Jack Cittarelli is the latest Republican candidate to enter the race for governor of the People s Republic of New Jersey. Megyn and Allie Beth Stuckey join him to talk about his campaign and why he should win. Plus, a new addition to The Megyn Kelly Show on the Triumph channel.
00:03:00.640Everybody needs a little red meat when it comes to dinner time.
00:03:03.140And I can also now announce that our friends from the Real Clear Politics podcast on SiriusXM will be moving over to join yours truly right here on the Megyn Kelly channel.
00:03:13.680Now they're going to be doing the show live right on this program on this channel, which they don't do.
00:03:19.040OK, so you're going to hear the guys from RCP, Tom Bevan, Carl Cannon and Andrew Walworth now bringing their news and analysis to serve as the lead in to our show.
00:03:28.760They will be live every weekday at 11 a.m.
00:03:32.280That's great because you can't get their podcast currently until the evening.
00:03:35.720And by the time the evening rolls around, sometimes you're busy.
00:03:38.280Be great if we could have them live at 11, which now you will on our channel.
00:03:41.900That starts on Wednesday of next week.
00:03:45.320OK, we're going to have many more announcements coming.
00:03:47.720The lineup is populating by the day, so we'll launch it next week with some great starts and then it will be dramatically filled in within the two months to follow.
00:06:15.960I met her back in 2017 when I first profiled him in depth for NBC and went deep on his family, his sister, Lindsay, his Aunt Wee, his mamaw, and Usha, who sat with us when I interviewed J.D. for that long piece in which J.D. said he really, he felt like he projected used car salesmen when people like me told him he should run for national office.
00:06:39.560It was before he was even running for Senate.
00:06:42.180And anyway, theirs is a deep love story.
00:07:12.120I mean, she's got like an especially sound mind.
00:07:14.340And like I said, a calmness to her that I think Erica has found comforting.
00:07:20.640I saw Erica literally leaning on her at the Charlie Kirk Presidential Medal of Freedom Award ceremony a couple weeks ago at the White House.
00:08:19.320It seems to go for miles and miles and miles.
00:08:23.060Andrew Colvert, the EP of Charlie's show, was reporting online yesterday that half of the students at the University of Mississippi applied for tickets.
00:08:55.360You can see the enthusiasm for Turning Point, for our sitting vice president, and of course, for beautiful, sweet, sensitive Erica.
00:09:06.540Erica, there's video of her behind the stage, and she's wearing, for the listening audience, jeans and a white Freedom t-shirt like Charlie had on when he died.
00:10:51.260It's like seven weeks out is a short amount of time, and she has been forcing herself to do a few of these things just to keep now her organization going
00:11:02.240and to keep Turning Point on people's minds, which is what Charlie would have wanted.
00:11:08.920She spoke to the crowd before J.D. came out, and here's a little bit of that.
00:12:24.200People are literally attacking her for seeming two together.
00:12:28.680You know, as if, I mean, there's like crazy theory.
00:12:30.660I don't want to get into it, but she should stay off the internet.
00:12:33.360And she should go to places like that where she can feel what's real, what's real.
00:12:39.520The love for Charlie, the love for her, the love for her family, the love for her turning point family, which she and Charlie helped build.
00:12:48.420I mean, she helped Charlie build it in the later years and take it next level and inspired him to take his own life next level.
00:15:34.760The way he handled himself, the way he interacted with these students, had virtually every right-wing publication today using the number 48.
00:15:58.080And these policies are not even solving the problems.
00:16:01.740These policies are just creating chaos.
00:16:04.520I can believe that the United States should lower its levels of immigration in the future while also respecting that there are people who have come here through lawful immigration pathways that have contributed to the country.
00:16:19.120But just because one person or 10 people or 100 people came in legally and contributed to the United States of America, does that mean that we're thereby committed to let in a million or 10 million or 100 million people a year in the future?
00:16:35.280We cannot have – I'll go and finish.
00:16:38.220We cannot have an immigration policy where what was good for the country 50 or 60 years ago binds the country inevitably for the future.
00:16:46.480There are too many people who want to come to the United States of America, and my job as vice president is not to look out for the interests of the whole world.
00:16:53.620It's to look out for the people of the United States.
00:17:20.460He's just – he's funny, and he's very deft at maneuvering through these issues and condensing down, like, a lot of information into its most salient point and hitting it.
00:17:32.860It's from all the experience he's had.
00:17:35.100It's from his fearlessness and going on those Sunday shows with hostile media.
00:17:38.640Like, there's not a corner he won't go into.
00:17:41.440Unlike the left, he's used to getting cross-examined by people who can't stand him.
00:17:45.820So answering a few questions from a couple of hostile students at University of Mississippi, not a problem.
00:17:51.800Here he's asked about how his faith has helped him in his current job.
00:17:57.780Can you tell us how your faith helps you in your role as vice president?
00:18:03.000I grew up in a country where you just didn't hear political leaders talk about their faith.
00:18:06.880But the reason why I try to be the best husband I can be, the best father I can be, the reason why I care so much about all the issues that we're going to talk about is because I believe that I've been placed in this position for a brief period of time to do the most amount of good for God and for the country that I love so much.
00:18:27.280And I have two very important duties as vice president of the United States to the American people and to God, and that's the most important influence my faith has on me.
00:18:35.700He talked about how he is hoping that at some point his wife, Usha, will convert to Christianity, and I think he said she's agnostic.
00:18:52.840I think that's what he said, and forgive me if I've gotten that wrong, pretty sure that's what he said, and that he's hoping that soon she will convert to Christianity.
00:19:00.240Yeah, that's what he said, and that would be pretty extraordinary.
00:19:04.040He said they're raising their children Christian.
00:19:07.320And then he also talked about how he grew up in an area, you know, of course, he was in Middletown, Ohio.
00:19:13.760He spent lots of his summers down in the Hala in Kentucky, and he talked about how where he grew up, people were faithful, but they did not talk about their faith.
00:19:21.540It was not like the way Charlie did it, but talked about how Charlie really influenced him on that front, and as he did with so many of us.
00:19:29.840You know, right now I'm on my fourth faith book that I've been reading just in the past couple of weeks, thanks to Charlie.
00:19:34.580I think a lot of us are going through that, and thanks to all of you, too, by the way, who many of you emailed into the show and emailed me, Megan, at MeganKelley.com, with your recommendations of faith-based books that could help somebody like me who's looking for a window of entry.
00:19:50.780I mean, obviously, I'm Catholic, but I don't know the Bible.
00:19:55.500I certainly can't quote it the way Charlie could, and I have been having questions about faith, given everything that's been going on with the annulment process that I'm pursuing on my first time.
00:20:04.580I think you guys have heard that story.
00:20:06.440So, in any event, he can relate from the sound of it.
00:20:09.620Maybe Usha can relate from the sound of it, and maybe some of you guys can relate, too, so good for him for taking that on.
00:20:16.480The question of what we're doing with our National Guard in U.S. cities came up, and this was an interesting answer because it kind of got to, I think, overall, in my view, also maybe some of the lawfare.
00:20:28.320It was basically, should we be more careful when we Republicans are in charge, understanding that we won't always be, and that when Democrat rule returns, some of these same tactics are going to get turned around on us.
00:20:43.520That's basically where I think this questioner was going.
00:20:45.660So, take a listen to the question, but listen, most importantly, to how J.D. answers it.
00:20:50.400You guys have sent the military into Washington, D.C. and a few other cities that I can't think of off the top of my head, which, first off, they've had wonderful results.
00:21:00.400Like, no one, no one can deny the results of that.
00:21:05.940Well, it's not necessarily something you did wrong, but it's what could someone else do wrong.
00:21:11.900Let's say we get a complete tyrant in office, and let's say we're having, let's say Turning Point USA is having a huge protest against, you know, something really bad that we don't like.
00:21:22.460And let's say he's, a president is saying that it's getting violent.
00:21:25.860How can we prevent someone from abusing that power?
00:21:28.200Here's something that I want conservatives, I want every conservative to remember.
00:21:32.120It's an important part of my entire political philosophy, is we cannot be afraid to do something because the left might do it in the future.
00:21:40.840The left is already going to do it regardless of whether we do it.
00:21:44.320That is the takeaway of the last 40 years.
00:21:49.480What I'm worried about, frankly, is what the far left already did with American law enforcement, and that is the thing that we have to prevent against.
00:21:57.300And the answer to that question is you make sure the people who did it face penalties for using the federal power against American citizens.
00:22:11.140I mean, they're going through all these old files.
00:22:14.580And if it's if it's beyond the point where a crime could be charged, they're just outing them to the media, you know.
00:22:20.720And if it's something that's not a crime, but a scandal, they're outing it to the media.
00:22:25.880And if it's something that actually is a crime, like John Bolton allegedly sending classified documents to himself and his wife and his daughter without clearance, they're charging it.
00:22:37.320And some of the worst actors obviously are getting charged for other crimes that would not clearly have been charged.
00:22:44.500But for the fact that they charged Trump with made up crimes like Tish James, she's at least getting charged with a real crime.
00:22:52.800Whether she did it, she'll have her day in court to prove one way or the other.
00:22:55.980But I mean, no one's disputing that charge would not normally be brought against her.
00:22:59.720It was brought because she made several years of Trump's life a living hell when she tried to steal his business from him over bullshit made up charges involving alleged bank fraud that he did not commit.
00:23:14.760All the banks said he paid us back with interest.
00:23:17.100We're delighted to do business with him.
00:23:18.700And she said, no, there's some inherent harm in just you having gotten these interest rates for some time.
00:23:24.880Well, now she's dealing with interest rates and accusations that she got some sort of a benefit, whether somebody was actually harmed or not.
00:24:19.840Get rid of these illegals and restore some accountability to these disgusting offices that have been totally corrupted under Democrat rule.
00:24:42.480As much as I hope and pray that we can be a nation of Christians, the idea of a Christian nation scares me.
00:24:50.600So I'd like to hear your feedback on a pretty nuanced argument here that perhaps there should be a wall of separation, as at least one of our founders advocated, between church and state at the national level.
00:25:03.280However, that line can and should get blurrier as we descend to the community level.
00:25:07.840If you go back to the First Amendment, it doesn't say separation of church and state.
00:25:11.900It says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
00:25:15.740But if you go back to the founding time, there were actually a number of states that had formally recognized churches.
00:25:22.680So there was the Anglican Church of Virginia.
00:25:25.020That was the official state church of Virginia.
00:25:26.800And yes, I do think that what happened is the Supreme Court interpreted Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion to effectively throw the church out of every public space at the federal, state and local level.
00:25:40.320I think it was a terrible mistake, and we're still paying for the consequences of it today.
00:25:44.540But if, and I think this is your point, if you were to undo that, if you were to get back to a system actually meant by the founders where Congress is not setting up an established religion,
00:25:54.620but people in their local communities can kind of do whatever it is that they want to do, I think that would be a better system than what we have today.
00:26:01.920But I think the most important principle that we have got to remember is you do not, you do not have to completely kick God out of the public square, which is what we've done in modern America.
00:26:34.560We've deluded ourselves into believing that you can't have any mention of religion or that we're not actually a Christian nation, which was kind of baked into his question.
00:27:30.840That's the way out of this for everybody.
00:27:32.860More faith in the public square and in their lives and more connection for people and more dwarfing of oneself and understanding that there is something larger than you in this world that matters.
00:27:42.680There's a reason atheists and others push that out and have led us into being more and more godless.
00:27:52.780And I do think it's directly linked to those polls we talked about yesterday where you've got between 20 and 30 percent of leftists who think political violence is acceptable, who think it's fine.
00:28:02.120And we saw that poll of Illinois primary voters in the Democrat Party thinking 81 percent of them say Trump and MAGA are Nazis, 81 percent.
00:28:12.980So I do think those people need to get back in touch with God, with with their faith and understand the roots of this country and what leads to happiness and what doesn't.
00:28:24.980A life of atheism and nonbelief and disconnection to anything other than one's navel has proven to be deeply problematic and dangerous and we're going down the wrong path.
00:28:40.160Kamala Harris, she's finally subjected herself to a couple of mildly challenging interviews, and it's no coincidence that it happened overseas.
00:28:50.440Right. We showed you the one with the British journalist the other day, and now we have an Aussie who works for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
00:28:59.900Her name is Sarah Ferguson. And take a look at this exchange that happened with these two.
00:29:06.400Wasn't Joe Biden meant to put it on him? Wasn't his refusal to recognize his own frailties the reason that you faced a nearly impossible task?
00:29:15.740I ran against Donald Trump for president. And Donald Trump ran on a platform that was in large part, I believe, misrepresenting his intentions.
00:29:31.360I do believe that there are a fair number of people that voted for Donald Trump who believed him when he told them that his first priority on day one is going to be to bring down prices. And he didn't.
00:29:45.560And you combine that misrepresentation of intention with also what was at play in terms of massive amounts of mis and disinformation.
00:29:56.140And a truncated calendar in terms of the clock.
00:30:01.140I want to interrupt you because that is a world-class pivot, but it is not the question that I asked you, which is about Joe Biden's failure to recognize his own frailties and what that did to you.
00:30:13.420The question is about Joe Biden. Are you still reluctant to criticize the former president?
00:30:26.560Was it Joe Biden's decision, his failure to recognize his own frailties in that position that put you in the position that made it almost impossible to win that race?
00:30:36.460He was not frail as president of the United States.
00:32:39.540Was it Joe Biden's decision, his failure to recognize his own frailties in that position, that puts you in the position and made it almost impossible for you to win that race?
00:32:50.060He was not frail as president of the United States.
00:33:20.240I'm talking about how all these people went in there and they pled the fifth, including Dr.
00:33:27.500Kevin O'Connor, President Joe Biden's personal physician.
00:33:30.960And the House Oversight Committee has now referred this all to the DOJ, saying, you know, like, please investigate these people who took the fifth on what appears to be the greatest cover up in presidential history.
00:33:43.080That Joe Biden was incompetent and non-composmentous.
00:33:46.480And even his own physician appears to have been in on the cover up.
00:33:51.240Pam Bondi, because he pled the fifth when he came before us at House Oversight.
00:33:54.160And we were talking about Dr. Kevin O'Connor in the piece, and we pointed out the fact that he helped before Joe Biden had returned, had won president.
00:34:05.980It was like 2017, 18, 19, right in that time frame there.
00:34:42.740And why was Dr. Kevin O'Connor recommending Jim Biden to do anything with a hospital group when the guy had zero experience in hospital administration?
00:34:51.660It spoke to the cozy, the overly familiar relationship that this doctor had with the Bidens from Jill to Jim to Joe and raised the question of whether Dr.
00:35:06.080O'Connor received any sort of a kickback.
00:35:07.840Well, we didn't know the answer to that because what we did have was a denial from James Biden's lawyer that this doctor received any kickback.
00:35:16.560But we couldn't ask the doctor himself because, again, he pled the fifth.
00:35:22.540OK, and we went back actually to see who specifically it was Joe.
00:35:27.080It was the Biden spokesperson, Joe Biden, who said there was no kickback.
00:35:31.940We went back to see who that was, who denied it.
00:35:34.520And it was a White House spokesperson named Ian Sams.
00:35:36.660And I remember thinking, I'm pretty sure that guy's lied to us many, many times.
00:35:41.660He's been on, you know, we've run clips of him many, many times where he was denying the mental acuity problems and so on.
00:35:48.440And it was very clear to me he was a liar.
00:35:54.020Because he, too, had to give an interview to the Oversight Committee.
00:35:57.800And he was asked about how he allegedly knew that Joe Biden was a OK, something he said publicly and apparently insisted was true to the House Oversight Committee.
00:38:53.980You, Kamala Harris, Kareem Jean-Pierre, and Joe Biden and his family themselves.
00:39:00.360Plus these top aides like Mike Donilon, who we talked about the other day, who admitted he had not only $4 million in his pocket to get Biden reelected,
00:39:10.080but another $4 million promised him if he could get him over the finish line.
00:39:14.080Okay, we're going to bring on Allie Beth in a second, but I just want to make two more points, two more points before we do.
00:39:21.280One of the things that I've been thinking about today because we are, yesterday was a seven-week mark on Charlie, is the Kirk family.
00:39:31.740And there was a video that was shown online, Erica posted it, of their little girl who's three.
00:39:38.220And they appear to be going by the Charlie, the Turning Point HQ in Arizona.
00:41:43.820This is Allison and Tom, and that's their daughter, Lexi, who survived her brother, her big brother, Blake, at our annual Fourth of July party, where we dress up like colonial figures.
00:41:54.300Here's Blake, gone too soon at age 17.
00:42:04.260He did have COVID, which can cause heart infection.
00:42:07.780He had received a double dose of the vaccine, as almost every teenage boy did, because those are the recommendations.
00:42:15.200Most places you couldn't even go to school.
00:42:17.040Most colleges, he was in high school, but couldn't even go unless you proved that you did it.
00:42:20.580And they don't know what caused the myocarditis exactly or what, you know, what led to it, but they know it caused a heart attack in someone they adored too soon.
00:42:32.700And as a result, they lost their son, Blake, and Lexi lost her big brother, Blake.
00:42:37.420Here's a piece of the tribute we did to Blake a year or so after he died.
00:42:42.160Blake, what lessons has this taught you about why we're here, what your purpose is?
00:42:50.960I mean, every time I'm hanging with my friends now, I like, I always just take a second just to like look around.
00:42:58.240Because I feel like when I used to hang out with them, with my friends, I wouldn't like live in the moment, I guess you could say.
00:43:05.240And it would go so fast and then it's over.
00:43:07.000Now, like, we're all leaving for college to hang out before last few weeks.
00:43:12.420Like, I just look around and just, I can enjoy it so much more.
00:43:16.740Clemson's man down going into this freshman year.
00:43:59.420But I wanted to tell you the upshot as we're thinking about Erica Kirk and we're thinking about Erica and Charlie's two babes.
00:44:05.980And that is the Barkledges were determined.
00:44:09.540That's one of the reasons we profiled them was because the mom and dad, who are dear friends of ours, just refused to give up.
00:44:17.100They refused to let their lives be ruined to subject their daughter, Lexi, to a life of nonstop pain.
00:44:24.040They did turn their pain into purpose.
00:44:27.000And since then, they've formed this foundation, Blake Gives Back, which is helping do screenings at hospitals, I'm sorry, at schools across the nation for cardiac irregularities.
00:44:39.340And they've saved innumerable lives with kids who had no idea that there was something wrong.
00:44:47.500But the EKGs that they've been offering found them, found them.
00:44:51.460In one case, it was like one kid almost didn't go.
00:44:59.020And he got it addressed thanks to this Blake Gives Back foundation that they're now running in honor of their son, powered by their son and his memory.
00:45:10.000So they've – Tom, you may remember he works at Johnson & Johnson.
00:45:15.120And that wasn't for whatever it's worth, the vaccine that Blake got.
00:45:18.920But he works at J&J, and he changed the bereavement policy there, which had only allowed for five days off in the loss of an immediate family member to now 30, 30 days off, which of course is what it should be.
00:45:31.460And J&J was very good about it and like very – has been very supportive of the Barkledges.
00:45:36.240Because it's just – I'm just thinking about it because in the initial stages here, when you're two months in, you're not – most people can't even function.
00:45:46.160Never mind think about – I mean, when we ran that tribute for Blake, Tom and Allison, they hadn't formed Blake Gives Back.
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01:00:44.860Abortion is health care for women who need it, who have unwanted pregnancies, who have 12-year-old girls who have been raped, who have experienced incest, Allie.
01:01:00.260If I said to you, okay, fine, we will only allow—which this is not my position—but if I said we will only allow abortion in those 1% of cases in which it's rape or incest, would you agree with me to ban the rest of abortions?
01:01:12.520The denial of abortion health care to women is 100% harmful to the woman who absolutely needs it.
01:01:20.440And abortion is 100% harmful to the child.
01:28:39.780All these things are problems in New Jersey.
01:28:41.240So I think that message not just fits the mood of the state and again is what the same kinds of things that got Chris Christie elected.
01:28:48.920So even though it's become a very blue state, they haven't elected a Republican senator in forever or voted a Republican for president, I think, since Bush 43 or 41.
01:29:00.200They did elect Chris Christie that long ago on all the same kind of themes, corruption in Trenton, economics out of whack, et cetera.
01:29:06.840So I agree with Dan that Chattarelli's momentum is not what it was.
01:29:11.660But no one I know in either party who works in the state familiar with this race, no one would be surprised if Chattarelli won.
01:29:36.160And I've been very encouraged by the latest polls.
01:29:38.540But how do you get it over the finish line?
01:29:41.020First of all, Megan, the polls that we trust, including Emerson this morning, have it as literally a dead heat.
01:29:46.320There's a couple that have me up by a point or two.
01:29:48.740Listen, people across the state are ticked off after eight years of failed policies of the current administration, all of which have been endorsed by my opponent.