The Megyn Kelly Show - American Stories, with Bari Weiss, J.D. Vance, and Mike Rowe | Ep. 123

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

We have a special episode of The Megyn Kelly Show today, highlighting "American Stories" from our first 120 episodes. Today's show features new commentary from Megyn Kelly, as well as the entire Megyn Kelly Show staff, reflecting on the episodes as well as our current cultural moment, and this country overall. We look back at episodes featuring Bari Weiss, J.D. Vance and Mike Rowe, and Megyn previews July 4th weekend.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, and happy Independence Day, America. Here we go into another July 4th weekend, and I hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am. I feel like we need to celebrate America, especially right now, right? With all the America bashing going on, those of us who love our country. My anecdotal experience has been that more and more people are having big Fourth of July parties, making a point to celebrate what we stand for here in this country. People are starting to fight back against the America bashers who don't get it or just are willfully blind to it, to the magic of what we have here. And I am one of them. We're actually having a big, big bash and I can't wait. And I do believe

that the majority of people in this country understand how lucky we are to live here, to have been born here. What a fortunate circumstance of our birth to have wound up of all the places in the world here where liberty matters, where freedom is an ideal that's written right into the founding documents of our country. So today we have an interesting show for you. We've chosen sort of three of our favorite stories, and we're calling these American stories that relate to our country. And I think you're going to love, I know you're going to love all these guests and they're sort of going to give you a feel for where we are right now as a country, it being July 4th weekend. It's basically three of our favorites out of our 120 plus episodes.

And a bonus for you, you're actually going to get to meet our team too. All of those writing nice letters about Canadian Debbie, you're going to get to hear from her directly today, along with the rest of our team who I'll introduce to you shortly. But before we get to our guests, I just want to read you this, okay? In preparation for our 4th of July party, we're putting together a reading of the declaration of independence. I recommend you do the same. Um, I'm actually thinking about Amazon priming some like colonial wigs. I don't know. I'll get back to you on whether that happens, but anyway, um, we're going to have a reading of part of the declaration of independence. I mean,

they really go on about how bad the King is. That's kind of outdated. But I just want to read you the very, very beginning, because it's so great to go back and read these things, isn't it? Like the Gettysburg Address, the preamble to the Constitution, the Declaration. So this is what July 4th, 1776 was all about, the Declaration of the Independence of the United States of America, and it was game on to fight for it at that point. And here it is. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

And here we go. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government. And on and on it goes from there. Just so beautiful, no matter how many times you read it. And I was reading up, you know, it's like Thomas Jefferson was the chief architect and he and John Adams were at each other's throats for a long time when they were running for office. I mean, they sort of helped found the country and then went into partisan politics against one another. And then when they were much older and getting close

to death, they started a series of correspondence with one another and managed to reconnect and managed to remember their brotherhood as founders of this extraordinary experiment called America and people who fought for a cause that would change the course of billions, would change the course of life for billions of people on this earth. Think about it, right? These two guys. And do you know, you may remember this, do you know they died on July 4th, the July 4th, 50 years after 1776, July 4th. I mean, it's just, it's pretty extraordinary. You want to feel good about the country, go back and read some of these documents. Go back and read some of the letters these two guys wrote back and forth, and it'll humble you as a human being. And before you do all that, take a listen to this show and some of our

American stories. There is a common through line to the three sections that we've chosen to highlight for you today from three perceptive, brilliant Americans. Truly, that is not an overstatement. These are important Americans in the truest sense. Mike Rowe, Barry Weiss, and J.D. Vance. They all can see the challenge that we're in in this country right now. They can all see the flaws of America, of course, but they have solutions. And it comes from believing

that America is and Americans are at the core good, special and worth saving. We're going to start with Mike Rowe. We talked to him back in December for an interview that aired on New Year's Day of this year. And everybody knows this guy from Dirty Jobs, from so many great shows highlighting the sort of Americans that don't usually get highlighted on TV shows. It's why he's been so successful. But Mike does not often get into politics or policy. So our exchange was pretty extraordinary. And here we're going to talk about safety, about patriotism, about socialism, about curiosity, and about Americans who rightfully feel, as Mike says, like liberties and livelihoods are being transformed under their very feet. That's coming up. But first this. we've gotten incredibly risk averse and, and risk is not inherently bad.

Risk can lead to great reward. Sometimes you can fall flat on your face. Sometimes you can break the arm, but in my experience, usually succeed or fail. You emerge the better person for having taken it. If safety were truly first, if safety were truly first, what company would be in business?

You know, if safety were truly first, our cars would be made of rubber. They would not exceed speeds of 15 miles an hour. We would all wear helmets and we would eliminate left-hand turns. If you did that- There'd be no more liquor stores? No more liquor stores. Look, the things we could do to save millions of lives every year are manifold. We don't do those things because we've made a calculation and we've decided that the risk, and by the way, it's not even a risk.

We've decided from an actuarial standpoint that the certainty of 35,000 automotive deaths in the coming year, the certainty of that is a fair trade for the ability to come and go as we like and drive our vehicles at the posted speeds and so forth. It's a bargain that we made. 690,000 people died last year of heart disease. We could stop a lot of that by dramatically changing the types of foods we sell and implementing a mandatory exercise program. We're not going to do that because 690,000 deaths is a fair trade for the freedom to live the way we want to do. Now, people don't like to say that out loud, but how else can you conclude when you look at the reality of the data?

10 million people died of cancer last year. They're going to die this year. 10 million people starved to death. I read something the other day, and maybe you can verify it, but it seems real. It seems in multiple places, the CDC has concurred that the number of starvation deaths likely to occur as a result, not of the disease, but of the lockdowns, will be between 80 and 100 million around the world. Because the logistic chain has been destroyed. Because trucks can't get where they need to go with the food. This is what the Red Cross is saying. This is what a lot of organizations are saying. We just have no real understanding of the unintended consequences on a global level of shutting down the most powerful country in the world and every other country, for that matter. It's going to be the ones shaming others

who tend to be more working class, more dirty jobs kind of people who say, I'll take the risk. I want to put food on my table. I'll do what I need to do to protect myself and my family. But let me work. Let me work. It's not the media people who are going to lose their jobs. You're not going to lose your anchor job on CNN because there's a shutdown of bars and restaurants and other industries, as you point out, that are deemed non-essential. And to me, it does seem like a class issue. And I think the dirty jobs are the noble jobs where you really do get your hands dirty and you're in the street all day and you don't mind it. And you have a certain mentality of my life may be risky and it may be dirty and that's okay. And sometimes you get hurt. Sometimes not the perfect result

happens. Sometimes it isn't perfectly equal back to your other point. And that's the way America is and used to be. I don't know, Mike. I think maybe you're right. Maybe they've overstepped to the point where there's going to be an uprising. And I do think the political messaging is playing into this because that same group of people, many of whom voted for Donald Trump, has been told for four years that they're awful, that they are horrible, that because they support this guy who seemed to reach out to them and say, I'll fight for you. Not only are they just dumb and stupid and not worthy of celebrating, but they're racist, they're sexist, they're xenophobic.

God, it's the old. Look, this is a big generalization, but I do find some truth in it. By and large, my friends on the right will look at my friends on the left and conclude that they're mistaken. And my friends on the left will look at my friends on the right and conclude that they are evil. And there's a big difference between being wrong and wicked. And so that is an unfortunate way to set the table. And the word deplorable was an amazing choice to make. And one of the truest things I think that was ever said,

maybe not intentionally, I'm sure she'd like to have that one back, but man, that set the table. And when Hillary Clinton called half the country deplorable, half the country listened and they believed her. And so, you know, ever since, I mean, that was one of many, but that was certainly a moment where people looked around and said, wow, there's a line. There's a line in the country and it's being drawn as we speak. Am I deplorable? I'm not, you know, people, I mean, I know a lot of people who ask themselves that question. So, you know, it's a, it's a heck of a thing. Do you think we're losing? Because I think after Trump was elected, people started to see that. You know, I think some of my liberal friends started to see, OK, we seem to be getting a message from, you know, the working class workers of America that we need to pay some attention to them.

That not every policy can be to please the Chamber of Commerce. Right. And that was a Republican problem. But I think sort of the more elite started to say, OK, let's listen. But now now just people are angry and they seem to be I don't know when they're looking at these Trump voters and the white working class and the black working class, they seem to be saying something very different. Yeah, I think it has to do with I don't know. It's just like last week I interviewed J.D. Vance and we were talking about his the movie based on his book, Hillbilly Elegy, that's come out. It's getting killed, killed in the reviews, which was completely predictable. But I read those reviews and I

think the movie was great. And I think, you know what? It's okay to go after deplorables again. And it's not okay to humanize them as he does. Look, Megan, that's just straight up hubris. I've spent the last nine months working from home and prospering. And I know that. And I know a lot of people haven't. So therefore, and for no other reason, I can't mouth off about a whole lot of things that I might have an opinion on because I've been able to work. You know, the CNN and the Fox News anchors have been able to work and yet they have opinions and they just can't help but share them. And so it's appalling to me the lack of self-awareness among so many people who have a platform. And look, I've been accused of it too. I suppose I'm guilty from time to time, but by and large, I try to stay in my

lane and I try not to get over my skis with all this. But do you remember when the smoking thing really tipped, when public sentiment really, really once and for all and forever turned against the cigarette industry. I think it was around the issue of secondhand smoke. that it wasn't their decision to smoke was not necessarily the proximate cause of them getting smoke into their lungs. And when that happened, right, secondhand smoke became a thing and it became a deadly thing. Part of what's going on right now, I think, is that our breath has been deemed to be secondhand smoke. The mask argument is no longer about whether or not I get to choose to assume a certain level of risk vis-a-vis my decision to wear or not wear a mask. It's, oh, you selfish bastard, you're not wearing a mask, therefore you're filling the air with

your own toxic breath and you're going to kill grandma. And that, you know, I understand that argument. It's the exact same argument I heard persuasively made around why cigarettes ought to be outlawed. Unfortunately, we're not talking about smoke. We're talking about breath. And we're talking about the fact that millions of viruses exist in a drop of seawater and the air is filled with things. The world is filled with things that can kill us. We live in a desperately dangerous place and nobody's getting out of it alive. But this new thing, this new thing has come along and the idea that somebody can breathe on us and infect us with a disease that has a 99% survival rate if you happen to be under 70

has for some reason petrified us to the point where we're simply not thinking rationally. And sometimes things just have to go splat before they get better. And I don't know what that means in this case, but we've just seen a lot of rioting. We've seen a lot of protesting. And I understand why it happened. We could see that again times 10 if this goes too far and people well and truly believe their liberties and their livelihoods and their country is being transformed under their feet. Fascinated and a little frightened by what could happen. Let's talk about freedom for a minute. There was a poll that recently came out that said, it was talking to young people.

As we've seen a lot with young people, the rise in support for socialism is spiking. This, this is actually not particularly new. A lot of, a lot of young people, when they go to these universities and they get told about how wonderful the communist manifesto is, they suddenly say, oh, it's a good idea. I'm going to be a Marxist. Sadly, that's the truth, but then they tend to grow out of it. But anyway, um, the other, the other stat that jumped out at me from this survey was that only 44% see the flag as representing freedom. I mean, that to me is nuts and a little scary, like the just the erosion of patriotism and love for the country.

What do you think? I think that. I think that's symptomatic of something. You know, I don't think it's a problem in and of itself, not to minimize it, but I just think there's something under it. I guess maybe it's curiosity. Maybe we're less curious than we used to be. Maybe I'm just saying that because I work for the Discovery Channel and satisfying curiosity is their mandate. And so I tend to look at everything through the lens of you're either interested in it, curious about it, or persuasive. But you can't be persuasive until you're informed and you can't be informed unless you're curious. And if you think socialism

is a good idea, well then persuade me. And if you can't persuade me, it's because you don't know anything. And if you don't know anything, it's because you're not curious enough to go around the world or read and, and, and make, make a persuasive case for socialism. Do that. I say that every day to people who take that view. I like to think my mind is open enough to be persuaded. It's just that I can't find a single example in the history of the whole world where socialism has worked. And no, I don't want to hear about Denmark or Sweden. That's not socialism. That's a kind of high tax capitalism. I'm standing by. I'm standing by to look at the study and to hear a case for it. And it can't just be, well, capitalism bad, or look at the bad things

that happen in a cap. Capitalism is not perfect. In fact, there's a lot wrong with it. I've just looked around and for the life of me, I can't find a better plan. I can't imagine of a single thing in the history of the world that has elevated more desperate people up from poverty than capitalism. It's one of the great success stories of all time. And conversely, socialism has got to be one of the greatest and most impressive failures of all time. The guy from Whole Foods just wrote a terrific book. John, what's his name? Is it John McKay? Yeah, Mackey. Mackey, right. Conscious capitalism was his first one. He wrote something called Conscious

Leadership, I think is his second one. But he makes this point, you know, the evidence demands a verdict and there is no shortage of evidence to make a case for capitalism or a case against socialism. Or you could say it the other way too, but you have to look at the evidence. And it's, to me, it's just, it's just overwhelming. We're not a perfect country. We don't have a perfect system. The constitution is not a perfect document. The flag has evolved just as surely as the Bill of Rights has. It's changed. Its complexion is different and so forth. We're a work in progress. progress, but to affirmatively look at the iconography, the symbols of our country, and to then just lean back and evaluate the decisions made by our ancestors and look at them through the lens of modern sensibility, that is the height of arrogance, in my view, and the very definition of an incurious mind.

It's a statute to laziness, is what it is. This is the thing, for me, the biggest difference. And again, I keep qualifying this in a stupid way. I have many liberal friends. I really do. My best friends are very liberal. And just the other night we were sitting around socially distanced, naturally drinking beer in between the moments where we lowered and raised our mask.

And I said to a group of my friends, it's like, it's amazing what we agree on. In fact, I can't think of really a single big issue whose outcome we wouldn't all like to see. It's just a matter of process. And in a general way, if I'm going to say something critical to you, I would say that you're impatient in the same way the millennials are that we talked about before. You look for shortcuts. A high minimum wage is a shortcut. Rent control is a shortcut. Now, we'd both like to see people paid fairly. None of us want to see people evicted from their homes. But if you look at the policies that are either popular or not popular, then I think you can, in a very general way, say, well, that's a shortcut or it isn't.

I think, as I understand it, socialism is a shortcut. Capitalism is not. And capitalism is messy because there's competition and people are going to fail. Good people are going to fall short. Again, it's well-intended people can disagree over the way to get to a place. But the place that we're all trying to get to, and I take some hope in this, is by and large the same. So what are we arguing over, the discussion we're having in the country over race. I think most people want the same thing, equality, love, support, non-judgment, opportunity. But there are real disagreements, I think, in particular between Republicans and Democrats on how we get there. How do we get there, right? You can just go back to the disputes we used to

have over affirmative action. Now it's morphed into disputes about, you know, should you be doing what Robin DiAngelo wants you to do, or should you be doing what Professor Glenn Lowry of Brown University wants you to do? But everybody wants equality and opportunity and love and support. You know, it's just, but what we do in today's day and age is demonize anybody who doesn't see the root there the same way we do. And yeah, go ahead. Look, to me, the entire race thing, and I'm going to really oversimplify this, but isn't the goal of the entire conversation to become a colorblind society. Well, it used to be. It seems like, ultimately, the best world we could hope to live in would be a world where people look around

and truly do not give a tinker's damn what color your skin is. So it's a great example because every thoughtful person I know loves that world. We imagine a world where we don't see color, but everything we seem to do in order to place is accentuate color. And so, you know, it's just a fundamental tautology, I think. I mean, how can you correct a problem with affirmative action, for instance? You know, how can you hope that the ultimate end result of that policy is going to get us to a colorblind place when the very definition of that policy precludes certain people from participating

in it? Well, you know, the answer on this general argument is only white people would say such a thing, which isn't true, of course. Many black intellectuals are saying exactly the same thing, which isn't true, of course. Many black intellectuals are saying exactly the same thing, but it's your white privilege that makes you say, let's not make color a thing. These activists, white and black alike, these activists would say it is an issue because America is systemically racist and we have no choice but to acknowledge that and work past that. And I would buy that criticism because I just made it to you a half hour ago

when I talked about the hypocrites in the media who can't see their own place of privilege and therefore hold forth with just delightful impunity. What I'm saying here is that, okay, if you want to take everything I just said and say, well, that's easy for you to say, you rich white guy in the middle of your life. All right. I'll accept for the purposes of the argument being dismissed based on those things I can't control. But then what are you going to say to Thomas Sowell? What are you going to say to Tim Scott? What are you going to say to Candace Owens?

What are you going to say to all of the black people who said the same thing I said? Well, you're going to call him Uncle Tom's. You're going to criticize anything you don't agree with, not based on the substance of the observation, but on the color of the observer, which is the precise thing you're complaining about in the first place. And so if you can't see that, you know, then I'd go back to my earlier point and say, you're not a genuinely curious person. You're something else. You're an advocate.

And that's okay, too. You know, the world needs advocates, but it's important to know when you're being sold something and when you're going on an exploration, these people, they're not exploring the kind of society that, that I would like to live in a colorblind society. They're exploring ways to gin up conflict to keep their thumb on the scale and keep us more and more divided. You know, going back to something you said about, well, discovery and exploring, and that really is how you've spent your life. But you were saying maybe it's because you work for the Discovery Channel that you have a different view of patriotism, America, capitalism, all these things. I think it's also because you spend a lot of time with veterans.

And I do think you tend to love the country and see the flag differently if you spend a lot of time with veterans? How do you not? You know, I mean, 1% of the population wears a uniform. Every single freedom that we enjoy has been paid for in blood. People roll their eyes when I say that because it sounds like a talking point off of a monument, but it's true. Every single thing we have was paid for by somebody who either volunteered or answered the draft or put on the uniform and paid the ultimate price. You're either

impressed by that or you're not. If you're not, okay, but Jesus, what's it take to impress you? Incidentally, one and a half percent of our country are farmers. One and a half percent of our country are farmers. One and a half percent feed 330 million people three times a day. You're either impressed by that or you're not. If you're not, okay, but Jesus Christ, what's it take? Our skilled workforce is a relatively small percentage of our country. But when you flick on the switch and the light comes on and flush the toilet and the poop goes away, these are miracles. These are modern miracles that we all take for granted. And you're either impressed by that or you're not. So dirty jobs and somebody's got to do it and returning the favor. And the way I heard it, every show I've ever worked on is essentially the same show. I just changed the title every couple of years. And their goals are all interchangeable. My job, I think, to the extent I have one, is to tap the country on the shoulder every so often and say, hey, get a load of him. Get a load of her. Look at what's going on over here. So on returning the favor, you know, I get to do that a lot. And aside from our country's fungible, ever-changing

definition and relationship with risk, we have a similar fungible, ever-changing definition of gratitude. And if we're not a grateful people, and I say this on a micro and a macro level, if we're not fundamentally grateful for what we have, then we're essentially rolling out the red carpet to a long list of feelings that we're not going to enjoy. I mean, it's hard to be angry when you're fundamentally grateful. It's hard to be bitter. It's hard to be suspicious and resentful. It's hard to be envious when you're fundamentally grateful for what you have. But it just seems like because we're not as curious as we once were, we don't have an understanding of history the way we should. And so we look around in relative terms and we don't see our country for the miracle that it is. We don't see our form of government for the singularly remarkable construct that it is. Instead, we look at Mount Rushmore and go, hmm, probably be prettier without all those slave owners up there.

It's an amazing thing, this ability to judge our ancestors based on what we know to be true today. Can you imagine 150 years from now whose statues are going to be pulled down? That will depend entirely on how woke and how enlightened that generation is. I mean, 150 years from now, what will the topic be that most mirrors the way we feel about slavery today? I don't know anybody who doesn't look back at slavery and go, oh my God, it's the human stain. It's our great sin. What a terrible thing. What a demonstrably, undeniably terrible thing that was. What do you think 150 years from now, that generation will be saying the same thing about? Could it be eating meat? Could it be abortion? Capital punishment? Anything that's in the headlines right now that seems controversial is going to be completely

worked out 150 years from now, assuming we make it that long, including the environment. And when that generation looks back at us, how harshly will they judge us? If they judge us as harshly as we judge our ancestors, then whose statue is safe? Right. Who will be left standing? It reminds me of the, there was a report not long ago about the famous, the famous Martin Luther King biographer, this guy, David Garrow, who got access to these FBI files from the 1960s studying Martin Luther King Jr. And some of what was in there was not good, suggesting he had affairs with 40 women. This is a guy who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on King, that he stood by as a friend, raped a woman. It was not good stuff. It's never going to change what Martin Luther King did for race relations in this country. It's hard to sum up the character of any man or a woman

by diminishing it based on even one terrible thing. People are complicated. And back then, when Thomas Jefferson had slaves, sadly, so did a lot of other people. It just wasn't the same. And you're right. I think when it comes to even just the way we treat our animals today, and when you think about what happens with the chickens, what happens with the cows and so on, it makes it hard. But right now we're not there. It doesn't make everybody who has a hamburger a bad person. It's so delightfully glib and easy. That's all I'm saying. It's the laziness that allows us to take our standards and apply them to Alexander the Great or George Washington or William the Conqueror or Sally

Hemings. Or Winston Churchill. Of course. Of course, if you can't separate, look, Martin Luther King, when he talked about the content of character, that idea deserves to be ruminated on and unpacked completely separate from the man as, as all ideas do, because all men are deeply irredeemably flawed. Who are we kidding? We're all pigs. We all know it. You know, we all know it. It's just, you know, if, if, if I see myself as more of a cougar hey not yet give yourself another 10 years you're still a lioness megan oh i like that better okay i'll choose lioness over pig but the point is animals we're animals yes yes i mean look i i do think there's a hierarchy of of species um and i do make value judgments all the time and I, and I, I can't defend it, but I look at dogs differently than I look at chickens. Um, but who knows 150 years from now, what the most enlightened among us,

who knows how they're going to make sense of our inconsistencies, our proclivities, our flaws, our contradictions, our hypocrisies. This is the part of the show where we're going to talk about some of the interviews. You're going to meet a little bit of my team. Actually, all my team. Who am I kidding? So we're bringing on the cast of characters as follows is steve debbie danny natasha and abby steve's our ep debbie is basically our senior producer she runs our news

danny is our booker natasha is our editor she's the one who does all the good recording and slicing and dicing to make me look good at the end and abby you probably knows know by now as my assistant little sister mentor nanny um all all things above. So anyway, are you guys nervous? Do you feel nervous? Yeah, I'm nervous. You know, you and Steve have the upper hand on this, obviously. I keep saying, like, at least it's recorded, you know. If we suck, you can cut us out.

Natasha only makes me look good, Canadian. Yeah, you guys are on your own. Just Megan. All right, so I'll kick it off to make life easy for you. I thought Mike Rowe, he does have this special gift of having spent his life not just with veterans, but with real working class people. So he doesn't have his nose up in the air about them. And that's what people love about him. I was amazed that listening back to him, he used to work at CNN, you know, and it was a different era of CNN.

He was like the after the dirty jobs. And then he went and did a CNN show that was similar. 2014, 2018. He never felt less like CNN than when I when I heard, you know, hearing back to that interview. Right. They've gone a different direction. And I don't know. I think he's the same kind of guy, but they they're they're a shadow of their former selves.

I can never see them hiring him now. Right. You know, the whole interview, we really felt like it was one of the most open and honest conversations we ever had. You know, he wrote like wasn't afraid to get into anything. Racism, classism is blind spots. You know, like he was willing to, like, go there with everything. You know, it's hard to do, which is really genuine. And and then at the end of it, you know, I re-listening to it again, like, oh, very patriotic. Like, I got to go plant my American flag in the middle of Toronto and make my children go out there and salute it.

Because that's just how he makes you feel. Mike actually hit on like with his safety last, everything's safety last and personal responsibility and assuming your own individual risk. We live in the DFW area, but if you go an hour outside of DFW in any direction, it's like an entirely different world. No one's wearing masks. Everyone's doing their own thing and they're perfectly happy and they're all farmers and they just have done this forever and they're not waiting for the government to tell them like when it's time to like do stuff they're just doing it and living their life and that's why i love texas next up is going to be barry weiss she's amazing she's a powerhouse and she's come on this show twice now by no accident so the first

time she came on was just after she launched her substack publication and before she became a champion for and board member of a new organization called fair that i'm also an advisor to the foundation against intolerance and racism and this organization is actually fighting all this racist nonsense that's being shoved down the throats of our children today in our school systems. Anyway, her voice is so necessary in our culture and in our current media landscape. And she speaks with openness and independence, which is why she was essentially pushed out of the New York Times last year, right? She's like, they wanted voices other than their normal far left people. They hired Barry,

who was a liberal. She's a lesbian. None of that was enough. You can't be a lesbian and a liberal and is outspoken person for causes on the left unless you adopt all of their orthodoxy. And she hasn't. She's she's an independent thinker. Well, that's why she left and in like a barn burner of a resignation letter. And she's a star.

And here you're going to hear just a little bit of how little incentive young Americans and particularly those in the media have these days to deviate even slightly from the norm. Because Barry talked to them. She talks to a lot of people. They write to her and she's pretty open about what she hears. And she's going to talk about how uniquely American it is to have challenging and honest conversations. Yes, everybody who listens to the show knows that. And heaven forbid, with people with whom you don't necessarily agree, that can be really fulfilling too. So listen to Barry. She's coming up in one minute. But first this.

We talk a lot about the internet and Twitter and social, but it's like, do people understand that we're living in an era in which you cannot make a mistake? You cannot make a mistake. And everything is captured for all eternity. And there's just so little incentive. I spent a lot of time talking to teenagers and college students who want to get into public life or want to be journalists or want to be op-ed writers or maybe want to run for office one day. And these kids rightly see no incentive to do so. And if they do want to, why would they ever take any kind of strong opinion? Why would they stand up for something unpopular? That's exactly it. That's what you wrote in your

resignation letter saying there are, it's very clear to the young people there are rules. One, speak your mind to your own peril. Two, never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Three, never believe an editor or a publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Oh. I mean, don't you think it's true? I do. And it scares me because, as I always say, the bullies have really won when they're in your head changing your behavior, right?

Like, it's never good to be bullied, but it's really scary when the bullies turn you into a bully of yourself. Right. And that's what's happening. I want to read you two really short things that summarize the moment I think we're in with regard to this. I get emails every single day from people like this young journalist who wrote me, I never thought I'd practice the kind of self-censorship I now do when pitching editors, but I have no power to do otherwise. For woke, skeptical young writers, banishment

and rejection awaits you if you attempt to depart even in minor ways from the sacred ideology. I used to live in China where I worked as a foreign correspondent, and these dynamics are eerily similar to aspects of the cultural revolution. I had a student from Harvard write me the other day from his personal email because he was too scared to write it from his college email. And he wrote to me and explained that he self-censors even when he's talking to some of his best friends for fear of word getting around and that he, you know, projects what he thinks professors want to hear in his papers and tries to write answers and write papers with the perspective that mirrors their worldview rather than what he thinks are the best arguments. Like they sound like missives,

like smuggled out of a totalitarian society. I think one, one thing I'm hoping, given that, you know, the era of Trump, hopefully with him out of the picture, and the clownishness, and the, you know, just the grossness of a lot of what that meant, that we will be able to see this other threat with more clarity. Maybe that's Pollyanna-ish, but that's what I'm hoping for. You know, I hope you're right. I mean, I certainly hope that there are more people coming over to our side, but they're so smart, the way these sort of radical leftists have seized control of so many aspects of our culture and our debate, because the less people speak up and offer differing views, the more people who haven't

said anything yet think they're in the minority and that they can't speak up. You know, one of the reasons I've been so vocal about this and I try to talk about the third rail stuff, you know, trans, race, sexism and misogyny so bluntly is because I think it's American. I think it's uniquely American. I've never been one to be ginger with my language, because I think it's American. I think it's uniquely American. I've never been one to be ginger with my language, but I think people need to be reminded it's not East Germany. It's the United States of America. You're allowed to talk about issues. Don't be shamed out of having the opinions that you have. Debate is the answer. Silence is the devil. And don't listen to the people who tell you your views are not OK and they're not

shared, because the truth is I forget that 75 million people who voted for Trump. You're you're of the left. Most I think most people on the left are with us. They're they're just freaking terrified. Yeah. And you know what? They're right to be terrified to some extent, because how much time and effort does it cost for me to go on Twitter and call someone an ism? It takes your career and hurt your family. You just need a dedicated group of like 25 people because I'm watching it happen to a friend right now. And that scares people. And it's not just, you know, the fact that you could get, you know, kicked off of Twitter for saying, you know, for misgendering someone. Meantime, the Ayatollah Khomeini, you know, talks about genociding the Jews, but okay. So it's not that, it's that it's not that far-fetched. And a lot of people in Silicon Valley have been talking about this

over the past two weeks to imagine, you know, this sort of censoriousness coming, you know, to your email or to the browser that you use, or maybe even to the bank. And so I think what's going on right now is not just people protecting themselves for whatever the mores are in the current moment. They're projecting out to what they could be a year or two years or three years from now. but there's this sort of paradox because people are silencing themselves and closeting themselves in order to protect themselves. And maybe they will in the short term. What they don't realize is that in doing that, they're sacrificing not just themselves in the long term, but the whole thing that makes this country exceptional.

Like, speak out now. If you get one thing from this conversation or one thing from my letter, my story, like, speak out now. Because it's not just about you and your mortgage or, you know, your professional advancement. It's about our ability to protect the things that have made this country, you know, the last best hope on earth. That's what's at stake here. And I really hope people understand that. You've written so beautifully about this. I mean, it's been a pleasure preparing for this interview because I got to read so much Barry Weiss. And one of the things you pointed out in the same vein is what we're losing is liberal America. And that is not used in the political

sense, not conservative versus liberal, but liberal ideals. I just want to read this to the audience because there's so much. It's so hard to choose which ones I wanted to read because they're all so beautiful. Oh, no, there's amazing. All right. So you're writing about how we've lost that. America used to be liberal. Then you write, not liberal in the narrow partisan sense, but liberal in the most capacious and distinctly American sense of the word. The belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of God. The belief in the sacredness of the individual over the group or the tribe. The belief that the rule of law and equality under that law is the foundation of a free society. The belief that due process and the presumption of innocence are good and that mob violence is bad.

The belief that pluralism is a source of our strength. That tolerance is a reason for pride and that liberty of thought, faith, and speech are the bedrocks of democracy. The liberal worldview was one that recognized that there were things, indeed the most important things in life, that were located outside of the realm of politics. Friendships, art, music, family, love. This was a world in which Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg could be close friends because as Scalia once said, some things are more important than votes. Oh, you don't even realize you've lost it until it's been chipped away and chipped away. And you have to ask yourself, why do I feel so bad? Why do I feel so sad? I know something's gone that I once loved. And this is it. This is what's happening. It's not about, I mean, listen, it's a little bit about critical race theory and that stuff, which needs to be write in my book that I feel like I grew up on a holiday

from history and maybe other people listening felt that way too. That certain, that it's like, my friend likes to joke that Americans are people that think history happens to other people. Like it seemed like we were inoculated from some of the worst things that were going on in other times, of course, and in other places. And I think what we've learned over the past few years really, really clearly is that the veneer of civilization and the things that we maybe assumed were as natural as gravity, like the things you just read off in that paragraph, they're not. They need to be protected and defended and sacrificed for. And the things that make this country exceptional,

it's not bloodline, it's not soil, it's our ideas. It's our ideas. And when those ideas are under siege, and they are very much under siege now from lots of different directions, then America gets pulled back into the mean of history. And I think that's what we're living through right now. I think that, you know, nothing less than those ideals that make us exceptional are under attack. And, you know, I think back to this summer and, you know, lots of statues were pulled down. Some of some of people that, you know, maybe deserve to be pulled down like Confederate generals, but among them were people like our first founding fathers, like Abraham Lincoln, and our second founding fathers, like Frederick Douglass. And you didn't hear a lot of people that are supposed to be our intellectual and moral betters, our elites, offering a full-throated condemnation of that. And that's a problem. Like I see a direct connection between the vandals that pulled down Lincoln and the vandals that stormed the Capitol. Like both groups of those people do not love what is good about America. And I'm worried about, I mean, obviously, I'm really worried about

where we are. And I just think that, you know, we've seen other countries sort of torn apart by the dislocations of the 21st century. And it's hard to imagine that we would be one of them. And yet, you know, anyone that studies history sees that, you know, nothing lasts and we're so young. And of course, it's possible for things to come apart. That's why I think it is, you know, all of us that love what this country is at its very best, even with its flaws, are obligated to to defend the things that, you know, the vandals are trying to tear down. Right. The vandals beyond beyond the statues, they're trying to tear down a lot of things that we care about. You you try to you toy around with the name, you know, because I do think some of us have been struggling to define, forgive the rhetoric, but the enemy, you know, like, what, what is this force against which we're fighting? You know, I'll get out there and I'll talk about some of these absurdities

that are being done to us. And I don't have a name for it. And you, you've written and I quote again here that American liberalism is under siege. There's a new ideology vying to replace it. No one has yet decided on the name for the force that has come to unseat liberalism. Some say it's social justice. The writer Wesley Yang refers to it as the successor ideology, as in the successor to liberalism. At some point, it will have a formal name, one that properly describes its mixture of postmodernism, post-colonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality. Until then, it's up to each of us to see it plainly, look past the hashtags and the

slogans and the jargon to assess it honestly, and then explain it to others. And that's the challenge, right? To get our arms around what are, because it's like, if you, I can't stand critical race theory. I can't believe that this thing is making its way into corporate America and into the schools of America. And that the shaming of people based on pigmentation has now become acceptable. And if you think it's okay, just because the people who are being shamed are whites, you haven't studied history to see how that pendulum swings back, right? Like this is not going to end well if we continue going down this route. It's creating more racism, which is what I hate so much about. It's totally anti the

MLK dream, which they're open about. I mean, people pushing this stuff don't believe in the MLK theory. They don't believe, they think if you're after content of character instead of color of skin, that's your racism talking. But if you focus in on that, right, the response from the sort of the radical left is you're a racist. What you're trying to avoid is an education on the history of racism in America and how to combat it. You know, you need to read more Robin DiAngelo. And I think you and I can look at them and say, you're insane. Robin DiAngelo's book is racist.

Her theory is racist. I'm fighting against racism. I don't believe we have the same goal. Get rid of racism if we can, or at least eliminate it in the pockets in which it still exists or work toward it. But we have a very different approach and very different, very deep disagreement on the methods. That kind of talk, that kind of language is not available to most people.

They don't even understand that that's that's the argument we're having. That's what's been so genius about this movement is that it frames itself as social justice, as the new civil rights movement, as anti-racism. Who wouldn't want to sign up for those things? But in reality, it is cynical. It is intolerant. It is neo-racist. It is neo-racist. The idea that some people are born into original sin or collective guilt because of their skin color and that other people have more claim to morality and truth because of theirs. I don't want to live in a world that believes that. I don't want to live in a country that accepts that as normal. And one of the things that I think is so important is, you know, we've lived through the past few years, you know, we've seen just such a degradation of language and such a coarsening

of language. And I think one of the things that's very important is for us to reclaim the language. And that's certainly the case when it comes to critical race theory. Again, do you believe in equality under the law? Do you believe that we should strive to live in a world where color doesn't matter? Do you believe that, you know, the world is complicated and people should not be slotted into two categories, victim and victimizer, oppressor and oppressed? And do you think that anyone that. And while there are people out there that are, you know, again, like it is hard to explain it because these though they're trying to do a good job. And I think, frankly, it's so important to what's happening in our culture right now, to the fight against all this nonsense. And she is totally fearless. Barry Weiss is somebody you want on your side. And by the way, team, the reason they hate her so much, like the left, the woke left,

not the regular normal left, but the woke left hates her so much because she's so effective. She's so good. She's so effective. She's so good. She's so articulate. She's got a way with the words things. And, you know, when you listen to her, she's persuasive. It also was one of the more requested guests we had before we got her on. I mean, there was probably a few there was like her, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson. There was a small list of people that we just got from the very moment we launched. Tulsi. Tulsi, yeah. But it was a kind of a perfect fit, I feel like. I mean, and she is someone who's going to be in the orbit for a long time. She came to New York, and this is before she actually came on, and this is the first time I met her in person. And we sat down, and several margaritas later,

we were hysterical, laughing and crying and agreeing on a lot and just lamenting the state of our society but resolving to do a million things together to solve it and fair is one of those things that actually did work out but i i would partner with her on anything because she's just she's a force to be reckoned with and unlike yours truly she's organized and she'll make things happen she has just enough of um abby in her to make her both a fearless warrior and a very well organized party planner. And this is this was one of her. Well, actually, this was the first long form interview she gave after leaving the New York Times. And, you know, what I liked about the discussion and kind of where it kicks off at the beginning and you talk about her being,

you know, Daenerys Targaryen coming out with the flames going on behind her. And, and you got, I guess you kind of think that that's how it is, right? You think someone like Barry Weiss, like it would be so easy to fire off, you know, a letter like that and to, you know, leave the New York times and with explosions going off. But, you know, she talked about how it was really scary. And I think that it resonates with a lot of people because it's a really scary time. Sad. But can I tell you something weird that's been happening to me in New York? Barry's profile, I think, is only going up. And she's become like some sort of weird litmus test amongst a lot of New Yorkers who you'll be talking to and you'll be talking about politics or commentators. And people will say to me, like, how do you feel about Barry Weiss?

It's like people who clearly are not listening to the podcast. And I'm like, I love her. And then you'll be like, yes, me too. Me too. Right. Like they don't want to say they love her because if you say you love Barry, it's like saying you love me or you love somebody who's on the right and she's of the left. So like they have to be careful about openly loving Barry Weiss. Meanwhile, I'm like, I can't get enough of Barry Weiss. I

want to be the third person in their marriage. Like I would have throuple with them. You know, it's so weird because I'm a Gen Z millennial cusper. And this is Danny speaking, our booker. Sorry, keep going, Dani. And I have friends who are non-binary who are on the LGBTQIABCDEFG spectrum. But then I have friends who are big MAGA fans. And I feel like my friends and I were all in our early 20s. And we have open conversations about politics. And I think we all are just trying to figure out what the heck our beliefs are. Because we're growing up. I mean, we were in college when cancel culture started. And I think we're all just trying to figure out what what is cancel culture? What was the world before cancel culture? Because we were, you know, 18, 19, when that started, like, what do

conversations look like before this, and we're still trying to figure out what our beliefs are and how to navigate this new world. It's going to be up to young people like you to fight back against the people who are saying you have to accept all or nothing, whether it's some diehard MAGA person who's like, you will not criticize the Trump or the diehard wokesters who are like, you will not express a different opinion than my own or your bad. J.D. Vance, I said when he came on, was literally my favorite interview at NBC. It's the piece of journalism that I did there that I'm most proud of. And you can see it on YouTube, by the way, the interview, it's just it's a beautiful family. And I got to meet his sister, Lindsay, who is a star of the book and what became a movie. And I still think you should go back and

watch it because I think it'll tug at your heartstrings in a way it'll be meaningful. Anyway, so we got him on the show and it was everything I knew it would be. And you know this name because he's, if you haven't heard the interview, he's the author of the massive, massive bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy. And he's actually now finally really considering a move into politics, running for Senate in Debbie's home state of Ohio. He's got big, big money backing him. Peter Thiel, the investment banker who backed Trump. Remember, he got kicked

out of Silicon Valley, basically. He's a really well-known investment guy. Anyway, he employed J.D. in San Francisco for a couple of years. And J.D. got out there and was like, what the hell am I doing in San Francisco? I don't like it. Moved back to Ohio, married Usha, who had clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court. Brilliant woman. And I think he's finally getting ready to make the move and we need him. We need more just like him in politics. And we'll have him back on the show if he decides to announce anything. Anyway, he came on November last year. It was around the same time that the movie version of the book had been released on Netflix. And he's unlike anyone. He really, his personal journey is an incredible American story. When he was on, we talked about the learned helplessness that exists in some parts of

America, but also about his hope for Americans, because he has seen that those who say life's unfair and leave it there are not nearly as prevalent as those who say life's unfair. And here's how I'm going to overcome it. The American dream, you could say he's coming up. Don't miss this one second, get an ad in and then JD Vance. You talk about culture versus economics and the effect on a community and, you know, the absurdity of the learn to code message to these coal miners, let's say. Think about if they turned around, if, you know, Trump's administration turned around to black America in Chicago and, you know, where you talk about blight. Right. And said, learn to code. Yep. The outreach that we

would get in that message, you know, there, yes, we do have to talk about agency and willingness to get off the couch and fix your own life for sure. That's a, that's a massive piece of it, but we also have to be realistic about what the economics look like and what's really realistic and expecting of these people. And I just think you can't, if you can't do it with the black community, you can't do it with the white community. And what we're really talking about is people who are lower socioeconomic status and how to lift them up. And you've got to look at both of these things. What's their attitude and what's, what's potentially available to them. Yeah. There's, there's a sociologist. She's actually a very liberal guy

and I've gotten to know him a little bit. And I cited him a few times in the book. His name's William Julius Wilson. And very much a guy on the left, but just incredibly thoughtful about these problems. And he's been pretty influential in how I think about this interplay between cultural and economics.

Because you're right, you've got to take people who are sitting on the couch doing nothing and you got to get them off the couch. You got to get them into good jobs, hopefully able to support families, able to raise those families in stability and comfort. And then you create a virtuous cycle from generation to generation instead of the vicious cycle that we sometimes have in families that are struggling with joblessness and addiction and so forth. But one of the things that's going to motivate people to get off the couch, of course, is the existence of a good job. That's an important piece of it, but it's not the only piece. Another thing that's going to

motivate people to get off the couch is when their neighbors and friends are also getting off the couch. When you're in a community where there just isn't a lot going on, where a lot of people are doing drugs, a lot of people aren't finding good jobs, even the guys who want to go and work and think about it, but, but if you want to actually improve people's lives, you can't just say, well, here's a money, here's some money, right? Here's, here's a check from the government, spend it well, or here's a good job, go and apply, but you've got to create the community infrastructure, uh, that makes it people feel like it's possible. And if they try something good is actually going to come from it. And we've got to feel pressure too. I mean, I, you know, I've certainly been, I'm sure all of us have been in moments in our lives where we're feeling a little bit lazy,

a little bit shiftless, unsure what we want to do. You know, one of the things that helps break you out of that pattern is somebody in your life saying, Hey, you know, do something else here. Right. You know, go, you know, maybe it's, maybe it's your wife who says you need to do something else here, right? You know, go, you know, maybe it's maybe it's your wife who says you need to do the dishes or help out a little bit more. Maybe it's somebody in your family. So you need to go and apply to that job. You know, those things matter. But like, I think about my own life. And all of these little influences that helped get me on the right path. You take those influences away. And it's just me trying to figure this stuff out on my own. And I think things just don't go as well for me, right?

If Mamaw wasn't telling me, you need to go get off your ass and apply for that job and work hard. If I didn't have my sister and my aunt and my mom saying, if you want to have a good job, you may need to go get an education. If I didn't have people in the Marine Corps saying, here's what you need to do. Here's how you need to have a good job, you may need to go get an education. If I didn't have people in the Marine Corps saying, here's what you need to do, here's how you need to apply for financial

aid, here's how you need to structure your life so you can actually succeed in school, all of these weird little community influences are what I think the building blocks of success ultimately are. That's as I see it, the interplay between culture and economics. It's not just the good job. It's also the full spate of community actors that make it seem both possible and available to you to actually get off that couch and go do something. Is it possible? That's what's ultimately missing when you're when you've got people who who are really, really left behind and really don't see a path forward. I also think that's the thing that's missing the most is people in their lives can actually help them. Right. It's it's back to the old if you can see it, you can be it.

You know, it's very helpful to see role models around you who have done it. But I also think this is one of the problems with identity politics, because the messaging from people who are obsessed with their gender, their skin color, their sexuality is you. The reason you can't do it is because of these immutable characteristics. Like you can't. The American dream is not possible for you because the system won't allow it. And it completely takes away a person of voters. But it's, they're basically challenging the notion that anyone, no matter their circumstances, can achieve success in this country. One of the things that I think is so beautiful about your book, your story, and the reason why many on the left hate it, is that you're an example of it being possible, even under really tough circumstances, even for a kid who has almost no advantages other than a grandma and grandpa who really loved him and decided to give him a little tough love. Yeah. I mean, the thing I always ask people when they talk about the structural and systemic

factors that make it hard or impossible for people to achieve is let's say you're absolutely right. Let's just say for the sake of argument that you're absolutely right. What good is that message when directed at a kid who's struggling and trying to figure out how to make their way? Right. So I'm not one of these people who says that people, you know, says that sort of poor folks don't have any disadvantages. Like, I can't possibly look at my grandma's life and my grandma's upbringing and say, you know, she had the same set of opportunities as someone who was born in an upper class background in the 1940s in New York City. I think, frankly, she also had a lot of advantages, right? She had, I think, a lot of important cultural training that she wouldn't have gotten. But obviously, her life was hard. I don't know anybody who would look at my life and say, you know, J.D. had it easy relative to a kid born of privilege. But so what, in some ways? Is the

takeaway from that to tell a kid like me when I was 12 years old, your life is unfair, the deck is stacked against you, there's nothing you can ultimately do? So why isn't the message that I take from that ultimately, well, I should just give up then, right? If the deck is stacked against me, if there's no hope, then I shouldn't even try. And there's just this weird strain of thought in American life right now where you can't hold two thoughts in your head at the same time.

And in this particular moment, I think the two thoughts, in this particular question, the two thoughts that we have to hold in our head at the same time are, one, yes, life can be hard for people who were born poor in tough circumstances. But two, it's still important for them to see that they have agency and that they need to try anyway, right? It might not always work out. And we got to be honest about that fact. But the worst of all possible worlds is where people are just told there's no hope, there's no

reason to try, there's no reason to make anything of yourself. And I do unfortunately think that's the message that a lot of people on the left are ultimately giving to communities like mine. I am, you know, my, you know, my grandparents were classic blue dog Democrats. And I'm actually sympathetic to a lot of the arguments that folks on the left make about certain unfairnesses, especially when it comes to people who don't have a lot of money, who grew up in traumatic homes, who grew up in abused and neglected environments. I don't think that they're wrong, that that creates special disadvantages. But you can't just encourage people to wallow in everything

that's gone wrong in their lives. You have to be able to say, on the one hand, we as community leaders, as policymakers, as media folks, are going to try to make it a little bit easier for those who are disadvantaged to have a shot at the American dream, while at the same time, telling people who are struggling to achieve the American dream, it's possible. It is out there for you if you're willing to work for it. Well, I think the other piece of it too is once one achieves the American dream, the response, the collective response from the left in particular should not be fuck off. One of the problems we're seeing is success has been so demonized in the country. Now, even if you are self-made, just having it is a problem. You know, they're,

they'll, they'll hold it against you. You've, you've, you must now see the rest of the country as less than you must not be paying your fair share. You have to give more of it back, you know, and the less you give the more of a miser and awful person you it's like, I don't know that I, I just think we've changed the messaging from good for you. Maybe I could do it to help me understand how to screw you. Yep. Yeah, there's definitely a way in which I think our country is really, I shouldn't say our country, I think that our leadership class is really uncomfortable with success and with people who have achieved success. I saw this interesting poll just a couple of days ago, and it was looking just at Trump voters, college educated Trump voters versus non-college educated Trump voters. The question was, do you think that it's possible for a person to achieve the American dream. And I think it was 71% of non-college educated Trump voters said yes.

And I think it was 40% or something of the college educated Trump voters said yes. And it was true for the Biden voters as well. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was basically the people who didn't have college degrees were actually more optimistic about their future and more optimistic about the chances for the American dream than people who had gone to college. And I think that's because they haven't thankfully absorbed the message that their lives are hopeless just because they don't have all the advantages in the world. And that's just an important thing. And I worry about our country's inability to try to uplift those who are struggling without treating those people as hopeless children who have no, have no agency and no, no responsibility. Um, you know, there's,

wait, but can I ask you something about that? Cause I, I wonder is the other piece of that, the people who are college educated saying, eh, I don't know, Is that, do you think born of, I made it. It's not that great. Like, I have to work my ass off. I never seen my family. The government takes 50% of my dough. You know, I kind of made it to the promised land and what do you think? Yeah, I think there's part of that going on, but the biggest, when I looked at that poll, what I took away from it is that if you're a working class American versus a professionally educated American, a person with post bachelor's education, then you're fundamentally living in two different media and information environments. And I do think that our universities, our elite media institutions have just grown pretty pessimistic about the American experience, the American experiment. And consequently, people who have spent their lives in those academies, in those media environments, I think they've just absorbed that things are more pessimistic and more, you know, more negative than a lot of working class Americans believe.

I also, you know, I really do think that a lot of this is like, ideology ends up trumping people's ability to think. Because one of the more interesting dynamics is, in response to the book, is that people who were, you know, really well educated, who are sort of the winners in American society, both in terms of their income and their prestige, they really wanted to project their own political narrative onto the book. And they wanted to sort of fit me into this box, right? So if like JD said this thing that I agree with, I'm gonna ignore that. I'm gonna only attach myself to the things that I disagree with, or vice versa, right? People would sort of, you know, had either very strongly positive or

negative views. And what I found, you know, is that working class Americans were actually better able to hold two thoughts in their head at the same time. And they sort of got that I was making both an argument about the fact that, yeah, sometimes life is environment are not constantly looking for alarm bells that a particular idea or concept violates one of the sort of sacred tenets of their faith or ideology. It's just more open minded. predict with your movie, because the movie is now out about, you know, based on your book, you're going to get slaughtered by the reviewers and you're going to get completely loved by the actual viewers. It'll be reviewers versus viewers, as we've seen in any film that, you know, that hasn't a message like yours, which is that the American dream may still exist. It may not be perfect. It may not be pretty, but it does still exist. And that even shines a spotlight on this group of people, you know,

people in Appalachia, people struggling with the opioid crisis in a way that that isn't entirely about woke culture or victimization and how the country's bad. That's what we've seen. You know, it's one of the reasons why Roseanne, the reboot was so successful, right? Like they talked about these issues in a way that really resonated with real America, even though the people who wrote about that, the reboot were like horrified. Or even before her scandal, they were like, this is horrifying. Well, how could the show be succeeding? And I saw this already. There was one review by The Washington Post.

That's this is so perfect because of what their criticism of the book. The movie is that they really wanted it to be more woke. And this is a quote from one of the reviews. Vance paints Appalachia as a near exclusively white space. Erased are Black residents and their history in the region. Missing are the many generations of Native American communities. Ignored is a growing Latino population. Disregarded are Appalachians who embrace racial justice and acceptance of their LGBTQ neighbors. This is a personal story of your family. Why did you get into all that?

Right, right. Can you imagine what a movie like that would look like, you know, where you're trying to tell the story of a family, but you have to actually talk about every other conceivable group, majority, minority, what have you, and present them on the screen so that it satisfies this sort of woke obsession. With a little no justice, no peace sign in the background. It's just, yeah, it's just totally preposterous. And as it happens, most of my family voted for Republicans and she's voted for Democrats since. I just think that there's this way in which elite Americans want working class Americans

to be more ideological and more woke than they actually are. One of my favorite responses to the book or to the movie, I can't even remember which at this point, but is that J that, you know, J.D. Vance doesn't talk enough about BIPOC, BIPOC and LGBTQIA Americans in his sort of experience of Appalachia. It's like, okay, so BIPOC is Black Indigenous People of Color.

LGBTQIA is Lesbian, Gender Non-Deforming, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Asexual. And I read this and I'm like, you people are crazy. Like truly the authentic real Appalachians use these like 14 character pronouns every time they talk about themselves. And, you know, I just listen to this and I think, who are you kidding that you think this is the way that Appalachians or frankly anybody else, black, white, brown, whatever, talks about themselves and their communities. This is a particular obsession of a particular upper class of Americans. And I think it's insane. But don't try to pretend that that's the real America because you want it to be. It just isn't. Right. A moment on the asexuals in

the holler. You know, what, what, what am I, what am I good friend? Just a side, you know, he's sort of like a populist. he calls himself a populist Reagan Democrat, but he's, he's a professor, I won't give his name, because I don't want him to get fired. But he's, he's, you know, he's a gay man, you know, in his in his mid 50s, just a great, great friend of ours. And he sent me this tweet from Elizabeth Warren's campaign, Twitter account back when she was still running for president. And it was like something like, you know, we love all people who are intersex, asexual and two spirit. And this guy sends me this tweet. And he says, Look, man,

we gay guys just wanted to be left to hell alone. You can have your two spirits. There's something about just this bizarre way of discussing these issues that's alienating and dividing the country. on Hillbilly Elegy is, you know, you really needed to diversify your cast and the way you look back at your own hometown and add in a bunch of transgender people who weren't there in a bunch of different races and ethnicities that weren't actually there when you were, you just need to do it. Everything needs to be woke. Okay. And now they're going after a Senate campaign. I mean, the idea that a populist message, but being funded by billionaires, it's like Peter Thiel, I mean, you're not going to group him in with your typical billionaire. I don't know how that is some sort of is not allowed to happen where that could have a populist message.

Only the far left cares about stuff like that. It's like anybody running for office has to raise money. They all have to raise money. It's not easy to put ads out and all that stuff. I want to know about the person. Is it a good person out there beholden to some dark corporate force? That's important to know. But Peter Thiel is like an investor across many properties. Like what if you're beholden to him, I think you're beholden to sort of amorphous causes. I have something I have two things that I thought about when I was listening to this. The first is he talks a little bit about the word prestige. I have never felt a desire for prestige. I thought

it was so interesting, his focus on, you know, he was talking about like how he came. I mean, he is, he's literally the American dream. Like he is obviously the American dream. And when I was listening to him, I was like, I never felt a desire for prestige. And I wonder where that comes from. And should I have a desire for prestige? This is why you became my assistant. I just feel like I got so well. I don't know that. And like his other is other stuff about like learned helplessness, you know, like how we

are learning helplessness in society. I also when I hear that, I'm like, my I have such a strong desire to make sure my daughters do not learn helplessness. Like I want the exact opposite. I want them to learn no helplessness. I want them to be the opposite of that. Well, I was gonna say so I've said this to our other teammates before about you, Abby, Abby's got the highest EQ of anybody I've ever met in real life. I it's off the charts. Like you just, you can read people in situations quickly and accurately in a way that is special. And I think it's no accident that you don't feel the need for, for prestige because you have your priorities straight. What is

prestige? What is that? That's a bullshit word, right? It's like, you love Kevin, you love your daughters, love me. Anyway, but my point is like, you've got your priorities straight and you put all of your energy into those things and you work hard, you work your ass off at your job, you do really well. That's what matters. Who cares how other people are looking at you and like, prestige is, it's almost like another word for created envy. And I love JD, I don't think that's how he meant that. But like, I also don't feel the need for that. Like, I feel the need to have a happy life, not to have people admire me. When JD was talking about the American dream, and how it is possible. And it's a beautiful thing to you know shoot for and if you say that anymore

if you say like oh you know i still believe in the american dream you're almost like shit on for it and it's really sad because this is an amazing country and in saying that you believe in the american dream is saying you believe in your own individual agency to do whatever the heck you want and that's really what we should be celebrating. And no one seems to want to celebrate that anymore. Yeah. Saying like America sucks is part of the American dream. You have the right to say that. Equality of opportunity is awesome. Equality of outcome is not your guarantee as an American. And in fact, the hard work and effort that goes into how one approaches any task in one's life is what makes inequality of outcome a reality and a great thing. Now,

you shouldn't wind up in the same place if you phoned it in, if you didn't work as hard, if you didn't spread as much positive energy, right? You shouldn't. And that's why the system does ultimately work, not perfectly, but it does work. I also love what he said when he says like, you know, the message that permeates our society is the deck is stacked against you and how bad that message is. Because if you're given that message, what, what is, there is literally no incentive to do anything better or work harder or to explore another avenue or see how you can get out of your current situation. Like what a dead end message the deck is stacked against you. Like that's just not a good place to start. Do not go away because we have a

special, special treat for you. Right after this break, we are going to bring you Daniel Rodriguez, known as America's Tenor, the singing policeman. Daniel became famous after the 9-11 terrorist attacks when his rendition of God Bless America became incredibly popular. And he was invited to sing at several memorial events. I have had the honor of seeing him perform live many times, and it will send chills down your spine. He has given us permission to play his rendition of God Bless America for you guys. And if you don't already love Daniel, you're about to.

Stand by. While the storm clouds gather far across the sea, let us swear allegiance to a land that's free. Let us all be grateful for a land so fair as we raise our voices in a solemn prayer. God bless America, land that I love Stand beside her and guide her Through the night with the light from above From the mountains to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam. God bless

America my home sweet home God bless America land that I love Stand beside her and guide her

Through the night with her light from above From the mountains to the prairies To the oceans, white with foam. God bless America, my home, sweet home. Wow. Wow. Right? God bless America. God bless America. Listen, have a wonderful, wonderful weekend. And don't forget to tune in to the show on Monday because we have Brett Weinstein. He's been all over the news lately,

getting a lot of pushback on an episode he did on the COVID vaccines and kicked off YouTube and just Brett's all over the news these days. And I've been wanting to talk to him anyway. So we moved it up and we're going to have a fascinating discussion about all of it. Don't miss that show. In fact, by popular demand, because I think I see his name more than any other in our comments these days saying, get Brett, get Brett. So we got Brett. We're going to do it on Monday. And in the meantime, happy Independence Day to America, to all of you.

God bless you. God bless your families. And God bless our beautiful country, the United States of America. Go Team USA. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care Media Production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures. Thank you.