The Megyn Kelly Show - Bombshell School Videos, and Dark Brandon's Speech, with Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch | Ep. 385

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch, hosts of the Fifth Column podcast, to talk about the bombshell undercover videos exposing school administrators, racism and more shown in the James O'Keefe videos, the cultural shift that's behind the progressive activism, the negative effect this propaganda will have, reality of harmful COVID school closures coming clear, the lack of interest in correcting the COVID record and changing policy now, the failure of our scientific elite, Dark Brandon's apocalyptic and hypocritical speech, who really is the "semi-fascist," the purposely vague "MAGA Republican" slur,  Biden's hope to make 2022 about Trump, Joy Reid implying Trump got spies killed, Hillary Clinton's new ridiculous "Gutsy" show, the truth about The Clintons' marriage, Chelsea Clinton's irrelevance, what Michael Jackson's "Thriller" really means, 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. Hope you enjoyed the long holiday weekend. Now it's back to reality. My kids went back to school today. Did yours? It was, I mean, it's such a shit show getting everybody out of the house. You forget, you know, you wake up, it's still dark outside. It's about to get even darker as fall sets in. Everybody's tired. We went to get my little guy Thatcher up this morning and Doug said, Thatcher, come on, it's time to pop. He goes, I don't want to pop. I want to stay a colonel. Everyone's tired. And then you won't be surprised to learn um we we come downstairs we're back in connecticut and uh i'm getting the kids breakfast doug's getting the

kids breakfast everything and i look over and strudwick had done an enormous dump I live in my living room and he has diarrhea. Why? My dog, he's so bad. I know. I love him, but good God, he's so bad. Anyway, it's not just us. All across the country today, dogs are crapping, kids are complaining and going back to school. And let me tell you, folks, you need to pay attention this year. If you think you can just ship them off by bus, by car, by foot, by bike and not pay attention, think again. Some of our worst fears about education and indoctrination are confirmed, are being confirmed by the day. Thanks to God bless James O'Keefe. OK, God bless this guy. Thanks to Project Veritas. He doesn't care what they say about him. He continues to put his reporters undercover and to unearth people's true character. And now he's taken focus on educators, on administrators at our nation's K through 12 schools just in time again for the reopening. They published one video of a school administrator at one of New York City's most elite schools. I mean, literally, the school is considered the number one school in the nation by a lot of ranking ranking systems and so on. It costs $60,000 a year to go there trinity is the school uh and he's got this administrator

admitting that she sneaks her left-wing agenda into the classroom she intentionally silences conservative voices and that's not even close to the worst of it here is just a sampling of this woman's views including the suggestion so funny that they should get a serial killer to kill the white boys. It's definitely a school where conservatives would not feel comfortable. Unfortunately, it's the white boys who feel very entitled to express their opposite opinions and just push back. There's a huge contingent of them that are just like horrible.

And are you always going to be horrible? Are you just going to be horrible right now? Don't know. Is there any saving these Republican white guys? I think they need to go. No, I think they're really awful people. Yeah. That's kind of what I'm afraid of

with my white students that are rich. I'm like, do you ever have to deal with this they're so protected by capitalism it makes me sad like dexter yeah yeah i just wonder how many yeah oh no there's something wrong with her there's something wrong with her. There's something wrong with Jennifer Norris. For the record, she's now been placed on paid leave while they investigate at Trinity. 60 grand a year to get Jennifer Norris to think about murdering your child because he's white and a boy. Joining me now are friends from the Fifth Column podcast, Matt Welsh, editor at large for Reason Magazine, Michael Moynihan, a correspondent for Vice News Tonight, and Camille Foster of Freethink Media. Welcome back to the show, guys. Can you believe this woman?

Thanks for having us, Mike. I absolutely believe this woman. My daughter goes to a private school in New York, and she hasn't started yet. As yours actually starts later this week, I think they sent her off to Havana to cut sugar cane for the first week, and then they come back, and then they do the indoctrination. But no, there's literally nothing surprising about this. And look, I'll get hate mail for this. I'm not a huge fan of the technique that James O'Keefe uses, and there's nothing surprising about this to me. It's a private school. You should actually know this and you're paying for this stuff. And I hope that kind of

wakes people up and says, maybe your $60,000 is better spent elsewhere. Now, keep in mind, this is the school that Eric Trump went to, Oliver Stone went to. I mean, there's a long list of kind of luminaries and rather wealthy people that went there. But you know, the crazy thing about it is the, I can't remember the exact phrase, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong on this. And she said, you know, it's the white boys with their other views, their opposite views. Does she understand what school is for? Because apparently she doesn't. There's one view, and there's these kids who are diverging. I guess they should all be murdered. But there's kids with these divergent views, these other views, which she then, I believe, blames on capitalism. I don't understand anybody.

So I'm more offended that the entire argument is incoherent. Yeah. You know, she's straight out of central casting, I have to say. You know, she's got like the nose ring and she's got sort of the gender neutral appearance and she's like the boys, the white boys in particular are the problems. So what, they all need to look like you in order to be accepted at Trinity School? they all need to certainly think like you. Um, and I don't know

how James O'Keefe manages to get like his staff to continue getting these administrators to speak so openly about their views, but I have to think they're, they're just pretty close to the surface for them to be talking so openly like this. There's no like hushed tone. She's proud of it. So I would love to talk to James about his strategy and tactics. And what it seems like is there's a lot of honey traps taking place. And you will often find that there are these men divulging their secrets to someone who sounds like a young woman who I presume, you know, is it at least an eight or a 10 or an eight or a nine. Camille's like, this isn't my first rodeo. I know how this goes.

I'm just saying that's sufficiently enough to kind of entice you to start spilling the beans and sharing all your secrets. But apparently willing to do this with both genders doesn't quite care about your sexuality. But I imagine there's a lot of kind of hot or not fishing going on. It's amazing to me like you because there's so many questions and we're going to show you some of the tapes. And by the way, I think we're having James O'Keefe join us later this week. So I'll ask him. But it's amazing to me how many questions the undercover journalist asks these administrators about liberal versus conservative. How do you do it? How do you keep them, you know, the Republicans, the speakers and so on out of the school, out of the class, and they never catch on. If somebody had me, like, it just kept tweaking over and over. I think at

some point I'd be like, holy shit, I better put down this margarita and maybe rethink this date. In fairness, not everyone is expecting to have their kind of date surreptitiously recorded by people trying to smoke them out at a private school. I mean, you can find monocultures in a lot of different places in this country. And God knows the New York City school system, as all of us here have had experience with it, with the exception of Camille, but he's been close enough to it. God knows that that can be a monoculture and just filled with jargon. I recommend if anyone hasn't to read George Packer's Atlantic piece that was like 5 trillion words long from three or four years back talking about navigating what turns out to be kind of my system in Brooklyn. Most normal people would read this and say, my God, I don't even recognize the

language that's being spoken. But you can find monocultures in a lot of different places with a lot of different slants on it. I don't think James O'Keefe will be going in the middle of Kansas somewhere to try to find if there's a conservative place that like, yeah, these liberals that come over here, we got to do something with them. In fairness, I don't think that that place necessarily exists. There's something about, there's something about that process, which, which strikes me as a little bit sketchy. This is confirming something that we've seen. And for the rest of the country, looking at this saying, oh my God, this woman is from Mars. No, she's from New York. This, this is, that's the thing. So it's like, all right. So I realize James has

gotten criticism for the tactics they use, but I stand by what I said. God bless this guy, because we do need to see it. It's like the Disney situation where somebody pressed record on that executive and people didn't have to suppose anymore about Disney's secret agenda. It was all on camera, just like we don't have to suppose now, like these teachers who then wind up blaming libs of TikTok for taking something they said on Instagram out of context. No, I can see you say what context makes your joke about hiring a serial killer to take out the white boys? What context could make that better? I understand you think that's an appropriate joke

as the mother of two white boys. I tell you, you can fuck right off. I'm sorry, but if you're not funny, your school sucks. What lunatic would pay $60,000 a year to send their child there? I don't care if you're liberal or not. All my friends are liberal. Most of them would be really deeply offended by this shit. These lunatics have access to our children and it's alarming and so again god bless james o'keefe and this crazy lunatic a trinity i'll give you one more soundbite before i get on to her buddy in connecticut everywhere i go these lunatics are you guys i'm moving connecticut now there's another it's a 200 mile radius so you got to get out of it this It's just a problem. It's a long story. All right. Here's the second soundbite we cut from this person, Jennifer, about how even at Trinity least some person there is like, well, we might have to not do like the craziest stuff. Here she is. Soundbite two.

There's always groups of teachers who are like, I want to do these things, but the administration just wouldn't let us. So we've been sneaking things in in the cracks. I just keep trying to like disrupt whoever I can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now that I'm in this position, I have so many opportunities to do that. But I said,

there are some speakers I am not even going to put on the plate for them. And if that's a problem, I cannot be in charge of that. Yeah. And he was like, no. He said, this isn't a time

for the, like, both sides. Like, he said, we're not in that place in our society. I like him. He's your dean, he said? He's the principal of the our society i like him he's your dean he said he's the principal of the high school so you guys wouldn't let republican perspectives on campus and then she talks about how if you sneak off campus to go do a demonstration

you're supposed to get suspended or you're supposed to get a detention but she makes detention really fun and they just talk about social justice activities while there. I mean, you wonder why you get these lunatics on the college campuses and then running corporate America. This is the pipeline, guys. This is the pipeline exposed. It's the pipeline. The pipeline is the public education system. Trinity, the people who are coming out of Trinity aren't necessarily going to be those people. They're going to be Oliver Stone. They're going to be Oliver Stone. They're going to be investment bankers who live in your neighborhood, Megan. It's the people I'm worried about, the people who are spending my money to do this and teaching my kids, in this case, that pipeline, which contains a lot of the similar things. You know, there's a place in a school in Manhattan that told kids in middle school in the morning, all right, let's everyone segregate by race. And then we're going to go and talk about, you know, our various things. Hold on. You are a public school doing this.

That's where I think the locus of our upset should be because we have the ability to target that and to affect that with, you know, kicking people out of school boards in this case in places like San Francisco and elsewhere. And it is a real. Matt Welsh, if it is public schools you want, it is public schools you're going to get because James O'Keefe has been busy. On behalf of private school students, though, no, you're wrong. It's a problem in both places, because let's say you live in an area where the where the public schools are crappy. And so you really feel like you got to put your kid in a public school or private school or Catholic school, what have you. This problem

is becoming universal. So, you know, you flee and then the problem pops itself up again. You flee and then here it is again. Like I've experienced this myself right now. Our schools are not indoctrinating quite as badly as New York. Otherwise, I wouldn't have gone here. But, you know, the problem of left leaning administrators who went to, I believe it's the Koskob Elementary School, public in Greenwich, Connecticut, and gets this guy. Oh my, speaking of honeypot, right? Is it honeypot or honey trap, Camille? Honey trap? Honeypot. Honey trap. You hope you get the honeypot as well, I suppose, but I don't know. Well, that's definitely what happened to the assistant principal of Coscov Elementary School, who's, you can just tell he's got his margarita. You can't see the woman he's talking to, but she looks kind of hot from what you can see.

She has a hot voice. She has a good arm. And he is clearly drunk on his own margarita. And talking about how, well, let's kick it off with the one that started to make all the news, which is he doesn't want to hire Catholics. You got to screen do with the Catholics? They can find out someone's Catholic number. You don't hire them, he says. I agree, but why not?

Because it's just thatcribed. But for the listening audience, here's what happened. He said, I'm not a huge expert on religion. Protestants in this area are probably the most liberal, but if they're Catholic conservative, the journalist says, what do you do with them? He says, you don't hire them. She says, would you ever hire a Catholic then? No. He says, no, I don't want to. Because if someone's raised hardcore Catholic, it's like they're brainwashed. You can never change their mindset. So when you ask them to consider something new, like an opportunity, or you have to think about this differently, they're stuck, just rigid. That's, as I say, illegal, as is his on the record statement to her that he only hires younger. He'll only go younger because older might mean more conservative. So he will never interview somebody who is older. He likes them under 30. I mean, I need that to be a two-camera shoot, by the way, because for me, six margaritas, if she's hot enough, I'm joining ISIS. I'm like, you know what? It's fine.

They made some mistakes in Iraq, but let's move on. No, this is amazing because this is always an experiment that I do. Catholics, of course, you know, last name Moynihan, maybe I have some bias here. Catholics are always getting it in this case. But imagine if the news story, if this wasn't James O'Keefe, if this was anyone else, and the administrator on a secret tape was saying, you know who I really won't hire because they're very, very conservative Muslims. Muslims are really, really bad on gay marriage and Muslims are just bad in general.

This would be a cover story in every newspaper in America, but you can have that sort of religious intolerance when it comes to Catholics, because, you know, it reminds people of Amy Coney Barrett or something. I just, I don't, I don't understand where this is coming from, but just to, I do appreciate the fact that he doubles down and says, you know what, the previous one was like, was legitimately racist saying, we're talking about white students in the entire race of students. These whites are bad. And then you move on to, you know, this religious

discrimination. Okay. Let's throw another thing in there and say, we don't want the olds. Why, if this guy has a job as of tomorrow, and again, this is all presuming that these tapes are not edited. I don't know. I haven't seen them. But if this is as it is presented, one would presume that this person would be out of a job. But the lesson to everybody is, you know, don't be don't discriminate in religion, race, age, and don't get drunk with strangers and talk about your job. A couple years ago, people kept getting caught, like by their accomplices, they kept getting, you know, their accomplice to their crime would get them on tape and turn them in there was like a rash of those a wave of them and somebody on twitter had such a great response to one of the cases where the accomplice had gone back and gotten their co you know partner in crime to confess to it all

saying um it just pro tip if your accomplice in a crime comes back to you and tries to get you to repeat everything you did, remember when we robbed the bank? Remember when you held the gun? The only proper response is, no, that is not a thing. It has a huge flower on their lapel. The incredible thing about this is the questions are literally like, so what you were saying is, yes. I was too drunk to be like, wait a second, do you work for James O'Keefe? No, no, no. What he hears is, oh, she's really listening to me.

She's really into this. This is actually something you have to wonder about. I don't know how much of the things that they're saying are actually true or the things they imagine this person wants to hear. In either case, you're willing to say it and you're not revolted by it, which suggests that there's something defective about the culture or the cultural milieu that these people exist in, which it's worth underscoring here that we've had extensive conversations about bans and prohibitions on the kinds of things that can happen in classrooms. But ultimately, what this boils down to is what is happening in the culture. And if you are not actively having these arguments in the culture, shifting the needle with respect to the kinds of ideas people are willing to entertain, you're ultimately not

going to be in a great place to make a huge dent in the kind of philosophy that is animating these particular concerns and the fact that people want to exist in these monocultures, that teachers are determined in many instances to circumvent prohibitions on discussing divisive concepts, for example, and find ways to inculcate it into their classrooms, to talk about it with students, finding actually high quality, serious academic institutions that are interested in complexity and nuance and genuine diversity. That's a legitimate challenge that we're all faced with, and there is no shortcut to getting there. And yet they're going to one day encounter a bunch of conservatives who have had to wrestle

with the other side for their entire existence because that's all they've been exposed to. So their argument abilities get better. Their intellectual reasoning, logical reasoning abilities get better. Just to add on to this guy, the COSCOP, he's been placed on administrative leave while they investigate. But I have to say, both of these schools sound more pissed off about the James O'Keefe recording than they do about what their teachers said. I mean, I wouldn't be one bit surprised if both schools rein to the girl, I haven't hired a conservative yet. He complains he can't get past the parents as much as he would like to because they're so nosy and try to intrude between his direct conversations with the students. He talks about how it doesn't matter what anybody thinks about it. He says it doesn't matter what the students think about.

If they think about anything in a progressive way, that becomes their habit. It's subtle, but they get the democratic messages in there in that way. I mean, he, this is his game plan. Go ahead, Matt. Yeah, no, it's, it's terrible. And it does matter to these people ultimately, because they're going to find that they're the piece of cheese that they're sitting on is getting smaller by the day because people like Megyn Kelly take their kids out of the public system. Actually, you can take them out of New York. I've taken one of my two kids out of the public system in New York. You're seeing across the country, but especially in big cities, an unprecedented decline in enrollment and funding for public schools is tethered to enrollment. It didn't bounce back after the pandemic because precisely a bunch of parents suddenly got sort of paying a lot more attention to what was being taught in schools. And they couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe that in the teeth of unprecedented closures, the likes of which we did not see almost anywhere else in the Western world, that the things that their schools wanted to communicate them was how to develop their kids as anti-racists and just sort of buying into a bunch of Ibram X. Kendi ideology. Like, no, tell us about the plan for opening the schools and counteracting

what we've now seen from last week, an absolutely historic decline in reading and math acquisition. Tell us about that a little bit before you do your activist stuff. And people are voting with their feet and leaving, and it's going to be an absolute wipeout for teachers' jobs. They're not going to have this money. And you should all go to the fifth column sub stack and subscribe so Matt can take his other kid out of the public school and into a private school because the Patrice Lumumba Academy that she goes to needs to be shut down. The interesting thing that we're not even pointing out is that this is elementary school, correct? The Costco one is elementary school. That is the deeply offensive thing. At least kids who are 16, 17, 18 have a fighting chance and can push back against this stuff. Elementary school kids don't, and they

have no concept of this stuff, is that this is the great thing. And I've seen this actually in New York schools. It's actually true, is that monocultures produce kids who want to subvert them because kids don't just sit there and say, I love the teacher. I want to do exactly what the teacher says, is that this is actually the backlash that's happening. And I've seen it amongst teachers. I mean, I've seen it amongst students

and I've seen it amongst friends, kids who are like being red pilled at 16 years old. So guys, when you are doing this in high school, don't believe that everyone's going to have this Pavlovian response and just eat it up and become one of you. They probably won't. We could totally draw an analogy to the DARE program, which also persisted in public education and did not succeed in wiping out drug addiction. It's always important to take our concerns about this and peg them against what is realistic. And as much as these teachers are determined to, in some instances, turn these places into propaganda institutions, what they're likely

to do is just hollow them out and make them completely ineffective at their actual job. One of my favorite pastimes, and by favorite, I mean kind of morbid fascinations, is finding these different controversies at these schools. And oftentimes with the public schools in particular, the places that are having these ridiculous race controversies where the teachers are doing the most egregious stuff also tend to be the worst performing schools. The kids can't read. They cannot do math. It persists from elementary through secondary, right through high school, where the scores only seemingly get a little bit better because I presume plenty of kids are dropping out.

These schools just don't work in terms of doing the job that we imagine that they ought to do in terms of educating kids, but they are also very likely to fail with respect to their propaganda project. Remember though, just two weeks ago, the story in Minneapolis public schools where the union negotiated that they could, they had to fire the white teachers first, irrespective of performance. So if the white teacher happened to be teacher of the year, 10 years in a row, she's got to go over somebody who is black or Hispanic or, you know, some sort of minority status. And that was one such school system, Camille, where the reading and the English scores or the math scores were absolutely atrocious. And the dropout rate was atrocious. And so they're so obsessed with just keeping the teacher who has the right skin color in the

position, irrespective of merit, and not at all concerned about who can actually teach. And there's also a flattening effect. The same institutions are the ones that are going to be the quickest to get rid of gifted and talented programs. Any specialized schools got to get rid of that. I've seen this in New York very heavily. All of the energy is, where is the perceived place where privilege is being perpetuated? Let's knock that down. And that can happen all the way up until it can't. And again, San Francisco, they did the same thing.

It wasn't just they tried to rename 40 schools as the Thomas Jefferson School during the pandemic, although that didn't help. But they also went after one of the two basic specialized schools where immigrant Chinese families sent their kids. They did everything in the world to try to sacrifice so that their kid could go and finally succeed. This is the way to do it in America. And these progressive activists, many of whom are pulling down $200,000 salaries, are like, no,, that's perpetuating privilege. We can't do it. And so they knocked that down. That touched off a complete backlash that we're seeing in a lot of different places, but it's widespread. These fads are all concentrated in the same place. It's wherever we can institute plans like controlled choice, where the school basically controls the choice of where they want to send your kids based on income level because they can't do it on race anymore because of the Supreme Court decision. And this is just producing failure all over the place. It's replicating failure. Quickly, just add, why does that happen? We hear the expression all the time in these universes, do the work. One has to do the work. Well, it happens because they don't want to do the work.

And it's much, much easier to say that people are privileged. And that's why there's a disparity in scores that actually having to look at the pedagogy and kind of re have been cashiered, and you have something like Stuyvesant High School, which is the most elite public high school, and it's merit only, test scores only. And you see the number, there's like, by the way, there's like no white people in the school because it's very heavily Asian. And when you look at the Asian populations, a lot of them are first generation immigrants in Queens. These are not wealthy people. And they're doing exceptionally well because they have, you know, kind of tiger mom visions, to borrow from Amy Chua, about how their kids should perform. And that's a tough nut to crack for people who just say everything is privilege and everything is race. Yeah. And now they can't get into Harvard because Harvard is secretly using race very much in a way it's not allowed to do. And that case is going to go up to

the Supreme Court in the fall, asking whether the Supreme Court used to say, the law is currently, you may not use race as a quota, but it can be a factor among others that is considered. But the Supreme Court said there will be an end to this. This is not a forever ruling. And the Supreme Court will decide in the fall whether we are now at the end of allowing that. I mean, again, I've pointed out before, they changed the law in California to say you can't consider race and they did it anyway. They were like, oh, OK, we got it. We'll comply. And they did it anyway. And it was only with a lot of time that they sort of had to start not relying on race as one of the main factors. And what they found was that black students did much better. They did much better. They aligned with the universities in a much more true and productive way. So you wound up with black scientists who might otherwise have gone to an elite university out there like Berkeley or Stanford or whatever the public system offers and majored in African-American studies or same thing with women who might have gone and become like a gender studies major at Berkeley,

whereas they could have become a doctor if they'd gone to maybe on paper, lesser UCL, whatever. And so anyway, the experiment has proven that the people who are just totally focused on race aligning with or gender aligning with the most elite institution have engaged in a failed experiment. All right, stand by because there's much, much more to discuss. And I have to tell you, listening to these two people talk about

our kids and Republicans and conservatives and Catholics reminded me very much of Dark Brandon, which I haven't had the chance to talk about yet because I was off the day after his speech. But we'll talk about Dark Brandon and the president's, you know, President Unity, his latest message with the guys from the fifth column in just one minute. Stay tuned. OK, guys, so before we get on to Dark Brandon, which apparently they're embracing now, the White House likes it. Let's talk about because we're coming off of the schools discussion, the new White House claim like they did with the defund the police, where they were like, we've always been for funding the police. It's the Republicans who don't want to who've been pushing for defunding. I mean, it's a true gaslighting. Just that's just not true.

And we all lived it for a year plus. And we know you're lying, but they they're really good at looking right in the camera and lying. And here's the latest version of that, where Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, actually tried to argue that it is the Democrats who wanted schools open and who we have to thank for the schools being open now. And it was the Republicans who wanted them to remain closed. Here it is. In less than six months, our schools went from 40, 46 percent to to open to nearly all of them being open to full time. That was the work of this president. And that was the work of Democrats in spite of Republicans not voting for the American Rescue Plan, which $130 billion went to school to have the ventilation, to be able to have the tutoring and the teachers and being able to hire more teachers. It shows you how mismanaged the pandemic was and how the impact

of that mismanagement had on kids' progress and academic well-being. And, you know, every Republican Congress voted against that money. That is the reality. We had to do this on our own. Just again, for the listening audience, she read that entire thing. She cannot speak extemporaneously. She cannot make a point without reading from her notes. She doesn't know the facts. That's very clear. It's it's infuriating to me.ating to me. Just as a woman, you see a woman in a post like this, like, get on your two feet and make the argument. That's literally your job. They could send anybody up there to just read. Oh, I got a question about schools reopening. There's paragraph eight. Read that. She can't do it. It upsets me as a human and a woman. But OK, moving on to the substance of the argument, Camille, I saw you shaking your head. I mean, it really is up is down and down is up. But, you know, what do you make of it? Well, first, I want to second your perspective. I think she's uniquely bad at this job. We see a lot of people go into being the

White House press secretary and having to spin on behalf of their bosses, telling half-truths. She's just terrible at this. I think there have been dueling editorials in recent days in the New York Times, well, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, both about COVID and educational policy. And the Wall Street Journal was blasting the teachers' unions for keeping the schools closed as long as they did. And the Washington Post editorial, and this is the entire editorial board, did not say in response, this is unfair because Republicans are responsible for this. What they said was, specifically, this is unfair because it doesn't take into account that there was a lot of fear and trepidation at the time. We know who was responsible for keeping the schools closed.

This isn't debatable. There's some question about whether or not it was justified, whether or not it's understandable. But the fact that it's been consequential, that it's hurt students in general, and that it was almost certainly unnecessary, that is what we should be focusing on. This wasn't a function of money. One line that I do want to slag the Washington Post editorial writers for is suggesting at some point that it's not worth talking about whether or not teachers unions are responsible, that we shouldn't be looking backwards. We should be looking forward because we need to help students catch up. One, I would love to see them apply the same exact philosophy to kind of their conversations about systemic racism. They seem to be particularly obsessed with talking about

what happened in the past and not what actually matters and is likely to improve people's lives in that context. But two, I think it's vitally important that we have conversations about what went wrong and what went right with respect to public health and pandemic policy. I think a lot of that is going to inform how we respond to other problems in the future, but may also have some sort of informative value with respect to the policy solutions that we select when we're trying to help kids get out of the rut and the hole that we've dug for them as a result of really disadvantageous policies that were adopted during the pandemic. Let's remember the wrong decision. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, Matt. Because I was just going to say, she's mad that the Republicans didn't support the American Rescue Plan. Meanwhile, all these schools still have so much money sitting in the coffers that they didn't spend.

Absolutely. Unspent. Right? So now she's trying to say, is how they got they got the schools reopened. You know, it's Joe Biden. Meanwhile, he took office and he took possession of a vaccine. You know, Trump did not have the vaccine, though he developed the vaccine. So to compare, you know, just just this is the percentage of schools that were open when we took office to, you know, where we are today is so misleading. It doesn't add any context. If you go back and look at Trump spring of 2020, he was saying we should open the schools and and that he was getting attacked uniformly by Democrats for being absolutely irresponsible.

Go ahead, Matt. So Ron DeSantis was called widely in the press, Ron Death Santus, because he insisted that Florida public schools be fully open in the fall of 2020, just like basically almost every single school district in the entire continent of Europe. By the way, I guess we only pay attention to Europe when it's advantageous for ourselves. But he was called Ron Death Santus. If you look, and you can find this very easily online, there are color-coded state-by-state rankings on which states had the most open school days from beginning in 2020 in the fall onward, and which ones had the most closed. The most open, all of them are Republican. They voted Republican in the 2020 election. They have a governor who's Republican. Their state house is Republican. All the ones that were the most closed, all Democrats. The correlation between whether

your school systems were open or closed was entirely about partisan politics, entirely. And what do we know about partisan politics on the Democratic side? 94% of teachers union giving goes to Democratic party, political giving goes to democratic parties. So it's exactly in those places where they have the most power that they close the most schools. And we have just seen, as mentioned of last week, we'll have these big report about what happened to learning loss over the last couple of years. It is those places.

And if we're going to use an equity as a focus in all other circumstances, let's look at equity in this circumstances. The the populations that got hit hardest were poor and minority, period. When it comes to this, I know Camille doesn't like that because he doesn't believe in the word minority, but it's certainly among my perspective. I'm just kidding. Traditionally disadvantaged communities suffer by far the most. And there's those places that are run by Democrats. And so it's worse than gaslighting, a term that I normally hate, but it is absolutely on point in this case. Can I just say, I started it by saying it's gaslighting along the lines of what they did with defund the police. And that policy pushed by Democrats had exactly the same effect. It endangered many communities and people lost their lives as a result of this, but in particular, Black and brown communities across America. Hence, the 180

in positions being taken right now by the Democrats and the lie that they were always on the right side. Go ahead. First of all, I object to Ron Death-Santis because it just doesn't really work. It's just a DE, like Ron Death-Santis. But you remember those times, by the way, in which anybody that had the kind of slightly heterodox view on COVID, many of which turned out to be right, by the way, so heterodox at the time, were accused of confining grandma to the gas chamber, basically. Yeah.

Like, everything that you're doing is going to make people die. So Matt brings up the politics. Well, let's look at the politics of this. Of course, we were told we should not politicize science. You know, this is a smart thing to say, but it never actually happens. Well, if we look at the politicization of science and, you know, how it relates to schools, Matt is also correct that most all of Europe didn't close schools. Sweden, where I used to live, I don't think closed schools for a single day, right? They didn't even have lockdowns. So now is the time after a couple of years of this, you know,

two and a half years to actually look at the evidence. If not, you're engaged in a political campaign. If you're up there as the White House practice secretary talking about this stuff in these ways, why are you not, if you don't care about the politicization of science, you don't want it to happen, why are you not addressing the American people and saying, okay, so here's actually what we know about COVID in schools. What happened with kids? How many kids died? How many teachers were confined to their deathbeds because of a transmission from a child? Because we have a lot of evidence about this now, but instead, it's a political blame game and a political blame game only. I'm fine with that because there were some

really bad and shitty politics that we all saw during this time. But I also want that adjunct point to say, by the way, you were all wrong about this. And whether or not you like Ron DeSantis, want him to be president or hell, want him to even be in elected office in Florida, he was right. And Sweden was right. And Europe was right about this. And this idea that kids were going to be dropping like flies, and their teachers, of course, too, because they were vectors of disease, these kids, turned out was not to be true. And you can look at the evidence. I'm not just making this up.

But the problem is no one wants to talk about the evidence. And no one at this point is going back and saying, what do we know about COVID? What do we know about who is dying from it? What do we know about transmission rates? Why are we still asking professional tennis players to come to America when the vaccine doesn't prevent the damn thing from transmitting? That's why we did it before. And this is still affecting policy. This is still affecting policy. We saw it in DC where the mayor suggested that she was going to hold students out of school, not give them any options to attend unless they were fully vaccinated. When we know all of the things that you just underscored, this is the reason we have to talk about the profound failures that happened during the pandemic and our unseriousness about trusting

the science. But the thing is, Camille, I am okay with the failures in some senses because there was a lot of stuff we didn't know. We were feeling this through as a nation. Scientists are trying to figure it out. There's debate amongst scientists. There's no settled science. That's ridiculous. But when we're not actually correcting the record about this stuff and actually telling people, why on earth would we have a mandate for a vaccine of playing in a tennis tournament? You can't do this. Well, why? I mean, that's his problem, isn't it? It's not mine because he can transmit it and he can acquire that whether or not he's been vaccinated. He's just going to have a much better time if he is. That's the position all of our children are in.

All of our children are in that. My kids are facing vaccine mandates at both of their schools. And for what? For what? If God forbid they got some terribly severe case of COVID and had a very negative health outcome, that would be between me, my child, my husband and our doctor, our pediatrician. That is not for the school to weigh in, my husband and our doctor, our pediatrician. That is not for the school to weigh in on. The school doesn't pay our hospital bills. The school really just needs to worry about transmission. And the vaccine doesn't affect that at all. And yet still they're going to expel my children at age 16 unless they get the vaccine. That policy is still in place. And it's absolute madness. But to your point, they've been dishonest all along.

The reason they won't do, you know, a full, open, honest, retrospective look is because they've been dishonest all along. As we saw, the masking was driving me nuts, as you guys know. As we saw the CDC do studies like the 90,000 kids in Atlanta that showed the masks did nothing. They ignored it. Then they would do another study. And then we'd have honest journalists come out and say, no, that one's flawed, too. Here's the and they would continue touting the study despite serious methodological issues. And then a study would come out of Europe proving, no, the masks don't work in reducing transmission. And they would ignore it or try to discredit it. It was all agenda driven.

So, of course, now the one retrospective moment we're having at the CDC, oh, Rochelle Walensky is going to take a look at what went wrong, is focusing on how we are too academic. We're just too smart. Well, we had too many academic papers. Shut up, Rochelle. That's not it. Not it. You need to go the way of that Connecticut'sco elementary school teacher, vice principal, whatever he is. You need to go to the way of all these lunatics who won't accept reality. Never forget that in February 2021, the CDC came out with new revised science-based guidelines for schools. And who sat at those meetings and helped shape those guidelines. Yes. Randy Wingarten.

Randy Wingarten. Who does not have an MD. Not last time I looked. No, that's not really her area of expertise. And those guidelines, if interpreted strictly by school districts, would have had 90 percent of schools closed continuing from that point on. And some of those guidelines, they've reversed most of them by now, but some of them are still in service. And so in the deepest, bluest places like Washington, D.C.,

you have this kind of insane interpretation of them. New York City right now, public schools, you can't engage in extracurricular activities. You can't play on the football team if you're not vaccinated. Why? There's no reason. That's exactly right. We're already facing restrictions on field trips and so on. And ours is not the only school unless your kid is vaccinated. And it truly is like, what business is that of yours? There was one school, it hit the news this weekend that now they're implementing a mask mandate for if you haven't gotten the flu vaccine. These people are drunk on their own power. They love it. They'd like to see us masked all day, every day for everything.

Right. I mean, monkey pox now. It's like kids are looking at mass mandates potentially on that. It's like unless they're having gay sex in like the second grade, I think they're fine. What is that? Can you reveal that in this latest video? I think someone may go to prison over that. Well, I mean, we'll get to that story later about this lunatic who wrote a book who's like celebrating exactly that at the very young, at the 12 year old and up and schools are allowing her book to be everywhere.

But this is a good place to pause it because I do want to do Dark Brandon. We've come up with a just short, brief montage of Joe Biden's dark Brandon moment. And now he's trying to walk it back as if we didn't hear everything he said, um, last week. And then he goes out on the campaign trail and he goes back to dark Brandon again. So it's really, it is more like a Superman figure, like, I guess, uh, like a Batman wait, who's no Superman. Who's got Clark Kent. He's got the one character and he's got the other character and really kind of depends on the setting. What, what message you're going to be hearing. Um, it's like a new superhero character who's got that one character and he's got the other character. It really kind of depends on the setting, what message you're going to be hearing. It's like a new superhero character who's got that same thing in common. Dark Brandon as the fifth column host.

Come back with us right after this quick break. And remember, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111. Every weekday at noon east and the full video showing clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash megankelly. Thank you so much for getting us over the 500,000 subscriber mark. That was our goal by August 31st, and thanks to you guys, we did it. Very grateful. If you prefer to get your news via audio podcast, follow and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free. And there you'll find our full archives with more than 380 shows, many of which feature these three brilliant guys.

Love their perspective. More libertarian. Love to hear from everybody, right, on these issues. And respectful disagreement, always fun as well. All right, so Dark Brandon came and went and then came back again. And I can't quite keep track of whether he's dark Brandon or is it light Brandon? I'm not sure what the opposite of just Brandon, just Brandon. It's like when I had my first date with Doug, it went great. And I was calling him dream date, Doug, you know, shortly after there thereafter. And then like he kind of like blew me off or didn't call when he said he was going to. And he just happening with dark Brandon and just Brandon.

For those who missed it last Thursday night, dark Brandon appeared before the red, the black columns in the red lighting. And I'm not a big Star Wars person, but it's the Star Wars thing, I guess. This is what a lot of people saw and said, in part, the following. Migrant Republicans represented extremism. Migrant Republicans do not part the following. MAGA Republicans represent an extremism. MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards. MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. And MAGA Republicans are to destroy an American democracy.

MAGA Republicans look at America and see carnage and darkness and despair. The MAGA Republicans believe that for them to succeed, everyone else has to fail. Hmm. He added, wasn't in that montage, they don't believe in the rule of law. They don't respect the Constitution we had in there. But he also added they don't believe in the rule of law. They don't respect the constitution we had in there. But he also added, they don't believe in the rule of law. They, he'd spent a lot of time and they refused to accept the results of a free election. I mean, this is like one of those therapy sessions where, you know, you go in, you say all these things that are actually true about you and your

therapist is like, the person starring in this story is not your quote friend, sister. It is you heal thyself. I mean, just to go down, like, first of all, respect the Constitution. It's like what he just did with student debt, which he clearly doesn't have the authority to do, and it's going to be struck down. Okay. So we remember that one because it was recent. The eviction moratorium, which even he said he did not have the power to do. The Supreme Court had already said this is unconstitutional, and he knew it was unconstitutional, but he thought he could get us through the summer by doing it. He didn't care that it was unconstitutional. He doesn't have respect for the Constitution. It's his party that's talking about do nothing when one of them almost gets assassinated. This is a shoulder shrug. They still want to circulate the guy's addresses online. No problem. Not to mention his vaccine mandate, which was struck down in part by

the U.S. Supreme Court. So don't lecture me about this Constitution, Dark Brandon, because just Brandon is violating it every other day. Right. The rule of law, of course, it's like, don't get us started. And he's upset about the January 6th protest. But we've got the Black Lives Matter two year event to look at and the riots, which he didn't care about. His party didn't care. It's like he's in no position to cast these stones. But the one I want to start with is that how MAGA Republicans look at America and see carnage and darkness and despair. I mean, truly, it's his party that's been trying to inject messages like that into every textbook, every speech about how bad we are and how awful and what sinners and

how we can never atone. That's his party. Who would like to take it? We've had a problem with apocalypticism in American politics for a while now. It predates Trump. Trump supercharged it in many ways. But Bernie Sanders is part of that. Hillary Clinton is part of that. Joe Biden is part of that. Democrats.

Populism loves, loves, loves to say at every given moment that this is the inflection point. He said that in the speech. Right now is the inflection point. He said that in the speech. Right now is the inflection point. Our future of our country depends on what we do right now about this speech that just for some reason had to happen in September of 2022. I'm not really sure what the timing of that was all about. What could be coming? So we've been living through this for a while. And you're right that he's talking about his own party. He's also talking about Republicans, not all of them. The problem is that the tone of the speech and the language of the speech was this constant

conflation. And so then he's like, well, no, I'm not talking about all Republicans. Wait, wait, you faded out. The constant what? Constant what? Conflation of MAGA Republicans with everybody who doesn't believe in gay marriage or has a different idea about abortion are those. He was talking about MAGA ideology,

but he never really flushed it out beyond talking about contraception for some reason and gay marriage and abortion rights. That's not really MAGA ideology. You should know who you're talking to. I'm not sure there's a big, strong MAGA ideology, but I can tell you that one part of it, a fundamental part of it, that through line in Donald Trump's ideological career, and it's held by a lot of the people who support him the most, is against trade agreements.

And Biden extended that in the piece. He's like, we're going to make stuff in America again. Okay, so you are actually extending part of the MAGA ideology that you're talking about as such a threat to democracy. That's a great point. Including, you know, the Labor Day speech, which was in Wisconsin, which was the site, I think everyone forgets, and I covered at the time, one of the great Trump administration boondoggles of getting Foxconn to come and make screens. Initially, they're going to come make iPhones, and they're going to make screens. And, they were going to come make iPhones and they're going to make screens. And then that's been downgraded

and they've backed out of this thing from, you know, 1,000 jobs to 100 jobs, that sort of thing. But so, yeah, no, it's very similar in that. It's economically, you know, one of the things that I think all three of us disagree with Trump on most vociferously is the economic policy,

which I think has been uniquely bad. But it's really interesting, Megan, you said at the beginning that people are saying this is a Star Wars kind of imagery. You know, Star Wars is pretty straightforward, and George Lucas is pretty straightforward about this was borrowed from the Nazis, from Lenny Riefenstahl's film, Triumph of the Will, you know, all the red and all the columns and the rest of it. So it seems to me that it was, dare I say, semi-fascist because it wasn't fully fascist. It was like the minor leagues of fascism.

So it was a little semi-fascist. But, you know, it is so crazy to suggest that, and you were right when you said, you know, the riots two years ago and Camille has talked about this, you know, ad infinitum on the fifth column. And we liked to bang on about it. But I was in Kenosha the day after the shooting,

the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting, all this stuff being burned to the ground. And Trump was there. And he met with the person whose lot was burned down or whose furniture store was burned down. And then later in the day, Joe Biden showed up and he went and visited Jacob Blake. And he said that Jacob Blake's, the officers involved in that shooting should be arrested. Now, the stories we found out about Jacob Blake were the opposite of what we initially were told was that he was unarmed and he was there to help. He was violating a restraining order and he had a knife in his hand. So it's like, you know, these are two parties.

And then, you know, look, yesterday I turned this on. I was thinking about this and I turn on TV or I was on the internet or something. I see Roland Martin in one of his ridiculous outfits. He's like, I wonder where he gets all these dashikis. They're amazing. And he said the Trump voters, like we're at war with these people we're at war with them and he said then you know the next line was these folks are evil yes i mean don't tell me that there is

one dark force in america i didn't vote for donald trump twice i didn't vote for donald trump and i wouldn't vote for him again and you know i would i would never i i'm not a fan of the guy our podcast has been very critical of him but at the time, let's keep in perspective here that this thing and he said, you know, in the speech the other I mean, everyone's been called a Nazi, who's pretending that he's not conflating the 70, 60 odd million people that voted for Donald Trump with these dark MAGA Republicans. He is doing just that. So they must have some sort of internal polling that suggests that banging on about this stuff is going to help them, you know, repeal or push back this red wave because it is just endless at this point. I mean, this idea that there are fascists at the door, which is obviously ridiculous. Well, can I tell you, I had Chris

on the program last week, you know, very smart political prognosticator. And he was saying the smartest thing for Joe Biden to do right now is to SDFU. He said maybe he could borrow Joe Biden's basement, you know, like or wait. Yeah. Yeah. He was saying, be quiet. He's like, go back to your basement, because he was saying he the Democrats numbers are getting a little bit better and he doesn't need to be out there making speeches like this because things are going a little bit more his way. So this is not a good time to be out there giving what this is my take on it, his deplorable speech. Right. Like it didn't help Barack Obama to call Republicans bitter clingers. It certainly didn't help Hillary Clinton to call Republicans deplorables.

And Dark Brandon is not going to help his own chances or those of his party. But with his deplorable speech, which is why I think he's decided to try to dial it back a little. Either that or he just got off prompter and he says different things when he's off prompter. You know, he denounced the American carnage speech in his own American carnage speech. So he gets caught. But Peter Doocy was like, you know, do you really think this about all Trump supporters? And he was like, how dare you? Here it is. Watch. Mr. President, do you consider all Trump supporters to be a threat to the country? Y'all, everyone, come on. If you cannot make that case, I don't consider any Trump supporters to be a threat to the country.

Mr. President, do you consider Mr. President... Did you hear it? I don't consider any Republican a threat to the country well you just said MAGA forces determined to take the country back or back into an america where there's no right to choose no right to privacy MAGA republicans do not respect the constitution they don't believe in the rule of law MAGA republicans embrace anger they thrive amongst chaos MAGA republicans look at america and see carnage and darkness and despair. Like, it certainly sounds like you're not like a big fan

of Trump Republicans. I don't like, you might have to explain. I mean, MAGA Republican is a self-servingly vague slur that is being directed at his enemies. It does not mean anything

in particular, in precisely the same way that semi-fascist doesn't mean anything in particular. It means we generally don't like you and think that you're bad. And I think Moynihan's point is very vital for us to focus on. The notion that we've always had substantial division in our politics. There's always been disagreement. And in many respects, there's probably always been cheap demagoguery deployed against your political opponents. But there was a time when it was punctuated by kind of civility and respectability. And at a moment when there are criminal prosecutions of members of the January 6th riots that took place at the Capitol, someone may want to call it a fracas. I would accept either one of those answers. And people are getting long jail sentences at a time when the president of the United States is being investigated by the intelligence agencies

for potential crimes that could land him in a courtroom, if not in a prison. The former president, Camille, I know he's still your president. The former president. I'm just, well, they're always- Okay, Dinesh. They were always the president at some point. So I can say the president of the United States. I think it takes on a very different tone. And Joe Biden knows this.

Joe Biden talked incessantly about the fact that he was going to bring us together. And we have, in the same week that this speech was given, the president's now press secretary suggesting that if you disagree with the majority, then you're an extremist. This is absurd, hysterical hyperbole. And I would say that when it comes from the president, as opposed to Roland Martin wearing a Dragon Ball Z themed tachiki, like this is this is bad. It's unacceptable. And it's something that we should all be genuinely concerned about. And I will say that I was heartened to see plenty of people in the media, plenty of people on the left side of the political spectrum expressing concern about this because it was a bad speech for one, but it was also just decidedly in very poor taste for this administration. It was in poor taste, exactly right. it was also just decidedly in very poor taste for this

administration. It wasn't poor taste. Exactly right. And ran a real risk at a time when his poll numbers are getting a little better. They're at 42 percent approval rating, according to the latest poll. They were at 36 not so long ago because his base is getting a little riled up. He's gotten a couple of legislative agenda items through. They're feeling like, OK, maybe he's going to fight for us.

Maybe he's thinking this is me fighting for you even more. I'm going to say all the things that make Mary Trump get chills, which is what she said. Why is Mary Trump a commentator again? Anywho, so he maybe is trying to get that up to 43, 44 to drive midterm results. But you got to factor in what it's going to do to the other side, right? Like deplorables hurt her way more than it helped her. And I got to feel like it's way better for him to have Roland Martin say the crazy things than for him to say them. I mean, luckily for him, I suppose, Donald Trump is giving no shortage of crazy himself over the last couple of days. Just like matching the retweet button on QAnon. So weird.

Arrestees and then also just like randomly spitting out like redo the election. Reinstate me. That was a good one. It's almost like he thinks you can you can take the little void stamp and like put it on the, you know, the ink pad and then just stamp it on Joe Biden's head. That's not the way it works. I think that points to an interesting little thing, which is, I believe at this point, cynically, it's cynical. I don't want to be that because I want to be idealistic ish. But that it serves Joe Biden's interest to make the midterm elections about Trump, because that's going to rile up his base. And also because Trump, even though he's really popular among Republicans, is not popular among Americans.

Right. Or independence in particular. Independence in particular. Two thirds of which don't whom don't want him to run for president again. Right. So if we make this about democracy and this is the inflection point and because of Trump, even though he's not running in this election, then you can nationalize it and give people this sense of of glorious purpose. that the Democrats poured $44 million into five races, close races of GOP primaries, in order to try to influence it so that the MAGA Republican won, as opposed to the more competitive, saner people like Peter Meyer, a subscriber to our podcast, am I not? But like, if you really believed in what you say about democracy, that's not the behavior that what you would do. You just think back of or, you know, work yourself backwards with what would you do if you were actually trying to create unity behind shared principles of Americans of all stripes to say that, you know, this act, political violence is bad, not respecting elections is bad, not respecting court decisions or whatever is bad. You wouldn't do it like this. You wouldn't suddenly start talking about the infrastructure bill. That has nothing to do with it. Why are

you bringing it up? You'd be bringing up specific things like, oh, we should back the Electoral College Reform Act or, you know, this vision of how to fix the system next time. But that's not what he was doing. He was trying to nationalize an election, even create a MAGA force. That sounds cool. I want to join the MAGA force. Oh, wow. He just admitted it. MAGA forces. Oh, Matt. The colonel in the MAGA force. Oh, Lord. He wants to run against Trump because he thinks he can win. And that's, you're flirting with him. And how do you, I mean, look, they're doing a very good job at one thing. What are we talking about? We're talking about this absurd idea that,

you know, American democracy is heaving and dying and, you know, taking its last breath and talking about fascism and all this stuff, rather than talking about, you know, pocketbook table issues that are affecting everyday Americans that they have no answer for. Right. I mean, you know, gas prices are down a little bit and there's some suggestion they might go back up again. But, you know, to say that they've gone down to, you know, like three dollars and seventy five cents a gallon. I mean, that's still a lot more than it was a year ago, right? Or a year and a half ago. Not to mention our electric bills. Electric bills. I mean, you know, food bills, everything. I mean, these are, of course, people that are having these conversations that don't give two shits about this,

that don't actually comparison shop, don't actually know, you know, famously like, you know, George H.W. Bush, like in the scanner and how much a thing of milk costs. These people truly, and I'm talking about people not in politics, but people, you know, George H.W. Bush, like in the scanner and how much a thing of milk costs. These people truly, and I'm talking about people not in politics, but people, you know, in the media who, you know, shop at bodegas in New York where things are 18 times the price that they are at Walmart. They're not price sensitive and they don't care about this stuff, but everyday Americans do. The poll numbers, you know, bear this out. So why not just talk about how American democracy is collapsing and get into the weeds of these debates and say, you know, people just turn off and tune out. It's just, you don't have to have a conversation about real things that actually

matter. You still have people heckling Joe Biden. They're heckling him on these issues. They're actually following his lead and saying, are you saying all MAGA people are fascists or semi-fascists or whatever? It's like, well, no, you should heckle him about the things that are actually ruining and have been ruining the American economy, including spending massive amounts of money, which seems to be his solution to most everything. I think you're right. It's strategic. More inflation. I think you're right. It is strategic. That makes sense to me. Talk about MAGA instead of talking

about inflation and gas prices and all the rest of it immigration you could go down the list but i also think i don't know about joe biden but those around him are true believers in what he said you know for sure that's fine there's no doubt about that yeah yeah and and we talked about like the teachers who can't even countenance a quote normal Republican speaking at their schools where we kicked it off today. And another example of that is the lunatics on MSNBC. And I don't run Joy Reid soundbites every day because I mean, you could you could do this with her every day. But this next one is truly insane. Like, I really think MSNBC needs to answer for what she said on her program. I guess it was last night. I'm not sure what we don't know how much of it is classified. We don't know how much of it is top secret exactly, but we're hearing all sorts of reports in the Washington Post and other Trump hating outlets. So who knows? We'll find out. In any event, this is the context in which the following discussion came up. Listen to this lunatic. We know that in 2021 that there was a rash of deaths of American spies.

They were being caught. They were being killed. This is a very real and exigent circumstance. And the CIA has admitted to that. And now we are not saying that we know that there is some connection between the purloined documents and that and those events. But they did happen at a time when Trump did have custody of some really sensitive information that he shouldn't have had. You know, both our intelligence community and our law enforcement community must be beside themselves right now because Donald Trump absolutely has information and evidence about how those documents that he stole and unlawfully concealed at Mar-a-Lago might have compromised national security. The reason I state that definitively is because he

knows who he showed them to, who he let copy them, who he let take a snapshot of them, who he might have given or worse sold the information that was in those 43 empty classified documents folders i wish the audience could have seen your three faces i wish the audience could have seen all three of you reacting to that oh my god do you think it's connected to the person that hacked her blog and made her i don't know i don't know. I'm just asking questions, Megan. I don't know. I don't have the evidence. It has to be the same team. It involved words on paper

or at least represented in pixels. You know what it reminded me of? That Don Lemon clip where they were talking about, was it a Malaysian flight, 370? He's like, you know, this flight just disappeared. And some people are talking about black holes and Bermuda triangles and lost. I mean, it's absurd, but, but is it absurd? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's absurd. Yeah. Segment is over right there. You could just stop this. This doesn't make any sense.

He was the president for four years, privileged access to top secret information. You imagine that he started selling secrets out of a box in his basement. It's like a swap meet. He's got bootleg DVDs. He's got some intelligence. Look, the guy's not a billionaire. I think he's probably overstating that, but I don't think he's selling stuff out of the back of his car in Palm Beach. It is so crazy. And he would be a billionaire if he were selling those kinds of secrets. But you should fire anyone. This is a journalistic rule who hides behind the just asking questions trope, which is the way that you say, I don't know how many people died in the Holocaust. I'm just asking questions. I'm just asking the question is the bad thing oftentimes because you are suggesting that this thing is real. She's not just saying that because like it just popped into my

mind. This is a network who has told you for four and a half years, five years, maybe six years, that Donald Trump was an active agent of Russian intelligence. Did he do stupid things vis-a-vis Russia? Yes. Was he somebody who was vis-a-vis Russia? Yes. Was he somebody who was on the payroll of the Russians? Well, if you'd watched MSNBC, you would be forgiven for thinking that that was true. So this is just an extension of that. If you watched any of the related court proceedings at which people were under oath, you would know that it was all bullshit. Now, can I tell you, it's even worse than we know. I mean, we know it's bullshit, what she said, but it's even worse than that because for the listening audience, what she put on the board as her evidence of these CIA agents dying, which that is true, was a New York Times article from October of 2021. All right. And in her graphic, she actually had the the date wrong. She had it October of 2022, which obviously hasn't happened yet. So we know it was wrong. But the actual New York Times

banner job MSNBC banner job. So but the actual article that she was referring to was from October 2021. And it talked about a breach of the CIA's communication system that led to CIA agents being captured, killed, or compromised and losing dozens of informants. And guess when that happened? I mean, this is an October 2021 article talking about the fact that it did happen and there were consequences to it. And guess when it happened? It happened between 2009 and 2013 when barack obama was president okay it didn't even happen during president trump's presidency so that is what this idiot is citing as her proof that donald trump sold secrets out of the Mar-a-Lago document containers. She's too stupid to be on television.

According to, by the way, I just looked this up because I remembered it, that from 2013, when she was on the air, Eric Wemple from the Washington Post pointed this out, that she was raising questions, not suspicions, just questions about the Guardian, then Guardian's Glenn Greenwald in his behavior vis-a-vis Snowden, and if he was an intelligence agent or something like that. But she was raising questions. So she's been doing this for a good part of a decade of anybody she disagrees with of saying, I'm just going to raise some questions of whether or not you are a Rosenberg-like spy and you should be executed. I mean, it is total madness. And one would expect, I mean, one wouldn't expect from MSNBC, but any journalistic outlet saying this kind of stuff of,

you know, raising questions, but I'm not raising suspicions, is uncalled for and is totally, totally unforgivable. And Megan, can I raise a question? I'll give you the floor in one second, but just a quick point. Michael Hayden liked a tweet of somebody saying that the Trump-Mar-a-Lago situation was like the Rosenbaums, like somebody who sold secrets, nuclear secrets, to the bad guys. And Michael Hayden— Both of whom were executed, by the way. Yeah, right. He liked that, saying, pretty much.

Like, oh, yeah, sure, it's exactly like that. So go ahead, Matt. Are you saying that Michael Hayden has a veracity problem? Slightly biased. Look to the core. Are you saying that Michael Hayden has a veracity problem? Slightly biased. Look to the core. No, not everyone understands, Megan, and you do. I don't know how much you want to or can talk about it, but NBC News is a news gathering operation, and it has some quality professionals in it. It's an advantage that MSNBC theoretically has that exceeds the advantage that other cable networks have. I have to imagine that there's a whole

department in NBC News that just pulls out its hair every single day. Oh my God. What happens? They've got to be. By the way, to correct Rosenberg, the NBC sort of standards and practices group, that's what they call them. They're legit. I mean, that is a real group of people that takes what they put out on the air very seriously to the point where I would get very frustrated with, you know, their nitpicking on anything that's a script. They can't control you as the anchor in your questions. At least they couldn't with me because unlike everyone else there, I read my own questions. I came up with my own. I came from cable where it's like, you got to think of them yourself. Newsflash, you got to use your mind and come up with it on your own. But the system there is the anchors just ask the questions that the producers write down for them. And the producers have those questions screened by standards and practices before they even get in front of the anchor. OK, it's not to say they never ad lib, but I'm just saying that that's the approach. MSNBC is not that way. All right. So like somehow the standards are very different over there,

but it's still controlled by the same group of people who I think are honest and legitimate. And they may be biased, but they're not looking to allow bullshit like this out on their airwaves. But I mean, look, it's going to be up to the network president, right? Does he care? Does he care at all? He didn't give a shit about her lies about the FBI or her blog. Same guy, you know, so and I don't mean the MSNBC. I mean, the head of NBC, like they oversee MS. So do they care about this kind of egregious misstatement of fact, citing a newspaper article that was talking about events from 09 to 13 and trying to blame that on Trump, trying to say that that event somehow led to Trump? Like, it's nonsensical and it's an embarrassment. today is the fact that cnn during dark brandon's presentation you know for the star trek nazi situation lightened the background okay i why they did remains unclear our executive producer

steve crackauer called them to ask about this they claimed there was a problem with the feed but every other network had it in red. CNN had it in pink. Watch. Watch. It was red. And then you're going to see it turn. Oh, there it is. It's fuchsia. It's hot pink now. And it's unclear about whether that really was a feed problem or somebody just said, maybe it'll look prettier and less imposing and inappropriate if we make it fuchsia. Did they make it into a gay rights flag? Was that what they were trying to do? Just with a press of a button just to be inclusive? Do you remember, we've talked about this on the Fifth Column, which is the greatest podcast in Christendom, semi-cover issues like this, that Newsweek, do you remember Newsweek during the OJ trial was accused of darkening his skin? Definitely. On the cover store. And there was two covers with the same mugshot.

Was it Newsweek or Time? I'm trying to remember. It was one of, it might've been Time that did it, but it was Time and Newsweek both had the same cover and one was considerably darker. But it was just kind of a vignette that they put around. It was like, of course, the neo-Nazis at time were like, let's just make it better. Yeah, it was time. I just watched this. I just watched The People vs. O.J. Simpson, which is the only reason I had that in my head. It's fantastic.

And it includes everyone's favorite masturbator, Jeffrey Toobin, who I think worked a good time off from pleasuring himself to write an amazing book. I feel like Louis CK might be my favorite masturbator. I don't know. At least mine too. And he's funny. Like he's at least got good moments. I don't know about the CNN thing at a minimum. Like they made him look like an Oompa Loompa.

Like the contrast of his skin gets like very orange. Oh, let's see it again. I didn't even look at that. Let's check that out. I'm in favor of Oompa Loompas. I don't, I mean,

sure. That's what they did. All right, let's see. I was looking at the walls. I wasn't looking at him. The walls are getting pinker. Yeah.

It looks a little more orange to me as this goes on. Maybe, maybe his tint, his tint changes too. I'm not sure. I guess I'll have to give them the benefit of the doubt on this, but it write. Maybe he can write. Yeah, his tint changes too. I'm not sure. I guess I'll have to give them the benefit of the doubt on this, but it's raising all sorts of...

You know, just asking. Just asking whether they manipulated it. You're just asking a question. That's what we do here. Just ask questions. Just ask questions. Speculating. I'm going to give CNN

the benefit of the doubt on this. It's just a weird thing to be able... Let's make it pink. It's weird. It's just happened with them if it's the feed that's yeah it shouldn't have happened to just cnn i'll just all right stand by some producer is like this looks ridiculous this cannot be right like we have to try to tune this a little bit to see what it actually looks like because who would decide that this was a good idea i wish i

had that producer on the days where I've used too much bronzer or got a little bit too much sun. I could use, hello, my producers, hello. I could use your help. Yes, producers, when she looks too much like Hitler, do something. All right, stand by.

More with the fifth column right after this. In all your busy lives, this may have slipped by you and I forgive you for that. And I really just wanted to do you a solid and let you know that there's an exciting new show coming out by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. And it's about gutsy women. Gutsy, which they know because they themselves, as you see, are gutsy. And in case you just need a little bit more of a description, here's a part. I won't make you watch the whole. A part of the trailer for Gutsy. Okay, here we go. We're hitting the road to shine a light on women who inspire us to be bolder and braver.

Leadership doesn't look one way. It's a giant rainbow. You're not going to break me down. You'll get worn out before I do. Women who push us outside our comfort zone. You got this. And make us laugh. I'm in deep Georgia and they might have never met a muskler.

Or they don't know they have. Or they don't know they have because we walk among you. Hilarious. You have a marriage that has been on public display since the beginning. You said the gutsiest thing you ever did was stay in your marriage. That doesn't mean that's right for everybody.

To throw someone's life away when people really do make changes. I just believe in second chances. My mother needed rehabilitation, not prison. Your survival is your power. All right, that's enough. For the listening audience at home,

what we have is Chelsea Clinton boxing and having dinner. That is amazing. At the beginning, I thought they were going to do that karaoke thing when they got in the car in that first scene. I was like, oh, shit. Just in case you were wondering,

just in case you were wondering, their only Democratic women are gutsy. Just to get that clear. There's no Republican featured. Naturally. And by the way, everyone in Georgia is an Islamophobe in case you didn't know. Yeah, 100%. That's assumed, only to be confirmed. I will say, Hillary went on...

Yeah, go ahead, Matt. No, it's just like, Georgia is known for being particularly friendly and multiracial. Yeah. But not to Muslims. They've never met them. They just don't know. In the South. Come on.

Come on. And by the way, it was very gutsy. I think the gutsiest thing that was not discussed, but kind of tangentially mentioned, was Bill Clinton cheating on his wife. It was a very gutsy move at the time. Well, that was a follow-up. He was a president? This is about gutsy gals.

Oh, shit. Really? Okay. Sorry. Is he our favorite masturbator? I don't think so. No. A new entrant.

Okay. She was asked about this, Hillary, when she was promoting her show on CBS this morning by Nora O'Donnell about that comment about Bill and his affair. And I mean, at least the one affair, I should say. And here's how she responded. I guess I was surprised that you said that staying in your marriage was gutsier than running for president? Well, it was in my private life. It was really hard. And as you know, everybody had an opinion about it. People who I'd never met had very strong opinions about it. And it took a lot of, honestly, prayer and thoughtfulness and talking to people I totally trusted to really think through because it was all being done in public, Nora. So it made it even more painful and difficult.

But I have no regrets. Oh, dear God. I'm like your smoker. You're not feeling it i'm well i'm feeling it i am definitely feeling it uh but it's amazing it was like it was very public and i was uh surprised like you know he was the president having sex with a 20 odd year old intern it was kind of a public thing and the bravery of staying with him is not about monica lewinsky it's during the campaign he got caught having sex with jennifer flowers It was kind of a public thing. And the bravery of staying with him is not about Monica Lewinsky. It's during the campaign. He got caught having sex with Jennifer flowers. It's not like new to her.

She's like, I repeat performance. Yeah. It's that courage at the moment. We all know they had some weird political professional relationship that they've housed in a marriage. I mean, that's what's happening there. It wasn't

gutsy. It was part of your deal. The only risk she had to assess was, is this going to hurt my husband's political chances if I leave him? And is it going to hurt my chances long-term? I have zero belief that they're in a true loving marriage. You don't behave the way he has if you are. Well, maybe you do because she doesn't care. There's no consequences. Why not? Apple Plus, by the way. That's Apple Plus. Oh, good. Apple Plus did that. Barack Obama,

Spotify, and Netflix. Meghan Markle, I believe, Spotify and Netflix too, but she got bounced from Netflix too. So all of these companies are just giving enormous advances to insufferable politicians and Meghan Markle, who is not a politician, but just insufferable. It is incredible that everyone gets upset about Joe Rogan. It's like, be a shitty politician and they'll give you $50 million to make shows that nobody wants to

watch. Getting the daughter in there too, it's like, why would I listen to Chelsea Clinton about anything? What does she know about anything other than being born into this enormous privileged family, having all sorts of buckets of money thrown at her and becoming a national figure for nothing she's done? Who gives a shit what she thinks about gutsy anybody? Well, it's gutsy to have the presumption that anyone would care about your privileged perspective in a television show like this. You know what?

Make me the executive producer. No, no, no. I have no shame. None at all. Yes. That's why I respect Jenna Bush, by the way. She's like on TV and she's like, oh my God, these cupcakes are delicious.

And that's like it, like in the morning. Like, fine, that's great. She's not like, here's like, oh my God, these cupcakes are delicious. And that's it in the morning. Fine, that's great. She's not like, here's the thing about Black women. It's like, what are you talking about? Why are you Muslims in Georgia? The cupcake thing was good. I like that. This time, Chelsea actually has to produce something.

Didn't she get paid like $240,000 a year by NBC News to produce, produce what six somethings that no one ever watched or listened to i mean i'll do it for exactly i will do that for half the money tomorrow i have learned from your podcast that um you do have musings on somebody who's a very famous figure, not named Chelsea Clinton, but Michael Jackson. Oh, yeah. I will never listen to the song Thriller the same way again. What? Camille. Thank you very much.

Megan is a believer. Yes. What'd you do, Camille? Oh, actually, they cut a clip. They cut a clip. We knew you were coming, so we baked a cake. Here it is. Listen to this.

What? It's close to midnight. Something evil's lurking in the dark. Under the moonlight. You see a sight that almost stops your heart. Oh, see, everybody home is like, yeah, we're in the fall. That's how it is. He's 12 years old. I'm sorry.

Yeah. No. Camille's like, no, you're in the fall. That's how it's 12 years old. Yeah. No. Camille's like, no, you've been mishearing, misunderstanding. You tell me what you think he's saying there. Thriller is a song about intimacy. It is a song about sexual relations. And in those particular lyrics, Michael Jackson is clearly singing about his genitals. Something spooks

you in the dark. Yes. That's what he's talking about. And you could follow this thread all the way through the song. Even the voiceover by Vincent Price, very suggestive stuff. I mean, they talk like the funk of 40,000 years. He said, this is an extraordinary experience. It's funky and sweaty and gross. And also you want to run but you can't you're a little afraid because you're not sure if you can don't worry girl because you're 13 i got you and it's really he's a predator he's a predator um so we need to listen again we have to listen to it one more time now understanding it's also a great song can we play it again let's play it again on a great album it's close On a great album. It's close to midnight.

Something evil's lurking from the dark. Him. That's what's even worse. He's lurking. You see a sight that almost stops your heart. Oh, dear God. Is that Michael Jackson in the bushes? He's self-aggrandized.

He just almost stopped my heart. So what did this dawn on you? You were driving your car. What happened? when did this dawn on you? You were driving your car. What happened? How did this dawn on you? You know, I was sitting in an airport in New Orleans. I was actually just leaving a public radio conference where I did a debate on whether or not public radio was still relevant. Plus which side he took.

I was very kind and well-received. And I think there was a song from Thriller that came on. And I can't remember which one it was right now. PYT? It might've been PYT. It was something like that, but it brought like, it was clear that everyone in the airport was a little more joyous in that moment. And I thought to myself, one, Thriller's an amazing album.

Two, it is impossible to cancel this man. And three, I started thinking about Thriller because I was like listening to the album myself one thrillers amazing album two it is impossible to cancel this man and three i started thinking about thriller because i was like listening to the album again and it just dawned on me that this was michael jackson's sexual healing this was his sick man off the light that's obviously what was going on here i just i didn't know i didn't also for for it does not appear that he actually molested those two guys in that movie. No. So, by the way, I think we're all in the same, well, I can't say Matt.

I know Camille and I have talked about the, was it HBO movie? I think that's right. Oh, documentary. Very suspicious. Yes. Yeah. Very suspicious. I don't believe those two guys.

I do not believe those two guys. I don't know what happened in the rest of Michael's career, but I've looked enough at those two guys and their story that I do not believe those two guys. I do not believe those two guys. I don't know what happened in the rest of Michael's career, but I've looked enough at those two guys and their story that I do not believe them. Yes. But I will say, honestly, that I would be more inclined to believe them if Thriller was a really shitty album, but it's not. Yes, that's true.

So I am more inclined to be like, I don't know. That's true. And I did want to raise a social justice issue, or just a justice issue, they're all the same thing, that I mentioned on the show, Eddie Van Halen never got paid a nickel for his guitar solo on Beat It. And that

is a tragedy. Wait, Eddie Van Halen played on Beat It? Beat It is the theme of this episode. Take it? Yes. In some people's lives. Did you literally just say that you didn't know Eddie Van Halen played guitar? I didn't know that.

Oh, my God. You call yourself a newswoman? That's so horrifying. My own ignorance. I'm not doing enough work. That's the best part of the song, and he didn't get paid for it. Rest in peace, Michael Jackson and Eddie Van Halen. The vocals don't matter.

It's not all fine without the vocals. Why didn't he get paid for it? He was just a nice guy and they asked him to quincy jones asked him to come to the studio and he was like all right came down played the solo in one take then left and it was the biggest song on the planet for 10 years and forgot to get paid so yeah that's your point about uh lyrics matter and the sing only the thing that reminds me this comedian who i saw once that uh i don't remember where but i he did this bit about how he was playing his guitar during his act.

And he was saying, he was very good, but he was like, I'll never make it as a musician because the lyrics matter. And lyrics matter. And I can't come up with any good lyrics. And this has been proven to me time and time again. He's like, I thought I was on my way up and I was going to get more gigs and money was starting to come in. And then I realized, I'll never be as great as He's like, are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary. Like what? What? It's just a recipe. The lyrics matter.

They're not all that matters, apparently. Yeah. Well, we're going to have a debate on the Michael Jackson case very soon because I don't know. Yeah. No, we actually are. We're going to go there. I like to go to the place that hurts in case you guys weren't aware. And I really think HBO ought to be ashamed of itself for putting that on as a documentary and using Oprah once again with her sort of seal of approval to bless it without any challenging

POVs. They should have had somebody come out at the end to say, here's a problem with what you said. Here's a problem with what you said. A lawyer for the Jackson estate, maybe somebody to push back on the problems in that documentary. Because there were some timeline issues. And I seem to remember one of the kids wanted to be a dancer in his later shows.

And then was rejected. It wasn't cast. Years afterwards, it wasn't cast years afterwards wasn't cast yes and you know basic things that as you know megan in a court of law a defense attorney would bring up and you would want to put into documentary to like you know at least be fair to the guy it's way worse than that it's so much more like that's the least of the sins of of that quote movie and and quote documentary and what they did was like here there they throw in like one fact that wasn't good for them but they left out the huge giant

credibility problems that i believe those guys had so we'll get into that at some point in the not too distant future um all right so listen you're back to school we had this debate last week just just with michael knolls and he's very pro i was neutral um my friends at sirius are very anti pumpkin spice latte where do you stand yeah it's not a fan not okay no no no like ever or just too soon never i mean in general yeah i'm a matcha, I'm a matcha chai tea latte guy. Wow. Pumpkin spice.

It's never worked for me. Never worked. It's fancy. So you could cross over. I learned that in Brooklyn. Oh, wow. Yeah. I just sit in my Ugg boots drinking pumpkin spice lattes and reading O Magazine.

Does this still exist? O Magazine? Is that a real thing? Watching Bravo. Watching Bravo weeping and wondering what's happened to the Real Housewives, who I saw one of whom the other day

in a yogurt store. And she looks famous. Suspiciously quiet. Suspiciously quiet. Why is that? I don't know. I should have talked to her. But I couldn't.

She looked very strange. And I was like, I don't know. But yeah, pumpkin to her. But I couldn't. She looked very strange. And I was like, I don't know. But yeah, pumpkin spice latte is for communists and fascists. I'm happy that American free market capitalism has granted us enough choice to throw up all kinds of horrible things about Starbucks that I never really used in any way, shape or form. Starbucks is not. I have never had one. And this is the fall. I'm going to have one.

I'm going to drink it right here, live in the air. And we're going to get it. We'll have you come back. Maybe all four of us can do it together at the same time and see if it changes our opinions. No matcha. Yes. All right, guys.

The interpretive commentary. All right. What a pleasure. Thanks, Megan. As always, Matt, Michael, Camille, to be continued. Thank you, Megan. Don't forget, go subscribe to them at wethefifth.substack.com. Don't miss the show tomorrow.

We have James O'Keefe and Larry Elder. That'll be a fun one. Download the show in the meantime on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher. Go to youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly and we'll talk to you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.