The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden's Blunder and Will Smith's Oscars Smack, with Sohrab Ahmari, Emily Jashinsky, and Eliana Johnson | Ep. 287

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Megyn Kelly begins by revealing an injury her son sustained while on vacation, and the importance of family, friends, and your "15 feet." Then, Sohrab Ahmari of Compact magazine, joins to discuss Biden's massive regime change blunder on the world stage, Will Smith's Oscars smack of Chris Rock and the media response, the Hunter Biden laptop story being confirmed by the New York Times, and more. Then Emily Jashinsky of The Federalist and Eliana Johnson of the Free Beacon join to discuss the Oscars highlights and lowlights, the media and left's "Don't Say Gay" branding and propaganda, tech censorship, the revealing "woman" debate and the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings, Kanye West's cultural and family fight, Rachel Levine and the trans debate, the Yale Law School free speech drama, and more.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

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday. We're going to get to all the big news in just a minute from what happened with Will Smith and Chris Rock last night at the Oscars, and a rather stunning moment to Biden and his multiple missteps, including the latest one seeming to call for regime change within Russia and then all the White House aides running to try to take it back. I mean, it's happened over and over and over. He can't keep his mouth shut. He cannot control his messaging.

And on this particular matter, he needs to. It's one thing when he's talking about his chocolate chocolate chip. It's quite another when we're talking about Russia and Ukraine and so on. But before we get to our guests and the news and all that, I wanted to talk to you guys personally about a couple of things that have been on my mind. First of all, I'm going to tell you those who are watching this on YouTube in for the next two weeks, you're going to see me with my glasses on and off as needed because I'm having LASIK in two weeks, two weeks from wait, less than two weeks. I'm having LASIK and you can't wear your glasses for two weeks before they need your corneas to be like not manipulated by contact lenses. So I'm very

excited to be getting LASIK. And there's a lot of pressure on the doctor because if he screws it up, of course, you know, you're all going to know. But letting you know that number two, just got back from vacation. And I wanted to talk to you guys about something that happened on vacation is it was big in my own world. And I just didn't feel like I could just resume the show without talking about it. So you may have noticed, not last week, last week, we did the RFK junior interview on Monday and Tuesday. And then we did sort of a wellness week, special for you guys, the following three days on sleep, on exercise, on time management, all well worth your time, by the way. But the prior week, we were live the first three days from Montana. And then there were a lot of people noticing that we weren't on the

air Thursday and Friday and wondering why that was. And there was a very good reason. We had planned on doing the show. However, something happened to my little guy, my Thatcher, my eight-year-old while we were skiing. And thank God he's okay. So I'll just start with the lead, but he's just such a crazy experience. We were skiing in Montana and he's a good skier. He's been skiing since he was really, really little. And he was on an advanced run and did the run just fine, skied it just fine, but was inspired by this cave-like structure that was on the run to check it out. And he was with his instructor.

And it's something I guess a lot of people go to and they sort of hike up to get into this little cave and take a break on this run. And he did that. And he didn't even have his skis on. He had on his ski boots. Again, he's only eight. And it was the end of the day and he was tired and he apparently didn't have the strength to make the climb that's necessary to get into this little cave. And he fell. Now, meantime, I skied a little bit that morning and then I was going for a, for a, actually I did the show. I did a little skiing and then I was going for a massage and I get a call from Doug saying,

Thatcher's hurt and he's fine. He's fine, but he's hurt and he's got to go to the hospital to be checked out. So I confess my first instinct was, ah, crap, I'm going to miss my massage. I'm sure he's fine. You have you ever been there? You know, it's like, Oh, I'm sure he's fine. But we'll go get him checked out. So I get in the ambulance. And there's Thatcher. And he seems okay. He's speaking, he says he fell 10 feet and landed on some rocks while hiking up this part of the mountain. But he's got an IV in him. And I'm like, why does he have an IV in him? And the ambulance, the emergency technician said,

that's protocol when there might be an internal injury. I'm like, well, why do you think there's an internal injury? She said, well, given the way he fell, he fell on rocks and the pain that he'd been complaining of, It's a possibility. So this is protocol. So she said, do you want me to give him some fentanyl? So no, no, he seems fine. He's in some pain, but no, I don't want my eight year old to have fentanyl right now. Let's wait until we get to the hospital. And I understand again, she was following protocol, but it's a, it's a jarring thing to be asked that question. So we get to the hospital and they said they needed to run some tests. First, they needed to do an ultrasound on his belly to see what they'd find.

And they did that. Dr. Rodriguez did that. And we saw it. And he said, what we're looking for is fluid that doesn't belong in between the organs, which would be, he said, the only fluid that they're concerned for is fluid that doesn't belong in between the organs, which would be, he said, the only fluid that they're concerned about is blood. So they don't want any internal bleeding. So he did the scan and Thatcher said, I'm going to be fine. I don't think I have that. And he was so brave throughout. So nothing came up. Okay, great. Then they said, we have to do

one more scan. And that's a CT scan. And you've heard about CT scans, right? Although I've never had one, I didn't actually know what it was. What it is, is an enormous x-ray that has unfortunately a lot of radiation, but it's great at seeing what an ultrasound can't see. So my little guy, we put some pictures on the board, you know, I don't show them publicly because I'm pretty much the opposite of Kim Kardashian when it comes to my children. So we put some pictures up where you can't really see Thatcher's face, but he's going into the CT scan here.

And lo and behold, there was internal bleeding. And he had lacerated, like had two severe lacerations to his spleen and a third the size of which they weren't able to determine so three tears of his spleen which is only i guess it's about five inches i'm not totally sure on the size of a little boy's spleen but he dinged it up pretty good and he was bleeding internally. And they said, you need to go to a more serious hospital right now. And they said, ASAP, you got to get into the ambulance. So we were like, oh my God, what? So, you know, it's like an hour earlier, I'd been like, oh, I'm going to miss my massage. And you know, that's just going to be fine. We're going to go home.

Now suddenly we're, it's ASAP into the ambulance to the more severe hospital. So we get back into the ambulance and he's still fine, you know, in terms of like he's speaking and, you know, we're kind of cracking jokes. I'm taking video of it just to sort of, we were laughing the whole time. This is going to be a great show and tell. He still has, they call it share. It's going to be a great share. And we get to the hospital and they whisk him into the ICU. And now I'm like, why are we going into the, I mean, I know absolutely nothing about medicine, right? So it's like, why are we going into the ICU? And no one's making it totally clear to me why we're

going to the ICU until this lovely nurse who became sort of the heroine of our stay, Alyssa, ultimately sat me down and explained to me that these are severe tears of his spleen and that there's a very good chance he's going to lose his spleen and the doctor's going to explain more. So now I called Doug. He's with our other two children. And, you know, he and I had been but you know now we understand there's internal bleeding this could be a an operation situation in a hospital we don't know in a town we don't know in the middle of Montana and we don't have our doctor there we don't know what to do exactly but the surgeon did come in and said we hope he's not going to lose his spleen, but if the bleeding continues, we're going to take the spleen. And I only know what I know from ER. Like, yeah, okay, that's not bad. You lose

the spleen. I said, Thatcher, of all the organs you could have injured, that's the best one to have to lose. And the doctor said, well, the gallbladder's better. That was the doctor at the first hospital. So I wasn't that worried. But then we started talking to our doctors back on the East Coast who we've known a long time, friends of the family, peds specialists and so on. And pretty much to a person, they said, don't lose the spleen. It's almost never necessary in a young child to take the spleen in today's day and age. And that there are other measures you can do. If you can get an interventional radiologist, you can potentially save the spleen without taking it. And taking the spleen itself is a major operation, which our

surgeon told us as well. So now you're there like, oh God. Okay. So we don't really want him to operate. We it's, it was a level three trauma center, not a level one, and they didn't have a PEDS specialist. So that was another thing, which wasn't ideal. And, um, some of the folks advising us were saying, you should seriously look into medevacking him to a level one trauma center with this pediatric specialist, uh, or at least an interventional radiologist and that's i guess what you need to sort of repair the spleen as opposed to take the spleen um so the the closest places that there you could find that were seattle i think when salt lake city utah but that's a lengthy plane ride and our surgeon was saying don't move him. Like the number one

thing you don't want to do right now is move him. He needs to be in the ICU. He needs to be in the hospital bed and he is not allowed to even get up to go to the bathroom. He cannot leave the bed. So as a parent, like, what do you do? Right? Like, what do you do? Because the bleeding's not stopping. We don't want him to lose the spleen. If there's any way of repairing it, we'd like to do that. But it's not safe to move him. We're looking into the medevac flights, none of which can come immediately anyway. Apparently, they don't work the way they do in the movies where it's like instantaneously, you're gone. It takes a long time to arrange. And that's if you can get a bed on the receiving end, and if you can find the right person on the receiving end. And in the meantime, we look at our surgeon and our surgeon said to me, he is not cleared for travel. Like really felt strongly, we should not be putting him on a flight. So the long and the short of it was they found an interventional radiologist who was not a specialist, but who had done some work on children. And they said, if things go south,

this person's here. There was a funny moment that you guys might appreciate knowing me as, as none of these people did, um, where I was just as calm as I am speaking to you now. I mean, if I, if I have one, you know, sort of natural benefit to my normal personality, it's, I'm not a panicker. I'm not an anxious person. I always joke that I'm, I'm like Jeb Bush, low energy, if anything, which has come back to help me more than haunt me in my life. I just, it takes a lot to get me like anxious about stuff.

And I was talking to the doctor and I was saying, what should we do? And what are the options? And he was like, you need to not panic. You need to not panic. And I was not panicking. And, you know, I laughed like those who know me, those who know anything about me know that I can take an enormous shit storm in my life without panicking. Once again, I swore it's still

Lord, forgive me. Um, so I wasn't panicking, but I was, I was just saying to Abby feeling the water start to rise. You know what I mean? I could feel like as the news kept coming in that the bleeding was ongoing and I'm talking to Doug and we're trying to figure out what to do. And it's not, there's not a clear course. There's not a clear right course. I could feel the water rising. I sat down, I took a couple of deep breaths and just reminded myself that I had to be the parent, you know, that he was depending on me and Doug and like we had to make a decision and this was no time to lose this natural skill that has served me so well. And I was fine. We decided to stay at the hospital. We were in Bozeman, Montana. And I can't say enough about the people there. They were

wonderful. The nurses, the doctor, the PAs, everyone just treated us all so well and was so good in their communications with us and their treatment of my son. So we decided to stay. I was there overnight, every night. Doug was too. We switched on and off a couple of nights in part because of you guys. Because while all this was going on, we were finishing up the RFK interview, which we had taped a few days earlier. And we wanted it to be amazing. We wanted it to be as close to perfect as it could be. And we wanted to achieve the impossible. And we did, which was we managed to air a four-hour interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and have it live on all platforms with no censorship. And it stayed monetized

everywhere, which was less important, but it is a feat um and he was happy with it and our audience loved it like we i mean who's ever done that before right everyone's always getting deplatformed you put somebody like rfk jr on which is total nonsense because he was riveting and great but we did it and so i was coming back to our cabin where we ski and doing the sort of ins and outs, as we call them, to that four-hour show, which we split up over last Monday, Tuesday. And I have to say here a word on my amazing team and on the importance of colleagues and friends you can trust. Because there was a lot of fact-checking that went into the RFK interview, as you know.

And by the way, for what it's worth, he checked out on virtually everything he said, right? So he's not some like disinformation machine as people would have you believe. There were a couple of things that we wanted to make sure the record was clear on or make sure we offered perspective on, but it required a lot of work on our part. And my team just completely took the ball and ran knowing that i was at the hospital i was dealing with thatcher doug too and so when i got back to the place where sirius had rented me this camera and so on god bless sirius too they aired this thing without giving us any problem they were nothing but supportive um i could just sit in the chair and do the ins and outs and and get back to the hospital and I think the end product was excellent I just thought I was really proud of the interview I hope

if you haven't listened to it that you do and I hope you enjoy it too part one is all about vaccines and so on Fauci and the second part um has got some of that and then a lot about his personal history um fascinating stuff so my, very proud of them and very grateful to them. On the third day of the hospital stay, things went in the wrong direction. And Thatcher's vitals were not doing what we wanted them to do. His blood pressure was falling and his heart rate, his pulse was rising. And the doctor said, we might have to send him back in for another CT scan to see if the bleeding had stopped. That's the thing. It's not an arm that's bleeding. It's not like a head even. You can't see it. And he was in pain. We really didn't

want to do it. It's a lot of radiation. And if you have to get it done, you got to get it done. But if you can avoid it, boy, it'd be better too. And so the doctor said, let's wait a bit before we do that. And then we'll see. And thankfully, things took a turn for the better then. And we managed to make it through the five days. The kid did not leave that bed for five days, which led to some very awkward and funny exchanges when it was time to use the facilities, which he wasn't allowed to do for me, Doug, and Thatcher. But who cares, right? You're not even thinking about that stuff. You're just thinking about your babe, how much you love him, how you pray everything's going to be okay. And, you know, we kept laughing a lot. We got his brother and sister in for a quick visit. God bless our nurse who made that happen, even though it may not technically have been allowed and made it through. And he's okay. He left the hospital after those six days total. When he got out of the bed,

he was like a baby deer. He was like a Bambi. He could barely step. He'd lost five pounds, which he was only like 68 pounds to start. And it wasn't until we walked out amount of stress and the love that you have for your children and the fragility of these little bodies who totally depend on you and the enormous responsibility you have for their wellbeing, you know, for making huge decisions and the importance of family and friends, right? And good colleagues. I had Doug. I don't know what people who are single parenting do. God bless you. God bless you. It must be so hard, you know, and I'm sure you have the feeling of loving your friends and your family even more. My two older, Yates and Yardley, were so delightful. They were so supportive of Thatcher, kept writing him notes. And when we got home, they had the place plastered with fun signs, like, we'll put them on the board on the YouTube.

It's been so long since we've spleen you. Just cute moments, brought all five of us together. And my, my son Yates gave Thatcher the greatest hug, which we caught on camera, which was just such a lovely moment. One I will never forget. Um, and it left me feeling a couple of things and it was all done between the RFK stuff, the hospital stuff. Um, early on in the show, we had somebody on and it's a saying, I guess, but they said something to the effect of, you know, the only thing that matters in life is within 15 feet of you, you know, generally, like your family, your friends, your closest colleagues. And I made a decision a few years ago to make sure the things that were within 15 feet of me were the right things, you know, meaning not Bill O'Reilly. And man, it was the right decision. It's been a rocky road.

I'm not going to lie. Some of the path has been pretty rocky, but now it's pretty smooth and it's pretty glorious. And I have been able to raise my kids, to be with my friends a little bit more, at least a lot more of the kids in the family to nurture my marriage. And now I found a way to surround myself with amazing colleagues who I absolutely treasure and who are helping me bring the show to you. And, and in a way I feel surrounded by you, you know, like I knew I was going to tell you the story. I knew that the people who understand who I am would find it interesting and would understand why I'm telling it to you.

And that's a connection that's valuable to me as well. So thank you for being part of my 15 feet. And thank you to my colleagues on the show, colleagues at Sirius as well. And just a reminder to all of you that if you've got the wrong things there, it's not too late for you either to change what's within that grasp and to set yourself up for success. God forbid a tragedy should come your way, or at least a potential tragedy should come your way. All right. So that's what I wanted to tell you. That and my LASIK.

And coming up, we're going to get to the news. So Rob Amari is here, and we're going to talk about Biden and that crazy Will Smith, who also really prizes his family moment at the Oscars last night. Don't go away. Okay, there's a lot of news to cover from President Biden's dangerous off script remark yet again, that Vladimir Putin quote cannot remain in power to Will Smith's Oscar slap heard round the world. It was like, is it a punch? Is it a slap? Right?

Did you have that? And then you saw the replay of like Japanese TV. It was like it was a slap. It was an open ended slap. Joining me now to discuss it all and the latest on the federal investigation into Hunter Biden is Sarab Amari, founder and editor of the brand new online magazine called Compact, which we want to talk to Saraurabh about as well. Saurabh, great to see you again. So good to see you, Megan. And I'm so sorry to hear about Thatcher and grateful. It seems like things are stabilizing. Oh, thank you so much. You know what it is? It is a relief to be back home, you know, to be sort of just in the area where we know all the doctors and we know exactly where to go in case there's an emergency. And he's fine, though. I mean, last night, he

played a little basketball and he was excited. We put together, so Rob, you won't be surprised to hear like a little video mashup of, you know, because I was his little documentarian. So he showed it to a second grade today. And I'm expecting that it really was the most awesome share ever. Okay, so as a father of a son, I know you get it. Let's start with there's so much to talk to you about. I mean, the Hunter Biden stuff, obviously, you haven't been with the Post for so long. Compact. But I want to talk. I want to kick it off with Joe Biden and his latest gaffe. I mean, how many like he can't be allowed to speak to people, right? Like the problem with letting him loose domestically is he might say something stupid. And so the White House has to come out and clean it up. The problem with him doing it on a much more international level is we actually could spark World War Three. Here's the latest. This is soundbite for Biden in Warsaw ad libbing something about President Putin. Decency and dignity and freedom of possibilities.

For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power. So that wasn't part of the prepared remarks. By the way, neither was Chris Rock's comment on Jada Pinkett Smith. I think we're getting a lesson here about going off script. And the White House has now spent, you know, the better part of the last 48 hours trying to walk it back. He didn't mean that. He didn't mean he can't remain in power. What he meant was he can't. We don't want him. Let me read you exactly. Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. What Biden said was he cannot remain remain in power. Now they're trying to say he meant allowed to exercise it over his neighbors. Secretary of State Blinken said basically the same trying to clean it up. He just meant

he can't be empowered to wage war against Ukraine. You tell me whether we should be allowing him to speak at all from this point forward on Ukraine or anything else. Megan, you remember the time he was talking to a group of supporters and he started talking about how the kids would rub their hands down his legs and his hairs would stand on end. It was a really bizarre, awkward comment. And you also remember when he called just some construction worker who asked him a question, he called him fat. He said, listen, fat, that stuff is fine in the domestic sphere, I guess. It's really not fine. It's alarming. But like you said, stupid comments in the domestic sphere can be contained. When you're dealing with a situation with this vast Eurasian land power, Russia, that's invading its neighbors, it's a nuclear armed power, just speaking off the cuff about regime changing Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin is extremely dangerous.

And it's both what was substantively said is wrong, Right. We do not need to seek regime change against Russia. We tried regime change wars the past 20 years against much smaller and less important countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. And the result in all those cases was dangerous. And this is where Russia we're talking about. So it's substantively the wrong thing to say. But even if this kind of discussion is percolating in the White House, the fact that he can't resist speaking out loud, as it were, in a setting as sensitive as that he's standing nearby in Warsaw, that he can't self censor or whatever it was that happened with the slaps shows you the limits of having a president that I'm sorry to say, but he's losing mental acuity. Yes. And is a liability for the United States and our allies. Look, that is a fair assessment of what's going on right now. Because this will be used by Vladimir Putin to win a propaganda war against us. It'll be played in Russia saying this is what the United States is really after. You know, they just want to pick your leader. They don't want you to pick your leader. They want to pick your leader. And that's what they claim happened in Ukraine, too. Right. So it matters that he can't control his mouth. It matters. He's the president. And this wasn't even close to the first time, including on Ukraine,

on Russia. Okay. So I just wrote down a couple who could forget minor incursion, right? Then he called Putin a war criminal, which was not intended. And the White House first spent a day trying to say, oh, that's just his personal opinion. He's not really speaking as president. What? Until they were like, no, actually, okay, we'll go with it. He's a war criminal. Then there was cannot remain in power um then he apparently just said to our troops speaking to our troops about uh ukrainians talking to the troops over in poland saying oh the ukrainians they'll stand in front of the tanks you'll see it when you're there you'll see it suggesting that we're about to

send american troops into into ukraine which is a massive news story. But then the White House had to roll that back and say, no, no, no, we're not doing that. And then he also said that we were going to respond in kind, quote, respond in kind if Russia uses chemical weapons, meaning we're going to drop a chemical weapon. And then the White House had to spend the next couple of days rolling that back. We didn't we didn't mean that. We didn't mean that. He can't control himself. Yeah. And you know what? Now, to speak somewhat in defense of President Biden, I will say this, that I think he actually has a lot of good instincts on this relative to other people in Washington. You know, there are some really scary hawks in my mind, Kelly, genuine psychos who are dreaming of regime change in Russia and things like this and are prepared

to accept really serious escalation. Right. And they they are even saying like, OK, well, then let's go to World War Three, not realizing the nuclear stakes. And I will say that in terms of policy, the Biden White House has been is more restrained than others who could be in power right now. And that's that's a blessing because, you know, the idea, for example, of imposing a no fly zone over Ukraine, it pulls well because people a lot of Americans and others in Europe don't know what that means. It means shooting down Russian planes, which would trigger World War Three, which would trigger potentially a nuclear exchange. It's really serious stuff. And the Biden administration has resisted that.

But then there is this side of it. And I mean, it must be so frustrating for his handlers, certainly. It must be really frustrating for other world leaders. You saw how quickly French, German, other world leaders, Emmanuel Macron most sternly said, no, we don't want to pursue a policy of regime change. This is the kind of thing that prevents de-escalation. Because look, if you make Vladimir Putin think like there is no other off ramps, that it's his life or his ability to stay in power that are at stake, then he'll have no incentives to act rationally and limit his goals in Ukraine or deescalate or what

have you. So this kind of loose talk really sinks nations. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's one thing when he's sort of saying something weird over here about smelling girls hair and so on. It's quite another when we're looking at World War Three. So you know, the stakes are high. Okay, let's shift gears entirely. But there's a related thread, as I said, speaking of going off script. So normally, I wouldn't be covering the Oscars because I really can't stand most of those people. And I don't watch their stupid shows. And I know that they hate half the country. And they hate people like me who are just not one of their partisan hacks, who is woke and submits to all of their demands. So I really have no use for them. And I've more and more, I don't even watch their

products. I don't, I don't watch their movies. I just don't. But who could miss the, you know, slap heard around the world last night. My friend, Joelle texted me. She was like, I'm Kay. Will Smith just smacked Chris Rock. I'm like, what? So I looked it up on Twitter. Chris Rock got up there and made a joke about, um clearly ad-libbed it he was introducing like best documentary and he said something like oh there's will and jada jada you're gonna be great in gi jane too and it was clearly a reference to her her head which she doesn't have hair and i don't know i don't want to say she shaves what hair she has she has uh alopecia which is a condition that causes your hair to fall out by the way she rocks the bald head jada pinkett smith is an example in class and beauty um nobody else could look as good as

she looks she's just she can do anything so she's sitting there looking glamorous and gorgeous but he made a comment about it and i don't know know that Chris Rock knows she suffers from alopecia. She has gone public with it. I've interviewed her a few times. She's public with it. But that doesn't mean Chris Rock knows that. I don't know what magazine Chris Rock is reading. He's probably a pretty busy guy. So he made a comment about how she's going to be great in the next G.I. Jane 2, which is Demi Moore shaped her head for that first film. Will Smith laughed initially, but Jada immediately was sort of shaking her head. She, in a classy way, was sort of showing him, I don't like that, but she wasn't going to make a big thing about it. But the husband changed his mind and did decide he was offended, or at least saw she was upset, decided to defend his lady got up on the oscar

stage and smacked chris rock and then when he went back down to this stands the seats said basically don't effing talk about my wife get my wife's name out of your effing mouth here's the clip jayna i love you gi j 2, can't wait to see it. Alright? It's Jada! That was a nice one. Okay. I'm out here. Uh-oh. Richard?

Oh, wow. Wow. Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me. Keep my wife's name out your fucking mouth. Wow, dude. Yes. It was a G.I. Jane joke. Keep my wife's name out your fucking mouth.

I'm going to, okay? Oh, okay. That was the greatest night in the history of television. Okay. What do you make of it, Sirab? There's a lot of opinions on this today. So, first of all, my take is that I grew up watching the 90s Oscars. Those were the truly kind of last halcyon days of Hollywood. And Will Smith was just kind of this figure of the wholesome

1990s that I remember. So from my point of view, first of all, there's this loss, this sense of loss 20 years later, where everything has somewhat darkened, you know, American power has declined relatively, we've gone through 9-11 and the Great Recession, and COVID and, you know, etc, etc. And our celebrities, the wholesome celebrities of the 90s have somehow gone down, have declined along with that. So there's this kind of poignancy about the whatever that was that that transpired. The second. So there's this kind of poignancy about the, whatever that was that, that transpired. The second thought is there's something very 19th century about this. I don't think people have commented on this or maybe say late 18th century where someone, you know, insulted your lady, you, you stood up and you slapped him and then you had to duel. You know,

it was the slap was the beginning of this code of honor kind of thing where you went out and duel. There was some element of a, I mean, the the vulgarity afterward wouldn't you wouldn't you wouldn't see that in a russian tea room but the the slapping and the prelude to a duel i guess it's better we're better off now that men don't resolve these kinds of differences with with pistols so in a way that that would have been a ratings getter um the by the way the ratings have been tanking steadily for the oscars for the past you know 20 years it used to get like 40 million viewers last year they got 10 million i imagine last night's numbers will go up because people heard about it and turned on um the show to see will smith smacking chris rock i'll tell you i

have a couple thoughts on it i mean i've been sort of wrestling to figure out how I feel. It's like it wasn't immediately apparent to me how I felt about it other than, wow, that's shocking. In the end, I understand Will Smith wanting to defend his wife. That wasn't the way to do it. You know, I think he would have looked stronger. And I think he was looking for an opportunity to look strong. To me, that looked like a man trying to look strong, not necessarily being strong. And I think he would have looked stronger had he scowled and dealt with it after the show directly, man to man, as opposed to making a spectacle out of himself in the moment, which to me just seemed almost needy in its demand for attention. That was how I felt. I'm looking at it, and I love

Will and Jada. I'm rooting for them. I love her in particular. But I thought it was a bit of a performance on his part. I don't think it was planned, but I think it was a bit of a performance on his part. I think it came across, I don't think it was planned, but I think it was a bit of a performance. And I think he would have been better served if he had gone the classy road that his wife always goes. Make the face, move on, you know, you're Jada and Will. You don't need to like respond to every stupid ass joke. And Chris Rock, I don't know whether he

knew or he didn't know but he has taken a few shots at jada pinkett smith he took one at the oscars i guess in 2016 she didn't go because she didn't think it was i don't know diverse maybe that might have been oscar so white i can't remember um and he basically said oh her not coming to the oscars is like me not going into rihanna's underwear we weren't invited okay that's kind of fun. If you're a public figure, they're going to take shots at you. That one's kind of funny. I don't know the history. But I do know that all those celebrities who stood and clapped for him when he went on to win Best Oscar, Best Actor, the Oscar for it, and surrounded him and cheered him

so hard at the after parties would have been having a very different reaction to him if he had been white and chris rock had just remained chris rock i do think there was some level of pass given and i don't totally understand why i have to bring this up because it's huge on the internet it was huge on the internet when I was looking at this in real time last night, Megan. It was that aside from that issue, which a lot of people commented on, I don't know where I stand on it because I think I saw a lot of condemnations online too, but that it was staged. This was the Academy's desperate effort to revive its ratings. I don't think it was, especially now. I mean, I watched the versions early on that were appearing over and over on Twitter.

But when you just played it with the full sound on the big screen here, it was like, that's 100% real. It was just, it's a human moment. It was a very human moment and too raw to be faked. And I mean, I thought it was a very human moment and too raw to be faked. And I mean, I thought it was it was a good outcome. It sounds like Chris Rock is not pressing charges. So certainly there was no case for prosecution once once the victim declines to press charges.

But yeah, I mean, it's just such a such a raw moment that there's no way we should settle this at least for people on the internet that there's no way that was fake that was well apparently my favorite story about it is apparently denzel washington went up to will smith after the fact like he was like comforting him after the moment and uh by the way who is chris rock's comforter because he was the one who needed to be comforted i i do feel for the guy i'm sure sure it was humiliating as a man. No man wants to be treated that way on the national stage or on any stage. But I mean, it had the extra element of a humiliation for Chris Rock. And that's unfortunate. My heart goes out to him on that. But anyway, Denzel Washington apparently said to Will Smith something like, it's at your highest moment that the devil comes

to get you. Oh, I love that. I'm like, note to self, make friends with Denzel Washington, however necessary. That's good advice. I like that. That's actually true, right? I feel like I've experienced that in my own life and I've never heard the saying. It was pretty good. Okay, so here's Will Smith accepting because he later would go on to win best actor. And the moment, I don't know, the audience will decide whether it was tarred by that earlier exchange, whether it was enhanced by the earlier exchange, but clearly he was making a reference to what had happened earlier. Here's part of Will Smith's acceptance speech. Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family. To do what we do, you got to be able to take abuse.

You got to be able to have people talk crazy about you. In this business, you got to be able to have people disrespecting you. And you gotta smile and you gotta pretend like that's okay. I wanna apologize to the academy. I wanna apologize to all my fellow nominees. This is a beautiful moment and I'm not crying for winning an award. It's not about winning an award for me. It's about being able to shine a light on all of the people.

Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father, just like they said. I look like crazy father, just like they said about Richard Williams. But love will make you do crazy things. Art imitates, I think what he meant was life imitates art. But yeah, he won for playing the father of Venus and Serena. Yeah, he was making the point that he article about their marriage in the papers, like every week talking about, is he gay? Is it open? Really? Like what, whatever, all the speculation, it's annoying. But I would say people in his position need to remember when they go up there, there are people in the world with real problems,

record inflation, they're losing their jobs. The mandate of the vaccine has cost a lot of people, a lot of people have lost loved ones to COVID, so on and so forth. When you're in the position of Will Smith and you go up there and you have a few moments with that microphone, you need to remember that and them and not your own personal suffering that really what you're saying is people say nasty things about you. Like the average American doesn't give a damn. They have actual problems that they need to worry about. Yeah, I go back to Denzel Washington.

I saw last night as part of the coverage of this that he says he reads the Bible every day. And, you know, the Bible is full of warnings against being rash, being reckless. And that's it. Like you said, the devil gets you at those moments. As a Christian, it's certainly part of my tradition. Like, you work so hard, you actually have achieved something that night. But if you're not watching you're not watching out over, over your own kind of base or passions, and you're not controlling them, you can, you can kind of ruin a moment like that. I'm sure he doesn't, he didn't want to be up there having just won, you know, a pinnacle award in his profession tainted, as you said, by this kind of tawdry drama. So I don't know, I'm with Denzel,

but it's easier said than done. Yeah. You got to follow Jada. Follow Jada's example. Take the high road. It never served anybody poorly. Okay. So moving on, can we talk about Compact for a minute? Because this is big. I do want to ask you about the Hunter Biden thing since the post has now been proven right by the New York Times. Don't you kind of hate that? It's like, well, we knew the post was right. We don't need the New York Times to finally acknowledge it on page 20 of their A section in the 23rd paragraph of this in-depth report for it to be true. Right. But the mainstream, the left, they need the New York Times to say it before they can acknowledge it's true. And there's been no mea culpa by the New York Times or Twitter, which censored the New York Post's reporting in advance of the. OK, so you're at the post where all that happened. But now you're forming compact.

I want to get to compact and I want to get to 100 Biden. So what's compact? So compact is a new web magazine co-founded by three people, two of us, me and Matthew Schmitz are of the right. We have a third partner, Edwin Aponte, who's of the left. But we think we can come together to offer a compelling journalistic critique of the American overclass. These are the people who got us into 20 years of fruitless and bloody wars in the Middle East and North Africa that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, the people who have paid no price for the Great Recession. And then again,

for the, you know, jobs and small businesses destroying lockdowns that, you know, caused Jeff Bezos' wallet to swell, and lots of other oligarchic type figures here in the West to do well as a result of the lockdowns. But ordinary Americans lost their jobs and lost their small businesses. So we think there is an opportunity to be had, not a kind of left and right come together to meet at the middle, but left and right using their different lenses to shine lights on the failings and corruption of our ruling class. And you mentioned we can tie it into the Hunter Biden story. That's another example of every institution that was supposed to stand for truth in a crucial democratic election actually silenced the truth. The New York Post, where I was working at the time, as you said, put out this report.

I was helping run the opinion pages. I wasn't involved in the actual reporting of the Hunter files. But I knew that we had done right by this story. And it was more solid than lots and lots of other similar stories that had appeared, anti-Trump stories that never got censored. But in this case, big tech teamed up with the kind of blue check media, which in turn teamed up with, you know, deep state figures, former intelligence officials to all claim this was Russian disinformation. And so as a result,

light was not shined on the Biden family's corruption. And especially, you know, we're talking about Ukraine now. This involved Hunter getting paid $80,000 a month by a Ukrainian energy firm to help set up meetings between his father, who was then vice president, and executives of that firm. This was a solid story. And yet we have a ruling class that uses power. And this is the crucial thing for compact, that a lot of the power that oppresses us nowadays, a lot of the coercion we face doesn't necessarily come from the government. It's often from corporate power, it's private power. And conservatives especially have lost sight of the possibility that large corporations

can threaten our freedoms just as much as government can. So we're trying to, you know, shed light on that. And to be as aware of private abuses of power, monopoly power, power in the employment-employee relationship, big tech power, as we are of governmental abuses. The Babylon Bee has been suppressed now for days because they sent out a tweet on the trans issue that Twitter didn't like, but they're brilliant. And one of the things that they tweeted out prior to getting shut down was nation wishes there were some way they could have known about the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election. Like the left is finally talking about it. Now that's safe. Now that he's in office, they can say, oh, you know, just needed to be verified. That's all we just had to make sure. Meanwhile, you've got people like James Clapper still holding on. At the time we wrote that letter, at the time our caution was warranted and people have moved on. They know they're being lied to by those folks. I think you're absolutely right. I think the classism that's infected media is as pernicious, if not more than just the leftist

bias, the classism that has taken over, you know, the Don Lemons of the world, who just can't see regular people the way they must in order to be effective journalists. So I love, love, love this idea. How can people get it? It's just like, what do they do? So they can visit it at www.compactmag.com. And right now we're offering all our content for free. At some point, we'll have to impose a paywall,

but readers right now can access all of it for free and get a taste of it and then hopefully subscribe. It's going to be a huge success. I can feel it in my bones. So, Rab, great to have you. Good luck with it. Thank you, Megan. All right.

See you soon. All right. Coming up, we're going to have Emily Jaschinski back from The Federalist as well as Eliana Johnson. I'm not squinting my eyes because I don't like Eliana. I can't read anything. I need my glasses. I'm going to put them on. Coming back, our culture warriors to talk about everything. Love them. Don't go away. What is happening at Yale Law School? They're even more annoying than you

thought. We'll get to that in a minute. But first, the award for the most woke night in television goes, as usual, to the Oscars. Despite their attempts to un-woke-ify it because of terrible, terrible ratings, they went woke again. Emily Jasinski is the culture editor at The Federalist and host of The Federalist Radio Hour. And Eliana Johnson is editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon and co-host of Ink Stained Wretches, along with our pal Chris Stierwald. Welcome, Evelina. Eliana, good to have you back. Hey, Megan.

Thanks for having us. It's great to have you. Okay, so I just want to give the audience a quick update because a lot of people write in and ask about my dumb dog, Stradwick. I love him. He's adorable. He's the worst dog. He's a very cute puppy.

But can I just tell you, I just got an update from downstairs where I do my show from home. Strubbuck just took a dump in the TV room. The dog won't learn. He won't learn. Just this morning, the people know he jumps up and he eats the food right off of our counter as I'm serving it to my kids, literally about to hand the two pieces of toast and the scrambled eggs on top of it to my kid. And the dog ate it. He jumped out. I was pulling the toast out of his mouth.

So he didn't get the reward. And everybody's like, put him on a leash. Well, that doesn't stop him. Put him in a crate. Well, he never shuts up. He barks the whole morning. I put him outside. He barks.

He wakes up the whole day. I don't know what to do. OK, sorry, ladies. Sorry. Eliana has an infant. So I think i was gonna say uh i think my sister downstairs uh babysitting my daughter and i think i'm about to get the same update uh text me well i hope it's easier to clean up than the mess i'm looking at after this show uh okay i left it off just a little bit with uh sarab on oscars And you guys have

got to have thoughts on the slap heard around the world who wants to take it. I mean, I can jump in. I think it was I mean, this was this was wild, because we don't have as many A-list celebrities as we used to. We don't have so many like Will Smith's and the younger generation because Hollywood has stopped making movies that are mass palatable, right, that everyone can watch and everyone can enjoy because Hollywood doesn't know how to do that anymore. And their financial incentives aren't over there anymore. So you have Chris Rock and Will Smith.

These are like two bonafide A-listers. And that's kind of what the Oscars has been missing is we just don't have these old stars like we used to. And so I think that made this extra crazy. And I actually think you know the the conversation that will smith had when he won his award which he completely deserved that was the best performance of the year um i thought he handled it really well i was ready to you know the takes were like spinning in my head uh but then when he got up there and

you know i'm not a huge will smith fan, but he was so eloquent and sincere. And I thought it was a sort of a clinic in masculinity. Right. Like he let himself he let his his sort of calm get away from himself in that difficult moment. And then he came and apologized. And if Hollywood is going to err in one direction, rather it be, you know, husbands defending their wives than being disloyal to them so it was almost refreshing but let me ask you this okay because i i was saying so rob i i thought and i i love will and jada but i i thought he made that moment about himself i didn't think it was a clinic in masculinity i thought it was a clinic in ego i thought he saw an opportunity to look like the tough defender and he does love Jada. I have no doubt of that. But like I thought he made that moment about himself more so than about Jada, which I did not think was what a real man does in that kind of situation. But that's that if anybody ever punches me in the face or slaps me in the face in public, I hope to take it like Chris Rock. I just could not believe he maintained his composure and kept a smile on his face during all of that. That was like serious professionalism. And I don't know, I don't have strong views on this. I thought the whole drama

happening on national television on stage was a kind of demonstrates why nobody really cares about Hollywood and the Oscars anymore. And that like, this is not what people want their children watching. And I hadn't seen really any of the movies last night. Not that like I'm a reflection of the tastes of America. But but, you know, I look when I was a kid, Forrest Gump was on TV, not to age myself. And I just feel like this is not like these people have gotten like really far afield from, you know, whatever the tastes of average people. Absolutely. Well, the three women who opened the ceremony, and I guess they were the hosts of it. Again, I literally watched not one moment. I only watched the Twitter highlight of the of the slap.

Me too. I don't even know these women. I think I know Amy Schumer. I don't know. I don't know these stars anymore. But they opened it up. And all I heard was woke, woke, woke, if I woke. Here's a clip. This year, the Academy hired three women to host because it's cheaper than hiring one man. It's fun, right? Yeah, it's fun. You're right, you're right, right.

But I'm still excited to be hosting, representing black women who are standing proud. Yes, and I'm living out loud. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I am representing unbearable white women who call the cops when you get a little too loud. Okay. You know, this year we saw a frightening display of how toxic masculinity turns into cruelty towards women and children.

Damn that Mitch McConnell. I know. I know. But, you know, I was actually talking about the power of the dog. Oh, yes. We're going to have a great night tonight. And for you people in Florida, we're going to have a gay night. Gay, gay, gay, gay, we're going to have a gay night. And rip on the don't say gay, quote unquote, don't say gay bill in Florida, which is a total misrepresentation of what it actually is. So basically rip on parents' rights.

And they actually think that they're going to drive their numbers up with the people who no longer watch them? Who? Who? Yeah, I mean, as if we don't get enough of this, if you turn on cable news, this is just like nothing that we can't get elsewhere. Why tune in for this? It's also like really rich to hear three multimillionaires making a joke about how women have less earning power than men. These women who have been so extraordinarily successful and not in the least held back by their gender. I think it was Kyle Smith, writing at National Review, who said something like, Amy Schumer makes like $12 million a movie, which is 1 million for every person who finds her funny. Come on, it wasn't even funny, like the way they were delivering the lines.

By the way, I do know those women. Regina Hall is definitely wearing the same dress that I wore to prom 1987. We'll lay it in the YouTube so I can prove it to you. There's a pink dress and I'm telling you she got it. My mom sold mine at the garage sale and I never found out where it went. I said, mom, don't sell my prom dress. And the next thing I know, all you can grab for a dollar. It was gone. I'm not saying that she had it, but it inspired somebody because it came back in full fashion this year. But it wasn't even funny. Right. So it's like they hate Republicans, they're going to misrepresent things like the don't say gay bill, which we've heard way too many misrepresentations about. And that how is this going to drive the numbers up from 10 million back to 40? Well, you know, what comes to mind is in the Michael

Jordan documentary that was fantastic. I guess it was like two years ago now. He would not get into politics. And he said, Republicans buy shoes, too. And, you know, in this case, it's Republicans watch movies, too. And they're driving them away. I don't know if anybody's watching these movies. That's what's so interesting about all of this. And I wrote about this in the Federalist this morning. It's that like Hollywood and Stephen Colbert.

Why is Stephen Colbert the most popular host in late night? Because he's decided to go all in on a niche when you don't need to get Johnny Carson's numbers to be the top host of late night, you need he needs like three or 4 million viewers, as opposed to 15 million. And so he's going to sit down have his writers asked, not asked not what is going to make America laugh tonight, but what is going to make resistance boomers laugh tonight. And so if you can get that same small group tuning in reliably, then you can corner the market and be the top host. And I think the Oscars is going in a similar direction, but movies in general are going in a similar direction that they're more for niche audiences, which creates

this vicious cycle where it's like Hollywood has no idea what unites the country anymore, because they're just going to these smaller and smaller audiences. So they don't even know how to make movies that Republicans would want to watch. I mean, people kind of have to watch what they put out if they want to watch movies. But the movies are in and of themselves appealing less to what brings us together as human beings or as Americans, and more to what brings us together in these very small niche groups, which makes the Oscars a really difficult thing to produce, period. But it sounded like middle schoolers were writing their jokes, which is what Colbert's show sounds like every night.

It's so true. And this is kind of why. And by the way, there's a reason why now he's gotten beaten many nights by Greg Gutfeld and his late show over at Fox for very good reason. Greg is genuinely funny and he appeals to more than just the far left. The right loves him and the center loves him. And it's embarrassing for these folks who are on the free TV channels, the ones you get if you just buy a television and plug it in to be getting beaten by Greg, who's on a cable service that you have to pay for.

But that's that's the American people telling the populace what they want. And yet the people who own these distribution companies, they don't listen. I mean, look what's happening right now with Disney, how it's completely caved. Disney owns ABC. ABC broadcasts the Oscars. Disney is now basically in a full fetal position on this don't say gay bill. Again, I hate to refer to it as that because you can say gay. It's absurd. That's not what the law is. It's basically saying sex education and transgender education doesn't need to begin with the little ones under grade three. And even above grade three, it should be age appropriate.

That's what the Florida bill says. That's it. It doesn't say you can't say gay. And if you want to teach your kid about gay and lesbian, like we did in our house, you do it at home. Two of my best friends are lesbians. They're married. We talk all about it. You know how?

We had them over for dinner. Like, hey, what's the deal there? Well, women can get married too. Who needs the school? Like, the teacher doesn't say it. My kid, how will my kid ever know? Right. Like, who are they kidding? They're just using it as a wedge issue. I read through the bill this morning when it was when it was on the list of topics. And yeah, the don't say gay branding is really a testament to the victory of the opposition here. And I've seen

critics, including in The New York Times, say, you know, teachers can't mention the word. And I've seen critics, including in the New York Times, say, you know, teachers can't mention the word. And how is anybody going to talk about these issues at all? But you're right. The bulk of the bill is actually about parental notification, not even about classroom instruction. And the part about classroom instruction pertains to lessons in K-3. And reading through the bill, what did jump out to me was just the distortions in the public discourse about this bill. It's incredibly shocking. And it does speak to why folks do not trust the media anymore.

The media coverage has been unbelievable. I mean, they've used the Don't Say Gay label. Yeah, they've used it. And it's insane. And I actually think some of the language of the bill is overly broad. But the idea that it's going to be enforced They've jumped on board. releases all of the other disinformation or information they deem disinformation has been spreading outright. Disinformation on a huge narrative is completely insane. And it should be, you know, if anyone needs to put a nail in the coffin of the so-called mainstream media or the legacy media, this should be it. They told you no matter what you think about this, they were

giving you completely false information. And it just shows how like when the public actually needs to rely on the media as the gateway into our government, you can't anymore. It's maybe not functioning. Maybe like a year from now on page 20 of the A section of the New York Times in the 23rd paragraph, we'll get an update saying, by the way, that that wasn't about not saying gay and no apology and no acknowledgement of one's error. And that's the thing that's so irritating about the Hunter Biden story. Like we knew we didn't need the New York Times to finally come around to the truth that this is a thing. It was Hunter's laptop. It wasn't Russian disinformation. And he is a hot mess in ways that are deeply problematic, potentially even for his dad in terms of conflicts of interest and, you know,

money laundering. There's all sorts of investigations going on right now into Hunter Biden and what he did and didn't do. We didn't need The New York Times. What's so annoying about it is there's no acknowledgement. Where's Twitter's apology to The New York Post? Right. We're like Politico and all of its reporting about, you know, what this meant and what how disinformation this was, what the post was reporting. Where's the acknowledgement that no they won't the political reporter was promoted not promoted but she went to cnn and got a great job there oh is that um what's her name natasha oh yeah she's was used the worst on russiagate the worst yes exactly exactly you get rewarded you you fail up yeah that's right that's right that's the incentive

go ahead eliana what were you gonna say? You know, Chris Starwell and I talk about this all the time on our podcast that I'm with you. What drives me insane about this is there is zero accountability in the mainstream media. You know, I'm sure we can all understand making a mistake. Everybody gets things wrong in the mainstream media, there is no penalty for making these sorts of mistakes. And in fact, as Emily said, you get rewarded for peddling the false narratives. You get promotions, you get more airtime, you get more success in your career. All the incentives are backwards. Before we move off the celebrity beat, can we talk about Kanye and Kim? Okay, Emily, I know that you wrote something about this and I was into it. So Kanye and Kim, I don't know if the divorce is final, but they're definitely getting a divorce. And she's hooked up with Pete Davidson. Don't understand the phenomenon. I see it. Every single beautiful woman in Hollywood has had an affair with this guy. I don't get it. But they have. And he just bailed off of the next SpaceX flight, right?

Didn't he? I think so. He said he had a scheduling conflict. What? No. Decadence. This is the age of decadence. That is goals.

I mean, maybe when you're dating Kim Kardashian, that could be real. I don't know. You might actually have something more important to do if you're a man. So there's a bit of a feud between Kanye and Pete Davidson, where Kanye continues to sort of needle Pete and needle Kim, and Trevor Noah weighed in saying, I Kanye's objections that he's voicing, Emily, online, and why we might want to be paying a little bit more attention to the substance there as opposed to just being like, oh, Kanye people. Yeah, it's been really interesting to watch him sort of convert to evangelical Christianity and then try to make his old life fit with his new life. I think it gives a lot of insight into actually the way like evangelicals have to confront the culture and Christians in general have to confront the culture, but he's upset about sort of the influence of TikTok in his very young children's life, particularly North, who's eight years old and is using TikTok with her mother was lip syncing to like very, very, very inappropriate song by,

I forget actually who the song is by, but it was about kissing an emo girl. And it's a super popular song. It's a TikTok meme. And it may seem like it's nothing to a lot of parents in 2022, but to somebody who's trying to live a Christian lifestyle, that's a very big deal. And so it's interesting to watch Kanye try to fit his new life in together with his old life, where you have your wife raising your kids and your family around people who are bad influences, clearly, like Pete Davidson, absolutely a bad influence. There's no question about it. And it's not that Kanye West is a perfect human being, although I think we could say he's trying to be better and we get way more insight into that process than we do with most celebrities.

But it is, I mean, TikTok is something that is actually very bad, but it's normalized in our culture. And so when you're trying to exist in the culture, especially as an ultra famous celebrity, while also being in, a lot of people in Christian circles will say you need to be in the world, but not of the world. And that's what Kanye West is trying to do as somebody who has always been very much of the world.

And it's causing conflict. And to see that play out in his marriage is really sad and tragic for the children. But I think it's also insight into how sort of secular our cultural norms have become. Yeah, in your piece, you wrote, they've lived their life in the public eye and the rapper is clearly in a bad place, but West may have some legitimate concerns about leftist and secular influences introduced to his young children.

And I wrote him at the margin, then don't reproduce with a progressive selfie star, right? Like that's, I mean, you know, like this is foreseeable. And one of the things that jumps out at me is this is like every parent's nightmare in getting a divorce. If you have children, right, that your, your ex is going to find a new person whose values you don't share. And maybe you've realized too late in the marriage that you don't share the ex's values when it comes to child rearing. And now your kid not only has to be raised

by somebody other than you half the time, but it's someone you can't stand or you actually think is genuinely bad for them. To me, that is like torture. That would be a form of torture on earth. I can't I cannot imagine. And especially when you're just expected to deal with it as a celebrity and you know, not weigh in and not make this stuff public. But too. And I think that's obviously the way better course here for Kanye West is to deal with those in private. But

it's been difficult for both of them because you know you don't want to make it look like you endorse pete davidson who kanye calls skeet by the way uh skeet's influence why uh but do we know why it's tragic but you're right like what do you expect you married kim kardashian yeah like you you knew what you were getting it's not like she posted remember that picture she posted that broke the internet of like her naked bottom and her naked breasts and like she was on a champagne bottle or something. And I remember his tweet at the time, which is sort of unforgettable. It was all night long.

Okay, great. But there might be a downside to that balance that you should put some thought into. I'm just saying. Like Doug is never going gonna have that problem now that's and that's why it's so interesting that like after he goes on this journey where he he's really trying to live like a christian lifestyle um it's making those two puzzle pieces fit together is extremely difficult he must have been sitting there learning all the lessons going oh shit oh i swore again dang, dang. It's so hard. Sorry. I only have two more. What is it? Two more weeks of Lent. Just did the fourth Sunday.

All right. Stand by, ladies, because there's much, much more to discuss. I'm dying to talk about that. I've been on vacation, so I haven't been able to talk about the Marsha Blackburn moment with our next Supreme Court justice and what a woman is. I'll put it to you, too. Let's see if you can figure it out. There's your homework over the two-minute commercial break. We'll be right back. So the vote on Ketanji Brown-Jackson was supposed to happen today at three. They said it's almost certainly going to be postponed, however, for whatever reason. But she's going to get through. I mean, there's no drama attached to that. The hearing last week I thought was about as milquetoast and mild as you can get in today's day and age. I didn't see or hear anything that

was upsetting to me. I did see and hear some upsetting reaction to Marsha Blackburn's question, what is a woman? Even in right wing, I mean, I listen to a lot of podcasts and so on, even in right wing podcasts, like, now we're down the line, it was a stupid question. But shut up. It's not a stupid question. It's a stupid debate to be having it at all. But the left has made us have it. And now we're going to have it. And somebody sitting on the Supreme Court should be able to answer that with ease. It wasn't something she needed to dodge. But here was the moment just for for those of you who missed it, soundbite 10. Can you provide a definition for the word woman? Can I provide a definition?

No. Yeah. I can't. You can't? Not in this context. I'm not a biologist. I find this whole thing maddening. I don't think it was a dumb question.

It was a clever question. She was trying to pin her down on whether she was going to be a reasonable person who would stand up to the woke on their nonsense interpretations of things that we all know to be true. And the judge effectively answered it. She will not. She requires their approval because she wouldn't have lost one vote if she had answered that honestly. I mean, your knee jerk reaction would probably be double X chromosome or, you know,

whatever you get when you get that right. The, the, the, the definition, according to Deborah So who I've had on the podcast and she's brilliant, she's, you know, got all sorts of degrees and all of this, uh, is you have gametes. You have only two gametes. You got ones that produce sperms and ones that produce eggs. And it's binary. You're one or the other. And it determines biological sex, which is not fluid. And it's not a social construct. It's one or the other, male or female. Maybe she doesn't know about gametes. That's fine. She knows about chromosomes. Any moron knows double X or XY. Everybody knows that. All right. Anyway, what did you make of it? Because when I listened to her, Emily, I liked her. I thought this is as good as we're going to do for I'm more of an originalist and a Federalist Society type person in a selection of judges. But I thought she's nice. She doesn't sound like a total radical. But that answer actually did concern me. Yeah, that answer concerned me immensely as well, as did her answer on the question of when life begins. But what the media completely stripped out of context is that Marsha Blackburn, and Megan, you know this as a lawyer,

she was asking about an extremely important case, and that would be the VMI case. This was in the context of a line of questioning about the Supreme Court's VMI case, which involves sex and gender. And these are cases that we can expect to make their way, similar cases to the Supreme Court in recent years, given the way our culture war is heading, in which a jurist's definition of biological sex becomes incredibly salient. So it wasn't as though Marsha Blackburn was just flinging silly culture war questions, even though this one is relevant, whatever you think. And the media, again, stripped it out of context and made it seem like Marsha Blackburn was just asking completely random questions, when in fact, this was in a very serious line

of questioning. And I actually interviewed Marsha Blackburn the week before the hearings began. And she reiterated to me time and again, that this was going to be a respectful, civil process. And I was kind of expecting, I don't know, maybe I was expecting something different after Kavanaugh and, you know, the Amy Coney Barrett circus. But yeah, I actually think the Republicans managed to stick to that. I was disgusted by anybody on the right who critiqued that line of questioning, who said there wasn't, you know, that these were not reasonable substantive issues. They absolutely are. And it's just, again, a great example of how far our standards have fallen, that the media is behaving this way and even people on the right are behaving this way. Yeah. You know what? When you deal with title seven claims and title nine claims, you need to understand what a woman is and what a woman isn't. And honestly, in that moment, she could have said, my understanding of a woman is somebody with two X chromosomes, but I understand legally things are changing and, and people who have an X, Y are now identifying as female. And that becomes a legal issue, gender versus biological sex. She's very well smart enough to answer that in a way that acknowledges i see where you're going this is my

understanding but you know it's 2022 and i get now that this has become an issue and that's even that's an issue for some her playing dumb on it offended me i really just thought that that is absurd and that's the kind of thing I really hope to see held against people who push that kind of messaging come the next election. Like Eliana, that's the stuff that look, it's a long time between now and November, but that's the stuff that will stick in America's craw if they see too many people saying it. We know what a woman is. We know that there are trans women as well. People who are biologically male, but identify as female. The vast majority of people will respect that and be kind to a person dealing with that.

But it doesn't require the erasure of women. Megan, you said she wouldn't have lost any votes if she had answered that question. I think she blew an opportunity to gain some votes. I actually think she could have gotten some Republican votes if she would have given a candid answer. And I think the one that you proposed is good. Somebody with two X chromosomes. It is a problem when the smartest elites in our society say they can't answer a question that you could go up to the guy on the street corner and get an answer to. That is, I think, what is driving a wedge between the elites and the regular people and that people find absurd. And I think it is something that, you know, Biden campaigned as a

moderate. He isn't governing as a moderate. And I think that it's these sorts of things, these sorts of like, oh, sorry, I can't answer what a woman is, that we saw Glenn Youngkin in Virginia campaign on these sorts of things in the gubernatorial race, and that Democrats are probably going to pay for in the November midterms. But I think Katonji Brown Jackson blew an opportunity to make a statement about who she is and where she stands and perhaps to gain some votes. I totally agree with you on a, on a not unrelated note. I mentioned it earlier and I know Emily, you, you interviewed the Babylon B founder. Who's a great guy, but Babylon B still shut down.

Their Twitter account is still not operational because they sent out sort of they're snarky. That's what they do. That's why we love them. A tweet about Rachel Levine, who is u.s assistant secretary of hhs i mean nobody's ever heard of whoever filled this position prior to rachel levine uh but the reason rachel levine has become well known is because this is a trans woman this is a biological man who lived the vast majority of their life as a male i think it was mid-50s uh transitioned to female and now is in this role and was celebrated when biden appointed rachel levine to this role as the first woman first woman admiral to hold it or maybe she was the first first woman admiral something and now usa today has named her one of

its women of the year women of the year i have problems the year. I have problems with that, and I will explain why, with all due respect to Rachel. But Babylon Bee does what it does, which is they make fun of everybody, and lots of woke issues and policies. And they tweeted out that Rachel Levine is their man of the year. Shut down. Shut down for, quote quote hateful content they will twitter in its beneficent way will allow them access to the twitter account if they delete the the tweet you can have it back within 12 hours just delete it unsay it go go my way see the world as i do. Don't say anything, quote, hateful. And we, Twitter, will decide

what's, quote, hateful. And they won't do it. So let me start with you on it, Eliana, and ask you what you make of Rachel Levine as, quote, woman of the year by USA Today. Well, I just laughed at your reading of the Babylon Bee tweet. So I guess that's where I stand on it. I mean, it's just so ridiculous and hard to take seriously. I honestly, like I cannot take it seriously. Woman of the year, I mean, XY chromosome, Rachel Levine, you know? That's right. The Babylon Bee thing. I mean, it's funny. It's funny. Exactly. Come on. Look, and it's also factual. It's factual. There's no question that Rachel Levine is a biological man. That is true. It doesn't make it hateful for the Babylon Bee and pushing back at USA Today to acknowledge that fact. It's not nice. It's not a kind thing to do, but it doesn't make it, quote, hateful and worthy of censorship. But I don't run Twitter. Go ahead, Emma. Well, I mean, the other thing about the Twitter move is the selectivity with which they determine or they call out hatefulness where, you know, world leaders like the Ayatollah who espouse hate like that's totally fine. But, you know, you look the wrong way at somebody who's

trans, and that's unacceptable. And I think that's what really gets under the skin of people who think the way that, you know, you and I and Emily do. It's that it's, it's our it's our, you know, it's our hate that's always looked at crosswise. I mean, like, if I, I would love to give you a list of the things that I've been called by very public people on Twitter, but it would violate my Lent pledge in a way that could not be undone. Right. So most of us see hateful things written about ourselves. We move on. Like we don't punch somebody on the Oscar stage and we don't claim it's hateful. It has to be taken down. You just move on and go on living your beautiful life, Emily.

Well, yeah, but this is the left has expanded the definition of hate and bigotry to now include and even violence, by the way, violence can involve actually being misgendered. So if you accidentally use the wrong pronoun, you will fall under the definition of violence. And so that the left actually insists on and that has been codified in corporate institutions and major institutions around this country and around the world. And so you're making speech, innocent, civil speech, you're making it, you're turning it into violence. And you have then narrowed the boundaries of what we can or cannot debate in this country country to the point where we're outright

erasing women. And we have these major corporations who are complicit in what, by any definition that would have been used 20 years ago, would constitute misogyny. And so it's unbelievable, but that's what happens when you have this expanded definition. I mean, how do you celebrate Ketanji Brown Jackson being the first female, black female nominated to the Supreme Court and perhaps justice on the Supreme Court if we don't understand what it means to be a woman? If that definition is so fast and loose that we don't even have it to the point where Rachel Levine is being named woman of the year over women, it's unbelievable. But the definition has been expanded. That left academia and made its way into the workplace and now it runs all of our institutions it runs our society it's absurd

it's not factual it's completely wrong it's immoral um but it's the regime that we're now forced to live under and you can't even question it as the babylon b did our senior editor john davidson at the federalist is locked out of his account right now for a similar infraction. You can't even question it. They'll shut you down. So here's why this this is why it upsets me to see this. Now, if Rachel Levine wants to live as a man, as a woman now, you know, as of 10 plus years ago, fine by me. You do you. However, Rachel Levine doesn't get to be celebrated as the, quote, first female admiral to get this post or as, quote, the woman of the year, because there is a reason we put those markers in someone's bio. And it's because it's a recognition that, you know

what, somebody who's now mid 60s, as Rachel is, came up in a time when it wasn't so easy for women. They actually had to overcome a lot of bull... blank. I was better before Lent. I'll be back. Anyway, I asked somebody if you can sub in a new something to give up in the middle of Lent, and the answer was no. So I've just got to see it through to the end, ladies. Anyway, so it's an acknowledgement, right, that you have gone through, like for a woman back then to get into medical school and do well and move your way up through the medical ranks was actually pretty impressive and it didn't happen nearly enough. So if Rachel Levine had been born a woman and had lived her whole life as a woman and then became the first admiral at the HHS,

et cetera, it would be something to say, okay, cool. She did something that wasn't that easy to do. Same way we celebrated Ruth Bader Ginsburg being one of nine women at Harvard Law School. And so that's a thing. It's not easy to be one of nine when there's, I don't know, 100 plus males all around you. To not have gone through any of that to have had all of the ease that comes yes let's face it back in the in her day in his day of being a white man and have taken advantage of the system all those years as a white man great i get it it was a good time to be a white man unlike today um and then switch teams and want all of the accolades of like having made it you climb i climbed the same mountain you did no you didn't you were in the ski lift you were in the chairlift on the mountain

next to me i was fucking hiking with the sticks and it was a i'm sorry but no you were in the gondola uh stop it megan i take it you were you weren't cheering on the Penn swimmer Leah Thomas. No victory. No, she is not the winner. I'm sorry. She she I'm happy to see Leah Thomas swim in a different race or with an asterisk. But she Leah is not allowed to call herself the winner of the women's race. She did. She is. She was in that race fraudulently, unethically. And that too, like I want to be supportive, but I think the best way to create support around the trans community is to not make the rules unfair for the communities that already exist. The female community, the male community, let's create a space that works for them and for us too.

Because all this is doing is causing anger and resentment. You know, like this is not the way forward. And, and honestly, I know trans people, I have trans people in my family. None of them want this. None of them want this. I don't, who are these freaking activists like Leah who are like USA today? Nobody's asking for this crap. The best was in the university of pennsylvania uh newspaper in their article about leah thomas they they write in their lead in the news article is like leah thomas so and so becomes the first quaker to win the win the race i'm like yes exactly what was on all of our minds awesome and this stuff matters beyond the sort of like issue of political correctness, because

tragically, actually, this matters a lot in prisons. It matters a lot in women's shelters. It matters a lot in places where women need safe spaces. And even in swimming, it's more serious because there are people without means or with fewer financial means who need the scholarships and rely on winning those races and having a fair playing field to get into college and to have financial support for college. And so I think the left likes to pretend this is just about semantics and it's just about bigoted Christians, conservatives who refuse to you know go along with

the language and change with the times but actually there's a reason feminists fought for years to have safe spaces like restrooms by the way which was considered a feminist victory uh for women um and it's because men and women are different and women do need their own spaces, especially places like women's shelters and prisons. And you can see how this is a very important issue beyond what the left likes to pretend it's about, which is just words and just tolerance. It's not just about that. It's about women's safety. And the media, again, it always comes back to the media. The media, again, does not want to have that conversation. All right, last question, Eliana, Yale Law School. You went to Yale, right? I went to Yale. Yeah. So they've lost their mind. I love the Federalist Society at Yale Law School. I've spoken before that group before. It's the normal Federalist Society. They lean more right in their approach to the law and judicial thinking,

and that's totally fine. There are different approaches to how to handle the law that's what the federalist society is for they tried to have a debate a fair and balanced debate on an issue and the protesters came out shut it down were too loud didn't want debate called it hateful what was the debate going to be over and what's the fallout been? The debate was over free speech, actually. The Alliance Defending Freedom was one of the groups and they have a traditional view of marriage and other things. And Megan, you said you spoke to the group. I was going to say, be careful when you go back. I'm not sure you'll get a friendly greeting. But they were they were not shouted down.

But in the clip you're showing, there were loud jeers. The students were given a warning and they left the room and then from outside the room made so much noise that it were required to see the speakers out the door and, you know, off the campus. So it's an absolute disgrace. And at Yale Law School, as at many other law schools, the lunatics are running the asylum. And the administrators are absolutely feckless. Absolutely. And I've seen some pushback with people raising the best point, which is, how do you think we do it in the courtroom? Just the one side gets to stand up and say totally non-offensive things. And then the judge just has to figure out what the other side might say, but it can never be voiced because that might offend somebody.

And then he or she rules. I mean, these are absurd people. They should not be allowed to practice law. I would not hire them. And we had a federal judge, in fact, come out and say, Judge Lawrence Silverman on the D.C. Circuit, come out and say that free speech is a cornerstone of our legal system. And all federal judges should really think twice about hiring for clerkships, anybody who participated in these clerks. And Yale Law School, it carries more importance when these things happen there because it is the top law school in the country. And these are our future federal judges. It is concerning. Yeah. You know what? My my advice when I spoke to the Yale Law School students was when you go out there and you seek a job, you act like you went to Albany

Law, where I went. Don't think you're high and mighty. You work hard. Keep your mouth shut on your stupid, woke policies and, you know, put some elbow grease into it. Actually earn your position. But I was speaking to the Federalist Society, so they already knew all that. Emily, Eliana, such a pleasure as always. Great to see you. Thanks, Megan. Tomorrow, we've got Marianne Williamson by popular demand. So many of you have asked me to interview her, so I'm doing it. She's led a fascinating life and she made serious waves during the 2020 primary. Meantime, download the show, check it out on YouTube and we'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly

Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.