The Daily Signal - Harris Talks Abortion with Oprah, Israel Strikes Hezbollah, Mark Robinson Continues Campaign | Sept. 20

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Vice President Kamala Harris sits down with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday to discuss the Georgia woman who died after abortion pill complications.  Israel launches an airstrike on the capital of Lebanon on Friday. New York Magazine’s Washington Correspondent is currently on leave after an alleged romantic relationship with Robert F. Kennedy jr.  Mark Robinson says he will continue his campaign after allegations of questionable comments on pornography sites.  Indiana State University canceled a speech from Rich Lowry due to a false claim he used a racial slur.  Relevant Links Listen to other podcasts from The Daily Signal: https://www.dailysignal.com/podcasts/ Get daily conservative news you can trust from our Morning Bell newsletter: DailySignal.com/morningbellsubscription   Listen to more Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcasts Sign up for The Agenda newsletter — the lowdown on top issues conservatives need to know about each week: https://www.heritage.org/agenda Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oprah Winfrey and Kamala Harris accidentally highlighted the dangers of the abortion pill. I'm Elizabeth Mitchell, and this is the Daily Signal, top news for Friday, September 20th. Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday evening to discuss the Georgia woman who died after abortion pill complications. After taking the abortion pills to end the life of her unborn child, Amber Nicole Thurman got an infection from the baby's tissue not fully clearing out of her body. She went to the hospital, which waited 20 hours to treat her leading to her death. ProPublica covered the story, presenting it as evidence that pro-life laws kill women. Georgia bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions if necessary to save the woman's life. Here's Harris discussing Thurman with Winfrey.

In state after state, including yours, these abortion bans have been passed that criminalize health care providers. in a couple of states prison for life, Oprah. Prison for life in a couple of states for a doctor or a nurse who provides health care. However, the video Winfrey showed when she sat down with Harris incidentally demonstrates that Thurman did not die because of Georgia's abortion ban,

but because abortion pills are not as safe as the abortion lobby says. She made the decision to terminate her pregnancy. A strict abortion ban had recently taken place in her home state of Georgia. which caused Amber to travel to North Carolina for the procedure. Traffic made her miss the appointment so the clinic gave her medication, but are known as abortion pills.

Once back home, Amber experienced profuse bleeding, vomiting, severe pain. She eventually passed out. Her boyfriend called for an ambulance. At the Georgia hospital, Amber's condition deteriorated quickly. In a rare occurrence, it was discovered her body had not expelled all the fetal tissue. and an infection was spreading. Official Georgia State Medical Expert analysis of her case says Amber should have received a life-saving DNC, but doctors waited 20 hours before deciding to take her to surgery.

As the video shows, Thurman died because of complications from the abortion pill and not receiving surgery quickly enough, not because Georgia law limits abortion. Israel launched an airstrike on the capital of Lebanon on Friday, killing a top Hezbollah commander and several other members of the group. Hezbollah is the terrorist organization which effectively controls Lebanon. Ibrahim Akeel, the commander of Hezbollah's Radwan Special Forces Unit, died in the attack.

The U.S. had placed a $7 million bounty on his head due to his link to the deadly bombing of Marines in Lebanon in 1983. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Hezbollah Pagers exploded, for which the terrorist group blamed Israel. A Hezbollah leader said the attack amounted to a declaration of war. Hezbollah threatened to retaliate for the explosions. The terrorist organization had launched 140 rockets at Israel earlier on Friday.

Hezbollah first attacked Israel on October 8th, the day after the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, which began the conflict. New York Magazine's Washington correspondent is currently on leave after allegedly having a romantic relationship with former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This was reported by Oliver Darcy's media newsletter, Status. The magazine said in a statement that reporter Olivia Newsie violated its standards around conflict of interest and disclosures. Newsey engaged in a relationship with Kennedy while reporting on his campaign for president. The statement says, had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign. Editors found out about the relationship a few days ago and immediately took her off the 2024 campaign, according to New York Magazine editor-in-chief David Haskell. Still, Haskell said he has found no evidence of bias or.

inaccuracies in her reporting. North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson says he will continue his campaign after allegations of questionable comments on pornography sites. CNN reported that the Republican lieutenant governor of North Carolina referred to himself as a black Nazi on a porn website message board. CNN says they discovered the commenter was Robinson by matching biographical details and a shared email address. However, Robinson posted a video on X calling the report tabloid trash. Here's Robinson. It's appearing now.

Let me reassure you the things that you will see in that story, those are not the words of Mark Robinson. You know my words, you know my character, and you know that I have been completely transparent in this race and before. Folks, this race right now, our opponents are desperate to shift the focus here from the substantive issues

and focus on what you are concerned with to salacious, tabloid trash. Robinson said he is staying in the race and he is there to win. Indiana State University canceled a speech from National Review editor Rich Lowry due to a false claim he used a racial slur in an appearance on the Megan Kelly show. The university told Lowry they canceled his scheduled speech in light of recent developments in following the advice of our public safety officials

regarding campus and community safety concerns. Lowry said he was discussing the influx of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. He mispronounced the word migrants with a short eye the way you say immigrants instead of the long eye you use for migrants. He caught himself and corrected the pronunciation. Lowry has said he will not cower or apologize in response to the cancellations and negative media coverage. The Daily Wire's newest film starring Matt Walsh recently came out. It's called Am I Racist and it's a Borat-style film about

Walsh's journey to being anti-racist. Now, last week, several Heritage Foundation staff went to go see the movie, Am I Racist, including Christian Last Fall and Truman Chose. They're here now to discuss the movie. What did you guys think? Well, Elizabeth, it was hysterical, I guess is what I would say first. Matt intended for it to be a comedy, and he succeeded in that much, but more importantly than that, he also succeeded in exposing the entire anti-racist movement as a complete fraud, filled with mostly grifters who actually don't have a clue what they're talking about

and they're very good at pretending they know what they're talking about for audiences that are willing to entertain it but the moment you ask any questions that are below the surface, you quickly realize there isn't much there and Matt does a really good job comedically exposing that for everybody who watches the movie definitely worth your time to go see.

Yeah, I really liked what is a woman. I wasn't sure if he could top that one. I'd say this one was about his love. good. I guess I didn't originally realize just how much grifting there was in the DEI industry. So I was like, okay, is this really worth making a movie about? But I was pleasantly surprised. What was your favorite parts of the movie, either the funniest part or the thing that you think really hit home the most on the problem with the anti-racist movement? Believe it or not, well, there's so many, good scenes. But the one that stood out to me the most that had the most impact for me was

actually toward the end when Matt was holding his own anti-racist focus group, so to speak, or workshop, I think is what he called it. And he had Uncle Frank at the front of the room. And I won't spoil the whole movie for the listeners, but essentially he'd worked them through the layers of this course and then brought Uncle Frank, who was playing a disabled, more elderly white man, and claimed that he made a racist joke, I think he said like 15 or 20 years earlier, and to see the vitriol and the way the people in the group were willing to treat him. Now, obviously, as the moviegoer, you know this is set up and they're not actually going to do anything to Uncle Frank, but only because it's a movie and Matt wouldn't let it happen.

But it was very eye-opening and really shocking. The theater fell silent for this part. There were no laughs, but it was the strongest point that this ideology taken to its logical end makes these people not only willing, but enthusiastic to do harm toward others. for a completely illegitimate cause, that was chilling, and you felt it in the theater. I agree. It really left me wondering, who is that man? Is that the real Uncle Frank? And is he really racist? I think I would love to get to the bottom of that. I don't think it's actually Matt's uncle, but thankfully he was in on it too, because it really does open your eyes to how evil the root

ideology of this movement is. I totally agree, yeah. I'd say on the flip side, I also really appreciated some moments in the film where Matt went to, I don't think they said specifically where, but somewhere in the south and just went into a bar and talked with people about how they were deconstructing their whiteness. And they just pushed back because they had not been propagandized with the DEI initiatives. And so they just couldn't even register what he was even talking about and really brought home. Like, well, maybe people aren't that racist. I really like the scene with Robin DiAngelo. That was pretty funny where Matt tries to get Robin DeAngelo to pay reparations to his African-American producer. That was a pretty wild scene. And they were both Matt

and the producer were here at Heritage this week. So that was fun. Is there anything you learned more about the film that makes it even better now that we got to hear Matt Walsh live at Heritage talking about the film? I think the thing that was most interesting for me to learn is that obviously in the movie you're seeing a scene cut down into a couple of minutes, but that Matt actually had to take several hours talking with these people to convince them that he was on their side before they trusted him enough to do the more absurd things. But he really just highlighted again how much of a fraud their movement is, how little there is to the intellectual depth behind it and the rationale behind it. But it was interesting to learn that he had to sit through that for two hours,

fake it till he made it to get them to the point where, like he says in the movie, he can turn the teacher into the student and actually show them the absurdity of their ideology by having them be the ones to expose themselves without them even realizing that they're doing it. So truly an art, and that's what makes for the comedic gold. Yeah, I remember he said that there were a couple times

during the making of this film and of what is a woman, his previous film, that he almost felt like quitting because he said, I don't know if I can just keep up facade any longer. So I was impressed by the amount of tenacity you took him to get through that. I also appreciated his advice at the end where Kevin Roberts asked him about what can just regular people do who can't make a movie, who can't do a podcast, et cetera, due to fight DEI and you just push back where you can, just in conversations and in the workplace. So I also really appreciated that.

Absolutely. Well, thanks so much to both of you. Thank you to Christian for organizing the group of Heritage staff going to see the movie. I know we all really enjoyed it. Glad you guys could join us. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to this Friday episode of The Daily Signal, Top News Edition. Have a wonderful weekend,

and be sure to tune in on Monday morning to our interview edition where my co-host, Virginia Allen, sits down with the CEO of Goya Foods. That's sure to be an exciting interview. Also, please make sure to subscribe to the Daily Signal wherever you listen to podcasts. And leave us a review.

Enjoy reading your feedback. Thanks so much for listening. Have a wonderful weekend and we'll be back with you on Monday. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Bluey and Katrina Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Tyler O'Neill, and Elizabeth Mitchell. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, John Pop, and Joseph Von Spakovsky. To learn more or support our work, please visit DailySignal.com. Thank you.