too.

01:19:05.660 What we're saying is she cannot express her thoughts on the subject matter, period.

01:19:12.760 And I found that to be very narrow.

01:19:15.040 And I felt like that's going to have a chilling effect of other victims in the future.

01:19:19.900 I don't know.

01:19:20.780 She, she, I'm just pulling it back up just to refresh my, my memory.

01:19:25.380 She talks about getting abused when she was younger.

01:19:28.980 I'd been harassed two years ago.

01:19:31.400 Here it is.

01:19:32.200 Two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse.

01:19:37.640 And I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out.

01:19:40.980 The jury clearly felt that was a statement of fact and it was defamatory against Johnny

01:19:45.500 Depp.

01:19:45.780 In addition to the headline of the piece, which she didn't write, but was held accountable

01:19:49.020 for Amber Heard colon.

01:19:50.880 I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our culture's wrath.

01:19:54.740 That has to change.

01:19:56.260 I honestly, if I represented her, I would have handled it differently.

01:20:00.420 I think that they didn't do a good enough job.

01:20:03.220 I really, I don't think they did a good enough job expressing that it's, it's her opinion

01:20:08.940 from what she went through with him and just some of the things that were factually proven.

01:20:15.340 That's enough for her to feel as if she was a domestic violence victim.

01:20:19.540 But here's my point.

01:20:20.320 Also say that her hands aren't clean either.

01:20:22.140 There were some things that she did and I would have made sure she got up on that stand

01:20:25.100 and admitted the things that she did.

01:20:27.280 But do we, do we really think it has a chilling effect, Megan?

01:20:29.700 Does like, is anyone of substance who's really a victim of domestic violence, are they really

01:20:36.880 not going to speak out and talk about it because of this?

01:20:39.700 Yes.

01:20:40.420 Yes.

01:20:40.980 Not if they're really, no, not if they're really victims of domestic, if they've got a

01:20:45.900 black eye.

01:20:46.340 No, yes, even if they're really, but that doesn't change the correctness of the verdict.

01:20:50.820 But I do think that whole case is going to have a chilling effect.

01:20:54.740 And I blame Amber Heard.

01:20:56.300 I blame Amber Heard for that.

01:20:57.420 If she had done what Mark just said, she might have had a way forward.

01:21:00.760 She might not have seemed like such a liar.

01:21:02.840 We went, we've been through this, but like her direct testimony, in my view, was very

01:21:05.640 good.

01:21:06.040 I was one of the people who believed her.

01:21:07.840 And then cross-examination, she was completely decimated.

01:21:10.800 She came across as a pathological liar and she undermined her own point and the arguments

01:21:16.320 of any woman to come after, because thanks to her, they're all going to be looked at

01:21:19.820 suspiciously.

01:21:20.840 No, no, you're making my point.

01:21:22.660 She was exposed as of lying about it.

01:21:26.000 I said, someone who is not lying about it, someone who actually know what really did

01:21:30.780 happen.

01:21:31.660 There's a big difference with saying that's a woman who was a liar.

01:21:34.340 She maybe was hurt emotionally.

01:21:35.900 Yeah, but women are going to worry.

01:21:37.640 Versus someone who is really, any woman who's got a guy on the other side who's got more

01:21:41.700 money or more power is going to worry.

01:21:43.420 That wasn't her case.

01:21:44.300 I mean, he had more money, but she had, she was pretty powerful in her own right.

01:21:48.820 They're going to worry.

01:21:49.600 They're going to worry that they're going to be sued for defamation.

01:21:51.300 And, you know, they're going to stick the lawyers and they're going to hire Arthur Idala

01:21:54.000 and he's going to come get you and make you cry on the stand.

01:21:56.520 Right.

01:21:57.100 Reality, the morality that the gravy trade in the real world, not the celebrity world,

01:22:01.460 women who don't come out against domestic violence, typically it has to do with finances

01:22:05.720 because the abuser is paying the rent, paying the child support and all of that stuff.

01:22:11.100 And, or there's going to be more violence that's going to then come after the proclamations,

01:22:18.540 proclamations of domestic violence.

01:22:20.140 I mean, we're working hard in the system now to protect.

01:22:22.640 Arthur, you know, the second someone comes after your next celebrity client, you will

01:22:28.160 threaten with a countersuit.

01:22:30.340 And that person will worry about being decimated financially, whether they're telling the truth

01:22:35.820 or not.

01:22:36.240 So do not be intellectually dishonest and suggest that somehow that's not a factor moving forward.

01:22:42.080 I'm talking about real people.

01:22:43.420 I'm not talking about celebrities.

01:22:44.520 No disrespect to Megan.

01:22:45.540 I'm not saying you're not a real person because you are a celebrity.

01:22:47.680 But I'm talking about in the real world that you and I live in, Mark.

01:22:51.220 I don't wait.

01:22:51.880 Can I jump in?

01:22:52.740 I got I got your defense.

01:22:53.900 But listen, I got a question for you.

01:22:55.440 And I didn't read the whole filing, but the ruling that what Amber Heard said was not opinion.

01:23:03.640 I mean, is that I don't know whether the judge ruled that as a matter of law or whether the

01:23:08.900 judge was that one of the questions to the jury?

01:23:11.220 Maybe we can go and check it during the commercial break.

01:23:13.240 But would that have been a matter for the jury to decide or for the judge to decide whether

01:23:17.660 this is in actionable opinion?

01:23:21.020 This seems like if the judge, if the judge could have dismissed that as opinion right

01:23:25.300 at the beginning, we never would have had a trial.

01:23:27.360 Right.

01:23:27.620 I don't know.

01:23:28.160 Do you know, Arthur, is somebody a jury question?

01:23:31.360 It is a jury question.

01:23:32.360 A close call.

01:23:33.120 A judge is going to absolutely let jurors decide, as a matter of fact, how they perceive it.

01:23:38.140 So that's that doesn't bode well for her.

01:23:39.780 If it's a jury question, the jury considered it.

01:23:42.040 These appellate courts are very, very, very reluctant to overrule, which is why she needed to

01:23:46.600 be honest about everything so as not to undermine some legitimate claim.

01:23:50.720 She might have had about times where he treated her like a victim.

01:23:54.140 If that were OK, I'm going to pause it there.

01:23:55.980 We're going to come back.

01:23:56.680 And I got to get to the latest on this.

01:23:59.560 Balenciaga just made an interesting move dropping.

01:24:01.820 It's one lawsuit trying to defend itself.

01:24:04.300 And if we have time, we have to get to the latest on Sam Bankman Freed, who's been out

01:24:07.520 there in front of.

01:24:08.900 Well, we'll get to it.

01:24:10.020 Stand by more with Mark and Arthur after this.

01:24:11.620 Before we get to Balenciaga, there's a mess happening over at GMA where the anchors of

01:24:21.520 the third hour, Amy Robach and TJ Holmes, have now been taken off the air.

01:24:28.680 Honestly, I wasn't going to get into this on the air, but now that it's turning into

01:24:31.620 a legal matter, I do think it's kind of interesting.

01:24:33.440 So apparently these two both married to other people were having an affair while co-anchoring

01:24:38.060 the third hour and Daily Mail had somebody following them.

01:24:44.060 They have all these pictures of his hand on her bottom and at some cabin upstate and what

01:24:50.200 was reportedly some getaway.

01:24:52.580 And I mean, this is video of them, quote, canoodling.

01:24:56.080 I read a lot of the word canoodling in the press.

01:24:59.740 And so, I mean, basically, it looks like they got him dead to rights, caught in an

01:25:03.060 extramarital affair.

01:25:04.940 And what happened last week was the story broke, I think, on Thursday and they had him

01:25:09.380 come out and anchored the third hour without her.

01:25:11.380 Then Friday, they had them both come out, didn't acknowledge it, anchored it anyway together.

01:25:15.660 And now today is Monday and they neither one was there this morning.

01:25:22.080 According to The Post, ABC News president Kim Goodwin had an internal call announcing that

01:25:27.200 they would not host the 1 p.m. show, at least today.

01:25:31.040 I got a foreseeable future.

01:25:32.080 I'm not sure how long saying that the affair had become too much of an internal and external

01:25:36.720 distraction, said it was not a violation of company policy, which makes sense, right,

01:25:41.200 because they're equals.

01:25:43.300 But the decision to take them out of their anchor chairs was necessary for the GMA brand.

01:25:48.920 Also saying that this whole thing has not gone down well with GMA anchor Robin Roberts,

01:25:53.380 who is apparently religious and also just didn't like this kind of scandal tainting

01:25:57.220 the show.

01:25:57.780 But here and also The New York Post reporting, and so is Daily Mail, that he had a three year

01:26:03.720 affair before this with another married GMA staffer.

01:26:08.640 This one was a producer that started in 2016.

01:26:11.320 He was married then, too.

01:26:13.260 He was just a correspondent at the time.

01:26:14.800 The woman reportedly fell in love with him.

01:26:16.440 He had a key to her apartment and the wife eventually discovered it.

01:26:20.820 In any event, here's the thing that's interesting to me.

01:26:23.760 I mean, people are fallible.

01:26:25.080 They make bad decisions.

01:26:26.480 But as a legal matter, most anchors on television have to sign morals clauses, which say if you

01:26:32.840 do something that brings the company into disrepute, like a moral failing that brings the company

01:26:37.700 into disrepute, they can fire you, which is why I thought it was so interesting on Thursday

01:26:42.680 they had him come out, but not her, because there's no world post Me Too in which you get

01:26:49.320 to blame it on one versus the other, right?

01:26:52.080 Like on the on the woman and not the man.

01:26:53.860 There's just no like they're both married.

01:26:56.180 Megan, Megan, she was so upset she just couldn't do the show.

01:26:59.380 Maybe that's that's true.

01:27:00.960 But now they're both turfed.

01:27:02.760 And I wonder whether you think in modern day America, 2022 America, they could use the morals

01:27:09.460 clause to get rid of these guys.

01:27:12.380 Yes.

01:27:13.320 Let's go to the contract.

01:27:14.600 Right.

01:27:15.560 You think that somehow their top attorney didn't include some language in there that

01:27:21.020 essentially says that when the anchors become the story and it becomes distracting for the

01:27:27.380 viewers, that perhaps they should go elsewhere.

01:27:30.640 I'm sure that's in there.

01:27:32.140 And I actually read some comments because I'm friends with Amy Roback and I feel for her under

01:27:37.640 these circumstances.

01:27:38.800 But people were asking, like, you're not addressing this.

01:27:42.580 You're talking about the big stories of the day and you guys are just not answering that.

01:27:48.340 Like that becomes a distraction.

01:27:50.440 And it's everywhere.

01:27:51.780 Those clauses that Mark referred to, they're even more amorphous for that.

01:27:56.660 They're just if the company feels that, you know, you've done something against the

01:28:01.060 fabric of of our company, you could go.

01:28:05.580 It doesn't have the effect.

01:28:06.740 It could be anything.

01:28:07.280 You got caught smoking weed.

01:28:08.820 You serve at their disposal.

01:28:11.080 They can do whatever they want.

01:28:11.960 They can get rid of you anytime they want.

01:28:14.200 So, I mean, that's I think from a financial point of view, they should have to pay out.

01:28:18.520 One way to go through the roof.

01:28:20.220 Sorry.

01:28:20.800 Are there repeat that point?

01:28:21.820 I think from a financial point of view, they should have kept them on.

01:28:25.340 Their ratings should have gone through the roof.

01:28:26.700 People will be watching every day to see at least for another couple of weeks.

01:28:30.160 Like what's going on?

01:28:31.220 What's there any double entendres?

01:28:33.660 Like, I mean, it would be much more.

01:28:36.160 See you later.

01:28:36.600 Distracting.

01:28:37.640 How?

01:28:38.280 Just so distracting.

01:28:39.980 Really?

01:28:41.220 Well, all they care about is eyeballs.

01:28:43.360 Megyn Kelly can tell you that.

01:28:44.640 All they care about is eyeballs.

01:28:47.080 Well, but here's what's interesting about the morals clause.

01:28:48.760 So if they didn't violate the morals clause, like GMA could 100 percent pull these two off

01:28:52.680 of anchoring duties at its at its whim.

01:28:55.300 You know, they require no, no, no news organization would say, I have to keep you in that spot

01:29:00.600 forever, no matter what the question is, whether you get paid, right?

01:29:04.500 Whether you get paid and if they violated the morals clause, they don't get paid if they

01:29:08.800 if they didn't violate the morals clause and the news organization knows they didn't violate

01:29:15.440 the morals clause.

01:29:16.700 Then it has to pay.

01:29:18.280 I've or so I've heard in connection with other cases about which I know very little.

01:29:23.900 But I'm just telling you that if an anchor doesn't violate the morals clause at all, then

01:29:29.860 the news organization has to pay you every dollar they owe you.

01:29:33.460 So it's going to be interesting to watch.

01:29:34.840 Very murky.

01:29:35.900 That's murky.

01:29:36.980 Morals to who and what's immoral.

01:29:40.780 And, you know, now is immoral is you're married.

01:29:43.400 You took a vow that you're going to go with another person.

01:29:46.700 Maybe legally separated.

01:29:49.260 Maybe you're starting to see other people.

01:29:51.080 Is that really so immoral?

01:29:52.820 Well, it does become more murky.

01:29:55.220 Well, listen, according to Daily Mail, which broke the story, they were not separated from

01:29:59.180 their spouses when this started back in the spring.

01:30:01.540 And they claim, again, not not confirmed by anybody, not by me, but they say that she wound

01:30:08.500 up leaving her husband, Andrew Shue of Melrose Place fame in August after months into the affair

01:30:14.780 and that he was still with his wife, I think, when this was outed, this affair.

01:30:19.100 But the you know, if this happened 20 years ago, they'd both be fired immediately.

01:30:25.140 Right.

01:30:25.600 But remember, a couple of years ago, we had the scandal with Steve Croft over at CBS at 60 Minutes

01:30:31.740 where like his filthy sexts with some with his affair partner were in The New York Post.

01:30:37.320 It was like the it was the dirtiest.

01:30:40.000 It was like if he withstands this, you can never fire another person for having an affair.

01:30:46.400 Because if like I just think like if they're going to fire them for having affairs, everybody

01:30:51.320 like their defense is going to be everybody had an affair.

01:30:54.720 They're going to be like they're going to put private detectives on every single person

01:30:57.720 to ABC News from the executives to the talent, to the producing staff saying another affair,

01:31:03.260 another like affair can't be is going to have to be something more if GMA or ABC wants to

01:31:08.360 protect itself.

01:31:09.560 Well, having an affair and having an affair with your co-anchor is something completely

01:31:15.440 different.

01:31:16.820 Why?

01:31:17.860 Why?

01:31:18.420 I think, look, Megan Kelly knows who I'm who I'm married to.

01:31:22.480 I'm married to my law partner, but not from a let me not from a moral perspective.

01:31:26.220 I'm guilty.

01:31:28.140 Exactly.

01:31:29.260 In terms of their argument that it affects the brand, it affects that show.

01:31:35.060 Again, I have no problem with it, but I think that they have a stronger argument when it's

01:31:39.120 somebody who you sit next with on the set talking about the big stories of the day.

01:31:44.380 It's awkward.

01:31:45.420 That's for sure.

01:31:46.200 40 years ago.

01:31:47.620 So as opposed to you said 20 years ago, which is 2002.

01:31:50.360 But in like in the 1980s, if this had happened, would it would they be fired or would it

01:31:56.220 be OK?

01:31:57.720 I think so.

01:31:58.400 I think they'd be fired.

01:31:59.620 You recall over at CNN, Jeff Zucker had that affair.

01:32:02.040 But the problem, the reason it was a problem there is not because they had, you know, I

01:32:06.340 think he was married.

01:32:07.400 They would have been going on, according to my sources, for years.

01:32:10.080 But he was her superior.

01:32:11.680 So that was a totally different dynamic.

01:32:13.580 And then he lied about it when asked by his superiors at CNN.

01:32:17.580 This is a different scenario.

01:32:18.960 They're equals.

01:32:19.580 They have some explaining to do to their spouses.

01:32:24.400 I don't know.

01:32:25.200 I feel like that maybe I'm crazy.

01:32:26.920 I feel like they could come back with their audience.

01:32:28.420 But I think you're right, Mark, to not acknowledge it at all.

01:32:31.460 You know, maybe as embarrassing as it might be, you can just say maybe you read some stuff

01:32:35.220 in the press.

01:32:36.180 You know, we we both have some work to do in repairing our personal relationships.

01:32:40.300 We hope you won't hold it against us.

01:32:42.380 We're all going through a lot.

01:32:43.380 Something like I don't know.

01:32:44.060 Right out of the Megyn Kelly playbook.

01:32:45.940 Well, it's too weird.

01:32:49.180 All right.

01:32:49.760 I got to go quickly.

01:32:50.560 So we'll do Balenciaga.

01:32:51.800 They filed one lawsuit in the wake of their weird child pictures next to BDSM type teddy

01:32:58.780 bears.

01:32:59.240 It was just such a disaster.

01:33:00.760 They filed a lawsuit trying to blame it all on this other company, the set designer, saying,

01:33:06.180 oh, you owe us twenty five million.

01:33:07.560 You didn't tell us that this behind this bag you were going to put pictures of a child pornography

01:33:12.740 lawsuit.

01:33:13.840 They dropped it.

01:33:14.600 But Balenciaga got a bunch of headlines saying we're going after they dropped it.

01:33:18.100 They have no case.

01:33:19.320 They have only themselves to blame for their bad behavior.

01:33:21.460 Am I missing something?

01:33:23.340 No, no.

01:33:24.040 You know, they're trying to be out of the box.

01:33:25.540 They're trying to think out of the big vogue and cool.

01:33:27.640 And they went they crossed the line.

01:33:29.600 Yeah.

01:33:29.920 And the public will hold them accountable.

01:33:31.480 And so would a jury.

01:33:32.600 So, yeah, that's right.

01:33:34.220 They tried to distract us with their lawsuit, which they tried to pretend like they didn't

01:33:40.360 know what was in the ad campaign behind that bag, that it had not only Supreme Court child

01:33:45.000 pornography cases, but it also had a book by some guy that shows images of toddlers ostensibly

01:33:53.080 castrated, covered in blood.

01:33:54.720 But that's Balenciaga.

01:33:56.440 That's the one they just dropped.

01:33:57.720 It's not acknowledging that they had no case against the set desire.

01:34:01.080 Why?

01:34:01.680 Because they would have had to approve every single image.

01:34:04.900 That's the truth.

01:34:05.720 All right.

01:34:05.880 Mark and Arthur.

01:34:06.580 Such a pleasure, gentlemen.

01:34:07.740 Great to have you.

01:34:08.840 Thank you.

01:34:09.380 All right.

01:34:10.600 See you soon.

01:34:11.560 My God.

01:34:11.960 Thank you for joining us today.

01:34:13.000 We went to a lot of places, didn't we?

01:34:15.360 Tomorrow, our friends from the fifth column will be here.

01:34:17.760 So don't miss that.

01:34:18.400 In the meantime, download the show on Apple, Pandora, wherever you get your podcasts.

01:34:21.660 OK, also go to YouTube dot com slash Megan Kelly if you'd like to see the visual.

01:34:25.640 In the meantime, we appreciate you guys listening to the show and downloading it.

01:34:28.860 However you take it in.

01:34:29.980 Love being with you.

01:34:30.900 See you tomorrow.

01:34:33.500 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

01:34:35.340 No BS, no agenda and no fear.

01:34:40.600 Thanks for listening.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 05, 2022

Truth About Twitter Files, and Amber Heard Appeals, with Michael Knowles, Arthur Aidala, and Mark Eiglarsh ｜ Ep. 447

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