The Megyn Kelly Show - Vaccine Freedom, China's Military Might, and Woke Media, with Allison Williams, Sen. Josh Hawley, and Batya Ungar-Sargon

00:00:00.360 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.100 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today, a broadcast exclusive

00:00:17.640 interview with former ESPN reporter Alison Williams, former as of about 48 hours. Alison

00:00:24.620 was forced to leave the job she loves because she refuses to get the COVID vaccine. She is here

00:00:30.900 and ready to talk about it. We're also going to be joined by Senator Josh Hawley, and we'll be

00:00:35.540 talking about the growing backlash against President Biden's forthcoming federal vaccine

00:00:40.220 mandate. They're finally getting around to having OSHA write this regulation on an emergency basis so

00:00:45.640 they can get rid of the opportunity to comment. That's coming down as some record number of groups

00:00:51.080 are apparently going into the White House and complaining and raising serious questions and

00:00:55.540 concerns about how this is actually going to play out. And we are seeing that order is going to

00:01:01.340 affect some 80 million workers, but we're also seeing state by state municipalities enforce,

00:01:07.720 impose and enforce these vaccine mandates. And we're seeing cops resign and get fired,

00:01:12.760 firefighters resign and get fired, first responders resign and get fired, corrections officers.

00:01:16.880 You go down the list and it appears very much like public safety is about to be jeopardized

00:01:25.560 as a result of these vaccine mandates, which not everyone is going to obey. So what are we going to

00:01:33.300 do about it? I mean, you'll hear a theme throughout this show, the National Guard, the National Guard.

00:01:37.440 I mean, the National Guard, they apparently think is Waldo because they're going to need the National

00:01:41.600 Guard everywhere. They want them reportedly they're considering them for the supply chain problem.

00:01:46.020 Maybe they're going to go act as truckers. They're going to go act as longshoremen. They're going to

00:01:52.040 go unload cargo. Maybe I don't know. The White House was considering it, though, for now, apparently

00:01:58.440 no. But they're going to have them step in for first responders in New York, in other cities now.

00:02:03.700 I mean, it was great. Are they qualified to do all that? We'll talk about it with Senator Hawley,

00:02:09.680 along with the problem down at the border. We just got new numbers in. The numbers have soared to

00:02:14.980 the highest levels ever recorded the arrests at the border this year. And now we get news of secret

00:02:21.440 middle of the night flights of migrants from Texas to the Northeast, actually steps from where we live

00:02:26.680 here. And why on earth, by the way, is the White House now saying it welcomes stiff competition when

00:02:34.980 it comes to China reportedly launching supersonic weapons? OK, Charles C.W. Cook went off on this on the

00:02:43.280 National Review podcast, the editors the other day. It was a thing of beauty. I'm going to play some of

00:02:46.660 it for you. But what we're talking about the potential annihilation of some untold number of

00:02:52.940 Americans. Why are we welcoming China's development there? What is what is Jen Psaki talking about?

00:02:59.960 And why wasn't that immediately disavowed by President Biden? There's a lot to go over today.

00:03:06.160 And we're also going to get to just a bit later in the show, a deep dive into the woke media

00:03:09.820 with the author of a brand new book that's making a lot of news. First, though, let's start with

00:03:16.160 Allison. After 10 years with ESPN, her last day was Tuesday. She first spoke out about her decision

00:03:23.340 to leave in an incredibly emotional video and powerful video on Instagram. I have been not

00:03:29.260 denied my request for accommodation by ESPN and the Walt Disney Company. And effective next week,

00:03:35.720 I will be separated from the company. I am also so morally and ethically not aligned with this.

00:03:45.060 And I've had to really dig deep and analyze my values and my morals. And ultimately, I need to put

00:03:55.760 them first. And the irony in all this is that a lot of those same values and principles I hold so dear

00:04:02.300 are what made me a really good employee. I don't know what it's like to run a multi-billion dollar

00:04:07.180 company and to have shareholders and board members and financial quotas to answer to and not to mention

00:04:13.700 societal and I'm sure political pressures. So I respect that their values have changed.

00:04:19.380 I had hoped they would respect that mine did not. And ultimately, I cannot put a paycheck over

00:04:26.740 principle. And I will not sacrifice something that I believe and hold so strongly to maintain a career.

00:04:38.240 And so many of the people who are in the same situation as me are serving society and benefiting

00:04:43.320 this country in ways I could never do. They are nurses, they are teachers, they are doctors,

00:04:49.560 they are police officers and first responders. They are most importantly, our military. And they too

00:04:55.640 are pilots. They too are choosing to put their beliefs first. And I just want you all to know I stand with

00:05:03.680 you. But I also want people to know who support these mandates that I fight for you. Because

00:05:12.700 if this is the direction we take our country, there will come a time when the government or corporations

00:05:20.920 mandate you to get something that does not align with your values. The power given is seldom returned.

00:05:28.960 And when that day comes, I want you to at least know that we fought and we tried.

00:05:36.840 Allison Williams joins me now. Allison, I'm so sorry that you were placed in this position

00:05:41.960 and were forced to make this kind of a choice. I, of course, understand all the blood, sweat,

00:05:46.560 and tears that go into breaking into the broadcast news business, getting a job at a place like ESPN.

00:05:52.500 And I could tell just having watched the whole Instagram video how much you loved, loved, loved

00:05:56.900 your job. So let's go back to the beginning. You're a new mom. You had a baby boy, your first child in

00:06:03.400 2020. 2019. 2019. Okay. And you and your husband are thinking about having a second baby. And that's,

00:06:11.640 as I understand it, sort of where your vaccine hesitancy came from.

00:06:17.160 Yeah, I don't even want to call it vaccine hesitancy. I think it's vaccine awareness.

00:06:20.940 When you are trying for a child or when you are with child, there's a lot of difficult decisions

00:06:26.720 that you have to make about what you put in your body, what you don't put in your body. And that's

00:06:33.040 what ultimately led me to my decision that there's no way I was comfortable with receiving this vaccine.

00:06:38.660 There just wasn't enough data for me. Trust me, I've heard the sound bites. I hear the safe and

00:06:44.120 effective over and over safer for pregnant women and no, no impact on fertility. But when I went to

00:06:51.120 these websites that people were criticizing me for not reading, I did not get a good feeling about this.

00:07:00.080 It's pretty obvious if you go to the CDC or the ACOG or any of these websites that people steer you to

00:07:06.740 that the data is still being collected. They acknowledge that it is still very limited.

00:07:12.460 So for me personally, knowing that it was based on, and this is in their words, what they know about

00:07:19.220 mRNA technology and in studies performed in animals, knowing that pregnant women were not part of the

00:07:25.180 clinical trial and that it was still immediately approved for use in pregnant women when usually

00:07:30.220 something like that takes five plus years to establish safety, that didn't sit well with me.

00:07:35.940 And it made me very uncomfortable. And I expressed those concerns to my doctor and he supported me.

00:07:41.200 He said, look, you are very low risk for COVID. I understand your concerns. We can't say with

00:07:46.940 100% certainty these injections will have no impact. For me, the risk benefit analysis just did not weigh

00:07:54.840 out in favor of getting the vaccine. Mm hmm. So let's talk about that. The ACOG is American College of

00:08:01.300 Obstetrics and Gynecology, and they're very pro vaccine for including for pregnant women. So let's just get

00:08:08.420 that what they say out of the way so that we can then talk about why it didn't resonate with you. Okay,

00:08:13.920 because this is, of course, what the way the news gets into this is more expectant moms died of COVID in

00:08:21.240 August than in any other month of the pandemic. There's an emergency alert to recommending urgent

00:08:27.340 action to boost that the vaccine among women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or trying to get

00:08:31.080 pregnant and so on. The ACOG recommends the shot for all expectant mothers. CDC says no link found

00:08:37.480 between the shots and miscarriage, no link found between the shots and fertility problems. CDC in

00:08:44.120 August released the results of an analysis that found women vaccinated during pregnancy are not at

00:08:49.160 higher risk of miscarriage among the nearly 2500 pregnant women in the study who received an MRNA

00:08:54.400 vaccine during the first 20 weeks, they say the miscarriage rate was 13% normal rate of miscarriage

00:09:00.360 in a healthy pregnancy without COVID vaccine is between 11 and 16. So all of that is what they're

00:09:05.980 pointing you to to say, right, you know, you there there's no real risk in getting the shot either

00:09:13.120 when thinking about becoming pregnant or when pregnant. Yes. And they also acknowledge that it's still

00:09:18.660 being gathered. This is based on what they know at this time, these vaccines have been out for less

00:09:24.520 than a year, there can be congenital issues that are present at birth that don't manifest for two,

00:09:30.220 three, four, five years later in life for a child. This isn't just about having a healthy pregnancy or a

00:09:36.840 healthy delivery. This is about creating a healthy human. So for me, the data is still being collected,

00:09:44.300 it's still being analyzed, the link perhaps has not been established yet. And I would personally like

00:09:51.540 more time before I'm comfortable with receiving something that could potentially impact me,

00:09:56.860 a child I'm hoping to conceive or may have. So that is not enough for me to take that risk.

00:10:05.100 And the other part of it, Megan, is just because something hasn't been proven unsafe does not make

00:10:12.160 it inherently safe. It took decades to prove that smoking was unsafe. And during those years,

00:10:19.560 doctors and scientists stood up and said, nope, no link to tobacco and lung cancer. It's perfectly

00:10:25.740 safe. We recommend this brand. We recommend this brand for pregnant women. No problem here.

00:10:30.700 And 30 years later, what did we learn? And the reason that's so difficult is because there were

00:10:37.680 people who smoked and never got lung cancer. There were people who got lung cancer who did smoke.

00:10:43.660 And then there were people who smoked and never got it. So it's hard to establish the correlation

00:10:49.480 between something you're putting in your body that doesn't immediately impact it, but may down the road.

00:10:55.440 These things take time, in my opinion. So the absence of proof that it's unsafe for me does

00:11:01.820 not make it inherently safe. And the other thing they say, Megan, is the benefits outweigh the risks

00:11:06.940 for pregnant people. Here's the thing. My risk for COVID was very, very low. I'm healthy. I'm not

00:11:14.180 overweight. I have no underlying conditions. I have my own unique health background. I focus on my health.

00:11:20.320 It is a priority in my life. I've been supplementing my immune system since January of 2020 when we

00:11:26.480 realized this was going to be a pretty nasty flu season. So it's something that is a priority for

00:11:32.620 me in my life. The other part, Megan, is I got COVID. It was a very mild illness for me. I'm thankful

00:11:39.800 for that. I know that's not the experience of everyone. I have natural antibodies. Everything we know

00:11:45.300 about natural immunity has proven throughout the years that it is far superior to any vaccine we

00:11:50.600 could ever manufacture. In fact, the Wall Street Journal even acknowledges the purpose of a vaccine

00:11:56.240 is to induce a immune response similar to that of a natural infection without the risks of illness

00:12:03.700 and sickness. So I have in my body what this vaccine hopes to achieve. So again, the risk benefit

00:12:11.640 for me as an individual just is not in favor of getting this injection.

00:12:16.440 Can I tell you, I feel uncomfortable even asking you these questions because the truth is it's none

00:12:20.120 of my damn business. It's none of ESPN's damn business.

00:12:22.860 Right? I should just be able to say no.

00:12:23.600 Right? Exactly. You're on because it's a news story and so on. But doesn't this feel intrusive?

00:12:30.800 To me, it feels intrusive. It's none of my business. It's none of ESPN's business. You're a mom.

00:12:37.460 You're hoping to become a mom to be again. And if that's the decision you reached with your doctor,

00:12:44.320 that should be the end of it. Right. And here's the thing, Megan. I am fully aware that there are

00:12:51.780 people who have received this vaccine prior to getting pregnant, while pregnant, and they're

00:12:55.880 doing great and their babies are great. And that is a wonderful, wonderful thing. But when I went public

00:13:01.480 with my decision and the reason behind it, I heard from even more women whose experience was not that.

00:13:07.700 And that does not, in and of itself, I understand, establish that the vaccine caused the issues they're

00:13:14.340 having, whether it's menstrual irregularities or miscarriages and so forth. I understand that.

00:13:19.200 Okay. I want to make that very, very clear. But my thought process was this. If I get this vaccine

00:13:25.220 and I go on to struggle to conceive, I miscarry, I have a child with congenital issues, I'm going to

00:13:33.200 have to wonder, is it because of that shot? And I don't want to live with that. I don't want to

00:13:39.920 wonder, is this why? Did this pregnancy not come to term because of this injection? And every doctor

00:13:46.620 can say, no, no, no, that's not why it's very unlikely. Okay. But I'm going to have to wonder that.

00:13:51.440 And the only reason for me to get the injection was to save my job. So what did I just do? I put

00:13:57.340 my job before my family and my future children, and I couldn't do it. I mean, pregnant women make

00:14:03.920 choices all the time about what should go in and what shouldn't. You're not supposed to have soft

00:14:08.420 cheeses, right? Because it could cause this problem that hurts the baby. Obviously, you're not supposed

00:14:12.260 to drink alcohol. You're not supposed to smoke cigarettes, not supposed to do all this stuff.

00:14:15.480 And women forego things that they might otherwise do because they tend to be excessively

00:14:21.000 cautious about the life growing inside of them. And in this circumstance, they look at you and they

00:14:27.020 say, well, you're overruled. You're over. We'll we'll tell you what's best for you and the health

00:14:34.220 of that child. You don't get to choose about like you do with cheese or sushi. Right. It's like only

00:14:40.580 with this are they saying you have to do it our way. But women aren't. I mean, the numbers are low

00:14:46.020 when it comes to women who are pregnant, who choose to be vaccinated. According to our data,

00:14:51.660 fully vaccinated women who got the shot during pregnancy is less than 20 percent, just 19.2

00:14:58.680 percent of pregnant women chose to get fully vaccinated while pregnant. That's not to say

00:15:04.780 none of them did it prior, but they say fully vaccinated prior to pregnancy and or during pregnancy

00:15:10.300 total is 34 percent. Contrast that with 68 percent of the population over 18 that's vaccinated across

00:15:17.140 the country. So you're not alone. In fact, you appear to be in the majority in your in your questions

00:15:23.000 about this. Did ESPN say anything to you about the fact that your doctor was backing you about the fact

00:15:30.400 that you you do have natural immunity? No, no. And I ultimately requested a religious accommodation

00:15:39.600 and I think this is an interesting part of the dynamic that I wasn't sure I wanted to share. But

00:15:47.100 so my doctor and my conversation agreed with me, supported me. I have a belief that doctors are

00:15:55.360 people you work with in health. They don't tell you what to do. They suggest what you should do

00:16:01.240 and they work with you to find the best decisions for your health. I don't think they should be dictators.

00:16:06.320 And I think they they give their opinions. Right. And you weigh that with your own. So in my

00:16:11.180 conversations with my doctors, I expressed my concerns. He understood them. He supported them.

00:16:15.320 He said, absolutely. Whatever you need from a medical exemption support wise, we will we will do for

00:16:20.860 you. I 100 support agree with your decision not to get this vaccine. It's a very little benefit for

00:16:26.000 someone like you. And I can't tell you with 100 percent certainty that this is going to cause

00:16:30.420 absolutely no issues. So he supported me. But what's very interesting is I live in California

00:16:36.120 and this state has made it very, very difficult for medical professionals to write exemptions for

00:16:41.940 masks or for vaccines. And they put a lot of pressure on our doctors. And when I reached out to follow up

00:16:49.220 with my doctor's assistant to request the information needed for my medical exemption, she said, let me get

00:16:54.480 back to you. We're going to have a meeting as an office and determine how we want to go forward

00:16:59.940 with this, because there are so many women requesting this. And they ultimately decided as a clinic that

00:17:07.560 they would not write any exemptions. I was heartbroken. I'd already started the process of

00:17:14.240 applying for a medical exemption with ESPN. And I was told I would be supported. I brought this up.

00:17:19.220 They said, we're sorry. We just can't, as a company, as a clinic, subject ourselves to the

00:17:24.800 scrutiny that essentially will come with writing these exemptions. So do you see what they're doing

00:17:29.600 to people? They are essentially taking away what they believe is best for you because of the bureaucracy

00:17:35.080 and the pressure that happens when you involve politics and medicine. And this is a really dangerous

00:17:41.400 space to occupy. And it scares me that people are not only supporting this, but encouraging it.

00:17:48.600 Medical decisions need to be for individuals, not for the population in mass.

00:17:55.080 We just had David Zweig, a journalist who's been doing great work on COVID and the mask mandates and

00:18:00.240 so on, on yesterday, wrote a great piece in New York Magazine and follow-ups. And he was saying,

00:18:06.400 prior to joining us yesterday, he was on the phone with doctors and respected clinicians and professors

00:18:11.440 and so on. And one of them had said, for God's sake, don't mention my name. And he can get very few of

00:18:16.200 them to go on the record by name with their opposition to these mask mandates. And it's the

00:18:22.700 same when it comes to vaccine mandates, too, because of this very reason. They know they're

00:18:26.740 going to be shamed. It's too much pressure. They've just sort of shrugged their shoulders and said,

00:18:31.800 it's better for me if I can stay out of it. But even getting like the even the fact that you found

00:18:37.640 a doctor who would write you a medical exemption was progress. You know, I talked with one mom just

00:18:42.580 just this week who was telling me she wanted a medical exemption for her son. Her family history

00:18:48.620 is problematic when it comes to the heart and other issues. And she did not want her teenager to

00:18:53.620 be subjected to the vaccine. And the doctor wouldn't do it. And even if the doctor would do it,

00:19:01.040 the school wouldn't accept it because it has to be his he has to be diagnosed already with the heart

00:19:07.780 issue. You as a mom, you know, like you don't have your baby yet. You can't show your baby to ESPN and

00:19:14.000 say, here are his problems and why I don't want you're talking about creating a baby. So your health

00:19:20.300 is all that matters. And if you can't get somebody to write this for you, you're left twisting in the

00:19:25.140 wind. Were you shocked? Have they been kind to you in the past? Did you feel like a valued

00:19:30.720 employee? Yes, always. I, I can't say this enough. I really love my job. It, it was the dream. It was

00:19:41.980 the goal from the beginning. And I've always enjoyed working for ESPN. They've always purported

00:19:49.800 themselves to be a family. We use that word a lot. When you're on the road with these people, you do

00:19:55.440 become a family. I mean, that is your road family. There are stretches of the year when I would see

00:20:00.600 my play-by-play partner more than my own husband, because you're together so much between basketball

00:20:04.860 and football and they overlap. Um, you do create a family environment on the road. Absolutely. And as

00:20:10.000 far as management within ESPN, they've always been, um, receptive to any concerns I've had

00:20:16.000 supportive. And when I initiated this process of applying for an accommodation and when I expressed

00:20:22.020 my concerns and my, um, I guess, reluctance to get this vaccine and what were my options, my,

00:20:27.660 um, reporting managers response was, I'm sure we can work something out. Right. I mean, that's the

00:20:32.680 logical, um, thought of course we can figure something out. Remember Megan, I worked college

00:20:38.300 football all last season when there were no vaccines and I tested and I masked and I wasn't a threat to

00:20:43.980 anyone when no one was vaccinated. So why is it now that anyone that wants the vaccine has it and

00:20:51.060 should be therefore protected? Why am I a threat now? So the logical, I mean, the, the logical side

00:20:58.320 of me was like, of course we can figure something out for me to continue to go to events and work on

00:21:01.900 the road. Um, that was made very clear once he reached out to people, uh, within HR and I guess

00:21:09.260 probably above him, if you will, um, that there was no exemptions for travel. There was no way I was

00:21:15.380 going to work events or go to games. That was the first thing that was taken away from you as I

00:21:19.200 understand. Yes. Yes. So, so we went forward from there and the tough thing too, is my, um, my contract

00:21:25.200 was up. So I was in contract negotiations as I'm trying to navigate this decision. And that was, was

00:21:31.500 interesting and difficult at times. So gutsy, your guts. I mean, it's hard to get television jobs and

00:21:37.640 to take on an issue as dicey as this, when you're in the middle of a contract negotiation,

00:21:42.640 I mean, it just proves your sincerity to me. Yeah. I mean, I, I walked away from the largest

00:21:48.360 contract in my career and it was contingent on me getting an injection, which I was morally

00:21:53.320 ethically and medically opposed to. So when it came down to, um, when it came down to it,

00:22:00.380 I knew I couldn't get it. And when they denied my request for accommodation, I was very surprised

00:22:05.400 because I had hosted for them in the past and I had hosted virtually. Uh, so I didn't know why I

00:22:10.300 couldn't continue to host shows virtually without, uh, causing an undue burden on the company,

00:22:16.180 but they did not see it that way. And I have to live with that decision up next. I'm going to ask

00:22:21.440 Alison about her statement in her Instagram video that she's doing this for everyone, not just she,

00:22:27.240 she feels solidarity with the cops and the nurses and the teachers and the military guys who are in

00:22:31.780 this position, but also for the people who support the vaccine mandates and her really profound

00:22:37.240 thinking behind that. Don't go away.

00:22:45.380 Here with me to continue our exclusive interview, Alison Williams, a former now smart, former sideline

00:22:50.780 reporter for ESPN who had to leave the network this week over its vaccine mandate policy. I'm sure

00:22:57.640 it's still jarring to hear that former, right? It's like, it happens so fast, right? It's like this

00:23:02.640 career you've invested 10 plus years in and in an instant it's gone. It's gone over something that

00:23:09.520 just seems imaginary, like illusory. This, this statement that, you know, in order to keep the

00:23:16.240 workplace safe, you, you Alison Williams, you must get this shot. It just defies everything I have come to

00:23:25.200 know and all logic, honestly, how can you spread something that you don't have? If I'm willing to be

00:23:32.400 tested regularly for COVID, why could that not suffice? Uh, how am I a threat to people

00:23:38.880 who have had the vaccine? Why does it only work if everybody gets it? Doesn't that mean then it

00:23:44.340 doesn't work? Um, and you can spread it when you've had the vaccine anyway. Yes. And that's just

00:23:50.200 it. Like we're learning so much now, uh, that we didn't know a few months ago about this vaccine. So

00:23:55.360 why can we not just pause and say, okay, let's, let's maybe reevaluate what it means to be vaccinated.

00:24:02.160 And the fact that we treat people who are choosing to forego this injection, like they are the problem,

00:24:08.500 this, this pandemic of the unvaccinated, that's a dangerous and divisive statement that I have seen

00:24:14.680 very little data to support. So to feel like you are a threat to people around you, I don't think

00:24:20.760 that's just wrong. I think that's incredibly misguided and dangerous. I mean, why are we,

00:24:27.080 why are we vilifying people for making a different health choice than we have?

00:24:30.840 What did you make of that when Joe Biden issued his statement saying we've been patient,

00:24:35.860 but our patience is running thin.

00:24:39.100 I have never been so jarred by anything a president said. And I know Trump said some really crazy things,

00:24:46.120 but to hear the leader of the free world, stand up and say, this isn't about your freedom.

00:24:51.640 I thought, Oh my God, it is always about our freedom. This country exists on the principle

00:25:01.420 of freedom. We are the land of the free and the home of the brave. And if we don't have freedom

00:25:07.460 over our own bodies, if our bodily autonomy is not respected, this God-given constitutionally

00:25:14.240 protected right to determine what we do with our bodies, we aren't free. That was scary to me,

00:25:21.200 honestly, Megan. That was something a dictator says. That is not something a leader of free people

00:25:27.100 says. What happened to the consent of the governed? What happened to the power of the people? Those are

00:25:33.800 the two things that keep standing out to me when I, when I analyze this debate or when I had this

00:25:39.620 discussion with people, it's two things, it's freedom and it's consent. And you can't have one

00:25:45.300 without the other. And I'm talking about true consent. Everybody acts like, okay, well, this was

00:25:49.620 your choice. You chose not to get it. So go get a different job. That's not choice. That's coercion.

00:25:55.160 Okay. Consent is fundamental to everything we do. If we want to be a free people, consent is the

00:26:01.520 difference between two of the same apps and one becomes a crime without consent and true consent,

00:26:07.980 not pressure, not bullying, not you're going to lose your job. If you don't do this,

00:26:12.720 that's coercion. And if we can't have true informed consent, what do we have? We don't have freedom.

00:26:20.360 And that is why I think it's so important for people to realize this is bigger than this mandate.

00:26:26.040 This is bigger than this shot. There is something that is at play here that I don't know what it is,

00:26:32.860 but it is, it is chipping away at the very foundation of which this country was built on.

00:26:37.120 Well, that's, that's the point I was teasing before we went to break. And it was a very powerful

00:26:42.420 way to end your piece because you said you stand with, you know, the nurses and the teachers and so

00:26:46.680 on who are in the same boat as you are right now. But then you, you said, and we played a bit of it

00:26:51.100 there. I also stand with those who support the mandates. I fight for you too. And the great line

00:26:56.340 power once given is seldom returned. And what you're basically saying is beware, beware,

00:27:02.640 because you may support this mandate, but not the next one. And if we let the government and these

00:27:08.480 employers roll over us on something as personal as our healthcare, now they'll only be emboldened

00:27:16.460 the next time, the next cause, whatever it is. And that's what I think people need to remember.

00:27:22.540 We all want to end this pandemic, right? Nobody wants this to, to continue to harm people and to kill

00:27:28.620 people and for this virus to, to have the effects that it has, but at what cost, because this is

00:27:34.740 setting a precedent for how we move forward within this country, when it comes to, to bodily autonomy

00:27:40.000 and freedom within, within health and employment. And I just think this is a really, really dangerous

00:27:45.560 place to go when you allow corporations who have never looked at your medical records, who have no

00:27:50.700 idea of your health history to decide what is best for you and force you to go against your own

00:27:56.220 instincts, your own beliefs, your own religious beliefs. When religion doesn't have any, any

00:28:01.760 merit, that's, that's concerning. And I, I feel, I feel so frustrated by the people who say,

00:28:08.140 just get vaccinated. We need to force everybody to get vaccinated. We have to mandate this to get

00:28:12.920 over it. And I'm like, do you realize what you're giving away? Because when you tell or allow the

00:28:18.860 government or your employers, the ability to dictate your health, I think that's a really scary place.

00:28:25.660 And there will come a time, I promise you, if this is the road we go down where it's not going to

00:28:30.340 align with you and where it's not going to be in your best interest, who knows what vaccines they're

00:28:34.780 going to develop in the future and what disease are going to say they need to prevent. And this

00:28:38.680 is in the public health. And I just think that's a really, really scary place to exist. And I wish

00:28:44.120 people could see that they can believe everyone should get the vaccine. They should, they can support

00:28:48.420 everyone getting the vaccine and they can know that the mandates are not the way to go about it.

00:28:52.880 Well, it's funny because my, I am vaccinated and I'll tell you, my doctor said to me,

00:28:57.320 but I'm not a 37 year old woman trying to conceive a baby, by the way. But my doctor said to me,

00:29:02.380 I said, should I get the mRNA or should I get the Johnson and Johnson? And he said,

00:29:05.700 you know, either one, he said, but you know, the mRNA vaccine, he said, at some point, I believe

00:29:10.240 it's going to vaccinate you against pancreatic cancer. So he was kind of saying no, no better time

00:29:16.600 than the present to get comfortable with the technology, because if they have a vaccine against

00:29:20.220 pancreatic cancer, you're probably going to get it. And I thought, damn straight, I probably will.

00:29:24.640 But, but it could go the other way. It could go to the point where it can vaccinate you against all

00:29:29.780 sorts of medical illnesses. And in the name of public health and the name of reducing the cost

00:29:35.020 of health care, suddenly the government's looking at everybody saying, you must, we don't want to have

00:29:39.780 to foot the bill for all these expensive cancer treatments, right? So this really could be a

00:29:44.760 watershed moment. And what happens when they put an expiration date on your vaccination status?

00:29:50.300 What happens when your boosters aren't up to date? What happens when you have an adverse reaction to

00:29:56.040 one of these injections and you say no more? And they say, yes, more, more because it's expired.

00:30:01.420 There is a lot that could happen that I don't think we have the foresight to see. But, but if you look

00:30:07.540 at kind of the tea leaves, there is, this is opening Pandora's box a little bit. And I just,

00:30:13.160 I truly believe that there, there could come a time when it might be something you don't need

00:30:19.540 and you don't want. And once that precedent is set, there's no going back from that or it's very,

00:30:24.980 very difficult. And that's why I realized months ago, Megan, like this is going to be my hill to die on.

00:30:31.140 I really believe medical mandate mandates are dangerous. What's good for one is not good for all. I mean,

00:30:36.520 that's true of food or pharmaceutical products. Even our president recognized that.

00:30:40.060 He was saying that before he was pro-vax, he was anti-vax mandate. But let me ask you this,

00:30:45.700 because you mentioned bullying. And I'm, I want to ask you what it was like when you had to sort of

00:30:49.720 announce to them, you weren't going to do it because you knew exactly what that would mean.

00:30:53.220 But before I get to that, I want to set the scene because we covered here on the show,

00:30:56.520 your colleague Sage Steele, who spoke out against the ESPN, she co-hosts SportsCenter,

00:31:03.500 against the ESPN vaccine mandate. And she called the vaccine policy sick. And then she was suspended.

00:31:12.020 That's just, this is October. This is recent. She was suspended and she was forced to apologize.

00:31:16.800 And I wondered how you were reacting when you saw that apology and whether you thought that was

00:31:23.200 under duress.

00:31:24.880 It was, it was all under duress for getting the injection was under duress. Sage is a beautiful

00:31:33.100 soul and has become a very dear friend through all of this. It's actually one of the things I'm

00:31:36.740 thankful for. She, she found the courage to speak on the mandates and the way she saw them. And I had

00:31:44.980 to find the courage to stand up to the mandates and the way I did. And I give her so much credit for

00:31:50.620 having the strength to say what she said. Now, was it probably the best way to go about handling it?

00:31:57.780 No, but I want you to consider to the state she was in when she did that podcast, she had literally

00:32:03.760 just gotten her shot. That was why Jay Cutler even noticed she had the bandaid on her arm. So if you

00:32:11.380 are, if you are opposed to getting this injection, if you object, but then get injected,

00:32:17.500 what kind of mental state are you in? That was a traumatic experience for her. She was forced to

00:32:23.020 do something to her body. She did not want to do to keep this job. And she did it and, and she

00:32:29.080 complied, but she was emotional and upset. And honestly, she probably shouldn't have done the

00:32:33.580 podcast because she was in that, that type of state. And if you listen to the whole podcast and

00:32:38.600 you know her, you can tell she's upset. That was a traumatic experience for her. And I can't tell you

00:32:45.160 how many other people have reached out since I've gone public and said the same thing. They were

00:32:49.780 forced to do something to their body against their will. Now I'm not trying to like over dramatize it,

00:32:56.180 but that feels like a violation. And, and she was in an emotional state when she said that. And then

00:33:01.540 she of course had to apologize, but that's the frustrating part. I think that that's come out in

00:33:07.260 all of this is that we are not allowed to dissent. We're not allowed to say, Hey, I'm not

00:33:13.160 comfortable with this vaccine. And this is why, no, no, no, that's vaccine hesitancy. Now people

00:33:17.480 might not get the shot because of you and you're killing people and there's blood on your hands.

00:33:21.040 Well, wait a minute. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that's not comfortable for me.

00:33:25.940 I'm saying I don't support these mandates. Why can we not disagree on this topic without being

00:33:31.360 censored or punished or forced to publicly apologize? These mandates are sick. They are violating a

00:33:38.560 person's right to their own body. And I I'm proud of her for saying it. I'm sure it's something maybe

00:33:43.600 she wishes she could have rewarded, uh, in a more delicate manner, but I think maybe not a lot of

00:33:48.260 courage. Yeah, maybe not. Right. Cause they clearly suspended her. Her job was in jeopardy and

00:33:52.440 she did what she had to do to, to keep her job, which I'm sure she loves too. So when you decided,

00:33:58.380 I'm sure you sat down with your husband. I mean, can you just, I just want to ask you about what

00:34:03.340 it must've felt like to go in there and tell him it's not, it's not going to happen.

00:34:07.980 He's been amazing. Um, my whole family has been amazing and I would not be here, um, standing

00:34:14.460 strong without them. They knew from the beginning. Uh, I think we all shared concerns about this

00:34:20.720 vaccine and the risks it presents and to act like it doesn't present risks is being naive and uninformed.

00:34:26.720 You can go on VAERS. The deaths are up over 16,000. There's been 80,000 plus hospitalizations

00:34:32.340 I know what VAERS means. I know they have to investigate them, but nonetheless, these are,

00:34:36.740 these are reported incidents and that's all that we have to go on. So I think we, as a family,

00:34:41.820 we're all very much aware that this was a decision that came with risks. Um, my husband and I went

00:34:46.640 back and forth a lot. This was a huge financial hit to our family. Um, but he knew as did I,

00:34:52.420 there was nothing more important than growing our family. I obviously felt very frustrated that I felt

00:34:57.600 like I had to choose between the two, right. Providing for my family or growing my family.

00:35:01.000 And he was supportive in every way possible. He actually came to me at one point because

00:35:06.080 obviously this is a conversation that's ongoing, right? It's like, you sit down, make a decision

00:35:09.680 and move on. It was back and forth. Do I get it? Do I not? Do I, it was a lot of back and forth.

00:35:16.160 And, um, he actually came to me one night and he said, look, I know you have had, um, concerns about

00:35:22.440 this vaccine and you've said, you're not getting it. And so forth. He goes, I just want you to know,

00:35:26.000 I know how hard you hard you've worked for your career. I know how much you love it.

00:35:30.020 And if you feel like this is something you have to do, I understand. And I will support you,

00:35:34.920 whatever decision you come to, because ultimately it is your body. It is your career. Um, it is going

00:35:40.840 to be your kind of battle to fight. Right. And he, he said, whatever you choose, I support you. And he

00:35:48.240 has, and I'm thankful. That's the other part, Megan. I'm thankful that I have, um, a partner that does

00:35:54.160 have a job and an income because some people are sole providers for their family and they didn't

00:35:58.800 have that, that flexibility within their, their financial situation to make this decision. Was it

00:36:05.140 a huge hit financially? Yeah, but we're not going to starve. We're not going to lose our house.

00:36:08.720 There's worse things to lose than your job. You know, I've got some friends still in the Fox

00:36:13.720 family over at Fox sports, Allison. I don't know, but there's no way somebody as talented and as smart

00:36:21.320 as you are should stay quote on the sidelines for a long, or more accurately, we need to get you back

00:36:27.200 on the sidelines, actually physically doing your job. Thank you. I hope so. I hope so. It,

00:36:33.020 it doesn't feel like it now, but I'm, I'm trying to have faith that God has a plan and maybe I can't

00:36:37.760 see it now, but it's going to work out. And I believe in my heart, I'm doing this for the right

00:36:41.840 reason. And I really just hope people can realize that these mandates come at a cost and there are real

00:36:47.100 lives and real people being affected by them. Um, I'm not a bad or rational person. I'm trying

00:36:52.640 to do what's best for me and my family. Like I think we all are. And, uh, this has all become

00:36:57.020 very divisive and I hope we can start to find some unity in the common goals of working together. Like

00:37:02.460 we, we used to say, working together to end this, um, people who are forgoing this vaccine,

00:37:06.700 they're not the enemy. They're just people trying to do what's best for their health as well.

00:37:10.580 You did not deserve this. And, and one thing I've learned over my years and, um,

00:37:15.240 as a professional from law to media is if you've got the goods, you'll land on your feet. You know,

00:37:20.920 there's these rough times, but talent will win out in the end. You, you will get snatched back up

00:37:26.240 with, not by Fox sports than by somebody, and you will land on your feet. And this will have been

00:37:30.640 such a huge learning experience and character building exercise. And hopefully you will be

00:37:35.400 laughing all about it as you bounce your second child on your knee, um, not too distant future.

00:37:41.480 All, all the best to you, Alison. Thank you so much for coming on and telling your story.

00:37:44.460 Thank you, Megan. Thank you for having me.

00:37:47.080 Wow. Uh, coming up, we're going to talk about some of the thousands,

00:37:50.400 thousands of other people who are in the situation that Alison is in as well. Thanks to

00:37:55.060 Joe Biden's mandates. Thanks to the sweeping mandates coming state to state in this country

00:37:59.960 and the increase in lawsuits that are being filed now as people's medical freedom is being taken away.

00:38:05.960 Joining me now is Senator Josh Hawley to discuss the latest in the supply chain crisis, the new

00:38:14.360 historic immigration numbers and, um, much, much more. We're going to kick it off with the vaccine

00:38:19.000 mandates though. So Senator, um, what we, what we realized today is that the deadlines in several

00:38:24.640 states and cities are arriving for people to get these mandatory vaccinations with no testing options.

00:38:30.640 It was in many places, get the backs or you can be tested twice weekly or every day or however onerous

00:38:37.240 it was. It was at least an off ramp for people no longer. Uh, and there's just, there's a couple

00:38:41.820 examples, New York city. This is actually a very big deal. New York city, public employees now must

00:38:47.260 get the vaccine. It's mandated. Um, they are already implemented on education and public health

00:38:52.980 workers. Now it's all city workers. We're talking cops, firefighters, paramedic, first responders,

00:39:00.160 uh, prison guards, you name it. All of them have to get at least one dose by next Friday, 10 29.

00:39:06.560 Otherwise they're all going on unpaid leave until they provide the proof of vaccination.

00:39:11.640 We are going to have thousands, thousands of cops, firefighters, and other workers,

00:39:17.780 correction officers included off the job, uh, soon in New York, if this stands, because you've got

00:39:22.800 30% of the cops in New York unvaccinated, 40% of the firefighters unvaccinated. It's not like they

00:39:27.060 can't get the vaccine. Now if you guys are unvaccinated, it's because they don't want the

00:39:29.900 vaccine. Um, correction officers in here in Massachusetts and elsewhere, 40% of the prison

00:39:35.080 officers in Massachusetts, not vaccinated and so on. 50% of the paramedics in New York unvaccinated.

00:39:40.540 All these folks, they don't want it. And now they're about to get fired or lose their paycheck

00:39:46.720 unless they get it. And it, to me, it seems like other than a whack-a-mole lawsuit here,

00:39:53.220 a whack-a-mole lawsuit there, it doesn't feel like there's a heck of a lot we can or are doing about

00:39:58.400 it. What say you? Well, I want to say that, first of all, thanks for having me on, Megan. It's great

00:40:01.940 to be back with you. I am opposed to these vaccine mandates at the state level and especially at the

00:40:07.960 federal level. And I say, especially at the federal level, because it's just unconstitutional.

00:40:11.420 It's unauthorized. There simply is no legal authority for the president to direct private

00:40:16.520 entities all across the country. I don't care what their size is, whether it's a hundred or more or

00:40:20.920 50 or more or two, it doesn't matter that he does not have the authority to direct them to force

00:40:25.960 employees to get vaccines. And, you know, I think that as to what you've been pointing out, I mean,

00:40:30.440 it's quite the irony that our essential workers, as we called them all last year,

00:40:35.300 the people who in the teeth of this pandemic went to work, kept us safe, delivered our food,

00:40:42.760 educated our kids. Now, when these same folks say, well, hold on, actually, I want to make my own

00:40:47.760 informed medical choice. I don't want to get the vaccine. Now we say to them, oh, well, fall into

00:40:52.120 line, shut up or be fired. You know, I mean, it is quite the turnaround coming from, frankly, this

00:40:58.020 administration and its allies all across the country. And I think it's a huge mistake. I mean,

00:41:02.900 the other thing about it, I'll say is, why would you want to drive people out of their jobs,

00:41:06.980 these essential workers out of their jobs at this time? I mean, Joe Biden and his allies are

00:41:12.280 fomenting an unemployment crisis in the midst of every other crisis we're facing.

00:41:17.100 Yes. So you went to Stanford undergrad, you went to Yale Law School, you clerked for Judge McConnell,

00:41:23.520 10th Circuit, one of the most respected judges in the country, then on to clerk for Chief Justice

00:41:27.160 John Roberts. So just in case our viewers don't understand, you're very well educated in the law,

00:41:31.580 your practicing attorney. What what would you tell people to do? Because the way I see it so far,

00:41:38.280 the challenges by those who have said I have natural immunity and therefore you shouldn't be

00:41:42.000 able to force me are failing. The challenges saying you have to give me a religious exemption

00:41:47.640 are doing better. But I mean, I moved to Connecticut in September and here the governor,

00:41:54.820 they passed a law getting rid of the religious exemption for all public school students. You're not

00:41:59.500 even allowed to raise it. And I do wonder whether that's constitutional or if in any place, whether

00:42:06.320 removing a religious or a medical exemption is lawful.

00:42:11.440 I think it's not, Megan, is my view on that. And I think the religious exemption is the really key

00:42:16.120 piece of this. I think it's not lawful. It's not constitutional to say to students,

00:42:21.060 to parents, to whomever, that if you have a sincere religious objection to getting this vaccine,

00:42:25.960 that, oh, sorry, you're just out of luck. First Amendment doesn't apply to you. I mean,

00:42:29.460 what we're dealing with here is what's called and what the law calls the police powers. And by the

00:42:34.380 way, the police powers are something that states have. The federal government doesn't have them.

00:42:38.460 That's why Joe Biden can't just go out and say, oh, I want y'all to get the vaccine. I'm going to

00:42:42.280 force you to do it. He does not have that authority. At the state level, though, we've always said

00:42:46.740 that while state governments can exercise general police powers, what they cannot do is trample on

00:42:53.040 constitutional rights in doing so. And there's lots of case law. It's not like this has just

00:42:57.700 never been thought of before. It's only being thought of in this context. There's many cases

00:43:01.560 over many years about religious objectors and others, too, on grounds of free speech and other

00:43:06.680 things. But particularly when it comes to the First Amendment right of free exercise,

00:43:10.940 conscientious objectors saying, I can't perform that activity. I don't want to take that vaccine.

00:43:16.540 And we have long recognized under our constitution and our laws a religious exemption. So I think now

00:43:22.120 this new ground that some of these states are trying to break, and frankly, the federal government's

00:43:26.220 trying to do it, too, because they're trying to take away religious exemptions. It's dangerous.

00:43:30.260 It's not just dangerous for this context, Megan. It's dangerous going forward because it removes yet

00:43:35.700 another check on government power telling people how they have to live their lives.

00:43:40.900 Yes. And the thing is, like I know one mom who is told, and this is the policy at a lot of schools,

00:43:46.220 unless you're already on record as being an objector to vaccines, you can't raise a religious

00:43:50.820 exemption now in response to the covid mandate. Well, that's crazy talk because not all vaccines

00:43:56.260 were tested on copies of stem cells, which Catholics and Christians in particular might

00:44:02.580 very well have an objection to. How how can you raise have a preexisting object objection to a

00:44:07.020 vaccine that didn't even exist about a year ago? No, I think that's exactly right. And this this is

00:44:13.680 another example of the narrowing down or attempted narrowing down of these religious exemptions and

00:44:18.780 claims. And your point, Megan, I think is really an important one. Vaccines are different.

00:44:23.520 They're they're composed differently. They're manufactured differently. They're they're made

00:44:27.140 differently. So this is why we have a process where people can say, well, listen, I have a

00:44:32.680 religious objection to this vaccine for these reasons and then they can be heard. But what you

00:44:37.180 and I are talking about is they're not even able to be heard. People come in. They say I've got a

00:44:40.740 religious exemption. I have a religious objection. And they're being told by governmental authorities

00:44:44.940 not just shut up and go away. I mean, we're not even we're not going to listen to it. We don't

00:44:48.740 care. We're not going to recognize it. Boy, that is that is dangerous ground to break here. And I

00:44:56.180 think that I'm ultimately hopeful that as these cases make their way into the federal court system

00:45:01.040 and probably up to the U.S. Supreme Court, I hope that the courts will continue our tradition in the

00:45:06.500 country of saying, hold on, hold on. You can't just because the government feels strongly about it

00:45:11.680 doesn't mean they can suspend our First Amendment rights. And I hope they'll uphold that in these

00:45:16.200 cases as well. Yeah, we had a lawyer on from the National Civil Liberties Alliance the other day,

00:45:20.620 and they're taking on especially government overreach when it comes to these vaccines. And

00:45:24.640 they're the ones who haven't done so well on the natural immunity, but are seeing some progress on

00:45:30.180 the religious exemption. So the cases are just playing out. You know, it is a whack-a-mole strategy,

00:45:34.260 unfortunately, because there's not that much people like you can do about it. Right. It's like maybe

00:45:38.280 if the Republicans controlled the Congress and Joe Biden tried to pass a law, that'd be one thing.

00:45:43.560 But he's not even he's not even involving Congress. This is him with the old Obama pen and phone

00:45:48.540 making this happen through OSHA. Yeah. You know what is particularly pernicious,

00:45:55.480 Megan, about this, about his strategy, is that he announced Joe Biden announced this rule

00:45:59.600 about requiring employers, 100 more people have to get mandate people get the vaccine. He doesn't have

00:46:04.640 any authority to do it. But then he waited to actually publish the rule itself, to actually

00:46:10.320 put it out as a law, as a regulation. And because he waited for all of this time, there's been nothing

00:46:16.200 to challenge in court. So you have lots of employers who anticipating the rule have said, well, we're

00:46:21.480 going to force you employees to start getting the vaccine. And employees say, well, hold on, hold on.

00:46:25.520 I've got rights. I want to challenge this in court. And there hasn't even been a rule on the

00:46:29.340 books to challenge yet. That is a deliberate strategy on the administration's part to try and

00:46:34.740 force people, try to evade any kind of legal review, any kind of legal remedy. I just think

00:46:40.900 it's wrong, Megan. I think that at the end of the day, courts will strike down the federal mandate

00:46:44.940 because there's no authority for it. But I think, by the way, I think Joe Biden knows that. He has,

00:46:50.960 you notice that he's not out there saying, oh, I definitely think I have the power to do it.

00:46:54.520 He's out there saying, I'm going to do it anyway. Yeah. And we'll just do it.

00:46:57.780 There's a pattern with him when he understands he doesn't have the legal authority to do something

00:47:01.160 like the thing with the landlords. And then he does it anyway, understanding the courts are going

00:47:06.000 to slap him down, but he wants the political points. Listen, there's a lot to go over with

00:47:10.220 Senator Hawley, including breaking news we just got from Merrick Garland, the attorney general,

00:47:15.120 in extraordinary testimony about his DOJ cracking down on parents. We'll bring you that soundbite

00:47:20.480 and the senator's reaction next.

00:47:26.860 And an incredible moment on Capitol Hill. News is breaking at this moment. Just a short time ago,

00:47:32.880 this happened. Attorney General Merrick Garland appearing right now before the House Judiciary

00:47:38.300 Committee. He was just questioned about the Loudoun County, Virginia father, Scott Smith,

00:47:44.520 who was arrested at a school board meeting after his daughter was allegedly raped in a school

00:47:51.960 bathroom. Merrick Garland. Keep in mind, here's the background. OK, before I play this soundbite for

00:47:56.820 you, the National Association of School Boards wrote a letter to Merrick Garland's DOJ. He's our

00:48:01.500 attorney general saying we've got domestic terrorists running around at these school board meetings,

00:48:05.900 i.e. parents who are making threats, who are out of order. And we need the DOJ and the FBI

00:48:11.640 at the federal level to crack down on these parents. And one of the cases cited by the National

00:48:18.220 Association of School Boards was the case of Scott Smith, who appeared at the Loudoun County meeting

00:48:23.060 and objected to the fact that the school superintendent claimed no assaults in the

00:48:27.700 bathrooms had taken place. And indeed, his own daughter had been raped, I think, a week earlier.

00:48:33.820 All right. So that's so Merrick Garland now is before the House Judiciary Committee. He's being

00:48:38.760 questioned. You'll hear Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, giving it to him about that dad

00:48:45.120 and what the DOJ is doing. Listen to Merrick Garland on this. Attorney General Garland, are you aware

00:48:52.020 that because Loudoun County prosecutors confirmed that the boy who assaulted this young girl in

00:48:56.780 Broad Run High School is the same boy who wore a skirt and went into a girl's bathroom,

00:49:01.680 sodomized and raped a 14 year old girl in a different Loudoun County High School on May 28th?

00:49:06.460 Are you aware of those facts?

00:49:09.920 The boy was, are you aware firmly, are you aware further that the boy was arrested and

00:49:14.980 charged for the first assault in July, but released from juvenile detention?

00:49:19.860 This sounds like a state case and I'm not familiar with it. I'm sorry.

00:49:23.500 Do you agree with Loudoun parents? You said it is not okay to allow a child that has been

00:49:27.220 charged with a rape to go back into a school in that public school system.

00:49:30.300 Again, I don't know any of the facts of this case, but the way you put it, it certainly sounds like I

00:49:37.040 would agree with you, but I don't know the facts of the case. Is the FBI or the Department of Justice

00:49:40.980 investigating the Loudoun School Board for violating civil rights or under authority of

00:49:45.240 state of violence against women act?

00:49:46.700 I don't believe so, but I don't know the answer to that.

00:49:50.620 I'd ask why not, because on June 22nd at a school board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia,

00:49:54.820 the superintendent, Scott Ziegler, declared in front of the father of the girl who had been raped

00:49:58.780 that the predator, transgender student, or person simply does not exist.

00:50:04.380 And that to his knowledge, we don't have any records of assaults occurring in our restrooms.

00:50:08.540 When this statement bothered the father of the girl, I'm a father of a daughter, I believe you are too,

00:50:13.060 sir. The girl who had been raped, sodomized, in the bathroom of a high school by a dude wearing a

00:50:18.440 skirt, that father reacted. Now, that father reacted by simply using a derogatory word.

00:50:27.080 Would that statement have bothered you if your daughter had been raped, if somebody said that

00:50:30.820 it didn't occur?

00:50:31.880 Again, I don't know anything about the facts of this case, but derogatory words are not what my

00:50:36.760 memorandum is about.

00:50:38.020 Well, the victim's mother is heard on a cell phone video telling the crowd what happened.

00:50:41.340 My child was raped at a school, she said. Behind her, the victim's father is seen being arrested,

00:50:46.040 bloodied. This man, this arrest of a 48-year-old plumber, became the poster boy for the new domestic

00:50:51.340 terrorism, the Biden administration, the administration in which you serve,

00:50:55.140 has concocted to destroy anyone who gets in the way.

00:50:58.080 Wow. My guess still, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri. Senator,

00:51:02.340 powerful moment. And for the attorney general to say he's not familiar with that,

00:51:07.740 the most well-known of all the cases cited by that National Association of School Board in its

00:51:13.120 letter, to which he responded in two days and clearly based his federal action on.

00:51:17.740 Yeah. And in fact, he's testified also this morning, Megan, just to that point,

00:51:21.380 that he did in fact base his memorandum using the FBI to get involved in the school board

00:51:27.260 meetings. He based it on the complaint from the National School Board Association

00:51:32.520 that cites this case, the case of Scott Smith of the plumber. So the idea that he doesn't know

00:51:37.800 the facts of the case, it means that he is either the most incurious person in the planet

00:51:42.400 or that he's lying. And in fact, we know the answer, that he's just being untruthful.

00:51:47.740 Of course he knows. If he doesn't know the facts of this case, Megan, he hasn't read or seen

00:51:52.420 any news for the last month. That's exactly right. It's just absolutely ridiculous. And can I just

00:51:59.700 also say it's offensive. And I got the same treatment just yesterday, a federal judge nominee

00:52:04.780 up before the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has long advocated for biological males to use

00:52:11.380 female bathrooms and has previously gone to court herself and argue that there is no evidence,

00:52:17.000 no evidence that there would ever be any attack on a female by a biological male. I said,

00:52:21.960 what do you think of the Loudoun County case? And she said, I've never heard of it. I don't know

00:52:25.820 anything about it. So clearly this is an administration tactic and it's just ridiculous.

00:52:32.180 So it's like either you either you're lying or your statement that there's no evidence of it is

00:52:38.160 completely empty because you haven't done any homework whatsoever. My 12 year old would see the

00:52:44.460 Loudoun County case on virtually every website over the past two weeks. And for him, for Merrick Garland,

00:52:50.500 we actually have the soundbite, it's Jim Jordan pressing him on whether, in fact, Merrick Garland

00:52:55.820 was responding to that National Association of School Board letter claiming parents are domestic

00:53:00.260 terrorists and should be treated as such, in which that guy's case was front and center as an example

00:53:05.740 of why Garland needed to get involved. Here's the soundbite. First sentence of your memo, very first

00:53:10.100 sentence, you said in recent months there's been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation,

00:53:13.640 threats of violence. Yes. When did you first review the data showing this so-called disturbing

00:53:18.120 uptick? So I read the letter and we have been seeing over time threats. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:53:24.620 I didn't ask you. So you read the letter. That's that's your source. So let me be clear. This is not a

00:53:30.520 prosecution or an investigation. Is there some study, some effort, some investigation someone did that

00:53:34.520 said there's been a disturbing uptick or you just take the words of the National School Board

00:53:37.720 Association? Well, the National School Board Association, which represents thousands of school

00:53:42.700 boards and school board members, says that there are these kind of threats when we read in the

00:53:47.320 newspapers reports of threats of violence, when that is in the context of threats of violence.

00:53:52.380 The source for this, for the very first line in your in your mouth. Time of the gentleman has expired.

00:53:57.720 Was the School Board Association letter fired? Mr. Deutsch.

00:54:02.060 That's extraordinary that that letter and the newspapers. That's why parents are now on his radar as

00:54:08.840 potential domestic terrorists. And I just want to point out, Megan, that this also is a change in

00:54:15.100 tune. It's a different story. The White House has previously denied. And I believe the Justice

00:54:19.120 Department has previously denied that this letter from the National School Board Association was what

00:54:25.500 led to Garland's memo, was what led to the FBI being activated for school board meetings. And now you've

00:54:30.660 got Garland himself up there saying, yeah, that was it. That's why we did it, because we were pressured

00:54:35.060 into it. And we just accept it as fact. Everything that this letter, which is full of hysteria, as you

00:54:41.040 said, calling parents domestic terrorists, that letter also asks for the Patriot Act to be used

00:54:47.920 against parents and have them branded as domestic terrorists. I mean, you talk it's insane, Megan.

00:54:53.500 It's just insane. And meanwhile, what's the federal authority for this as a senator and a very

00:54:57.900 accomplished lawyer? You tell me what the DOJ can't run around getting involved in every crime,

00:55:03.040 alleged crime. It has to have jurisdiction. What's the federal authority for him to be doing

00:55:07.800 anything here? Well, that is the key question, Megan. And the answer is there isn't federal

00:55:12.560 authority. What would the crime be? I mean, what would the federal crime be? I mean, most of the

00:55:17.280 crimes in this country are left to the states and reasonably so and rightly so, because we want to

00:55:21.640 have local control of police departments, local control of law enforcement. The class of federal

00:55:26.840 crimes is actually very, very narrow and always has been historically. And Garland doesn't even

00:55:31.960 bother to cite potential federal crimes in his memo. He doesn't even attempt to. He's talking

00:55:37.480 about threats. Threats, by the way, are not unlawful. They have to be really specific and

00:55:42.620 like inciting violence right then and there for them. Otherwise, they're just words. And for better

00:55:48.060 for worse, we're allowed to say them. Well, and here's the other thing, Megan. If you look at

00:55:51.780 Garland's memo that activated the FBI, what he says is they're going to go after and discourage

00:55:56.540 violence, threats of violence, and other intimidation. I mean, you're an attorney. That

00:56:03.180 last phrase is so broad. It's so capacious. Other forms of intimidation that clearly is

00:56:09.480 meant to intimidate parents, to say if you go to a school board meeting and you express

00:56:14.260 frustration about mask mandates or vaccine mandates or critical race theory, well, hey,

00:56:19.580 that might get reported as intimidation. You might have an FBI agent knocking on your door.

00:56:23.260 It is so wrong and it really is unlawful. Let's shift gears because I got to ask you

00:56:29.740 about China. This was quite a story this week. So the news emerges and my pals over at National

00:56:36.480 Review did a great podcast on this at the editors. Love Rich Lowry and his team. But in August,

00:56:41.800 China tested a hypersonic missile that apparently circled the globe one time. It missed its target,

00:56:47.080 but that's not a big deal. That's kind of why you do the tests, I guess. And the Financial

00:56:50.960 Times says that our intel officials were, quote, shocked, shocked because we are way behind.

00:56:56.380 We do not have this weaponry. And while the Chinese have sort of been advanced when it comes

00:57:00.280 to manufacturing, some other things, weaponry was always our thing. So the problem is with these

00:57:07.760 weapons, they're very fast, they're unpredictable, and there's no ability to track them or to shoot

00:57:11.240 them down. In addition, I'm told that they could come at us from the South Pole, where we're very exposed

00:57:16.020 as a nation. We don't we haven't fortified that, you know, an attack from the South Pole.

00:57:19.920 So this is not good. This is bad news that China is at this point. And this comes on the heels of

00:57:25.660 news this week that a top cybersecurity official at the Pentagon, Nicholas Chalain, just quit

00:57:30.040 saying we've got no competing fighting chance against China when it comes to the tech war.

00:57:33.820 We've already lost it. Our AI program is at the kindergarten level. All right, so we're not doing

00:57:37.600 well. So Jen Psaki gets asked about this at the White House and listen to her response.

00:57:43.700 And then can you comment on reports that China tested a nuclear capable hypersonic missile over

00:57:49.120 the summer to the surprise of US officials? And we have been consistent in our approach with China.

00:57:54.980 We welcome stiff competition, but do we not? We don't do not want that competition to veer into

00:57:59.420 conflict. What do we welcome stiff competition when it comes to nuclear weapons that could annihilate

00:58:05.420 millions of Americans? Well, and I tell you, the way that you prevent competition from becoming

00:58:10.000 conflict, Megan, is that you show the authoritarian Chinese government that we will win any conflict

00:58:16.480 that they might choose to engage in. And this is what really worries me about what we're seeing

00:58:21.080 in China, what we're seeing in East Asia, is you see a Beijing government, a communist government that

00:58:26.760 feels emboldened. They look at the catastrophe in Afghanistan. They look at the debacle Joe Biden

00:58:33.060 led us into there. And they think, oh boy, this American government is weak. And now you see

00:58:38.320 them testing hypersonics. Now you see them flying over Taiwan. They've flown a record number of

00:58:44.260 sorties over Taiwan. That's very deliberate, Megan. They're telling us that, hey, we're on the attack,

00:58:50.420 we're on the offensive, and you, America, can't stop us. We're going to be the global superpower.

00:58:54.980 There's nothing you can do to stop us. We've got to send the message back that we're not going to

00:58:58.840 be intimidated and that we are going to stand up to them. And we're not just going to roll over.

00:59:03.720 But I'm afraid Joe Biden is sending just the opposite message. Yes, because we're not we are

00:59:08.060 not sending that message in any way. We're welcoming them to the party. I'm stuck on my

00:59:14.380 my friends at National Review because I thought their podcast is kicking it off on. This was so

00:59:17.860 good. Charles C.W. Cook. Basically, my summary of his response was, is she insane? But listen to him.

00:59:23.780 Why on earth would we welcome this competition? It's not a market. You might welcome competition

00:59:34.360 in the smartphone arena. You might welcome competition. If you're a restaurant, you might

00:59:41.900 welcome competition. If you make microchips, because you want the overall industry to advance,

00:59:50.060 you might realize that it keeps you sharp, keeps you on your toes. The competition here,

00:59:57.320 though, comes in the form of a missile designed to incinerate millions of Americans. We shouldn't

01:00:03.500 want that competition. We should be embarrassed that it exists. I mean, couldn't have said it better

01:00:11.520 myself, but we're getting a very different message from our president and his spokesperson.

01:00:15.740 You know, what strikes me about this, Megan, is the policy of this administration towards China

01:00:20.880 is really one of appeasement. There's just no other way to put it. You look at economically,

01:00:26.020 what have we heard out of this administration over and over? Oh, well, we want engagement with

01:00:30.680 China. We're not going to stand up to them anymore, whether they're cheating on their trade

01:00:34.260 agreements, taking our jobs, stealing our technology. We want engagement. We need them. I mean,

01:00:39.300 literally, that's what administration officials said. We need China. Militarily, the same thing.

01:00:43.620 We are appeasing them. This is an imperial power. The Beijing government is imperial in nature. They

01:00:50.040 want to expand. They want to control East Asia. From there, they want to reach out and project their

01:00:55.340 power all around the world. There's only one country on the face of the earth that can stop

01:01:00.000 them from doing that. It's the United States of America. And we have to stop them because if we don't,

01:01:05.280 they're going to impoverish our country. They're going to take away the rest of our jobs. They're going

01:01:09.160 to take all of our domestic manufacturing capability. And we'll ultimately have to ask

01:01:13.100 them for permission to do X, Y, Z. That is not acceptable to us. And Joe Biden needs to wake up

01:01:18.840 to those facts right quick. We thought we were going to change them. You know, we trade with China and

01:01:24.280 we're going to influence the way they live. And anything but has happened. Perhaps the opposite

01:01:28.760 has happened. They've influenced us. And you see this, you see sort of the downside of it in so many

01:01:35.300 areas from the weaponry to the supply chain. And I know you've been jumping up and down about this,

01:01:40.280 but one of the things all those ships lined up to get in and the delay in the cargo shipments has

01:01:46.920 had a lot of regular folks asking is, why are we so dependent on China? Why are like,

01:01:52.560 why are all the goods out on those ships? What about American made? You're actually asking some of those

01:01:58.600 same questions. Yeah. And I think it's time that we started acting like the strong country we are. I mean,

01:02:03.380 Joe Biden is acting like we're so weak. We've got to ask China for permission. We've got to ask,

01:02:08.420 we got to beg OPEC for oil and for energy for this country. I mean, let's get real. Here's what

01:02:13.180 I would do, Megan. Here's what I propose to do. I think we ought to say that any critical good or

01:02:17.980 critical supply chain, you've got to make the majority of it in this country. So if we identify

01:02:23.220 a good that's critical to us, whether that's medical supplies, whether that's vaccines, maybe it's

01:02:27.780 computer chips, steel, you've got to make over half of it in this country in order to sell it in this

01:02:33.280 country. No matter where you're based. No matter where you're based. Yes, ma'am. No matter where

01:02:37.260 you're based. So these overseas companies, multinationals, you want to have access to our

01:02:41.140 market, then you've got to make most of it in the United States if it's a critical good to us. That

01:02:46.060 would bring jobs back to our country. It would enhance our national security. And it would send

01:02:50.620 the message to countries like China, we're not going to lay down for you. We're not going to let you

01:02:54.420 walk all over us. We're going to look to our own strength, secure our own jobs. And in a crisis like

01:03:00.700 COVID, we're not going to be dependent on foreign nations and foreign enemies anymore.

01:03:05.900 It's crazy now. I mentioned at the top of the show, but now there's apparently a meeting at the

01:03:09.160 White House talking about whether we should get the National Guard involved in this crisis to have

01:03:13.580 them go out and unload the ships or try to drive the trucks. Meanwhile, there's a shortage of trucks.

01:03:18.080 So that's probably why they wound up rejecting it. But the National Guard can only do so much.

01:03:21.840 Already the New York governor said she's going to use them to cover for the health care workers who are

01:03:25.320 getting fired because they won't get the vax. We heard that same thing possibly in Massachusetts and the

01:03:30.320 corrections department. Now they want them to go out and cover for the truckers. I mean, good

01:03:33.620 gracious, the poor National Guardsmen. I hope all of them are vaccinated because they've got a lot

01:03:38.480 they want them to do. Yeah. And the border, the same is true at the border. Megan, we're already

01:03:42.600 asking the guard to deploy down to the border, which is total chaos. I mean, it's in total shambles.

01:03:46.960 It's a total crisis, humanitarian, national security all the way around. Here's what I feel like.

01:03:52.780 And when I talk to people at home, what people feel like the country's in chaos. I mean,

01:03:57.320 they just look at gas prices. People can't afford to buy gas. People can't afford to buy food. People

01:04:02.880 can't afford to get their car repaired. And you see rising violence everywhere. You see crisis at

01:04:07.800 the border. You see people losing their jobs over the vaccine. I mean, it's just total chaos. I mean,

01:04:13.440 Jimmy, I just about said Jimmy Carter. Joe Biden liked Jimmy Carter. It's a Freudian slip. He lurches

01:04:19.060 from one crisis to another. And I tell you what, I mean, I just think that the American people aren't

01:04:24.120 going to put up with this ultimately. And I mean, my part is in Congress and Senate is to try and say,

01:04:28.580 I'm not going to go along with this. There are better ways to do this. This is a strong country.

01:04:33.520 Let's start acting like it. Yeah. And just to just to deliver to the audience what I said, I would

01:04:38.820 the latest on the border headlines, border arrests, the numbers are in have soared to an all time high.

01:04:45.660 New data from the Border Patrol shows the 2021 fiscal year, which ended in September,

01:04:51.000 we detained over one point seven million migrants along the Mexican border. That's just the ones we

01:04:56.160 detained. And that's the highest levels ever recorded. Our 2021 figure was more than three

01:05:03.280 times the amount of arrests that we had between 2012 and 2020. They are coming. They are coming in

01:05:09.880 big numbers. There was a report this week they are being dropped off by the by the hundreds,

01:05:14.060 perhaps thousands at Westchester Airport, not far from where I am overnight between midnight and 6

01:05:19.700 a.m. The administration said, oh, it's just families. Those eyewitnesses on the ground said,

01:05:24.160 no, there's a lot of young men in their 20s. We don't know where they're going. There's not going

01:05:28.780 to be any requirement. They show up at an asylum seeking hearing and so on. And it seems like a

01:05:33.480 free for all at our at our southern border. I'll give you the last thought on that.

01:05:37.100 It is a total free for all, Megan, and it's dangerous for many, many reasons, not the least of which

01:05:41.400 are the drugs that are flowing over that border. Every state in this country is a border state

01:05:46.340 because of the drugs that are flowing into our schools. They're flowing into our neighborhoods,

01:05:51.320 into our churches, even where they're coming from. They're coming across the southern border.

01:05:54.460 That's just the drug route. That's how the cartels work. And Joe Biden is just enabling them

01:05:59.860 with his policies. Can I just say one last thing, Megan? And that is the end on a note of hope,

01:06:04.180 if I could. And that is, here's what I think. In the midst of all of this chaos,

01:06:08.260 in the midst of all of this disastrous series of policies from this president, the American worker

01:06:14.100 and the American family are strong. And this is why I just can't take all of this behavior of

01:06:19.360 weakness, whether it's on supply chains or at the border. Joe Biden needs to quit acting like we're

01:06:23.360 a weak nation. We are not a weak nation. Our workers are strong. Give them the chance to succeed. Give

01:06:29.180 our families the chance to succeed. Quit forcing on them these terrible policies. So I just think we're a

01:06:35.900 strong country. We need to start acting like a strong country. If we do that, not only will we

01:06:39.780 be better off, the world will be better off. Great to see you, Senator. Thanks for being here.

01:06:44.420 Coming up, the author of a new book on the woke media. Have you seen the latest numbers on trust

01:06:49.720 in media? They just dropped a new poll and it's disgusting. You're not going to be surprised.

01:06:56.360 Bhatia Anghar Sargon joins me now, and she's the deputy opinion editor at Newsweek, as well as the

01:07:07.340 author of a brand new book called Bad News, How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy. Bhatia,

01:07:14.700 great to have you here. So bad news is perfect. That's exactly right. And I think, you know,

01:07:20.740 you're interesting because I've had a bunch of people on the show lately who say they would

01:07:24.800 generally call themselves a lefty, a Democrat. They were up until recently, and then the ground

01:07:30.240 started shifting beneath them. And either they have been red pilled or they just don't know what

01:07:34.480 they are now. I know you say you put yourself in that same sort of category. But let's talk about

01:07:40.320 get to the polls in a minute. But sort of a headline of the of your book is something is wrong with

01:07:45.720 American journalism. We know that instinctively, but put some meat on those bones. Well, first of all,

01:07:51.120 Megan, thank you so much for having me. I have to tell you, I've admired you for so long. You will

01:07:56.620 always be the person who put Vladimir Putin in his place while he was trying to intimidate you

01:08:01.820 and bully you. And you just gave back better than you got. And I just want to tell you that when I

01:08:06.700 told my liberal friends that I was coming on your show, that is what they brought up to me. They were

01:08:11.440 like, didn't she interview Putin? So that's who you are in my heart. And that's who you are for a lot

01:08:16.560 of people as well. So I just I always promised myself I would tell you that if I ever got the

01:08:20.580 chance. In so many ways, I think your career really has been a harbinger of what was to come.

01:08:28.980 So my book is called Bad News. And it's really about how we're sort of in a moral panic about

01:08:35.320 race that's being perpetuated by the mainstream, liberal national media. And what I argue is that,

01:08:42.200 you know, this looks like it's about race, it looks like it's about politics. But at the end of

01:08:46.820 the day, it's actually really about class. This is a class story that we're not telling that we're

01:08:53.380 using race in order to not tell. And what I argue in my book is that over the course of the 20th

01:08:58.860 century, journalists underwent a status revolution. You know, journalism used to be a blue collar trade,

01:09:05.840 you would have journalists living side by side next to cops and electricians, and they just didn't make

01:09:10.060 that much more money than them. And a lot of them hadn't gone to college. And that's really not true

01:09:14.440 anymore. Today, journalists like a lot of American of the American intelligentsia on the left has

01:09:20.000 really migrated to the elites to the top 10%. And I argue in my book that the sort of wokeness that's

01:09:27.200 taken over in the media is sort of the last stage of this status revolution, where the left is really

01:09:33.760 much more comfortable talking about issues of identity than they are talking about economics. And what

01:09:39.640 we've seen is really an abandonment of the working class by these people on the liberal and on the

01:09:46.120 left in the in the intelligentsia, which includes the media includes, you know, a lot of the

01:09:51.240 entertainment that we consume, the university, of course, and I'm sure that you yourself have

01:09:56.220 opinions about this, Megan, that I'm dying to hear because you're so much in this and you were so much

01:10:00.980 sort of a victim of this in a way. I definitely feel like I've lived a lot of what's in there.

01:10:06.580 And what I hate about the media is reflected in this book so much, too, which is they've chosen

01:10:11.220 to make every news story about themselves. I had a caller just yesterday saying, how can you be nice

01:10:15.720 to Trump or say anything nice about Trump after him coming after you for all those months? And my

01:10:20.220 response was essentially, I don't I don't make it about myself. Whatever irritation I might have about

01:10:26.100 any individual politician, that's irrelevant. I have to report the news based on what's what the

01:10:31.840 truth is and what the viewers want to hear about. Not not my own personal piccadillos. So you start

01:10:39.100 the book, you open the book with a scene involving CNN, Don Lemon, who is just the worst perpetrator

01:10:46.460 of this. And and I mean, tied, maybe tied is the guest I'm I most loathe on on cable news, I must say,

01:10:54.200 Kirsten Powers, who is the most hateful person on television. Truly, I think she might be.

01:10:59.440 And I'll show you why I think that in the clip that you reference at the beginning of your new

01:11:04.560 book, Bad News. Watch, we pull it. There's been a lot of talk about why white women support

01:11:08.960 President Trump despite of or perhaps because of his policies and his tone. What's your take on this?

01:11:15.420 Well, I think there's a lot of different ways that we have to look at this. I think one of the first

01:11:19.640 things is that people will say that they they support him for reasons other than his racist

01:11:26.160 language. And they'll say, well, I'm not racist. I just voted for him because, you know, I I I didn't

01:11:32.480 like Hillary Clinton. It doesn't make you not racist. It actually makes you racist. That was

01:11:37.420 the theme of the whole segment that you are racist if you voted for Trump and white women are power

01:11:42.240 adjacent. And so they're all racist to supporting a racist patriarchal system. This is how this is how

01:11:47.500 not just CNN, but sort of the woke media sees America.

01:11:51.040 Yeah. And I the reason I opened the book with that scene is because Don Lemon and Kristen Powers

01:11:55.880 both make over a million dollars a year. And the idea that the two of them would be sitting there

01:11:59.900 with all of their millions in the bank calling the voters for president who won the vast majority of

01:12:05.440 people without a college education racist. Right. To me, that was just it was like, oh, my God,

01:12:10.300 that's exactly what I'm talking about. The use of a moral panic about race to hide the really,

01:12:16.100 really terrible, terrible income inequality in this nation and the abandonment of the working class

01:12:20.700 by both sides. Honestly, you know, it's true that Fox News doesn't insult the values of the

01:12:25.960 working class. Right. But but they really have not been great at uplifting them from an economic

01:12:32.160 point of view. And by that, I don't mean welfare, Megan. I mean, things like good jobs that give

01:12:37.140 people a sense of dignity, a sense that they are building up this nation that you really just can't

01:12:41.740 get through trickle down economics. But so something I wanted to ask you about this as somebody who

01:12:46.460 worked at Fox. So my thesis is that the real difference between CNN and Fox is really about

01:12:52.000 class. It's not even about politics as much or about polarization. It's about the fact that

01:12:57.460 the Fox News audience that's pictured by the Fox News hosts like you are or the Fox News as,

01:13:03.600 you know, as a channel is a working class person as opposed to at the liberal outlets where they are

01:13:09.480 picturing an increasingly elite educated audience. Is that true? Am I right about that?

01:13:14.340 Well, it depends on the anchor, I think. But yes, as a whole, I think you've got it right. And I know

01:13:18.880 you wrote about this in your book and I experienced this firsthand, but it was by design by Roger Ailes.

01:13:24.620 You know, he did not want the guys from Harvard or the gals from Princeton. He wanted people like me.

01:13:30.680 I went to Syracuse like O'Reilly, who claims he went to Harvard, but he really didn't. He went to the

01:13:34.480 Harvard Kennedy School, which doesn't count. He went to Marist like Hannity, who didn't go to college at

01:13:39.520 all. And I think maybe he may have dropped out of high school. I don't want to do anything. But

01:13:44.860 he never definitely never went to college and so on. That's what he wanted, because he wanted people

01:13:49.560 who could relate to regular folks and wouldn't be looking down their noses at them.

01:13:55.960 Yeah. Yeah. I think that's exactly the point. And if you look at so I argue that this sort of woke

01:14:01.400 revolution that took place over the last, you know, five, 10 years, you can really see it in CNN's

01:14:06.820 numbers. So, you know, in 2012, only 25 percent of CNN's viewership had a college degree, which is

01:14:13.240 on a par with Fox. Now it's about 50 percent. Right. So something that they were doing was

01:14:19.060 signaling to working class viewers, to liberal working class viewers. You know, this is no longer

01:14:24.080 a channel for you. We're not for you. And I would say that the rise of Tucker is directly related to

01:14:29.680 all this, too. And that's when I left Fox News, Lachlan Murdoch asked me, who would you who do you

01:14:33.720 think I should move up into the prime time? And I said, Tucker Carlson. Wow. Tucker had been on Fox

01:14:37.960 and Friends weekend. You know, it wasn't I mean, not to toot my own horn, but like it wasn't really

01:14:41.800 now he's a huge star. But I could see I could see that he got Trump and he got our audience in a way

01:14:48.540 not everybody did. And this was the wave of the future, not the Mitt Romney, you know, sort of

01:14:54.300 white bread Republicans, but the working class who'd been forgotten by Obama, entirely forgotten by

01:15:00.540 Obama and to a large extent by some of the talent on Fox. And I do think it's no accident Tucker's

01:15:06.740 become such a superstar. So but let me ask you this. I think that the Republicans, by and large,

01:15:14.240 took the wrong lesson from Trump. Somebody who got the right lesson is Josh Hawley, for example,

01:15:20.400 your previous guest, who really is leaning into the economic populism. But to me, it seems like

01:15:25.760 the lesson of Trump was these people have been forgotten. They're downwardly mobile. They are

01:15:30.680 ninety three thousand opioid overdoses. Right. Last year alone, we have these deaths of despair.

01:15:36.600 People are despairing. Those are the people who turned out for Trump. Right. Those are the people

01:15:41.160 who really showed up for him. And I feel like there's just that you don't really see a lot of

01:15:46.680 people, Republicans saying, you know what, we're going to pick up that economic populism piece.

01:15:51.720 They're sort of reverting to the free market stuff and then keeping the kind of Trumpian aesthetics,

01:15:57.060 which was like the worst part about it. I don't know. What do you think, Megan?

01:16:00.460 That's an interesting point. I don't think you're wrong, because I do think to some extent,

01:16:04.420 you know, the other half of the Fox News audience is the more Mitt Romney type chamber of commerce

01:16:09.100 Republicans. And so, you know, they that was one of the challenges that Roger was facing

01:16:13.680 during the twenty sixteen election during the lead up to it. Right. Like he needed to keep his

01:16:18.580 working class base, but not lose the Mitt Romney types who were appalled by Trump's behavior,

01:16:24.180 which, let's face it, was shocking to anybody seeing him on the national stage running for

01:16:28.620 president. You know, we'd never seen anything like that before. But when you look at the policies,

01:16:32.800 he was addressing the very thing that the Obama White House told me privately that we were about

01:16:38.180 to do a town hall. I was talking and I'm not about to. That's too strong. But I was talking to them

01:16:42.160 about trying to get a town hall together with Barack Obama when he was president,

01:16:45.500 one of his final acts as president, to address working class issues, to reach out to this

01:16:50.520 disaffected middle. And we never got to do it. But I do think that sort of Fox saw that audience,

01:16:56.840 but they weren't going to nurture it at the expense of the other half of the audience.

01:17:01.840 Right. And that other half of the audience is still baked into the DNA.

01:17:06.220 Right. And what they can do, they can sort of shortcut their way into uniting that kind of despairing,

01:17:11.520 bottom, working class, you know, you know, downwardly mobile middle class with the very

01:17:15.580 rich Republican side by just catering to the work to the culture war issues. Right. To the to the

01:17:20.540 issues that are sort of like the red meat. Right. Which always target. They always target a Republican,

01:17:25.840 a conservative, a working class person. I don't know. I feel like Fox. Yeah. It's always going to

01:17:30.600 have a future because it has basically a monopoly on anything that's not leftist news, you know,

01:17:35.460 at least on television. Now we have, thankfully, many products in the digital world.

01:17:38.780 But I do wonder whether, you know, it's sustainable long term, because I think there are people like

01:17:44.180 like you who might call yourself a lefty at one point who for whom Fox is too far. Right. Like

01:17:50.860 my friends in New York who are liberals, who are no longer liberals because of the covid madness or the

01:17:56.100 CRT or whatever, they wouldn't watch Fox. That's that's a bridge too far. But they do want more fair

01:18:01.060 and balanced news. And they can't stomach something like the CNN segment we just watched.

01:18:06.000 But I would argue and I'm very curious what you think about this. I watch Fox a lot. And it's

01:18:11.540 because I think that the reason that liberals, disaffected liberals won't watch it is really

01:18:16.640 about class. It's about education. It's because they have, you know, like, you know, they they have

01:18:20.840 a graduate degree. Right. And so they want to go to the places that are catering to them at that

01:18:25.280 level. And I feel that Fox is really one of the only outlets that is picturing a working class

01:18:30.240 audience when they're when they're sort of addressing addressing the audience.

01:18:33.920 I think a lot of it comes down to just sort of your approach to delivering the news. Right. I mean,

01:18:39.200 I what a difference between I've worked at ABC, I've worked at NBC, I've worked at Fox.

01:18:42.700 And I will say, you know, you look at the scripts at the broadcast networks and all the multi-syllabic

01:18:47.900 words and everyone's trying to prove how smart they are in their academic pedigree.

01:18:51.900 Whereas at Fox, I mean, the motto on my show was always write tight, write tight, get it simpler,

01:18:56.100 even simpler than that. And Joel Cheatwood, this guy who was brought in by Rogers, brilliant TV guy,

01:19:01.760 sat us down back when I was in America's newsroom with Hemmer and went over our segments, you know,

01:19:06.920 minute by minute and kept saying, what is that? Explain that. Don't assume familiarity by the

01:19:13.180 audience. And he's the one who taught me if the audience is not familiar, they will be so grateful

01:19:18.640 to you for the line or two of explanation. And if the audience is familiar with the story,

01:19:22.620 they will forgive you that 15 seconds. Whereas on CNN, it's you, you will know because you are smart

01:19:30.960 and you've been watching me every night. And therefore, I can jump right into, you know,

01:19:35.760 some whatever discussion. And it's just a turnoff. You can feel it.

01:19:40.480 Absolutely. Absolutely. And I so that's really what I argue in the book is I go through the history of

01:19:45.740 American journalism and show how we had this 19th century populist journalism pioneered by people like

01:19:51.160 Joseph Pulitzer that was really by and for the working class. It was a crusade on their behalf,

01:19:56.800 but he also gossiped about them. He covered crime. You know, he was in those communities talking to

01:20:01.980 them, asking them for two pennies when maybe they only had four pennies. And we really sort of lost

01:20:06.780 that as journalists have sort of become upwardly mobile, as the industry has constricted, the journalists

01:20:12.820 who made it are now part of the American elites. And the sort of business pressures of digital

01:20:19.120 media have really increased that because what you used to have. That's what I want to ask you

01:20:22.760 about, because I understand when you look at the hosts on CNN or MSNBC, I mean, Rachel Maddow was

01:20:26.800 reportedly negotiating a deal for 30 million dollars a year for her next deal. 30. OK, so this person is

01:20:33.500 not in touch with the working class and lemon to millions and millions and millions. And I see that.

01:20:38.760 OK, that's fine. It can happen. You can make a lot of money and still be in touch with those

01:20:43.360 roots. And I would say in my own case, you know, my mom is still middle class. You know, she's

01:20:48.780 living in a in a two bedroom house in Albany and I've offered to help her with all that. It's just

01:20:52.600 not the way she is and it's not the way I was raised. And if you still have people around you

01:20:56.760 who are in that circumstance, you stay in touch with it and you still love people who are in the

01:21:01.300 midst of it and you understand it. You surround yourself with all millionaires and sort of elite

01:21:05.960 academic pedigrees. You're going to respect only that. But I I look at print journalism and digital

01:21:14.480 journalism and they're not like that. These guys are making twenty five thousand bucks a year in

01:21:19.220 some circumstance. If they're lucky print journalist in Cincinnati, 60 grand a year. So what happened to

01:21:24.680 them? So the vast majority of journalists today live in not just blue states, but the most blue states

01:21:33.220 and the most blue districts in the most blue states. That's what a study by Politico found in

01:21:38.160 twenty seventeen. It wasn't just that, you know, the vast majority of journalists live in Clinton

01:21:42.760 districts. They live in the most Clinton districts. The journalism from the middle of the country,

01:21:48.380 the local news newspapers, those have by and large collapsed because of digital journalism.

01:21:54.180 And what happened was you had the sort of great sorting where all of the journalists moved to the

01:21:59.100 coast. That's where all the jobs are. And like you said, some of these jobs, they don't pay a lot.

01:22:03.020 So you have to ask yourself, what kind of a person can afford to take a job in New York City that pays

01:22:07.440 twenty five thousand dollars? Right. It's not a working class person. It's not someone with family

01:22:11.700 dough. Exactly. It's really become a sort of rich person's job at this point. You have to to make the

01:22:18.380 connections in this incredibly selective, very, very elite industry. You have to network, which means

01:22:25.040 you have to go get one of these journalism degrees, which you can't really teach journalism. You know this,

01:22:29.180 Megan. Right. You can't teach someone to be good at listening, to ask the right questions.

01:22:32.680 Right. To question their own biases. But they go and they spend seventy thousand dollars

01:22:37.060 on a journalism master's degree. Right. Who can afford that? Right. So the funnel has become

01:22:42.180 extremely, extremely small. And by the way, that's also why our newsrooms are so white,

01:22:46.880 which is a real problem. They are still very white. There is a real problem with diversity

01:22:51.040 in America's newsrooms because you have to essentially be rich in order to make it. Of course,

01:22:55.620 there are like, you know, counter examples. You know, this working class one who made it that one.

01:22:59.240 But by and large, the way to become a journalist today is to be born into a rich family.

01:23:04.620 Unless you're applying at Fox, in which case, you know, well, I mean, this is what Roger used to

01:23:08.760 say, but he used to say this is from your book. I just quoting it. I heard him say it, too,

01:23:12.600 that his best qualification for his job was that he didn't go to Columbia Journalism School.

01:23:17.020 And then he used to say that, too. You know, he he didn't he didn't like that stuff. And he knew

01:23:20.660 I used to liken him to Willy Wonka at the end of the movie where it was like, how could I trust all of

01:23:25.920 this to a grown up? They'd already have all their own ideas. You know, he he wanted the little Charlie

01:23:29.760 Buckets who he could help mold into a more fair and balanced journalist, not Republican, but just

01:23:35.180 more fair and balanced. And it worked. It worked with lots and lots of journalists over there. OK,

01:23:39.520 let me ask you about this Gallup poll just came out and it says trust in the media has fallen to its

01:23:45.640 second lowest ever. They say only seven percent of adults say they have a great deal of trust in

01:23:52.600 the media. Twenty nine percent say it's a fair amount. But but only 36 percent overall are sort

01:23:58.600 of, you know, saying, yeah, OK, I have either a great deal or a fair amount. On the other hand,

01:24:04.360 only 11 percent of Republicans say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media.

01:24:10.520 31 percent of independents are the vast, vast majority. And 68 percent of Democrats do. So you

01:24:14.800 got Democrats overwhelmingly trusting the media, 11 percent of Republicans, 31 percent of independents

01:24:19.340 saying hell no. And we know why it's for some of the reasons we've just been discussing. So what do you

01:24:25.220 say? I get asked this all the time. What does that mean for the future of journalism? It's such a great

01:24:30.500 question. I have a sort of very unsatisfying answer for that, which is I think one of the problems

01:24:36.940 with our society today, what really ails us is this addiction to knowledge, like this addiction to

01:24:44.240 knowing everything all the time, to being all up on the news. I feel like a lot of people have

01:24:49.620 replaced spirituality with like knowing things right with, you know, the sort of class divide around

01:24:56.180 whether you have a college degree or not, I think is really, really dangerous. But one of the things

01:24:59.900 it's done is it's turned like knowledge and information into this sort of like premium thing.

01:25:05.380 I just don't understand why people need to know everything so much. So I'll give you an

01:25:09.220 example, like all of the negotiations with the Democrats over these bills now, right? The big

01:25:13.260 bipartisan infrastructure bill and then the Build Back Better plan, right? They're negotiating over

01:25:18.540 those bills, right? At some point, those bills are going to get passed in some form or another. But

01:25:22.460 why does every American have to know every second, like, you know, who is the bad guy today? Is it

01:25:28.020 Manchin or Sinema? Who's the good guy like Sanders or this one? It's like, why do we need to know

01:25:32.960 everything? I really feel like that is kind of part of the problem in a way, which is a weird

01:25:37.040 thing for a journalist to say. No, I get it. I do. I honestly, it's like, one of the pleasures of

01:25:43.000 doing this show is we can do, you know, we did Ryan Holiday on stoicism the other day, you can do

01:25:47.620 you don't have to be immersed in the reconciliation bill day to day like we did when I was in cable. And I

01:25:54.620 do think like Matt Taibbi now as of Substack, you know, Rolling Stone is what made him famous.

01:25:59.600 He has said he only consumes information about the subjects he intends to write about. And that's

01:26:05.380 one of his defense mechanisms against this fire hose of largely needless information. But yeah,

01:26:12.360 I'm so excited for your book. I know I taught we talked about you on Bridget Phetasy's podcast,

01:26:17.320 and she's a big fan, too. But I hope people buy it because you should read about it's a good forensic

01:26:22.300 diagnosis of how we got here and where this is going. And I love the title to bad news how woke media

01:26:29.200 is undermining democracy. Good luck with it. Thank you so much.

01:26:34.480 Lots of love. Don't miss our show tomorrow. We're gonna have some fun with the CEO of the Babylon Bee,

01:26:39.360 along with my pal Melissa Francis. Download The Megyn Kelly Show. See you tomorrow.

01:26:43.980 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - October 21, 2021

Vaccine Freedom, China's Military Might, and Woke Media, with Allison Williams, Sen. Josh Hawley, and Batya Ungar-Sargon ｜ Ep. 186

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