The Megyn Kelly Show - Alex Murdaugh Takes the Stand and MSNBC’s ‘Non-Apology’ to DeSantis, with Ben Shapiro, Ronnie Ritcher, and Peter Tragos | Ep. 499

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by Ben Shapiro, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" and editor emeritus of The Daily Wire, to discuss the Georgia grand jury foreman’s bizarre media tour, former President Donald Trump visiting the site of the Norfolk Suffolk train derailment in East Palestine, OH, a day before Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, President Joe Biden falling up the stairs of Air Force One again, what Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) hospitalizations mean for the people of Pennsylvania, the media fawning over President Biden’s surprise trip to Ukraine, MSNBC’s ‘non-apology’ to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and more. Plus, attorneys Ronnie Ritcher and Peter Tragos join for a Kelly’s Court to examine the latest in the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial in South Carolina, including Murdaugh taking the stand in his own defense, denying he killed his wife and son, admitting he lied to investigators, and attempting to charm the jury.Ben Shapiro:https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plusPeter Tragos:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxAHSAOfe4wZozc2jYK9NAwRonnie Richter:http://www.blandrichter.com/ 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, live from the New York offices of SiriusXM, broadcasting live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel, 111, just in case you never listen to us live, which you should do because that's the most exciting way to consume the show. We have a jam-packed show for you today and a great lineup for you. Just a short time ago in South Carolina, unbelievable news as Alex Murdoch himself on trial for the double murder of his wife and son stunned the court and the nation and opted to take the stand. In his double murder trial, this is like O.J. Simpson taking the stand. I mean, it's that big. He flat out denied that he shot his wife and son. Listen to this. On June 7th, 2021, did you take this gun or any gun like it and shoot your son,

Paul, in the chest in the feed room at your property off Moselle Road? No, I did not. Mr. Murdy, did you take this gun or any gun like it and blow your son's brains out on June 7th or any day or any time? No, I did not. Mr. Murdy, did you take a.300 blackout such as this and fire it into your wife Maggie's leg, torso, or any part of her body? No, I did not. Did you shoot a.300 blackout into her head, causing her death? Mr. Griffin, I didn't shoot my wife or my son anytime, ever. Oh, but he was slick. He was slick. It's shocking to me that they put him on the

stand, but I understand why. We'll get into it in our second hour. We're going to keep close tabs on this trial. We have a stellar Kelly's Court coming up for you. We were prepared for the moment. We didn't really think it would happen, but then it did. So thankfully, we're ready. First, though, let's get right to one of my favorite guests ever, whether it's my time at Fox, my time on this show, or listening to him every day on the one and only Ben Shapiro Show. He is Ben Shapiro. He's the editor emeritus of The Daily Wire and host of The Ben Shapiro Show, the greatest podcast in America, and it's a pleasure to have you here. How are you doing? It's great to be here.

Good to see you. Oh, it's great to have you, like in person, no less. It never happens. No, we never get to do this. I mean, I hate coming to New York, I'll be honest with you. I know. Why are you here? I don't know.

To see you. I mean, really, to see you. But you want to plane, and you just do what they tell you to do. That's pretty much correct. Okay, yeah. Well, we have a couple of dates going on today, but we'll hold that in abeyance until later. All right, so this is where we have to start, even though there's so many fun stories to discuss today. So many fun stories.

The lunatic grand jury foreperson, forgive me, she's not a lunatic, but she's a very strange young woman who, in breaking the protocol of virtually every grand jury ever, has decided to go on a press tour, just so the audience understands what we're talking about. This is the grand jury looking into whether Trump broke any laws or his compadres and colleagues broke any laws in trying to get the Georgia election results overturned. They impanel the grand jury. They've been at it for the better part of a year. And now we find out the other day through the grand jury report, which doesn't actually indict anybody. It just makes recommendations to the DA that they want indictments. They do believe that several people should be indicted,

but we don't know who. Okay. So that was news. Wasn't particularly shocking, all right, given the politics down there. But okay. That's where we stood until Emily Kors, K-O-H-R-S, decides to make herself a star. And she is doing interview after interview. Here is just a little flavor of how Emily sounds. This is SOT1 with NBC. Did the grand jury recommend indictments of multiple people? Yes. I will tell you, it's not a short list. I mean, we saw 75 people, and there are six pages of the report cut out. So we're talking about more than a dozen people? I would say that, yes.

Are these recognizable names, names that people would know? There are certainly names that you would recognize, yes. There definitely are some names that you expect. She goes on to say she's going to be disappointed if the DA decides not to do anything and talks about how exciting it was to swear in Rudy Giuliani and how it would be so amazing if she could get access to President Trump because that's the moment she really wanted, but he didn't wind up testifying. Ben, what do you make of this? So she's weird.

I mean, let's just start with that. That is a very weird human being. Yes. And there is something absolutely delicious about a media that is hungering for Trump to be indicted in any case, right? New York, Georgia, D.C. It doesn't matter to them. They want Trump indicted, but they couldn't help themselves having on this lady

to essentially taint the entire jury pool of the state of Georgia. So they have on this crazy person. And she, I mean, she, her, apparently her Pinterest page is just filled with like witchcraft and Wiccan pins and stuff. I wondered, how do you become the grand jury forewoman? Is this like the people in the grand jury were like, it's got to be her. She's the best spokesperson.

She's the one who can put it all together. Because I just wonder, it just, you know, it keeps going through my brain that the great shortcoming of the jury system is that your fate will be adjudicated by people who are too stupid to avoid jury duty. And that is what you see right there. Never mind grand jury duty, which is the worst

because you get impaneled for 18 months. They only get people who are basically unemployed because no normal working person could ever do that. So you might get some normal people on there, but you will often get people like Emily on there who are enjoying the process just a little too much. Charlie Kirk had a great line speaking of the witchcraft stuff, saying that she puts the witch in witch hunt. It's just, it's very weird. And again, I think that the big fail here is the members of the media, because what the media should have done

is they should have said, okay, well, I mean, we're not going to get any real breaking news from this, but we have to have her on, we have to have her on. We need it. They need the ratings. And it just goes to show you that everything about 2024 for the media

is an exercise in disingenuousness. Because on the one hand, Trump's a threat to the republic. He must be stopped. And on the other hand, anybody who declares for the presidency, from Nikki Haley to Vivek Ramaswamy, everyone becomes the enemy the minute they declare because the media desperately wants Trump. They desperately want to be the nominee. He's great for ratings and they think Biden's going to beat him. So it's like they can't help themselves. Yeah, they're correct that Nikki Haley and as much as I love Vivek, they're not going to be the ratings juggernauts. Right. Trump is 100 percent, always has been, always will be. I can't leave Emily yet. We need to get to know her a little bit better. OK, here's here she is talking about the possibility of

Trump being indicted. She didn't reveal the card. She didn't say who's going to be indicted. Just multiple indictments. She wouldn't lift the dress up on on President Trump and his fate. But here's just let's get to know her a little bit better. Here we go. Saw two. Did the grand jury recommend an indictment of former President Trump? I'm not going to speak on exact indictments. Would we be surprised? Are there bombshells of who is? I don't think I don't think that there are any giant plot twists coming. I don't think that there are any, like, giant...

That's not the way I expected this to go at all. I don't think that's in store for anyone. So nothing that would surprise people who have been following this? Probably not. I wouldn't want to characterize anyone else's reaction, of course. Oh, my God. So that was something we heard a lot in testimony. But probably not.

It probably wouldn't shock you. I would not expect you to be too shocked. No. And that includes the former president. Potentially. Potentially. It might. Oh, my God. What is even happening?

The fact that there are quacks in the back is absolutely perfect. It was straight out of Central Casting. It's so good. It's so good. She's like giggling for the listening audience who didn't get to see it. You really should go to YouTube to check it out. She's so good. She's like giggling for the listening audience who didn't get to see it. You really should go to YouTube to check it out. She's like coy. She's making sort of flirtatious faces. She's shrugging her shoulders. It's so strange. You remember that Emmys broadcast where Winona Ryder was up on stage with a cast of Stranger Things

and she's just like making weird faces during the entire speech that her co-star is making. She's kind of gazing off into the distance, just kind of quizzically looking around. The eyebrows are going up and down. So people turn that into an internet meme with a bunch of random equations appearing around her like she doesn't understand math. And that's this lady. Like, I don't, where is she?

Like, the camera's here, lady. Like, you're talking to the camera. Like, here. Or the anchor is there. Like, what are you doing? She's looking all over the place. Like, these are the people who decide the fate of the country. Well, and she's loving her moment in the sun too much to be in charge of something this serious.

But this is the way the system works. Just a couple of bits of color. She said that she spoke of how the gravity of the special grand jury's work was not lost on her. Quote, I told my boyfriend at one point during the proceeding, during all this, I came home and I told him, do you know that if I was in a room with Donald Trump and Joseph Biden and they knew who I was, they would both want to speak with me. Good Lord. Then she goes on to add this. She says one of the big moments for her was the moment when she came in and she was eating.

What kind of popsicle was it? Oh, a Ninja Turtle popsicle as she swore in the late House Speaker of Georgia, David Ralston. So she adds the details like that. That's a very specific memory. You're not surprised at all that she likes Ninja Turtle popsicles, are you? No. That's actually the least surprising thing I've learned about her today, actually. Wow. So now Trump is out there already using this, as of course you would, saying there was a very enthusiastic young lady who went on a press tour about my grand jury proceeding down there.

Extremely energetic young woman. And get this. He says she's going around. She's doing a media tour, revealing incredibly the grand jury's inner workings and thoughts, which she kind of is. She is talking about how they felt about certain witnesses and so on. He says this is an illegal kangaroo court. And some even who don't necessarily support Trump are saying this supports moving the trial out of this jurisdiction. This undermines the credibility of the whole process. And it actually could lead to a legitimate objection by the Trump team that there was something tainted about this indictment in the first place. She needed it too badly for personal reasons.

There was a clip from CNN that was going around of one of their lawyers who they like to talk to who's lamenting the fact that this may have tainted the grand jury pool. And you could hear the Price is Right sad music, the sad trombone happening with the CNN anchors while this person was speaking. And again, this is the problem, is that the media culture has created so much of this controversy. And I've got to be honest. I'm puzzled as to why it would take two years to investigate this. Like the Brad Raffensperger call, that transcript was available within days of it happening.

What else is there to investigate, really? That's either going to be one thing or another thing. What's the extraneous evidence going to be? And they're not getting Trump on this stuff. This is not going to happen. This is too ambiguous. I know they think they've got him because he had that one line, I need 11,000 whatever votes. But that's too ambiguous, believe it or not.

If you listen to the whole thing, he's not clearly saying, go find me illegal votes. He's trying to say, I don't trust the process and this is how far behind I am. And this is the extent to which I was hurt by what I believe is an illegal process. I will say this. It's fun to listen. So the media can't stop themselves from putting her on, even though they know it's going to taint this process that they love and that they want. And then you get the media reaction to what's happening here.

TPM, Talking Points, Malmö, Far Left. Juries, including grand juries, are composed of ordinary people, Ben. That's what they say. And they do ordinary people things. But with the fate of the republic and the rule of law hanging in the balance at this perilous moment, it is not time to jeopardize long-running investigations with public winks and nods about what's coming. The fate of the Republic is at issue with this Georgia indictment, didn't you know? Well, I mean, also, this is a normal person. She's a representative of the people.

Wicca is a thing, man. It's big and it's a thing. Those are the people. Oh, we really need to screen better, honestly. But what can we do? Because like I say, not everybody can sit for 18 months on a grand jury panel. So we'll see where it goes. I love Emily Kors.

I personally would like to see more of her. 100%. I'd watch a reality show with her, wouldn't you? Maybe we'll have her on. I'd like to know about those posts. Oh, my gosh. What is it about Wiccanism that so appeals to you? I want to know the actual spells.

Apparently, there were spells on there. Have they ever worked for her? I'm kind of curious. I'll be honest with you. Was there anybody in the proceeding who she cast one on? I will bring her one of those SpongeBob popsicles or whatever the hell it was. Ninja Turtle, same thing. Okay.

So, the other big news today is that, finally, Pete Buttigieg went to East Palestine right after Trump did. Right. You got to give this right after Trump did. Right. You got to give this one to Trump. Of course. He went out there and said that the only reason he's going is because I shamed him into it. I mean, I think he's right. He is, of course, right. I mean, two things.

One, it's a slam dunk and Trump still gets credit for the slam dunk. I mean, it's a 360 windmill jam on this one because they left the door wide open. I mean, literally all anyone, anyone of prominence from the Biden administration had to do was just go there. Yeah. Let people yell at them and then go there and let people yell at you. And that's it. Right. Just show some empathy against the empathy administration. We have to go and we have to show them. Now, listen, I'm not a big fan of the politicians go to places and look at things tour. Like, I just don't like that. I think it's stupid, I think, because I don't see politicians as people we should emulate or treat as heroes in these little plays.

I remember back when Hurricane Katrina happened, people were like, why isn't George W. Bush going to visit the site? What's he going to do? Do cleanup? The only time I've ever seen anything remotely like that that I thought was useful was when W. went to the site of the World Trade Center after 9-11. That was the only one. I get it,

but that is part of the job. Everybody understands that's part of the job. And people who judge understands that better than anyone because he is a photo op. He's a walking photo op. He's never actually done anything in politics. He was the mayor of the fourth largest city in Indiana and didn't fill the potholes there, but he is gay. So he got to run for president. And then he became the candidate of the elite white college-educated women.

And so he did okay in a couple of early primaries. And this made him transportation secretary somehow because he liked airports and trains. He literally said that, right? He was picked for transportation secretary and gave an entire speech about how airports were romantic, which I don't know about you. Airports are not romantic. Airports are horrifying. In any case, all he has to do is just go there. And so he spends two weeks not going there because part of the problem for, I think, a lot of top Democrats is that the media protect them to such an extent that they don't actually feel the need to do these things. The media will defend Pete Buttigieg to the end.

They'll say he didn't do anything wrong. They'll defend him when he goes on paternity leave for two months and just never tells anybody. And then they'll make him a hero when he comes back because he's now standing up for all of the men who need paternity leave. And so I don't think he felt the need to do this. So Trump completely wrong footing him by being the this is the best version of Trump. Right. So this campaign was a complete dud. He launched this is the best version of Trump, right? So this campaign was a complete dud. He launched it. It was a fail and he didn't have any electricity. He did

absolutely nothing. Nothing. His original launch campaign should have been done in a stadium with 10,000 people to show that he actually has some backing. Instead, he did it with like 400 of his friends and you know, Roger Stone and that was a fail. And part of that is because 2016 Trump is very different from 2024 Trump.

2016 Trump, his entire pitch for the people who really liked him was, I'm taking the bullet for you. I walk in elite circles. I'm extremely wealthy. Hillary Clinton was at my wedding. These are the people that I hang out with. But I don't really like those people. I like you. And the reason that they hate me is because they hate you.

Because until five minutes ago, I was their best friend. But then I ran. And they hate you, so they hate me. So I'm taking the bullet for you. And a lot of people said, OK, I hear that. Right. He's a man of the people, even though he's not really a man of the people. He has a gold plated tower, but he does like McDonald's. And then 2020 happened. And I think he became extremely angry, obviously, and very frustrated. And so his pitch, bitter is right. And his pitch changed to instead of they hate me because they hate you, they hate you because they hate me.

And so they hate me, which means they hate you. And that means that you have to go out and repeat everything that I say. So I have to I won the 2020 election and you are disloyal and bad if you don't go out there and take the bullet for me. I took the bullet for you. Now you're going to take the bullet for me. That's a really crappy electoral pitch. Nobody wants to take the bullet for a politician. That's not our job. And the job of the politician is to defend the people. It's not the other way around. And this is the first time I saw Trump actually go back to 2016 Trump, where I was like, I'm out here doing the thing for you. And it was the first time I

saw in his campaign, oh, there's still people aside from Trump who he actually cares about in terms of this campaign. So going there and doing all of the Trumpy things that the media hate, but are actually kind of charming, like him going there and saying, here's the Trump water, and the other water is inferior, but here's Trump water.

Or him going to McDonald's and saying, I know the menu better than anyone else in here. Yes. And then McDonald's. It's actually kind of charming and funny, because obviously he can afford not to eat a McDonald's, but he does eat a McDonald's, just like a normal human. And so I thought it was a great look for Trump. It reinvigorated a certain magnetism about him. And he does have that magic when he's doing that mode.

The problem for Trump is that he got out of that mode. If he'd been that guy for all four years, he'd still be president of the United States right now. Oh, that's such a good analysis. And to me, it's like, it reminds me of when Mitt Romney was running for president. One thing you could always see, you could count on for Mitt Romney when he was in the GOP field, is he would be the very last person to put out a statement on anything. He would wait for all the others to take a risk. What's the messaging going to be from the GOP side?

Wait for him to do it. Wait for him to do it. OK, now I'll do it. He didn't go last. And Trump has made Buttigieg and Biden look like they're going last. He was the first one there. He's not an elected official right now. He's a civilian at the moment.

And our president went over to Ukraine and he made the most of it. He got out there and basically said, you better hope that I think we have it where he said, you better hope that this this president has got some dough in the coffers when he comes back from taking care of the people. Ukraine, here it is in Sot. Well, you guys know eight. We have told you loud and clear, you are not forgotten. You are not forgotten. You are not forgotten. I sincerely hope that when your representatives and all of the politicians get here, including Biden, they get back from touring Ukraine, that he's got some

money left over. Yeah, I mean, right. That's the right message. And it looks so bad that Buttigieg did follow him just earlier this week. He went out there saying, I'll go when the time is right. Right. When the time is right. And then it magically became right. Amazing. Amazing. Amazingly coincidental. And honestly, to your point, yes, I agree with you about George W. Bush in front of the fallen towers on 9-11 and how the photo ops don't.

But this situation is different, not because there was a huge loss of life. Thank God there wasn't. The reason they needed to get there is because there's a real question about whether the air is safe and the water is safe. And all these people are being told is it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. So go out there, Pete Buttigieg. If you want the people to believe you, go take a drink out of the faucet. Go take a shower with somebody's well water. I'm not even sure that it's because this is a particularly special situation. I mean, it's obviously egregious and terrible.

But I think that because this is not only the expectation, but we can tell which things you're going to. They pick and choose which things they want to go to. There are certain disaster areas where they're just not going to touch it with a 10-foot pole because it is not people that they care as much about. And then there are certain disaster areas that will be a mass shooting and they'll arrive at the funeral. Or there will be a shooting by – there will be a police beating and somebody will die. And the vice presidents of the United States will show up at the funeral. Not knowing the family, not knowing anything. But this is a political point.

So if we're going to treat these situations as political opportunities, then you have to ask why this was such a nonpolitical opportunity that you're going to wait for two weeks to actually go there or to send Pete Buttigieg, who has nothing better to do. I mean, let's face it. Literally nothing. Secretary of Transportation is one of the cushiest jobs in America. You didn't even know the name.

Name past secretaries of transportation. Go. Lane Chow. It's like a Lane Chow. jobs in America, you didn't even know the name of a past, like name past secretaries of transportation. Go. Okay. Like it's like Elaine Chao or I can't remember. Yeah, exactly. Like that's not a cabinet secretary who's very prominent, but Buttigieg has made himself prominent. And so you're going to take the hits for that.

And so at the very least, you have to go and do this sort of stuff. So do we think it's because East Palestine went 40 percent or 40 points for Donald Trump? I mean, do we think because I did wonder I hate to be so cynical, but I did wonder, would they be reacting differently if this were a swing county in Pennsylvania? Ohio's red and this county's red. It's not in play for them. And, you know, I hate I hate to be that person, but one has to ask. I mean, on a political level, I think probably it played some role.

I think also Pete Buttigieg is just he's he's gun shy when it comes to any sort of real controversial situation. And I don't think, I'm not sure that as a politician, he's the kind of person who's willing to take the hit. Like part of politics is you have to go there and you have to let people yell at you. Yep. Right? If you're the secretary of transportation, you have to go there and you have to say,

I'm here and I'm going to let you cry on me. I'm going to let you, I'm going to let you show me that you're really angry at me and you think that it's my fault. And even if I don't think it's my fault, I have to hear out what you're saying. I mean, that's what it means to be a politician in a position of responsibility. This was like a sweet spot moment for Trump, especially because there was no other candidate who could have done that. Meaning Ron DeSantis is governor of Florida. He can't go to Mike DeWine's state and just arrive there with a bunch of water.

It makes Mike DeWine look bad. Plus, he's running his own state down in Florida. Nikki Haley can't do it because that's not her common person feel. That's not what she does. Vivek is, theoretically, Vivek could have done it, but Vivek is not famous. He's not Trump, and he doesn't have any connection with these folks. And he launched his candidacy like 10 hours before. Right, exactly.

So this was like the perfect moment for Trump. And credit where credit is due. I mean, I think it was a softball, but you still have to hit the ball. And he hit it out of the park. I mean, I thought it was the best moment of his campaign by far. I think it put some new life into his candidacy, which I thought was kind of dying, actually. Yeah, no, he wasn't doing anything to nurture it. So it's kind of an interesting 24 hours.

So you have, not Biden. Biden's in Ukraine. We'll talk about that in one second. But you got Buttigieg going out to East Palestine. You got Trump taking the lead and showing leadership. And you're right, people love the Trump water stuff. I mean, it's like there's entire towns that they call Trump towns. You think these people get upset that he brought some water to them? They rode in the Trump helicopter in Iowa in one of the most important

moments of the 2016 campaign. They love this about him. But at the same time, you got Biden with his big victory lap in Ukraine. And then, let's face it, that video of him falling again up the stairs is embarrassing. And it serves as such a reminder to us all of the fact that the guy is, he's feeble. He's infirm, not just physically, but potentially mentally as well. We've seen that many times as well. Here he is. It's funny because I go on with Paul Murray in Sky News Australia once a week, and I love Paul. And he always calls Biden, every week he calls Biden, the man who's so incredible he can fall up the stairs. And here it is again, Ben. And just the juxtaposition of the two guys, it hasn't been a favorable moment for Biden.

No, I mean, I think that he got a couple of photo op wins when he went to Ukraine. But I do think that it's hard. He's hard to watch. He's a very hard to watch person. And just like any elderly relative that you have, and they're coming up the front steps of your house to come to dinner or something. And you're like, you want to grab them. The same feeling you have with they're coming up the front steps of your house to come to dinner or something. And you're like, you want to grab the feeling you have with your toddler? Yeah, correct. And when you watch Biden, you just get the feeling that he's Nick Wallenda walking a

tightrope over a volcano, but physically every single time. Is he going to make it up the stairs? We don't know if he's going to make it up the stairs. And then, of course, we'll get all the headlines about what a healthy and jovial and vital guy he is. I mean, look, the Democrats don't have any choice. They have to run him. They do not have any backup plan.

Did you see that report in Politico today saying he's more hesitant than they want? I think that's wish casting. They were going to announce in February, and now they're saying maybe April. I think the only reason why he would not run is if he thinks that Trump isn't going to get the nomination. I think that in Biden's own head, he beat Trump once, he'll beat Trump again. So if Trump runs, his entire claim to fame is, I stopped the fascist onset of Donald Trump. This is what he said at that crazy speech that he gave

in Philadelphia. And so that's how he thinks of himself. If Trump isn't the nominee, I could see a world where he, or he thinks Trump won't be the nominee, I could see a world where he steps aside. But for what? The Democratic Party needs him there. I mean, they're going to taxidermy that guy and they're going to wheel him around and it is not going to matter. He ran as a dead person last time and it worked. So, you know, I think that everybody on the right is taking it a little bit lightly because he is so old and because he is so infirm. But it you know, he was able to he was able to carry it out last time. And a lot depends on who the Republicans select as their candidate. And this is always the temptation of Trump. Is it gold or is it fool's gold?

Who knows, right? When you get a moment like you see in East Palestine, you're like, that guy is great. I mean, that's great. And then, you know, 24 hours later, he'll be on Twitter yelling it at Coco Chow or something. Or he's teasing the NFT of himself, right? Like the superhero, like, what are you doing?

Why, stop that nonsense. But wait, I wanna get back to Biden and Ukraine one second, but the fact that you said they ran a dead person, forgive me, but it reminded me of what's happening with John Fetterman. Where the Democrats, they don't care how infirm the person they're running is. As long as they get them over the finish line, they're happy. And they realize that you're going to pull the right lever. The thing with Fetterman that's so outrageous to me right now, and look, I hope the guy feels better. I really do.

He's hospitalized for depression now, severe depression. The thing that bothers me is the lack of his stroke. And we didn't know what it was. Well, they'd had an interview with him. They had an interview with his staff at the time talking about his problems, his physical problems. OK, then like four days later, the news drops. He's going in the hospital for potentially a month or more to deal with severe depression, which was conveniently not in The New York Times report. They had obviously not been told the full story by his staff. And instead of being ticked off as the reporters on the story to try to get the full scope of this U.S. senator's mental and well-being state,

everybody launches immediately into, good for you. Good for you. Thank you for being honest. The reason they're not angry is because they were the ones lying. It's not that they were lied to. They were complicit in this. I mean, you remember there was a reporter who actually said, you know, he's got all of these disabilities. The reason they're not angry is because they were the ones lying. It's not that they were lied to. They were complicit in this. I mean, you remember there was a reporter who actually said, you know, he's got all of these disabilities.

He couldn't understand what I was saying to him when I was talking. Dasha Burns of NBC. And she got ripped up and down. There were people calling for her firing. There were people in the journalistic outlets like Kara Swisher at the New York Times who were saying she should be losing her job because of this. It's ableism. All the rest of this kind of garbage. And it's an absurdity. I mean, what makes it the most absurd, the Fetterman thing, and truly outrageous, is you even understand politically why people would lie in order to get this guy into office

in the first place, because they desperately want the seat. OK, now he's in office. The question is, why are you still doing this? Why are you still lying? OK, because right now, the governor of Pennsylvania is a Democrat. So if John Fetterman were to step down, which is exactly what he should do, he's not capable of holding that office. Josh Shapiro would appoint his replacement, who would be a Democrat.

So what they are doing right now is they are basically saying we would rather have six years of a person who is not mentally capable of holding this office than two years of a Democrat and then have to go up for reelection again with the voters of Pennsylvania able to look full face what the Democrats did to them in 2022. It's disgusting. And frankly, you know, his wife bears a huge amount of blame here. We don't want her. Okay, if she ends up being appointed to that, I don't think Josh Shapiro would do that. But if he ends up stepping down and she ends up being appointed to that seat, I mean, that's some Lady Macbeth crap right there. Absolutely no qualifications.

I mean, none. It's insane. I think we'd be better off with Emily Croft or whatever. But beyond that, can you imagine treating your own spouse this way? I mean, like, I can't imagine if, God forbid, God forbid, something would happen to my wife saying, OK, but it's important that we lie to the entirety of the voting public and just continue to put you out there endangering your health. The New York Times admitted that this endangered his health to be out there all the time. And they've been intentionally vague on how long he's been suffering from this severe

depression. Actually, they've telegraphed that it wasn't just in the wake of the stroke, that this has been an ongoing thing. So she knew. She knew that he had problems with severe depression, which is a serious problem, and then had a serious stroke that they didn't disclose the full details on. It was much more of a cardiac event than we apparently knew, and had the defibrillator put in and the pacemaker put in, and never gave us access to a doctor who could explain to us what exactly had happened. The cardiologist then or now and now back in the hospital for an unspecified period.

Like she knew we didn't know, but she knew. And to your point about the press. So you mentioned Dasha Burns correctly because she was the NBC reporter who went in there and did this interview. And she had this moment of honesty where she said, my God, didn't seem like he even understood the small talk before the interview. Rain down Kara Swisher and others on her. Well, listen to how she covers the latest news. She does sort of a couple of bullet points. A senior aide says it's tough to distinguish the stroke from the depression.

It's hard to tell at times if he's not hearing you or if he's crippled by his depression and his social anxiety. Okay, fine. This is normal reporting in the wake of the news about the depression. Then she goes on to say this. A senior aide tells me both the staff and Fetterman himself were taken by surprise by the severe onset of the depression. The aide also says this hasn't compromised his ability to do the job going forward.

Sure. And he'll be back to work once he's taken care of his mental health. Then she adds this. Anyone who has ever suffered from severe depression, myself included, knows how important it is to ask for help. But damn, it is hard to do. Glad the senator is now getting the care he needs. What? Where's her outrage that she was lied to? And about and then about. Right. And then about. This is her licking the boots of the media, Ben, because she fell out of favor. And she's like, I'm a good girl. I'm a good girl. I am. I'm a good girl. Please love me again. That's what she's doing. It's it's totally insane.

Also, by the way, this is a common side effect of severe stroke. A common side effect of severe stroke is that you end up being depressed about your mental state. So to pretend that this is somehow unforeseen, it is absolutely foreseen. I mean, this is an actual complication that people suffer in the aftermath of having a severe debilitating stroke and being put in a position of high stress. In the original New York Times article that was reporting about how he was hospitalizing himself, it suggested that his depression had cropped up over the course of the last few weeks. Well, what could have happened over the course of the last few weeks? Could it be that you became an actual sitting United States senator who is demanded to do jobs that you do not have the capacity to do? I mean, you'd be depressed.

I'd be depressed. Anybody would be depressed. You're sitting there with an important job and you can't understand the words that people are saying to you and you're frustrated. Of mean, you'd be depressed. I'd be depressed. Anybody would be depressed. You're sitting there with an important job and you can't understand the words that people are saying to you and you're frustrated. Of course you'd be depressed. But the question here is, I like that they're creating in their minds a villain that does not exist. The villain that does not exist is people who are like, man, that guy never should have gotten treatment for depression. Man, that guy should have been sitting there and being depressed all day long and shouldn't have gotten treatment. Who is that person? Everybody wants people who are depressed

to get the treatment that they need. That is not the question. The question is, who lied to whom? Who is still lying? And is this person capable of holding out the office? And if not, then why aren't you just replacing him with another Democrat? That's the part that's totally insane to me.

He will get replaced with another Democrat. You're not even saying control of the Senate hinges on this person who is mentally unfit being in the office. That'd be gross, but you'd at least understand it politically. But now they're saying that not even control of the Senate hinges on this person who is mentally unfit being in the office. That'd be gross, but you'd at least understand it politically. But now they're saying that not even control of the Senate, continued control of the Senate for four more years after the next two years, is contingent on keeping a person in place who does not have the capacity to hold down the job.

No, they don't care about him at all, notwithstanding this kind of coverage. There's much more to discuss. I want to pick up on what you said about you don't believe in making heroes out of politicians. I completely agree with up on what you said about you don't believe in making heroes out of politicians. I completely agree with you on that. And I want to ask you whether the media, the right wing media, is doing that right now with Ron DeSantis. Oh, there's a tease. Ben Shapiro stays with us after this break. Don't go away. I've got to talk for a minute about Ukraine because President Biden goes over there. And honestly, like you would have thought it was a George Bush moment in front of the towers.

The way the media covered this, like he was in grave danger and he braved the flames to go speak to the Ukrainian people. We've Gravian, who does great mashups of all sorts of news events, put together a little butted shot of it. And here's a sampling of how they reacted. Joe Biden has put solidarity ahead of his own personal safety. Air raid sirens and no real guarantee of security as air raid sirens blare. This was incredibly dramatic, Andrea. It was historic as well. Historic, timely and brave. With Biden's trip to Europe, you know, he is he is welcomed as not only the frankly the savior of Ukraine, but also the savior of Europe as a whole. It's historic. It's the first time that a U.S. president has gone into an active war zone that the U.S. military does not have control over.

And against all odds, it was successful. The continuing threat quite literally sounding all around the two leaders. The skies here are not safe. And in fact, an air raid siren went off while President Biden was here. Seeing the American president there walking the streets of Kiev while air raid sirens literally sounded in that moment about possible incoming fire from Russia. The wail of an air raid siren. Air raid sirens wailing in the background. Seemingly undeterred by an air raid siren. Air raid sirens wailing in the background. Seemingly undeterred by an air raid siren.

Undeterred by the sound of air sirens. President Biden's ability with his aviators on to walk through in broad daylight in Kiev. The swagger of this trip. Ben. So let's just start with this. His national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, said on a phone call with the media that the Americans called up the Russians and said, Joe Biden is traveling into Ukraine and he's going to be traveling through Ukrainian airspace. So in other words, don't shoot down the plane and don't try to kill the president.

Right. Which, like, you should do because you don't want the president to get killed in a war zone. You're going to have a much bigger problem on your hands if you blow up Joe Biden. As it turns out, yes. And so Vladimir Putin is not totally crazy. And so, of course, he was not going to try to kill the president of the United States while he was flying into Ukraine. Now, listen, I happen to be a supporter of military aid being given to Ukraine.

I think that repelling Vladimir Putin's invasion is a good thing. I think it's in America's interest. However, the kind of treatment of Joe Biden went to, I mean, just the insane bravery, just insane. I mean, it's like a rappel from a helicopter and shopping Laden between the eyes. No, it's just ridiculous. It's just ridiculous. And everybody, I think, can see that it's ridiculous. But I think the real question that we ought to be asking ourselves is why this particular timing? So people were saying it was about the one year anniversary of the Ukraine war. I really doubt that. I mean, there have been other foreign dignitaries who have gone there.

Boris Johnson famously went to Kiev maybe four months ago. There are a lot of people from the American government who have gone to Kiev over the course of the last year or so. In fact, a bunch of House Republicans went this week to Kiev as well. Sean Penn went. Yeah, exactly. So the bravery. Oh, the bravery of Sean Penn.

Or the question is, was this possibly an attempt to reset a presidential campaign and to get people to stop talking about the fact that he let a giant Chinese spy balloon float over the entirety of the continental United States before spending a bunch of $400,000 sidewinder missiles to shoot down Valentine's Day balloons from Party City? He had a couple of really crappy weeks. And then the way that you reset is you get the media to tout how brave it is for you to go to Ukraine. Apparently, they had those plans on the books for like a while. They knew what to do.

They knew how they were going to implement it. And he only made the call on Friday that he was going to go in. And then he went in. But this treatment is like, wow. It was like the great escape. He was digging a tunnel into Ukraine. It's so over the top. The mention of the aviator shades.

The aviator shades. In broad daylight, he was wearing shades. In broad daylight, not at night even. Like in broad daylight. Just try to pretend that you're not madly in love with any Democrat. They don't really love Joe Biden, but they understand he's going to be up for reelection. And we're now getting the GOP's raising their hands. And so they've got to start shoring him up because they can't lose.

They can't lose to Trump. And they hate DeSantis maybe almost as much as Trump. And that leads me to the question of is is the right wing lionizing DeSantis right now and too much before they know whether he should be the guy? You know, if this time this time in 2015, right, leading into the 16 election, Jeb Bush was leading in the polls. Rudy Giuliani was up there, too. They completely collapsed. Trump was nowhere in the polls. He wound up, of course, being the nominee and then their next president. And so I always get like I I like Ron DeSantis. I think he'd probably be a great president. But I'm always like I'm not pledging my love to any of these people. Like I'm a journalist. So I'm first of all, like skeptical of everybody and love no politicians. I really don't. I never thought I've never fallen in love with a politician. But I get uncomfortable when I see like the right wing doing like the equivalent of what that Grabian shot shows the left wing doing to President Biden. So what do you make of it? So I think that you're right, that nobody should worship at the altar of any politician. That's true of Trump. It's true of DeSantis. It's true of literally anyone. When it comes to DeSantis, I think that the enthusiasm for DeSantis, unlike a lot of the other politicians you're talking about, is not actually based on personal magnetism. Because the truth is that if you watch DeSantis, he's not personally magnetic.

He has an edge to him and he'll cut people on the other side, which I think is the major quality that distinguishes him from some of the other Republicans who are in the race. He's not soft. He's very hard and he will go up against the media and the media took their shots at him over the course of two long years, lionizing Andrew Cuomo and all the rest. But, you know, trigger. But the fact that, you know, a lot of people are resonating to his governance is of benefit. I will distinguish him from Jeb, who had not been governor for a very long time by the time he ran, or Giuliani, who had not been mayor of New York by the time that he ran for a very long time from DeSantis, who's currently governing in Florida and took a state that was a 0.4 percentage point victory from in 2018 and turned it into a 20 point victory for him in 2022 and has proceeded to basically hit every cultural right wing erogenous zone in terms of legislation while making the state significantly more red.

Right. So he's doing all the things that you need to do in terms of basic government, like in terms of how he's governed Florida. There's no controversy from anyone on the right that he has done an amazing job in the state of Florida. Well, Trump, there's some controversy. Trump's like, it's Florida, beautiful oceans, no state income tax, everybody would do well there. Right.

So Trump is the only person in Florida who's unhappy with Ron DeSantis by statistics. In Florida, and I'm a Floridian, he is very popular. He's popular with independents. He's even popular with a lot of Democrats. He's winning counties that were blue and have now turned red because of him. Like Miami-Dade. The Republicans now have a super majority in the legislature, so they're ramming through a lot of very conservative bills.

All this is really good. Whether that wears nationally, we have yet to see. But I think that one of the things that Republicans don't want is a multi-person race. What they're afraid of is a repeat of 2016, not in that Trump gets the nomination, but that somebody sneaks through with 25, 30%. And that would, I think, be really, really hard for the Republican Party. If this ends up being another 10-person race

and nobody drops out, and it ends up that Trump sneaks through with 35% of the vote, because I think that his floor probably is about 20 to 25% in any given primary. If you split the rest of that 75% seven different ways, you got a real problem on your hands. And so I think what you're seeing is an attempt by a lot of Republicans to say, okay, let's make this a two-person race. And then Trump beats DeSantis, okay. And if DeSantis beats Trump, okay, we're okay with both of those

guys. But we don't want is Nikki Haley taking 7% and Tim Scott taking 6% and Larry Hogan taking 0.3%. We don't actually want that. And so I think a lot of the resonance of DeSantis has been he is winning. He is doing things that are effective. He has stood up to the media. In fact, the thing that he did over the last 24 hours, Sam Besson, I thought was great. Let's talk about that. I love this story, too. So Andrea Mitchell, who I think is the senior political correspondent or is the chief international, whatever.

She's got a big title over there. She's been there forever. Chief Washington correspondent. She interviews Kamala Harris last Friday. OK, today's Thursday. So we're almost a week later and completely misrepresents Ron DeSantis's educational program down in Florida. I think we have the original soundbite here. Here she is questioning Kamala misrepresenting Ron DeSantis not know about black history and the black experience when he says that slavery and the aftermath what they should be teaching in the best interest of our children in partnership with the parents of America is, I think, wrongheaded. This clip started off as a critique of Andrea Mitchell. But any time you put Kamala Harris on camera, I can't.

I'm sorry. I saw you girding yourself. She's political colon cancer. She just is. I mean, you're watching her and you're like, how is this person, the vice president, how did this person elevate to this particular level? You just have to call Joe Biden racist and then he walks you right in. And maybe suggest that he's a rapist. If you do those things, then you can become vice president of the United States.

And anyway, the original story has been Andrea Mitchell. I'm sorry. I got sidetracked by the horror show. The dumpster fire that is on top of an actual wildfire that is also on top of a flaming volcano of garbage. That is Kamala Harris. Genuinely scared. When I can tell you this. Oh, God.

Oh, no. She's going to start talking about Venn diagrams and electric school bus. Rocket science. OK, so that was incorrect, God. Oh, no. She's going to start talking about Venn diagrams and electric school busing. Rocket science. Okay. So that was incorrect, to put it mildly. And Ron DeSantis' office hit Andrea Mitchell and actually put out a memo saying he's not going on any NBC property. No MSNBC, no NBC, no Peacock, none of that.

Until she corrects the record and ideally apologizes. And so this was the lame response by Andrea Mitchell just yesterday, Wednesday. So it took several days for her to put out and listen to this. You tell me whether this is an apology or an actual correction. In my interview last Friday with Vice President Harris, I was imprecise in summarizing Governor DeSantis's position about teaching slavery in schools. Governor DeSantis is not opposed to teaching the fact of slavery in schools, but he has opposed the teaching of an African-American studies curriculum as well as the use of some authors and source materials that historians and teachers say makes it all but impossible for students to understand the broader historic and political context behind slavery and its aftermath in the years since.

She's sorry. She seems very sorry. She was imprecise, but totally right, as it turns out. It was like Don Lemon. I was just inartful. It's just inartful. Exactly. The main point was Stantz.

She is amazing. So to Stantz's team, they said, well, no. So then the answer is no. We're not going to go on your network. And good for him. That is the way that the media ought to be treated. I mean, if they're going to lie, and that is a lie. You know, a few things that we can still do in Florida, as it turns out.

Not only can we do, we must. I mean, so you have to teach your children about slavery and the aftermath of slavery in any accredited public or private school in the state of Florida. Other things we can do. We can say the word gay in Florida, as it turns out. You know, apparently, according to the media, you couldn't say the word gay. And like the DeSantis capos would like break into your house and drag you away, screaming to some sort of concentration camp.

Turns out that that's not true. Are you just visiting parent teacher night going gay, gay, gay, gay, gay? Yeah. I'm Orthodox Jewish day school. That's actually what we do like all the time. But it's it is insane the way that the media have covered him. And this is one of the reasons why I think he is, again, riding high with a lot of Republicans is because he does not treat the media as potential allies.

He does not treat them as people who ought to be given the time of day. In fact, I mean, I will say I think that he treats the media with more discipline by far than Donald Trump did. Donald Trump actually liked the media is the dirty little secret of Trump, right? I mean, he was on the phone with Maggie Haberman a lot. A lot. And he was talking with members of the media a lot because he actually wanted to see what they would say about him in response. DeSantis is a very disciplined politician. And you can see it

in the way that he's treating the media. You can see the way he's treating Trump. Trump is taking shots at him. He's just like, listen, I'm here governing. I'm not going to say a bad word about the president. I'm just going to do what I do. I really wonder what NBC's next move is going to be, because they do have this group standards and practices that pours over every single on air statement. And honestly, those guys are like lawyers who don't want to get sued. So I would have expected them to make her dial it back much more than she just did. And I love the thought that like, oh, without the context that has been newly provided, basically, by Ibram X.

Kendi, which is essentially what she's referring to, no one could ever understand the Civil War or the aftermath of slavery and so on. Baloney, right? We've been understanding it for a couple hundred years. So it's a lie. So we'll see what their next move is and what his next move is. All right, I want to get to this. I heard you the other day, you did such a great bit on one of my favorite stories.

It's horrifying me what they're doing to Roald Dahl. He wrote, of course, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which became my favorite movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. And his words and his writings are meant to be intentionally disturbing on some level. That's part of the Roald Dahl effect. I mean, he James and the Giant Peach and the BFG and Willy Wonka. We could go down to James and all of it. The witches, like it's kind of creepy and it's kind of dark. And then eventually there's some important message in his work. No more. Now, thanks to his publisher and also his family, they sold eventually, I guess, to Amazon. I think it was Amazon or Netflix. They're completely revising his books. He's dead, so it's not with his permission. His publisher, Puffin, has made hundreds of changes to the original text, removing many of his colorful descriptions and making his characters completely uninteresting, frankly. Here's just a couple of examples. The word fat has been removed from every book. Augustus Kloop, no longer.

He's not fat. He can't be fat. The Oompa Loompas are no longer tiny. Now they're just merely small. They're not even men anymore. They're just small people. By the way, I can't remember the book. Well, for sure in the movie there were no female Oompa Loompas, so I don't know what the problem is.

In The Witches, there's a paragraph explaining the witches are bald beneath their wigs. And the new line is, it adds on at the end of the line, there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs. And there is certainly nothing wrong with that. What? What are you saying? The James and the Giant Peach, you know, the weird ants, Ant Sponge and the other one. Spiker. Yeah, thank you.

And Spiker. They were terrifically fat and tremendously flabby. And the other one was thin and dry as a bone. That's all been removed. That's been sanitized. And we could go down the list. They removed all references to crazy and mad. My favorite was in Matilda.

In Matilda, there's a reference to a series of books that Matilda reads. And it talks about how she's reading Rudyard Kipling. And it talks about how she's... Jane Austen. Right. And so how she's... Jane Austen. Right, and so they replaced it with Jane Austen and John Steinbeck, right? You're not allowed to use Rudyard Kipling anymore. Apparently he's bad because he was an imperialist

and you're also not allowed to use Joseph Conrad because even though we're all forced to read Heart of Darkness in high school, you're not allowed to mention Joseph Conrad anymore. And they left Ernest Hemingway, which is weird because Ernest Hemingway... Pretty dark. He had a record.

I mean, Ernest Hemingway was not great with the ladies, to put it mildly. The insanity of taking these kids' books and then trying to remove the kind of cruelty and meanness of them, the whole point of Roald Dahl's books, and I've read them to my nine-year-old and now to my six-year-old. By the way, kids love these books. The reason that kids love these books is because the books are mean. It's a dirty little secret about kids. They're mean.

Kids are terrible little people. They're innocent and they're wonderful and they're terrible small people. They're normal human beings. Yeah, except more so. And what that means is that teaching them that the world is not the nicest place is actually a way of ushering them into adulthood. The reality is that, I know Beth said something very unpopular, being fat is harder in life than being skinny. Being enormously fat, as Augustus Gloop is, if you can avoid it, it's something you probably should avoid. It's not empowering.

The goal should not be to get everybody to embrace fat form. The goal should be to embrace wellness, and wellness requires a level of thinness. It does. Ask your doctor. The whole point of the Augustus Gloop character is that he's not fat because he has a genetic condition. He's fat because he keeps eating everything. That's literally the point of the character, right? I mean, if you watch the movie...

This is why what you guys are doing at Daily Wire is so important. I mean, honestly, not to make this into a big promo, but you guys are taking this on. You took on Disney. You've created your own, like, children's division now to fight back against this nonsense. Yeah, so we're sinking about $100 million into the making of children's content

over the course of the next couple of years that's going to start coming out in the next few months. And it really is good stuff. It embodies traditional values. It's not going to be sucker punching. One of the big things that we see all the time is the way that a lot of the major corporations that are making kids' content, it is a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down with a lot of these folks.

So if you've watched the Disney Super Bowl ad, I saw you commented on this, the Disney Super Bowl ad, which was all legacy material, right? They've got Peter Pan in there. Well, if you actually watch Peter Pan on Disney+, there's a placard at the very beginning that warns you about cultural insensitivity. But they were willing to make money off it and feature it in the Super Bowl commercial. And this is true for a lot of the stuff that Disney does. They're perfectly happy to push forward this legacy material.

But at the same time, the stuff that they really want you to watch is the proud family lecturing you about white privilege. Right. Exactly right. So that's why The Daily Wire, if you don't already subscribe, you must subscribe. There's all sorts of great exclusive content. And you get all sorts of behind the scenes things with not just Ben Shapiro, but his favorite, Michael Knowles. We love Michael. We love Ben. Thank you so much for being here. Good to see you. Great to see you too. Alec Murdoch on the stand today. It's unbelievable taking a stand in his own defense in a South Carolina courtroom. While Murdoch's lawyers have said all along that Alec may testify, most of us didn't believe it. Most

lawyers thought that's just a punk to make the prosecutors spin their wheels and waste their time because most defendants do not take the stand in their own defense. It opens up the door to so much that could be damaging to them. So this is a truly shocking development. Again, Alec is accused of murdering his wife, Maggie, and his son, Paul, in 2021. Paul was 22 years old at the time. But on the stand today, he denied that he was a murderer. And my two guests right now have been watching all the developments in this trial since the beginning, including all the testimony today. Peter Tragos is a partner of a law firm in Florida. He's been covering the trial on his YouTube show called The Lawyer You Know. Also with us, Ronnie Richter. He's an attorney in South Carolina and the founding

partner of the Bland Richter Law Firm. Guys, thank you so much for being here. I mean, absolutely stunning. Absolutely stunning. Peter, let me start with you on your reaction to the fact that he did it. He actually got up on the stand and it's ongoing. It really seems like he did it against the advice of counsel, but I think his lawyers did a good job of setting the record for any appellate issues that, you know, judge, this may have gone differently if all the financial crimes and the side of the road incident and all that didn't come in, judge, maybe this would have been different, especially if this goes poorly for our client, they might as well have said, because this is going to be an appellate issue. If it goes poorly, if he gets convicted, they testified if all this other stuff wouldn't have come in and now he's got to explain himself.

Now he's got to talk to this jury. But to me, it seemed like he was pretty resolute. He wanted to talk to this jury regardless of what his lawyer said. Ronnie, I see him up there and I think to myself, this is a guy who always thinks he knows better. This is a guy who's such a skilled and effective and successful for much of his life. Liar. He's used to doing it and he is convinced that he is he and he alone can bring this jury over to the promised land.

What do you make of it? I agree. I said last night, I would put this in the legal pantheon of bad ideas for him to take the stand. I thought his defense was, frankly, doing a pretty good job of creating some doubt. I didn't think this was necessary. I thought the only thing you could do is talk your way into jail. But obviously, he's very comfortable in his home court, and he feels like these are his people, and he can talk to them. It's great. So this courtroom, as I understand, it actually has pictures of his granddad and maybe great granddad who were the prosecutors there, the lead prosecutors in that jurisdiction comes from a long line of solicitors, meaning

chief prosecutor in the district. It's his courtroom. He's familiar in it. He's tried cases and I'm sure as a trial lawyer himself. And there he is up there. Just one more time. All I can do is spin this jury. I can spin all the evidence I've heard so far. And he is, I believe, guilty. I don't know whether he's guilty, but I believe he did it. And so he's a master manipulator. Even if you think he didn't do this, but he just did all those financial crimes, he is a master manipulator. And you can see him up there. One of the things I noticed, Peter, is he's talking about the dog collars down at the kennels. He's like, yeah, you were down there. The dogs have five, maybe six collars normally

down there that track them. Oh, see, it's me, Alec Murdoch. I just want to help you members of the jury. That's how precise I am when it comes to facts and wanting to be your very good assistant. I just came up here to set the record straight because you've been so misled by the big bad prosecutor. Absolutely. And I think that he's spot on with how the defense has performed in their theory of this case is all, you can't prove this. There's not enough evidence. It was a bad investigation. There's reasonable doubt here. And I don't understand. I think there are some cases where the defendant can testify, can do a good job, can help his or her case. But in this situation, when you're saying the investigation was horrible, they don't have enough evidence, they missed evidence, they can't prove

this beyond a reasonable doubt, just to put Murdoch up on the stand is going to create issues with exactly what you're saying. People are going to pick apart everything he said. It's either too detailed or it's not detailed enough. That's too simple of an explanation or it's too complicated of an explanation. I don't see how he helps his case when your theory is they can't prove it. They don't know what happened and it's up to them to prove what happened in that 15 or 17 minute period of time. Ronnie, it seemed to me, given the way they began his direct testimony, and I'll play part of this, there was a reason he took

that stand. And it was the Snapchat video that Paul, his son, the victim, one of the two, took right before the murders that we've had multiple witnesses testify has Alec Murdoch's voice on it. It was, according to the prosecution's timeline, I think within six minutes of the murders, Alec had told investigators he wasn't there at the time, that he was back at the house taking a nap. And this video is the closest thing we've had in the case to a smoking gun, showing that Alec misled investigators. He was clearly there moments before the murders. He was not back at home sleeping. And that is how they kicked off his testimony. We've got a little bit of it. Listen. Alec, why did you lie to Agent Owen, Agent Croft, and Deputy Rutland about the last time you saw

Maggie and Paul? As my addiction evolved over time, I would get in these situations or circumstances where I would get paranoid thinking. And it could be anything that triggered it. It might be a look somebody gave me. It might be a reaction somebody had to something I did. It might be a policeman following me in a car. That night, June 7th, after finding Mags and Paul. Hello, Paul.

Don't talk to anybody without Danny with you. All my partners were just repeatedly telling me that. I had a deputy sheriff taking gunshot tests from my hands. I'm sitting in a police car with David Owen asking me about my relationship with my wife and my son and all those things coupled together after finding them, coupled with my distrust for SLED, caused me to have paranoid thoughts. Ronnie, what did you make of that? Well, I agree with you. If there was a moment that would have compelled him to the stand,

it was the fact that he had lied to investigators about his whereabouts at the kennels. But for that fact, I don't think the state really had much of a chance of winning this case. So if there was a moment that he had to speak to, it was this moment. And that explanation is terrible. It's terrible. I mean, the idea that the drugs made me lie. It's a Monday. He's already testified it was a work day. He was completely lucid to go to work that day. He was completely lucid to have dinner with his family. He was completely lucid to go to work that day. He was completely lucid to have dinner with his family. He was completely lucid to drive into town to tend to his mother. But at the moment the investigator showed up and he had to speak to them for the first time, it was the drugs that caused him to tell a lie.

And then on a going forward basis, he just maintained that lie. And it was also, according to his testimony, his distrust of SLED. I mean, the family held the solicitor's seat for 100 years. They are SLED. They are law enforcement in Hampton County. So the explanation is preposterous. Did you hear, Peter, did he claim that he took drugs after finding the bodies? Because Ronnie's got a good point.

He was doing all this stuff. He looked fine. We saw a videotape of him about an hour prior to that, where he's dealing with the families, dealing with the tree that they're replanting. He did not look like somebody who was out of his mind. Did he claim that he saw the bodies and he took a bunch of drugs and they drove him out of his mind and that's why he lied to SLED? No, he specifically said it was his addiction, his addiction, ongoing addiction, which this guy is getting multi-million dollar verdicts while he's a drug addict on these pills. And I thought he said a very important word in that explanation. And that was these drugs and this addiction create paranoia. And if I'm the attorney general and I get up there

and I say, so you were paranoid, you started to hear something and that would make you run down and do bad things, right? Like lie, like lie to law enforcement. And then you spin that into you get this news on six, seven. They were on to you. It's crashing down. Mr. Tinsley's coming after you. You think Maggie and Paul might have sold you out and now you're paranoid. I think that's an easy thing to flip for the AG's office.

I think they are sitting over there salivating. They cannot wait for cross-examination. I expect it to be a long cross-examination. And we don't know. We're taping this today at 1 p.m. Eastern. We don't know how long the direct is going to last and when the cross will get started. I'm thinking if you're Dick Harpoolian, you want to make the prosecution get started today. You'd much rather not give them the fresh overnight

to do all their prep and sick them on your client the next morning. I don't know. What's your guess on how long the direct testimony goes on? I mean, I think that they're going to continue to go on for most of the day today, but I think you're exactly right. I think they're going to have them start cross, but because it's going to be such a long crossing, there's no way they don't get the overnight to prep at least some questions tomorrow. There's another word that Alec Murdoch used on the stand today that jumped out at me just as a human, as a woman, as a wife, as a mother. And it was he apologized to his relatives for lying in that bit that we just showed part of. He's admitting now that he lied to the authorities about it when he said, I never went down to the kennels that night prior to finding

their dead bodies. And he says, I would never do anything intentionally to hurt them. Meaning Maggie and Paul intentionally, who would say that? Who would say that? You would say, I would never hurt my son. I would never hurt my spouse ever. Like the, the placeholder of like intentionally in his own mind, I feel like that's sort of his own justification from having done it. Maybe he's telling himself it was the drugs that made him do it or it was the outside pressures that made him do it. But like the real Alec Murdoch wouldn't bodies, right around the time of the murders. What else jumped out at you so far that was meaningful about what he said? Well, what's jumped out at me so far, not about his testimony so much, but they keep panning to the audience. And to see the reactions in the audience, we can't see the jury. I'd love to see how they're reacting right now. But not a tear has been shed, not even Buster, not his sister, not his brother. I mean, everyone in attendance is

emotionless, which is really striking. So if they're my proxy jury, if the jury's receiving it the same way, then it may be falling on deaf ears. I thought the problem for his testimony was not so much the cross, which we know is going to be withering. He has to stick the landing on the direct. If he can't deliver that, if he can't emote and make that connection, then we don't even need to talk about the cross. And again, if the audience is any measure of the jury, I'm not seeing any impact whatsoever on the people inside that courtroom. So Peter, what's interesting is, yes, he is slick. I mean, I was kind of like, he's so slick.

And so he took that stand. He was so casual. And forgive me for using this word in this context, but he was kind of likable. I mean, the way he talks, you know, there's something about him that's kind of likable, but you don't like him. And that's what he's up against, because this jury, they're not going to fall under his spell. The odds are against that, because even though he has this likable way of talking, they've gotten to know him. We've heard with the last couple of days of testimony, we heard about how he stole money from was it a cop or a relative of a cop who got shot?

And he was trying to bring a case on that guy's behalf. And he stole the money. He stole money from, was it a cop or a relative of a cop who got shot? And he was trying to bring a case on that guy's behalf. And he stole the money. He stole the money of his housekeeper who died where he pursued that lawsuit. And he got four point whatever million dollars. And he didn't tell the young boys about it. He kept it for himself. Meanwhile, the boys were facing financial hardships. He didn't like the jury.

I'm going to guess even if they don't think he committed these murders arrives at this relationship with him hating him. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think there's no doubt about it. He's definitely there's nothing wrong

with saying he's a likable guy. He went through his whole career. That's how he got all these clients. That's how he got all these verdicts. That's how he lived his entire life was being likable. And that's why he was able to keep up the scheme

as long as he was, because he's a likable guy. But at this point, it's once you really know him, he's life was being likable. And that's why he was able to keep up the scheme as long as he was, because he's a likable guy. But at this point, it's once you really know him, he's not a very likable guy. And I think some testimony came out yesterday. He stole money from his closest friend who was dying of colon cancer. Yes. I mean, it does not stop with what this guy is capable of, which is exactly the reason

that they keep propensity evidence out of cases like this, which is, I think that's going to be an interesting discussion on appeal. I mean, there's a lot of stuff to not like about him, but Mark Ball, one of his law partners yesterday, I know Ronnie knows much more about this than I do, because I know he's been involved in some of this. But Mark Ball yesterday, I thought, put it perfectly. He's a jackass. I don't like him. He's a bad guy for stealing money. But just because he's done all that does not then mean he's done what he's accused of doing here in this courtroom. We have doesn't mean he didn't do it. We have a little bit of that. We'll play it and then we'll get Ronnie to respond. Go ahead. When September the 2nd hit, it changed

everything that I knew about Alec. I would have never believed that a guy that you know was like family would have ever stolen from me, would have stolen from his family, would have stolen from his clients or any of that. And so immediately you're you've got this rage, this emotion that you've got and then on the third we go through this whole ordeal of determination. And then the fourth, it hits. And you're like, you know, did the jackass kill himself because of anything else? And then as time progressed on and you see the scope of it, I mean, I don't know the guy that after September the 3rd and leading out,

I don't know who that guy is. I mean, that's not Alec that I knew and Alec that I loved and Alec that all of us loved. Just to set that up, Ronnie, for the audience before I get to you, that was him on cross-examination. He was Alec Murdoch's witness. And he's talking about how three months after the double murders, Alec Murdoch staged a fake attempted murder on himself. They said it was an attempt to suicide with help from somebody else so that he could get his remaining son a $10 million life insurance policy. Many don't believe that. They think he just was trying to engender sympathy for himself or try to make it look alternatively like, the murderer's still out there and now he's after me.

That's more the prosecution side. So what are your thoughts on all of that? Yeah, so Mark Ball, I thought he was a compelling witness. I thought he was a real boomerang witness, right? So the defense calls him, really for two purposes. One, to say that the investigation was sloppy because Mark had visited the scene as well and saw things there that disturbed him.

We all heard that testimony. Like a golf ball size piece of Paul's skull, which both made you feel sick and horrified about the nature of this crime, but also reminded you, what was that doing there? The defense is doing a good job of showing us how crappy SLED managed the crime scene. Sorry, go ahead, Ronnie.

Yeah, no, no. The forensics are terrible. And if there's a sweet spot for the defense, it's hang on the motive, hang on the forensics, right? So they bring in Mark for that purpose. And by the end of it, Mark has to sit there and catalog all the different thefts that Alex engaged in, all the different victims that he left behind, and then culminate with that testimony that you just played that said, I knew the guy for 30 years. Now looking back on it, I don't think I know him at all. So he is this chameleon. He's a skilled and cunning

liar. And it's not just the theft of money, but it's the theft by deceit. And it's Alex's practice of when he's caught in a lie, he's that guy that will not admit it until you've got both shoulders pinned on the mat and a 10 count. And then he'll concede it, but then he'll move on to the next story. Yes, that's what he's doing right now, I believe, with respect to that Snapchat video, where you had witness after witness, because it was just voices. There's a video from an hour before the murders actually showing him. But then there's a video where you had witness after witness because it was just voices. There's a video from an hour before the murders actually showing him. But then there's a video where you just hear him four minutes before, five to six minutes before. And in that one, we had witness after witness say, I am 100% sure, who know the family forever, including him. That's Alec. That's Alec Murdoch.

That's Alec. That's Paul. And that's Maggie. Moments before the murder, he had no choice but to concede that it had been a lie, that when he told law enforcement he wasn't there and he was inside sleeping. So one of the things, so Ronnie points out that no one's shedding a tear yet, Peter. I think people are sadly sitting there, arms crossed, defensive, like, mm-mm. But he's working it. And you know who is shedding tears, or at least pretending to? Alec Murdoch, who a couple of times broke down in tears or at least purported to. Here's a little bit of that when he's talking about going back to grab a gun from the house. This is the allegedly innocent Alec stumbling upon the crime scene, wondering what's next. It's Souther 35.

Why did you go back to the house to get a gun? I just didn't know. I didn't know. I mean, that's all I did. I don't know. I mean, it was just, I didn't know if somebody was still out there. A few moments like that with the sniffing and the voice breaking. I mean, to me, that looked like maybe he did.

He was flirting with the verge of tears. But for me, that was because he's probably going to prison for the rest of his life. I mean, is it really that hard to conjure up a few emotional moments if you're that defendant? I don't think it proves that he didn't do it just because he's crying. I think he could still be sad. There could be a lot of regrets. Your family that this happened to. And there were some chunks of saliva and things coming from his nose and mouth that you could literally visibly see as you're watching this.

But again, hard to see real tears. But I don't think that whether he cries one way or another is going to prove much because the prosecution did a great job of setting up. This was the kind of guy that would cry in closing arguments to try to manipulate that jury and work the jury to give more and more and more money and run up the score. So I think this was to be expected. I don't think it's going to have the effect that it may have from a normal witness. But I mean, he sure is trying to make it seem like he is just pouring tears up there. Ronnie, you're a South Carolinian. He's he's working the South Carolina thing, right? Talk about his he calls his wife Maggie Maggs. He refers to Paul, his dead son, as Papa.

And that's what we call him, Papa. Every time he's got his pet name for his boy, whenever he refers to him, he's got the Every time he's got his pet name for his boy, whenever he refers to him. He's got the South Carolina thing, you know, talking about his mama and, you know, what she was like and how they love the housekeeper. And I mean, he's leaning into it, I think, is a big manipulation. But what's your reaction to, you know, how he's working that angle and trying to charm this jury? Well, I got to tell you, I'm a native Charlestonian. We're not all plantation owners down here. So he kind of has rich Southerner problems. And I would worry for him that that's what he's communicating. We don't all have kennels and dove fields and duck ponds and

housekeepers and multiple properties. So he's got a whole lot of rich Southern problems going on. And I don't really know how that's touching this jury. He seems to be on his heels about the fact that he touched the bodies. I'm not sure what's happening here, but they spent some time on why he allegedly, again, under his story, walked in, there they are dead in the kennels, shot, brutally shot. And they talked about, you know, Paul's brain being on the ceilings. This ceiling, this is allegedly what he walked into. And this is Alec discussing at Stop 33.

What did you do when you went up to Paul at some point in time? Paul was so bad. At some point, I know I tried to check him for a pulse. I know I tried to turn him over. When you say you tried to turn him over, why were you trying to turn him over. When you say you tried to turn him over, why were you trying to turn him over? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why I tried to turn him over. Me and my boys laying face down.

He's doing the way he's doing. His head was the way he's done. Ed was the way Ed was. I could see his brain laying on the sidewalk. What's going on there, Peter? Why are they having this intentional exchange? So, I mean, I think they're trying to explain away why and how he did what he says he did with he was in shock he's just not sure although he was very specific at one point saying that he picked him up by his belt loop and the phone popped out that was a very specific fact and you pick somebody up by their belt loop i guess as a way

that you don't get blood all over you um but again i'm not sure how he specifically checked their pulses and just got a little bit of blood on the fingertips which is how he's trying to explain away the fact that there was so little blood on his clothes but a little bit of blood on the fingertips, which is how he's trying to explain away the fact that there was so little blood on his clothes, but a little bit of blood in the suburban that here's what they're doing. They're connecting dots with a plausible story that I don't think they needed to call Alec Murdoch to do. I think they could have argued all of this in closing argument without opening him up to cross-examination. He has not given us one single fact the other evidence didn't already point to as the way that the defense is presenting it. And that's why I still so far don't see a reason why the

defense called Alec Murdoch, except for the fact that he wanted to take that stand and he wanted to talk to this jury. Right. And if you want to do it as the defendant, you're allowed to do it, even if your defense counsel has advised against it. It's ultimately your call. You know, he gets into the crime scene a little, and he talks about, you know, sort of arriving there. I wonder, like, one of the other big things about, that was against him, Ronnie, was the outfit change. You know, he, I think there's new testimony. What I heard this morning was there's new testimony by Alec about his clothes because you had his housekeeper take the stand and talk about him being in one outfit when he went off to work. Then we saw the video on Paul's phone an hour before the murders in which he had on this sort of turquoise T-shirt and khaki pants. Then the next thing we see is him being interrogated by cops after the murders,

and he's got on shorts and a white shirt. So by my count, the prosecution has gotten in three outfits in front of the jury on the day of the murders. He testified, no, I went to work in that turquoise shirt and pants that were on the video you saw from an hour before the murder. I was working the farm. I was sweaty. I went home. That's when I took a shower because we know from the prosecution's witnesses that the shower had recently been run. The prosecution's getting us to believe it was run after he committed the murders. He says, I was in that seafoam shirt. I went home to shower. I'd been doing the yard work. And that's when I changed into the outfit that you would later see me in. That is, if true, a helpful explanation for the outfit change.

How important was that explanation? And how do you reconcile the fact that it seems to conflict with what the housekeeper testified about his outfits earlier in the day? Well, I don't think it was important enough to take the stand for. I never would have put him on the stand for the purpose of explaining the wardrobe change. You don't want to set up Alex in a swearing contest with any other person. If we're going to test the credibility of Alex against the credibility of the housekeeper, who said those clothes were never found again. You don't want to compare his credibility to any other witness in this case. So again, to Peter's point, they're not offering in the evidence any markers, any points that aren't already there and already available for argument.

They don't have to prove a thing. Just the reasonable doubt was there for them or so I thought it was. I only see himself talking himself into trouble here. And the cross is going to be on this heavily. It's going to be so brutal. And I wonder, though, like with the clothing, I haven't heard this discussed yet, and maybe it's happening right this second. But one of the points has been, OK, you didn't change out of your seafoam shirt and your long pants because you had blood on them. All right. That's your theory. You want us to believe you were just sweaty and you took those off before any murders happened. Let's have them. Let's see them. Give them to me. If an innocent man would say, and they're sitting in my hamper

right now with absolutely no blood on them, just my sweat. Go ahead, go find them. That's been a big question. And his defenders, Peter, have been saying, not his obligation. Prosecution's obligation. Go try to find the clothes. But here he is on the stand. Let's hear that one explained. He did with them and let him say I threw him in the hamper or whatever, but I am absolutely in the corner that it is not his duty or obligation.

Nobody accused of a crime has to present evidence in the case, has to give evidence to law enforcement, has to waive any of their rights. It's law enforcement and the state attorney's job to prove the case. And I think that's the real point with the clothes. Why I think it's kind of a nothing burger is they didn't search for it. So Blanca can say it was Blanca's, the housekeeper can say that she never saw it again, but we've got confirmation from SLED that they didn't go look for it. I agree with you if Alec Murdoch hadn't just taken a stand, but if I am the prosecutor, I'm spending time on this. I'm going to say, so by your story, you threw him in the hamper and then you took a shower. Once you recognize, because you're telling us, you're paranoid.

You're so paranoid about law enforcement, you lied to them about whether you've been down to the kennels. So you must realize it's important for me to maintain those earlier clothes. Somebody's going to think I did an outfit change because I shot my wife and son. What did you do with them? Where are they? What efforts have you made to retrieve them so that you could just show the world, you know, not under a legal obligation to do it, but of course you'd want to do it morally, ethically, as a matter of setting the record straight.

What effort did you make to find your clothes? Two very easy responses to that. I think that they did not need him to take the stand for is he lost a bunch of weight and got rid of a bunch of clothes over some period of time. And he was not charged with this crime for a year. So I don't know where some clothes are I wore a year ago. It's not like this was the next day or the next week that they charge him with the crime and he

could go back in his closet and say, here's this shirt, here are these pants. I got rid of a bunch of stuff over that year. I lost a bunch of weight, got off the pills, whatever, my life changed. So I don't know where a lot of my clothes are from back then. Clothes here, clothes there, clothes everywhere. That sled never bothered to search and try to find what clothes were there because they always thought it was the white shirt with the blood spatter on it the entire time until that was disproven. And now they've come up with this alternate theory that it must be on the shirt that we never looked for as law enforcement.

What about the one of the other ways in which he's been dinged up in the course of this trial before taking the stand, Ronnie, is the prosecution had a witness who said he he said in the interrogation, and there's tape of it, and they played the tape and tried to convince us that this is what we heard. I did him so bad with the accent, so bad. And you can hear him saying, he intentionally in that soundbite, I think, that I just played for you, said so bad, so bad, and he did it again. And I think he's getting ready to say, you know, of course, I did not say I did him so bad. I said they did him so bad. Is it possible they thought that sort of off piece of testimony, because we all heard the tape and people were

split on whether they heard they or I. Is it possible they thought that was damaging enough that that's what he's doing up here? No way. No way. And I don't see where the state could think that that statement was valuable enough. I know a big to-do was made of it at the time, but I think it amounts to little or nothing. I do think he said they. It sounded to me like they. And frankly, I think he said they did it so bad. And so the question I'd be wanting to ask is, who are they? And what is the it? The it is the hit. So if you didn't do it, you obviously know who did. I mean, the more plausible theory is he arranged for something that he thought was going to be a more romantic hit, where it's like the movies and you just put the silencer on the pistol and everybody goes to

sleep and he comes upon this terrible crime scene where they did it so bad. I mean, I don't know what that means. It's not a confession. And it's certainly no reason to put Alec Murdoch on the stand. That's interesting. All right, Wade, I want to ask you about that, the possibility that he had somebody else commit the murder rather than himself. But first, let me just take this soundbite. This is from Buster Murdoch, who did take the stand in his father's defense. We'd been speculating all along. Will he? Won't he? If he does take the stand, will it be as a prosecution witness? No, it wasn't. It was as a witness for the defense. It wasn't like hugely big, I have to say. But Buster Murdoch

was asked about that moment we were just discussing. Here's what he said. Were you here when a video was played of an interview with your dad on June 10th? Yes, sir. And there was a question about whether your dad said, I did him so bad or they did him so bad. Do you remember that? Yes, sir. Do about whether your dad said, I did him so bad or they did him so bad. Do you remember that? Yes, sir. Do you recognize your dad's voice? I do.

If you listened to it, would you be able to tell the jury whether it's I or they? Yes, sir. You're on, like, pull up Exhibit 153, the clip. And sit there and laugh at the day it's just us. It's did them so they did them so bad so that the first time you'd heard him say they did him so bad no sir when was the first time you heard him say they did him so bad uh first time i heard him say that was the night that i went down to moselle the the night of June the 7th. Did he say that more than one time?

He did. You guys tell me, but the biggest point of Buster was to show the jury Buster still believes in his dad. Buster knows better than anybody whether his dad is capable of this and is still on his side. What do you think, Peter? Yeah, I mean, that's what I said. I said I think it's huge for the defense when it first happened. And everybody's like, what? He didn't even say anything. What's the big deal that he testified for the defense? He didn't do anything to help his dad. He was emotionless. He said, I'm old enough to remember at the

beginning of the trial when a lot of us were discussing, is he going to testify for the state? Is he going to testify to the defense? Is he going to sit behind the state? Is he going to sit behind the defense? Who is he supporting? The fact that he was a witness for his dad clearly does not believe his dad did this, I think was a huge win for the defense, even though not a ton came out of his testimony. I agree with you. It wasn't all that impactful. It got a couple of points across. But the overall theme that he still supports his dad and does not believe his dad did this,

he saw his dad the night of right after it happened. He spoke to his dad after the murders occurred while his dad was driving to his grandmother's house and he seemed totally normal. And then he was with his dad the days following. I think that was important for the defense that he came and just testified at all to support his dad. All right. I'm going to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to talk about what Alec Murdoch says the story is of that night. He told the story. He is now on record as having said exactly what happened in the house that night. It was all very matter of fact, very normal evening, clearly trying to show this jury like nothing unusual was amiss.

You know, I had no reason to believe anything was going to happen and I wasn't involved. It was very interesting the way he sort of spun it as just a normal night at home for a normal American family. We'll pick it up there with Ronnie and Peter right after this. This is the interesting thing, Peter, is he's now and he's the only person who can do it, telling us the story of what allegedly happened that day. And maybe you can just help the audience understand Alex's story on what the day looked like. He went to work, and then he talks about getting back to Moselle, which is how they refer to their property. And maybe you can outline for us just a bit of what he says happened, how his evening went. Hanging out with Paul, just doing stuff around the farm, and then they get back to the house.

Blanca's made dinner. Paul eats it fast. He sits down with Maggie in their den. The TV's on, which is important because the TV stays on later. When we had the audible expert about how he couldn't hear the gunshots, he makes sure to let us know the TV's on. They eat dinner together. Maggie goes down to the kennels first. Alec doesn't want to go because he's already showered. He doesn't want to mess with the dogs anymore because he was sweaty. He already showered and changed into the white t-shirt and the green slash khaki shorts. Eventually he goes down to the kennel. He is there at 844,

which we have video proof of, but then he leaves immediately after, goes back to the house and he tries to fit in. I think some of the story that he's already told SLED, which we know is not true, that he lays down on the couch, maybe dozed off for a couple minutes. Um, and then he leaves shortly after nine o'clock drops, drive straight to mom's house, hangs out with mom for a while, drive straight back, finds the bodies calls nine one one. And again, it's, it's easy to explain on direct that, you know, I was on nine one one, I was checking pulses, doing stuff with the bodies, but I think the state is going to nitpick over how many seconds he had to actually check the pulse for when he called 911, when he told them he's already checked the pulse.

He didn't say I'm actively doing this stuff. And I think that I've seen some tweets and some DMs come through already to me that he's doing a great job. This is the easy part. And I don't think a lot of what's happened on direct has been necessary. So when cross comes, that's when we're going to find what kind of job he did on the stand. He also, Ronnie, seemed to feel the need to address the testimony from the sled agent at the end of the prosecution's case, who said on Alec's phone, they had pinpointed when he would have been standing over the two dead bodies, that Alec had allegedly searched up a restaurant on Google and possibly taken a look at a bikini photo of a woman that had been sent to him or that was on his phone.

You know, they can tell everything you do on your phone these days. Alec spoke to that today. Here's a bit of what he said. How do you account for that? Obviously, they're unintentional. I mean, I'm doing something with my phone trying to call people, but I'm not trying to call those people. I'm not doing a Google search for any Whaley's restaurant, and I'm certainly not reading any texts. What do you make of that, Ronnie?

Because it's like if the phone says you did it, you did do it. You know, I thought he gave a good account for that. I mean, to me, it makes perfect sense that you're in some panic phase and, you know, your fingers are clumsily playing with the phone. And obviously, he activated some data. He revived some old search. So I thought he gave a good account for that. I think the part that got really sketchy for him, and I mean, Peter's recall of the offense was just spot on, but where the timeline gets really dodgy is from that 845 to the 907,

because we now know he was there at 845. According to his testimony, after the video, some time was spent getting the chicken out above his mouth, right? So there's still some time there at the kennel. Some time was occupied getting back to the house. He then says that maybe he dozed off, but he's on the move by 9.07. So that's a very tight window. I mean, at 8.45, we know he's at the kennel. He's still there for a period of time after that. He gets back to the house. To me, it feels like the perfect amount of time to get back to the house and then haul Buck down to Almeda. We know from The OnStar that he went at high speed back and forth

to get to his mom's house. But it's an odd point in time to say it's at that moment that I decided I need to go see mom and he's off. I decided to squeeze in a quick nap, you know, when you're just off of, you know, your, your visit to the kennels, it's not like you've been sitting there for two hours watching some boring television show. You're awake, you're up, you were up moments ago and it's almost time to go to bed anyway. You know, you're approaching 9 PM at night, at night. Who takes a nap? And so but he's got to say that because that's what he originally told law enforcement. And yeah, then he pops back up. Can you speak to Peter something that's been bothering me? And I don't know exactly how this works, but

what's the evidence of Maggie's cell phone allegedly being with Alec Murdoch in the car on the way to the mother's? Did that testimony come in? I don't feel like that's what the evidence has shown so far. I actually think that the defendant's theory of he couldn't have thrown it out the window at that time, based on the movements of the cell phone, based on how fast his car was driving, based on what time his car crossed the spot where they found Maggie's cell phone. I actually don't think any of that lines up. And I think Ronnie's timeline there gave Alec even a little bit of the benefit of the doubt, because I think between 902 and 906 is when we saw all

those steps taken by Alec, 200 and something steps. But Ronnie's kind of given him until 907 before he left for moms, which is true. But what was he doing from 902 to 906? He was not napping. Where was he walking? Things like that, I think he's going to have to explain. Where were you? You obviously weren't sitting on the couch dozing off. Did it take you 270 steps to walk to the car? That doesn't make sense. So I think he's going to have to answer all of those questions. But one other thing, Ronnie and I seem to be in lockstep. We haven't talked about this before. The only thing I would push back a little bit on if I was the defense is I don't think

he sped to and from moms. I think the fact that it took him 16 minutes on the way there and 18 minutes on the way back. And when SLED did a test drive, it took them 17 minutes. It's more likely he was passing a car or going faster and slower, but it took him about the right amount of time to get to mom's and back. So I think each side has a lot of good arguments with this evidence, which is why I felt like it was a mistake for him to take the stand. Because the OnStar shows that he went at least 80 miles an hour in the car, but that could be in a moment. We all know when you're trying to pass another car, you put it into a different

gear and then you slow back down. All right. So if we go with that timeline, 8.44, he's on the tape. We know he was at the kennels, but at 8.44. And then you say the story is that he then had to deal with getting the chicken or the guinea or whatever it was out of the dog's mouth. So that eats up another minute or two, and then he goes back to the home. Then he allegedly lays down. We don't know exactly. Lies down.

And then by 9.02, the fast footsteps start. We've got that too. The iPhone shows everything. So he's definitely moving around. So 8.44, let's call it 8.46, 8.47 by the time he's back home. So now you got what, 13 minutes plus two after nine, that's 15 minutes to squeeze in your nap and then get up and start walking around super fast. That's his version, right? That's the best he could be stuck with right now. Which he didn't have to testify for us to get. I mean, they could have argued all that. He's literally given us no details that makes it more or less reasonable

that that's what he did. What do you think, Ronnie? I agree 100%. If anything, he ate into that same timeline by volunteering that he spent some time with the chicken or the guinea or whatever it was and he said um he misstated it was 100 yards to the house it's actually 1100 feet so maybe even more time to get back to the house so that narrow window from 844 is even tighter and it really dispels the idea that the guy could have sat down and taken a nap

i mean that's completely not believable. The testimony from law enforcement, no, forgive me, from the defense witness, the so-called expert witness who, I mean, I don't know how much of an expert this guy was in like actual forensics of a crime scene or firearms. It seemed to me they found a guy who they'd been using in another way and the guy agreed to be their expert in this. And that's the guy who was like, couldn't be Alec Murdoch because Alec Murdoch is 6'4". And I think that this shooter was either 5'2 or 5'4", given the way the bullets entered the victims. But that guy, I think, is the one who testified. You couldn't necessarily hear the rifle, the shot of a shotgun back at the house.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but Ronnie, the prosecution did not introduce any testimony on that. They probably didn't go there because they didn't want to know if it was, they just want people to assume you could hear a shotgun up at the house, 1100 feet away or whatever it was. But how important was that moment where he said, he gave Alec cover, that if he were in the house and if the TV were on and if he were snoozing or close to it, you might not hear these gunshots. No, that was definitely a defense win. The rest of his testimony, the five foot two shooter theory, I mean, humans have knees, so that's completely without value. But the decibel testing is pretty

objective. And the methodology they used sounded very reasonable to me. So it was an issue that bothered me about the case, that if you are at the House and I accept that, how did you not hear World War III break out in the side yard? Well, they did a pretty adequate job of explaining that and, again, creating more reasonable doubt about the state's case. All the more reason, again, not to call Alex Murdoch. You know, the other thing they seem to be doing, Peter, is addressing whether he lured Maggie and Paul to the crime scene. Can you speak to that at all? Yeah, I think there's been some testimony of that. I don't feel like it's particularly something that is going to be probative in the jury's mind to prove that this proves that he

did it. We've had some other testimony of other reasons Paul may have come because of the dealings something that is going to be probative in the jury's mind to prove that this proves that he did it. We've had some other testimony of other reasons Paul may have come because of the dealings with the sunflower plants or whatever they're doing on the farm. We had some testimony recently of Ms. Mixon, one of the caretakers who called Alec and told him, you know, you got to come see mom. And this was at four o'clock. So at some point he found out he does have to go see his mom. And then he's talking to Maggie about that. But if Maggie wasn't going to be staying at Moselle, the dogs wouldn't have been there and the dogs were there. So I feel like there's been some testimony on both sides of that, but I think it's definitely going to be something that's in the state's mind to show that this was all planned. He was the only one that

knew they were there. They weren't planning on going there, but for that day. But then how does that fit in with the motive of everything's coming crashing down that day because he gets confronted with the check? What time exactly was he confronted with the check versus when he calls Maggie to show up? The state never put, in my opinion, a clean timeline of motive and getting them to Moselle at the right time to commit this crime, to then show up at mom's house to create this alibi. Instead, they've just kind of given conclusory statements about, oh, this is what happened. He lured them there. Financial motive was closing in, decided to kill them and then create an alibi.

And again, I think that goes just not the state attorney's fault or the attorney general's fault, but that goes to the investigation that goes to SLED. They're just missing a lot of evidence that they would have. I thought they did a good job of establishing that he lured Maggie there, that the sister talked about how he got her there by saying, I want you here to go visit. I can't remember which of the parents, both of his parents were ailing, but I want you to come to visit the parents and that the sister felt so bad. She cried on the stand saying, I told her to do it. It's like the parent, you need to go. So that to me actually was persuasive. I'll say one other thing about the timeline. Before Alec, they put on a friend of Paul Murdoch and the prosecution got that guy to admit that Paul's schedule was erratic,

that it was totally unpredictable, that you never knew where he was going to be. And I thought, I was guessing that the reason for that was the prosecution is trying to undermine that like some intruders, like somebody who was lying in wait could have known that Paul was going to be at the kennels that night at 9 p.m. and committed this murder, that only somebody who was very close to him, like a dad, would know exactly where he was. That brings me to, before we go, Ronnie, your thought. Do you believe that there is a possibility Alec Murdoch wasn't the trigger man, that Alec Murdoch may have hired another murderer who committed these crimes? Yeah, absolutely. If you had asked at the end of the state's case, did they prove that Alex pulled the trigger on the gun that killed Paul? I don't think so. Or did they prove that Alex pulled the trigger on the gun that killed Paul? I don't think so.

Or did they prove that Alex pulled the trigger on the gun that killed Maggie? I don't think so. The question was, did they prove that Alex was involved in some way? I think absolutely. That the absence of any other viable suspects, his presence at the kennels, his lies about being there, the fact that weapons from the house appear to have been used in the commission of the crimes, his association with drug dealers, his $50,000 a week habit, if he really had one. Did he have involvement? Yes.

Is he the trigger man? I don't know about that. I feel, as you guys do, that as compelling as the case is, and I do think he's guilty. It's my opinion. They've been doing a pretty good job of establishing reasonable doubt, especially with their attacks on SLED. And it's stunning to me that they would take this risk. I realize they had a couple of things to explain, but it's just stunning. Ronnie, Peter, please come back.

That was a great discussion. Really appreciate it. Thank you. And we'll continue our coverage of this trial tomorrow. How will the cross-examination go? That's really the thing to keep your eye on. We will soon find out and we'll have it covered for you on the next program. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.