In this episode, I sit down with Megyn Kelly to talk about the current state of the media landscape and what we can do to fix it. It's a fascinating conversation, and I think you'll find a lot of value in it. Megyn is a force to be reckoned with in the world of media and politics. She's been around a long time, and she's done so in a way that most of us can only dream about: she's been in the business for a long enough to know how to speak truth on anything, including about media, as well as in politics. I think we can all learn a thing or two from Megyn's experience in both industries, and we can learn a lot from her advice on how to deal with the current media landscape. If you're interested in learning more about Megyn, you can find her on all of the social medias, if not all of them, here's a link to her latest book: How to Speak Truth on the Campaign Trail: A Guide to the 2020 Democratic Primary Campaign. You can also join our bi-monthly bi-weekly FaceTime call-in show, where Megyn and I chat about politics, policy, and everything else going on in American politics. 8:00-9:30 PM Eastern Time 11:00 PM Central Standard Time 16:00 - What are you going to do about the future of media? 17:30-20: What can we do about it? 18:00: What should we do? 19:30 - Is the next president do about media and media now? 21: What are we going to fix the problem? 22: How can we fix the media problem we all agree on? 26:30: What s the best way to fix media and information? 27:00 | What s our best bet? 28:30 | What is the solution? 29:00 32:30 What s your answer to the media's role in the future? 35:00 + 35:40 | What's your answer? 36:00+37:00 Is there a solution to media Darwinism? 39:00 What s a problem for the left? 40:00 = what s the solution to the problem we need to fix? 45:00 / 40:10 47:00 Should we be worried about the media and what s going to happen next?
Transcript
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00:00:02.000So I'm usually pretty ready with a response to a question I'll get on the campaign trail.
00:01:01.000I'm not talking about the merger of state power and corporate power.
00:01:06.000I'm talking about the US energy sector, inflation, foreign policy, China, none of that stuff.
00:01:11.000The question I get is, what are you going to do about I have to admit, it's a question that Stumps me a little bit.
00:01:38.000The best I'm able to say is, look, I believe in the internet.
00:01:41.000I think the internet decentralizes the provision of information.
00:01:46.000But then again, there's now the means of accessing the internet that are themselves centralized, which then get captured by external forces, including the government itself.
00:01:56.000And that's why I was looking forward to a conversation with somebody who has done something that I haven't, which is to have lived in, grown up, professionally succeeded within the world of media itself, who's unafraid to speak truth On anything, including about media as well.
00:02:14.000And as a friend, but I haven't had this conversation with her yet, and I'm looking forward to it.
00:02:18.000So, Megyn Kelly, welcome to my podcast this time around.
00:02:21.000I've been on yours many, many a time over.
00:02:55.000Fox News is being punished for its disastrous Tucker decision.
00:02:59.000MSNBC still has some viewers because that's where the leftists go.
00:03:03.000But they will, the viewers figured out eventually, and they will punish the channels appropriately, and then they will find other outlets.
00:03:09.000You know, media trust is at an all-time low.
00:03:12.000The search for outside sources, we just saw this in this Harvard Harris poll, is greater than ever.
00:03:17.000More independents are seeking their news outside of their old channels, like no more ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, no more for them.
00:03:24.000More independents are seeking outside channels like the digital lane than ever before.
00:03:29.000More Republicans are doing that than we've ever seen before.
00:03:32.000Democrats are still watching TV, so they're still like dividing their eyeballs between all those channels I just mentioned.
00:03:38.000And I think we really started to add to our problems when we started to have other performance of media like Facebook try to do little fact corrections on the ads, the political ads that were being run on it.
00:04:03.000I mean, your own success through your channels of reaching people is probably a good testament to that.
00:04:09.000But I guess it's fair to say then it sounds like you're pretty optimistic that the problems introduced by so-called media capture of narrative and the flow of information, that's not too high on your list of concerns just because you think competition is more or less working itself out.
00:04:46.000But since, you know, even six years ago, the explosion of digital media, podcasting, radio as well, it's always been a sort of a hotbed for conservatism in a good way.
00:04:58.000But look, right now, if you want to listen to anybody, like Glenn Greenwald is a liberal, but he's not woke and he fights these government institutions that have been, you know, corrupted, you can listen to him.
00:05:09.000If you want to listen to Matt Taibbi, same thing.
00:05:10.000If you want to listen to Ben Shapiro, you want to listen to me, you want to listen to you.
00:05:13.000There's so many places that you can get us now where you don't have to surrender to...
00:05:18.000These institutional rules that queer the debate, right?
00:05:22.000And I think that's as a result of consumer demand and a couple of intrepid, I don't know, just searchers like Glenn Beck.
00:05:32.000You could name a few who have gone out into the space first and given it a try and created a lane for the rest of us.
00:05:36.000I mean, I'm here because Ben Shapiro pulled me aside when I was post-NBC and said, MK, when you're making a decision about what to do next, this is a real lane for you.
00:06:11.000And I feel like our lane is rising, and I think the future of media is with individual personalities and not these behemoth corporations.
00:06:19.000Yeah, it does certainly seem to be moving that way.
00:06:21.000It's kind of still fascinating to hear about your alluding to it.
00:06:25.000Do you actually – I mean, this is interesting for me, right?
00:06:27.000Now I'm interfacing with this as a political candidate and whatnot.
00:06:31.000Do you get the sense that major networks broadly – it's not even a left-wing or right-wing thing – do have a – Sort of a top-down, invisible hand kind of thing going on internally?
00:06:44.000Or do you think that, you know, what most of the people will say is that, no, they're totally independent and feel unconstrained to say what they do.
00:06:52.000And you've been in that seat before, so it's like a pretty unique, and you're liberated now.
00:06:56.000Look, when I was at Fox, there was more of an implicit understanding as to how you would cover the news.
00:07:01.000And I honestly, I was okay with that bargain because Fox was an antidote to the left wing media bias that was everywhere else.
00:07:08.000And my political sensibilities were more in line for the most part.
00:07:11.000I mean, I started off more left leaning when I first joined Fox than I wound up.
00:07:16.000But just, you know, that's what age and wisdom will do to you, in my view.
00:07:19.000And plus, the country lost its ever-loving mind and moved far left.
00:07:22.000So if you were a centrist, suddenly you were a conservative Republican by the end of that 10, 15-year period.
00:07:28.000But I will say that it was more implicit at Fox than explicit.
00:08:19.000I mostly share it, by the way, but to push back a little bit on your optimism of market solutions here, I suspect what your response is going to be.
00:08:29.000If you just take Newsmax, for example, and some of the obstacles to Newsmax reaching consumers through its chosen medium, which is still cable, One America and Newsmax both were in the camp of AT&T and DirecTV taking governmental pressure to – at least it appears taking governmental pressure.
00:08:54.000Congress calls them in, citing specifically this network and these two networks as to why you're carrying them.
00:08:59.000And then lo and behold, the market later, the market makes the decision to remove them in due course thereafter, after the carriers had been threatened.
00:09:09.000Does that – Does that kind of example worry you?
00:09:12.000It's not that different than Twitter choosing to silence.
00:09:57.000My understanding is they had a dispute with DirecTV because they wanted to get paid instead of paying DirecTV or at least just doing it for free.
00:10:04.000And DirecTV didn't think they were worth it.
00:10:18.000I think, look, the bigger you build your brand, like DirecTV could never get away with that if it were Fox News.
00:10:25.000Because the audience, even though they're mad at Fox at the moment, they're still too big and too loyal to, So that works.
00:10:31.000You know, net-net, it's going to work.
00:10:33.000There are going to be a few players that don't have as much power who could get hurt.
00:10:36.000And look, there's a reason they targeted OAN. You know, I don't watch OAN, but I understand it's a little bit more extreme in its politics, and that's fine.
00:11:06.000And so that – you put in a different category than maybe a higher level of concern you have with the government leaning on, say, Twitter for deciding what does and doesn't get posted.
00:11:24.000This was a private company, DirecTV, saying, no, I don't like your deal.
00:11:27.000I'm going to – I'm going to go book a new deal with The First, which is a conservative leading channel, which has got a lot of very popular personalities on it, from Bill O'Reilly to Dana Lash.
00:11:36.000It's not like they replaced them with an MSNBC alternative.
00:11:39.000So I genuinely believe the dispute with Newsmax was not about Newsmax politics.
00:11:45.000It was about the number that they wanted.
00:11:48.000Otherwise, why would they have replaced them with people like Bill O'Reilly?
00:12:01.000Media has been very, very divided for a very, very long time.
00:12:04.000We had sort of a honeymoon period in the 70s, 80s, and that's fine.
00:12:08.000I think it was leftist even then, though not as bad as it is now.
00:12:13.000And I think it's good to have fractured media.
00:12:15.000People will figure out who they trust.
00:12:17.000And yes, maybe we don't all agree on a basic set of facts, but those who want real facts, as opposed to just their worldview confirmed, We'll find them.
00:12:25.000You listen to the Daily Wire in the morning and you listen to NPR. You know, you listen to both podcasts.
00:12:29.000You get the times and you get the journal.
00:12:31.000You spend a little time with Brett Baer in the evening and maybe you subject yourself to a little wolf blitzer.
00:12:36.000You do what you have to if you really want facts.
00:12:39.000So I want to switch gears for a second.
00:12:45.000One of the big questions all over our mind is, of course, You know, the content and the future direction of our, what I'll call our movement, the conservative movement, pro-American movement.
00:12:56.000We can apply what label we want to apply to it.
00:13:00.000I think one of the fissures that I see, it's a little different than the traditional debates we're having within the Republican Party or whatever.
00:13:12.000But I think the debate between whether we're really a party built and a movement built on Certain first principles around proceduralism, free market, free speech, classical liberal values, let's call it that.
00:13:28.000Because I think that that's a strain that exists.
00:13:30.000I think you and I share a commitment to those values in common.
00:13:35.000But a moment that we're living in, I see this in the campaign trail a lot, Megan, where, you know, when I get questions like, oh, what do you think is going on with the media?
00:13:42.000I think people are hungry for direction and leadership.
00:13:45.000And For people who actually need some more substance to sink their teeth into.
00:13:51.000This is something that I see a lot in traveling this country right now.
00:13:55.000And it's interesting where there will be certain audiences, maybe like New Hampshire or other places, where you talk about the virtues of free speech, that the path to truth runs through free speech and open debate.
00:14:12.000But for certain people, that doesn't really do the trick anymore.
00:14:14.000That's not quite enough, where we need more content, more substance of what it actually means to be a conservative.
00:14:23.000I have my ideas on what should fill that void, the revival of family, the revival of faith, the revival of belief in a nation and patriotism, but sort of the content of something that stands in contrast to the left's I think that's something interesting I've noticed in the first three months of traveling the country,
00:14:51.000talking to audiences, of seeing, I think, a You know, fissure means it seems like a conflict, but maybe two different camps in large conservative audiences, those who are actually just hungry for the revival of those classical liberal values that even a liberal in 1990 would have embraced versus this broader separate kind of hunger for purpose and meaning and actual identity to be filled by more than just the procedural values of classical liberalism.
00:15:22.000So if we should shift gears a little bit, I just wanted to hear your reaction to that.
00:15:26.000I know you're very thoughtful about questions like these.
00:15:30.000I was curious for your take there because that's on my mind as we're heading back on the travel circuit campaign trail for the next few days.
00:15:40.000I'm curious for your thoughts on that.
00:15:42.000Well, I mean, the way I view liberalism and what's annoying about it is it's like an enormous thumb that keeps trying to pin us down wherever we go in our lives.
00:15:54.000They want to pin down our kids and tell our kids how to live.
00:15:56.000They want to pin us down and tell us how to live.
00:15:58.000They want to get us in our employment situation and tell us exactly how much taxes we need to pay, and it's a lot, and the kind of words that we can use when we're at the workplace.
00:16:07.000Just everywhere you go, there's just like another thumb trying to pin you down.
00:16:11.000And the way I view conservatism is there's no thumb.
00:16:28.000They would like to make some suggestions to you, like maybe you should consider the introduction of faith into yours and your children's lives.
00:16:34.000It might lead to something wonderful that would lead you without this vacuous hole that you feel the need to fill with Empty identity politics, et cetera.
00:17:04.000And one makes me feel good about myself and my children's prospects.
00:17:08.000And one makes me feel terrible about myself, my children's prospects and my country.
00:17:13.000You know, one is a massive downer and one is a massive upper.
00:17:16.000There was a poll recently talking about how depressed liberals are and how they're way more depressed and likely to need psychiatric services and therapy.
00:17:25.000Now, there's anything wrong with therapy, but way more so than conservatives are.
00:17:30.000And it gets right to the heart of what you're saying and what I'm saying.
00:17:34.000If you feel like you are in charge of your life and no one's coming to save you and you can change what's ailing you, it's a wonderful moment.
00:18:01.000I don't know if that's too self-helpy for you, but that's how I see the two sides.
00:18:06.000At the same time, I do think that when you think about the...
00:18:13.000I guess when it comes to kids, this way you sort of put pressure on this a little bit, even from the conservative angle, right?
00:18:21.000Like, what's your perspective on whether or not a social media product that Is known, let's say TikTok or whatever, to result in dissatisfaction, depression, anxiety, etc.
00:18:35.000amongst teens who are using it, maybe 15, 16 years old.
00:18:40.000You know, put after 16 in a different category.
00:18:44.000The free view of the world, some would say, and I don't subscribe to this, but the free view of the world is, hey, listen, that's up to parents.
00:18:51.000Parents are supposed to decide what their kids do and don't use, but if the reality is that mechanism isn't actually delivering on...
00:19:01.000The right outcome for kids, or let's just say, with respect to whether or not kids are going to go through gender conversion therapy, whether they're going to get through puberty blockers, chemical castration, surgical intervention, when a kid feels like they're born in the wrong body.
00:19:17.000What's your perspective there when the outer limits of freedom only apply as we think about it to fully formed adults?
00:19:25.000I think this is kind of where the rubber hits the road a little bit.
00:19:28.000Is that in the realm of freedom for parents to be able to say that, no, my kid's actually going to go and get this gender conversion therapy and surgical intervention without the state telling me that I can't stop them from doing that?
00:19:42.000So there's a big difference between, let's say, you must stick your kid with a COVID vaccine because I, the president, will tell you that's what he or she needs.
00:19:52.000And you're free to chop off your son's penis when he's nine years old.
00:19:57.000There's a big, big scale there between those two things.
00:20:00.000And I think at one point, it's appropriate for government to pass a law saying, no, you may not actually harm your child in that way.
00:20:08.000You may not cut off body parts of young children, any children, until they reach the age of majority, they can make their own decisions.
00:20:16.000That, to me, seems like an appropriate government role to prevent the harm, that level, against children versus You know, most of the stuff to the other side of that, I'd probably be against government involving itself.
00:20:28.000Like, I don't think, I don't like the TikTok ban.
00:20:53.000Instagram's the one that's leading girls to want to kill themselves.
00:20:55.000Snapchat, probably the most pernicious.
00:20:57.000I've done so many stories on parents who have lost kids because of the bullying that goes on on Snapchat, but we're not going to ban each of these social media companies.
00:21:58.000Version of the question though is, okay, that'd be great if that's what parents were doing across this country.
00:22:03.000So many parents are not rising up to the role they're supposed to play, let alone, you know, the loss of the nuclear family structure altogether.
00:22:14.00025% of households now living without dads in the house.
00:22:16.000I mean, we can go all the way upstream, even two-parent households.
00:22:20.000But that's not an invitation for government to come in.
00:22:22.000I mean, you know how many kids are eating McDonald's every day?
00:22:24.000You know how many kids are having the Big Gulp in their baby bottle in Appalachia?
00:22:55.000If not the government, and I agree with you, that's not the right answer.
00:22:59.000That's the gaping hole where what I see amongst a lot of conservatives across the country, Megan, is that's what I was getting at in the beginning is a hunger for more than just the answer that we've often served, which is the government should not be involved in this.
00:23:30.000What do we actually, as a culture, forget the government, what do we as a culture, as leaders in capacities outside of government, like what do we actually do against a state of affairs where we're seeing the breakdown, for example, is to stay on the issue of the family, the breakdown of the family, both in terms of parents exercising what their correct responsibilities ought to be in the way they bring their kids up, or even worse, the absence of family formation or the breakdown of the nuclear family altogether.
00:23:57.000That's a hard question, it seems to me.
00:24:45.000You know, I mean, like, we need to make people pull themselves out of their depression in order to give them the skills to tackle these problems.
00:24:55.000And we're doing all the opposite things.
00:24:58.000I mean, one of the reasons why identity politics is so pernicious, and one of the reasons I love how hard you fight against it, is because it leads to despair.
00:25:08.000It's disempowering to the people of color, and it's offensive and depressing to white people who get blamed, or Asians, depending on the setting, who get blamed for the world's problems.
00:25:19.000And it leaves you feeling like you can't change anything because you're born with original sin or you're born with original deficiencies that are impossible to overcome.
00:25:53.000Oh wait, then you'll get called an insult by Olivia Wilde, one of Hollywood's biggest stars, and she'll make a whole movie about how pathetic you are.
00:26:12.000There are more and more, like my friend Mark Joseph is a conservative-leaning filmmaker who's making this movie, Reagan.
00:26:18.000It'll have a different kind of messaging.
00:26:19.000He also did the movie No Safe Spaces, which talks about the need for free debate on college campuses.
00:26:23.000Like, the more we can get alternative viewpoints out there to reach out to these people who are suffering and tell them, don't listen to those people.
00:26:31.000The more empowered they'll feel, and hopefully the better their lives will be, But it's hard to inject self-help into someone's life from the outside.
00:27:26.000You seem like you've taken risks in your career.
00:27:29.000I'm not here to talk about my story, but I find a lot of admiration for the way you've taken risks in your career, the self-confidence you bring in the show you put on every day.
00:27:47.000It doesn't have to come from the government, but it just comes from, you know what?
00:27:50.000Let's say you're talking to a bunch of parents or a bunch of teenagers.
00:27:52.000What's your perspective on where you derive your sense of self-confidence in hopes that somebody else might take something useful away from it?
00:27:58.000Well, I would say the best gift I had was parents who never gave me any false praise or really any praise.
00:28:40.000It should be seen as, oh yeah, okay, this is my secret juice that's going to make me even more powerful on my next encounter because how do you build up the muscles without tearing them down first?
00:28:52.000We're framing everything wrong right now.
00:28:55.000You know, we're telling people, as you know, you've heard the whole speech, but like leaning into victimhood and feeling sorry for yourself and feeling like everybody's out to get you.
00:29:04.000I mean, I was just reading up about, it was one of these actresses who was at the Cannes Film Festival wearing nothing.
00:30:18.000You know, it could just be something quirky about you.
00:30:20.000People, they need to start embracing their weirdnesses and their failings and their disastrous moments as part of the mosaic that makes them an interesting person that's sticky, that people want to stick to, as opposed to somebody who's annoyingly perfect and you know they're actually not, and they're just hiding their stuff.
00:30:39.000They're better at hiding it than you are.
00:30:41.000Anyway, we've gone exactly the opposite way as a culture.
00:31:03.000I do think we are like, wait, we mean it just like us as Americans are going to have to find a way of rediscovering that on our own.
00:31:12.000I do think that there's a role for leaders to play in, you know, coaches, teachers.
00:31:18.000I think US President, I mean, Ronald Reagan, I think in a certain way, there was something about, you know, leading in the 80s that led the country back from an identity crisis akin to the kind we might be going through now in the late 70s that revived our national self-confidence, but our national self-confidence starts from confidence in each of us in the way we live our daily lives.
00:31:39.000And I don't think it's going to happen automatically, but I do think More people like you, Megan, honestly, who are willing to share what works for you.
00:31:47.000I don't think that self-help books – yeah, I used to laugh at the category, but I don't anymore.
00:31:51.000I think that there's actually something to be said for people who have discovered what works for them.
00:31:57.000In a deeply first personal way to open up and share that with those who can take something and use something that comes of it, that's more likely to result in an epidemic of self-confidence that we're hungry for than any form of top-down political leadership or institutional reform.
00:32:15.000I don't think that's where the ballgame is right now.
00:32:20.000I mean, I will say one thing you talk about, which I also support and agree with, is the importance of civics and reminding people what's important about being an American citizen, what's great about being an American citizen, what's great about our country.
00:32:32.000I think that, you know, there was a time in this country...
00:33:50.000But thanks for admitting it, and thanks to the whistleblower who leaked the tape, because now we know, right?
00:33:55.000And now the Daily Wire is into children.
00:33:57.000Not that this is a big promo for the Daily Wire, but I just like what they're doing.
00:33:59.000They're building an alternative and we need more and more of those alternatives because there has to be a vision, you know, of an America that we love, of the family unit that's intact and working and loves one another.
00:34:12.000You know, we do little things in our family.
00:34:14.000Like when we go on vacation together, we don't bring a friend.
00:34:17.000You know, the kids, they're still young, but they can't bring friends.
00:34:20.000Like we spend the vacations together, the five of us.
00:34:23.000That's our time to reconnect, the five of us, not for you to reconnect with your friends.
00:34:27.000And the teenagers will hate it and too bad.
00:34:30.000Then they'll get used to us and we'll reconnect and it'll be good.
00:34:33.000Nurture this thing that you're building.
00:34:35.000Nurture it with church or synagogue or wherever you pray.
00:35:07.000Megan, you're a good soldier and a good messenger.
00:35:10.000And I think that I'm actually with you.
00:35:14.000I think most of that change is going to come from outside of the instruments that we spend most of our time arguing about, the government or otherwise.
00:35:19.000It's going to come from everyday people taking inspiration to do what they're already – and most people are empowered to drive the kind of change you described without having to go to some ballot box every November.
00:35:29.000It's just the choices you make every day, and I appreciate you being a voice for – And a voice for restraint in just lazily resorting to centralized state-based solutions to things that actually absolve us of the responsibility that each of us bear as human beings, as parents, as citizens.