The Megyn Kelly Show - Ben Shapiro Responds to Tucker Carlson, Plus Sydney Sweeney and Newsom, with Michael Knowles and Andrew Klavan - "Megyn Kelly Live" in FL | Ep. 1189

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Megyn Kelly begins her "Megyn Kelly Live" show in Jacksonville by talking about comments from Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence about why she's not going to speak out politically anymore, her admission that celebrities have no sway to move voters, the culture shifting right, and more. Then, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, and Andrew Klavan of The Daily Wire join to talk about the full backstory to Ben's takedown of Tucker this week, the relevance of the Nick Fuentes interview, the actual texts between the two after Charlie's assassination, how Israel factors into the disagreement, free speech vs. "platforming" and "gatekeeping," the state of the conservative movement, how he would have handled the Fuentes interview, the viral Sydney Sweeney dress, why it was actually a subtle dig at liberal feminism, Sweeney shutting down a leftist interviewer, Gavin Newsom's totally fake persona, knowing the truth of the bible, the rise of Mamdani in NYC, and more. More from The Daily Wire: https://www.dailywire.com/ Byrna: Go to https://Byrna.com or your local Sportsman's Warehouse today.Incogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Get 60% off an annual plan at https://incogni.com/MEGYNcode MEGYN at checkout.Walmart: Learn how Walmart is fueling the future of U.S. manufacturing at https://Walmart.com/America-at-workBirch Gold: Text MK to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold  Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hello, God, it's so great to see you. Woo! Love you, Jacksonville. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. God, it's so fun seeing all of you. You know, I was talking to people backstage about how I said, I needed to get out on this tour.

I needed to get out on the road. I needed, like, to see you, and you needed to see me, and we needed to be together right now. And it's been even better than I thought it was going to be. It's such a feeling being up here and actually seeing the people who listen to the show and make it possible for me to do the show every day, and that's all of you. People say, oh, thank you so much for what you do.

And then I say thank you for making it possible for me to do a job I love and to set the record straight on so many things. I love you, too. And listen, what's on my mind tonight is that we are making progress. Okay, it was one year ago, almost exactly, that we were leading up to election day, right? The polls were disturbingly close, and we weren't sure what was going to happen. And what did we see in campaign 2024 on Team Dem? We saw Oprah, right?

Yes, boo. We saw a parade of celebrities come out, like rapper, who are now we know we're getting paid big dollars to show up at her campaign rallies and endorse her. And person after person, in every election, it could have been the one in 2024 with her or with Obama earlier. The celebs always line up and they do their little thing

and they think they're relevant. And the Julia Roberts ad, you know, where they showed the Republican wife like disobeying her husband and like clicking it for Kamala. They totally misunderstand our side of the aisle, right? Like, we're going to get beaten by our husbands if we don't vote the way they want us to.

That is a true Democrats' view of conservatives. So there were celebrities everywhere doing this, and I think on our team we're like, yeah, we're used to this. We don't care what they think. Like, I guess only Democrats care what they think. And Democrats did care what they thought, not so long ago, but they don't anymore. And one of the great things about the Internet

is it's totally democratized, like, celebrity. And we really don't give a shit what they say at all because they're ubiquitous, right? And even the left is starting to feel that way. And I'm going to give you two examples that have made me very happy. Because in this past year, the left has realized that they don't have the power to move votes on their side either anymore. And these celebrities, it's wonderful. It's working just as it should, are shrinking away from politics more and more and realizing they need to stay in their damn lane.

Right? We're sick of them ruining our movies. by coming out and showing their Trump derangement syndrome. Why can't we watch a movie without knowing how much they hate us? Right? The left never has that problem. Because even when you have somebody declared that they're conservative and they're an actor, they're never nasty about it.

Like they're sweet, you know, maybe like Dennis Quaid who's like, I really love the Gipper. He was the best person in my lifetime, and I'm going to star in Reagan. That's as far as most of them go. You know, occasionally get like the John Void or the James Woods. But that's a unicorn, you know, when they're that strong and they come out and they really make the case. more often it's somebody who's like, I'm an independent.

We all know what that is. But now we're starting to see the left get shamed. The left celebrities get shamed out of being too outspoken. I'm going to give you two examples. I'm going to start with, I don't know if you saw that. You know Jennifer Lawrence, right? She was a huge star. She gave an interview to the New York Times just this past weekend, I think it was.

And there was an extraordinary moment where, of course, they tried to get into her politics. And she is left. She's made that very clear. And listen to how she answered. I'm going to play a soundbite. Watch this. You have been politically outspoken in the past. In the first Trump administration, you know, you had a lot to say.

I'm curious how you feel about talking out now. I don't really know if I should. No, you should. I think, like, the first Trump administration was so wild. And just how can we let? at the stand. Like I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

But as we've learned, election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for. And so then what am I doing? I'm just sharing my opinion on something that's gonna just add fuel to a fire that's ripping the country apart. I mean, we are so divided.

Yes. Guess who taught her that lesson? All of you. Honestly, it's like, she realizes now, right? It's, to steal a phrase, pissing into the wind when they come out. And what do they do? They hurt their own careers. They embarrass themselves.

They alien half the country. And she goes on to say that maybe I'll just express my opinions through my art. Thank you. That's all we ever asked. then we can choose whether to go to that movie or not but, you know, it may be some woke thing that we think is terrible, maybe some great thing, but if we go to see something that is appealing to us

as right-wing people or independent people, we don't want to be constantly thinking about how much you loathe us, Ben Affleck, right? So she got the lesson. And then just today, there was another moment with Sidney-Sweeney. You've heard of her. I'm sure the men in the audience are,

have you ever heard of Sidney-Sweeney? Yeah. And I'm going to save the Sydney-Sweeney moment for when my guests come out. And we'll talk about why it's equally encouraging. All right. So the point is we are winning. These loud-mouse celebrities have gotten the message, sit down, shut up, and act. That's it, right?

We're not listening to you anymore. And the great democratizer of the Internet has taught them that them being ubiquitous has been bad for their political power, but great for the promo of their careers, and they have to choose. So right on us. Let's be honest. America can still be a dangerous place, and you cannot afford to wait for help when you need it. Sure, you could use a firearm, but in today's America, defending yourself with deadly force could have legal consequences. According to FBI data, 99.9% of all altercations do not require lethal force. And that's exactly why many are turning to Burna. Burna is proudly American, hand-assembled in Fort Wayne, Indiana. These less lethal self-defense launchers are trusted by, hundreds of government agencies, law enforcement departments, and private security companies. Over 600,000 Burna pistols have been sold, most to private citizens who refuse to be victims

want to shore up their self-defense plans. Burna launchers fire rock-hard kinetic rounds and also powerful tear gas and pepper projectiles, capable of stopping a threat from up to 60 feet away. No background checks, no waiting periods, and Burna can ship straight to your door. Take responsibility. Protect your future. Visit berna.com right now or your local sportsman's warehouse. That's B-Y-R-N-A.com or your local sportsman's warehouse. Visit now and be prepared to defend. So you guys know our guests tonight are Andrew Claven, Michael Knowles, and Ben Shapiro. And we're going to kick it off in no particular order, though, with Andrew Claven, who I know. I know you all know and who needs no introduction, but let's give him one anyway.

Take a look at this. Tricker warning, I'm Andrew Claven, and this is the Andrew Claven show. My fight has been to get people to see that they're being lied to every day. Feminism raised some really interesting issues, really important issues, but now it's just leftism in a skirt. There is a really zero percent excuse to talk to a third grader about his sexuality if you are not. his parent. They talk about him looking for retribution, but really it's only justice. The holy crap debate. We finally beat Medicare. Holy crap. You can have all kinds of different opinions. You're smart people. We're not going to agree on everything. Luckily, I'm so old that before you can

screw everything up, I'm going to be having lunch with Jesus, right? I love the fire. It makes me think of Charlie. He loved it so much. Great to have you. It's so nice to see you. Oh, we never see each other in person. This is a thrill.

It's the nature of our industry now. It's all over satellite. Everybody's on TV. So it's been so fun for me to actually see people. All right. So I have so much I want to go over. with you we've talked many times about your religious background yeah and I I have questions because I've been searching on my own faith for a while now but especially

since Charlie died yeah have you guys have you felt more faithful since Charlie died yeah right I think a lot of us are like having a renewed faith and a renewed search for what it is I mean I've always been a Catholic but yes Charlie Kirk does matter and still matters. So you're somebody who, you have an interesting background. You were born Jewish, you were raised in a secular Jewish family, and then you converted to Christianity at 54? 44? 49. 49. Okay, 49 years old. And you speak about your faith so beautifully. I've learned a lot about the Christian faith from you, actually. And you are like Charlie in that you can look through any political lens and infuse your faith into what we're seeing. So first of all, just tell us

about how that transition, that conversion happened to you? Well, it's a 35-year story. I'll have to condense it quite a lot. But it really had to do with fiction in a way. When I was 19, I read the book, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which is about a murder. And it was just at that moment when the moral relativists were coming up into the colleges and teaching you that one culture is just as good as another,

who knows what's right or wrong, you think one thing is right, I think another thing is right. And I read that book, and there's a brutal murder in it of two women, one of them, a retarded woman, and it's just so pitiful, I thought, no, some things are wrong. Some things are wrong, and they'd be wrong even on a planet where everybody said they were right. And that kept me from falling into the pit of moral relativism, but it stuck me with the idea that if there is a right and wrong, there must be a supreme good, and that supreme good has to be a consciousness because only consciousness is good.

Well, you're applauding, but it's hard to work in my business if you believe these things. You know, Andrew's a very successful author, writer, and screenwriter. And so slowly that worked in my head, and I couldn't quite accept it, and I had a terrible when I was in my 20s, I had a terrible breakdown, suicidal, depressed, you know, just absolutely at the end of my rope. And I couldn't reach out to God then because I was so stubborn, I thought, well, then it's just a crutch, then I'm just in pain. But through what I truly believe was a miracle, I found a shrink who actually healed me,

which may be the only time this has ever happened in psychiatric history. And I became, really, within the course of two years, I went from being suicidally depressed to being a very happy, kind of jolly person, doing really well in my career, doing what I always love doing, which is writing novels. And then I thought, well, now I've got no excuse. And I started to pray. And prayer transformed my life. And this is what I always tell people, you know.

People always say to me, like, you know, how do I connect with God? I thought, call him. His lines are open, you know? It's like, I mean, talk to him. And I started out with a three-word prayer, which was, thank you, Lord, because I had come from such a horrible place in my life to such a beautiful place. And then it got to be like 15 minutes, 20 minutes, sometimes half an hour, sometimes an hour of prayer every day.

And at the end of five years, I was now a screenwriter and a novelist, and I was driving my BMW convertible in the hills of Santa Barbara. Complete jerk. Sounds kind of awesome. And I said to God, you know, I said, gee, you've given me everything.

You just transformed everything. And you're God, and I'm just a schmo. What can I do for you? and it came back to me instantaneously you should be baptized and I'm driving my car and out loud I went you gotta be kidding me were you attending Catholic Mass? What were you

going to at the time? I was Episcopalian which is no longer a religion but at the time it was He's not, definitely not now I'm an Anglo Catholic but then I was and it took me five months I started to argue with God about this and I thought I can't really believe in these miracles

and this stuff and I went back and I had read the Bible all my life because as a novelist, I knew it was the center of all art, and all Western art is based on the novel in one way or another. And when I went back and read it for the first time as if it might be true, I thought, oh, that makes sense. And listen, I'm not a literalist, I don't think every word is exactly what it means, some of its poetry, some of its legends, some of its all kinds of, but it's all the word of God. And when I read it that way, it all made sense to me.

And I knew that it was going to ruin my Hollywood career, which it ultimately did. And I thought it was going to start a terrible fight with my father who had once told me if I ever thought of converting, he would disown me. And we had sort of made a separate piece. And I thought, well, I'm going to have to tell him because I give interviews and he'll see it. And he came to visit me. I was living in California. He and my mother were living in New York, and they came to visit me. And he walked in the door, and he said, I'm seeing double.

I have to go home. And this was a joke in my family. My father could never take a vacation without having an emergency. wasn't to go home. So I laughed it off, but he was in fact, had his final illness. And so I couldn't tell him at that point. It would have just broken his heart. So I spent a long time going back to New York, training with this priest, this Episcopal priest I knew, and then visiting my father, who was fading away. And he died in a week that was both Easter and Passover, which was very meaningful and sad. And then I came back for his memorial and left the memorial

and went to the church and was baptized. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was like a... But how did you go to Jesus? Like, because you kept reading after that Old Testament, and, you know, that's a big shift when you read the second part and say, that's for me as a Jew. Well, the thing was, I knew a lot about both Testaments

because I was writing novels, and it informed the way I thought. And I knew that Jesus was the major character in all of Western civilization. And the idea that we can't know. God until we see him, and all we can know of God is what we see, is what really turned the key for me, that this was the God that I could talk to face to face. And when I read the New Testament, it occurred to me that even if nothing like that had ever happened, everything that was in it was true, and that's just not the way things work. When everything you read is true, it's true.

You know, I mean, that's, it's not an illusion. I don't believe that people are living in hallucinations unless they're literally insane. So I thought, no, this is what I believe. And it was just amazing. I mean, I had been baptized three weeks, and my wife, who knows me back and forth, down to the ground, turned to me, and she said, you're a totally different person. The serenity is just, it's insane. Wow. And the joy, you know.

And then you got into political commentary and that serenity went out the window. It's not where you come from serenity. Thinking. That ended my Hollywood career like that. So how have you been taking in the increasing rise of Muslim politicians, and many of whom are connected to radical Islamists who are saying openly that this is part of a plan to control in American cities? Yeah, I'm not appalled. You know, I wrote a novel when I was 25 in which I referred to my generation as holiday Jews. And the reason for that was that was that the Holocaust was not that long. and people knew what it was and remembered it. And so everybody was nice to the Jews, just like people were nice to gaze after AIDS.

You know, they understood, oh yeah, this is bad, and these are human beings, and we ought to love them a little bit. And the holiday is over. And I see this in a lot of places. You know, your friend Tucker Carlson, I think, is expressing it. I think that Candace Owens is expressing it. I think that Islam, it's not individual Muslim people,

because there are many lovely individual Muslim people, But as a religion, once they take over a majority, it grows up there. And what I know is a Jew who is a Christian is that these are brother religions. It's St. Paul said that all of Israel will be saved, and we are temporarily separated from one another. The Jews who don't believe in Christ and Christians were temporarily separated, but we will come together. And so that hatred, to me, is spiritual. You know, you said that I always talk about God, because I think that God is. is the central reality of life.

And I think everything is about God. It really is. And if you think about it, if there's a God, and spoiler alert, there is, then for about 200 years of secular life, all of our thinkers, all of our most famous thinkers, all of our most famous authors, all of our most famous painters, have been living in a delusion about the most important thing in the world. world. And I think that, you know, the Jews are the vehicle by which God re-entered the world

after the fall. I think they are the vehicle by which he created a Messiah for all people. And I think that when you hate them, you are slapping God in the face. You're basically spitting in his eye, which is a bad idea. So you're not feeling great about Globalize the Intifada. I'm Donnie. Yeah, globalizing the Intifada. It sounds like it might make a good song, but it's a philosophy. I'm against it. Like, it's shocking to me that New York City did what it did. It's shocking to me that they would elevate a man like that with the connections he has to his post.

And, you know, he's not alone. You know, there was that Omar Feté that almost won as a mayor of Minneapolis, and, you know, Dearborn is now run by a Muslim mayor and is almost majority Muslim, Minneapolis too. Like, I'm, with all due respect to people who are Muslim,

I don't think this is a good thing. I don't think this is consistent with Western values. And you see these videos online all the time of them saying, like, we have six kids and the white people are having one, and this is part of the plan. Yep. And they're not right. They're not wrong. Like, I mean, read any leftist

paper talking about how liberals don't want to have children anymore, the environment. Maybe now they'll listen to Bill Gates, who's finally reversed himself on his environmental catastrophism, and they'll start to actually reproduce and have children. I think it goes beyond that, though. I think that there is one of the things that shocked me, when I

came to the Daily Wire, I was working with a lot of guys who were much younger than me, and one of the things I was shocked by was the hostility toward women. guys, you know, and guys and girls always talk about each other rolling their eyes a little bit. You know, I've been an athlete... At the Daily Wire?

Everywhere. Everywhere. What are you saying? No, we all do this, you know, women, men, you know, all that stuff. And, you know, I've been an athlete most of my life and I've been in a lot of locker rooms and you hear the way talk, people talk about women. But in my generation, it was always with incredible love.

Oh, women, you know, they're kind of nuts, but we love them, you know. All that was gone. I mean, is he wrong? For being honest. But all that was gone with the young people. They were showing me pictures of Andrew Tate saying, you know, you can dominate and destroy women. This guy's a pimp.

You know, that's a bad thing. You know, pimps are bad. It's a bad thing, right? It's a reaction. It's a reaction. Right. And I truly believe, because I do believe everything is centered in God, that there is something about women, women's bodies, women's power to create life that is deeply connected to the holy and deeply connected. to the spiritual, even God, when he wanted to become a human, had to have a mother.

You know, I mean, the first thing he did, picked out a mom, you know, and like, and so, and so when you are alienated from God, I think you're ultimately going to become alienated from femininity, from motherhood, from all the things that make life work. The only, the only Western country where the population is growing, Israel, the only one. And that's because there's still this kind of tradition going on there, even among the non-believers, where you increase and multiply, you know, and I think that we better get to it. We better get to it, yeah. I played that clip, I don't know if you saw it, of Jennifer Lawrence,

refusing, really, to sort of reevaluating her foray into politics. And I really see that as a bit of a watershed moment, right? I mean, like, where Hollywood is going, you might be able to go back. I mean, do you think they've learned their lesson? You know, I have been getting calls. I'm worried about, I'm less worried about people's opinions, because, as you were saying, I believe everybody should be allowed to express his opinion. I don't believe anybody should be canceled or silenced.

But I'm much more worried about the system that's in place that keeps any traditional values of making it onto the screen. You cannot do it. And it's an entire social system. When I worked in Hollywood, we had a secret organization called Friends of Abe. That's right. Yeah. I know a lot of guys in that.

Yeah. It was like an underground organization for conservatives. Right. And it was like you went to these meetings and it was like an alcoholic's anonymous meeting. You'd come in and say, say, hi, my name is Andrew. I'm a conservative. Hi, Andrew. You know, it's like that.

And it was terrible. And then you would go into a meeting where you were trying to sell a script. And the first words, that was George W. Bush days mostly, and Obama days. The first words out of the guy's mouth were to be. Sit down, isn't George W. Bush an idiot? And because I'm me, I would always say, I don't think so. And it's like, don't let the door hit you on the way out. And that is basically speaking up about the war, the movies that were being made that showed our military as bad guys,

while our military were being shot at in Afghanistan and Iraq, I started to write and say, you know, this is wrong. No matter what you think about the war, it's wrong to make these movies, because they're propaganda for the enemy. And my phone turned off, like, I thought somebody had implugged it. No, it's, they're a nasty industry, but it's reminded me of what one of our questioners asked, you know, a young girl talking about how do I bring up politics, when my friend is bringing up her politics. And I do think there's an opportunity, I think in today's day and age, almost 2026 America, it would be so extraordinary if a young screenwriter went into that pitch meeting and was asked a question like that,

and then responded by saying, well, I'm a conservative, so I see things differently. I did it all the time. I did it all the time. But I kind of think they've been brought to heal a bit. They understand their Wocopalooza movie extravaganza was a nightmare. It failed. They lost money, which is their true God in Hollywood. And I think they're conservative curious now. There's two places.

Because they want our dollars. There's two places where this is true. Apple TV, of all places, they have a sort of white man's lane, where suddenly they'll put, like, you know, they'll put, like, George Clooney in a movie, and he'll go like, oh, okay, I'll watch, and it'll be like an action film or something. Meanwhile, like, he's not our representative. Pick someone else. No, but the movie, but the movie will be pretty good, you know.

And the other is Christian. Vince Vaughn. Yeah, Vince Vaughn. He's great. But the other is Christian filmmaking, which I hated for a long time because I hate these happy, smiley, you know. I mean, it's a movie, you know, our God. Who doesn't hate happy and smiling? Well, our God got killed, you know.

It's a tragic religion. And I used to think these movies were terrible, but then I realized something that they bring in audience, people like them. And when you bring an audience, that attracts talent. And now you have things like The Chosen, which is really creative. Yeah, it's excellent. And Sound of Freedom, which was a very, yeah. And I mean, The New York Times, Sound of Freedom is about the child, you know, selling children into sex slavery. It had the New York Times going, well, you know, these conservatives hate sex slavery.

What's wrong? You know, you know. Thanks. But that's because the audience attracts the talent. And, you know, when the novel started out in the 18th century, it was supposed to be for, you know, women, go away women and read your novels. And then Jane Austen came along and took the form and turned it into an art because that's where the audience was. And that's, and her talent brings in Charles Dickens and all the other guys who come in and, made the great age of the novel.

And so building an audience is a good thing. And I think the Christians have done that. And I think that if conservatives will just get past their hurdles that are in front of them and start making stuff themselves and start making it on the

internet and start using AI to make it and start peddling it any way they can figure out, I think we can beat them. Listen, we beat them in the media, right? I mean, we destroyed them. And it was us. It was guys little people, like the revolution shooting at them from behind rocks. It doesn't even have to be, you don't necessarily even have to make the film, although if you can, great.

But you can go patronize films like Top Gun Maverick, which are not woke, which are pro-America, which have somebody who, I mean, I think we can safely assume Tom Cruise is a Democrat, a leftist Democrat, who's very, very pro-COVID lockdowns and mandates. But who cares? His movie was great and was right down the middle. He was not propagandizing us. We can support those films and send a message. to Hollywood. You do that? We're open-minded. Our side always is open-minded. We have to be. Otherwise, we could take in no TV, no movies, no news, no sports. We couldn't work in corporate

America. That's the beauty of being us. Okay. Yeah, great guys. Yes, Kevin Sorbo. Great guy. There's a bunch of them. I mean, honestly, they're coming out more and more now because they feel emboldened. All right, I have to leave it there for now. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to see you. Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you very much. Andrew Claven, everybody. It's wonderful, isn't he? If you've ever Googled yourself, you know how many results contain your personal information. And it's not by chance. Your info is available. Your name, your address, phone number, financial info, income, legal and health history. It can be sold and shared publicly without your consent. There are real risks here,

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data back with Incogni. Get 60% off an annual plan at incogni.com slash Megan. Code Megan at checkout. Michael Knowles doesn't give a shit if you don't like him. He says all the most incendiary things. it's hard to make my jaw drop and Michael Knowles does it regularly and he does it by just being totally unapologetically fearlessly honest but with such intellect behind the points

that it really is like chewing rubies in your mouth when you repeat his words and hear him speak here's a little quick intro outrage boiling over at the University of Buffalo hundreds of students and community members gathered in protest. Do you have anything else to say?

Hello, I'm Michael Knowles. I'm a conservative podcast host. I am surrounded by 20 LGBTQ plus activists. I'm gay married. Right? Like, you're not really married. I'm sorry. I'm going to outright call you a fascist.

Oh, no. Permanently banned by TikTok. Every time you come on this show, Michael, you're in trouble. What did you do? What did you do this? I'm always in trouble. Plenty of those white conservative men that you like so much seem quite happy.

Just take a look at this clip. Joy Reed, she has just been canned. Kick to the side of the road. Her show is over. Okay, well, we've got Michael there. Michael, anything you want to say to Joy? Joy, very nice to meet you. Now there's no longer a market for that absolutely vile content.

And I think that's good for the culture brought it. And now we can all chat on Pearson's show. We build, they destroy. That has been true since the terms left and right, entered into politics during the French Revolution. If they want to tear it down and knock it down, let them try their very best. Pay them no heed.

We're going to keep moving forward. Talking to me is like chewing rubies. Yes. I want that in my Twitter bio. That's really good. I like that. You take all the thoughts I have in my head and make them sound so much more eloquent and informed.

It's one of the many things I love about you. One of the first bonding moments Michael and I had, and you know, you guys all understand why this was personal, is you were on Fox News. You said something totally reasonable about Greta Turnburg, and then Fox canceled you, and you were never allowed to come back on. That did happen.

I was on Fox and I was asked about Greta Thunberg, St. Greta of the Blessed Sailboat, who was... You're familiar with her. Okay, for those who don't know, she is a truant who thought that the Sun Monster was going to kill us all and so she

sailed a boat back and forth with like private jets flying overhead and whatever. So, anyway, I said the girl was 16, 17 or something, and I said, I thought it was wrong that the left would exploit a girl who was mentally ill. Because her mother wrote a whole book about how

she had these mental illnesses and I said that's wrong to do and you shouldn't exploit kids for politics and then they cancelled me for that. Fox News decided Michael Knowles was too controversial because of that comment I remember DMing you saying what utter bullshit. I appreciated

that. So wrong and a beautiful friendship was born from that point forward. By the way that's the only good thing that's come out of Greta Thunberg's activism is our friendship. That's it. Thank you Greta. She's way off of that cause. now you know she's a, she's a globalized the endofata type. Yeah, there's no more money in the sun monster, so she's got to put on the kephia. They switch it like that. Like that. It's amazing, right? So you were born and raised in New York City.

I was, I was raised in the suburbs. I'm a suburban man. Though I guess I lived when I was really little, I was in the city, and I lived in the city later on. And after what occurred on Tuesday, I don't think I'm ever going to live in the city again. I know. I live in a city. I live Manhattan for 17 years, I can't say I'm totally shocked by what they did because they did elect Bill de Blasio twice, who is truly an idiot. I don't think Zoran Mamdami is an idiot, but Bill de Blasio is dumb as a donkey. Megan, I fear that Bill de Blasio is like Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan combined compared to Zoran Mamdani. Oh, God. I think this guy's clever, and I'm a little fearful of how clever he is. What do you make of his assent? A lot of people asked me when

Zoran was running, they said, Michael, isn't this terrible that a Muslim is going to be the mayor of New York City? And I said, we should be so lucky if he were actually a Muslim. Look, I understand Christendom's had a little conflict with Islam for about 1,400 years now. So, you know, it's a tough situation. However, at least if he were actually Muslim, I could speak to the guy. He would believe in God, he would believe in a moral order, he would believe in an ordered society. We could have a conversation. It wouldn't be good, but we have a conversation. I fear it's worse than that. I fear when you look at the Muslim communists, O'Ran Mamdani, he leans a little more on the communist side. I think he is a cringe millennial leftist who is every one of your worst

classmates at university. He's like that guy, and he is going to destroy New York City. Yep, I know. It's happening, and that's what they voted for, and we're all going to have to sit by and actually watch it. What does it say, though, about where the Democrat Party is? I mean, do you think he is the future? When they asked Hakeem Jeffries that, he said no. But Zora Mamdani won by huge margins. And if you don't think there are other Democrats in other cities right now saying that's the way to win elections, you're wrong. Who else would the future be? It's not Mrs. Pelosi. After a very brief 64-year political career, Nancy Pelosi is retiring, it seems.

Did you hear that news? She's not going to run for re-election. She's 85. I don't want to violate any SEC rules or anything, but if you are invested in the Nancy Pelosi tracking stocks, short, get out, get out right now. They're not going to drop. Just like she does. That's right.

So, is she the future? Is Schumer the future? No. Kamala Harris, the former future president, was asked about this. Who's the future of the party? Do you have any leaders? Because for the first time in at least 25 years, there is no leading candidate for president. The Democrats in 2004, the leading candidate with 25% of the vote at this time in the cycle was Al Gore. After that it was Hillary Clinton, after that it was Joe Biden. There was always someone who had this role. There's no one right now. And Kamala was asked about this. and she said, oh, you know, and she kind of giggled and coconuts fell out of the sky, and then she said, and then she said, of course we have a future. I mean, we have Zoran Mamdani, she named him. We have Jasmine Crockett. Jasmine Crockett, can you imagine? We have AOC, whoever.

And so, you know, you got it from the horse's mouth or some part of the horse. They're saying that this is the future of the Democrats, and I believe her. By the way, Zora Mamdani cannot be president. He was born in Uganda, and he's Ugandan. Like, he cannot be president. And never stop Barack Obama. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Don't clip that.

Don't clip that. You'll get canceled again. Who's smarter? Karin Jean-Pierre or Kamala Harris. I will have you know, and I have this on good authority. Karin Jean-Pierre is a black, queer woman. No.

Yes. No. I heard that on TV. How do you know? I heard it many times from Corrine Jean-Pierre. So, it's a tricky battle. I mean, maybe she's like a fox, that Carine Jean-Pierre. She held that job the whole time, and there was no actual president the whole time.

So, Corrine Jean-Pier effectively might have been the president for like four years, three years. Do you view Kamala Harris as an intellect? You know, San Juan. Thomas Aquinas shows us that all human beings are made up of, you know, matter and intellect. You know, we have will and intellect, and part of that's memory and part of that. So inasmuch as she is a human being, I suppose I grudgingly have to admit that she might have some intellect. But that actually, that's the first thing that's made me doubt Thomas Aquinas ever in my entire life. So I don't know.

Same. You had an interesting opinion recently on Sidney Sweeney. Now, we talked on the show about the dress she wore. Well. Did you like the dress? Split of opinion, maybe. So I came out against it. I love her.

I think she's great. She's very brave. But I didn't like the dress because I thought you went too far. And it was Ali Beth Stuckey on the show that day who said, can we draw the line of ariola? like we're all for titillation we love the return of actual women you know to these events and the as of the headliners and so on but like headliner good headlights not good we you know there should be some modesty but you had an interesting take on why the dress actually

was kind of conservative in a way it's a Straussian reading it's an esoteric I'm not recommending I would never send my daughter out in the Sydney Sweeney dress I do not recommend it generally However, I have to point out, what was the event that she wore it to? The event was called The Power of Women Gala. And what do we know about Sidney Sweeney? We know that she's a registered Republican reportedly. Love that. We know that just today some liberal journalist was trying to bait her into all these stupid answers about her jeans at,

and she just completely shut it down. She's got better message discipline than the entire Republican Party put together. We know that in a culture of... androgynous they-thems with crazy hair and 15 septum piercings, that, that Sidney looks normal, like a really, really, really pretty normal person. And so I thought there was this esoteric message, very anti-feminist, which she said, you want to invite me to the Power of Women gala? I am going to show you a big part of the power of women. And so I'm not saying it's conservative. I'm just saying it's not feminist. It ain't

feminist for sure. Yes. I actually love that point. I take your point because I remember not to compare myself to Sidney-Sweeney sadly. I wish I could, but no. But it was 2016 and we were headed to the Republican National Convention and I was anchoring for Fox and it was a crazy time. You know, I was like Trump and, you know, just so tumultuous and it was crazy for me at Fox because that day we had gone out to the Republican National Convention in Ohio, and that day it broke on the air that Roger Ailes was credibly accused by all these women and that I had been cooperating with these investigators, and it was just like my whole life was on the news,

and then I had to go do the news. And I went out to do the coverage that night, and of course all these leftists are like, she's a girl boss, that kind of thing. And I remember thinking, I'm not one of you. Like, this is, I didn't want any of this out there. This is, I was dragged into this kicking and screaming. Like, I don't want this to be that. And that night, I wore this, like, spaghetti strap outfit to do the news.

And it was, it was kind of that moment. You know what I mean? Where I was like, I'm going to sauce it up and remind you all that I'm not on your team. I'm going to bring the heat as a woman who's not looking to be out here in pinstripes, like grabbing people by the balls. castrating them, right? That you can do it all. You can be a news anchor, you can take yourself seriously,

but you can also be sort of a saucy person who men find attractive and who you want to find you attractive, right, because you're a regular American woman. So I kind of relate to what you're saying. Yes, you know, look, I'm all for modesty, truly. I didn't even see the dress at first. My producer said, he said, Michael, why aren't you leading the show and closing the show with Sidney-Sweeney?

You know, their ratings would be through the roof. I said, what? I saw some headline and paid attention. And then later on, popped up in my Twitter feed, and I said, all right, got to get custody of my eyes. Hold on, let's see, go to custody of my eyes. Hold on, I got to go to some other news website or something. But I thought in a culture that is so confused as ours, in a culture that doesn't know the difference between men and women, it is a relatively conservative thing for a woman to really be a woman and really show everyone. We're going to talk about that soundbite that you mentioned of Sidney Sweeney a little later. We talk with Andrew a bit about his faith and his conversion from Judaism to Christianity.

And you, of course, I know you're deeply religious that you're a Catholic, you're a devout Catholic. And I did not know until I was actually preparing for tonight that you, like, doubled down on your faith. You found like your true conservative Christian faith, your devotion to Catholicism, until you're at Yale? That's not a thing. Who goes to Yale and becomes more of a devout Catholic? I think they're going to rescind my diploma when they find out that was the consequence of it. Yeah, I was, you know, I always prefer the term, instead of devout Catholic, I always prefer the term practicing Catholic, because I'm going to keep on practicing until I get it right.

It might take a long time. But when I was cradle Catholic, raised, you know, the 90s were kind of a week time for catechesis generally. And then by the time I was 13, I was about to be confirmed, I said I'm an atheist. because I was a very clever little boy, and you know, Christopher Hitchens had that posh accent, and he was just so smart, and I thought I was smarter than everybody, so I said, I'm an atheist, and my mother looks at me, she says, ugh, ugh. She said, you're going through a phase, you should receive the sacrament of confirmation, you're going to come out of it, you'll regret it if you don't.

I said, okay, all right, whatever, I trusted my mother. She was right. I was an atheist for about practically an atheist for 10 years. That started to weaken when I was 18. I get to Yale, as you mentioned, and most people are atheists, and I don't know, a ton of people are much smarter than me, many of whom are atheists. However, I noticed the most intelligent people were not atheists. They were theists, they were in varying degrees of practicing religion, and they presented me

with intellectual arguments for the existence of God. It was pretty good. The ontological argument, later on St. Thomas Aquinas is five ways. Then I found other British guys who were clever and posh to counter Christopher Hitchens, namely C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, from there, G.K. Chesterton. Only at a Megan Kelly event. You get applause for Chesterton and Lewis. Great. I love that. Thank you. I love that.

And so by the time I was 23, I graduate, that was when I really reverted. I'm not a convert, but I'm a revert to the faith. And it's one of those things, as what St. Augustine said, you know, how late have I loved you, you know, a love ever, ancient ever knew? And it's kind of how you feel. You say, man, I really took the long route. You know, I talk to people who are cradle Catholic, you know, broadly religious, and I said, that was the easy way.

That's what you should have done. And I took the long route. But, hey, all's well that ends well, so I'll take it. What was the conversation between you and God after Charlie? You know, I was at work, and the morning that Charlie died, I thought about texting him because Charlie was very good at texting and I am very bad at texting.

I don't text anyone back. It's bad. Same. Yeah, I'm horrible at it. My friends, my family, very important people. Anyway, I thought, shoot, I owe Charlie a text. And it was a text, actually, weirdly, a little bit about religion.

And then he was shot. And also, oddly enough, Charlie and I were supposed to do an event together at the University of Minneapolis 12 days. after he was killed. And the last conversation we had on his show, he said, all right, Michael, I'll see in Mogadishu. And it was a great observation. And so my first reaction, everyone was chattering about it on Twitter, I said, just pray for Charlie Kirk. But what I can know, I don't want to tell tales at a school, but I think a lot of this has become public. You know, one, everyone knows

Charlie was deeply religious. Charlie was wearing a St. Michael medal, actually, when he was killed. opened the speech that we were supposed to have together with the prayer to St. Michael. And you don't believe it. I was talking to my wife who saw, happily, I didn't see the video, but she did. And she said, you know, it's a strange thing because I looked at it and I said, there's no way he's alive. And then at the same moment, I said, there's no way he can be dead. He's Charlie Kirk. You know, the guy would have been president. And everyone knows it. And it's a very difficult thing because it's all in God's providence, you know, and Charlie knows that better than

anyone. And, you know, Charlie had certain faith in Christ. However, there's this impulse afterward to say, well, we're Christians. We shouldn't be sad. Charlie's with his Savior. We shouldn't be sad. You know, we should be happy. This is a very modern aspect of Christianity to say, you know, don't grieve, don't mourn, just be happy, clappy. And that ain't my kind of religion. I don't know. Maybe I'm a little too traditional, but it is deeply sad, and we should grieve, and we should mourn, and it's a great injustice, and we should be indignant. I mentioned Thomas Aquinas earlier. He says it is a defect not to be angry in the face of grave injustice, and we should be absolutely furious about it. We should also have trust in God. We should also

have hope as a theological virtue. We should also pray for Charlie and his entire family, but we should be really shocked and mourn. And it was a national trauma, as much as it was a personal one. I know a lot of people were grieving. I thought, man, am I grieving because we were friends? And that was part of it? I would meet grown men on the street, and they would be crying, and they never met Charlie ever. It was a national trauma. It was a political trauma, compounded by a second political trauma, which is when the Democrats celebrated it. And we should be furious, and we should reassert some order to conduce to the common good as a national wake-up call. Amen.

Michael Knowles, thank you. Megan, thank you to all of you. Appreciate it. Thank you. When customers are walking through the aisles of their local Walmart, they're not just picking up groceries or supplies. They're supporting American businesses and their communities. The real story is what's behind the label. With over two-thirds of the products Walmart buys made, grown, or assembled right here in the U.S., buying local is not just stocking shelves. It's about strengthening communities. Because of that commitment, Walmart invested 350 billion dollars in U.S. manufacturing, helping American companies like Fisher and Weezer

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I was like, we have to go, and then after what happened to Charlie, I'm like, we definitely have to go. The best way to honor Charlie's legacy is to be out here to be unafraid. Do not back down. Stand firmly. Do not waver on the truth. Next stop, White Plains, Jacksonville, Miami, and Atlanta. So go get your tickets right now before they sell out. Megan Kelly.com.

Presented by Y. Refai and SiriusXM. Well, you may have heard of my next guest. Let me tell. I'm just going to steal a couple of minutes to talk about Ben Shapiro. so I first got to know Ben when I think he was 10 he looked 10 and I was on the air at Fox and he started coming on and he was obviously so smart

right but he was so young and you were kind of like are people going to take him seriously like he's so young but all you needed to do is spend two minutes with Ben Shapiro to realize oh people are going to take him seriously yeah we're good that we don't have to worry about that I quickly fell in love with this guy and his political commentary and started putting them on more and more and more and more. And in the ratings game, which is cable news, you can see how somebody does. Like, do they rate? And you can see it

minute by minute. Does the audience go up when he's on? Does it go down when he's on? Is it hold steady? And we'll take either go up or hold steady. But if it goes down a lot, then you never say them again. And every time Ben was on, you could see it skyrocket because people were learning something. He's got the gift of gab. I mean, he's completely articulate and can make his points without any stuttering, without any ums and ahs, without any hesitation, but he's always substantive, right?

And you always learn something. Agree, disagree, doesn't matter. You learn something from Ben Shapiro because he's always done his homework. You never think, oh, God, that guy's going to come out with empty-handed. He's got that big brain. He's got the legendary IQ.

It can be very intimidating, talking to him at first. But I'm proud to tell you I'm now one of the very few Americans who listens to the Ben Shapiro show on 2.0. It's not easy to do. You can listen to the,

the Megan Kelly Show on 2.0, the Ben Shapiro show? Megan Kelly, fine. Ben Shapiro, no. You have to be an expert. So we became friends over those years. And then, of course, I left Fox, I went to NBC, and everybody knows what happened there. So there I was, sitting on my couch, feeling sorry for myself, licking my wounds, thinking, my career is destroyed. Literally, everybody's calling me a racist. Nobody wants to hire me. I'm a joke in the industry. I've gone from, like, the top of my game to someone everybody is laughing at and treating with scorn. and who reached out to me

who actually reached out sent me a text and said we need to talk Ben Shapiro he saw I was down he saw I was hurting and instead of what most of us do honestly what I do too often and just kind of say like oh that's sad move on he actually reached out and said I want to help you

and you need to get off that couch he didn't have to do it his life was great his show is completely crushing it the Daily Wire was on fire like he was busy man did not have to take two minutes to think about me and it wasn't like I had done him

in extraordinary favors at Fox he was a star he was brilliant anybody could have seen that I wasn't some special you know spotter of talent so he said MK you need to come out here to the Daily Wire in California where they were at the time now they're in Nashville and see what we're doing and see whether you think you could see

yourself doing something like us and he wasn't like you must work for the daily wire i want to make money off of you i think you're a commodity i could buy into the daily wire he was like you need to do this and the country needs you to do this so i did i flew out there which was a big step from me because i was really just stress eating at home most days and uh showed me all around and not only did he show me all around the daily wire and show me exactly how he was doing a show and how one could do a show but like completely he was like here are our financials what do you want to know about us. Like, here's exactly how we, here's what this cost. Here's what the advertising is. Here's how you could do it. This is how much it would cost you. Like, it was

amazingly transparent on somebody who, like, he didn't have to do any of this. It was like the amount of trust that he put into me having me out there and showing me, it's like blown away by it and I left the Daily Wire that day and Ben saying, this is what I want to do. He inspired me fully and completely. And I didn't totally know exactly what my next move was or how I'd get into it or who I'd hire, or from where I would do it, or any of that. But that was, I think, December of 19, and I had made the decision that that would be my next move. And then we got into the fall, or the spring of 2020, and COVID hit. Spend that in Montana with my family.

And then George Floyd a Palooza hit. And by September of 2020, the Megan Kelly Show was born. Sometimes we joke with Glenn Greenwald, who's one of the most frequent guests on the Megan Kelly show, that he's the godfather of the Megan Kelly Show because he comes on so often. That's true, but I think you could make a fair case that Ben Shapiro is the father of the Megan Kelly Show.

And I will be forever grateful to him. You know he's a total juggernaut. He's, his show, it's in a league of one. He's reinvented this entire industry in Lane. He started The Daily Wire, which gave us geniuses like Clavin, Knowles, Matt Walsh, who we love, who just talked to two days ago,

and many, many others and I have nothing but unending love and respect for Ben Shapiro. Take a look at this, and we'll bring him out. What's happening today's college kids? What explains the fear? Ben Shapiro went out, made a speech.

Some students who didn't even go to the speech have made appointments with a therapist to deal with the trauma. That was the crowd that greeted conservative writer Ben Shapiro as he was attempting to give a speech. And I was told by the police officers, if you do that, there could actually be a riot. Look at me. I mean, do I look like a physical threat to anybody?

It's not rude to say that someone who's biologically a male is a male. Facts don't care about your feelings. You cut that out now or you'll go home in an ambulance. Yeah, that seems mildly inappropriate for a political discussion. No, I know. You're going to criticize the meritocracy as an outgrowth of white supremacy. Then you're going to have to tear down the system that you've succeeded in because you have merit. Joe Biden, there's only one thing the guy is good for, and that is being wheeled out in front of a parade that's already moving.

He's like, oh, look, go down. Oh, I'm here. I'm here. Oh, yeah. And Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro. I really enjoy our work. Ben Shapes. He used to love Ron Sanctus. I think you're going to love us a lot more. I think you're going to really enjoy being with us. Okay, Mr. President. I appreciate that. Fox News just called it. It's over, gang. This election is done. It's toast. You can put it in the fridge. It's finished. The greatest political comeback in American American history. Un-Effing believable. I mean, this is a huge victory,

a huge victory against the woke left that needed to take it directly in the team. Well, folks, I just got back from the theaters seeing Barbie. This movie is not just a piece of shit. This movie is a flaming piece of dog piled atop an entire dumpster on fire. It is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

And you said, I may have a desire to sleep with many women, but I do not. I agree with me. Yes, that's true. Congratulations on your, yeah. Charlie's voice. is not silent. We're going to pick up that bloodstained microphone where Charlie left it. And to those who would intimidate, who would seek to stop us, who would seek to end free discussion and kill

people who speak freely, we are not going to stop. And I have two words. You. Thank you so much for being here. I guess. The man, the myth, the legend, the one and only. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Megan. How about that walk down, memory lane? That was great.

Right? I am so happy you're here. This worked out so well. You've been in the news lately. Yes. Yeah, you've seen that? Yeah, a little bit. How's your last year been?

The last year has been interesting. Obviously, huge victory for President Trump, which was the big news of the last year. All the transformative policies that he's put into place, that's been wonderful. I've had the opportunity to see him do some of these historic things in person. I happen to be in Israel for the Jewish holidays when he was giving that historic speech at the Israeli parliament, which was unbelievable. I mean, it was truly tremendous. And then obviously, you know, you figure after an election things are going to cool down, and then things don't cool down. And so, you know, it's been busy.

Obviously, since Charlie's murder, which I think all of us reacted in precisely the same way, the security threats went up dramatically. I've had, obviously, personal security since I believe 2017, maybe 2016. I've had about 10 years of personal security. The last six years, it's been 24-7 security on me as well as on my four children. And that's been accelerated even more so in the aftermath of Charlie's murder. So on a personal level, that's been not fun. The good news is that the security guys are very sweet, and my kids get along with them great,

and they have lightsaber fights with them, and they think that this is kind of normal, but it isn't normal, and I wish that the country would go back to normal, but it seems like it may be a while. You've been dealing with this for a long time, and I've seen it personally. I mean, I've seen you surrounded by teams of security,

and I heard you say, and I mentioned this last night, that if, God forbid, something happened, most of the Daily Wire guys, we would know exactly who did it immediately. If something happened to you, God forbid, it would be like an Agatha Christie mystery. There's so many possibilities because you're loathed by the far left, and you're loathed by what we used to and maybe still do call the alt-right. And I remember we used to talk about this on the Kelly File because some people called you alt-right, and you would explain, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm not alt-right. I'm loathed by alt-right. So what is alt-right, and why do they loathe you? So there is a group of people in the United States who are rooted in an idea of grievance against the system that they believe has put them underfoot, and those people believe that essentially they are underfoot because of their white status. And thus, they must take revenge on anybody who is disproportionately benefiting from the system that tends to, in their own minds, be Jews. And you see this mostly refracted right now through a young man named Nick Fuentes.

He's 27 years old. He is the leader of a movement called the Groyper's. I don't know if any of you are familiar with this. But he is, he says and believes truly awful things. I mean, truly awful things. Not just about Jews. I mean, he has said, for example, that the vice president of the United States, this is a direct quote, I believe, is a fat gay race trader married to a jeet.

That's a direct quote about the vice president. And I'm upset that he named his son Vivek. Yes. He also has suggested and spent years trying to destroy Charlie Kirk's organization. Charlie, in texts that have now been revealed, called him vermin for exactly this reason. It had banned him and his followers from TPUSA because he believed that Nick Fentz and the Groyber's and white supremacy didn't belong as part of the conservative movement. And so the alt-right became this, or they are two sides of the same coin or parts of the same

sort of broad movement. And unfortunately, I think that they've gained a foothold in sort of the Internet subsystem. I don't think they have a foothold in mainstream America at all. And I think one of the mistakes that people make is to think that the Internet is real life. The Internet is absolutely not real life. And the first thing people need to do is turn off X, which is poisoning brains and making people think that not true things. It's basically like war games. They think the missiles are real.

The missiles are not real. The things happening on X are not a reflection of real life, but they can bleed over to real life if enough people take them seriously. So you and I have talked about Nick Fuentes many times over the years and our many appearances together. and that's how I knew about him because he was saying absolutely terrible things about you. And I am going to show a video, please forgive me,

of one of my first introductions to this guy, Nick Fuentes, and what he was saying about Ben. This is a video of him showing himself playing Grand Theft Auto, a video game where you shoot people, and he's pretending that this character in the video is Ben.

Let's watch. Oh! That's funny. That's funny. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, that makes me laugh and laugh. That's a funny one.

What a chance encounter that was. I think I just saw Ben Shapiro. And it goes on. It goes on. I mean, I would hate for people to believe that the Nick Fentz sort of, my problems of Nick Fentz are about me because they really are not. They are about the fact that Nick Fentz is a truly horrifying person who believes truly horrifying things. And again, there is a reason why Charlie Crook despised him. There is a reason

why every mainstream political commentator has been highly critical of him. It's the reason why these are not arguments. This is not a person who's making arguments. He is a Hitler-loving troll. And I say that advisedly, he literally says on his show that he loves Adolf Hitler. Okay, so the reason this has come up in recent weeks is because Tucker, your guest last night, decided to have him on last week and to completely gloss him, in my opinion. And you can make up your own opinion as to what you think Tucker was doing during that interview, but I know what it looks like when Tucker Carlson decides to be an aggressive interviewer, when he decides to ask difficult questions of people, Tucker is eminently capable of doing that, and he did it to Ted Cruz

quite thoroughly. But he decided for any number of reasons, and I try not to attribute motivations to people, that he was going to treat Fuentes with kid gloves, that he was going to not ask him about any of the things that I've just mentioned, literally any of them. and to essentially normalize Fuentes, act as a sort of gateway drug or as a, what I've called Tucker, as an ideological launderer of bad ideas over the last couple of years.

And this is not coming from a place of animus for Tucker on a personal level. I've known Tucker for a very long time. Tucker whenever we're in personal situations, we get along great. I think I saw that Tucker talked about how we were at Charlie's Memorial in the vice president's box together,

and he's correct. I mean, we saw each other, we said hello, we talked, it was very friendly, and all of that. And it's also true that a couple of days after Charlie's murder, he reached out and he called me and he said, listen, I know that we're at odds and we've been at odds for a number of reasons, mainly political. I mean, again, on a personal level, I'd go fishing with Tucker any time. The real question is, for me, I got into this business because I care about the ideas and I care about the ideals. And so when you're determining, what is conservatism? What should the future of America look like? And where do you draw the lines? Those are the questions that I need to answer. answer in my job. For me, my business is really not about friendship. I have lots of friends, people who I love, with whom I disagree in politics, and don't believe they should be leaders in the conservative movement, for example. And that to me is the real question. In any case, Tucker reached out. He said, you know, we've had a bunch of disagreements, and, you know,

what if we could put those aside and align toward the DSA in particular, is what he mentioned. And I said, you know, Tucker, you're totally right. Let's do that. That would be great. In fact, the TSA? The DSA, the DSA. The Democratic Socialist America. Why the TSA? How did that bring you together? The Democratic Socialist of America. No, that I know.

Yes, and the reason that I'm taking out my phone. TSA only divides people. Is because, yes, the reason I'm taking out my phone is because I don't just, you know, I like to evidence what I'm saying with, you know, actual evidence. So I texted him, and the text exchange was very nice. I mean, here's what the actual text exchange went like after the call. So I texted him. And I said, thanks so much for calling.

it means the world. It truly does. Should we do a show together, talking about the DSA threat, Democratic Socialist of America threat, and orienting in the same direction? Happy to do whatever it takes to bring everyone back together for the fight that matters. And Tucker then wrote back, Thanks, man, I appreciate it.

I'm going to spend the next week or two thinking about how to be most effective the country is clearly on the brink. I reached out repeatedly after that, nothing happened. And again, I thought it was a good idea at the time. I think I felt differently after I saw what he did with Nick Fuentes, and after he proceeded, in my opinion, to spend these subsequent

weeks doing literally nothing to fight the left. Again, I say this with sadness, because Tucker used to be, I think, a deeply important part of the conservative push to win. The number of times that Tucker Carlson has mentioned, Zoran Mamdani, since October 5th, on his show is once. And it was in the context of Marjorie Taylor Green and Tucker Carlson talking about the appeal of Zorn Maldani. of contrast, not because I'm a perfect representative here, but because you've talked about Zoramandani a lot. A lot of us have. Since October 5th, I did 17 separate shows on Zoroamam Dhani, including four in the last week before the election. Okay, because when you're orienting against the left, you really should orient against the left. Okay, so there's a lot in there.

I think, just to be clear, so the breakdown from the, like, detain after Charlie was him interviewing Fuentes? Like, was that the next thing that happened that led to the blowup? I mean, yes. I mean, I had not spoken to word. There were things... So wasn't that he attacked you, like, or you had something. No, I don't care about people attacking him. And I don't think Tucker cares about people attacking him. I mean, again, we're professionals. We're in a business where people comment on what we say publicly. You know, again, this is why, you know, I think you and I differ on our angle with regard to, for example, Candace Owens. I think that what Candice Owens is doing right now is evil. It is evil.

doing right now okay and I say that again but what what like I didn't know opine on whether it's evil or not but my my position is it's really none of my business and why is it but I have a question what why is it none of your business I mean you you come out on these things for a living I'm not mother of the internet no but you but if this were on the left and somebody were accusing Charlie Kirk of how of his wife having murdered him I assume that you would be talking about it was that what Candace is accusing Erica of yes of murdering her own husband she's she's accusing TPSA insiders

and other members of the right wing, including Seth Dillon, of being involved in the murder of Charlie Kirk, yes. Okay. Like I said, I don't take in that content, which is an honest statement. I don't have time to watch Congress. No, I believe you. I believe you. But the point that I'm making is that when...

What I understand, Candace should not have been doing. I think it's important. Listen, I'm... No, and Candace and I are not friends. We don't even know each other. I understand, but even with Tucker, friendship should not trump our manifest requirement to speak out when people do and say things

that are both detrimental to conservatism and morally won't. Okay. So I don't totally disagree, but I think the way of handling that, at least for me, is much different. So I saw things go south between you and Tucker, at least from my vantage point, when you disagreed on Israel, that was obvious. And he was, well, let me just make my point. And so he was saying things that were critical of Israel and our policy towards Israel. And then you did one show where you did what I thought you should have done, if you disagreed with them, which clearly you did, which is say what you believe and what you think is factual.

and, like, educate your audience on what you think are the real facts and give them the evidence for it. But you named him, and it felt like an attack. And that, to me, was the beginning of the end where he was like, now it's on. Because he felt personally attacked by you, as opposed to just challenging his idea. I think you named him and you kind of diminished him.

And, you know, he's an 800-pound gorilla. And if you mess with a gorilla, he's going to fight. And to me, that's where it started to go south. And because I remember that day being like, oh, shit. I don't want to see this. But here's the thing. I would urge everybody to go back and listen to the show that you're referring to, where I criticize Tucker's ideas, not Tucker as a person. Tucker then responded by claiming that I do not love America. That is a direct quote, that I do not love America because I was spending too much time covering the October 7th attacks, and then proceeded in January to then say that I wanted his children to die in a foreign war. Okay, so those are different. That's a rhetorical point. No, it's not. I'm sorry, it's not. An attack on motivation is a very different thing from an attack on an idea. His point was. that you were sounding like a neocon, and he's upset with anybody who wants us

to get too involved in Israel's conflict because he feels it endangers American children. Okay, the idea that, number one, the idea that I want the United States to be directly involved in Israel's conflict is not true. No, I know that, Ben. I've been urging Israel to get off of American aid for literally as long as I have been active in politics.

But I'm making clear what his point was. No, no, but my point is that that's not his point. And again, none of this blew into... So we disagree. Well, no, none of... We disagree on the interpretation of what Tucker has been doing for the past two years. And it's very difficult for me to believe that Tucker is merely anti-Israel when, for example, today, in his newsletter, I mean, I can directly quote it, if you'd like, in his newsletter today, he claimed that Zorn Mamdani is not anti-Semitic. This was his newsletter today, this morning.

I mean, I'm happy to read the text. It's a little extraordinary because, again, it is kind of shocking stuff. So here's what Tucker Carlson wrote in his newsletter today, or what his newsletter says under his name. He said, is the incoming mayor a fan of Israel? Does he want America to fight its wars? Not particularly, but a Jew hater. That's a different conversation. We've never seen anything to suggest he falls into that ugly camp.

If we're talking about fighting the left, defending Zaharm Amdani, who literally said that Hamas, he has no opinion whether Hamas should disarm, who posed alongside the 1993 trade center unindicted co-conspirator, who wouldn't have to sound globalize the infifada, who suggested that, that whenever there is in a New York Police Department boot on somebody's neck, it's an IDF lacing the strings, to suggest that that's not anti-Semitic in any way, no way. Okay, but listen. Or when he...

Listen, I'm going to give you a defense of Tucker here, and I don't need to defend Tucker, because I'm not Tucker. Tucker can perfectly well defend himself. But I'll just say, I think in general, because I know him, and I listen to him, and I understand generally where he's coming from, he would say his problems are with Israel, and he would say that that shot that Mamdani laid against the IDF

is a shot against the IDF, and Israel and how he thinks they're pro-war. Not against Jews. And I think... All I can say is when Tucker Carlson finds himself in complete alignment with Zorn Mammani, it is very difficult for me to believe that he does not agree with Zor and Moundani. I think Tucker is in a place right now of the same place that Charlie was getting to toward the end of his life, the same place that some people had tried to drive me,

which is you're under withering, non-stop accusations of being something you know you're not. but from some people who you love and who you've been protecting, at least in my case, in Charlie's case, for two years who you've been completely defensive of. And Charlie and I both felt, because we talked about this on my show, like, what's happening here?

Why are they dropping charges of anti-Semitism against us when we love Jews and we're both open Semites? We're Zionists. Megan, you may notice. I'm just talking about me here. Are there people who are over Zellishore? Have I ever attacked you? No, no, never.

Did I ever attack Charlie publicly about any of this? No, no, no, no. Okay, he and I had disagreements behind the scenes. You're like, you get defensive, and I think Tucker's feeling defensive. By the way, I waited to attack Tucker until he glossed Nick Fuentes, who is, that has nothing to do with Israel. Nick Fuentes hates Jews. I'm not saying you didn't have a right to go after him. I mean, I think you did what you know it was right, and you felt, and he mentioned you a few times in his interview with Nick Fuentes.

But again, I don't think it's about that. Because if he had not mentioned me in that interview with Nick Fuentes, I still would have said something about it. Because, again, glossing people who are white supremacists. is bad electorally on a pragmatic level, a right wing that embraces its own fringes will end up in the same position as the left wing that has embraced the trenches. Okay, so that's why we're going to get into it.

Embraces. Yes. So now having spoken to Tucker, I actually see that interview very differently, and I did listen to the interview, and I knew what Nick Funtas was, and I think he did show himself to be who he is. It wasn't his most vile stuff,

but you got the feel for what this guy was. But I really think Tucker was talking to him, Ben, to put like a bumper on this. guy. Because what Tucker was urging him the whole time was to understand that collective punishment for any one group of people is wrong. It's deeply immoral and it's anti-Christian, which this guy is supposed to be, and reminding him of how deeply immoral that is, that you should not be looking at a group of people, whomever it is. The left does it to everyone, whites mostly, but like this collective shame, white men in particular. And there's a group of people like Nick Fuentes that

does it to groups of Jews. And he was making the case throughout the whole interview in the way that Tucker does. He's not like you or me. He's not like pointed and cross-examining. That is not true. And was making- That is fundamentally untrue. No, no, no, Senator Ted Cruz, whether that is true. He gave it to Ted Cruz because Ted Cruz is a politician. That's, oh, hold on, hold on. So only politicians get cross-examined? You don't, well, look, it depends on the person. Tucker would never cross-examine a person who is not a politician. That's his rule? Tucker has excoriated public figures who purport to speak for us and represent us for many years.

Nick Fuentes is a podcaster civilian. Okay, I just have a question. We all in our industry are constantly excoriating people who are in our industry. It happens all the time every single day. Okay. But we're talking about his interviews. Again, we can agree to disagree on your interpretation of what Tucker was doing there. I think everybody should watch and determine for themselves what they think.

think Tucker was doing in that interview. And I urge you to watch it back to back with the Ted Cruz interview to determine whether you'd think that that was an aggressive Tucker Carlson interview. And you can judge to yourself. I didn't say it was aggressive. I didn't say it was aggressive and I don't think he would say it was aggressive. And I think his point was this guy, first of all, he's become a behemoth sadly. He's got five million viewers on Rumble. He's got a million followers on X. I agree. This is all before Tucker Carlson. And he was platformed, I hate that verb, but he was platformed by Patrick Beth David. And he went on Dave Smith show and he went another big show. He's been getting more and more

purchase in the political ecosphere, including right wing. And I think that's bad. Patrick Back David has a huge show. I know, but did you know that Patrick Beck David had him on? Did his life blow up? Patrick Beck David did a significantly more aggressive interview with Nick Fuentes than Tucker did. Okay, but my

point is simply he's growing. He's growing in stature. And so what I saw Tucker do was not weightwash his ideas, but try to put bumpers up on the guy. I know Tucker well, and I think that was his approach. And the way, the way The way, if you want to put a bumper up on Nick Fuentes, is it helpful to say, you're fucking vile,

you're an anti-Semite, you hate, no, it isn't. Yes, it is. That doesn't put a, yes, it is. No, it isn't. That makes the audience feel good because you have hand-to-hand combat, but it doesn't help change that guy's view or his extremeness at all. Okay, I'll tell you what doesn't change Nick Flentes' view. Tucker Carlson, with his arm around, Nick Flentes, grinning for the camera while Nick Flintes tweets out America first, and then triumphantly goes on the air the next day to explain

that he has essentially used Tucker Carlson as a vehicle for manipulating other people. Okay, that's what Nick Fuentes is saying. Not me. Nick Fuentes. Okay, and Nick Fuentes, and by the way, I will, again, say that Tucker Carlson, when you say to somebody in an interview, do you condemn anti-Semitism? And then the person says, sure, which is what Nick Fuentes said. He said, I'm not an anti-Semit, which is blatantly untrue. A responsible journalist would then follow up demonstrating that that is false. Tucker did not do that. He allowed him to get away with that. And then he allowed him to talk about, quote-unquote, organized a jury, followed by Nick Flantes, being treated to a disquisition by Tucker Carlson about why

Christian Zionists of all human beings on Earth are the people that he hates the most. He took that back. You can't take that back. How do you take that back? How do you take that back? He did. How? He went, he spoke. Then he should explain why it was wrong. He should explain how Christian Zionists are actually wonderful people. Tucker is very quick to self-flagellate, and he went on with Dave Smith the next day, the next week, whatever. Monday, Tuesday this week, and said, that was stupid. I didn't mean that. He said, I'm angry at people like Lindsey Graham.

I'm angry at people like Ted Cruz because he thinks they run head first in these conflicts and they don't think about what's going to happen to American kids. If we're talking about firing inside the tent, what everything, Lindsey Graham, okay, and I'm not a huge Lindsey Graham fan. He votes with the President of the United States 100% of the time, and Tucker spent yesterday's show excoriating him as a psychosexual death worshiper. Does that sound like firing outside the tent? Again, these are the question.

Again, the questions that I'm asking here, I'm not asking you to do anything, Megan. No, I know. Okay, I'm not. I'm not. When I draw a line with regard to what I believe Tucker Carlson is doing to the conservative movement and what he is fomenting, that is because that is my influence. And everyone can make their own decision as to whether they think that I am right or whether I am wrong and where they choose to draw the line with regard to the conservative movement.

The question for me is always whether somebody's statements are forwarding moral values that I think are worthwhile. I did not get into this business for the money or for the clicks. You didn't neither. Neither did he. What was that? Neither did he. I mean, he may not have. That's fine.

I certainly did not. I'm only going to speak for myself. And what that means for me is that if I see somebody breach basic moral values by having on a Nazi, and in my own view, you can take your own view. In my own view, gloss the Nazi, then I'm going to speak out about that. And I'm going to point out that there is a long pattern of him ideologically laundering terrible ideas over the course of the last. two years, ranging from traveling to Russia to sniff the bread and explain why the Russian regime is actually wonderful, to saying last week that the Venezuelan regime of Nicholas Maduro

is actually not that bad because they're being attacked by, in his words, Globo-Homo. Tucker's made the point, I'm not going to hear to be Tucker's defender, but he's made the point that Maduro is culturally conservative. Who gives us shit? The guy's a communist dictator. Everyone in his country's eating dog. He's shipping fentanyl to the United States to kill Americans. Why don't we give a shit whether he's anti-LGBQ rights? This is the number one thing about Nicoblis Maduro? You're not far down the list you have to get

before you can get to anything remotely recommendable about Nicholas Maduro? I did ask him yesterday about the criticism that he didn't give Nick Fuentes a hard time, right? He didn't bring up the stuff that we were talking about. No, he didn't. And here's what he said. It seemed to think that we've way overstated the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.

He's ripped on poor Ushavans in the most offensive terms, which I mean... So what do you say to those people to say, why don't you raise any of that? You know, do your own interview the way that you want to do it. You're not my editor. Buzz off. I mean, I don't know. You want to go yell at Nick Fuentes? I'll give you a cell.

Call him. And go sit and yell at him and feel virtuous or whatever. That's up to you. I agree with him. But I agree, no, I agree with him. I agree with him. He did the interview that he wanted to do for a reason. Here's the other thing I want to say.

We all have different approaches in this industry, you know, and there's been a lot that people in podcasting have said that I disagree with, including many of the names that we've discussed tonight. I mean, we disagree too. I mean, yes, of course. I mean, yes, rarely, but sometimes we do. But my own personal approach, generally when it's someone who's on my, what I consider to be my side, the side of sanity.

This is the entire question, is whether I consider Tucker Carlson to be on myself. I got it. I get it. But I would just say, just for the record, my own general approach, and this is my audience here, so they know, is in general, I will take on a position, and I will make clear how I feel. For example, I've been asked, and some of my audience is mad at me for this, but what do you think happened to Charlie Kirk? And I believe a man named Tyler Robinson shot and killed Charlie Kirk. I believe he was influenced by trans Tifa, radical trans activists, that he fell in with a lunatic that goes by Lance Twigs. that that guy was extremely radical

and that he, and possibly a band of others, convinced this guy that violence was the answer. Then I believe others knew about it before Charlie was killed. That's what I believe. And until you can show me cold, hard proof that it was something other than that, that's what I'm going with.

And I don't want to do or say anything that will jeopardize the FBI investigation and prosecution of that guy to make sure he spends the rest of his life, either behind bars or on the wrong end of a firing squad. But that's... So I feel like... I can make these points without attacking people who generally are on my side in fighting the deranged

leftists who are killing us. But my point is, two points. One, you have to define your side. You do. There are limits to the side. All the people who don't want to kill others based on their political ideology. So I would agree with that, except for the fact that, as you showed, Nick Flent has wants to kill others based on their political ideology. He's not on my side. He's not with me. My point is that Tucker treated him as though he was on his side. I see it differently. I think He did an exploratory interview where there was a possible attempt to put a bumper up on this. I think that we don't have to go over ground that we've already covered. We can agree to disagree on that.

And everyone can make up their own mind after going and watching the interview yourself. Why don't we do the Larry David? I disagree to disagree. By the way, is it gloss or glaze? I've heard it both ways. A gloss, like a glossy? You have kids who do the brain rot talk? That's what they call it brain rot, those terms.

Like he's got Riz. I don't know. I've got two teenagers and a 12-year-old. I mean, listen, my original verbiage is that Tucker was fluffing him, so I guess that was more G-rated. That's a port reference, right? It is. It's a porn reference.

Yeah, he's not afraid to say it. So, let me ask you this. There's some risk to both of you in this. You know, it's like Godzilla and King Kong having this battle. There's some risk to both of you because you both have very large shows, very large audiences, and there's probably some overlap, or at least there would have been two years ago. So is this in any way?

Did you feel any reluctance to have this? only, okay, so I was reluctant because, again, he and I had texted about the idea of orienting the same direction, and then I decided that we were, in fact, not oriented in the same direction. Okay, but am I worried about, you know, the career risks? No, because to me, there's sort of a laffer curve when it comes to influence. So the famously when it comes to economics and the laffer curve, the idea is that if you tax everybody at zero percent, you receive zero tax revenue. If you tax everybody to 100 percent, you also receive zero tax revenue because everyone stops working. I think there's an influence curve as well,

because I thought about this a lot before. This is so, Ben, who goes to the laffer curve to bring home the point of, this is so smart, but then he knows that we don't know what he's talking about, so he defines it. So if you have no influence, if you have no influence, but you speak out a lot, then you have no influence. If you have tons of influence and you don't speak out when it's appropriate, you also really have no influence. And so for me, the question becomes, when is it important to speak out? And Megan, you and I have been talking behind the scenes about many of these same issues for a very long time. And so you know that I actually, you've known me for a very long time.

I'm pretty good at conflict, but I don't like conflict. I really don't. You've been trying to put this one behind you guys for a long time. A very, very long time, consistently, for a very long time. In fact, for two years, I mean, I can read older text messages. After that initial blowup, where Tucker was suggesting I have dual loyalty in all of this, I literally texted him, and I said, Tucker, we seem to have gotten crossways somehow. I would love for you to come on my show.

I'd be happy to come on your show. We'll do it. and he proceeded to ghost me for two years. He was not in a head spade. I didn't talk to him about this, but my assumption is he was not in the right headspace to have a day time. For two years, a long time to be not in the right headspace. But look at the two years we've had, right?

Look at the two years. It's all related to Israel. It's all related to Israel. I do not agree. I disagree. I fundamentally disagree. He wasn't picking fights with you before the Israeli conflict. It wasn't about picking fights over Israel.

Okay, again, you're trying to turn it into, he picked a fight. with me or I picked a fight with him. For me, the question is the principles. It blew up over the past two years. I don't think that it's a coincidence that obviously anti-Semitism simultaneously blew up with the war of October 7th. Yes, but also so has, you know, conflict and controversy involving feelings over Israel. Of course. And now the war has been over for several weeks. And Tucker Carlson is writing newsletters about how Zoran Mamdani is not an anti-Semite. What does that have to do with Israel? I think that's a hangover from being called an anti-Semite at every turn and feeling angry about it. You know what? I'm a little tired of the excuse that if you are called something enough, that justifies all of the subsequent activity.

I've been called every goddamn name in the book. Every name in the book. And I have not, wait, but I have not shifted my positions because people call me names. That is a childish thing to do. Ben, with all due respect. And pardon the language. You did not have an entire country call you a Nazi for the past week. I think he's in a defensive place right now on charges of anti-sendomages.

I'm not interested in his psychotherapy, Megan. I am. I love him as I love you. You know what? And that's why I started this off by saying you're empathetic and you're a wonderful person and you're a good friend. And I think that, you know, there's a reason why in the medical industry, you don't operate on your friends or your relatives. But you're telling me I need to. I'm not telling you.

That's what I'm trying not to do. No, Megan. Actually, I haven't said that one time here. I've said that's why I'm doing it. I know, but there are many people who are late. And I'm saying that that is not a move that I can make because Tucker has already closed the door to the idea that we are on. on the same side. Ah, but he hasn't closed the door to detente.

Let me show you another soundbite. Let me just show you one more. But is there any way that you and Ben Shapiro can actually find your way to detaunt? I'm not against Ben Shapiro. He did like a 40-minute thing

yesterday calling me dangerous and all this stuff. It's like, I didn't watch it because why. But I got a lot of texts about it and it's like, I'm not, I don't think Ben Shapiro was driving a lot of this stuff,

I don't consider him, like, the world's greatest force for evil. I don't feel that way at all. I don't actually think about him ever. So I don't want to have a war with Ben Shapiro. I don't know. Does he really think that me doing an interview in which I explain that anti-Semitism is wrong to one of the lead purveyors of anti-Semitism, that that somehow makes me a Nazi? What is the argument here?

I'm going to ask him tomorrow night. I don't even understand what the argument is. All I know is that the right, and I've been on the right since before Ben was born, is acting like the left in such an amazingly precise way that I'm like, what the hell is going on? I agree with Tucker that the right is in fact acting like the left

by again massaging its radicals in the name of some sort of foe unity. That does not sound detainty. Because, again, I'm not... Again, trying to turn this personal is a mistake. I know, but can it happen? Like that person who sent those texts from your end?

Is that person still willing to sit with him and work something out? When Tucker changes his positions, then sure. If he does not change his positions, then no, because I'm not in politics to be friends with people. I have children, I have a wife, I have a dog, I have an extended family, and I have friends outside of this. He doesn't want to be friends with you either, Ben. It's about uniting the right so that we can fight the right enemy on the left. And Tucker is of the right. And Tucker has been fighting for a lot of these ideals for a long time, and he's changed this country fundamentally for the better.

I'm saying Tucker has never been a wonderful advocate for anything on the right, because I don't think that's true. I think in the past, he was a great advocate for many things on the right, particularly on the immigration issue. For sure. I'm saying that's not what he is doing now. I do not think he is advocating for right-wing positions. He is not conservative than I am by any stretch of the imagination on any possible issue. And when it comes to the question as to whether he is actually making the conservative movement more likely to lose by attacking inside the tent significantly more often than anyone else on the right, Well, simultaneously, massaging again, watch the interview, massaging the nation's leading white supremacist.

I'm sorry, there's no detente with those positions. Forget about the person, there's no detent with those positions. Fair enough. Fair enough. Was this a good discussion? I mean, honestly, I give you tons of credit for coming and doing this. It was such a crazy thing for me that I had him booked last night and I had you booked tonight, and then you guys wound up in this. but part of me loves that

you know I can talk to both of you but part of me hates this because I really I don't like it I hate it too this idea that I'm like seeking conflict again I'm not I know it's idea driven if the ideas are bad I am against them I get it the ideas are good I am for them end of story I get it and he would say the same right he feels

he feels very much America first and that you know we need to prioritize what's happening in our country in Israel's not on that list and so on you guys can listen to that interview if you want to hear Tucker's full thoughts. It aired today. You probably heard it. Okay. We're going to take 20 seconds and surprise, we're bringing Andrew and Michael back out here. It's the one time of year that Birch Gold Group gives away free gold with every qualifying purchase. That's right, for Black Friday, when you convert an existing IRA or 401k in whole or in part into a tax-sheltered IRA and gold, Birch gold will send free gold to your home for every $20,000 purchased.

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You gave us all the easy questions. I like that. We had a lot of fun. All right, let's actually have fun. Let's kick it off with the Sidney-Sweeney moment. Not the dress, sorry. but with the moment, an extraordinary moment she had today where she was asked quite a question by GQ Magazine

about that infamous or famous, depending on your point of view, American Eagle jeans ad and how she handled it. The criticism of the content, which was basically that maybe specifically in this political climate, like white people shouldn't joke about genetic superiority. Like that was kind of like the criticism. broadly speaking, and since you are talking about this, I just wanted to give you an opportunity

to talk about that specifically. I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear. Like a boss. That was actually sexier than the dress. One extraordinary moment, right? That's great. That's watershed stuff up there. It's the new meme. You know, there's a meme on the internet of like Anakin Skywalker talking to his wife and then really he sort of doubles down and it's this like dark right wing that's the new version of that she's the new spokesman for the american right and i'm willing to go so far as to

say right now i'm formally endorsing a ticket of vance sweeney 2028 the greatest message discipline in the republican party the message discipline exactly but what a thing to hold your own and say like no i won't be making news for you today on that it's so great and she understands the game right which the lady was after clicks. And if she comments in any way, it'll make a huge headlines. She's like, you know, no gas, no gas for the car. And now where are you going to go?

That plus that Jennifer Lawrence moment, right? Drew is like, they're starting to get it. Oh, listen, Hollywood is out of work. When I say that, I mean, they're all out of work. You could make a movie about white supremacy and they would show up because they are out of work. This is true. The business has shut down.

Only the Christian people are making movies. a couple of movie stars who can still make movies. The business has closed. And, you know, the unions are enforcing racial quotas on the films, and you cannot win an Oscar if you don't have a certain racial quota of the people involved.

And all of that is kind of just coming apart at the scenes. It's kind of delightful. It is. It's wonderful. Well, this is, not least because this is the Democrats' bench. Like, this is their A-Team to get them elected, right? This is who they bring out, this is who they parade out and out. And more and more, they're going to be getting a no. Because if they can hurt the career,

of Taylor Swift, they can absolutely hurt anybody else. And by they, I mean us. So they're learning that we have real buying power and that we can hurt you if you get too political. And we will. Like, we don't use it that often because we're conservatives and we kind of let people live and let live. But like when they try to push Kamala Harris into the White House, we stand up and we fight. We find our spine. So I feel so encouraged by that. I don't feel encouraged at all about anything that happened this week, but I feel encouraged by that. And there was really no blowback to her either, which is sort of the impressive thing. So you remember back in the 90s, Michael Jordan famously was asked about why he didn't start making very loud political statements,

and he said, because Republicans wear sneakers do, and everyone went nuts on him. This was considered terrible at the time. And then, of course, the NBA decided that LeBron James was the great face because he was so politically, so much better than Michael Jordan, because he was political. She said this, and I think all of us cheered, and the entire left kind of backed into a corner. They really did. They're afraid. They're like, oh, shit.

I think that's right. She'd be pulled around. But you said something earlier, Megan, that people have to show up for the people who make rebel films and Rebel Books and all that stuff. There was a film on Apple TV with Tom Hanks where he was a guy fighting Nazi submarines. All he does through the entire movie is read the Bible and kill Nazis.

And I thought, we should, everybody should be watching. We should be subscribing to Apple TV. The movie's called Greyhound, by the way, and it's terrific. Oh, awesome. Let's talk about 2028 and Team Blue. Who do we like? Who do we think is actually going to pull this thing out? Gavin?

I guess, right, yeah, I guess, like the leading candidate right now. Like if you had to put your money on it. If I, if you forced me today, I would say, no, it's going to be a Bill Clinton-like figure in 92. It's going to be someone who maybe we don't know yet because no one's over that 25% threshold. Probably it is American Psycho, Governor Bateman, you know, Newsom over there. Probably he's the leading candidate. The problem for him, though, is he doesn't know who he is. So he's a very far-left mayor.

He was doing gay marriages in San Francisco in like 2003. long before that was legal. He is very, very left wing. Then he tries to pivot and be the new Clinton Democrat, so he tries to be friends with Charlie Kirk, he tries to be friends with Steve Bannon, he's going to cut this middle ground.

That doesn't work. Then his press team is tweeting threats at Stephen Miller, and they're going far, far left shortly after Charlie was murdered. So he doesn't know where he stands. And it's just a party problem. The party problem is, you know, the future of the Democrat Party,

per Kamala Harris, there's Jasmine Crockett and Zohran Mamdani, all these far-left communes. and he understands that no one is going to win a primary as a white guy who's a moderate who's friends with Steve Bannon and no one's going to win a general if she's Jasmine Crockett who sometimes can speak the English language and sometimes apparently can. But I saw you say on your show, this is why you believe Gavin Newsom is actually going to run and he is going to run as the next black president.

And the reason Michael predicts this is because of this soundbite, we've got one more soundbite for you, that comes from an interview he did with two former NBA players last week. But also, you know, it was also about paying the bills, man. And it was just like hustling. And so I was out there kind of raising myself. Turning on the TV, started, you know, just getting obsessed, you know, sitting there with, you know, the wonderbread and five stacks of, you know, meat's like the white steak, five story. Come on.

Jesus. Every day in the backyard, just bouncing the basketball, throwing the ball against the wall until the ball is just like fraying, man. And your arms falling. That's it. The whole thing. So just, and then, you know, then this student that was shitty student is in the back with his head down, all of a sudden started throwing the baseball a little faster than everyone else

and started, you know, make a few free throws because I was sitting there practicing 500 of them every damn night. And in high school, I look up in the stands, my dad's back up there. Okay. And it's like, man, and then he's bringing his friends and you're captain of the team and you're like, gee, you know. And it just saved me and it got me into college. He's got my vote, like, Michael, Michael said he was born a poor black child.

I was waiting for him and that, you know, listen, I'll tell you fellas, smoking blunts was a daily routine since 13, chubby fella on the scene. He is such an unbelievable. unbelievable lizard person. When you watch him, you can almost see the ridges under his skin kind of moving. And you're waiting for him

to unzip and just the dinosaur pops out. I was actually How about the working class lie? It's such a lie. It's unbelievable. He said, you know, he goes, well, my pops went out to get milk, you know, he didn't come back and finally my dad's came around. His dad was the financial advisor to the

billionaire Getty family, and he was a judge. He was a judge. That was his other job. My dad worked two jobs. Yeah, you You were a financial advisor and a judge. He was featured in a magazine spread as a teenager with a captioned Children of the Rich. I was like Wonderbread and Mac and Cheese. You know, I'm going to go a little bit off the board in terms of 2028 picks for the Dems. I think everybody is underestimating AOC.

Yeah, me too. I do. Who? Underestimating. AOC. Really? Yes. Well, that's scary.

Because if I look at the order of the Democratic primaries, it goes Iowa, super progressive. New Hampshire, super progressive. And you get to South Carolina. And that was sort of the firewall for, quote, unquote, Normie Dems last time, because Bernie won both the first two states, and then the entire Democratic Party decided to deprive him of the nomination by all getting together and James Claiborne saying, it's got to be the dead guy.

And so they all mobilized behind Biden. I think that it's harder to do that with AOC, because what she represents is Bernie, but ethnically diverse. And that is not a horrifying pitch inside the Democratic primary electorate, actually. And hot. She's cute. He is. He is. She's true. I'm sorry.

Stop it. She is. She is. Just stop it, Drew. Drew? No. No, Drew. No. Stop. She's no Sidney's. And I think we can all agree. No, she's no Sydney, Sweeney. But she's got what Sidney's got. My own personal opinion is you can't be like that constantly angry all the time

and, like, really penetrate the language. Ben is right. The eyeballs are like half out of your sky socket, like all the time. She's a good campaigner. She's good on the... All right. So would you put money on AOC? Like, because she's your frontrunner? Yeah, I'm looking at the polls right now. I think that she is, if she's not, I think right now it's Newsom and Herbert. I think Newsom fades, I do.

He's got the same feeling about him that actually I kind of felt about a guy who I really like, Governor DeSantis in the early primary going in the Republican Party in 2024. I love Governor DeSantis, but in 2023, the idea was that he was definitely going to be the nominee in 2024. And then, of course, Donald Trump just swamped him, right? And so I could see a world where the Newsom moment kind of fades. He feels like he's peeking early. In all these races, there's somebody who kind of peaks early and like, oh, man, remember that Tim Paul-Lenzie

guy? Remember there's like a hot moment where we're like, oh, Tim Paul-Lenzy? But come on. You remember? Okay, but what about, like, an outsider? Like, Stephen A. Okay, first of all, I really like Stephen A. As a human. I know. Stephen A's great.

We all like him. But a Democrat. And so Stephen A, no. He's moderate. He's diverse. He's from the outside. He's very good on camera. That'd be fun. I would love it. With both. love. No? What do you mean? To run as a Democrat? We could do no better on Team Blue. Like, to get

a Normie running as a Democrat where like our worst case scenario is Stephen A? I feel like that's pretty good. I totally agree with this. Totally agree with this. Vance is going to be the next president no matter what happens. Vance. Vance and Rubio. Okay, so here's a question for you. Unbeatable. Here's a question. If it's Vance, how does it happen? Like, do they do a convention? Does Trump, like, pass a baton? Well, I think that the, I mean, the hot. I mean, the hot. I mean, the hot. I mean, the rumor is that Rubio's going to sign on as Vance's VP right after the midterms, basically. Right? And then that makes a lot of sort of political sense for Marco, right? There are a lot of people who are trying to say that the Secretary of State should run against Vance. If you're

just doing a game theory thing here, it doesn't make a lot of sense for Rubio to do that. If he runs against Vance and he loses in the primaries, he does. We did the laffer curve and now we're doing the game theory. Okay, keep going. If you're evaluating his options, what you would figure is he runs against Vance, he loses, and now he's toast. He runs against Vance and then Vance doesn't pick him for VP. And then Vance becomes his prime. president, he's toast. The only way that works out for him is somehow if he finishes second, but he's better off then even if he picks him his VP and then loses. So that's definitely Rubio's best option. So I think they probably run a combine ticket. I think they foreclosed

primaries. I think no primaries. But like if they, if they sort of come out and say like, we'd love to be president and vice president and this is looking at, how is that going to resolve it? Right? There are other very ambitious Republicans in the Trump administration who might have a problem with it. There are. There are plenty of people who want to be president, you know, like every United States Senator, every sconeer, every, you know, everyone, basically. But who's got the juice to do it? You know, I mean, you make the point then that maybe Newsom is kind of like DeSantis was in 24. And I see it. But the difference is there was Trump. And really, I know there was a primary in 2024. DeSantis is great. I love DeSantis. I never really thought for even two seconds that

there was seriously a primary. Trump was a fait accompli. He was the man. He was the one they were prosecuting. He was the one they were raiding his hat. He was the man, you know? and they jilted him, and he's just this world historic figure. There's nothing even close to that on the left right now. And so as a result, Trump remains the man. He's basically endorsed that ticket of Vance Rubio. And I think it is, look, you know, there are plenty of people who want to repeal the 22nd Amendment,

name Adonaldus to be, you know, Dinaldus Magnus, Emperor the First, have it passed to Baron Octavian Augustus Trump, and, you know, so on and so forth. Assuming that doesn't happen, Trump can crown. Vance and Rubio, and I think that's the end of the story. Okay, but now I have a question for you. Okay, I have another question for you. Because we are, what, we're in November of 2025, so it's a long time before

the actual race kicks in. And in between now and then, we might have the tariff scheme collapse, depending on how the Supreme Court rules. It was ambiguous yesterday. It wasn't perfectly clear two days ago that it's going to go Trump's way. We might have eliminated the

filibuster, which will be extremely controversial, and your favorite, in favor of it? The time has come. I would say, if you ask me, the time has come, you have to do it. And actually the proof of it, look, I'm like a big defender of the filibuster and standards and norms and slowing things down. I've loved the filibuster, but politics is applying eternal principles to changing circumstances. The Democrats will do it. There is no question. The only reason they didn't last time is because a mansion and cinema, they're gone. These are people who celebrated

when the most prominent proponent of civil debate in America was assassinated in 4K. These people will stop at nothing, and you get a real advantage of you're the party to do it first. They've been creeping toward it for years. It pains me to say it. I kind of like the filibuster in principle. Do it. Nuclear option, to quote George W. Bush, nuclear, get rid of the filibus. I have sort of a happy medium counterproposal, and it was actually put forward by our friend Jeremy Boring.

I thought it was quite brilliant. What he suggested is that what Republicans should do. He said this a year ago. Republicans should do is they should say to Democrats, let's do a constitutional amendment to enshrine the filibuster permanently, and if you won't do it, then we'll nuke it. I like that. Because that's like, okay, either we're all on board or nobody's on board. We're not going to play this kind of take-em-on-faith game, which I think is quite smart. I am terrified about the loss of minority rights in the Senate, because our team is going

to be there soon enough, and we are going to be terrified at what those Dems are going to do to us. It does give a big advantage to having a president who is of a different party than the Senate, which the public will catch onto eventually so he can start to veto bills. It's going to mean a lot more of, you know, people getting stuck, things getting stuck in Congress, which I'm totally in favor of. The less they can do, the more I like it. That was built in by the founders. They didn't want things to move quickly through the Senate. They wanted conflict. They wanted it to take forever. They wanted it to be really hard to pass legislation. They thought it would lead to strong-arming and trying to get bipartisan, you know, compromises done. And we just

don't do that anymore. I think it is related to Citizens United where, like, money talks, and that's what everybody answers to who got them elected and what do they want. They don't compromise anymore. So maybe you're right. Maybe different circumstances require different measures, but I really do not favor getting rid of the filibuster. What do you guys say? Do you want to get rid of the filibuster? Or no, how many who do not want to do it? These are very wise, good-looking people. They understand. This is Nuket. They've got a lot of that. The Marxists will destroy us.

No paying for Congress. Don't pay Congress through the shutdown I heard out there. It makes perfect sense. Or ever, maybe. So what is the biggest threat to a J.D. Vance Marco Rubio ticket actually winning? What's the biggest? What's the biggest threat to them actually winning? The biggest threat is an economic downturn.

It is not even close. So I'm very, very uneasy about the state of the economy right now. In fact, I think the best thing that could happen for the President is likely the Supreme Court striking down the tariffs. If that were to happen, then what you will actually see is some reduction in prices. You will see an explosion in investment not in the top of the market. Right now, virtually, I don't know why your mic's doing. Yeah, I'm not sure why. Right now, virtually all gains in the stock market are going to the Magnificent 7, those top 7 stocks.

If you take out the gains from the Magnificent 7, the stock market has been flat for several years at this point. Everyone in the investment community is pouring money into AI, and I don't think it's going to pay off the way. it's going to pay off. I think AI is a bubble. I think that Trump is doing something really visionary, and I'm not sure he's doing it according to a philosophy or just instinctively. But I think he is rearranging the American economy to be able to face off with China, which is going to be huge in about three years, if not shorter. The problem is, as he's doing that, he's not paying attention to this one thing that always is a president's lair, which is inflation. And he has not paid attention to that. And so the economy is hard to read the economy. His numbers are bad on

it. Yeah. And so he's getting blamed for Biden inflation basically. And that's what I think had, it played into a little bit in that election, not as much as people say. But I think that that's the thing. Will he turn at some point and say we've got to bring down prices? We've got to stop it. Because inflation is not high. He has to at least look like that's his number one priority. Absolutely. And right now he doesn't look like that. That's why people are punishing him and all of us with people like Epicel Spamberger. I call her Melba. She's Melba Toast.

I told her, how do they elect? Melba, in Virginia, of all places. And not to get us started on Jay Jones, right? I mean, let's end it on this. And you can use my mic to answer it. But, like, where do we stand now when we've actually seen, here, I'll take it, yeah. I don't know why that's not working. Why, where do we stand now when two months after Charlie's assassinated?

The Democrats have elected somebody who's calling for assassinations of Republicans and their children. Like, how do we ever get along with these people? Do we try to get along with these people? Do we have dinners with these people? Do we try to compromise with these people? Do we just steamroll these people? And do everything in our power to get Republicans elected here? So, you know, I think that we should define who these people are,

because obviously I don't think every single Democrat is a person who wants to slit our throats. I mean, I think we all have extended family members who are Democrats. I'm sure we all have friends who we work with. who have voted the other way. But there are certainly an enormous number of people. You're just too close to me, do you? Move away. I want to get closer to you. I want to get closer.

I don't know. I know you're like Claven with AOC. I don't know what's going on right now. I can't dream, can I? But it seems to me that when we talk about they, one of the big obstacles to the possibility of a comedy in politics of people getting along is being too broad about who we're,

labeling. There for sure is a segment of Democrats who absolutely 100% celebrated Charlie Kirk's murder. We all saw it. We all know who they were. That's absolutely true. I don't think every single person who voted for Jay Jones was celebratory about his text in the same way that I think that people when they vote tend to overlook terrible things that their own side is done when they get into a binary race with another side. Again, that's not an excuse for voting for Jay Jones, who is a complete and utter piece of shit. But that is to say I'm hesitant to malign every single person who votes in an election in one way by saying that's the reason they voted for that specific thing. And so I think that it's incumbent on everybody to basically right and left say that people

who do violence, obviously, are doing act of evil. And it's evil. And honestly, before the Jay Jones, before Charlie's murder, I think that you saw this bizarre moment when Luigi Mangione murdered the United Healthcare CEO, where there are a group of people on both right and left. It was almost entirely left, but there were some people on sort of the populist right even who were saying, well you know health care really is a problem we should understand his points it was like no we should absolutely not we absolutely should not and these permission structures for violence really need to end yeah i certainly agree i know it's fashionable to say we need to hear all voices and we just need a totally open marketplace of ideas but i'm a conservative man you know i'm pretty traditional and i

just don't agree with that i think that we need to get much more serious about standards and norms in in the country. So when someone is threatening people, that's not protected speech. When someone's seriously inciting violence, they're all manner of speech that are not protected. Fraud, obscenity, fighting words. And so when that happens, we need to prosecute that. That's prosecutable for a reason. I'll go further, though. I like a thriving marketplace of ideas, but you can't have a marketplace of ideas or any other thing if bandits keep shooting up the marketplace. And so, you know, we saw after Charlie was murdered, it was, people who are very liberal were eight times as likely to defend political violence as people who are very conservative. Almost 30% of young liberals

would justify political violence many, many times what you saw for young conservatives. This is not sustainable. And so the people, whether they be in Congress, whether they be on TV, whether they be that girl you went to high school with on Facebook, if they are defending and celebrating the murder of an innocent man who just wanted to talk it out, they need to be ostracized from society. They need to lose their jobs, in many cases. They need to be excluded from polite society. I'm with William F. Buckley, Jr. I love William F. Buckley Jr. One time he was having a debate on firing line with a guy named Leo Churn. And Chirn said, well, Mr. Buckley, I think we can all agree. An open society is conducive to all that we want. And Buckley, and is

really like Buckley Way is sort of over this way. He said, I don't agree with that. He said, I want society to be considerably more closed. You know, I'm an epistemological optimist. I see no reason to defend the speech of a Nazi or a communist. And I'm with Buckley, and I think we ought to do it. I actually think it's free speech that's going to save us. I think the thing that happened after Charlie, it was immediately exposed. The violence of the left has been hidden and masqueraded by the press. That power is gone.

They have lost that power. And as long as we can disprove what they're saying in real time, which we now can, people are going to see pretty soon who is calling for death, who's calling for murder. But aren't they going to elect Jay Jones, too? You know, I'm not so sure about that. You know, there's so much goes into these local elections that I think, you know, he kind of wrote to power

on the coattails of the governor. But the polls do show that some 30% of liberals think political violence is appropriate in some circumstances. But I think as that comes out, they're going to start losing more elections. I'm actually really, I hate to say it, but I'm actually really optimistic about what's about to happen and what's happening now, I know.

I know. You're the one? Is it because of Sidney Sweeney? As I said many times about Claven, as Claven draws closer to the death, he sees more light. Listen, I got to say this. I think, like, everybody here has really stepped up in the wake of Charlie's assassination.

I've watched you guys do it, and we've done it ourselves, and that is something I feel really hopeful about. like everybody on our side of the aisle and all of you in showing up here tonight said, F that, we will not be silenced, we will not start talking about these ideas, we'll say and double and triple down

on all of our most controversial thoughts just the way Charlie would have wanted and I think you'd be really proud that we're all here together tonight. Thank you. Thank you guys. So grateful. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Megan. Thank you to all of you.

Thank you. We love you. Thank you, Jacksonville, to be continued. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show, no BS, no agenda, and no fear.