The Megyn Kelly Show - Ben Shapiro on Trump and Biden, Bullying, and Leaving California | Ep. 3

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

Megyn Kelly is joined by Ben Shapiro, the host of the Ben Shapiro Show and author of "How To Destroy America In Three Easy Steps." Ben and Megyn discuss the state of the 2020 election, Trump's response to COVID, bullying and Ben's life growing up, his decision to leave California and more.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 everybody, it's me, Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Let me take you back to, let's say, around 2013, 14. We wanted somebody who knew about politics and law and culture to come in the Kelly File and speak intelligently and not down to our audience. My bookers found Ben Shapiro. Our relationship over the years would become stronger and stronger. We used him all the time.

He could talk about anything with confidence and with intelligence and in a way the audience could digest. And then we watched him get beaten up rhetorically, that is, at college campus after college campus as he stirred things up fearlessly, always fearlessly. And now he's doing the same on his own podcast, of which he is king. He is one of the kings of the podcast world. He's killing it with his political commentary. I listen to him all the time.

Thrilled to have him here today. So, you know, I just launched this new business, right? And you have to hire employees when you launch a new business. More and more people are getting entrepreneurial and face the question of how am I going to find a staff? How am I going to find qualified people, the right candidates? Well, there is an easy answer. It's called ZipRecruiter. They make it super easy, super easy. ZipRecruiter.com slash MK will take you there and you can go to get your firm started. They will send your job out that you're looking to hire for to over 100 of the web's leading job sites.

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It is the smartest way to hire. Good luck. And now, Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro, so good to have you here. Thanks for having me. You are, in large part, the reason I'm here, the reason I am doing this. So people may not know that over my time off, you and I are friends, and you were kind enough to reach out and to tell me about your business and about this way of communicating with people. And you and your partner, Jeremy Boring, have been so helpful to me over this whole journey.

So I'm very grateful to you. Well, we're super excited to see you jump into the space. I mean, it's long overdue. Oh, well, it's good to be getting back out there. So Trump is behind in the polls right now. At least, you know, that's how it looks. We always have to think about the secret of the shy Trump voter. But it's very hard to convince the electorate to fire the guy that's in there,

don't you think? I mean, the thing Trump has going for him, even he's got time to make up that difference, as we saw him do with Hillary. But it's hard. It's harder to convince the public to fire the sitting president than it is to, you know, just put in the R or the D in an open election year. I mean, I think that's right. There is an advantage to incumbency, obviously. But the problem for Trump, and this has been true, and I've been saying this really since the day he was elected, is that between 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush had to pick up an additional, what, eight, 10 million votes in order to win against John Kerry. And so the question is, what additional votes has Trump picked up in an electorate that is very activated? I

mean, there's going to be heavy turnout this year, some in person, a lot in mail-ins. What has he done to pick up an enormous number of voters? I mean, through population growth, there'll be some additional Trump voters, but has he picked up enough votes in order to overcome the fact that he lost the popular vote by two and a half million last time? Wait, what is it? Why isn't the answer, it's not what he's done, even though he has a Republican record that's strong to run on if he wants to point to his policies but isn't the answer look what's happened this summer you know the the law and order the recklessness the riots you know he's sort of all he does is tweet out law and order law and order but that's kind of effective if that's the message you want to

stick in people's heads i always say trump is this he's a messaging genius he's he just says something over and over he's really good at it sticks in your head it's like it was a perfect phone call. It was a perfect phone call. And then next thing you know, you're at a dinner party and you're like, it was a perfect phone call. And I do think staying on message, law and order, law and order is somewhat effective. And if you're looking at the picture of these riots versus law and order, I think that's his best way of picking up these additional votes. I mean, I totally agree with that. And I think it's why it's important that he not be distracted with whatever nonsense he's he's retweeting. I mean, his Twitter could be a real weapon for him if he used it in concerted fashion. And this has been the great lament of Republicans really since

2015, 2016, was this is a guy with an unparalleled ability to draw cameras. He has an unparalleled ability to focus everybody's attention, focus the media cat on the laser pointer on the wall. So where does he choose to focus the laser pointer? Be focused in where you choose to focus the laser pointer. I agree with you. If he had just said law and order, law and order for the past several weeks, honestly, I'm very surprised that the Trump campaign has not gone harder on this issue. I mean, I understand he's been tweeting a lot and I understand he visited Kenosha, but there's a very obvious angle of attack here that he and the campaign have not taken that I'm shocked they haven't taken. So to take an example of what is

the most obvious campaign narrative I've ever seen that is being ignored, the Biden campaign deployed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to Kenosha. Both of them visited with Jacob Blake's family and Kamala Harris suggested she was proud of Jacob Blake. Jacob Blake is an alleged rapist. Jacob Blake was only put under arrest because a woman who had previously alleged that he digitally raped her with her child in the room called the cops and said, he's here again. The cops showed up. He resisted arrest. He walked around to the other side of the car. He reached inside the car, apparently for a knife, because there was a knife on the floorboards of the driver's side, before he was shot. And the Democrats decided they were going to rip the police as systemically racist, call for the police to be charged, and then call up the guy who was the alleged rapist

and talk about how proud they were of him. If that's not a campaign ad, I've never heard of a campaign ad, especially if you're seeking to get out suburban women and rural white voters. Like that's that's not a racial thing. That's just a perfectly obvious. You can side with the criminals or you can side with the cops thing. And Democrats have decided to side with an actual criminal. How have they not cut a campaign out on this? That news that she was saying, Kamala Harris was saying that she's proud of Jacob Blake. I don't care what you think about what the police did. That will be figured out in great detail. And by the way, he may have had a knife on him because the eyewitnesses are saying they heard the cops yelling, drop the knife, drop the knife. And then we know that they found the knife on the driver's floor of the car.

So we'll figure out what the sequencing was exactly. But at least according to a couple of eyewitnesses and according to the cops as well, he had the knife on him prior to going over to that car door. But for her to come out knowing what this guy's accused of, he humiliated, not only did he digitally rape this woman who was his, his ex wife, but he humiliated her in that room. And people that, you know,

they'd say, Oh my God, he was shot in front of his children. You know why that happened? Because he, he behaved that way toward their mother with her in the bed. And then he had them in the car when he chose to resist arrest, to get into a scruff with police, to resist the taser, to get the cops in a headlock.

I mean, you kind of assume the risk that something's going to go south really fast in front of your kids when you behave that way with a police officer. I mean, and Kamala Harris and Joe Biden both called for charges to be brought against the officer. They said that they don't know that they're guilty, but there should be charges brought against the officer, both of them. How is that not a campaign ad? That is just blatant pandering. Remember back in the days of Obama, when if he made one small comment, like he made a comment about the Trayvon Martin case and said, you know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon. And everybody on the right freaked out. Like,

what is he weighing in for? This has got to play on the courts. Like, shut up. Let it, you know, a president shouldn't be weighing in. Now it's a free for all. Now it's gone to the point of like arrests now. And we're proud of this guy and condemn like this is so far beyond the pale. And they know it, especially Kamala. She knows it. She's a lawyer. But they do it anyway because they want to gin up votes. Absolutely. I mean, by the way, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, you wonder how little facts matter to these folks. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have both tweeted out in honor of Michael Brown. Kamala Harris has openly suggested that Michael Brown was an innocent man who was murdered by the police. I

mean, I believe she used the word murder, as did Elizabeth Warren. She did. I mean, the fact is that there were two separate DA's investigations. Both of them said that the shoot was a good shoot. The Obama DOJ investigated and found the shoot was a good shoot. So the facts are just completely disconnected from the narrative. This is a rich vein for Trump to mine politically. And the fact that he doesn't have enough focus to actually mine it in any sort of detail, like force Biden to answer that question, force him to answer why he is calling for police officers who are called to the site of a man violating a restraining order for being at the house of a woman he allegedly raped. Why are they siding with that person and saying the cops should be charged and that cops all over

this country are the problem? They are not the problem. They are very often the solution. I know Biden's been trying to walk this middle line, but it's amazing to me that the Trump campaign has enforced him not to. But again, it's such a disorganized news cycle, right? The Trump campaign is, I think, all over the place in a lot of ways. I feel the same way about COVID, right? I mean, I've been saying for a long time that it is political malpractice for the Trump campaign not to have an ad out since like April, showing just various clips they did at the RNC, finally, showing various clips of Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom and Jay Inslee talking about how Trump had given them everything they needed in terms of resources because those clips exist. They did say all of those things publicly.

How has that not been the theme of the Trump campaign? But again, it's been so kind of weirdly disparate. It's just all over the place. In my view, this is where he's most vulnerable. Trump is most vulnerable on COVID because he doesn't really have a handle on the facts. When you hear him talk about it, he says different things every time, you know, he'll pull out a piece of paper. Everyone's looking at it like, what? Where does it show that? Huh? What? And he doesn't have that thing where he can he can explain

really dense information in a simple way, even though he's a great messenger. If it's really dense, he seems to struggle. I mean, I totally agree, especially because the mixed messaging from Trump himself has been so obvious. He said that he was playing it up and then he said he was playing it down. He suggested that he is in favor of masks, but he's also suggested the masks are not particularly effective. He's been holding in-person rallies with no masks at the same time, ripping Joe Biden for having done so in early March. And so,. And so the good news about being on all sides of all issues is that somebody can find something to like. The bad news is that there's a lot to dislike right there. I thought there was a lot

of strategic error, not just, listen, in the early days, there's a lot of confusion because literally nobody knows what's going on. And so if you look at the actual activity by the Trump administration in the early days, I don't see where Democrats would have done materially better. Where they would have done better, presumably, is on having some sort of solid, cohesive message. And also, I think that the Trump campaign, when it came to COVID and the Trump White House, made a serious strategic blunder when there was a perfect moment for Trump to seize control of the narrative. And that was when these racial protests began. And suddenly, the entire Democratic Party and the, quote unquote, scientific establishment swiveled on a dime and started saying that giant in-person gatherings with people screaming

and yelling in each other's faces. These were not only good, they were necessary because racism is a health issue. You should have immediately said, OK, well, you know what? You guys obviously aren't taking COVID seriously. So whatever happens next, that's on you. I've said that I think that these giant public gatherings are a bad idea. Instead, he's like, OK, but then I can do giant public gatherings. And I like like what you just gave away, whatever the talking point is.

You can't forget about. Yeah, exactly. Forget about the actual policy of covid, which I'm very anti lockdown. I think Trump could have even taken that. He could have said very early on and he did that he was anti lockdown. But then as soon as Brian Kemp started to relieve lockdown in Georgia, he was like, yeah, but I don't agree with what Brian Kemp is doing. So it's it's so all over the place in a time when the one thing people want is some semblance of leadership, whether it is Ron DeSantis taking leadership in Florida or whether it is Andrew Cuomo taking leadership in New York with completely different strategies.

People just want a sense that people know what they're doing. And this is an area of true vulnerability for him, for sure. So if you haven't tried Super Beats Soft Chews, you are missing out. This is actually a very yummy little treat that is supposed to really help with blood pressure and energy and just kind of makes you happy because it's delicious and it isn't bad for you. They're called Super Beets Soft Chews. They combine non-GMO beets with a powerful new ingredient of grapeseed extract, which is what makes it taste delicious. The grapeseed extract used in Super Beets Chews has been clinically shown to be two times as effective at supporting normal blood pressure as a healthy lifestyle alone. Better blood pressure means more energy. Who doesn't

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So what do you think Trump does in general from this point forward about these cultural issues that are being played out in the media and in the country? Right. I mean, I know you've said that you think the Republicans in general have been fighting the wrong battles, that they're fighting these electoral battles and they do okay with electing Republicans, but they haven't been fighting cultural battles. And, you know, the chickens are coming home to roost on that right now as we see those explode, you know, now weeks before the presidential contest. So I think that Trump's forte is the cultural battles. And so I think that he'll continue to focus in on them. The question is whether, again, he can provide some sense of solidity. I think before COVID hit, there was a sense that all of Trump's cultural battle stuff really riled up the base and everybody else was, you know, bothered by it, kind of, but not bothered enough they were going

to go vote against this economy. With the economy in the doldrums and with the recovery kind of a little bit wavering, I think that him stirring up cultural battles may not actually be the proper strategy here. Remember in 2016, I've heard, as Chris Steyer-Waltz has said, the Senate from Fox, and I think he's right, his suggestion is that one of the best things that happened to Trump in 2016 was the Access Hollywood tape, specifically because it happened so close to the election that everybody number one on the Democratic side assumed he had now lost. And so they said, OK, why am I going to bother to show up to vote? And two, it drove Trump underground for the final three weeks of the election. So when the Comey letter dropped, the only thing in the news was

Hillary Clinton. And the more Trump fights the cultural battles, the more it seems like, yes, he drives his base, but his base loves him and is going to vote for him anyway. So I'm not sure how much that helps him. Another case in point being 2018. In 2018, he was off the front pages for a while because it was all Kavanaugh all the time. And in that time, the generic ballot closed up tight as a tick. I mean, it was very, very, very tight. And then Trump was like, you know what?

I'm going to talk about the border and the invasion coming through these giant marches through Mexico. And then there was a blowout. So in other words, Trump actually needs to pursue the Biden strategy, which is go to the White House basement, watch Shark Week for a while and let Biden be the center of attention. I think he's going to be watching Fox News if history is any guide. That was fantastic the other day when he's like, well, I watched, you know, I watched Laura and I watched Tucker and I watched Sean and I watched Lou Dobbs and I watched it. It was like, oh, my God. He's now offering commercials for mesothelioma and ready to buy gold. Let me ask you, I want to talk about you.

I talked to you at length in the lead up to the last election. And I remember you left Breitbart after the whole dust up with Michelle Fields, where Corey Lewandowski threw her down. It was just this whole thing. And you were at first never Trump or you were definitely against Trump. But I know now you say you're a sometimes Trumper. And I kind of like that. I think that that sort of encapsulates how a lot of people feel. So what does that mean? What does that look like? Well, as soon as he became president, then what did it mean to be a never the president? I wasn't going to oppose everything he did, especially a lot of the things that I agreed with.

He's been a lot more conservative than I thought he would be on a wide variety of policies, ranging from tax cuts to his stance on China to moving the embassy to Jerusalem in Israel. I mean, his Middle East record is, by the way, stellar. I mean, like the best Middle East record of any president, certainly of my lifetime, and probably going back to the establishment of the state of Israel. His Middle East record is truly incredible. So, I mean, that is a big win for him. I'm not going to sit there and yell at the moon about his tweets while he's making peace in the Middle East. Like that's kind of a good thing. So, you know, sometimes Trump, I hope that I'd be sometimes Biden or

sometimes Obama in the sense that I would give my conservative evaluation of what they are doing that is good or what they're doing that is bad. I would say that overall, I'll be happier with Trump's record than I will with any Democrat by a huge margin. I think, again, the logic changes once he's president. So I didn't vote for either of the candidates in 2016. And I had several articulable reasons for that. One was because I was deeply fearful that Donald Trump was not going to govern as a conservative. There were indicators he might. There were a lot of indicators he wouldn't. And so it was like, OK, I have no idea what we're getting here. Two was that he was going to sort of soul suck the Republican Party to the point where all of his worst excesses would be green

lit by the party or excused by the party. And this would become the new normal. And frankly, I think some of that's happened. And then the third reason is I was afraid that he was going to alienate tremendous numbers of minority and young voters. And I think there's a fair bit of evidence that he's alienated young voters. I think the evidence on minority voters is a little bit more mixed. He seems to be performing basically the same as every other Republican with black voters and a little better than other Republicans with Hispanic voters, particularly in swing states. The bottom line is that all of those concerns were going to either materialize or not materialize. And so now it was a new reality. The question was not now, okay, let's say I set it out in worst case scenario, Hillary wins and there's a Republican Senate, what comes next versus what happens if Trump wins and he does all of these bad things that I see possibly happening.

Now the scenario is, I know what I've got with Trump. All the things that I thought would happen either have or have not happened. And so now I have a choice between a continuation of that or what I think Joe Biden's administration will be, which is a series of kowtowing to a radical left that is going to completely remold the institutions and remake the country and maybe violate the constitutional compact in the processes that are vowing to do. So that's shifted the logic a fair bit. And you can only make the decisions based on the facts on the ground and the situation on the ground. And we're not in the same place in 2020 that we were in 2016. What's the biggest downside of being this smart? Honestly, like you're just, I mean, your mind is just rip roaring. It's

obviously like we're working with an IQ that none of us can even see. I mean, honestly, the only downside to it is that, you know, first of all, listen, I know a lot of smart people and I tend to hang out with a lot of smart people. So I have a pretty fulfilling social life. But I will say that it makes many dinner parties very boring. And so you really have to make a strong case as to why I should leave my home, my wife, my children, and classic books that I'm reading to kind of go out and hang. Well, I know because you said to me one time, I'm a family guy. I'm not a friend guy. And you sort of just said it in passing. You were really trying to make a point that you love to be with your family, as I do with mine, and that you would choose them on any given night over going out with friends. But then I found out more about you. And is this tied? Because I know you out more about you. And I like,

is this tied? Because I know you're very badly bullied. And I thought, I don't know a lot of people who go through bad bullying, a do wind up becoming lawyers, as you did. And B, do choose pugilistic careers of some type, which you also did. Well, you can definitely respond one of two ways to being bullied. One is to sort of curl up into the shell and the other is to get more aggressive and grow a thicker skin, as you know. I mean, you've taken it on the chin a bunch of times and you can either sort of bulk up in response

or you can curl up. And so I think that my life has been more one of trying to grow a thicker skin, get more aggressive in defense of the things I believe in. And also I will say that about being bullied, what it does breed is a certain level of, I think, healthy distrust in people who surround you. And so you tend to want to have a pretty close circle and a pretty close-knit group of people who you really, really trust, people who will give you good advice. And once you open up to, particularly in the internet age, I think that's really healthy,

actually, because the internet is filled with people who purport to be giving you good advice and actually just want to see you torn down, as you know. Right. You know, it makes me think, because I once heard that we choose in our spouse someone who has both the best and worst qualities of our parents, you know, because we want the good stuff and then we want to do over with the bad stuff. And I actually think that's, you could say that about life, right? Like, because I was also badly bullied when I was in middle school. And we know we've had similar career paths in a way. And I almost wonder whether on some level, I've wondered about myself, am I looking for a redo? Like, do I want is a battle with, you know, Anthony Weiner, or Michael Cohen? Is it a redo of the battles I had with Nancy,

whose last name I will not say? Am I trying for a better result? I don't know. If so, then good, right, Ben? Because it's like it landed in an okay place. Yeah. I mean, I think that there is something to that. I mean, there's something good about growing extra layers of skin. I think what people don't understand about, you know, being in a position of prominence, you get this because you've had it too, is that your skin can never be thick enough to repel all attacks. Like things still hurt. And so when you're in the public eye, people act as though, okay, well now you're completely impregnable. I can say whatever garbage I want to say about this person

and they'll never be hurt. And you know, they'll never react on a personal level. And that of course is, is untrue and very silly. But I certainly agree that, you know, being bullied overall in terms of how it's shaped my life on, on net, it sucked when it was happening, but on net, I don't actually think that it was necessarily a bad thing for me overall. You know, lots of bad things happen throughout your life that ends up actually strengthening you. If you, right. As you say, if you allow it, cause there's no way to strengthen your, you know, your resilience muscles unless you actually work them out. But I worry about you because you get it in a particular way. I mean, you get threatened. I've seen the videos of you getting threatened on the street with your kids, with your wife.

And I know what that's like, just because you can handle it. You know how to, you know, head up shoulders back and keep forging forward. Doesn't mean it isn't deeply affecting you on a personal level. And, you know, you you have a family to worry about. And I think to myself, I don't know. I just I I wonder whether it's enjoyable for you. Like, does does that stuff get so large that it clouds your enjoyment of your huge success. Oh, for sure. I mean, when we had to have armed security outside our house for months on end, that was no fun. When I have to worry about bringing security with me to family events, that's no fun. My kids are young enough that they don't really understand it at this point. And I will say, thank God, the vast, vast, vast majority of people who come up to me in public are people who enjoy the show. I've only had a couple of incidents where people come up and they say something nasty, and usually it's in passing. And my kids don't really see it. Although one time I was holding my daughter and I was like, what are you doing? I'm holding up like a five-year-old. What are you doing? But overall,

what it does lead to, and you see it with pretty much everybody who reaches a certain level of notoriety, is again, a necessity to build the sort of bubble around yourself that can't be invaded, particularly when you're with your family. And thank God, you know, as part of a religious community, I have that. I'm very tight with my parents. And frankly, it's one of the reasons I think that we're leaving LA. I'd like to live in more of a community that has less antipathy for my values and where I can walk around on the beach with my kids and presumably not be screamed at. That's the thing is, it's like as somebody who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and worked for Fox News for 13 and a half years, it can be, you can grow

weary because I'm sort of center right on most things and right on some things. And I'm even center left on some things, but up here, you got to be left and you know, you got to be left with a capital L. And it used to be when I first got up here, um, fine, you know, whatever they leave you alone. But now it's just, it's gotten so divisive. I mean, for the first time I've been looking around saying, I don't know, I'm not sure if we're going to last year. I don't know if, I don't know if I can keep my kids in these schools and stay in this neighborhood and fight the battle that's going to need to get fought for the next 12 years while they go through this.

I totally agree. And it's one thing when it falls on you as an adult. It's another thing when it starts to fall on your kids. So again, I'm lucky because we live in a pretty parochial community. It was funny. I remember after Sarah Huckabee Sanders was shouted out of a red hen for the great sin of eating dinner. Somebody on, I think it was Martha McCallum on Fox asked me, you know, I was

on TV that night and she asked, has that ever happened to you? And I was like, no, I eat at kosher restaurants. Everybody loves me at kosher restaurants. Those are my peeps. I mean, that's the beautiful thing about self-sorting this way. But it is, you know, I certainly know, you know, I was talking the other day to somebody who is, you know, again, very well-known and is used to be kind of bigger in the entertainment industry. Now it's kind of sort of commentary industry. And his son is a big fan of the show and goes to a very liberal school in the LA area. And he and his son is 14 was telling me how he had told some of his friends that he was that he kind of like Trump, that he

wasn't super anti Trump. And one of his friends or friends before refused to hand him an eraser because he said, you're a racist, which seems insulting on two levels. One, just because you like Trump doesn't mean that you're a racist. And two, I mean, even if you are a racist, does that mean you're going to steal the eraser? But beyond that, that kind of divide, I'm not sure it's bridgeable. And I feel like it is absolutely getting worse. There's going to be a big sort that's about to happen where if you are a red person living in a very blue state like California, I think there's about to be a mass exodus of everybody who's a registered Republican in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California.

Why? Why specifically, though? Is it defund the police? What is it? I mean, some of it's defund the police. Some of it is idiotic financial policy that is based on confiscatory tax rates, where the harder you work and the more people you employ, the more you are expected to pay for garbage policy that actually makes quality of life worse. It's one thing to pay extraordinary taxes in order to have an extremely clean community

with excellent public schools. It's another thing to do that when you have homeless people outside every gate, open needles on the street, people being left in their mental illness and drug addiction and treating it as freedom for them to live under freeway underpasses, and public schools that are completely falling down from within because the teachers unions have taken them over. Subsidizing that at the rate of millions and millions of dollars a year, I think is almost sinful. And then being shamed, being shamed for not paying your tuition. Right, and then being shamed for it. And then if you, I mean, in LA, if you were to put a Trump sign on your lawn,

I mean, I can't even imagine the consequences. And you're almost expected as a rite of passage to put these lawn signs out, these lawn signs that are very popular out here in LA, the one, you know, in this house, we believe black lives matter, women's rights are human rights, water is life. These kind of tautologically overwritten

and semantically overloaded phrases on a lawn sign so you feel better about yourself as your city collapses in on itself like a dying star. I think that more and more people, particularly who own businesses, are going to leave. And we're seeing this. I mean, Joe Rogan's out. Elon Musk is out, right? Daily Wire is moving. We're talking with other people and they're like, yeah, I'm not sure why we're here either. I think a lot of folks on the right, we're kind of using, you know, some key cultural figures as a bellwether. And the fact that we're moving, we're getting calls every single day from very prominent figures saying, okay, so how do, you know, what's, what's Nashville like? What's Florida like? Like, what are these other states

like? As you know, living in Manhattan or LA, because you think you're in the center of the world, living in a big city, you forget there's an entire other part of the country that's actually pretty darn nice outside of these cities. Now it's time for a new franchise here at the Megyn Kelly Show called You Can't Say That. We may expand it to You Can't Say That or Do That or Think That. Oh, wait, this is America. But for today, it's You Can't Say That. First and foremost, did you know that doing a PSA with Dr. Fauci about wearing a mask during COVID could get you canceled? Well, Dennis Quaid found out the hard way that the answer to that is potentially true. You see, Politico came out

with a report saying Dennis Quaid was essentially trying to help Donald Trump rehabilitate his image with other celebrities that he was getting paid to try to help Trump and people on Twitter lost their minds. Because you're not allowed to be a Trump supporter and you're really not allowed to be a Hollywood person who's a Trump supporter. So screw you, Dennis Quaid. Except it didn't turn out to be true at all. Political was wrong. He wasn't getting paid. It was a PSA, a public service announcement that he did with Fauci, with Dr. Fauci. And they were just encouraging people to take precautions during COVID, like wear your mask, which these cancel culture warriors are supposed to be all for. So Politico has yet to correct its report.

Dennis Quaid is ticked off. He spoke out about cancel culture, saying this is bull. It wasn't correct. And, but by the way, why would he have to apologize if it were correct? Think of the number of celebrities who have come out against Donald Trump

or back in the last election for Barack Obama. Fine. You want to support Barack Obama? You want to support Joe Biden? Good. You should. You want to support Donald Trump? Good. You should. Get off of his case just because he might not have the

same views as you do. And by the way, I've interviewed Dennis Quaid and I've asked him about his politics and he says he's an independent, which apparently you're also not allowed to be unless it's code for Democrat. So this is one of the reasons people don't like Hollywood anymore because they feel judged. People who are not Democrats, they feel judged by them and they've lost their influence as a result of all of this. So good for Dr. Fauci for partnering with a guy like Dennis Quaid. Good for Dennis Quaid for giving up his time to do a PSA on COVID precautions. And bad for Politico for not, as of now, correcting its reporting. And now back to Ben.

Here in Manhattan, there's a there's an upperclassman where one of my children goes to school and she's a Republican. And, you know, I just asked her, what's it what's it like for you? You've made it through whatever, 10 years as a as a student at the school, which is very openly left. And she was saying it's it's been really hard. You know, she's open about it. She does. She says that she's a Trump supporter. She her friends know that she's a Republican, but it's a nonstop fight. And there's a diminishment, you know, by the friends when they're like, well, we know we know how where you stand. And there is that same sort of stigma that the country is now putting on anybody who supports Trump, which is, and you must be a bigot, a racist, a xenophobe, a sexist, you know, like the whole laundry list, which for all of our lives, we've been conditioned to recoil at those words. No one wants to be called them. And Doug and I have been asking ourselves, do we really want our kids to have to fight that battle, right? They have enough to worry about.

Now, this is right. It's extremely tiring. It's hard enough to be a kid or be a teenager and deal with all the changes that entails without having to deal with all this nonsense. And we have, as a culture, removed all common spaces. This is the part that's going crazy. It used to be that regardless of obviously what your political persuasion was, you'd go to a ballgame. It doesn't matter what the guy sitting next to you who he voted for. All that matters is that you're at a ball game and you're talking baseball or something. Or you're talking about what was on HBO last night that wasn't some sort of political cram down. And now everything has become so overtly politicized that there is no space to move. I mean, it just, it feels like the walls are closing in culturally.

And the only way to buy yourself any space is to move to a place where a lot more people agree with you. So I think that's going to exacerbate over time. I think it's going to open up some market opportunities, by the way, for people on the right who have neglected cultural concerns. I think that there will be a right-wing Netflix. I think that there will be a right-wing ESPN because, obviously, the ESPN is now MSNBC with footballs, and Hollywood has decided to go full-on Democratic Party outlet. So, I mean, when the Oscars have declared that you have to fulfill racial quotas in both plot lines and staffing in order to be nominated for an Oscar, there are a lot of people in the country who really don't care about what your woke principles are in Hollywood.

They just want to watch a shoot-em-up. They just want to watch an action flick. They just want to watch a rom-com. And there's going to be a lot of space opened up here. Why did the Roseanne reboot do so well? Why did Tim Allen's show do so well? Why did Tim Allen show do so well? You know, it's there is interest in these stories. It's just that the people who are in control in control of the programming refuse to see

it or or disdain it. You know, when I when I was on NBC, I really wanted to put on Suzette Kilo, you know, Mark Joseph, who made No Safe Spaces, which you are in and I love. And if you haven't seen it, everyone needs to see it. But so Mark Joseph is a conservative. Well, he's not really conservative. He's, you know, he's center right, I'd say, filmmaker in Hollywood. And he made this movie, No Safe Spaces, which, you know, features Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager and Ben and some others. And he said to me, he came to me when I was at NBC and said, Hey, do you want Suzette Kelo, who was the plaintiff in Kelo versus Connecticut because the state of Connecticut seized her home, her little pink house, claiming

eminent domain. They wanted to build this waterfront establishment. And it went all the way up to the Supreme Court and she lost. And I think the reaction from most people was like, eh, right? Like, do we really care? It's like a Supreme Court case, whatever. One lady lost her house. I'm like, 100% we're putting her on. Can I tell you, it was the highest rated segment that I did in my entire time at NBC. Wow. Americans, they respond when the programming goes out there that speaks to their values. And it is half the country, they respond. And you would think just sheer greed, just sheer capitalism would make people cater at least a little to them or at least get like one strain going of movie making or television programming or, you know, more than Fox News in the television industry. Nope, they just won't. It's for them. It's just it's war. It's cultural ideological war. And it would be a sacrifice in character to brook any of those ideas. Absolutely. Well,

lack of lack of competition breeds a certain level of laziness in Hollywood. And they've had no competition. I mean, it's not as though there's a robust conservative filmmaking industry. It exists. It's small. And part of that is because conservatives have never been forced to engage on the cultural level because, again, these common spaces existed. And then the left was smart enough, I think, to to kind of subtly push people in particular directions using a lot of that common space. I mean, Joe Biden used to say this, right? He used to say that Will and Grace was very instrumental in pushing same-sex marriage,

which is obviously true. And Hollywood used to recognize that the way that you actually push messages is you do it subtly, you do it over time. And now they're just like balls to the wall going for it, right? At this point, it's like, okay, if every single movie isn't about a a communist little person of transgender identity having a wonderful you know cross species oration relationship with it with a fish man then is it then it's not actually happening the sad thing is that's not a joke there really is some sort of octopus sexual film people i mean i can. I basically just described

the plot of The Shape of Water, right? I mean, that's the, which just won the Oscar a couple of years ago. Just insane. It's about a deaf woman, a deaf mute woman who falls in love with a fish alien

and has a communist sidekick and a black woman as a friend. I mean, it's literally like they just cast this thing out of an SJW Mad Lib and the thing won the Oscar for Best Picture. It's a terrible film. I mean, it's literally like they just cast this thing out of an SJW Mad Lib. And the thing won the Oscar for Best Picture. It's a terrible film.

I mean, just a terrible film. Maybe you can make a good film out of that. This one is not it. But the fact that conservatives are now being forced to the point where it's like, I can't even watch a cop show.

OK, well, then we're going to have to make our own cop shows. And they've literally tried to cancel Paw Patrol because it's too positive toward police officers. It's a dog who's a cop. I know.

They claim they didn't. They weren't actually going to cancel it. It's just got some heat from the New York times in it. And now their claim is, is satire, but they did cancel live PD on any, the number one rated show on a and E they were killing it. And it was a high, that, that shows ratings beat all the ratings on cable news, like the most successful host. And if I could buy the rights to Live PD right now, like if I could negotiate the rights to Live PD right now, I would buy them and I would broadcast it at Daily Wire and I'd put some of it behind the paywall

and we'd make bank. A hundred percent. And that's what conservatives are gonna start doing, I think. Okay, I'll join you. I'll chip in. Okay, so before I let you go, you're the king of all podcasting

and certainly political podcasting. And I've watched the show grow and I love it. I listen to your show all the time. So you got to give me some advice. What do I need to know as I join this industry about how to do well and what pitfalls to avoid? So I think how to do well, you're going to do great, obviously, because some of it is just you got to know what you're talking about.

But a lot of it is examining all sides of the issue. And it's, it's much more stream of consciousness. It's not scripted TV. Uh, so, you know, I did, you know, obviously you're much more of a television professional than I am, of course, but I did, you know, uh, a scripted show basically for, for Fox, uh, during the election of 2018 for maybe a couple of months. And the amount of pre-writing you got to stick in the teleprompter is very, very different than the amount of riffing that you do on a podcast. People want conversational on a podcast. They want to get a window into your mind. They want to see how your mind works. And so that's the fun. I mean, very often on a podcast, I'll pull a topic and I have not necessarily fully thought through the entire topic.

And I will consider on air how the various you know, how the various permutations of this topic work. People want to think through the entire issue with you. And I think that that's, that's the great fun of it. So rehearsal is sometimes the enemy of a good podcast. And there are good podcasts that, you know, are built around very scripted stuff, the kind of NPR, New York Times Daily kind of stuff. But I think that for long form podcasting, people just want to deep dive into your thought process. And wait, before you get to your second point, you are so funny. I didn't know you were this funny when I listened to the show. Can you do your little I can't do the trail on the right, the racist and sexist system. Yeah. Yeah. Every time every time Democrats

accuse somebody of racism, it's it's it's so over the top. Yeah the top. By the way, this is one of the things that's wonderful about podcasting is when you're doing a hit on Fox for five minutes, you might be able to draw out a one-liner or two. And usually you have to sort of pre-think them out because you have five minutes. But you have a chance to be sort of naturally entertaining and fun. Your personality comes out a lot more when you're on the air for a long period of time without serious commercials, because if you're doing commercials, you're usually reading them. And you can inject the humor into the commercials too. Listen, I find it fun. I think that the media, like I love this medium. This medium is my favorite medium. It is not close. And it also gives me the opportunity

to talk at length with people I disagree with, which is a lot more fun than the sort of rock them, sock them robots that you get on TV, I think. Yeah. Well, you're forging the way forward and I'll just draft right behind you because I love listening to you and I'd love if I could build an audience, anything like yours, Ben. It's such a pleasure having you in my life and thank you for the mentorship on the podcasting world, further updates to follow. Well, can't wait to see what you do because I think it's going to be super exciting. Thank you, my friend. it five stars of course uh and then go and spread the word send the apple podcast link to others who might want to subscribe who you think will like it and even those who you think might hate listen to it uh or if apple podcast is not your thing you can go to spotify google iheart tune in or

wherever you may listen to podcasts you can find us for free for free what a deal we appreciate you being with us thanks for listening to the megan 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.