Shawn Ryan Show - #129 Megyn Kelly - The End of Mainstream Media

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Megyn Kelly is an American journalist, television personality, and host of "The Megyn Kelly Show." Prior to her television career, Kelly practiced law, graduating from Albany Law School and working at renowned law firm Jones Day before transitioning to journalism. She is best known for her work as a television news anchor. Kelly gained critical acclaim as a Fox News Channel anchor, where she hosted "The Kelly File" and earned a reputation for her sharp interviewing skills and unique style. In 2017, she left Fox News to join NBC News, where she hosted "Megyn Kelly Today." Her career has been marked by high-profile interviews and coverage of major news events. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://betterhelp.com/shawn https://drinkhoist.com - USE CODE "SHAWN" https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/the-old-man https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner Megyn Kelly Links: IG - https://www.instagram.com/megynkelly x - https://x.com/megynkelly FB - https://www.facebook.com/MegynKelly TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@megynkellyshow YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/MegynKelly Podcast - https://www.megynkelly.com/listen Website - https://www.megynkelly.com Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

the game. to wager Ontario only gambling problem call connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600. BedMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Looking for a collaborator for your career? A strong ally to support your next level success? You will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. Megyn Kelly, welcome to the show. So good to see you again. It's good to see you too.

I just want to say this is so surreal to me to be interviewing you. I mean, throughout my entire career, we watched the Kelly File on deployments and to keep up with what's happening in the rest of the world. So just to be sitting here is, it's very surreal and I'm thankful for the opportunity. So thank you. Thank you for telling me that. I'm so excited to be here. I only knew a bit about you before you came on my show and I said this after you left publicly

and not in a creepy way, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about you. Like that whole interview was so profound and really just affected me in ways that I'm not usually affected when I sit down with somebody. So it was a no-brainer when you asked me to come here. I'm looking forward to a long friendship I hope. Wow that means a lot. Thank you so much. And yeah it was a I love that interview so I just listened

to it again today. But so thank you for that opportunity as well. Thank you. Although I've decided I gotta step up my studio now that I'm here. My God, I've been phoning it in. It's unbelievable I'm here. Thank you. There's a lot of artifacts.

It's turning into a museum. I gave you some of those. I gotta start putting more pressure on my guests to give me things, important things. The best thing I've ever gotten from a guest is a signed basketball signed by, remember when Dennis Rodman went over to, he's the Henry Kissinger of our time,

to try to find peace with Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un? Well, it's signed by two out of the three. I got Trump and Dennis Rodman on there with all three of their faces on the basketball. That's cool. That's gotta be a one of a kind thing. Might be the most valuable thing I own. Right on, right on.

Well, let me, I like to kick it off with an introduction. Not that you need one, but here we go. Megyn Kelly, you were a journalist at Fox News for 13 years and moderated six presidential debates including the first Republican primary debate in 2015. You hosted America's Newsroom, America Live, and The Kelly File. You are the founder of Devil May Care Media and host of The Megyn Kelly Show, one of the top podcasts in the world.

Your 2016 memoir, Settle for More, debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list. You have an impressive and varied list of notable interviews, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister, I'm gonna butcher that, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former President Donald Trump, then Senator Barack Obama, President

Joe Biden, Senator Mitt Romney, Michael Phelps, and the list goes on. You've won awards such as Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People, Vanity Fair's New Establishment List, and Hollywood Reporter's Woman and Entertainment Power 100. In 2016, you became the second news anchor in history to be featured on the cover of Vanity Fair. You are a mother of three, a wife and a devout Catholic. And one of my favorite things about you is you do not waver in your values or beliefs.

And that's hard to come by these days. Oh, well thank you for that. I can tell my assistant has been here. But. How old am I? But, so I just watched this movie this morning for the first time, Bombshell. Oh wow, you watched Bombshell.

I watched the whole thing this morning. And wow, I'd always heard about what went on over there, I watched the whole thing this morning and wow. I'd always heard about what went on over there, but to see it in that format, what you did is just so commendable. And I can't wait to dive into that, but. I have a lot of thoughts. I mean, to me, you are a beacon of light

in a lost world for women, especially in this upcoming generation. I mean, they're just facing so much, and there aren't too many positive role models in the world left, I don't think, and you're a great one. So thank you. I definitely have a strong ethical compass, but I am open-minded to being persuaded I'm

wrong. I always say it's delightful to find out you're wrong because tomorrow you'll be less wrong than you were yesterday. But certain core things that you grow up with, from the church, from your parents, from your Girl Scout troop, though not today, but back when I grew up, they do communicate certain core values to you that ideally,

you hold onto throughout your life. And while different interests may come and go, different judgments may come and go, the core set of values tends to stay the same. That's at least been my experience. Though I have to admit, devout Catholic may be too strong because I think my priest would be sitting at home like, really?

I mean. I mean. Uh huh. We missed a few appearances at Sunday Mass over the past year, but not too many. Well, I would love to dive into your faith journey and how that's all going, maybe towards the end of the interview as well. Sure.

But I would love to do a life story on you starting at the beginning and going through your come up and to being a mega news anchor and how you got to where you are today. And then maybe some current events at the end. But I have a subscription platform. It's on Patreon. And there are top supporters that have been here since the beginning. And so one thing that I do is I give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question.

And it was overwhelmingly questions about you standing up for women. And so I wanted to, so I kind of combined all those questions and I just wanted to ask you, especially being a father of a eight month old daughter, what is the best piece of advice for young women dedicated to rising to the top in today's generation? Don't think of yourself as a woman. Just think of yourself as a worker and do it, a lot of it, all the time without complaint.

You know, that you're not above anything. I almost called my book out-hustled as opposed to Settle for More because I really think that's the word that explains my success. There's nothing particularly special about me. I'm not particularly brilliant or particularly talented in one way or another. I've just worked really hard It studied hard and when I landed in this field worked really hard to develop the skills that it would take to do well here and Anyone anyone can do that?

It does require some each fit field requires some natural aptitude You know, I don't think this work ethic on stage in the ballet would have produced the same rewards for me. But once you narrow it down to, I think I have the natural talents that could make me succeed in this business, it's all about hard work. And so my advice to young women is the same as it is to young men. Get in there. Do every job, even the ones that aren't yours, even the grimy ones that make you feel less than.

Don't leave before your boss. Come in on the weekends, volunteer to. Take every assignment, even if you think it's beneath you, with a thank you. When you get positive or negative feedback, say thank you. When somebody gives you any sort of critique, explore it. Why? What did I do? How could I do better? If somebody edits you any sort of critique, explore it. Why, what did I do?

How could I do better? If somebody edits your writing, ask them to have the marked up brief. Let me see it. How did I go wrong? How could I do better? All of it is a learning opportunity. So I think all of that's important to becoming,

you know, a valued employee or star or whatever in your particular industry. But I will also say, whatever's thrown at you, by your boss, by your colleagues, by your spouse, by your friend, by your office mate, the response is thank you. Thank you. Great.

Wow. That's a great piece of advice. Thank you. Even if it's shitty, because now you've got this to deal with. You're figuring out, this is how I deal with a crappy person, an ethical person. This is a lesson to me in how I misjudge somebody as good, who turns out to be not so good. Where did I go wrong? All of it is opportunity, if only you will take an ever so brief time.

You don't have to spend days and years to reflect on it. Have you always lived by that philosophy, or is that learned? There's so brief time. You don't have to spend days and years to reflect on it. Have you always lived by that philosophy, or is that learned? I would say I put that to more use once I hit the professional field as a young lawyer. And then certainly when my first marriage was collapsing, that was a great opportunity to really pause and figure some things out about myself.

And thankfully that happened in my young 30s. So that set me up for a nice long run, you know, since then. Good. I have, I also have a, this is a personal question. And you know, ever since I started doing this and I kind of talked about why I started doing it on when you interviewed me, but ever since I got into uncovering corruption or the truth space or whatever you want to

call it, it's, it's almost like a beacon one out for, for all the weirdos to try to get on my podcast. And it gets really hard to determine who is completely full of shit and who's actually not manipulating facts to make it sound like truth. It's tricky, I think it's tricky. Do you find it tricky? Yes or no, I mean I have a whole team of producers

who I really trust. Some of them have been with me for more than a dozen years and gotten me through Fox and NBC and now this show, so I have complete trust in them. So they, you know, I have more than my own radar to figure out who's telling the truth. But I still make mistakes because I think like you, notwithstanding my cynical newswoman background,

and you've got to be somewhat cynical given your background too, I still trust people. I still kind of love people. My instinct is still to believe as opposed to doubt. Unless you're a politician, in which case it's the opposite. I believe almost nothing. But when I was at NBC, I had that couple come on my show. I don't know if you remember this story, but they, the woman ran out of gas

and a homeless guy gave her his last $20. She filled up her gas tank and it was just such a nice gift by the homeless guy. Anyway, turn to this whole thing. She and her husband wound up starting a GoFundMe for this guy. All these people donated. It was a feel-good story.

Whole thing wound up being a fraud. They were all in on it. Before we knew that, I had the husband and wife on my show because they were under some scrutiny for maybe stealing some of the gold from me. I gave them way too much benefit of the doubt. They were total fraudsters. It was so bad.

But you know, I wouldn't take it back if I could because I like that part of me. I don't want to lose that part of me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I get because I like that part of me. I don't want to lose that part of me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I get, I just, you know, some of the stuff I worry about is things like the COVID vaccine or I don't ever want to affect somebody's decision-making process off bullshit that was put out on my show.

And I just, I feel a huge responsibility to that. And so, so I was just curious how you sift through it. I mean, that stuff was very tricky. The COVID stuff was very tricky. We were turned on by so many authorities that we were supposed to trust. Yeah. It's almost like too big to get your arms around

what happened there. And I actually think it's one of the reasons why people can't go back there. Like if you do stories on COVID, they don't get numbers. And it's not because in particular, the right half of the country doesn't have very strong feelings about it. It's just part of the term triggering.

It's triggering. You know, it's like people are pissed. Nothing changed. We screwed over our kids and ourselves. A lot of us took the vaccine and feel unhealthier as a result of it. People are worried about their children if they give it to them.

So it's one of those avoidance things now. But yeah, I did not get all of COVID right. I think I did okay. I give myself a B plus on my understanding of what was going on there. But it's very hard when you have so many previously trusted entities lying to you. Yeah. Yeah. Even, I mean, I'm not, I wasn't for it, but I brought somebody on

and I felt like they were, I felt like the facts, they were against it too, and I felt like the facts that they were pulling, were painting it, they were pulling all these facts from all these other things and trying to create a narrative out of it. And I never erred it. Oh wow.

Because I didn't, if I don't believe them, then I won't air it. Smart. So. It's very hard to know. And then, I mean, I'll take you back to the COVID period where Alex Berenson wasn't allowed anywhere. You know, he was a COVID vaccine doubter early on,

former New York Times reporter. Then he turned an author. And he was saying some interesting things. I mean, I had interviewed him on Fox, and he seemed like a very credible, serious journalist to me. He never struck me as a crackpot. You know, there are some people out there that you just know. So I said, well, let's put him on.

I'd like to find out why he's so scary to everyone. And, you know, Alex Berenson turned out to be right about not everything, but a lot. And I thought our duty in putting him on was just research everything he was going to say and find out what the other side was saying so I could tweak him so that people could make up their own minds.

But somebody like that, I didn't think it was right not to platform that guy at all, right? Like, it's a serious person. He's not a nutcase. He's not out there to hurt a bunch of people. But there are some people who are more in the category of what you're saying. And for me, I just try to stay away from them

and let the team do the vetting. Yeah, yeah. I should give more team members. Yes, you need the team do the vetting. Yeah, yeah. I should get more team members over there. Yes, you need the team. But we'll get there. But so I wanna start at the very beginning. Okay. Where did you grow up?

I was born in Illinois. My dad was getting his PhD at the University of Illinois. And then before I turned one, we moved to Syracuse, New York. And that's where I spent pretty much the first 10 years of my life, where my dad taught at Syracuse University. And then we moved to Albany. So I basically just moved from one tundra to another, immersed in four feet of snow every winter, freezing our asses off, but loving it.

Totally gray, totally freezing. Summers were almost nonexistent, maybe a month, and then every other month was snowy with sledding. But I thought it was heavenly. And you have how many sisters? I had one sister who's, she was six and a half, almost seven years older than I am. And then my brother's five and a half years older.

Okay. So you're the youngest? Yeah. Of three. I'm the ba- I was the only one they really wanted, Sean. My brother and sister were accidents. They got- my mom had them when she was like 23 and 24. I was the only planned child, which means only coveted child.

There you go. There you go. What kind of stuff were you into as a kid? What did you like doing? It's funny because I look back now because now my husband and I are living such different lives than the ones we grew up with. My kids have a great existence and we have some money so they get to do some fun vacations and they get to go to this camp, although it's not an expensive camp, but they're learning how to sail.

I never did anything like that. So when I was growing up, I literally went through the sprinkler in my mom's backyard in the summer. Or the highlight was we'd go to my Nana and Pop-Up's boatyard on the Hudson. I was swimming in the Hudson River in the 1970s when GE was doing all of its toxic dumps. I could have been at NASA. If only I had not taken in that amount of toxicity. Anyway, but it was great. It was heavenly because we'd sit out there. I was joking the other day with my husband. I'm like, you know, I it was great. It was heavenly because we'd sit out there. I was joking the other day with my husband.

I'm like, you know, I was thinking back. One of my favorite activities was to make mud pies, you know, just mud pies when it rained. And then I said, my second thought was we were poor. Like, how was that my favorite activity? But it was, you know, we'd sneak out. My grandparents had a stand where they would sell burgers to the fishermen

and I could get a cheeseburger whenever I wanted. And then at night when nobody was there, none of the customers, my brother and my sister and I would have our friends over and we'd play waitress where we'd get the little order pads. We'd make ice cream sundaes for each other. We'd have Elvis Presley movies on or the Brady Bunch, you know, classic 70s TV.

And I don't know if it gets any happier than that. You don't need to sail, you don't need to tennis, you don't need a yacht club, you don't need any of that crap. You can do it with mud pies, a little Elvis, and a great cheeseburger. I've never lost sight of that. I feel like all of that was an important ingredient to becoming a good journalist, frankly.

Were you close with your siblings? Yes. There was enough of an age difference that when we were little, I wasn't that close to my brother. My sister took care of me. She was seven years older, so she was always a caretaker. And good to me. She was very funny, and my mom is very funny. All the women in my family have a very strong You know, she was seven years older, so she was always a caretaker. And good to me.

She was very funny. And my mom is very funny. All the women in my family have a very strong sense of humor. And my brother just sort of, I think I was in, I was annoying to him. He was annoyed by me because I was always in his stuff. I was messing with his gerbils when he didn't want me to. I picked up one and its tail fell off. I was like, oh shit.

Buried it in the garbage. But then when we got older, as soon as I was like 16, my brother and I got closer. And my sister and I were always close. And now my brother and I are really close. What does your mother do? My mom is a nurse and so she spent her whole life nursing at ultimately the Albany Veterans Hospital.

Oh good. Yeah. And you lost your father at age 15, correct? Yeah. Of a heart attack. Yeah. How did you get through that? I mean, the short answer is my mom. My mom is, she's really strong and always was. And that sense of humor was very important.

You know, she was able to crack jokes almost the night of, not quite, but almost, and kind of taught us how to keep laughing even through the dark times. It was an odd time of life for me because my dad died December 15, 1985. I was a sophomore in high school. It was sudden. It was right before Christmas. And it couldn't have been a more explosive event on our family. But at the same time, I was popular that year. I hadn't always been, I was very badly bullied earlier.

But that year I was popular. And I had lost some weight, I was starting to look better, my acne was clearing up, I was getting invited to these cool parties with good looking boys who started to ask me out. And so for a 15 year old girl, with good-looking boys who started to ask me out. And so for a 15-year-old girl, all of those things are great things. And so I remember that year as just feeling such an odd mix of intense sadness and depression,

and yet happiness and hopefulness about my life and how it could be. And escapism, not in terms of drugs or alcohol, but just going to the prom with the junior. That's cool. Like shopping for a dress. Back in those days, we didn't have cell phones. Just waiting for him to call, and then he did call. I remember those moments almost as acutely as I remember the sadness around my dad's death, I think just given the value system of a 15-year-old girl.

Where it happened suddenly? So he was only 45. And my mom was 44. And he really hadn't had any health problems. He wasn't an exerciser, you know, 1985, a lot of people weren't. He had a relatively stressful job. He was a professor, first at Syracuse and then at SUNY Albany. But he loved his job. He wasn't heavy, but he did smoke. And he drank. Not to excess, but he smoked. And about a week or 10 days before he died, he thought he was having some heart trouble, and he went to the ER, and they told him it was heartburn.

So he came back relieved. Other than that, there had not been any sort of warning. And the night he died, it was a Sunday night. My sister was home from college, because it was a Sunday night. My sister was home from college, because it was close to Christmas. My brother was still at his college, which was not too far from where we lived. And we said good night, went upstairs, and I just remember my sister waking me up shortly after midnight saying, wake up, daddy had a heart attack.

And it's just, it's like an otherworldly, it's an out of body experience, you know? Wow. That's sad. You had just mentioned that you were bullied as a little girl. Why were you bullied? Why? Why? Why?

That's an interesting question. I think it's because I had a fairly big, not huge, but fairly big personality. So I attracted attention, which is somewhat dangerous when you're young. Kind of always, it could be potentially dangerous, but you know, when you're young. Kind of always. It could be potentially dangerous, but you know, when you're young, most kids just want to fly under the radar, have friends.

I wasn't trying to get attention. I just had a large personality. I've always laughed that I consider myself, now I'm fairly attractive, though it's going downhill as I get older, it's fine. But I have an unattractive girl's personality, because that's who I really am, that's how I grew up. I was never good looking. I wasn't a cute child, I wasn't a particularly good looking tween.

It wasn't until I got, you know, later in high school that I was like, I need to work on this. I can do better. Gotta lose some weight. I gotta get to a dermatologist. I had a big space between my two front teeth. I'm like, I gotta get that fixed. I gotta put some sun in in this hair.

And I started teaching aerobics. My brother just casually one time he said, the girls with the best bodies all do aerobics. I was like, that's what I'll do. And so anyway, I do think it was just, if you have a big personality, you're potentially a target as a kid. How did you, I mean, how would they bully you?

Well, I had some bullying when I was in fourth grade that was unpleasant before I left Syracuse, but that's, it was sort of more normal bullying, but it was bad. I was at a girl's birthday party and they all started flicking me. All of them. I was like, kids can be so mean. And I remember calling my dad and he came to get me early.

And when we walked inside, I remember he looked at my mom and my mom looked at him like, how is she kind of thing? And my dad went, gave her the thumbs down. But that's not, I mean, I remember it. Here I am all these years later. But it was the seventh grade where things got bad. And really, if you could have seen me in seventh grade, Sean, honestly, I can't believe those girls picked on me.

You know, I had enough problems. Why would they have picked on that version of me? But they did. And I've never named the ringleader, but she knows who she is. And she just turned every person in the school against me. She decided I was out, I was otherized, and I went from having lots of friends to having no friends for almost a year.

And seventh grade is a tough year. You know, that's 12, you're very fragile, you know, you don't really have all the skills you need to deal with that kind of a thing. And on top of that, it was at an era, at a time when talking to my parents about it was unthinkable. We weren't talking about bullying or going to guidance counselors about it, it just wasn't a thing yet.

So I was ashamed about it. So I didn't want anyone to know in my home. And so it was just, it was like a year of torture in a way. It was like an extended torture. What ended it? I don't know. They just gave up? She just decided one day I was acceptable again.

What... So, I mean, there's a lot of kids that go through this today, especially with the cyber bullying and, I mean, it's a big problem that a lot of kids are dealing with. And so I'm curious if you have any advice for kids that are being bullied, what could you have done back then to end it or? Yeah, if I could talk to the 12 year old version of me, I 100% would say tell your parents,

they can help you. And it doesn't have to be, you can establish some parameters like, you have to agree not to call the girl's parents, you know, something like that. But your parents can help. And I, as a parent, would absolutely intervene if this were happening to my child in whatever way I could. Because while I do think you can learn a lot from some bullying, like some short stints of bullying, I think it actually creates a more empathetic person, right? You're less likely to bully, I think,

if it happens like that, but if it goes on and on and on, it can cause real damage. I still think it affects my relationships. Really? My friendships, yeah. How so? I'm not good at pursuing friendship. Like once I have a friend, I'm a good friend,

but all the friends I have pursued me. Interesting. I just like, I'm very wary of like rejection and getting, I don't know, hurt, getting hurt. I wanted to ask too, I didn't wanna skip over the bullying when you brought that up, but I also wanted to ask about advice for people that have lost a parent as a child.

And what advice would you have for that? Because there are a lot of kids that lose parents and me coming from a military background, there's, I know a lot of gold star kids. And so every time I get the opportunity to talk to somebody like you that had spin through it, I just, I have to ask. Hey guys, you've heard me talk about them before

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This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. As an adult, do you make it a point to carve out time to learn new things as often as you'd like? Or is day-to-day life so busy that you feel like you'll never recapture that sense of childhood-like wonder. Kids are always learning and growing, but as adults, sometimes we lose that curiosity. What's something you'd like to learn?

Gardening, a new language, or maybe something else? Therapy can help you reconnect with your sense of wonder because your back-to-school era can come out at any age. Therapy is helpful for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself and it isn't just for those who've experienced major trauma. Therapy is for everyone. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.

It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist at any time for no additional charge. Rediscover your curiosity with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Sean today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-Lhelp.com slash Sean. Well, I think number one, lean into faith. Even if you're not faithful, that's a good time to start. Just go and sit there. I used to be so comforted just by sitting in the church. One of my frustrations when my dad died was I couldn't drive. I was only 15.

I just turned 15 a month earlier, so I really wasn't even close to driving. So I'd ride my bike to the church and I'd sit there, but I couldn't get to the cemetery because it was too far away. I really wanted to sit by the cemetery very badly. You knew physically that's where he was. So I think young children need that time to say goodbye. It's not a one or two day process, a week, and a funeral. There will be time of needing to sit with God or by oneself, maybe in a place like a

church with the candles in the windows where you just feel it's bigger than you, or by the gravesite. And I think as a parent, I might ask, like, is that something you want to do? Because I wouldn't have suggested that to my mom. She could have driven me, but there was no way I would have asked that because she was grieving and I wouldn't have wanted to upset her. But she would have done it.

And I think that maybe a parent could go to the kid and say, do you want that? I can drop you off, I can pick you up, I don't have to be standing there for it. Do you want that? I can drop you off. I can pick you up. I don't have to be standing there for it. I guess I also want to say, this is sort of part two, this sounds weird, but there is

a silver lining to it. You know, like, because I know my friend just lost his wife and he has two young boys. She just died suddenly last September. And he was like, can you tell me what to say to them? Can you tell me anything to make me feel better about what just happened to them? And this is in that category. The biggest gift to come out of losing my dad was the fact that you understand mortality in your limited time here like no other.

You can't understand it the way someone who's lost a parent or a loved one at an early age understands it without going through that. And so again, if you spend the time reflecting on what it means, what the pain signifies to you, then you can arrive at the obvious conclusion, which is you must make decisions in your life like it's an emergency. It's the old no tomorrow is promised, but you just know it on a gut level.

So you can't waste time. You can't waste time in a relationship that is unhappy, in a job that is unhappy, in a you that is unhappy. You must take active steps always, always, to improve your situation. And the longer you sit around and think, well, I'll meet the right person and I'll be happier, or my boss will finally recognize what a star I am

and give me that great role or raise I want, and it doesn't happen, the more you get to the point where you realize, oh, and I have to be the one to change it. No one's coming to save me. It's just the MK show. You know? I have to make the changes.

I have to do it. Succeed or fail, it's right now. So I wound up a happier person, I think, at 53, than I probably otherwise would have been. I think I probably would have been much more complacent about my happiness if I hadn't had that loss, and that's one gift my dad was able to give me. I think that's some of the best advice I've ever heard in this room when it comes to that. And thank you.

We've had a lot of discussions about loss and that was top notch. I'm curious, you had mentioned leaning into your faith. Did you ever, do you feel like your father's ever visited you since he's passed? Many times. Many times. Any specific example that sticks out? I mean, certainly right after he was gone, we had a lot of signs from him. Right after we lost him. I mean, they were really kind of stunning.

But for me, probably the biggest was when my dad was little, when I was little, my dad used to take us camping, and we'd go to this place on Lake Ontario, and we'd rent these cabins, you know, low rent, but so fun. I used to call the lawn chair for sleeping overnight inside the house. My brother and sister were like, she's an idiot. Great. We've got the bed.

And my dad used to play his guitar for us around the campfire all the time when we were camping there. So there are certain songs that he used to sing to us that are you know, I will always associate with him in those memories Mostly by John Denver Neil Diamond, you know that era and One time I was living in Chicago. I was a young lawyer It was I wasn't that young. It was like 30 I I was a young lawyer. I wasn't that young. I was like 30. I was learning how to play guitar.

Not well, but I was learning. And I had a book of sheet music. And I was really missing my dad. At 30, I'd lost him for 15 years. But of course, you think about him and some days you just really wish you had your dad there and you could about him and some days you just really wish you had your dad there and you could ask him for advice. And I was just feeling blue.

And I turned the page in this guitar book and there was this song that he used to sing to us all the time. And I don't actually know the name of it, but it goes, it takes a worried, worried man to sing a worried song. Oh, it takes a worried, worried man to sing a worried song. And it goes from there.

And I was like, oh my God, and I could play it. I learned enough chords that I could play it. And I strummed that guitar and I sang the song to myself and I cried and I knew he was there. I knew he brought me that moment. You know, I don't purport to know how it works, but I know what happened that day. I love hearing that. Can I share something with you? Yeah. I just had something happen to me a couple of weeks ago, I guess about a month ago now, but I had,

it's Gabe again, and who we had discussed, you know, on your, when you interviewed me, but so I'm gonna try to get through this quick, but I Went to Vienna and I interviewed this gentleman Ahmad Masood who's the leader of the Afghan resistance and He told me a bunch of stuff on the interview that I get paranoid when I start doing these type interviews uncover covering corruption and and and

Do you get paranoid about that at all? No, but I'm not dealing with that kind of stuff I mean you're in the thick of it. Yeah, so Anyways, there's I mean there's I worry about our own government. I worried I mean he he Is the third person I've interviewed that said we're bringing, giving $87 million a week to the Taliban. And so we started a whole movement here. And once the word kind of got out, all of my former colleagues are all texting me, all of my former colleagues are all texting me, do you have protection? Do you have security?

And so then I started getting really paranoid because these are the guys that I used to work with at CIA and special ops and yeah. And so I got home and I got home, came into work on June 28th. And when you walk in the front door down there, there was a big hockey jersey, a Panthers wounded warrior hockey jersey.

And so when Gabe died, Gabe died of a heroin overdose. And he had started this, he kept telling me, he was, he was junked out a lot and he was, he was telling me that he wanted to start this, this Wounded Warriors hockey team. And he was going to walk into the Panther Stadium and find who he needed to talk to. And I was like, yeah, right, Gabe, whatever.

Okay. I hope you do. Well, he did it. And when they went to tell him that they were gonna fund his team, that's when they found him in his apartment. So fast forward, I had mentioned that Gabe's a protector and I was really paranoid about this interview and I was a little concerned for my team

and it was kind of sinking in. What we had just done, I come into the studio here for the first time since we got back and that jersey was on the ground. And that jersey, I mean, it probably weighs 35 pounds. It's a huge frame. It's a framed full-size hockey jersey. And it was just weird because it had been,

I've been here for three years now. And that frame has been there for three years. No crack in the frame, glass is fine, no scuffs on it. Everybody in the office was in Vienna with me. So it couldn't have been any of them other than my assistant who I asked and she didn't do it. And so anyways, the day goes by and it's just in my head. I'm like, why did that fall?

Like, what is Gabe trying to tell me? Are you warning me about something? And so I stayed here late that night. Everybody was out of here. Everybody was out of both buildings that are here. And it was just me in the parking lot at the end of the day. And I'm pacing around,

kind of having a conversation with Gabe in my head, just what are you trying to tell me here and I couldn't figure it out and I went home and I told my wife Katie about it so this is the weirdest thing Gabe's jersey fell off the wall it's been there for three years and she's, the Florida Panthers wounded warrior hockey team jersey. And I said, yeah, that's the one. And she goes, Sean, the Panthers just won the Stanley Cup.

Oh wow. And I was like, holy shit. And I was like, today's June 28th, that's the anniversary of Operation Red Wings. Those rounds that I just showed you up there, I found it on June 28th. And to me, I totally broke down and a happy breakdown, but it was, I could hear his voice up there going, I'm not trying to warn you about anything, Sean. I'm trying to celebrate.

The fucking Panthers just won the Stanley Cup. But to me, I mean, I wanted to tell that to you after our discussion about faith and that kind of stuff that we had on your show, but to me, that's like proof. That's, it's too many coincidences in one incident to be anything else. And people are always searching for, you know,

is their, does consciousness continue? Is there life after death? And to me, you know, it's, it's, it's like a, a supercharge in your faith to know he's got me. Yeah. Somebody's. I feel like there's no avoiding it. There's just no avoiding it.

It's just too present, these reminders. If you just pay a modicum of attention, you'll see it. I don't know how one couldn't see it. You know, there's only so many things you can write off as, oh, that's a coincidence, oh, that means nothing. It's like, in my life, I just had way too many for me to ever be convinced it's not him.

It's not an otherworldly force trying to communicate something to me. And I also think it's just so, there's so much hubris behind the notion that, well, you're up, it's over, it's done. How do you know we don't, we're so fragile and we know almost nothing. I love these big swinging, right, guys who are like, and gals like, no, it's just a no. Okay. I mean, who the hell knows? We need to be humble enough to know that. I'll tell you something, good one not in my case

But my dear friends Allison and Tom Barclay's Lost their boy Blake at age 17. I did a story on it in October of 21 he died suddenly of myocarditis and They don't know if it might know people are gonna say it was a vaccine. They don't know he had been vaccinated But he definitely had myocarditis. And they don't know if it, I know people are going to say it was a vax, they don't know. He had been vaccinated, but he definitely had myocarditis. And two greater people you'd never meet.

Well, one of the things that they told me was Blake really wanted to go to Clemson. And the dad said, I don't know, Blake, you know, I'm not sure, because he's like, I'm going to get into Clemson, and I'm going to get a scholarship from Clemson so we can afford it. And Tom was like, if you get a scholarship, you can go. After Blake died, they called all the colleges

to which Blake had applied and said, you know, he died. Don't give him a spot. Give it to some kid who's applying. But something happened at Clemson. And Tom came home one day, and there was the big envelope. And it said, not only has he admitted, well, here's a scholarship for him. So Tom and Allison is just completely blown away by it. And when we aired this piece of the story, somebody from Clemson was watching.

So this guy at Clemson, high up in the administration, contacted Tom. And they started talking, they became friends. Tom invited him to this memorial golf tournament he has in Blake's honor every year. Blake loved golf. And I went this year, I don't golf, but I went for them, and I met this guy from Clemson.

And that day, the guy had been on the golf course, and he gets to one of the holes, and he said, he or the person with him, I can't remember, but one of them said, Blake, give us some help, you know, it hasn't been a great day. We need something. And this guy who's not a very good golfer hit the only hole in one of his life.

And it happened to be on the hole where if you manage to hit a hole in one, which nobody does, you get a BMW. Oh man. So the epilogue to the story is at Blake's memorial, Tom Barklidge stands up there and he says, he tells the story, and everybody's like, this is unbelievable.

And Tom says, and I just want you to know that the one thing I always knew about Blake was that he really wanted me to have a BMW. Tom said to the guy, anyway. The guy got to keep his BMW, but it's such a great, I just don't believe for a second that none of those things are connected. It's like, every time I hear this stuff, it's like a restoration of faith. And you know, because I don't know about you, but mine, it goes up and down, you know? And it seems like as long as you are open

and paying attention, you know, and not too wrapped up in your own bullshit, all the signs, they seem to be there. At least for me, they just keep coming and coming and coming. And you know, another thing is, that was another, that was a low point. Like the last one that I just told you about

was a low point for me. And maybe not a low point, but a lull. And like, I just wasn't really into the faith stuff. I was starting to doubt again. We had had a study at my house and somebody, we were talking about life after death and somebody had said, yeah, well, you know, it's probably like before you were born. And I thought about that and then that started creeping back in my head about, well, shit, what if the lights just go out and that's it?

And then that happened. But that's somewhat comforting to me. Like I think about when you have your babies, I just think you can tell your babies are still closer to the other side. There's something just truly magical about them. There's like a knowing, there's a beauty, there's a specialness.

It's not just because they're babies. I just think that you can tell they're closer to the other side still. So I, that statement doesn't imply that that's a bad place to be, you know, prior to you being born. It's just not a conscious knowledge of every day to day activity here. That's a good point. I'm okay with that. That's a good point. Well, moving on, when did becoming an attorney sound appealing to you?

Very quickly. You know, I, like suddenly is what I mean. I wasn't planning on being an attorney. I went to Syracuse thinking I would be a journalist because I had taken a high school aptitude test that said I should be, that I should be a journalist. And my guidance counselor wrote me a recommendation, my only recommendation for college. It was so pathetic.

And he wrote, she says she wants to be a political journalist, which I actually didn't even remember. And then he actually wrote in the thing, Meg's very strong in English and social studies, math and science aren't her thing. Who writes that in a college recommendation? It was the 80s. It was a different time.

So I went to Syracuse thinking I would be a journalist, though I didn't get into Newhouse, which is the very strong journalism school, but I got into the political science school. And before I knew it, I started thinking about political science and government, and maybe there would be a role for me. And I said, well, I think I'd really, I'd like to be a DA. And somebody said, well, then you gotta go to law school. I'm like, oh, I guess I'm gonna have to start focusing

on my grades then. And I did. I focused on my grades. I kept a good GPA and I wound up going to Albany Law School, which is my hometown. And I had a great education there. I loved Albany Law School a lot. And then, you know, one thing led to another.

I never did prosecute cases though. So you wanted to be a journalist before an attorney. Yeah. And then wound up know, one thing led to another. I never did prosecute cases, though. So you wanted to be a journalist before an attorney, and then wound up being a journalist. Yeah. What was the draw to journalism? It was exciting. I always liked breaking news. You know?

Like, I see it in my kids here and there. You know, like when Trump got shot, I was sitting in my living room, and my little Thatcher, who was 10, said, Trump got shot. I was sitting in my living room and my little Thatcher, who was 10, said, Trump got shot. I'm like, what? I thought he was messing with me. And he goes, he got shot in the ear, but he's okay. What?

And of course I run over to my phone and sure enough he was exactly right. And then I see him updating the whole family on the family text change. Trump was shot today, took a bullet in the ear, appears to be okay. And I was like, anyway, I think some kids just have an affinity for being the one to break the news.

And I had it, and I did a little like a two-day internship with the Albany Times Union when I was a sophomore in high school, and I loved that. I loved being on the phone next to the reporter who was on the phone calling his sources and getting the story. Then I watched all the president's men, which is full of inspo. And that's kind of how that ball got rolling.

And then I got sidetracked with the law thing. I mean, I never thought that I could go to law school and be a lawyer. I just wasn't thinking about myself in those terms. Like, Megyn Kelly Esquire sounded so important. And I just had never even considered a life that looked like that. I just thought I'd be more of a grizzled, shoe leather

reporter on the beat in the field breaking news. And then I just became quite dazzled by the notion of being a respectable attorney who people would have to take seriously because I had Esquire after my name. This is the way I was thinking back then. Before I knew it, I had done it. So were you outgoing before you got into that?

Yeah, I was outgoing, sure. Okay. I wouldn't consider myself an extrovert, but I'm outgoing. I'm not one of those people who gets totally energized by being in front of a big crowd. Like Rush Limbaugh, I saw him many times. I was kind of friends with him. And you'd put him in front of a crowd,

and man, he would come alive. You know, the chest would puff out, and the voice would start to boom, and the pupils would dazzle. It was just you could see it. I'm not like that. I can do it, but I don't have that. That's I think what a true natural extrovert extroverted.

But outgoing, yes, I'm an easy conversationalist and happy to interact with others. So you became, so did you, you never did become a DA? Never became a DA. Basically racked up $100,000 worth of debt and realized I was going to make 30 grand a year. I would have been below the federal poverty level. And I was like, I've had 25 years of being poor. I don't wish to be poor any longer.

I would like to make some money. And the thought of making money was so delightful. I can't wish to be poor any longer. I would like to make some money. And the thought of making money was so delightful. I can't tell you. It's like I remember the prospect of earning like a real paycheck because I was going to either make 30 grand a year going with that. I wanted to work in the Manhattan DA's office and you had to live in the borough in which you prosecuted. So, 30 grand a year in Manhattan. Or I was getting job offers and interest from firms that were offering me $85,000 a year

to start as a young whippersnapper. And I did the math, doing what my rent would be and what the cable would be. And then I remember seeing I was going to like a thousand of nine hundred dollars left over a month. I was like, oh my god, I've got to do, I would have nine hundred dollars a month to spend or save or whatever. It seemed like the greatest fortune and I realized that still is a fortune for a lot of people but I remember the feeling of when it was a fortune for me, and I happily shed the dreams of being a DA and went to Big Law.

Wow. When did you get into journalism then? So I practiced law for about a decade. A decade? Yeah. Wow. Just over nine years. Okay.

Yeah. I graduated law school when I was 25 and I left the law when I was 34. So nine and change. Did you excel as an attorney? I think so. Yeah. I was at one of the best law firms in the world, Jones Day. And I was on the partnership track.

They were telling me I was going to make a partner if I stayed one more year. I tried tons of cases with these great partners there and was arguing in front of federal appellate courts across the country, which is, you know, that's a level below the Supreme Court. I was taking depositions all the time. I was arguing.

I was on my feet making arguments and motion practice and doing many trials and TROs. And I loved it for a long time. But the problem with my out-hustled is you can burn out if you don't put some self-nurturing in there. And the law, they say, is a jealous mistress. And my mistress was very demanding. She did not want me to be with anybody but her. And I just had so many vacations where I had to work the entire time. Never took a weekend. Never.

I missed funerals. I missed weddings. I don't regret it because, in the same way I don't regret I miss funerals, I miss weddings. I don't regret it because in the same way I don't regret the hours I put in, especially early on in my career as a journalist, it all got me to where I am. The people who didn't do as well as I did in the law or in journalism didn't put in that time, for the most part. Maybe some did, and I just don't know about them. But the people I looked around, they weren't willing to make those kinds of sacrifices.

I think soldiers could probably understand this, right? It's like, some will go the extra mile every time no matter what, and probably some won't. Not everyone's going to be a Navy SEAL. So I burnt out, and there was an aha moment when I was considering about whether I was going to take this partnership because they don't give them out to everybody and if I took it, it would be at the expense of somebody else. And I already knew I was feeling unhappy, looked around, everybody there was an older guy with like an ex-wife or two and several

kids in private school, and they were handcuffed to the place. And I just thought, I can do something else with my life. I can do something that I find exciting. You know, the line I wrote in my journal was, I am more interesting than this. I am more interested than this. And I resolved to change my life. Where, I mean, how old are you at this point? I was 32 when I had that moment. So you're ready to totally reinvent yourself at 32?

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thousands of years, Gold Co. can help. So go to SeanLikesGold.com or call 855-936-GOLD. That's 855-936-GOLD. Performance may vary. Consult with your tax attorney or financial professional before making an investment decision. There was a little fear of not getting the partnership. I just kind of thought,

it wouldn't it be better to stay and get the partnership than run around the world saying, I made partner at Jones Day, which is not easy. And in the end, I just thought it was going to be an unfair thing to do to my colleagues, you know, sort of taking it at the expense of somebody else and my firm, which I loved. And I, you know, I still have close relationships with some of the people there. I just thought, what kind of a way is that to leave?

You know, you take the feather just so you can put it in your cap and then you ride off into the sunset and screw them over. So yeah, that was the only scary piece, not to get like that brass ring that I've been working so hard. Because when you're in, I know to the outside world, they're like, who gives a shit?

We don't care whether you were a partner or not. But when you're working for it, it seems like everything. So anyway, but then there was the big question of what to do. Now what? Oh, you didn't even know what you were gonna do. No, no.

I was like, well. I used to be a telemarketer, I could go back to that. I don't know, I really didn't know what to do. But once again, the guitar and the music spoke to me. I was living in Chicago and I was taking a guitar class and it just so happened that a gal in my class was a journalist. She was a producer for the NBC O&L out in Chicago. I only knew that because the Space Shuttle Columbia blew up and she missed guitar.

We never talked about our jobs. I said, but where were you? She said, I'm a journalist. And I said, oh, you know what? Can I buy you a cup of coffee? And she said, that sounds like someone who's interested in a career change. And I said, maybe.

So we went out, we started talking about it. The more I talked about it, the more she gave me hope. I felt old then. I'm 32, kind of long in the tooth, and this is kind of old to start a new career, especially one on camera. She was like, you're all wrong. You're wrong, wrong, wrong. You can totally start, and I will help you. Which is so amazing, Meredith is her name, like for her to help me,

a woman helping another woman break into news, like bending over backwards to make it happen, like that doesn't happen a lot, Sean. I can imagine. So she helped me. She helped me get, it's called a resume tape. And before I knew it, I was cold calling news directors and I had a job.

Wow, do you keep in touch with her? She contacted me after I wrote my book and I wrote all about her. And we had a great come to Jesus moment. And by the way, something else happened because my book, I wrote about the one girl who befriended me during my seventh grade bully year, Heather Shepard. God bless her.

And she and I reconnected after my book, and we still text. Oh, that's cool. That's very cool. Wow. So where did you wind up? Well, so I convinced this guy named Bill Lord, who's the news director in Washington, D.C., at the ABC affiliate, to put me on the air one day a week on tape while I was still working at Jones Day. And I said, basically, once he agreed to take the meeting, which was really the, like, that's the big thing, like, just get a yes to the meeting, I knew I could talk my way into the

job. I was like, if I suck, you don't have to air it. I'm gonna work for you for free. My law job's paying my bills. Like, let me work for you for free. I can do a lot of stuff for you legally. This is before the day of the big legal analyst everywhere. We weren't really doing that back then.

But I was like, I can cover the Supreme Court. You know, I've had arguments all over federal courts of appeals. I know a lot of legal stuff and how to find cases and interesting stories. So, just let me shoot a story, put it on tape, and if you don't like it, you don't have to air it. appeals. I know a lot of legal stuff and how to find cases and interesting stories. So just let me shoot a story, put it on tape, and if you don't like it, you don't have to air it. And they had a sister cable station that was local and not as prestigious as the

ABC affiliate. I'm like, or you could just air it on News Channel 8, with all due respect to News Channel 8. So he said yes. And so he gave me one day a week. He did pay me like a couple hundred dollars for the one day. And I loved it. Really? Loved it. It was truly one of those shoot it in my veins. It was so great.

What was it? What was it? Everything. All of it. It was so great. What was it? What was it? Everything. All of it. It was exciting. It was exactly the thing that I kind of felt back in sophomore year of high school. It was like chasing a story and calling sources

and figuring out what's true and then crafting a beautiful script where you can edit it and make the words just the way you want them, which I always enjoyed as a lawyer too. We always used to say, if I had a longer time, I would have written a shorter brief. And in journalism, you have to write the shortest of briefs.

You've got two minutes at most on the evening news to deliver your story and your script that you work on all day. Tighter, tighter, tighter, get a better sound bite. Even better than that, upgrade. Get a better video element, get a better sound. How are we gonna open it? How do we ease them in?

What's the moment where we emotionally connect with the audience? What did you make them feel? Is it balanced? Did you offer the rest of the story? Are you biased? Are you taking them too much this way? I loved all of that.

Wow. And then, it was all so exciting, and you're like, okay, I'm gonna go on camera and I'm gonna do this. And then instead of being like, I nailed it, you're like, huh. I'm so much worse than I thought I was. You know, like, I thought I was gonna be

so much better than this. You just, it's not something you can be great at until you've done it a lot. So in the beginning, you just have to hold on to the promise of it being great in the final product and be humble as you row. Do you remember what your first brief was? First brief as a lawyer or first story as a reporter?

First story. The very first story I had was, I was supposed to work on a Friday. That was my one day. And Hurricane, what was her name? Irene, I think. I can't remember. Irene was a bad one. It was another one.

Anyway, it was a hurricane that was coming through Virginia. And I called Bill Lord and I said, well, you don't need me, right? Because I do like legal stuff. And it was my first day. And it's like a hurricane. And he said, if you don't already have rain pants, rain boots, a do like legal stuff and it's my first day and it's like a hurricane. And he said, if you don't already have rain pants, rain boots, a rain slicker and a rain hat, you better get them and I'll see you tonight at five. I was like, oh my God.

So I went and it was crazy. It was like a scene out of broadcast news. I went into the control room and I already have a potty mouth. I just got it, honestly. My Nana swore like a sailor and all the lawyers I'd work with swore like sailors. So I'm sitting in the newsroom, control room, and it's breaking news. So they've got reporters everywhere covering the damage of the hurricane and the blowing winds.

There's this guy named Eric Hong, who was freelancing, and they were like, get to Eric, get to Eric. And they'd say like, Eric, we're coming to you. And you could see him getting ready, you know, he's getting ready. And somebody else made a different decision, like, no, not Eric, move on, whatever. No, back to Eric, Eric, we're coming, we're coming.

And he'd get ready, get ready, no, forget it. And then the one guy goes, the executive producer I later found out goes, Eric, you're dead, WJLA fucked you. I was like, what's happening? Wow. But I loved it, it was so fun. It was dynamic and kind of sexy and exciting,

fast paced, no holds barred, no... You know how like when you have to criticize somebody today, the corporate managers will tell you, you have to say like, you're dressing particularly well, you have a perfect record of attendance, everyone loves what a positive attitude you have, your briefs suck. We really enjoy the way you clean up the coffee room

after you leave, right? You have to like fold it in there. News is the opposite of that, right? They fucked you. That's how it still is. No kidding. No, my team and I joke all the time that there's no time for flowery, fluffy stuff.

It's like, we finished a show and if we didn't do a good job, I will say to the team, that show sucked. That we didn't have the facts, we didn't have the soundbite, we embarrassed ourselves, that was not up to par, it's not what the audience expects. And they're like, yeah, and then we do better the next day.

And then I'll say that was perfection. Nobody cares, nobody's like, she's abusive. They're like, God, she's right. We're gonna be better tomorrow. But I love that piece of news. I couldn't do it any other way. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, your career sounds like it took off

very rapidly. And so, how long did you spend at the local station? Part time for a year, nine months. When did they start paying you finally? Well, I was getting my 200 bucks a day for those Fridays I was doing. And then he offered me a second day, which would mean I had to go part time at Jones Day. No, he offered me a second day and then he offered me a third day, which would mean I'd have to go part time.

So that was a big moment, because I was like really taking a step away from my law job. And I wanted to do it, and I seriously considered like whether this is the place for me, like if I'm good enough to do this. Anyway, long story short, I went part-time with them,

and then they offered me a full-time job. And that meant leaving the law altogether. How did that feel? Great. I was fine. I... Jones Day was so good to me. This guy, Tim Collin, who ran the general litigation group, which I was in, when I first went part-time, he said, I'm scared because this feels like a trial separation,

and those usually lead to divorce. And so when I left, he said, I knew it. But they said, go with God, we love you. They said, if you ever want to come back, come back. I still have lots of friends there who are far lefties. Judge Jones Day is actually pretty fair on ballots on this politics, but my one favorite partner there, one of them,

he's a far lefty and he's constantly harassing me on Twitter in a funny way. But I love that. I love that I have that history with these guys. We were in the trenches together. My trenches, not the real ones like you've been in. And the war, like lawyers tell war stories so great. I look back on those days fondly now that they're in the past.

Yeah, yeah. When did you, how did Fox come about? Well, so when WJLA offered me a full-time position, I thought, well, you know, if I'm good enough to be full-time here, maybe I'm good enough to be full-time someplace better than here. Because while I'm very green as a reporter, I have 10 years of legal experience under my belt.

And that counts for something. It's not totally irrelevant. And so I had met this guy, Bill Salmon, who was a Fox News contributor at the radio and television correspondence dinner, the one that they show on broadcast news, you know, where they go. And William Hurt's character says, it's incredible who's here. And she says, who? And he says, me.

That was me when I went. And I met this guy. And he said, have you considered getting your tape to Fox? And I said to him at the time, I'm too green for Fox. I'm not ready. And he said, not necessarily. And he said, if you're too green, Kim Hume, who runs the DC Bureau, will tell you you're too green.

But you have a shot. So I sent them, I sent him my resume tape from my nine months at the ABC affiliate, and he agreed to put it on Kim's desk. Like he guaranteed he would get her eyeballs on it. And she later had me in. I met with her. Britt Hume came by, her husband who was the, can't remember his title, but he was kind of,

he was managing editor and she was DC bureau chief. And they held their cards so close to the vest on an interview of three hours. He did not let on at all how this was going. And I later found out that when I left, they high-fived each other. No kidding. Yeah.

And they got me right up to see Roger Ailes and he hired me. Wow. But you applied, did you apply to several places? It sounds like CNN. No, I was willing to. I mean, I wasn't in any way thinking Fox is right wing and it really wasn't known that much that way back then. This is 2004. Fox is known as more to the right,

but like MSNBC hadn't lost its mind. This is back in the days when it was still kind of normal. So I was totally open to working there or CNN, but I only had the one connection, which was Bill Salmon, who was a contributor at Fox. So that's where I sent my tape. And I was sitting in the interview up in Ailes' office, actually with his number two, and the guy was like, everyone wants to work here now that we're number one.

And I remember being like, holy shit, they're number one? I'm never gonna get this job. But I did. Then he was off to the races. Wow. I mean, that had to be very surreal for you to be at the number one news station at the time. I loved everything about it.

I loved seeing Bill O'Reilly walk through the halls like this amazing, huge cable news host, number one in all of cable news. Cocky, but like in a cool way. I just had stars in my eyes for him. Brit Hume, who was serious, and you know, he took me under his wing and taught me how to be a serious reporter. And he used to say to me, you know what I like about you?

You're not a silly girl. There's a lot of silly girls running around Fox News. You're not one of them. And it was so fun. It was so, these characters were just so colorful. You know, it was like, how is this happening? I'll tell you a story that I've never told publicly and I can't name the names, but I was at one big event

and let's just say the person next to me on the set, I'll say this, the person's no longer there, had like porn up on the laptop. It was like talking about it. I do not think this was harassment. I'm not saying it was funny. I was like, this is an unbelievable place to work. Since nobody did this at the law job.

Wow. Sounds like the SEAL teams. So what was Bill O'Reilly like? But without the muscle. Bill O'Reilly was great. I loved Bill for every year I worked there except for the last one. He took such good care of me. He was so good to me.

He gave me the most amazing opportunities. He had to take a hit for me one day when I was at the Supreme Court covering the Anna Nicole Smith case that went there. Do you remember that? Yeah, I do. She showed up herself and she lost all this weight. She looked even more stunning than normal. And everybody was like, well, I had never been so popular

because that was my story that day. I must have done 100 hits from the steps of the Supreme Court. Tokyo, everybody wanted me. And O'Reilly took me and I found out after that hit, he was like, we need her. She's going to be a star, he said, something like that. So he offered me to come back because we sparred that night, even though I was green.

He was saying she doesn't deserve any money, she's a gold digger. And I said, she is a gold digger, but he was happy to have the gold dug. He was totally on board with this gig, and his estate should have to pay. They had a deal. And we had an argument about how much money it takes to be Anna Nicole Smith. I explained it to him. And it was funny. So it was a great hit, you know, because we were laughing and it was substantive, but

we were also fighting. And there was a good chemistry. And then he kept having me laughing and it was substantive, but we were also fighting and there was a good chemistry. And then he kept having me on and on and on and then he started building legal segments around me and then I would go on twice a week, blah, blah, blah. And then I think he probably helped pave my way into the prime time. You know, it was Roger's decision, but seeing me on the prime time and, you know, they check the numbers so they can see it, you're going up with the audience. Convinced Roger it was a good move. And then things changed and it was just so disappointing.

Once he saw me as more as competition, it kind of became a douche bag and it went downhill from there. So I kind of separate my experience out from all those great years and then that last shitty year thereafter. How does the, I mean, what is the competitiveness? Is it all about numbers?

Yeah, but it shouldn't have been. He should have just been taking credit for me. He should have been like, you're welcome, Kelly. You know, I didn't understand why he couldn't just be proud of me. You know, he helped me when I was totally unknown. He helped me build a name and a reputation. He gave me credibility by putting me on his show,

treating me like an authority, arguing with me, showing the audience he liked me. And I was very grateful to him for that and made that very clear behind the scenes and publicly. But once my show started to surpass his, never in the overall, he always beat me in the overall, like the older viewers, but in the key demo of 25 to 54 year olds, which is what they based them

advertising money on, he got very competitive. You know, everyone in cable is competitive, but like he just couldn't square it. What does that mean competitive? Is that, I mean is that like... He started doing like subterfuge around my show to block my guests and kind of interfere with our editorial. And we shared an agent and there's some nasty things happen there. It was just, I was so disappointed because I really felt like I was losing a mentor and a friend.

We always, part of it was probably born of the fact that we had no competition on MS or CNN. We just crushed them in every way. This is Fox News' heyday. This was the heyday for sure by any measure of Fox. No one was even close to us. We were having 10 times the ratings of our competitors. So internally, we would look at each other's numbers, right?

Because that's what's interesting. Anyway, look, then things got weird after the whole Roger Ailes falling and the sexual harassment things between me and Bill. But it's a weird thing. I see him on TV. He goes on News Nation sometimes. And he's just so talented still. He looks older. His voice is a little bit more frail.

But he's so talented. He's very smart. He's an amazing communicator. And I just, I still feel sad to this day that, you know, things ended the way they did. There was a lot of other crap. No contact, huh? No, no, no, we're not friends. Yeah, yeah.

Well, what was the, what would you say the culture was like there at the beginning during the heyday? I mean, probably pretty harassing. Really? Yeah, for sure. That's gotta be part of the memory. But I just, I mean, probably pretty harassy. Really? Yeah, for sure. That's got to be part of the memory. But I just, I mean, professionally what I remember is excitement drive scrappiness.

You know, it was like, we'd go to cover a story. I went to cover the Virginia Tech shooting, you know, still the worst on-campus shooting that we've seen. And CNN, they had four bookers or producers for every one that we had. They were crushing the field with staff. And we had almost nothing, but we were killing them in the ratings. And it just drive them nuts. And I remember talking to Geraldo on a grassy knoll, was we were sitting there in between hits,

and I'm like, my god, we're getting our asses kicked. But in the bookings, they were getting the biggest bookings, the best guests, and we weren't. And Geraldo goes, people don't watch because of the guests, they watch because of the hosts. I was like, that's kind of funny coming from Herold. Of course he thinks that, right? But he wasn't wrong.

On Fox, I think they watch because it's Fox and they know what they're gonna get. But they also develop a real relationship with the talent. And even in my current lane and yours too, your audience develops a relationship with you. And if you're gonna bring somebody on, they're kind of trusting you to have a kind of taste that resonates with them.

So he wasn't all wrong. Anyway, I remember just scrappiness and shoestring budgets, even though we were rich, we didn't act like we were. Roger and Rupert had tons of money. And I remember saying to Kim Hume, I found some of the story writing and production frustrating because I was coming off

of my time at Jones Day where, somebody once explained to me, Kelly, my old boss said, we're American Airlines first class. We give the real silverware with the cloth napkin and the warmed up nuts. That's the kind of service that we're providing here. And I said, it's just frustrating to want that level of product, of production, and not be able to give it because time is crunched, we don't have the resources.

And she said, we're Southwest Airlines. So that, but it was a good thing. It kept us a little chip on the shoulder, edgy, scrappy, like, let's fight, let's go. Bunker mentality. We were always under attack, but it brought us closer together. You know, we were a team, we were a part of the same fraternity. Good camaraderie?

Mostly. Mostly. Yeah, there were a couple who were, you know, very rare. But very competitive? Yeah, but mostly very, very good camaraderie. So are all journalists competitive with each other, or was it just Bill? Yeah, I faced some more of that when I hit the primetime,

for sure, from the other primetime hosts. But never before that. Before that, I only had really one person who shall remain nameless, who felt very threatened by me and behaved badly. But for the most part, people were really cool. Do you get competitive? Not like that.

I'm a weird person where some people think that I'm gonna play gin rummy with them and I'm gonna be like, I crushed you, like Monica from Cheers, or Friends. I'm not like that. I'm not competitive like, I have to be number one in the podcast space. I'm more like, the show needs to be better.

You know, like we have to do a better job. This wasn't our best work product. Like I'm frustrated. You didn't cut that soundbite right. I said I wanted it like this, but you did this instead. And then it didn't flow in the argument I was making. And then when I went to call for the follow-up soundbite, it made no sense.

I guess I'm closer to like a perfectionist than I am competitive. But in my business, that breeds success. So you actually have control of how they cut your segments and all of that stuff over there. Well, I did at Fox, to some extent. I had almost none at NBC, and now I have entire control on my show. Is it still like that?

Yeah, yes. I mean, on NBC, you are just a presenter. You're a newsreader. You don't do it. The producers do everything, which is one of the reasons why it didn't work out for me. One of the many. On Fox, you do most of it yourself. They don't have the staff.

They're like, you know, the reporters write the scripts, the producers do packets for their anchors, and then the anchors have to read the packets, know the news, and ask the questions themselves. On NBC, they give you the questions. The producers write the questions, and then you're supposed to just read them like an actress. Wow.

Yeah. Wow. That's literally my job. Why would I read your questions? Is that most news stations? Broadcast. Yeah. Pretty much all of them?

I think so, yeah. I mean, when I went over to The View as a guest, and I went there a few times, not only were the producers writing the questions for the hosts, like those women just sit there with their cards and they read the questions off of their cards, they give you the questions as the guest in advance so you know everything is coming your way. I'm like, okay, they're still purporting to be a journalistic operation. Are you serious? Yeah. So there's nothing that's off the cuff, real, actual opinions? They're just told.

I'm sure there are moments of spontaneity, but everything is very carefully choreographed. It's all written down on their little blue cards. Wow. I mean, I don't even know why I'm acting surprised because it does seem like that. Yeah. But so were you, did you lean conservative before Fox? Not really. I was, you know, I voted, I think in, was it eight presidential elections?

And I voted for four Democrats and four Republicans. I'm pretty down the middle. Now I'm more conservative because the whole world has shifted. My normie views are apparently now far right. Like men can't become women. Like we should have a border. Little things like that.

But I never consider myself, and I still don't, ideological. I have my ethical compass, I know what's right and wrong. And I don't like team jerseys. I've been a registered independent for almost 20 years now. I've been a registered Republican and a registered Dem. I don't want to share a jersey with any of those guys. I don't blame you. I don't blame you at all. Your teen requested a ride, but this time, not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers.

Add your teen to your Uber account today. You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it. today. Ambition is on the inside. So that road trip bucket list? Get after it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. So at Fox, I mean, your career, it sounds like it just went almost straight up. Who would you say some of your biggest competitors would have been? I never saw any competition on CNN or MSNBC.

The bosses over there continued to try to hire me and lure me away every contract renewal because they weren't getting anywhere and our readings were always huge, huge mine and Fox's. And at Fox, I just didn't look around at my colleagues like that. I never considered it a zero-sum game. Roger told me early on, other people will try to imitate you, they'll try to get your look or get your delivery or whatever, and you never have to worry about that. There's only one you.

You just worry about being you and things will work out. And that was really good advice. I didn't look around at the other players on the field and worry about any of them. I just thought, if I can do the best job I'm capable of, I'll get to where I want to go. And those were always baby steps. When I was a reporter, I thought, well, it'd be great to get bigger assignments. And then when I got bigger assignments, I was like, well, I'd love a chance at anchoring. And then it's like, what if I could be a full-time anchor?

And then it's like, what if I could have my own show? And then it's, well, what if I could have, instead of co-anchoring a show, my own show, just me? And then it was like, well, what if I could move up to prime time? And all those things happened. And then I kind of got to the place where I was like, it all happened. And the paycheck's bigger than it's ever been.

And I'm enjoying it less than ever. Things have changed so dramatically in year 13 versus year one, that now I guess I'm rich, okay? I've come to learn a lot of secrets of this place that I never wanted to know. I'm having way too much exposure to the executive suite. People who used to be rooting for me now find me threatening. You know, just that's what comes with money and power.

And this isn't as great as I thought it was going to be. And then, you know, most of the guys around me were like, what are you talking about? It's like you're powerful and you've got this dough. It's meaningless to me. I don't care. Really? I just don't care. I, tomorrow, could basically go back to mud pies in the backyard if I had to.

That's just who I am. That's why I was saying earlier, that was an important way to grow up. I think if you need the trappings of big money in journalism, you become a shitty journalist, Don Lemon. You take yourself too seriously. You need access to these elite circles. You want to see yourself at dinner tables with stars. You want to go to the fancy award shows. And I dipped a toe into that world just to see what it was like when I got these invitations.

And it was horrible. Why? Because it's insufferable to be around those people and to have to make conversation with them. I can't talk to those people. I don't know how to live in that world. I feel the way probably most of your audience feels like they would feel.

Where you're like, I've got nothing to say to this bride. I don't even know how to talk to, in certain name, of A-list celebrity. Unless they want to talk about the stuff that I like, like politics and the world and real people. Yeah. What are we, I don't even know how to respond. Doug and I would always find the accountant

who helped organize the event in wide of talking to him, you know, like the geeky lawyer who got invited just as a favor. That's where we'd go. Yeah, I can relate to that. Right? Yep. Wow, that's interesting. You know, when you were talking, just a second ago, you were talking about how Roger told you

people are gonna try to copy what you're doing, to steal your style. I struggle with that now. I see it starting to happen. And when is the first time you notice somebody trying to imitate what you were doing? I don't know. I guess I've seen it here and there, but I don't really pay attention to it.

That didn't bother you? No. No. I believed what he said, and I knew what he said was true when he said it. That's true. Only one person has my combination of attributes, good, bad, or ugly. They're mine, you can't imitate them. Look at Josh Shapiro, this governor of Pennsylvania. Have you heard him talk?

No. He is a wannabe Obama. He tries to talk just like Obama tomorrow. Right? It's so obvious. I'm embarrassed for him. I have secondhand embarrassment. There's only one Barack Obama, and it ain't you, Josh Shapiro.

Find your own style. So no, I never felt like, oh, she's coming for me. You know, I just kind of felt like. How would they try to imitate you? I mean, a lot of people would get exactly the same haircut I had, or start wearing exactly the same clothes I had, move over to the same agents I had, start getting, you know, whatever, go to all the same people I went to for like clothes and just sort of surround themselves. Legitimately trying to be you.

Yeah. It's just like... Same network? How'd that work out? Other networks? Both. Both? Yeah.

Listen, when I was in college, I dated this guy who was a great guy, and he was the captain of the lacrosse team that won three national championships at Syracuse. And he, you know, division one NCAA champion, and he used to say, Meg, you go to these lacrosse games, you can always tell which team is going to win. Because one team is practicing their drills and throwing the balls around, and the other team's looking at that team. You know, it's just a good reminder,

don't be that second team. And I don't even think it's a good competitive practice, like you're keeping an eye on your competition. No, that's not the key to winning. The key to winning is to keep an eye on your shit and just keep tweaking it, keep making it better, keep raising the bar for excellence. There's always room for improvement. We never achieve perfection, but it's fun to try.

I want to take that advice personally. You should. Thank you. And plus, like, who would have the connection that you have with your audience, Sean? It's like, they fall in love with you because of you. You know, one of these imitators might get an invitation onto the Megyn Kelly show one day,

and I'll have a very nice interview, and they'll be very nice, and I'll say, that worked, goodbye, and they'll be utterly forgettable. Only you have this, there's something special about you. And I mean that to you in particular, like there's something special about you. Very few people have like this combination of soulfulness and smarts and depth and humor and introspection, but ability to have conversations about light things

and real things, it's just, it works, and you don't need to worry about that other team. Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. That means a lot. How did you meet your husband? We were set up. Really? So I was a young cub reporter at Fox, and he was running his own business.

He had started a company from New York, but it was based in Florida. And we were set up on what was a blind date for me, not so much for him. That's kind of a great story because this woman who did PR work for his firm sent me an email saying, Megan, I have no idea what your situation is, but I know this great guy. She gave me his resume. He went to Duke. He went to Georgetown for his MBA. He sounded smart. He's great looking.

We all love this guy. He's a super nice guy. I had just gotten out of my first marriage, and I almost deleted the email. I literally had the finger on the delete button. And the last second, something made me hit save instead. Wait a minute. So a random publicist just, what, saw you on the air? I guess she got my email. I think she'd done some work for Fox. And was like, oh, saw you on the air? I guess she got my email.

I think she'd done some work for Fox. And was like, oh, this woman would be perfect for my boss? She was traveling with him on an airplane, and they saw me pop up doing a report on Duke Lacrosse and that fake rape case. And they got to talking about that story, because Doug went to Duke, and me me and she, you know, I guess he must have said some favorable things.

And so she shot me an email like, you know, he expressed interest, I guess. And it was just so crazy because if you like Doug came into my life when he was 34 years old, he did have that nice resume. He was running a company. He came from a very nice Philadelphia family, not snooty, just like, I mean, a nice, nice family. And he'd never been married. It was just, he's very good looking. I think I can, the audience will Google Doug Brunt. You will see. I'm not just being a proud wife. He's really a great-looking guy. And I was like, he's gay! He's a serial killer!

He has a secret wife, that's obvious! Every lady knows that doesn't just come to you after your divorce when you're 34 or 35 years old. It doesn't happen. So I was like, I guess I can give it a try until I find the body's buried in the basement, but it'll, you know, we'll have a good run till then. And so we went on our first date.

I brought a friend who hid in the bar, like she was down at the end of the bar, making sure he wasn't a freak stalker. And he wasn't a freak stalker. He's kind of nerdy actually in a really sweet way. And we hit it off instantly. How long did it take for you guys to get engaged? He moved fast.

We started dating in July of 06, is that right? Yes, and he proposed to me in September of 07. How did he propose? He took me to the end of the dock in the Jersey town where he grew up going in the summers. And he took off his sunglasses. We were sitting on a bench. He got down on one knee and proposed with a big fake like dime store, 25 cent ring. Beautiful.

It was scary. That moment was scary, Sean, because I was not thinking about getting remarried. I had just gotten a divorce. It was total surprise. Total surprise. He ran just gotten a divorce. It was total surprise. Total surprise. He ran it by my mom and my mom was like, have you run this by Megan? Because I'm not sure.

And he was like, whoa, what do you mean? But, you know, it was one of those things. I'm learning how to play mahjong. Do you ever play mahjong? It's like becoming a thing. Man, back in like Windows 95 era. It's becoming a thing in both of my communities where I go in the summers and where I am

in home in Connecticut. And when you get the little card, you have to say whether you want it or the tile or not. You got it like, there's no do-overs. If the tile's there, you got to click on it or you never get it again. So it might've been a little early for me, the proposal, but in retrospect, I thank God I said yes

because I don't know if we would have had Thatcher, you know, like my third kid. I had him when I was 42. That's already kind of old. What if I had waited? Maybe there wouldn't be a Thatcher, you know? So Doug's instincts were dead on. You know, so Doug's instincts were dead on.

So you guys have been married for 16 years? 16 years, yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. What do you think the key to a successful marriage is? I definitely think it's using your most generous lens on your partner. Trying to interpret all behaviors through the lens of he loves me and I love him.

That helps with so many things. And I also think it's important to say the thing that you don't want to say. Not to be intentionally hurtful, but we don't really have a lot of conflict now, but when I was on Fox in the prime time and Doug was doing more than his fair share of everything going on with the young kids.

He was never like a stay at home dad, he always had stuff going on, but he just, he had a job that allowed him to be at home more, and so he necessarily was doing more. He never got resentful really of me, actually. He was always very supportive, he's just a cool guy, but I got resentful of him. Really?

Yeah, I was like, I don't like that the kids go to your side of the bed in the middle of the night. I don't like that you've shown them all these movies that I'm not around to see. Now you have your own little language with them about the fun things you've done. I don't like when I'm having a one-on-one conversation with them and you come in and join.

I need my own one-on-one time with them, get out. And I didn't really want to say it. All those things make me feel, even to this moment, like a very petty person. You know? Like, here's this guy. He's doing all this great stuff. Most women would kill to have a more active partner. I had a different kind of problem.

And I didn't really give a shit if it made me feel small. I needed to say it. We had to clear the air. And Doug always made me feel better about those things, always. And then when I finally righted my life and got more balance into where I could be a more active mother, I realized it's not so thrilling to have them come over in the middle of the night and wake you up. It was, I didn't know how good I had it.

Go bother your father. How long did it take you to find that balance? Did you find it at Fox or was it after your, what would I call it, mainstream? I mean, I left Fox for a bunch of reasons, but the number one reason was I needed to raise my own children. They were seven, five, and three when I left, and I hadn't missed it.

You know, I'd missed a lot. Yeah. But I hadn't missed it. And, you know, I don't, it's just, if people don't understand that, it's like I can't explain it to them. Like, there's only one time that you can raise them, that's it.

I feel it. Yeah. I feel it. Yeah. I feel it all the time. Once you've missed it, you've missed it. Yeah. I'm realizing how fast it actually does go. You have to prioritize it. It's terrifying.

Yeah. You have to. Like, and I remember when I was thinking about leaving Fox, I sat next to some gazillionaire at some event. We were both doing a speech someplace or something, and he was talking about how he spent all of his kids' 18 years of formation on the road and earning the money, and they have a private jet and all this stuff. And he was like, I screwed up.

It wasn't worth it. I wish so much I had done it differently. And I was like, this is an angel sent to me at this moment in time when I can make a different choice. I had the NBC offer to go do something that, as we now know, is a very poor fit, but in my mind was just an off ramp. It was like, I can get out of the toxic world of politics, which if you know anything about 2016 in my life, was extremely toxic for me that year. I can be with these beautiful people who need me.

I can talk about stories that are uplifting. I thought it'd be more like an Oprah type show where we talked about changing people's lives and I took it. I was scared to take that leap, but I knew changing my hours and my schedule and my overall set up had to be done. How does your, if you don't mind me asking, how does your husband deal with the fame and notoriety that you have? He's very good about it. I mean, he said once something like, you know, every few months Meg will say something that

upends our life and then we have to deal with that. But for the most part, it has more positives than negatives. You know, people are so nice. Look, I have like just a small level of fame, if that's the word we want to use. People recognize me, but they're very respectful. No one's ever nasty. I mean, they used to be more when I was on Fox. But the percentage of nastiness is less than one.

The percentage of kindness is all 99. And the percentage of intrusions into my personal time that are unwanted is almost none. Like people are pretty good about reading whether you are approachable in that moment or not. Like with my kids, they leave me alone. I've noticed if I'm with Doug, they usually leave me alone too.

If I'm on my own, they feel more comfortable coming over. But some of that's nice. It's like a little ego boost. They come over, they say all lovely things. Then they say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I say, what are you apologizing for? You said all these beautiful things to me, right? Made me feel good.

But I can go places. I don't have to worry. I feel like I'm right at a good level where I can pay my bills and I can sort of have a microphone and people wanna listen to it, but people are so respectful and it's not, I can't imagine how like truly, you know, well known people live.

Yeah, yeah. Back to Fox, you get your first, I don't know, I'm sorry, I don't know what to call it, main show, prime time show. Yeah, so I had a show in the morning and then the afternoon in the prime time, yeah. How was that? The prime time?

Yeah. It was great, it was exciting. The night before we went on the air live, we played Don't Change a Thing by NXS. We all danced. And then we went out there and did it, and it was great. It was so fun. It was just such a big moment for us all. Does your team follow you everywhere you go?

Yeah. That's amazing. Same executive producer and core producers. And I love my old EP. I love my current EP. I love my current EP too. But this guy, Tom Lowell, was just like, we were in it together from 2007 to when I left in 17. I mean, just 10 years of insane events.

And he was like a blood brother to me. So I love that guy and always will. And Prime Time was exciting. It just definitely a different level of attention and importance and high wire act. You know, you sit down on that set and you feel yourself, you know. Do you get an adrenaline dump?

Definitely. Every time? Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. But you know, I was torn during those years, too, because we launched The Kelly File two months after Thatcher, my youngest, was born. He was so little, and I would bring him in. It was a new schedule, you know, where I worked basically 3 to 11 p.m.

You can't just go in at 8 if you're doing the 9 p.m. news. You have to prepare a lot, especially if you're me. And first I thought this would be so great because my kids are little. They're not yet in school. I can be with them. It's not really how it works. Before you know it, they are in school during those hours, and you leave just as they get home. But my babe was not in school, he was an infant,

and I'd bring him into Fox. He'd be with me, I'd be distracted. He'd fall asleep, I'd put him on the little sofa right across from me, and he'd sleep in his little, you know. And I just felt so bad about it. It just felt like the wrong thing to be doing. It was the first time my professional goals really clashed with my personal goals. Because doing the earlier shows, like in the afternoon when my first two were little, I

was balancing it much better. I was gone in the middle of the day. I was with them for most of the morning. I was with them for most of the morning and I was with them for all of the evening. I put them to bed every night. It was a very present mother. And then with Thatcher for that beginning first year of the Kelly file, it was just,

he was with me a lot at Fox, but it wasn't quality time. It's the first time my heart really started to like cry. You know, like this isn't good enough. I was 13 to 14, 14 to 15, 15 to 16. I was going on four years and I was like, Thatcher was three when I left Fox. I just got to the point where I was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this one more minute. Not one more minute.

I loved my audience, I loved my show, and I loved my job, most of it. But I love them so much more. There's not even any contest. And it wasn't like I had to give up journalism. I could still do something in the field going over to NBC. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was something. So it seemed like a good compromise. Can we talk about 2016?

Yeah, we can talk about all of it. With you and Trump? Yeah, good times. It doesn't sound like it. I mean, I remember when that happened and how do you, I mean, how do when that happened and how do you, I mean, how do you deal with that? You know, I see it so differently now.

I see it as one of my thank you moments for sure. You know, I am a lot stronger and tougher than I used to be in a good way, not like bad tough. And I have a very good perspective on what happened there and my role in it and why Trump was doing that. But when I was going through it, I lacked that perspective. And so it was more traumatic. Like anything, especially a crisis you go through,

the wisdom only comes later. You know, when you're in the midst of it, you're just dealing with the fire hose of shit. So it was highly unpleasant. And the biggest challenge for me was trying to report on him without being a rabid opposition force. I refused to let his negative comments about me ongoing turn me into the very thing he was saying I was.

Unfair, I can't be fair to Trump, all the other words, whatever. I was determined to go out there and be fair to him at night, notwithstanding what he was doing to me in my personal life. And I think I did a decent job of it. It wasn't perfect, but I think I did a decent job of it. I know what it was, but I just want to ask you, what was the question that you asked that triggered that response? It was something like, you've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, disgusting

animals. Your Twitter account is littered with negative comments about women. Oh, and it began with, one of the things people love about you is you don't use a politician's filter, but that's not without its downsides, especially when it comes to women. And I went over the things he said about women, and then I said there was once a celebrity apprentice contestant who you said you'd like to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president? And how will you answer the charge coming from Democrats that you are part of the war

on women? I love my question. I know people disagree, and that's fine. They're entitled to their opinions too. But I loved it. I thought it was perfect. And I worked on it tirelessly. And people think that Rupert Murdoch blessed it, allowed it, greenlit it.

Absolutely not. I'd love for the people who are mad at me over that question to blame it on somebody else, but no. All the blame goes on me. And that's fine. As I say, I stand behind the question 100%. We're not supposed to be chumming with these guys. It's supposed to be adversarial.

It's a presidential debate. Let's go. Let's get it on. That's what I thought. And it made electric television. It was spectacular to watch. The highest rated debate in US history. Is it really?

Yeah. Congratulations. Well, I don't know if the record still stands because Trump went on to be, but nothing came close prior to that. Well, we don't have very many presidential debates anymore. So. No. I'm sure it's still.

I think we're going to get some still. When he had implied blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever, I mean that was pretty much what kicked the whole thing off, correct? That he'd been tweeting that I was a bimbo and he'd been tweeting out pictures I did for GQ Magazine, you know, that kind of thing.

How did that, I mean what did that, what aspect of your life do you think that affected the most? Probably the most was internal at Fox. It created just such a shit storm internal at Fox because Roger was very worried he was going to lose the core base of his audience that had fallen in love with Trump, but he was still trying to hold on to the establishment wing of the Republican Party. And we were getting so much hate mail. I was getting so much hate mail.

It seemed like overnight I went from someone the audience liked to someone they loathed. But the ratings didn't suffer, which was interesting. My ratings never went down. They only went up. Really? I know. So it's odd. But people were very angry with me over that question. They really thought I tried to kneecap

Trump. And I understand why they thought that. I just don't see it that way at all. Like if you would ever go back and look at that whole debate, if you look at that first opening round of questions, we were so mean to all of them. All of them. I basically told Ben Carson he seemed like an idiot and listed all the ways in which he had evidenced that and made him explain why it wasn't true. I mean, mean questions, but mean in a good way. Journalists should not be cozy with presidential candidates. They should be tough on them.

These should be the toughest A-plus level questions you can craft. That's what I think a presidential debate should be the toughest A-plus level questions you can craft. That's what I think a presidential debate should be. Then let him fight. And we did our job. We did our job that night. And Trump answered that question beautifully. He really did.

He was humorous. He was like a bull, you know, like only Rosie O'Donnell, which made everybody laugh. And then he said the classic Trump line of what I say is what I say, right? That's Trump to this day. So it was an opportunity really for him and he nailed it. And if he hadn't decided to make a thing

out of that question, the world would have just moved on. But he did. And I think he did it for a variety of reasons. And then just like the stress in my life internally, and because there are many people who are mad at me over the question too, like diehard loyalists to Trump inside the building. And outside, because the security situation in our lives went nuts. It was very weird how the threat level started to go up. And you always get death threats, sadly, as a public figure, but these were scary.

And they were specific, and we kept having to call in security teams, and we had to investigate this person and that person and the other person, and do we get a restraining order or whatever. And then strange, odd men showing up to my home in the middle of the night. Really? And yelling at me in front of my children. And it was just like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is next level.

Off of the one question, and Trump had so many bigger problems in the news. I was the least of his problems. You know, he had people who hated him and were openly espousing it every day. I'm like, why me? And I think there are all sorts of answers to that, but I was unhappy. I was, as you know from the discussion we've had, I was going into that year kind of unhappy

about how things had changed at Fox and my kids and all that. And then I was just getting more unhappy. So it was just, you know, there's a scene, you mentioned that you watched the movie Bombshell. You said that to me before we started. And there is one scene in that movie where Charlize Theron playing me is in like an edit bay and she's having a conversation with my fake husband Doug. While that scene never happened in my life, the sentiment she expressed 100% did where she said something like, I'm allowed to want this to be over.

That was it, exactly. I'm allowed to want this to be over. And I did end it. I managed to end it on a good note with Trump. The media turned on me 180, of course, because they wanted me to be his antagonist. They wanted him to say more things about me because they would make a story out of it every time he did. And they saw it as a surrender by me to him.

When you say that you think he did it for a variety of reasons, what are the reasons? I think the first night he was genuinely mad at me. And I now know from everyone, I mean, from reporting around Trump, all these in-depth pieces from people close to Trump, not just his detractors, I mean, you know, that, and even deposition testimony that was given in some of the lawsuits against him and the legal cases from him and others, they knew that the women thing was going to be a problem for Trump, long before America knew it, long before I knew it. I found that issue only because I asked my research assistants to get me, you know, information on everybody. And they came in with, this is this guy's weakness, this is this gal's

weakness, this is... So I was ready to punch them all where it hurt. And Trump's was like this and it was all about women. Now we're more used to some of this stuff, but back in 2015, that debate was August 2015, to have a presidential candidate having said that stuff about women and done some of those things with women was like, what? We had had Bill Clinton. I haven't forgotten that, but I'm just saying this was not the norm. So I was like, this is gonna had had Bill Clinton. I haven't forgotten that, but I'm just saying, this was not the norm.

So I was like, this is gonna be a good one, right, to ask him about this stuff. It wasn't an attempt to take him out. It was like, let's go, right? Like, let's go. I'm gonna bring my A game, you bring yours, it's on. I'm doing your favorite thing, good TV. Let's do that thing together.

And I think it touched a nerve because it was a soft spot for him. He knew he was exposed. So initially he was mad. Why did he keep it going for nine months? I think he enjoyed it. And he knew it was a good storyline for him. And he was right.

I'm not beholden to Fox. I will take on Fox News. I will take on the female anchor. I won't be controlled by anyone. I won't bow to any of the right's sacred cows. I'm for you. Not for the elites, the establishment, the so-called bosses of the Republican Party. F them all.

You and I are together. That's what Trump was saying to his fans. And it was brilliant. I was just part of it. He was making me part of that messaging, long past the point at which I wanted anything to do with that. I just kind of wanted to do my journalism.

And I punched him some nights from the anchor desk, and other nights I defended him. In fact, I didn't really hit Trump much at all. The one thing I remember going after him on was when he criticized the Gold Star family. I didn't like that. But other than that, honestly, I was defending Trump most of the nights.

So you didn't get vindictive, you didn't at all. No, no. Even though as he continued doing this, my feelings on him personally definitely soured. Oh, I could imagine. How did your family take it? Doug's feelings soured more. He was very frustrated.

He really wanted it to stop. He wanted to defend me, but he couldn't. You know, I knew that would be inappropriate. It wouldn't help, and it would undermine me. I didn't need to run to my husband to make it stop. I needed to go to the gorilla himself, a psychol trope. He's always the 800 pound gorilla. So it was very, it was very hard.

I mean. Were your kids old enough to understand what was going on? No, no. Nor did I want them to. Nor did I want to poison them on Trump. You know, I didn't want to poison them on anybody politically. Back then, I was really just thinking I want them to figure out eventually where they stand on politics and politicians and Trump could be president. I certainly don't want them loathing the president.

So I didn't tell my kids a lot. You know, they'd see some of the security issues. You know, we went to Disneyland with an armed guard, Disney World, that was weird. He was like following us around on all the rides. So that was strange. Things like that they'd noticed, but no. So anyway, finally I had tried to get Trump to stop through Hannity, who did, he was very gracious

and tried to help me out, because they were friends. Roger tried time and time again, no. Had other people go to back door, no. And then Brian Kilmeade actually offered to send Trump an email for me because he knew I wanted a meeting. And Trump said yes. So I went there. I didn't tell Roger.

And I settled it with Trump one-to-one. And he never bothered me again. And Roger was incensed. He was so angry that I went there and didn't tell him. And I think it's because he wanted the credit for putting it to bed. What he said to me was, you don't go to him. He should have come to you or you made it a neutral spot. You gave up all your power.

And I was like, Roger, I am a reporter. He is a presidential candidate. He does have the power. The nature of this relationship is I pursue him. I need access to him. He doesn't need me. I need access to him. He doesn't need me. It's appropriate in the context of this relationship for me as the reporter to say, may I have time with you? I will come to you, and I would like to bring you this objection I have

and ask you to stop this behavior. I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. And I think he was actually just mad because he wanted credit internally for having organized it all himself, you know, the come to Jesus and the reconciliation and the new page. But he was so pissed off.

That's another thing that the movie Bombshell gets wrong. They show Roger really happy about that question, like, good job. No, he was very angry about that question. And I think we would find out, you know, soon thereafter, why Roger was so very paranoid about that particular subject. Mm-hmm. What was the conversation like with Trump when you went there?

Classic Trump. Funny. He hugged me. He'd been telling people to boycott the show for months. He said he watched it every night. He was so magnanimous. Warm. It was like none of it ever happened.

Did it totally disarm you? Ah, not totally. I was like, what the fuck is going on here? But I was relieved that he was so nice. I didn't know what to expect. And he'd just been so, I don't know, just so rough. So I just wasn't sure what I was getting myself into there. But he could not have been nicer.

He's like, Melania loves your show. Get her in here, Melania. Eric Trump came in. It was like, I can't believe this is happening. What's happening? Wow. Then he asked for my phone number and I was like, oh God, remember he had just done the thing

in that primary with Lindsey Graham where he posted Lindsey Graham's phone number publicly because he turned on Lindsey. And I was like, you're not gonna Lindsey Graham me here, are you? And he's like, no, no, I promise to keep it to myself. And it was really crazy, so crazy, Sean, because I walked out, we agreed, like, we're good.

And the last thing he said to me before I walked out of Trump Tower was, you know, Megan, it's not such a good thing if they're not talking about us. And I was like, oh my God, was this whole thing for show? Like was he acting the whole time to generate buzz? And I really don't know the answer to that other than what I told you, my suppositions about his feelings the night of and then the motivations thereafter.

Wow. There was a scene in the movie where I believe it was your husband seemed disappointed. Maybe like you were not being true to yourself. Too solicitous of him. Yes. Is that? That's a made up scene. That never happened.

Doug always had my back and was on my side. But I think they use Doug sort of as a stand in for many millions of people who were angry I made up with Trump and angry that I then did a relatively friendly interview with him turning the page, which is true. I mean, I did do that. I did have a goal in that interview. It certainly wasn't to stir things back up. People were right about that.

But it was really just to see if Trump was an empathetic person. If you go back and look at that interview, you see almost every single question is toward that end. Asked him about his brother who had alcoholism, asked him about his dad, asked him about people who he's attacked on the internet, asked him a little bit about me. But people with the left, you know, they wanted me to go in there and be like, you called me a bimbo, how dare you?

That's not me. I was enjoying not being his target, and I certainly didn't wanna spend more time admiring at how I was your target for all this time. enjoying not being his target, and I certainly didn't want to spend more time miring and how I was your target for all this time. So, yeah, people were very angry. And I think that's really when I lost a lot of the media as they just turned on me and never came back over, which is fine.

Their love was artificial when it was given and it was unimportant to me then and it remains unimportant to me. But I did think it was a very telling dynamic how as soon as I no longer was Trump's foil, they were like. Join me and my special guests for the next behind the scenes experience exclusively available on Vigilance Elite Patreon. The behind the scenes footage is raw and uncut.

This is as close to the set as you can possibly get. You can expect anything from off topic conversations, studio tours, the final moments before the interview starts, and everything in between. The behind the scenes content is constantly evolving and will continue to bring you more as we grow. You can gain access for just $15 a month exclusively at Vigilance Elite Patreon.

Thank you for listening to The Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave The Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. Wow. Wow. So it sounds like in look like from the film and the reports and while it was happening that the sexual harassment was just running rampant throughout the entire Fox News organization. Is that an accurate assumption?

I think it was pretty common. Yeah. It was pretty frequent. I mean, this is back before Fox News was patient zero in the Me Too movement. We were a year before Weinstein, so it wasn't really a thing for people to come forward, for women to come forward like that. So yeah, it was prevalent. I would come to find out it was prevalent at NBC, and then as the world would later

find out, it was prevalent at CBS and it was existed at ABC and CNN and MSNBC. So we were not special at Fox News, we were just first. How did it start with you? I was very young, I was at the very beginning of my career there, still a reporter in DC, working for Brit Hume and Kim Hume, and very green, but loving my time. And Roger took an interest in me early on. I think in fairness to myself, it wasn't all because he wanted to sleep with me.

I think he understood he had somebody who was a lawyer, who had potential in this business that was unique and that he really wanted to develop it because above all, he was a capitalist. He wanted to make money. So he started to mentor me in a great way. He gave me so much good advice, advice I still rely on and miss to this day. And we kind of became friends. He would have me to his house with his wife and with Doug for dinner, and we went many times, and I got to know him.

And then he would make bawdy comments to me a lot, which didn't faze me. I had come off 10 years of practicing law. Like I said, we were pretty raunchy in the law. Not quite this raunchy, but salty language. And I'm almost impossible to offend. I'm really hard to offend. I'm freaking Irish.

We don't offend easy. So I don't know. I just kind of... I wasn't too fazed by the inappropriate comments about women's looks or this one's left her way to the top, that kind of thing. I remember getting worried when he said, I'll spare this news anchor the identification, but he said, this anchor who I admired at another network was smart. She slept with her boss, and that gave her every opportunity she ever wanted. That's how she got to the top. And I remember being like,

now that's different from just body. You know, that sounds like an invitation. And then there'd be more inappropriate comments about me. You know, the initial comments were just about, in general, like sexual. It's almost like how a groomer, you know, frankly, operates. Then he gets specific about me. And he said something about how good he thought I would look in my bra and panties.

I was like, all right, now we're really over on thin ice. In no world is this okay talk between a boss, the most powerful man in news, and a first-year reporter. I remember thinking this is so ballsy because he knows I'm a lawyer. He knows I just came off of 10 years of practicing law, including employment law. This is definitely not kosher. But my feeling was he just wanted to have an affair with me. I thought the guy was Randy.

I wasn't thinking he's this massive sexual harasser. It just wasn't even, that's not at all how I experienced him. Like, he wants to go to bed with me. And not to sound, you know, self-congratulatory, but he wasn't the first man to behave like this around me. It wasn't like this is the first time a man's ever come onto me and wanna have sex with me. So I was like, oh, this is tricky,

cause he's my boss, I've gotta get out of this. I'm definitely not going to have sex with me. So I was like, this is tricky because he's my boss, I've got to get out of this. I'm definitely not going to have sex with him or an affair. This is very tricky. But my only goal was get out of it without hurting him because I want a career. You know, my career, which I'm loving, is on the line here. If I upset him or play this wrong, he's gonna feel rejected,

which is the worst way you can make a man feel. And if that man's your boss, your career's out the window, especially when you were me, with no connections, no history, no resume, no body of work, nothing. So it was just like dancing on the head of a pin to try to just get out of bounds whenever he said something like that. Out of bounds, out of bounds, out of bounds.

And for most of this time, I was divorcing Dan and not yet with Doug. So I couldn't be like, oh, you know, Doug, which is a very effective way of telegraphing to a man, no. But I didn't have that and I didn't have a ton of experience in just navigating this particular thing. So it was bad. But I did know that if he was going to fire me, I needed a record because I would have sued him. And so I started keeping a diary every night

whenever I had an interaction with him, very detailed. I told my office mate, Major Garrett, who's the White House reporter for CBS News now, and he would later back me up when this investigation came down. We used to sit in my office, we shared an office together, and the phone would light up, and I'm a first year, and I would say, Roger Ailes. He'd be like, never got a call from Roger in his career there.

Called me all the time. I'm like, oh my God. He kept calling me up to New York, which was also unusual. I would later find out. These long face-to-face meetings were unusual. And I called my lawyer. I called Jones Day. And they opened up a case file and created a conflict just in case like he ever called them so he couldn't hire them so they could represent me if I needed it. And then I told my supervisor, who I have chosen not to name in the DC Bureau, but I went to this person and I told them

what was happening. I didn't want this person, just to be clear, to run to human resources. I wasn't like, let's make a record. This is inappropriate. I was like, please help me. I wanted to end and I don't want to get fired and I don't know what to do. This person told me he's just an unhappily married man, and he's a good man.

And if you just stay down here in D.C. and ignore him, it'll stop. And that's exactly what happened. And I chalked it up to exactly what I was told. He's a good man, but an unhappily married man, and he was looking to have an affair, and it wasn't going to be with me. And I kind of skipped the, you know, crescendo of it all, but it came to a peak in his office one day when he grabbed me and tried to kiss me and I pushed him off of me. It wasn't like violent, you know, it wasn't like, I'll have you.

And I was like, no, it was was just like he tried to go for it and I pushed him back and I could smell alcohol in his breath and He came at me again, he clearly didn't get the message like most men after one shove-off would know it's a no he came at me again and Same thing I pushed him away and I went over by the door to get out. He used to lock the door when, not just me, but women were in there. And he looked at me and said, when is your contract up? And it was soon.

I remember telling him whenever it was up. And then he came for me a third time. A third time? Yeah. And I pretended to stumble off of my high heel to get away from him, and I ran out the door. And I called my Jones Day lawyer in tears. Like, I'm definitely getting fired.

This is going to be a disaster. That's when they opened up the case file and did all that stuff. But ultimately, I did what my friend and supervisor told me to do. And he didn't pursue it, and he did not exact any sort of retribution on me. He got past it. He ignored me. He got past it. He ignored me. I was a peon. And I just nosed to the grindstone for the next couple of years down there. A couple of years went by and he promoted me to anchor.

The long meeting stopped and I got the anchor job. I was earning my bones that time. I was doing really solid reporting on big, big cases. So it wasn't like, oh gee, nothing happened. And then he gave me, you know, I worked and I was getting well known and people, there was buzz. I was coming up. And then he made me an anchor and he never bothered me again. Never.

He was always the perfect gentleman with me. After that, he had gotten the message. He still was body here and there, wasn't he? But never like about me. He clearly, and then I was with Doug and he was always respectful of that. When did you become aware of all the other women? So I found out that my friend,

my closest friend there, Janice Dean, she's the meteorologist, also had an experience with him. And we kind of laughed. We weren't thinking he was this massive harasser. We were like, oh, men. And it was right at the same time mine happened. So I filed that under, took a shot with her too. Didn't work out with me, took a shot with her,

didn't work out with her. Her story always made me laugh because he took her out for like a job interview at a hotel, and not a hotel room, but like in a restaurant. And they had a glass of wine and before she knew it, he was like reaching out to like hold her hands across the table, which is a weird move on a job interview and he said to her I need to know how you see me and Janice was just the best was like like

a teacher you know like like a mentor anyway we used to laugh about that story. You know, it was like, ah, these pervy old men. That was the file it was in. So this is like similar to getting heckled at the nursing home. Yeah, it's like harmless. Once I got past my thing, which was definitely not harmless, it had the potential to do a lot of harm, it was like, all right, it's done.

I managed it. I don't want to make a federal case out of it at all. And neither did she. She wanted her job. He offered her a job. She rejected him. She had the same experience. She rejected him, and he hired her anyway, and then left her alone.

So we both had it in the file of he took a shot, it didn't work out. That happens. It's not supposed to happen in the work exactly with a boss, but it does happen. And then Gretchen Carlson filed her lawsuit. And we were like, holy shit. I mean, that truly was a bombshell. And all hell broke loose. I mean, just that lawsuit was a before and after moment.

All hell broke loose. How long was the lawsuit going on before you made your decision? I don't remember. I don't remember. I don't remember the time span. The whole thing seemed to be maybe six weeks, but I can't, they'll hold me to that. Were you close with Gretchen Carlson? Not at all.

I didn't really like her. Okay. A few of us did. And in a war between Gretchen and Roger, we were all Team Roger. That's just the truth. She didn't really like me either. So the instinct was not in any way to help her. But truth is truth. Reality is truth.

Reality is reality. And while I offer no opinion on her situation and what did or did not happen between Gretchen and Roger, I knew from the second that thing was filed that if I got called in by any investigative body, he was fucked. Because by this point, I had risen to the top of Fox News. I had credibility. I had no ax to grind. She had just been fired.

And I knew that they would believe me. And I deserved to be believed. I just saw that this thing had set wheels in motion that were ultimately going to end in calamity. And god, it was terrible. It was just terrible because I didn't want to hurt him. And I didn't want to help her. And I didn't want to hurt him and I didn't want to help her. And I didn't want to upend my career and I didn't want to be known as the face

of some sexual harassment movement or lawsuit or to have the fact that I'd been harassed broadcast to anybody. I was humiliated about it. It's just, it wasn't something that was seen the way it is now. Usually they'd say you brought it on yourself. You know, back then.

Only now are we starting to understand, actually, this is really kind of common and it doesn't mean you were asking for it. Trust me, I was not asking for it. I just didn't want anything to do with it. It was like, cesspool of toxicity over there. My life's going pretty well over here. I don't want to go in your pool. But,

one thing after another started happening. And what happened was I found out that they were going to limit the investigation to only staff that worked for Gretchen. And I found that out after other women had spoken to either me or Janice. So like once the lawsuit was filed, women started talking, me too, me too, me too. And so Janice and I started to hear this was widespread,

this was not just the two of us. And heard it had happened to some young women. And these were deeply concerning things. And we were like, oh my God. And then other women, non-Fox women, came out and spoke, I think, to Gabe Sherman in a piece that was explosive about terrible allegations they were making about him before Fox News.

So we were all like him before Fox News. So we were all like, oh my God, and now I'm reevaluating everything that happened to me and Janice reevaluating everything that happened to her. And then we found out that Roger had managed to limit the investigation to just Gretchen's staff. And that was the real moment of reconciliation for me, because I knew that would end it. That would have ended it, and he would have been fine. They would not have talked to Janice. They would not have talked to me.

They would not have talked to the other women we now knew about. And I knew women not only at Fox, but at CNN, like elsewhere, who had worked for him at this point. And it's just, I betrayed him. That's how I see it. You still feel like that? Yeah.

I mean, I know I had good reasons, and it's not like I would have done it differently. But I still, I have really complicated feelings because I betrayed him. And now I also feel like I let down the women who came after me, who were harassed after I was. Even though I don't blame the women who were harassed by him before me, it's just my own thinking.

If I had done more in that first year as a reporter, if I had blown up my career and just said, fuck it, I'll go back to practicing law, I know women, I know actual women who it wouldn't have happened to. But at the same time, I didn't want to hurt him. He'd been so good to me. We'd become friends.

He'd really helped me and my family. He'd always been good to me. But it was like, what if he's still doing it? Am I just gonna cash my check and go out there with swagger on the air? Like, I'm fine, I'm good. It was just an impossible situation. It was so hard.

And I wrote about this in my book and it's a true story. The deciding moment was my daughter was little. She was like four or five, four. And she had fallen off the jungle gym a week earlier. I'd been on the road and caught the back of her head significantly and needed a bunch of stitches. And a week later, she went back at the top of that jungle gym in her dress, this white dress with red polka dots and sneakers.

And I have a picture of her with this huge smile at the top of the same jungle gym. And I'm scrolling through my pictures one day and there's that picture. And I'm like, look at her. It's so brave, right? Like she fell far and really hurt herself and she's right back up there. It's like an extraordinary act of courage for a little girl. And she has this like zigzag scar on the back of her head, like a shazam kind of thing. And I call it her superhero scar, you know. And I remember thinking like, this can't happen to her, to another young woman. Again, not here, not by him, not if my saying something can stop it. So I called Lachlan Murdoch and I said, you better get your lawyer on the phone because

I have something to tell you. And then I told them the story of what had happened to me all those years earlier. And then they hired a real law firm to do a real investigation. And dozens of women came in, including ones to that day. That day? That were going through it. Wow. It's, uh, I wasn't expecting that reaction. It's complicated. People are complicated.

That's what my therapist always says, people are complicated. And then, you know, internally at Fox, it was terrible, which is another heavy layer of it, because everyone was very angry with me. Some had already been angry because of the Trump stuff. And then it was just such a betrayal that they thought I had committed. And they didn't know. People softened after they found out what really was the truth about him. But in the beginning, they just thought I sided with Gretchen and had some nothing with

him that I then complained about to try to hurt him. So they were very angry. They thought I stuck a knife in daddy for no reason. And he really was kind of like daddy. He was almost like a cult leader there. So that just, I mean, going to work in those days was, it was crazy. I just felt so heavy. And it was the Republican National Convention in 2016 where I had all these security guards

because of the death threats and Trump and it had gone up. And I was getting ready to go on the set for a report by Howie Kurtz, the media guy, about me. It had leaked that I was cooperating with the investigators. And the whole report was about how I was a liar. They had pulled every nice thing I had ever said about Ailes in the press over the previous 10 years, and were saying, you know, basically, she's got to be lying because look how she actually feels about Roger, and just painted me as this awful, disgusting turncoat. They never called me for comment on the report, try to find out whether it was true.

Meanwhile, the Murdochs knew it was true. The Murdochs were talking to me. This is their network. Wow. But Roger was calling the shots. And so Roger told Howie Kurtz to do that and he did it. And I'm in the hotel room looking at this television like, is this happening? And I, speaking of the angels who come to get us, got a text or call right after this happened from my priest who happened to be at the RNC and saw the report and said,

do you need me? And I said, yes. And he came over. I've never done this before in my life. I'm not one of those people who like has a priest to I call and then we pray together. But my priest came over and we prayed together. And I went out in the air that night and it was like,

I mean, it was just stone cold. It was rough. And then he was fired the next day. You do see all the good that came from that, correct? Yes. I mean, to be honest, I have mixed feelings about it because I have mixed feelings about it because I know that many women were saved from active harassment or harassment as a result of that whole thing. I played a part in it, but truly the women who did it were the younger women who it was happening to then, who had everything to lose.

They didn't have money in the bank like I did. They didn't have a relationship with him. They couldn't just leave and go get another job at another network. They owed him everything. And they fucking did it. They went into that lawyer room and they told the stories, not knowing that he would be fired, 100% believing that they would be fired. I mean, that's guts.

When I think about the Me Too movement, those are the women. I picture their faces. Those are the women who did it. That was the goodness of the Me Too movement, but the movement was so disgusting by its end, so corrupted and unjust and devoid of due process and such a witch hunt that I don't like being associated with it. I certainly don't want to be the face of it.

I'm not proud of the movement. It was politicized and bastardized and used to take down political figures and others with whom some women just had political or business beefs. But then I, you know, my therapist always says cognitive behavioral therapy, you have to make a list on the other side. And the list on the other side is, you know, Les Moonves got thrown out of CBS.

CBS, that was a good one to go. Harvey Weinstein got thrown out of Hollywood. That was a good one to go. Harvey Weinstein got thrown out of Hollywood. That was a great one. You know, Matt Lauer lost a job. That needed to happen. So there are all sorts of examples I could look at that were not politicized, that I know a lot about,

especially the ones in the news industry, more than what came out publicly. And I know that those were good. I mean, you know, I think you just never know how big the impact that you make is. And it just goes so far beyond that. And I don't, I mean, do you think that's still going on at Fox today? I don't know. I mean, there's a real dynamic that men and women are attracted to each other and often find a spouse

or a future spouse at the workplace. And it's always been. So, you know, you can't scare humans out of behaving humanly. You know, like that's scare humans out of behaving humanly. You know, like that's normal for them to be attracted to each other and they spend a lot of hours at the office and sometimes those office romances bloom into beautiful things. Where there's a power imbalance,

it's very tough and risky. And I think at least now people are more aware of that and maybe more bosses are aware that she might be telegraphing to you that she's okay with this, but she might just be scared. You know, got to tread so lightly there. I think there has been greater awareness brought, been brought to the question. And look, I definitely am stopped by a lot of women who say thank you, who sort of saw a model for how to get through this kind of thing and then followed it.

And whenever they say that, I do think of these young women who I know who went in there because they're still nameless as they wish to be. And I see them thriving now at Fox. And I root them on. And I'm thrilled that their careers are going so well. But I know who they are. In my mind, those are the true heroines because they were so powerless,

but they told their stories, and they survived. They still have their career there. I do think in many ways it was the end of my career at Fox. There was really no staying after that. Yeah. Well, I'm proud of you. Thank you. And I mean, I don't think you'll ever know the amount of women that didn't have to go through that because it seemed to me like you were the tipping point.

And I'll bet that saved a lot of trauma, not just at Fox, but everywhere. You know? So I hope so. I don't know. It's like, I'm not sure how to file it away. If I don't file it under the Me Too movement, I do better with it. You know? We had our own thing.

And then the Harvey Weinstein thing kicked off this other thing. But I certainly don't want to be associated with anything that, you know, what they did to Brett Kavanaugh, any political figure now gets accused. That's all just such BS. I have two sons and I have a husband. I hate that now it's like all you need is an accusation. I think we've righted that ship a bit.

We've restored some balance, but not totally. I want nothing to do with women who want that and who do that and make a Sunday morning regret into a MeToo harassment case that ruins a young man's life. I completely disassociate myself with that and I've had a long career of reporting on those women and exposing them. Long career. I was one of the only ones who knew

that that Duke rape accuser was a liar. You know, I still get thanked by guys who knew those three Duke rape accuser was a liar. I still get thanked by guys who knew those three guys and by those three guys themselves for that matter. So I'm not on board with any of that. I'm all about due process. So I guess in that way, I'm sort of a chameleon. Did you and Gretchen never develop any type of a friendship or discuss what had happened?

No. I've never spoken to her. Still to this day? She never said anything to me. She certainly didn't say thank you, which is fine. I did not do anything to help her. And for a long time, she didn't thank the women who came forward. She made every interview about herself

as she does to this day. That's all I'm gonna say. Wow. So moving on from Fox. NBC. That was another lovely experience. This is like destitution derby, all the terrible things that have happened to MK. But no, thank you.

Back to my motto. You know, that was a bizarre year and a half. And a terrible fit. The one good thing that came out of that is I did an interview with Putin, which you mentioned at the top, and I loved that. That was really cool. I was not well received by the audience, the executives, or the talent. I just kind of went out of the frying pan and into the fire. I thought it was going to be a better situation than Fox.

It was worse in every way. And I knew it was going to be bad. The night before I went there, I think it was the night before I started there, I had this foreboding feeling come over me. And I remember saying something like, I think my career has already been ruined. I just have yet to have the wave wash over me. I think whatever has been done to me in terms of my ability to be in this business

has been done already. And I'm just gonna, the consequences are about to come. It was a very scary feeling and I went out there and from day one you can almost see that uncertainty on me and almost trepidation when you watch the early shows that I did there and my initial appearances there. I changed my wardrobe because I thought I needed to be more daytime-y.

My look was different, my hair and makeup team changed. My makeup guy, he was gray, but it was a different look. It just didn't work on any level. And in some ways, I was trying to change myself. I was trying to turn the page, you know, get a new chapter going. Like, come on. Reinvent. It's been a rough fucking couple of years.

Come on. Going to see my kids. Going to do more uplifting stories. Going to take a step away from politics for a while. This is going to be good for me. This is going to be good for me. And I'll tell you, the one other thing that came out of that year that was really good,

I did have a lot of amazing guests on that show who I loved and who were sort of amazing and inspirational. And the audience, the in-studio audience, I loved. They were so fun. I made actual friendships in that group. The regulars who would come, just we'd talk about our problems every day before and after the show.

And I hated that I never got to say goodbye to them. When they kick you out of TV, they kick you hard, and you just go running. But that ended because it needed to end. At the time, it ended dramatically and in ruination. However, I've since become a big fan of cancel culture. It separates you from a place you didn't belong, a place with different values than your own. So I got, technically, I wasn't fired. I just lost my show.

But that happened because I made a comment about Halloween costumes and the way it used to be saying, when did it change? And how is it racist? And you're just not allowed to have that conversation at NBC. You know, you can't do what we do in this lane and Let's just say there were some other things going on there behind the scenes. Um But really the big picture is it happened because it needed to happen NBC wasn't wrong. It was not a good fit. I knew it too. It's just, what do you do?

Do you give up in the middle of a contract? Where do you go? What do you do? A lot of bad will had already been ginned up about me with some in the populace, some diehard Trump fans who are still angry, some on the left who are pissed, I made up with Trump.

It's just a lot of different weird constituencies. I kind of got canceled by the right and then later by the left. Man. What did it feel like for you to sit down in front of Putin? Great. I enjoyed that thoroughly. Did you? Yeah.

Were you fearful at all? Only in one moment. He's definitely had journalists killed. That's a problem. And we actually had a plane on standby because we were worried that something could happen. We talked about having a plane on standby. I can't actually remember whether we did it. But we were worried about him.

And we sat together. I've interviewed him now five times. I mean, a few times. I went, I did a couple things, a couple days together, and then I went back and we did more a year later. And it was when I was moderating his economic conference with Prime Minister Modi of India that I got in his face about the chemical weapons in Syria and how Russia had helped fund Assad, and he got really pissed.

That was the one thing I asked him of all the things that he was genuinely angry about. You could almost see the switch flip in his head where he went to genuine anger. I remember being like, whoa, I got to pull back. I've crossed some imaginary line I didn't know was there, a tripwire. And I did pull back. And enough that he continued to grant me more interviews and so on. But what a dynamic, fascinating, terrible man. Man, that's, to go over there and put yourself in that situation,

that takes a lot of courage. It was crazy. Russia was so different, it was so beautiful, and the people were so, so nice, and love America. The people there love Americans, love. It's not the way it is at the leadership level. But you know, the women over there, they love a strong man. I mean, American women kind of love a strong man, at least conservatives. I don't know about the liberals.

They used to. They like the soy boys. But that's one of the reasons why he's so popular. And you know, just the dynamic of the guy was fascinating. You know, it's like he knew how to manipulate me, or at least I could see when he was trying. He knew how to be angry when the situation called for anger, to be charming when the situation called for charm. And I have to say, he was very generous with me in terms of the time and no restrictions. He brought me into this weird sort of state dinner between he and Modi, where suddenly I was like the third party

between these two giants, like, oh my God, what's going on? What am I doing here? So anyway, I enjoyed it. I got everything I needed from it. And I actually think it's not out of the question I'd go back and interview him again. Would you really?

Yeah. He liked the tough questions. Other than that one thing, he liked the tough questions. Who were some of the other interviews that you just really enjoyed or got something out of or are proud of? I mean, I really love Judge Judy. I do. She's full of so much wisdom.

I always loved talking to her whenever she came on my show. There was nothing, though, nothing like the Wounded Warrior interviews that I did at Fox in particular. And now on my show, we do a deep dive every Memorial Day with a storied vet. And they're just the best. I mean, they're just crushers, from Rob O'Neill to Dakota Meyer to Jason Redmond to Marcus Luttrell. These are giants.

And their stories are just incredible. You. They stay with me. Like there's just a special thing about military guys. The ones who have been hurt and the ones who haven't. They've all had trauma. If they've served, they've had trauma. And there's a wisdom that comes with it.

There's like a depth that comes after something like that, that just takes you guys to this other plane. And I don't even know if you know you're there, but you're all operating on this other plane that's just higher. You don't have problems. You don't have real life foibles and things you change, but there's a level of advice, perspective, thought about our world, about our lives here that you can't get anywhere else.

I've yet to get it from anybody else. The same was true at Fox. We used to do a show every year to help tunnel toowers, which helps severely wounded vets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, and will also help fallen police officers, and firemen, and their family. But these are guys who have generally lost three, maybe four limbs, and they need houses built for them. And Tunnels to Towers does it, and Gary Sinise and his foundation too.

And I would get like nervous before those shows because they're hard. Like it's sad. You don't want to ask the wrong thing. You know, it's like the last thing you want to do is add to their upset. Say something stupid that's going to trigger these poor guys who have been through enough. It's just like, you're like, oh, it's hard. But I would do it.

And every time they were so good to me, they would make it so easy. They would never be offended by something. That was all in my head. And then you leave having raised all this money for these guys, and they were so grateful. All they want is to walk across the floor. All that stuff would put such perspective in my life.

It was like, what are my stupid problems? Even now, look at all the stuff I've been whining about. What are you saying? You're so weak. These other guys, they have actual problems. They have life-altering injuries that they wake up thinking about and have to deal with all day, every day.

And they have kids and they have bills to pay. So like for me, they were important too, because you know how they say like touch grass, that's touching grass. You know, that's, get over yourself, you know. Well, I don't think that about you. I mean, it's all perspective. You gotta stay in touch with that.

Like, I... The reason we do the thing on Memorial Day every year is because I think we're getting away from that as a society. And we don't just do it Memorial Day. I'm just saying that's like a big one that we'll do. We're kind of like, as we've turned against our military leaders, I feel like we're forgetting about our military men and women. Like when I was on Fox, we used to highlight military members all the time.

Granted, we had two wars going on, so it was a little different posture. But those guys are still around as you well know Many suffering still need our help The forever wars are over so we're good. Yeah Yeah, well, I mean the media doesn't do a very good job of bringing it up anymore You know, so thank you for doing what you're doing. I mean, I'll give a shout out to one of my competitors, and that's Jake Tapper. He does a very good job of remembering our service members. And he has a charity that raises money for them every year.

I always try to participate in it. But that takes a lot of work and effort. He does it religiously. He's very good to the troops. And I know people don't like him because he hates Trump, but I like him and I really appreciate what he does. Yeah. I had the pleasure of meeting him once.

He seemed like a really nice guy. Did he? He did. Good. We spoke together at the National Press Club for the 13 families, the know, the gold star families from from Abigate. Yep. And the ones that President Biden forgot to acknowledge, forgot exist. The same ones.

And man, yeah. Yeah. That was dark. Yes, it was. Still is. Yeah. Yeah. That was dark. Yes it was. Still is. There was one interview that I remember as well, there were so many over the years, but this news reporter was killed on the air by a stalker.

She was attacked in her newsroom, I think it was, and she was killed by the stalker. She was attacked in her newsroom, I think it was, and she was killed by the stalker, very young girl, young woman. Her dad came on my show that night to talk about it. The one thing he didn't want was he didn't want to see the setup package, you know, telling the audience what happened. And of course, we had done 15 different things to make sure that he did not see the setup package. But something happened, and he got it fed to his ear. And when he started the interview, he was upset.

He was angry. Rightfully so. And I just remember that feeling of like, oh my God, like we let this poor man down on the one thing he needed. I felt so bad. But he managed to get through it and I managed to sort of get him able to talk. And like those are the things. You remember the ones that affected you emotionally, I guess.

That's sort of the theme of my answers. Like a Judge Judy who makes me laugh, makes me so happy. The military guys who make you feel grounded and give you perspective. And something like that where you had a massive failure and you upset somebody you did not want to upset, you know? It's not easy. This job's not easy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Is there, I mean, do you often regret asking the wrong question maybe or do you? No. No? Pretty much never. No. I mean, I think the audience is so forgiving.

They know you're only human and you're going to say dumb things. I think it's like you get judged on the body of work. I think I've been in the business for a long time now. So people know generally who I am and what I stand for. And if I have a bad day or a bad show or if I say the wrong thing, I deliver the news in a way that wasn't true, which I will always go correct. They know that.

They know I'm not a dishonest broker. I'm not there for clicks. I'm not even there for love. I'm there for respect and in service. That's what I'm not a dishonest broker. I'm not there for clicks. I'm not even there for love. I'm there for respect and in service. You know, that's what I'm there for. So I'm pretty forgiving if I, when I say something dumb or that I don't feel. That's my bigger sin.

That like I say something like, yeah. And then you're like, nah, I don't really feel like that. Right? You know? Like, did I really mean nah, I don't really feel like that. You know what I mean? Right? No? Like, did I really mean yeah? I don't know if I did.

Well, after you, how long was it after you left NBC that you started your show? So I left NBC in October of 18 and we launched the show September of 20, about two years. Is that right? Yeah, two years. I wasn't sure I was gonna go back into the business at all.

Now you can hear in the story just the arc of, you know, how it went from so amazing to not so great. I was like, I don't have to do this. Maybe I'll hang out my shingle again. You know, I could do some sort of law helping people or something else. I could reinvent some sort of law helping people or something else. I could reinvent myself another time. And you know what did it, what got me off my couch?

It was the post George Floyd behavior. That's what did it. The country losing its mind. I was like, these are lies. These are all lies about the police, about us, and they're lies that are tearing at the very fabric of America. And I need to say all the things that need to be said to correct them. My brother is a cop, and a great cop.

Now he's retired, but he was a lieutenant in Albany. And this guy was such an honorable cop the entire time he was in service. He was beaten to within an inch of his life by a gang. They broke his neck. He was in the hospital for a long time. Never came out bitter, never complaints. He was so upstanding. And to

hear these people smear cops writ large as just all racist, you know, or all bastards as they were saying at the time, I was like, it's on. Bullshit. Bullshit. I couldn't believe those protests where they were making people say Black Lives Matter. This is America. We don't make people say anything. That's not us. And at the same time, we're in the COVID lockdowns, which I wasn't that excited about.

I was pissed off about them and I was more like, I don't know what to believe. I'm kind of irritated. And then we got to the mandatory masking and I was like, all right, it's on. I don't like being told by anybody that I have to do this or you have to do that. I have a fairly strong libertarian streak in me.

So I was like, I've got to get off the couch. I must get off the couch. And so we launched the show with me sitting in my kid's playroom with just a little desk and a microphone and three people. We actually took a picture of the screen grab. It was just a couple of us like, well, here goes nothing.

And I said to my therapist again, I was like, what if nobody listens? And he said, he's from South Africa. And he goes, well, I'll listen. And Doug will listen. So you'll have two. Now here we are, it's four years later. So you felt a sense of service. Yes, yes.

I was awash in actual facts that summer about the cops shooting deaths, race relations in America. Then the COVID stuff came on and all of it. I just became a student of, I mean, I was reading nothing but Shelby Steel and glam L.B. Steele and Glam Lowry and listening to all sorts of podcasts from people who were fair and balanced. Thomas Sowell, not his podcast, but his books. I was listening to Heather MacDonald. I was going to leftist sources to hear what are your accusations, like what are you saying?

I was reading their data to see if they had a point. I was reading Roland Friar at Harvard, the studies that he was putting out. I was trying to really educate myself on what's real, what's real. And once you do that, it's just so clear, my God, the cops, they make 10 million arrests a year. They have 30 million pullovers or interactions. They make 10 million arrests a year. And in that year that we were looking at, 2018, there were a dozen shootings of unarmed black men.

And unarmed included people who had a glove box with guns who were trying to run down the cop. That's in the 12th. We were being lied to on a massive gaslighting scale and nobody was talking about the truth. They were too afraid. So that's how the podcast was born and where we got our tagline, no BS, no agenda, no fear, and the rest is history. I always wondered that and you know,

because even during the interview, it sounded like, I mean, now you have all the time you want with your kids. Yeah. It's not great to make assumptions, but I'm assuming you didn't need to go back to work after that. Well, I would have had to change some things in my lifestyle, but yes, I would have been just fine. Yeah. And so there it is. Felt a sense of service. Oh yeah. And look, it was, it took me a while to really hit my stride. Like I knew I was going to

report facts about these tough issues and I did, but I wasn't sharing really my opinions as much as I do now. I had on Mark Cuban very early on. We sparred about his big commitment to DEI and Black Lives Matter, but it was just fine taking all the money from China who are genociding the Uyghurs, but human rights matter. Yeah. Okay. We had a feisty exchange on that, but Mark Cuban said something that was very right

to me, and I didn't realize it at the time. He was pressing me on my opinion. And I was like, I don't have to give my opinion. I asked the questions, I don't answer them. And he was like, oh, no, not on a podcast, not in this forum. You're going to have to give your opinion. I remember being like, hmm, what does he know? He knew a lot.

He was right and I was wrong. And now look at me now. Now you can't shut me up. I kind of owe him an apology over that. Where do you think, when did the media turn to all the lies? When did that happen? 2015.

2015? How does, I mean, how does it, what happened? Trump, there is such a thing as Trump Derangement Syndrome. He really just, he literally drove them crazy. He drove them crazy.

Continues to drive them crazy. And they're just so agenda driven, you know? You know, I said I'm not ideological. More journalists should be able to say that. It's not great to be an ideological journalist. It's really not. You're much better off if you really don't like either side and you're not in love with one or the other.

All these people when Joe Biden was stepping down, I love him, I love the man. We shouldn't. Get out of the news business. Stop that. Yeah. You know, we shouldn't love our politicians. We should be kicking the tires on our politicians.

All of them. Trump too. If you're a fan at home, you're a voter, that's one thing. If you're a member of the media, that's not your job. You're not a cheerleader, you're not there to help him. So I had a real problem with the fact that they all sacrificed their objectivity to get him, to bring him down.

And despite their personal beliefs, could never check it. It's fine to actually privately root for somebody and want this candidate to win or that's human. But to show it, to openly try to make it happen every night on the air is something very different. And they started doing it in 15, they declared openly that they would now no longer be objective,

that they would say Trump is a racist, Trump is a sexist, Trump's an Islamophobe. That's opinion, that's your opinion. You're saying he's a racist because you're also saying that he said there are fine people on both sides at the Charlottesville rally, which is a lie. So your first fact is based on a second underlying

faulty fact, which makes you wrong. So you're much better off if you're going to offer an opinion saying it's an opinion. In my opinion, he's a racist, he's a sexist, he's a whatever. That's not what they were doing. They were reporting night after night that he was these terrible things, that he had said these terrible things. And they continue to do it.

What's happening right now with JD Vance is a good example of it. Of course he had to be crucified because he has too good a story with a working class. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin are too important not to hurt him. Trump has to be kid gloved for a little while because he just got his head almost blown off. It would look bad. But here's this nice fresh meat who happened to say some things that were provocative on cable news about women. Get him. Because we need women, we're Democrats.

That's how we get elected. So, unleash the hounds. He said this stuff. What did he say? I went back, we're Democrats. That's how we get elected. So Unleash the Hounds, he said this stuff. What did he say? I went back, we did a deep dive. You know what was happening when JD was saying that shit? It was, there was a rising conversation on the internet and elsewhere around Mother's Day by these leftists that we don't need children. More and more women are choosing not to have them.

More and more women who have them regret it. Deep thought pieces from mothers on how they regret having their children and how you really might wanna rethink your decision to have them at all if you're somebody who hasn't. And you had AOC coming out there and saying it might be environmentally unsound and irresponsible.

One third of women polled said they felt the same according to Pew Research. Is that real? Yes, a rising tide of children are bad. They're irresponsible and they ruin your life. Around Mother's Day. So JD Vance goes out there and says, defensively, these people are nuts.

They sound like sociopaths. We should not be ruled by childless cat ladies who don't think children are worthwhile. And when pressed about, like, he was making a point about they want 16-year-olds to vote. And he said, if we're going to give 16-year-olds the right to vote, then we should give their parents a heavier weight to their vote.

And the single people will have less of a weight. He said it was a thought experiment. Wasn't like, I have a policy proposal, single people without children shouldn't have their vote counted as much as the married people. That's what happened with JD Vance. He was, and he said, I understand people who want kids and can't have them, that's tragic.

And my heart goes out to them. And you know, a lot of people just can't do it. IVF, whatever, which I believe in. But I do think net-net it's better to have kids because I think it helps ground you and it gives you better perspective on life and your problems. And especially if you're gonna run for office,

you know, it gives you something real that you can think about and you have real skin in the game in the future. None of that is controversial, but you didn't get any of that context, the lead up, what he was responding to, or his fuller explanations about what happened you just got.

He hates people who don't have kids. He wants to make women have children. That was an actual headline that he wants to make them have. So the media lies, and in particular they lie about Republicans, and certainly anyone who's a MAGA Republican. I mean, is this the end of mainstream media? Are we seeing its demise right now?

Yeah, yes, yes. We're living in the end times for corporate corporate media, I guess we call it. They're not mainstream. Is it mainstream to go out there every day and say that guys should be allowed to punch women in the face at the Olympics and pretend they're women? That's not mainstream. 70% more really, but 70% of the Americans polled say they don't want it. They don't want men and women's sports or boys and girls' sports. That's not mainstream.

You and I are the mainstream. They're not. Is it mainstream to say, open the borders and give amnesty to them all? I hate that term because it's a misnomer. But yes, we're living through the end times for them, which is a glorious thing. We should be celebrating that.

That's one of the few great things we have to think about right now in public life. That and the Supreme Court are the two things I wrap myself in like a blanket when I go to bed at night. What do you think the final nail in the coffin will be? If Trump wins again. That'll be the end. Yes, because they'll do the same thing they did the first time.

Everything will be negative. He will be the devil incarnate. They will find their oppositional media roots again, which they totally forgot during the Biden years. Hello? We have a whole White House press corps that didn't figure out he was being visited regularly by a Parkinson's doctor. You think they'd miss that with Trump? In fairness to them, Trump didn't put out his logs.

But my point is they had no interest in finding out anything bad about Joe Biden. So I do think they'll just drive more people away. But they're already dying. Like, you saw what happened with CNN tried to launch its digital property. It closed within a month. So I do think they'll just drive more people away, but they're already dying. You saw what happened with CNN tried to launch its digital property. It closed within a month. Hundreds of millions of dollars closed within a month. Their ratings right now in primetime, they're pulling in half a million.

I know you dwarf that in your numbers, and I certainly do as well. When I was in primetime at Fox, I was getting like 4 million a night and like a million in the demo. Sometimes well over that. Yeah, like CNN's never seen a million in the demo unless like it's the Trump assassination or some massive breaking news. CBS just fired, they're saying she quit, but she obviously didn't. It's main evening news anchor, Nora O'Donnell, and they're replacing it now with like a cast trying to look more like local news.

They've been in third place forever. They're never getting out of it. The Today Show, their ratings are in the basement. They're pulling no numbers whatsoever. They used to be a behemoth. That was where everyone wanted to work. It was like, hashtag goals. Now they get maybe one fourth of what they used to get. They make no news.

They're totally irrelevant. What was the last news Savannah Guthrie made? I have no idea. Of course you don't. What was the last news? Big interview Robin Roberts had. Who knows? I don't ever watch it. Who has more influence? Wolf Blitzer or Ben Shapiro? Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro. It's just a new world. So they're well on their way to the end of their Kevorkian experience. Trump was the doctor, but they're the ones who hooked themselves up to the machine and

they're almost gone. What do you think happens? I mean, does it just dissolve into nothing? TV's just done? I don't know the answer to that. I know the almighty dollar rules. So if they're, when they stop making money off of these people, they will shrink as they have been, mass layoffs already.

And eventually they'll have to find either a new model or close. I would love to see it turn into a resurrection of local news, which is important. Reporting is important. We need journalists, honest journalists. Sometimes they do amazing things. Look at the whole Boston Catholic Church scandal. That was amazing journalism, and we know about that story because of those reporters. So I don't want to see it go away altogether and I do think it'll reinvent as, you know, to steal a line from

Jurassic Park, life finds a way. Do you think it will be reinvented from companies like CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or do you think it'll be some of these newer organizations? I think Fox is going to go away because at some point Rupert's going to pass. He's an old man. And I have my doubts about whether Loughlin really wants to run a news channel. I think he really wanted to run the movie company, which then was sold to ABC. And I think he was probably disappointed about that.

I don't think he ever thought he would be sitting at 1211 6th Avenue in Roger's old crappy office doing news, and indeed he's chosen not to do that. So I don't know. I'm not sure about what Fox will do once the succession kicks in. It's not going to happen imminently, but I think eventually it goes away. CNN, they've gotta be the closest to death because they have no numbers, none. Doesn't matter who you put in there,

doesn't matter whether they try to do fair and balanced now or not, no one's watching. Jeff Zucker killed CNN, and it has not been able to resurrect. MSNBC, I think they'll probably hang on longer because there isn't really a strong left-wing eco-center outside of cable. You know, shows like mine, like they were born because conservatives and just right-leaning independents, fair-minded independents needed alternatives.

They couldn't get facts anymore on ABC, on NBC, on CBS, on CNN, on MSNBC. Even Fox has its own agenda, as people have now seen. We had to rise up. It's Darwinism. The left has its choices, you know, you could go hardcore left, MS, or soft porn over at CNN. So they don't have as much of a robust a presence in our lane. So I guess that would suggest they'd hold on a little bit longer, but not CNN, because it has no numbers. It's not a business. What do you think is going on in the world?

Everything, I mean, you've been in news for a long time. You have a great pulse on everything that's happening. And I don't think we've ever seen anything like this ever. Well, in our lifetime, I don't know. I'll tell you this about me. I don't really, I'm not in any way, I don't have a conspiratorial gene at all. And I am fairly optimistic in my worldview. So I may surprise you, but I think old patterns just repeat themselves and we usually wind

up okay. I think it has been worse than it is now. We've had two world wars, and somehow we found our way back to stasis. And right now we're not, we don't have thousands of troops over in Iraq, or they're getting bombed all the time, losing limbs. We don't have anybody in Afghanistan. Those are good things. We're not living in a world where we're worried about Bin Laden bombing us every time we see

the evening news. You know, in many ways, things have gotten better than they were 20 years ago. We're divided as a country for sure. We had a civil war once. We were pretty divided back then. The media sucks. The media used to be 100% partisan. You couldn't pick up a paper

and ask for just objective truth. You only read what you wanted to read that would reinforce your worldview, and then the other side did the same. That's how it used to be in America. It's okay. If you read that knowing what it is, you can figure out what's what. Our founding fathers did, and so did a whole bunch of generations that came after them. Europe, it moves to the right, and then it moves to the left, and then it moves to the right, then it moves to the left. Net, it's a leftist kind of place.

America's not. We're still more of a center-right country. We just have a bunch of lunatics running right now that have captured the left. But they're starting to get the cobwebs out of their eyes, the normies on the left, the center left. You know, you listen to James Carville. We can work with him. He's not a nut.

He's going to vote Democrat. He's got the same principles that he used to have and the left used to have. I just think they've gone so far. There's no answer but to see things settle down in a more normal place. America is normal. We're not crazy lunatics. Look at the Midwest, go visit the Midwest.

My two best friends live there. I see them all the time. They're normal. One's very liberal. She's not woke. She doesn't believe in any of this crap. She can't believe what's happening in the news when I tell her.

Too much proximity to the news can actually drive you a little batty, and you can think these problems are bigger and more widespread than they are. So that may sound Pollyanna-ish, but I would bet on us. And I think we're actually living in a relative time of stability. Mind-blowing, right? It is. of time of stability. Pfft. That's mind blowing, right? It is.

I mean, I see the stuff going on and it really bothers me. I don't know. I feel like I'm center of the road, but lean conservative. But you know, the last couple of years, I just, I don't, if you have, if you love kids, if you, I just don't know how you can go that way. Yeah. At all.

I mean, how much of that population, how much of that left demographic is for this shit? I think it's a far fewer number than they would admit. I think most of them are afraid. How can they vote? How can they vote that way? I mean most leftists vote for abortion. They're obsessed with abortion on the left. Man, that's a big issue for them. They love abortion. So that's their top priority and they're voting based on that. Man, like what's happening to these kids? I know. And love bombing them into the LGBTQ,

LMNOP, whatever they're calling it today. It's like there's a recruitment going on in school. It's grooming. It's dark. How can they, like how can you be for that shit? How can you be for maps? Yeah, right. Minor attracted persons.

How can you be for that? Are they uninformed? Do they not know this is happening? I think most don't know about maps, that's for sure. How can they walk around in their cities and see what they've turned into? Well, they aren't, they all come here to Tennessee. Everybody.

Every state I go to, every state we go to. But you see Gavin Newsom cleaned up the homeless encampments like that. Yeah. You know. Xi Jinping must be coming to town. Yeah, exactly. But even, you know, Oregon now is rethinking

its open air drug markets. It's like, they go so far left, they eventually are forced to correct. I'm very worried about the same things you're worried about. I'm definitely worried about the 10 million plus illegals who are running around and we don't know where they're from

and we're never gonna get them out of here, especially if Trump loses. But I'm deeply worried about the children and the trans thing. We are, this is like the time when we used to lobotomize people who were a little slow. Like we were lobotomizing people who were just a little slow. What a stain on our record as Americans and on the medical community.

And we're kind of doing that right now. It's the same thing to children. We're not lobotomizing them, but we're sterilizing them. We're chopping off their body parts. We're ending their sex life, any chance at a normal sex life. Most people don't realize, if you go from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones directly, you're probably going to be sterile and you'll never achieve orgasm. What in the actual... And they want to tell us that's informed consent that a 12-year-old

can give. It's barbaric. It's evil. So I too am very concerned about these issues. It's just that if I zoom out, I see positive trend lines in most of these things. I like the fact that immigration is coming up as number one on the leftist's list of concerns now. Not leftist, but liberals. I like the fact that we're polling at over 70%

on whether boys should play in girls sports. I think things like what happened at the Olympics will help because that's an international event that everybody watches and this story. The Last Supper or a man bitting the shit out of a woman. Christians will always be the group. It's okay to bash at every international event, but that's because we don't run around murdering people

when you make fun of Jesus. No, what happened with the trans boxer? Intersex, whatever, it's a man. You have XY chromosomes, welcome to manhood. Then they've done deep studies on people with the XY who say they're intersex, and they have all the testosterone advantages that an actual

man with a penis and no female genitalia, which is a weird problem to have in all sympathy to this person, but too bad. You can't box with the women. Sorry, you have a testosterone advantage. That's why you got kicked out of the world championships last year. And so did the other guy. It's just outrageous. And I do think that being such a public and watched event will help.

You know, we still have people like Megan Rapinoe out there saying, it's not happening. They're not taking medals. They're not endangering girls. They're just not informed. And they just revert to their woke proper speak. We're not allowed to say anything bad about the trans people. She's so worried about protecting the fake girls,

she's forgotten about the real ones. So, I mean, the biggest thing right now for people like you and me, I think, is to just remind people that you, it's okay to speak up and you must. It's okay not to use their forced language on pronouns and you must, or you are part of the problem. And once you stand up, once you ask the question

at your school board meeting or of your potential new school principal or at your office or wherever you're able to do it, so many other people will feel empowered to do the same. They'll feel emboldened that they're not alone. And you'll get tons of, me too, thank you for asking that. I loved your question. And then you find out, oh my God,

it's okay to have this opinion. Right now you're just told it's not okay to have that opinion. So that's starting. You can talk about this issue so much more freely than you could three years ago, thanks largely to Elon Musk. God bless him and his ownership of X. I realize so far it hasn't been a great financial deal for him, but he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for what he's done.

So I see shoots of grass, Sean. I don't see us as at peak in the problem. I see us as past peak and now on our way to solving it. Man, I hope you're right. I'm a pessimist. So it just bothers. I think about it all the time, especially the maps, the pedo stuff that they're trying to normalize and the,

and just the kids, man, like everybody says this, but I don't fucking care what you do as an adult. If you wanna do that surgery, then go ahead. Could care, two shits, don't care. But an eight year old, an eight year old. Well, and on top of that, you can do what you want as an adult to your body, stay out of my locker room.

Yeah, yeah. Stay out of my bathroom. Yeah, okay, I'm not cool with it. But it's like, you wanna do your thing in your house? All right. Kim Kardashian put a bunch of fat in her ass. It looks huge. Who am I to judge?

People seem to like it. There are people down in Texas, in Texas, getting all their genitals removed and their belly buttons. Just like Cy cyborg. I don't know. What? They leave like one area for you to do your business.

No genitals. Great. Good luck. When did this start happening? As Joe Biden says, as the one saying of his, I like, good luck in your senior year. Wow. Yeah, so okay.

But I'm sorry if you're a man, you're not coming into my private space. Period. How do these conversations even... I can't even believe we're having... Every time I have this conversation, I can't believe I'm having the fucking conversation. Where does this shit stem from? I mean, that one is, it stems from men who like decided to go into these spaces, decided that they would exploit our empathy for a very small section of the community,

which legitimately is confused on gender. These people, it's a teeny tiny amount. They've been around forever. The vast majority of them never bothered anybody. You know, like I actually, I see Caitlyn Jenner in this category, who says they always had this thing, you know, they made the choice to live life as a man and then kind of came to grips

with this gender identity crisis. But Caitlyn Jenner's not trying to sneak into little girl spaces. Now, Caitlyn will admit that he used female bathrooms, and I think he still uses female bathrooms, and I think he'd be perfectly happy to sit here and listen to why I object to that. He's just so reasonable, I think,

in the way he talks about this issue. And I'm not trying to be disrespectful by calling Caitlin he, but I really think it's critical. It's not just a preference, it's critical that we do it. Calling anybody she when it's a he makes you actually part of the problem. Pronouns are a hypnol, they dull your sentences to the problem, you cannot win an argument saying he,

saying she needs to stay out of the women's locker room. So, I don't know, it is almost, I've become almost a single issue voter on the trans thing now. I just don't know. You just saw Jennifer Aniston tweeted out about JD Vance's childless cat lady comments. I don't know if you saw that. She came out and said, oh, how could you?

Hope your daughter never needs IVF, which you oppose. Lie, he doesn't oppose IVF. He signed on to the Ted Cruz, Katie Britt bill, protecting it in all 50 states. So she wanted to stand up for childless cat ladies because she's one of them. What did she say about the women? What did she say about the girl who got her face punched out

by the man in the boxing ring? Zero. What did she said about Peyton McN got her face punched out by the man in the boxing ring? Zero! What did she say about Peyton McNabb, who's suffering permanent nerve damage and brain damage from getting hit so hard in the face and the head by a volleyball player in North Carolina? Nothing! What'd she say about that girl who got all of her teeth knocked out in a field hockey game by a boy pretending to be a girl on her team?

Zero! So I don't give a shit what she thinks about JD Vance and childless cat ladies. She masquerades as some protector of women. She's quite the contrary. She's never stood up on any of these issues. This is the one she comes out on? You don't want childless cat ladies to be offended?

That's where you're gonna plant your flag? I have no tolerance for it. Hollywood is awful. I can barely watch their products anymore because they have, it's not even no morality. They've really crossed over to evil in a lot of their beliefs. Yeah, I think they're on their way out too.

Seems like. That's true. Man, my kids are gonna, I don't even know what the hell they're going to watch or do at this point. But the Darwinism thing will save it. Do you feel like any of this is biblical at all? I'm not there yet. No? I don't know.

I just don't think about the world in those terms. I don't think so. I just think we've been through worse. We've done worse to each other, even than this. How was your faith journey going? It's doing okay. I put the annulment papers to the side for now. Really?

I'm going to pick them back up. But it was bothering me so much, I just decided to table it. I watched a clip of you, and I think he was a bishop, asking about the middleman and the, he... Yeah. The answer seemed to be, trust the process. The answer seemed to be, trust the process. Well, all my Catholic viewers say the same, right? And then people who are not Catholic are like, you don't need the middleman. I did have somebody make a good point to me about,

in favor of the middleman, what I'm stewing on, which was a priest who said to a friend of mine, people complain, why do I have to deal with a middleman? I want to get an annulment, or I just want my divorce to be recognized by God. I don't want to have to do anything actually after I've done the legal thing. And he said, but those same people,

if a family member is dying, I'm their first call to get in there and give last rites. And that's true. You know, my sister died two years ago. And when that priest came in there to give her the last rites, it was an important moment. I was relieved he was there. And I've never said so many Hail Marys, you know, right in a row. It was intense.

So maybe it's just the way I've been raised, you know, my Catholic background. He's not wrong. The middleman was important to me in that moment, and I believed. So that kind of opened the door back up to me just seeing it through. You know, nothing harmful, I think, will come from seeing it through. Something could potentially harmful happen if I don't see it through and I'm wrong that I'm already absolved, right?

Like what if I'm not absolved and I actually do need, I don't know. These are the thoughts you go through because you got these crazy messages being handed to you by religious figures. But that sounds crazy, right? That I would need a man to tell me I'm good with God after having a divorce that was totally legal and finding a new man who I love and making three beautiful children and living in love and harmony with all of us. Sounds crazy that I would need anybody to pass any judgment on that. But you know we're all raised with these beliefs.

It's a form of indoctrination, right? You go every Sunday and you hear the same messaging and you go to Sunday school and then you go to, you know, confirmation and CCD, all the stuff. And it's very hard to just say, well, that no longer works for me. So I reject it. It's baked in there. Yeah, I get it. Have you read the whole Bible? No. Me neither. I've listened to Bible in a year a couple of times. I don't think that counts. Father Mike.

Schmitz. Yeah, I've listened to it. I don't think it says anything in there about a middleman, ever. I think you're right. I think that's a manmade creation. I hope my priest doesn't watch this. What if he watches it and then he says,

reject it when I submit the papers. Oh crap. I don't know. It's like back to our earlier discussion. I have every belief in God and in higher power and in something more for us on the other side and on the last side, you know, before we got here, as I said. I just haven't figured out how I interact with it.

What's really required of me. Have you ever heard of John Burke? No. He wrote, great, now I'm gonna have a brain fart. He wrote, great, now I'm going to have a brain fart. He wrote a book about NDEs. About what? NDEs, near-death experiences. Near-death experiences, love those books.

Wow. He wrote a book called Imagine Heaven, and I cannot remember the big one that he wrote, but it's all about NDEsEs and he went all around the world and he interviewed over 1,500 people from different countries, different religions, all about their near death experiences and puts together all the commonalities. I interviewed him because I'm digging.

I want to know. Yeah. And you know, the one common thing that happens to all of them is they get the opportunity to accept Christ even if they don't believe. the opportunity to accept Christ, even if they don't believe. And I guess the only reason I'm even bringing this up is that it may be something you want to look into, because he just has an amazing way of describing all these experiences, putting the commonalities in right in front of you. And he even talks about people that have hellish,

he calls them hellish near-death experiences where they actually go to hell and everybody gets the opportunity to accept Christ. Wow. I will read that. I love those stories. I did a lot of those stories when I was at NBC

and they were always stunning. You would just not be able to move afterward. And it's always somebody who didn't believe, before a scientist, a doctor. It's amazing to listen to those stories. I guess like when I'm listening to you, and Father Mike is Catholic, he definitely urged me to get the annulment. I'm a rule follower in general.

I don't like people telling me what to do, but once there's a rule, I generally follow it. You know? And so I wrestle with that. It's like, this is the rule. If you... I like it to be clean. It'll be all clean. If I get an annulment, it will be clean. And I can make sure every... all the boxes are checked, that I need checked, that these authority figures have told me must be checked. And I realized this is not exactly free thinking. But back to the earlier point, there's a reason for that. You know, belief in many ways is not free thinking. Just the acceptance of God could be mocked as it is

by people like Bill Maher and others is like crazy talk. So if you start to go down that lane, you know, what else gets thrown out the window? What else is silly that you believe? Like I just, I'm really kind of stuck. So I've decided to hold, like I said. And now right now I just kind of see it as like the one way has no disadvantages.

And the other way might, unless I read your book and it tells me I get a second chance to clean it up at the end. It's already been, it's already cleansed. That's the whole thing about Jesus. He's cleansed us all already. He knows we're all shitheads and He's already forgiven us. All you have to do is accept Him. That's it. That's all you got to do.

But then, and stop going to Catholic Mass? No, no, I'm not trying to get you to stop going to Catholic Mass. Well, but I mean, that's what would continue happening. And I would feel, you know, you're not supposed to take communion. You're not allowed to give confession. There are all sorts of rules that you're supposed to comply with over there or just be a sinner. Wait, over where? In the Catholic Church? Yeah. Yeah, there are a lot of rules.

It's not a religion for wusses. I was there. You were? I wussed out. You gave it a try? Oh, no, I was raised Catholic. Oh, oh. I was raised Catholic and then I lost it.

But I didn't lose. I just lost faith, you know, after, I just wasn't a great person. The SEAL teams will do that to you. But I found it and, you know, I found it again. And then, man, I just love, I just love exploring it without the rules because it just, man, it just opens you up to so much more, and I don't know,

I just want that for you. Yes, it sounds amazing. You know, you probably gleaned from the way I talk about, like, my approach to my business and my life. It's definitely more me to say, these are the five things that need to get done and I will get them done. I'll get them done better than anybody will get them done.

I will out hustle everybody else's annulment. Right? Stupid. It's just my general default makeup, right? Like going, like taking it easy on myself and letting myself kind of off the hook doesn't sound like me. How would you be letting yourself off the hook? Like, I don't have to go through the shame and the hassle and the difficulty of getting

the annulment. What does that entail? You have to confess, like, very intimate secrets of your life and your marriage, your first marriage, to a stranger. I mean, and you have to write tons of stuff and you have to get witnesses to write in about your marriage. You have to dredge up all this stuff. My poor ex-husband had to be brought into it, too. He was fine. He was cool with it. He was, you know, on board. But I just feel like, wow, they really make you work for it and then you may or may not get it.

What if you don't get it, what happens? Then I'm definitely going the other route. I'm going full bore. I'm gonna get Father Mike on and we are having it out. I don't know, I just can't trust religion. I don't know, I just can't trust religion. I can't trust it. I have to say, it's like, I think the relationship is between me and God, me and Christ, and all these other places, whether it's the Episcopal Church or the Catholic Church or the Evangelical Church, are just vehicles to help me express and be in the relationship.

It's just like the scaffolding. So I guess I just don't ask questions like that. I never have up until I bumped into the feelings I was having when I had to comply with some of the more, I think, ridiculous rules. You know, as I said, I'm not devout, so I don't comply with a lot of the other rules. I do eat meat on Fridays during Lent. I just don't think I'm gonna get punished for that.

Like things like that. I'm not that observant. I go to Mass, I believe, I'm raising my children Catholic. But the scaffolding has been non-objectionable to me for most of my life. It's only now that it's becoming objectionable. And so that's leading me to figure some things out, right? Like I told you, I tried some different scaffolding over at the Episcopal Church and that didn't go well. We went to a Methodist church in Manhattan. It was like a variety show.

That was a no. Might've just been the place we went because the pastor had blue hair and mohawk. I was like, what's happening? Interesting. Oh! I mean, have you noticed this wave of Christianity just moving across the globe here?

Have you seen, did you see the party, the party at, what was it? I think it was Georgia State. It looked like a, it was all these kids tailgating at a football game. And I mean, it looked wild. It looked wild. They did a big story on it.

Wait, were they? They were getting baptized in the back of trucks, like hundreds, maybe thousands of kids. What? No, I have not seen this. You haven't seen that? No. It looks, it's just awesome. It's cool to see.

Wow. Thank God. Praise God. That's just awesome. It's cool to see. Wow. Thank God. Praise God. But that's the solution. You've got that. You've got all these people coming out all of a sudden, getting baptized with massive audiences. I mean, I see it all the time. I don't know. I guess I'm going back to, sometimes I just think some of the things that we're seeing as it's big, it's biblical. In what way?

Well, I mean, I think it's, I think it's interesting that the letterhead on the, the Biden's letter to trans visibility day on Easter, you know, that was what, that was implemented what, nine years ago or something, and it just fell on Easter, but they still put the Easter eggs and the Easter bunny and the letterhead, the mocking of the Last Supper that we just saw at the Olympics, the wave of Christianity, like I'm talking about, the dismembering kids, the confusion of genders, all these, I just look at all these things and I don't remember, it's like I was saying earlier,

we just have never seen anything like this and it makes me wonder what we're actually up against. But what's the end conclusion of that? What's the end conclusion? Yeah, like so, Well? The end conclusion of that? What's the end conclusion? Yeah, like, so... Well? The end times are here? Oh, I don't know.

Maybe. Like, where does that assumption that this is biblical take you? Yeah, it takes me there. It takes me to this is good versus evil. I'm using that word more than I ever have in my life. It takes me to good versus evil. I'm using that word more than I ever have in my life. It takes me to good versus evil. I don't know if it's end times. I mean, I do know that people have thought that,

you know, throughout history, that it's end times and it hasn't been, but there sure seems to be a lot of signals happening. I think we need to make the studio brighter. You come, it's beautiful, but you're in the dark room too much. Yeah, you might be right. Put some windows in.

It's good. The children are good. That's a plus. The grass is good. I sound like JD. Your wife is good. I sound like JD. Your wife is good. When you start to feel like that, I think that's not healthy thinking. Like that's a dark place to be. And it's just too overwhelming. You can't do anything if it's biblical.

What can you do? Somebody else is totally in charge and it's not gonna end well. Or it will if you're a believer. But anyway, my son Thatcher was asking me the other day, he goes, when Jesus comes back, does that mean we all die? Those of us who are like alive and here, we die?

So we shouldn't be rooting for him to come back soon, right? Like, it's a good question, it's kind of complicated. But I think, let's fight the fights we can fight. Let's manage these things one thing at a time. Let's not take on biblical. It's too big and daunting. We can speak out about the trans insanity. We can encourage people to find faith and to do the baptisms in the back of the truck

or wherever is necessary. We can speak up against the things that we know are wrong, like bringing all these illegals over who are going to hurt Americans and take lives, and then let other people see that it's okay to talk about these things in harsh terms to make their point, elect the right people. We can even take electoral losses, like we potentially could suffer this year, God forbid. God forbid, I had to say, but, and find some good in it. Remember that the country was never so woke

as when Trump was in office. It gets more woke when they have him as an adversary. I'm not rooting for this. I'm just saying there will be a silver lining that we can focus on and exploit if things go that way. There are things that you can do, and I think that's the key to staying okay and like well, otherwise it's just too overwhelming.

Well, I'll take that advice. I'll lighten it up in here a little bit. Well, Megan, we're wrapping up the interview and I think it's good to leave it on a positive note. So, and I, like I said, I'm a pessimist, so I can go down the negative road. But one last question. Okay. If you had three guests to recommend for my show, who would they be?

Three guests. Well, you've probably done all my favorite military guys. I'm gonna- It's likely. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and guess that. Kelly J. Keene, she's a Brit, she's a warrior on the trans stuff. She's been everywhere.

She has these rallies, they throw tomato juice all over her, they attack her. She's been punched in the face by all these trans insanity people and she just keeps going. She's totally opened my eyes on it and so she's lived an interesting life and she's right in the heart of battle and will really open your eyes on a lot of stuff. Like she's been studying a lot longer than we have. So I would vote for her. You already did Tucker, but he's a great interview, as you know, fascinating.

Have you done Trump? No. Would you wanna do Trump? I've been trying to get Trump. That would be a great one for you. I'm trying to think of which guests align with your mission. Hmm. Now I'm realizing how many shallow people I know. Ha ha ha ha.

Positive note. Yeah, I know. I think. What about Father Mike Schmitz now that we're talking about it? I would definitely interview him. He'll do it. He's cool. He's so relatable and he's got real life experience.

We call him Father Water Waste, because he's a very good looking guy. I know that's not important to you, but it wouldn't be bad to sit across from him for a few hours. He's thoughtful and reflective, and you could have this conversation with somebody who actually knows what they're talking about.

See if you might. Maybe that's the reason we're together. Maybe you need to have that conversation with him. Not to bring you back into the Catholic fold, but just to offer some insights. I would love to do that. This may be a little out there, but have you ever talked to Charlie Kirk?

No. All right, let me tell you why I like Charlie. He's a whippersnapper. He's like in his young 30s. He is loathed by most establishment Republicans. I know because they're a lot of all my friends. And every time he comes on, they're like, hey, we hate him. I love him.

He's really loathed by the left. Didn't go to college. Was Don Jr.'s bag, like assistant, in 2016. No kidding. Started Turning Point USA, and now he's a juggernaut. He is hosting conference after conference to generate enthusiasm amongst young people for conservative values and letting them know they're not alone. He knows Trump like a Trump whisperer.

He can explain all things Trump to you. He's got a great sense of humor and an encyclopedic memory. And he's in the lion's den all the time, like fighting these wars and not giving two Fs, what people say about him. And he's on to the next big thing. He's tireless, he never takes a vacation, he never gives up. If he's dealt a blow, it doesn't seem to land in his mind.

And he's damn entertaining. Like the way he talks about the news, he makes me laugh, he makes me think, he says exactly the thing I wanted to say, but I didn't know I wanted to say it until he had said it. And I love talking to him. So there you go. Well, thank you. It's a variety. Sorry that took so much thinking.

I was really just trying to curate my list for people you would actually enjoy. I appreciate that. Well Megan, thank you for coming down and sharing your story. And I'm just so happy that we connected. And once again, I just want to say thank you for being a beacon of light for young women today. Wow. Thank you, Sean. It's extremely important and very noble.

Thanks for having me. It's been a true pleasure. Thank you. That's the one. I appreciate it. FX is the old man starring Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow. The hit show returns as the stakes get higher and more secrets are uncovered. The former CIA agent sets off on his most important mission to date, to recover his daughter after she's been kidnapped. FX is the old man premieres September 12th on FX.

Stream on Hulu. Hey, it's Rich Eisen here. Join me and my compadre, Chris Brockman, every Monday on the Overreaction Monday podcast. A 2023 last place team will win a playoff game this year. I'm taking the Cincinnati Bengals to be that team. If you gave me two, if you said two last place teams, I might say that's an overreaction.

Come react or overreact with us. This one makes it much easier. So thank you for making it easier. Tune in next week. Overreaction Monday, wherever you listen.