The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden's Putin Miscalculation and Supreme Court Pick, with Morgan Ortagus, Rich Lowry, Harmeet Dhillon, and Jonna Spilbor | Ep. 269

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Morgan Ortagus, former State Department spokesperson and Congressional candidate and Rich Lowry of National Review to discuss what's happening right now with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Trump administration's handling of Russia and Afghanistan, President Biden's major Putin miscalculation, China working together with Russia against America, how the American left and right are reacting to, and more. Then, Harmeet Dhillon and Jonna Spilbor are here for a "Kelly's Court" segment on Biden's Supreme Court pick of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Alec Baldwin's latest legal troubles, Britney Spears' possible lawsuit, BLM's legal issues, Los Angeles' DA's case involving a trans woman sex offender, 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 continue to follow breaking news today on multiple fronts. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has continued today as Ukraine's president urges his people to take up arms against the Russian army while the Russians close in on the Ukrainian capital. Meantime, President Biden will name his nominee to the Supreme Court later this afternoon. We expect an announcement at 2 p.m. today, and we believe we know who it is. We'll get into her.

We have a Kelly's Court panel here to talk not just about that, but many more of the hot legal cases in the news in our second hour. But we are going to start with Putin's next move in the region. Morgan Ortegas is a former State Department spokesperson and Navy Reserve officer who is now running for Congress in Tennessee. And she joins me now. Morgan, thank you so much for being here. So thank you to hear Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, come out explicitly and say, we are defending ourselves alone and looking at the United States specifically saying we are getting no help from the world's most powerful nation. Now we are providing some help, but not the kind that he needs. And while Ukraine is putting up quite a fight,

I have to say, they're putting up quite a fight, right? It doesn't look good for them. And they certainly are outmatched in terms of the numbers and the equipment. And we had Pompeo on the show yesterday saying it's likely that Ukraine will fall and that Russia will take over. And they seem to want to instill either a puppet government or to get Zelensky to sign some statement surrendering in all ways, and that Russia will be in control of this country, an American ally, rather soon. I mean, that's the worst case scenario. How do you see it? How do you see the stakes that we're looking at right now? Well, I think to go back with where you started, Megan, and thank you so much for having me on. But you made a really great point.

You know, the Ukrainians, as has been reported in the news, and they have brought this up themselves, gave up their nuclear weapons, right? And this was a part of America, Europe, the West. We were, you know, first of all, beyond even just Ukraine, why would anyone else sort of disarm or give up nuclear weapons? So I think that that's something that we have to look to specifically because right now in Vienna, President Biden's negotiating team are at the table in this negotiation for the Iranians and for the U.S. really to get back the JCPOA, which is what President Trump always called the failed Iran deal. That deal, by the way, just to remind everybody listening, was supposed to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. So they may or may not go back in. It will be a much weaker deal. But I think what is happening in Ukraine today actually sets the stage for these negotiations with Iran.

If you're the state of Israel, how do you trust and depend on the United States anymore to have your back, especially while they're negotiating with Iran? And if you look around the world, I think that countries are going to start calculating and say, OK, what is our alliance with the United States? What is it actually worth, right? Are they really going to protect us and come to our aid? And if we get rid of any of our weaponry, North Korea is a great example, right? They have the internet as well in North Korea. They're certainly looking at this. So you've got, I think, because of the dovishness and the weakness of this administration, you're going to see a lot of states actually work to improve their nuclear weapons, to improve whatever conventional weaponry they may have.

I think the world is becoming a much more dangerous place because of this weak president. There's a harsh but fair piece in, I think it was Politico this morning, by Nahal Toosi, saying Putin was playing Biden all along and concluding that Biden thought he could manage Putin. That calculation was dead wrong. And going on to say he repeatedly tried to reason with Putin and Putin cannot be reasoned with. You know that it kind of recounts effectively the number of things that Joe Biden did to try to try to counter Putin's behavior. They met last June in Geneva. Biden urged Putin to end his aggression toward Ukraine and to stop hacking the United States. In December, they had a call and Putin was assembling thousands of troops

along the border with Ukraine. Biden pushed him to deescalate and to return to diplomacy. Earlier this month, Biden warned Putin reinvading Ukraine would diminish Russia's standing, would produce widespread human suffering and on and on ago. None of it worked. Neither did the threat of sanctions, the words of condemnation. This is again from that piece, emotional appeals on human rights grounds, deployments of U.S. troops to NATO countries in the area, weapons to Ukraine or the relatively united front put forth by the U.S. and its allies. None of it, none of it, even publicizing significant amounts of intelligence about Putin's plans did not stop him. So where did we go wrong? Like what more should we have been doing? The problem is, is that we keep thinking of Putin and the Biden administration does this.

They think of him as a rational actor. And they think that people like Putin, like Xi Jinping, are worried about what's said of them at Davos, right, or at cocktail parties in Paris. And clearly they're not. So this administration tried their strategy at deterrence, and that strategy failed. You know, the only thing something like Putin, someone like Putin, the only thing that they understand is hard power and strength. You know, you had my last boss, Mike Pompeo on yesterday, and Pompeo constantly said to me and all of us working around him, we have to see the world for how it is, not for how we want it to be. We can't be naive about others' intentions. And so there is this, you know, this mentality that people like Putin can be reasoned with for all the reasons that you just

stated. And specifically on the sanctions and on the economic side, I think that we have leaned in too heavy on that as an approach. Not that I think we shouldn't be employing sanctions. We shouldn't. In fact, what Biden did yesterday was too little, too late. It was a slap on the cheek instead of a knockout punch. And so that's certainly a problem. But sanctions should be a part of a whole, if you look at the cake, or if you look at the whole piece of the pie, for example, the whole pie, sanctions is but one piece of the strategy. And when you don't have the credible threat of force to back you up in a negotiation, and you're only leaning on sanctions well that's not what sanctions are designed for they're designed to help a curb behavior but again i think that you look at all the steps that led up to the past year and it

actually you know i think when history looks at this it will make a lot of sense so there's some little things for example in the trump administration I think it was in the last year at Pompeo's State Department, we got out of an arms control treaty called INF, you know, simply because we thought that the Russians were evading it and. He was renegotiating New START because it was supposed to be re-upped. And we said, you know what, we're not going to just, you know, we're not just going to re-up it. We want to get something for it. We want to know that you guys are actually going to comply and that this is going to be real arms control. And so all the things that, by the way, for the past year that Putin has put on the table, things like not allowing Ukraine and NATO trying to negotiate with us over our security presence in Europe, whether it's our missile defense system or our troops. They tried to negotiate

all of that stuff with us. And we said, no, thank you. Like, goodbye. And we were certainly, if we had had another four years, we would not have just re-upped that treaty. Well, the Biden administration comes in. What's the first thing they do? They renew New START, the tongue twister, without getting anything from the Russians for it, right? Then you see the attacks on our critical infrastructure that I think, you know, there was definitely not a strong enough response from this administration. And then, of course, you see things like Afghanistan, you know, that matters. It was a huge embarrassment to the world. You also see somebody in Putin who has, listen, I met him with Pompeo and meeting him in person felt like meeting pure evil. But I had to meet Lavrov quite a bit with Pompeo, that's the foreign

minister. And, you know, listen, Pompeo is as tough as it gets. And so they would definitely try, you know, to get a few inches in meetings. And Pompeo was strong and tough and held the line instead of for America. And I think that's why you didn't see these sort of incursions on our watch. Trump and Pompeo made it very clear to them to know in certain terms behind the scenes what would happen if they did this sort of activity. And so just to go back, you also have, you know, you have a guy who's done whatever he wanted as leader of Russia for decades now, for over two decades. He can kill whoever he wants to kill. He can do whatever he wants with the oligarchs. He can commit all the war atrocities in Syria. I mean, what you're starting to see in Ukraine and war crimes, I just read about a kindergarten this morning,

I think that was, you know, potentially bombed. I mean, you're going to see more of this stuff. And by the way, it's just an appetizer for what the Russians are capable of doing. And if anybody's paid attention for what they've been doing for, you know, at least seven years in Syria now. So he's been able to commit all of these war crimes in Syria, all of these human rights atrocities. And everyone, including us, are still buying their oil this morning. The Russian stock market, unless it's changed in the last hour, it was actually up this morning, which is pretty unconscionable to me. What Biden should have done is not just done a slap on the cheek, but he, like I said, the economic sanctions that he should have unveiled should have been a knockout punch where he said, you know what, you are no longer doing business

with the West. We're not traveling there. You're not coming here. We're going after you. We're going after the oligarchs. We're going after oil and gas and the other economic, you know, like I think they have a lot of timber that they do in Russia as well. So my point is, is all the economic levers should have been turned on and said, you are effectively cut off from the West. But what the Biden administration said instead does is they keep doing these little steps, these little half measures. Well, if we, you know, if we only slap you a little bit, maybe you'll actually stop in Ukraine. We keep thinking if we hold back the punch, we being the Biden administration, they keep thinking if we hold back the knockout punch, maybe you'll stop. But bullies only understand a knockout punch. It's so true. It's like, I mean, I, as you probably

know, have met with President Putin numerous times and interviewed him many times. But the thing about Putin is if he wants to charm you, you will be charmed. He's a former KGB agent. He knows how to act in whatever way he needs to to have its desired effect. And so he could absolutely sit across the table from a Joe Biden as he did. And that was something else Biden did was give him a one on one meeting, whereas, you know, previously he'd been treated as just sort of other, you know, they sort of otherized him. There was sort of, you know, he wasn't somebody we'd necessarily have a one-on-one meeting with. And convince Biden that he was there, that he was open-minded, that he was going to negotiate. But his behavior all along

has reflected something very different, that as soon as he's out of sight, he sticks the thumb in the eye. He has absolutely no interest whatsoever in being friendly with the United States. We stand against everything that he holds dear and vice versa. And what we've seen is that every single thing that Biden has tried has failed. Every single thing. Not one has deterred Putin from doing a single thing, whether it's hacking, cyber hacking, or aggressiveness towards Ukraine and so on. And so now I just want to talk to you about the sanctions, because it gets confusing. The sanctions that he added yesterday are as follows, this is reading from an article from The Hill, curbing Russia's access to foreign capital, trying to hobble the financial freedoms of Moscow's wealthy elite, and preventing Putin's military from obtaining the latest high-tech weapons systems.

But there are several other options not deployed. Here are a few. Cutting off Russia's access to this international messaging system for banks, the SWIFT system. Biden says he can't do it because we have unnamed european allies who don't want it hi germany um he won't name them but we i mean come on right we don't we don't have the muscle they won't listen to us um seizing the russian oligarchs assets like their yachts and villas they won't like that that hurts that's personal um sanctioning putin personally he won't do that. Now, why is that? Because he's really worried about ticking off the bully, like the bully is going to get really mad

if I sanction him personally. Well, aren't we there? It goes on. This is from Representative Bill Pascrell, a Democrat. Some of the Democrats, Menendez of New Jersey, this guy, Pascrell of New Jersey, have pushed back on what Biden did yesterday, saying it's not enough. They have to feel acute pain. He says seize their estates and pound their yachts, auction their possessions, topple their stock market, embargo their fuel, kick their kids out of colleges. He says Putin's one of the richest men on earth. He's got billions. Grab every penny of it that can be grabbed. And then McConnell came out and said, yes, we need to do more with sanctions and we have to provide Ukraine with more aid to fight the Russian military. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania saying we need tougher restrictions on Russia's oil and gas industry. So you were just mentioning we need Iran style secondary sanctions on Russian banks that force the world to choose between doing business with us or with Russia. We haven't done any of

that. Right. So the question is, though, why? What what do you think Biden is waiting for? I wish I knew the answer to that. I do know that a lot of the people that were in charge in the Obama administration, they've they've shuffled the deck chairs. Right. And so they're all in different positions. So in the Biden administration, so Putin knows who these people are. He knows what he's getting out of them. Most of these people were in power and the second term of the Obama administration when he invaded Crimea. So again, that's probably his calculus, right? All of these people were in charge the last time he invaded Ukraine. And not enough happened. There were some sanctions, but not enough happened to prevent his behavior. And again, there wasn't a comprehensive

strategy for it. You know, I don't understand the weakness. I will tell you one of the things that me and many others were frustrated whenever Afghanistan ended so badly, that just terrible, disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that just embarrassed us as a nation, nobody was held accountable from his national security team. Right. Not the national security adviser, not the secretary of state. I mean, set up nobody. They didn't even put up a figurehead right to to to fire, you know, or to hold accountable. And so I think part of the problem going into this crisis is you have a national security team who learned apparently no lessons from Afghanistan. There's been no accountability. And I got to tell you, I think we're incredibly close to, I mean, we certainly need congressional hearings to understand what this team is doing and why. I mean, I'm getting to the point that I

am incredibly worried and concerned for NATO writ large and for the surrounding countries. You know, one of the things that we did when we withdrew from the JCPOA and the Trump administration is we put on the maximum economic pressure campaign against Iran. And you can basically take that playbook. Iran, for example, as you're hearing everybody talk about SWIFT, you brought it up earlier, we kicked Iran out of that. And basically, every day we looked at how we could tighten the screws on the regime in Iran economically to cut them off from the rest of the world. So there is an example, the maximum, not that you would do everything, you know, exactly as we did it, but there is certainly a playbook for what we did in Iran for, you know, through the maximum economic pressure campaign.

We need one of those applied to Russia. It's happening. Like the thing we were we were trying to prevent. It's happening. He's doing it. So what are we waiting for? You know, I mean, this actually this question was put to Joe Biden yesterday by NBC's Peter Alexander. Here's here's how that went. Listen to this. You detailed some severe and swift new sanctions today and said the impact it will have over time. But given the full scale invasion, given that you're not pursuing disconnecting Russia from what's called swift internationalT, the international banking system, or other sanctions at your disposal. Respectfully, sir, what more are you waiting for? Specifically, the sanctions we've imposed exceed SWIFT. The sanctions we oppose exceed anything that's ever been done. The sanctions we imposed have generated two-thirds

of the world joining us. They are profound sanctions. Let's have a conversation in another month or so to see if they're working. They impose they're worse than anything ever done. I mean, maybe he was referring to Russia. I'm not sure. Like I just said, we had the maximum economic pressure campaign against Iran, which is certainly a good playbook to start. Listen, I think that there's a chance that he got as tough sanctions as he could, given the partners that he is dealing with. And it's been reported that Germany and Italy are two of the main advocates, you know, against any further sanctions. Listen, when President Trump was in office, everybody got really upset because they said, oh, you're weakening NATO by constantly

berating them and telling everyone to pay their fair share. But I think in many ways, as it relates to NATO, he was sort of a prophet in the wilderness in that he saw that it could have been inevitable that we would have some sort of confrontation with russia and you know once again it would just be the united states there militarily to pick up the ball if there is a confrontation um with uh with the nato ally obviously no one's advocating sending troops into ukraine right now but but i think it's really important because i think it was 2018 whenever Trump was at that NATO meeting and he really berated Germany and said, listen, you're bought and sold for by the Russians. You're totally dependent on their energy.

And he was right, right? He didn't say it nicely and it made everyone upset because he wasn't very, very nice about it. The new spin on that, I actually think this is really interesting. The new spin on that from the Biden administration is, see, we had to clean up that mess when we took over. You know, President Trump didn't he wasn't nice, nice with Germany and some of our other NATO and European allies. And therefore, that is why Biden had to greenlight the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. You know, We were trying to repair relationships with our European allies. That's really what got us in this position. That's their spin.

So they have confused strengthening NATO with appeasing Germany, right? First of all, if you look at it, climate change is supposed to be the number one thing that guides this administration. It's not even clean energy that they're getting from Russia. What they would import from the United States is certainly more clean. So they violated their climate change principle or their clean energy principle to begin with. I mean, listen, there's a number of reasons. By the way, one of the reasons that he's probably not going after the oil and gas sector as much as he should is because we know it will make energy prices

rise in the United States. Well, why have you spent the last year reversing all of the things that the Trump administration put into place to make the United States energy independent? I mean, if the 2008 financial crisis, I was actually at the Treasury Department at the time, but one of the things that I thought that we all learned, Megan, from the 2008 financial crisis is that we need to make things at home, right? And then fast forward to the pandemic. I thought that we all learned the lesson that we shouldn't be dependent on the Chinese and other countries for things like masks and gloves and medical equipment, right? We keep having, whether it's the 2008 financial crisis or whether it's the pandemic, you can go through another a number of examples. History keeps showing to us that we cannot be dependent on critical needs such as energy, oil and gas from other countries.

Right. We need to manufacture things here in the United States. The financial crisis, the pandemic taught us that. And here we are. Now we're in a situation with Russia where we we too are importing their oil and gas. We have removed the steps to make the US energy independent. We've canceled the Keystone pipeline. I mean, none of this makes any sense to the, how can it make any sense to the average American? We need to be energy independent. We need to be making critical medical equipment here at the United States. We need to be producing things at home if we learn from the financial crisis. But in doing all that, your point is in doing all that, we made him more powerful. We put more money in Putin's coffers by forging that relationship between him and Germany, by hobbling ourselves.

We made ourselves weaker and we made him more powerful. And he's watching all of this. And he's also watching record inflation in the United States, soaring division and tribalism, which there's no question Putin helped stoke via his bots and so on. But we're stoking it ourselves. I mean, you've got, you know, memos from the federal government saying you can't refer to pregnant women and you can't use the term moms. I mean, things like that. So he sees that and he sees a president who's been weakened by the way he handled Afghanistan. And he accurately deduces there's very little he can do to me. There's he doesn't have the public support for a big, bold move against me. And to be honest and fair to Joe Biden, it goes back prior to Joe

Biden. He understands the United States is war weary after 20 years in Afghanistan, a disastrous experience in Iraq. You know, it goes back to George W. Bush. And he realizes the American psyche is not behind playing the role of world leader at the moment. And it's, you know, we're feeling down. We're in sort of a pessimistic phase, both domestically and with respect to our role in the world. And man, has he taken advantage of it? Well, you are absolutely spot on. And by the way, what is Xi Jinping learning from all of this? Right. What is he? You know, they issued statements right away after Russia ran into Ukraine that Taiwan is a part of China.

No surprising that they issued those statements. Listen, as we and just for the record, also then blaming us, the Chinese foreign minister came out and said, you know, oh, you claim you want to put out the fire. But meanwhile, you've been pouring fuel on it. And they're referring to our putting weapons in inside of Ukraine, which is, you know, you could argue the bare minimum we should have been doing, as it was very clear they were about to get attacked. But the Chinese, to the extent they've taken a side here, it's very clearly the Russians. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there seems to be some sort of special relationship between Putin and Xi. And I don't know, by the way, I mean, historically, there's plenty of reasons for the two countries to be at odds. But it seems like the two of them, especially over the past decade, that their relationship has gotten even closer and has and has forged and been tighter. Whether we I know I certainly understand that we're war weary as Americans.

I get it. Right. I've been as a civilian. I've been in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan myself over the past 15 years. Went there a number of times with Mike Pompeo. We retried to negotiate the end of America's longest war. So I get it, and I am very sympathetic to that. When you look at the broader picture, when you looked at the national security strategy that we put out in the first year of the Trump administration, we said, listen, we are moving to an era of geopolitical competition between the United States, China and Russia. That was that's very clearly what we are in, what we will be going forward.

And there is a battle for ideas. You know, we think I think that we've been lulled into the sense of security because we won World War Two. And because the rules based order has been based off the West, right? Democracy. Well, if you talk and you look at what the Chinese are saying, what the Russians are saying, they don't necessarily think that democracy and freedom are going to win today over the next, you know, over the rest of our lifetimes. This is our big strategic battle. And somebody will win, right?

The Chinese Communist Party will either win out or democracy and freedom led by the United States will. And what concerns me, Megan, is when I look around Europe, I think how much of our allies are really truly in the fight with us. I mean, certainly the Eastern Europeans have a lot of gumption and we need to be doing even more to strengthen our alliances in the Indo-Pacific. I mean, that should be the top foreign policy strategy of the United States. But I am concerned not that we I do think even though we're going through a rough time, that the United States, the people of the United States don't want the communists to win. And then if anyone's going to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party, I do think it will, it will be us. But our, I hope you're right. I hope you're right. Because

the rhetoric I'm hearing now from sort of the anti establishment left and right is very like, they're on their own. We're sick of wars. And it's not at all sort of cognizant of the responsibility we have as a world leader. If we cede that space, it will be filled and not by good people, not by countries who share anything like our values. It's not to say we should run around commencing wars or jumping into wars everywhere, but we need to be a lot smarter if we're going to be in this more sort of relaxed posture, for lack of a better term. We need to be very clear on how we're going to be in this more sort of relaxed posture, for lack of a better term, we need to be very clear on how we're going to orchestrate the right outcome without putting boots on the ground. And right now, it seems like we took a step back without figuring that out. I stole the last word. Morgan, what a pleasure. So nice to meet you. Thank you so much, Megan. I appreciate it. I'm a big, big fan. Thank you. I will definitely have you on again. That was great.

Coming up, Rich Lowry's here. So what are the political ramifications of this war in Ukraine as President Biden has no choice but to take his eye off of China? And how's that going to go? OK, we'll be back with that in one second. Joining me now, Rich Lowry, editor of National Review. Rich, good to have you here. So just a few line items from what's happening right now in Ukraine. Chechen special forces have been unleashed there to try to detain or kill Kiev officials. We are told Ukrainian troops are facing Russian troops inside Kiev at this hour,

residents being urged to make Molotov cocktails to defend themselves. There are civilian attempts to block the Russian military convoy of trucks and tanks coming in. It looks like something out of Tiananmen Square when you see one guy there trying to head the tanks off the road, which he did actually in one case. You see these Ukrainian soldiers lining up with their bodies on the highways. They're blowing up their own bridges to try to stop the advancement. It's disturbing. And we took the liberty, forgive me for, you know, it's a little crude, but there is a Ukrainian woman confronting a Russian soldier, which just apparently has gone totally viral inside of Ukraine. They're on their own, Rich. They're on their own. They're asking every man, woman and child who's capable of firing a gun to grab an arm. And meanwhile, the Ukrainians are like, there's a quote in one of the papers, the guy saying, this isn't like America. We don't just have guns everywhere. Like we where are we going to get a gun at this hour? And you see this elderly woman go out and confront a Russian soldier.

It was translated on the Daily Mail. That wouldn't help many people because they are listening to this show, most of them. So we had our team reenact it. Here's how it went. You can watch it on YouTube or just listen to it here. Forgive the swearing. It's per the original. Listen. Who are you? We have exercises here. Please go this way. So what the fuck are you doing here? Our discussion will lead to nothing.

You're occupants. You're fascists. What the fuck are you doing on our land with all these guns? Take these seeds and put them in your pockets. So at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here. Wow. How about it? I mean, it's like this woman, this elderly woman on the streets of Ukraine has got sort of more chutzpah and more determination to confront these guys than pretty much the rest of the world, which is really not doing that much to help them, Rich. Yeah, so it's been incredibly moving. If there's any doubt that the Ukrainians feel a strong sense of national identity, it should have been removed the last couple of days, starting at the top, where you had this former comedian, President Zelensky, who became president in 2019, and everyone thought he was going to be a joke. He gave one of the best speeches of the century a couple days ago, directly addressing the Russian people,

not that the Russian people are going to hear or see it, thanks to the controls of Vladimir Putin, but a really moving, stirring, eloquent speech about how the Ukrainians want peace, but they'll defend their national honor. They'll defend facing forward rather than with their backs. And that's what we've seen. But unfortunately, the balance of forces here, obviously in Russia's favor in a decisive way. It's wonderful to see that woman doing what she did, but it's not going to make a difference.

They're going to decapitate this government. They're going to capture or kill Zelensky, and they are going to create their own puppet government. It's just clear that's what's going to happen. And, you know, I think the West obviously should have done much more to arm Ukraine prior to this, at least to increase the cost to the Russians, you know, with anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. But at the end of the day, if you're not going to fight a war over it, and we're not, and I don't think we should have, there are just limits to what you can do to stop a strongman who is bent on taking this territory. And sanctions are not going to make that much of

a difference. Biden implicitly admitted it yesterday when he said the sanctions aren't a deterrent, even though they pretended as though they were going to be a deterrent for months. And you could do things that would immediately create pain, like cutting off Russia from the so-called SWIFT system that enables international banking transactions, but the Europeans weren't going to go along with that. So this is what it is. It's going to be a puppet government and we'll see whether Putin can make it stick. Everyone outside Ukraine who's willing to help to come into Ukraine to help. It's sad to hear his desperation saying to his own military, let them in when they come, let them in, calling on his own people to show solidarity, to help the elderly and the young who are scared and don't know what to do right now, saying Russia's embarked on a path of evil and warning the rest of us outside Ukraine, if you don't help us now, tomorrow the war will knock on your door. And of course, that's the scary thing about trying to pacify a wolf. It doesn't stop eating after the first one. about whether Vladimir Putin is in the right headspace. There was an executive, I'm trying to think of the guy's title. He was in Great Britain. Oh, he's the defense secretary, Ben Wallace, who had a quote yesterday, Rich, saying, I think Putin has gone full tanto,

which if you read it in context, apparently means he's lost his mind. And, you know, there's a question about what's next. Yeah, so I don't think he's lost his mind. I think he's incredibly rational. He's just unreasonable and driven by an unreasonable goal. And the danger, of course, now is, as you say, the appetite grows with the eating and that he'll target the Baltic states that are quite vulnerable to the North. And those are NATO members. So if he targets them, then you're really faced with a no kidding choice. Do you fight Russia over, say, Estonia? Or are you willing to contemplate the dissolution of the NATO alliance, which is a key part of Western security. And we're really faced with

this dual challenge, as Morgan was citing in your conversation just a few moments ago, by Russia, by China, to end Western preeminence and American leadership in the world. And this will be a struggle for years, perhaps for decades. And we're going to have to engage in new thinking, create new institutions to deal with this challenge, just the way we did with Cold War. But it's China that's more threatening at the end of the day, in my view, than Russia. And that's what the Biden administration determined, right? When they sort of set out their foreign policy, and I think it was spring of 2021. That's where they landed to China's the much bigger threat. The Russian economy really is nothing. And so while Putin's got a big military and nuclear weapons,

other than that, he doesn't really pose much of a threat, certainly not economically. And so but the so the problem with all these sanctions, as I see it, Rich, is even if they are painful, what good do they really do if China's there as a backstop? You know, if China's saying, don't worry, Russia, we got you. And somebody asked Joe Biden yesterday, are you urging China to isolate the Russians? And it was the one question in response to which Biden said, I can't comment on that, unusually disciplined for this president. I actually said, I'm not going to comment on that. And so it does appear that they have some strange sort of bromance going that is definitely threatening to us and our interests. Yeah. So I'm not sure how long the bromance will last, but they share the same goal of ending

this era of Western dominance. It's really dated, you can argue about it, the last 300 or 400 years. And they feel as though they're both humiliated by it. Russia, with the end of the Soviet Union, and China, about a 100-year period from 1839 to 1949 or so, and they need a return to imperial glory. Now, Russia, it's very threatening. It involves ending the NATO alliance, involves picking Europe apart and diminishing our influence or expelling us from Europe. That matters. That's a hugely consequential question. But Russia does not have the capability the way China does to become the predominant economic power in the world. And some isolationists might think, well, you know, that's okay. Why is that going to bother

us? We'll just tend our garden here at home. We're protected by two big oceans and friendly neighbors to the North and the South, but China will not leave us alone. And the way that everyone has to come to the U.S. with regard to any really important diplomatic, military, economic question having to do with the standards for trade and technological development, that will all go to China. And when China has that sort of influence, we've already seen indications of it. They'll reach into this country and affect what people can say and do here. You know, there's a reason the NBA never criticizes China, right? It's because China cares. It's going to exact pain. Same thing with Hollywood. And the ability of China to do that will be much greater than it is today. So the stakes are enormous. This is big stuff. It's on

par with the Cold War, and it will affect our prosperity and our freedom and security if we don't get it right. I had a guest on yesterday, Konstantin Kisin, who's really thoughtful about this whole issue. He's Russian. He's half Ukrainian. And he thinks he had an interesting point, which was he thinks as a result of all this, globalization is dead. That is just reinforced that it it cannot work given the various interests

at stake and situations that will inevitably come like this, that we have to be self-reliant, and that message here needs to be reinforced. Yeah, I'm increasingly at that point of view myself. I would have rejected that several years ago. I might have even rejected it a year ago. But I think we basically have decoupled with Russia. I mean, Russia after 2014 and the sanctions when it went into Ukraine the first time it grabbed Crimea, met Russia, had to sort of create these self-reliant industries and cut itself off to some extent from the West. That's why the sanctions we're talking about now, they'll pinch, but they won't be decisive. And we're going to have to do the

same thing with China and decouple will be very painful. You know, Neil Ferguson, the great historian coined this term Chimerica to get to how intertwined our economies had become. That's going to have to begun to be unwound, beginning with the things that are most sensitive in terms of national security. And something that's, you know, not ideologically welcome to me, I think we need to think about industrial policy in certain areas to compete with China. You know, one of the things that's worrisome about China potentially taking Taiwan is that the most sophisticated semiconductor manufacturer in the world is there in Taiwan. And that would be a huge blow to our economy and the world economy

that's taken offline or is owned by China. So why are we that dependent on a plant and a company in Taiwan? Why can't we have that here? And if private industry can't do it, maybe government needs to help them. Right, right. Lessons to be learned. And if we do learn those lessons, maybe this, you know, in some ways has some upsides, not to diminish what's happening now in Ukraine. The latest from Zelensky is that he said 137 Ukrainian heroes are dead, including 10 officers, 316 wounded. That was overnight. This morning, President Biden's meeting with fellow leaders of NATO governments in what the White House is calling an extraordinary virtual summit. We'll see whether that moves any hearts or minds on this, you know,

further sanctions. You know, it's like we were doubling down on a strategy that already didn't work. So query whether it will now work when we just add more to the non-working strategy. But we are absolutely looking at the largest ground war in Europe since World War II. Coming back with Rich right after this. Don't go away. I'm going to play the most extraordinary clip on the internet from yesterday. Most extraordinary. My whole team was talking about it. Remember, if you want to watch clips that we play on this show, you can. You can do that by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly, or you can download the audio podcast there and comment if you would like in the Apple Podcast comments section.

This just in from the New York Times, Rich uh apropos of the discussion that we were having on china and whose side they're on uh reporting that over three months senior biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top chinese officials in which the americans presented intel showing russia's troop build-up around Ukraine, urging the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade. Each time the Chinese officials, including the foreign minister, the one who's now saying you poured fuel in the fire and then complained about the flames, and the ambassador to the United States from China, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works. After one diplomatic exchange in December, U.S. officials got intel showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow,

telling the Russians that the U.S. was trying to sow discord and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions. I mean, there you have it right there. I don't know if we needed a smoking gun, but there it is. Yeah. Well, also, I mean, even if you weren't privy to information like that, it was clear what was going on. There was no way Putin was going to move prior to the closing ceremonies of the Olympics because he didn't want to step on the propaganda value of this partner from hosting these games in a city that had no snow. You know, the whole thing was a scene. It was awful. It was all man-made fake snow with his dystopian views off of the left and the right. But he waited.

And as soon as they were over, it began and the balloon went up. So the reason why this partnership might not last is Russia will definitively be the junior partner. Now, perhaps now it has no alternative, but being the junior partner, because it's so estranged from the West, given its aggression here, but it's not going to be a comfortable thing for Russia over the long run. They have a long border. The Russian side of that border is not very heavily populated. You can see China having ambitions there. So it might not work out very well for Russia, can see China having ambitions there.

So it might not work out very well for Russia and there might be a divorce. But for now, as we were talking earlier, they're thrown together by their distaste for their West and for their desire to restore their former supposed imperial glory. As we see these shots of, you know, we see young people terrified in the streets of Kiev, children, again, the elderly not knowing what to do,

except for that one badass woman who got in the face of the Russian soldier. I wonder whether it's going to change. Forget opinions, you know, over there. I'm sure the Ukrainians and even the Russians now, 1700 people arrested in Russia for protesting against this. That's extraordinary. You're not allowed to protest in Russia for protesting against this. That's extraordinary. You're not allowed to protest in Russia. So, wow. But I just wonder whether it's going to change some of the sentiment back here at home that lately has seemed very pro-Putin, like people on the left and the right being weirdly pro-Putin. This is who Putin is. This is what he does. What hasn't really been a mystery even prior to

now? What do you make of it? So I'm not sure this sentiment has much purchase beyond a few opinion makers, both on the left and the right in terms of American public opinion. I think American public opinion is we don't want to get involved. There's a poll that showed that very starkly the other day. But it's also not in favor of invasions of sovereign countries by dictators that Vladimir Putin is. So but it doesn't make much sense to me on the right. You have people who are OK, you know, Putin, he's religious, supposedly. You know, there's an Orthodox church, very influential in Russian society. And there are only two genders in Russia.

They're not doing this crazy trans stuff that we are, which is all fine. But you can oppose crazy trans stuff in this country and also oppose dictators who poison and jail their dissidents and invade neighboring countries. That doesn't require much nuance or moral complexity. It just seems easy. And the best case here is that Europe gets more serious about its defense. There's some indications about that. People realize with NATO under threat how valuable it is and it needs to be fortified. And perhaps over the medium or long term, Putin has bitten off more than he can chew, because whatever government he's going to set up will be hugely unpopular in Ukraine, will be

totally illegitimate, and will be under considerable stress. And unless he has a secret police there forever, assassinating and jailing people, which will be difficult. It's going to be hard to maintain that government. And as you say, the indications are that there's certainly more opposition to this in Russia than Putin counted on. Otherwise, he would have had, you know, all sorts of fake pro-war protests going and he didn't bother to do that, which suggests... And the longer it drags on, the worse it is for him, the longer it drags on. I will say, though, you may be underestimating the love for Putin domestically because there is an actress making the rounds on Twitter yesterday. I don't know if you saw this. Apparently she was in that show Nip Tuck, which wasn't bad for a while.

And she decided to make a video telling Putin things could have gone differently for them if only she had been his mother. Listen to this lunatic. Dear President Vladimir Putin, I'm so sorry that I was not your mother. If I was your mother, you would have been so loved, held in the arms of joyous light. Never would the stories plight the world unfurled before our eyes a pure demise of nations sitting peaceful under a night sky if i was your mother the world would have been warm so much laughter and joy and nothing would harm i can't imagine the stain the soul-stealing pain that the little boy you must have seen and believed and the formulation of thought quickly taught that you lived in a cruel,

unjust world. Oh, my Lord. That's enough of her. OK, the one good thing of this, Rich, the one good thing was the responses. Somebody to somebody responded. So the answer to this whole crisis was Putin needed more tummy time. And then here is a responder, Kate. Well, she goes by Kate Barstool. Listen to her response. Dear President Vladimir Putin, I'm so sorry that I was not your mother. You would get so many raspberries after your bath. Real funny ones on your little Putin belly.

You'd laugh so much you'd shake like a bowl of Putin jelly. If I had been your mother, I'd let you stay up late to watch 90 day fiance you wouldn't understand it it's but we'd have fun anyway it's totally worth if i were your mother she's amazing uh we only have 30 seconds left rich but your your thoughts on these dueling narratives yeah it's like like you've stumbled into the worst poetry jam at brown University ever, right? If it were Vladimir Putin, I would have kicked his ass like every day, told him not to steal the cookies and to obey the rules like a good child. Maybe that would have made a difference, but I don't think so. Would have kicked his ass, smoked more grass. Anyway, we'll think of some

other rhymes over the break. Rich, what a pleasure. As always, don't forget to check out National Review and the one and only The Editor as well. Worth your time. Up next, Kelly's Court on the new Supreme Court pick. Don't go away. Kelly's Court is back in session, and today we are discussing some hot cases in the news. We're going to take a look into allegations that BLM is a big scam, plus a horrifying story out of L.A. involving a trans woman who admitted to sexually assaulting a child as a man and was told that she would serve out her sentence in a juvenile facility

and not have to register as a sex offender. The L.A. district attorney is a disgrace. He is a disgrace, and we'll get to him as a sex offender. The L.A. district attorney is a disgrace. He is a disgrace. And we'll get to him in a second. There's also news on the Alec Baldwin and Britney Spears fronts. So a lot to get to with our court panel. But we're going to begin with the big announcement out of Washington at this hour. President Biden making his Supreme Court nomination official later today. And we'll tell you who it is. First joining us are Janice Bilboer. She's a criminal defense attorney and founding attorney of Janice Bilboer Law. And Harmeet Dhillon, who is managing partner of Dhillon Law Group and CEO of the Center for

American Liberty. Ladies, it's appropriate. It's a three lady lawyer panel to discuss the latest lady lawyer nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. I don't think many people are going to be surprised that it's Katonji Brown Jackson. She's from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The thing I love most about Katonji Brown Jackson is that they continue to talk about how young she is at age 51. We need to get that going and make that a thing. So let me start with you on this, Harmeet. We knew, you know, it's not going to change the ideological balance of the court because Stephen Breyer was a lefty and she's a lefty. But just how lefty is she? Because in that way, it kind of could change the ideological balance. He was a little bit more of a moderate

lefty. Is she? Supreme Court, who I've had experience and had cases before the Supreme Court, I think is much more moderate and mainstream and has a longer appellate judicial history. And so Judge Jackson Brown has been on the D.C. Court of Appeals for only about eight months, and she has a long and very radical history. Now, what's interesting about the differences between the parties is Republicans typically nominate judges who have as little political and radical history as possible on the right side. And that certainly characterized Justices Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. has represented Guantanamo detainees, not just in her job as a defense attorney, but also on purpose in private practice when it wasn't necessarily her job to do that. She repeatedly ruled against the Trump administration on a number of important issues and was then reversed by the D.C. Circuit.

She's probably one of the justices, if she gets confirmed, who's been reversed the most by higher courts when she was a district court judge and served in, you know, ally of Obama administration and so many others. And so what's going to be interesting to see is whether conservatives, and this is going to be a very, very close vote, whether they're simply going to genuflect and defer to President Biden, whether they're going to ask her some hard questions and ultimately vote against her on the merits of whether she's judicially suited temperamentally, given some of the things she's said and done over the years. I predict not a single Democrat votes against her, just for a little flavor. And we

expect President Biden to speak in an hour with the official news with, you know, his nominee next to him and, you know, the sort of the more formal presentation. But here is what he put out on Twitter. Watch. I'm excited to nominate one of the nation's brightest legal minds, Judge Katonji Brown Jackson, to be our next Supreme Court Justice. Raised by public school teachers, she was a standout student who became a clerk for Justice Breyer, the same justice that she will be replacing when confirmed. Justice Breyer gave me the chance to work for him as a law clerk and thereby bear witness to the workings of his brilliant legal mind.

Judge Jackson has been confirmed by the United States Senate three times in her career and garnered support from both sides of the aisle each time. She's a history maker, the first black woman ever to be nominated to the Supreme Court, an immensely qualified judge who's going to help make our court stronger and more reflective of our country. I mean, Jonna, the chances of her not getting through, which would require a Democrat to go against her and all Republicans, including Susan Collins of Maine, to go against her are slim and none. Yeah, I agree with that. You know, but I want to say this, because Biden, first of all, didn't pick her. I mean, I'm of the opinion that Biden doesn't really do

anything. Somebody else picked her and Biden is really the puppet being puppeteered by somebody else. That said, he limited his pool. I mean, he came out and said that he was going to nominate a black woman so that he could have the first black woman on the Supreme Court. And I don't know if how fair that is, because to me, that is blatant racism. She may end up being a fantastic Supreme Court justice if she does get confirmed. But how is that OK that you limit your pool by race? And that I know that's a touchy subject, but it's something that I think is on the minds of a lot of people. Well, this is this is a bone to James Clyburn because Biden was losing the presidential primary contest.

He hadn't he was going into South Carolina. And if he didn't have a win soon, he wasn't going to win the nomination. And James Clyburn of South Carolina said, you better make this promise. And he did. And he won South Carolina. And who was standing next to him when Breyer retired? But James Clyburn saying, you better say it and you better say it out loud. And who was standing next to him when Breyer retired? But James Clyburn saying, you better say it and you better say it out loud. And then what did the puppet do? He said it and he said it out loud. I'll be nominating a black woman to the Supreme Court.

In my view, just as a woman, I feel like he screwed her. He screwed her over. He just shut up. Just tell James Clyburn to shut up. And either he'll get what he wants later or he won't. But you don't have to lick his boots in the moment just because he's saying you better say it out loud. He kneecapped her. Now we're looking at her as, oh, she's there because of her race and her gender. Whereas, look, it's not like nobody would have thought, oh, you know, it's just coincidental he chose a black woman. But it would not have been as obvious and clear as he has made it. And it's irritating to me. He wanted the political points at her expense. And he got him, I guess. I don't know. I haven't seen his poll numbers shoot up at all. But I guess in his mind, he got him. No, I agree with that. And now forever in my mind, I'm going to refer to Biden as a bootlicker. I like that phrase. That's exactly on point. And that's and that's what's happening here. So I guess. But you're right. It's not going to change the ideological makeup of the court. So I guess maybe that's why nobody's really up in arms about it.

But it still smells bad. Well, the thing is, Harmeet, you're not going to see. I mean, maybe they'll prove me wrong, but I don't believe you're going to see Republicans or their supporting groups, allies, what have you, organize insane personal character attacks on her. Like we saw in Kavanaugh where they try to destroy her as a human or like we saw with Amy Coney Barrett where they tried to destroy her as a mother, as a bad mother. You know, I mean, just below the belt. However, however, if you ask. Ellie Mistel, right, he's he's on MSNBC, I think he's like their justice. Yeah, he's with the nation, but he's on MSNBC all the time. Listen to what he tweeted out. OK, it's crazy. Jackson will be attacked by the worst white people this country has to offer. J.D. Vance will feel threatened and worried that hillbillies with

Yale law degrees and venture capital backing are being left behind. The Georgetown Constitutional Law Center will hold a symposium extolling the virtue of judicial eugenics. Tucker Carlson will warn that black people mean to make slavery unconstitutional, then claim to have been joking when someone informs him that it's unconstitutional already, and then goes on to say she's a strong nominee and screw them. This is the lunacy that you get on the left. Well, no, that's disgusting. I feel like taking a shower after hearing that. And the reality is on the right, we don't care about race. It's like you said, it's a real disservice to all of those shortlisted nominees that people are looking at them through that lens, because each of them is a very qualified jurist. And certainly

Republicans are put in a box by the fact that and I'm sure this played into the decision. So for example, Republicans didn't have to vote to endorse Leandra Kruger to the California Supreme Court. So their nomination vote or their vote on confirmation can't be thrown up in their faces. But it can here. So where Lindsey Graham has effectively rubber stamped just about every single one of Biden's nominees, it's really hard to go back and say, well, all of a sudden, I don't think she's qualified for the Supreme Court. So that work should have been done earlier on. So at the end of the day, you're probably right. She's probably going to get through. It's unfortunate she's been labeled with this sort of token label as the first whatever, because I think each judge should be judged on the merits of their

rulings and their career and their judicial philosophy. And so, you know, one more important thing is that because she's on the Harvard Board of Overseers, she may have to recuse herself. She probably should have to recuse herself if she gets seated and has to rule on that Harvard admissions case. And so that's going to be interesting as well. That is where they're being challenged for using a race as one of the criteria in assessing whether somebody should be allowed into the university. Of course, it affects more than Harvard. It affects all universities.

That's fascinating. Well, if she has to recuse because of that, I'm sure they factored that in, in choosing her. But, you know, again, she will have a long tenure on the Supreme Court because she is only 51. She is a babe in the woods. Let's keep that rolling. That is a positive of this nominee. All right, let's move out, out Western Westward from L.A. because I mean, from D.C. to dc to la because what this lunatic da is doing i can't decide like if i you know gun to the head if you had to decide which which da would you want running your city chesa budin of san francisco or this guy gaston i keep calling him gaston because that's

from um beauty and the beast right i spend too much time with little children. Gascon, it's George Gascon. Um, I don't recall effort against their boss. They hate him. Like every single DA in his office hates him. They want him gone. It's not like they hate him personally. Maybe they do. It's because he won't prosecute crime. And John, I'll give it to you. There's a case in point involving a 26 year old transgender woman. So it's a biological male who's now going as a woman that goes by the name of Hannah Tubbs that basically demonstrates how ridiculous this DA is. What's the story with Hannah Tubbs? Yeah, this is absolutely ridiculous. Now. all right. So this case may have started, for lack of a better word, innocently enough, because we do have a juvenile justice system in this country. And it does treat the defendants or the people involved in that system with kid gloves, literally, right? Because the theory is that when you are under a certain age, your brains aren't developed. We treat you different because you have a chance to get

rehabilitated and grow up to be a normal human being and not commit any more crimes. And it's helpful if you don't have a criminal record, you don't have to register as a sex offender in order to live the rest of your life. I get that. I've worked in the juvenile system for a long time. That said, it's not one size fits all. And there are oftentimes when somebody does something so egregious or doesn't deserve to be treated in the juvenile system, they deserve to be tried as an adult. This was likely one of those cases, especially now that we know that Hannah Tubbs, who, sidebar, I don't believe she's a transgender woman at all. I believe this is part of her time to get over on the system. But she basically molested a 10-year-old girl in a restaurant bathroom, got put into the juvenile justice system,

and then was all giddy over the fact that he, she was not going to get sentenced as an adult. And, and the most disgusting part, when you hear her phone call, I guess, where the father basically said that, you know, he was on the prowl looking for some meat. And that meat was a 10 year old girl in a public bathroom. This guy deserves to be punched in his cojones and not treated like a kid treated like the adult sex offender that he is. And that's not going to happen now. And it's not going to happen because of George Gascon. So if I understand the facts correctly, Harmeet, the Gascon, George Gascon last month sentenced him to a youth facility for the remainder of Hannah Tubbs' sentence. It was a two-year sentence out of fear that Hannah Tubbs would be victimized by adult offenders like Hannah Tubbs did to the 10-year-old girl Hannah Tubbs assaulted when the girl was 10 and Hannah Tubbs was 17. Okay. So to protect Hannah Tubbs, he sentenced Tubbs to a youth facility and says, you don't have to register as a sex offender because you were underage to the point that Jonna was just making. And this is evidence. Hannah Tubbs, is Hannah Tubbs grateful? Is Hannah Tubbs saying, oh my God, I made a terrible mistake in my youth and I feel so bad? You tell me, cause here's Hannah Tubbs in tapes obtained by Fox news on that

phone call talking about, um, how Hannah Tubbs feels about this situation. So now they're going to put me with other trannies that have similar cases like mine or with one tranny like me as a case like mine. Okay. So when you come to court, make sure you address me as her. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it'll be hard, but you have to do it. What we're trying to avoid is trying to avoid the registering thing. I know.

That's what we're trying to avoid the hardest to not the registering thing. I know. That's what we're trying to do. Yeah, I know, Bubba. We're also trying to avoid going to prison again. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. That's a good idea. Yeah, because this time if I went in, I'm getting a sex change. You what?

Yeah, this time if I was to go in, I would would get the sex change so I wouldn't be in a man's prison no more I'd be in a female's facility, it'd be better there's some bitches in there too okay so his name is James when he was when he committed the offense, now he claims it's Hannah and you can judge for

yourself how real his transition is he basically puts the lie to it himself, ladies it's disgusting. And instead of owning this, George Gaston, Gaston, Harmeet appears to lie and say, I knew nothing about these recordings, nothing. But that, as it turns out, does not appear to be true. This Claude Rains Act is ridiculous. I mean, and prosecutors in his office have told Fox News and others that all the documents are there.

And in fact, senior prosecutors in the office were fully aware. There are emails documenting that the L.A. County District Attorney's Office was fully aware of the fraud that was being perpetrated on the court and the absolutely ignoring the rights of the victim in this circumstance. And California has a strong statute to protect victims' rights. And prosecutors like Quesa Boudin and George Gascon repeatedly ignore that. And so you think about how ridiculous the situation is. This person is 23 years old. Okay. And so the theory is, oh, because they were a minor, 17, when they committed this crime, we're going to put them in a juvenile facility.

Where does that logic end? What if we find out that somebody committed a murder and they're in their 50s, but they committed the murder when they were a teenager? Do we sentence them to a juvenile facility at that point? Just to get a little bit of their known predator. And so one more point I want to make about the difference between these two prosecutors. I live in San Francisco. George Gascon was the district attorney here in San Francisco. He's worse, okay? Because he actually started out as the police chief here in San Francisco. And he was a Republican. He

identified as a Republican. And then he became the district attorney. And then suddenly he changed. And now he's on the far left. So wolf in sheep's clothing. I don't think he ever would have made it here back in that day as a far left police chief. And that's how he got in the door and turned into this. It's almost a microcosm of los angeles and i think that now that he's scared that the recall uh second recall effort against him is gaining steam that is why he is suddenly exhibiting this about face on this circumstance but yes because now he's yes now he's trying to pull an alvin bragg all fake so he's the soft on crime county he's the soft on crime DA Alvin Bragg of New York. All these are Soros supported guys. Who's now Alvin Bragg's like, Oh, well, I'll reverse some of my crazy policies after we have all these cops dead, including those two very young police officers and their widows directly blaming Alvin Bragg. Now he's like, Oh, I'll reverse some of my things. Maybe I really will

criminalize resisting arrest again, and so on. And that's what Gascon is trying to do. He's like, oh, I'll reverse some of my things. Maybe I really will criminalize resisting arrest again and so on. And that's what Gascon is trying to do. He's like, oh, I'm going to reverse a lot of the stuff. Oh, I don't want to be recalled because the first recall effort failed. I guess they didn't get enough signatures. But the second one is looking good and could go down this summer. And I hope he does lose his job. I hope the citizens of L.A. stand up and fire his ass just the same way they do Chesa Boudin, who, yes, OK, I see your point. At least he's not a wolf in sheep's clothing. He's a sheep in sheep's clothing. But I don't think the good people of San Francisco had any idea what kind of a lunatic they were putting in office. The child basically of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn, who raised him, who are domestic terrorists and his biological parents are convicted felons who killed two cops and a security guard. Yes. Yeah, it's it's rank choice voting in San Francisco. Literally, this guy was actually not the choice of the Democrat machine. It was a more moderate prosecutor. This guy got in because of our split voting system in San Francisco. People do regret it across the political spectrum here. And so I feel like we're going to see a second recall here. Yes. Those school board

members went down and Chesa Boudin is going down too. And reason will ultimately prevail or so we hope. Can I just listen to the second? Because we have more of this Tubbs on camera talking about the sweetheart deal that James, now Hannah, has managed to get. Don't worry about it. It's a strike, but they're going to plead. I'm going to plead out to them and plead guilty. They're going to stick me on probation and it's going to be dropped. It's going to be done. Done. I won't have to register. I won't have to do nothing. For an offender, you don't have to register? I won't have to do none of that. So what are they going to do to you then? Nothing. Sweet. And you know, John, this doesn't even touch on the fact that he's not the only prisoner

doing this. In LA, we've had several prisoners who are men suddenly claim that they're women and get transferred into female prisons. And it doesn't matter how much the women in those prisons object. California is just determined to let them in. Yeah, because just another example of how woke and out of control our system has, our country essentially has become, just add one thing sort of ancillary to this, Megan. And that is, you know, while all these DAs are getting very soft on big crime, like these are big crimes and, you know, they're turning a blind eye on purpose and they think that that's okay. Do you know who else is paying the price? The people who are committing small crimes. And I know like a lot of people out there might not care about criminals who commit small crimes, but example, because I

do this every day. You can have somebody who drives for a living, drives a commercial vehicle for a living, goes out, two glasses of wine, gets popped for DWI. That's a relatively minor crime. Nobody's dead. It's a low BAC. They lose their livelihood because of that, Megan. They lose their livelihood because they lose their commercial driver's license. Nobody's crying about that. Everybody's letting that go. But these child molesters and murderers and everybody else are getting free reign. Oh, and by the way, go to go to prison and then get your free sex change so you don't have to, you know, watch out for your soap on the rope. I mean, come on. It's what people aren't given this statement to Fox News saying that the lenient treatment of Tubbs is a miscarriage of justice. It's insulting and it's unfair to her as a victim saying, quote, the things he did to me, the things he did to me and made me do that day were beyond horrible for a 10-year-old girl to have to go through. I want him tried as an adult for the crimes he committed against me.

Wow. Okay, so we have so many more things to go over. We're going to squeeze in a quick break and come back on Brittany, on Alec Baldwin, and much, much more. Don't go away. All right, so BLM back in trouble. Indiana's attorney general now calling BLM a scam, saying it's a house of cards. It may be falling. And it's just the latest. We got Indiana, we got California, we got Washington. There have been problems with them out of compliance, I guess, in some way. You guys explain how in Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia, according

to the Washington Examiner, which took a deep dive on this, seems to be with respect to their tax and charity filings. Harmeet, basically, they're claiming to be a charitable organization, but they're not behaving like a charitable organization. Right. So when you introduced me, you mentioned I was the CEO of the Center for American Liberty, a small nonprofit. We won three cases at United States Supreme Court last year, to operate a small nonprofit in this country and do fundraising in the 50 states, you have to file extensive paperwork throughout the country, particularly in these blue states, California and others, pay a small fee in some circumstances and do that annually. You have to certify that you have particular objective criteria and that there's somebody watching the hen house besides the

fox to make sure that the money isn't being stolen by the leaders of the organization. And they've simply blatantly blown through and ignored those requirements. So not just the states you mentioned, but in I think over a dozen states, they fail to file necessary filings that demonstrate their bona fides. They also are required in some jurisdictions to have audits or to have at least an auditable paper trail. So that's why the Attorney General of Indiana is calling them a fraud. But when you even have California's liberal attorney's general's office questioning your practices, you're in deep trouble. And so I think that indeed, that is why they hired the shadiest of the lawyers on the political left, Mark Elias,

somehow to come in and try to perhaps demagogue their way out of this claim. It's racism or claim that perhaps it's, you know, some kind of discrimination to require people to comply with paperwork requirements. That's perfect. It's racist. This attack on us is racist. I mean, where else would they go? The thing is, Jonna, this organization has been promoted by the by corporate America, by the NBA and its courts, by New York City on Fifth Avenue. And I know, you know, it's like, oh, well, you know, the thought of BLM versus the organization. Well, people who want to help support BLM when they see the big BLM on Fifth Avenue go online, Google it, and it takes them to this group. And this group, according to these state officials in the blue and the red states, is a fraud, is taking the money with no accountability. And right now, the charity has no known leader

in charge of its bankroll. We do know, however, that the old leader has three or four houses and is living large on apparently the donations, but we have no idea where the rest of the millions and millions of dollars went. Yep, yep. And we may never, I mean, I think that's how they,

how they got caught, basically, is that one of the founders is turning money into another charity in Canada and then buying a whole lot of real estate through that charity. I don't know who they were trying to fool. But look, whenever somebody wants to be benevolent and donate to any nonprofit, the key here is nonprofit organization, we're all kind of guilty of it, right? I've donated to plenty. I don't know how many cents on my dollar is going where I want it to go. That's why we have the rules that we do for nonprofit organizations that need to be followed. Nobody was looking for a

period of time with BLM because all BLM could do no wrong. When you have the mayor, the former mayor of New York City plastering it, like you said, up Fifth Avenue, like they can't do anything wrong. I always knew that they were probably going to get caught up in something because Al Sharpton, whenever he's involved, you never know what the heck's going to happen. So I'm not surprised by this, but it is pretty disgusting. It absolutely is. And I think this House of Cards is going to fall pretty quickly. I think about, you know, during after George Floyd, Harmeet, and when our kids were still remote learning, it was May of 2020. It was in the midst of the COVID pandemic. And I remember my daughter's teachers were popping up the BLM sign as their background, right? You're not allowed to do politics in the schools, but BLM, they got an exception. And I think, do you understand what you're backing there? Do you understand that phrase, those letters have been co-opted by a group that stands for far more than the basic concept that black people should be valued as much as white people, which is not controversial

and accepted by 99.99% of Americans, right? Except for the crazy racists who tend to do bad things and get tried and convicted. You're conveying support for an organization that I would argue is rotten to its core, that is dividing us, that is defrauding us, that is padding its own pockets to support things like the division of the nuclear family. But people roll along in their lives like, oh, yes, I'll give money. And you got people giving tens of millions to this organization or its affiliates. Right. I mean, I think we're talking about 60 million dollars that have been raised by by this entity. Its leaders are in disarray and living large, as was said. What's really tragic about this is that, you know, some some on the right may not agree with me,

but as a civil rights lawyer, I can tell you we do have a history in our country, historically, of some discriminatory practices. And addressing that head on should be part of history. What BLM has done is hijacked that very important American sentiment of acknowledging things we need to change and improve and turn it into an industry, turn it into a Marxist loving and promoting organization and turn it into politics in our schools. Even as this is happening in the courts, Megan, in the schools, this same ideology is currently being preached.

Students are being asked to pledge allegiance to the principles of BLM, which are Marxist principles. They aren't American principles. And all of this is an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement of anarchy, Antifa. There are not good things going on under the hood over here. So if I were the civil rights movement and concerned about having their message not be tainted by this, I would distance myself from BLM and I would start fresh because the principles of everyone should be treated fairly. Those are Martin Luther King Jr. principles. Those are the principles enshrined in our constitution. And those are valuable. So we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater, but we should call out these grifters and these frauds for what they are. If you want to make a donation to a group that is actually

helping people and trying to stop others from dividing us by race, consider fairforall.org. They actually are doing it with people like Glenn Lowry. And the list goes on and on, but you'll be very impressed by who's on there. I'm on their board, but there are amazing, amazing people. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, there are people on the left and the right who are working with Fair For All to try to actually fight discriminatory policies. And as for these sort of people who come into your school and try to divide your kids, go to Chloe Valdry, Theory of Enchantment. She's an MLK proponent. She has these courses that try to fight discrimination that bring you together, that don't shame anybody, that are uplifting,

that are cool, that use pop culture. And she's cool. She's not even 30. Anyway, okay. There's just a couple of tips for you. Now, Alec Baldwin Oh, my gosh. Have you guys seen the the the video markup or, you know, it's it's a mock up, I should say, of the shooting. So what's happening now is Helena Hutchins. She was the cinematographer who was killed by Alec Baldwin on the set of his movie Rust. Her Rust. Her husband has filed a lawsuit on February 15th against Alec Baldwin and others involved in the film, claiming that he was reckless and that they cut costs and that that is what really led to the 42-year-old Helena's death. In the context of that, they produced a mock-up of the moment Alec Baldwin shot Helena. What it shows is her shooting Alec Baldwin with a camera and him sitting, which I actually didn't realize prior to this, that he was sitting and pulling out the gun and shooting her. It's disturbing. It's chilling. And the husband is particularly angry over what we knew would come back to haunt him, which is Alec Baldwin speaking to ABC News, George Stephanopoulos, saying the following.

This is Sat 9. Do you feel guilt? No, no. I feel that there is, I feel that someone is responsible for what happened. And I can't say who that is, but I know it's not me. There are some who say you're never supposed to point a gun at anyone on a set, no matter what. Unless the person is the cinematographer who's directing me where to point the gun for her camera angle. The husbands come out and said, you know, watching him, I feel so angry. And the notion that that my wife told him to point the gun at her, he says almost sounds like like he was the victim. Here's the husband, Matt Hutchins, responding, notably not on ABC. Right. He went to NBC. here he is on the today show watching him i just felt so angry just so angry to

see him talk about her death so publicly in such a detailed way and then to not accept any responsibility after having just described killing her he said essentially he felt grief but no guilt. Almost sounds like he was the victim. And hearing him blame Helena in the interview and shift responsibility to others and seeing him cry about it, I just feel like, are we really supposed to feel bad about you, Mr. Baldwin? He never should have given that interview. Never should have given that interview. Mark

Garagos was on a couple of days after it happened, famed criminal defense attorney saying, he's an idiot. He never should have done it. And he predicted exactly this. Exactly that line would come back to haunt him with a jury, with Helena's husband. It was colossally stupid to give that interview to ABC. He did more harm than good. And you tell me, Jonna, how this lawsuit is likely to go. See, this is horrible on a number of levels. I think we all can agree that this poor woman, Helena Hutchins, should not be dead. This was a tragedy. And I always and I think all of us would agree. it's not a matter of if somebody's going to pay for her death. It's a matter of how much is that check going to be for? And it will come from numerous

sources, not just one person on that set. But as an attorney, I don't know if, did somebody tell Alec Baldwin not to give that interview? I don't know what prompted him to do that. It's like he's trying to limit his own liability, but that's not how you do it. When you have something like this going on, you sit back, you say nothing except maybe, oh my God, this was a tragedy. I'm so sorry, but I'm not allowed to talk about it until all the dust settles. Because this is what the lawyers need to do. Apportion a liability

and settle this case. This husband should not have even had to file a formal lawsuit to get there. This could have been negotiated without that. But Alec Baldwin needs to be Alec Baldwin, I suppose. And his behavior is really, it's deplorable in a lot of ways. He really needs to shut up if it's not already too late. Harmeet, you know what Alec Baldwin forgot? That the husband can get access to a microphone, too. That he wouldn't have the one and only word on this. Not in the public domain, not in a courtroom. And that the husband is going to be far more sympathetic than you are, Alec.

So keep your mouth shut. Alec Baldwin is a complete moron, and that predates this particular terrible incident. Now, I mean, as a lawyer, I will tell you, and I think all three of us can tell people, that the biggest mistake people make in a circumstance like this, and they could avoid so many lawsuits

by simply saying, I'm sorry. A lot of lawsuits happen because the person at fault didn't say, I'm sorry, what can I do to make this right? And John is absolutely correct. This could and should have been resolved privately out of court. The liability is very clear. You know, what happened here is, you know, apparently there was gross negligence and people walked off of the set hours before this incident happened because of prior incidents involving this specific weapon. And so, you know, I don't know whether he's a narcissist who's listening to his narcissist's wife, Hilaria, telling him to go out there and tell his story. But he wasn't the victim. And now he's going to have to pay. and I hope it impacts his career is bad judgment here because it is really unfortunate

that this family is being victimized, not only by the death, but also by this callous and even cruel commentary spewing forth. I mean, if I'm a lawyer with this client, I would fire the client. You know, you can't control this client, he's crazy. And I would distance myself from this client.

Yeah, we've seen a lot of great lawyers do that in the past. And when you're up against it, you want the best legal talent you can find representing you, whether it's a criminal case or a big civil case like this. And they have rules too. And they will not represent a client who just fires off, goes off the handle and doesn't take their advice. There's a reason these very great lawyers

get very great reputations, right? It's like they need to handle the case. They go through this all the time. I don't have to tell you ladies this. You go through it way more than your clients ever go through it. And they need to shut up and take your advice if they want the right outcome. But he was too full of hubris. He thought he knew better. And now it's coming back to haunt him. I do want to say, interestingly, the movie's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, is also named in this lawsuit, but she has filed her own lawsuit. And she is alleging that a different crew member named Seth Kenny supplied the ammunition to the set and that she believed she had been loading dummy rounds into that gun and that if anybody substituted in a real bullet, for. And to your point, Jonna, as far as civil liability goes, the insurance carrier is going to have to pay. They're probably going to have to pay out the full policy. Just do it. Just who wants to go to court on something that's freaking pay? Okay, let's switch over to Britney

Spears. She is, look, I'm glad the conservatorship is done, but she's not a particularly well woman. Let's be honest. She's not. All of woman let's be honest she's not all of her public statements lead me to be really concerned for her mental state i just don't think she's all all together um and i don't think that's an excuse for what her dad did to her all those years but i'm just saying because we've talked about before how a lot of hollywood stars are not all together they don't have a conservatorship or their father controls their every motion. However, I don't know. Every statement she gives, I'm kind of like, I don't know. She is now threatening to sue her former business manager, TriStar Sports and Entertainment,

making allegations against her former managers in an Instagram post that has since been deleted. But I'll just give you a flavor for what she's saying. She writes, before they sent me away to a treatment facility, they, she's saying, sent me away, TriStar brought me into their offices. The swanky, suited up bitches, so nice with their, we're here to make you feel special, she wrote, before specifically naming her former business managers.

This is Brittany. She writes, I had lunch with these two, and they said, Brittany, look at your picture on the wall with a huge black and white frame picture in the hall of their office. Kate Peckinsdale was there too. They sucked up to me and made me feel special. Right. Ha, those same bitches killed me a week later. She claimed her father worshiped these two, would have done anything they asked of him, said, I think they were trying to kill me. I still do to this very day. I believe that's exactly what they were trying to do, but not a damn thing was wrong with me and I didn't die. Nobody would have done anything they asked of him, said, I think they were trying to kill me. I still do to this very day. I believe that's exactly what they were trying to do, but not a damn thing was wrong with me. And I didn't die. Nobody would have lived through what they did to me. I lived through all of it. I remember all of it. I will sue the blank out of TriStar. And they got away

with all of it. And I'm here to warn them. TriStar says these claims are entirely false, as well as highly offensive damaging and unacceptable and i'm sure they will be defending themselves if she does file said suit harmeet what do you make of it look i think i think you put your finger on on it which is she's probably not starting from you know a full a full box of crayons but uh but what happened to her here in the courts is extremely disturbing, and I think outrageous. And it is only because she's famous, it's getting attention. But the abuse of conservatorship and the payment of a lot of money to conservators for people who are either elderly, but perfectly compost mentis, or people like this who are very successful and can be a gravy train for their parasites who are manipulating them.

It's really disturbing, and I'm kind of shocked that this judge continued to rubber stamp this conservatorship, even to the point of her being forced to perform, making money for all these other people, and not allowed to reproduce, forced to wear an IUD as a condition of this ongoing persecution, I think it is outrageous. And so if she's the imperfect vehicle to bring this issue to the world's attention, I guess I'm okay with that. I hope she gets the help she needs and the support she needs. But can you blame people who are very successful from a young age, in part because they're manipulated by their parents? They don't get good guidance. They don't get proper schooling. They don't get any reality check from a normal upbringing or college or friends mocking them. And then they turn out like this. So I suspect

there's some statute of limitations issue here having to do with the fact that she was legally not capable of filing a lawsuit. And now is her time to do that. And, you know, if these people did wrong to her, I hope they pay. And, John, it could be more than just the managers if she does file suit. I mean, who knows? She could go after the guy who was supposed to be representing her. Remember, who seemed way more in bed with the dad than he was with her. And it is weird that this judge has kept rubber stamping this over and over and over, though it's really tough to sue a judge. But these documentaries on her really do take aim at the managers as having had a hand in all of this. They're going to argue, I assume, we always had her best interest at heart and she was not a well person.

If she actually sues, I don't know how much of her rhetoric right now is her just trying to lash out on social media to feel her oats a little bit and how much of it is really going to form the basis of a lawsuit. If she does intend to sue anybody, and if there is any liability there, if I were representing her, I'd say, listen, you're ahead. So again, be quiet and let's not lose credibility in your arguments. Let's put the arguments on paper. Let's keep them off Instagram and make sure that the arguments are credible and will survive a lawsuit. Don't go're going to love it. Just ask Harmeet with all of her wins at the U.S. Supreme Court. The turn of a beautiful phrase in front of very smart judges can really do a lot, a lot more than Instagram posts in the middle of the night. Ladies, what a pleasure. So, so great to have you here. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Megan. Unbelievable. So the CDC just announcing that it will ease its masking recommendations for 70 percent of the country, including inside schools. Look, this is not this is not bad news because some of these counties continue to treat the CDC like it's God and do only what it recommends. So for those, the CDC saying, OK, it's time to take the masks off. That's a good thing. That'll help people in their fight to return to reason. But it is absurd that it has taken the CDC this long. And if you think for one minute that it has to do with science, you're insane. 2022. There was research done by a Democrat hired research group. They circulated the memo and the Democrats, including Rochelle Walensky, have clearly gotten it talking about how people are worn out and feeling real harm from the years long restrictions on covid, advising that they need to take those people's side in order to win over Democrat voters,

to win them back. Most Americans reading from the memo have personally moved out of crisis mode. Twice as many voters are now more concerned about COVID's effect on the economy than about someone in their family or someone they know becoming infected with it. Two thirds of parents and 80 percent of teachers say the pandemic caused learning loss and voters are overwhelmingly more worried about that than kids getting COVID. Six in 10 Americans describes themselves as worn out by the pandemic. The more we talk about the threat of COVID and onerously restrict people's lives because of it, the more we turn them against us and show them we're out of touch with their daily realities. That's Feb 24, 2022.

Today is Feb 24, 2022. Today is Feb 25, 2022. And today is the day Rochelle decides to issue a memo saying we can ease the masking recommendations. We don't need these. We're moving on. We're moving past the most crucial phase of the pandemic. These are such dishonest people. You know it. I know it. And the American people finally know it. You're a dishonest broker, Rochelle. So is your friend Anthony Fauci. And we're on to you. That's the glory of where we are right now. Okay. Let me talk to you about the glory of Monday because we have a special show that I really want you to know. Please listen to it.

Please download it. I hope you heard our Memorial Day show with Rob O'Neill. You know him as the man who killed bin Laden. One of my favorite shows ever. Well, Rob O'Neill is back with us on Monday along with Dakota Meyer, another war hero. They're out with a new book next week. It's fascinating, perfectly timed, called The Way Forward, Master Life's Toughest Battles. I am so excited for this.

It's their first interview. Don't miss it. Download the show and have a great week. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.