The Megyn Kelly Show - Understanding America's Goals in Iran, with Erik Prince and Mark Geist, Plus Team USA Star Matthew Tkachuk, and Bill Clinton's WILD Epstein Comments ｜ Ep. 1264

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00:00:30.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:42.320 Hey, everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.480 I want to tell you later today, we have an interview with one of the heroes from Team USA Olympic men's hockey team,

00:00:52.760 the gold medal winners, Matthew Kachuk, will join me in an interview.

00:00:57.740 I think you're going to find him totally charming.

00:01:01.420 Very excited to show you this.

00:01:02.820 We taped it yesterday, and we all just fell in love all over again.

00:01:06.800 He was wonderful.

00:01:07.920 So, anyway, you're going to enjoy that.

00:01:09.440 But we begin today with the news as America's war in Iran continues.

00:01:13.920 And if you look at the early polling, there are serious questions among the American people about why we're there and what our goals are.

00:01:21.660 I mean, if you are having questions about what the mission is, you are not alone.

00:01:26.940 For example, a Washington Post poll lists eight choices for what people think the Trump administration's main goal is in Iran.

00:01:34.940 The top response, show power or take control, which gets 14 percent.

00:01:40.900 14 percent.

00:01:42.400 The lowest response, protecting U.S. and allies, gets 7 percent.

00:01:46.960 So, every answer, all eight, gets between 7 and 14 percent.

00:01:52.280 The American people do not know why we're doing this.

00:01:55.400 I mean, when you're getting no more than 14 percent for each possibility, the American people is confused.

00:02:04.180 They are confused.

00:02:04.820 They don't know why we're doing this.

00:02:06.420 And what you're seeing now is support falling basically along partisan lines.

00:02:11.880 Republicans, a majority, support the president.

00:02:15.460 Independents and Democrats are totally against the president on this war, which makes some sense because, look, I've told you guys for the past 20 plus years, I'm a registered independent.

00:02:25.820 I haven't been a registered Republican in more than two decades.

00:02:28.540 And I'm with the independents, you know, as I told you yesterday, most of my Republican audience is supporting the president on it, although a lot aren't.

00:02:36.120 And actually, there's an interesting poll showing it's breaking down more severely along gender lines where a hefty majority of women are against it and men are split almost 50-50.

00:02:49.280 So that's that's all very interesting.

00:02:50.980 But there is no question that the American people don't understand why we're doing it.

00:02:54.400 So they're kind of resorting that the hard partisans, Dems and Republicans, are resorting to their, you know, their their partisan stripes like I support Trump.

00:03:03.740 I hate Trump.

00:03:04.760 And kind of going from there.

00:03:07.440 It's also hard to follow what's actually been happening on the ground.

00:03:10.500 After all, we have no ground troops in Iran yet.

00:03:13.540 But here's the latest as we understand it.

00:03:15.740 According to multiple reports, the Israeli Air Force struck a building where senior clerics had gathered in Iran to elect the new supreme leader.

00:03:27.360 The Assembly of Experts has 88 members, though it's not known how many were in the building at the time or if there were any casualties.

00:03:34.280 I mean, why are they still meeting like above ground?

00:03:38.440 You have to ask yourself, like, that doesn't seem smart.

00:03:41.680 Not exactly sure what they're thinking over there.

00:03:43.500 Iran is also fighting back outside of its borders and somewhat effectively.

00:03:49.460 Both the U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are now closed after they came under drone attacks.

00:03:55.200 As of now, thank God, no reported casualties.

00:03:57.900 We hope it stays that way.

00:03:59.500 But they are definitely causing trouble for the United States and for Israel. 0.98

00:04:03.540 Before we get into the details of that, the State Department not taking any chances, officially urging all Americans in the region to, quote, depart now due to serious safety risks.

00:04:14.940 But people cannot get out.

00:04:17.400 I mean, have you seen the videos of the long, long lines at the airport in places like Dubai?

00:04:23.960 They can't get out.

00:04:24.880 They didn't have a heads up that this was going to happen.

00:04:29.120 And now they're being told, get out now, get out now.

00:04:31.720 Well, they can't.

00:04:33.020 The lines are too long.

00:04:33.980 The flights are too few.

00:04:35.080 There's chaos at the airports.

00:04:36.300 And there are a lot of Americans over there who are starting to panic that they may not be able to get out as the interceptors that stop the missiles from falling on these areas are running low.

00:04:49.180 And that's one scary piece of all this.

00:04:53.020 Iran, while it may or may not have been building up its nuclear arsenal since we devastated it or obliterated, to use Trump's word, in late June, it certainly has been building up its missile storage capacity thanks to, in part, China. 0.52

00:05:08.560 China, we read, and Russia, we read about Russia shipping it a bunch of missiles that were intercepted by the United States on one Navy vessel not long ago.

00:05:19.760 But plenty more have gotten through because they seem amply supplied to be targeting all of these U.S. outposts, our military bases, not to mention all over Israel.

00:05:29.200 And both the U.S. and Israel are running low, reportedly, we'll get into it, the president's disputing it, on these interceptors, which would make the missiles ineffective.

00:05:39.020 And by the way, the interceptors are extremely expensive, extremely expensive.

00:05:44.180 But you know what we were doing, giving them to Ukraine for the past few years and giving them to Israel over the past year or so, and using them to fight the Houthis in what turned out to be a rather brief conflict, using them ourselves when we went into Iran over the summer.

00:06:03.420 I mean, we're low, according to an independent analysis of where we are.

00:06:07.340 The president, I'll tell you exactly what he's saying.

00:06:09.400 And he's admitting some of it and denying others.

00:06:12.200 But the point is, do we have enough interceptors?

00:06:15.020 Because if we don't and if we let these military bases sit as exposed targets who can't stop the missiles, that's a deep problem.

00:06:23.680 We start today with one of the brightest minds in the defense industry.

00:06:27.900 Eric Prince is co-founder of Unplugged Technologies.

00:06:31.300 Eric Prince is on the record warning President Trump against sending ground forces into Iran and was against this conflict.

00:06:38.560 But now that it's started, definitely has thoughts, having been all over the previous Middle East conflicts that we've experienced these past 25 years.

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00:07:38.900 Eric, welcome back. Great to see you.

00:07:41.160 Thanks, Megan. Nice to be back.

00:07:42.180 Okay, so let's just start with your overall view on whether this was a good idea.

00:07:47.820 I know you've said you don't really think so, but explain why.

00:07:51.400 Look, I am no fan of the Iranians or of the Mullahs and glad to see the Supreme Leader gone. 1.00

00:07:57.760 I mean, I've been on the Iranian hit list for years.

00:08:00.460 I was personally denounced by the guy twice, but I don't necessarily agree with this approach to doing it.

00:08:06.780 And I definitely do not understand how we allowed ourselves to be dragged in by the Israelis. 1.00

00:08:14.000 And their problems are not necessarily our problems.

00:08:19.320 I think how we got to that decision, that certainly there'll be books written about that.

00:08:29.560 I am all in favor as America comes towards 250 years.

00:08:35.100 We probably need to re-declare our independence from what Washington warned about, overseas entangling alliances that drag us into the situation.

00:08:49.560 I agree with Tucker.

00:08:51.260 I think the president was extremely uncomfortable in doing these strikes, whether he was arm-twisted, coerced, extorted.

00:09:00.800 I don't know.

00:09:01.800 I don't have that kind of information, but I can't imagine anybody that thinks this is a fantastic idea other than the typical neocon chorus. 0.71

00:09:10.380 The last big push last summer, right, the 12-day war, it burned through 16 years worth of interceptor production.

00:09:22.300 And now we're having to pull a huge amount of supply out of Indo-PACOM, war reserve for that.

00:09:28.620 What's that?

00:09:31.780 Our supply in the Pacific, right?

00:09:34.620 The different theater.

00:09:36.240 So we're pulling down magazine supply from there to try to defend all these U.S. facilities in the Gulf for being smashed.

00:09:46.540 The Iranians are really good at asymmetric warfare, meaning high payoff, low cost for them. 1.00

00:09:53.140 They built that $20,000, $30,000 drone, which costs the United States a million to $3 million per drone to shoot down because our interceptor missiles are so expensive.

00:10:04.760 The Iranians have built thousands and thousands and thousands of those.

00:10:10.400 There's 44,000 mountains in Iran, and they've been busy tunneling for years.

00:10:18.700 I would have hoped that a lesson was taken from the conflict against the Houthis.

00:10:25.740 Remember, the Houthis were in Yemen.

00:10:27.180 They're shooting a lot of missiles at ships passing by, jamming up the southern end of the Suez Canal.

00:10:33.880 And for all the billions of dollars of precision weaponry we tried to do, never really degraded the Houthis' ability to keep shooting at ships.

00:10:42.180 And now to go into Iran, into their prepared homeland.

00:10:50.140 You know, Iran does not have an Independence Day because they've not been conquered since Alexander the Great, hundreds of years before Christ.

00:10:58.540 So I just don't, look, I think it's great.

00:11:04.600 I appreciate what the president said two days ago when he said,

00:11:09.820 I have paid a great gift to the Iranian people in killing the mullahs, the leadership of the Iranian government that killed all those thousands and thousands of protesters.

00:11:23.200 Great. Good on them. 0.99

00:11:25.740 But now declare victory and be done.

00:11:30.460 Treat it like a Roman, like a punitive Roman raid, right? 0.93

00:11:33.920 When Rome, the Roman Empire had been getting ravaged for years and years by the Carthaginians, by Hannibal, right?

00:11:44.440 The guy who took elephants in.

00:11:45.700 When he came, the Roman Senate met after the Battle of Cannae, I think there was 80,000 Romans killed in that one battle in the morning.

00:11:58.720 And the senator said, Carthage must be destroyed.

00:12:03.000 So they sent Scipio Africanus, punitive raid.

00:12:05.980 That worked.

00:12:06.980 Carthage was not a problem again.

00:12:09.000 This is a way for Trump to do it to Iran.

00:12:13.220 Pound them.

00:12:14.300 He's done that. 0.86

00:12:15.060 Fine.

00:12:15.700 They just struck the the Trump said the people we were thinking would take over.

00:12:22.500 They're dead, too.

00:12:23.980 Not sure that's going to be.

00:12:25.500 Let that be the message to the Iranians to say, behave, be decent to the Iranian people or we'll come back and do it again. 0.99

00:12:33.900 I think the other construct that should be offered to the mullahs is to give them a city like Mashhad and let that be their holy city, their Vatican.

00:12:45.000 They can go whatever strict super Shia supremacy, Islamic fundamentalism there. 0.62

00:12:51.740 Fine.

00:12:52.180 Let the rest of the Iranian people breathe free. 1.00

00:12:54.280 But Trump is the president is is not well, not well advised if people are telling him to go deeper and deeper and deeper into this for weeks, because our interceptors are exceedingly expensive.

00:13:07.640 Iranian weaponry is relatively very cheap and they have built lots and lots of those and they will smash not just U.S. facilities, but the other Gulf infrastructure, which they've been very active at. 0.97

00:13:21.300 And this is not going to go so well for the United States.

00:13:26.980 So I would encourage him to declare a punitive raid.

00:13:30.620 Deliver the lesson and it's clearly unprecedented, amazing intelligence that they were able to to strike that many high value targets at one time.

00:13:41.820 But this idea of trying to foment regime change to the perfect person and the idea of putting ground troops is extremely bad, extremely bad.

00:13:52.760 Why?

00:13:53.300 Please do not.

00:13:53.980 Why is it bad?

00:13:55.060 Well, we had a hard time.

00:13:58.860 The United States had a hard time pacifying Iraq.

00:14:02.440 Iraq has effectively been lost to Iran as it is. 0.66

00:14:05.340 There's a 250,000 man Shia militia that is loyal to Iran.

00:14:12.220 Those are the guys that have been shooting missiles and drones at U.S. facilities just over the last few days.

00:14:19.160 But it took us trillions of dollars and thousands and thousands of lives to try to pacify Iraq, which was less than a third, almost a quarter of the size of Iran. 0.55

00:14:30.040 So the idea that we're going to do it to a much better prepared Iran with the RGC is it's a it's a 10x worse decision than going into Iraq was. 0.60

00:14:42.380 Hmm, that's scary.

00:14:45.960 And yet the president said yesterday he doesn't get the yips when it comes to putting ground troops in.

00:14:52.100 And, you know, even Tom Cotton was on the Sunday shows suggesting, yeah, well, maybe a small ground force if we need to.

00:14:58.280 But clearly they're opening that possibility because everyone, experts like you, who have been neck deep in warfare for a long time, have said there's not really going to be a regime change unless you actually do put boots on the ground.

00:15:13.000 Like, that's not something we can do from the air, not at least in a country like Iran, which doesn't have just like, I don't know, 40, the 40 leaders who were there running the country or who were hit at that meeting weren't anywhere near to, quote, the regime.

00:15:30.100 There are tens of thousands who make up the regime.

00:15:33.300 Correct.

00:15:33.920 The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps really behaves like the old SS in in a Nazi Germany state.

00:15:40.000 They are a military power into themselves, really with effectively more power than the Iranian military.

00:15:46.160 They are hyper loyal to the regime.

00:15:48.700 They are they are of, by and for the regime.

00:15:51.620 That's how they make money as well.

00:15:54.640 And the Iranians have really gone to a dispersed command and control system, figuring that the West would smash their command and control infrastructure.

00:16:03.620 They dispersed that authority and responsibility out to the various regional commands to maximize the mayhem that they can spread.

00:16:15.260 So this is a exceedingly difficult situation.

00:16:19.700 Who takes over?

00:16:21.720 I don't know.

00:16:22.880 I don't think it's going to be Reza Pahlavi.

00:16:24.600 And again, this is something that was instigated and pushed by the Israelis. 1.00

00:16:31.760 It does not have to become an American problem for the next weeks, months and certainly years.

00:16:38.500 They wanted this.

00:16:40.380 They broke it.

00:16:43.020 They bought it.

00:16:43.620 And I find it really ridiculous to think of sending U.S. troops when Benjamin Netanyahu's own son, 34-year-old able-bodied male, is hanging out in Miami Beach, hasn't even gone back to serving the IDF himself.

00:17:00.120 Come on. 0.97

00:17:00.700 That's ridiculous. 1.00

00:17:02.760 But he'd be thrilled to see my son or yours go over there and die for Israel. 0.99

00:17:06.680 I mean, that's how it seems to me.

00:17:08.800 He'd be perfectly happy to see any American military service personnel go over there and give his life so that he can feel better about having defeated Iran and having used U.S. troops to do it, Eric. 0.93

00:17:24.180 I understand the people's argument that say, well, Iran's been at war with us for since 79.

00:17:29.920 Yes, they've been taking shots and pushing back and all the rest.

00:17:33.120 And the Iranian regime is terrible.

00:17:36.680 But this is ultimately up to the Iranian people to decide their future.

00:17:40.540 It doesn't have to be us.

00:17:42.220 Just like the French helped us, the French fleet showed up for a couple months around Yorktown in 1781.

00:17:50.180 But it was the American people that did the fighting that took on then the most powerful empire in the world, the British Empire, and got our freedom.

00:18:00.140 The Iranian people have to rise up.

00:18:02.460 And if people want to do action, fine.

00:18:04.600 All the super hardcore hawks on Iran, they can volunteer.

00:18:10.660 They can go be trainers and train and work with the Iranian people to help them gain their freedom.

00:18:16.360 It does not have to be active duty U.S. forces at an extremely, extremely high cost of delivering energy, whether it's defending themselves from incoming weapons or the weapons that were sent.

00:18:31.340 I am confused by the messaging because I thought all the strikes last summer took out their nuclear program.

00:18:39.940 Now Netanyahu is saying, wow, they're still just weeks away from a nuclear program.

00:18:45.200 I don't know.

00:18:45.680 I think the president should say we did our part.

00:18:50.520 We we we punished the regime that killed all those protesters.

00:18:55.780 Now the protesters have to figure out what they're going to do and take their country back.

00:19:00.320 It is not our responsibility from eight thousand miles away to do that.

00:19:04.300 The New York Times had a very in-depth article that posted yesterday on exactly how we got into this.

00:19:11.740 And it talked about how the reason we didn't go in during the midst of the protests was we were not ready.

00:19:16.980 We did not have the military assets we needed in the region in order to support this war.

00:19:22.660 Israel, too, was saying it was not ready.

00:19:24.360 It needed to replenish some of its missile defenses.

00:19:27.440 We needed to get some more assets into our military bases in the Gulf.

00:19:32.960 And so that seems to be the reason that we waited from when he was slaughtering his people, the Ayatollah, to now to go ahead and do this. 0.67

00:19:42.480 But it also makes very clear that, as we reported yesterday, as now Marco Rubio and Speaker Mike Johnson have said on the record,

00:19:51.140 the reason we actually decided to do it is that Benjamin Netanyahu went in and told President Trump,

00:19:57.320 we're doing it.

00:19:58.700 We, Israel, are doing it.

00:20:00.300 And the Trump team understood that that would lead to retaliatory strikes against us.

00:20:05.660 We're considered the big Satan.

00:20:06.960 They're the little Satan.

00:20:08.000 And that we thought it would make more sense if that were the case, that we went in there first in tandem with Israel and sort of started this thing on our terms.

00:20:17.280 I don't know what to believe there, to be honest, Eric, because we could easily have looked at Netanyahu and said,

00:20:23.980 no, you're not going to do it.

00:20:26.460 And I think he would have listened to us.

00:20:28.640 I mean, he depends on us for ammunition and military backup.

00:20:32.720 Do we really believe that if Trump had looked at Bibi and said, it's a no, we just bombed the nuclear facilities for you in June, 0.64

00:20:40.100 and there's not an appetite of the American people to have Iranian bombs raining down on our military posts in the Gulf, thanks to you.

00:20:47.560 So, no, you will not be going in there and starting yet another war that he would not have listened.

00:20:53.480 Yeah.

00:20:53.960 No is a complete answer.

00:20:55.500 And F no is an even more complete answer.

00:20:57.800 And I wish the president had given that answer.

00:21:01.400 But now that he has taken the first step, not just the first step, a lot of steps,

00:21:08.560 we're lucky that we've only lost five or six killed in action so far.

00:21:14.880 And I'm sorry for their families terribly.

00:21:16.520 Six so far.

00:21:17.900 The fact is, an aircraft carrier battle group that deploys every six months loses people.

00:21:25.040 The military is a dangerous job, but we have, we must be exceedingly cautious with the blood and treasure of America.

00:21:36.580 And the president can, can look great as the statesman to say enough.

00:21:42.820 We have killed the, the bad mullahs, the guardian council, the supreme leader. 1.00

00:21:48.300 We have taken them out that killed all these protesters, figure out you Iranian people, what that next government is going to look like. 1.00

00:21:56.380 But it's not, it's not going to be dictated and we're not going to bomb them into oblivion until then.

00:22:01.660 The other thing the Trump administration could do is there is real change afoot in Afghanistan now because the Taliban, most of the Taliban and of course all the former part of the normal, you know, free government are all really sick of the five crazies that have been running the country. 0.89

00:22:20.920 And even the Pakistanis are also really sick of the Taliban government because they've been supporting the Pakistani Taliban. 0.82

00:22:30.600 There is a real opportunity to remove the crazies from the Taliban government and have a more reasonable one, which would at least let us go back into Bagram to use as a deportation center. 0.97

00:22:41.700 And as a, as another, let's say position on the Eastern flank of Iran, if you're going to, if you want to do regime change in Afghanistan, in Iran, fine.

00:22:54.060 You don't have to do it with all kinds of U.S. troops or aircraft going over the border.

00:22:59.680 You can actually take Iranian people that want to defend and, and, and, and fight for their liberty, train them in Afghanistan and send them back in. 1.00

00:23:08.800 And if you, if you remove the Islamic crazies who have now allied themselves fully with Iran next door. 0.98

00:23:16.260 So that's a, that's a second. 0.61

00:23:18.060 I'm sure Trump is thinking he can't, he can't be going back in an Afghanistan. 0.92

00:23:21.720 I mean, like given the reaction he's had so far from a large faction of his base, that's the last headline they want to see.

00:23:27.720 And now we're back in Afghanistan and we're doing regime change there too.

00:23:30.340 Oh, no, no, those are that, that's, that's, and that's my frustration.

00:23:34.160 Um, when you have a CIA that's not willing to do their job, if you think of the continuum of foreign policy, you have diplomats and embassies on one end of the spectrum and you have aircraft carriers and B2 bombers on the other end.

00:23:47.140 The 80% of the middle is the intelligence space and what should have been done in COVID with covert action.

00:23:56.000 I don't think was done.

00:23:57.560 I don't think the Iranian opposition has been prepared, um, in organized, not just in protest, but you have to give them just enough kinetic capability to take away the inevitability of the regime.

00:24:08.700 So that when you had millions of people in the streets, just a few months ago, when the regime forces came to, to kill people, that you have the means on the ground by Iranians to push back and to defend and to take away the inevitability of the regime. 0.77

00:24:28.240 That is a much smarter way.

00:24:30.660 And that's done for less than a few that that's less than an hour worth of, of launching of all these interceptors.

00:24:37.700 But sadly, we have an agency that has not embraced for decades, that kind of clever use of, of innovation and American power.

00:24:49.380 And so it defaults to the big Pentagon with that cost structure and, and that will truly bankrupt us.

00:24:55.720 So it is frustrating.

00:24:57.540 What about, Megan, I did, I did.

00:24:59.760 What about the Kurds, Eric?

00:25:00.760 I mean, you, you spent more time than in Iraq and places like it than anybody I know.

00:25:06.200 And there's a report out today, uh, that I think in Axios, that Trump has called Kurdish leaders to help in the Iran war effort, calling Kurdish leaders in Iraq.

00:25:19.060 So, uh, saying the Kurds have thousands of soldiers along the Iran-Iraq border and control strategic areas that could be significant as this war develops, that Iraq's Kurds have close ties to Iran's Kurdish minority.

00:25:33.240 And I guess, according to this article written by Barack Ravid and Mark Caputo, the Israelis came in, Netanyahu promising big things with the Kurds.

00:25:43.240 He came in and said, oh, they're, they're going to come out of the woodwork.

00:25:46.720 They're going to rise up.

00:25:47.700 He's, quote, been relentless in urging strikes on the regime in Iran.

00:25:51.560 And he first advocated for the Kurds in a White House meeting, saying, this is the quote in the article, when he first came over and sat with Trump for hours, you would have thought Netanyahu had it all figured out, said the official.

00:26:00.520 He had the successor planned out, he had the Kurds all figured out, two sets of Kurdish groups here and there.

00:26:06.600 This many people are going to rise up, thinking that they could get them from Iraq to go into Iran, help their fellow Kurds and be the fighting force, because the people have no arms, you know, the regular Iranians, to fight the IRGC.

00:26:19.720 See, Trump's plan yesterday, as he suggested, was he was just hoping that they would put down their arms and join hands with the patriotic Iranians in saying, no, forget it.

00:26:29.820 We're not going to be the people we've been for all these decades.

00:26:32.580 But in any event, what do you make of the Kurds as a possibility here?

00:26:36.500 See, to me, look, Iran is not Iranians. 1.00

00:26:41.240 It is ethnic Persians, ethnic Azeris, Akwazi Arabs, some from Balochistan and, of course, Kurds.

00:26:50.900 So it is a multi-ethnic mix.

00:26:53.120 I actually did a clandestine political poll in 2013 inside of Iran.

00:27:01.060 Two thousand respondents from from all over the country.

00:27:04.640 And we polled what would get you back into the streets and what happened to the Iranian revolution.

00:27:12.120 Why did you go to the streets in 79?

00:27:13.940 And they they said they wanted freedom.

00:27:16.280 They wanted to.

00:27:20.540 To be more Western and they do not want to live under a mullahocracy. 0.99

00:27:26.400 I get that.

00:27:27.360 But I don't think the Israelis certainly haven't. 0.95

00:27:31.560 And I don't think the CIA has adequately prepared an opposition with real force to actually push back on the regime at the ground level.

00:27:42.980 This top down approach.

00:27:45.080 I don't know of anywhere in history, however wonderful and spectacular the precision weapons are.

00:27:51.460 Air power alone does not change a regime.

00:27:54.140 And it certainly doesn't create spontaneous order.

00:27:57.360 I mean, heck, I met Reza Pahlavi for the first time six weeks ago and they were talking about a.

00:28:03.800 Just FYI, that's I think most of our audience knows, but he's the son of the deposed Shah who's been living in America for all these decades and is Iranian, but not really.

00:28:14.340 He's kind of more American than we are at this point and doesn't have a lot of support amongst the Iranian people.

00:28:19.060 But he gets mentioned as a possible next gen leader, even though he's he's not doesn't sound like Trump has a lot of faith in him.

00:28:26.900 Keep going, Eric.

00:28:27.660 Yeah, I'm I'm agreeing with you.

00:28:29.940 But but but if if if that if no one has gone through the steps of, hey, how are we going to set up defense committees inside of Iran so that when you have a city, how do you defend it?

00:28:43.900 How do you protect it?

00:28:44.940 How do you defend your people?

00:28:46.380 How do you take away the Quds Force IRGC capability town by town?

00:28:52.300 I don't know of anybody that's done that and maybe I'm just not informed, but my God, when you have millions of people in the streets over the last decade, plus would have been a good time to roll out that capability or having seen the absence or the need for those.

00:29:08.500 Because you'd think the intelligence community would have been building that capacity on the ground or next door in Afghanistan or in Kurdistan, northern Iraq to be ready for this day.

00:29:21.820 But nobody's done that.

00:29:23.220 And so the top down approach with air power alone is not going to get us there.

00:29:28.400 I pray I beseech the president to not send ground troops into Iran.

00:29:35.180 And the the actual geography of the country just speaks to defense.

00:29:43.380 And it is here's what's so scary to me.

00:29:46.320 The president is talking about I could do it in a couple of days or four weeks, five weeks.

00:29:52.460 You know, I can I can do this.

00:29:54.160 I can trust me.

00:29:55.480 And his officials from his administration are saying, like, it's not going to be Iraq.

00:30:00.140 Just stop.

00:30:00.820 Like, it won't be Iraq. 0.97

00:30:02.120 It's going to be quick.

00:30:02.840 But many people online pointing this is just one of many.

00:30:07.540 We could have pulled a lot of these.

00:30:09.800 Dick Cheney back in March 2003 about the Iraq war.

00:30:14.820 This is three days before we launched it.

00:30:16.560 Sot five.

00:30:17.740 If we do have to take action, do you think it will be a long war or a short war?

00:30:22.620 My own judgment, based on my time as secretary of defense and having operated in this area in the past,

00:30:28.480 I'm confident that our troops will be successful and I think it will go relatively quickly.

00:30:33.760 But we can't you can't you can't on that weeks rather than months.

00:30:38.960 There's always the possibility of complications that you can't anticipate.

00:30:42.740 But I have great confidence in our troops.

00:30:44.980 Eight years and eight months later, we finally pulled our troops out.

00:30:52.560 It was not weeks.

00:30:53.840 It was not months.

00:30:54.800 It was nearly a decade.

00:30:56.260 Not to mention what happened in Afghanistan.

00:30:59.020 And tens of thousands of wounded.

00:31:01.180 Look, a sliding door moment in that conflict.

00:31:04.020 In fact, the head of Iraqi intelligence came to see me early in 2004, like February.

00:31:13.820 So we'd been the U.S. had been there for about nine months.

00:31:16.660 And, you know, you get the initial pause and calm after the invasion and then the chaos starts.

00:31:23.260 And he said, we're seeing all kinds of evidence of the Iranians sending agents into Iraq, building cells to kill opposition, to exert force.

00:31:37.240 And we want to we want a capability to drive them out.

00:31:43.060 So he said, yes, this is back in my Blackwater days.

00:31:46.360 The CIA was going to pay for it.

00:31:48.140 It was a tiny cost compared to what was being spent per day and blocked by Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor.

00:31:59.440 Oh, Iran is not our enemy.

00:32:01.760 We have to respect the political process, all the rest.

00:32:04.740 If we had severed and prevented the Iranians from getting their hooks into Iraqi society, we wouldn't have had all the problems in Iraq. 1.00

00:32:12.860 But now to think we're going to wade into Iran, into the IRGC's hometowns and say we're going to impose regime change and consider U.S. troops, please.

00:32:24.280 That is a bad idea.

00:32:26.320 If people are so hell-bent to do it, fine.

00:32:29.200 Let them go volunteer.

00:32:30.880 They can train the Iranian people, carve out some part of Iran that they conquer and free and build from there. 1.00

00:32:41.000 But it does not have to be done by our active duty forces, period.

00:32:46.800 Here's what the report is on the munitions problem today.

00:32:51.380 It's written by Kelly Bukhar-Vlejos of ResponsibleStatecraft.org.

00:32:58.240 She spent some time working for Fox News.

00:33:00.900 She's got the right background for this reporting.

00:33:04.980 She's taking on the president's true social overnight on Monday, which reads in part as follows.

00:33:11.980 The United States munitions stockpiles have, this is Trump, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better.

00:33:20.520 So medium and upper medium, never been higher or better.

00:33:23.420 As stated to me today, we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons.

00:33:26.660 Wars can be fought forever, he writes, and very successfully using just these supplies, which are better than other countries' finest arms.

00:33:35.020 At the highest end, we have a good supply, but we're not where we want to be.

00:33:39.540 Much additional high-grade weaponry is stored for us in outlying countries.

00:33:44.160 Sleepy Joe Biden spent all of his time and our country's money giving everything to P.T. Barnum Zelensky of Ukraine, hundreds of billions of dollars worth.

00:33:51.040 And while he gave so much of the super high-end away, free, he didn't bother to replace it.

00:33:55.600 It says, fortunately, he's rebuilt it.

00:33:57.940 But this is Trump saying we're good on medium and upper medium grade, and that we can basically raid our outposts if we need more on the high-grade weaponry, which we are low on, he admits, thanks to Ukraine.

00:34:14.320 Now, here is what she reports.

00:34:18.000 Okay, she says, by all measures, by every measure, this is not true.

00:34:21.980 It would never be true.

00:34:23.100 But in the case of today, after four years of emptying our stores for Ukraine and then more than two years for Israel, fighting the Houthis, defending Israel twice in Operation Midnight Hammer in June, and now Operation Epic Fury.

00:34:35.660 Well, you remember the nursery rhyme, she writes, old mother Hubbard, the cupboard is bare.

00:34:39.520 Perhaps what is most absurd, she writes about Trump's words, other than the lack of truth, he did not rebuild the stockpiles in one year following Biden.

00:34:48.780 The missiles are still being sent to Ukraine under previous agreements.

00:34:52.060 And then he told the Europeans they could buy them, depleting the stores even further.

00:34:55.640 But she says, but his Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Dan Cain, also warned that an operation, especially an extended one, could be risky.

00:35:02.540 Washington Post reporting last week, we brought this to you yesterday as well, Dan Cain expressed his concerns when they were planning this at a White House meeting last week, that any major operation against Iran will face challenges because the U.S. munition stockpile has been significantly depleted by Washington's ongoing defense of Israel and support for Ukraine.

00:35:21.640 Trump immediately went to Truth Social to contradict the story, but as we reported here, she writes, the military was already raising the alarms last summer about the shocking, that's in quotes, number of missiles that had been depleted from the stockpiles.

00:35:35.820 She writes, the standard missile variant was down 33%.

00:35:39.960 Those cost $12.5 to $28 million a piece.

00:35:44.360 Each interception attempt requires at least two missiles, and often more than that, thwarting a few missiles can easily end up costing more than it does to buy an F-35.

00:35:55.940 According to reports, the U.S. used a quarter of its THAAD missile interceptors during the 12-day war in June, the one in Iran, alone.

00:36:04.640 The Guardian reported in July, the U.S. only had 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it would need for the Pentagon's future military plans, with many already sent to Ukraine and more promised.

00:36:15.700 It goes on.

00:36:16.400 She talks about how we were expending Tomahawk cruise missiles air-to-air to counter the Houthis, which one of the reasons why Trump ended that so abruptly is we were running out of those.

00:36:27.400 The Tomahawks lost at an extraordinary rate in operations around the globe, not just that one, but in the Middle East against Iran, against the Houthis, and against Nigeria on Christmas Day.

00:36:39.660 On and on it goes.

00:36:40.960 The point she's making here, Eric, is we don't have the military defenses and weaponry that we need to defend against an Iran that's not just rolling over. 0.98

00:36:54.240 Correct, and if what's more strategic value to the United States is keeping the CCP from rolling over Taiwan, because they make all the computer chips that we need to run a modern economy.

00:37:10.220 That is far more strategic.

00:37:12.300 We don't need anything in the Middle East for oil, because we're independent, thanks to Texas fracking.

00:37:20.520 So, yes, it's a math problem, and it's a production problem.

00:37:24.400 Over the last 20, 30 years, you've really allowed a cartelization of our defense industry.

00:37:31.400 You have the five super majors, which make super exotic, very high-end weaponry that, as you just listed, is ridiculously expensive.

00:37:41.680 And so the cost of delivering energy, right?

00:37:43.820 There's two things a military commander does.

00:37:45.380 You coordinate information and release energy, move that airplane from here to there, move that ship, or put that warhead on a forehead.

00:37:54.200 The cost of doing a warhead on a forehead in the United States is grotesquely too high.

00:37:59.900 And Trump administration, to their credit, is trying to bring reform there and bring more competition to it, but haven't been able to go nearly fast enough because they have a lethargic, worthless Congress, which doesn't really change procurement rules to open up the throttle on production and procurement.

00:38:18.760 But those are, yes, what you just listed are very real math problems, and if we deplete stocks further, now you leave the entire Pacific theater and the West Coast of the United States extremely open to incoming attack from anybody, really.

00:38:35.760 And they don't get made overnight.

00:38:38.440 This amidst reports as follows, that the U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have closed after drone attacks.

00:38:46.220 You mentioned that the Iranians are using not only missiles, but drones very effectively, and they've got some untold number of them, and they're using them against U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and now we've closed those after they were attacked by drones.

00:39:01.080 The U.S. are urging Americans in the region, depart now.

00:39:04.560 Again, they're asking themselves, how?

00:39:07.100 How do we get out?

00:39:08.120 It doesn't seem that easy.

00:39:09.320 Then there's a report that the UAE and Qatar are having interceptor issues, that the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, via Bloomberg, are privately lobbying allies to help them persuade Trump to reach for an off-ramp that would keep U.S. military operations against Iran short.

00:39:27.600 Privately, both the UAE and Qatar are working to quickly improve their air defense capabilities.

00:39:32.060 The UAE has requested assistance from its allies with medium-range air defenses, while Qatar has asked for help to counter drone attacks, which have emerged as a greater-than-ballistic missiles threat.

00:39:45.140 Qatar's stocks of Patriot interceptor missiles will last four days at the current rate of use.

00:39:52.920 Not for nothing, but the U.A. and Qatar denied these claims when contacted by Bloomberg on them.

00:40:00.760 But the Wall Street Journal has similar reporting.

00:40:03.340 They read, a crucial variable is whether these monarchies start running out of interceptors before the Iranian regime runs out of projectiles.

00:40:11.860 At current burn rates, it could be very soon.

00:40:14.520 The UAE, they write, by Monday evening had been targeted by 174 Iranian ballistic missiles, eight cruise missiles, 689 drones in three days, with no missiles and 44 drones actually hitting.

00:40:26.160 Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, these are all Gulf allies, came under heavy barrages, with Bahrain reporting 70 incoming ballistic missiles.

00:40:33.520 It usually takes two or even three interceptors, such as missiles, for the Patriot or THAAD systems to shoot down one ballistic missile.

00:40:41.740 And we talked about how expensive those are.

00:40:43.960 So these are all our Gulf allies who are taking the brunt of it right now, of course.

00:40:50.160 You know, Israel's getting attacked, but so are all of our Gulf allies, and so are our embassies.

00:40:55.360 And in the meantime, the question is whether we've gone to Iran to say, hey, do you want to talk?

00:41:05.620 Do you want an off-ramp?

00:41:07.200 Because we're not projecting that publicly.

00:41:09.300 I did see at least one unconfirmed report that we had tried to do that through the Italians and that we were told no.

00:41:13.760 But right now, it's full steam ahead.

00:41:17.220 In fact, all the administration keeps saying is, you haven't seen anything yet.

00:41:20.600 We're about to unleash a much bigger, fuller, heretofore unseen barrage.

00:41:28.360 Yeah, Megan, I've not had a security clearance in more than 15 years.

00:41:35.480 So maybe I'm just not very well briefed.

00:41:37.600 But at the end of the day, I think it's a math problem when you have an enemy like Iran that can field weapons that are $20,000 to $30,000, like a Shahhead drone. 0.96

00:41:48.760 And we have to shoot it down with, I thought the standard missiles were $1.2 million.

00:41:53.940 What you just read, they were in the $10,000 to $12 million per copy.

00:41:58.420 It's insane.

00:42:00.160 Insanity that we have allowed our cost structure to get away from us that badly.

00:42:04.960 And yeah, this is a, this is not a great situation, but the president can say, look, we did our part.

00:42:15.480 We smashed the Iranian leadership and now, and now we're done. 1.00

00:42:21.060 Yeah, you're welcome.

00:42:22.280 That's it.

00:42:22.720 Our part's done.

00:42:23.360 And if Israel wants to stay over there and do something, although I guess that's fraught too, because that's kind of how we got into this mess. 0.80

00:42:29.040 You know, Israel, I mean, look, there's two roles for Israel here.

00:42:32.080 Number one, Bibi has been lobbying President Trump for the better part of a year to do this.

00:42:39.020 He desperately wanted to strike Iran. 1.00

00:42:41.260 He's wanted war with Iran for decades.

00:42:44.320 He's pleaded with every U.S. president to allow him to do this and to help us, to help them do this.

00:42:50.380 And finally, he found a taker in President Trump.

00:42:53.360 So it's been very clear that he's wanted to do it and he wants to do it with our help.

00:42:57.360 The specific catalyst was allegedly, according to Rubio and Speaker Johnson, that he came into Trump and said, OK, we're going to do it.

00:43:06.220 And Trump and team said, well, if they're going to do it, we're the ones who are going to be taking the responsive strikes.

00:43:10.460 So let's join in.

00:43:11.780 We'll do it in tandem.

00:43:12.780 So, yes, I mean, on a sort of short term basis, it was also potentially his fault.

00:43:21.080 But if that undermines the obvious truth that Trump could have told him, no, you're not doing it either.

00:43:27.400 And Trump didn't do that.

00:43:28.680 And I think that reverts back to point A, that he'd been getting convinced by Bibi for a year that this was necessary. 0.62

00:43:34.320 And we had this chance, especially Bibi was reportedly arguing, especially after the nuclear facility strike in June, their weekend, you know, now's the time.

00:43:42.720 Strike while the iron's hot.

00:43:44.140 And he talked Trump into it, Eric.

00:43:46.300 You know, now the president's defenders are like, oh, no one talks Trump into anything.

00:43:49.880 Like, oh, come on.

00:43:51.160 Trump didn't run on this.

00:43:52.600 Trump wasn't promising war with Iran.

00:43:54.740 Trump wasn't running around saying, I'm going to take out the Ayatollah.

00:43:57.260 That was Bibi all along. 0.82

00:43:58.640 Clearly, he was he was persuaded by Netanyahu.

00:44:02.200 This was a good idea.

00:44:04.800 Persuaded or coerced or extorted.

00:44:07.660 I don't know.

00:44:09.260 I'm not I'm not at that decision making level.

00:44:12.640 I don't claim to be.

00:44:14.100 I just claim to understand math.

00:44:17.020 And right now we don't have a great math scenario.

00:44:20.760 The look, the U.S. forces for what they were asked to do performed amazing.

00:44:26.380 Of course, when the enemy shoots back, sometimes their rounds are going to get through.

00:44:30.080 Um, and and the friendly fire incident over Kuwait losing three aircraft.

00:44:34.980 We are exceedingly lucky we didn't lose those crews.

00:44:38.740 But it's not time to go deeper into Netanyahu's war.

00:44:43.200 And he I think he's been to Washington at least six times.

00:44:47.940 You think he could have taken his son back in the White House at least seven.

00:44:51.540 OK, seven.

00:44:52.120 You think he could have grabbed his son from hanging out on the beach in Miami and taken

00:44:57.080 him back to at least serve in the IDF instead of asking America's sons and daughters to do 0.64

00:45:01.240 the same.

00:45:02.500 Yeah.

00:45:03.100 Why do we have six dead American troops now while his son's on a beach in Miami?

00:45:06.980 That's a good question.

00:45:08.540 The he went on with Sean Hannity last night.

00:45:10.880 And I'll show you the exchange.

00:45:13.360 That one.

00:45:15.320 You know, there are people that say, well, the prime minister of Israel dragged Donald

00:45:19.540 Trump into it.

00:45:20.280 And as somebody that's been friends with him over 30 years, nobody drags Donald Trump into

00:45:25.140 anything, number one.

00:45:26.240 But I want to get your reaction to that.

00:45:32.720 Well, you're right. 0.98

00:45:34.120 I mean, that's that's ridiculous. 0.93

00:45:36.620 Donald Trump is the strongest leader in the world. 0.94

00:45:38.540 He does what he thinks is right for America.

00:45:42.080 And we have to understand that we're fighting here.

00:45:45.500 We're fighting here.

00:45:46.520 The the the bad guys, we're the good guys.

00:45:50.220 I mean, the evil laugh is just right on brand there.

00:45:53.980 But I just think.

00:45:57.240 So, OK, they're setting it up such that.

00:46:00.300 Look, I'm just gonna be honest.

00:46:01.760 Hannity is a supplicant to Donald Trump.

00:46:03.560 He would never say anything other than to puff Donald Trump up.

00:46:06.280 And it's not we all love Trump.

00:46:08.380 But let's be real.

00:46:09.620 Like, he can be flattered into thinking, yes, this is your idea.

00:46:14.400 And it's a great one.

00:46:15.380 And you're the leader of the free world.

00:46:16.680 And we need you, Mr. President. 0.97

00:46:18.020 BB's not dumb.

00:46:19.160 He would know how to talk Trump into it, which is clearly what he did.

00:46:22.380 And then do it now.

00:46:24.080 Well, and then you have Rubio on record and you have Speaker Johnson on record saying this

00:46:28.580 is kind of the ultimate catalyst.

00:46:30.340 And now Trump comes out today and says the following.

00:46:32.200 This just hit.

00:46:32.880 Watch.

00:46:33.980 Mr. President, did Israel force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran?

00:46:38.180 Did that help pull the United States into this war?

00:46:40.760 No, I might have forced their hand. 0.98

00:46:43.040 You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics. 0.97

00:46:48.180 And it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. 0.99

00:46:51.040 They were going to attack.

00:46:52.140 If we didn't do it, they were going to attack first.

00:46:55.700 I felt strongly about that.

00:46:57.040 And we have great negotiators, great people, people that do this very successfully and have

00:47:03.000 done it all their lives very successful.

00:47:04.900 And based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first.

00:47:09.640 And I didn't want that to happen.

00:47:13.040 So if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand. 0.81

00:47:17.100 OK, that's just not true.

00:47:18.820 There is there is zero that he didn't mention that at all in any of his explanations about

00:47:23.120 why we started this war.

00:47:24.940 All the intel that's been leaked in the reports to The Washington Post and The New York Times

00:47:28.660 and every publication has been the calculation was that we would get hit by Iran preemptively

00:47:33.440 after Israel struck them.

00:47:35.860 Not that they were just going to out of nowhere attack the United States if they had not yet

00:47:41.620 been attacked.

00:47:42.660 And that while we were having these negotiations with them where we made demands, they were

00:47:47.160 never going to meet, Eric.

00:47:48.800 I mean, in no world were the Iranians going to promise they would never have a nuclear plan, 0.98

00:47:54.020 civil or otherwise, ever.

00:47:55.900 I mean, that's just as much as we'd love that.

00:47:58.000 There was no way they were going to.

00:47:59.000 We set these terms that they, of course, were not going to meet while we were moving our aircraft

00:48:02.880 carriers into the region, getting ready to execute Bibi's plan.

00:48:06.360 Your thoughts on it?

00:48:08.120 Look, I love the president.

00:48:09.720 I love largely the decisions he's made, but I love him enough to also tell him when he's

00:48:15.080 going down the wrong path.

00:48:16.440 And in this case, putting ground troops or extending this war longer is the wrong course

00:48:22.260 of action.

00:48:22.680 So I hope that he seeks wider counsel, looks at history, and says this one is not the best

00:48:34.680 path for the American people to go deeper into Iran, period.

00:48:39.560 Mm-hmm.

00:48:40.480 Mm-hmm.

00:48:41.060 You don't think there's any way of forcing regime change without boots on the ground and

00:48:44.540 a lot of them?

00:48:46.600 Not our boots.

00:48:48.320 Not American boots.

00:48:50.080 Iranians? 0.94

00:48:50.860 Sure.

00:48:51.100 You have a very young population there.

00:48:53.760 Like 70% of the population is under the age of 30.

00:48:57.060 They are not a fan of living under a mullahocracy. 1.00

00:49:01.020 When they protest, the mullahs killed them.

00:49:04.540 Give them the means to defend themselves.

00:49:09.460 That's what covert action is supposed to be.

00:49:13.500 That's the path forward.

00:49:14.820 But it doesn't have to be U.S. aircraft and certainly U.S. troops on the ground.

00:49:21.100 Fighting an unconventional or a conventional war.

00:49:24.640 Not the best course of action.

00:49:28.660 Eric Prince, thank you for your service to the country and your expertise today.

00:49:32.200 We appreciate it.

00:49:33.540 You bet, Megan.

00:49:34.200 Have a good day.

00:49:34.700 Yeah, you too.

00:49:37.740 This is very tricky, Wicket.

00:49:39.880 Up next, we're going to have the other side, someone who I respect who's a supporter of

00:49:43.820 the president on this.

00:49:44.900 And we'll hear his rebuttal to some of these arguments.

00:49:47.960 And as always, you guys will be able to make up your own minds.

00:49:50.600 My audience is very, very bright.

00:49:53.880 And we just want to make sure you're armed with the facts on both sides.

00:49:56.940 This is not a President Trump bashing show, but it's also not a supplicant show.

00:50:03.360 As you well know, the president and I have crossed paths many times, positively and negatively

00:50:08.600 over the years.

00:50:09.760 There's a mutual respect there, if not always total agreement.

00:50:13.360 All right, stick around.

00:50:14.560 We'll do the other side next.

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00:52:14.160 Joining me now, someone who fully supports the president's actions in Iran, Mark Ozgeist

00:52:20.120 is a retired U.S. Marine.

00:52:22.140 After retiring from the military, he began doing contract security work in Iraq during

00:52:26.780 the height of the war.

00:52:27.940 He was also a member of the security team that fought off Islamic militants during the

00:52:33.360 siege of the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, back in 2012.

00:52:38.740 That attack left four Americans dead, including the U.S. ambassador, Chris Stevens.

00:52:43.620 To this day, Geist still has 16 pieces of shrapnel in his body from the attack.

00:52:48.060 He is now founder of the Shadow Warriors Project, an organization that helps military contractors

00:52:52.840 who need medical and financial assistance.

00:52:54.820 He's also the co-author of 13 Hours.

00:52:58.600 Mark, great to see you again.

00:52:59.760 Thank you so much for being here today.

00:53:01.360 All right.

00:53:01.700 So there's no one I can think of that I respect more than you in terms of your service and

00:53:05.640 your sacrifice for this country.

00:53:07.120 So please try to sell me on this war, which I am definitely not sold on right now.

00:53:11.440 Well, and I understand that.

00:53:12.620 I think a lot of Americans are not sold on it yet.

00:53:17.560 You know, we got to look back at history.

00:53:19.060 You know, when we first started engaging with Iran and or them engaging with us was in 1983

00:53:27.780 when their proxies started bombing our U.S. embassy and marine barracks in Lebanon.

00:53:34.980 Since then, they've, through the IRGC, they've built up their proxies, expanding them into Yemen,

00:53:43.620 into Hezbollah, Hamas, which is really what's the core of things that have kept peace from 1.00

00:53:51.520 really happening in the Middle East, I think.

00:53:53.520 And with that, you know, I guess you look at their development of nuclear weapons, the

00:54:01.700 nuclear capability.

00:54:03.040 I do hear the argument that, you know, well, they don't have it right now.

00:54:07.280 They're not going to be able to have it.

00:54:09.000 But when is when?

00:54:10.540 And it's not necessarily ICBMs that we have to also worry about.

00:54:15.660 We have to worry about dirty bombs and their capability to do that.

00:54:19.280 And there's got to be a time when we decide to look at the ultimate way of preventing it

00:54:27.700 or deterring it is getting rid of it.

00:54:30.880 And I think between what we've seen over the last probably four or five months with the

00:54:37.920 Iranian people who are very fed up with the mullahs, they want a change.

00:54:44.960 They just don't have the capability of doing it without a little bit of help.

00:54:49.060 And I think where we're at right now is taking out the leadership of both the mullahs as well

00:54:55.920 as the IRGC leads them or gives them the permission that they're looking for to take back their

00:55:02.920 country.

00:55:04.240 OK, but how practically does it work?

00:55:06.420 We take out the top leadership.

00:55:08.160 We've taken out 40 to 200 people at the top reportedly so far.

00:55:13.000 Yesterday, the report was 40 and then 200, including possibly 100 civilians.

00:55:16.580 Now, I'm sure it's much larger.

00:55:18.180 But President Trump says we're not you haven't seen anything yet.

00:55:21.280 We're about to go back with with our biggest assault on Iran. 1.00

00:55:25.960 So we'll see where that goes.

00:55:27.060 But how does it work?

00:55:28.020 Because you've got the IRGC throughout the country who are armed and vicious.

00:55:33.620 I mean, notoriously vicious, who literally were shooting protesters in the head a couple

00:55:38.800 of weeks ago.

00:55:39.600 And what President Trump is saying is hopefully they'll put down their arms and join with their

00:55:43.800 fellow Iranian patriots.

00:55:45.180 That doesn't sound like a plan.

00:55:46.900 So what how do we actually get those guys to work with the freedom loving Iranian people 0.98

00:55:53.980 for actual regime change in Iran?

00:55:57.240 Well, I mean, one is it is a plan, Megan.

00:56:00.200 I mean, the thing is, is that could be the plan.

00:56:02.620 Everybody wants to sit there and say that the plan has to go all the way through completion

00:56:07.500 of the Iranian people taking back their country.

00:56:12.140 You know, one is the United States has never been good about changing dictatorships.

00:56:19.300 We've failed at it so many times, whether it be through direct military action or through

00:56:24.040 the CIA.

00:56:25.080 What has to happen is it has to come from the people within Iran. 0.92

00:56:29.180 And they're the ones that have to decide if they're going to take their country back.

00:56:32.620 What we have to look at is how do we protect America, our soldiers, our allies that are

00:56:39.100 in the region?

00:56:40.220 And we have to do that by eliminating their capability of bringing offensive action to

00:56:45.440 us.

00:56:46.020 And that's really what this is about right now is is limiting their ability to to do

00:56:52.560 that to us and holding us hostage to a nuclear weapon.

00:56:56.540 I mean, we were told by this administration that the nuclear facilities and capabilities

00:57:02.360 were obliterated.

00:57:04.080 That's Trump's word in June.

00:57:06.140 So it's very hard to believe that they were anywhere close to meaningfully rebuilding that

00:57:12.320 eight months later.

00:57:14.360 And indeed, we heard yesterday that the intel, as brief to the gang of eight, did not suggest

00:57:20.320 they were anywhere near that, nor were they anywhere near short of a decade of getting

00:57:27.100 ballistic missiles that could that could reach the continental United States.

00:57:31.080 So there was no there was no imminent threat.

00:57:33.800 That's really what many of us are hung up on.

00:57:36.520 Like, it's been one thing if we really did have intel that they were about to launch something

00:57:39.500 massive against us.

00:57:40.480 But it seems to me they were still they were doing the stuff that Iran's been doing for 0.98

00:57:43.800 decades, which is saber rattling and dreaming about one day having a nuke.

00:57:47.960 Well, if you look in the immediately after we destroyed their capabilities or the capabilities

00:57:53.780 that they had, there was a onslaught of Chinese moving into and bringing in more technology

00:58:03.000 for them to utilize.

00:58:04.680 And we define the threat and everybody keeps talking about the threat being an ICBM because

00:58:10.160 we're sold on this idea that that's a big threat.

00:58:13.120 I mean, we got to look at Russia or not Russia, but Korea.

00:58:16.560 North Korea has ICBMs.

00:58:18.800 But do we worry about them?

00:58:20.340 Why don't we worry about them as much as we do about Iran? 0.99

00:58:24.060 And it's because they have a more stable and not such a radical environment.

00:58:29.020 They are looking at protecting themselves and using it as a deterrent.

00:58:33.560 Iran has always said that if they have the ability to build any type of nuclear device, and that's 0.89

00:58:41.280 what it's got to be looked at is the threat is the device, and it doesn't necessarily mean

00:58:46.000 the delivery is just a different item, how that's delivered.

00:58:50.200 And with the fact that we had open borders over the four years of the Biden administration,

00:58:56.020 the amount of people in sleeper cells that have came into our country, and that can pose

00:59:01.620 a threat internally, all they have to do now is provide that source to those sleeper cells

00:59:07.780 that are here and use something like that, whether it be chemical or nuclear, and are

00:59:13.940 going to have a problem that is 10 times worse than what 9-11 was.

00:59:19.360 I mean, imagine if they took a oil ship, a transport ship, and put a nuclear device on it,

00:59:28.100 floated it into New York Harbor under the guise of another country, and blew that up.

00:59:34.080 What would we see there?

00:59:35.620 Something 10 times worse than what 9-11 was. 0.54

00:59:39.500 And we cannot allow that to happen.

00:59:42.400 Well, I agree with that, but what happened to we obliterated everything?

00:59:45.900 Well, I mean, come on, do you think that we really did?

00:59:48.400 No.

00:59:49.180 And how hard is it to rebuild a small nuclear device?

00:59:52.420 Maybe I was naive.

00:59:53.560 I believe the president and the secretary of defense.

00:59:55.920 I believe them both.

00:59:56.840 Yeah, and they-

00:59:57.500 Repeatedly, it was the left that continued running around saying, these are lies.

01:00:01.140 These are lies.

01:00:01.880 They didn't obliterate.

01:00:02.900 And those of us who believed in President Trump and took him at his word, and Pete Hexeth,

01:00:06.660 were defending them, saying, we believe them when they say that it was annihilated.

01:00:10.640 We talk about the bunker-busting bombs.

01:00:12.340 We played the presser with Pete and Dan Kane. 0.93

01:00:15.040 And now here we look like fools because they're like, oh, gee or no, they were about to drop 0.96

01:00:19.740 the bomb on us. 0.99

01:00:20.460 What does it take to build a dirty bomb?

01:00:22.920 How long does it take to have that if you have the material?

01:00:25.540 We know they didn't get rid of all of the material, I'm sure.

01:00:28.480 We've seen the BDA that showed the obliteration of their ability to build an ICBM, to be able

01:00:39.240 to take it to that level.

01:00:41.200 What we're looking at is there's still the threat there of other devices and other capabilities.

01:00:47.340 And if you have the opening to be able to allow the Iranian people to take back their 1.00

01:00:52.460 country, and if we see that happen, I mean, right now we've seen what Iran has done has 0.62

01:01:00.500 even solidified the relationships that we have with other countries in the Middle East that

01:01:07.180 much more.

01:01:08.160 Something they did not ever expect was Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia becoming an ally to fighting

01:01:18.300 Iran.

01:01:19.260 Iran, we're at a position that we need to take this threat out. 1.00

01:01:24.180 Nobody mentioned anything about a dirty bomb until, like President Trump spoke twice on

01:01:30.260 Saturday.

01:01:31.140 Once again, the administration put out messaging on Sunday.

01:01:34.280 Then the president spoke again yesterday.

01:01:36.060 Marco Rubio spoke yesterday.

01:01:37.760 It took three days for them to finally be like, and maybe a dirty bomb.

01:01:42.060 Like this was, nobody said, here was President Trump's, can we play the soundbite that we played

01:01:46.360 yesterday, Deb, Deb, Sot, two or three, whatever it was.

01:01:48.800 This is what President Trump said was the reason.

01:01:51.640 This is how he explained why we had to do it on Saturday morning.

01:01:55.720 Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian 1.00

01:02:02.520 regime.

01:02:03.620 For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted death to America and waged an unending campaign of 1.00

01:02:12.420 bloodshed and mass murder targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in

01:02:19.040 many, many countries.

01:02:20.540 It's been mass terror, and we're not going to put up with it any longer.

01:02:25.260 Iran is the world's number one state sponsor of terror, and just recently killed tens of

01:02:33.420 thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested.

01:02:37.420 It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular, my administration, that

01:02:44.020 this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon.

01:02:47.520 And I'll say it again, they can never have a nuclear weapon.

01:02:53.800 They've rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can't take it

01:03:00.380 anymore.

01:03:01.180 They're going to destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground.

01:03:06.520 It will be totally, again, obliterated.

01:03:10.480 I just, I don't believe the dirty bomb story.

01:03:14.440 It would have been in the initial justification if it were true.

01:03:17.420 Well, the thing is, though, is, I mean, you got to look at it like this, Megan.

01:03:23.400 What threats have they always had or tried to develop?

01:03:27.900 Okay.

01:03:28.640 We want to sit here and stick on, okay, and because I'm not an advocate for war by any means.

01:03:34.480 It is not what we should do unless we have to.

01:03:37.400 Okay, but the history of Iran, since 1979, when the Mullahs took over, they have done

01:03:46.120 nothing but try to kill Americans, and if they got a nuclear weapon, what do you think

01:03:53.700 that they would do with it? 0.99

01:03:55.140 Would they use that as a deterrent for us to attack them, or do you think after all of

01:04:00.420 the history that we've seen of them, they would use it to destroy Israel and destroy America? 0.98

01:04:07.400 And I have no doubt that that's what they would do.

01:04:11.320 I mean, Iran would fully understand, I think Iran would understand that any sort of attack

01:04:17.820 on the United States of America involving nuclear would be certain annihilation. 0.90

01:04:23.660 I mean, they're not dumb.

01:04:25.020 They would understand that it would be annihilation for them and all of their people.

01:04:29.880 So that, I do have doubts about whether Iran would actually use it.

01:04:33.280 And what Steve Whitcock is saying today, the negotiator for President Trump on this, is

01:04:37.420 that, well, let me just finish.

01:04:39.000 He's saying that they told them on the first day of the meetings, he and Jared were told

01:04:42.440 by them, that they still have enough enriched uranium to make 11 nuclear bombs.

01:04:47.520 He said that's how they opened, that they still have enough to make 11.

01:04:51.160 So if like, if they had enough to make 11, why didn't they make the 11 and drop bombs on 0.78

01:04:54.780 us if they were prepared to nuke us?

01:04:56.500 I mean, I just think like, what is your idea?

01:04:59.320 If Iran were prepared to do that and was going to do that, if it got a bomb, it would have 0.91

01:05:02.460 done it.

01:05:02.960 What is your idea of nuke us?

01:05:04.420 Nuke us is an ICBM.

01:05:05.860 That's what everybody talks about.

01:05:07.520 That's the big thing that you're thinking of.

01:05:09.600 Okay.

01:05:10.860 Two is, show me where any terrorist is worried about dying.

01:05:16.960 The moolahs don't care about their people. 1.00

01:05:19.700 They, as you've said, they've killed over 10,000 of them just in the last few months because 0.69

01:05:24.360 of them rioting.

01:05:25.820 They don't care if they sacrifice all of their people.

01:05:29.380 What they do care about is destroying America.

01:05:33.040 I mean, it is, it is paramount to what hate happens to a person and how it takes somebody

01:05:39.840 from having common sense to not being able to go to every extent possible to blow something

01:05:48.640 up.

01:05:48.920 I mean, I've been in the Middle East in and out, in and out of 40 years.

01:05:54.020 I've seen kids wear a suicide vest to go blow up a Marine or a facility.

01:06:03.640 How do you get somebody wearing there is any sense that they would utilize what we think

01:06:10.080 of from our Judeo-Christian principles, our morality?

01:06:13.880 We can't put that on them because they will not listen to it.

01:06:17.800 It's not common to them to have that.

01:06:20.300 They're willing to sacrifice everything for the destruction of America because what do

01:06:25.920 they do if they die?

01:06:26.980 They go to heaven and they get 72 virgins and they live in paradise. 0.89

01:06:31.900 I mean, if I could promise you that, what would you not do?

01:06:35.360 Yeah, I hear you.

01:06:37.920 And I certainly am not defending the Iranians and their intent as good people, the mullahs 0.96

01:06:43.400 who run Iran.

01:06:44.340 However, I think generally we've been of the mind that we don't start wars unless there

01:06:49.300 actually is an imminent threat against us.

01:06:51.140 And this has been an exception to that.

01:06:52.840 And I mean, even though the president used the term imminent threat, he was undermined

01:06:56.480 immediately by those around him who's leaking to the Washington Post and the New York Times

01:07:00.340 and the Wall Street Journal.

01:07:01.720 And I think that with respect to like the nuclear program, that's why we took it out in

01:07:08.600 June like that because we understood that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon.

01:07:11.980 And I think the American people were behind Trump on that.

01:07:15.040 I was behind Trump on that.

01:07:16.340 Like I was I defended the strikes in June.

01:07:18.540 I was thrilled to see them target those sites, but nothing's changed since June that they

01:07:24.220 didn't rebuild their nuclear program.

01:07:25.980 So what did we do that for?

01:07:28.100 So what else did what else what else is the threat?

01:07:31.280 What other threats do they have?

01:07:33.280 What other capabilities do they have and have they always had and are they willing to use

01:07:38.220 them?

01:07:38.400 And at what point do we decide to make sure that we take I mean, not only the threat of

01:07:45.640 the nuclear weapons, but the capability or the possibility of bringing around regime change

01:07:51.900 in a way that is not going to involve our troops, because I think if anything that involves us

01:07:58.380 putting but it is involving our troops, let me finish, Megan, if it's involving anything

01:08:03.500 where we put boots on the ground, then I am not I'm not for that.

01:08:07.960 I think there's other ways to do it.

01:08:09.440 And I go back to it's up to the American or not the Iranian people to take charge. 1.00

01:08:14.640 We give them the opportunity to take over their country. 1.00

01:08:17.400 And at some point when you have a bully in the backyard around the playground, somebody 0.93

01:08:22.600 has to fess up or face up to that bully and punch him in the nose.

01:08:26.580 And we have done that. 0.95

01:08:28.160 And we need to continue to do that, giving the rest of the people on the playground and

01:08:33.900 showing them that, you know what, you can take over this bully as well and make your

01:08:38.320 own playground safe.

01:08:40.340 And that's what really I think is a lot behind this.

01:08:42.980 What about making it so the Iranian people can have an environment where they can take

01:08:47.420 over their country and choose the people of Iran choose what they want, not what some

01:08:53.760 mullah wants to tell them they have to have. 0.69

01:08:56.640 It would certainly be nice if it could happen.

01:08:58.800 I just I have my doubts, given how ingrained the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is in the country 0.97

01:09:04.440 and the regime's emissaries are in the country.

01:09:07.380 There are reportedly thousands of them.

01:09:09.500 I've heard the number 10,000.

01:09:11.240 So it's it's not going to be that easy.

01:09:13.280 It's not just like, OK, the Ayatollah is gone and now the country's free.

01:09:16.460 No, this is going to be a war.

01:09:19.320 But nothing war.

01:09:20.200 And the Iranian people aren't armed.

01:09:21.740 We're going to the Kurds. 1.00

01:09:23.560 Nothing.

01:09:24.080 Well, we got to.

01:09:25.000 I know.

01:09:25.420 But like this is quagmire we didn't need to do.

01:09:27.880 So two things is one is when is anything worthwhile been easy?

01:09:33.880 It never has.

01:09:35.140 Two is when we talk about the Kurds, I mean, most people don't understand what the whole

01:09:40.600 Kurdish nation or Kurds that that part of that race involves.

01:09:46.400 I mean, you have Kurds that live in and have been in Iran.

01:09:49.800 You have Kurds that are in Iraq. 0.97

01:09:52.180 You have Kurds that are in Syria and you have Kurds that are in Turkey.

01:09:58.580 All of them are not.

01:10:01.460 Though they are all Kurdish, they're not all on the same side all the time. 1.00

01:10:05.220 I mean, we saw it in Iraq.

01:10:07.180 I used to I mean, I was up with Barzani and Talibani a lot up in the Kurdish portions of

01:10:13.240 Iraq.

01:10:13.620 They fought each other left and right when Saddam was still in power because they're vying for

01:10:20.640 power themselves.

01:10:22.260 And that is one of the problems that we're going to see in Iran is all the little different

01:10:27.320 factions, because as your previous as Eric previously stated, it's it's not all Iranians.

01:10:35.720 I mean, they're all Iranians, but they're not necessarily all Persians.

01:10:39.040 There is Baluchis. 1.00

01:10:40.440 There's Kurds.

01:10:41.620 We've got several different factions.

01:10:43.420 And yeah, they're going to have a problem.

01:10:45.400 They're going to have trouble figuring it out.

01:10:47.820 But as I listen to you talk, I'm like, oh, my God, we don't want this.

01:10:52.600 We just got over 20 years of this. 0.99

01:10:55.140 I don't want to hear anything about the fucking Kurds or Barzani or Turkestani or any of the 1.00

01:11:01.680 Anis. 1.00

01:11:02.120 I don't care about them.

01:11:03.700 I care about my kids.

01:11:05.740 Americans, they want a mortgage. 0.96

01:11:07.960 They want to be able to work a single family, you know, income to live in a single family.

01:11:13.060 They want to be able to take a vacation.

01:11:15.180 They want to send their kids to a decent school without being overwhelmed with illegals. 1.00

01:11:19.060 They want the illegal deportations to continue.

01:11:21.560 And how are we going to focus on that when we're also focusing on an Iranian war?

01:11:25.180 We are not going to do both simultaneously.

01:11:27.480 Like, I I'm sorry that the Iranians have a terrible man ruling their country or did until 1.00

01:11:32.620 two days ago.

01:11:33.360 The next one they were looking at doesn't look so great either. 0.99

01:11:35.800 But I don't give a shit. 0.99

01:11:37.420 It's like I just feel like we have our own fucking problems to worry about. 0.99

01:11:41.100 And I just I have so little bandwidth for them. 0.98

01:11:43.860 I and Megan, I would agree with you completely on all of that.

01:11:47.560 I've been it probably in my life overseas.

01:11:50.680 I've been to probably 50, 60 different countries.

01:11:53.220 And you know what?

01:11:54.340 Everybody in every country wants the same thing.

01:11:58.000 It's the problem is not the people.

01:12:01.280 The problem is the governments.

01:12:03.580 And that's the problem that we are always going to run into.

01:12:07.160 And at some point, we have to do what we can when we can, whether it's a lot or a little,

01:12:12.900 to help other people have a better life.

01:12:16.180 And I'm I'm right there with you.

01:12:18.060 I think our focus should be on what's going on in our country right now, because we have

01:12:24.400 a lot of things that we need to focus on and fix.

01:12:27.560 But at the same time, when an opportunity sees is opened, we can't just turn away from that

01:12:36.220 and hope that it just goes away because it's not going to just go away.

01:12:41.000 The well, the moolahs, the IRCG, the capabilities that they are trying to develop, it is going

01:12:49.900 to affect us at some point in the future if we don't deal with it.

01:12:54.580 As much as I wish in a perfect world, it would just go away.

01:12:58.780 It's not going to.

01:12:59.680 So I've been I've seen it too much.

01:13:02.720 Point taken.

01:13:03.420 I respect you.

01:13:05.000 Listen, you've been boots on the ground over there.

01:13:07.420 You know better than anyone.

01:13:08.920 So I greatly respect your POV and for you sharing it here.

01:13:12.620 Thank you, Mark Ozgeist.

01:13:14.340 Great to see you again.

01:13:15.100 Thank you so much for having me on.

01:13:16.800 It's my honor.

01:13:18.040 I'm honored just to know you, Mark, and all the best to the rest of the guys, too.

01:13:21.460 Those guys are badasses out of that Benghazi compound. 1.00

01:13:24.360 And I was lucky enough to come to know them when it went down.

01:13:27.900 OK, we have a bit more ahead.

01:13:30.240 And then Matthew Kachuk from the U.S. men's Olympic gold winning hockey team.

01:13:37.080 He's here.

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01:14:36.820 That's B-Y-R-N-A dot com or your local sportsman's warehouse. 0.82

01:14:40.880 Visit now and be prepared to defend.

01:14:43.040 Now we turn to another story we covered last week that's making big news right now.

01:14:50.800 Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifying behind closed

01:14:56.060 doors last week about their ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

01:15:00.100 Well, last night, video of their depositions was released by the House Oversight Committee.

01:15:04.840 And there are some interesting moments that we have got to get to.

01:15:11.020 OK, where to begin?

01:15:12.720 I kind of want to start with Bill because he he was entertaining.

01:15:17.760 Um, let's start with Sot 51, where he was asked why Jeffrey Epstein would say, quote, he likes

01:15:27.240 them young.

01:15:28.380 I'd in the Epstein cases that Epstein said, uh, you quote, like them young.

01:15:33.400 Why would Epstein say that about you?

01:15:35.500 First of all, that's not true.

01:15:41.780 What's not true?

01:15:43.460 That I have any interest in underage.

01:15:50.300 I didn't say underage.

01:15:51.280 I said, I said young.

01:15:52.840 But it's still not true.

01:15:54.920 Is an intern young?

01:15:58.840 Yes.

01:15:59.760 OK.

01:16:00.520 In my age, anybody younger than I.

01:16:02.220 Did you know Jeffrey?

01:16:04.380 Oh, my gosh.

01:16:05.860 Brutal.

01:16:06.880 Brutal, brutal, brutal.

01:16:09.200 Like, I'm so uncomfortable watching the whole thing.

01:16:12.040 Is it intern young?

01:16:13.820 Yes.

01:16:14.520 Yes.

01:16:15.380 That's, of course, why Jeffrey Epstein said you like them young.

01:16:19.460 Don't make me show the picture again, Mr. President, of you leering at my friend's breasts

01:16:24.520 when she was 20 years old at the Bombay Club in Washington, D.C.

01:16:29.660 My pair of friends, we were all around 20 at the time,

01:16:32.560 and they were in Washington, D.C., and so were you.

01:16:35.820 You were still president.

01:16:37.020 It was 1999.

01:16:38.220 And you were leering down her blouse with your hand sneaking up the side on the side boob of 1.00

01:16:45.280 my other friend.

01:16:46.060 OK, so Meg Florence and Abby Rittman might dispute your statement that you don't like them young.

01:16:53.420 I saw it myself.

01:16:55.140 In any event, there was that.

01:16:57.520 Then he was asked about that viral hot tub moment that we all saw from the Epstein files,

01:17:03.200 where you can see him.

01:17:04.400 It's larger than a hot tub.

01:17:05.620 It's like a bath, like one of those traditional Roman baths.

01:17:08.200 It's like large, and you can swim around, and it bears more of a resemblance to a pool

01:17:12.880 when you see the larger shots.

01:17:14.580 And he was asked about this.

01:17:16.420 Here's how that went.

01:17:17.260 Saw it 50.

01:17:18.500 Do you recall the details of this photo or recall the photo being taken?

01:17:22.740 No, I don't think I ever knew the photo was taken.

01:17:25.660 This picture was taken in Brunei.

01:17:31.940 Were there other people in that pool or hot tub with you as well?

01:17:36.560 I don't think there was anybody in the hot tub.

01:17:38.720 I didn't have forgotten that there was anybody in the hot tub.

01:17:42.120 This photo, there's a girl over here. 0.99

01:17:43.940 Or there's someone.

01:17:44.500 Yeah, I don't know who that is.

01:17:46.160 But he's also asking in the pool area, were there other individuals?

01:17:48.520 I don't know who that is.

01:17:50.060 OK, so you don't know?

01:17:51.460 No, and then there were other people in the pool.

01:17:54.660 OK, so do you remember, were they under 18?

01:17:58.380 No.

01:17:59.200 No.

01:17:59.400 Were they part of your traveling party, he's asking you?

01:18:01.940 Yes, they were, I think.

01:18:08.240 I think everybody there was part of our party.

01:18:10.460 I swam around, I sat in the hot tub for five minutes, I think, or whatever it was, and I got up and went to bed.

01:18:16.720 And then I have to ask this, did you engage in any sexual activity with this person?

01:18:22.740 I went to bed.

01:18:25.000 Who is with you?

01:18:26.340 That kind of gets to one of the core issues.

01:18:28.420 This is so uncomfortable.

01:18:30.320 But it's fair game.

01:18:31.220 He was very close with Epstein.

01:18:32.480 He was all over the world with him.

01:18:34.020 He was on the plane 17 times.

01:18:37.240 Like, these are fair game questions of Bill Clinton.

01:18:39.780 Hillary didn't seem to know anything, but Bill knew a lot.

01:18:43.120 And part of what was interesting about the dynamic was watching his lawyer.

01:18:46.960 It was very annoying, her speaking objections.

01:18:49.320 You know, when you take a deposition,

01:18:50.420 the lawyer defending the deponent is not supposed to do a bunch of speaking objections, but man, it was, and so was the male.

01:18:59.380 She had, he was flanked by two lawyers, a female and a male, and both of them were completely trying to telegraph to Bill Clinton the answers.

01:19:05.880 He's asking you to get into Jeffrey Epstein's mind and opine on what he may or may not have been thinking.

01:19:11.880 You know, like, you're supposed to say objection to form at a deposition.

01:19:15.460 That's all you're supposed to say so that you can observe, sorry, preserve your substantive objection for when this case ever proceeds to, let's say, a trial if somebody got indicted.

01:19:27.520 So these speaking objections were inappropriate and ubiquitous yesterday.

01:19:32.360 You didn't see much of it there, but trust me, because I watched a lot of this.

01:19:35.960 There's another one here about whether he thinks Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.

01:19:41.620 That's the $64,000 question for many.

01:19:44.660 Sot55.

01:19:46.020 Do you believe that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself?

01:19:48.460 Are you asking him to speculate on how Mr. Epstein died?

01:19:51.260 I'm asking what the president thinks.

01:19:54.300 So you're asking his opinion?

01:19:55.360 Mr. President, was your friend Jeffrey Epstein suicidal?

01:19:59.280 Are you classifying him as a friend who he has testified that he was friendly?

01:20:02.200 He has called him a friend in a letter.

01:20:03.500 He said he was friendly, but you've asked for his testimony here.

01:20:06.060 Mr. President, do you believe that Jeffrey Epstein was suicidal?

01:20:10.680 Do you know?

01:20:11.600 Was he ever suicidal?

01:20:13.120 She's asking the best of your understanding.

01:20:13.860 I don't know.

01:20:14.440 I only know what the medical finding was.

01:20:17.940 I think maybe he finally got caught.

01:20:23.340 I don't know.

01:20:24.140 I think I've accepted it in my own mind.

01:20:27.360 I don't know what happened.

01:20:28.620 Mr. President, what did you accept?

01:20:30.060 That he killed himself or that he did not?

01:20:32.460 That he did.

01:20:33.180 But I don't know.

01:20:34.520 Yes, sir.

01:20:35.200 Thank you, Mr. President.

01:20:36.100 We don't.

01:20:36.520 None of us know.

01:20:38.360 Did you hear his lawyer say that's it?

01:20:41.380 He tried to cut him off from answering.

01:20:43.540 And Bubba was there to chat.

01:20:45.660 He was ready said.

01:20:46.980 I think he got caught.

01:20:49.320 Caught what, sir?

01:20:51.600 Caught what?

01:20:52.560 I mean, really, that's the interesting conversation.

01:20:55.600 He wasn't prepared to give up too many details on that, of course.

01:20:58.600 But it is interesting to hear him talk about his own theory on Jeffrey Epstein.

01:21:02.280 You can only imagine what he was thinking.

01:21:03.660 Because they had known each other very well.

01:21:05.840 Trump, too, for that matter.

01:21:07.120 What was he thinking the day he heard that Epstein allegedly killed himself?

01:21:10.620 Like, after all the hours they'd spent together? 1.00

01:21:13.040 I mean, I'm sure Bill Clinton was like, oh, shit. 1.00

01:21:15.140 This is going to turn into a nightmare now. 0.98

01:21:17.760 Because when there's no actual resolution in a court of law, as there ultimately would have been against Jeffrey Epstein, you know, the unanswered questions are sometimes the most dangerous ones.

01:21:29.420 And that's, I think, proven true in the Epstein case.

01:21:32.760 So there you have it.

01:21:34.420 I think he got caught.

01:21:36.800 He got caught.

01:21:37.460 Very interesting answer.

01:21:38.240 The following clip has gone a bit viral because he was smiling as he looked at Epstein documents showing, for example, a photo of him framed in Epstein's home in Manhattan.

01:21:52.560 This is the pictures from a New York Times piece in 2025.

01:21:56.420 Some had mistakenly thought it was that same picture that we just showed of him in the pool.

01:22:01.780 It's not.

01:22:02.280 It's a different photo of him.

01:22:03.660 And you can watch.

01:22:06.380 It's interesting to sort of watch his reaction to it in Sot 57.

01:22:22.780 Okay.

01:22:28.220 Mr. President, we have about five minutes remaining in the majority's first hour.

01:22:34.660 Okay.

01:22:35.060 What's interesting about it is because he's all smiles for the listening audience.

01:22:38.320 He's like ear to ear with a smile as he looks back over the New York Times article and his lawyer takes it from him.

01:22:44.700 Clearly, she doesn't want him getting too interested in this subject.

01:22:47.980 And Ben sees the picture of himself and Epstein.

01:22:51.360 And by the way, for the listening audience, it's a picture of the two of them looking like BFFs, just looking at each other like bros in a picture.

01:22:58.260 He's not in a hot tub.

01:22:59.120 He's not naked.

01:22:59.820 He's not with a girl.

01:23:00.580 He's just with Epstein like a great friend.

01:23:03.820 We're showing the audience the picture.

01:23:05.940 They're like side by side.

01:23:07.520 It looks like they're at some sort of like a bar or a table, both arms up on the table and looking at each other.

01:23:13.780 Like, I mean, can you imagine being a fly on that wall and hearing that discussion?

01:23:18.700 What we wouldn't give.

01:23:20.360 OK, so overall, it wasn't, you know, earth shattering that he denied any knowledge of Epstein's sex crimes when asked if he ever had any communications with Epstein related to young women or girls.

01:23:34.880 He said, no, he briefed lawmakers on the backstory of his history with Epstein and denied having any knowledge, again, of the sex crimes before he was prosecuted.

01:23:43.740 He denied having sex with a mystery woman pictured next to him in that hot tub.

01:23:48.020 Again, he explained it was taken at a lavish hotel in Brunei with the sultan inviting him there.

01:23:55.960 He said, my team was working on the AIDS issue and Epstein was there, as was Ghislaine Maxwell.

01:24:00.880 The sultan of Brunei was a man I had gotten to know well.

01:24:03.700 I wanted I want you to stay at this hotel and I hope you'll use the pool, he said.

01:24:07.520 So I did.

01:24:08.660 He could not identify the woman in the hot tub with him and was adamant that he did not have sex with her.

01:24:12.860 I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

01:24:17.200 By the way, he was asked whether he's ever lied under oath before, like when he said he didn't have sexual relations with Miss Lewinsky.

01:24:25.660 And listen to how that went.

01:24:26.860 Short thought here, 54.

01:24:29.060 First question I have for you, Mr. President.

01:24:31.640 Have you ever lied in a deposition?

01:24:34.220 No.

01:24:35.380 Have you ever lied while under oath?

01:24:37.320 No.

01:24:37.680 No, he says.

01:24:41.140 OK, I mean, he was impeached for doing exactly that, but he did deny the charges even then.

01:24:45.520 Pretty sure it wasn't true when he said he did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

01:24:51.340 And that's pretty well established.

01:24:53.980 But I think he just did it again, quite frankly.

01:24:56.540 That was another lie under oath.

01:24:59.220 Let's see.

01:24:59.900 Oh, then there was a question about Trump and Epstein asked of Bill Clinton here in SOT 58.

01:25:05.780 I hate this, because I don't believe I should inject anything.

01:25:11.540 But I do not want to leave the impression, since there was no follow-up question.

01:25:19.940 He never, the president, never, this is 20-something years ago, never said anything to me to make

01:25:27.000 me think he was involved in anything improperly with regard to Epstein either.

01:25:33.560 He just didn't.

01:25:36.280 That's the truth.

01:25:37.100 I, you know, as I said earlier, the only conversation I had with President Trump about this was in

01:25:48.480 the early 2000s.

01:25:51.280 And I have no information that he did anything wrong.

01:25:59.180 Well, and that's the relevant time frame, because Bill Clinton was hanging out with Epstein

01:26:02.520 right after his presidency in that 2000 to 2004 time period.

01:26:07.620 And President Trump, then just Donald Trump, was very close with Epstein from, I think,

01:26:12.520 2006, backward 10 years.

01:26:14.940 So when they were talking would have been the relevant time frame.

01:26:18.180 And he's saying he never said anything to me about Epstein and young girls and anything,

01:26:23.260 knowing any of that or participating in any of that at the relevant time frame.

01:26:27.260 So that is interesting and probative.

01:26:29.340 And by the way, also puts the lie to Bill's and Hillary's claim that they had absolutely

01:26:33.940 nothing of value to offer and no relevant information to discuss.

01:26:38.260 He did.

01:26:39.540 She didn't really have too much to say, but he absolutely did.

01:26:43.100 And it was very wormy that they tried to get out of it by claiming they had known they knew

01:26:47.720 nothing was not true in his case.

01:26:50.020 And that was made clear by the deposition yesterday, notwithstanding his lawyer's best attempts to make

01:26:54.420 him look like he like he, in fact, was a know nothing.

01:26:58.200 Here's Hillary in the moment that's getting a lot of attention because she I got to say, 1.00

01:27:04.280 this was it's kind of bullshit. 0.98

01:27:05.920 So Lauren Boebert was there, among others, when Hillary was deposed and she decided to 1.00

01:27:10.000 take a picture of Hillary and to leak it to Benny Johnson, who put it on his social media

01:27:13.700 during the middle of the deposition.

01:27:15.180 Well, the depo was going to be made public.

01:27:16.980 It was understood and agreed that it was going to be made public, the videotape of it.

01:27:21.660 So it doesn't make it really like a capital offense, what she did, because it was all

01:27:25.020 becoming it's not like, oh, my God, we never would have seen it had it not been for this

01:27:27.860 Lauren Boebert snapshot.

01:27:29.340 But I'm not I'm not going to lie.

01:27:30.660 It was it was a classless thing to do.

01:27:33.360 Follow the rules of the depo.

01:27:34.820 All right.

01:27:35.140 Like you may hate Hillary Clinton, but she's the former secretary of state. 1.00

01:27:38.580 She did show up. 0.99

01:27:40.040 She's answering the questions like fucking just go along with the protocol. 1.00

01:27:43.400 And it's not up to you to upend the whole situation by taking a snapshot and leaking 0.98

01:27:47.660 it.

01:27:47.940 I just Benny Johnson did nothing wrong, but I don't think Lauren Boebert should have done

01:27:52.240 that.

01:27:52.980 But OK, she did.

01:27:54.580 And when Hillary found out about it because it hit social media seconds thereafter and 1.00

01:27:58.700 that they had violated the agreement between Hillary's team and the House Oversight Committee,

01:28:04.420 she wasn't happy.

01:28:06.020 Here's a bit of that.

01:28:07.860 Excuse me.

01:28:08.340 Can I interrupt?

01:28:10.140 I have another photos that are being released of the secretary as she is testifying from inside

01:28:16.440 this room.

01:28:16.960 Can you please advise me as to whether or not that's permissible and consistent with

01:28:20.600 the rules, particularly given that we have asked for a public hearing if there are photos

01:28:25.760 that are being released of the secretary as she is testifying?

01:28:28.720 Can you please explain how that can occur?

01:28:30.540 I'm done with this.

01:28:30.740 If you guys are doing that, I am done.

01:28:32.460 You can hold me in contempt from now until the cows come home.

01:28:35.460 This is just typical behavior.

01:28:37.120 We will go off the record.

01:28:38.900 Oh, for heaven's sake.

01:28:40.100 So I would like to understand how that's permissible.

01:28:42.400 It was before the hearing was.

01:28:44.080 It doesn't matter.

01:28:45.040 We all are abiding by the same rules.

01:28:47.640 I will take that down.

01:28:49.160 Yeah, well, I would like to take a break at this moment.

01:28:51.380 I'd like to have a conversation for now.

01:28:54.000 Go off the record.

01:28:54.840 Go off the record.

01:28:57.860 I'm going to shock you, but she was right.

01:29:00.860 Like, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm on her side.

01:29:03.720 They shouldn't have done it.

01:29:04.900 Like, these things are always negotiated.

01:29:07.120 I've taken countless depositions and they're always negotiated in terms of what's going to

01:29:10.520 be available, what's going to be publicly available, what's on the record, what's not.

01:29:13.160 But all the stuff, and it's the subject of countless phone calls and letter writing with

01:29:16.920 the lawyers before the event.

01:29:18.300 And everyone there is expected to live up to the terms.

01:29:21.220 And we were always going to see Hillary on tape offering her testimonial. 1.00

01:29:26.420 So there was no reason for it.

01:29:27.740 Okay.

01:29:27.920 There was no reason for it. 0.99

01:29:28.960 And I think Lauren Boebert jeopardized the day's proceedings with a stupid thing that was 1.00

01:29:34.620 kind of pointless. 0.99

01:29:35.580 All right.

01:29:35.780 So write it down in the calendar.

01:29:38.440 What's today?

01:29:38.920 March 3rd.

01:29:39.920 Um, I, I'm in agreement with Hillary, Hillary Clinton.

01:29:45.140 Um, I've got one more, and, uh, this is where she has a heated exchange with Nancy Mace 1.00

01:29:50.860 in SOT 60.

01:29:52.200 She's asking about Hillary's relationship with Howard.

01:29:54.740 When I was Senator, on 9-11, the firm he headed, Cantor Fitzgerald, suffered the greatest loss

01:30:03.480 of life.

01:30:04.180 As I recall, something like 650 of his employees were murdered by terrorists that day.

01:30:12.260 Howard Lutnick missed being a victim because he was delayed dropping his child off to kindergarten.

01:30:19.080 You asked the question.

01:30:20.440 I'm going to answer your question.

01:30:21.840 This was what I spent my time doing.

01:30:25.200 I'm a survivor trying to look out for others.

01:30:27.500 Well, and I was taking care of the people who lost 3,000 lives at World Trade Center.

01:30:34.520 And now you're being defiant and indignant today.

01:30:35.380 You have emails.

01:30:36.160 You've denied that Jeffrey Epstein, that you tried to get Jeffrey Epstein to give money to

01:30:39.980 you.

01:30:40.160 I did not.

01:30:40.620 But Howard Lutnick was used to give money.

01:30:41.620 If you have an email with me asking Jeffrey Epstein for money.

01:30:44.380 You have an email from Howard Lutnick sending it to Jeffrey Epstein and his people to raise

01:30:49.500 money for you.

01:30:50.280 I don't know about it.

01:30:50.680 For an event, an intimate event for you at his offices at Cantor Fitzgerald.

01:30:54.720 You're going to sit here today and obfuscate and say to this committee, you didn't try to

01:30:59.780 get money from Jeffrey Epstein when there was a-

01:31:01.900 I didn't.

01:31:02.740 Okay.

01:31:03.540 That went on.

01:31:04.360 I will say Hillary did a good thing in the longer answer where she said to Nancy Bates, 0.66

01:31:08.520 because you heard Nancy May say, I'm a survivor.

01:31:10.140 And Hillary said, I'm aware of your story and I respect what you've been through and

01:31:16.580 your testimonial about it that I heard on the floor of the Congress.

01:31:20.400 Like, she had her moments there.

01:31:21.980 You know, sometimes you got to give it to her.

01:31:23.860 She's not, she's no dope. 1.00

01:31:25.460 And she practiced law for a number of years, so she knew how to handle herself in there.

01:31:28.740 But not, look, the bottom line is no substance really was offered in the Hillary portion of

01:31:33.720 the event.

01:31:34.700 And it did not appear that she knew that much, or at least wasn't prepared to give up that

01:31:39.460 much.

01:31:40.180 All right.

01:31:40.400 I want to get to what happened with Kristi Noem, though, at a different hearing.

01:31:44.220 Okay.

01:31:44.620 She was on Capitol Hill today, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in an oversight

01:31:50.100 hearing on DHS operations and had a remarkable exchange that I happen to have some knowledge

01:31:57.520 about with Senator John Kennedy, a Republican.

01:32:01.540 All right.

01:32:02.540 This is a Republican who's given her a hard time about the television advertisements she's

01:32:09.980 put out featuring herself at DHS.

01:32:13.860 Watch.

01:32:14.020 You have spent $220 million running television advertisements that feature you prominently.

01:32:26.940 Sir, the president tasked me with getting the message out to the country and to other countries

01:32:33.820 where we were seeing the invasion come from, with putting commercials out that told them

01:32:38.840 that if they were in this country illegally, that they needed to leave, or we would detain

01:32:43.280 them and remove them, and they'd not get the chance to come back to America the right 0.99

01:32:46.760 way.

01:32:47.000 The president asked you to run these advertisements, is that right?

01:32:54.240 We had that conversation.

01:32:55.640 Did you bid out those service contracts?

01:32:58.880 Yes, they did.

01:32:59.520 They went out to a competitive bid.

01:33:00.940 The people that you ended up picking were people who had formerly done your political work back

01:33:11.040 in South Dakota, is that right?

01:33:12.740 No, that's not correct, sir.

01:33:14.120 I think it is.

01:33:14.700 No, it's not, sir.

01:33:15.880 Careers, who they chose were two different media firms.

01:33:19.660 The president approved ahead of time you spending $220 million running TV ads across the country

01:33:28.000 in which you are featured prominently.

01:33:30.520 Yes, sir.

01:33:30.740 We went through the legal processes.

01:33:32.740 Did it correctly work with OMB?

01:33:34.680 Did the president know you were going to do this?

01:33:35.060 Yes.

01:33:35.860 He did?

01:33:36.440 Mm-hmm.

01:33:36.900 Yes.

01:33:38.360 Well, I happen to be in a position to be able to back her up on that, sort of.

01:33:44.700 Um, I was told by a source close to Secretary Noem more than a year ago, uh, that President

01:33:54.500 Trump, well, just about, just under a year ago, that President Trump did indeed want her

01:34:00.460 out there doing those advertisements.

01:34:02.140 That he viewed it, you know, like the bit she did down at Seacott, where she showed up in

01:34:07.440 the T-shirt and she was at the jail in El Salvador and some of the other ones, because

01:34:12.660 President Trump really thought, according to this source, didn't confirm it with him

01:34:16.520 directly, um, that that would be a very effective deterrent.

01:34:20.320 That he wanted her to be calling attention to some of these efforts they were doing because

01:34:25.560 he thought, let's advertise it and get the word out.

01:34:28.820 Like, you too could find yourself shipped off to El Salvador if you don't just get out.

01:34:34.280 And we have had a significant number of these illegals self-deport.

01:34:38.820 You could make the case as a result, in part at least, due to those ads.

01:34:42.560 So while I think Senator Kennedy thought this was a vanity project for Secretary Noem, and

01:34:47.640 I get it, but, um, I don't actually think that's true in this particular case.

01:34:52.000 I think she did have the blessing of the president.

01:34:54.800 I don't know about the numbers, you know, the, the 220, whatever million, but to get

01:34:59.440 herself on camera and call attention to what DHS and ICE were doing as a measure of getting 0.95

01:35:04.320 the word out that there was new sheriff in town and that none of this illegal bullshit 0.98

01:35:08.960 was going to be permitted anymore. 0.95

01:35:10.240 Uh, so anyway, it's interesting that they're taking a look at it.

01:35:13.240 I wonder what Senator Kennedy, who is very charming and always interesting, was up to there.

01:35:17.800 But, um, for what it's worth, I think the secretary was telling the truth, what I know about it

01:35:22.580 anyway.

01:35:22.800 Um, okay.

01:35:23.960 In the minutes we have left, I want to tell you the very latest.

01:35:28.820 It's just a bit in the Nancy Guthrie case.

01:35:32.120 As, as Zach Peter is saying on his social media, they never found the lady.

01:35:37.560 What happened to that lady? 1.00

01:35:39.240 Hey, that's how I feel too.

01:35:41.360 I can't believe they haven't found Nancy Guthrie after all this time.

01:35:45.180 The media has moved on.

01:35:46.860 It's now just a couple of very sad Kim Kardashian wannabe lookalikes.

01:35:52.420 I mean, in their dreams, they actually look like Kim Kardashian.

01:35:55.300 They, it's not the case, but they're doing their best.

01:35:57.860 Um, standing out in front of, well, near the Nancy property, trying to make hay of this

01:36:05.340 family's pain.

01:36:06.140 Like the actual journalists have left the influencer crowd that was helping has left.

01:36:11.260 And now it's really just down to the remnants.

01:36:13.380 It's kind of sad.

01:36:14.560 And Brian Enten dropping this just moments ago.

01:36:18.400 First of all, I should tell you that Michael Ruiz of Fox reported yesterday that, um, yesterday

01:36:23.680 morning, the case was handed off to a task force featuring Pima County homicide detectives

01:36:28.940 and FBI agents.

01:36:30.580 So a smaller footprint, that's now a task force involving some from the sheriff's department,

01:36:36.280 some from the FBI.

01:36:37.920 Sheriff Nanos did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what Ruiz's sources

01:36:42.540 were reporting there.

01:36:43.440 Now, today we get this from Brian Enten of News Nation.

01:36:46.980 The Pima County sheriff did an interview with NBC saying, quote, I think the investigators

01:36:53.020 are definitely closer to finding Nancy Guthrie and the suspect to finding the Nancy Guthrie

01:37:00.900 suspect is what he says, says new video of a car 2.5 miles away has not been identified.

01:37:08.000 And they are looking at hundreds of thousands of other vehicles says the backpack that

01:37:13.420 we saw in that video of the man on the porch may not have been purchased at Walmart.

01:37:18.500 That's new and unfortunate.

01:37:20.900 Remember, we believed it was a backpack you could only get at Walmart, though we did point

01:37:25.020 out on this show, doesn't mean it wasn't available secondhand in a thrift store, Salvation

01:37:29.980 Army, or a gift, a re-gift.

01:37:33.060 And sure enough, the sheriff says to Brian, it could have been purchased secondhand.

01:37:37.560 What that tells us is that they came up empty on the Walmart records and video records

01:37:43.000 of people purchasing the thing.

01:37:44.960 So that is very unfortunate because that was a real lead that could have led somewhere.

01:37:50.380 But like every lead in this case didn't.

01:37:54.220 He then adds, quote, we have information on this case that we think is going to lead us

01:37:58.420 to solving this case, but it takes time.

01:38:02.260 I mean, what does that mean?

01:38:05.100 What does it mean?

01:38:06.220 He says, I think the investigators are definitely closer to finding a suspect, and we have information

01:38:14.920 on this case that we think is going to lead us to solving this case, but it takes time.

01:38:21.180 Wouldn't you love to hear what exactly he was talking about?

01:38:25.040 I don't know.

01:38:25.700 We'll keep you posted.

01:38:26.800 We don't know.

01:38:27.620 Okay.

01:38:27.840 In the short time I have left, I want to end on this.

01:38:31.420 We've been talking so much about negative things like the Iran war.

01:38:34.320 It's stressful, like MAGA being divided over.

01:38:36.960 It's just, it's all stressful.

01:38:39.140 You know, it was wonderful.

01:38:40.260 Something wonderful, wonderful, wonderful happened in my life this past weekend.

01:38:44.620 My daughter was in the high school play and the play was Mamma Mia.

01:38:50.520 And we went and saw these young men and women, boys and girls, put on a play that was spectacular.

01:39:00.800 The performances, my daughter's just in the chorus.

01:39:03.620 She's just a ninth grader.

01:39:04.620 But the performances by the leads had me, my jaw was slack.

01:39:09.880 I couldn't believe my eyes.

01:39:12.020 I desperately hope that especially the two lead girls go on to perform on Broadway.

01:39:17.100 Anyway, the, like the singing, the high notes, the pizzazz, especially of the woman who played

01:39:23.320 Donna from, from Mamma Mia.

01:39:25.400 When she got up there, it was like just belting it out.

01:39:29.280 And I was like, it wasn't a dry eye in the house.

01:39:32.160 I couldn't cheer loudly enough.

01:39:33.860 The guys too gave it their all with the singing and the dancing.

01:39:37.260 And I was so moved by it.

01:39:40.180 And you should go to your high school plays.

01:39:42.440 Even if you don't have a kid in the high school play, go to them.

01:39:45.300 Go to your local high school play.

01:39:46.480 But it's uplifting.

01:39:48.000 It's joyous.

01:39:48.820 It's restorative.

01:39:50.220 When you see the youth of this country doing something amazing that they're great at,

01:39:53.620 it makes you feel good inside.

01:39:55.600 And I left on cloud nine and I think everyone there.

01:39:59.080 So hats off to the high schoolers who actually acted and sang and danced and the tech crew

01:40:04.080 who put it on and to the director who, you know, didn't have a lot of time for this particular

01:40:09.200 play, but got it on notwithstanding snow days in a short window in a way you would never

01:40:13.460 have known they were up against any of those challenges.

01:40:16.340 Loved every second of it.

01:40:18.480 Okay.

01:40:19.000 Coming up, we are going to say goodbye, but we are going to play our interview with Team

01:40:24.480 USA gold medalist Matthew Kachuk.

01:40:27.720 Next.

01:40:28.200 We did an interview with him at the end of the show yesterday.

01:40:30.340 Hasn't yet aired.

01:40:31.020 And he is such a charmer.

01:40:33.580 Okay.

01:40:34.140 So enjoy.

01:40:34.720 That's up next.

01:40:35.780 And after that, we will just see you tomorrow.

01:40:38.320 Thanks for watching, everybody.

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01:41:37.460 Hey, everyone.

01:41:40.780 It's me, Megyn Kelly.

01:41:42.160 I've got some exciting news.

01:41:44.400 I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM.

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01:42:09.340 app.

01:42:09.660 As anyone who has seen this show in the last few weeks, well, no, last week and few days

01:42:20.080 knows, I can't get enough of the gold medal winning U.S. men's Olympic hockey team.

01:42:23.760 Can you?

01:42:24.080 And last week, we saw that even President Trump wanted his own piece of gold.

01:42:29.760 Watch.

01:42:30.840 Mr. President, I'm not giving it back.

01:42:36.500 I'm not giving it back.

01:42:37.680 I'll trade you that for a pound.

01:42:40.300 Hey, that's cool.

01:42:41.180 One of the guys letting him put it on.

01:42:44.580 And that guy is with the Florida Panthers, and his name is Matthew Kachuk.

01:42:52.700 His brother Brady also played on the team.

01:42:55.300 They are sons of hockey legend Keith Kachuk, himself an Olympian, who never was able to

01:43:00.760 take home the gold.

01:43:02.160 Like his teammates, Matthew received a hero's welcome from his hometown team in Florida, but

01:43:07.420 he did not forget to give the game puck to a 101-year-old World War II veteran named Jim

01:43:14.600 Saleno.

01:43:15.560 Watch.

01:43:15.820 Panthers forward, and Team USA alternate captain, Matthew Kachuk.

01:43:38.360 Skating around the rink holding the American flag.

01:43:40.500 Oh, another moment here.

01:44:00.460 Shaking hands.

01:44:02.440 Congratulations to our American leaders on bringing home the gold medal.

01:44:07.000 Oh, wow.

01:44:09.620 Joining me now, Matthew Kachuk.

01:44:11.660 Matthew, welcome to the show.

01:44:12.800 How does it feel to be called a hero?

01:44:14.740 I'm not a hero.

01:44:16.760 First of all, thank you for having me on.

01:44:19.760 Love listening.

01:44:21.380 But yeah, not a hero, just a hockey player.

01:44:24.980 And I'm very lucky to be in the situation that I've been in, and very lucky to be having

01:44:30.100 this around my neck right now.

01:44:31.760 But the veterans and all the first responders, military, they're all the heroes, not me.

01:44:36.720 We just play the game we love.

01:44:38.840 And we are very honored to represent the greatest country in the world doing it.

01:44:43.920 And the support we've gotten has actually been so insane that I still can't really believe

01:44:50.220 it, if I'm being honest.

01:44:51.720 So just trying to enjoy all the celebrations that have come from it.

01:44:56.080 And I'm trying to have this around as much as I can, because it's kind of like the Stanley

01:45:00.260 Cup.

01:45:00.940 It's what it does to people when they see it.

01:45:04.020 The smiles, it's kind of what it's all about.

01:45:07.200 All right.

01:45:07.660 Now, I'm going to tell you something I should have told you.

01:45:09.880 I should have emailed you, knowing that you guys would win a week ago.

01:45:12.540 There is a product called Party Smart.

01:45:14.780 And if you take it in the midst of your alcohol, it makes the next morning a lot easier.

01:45:20.000 I feel like I'm going to send a case of this to the entire team.

01:45:23.700 But you're a young man, so you probably don't have that problem anyway.

01:45:26.080 I want to know everything.

01:45:27.820 There's a lot I have to ask you about.

01:45:29.240 First of all, let me ask you this.

01:45:30.580 You make this team, the Olympic hockey team.

01:45:33.180 I realize it wasn't 1980.

01:45:34.820 It wasn't like a bunch of college kids up against the Soviets.

01:45:38.040 What was the messaging internally?

01:45:40.240 Was it like, no, we have a real shot at winning gold?

01:45:43.200 Or was it, it's going to be very tough to get past those Canadians? 1.00

01:45:47.260 I would say that we definitely weren't saying it publicly, but privately in our room, it was

01:45:53.300 gold or bust.

01:45:54.520 We felt we had the team to do it.

01:45:55.940 We felt we had the characters to do it.

01:45:57.780 We felt we were the perfect team to break the streak, the 46-year streak.

01:46:02.160 And so many proud Americans in there that the sacrifice from what I saw guys on our team

01:46:08.940 do, like everybody's the best players or one of the best players on their team back at home.

01:46:13.700 And to see like the sacrifice that guys would make, playing less minutes, playing different role, not playing power play, less five-on-five minutes, maybe not even playing at all.

01:46:24.200 And that's, when I first saw the sacrifice in that first practice, I knew we had a real, legit shot.

01:46:30.620 And I mean, it took to overtime in the gold medal game to do it.

01:46:34.920 It took probably the best goaltending performance of all time by Hellebuck.

01:46:38.480 And it really takes a village.

01:46:41.660 Like the trainers, the equipment guys, all the staff.

01:46:44.820 I mean, we put in so many hours.

01:46:46.920 I know it was only a three-week tournament, but everything that built up to it.

01:46:50.680 The culture with USA Hockey, starting with the guys that came before us, and now after winning, the guys that are going to come after us.

01:46:57.380 It's a culture of USA Hockey, something that's so special, and I'm just so lucky to be a part of it.

01:47:02.680 It is so special.

01:47:04.160 I didn't know this.

01:47:05.080 I don't, I'm not a sports person, but I'm so inspired by the culture of USA Hockey.

01:47:09.940 I'm so sad.

01:47:10.840 I'm moving all my kids over to immediately.

01:47:12.920 They don't skate a lick, but they're going to.

01:47:15.080 We're starting.

01:47:16.680 How, how is USA Hockey so patriotic, so bonded, so on message, totally having each other's backs?

01:47:25.840 It is not like that in every sport.

01:47:28.480 I just think it's like a group of guys that are so selfless, and like I just talked about the sacrifice, like willing to do whatever it took.

01:47:37.800 Like put their bodies on their line for the country, play a different role.

01:47:41.960 Just, I thought what was really cool that we've talked, I've talked about a little bit since, but kind of going back to like the alumni and the guys that have come before us.

01:47:49.420 Like I obviously talk to my dad like every day.

01:47:51.860 He was a four-time Olympian and played for 20 years, and we've become close over the years with guys like Chris Chelios, Jeremy Roenick, like Brian Lee.

01:48:01.560 So, for example, like before every single game, there would be like five or six of us out in the hall taping our sticks or getting our skate sharp or tying like laces, whatever we were doing to warm up.

01:48:12.880 And we would FaceTime Chris Chelios, talk to him for a few minutes.

01:48:17.100 We'd FaceTime Brian Leach, talk to them for a few minutes.

01:48:19.740 So, I felt our team did a great job of keeping the alumni of USA Hockey like involved.

01:48:25.580 And then we'd go into the dressing room, and they all sent us like these huge letters that we had like plastered all over the walls of messages.

01:48:32.420 So, like we just have such a tight brotherhood, whether you're Mike Ruzzioni, who's however old, or you're Jack Hughes, who's 24 years old.

01:48:42.780 Like everybody in between, so tight.

01:48:44.660 And we're so lucky to have guys like Mike Ruzzioni on the 1980 team, who they were really the guys who influenced guys my dad's age, and then my dad's age, guys with Chris Chelios, Jeremy Roenick, Brian Leach, Mike Madonna.

01:48:58.100 All these guys influenced, you know, the Patrick Haynes, and then us.

01:49:01.940 So, it's really just a trick-of-the-down effect.

01:49:04.000 And who knows, hopefully our team right now is influencing the next generation or generations, because that's really what it's all about in creating the greatest culture around it.

01:49:13.580 Is patriotism part of it?

01:49:16.660 I think that it is.

01:49:19.380 Like, we're so proud to be Americans.

01:49:21.380 We're so proud to represent our country.

01:49:24.000 And, like, that was the greatest honor I've ever had in my entire life, is representing the United States, wearing the red, white, and blue at the Olympics at the greatest stage ever.

01:49:33.880 And I don't know if you're ever going to get a greater honor than that, you know, other than maybe being in the military or a first responder.

01:49:41.980 It was when I saw Mike Ruzione say that, and it really hit home when I put that jersey on over in Milan for the first time.

01:49:51.020 It was so surreal and so special.

01:49:53.360 And just realized, like, you're playing for everybody in the United States, and just a special feeling.

01:50:00.760 So you're in the finals, you're up 1-0 for virtually the entire match, and then right at the end of the game, toward the end, well, the end of the second period, the Canadians scored.

01:50:12.780 Now it's tied.

01:50:14.140 And the game ends, and it's tied.

01:50:16.640 Now we go into sudden death.

01:50:17.920 And it could easily have gone the other way, unfortunately.

01:50:20.360 Maybe not easily, given Hellebuck in the goal.

01:50:22.260 But were you on pins and needles?

01:50:24.560 Do you, at your level, because now you're a professional hockey player at this point, do you feel nervous when this is happening?

01:50:31.860 Maybe a tiny bit going into the game, but once the game happened, I was totally fine.

01:50:35.780 And before overtime, I thought our coach, Mike Sullivan, gave an unreal speech where he was really just talking about, like, there is a hero in this room that's going to change the course for generations to come with this goal.

01:50:48.660 And, I mean, at the end of the day, I just looked to the right, and we had Connor Hellebuck there, and I just calmed right down.

01:50:57.420 He was in a zone that no, it was probably the greatest goaltending performance in the history of hockey.

01:51:02.900 And he was so calm going over.

01:51:05.420 He was actually so calm, he didn't even know that it was three on three.

01:51:07.700 He thought we were going back to five on five, like we do in playoffs.

01:51:10.420 So it was, he was in a zone that you dream about your starting goalie being in.

01:51:16.880 I think he even might have, I don't know if it was that game or the game before, he was sleeping on the bus on the way to the game.

01:51:23.000 Like, he was just so chill.

01:51:24.480 Wow.

01:51:25.080 And in a zone that we all dream about being in.

01:51:28.020 So I felt great about our chances.

01:51:29.860 Everyone talks about the world-class players Canada has.

01:51:32.520 We have the same.

01:51:33.780 And it was our time to break through.

01:51:36.360 USA Hockey's been knocking at the door for a while, but Canada's had our number.

01:51:40.520 And it was time to finally break through, and we did.

01:51:43.080 Wait, tell me more about the coach's speech and when that happened.

01:51:46.600 When exactly, and what did he say?

01:51:48.120 So always coaches come in before each period.

01:51:51.000 So they come in after warm-ups before the first period.

01:51:54.100 You know, they give a speech, they announce the starting lineup, and then they come in before each period after that.

01:51:58.800 And since we went into overtime at the Olympics, they did like a flooding of the ice, like the Zambonis came up there. 1.00

01:52:04.620 So we had a 20-minute intermission.

01:52:05.880 And Sullivan comes in, I think he comes at 10 on the clock, so halfway through.

01:52:11.060 And all he just kept saying was, American swagger.

01:52:14.400 American swagger, this is our time.

01:52:16.920 Somebody in this room is going to, you know, make the difference and change the way hockey's looked at in the United States forever.

01:52:23.780 And a couple great saves by Hellebuck, and the guys that were out there did an amazing job.

01:52:28.140 I don't think it can be stressed enough, like obviously Jack Hughes being the overtime golden goal hero.

01:52:34.500 But the play he made defensively on McDavid, who's the best player in hockey before, that was absolutely unreal.

01:52:41.200 And then the play Zach Rensky made to beat Nathan McKinnon, who's probably like the second best player in the world, at a puck battle, gave it to Jack, and then Jack did the rest.

01:52:50.540 So, so many things that led to that goal.

01:52:53.580 But, yeah, I think we really got it.

01:52:56.240 I mean, every single day, it's so funny.

01:52:58.560 We have our team group chat still going, and it's going, like at all times during the day.

01:53:04.280 It's the best.

01:53:05.420 And one time a day, somebody texts, thank you, Helle.

01:53:09.420 So every day he's been getting a text for the last week or eight days, and like everybody loves or likes the message or whatever.

01:53:16.900 So, yeah, we've got Helle to thank for that.

01:53:19.900 That's so sweet.

01:53:20.340 We did a story last week about how he wasn't even heavily recruited.

01:53:24.100 Like he wasn't some star when he was much younger, like finishing high school or college where everybody wanted him.

01:53:31.180 It was more of like a Tom Brady situation.

01:53:33.300 Yeah, I think he was definitely a late bloomer.

01:53:35.680 And then when he came to the NHL, I think it took him a few years to become a starter.

01:53:40.480 I really don't know exactly.

01:53:42.180 But he proved himself that he's, if not the best player in the world, like the most, I mean, he was the MVP.

01:53:49.920 He was the best player.

01:53:53.180 He was the most important piece for us.

01:53:55.840 And just put such an all-world performance, like having that save right there, that stick save will go down in history as one of the best saves, if not the best ever.

01:54:06.060 It actually looks divine.

01:54:07.760 It really does.

01:54:08.520 It looks otherworldly.

01:54:09.640 Like he had somebody helping him with the stick that day because that just doesn't even look like a huge amount of defense.

01:54:14.640 It's so funny, too.

01:54:15.660 Like where that hit on the stick, it was above the tape.

01:54:19.220 So it was like almost at like the bottom of – it's hard to explain.

01:54:24.040 But anyways, he said –

01:54:25.440 He said that after the game, there's a perfect puck mark on that spot, like on where the paint is.

01:54:31.980 And I'm like, I don't know.

01:54:34.440 One day that thing might be worth $50 million.

01:54:36.780 Make sure you keep that tight to you.

01:54:38.280 Totally.

01:54:38.940 So –

01:54:39.580 No, he better not sell that or use it again in normal play.

01:54:42.880 Is there – in hockey, is there like your favorite stick that you use all the time?

01:54:45.700 Or is it like, no, like tennis where you've got 10,000 different rackets?

01:54:48.880 Um, we probably have like 10,000 sticks, but it's all like the same company, whatever, one you have like a deal with or whatever.

01:54:54.660 So each company made like special theme sticks for the Olympics.

01:54:57.980 So it was all USA theme, which were – those are limited edition.

01:55:02.480 Okay.

01:55:03.020 That's so cool.

01:55:04.000 All right. 0.71

01:55:04.260 So now I'll ask you about the ridiculousness that followed.

01:55:07.100 But let's – before we get to that, let's stay in the celebration mode.

01:55:10.180 So there's the moment – let's play it – when Jack does score that golden goal.

01:55:14.880 We just want an excuse to play it because we all love it.

01:55:17.160 It's not 60.

01:55:17.740 United States with numbers.

01:55:22.060 Rock across it comes.

01:55:24.260 Jack Hughes wins it.

01:55:25.980 The golden goal for the United States.

01:55:31.460 For the first time since the 1980 miracle, the United States takes the gold.

01:55:37.760 The United States takes the gold.

01:55:47.740 Describe that feeling.

01:55:49.200 Oh, my gosh.

01:55:49.920 It's like my life just pressed pause for five minutes.

01:55:53.820 And everything was like slow.

01:55:57.220 Everything – like you just remember everything that was going on.

01:56:00.760 Every hug with the guys.

01:56:02.400 Every I love you.

01:56:03.640 Every little jump you had.

01:56:05.080 Looking in the stands to see my family.

01:56:08.600 It was – out of all the guys, too, I think the last guy on the team that I got to for a hug and I love you was my brother.

01:56:15.980 Which I don't know why it happened to be like that.

01:56:18.180 But we had such a special moment there at Center Ice, one with my brother, one with my brother and the Hughes boys.

01:56:26.400 We call ourselves the Golden Brothers is our group chat name right now.

01:56:30.600 And we kind of like grew up with them and have been so close with them for a while.

01:56:35.420 So those two embraces is like it's just why you play the game and it's why we do what we do and just special.

01:56:42.500 I wonder if you could feel like the power of the world's embrace of you guys in that moment.

01:56:50.180 I mean millions of Americans like my family on our feet in our living room screaming, screaming for your win.

01:56:58.680 And that was just one little example.

01:57:00.400 It was happening with millions of Americans all across the country and the world in that moment.

01:57:05.080 And it was just – it's been 46 years.

01:57:07.220 They love you guys.

01:57:09.080 They love USA Hockey.

01:57:10.440 It was such a hard-fought battle.

01:57:12.380 Like could you feel it?

01:57:13.860 Could you feel that worldwide energy like zapping you all?

01:57:18.240 That's a hard one.

01:57:19.340 I mean we definitely felt like in that moment like, yes, we got them.

01:57:23.260 Like we've been knocking at the door for so long and we finally like kicked right through it and got them.

01:57:28.860 And I don't think it – it hit us until going to like the USA Winter House,

01:57:33.380 which is where all the athletes and their families got like their hangout spot, bars, restaurant, everything.

01:57:39.480 When we went there, it was like mayhem.

01:57:42.100 And it was just like one of the craziest parties.

01:57:44.160 I think that's when we realized the effect of everything.

01:57:46.400 And then definitely after the game when we're seeing like on our phones like all these watch parties,

01:57:51.700 all the celebrations back in the U.S.

01:57:54.320 And then we land in Miami and it's insane.

01:57:56.940 And then that first night in Miami was just out of control.

01:57:59.680 And we're like, oh, my gosh, this is different than anything we've all experienced.

01:58:03.820 And I don't think we are even going to realize the magnitude of the situation.

01:58:06.500 It's been a week since.

01:58:07.440 And I still don't really understand or know what's going on and how crazy this is because everybody comes up to me,

01:58:15.700 no matter what city, like they're just so excited.

01:58:18.120 And hockey is the cool thing right now.

01:58:20.340 And it's because of our team and the women's team, obviously.

01:58:23.320 So it's just so special.

01:58:25.960 Yeah.

01:58:26.400 What a gift you've given back to the sport you love.

01:58:30.200 You and your – Brady is your younger brother, right?

01:58:32.280 Yeah.

01:58:32.420 He's a couple years younger than you are?

01:58:33.860 Yes.

01:58:34.320 Also in the NHL?

01:58:35.580 Yeah.

01:58:36.040 Yeah.

01:58:36.260 But it's just such – I mean, hockey's been so good to us.

01:58:38.820 It's created lifelong memories, friendships, everything.

01:58:45.440 And it's so cool, like with our team too, the U.S. team,

01:58:48.600 everybody kind of overlapped with each other at some point in their careers.

01:58:52.260 So, like, I played youth hockey with some of the guys.

01:58:54.680 I played in summer tournaments.

01:58:55.920 I played for the U.S. NTDP with a lot of them.

01:58:58.020 A lot of them are some of my best friends.

01:59:00.160 So even though we play against each other in the regular season

01:59:02.780 and you don't get to see them as much, you go to this tournament,

01:59:05.860 you meet in New York before flying to Milan,

01:59:07.840 it's like just brings you right back to 2015 when you're playing

01:59:13.740 in Ann Arbor, Michigan with them.

01:59:15.240 And it's just – that's the best part for me is being able to win,

01:59:18.740 but being able to win with some of your best friends, it's just – it's unreal.

01:59:23.100 Now, I imagine having been a hockey player your whole life,

01:59:27.360 the risk of injury is not unfamiliar to you.

01:59:31.240 The loss of teeth may not be unfamiliar to you.

01:59:34.020 When you saw Jack Hughes' face after taking the stick to the mouth,

01:59:39.160 did that phase you at all, or is that a day ending in why

01:59:42.480 for a professional hockey player?

01:59:43.800 Well, as you can see, I thought I was going to be Jack Hughes last night

01:59:46.740 in my game against the Islanders.

01:59:47.880 I was like, come on, why me?

01:59:51.500 But that's – I think everybody in the NHL probably has a chipped tooth

01:59:56.100 or something or cuts on their face.

01:59:58.380 It's just –

01:59:58.860 Can you even get to dental insurance as a hockey player,

02:00:02.380 or are they like, no, it's a no?

02:00:03.660 I think they do, but it's pretty expensive because they know it's coming a lot.

02:00:08.540 But, I mean, Jack, if I'm Jack, I'm letting that look fly

02:00:13.340 for as long as possible.

02:00:14.420 That's like the iconic look in the United States right now.

02:00:17.880 I'd keep that for as long as possible.

02:00:19.560 Yeah.

02:00:20.600 Well, in your family, too, it runs in the family because I know your dad,

02:00:24.320 he was no stranger to the lost teeth either.

02:00:26.420 I think we have a picture of that.

02:00:27.640 Stand by.

02:00:28.140 Let's see.

02:00:29.980 Yeah.

02:00:30.640 This is when you guys were little.

02:00:32.120 I can't –

02:00:32.760 Right?

02:00:33.040 So your dad's been through it, too.

02:00:34.180 Yep, him and my sister twins in that picture.

02:00:37.260 I'm shocked my mom didn't make him go fix it, but that's hilarious.

02:00:43.200 So, okay.

02:00:44.420 So you're – and your sister plays as well.

02:00:46.460 I mean, like, this whole hockey family.

02:00:48.080 Yeah.

02:00:48.300 She was field hockey for four years at UVA, which was – we loved going to watch her play.

02:00:54.640 Totally different sport, but a little bit similar with the skills.

02:00:58.080 But she – everyone says she's the best athlete in the family, or at least was. 0.50

02:01:01.920 So that's a lot of –

02:01:03.920 Well, she'd have to beat it up to play at UVA. 0.60

02:01:05.720 She had to keep up with us.

02:01:06.380 Very competitive program.

02:01:07.280 She had to keep up with us.

02:01:08.960 So you go into the back locker room.

02:01:10.740 You guys are partying.

02:01:11.620 Why was everybody wearing blue goggles?

02:01:14.040 Because of the champagne being sprayed and all the beer being flown around.

02:01:19.220 They just have those in the locker room for celebration.

02:01:21.560 I think for, like, smoking cigars, too.

02:01:23.400 I don't know.

02:01:24.600 All the above.

02:01:25.960 But –

02:01:26.040 It's just – people didn't.

02:01:27.140 Yeah, I don't – I never put the goggles on.

02:01:29.280 I embrace the eyes stinging from everything.

02:01:33.460 It's just all part of it.

02:01:34.780 I'm not soft.

02:01:35.720 The danger.

02:01:36.420 Yeah, exactly.

02:01:37.580 Okay.

02:01:38.180 No, no one on that team is.

02:01:39.780 That's clear.

02:01:40.600 Now, do we know – were you – did you know Kash Patel?

02:01:43.420 Like, how did he get in there?

02:01:44.500 Do we know?

02:01:45.140 Yeah, I did know him from before, from our White House visit, from playing with the Panthers,

02:01:52.100 being on the Panthers Cup team last year.

02:01:54.540 So, we met, like, everybody when we went for our visit.

02:01:59.140 After you won the Stanley Cup.

02:02:00.240 A month or two ago for our Stanley Cup visit, yes.

02:02:02.400 And he was in the room.

02:02:03.460 There was so many – him, everybody was in the room.

02:02:05.960 Like, there was so many people.

02:02:07.460 Like, the room was crazy flooded with everybody.

02:02:11.420 And, yeah, a lot of people – a lot of people were a part of the celebration.

02:02:15.920 A lot of people that are big supporters of our team and love hockey and just love the United States.

02:02:21.780 Let me just pause you because we have a little bit of that.

02:02:24.160 Let me show it, and then you can take it on the back end.

02:02:25.900 Here it is.

02:02:34.640 That's Kash after you guys won the Olympic gold.

02:02:40.820 Yeah, I mean –

02:02:41.620 Yeah, and you were talking about that after the Stanley Cup.

02:02:43.340 Yes, yeah.

02:02:43.960 So, when we went after the Stanley Cup to the White House, that's where I met him and everybody.

02:02:49.780 That's what I met by that last month when we went there.

02:02:52.180 Yeah.

02:02:52.440 So, then, obviously, knew him and everybody that was in the locker room after the Olympic gold medal game.

02:02:58.660 And that was where that video was taking place.

02:03:00.500 And everybody just having an amazing time.

02:03:02.780 And just unreal the support we got from everybody.

02:03:05.860 Like, it was – the locker room was packed.

02:03:07.960 Everyone having a great time.

02:03:09.440 We were singing Dream On, Courtesy to Red, White, and Blue, Born in the USA, God Bless the USA.

02:03:15.460 It was – like, those four songs were just, like, on repeat going.

02:03:18.760 And some of the greatest memories I'll ever have was that locker room party.

02:03:24.920 And then, just, like, last year at the Four Nations playing for USA, we got a surprise call from the president of the United States,

02:03:32.940 which is always just the most surreal moment.

02:03:36.940 Like, you have no idea that – it's – like, we're hockey players and now the president's calling us to congratulate us.

02:03:43.660 Like, just all insane, and it's amazing what that game did.

02:03:47.820 It was such an honor.

02:03:49.460 So cool that the president of the United States was watching our game.

02:03:53.100 And just – it was such a surreal moment.

02:03:56.900 Did you have any hesitation?

02:03:59.520 Because it didn't sound like it when he said, do you guys want to come to the State of the Union?

02:04:02.640 We'll get you on a plane.

02:04:03.900 Yeah.

02:04:04.380 Like, to me, it was very charming that there didn't need to be a focus group meeting before you gave your answer.

02:04:08.640 But did you feel any hesitation before you said yes?

02:04:10.740 No, I mean, just – and going off, like, winning the last few Stanley Cups, like, getting invited to the White House, no matter who's there,

02:04:18.780 it's just the greatest honor as an American, one of the greatest honors as an American.

02:04:22.800 So everybody on our team was so excited and honored and shocked to get the invite.

02:04:29.200 And then they said the State of the Union was that night, which I guarantee you nobody on our team has been to.

02:04:34.580 So another really cool experience.

02:04:37.100 Or maybe even ever watched.

02:04:38.280 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:04:39.300 And then – so we had that experience, and it was just getting a call Sunday to go to that on Tuesday back in the U.S., being like, how are we going to get there?

02:04:52.440 All right, they're sending Air Force Two.

02:04:54.840 Like, it was just – they couldn't believe it.

02:04:57.380 So just a surreal few days.

02:04:59.500 So now, if the president makes this joke about the women's team – and by the way, we've played it on our social media, it's gone totally viral – President Barack Obama made a joke about the men's team when he called the women's hockey team – or, sorry, soccer team after they won.

02:05:15.380 And I think it was the World Cup or some big match.

02:05:19.200 But in any event, President Obama did the exact same thing.

02:05:21.640 He did it about the men's team.

02:05:23.340 It seems we have experience of all hockey teams and soccer and sports teams being able to have a friendly laugh at a presidential joke about members of the opposite sex. 0.71

02:05:33.720 But with you guys, certain people on the left tried to turn it into a capital offense.

02:05:38.860 So how did you learn that this was blowing up into something some very bizarre people wanted to take offense at?

02:05:45.380 Listen, we're – I was just telling a story this morning about how close we were with the women's team, how we were sharing the same floor on, like, the third floor of the USA building was us in the women's team room – or, sorry, floor.

02:05:58.600 And, like, we became super, super tight with them over the few weeks.

02:06:02.860 We went to their games.

02:06:03.640 They went to ours. 0.96

02:06:04.380 We had, like, watch parties for other events.

02:06:07.960 A lot of people knew each other from before, but getting to know the rest of them.

02:06:12.200 And, yeah, like, I think it's just all, like, completely blown up into something that's just not true because we were great, huge supporters of them, and they were of us.

02:06:21.960 And being able to sweep both gold medals for the first time ever is such an honor.

02:06:26.700 And one of the highlights – honest to God, one of the highlights of the whole experience was after we got back from the Winter House, which is where our post-gold medal party was, we went for – because a bunch of us had, like, the late-night munchies, so we wanted to go in the dining hall.

02:06:42.340 It was, like, 2 a.m., and the buses were picking us up at 4.30 to go to the airport.

02:06:47.360 So a bunch of us were like, let's just go eat something quick.

02:06:49.780 And we go down there.

02:06:50.760 There was, like, half the women's team had just got back from closing ceremonies.

02:06:55.500 They were doing the same thing.

02:06:56.820 They were just eating quick before the buses – their buses were, like, 5 a.m.

02:07:01.520 Nobody wanted to sleep.

02:07:02.960 Before you know it, within 5, 10 minutes, full bowl teams are down there.

02:07:07.420 Everyone's got their gold medals on.

02:07:09.380 Everyone's eating lava cakes, having beers, telling stories.

02:07:15.020 I mean, we were probably a little bit more drunk because we just, like, had the big party, and they were at the closing ceremony.

02:07:21.380 So they probably thought we were outrageous with some of the stories.

02:07:24.920 But might be the highlight of the whole experience was celebrating with the women's team, all of our team, all the gold medals on, like, just looking at everybody and just – can you believe this?

02:07:36.380 Like, look what we just did.

02:07:37.600 Oh, my God.

02:07:38.040 More gold than you'd find at Trump Tower.

02:07:39.880 Look what we just did for our country.

02:07:41.700 And what an honor.

02:07:44.080 Everybody just going around and talking about how special this was, how special both of our teams were, just how – what a great honor it was to represent the United States at the greatest single venue Olympics.

02:07:55.540 Like, it was – it was unbelievable.

02:07:57.540 And to be able to share with them was so cool.

02:08:00.020 Okay.

02:08:00.440 Well, I was subjected to this, and therefore, you must be, too.

02:08:04.560 Not everybody loved it.

02:08:06.300 Here's Megan Rapinoe.

02:08:07.700 What I like to call a classic ripping defeat from the jaws of victory, the United States men's hockey team, in their utter moment of glory, childhood dreams come true, once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment, sensational.

02:08:37.700 Ruined it for themselves. 0.98

02:08:39.820 Because they allowed themselves to be totally co-opted – co-opted, yep – by a clown. 1.00

02:08:47.640 And now you're a clown. 1.00

02:08:49.240 You look like a clown. 1.00

02:08:52.020 Cash Patel is in the locker room. 1.00

02:08:54.880 He's partying.

02:08:55.780 He's chugging beers.

02:08:58.620 I'm not, like, decorum over everything.

02:09:01.620 That's not what I need out of my FBI director.

02:09:04.900 Like, what are we doing?

02:09:08.660 Your reaction to that, Matthew?

02:09:10.540 I just think that we're in the locker room celebrating after probably the greatest win that we've all been a part of.

02:09:18.380 And we were just sharing it with everybody.

02:09:21.760 And, I mean, that's really it.

02:09:24.340 I've got nothing really to say to that.

02:09:25.980 Yeah, I think that's probably the right – that's probably the right attitude.

02:09:29.940 By the way, she took a call from the president herself, personally, who congratulated her after a big win and accepted his invitation for a visit to the White House.

02:09:40.640 So, literally not one word of what she said was sincere.

02:09:44.060 It was just an opportunity to rip on a bunch of white guys, which is very much in favor amongst some on the far left, but not amongst normal Americans.

02:09:52.020 So, now you go back and you resume life at the NHL.

02:09:54.740 And my understanding is guys to your left and to your right are on the Canadian team you just defeated the previous couple of days, right?

02:10:03.560 So, you're playing with some of your – with some of your adversaries who are Canadian.

02:10:07.200 Yeah.

02:10:09.880 That's awkward.

02:10:10.500 Yeah, I guess it is.

02:10:14.040 But we're hockey players.

02:10:15.500 We're professionals.

02:10:16.380 I mean, we did this last year at the Four Nations.

02:10:18.040 This happens – this happens a bunch.

02:10:20.280 One of my teammates was on Sweden, who we beat.

02:10:22.820 Three of my teammates were on Finland, who lost to Canada.

02:10:25.180 Like, it's just – just the way it is.

02:10:26.620 But – and you just move on because, ultimately, our goal now is now we want to win our third straight Stanley Cup.

02:10:33.500 Did – do they give you any jazz, though?

02:10:35.640 Like, is there any sort of smack talk?

02:10:37.260 What happens?

02:10:38.580 No.

02:10:38.940 No.

02:10:39.020 Um, no.

02:10:41.300 No.

02:10:41.800 And I'm not throwing out any jabs at them either.

02:10:44.800 It's just been – I don't know.

02:10:47.600 It's just – it's been weird, I guess.

02:10:49.440 But I think they – I think what I respect a lot from them is they know how much this meant to me and Americans.

02:10:56.720 I mean, they live in Florida.

02:10:57.640 They live in the United States.

02:10:58.700 They've seen the impact that's had in Florida.

02:11:01.180 And so I think – I think as much as they would have wanted to win – I mean, they've been unbelievable about it.

02:11:06.700 They're – they're super happy for me, and I think they're happy with seeing the reactions in the United States.

02:11:12.400 I think it's – I think it's – they recognize that.

02:11:15.860 So, um, now, the White House decided to have some fun with some AI involving you and your brother and put together a video.

02:11:24.400 This is not actually what you guys said, but they – they put it out, and it's gone totally viral.

02:11:28.540 People love it.

02:11:29.220 But it's – it's showing you guys – the fake versions of you bashing Canada.

02:11:34.460 Here it is in SOT 52. 0.98

02:11:36.600 ...booted our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple syrup eating f***s a lesson. 1.00

02:11:41.520 Canada, we own you, Lil Bro. 0.88

02:11:48.580 Boldy, looking at his push through.

02:11:50.760 And Boldy, to the net, he scores!

02:11:52.980 Then the rest is just a bunch of hockey skating.

02:12:01.040 The AI part was the top.

02:12:03.260 Any thoughts on the White House superimposing a voice over the image of you and your brother there, as though it were you guys?

02:12:09.840 Well, obviously, the AI part is not what we said.

02:12:12.760 The rest of the video is great.

02:12:14.040 Free Bird and the highlights.

02:12:15.500 Love that part.

02:12:17.480 I don't know.

02:12:18.120 Like, we were – I guess we were just so honored to be going to the White House and everything that came with that.

02:12:26.160 But, yeah, that – those words did not come out of our mouth.

02:12:29.000 I know my brother has been getting a little bit of heat for that because he plays in Ottawa, in Canada.

02:12:34.420 But, yeah, we definitely did not say that.

02:12:38.040 But you don't have to worry about it because you play in Florida.

02:12:40.880 Yeah, I don't have –

02:12:41.720 All your fans probably loved it, AI or not.

02:12:43.500 Other than you asking me right now, I don't have to answer to it.

02:12:46.940 My brother gets, like, probably 100 questions a day about that.

02:12:50.400 So, I'd rather be down in Florida.

02:12:53.900 Before you go, tell us about your family.

02:12:56.140 Like, are you married?

02:12:57.040 Do you have kids?

02:12:57.760 Like, what's your social life like?

02:12:59.280 Yep, I'm married.

02:13:00.420 I have a kid on the way in a month and a half.

02:13:05.040 And I have to start in a family.

02:13:08.060 And life's about the –

02:13:09.160 Do you already have the little booty with ice blades on the bottom of them? 0.93

02:13:13.860 Well, I'm sure we've – she's ordered everything for – because we're not finding out the gender.

02:13:20.620 It's going to be a surprise.

02:13:22.020 And the only thing I asked is, can we not just get so many clothes of both?

02:13:27.080 Like, can we just wait until – and, of course, we've got everything of both.

02:13:31.240 So, we'll see how much –

02:13:33.060 The answer was no.

02:13:34.860 Yes, I'm on the side of your wife.

02:13:36.860 That's so exciting.

02:13:37.900 I'm so happy for you both.

02:13:39.160 Thank you.

02:13:39.420 And I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you, speaking of kids, about that beautiful moment with Johnny Goudreau's kids.

02:13:45.560 Yeah.

02:13:46.560 After you guys won the gold.

02:13:48.260 What did that mean to you?

02:13:49.580 Like, how important was it to you to pay honor to him, tribute him?

02:13:53.520 It was fitting.

02:13:55.180 It was the only way we could celebrate the right way and honor it the right way.

02:14:00.840 Winning the gold medal was having him be a part of it.

02:14:03.580 And even though it just sucks so much that he's not with us because he would have been on that team and a big part of it, we felt we have – I mean, his family was there.

02:14:12.740 We wanted to include all of them, but just logistically, it was so hard to get them all down.

02:14:16.240 So, Wierenski and Larkin grabbed Noah and little Johnny.

02:14:20.760 I got the jersey.

02:14:22.300 And that picture is one of the most special, emotional, just times of my life.

02:14:28.920 And skating around with his jersey, doing the lap with the American flag and his jersey, it was just – I mean, there weren't many dry eyes in that stadium in that moment, including us players.

02:14:41.020 It was just so – it was just emotional.

02:14:43.180 And, yeah, we miss him very dearly, and he had to be part of that celebration with us.

02:14:48.560 Oh, sweet Noah was shown in that picture there.

02:14:52.780 So innocent and not yet aware of all she's lost.

02:14:57.060 But, boy, she did gain a bunch of great uncles, and you could see that as you guys kept him in your thoughts and prayers the whole time.

02:15:04.020 Thank you, Matthew.

02:15:04.840 Thank you for giving us such an incredible moment and something we'll never forget.

02:15:09.340 We're all so proud of you guys.

02:15:11.540 Thank you so much.

02:15:12.340 Thank you for having me.

02:15:13.920 All the best.

02:15:15.080 And go Panthers. 0.72

02:15:16.640 I'm a new NHL fan.

02:15:19.980 I only root for the guys, for the teams that have our former guys on them from the men's hockey team.

02:15:24.660 What a guy, right?

02:15:26.580 That's like – that's exactly what you think they're going to be like. 0.98

02:15:29.760 Like, humble, patriotic, cool, no nonsense, no bullshit.

02:15:35.800 We're so lucky to have had that team play for us and to have them out there still available for our enjoyment and our support.

02:15:43.100 So we should get out there and support teams like the Panthers and the others that keep our guys employed and on the ice every day such that they can do miracles for us when the big four-year Olympics come.

02:15:54.700 Anyway, thanks to all of you, too, for watching, and we'll see you soon.

02:15:59.540 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

02:16:01.680 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

02:16:04.220 Go from this

02:16:13.340 to this

02:16:17.420 in no time.

02:16:20.520 Find last-minute deals

02:16:21.560 on thousands of stays in Canada

02:16:23.780 with Vrbo.

02:16:24.540 The Megyn Kelly Show.

02:16:25.200 Go from the

02:16:25.320 js ног

02:16:25.800 out there.

02:16:25.900 So dupl菊

02:16:26.320 in the

02:16:27.020 middle of –

02:16:27.480 in the

02:16:28.480 middle of –

02:16:28.980 so you don't care. 1.00

02:16:29.920 Fuck Gwen. 1.00

02:16:30.700 Don't even do it. 1.00

02:16:31.080 They got lost…

02:16:31.520 thousands of stays in there.

02:16:32.420 Over

02:16:32.780 to the

02:16:33.600 mostof the

02:16:34.160 top-opy jobs when they are in the

02:16:35.340 cycle.

02:16:35.780 And so you know that they're being

02:16:41.280 added golf-outs in the podcast about them –

02:16:41.340 with the

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The Megyn Kelly Show - March 03, 2026

Understanding America's Goals in Iran, with Erik Prince and Mark Geist, Plus Team USA Star Matthew Tkachuk, and Bill Clinton's WILD Epstein Comments ｜ Ep. 1264

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