The Megyn Kelly Show - Best of the Week: Attacks on Women in Sports, Israel and Christians, Sadness in Our Culture and More

Episode Date: April 14, 2024

Megyn Kelly highlights some segments from The Megyn Kelly Show this week, including Victor Davis Hanson on Christians and Israel, Sage Steele on her scripted ESPN Biden interview (and Keith Olbermann, Stu Burguiere and Dave Marcus on attacks on women in sports, and Allie Beth Stuckey and Britt Mayer on sadness in our culture. 

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly and welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show's weekend best of special. It's been a crazy week on the show with the death of OJ Simpson and an abortion announcement from former President Donald Trump. I guess I should say abortion policy that drew fire from both sides of the aisle. But on today's special, I want to bring you four segments featuring some of our favorites. The brilliant Victor Davis Hanson was here and through his vast on the ground experience and historical knowledge, which is like incredible. I mean, like a steel trap, that guy's mind for facts on any historical story. It's great. He walked us

through the true status of Christians and Israel was very interesting. Sage Steele came on, gave the full backstory to her scripted and officially approved ESPN interview with President Biden. She found it just as annoying as anybody would and talked about exactly what they did to her over there and her interactions with the sad, pathetic man known as Keith Olbermann. Stu Bergears, Dave Marcus, they both came on. We love our Stu and Dave days, speaking about the crazy reaction from some to Caitlin Clark's rise in the women's basketball world. Like people are lunatics, but it's fun to expose them. And I spoke about the comments from South Carolina's cowardly head coach, not to mention a terrible, terrible sports columnist for USA Today, both of whom refused to support biological women and girls in sport. Not to be forgotten,

we got deep with two women who we absolutely adore, Ali Beth Stuckey and Britt Mayer, about SSRIs, therapy, and sadness in our culture today from all of our personal experiences. I think you're going to enjoy this and I'll talk to you next week. One of the things that's happening in our country right now with respect to this conflict, Israel, Palestine, Hamas, as yes, these lefties who we just saw in Dearborn are marching, saying things like death to America. But also on the right, there's a considerable growing, dare I say, faction that is making the case that Israel's gone too far or that this is not in America's interests to be supporting Israel in this conflict at all. And even in some cases, making the case that Christians should not be in favor of America's support for Israel here, given the death toll and given its residual effects on Christians in Israel. And if you

go online for two minutes, you'll see this debate breaking out within the Republican Party about whether this is whether we have any proper role in this conflict, whether it's supporting Israel. We're not, obviously, nobody's calling for our boots to be on the ground, including Israel. But the support that we're giving, is it appropriate? Should we get out? And is there some growing divide between Christians and Jews? I think a lot of it's based on ignorance. I really do. Because if anybody, I've been to Israel a lot in the West Bank, and if anybody goes to, say, Bethlehem, or they go into Lebanon, what's happening all over the Middle East, Megan, is Christians are being ethnically cleansed.

If you look at the population, I think, of Bethlehem in the late 90s—I went there as early as the 70s. There were 70 or 80% Christian. It's down to about 10 or 20%. And the same is true of villages in Lebanon. And so Christians themselves, not their spokesmen who have to... The problem we have when we have Christians in the Middle East that are living in Gaza, there's not many, they've been ethnically cleansed from Gaza, most of them. But if they're speaking in Syria or they're speaking in the Palestinian Authority, they're terrified and everything they say is monitored.

So mostly the Christians are very anti-Israel, the spokespeople. But when you look at actual events on the ground, they have fled. They either go to Europe or mostly to America or Israel. I think Israel's getting close to having 200,000 Christians, and they're not people who were there in 1947, necessarily. Most of them came to Israel as a refuge from religious persecution by Muslim governments. And I think most of the evangelical community that I know of is still very pro-Israel. I think what we're talking about is the libertarian right intellectual movement. And I understand, you know, I know that Tucker Carlson has voiced some things.

Candace Owens has. The Cato Institute's been really vocal. There's some people on that website who've called for breaking relations almost with israel but i don't think it represents most christians much less most americans but i don't know quite what their arguments because i've seen so many of them you know uh it doesn't take a lot of brains to say there's 500 million people in the middle east and there's 12 million that live on a democratic government. And that is the only democratic constitutional system there.

And when you go to Haifa or Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, and I have been to every Arab country in the Middle East, and you go to, except Emirates, I haven't been there. But if you go to Tunis, or you go to Tripoli, or you go to Cairo, and these are moderate countries, you go to Jordan, you go to Baghdad, you go to Beirut, you go to Damascus, and then just compare it going to Haifa, for example. And it's just night and day. None of these people who are saying death to America, if they dare to go back into their own countries and they said death to Assad or death to the Palestinian or death to Hamas, they would be killed or they'd be in jail. But they wouldn't. If you're in Israel and its neighbors who do most for the vast majority do not. And anybody on the right who can't make that distinction, I don't know what you do with them, but it's a no-brainer. Our audience should know, in addition to the classics that you teach, you're an expert in warfare. You've written a lot of books on it. You've studied a lot of conflicts, seen how they played out.

And I heard you on your show, which I love, talking about this. Yes, you've talked in the past about proportionality, but you were talking about like the extreme response to Israel after it, I don't know if the word is inadvertently, but mistakenly killed these central kitchen workers. Their van was labeled that it was clear that they, or should have been clear that they were not combatants for Hamas, but Israel made a mistake and they fired two people over it. But still you've got innocents now who are dead. And this has led to President Biden, many others saying, that's it. Like you've got to change it. That's the Kamala Harris soundbite. You've got to change your tactics or we're going to change ours. And, you know, you, you brought your hefty dose of of reality if we want to take a hard look at civilian deaths in a war conflict. Well, I mean, I walked through Fallujah about a year and a half after we retook it, and it looked like a moonscape.

And we were doing all we could not to kill civilians that were intertwined within the sons of the Ba'athist and ISIS. And we leveled Mosul. Actually, the Iraqi forces, with our help and air power, leveled Mosul. I didn't hear anybody in Dearborn say anything. I didn't hear anybody in Dearborn say, My God, we stand with Chechnya. Putin, when we had the second Chechnya war, he leveled Grozny, leveled it. It didn't even exist. I didn't hear anybody in Dearborn say a word. I didn't hear anybody

in Dearborn ever object to what the Taliban were doing to women. I really didn't hear that. And so I don't hear anybody talking today. There's a million Muslim Uyghurs in China that are being oppressed. I hear Blinken talking about it and equating the Gazans with the Uyghurs, but I don't hear anybody in Dearborn. So there's something else is what I'm trying to say going on. And when you look at the usual ratio, it's three or four civilians to one is pretty good. I don't mean anything's good in an urban warfare, but there's outside observers who've come back and said the number of actual militants, terrorists, combatants who were killed versus civilians is about one to one or 1.5 to one. And that shows you that's a great deal of care. And you know, the other thing, it's really bizarre, Megan.

We have two wars going on, and I haven't heard anybody on the left, and I haven't heard this administration say to Mr. And I support Mr. Zelensky's right to defense. I'm glad we give them weapons. And I break with some people on the right. I don't want to go into Moscow or attack Russia on the offensive, but to defend themselves, they have a right. But have you heard anybody say, Mr. Zelensky, you need a wartime bipartisan government, just like we made Mr. Netanyahu do? No, he canceled elections. He canceled habeas corpus. He outlawed political party. Do they ever say to the Ukrainians, you've got to be proportionate. Do not be disproportionate and start something. No. Do they ever say when you go back, when you send drones into Crimea on bridges and highways to disrupt transportation of the Russian military, you've got to be very careful about collateral damage. You've got to have collateral damage. sad that there's been 30, maybe 30, we don't know how many people have been killed in Gaza.

We do know there's somewhere between seven and 800,000 dead, wounded and missing Russians and Ukrainians. We're beyond the Battle of Verdun in World War I. We're getting close to the Battle of Somme territory. And I haven't heard anybody in this administration say, we need a ceasefire right now. This is the largest carnage that we've seen since World War II. And it's right in Europe. We've got to do something. Seven, eight hundred thousand people have been destroyed. Twelve million people.

Twenty eight percent of Ukraine has left the country. It doesn't even have 45 million. It's down to about 30 million. They're running out of manpower. They are destroying that country. I haven't heard anything. No ceasefire talk. And yet we say to the Jewish state, ceasefire can't be disproportionate.

Got to have coalition government. You've got no collateral damage. And it's bizarre. And everybody said, well, Russia by design. Absolutely. By the Russians in that conflict. Right. Like we don't. That's what we have.

They didn't take Americans, killed them and still have five hostage. I got to. And why, Megan, you made a real you made a really excellent point. I feel terrible about the Wall Street Journal reporter. But this everybody is obsessed on one American hostage and they should be that Russia has taken. But they don't say one word. We still have five or six American hostages that are in somewhere in that tunnel, if not dead. I never hear Mr. Biden say anything publicly about that. So there's a big asymmetry, and they should explain why that is on these two wars. Yeah, they're not the same. The growing sentiment among Republicans in particular against the Ukraine war is spilling over into the Israeli conflict, from which much

less has been asked of the United States. Israel's doing its own thing. Ukraine is asking for more and more from us. So I don't know why they're getting lumped together. Maybe there are other reasons. You were basically saying everything they, that you asked, they controlled. And you said every single word and they told you no follow-ups. And so we actually, the soundbite I do have is we pulled some of the questions from the interview so that the audience could hear what was ESPN approved? Like, how did they what did they say? It's OK for Sage Steele to actually ask. Here's some of that. We are obviously still in the rollout phase of the COVID-19 vaccine. How do you envision this season going with so much up in the air? So you talk specifically about athletes and fans, many

of whom have gotten the vaccine, others looking forward to it. There are people who are hesitant, athletes who are hesitant. So, Mr. President, if you're in a clubhouse or a locker room with those athletes, what would you say to those who are hesitant to get vaccinated? Governor Greg Abbott lifted the mask mandate. So the Texas Rangers say there will not be any attendance restrictions. Mr. President, 40,000 people with masks required except when actively eating and drinking. What are your thoughts on the Rangers' decision? Commissioner Goodell said Tuesday the league is making plans to open its stadiums to full

capacity for the upcoming season. What's your reaction to Commissioner Goodell's decision right now? Mr. President, I know you're a sports fan. I know the first lady, Dr. Jill Biden, is a sports fan. So can you give us, Dr. Jill Biden, is a sports fan. So can you give us a glimpse when Dr. Biden is watching Phillies games? What is she like? No, I'm sure they had that Dr. Biden thing written in there. I wouldn't have said doctor. No, because she's fake news, doctor. It's not real. I'm sorry, but it isn't. So what when they when you had this conversation, because I know a lot of journalists have said, well, I never would have allowed them to do that. And I, I said on my show last week, listen, uh, I happen to know you, but it wasn't an attack on

you. But I said a lot of journalists, and I know this is true in your case, you're basically a single mom. You got three mouths to feed. You need this job. And it's great for somebody on the sidelines to be like, Oh, I would have thrown down and, you know, taken on. It's a very different reality when you're you in this position, having to feed your children and you know very well what pushback is going to get you. Exactly. I don't know that I would have done anything differently either because you have to know which battles to choose. I had already chosen a couple of battles along the way. And actually, there were a lot more that came just a couple of months later.

So, you know, it's do you want to interview the sitting president of the United States or not? And if you want to, then these are the questions. We will get back to you with what you will be saying. You know, it was a scary time. And this was right after the election. So this is 2021, March 2021. And I did it. You know, there's a lot of reasons why I think I was given the interview in the first place. And it's based on some other things that they did not allow to happen with the former president. So something that when I'm ready to share,

I'm going to bother you because I think it's just more about the control. The reason I want to speak about all of this in general is because I want people in an election year to understand the control that the mainstream media has and the inability for normal Americans to just go and watch and hopefully learn the truth and be able to form their own opinions. And if we're controlling things at a sports network, what are we doing at news networks? So I just took the opportunity and said,

okay, I'm gonna do it and take my orders. And I don't know that I would change anything that I did at that moment. One of the first questions, I don't know that it was in that clip, but it was about the president's opinion on whether or not they should move that major league baseball all-star game from Atlanta. It was coming up that summer. We actually had that. Stand by, Sage. Let me play that and then you pick it up on the back end. It was coming up that summer. We actually had that standby stage. Let me play that and then you pick it up on the back end. Here it is, top three. Tony Clark is the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. He said he would, quote, look forward

to discussing moving the all-star game out of Atlanta because Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed into law a bill passed by the Republican-led state legislature to overhaul how its state elections are run. So, Mr. President, what do you think about the possibility that baseball decides to move their all-star game out of Atlanta because of this political issue? I think today's professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly. I would strongly support them doing that. The very people who are victimized the most are the people who are the leaders in these various sports. And it's just

not right. This is Jim Crow on steroids, what they're doing in Georgia and 40 other states. What it's all about. Imagine passing a law saying you cannot provide water or food for someone standing in line to vote. I have to say, I really like Joe Biden better in the first clip we ran where he wasn't saying anything. I agree. And I have to tell you, sitting there listening to that, there was like a rage in my belly because I'm saying, what do you mean passing laws against giving water to people? And it goes all back to what? Do you think that because of the color of my skin, I'm not able, I'm not smart enough to remember to bring my driver's license or this talk leads to is racism, basically, for people like

me who apparently need assistance to do basic things in life. And that's what I, that was like the first question, I think. And that's what I wanted to follow up with. And there were also technical issues leading up to it where we couldn't get our crap together leading up to the beginning of the interview. So I was having to like spill dead air with the president of the United States while we're trying to get our shit figured out behind the scenes. I'm trying to hurry people up over here and say, so how about your football career at Delaware?

I mean, it was a very stressful situation. Needless to say, I would have loved to have been able to really follow up and say, wait, are you saying that I'm not able? There's so much there to make. That would have been the greatest follow up ever. I mean, trust me. I know, I know. And it killed me because I felt like I wasn't able to be a journal. I wasn't, I listen, I'm pretty good teleprompter reader,

but like, that's all that was, you know? And I think that again, people, our viewers, and that's what this is about. Again, it's not about, Oh, woe is me, whatever. I'm fine. I'm more than fine. And I'm grateful for every moment at ESPN, even that one. It's really, if we don't continue to speak on this and the control that the mainstream media has, the networks, even though I believe many people at ESPN and elsewhere don't even believe what they're preaching, don't believe some of the craziness that's also left wing or woke in many ways with the coverage. They don't all believe it, but they're all just following as well. So I just want people to know and be careful as we enter this election cycle. Do your homework, dig deeper and don't believe everything that you

watch, especially on those networks. I want to tell the audience, we reached out to ESPN about this and they declined to comment on whether they scripted your interview. Not surprisingly, there was no denial. A former ESPN anchor who I believe you know, Keith Olbermann, shockingly saw the opportunity to bash a woman and weigh in here. That's his favorite thing. And he tweeted on X, whatever posted. Of course it was scripted. If it hadn't have been at Sage Steel, the dumbest person I've ever worked with in sports or news, couldn't have gotten through it. I mean, Jesus, if this happened to you, you just assume it wasn't being done to protect the network from you humiliating it and yourself. Um, that's Keith Olbermann's thought. I will note for the record, he also at the same, like right around the time, um, posted something else about Laura Ingram calling her a DEI hire. He loves women's age, calling her a DEI hire, and then drag yours truly into it as well. Saying the irony of course, is that Ingram angle who was bashing DEI on her show was a DEI hire and then dragged yours truly into it as well, saying the irony, of course, is that

Ingram Angle, who was bashing DEI on her show, was a DEI hire by Fox after the O'Reilly scandal and the ousting of Megyn Kelly and Greta Van Susteren. I don't know what he means by ousting, but they offered me $100 million to stay. So it wasn't really an ousting. I just wanted to raise my children more than I wanted all that money. So once again, he's wrong on every level, but would you care to respond to the lovely former colleague of yours? You know, I'll say this. I saw that and I just laughed. And I actually, he spends a lot of energy on me. You know, that whole phrase, rent free, live rent free in your head. Apparently I do. And it's so funny because when i did work with him i mean megan it was an honor at the time because for those of us longtime sports fans have

watched ds pan for decades he was awesome at his job keith oberman dan patrick back in the late 90s they were everything he's so talented yet so pathetic at this point in his life like it's really really sad i usually don't respond to anybody who's, who's a race baiter or anyone who's, who I think is unstable. And that's certainly his key. I think I did the other day to that. I know I did because I went and found an old video from when he filled in for my co-host on my show. And I was asked to go to New York because he couldn't leave his dogs overnight. So I went to him instead of, I brought my show to him instead of him bringing himself up to Bristol to me. And it was fine. I got a nice dinner on the company in New York City.

But it was an honor because of the history, like how historically great he was. And I used was past tense. And I was super nice. And I was like, how are you? We chatted. He didn't get ugly with me online constantly until I started to be true to myself. And that's kind of the hypocrisy with people like Keith is that, you know, they're great with, hey, you do you and be true to who you are and all the things and diversity and tolerance and acceptance until what? Until you don't fit their narrative. So with Keith, I don't even waste my time and energy on him because he goes crazy about me and you and many others. He is truly a miserable human being. And if nothing else, I don't even have hatred for him. I don't care.

He's it's sad to me to watch someone decline like that and spend so much energy on people who obviously a little bit envious of you and Laura, maybe even me, right? Because we don't care. And it is interesting that it's all women, women who are strong and have stood up for themselves and stay true to who they are. The irony is not lost on me. His ex-girlfriend, he can't, he never misses an opportunity to bash her. Yeah. And I like Laura Ingram is truly one of the smartest women on television. She, she, I think she clerked for Justice Thomas. Like this is he's talking about, oh, she's a D.I. hair because she's just because she's a woman, just because she's a woman.

That means she didn't deserve the job. That's what the left is criticizing the right for. You remember when the mayor of Baltimore, who happens to be black, came out and some crazy ass people on the Internet were like, who happens to be black, came out and some crazy ass people on the Internet were like, he's a DEI hire just because he's black. And they rightfully got pushback from people saying if DEI is just synonymous with black, I'm out. I'm all the same. I feel the same. I'm critical of DEI. It's not a synonym for black. How do we know the guy's a DEI hire? Give me some facts. It's not like, you know, Biden saying I'm only going to hire a black woman and then hires a black woman that, yes, you could argue is a DEI hire.

In any event, that's what Olbermann is doing. He just sees a woman in the chair, Laura Ingram, who's brilliant. DEI hire. Right. And I'm sure he thinks the same of you and me and any ex-girlfriend who is constantly suggesting is an idiot. It's just disgusting. And it's completely real quick. Megan, right? He's blind. He got, he got, he was hired and fired three times just from ESPN. I'm sending every single, every single thing he does. And I said to my boss, it's like, what the hell are you doing?

Why do you keep bringing someone like this back when you know that they're not there to be part of a team? So that's just ESPN. He's been fired everywhere he's been, which is why I guess he now stands on his balcony overlooking central park with his cell phone and does selfies. I mean, enjoy. Yes. Oh, by the way, I forgot. He also dated Laura Ingram. He's got don't, don't date Keith Olbermann. Okay. That's the bottom line. He told me about that. And, and we were in his little office and she was on the screen and he's like, Oh, I used to date her and whoever else he said, I dated her that. And we were in his little office and she was on the screen. He's like,

oh, I used to date her and whoever else. He said, I dated her too. And I was like, I'm leaving now. This is so gross. Iowa has Caitlin Clark, who's become this huge star. She's amazing. And she's getting all this attention and some nasty press reporters are upset about it. We read a piece on Friday with this woman saying the face of women's basketball has been black and it needs to stay black. OK, racist. So she's getting a lot of hate from people like that. Of course, Jamel Hill is weighed in, like a lot of people taking shots at her. Lynette Woodward, who I didn't know, I confess I'm not a big WNBA or NBA

person, but she came out to say her own scoring record stands despite Caitlin Clark beating it because I guess they didn't have three pointers when she was playing, which is just ridiculous. Here she is in slot six. I don't think my record has been broken because you can't duplicate what you're not duplicating. So unless you come up with a men's basketball and a two point shot, you know. But just for you, so you can understand. So if you can help me spread that word. What is that?

Talk about ungracious. And Sid Luckman was the greatest quarterback of all time because after him, they had face masks. I mean, like, ridiculous. Yeah, the sport changes. Well, it's like Jimmy Conner, you know, or John McEnroe. Like tennis rackets were about this big. Yeah. It's weird because I mean, you know, I, I grew up in Connecticut around the time that

UConn became like a national powerhouse in both men's and women's basketball. And it was sort of thing that entire time that people like were demanding your attention and women's basketball. And it was sort of a thing that entire time that people like were demanding your attention for women's basketball. It was almost like this thing where you had to get into it because there was equality and you had to recognize the wonderful greatness of these athletes.

And of course, they do great, amazing things and are great female basketball players. But like Kaylin Clark has done a totally different thing. She's captured the entire attention of the nation. I have never, I never in my life would I imagine that I cared more about the women's basketball final four than the men's. And that is exactly where I was this year because of her solely because of

her. She has changed because she's an incredibly amazing player. It has nothing to do with her personality. It has nothing to do with her personality. It has nothing to do with anything. It's just that she's completely changing the sport and doing things that are out of this world. She's pulling up for shots that are as long or longer than Steph Curry and Dame Lillard in the NBA. She's doing amazing things. And because of that, people are engaged in it.

And it is fascinating to watch these old school players. And of course, you'll always have these three point lines of rule change. It's not like some of these dumb racial complaints. I understand the criticism or at least the delineation there. There's something to be said for that, I suppose. But at the end of the day, these rules change. Sports evolve. You know, LeBron James made a lot more three pointers than Michael Jordan was. I don't think anybody believes that Jordan couldn't have made a lot of threes if that was

the game style of the time. But at the end of the day, though, this is the thing that women's sports has been hoping for and praying for forever for people who are just sports fans to watch it just for the sport, not because they're guilted into it. She's done this by herself and she's getting hate for it. It's insane. Honestly, I think the words you're looking for are thank you. Those are the words you're looking for. Thank you. That's what you should be saying to Caitlin. To his credit, LeBron James tweeted out in support of her as follows. If you don't rock with Caitlin Clark game, you're just a flat out hater. Stay far away from them, people, please. Right on.

You sound very natural reading LeBron James tweets, Megan. I don't know if anyone's ever told you that before. Was that a cold read or did you spend time with that? It was a cold read. I'm going to have to work on that. You know, I, too, am an actor now, Dave. You're not the only actor on this set. I'm starring in a cartoon. I've been talking to the audience. Oh, yeah, that I too am an actor now, Dave. You're not the only actor on this set. I'm starring in a cartoon.

I've been talking to the audience. Oh, yeah, that's right. No, you showed us. That's awesome. Acting chops. So let's, can we not get crazy here though, people? There is a ceiling for women's sports. All right.

Like, you know, I was hanging out recently with MK Hammer, right? And she's apparently a very good athlete. And I said, I said, okay, this is going to sound horrible. And I'm a big soccer fan, but it's just like women's soccer is just unwatchable. It's just bad. It's slow. It just takes forever. And she looked at me and she said, Dave, you're right. So there's a ceiling here to her credit, right? And I'm sure that when she was on the field, it felt much more exciting, but there is a ceiling here. And I think that we all have to stop pretending that the WNBA is ever going to be the NBA because it's not going to be. But I will defend women's soccer. The only thing I don't like about women's soccer is

Megan Rapinoe and her ilk. I'm sick of these woke moralizers out there wearing our team jersey, bashing on America. By the way, Megan Rapinoe's back at it on the wrong side of issues. I'll get to that in a bit. But look, I'll tell you this. We watch girls soccer all the time. Cause my daughter's a soccer player and it's awesome. It's fast and it's exciting and they're gunners, but I don't know women's soccer well enough to defend it. You know, the way in response to what you just said, I believe it was, it didn't the 15 year old boys team of like Dallas FC, like beat the women's national team? Well, that's a question about whether they're as good as the men.

But that's a question about whether they're as good as and as exciting as the men. Right. But exciting is the problem. That's different than they're just not exciting in their own right. They need to play on a smaller field because there's times that I watch women's soccer when there's like a long pass and like the ball stops. The ball should never stop. You's you're watching the wrong game. No, I'm telling you, my 12 year old players can get it down the field. All right. So I want to say something else on the

women's finals. The coach of the South Carolina team, which was victorious, is named Dawn Staley. And apparently she's a legend in women's basketball. Now she's coaching. And to his credit, Dan Zashefsky, he's over at Outkick Sports, got up before that game and put the question to both coaches, the one for Iowa punted and the one Dawn who was coaching South Carolina answered it as follows listen to the q a here one of the major issues facing women's sports right now is the debate discussion topic about the inclusion of transgender athletes biological males in women's sports i was wondering if you would tell me your position on that issue um yeah take a Damn, you got deep on me, didn't you? I'm on the opinion of...

If you're a woman you should play if you consider yourself a woman or and you want to play sports or vice versa you should be able to play so now the barnstorm of people are going to flood my timeline and be a distraction to me on one of the biggest days of our game. And I'm okay with that. I really am. Unbelievable. Complete turncoat to womankind. She gets out there.

She gets to the position of power. She gets all of her accolades and awards and all of this spawning praise and money. And when she has a chance to do something for women coming up behind her, she pulls up the ladder and says, play against the men. That's what she just did there. And you've got these lefties all over, like Megan Rapinoe, calling her a national treasure, an ally, a revolutionary because she's just as guilty. There's this columnist over at USA Today Sports, Nancy Armour, who's a repeat violator of women's rights. She can't find the female athlete she wants to protect, who also tweeted out, Dawn Staley is a goddamn national treasure. You're a goddamn national disgrace, madam, because you have a pen in a very large newspaper

dwindling, though, by the day. You too could stand up for women, but you're too cowardly to do it. And you know why? You're not a mother. You don't have to worry about your daughter having to face some six foot four man out on the basketball court like I do. So I don't want to hear from you. Dawn Armour or Nancy Armour's bio calls herself, she calls herself a proud aunt of three boys. So she doesn't even have nieces. And she, she says, I don't have all the answers, but I'm always looking for more of them. I've got one for you, Nancy, shut the fuck up until you know what you're talking about, because girls are getting hurt by male basketball players posing as girls. I take you out to Massachusetts where Lowell was playing in a game. The Lowell school was playing in a game and they had to call it at the half because three players got hurt. Look at this girl in the black shirt go down. That's a man

pretending to be a girl who took the ball from her. Look at her. You watch this, Nancy, Dawn. You two watch this. Look at her writhing in pain after she was injured by a boy pretending to be a girl trying to get up. She can't. She's so hurt. Three others, two others, three total got hurt. They called the game. It's happening over and over and over and over. I'm so sick of these women who are so terrified of the woke mob or trying to shore up their own bona fides with this crowd, afraid to say what they know is right, which is it's not safe and it's not fair. And I have a daughter who played basketball just weeks ago. And the thought of her going up against a biological man on that court is terrifying. She would be in danger. But

because this legend, Dawn, decides to look woke and empathetic, she's endangered her and all the other girls who play in this sport. I'm just we've had this discussion before you guys, I just get so fired up about it because not even a nod, not even a nod toward the issues that biological girls will face if this does get permitted. And by the way, it's technically okay right now in, in the NCAA. Dave, what are your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, look, there actually was a nod, right? It was a silent nod. It was the 17 and a half minutes that it took Dawn Staley to answer the question between sips of water, you know, the women who she just beat in a swimming event. You can't convince the American people that this is normal or this is OK. Right now, Don Staley doesn't have to deal with it. Right. I guarantee you, Megan, had 20 minutes later, Iowa decided, you know what?

We're going to start the center from the men's basketball team. Because lo and behold, he suddenly just decided he's a woman. I bet Dawn Staley would have had a problem with that, right? Until people are confronted with it, they're willing to say, oh, well, it's none of your business. What's the difference? You go back to the germ of the whole trans issue. And that was the number one argument. The number one argument was, come on, guys, this is point oh, oh, oh percent of the population. It doesn't have any impact on your life. Well, that changed because there's women's prisons, there's women's shelters, there's women's

sports, there's actual public policy at stake here. And so Dawn Staley is a coward. She proved herself to be a coward. And what else is new? She is a coward that I'm sorry. She's a coward. You're right. This isn't her first foray into the social justice wars. And we've seen the evidence of it in the past. She was in 2021. She was behind her team. I had no problem with them taking the knee when we played the national anthem. I think we've got video of it. Stand by. That's her team. All squatting down.

The reason the national anthem is playing all coaches stood. She thought it was fine. She's tweeted out quite a bit on the social justice wars after Jacob Blake had his run in with cops in Wisconsin, where he pulled a knife on them and then wound up shot. She said she the reporting was she hopped on Zoom calls with local reporters, knowing she was the only prominent black coach at South Carolina to speak about Jacob Blake. She tweeted past ridiculous with yet another black man shot by cops in front of our very eyes. How many more before we see this end? I'm all for canceling all things sports to focus on this matter. Hashtag BLM. When a disgruntled fan disgruntled claimed to be done with Staley after her support of Jacob Blake, she vowed to be herself. Take it, leave it. I'll leave it, madam.

I'll leave it. Because you're coming at these issues from a place of over-emotionality and not facts. And facts are what is important, right? We're supposed to care and protect our daughters. That's supposed to be something obvious. My son is 12 years old and plays a lot of sports. The biggest, strongest kid on his baseball team also plays football. And last year, while playing tackle football, he broke his back in a game.

12 years old. Thankfully, he is fully recovered. But he's a really strong kid, a big kid. And you think about this type of thing when you're talking about a sport where contact is involved. And in basketball, it is. it's part of the game, you put up girls against boys in that realm, like really bad things can happen. We should be doing everything we can to protect women. And a lot of people would think, well, football is a different thing. It's a physical sport. And it's true. But why do you think it's a different thing? If there's no difference between these genders, if there's no problem with this, why wouldn't

you want your daughter playing football with a bunch of boys? You wouldn't because it's insane. It's obviously insane. And I just you watch this and you can't believe people come to these conclusions. And I will say on her answer in particular, if it, if it's taking you that long to answer, there's a reason for it. You know, what you're seeing, you know, there's some, some line you're trying to walk. Honestly, if it takes that long, that was about the most egregious example I've ever seen. If it takes you that long to answer a question, the only way, the only thing

you should do at that point is fake a medical condition, just like act like you're about to faint and then fall over. It's your only way out of it well the other you can here's how the other coach the the coach of iowa responded which in her in defense of don staley the other coach went second so it was probably easier right because she was conferring with her team holy shit they're gonna ask me that question here's how she answered um well thank you for the question uh know, I understand it's a topic that people are interested in. Uh, but today my focus is on the game tomorrow, my players. Um, this is an important game we have tomorrow and that's what I want to be here to talk about, but I know it's an important issue for another time.

Better, better. Uh, by the way, it wasn't just Lynn, Massachusetts, where, you know, a six foot tall male tried to play against girls. And in that particular instance, I told you three girls got hurt in San Francisco. We just saw this at Waldorf High School. The captain of the girls team, a boy, Henry, competed in girls sports for at least the last three years, ranked number four in scoring in the North Coast section of California with an average of 20.8 points per game, and at a January game, scored 26 points, towering, towering over the girls.

Dawn Staley wants a whole lot more of it. I don't want my kid having anything to do with that NCAA or women's NBA. It's wrong. It's wrong on just so many levels and more of us need to say it. I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today you can catch the megan kelly show on triumph a serious xm channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love great people like dr laura blaine beck nancy grace dave ramsey and yours truly megan kelly you can stream the me Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required.

I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free. Offer details apply.

You know, I look around at like the state of womankind and I'm worried. I'm worried about our girls, how anxious they are, how depressed they are, not our girls on this set, but you know, I'm talking about America's girls and how we're at record levels of anxiety and depression and suicidal ideation and the messages that they get every day through Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat and these false images of women, half of whom are walking around literally half naked with these artificial bodies as this impossible beauty standard that these girls never should even seek to attain. Nevermind, try to with the surgeries, the enormous, this,

the tiny, that all combined. Um, and we're medicalizing them. And I saw Allie Beth, you did something on this in your show recently. But we are now, we do it with boys too. But we're basically treating, starting to treat these girls as like the hysterics from, you know, like the 40s. Where if you had any sort of natural human emotions, you were soon to be shipped off to the asylum. Right? Like the husband would have you shipped off or heavily medicated. And it's like, it's happening again. So can you talk about the

interview you did on a recent podcast on this, Ali, because I thought this is a good topic. Yeah. Yeah. We've done quite a few episodes on this recently. I've had a psychologist on the show to talk about this, just the medicalizing of normal behavior, especially in children. So with boys, very often they are given the diagnosis of ADHD. I'm not saying that that's always inaccurate, but sometimes boys are just rambunctious and they don't want to be seated for eight hours a day. And so you medicalize them to tame them to make sure that they can sit there, basically like zombies. And for young girls, especially teen girls who are hormonal, emotional, and moody, very often they are placed on birth control, which makes it worse. And then they're

placed on some kind of SSRI. And rather than just being told, hey, it's normal to be sad, it's normal to be worried. They are told, no, you are depressed. No, you have anxiety. No, you have these kind of pathologies that we have to medicate. And they are not told that this can radically transform your personality. This can change your ability to pay attention, to feel joy, to feel real sadness. It just kind of numbs you. And I'm not saying that medication should be condemned in all cases. I'm not saying that at all. But we are no longer teaching our young people, especially our young girls, who you're right, Megan, have so much on their plate right now and are facing so much. Rather than dealing with those root causes, we're saying,

hey, here, take Lexapro, take this Prozac, take this Welbutrin and numb all of the pain. Don't think about it and it'll just be fine. Then they're waking up at 25 remembering that they don't remember the last 12 years of their life. And all of these chickens have not yet come home to roost yet. And I am scared of what the future will look like when they do. I will say a word in defense of birth control. I was on it for basically my entire, you know, reproductive years, which I'm still technically in, but it's not happening. I have no fallopian tubes.

So for one thing, also, I'm now as old as Methuselah. In any event, I like being on the birth control. I was not one of those people who had any emotional response to it. And I loved it for, among other reasons, you can have safe sex and you can control your family planning, but it also really helped with my skin. And I had acne, I mean, pretty much through my forties and it really helped me. So I know there's some pushback in some corners on birth control, but I am a big fan. But to the point of like the SSRIs, Britt, and how over-prescribed they are now, especially to these young girls, I am with Allie Beth. I have real concerns about medicalizing

emotions and also wallowing in any sadness or trauma. You know, the older I get, the more I really feel like compartmentalization works. The solution is not to get mired in the bad things that have happened to you as much as you can kind of go Presbyterian and shove it down. Sorry, Doug. He's Presbyterian. Honestly, the better that I really think that works and the more you lean into part knife. You want to look 20 and you're 45? Here's a knife. You know, so we're in this hyper medicalized society that's also driven by really not addressing root causes. It's just a series of band-aids. I actually, I, so you don't know a whole lot about my childhood, not to get into it, but it was very, very dark. And I went through a lot of like extremely challenging things and the Lord

redeemed so much of that. Um, but when I was dealing with a lot of the trauma from my childhood, I was getting ready to get married and I started seeing one of the best therapists in San Diego to help me walk through it. And, um, all the trauma started to come back up, which is a common phenomenon if you haven't dealt with it, cause you've shoved it down and it's repressed. So everything started coming back up. And the first thing was throwing pills at every manifestation of the trauma. And I ended up on so many medications and, you that I just felt like I was in this haze. And I was doing a lot of acting in Hollywood at the time. And I just remember like popping pills just to get through auditions and then having panic attacks set in. And then there was a pill for that. You know, there was always a fixed pill, but it was never getting to the real root. And even with this amazing therapist, it was just tossed pills at me. So then when I got married and we wanted to start having

a family, I was like, I have to get off all this medication. And it was probably one of the most difficult and challenging seasons of my life that no one prepared me for was to get off all the medication. It's the physical taxation on your body that that takes and the mental turmoil to get off of all these controlling drugs that have numbed you for so long. So for all these girls who are just being thrown medicine right now, it's like, that's not a long-term game plan. And eventually they're going to hit a point where they're going to want to get off of that. And then the trauma all floods back. If you haven't actually dealt with what's at the bottom, you know, it's still there when you get off all the drugs. So I just think that our society

in general, it's too much of a push to medicalize as a fix it when instead of actually addressing the root and also looking at, look, this was the past, the past was this big on a whiteboard, but you've got all of this, all of this that the Lord can redeem and that can be for the good. And that was for me, the biggest shift was seeing that and seeing how much potential I still had to live life free of the past work through it. But the, the medication was just a very temporary bandaid that actually caused more harm than good. I, I completely understand that. I, for me, I did not have dramatic trauma in my childhood. I mean, my dad died at a very young

age and so that was traumatic, but I didn't have, you know, abuse or anything like that. Thank God. And, but I will say that my therapist who I love, and I had another great one when I was getting divorced from my first husband, they were very, and have been very like present focused. Neither one was interested in discussing past trauma. It was, it's very much like, how are you feeling now? And how are you dealing with those feelings? And here are some other alternatives for how to deal with how you're feeling. And that for me has worked wonderfully. It doesn't require

the dredging up of any painful experience. It's just new tools for managing emotions, which is really important. But I know like a lot of my friends now, you know, we're, we're all getting older. And so my kids are a little on the younger side, but a lot of my friends have kids who are a little older who now are getting the SSRIs pushed on them. I mean, everywhere. It's like you go to the guidance counselor. They want to put you on one of these things. And you talked with somebody, Allie Beth. She won chopped. She won chopped a couple of years ago. Brooke, a chef. We pulled a soundbite. There's a little bit of it. And then you react on the backside. It's not 47. I had spent the better part of my 20s in New York City. I was objectively

miserable. I was really depressed. I was having a lot of suicidal ideation. I had no emotion to anything. And it just kind of dawned on me that I had spent my entire adult life on powerful psychiatric drugs and that if they were working, I wouldn't be thinking about these things. And on top of that, it just bothered me that I clearly was so deeply unhappy in my life and I had made the decision that led me to that point through the lens of a powerful psychoactive agent. So I kind of started to wonder if I would have made the same decisions had I not been medicated. Thank you so much for sharing part of Brooke's story. I mean, she is an amazing person, but a very, very strong person. And one part of the conversation, we were talking about how when she decided to get off the drugs, cold turkey, which she's not saying that she recommends, talk to your doctor. But she decided, OK, I just don't want to do this anymore. She got off those drugs and she had all of these just awful, awful thoughts, thoughts of suicide, thoughts of violence, just out of her mind. And then but

she also had these small windows of feeling joy. And so it was that those small windows of feeling joy for really the first time in her life. And she got off those medication that made her hold on and reminded her, okay, I'm not actually crazy. If I can hold on to these small feelings of joy that I've never had while on these medications, then maybe I can hold out. And eventually those feelings of joy and the feelings of normalcy, they got longer and longer to where she finally was able to live a normally and mentally stable or normal and mentally stable life. And she realized that her childhood was really taken from her, maybe with good intentions. Her dad died.

And so she had to deal with all of that. But she really didn't get to experience the normal range of human emotions because her sadness was called depression and anxiety. And she was medicated into numbness for about 20 years of her life. Oh, we have sadness. It's, it's human. And sometimes it lasts for a few months, a few years is rough. That's a different story, but you can get help in, in handling sadness. That's non pill related. You can do things to make sure you're sleeping better, which is so critical. You can exercise. That's a natural way of improving mood and endorphins.

You know, you can work out, you can improve your sleep, you can improve your nutrition. You can make, my therapist always says three social a week. That's what he wants me to do. Three social. So I'm like, does this count? This feels social. I don't know. Anyway, but that's good, right? Just to get out there a little bit, put yourself out there. I'm like, does this count? This feels social. I don't know. Anyway, but that's good, right? Just to get out there a little bit, put yourself out there. I'm not saying this is a prescription for everybody. And I know that SSRIs have helped a lot of people, but we're just, it's too knee jerk now. It's too quick and it's becoming too common.

You women are delightful. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.