The Megyn Kelly Show - American Freed by Trump, John Oliver's Outrageous Segment, and Saving Your Marriage, with Stu Burguiere, and Jason and Erica Redman | Ep. 1046

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Megyn Kelly opens the show with the incredible news of American ballerina Ksenia Karelina’s release from a brutal Russian labor camp after 15 months of captivity just days after her boyfriend boxer Chris van Heerden appeared on The Megyn Kelly Show. Then Stu Buguiere, host of BlazeTV's Stu Does America, joins to discuss the reason behind President Trump’s decision to pause tariffs, the meltdowns and freakouts before and after, the role of President Trump and his team in securing her freedom, the difference between justice and revenge, why it's important for President Trump to hold those who politicized government accountable, the way the corporate media has completely mischaracterized the story, NBC News forced to settle the defamation suit filed against them by a doctor who MSNBC hosts claimed was the "uterus collector," the false reporting from Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes, John Oliver’s dismissive defense of boys in girl’s sports, him offensively downplaying traumatic injuries, his condescending denial of biological reality, and more. Then Jason and Erica Redman, authors of "Mission: Invincible Marriage," join to discuss their powerful story of resilience after Jason was severely wounded as a Navy SEAL, how their strong foundation kept their marriage intact, the importance of vulnerability in their marriage, and more. Burguiere- https://www.youtube.com/StuDoesAmericaRedmans- https://www.harpercollins.com/products/mission-invincible-marriage-jason-redmanerica-redman BeeKeepers Naturals: Go to https://beekeepersnaturals.com/MEGYN or enter code MEGYN for 20% off your orderDone with Debt: https://www.DoneWithDebt.com & tell them Megyn sent you!DailyLook: https://DailyLook.com to take your style quiz and use code MEGYN for 50% off your first order.Angel Studios: Become an Angel Guild member today and get 2 free tickets to The King of Kings movie when you become a premium member. Visit https://angel.com/MEGYNFollow 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, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Oh, this morning our staff, along with the world, woke up to incredible news involving a story we brought to you on Monday. That ballerina we told you about, Ksenia Karolina, she's on her way home. It's like, it's unbelievable. It's a miracle. I can't believe it. I'm so thrilled. I'm so grateful to President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. She has dual citizenship, Russian and American. She's an amateur ballerina over here. And for the last 15 months, she has been wrongfully detained in Russia on these trumped up bogus charges.

And now she's free. This morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posting to X quote, American Ksenia Karolina is on a plane back home to the United States. She was wrongfully detained by Russia for over a year and President Trump secured her release. The president of the United States will continue to work for the release of all Americans. Last August, Ksenia was convicted again. These are ridiculous charges in Russia as she visited family there of state treason and handed a 12-year prison sentence in a Russian labor camp. Her crime, she donated $51 two years prior while in the United States as a U.S. citizen

to a U.S.-based nonprofit that helps children and elderly impacted by the war in Ukraine. $50, you guys. The details of what happened to her are downright frightening. So she traveled to Russia for the first time in three years to visit her elderly grandmother. Her family still lives over there. First, she was detained for 16 hours at the airport for interrogation. She never even made it past the airport. Under suspicion, she might be some sort of a spy. Then she was released, but they kept her phone. And boy, oh boy, did they go through it. That's how they found this payment on her Venmo. And they found the receipt of this donation. On Monday, and by the way, and then they charged her first. They accused her of hooliganism, hooliganism. That's what they

charged. And then they upped the ante to treason, which you can go to jail for a long, long time for. Originally it was like 15 years. And then they were talking about a life sentence and they, they strong-armed her into copying a plea because she didn't want to go to jail forever. They were like, well, you can go to jail for maybe five years if you say you did this. And she didn't think she had any options. So she did, and they gave her a 12-year sentence. On Monday, I mean, literally four days ago, we had a long interview with Ksenia's boyfriend, Chris Van Yerden. Chris is a former international boxing organization welterweight world champion who retired from the sport last year to work full time on getting Ksenia home. See, he had paid for her to take the trip as a Christmas gift so she could see her family.

And he spoke to us on Monday about the charges she faced. $51 after they took her phone, they sent her back to her family. So they released it to her family and they said, you're not allowed to leave your Katerinburg. You will hear from us. And we now know within the three weeks from January 2nd to January 27th, they investigated every single thing on her cell phone. This is where they came across the Venmo, $51 on Venmo, charged her for treason, funding the enemy state.

That's what she was charging for, funding the enemy state, buying weapons. And if you know, I started laughing and crying in the same time because it was like, if you know my Ksenia, she is the sweetest, kindest person you'll meet.

She goes out of her way to do good for people. She hates seeing people hurt. So you can imagine elderly people, young kids without food and water, she would be the first to donate money. Chris also described the very harsh prison conditions she was facing in Siberia. He told us that while Ksenia is mentally strong, she was signaling in letters that she did not expect to survive the full sentence over there. She's in a labor camp, right? So she wakes up at 6 a.m. in the morning. She works till 9pm at night she gets 15 minutes breaks in between

for lunch or coffee break or to brush her teeth or whatever it's snowing in Siberia close to where she's held at, close to Siberia it's snowing, it's freezing cold out they're working, there was a moment of her not

going to the shower for two weeks. But again, Ksenia, knowing her, she would write to me and she'd go, babe, your mom, her mother would send her some wipes and stuff. And she was like, I would use the toilet water to clean myself. She's got problems with her legs, and this worries me. This really worries me. She's now all of a sudden got,

she's got leg pain. She's got some big veins popping out on her legs from all the standing. She's explaining to me in the letters how she's peeling thousands and thousands of potatoes every day, but you only get a few seconds. There's people yelling and sweating at you all day

and you've got to rush. And then you've got to put the potatoes in the boiling water. So she's got blisters on her hand from the boiling water burning her hands. And she's getting basically no attention. Like it's harsh. It is.

Do you think she could do 12 years in these conditions? No, she cannot On our show, Chris also sent this message directly to President Trump I'm on your show, Megan Because I know President Trump has a lot of respect for you He watches your shows, he takes note of what you say And I'm on you, and I'm begging I'm not a begging man. But I'm begging for this girl's life.

It is not looking good for her. And if there's somebody that can bring Ksenia back, it's President Trump. I know it. She's already given up. She's already 90% given up. But we will not give up on her. I will not give up on her. You know, I feel like I'm really. President Trump got Mark Fogle home.

And I believe he could get Ksenia home too. Well, message received. And today for the second time since the start of his second term, President Trump has returned an American from Russian captivity. This is incredible. You heard me mention it there. In February, he brought home American school teacher Mark Fogle. I can't believe it. We were all just talking about her. We felt totally hopeless a matter of hours ago. And look at this exclusive photo that we have received. This is Ksenia today. Look at this, holding the American flag on the flight back to the United States. Oh my gosh, this is wonderful. She has the green sweatshirt on.

Her father describing to the Daily Mail what happened when Ksenia called him saying, quote, the first seconds of our chat were all pure emotion. I cannot imagine what we were saying. It was like one explosion of happiness. And a short time ago, we received this statement from Chris. He says, I'm overjoyed to hear that the love of my life, Ksenia, is on her way home from wrongful detention in Russia. She's endured a nightmare for 15 months and I cannot wait to hold her. He thanked everybody who has helped to bring attention to this story. He mentioned them on the show the other day as well, in particular, Peter Berg. You remember the guy behind the Friday Night Lights series and, um, oh God, he's done so much in Hollywood, but he, I'm trying to remember, he's got some

connection to Peter Berg, but, oh, I think it might be through his boxing. In any event, he also thanked Dana White, who's been advocating for Ksenia. A lot of people have taken up this cause. It's amazing. It worked. He just, can I just tell you something else? Well, I'll bring this up when I bring Stu on, but listen, Ksenia is going to go to a military hospital when she's back on U.S. soil. And listen, we send her our love and our prayers and Chris as well.

God bless you. What a beautiful love story. I expect to be invited to the wedding. It's unbelievable. And congratulations to Team Trump. Hats off to you. Wow. Joining me now, Stu Bergeer, host of Blaze TV's Stu Does America. Here's one way to clean up your medicine cabinet this season and replace toxin-filled conventional products with more natural options. Propolis Immune Support Throat Spray and Propolis Plus Vitamin C Liposomal can be must-haves in the medicine cabinet as seasonal germs start to hit. Did you know that germs can enter through your nasal passages just as easily as through your

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They never use harmful ingredients like red dye number three or other synthetic dyes or artificial flavors. Their products are third-party tested for all pesticides, and they are dedicated to sustainable beekeeping and helping to save the bees. Beekeepers Naturals is offering you an exclusive offer. Go to beekeepersnaturals.com slash Megan, or enter code Megan to get 20% off your order. That's beekeepersnaturals.com slash Megan or enter code Megan to get 20% off your order. That's beekeepersnaturals.com slash Megan or enter code Megan. Beekeepers Naturals products are also available at Target, Whole Foods, Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens. Stu, Chris told us, hi, first of all,

Chris told us that he had to work hard during the Biden years, because this all happened during Biden, to get them to finally just designate her as wrongfully detained, which was like climbing a mountain. And finally they did it. And then he told us that he just felt that they kept yesing him to death and that they didn't do anything. He realized too late into her confinement that the Biden administration was not going to do anything to help her, never mind Biden himself. Trump has been in office for two months. He's already gotten, forget outside of Russia. I mean, we saw Rick Grinnell with those prisoners from Venezuela. We've got two American citizens back on American soil, Ksenia almost, from Russia. And this guy,

for Ksenia, apparently we traded some guy, some German guy who was 33 years old, who was selling some sort of information about computers to the Russians that he shouldn't have had. So, okay, it's not exactly great, but it's not like, you know, one of the most evil people that we'd have to give up. I mean, no man left behind, no woman left behind. She's one of our, she has dual citizenship. This is an American who is dying in a Siberian labor camp who was completely forgotten by Joe Biden. What do you make of it? Well, first of all, I mean, you did this interview on Monday. I'm a little disappointed it took you three full days, Megan, to get her home. You know, you got to step up your game a little bit here. You know, it's an incredible story and a miracle,

right? This is a miracle. And you're of course right that a lot of people worked on this, including President Trump. One of the things you can say, I think, quite clearly about President Trump in these situations, and he's shown it over and over again, is he actually cares. This is a totally different approach, I think, than, as you mentioned, Biden. He really cares about this stuff. And because he gets tons and tons of criticism for his relationship to Russia. I think if we turn on MSNBC, they'd be telling us about Russiagate right now. But there's benefits to having a relationship that at least you can talk to a country like this that is doing things like this. I have no fan of what Russia did and is doing in Ukraine. I'm no fan certainly of them taking our people hostage. But like,

you have to have the ability. It's like a, you know, it's sort of like just being an adult on the world stage. You have to have the ability to go and talk to these nations and be able to have conversations about important things like that. You're never going to agree with everything with Vladimir Putin. We all understand that they're doing, you know, they're doing things in that country that we don't want done and we think are horrible, but we have to be able to talk to them and at least get, you know, we didn't trade an international terrorist this time, which is a really good, really good outcome. The fact that we can get someone who's totally innocent back here on our soil is a massive, massive win. It's so big. And it's like,

not just any country, you know, it's like now President Trump says we're going to be meeting one on one with Iran. When Obama first suggested doing that, it sounded crazy because it was clearly a slip. It was something he just kind of popped off with at a debate. Then he got so much blowback. He made it U.S. policy. But and now Trump's and I was like, we're all doing that. But the thing about Russia is Russia's huge. Russia is actually a really important player on the world stage for a couple of reasons. I mean, yes, they call it like basically just a gas station, but it's a massive player when it comes

to gas, oil, energy, not to mention it's fully armed with nuclear warheads. So it's like there is a lot of upside to having somewhat of a good relationship with Russia. And Trump should not be embarrassed for trying to cultivate that. That's probably why she's on her way home right now. So God bless this couple. God bless Trump, Marco Rubio, too. All the guys and gals who worked on this. Well done. They brought one of ours home and I am I'm thrilled about it. Um, okay. Let's talk about Trump in general, because it's like two alternate universes reading what he did with the terrorists. The New York times is completely calling bullshit on him saying this was the strategy all along.

He didn't say that really exactly, but Scott Besson said it. Caroline Leavitt said it. It's art of the deal. He was sort of playing, setting everybody up for this big announcement that really would target and out China as an unfair actor in the end. And then you have the president's defenders saying, no, that's exactly right. That's what he was doing. He was playing chess when everybody else was playing checkers. And then you have Trump himself, who kind of says exactly why he did it in SOT7 outside of the White House on Wednesday. Thinking about why you decided to put a 90-day pause. Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know,

they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid. So, I mean, that's Trump's own explanation, which suggests if it was part of the plan, maybe it got accelerated given, you know, the jitters on the market. And in particular, I don't purport to understand the bond market, but in particular, what was happening with the bond market yesterday, which, which I guess could have potentially was so volatile, could have led to a longer and more intractable recession or near recession. Your thoughts on it? Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I I don't think it was his plan for it to play out this way.

You know, I think I would hate to be honestly an aide of President Trump because he just has this way. You know, I think I would hate to be honestly an aide of President Trump because he just has this way. When you go into Washington to be an aide, your job is to kind of say whatever whatever you can to make things seem as positive as possible. And then a lot of times Donald Trump is like, yeah, I'm just going to tell the truth. So he just comes out and kind of undercuts you. You put it all. Yeah, not at all. Actually, I just thought people were getting yippy. And I think that's true. Right. I think one of the strengths of President Trump in situations like this is he's not the most consistent on since, you know, gosh, back in the 1980s. I remember this guy talking about it. He also recognizes that there there are downsides. He warned about pain going into that and seeing the reaction of this. He may have thought, too, that the rates would come down. There'd be an additional benefit when they didn't go that way. It did, I think, shake him a little bit. And he was willing to come out and say, look, you know, I think the most important part of this is the China part of it. I'm going to stick by

that. Let's give a 90 day. Everyone can take a breather here a little bit here and see where this goes. You know, as a guy who believes in free trade, I'm not a fan of tariff policy, generally speaking. China, of course, as an adversary, there's a little bit of a difference there. But I think this was the right move for President Trump to remove this. I think it was too widespread. And, you know, there are a lot of good arguments to change our policy towards China. They do cheat. They are an adversary and they're not out for our best interest. I think such a broad strategy here where everyone, including allies and people who, like Israel, who went to zero percent, still tariffing countries like that, I don't think is

particularly the right policy. But then again, no one voted for me. They voted for him. Well, and I mean, we have improved our respective positions on trade with numerous countries, there's no question. But we've also rattled the markets worldwide and sent a message that we might not be the most reliable trading partner. You know, we, we can do things like this. So, you know, was it worth it? I guess is the question that we'll be looking at in the coming days. Here was Scott Besson explaining that this was a long plan. This is all part of the plan yesterday at the White House. As I said, we've given 90 days, and the only certainty we can provide is that the U.S. is going to negotiate in good faith, and we assume that our allies will too. And in terms of certainty,

we will see what China does. But what I am certain of, what I'm certain of is that what China is doing will affect their economy much more than it will ours, because they have an export driven flood the world with cheap export models. And the rest of the world now understands because when we put up our tariff wall, those exports were already flowing. All right. You get the idea. We get the idea. So look, I think that they may be benefiting from the fact that most people don't fully know what to believe, right? Like I think most of Trump's fans are willing to give him a chance. And now his more elite sort of base who have millions in the stock market are very relieved. And by the way, every single one of them is

declaring that it's thanks to them. It's amazing. They're all like, he listened to me. He listened to me. He listened to me. It's like, okay. I, what the daily mail reported is that he listened to J to, uh, Jamie diamond of JP Morgan chase who's in his ear, like, and who's a very smart, sober guy who said, look, this is what's going to happen now. Now it's gotten really bad. And I'm sure he's listened to, you know, his top advisors like Besant too. But I don't, I just don't think as many of his detractors are predicting that this is going to crater his approval rating because people were so rattled by the past five days. Yeah, I think that's definitely overstated. I heard you talking about not panicking. And of course, that's incredibly good advice. It doesn't do any good

for you if you do panic. And of course, it doesn't change the policy either. So it doesn't really matter. When you talk about the markets overall, it's a sign. And I think we could, I am concerned that if this policy is this broad and this strong, if that's where we wind up landing in 90 days, it could do enough damage to the economy, the people's general speaking economy, not worrying about necessarily millionaires in the market, but regular people who are paying much more for goods and having to deal with the outcomes of that process. And it's not just people like that. It's also small business people. I have a friend who works in – he imports parts for oil and gas.

Again, a central part of Donald Trump's mission here, right, to get us energy independent and to take the best of our resources and make the United States more powerful. Like this is an important part of Trump's mission. This guy's a Trump voter. But what he has, he has been chasing a contract overseas for a very long time, which he finally locked down after a couple of years. That contract had a designated production schedule in a foreign country and a designated price that he was going to sell to the oil company. Well, now he's paying, if these tariffs were to go through at their old pace, much more than he was paying, that he was earning from the product. So now he's underwater and he has to figure out whether do I accept essentially a loss on every product that I sell to this new

company to lock them in for a long-term deal and hope the policy changes at some point? Or do I go back to the company and say, hey, I have to bail on this deal, and then it's opened up to bidding all over again, right? These are hitting his own supporters, and they don't control this policy. They believe in his mission. They believe China and all these other countries have kind of screwed us in some of these situations. But like they're at a point where they just are out of their own control. And I think there is a certain percentage of the American people who are going to stick by Trump no matter what he does. And then there's some people who I think will look at this and say that one of the reasons why I voted for Donald Trump was to avoid the

feeling I had during Joe Biden, where things were changing all the time. We didn't know it was going to happen. Prices were going up. They were mistaken. That was a mistake. You should not vote Trump in office because you want complete steadiness and no surprises. That's that was never. No, it's true. No. OK, but I take your point. I mean, the terrorists have really driven a wedge between two factions of the right, factions that already existed. I do want to say this. Now we're getting grumbling from AOC,

from Chris Murphy in Connecticut, that this is insider trading, that they believe that Trump somehow advised maybe his friends, whatever, to buy yesterday morning when the stocks were still low before he announced the deal. And they're absolutely right. He did that. He sent out a tweet telling everyone now is a good time to buy. And the Democrats want to turn it into a crime by Trump, like secretly telling his friends. He told us all. We just, we didn't listen. Most of

us were like, oh God, I don't even look at the market. At least that's how I felt. Anyway, here's a little bit of a sampling. I mean, the Democrats wanted the pause. They didn't like, that's what they said. They hated the tariffs. After loving tariffs, now they hated tariffs because it was Trump tariffs, but they didn't like the pause either. Here's a little bit of that yesterday, Sot9. He announced it on a tweet. WTF? Who's in charge? So look, you can't undo the damage.

The Trump slump is upon us now. And whatever he will try to do in the future does not undo the damage. We're in a car driven by somebody who was blackout drunk. And it's like one of those bad Bugs Bunny cartoons. It's Looney Tunes. We're driving a car drunk towards a tunnel painted on the side of a mountain. If you drive a car, I'll tariff the street. If you try to sit, I'll tariff your seat. If you get too cold, I'll tariff the heat. If you take a walk, I'll tariff your feet. Skeet Overman. Poem form. I mean, bonus points for the extra effort. They're not having, they don't like the terrace. They don't like the pause in the terrace.

They used to love the terrace. Now they hate the tariffs. I'm getting the feeling like this isn't really like a sincerely held belief on their part. Well, it's good to see Keith Olbermann has chat GPT because I think we know how all that happened. But I will say it's funny because I don't know. I've been talking about these economic policies for a long time, I always associated tariffs with the left. I mean, like every union leader that I've ever seen in my life has come out and advocated for tariffs. And, you know, there's always Democratic senators who are always there advocating for them. And now all of a sudden, I guess they don't like them because Donald Trump, I mean, he is a mastermind at somehow to be able. I wish he would just come out and take all left wing positions and therefore the left would abandon them all.

I think it is it's impossible to. It really is fascinating. He is pro choice. He should be more openly pro choice, pro transgender ideology. Yeah, maybe they'll they'll abandon it just as soon as Trump endorses it. Yeah, my favorite example of this, Megan, is from the last few weeks where Donald Trump was, they were tossing around this idea of pulling soda and candy and cookies off of food stamps so you couldn't no longer use food stamps to purchase them. And Trump kind of came out and said, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. You shouldn't be able to do that. And then the American Medical Association came out and said, no, you should be able to buy soda and cookies with food stamps. The American Medical Association.

That's because their own Dr. Mark Hyman was on the show the other day explaining that. Yeah, I mean, it's ridiculous. It's absurd. It's ridiculous. The the women who are pushing that bill in the Senate, you know, they, they want permission basically to, to vote from home while on maternity leave. And, uh, most of their Republican colleagues are like, what? No. Uh, and Trump was like, I don't know. I'm kind of for it. It makes sense to me. And that's another one where you might see all the Democrats who previously liked it, just completely flipped. Nevermind. We have to be in there if he likes it. There's something we're missing about it. All right. So that's the terrorist. We'll see how it all shakes out.

I mean, like, honestly, I'm kind of over it. I'm kind of this is Mark Halperin's take. And he's as honest a broker as we're going to find. He writes 50 percent bond market, 25 percent weakness was hurting reconciliation odds, meaning Trump's budget that he's trying to get through with just Republicans and 25% rich people calling Trump. And he said it also known as 100% at, at secretary Scott Besson. So he's saying it was a combination of things, including the rich donors, the worries that in uh, in getting reconciliation and the budget bill passed and then the bond market 50%, which yeah, a lot of people were looking at that. Okay. I want to talk about some other stuff he's doing. So he has been like cracking down a bit on

those who attacked him. Um, a couple of law firms, one law firm that hired one of his chief antagonists at Alvin Bragg's office. That guy, there was this guy who was jumping up and down saying, we've got to prosecute Trump, like criminally prosecute Trump for whatever's going on at his Trump company. And even Alvin Bragg was like, nah, we don't have that. We're going to go after him, but I don't think we can get his company. And that guy quit. He wrote a book about it. He quit in protest and he got hired by Paul Weiss. So Trump issued an executive order cracking down on Paul Weiss. Like, you know what? The government's not going to do business with you. We're just really not interested in a law firm like this being connected to the U.S. government.

And Paul Weiss got a bunch of calls from clients being like, if you can't do business with the government, we can't do business with you. Like, that's why we're using you on various mergers or acquisitions or what have you, or defenses. And Paul Weiss bent the knee immediately and went to President Trump and worked out a deal. They're going to make donations to organizations. They're going to do pro bono work that he approves of. They didn't have to, but they did it and they came under fire for it. Perkins Coie, that's the one that represented the Hillary campaign and got Russiagate started. Same, but they did not. They're still litigating. They think this is illegal, what he's doing. And now today, well, yesterday, we have Trump executive orders targeting two individuals by name. And I'll just read to you here from

Politico. The directives that he signed on Wednesday ordered the Justice Department to scrutinize Chris Krebs, who ran Trump's cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, and former Homeland Security official Miles Taylor. Who is Miles Taylor? The name may be familiar to the audience out there, though he originally didn't want it to be. He is anonymous, who's published in the New York Times as some sort of senior Trump official who's keeping Trump honest behind the scenes. And so what Trump has said is, you guys are going to have your security clearances pulled, and we're going to investigate, at least in the case of Miles, whether you used classified information for your book or in any other way. Okay. So the left wing

is melting down over this. He doesn't like Krebs, I think, because Krebs, he was fired by Trump via tweet, had been out there asserting that when Joe won in 2020, that quote, in every case of which we are aware, those claims of fraud either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent. And then he authorized a joint statement by many groups that said the election was secure, no indication of any votes being changed or stolen, which Trump wasn't happy with. And then he was a key witness for the J6 select committee. So clearly this guy got on Trump's bad side.

And now, I mean, he's having his his security clearance pulled. They're saying in this executive order that he's a significant bad faith actor who weaponized and abused his government authority. Uh, Trump, as he signed the order, stripping Krebs security clearance and opening an investigation into his activities, repeated his claims that the election was quote rigged. Uh, and then same thing. So this guy, miles is going to be investigated Taylor to see whether he used classified information in writing his book and also see his security clearances. Why wouldn't these guys have already lost their security clearances? They haven't been working for the government in years. Miles quit in 2019. The other guy quit right before, uh, right, you know, around the 2020 election. Like why, why do we let these security clearances

stay in place after these people leave government services? So that's one thing. But the real question I want to get to Stu is how do we feel about this? Because you could argue that, you know, National Review argued in the case of the law firms, this is effectively a bill of attainder where the Congress or the president specifies, like picks out an individual company or individual and declares them guilty of a crime and imposes a punishment without due process? Or is this perfectly fair game? Let's start there. You know, it's interesting. You're the legal expert in this conversation. So at some level, I would definitely cede that to you. I think when it comes to a moral judgment, there are there's two sides of this, right? There's two paths this can go down. There's there's justice and there's revenge. And I think from from a moral standpoint, it's pretty clear that revenge is not OK and justice is. And you have to kind of wonder which which way this is going. I think there are, Trump has a pretty clear record of really being upset about people who come after him and will go after him. And as he said many, many times,

punch back twice as hard. You know, what makes me a little nervous about this is I want to make sure that there are checks and balances to make sure that any president, not Trump or anyone else does this. I didn't like it when I think the Biden White House was going after Donald Trump and going after their political enemies. And I don't think it's OK for Trump to do the same thing. I don't know that he's doing that here. I mean, we don't have the results of whatever investigation might be coming from this. I think he is sending a very clear message to anyone who does stand up against him

not to do this next time because we're not going to forget. He's not the guy that lets this stuff roll off of his back. At least he's not anymore. I mean, if you remember, he kind of promised the same thing against Hillary Clinton when he was running initially in 2015 and 2016. And then when he got into office, he kind of shrugged his shoulders and said, look, that's all politics. I do think some of this has changed. Some of it changes when someone threatens to take your entire rest of your life away by throwing you in prison for a very long time. Some of it changes when someone tries to take your life away with a bullet hitting your ear while you're standing on stage. I can understand why he wants to make sure people who were trying to destroy his life and his livelihood are held

responsible. We should, though, I think as conservative, and I applaud the efforts of National Review, to at least say, let's hold a standard here to make sure that we're the ones holding it up. We're never going to get what we want out of the left. But it's important that we watch this closely. People like you, Megan, who can kind of parse the legal aspects of this a little bit better than I can, to hold him responsible to make sure he doesn't cross those lines. I don't think he's this erratic, crazy person. I don't think he came in here with an enemies list. All the stuff that the media would say about him I don't think is true. But it's also human instinct for any person who's been treated the way he has to want to get

a little bit of revenge. Let's just make sure we don't cross that line and we keep it in the realm of justice. My general feeling is they need to suffer or they will continue doing to Republican lawmakers and Republicans in general what they've been doing. I know. I wish I sounded as sober and measured as you think I am. I had this debate before the election. I was arguing with Alan Dershowitz, and I was saying, I'm sorry, but we're going to need to see a little bit of retribution. I'm not for making up charges where none exist, but I am absolutely fine looking into what these people did. I'm totally fine with it. Let me, let me take you back. Okay. I just went, just a couple of things came to mind.

It's story time, Stu. We're back to story time with MK. I'm ready. Let's do it. Okay. Um, this is April 25th, 2023. Okay. April 20th. So almost exactly two years ago, it was a press release, a release from Ron Johnson's Senate office, Republican senator from Wisconsin. visiting the home of journalist Matt Taibbi the same day that Mr. Taibbi testified before the House of Representatives select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government. Senator Johnson noted that, quote, the IRS's intrusive actions do not appear to be consistent with the agency's standard practices for contacting taxpayers. At an April 19th, 2023 Senate finance hearing, Senator Johnson asked the IRS commissioner Daniel Warfel about this incident and emphasized that the chances are so infinitesimally small that an IRS agent would show up at the journalist's door the day that journalist is testifying before a House committee. He goes on, the IRS's alleged decision to not follow standard practice and conduct with an unannounced visit to Mr. Taibbi's home on the same day he was testifying before Congress serves only to underscore taxpayers' negative views of the IRS.

Right on. And the IRS, I believe, went on to later announce Taibbi was being audited after he testified at a subcommittee meeting on weaponization. That's how brazen and lawless the Democrats have become, the Democrats. So suck it, Miles Taylor. You lost your security clearance and you might have to deal with a little bit of an investigation just to make sure you didn't abuse your position and use classified information. That's the least that could happen to you. How would you like the IRS showing up at your door and pouring through all of your documents? All right. Chapter two of MK story hour. Um, it was okay. What, what is the date? Hold on, I want to go back and find the date. Standby. I don't have it. It was 2021. It was definitely 2021. And journalist James O'Keefe

was at his home at five in the morning, whereupon the FBI came through his door with some multiple agents, guns out, announcing to James O'Keefe that they were investigating him for the possible crime of allegedly trying to buy Ashley Biden's diary. And very weirdly, the New York Times had the story within hours. Very strangely, this covert operation in the dawn of the morning, somehow the New York Times just kind of knew to be near James O'Keefe's apartment because news might possibly F these guys. So James O'Keefe came on my show shortly thereafter, very rattled by what was being done to him, of course, and not just him, but his staff too had the same treatment. Another guy on his staff, same exact thing. And here's what he said.

We reached out, our lawyer sent a letter to Ashley Biden's attorney. And then, and that's when Ashley Biden's attorney said, we're taking this to the Southern district of New York. That's for those of you who don't know what that is. That's the federal jurisdiction, the Department of Justice in New York, where we're located in Westchester County, New York. And and they referred to this somehow. This got to the FBI, the Department of Justice. And this is where things take an insane turn. A year later, a year later, suddenly my two journalists at college get raided by the FBI with a battering ram. They go into my colleagues' houses at 6 a.m., take all types of computers and laptops. These are journalists, news gathering materials, confidential sources. This has never happened before in history for the for the execute a search warrant like this. And then now we find out some this was last month that they issued secret warrants to Microsoft Corporation. O'Keefe for almost four years, suggesting it is not illegal to publish an ill-gotten diary,

ill-gotten emails, any sort of ill-gotten anything. It's not. It is illegal to pay someone to steal them. But there was no evidence that James O'Keefe had done that. The testimony was that this woman said, I've got him. I've got it. I've got her diaries. I moved into the house where she was and I've got him. Is anyone interested? And he was like, we might be interested and had a discussion with her about possibly buying them, but then decided not to. But even if he had bought them and published them, that's not illegal. And Joe Biden's DOJ knew that, but they did his bidding. And listen to the Politico article from which I read before. Okay, listen to this. These two critics are the latest to be swept up

in Trump's expansive retribution campaign, where he has sought to use federal powers in unprecedented ways to punish political opponents, law firms, university and others that he believes have wronged him. Oh, it's totally unprecedented politico. And then they go on a president ordering investigations of specific individuals whom he considers to be his political enemies is a remarkable breach of the traditional wall of separation between the White House and the Justice Department. I'm throwing up in my mouth. And then under that norm of separation, criminal investigations are supposed to be insulated from political pressure. But Trump has repeatedly scorned the notion of DOJ independence.

That's why I say I don't care. Do it. They will not learn. And the media will continue writing this bullshit. So the only hope for the side of normalcy who genuinely, like you kicked this conversation off with, do not want to see this, do not want to see the DOJ weaponized, is to make them suffer. I think we're calling this now the suck it manifesto that you've just laid out here. I think I'm proud to be part of the episode where where you laid that out. First of all, your your your approach is sounds a lot more fun than mine does. And I

will say what you just outlined is completely on the right side of my dynamic that I outlined earlier. I think that's justice. You're talking about these are massive, massive problems that happen in our justice system. And there's so many examples you could have gone on all day with those. I mean, I think about justice when it comes to Trump and what they did to him. But keep going. Exactly. Or, for example, the guy you were talking about, Joe Biden and the people around him hiding the fact that he had lost all mental abilities while he was president of the United States. I want an investigation on that, too. There is so much going on. And the Justice Department's interference on the Hunter Biden

investigation, trying to stop those two IRS whistleblowers from actually getting to the bottom of what he did. The weaponization, the misuse of the DOJ has been in place now for at least the past four years, thanks to Joe Biden. Politico, where were you? It doesn't work this way. Yeah. And by the way, investigations are part of knowing this. So if there is an investigation and maybe we find out that all these things are complete coincidences, I don't think we will. But if we do, and that's the result, that's the point I think we need to make sure that we don't go over the line just because we don't like this person or that person.

We shouldn't be charging people, as you pointed out earlier, with made up charges or anything like that. But this is out of control. And I completely agree with you. And I think it's completely consistent with the concept of justice to be able to go after these people really, really hard if they did these things and to find out what actually happened. You are right, because I think there's in a way three approaches to this, right? There is this approach where you're getting revenge. There's an approach where you're going for justice, looking for it, and then utilizing that result to the best of its ability to discourage this type of behavior later on.

And the third approach is the one we used to use and always did. And I think this is the difference between Trump and many Republicans in the past that would just say, OK, and maybe even Trump in the past. OK, we're above it. We're not going to do anything. That was the past. That was politics. We all know that we're going to have a guy on that side later on. So let's not go crazy. We should make sure the people that did this are held responsible for it. You've you've done great coverage of what happened during the covid era. That's another one. We need to make sure people who are encouraging churches to be shut down, we need to know who those people were, how that process happened, what emails, what messages were

sent to make these things that we were all so offended about. We can all read books about it. We can look at it and say, hey, gosh, you know, this was really, really bad and move on with our lives. But that's not going to change things. I don't, I don't think we're saying we're talking different languages here. You're just expressing it in a much more entertaining way. Well, I'm, I'm in favor of it. I have to say it's, I'm not in favor of charging somebody if the evidence is not there. And I mean, real evidence. I don't mean just like colorable. I mean, like this person actually did appear to have committed a crime and you have to have a good faith belief in that as a prosecutor, or you violated your ethics

in bringing a case against them. But do I have a problem with this guy, Miles Taylor, who was so self-aggrandizing? We're keeping a lock on the president. We, the adults in the room, will actually dictate U.S. policy, whether he knows it or not. That now that Trump's been reelected, Trump's like, you know what? You've lost your access to your security clearance, and I'm going to take a look at exactly what files you decided to check out miles when you were in the federal government to make sure you didn't cross any lines. I am fine with that. Too bad, too bad for him. And, and, uh, by the way, there is a happy ending on one of these stories. Um, I don't know where the thing is

with Matt. I'm going to find out for you. But did you know we missed this in the Trump executive order mania when he first took over? Listen to this. On February 2nd, 2025, James O'Keefe tweeted out, breaking news, DOJ announces it has dropped criminal investigation into James O'Keefe, Spencer Meads, and Eric Cochran over the Ashley Biden diary. The Southern District of New York announcing today the criminal case is closed and the search warrant affidavit materials will be unsealed. He goes on, the U.S. Attorney's Office has officially closed the investigation into the FBI raid related to the Ashley Biden diary case. The government respectfully submits this letter to notify the court, the grand jury investigation that led to this and the issuance of the above reference search warrants has concluded no

additional criminal charges forthcoming. And they go on to say that they are going to release the supporting documentation, if any, that was undergirding the case. And that I really do want to see. I love to see what they say they had on James O'Keefe, but it took an adult getting elected president to turn to the DOJ and say, please stop bothering James O'Keefe, a journalist who even under your allegations, you have, what do you have to prove that he, he paid her to commit the crime? What show us the allegations? Because if that were true, it would take about two minutes to prove it literally two minutes. But here we are four years later, it was brought in 21, 2025.

They're still harassing the guy and it took Trump to take over and Pam Bondi. So this is why I'm just, you know what, Stu, you're not going to see? You are not going to see either one of those names mentioned in any political article, in any Axios article, in any article, anywhere. I mean, even the right wing isn't going to bring that up. Most of the right wing publications are just going to express horror at bill of attainder. This is wrong. And they're going to go down the normal road of like, it was wrong always and it's now wrong too. Can we just be honest about how wrong it was and how bad it was and how not just Trump was targeted with losing his freedom, but journalists, journalists like Matt Taibbi and James O'Keefe, who indeed is a journalist,

to losing their freedom or their fortunes, who knows what the penalties might have been, because of a personal vendetta. Matt Taibbi for speaking to Congress and James O'Keefe for having the nerve to actually publish something that might not reflect well on Joe Biden. P.S. It didn't. She talked about inappropriate showers with her father when she was a young child. So I just like they're so gross. There's a concept in the law. It's an equitable concept, which means if you go into a court of equity asking for an equitable remedy, meaning non-monetary, you know, like don't, don't let those planes take off. That's an, that you're seeking an equitable remedy that you cannot get it. If you have unclean hands, if you yourself have committed

crimes or terrible acts or whatever, and a court can take that into account. This is what I'm trying to say. They have unclean hands, both the Democrats and their media servants on this issue. So I don't even want to see the damn article. I don't want to read what Politico says. I certainly don't want to see, you know, a reminder about how lawless Trump is. I'm just over it still. Yeah, I mean, look, I think there's doing the right thing and there's doing the wrong thing. And then a third option there is doing the right thing with absolute follow through. And that's

what I want. I want full follow through. I want these things to be taken. I don't want to do the wrong thing. I want to do the right thing and follow through on it for once. Well, I think a new day has dawned and these people like I bet Trump's not done. I mean, Biden didn't pardon himself. It would be very interesting to see whether, I don't know, whether Pam Bondi and her investigators see Joe Biden as a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. I mean, I just, I would have zero problem

if they reversed that conclusion. Okay, I gotta take a break. I'll be back with Stu right after this. There's a lot of talk about government debt, but after four years of inflation, that conclusion. Okay, I got to take a break. I'll be back with Stu right after this. There's a lot of talk about government debt, but after four years of inflation, another real crisis is personal debt. Some people are working harder than ever and still drowning in credit card debt and overdue bills, but there is done with debt. Done with debt has unique escape strategies to help end your debt fast. So you keep more-earned money and have more to spend. Done With Debt does not try to sell you a loan or bankruptcy.

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Speak with one of their strategists. It's free, but listen up. Some of their solutions are time sensitive, so you're going to need to move quickly. Go to donewithdebt.com. That's donewithdebt.com. So on the subject of Trump's executive orders, he had another great one. Let's listen to Sot 13. You take a shower, wash your hands, whatever you do, including dishwashers when no water comes out, but you wash your hands. And in my case, I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair. I have to stand under the shower for 15 minutes until it gets wet. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It's ridiculous.

And what you do is you end up washing your hands five times longer. So it's the same water. It's like between the return of the incandescent light bulb and the return of water pressure, these are things that actually genuinely improve the life of your average citizen, right? It's like I'm all, believe me, the audience knows all for getting rid of DEI, but like people who don't have kids going through school right now or woke companies that they work for might not have that one touch them personally. But everybody takes a shower, turns on the kitchen faucet and sees the trickle. He's totally right. He's 100 percent right. You know, Megan's travelers talk about how nice the beds are in the hotel that they stay at. Smart travelers talk about how nice the shower is at the hotel you stay at. It is a crucial part of life. It is massively important. It's funny, these restrictions

have existed for a while. If you happen to be handy, if you happen to have a handyman, if you happen to know how to go on YouTube, oh yeah, there are ways around. And I don't want to convict myself here on national radio, but I will say. Well, I've been told that you can take out the governor, the regulator on your faucets, like your shower. Yes. I've been told. And you can make it amazing just like the old days. The best shower pressure you can possibly imagine. I will say, I'm just going to throw this in there.

There's also adjustments you can make to your water heater that will make it really, really, really hot and make it absolutely the best possible experience. He's connecting one man crime ring down there. How dare you accuse me? As we said, we do not go beyond the law, Megan. No, I think it's it's it's he's hitting me in my soul with this one. This is this is the best possible thing that if he gets rid of paper straws and he gets me to get gets rid of these stupid shower heads. He's he can have a third, a fourth and a fifth term as far as I'm concerned. I know that I know exactly. That's how I feel like these.

These are really things that I care about. And I talked about it yesterday with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. The damn wind turbines need to be stopped, too. They are ruining the coastlines of the most beautiful country on Earth, the United States of America. Stop ruining all of the views. Stop torturing the whales. Stop taking up huge multiple acres of our beautiful environmental land for these stupid-ass toxic blades for electricity that really doesn't work. And it's only sporadic when we have, as Trump says, you know, all we have to do is drill, baby drill, not to mention coal and fracking and all that, that can pay all these energy bills or provide these, this energy for us at cheaper rates. Okay. Switching gears. I want to talk to you on April 22nd, just settled a $30 million case against it brought by an OBGYN named Dr. Mahendra Amin. So here's what happened.

Only Fox News is covering it. Nobody else wants to cover this story. Well, maybe I should just show you the soundbite first. Rachel Maddow covered it. Nicole Wallace covered it. Chris Hayes covered it. MSNBC.com covered it. And they all covered it basically the same way, which is why they got sued and where they were all expected to be called a trial as witnesses. Here's a sample of Rachel Maddow's coverage about this doctor who was the subject of a report aired ubiquitously over there about him allegedly performing unnecessary hysterectomies at immigration and customs enforcement centers at an ICE detention center. Watch. I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp. It was like they're experimenting with our bodies. The nurse who contributed to this whistleblower complaint explains it like this, quote, everybody this

doctor sees has a hysterectomy, just about everybody. He's even taken out the wrong ovary on one detained immigrant woman. She was supposed to get her left ovary removed because it had a cyst on the left ovary. He took out the right one. She was upset. She had to go back to take out the left, and she wound up with a total hysterectomy. She still wanted children. So she has to go back home now and tell her husband that she can't bear kids. She said she was not all the way out under anesthesia and heard the doctor tell the nurse

that he took out the wrong ovary. The nurse says she and her fellow nurses, quote, questioned among ourselves, like, goodness, he's taking everybody's stuff out. That's his specialty. He's the uterus collector. She says, quote, I know that's ugly. Is he collecting these things or something? Everybody he sees, he's taking all their uteruses out or he's taking their tubes out. What in the world? I should tell you that these allegations from this whistleblower are not isolated complaints. NBC News has spoken to four different lawyers who represent women who were detained in that federal facility in Georgia who are making similar claims.

Also swept up in the litigation, NBC News reporter Jacob Soboroff and Julia Ainsley, as well as MSNBC producer Dennis Horgan, senior director of standards and practices, Mary Lockhart and deputy head of standards and practices, Chris Scholl and others, by the way. So what the judge found in allowing the case to go forward to go to trial against NBC, Judge Lisa Godbey-Wood of the Southern district of Georgia, uh, ruled that a jury under the facts alleged here could find that NBC and its employees acted with actual malice, which is the standard that was going to apply here. And said as follows, quote, NBC investigated this alleged whistleblower, like some whistleblower came out and said, he's doing this. NBC investigated the whistleblower letters accusations. That investigation did not

corroborate the accusations and even undermined some of them. NBC republished the letters accusations anyway. Judge Wood wrote in a 108 pagepage summary. And this doctor, who was portrayed as evil and disgusting, harming immigrant women there without their consent and just some sort of like Dr. Mengele type, is in fact, they say, according to his lawyers, a dedicated physician who dedicated his entire career to serving underserved communities. And the NBC behaved recklessly trying to paint him as evil. So what happened was they first put it in an NBC news article in September, 2020, citing this alleged whistleblowers claim. And then MSNBC quickly jumped on board. That was too good for them to resist. So with, um, Nicole Wallace, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow all running with the quote uterus collector label for this guy,

he filed a lawsuit against the parent company, NBC universal, alleging that this was, he's been portrayed falsely. And now on the eve of trial, they settled a $30 million suit. I don't know yet, or we may never, what the settlement was for, but I bet it was a big number with all those stars about to get dragged into court and answer for their investigatory processes before they slap a report like that, which is obviously defamatory. What do you make of it? Especially when you have some behind the scenes investigation that doesn't corroborate it. I mean, I think there's real questions as to whether you

should even cover an accusation like that when it's just an accusation and there's no other evidence corroborating it. I mean, just saying that about a person, and the left loves to do this, the media does it all the time, where, you know, they'll just, well, this person said it, all we're doing is reporting what they said. Well, as a journalistic institution, it's kind of your job to have a little bit more. You might not be able to go through it in full investigation. You don't have to necessarily hit some legal standard to report the claim, but you should have some idea whether you think it's true or not. And unfortunately, I think the filter they run it by is, do we want this to be true? That's the beginning and the end of their investigation in a lot of these claims. investigation that didn't corroborate it, made it seem like it wasn't true and still erred it,

is absolute, I think, hitting that standard of malice. I mean, that is completely beyond the pale. You know, a lot of times I hear stuff, I'm sure you do, Megan, as well. Callers call us, we get, you know, email tips. People that I know who work in the government will tell me things that are really salacious or really support my viewpoint, my priors as I walk into a situation. And that is when I'm on my highest level of guard because of course I want something to be true. And when I know I want it to be true, I raise the standard even higher to make sure I'm not just reporting junk because human beings are vulnerable to that type of thing. It seems like all of these organizations are living by a totally different standard and they just financially paid for that standard.

It's amazing because NBC has a very well-paid and well-experienced standard and practices group that you can't get anything on the air without going through these people. I've told the audiences before, but we were doing a report on, on my, you know, one year, um, morning show over there. And it was about Roger Ailes. I think he died. I think it was that he had died. Um, I can't remember to be honest, but it was some, I don't remember what year Roger died, but it was shortly after I left Fox. And, um, it came up that he, he had been involved in the me too thing and everything that happened at Fox. And I was reading this script that said several women at Fox news accused him of sexual harassment,

including yours truly. And then we moved on and they wanted me to insert, um, he denied all claims, including my own. And I was like, I'm not going to read that. Like I realized why don't you just have somebody else do it then? Like do somebody like, I'm not reading that. I'm a fucking, I know what happened. I wrote a whole book about it. There's like, it's ridiculous. The Murdoch's and they were like, you will read it because it's what's fair to him. And look, they weren't wrong. It was just I was so freshly off of that whole thing. I was like, I'm not doing that.

I think I wound up reading like, and he denied it, which was a false denial because it happened. I can't remember what I said, but I remember sort of stealing the last word on it. I only tell that story to reiterate that they're tough. They're generally tough over there about maintaining some semblance of fairness, especially on dicey legal matters, like a whistleblower coming out and saying something that is very clearly defamatory, if true, if not true, very clearly defamatory, if not true. So I think you're exactly right. This was too good. It's like they're hurting immigrants. They're stealing uteri. And this guy, rather than seeing him, it's kind of like what happened to CNN. We had on that plaintiff,

the guy who got defamed by CNN, um, who was overseas in Afghanistan trying to help people get out. And yes, he charged a fee, uh, to help people get out. It was like in line with what the fees are to get out. But like they, they completely ripped this guy as though he was like profiting off of the pain of others. Like, no, this is a service. You can get hired. And big companies hire him to get like their people out. And they made him seem like he was this opportunist. And all these texts came out in the litigation saying like, he has a punchable face. And they

were mad that he called them back prior to the report to actually weigh in. Like they're like, oh God, now he's calling. Like, no, an honest reporter wants that. You want the other side to be able to weigh in. Anyway, it's just one of many examples that we've seen of corrupt media. And that will bring me to John Oliver. I don't know. Do we consider him media? I don't know what the hell he is. Annoying and not fact-based, though he purports to be. I mean, he thinks he's Walter Cronkite. So he goes out on his show and he decides that he will be the final arbiter on whether men should be allowed to play in women's sports and decides to unleash this typical bullshit that we get from these leftists about how it's a very small number. And who are they hurting?

You know, who are they really hurting? And tries to get into like, I couldn't find real studies showing without spending one minute to consider. Do you know why that is, John Oliver? It's because leftists are the ones who do these studies and no leftist magazine, which is all of them, every, every magazine in the science field is controlled by leftists, will get published if they run a piece saying biological men have an advantage over women. That's the world we've been in for the past 15 years. And by the way, the studies aren't necessary anyway, because we have eyes. It's just absurd. Thank you. So he decides it's not enough for him to just sort of state like, this isn't an issue. This is made up right wing,

you know, catnip. But then he starts to go through these. I mean, true. These are feminists in the, in the good sense of that word. You know, that word is, it's not a good word and I'm not a feminist, but if you want to say to me, like, what's a real family, like who's somebody who really stands up for women. It's somebody like Riley Gaines, who is actually fighting for women's rights or Peyton McNabb, the girl who at 16 in North Carolina was partially paralyzed by a volleyball, hit her by a male. That's an actual true, like in the old school way of a feminist. We're like, not the man hatred, not the radical abortion policies, but like, I just want women to, to have their rights. Anyway, those are his two favorite

targets in this long monologue. Here he is on Riley Gaines. She tied for fifth in the 203 with Riley Gaines, who catapulted to conservative stardom off the back of that race. First, that's a story about how Leah Thomas prevented Riley Gaines from getting fifth place instead of fifth place. Second, those trophies look absolutely identical. So, just so we are clear, Leah Thomas didn't take anything from Riley Gaines. In fact, you could argue she gave a lot to her, as Gaines later decided to forego dental school

in order to be an activist and speaker. She now has her own advocacy center, and has personally lobbied multiple state legislatures for bans, all to address the threat posed to women's sports by a woman who swam exactly as fast as she did to the literal hundredth of a second. You know what this is like? This is like, what is Denise Brown complaining about that Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered? She became world famous and she's a big advocate now for domestic abuse. Fuck off, John Oliver. So Riley Gaines has no legitimate complaint because she spoke out so effectively about what happened to her that she's become, in effect, a national spokesperson on the

issue. So she should really be thankful that she had to take off her clothes and get nude in front of a fully intact male who is clearly, if you review his social media, an autogonophile who gets off on dressing like a woman and obviously parading around his fully intact penis in a women's locker room before he goes into the pool and steals their medals. Weirdly, I missed that portion of John Oliver's monologue, Stu. Gosh, that is just irreverenceable in so many ways. I'm sure Ronald Goldman's dad was really excited

about all the media attention that situation brought him as well. Thanks a lot, OJ. I mean, absolutely fascinating. And he goes on to basically, you know, you mentioned he can't find any studies. Being alive is a study. Every world record in track and field is a study.

You don't need a study on this. Every single person on Earth knows it to be true. And it's so offensive. And I will say this about John Oliver. And I think he is really a unique person. I think a lot of people who are on the right in particular don't even know who he is. Like, you know, he's just some guy, you know, some comedian. Was he on HBO? His YouTube videos get massive attention to the extent it's absurd. Like he will name a video lead and he'll put it out there. And it's a 40 minute monologue on lead. and it'll get three times as

many views as he has followers, which is millions. I mean, he really does get wide, wide attention on the left. And I think he is an incredible gift to conservatives. He has a unique ability to be able to convince the left that their worst instincts are the only smart, incredible position to follow. Like everything on the left, everybody on the left should know the last thing they should do is be dying on the hill of men should be able to play women's sports. And he comes out here and condescends to the left to, to, to an extent that they think they go to all their friends at work and say, this is what I'm sticking with. Oh, of course, men and women should men should be able to play in women's sports. And it puts them in a position politically. And this does not make the situation right, of course, for the poor women who have to go through the situation.

But like politically, he's he has this weird power over people on the left to convince them that they're the smart ones and everyone else is nuts. And I don't know. I don't think it does them any favors. I don't want this to continue, obviously. But there is a certainly a political benefit at the very least for conservatives. It's amazing to me how his entire monologue is told from the point of his own physical weakness. Like men are not stronger than women. Men cannot be like, what are you worried about? There's no physical advantage. Right. Not if you're the athlete, John Oliver, obviously, because you just look like one big human turd of softness. But shockingly, John Oliver, there are men out there who go through normal male puberty. You clearly weren't one of them, who emerge on the

opposite side, full of testosterone and muscle. You should look around. They're everywhere, not in your mirror, but elsewhere. Look around. And Riley Gaines, the fact that she tied Leah Thomas for fifth, and he's like, it's the same trophy. Talk about being intentionally obtuse. She shouldn't have had to share with a man in anything in her sport at all. He wasn't entitled to be in that race, to have a trophy at all. And she tells the story about the trophy because they tied, there was only one trophy available for fifth place at the time. And they said, we want him to hold it because this was back in the, let's celebrate the fact that there's a man posing as a woman in this race at

all. So it was clearly she was reduced to second class citizen as the actual biological woman who won there. And the woman below Riley Gaines lost out because Leah Thomas was there and the woman below her and so on. Then he turns on a 16 year old, now she's older, I think she's now 20 or something, Peyton McNabb, the audience may remember her from this show. We had her on shortly after this whole thing happened. But then she went on to speak out at her state legislature. She went on to be Trump's guest, Melania's guest at the State of the Union that Trump just gave. It's not technically a State of the Union, but you know what I mean. And listen to what he said about Peyton McNabb. A concussion is genuinely traumatic, though for what it's worth, she did go on to play softball in the spring and did pretty well, judging by her school posting this image about her making the all-conference team and a local paper pointing out she helped her team to a 5-0 start.

And I'm not saying she wasn't injured or that it didn't have some impact on her performance, but a lot of the groups heavily pushing this story seem to be overselling it. Oh, my God. In about 10 minutes, Jason Redman is going to come on. Former Navy SEAL who was blown up so badly fighting for us overseas that his face was severely damaged. And he's the guy who posted that, do not come into this room to feel sorry for me, and his hospital bed as he underwent 37 surgeries to try to get back normalcy and said, I will fully recover. It's truly like looking at somebody who's gone through hell and just being like, well, you're fine. You seem fine. What are you complaining about? You're fine. The fact that

she got through her injuries and managed to play a sport after her injury is an inspiration to most of us. You fucking prick. You don't look at somebody who's been through great hardship, who refused to just lay down and declare life over. I'm a victim forever, but fought back to do something extraordinary and say, it means you weren't hurt at all. It means your injury was a nothing burger, Redmond or Peyton. She came on this show too early on and told us about, first of all, how the trans player didn't give a shit at all that he had hurt her at all, was zero sorry. And described, by the way, John Oliver, it wasn't just a concussion, you absolute loser. Here's what she said.

They hit it so hard that we didn't really know. We weren't used to taking hits that hard. So I was afraid. I was, I know a lot of the girls were. I was hit and everything went black. My teammates and coaches said I was unconscious for about 30 seconds. While my team was huddling around me, the opposing team was laughing. But when I came back to consciousness, a trainer took me to the sign lines and checked me for a concussion and told me I was fine and could go back in. But luckily, my coach didn't let me go back in. Was there any chance of you to defend that ball? No. A lot of people say that there was and I should have protected myself better, but I had, I seriously had no time.

I was out for the rest of my volleyball season. I have impaired vision, so I have to, I had to get my glasses redone. I have partial paralysis on my right side, so my right side lags slightly. I have really bad headaches. I have to have accommodations at school and test in separate rooms and get extra help when that's never been a problem before. I was really depressed. I had a really long depressive episode and I have anxiety now. The arrogance and privilege of this fucking multimillionaire sitting at his desk trying to lecture this young woman about how she's fine. It was just a concussion. By the way, that's enough, you absolute jerk. But listen to what actually happened to him. Weirdly, I didn't hear that. I didn't hear that either in his monologue. I didn't hear about Riley Gaines,

again, having to change and get naked in a locker room in front of a man, Will Thomas. And I didn't hear anything about Peyton McNabb's actual injuries that she somehow managed to get through in order to have some semblance of a sports career while in high school, which doesn't take away one second from her ongoing headaches, from the bullying that she felt she suffered, from the partial paralysis that she had on her right side. This, like the, I can't, Stu, it's like the height of, I mean, leftism. That's what I see when I hear him. Like this leftist, elitist, rich prick who has no sympathy or empathy in his heart for this young girl or any young girls. By the way, he also didn't mention the girl in Massachusetts who had her entire mouth of teeth knocked out by a male field hockey player posing as a girl.

How about all the girl basketball players that we have seen fall down and hurt on the court? We could do this all day. How about the girls in the Midwest who had an 18-year-old guy join their shower with his dick hanging out while they were trying to shower for gym? They were 14-year-olds. John Oliver, you don't know what you're talking about. Shut up until you get actual facts. And don't you dare purport to be fair on this issue with your fake facts and your fake, there are just no studies, until you've done two seconds of research. Call up Peyton McNabb. Why don't you actually look into the cases? It's so infuriating, Stu, because to your point, he's a leftist god. They love him. And the reason he did that, I guarantee you,

is because he saw Gavin Newsom say, it's an issue of fairness. And he sees the numbers that this is now an 80-20 issue. And he's trying to reel back in his side. And by the way, he's got some trans producer high up in his ranks who I'm sure he was trying to pander to. And all leftists want to pander to this community. They don't give a damn about women. Okay, I'm done. That was awesome. I completely agree with you.

And honestly, it's soulless, right? Imagine being, you know, this guy who can have this type of audience, who can bring this many millions of people to the table. And what you use that for is to mock a young teenager who went through serious injuries and now has to live with those injuries, possibly for the rest of her life to defend some revolting and obviously untrue left-wing talking point that you're so locked into your ideology and so locked into serving that weird god that you're serving that you're going to take a victim like this poor girl who was bashed in the face with a volleyball. I mean, I'm a dad of a 12-year-old girl. She played volleyball. I can't even describe to you. I really hope that her father does not watch that John Oliver monologue. I hope he doesn't get wind of it because the anger that would be brought up when you're talking about your daughter, all you think about is protecting them and hoping that they don't go through something like that one time.

And to see it defended as if it's this brilliant and yet – and somehow on the side of loving – this loving nature that the left tries to portray. We're only doing the nice thing. We're doing the kind thing by allowing boys to bash volleyballs into the faces of your daughters. I can't even imagine. I'm angry about it. I can see you are as well. I can't even imagine what her family members are feeling when seeing something like that. I mean, it's a disgrace. It really is. I'm sure her parents want to punch him in the face, or maybe they're nicer people than I am. They probably are. But then he's like, oh, it really kind of all just boils down to disc golf. It's all about disc golf. Meanwhile, it's like he doesn't touch on what's happening to women's rugby, which is being overtaken in various towns and places by these guys. And that is danger. He's like, there's no danger in track. Talk about missing a large portion of the point. It is unfair. These girls worked their whole lives to have the glorious feeling of victory, which is being stolen from them. And then he says like these runners in Connecticut, also inaugural guests of the show. We weren't on the air, I don't know, 50 episodes before I put

these girls on who were running in Connecticut in high school and were losing to guys who had run as men the previous season. Zero hormone therapy, fully intact, fully hormonal, post-pubescent men running against them as teenagers who were starting to steal the medals. He's like, well, they didn't lose every race to these guys. That's like telling somebody who has to run a bike against somebody who's doping or fight in the ring against somebody who's on steroids when they're not. Well, you got that one round off of them. I mean, you got that one race. So what are you complaining about? It doesn't address the fundamental unfairness that the fight is rigged. The whole contest is rigged. The fact that in this circumstance or that outlier, it could be overcome by somebody extraordinary does not disprove the basic unfairness of it. I totally agree with you. The only thing I would actually quibble with you at all on all of that, Megan, is when you said he was missing the point, because in some ways that sort of insinuates it was unintentional. He knows the

point. He's missing it intentionally. He's hiding all of these facts intentionally. And a lot of this comes from the fact that Oliver comes from this this old like Jon Stewart tree where you're allowed to basically ignore facts to make jokes. I'm just a comedian. I'm just saying the funny thing. And it is infuriating. You're allowed to be the authority on everything you say until you get caught. And then you just say, I was just joking. He 100% knows every single example you talked about. And if he doesn't know it, certainly someone on his staff knows all of them.

They intentionally hide those things to his audience who swallows it like suckers over and over and over again. And I would be angry. Like if I were listening to your show, Megan, and you're explaining an important issue and you intentionally left out facts that disproved the point you were making, I would feel betrayed by you. I would feel anger at the host who was doing that because I'm the idiot that goes into work the next day and makes this big case and then looks like a fool. For whatever reason, the left doesn't have that instinct. They don't care if they get lied to over and over again by people like John Oliver. And that is what he's doing. He's going out there. He's misleading them. It might help actually Republicans at the polls that the left believes this and they try to die on this hill that is, as you point out, at least an 80-20 issue. But it doesn't make it right. He should be embarrassed by it. And it is it's the type of thing that is done so frequently on the left wing media side of things that it's really irritating. And especially if you happen to be

the father of a young kid who has had to deal with the consequences. I mean, I just there's there's no there's no redeeming value there. Megan, you're getting me very fired up, but there's nothing redeemable about what he did. Yeah. Oh, go ahead and dig in, John, and let your side dig in on this issue and you'll get spanked again at the next election and the one after that and the one after that, because we've already won on this issue. You sound like a caveman with those ridiculous arguments. It's absurd. It's mind bending that he's allowed to get away with this. You know, it's it's actually shocking. This is J.K. Rowling's reaction for what it's worth.

I understand why men like Oliver, who have consistently mocked anti-science people on the right, sold out initially. They didn't want to blow up their careers. Talking fashionable or taking fashionable anti-women's rights positions was the cost of doing business. But it's time to read the fucking room. Yeah, read the room. He doesn't care. He wants points in the woke bank, which is a bankrupt account. Stu Bergeer, thank you. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much, Megan. I appreciate it.

Okay, I mentioned it a minute ago. Jason Redman is an extraordinary man and he's been on the show multiple times. You guys have met him, but I first met him at a benefit for Navy SEALs back in like 2008. We went through this the last time he came out trying to pinpoint the year, but it was many years ago. I was young at Fox and in a room full of Navy SEALs, I mean, they were all extraordinary and had amazing stories. And there were a lot of injured vets there too, because this is in the height of the Iraq war. He stood out as one of a kind. He had suffered catastrophic injuries, including to his face. As I mentioned, he had 37 surgeries and he was the most positive, happy warrior you'd ever know in your life. You'd ever be privileged to know in your life. And just his behavior, his attitude, his mental toughness

was inspirational and remained that way for me for years. And then I finally had him on and times 100. He's here next with the woman he worried would not stand by him in the face of these injuries. He'd heard too many horror stories about women abandoning their guys when they suffered these kinds of catastrophic injuries. And for the first time we get to meet Erica along with Jason next life is busy and finding time to shop for clothes can feel impossible. That is why Daily Look is a game changer. The number one premium personal styling service for women. Here's how it works. A stylist curates a box of up to 12 pieces tailored to body shape, preferences, and lifestyle. Whether chic office outfits or cozy everyday looks are needed,

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Head on over to dailylook.com to take your style quiz and use code Megan for 50% off your first order. That's dailylook.com for 50% off and make sure you quiz and use code Megan for 50% off your first order. That's dailylook.com for 50% off and make sure you use my promo code Megan so they know we sent you. Dailylook.com, promo code Megan. What are you doing this Easter to celebrate with your family? Angel Studios, who gave us the box office hit Sound of Freedom, has an unforgettable movie coming out this Easter called The King of Kings, an animated story of the life of Jesus, featuring an all-star cast including Oscar Isaac, Pierce

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Get two free tickets to see King of Kings and join the Angel Guild as a premium member at angel.com slash Megan. Take your kids to a truly wonderful movie this Easter season and be a part of making family entertainment great again. Angel.com slash Megan. I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch The Megyn Kelly Show on Triumph,

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three months for free go to siriusxmM.com slash MK show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free. Offer details apply. Now we turn to marriage. Let me tell you, if my next guests can weather the storms of matrimony, then there is hope for everyone. Joining me now, U.S. Navy SEAL Jason Redman. You might remember we had Jason on in 2023 for our Memorial Day show, episode 560. So worth your time to go back and just listen to that whole thing. His story's incredible and inspirational to say the least. And now we have his wife, Erica, also joining us because together they have released a new book, Mission Invincible Marriage,

a battle-tested guide to an enduring relationship. And I'm so excited to dive into it with them. Welcome to the show, Jason and Erica. Great to have you. Megan, great to see you again. Oh, great to see you too. So Erica, you're, you're the star. Sorry, Jason, I've already talked to you. I am so excited to talk to Erica. You're the star who we've talked to Jason about so many times about how he got hurt in Fallujah. He's, he's there bandaged up. You know, he's got, he got blown up, which, you know, they all tell you don't get blown up, but he got blown up and started hearing the stories, the terrible stories about unfortunately too many women who peace out. They cannot handle the stress of what they know

is coming their way as fiancees, as wives, as you were. And instead he woke up to you kissing him and telling him, we got this. I'm with you. And, and remembering the salt of your tears. Oh, it's like, it's so moving. So explain to us how, how was that your reaction and not this other one that's that apparently all the other wives have made? Yeah. You know, we were fortunate that I think we have really have had time. Um, so many military families sometimes don't always get that time, but we have really have had time. So many military families sometimes don't always get that time, but we had really built a good foundation. You know, I don't think either of us had anticipated, you know, we thought about what if he was killed or, you know, all these other things. And I'm pretty, I'm a pretty positive person. So I did a pretty good job of pushing

all of that. But I don't think either of us ever anticipated, you know, getting severely wounded, that just wasn't something that, you know, we had thought through or really prepared for. So I don't know, you know, he he laughs, but I feel like I kind of was in mom mode, like I really didn't, I didn't think about it. So I think that we just had, you know, we had a really good, strong foundation and we were fortunate for us when adversity hit. I don't think I thought much about it. I did, did whatever needed to be done. And I think that that made us stronger, but there is, we we've seen it where there's so many couples that there's not that strong foundation. Um, they definitely don't seem to make it through that. Right. And then these poor guys have the loss of their love in addition to the loss of

the life they knew. And it's such a role reversal, let's face it. I mean, when you marry a Navy SEAL, it's like, I think generally like this very strong protector, tough guy, and you're going to be taken care of. And then to see him severely wounded and you have to be the protector and the caregiver for a good long while. Um, of course, Jason never, never saw life like that. I'm sure because I've just gotten to know him a little bit, but it is a role reversal and you can see how it could cause big disruption in even a good marriage. But you say your book, I mean, it's about how do you save a marriage and how do you get past this? This wasn't the biggest test of your marriage. It was more after he got through the injuries and you know, you tell me, but it's more like Jason,

this mental toughness, this thing that led you guys to work on this. Jason gave me a copy of this note that he put outside his door. Hold on. I want to make sure the audience sees it. Um, this like this mental toughness was very good and got Jason through all those surgeries and so on, but it had a downside. And I would say from what I read, that was more your toughest period. Can you, I'll start with you on that, Jason. What was it? How would you describe what you were doing in your marriage that was not so great? Well, I think for many of our warriors, you know, so many people want to focus on the physical wounds and obviously mine, I wear on my face. So they really stand out. I mean, people oftentimes they look at amputations and things like that, but so often it's the

invisible wounds we carry. I mean, Megan, you nailed it. I mean, if a marriage comes to an end, oftentimes a career comes to an end. I mean, really that individual is lost trying to find themselves and where they go from here. And I was starting to encounter that. Although I had a strong family, I was now transitioning out of the military. My SEAL career was ending and I'll be honest, everything really was good. Should have, should be good. I mean, physically, you know, my surgeries were coming to an end. And, and I was, I was on the path. We had created a nonprofit doing successful things. Our family was good, but I don't know why I started to struggle mentally.

You know, combination of post-traumatic stress and transition. And, you know, in the protector community, law enforcement, fire and military, that's a really hard time for us when you give up something that was so much part of your identity. And now you're stepping into the second phase of your life. And I wasn't managing it well. I think the combination of some of the post-traumatic stress, not sleeping, the combination of the transition led me to self-medicate, drink too much and start pushing Erica and my family away. And she tried to allow me to figure that out, which is so funny. Almost all of us do the same thing. It's the opposite of what you should be doing. You should be asking for help, but that's hard for us. We've always been, we're the ones that go save other people. So when we're the ones struggling, it's very difficult to be vulnerable and say, Hey, I'm really struggling. And I think Erica recognized

that we had built a strong enough foundation. And she tried to give me time, but she recognized I was kind of, I was getting ready to drive off a cliff and she needed to do something. And she tried to give me time, but she recognized I was getting ready to drive off a cliff. And she needed to do something. And she was really smart in how she approached it. And I think the way we had built ourselves that she knew how to approach it so that I would listen. I mean, it's so beautiful. It's very, very strong of you to be able to admit that. Because it would be so much easier to say,

this is the, this is the story. It's all right here. This is the story saying I should read it to the audience in part because it's just so amazing. And then I'll finish making my point, but this is what Jason and Erica hung outside of his hospital room. And now this is on display at Walter Reed, uh, when he was healing. Attention to all who enter here. If you are coming into this room with sorrow or to feel sorry for my wounds, go elsewhere. The wounds I received, I got in a job. I love doing it for people. I love supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love. I'm incredibly tough and will make a full recovery. What's full? That is the absolute utmost physically. My body has the ability to recover. Then I will push that about 20% further through sheer mental tenacity. This

room you are about to enter is a room of fun, optimism, and intense rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, go elsewhere. Signed, The Management. I read the whole thing. How can you only read part of that? And so this is important in its own message. And this was exactly the right headspace, I think, for you at the time, and you both shared in it. But then the second piece is so real. It's so real, as the kids say, real, where you get your body and your mental tenacity gets you through the toughest period. And then there's like a resettling. And that can be the most painful part. And the fact that you're admitting it, Jason, as a former Navy SEAL, that's going to help a lot of guys because they might be going

through it right now feeling weak or like they're the weak one. Everybody else was tough all along and never had this. And the fact that you saw it, Erica, and spoke up to it and actually said to him, I don't want this to be the beginning of the end of our marriage. And that's what it's starting to feel like. That's incredibly powerful. It was such a shock.

And I know, babe, I'll let you go in a second but i i think people need to understand number one the most dangerous battlefield we'll ever walk on is right here and number two uh i think people often say to us like hey you guys are so lucky you know not everybody has what you have um but we were very intentional. It took years of building ourselves to get to that point. And we had established a rule right from the very beginning. It was part of our rules of engagement that we talk about in the book. You never bring up divorce or the end. I mean, for us, the end was death. That was it. So when Erica said that in that car, I felt like I'd been blown up mentally. It's so shocked to me that that came out of her mouth that it, it, and it wasn't accusatory, like, Hey, you need to figure your

beep out, uh, or I'm going to divorce you. I mean, it was, it was so, it was like a surgeon with a scalpel who made this tiny little surgical cut that penetrated my brain to say, you got to do something here. And I'll turn it over to her, what she was thinking. Go ahead, Erica. So going back to the sign on the door, I was just going to, you know, touch on, that was such a pivotal thing during that time frame. And because Jay is 99% of the time so positive and that sign absolutely shows that. But that was such a huge thing. And I just think people should never underestimate the power of positivity. It made it easier for me to support him and stand behind him.

Not to say that every day was, you know, that we didn't have bad days that would there, you know, some days were a struggle. I mean, we had a lot of roadblocks. But overall, I mean, we had music playing, and everybody always said our room was like the fun room. And, and I think that that's been throughout our relationship, but definitely during that time. And I think so many people can relate our relationship, but definitely during that time. And I think so many people can relate to years later when things weren't going right. The kids were good. He was essentially done with surgeries.

The nonprofit was doing well. Everything was good. So it should have been happy. And, you know, I think we talked about a little bit the rules of engagement that we were so careful when we, you know, we were positive, we didn't get into a fight and say, you know, this is it, I want to separate, I want to divorce, those were things that were off limits. So I think that we had really built that foundation. And we had the trust so that when I did, you know, kind of say, if we don't, if we don't do something different, if, you know, if we don't fix this, this will be the

beginning of the end. Um, it, it, it absolutely, um, you know, took it, you know, he took that very seriously and I'm grateful that he took a serious and took action. It was seismic and it was like tectonic plate moving it because it was so off limits. And I love that rules of engagement to put it in terms that most military vets can get, um, that the rules, as I understand it, and my, my husband and I have these same rules, although I don't know that we've ever like, you know, written them down like this, but, uh, yes, do not, we always say, don't make the relationship, the stakes of any argument, you know, which is, I think the same thing as what you guys are getting at. Uh, no name calling totally agree. We don't fight below the belt basically. And I like, you also have don't bring up past

like transgressions. Do I have them? Am I missing one? Yeah. You can never, never say divorce or no ultimatums. Um, yeah, no name calling, no, uh, no bringing up the past. That's good. That's, that is what you're really saying. And I got this from them. Uh, I don't know them. They said it publicly is, uh, the, the famous Kevin Bacon, Kira Sedgwick advice of keep the sex dirty and the fights clean. And it's kind of like a rule to live by in any good marriage, right? Like when you're at your angriest is when you have to actually be, have the most self-control in your day-to-day life, because this is someone you love and you don't win. If this person loses, it's a, it's a net loss for the relationship, for you, for the family.

You actually do have a lot of good advice in here for arguments. You know, I think something we talk about is not only keeping the fights clean, but also I think knowing your partner and knowing when to give space. We talk a lot about giving space in the book and sometimes, you know, Jay can run rather, rather hot, I can get rather emotional. So it's taking those cues, when you know, I definitely we definitely feel like you always need to address it so that you don't carry those arguments forward. But sometimes knowing when to say, All right, let's take, let's take a little break and, and come back to address it because you're, you're not getting anywhere at the moment. Well, and one, you know, the thing that we were talking about a moment ago, Jason,

is really interesting to me because I think a lot of women have the same objections to their husband's behavior as Erica had to yours. Even if the circumstances are totally different, where they think the husband is too withdrawn and not sharing any of his stuff. Like men, I think generally have a natural instinct to deal with it on their own. This is why the teenage suicide rate is super high in places like Montana, because in cowboy culture or military culture, the message is cowboy up, you know, like you're fine. And the last instinct is to go cry on the wife's shoulder about the fact that you are definitely not fine. So like a lot of it, like it was brave of Erica to say, I see you drifting away from me and I see you not talking to me and I can feel the separation like on a fundamental

level. And it was brave of you to say you're right. So how did you get to that? Like there, you know, right now there are other guys listening to this. Like, I don't think I can talk about this. Yeah. I mean, and man, the mental health crisis that's happening within not only our country, but within the veteran law enforcement and fire community is a problem. And it's only exacerbated by, in my opinion, a little bit of the victim mindset. So there's a balance that we need to have. One, it's OK to say, hey, I'm struggling. But number two, it's on you.

You have to take action, you know, and I meet, I talk about this oftentimes when I speak to organizations about mental health, you know, linking everything back to different stories related to the military. Number one, we call it a failed breach. So when we're going into a building and we need to breach a door, you know, we'll use explosives or mechanical tools or whatever it is. And if we don't succeed the first time, it's called a failed breach. Well, no one stops and suddenly goes, oh, we got a failed breach. Let's just quit and run away. We have to continue to find the things that will work for you.

And that's what I try and encourage. You know, any guy out there that's really struggling, you have to figure out what works for you, what worked for me. This is why when Erica said that to me, I kind of went on a journey of, man, I did counselors, I did chaplains, I did all kinds of different therapies to figure out how to heal myself and navigate through that. And I meet other guys that'll say, well, I tried what you tried, and that didn't work for me. Well, and I'd be like, well, how many other things did you try? And they'd be like, that's it. And I'm like, well, why would you, I mean, you trained your entire career on how to problem

solve and create contingencies and attack things from five different angles if the first four didn't work. So why are you approaching this in the same way? So it's just, you got to communicate. And number two, you got to figure out what works for you. And if it doesn't work the first time, you got to attack it from different angles. The other thing I love that you guys do and are recommending for people in the book, again, Invincible Marriage, it's called Mission Invincible Marriage by Jason and Erica Redman,

is humor. I completely love this as a tool. I've told the audience before, my husband's very good at this. If we have an argument, we'll separate, you know, rooms or whatever. And he always comes to me. He's the, cause he can't stand being in an argument and I'm, I run hotter. So it takes me longer to calm down. Uh, so he'll come back and he's less emotional in general, but anyway, he'll, he'll come in and he'll say, I forgive you. And I accept your apology. It just like out of nowhere, it always makes me laugh, you know? Anyway, can you speak to that, Erica? Like the importance of humor and navigating your marriage and your arguments and all of it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Jason's always talked about even in SEAL training and in BUDS,

sometimes so often that that made a difference for them. And I think everyone will agree that doing that at work or having humor at work,, are we making that effort to also take that into, to the home and into your relationship? But there's, there's no doubt that we definitely have little sayings or little phrases. Sometimes if things are stressful or if there's tension, it is, it is kind of just a great way that kind of makes you pause and like, like think, okay, it's not, you know, this is not that big of a deal. We, we recently, you know, this is not that big of a deal. We, we recently, you know, launched a new business, which almost became a whole new chapter in the book. But, you know, we, lots of little phrases that, you know, when we're both tired and

exhausted, you know, that we'll look at each other and we're like, okay, you know, take a deep breath. And so it absolutely makes a difference. Well, I think it's very interesting because of course that must have been a huge tool for you guys in, in, you know, SEAL training and throughout your time as a CLJ. Yeah. Humor is, humor is the best medicine. I mean, don't take yourself too seriously. I feel like America has gotten too sensitive. We were, it's like, you have to be offended by everything and, and man, just take a breath. I mean, have a little joke, have some fun.

I mean, Erica and I have always done it from the very beginning. Um, uh, I think there was one time we were dating and I think we sat in an empty bathtub with our clothes on. We were still, I don't know how this ended up happening, but I sat in there and I told her every stupid joke I could think of. And I thought I was like the wittiest guy on the planet, but I figured out later, she was just laughing at me. She wasn't laughing at any of my terrible jokes, but it was, yeah, it was the start of our relationship that is built. You know, there, there are hard times in this life. There's a lot of stress in this life. Um, yeah, try and break it with a little bit of humor and a little bit of fun, you know, and the immortal words from the movie, Hey, lighten up Francis, like let's, you know, let's laugh a little bit. I had a relationship expert on the show a few

years ago. And she said, especially for long-term relationships, like a marriage, novelty, novelty, novelty. And she said, the novelty could be you try a new recipe together, you go to a new movie together, or you watch something on Netflix you've never seen together, or it could be, you know, we go to Japan on some walking tour, you know, like whatever. It can be big or small, but she was saying that's a key thing. I like that a lot. Again, we're talking to Jason and Erica Redman about the book, Mission Invincible Marriage, which everybody needs to buy right now. Please buy multiple copies. By the way, Father's Day and Mother's Day are coming up.

So don't wait, do it now. Mission Invincible Marriage. And at the heart of the relationship, as I understand it, you guys, is you have something that a lot of people say they have, but they don't actually have, which is a friendship. And it seemed to kick off that way right from the get-go, Erica. You guys seem to be joking, right? Even though your relationship began in a lie, began in a lie, as you can explain what that means, but you're friends before anything.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was such a key thing early on. I do think that that helped during these difficult times that we've gone through over the last 24 years. And I think that that's also making a huge difference for us right now. We're kind of at a new, interesting stage. Our kids are all young adults. They're all leaving the nest. The youngest is in college. And I'm excited about it. Like our kids are all doing great.

So that makes me happy. But I know that this is a really difficult time for a lot of couples. And I feel like we're doing good. And I think that because we are friends and because we had that friendship, um, that this makes this time, this transition, um, that much easier. And I mean, uh, you, you started in a lie because Jason told us this story before, but he lied and said he was a boxer. Cause he was out with a bunch of Navy SEALs the night he met you and they didn't want to be like, we're Navy SEALs. And then tough guys around them wanted to like challenge them to a fight. So you thought you were going to date a boxer, but not exactly. No, it was former and current, but beyond that, beyond that, cause I, I, I have, I'm blessed to have a very healthy, happy marriage. And I think a lot

of the stuff you guys are doing, we're doing, and I recognize them as tools we're using, whether we'd identified them or not. So thank you. Thank you for your service and your sacrifice, both of you and for writing mission, invinciblecible Marriage. All the best, guys. Yeah, Megan, thank you. I mean, it's never too late. I mean, I think there's a lot of people that say, oh, you know, our marriage is okay or I'm not married. But there's so many tools in there, whether you're someday you're going to get married, you're in a marriage, or maybe you feel like it's too late. I don't think it's ever too late to go back. There's a lot of tools that you can get realigned and get back on course and celebrate in the goals and dreams, which is something Eric and I have always done, look into the future and where are we going to go? So that's

what this book will help you with. Right on. If you guys can do it, anybody can do it, truly. I mean, it's like no one's had bigger challenges thrown at them than the two of you had. God bless you. Yeah. Megan, thanks so much for having us on. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, so nice to meet you, Erica. Come back soon.

Absolutely. All right. Oh, wow. Gosh, it's so great to hear stories like that. You move on with your life and you can get too complacent about like, they write about that in the book, actually, complacency and how it's, it's a marriage killer. Um, but you can get complacent about the sacrifices that our men and women in uniform have made for us, especially now that those wars are over. Right. And, and they never really end for the guys who were over there or their families. They never end. The trauma in a way is always going to be with them and ongoing,

and they find their own ways to deal with it and some better than others, but it's something, it's an act of sacrifice as well for them to put those private moments down on paper and share them with everyone because they want to help you, whether you served or not, whether your marriage is, you know, a service marriage or not, you know, in between service or not, you know, between service personnel. So anyway, let's help them. Okay. Let's help them please by mission, invincible marriage and help the wonderful special Jason and Erica Redmond today and help yourself. You know, what if that, what if reading this book could be the beginning of a reinvention in your own relationship?

Check it out tomorrow. Tim Dillon is here. That's going to be fun. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.