The Megyn Kelly Show - Afghanistan Accountability and COVID Misinformation at Supreme Court, with Stuart Scheller and Robert Barnes | Ep. 236

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Stuart Scheller, the former marine who spoke out publicly about the Biden administration's botched Afghanistan withdrawal, what happened after he spoke out, the problems with both political parties when it comes to our foreign policy and treatment of the military, what we should do next in the Middle East, how we should have left Afghanistan, who should be held accountable now, what he's lost and what he's doing next, and more. Plus attorney Robert Barnes on the vaccine mandate cases before the Supreme Court, how the court may rule next, the COVID misinformation being spread by some Supreme Court justices, and a mom and radio host Shannon Joy on her fight over her arrest over masking in her school district.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Friday. We are keeping a very close eye right now on the United States Supreme Court, where the vaccine mandate cases, two of them, are being argued right now. We could get a ruling on this within days. There's the Biden vaccine mandate. They used OSHA to effectuate, saying any employer that has more than 100 employees has to either require vaccinations or mandate testing and masking. That's under challenge.

And then the separate vaccine mandate imposed by the federal government on health care workers saying if you work in a hospital and it receives taxpayer dollars, you must. You have no choice but to get a vaccine. All of that's being disputed right now. It's been pretty heated at times, And there's been a lot of nonsense, a lot of nonsense thrown out by some of the justices on this subject. I think it was Sotomayor who suggested we've got 100,000 children right now in the hospital because of COVID. I mean, it's like getting her facts from Terry McAuliffe. Remember him down in Virginia

when he was running for governor? And he just misstated, grossly overstated the numbers in the hospitals every other day, and then finally lost. In any event, you can't be kicked off the Supreme Court, really, so it's not going to happen. But she does have a lot of power, and we're going to get an update to you on how the vaccine mandates are looking. Do we think they're going to fare well or do we think they're going to be struck down? I've got some thoughts and we're going to be joined by Robert Barnes with some legal analysis just a bit. First, however, I'm excited to be joined today by a special guest. Now, former Marine Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller is here with

us today, and he's going to talk to us for the first time about his experience and speaking out about the debacle in Afghanistan and about the fact that he is now officially the only the only person to be held responsible for that nightmare. Not a senior officer has been disciplined, has been fired, has been held to account for the way that was handled. Just now, again, former Marine Lieutenant Colonel Scheller, who had the nerve to speak out about it and say, this is wrong. Can I call you Stuart? Absolutely. It's a pleasure to have you here, Stuart. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your 17 years of service. And thank you for having the guts to speak out on something that has cost you a lot. I do want to say this. It strikes me that just yesterday was January 6th on Capitol Hill. We saw a prayer vigil. We saw moments of silence. We saw speeches by politicians, the vice president, the president, members of Congress. We have a congressional investigation

underway into how it happened. We saw lawmakers invited to speak about how they were personally affected by this riot. What are the chances we're going to see anything close to that on the anniversary of the deaths of those 13 service members in August of 2022, right? When we see, do you think a year from that debacle, we're going to see anything like that sort of reverence for a solemn event from these same players? No, Megan, the point you're making is obviously we won't. We've lost thousands of service members over the last 20 years. But I think, you know, the reason you're having me on right now and the reason this conversation is so important is not only to remember those 13 service members that lost their lives, but hopefully we can have conversations

that prevent putting service members in situations like that and hopefully prevent the next loss of life that is preventable. Right. It seems to me that the members of Congress and the administration are very quick to spend the day marking, marking an occasion that makes Republicans look bad. But when it would be something that would hold them to account, that would remind people of their own malfeasance, I don't think we can expect anything like that. And I think it goes to the very point you've been making, which is who has been held accountable? Where is the administration's desire to hold someone accountable, not just for the death of those 13 service members, but for the entire debacle and the way it went down? So let's start at the beginning for you and just help us

get to know you since we've covered you a lot while you were in the brig for having the nerve to speak out. But this is my first chance getting to talk to you. How old were you when you joined the Marine Corps? 23. I joined after college. I graduated from the University of Cincinnati with an accounting degree. At the time, I thought I was going to go be an FBI agent, and I was working as an accountant, and that was in 2004. So the war was going on. I saw the Marines on TV, and I just had a call to serve to go have an opportunity to be a leader in combat. So in 2004 is when I called up my Marine recruiting office.

Wow. I always have even a greater respect for somebody who signs up to serve in the middle of a war, and in particular, one that wasn't going very well back then. So, I mean, it takes a lot of guts. It takes a lot of patriotism. Do you come from a military family? No, I don't. My grandfather did land in Normandy when he was 18.

He was only like third generation American. He was a German American. And so they actually didn't trust him. And he was in like the third American. He was a German American. And so they actually didn't trust him. And he was in like the third wave and he ended up getting out. But he went into the federal service. He was a U.S. marshal. I had an uncle that was in the FBI.

And so they kind of pushed me towards being, you know, serving my country. And that's why I got the accounting degree. I was following in his footsteps. And my father was an insurance salesman. I've got two brothers and a sister and none of them are in the military. So I was really only the first one in a couple of generations that joined the military. Nobody that I knew was in the Marine Corps, but I pursued it because it seemed to me like a good challenge. And I was always an athlete and I liked being a part of teams and I loved America. I loved Americans and it was something that I wanted to do to challenge myself. And how'd you become an officer?

Well, I went into actually, I didn't know the difference between enlisted and officers. That's how lost I was. I went into an enlisted recruiting station, said I wanted to be an officer and had to talk to them. And then they directed me to the officer recruiting station. But ultimately I wanted the opportunity to lead. I was a soccer captain. I was all state in soccer. I was always a captain and I just felt like I had leadership abilities. I was smart. I never had 4.0s, but I had like 3.5s all through my academic career at school. As long as I put in the work, it came pretty easy to me. And I just wanted to have the opportunity to be a leader. So that's why I chose to become an officer. Okay. So you were deployed, as I understand it, both to Iraq and Afghanistan. How many times?

I deployed to Ramadi, Iraq in 2007 for seven months, and then I deployed to Afghanistan. It was a year deployment from June 10 to June 11. And then I've done three other deployments. So I did two MUSE, that stands for Marine Expeditionary Unit. It's where a bunch of Marines get on ships and they sail across the ocean. So on one of those, I conducted an American evacuation in Lebanon in 2006 in the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. And then I ended up in Kuwait and we actually sent some snipers up into Iraq in 06. Got a couple of snipers killed. It was very much a sniper fight then. And then I went on another Marine Expeditionary Unit deployment. That was a 10 month deployment in 2010. We did a lot of bilateral stuff. I was in Egypt when the president got put in prison and LCC took over and I had to evacuate out of there and did a bunch of bilateral

training operations. And then I did a UDP. They put Marines in the Pacific and Okinawa to be part of the war plans if we were ever to go to war with North Korea. And so we were part of that planning. And then we went to Korea and a couple other places. So five total deployments is my deployment background. Meanwhile, you get married. You have a few children, right? How many kids?

I have three boys, 11, 9, and 7. I got married. I was actually, I was dating her as a senior in college. We got married within six months of me being in the Marine Corps. So she was with me the whole time. Okay. And so you're trying to maintain a family life and you're trying to serve your country and you're going all over the place and, and we get to the summer of 2021. And what were you doing at that point? So yeah, I was in MARSOC from 19 to 20 for one year. And then I was an operations officer in 6th Marine Regiment for one year. And then I had just gone from my operations officer billet into a battalion commander billet. So I was at the

School of Infantry, Advanced Infantry Training Battalion. And that's where they teach sniper school, squad leader school. All the advanced schools that infantrymen go through was in my battalion. And so I only had that job for about six weeks, which brought us to August 26, where I made that first video. And where physically were you? Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. It's in Jacksonville. It's just above Wilmington, North Carolina. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure I've been down there. Okay. So you decide to issue a post. And where did you

on social media? I think it was Facebook. Was that where you primarily were posting? I had two social media platforms. It was Facebook and LinkedIn. Most military officers don't have social media. In fact, I don't have social media. In fact, I didn't have social media until 2018, but I had launched a business as a major. And because I had launched that business, I needed social media. And so I had a couple thousand followers on each platform. I think I had just enough to kind of light the fire when I ended up posting what I did. So yeah, it was Facebook and LinkedIn were the two platforms. And the first post was in August. And was it before or after the death of the 13 service personnel?

It was the same day. So I was in my office. You got to understand it. I didn't just make that decision that day. I mean, this is something that had been building up. So I have a master's in military science. I specialize my thesis on foreign diplomacy. I've been thinking about how we could do this more effectively for a long time. Obviously,

I have the experiences in the countries where I saw some things that we did that were highly ineffective. And then, you know, in current day, I was watching the Afghanistan fallout real time on social media, on the news, and I was getting frustrated. And then my senior leaders were making messages that basically said, go to the therapist if you're struggling, but they weren't accepting accountability as far as I saw it. And so when the deaths happened, you got to also understand it was the unit one, eight was my first unit. That was the unit I went to Ramadi with. My best friend got hit with the suicide vest. It was very personal for me. Also, when I was the operations officer, they were in my regiment. I'm the one that trained, manned, equipped them and sent them out on deployment

from what a higher headquarters does. Obviously, they do all the training themselves, but from a higher headquarters, I knew everybody in that unit. And so when it happened, I just got to a place where I knew without a doubt that no senior leaders were held accountable. And I knew based on all my experiences that this was very preventable. And so I just felt like no one else is going to address this. And I think a lot of American people don't understand the true fundamental problems that are plaguing the military. And I know you started the interview with January 6th and political, and I know there is some politicalization in the military, but the truth is the systemic problems go through both parties. The problems facing the military are fundamental.

Yes. And so I just want to make sure that we understand that people have been lionizing and saying, thank you for so long because they want to be supportive. And we appreciate that. But because of the lack of criticism, it's just created these problems that nobody was addressing. So that led me to the day of the attack. I posted a video and the takeaway from the video was, you know, you abandoned Bagram Air Base. You didn't have to do that. You allowed the situation to deteriorate to a place where you were relying on the Taliban for security. And then there was an attack that was preventable that took the lives of service members. And I demand accountability for this. And that was the video I posted. Let's let's take a look at some of that. Here's soundbite one, which is an excerpt from Stewart's video, August 26, 2021. I'm not saying we've got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying, did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, hey, it's a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, the strategic airbases, before we evacuate everyone? Did anyone do that? And when you didn't think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, we completely messed this up?

And then just to add on, here's a little bit more. Same day, soundbite number two, adding on, Stuart. I want to say this very strongly. I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, I demand accountability. Wow. What a moment that was. So when you did that, did you realize you could get in trouble? Oh, absolutely. So after I made the video, I actually didn't post it right away. I drove back to my house. There's a soundbite in the middle that says, you know, I know I'm jeopardizing my family,

my retirement, my job. And so, I mean, I articulated even in the video that I had thought through it. But even after I made that video, I drove back to my house, hadn't posted it, and was pacing around my house deciding whether or not I really wanted to go down that route because I knew how life-changing it would be. But like I said, this is just very personal. I'm very passionate. I've spent my whole adult life thinking, living this, and there just wasn't anything that was more important. And so, you know, with a click of

the button, you post it and then it kind of took off from there. I know you felt like nobody was really calling them out, demanding accountability within the military. Outside of the military, there were many people doing it, right? It was half the country who was outraged, and even Democrats and even some of the mainstream press that would normally be more protective of President Biden were not as protective in the wake of all of this. So why wasn't that enough? Why did you feel it had to come from a man in uniform? Well, first of all, even though let's just use Congress, for example, all got opportunities to use their soundbites of anger towards the generals, they didn't do anything.

You know, so talk is not enough. So I'll give you an example. Each one of those apolitical Congress people that demanded accountability six days previous to that congressional testimony to the three generals, they approved one of the largest DOD budgets and nobody stood against the DOD budget and demanded metrics of effectiveness or accountability because that would have taken courage. So it was easy to tap into the people's anger, but it was much harder to actually use the leverage of control that they have against the DOD budget. And so, you know, I get it. People in the aftermath are going to talk about it, but then the news cycle is going to move on and nothing happens, i.e. Vietnam. So these problems have plagued us post-World War II. And quite honestly, nobody is doing anything. And I thought a guy in uniform with the experiences that I have, with the education that I have, it was very important to start this conversation. And I'm one of these guys that's not going to let it go. Once I'm in the fight, I'm going to fight to the end.

And I'm going to make sure that we bring the changes that are needed. Because quite honestly, all those people that talked about it right after the fact, they're on to talking about other things. And here I am still doing the rounds because this is still very important. And these are problems that need to be fixed. That's so true. What, what were the other options available to you? So if you want to speak out and say, where's the accountability, was there a way of doing it that would not have gotten you in trouble? There are always ways within the system to address it. You could have done an IG complaint. You could have just talked to your boss. You could have requested masks. But I did all those things after the fact, to be fair, about other things. And I don't know if it was just based on everyone was mad at me, but they basically just denied all of those things. So to me, it was just an example of the system doesn't work the way you think it will. And,

you know, I calculated everything I did was calculated. And I knew had I gone through those processes that they would have been stonewalled. They wouldn't have got the attention. The whole point of this was to start a conversation and going through the appropriate channels wouldn't have started the conversation that's needed. There's still professional articles that are coming out within the military circles saying exactly what you just said, Megan. Like, why didn't he go into a professional publication and voice it? And he could have saved his career. But the bottom line is all these professional publications are mostly controlled by retired generals. And even the ones that aren't, my question would be to all the people in these

professional publications, how many of those articles have prevented failure over the last 60 years? None of them, right? So if we keep doing the same thing and we keep having the same failures, at what point do we do something differently? What about, you know, I'm not in the military, but I know that obviously the whole thing requires people to follow orders, people to respect command. And so that's sort of what they seem to rely on. Like you didn't follow orders to stop doing this. You were disrespectful of senior officers and so on. And that there's a reason, you know, it's like the movie, A Few Good Men, you know,

maybe you only get to follow the orders that, you know, really mean something. And the smaller orders you can ignore. And of course, it's like, we follow orders or people die. Sorry to use a commercial movie as my reference. You also said you can't handle the truth. And so, you know, I think it cuts both ways. But what about that, right? The need to follow orders,

the need not to break command. You know, that's why the military would say we had to go so hard on him. I just fundamentally disagree. Now, I accepted accountability. So I'm not saying that I didn't break the rules. I did. And I should have been held accountable. But to say that we can't have this open conversation, to me, it just, it doesn't make sense. If everyone agrees with what I say, but then remains quiet, the system might actually implode faster. If you actually

care about the system and you agree with the content of my statements, you have a moral obligation to speak up, in my opinion. Yeah. Listen, it's fascinating to hear you say all this. We've debated this without you. We've had people coming on saying, no, we shouldn't have done it. And more than that, people who are saying good for him, someone, someone needed to. And this was such an extraordinary circumstance where you had all the top generals, all, you know, the secretary of defense and, you know, all the players, chairman of the joint chiefs coming out there and sort of uniformly telling us this was going well and that it was the right call and that they were handling it well. And it was like, you know, gaslighting to use an overused term. It really

felt like gaslighting. No, it's not going well. And even before the 13 service members died, we all knew it wasn't going well. We knew when we saw those Afghan citizens trying to hold on to the wheel well of that jet as it took off. There's nothing about this that's going well. And yet there was no accountability. And here's the thing that's really still bothering Stewart. There still hasn't been. That's where he and I are going to pick it up when we come right back after this quick break. And we're also going to talk about what happened to him.

What happened to him after he posted that video. How did the, you know, you know what storm start raining happened to him after he posted that video. How did the, you know, you know what storm start raining down on him. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Stuart, so you post the video and what happens? Your commander says to you what? Yeah, good question. So I came in the next day, and my commander at first did exactly what I thought he would do, and he said, hey, go home, take a little time off. There's going to be an investigation, and then we'll reassess, and that was very fair. I thanked him. I went home, and then he called me back to work two hours later and just said, you're relieved. I don't know what changed. My assumption is that

the general officers called him and just said, you got to get him out of there. But there was no investigation and I was relieved. But still, you know, I understood it. I anticipated it somewhat. So I walked away. I made a post to thank the Marine Corps and I understood what was happening. But then I got on my social media when I made that post thanking everybody. And I saw some old bosses had got on my public platform and made the statement, if Stuart Scheller was honorable, he would resign. And that's kind of where I diverged ways because if they were willing to relieve me

within 12 hours, no investigation. And then I had previous mentors publicly attacking me, not identifying that they were my previous boss or that they knew me, but just calling me out. I got to a place where I was like, I don't know if this organization cares about me as much as I care about them. And I knew what my future was. I could be moved up into Quantico and sit in a cubicle and best case, maybe limp to retirement for another three years as a failure. And I just, I decided I couldn't live my life like that. And I believed in what I was saying and I believed in what I was doing. So I thought the only way through this is all the way. And so if they're going to attack me, I'm going to keep speaking truth. It may hurt

and we'll just let the chips fall. And that's where it became this series of escalating post and events that ultimately culminated with me in jail. My gosh. And putting you in jail, to me, was very clear to shut you up. I mean, they claimed you were a flight risk. It was like absurd. There was zero evidence of that, as a judge would later find in scolding them for their behavior toward you. But yeah, they wanted to shut you up. And as I understand it, you know, the rhetoric in the videos, I think there were four in

total, started to escalate a little. You felt definitely emotional at time. Most service personnel did. The guys who served in Afghanistan in particular went through a lot watching that withdrawal and the giving up of everything. I mean, we just walked away and we did leave people behind. I interviewed Marcus Luttrell and his brother right in the midst of all of it. And, you know, did they. Here is soundbite three, the last part about committing violence. They decided to make your entire message unfairly, but take a listen. The post-war movement after Vietnam was pro-love, anti-war. And as I've

contemplated on it, I think that's wrong. You definitely want pro-love, but it's not anti-war. It's pro-love from a position of strength. You have to have the ability to project violence for somebody that's throwing acid in a woman's face. You can have all the celebrities in the world come up with a video telling him to stop doing that. And guess what? That's not going to work. You need patriots that are going to go out there and commit violence when evil is not listening to reason. So they would later suggest, you know, you were suggesting revolution. There was another quote about that and that you wanted sort of an uprising, a revolution within the United States,

violence against command and so on. And you tell me whether that's what you meant. I mean, I never stated that I wanted a violent overthrow of the government. I don't feel like I ever even came close to that. In fact, some of my posts, I went on to clarify because people were saying that, Kelly, and I said in one loud voice in a constitutional manner, I went on to quote the Declaration of Independence that says the power of the government comes from the people. And if the government no longer serves the interests of the people, it's the people's obligation to throw off that form of government. And people were calling me a violent extremist. And I was like, look how far we've come, guys. I'm quoting our foundational document, like quoting it. And you're calling me a violent extremist. Like, how is that possible? And so

this whole process was really eye opening for me. You know, I did have a bunch of teachers in school tell me that violence was never the answer. I got into a lot of fights as a kid and I won about half of them, but I always was told the same thing. There's no time for violence. Violence is never the answer. And, you know, I wish some of those teachers were in Afghanistan teaching to see the depths of their misguided worldview. And you don't want to use violence, but you need to have strength so that you can prevent evil out there because evil doesn't always just listen to your views that violence isn't the answer. So no one is seeking violence, but you need to have the capability to use it if evil isn't listening.

Was the point that we needed to have some sort of residual force in Afghanistan? No, I don't think, I think where we got wrong over the last 20 years was fighting the counterinsurgency. I mean, we've celebrated the generals of the last two decades was counterinsurgency. And the secret to counterinsurgency is to not get involved in an insurgency in the first place. So what happened is all our service members have won every single battle on the tactical level, but our senior leaders can't figure out how to achieve success on the operational through the strategic level. And part of that is their willingness to engage in these insurgencies or to think they can export democracy or a American view on another population

that just doesn't see the world through the same lens. So I don't think we should have been in Afghanistan forever, but to your earlier point about the senior leaders gaslighting about how well it was going, it very quickly went from a withdrawal to an evacuation. Those are two different things. And it went to an evacuation because they poorly planned the withdrawal. I don't think we should have had people in Afghanistan forever, but I think I deserve senior leaders that are competent and capable enough to plan a withdrawal absent of a PR headline to have everyone out by September 11th if it means protecting our service members to get them out of there safely because you had them over there

fighting an insurgency for 20 years that obviously wasn't effective. You know, Rob O'Neill came on the program and said something very similar. It was saying, obviously for the listeners who don't know, the guy who shot bin Laden, former Navy SEAL. And he, he was making the same point that we have these leaders of the military would never denigrate the service personnel themselves, but the leaders, he said something similar to you to the effect of they're very good at staying in power and they're very bad at winning wars.

And I know you, one of your points was we need to fire more of these generals. We need to start firing leaders and understanding that those who managed to make it to the top now, maybe these great sort of diplomats or butt kissers, that's not necessarily who we want commanding troops. And it's one of the reasons why we're not winning wars anymore. A hundred percent. There's a great book. It's called The Generals by Rick Scott. It outlines the exact problem. World War II, we were firing generals at the rapid rate. And since post-World War II, we just have gotten away from that. And exactly like you said, Megan, our senior general officers are hardworking. They're intelligent, but they're

conformist. And they know how to navigate a career and not necessarily win a war. And we deserve better. So you're one of your biggest beefs was the fact that we gave up Bagram Air Base and you want accountability for the person who made that decision, which obviously even the lay person here in America could see, boy, it's a problem that we don't control an air base like that one anymore. As we see the Taliban take over what's left and we were not in control and we were begging them for permission to get in and out and to evacuate people. And we actually wound up leaving people behind. We would later claim our administration would tell us everybody who wanted to get out did get out. And that wasn't true. But explain why Bagram Air Base and our abandonment of it made you so mad and was so consequential.

I've been to Bagram Air Base. It's hard to even fathom if you've never been there how big and important and critical this was. You could have done that whole evacuation and maintain security and never had a problem. The arguments right now, I know the operational planners that were over there when they submitted plans to the National Security Council and Biden's administration, they submitted plans to maintain Bagram. The decision was made by President Biden, the National Security Council, to close down Bagram because of they wanted to shrink the force in Afghanistan very quickly. And even in the general's testimony, they all stated we wanted to keep 2,500 and that was shot down. And the reason that 2,500 was so significant is because they were saying, had they had that force number, they would have been able to

maintain Bagram Air Base. But because that was shot down, they felt the best course of action was to shrink into Kabul airfield. But even with that plan, they still didn't fully appreciate the speed with which the Taliban could advance into Kabul. So my position is once the generals, General McKenzie specifically, submitted the plan, it's his responsibility. He was CENTCOM commander. He oversaw Afghanistan. That's right. He's the CENTCOM combatant commander, General Frank McKenzie. He's the one, in my opinion, that's ultimately responsible. So when he recommended to the president that we should have 2,500 troops, there is a responsibility for the military advisor to get the boss to take his plan. But he can't control that, right? So he failed in that soft diplomacy on figuring out how to

get him to take his plan. So at that point, General McKenzie had a choice. He could have resigned because if he thought, all right, here's the restraints on my plan, and I can't execute this out without a speedy advance by the Taliban and getting people killed, then he had a moral responsibility to resign if that's what he thought. But he didn't do that. So he obviously thought based on the restraints that he had, he could still pull off the plan. In my opinion, at that point, he is responsible. He is the military guy that's in charge of that plan, doing the withdrawal. He doesn't get to go back after the fact, which is what he did and say, no, I told the president 2,500 and he didn't listen to me.

Well, you didn't resign, did you, Frank? And you didn't get him to agree to your plan, did you, Frank? So guess what? You're responsible at this point. And so it just kind of breaks my heart that this is where we're at, where we're looking at these general officers. Their plans are obviously failing and we don't have anyone saying, hey, we messed this up. What we had instead was the commander in chief looking at us over and over, leading up to this saying, don't worry, it's good. But don't worry, the Taliban is not going to take over. The Afghan National Army has got this. There's nothing to fear. And then when it all started to fall apart, as we mentioned, Biden looking into the camera and saying that this mission

was an extraordinary success, extraordinary success. While you've got Afghan service, members of ours, of our military who have served in Afghanistan in tears and calling suicide hotlines and wondering what the hell was this for? Why did I go over there? Why did I lose my buddies? Why? Like the what you one of the things you complained about was you were effectively told by leadership within the military, it was worth it. Go lean on your buddies and your families if you're feeling bad, but just trust us. It was worth it. And you were like, not good enough. Explain why. Absolutely. General Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, you could Google it. On 17 or 18 August, he released a white letter that said exactly that.

Hey, guys, I can see that you're upset, but your sacrifices were worth it. If you're struggling, go seek therapy. And I read that and it was just it rang so false. He didn't either understand or he just didn't care why service members were upset. They were upset because the plan fell apart because it it was a terrible plan. Anyone can see that. And so after Vietnam, the story told in the military today is that the generals had to fix the service. The generals had to clean up draft class, the drug use, and they never went back and addressed the operational strategic failures in Vietnam. There were many mistakes that were made by general officers, and none of them were held accountable back then. And the same thing is happening now.

They're focusing on tactical fixes to the problem. When we've won every tactical battle, no one is addressing the breakdown at the operational and strategic level, which is the four-star general level. And those people need to be held accountable. And to go back to the combatant commander, the CENTCOM commander, General McKenzie, I've been on a gag order for four months. So I haven't been able to fully articulate some of these points. Just two days ago, after I started doing the interviews, the White House came out and said that General McKenzie was going to be replaced this spring by another army general. And the timing of it, it seems very coincidental to me that this guy is now racing to the exits that I'm going out and pointing out to everyone that he should be held accountable.

Do you think, I mean, do you think he's being pushed out? Because it just doesn't seem possible that Joe Biden would be blaming anyone other than himself for the outcome. But you tell me. Yeah, if I was Joe Biden, I would say the buck stops with me. If I was General McKenzie, I would say that the buck stops with me. If I was Lloyd Austin, I would say the buck stops with me. All three of those leaders could stand up and be a leader and all three have shared responsibility. Right now, it looks like General McKenzie is trying to run to the exit, enjoy his retirement, which is not something that I received. But I think before he goes, he undermines his whole career if he can't stand up and say,

I messed this up. He'll get out with the full honorable discharge. He'll be celebrated and he will not be falling on his sword and taking responsibility for anything before he leaves. No one has. That's the thing that's so nuts.

So you did get thrown in the brig for nine days. And that really caused a national outcry. I mean, we're not used to seeing people thrown in jail because they exercise their First Amendment rights. And I realize there are restrictions because you're a military member, but that doesn't make you a criminal. It doesn't make you a criminal who belongs in prison. And and then you effectively lost your position in the military. You were, as I understand it, there's one step below honorable discharge that's like discharged with honor. And you got that. General under honorable, correct. It's the step down from

honorable. But none of that's going to happen to McKenzie or to Millie or to Austin or to any of these guys. You're the only one who will have paid a price for the way Afghanistan's withdrawal went down. And really, all you did was comment on it. That's correct. Does it make you angry? I've gone through a lot of emotions the last four months, Megan, but ultimately anger doesn't serve us. So I've got to move through it. They, through this whole experience, made me stronger.

And so, yes, obviously I wanted an honorable discharge. Obviously I would have liked to hit 20 years and gotten a retirement. But, you know, everything that's happened to me, I believe happened for a reason. I believe that we as the people can make change. And so I'm going to keep moving forward. I'm not going to look back. And I think even if General McKenzie goes off into retirement and takes a board director job somewhere and gets his honorable, at the end of the day, he and I will see each other again and look eye to eye. And I feel like I'll be standing taller at that point. Yeah, honestly, I mean, you you may have broken some rules, but you did not break any code of honor. I mean, that just seems so clear to me. And and yet the Marine Corps appears to have in coming after you. They betrayed you, as I understand it. And I want you to help me, you know, fill in the blanks here. But Colonel General Hines, the Marine judge who oversaw your

trial, was very critical of how the Marine Corps handled your case. First of all, he rejected the prosecution's request for further punishment. They wanted you to, what, do more time in the brig? They wanted me to be fined $30,000. Yeah. So yes, they wanted a lot more, but the judge said no. Okay. And then he said the combination of your pretrial confinement, with which he was not happy, along with alleged leaks to the press by the Marine Corps about you, raised the specter of unlawful command influence over you and in this case. And so to me, it sounds like the judge was very much on your side when it came to the fact that though you may have broken these rules, you were treated unfairly by your own

command. So what did they leak to the press about you? All right. So two things on that. I'll go back to the leak press thing. The judge, Colonel Hines, in my opinion, didn't believe that I was guilty or he thought legally I could have beat the charges based on the undue command influence. But you got to understand it wasn't a, you know, somewhere in the middle. It was a binary choice.

When I was in jail, they offered me a special court martial with five charges. I plead guilty to all five charges, or I go to general court martial and I tried to beat all of them. And I do believe that I could have beat all five of those charges. But again, the whole point of this was my message. And I do feel like deep down, I broke some rules. So if I were to go to general court martial and beat some of these or all of them on legal technicalities, even though I did break the rules, but they had a disproportionate response, therefore I can get off of the charges. It seemed like it would take away from my message. And so I agreed to plead guilty at special on all five charges. But to your point, the judge was like painstakingly going through and making sure that I understood everything that had happened to me and why I was pleading guilty, because it was clear he didn't want me to plead guilty.

But that was a choice I made. The Marine Corps did, the week before my trial, leak my full command investigation to a publication. And in the investigation, they put my medical record. So I don't know if they selectively leaked pieces, but the publication stated they had my full investigation, which includes my medical records, which is obviously a huge deal. So I was very frustrated. And so the judge scolded them for that. And so then they did another investigation on my leaked investigation. And so then I asked for that investigation and they told me, no, they're like, you can go through freedom of information act to get that investigation. I was like, let me just get this straight.

You created another investigation for how you improperly leaked last investigation. It is completely about me, but I can't get it unless I go through Freedom of Information Act. And they're like, yeah. Did you do that? We need to do that. I'm going to. I mean, my life's been crazy, Megan. I'll get it.

We will help you. We will help you FOIA them so we can get it. The investigation is about me, about you doing it improperly. And you're saying I can't have it without going through freedom of information? I'm like, yeah, that's how it works. That's disgusting. And clearly the judge saw it. Colonel Glenn Hines saw it and to his credit, called it out because otherwise the public not paying attention might be stuck with this. Well, he broke the rules. He pleaded guilty. He's held accountable. That's that. No, the Marine Corps turned on you. They turn. And obviously it was those who were in command wanted to punish you, wanted to publicly humiliate you. They they went outside the rules, too, only they all still have their commissions.

They have they're going to retire with a full honorable discharge. They're going to get their pensions. You were three years short of yours. So there's, again, even at that level, no accountability for wrongdoing by anyone. And that leaves Stewart, really, just the one honorable man trying to fight this fight within this system. You're not alone, but the one who we know about and being wrongly punished for it. I want to talk about the other losses because I know they've been considerable. And I want to ask you about your parents who have been such good advocates on your

behalf. We're going to do that when we come back right after this break. And don't forget, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM triumph channel one 11 every weekday at noon East and the full video show and clips are available on our YouTube channel. Just go ahead and subscribe when you get there. YouTube.com slash Megan Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, subscribe there, download on Apple,

Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you care to issue a comment on the Apple podcast comments thread, I read them all. And if you want to, while you're there, scroll down, you'll see our full archives, more than 230 shows, including some very powerful shows last August with Robert O'Neill and Marcus Luttrell and his brother Morgan on the botched Afghanistan withdrawal as it was happening.

You've mentioned earlier this isn't political for you. It never has been. And I have looked and you have been critical of Democrat and Republican presidents in command. You issued an interesting post about President Trump. And as I understood it, you may have gotten wind that he was about to say something about you or maybe respond because you've been critical, not just of Biden, but of Trump as well. And then something kind of extraordinary happened. He didn't. And you commented on it. So explain what you what you felt when you understood that he was going to stand down on coming for you and how you think this has been politicized by others.

I appreciate that. Yeah, you got to understand the world is crashing down on me. It was apolitical, just like you said, and I attacked the last four presidents apolitically. But the media only ran with the comments I had about President Trump, which bothered me. And it also bothered him rightfully so. And so President Trump actually called a member on my team and said that he was planning on attacking me in the media and or defending himself. And the member on my team said, hey, Stu's going through a lot. It would mean a lot for us if you could exercise restraint. And he did. And so, you know, as I got through all my anger and emotion, I thought about it and I was like, wow. You know, I attacked him unwarranted and he chose not to come back and publicly come after me.

And I pointed out how that demonstrated he had more character than me, which was humbling for me. And I just appreciated it. I pointed out how that demonstrated he had more character than me, which was humbling for me. And I just appreciated it. And I think he and I come from different worlds and we may not agree on everything, but I think we need to have more humility and figure out how to develop common ground. And I really appreciated what he did for me. So I thanked him for that. That's extraordinary. In the meantime, I know you still have questions about whether people are listening on your phone calls, whether there's a campaign to discredit you that goes on. Why do you believe those things? Because there are people sending me messages that are pretty crazy, and I've had them validated by the best of the best. They're VPN burner numbers. I don't believe it's the government, even though

that's everyone's assumptions. I believe there's nefarious players out there. I don't understand what they gain. Quite honestly, I'm a pretty strong guy. You're not going to intimidate me if that's not clear by now. But there's things I can do to protect myself and my electronics that I just haven't done because I've never had to worry about it. And so my life's changing and I just need to figure that stuff out. My goodness, it's crazy. It's crazy how everything gets politicized. It's like who in their right mind would be attacking you? You've paid more than the price of your job and, you know, wife has taken your sons, I guess, away for a bit just to try to spare them some of the bullying that they then received as a result of you speaking out. The family toll seems significant, Stuart. Yeah, so I'll just say I still love my wife. She was with me for 17 years.

She's a fantastic mother and she's a fantastic person. This was one of those situations where I think if we could go back, you know, maybe we all would have done slightly different things, but she has always been supportive of me and she had to do what was in the best interest of the kids. My kids were leaving the playground crying because everyone was, I mean, it was crazy here in Jacksonville, North Carolina. I mean, there was parades for me. It was, so they had to leave the school and, you know, my, I am going through a divorce, but, you know, we, as a family spent all of Christmas together. It's very amicable. And I think the reason we're going through a divorce is just because in a lot of ways, the situation illustrated that we are going down different paths. You know, my wife has

sacrificed so much over the last 17 years and she was looking forward to some stability and, you know, some retirements and things that she is entitled to. And once she kind of saw the trajectory of my life changing, we had an adult conversation and, you know, ultimately we want to do what's in the best interest of our children. And that means co-parenting and always having nice things to say about each other. So that just is what it is. The news wasn't all bad, however, because as your parents pointed out, while you lost some support in your immediate circles, boy, oh boy, did you gain some coast to coast. Here are your parents on Fox News.

I think it was on Christmas talking about you. Listen. We didn't have a town rallying around us. We had America rallying around us. And they sent their prayers up. They made their phone calls. Over 40,000 people made donations. And they, our son is at home with his children today because of America. And I would like to say thank you. And it is a wonderful life. And I could not be happier for them today. And his journey forward will be what it will be.

He is his own man. I love them. I love her. Your thoughts on the support you did receive from your parents to the citizens of this country who were rooting for you. Yeah. For the parents, I've spent more time with my parents these last six months than I have the last 17 years.

Their love, it just showed the unconditional love that they have for me. And they stepped up when I really needed it. I just, I couldn't have done this without them. And quite honestly, I never asked them to do anything. This was them seeking me out and just stepping up and being a critical part of my team when I needed it the most. And for Americans, this whole endeavor for me was about love of America. And to see 40,000 people donate to the Pipe Hitter Foundation.

So shout out to them. Eddie and Andrea Gallagher helped me out a tremendous amount while I was in jail, but having people of all political parties, ethnicities, genders, you know, it's just United States, Americans supporting me. It felt kind of like God was helping me move on to the next step. And it just filled my heart with love. And all I can say is thank you. And I hope to meet every person that helped me through this and give them a hug. Wow. All right.

Now, quickly, because we're up against a break, AuthenticAmericans.com is where you're putting your energies today. What is that? AuthenticAmericans.com is my platform that kind of outlines my political views. It gives us a chance to talk freely. It's also, if we just start getting social media censored, it was my place where I was going to start putting my messages, but ultimately just outlines my thoughts, beliefs. I probably will write a book. There's a pre-order of a book on there. And so it's my place that's not censored. And so you can check that out. It's a way that we can support you. To steal a line from Sean Hannity, you're a great American,

Stuart, and I'm blessed to have met you. And thank you for everything you've done for our country. All the best. Wow. Wow. Coming up, how's that vaccine mandate argument going before the U.S. Supreme Court? Don't go away. The U.S. Supreme Court right now is hearing oral arguments regarding President Biden's vaccine mandates for private businesses nationwide. But apparently some of the justices are getting their facts, I mean, grossly wrong, stating false statistics when it comes to the pandemic. I have to tell you, as somebody who practiced law for 10 years and covered the high court for Fox News for three years, and then, you know, since then has been following it closely, I'm shocked to hear how wrong they are. I mean, it's one thing to get the decision wrong and have a, you know, boneheaded judicial philosophy or take on a case. It's quite another to just be grossly misstating the facts.

Joining me now to do the opposite of that is Robert Barnes. He's founding attorney of Barnes Law. He heard the proceedings this morning. They're actually ongoing. Great to see you, Robert. Thank you for being here. I speak, of course, of Justice Sotomayor, who I mean audio. They don't allow video in the Supreme Court. They allow audio on the big arguments. Listen to how she's describing the pandemic at this moment. We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators. We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators. So saying it's a different variant just underscores the fact.

No, we don't. Robert, hello, Justice Sotomayor. No, we don't. I'm just looking at Phil Kirpin. He's a great follow on Twitter and is an expert when it comes to these healthcare things. And he just tweeted out, this is absolutely astonishing. He said the current national pediatric COVID census numbers per HHS is 3,342 who are in the hospital. Many, most are incidental, meaning they're just there because they broke a leg and they test everybody. And if they happen to be positive because there's a wave with Omicron,

then they're positive. But to suggest 100,000 children are in serious condition in the hospitals, that's a lie. What is she saying? Yeah, she made up a lot of facts. Justice Breyer did as well. Justice Breyer said 750 million new cases took place. He got 750,000, somehow went up to 750 million. So you saw a lot of the effect of a lot of the censorship that's taken place in the social media space and the news media space is translated to judges thinking they know things they don't know, because that's not in the record, as was detailed by the Fifth Circuit when they initially granted the stay. There was actually very little evidence in the record to support the idea that vaccination would provide this complete protective umbrella against the spread of COVID. And in fact, they said it might work. They didn't know if it would work. They didn't know how it would work. So it's not in the record what these statements that they were making. They were, so to my mind, was just making up claims. To some degree, Justice Breyer, frankly, did the same. Justice Kagan was treating this as if

any emergency justifies any departure from the Constitution. So it was a little frightening where they were going, but it was re-encouraging where the key three centrists appear to be going. Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh appear to be leaning towards striking down the mandate. It's clear that Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch are already there by the nature of their questions. So you've got the three conservatives, we think, ready to strike down the mandates, the three liberals ready to uphold the mandates. And it comes down to the three center righties and how they're going to see this issue. But I will say they've been the Supreme Court's been very supportive of the state mandate me to do this, that, or the other thing with respect to the vaccine, they have not been going the way of those who are anti-mandate, including at the U.S. Supreme Court. Yeah, no doubt. And I think it's been disappointing. I mean, the history of when the Supreme Court fails is when a so-called emergency is present or they defer to the

executive branch too much. So you go back to the forced sterilizations in the Connie Buck case, the Supreme Court celebrated that decision as if it was a great decision that went down as one of the most ignoble decisions in judicial history. Then with the same thing of Korematsu, where they. And that was the entire argument today by the feds. Their entire argument was scary, scary virus. If you don't do what we tell you, a whole bunch of people are going to die. So you better just stay back, stay out of it. And in fact, Justice Breyer kind of made that argument explicitly as to why a stay shouldn't be granted. So I think the sad thing is that 90 percent of the questions today had nothing to do with the law. It was about a policy debate taking place in many of the. Right. And that's not appropriate. OK, so speaking of Justice Breyer, one of the longest serving sitting right now and one of the most liberal.

Here's here's Justice Breyer trying to talk about the covid pandemic and how the hospitals are just full. They're full with COVID patients right now. Take a listen. This is soundbite 17. Are you still asking us to issue a stay and stop this from taking effect? Like issue a stay today or tomorrow or Sunday or Monday or Tuesday? I mean, the reason I ask that is there are several elements.

We have some discretion there and, and you know, it was brought up. I mean, there are three quarters of a million new cases yesterday. New cases. Nearly three quarters. 700 and some odd thousand. Okay?

That's ten times as many as when OSHA put this ruling. The hospitals are today, yesterday, full. Almost to the point of the maximum they've ever been in this disease. Okay? And you heard references, studies. I mean, they vary, but some of them say that the hospitalization is 90% or maybe 60% or maybe 80 percent but a big percent filled up yesterday or the day before uh with people who were not vaccinated okay so uh that's we're talking about now and think of the stay requirements it's both the balance of harms it's also public interest

can you ask us or is that what you're doing now to say it's in the public interest in this situation to stop this vaccination rule with nearly a million people? Let me not exaggerate, nearly three quarters of a million people. New cases every day. I mean, to me, I would find that unbelievable. Justice Breyer, we are asking for a stay before enforcement takes up, in fact, Monday. OK, so, Robert, the again, going back to Phil Kirpin, who's been right his reign on this, he he points out he says hospitals are full almost to the point of the maximum. Phil's response is these people know absolutely nothing. Zero. He says they're growing by factors of 10 times what it was. The National Hospital Census is apparently, he writes, quote, flat as a pancake in terms of the

number of hospitalizations. And that's what we've been looking at when it comes to Omicron. Way more contagious than Delta. We all know that. But is it more deadly? And the experts have been saying no. And we're not seeing huge spikes in the hospitalizations. But these justices seem to be getting their information from The New York Times. Yeah, I mean, it's clearly not it didn't come from the record because it's not in the record. As the Fifth Circuit made clear that the even the CDC couldn't establish the basis for this. OSHA couldn't establish the basis for this. They were just guessing. They were hoping. And in fact, there was I mean, to Justice Alito's credit, to Justice Thomas's credit, they both raised the question about how effective these vaccines actually are. Do they actually prevent transmission to the degree that OSHA presumed they would,

given the new information that's come out and it's been present? Because as you note, Omicron is like most coronaviruses and like most pandemics, what happens is it becomes, in order to evolve and survive, it becomes more transmissible, but less lethal. And that's what we're seeing happen. We're seeing it from all the data from South Africa. But they clearly don't know it. I mean, you had liberal justices today who are just making up factual claims. And later on, Breyer would actually take that 750,000 and increase it to 750 million. 750 million people a day are getting COVID. I was like, I don't know where he got that from.

But then I realized, oh, he just kept adding it up in his head. Right. It's scary how much they're willing to allow emergency fear to justify circumventing the Constitution, because the questions today should have been all about the law. Do they have this authority or not? Sotomayor even said Omicron is as deadly as Delta. I mean, that's not true. What is she saying? It's more contagious. They didn't seem to understand either. They're talking about how, you know, we've got to protect the unvaccinated, the liberal

justices. We've got to protect the unvaccinated. Sorry, we've got to protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated. And then the more conservative justices were saying, that's not the issue. We don't have to protect the vaccinated from anybody. We're talking about whether unvaccinated. And then the more conservative justices were saying, that's not the issue. We don't have to protect the vaccinated from anybody. We're talking about whether unvaccinated people are going to get infected by other unvaccinated people. But the point is, right now, given the explosion of Omicron, we're all the same, vaccinated or unvaccinated. You can get it, you can spread it. And the vaccine now may be your friend in preventing deadly disease. But if we're justifying this mandate as saying we have to stop the spread, that no longer applies.

Exactly. And it's a rare circumstance, as Justice Thomas pointed out, that where you're basically mandating something, usually OSHA rules are to protect employees and force employers to do things to protect employees. Here, that's not what's happening. They're forcing things on employees that employees don't want. And as Justice Alito pointed out, you're forcing the employee to take on a risk. He goes, even if the risk is small, there's at least some risk of an adverse event from this vaccine. And as he pointed out, that's historically unprecedented and unparalleled. And the government, the Solicitor General, could not identify any prior example where that had ever occurred before yeah yeah sorry alito seemed to be saying well give me a circumstance in which osha has passed some

regulation that makes you as opposed to just putting on a hard hat when you're on the assembly line take the risk home with you you you've got to put something in your body that may indeed cause an injury. Exactly. It's like a permanent, he compared it to a wand, sort of a permanent effect, a permanent hard hat that you have to wear all the way home, wear it to the shower, wherever you go. And he's like, this has never been done before. So it's highly unusual to mandate something for an employee's benefit that the employee doesn't want. And in particular, OSHA said that they did this solely for the unvaccinated because they're operating under the assumption that being vaccinated works. The problem for them was that means you couldn't argue that the vaccinated needed the unvaccinated to get vaccinated,

which is kind of where they're really going. But they can't admit that because that would be to admit the vaccine doesn't work like they say it does and that's where they got caught in factual traps today well robert if we have 750 million people a day getting covid clearly the vaccines aren't working as intended that i wish somebody had said that to justice breyer okay so let's back up because we kind of started right and kind of at the end not this not the end but maybe the penultimate chapter of this legal battle which is is the arguments. Let's back up to what they're really arguing about there. It's this is the President Biden. I'm going to mandate every business in America that has 100 employees or more has to either require vaccines, issue a vaccine mandate or require mandatory masking and testing, I think, once a

week. And this would affect I think it's two out of three American businesses. And then separately, there's a vaccine mandate saying is it any hospital that receives federal dollars? But all health care workers have to have to get the vaccine. Exactly. If you're within six degrees of separation of Medicare and Medicaid funding, you have to get the vaccine. That was that on top of it. And one of the things that even Justice Breyer noted was he was like, really, this should be for Congress to a certain degree. He was recognizing where Justice Roberts was coming from. Justice Roberts has long had a Commerce Clause concern about the expansion of the federal government, and he correlated it to the major question doctor. Whoa, whoa, Whoa, stop saying Commerce Clause and major

questions. Let's let's take it down to one on one. So the vaccine mandates come out. They haven't yet been implemented. They're about to be January 10th. You know, for all of the fanfare over Biden's announcement, he didn't actually do it. And then all these employers who I think kind of wanted to do it anyway, were like, oh, we have to because of Joe Biden. But there are a lot of employers out there. I'm thinking about my pal Ben Shapiro over at the Daily Wire, who was like, we're not doing this. And they immediately filed lawsuits saying this is unlawful. You don't you, President Biden, don't have the authority to mandate this of us. And the argument was, you know, normally, if somebody if you're going to make a business do something like this, it has to be Congress that has the power via they call it the commerce power.

If an item touches interstate commerce, Congress can generally do it. But they're saying Congress didn't really issue this kind of authority to OSHA, which is an organization that regulates workplace safety. And if Congress did say, OSHA, you can regulate things like this, they needed to be a lot more specific than what they've done here. Does that basically encapsulate the argument? Yeah, exactly. Would Congress have the power to do it under the Commerce Clause in the first place? And even if they did, they needed to say so specifically and clearly in ways that is not by the very sort of generic provisions they're using, kind of ambiguous or cryptic language, because under their interpretation, they could issue almost any edict just by executive order. They could short circuit the entire Administrative Procedures Act, not do notice of comment, not recognize citizen petition process, not go through Congress, the legislative branch, not even allow it to be adjudicated because they'll claim there's no standing to contest it. And that would be a sort of a terrifying prospect that the executive branch in the name of an emergency could just declare anything they wanted, including to the degree of imposing something on a person's body

and requiring they take medical treatment. So that's the core constitutional and legal issue at play. And it's bigger than the vaccine because it will impact executive power writ large and agency power in general. My gosh, I mean, I hesitate to think what OSHA could mandate us to do if they're allowed to do this, if it's like, well, anything, anything in the name of workplace safety, as long as I can say it's an emergency and it's in our best interest. There was a good back and forth on this. Here first is soundbite 14. It's Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioning those who are challenging the mandate. So I think she and they are aligned, but she's trying to say this OSHA rule, it's too broad, and it should be more targeted for us to be able to uphold it. Take a listen to our most recently confirmed Supreme Court justice. I think what you're saying is that even if there are some industries or some people who would face a great risk, and this might be necessary to

address that risk. So in other words, if OSHA had adopted a more targeted rule, you might not be contesting that or you would not be contesting that, that the problem here is its scope and that there's no differentiation between the risk faced by unvaccinated 22-year-olds and unvaccinated 60-year-olds or industries. You were just talking about landscapers and people who work primarily outdoors, those and workers who work in an inside environment all day long. So is that the distinction that you're making? They're not disputing what Justice Kagan said, that, you know, this is a grave danger and that in some circumstances this rule might be necessary. But just the scope of it makes it different. That's right, Justice Barrett. But I just want to be very clear about this.

Wherever that line is, this ETS is so far beyond that line. So what's the point there, Robert, that they haven't this this order, you know, that Biden got OSHA to issue is so sweeping, it makes no distinction between the fact that, you know, an unvaccinated 18 year old has a lower risk than a fully vaccinated 50 year old. I think based on their prior their questions today and their prior rulings, both Roberts and Barrett would like to save and salvage vaccine mandates, but they're not comfortable with this method of doing so. So they're not comfortable with the Biden administration, just writ large, circumventing Congress, circumventing citizen petition process, circumventing all the rules, and just saying we can declare whatever we want. And sort of as Roberts made clear, you're just picking, you know,

one agency, then the next agency, then the next agency. It all has this buried, hidden power. As Justice Alito pointed out, basically there's all these elephants and these mouse holes everywhere that federal agencies are claiming. And I think they're uncomfortable, both Roberts and Barrett are uncomfortable with that assertion of power, even though they feel that some degree, they want to protect some degree of vaccine mandates or emergency power. I think that's where they're sort of at the cusp of what to decide. Do we think Amy Coney Barrett is less conservative than we expected her to be? I was more of a skeptic of her when she was coming in because she had favorably cited the Jacobson decision in a lockdown-related case while she was on the Seventh Circuit. And so I was one of the few critics who said that she's not going to end up, she's going to be more like a Roberts than she's going to end

up like an Alito or Thomas or Gorsuch or Scalia. Even though she came in as the female Scalia, her background on the Seventh Circuit said she's more of what some people in the law would call a centrist. Center right, I think is appropriate, but tends to be an institutionalist. So not the biggest advocate for civil liberties, and at least in the Seventh Circuit. And I think we're seeing signs of that now in the Supreme Court. I have to say, so I covered the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for both Roberts and Alito and many others, frankly, but Roberts and Alito, I was on the air every day for every single minute of the hearings and had studied everything. And on Roberts, I thought he was like born in a crib with a justice's role on. I mean, if you look back at his history, it was just perfection in terms of getting a Supreme

Court seat, nevermind chief justice. Yes, yes, yes. And he was extremely conservative in his prior rulings. And he was a Bush appointee. And I thought you could ask for no better. Maybe the problem was he became chief justice, but he's been really wishy-washy and hasn't been at all. I think the justice president Bush was hoping for, but Alito, he's a, he's a superstar. I mean, I've said to the audience before, I'm much more of sort of with the federalist society when it comes to my own judicial approach. Alito, he doesn't get enough credit for how smart and strong he's been on this bench. No doubt. I mean, he's earned his reputation of Scalito that they used to call him on the Third Circuit because he's in fact, he's been a better advocate than even some conservatives thought he would be. He's ended up much more same with Gorsuch for the most part,

with one or two decisions exception. They have been, particularly in this context, they've been very good. They have been warning about Jacobson. They've been warning about the misapplication of emergency power, that just because you have a pandemic doesn't mean you throw the Constitution out with it. And they asked very good questions today. Justice Thomas asked more questions than he normally does. Yeah. So I think all of that was a good indicator, as long as they can get Barrett, Roberts,

Kavanaugh, or two of the three to go with them. So if they uphold the mandates, then they go forward. Then they kick in on January 10th, and all these employers have to start complying with them immediately. Yes. And I think you'll see a lot of EEOC complaints because a lot of employers are today, the government said, oh, you know, you have to recognize religious accommodations as one of the groups that may stay unvaccinated. But there's a lot of employers that are not

enforcing that law, despite what Title VII of the Civil Rights Act said. So I think it will just invite a new wave of litigation in a broader context and substantially disrupt the economy, as both the National Federation of Independent Businesses and the state said today, pointed out. It's going to be billions of dollars lost in the supply chain. It's already has problems is going to be major disruptions because of the labor market issues. They anticipate anywhere from two to 10 percent of employees would rather quit than for something in their body that they don't feel is appropriate for them. Didn't you think it was odd how I thought there'd be more of a focus on Omicron and how incredibly contagious it is and how that's really been a that's a game changer for this

whole thing. You know, the vaccines don't stop you from getting Omicron from getting COVID. They didn't even before Omicron. But I mean, there's no question that this variant breaks right through the vaccine and the booster and all of that. And the vaccine mandate has really kind of been just rendered obsolete. I would have hit that harder had I been representing one of the teams that was in there challenging the mandate. I think there's been this sort of fear factor with litigants not to challenge judges' misapprehensions about COVID and the pandemic

because they think that will undermine their legal argument. But I agree they would have been better off and better situated had they pointed out just how ineffective this vaccine is and how much more effective other means are. If you're really concerned about COVID, as Sotomayor mentioned, if you're symptomatic, she acted like this was weird, that nobody knows that if you're really concerned about COVID, as Sotomayor mentioned, if you're if you're symptomatic, she acted like this was weird, that that nobody knows that if you're symptomatic, you should stay home. That's been the policy for two years everywhere. That's a more practical policy than a than forcing a vaccine that may not be effective, that has an unusual risk profile for the history of vaccines. With a lot of people who don't want to take it for a wide range of reasons, some religious, some medical. That seems to make a lot more sense than what the Biden administration is doing. And they're using every pretext to do it. But I think they're also trying to establish the precedent that they can use these little loopholes, these little mouse holes to put

in every elephant they want, including probably environmental legislation, climate change, emergency. That's probably if this gets affirmed, that's what's coming next. If they if they strike down the mandates, then it doesn't mean you cannot have an individual employer or individual hospital issue a mandate. What they're saying, if they strike it down, we expect would be Biden didn't have this power. Congress didn't delegate this much authority to OSHA. Everyone's on their own with respect to setting policy. Is that right? Yes, exactly. And the same with they'll probably whatever they rule in the OSHA mandate will probably be the same in the Medicare mandate and federal contractor mandate as well. Maybe not the federal employee mandate. That's slower to go up the food

chain currently. But I think but that's basically what it means. Now, I think a lot of employers were surprised at how many people didn't want to take the vaccine. So there were like people like Boeing, people like Disney were reconsidering their options. And if OSHA, that mandate is withdrawn, a lot of big employers that were planning to do it, it probably won't. But there'll still be some employers that legally can. You still have rights to medical accommodations and religious accommodations under both state and federal law. But they still can. But I think probably half or more would decide not to go forward with it if the OSHA mandate falls.

Well, I hope you're right because it's, you know, I just feel like at this point when the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission of the virus, and we've got great therapeutics now, thank goodness, available to those who choose not to get the vaccine, because the vaccine definitely does prevent severe disease, not in all cases, but prevents in most severe disease or death, which is what we're trying to fight. But if you choose not to afford yourself of that benefit by not getting the vaccine, you do still have therapeutics as an option. So I guess an employer saying you're going to be an expensive employee for me. Therefore, I want to mandate that you get the vaccine, because if you do get severe disease or wind up on a ventilator, that's going to cost our health insurance a lot of money. Now you get

the therapeutics, you know, so it's like the reasons behind these mandates are dwindling in strength and persuasiveness by the day. Let's hope the Supreme Court and in particular Roberts and Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh are cognizant of that in the same way the liberal justices seem to be cognizant of things outside the record, but maybe slightly more factual. Robert Barnes, it's a pleasure. Absolutely. All right. Next up, we're going to be joined by one mom who's fighting back over masks. And wait till you hear what her school district did to her when her mask fell slightly below her nose.

We've lost our minds, and she's fighting back. I am joined now by Shannon Joy. Shannon's a mother of three who lives in upstate New York, and she's planning to file a lawsuit next week against her school system after she says she was pulled out of a school board meeting and arrested for improperly wearing her face mask. Shannon, thank you so much for being here. Hello, Megan. Thank you so much for having me. I'm such a big fan of your work, so it's super exciting to be on with you. Oh, that's nice. Thank you. I know we have a lot in common because you're from upstate New York around the Rochester area, I gather. I was raised first 10 years in Syracuse and the rest in Albany and back and forth as it happened after that. And you also,

I think, do you have a radio show? I do. I have a daily radio show on iHeart, on the terrestrial radio station, WAM 1180 here in Rochester, and also on podcasts. So yeah, I've been doing that for about a decade. Okay. So obviously you are a person of sense. And that truly was on display when you went to the school board meeting. So before we show the tape and let the audience see and hear what happened, just set it up for us. You're like the rest of us. You're going through the pandemic. And what is the school doing? Like you're showing up at the school board meetings. Was that normal for you? Were you like a school board activist

all your whole life? I call myself an accidental activist, which I think a lot of people have become in the past two years since March of 2020. And I began attending school board meetings shortly after they opened them up to the public. And it was because I was very concerned about what was happening within our schools, a whole host of reasons, critical race theory, the masking, the distancing, the sex ed curriculum coming down the pike. And so in Monroe County, not just in my school district, there were many parents organizing. They were attending school board meetings. They were speaking out in public comment and the testimony of these parents was absolutely heartbreaking

the the relationship between the board and the parents of these students concerned about what is happening in their school was was Deteriorating I think over the past five or six months. And so that led to this particular school board meeting. Not only was I a taxpayer, I was also a parent in the Fairport School District, and also I had a large media platform. So I think in some ways I was a triple threat. They did not like that we were speaking out. They did not like that we were dissenting. They did not like that we were organizing. And we believe, you you know the lawsuit that we're filing on Wednesday we're very confident about this lawsuit

We are filing it federally if we need to take this to the supreme court We will do so but we are very confident that we can prove that the school board the superintendent And other actors within our school system conspired Potentially with the private security company and outside political organizations linked to BLM to set up the conditions at that meeting that led to my arrest. And so we believe it was malicious. And we are very confident when we move into discovery, we can dispose these individuals and have them testify under oath. We're going to shine a light on this entire system.

And we're going to stand up for parents across the country who have been bullied, school boards who have used the police to suppress their voices and to intimidate them into silence, which is what we believe they tried to do on that day. It's crazy. In any other world, the audience might be sitting here saying, nah, no, the school board wouldn't use police to silence parents. But now we know at the very highest levels of our government, we've had a White House coordinate with an attorney general to accept that these parents speaking out at these meetings may be domestic terrorists

and may be the subject of FBI investigations. And who pushed them to do that? School boards. So there's no question these school boards don't like dissent. They don't like objections to critical race theory, to masking, to vaccines, to, like you point out, this weird, I hate to call it sex ed. It's not sex ed. It's like kink that they're trying to force on our young kids. It's weird stuff that has no place in the schoolroom. Okay, so you show up at the meeting, and you're there doing your part as a mom listening. And let's just show, we're going to show the first video

where someone's irritated that the mask is not, they can see nostril, I guess. I don't, watch, watch and listen to our audience at home. Am I surprised I didn't make a move for a recess for 15 minutes? Why? Why? Because the people are still refusing to wear masks, unfortunately. What?

Nobody is. We have places to be, Mary. Okay. And other things to do. You can't just stop a meeting. Can I get a second for that? This is unbelievable. This is not leadership.

You asked us to be respectful of you and you can't respect the taxpayers and citizens. Mary Taylor writes emails. This is silly. You could have prevented it by being a grown up and doing what you're supposed to do. I've got my mask on degrees out mary is uptight mary's like we've got to adjourn the meeting and by the way she says people weren't wearing the masks but what what is your side of that well the interesting part about this case we have an enormous amount of documentary footage. So not only did when I got the when they called the recess, I got this sinking feeling that they were going to arrest potentially me. And why? Why would you have thought that at that point? This particular meeting was very different than previous meetings. The board had worked with an outside organization called Black in the Burbs, which is a suburban

version of BLM. And they brought in about 25 activists, all with red shirts. When I came into that meeting, there were probably six or seven cameras on me from the second I walked into that room. So everyone sensed that something was very different about this meeting. And when they called that recess, my mask was over my face. We have 10 minutes of video that shows I was sitting very quietly as a member of the press. I wasn't supposed to be speaking. The mask was over my nose the entire time. The only time it

came underneath my nose was when I took it down to put a piece of gum in my mouth. And in that moment, that's when Mary White, who was a school board member, signaled to security and other members of the board that they wanted to go to recess. They then went to recess. And I was told by the arresting officer that they called 911 and requested specifically that Shannon Joy is arrested. There were six or seven security people there. There were five Monroe County Sheriff's cars and multiple officers. They came in, SWAT team style, swooped me up. When I realized that, I decided to take control of the situation and I FaceTime

live. Once I realized they were going to arrest me, I'm like, I'm not going to let them do this on their terms. And I went live and it went viral. And that kind of led to the Daily Wire coverage and the PJ Media coverage. And by the time we left that meeting, the entire community was outraged. They had seen what had happened because of the footage that I put out on the live and public sentiment changed very quickly. And the board had a lot of egg on their face. All right. Let's watch that second video of the cops, the sheriff's deputies coming to get you. We all came here to hear public comment. The school board stacked the meeting. They limited it to 10 individuals and they stacked it with pro-mask individuals.

So they kicked out all of us who were anti-mask. And here come the cops. And so I'm just going to ask. Hi. Hi, how are you? My name is Shannon. Nice to meet you. Thank you for coming out.

I know you don't want to be here today. So there are about 20 pro maskers here who are applauding the cops here who are now going to, I suppose, arrest us for. OK, so just come with us outside. So I have their hands on me now. And I guess this is the way it is now. I can't believe this is happening. I don't have my purse. We'll get it. We'll get it for you. And so we're all on Facebook Live right now, guys. These are the officers.

Okay. Monroe County sheriffs. And I can't believe this is happening. They're going to... Oh, no. Put your hands behind your back. We'll get it. Oh, they put you in cuffs?

Yeah. The unnecessary humiliation of that is outrageous. I've been in my community for over a decade. I've never had a parking ticket. I've never been to jail. I'm an upstanding citizen. My husband is a psychologist, a doctorate at a neighboring school. I have three kids in the community. And it was, when you say humiliating, it was one of the most uncomfortable situations that I have ever endured. And I'm glad that it happened because it exposed what these school boards

are capable of. But it was terrifying, humiliating. The conversations I had to have that evening with my kids and my husband, my neighbors, it's divided a lot of our neighborhood. And it's a difficult battle. I mean, but I'm not going to back down. That's the thing. What they did was wrong. And this is why we are filing this federal lawsuit. I'm so blessed. The attorneys of Hogan Willig, Corey Hogan out of Buffalo, New York, They were with me, Megan, from day one. They've never charged me a penny. They've represented me pro bono. This case was thrown out. The DA, Sandra Dorley Monroe County, when we went to, I was charged with trespass, which was a violation. And she sent one of her top prosecutors to that hearing. And the

prosecutor asked the judge to throw out my case in the interest of justice. And the judge did. So we had a huge win in that situation. But Corey Hogan and my attorneys at Hogan Willig, we want to use this. We are so confident that we have a rock solid case and that we can win this. We want to fight for every parent in the United States of America. There have been arrests on the basis of trespass at school board meetings in Florida, California, Texas, and across the country. And we want to answer that question. And we want to do it with a lot of sunlight and a lot of transparency.

And that's what we're willing to do. It's going to take about a year as we move through this process, but we're not going to back down. That's not accountability. Dropping the case against you is a no-brainer. That's not accountability for the people who called the cops and for the police doing the absolute wrong thing and slapping the cuffs on you and dragging you away like some criminal because your mask may have fallen below your nose. You may have taken it down to have a piece of gum. I mean, this is this is totally outrageous and and it's wrong. And I know you're tough. I can see you're tough, but that doesn't mean you're incapable of being humiliated or upset or your kids aren't capable of being embarrassed or, you know, having sort of the storm rain down on them. And I understand your husband, he's been targeted as well because he's a school psychiatrist. Yeah, he's a he's the school psychologist at a neighboring school.

And this organization, Black and the Burbs, that the school board works very closely with, doxed him and put out, you know, my middle name is Joy. And so I use that as my show name, but they put out our full name and his name and where he works. And, you know, there were multiple phone calls that he's had to deal with over the past year. He's tough too. You know, I guess there isn't a better person for this. He's so supportive of, of what I do and it's uncomfortable for him, but, um, he is behind me 100%. But yeah, I mean, it's wrong. It's wrong what they've done. And they wanted to make an example out of me so that other parents would never stand up and speak out. And what we seek to do is to make an example out of them. We want to make school boards across the country think twice

and sheriff's departments as well, police officers think twice next time they seek to suppress parent voices. I mean, this goes back to basic constitutional issues. You know, we operate in a constitutional republic. It is representative. And in order for for them to obtain consent of the governed, you have to have the ability to speak out and to dissent at these public. Yeah, of course. And it's chilled if you've got to worry about the cops dragging you away in cuffs. All right. Few questions for you. Um, did you stop going to the school board meetings after that? Did the others? No, absolutely not. They kicked me off the school grounds. They sent me a letter telling me that I could not attend my son's volleyball games or go to school board meetings. And we called their bluff very quickly, sent them a letter. And absolutely the next school board meeting I was at, I spoke and I addressed them and we informed them that we will be litigating, organizing and activating to bring light to the entire issue. So absolutely, I've been at every school board meeting since. Good. I like that.

Why is Black and the Burbs an antagonist in this? I have the same question in New York City. I have a good friend whose child children didn't go to school the entire year. I mean, they did. They didn't have school open in New York City for the vast majority of last year. So she and her husband, lifelong Democrats, went to an open the schools rally. You know, please open the schools. We want our children to be in school. And they got called white supremacists. Wait, how did it become a racial issue? And I have the same question for you. The meetings, I would say the two hottest issues at these meetings, not just in Monroe County, but in New York City and across the country, have been the masking and the critical race theory. And the BLM organizations and their subsidiaries that pop up in the suburbs are fully committed to the implementation of culturally responsive learning, critical race theory, anti-racist curriculum, whatever you want to call it, because there's a lot of money involved with

that. It is essentially blowing up the entire curriculum in the country and replacing it with cultural Marxism that is focused mainly on equity. And they're using the race issue in order to get that into the schools. Well, that leads me to my next question, though. Sorry to interrupt you, but I have a couple of things I want to hit before we have to let you go. I know you said you think this larger thing when it comes to masks also has to do with other considerations besides, you know, COVID protocols and not spreading the deadly disease. You said it has to do with CARES Act funding. So explain that. I like this theory. I hadn't kicked this one around as much prior to today. So talk us through that.

A few months ago, the Associated Press released and then subsequently took down a few weeks later, but we have the documentation, a breakdown of the amount of CARES Act money. So this was the emergency federal money that was distributed to public and private education systems across the country, private schools, public schools. And it was the emergency spending for COVID mitigation in the schools. And it essentially, hundreds of millions of dollars were dispersed. It's a slush fund. And the Associated Press broke down by school district. We found that the Fairport Central School District received in about one year, a 12-month time period, well over $10 million just in that federal CARES Act funding.

There's a whole host of state funding. I mean, there's a lot of money being thrown around, but all of that money is contingent upon the school district complying with any and all CDC or state health guidelines. So the reason we believe that they are so committed to muzzling the children really has to do about cash to the tune of $1,500 to $2,500 per student. There are districts across the country that got a lot more than $10 million. That is so wrong. It's like a lot of us are looking at our still muzzled children thinking, why, why? And I mean, yes, I realize there's a surge with Omicron, but the mask isn't going to prevent it. And most of the kids are in these cloth masks, which do nothing. And there's been no confirmed science at all behind these masks. And yet,

they're still so committed to it. They're scaring the children. I know I read in my prep materials for you, apparently in your district, there was some five-year-old girl on a 90-degree day who couldn't breathe and she threw up in her mask on the bus. And when the bus driver tried to take off the mask, the girl was so scared she wouldn't. I mean, this is how we've gotten with our children. Like the mask is some be all end all to save your life. It's nonsense. Megan, that testimony was given at a school board meeting by a bus driver, Fairport Central School District bus driver. And she wept as she gave that testimony. And that was the last time the school board allowed us to speak freely. It was the subsequent meeting, the following meeting where they limited all the speakers.

You can't speak at a Fairport school board meeting unless you go through the superintendent and they approve you. And they only allow 10 speakers and they only allow three minutes. They changed. They do not want to hear. That's icky for them to hear what their masking policies are actually doing to small children, the abuse. And yes, this young girl was so afraid of spreading COVID and hurting someone that she

sat on a 90 degree day in a mask full of vomit, refusing to take it off. It was heartbreaking, heartbreaking testimony. But these board members are so corrupt and so toned up to the abuse. And that's just one example of what these masks are doing to children. I can't believe that so many of them have not seen a smile from a teacher or an aide or their classmates. Or haven't even seen each other's faces. A lot of these kids, they don't even know what their friends look like. They never get to see them without the masks on, except for a few seconds at lunch while they're shoving food in.

All right, so- What is so crazy is that what we were asking these board members, we were ready to bring them medical doctors, scientists, studies, industrial hygienists, witness experts that have testified who understand air quality and OSHA regulations. We were saying to them, listen, if you're going to do this, let's have some discourse here. That was all that we as

parents were asking for. And they just refuse. They refuse to hear any other dissenting argument. And that's where that frustration comes from. But they don't care if it's all team Fauci, team CDC, whatever Rochelle Walensky says is golden. And that's the frustration of parents like you, like me, who are looking at actually independent data from doctors who are not working as a government bureaucrat and really just doing whatever Joe Biden or the teachers union wants them to do and just dismissing it. It's so frustrating. All right. So now a last thing, what are you, what is the basis of your claim? What are you claiming they did to you?

And I know you want to send a message, but could you get some dough? And if you did, what would you do with it? So we are, we, there are six, and we're looking at wrongful arrest, emotional distress. What do we have here? False arrest, false imprisonment, battery, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. We're filing in federal court and we're really, you know, there, there isn't, I mentioned that Hogan Willig, um, my attorneys that they have supported me pro bono up until this point. Um, and they continue to do so they are so committed to this because they believe it's the right thing to do. And I do as well. Um,

but it really isn't about the money. Um, this is about, we, we want to ask for damages because we want, um, this school district, we want them to feel a little bit of pain on this and we want to ask for damages because we want this school district, we want them to feel a little bit of pain on this. And we want to send a message to other districts that this could happen to you too, if you abuse your power and seek to suppress the voice of the people of your district. And so we're asking for it, HoganWillard. com. We're asking anyone in the country who wants to kind of support these efforts. It is expensive to bring these type of suits. We have paralegals and multiple attorneys and likely, you know, detectives. There are a lot of parents who would like to see you succeed in this. And if they want to support you, they can check out that website. Last quick question. Your message to other parents who are afraid, who do not want to tick off the school board, who do not want to sour the relationship they have with the school,

lest it affect their children, but have the same concerns you do. What's your message to them? So I would say one of the things that I've done throughout the past couple years, always be respectful, always be nice, but you have to be firm and don't be afraid. You know, I love to be able to do this because I love to show people, look, they arrested me. They hauled me out. They tried to intimidate me, but I'm still here. I'm doing fine. If anything, I'm doing better. You might lose a little bit in the short run, but in the

long run, it's the right thing to do. And if people don't continue to stand up, then we will not get out of this. I mean, it is going to take peaceful noncompliance, some civil disobedience, and perhaps some uncomfortable discussions with your superintendent or your school board. But if you're nice and kind and firm, then you can do this. And hopefully, you can look at someone like me and see that it'll be okay. We spoke with Stuart Scheller, now former Marine, a little earlier, and there was a quote that he gave at the time this all happened to him. He was putting the Briggs, what you believe in can only be defined by what you're willing to risk. So good. Shannon, thank you so much.

We'll continue to follow it. We appreciate you being here. Megan, thank you for having me. I so appreciate it. Thanks for joining us today, everybody. Don't forget, Monday, we've got Matt Taibbi here with us. You're not going to want to miss that. In the meantime, download the show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher. Go to youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly for the visual. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend.

Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.