The Megyn Kelly Show - Vivek Rises, DeSantis Untouched, and Trump's Arrest, with Michael Knowles, Emily Jashinsky, Comfortably Smug, and Charles C.W. Cooke

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.200 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Here we are post the first

00:00:17.500 GOP presidential primary debate of 2023. Did you watch it or did you watch Trump on Tucker?

00:00:24.880 I watched the debate and then I watched Trump on Tucker today. That's the advantage of the

00:00:30.760 Tucker Forum. You can watch it when you want. Query whether that works as a counter-programming

00:00:35.780 measure, right? Because you don't have to watch it live. And the debate was interesting. It was

00:00:40.520 interesting. It was bizarre for me personally because, of course, I was out there with Brett

00:00:47.160 Baer for all of his past GOP presidential debate primaries. We used to do them all together.

00:00:52.600 And so I had a lot of sort of inside knowledge on what they were doing, what they weren't doing,

00:00:57.400 changes that they've made. Some I like, some I didn't. I'll tell you my number one thing in terms

00:01:02.540 of the formatting of the debate. Get to it. Get to it. Everyone's been waiting. Don't, we don't need

00:01:07.980 to hear the national anthem at the beginning of the debate. You play that right before the debate

00:01:11.480 gets started. All due respect to the national anthem. You guys know I love the national anthem,

00:01:14.860 but we don't need to waste three minutes of the primetime debate with that. That can be played

00:01:19.820 before we actually start. We don't need the long video wind up trying to get people excited.

00:01:25.380 They're already excited. Let's go. And we need a strong first question that kicks things off with

00:01:31.880 a boom. All due respect to Oliver Anthony. We've been covering that story, too, in his song. That

00:01:36.640 was the wrong first question. It was a sleeper. It was such a gimme. It invited the stupid opening

00:01:42.760 statements that Fox was trying to avoid. No, get in and get out a precise hit. And I will also say

00:01:51.160 this. There is nothing wrong with the reporters in the room at a presidential debate, the hosts

00:01:57.740 being slightly antagonistic to the candidates. It works. It's our job. We're supposed to be

00:02:05.100 slightly antagonistic to them. We're not supposed to be cheerleaders, bootlickers rooting for them.

00:02:10.700 I'm not calling Brett Martha that, but I'm reacting to some of the things I've seen on

00:02:15.140 Twitter. Real journalists are not fucking bootlickers. Go out there. Be skeptical. Press

00:02:20.660 them. Push. Be hard. Have an edge. That's our job. We're not supposed to love them. We're

00:02:26.580 supposed to love truth and the audience. And so I was missing some of that last night. But having

00:02:33.460 said all that, I enjoyed it. I actually really did enjoy it. And I thought the best parts of it

00:02:37.680 were where the candidates mixed it up directly with one another, where they started rhetorically

00:02:42.200 punching one another. And in those moments, as the moderator, you just want to shrink down to

00:02:46.420 nothing. I'm not even here. I'm not here. You guys go. You do your thing. No one wants to see

00:02:51.320 the moderator. And they did, for the most part, a good job of that. A couple of times, I thought

00:02:54.720 the moderators stopped good exchanges in order to bring in Doug Burgum. I mean, is it Rupert Murdoch

00:03:00.340 who loves Doug Burgum? Because there was absolutely no reason to interrupt great TV

00:03:03.760 with, let's hear what Doug Burgum thinks. Nobody, literally nobody in America was thinking that,

00:03:08.640 except for maybe Rupert. Nothing else would explain the continuous tossing to Doug Burgum

00:03:15.380 at critical moments. There were lots of punches thrown. The winner, I say, I tweeted this out last

00:03:24.120 night was not in the room. Former President Trump had to be the winner because, in my view,

00:03:30.000 nobody changed the game last night. While some did well, some did less well. Nobody had the huge

00:03:35.240 knockout blow that would have elevated them to anywhere near striking distance of Trump,

00:03:40.920 who, as I said, had done a pre-taped interview with Tucker, which aired on X, formerly known as

00:03:46.680 Twitter. Today, Trump is preparing to head to Georgia, where he is expected to surrender at the

00:03:51.440 Fulton County Jail on felony charges connected to the last presidential election. We expect him to

00:03:56.940 do it later in the day. They're saying it's going to be a primetime appearance. He's not dumb. You

00:04:02.780 know what he's trying to do? He's trying to drive all the evening news coverage to cover that instead

00:04:07.160 of the debate. You cannot say the man is dumb. He has great political instincts, and he's turning

00:04:12.000 lemons into lemonade, I guess, to the extent you can turn a criminal indictment into anything good.

00:04:18.700 We do expect to see a mugshot, at least as of now. It's ridiculous.

00:04:23.300 Sir, do not need a mugshot of Donald Trump. A mugshot is so that you have something you can show

00:04:30.180 if he absconds. If he takes off, you can post it on the FBI's most wanted list. He's literally the

00:04:36.560 most famous man in the world. Stop with the mugshot nonsense. Just makes you look like even more harsh

00:04:43.000 partisans than you already are down there. Those who are going after him. Some of our free favorites

00:04:48.520 are here on the show today to break it all down for you in just a bit. National Review's Charles C.W.

00:04:54.000 Cook will be here. Plus, we'll talk to The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles, who had my favorite tweet of the

00:04:58.560 night. But we begin today with Emily Jashinsky, culture editor at The Federalist and Comfortably Smug,

00:05:05.680 co-host of The Ruthless Podcast. Those guys were live on the scene doing the pregame. Great to have you both

00:05:12.440 here. So you heard my sort of overall take on, you know, the Fox format and how they handled most of

00:05:19.680 the evening. My take was Trump was the big winner because I didn't see any I didn't see anybody just

00:05:26.000 rise as the biggest star that's going to threaten Trump, which I think makes Trump remain the winner

00:05:32.580 with his 46 points ahead. But what do you guys think, Emily? Well, in 2016, Republicans had that

00:05:38.760 two tier system where like the JV squad was debating each other. This entire debate was JV.

00:05:44.500 Yeah, it was the entire debate was the kitty table. Exactly. Because of what you said, Megan,

00:05:48.080 which is that Donald Trump has a 40 point lead, not a 10 point lead, a 40 point lead in Iowa.

00:05:53.520 According to the RCP average, she has about a 26 point lead. Basically, nothing that could have

00:05:59.080 happened at that debate last night could have changed that margin, which is why I actually think

00:06:03.540 Ron DeSantis' strategy to just sort of blend into the background was really smart. I think he realized

00:06:08.260 he was the varsity guy on the JV team. Vivek realized that he was the freshman guy trying

00:06:14.460 to make it onto the JV team. So he was dunking every time he could. Even if he missed, he's trying

00:06:19.080 to show that he can jump. And with the other guys, when you have the former vice president

00:06:22.880 of the United States, Mike Pence, just kind of looking like he's begging for airtime, trying to

00:06:27.540 interject into every exchange, asking the moderators to go to him. It looked like a varsity guy going to

00:06:33.980 the JV team and dunking on all the kids. It just was a really bad look, especially when the guy who's

00:06:39.980 up by 40 points is not in the room. So I think if it's a win for anyone, it's a win for Trump and

00:06:45.460 Vivek, who did exactly what he needed to do, which was generate head times. According to the New York

00:06:50.080 Times, he got the second most time talking, the second most time talking, which is pretty remarkable

00:06:56.580 for Vivek there. So big win for him on his terms. But for everybody else, the only thing that could

00:07:02.440 come out of last night was really a Trump win. And that's exactly what happened.

00:07:06.440 Mike Pence would not stop interrupting, would not stop talking, even when they'd gone back to him.

00:07:11.200 Had I been the moderator, I would have handled that very easily. I would have said,

00:07:14.100 you can continue talking, sir. It'll come out of your future time. You only get a limited time.

00:07:18.720 So go ahead. If you want to use the remainder of the time you have on this one issue, go for it.

00:07:22.680 And then I would have shut up and then he would have shut up, too.

00:07:24.780 He was it was borderline rude because they were going back to him. They gave it. They gave him

00:07:29.120 his 30 seconds to respond. And then he would jump in anyway. And it was like and then he doesn't

00:07:33.600 understand the meaning of rap. It's like the double bell is there for the respect of the audience and

00:07:39.640 the process and the number of issues that are important that you have to get to. It's just so

00:07:44.020 rude. It's all about me. But I have more to say. I have more to say. So I'm going to blow off your bell

00:07:47.740 after you've come back to me twice. Like, be quiet. Be quiet. Be respectful of the people in this room.

00:07:53.980 It's not all about you. I was going to say, Smug, you know, a feisty Mike Pence was not on my debate

00:08:00.580 bingo card. Like what? Did not predict that. But your your overall take on how it went last night.

00:08:07.740 Yeah, I mean, I think he definitely realizes that, yes, he's he is a vice president. He needs to kind

00:08:13.540 of have that kind of gravitas and demand that kind of respect. I think he could have maybe taken a

00:08:18.360 better tack towards accomplishing that. But I do have to agree with the overall take. It ended up

00:08:23.340 working in Trump's favor of not showing up, making it look like everyone else is essentially fighting

00:08:28.240 for table scraps. And there really wasn't any kind of like a knockout blow where one of these candidates

00:08:33.840 could consolidate the non-Trump vote and actually post, you know, kind of a challenge to the dominance

00:08:40.240 that Trump has already established. But seeing the interactions between all the various candidates was

00:08:45.060 really interesting. There are a lot of surprises for me seeing it happen. And I think a lot of them

00:08:48.920 realize how critical that debate is going to be. I don't think we're going to end up with a very long

00:08:54.640 primary season of a bunch of debates. I think there's, you know, the field is going to winnow

00:08:59.600 very quickly. Hmm. Vivek was a star, probably, I think, the star of the show last night because,

00:09:09.500 well, many of us thought that the other candidates would spend their time going after Ron DeSantis

00:09:13.660 since he has been the leader of the B team from the beginning, you know, Trump being the only one

00:09:18.460 in the A team. He has been going down. DeSantis' poll numbers have been falling and Vivek's have been

00:09:24.320 rising a little. But I would say, you know, if you want to say who's got momentum, you'd have to put

00:09:28.840 Vivek over Ron DeSantis, at least according to the most recent polls. So either the candidates saw that

00:09:34.960 or they have some internal polling that shows Vivek is a threat because they were all like

00:09:40.420 to Vivek. And that's good for Vivek. You want you want attention at the debates. If you talk more,

00:09:47.280 that's better. If you the Nate Silver, he was posting that Vivek is rapidly becoming better

00:09:54.200 known and that the Google search traffic over the past 24 hours among the leading non-Trump

00:09:59.400 candidates shows Vivek with the biggest spike. People Googling his name, people Googling his age,

00:10:06.380 whether you loved him or you hated him. That's good. That's good attention for him. So I would

00:10:12.400 say, I mean, you tell me, Emily, but I would say Vivek gained the most of the candidates who are out

00:10:16.980 there. Yeah, I would say the exact same thing, and especially because he's an unknown quantity. So

00:10:22.120 when when voters don't know you at all, I mean, so even like Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, definitely

00:10:26.920 Mike Pence. These are known quantities with the vast majority of voters. Ron DeSantis, people know what

00:10:32.220 they're about. They feel pretty comfortable. A lot of these people have been around for a really long

00:10:35.960 time. Vivek is new to a lot of voters. So that means he has more room to grow. So he's already

00:10:42.520 just barely behind DeSantis and national averages. So almost, you know, getting to margin of error

00:10:47.460 territory in some polls. And in that sense, if you also have a lot of voters who are just being

00:10:53.540 introduced to you and you come out and put on a performance like that, I'm sure he turned some

00:10:57.880 people off. But I actually think a lot of folks in the Beltway looked at Vivek and were like, he got

00:11:02.120 crushed by Nikki Haley. He got crushed by Chris Christie. But to a lot of voters who are in the

00:11:07.740 Trump camp, they might not be persuadable. They might not want to vote for someone else. But for a lot of

00:11:13.200 people that are dissatisfied with establishment politicians, which is a good chunk of the Republican

00:11:18.520 base, they're going to look at Mike Pence denigrating him for having no experience, which, by the way,

00:11:23.380 is what every candidate did to Donald Trump unsuccessfully in 2016 and say, yeah, that's

00:11:28.420 exactly what we like about him, because he doesn't sound like a typical Republican. So if that's his

00:11:33.480 first introduction to a lot of voters, he did a good job. I agree. He gained the most of everyone.

00:11:39.080 Smug, who do you think gained the most of everyone?

00:11:42.520 Well, I'm going to Vivek for a second. I think a question I have in my mind for him is, you know,

00:11:49.880 you see him show up outside the courtroom with like a petition whenever Trump has an indictment,

00:11:54.780 essentially acting like a Trump surrogate. I want to know who's the person that's going to show up,

00:11:59.060 you know, to vote and is going to say, I'm picking Vivek over Trump. Instead of just voting for Trump,

00:12:04.080 I go the indirect route. I think a lot of Vivek's message is essentially just echoing, hey,

00:12:09.120 like last night when he says Trump's the greatest president of our lifetime, it's like, okay, well,

00:12:12.940 then why are you running against him if that's the case? Seems like he did a great job and might

00:12:16.520 just have Trump. So I really want to see what kind of differentiation there is in the minds of

00:12:21.080 any voters of why would I vote for Vivek over Trump if I like Trump as the best president ever.

00:12:26.140 I think there was a lot to gain, actually, surprisingly, by Ron DeSantis because

00:12:29.920 Vivek's surge in the polls came right before the debate. So all the crosshairs from the other

00:12:35.660 candidates were on Vivek. Ron DeSantis, you know, most people thought someone's going to try to,

00:12:40.240 you know, knock him down, take over. He kind of got to blend into the background and watch everyone

00:12:45.460 else go after Vivek. So that helped him a lot. He didn't make any kind of like a major mistake.

00:12:51.080 You know, there were all these stories about the super PAC had released this memo for what he should

00:12:54.820 do. So, you know, he definitely had a lot that he was probably thinking about, like, am I saying

00:12:58.860 something that was on that memo? Now all these journalists are going to point it out. But

00:13:01.680 by just blending into the background, I'd say he served himself best.

00:13:05.980 Hmm. All right. Now, what about who lost ground last night? I mean, who do you think

00:13:10.220 lost ground, went in and, you know, better off than they emerged, Emily?

00:13:15.460 Yeah, I think it's a really easy answer. And that would be Tim Scott, somebody who has a lot of

00:13:19.800 money and resources behind him, who has put in a big ground game in Iowa, New Hampshire and South

00:13:25.360 Carolina and flubbed basically every major opportunity he had to make his mark in that

00:13:31.200 debate. There are a lot of donors behind Tim Scott. Sorry, keep going. I'm so enthusiastic about

00:13:36.520 your point. I was like, what's happening? Where is he? Keep going. I was just going to say he's so

00:13:41.840 talented as a politician. Nikki Haley also, by the way, is very talented as a politician. And she

00:13:46.840 made the most of a lot of moments that got tossed to her. The best that she can do is a kind of never

00:13:50.640 Trump Republican candidate in a field in a voter base that's not super open to that. But just sort

00:13:55.380 of theatrically, she did a good job taking seizing some of those moments. And Tim Scott did not. He has a

00:14:01.060 lot of money behind him. A lot of big donors really were putting their hopes on Tim Scott. And if you want

00:14:06.400 to have a chance in a field where Donald Trump's up by 40 points, DeSantis is even up in Iowa, you know,

00:14:11.520 we're close to him in any poll. If you want to have a chance, it has to be in these debates. It has to be

00:14:16.940 in these moments where you're making a huge splash. And he didn't come anywhere close to that once last

00:14:22.380 night. You know, Smug, I know a lot of very well off Republican donors, a lot of them. And they've been

00:14:29.020 asking me and talking in social circles for a while about Vivek and Tim Scott, who who's most

00:14:36.160 likely to be Trump's VP out of those two. And for a long time, they've been saying it's got to be

00:14:41.440 Tim Scott, right? It's got to be Tim Scott because Vivek just wasn't as well known and they didn't

00:14:45.060 have as much buzz. I think after last night, if the race is to be Trump's number, you know, number

00:14:49.920 two, Vivek surpassed Tim Scott easily. Yeah, I mean, David Sachs actually recently just hosted

00:14:56.720 Vivek at his home in L.A. for an event. So I think a lot of the donors started seeing that

00:15:03.560 Tim Scott has been essentially in witness protection for the past couple months. You

00:15:07.720 haven't seen him in public much. And then in the debate last night, just solidify that in

00:15:11.620 everyone's minds. He disappeared. It didn't seem like he was even that interested in trying to make

00:15:16.300 a mark and actually compete for the for the nomination. So he lost the most ground in my mind,

00:15:23.260 for sure. OK, so I want to talk about some specific moments, including like the best

00:15:30.100 one liner. And I would say the best I think the best one liner and the best comeback are

00:15:36.820 all in the same exchange. The two men involved were Chris Christie and Vivek. We've got it teed

00:15:43.680 up as sought one. People are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate

00:15:52.800 change. Governor Haley, are you bothering me? Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I've had

00:16:00.480 enough. I've had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like chat GPT standing up here.

00:16:08.360 And the last person in one of these debates, Brett, who stood in the middle of the stage

00:16:15.500 and said, what's a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here was Barack Obama. And I'm

00:16:21.680 afraid we're dealing with the same type of amateur standing stage tonight.

00:16:25.300 Come over and give me a hug. Give me a hug just like you did to Obama.

00:16:29.660 The same type of amateur. And you'll help elect me just like you did to Obama, too. Give me that

00:16:33.480 same type of amateur. Hold on. Hold on.

00:16:38.360 Ah, so it almost sounded to me like Vivek knew that was coming because it was a pretty good,

00:16:45.700 you know, like he gave him a big hug. Come over here and hug me. What did you make of it? Smug?

00:16:49.580 I'll start with you on that one. Yeah, I mean, that was a pretty good line. The chat GPT thing.

00:16:57.040 One thing I will say about Christie's performance is it felt like, you know, he doesn't have the same

00:17:01.580 fastball anymore because he didn't really get a kill shot. Like he got that good little hit in

00:17:06.340 on Vivek. And then later when the opportunity presented itself to, you know, go after him

00:17:10.520 some more, it just got muddled. And then eventually the audience started booing.

00:17:14.940 It was a good one liner. And Vivek actually then tried recycling the line that's been used

00:17:19.000 against Christie before of like, come give me a hug. And previously, Chris Christie would have

00:17:23.960 the response where he said, well, the only hugs that I care about are with the families of the 9-11

00:17:27.400 victims. And so I'm surprised he didn't even try using the opportunity there with the whole message

00:17:32.520 of like, okay, now Vivek's a 9-11 truther. So I'm really surprised he didn't capitalize on that.

00:17:38.440 Oh, that's a, that's an interesting point. What did you make of it, Emily, that, that moment?

00:17:42.040 Cause it got a lot of play.

00:17:43.640 Yeah. I thought actually Vivek had the better in that moment because it was a pretty clever

00:17:47.800 comeback. You know, what Christie said was clever, but then to be on your toes enough to retort

00:17:52.100 that I thought that was really good. I agree with Smug. I thought Christie was going to be

00:17:55.740 throwing fastballs all night, not just at the other candidates, but specifically at Trump,

00:17:59.720 which is one thing that again, theatrically, if you're not a pro-Trump Republican, you probably

00:18:04.220 would find some appeal in Christie doing that. There, there aren't a lot of non, you know,

00:18:08.740 anti-Trump Republicans out there. There are some, not a ton. But that is to say, like,

00:18:12.780 even with that crowd, he generally does well. So I just, it was really lackluster from him and

00:18:18.700 somebody who came in with a whole lot of swagger and even got bested, I think, by Vivek in that exchange.

00:18:25.740 Yes. You, I think the problem for Chris Christie was our expectations were very high,

00:18:31.280 you know, based on what he did to Rubio. We played that soundbite the other day. It really

00:18:35.440 was spectacular. I mean, he was like a surgeon with his precision in taking him down and leading

00:18:42.080 the trap that Rubio walked right into and then seizing upon it, being smart, being nimble,

00:18:46.420 seeing it when it like, it was great stuff. So the expectations were super high for Christie

00:18:51.100 and he didn't meet them. Even his general demeanor, I will say, I thought the Fox lighting on the,

00:18:57.260 on the candidates was kind of crappy. I, the candidates did not look very good.

00:19:02.100 You know, when you're in TV, you need good lighting. Trust me. Um, the anchors look good,

00:19:06.640 but, but, which that's number one, but the candidates could have looked better. And Chris Christie,

00:19:10.580 to me, look, his skin looked a little gray. He looked kind of, he was hunching over,

00:19:14.600 you know, which you don't want that. He looked a little tired and I tweeted out, did he, is it just

00:19:20.400 me or has he lost something off of his fastball? I think he, I think he's lost a little something

00:19:25.300 off of his fastball. Cause that was the best he did smug. Like he didn't, that was the, that was

00:19:29.920 his number one line. Was it not? Yeah. And also like you just said that the expectations, he's in a

00:19:36.420 tough situation because now anytime he takes a debate stage, everyone's like, well, he's going to end a

00:19:40.580 campaign, you know? So, I mean, that's pretty tough to always pull off, but at the same time,

00:19:45.740 you know, there wasn't the same kind of spark where it's like, okay, Christie's going to talk

00:19:49.860 and everyone gets nervous. And I think a lot of the candidates, I think Vivek definitely prepped for

00:19:54.780 that is that, you know, the reputation of Chris Christie is he's going to go after somebody and

00:19:58.800 there's a great chance he'll go after the person searching in the polls. So I think Vivek definitely

00:20:02.900 prepped for that. Um, but that moment didn't really show up. There was no kill shot, um, from Chris Christie last

00:20:09.760 night. And I think a lot of people are disappointed because that was the whole point of like, okay,

00:20:12.860 well get Christie on the stage. He's going to body back. Somebody is going to be entertaining.

00:20:17.360 We didn't get that moment. Can we just spend one minute on the chat GPT accusation? I get it. I

00:20:24.200 actually understand what Christie was saying. Vivek for all of his talent, he's only 38. He's not a

00:20:28.860 politician. This is his first presidential run. Obviously he was only eligible to run three years ago.

00:20:33.300 He's young. I get what he's saying. Vivek can sound rehearsed canned lines. A number of people,

00:20:41.620 including my former colleague, Bill O'Reilly were, were commenting on like, he clearly had some teeth

00:20:46.480 whitening done. His teeth were like almost distracting. They were gleaming so much.

00:20:50.300 O'Reilly said he looked like a game show host. There was something oddly, like a little falsely polished,

00:20:55.700 I would say about Vivek that came off to some as like inauthentic or, you know, a little just

00:21:02.140 too, not, not to steal a name, smug. Emily, what do you, what do you make of it?

00:21:08.960 Yes. Vivek was more uncomfortably smug, not, not quite so comfortable in the smugness.

00:21:13.300 I think, I think there's truth to that for sure. I also think that when people in DC look at Vivek,

00:21:21.600 they're sort of uncomfortable with him and like just in and of himself because he's so different.

00:21:26.700 And I'm not saying he's Trump. Nobody will be Donald Trump. But there are echoes of how

00:21:31.400 the Beltway reacted to Trump in the way the Beltway is reacting to Vivek, which is to say

00:21:36.540 the public, going back to Ross Perot, actually really does like a business guy. They like a

00:21:42.400 business outsider and he does not talk like a politician. And sometimes it's really cringe.

00:21:48.300 He does talk like a politician. I think he can be nonpolitical, like like all the tweets of him

00:21:56.480 doing the burpees and playing the tennis and all that. I mean, we've debated him back and forth.

00:22:00.820 Net net. I like him because it shows like he doesn't take himself too seriously. He's very,

00:22:04.940 very smart, but he's not stuffy. You know, he's he's young and he's vibrant. But I do think he

00:22:10.880 sounds maybe his substance isn't what you'd hear from your average Republican. That's for sure.

00:22:15.720 But I actually think he's he's getting a little too boxed in on these like rhetorical talking

00:22:20.060 boys. Like that's not how he really is. And I I don't I don't know why he's doing that. Go ahead.

00:22:26.820 Yeah. You don't want to sound like karaoke. And I definitely see what you mean on that. I guess

00:22:30.760 I meant in the substance where he starts talking about like growing up in a two parent house being

00:22:35.940 a privilege when most Republicans to the question he was asked when he gave that answer wouldn't think

00:22:40.600 to like step outside of the box and in substance sort of bring different things

00:22:45.180 into their responses to questions like that. I think that is is. And when he said, I mean,

00:22:50.280 I didn't like his line about going to the their Pope Zelensky in Kiev, but I actually think that

00:22:55.160 probably plays well with a chunk of the Republican electorate. And it's just a different kind of

00:23:00.340 rhetoric than what you see from Mike Pence and Nikki Haley and Tim Scott. And so I think some of that

00:23:05.400 actually plays better than we realize necessarily. So he's got something there. But I agree that he does

00:23:11.440 go into karaoke mode sometimes. Yeah. I'm a first timer, though. You got to say, I mean,

00:23:16.440 for a first timer, you give him a solid A on that performance. My God, he's he can only improve

00:23:21.000 after time one. And he'll look at the tape back. He was too smiley in the beginning. There was it was

00:23:25.480 too much. You want to smile a little to show them you're a nice guy. You know, the moms at home want

00:23:30.680 to see this is a nice person. But it was too much. And Ron DeSantis, even worse. He was fine on substance

00:23:39.640 smug. I agree with you. DeSantis was fine. He didn't have any misstep that way. But my God,

00:23:44.620 the weird smile. I own apology to Canadian Debbie, my producer, who yesterday I mocked because we

00:23:49.940 looked at the debate against Andrew Gillum and DeSantis had this crusher answer when he Gillum

00:23:54.520 accused him of being a racist. But then Debbie looking for, you know, to be fair and balanced

00:23:58.480 about what what could be the pitfalls found tape of DeSantis elsewhere in the debate with kind of weird

00:24:02.960 smiling. And I said, oh, I don't I think you're being too hard on him. I was wrong. This was a potential

00:24:08.220 weakness. We'll take a look at the DeSantis, like delayed smiling, almost like someone was in his

00:24:13.820 ear going, please smile. Look at it. I pledge to you as your president, we will get the job done

00:24:20.440 and I will not let you down. Smug. Why? It's so tough. It is a really tough situation that he finds

00:24:33.720 himself in when I think it was the New York Times or the Washington Post who had that story of like,

00:24:38.100 why is Ron DeSantis weird? And can weird Americans actually relate to Ron DeSantis because he's a

00:24:42.900 weird guy, too. So, you know, whenever he's on the stage, he's got to be so self-conscious of like,

00:24:47.960 OK, am I putting my hands in the right place? Am I smiling at the right time? Like,

00:24:51.820 I can only imagine all these questions going through his head when he has to contend with all

00:24:55.880 these other candidates. It's almost kind of like, you know, Hillary Clinton had that issue where

00:25:00.440 she was constantly worrying if she's likable enough. Is she is she's, you know, smiling at

00:25:05.840 the right time? Is she expressing herself in the right way? I wonder how much of that kind of head

00:25:10.100 game Ron DeSantis is finding himself in now. If he could be much more, much more forceful,

00:25:15.380 by the way, I did think having watched the Andrew Gillum debate, DeSantis to me last night seemed like

00:25:21.280 a little polished versus the real guy. Like, I actually think that the bare knuckle brawler who's

00:25:29.100 like I saw in the old debate, like, what the hell? And and like the guy we saw during COVID,

00:25:33.940 like, get up, get away from it. Like, I kind of like that guy. I I'm not sure I want the new

00:25:39.240 polished version. Is it just me? I think everybody's in the same boat. And I think that's

00:25:45.080 probably part of the problem with his poll numbers is that when you launch a national campaign,

00:25:50.240 people feel candidates definitely feel like you have to be boxed in and very, very careful in the way

00:25:57.020 that consultants are sort of scripting things and you are, you know, not making this wrong turn at

00:26:02.840 this exact moment. It is so calculated that it just it would be impossible to not let that get to your

00:26:09.000 head unless you decided to sort of throw the old campaign playbook out the window, which I think is

00:26:13.700 what a lot of people thought DeSantis had done in Florida when he just threw off all of the sort of

00:26:17.720 party orthodoxy about the culture war. But it's a different time. It's not 2023. Nobody mentioned

00:26:22.820 woke, as my colleague Crystal Ball at Breaking Point said, I think astutely, I think maybe Nikki

00:26:27.560 Haley mentioned it once in passing the word woke, because 2023 is just a different time. And I think

00:26:33.340 Ron DeSantis is trying to adjust to that different time. He's trying to meet the moment of 2023 with

00:26:38.620 like a man who was really popular a couple of years ago. And it's all in his head. It's in his

00:26:43.760 campaign's head. And they can't get enough distance from the situation to feel really comfortable with

00:26:48.540 Ron DeSantis just being who he is. They don't have to be using that old campaign playbook,

00:26:53.320 but they are still like welded to it, like handcuffed to it for some reason.

00:26:57.980 He went back to the Fauci. Well, DeSantis did. I mean, it's interesting to me. So like this is

00:27:02.820 anecdotal, but we're still into on this show holding the covid lunatics accountable. I'm into that.

00:27:10.580 You know, I like it when news comes out proving all the lies we knew Anthony Fauci told were in fact lies

00:27:16.000 and we'll cover it. But just anecdotally, that stuff doesn't actually do that well for us.

00:27:20.340 You know, we do it because we think it's important and I'm into it, but it doesn't do that. You can

00:27:23.600 see on the numbers like what the viewers responded, what they don't. And I think that this is related

00:27:28.360 to Ron DeSantis's problem. Like this is why people fell in love with him for the way in part, you know,

00:27:32.820 at first he handled covid, but covid's over and we all want to move the hell past it. Like we don't

00:27:38.000 we don't we don't even want to spend any time thinking about it. We don't want to give credit to the

00:27:42.040 ones like we just want to forget it. It was traumatic the way that our rights were squashed

00:27:46.500 and so on. Our kids were hurt. So he went to the Fauci. Well, again, last night, because this is

00:27:50.860 one point he's got on Trump. To me, it sounded a little rehearsed. I'm not going to lie. Here's

00:27:56.200 what he said. So at six. Why are we in this mess? Part of it and a major reason is because how this

00:28:02.560 federal government handed covid-19 by locking down this economy, it was a mistake. It should have never

00:28:09.380 happened. And in Florida, we led the country out of lockdown. We kept our state free and open.

00:28:15.520 And I can tell you this, as your president, I will never let the deep state bureaucrats lock you down.

00:28:23.060 You don't take somebody like Fauci and coddle him. You bring Fauci in, you sit him down and you say,

00:28:29.660 Anthony, you are fired.

00:28:33.420 It was good in the beginning. The first two thirds were good. The last it was like,

00:28:38.720 oh, I don't know. I sell the line from The Apprentice. I get it. But that's what made

00:28:43.480 it feel rehearsed to me. What do you make of it, Smug? Because right now, covid covid's coming back.

00:28:48.100 Covid hawks are already starting to push mask mandates again. That could work to his benefit,

00:28:51.920 ultimately. I mean, if they bring covid back, we are going to want to talk about it.

00:28:56.620 Yeah, I mean, I think what Emily said a second ago was dead on is that, you know,

00:29:00.960 the primary voters, if you look at the polling, they aren't as interested in covid or woke as

00:29:06.700 as an animating factor in when they're going to vote like they did a couple of years ago.

00:29:11.620 And that is, I think, a large part of why Ron DeSantis doesn't have the strength in polling

00:29:16.380 that he would if it had been taken two years earlier and when he had won so massively re-election.

00:29:23.220 So the audience and the voters have kind of moved on from that as a subject.

00:29:27.380 And, you know, like you mentioned, honestly, the sad thing is best for Ron DeSantis would be

00:29:31.500 if the left tries pushing covid again, it'd bring back the tension of like his greatest strength.

00:29:36.680 But right now, it just isn't animating voters the same way.

00:29:40.940 Let's spend a minute on Trump before we go.

00:29:43.520 Trump was speaking to Tucker.

00:29:45.560 I want to say I everybody knows I love Tucker.

00:29:50.260 The numbers being circulated online are not real.

00:29:53.220 People need to know that Tucker's show, I'm sure, is doing very well.

00:29:55.840 I'm sure there are many, many millions who watch that interview,

00:29:58.820 almost certainly more than watch the Fox News debate.

00:30:01.880 However, the numbers of people like 90 million people watch.

00:30:05.040 That's not true.

00:30:06.200 You get a view on Twitter if you hover over the over the like icon for just a couple of seconds.

00:30:13.840 That's one of the frustrations of being on on the new X.

00:30:16.940 You actually don't know.

00:30:17.940 We as the consumers don't know how many people actually watched it.

00:30:21.120 Just as a point of clarification, there's no I'm sure the numbers are good in their actual true raw form.

00:30:26.160 It'd be nice to have those.

00:30:27.240 We don't need to falsely inflate the numbers in order to show Tucker's power.

00:30:31.500 Or Trump's Trump was over there.

00:30:34.040 And I have to say, I watched the whole thing this morning.

00:30:36.380 I really enjoyed it.

00:30:37.800 It was not like hard hitting him.

00:30:39.560 It wasn't like Trump was trying to hurt him.

00:30:42.180 But it was fun to watch.

00:30:43.720 I'll give you just one exchange that they got to talking about Chris Wallace in the general election debate.

00:30:50.720 Both of these guys were cracking me up at Sop 15.

00:30:54.600 When I debated him, I said, how come?

00:30:57.720 And this was in front of probably not a friend of yours, Chris Wallace.

00:31:01.380 He was the moderator.

00:31:02.400 Not a friend.

00:31:03.120 I said, why did why is he wants to be Mike, but he doesn't have the talent?

00:31:06.740 It's one of those little man.

00:31:08.260 He wanted to be his father, but he didn't have the talent of his father.

00:31:11.360 His father was great.

00:31:11.800 His father, little fussy man.

00:31:13.220 His father interviewed me in 60 minutes.

00:31:15.140 It was actually a 10.

00:31:16.220 Can you believe it?

00:31:16.960 No, I told you, but his father had talent at least.

00:31:20.260 It went on from there.

00:31:23.400 There were like huge newsmaking moments, but it's fun.

00:31:27.160 They're fun to watch.

00:31:28.280 Right.

00:31:28.580 That's like one of Trump's gifts.

00:31:30.460 And and even my my intern here today who's with me, young gal, was like, I just felt like there was something fun and dynamic that was missing from the debate.

00:31:41.300 I'm like, is his name Donald Trump?

00:31:43.840 Yes, that's that's the truth.

00:31:45.940 So what about that element?

00:31:47.020 Right.

00:31:47.220 Trump's over there.

00:31:47.940 And when you get a look at him, you're reminded.

00:31:49.340 Oh, wait, there's that guy.

00:31:50.720 Oh, wait.

00:31:51.560 Oh, that.

00:31:52.260 And he's almost 50 points ahead.

00:31:55.180 And it makes sense when you see that.

00:31:57.340 It makes sense.

00:31:58.060 And basically, none of the other candidates are serving up the same thing that got him to the position that he's in right now.

00:32:04.480 Some of them are trying.

00:32:05.280 I would say DeSantis and Vivek are trying to sort of deliver in the way that Donald Trump became such a clear front runner.

00:32:12.120 They know that there's some things you can do to differentiate yourself from Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, but nobody can bottle what Trump has.

00:32:20.080 So long as you're running against Donald Trump, you can't out Trump Trump.

00:32:23.580 And right now, like it or not, there's a big group of the Republican electorate that likes Donald Trump.

00:32:29.060 I mean, we're talking at this point like 60 percent, 70 percent.

00:32:32.700 It's a really, really big number.

00:32:34.320 Some of that, I think, is persuadable.

00:32:36.540 But to get that below 50 percent, I don't know, something major is going to have to happen because his numbers are going up as the indictments mount.

00:32:44.060 And as the lawfare continues, he's getting stronger.

00:32:47.300 Everyone else is getting weaker.

00:32:48.400 And again, I think that was on full display in the Tucker interview where Trump was just relaxed.

00:32:52.940 Tucker was relaxed.

00:32:54.180 I love adversarial Trump interviews.

00:32:56.220 I also love relaxed Trump interviews.

00:32:57.940 You get something different out of each of them.

00:33:00.200 But there is something valuable to just having him sort of riff on Chris Wallace, riff on Fox, riff on whatever.

00:33:08.100 It's true.

00:33:08.760 You know, no, I agree.

00:33:09.560 And but my point at the top was the debate should be adversarial.

00:33:13.180 Like when you're out there, it should be adversarial.

00:33:14.960 It should not be a love fest.

00:33:16.580 You know, they as I always say that they want George Washington's job.

00:33:19.940 It's on.

00:33:20.640 Let's go.

00:33:21.860 This is going to be fun.

00:33:22.960 Right.

00:33:23.200 And the best ones want it.

00:33:24.440 You know, like I liked when Chris Christie was like, I'm getting the UFO question.

00:33:27.900 Like, come on, this is bullshit.

00:33:29.380 Right.

00:33:29.540 Like, I don't blame him.

00:33:30.520 That didn't have any place in a in a debate.

00:33:32.580 Why?

00:33:33.000 How do we ask about UFOs?

00:33:34.320 And we didn't ask about the gender transitioning that's being forced on children.

00:33:38.180 This is absurd.

00:33:38.820 OK, I'll save that for a later segment.

00:33:40.660 But Emily Jersinski and Comfortably Smug, thank you both so much.

00:33:45.840 Thank you so much.

00:33:47.180 We are coming right back with Charles C.W. Cook.

00:33:49.780 What does he think about the winner last night?

00:33:55.520 Joining me now, Charles C.W. Cook, senior writer at National Review and host of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast.

00:34:03.480 Charles, great to have you back.

00:34:04.620 So who was the big winner last night?

00:34:06.340 Well, I'm not sure there was one in the sense that I don't think the race was shaken up.

00:34:14.520 Trump didn't show up.

00:34:16.940 He's still the front runner.

00:34:18.260 DeSantis didn't lose, which was pretty important.

00:34:21.500 He wasn't really the target of many attacks.

00:34:25.040 Much of the attention was lavished on Vivek Ramaswamy.

00:34:29.760 But I don't think it was positive attention.

00:34:31.560 And I'm not sure he helped himself.

00:34:33.900 And then the people who I thought substantively did really well, I don't think have a shot at the nomination.

00:34:41.040 I thought Nikki Haley had a good night and Mike Pence had a good night.

00:34:44.760 But I don't think they're going to make it.

00:34:48.760 So it was an odd one in the sense that it didn't actually change anything.

00:34:54.860 In one sense, I think DeSantis probably came out of it best because the attacks that he expected from Chris Christie did not come.

00:35:06.920 They were aimed at Vivek.

00:35:09.180 I mean, I agree with some of your substantive criticisms of DeSantis' performance, but he's still treading water, which is where he needs to be.

00:35:16.200 I think DeSantis only got attacked once, I think, when The New York Times did a running tally of who got attacked the most.

00:35:23.600 And DeSantis only got attacked one time.

00:35:25.960 They were very, very focused on Vivek, which I think I would be delighted at if I were Vivek, right?

00:35:32.920 It's like I'm the center of attention and there's going to be all this buzz about me tomorrow.

00:35:36.620 There was there was the moment where Nikki Haley came at Vivek on foreign policy and she's dismissed by some in the party as a, quote, neocon.

00:35:49.340 You know, she's a little too pro war.

00:35:51.280 She's a little too pro intervention.

00:35:53.120 That's the criticism.

00:35:54.780 Well, she didn't shy away from any of that.

00:35:57.500 But she basically took it to Vivek saying, you don't know what you're talking about.

00:36:01.540 All of these sweeping policies that sound like panders to a certain portion of the Republican base.

00:36:06.600 You don't know what you're doing.

00:36:07.760 Here's a bit of that.

00:36:08.760 Sop 5.

00:36:10.500 Nikki, I wish you well in your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.

00:36:13.980 You know, I'm not on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.

00:36:16.340 And, you know, you had put down everybody on the stage.

00:36:19.060 You've been pushing this lie all week, Nikki.

00:36:20.920 But do you want to go and defund Israel?

00:36:22.780 You want to get Trump under China?

00:36:23.100 Okay, let me address that.

00:36:24.060 I'm glad you brought that up.

00:36:24.980 You want to go and give you pretty much?

00:36:25.880 You want to address each of those right now?

00:36:27.700 This is the false lies of a professional politician.

00:36:31.980 There you have it.

00:36:32.560 Under your watch, you will make America less than you have no foreign policy experience.

00:36:36.760 And it shows.

00:36:37.320 And you know what?

00:36:38.000 The foreign policy experience that you already have.

00:36:42.720 So that everything she said, and you could hear it from some of the people in the audience

00:36:47.540 who are allegedly, you know, the big donors of the Republican Party, would have gone over

00:36:51.800 huge with any large Republican audience as recently as six, seven years ago, right?

00:36:56.900 The party is changing.

00:36:58.520 It's changing.

00:36:59.500 And there's a question there about how many Republicans are still on Team Haley when it

00:37:05.760 comes to foreign policy and how many are more on Team Vivek, which looks much more like

00:37:09.500 the Trump foreign policy.

00:37:10.360 Yeah, I don't think that the party is quite where Vivek Ramaswamy thinks it is.

00:37:19.840 And I think this is a problem that he has.

00:37:22.200 I've written critically about him in the past and I stand by it.

00:37:26.160 He is the sort of person I've noticed who, while he's talking to a crowd, scans the room

00:37:31.640 to see whether the message is working and then tweaks it in whatever direction he intuits.

00:37:39.400 It's certainly true that the party is less interventionist than it was, although there's

00:37:46.200 not a particularly high bar, given that what we're really talking about is opposition post-hoc

00:37:53.980 to what the United States did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

00:37:58.040 But I think that the Republican voting base and also the broader public is quite open

00:38:05.800 to argument and debate on this point, which is why Nikki Haley scored big on that.

00:38:12.760 Part of it was the attack on Vivek, who doesn't know a great deal and was putting everyone down.

00:38:19.460 Part of it was that Republicans still like the American hegemony.

00:38:24.740 They like American military strength and they are open to the United States taking a leading

00:38:31.020 role in the world.

00:38:32.560 Now, they don't want that to mean preemptive invasions of other countries, but there's

00:38:37.660 a very big gap between reiterating the mistakes of Iraq and making cheap jokes at Nikki Haley's

00:38:47.720 expense about sitting on the board of Raytheon or Boeing.

00:38:53.580 It's simply not the case that when Donald Trump came into office, he turned himself into some

00:39:01.780 sort of 1970s McGovernite or into Rand Paul.

00:39:07.200 He quite early on in his presidency dropped however many missiles into Syria.

00:39:13.480 I remember Van Jones famously said, this was the night that Trump became president.

00:39:18.440 He took out Soleimani.

00:39:20.760 Trump's a Jacksonian, really.

00:39:22.740 But Jacksonians are not opposed to all force.

00:39:25.520 They're not opposed to asserting American interests.

00:39:27.800 They just recognize that alliances are fluid and they want limited and overwhelmingly emphatic

00:39:35.060 enforcement of American interests.

00:39:37.560 So I understand why this term neocon gets thrown around.

00:39:43.140 I mean, I'm not a neocon, so I don't have a brief for neocons.

00:39:46.200 I just don't think it's a very useful frame.

00:39:48.280 And I think Haley resonated there because she pointed that out.

00:39:53.180 The other question is, who is the biggest loser?

00:39:57.700 And in the last segment, I think, well, Emily Jasinski and I were both agreeing that it was

00:40:02.940 probably Tim Scott, because there was so much promise around him.

00:40:07.240 He had a fair amount of buzz.

00:40:08.960 He has a ton of money, a lot of big donors.

00:40:11.860 But Charles, I had the team pulled this.

00:40:14.280 I mean, we could have pulled this from any one of his answers, but they sounded so generic.

00:40:18.580 They sounded just like, you know, pro-America talking points where you're like,

00:40:23.500 that's my view.

00:40:25.460 Here he is.

00:40:25.940 America can do for anyone what she's done for me if we focus on restoring hope, creating

00:40:34.200 opportunities and protecting America.

00:40:36.280 If we want the environment to be better and we all do, the best thing to do is to bring

00:40:41.580 our jobs home from China.

00:40:45.240 OK, so what we need to do is restore hope and create opportunity.

00:40:49.480 I mean, come on.

00:40:50.580 This is not going to get it done.

00:40:52.000 So I like Tim Scott a lot, and I think that the optimism and forward-looking approach that

00:41:00.620 he's taken is necessary.

00:41:02.720 I wrote about this recently.

00:41:04.160 I do think Republicans need to cheer up as a whole.

00:41:07.240 The Democratic Party is full of unhappy people.

00:41:10.540 This isn't me saying this as a conservative.

00:41:12.720 The statistics are actually extraordinary.

00:41:14.620 The polling shows it.

00:41:16.180 The medication use shows it.

00:41:18.280 But the thing about optimism and forward-looking rhetoric is that unless it is coupled with

00:41:29.780 really specific policy steps, then, as you say, it does sound vague and even hollow.

00:41:37.180 I am a big fan of Ronald Reagan.

00:41:39.280 I absolutely depart from my fellow conservatives when they say, we're in a different time.

00:41:44.860 We don't need that anymore.

00:41:45.680 Actually, a lot of the challenges that Reagan faced were quite similar to ours.

00:41:49.700 We had a resurgent and threatening communist country on the horizon.

00:41:54.760 Then it was Russia.

00:41:55.500 Now it's China.

00:41:56.640 We had runaway inflation that had been met with high inflation interest rates, sorry,

00:42:02.680 therefore high mortgage rates, and so on.

00:42:05.100 We had a general loss in patriotism and belief in the American system.

00:42:12.800 But if you go back and you look at Reagan's speeches, he was very sunny.

00:42:17.060 He had that Tim Scott quality that I like.

00:42:19.720 He was also unbelievably specific.

00:42:22.580 Half of his speeches, he would cite these statistics about unemployment and oil production

00:42:27.500 and international trade and troop numbers.

00:42:30.760 And it wasn't just a generalized, vague appeal to the American experiment.

00:42:37.660 And that's the bit that Tim Scott was missing.

00:42:39.880 His affect's great.

00:42:41.320 I like watching him.

00:42:42.360 He's extremely likable, but he's going to have to put a lot more meat on that bone or

00:42:46.720 he's going to get rolled.

00:42:47.580 And I do agree with you.

00:42:48.380 I do think he was probably the loser from last night's debate.

00:42:52.060 Yeah, it was definitely missed opportunity for him.

00:42:54.680 So, you know, he's going to have another opportunity, I think, if he qualifies for the next one.

00:42:58.940 But I think the money may move.

00:43:00.960 It may move from Tim Scott over to Vivek.

00:43:03.240 And then, of course, what we're going to see, Charles, is what we are just starting to see

00:43:07.260 a little but haven't really so far, which is the media is going to turn on Vivek.

00:43:12.360 No one's done like the deep dive oppo piece on Vivek because he's been kind of a non-factor.

00:43:18.700 They're not they're not seeing him as a threat, but it's coming.

00:43:22.220 But I do wonder whether he's kind of moving into the Trump territory of untouchable.

00:43:28.720 Like the people who like Vivek seem to me to be largely the MAGA base because he doesn't

00:43:34.960 touch Trump.

00:43:36.420 He's saying a lot of the same things Trump said.

00:43:39.360 And so I do wonder whether even the media attacks that are undoubtedly coming on him

00:43:44.720 are going to work.

00:43:46.540 Well, maybe.

00:43:48.180 But what's the upside?

00:43:49.300 And you said the money is going to move over to him.

00:43:51.660 I can't see why.

00:43:53.620 My criticism of Vivek from the beginning has been he's not running for president.

00:43:58.140 He's far too complimentary of Donald Trump.

00:44:00.780 You saw this.

00:44:01.400 Donald Trump came out after the debate and said, well, Vivek was the winner because he praised

00:44:04.860 me.

00:44:05.460 Sure, he did.

00:44:06.240 You know, if anything, Vivek's running to be Donald Trump's valet or perhaps vice president

00:44:11.480 or a cabinet member.

00:44:12.940 There was a moment last night that exhibited this perfectly where Vivek said, well, Donald

00:44:18.980 Trump was the best president of the 21st century.

00:44:21.800 Well, if that's true, why are you running against him?

00:44:24.720 What is the point in you being there?

00:44:26.120 Trump is running again and he's leading in the polls, sometimes by 40 points.

00:44:31.640 You know, I know why Chris Christie's running.

00:44:33.360 I know why Mike Pence is running.

00:44:34.660 I know why Ron DeSantis is running.

00:44:37.220 I don't know why Vivek is running if he believes that and if he is a circle in the Venn diagram

00:44:44.160 that is Vivek Trump presidential candidate 2024.

00:44:47.960 So I'm just not convinced by him.

00:44:51.280 Certainly he may benefit from some of the same dynamics that have made Trump very difficult

00:44:58.840 to touch among Republican primary voters.

00:45:01.760 That is a defensive quality, but it doesn't help you offensively.

00:45:07.000 It doesn't help you distinguish yourself and move away from Trump and become the nominee.

00:45:11.440 Unless your game plan is, as you point out, being his number two or being in his cabinet

00:45:16.460 or you're banking on him going to jail and you being the Trumpiest candidate left standing.

00:45:23.780 Yeah, I mean, I can see that.

00:45:26.620 I can absolutely see that.

00:45:28.140 As you know, I don't want the Trumpiest candidate left standing.

00:45:31.120 I'm a policy guy.

00:45:32.200 I want someone who does not have the profound moral and personal failings that Trump has

00:45:39.160 and who can get things done.

00:45:41.560 And I don't see Vivek as being that guy.

00:45:44.220 And and somebody I like what you always say, I want somebody who's as boring and hands off

00:45:49.520 as possible.

00:45:50.040 Like, let's shrink the down to what it what it was meant to be, as opposed to like, let's

00:45:55.900 just keep empowering, you know, this random person with more and more authority.

00:46:00.060 We've seen how that's gone over the past few years.

00:46:02.260 Just just look at the pen and the phone start of it with Barack Obama.

00:46:06.320 It doesn't go so well.

00:46:07.380 All right.

00:46:07.660 Stand by because there's so much more to get to.

00:46:09.080 I have my thoughts on who needs to leave and who needs to stay, and I have new thoughts

00:46:13.400 on why Mike Pence is in this race that I'd love to get into.

00:46:16.840 I do think he's serving a valuable purpose.

00:46:19.580 I think there's something like therapeutic going on there, almost cathartic that the

00:46:23.620 nation needs to go through.

00:46:24.840 We'll pick it up there right after this, and we'll show you a bit more of Trump on Tucker.

00:46:30.360 Some extraordinary comments on whether we're headed for civil war.

00:46:33.700 You might find that interesting.

00:46:34.980 And I would love to know your thoughts on the presidential debate last night.

00:46:38.560 Did you watch it or did you watch instead the Trump Tucker thing live?

00:46:43.740 Email me, Megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at MeganKelley.com.

00:46:49.520 I would love to find out whether you think who the big winner was, right?

00:46:53.500 Do you agree that we think, you know, what I thought, which is Trump's, is the winner,

00:46:56.560 that what our opening panel thought, Trump was the winner because nobody else changed

00:47:00.300 the game?

00:47:01.500 And did anybody change your mind, right?

00:47:04.080 Like, did you go in last night thinking, oh, I hate this person and leave thinking,

00:47:07.340 I love him, or the opposite?

00:47:10.100 Let me know, Megan, at MeganKelley.com.

00:47:13.180 All right.

00:47:13.460 Meantime, Charles stays with us in just a bit.

00:47:15.140 Michael Knowles joins us as well.

00:47:17.260 And remember, folks, you can find The Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel

00:47:21.060 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:47:24.000 The full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash Megan

00:47:29.440 Kelly.

00:47:29.700 And if you prefer to get your news via audio, you can check out our podcast, follow and download

00:47:35.480 on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free.

00:47:40.580 There, you're going to find our full archives of the show with more than 600 shows now.

00:47:45.400 We've been working for a while for you, going on three years.

00:47:48.500 So, Charles, looking around last night, I was trying to ask myself, what is the justification

00:47:55.580 for each of these candidates?

00:47:57.640 Vivek, I get it.

00:47:58.900 You know, young, new blood, Trump, Trump young, you know, Trumpy, but younger, more vibrant,

00:48:04.860 next generation.

00:48:05.940 That's how he wants us to perceive him, at least.

00:48:07.620 Ron DeSantis, conservative, like traditional, but maybe not that traditional because he's

00:48:13.300 different on Ukraine.

00:48:14.220 He's different on a couple of things, but conservative fighter, right?

00:48:16.980 Um, Chris Christie, he's there to fight, like he has to attack Trump.

00:48:22.820 He wants to be, he's like there for the never Trumpers, the people who hate Donald Trump,

00:48:26.240 who aren't necessarily never Trumpers, but just are very mad at Trump and not really inclined

00:48:29.860 to vote for him.

00:48:31.200 And I think Mike Pence has a role out there.

00:48:35.900 I think Mike Pence is helping the country work out the conscience around January 6th.

00:48:41.600 I think that like, it's kind of actually important, at least for last night's debate.

00:48:46.340 He doesn't need to stay forever, but just to be reminded of what was at stake on that

00:48:51.300 day and what was done to Mike Pence.

00:48:54.520 And just to be reminded you, it may not be a deal breaker for you at all.

00:48:57.340 And I realize it's not for, you know, some 70 percent of the Republican Party who's apparently

00:49:01.360 either open minded to are ready to vote for Trump.

00:49:03.360 But we do need a little bit of closure, I think, on what happened with the Republican Party

00:49:10.320 at the end of the 2020 election.

00:49:13.140 Here was Trump, I mean, sorry, Pence providing a bit of that last night.

00:49:17.420 You know, it's not about looking back at January 2021.

00:49:23.600 It's about January 20th, 2017.

00:49:27.080 I put my left hand on Ronald Reagan's Bible.

00:49:29.540 I raised my right hand.

00:49:30.440 And I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

00:49:36.580 And it ended with a prayer.

00:49:38.100 So help me God.

00:49:39.640 It was a promise that I made to the American people.

00:49:42.920 But I also made it.

00:49:45.040 It made it to my Heavenly Father.

00:49:47.880 Every day for four years, I sought to keep that oath.

00:49:50.160 What do you make of it?

00:49:53.460 And I think he and Nikki Haley are both there as a little bit more of the conservative,

00:49:59.340 traditional Republican that we're used to.

00:50:01.940 But only one of them is really necessary.

00:50:04.580 Burgum's got to go.

00:50:06.060 Ace has got to go.

00:50:07.400 I think Tim Scott is going to go.

00:50:08.980 I know you disagree, but I think it's over for him.

00:50:11.520 But what do you make of it?

00:50:13.460 Well, I think it's profoundly important.

00:50:15.300 First off, I do think Mike Pence would make a terrific president.

00:50:18.620 I don't think he's going to be president.

00:50:20.600 But I think if you parachuted Mike Pence into the Oval Office right now, he would do an excellent job.

00:50:26.940 That's one rationale for his running.

00:50:29.480 But the main rationale, as you say, I'd put it a little bit differently.

00:50:34.940 He's telling the truth about what happened in 2020.

00:50:41.260 Trump lost the election.

00:50:43.580 And Trump won't say that.

00:50:46.600 And unfortunately, many of the other candidates won't say that either.

00:50:52.740 DeSantis whiffed on it last night, disappointingly.

00:50:55.960 And Pence does.

00:50:57.760 He put it perfectly there.

00:50:59.540 He took an oath to uphold the Constitution.

00:51:03.580 He kept that oath.

00:51:06.100 It is simply not true.

00:51:08.640 As conservatives, we're supposed to believe what is true.

00:51:10.920 It is simply not true that Mike Pence, even if he had wanted to, has some freestanding power to reverse Congress's ratification of the election process.

00:51:25.280 That's right.

00:51:26.200 Trump keeps saying otherwise.

00:51:28.480 Trump has criticized Mike Pence for his refusal to do something that he could never do.

00:51:33.560 And Mike Pence hears this from voters quite often and I think has been admirable in calmly and politely and correctly pushing back at it.

00:51:45.060 You need someone on the stage, preferably Mike Pence himself, but someone at least who is going to say that, that this is not how our system works and that is not what happened in 2020.

00:51:58.580 And that if we are going to spend our time relitigating the past instead of looking forward to the future, then we need to do so accurately.

00:52:07.520 So I'm glad Mike Pence is out there saying that, mostly because it's true.

00:52:13.540 Yeah.

00:52:13.880 They went down the line and asked, did Mike Pence do his duty on January 6th?

00:52:19.220 And I think most of them said yes.

00:52:22.000 Vivek did not answer.

00:52:23.040 And Ron DeSantis was sort of pressed into saying, I got no problem with him.

00:52:28.240 He did his duty.

00:52:28.900 Like it wasn't, it was not a forceful defense of Pence, of course, because DeSantis is still, his game plan seems to still be somehow I will rest the Trump supporters away from Trump.

00:52:40.980 Which leads me to the next thing that happened.

00:52:44.000 And they were asked, if Trump is convicted on one of these, in one of these cases, the four now that have been brought against him, will you commit to pardoning him?

00:52:55.280 Now we're going to show the video.

00:52:56.400 So for the listening audience, I'll try to describe it.

00:52:59.180 Vivek's hand shot way up.

00:53:00.860 I mean, he truly is like the kid in class, the teacher's pet, like he'd be picked me, picked me.

00:53:05.500 DeSantis looks around and then barely raises his hand.

00:53:10.360 Charlie, this is not a good look for DeSantis.

00:53:14.440 And by the way, everybody else's hand went up.

00:53:17.020 Chris Christie did raise his hand, but then seemed to kind of second guess it.

00:53:20.100 Asa Hutchinson did not raise his hand, but everybody else, their hand went up.

00:53:22.780 Not as high as Vivek was up here.

00:53:25.660 DeSantis looks around.

00:53:27.900 And then raises his hand and he's getting some flack for that.

00:53:32.560 Like pick a lane.

00:53:33.740 Is it a yes or is it a no?

00:53:35.880 What did you make of the moment?

00:53:36.760 Well, I think that this is closely tied to the conversation that you had with one of

00:53:45.060 your previous guests about DeSantis' odd little smile.

00:53:50.280 The best advice that I think anyone could give Ron DeSantis right now is you've got nothing

00:53:58.620 to lose.

00:53:59.420 Be yourself.

00:54:01.180 Foibles included.

00:54:02.700 Flaws included.

00:54:03.760 Ron DeSantis is a very intelligent man who is clearly irritated by a lot of the machinations

00:54:12.700 that he has to go through as a political candidate.

00:54:15.680 Now, some of those have to do with Donald Trump, and I empathize with them greatly.

00:54:20.080 There is so much nonsense that Republican politicians and other prominent conservatives have to put

00:54:26.700 up with because of the cult of personality around Donald Trump.

00:54:29.960 Some of that, though, is just normal politics.

00:54:32.600 DeSantis does not have the affect that our most electorally successful politicians tend to have.

00:54:46.120 He does not have that Reaganite affect.

00:54:48.760 He doesn't have Bill Clinton's love of people.

00:54:51.840 He doesn't have Barack Obama's charisma.

00:54:55.680 He has his own thing, and if he's going to become president, then it will be on the back of that

00:55:03.400 own thing.

00:55:05.180 It will be on the back of his saying, look, I am a middle-class kid from Tampa who became

00:55:14.580 the governor of Florida, did a really terrific job at it, bucks the conventional wisdom, and now I'm

00:55:21.440 running for president to deliver for you.

00:55:23.340 I'm not saying, Megan, that's going to work.

00:55:25.080 I think at the moment it looks like it's not.

00:55:26.800 But if he's going to get there, he's going to have to be Ron DeSantis.

00:55:32.660 And that moment that you just showed is another good example of him trying to work out what

00:55:41.860 is expected of him rather than going with his gut.

00:55:46.880 So is the little smile, you know, so is so much of the campaign strategy that he's exhibited

00:55:54.680 thus far.

00:55:57.040 And he's getting caught in the middle as a result.

00:55:59.520 Either you put up your hand like Vivek and you just commit to the part.

00:56:03.300 You're a phony.

00:56:04.180 You're proud of it.

00:56:05.220 You know what is expected of you in the audience.

00:56:07.220 And so you just do it or you leave your hand down.

00:56:11.800 Yeah.

00:56:12.140 Or you you are an enthusiastic phony anyway.

00:56:15.380 Or you leave your hand down and you deal with the consequences.

00:56:18.820 When you're asked about it the next day, you say, you know what?

00:56:22.280 My job is not to play Donald Trump's lawyer.

00:56:26.560 My job is not to get into the Oval Office and immediately contemplate whether or not I will

00:56:33.800 use the pardon power to help the last guy.

00:56:36.040 Here are the things that I'm running for.

00:56:37.720 I'm not saying that would be a good strategy.

00:56:39.480 Don't get me wrong.

00:56:40.840 I'm just saying that he's caught in the middle and you can see it over and over again.

00:56:45.440 When he made that emphatic statement and then tried to do that little smile, he was caught

00:56:51.420 between who he actually is, which is a guy who likes to machine gun the opposition and

00:56:56.860 then get things done and who he's been told he should be, which is a politician who smiles

00:57:03.040 at people and has a softer side.

00:57:05.100 And I don't believe, well, I don't believe in a general matter that getting caught in

00:57:10.340 the middle of who you are and who you're supposed to be works out for people.

00:57:13.220 But I don't believe specifically that DeSantis is capable of doing it.

00:57:17.840 I don't think that what we have seen thus far suggests that he is going to be able to

00:57:23.000 run as a hybrid.

00:57:24.000 I just think at this point he has to take off the gloves and do what he actually wants

00:57:30.200 to do and be who he actually wants to be and see how it plays out.

00:57:33.780 All right.

00:57:35.400 I'll say this in defense of Ron DeSantis.

00:57:37.440 I don't know whether this is true, but this was after.

00:57:41.740 The moment where he objected to the whole hand raising nonsense.

00:57:46.140 So it was good possible.

00:57:48.080 It was very good.

00:57:48.820 Actually, we'll play it.

00:57:49.700 That's good.

00:57:50.280 We're talking about this.

00:57:51.280 Stop three.

00:57:53.580 Human behavior is causing climate change.

00:57:56.860 Raise your hand if you do.

00:57:57.920 Look, we're not schoolchildren.

00:57:59.260 Let's have the debate.

00:58:00.300 I mean, I'm happy to take it to start.

00:58:02.060 Alexander, so do you want to raise your hand?

00:58:05.260 I don't think that's the way to do.

00:58:06.800 So let me just say to Alexander this.

00:58:10.000 So that was good.

00:58:11.080 He was like, I'm not.

00:58:11.740 I'm not raising my hand.

00:58:12.620 This is nonsense.

00:58:13.240 Let's just talk about it.

00:58:13.980 We're adults.

00:58:14.860 And this the second question, raise your hand if you will commit to pardoning Trump

00:58:18.900 if or whatever it was after if he gets.

00:58:22.020 Yeah, if he gets convicted, came after he said, we're not doing the hand raising thing.

00:58:26.360 So it is possible that he was basically like, is everyone aren't we done with the hand

00:58:30.920 raising nonsense?

00:58:32.220 Whatever.

00:58:32.840 Either way, you have to lead your own course.

00:58:35.220 You know, that would have been a good time for him to grab the lectern and say, as I already

00:58:39.840 told you, we're not doing that.

00:58:41.980 Move on.

00:58:42.800 Right.

00:58:43.020 Like that would have been a great moment for him.

00:58:44.960 But to your point, he's caught.

00:58:46.260 He's caught between another moment that I did think depends on, you know, like all this

00:58:52.280 is a litmus test all over Twitter last night.

00:58:54.260 You saw it through the prism of the the person you're supporting.

00:58:57.920 Right.

00:58:58.320 It's like that crushed or Ron DeSantis crushed or, you know, this is one of those moments.

00:59:06.180 Ron DeSantis was answering on Ukraine and he did waffle on Ukraine.

00:59:10.720 And you guys at National Review have talked about it quite a few times where he gave Tucker

00:59:14.740 a statement calling it a territorial dispute.

00:59:17.680 And then he kind of got hit by more, I don't know, establishment Republicans, whatever you

00:59:21.200 want to call it.

00:59:21.740 And he expanded his answer on Ukraine in a way that distanced a little bit from territorial

00:59:28.360 dispute and then said he'd been mischaracterized.

00:59:31.060 So he's been a little, you know, wishy washy on Ukraine.

00:59:35.800 And he gave an answer last night where he said it was another raise your hand.

00:59:41.200 And he was like, I am not committing to spending more money, America's money on Ukraine.

00:59:47.060 And then they pressed him a little like, what do you mean?

00:59:49.520 And he tried to say it's going to be Europe's money.

00:59:51.980 And Vivek, you're going to see his hand in the shot.

00:59:56.180 Doing I think it's like this.

00:59:57.980 I can't exactly tell, but the full video we're going to show you shows what Vivek was doing

01:00:03.200 to him.

01:00:03.520 Watch.

01:00:04.780 I will have Europe pull their weight right now.

01:00:08.600 They're not doing that.

01:00:09.560 And I think our support should be contingent on them doing it.

01:00:14.580 And I would have support in China to be able to take to be able to take China and do what

01:00:20.520 we need to do with China.

01:00:23.360 And Vivek, for the listening audience, sort of licks his finger and puts it up in the air,

01:00:27.100 like testing the wind, which whichever way the wind is blowing with a big smile on his face,

01:00:31.320 is clearly enjoying sort of rubbing DeSantis' nose in it.

01:00:34.520 What did you make of it?

01:00:36.180 I mean, I think for Vivek Ramaswamy to advance that criticism of anyone else is one of the

01:00:41.060 most preposterous things I've ever seen.

01:00:42.800 And if I were Ron DeSantis, who is a serious person, I would be irritated by it.

01:00:48.780 I'm not wild about DeSantis' view on Ukraine, although I will say this in his defense, Megan,

01:00:55.040 I am not sure what I think about Ukraine either.

01:00:57.200 You must have heard me say this over and over again.

01:00:59.320 I am very interested in hearing debate on this.

01:01:04.020 Normally, I know what I think.

01:01:05.380 I'm not one of those voters normally who says, well, I just want to wait for the two candidates

01:01:09.060 and see what they think.

01:01:10.100 You know what I think.

01:01:11.460 But with this one, I mean, I had Noah Rothman on my podcast.

01:01:14.820 I've also had Elbridge Colby on my podcast.

01:01:16.860 They're diametrically opposed on this.

01:01:18.700 I read something about it from someone who is critical, and it persuades me.

01:01:23.360 And then I read something from someone who is much more hawkish.

01:01:26.720 We had Rod Dreher, and we also had Garry Kasparov.

01:01:30.300 I mean, it was like, you know, we're just trying to highlight all the views so people

01:01:33.440 can make up their own minds.

01:01:34.580 This is a very, very difficult issue.

01:01:36.600 So yes, same, Charles, keep going.

01:01:38.980 Well, and I mean, I'm not, to just clarify, I'm not in any way drawing a moral equivalence

01:01:44.520 between Russia and Ukraine.

01:01:45.640 I want Ukraine to win the war.

01:01:46.820 But what policy should be from the West and what implications that has, for example, toward

01:01:53.160 the Pacific is something that I just don't know enough about to judge properly.

01:01:58.020 And I think DeSantis is in the same position on this, in that DeSantis is much more interested

01:02:03.360 in the Pacific theater.

01:02:05.440 He said so when he sat down with Jake Tapper, that this is where we should be looking now,

01:02:11.300 that we have a almost holdover fixation on Europe for understandable reasons, because

01:02:16.620 of the 20th century, not just the Soviet Union and the Cold War, but before that, the First

01:02:22.800 and Second World Wars came from Europe.

01:02:25.420 So I don't know if he's pandering there or not.

01:02:28.820 He hasn't been clear on it, though.

01:02:30.640 And that is a big problem.

01:02:32.480 And whether he hasn't been clear because he doesn't know what he thinks, or he's just

01:02:35.620 trying to play to the audience, I don't know.

01:02:37.860 But it's unlike him, it's unusual for him, and it therefore seems odd.

01:02:42.900 You know, Ron DeSantis is a guy who always seems to know precisely what he thinks and

01:02:47.060 is direct about it.

01:02:48.700 And on this one, he's given five different answers and sounds as if he's trying to have

01:02:55.820 it both ways.

01:02:56.440 But I really just do not want to hear criticisms of that from Vivek Ramaswamy.

01:03:01.140 He, well, Ron DeSantis didn't stack the cannon with his own ammo.

01:03:04.560 He just, he kind of ignored Vivek, and that's a strategy, but certainly he could have prepared

01:03:11.220 a hit on Vivek.

01:03:13.760 Like, what do you do?

01:03:15.260 How dare you raise your finger at me?

01:03:17.100 Like, I'm following wherever the wind blows.

01:03:19.520 Here are the five times you've done that, right?

01:03:21.660 Here are the reversals that I found on you in the past hour before I got out here.

01:03:25.640 Like, you've got to have some sort of offensive ammo against the guys who are going to come

01:03:31.280 for you if they're legitimate threats.

01:03:33.100 And Vivek is becoming a legitimate threat.

01:03:35.320 I mean, he's got more momentum behind him right now, I think, than Ron DeSantis does.

01:03:40.160 And I'm not sure, you know, maybe it will matter.

01:03:42.060 Maybe it won't matter.

01:03:42.920 In that Nate Silver article I pointed out, he said, if you look at the past history, Vivek

01:03:48.160 is going to have a spike in the polls.

01:03:49.980 Whoever gets the most Google hits and so on and the most attention in a debate will have

01:03:53.640 a spike in the polls.

01:03:54.640 It tends to last for around six weeks.

01:03:57.000 And then they all flame out.

01:03:59.320 He went through the list, like Rick Perry had one, Newt Gingrich had one, Herman Cain

01:04:04.640 had one.

01:04:05.940 So Vivek is probably on his way to a spike right now.

01:04:09.000 I don't know.

01:04:09.540 Like, Ron DeSantis has been a little bit more steady, but his poll numbers aren't good.

01:04:13.660 So you tell me whether he needed to stack the cannon a little bit more and be ready for

01:04:17.220 his attackers.

01:04:18.360 I'm actually not sure that he did with Vivek.

01:04:26.160 As I said at the beginning, I think in some ways you could see this debate as having been

01:04:30.000 quite good for Ron DeSantis in that he stayed where he was.

01:04:35.880 And I expected there to be an enormous amount of focus on DeSantis.

01:04:40.500 I thought everyone would attack DeSantis.

01:04:42.780 They didn't.

01:04:43.900 Instead, they attacked Vivek.

01:04:45.440 And, you know, if you're DeSantis, perhaps you just don't feel a great need then to go

01:04:50.500 after the guy.

01:04:52.040 And perhaps that will change.

01:04:53.360 I mean, I actually agree with Nate Silva.

01:04:55.180 I do assume that that's who Vivek is in this race.

01:05:00.220 There always seems to be one.

01:05:01.760 The Democrats had one last time around with Pete Buttigieg.

01:05:05.260 And then he dipped down and ended up as one of the worst transportation secretaries we've

01:05:11.900 ever had.

01:05:12.420 So I'm really in two minds about it.

01:05:17.300 My bigger advice, as I say to DeSantis, is you know who you are, be it.

01:05:24.040 And maybe it's not what people want.

01:05:26.220 And that will obviously be very disappointing for him.

01:05:29.160 But he probably, of all of the people on that stage, knows who he is the most.

01:05:35.640 And I just, I see him trapped at the moment.

01:05:40.120 And I see him unsure as to how to run.

01:05:43.440 And it's very strange as a Floridian, a Floridian who's criticized DeSantis on a bunch of issues,

01:05:49.640 but who never doubted his resolve on them, to watch that.

01:05:53.200 Because that's not how he ran in 2020.

01:05:56.620 I have two last time around when he won by 20 points.

01:06:00.640 He's feeling unsteady.

01:06:01.940 He's lost his mojo.

01:06:03.380 Like, he's not sure exactly what to do.

01:06:05.640 And the answer in those circumstances is always just go back to true north.

01:06:08.740 Like, who are you?

01:06:09.800 Just let it, let your free flag fly and they'll love you or they won't.

01:06:13.540 But like, that's the answer.

01:06:15.000 Let me ask you before we go, what is the purpose of Asa Hutchinson or Doug Burgum?

01:06:19.980 I really, I grew resentful because it was like every minute that goes to those guys who have

01:06:24.900 zero chance and aren't even offering something different.

01:06:28.260 It's not like I like, you know, love him or hate him.

01:06:30.980 I understand why Chris Christie's there.

01:06:33.200 I understand why Pence is there.

01:06:34.680 I understand why Vivek is there.

01:06:35.860 I don't understand why those two guys are there.

01:06:37.820 They know they have no chance.

01:06:39.500 So what did you make of those two?

01:06:41.300 And how much longer do you think they're going to be in there?

01:06:43.140 Well, I think that Doug Burgum can be in as long as he wants, because he's worth about

01:06:48.220 $2 billion.

01:06:49.640 Look, but they shouldn't be there.

01:06:54.220 That's not a criticism of Doug Burgum, for the record, who I think is a really good governor.

01:06:58.280 Again, if you parachuted him into the White House, I'm sure I would like him a great deal

01:07:01.960 and he'd do some good things.

01:07:03.420 But he's not going to be president.

01:07:04.640 A year or so ago, I wrote a column titled Don't Run.

01:07:08.900 And it was aimed at precisely those sorts of figures.

01:07:14.180 And it was not a moral judgment on them.

01:07:16.200 It was just saying, look, there is no path.

01:07:20.900 There is no lane.

01:07:22.900 There is no rationale for these candidacies.

01:07:26.320 Just don't do it.

01:07:27.440 Go and do something else with your life.

01:07:29.660 And I guess those two didn't read it or read it, didn't care about it.

01:07:33.900 But that is precisely who I had in mind.

01:07:36.140 They don't need to be there.

01:07:37.180 They're not adding anything that they should.

01:07:38.860 They're not.

01:07:39.740 It's not like the debates of 2012 and when Ron Paul would come.

01:07:44.960 And you'd say, OK, everyone knows Ron Paul has no chance.

01:07:48.720 But he clearly has a very clear agenda that he's advancing.

01:07:52.540 And he's trying to bring attention to his libertarianism.

01:07:55.220 And vote for me, because I see the world in a different way.

01:07:57.860 And he'd get a conversation started and represented a faction of the Republican Party that was

01:08:01.580 different and interesting.

01:08:03.200 I don't get it.

01:08:04.380 Other than, like, I think Rupert likes Doug Bergen.

01:08:06.900 I think that's why he got attention.

01:08:07.940 I don't know.

01:08:08.800 And Asa, zero clue.

01:08:10.320 I don't know.

01:08:10.800 That's the one that is inexplicable.

01:08:14.100 I mean, as you say, there are some people who, even though they're not going to win,

01:08:17.060 they stand on the stage and they make a difference.

01:08:18.940 I didn't realize how well he was going to do.

01:08:21.220 But I encouraged in 2015, 16, Bernie Sanders to run, just analytically, because I said,

01:08:29.760 look, you really fundamentally disagree with everyone else on the stage.

01:08:33.560 So that's a really good idea is to run, make your case, see if you can change the party.

01:08:37.160 Now, unfortunately for me, who's about as far away from being a socialist as you can get,

01:08:41.480 Bernie actually did manage to change the Democratic Party by doing it.

01:08:44.280 But that shows your point, which is, even though he didn't win in either race he ran,

01:08:48.800 he achieved what he wanted to.

01:08:51.580 What would an Asa Hutchinson-infused Republican Party look like?

01:08:55.940 I mean, what is that?

01:08:57.740 I don't know.

01:08:58.380 I think it would involve a lot of trans kids.

01:09:01.580 True.

01:09:02.200 True.

01:09:02.460 That's the other thing, right?

01:09:03.400 He's not even been able to stand up on the one thing all Republicans seem to agree on.

01:09:08.420 Exactly right.

01:09:09.320 And that didn't come up at all last night, which I'm going to discuss with Michael Knowles when he comes.

01:09:14.280 On in a minute.

01:09:15.200 Charles, great to see you.

01:09:16.400 Thank you.

01:09:17.780 Thanks for having me.

01:09:19.260 Up next, Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire.

01:09:22.180 He's got thoughts you won't want to miss.

01:09:26.360 Now, without further ado, Michael Knowles, host of The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles show.

01:09:32.040 Michael, great to have you.

01:09:33.300 What was your overall take on last night?

01:09:35.640 My overall take, I'll give it to you in 30 seconds, Megan.

01:09:39.500 Vivek helped himself the most because he went from an unknown to now someone who everybody's talking about.

01:09:45.700 And he had a good debate.

01:09:47.420 DeSantis did not help himself.

01:09:49.260 I felt he met expectations, but the expectations were moderate.

01:09:54.000 They'd been moderated down from the high expectations he had when he got in.

01:09:57.420 And he didn't break through.

01:09:59.140 Pence did a little bit better than I think people were expecting.

01:10:01.820 He was aggressive.

01:10:03.320 He was lively.

01:10:04.420 It's not going to matter at all, but he slightly outperformed.

01:10:08.600 Some of the second-tier candidates, Chris Christie, I felt, got his usual zingers in, but they fell flat.

01:10:15.160 It wasn't the full Marco Rubio treatment.

01:10:17.160 And when he tried them against Vivek, Vivek had pretty good zingers back at him.

01:10:20.620 So that didn't work.

01:10:21.680 Among the other candidates, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, both basically met expectations, which, again, is not good enough when you're in the single digits.

01:10:29.700 I felt that Asa Hutchinson outperformed expectations in as much as he did not trans a child on the stage.

01:10:37.960 So that was good.

01:10:38.860 I was pleased to see that.

01:10:39.860 And Doug Burgum proved himself to be the single worst candidate in the entire race, maybe in any race that I've ever seen in my entire life, and yet somehow also possibly the most likable person on that stage.

01:10:55.500 So what does that mean?

01:10:57.300 Where does that leave you?

01:10:58.240 It means that no candidate broke out enough to overcome what is now a 41-point gap between Donald Trump, the frontrunner, and the number two guy, at least as of now, Ron DeSantis.

01:11:10.520 That's according to the RealClearPolitics average.

01:11:12.300 Some polls have it as an even bigger gap, which means that the winner of the night, without even showing up, was Donald Trump.

01:11:19.360 Mm-hmm.

01:11:19.940 Yeah.

01:11:20.440 I loved your comment on Asa Hutchinson.

01:11:22.820 I thought that was the tweet of the night.

01:11:24.160 You tweeted it up.

01:11:25.040 It made me laugh out loud.

01:11:26.300 Our viewers may remember, he, in this discussion with Tucker in Iowa, defended his unwillingness to sign a law that would have banned the transing of children as minors, these medical treatments, the drugs, the surgeries, and so on.

01:11:43.460 And he defended the drugs in particular, like completely not understanding that they sterilized children.

01:11:48.920 He was like, well, I think that's a different matter.

01:11:50.340 Anyway, that was kind of the end of Asa Hutchinson for a lot of Republicans.

01:11:53.980 So, yes, I take your point very well.

01:11:55.780 Can I just ask you, can you believe that they spent time on UFOs and on Oliver Anthony's song and a question about general patriotism and did not ask one question about this massive cultural issue and what we're doing to young children?

01:12:09.200 Of course.

01:12:10.180 I loved Christie's answer.

01:12:11.840 It was the only point of the night or the last five years where I thought Christie might win me over, and it's when he laughed at the moderators.

01:12:18.740 He said, you're asking me about UFOs?

01:12:20.780 Are you out of your mind?

01:12:22.560 But to your point, Megan, this is an issue where all Republicans seem to agree from the most populist nationalist types all the way to fairly establishment types.

01:12:34.880 The problem is, though, that the debate was being moderated by Fox News and Fox is pro trans.

01:12:40.960 And Fox has made that stance clear.

01:12:43.440 Fox will use the fake pronouns when they refer to men who think their women is she.

01:12:47.860 Fox has even run segments lauding the transing of kids.

01:12:51.960 So he who pays the Piper calls the term.

01:12:53.340 Not too long ago.

01:12:54.660 Not too long ago.

01:12:55.420 They did that relatively recently.

01:12:57.560 Right.

01:12:57.900 And so because they were running the show, that issue didn't come up.

01:13:01.780 It was obviously a huge omission.

01:13:04.260 I think it shows you the increasing gap between political elites and the Republican Party base and the conservative movement.

01:13:12.540 But even if that issue had come up, I'm not sure it would have done very much.

01:13:17.860 I watched the whole debate.

01:13:19.520 I watched the whole Trump interview with Tucker.

01:13:21.620 And I came away with it thinking, OK, some of that was entertaining.

01:13:25.760 Some of that I did just because it's my job and other people aren't going to watch it.

01:13:29.440 But ultimately, it just did not change a single thing.

01:13:35.060 Yep.

01:13:35.640 Can I ask you about the Trump interview on Tucker?

01:13:38.180 I liked it as a counter program in that it's a middle finger to Fox and both of those guys have every right to do that.

01:13:45.140 But no one's really talking about it.

01:13:49.220 You know, it trended on Twitter, which is where it well, X, which is where it lived.

01:13:54.040 It's not dominating.

01:13:55.440 I haven't even seen any of it anywhere in the news today.

01:13:59.040 You know, I wonder, like.

01:14:01.180 I don't know if there was a way for Trump to counter program away from the debate, but I don't know that it actually worked in terms of detracting from the attention.

01:14:10.060 I think turning himself in today in Atlanta will.

01:14:12.580 But what do you make of it as a strategy?

01:14:14.300 The conversation was two friends chatting on air, which was perfectly fine, but it's not going to grab headlines.

01:14:25.360 The big counter programing is going to be the mugshot counter programing in as much as people are supporting Trump increasingly because of the indictments, because the liberal establishment is wielding the political order in such a way that is unheard of in American history.

01:14:44.380 Obviously, obviously unjust, it is a recommendation of his candidacy.

01:14:49.380 So it was a fine middle finger to Fox for both of those guys and also an expression of where Trump stands.

01:14:59.220 Trump is just different from basically anybody.

01:15:02.280 He's an American original, but he's different from a lot of Republicans, too.

01:15:05.320 And the medium is the message often when it comes to Trump.

01:15:10.000 And so if you had to ask right now, where is the conservative base?

01:15:13.780 Do they support Fox News or Tucker Carlson?

01:15:16.020 Obviously, they support Tucker.

01:15:17.900 And so it made perfect sense for him to do it, but it was never going to grab headlines.

01:15:22.180 If Trump wants to grab headlines, he's got to get confrontational.

01:15:25.100 But he just doesn't have to because he's got a 40 point lead.

01:15:27.860 The person who should have learned that lesson is Ron DeSantis.

01:15:30.600 Ron DeSantis has been playing the safest campaign I can imagine, and it's going to safely make him a loser in 2024.

01:15:39.640 The only way that he has any chance.

01:15:42.700 And frankly, I think the die is probably cast and the bizarre circumstances of this primary, where for the first time since 1888, we've got a former president running for a non-consecutive second term.

01:15:53.820 Probably the circumstances mean nobody can beat Trump.

01:15:55.920 But if you want to have any chance at all, you've got to get bold.

01:15:59.200 You've got to take bold positions.

01:16:01.280 You've got to go on on media that's going to be hostile to you.

01:16:04.780 The one candidate who has done that so far is Vivek Ramaswamy, who nobody had heard of six months ago and who now might soon be the number two guy in this race.

01:16:14.940 That's right.

01:16:15.360 He goes everywhere.

01:16:16.360 And it's not only has it exposed him and gotten his name out there, but it's honed his debate skills.

01:16:21.960 I mean, you can see he's very practiced.

01:16:24.060 He's very skilled.

01:16:24.780 He enjoys the back and forth.

01:16:26.280 It's made him better.

01:16:27.620 So the rest of the candidates could take a lesson there for sure.

01:16:30.660 The Trump interview on Tucker did have some classic Trump moments, which I would just kick myself if we didn't get to some of them.

01:16:36.600 Trump on Kamala Harris.

01:16:39.080 Watch this.

01:16:39.780 Sot 16.

01:16:40.260 She has some bad moments.

01:16:44.240 Her moments are almost as bad as his.

01:16:46.040 I think his are worse, actually.

01:16:47.640 Yeah.

01:16:48.480 She seems pretty senile, too.

01:16:50.240 She speaks in rhyme.

01:16:53.480 It's weird.

01:16:54.700 It's weird.

01:16:55.700 But she has bad moments.

01:16:57.260 In rhyme?

01:16:58.580 What do you...

01:16:58.920 Well, the way she talks, the bus will go here and then the bus will go there because that's what buses do.

01:17:04.500 It's weird.

01:17:05.360 The whole thing is weird.

01:17:06.320 This is not a president of the United States future.

01:17:08.860 By the way, we pulled a little of that.

01:17:12.940 She did do a little bit on school buses.

01:17:14.900 I don't think she rhymed, but here it is.

01:17:16.600 19.

01:17:18.280 Who doesn't love a yellow school bus?

01:17:20.900 Right?

01:17:21.380 Can you raise your hand if you love a yellow school bus?

01:17:24.200 Right?

01:17:25.080 Just there's something about the...

01:17:28.400 And most of us, many of us went to school on the yellow school bus.

01:17:32.300 It's part of, you know, a nostalgia and a memory of the excitement and joy of going to school.

01:17:40.600 The school bus takes us there.

01:17:45.520 Inspiring.

01:17:46.260 Trump nailed it.

01:17:47.340 Wow.

01:17:47.740 Trump has this odd ability because people point out that he's very clumsy with his words because he says things that are offensive and sometimes grammatically incorrect.

01:17:58.840 He's really actually pretty precise with his words.

01:18:01.400 He's got a kind of poetic diction.

01:18:02.740 That's why he stumbled on that great slogan, make America great again.

01:18:05.700 And it's why all of his nicknames tend to stick and they're really biting and cutting.

01:18:11.120 So I love that of all the things Trump could talk about there, he says, hey, you ever notice the way that that lady sounds like a sing-songy preschool teacher?

01:18:18.260 Da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da.

01:18:19.800 And he's totally right.

01:18:21.820 And it was as important as anything else he could talk about in this interview for which the stakes were just so low.

01:18:30.560 He's just...

01:18:31.000 I think he's just reminding everyone why they like him.

01:18:34.020 And here's more of that in SOT 17.

01:18:37.160 You don't think he's going to make it to November of 24th?

01:18:39.560 Well, I think he's worse mentally than he is physically.

01:18:42.400 And physically, he's not exactly a triathlete or any kind of an athlete.

01:18:48.640 But you watch him and it looks like he's walking on toothpicks.

01:18:51.600 I think he looks terrible on the beach.

01:18:53.380 He looks terrible on the beach.

01:18:54.480 Skinny legs.

01:18:55.120 Well, he can't walk through the sand.

01:18:56.780 And there's somebody in there that thinks he looks fabulous at the beach.

01:19:00.260 I think he looks horrible at the beach.

01:19:01.480 Plus, the beach doesn't represent what a president's supposed to be doing.

01:19:05.900 He's supposed to be working.

01:19:08.240 That's good stuff.

01:19:09.600 Who else would say that stuff?

01:19:11.600 Like, only Trump.

01:19:13.220 And people...

01:19:14.120 Those are the kind of conversations you and I would have, you know, over a drink.

01:19:17.620 One day we'd be like, yeah, what's he doing with those skinny legs on the beach?

01:19:20.140 No one wants to see that, right?

01:19:21.140 But only now do we have a president and candidate who says the stuff.

01:19:27.820 Exactly.

01:19:29.080 A couple of weeks ago, Corrine Jean-Pierre got in trouble because her Twitter account sent

01:19:33.720 out a tweet that was supposed to come from the president's account.

01:19:36.400 So it said, you know, when I ran for president, blah, blah, blah, you realize it was all being

01:19:39.140 run by staff.

01:19:40.340 And it doesn't really matter.

01:19:42.120 It's a minor gaffe.

01:19:42.780 But it does reveal part of the reason why people like Trump, because Trump is a real

01:19:47.880 person.

01:19:48.760 You can't deny he's not focus group tested.

01:19:51.160 He wasn't bread in a Petri dish at Langley.

01:19:54.460 This is a guy who is presenting to you exactly who he is, warts and all.

01:19:59.840 And I know that there are some Republicans who want to pull their hair out over this because

01:20:02.600 they think that he has a surplus of personality.

01:20:05.260 But this is democratic politics, lowercase d.

01:20:07.800 It's about people.

01:20:09.140 It's about the way that people feel.

01:20:11.060 You know, a pal of ours likes to say that facts don't care about your feelings.

01:20:15.020 And that's largely true.

01:20:17.220 But politics almost exclusively cares about your feelings.

01:20:20.980 This was what was so unfortunate for DeSantis last night.

01:20:24.660 I sincerely like Ron DeSantis.

01:20:27.360 I think he's a good guy.

01:20:28.820 He's been a great governor.

01:20:30.220 He's a really admirable figure.

01:20:32.980 He just wasn't able to connect last night.

01:20:36.800 And he hasn't been able to connect.

01:20:39.060 And people want to dismiss this.

01:20:40.700 And say, well, who cares?

01:20:41.940 He's got the charisma of competence, let's say.

01:20:44.740 Okay, sure.

01:20:45.360 That and $1.50 is going to get you a pumpkin spice latte in about two weeks.

01:20:49.320 Because you need to connect with the people on the trail.

01:20:52.180 If you don't do it, then the number two guy is about to be Vivek Ramaswamy.

01:20:55.740 Yeah, you got like, they're too far behind to be this cautious.

01:21:01.520 The predicament that they are in requires a swing for the fences.

01:21:06.120 You don't, you know, Roger Ellis used to say to me before I'd go out on the big nights,

01:21:09.320 just said, just hit a single, just hit a single, right?

01:21:13.060 He was trying to take the pressure off me.

01:21:14.320 There's no reason to go for the home run.

01:21:15.960 That's not true for them.

01:21:17.940 They actually do need a home run.

01:21:19.860 They do need to change the entire trajectory of this race.

01:21:23.400 My only thought is perhaps they're banking on a conviction that will change or a year plus

01:21:29.440 of criminal trial coverage that will change the mood of the electorate.

01:21:32.980 What else explains the strategy of these guys?

01:21:37.560 If that's what they're thinking, they're out of their minds.

01:21:39.500 If they're waiting for a conviction to change the mood of the electorate, they might be right.

01:21:44.580 It's only going to increase Trump's support.

01:21:46.580 That's why he said a week ago that he's one more conviction away from clenching nomination

01:21:51.020 and winning the election.

01:21:52.560 Because people know it's deeply unjust and the vast majority of Americans agree,

01:21:56.560 including many independents and Democrats.

01:21:58.720 So, you know, just holding your ground or just saying the right, polite, focus group

01:22:04.580 tested thing is simply not good enough, really in any hotly contested race, but certainly

01:22:10.020 not in this one, which is unlike any primary we've ever had.

01:22:13.360 The DeSantis campaign right now seems to be running the Cruz 2016 strategy.

01:22:19.420 People revise history and they think that Cruz was always doomed in 2016.

01:22:23.900 He ran a very good campaign.

01:22:25.820 He's an excellent politician, very smart guy, and the base largely likes him.

01:22:31.220 But the campaign was a little bit cautious with regard to Trump and that caution did not

01:22:36.920 pay off.

01:22:37.760 I can see why a strategist would have made that decision in 2016 to run a campaign that's

01:22:42.840 going to totally solidly get you into number two.

01:22:45.460 But we know how that played out.

01:22:47.120 We already saw that seven years ago.

01:22:49.000 So to do that again, it's the definition of madness.

01:22:52.120 I just think if I were running against Trump, I would understanding how the GOP base still

01:22:57.400 loves him.

01:22:57.840 I'd say I get it.

01:22:59.020 You know, he did so many good things for us and he's highly entertaining.

01:23:01.420 I completely get it.

01:23:02.440 He changed the Republican Party in a way that was absolutely critical.

01:23:05.680 However, let's talk Turkey.

01:23:07.460 Let me go through the poll numbers in Wisconsin, in Arizona, in Georgia, in these in Michigan,

01:23:13.580 in these critical states in Pennsylvania and give you the reality.

01:23:16.120 Republican primary voters of what's coming down the pike, what's coming down the pike

01:23:20.840 are independent voters who are not as in love with Trump as you need them to be.

01:23:24.360 And they're never going to be as in love with Trump.

01:23:26.420 And this is what the numbers show there.

01:23:29.200 Nothing's going to change.

01:23:29.980 They know Trump.

01:23:31.280 There's nothing he can do between now and then that will change their view of him.

01:23:35.600 So as much as you love him, you may have to let him go if you actually want to win

01:23:39.320 back the White House.

01:23:39.980 I know you want to destroy the party.

01:23:41.420 He's done all he can do.

01:23:42.760 I will continue the legacy for him.

01:23:44.600 Trust me on that.

01:23:45.280 I will bust up all these same things, but you will lose.

01:23:49.040 I'd say something like that.

01:23:50.040 And I'd have real hardcore data on the polling and the independence in those states.

01:23:54.660 Whatever.

01:23:55.140 I'm not a political consultant, but that's what I would do.

01:23:57.740 One of the issues there, though, Megan, is in order for that to be effective, I think

01:24:01.540 you've got to say it to his face.

01:24:03.140 I think you've got to get Trump on the debate stage and give him a chance to answer that

01:24:06.500 or not answer that.

01:24:07.760 And the problem is Trump just came out a couple of days ago and said, not only was he not going

01:24:11.860 to go to the first debate, he's not going to show up to any of the debates.

01:24:14.740 And he gave his reason why.

01:24:16.060 There's an asterisk there.

01:24:17.100 NBC News then followed up and said, it's just the first two, we think, after speaking to

01:24:21.740 Trump's people.

01:24:23.260 So it's ambiguous.

01:24:24.440 But he sent out a truth, you know, his kind of Twitter posts.

01:24:28.780 And he said, the people already know me.

01:24:32.580 They already know who I am, which is the first line that he said that makes me think this

01:24:36.300 kind of a promise might not be bluster.

01:24:38.160 Because, as you just said, everybody has an opinion on Trump.

01:24:42.420 Every single person and their grandkids and their dogs have opinions about Donald Trump.

01:24:46.920 We've known who he is since the 1980s.

01:24:49.080 So there's no benefit to him really showing up to these debates unless his poll numbers

01:24:55.200 crater.

01:24:55.720 But they just don't show any signs of doing that.

01:24:58.160 They needed a different debate to make the poll numbers crater.

01:24:59.980 I had a very interesting I heard a very interesting discussion.

01:25:04.100 It was on The Federalist yesterday with Molly Hemingway.

01:25:07.420 And she was telling a story.

01:25:09.900 She's a conservative pundit and she goes on Fox.

01:25:11.980 But she was telling a story about a guy she knew in Republican politics who was about Brett

01:25:17.620 Kavanaugh.

01:25:18.520 He thought there's at least four other judges that Trump could have picked who would be

01:25:22.920 more solid and reliable than Kavanaugh.

01:25:25.560 But whatever.

01:25:27.000 But then when they accused him of being a gang rapist, like it happened for so many

01:25:32.380 people in the country, it flipped the guy entirely on Kavanaugh.

01:25:35.940 It was like, I will fight to the death to make sure Kavanaugh gets confirmed and started to

01:25:39.660 see Trump in a different light, too, since he fought for Kavanaugh.

01:25:42.060 And she was saying this guy and others, you know, looked at Trump this time around and said,

01:25:46.540 maybe that we need somebody new.

01:25:47.960 Yeah, I don't like what he did.

01:25:49.680 Good justices.

01:25:50.320 But like, maybe it's time.

01:25:51.800 And then when the indictments started piling up, he had the same flip like Trump has to

01:25:57.820 win.

01:25:58.340 He has to be the nominee and he has we have to get behind him because the fate of the of

01:26:02.700 the republic is at issue right now that no less than the fate of the republic, what we're

01:26:07.680 turning ourselves into must be fought.

01:26:10.320 And I know so many conservatives who feel that way.

01:26:13.320 It's almost just bigger than Trump.

01:26:16.080 Of course.

01:26:16.480 I mean, you see this in Fulton County right now.

01:26:18.480 The proof of this is that it's not just Trump being indicted on a campaign donation in kind

01:26:24.500 in New York and on, I don't know, tweets or something and recommending TV shows on Twitter

01:26:29.700 or whatever.

01:26:30.400 In Georgia, it's him and 18 co-defendants.

01:26:33.580 Some people who are being brought up on charges, Jenna Ellis, I was just speaking to her an hour

01:26:37.940 ago on my show, Jenna is being arrested simply for being the president's lawyer, for for providing

01:26:46.220 legal counsel, which everybody last I checked is entitled to murderers, rapists, serial killers,

01:26:51.940 but not the president of the United States.

01:26:54.020 For that reason, she's being charged like she was a gangster in New York under a RICO

01:26:58.960 statute, 18 co-defendants.

01:27:01.720 It's it's an expression of that meme that Trump sent around that got a lot of currency

01:27:06.760 in 2020.

01:27:07.500 And the meme is they're not coming for me.

01:27:09.400 They're coming for you.

01:27:10.300 And I'm I'm in the way.

01:27:11.360 Well, the Democrats are proving that now because they're going after everyone around this guy,

01:27:16.260 the activists.

01:27:17.560 They're going after the lawyers, just as they went after the January 6th Midwestern grannies

01:27:22.480 who they threw in the solitary.

01:27:24.320 Meanwhile, they let the BLM terrorists off the hook.

01:27:26.480 I think ordinary people are realizing, oh, wow, even if I don't like this guy's personality,

01:27:32.060 the left is not going to stop with Trump.

01:27:35.780 They're already moving past Trump.

01:27:38.600 Right.

01:27:39.260 They need to be taught a lesson about what the country will do if they want to pick these

01:27:44.100 kinds of fights.

01:27:45.440 This just coming in right now, as everybody is going down and turning themselves in down

01:27:51.200 in Atlanta, Trump later today doing the same.

01:27:53.340 Fannie Willis, the prosecutor down there, has just proposed.

01:27:56.480 A trial date.

01:27:58.140 Remember, she had said March of 2024, just a few months before the presidential election.

01:28:02.660 She just upped it to October of 2023.

01:28:06.480 This is OK.

01:28:07.680 Here's what I have to say to that.

01:28:08.820 OK, ready?

01:28:10.120 Here's what I have to say to that.

01:28:11.480 Sure, Dan.

01:28:12.100 It's not going to happen.

01:28:18.960 She's got 19 defendants in a RICO case.

01:28:23.000 Complicated as all.

01:28:24.200 Get out, including one against the president of the United States, the former and leading

01:28:28.440 contender to become again.

01:28:30.240 It's not going to happen.

01:28:31.040 I don't know what she's doing, but this is an absurdity.

01:28:34.180 Megan, it takes me two months to schedule dinner with my friends.

01:28:37.140 You think you're going to get 19 defendants in front of you by October?

01:28:43.000 Impossible.

01:28:43.840 Right.

01:28:44.040 That's literally two months away.

01:28:45.600 One of the defendants asked for a speedy trial and she says she wants to try them all

01:28:49.660 together.

01:28:50.760 That's not how this is going to work.

01:28:52.200 So more on that as we get it.

01:28:53.800 I want to play you one other soundbite of Trump talking about Tucker was pushing him

01:28:57.380 on.

01:28:58.020 I mean, it's a legitimate question.

01:28:59.240 It's a scary question.

01:29:00.160 But does he worry about being assassinated if he if he wins?

01:29:02.920 Like they've done everything to stop him, not even if he wins, but like, you know, they

01:29:06.580 they impeached him tomorrow.

01:29:07.760 They indicted him four times.

01:29:08.820 Like, does he have real fears about that?

01:29:10.780 And does he have fears about a possible civil war in this country, depending on Trump's future?

01:29:15.760 And here's how he answered.

01:29:17.800 It started with protests against you, massive protests, organized protests by the left,

01:29:22.000 and then it moved to impeachment twice.

01:29:25.040 Right.

01:29:25.820 And now indictment.

01:29:27.080 I mean, the next stage is is violence.

01:29:29.280 Are you worried that they're going to try and kill you?

01:29:30.900 Why wouldn't they try and kill you?

01:29:31.920 Honestly, they're savage animals.

01:29:35.800 They are people that are sick, really sick.

01:29:39.360 You have great people in the Democrat Party.

01:29:41.900 You have great people that are Democrats.

01:29:43.600 Most of the people in our country are fantastic.

01:29:45.820 And I'm representing everybody.

01:29:47.220 I'm not just Republican.

01:29:48.520 But I've seen what they do.

01:29:49.880 I've seen the lengths that they go to.

01:29:51.560 But these people are sick people.

01:29:53.680 These are people that I think they hate our country.

01:29:58.600 You want to know the truth?

01:29:59.980 Do you think we're moving towards civil war?

01:30:01.920 There's tremendous passion and there's tremendous love.

01:30:08.660 You know, January 6th was a very interesting day because they don't report it properly.

01:30:13.420 There was love in that.

01:30:14.500 There was love and unity.

01:30:16.580 And I've also never seen simultaneously and from the same people such hatred of what they've done to our country.

01:30:22.840 So do you think it's possible that there's open conflict?

01:30:27.720 We seem to be moving towards something.

01:30:29.200 I don't know.

01:30:29.280 I don't know.

01:30:30.000 Because I don't know what it...

01:30:32.240 You know, I can say this.

01:30:34.840 There's a level of passion that I've never seen.

01:30:37.040 There's a level of hatred that I've never seen.

01:30:39.760 And that's probably a bad combination.

01:30:41.440 You don't have to take his word for it, Megan.

01:30:47.180 Judge Michael Ludig, who was once a very respected conservative judge, he's now unfortunately been driven insane and spends his time playing Ed McMahon to every hack host on MSNBC.

01:30:59.400 But Mike Ludig came out and he said that he predicts in 2024 secretaries of state might not list Trump on the ballot.

01:31:11.020 And I'm trying to think of the last time we had a major presidential candidate not listed on ballots in states.

01:31:17.600 And it was right before the Civil War.

01:31:20.080 So you might say Donald Trump is hyperbolic or Tucker Carlson is catastrophizing.

01:31:25.400 Well, you're also hearing it on MSNBC from Never Trump judges like Mike Ludig.

01:31:31.660 This is a real fear.

01:31:34.020 And as my friend Andrew Klavan pointed out just last night, you know, Abraham Lincoln was saying, we have no enemies, only friends.

01:31:41.040 We'll all come together.

01:31:42.300 And that was two months before Fort Sumter.

01:31:45.080 Things in the political order can decay very rapidly.

01:31:49.900 Not done, but just want to remind the audience.

01:31:51.880 Call in eight, three, three, four, four, Megan, M-E-G-Y-N, eight, three, three, four, four, M-E-G-Y-N.

01:31:59.060 That's four, four, six, three, four, nine, six.

01:32:00.720 Call now.

01:32:01.140 We'll get you on the line after Michael goes in a few minutes.

01:32:04.740 They've been parading the mugshots of Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, his lawyers, Trump's lawyers out of Atlanta over on MSNBC like they're eating popcorn at the fair.

01:32:17.040 They are loving it.

01:32:18.100 And by the way, I made a comment on the lighting at the Fox News debate.

01:32:20.780 My God, the lighting at the Atlanta, at the Fulton County, I guess, sheriff's office is the worst.

01:32:25.940 I've it's terrible.

01:32:27.540 I mean, Rudy Giuliani, let's face it.

01:32:29.280 He's been going downhill in his looks for a while here.

01:32:31.440 The hair dye and all.

01:32:32.660 But he he looks like himself a mobster.

01:32:36.400 He's the mugshot looks like he's playing to type on the RICO claim.

01:32:41.260 Jenna gave a nice smile, which is probably the move.

01:32:43.820 They say Trump is going to be mugshotted today and they say it'll go everywhere.

01:32:47.880 It'll become viral.

01:32:48.660 People will have T-shirts. His supporters will have T-shirts of it to try to turn it around.

01:32:53.520 I don't know.

01:32:54.140 To me, I just feel sad.

01:32:55.320 I feel kind of depressed that the former president of the United States is going to get fingerprinted and mugshotted and, you know, forced to turn himself in for arrest today.

01:33:04.160 It's another before and after moment.

01:33:05.820 For all of these people, Megan, you know, I grew up in New York in the 1990s.

01:33:10.680 Rudy Giuliani is a hero to me.

01:33:12.300 I don't care what wild things he says or how much hair dye he uses that the man is a hero.

01:33:17.260 And to see what they've done to him, to see what they've done to John Eastman, a very respected legal scholar, very serious and wonderful man to walk him in there like a perp.

01:33:25.320 It's so disgusting.

01:33:26.940 It's such an obvious political persecution to say nothing of what they've done to my friend Jenna.

01:33:31.800 And so I agree with you.

01:33:33.860 It's terribly sad and most sad to see a president of the United States and, frankly, more importantly, leader of the opposition being brought up and mugshotted.

01:33:41.600 I also agree with you.

01:33:43.340 The smile is the way to go.

01:33:45.160 And there's two thoughts on this.

01:33:47.460 One is look defiant, look angry at this injustice.

01:33:51.060 That's what Rudy was doing.

01:33:52.060 That's what a number of the other defendants have been doing.

01:33:55.060 I'm with Jenna and I hope I hope Trump smiles, too, because this is an unjust persecution and good people have been unjustly persecuted before.

01:34:04.020 And in the evils of the Roman Empire, you would have Christians smiling and dancing while the lions ate them.

01:34:10.520 I think that they can arrest us.

01:34:13.000 They can throw us in prison.

01:34:13.900 They can take our mugshot.

01:34:15.160 But only only you can can give away your joy.

01:34:19.240 Yeah, I'm starting to rethink the Kim Kardashian.

01:34:22.280 Glam team at the DMV.

01:34:24.340 That's what Rudy needed.

01:34:25.680 He should have brought them to turning himself.

01:34:28.780 Like, you know what?

01:34:30.240 Smiley your way through it.

01:34:31.420 You hopefully they'll have the last laugh, because while I don't defend the conduct, I certainly don't think these are criminal acts.

01:34:38.860 It's absurdity.

01:34:39.520 Michael Knowles, a pleasure, as always.

01:34:42.340 Great to be with you, Megan.

01:34:45.520 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

01:34:47.460 No BS, no agenda and no fear.

01:34:52.060 We'll be right back.

01:34:52.680 Thank you, Megan.

01:34:53.000 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

01:34:55.300 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly.

01:34:58.900 How's the Megan Kelly?

01:35:08.260 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly.

The Megyn Kelly Show - August 24, 2023

Vivek Rises, DeSantis Untouched, and Trump's Arrest, with Michael Knowles, Emily Jashinsky, Comfortably Smug, and Charles C.W. Cooke ｜ Ep. 614

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