Tucker and Lemon Firing Fallout, and Dark Brandon Returns, with Victor Davis Hanson, Emily Jashinsky, Michael Moynihan, and Vivek Ramaswamy ｜ Ep. 536
Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon were fired from Fox News on the same day, and the fallout continues to cause heads to explode. We re learning more about the details behind at least one of those firings, and we re joined by the man who some say is at least partly responsible for Don Lemon s demise.
00:24:25.000It's now not a party of the very rich.
00:24:28.000It's a party of the upper middle class to the lower middle class.
00:24:31.000And I think a lot of people like the Disney people or American Airlines or all of these
00:24:38.000corporate people can't quite adjust to that yet.
00:24:41.000Because in some ways, if you look at the congressional districts by income or you look by zip code,
00:24:48.000it's just overwhelming that the Democratic Party is represented by the very wealthy.
00:24:53.000And they outspend Republicans two or three to one.
00:24:56.000And so for somebody, somebody in a conservative show has to reflect the new Republican Party.
00:25:04.000And that's going to be, by definition, very suspicious of corporatism and one world ism and globalism and all of that stuff at the expense of the people in East Palestine, for example.
00:25:18.000So if somebody, if Biden or Buttigieg won't go to East Palestine, then somebody is going to champion that.
00:25:24.000And that had traditionally not been a Republican.
00:25:35.000And sometimes if I may add, not just that people who aren't just glomming on, you know, like Tucker was able to give voice to those people, because even though Tucker has a privileged background, I would be the first to tell you that he just got it.
00:26:53.000And every time she's on film, it's either she's posing as if she's a Hollywood celebrity or she's fixing her makeup or she's in some designer dress.
00:27:01.000She's about as Marxist as I don't know.
00:27:04.000She's a big phony and she has zero credibility among American people.
00:27:08.000And it's innate to the whole woke movement.
00:27:51.000But all of these left wing movements, whether they're Bolsheviks or Jacobin or the 60s, intrinsic to them, they have to be authoritarian.
00:28:00.000They all are authoritarian because they cannot trust the will of the people because people, whether it's Nicaragua or Cuba or Venezuela or the EU and Brexit, people get sick of it.
00:28:12.000And so they have to be cancel culture.
00:28:14.000And if we had an ACLU like we used to have in the 1950s or 60s, they would have been speaking out against all of these suppressions of free speech on Twitter and everything.
00:28:34.000It's it's part of their DNA to suppress free speech because that that suffocates their position, transparency and open debate.
00:28:43.000You saw that with Don Lemon in his last debate when he was interviewing the presidential candidate, the new guy, and he couldn't couldn't debate him.
00:28:51.000All he had to revert to was, I'm a black man.
00:30:00.000Tucker was very brilliant on CNN to kind of package it.
00:30:03.000Tucker used some nasty words about Sidney Powell, which he admitted to and we're in writing, but it's a different story than you're actually diminishing the chances of one of the first female presidential candidates entirely by saying you're past your prime because you're 51 years old.
00:30:15.000That's just the latest example we could keep going on.
00:30:17.000Don and his diva like behavior and abuse of his colleagues and blah, but we could keep going.
00:30:21.000Victor, thank you for coming on with your input.
00:30:26.000Coming up, two of our favorites join us with more reaction to the breaking news.
00:30:30.000Emily Jashinsky and Michael Moynihan with their thoughts on Don Lamont.
00:30:34.000And we'll show you the reaction from the CNN hosts, his his co-hosts this morning.
00:30:39.000Here with more reaction to the media world shakeup, Emily Jashinsky, culture editor at The Federalist and Michael Moynihan, co-host of The Fifth Column podcast.
00:30:51.000Guys, my read of the various reporting on this, I mean, it's all over the board.
00:30:57.000Everybody claims to know why he was fired.
00:31:04.000It was Rupert's decision and it was some sort of personal reason.
00:31:08.000It was Rupert's opinion that he should go, not not necessarily because of a sale, but there could be one potentially down the road in the offing.
00:31:15.000But I'll just give you some flavor. NPR, David Spoken Flick, saying I've spoken with three people with knowledge of Fox's ouster of Tucker.
00:31:22.000They say his digital exchanges captured by the Dominion legal team echo the suite of concerns alleged by his ex producer, Abby Grossberg, that his show's workplace was defined by sexism and bigotry.
00:31:34.000I don't believe that for one second. I don't believe the Abby Grossberg thing had anything to do with Tucker's ouster.
00:31:42.000I reject that, although it's absurd how this woman and her legal team are trying to act like they got him fired.
00:31:48.000I mean, it's just if you read that, they're like, this is a first step in accountability toward Abby.
00:31:53.000Oh, come on. If you think he was fired over that, you're nuts.
00:31:56.000I guarantee you he talked to Abby Grossberg maybe once to say hello to this person when she joined his team and never again.
00:32:01.000I guarantee you. OK, Brian Stelter quoting The Washington Post.
00:32:07.000The Washington Post. Dozens of communications from Carlson and other Fox personnel remain out of public view, redacted at the request of Fox attorneys in the Dominion lawsuit.
00:32:15.000But they've been seen by talks top Fox executives suggesting that there are far more damaging exchanges in there by Tucker about people in management.
00:32:23.000That is a possibility. I am open minded to that, that they he said some bad things about executives that tick people off.
00:32:29.000Daily Beast. Lachlan Murdoch and Suzanne Scott made the call on Friday night again.
00:32:36.000No, it was Rupert to can him in his show. Thanks largely and surprisingly, in part to vulgar comments he made about Sidney Powell,
00:32:46.000as evidenced by the discovery in the Dominion case and Tucker's lawsuit or deposition in which he admitted to calling her the C word and said he was embarrassed about it.
00:32:55.000Zero chance. No way. There is zero chance Fox fired him because he used that word about Sidney Powell.
00:33:03.000It just didn't happen. No, no, I reject that. OK, let me just move on. Wall Street Journal.
00:33:09.000Now that's owned by Rupert. So now we're getting closer to the possibility of at least what Fox wants the messaging to be.
00:33:18.000Carlson, whose contract was renewed in 2021, found out he's being let go about 10 minutes before the network announced his departure.
00:33:25.000Let's see. I had it here someplace, but I think they, too, were saying revelations in the Dominion lawsuit caught them off guard and so on.
00:33:36.000So I I still don't know the answer, you guys, but let's just spend a minute on this Abby Grossberg, who is alleging toxic work environment.
00:33:44.000She worked for Tucker, as far as I can tell, one month.
00:33:47.000She was hired on his team in August and then she got deposed in in September and fired, fired because as soon as she got deposed by Dominion, she came out saying Fox twisted my words.
00:33:58.000They made me work with a lawyer who tried to change my testimony. I'm filing a lawsuit against you. And Fox is like, oh, you revealed a bunch of privileged information.
00:34:05.000You're fired. Anyway, what's your take on where we stand today? Emily, start with you.
00:34:12.000The idea that these hardened media executives had retreated to their fainting couches after hearing Tucker use the C word about Sidney Powell is just unbelievable to the point of laughable.
00:34:23.000Right. Exactly. Exactly. And my interpretation of all this is that it's it's a it's their excuse to get rid of somebody who they found politically to be a problem for them.
00:34:35.000They didn't want to sort of be backing the populist message. And I know Victor Davis Hanson talked a little bit about that earlier.
00:34:41.000I think that's really what it is, is that like Rupert had had enough to your reporting, Megan, and all of this after the Dominion decision snowballs into giving him a really convenient excuse to just say we're done.
00:34:53.000We're done. It's over. Tucker Carlson obviously had there are a couple of things were in any normal workplace.
00:35:00.000You know, if a man is using the C word and it comes out and, you know, discovery or whatever.
00:35:04.000Yeah, you get reprimanded, reprimanded. But this is the top person on their network.
00:35:09.000Let's not act like a human, a human resources dispute is all Fox needed. That was just a bridge too far for them.
00:35:17.000Now, you know, he's he's insulting the executives. Everybody who's worked in journalism knows there should always be a hostile relationship between the business side and the news side.
00:35:26.000That's not unfamiliar to Fox whatsoever. So to act like all of this, you know, this was just the final straw for them, I think is ridiculous.
00:35:33.000But I do think it's the final straw in terms of having a convenient excuse to get rid of somebody that they they're sort of politics.
00:35:41.000They were no longer comfortable espousing or supporting as a network.
00:35:45.000That's the best guest, the best guest that I have. But it's it's very strange to see it.
00:35:50.000Fox leaking to the media and getting closer and closer to what their perspective is on this, because I don't think it's actually the truth.
00:35:57.000Here's just the background, as I understand it, on this producer.
00:36:01.000She worked for Maria and she wound up complaining.
00:36:06.000I couldn't fact check Maria because we were understaffed.
00:36:09.000OK, that that's no excuse. You're a producer.
00:36:12.000You can fact check. Fox News has a lot of resources, including this huge resource called The Brain Room, which was fact checking the Sidney Powell claims.
00:36:19.000You didn't need to do it yourself. So that to me sounds already like somebody who's got some sour grapes about her experience and is trying to blame somebody else for something she fell down on.
00:36:28.000I'm not excusing Maria here, but I'm not excusing Abby Grossman Berg for the behavior either.
00:36:33.000Go call The Brain Room. They did fact check Sidney Powell.
00:36:36.000So then here's what happened. She joined Fox News in 2019.
00:36:39.000She worked for Maria in August of 2022.
00:36:41.000She started to work with Tucker's team in September of 2022.
00:36:45.000She sat for her first deposition in the Dominion case.
00:36:51.000So what's that? Six months later, March 20th, 2023, she filed a lawsuit against Fox saying your lawyer tried to strong arm me at that deposition into saying nicer things about the staff than I wanted to say.
00:37:04.000They made me run cover for people like Tucker.
00:37:07.000And it was misogynistic because they were trying to hang me and Maria out to dry.
00:37:42.000If you know anything about Rupert Murdoch, I mean, even the most sort of baseline stuff about how the man built his empire, you know that he's not a fool.
00:37:51.000And he's not someone that will, you know, crumble to a 20 odd year old woman who worked there for a month.
00:38:00.000Is that a normal thing that should one expect to be taped by a new hire who then is going to sue you a few months later for misogyny and various other things?
00:38:16.000But one of the things I think is quite revealing about it is when I've been kind of consuming all of this stuff for the past 24 hours, it shows you kind of in a way why you can't trust the media.
00:38:26.000Because I don't think this is deliberate.
00:38:28.000I don't think people are doing this deliberately.
00:38:30.000People are very willing to run with sources who work inside the News Corp building, say they know something, just to be first.
00:38:38.000Because you have, like, mainstream people from The Wall Street Journal to The Washington Post to the LA Times to every, you know, web publication like The Daily Beast, giving you a different story.
00:39:29.000Well, that's what's I mean, to me, it's like this Daily Beast report is the one saying his the vulgar comments he made about Sidney Powell.
00:39:35.000Now, the Daily Beast, that's a that's a left leaning publication that has zero sources inside Fox who would be in a position to answer why Rupert made this decision.
00:39:44.000Right. So that's probably why they wound up with such an absurd theory that it was the Sidney Powell name calling that got him fired.
00:39:53.000The Wall Street Journal is Rupert's publication and their reasoning.
00:39:56.000They said it was because the executive saw more Tucker correspondence in the course of the Dominion lawsuit than the rest of us saw that ticked off Rupert and other executives.
00:40:07.000Well, they've been in possession of that for months, for months and months and months.
00:40:11.000And, you know, all indications were that they were on their way to renewing Tucker's deal.
00:40:15.000And I know Tucker had a personal meeting with Rupert Murdoch very short time ago that went well.
00:40:49.000The worst thing about it is that Tucker, to me, was always a dumb person's idea of what a smart bigot sounded like.
00:40:56.000He arguably has done more on cable television to spread the gospel of hate, fear and paranoia than anyone since radio propagandist Father Coughlin in the Nazi era of the 1930s.
00:41:08.000And as a result, whomever succeeds Tucker Carlson in Fox's coveted 8 p.m. time slot will be contending with an audience that has grown accustomed to watching the man who curated the most racist show in the history of cable news.
00:41:23.000This doesn't mean that Fox is going to course correct, are they?
00:41:26.000Because there's a whole hell of a lot of other people at Fox that need to go also.
00:41:40.000Father Coughlin and Rachel Maddow just did a very bad podcast that references Father Coughlin.
00:41:45.000So I know she knows what she's talking about because Father Coughlin was a radio priest from Michigan who was a raving anti-Semite.
00:41:53.000I mean, first, he was a big supporter of the New Deal.
00:41:56.000And then he quite outspokenly said Jews are controlling the world and they're ruining the world.
00:42:01.000If you think there's a parallel between Tucker Carlson and someone who was effectively a like a Nazi, like a real Nazi, saying that the Jews controlled the world.
00:42:09.000That is the wildest thing I have ever seen.
00:42:12.000I mean, this is an expectation from MSNBC.
00:42:15.000But, Megan, I have a bone to pick with you.
00:42:18.000Because when this happened, I said, I have to listen to Megan's show yesterday.
00:42:43.000Yeah, Anna Navarro, who is like one of these conservatives that was a conservative for five minutes so she can be a conservative on the view.
00:42:50.000And I thought I was thinking about this and I said, this is the funniest, most deranged thing in the world.
00:42:55.000It's almost as if, you know, if Steph Curry was going to be traded from the Golden State Awards.
00:44:51.000And it took CNN a really long time to fire the guy who was bad at his job.
00:44:56.000And Fox News took what seems like a pretty quick opportunity to get rid of the guy who's really good at his job.
00:45:02.000And I'll let listeners because they're smart enough to distinguish between what might be the difference there.
00:45:07.000It could have something to do with their politics.
00:45:09.000But it's just so funny to hear them cheerleading the ouster.
00:45:13.000And by the way, I we take for granted, like because everyone here knows that, of course, the media repeats these awful things about Tucker Carlson that are not based in fact night after night.
00:45:22.000Even if you don't like Tucker Carlson, even if you agree with you, don't agree with him to smear him as a racist along the lines of Father Coughlin.
00:45:30.000I mean, just unbelievable. But they're repeated uncritically on MSNBC and CNN.
00:45:35.000And it's just no big deal that you're smearing someone baselessly as an act like a virulent anti-Semite racist bigot.
00:45:43.000And it's just a shrug. And they just take their plaudits for it and move on.
00:45:47.000I want to get back to him like virtue signal points for it.
00:45:50.000I want to get back to Father Coughlin one second.
00:45:52.000But can we just spend one minute, Wayne Hanna?
00:45:55.000Don Lemon apologized and received formal training.
00:50:02.000And by the way, she, Caitlin Collins, dumped Jay Suarez, her agent at UTA, because he was Don Lemon's agent, too.
00:50:14.000That happened about six weeks ago, according to The New York Post.
00:50:18.000And that was a smart move, because when you have an agent who's got loyalty to the person you're worrying with and not to you, which is the suggestion here, you shouldn't stay with that agent.
00:50:29.000So this was the writing was on the wall for a while here.
00:50:33.000And, you know, you can tell that there's nobody there at CNN who's shedding any tears about Don's departure.
00:50:40.000We'll see what he does. I think it's a totally different situation for him.
00:50:44.000I think Tucker will have a huge career no matter where he decides to go next.
00:51:41.000I mean, he was he had a big show that had decent better numbers than Don Lemon had.
00:51:45.000And he was fired for for, you know, a couple of dodgy comments and never heard from him again.
00:51:50.000I mean, I think people aren't clamoring for Don Lemon's opinion on things.
00:51:55.000I mean, he can barely formulate a sentence.
00:51:57.000You had a clip before of a guy on MSNBC.
00:52:00.000And this is like the oldest, most boring thing that one can say is it's a stupid person's idea of a smart person.
00:52:06.000That's actually a thing that stupid people now say because it's repeated like this mantra.
00:52:11.000But that's actually ridiculously untrue about Tucker.
00:52:14.000I mean, I have known Tucker for a long time.
00:52:16.000I disagree with him on a lot of things these days.
00:52:19.000We were a lot closer when he was like a fellow at the Cato Institute, referred to himself as a libertarian in an interview with me a long time ago, even tried to hire me at one point.
00:52:26.000And he's gone much more to the populist right direction.
00:52:29.000So I disagree with him on a lot of things, a lot of things.
00:52:31.000But the guy is really whip smart and he's a great writer.
00:52:34.000And everyone acknowledges this when he used to write for George Magazine, Talk Magazine, Mainstream, The New Republic, incredible stuff.
00:52:42.000And people don't remember that the most famous thing in George W. Bush's election campaign in 2000 was the Carla Faye Tucker thing.
00:52:49.000When Carla Faye Tucker, who was on death row in Texas, Bush mocked her.
00:52:53.000That came out because of a profile that Tucker Carlson wrote and was a very, very good one.
00:52:58.000And this guy's really bright. He writes all those monologues and everything himself.
00:53:02.000Don Lemon in that Vivek interview could barely formulate a sentence.
00:53:07.000He was saying, well, you don't talk to a black man like this.
00:53:10.000It's like, by the way, Vivek has, you know, pretty dark skin.
00:53:13.000I guess maybe you're saying a cultural thing. I'm not sure.
00:53:15.000But that is the level of argument that you get from him.
00:53:19.000And I love the fact that that that montage ended with Ali Velshi saying, oh, Tucker built the most racist show on television.
00:53:25.000I will never forget Roger Ailes used to use Ali Velshi as the example of what not to do on television about why I think it was CNN at the time he was there was failing.
00:53:37.000Like, look at that guy. Look how bad he is.
00:53:40.000He's such a joke. And here now he's at MSNBC still getting zero ratings just by running around calling everybody a racist, Emily.
00:53:48.000And no, that's actually really interesting, because I think what Ali Velshi does is a very bad impression of Don Lemon.
00:53:53.000And it seems like he was the Don Lemon model of how to anchor on CNN, which is to be excessively smug, but also excessively ignorant.
00:54:01.000A wonderful combination that is sure to draw viewers night after night.
00:54:05.000But it works for this like tiny little audience. And you can see that's all they're able to draw in either at MSNBC or CNN.
00:54:12.000MSNBC obviously gets a little bit more of it because they're willing to at least be slightly honest sometimes and say they're outright liberal.
00:54:18.000But it is so it's so unappealing. I can't imagine sitting down at a television set and watching Ali Velshi just condescend to like 90 percent of the country day after day or Don Lemon.
00:54:32.000And that's the thing that Don Lemon doesn't have anything to take with him because he's not interesting.
00:54:37.000And he kind of used to be slightly more interesting when he used to talk about race in a way that he thought would get clicks.
00:54:43.000And if he if Tucker Carlson had said any of the things Don Lemon had said back then, he actually would have been canceled maybe.
00:54:50.000But it's just like he's completely uninteresting.
00:54:53.000He has nothing worth listening to to say because he's allowed himself to be beaten into this just useless gray vanilla cable TV blob where you just are like a factory of anti-Trump and anti-Tucker and anti-conservative commentary.
00:55:10.000So that that Jason Johnson was in the first part of that clip saying he's like what you were saying when he had he's like a dumb man's vision of what a smart man sounds like what a smart bigot sounds like that condescension.
00:55:22.000Like if you like Tucker, you're a dumbass bigot.
00:55:31.000And to parlay on what you said with that comment, Moynihan, what you just said, Emily, about the condescension of Don Lemon, who shares exactly that worldview of Jason Johnson.
00:55:40.000We pulled just a short montage of some of that some of that piece of Don, which was a massive turnoff.
00:55:46.000He used to be more reasonable. That's when I knew him back in 2014, 15.
00:55:50.000And then he went super woke. And I do believe broke is about to follow.
00:57:04.000Just imagine waking up in the morning and drinking your coffee, sipping your coffee and just being told the entire country is full of racist bigots.
00:57:12.000Like that's nothing invigorates you for a hard day at the office, quite like being implicated in widespread racism and bigotry.
00:57:19.000And with him, it's like I can't even believe some of that stuff is real because, again, it's so it's such bad journalism that in another era it would have stopped right away.
00:57:30.000I mean, people acting like that would have stopped right away.
00:57:32.000But it was rewarded time and time and time and again at CNN because they just looked past all of it.
00:57:39.000And his I mean, with Chris Licht, obviously, I think it's interesting.
00:57:42.000He hired what Zucker's ex mistress immediately to do PR for him, Don Lemon.
00:58:59.000His fate had been sealed for weeks, people with knowledge of the matter told us, because remember, he claimed in his statement yesterday I was blindsided.
00:59:08.000His fate had been sealed for weeks and he was keenly aware of his coming exit, calling around over the last week for a crisis communications specialist to help out.
00:59:19.000He ultimately decided, as Emily just pointed out, on Alison Gallist, who previously ran comms for CNN and resigned from the network two weeks after former CEO Jeff Zucker was fired for not disclosing his relationship with her.
00:59:31.000Well, I mean, come on, Alison Gallist was also forced out of CNN after she'd been humiliated.
00:59:36.000She'd been promoted up the line of PR over other deserving women at a time when she was screwing the boss.
00:59:42.000So, yeah, that can lead to problems if you stay in your post and then try to run comms.
01:00:09.000It was like, has he not been fired yet?
01:00:12.000I can't believe he hasn't been fired yet.
01:00:13.000I love, by the way, that montage because it has one of the greatest, you know, three second clips where he says we really have to stop the demon demonization in this country.
01:00:25.000You know, the problem is white people.
01:00:28.000Did he actually just say it like that?
01:00:30.000Is he that unaware of what he just said?
01:00:33.000It's like that person probably probably shouldn't be on TV.
01:00:37.000Like, look, I actually appreciate the fact that he's I mean, I don't think he's been successful at it so far, obviously, because you don't put Don Lemon from a failing show at eight o'clock into the morning show.
01:00:46.000I mean, like if you have bad players in the team, you don't shuffle them to different positions.
01:00:52.000And I think that's probably what they need to do at this point.
01:00:54.000But, you know, like I appreciate the idea of trying to make CNN kind of trend a middle path, because in the past, when I was in a hotel room and that's essentially like you make is the only time I watch cable news.
01:01:07.000I would turn on CNN because I just, you know, was, you know, my job is to be a jerk about politics and I want to hear someone talk about it, you know, down the center.
01:01:18.000But look, there's after Donald Trump, there's diminishing returns of that kind of constantly beating the drum about how psychotic his supporters are, how psychotic he is, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
01:01:30.000I think the reason that people like someone like Joe Rogan is that it's contemplative.
01:09:02.000He arguably has done more on cable television to spread the gospel of hate, fear and paranoia than anyone since radio propagandist Father Coughlin in the Nazi era of the 1930s.
01:09:49.000And, you know, I again have to reiterate when what Emily was saying, you know, Tucker and Heritage said he changed his mind when he realized he was wrong.
01:09:57.000I think the things that he says he was wrong, but he was actually right before.
01:10:55.000Well, that's partially true in the sense that, you know, a band that was popular in 1980 and playing stadiums is probably playing clubs now.
01:25:34.000But what was amazing was he had the nerve to call you out on that as though it were improper,
01:25:40.000that you as a brown-skinned man didn't have a working knowledge of U.S. history
01:25:47.000when it comes to American black people enough to opine on it while sitting across from a black man.
01:25:54.000I mean that there was some sort of racial hierarchy that would have required you to defer to his opinions about America's history, about historical fact.
01:26:07.000So that is what the theory of intersectionality, as you well know, is all about.
01:26:10.000There's a hierarchy of whether you're an oppressor or whether you're oppressed.
01:26:14.000And if you're lower on that hierarchy, according to that set of rules, you have to either step up and stand up and speak or step back,
01:26:21.000as they say in their language of the woke movement, to step back and not speak to give the person of the lower rung on that ladder the chance to speak.
01:26:32.000Everyone's voice and vote counts equally in the open debate and marketplace of ideas.
01:26:37.000But in the case of Don Lemon, I was on set with him, Megan.
01:26:40.000I can tell you what I actually saw happening was that his head exploded a little bit when there were two conflicting ideas that I brought to the fore.
01:26:47.000And I didn't want to talk about the NRA speech particularly.
01:27:08.000We just got to go study it, is that actually the civil rights of black Americans were never secured until they actually enjoyed Second Amendment protections.
01:27:16.000In fact, part of the black codes that were passed in the Reconstruction era were designed to take guns and gun ownership rights away from black Americans.
01:27:26.000The Dred Scott decision, which preceded the Civil War, Chief Justice Taney famously and ignominiously said that part of the reason black people couldn't be citizens in this country is because it would give them the right to own guns.
01:27:39.000So this is fundamental stuff, even in Supreme Court doctrine.
01:27:42.000I was exposing that history, but that made Don Lemon's head explode because to him, Second Amendment bad, civil rights good.
01:27:48.000And I'm committing some sort of cardinal sin by mixing the two together.
01:27:51.000When it's just a fact of history that actually one was fundamental to securing the other.
01:27:55.000And the audience should know that Vivek went to, in addition to his success on Wall Street and so on, went to Yale Law School.
01:28:01.000I mean, he graduated from Yale Law School.
01:28:03.000You were prepared for a debate or a discussion on that.
01:28:05.000But the irony is, if he actually expected you to seed the arguments to him because he's a black man and you're not, he shouldn't have had you on the show.
01:28:15.000He should have just looked into the camera and offered his own opinions on all these matters.
01:28:19.000He invited you to be interviewed on his program and then got upset when you actually offered your view and explained why you made the claims about gun rights and so on.
01:28:30.000And so his intersectionality approach doesn't work.
01:29:07.000Let's actually stick to our arguments without compromising on our principles, but do it unapologetically in a way that surfaces the actual tension underneath that implicit assumption that other people don't talk about.
01:29:18.000And I think it would be a mistake here to just focus on Don Lemon.
01:29:21.000I mean, he's, I think, look, I think there's better models for how to succeed in your career as a journalist in staying close to the truth than following Don Lemon's path.
01:29:38.000But she basically said the same thing even more concisely than Don Lemon did a couple of years ago when she said, we don't want any more black faces that don't want to be a black voice.
01:29:49.000I don't fit her description of what counts as a brown voice because I reject the premise that your skin color ought to predict anything about the content of the ideas you're allowed to espouse.
01:30:05.000That is definitional racism to say that I can predict something about the content of your ideas based on the color of your skin.
01:30:11.000And yet that's become quietly accepted in much of mainstream culture in America.
01:30:17.000I will say, Megan, though, I'm optimistic.
01:30:19.000I think the fact that we're having this conversation on the back of CNN making the decision to actually remove Don Lemon from air, hopefully replace him with somebody who's a more thoughtful journalist.
01:30:28.000I do think I'm actually quite optimistic that we're a domino effect, a hair's trigger away from a national revival that rejects this woke orthodoxy that's been an assault on American excellence.
01:30:40.000You saw it from Netflix about a year ago after the Dave Chappelle controversy.
01:30:44.000I think this is a good move that Chris Licht has taken at CNN.
01:30:47.000I think if we keep our optimism alive, right, I think a lot of that woke woke ism that has infected institutions over the last several years, people are hungry for something new.
01:30:55.000I think it's up to conservatives in this country.
01:30:57.000This is why I feel called to do it, to lead the way with an affirmative vision of our own, not just being victimized by the victimhood culture, but by actually leading the way with our own vision.
01:31:07.000Well, we've heard people like Joy Reid explicitly say about black people in America who have heterodox views on this whole woke ism their skin folk, but not kin folk.
01:31:16.000That's you know, that's how they dismiss anybody who sees things the way you do, but happens to be a black man or a black woman.
01:31:23.000It's absolutely disrespectful and it's racist.
01:31:26.000I do want to ask you, first of all, did you have that conversation with Chris Licht, the new head of CNN, took over for Jeff Zucker after that exchange with Don Lemon on the air?
01:31:35.000It was before it was beforehand. I was I was I thought it was my place to leave them be.
01:31:41.000I think there was a lot of discomfort after that, and they were very respectful of the people who had booked me right after I was off air.
01:31:47.000But I left that. Well, let me show you the ending. Let me show the audience the end.
01:31:50.000The very, very last part where he, Poppy tried to save it.
01:31:53.000I mean, this is what you do when you're a co-anchor. I've been there with something tense happens.
01:31:57.000You try to diffuse the tension a little, keep things nice with the guest before they leave and say nice goodbye, which she attempted to do.
01:32:04.000And he was clearly irritated by her and he always lets his irritation show.
01:32:08.000This is one of the reasons why that morning show is a disaster.
01:32:10.000They have record low ratings and his co-hosts very clearly can't stand him.
01:32:16.000But here was his last parting remark in the whole exchange to Poppy.
01:32:22.000We appreciate you coming on with due respect, Don. I look forward to continuing that conversation.
01:32:26.000Well, thank you. The conversation. Thank you so much.
01:32:28.000Thank you, Poppy. We'll talk about China. Yes.
01:32:30.000You come back. Oh, thank you. Much to say on declaring independence from China.
01:32:34.000OK, something you can add on now. Thank you. Thank you.
01:32:39.000Mm hmm. So we can move on now, please.
01:32:42.000And so the reports are that they'd had it between his reported diva moments and his sexist remarks.
01:32:50.000The Nikki Haley thing, there's a report this morning, I think it's in the Daily Mail, talking about how so many staffers at CNN were actually really ticked off and offended by saying, you know, Nikki Haley's passed her prime.
01:33:01.000Sorry, a woman's passed her prime when she's out of her 20s, 30s, maybe at age 40 and on and on.
01:33:06.000There's lots of examples. Don Lemon not liking women. He doesn't doesn't like women.
01:33:10.000That's my opinion. It seems pretty clear.
01:33:12.000He blames everything on women. Anything goes wrong on the set.
01:33:15.000Interruption. It's the woman's fault. Trust me. That's his M.O.
01:33:18.000Blame the woman. And so I do wonder, Megan, there's a funny connection there just to just to briefly draw it.
01:33:24.000So he's a man who feels particularly totally free to talk about when women are or are not in their prime and to criticize women for being women,
01:33:31.000but somehow believes that if you're not black, you can't actually even make a comment about supposed war history.
01:33:36.000There is a certain rich irony in that if you observe it.
01:33:38.000That's how the woke are. They have a weird hierarchy that you really have to be immersed in it to totally understand it.
01:33:42.000So after that moment when they said goodbye to you, Vivek, what was that? What was it like?
01:33:46.000It's always kind of fun to get a behind the scenes, you know, wrap up of what happened on set after something like that.
01:33:50.000Yeah, so I had a nice exchange with Poppy. I felt bad for her, to be honest, because I think she had been sidelined in the conversation. She was trying her best. So I told her, look, we have conversation China later on. I walked off. I went out of my way to really be thankful to the producers and those who are on set as well. I think it was awkward for everyone there. So I tried to do my part to bring a lighthearted tone and say they're doing great work and to keep up the keep up the beautiful set. That's what I think I told them, which is a
01:33:55.000nice looking set, I guess. Okay. And then I left and you know what they were very decent about it afterwards. I think they reached out to my parents and I think they're doing great work and to keep up the keep up the beautiful set. That's what I think I told them, which is a nice looking set, I guess. Okay. And then I left and you know what, they were very decent about it afterwards. I think they reached out to my parents.
01:34:24.000Afterwards, I think they reached out to my people who, who did the scheduling to, you know, effectively apologize for that interaction, but I don't need apologies. I think that this is good actually for our country to be able to air this kind of underlying tension in our discourse.
01:34:37.340It's so crazy. It shows the craziness. It's like something to somebody saying to me, like women didn't actually, they got the right to vote, you know, in 1920, but they didn't actually get their power until 1970. And me saying, no, actually the data show that in the 1960s, they were really coming of age. And, and somebody being like, no, actually the data show that in 1970s,
01:34:54.00074, that's when it started. And me being like, you're a man. I'm a woman. Shut up. People do that. Shut up. People who say that kind of stuff. It's ridiculous. Thank you for calling it out and giving us a good, good example of how they operate.
01:35:06.840Now you mentioned something because it crusading against these woke, you know, pushes in corporate media, in corporate America and so on has been a big issue for you. This is one of the reasons why I love what you're doing.
01:35:19.040Um, there's an update in the whole Bud Light disaster today, which is just, I think spectacular. So of course their stock price fell in the wake of the boycott after they partner with trans activist or trans person, Dylan Mulvaney and, um, their core audience and core, you know, purchasers revolted across America saying, what are you doing? We don't want you dabbling in this stuff. Just service our beer for the love of God. Shut up and service the beer.
01:35:45.540And they try to be quiet. It failed. Their stock price was dwindling and their sales were dwindling. Then their stock price went a little back up. And the people who are against you on the woke stuff, Vivek said, oh, it went back up. Ha ha ha. But the real question was, how about the sales? How about the sales? The stock's going to do what the stock's going to do. Well, how are they doing on the sales of Bud Light? Well, now we have an answer to that. And by the way, they, um, they saw these numbers before we did that the people at Bud Light, uh, the reading from the New York post today, Bud Light has a number of sales.
01:36:15.540Bud Light has suffered a staggering sales hit following its disastrous marketing tie-up with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The latest data showing a 17% drop in sales. 17. It only went down, I think, 8% or 6% in the first week after the controversy. And now, uh, it's, it's, uh, almost triple that the drop in sales and probably going to go up even more.
01:36:40.240They've now put this, the woman who made the decision, we're told, uh, Alyssa on, uh, leave of absence, though it was clearly not her idea. And I don't think she's ever coming back as well as her boss also on a leave of absence. And I think this is a huge victory.
01:36:57.020I'd like to see them fight. I think they're fired. So I'm taking the W. Um, however, I think this is a, an inflection point in these, in the battle that you've been fighting and, um, yours truly as well, to a lesser extent to get these corporations to stay in their lane and just do their thing. Sell your beer, sell your facial cream, but stop trying to wokeify America.
01:37:16.620Yeah. That's what makes America great is that we have a system of capitalism that is insulated, or at least historically has been from partisan politics. First of all, that makes companies more successful. Bud Light's just one example among many. Megan, that's what the whole book is about. The capitalist punishment book that I'm putting that's out today.
01:37:36.040That is about why companies are more successful when they are not encumbered by these environmental and social agendas. But there's something even more fundamental than that, Megan, which is that actually Tocqueville, Alexis de Tocqueville, he made this observation about America. We're a diverse, divided democratic society. We're not supposed to last for more than a couple of generations, unless there are these apolitical spaces that bind us together, that literally bring us together. Bud Light is, is liquid fuel that brings people together.
01:38:06.040At football games at parties across the country. It's uniting. When that itself becomes politicized, that's really the beginning of the end of the American experiment. If we lose those apolitical sanctuaries that are supposed to hold us together. And Tocqueville said that back then too, is America requires what he calls these intermediate institutions. Capitalism is the biggest of those. And so for me on a personal level, it's not just because I think it makes companies less successful, though that's definitely true. And we see that example on display here.
01:38:34.400It's that it makes America and our constitutional republic itself less successful. It won't survive if we don't have those spaces where we can come together across the divides of identity politics or partisan politics. I'm with you, Megan. I think that we are at a potential turning point here.
01:38:52.300I think people, you know, the woke, woke movement, what it did is the analogy I sometimes have used is, it's like when young people are hungry for a cause. They tell them you satisfy your moral hunger by going to Ben and Jerry's and ordering a cup of ice cream with some social justice sprinkles on the side. I mean, effectively, that's been the culture for the last several years.
01:39:11.700I think that you don't satisfy a moral hunger with fast food. You sort of get that hit initially, but then that starts to fade away and you still realize you're still hungry. Hungry for something more substantial, purpose that you derive from something other than corporate virtue signaling.
01:39:28.440And that's the opportunity in front of us for the conservative movement. Can we fill that void with a vision of American identity that's actually more powerful, that dilutes the woke agenda to irrelevance?
01:39:39.860That's a question of whether the conservative movement can rise to that occasion or not. That's why it used to be in this presidential race.
01:39:45.020The way it used to be in this country.
01:39:46.480The way it can be. And the way it can be.
01:39:48.300How? How? How? How? How? How? That's the problem. Like, I'm with you. 100% with you. But how on earth are we going to get these young people to get back to that? I mean, yeah, teaching civics. What? We're going to force them to go back to church? That's up to their parents. Americans are moving away from religion, away from more children, away from civics. It's depressing. But how can a president push us back?
01:40:09.860In that direction. Look, I think part of this is, and there are many hats to wear here. One is a policymaking hat, and I can come to that. But some of this is through the kind of leadership and national character that you set. I don't think we have had a president in this country since Reagan who tied the what, what we're doing, the motions we're going through, to the why, to the principles that actually set the country into motion.
01:40:31.900And I reject this political worldview that both parties seem to espouse, that human beings are somehow just these biological automatons walking around, and we're supposed to bean count them to see how they'll vote.
01:40:42.720I believe in the power of persuasion. I think people are, especially young people, Megan, are hungry to be led.
01:40:49.040I went to, you know, we've done these bus tours for the last few days. I was in New Hampshire on a bus tour. I was in Iowa on a bus tour. South Carolina's a bus tour later this week.
01:40:56.460We stopped at college campuses on these bus tours. I went to one, New England College in New Hampshire, where I was told that other Republican candidates didn't want to show up at some of these college campuses.
01:41:07.140Well, you don't know why? It's because they're going to get the kinds of questions that I got, which aren't that different than interaction with Don Lemon on set.
01:41:13.020But the thing about, unlike Don Lemon, who's making, you know, was making millions of dollars while claiming to be a victim, the difference with young people on these college campuses,
01:41:20.060they don't really believe the stuff they're fed and spewing back. They're hungry. They're lost.
01:41:25.760And I think if we can fill that void with even a sense of leadership, talking about understanding that our worst hypocrisies as a nation are actually our best evidence that we have ideals at all,
01:41:36.260because to be a hypocrite, you at least had to have those ideals.
01:41:39.420I think we bring these people along, Megan, because here's the other thing about being 21 years old or 19 years old.
01:41:45.180You want to stick it to the man. You want to stand up to the system and be a hippie and be countercultural.
01:41:50.060That's what made the woke movement popular in the first place, is that that was sticking it to the system of the people who are in power.
01:41:56.320Well, now we've come full circle where what began as a challenge to the system has become the system.
01:42:02.420I think we can actually tap into young people's desire to be heterodox.
01:42:06.580You don't want to be heterodox? Call yourself a religious conservative on a college campus.
01:42:10.140See what that does to you. And I think it takes a certain voice.
01:42:13.260And I think it takes us. I'm 37. I'm the first millennial to ever run for president as a Republican.
01:42:17.380But I want to use these attributes to reach that next generation.
01:42:21.300I'm actually optimistic that that opportunity is sitting in front of us just through persuasion alone.
01:42:25.980On policy, I could give you a lot of my ideas on how to do it.
01:42:28.140But actually, I think this other cultural character is almost more important.
01:42:31.620And then the policies just follow naturally from that.
01:44:00.460Is when Donald Trump was arrested and indicted by Alvin Bragg, a member of Joe Biden's political party.
01:44:06.120If Joe Biden had said what I said at that same time, as somebody who was also running against Trump, that this is a politicized prosecution, it's persecution.
01:44:12.800And even though you shouldn't elect Trump, you know what?
01:44:15.480This is wrong and we should not arrest our political opponents.
01:44:18.820That was his moment for national unity.
01:44:39.360They're a feature for the managerial class who would rather have a hollowed out husk in the White House.
01:44:46.660They're almost needling the American people.
01:44:48.960They're almost needling the citizens of this country, laughing, saying, you know how much we rule you as the managerial class, the three-letter acronomists, bureaucratic soup in Washington, D.C.
01:44:58.820We can put that guy up, barely mentally competent, present even as a human being.
01:45:04.160That's who we can put up, and we're still going to run the show for you.
01:45:09.380And so when I see myself running against Joe Biden in this race, I'm not running against Biden.
01:45:13.720I'm running against a puppet like the Wizard of Oz, the front man, for a managerial class that's behind it.
01:45:19.580That's really the heart of what's going on, and we might as well see that for what it is.
01:45:23.520And it's also why the DNC, by the way, doesn't want to have debates, because they want to make sure the front man for that managerial class isn't subjected to debate from the likes of RFK or Marianne Williamson or anybody else.
01:45:34.600And so I think it's worth seeing through the farce that somehow this is about Biden and his failure.
01:45:39.100He's just the stooge who's the front man at the end of it.
01:45:45.560They are saying that they're not going to be debates, so RFK Jr. is not going to get the shot to go after Biden, never mind Marianne Williamson or whoever else.
01:45:53.140Might try to throw their hat in the ring.
01:45:55.020But meanwhile, this is what they're up against.