The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden's Border Crisis and Cratering Poll Numbers, with Eliana Johnson, Chris Stirewalt, and Brandon Judd | Ep. 176

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Brandon Judd, President of the National Border Patrol Council, and Eliana Johnson and Chris Stirewalt, hosts of the "Ink Stained Wretches" podcast, to talk about the state of the border crisis, the potential terror threat at the Southern border, President Biden's cratering poll numbers, the Virginia governor race, the ethical issues with Hunter Biden's artwork, cable news and the state of the media, 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. We have got a great show for you today. My old pal Chris Stierwald, formerly of Fox News, and Eliana Johnson, the editor of the Washington Free Beacon, will be with us later to talk Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Sage Steele of ESPN, and more. But first, we're going to get to the crisis at our southern border, which continues even though the media has moved on. As 10 governors yesterday began taking matters into their own hands, what choice do they have? Drafting a 10-point plan for getting the border under control. With the Biden administration

choosing inaction at a time of national security problems, our only line of defense as of now are Border Patrol agents who have been demonized for attempting to create or to control the situation created by Joe Biden and others. Joining me now is Brandon Judd. He's the president of the National Border Patrol Council and a Border Patrol agent himself for over 24 years. Brandon, thank you for being here. How are you doing? I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me, Megan. Okay, so what is this group? Because I understand these governors got together, including Greg Abbott of Texas, and they compiled a 10-point plan to tackle this border problem. And you were part of it. You were with it. So how did this come about? Well, when you look at the stresses that illegal immigration causes on the states,

but even worse than that, the flow of the drugs that come into the states and kill our children in all areas, suburbs, inner city and in the rural areas. When you look at all of the stressors that are being placed on the states, these governors are put in a no-win situation where they have to come up with solutions themselves to do the job that the federal government is choosing not to do. This is obviously a federal government issue. But if they're not going to do what they need to do to protect the states, then the states are going to have to step up and come up with plans on their own. What is the biggest difference you've noticed from when Trump was president to when Biden is has since he's become president? It's night and day. What we've seen is we've seen a complete secession, if you will, of all of our operations to criminal cartels.

Right now, they're dictating to us what we're able to do. They know that if they flood us in certain areas with large numbers of people that cross the border, it requires that we then send our resources to those areas, which then depletes our resources in other areas of the border. And when we do that, they're able to create artificial gaps where they then can cross higher value products, whether that's fentanyl, criminal aliens or aliens from special interest countries. They're able to dictate to us exactly how we operate. And when we do that, they're able to get their higher value products across, which then, of course, makes it into middle America, spreads out throughout the United States. And of course, that is very, very dangerous to all of our citizens, all of our

fellow citizens. And again, it really upsets the balance of how we're able to secure the border. And right now, it's just it's the most unsecure I've ever seen in my life. So the cartels are not stupid. They know to create a problem at point A so that all the Border Patrol will go there exposing point B because they know we don't have the manpower to cover the entire border and then provide backup for those same spots. But is that a difference from under President Trump? I mean, as far as I know, Joe Biden hasn't rolled back the number of agents, has he? It is different. And the reason why it's different is because the way we deal with the people that cross

the border illegally. So under President Trump, he recognized that the catch and release problem was the main magnet that is drawing people here to the United States. When I say catch and release, that's when somebody crosses the border illegally. We take them into custody. We process them and just release them into the United States pending a future court date. That's exactly what these individuals want. They want to be released into the United States and the cartels understand that. When President Trump ended the catch and release magnet, when he was able to negotiate the migrant protection protocols with the Mexican government,

we were sending everybody that was crossing our borders, we were sending them right back to Mexico pending their asylum or deportation proceedings here in the United States. Once we did that, illegal immigration dropped to 45-year lows. We were then able to concentrate on the criminality. We were able to go after the profits of the criminal cartels, and we were able to drive down the number of drugs, the amounts of drugs that were on the streets, and of course, killing our children. Again, when you look at the number of overdoses right now in this country, it's at an all-time high, and it's strictly due to policy that's been implemented by this administration in getting rid of and gutting all of the immigration policies that we had under President Trump.

So if an illegal immigrant crosses the southern border now, they get stopped by a border patrol agent, if we're lucky, right? If we see him, if we have the manpower, we get the guy. We process him, meaning we basically take down the person's information and we give them a date to show up because they all say they want asylum, right? So you give them an asylum date, I guess, is how we do it. And then we say, okay, bye. And they're out there on the honor system. Yeah, that's exactly what happens. And it gets even worse from there. Even if they do show up to their asylum or deportation proceedings, and if a judge orders

them deported because they've been in the United States for a number of years, because these deportation proceedings or asylum proceedings, they take years. They don't they don't happen within a couple of months. They take years. And if they show up, they've now accumulated a stay of that deportation and they'll release these people on their own recognizance to get their affairs in order. And then they're supposed to show up to ICE at a later date to then be deported. And that's when they disappear into what President Obama termed as the shadows of society. So, yeah, we release them. And then if they do show up to court, then a judge releases them pending a future deportation, and then they disappear and they never show up again. So even once the deportation order is handed down by the judge, we release them on the honor system

saying, please come back for the day of your deportation? We do. We do. As crazy as that sounds, And the reason that they're doing this is, again, these people have accumulated. So when they're here pending their deportation proceedings, we've given them a de facto legal status. So we've rewarded them for crossing our borders illegally when we release them. We give them a de facto legal status. They're then able to get work permits. They're able to get driver's licenses. They're able to put their children in school. They're able to get all of the social benefits that any United States citizen would have access to.

And when they accumulate those goods, then the judge issues an order of deportation, releases them so they can get all of those things in order, in order to leave the country. And of course, that's when we know they never show up. Okay. That's the game. Accumulate goods so that you can go into the go into the judge and when he rules against you on whether you can stay, you can say, oh, I've got all these things. I just got to get my affairs in order.

And we say yes. And that's the end of that. They're here. Bob's your uncle. So now under President Trump, the same guy crosses over, you catch him, you process him. He's standing there saying, I really want asylum or, you know, please let me stay. I need a hearing of some sort. And what, what would happen? We would then send them back to Mexico. We would give them the same court date.

And when that court date arises there, they then show up to the port of entry. They're paroled into the United States, but with that parole, they're under custody, they're in custody the entire time. And so if a judge orders them deported at that point, they never leave custody and they're sent back to their country of origin. That was the system that was always supposed to be in place. We were never supposed to be releasing these individuals. When the immigration laws were passed, it was never envisioned that these people would be released into the United States. But that's what's happened because the cartels are flooding us and they understand that we only have so many resources to hold people in our jail facilities for so long. So President Trump, recognizing this, decided, well, we'll just have them wait in Mexico pending that asylum or deportation proceeding.

And it was the most brilliant plan that we've ever seen. You know, we always talk about we shouldn't recreate the will. We should always look at what's been done in the past. Well, nothing had been done in the past that had worked. I started my career under President Clinton, worked up through Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden, and nothing had worked in the past because we never did anything like this. President Trump literally created the will on this. And he gave the Biden administration a blueprint on how they could deal with illegal immigration. But the Biden administration pandering to its base, understanding that they want to get their base out to vote in all elections. They started pandering to the base and they completely and totally gutted the Trump policies, which put us in this current

situation. Well, there was a court ruling, Supreme Court recently, I think, saying that the remain in Mexico policy had to stand and that that couldn't just be so easily undone by President Biden. Have you seen the effects of that? I mean, are we able now in the wake of that to send the folks back to Mexico? No, the Biden administration hasn't implemented the problem with that with that court order. And it's a good court order.

It has no teeth. How do you enforce that? If the Biden administration just chooses to ignore it, the only thing you can do is file another lawsuit. Well, wait, let me stop you there. Let me stop you there. How are we enforcing it before when when we sent the people back to Mexico? Do we have buses lined up or do I mean, do you guys make sure now you're on the bus and you're going? Yeah, yeah. So under the under the Trump

administration, we would, we would, the moment they were apprehended, we would process them, and we would take them back to a port of entry. And we would expel them back into Mexico from that port of entry. But unless the Biden administration gives us that authority to do that, we can't do it. We cannot. Even though the court has ruled that the MPP must be re-implemented, it has to be re-implemented through policy and certain procedures. And that's what the Biden administration is failing to do. They're not giving us those policies and procedures.

So we can't re-implement how a judge told us to do it. You can't just start doing it on your... Yeah, that makes sense. Because if you've got like stop and frisk in New York City and a court rules it unconstitutional, it's not like the cops just go based on whatever the court says. They need a boss. They need the person who's in charge, who they answer to to say, OK, here's how this is going to change your approach on the subject of the cartels, there was a documentary out recently that made this point that the cartel is paying children to keep an eye on you guys from Mexico to make sure they know what you're doing at all times and where we're most vulnerable. Here's a clip from the documentary.

And it's the kids that get roped into this crap. The majority of the time, yes. Are you surprised how trained these kids are the time yes how trained they are because trust me you got little kids making 20 to sit there and play and hey let me know if anybody shows up like i said that's 20 in mexico it's a lot of damn money so the cartels will pay the kids they'll pay them whatever they pay them i don't i'm not i'm just giving an amount but yeah they pay them they're like they're scouts believe it or not so have you seen that kids i have personally seen that as rudimentary as that sounds it's extremely effective um they use kids they'll use kids for for multiple purposes they'll use kids um to cross the border illegally with uh with adults and say

that and and the adults will say that that child is their kid. So it's now a family unit and that child will get recycled over and over and over again. They'll use kids that way. They'll use kids as scouts. These cartels, they just don't care about life. They don't care about freedom. They don't care whether or not even children are able to grow up in a normal manner. All they care about is the profit. And let's understand that the profit is astronomical on illegal immigration alone. Alone, they are generating a minimum of $400 million a month in profit.

That does not include the drug trade. That does not include trafficking in criminal aliens or aliens from special interest countries. So these profits are astronomical and that's what they're after. And they'll do anything to get it, including using kids. 400 million a month. Is that what you just said? Yes. 400 million. From people who are paying them to get them across the border? I'm sorry, say that again? What is the money? You said that's not including the drugs and the profit and all that. What do they make the 400 million from doing? That's on human smuggling alone, human trafficking alone, just bringing people across the border,

having them cross the border illegally, trafficking them up through Central America, South America. They're able to go into countries. And this is, again, something that we've never seen before. These cartels are able to go into countries, China, Uzbekistan, Gambia. They're able to go throughout the world and they're able to advertise their services. And when they advertise their services, these people pay them large sums of money to be smuggled up to the U.S.-Mexico border. When they cross the border illegally, the cartel's job is now done, and they've made the money. So in human trafficking alone, they are generating a minimum of $400 million in profit every month. Oh my gosh. I guess we have a clip of that too. By the way, the documentary is by Peter

Centinello. It's called How Immigrants Cross the U.S.-Mexico Border. This is soundbite number six of migrants paying to cross. Just to cross from that side of the river to this side, they're paying $3,500, $3,500 just to cross just the river itself. They have their smuggler, they're bringing them across, puts them to the United States side, hey, get out, get out, get out, and then he'll go right back and load up another one. Wow. So it's not just, I mean, it's like every step of the way they fork over more dough, whether they're poor or as you point out in these other countries, maybe they've got worse intentions and more money to somehow find their way into the United States.

This is such a huge battle because it seems genuinely out of control. We saw a record number of crossings in July, over 200,000 in August. I think it fell only slightly, but it was still over 200,000 in September. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was once again around 200,000. Yeah. So the official September numbers have not come out yet. The unofficial numbers are going to be a little more than 200,000. They don't change very much from those unofficial numbers. So I would expect, yes, we're going to have another month in which we made more than 200,000 apprehensions. When you look at this, you know, everybody likes to compare fiscal year to fiscal year. In this case, we can't do that because this

fiscal year, the first three months were under President Trump. And so apprehensions were low under his when he was the president. The apprehension skyrocketed the moment President Biden took office. So in eight months, in eight short months, we've made more than one point two million apprehensions. And we're on pace for for a calendar year to break every single record we've ever had. Oh, my goodness. Now, my understanding from what I read was that in July and August, at least half of those were were returned immediately under the COVID policy was a title 42, which President Trump put in place that basically said, given the COVID emergency, we're kind of not going to jump through the hoops we normally would with immigrants

who cross illegally, and we have the authority to just send them home. So we did that with at least half in July and at least half in August. So are we averaging about 100,000 people that you apprehend, this doesn't count the ones that you don't see and that you don't know about, getting into the country and going on their merry way each month? Yeah. So when you look at the numbers, the actual numbers show that we're releasing between 60 to 70% of the illegal border crossers. Now, when I say we made 212 apprehensions, that doesn't mean that we dealt with 212,000 different people. Some of the people we apprehend over and over again, but what we're dealing with month in and month out, we're dealing with about 140,000 different people.

So when you look at 60 to 70 percent of that that's being released into the United States, we have already released in eight short of the gotaways, the people that we have been that we've detected, but we weren, president of the National Border Patrol Council, is where do they go? Right. We always hear these stories about all these people crossing into the United States and maybe a lot of folks up in New York think that is a California problem and a Texas problem only, you know, maybe some Florida, some Arizona. But like, where do all those people go? Everywhere. So everywhere that your listeners and your viewers are, they're there. These people will spread out throughout the entire United States. It's interesting when you look at the Brazilians. I can pretty much guarantee if they're from Brazil, they're going to Atlanta or Boston. When you look at the large communities of Brazilians in those cities, that's generally

where they're going. Every different nationality is going to different places, but they're spreading out throughout the entire United States. They're going to go wherever jobs are available. If jobs are available, they're going to head to those locations. So if jobs are available in Des Moines, Iowa, you can expect to see a large number of people that crossed the border illegally that were released in Des Moines, Iowa. That includes Nebraska, Oklahoma, Miami, Florida, even Bangor, Maine. They go throughout the entire United States wherever there are jobs. That's because this, it bears noting, is not, right now we have a Democrat in the White House who's very pro open borders. But it's not really just a Democrat created problem, because it's more Republicans

who have been in charge of like the Chamber of Commerce and a lot of these big businesses that want cheap labor that willingly turned a blind eye to this problem for many, many years. That's why it was so unusual to hear a guy like Trump, you know, who is really beholden to nobody. He was technically a Republican. But, you know, that's, I think, just because you got to pick a party to run for president. And he's definitely more right leaning than left. But that's why it was so unusual to hear him talking so much about the southern border and the wall and so on, because most Republicans like Mitt Romney types were more beholden to those business interests that liked the cheap labor. You couldn't be more correct. The border

was out completely and totally out of control under the Bush administration. You know, anytime that President Bush talked about an amnesty, we saw a huge influx in people crossing borders illegally. And like what you just said, the Chamber of Commerce's, which again, are majorly controlled by Republicans, they want that cheap labor. So when you look at this, this has been an issue with both Democrats and Republicans. The only president under my, my time as a law enforcement officer, the only president that I have ever seen come in and actually address the issue has been President Trump. Unfortunately, right now, all of his policies have been completely and totally overturned.

And so we're seeing this huge influx, not just from Mexico, not just from Central America, throughout the world. And that's, you know, I go back to President Bush's time. Under his time, we were dealing, again, 90% of the people that we were dealing with were from Mexico. The other 10%, most of them were coming from Central America. Now we're dealing with people throughout the world. When we cleared out that bridge in Del Rio, the very next day, we were apprehending people from Gambia, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Brazil, China. We were apprehending people from all over the world at that exact same place where the United States public was able to get all of those great visuals to see exactly what we're

dealing with. So this problem is a worldwide problem. It's not just a problem with Mexico or Central America anymore. We're seeing people from all over the world, 151 different countries we're apprehending people from. Meanwhile, you've got little kids who are crying in their daycare as these daycare workers say, the mask has to go over the face, the mask over the face, as the little two-year-olds cry as they get smothered by these masks and these masked Nazis who insist that it be over the nose, over the nose. And where are those same people objecting to the sieve that is our southern border as all these folks come into the country? God knows what is wrong with them.

I mean, we heard our own administration say, yeah, they've got some diseases. They're not being tested for COVID. They're not being vaccinated. Here was Dr. Fauci talking about how that's not really a problem. This is soundbite number four. Are immigrants a major reason why COVID-19 is spreading in the U.S.? No, absolutely not, Dan. I mean, if you just look at the data and look at the people who've gotten infected, look at the people who are in the hospital. You don't want to look outside to

the problem. The problem is within our own country. Certainly immigrants can get infected, but they're not the driving force of this. Let's face reality here. My feeling has always been that focusing on immigrants, expelling them or what have you, is not the solution to an outbreak. What do you make of that? course they're spreading the disease. We've already had 14 agents die of COVID that they contracted while on duty. We've had officers at the ports of entry, more than 30 have died of COVID-19. Of course, these people are spreading the disease as they come into the United States, especially when you consider that most of these countries that they're coming from, the rate of the disease is much greater than here in the United States. So again, that's political talking points. And that's what

should frustrate and that's what should upset the American public. When you get a doctor that is willing to put politics before the health and safety of the American public, that's when you know that our government is wrong. And Dr. Fauci, frankly, he's just flat out wrong. I mean, he goes right to like, they're not the cause of COVID. Well, well, duh. I mean, no one's saying that, but it's a problem. My little kid, my assistant's little two-year-old sitting there with her mask on, three-year-old, she's not the problem either. But you've been telling us that everyone needs to do their part. You've told me I have to, you, Fauci, vaccinate my eight-year-old when that gets approved and now my new 12-year-old already because I'm supposed to be, quote, doing my part. And yet when you get asked about millions of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border who may have COVID, it's really not the problem. That's not where we should be focused. Give me a break. All right. My guest today is Brandon Judd. He's the president of the National Border Patrol Council and a Border Patrol agent himself for over 24 years. He's with us. And up next, we're going to talk about DHS Secretary Mayorkas,

who seems to be standing idly by as he rumored 400,000 more migrants are headed our way. Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show. I'm joined today by Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council and a Border Patrol agent for over 24 years. So NBC News reporting that our DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said that he had asked DHS officials whether they were prepared for up to 400,000 people to try to enter the United States in October if that sort of remain

or if that Title 42 ability to expel people based on COVID rule that was handed down by the Trump administration if that were lifted by the courts. And so that's basically what we have is our Homeland Security Secretary predicting 400,000 people are going to try to come into the country in just October alone if that Title 42 COVID policy goes away. Yeah, he's absolutely correct on that issue. I'm going to take umbrage with a lot of the things that he says, but on that issue, he's absolutely correct. If Title 42 goes away and we're not able to expel people immediately under this health code that CDC has recognized, then we're going to just open up the floodgates because everybody is going to be

released. I mean, right now, at least we're expelling about 40% of the people, which is kind of holding at bay this huge surge that is just waiting to come into the United States. I mean, all you have to do is look at the Haitians alone. Peru has reported that over 60,000 Haitians are passing through their country right now as we speak, coming to our southwest border. And that's just from one nation. Again, we're dealing with nations throughout the world. So yes, if that Title 42 were to go away, we're going to be in serious trouble. But we're also going to control the border, we didn't have Title 42. He was able to control it through very savvy negotiations that he was able to do with Mexico. He went into Mexico and he demanded that they become true border security partners. And they did it because he was threatening tariffs. And those tariffs were greater than the amount of money that the cartels were able to make in their smuggling organizations. So the economy was going to take a hit. The Mexican economy was going to take a hit. So they agreed to implement the migrant protection protocols or remain in Mexico program, which is what allowed us to drive illegal

immigration to lows. So even if the title 42 were to go away, which I don't want to see it go away, but if it were to go away, the Biden administration would be able to control this through policy, which, by the way, doesn't cost the taxpayer a cent. It just he's not going to because he's going to continue to appease his base and his base wants open borders. Can we talk about, yeah, of course. And it's the messaging that Biden has been handing down from the beginning. I mean, it's been all talk of asylum and letting folks stay. And the messaging matters. You know, it definitely matters. I mean, people knew under Trump that it was going to be a lot tougher than it was under Obama. We had Dennis Michael Lynch saying it could have been even tougher under Trump. He didn't like some of his softer language on DACA.

But there's no question there was a big difference between Trump's rhetoric about the southern border than we've seen with Biden, who seems to be telegraphing, you know, the borders open, notwithstanding what Mayorkas says. Mayorkas says, fear not, the border's closed. In fact, we've got that sound, but it's number three. Here's DHS Secretary Mayorkas. We heard the sheriff say it, the governor say it, and the migrants I spoke to say it. They are coming across because they believe they will be welcomed under the Biden administration. You said yourself three weeks ago, we're not saying don't come. We're saying don't come now.

President Biden had a stronger message later. But the messages are mixed at best, Mr. Secretary. Martha, good morning. The message is quite clear. Do not come. The border is closed. The border is secure. Okay. So he says from this temperature-controlled studio, unlike you and your guys, you tell me what the truth is.

Yeah. All you have to do is look at the amount of drugs that are on the streets today. That shows that the border isn't secure. Look at the number of people that have been able to enter the country illegally and evade apprehension. That shows the border isn't secure. Look at the number of people that we're releasing with these NTAs under the catch and release program. That shows the border isn't secure. Criminal cartels listen to actions. They don't care about words. They're always going to watch the actions. And the actions of this administration is screaming loud and clear. Our border is open. Go ahead and advertise your services throughout the world, because if they come, we're going to release them. That's the

reason why we're seeing numbers that we've just never seen before in the history of the border patrol. And now on top of, you know, the COVID threat and just the criminality that comes, there's no question when you have this number of migrants crossing the southern border, whether they want to, you know, surround themselves with children that aren't really theirs in order to get in. There is an unhealthy criminal element in it. You also have to worry about the terrorism. And I think about it in the context of Afghanistan, because you got these two dueling crises in America where our Joint Chiefs Chairman, everybody, our

Defense Secretary, everybody's saying we're less safe now as a result of Afghanistan, that there's no question al-Qaeda is going to be back in Afghanistan trying to plot attacks. And we could see one within the next 12 months on the homeland. At the same time, you've got his name, well, you know, Rodney Scott, right? He's former, he's a Border Patrol chief. And he comes out and says this about the terror threat that we're now looking at. We have nation state threats. We have terrorist threats.

We can't get into in this type of a forum, but they're real. They exist. And they want to come across that border. Statistically, it always includes rapists, murderers, potential terrorists every single year. To think that there's not just as bad or worse people in those getting away would be naive. Okay. So this is what Trump was called a racist for over and over when he said that, when he came down the escalator and said, I'm running. They're not sending their best people. They're sending rapists. They're sending murderers. Well, that's true. I mean, it's true. It's not doesn't mean that every single person crossing the

southern border is one of those things, but we do need to worry about it. We have a responsibility to know who is coming into this country. We have a responsibility to vet all of the people that are coming into this country. And when you have illegal immigration at the levels that we that we currently have, we can't do that, let alone know who's coming across that are getting away. But all of these people that are coming across into our country, we can't do backgrounds checks on them in their own countries. We don't have access to their databases like what we do here in the United States. If somebody has a criminal record here in the United States, we're going a criminal record here in the United States,

we're going to know about it because we fingerprint them. But we're not going to know about their criminal records in their own countries because we don't have that access. And we, of course, don't have the time to vet the number of people that are crossing the borders illegally, even if we do, even if we are lucky enough to take them into custody. So, you know, Chief Scott, he's absolutely correct.

And then, of course, when Scott, he's absolutely correct. And then, of course, when you look at the 151 nations, I can tell you, I don't know of a single apprehension from Britain. I don't know of one from France, Germany, Italy. We don't know of apprehensions from those locations because those are well-developed countries. Those are countries that are friendly to the United States. The United Nations identifies 195 countries. Officially, they identify 195. We're apprehending people from 151 of those countries. A lot of those countries are not friendly to the United States.

And those countries, as a government as a whole, they want to do harm to the United States. So, yes, it is a very dangerous. When you consider the number of people and the number of countries, it is very dangerous to the American public, what is coming in from the southwest border. So of course, last month, was it? Yeah, last month, I'm just losing track of my dates. It was very clear the Biden administration used the fake news report about Border Patrol agents allegedly whipping migrants down in Del Rio to distract from the disastrous policy that we were watching unfold right there. I mean, I've heard even the left-wing press saying that now. It's just obvious what was happening.

And the left-wingers, you know, sort of the hardcore leftists ran with it and loved the distraction because they didn't want to talk about actual immigration problems. But meanwhile, as I understand it, we still have some agents on desk duty and facing an investigation that appears very much to be rigged. Mayorkas said up front, it's going to be swift. Then he just came out in response to a press inquiry and said, it's not done yet. It actually hasn't been as swift as he promised from the looks of it. And you tell me whether you think these two agents, when even the photographer who took the original photographs from Reuters has said there was no whipping going on, there was no whip and there was no reins being used to whip anybody. No one got whipped. You tell me whether these guys are still in jeopardy. Yeah, very, very few things will boil my blood as much as a president of the

United States coming out and issuing a declaration of guilty before an investigation even takes place. The president of the United States said those agents will pay. The reason why this investigation is so ongoing is because everybody knows that they didn't do anything wrong. So they're having to overturn it. They're having to turn over every single rock, look in every single nook and cranny to try to find something to justify what the president of the United States says. But it's not just the president. Four of the most powerful people in this country have already condemned those agents to wrongdoing. The president of the United States, the vice president,

the press secretary, Jen Psaki, and of course, DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. They have already issued judgment before an investigation could even take place. And to think that an investigation is going to be impartial and fair after four of the most powerful people in this country, and frankly, in the world,

have already said that they did wrong. You can't expect that an investigation is actually going to be fair. And that's why it's taken so long because these agents did nothing wrong. And on top of not doing anything wrong, they did what they were ordered to do. They are executive branch employees and they follow the orders because the orders come from the president of the United States. The president sent them out to control the border. The president sent them out to ensure that nobody entered the country illegally. But because he's done such a poor job on the border, and because everybody knows he's failing, he had to grasp onto these pictures and try to divert from his failures and put it onto somebody else.

That's what this president is willing to do. And if he's willing to do that to his own agents, what's he willing to do to the American public at large if he thinks it's going to benefit him? That's the thing, too, is it's like that guy on that horse was one of his employees, one of our employees, an American here lawfully trying to keep the rest of us safe under presidential orders. The person he was trying to control was an illegal immigrant who crossed the border without permission, contrary to how the vast majority of immigrants try to get into the country who want to stay. A lot of them wait in line. A lot of them go through the proper hoops. That doesn't mean he should be whipped, but he wasn't. He wasn't. I said for

weeks, show me the evidence. Great. I'd love to see it. If somebody got whipped, that's terrible. We'll take a hard look at that. It wasn't there. And the news media, bit by bit, like you see the New York Times added addendum to its report saying, well, we may have overstated what's knowable so far. That's as much as I've seen in terms of a retraction. Instead, you get rhetoric like this. Forgive me. Hopefully my audience will forgive me for playing the sound bite one more time. But it gives you a flavor, number two, of the left messaging on the real problem down at the southern border. Congress must do the work of investigating and ensuring accountability of the egregious and white supremacist behavior of Border Patrol agents in Del Rio, Texas.

What we witnessed takes us back hundreds of years. What we witnessed was worse than what we witnessed in slavery. Cowboys with their reins again whipping black people people, Haitians into the water where they're scrambling and falling down when all they're trying to do is escape from violence in their country. Should we be looking at the budget of Department of Homeland Security? Because I was not aware that whips, which come from the slave era, slavery era, were part of the package that we issue to any sort of law enforcement or government sanctioned personnel. Were you aware that that was being issued to people, that people had that kind of equipment on them that they could use on humans?

I was not, and I am quite appalled. You know, when it comes to our immigration policy for so many years, cruelty has been very much embedded in it. There is obviously systematic racism at play here. We have seen many people come to our border. And the fact that we are dealing with mainly black migrants and black immigrants and asylum seekers at our border in this kind of way really speaks to the kind of racism, systematic racism that is embedded in that department and all of the departments that deal with our immigration policy. Your message to rhetoric. That is rhetoric. They did not give one fact in any one of those statements. They did not give any facts. Megan, all I want to do is have an honest conversation with the American public. I want the American public to formulate their own opinions based upon all of the evidence. That's what I want. The mainstream media wants to

lead. The mainstream media wants to force everybody to believe what they themselves believe. When you look at the Border Patrol, we have more minorities in the Border Patrol than we do whites. We are the only federal law enforcement agency in the entire nation that has more minorities than we do whites. Yet they're saying that we're racist. Are you kidding me? The majority of that horse patrol unit that was out there are Hispanic. They weren't white. They were Hispanics. And on top of that, these individuals that entered the country illegally, they were not listening to lawful orders. The horse patrol agents, the first thing that they did was gave them lawful orders. They didn't listen. They started to run. Of course, we have to control

that situation. And on top of that, think about what they were in. They were in the middle of the largest single group that has ever existed in the United States. They had 15,000 people to their backs and they had another several hundred people that were trying to cross the border illegally. They were stuck in between that. Everybody knew that this was a very volatile situation. Everybody knew that it could have exploded at any moment. And it did in some cases, look at what happened on that on that flight back to Port-au-Prince, when those ICE agents were attacked, because the Haitian illegal immigrants found out that they were being sent back to Haiti, they were attacked, they were beaten. Look at that bus driver who is transporting 56 Haitians in that bus. And they literally took

the bus over and broke out of the bus. We knew that this was a very volatile situation. Those agents were put in an impossible, impossible situation. And then they get thrown under the bus later on and political rhetoric is used. I will tell you this, and the American public can be assured of this. We will take legal action against every single one of those people, including the news outlets that reported that they whipped those migrants. There was no whipping that took place at all. In fact, all they were doing was using those reins to keep those individuals away from the horse because those horses can step on. They can even kick migrants, which could cause death if they get kicked in the head. So we are trained to ensure that people do not get too close to the horses. And if we have

to twirl the reins in order to keep people away, we will do that. But we never strike out at people with those reins. And that has been proven. Even the photographer said that. So in closing, what what like I don't have time to go through all of the 10 point plan that the governors came up with. But what are what would you say are the top three things that have to happen like now in order to get control over this sieve that is the southern border? The first thing that we have to do is we have to force the Mexican government to be true border security partners. We've that we did that under President Trump. We can do it again. It just takes the political will to make it happen. The second thing is we have to hold

people in custody pending their asylum or deportation proceedings. You have to stop the magnet that is catch and release. And the third thing we have to then, once we can control the illegal immigration system, we then have to go after the cartels and their profits. If we can go after the cartels and their profits, we can then keep our children safe and we can keep the drugs off the streets. Those are the three things that we must do and we must do it immediately. And by the way, once again, not one of those things will cost the taxpayer a dime. Is this going to happen now with the governors of these 10 states or is this more of a demand of the feds? It's a demand.

The governors are because they don't have the authority to do any of those things. They don't have the authority to negotiate policies with the Mexican government. That has to be the State Department that does that. They don't have the authority to detain these individuals and hold them pending court proceedings. What they're doing is they're shining a spotlight on this issue. They are letting the American public know how out of control it is. And they're demanding of this administration that they do their job, that this administration protects the American public. The first thing a government is supposed to do is look out for the

welfare of its citizens. Our government is not doing that right now. In fact, they're pandering to illegal immigration rather than looking out for the welfare of the American public. And we've seen the deadly consequences of this for years now, for years. This is a dangerous game. What a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it, Brandon Judd. Hope you come back. Thank you, Megan. Coming up, all this is hurting Joe Biden. It it's hurting him on the polls wow the the polls when it comes to um let me see i want to get the exact thing how he's doing on crossing the border and handling border crossings are disastrous for him here it is immigration 25 approve 67 disapprove

of the job he's doing at the southern border. Can you imagine? 67 percent. It's basically every Republican and every independent in the country, plus some Democrats. Coming up, we're going to talk about that, plus his other poll numbers that we just got out. Hunter Biden's artwork and a violated promise from the White House on that and much, much more with the hosts of the new Ink Stained Wretches podcast. Love it. Eliana Johnson and Chris Darwell, coming up. Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show.

It's time for another edition of our feature here on the MK Show called You Can't Say That, or Think That, or Do That. Oh, wait, this is America. We've been doing that feature on our podcast, and we haven't done it since we launched on SiriusXM and YouTube, but you'll love it. Today, we're talking about challenges, hardship, and the classroom. Here's the question of the day. Is it good for a student to encounter a class that is rigorous? Absolutely not, according to an article in the Chronicles of Higher Education, which makes the case for why it is, quote, time to cancel the word rigor. And why exactly is it time to do that? The authors claim the term rigor lays credit or blame on an individual,

when often it is the academic system that creates the constructs, and it's the system we should be questioning when it erects barriers for students to surmount or makes them feel that they don't belong. Ah, yes, making your class a challenge for students to overcome is now about excluding those students who aren't up for said challenge. Yes, the authors write that rigor is an exclusionary concept that leads to preferential practices. And it's not just rigor they have a problem with. No, grit is also bad. It's a bad thing in today's snowflakes culture, with the authors linking to another article that makes the case for why grit is, quote, inherently anti-black. So remember, if you're a teacher that's daring to put together a class

that is not properly simple so all students remain unchallenged at all times and you introduce the concept of rigor or grit into your teachings, well, you can't say that. Steve Krakauer, you know what? Whenever I see these stories, I think, great, my kids are going to crush these kids. My kids, when they meet these kids from these schools, are going to freaking crush. Right. I mean, just the idea of working hard, you don't even have to be smart. If you work hard, you have a leg up now because apparently that's impossible to do these days. That's inappropriate to be challenged.

Right. In fact, if you just make it challenging as a teacher, that's inappropriate to be challenged. Right. In fact, if you just make it challenging as a teacher, that's your racism. Right. Right. Yeah. It's offensive now. You must dumb everything down so no one can be challenged at all. That's clear. I mean, they're getting rid of gifted and talented programs. It's unbelievable. But this is happening everywhere. It's insane. By the way, that's our executive producer, Steve Krakauer, just back from paternity leave. He's got a brand new baby in addition to his other child, Jackson, and we're grateful to have him back. Don't go away because we're going to have Chris Dyer, Walt and Eliana Johnson next right after this break.

Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly show. I am joined now by Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, and my old pal Chris Stierwald, contributing editor of the online news magazine The Dispatch. Now, they are both co-hosts of the new podcast, Ink Stained Wretches, which I'm sorry, Stierwald, I don't mean to presume that you came up with that, but it's got your name written all over it. And I mean that in the nicest way. There may be some Steyer-Waltian notes engaged with that, but we are both. In the event that you hate it, it was all Chris. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we're both started in print media and we fight nostalgia. We don't want to be nostalgic for how things used to be. But that's definitely our bias was for when things sucked less.

Yes, I share that. I'm surprised that you managed to keep the name Bacon out of it, Eliana. I mean, did he fight hard? She's Jewish. Well, I was going to say, as the resident Jew on the podcast, I told him, like, try to limit the amount of pork products and references. Hard line. Hard line. There's so much to go over. Let me start with Biden's poll numbers because I just had the head of the Border Patrol on. We were talking about the disgusting numbers on immigration and Mexican border for President Biden. Good Lord, they're terrible.

This is the Quinnipiac poll showing that Biden's approval rating on handling the Mexican border in particular is 23%, 67% disapproved, and immigration overall, 25% approval rating. But overall, in general, these poll numbers are terrible. Overall, his approval rating is now at 38%, 50% disapproving. What do you guys make of it? You know, Megan, it seems to me, I mean, these are Trump level approval ratings. And we heard lots of talk about that, of course, for four years. But I think the first, you know, nine months of the Biden administration have sort of undermined his performances, undermined the perception he wanted or what he ran on, which was that he's a competent moderate and that he's going to bring in a lot of experienced technocrats. And it may

be that he did bring in experienced technocrats, but they have, I think, not been a match for the issues he's facing from, you mentioned, the influx of migrants on the southern border to the pullout from Afghanistan to the back and forth confusing guidance on the coronavirus, the pause of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, I think was really damaging under Biden. So and right now we see Congress unable to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill and really Biden's domestic agenda hanging in the balance. So I don't think it's too hard to explain those approval ratings. The Afghanistan numbers are reflected in here, Stierwald, in that commander in chief, 37 percent of the people approve, 58 percent disapprove foreign policy, 34 percent approval, 58 percent disapprove. They're terrible. I mean, they're really sucking wind.

So how how long do these things kind of stay on you? Right. Does the stank stay to the midterm elections and drag down the Democratic ticket? Well, the good news for Democrats is that it's probably happening too early and that Biden has time for this to come back. We have to remember the you said what it was, 26 percent in Quinnipiac on handling of the border. 23% is what I wrote down, and 25% on immigration. So the 27% or whatever, the overwhelming majority that oppose Biden on this and say that he's doing a bad job include all of the Republicans. So that's 47% of the country. And then it includes Democrats who think that he's being too hard. And we saw this happen with Obamacare. Obamacare was consistently

unpopular. Obamacare was consistently unpopular for two reasons. All of the Republicans thought it was too liberal. And some of the Democrats thought it was too liberal and some of the Democrats thought it was too conservative. So what Biden is struggling with right now is that his own party does not really want him to secure the border. His own party doesn't really want him to do these things. His own party wanted him to pull out pulling out in the, you know, the bomb, the drone strike against the people that the Pentagon came out and said was a mistaken hit, probably cost him with some Democrats. The challenge for Democrats always is they don't. So, you know, you and I have talked many times about this, the concept of a mommy party and a daddy party. And the Republicans are supposed to be the daddy party.

They're supposed to be tougher and they're supposed to be fiscally restrained and they're supposed to be they're supposed to kill terrorists and keep immigrants from coming into the country. And the mommy party is supposed to be nice to people and make things like say 10,000 Haitian immigrants can't just run across the United States border. When you do that, what's going to happen? You're going to lose with your own base. Biden's problem is right now more than anything else that his own base is frustrated with him and not being able to deliver the stuff that they want. You think that's more of a problem than the loss of independence reflected in these polls? I mean, when it comes to winning elections, you know, he needs he needs the independence. He needs some some crossover. You have time to get the independence back. So for Biden, you have time to come back if the economy basically if the economy is growing Oh, 2024. But I'm talking about the midterms, which is which is what's more interesting, because right now we got inflation out the yin yang and it doesn't look like it's going to get any better anytime soon. I actually think the problem is a little bit different. Yes,

Biden is losing independent voters because he's not handling the border in a competent fashion, but he's a party man. And so he has largely gone along with the left wing of his party. And the regnant ideology in the Democratic Party is an elite ideology, you know, wokeism and the far left. That is the province of wealthy white elites on the coast. And by and large, the Democratic Party is more moderate than that, which is why Biden was elected. But Biden tends to go along with the loudest voices in his party, which you saw as recently as last week when the White House and Nancy Pelosi were saying, we're holding a vote on this bipartisan infrastructure bill before we have any sort of agreement on, yeah, before we have any sort of agreement on the $3.5 trillion boondoggle. And basically they cave to the left on that. When you ask about the impact on the midterms, I think it could be that we're dealing with

an entirely different set of issues. Things move quickly. On the other hand, it could be that these issues do hang over Biden because there's some fallout. There's a terrorist attack from Afghanistan or he doesn't manage to pass any kind of infrastructure bill. And he's got one. What are they going to run on?

You something's going to pass right now in Virginia. And he's saying,. What are they going to run on? You see Terry McAuliffe right now in Virginia. And he's saying like Biden's a problem for him. So if that's the when is the Virginia election? When is the Virginia election? Three weeks from Tuesday. OK, so so Governor Ralph Northam is out and the contest is between Terry McAuliffe and I can never say the guy's name. Glenn Youngkin. Glenn Youngkin. Youngkin. I'm like, I want to pronounce it like young, like Carl Youngkin. It's like just think of him as a rapper, Youngkin. Youngkin. Okay. Anyway, he's doing well. I mean, he's this guy Youngkin's doing better than we thought in Virginia. He's the Republican. A

Republican hasn't won at the governor level since 2006 in Virginia, according to my notes. And so that it's interesting what's happening there because McAuliffe was beating him by 6.6 at the end of August. Now the lead, according to Real Clear Politics average of all polls, is down to 4.3. And McAuliffe, Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton administration is like, Biden, who? F Joe Biden. I don't know. Who's who is that? I he's really trying to distance himself saying, oh, yeah, I don't support the three point five trillion infrastructure plan. And, you know, I'm really facing some headwinds from Washington. But you tell me, because I think that's going to that's earlier than the midterms. And I think that all of this is a drag on him. So in the last 11 Virginia gubernatorial elections, in nine out of 10 out of the 11, nine out of the 11, I'm sorry,

Samantha Goldstein, Research Assistant Extraordinaire is with us. In nine of the past 11 Virginia gubernatorial elections, the outcome of the election was predictive of how midterms were going to go. This has been a really good bellwether over, and we remember in 2009 when Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie won in Virginia and New Jersey, that that was a big harbinger for why Republicans were going to do well in 2010. But 2009 elections in Virginia were important. I don't expect for Glenn Youngkin to win. I don't think that's probably what's going to happen. He is, I'll give a one in five chance. I think he's... Megan, cut that clip so that when Youngkin wins, you can play that over and over again. I don't expect... This was a thing that we went through in 2016 where people were like,

well, you said Trump wasn't going to win. I said Trump is probably not going to win. You wouldn't get in an elevator that don't get a chance of started on that the number of conversations you and I had styrewall done whether Trump was going to win that race. I mean, I could really bring that back to haunt you at the moment. No, I never thought Trump was likely to win, but I never said he couldn't. Oh, my God. If I could just play the tape that's in my brain, you would be totally impeached with your prior inconsistent statement. I am willing to be impeached, counselor.

Well, let me make the case for Yunkin. OK. OK. Virginia is now a Democratic state. It is a suburban Democratic state. Biden won the state by 10 points. Mark Warner, the Democratic senator, won the state by 10 points mark warner the democratic senator won re-election by 12 points in 2020 and the internals on each of these campaigns show

basically a tied race so i think yunkin is doing much better than people expected no uh and i if he loses no i think his margin of loss is or his margin. Sorry. Yeah. McCullough's margin of victory will be smaller than Biden's. Virginia is a 45 percent Republican state. That's how Republican Virginia is. It's 45 percent Republican.

There have been three candidates since 2012 who under or overperformed those numbers. One time they Republicans nominated a kook who got 40% of the vote. One time, Mark Obenshain, shout out to all the Obenshain fans out there, got basically within 300 votes of winning attorney general. And the best performance for Republicans in Virginia in the current post-Bob McDonnell era

was when former RNC chairman, Ed Gillespie, came very close. Okay, it's a Republican state. No, no, no, let's move on. when former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie came very close. Okay. It's a Republican state. No, no, no, no. Let's move on. Two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor. We don't care this much about Virginia.

I got to keep you guys on track. We care a little bit about Virginia, but not quite this much. Let's move on because I do care about Hunter Biden. No, no. Cliffy. Cliffy. Reel it in. Let's talk about Hunter Biden, who you're going to be shocked that the White House appears

to have broken a promise to us on his art, on his artwork. And you're also going to be shocked to learn that some people want to spend between seventy five thousand, they say, maybe up to a million dollars on Hunter Biden's artwork. I will say as an aside, given Hunter Biden's past, like the art world seems like a decent place for him to land. You know, all that weirdness. It's like that kind of helps you like the art world seems like a decent place for him to land. You know, all that weirdness. It's like that kind of helps you in the art world. Nobody holds that against you. A lot of people have been to prison and then were famous artists. So that's good.

Right. That being said, I don't think these people are shelling out for the art, Megan. OK, what a shock. They're not shelling out the 500K for the beautiful artwork. So can you help the audience understand what's gone on here? He's doing the art and he had a big art show last night. It's a muckety muck gallery. And I recognize a bunch of the faces. And yet we were told on the White House something else was going to happen. We were told it's going to be a blind sale of the Hunter Biden artwork where we wouldn't he wouldn't know who spent all the money on his beautiful art. And thus sort of the Chinese wall was in place to protect the White House from doing favors for any of these purchasers. Is that basically the deal that we were promised? The ethical myopia of the Trump administration was made correctly,

much sport of. People talked a lot about how people use the Trump Hotel and other ways, the big, beautiful golf courses of Doral and all that other stuff to try to influence Trump. These were fair and correct criticisms. And they never did. Donald Trump never did the right thing ethically as president. Biden is doing and what is happening now is an ethical quagmire, should be an emoluments clause discussion, should be all of this stuff. How possibly could you defend? I think back to George H.W. Bush wrote a letter to his sons when he was running for president. And he said, you know what? Life is hard and you're going to have to forego a lot of things that you might otherwise be able to get because I'm running for president, but you're going to have to forego a lot of things that you might otherwise be able to get because I'm running for president, but you're going to have to forego them. And you're going to have to do the right stuff because if you want to be in public life, there are sacrifices you have to make. This is gross. This is inappropriate. This is ethically and morally just a disaster. And the fact that they're not being called on it is why we should have a podcast called

Inkstand Wretches where we talk about what's wrong with the media. I have to tell you, I have another example for you. This is several years ago, Kate Middleton got in trouble because she decided to sunbathe topless out on some balcony where she thought she was in private, but she got caught. One of the two of us is very eager to see those images. By the paparazzi. And somebody was asking me if I felt sorry for her. And I said, no, I do not feel sorry for her because you have to make some sacrifices if you're going to be the next queen of England. And that's just the way life works. Same thing, you know, the message from H.W.

And you're gorgeous and men want to see you topless. I feel so sorry for you. You know what? You're married to the good brother. So you got nothing to complain about. And that's that's the position, I guess, Hunter Biden finds himself in, in which, you know, trying to earn money off of donors, potential donors to his dad's next campaign can cause headaches for himself and well, really more accurately for his dad. So Jen Psaki was asked about this obvious conflict and

problem by a bunch of reporters, actually, at the White House press corps. And here's how that went. What is the White House's response to the fact that an ambassador nominee was at this event? And secondly, should we expect to see more people who seek jobs in this administration attending events like this? Well, to be clear, we've spoken to the arrangement that is run by the gallerist and Hunter Biden's representatives that the White House provided suggestions for. I'd refer you to the gallerist for questions. This is exactly what ethicists said they were worried about. What is specifically? The fact that the president reportedly attended an event. So does this White House not have any

concerns about the photos that have emerged showing Hunter Biden at that gallery alongside prospective buyers? I pointed to the gallerist on specifics of the restrictions that were put in place. Right. But what about the position of this White House? This is a president who ran on being transparent. And we were very transparent about what recommendations were made to the gallerist. And I would again point to them or the many times I've spoken about that from here. She's going to circle back. The gallerist. We didn't realize when the White House made this announcement that it was just providing soft recommendations that the gallerist was free to adhere to or toss in the wastebasket. But they point out something important there about L.A. Mayor Garcetti, who's our nominee to be ambassador to India. And surprisingly, he was there just because he loves art.

He's a big, big fan of weird, big flowers. It was it was it was a toss up between Rembrandt and Hunter Biden. Yeah, we have hundreds of thousands of dollars being funneled to the son of a sitting U.S. president, presumably by people who would like to curry favor with this president and are using Hunter Biden's art as a means to do that. Do you know where in Washington, D.C., MK, do you remember where the National Gallery of Art is that backs up on Pennsylvania Avenue? I have no culture in my life, so no, I never went there. And I'm not familiar. Do you remember where the Newseum was? Do you remember where the Capitol Grill is? Yes, the Capitol Grill, I know. Now we're talking about. Oh, now we're talking. Now

you're back in my world. So on that location is where President James A. Garfield was assassinated. He was murdered. That was the former site of the B&O Railroad terminal before they built Union Station. The person who killed James A. Garfield... Wake me up when this is over. Oh, now, okay. Now you're getting a good taste of what the podcast actually sounds like. But James A. Garfield was killed by a deranged office seeker who wanted favors from the federal government. And James Garfield was a reformer and said, we're not going to do as much of this crummy patronage stuff and all of this other stuff. And this man, Charles Gatteau, shot him right there in that spot, Giving away free stuff, the power to have influence, the power to make money, the power to do all this stuff for privileged and influenced people is not new. This is not a new problem. And everyone will always act morally obtuse about it.

The Trump kids did. The Biden people are. We should call all of them on it all of the time because what it adds up to is a theft of their responsibility. They're stealing from us, even if it's not in money. They're stealing from us what they owe us, which is to put the interest of the country ahead of everything else and not even by a close margin. All right. We have so much more to go over. I want to get in. I want to ask you about Katie Couric's new book.

I want to ask you about Stephanie Grisham turning on the Trump administration two seconds after she's out of it. And then I want to ask about the three of us cable news veterans and how we think the media industry is doing without us. The cable news media industry, that is. OK, apropos of absolutely nothing, I just wanted to play this soundbite and get your reaction. Justin Trudeau, the wokest blackface wearing man in politics, has taken a shot at saying there's, you know, LGBT, it used to be LGB, and then it was like LGBT, and apparently it's LGBTQ two plus. And he's not so good at saying that the wokest man in woke politics. Take a listen to this. I will never apologize for standing up for an LGBT, LGBTQ two plus kids rights. I mean, who among us, right?

When the debate comes down about which country is the whitest country in the world and they can like Iceland and Greenland are like duking it out. Canada better be in there because that is the kind of awkwardness that only white men can really deliver at such a high level. They're very impressive. He followed it up on Facebook and there he got it right. This is, so this is what he tweeted. People across the country are lighting candles to honor indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA plus people who are missing or have been murdered and so on, blah, blah, blah, blah. What's 2SL?

Counselor, you're making that up. That is not a fact. Listen to me. Oh, contraire. It stands for two-spirit. They have their own letters now. Two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual people. Oh, my God.

It's exhausting. Same, same, same. I feel seen. Finally. Finally, someone's speaking out to the 2sq community this is finally finally i i feel i did i feel i feel identified i'm the plus you're the you're always the plus like i've said before questioning doesn't get its own letter that's bullshit right what's quite right you'll get your own check us out later come back to us later you're questioning

now you can always call back and tell us what you're into. Well, no, once you're not questioning, you're out, unless you decide like you're LGBTQ. You don't have to list it and then just check out later. Like if you want to be gay later, then holler. Why can't the Q stand for both queer and questioning? Why did they get a second Q? That's where it really starts to go off the rails.

Think of all the money we're wasting on paper, throwing extra Qs in there. We're just, this is, so that's bad for the earth. That bad for global warming extra i object i object to all of this and i feel confident that my pal andrew sullivan would back me up on this um okay in other salacious news can we just spend because we're going to get to fox and cnn um and all that stuff but i just got to spend a minute on stephanie grisham who was melania's press secretary and then moved up to the white house press secretary um and she she left the white house like she says she resigned 15 minutes after melania refused to did i say after trump trump's press secretary anyway she says she

resigned 15 minutes after um melania refused to condemn the january 6th riot in the way that she had suggested to her. She wanted to say something and Melania allegedly texted back. No, she didn't want to weigh in. And Stephanie Grisham says, 15 minutes later, I resigned. I walked around carrying my resignation letter. I will say in general, I don't love the I worked for the person and I cashed the paycheck. And then five minutes later, when something really controversial happened, I quit. Now I condemn everything and I tell everything that I wasn't supposed to tell. And you break the confidence that you're supposed to. I don't know. It's just the whole thing is unseemly. And I know Stephanie a little. And I understand she struggled with abuse in her life and stuff

like that. But I just in the end, I opted not to invite her on because it just feels unseemly to me. But here's just a little clip of what she's saying, because I'd love to get your reaction to this press tour. I had been trying to resign actually for the past six, seven months, and she had always talked me out of it and asked me to stay strong. I actually had a resignation letter in a folder with no date for the last four months of the administration that I just wanted to hand over if necessary. It was that bad for me. You weren't a short timer. I mean, you were a lifer. You were a lifer. So the number of choices that you made over five or six years, it's immeasurable. I mean, it's hard to say, oh, I just realized now after six years that this was all a really bad idea a deadly in some cases bad idea

i've had a lot of time to think about that and again not an excuse but i worked on the the east wing side of the house for two and a half years of that and so again naive as it may sound, I was really kind of locked off from the West Wing. Come on. I just she was the only person in the country who had no idea what was going on in the White House. I mean, either stand by it or don't. Right. You don't have to endorse everything that Trump did if you work for Trump. But you say, look, on balance, I found him more of a positive force than a negative force.

That's why I stayed. to say, look, on balance, I found him more of a positive force than a negative force. That's why I stayed or say, my God, like crazy about the mainstream coverage of this is she's now on every show. And I know she was in the White House. I covered the Trump White House for four years of Politico and left wing. And like she was not credible, a total liar. And now that she's out of the White House and bashing Trump like, oh, we all got to listen to her and take what she says at face value. I think it's ridiculous. And I share your distaste, Megan, I think, for people who go and work ostensibly for the country and then try to, in this case, recover their reputations and cash in on that service by throwing their old bosses. I like what Mattis did. You know, Mattis,

he wasn't getting along. He exited screen left, didn't write a book. He left with his dignity. Like, just do that. If it's not working out, just just do that. You know, counselor, you and I are part of a very small group of people in the world who formerly worked for the Fox News Channel and who don't anymore, and have never done, have never tried to go catch in on saying stuff about what happened at Fox. I look at every time you pay me, and this applies to the Dispatch and the American Enterprise Institute, where I'm very privileged to get to be a senior fellow now. What am I? A senior fellow. Who is this brilliant research assistant?

What's her name? Maybe we have to look for her. Are there any junior fellows at AI? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There are? Yeah, we're printing them like $100 bills. She don't want your head to get too big. No, no, no.

Trust me. My head is big enough by genetics. I don't need any extra. This is as big as it goes. But here's the thing. Every time my paycheck clears, it covers everything up to that moment, right? That is an implicit contract between me and my employer that I cannot have a seizure of conscience the day after the paycheck clears. We're up to date every other Friday. And for people who

take the money, the Latin word for salary and salt, our word for it, so be worth your salt, you get your salt, you get your pay. And when you get your pay, that covers everything that came before it. And then you can quit or you can leave. And I respect Stephanie Grisham for quitting. And there were a lot of people who quit in or around January 6th because of the disgusting conduct of the president around that stuff, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. But you don't then get to go back before that and say,

ah, while I was taking the money and enjoying the celebrity of this, now I have other thoughts around that. That's a bunch of bogus, bogus. I'll tell you, it's like, look, I can speak to this. When I was at NBC, I saw some things going down and there is a segment, you can go back and Google it. I believe it was September 4th of 2018, where I went on the air and called out Andy Lack by name. You did it in real time.

Somebody who lied about their investigation into Harvey Weinstein and why it was spiked and so on. And a month after that, I no longer work for NBC. It was a very proud. I've always been proud to be your friend, but that was one of my proudest days to be your friend. Thank you, Chris. And we were nervous about it. It's nervous.

It's hard to go out and do something like that. You were right. You were right to be nervous because they fired your ass. Just for the record, they canceled my show. I'll leave the firing question out into the ether um but you don't you know it's not to say you've got to go run to the cameras every time your employer does something you find controversial but i just like these tell-all books just make me feel uncomfortable but not when it's about your life i feel like katie kirk's in a different situation she's had time between her time at nbc or time at cnn and now apparently she's coming out with a book called Going There. It doesn't even hit yet, but it's made so many

headlines in the Daily Mail, which I love, that CBS has dumped her interview. CBS announced just based on the Daily Mail, I guess, that it's canceling her promotional interview. She was all set to do with Gayle King. She's getting hit because she admits she wouldn't help younger women while at NBC because like Ashley Banfield, she said, because she admits she wouldn't help younger women while at nbc because like ashley banfield she said because she would have considered it self-sabotage uh she believed ashley banfield's dad was running around saying ashley was going to get katie's job and that's why she felt that way ashley who's i have to say always a class act i love ashley banfield came out and said um she's yeah she does but she can't said i'm really hurt by that and by the way

my dad was senile and in a nursing home and And I don't know what you're talking about. But he no. Anyway, Deborah Norville, I guess she said Deborah Norville had relentless perfection that was off putting to viewers. Deborah Norville's now come out and saying, like, I'm so stunned by these comments. I can't even respond. And on and on it goes. Comments about Diane Sawyer. So what do you make of Katie Couric sort of going there, as the title says, on everyone. I'm going to shut up immediately. But just to say that this is, in fact, Eliana's. Is this your obsession for this week's episode? This is my obsession. Oh, good. If you enjoy this segment, please subscribe to Ink Stained Wretches. Look, on Katie, Megan, you kind of have to applaud her transparency for saying I tried to kneecap these other women. Like, I appreciate the honesty there. But there's another portion of the book where she says, I just had no idea Roger Ailes was a pig. And I had no idea Jeffrey Epstein was a pervert. And I didn't know about Harvey Weinstein. And I didn't know about Matt Lauer. But the book is about how she's like an intrepid journalist. But somehow all these gross men got by her, by the way, men who could presumably help advance her career.

So I like the transparency on the kneecapping other women, even if I don't like the meaning of it. I think I think that often happens. And it's like nice to see somebody admit that she did it. But I think she's not being totally candid on, in the pervert file. In the pervert file. I would say, you know, we'll be running that one. You're going to be really,

really busy. I saw you guys did. You already did a great thing about Chris Cuomo, which I recommend to everybody. Cause since I'm speaking of the pervert file, I think I will say this just for the record. I take pride in having mentored a lot of young women coming up behind me. And Roger Ailes, speaking of Roger,

he did give me a great piece of advice once and I took it to heart, which was you should never feel threatened by young women coming up after you, especially the ones who try to emulate you or they do your hair or they, you know, they copy your hair or they copy your wardrobe or your style because there's only one you.

And no matter how hard anybody tries to copy or whatever they do, there's only one you. So you focus on your own game, make your own game in A plus and then you can lift those coming up behind you instead of worrying about them. That has worked for me. Has anybody on this podcast or this radio show

ever had their haircut written up in the New York Times? Oh, wait. Oh, wait. It was you. I'm aspiring to that level where the New York Times gives a crap who's cutting my hair. One day when you get a haircut, it will receive notice in the New York Times. I totally believe that. You will follow in the footsteps of Megan.

And one day your hair stylings will be a matter of the public record in America's newspaper. Megan, I will say, like, back in the day, I think my first, like, big TV interview was with you when you had the daytime show at Fox. And I can testify that you were wonderful and very impressive, the most fun I've ever had in television, bar none. There's not a second. There's not a close second was daytime nighttime with you. Primetime with you was a lot of fun. But the one o'clock and two o'clock hours was just the best, the most delightful television I ever got to do. It was truly fun, truly enjoyable.

It was so fun. I had to say so both of those shows, the one o'clock to three and then the nine o'clock that we did in the primetime were number one in their time slot and nine o'clock wound up being number one in cable news. But we led with you every night, every night. We like the Kelly file. It's just raw sex appeal. It's just what America desires is more hillbillies with pumpkin heads.

That's what everybody all the time says. Megan brought the sex appeal and you brought like the Grover Cleveland. I was going to say, together we averaged out as a normal looking person. Yeah, five. You guys were a five. Right. Together we averaged out as a five. Stop it. No, but it was tons of fun. It was tons of work. It really was. Cable's complicated and it's certainly more complicated now. And I've read a lot of your criticisms of the business, Chris, and I agree with them. You know, it's sort of devolved to a dark place where it's all about just clicks and stoking outrage and not really delivering the news in a way that I think you certainly have a history of doing. And I'd like to believe I've tried to. Eliana, you were at Politico and then and now with the Free Beacon.

Politico's left leaning. It is. And Free Beacon's right leaning. And can you just tell me, because our EP, Steve Krakar, I didn't actually realize this happened to you on CNN because you were also a CNN contributor at the time. So what happened? I I had a wonderful time at Politico. I really have only the most like only kind things to say about them. But I was ready for a new challenge. And I was at the time a CNN contributor for two years. And the day I announced that I was leaving to go run the free beacon, which by the way, like, you know, I'm not into like the category checking, but I'm like the first woman to be the editor in

chief of a conservative magazine. So it wasn't like nothing. CNN told me, like, we're not renewing your contract. And I think it's pretty clear they've become they've become an arm of the Democratic Party. And there's just no room on the network for, I think, intelligent, conservative voices. I don't know how Mary Katherine Hamm does it because she's one. She she's holding on. I don't know how Mary Catherinham does it because she's one. She's holding on. I love her. I want to sort of go by with a flowered van and get her.

But I'm sure it helps pay the bills. And Mary Catherinham is such a lovely and sympathetic person. Like even CNN couldn't- The other MK, we love you too. That's right. Yeah, we love her too. So that leads me to you, my friend, Stirewalt, which is, you know, you left Fox News. I was so sad to see it happened. And for the record, I knew you were

busy and you weren't paying attention to our podcast. But one of the other people I love is Steven Crowder. His episode remains hugely popular in our archives, by the way. He was coming after you pretty good after the election in the Arizona call saying Fox News called it. It wasn't about you. It was about the decision desk. They called it too early. They called it too early. And I was battling right back saying, you got to know these guys. They're the utmost professionals. You know, I trust them. I trust them. And you've been proven right. Now, people could still say it was too early while still not arguing with the result. I don't want to get back into all that. I do want to get into a headline I saw that made me feel sad, which you said it was heartbreaking and humiliating when a month later, Fox fired you. And it was heartbreaking for me,

too. Can we just talk about that? Well, that was that interview. I was taken by surprise in an interview with Australian Broadcasting talking about what was going on in the 2020 election. And I had to talk about what it was like to have to tell my sons. And it was hard. I was not the only person who lost a job in the past year. And it was hard for all of them to lose a job. To get fired sucks. Nobody likes it. But- To do so in the public eye too, I think is extra hard. Yeah, but I got, you know what? Um, God is good all the time. And, uh, I definitely, it was a, I spent a decade at Fox and am proud of all the work I did there and never said anything that wasn't, I didn't think was true and never, uh, did less than I thought was my best. But they don't owe me a living, and they don't owe me a job, and that's okay.

What is even better is that as I have watched cable news in general, Fox in particular, my stuff doesn't fit their business model, right? My content does not work for what they're doing. And I totally understand that because the whole point of me is that I will try to cheerfully, I hope, in a friendly neighborhood way, tell you what you don't want to hear, too. The difference between news and entertainment is that in the news, sometimes we have to tell you what you don't want to hear. Glenn Youngkin might win Virginia's gubernatorial election, but I don't think he's likely to win Virginia's gubernatorial election. If you want to tune in someplace where people will just tell you what you want to hear, I'm not going to work for that because I'm going to say it how it is. Then you're going to hear McAuliffe stealing it.

Then we'll hear McAuliffe stealing it. And we were know, we just, we were on insane wretches this week. We talked about how AT&T funded the one America news network and put all this money by behind OANN to be a competitive Fox. So here's AT&T parent company of CNN putting money behind this goofball. Can, can, can I say half-assed on your show? Yeah. I, some guys yelling at me for saying fucking on the podcast yesterday. I'm like, buddy, you got to go check the archives. Whoa, I'm so glad I didn't know I could use that word until right now. Don't encourage her. Don't encourage her, Megan.

So here's this half-assed network that is not doing a good job and not trying to tell the truth and all that stuff. And it was relatively cheap for AT&T to fund them to dump this hot garbage out into the space. So I guess my point is, I have been, if you would have told me that you and I would get to do what we did, that I would get to be on your show, that we'd get to do all those debates and do all that stuff and go around the country and do those things, that I would sit down in a movie theater one day and there'd be Charlize Theron playing you and me in a split screen with, that I would sit down in a movie theater one day and there'd be Charlize Theron playing you and me in a split screen with her, I would have said, there's no way that could ever happen. Who am I but a simple country pundit? And we did it. And it was great. And it was

fantastic. And now this is fantastic. And it's all fine. And it will all be okay. I love the way you describe that. That's how I see you too. And I think, unfortunately, people took out their rage about Trump's loss on you and to some larger extent, the Fox decision desk, which has a lot of people, by the way, it's not just Chris. I don't know why Chris got- It's the great Arnon, or as we call him now, Q Arnon. Arnon Mishkin is the head of it. Q Arnon, that's amazing. Anyway, you're right. That's what you did for many, many years is you gave it to a straight and then you'd have me, you know, that's what you were missing. That's why it fell apart at the end because you didn't have me beating you up a little bit and then appeared on your primetime show, and we rapped. And I'm in the lobby walking out afterwards, and he goes, how do you think it went? I said, you know the steam catapults that they have to shoot the F-14 Tomcats off of

the deck of the aircraft carrier in the high seas? That was what I just did, because it was high impact, high intensity. You bring the heat, sister. You bring the heat, sister. You bring the heat. Well, listen, I know that this is going to be successful because truly if here's a note to the viewers, if you find yourself listening to somebody like Stierwald or Elian or anybody saying something that doesn't comport with your worldview, right? Like you don't like what he's saying, whatever.

Maybe take his example. McAuliffe is going to win and Youngkin's going to lose. And if you find yourself doing this, this is a visual for those that just listening, I'm batting my eyelashes a lot, like I'm about to get hit. Then you need to reconsider the way you consume your news, right? Like you can take the hit if it's information you may need. You may not like it. You may not wind up even accepting it. But it's not a great idea to attack the messenger for offering what they believe to be the facts. Right. And somebody like Starwalt's in a position to actually know them on a night like election night. And he was he was right. Trump did lose Arizona.

And even if he hadn't, he still would have lost the election. I know people don't like that. People who are Trump fans. But it's not Chris's fault. And Chris, for years and years and years, sat out there on that Fox News set, giving you very fair and balanced information and often had a lot of little darlings for people on the right, all of which should not be forgotten.

You know, he would call it both ways. You just don't go with the tide either way. And that's important in today's day and age when mostly the tide goes left and you need honest brokers saying, hey, here I am. The saying goes, with or without offense to friend or foe, we sketch your world exactly as it goes. And that's the idea. The idea is that we want, and this is, I think, I don't want to speak for Eliana, but I think what we're calling our colleagues to, two things will be required to save journalism and to save media and to save America.

Americans will have to become better and more educated consumers. This is not a passive action. Citizenship in a republic is not a passive activity. You better be better. And if you can be tricked into – if Facebook can own you, then you're too dumb and please don't vote. But the other part is this is a vocation. This is a calling. You have to be serious about this work matters to you. It's not just because you have a Twitter account that makes you a journalist. This is a vocation. We are called to do this work

and it matters and we better take it serious. We don't have to take ourselves seriously, but we have to take the work seriously. And the third is bacon. Oh, Eliana Starwalt. Such a pleasure. You guys. Great, great luck with it. I'll definitely be listening and have been. And I know it's going to do super well because of you, too. Thank you. Thank you. All the best. Love to know your thoughts on anything we've discussed today. The phone lines are firing up. Give us a call now. 833-44-MEGYN. Do you think there will be any fallout from the Hunter Biden art extravaganza? And by the way, did you watch my interview with Scott Gottlieb yesterday, the former FDA commissioner? Got a little heated,

got a little salty. Would love to know your thoughts on how that went, too, because we didn't get time to take calls. 833-446-3496. Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show. The phone lines are open. Call us at 833-44-MEGYN, M-E-G-Y-N. That's 446-3496. We're going to take our first caller. It's Amy in Florida, who's got a question for us today. Amy, what's on your mind? Hey, Megyn. How are you? Hi. Good. Thanks. Good, good. I was just wondering, I don't know. I don't know enough about your history to know

if you've been in the White House briefing room. But when the press secretary states a blatant lie, how come the press can't just say, know what that's a lie i mean are there will there be will they get kicked out will they not be allowed back in because it just seems so it just seems so um even steve even peter ducey is you know he tries with the follow-up questions but it just never seems like somebody just calls her out for lying. I mean, just a pure lie. Well, I think there's sort of an expected level of decorum, which even, you know, under the Trump administration,

people tried. You could see their exasperation with, you know, Kayleigh McEnany or what have you, and you can see it now with Jen Psaki, really only thanks to Peter Doocy. But there's a level of decorum that I think is expected of the of the White House press corps. But they are supposed to stay on it to the extent they can stay on it and push for follow ups or real answers. They should. And it's just when the

whole press corps actually, you know, rains hell down on the press secretary because it's clear she's or he's been lying. It's a thing of beauty. It's like music being made. It's just it happens so infrequently because everyone's got an agenda and, you know, they don't align. It's it was nice during the Afghanistan fallout because the press was against Biden and that. So you saw reporters really doing their job and they got blowback on the Hunter Biden thing. That was good to see. But yeah, as a for the most part, it's frustrating. And it's really frustrating because the actual president won't take any questions whatsoever. Jen Psaki is all we have. Anyway, thank you, Amy. Appreciate the call. I want to go let's see Tom in South Carolina. What's on your mind?

Hello, Megan. It's wonderful talking to you. You know, I've heard I've heard that President Trump was coming out with his own book. It's going to be called The Art of the Steal. I was wondering if you've heard anything. I haven't heard any press on that. Isn't that the name? The guy who co-wrote The Art of the Deal with him claims he's going to be doing? I don't know. That guy. That's another guy. He fired that bum. He fired him. He's a loser and a rat. I don't know. Now that guy's like all over CNN and everybody looks at him like he's some sort of Trump authority. It's kind of weird.

I doubt Trump's doing a book called The Art of the Steel, but he's probably going to do a book because he's getting paid millions and millions of dollars for it. I mean, he'd probably get 20 million bucks for a book if the publishing company had the stones to do it. Right. Publishing is so weak need these days and you remember after january 6th there was a push not to let even any of his staff write books uh but the big guy yeah i think the capitalist nature of these uh these book companies would win out and he'd have a company like regnery who would do it anyway or harper collins probably do it so yeah i'm sure we'll probably see one eventually. Okay, let's see. Laura from Ohio. What's on your mind? Hey, Megan, how are you? Good. How you doing? Good. So I guess the best thing to do is be honest these days. We my husband and I are huge fans of

you. And we followed you all the time. We couldn't wait. You came on Fox. Okay. And then I know there were some changes. We're not really sure what all happened. But wait till you came on Fox. Okay. And then I know there were some changes. We're not really sure what all happened. But now that you're on Sirius, I listen to Sirius a lot. In fact, I'm a big Dr. Laura fan. And I just I'm trying to figure out where you where you're falling with all this. Are you trying to stay on the fence so you don't go left or right? Or because this is the only thing my husband and I are huge Trump fans. I gotcha. I'll leave it at that because we're up against a heartbreak, but I'll give you the quick answer. I did not enjoy the nine months that Trump kept coming

after me. That's true. But I see the good that President Trump did, you know, without defending the mean tweets and things like that that he did to others. I can absolutely make the case for why Donald Trump was a very strong president and may have very well have been a better choice than the one we have now. You should go back and listen to the podcast I did. I think it was the day of the election or the day before the election to see my thoughts more in full. But my goal is to not be anybody's sycophant. And I hope you'll see that my reporting. Thank you so much for giving me a chance. Talk to you tomorrow.