The Megyn Kelly Show - Undecideds Breaking Red, and Biden's Sad Gaffe, with Josh Holmes, and Sean Parnell on His Personal Story ｜ Ep. 425

00:00:00.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.680 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Oh my goodness, things are happening.

00:00:17.220 I want to tell you, first of all, later today we're going to bring you part two of our interview with Sean Parnell,

00:00:21.300 where the former Pennsylvania Senate candidate, who wanted to be in the slot that Dr. Oz is in right now,

00:00:26.500 will address the personal matters that caused him to drop out of that race,

00:00:31.280 something he has never spoken about publicly before. And is there a future in politics for

00:00:37.200 Sean Parnell? Meantime, the midterm elections are now less than a week away, and at seven o'clock

00:00:42.380 tonight in Washington, D.C., President Biden has apparently decided he has found the answer.

00:00:47.820 He will, according to early reports just breaking, quote, address the threat of election deniers

00:00:54.100 and those who seek to undermine faith in voting and democracy. So basically, we're going to get

00:01:00.360 dark brand in part two. Why is he doing this? It could be the polls. We we've seen the red wave

00:01:07.260 apparently growing in poll after poll in states like Arizona and Georgia, but even in states like

00:01:14.360 New York, New Hampshire and deep blue Oregon. Here to help break all of this down for us this morning

00:01:21.360 is our friend from the Ruthless podcast flying solo today. He's the founding partner and president

00:01:26.180 of Cavalry. Josh Holmes.

00:01:32.260 Josh, welcome back.

00:01:33.700 Hey, Maggie. Great to be here.

00:01:35.460 Are they jealous? You get, you know, it's one on one.

00:01:39.680 Yeah. I mean, look, I don't have my pals here, but I feel like I get more airtime,

00:01:43.000 so it's kind of nice for me. All right. Well, we'll do them one by one at some point

00:01:47.760 as well, because everybody is awesome on the Ruthless podcast. So we'll get to dark brand in

00:01:54.660 part two in one second. But real clear politics. I had Tom Bevan on last week or the week before,

00:02:00.440 and he was saying they at that point they'd been predicting the GOP would take the Senate.

00:02:05.600 He thought that there would be wins in Georgia. And I think he he said Nevada. Now, real clear

00:02:14.140 politics is saying it's going to be GOP up 54 in the Senate. He's still project projecting that

00:02:20.760 they'll win in Georgia and Nevada. And he's added Arizona and New Hampshire to the mix. Do you agree

00:02:27.900 with that? Do you do you like that projection? I think all those races are certainly possible,

00:02:32.580 right? But they're all in degrees of possibility. I think what he initially started with with Georgia

00:02:37.960 and Nevada. Nevada is the one state in the union that's Democratic held at this point where the

00:02:42.520 Republican Adam Laxol has had a consistent lead here for a period of about six weeks. It's been a

00:02:47.600 small lead. It's two to three points, but it's very, very durable up to this point. Hard to see

00:02:52.080 at the end how they can sort of shake that. So I think that is definitely going to be a Republican

00:02:56.480 pickup. Georgia has been trending towards Herschel Walker here for the last couple of weeks.

00:03:01.280 He's he's had a good month. He had a good debate performance. It also aided significantly by the

00:03:07.080 fact that Governor Kemp is also on that ballot and is blowing the doors off of Stacey Abrams.

00:03:11.860 So, I mean, there's going to be a big margin that governor's race. I think it probably helps

00:03:15.380 Herschel. He's going to win a plurality here. The question is whether he can get to that 50 percent

00:03:19.780 threshold, right? Because Georgia, like a lot of Southern states, has a 50 percent threshold.

00:03:24.900 And if you don't meet it, you go to a runoff. I mean, we all remember 2020 and the fun that we had in

00:03:29.980 that process, which was ultimately a disaster. But a lot of reason to believe that that could

00:03:35.240 end differently in a runoff. So I feel pretty good about Georgia. The one that, you know, I think

00:03:40.280 he didn't count initially that I feel excellent about right now is Pennsylvania. I think Oz. 0.90

00:03:46.520 You do. Unlike Joe Biden, right? Or Chuck Schumer, who was saying to Joe Biden,

00:03:50.960 we're good in Pennsylvania. We survived that debate. We're OK there.

00:03:53.620 Yeah. I mean, look, in the seven days preceding that debate, that race had closed by five points,

00:04:01.040 right? In my experience, if you're dealing with a double digit closing in the last 60 days of an

00:04:05.960 election, it's almost impossible for the party in power to reverse that trend, right? At some point,

00:04:12.300 those lines will cross. Those lines cross during the debate, right? For obvious reasons that the world

00:04:18.440 could see. But I think when you're talking about late breaking, independent voters who tend to be

00:04:23.460 less partisan, they make a lot of judgments about whether or not somebody is fit for the job.

00:04:28.620 And in this circumstance, you got a pretty clear divide on that. So I like Oz's chances in

00:04:34.720 Pennsylvania a lot. New Hampshire and Arizona, look, they've been trailing, albeit very small,

00:04:41.220 very small number, like two, three points over the last couple of weeks. I think if you're in,

00:04:48.360 let me back off a minute. I think all of these midterm elections, when you have a party in power

00:04:53.220 that has a president that's 40 or below, you have a really bad economic approval rating and you have

00:04:59.840 a right track, wrong track. In other words, do you think the country's going in the right direction?

00:05:04.100 If that's also inverted, any one of those three things means that your final couple percent

00:05:09.500 go against the party in power. Now they have all three of them, right? And in my experience,

00:05:14.780 you kind of have three different sets of turnout in midterms. It either breaks two to three points,

00:05:20.640 three to five points, or five plus. 2014 was the only election I've been a part of in 20 years

00:05:26.600 where it's been a five plus break. Now-

00:05:29.700 What do you mean? Can you just explain what you mean by that? What do you mean a two to three

00:05:32.340 point break or a five plus break? Yeah. So the ultimate turnout on election day

00:05:37.640 reflects a huge shift in undecided voters who ultimately turn out to vote that aren't captured

00:05:43.420 in the screens in the polling, right? You'll see polling always kind of in the mid forties

00:05:48.040 sort of tied. And what generally happens is those remaining voters break towards the party out of,

00:05:54.420 out of power here. In this case, Republicans. Now, typically speaking, it's kind of a two to three

00:06:00.980 point deal. But there have been instances, as I said, in 2014, where we dealt with a five plus

00:06:06.640 point break, meaning a whole bunch of people came out to vote and they almost monolithically voted

00:06:12.160 against the party in power. If that is the case, New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado all of a sudden

00:06:19.840 begins to be interesting. And then the one sleeper that you really ought to put on your radar right

00:06:24.140 now is Washington State with Tiffany Smiley. I think she's got a real shot.

00:06:27.780 She's coming on a Monday, actually. You pointed her out to us. Somebody just yesterday pointed

00:06:33.700 her out to us like she's getting a lot more buzz as a possible comer in this whole thing. Let me jump

00:06:38.760 back and go through a couple of those states with you, because I do think the numbers are interesting.

00:06:43.420 Now, Nevada, the Republican Laxalt now has a five point lead over Cortez Masto. She was the first Latina 1.00

00:06:50.380 elected to the U.S. Senate Democrat per an Emerson College poll. It's he has a basically has 50. She 0.60

00:06:58.300 has 45 among likely voters. Five points is pretty significant. You know, this has taken over the past

00:07:05.160 couple of days. One week out. I feel like Nevada. I mean, I don't know if you can say safely GOP, but

00:07:12.120 you've got to have that's a leaner. That's our GOP leaner. No. Yeah. Well, I look nothing safe in

00:07:18.120 Nevada because during the covid epidemic, Democrats in the legislature changed all the voting rules

00:07:24.180 there. And what they did is they they had an automatic mail out of their ballot, which they've

00:07:29.040 cleaned up a little bit, at least that they have now current voter rolls. In 2020, they were mailing

00:07:34.180 out people who had left the state a year or two before. They've cleaned up that process, but they also

00:07:39.900 have a ballot harvesting there, which is the practice of an operative being able to go through

00:07:46.200 a community and just collect ballots on behalf of the Democratic Party. I mean, it's the worst

00:07:52.080 practice of all time. Right. But not surprisingly, Democrats love to do that. It enables them to get

00:07:57.680 these sort of big ballot drops. So in other words, their ground game is going to be pretty extensive in

00:08:03.940 Nevada. But like you said, this has been a durable lead that is sort of outside of the margin of error in

00:08:09.460 some circumstances. I expect this to be a very close race. But at this point, everything points

00:08:14.480 to an Adam Laxalt victory. All right. In Pennsylvania, we've had a hefty early vote.

00:08:20.420 Last I checked last week, it was some 700,000. I'm sure it's higher than that now. And 500,000 were

00:08:25.940 reportedly Democrats. So they're banking a lot of early votes. That was pre-debate. Is that

00:08:32.980 overcomable? Yeah, I definitely think it is overcomable. I mean, if you look at the in many

00:08:39.500 states similarly situated to Pennsylvania, this mail-in process, the early vote process has been

00:08:45.500 greatly expanded since COVID. Right. And so in practice, it has been basically a Democratic

00:08:51.840 way of voting. There's a huge advantage for Republicans on Election Day in places like Pennsylvania,

00:08:59.120 places that have been doing mail-in ballots forever, by the way, like Colorado or Arizona

00:09:03.080 or Washington State. That's going to be a fairly neutral partisan territory in terms of what the

00:09:08.620 early votes look like. Not in Pennsylvania. That's going to be heavily Democratic. So I'm not nervous

00:09:13.380 about people voting ahead of time that didn't get a chance to see the debate. Those are pretty

00:09:19.180 partisan Democrats that are going to happen come hell or high water. Right. Yeah. They were not going to

00:09:23.700 be going Oz's way after the debate. Yeah, that's right. I mean, they're banked Democratic votes.

00:09:29.700 What is important is that Oz maximizes his turnout with a Republican base. But then also, as I was

00:09:36.260 talking about, that final two, three, four percent, that is disproportionately going to break Oz's way,

00:09:42.540 which is why I feel really good about that Pennsylvania Senate race.

00:09:45.600 Hmm. OK, so you're you're feeling good about that. Now, Georgia, there was just a poll out

00:09:50.640 Atlanta Journal-Constitution showing a tie in the race between Walker and Warnock. It said Walker's

00:09:57.560 up 46 to 45, but it's basically a tie and showing Kemp up 51 to 44 over Abrams, which is perhaps a

00:10:05.300 little tighter than he's been. He's had a 10 point lead lately. The New York Times, I think, described

00:10:09.220 it as marginal, his lead over Abrams. Really? You think? OK. Yeah. But Georgia. Yeah. And I mean,

00:10:16.640 every day we get another woman coming out about her negative experience with Herschel Walker.

00:10:21.200 His poll numbers seem immune to it or if anything, in my layperson estimation, they seem to go up

00:10:27.260 in response to it, though. They say that 39 percent in the same poll view Herschel Walker as

00:10:33.000 trustworthy. The rest do not. Only 39 percent. Now, that doesn't bode well. I'm not sure what the

00:10:38.920 numbers are for Warnock, but they don't seem to think it's a deal breaker because, as I say,

00:10:43.380 he's tied with Warnock right now in Georgia. So what do you make of it? All the mud that's been

00:10:48.980 slung and he's tied at one point up? Well, I mean, look, if ever there is a voter who has been

00:10:55.060 conditioned to be lied to over the years, it's Georgia voters. Right. I mean, these are these

00:11:00.960 are voters who are very well educated now. At this point, they've been the center of the political

00:11:05.780 universe for two years. Right. They also have had the added benefit of being the deciding state

00:11:11.760 and who ultimately controlled the government with the two Senate seats in the runoff in 2020.

00:11:17.740 Clearly, there's got to be some some buyer's remorse on that, which is why you've seen

00:11:22.360 Raphael Warnock, despite all of the media attacks against Herschel Walker, all of the

00:11:27.780 being slung in that he can never break out of that 46, 47 percent. It does. It literally has not moved 0.94

00:11:34.820 an inch, whereas you've seen Herschel begin to inch up week over week. And he, again,

00:11:39.880 has had a pretty good month, far exceeded everybody's expectations in that debate.

00:11:45.300 He's closed this gap. And again, I think in that governor's race, this is not a six point race.

00:11:50.360 Kemp's going to win this thing by a margin. And nobody's been able to show me a Venn diagram

00:11:55.160 of a Republican vote, 10 percent of which votes for Kemp and Raphael Warnock like that. That is a

00:12:02.000 very, very difficult thing to do in partisan times like this. And so I think he gets there.

00:12:07.080 The question is whether he hits that 50 percent threshold.

00:12:10.420 What they're talking about, the black vote in Georgia. Now, in that Senate race,

00:12:14.240 you have two black candidates, but the black vote tends to be more Democratic. So it's not all about

00:12:19.460 skin color. It's about partisan affiliation. And they were saying that what they really need

00:12:24.160 is a strong black vote and ideally a strong black early vote in Georgia. Early voting in Georgia,

00:12:30.100 I'm told, started on 1017. It ends this Friday. And that there were some initial promising signs for

00:12:36.400 the Democrats saying that the black vote was around 39 percent in that early voting, but it dropped

00:12:42.320 like quickly to 30 percent that they like that. I mean, there's I think the voting population of

00:12:50.400 blacks in Georgia is 30 percent, but they wanted it to be higher. Basically, the consensus was they

00:12:55.980 were hoping for it to be higher in the early vote for the reasons I think you were just discussing,

00:13:00.120 which is they presume Election Day voting will favor the Republican.

00:13:04.920 Yeah, no question about it. Georgia is another state where they went through and underwent a bunch

00:13:09.200 of reforms here. And you've got a bunch of institutional resistance on the Republican side

00:13:14.060 to voting by mail. Right. I mean, this is a state that I think you're going to trust a big Republican.

00:13:19.200 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A big Republican turnout on Election Day. And so they do need to build that

00:13:24.540 that wall. And Democrats, the first couple of days of early voting in Georgia, you're right,

00:13:28.920 were extremely enthusiastic about what they thought was a huge African-American turnout in Atlanta

00:13:34.040 that has come down. And if you look at basically the performance of the early vote,

00:13:40.000 the advantages the Democrats really wanted to have have sort of evaporated.

00:13:44.980 Again, I think if this thing stays on trajectory, Herschel Walker camp's in a good spot. Herschel

00:13:52.020 Walker, I think he's on track to get a plurality there. The question is, is whether he can get a

00:13:56.860 majority over in Arizona. Blake Masters got some good news. The Republican as the libertarian candidate

00:14:03.760 dropped out and then endorsed Blake Masters. However, and this is the one with Mark Kelly,

00:14:09.880 you know, the twins, Mark and Scott, the astronauts. Mark's married to Gabby Giffords,

00:14:13.720 popular in Arizona, Democrat against his Republican challenger Masters. So good for Blake Masters for

00:14:19.900 getting this endorsement from the libertarian. But it's like you could count in the number of hours

00:14:26.360 how soon it happened in advance of Election Day. The guy's still going to be on the ballot. You know,

00:14:30.940 it's like, hey, tick tock, Mr. Libertarian, make a decision because now he's still going to be on the

00:14:36.260 ballot. Yeah, no, I mean, you're totally right about that, Megan. It's like information that would

00:14:41.180 have been helpful yesterday. Right. I mean, it's the kind of thing that if you're not going to run

00:14:45.440 and you want to endorse Blake Masters, please don't put your name on the ballot. Yeah. Get off

00:14:49.680 the pot, as they say. Right. Right. Which is what they did. But it is helpful. Right. And I do think

00:14:55.340 there's been some earned media, enough earned media within Arizona where it may make a tangible

00:14:59.700 difference. Look, this race is going to be decided by an eyelash. Arizona has been incredibly close the last

00:15:05.280 two cycles. It is incredibly close this cycle. I think Mark Kelly, it pains me to try to provide

00:15:12.180 a compliment to a Democrat, but he's run a pretty effective campaign into an impossible environment.

00:15:18.140 Right. And you know what? Can I just jump in on that, too? Unlike some of these other candidates,

00:15:22.120 he's likable. Mark Kelly is a likable guy. He's not some he doesn't come across like some far left

00:15:27.360 extremist. He seems reasonable. He seems nice. He seems like the kind of guy you'd have a beer with.

00:15:33.040 I mean, I think this is part of Dr. Oz's problem in Pennsylvania. I said this to you guys last week.

00:15:37.720 He seems a little slick, whereas Mark Kelly just kind of seems like a good guy.

00:15:42.900 Yeah. You know, he's really good at avoiding the questions. Right.

00:15:46.000 Well, to his credit. I mean, this guy's really talented at not taking any sort of ownership over

00:15:53.260 his job performance at all. Right. Which is to your point. I mean, it comes off as sort of likable.

00:15:58.840 That being said, Masters has really picked up steam here. There's been a bunch of investment

00:16:03.960 on his behalf towards the end of the campaign. You've seen Carrie Lake in that governor's race 0.99

00:16:09.480 begin to sort of put points behind her. I do think that's going to be a close race, too, by the way.

00:16:15.080 But if what we were talking about at the top of the show comes to fruition and that two to three point

00:16:21.920 lead or two to three point swing at the end moves to three to five. Yeah. You're going to welcome

00:16:27.760 Senator Blake Masters to the United States Senate. I mean, it's really that simple.

00:16:31.780 Wow. Because, I mean, he just got he got pummeled in so many. I just there was so much negativity

00:16:36.440 around him by pundits, by media, not not because of him necessarily. So that would be remarkable.

00:16:42.460 Carrie Lake, you mentioned. So she had an 11 point lead on Katie Hobbs, 53 to 42 ahead with Hispanic 1.00

00:16:50.400 voters, with female voters. Then the Fox News poll that just dropped this week showed her up only 0.97

00:16:57.540 one percentage point. That was through October 30th. So that's a big difference. Eleven points

00:17:04.020 up versus one point up. What are we supposed to believe? Well, so look, this is a good thing for

00:17:09.760 your audience to actually think about. The problem with media polls is that polls were basically created

00:17:17.340 to give people like me, operatives, a good sense of trends over time on issues. You know, your ballot

00:17:24.020 question, how you can position certain messages and know you're standing within the electorate,

00:17:29.340 knowing institutionally what's likely to happen here as as things break. What's happened over the

00:17:34.800 years is polls have become news hooks. Right. And so you get this wide ranging variety depending on

00:17:41.520 what kind of screen that they have. And by screen, I mean their assumptions about what the turnout looks

00:17:47.140 like. Right. Because that's the base of the poll is they're polling people that they think are

00:17:51.860 representative of the people who are going to show up and vote. That varies radically. And it's not done

00:17:58.200 typically by a lot of political professionals. It's done by all these analysts and these and

00:18:04.920 these media polls. So, look, it's not one. It's not eleven. I think it's probably in the two to three

00:18:12.300 point range. So it's closer to the one than the eleven. That's not going to be a blowout race by any

00:18:17.880 stretch of the imagination. It's Arizona. It's going to be really close. But I do think that

00:18:21.900 Carrie Lake has an advantage right now. Wow. I mean, that that one's a nail biter now. 1.00

00:18:26.900 But meanwhile, overall, I mean, all or virtually all these polls are trending red. I mean, we've

00:18:34.320 seen that over the past couple of weeks in remarkable numbers. You know, we talked about

00:18:39.060 Kathy Hochul versus Lee Zeldin, the Republican in New York state. She had a 19 percentage point 1.00

00:18:43.500 advantage over him in August. And now he's up one in the latest poll. He's it's been a 20 point swing

00:18:51.420 in Lee Zeldin's favor. Rising tide lifts all boats. The the local Republicans taking on Democrats

00:18:58.840 in district after district throughout the state of New York are now doing better. I mean, we could

00:19:02.940 literally see a red maybe not literally, but we could see a red wave in New York state next Tuesday,

00:19:08.900 which is crazy. But, you know, like I've lived here my whole life. It's great. Like you never see

00:19:14.380 this. I didn't think it was possible anymore that. OK, so enter. Respected political pundit, Joy Reid,

00:19:23.220 who you'd speak of the media, maybe staying in their lane and not trying to do your job.

00:19:30.920 Yeah, that was advice she could have used when she tried to warn people off of the polling that's been

00:19:36.120 so good for the Republicans, because remember, the Democrats, they don't do conspiracies.

00:19:40.060 Conspiracies is only the crazy QAnon Republicans. Well, tell that to Joy. Listen here. 0.99

00:19:46.720 You believe the recent headlines, you would think that mega fascism is ascendant. If you get past

00:19:53.280 those headlines and dig a little deeper, you uncover an insidious and seemingly intentional

00:19:58.280 campaign by Republican backed polling firms to flood the zone and tip the balance of polling averages

00:20:04.340 in favor of their candidates to create a narrative that Republicans are surging and that a

00:20:09.700 red wave is imminent and inevitable. According to Nate Cohn of The New York Times,

00:20:14.960 most of the polling over the last few weeks is coming from partisan outfits, usually Republican

00:20:20.000 or auto dial firms. These polls are cheap enough to flood the zone. And it shouldn't come as a total

00:20:26.480 surprise, given that one of those polling aggregators, Real Clear Politics, has become more openly pro-Trump.

00:20:36.940 Insidious and intentional.

00:20:39.700 I urge all of the Democrats, if you're thinking about a campaign or you just want to kind of put

00:20:46.200 together some kind of a political organization, just take Joy Reid's advice. She seems to have

00:20:50.860 her finger on the profession. I can't imagine what she's not understanding about the American

00:20:55.480 electorate. Can you, Maggie? You know, it's great. Let's hold on to that soundbite. OK,

00:21:00.460 let's see how she does. Let's talk next Wednesday and see how she did, you know, in her prediction

00:21:05.980 that these were all intentionally misleading and way off the mark.

00:21:10.760 I think that's right. I think it's, you know, a little bit of accountability goes a long way.

00:21:15.240 You know, Joy Reid could be right. She could be the next Karl Rove of our time. Something tells me

00:21:20.140 that's probably not right, that she probably has her own set of opinions that may color

00:21:25.120 her view of certain polls. I mean, look, what's happening nationwide is unmistakable.

00:21:30.040 And if you can talk to Democrats, they'll they'll tell you about it. There is a dramatic shift

00:21:36.000 as those remaining undecided voters who are not ideological, they're not partisan,

00:21:41.220 they're famously swing voters, begin to apply the circumstances of their life to their ballot.

00:21:46.780 Right. And if you believe that like 10, 8, 10 in the case of Nevada, 16 percent inflation

00:21:53.300 is good for your family, then by all means, keep the incumbents in there. Right. If you think gas

00:21:57.860 prices at six bucks a gallon and leveraged against the rest of the world is good for your family,

00:22:04.000 then, yeah, no, the incumbents are going to be in good shape. It's obviously going to not happen

00:22:08.940 that way. Right. So it's just a matter of in what margin all of this happens. And I'm beginning to

00:22:15.880 think there's going to be a little bit more margin than than perhaps we initially thought.

00:22:21.040 Well, and here's the other thing. OK, by the way, Trafalgar, which I think is one of the polls

00:22:25.640 she's referring to, because Robert Cahaley is more right leaning. But he what he wants,

00:22:31.300 and he said this to me personally, repeatedly, what he wants more than anything is to be right.

00:22:34.700 He does. He doesn't want to be loyal to Republicans. He wants to be right. He's given an A minus rating,

00:22:41.140 I think, by five thirty eight when it comes to pollsters. He called the two twenty eighteen

00:22:45.700 elections better than anybody. He called twenty twenty either better or almost as well as anybody

00:22:51.600 in the game. So it's like, all right, I don't know who you're referring to, but if it's him,

00:22:55.620 if it's real clear politics, they have they have a history that we can judge them against. And their

00:23:01.000 histories are really, really strong. They started poll aggregation. They started the thing that

00:23:06.280 Democrats all love and aggregating all of these polls. I mean, like literally their business model

00:23:11.220 in five thirty eight in The New York Times. And they just took what real clear politics had been

00:23:16.520 doing and applied it to their own models. And Democrats seem to love that. Right. Yeah.

00:23:21.000 Not what's real politics doing other than like averaging. He doesn't. Tom Bevin's not putting a

00:23:27.020 thumb on the scale. He's saying here are all the polls and here's what the net result is. I mean,

00:23:31.200 it's absurd. But wait, but here's your political operative. So, you know, the answer to this

00:23:35.520 question. OK, I'm like, I actually want accurate information. I don't want to predict results

00:23:40.740 that I want. I want I want accurate information. What's likely to happen? So maybe I'm deluding

00:23:47.420 myself about a red wave in New York, which personally I would like to see. I am sick of 1.00

00:23:52.580 one party rule in New York state. So maybe Joy Reid is right. Maybe there's some Republican

00:23:58.440 pollster or somebody trying to mislead us in New York to try to get Lee Zeldin over the top.

00:24:03.040 Well, where are the Democrat heavyweights going? Doesn't that tell us a lot? Like in my history

00:24:09.240 as a reporter, you want to know where they're worried about. You see where the big names are

00:24:13.000 going to try to shore up support. New York governor's race, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton

00:24:19.420 joining Kathy Hochul and Tish James for a Manhattan rally tomorrow. I don't think they send in

00:24:24.560 HRC to the areas they don't care about at all or they think are a total lock.

00:24:30.140 And Obama and Biden are going to all of the states that we just discussed, states that,

00:24:36.560 you know, we previously thought were solidly blue. They're dispatching their top emissary. So

00:24:41.800 you tell me what that's supposed to mean. If not, it's incredibly tight and they're in danger.

00:24:47.460 Yeah. I mean, look, you can't send Kamala and Joe to a state that has any sort of significant

00:24:53.460 red population, you know, just a real Republican base. But you can send into places like New York

00:24:59.860 where you have institutional advantages, huge party registration advantages. You know, the thought

00:25:04.440 process there is if Democrats vote Democrat, we don't have to worry about this thing. So it's all

00:25:08.560 about motivation and trying to get people out. The problem that they've got, particularly in this

00:25:13.360 in the Zeldin Hochul race, is that they are the problem. Right. I mean, you've got a bunch of people 1.00

00:25:19.340 who may have traditionally voted Democrat over the years who are sick and tired of crime.

00:25:24.160 They're sick and tired. Democrats outweighed Republicans in that poll showing Lee Zeldin

00:25:28.180 up one by one point, two to one. Democrats outweighed Republicans two to one in that sample.

00:25:33.820 And that's the right sample. Right. So the question is, how are those Democrats behaving?

00:25:38.740 Are they behaving like true blue Democrats? And in this case, no, they're not. They're not at all.

00:25:44.280 Right. So I don't want to be overly bullish on New York to say, like, Republican red wave is

00:25:50.180 happening. The fact that we're talking about it at all, I think, is testimony of the red wave 0.99

00:25:54.440 is actually happening. Right. Because there's no business, no business in a Republican winning

00:26:00.540 that governor's race in a partisan moment like this. And also, there's a ton of congressional

00:26:06.020 districts here that are super competitive. I mean, we talked maybe the other day about the

00:26:11.020 DCCC, the campaign committee for House Democrats. Sean Patrick Maloney himself, the chairman of the

00:26:17.140 operation, is now down in polls in his own district. That's real. That is happening. And so, you know,

00:26:24.740 like, can these people overcome all the institutional barriers and turnout mechanisms that Democrats have

00:26:31.580 traditionally had in New York to win? I guess that part remains to be seen. But the point is,

00:26:36.960 Democrats have had to exercise every muscle possible to try to get to the point where they even have any

00:26:43.040 confidence that their people can win. You know, and again, if it's a mirage, as as, again,

00:26:47.820 prognosticator Joy Reid tells us, it's a mirage, an intentional misstatement of the facts. Why is

00:26:53.600 Dark Brandon coming out again? Why are we getting Dark Brandon part two at the Capitol? He's going to

00:26:59.240 begin with, remember when I won here, remember, remember me, I won. And these people try to say I

00:27:03.680 didn't. Back to me and my thwarters of democracy. Come on, we've got to stop them. And Paul Pelosi,

00:27:10.180 too, by the way. Oh, I mean, I don't understand for the life of me why they think this works,

00:27:17.780 Megan. I mean, first of all, let's just take the backdrop. He's doing this in front of Union Station,

00:27:21.800 right? Yeah, they did move it from the Capitol to Union Station, the train station. Okay, fine.

00:27:26.120 Yeah. So like Union State, well, I mean, the bad the Capitol is right there. It's all it's all

00:27:30.460 right there. But I guess the point the point is Union Station is lost about 30 percent of its

00:27:36.200 storefronts over the last two years. You walk through there. It is like a ghost town. Starbucks

00:27:41.160 had to close because of safety issues. I mean, if ever if ever you want a monument to the failures

00:27:47.180 of the of the Biden administration, he's standing in front of it. And then he's going to go and he's

00:27:51.920 going to tell us what democracy means. Right. Right. Right. Before we're all voting and exercising

00:27:57.920 democracy, the president's going to helpfully explain to us how it can be saved by voting

00:28:02.420 Democrat. What an amazing construct. Right. And like no poll in the country is buying their whole

00:28:10.200 Jan 6 and abortion is the only thing that matters construct, which is why you have this red wave 0.99

00:28:16.160 developing in addition to the fact that their economic policies have basically made every American

00:28:21.740 vulnerable to their next page. This is like when I interviewed Chris Christie not long after

00:28:28.320 Bridgegate and we went to him. We went to the governor's office and his team chose the location.

00:28:35.060 We're like, fine, great, wherever you guys want. It was outside. And I liked the governor and still

00:28:39.500 like the governor and his team. But they literally set it up with the with an enormous bridge in the

00:28:44.800 background to the point where we actually said, are you sure this is how you want to do it?

00:28:50.160 They're like, yeah, yeah, we're good. I'm like, OK, OK, OK, let's do this thing.

00:28:57.480 Sometimes these folks are not well served by their team. Not everybody has a Josh Holmes on their team.

00:29:03.020 Oh, well, it's nice of you to say. But I mean, look, I think what is an undeniable fact is the

00:29:09.980 control of the House and the Senate is going to be determined in large part on the president himself,

00:29:16.980 his policies, his image, whether the American people want to continue on in the Biden agenda

00:29:23.100 or not. All right. That is proven to be a real liability for Democrats. And so, I mean, like I think

00:29:30.740 you ask like a Mark Kelly or a Catherine Cortez Masto or Patty Murray or some of these people who are in

00:29:36.660 danger of losing their seats. Is it helpful to have the president standing in a monument of your failures

00:29:42.900 a week before the election? I mean, I just I can't imagine. Maybe they'll move it next to a grocery

00:29:48.980 store or in front of a gas pump. Seriously, it's on. We might as well throw Keystone Pipeline in the

00:29:56.520 middle of it and see if we can't figure that out. Maybe Afghanistan, Bagram Air Base. Right. I mean,

00:30:03.060 let's just go through the litany of all of the list of terribles that this administration has been

00:30:08.100 through and talk about them all six days before an election. Oh, OK. Now, listen, I mentioned an

00:30:13.200 overseas war and that I wanted to ask you about this before I let you go. Biden with yet another

00:30:18.060 nonsensical, non-factual campaign trail stumble. I mean, hopefully, Dark Brandon stays on the

00:30:26.000 prompter tonight because when he goes off the prompter, we've seen he makes a lot of mistakes.

00:30:30.060 Just last week, he said we have 54 states. And last I have to just just count the flags. I mean,

00:30:36.300 the stars on the flag and you're good. You got it. Fifty. Let's not get started on the Republican

00:30:41.300 congressman he thought was alive when she was dead. He had acknowledged that shortly prior.

00:30:45.420 So here he is speaking yesterday about inflation. OK, and listen to how he says Iraq instead of

00:30:54.420 Ukraine and then how he tries to fix it with more disinformation. Listen.

00:30:59.040 Inflation is a worldwide problem right now because of a war in Iraq and the impact on oil and what

00:31:06.720 Russia is doing. I mean, excuse me, the war in in Ukraine. And think of Iraq because that's when my

00:31:14.240 son died. The because he died. No, he did not die in Iraq. He's made this mistake or misstatement

00:31:21.960 repeatedly. Josh, Beau Biden may have gotten sick. He may have gotten cancer thanks to those pits,

00:31:28.440 those burn pits in Iraq. But he did not die in Iraq. And he said this repeatedly now.

00:31:33.960 I just, you know, at some point it becomes elder abuse, doesn't it? I mean, I understand he's he's

00:31:41.260 the president of the United States and I understand that, you know, people elected him and I understand

00:31:45.780 that they want to get him out and talk about things. But like it every single time he goes off of a

00:31:51.460 teleprompter, it is a debilitating error, the likes of which if a Republican ever said one of those

00:31:57.000 things that he says on a daily basis, they'd never see elected office again. And yet we're sort of

00:32:02.000 forced to to pretend like he's driving the bus in the right direction. And look, I think that's

00:32:09.020 playing into this midterm, too. Right. I mean, it's not just that what you've done is wrong. It's that

00:32:15.460 they have absolutely no confidence in his ability to get things right. And how could they? He can't get

00:32:21.360 through a sentence. And I mean, look, like I don't want to harangue away on the fact that clearly

00:32:27.080 he's lost a step. Clearly, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Like, it brings me no joy

00:32:31.560 to do that. But he's the president of the United States. Right. And it comes with enormous power,

00:32:38.200 enormous responsibility to try to take care of the American people. And by any objective standard,

00:32:43.900 he cannot effectuate that. He cannot do anything about that. And God, I mean, you take him off the

00:32:50.000 mic, you put the vice president on, it gets worse. So, I mean, this is look, if I were them,

00:32:55.160 I'd shut it down. I'd shut it down. Yes, that's my question. If you because you've handled candidates

00:32:59.980 before, what what would you do if you were in the position of handling him? What would you do?

00:33:04.560 Well, I think his campaign guys got it right. I mean, they turned it over the White House staff

00:33:08.240 and they and they have created all of this problem. The campaign for Joe Biden, if you recall,

00:33:13.820 was largely conducted from his basement. We didn't hear anything from other than stumbling

00:33:18.140 out and shaking a couple of hands and going back in the basement. And that worked for him. And he

00:33:23.080 basically ran is not Trump. Right. It wasn't anything. It was like here. This old guy is not

00:33:27.720 going to go screw up the country because he doesn't know any better anyway. But that's fine. He's not

00:33:31.300 Trump. Now you get him out there and he wants to be, you know, 30 years ago, Joe Biden. He's not 30

00:33:38.040 years ago. Joe Biden. He is an 80 year old man who has has clearly lost his ability to navigate

00:33:46.340 incredibly treacherous water. And the scariest part is on the international stage. Right. Yeah. I mean,

00:33:52.780 it's one thing to screw up talking about tax cuts. It's quite another to look to to change

00:33:57.980 foreign policy vis a vis Taiwan, for example, off the cuff. Right. Not to mention those clearly

00:34:04.780 signal to Russia you can invade and the consequences will probably be rather minor as long as it's a 0.88

00:34:10.160 minor incursion. I mean, just, you know, you could go down the list. But yeah, he's not this Joe Biden

00:34:14.860 of 30 years ago. He's not the Joe Biden of 30 months ago. You could even say 30 days ago. I mean,

00:34:20.620 it just seems like it's on a downward decline. That's why there's so little enthusiasm in particular

00:34:26.300 amongst young Democrats for him staying on the ticket. And in our next segment, I'll talk about

00:34:31.520 Kamala as well. Josh, always a pleasure. Yeah. Oh, gosh. It's so fun. Megan, I feel like we're

00:34:37.760 just sort of sitting on the living room couch just chatting politics. This is great. I just love it.

00:34:42.040 I know. I love your your political analysis because you're always spot on and you're an honest broker.

00:34:47.240 We appreciate it. Thanks, Megan. All right. Coming up, part two of my interview with Sean Parnell,

00:34:54.100 who, you know, I don't want to say he should have been in that seat that Dr. Oz is in right now

00:34:58.620 running against Fetterman. But he almost was in that seat until a personal story travail took him

00:35:05.940 out of the race. He's never spoken about it today. He will. And we'll talk all things politics,

00:35:10.820 including a scathing column by George Will calling for the Democrats to boot Kamala Harris once and

00:35:17.440 for all, not to mention Joe Biden. I did want to bring you something that I mentioned earlier,

00:35:27.140 and that is this opinion piece by George Will. OK, he makes the case in no uncertain terms today

00:35:33.360 that Kamala Harris cannot be the standard bearer once Joe Biden goes away, which he argues he needs

00:35:39.620 to do. So here's what George Will writes. For the good of the country, Biden and Harris should bow out

00:35:45.880 of the 2024 election. I'm going to read this to you. I said this to Steve Krakauer before we launched

00:35:50.300 the show today that I wanted you to hear this in full. Vice President Kamala Harris applauds

00:35:55.400 President Biden. No, sorry. No, that's OK. Here he writes during this autumn's avalanche of political

00:36:01.180 news, an enormous boulder bounced by barely noticed. It demonstrated why Joe Biden should

00:36:07.860 not seek another term. Democrats should promptly face that fact. And this one an Everest of evidence

00:36:14.160 shows that Vice President Harris is starkly unqualified to be considered as his successor.

00:36:19.320 Now, here's the boulder. The boulder, colon. Meeting recently with some progressive activists,

00:36:25.320 Biden said his four hundred and twenty six billion dollar student loan forgiveness was accomplished by

00:36:31.100 a law that he had, quote, just signed. Quote, I got it passed by a vote or two. End quote. No, he did not.

00:36:41.920 Biden was not merely again embellishing his achievements. This is not just another of his

00:36:46.900 verbal fender benders. There is no less than dismaying explanation. There's no less than

00:36:53.300 dismaying explanation for his complete confusion. What vote? Who voted? Good questions, George.

00:37:00.100 No one, as George well knows. After repeated unilateral extensions of the moratorium on loan repayments

00:37:06.800 until election season, Biden unilaterally implemented the windfall for millions of voters. Congress was not

00:37:13.520 involved in this cataract of money from the Treasury in violation of the Constitution's appropriations

00:37:19.640 clause. Of course, as an aside, this is me talking again. We've talked about this on the show. There

00:37:23.760 was no vote. There was no I got it passed by a vote or two. He did not. He did it by executive fiat.

00:37:30.180 And yet he's out there completely revising history in a way that most disturbingly seemed real to him.

00:37:35.400 He seemed to actually believe it. All right. Back to George. Well, it is frightening that Biden doesn't

00:37:40.960 know or remember what he recently did regarding an immensely important policy. He must be presumed

00:37:47.060 susceptible to future episodes of similar bewilderment. He should leave the public stage

00:37:51.920 on January 20th, 2025, which would be the end of his first term. OK, so should his vice president,

00:38:00.220 Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson's vice president, joked, once there were two brothers. One ran away to

00:38:07.520 see. The other was elected vice president of the United States and nothing was heard of either of

00:38:12.320 them. Again, Kamala Harris has been heard from sufficiently. And then George goes on to say

00:38:18.640 transcripts of her verbal meanderings cannot convey their eerie strangeness. Videos of them should be

00:38:27.440 watched. He's 100 percent right. We've played so many of them on the show. He goes on to quote many

00:38:33.680 of them and says she sounds, as a critic has said, like someone giving a book report on a book she has

00:38:40.520 not read. I'll take you down just a little memory lane. Let's play soundbite nine as one example.

00:38:46.580 We will work together and continue to work together to address these issues, to tackle these challenges

00:38:52.880 and to work together as we continue to work operating from the new norms, rules and agreements

00:39:00.960 that we will convene to work together on. He goes on. Her style betrays a self-satisfied

00:39:08.820 exaggeration of her aptitudes. Lacking natural talent, she needs to prepare, but evidently does 0.92

00:39:15.140 not. Complacency and arrogance make a ruinous compound. Here's another soundbite cited by George

00:39:22.300 and played previously by us, Kamala Harris, on the beauty of the yellow school bus, SOT 8.

00:39:29.600 I have a particular fondness, I must tell you, for electric school buses. I love electric school

00:39:35.280 buses. I really do. And we're manufacturing them in our country. I've been to the manufacturing plants.

00:39:42.800 I've been on these electric school buses. And think about it. Aside from the pandemic,

00:39:47.880 on a daily basis, 25 million children in our country every day go to school on those diesel-fueled

00:39:56.040 school buses. And hundreds, thousands of school bus drivers are driving those buses, which are then

00:40:07.280 these people, these children, these adults are inhaling what is toxic air.

00:40:14.400 George Will goes on. Regarding Biden and Harris, the National Democratic Party faces two tests of

00:40:23.080 stewardship. Its imprimatur cannot again be bestowed on either of them. Biden is not just past his prime,

00:40:32.660 even adequacy is in his past. My God, that may be the perfect sentence. Biden is not just past his

00:40:40.220 prime. Even adequacy is in his past. And this is Harris's prime, George Will points out.

00:40:48.560 He concludes, in 2024, the Republican Party might present the nation with a presidential nominee

00:40:53.340 whose unfitness has been demonstrated. Will, as you may know, is no Trump fan. After next Tuesday's

00:40:59.560 sobering election results, Democrats should resolve not to insult and imperil the nation by doing

00:41:06.040 likewise. It's an unbelievable piece. It's a strong piece and it's a completely fair piece.

00:41:11.540 And it perfectly encapsulates the pickle in which Democrats find themselves. Because who's next?

00:41:18.720 Who's next? Gavin Newsom. Good luck. Once voters get a look at his record, they're not trying to go

00:41:23.760 farther left to get a more squad like nominee. That that person is not going to be acceptable to these

00:41:29.860 Dems who are getting ready to vote for Lee Zeldin in New York. No. Right. So who else?

00:41:35.660 Pete Buttigieg, who's he's like 14. He's been a mayor and the transportation secretary during a

00:41:42.320 supply chain crisis that he did absolutely nothing about. That's not going to work. It's not going to

00:41:46.580 happen. They don't have a strong standard bearer. That's why they're in such trouble. That's why we're

00:41:51.180 getting dark Brandon tonight and Joy Reid in a panic saying the polls are wrong. By the way,

00:41:56.280 we're talking about I was looking at him, the Cook Political Report, the Cook Political Report's

00:42:00.680 nonpartisan. Both sides acknowledge that they just shifted 10 more House seats won by President Joe

00:42:04.900 Biden toward the GOP. Nate Silver's 538 just flipped its projection for control of the U.S. Senate to favor

00:42:11.000 Republicans for the first time. Are they part of her weird right wing cabal? They're in trouble and

00:42:16.540 they know it at the presidential level, at the congressional level. And soon we're going to

00:42:20.640 have hardcore results by which to judge her kind of nonsense. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. 0.89

00:42:26.280 We're trying now to do this via like a new technology as sort of a different computer

00:42:36.100 and a different system. So hopefully this will work. Stand by. And if not, you know,

00:42:40.000 give it a third try. We're not giving up on Sean. I feel like it's it's Fetterman.

00:42:45.480 Yeah. He's clipping wires in the back of your Connecticut home and you don't even know it.

00:42:52.800 I know. It's insane. It's so weird. I can hear Josh Holmes perfectly and I could hear everything

00:42:58.220 else. But then every time you pop up, it's like some dark force is trying to prevent us

00:43:03.040 from talking. I know it's the strangest thing in the world, but it's not unlike the luck that I've

00:43:08.540 had this last year. So we'll just roll with the punches, you know?

00:43:12.540 Oh, well, you know what? And then, but not unlike the last year, you did not give up on yourself and we

00:43:17.340 did not give up on you and we will forge forward and have a meaningful exchange, which is what I

00:43:21.840 hope your future holds to. Thank you for trusting me with this. And I'm sorry that we got off to the

00:43:26.660 rocky start on such a personal issue in particular. But so let's just go back. OK, let's go back to

00:43:32.980 August of 2021. And you were voting for this Republican nomination in the Senate seat in

00:43:38.780 Pennsylvania, the one that ultimately Oz would get. And he only swooped in when, you know, 0.56

00:43:43.460 you bowed out and he saw an opportunity. You actually are from Pennsylvania and you decided

00:43:49.480 to try your your throwing your hat in the ring. Then things exploded in your personal life in a

00:43:55.340 way that caused you to drop out. And the allegations where I was shocked because I remember you just

00:43:59.460 been on my show and you clearly has a ton of charisma. You just remember saying, like, you don't

00:44:05.680 look like the average Senate candidate. You don't act like the tats going and you're the combat vet and

00:44:11.800 the bronze stars. But then the next thing I heard like a month later was you had to drop out. And

00:44:18.080 I forgive me, but like the headlines in the media were abuser, you know, a wife abuser, a child abuser.

00:44:24.620 It was like, what? And I remember saying to my team, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. Like,

00:44:29.360 I want to know more. And as it turns out, that was a good instinct because the story is far different

00:44:36.680 than that. And few in the media or even your detractors would really take the time to go

00:44:42.080 look it up. So let's get into it. OK, your perspective. What happened? What? Why did

00:44:48.180 the newspaper say that? And why do people still believe that? Well, I think that with regards to

00:44:54.640 the media, their mission was clear and it was to derail my Senate campaign. We were up by 20 points

00:45:04.780 in the primary. We were out raising everybody in the field combined. We had just received

00:45:12.260 President Trump's endorsement. Our internal polling, more than 10 months out from the general

00:45:19.360 election, had us running neck and neck with John Fetterman. And that was prior to the world

00:45:23.680 knowing about his stroke. We had a special thing going, Megan. And I mean, my message to the people

00:45:32.260 of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was like, generally speaking, I don't like the Republican

00:45:37.260 Party or the Democrat Party, but I'm running because I love this country. And that's what

00:45:43.760 matters to me. And if you're a Democrat that's been voting Democrat your entire life, and maybe

00:45:50.280 we disagree on certain issues, but you love this country, then you are more than welcome to stand

00:45:55.180 with me and march with me and fight for this country. And I did everything that I could

00:45:59.100 to bring people together, you know, because ultimately I think that's what leadership is

00:46:03.760 all about. And then the custody trial happened and it came out of left field. And I think that

00:46:11.600 the focus was at that specific time was to derail my Senate campaign because we were running away with

00:46:19.480 this thing. But leading up to, so I'll tell, I'll tell you this, let's just give you a little bit

00:46:25.860 of a timeline if that's okay. I ran for Congress. Prior to your running, you had been in a contentious

00:46:32.960 divorce with your now ex-wife. That's exactly right. And that's, that's, yeah, now that's something

00:46:39.820 that was not talked about at all, but I think a critical piece of information, the media led people

00:46:45.760 to believe that this was all brand new. Um, and that the woman I was, I'm with now, I I'm getting

00:46:51.980 a divorce from that my ex and I were together. Now it really wasn't the case. I've been involved

00:46:57.040 in my children's lives, their entire life. I was the first person to hold them when they were brought

00:47:02.360 onto this earth. Um, and in 2019, um, my ex consented to 50, 50 custody. And for years thereafter,

00:47:11.700 she and I shared custody with some conflict along the way, because, you know, if you're going through

00:47:17.260 a divorce, you know, everybody has conflict. Um, but everything was fine. I ran for Congress,

00:47:24.220 um, and a highly contested swing district here in, in Western Pennsylvania spoke at the Republican

00:47:31.200 national convention in prime time spoke at three Trump rallies in front of tens of thousands of people.

00:47:37.240 And when the media inquired into my, my divorce and my custody issues, uh, my ex issued a joint

00:47:43.460 statement with me. She stood with me and basically told the media to scram saying that, you know,

00:47:47.800 while Sean and I have our differences, uh, we love our kids very much. And a year later that all

00:47:54.580 changed. Um, and I found myself in a three-day custody trial with every media outlet in the country,

00:48:05.740 either in the trial itself or cameras outside. And, you know, Megan divorce and custody issues are 0.98

00:48:16.500 really, really tough. Um, and they're extraordinarily tough on children. And then you add to that,

00:48:23.560 the media being involved in exploiting every single thing in an attempt to paint me as something that

00:48:30.300 I'm not, I have to say outside of deploying to Afghanistan. I mean, this was 10 times worse than

00:48:37.520 anything that I'd ever experienced in the military or prior, or prior to that. You know, it was just,

00:48:44.200 I'm sure it's hard. It's hard to talk about even now. It's hard to talk about even now.

00:48:48.880 What changed? Okay. Your, your ex-wife, um, came, came forward when, during this run,

00:48:54.200 her name's Lori and Lori Snell, and she came forward to say all these, you know, negative

00:49:00.920 things about you, allegations, as you point out at this particular time in your Senate run. So

00:49:05.520 what changed? I understand how the media got super interested in it, you know, they hadn't been

00:49:10.020 before, but had something changed between you and Lori at that particular time? Well, no, not that I

00:49:16.460 know of. Uh, in fact, the custody modification that was filed, Megan was filed back during my run

00:49:22.040 for Congress and it largely focused on extra extracurricular activities or homework during

00:49:28.780 COVID. Um, and if you remember schoolwork during COVID was really challenging when everything shut

00:49:34.720 down and schools didn't really have a rhythm for how they were going to do virtual schooling. You

00:49:38.960 know, I had one laptop that I'm on right now and I was getting three different notifications for my

00:49:43.000 kids. Uh, you know, uh, they've got a zoom class at 1130 and then there was another class on

00:49:48.220 class dojo. It was just super chaotic. So it was a chaotic time in general for

00:49:51.940 for, for, for, I think not just our family, but every family. Um, so I don't really know

00:49:57.220 what changed. Um, other than I was running for a higher office.

00:50:03.920 She, we'll, we'll, we'll get right to it. She, she filed the case against you to challenge

00:50:09.160 the custody situation. Uh, it was heard by senior judge James G Arner and the hearing was on,

00:50:17.500 it was early November, 2021. Okay. So it was after you had come on our show and, um, in the midst of

00:50:25.100 the, your run, um, that judge said in his decision that the children love and feel safe with you and

00:50:34.340 their mother, both of you, and that both parents provide proper care for them. That judge said under

00:50:40.540 the circumstances, it would seem that the parents should have equal time and equal say in their,

00:50:45.200 in the decisions regarding the children. However, that arrangement has been tried and is not working

00:50:50.820 primarily because both parents refuse to communicate and compromise. Both parents are now

00:50:55.360 seeking primary physical custody. And the court says it must decide between quote, two good parents

00:51:02.780 by applying factors and facts of the case and the needs of the children. The end goal is the best

00:51:06.580 interest of the children. Now that so far to me is very contrary to the media narrative, which has,

00:51:12.060 as I said at the beginning was so cruel to you. I mean, a very unfavorable to you. This judge is

00:51:16.600 saying, I have two good parents here and both children, all the children, you have three of them

00:51:21.520 love and feel safe with both parents and say that they are properly cared for by both parents. Um,

00:51:26.900 so the judge is basically saying, I want you both to have shared custody just the way it's been,

00:51:31.180 but you two can't get along and that's not working. So now I'm being forced to modify that. So,

00:51:36.120 okay, I'm going to, he considers all the evidence, the arguments, including testimony of the children

00:51:40.760 who did not testify in open court, but privately, and that he heard, and he awarded primary physical

00:51:46.680 custody to your wife, your ex-wife and sole legal custody to Lori. So she got, so that this is the

00:51:53.640 thing that so upset you. Um, so it was shared custody 50, 50. Now it's primary physical custody

00:52:00.120 and sole legal custody. So she gets to make all the decisions on schools, on, on medicine, on religion,

00:52:06.140 all that stuff. And you won't, you get partial physical custody, which is like every other

00:52:10.580 weekend, something like that. I get, I get the first, second and fourth weekend of every month,

00:52:16.900 which basically boils down to three days a month that is uninterrupted with a custody exchange.

00:52:24.820 So it didn't just, the order didn't just overturn a three-year status quo of, of shared custody. Um,

00:52:33.020 it overturned a lifetime of me being in the lives of my kids for every moment, large and small. Um,

00:52:41.220 and it, it, it was tough. You know, I, I, as someone who loves this country, I, I believe in the system,

00:52:48.660 I trust in the system and I'm never going to stop fighting for my kids. Um, but this ruling was

00:52:54.220 extraordinarily tough for, for a lot of reasons on our family. But when you look at how the state

00:53:00.220 of Pennsylvania evaluates custody, they look at 16 factors, Megan, and it covers a wide range of,

00:53:06.380 of, of things, um, in the ruling, three factors favored my ex and two factors favored me. The one

00:53:16.620 that was the most significantly weighted was availability. And the fact that in, in the trial

00:53:23.060 court's own words, I was the leading candidate for Senate, I didn't testify to the fact that I was the

00:53:28.540 leading candidate for Senate, but that those were the words in, um, his opinion. I did testify to the

00:53:34.660 fact that, Hey, I thought we were going to win. I felt it in my bones. Um, so my thought to remedy

00:53:42.740 that was okay. If, if three factors favor my ex and two factors favor me, if I withdraw from the Senate

00:53:49.680 race and, and make sure that the court knows, and that my, more importantly, my children know that

00:53:55.160 they are my only priority in life. And I always put them number one, then maybe I can file a motion

00:54:00.360 for reconsideration. And then look, we've got two factors that favor her, two factors that favor me.

00:54:04.480 And maybe I can get at least salvage, you know, time with my children and get them back into my life.

00:54:10.740 Yeah. Get back to the 50, 50. Yeah.

00:54:13.840 Dealing more of a fair arrangement on, on legal custody, like the decision-making authority. So

00:54:18.300 you, you drop out of the race and, but before we get to what happened next, um, I think it's very

00:54:25.040 interesting because you're right. I, I looked at the decision myself and the judge did not say

00:54:29.600 Sean is an abuser of Lori or the children. And therefore the children are going with the wife, 0.63

00:54:35.880 which is how I think this was kind of spun. The judge, as I said, said, you're both good parents

00:54:41.720 and the children feel like they've gotten good love and proper care. And the judge had no reason to

00:54:45.820 dispute any of that, but your ex-wife Lori did make abuse allegations during the hearing. And this is

00:54:53.240 where things got ugly. And I want to ask you about them. So suddenly she testified at this particular

00:55:00.480 hearing, which wound up going her way about specific incidents. She claims constituted abuse.

00:55:06.360 Again, this is 2021, the fall of 2021. She says in, um, she says 13 years earlier in 2008,

00:55:12.860 while you were dating that you threw chairs across the room toward her, that you dropped her off on an

00:55:18.660 interstate when she was six months pregnant and told her to get an abortion that in 2009, 12 years 1.00

00:55:25.160 earlier, after your oldest child was born, you pinned her down by her thighs and screened profanities at 0.97

00:55:30.960 her. That in 2015, six years before her testimony, you tried to choke and strangle her on the couch

00:55:38.340 and that she bit you. That in 2018, three years before her testimony, you started hitting the kids

00:55:44.360 and would call them names that you would call her crazy in front of the children. You would go into

00:55:49.980 rages over little things the children did. And then she had two big allegations, um, beginning in 2018,

00:55:56.660 which I'll get to involving the children. But so far that's what she alleged and testified to.

00:56:01.720 How do you respond to those claims? They're flat out untrue. They're false in every single way. And

00:56:08.540 what I just told you is the same thing that I told the trial court and every single one of those

00:56:16.140 allegations, the alleged allegations and alleged incidences were heard in an actual hearing in 2018

00:56:25.020 in front of a judge where there was a full hearing. Uh, in fact, my attorneys at the time,

00:56:32.340 because there was a PFA filed, and I don't know if your audience knows what that is, but it was a

00:56:36.020 protection from abuse order. Um, oftentimes when those are filed, they're almost always granted on

00:56:43.140 an interim or temporary basis. They're ex parte. So you can't make a case. They're just, they're filed

00:56:48.700 against you and you have to comply for 10 days until you get a hearing. Um, my lawyers at the

00:56:55.000 time were saying, you should try to settle this. And oftentimes when you're, when you're in the midst

00:56:58.940 of divorce and custody, you know, PFAs are used as leverage for, you know, um, exclusive possession

00:57:06.300 of the marital home. Like, in other words, I'll drop the PFA. If you give me, if you give me the

00:57:10.380 house and pay the mortgage, um, I was so committed against defending myself against these false

00:57:15.920 allegations. I wouldn't settle. I went to trial. And in that hearing, we won. And then in fact,

00:57:21.840 there was a child protective services investigation at the time. They found the allegations to be

00:57:26.540 completely unfounded. The judge at the time found the allegations to be unfounded and untrue. Um,

00:57:35.080 everything was dismissed and then expunged. There was no contest on the expungement. And then

00:57:40.280 shortly thereafter, she consented to 50, 50 custody. And I thought that this was all behind us.

00:57:45.300 I thought that, you know, Hey, I defeated these allegations once, you know, this is America,

00:57:50.240 you know, you can't, you can't have the same allegations brought to you,

00:57:55.080 brought against you multiple times, but in the family court, I guess that's, that's not true.

00:57:59.860 And everything that, that you just talked about, um, I had already defeated once in 2018. So we weren't

00:58:07.260 even sure that she'd be able to bring that stuff to trial and testify to that stuff. But,

00:58:11.480 but she was, um, it's completely, completely untrue, Megan. And what was really difficult

00:58:19.340 about all of this was that I remember being bullied as, as a kid, a lot, I was bullied pretty

00:58:28.180 horrifically actually. And one of the things that affected me the most as a kid were my friends who

00:58:36.400 I was really close with, who would see me getting bullied and then maybe not do anything or stand

00:58:41.340 up for me. And for whatever reason, I just thought to myself, I'm never going to be that kind of person

00:58:49.860 that sees someone that needs help or needs to, needs to be defended or is maybe weaker than me.

00:58:57.520 Um, I never let them stand idly by and take it. I would always stand up to defend them.

00:59:03.140 And I think that was a lot of what drove me to join the military after September 11th.

00:59:08.500 And it's been wired into the very fabric of, of who I am, uh, defending people who can't defend

00:59:14.140 themselves. And since I've been out of the military, I've dedicated my life to serving other people.

00:59:18.980 I think the pathway to a meaningful life, uh, is service to your fellow man and woman.

00:59:24.500 And these allegations just flew in the face of all of that. And let, let me ask you, let me look,

00:59:30.340 let's talk Turkey. Okay. Cause we were on, when we did our lengthy interview in August of 21,

00:59:35.240 we talked about your traumatic brain injury and some of the trauma that you, you suffered in serving

00:59:40.000 overseas. And that doesn't make anybody inclined to abuse a loved one at all, to be clear, but it can

00:59:47.780 result in anger issues, having PTSD or, you know, something like that. Traumatic brain injury can

00:59:53.000 change the way somebody acts or behaves. And so is it not true? Like none of this is true that you,

00:59:59.520 you were rageful toward her. You threw chairs toward her, dropped her off in the interstate.

01:00:03.960 She says interstate 79 when she was six months pregnant. That's very clear. Like that's a,

01:00:07.680 that's a super detailed one. None of that ever happened.

01:00:10.340 No, no, none of it. I mean, to get you. Yes. Yes. In fact, you know, I would say that in some

01:00:19.840 cases the family court or being in the system almost incentivizes that because you have one

01:00:26.320 parent or another feels like they have to make up allegations to get a leg up in custody. And then

01:00:32.300 you add to that, that whoever gets primary custody, there's a financial incentive there because child

01:00:37.180 support obligations and sometimes alimony is increased. And then add to that, the fact that

01:00:42.360 there's no punishment for false allegations. It, it almost the entire system that pits one parent

01:00:48.280 against the other. I mean, it creates an environment for it. And look, Lori and I,

01:00:57.040 we had a rough relationship, right? Maybe rough is obviously the wrong word. It wasn't a great,

01:01:03.700 healthy relationship. Um, that's why she and I went our separate ways and ended up getting divorced. 0.98

01:01:10.640 There was never any abuse. I mean, we, we fought, we had arguments, we called each other names. Uh,

01:01:19.140 we had an on again, off again relationship for a long time, but there was never any abuse in,

01:01:25.580 in that relationship. Certainly nothing of what she said in that trial was true, but unfortunately,

01:01:31.500 um, the judge was swayed by those allegations, even though he didn't find, uh, any child abuse,

01:01:38.940 uh, in his opinion. So as you point out back at that 2018 hearing in which she raised these

01:01:44.120 allegations, she got the, uh, temporary protection order, which you, that's, I mean, with respect to

01:01:50.300 her, um, that's very easy to get. You just go in one sided before a court and say, I need it. And,

01:01:55.780 and they take your, uh, assertions as they basically give you the benefit of the doubt. And if,

01:02:00.300 and if your assertions taken as true would justify you to the protection, they generally

01:02:05.060 give it, but then you have a trial, then you have a hearing where the judge hears evidence

01:02:08.620 from the defendant and gets to make a more measured conclusion. And indeed, even this judge

01:02:14.060 acknowledged that after a full hearing on that 2018, uh, uh, trial, uh, the judge denied her petition

01:02:20.240 for protection. And that after that, you agreed the both of you to a 50, 50 custody order,

01:02:26.220 uh, you filed a motion to expunge that case, basically erase it, which she did not oppose.

01:02:31.380 And the court did expunge it. So, you know, so far going into your Senate rates and all that,

01:02:35.580 you and Lori had had an ugly divorce and ugly custody to dispute, but you got it to a

01:02:40.360 decent place and you're going forward. Now it gets reopened because she's saying

01:02:44.440 it's not working. We hate each other too much to communicate well. And the judge is revisiting.

01:02:49.440 Um, and now there's a couple of other allegations. These are, you know, arguably the most disturbing

01:02:54.180 about you and your children that I do want to ask you about, because they're in the public record

01:02:58.060 now. And she said, um, that in January or February of 2018, and you'll tell me whether this was also

01:03:05.640 in the earlier proceeding, but that in January of February, 2013, she claimed she heard your older

01:03:10.640 son scream and cry that you said, Oh, it's a joke. And that she saw your full handprint on the child's

01:03:17.280 back that the child was hurt. And she took a picture that was admitted into evidence. She

01:03:23.220 claimed she was going to call the police, but she did not because, uh, she knew that you were

01:03:27.920 concerned about your livelihood and public image as an author and a public speaker. And because she

01:03:31.640 did not see you hit the child, uh, and that you would allegedly say to her quote, call the cops 0.97

01:03:37.300 and you will be dead before they get here. And then claimed you were only joking before I go on to

01:03:43.080 the next incident. Do you want to respond to that one?

01:03:45.200 Um, it's completely not true. Um, and, and that picture that was entered into evidence during the

01:03:52.080 custody trial, that exact same picture was entered into evidence during the 2018 hearing. Um, and my

01:04:00.060 testimony during the custody trial in 2021 was the same as it was during 2018. And that's not

01:04:06.580 that was, that was also raised before the judge did not find in her favor and correct 50, 50 custody.

01:04:13.780 It was the same piece of evidence and the same alleged incident. And my testimony was unchanged.

01:04:18.880 And that's not a picture of my son. That incident, not a picture of my son. And it just flat out did

01:04:26.980 not happen. And did she falsify evidence? Is that your allegation? I don't know what she did. Um, you'd

01:04:34.280 have to ask her that question, but that picture was not a picture of my son. That incident did not

01:04:40.860 happen. And my son, my children never testified to that. Wow. All right. Let me give you an incident

01:04:48.400 number two. And this is, um, the, the court writing this up. This is the court again, that I just senior

01:04:54.700 judge James G Arner says that the next incident appears to have been the final straw. A few months

01:04:59.800 later, uh, Lori claimed Sean and the younger son, five years old at the time were playing with a

01:05:06.100 robe, a robe or a robe tie in the parents' bedroom. And that Parnell meaning you punched a clothes,

01:05:13.960 a closet door, and it hit the child in the face. He said to the child, quote, it was your fault and

01:05:19.280 get out of here. End quote. Photos of the child's face showing marks were introduced. Lori told Sean to

01:05:25.560 get his stuff and leave. He left that day. Several days later, he came back to the house screaming.

01:05:30.120 She said she was going to file for protection and so on. So, so that preceded that's, that's

01:05:35.680 according to this court is what led her to go in and get that initial protection order, 0.99

01:05:40.580 which wound up ultimately in 50, 50 custody. This incident was also, uh, discussed, um,

01:05:49.060 at the 2018 hearing. Um, and anytime there's a PFA, it also triggers a CYS, uh, child and youth

01:05:56.680 services investigation. And so they also investigated this. Um, Evan and I were playing

01:06:02.080 tug of war. Um, my youngest son and I were playing tug of war with a robe, like one of those things

01:06:08.120 that wrap around. He was just super little at the time, but I was pulling on one end. He was pulling

01:06:12.560 on the other and he let go of his end and went back and he bumped his head on the corner of a door.

01:06:17.420 And that's exactly what happened. And back then, I think four years ago, that's exactly what he told

01:06:24.200 the investigator. And that allegation as well was unfounded. Um, but again, it was dismissed back

01:06:31.680 in 2018, but then brought to bear again in the 2021 custody trial, everything was dismissed. And

01:06:39.260 I thought this was all behind us and that we were moving on together and doing everything that we could

01:06:44.660 to raise our kids to raise our kids. Look, anytime there's a divorce or a divorcing couple or a couple

01:06:52.260 that's separated, there's going to be some conflict and there is some conflict, but the children by and

01:06:58.800 large, like are, are not necessarily exposed to it. You know, of course they know that their parents

01:07:05.300 are divorced. And of course they know that there's some conflict, but they weren't exposed to it. Um,

01:07:10.920 they weren't exposed to it in a way in which it was presented at the custody trial. And after these

01:07:18.080 allegations were dismissed, I thought that this was just going to be put behind us and that, you

01:07:23.640 know, Lori and I were going to move on, uh, in a productive co-parenting relationship and do

01:07:28.040 everything that we could to raise good, strong kids together, but apart.

01:07:32.380 Yeah. But she raised it again and the court took another look at it. And ultimately this court taking

01:07:38.780 another look at it said as follows. Um, he found Lori to be more credible. He found you to be less

01:07:46.200 credible, pointing out that you were dressed very casually for your appearance in court. I got to tell

01:07:51.020 you as a lawyer, that's an odd thing for him to base your credibility on, but she did not feel showed

01:07:55.440 respect for the seriousness of the occasion. I mean, again, that's to me, that that's a little odd,

01:08:00.980 but, um, and said, he did find that you did commit some acts of abuse in the past. However, noting

01:08:09.180 that the incidents involving Lori occurred so many years ago and did not involve the children.

01:08:14.260 They're not relevant to the custody determination. Also went on to say incidents involving the boys

01:08:20.080 did happen in his view, as Lori describes, but he did not place weight on that because it had been

01:08:27.240 years since then with no further incidents and that you had properly cared for the children since

01:08:33.620 judge goes on to say, Lori agreed that Sean can have substantial periods of unsupervised custody.

01:08:40.080 And that indicates even she does not view him as a threat to the children and that the children have

01:08:44.920 not expressed any concerns for their safety. Um, and then he goes on to say, there's no evidence of

01:08:50.680 child abuse and that both parents have adequately performed parental duties. So the judge is a little bit

01:08:55.440 all over the board. You know, he's like, I kind of believe her. I feel like he didn't dress nicely

01:09:00.900 and maybe didn't treat this thing with the respect it deserved, but I don't really think there's

01:09:04.960 evidence of abuse. And so having to choose between one and the other, since he's going to be in the

01:09:10.680 Senate, he's not around as much as she is. I'm going to give her sole legal custody. Does that about 0.99

01:09:15.140 sum it up? Um, yeah. And unfortunately I think that he was swayed a little bit by her,

01:09:22.200 by her testimony. Um, and I'll say, you know, the decision on my, my attire, um, we actually

01:09:30.640 discussed that with counsel at the time. And we were afraid that I'd walk in there in a business

01:09:35.540 suit and look like, like a politician. And, you know, to be, to be fair, I also wasn't dressed like

01:09:43.080 a hobo. I was, I was wearing, you know, an untucket shirt and I thought nice clothes, but maybe I need

01:09:49.620 to re-examine that. Maybe, maybe I need to re-examine that, um, uh, moving forward. And I

01:09:55.500 certainly will. Um, I guess it just, it just hurts as someone who like anyone who knows me knows the

01:10:05.420 kind of relationship that I have with my children. Um, the people of Western Pennsylvania who were

01:10:12.700 super close to our campaign for Congress. I mean, my family campaigned with me everywhere we went,

01:10:18.000 they saw the kind of relationship that I had with my children. I know, but you never know,

01:10:22.940 like in front of the camera versus behind closed doors. That's, that's what's that. But Megan,

01:10:27.580 that is exactly what's so sinister about all of this is that you have people say, well, my gosh,

01:10:33.760 Sean seems like such a nice guy and it seems like his kids really like them, but behind closed

01:10:38.340 doors, you just never know. And that's been really tough for our family to deal with, you know,

01:10:43.940 her agreeing to 50, 50 unsupervised custody after all this allegedly take place took place is your

01:10:50.300 best fact. That's your best fact. And as the judge found, I will say she gave us a statement, uh,

01:10:55.800 emailed to us at our request that reads as follows. Mr. Parnell is a public figure defaming me

01:11:02.240 using his platform, playing out a personal vendetta to impact his own situation with no

01:11:07.540 regard for our children. Facts and evidence proved the abuse and determined custody for judges. Cause

01:11:13.100 you appeal later to a three judge panel all made the same decision based on those facts. He tried

01:11:17.980 to file a gag order to prevent me from speaking out. And now that I have Mr. Parnell is using every

01:11:23.240 platform available to lie and publicly shame me, which is far from healthy or helpful for our

01:11:29.860 children. So she says, you're playing out a personal vendetta to impact your situation and

01:11:35.260 that the abuse has been proven. Well, that's, uh, I, I dispute that I, the abuse hasn't been proven

01:11:44.100 and it didn't happen. And I would not lie about the mother of my children. You know, we, for all of our

01:11:52.600 differences, you know, we created three amazing children together and my focus is, and always

01:11:59.240 has been on them and will continue to be on them. Um, and it's just unfortunate that she feels that

01:12:05.340 way because that's just simply not true. Do you, so you appealed it and unfortunately you didn't know

01:12:11.860 better at the, at the appellate court, uh, where a three judge panel said, I mean, I read that the

01:12:18.180 opinion. And to me, what they were saying was he raises some good points, but we're the appellate

01:12:24.260 court and we don't get to revisit what the finder of fact says. And that is the case, you know, like

01:12:28.780 when it comes to errors of law, you can get a reversal. When it comes to findings of fact,

01:12:34.160 you're screwed. You're stuck with what the lower court did, unless it was absolutely egregious. 0.97

01:12:38.600 And they didn't see that here. And so they kind of said, well, we might've decided this differently.

01:12:43.660 That's not really our role. We got to stick with the findings of fact that the lower court did. And

01:12:47.940 so you're living with this arrangement now where she has full legal custody and you have,

01:12:52.280 you have partial legal custody. So how is that for you? It's been tough. Um, it's been tough on me.

01:12:59.900 I think it's again, more importantly, it's been tough on the kids because, you know, again, this,

01:13:05.260 this order didn't just overturn a three year 50, 50 status quo. It overturned a lifetime of me in the

01:13:12.960 lives of my children in every moment, large and small. And it's been tough, you know, but, but,

01:13:21.060 um, filed another custody modification. Um, I'm going to keep fighting for my kids because

01:13:27.580 they're the most important thing in my life, which is why I, which is why I withdrew from the Senate

01:13:34.700 race to make sure that they knew that, that there was never a question in their minds that they were

01:13:39.040 always, and will always come first for me. Um, and I'm going to keep fighting for them. And,

01:13:45.580 you know, something that I haven't been able to escape though, that's been on my mind ever since

01:13:50.940 that trial is that I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting to defend myself against

01:13:58.280 these false allegations and fighting to keep my children in their lives. And had I just,

01:14:05.440 had I just said when all this started through my hands up and said, you know what, I'm just going

01:14:10.220 to walk away from this and be content to be at every other weekend, dad, pay child support, maybe be,

01:14:14.960 maybe not be there for them all the time, be there for them on the weekends.

01:14:20.040 That would have, that would still be a better deal than what I have right now.

01:14:25.580 So what incentive?

01:14:26.680 It's so hard because it's like, people are primed to believe a woman alleging abuse,

01:14:32.880 abuse of a child in particular, we're primed to believe that, but you're not wrong to point

01:14:37.400 out the context in which it was raised, you know, that it was raised in the midst of a contentious

01:14:42.180 divorce in the midst of a contentious custody dispute. Um, and that ultimately that first court

01:14:48.720 that listened to it thought you were entitled to 50, 50 custody, custody. And she, she was fine with

01:14:53.900 that too. Like all this has to be, and I do think, you know, to be honest, in the wake of like Johnny

01:14:58.940 Depp and Amber Heard, people are looking at these cases, just, just checking their own bias in favor

01:15:04.600 of the female, um, you know, alleged victim, like just checking you and that everyone deserves a fair

01:15:11.180 shake is the point, not just the woman making the allegation, but the defendant, the dad, the guy

01:15:17.700 being accused of something as horrific as intentionally abusing his own children and his wife.

01:15:23.020 Like it's saying that about a man is so bad. There's jokes about it. You know, like, Oh,

01:15:29.100 how long have you been beating your wife? Like that? That's a joke in the law. Because if you say

01:15:33.440 that you've defamed the person in the question right out of the gate, um, that's how damaging

01:15:38.620 those allegations are. And they do, they get thrown around these custody disputes in a way that's

01:15:43.480 not always fair or accurate. And I'm not passing a judgment on this case. I'm just,

01:15:48.580 you know, we've all seen that dynamic play out. Yeah. It's, it's been tough. And, and I'll say,

01:15:54.800 I did ask for this, the custody proceedings to be, to be sealed. Um, and I mean, my ex opposed,

01:16:05.520 opposed me on that. Um, but I didn't do it because, and of course the media ran with this narrative that

01:16:11.920 I was, I was, I wanted the case to be sealed to stop my, my ex from talking about abuse. That's,

01:16:18.700 that's not why I pushed. I wanted this to be sealed. I wanted it to be sealed to protect

01:16:24.580 my children from public scrutiny. You know, I'm running for office. People can attack me,

01:16:30.560 but I didn't want my children to have to go to school and have all of their friends and maybe

01:16:36.360 their friends, parents know about, you know, their personal issues. And I gotta imagine you

01:16:42.940 didn't really want her out there repeating these allegations either. Well, of course not. Of

01:16:47.220 course not. And you know, it's not been, no, of course not. I mean, of course not the, you know,

01:16:53.100 these false allegations destroy people's lives and it's not been easy on our family. It's, it's not

01:17:01.300 been easy for, for, for me professionally picking up the pieces after all of this. Um, when you operate

01:17:08.640 Megan at, you know, you're doing operate at our level when you're running for Senate or you're

01:17:14.060 doing, you know, an hour prime time on Fox news or something like that. Um, or you're doing all these

01:17:20.700 media segments, you have a thousand people lining up to do those jobs. And the moment someone like me

01:17:27.520 has these allegations against them, people say, both the companies that I work with, or maybe

01:17:33.500 other media outlets that I work with say, well, we're just going to go to the next person in line

01:17:37.680 because who wants to deal with Sean with all these crazy, horrible allegations against him?

01:17:41.780 You know, it does, you know, of course I care about my name and my reputation because my name and my

01:17:50.720 reputation is, is, is how we make a living and how I provide for her and our children. So of course I

01:17:59.760 don't want that stuff being talked about out there because it's, it's simply not true, but it, it

01:18:06.820 happened. And so now, you know, once I make it through this process and navigate through this

01:18:11.900 process, um, you know, I'm going to do everything that I can to try to reform this system for people

01:18:19.380 that come through it after me. Um, because this has, when something like this happens with,

01:18:26.360 with your family, you know, and your children, it tends to color everything that you do. Um, and

01:18:35.420 I just think that, you know, Democrat, Republican people that agree or disagree with me on policy.

01:18:43.840 If you've been through a divorce and you've been through a custody fight, you know, how tough this is.

01:18:49.380 And if there are ways that we can make the system better for families and diminish conflict for

01:18:56.020 children, uh, then we should do everything we can, uh, to make sure that that happens. And, and I am,

01:19:03.160 since this case, um, since this has happened, I've sort of found myself becoming an advocate for equal

01:19:09.740 shared parenting across the board because parents are always going to have their stuff, especially for

01:19:17.040 going through a divorce, but the children, their relationship with each parent is sacrosanct and

01:19:23.480 they deserve, they didn't ask for a divorce. They didn't ask for a custody fight, but their

01:19:28.160 relationship with each parent is sacrosanct should be protected and preserved because even if there's

01:19:34.840 some conflict and in divorcing couples, there's always conflict. Um, the children should always come

01:19:40.740 first. They should always have equal access to mom and dad. You need to love your spouse more than

01:19:45.380 you, or I'm sorry, you need to love your kids more than you hate your spouse. I think that about

01:19:49.320 sums it up. You know, I can't imagine, honestly, I, I cannot imagine getting a divorce and I can't

01:19:56.040 imagine my poor kids and my kids and your kids are exactly the same ages, um, and boy, girl, boy,

01:20:03.100 in the same age and can't imagine saying to them, you're not going to see your dad except for a

01:20:09.220 couple of weekends a month. I can't, like, I can't imagine doing that. Can't imagine ever getting so

01:20:13.680 angry with him that that would be what even I wanted. But of course I've seen custody disputes

01:20:19.480 get as contentious as yours. And this is how, how it goes. Let me stand you by because I want to

01:20:24.420 squeeze in a break, but I really would love to talk about your next chapter. Okay. You know,

01:20:28.420 you're not done that to me, that seems pretty obvious and I'd love to know what it looks like.

01:20:34.400 And in particular, I'd love to ask you about, you know, there've been some pretty brutal

01:20:37.820 allegations that came out about Raphael Warnock and his divorce from his ex-wife. Um, why is it,

01:20:45.500 why is that such a deal breaker? Like for you allegations that were deemed, you know,

01:20:50.200 unproven initially and then ultimately accepted. And in his case, it hasn't been a deal breaker.

01:20:54.720 You know, do you think there's a double standard? So that's where I'll leave it.

01:20:57.360 I'm going to take a quick break and come right back to Sean Barnell.

01:21:04.500 So Sean, let's flip the page and talk about some of the good things that have happened to you. You

01:21:09.180 bailed out of the Senate race. Sure. It gave you time to focus on family. And thankfully,

01:21:14.700 as so often happens after a bad divorce, like a Phoenix, the sun comes out and love can be born

01:21:21.200 again. And that is what happened in your case. Uh, tell us now about Melanie.

01:21:28.180 Well, she's the most amazing person that I think I've ever met. She's brilliant. She's beautiful.

01:21:34.720 She's politically savvy. She's a fighter. Um, and she's got amazing daughters that have, 1.00

01:21:42.340 you know, changed my life just as much as my own children. And, and as I mentioned, like,

01:21:47.040 when I taught you before, like they're, they're not my daughters, my, my biological daughters, but

01:21:51.300 boy, I really love them like they are. And we've been focused on blending our families and, and

01:21:58.700 they've got an amazing, her daughters have an amazing relationship with my kids. And it's,

01:22:03.040 it's a pretty amazing thing to behold watching them grow together. And, you know, blending a family

01:22:09.540 is challenging. It really is. Um, but it's also incredibly rewarding. And so, you know, we're

01:22:16.440 focused on picking up the pieces and, and turning the pages and, and making sure that we spend,

01:22:23.500 you know, a lot of time together and focus on building a life with one another. And, you know,

01:22:30.320 Melanie without her, and I mean this without her, I don't know how I would have made it through this

01:22:37.560 without her daughters. I don't know how I would have made it through this because, um, they're

01:22:42.760 strong and they're resilient. And, and my own kids, one of the things that I've learned, you know,

01:22:47.060 there's anytime you go through something traumatic like this, there's opportunity in the darkness.

01:22:53.700 Um, and I think maybe in some ways, you know, maybe, maybe we took each other for granted in some

01:23:01.660 ways. And sometimes with the people that you love, you, you take their, those relationships for granted.

01:23:05.880 Um, now my family, my children and I, Melanie and her girls, we don't. And we know that every single

01:23:13.480 second on this earth is precious and time is fleeting. And it's the one constant that we're

01:23:18.160 all working against. And I think that, you know, when we're together, we focus on spending just

01:23:24.060 quality time together and it's awesome. So I got, got engaged. Um,

01:23:30.180 All right. Now stand by where we've got that, by the way, I would like to say for the record,

01:23:35.980 every woman would like her man to talk about her the way you just talked about Melanie.

01:23:40.360 Um, not, that was very sweet. All right. So you proposed to Melanie and you had the kids there

01:23:46.800 when you did it. And we actually have a little bit of that on tape.

01:23:50.020 Uh, I just wanted to ask you if you would marry me. Oh my God. Of course.

01:23:56.500 Oh, the kids are jumping up and down. Oh, they're screaming and they're jumping up and down. You

01:24:04.820 can't hear it. It's probably too much noise, but everybody's clapping and she's hugging you. You're

01:24:10.320 down on one knees. You are romantic. So, all right. What, what's next professionally? You got

01:24:15.260 the personal life now in order. Will there be another run at political office for you?

01:24:20.200 I knew you were going to ask that. And I asked Melanie, I'm like, I asked Melanie, I'm like,

01:24:24.500 what am I supposed to say if she asked this? Because, you know, the reality is I'm just trying

01:24:28.900 to focus on being a dad. And you know, that proposal, by the way, I actually didn't get

01:24:33.000 down on one knee. I had an injury and I had to sit my butt on the steps and I had to have the kids help

01:24:37.960 me. And I had to pretend like I fell. Cause that was the only way Melanie was going to rush and answer

01:24:42.160 me right away. So, uh, but she did, she did. And I surprised her and it was awesome. But the answer is I'm

01:24:48.800 absolutely going to run again. Like I'm not going to play political games. I have to show my children

01:24:53.580 that quitting is, is not an option. Um, that, that freedom is, is worth fighting for. It must

01:25:00.760 be fought for. And ultimately I'm fighting to make sure that they inherit a country that's rich with

01:25:07.080 opportunity and a country that is free. And I'm doing all of this for them. And so, and when we get

01:25:15.040 back into the fight and to the political fight, and honestly, Megan, I don't know when that's going

01:25:19.040 to be, um, we're going to do it as a family and we're going to come back and we're going to be

01:25:24.700 stronger than we ever were before. Well, you, um, I think that would be to the delight of a lot of

01:25:31.120 Pennsylvania voters. I do want to ask you to go pretty hard to see Dr. Oz before, when he first came

01:25:35.700 in, a lot, a lot of Republicans were like, but now, uh, and I only have a short time left.

01:25:40.800 Do you, do you support him? Do you want to see him win on Tuesday?

01:25:44.740 Everybody in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania needs to get out and vote for Dr. Oz. Like

01:25:49.840 this country depends on it because it just might. Unambiguous endorsement. Uh, any predictions for

01:25:57.740 how that race is going to go? That's one of the ones with a big question mark on it. 0.80

01:26:00.960 Oh, it's, it's going to be super close, but I think, you know, there's been a lot of debate

01:26:04.980 around whether or not John Fetterman should release his medical records. I don't think we're having that

01:26:09.320 debate anymore. Every single time he does an interview or talks publicly, it makes people move

01:26:14.060 to the Oz camp even more. It's going to be a close race, but Oz is going to win.

01:26:18.500 Sean Parnell. Thank you. Thank you for being here and telling your story and all the best to you and

01:26:22.320 your family. Thank you, Megan, for having me. All the best. Oh, wow. Thank you all for joining us

01:26:27.960 today. Tomorrow. We're going to have both sides on the lab leak versus natural origins debate.

01:26:32.600 I'm really looking forward to this. Don't miss that tomorrow.

01:26:36.360 Before we go, I want to tell you something exciting that is happening next week. Election

01:26:41.820 night this year is going to be a huge event. So we are bringing you a special event with a few

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01:26:59.320 but we will also be live on YouTube for the very first time as well. First time live on YouTube.

01:27:05.560 We're going to bring you the results as they come in and instant reaction and analysis from some of

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01:27:15.580 Barry Weiss, David Sachs, Camille Foster, Emily Jashinsky, Ryan Grimm, Larry Elder, Tom Bevin,

01:27:22.360 Jim Garrity. I could go on. It's going to be a great night with an A-list cast and you're going to love

01:27:28.240 hearing from our guests. I'm going to have a lot of fun to maybe be a glass of wine, maybe later,

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01:28:01.080 We'll speak more tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - November 02, 2022

Undecideds Breaking Red, and Biden's Sad Gaffe, with Josh Holmes, and Sean Parnell on His Personal Story ｜ Ep. 425

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