The Megyn Kelly Show - All Eyes on Virginia, with Salena Zito, Comfortably Smug, Josh Holmes, and Michael Duncan | Ep. 194

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Comfortably Smug, Josh Holmes, and Michael Duncan, the hosts of the Ruthless Podcast, and Salena Zito, columnist for The Washington Examiner, to talk about how all eyes in the political world are on Virginia as it's election day in the governor's race, the implications of a Youngkin or McAuliffe win, McAuliffe's fatal mistake, the issue of schools and what's happening in America's schools now, who the Democrats may run for president in 2024, the absurdity of the Kaepernick Netflix documentary, the "negligence" of D.C. insiders, the impact of the Afghanistan withdrawal on voters, media uproar over Tucker Carlson's 1/6 special, Alec Baldwin's tonedeaf Halloween posts, and more.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. It is Election Day in America and voters are hitting the polls right now. But all eyes in the political world are on Virginia and a battle that has serious 2022 and 2024 ramifications and really just could be a statement overall about where we are when it comes to American life, culture. So many issues that this should be illuminating on. Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who was considered a lock about five weeks ago here, they were predicting this is going to be a landslide. This was a no brainer. He was going to win. He's already been the Virginia governor, is now neck and neck to be charitable to McAuliffe with Republican Glenn Youngkin. They are just a point or two apart

in the averages of all recent polls. The results from today will no doubt set a precedent for what's to come. Is it going to change the way our schools approach critical race theory and all this crazy far left indoctrination they've been doing? Is it going to change the way our politicians run? Is it going to make Democrats listen to their constituents, many of whom are Democrats telling them we don't want this and parents do have a right to participate in school agendas and so on? No matter how it comes out, right? Unless it's sort of got her finger on the pulse of the attitudes down there and what she's hearing. But first I have been looking forward to this, the hosts of the Ruthless podcast, Michael Duncan, Josh Holmes, and the man known to the Twitter world and yours

truly and his quote minions, that's what they call their followers, as comfortably smug. This is so fun, you guys. Thank you so much for being here. Oh man, what a blast. I can't believe you actually invited us. We'll see how this goes, right? Thanks for having us. My pleasure. All right, so let me just make sure everybody at home understands who we're seeing here. Josh, you're in the middle. Smug, you're on the right, incognito. And Michael, you're on the left. Yep.

Okay, good. It's us. Good. Okay, so for the folks watching on the YouTube universe, that's the deal. And can we just address the comfortably smug thing off the top? Because smug, you got to explain to people why you use that name and why you are wearing a hat and glasses. I mean, you're not like on an FBI most wanted list. No, no, not at all. You got to explain to people why you use that name and why you are wearing a hat and glasses. I mean, it's not you're not like on an FBI most wanted list.

No, no, no. We're not entirely sure. Basically, I like to have the luxury of being able to go to a restaurant or a grocery store and not have anyone who may have maybe a left leaning viewpoint and isn't happy about it. I remember it was Maxine Waters who, during the Trump years, was like, if you see... Yeah, get in their face. Get in their face. So I'm happy to maintain that luxury in my life. That doesn't sound like you because you give it to everyone on your podcast

and you're so cutting in a fun way. Is that a thing? I think it's a thing. I think a lot of what we do is hold the left accountable the way the mainstream media does on a daily basis to conservatives. Right. We try to laugh and have fun, right? Megan, it's like what you do. I mean, we try to lighten it up a little bit, present it in a way that people are not just sort of having to wade through newspaper columns, but actually having a laugh with some friends and kind of relate to and how it applies to their own life. Well, what I love about Ruthless is it's, yes, all the things you just said, but also it's an insider's perspective. So I learned stuff from you guys that I wouldn't otherwise know because you've lived it.

You've worked on Capitol Hill. You've worked on campaigns. You've worked in PR. You know how all these guys are, how they're spinning. I could speak about media and how we do it, but you can speak about politicians, their aides, everybody on Capitol Hill in a way that is really illuminating and just it spares no one. Right? Well, it's nice of you to say that. Thank you, first of all. But I think when we started, our goal was obviously to hold the left accountable,

hold the media accountable as best we could. But as it's grown over time, like you said, there's a lot of Republicans who want to come on and express their point of view in a way that really doesn't translate in a 30-second sound bite on cable news or anything else. And so the interviews have become a bigger deal for us. And we've, I think over the course of the year, we've obtained some really critical insight in having a little bit of longer time. I know you probably feel this way on your own program. If you sit back and actually ask people the things that make them tick, you have a much better idea of how things are going to play out.

Our ability to do that in Ruthless, I think, has been a fun addition that we didn't see coming. People like seeing people be normal, politicians being normal. It's so rare. We don't have to tell you, but there's a lot of media out there, partisan media that you're being lectured to all the time. And people like to have fun. I feel like we record this podcast for my friends back home who are sort of culturally

conservative. They don't stay up on politics all the time, but during drive time, they'd love 30 minutes of just, you know, knowing what they should care about that day. And I think what we do really well and why we have so much fun is we're sort of reveling in revealing the theater of politics, right? And like how silly some of this acting is that's done this kayfabe here in this town because we've lived it. We know it. And we,

we laugh at it. Well, what I was listening to you recently, I saw the, you got the Politico treatment recently. They tried to take out ruthless. That guy, he's a bitter,

bitter man. He was really coming after you. I was like, wow, this guy seems kind of like a prick. Cause I really love the show. I mean, that's a very fair assessment, honestly then i listened i wanted to see what you

guys because one thing i love about you is you will go after anybody who comes for you and i remember caitlin jenner canceled on you guys yeah you did like a 15 minute you just ripped her you just don't don't cross the guys at Ruthless because they are, as they say, ruthless. But political, why did they take out the hatchet for you? Well, so there's two reasons, right? I'll let Michael and Smug explain the second. The first is, look, guys like this who wrote the article, he did the same thing to Dave Portnoy over at Barstool Sports, right?

2,000, 3,000 words, doesn't even call to sort of even do the basic fact checks. So this dude listens to like an episode or two of Ruth Bliss and decides he's going to pen 2,000 words on everything that makes us tick. The problem is his worldview is that we as conservatives need to fit in this little neat box. And these are the only things that we should be able to talk about. This is what motivates conservatives. Like we're zoo animals animals, right? The fact that we don't fit in his box means that he has something to lose, frankly. What if there is something that is conservative that has young people interested, that is funny, that's culturally relevant? All of those things are an anathema to guys like this who, I don't know if you see it, it's like, this is not somebody who should be lecturing anybody on what looks cool.

He can't stop himself, you guys, can he? You told Josh not to mock his looks and he won't listen? I can't listen. I can't listen. And I mean, one of the central critiques that he had was this podcast is not Pod Save America. And it's, I mean, well, correct. We are nothing like Pod Save America. If you wanted a left-leaning podcast, you've come to the wrong place.

Right. Yeah. Right. With conventionalism and everything else. But there's another reason that Duncan, I mean, you sort of like created this problem for us. So you should speak to it. I mean, I don't know that for sure, but I think I probably did. You know, I mean, it is the Ruthless Podcast after all.

And we are pretty ruthless when, pretty ruthless when we go after people. But basically, last week, we did this segment on this liberal billionaire, dark money, fake news ecosystem that is now getting a fresh coat of paint. And you've got Reid Hoffman, you've got George Soros, and these people spending tens of millions of dollars with this Democratic consultant, Tara McGowan, who, you know, she started Courier Newsroom, which was basically this network of fake news, left-wing sites that would- Literal fake news. Literal, literal fake news, like stood up out of nowhere.

And their job is basically to masquerade as news and just run hit pieces on Republican candidates and then advertise those on platforms like Facebook. Well, the thing that's interesting is that these same people like Tara McGowan spent four years saying, you know, Russia stole the election for Donald Trump. And it's the, you know, that's the money. The bots on Facebook is the reason why Hillary Clinton voted for Hillary Clinton, which, of course, is absurd. But to then turn around and say, oh, I'm going to start all these fake news sites and that's good. And to have Politico come out and do a Q&A with her about this relaunch of this liberal dark money ecosystem, I thought was

pathetic. They legitimized her. So it would be like them putting on an Alex Jones and being like, so what are you doing in your new iteration? And congrats on your new- Yeah, how are things going? It's exactly that. Yeah. You know? So they totally legitimized her and you were like, what the hell are they doing? And they didn't- Right.

And they didn't presumably like that. Open Secrets did some great work exposing all of the fake news websites and the ecosystem that Tara had created. Yeah. And I was talking to some friends back in Silicon Valley, and their theory was part of what Reid Hoffman, one of the billionaires funding this group, is trying to do, is get his name off the search results for when he got caught in Alabama and had to apologize for putting fake news out there. The Alabama special election, Reid Hoffman funded an operation

that bought Russian bots and then went to the media and basically convinced the media that these Russian bots were actually being organized by Vladimir Putin to prop up the Republican. It was a complete false flag operation. Now that guy is going to spend tens of millions of dollars spreading what he calls good information. Oh, my goodness. The upshot of this, Megan, is that Michael didn't appreciate it. I didn't appreciate it. I got a little aggressive.

I replied and I was like, this is fucking pathetic. It gets even better. So he replies to Politico about how ridiculous it is for them to try to rehab Tara and read in this way. And the author of that hit piece about us

was one of the writers for the fake news sites that Tara. He worked. He was not disclosed. He did not disclose that he had written for one of the fake news sites. No, that'd be crazy. But so, you know, I'm in her reply saying it's pathetic. The next day they do a hit piece on us. So, you know, I mean, you can kind of string it together. Yeah. You know, it's interesting, too, because the funny thing was, you know, you just Josh can't stop himself from going after the guy's looks. But it's kind of relevant because he went after you guys for being somehow uncool. I know you said something like you were geriatric millennials or something like that.

I was like, Megan, Megan, if you like those of us who are Gen Xers, go ahead. If he liked our podcast, I would quit. I would I would delete the master. I would delete every episode and burn the studio to the ground. Well, so I started calling him Sally Jesse, right? Because he looks just like Sally Jesse Raphael. And the fellas thought that was gratuitous. In fact, I think-

That is actually a geriatric reference. That was the issue. They said, you're only confirming his point by calling her Sally Jesse. By using that reference. Be that as it may, look at him, right? I mean- I have it. I actually, I saw his name and I actually, I confess, I didn't click on it. I didn't really need your description sort of brought it home.

But, you know, you've said sort of this is a podcast for people, not for people who get stuffed in the locker, but for those who did the stuffing. And I think that sort of boils down the disagreement between you guys and this political writer in a nutshell. That's a very fair assessment. All right. And I think that sort of boils down the disagreement between you guys and this political writer. That's a very fair assessment. All right. So let's move on to the news. I want to get your take on Virginia. It's kind of exciting.

Do you feel excited? I'm excited about this race to see how it comes out. Yeah. No, look, I mean, no question that Virginia is a much bluer state than it was 10 years ago, the lastalities are really interesting. There is a party in power that has fallen out of favor with the American public, right? And it hasn't reached the base of the Democratic Party at this point. It's obvious the independence across this country, but it's not obvious the Democrats, and clearly not this batch of Democrats who are trying to do another couple of trillion dollars of spending and make

the problem worse. So Virginia has always been that first canary in the coal mine. It's an off-year election that sort of resets the dial and shows people what sort of Republicans, Democrats, and independents are thinking. In 05, huge Democratic win. Democrats take over Congress in 06. 09, it's a huge Republican win. And Republicans take over Congress in 10, 17, huge Democratic win. You see the pattern continue. Now it's our view, at least it's my view, that the tide has shifted extraordinarily here. And Glenn Youngkin has run a good campaign.

He's talked about things like education that makes that center-right, center-left part of the electorate interested in voting for a Republican, which is a little different than you've seen over the last four years. I think the wind's at its back. We'll see what happens. But I really like in a state that went by 10 points for Joe Biden one year ago, the fact that we're even talking about it, in my view, is a really positive sign. And I live in a very blue part, as you do, Holmes, of Virginia, in Northern Virginia. And so I expect a lot of Democrat turnout there at my polling place this morning. But my favorite thing to do is to take that Democrat sample ballot from the poll workers

who are working outside, because it's a real great cheat sheet to know everything to vote against. Well, Maggie, you've lived in blue areas your entire life, right? I mean, I have, including Northern Virginia. I was in Alexandria for a while. You know how that works. It's like, oh, you want money on this bond? No. Oh, this independent school? No. But they have the Democrats standing out front. They're like, you want a sample ballot? They give it to you. it's all the pre-filled in stuff that tells you who to vote. For Dunks and I, it's like a perfect roadmap of what not to do, right? I wasn't following this particular board race, but now that you've provided me the endorsed

Democrat, now I know who to vote for. We can hope that maybe some of the parents in Northern Virginia, even if they are registered Democrats, use that cheat sheet the same way this time just to express. Well, that's certainly how it's looking. I mean, you know, the the tightening of this race is not a bunch of Republicans who are getting ready to vote for McAuliffe changing their mind. McAuliffe is losing his own party and he's losing independence by big numbers right now. And it boils down to education. The polls have shown that. And yesterday he did the act of a truly desperate man, politician.

He played the race card, right? He's it's getting tight, tight, tight. He's lost an eight point advantage. And now, according to the Fox News poll, it's gone the other way. Eight points, Yunkin, if you believe that poll, which you might. I mean, who knows? We're going to know soon. And decided to play the race card by saying what we really need is more, you know, is fewer white teachers. White teachers are the problem in Virginia. Here's a little bit of how he managed to communicate that. What bothers me to my core is what this man is doing.

He's dividing parents against parents, parents against school boards. He's using your children as political pawns in his campaign. It is a racist dog whistle. Folks, we are better than that. We will not have that hatred here in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I guess, when it comes to races, races, teachers versus students. I mean, he's obviously pandering. It's so obvious. And it's an act of desperation. What do you guys think?

I mean, I think, you know, Holmes earlier brought up a great point that you've got Youngkin who ran a great campaign. And a contrast with that is McAuliffe has run just a truly despicable campaign. Right. He sent his kids to private school, first of all. They went to Potomac School, right? Right. And you had last week, the Lincoln Project sent up operatives dressed as white nationalists with tiki torches to try to dupe the media into thinking that white nationalists are

showing up to support Youngkin. And until I think it was a vice news reporter confronted the Lincoln Project after identifying the Democrat operatives, the Lincoln Project was not going to take responsibility until someone found out. They were hoping the media would continue pushing this message. The McAuliffe campaign, their comm staff were all pushing out, this is despicable. Look at who Youngkin is. He's got white nationalists here so across the board the mccullough campaign has tried to make this this uh campaign about donald trump about how uh america is a racist nation and that isn't the issues that voters are concerned with that's totally right

also megan he made mccullough made a fatal error in this campaign, which was, it happened in the debate at the end of September, where he said point blank that parents don't have any or should not have any input into the education of their kids. It's between the teachers and their kids. Now, everybody in the world knows that he screwed up, right? But he wouldn't admit it. He didn't admit it. In fact, he doubled down on it, And so he went the last three weeks where the issue of education became the primary issue in the Commonwealth of Virginia, doing the same sort of messaging that parents has driven them absolutely nuts. He's added this to this fiction that CRT and everything else is not real. Right. What he says is all this is fake. It's a fake contract, which will come as news to the people in Loudoun County who've been dealing with this for the last six months. Well, yeah, because, I mean, they had their kids at home doing Zoom school for a year and they could hear. They could see.

And so, I mean, what are you going to believe? Like McAuliffe or your lion eyes? Right. The New York Times had an article about the? Like, McAuliffe or your lion eyes? That's exactly right. The New York Times had an article about the Yunkin-McAuliffe race, and they spoke with a gentleman. He was a lifelong Democrat voter who said he's going to be supporting Yunkin because while Zoom school was in session, he heard one of his teachers telling his daughter that all white men are like- The slave owners of the 21st century. Yeah, it's just sounds like Colin Kaepernick's new documentary on Netflix.

Yeah, we're actually going to get to that in a minute, which is how I know I'm not sitting around watching Colin Kaepernick in my spare time. Trust me, either on the football field or anywhere else if I can avoid it. Yeah, so that's the problem, because parents shouldn't be involved in education is a bad message any year, but it's particularly bad this year. And McAuliffe in the midst of his floundering and sort of doubling down on that message and then trying to play the race card is also apparently disconnected from the truth. A, saying CRTs and not being taught in schools, but B, he also went out last night and said um glenn youngkin is finishing out his campaign by doing an event with donald trump here in virginia

even politico who we've already bashed on this program he said and i quote that was a lie people listening for politico to say that about a democrat i mean like it has to be such an blatant obvious falsehood so it was obviously like young did not do an event with trump trump did his teletubby rally um i don't know what was like tell around whatever young had nothing to do with it and mccall was so desperate to tie them together he was like aha this is it it's so it's unbelievable it's so pathetic right i? I mean, so Democrats run the risk of every time they have any sort of electoral success, watch this over the last like 10, 15 years. Anytime they have success on something, they just refuse to run the next election any

differently, right? And so 2020, the only thing that worked was Donald Trump. They could just keep beating it into suburban voters' heads and something will happen. In 2021, everybody's like, yeah, but we have record inflation. We've got ships out in the middle of the Pacific. We've got an immigration border crisis going on. You ruined the Middle East with that Afghanistan pullout. We've got problems and situations everywhere. And this guy's barking about somebody who's hanging out in Palm Beach, right? It just doesn't make any sense. I mean, their calculation was completely backwards of McAuliffe kept trying to make this election in Virginia about Donald Trump and then brought in Biden to his rallies.

And all voters can connect Biden with these days is every problem that they're facing, whether it's the grocery store, whether they're at the gas pump trying to fill up their car with record gas prices. So the real numbers that they should have been looking at is not, you know, Trump popularity numbers. They should have looked at how Biden's numbers are tanking, how that could affect their situation. It's absolutely incredible. There was a recent poll out. I think we talked about it on the last episode that a majority of Democrats want a new candidate

for 2024. Yes. They don't even want Biden. And again, kudos to, you know, Youngkin's campaign for not taking the bait. They stayed on message. They talked about how he wants to repeal a gas tax,

repeal a grocery tax, because people are dealing with really hard times right now. And meanwhile, McAuliffe is not addressing any of their issues and any concerns that parents do have. He says, don't even exist.

It's all made up. Yeah. Oh, and then he's also misstating the COVID numbers every day. I think it's 1142. He keeps saying 1142 kids are hospitalized right now with COVID in Virginia. 19. It's 19. It was 19 last week. It's super backwards way to look. First of all, there's a Democratic governor of Virginia, right? So, and this guy is a physician, Ralph Northam. I don't know why you want to He's many things.

Blackface aficionado. No, he may have been in a KKK robe, so stop that. That's right. He's got a Halloween after all. So, but that is part of his problem too, right? And it's Democrats' problem

overall in that Joe Biden convinced the base of the Democratic Party that a pandemic based on a coronavirus would go away the moment you change the inhabitant of the Oval Office. Right. And the fact that he showed up and then seven, eight months in, it's actually worse. Now, that's a hell of a message to sell back to your people that you convinced in Trump was the problem. Yeah. The fact that more people, more Americans have now died in the United States as a result of COVID since 2021 than in 2020. And Joe Biden was handed multiple vaccines.

Right. And the situation has not improved. He has not followed through on his promise to shut down the virus, not the economy. We've got the exact opposite where the economy is more restrictions and the Republicans don't. So this is a line of demarcation. Meanwhile, it's like, okay, but then there's truth and there's an absolute falsehood. And this one's so easy to point out. 1142 is not the same as 19. I mean, some basic math skills would be nice in the governor. But let's pause and leave it there for now because I want to pick it up in a moment on Colin Kaepernick. There's a lot more political stuff to go over, but this Colin Kaepernick documentary that Netflix is running is insanely racist. I mean, it is insanely racist. And the fact that we don't have Netflix employees

walking out over that one says a lot about America 2021. Stay tuned more with the fellas right after this. So I want to get to Colin Kaepernick in one second, because it's just what I saw there was so great. I'm like, okay, Netflix is a duh. That's like the most predictable move ever, that they're going to do a documentary on Colin Kaepernick. But when I actually saw the clip, it was jaw dropping. Like, first of all, he's a terrible narrator horrible his acting skills are almost as bad as his you know honesty on twitter um but the the fact that netflix would actually have the nerve to put out this obviously racist anti-white and like it's stunning to me and i don't think we're going to see any walkouts the way we saw with the transgender person over the day uh the dave

chappelle thing so i am going to get to colin kaepernick in one second but before i go there i want to pick up on what you were just saying one second ago michael uh democrats want to sub out biden over 40 according to the latest mayor's poll 40 of democrats believe their party will have a better chance of winning in 2024 if biden's replaced at the top of the ticket 44 of democrats and democrat-leaning appendants want another candidate on the ballot. Just 36 percent want to keep Biden just 36 percent. And by the way, this has Biden's approval rating at 44 percent, which dovetails with the most recent poll on him.

So his numbers are tanking on overall approval. Seventy percent of the people think the country's heading in the wrong direction. And now even almost, I mean, not quite a majority, but over 40% of Dems want him gone. So you guys tell me what that portends. Let's just start with midterms in 22. Well, number one, I would say, you know, we're talking about Virginia earlier. But the reason why Democrats are so frustrated with Biden right now is McAuliffe, even if McAuliffe wins by three, if you extrapolated that out to the midterm, that would mean 29 seats that Republicans would pick up.

Why? Explain that. I don't understand math. It's based on the index of all the congressional races. If you look at the partisan makeup of what will be the swing districts, if you look at the shift in Virginia from 10 points of a Biden win in 2020 to, let's say, a McAuliffe win by three, if you look at the partisan makeup of every congressional district, and some of this is changing, obviously, with the redistricting and everything. But as the maps are drawn right now, if you looked

at the partisan lean of all of those districts around the country, it would result in 29 seat pickup by Republicans, even if McAuliffe wins by three. So that's why they are ringing the alarm bells right now, because, you know, even if he he wins by three, it still looks terrible for him next year. I think the funniest damn thing about this whole thing, Megan, is the fact that we are literally less than a year into Joe Biden's presidency. We're dealing with all of this in such fast forward, but you got the guy nodding off and in the international stage. He hasn't completed a full sentence in the better part of a month. He hasn't done a press conference since I don't know when. I mean, they literally can't take him out of the box.

So, I mean, if you're a Democrat, you're saying to yourself, we get ourselves in trouble, the kind of trouble that we're feeling right now with virtually every issue. How is this guy going to help dig us out? And I think the answer to that's pretty obvious. He's not right. Exactly. They know it. By the way, here is that moment of Biden falling asleep at the climate summit that he's over in Glasgow attending. You can see his aide rushes

in to try to help him. But here it is. This is a magnificent planet. This conference is one of the most important meetings in history. You have the chance to make decisions and reach agreements which will affect the lives of generations to come. You are in a position of extraordinary power. You can change forever the trajectory we are on. You can make a world that is once again full of hope, not fear. This is my message from Earth to COP. On behalf of WE the 15, I ask that you continue to support the work of the, not fear. This is my message from Earth to come. On behalf of we, the 15, I ask... So for the people listening, it's just Biden asleep.

It's just Biden. The whole thing is Biden with his eyes closed until finally one of his aides comes over. And it was a disability rights advocate speaking up front. Apparently, I don't know, that may be something Joe Biden may be becoming familiar with firsthand at this point. Megan, that's ruthless. I love it. That is ruthless. There you go. I love it. There's some evidence he's struggling. Yeah, so he's not all there or so it would appear. And, you know, we've all seen that. I've seen that

with my grandpa, my grandma over the years, but they're not president of the United States and they're not at the National International Climate Summit trying to figure out climate change for us. So, yeah, your point is they want to get rid of him. But let me ask you guys, to whom do they go? To whom do they go if they if somebody taps him gently on the shoulder and says, maybe that that stuff about being a one term president that you originally said maybe you should stick by that because it's not it's not going to be her it's not going to be harris so i i i have a benefit of i also get a lot of democrat operatives who talk to me especially when it's primary season they've got the daggers

out for each other and i've been hearing uh, you know, a few whispers here and there about it can't be just Kamala. Pete should step up to the plate. Pete. So there's going to possibly be like a Pete versus Kamala showdown to decide who's going to be the standard bearer of that party. Because like, like, like Duncan said, it's become pretty clear Biden's not an awe-inspiring leader and he's not going to be the recipe for victory. And neither is Pete Buttigieg. Is that who we're talking about? Pete Buttigieg? The transportation secretary? Yeah. I mean, he's showing he's doing a great job managing our infrastructure. Is he back on the job? Has he left the baby yet?

We know he showed up at his documentary premiere. In Chicago. Yeah. Yeah. But because of the wealth of goodwill that he has had on our nation's shipping lanes, I can't imagine a reason why we wouldn't want to elevate him to a national discussion. Oh, my gosh. I'm feeling the Democrats pain right now. I mean, even as ruthless as you are, you must feel a little bad for them. Like those are not good options. Biden, Kamala Harris or Pete, there's got to be somebody else that they could draft in. I don't feel a bit bad about anything.

I would convince the Dems, give Bernie another shot. I think, you know, he clearly got robbed in the last primary. You know, I think the progressive voters should stand up, stand against Biden and make sure their voices are heard. Well, you know what? You raise a good point. Smug raises a good point here because, know they didn't get back Bernie on the ballot but they took his agenda yeah right I mean he didn't he didn't win the battle but he may have won the war because I can't spell a lick of difference between what Biden has has done and what Bernie Sanders said he would well I'll tell you. I'll tell you one up front that I've talked about with Crystal and Sagar, which is Bernie's not woke. But yes, you're right. The financial agenda. Yes. So it's like the if you're a Republican,

kind of the worst of all worlds, right? Far left social agenda and far left socialist economic agenda in this current president. Which is so amazing to say that Joe Biden is now reincarnated as a woke Democrat. It's incredible how they piece this administration together. When he had Kamala during the primaries on the debate stage say, Joe Biden, you're a racist. And now she's the vice president. You're hired. It's incredible.

Speaking of racism. The last thing I'll say is it does show the casual relationship that Democrats have with the political attack of racism. Right. Oh, yeah. It's not real. No. If you had a Republican primary, if one candidate called the other candidate a racist and meant it, they would never speak to each other again. Right.

Democrats do it so casually. No. She's now his vice president. Right now, I'm thinking about the Ted Cruz attack on Donald Trump right before he secured the nomination. Remember, he was like, I'm going to tell you what I really think about him. She's now his vice president. He and I, we've had some Twitter dust ups. I mean, he's insane. This is a racist guy. He really is a racist guy and he hates our country. He hates America. So, all right. It's just another day that Netflix gives this guy his own special. And I'm like, oh, I guess it's going to be about how racist America is.

It turns out to me it's how racist Colin Kaepernick is. I'm going to describe for the audience listening to this, the clip that we're about to see. Because, well, you know what? Let's just play it. We'll leave my mic up and I'll explain when it gets to the weird turn, what we're going to see. But just for your listening at home, it starts off with the NFL draft with football players being drafted by the NFL and the sort of being looked at up and down by, I guess, the owners or the managers, what have you. And then there's a shift in the middle to where they turn into slaves. The players turn into slaves.

These are actually actors and being like looked at by slave masters. And this speaks to his overall point. Watch and listen. They don't want you to understand is what's being established is a power dynamic. Before they put you on the field, teams poke, prod, and examine you, searching for any defect that might affect your performance. No boundary respected. No dignity left intact.

Here's the shift where they're switching from NFL wannabes to sleeves. Come on, boy, hurry up. Look at that shape there. Look at this. Mr. Farmer got your bid. 30, James, 30 to you. 100. So, next one coming up, best one we got.

500. 500. 600. 300. It's going back and forth now between NFL owners looking at players and would-be slave owners looking at slaves to buy. Unbelievable. Have you guys seen that? No. I mean, that's incredibly offensive. It is. It's incredibly offensive.

And it doesn't make any sense. He says, you're seeing a power dynamic be established. You're about to get paid multi-millions of dollars. A job interview generally has a power dynamic. Right. I mean, for him to be like, okay, you're at the combine and they're timing how quick you run 40 yards to slavery. I mean, it denigrates the, you know, the history of slavery where people were forced or taken from their families and he's comparing them to people getting multimillion contracts. That's exactly it, Smug. Who made him

show up at the NFL combine, you know, to compare that willing and usually dream come true moment for an NFL football player to slavery. How does this wind up on Netflix? I mean, look, this is Colin Kaepernick is one of the most deeply of his time characters that I can think of in that the progressive left has become over the last 10 years entirely a victimhood culture. And you cannot have any control of your own destiny. It's all predestined by people who are controlling what you do, what you think, where you can go, how much money you can make, which is the exact opposite of the American dream and everything that conservatives fight for on a day-to-day basis. But where that goes now, extrapolated out, is that there's a constituency for it, right? And I find it so fascinating, so fascinating,

that Netflix, which is twisting itself into knots to try to defend Dave Chappelle, is now encountering zero resistance from the mainstream media about something like that, which is, I don't know anyone who doesn't find something like that deeply, deeply offensive. It's so, so he, just a couple of points on it. It's, by the way, it's called Colin in black and white, if you care to waste your time watching it. They, he says, okay, you heard the line. What they don't want you to understand, this is the NFL, is what's being established is a power dynamic. And of course, it's like, yes, and you are a player trying, you know, like, are the players supposed to be the ones who cast themselves into the role of teammate?

Or do we understand that there's a management structure and an ownership structure that is responsible for drafting you and picking you? Then he goes on, before they put you on the field, teams poke, prod, and examine you, searching for any defect that might affect your performance. Well, duh. You guys are probably the sports fans, but isn't that important to know if there is a defect? Say you're going to draft a starting pitcher.

You want to know if he's had Tommy John surgery, right? You want to know if his elbow works. What's Tommy John surgery? It's not about being black or white. It's not about slavery. It's about you're about to spend millions of dollars investing in the future of this young kid. And you need to know if they can play. Well, I just don't understand also where the race component of this comes into.

But let me add this. Well, let me help you, Josh, because he says no boundary respect, no dignity left intact. This is the NFL. So he makes it sound like they're doing strip searches of the players. And this is where he makes the leap to slavery. So, I mean, it's just the absurdity to compare what he willingly went through. And by the way, I'm told that in his role as, you know, former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, his deal wound up being worth $ million dollars to being a slave is a real F you America moment. And I think it's an F you Colin Kaepernick moment.

I can't believe somebody at Netflix didn't get up and walk their asses out over this bullshit propaganda about our country, the NFL, white people in general. This is outrageous. Well said, Megan. Well said. Not to mention the fact that he's making literally tens of millions of dollars from Nike, which is operating in a five iron away from a concentration camp, right? In China. Right. Yeah. I mean, this is not some sort of moral equivalence that somehow this guy has figured out and the rest of us haven't. This is a guy who has exploited a

capitalist system in a way that very few could, right? I mean, he's been the beneficiary of outrage that he alone has created, that he's parlayed into multiple contracts with massive corporate entities, all of which have their own moral dilemmas. He's laughing all the way to the bank. He's not outraged. He's overjoyed. Okay, now we're going to pick it up. I like asking the ruthless guys about stuff that I don't know where they're going to come down on. And next, that subject's going to be Alec Baldwin.

And it's got an interesting parallel because do you remember Kim Potter? She's the cop who accidentally shot Dante Wright last April. Remember, she said taser, taser, and she actually wound up shooting in an accidental shooting. Well, she goes on trial starting this month. And boy, oh boy, has the media treated that case very differently than the accidental shooting we just saw on a Hollywood set. I realize they're different, but it's kind of an interesting topic. We're going to take it up next.

And don't forget, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by going to youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Check out my bird attack from Friday. Abby, yeah, she was my heroine. Or if you prefer an audio podcast, go ahead and subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts, and you'll find all of our full archives there as well. All right, guys, so I've been following the Alec Baldwin thing. It's kind of interesting just to watch how it plays out and how the media covers it, right? And it's been, in my estimation, a pretty quick rush to cover for him, downplay his in it i realized he did not intend to shoot this cinematographer on set of his movie rust which is now not going to come out he says

but he did take a gun on set and pointed at somebody and it went off i don't know whether he pulled the trigger if it went off accidentally but it went off and you are not supposed to point a gun at somebody even if you believe it's loaded with blanks or dummy rounds as an actor on set. So there is some potential culpability on his part there. And he was a producer of this movie, which had multiple safety violations, according to reports. So he's in it. He's in the hot seat, potentially legally, as we discussed with Alan Dershowitz yesterday. Media loves to cover for somebody like Alec Baldwin because not because he's a Hollywood celebrity. I doubt they'd be doing this for Clint Eastwood. It's because he's a lefty and he's a committed lefty and he hates Trump. And he literally was the embodiment of Trump for Saturday Night Live and ripped him to shreds. And

I think their instinct with somebody like that is cover, cover, cover. Now, when it's a real life police officer like Kim Potter, who makes a mistake, higher charge of responsibility, not trying to say it's the same thing. But we saw that woman's mistake unfold on national television when she accidentally discharged her firearm instead of her taser. And it happened in April. She shot a guy named Dante Wright, who had tried to flee. There had been a violent resisting of arrest. He had sought to drag two cops while they held onto his car.

After that resisting arrest, there was an outstanding warrant for this guy's arrests and so on and so forth. And just for viewers who don't remember, here's what happened when Kim Potter accidentally discharged her firearm against him. Oh, my God. I'm sorry. Oh, my God. Yes.

Clearly an accidental shooting. I mean, you could hear it. She's, oh, shit. You know, it was my firearm. She now is going on trial, guys, facing 15 years or more. Prosecutors have sought an upward departure in the sentencing guidelines for this cop who doesn't have some long history of problems. They want her thrown away without the key and couldn't care less that it was an accident or not. And to me, it just sort of shows the

difference in how our society is leaning right now, or at least the leftists are leaning when it comes to accidental awfulness, right? True accidents. How do we punish them? Does it depend on your partisan stripes, on your uniform? What do you make of it? Well, look, I mean, both are incredibly tragic events, right, Megan?

I mean, these are areas where people lost their lives. I see them totally differently. In the Potter case, I think this is one of the moment issues that we are facing as a society when it comes to police and doing their job. This is a situation, clearly, she's made a mistake. to all of the public outrage that would follow the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis. The proximity of it alone has caused prosecutors to take this incredibly seriously. As you said, I didn't know this, but if they're seeking enhanced sentencing guidelines, that seems absolutely absurd. But it is part of the national dialogue that we are having. We as conservatives, I think, need to provide a better balance on this and speak to these issues a little bit more specifically than just the fact that crime is rising. We all know that. We also have an obligation to defend law enforcement officers, in my view, who are out there risking their lives, trying to keep our communities safe and know that accidents

do happen. And they're thrown into complicated situations. And this isn't the only case. I mean, obviously, the media would like to focus on an accidental discharge and not a suspect fleeing, right? Or you have these other cases where, you remember the knife attack? Oh, yeah. Where there were the two young women. Where LeBron tweeted about and and and this one girl is has the other girl pinned against a car and she has a knife and she is shot by an officer responding on the scene to a high pressure situation where you have to make snap judgments these officers have a very very hard job when the media reported it no one was talking about the

knife there were media people who are saying it was just, you know, it's just a childhood knife fight. Yeah. Which is the wildest thing. I mean, I don't recall any knife fights from my childhood. So I guess I say that is another sort of answer to your question, Megan. And that is like also the media, you know, in the aftermath of George Floyd has really changed the way that they report out these stories. And I mean, I think part of it is to generate more outrage and to generate more clicks and more revenue and to take something as horrific and a tragedy, an accidental discharge to this level where now we're in court trying to enhance

punishments, I think reflects that change in the way that the discussion happens through the media. We used to be able to look and see an accident and identify it as an accident, as a terrible human failing in the moment, and not try to pretend it's something akin to murder. And that's, I think, what should happen in the case of Kim Potter. It was clearly an accidental discharge, and she should not be thrown in jail for 15 plus years. And nor should Alec Baldwin, even though he'll have to answer for why he did point the gun. In any event, all of it plays out in the national eye and as does Ruthless with Michael Josh and

comfortably smug, the ever elusive. Thanks so much for being with us, you guys. All the best with it. Highly recommend it to all of you. And don't forget to stick around because Selena Zito will be here right after this break. Love her too. Joining me now is Selena Zito, a columnist for the Washington Examiner and a reporter who has traveled all over the country talking to everyday folks, including in Virginia, the battleground state voting today on its next governor. We're going to talk about Virginia, yes, but also the media's meltdown

around Tucker Carlson's January 6th documentary. You can find all of Selena's work, by the way, at selenazito.com. She joins now. Salina, great to have you here. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure. Oh, likewise. So, okay, let's talk about Virginia first of all. Can I just tell you first and foremost, I was stunned to see Larry Sabato. Good old Larry Sabato of the Crystal Ball. We used to have him on the Kelly File all the time. I don't know what's wrong with Larry, but he went on Fox or not on Fox on MSNBC yesterday and said, if if McAuliffe loses. And by the way, his own crystal ball just moved Virginia to Leans Youngkin. They moved it from Leans McAuliffe to Leans Youngkin. He goes on MSNBC and says, if McAuliffe loses, it's not about critical.

It's not about theory. It's about race and white rage. It was essentially what he said. I guess Larry's lost his marbles, but playing right into the McAuliffe closing message of playing the race card, trying to stir up minority voters in Virginia to fear Glenn Youngkin and his supporters as some sort of white nationalists. Yeah, you know, it's really a shame. I saw this behavior with Dr. Sabado beginning in 2015. And it's sort of part of, you know, what I've talked about a lot is our cultural curators,

people that are leaders in corporations, institutions, large media, academia, and sports entities who sort of live in the same super zip codes and do not share the same values as the people that they either are trying to sell something to or are trying to get their butts in their seats or are trying to instruct them on things that they're supposed to be experts on. And, you know, if Dr. Sabato had spent any time at all listening to voters, he would have understood that this election cycle has absolutely nothing to do with race. It's a very locally driven, localism driven election cycle that has to do with things that have to do with family, education, community, crime and safety. And those

are the top issues with voters. And to just dismiss it out of hand as being about race, which is something that unfortunately happens in our profession a lot, sort of takes away the values of what is important to voters. And they miss an election once again. Well, I mean, to me, there is an element of race on the ballot, but it's not with respect to a whiteists versus, you know, people who want to fight racism. It's about the infiltration into our K through 12 schools of this very divisive ideology and method of teaching that white people are oppressors, black people are the oppressed, which both both sides, both colors, both all groups find offensive, right? Black people no longer want to be told, no more want to be told that they're oppressed than white people want to be told they're the oppressors, especially children who have nothing to do with any of this. So I think that is definitely one of the things being debated down there, but not in the way that he dismisses if McAuliffe loses. It's basically a white backlash, which is what he said. Now, let me ask you about this, because the CRT problem down in Virginia is the same CRT problem we're having in states across this country where this this terrible

ideology is being taught to children as young as five and six years old. And if you listen to our media right now, I mean, if you were to listen, well, forget McAuliffe, Biden, our education secretary, Cardona, just went on The View and said we don't teach CRT in schools K through 12. It's a lie. It's a lie. As a mom of three young school children, I can tell you it's 100 percent true that they're teaching some derision of of CRT in our schools. I don't care what you call you. If it's classical school critical race theory who gives a shit it's some it's some real relative of that but they deny it and i'll just give you one example this morning so i every morning i listen to the left and the right podcast and i read the left and the right and this morning i did my daily listen to npr's podcast and here was how they were covering the virginia race and crt virginia's odd year elections are often seen as representative

of national trends. Democrat Terry McAuliffe was governor once before and campaigned on his past performance. Republican Glenn Youngkin is a former private equity CEO who picked up Republican criticism of schools, often criticizing them for things the schools don't teach. We did see very different strategies for animating the base. For Youngkin, that means drawing on conservative anxieties around education. At a packed rally at an airport hangar, he first cited Martin Luther King Jr., saying we should judge people based on their character, not race. Then he said schools were teaching students to view everything through the lens of race. And so on day one, I will ban critical race theory from being in our schools.

And it's worth noting here that critical race theory isn't actually in Virginia's K through 12 curriculum. OK, so he's going to ban a thing that isn't happening. Is Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat, even bothering to respond to that? Or do people in Virginia get it like this is not real? Oh, my God. It's infuriating. It's infuriating. It is real. what's happening rather than saying how you feel about something as a reporter. There's a lack of intellectual curiosity. Let's go in and find out what's going on. Let's go in and see if this is happening. And then the other problem is, Megan, and I think this is important to point out, is that a lot of these reporters who, again, as I talked about, live in these sort of super zip codes and, you know, sort of share values with a lot of things that are important to Democrats, might not even see it as critical race theory.

They might look at that and say, oh, this is how I feel. This is normal. But it's not. And it's not. And they discount firsthand accounts of it. I mean, this is a mom from Loudoun County. That's the county in which we had the the rape of the young girl in the school. There was an update on that today, by the way, that the mother of the perpetrator spoke to the Daily Mail. But listen to this Loudoun County mom. You tell her that there's nothing approaching critical race theory being taught in Virginia schools. Listen. My children are now in private school and are thriving. We had specifically moved into a case out of LCPS due to the swift and uncompromising political agenda of Superintendents Williams, Ziegler and the school board that have forced upon us. First, it was in early spring of 2020 when my six year old somberly came to me and asked me if she was born evil because she was a white person, something she learned in a history

lesson at school. Then you kept the schools closed for a year and a half despite the science indicating that it was safe for kids to return, and now you've covered up a rape, then arrested, humiliated, and falsely accused her parents of being domestic terrorists. I wish I could return my kids to LCPS. Private school is expensive, and I want my kids to be able to walk home from school with their friends in their own community. I refuse to allow you to destroy our schools. They are not your schools. They are our schools. You all should be ashamed and you should have the moral courage to admit you are wrong and step down. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Right. Senate began very granularly when parents were all of a sudden at home with their children in 2020

and they're hearing and seeing in a more intimate and in-your-face way of how their children were being taught and what they were being taught. And then that sort of snowballed into all of a sudden realizing, oh my goodness, look how much power a school board has over my children in terms of what they learn. And then another layer was added, look how much power a teacher's union has. And so the building blocks of this movement began, I would argue, in the spring of 2020 and has just continued to snowball as parents have understood the influence that that has been sort of taught to their their children in a way that they didn't understand when they sent their kids off to school. Yeah. And this is a massive dodge and massive gaslighting

by the Democrats and the media who are trying to tell us that critical race theory is not taught in K through 12. You can call it whatever the hell you want. I don't care. Great. Let's find a new name. But let's deal with what's real. What's real is that woman, six year old, was taught that she's evil because she's white. That in my kids school, the teachers were told that in every classroom where white children learn, there is a future killer cop. And then you've got reporting by Azra Nomani, who's part of Parents Defending Education, a great, great group, who's just come out with a piece saying in Fairfax County Public Schools, Rob Kerr, has been teaching a weekly two hour course to the teachers.

Why do they want the teachers to have this education? So they can impart it to the children. They can go into the school armed with this information at Marshall High School in Virginia called How to Be an Anti-Racist Educator. Oh, it has such a nice title. Sure. Great. We all know at this point anti-racist means racist. And these are just some of the items. OK, exploring andracist means racist. And these are just some of the items, OK?

Exploring and understanding whiteness. They are told to listen to this podcast by Bettina Love. We've heard her name before, thanks to Chris Rufo, who's done great reporting on Bettina Love, who is a critical race theorist. And it borrows key concepts from CRT, which holds that. Here's just a few items. All white people are intrinsic oppressors of minorities and especially black people. Education officials and politicians are denying all of this. Right. But but this particular woman, Bettina Love, has got a long

history of problematic teachings that go on and on about how dangerous white people are, how white people are to blame for the oppression of black people. And I could go on and on about how dangerous white people are, how white people are to blame for the oppression of black people. And I could go on and on with a long list of all the stuff that she has said, but it's divisive, and it's problematic. And it's what's got parents so outraged, Selena, and it's what could actually change this gubernatorial race today. Absolutely. And I think what is interesting is that, you know, if you talk and you and or listen to Black voters and Hispanic voters in Virginia, they are as infuriated about this teaching, this critical race teaching, or what theory teaching or whatever, again, it's probably going to get different names to try to sort of dilute that name. But they are as equally frustrated as white parents are. They

don't want people divided. These are people that live in their neighborhood. These are their kids play with each other's kids. Why would you create a tension that doesn't, you know, need to exist? And I think the other thing that is interesting, because I travel so much across the country. I have never seen so many signs for new people running for school board in small towns and medium towns and suburban areas all over the Great Lakes Midwest and down through Appalachia and in through Virginia as I have this time. I think we're going to see a lot of turnover in school boards because parents are getting more involved as they start to understand that they have the power to run and be a part of the solution and not be part of the problem.

Why would a school district require teachers to listen to Bettina Love, who, again, this is according to Chris Ruffo, his earlier reporting on her, but the latest reporting is that she's being taught in the in the Fairfax County Public Schools. Why would you want somebody to have access to your child's teacher who says as follows? Just a couple examples of her. This is Ruffo's reporting. She once gave a presentation to the San Diego Unified School System saying racism runs deep in the United States and blacks alone know who America really is. She believes children learn better from teachers of the same race. She doesn't like whites teaching blacks or I don't know how she feels about the opposite. She says public schools do not see blacks as human, that public schools are guilty of systemic anti-blackness and the

spirit murder of black and brown babies. She says whites are directly responsible for the plight of quote, dark children. She wants quote, abolitionist teachings. Whites, she says, need therapy to overcome their racism, ignorance, and history of harm. She says again, Bettina Love, whiteness reproduces poverty, failing schools, high unemployment, and trauma for people of color. Again, I don't care what you want to call it. I think it has direct links to CRT. But the point is, that is manifesting

in our schools, from our teachers, and ultimately, as that woman said, out of the mouths of babes when they come home, not understanding why they're being shamed for a pigmentation over which they have zero control. Right. Absolutely. And, you know, just that list of things you just said is so, you know, disheartening is not the right reaction. It's just shocking. Yeah. It's disgusting. of parents leaving public schools, going into private schools or homeschooling. Not every parent can afford that. Not every parent has the capabilities of doing homeschooling. So that's where you then see parents getting involved in public schools. And that's why you see people running for school board or making their voice known at

school board meetings and getting involved with the Parent Teachers Association. All kinds of great movements in American culture and American history always begin at the ground level, no matter what they have been, from civil rights to abolition. All of those things began at the ground level, began in communities. And this is one of those instances. I have said for months, this election cycle beginning today, all across the country, I'm really interested in following a lot of races across the country, not just Virginia, very local races. This is an inside, outside moment where it's not just left and right. Left and right pretty much means tight, close elections, like we saw last year, like we saw at the presidential, in the House, in the

Senate, right? Everything's pretty much down the middle. This inside-outside thing always hurts the party in power. We saw it in 2006 when the Republicans lost those midterm elections. We saw it again in 2010, again in 2014. And I think that that's where we are heading. And again in 2018 for the Democrats over the Republicans. But I think that we are again in another way because people are unsatisfied with who we sent to Washington. You know, we send people, we sent, America sent Biden and sent the Democrats to Washington, not with a huge mandate, not with a big overwhelming majority. They listened to what they ran on. They ran on being, you know, things are going to get calm. We're going to return to normal.

And Washington, once again, misreads why they were sent and decides that they're just going to spend like a bunch of drunken sailors and, you know, sort of redo our society. And that's why people are upset with Democrats. It's not that they love Republicans again or that they are in love with Republicans. They're just really mad at Democrats. Yeah. So that's an interesting way of looking at it. When you say inside, outside, you're talking the inside is the elites who are elected and are sitting in the side, the beltway. Outsiders are, in this case, parents nationwide, Democrat and Republican, who are saying you don't have a mandate to shove this kind of stuff down the throats of our kids to spend on our kids dime to pull troops out of Afghanistan in the way that you did. Like you were not given this blank check to push through these crazy agenda items that do not reflect our values, whether we have a D or an R after our names. Yes, this is very independent driven and it's taking along people along with it.

It's it's adding to the coalition, to the party that is out of power, which is the Republicans. And the best thing they could do is not do anything at all in terms of earning these voters. And I think that, you know, one of the things that we sort of miss is just how death Washington has become and their negligence on a lot of issues. You know, one of the Afghanistan has had more of an impact than I think anybody really realized. But when I when that happened in late August, I saw a dramatic shift among suburban independent voters. I saw them move away from the Democrats and they have not moved back because it's not because they didn't want America to leave Afghanistan. However, there's a nuance there. You know, Democrat reporters tend to forget to ask the second, third and fourth question.

They do not like how it was done. They believe that it was negligent, that believe that it did not live up to American standards. And they have moved away. And the Democrats have done nothing in a series of successive events to earn them back. It's so funny because it's like they the administration told us that was handled perfectly it was incredibly smooth the withdrawal like okay people know that's not true they say this stuff's not being taught in schools people know that's not true by the way virginia is a very big military state um yeah and and so it's almost it underscores your inside outside thing because it's like we

already don't trust you we already think you don't get us. We might normally vote for you because we like whatever your tax policy or we like Medicare for all, whatever the proposal is. But we don't want to be lied to. And we know what our eyes see and what our ears hear. And the fact that you either don't see it or you do see it and are lying about it creates an even bigger gulf between us. And you might need to be taught a lesson. You might need to be taught a lesson at the ballot box. And even I as a Democrat or I as a left-leaning independent,

this is the voters speaking, I'm going to go in there and I'm going to vote for Youngkin, knowing that we have a Biden in the White House, right? Democrats are more likely to vote cross-party lines. It works the other way, too, when you've got your party represented at the top, top level to teach you that lesson that you work for me, not the other way around. voting against Republicans, even if it was against their own interest in 2018 in those midterms, and or against their own interest in 2020 when voting for president, they aren't as tribal as we are led to believe. Voters are very independent thinking. And all you have to do is look at how much the ballots are split in a lot of states like

Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania. Let's just take Pennsylvania as an example in 2020. Joe Biden won. OK, he won narrowly. We forget to say that. More importantly, the state actually became more conservative. Two of the three statewide elected office went to Republicans who had no money and no message. And the Democrats were flush with money, but they won those

statewide elections. And if you look down ballot, Republicans were supposed to lose two of the 18 congressional or nine seats that they held. They didn't lose them. They won them. They didn't win them narrowly. They won them handsomely. And in the state house, in the state Senate, Republicans were supposed to lose their majorities in both of those houses. Not only did they, first of all, not have any money, and Michael Bloomberg and Eric Holder had all the money, they not only didn't lose a seat, they gained five seats. So voters were already sending a message to Washington, but they didn't read it. They said, oh, Joe Biden won. We have a majority. Let's go and do whatever we want. Yeah. We're not just a majority, a sweeping mandate,

which is just not being reflected. That's why 70 percent of the people don't like the direction of the country right now, which is not so great for the incumbent. More with Selena Zito in just one minute. We're going to get into the crazy loosening of screws over Tucker Carlson's new documentary on January 6th. I mean, the media's lost it. So they're so angry about Tucker doing this. Everything Tucker does gets this kind of reaction. We're going to talk about it just a little bit. So let's talk about Tucker, my pal Tucker Carlson, who I do love and I love that he upsets people.

And he takes risks and that's fine by me. I mean, I think we need some risk taking. It gets celebrated when it hurts a Republican. It doesn't get celebrated when it's somebody like Tucker saying something that might undermine a narrative that has taken hold. And I've learned this myself. If you touch January 6th with any narrative other than, it's horrible and Trump and all of his acolytes should never be seen again, they will sick the knives on you. So Tucker never cares about that stuff. And he is putting out a documentary called Patriot Purge. Last night, they aired part one. This is on Fox Nation, not the news channel. They put out part one and they suggested that we have yet to find sort of the main group who organized what we were told was an insurrection. They posit in the first piece that this has been compared 1-6 to 9-11, and yet we knew who committed 9-11, and we knew it almost immediately. And here we are, you know, months and months after 1-6, and we still don't know. And why is that? And they sort of suggest that there were some rebel rousers within this group who meant to stoke violence, confrontation, problems. Some may have been FBI. Some may have been sort of left-leaning agitators. But they were not necessarily all diehard Trumpkins who believed they were there to storm the Capitol and stop the steal. So that leads me to my question to you, which is the OK, that's his perspective.

That's actually how most Republicans feel. If you look at the polls, that's actually how most Republicans feel. Shock. It is. The media has had a complete and embarrassing meltdown over the fact that this is going on Fox Nation. OK, it's not even the news channel. And I'm going to play that mashup for you of some of that. This is this is a Gravian mashup, you guys. Just ask my team again. Yeah, it's Gravian. And just here's a flavor for the meltdown over Tucker's documentary. Tucker Carlson has created a terrorist recruitment video. Fox TV branching into fantasy programming. A new series from Tucker Carlson, Traffics and Conspiracy Theories

Surrounding the Insurrection on January 6th. Tucker Carlson attempting to rewrite history around the January 6th insurrection. Tucker Carlson makes a tribute video for the terrorists. Tucker Carlson is hitting a new low, completely rewriting the history of the Capitol insurrection in a way that defies belief. Tuckums previewed a documentary that goes beyond

the usual Daughters of the Confederacy rewrite of the January 6th insurrection. The Murdochs and Tucker Carlson, their primetime pyromaniac, appear to be hellbent on dragging this country into a civil war. Jefferson Davis would be proud. Seriously, how many more adjectives could they pull out to describe this? Civil war. I just feel like they haven't used enough it wasn't colorful enough daughters of the confederate rebel like okay joy reads always good for a laugh oh my stars so the the first to your point about risk taking, you know, Purdue President Mitch Daniels this year, I don't know if you heard it, did this incredible speech to all the students encouraging them to take risks, that we don't do that anymore. We don't do that enough anymore and that we are becoming a society that doesn't take risks. And so I commend Tucker Carlson for taking that

risk and going into a place and looking at something from a different worldview. And even more importantly, taking a look at it to me, I haven't seen it yet, but it appears as though this is a 365 look at what happened, warts and all, and sort of some intellectual curiosity as to what really happened, how did it start, and where did the grains of this begin? Yeah, well, they're getting criticized, he's getting criticized for suggesting, was this a false flag operation? And what that means is, is he positing that in fact, this whole thing was really being pushed by, say, Democrats or the FBI versus Trump supporters and Trump himself? And as I understand it, a question is being raised based on what we saw

with Governor Whitmer, where remember, there was reporting that she was the target of this kidnapping plot and they were going to do terrible things to her. And then it turned out something like nine of the 15 guys who were allegedly hatching this plot on her were FBI and were pushing it. And it does raise a legitimate question in that case about, is this like an FBI infiltration so that they can report on and keep an eye on a crime? Or is this the FBI creating a crime that would not have otherwise taken place in the hopes of catching a couple of losers on the criminality hook? And if that's the way the question gets asked, and there's evidence that there, and there already, there is some evidence that there was some law enforcement infiltrating on nine on one six from what i understand why is

it not a fair question to at least ask that false flag exactly but to what extent was law enforcement involved to what extent were democratic operatives involved that's a fair question to ask yes we are supposed to ask all the questions even the ones as journalists that make us uncomfortable. Why? Because it is our duty to find out what happened. We need to understand that. And if we only want to ask the questions that make us comfortable or safe or line up with an ideology, then we're not doing our job. We're not being thorough. And we have to question institutions.

We have to question authority. And wherever that takes us, that is what happened. No matter how, no matter, no matter if it's what we want it to be or not, we should, as journalists, ask the questions and get to the result. What happened? How did it happen? Who was involved? The New York Times is reporting that at least two FBI informants were involved on January 6th. So

this is not like the actual facts of this are coming out bit by bit in the months post-dating January 6th. And a good reporter follows them and you don't if you don't have ideological blinders on this would be a fascinating story if there really is a significant fbi role or government role or democrat role in creating what we saw on january 6th which i mean it was terrible there's no question you know hurting cops and people getting hurt so the death of ashley of Ashley, all of it was awful to watch. We should absolutely know who had a hand in it on both sides, whether they were law enforcement, meaning to keep an eye or who overstepped and crossed over into entrapment or Dems looking to create problems in the sort of the way Antifa does at some of these events. We should know.

But we have a total lack of curiosity if it doesn't support capital T, capital N, the narrative. Yeah, absolutely. We have a lack of curiosity. We have we also have a lack of risk. And that's a problem if we're going to be good at our jobs. Because you get punished because, you know, why, Selena, in part, right now there's a push by all these media people to get Facebook, Twitter.

They haven't posted this clip on YouTube, Tucker's show, the first installment. But Facebook, Twitter, and I can't remember one other of the social media sites, to take off the clip. Say it needs to be buried. You can't even air it, right? It's so offensive and incendiary. And that's what leads people who aren't as powerful as Tucker with his bigger platform to say, I'm not touching that with a 10-foot pole, people who might be more open-minded to pursuing facts.

Right. Absolutely. When you see something getting silenced, when you see someone getting silenced, there's this initial or this intuitive reaction to pull back because you're afraid of the ramifications. You're afraid of the impact that it's going to have on your personal life or your professional life. I watched a New York Times reporter just get crushed yesterday because he interviewed someone who was a swing voter. And all of a sudden, you know, he's being accused of not being fair. And it was the fairest story I saw about this election. So the consequences that happen in this very connected world, where people who have no names and no faces can in fact destroy your life, or at least put a dent in it, that's a big problem.

It's so interesting to me. And then you've got the Netflix situation where, you know, Ted Sarandos gets pummeled by his staff or airing the Dave Chappelle comedy, comedy special. And yet all those Netflix employees are fine with Colin Kaepernick coming out there and saying that the NFL draft or, you know, the combine is the same thing as slave trades. And that I guess football players who voluntarily put themselves up in the hopes and dreams of making it into the NFL are the same as slaves. No one's batting an eyelash. I, you know, I encourage all of your listeners to please go and watch that that clip from Colin Kaepernick's special. It is absolutely horrifying. And I don't ever use that word lightly, just to watch that. And to watch this really just terrible storytelling that makes quite the leap as to how someone is treated in the NFL.

It does nothing good for our culture. It does nothing good to mend any kind of divide that exists. And it only further goes to divide us as a country and also as a culture. And then which circles right back to the inside outside thing that I talked about and that, and, and it is our cultural curators that are pushing this. Look, Dave Chappelle. I remember the first time that my son put his show on, on television. And he was a teenager at the time. And I'm like, Whoa, that's hysterical. He's really has a lot of nerve. Good

for him. And, and I think that you see independent minded and conservative people tend to lean towards, um, appreciating may, you know, they might not agree with everything that he says, appreciate that, that risk taking, right. That putting it out there and doing what he does, which is comedy. It's comedy. In comedy, we're supposed to make fun of ourselves. I grew up with Richard Pryor. I grew up with George Carlin,

which shows how old I am. But those men were also great risk-takers. Can you imagine? I mean, the fact that Colin Kaepernick is a Black man should not excuse him dismissing the slave trade as he did. The nerve to compare it to the NFL draft. To me, it is like the most offensive thing I've seen in a long time. And that's saying something in modern day America. All right, let's shift gears and talk to holidays. One is Halloween,

and the next is Christmas. I talked about Alec Baldwin with our earlier panel, the guys from Ruthless, but Alec Baldwin and his weird wife, Hilaria, the fake Spaniard, in the midst of this whole scandal, Selena, she decides to post their Halloween photo. He killed a woman 10 days ago, and I'm sure he's very stressed out. She decides to post their weird family Halloween photo. Talk about tone deaf. Look at this. This is her with her six children and him. Oh, so fun.

You know, Helena Huggins is dead. And this is his actual daughter from his first marriage to Kim Basinger, Ireland Baldwin. She's getting hit for being totally tone deaf in her. You know, I've been attacked and I have blood running down my face. Look at this. She's covered in blood, fake blood on Halloween. To me, what this underscores is these are the people who want to lecture us night and day about what's appropriate. Okay. No. Yes. Yeah. They're the people that know better than we do. And we're not, you know, sort of intelligent or cultured enough or savvy enough to lead our own lives. So they're going to dictate it to us. I don't know anyone who is the middle

of an extraordinarily stressful situation that would post these, these Instagram photos. It just sort of shows the, the, the falsity of, of what Instagram showcases. And he's, they're trying to show like this happy family. And it was so wrong in so many ways and you know what even worse is i bet that was sort of tested by 13 different pr people before they posted it like i think hilarious hilarious from boston by the way. How you say cucumber? You're American, you faker. She's obsessed with social media, with image. Even her little defensive aleck when the paparazzi was following them the other day was about, I want to look like the protectress.

I want to look strong. Meanwhile, he was like, shut up and get out of the shot. And she's like, oh, good. I'll just go home and post my fun Halloween selfies that make me look like a great mom. But totally oblivious to this one. You don't know Helena's name. Her name is Helena, she said to the paparazzi. Do you understand what you're dealing with here? Because you should not be posting Halloween shots 10 days after your husband killed a woman. No, you should be off cam and you should not be posting your celebrations while her son is mourning his

mom and then turning around and trying. It's just of it selena is stomach turning to me uh yeah yeah yeah i would say you know just lay low kind of get out of the national scene and just stop okay stop but i have one nice thing to end to end the segment with and that is uh it's never too soon to look forward to christmas as you know it it's November 2nd now. And as of November 1st, they already started decorating the stores. That's how it goes.

And Mariah Carey actually released a cute little video of her because she's got that wonderful song everybody loves. I can't,

it's like the one that we all look forward to. All I want for Christmas. Sorry. Yeah. I'm no Mariah. Of her smashing the pumpkins and looking forward to Christmas, it sort of gets you in the spirit. So you tell me, is it too soon? Is it too soon for us to look forward to Christmas and start considering the lights and the treesrained in the DNA of an American is to be aspirational and have something to look forward to something with purpose. That fulfills both of them when she, when she, uh, when she did that. And there is Christmas cannot come.

Christmas can be from now until January 1st. And I think a lot of Americans will be like, yes, we just need something to celebrate. We need to be part of something bigger than ourselves. And, and I think that's what she was promoting and she was a big hit. People loved it. Remember Thanksgiving? We used to celebrate that too, in between. I don't know. Oh no, we'll be so Christmas. Thanksgiving is sort of part of that, that whole stretch, right? Right after, after Halloween. And, and it's just part of getting ready for the holiday. I am fine having my Christmas tree up while I eat my Thanksgiving dinner. A-okay with that.

Yeah, I'm right with you. Selena, so fun to talk to you. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Thanks to all of you for listening or being a part of the show. Really do appreciate the support for that very reason. You can continue to support the show by going to youtube.com forward slash Megan Kelly and go ahead and hit the subscribe button. It's like the kids on my, that my, my kids watch like go ahead and smash that subscribe button. Anyway, do it. And also download The Megyn Kelly Show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher. If you go back to episode 140,

we had on Julie Kelly and Annie McCarthy on January 6th. I think you'll love it. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.