The Megyn Kelly Show - Can Trump Unify GOP Now, and Whether Georgia DA Fani Willis Lied About Alleged Lover, with Michael Knowles | Ep. 704

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles, host of "The Michael Knowles Show," to discuss the DeSantis campaign playing the "blame game" after the Iowa results, the challenges of the "Trump 2.0" DeSantis campaign strategy, Nikki Haley emerging as the only real long-shot competitor for Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy could have a role in the next Trump administration, Trump serving as a “weirdly unifying figure” for conservatives, President Biden’s awkward 12-second video put out on his social media accounts, the contrast between Trump’s strength and Biden’s fragility, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis potentially lying about paying her alleged lover the same amount as other prosecutors, the vanity of Willis using God for personal gain, how this might affect her prosecution of Trump,  the “social illness” of plastic surgery, the trend towards hyper-reality, new images of Jeff Bezos' fiance Lauren Sanchez, the transformation of actress Erin Moriarty, and more. Plus Megyn takes listener calls on Trump and the state of the GOP primary. Knowles: https://www.dailywire.com/ 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, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. With every passing hour, the 2024 White House race is looking more and more inevitable. The floodgates are opening as former President Donald Trump's endorsements pile up, and Nikki Haley refuses to continue debating Governor Ron DeSantis. There's also a growing list of folks urging the Florida governor to drop out of this race so that it actually can be a two-person race between Haley and Trump. Meantime, we've got some stunning new reporting out of Atlanta involving DA Fannie Willis and her alleged boyfriend. We'll get to that. And later, we're going to hear from you. I'm excited to take your

calls. First, joining me for the show today, Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles show on The Daily Wire. Michael, welcome back. The team's telling me that you are snowed in, in your house in Tennessee, in Nashville right away? Explain. Megan, if any little toddlers start jumping onto my desk and pulling my hair and dancing around, it is because I am at home. Every time that Nashville gets a quarter of an inch of a dusting of snow, the city shuts down for at least a week because we're not used to snow around here. And so sadly, the Daily Wire studios have been closed for days. I think that my production team just wants to play hooky. But in any case, I've got my hot cocoa. I'm in my cozy little

office. And I'm so happy to invite you into my home. You know, I was just having this discussion with Abigail Fine and my assistant yesterday, because here in Connecticut, she lives in Connecticut, too. They closed the schools yesterday. And I was delighted for my children who, you know, every night they pray for a snow day the next day. But she and I, she's from Minnesota. I'm from Syracuse originally. It's like an inch and a half. Like they would never close the schools in Syracuse or Minnesota for an inch and a half. They would never close the schools in Syracuse or Minnesota

for an inch and a half. We've gone soft. We've gone soft as a country. And I can't help but notice some perverse incentives here. My team at the Daily Wire that is unmarried, or certainly the ones that don't have children. They're all very eager to work from home for as long as possible. Those of us with the toddlers, though, we recognize that working from home is actually physically impossible when you have little kids. So the barbarians will be at the gates as we chat for this entire show. Well, I hope we get a sighting. I'll tell you, yesterday it was funny because my kids now are old enough that they're independent. The snow day becomes a lot easier as you have children who can take care of themselves for the day. Uh, so ours are 10, 12 and 14,

but, uh, Abby's are little they're five and seven. So I said, bring them. So they came and it was actually so sweet. They went outside. They had a big snowball fight with my kids. Doug was in the middle of it. I, I participated in that. I watched it all from the window as I was getting ready for the show. And honestly, Michael, that was enough for me. I was good with that. I had no desire to be getting the snowball in the face. The one really great thing about the snow day is I think it will extend my life by several years. It is the most exercise I've ever had pulling my little sled around the Nashville snow in my neighborhood. So I guess the other thing that could go wrong in our conversation

today is I might just completely pass out. But but barring that, I'm happy to be here. It's so true. It is hard labor raising little kids between the cart at the beach in the summer and the sleds and their bodies in the winter going back up the hills, all that. I was telling Doug that, you know, when I was little in Syracuse, I had it made because right across the street, there was this house that had a great hill in their backyard. So I just had to walk across our small little, you know, neighborhood street. And there was the best sledding trail. I used to go all the time. I named it greased lightning because I was a child of the 70s

and obsessed with John Travolta. And I still think of it to this day that we don't have such a sledding hill in Connecticut. Nevermind, did we in New York? And by the way, half my team now lives in Canada because my two gals, two of my favorite producers from Fox moved up there and I still work with them. Anyway, Canada just issued some ordinance saying you can't sled. Oh my God, I've got to get it correct. My team will send it to me, but I tweeted it out

the other day because it's too dangerous. You can only sled on a certain slope now and you have to make sure that there's absolutely no obstructions like, you know, a fence at the bottom or that's part of the fun, the danger, the thought that you could crack your head open. That's, that's what makes it thrilling. Canada won't let you sled anymore. They just sentenced Jordan Peterson to a reeducation camp for tweeting in, in a politically incorrect way. I think that, I hate to say I told you so, but the prediction that I made on your show just a couple months ago that Canada would fully become America's evil top hat does appear to have taken place.

I love that. I've said it many times. It's so funny. Here it is. Toronto, not some small little county. Toronto has banned tobogganing, sledding at 45 hills across the city due to safety concerns. One counselor says he's not happy with the move because there are more important issues that should be drawing the attention of city staff. It's absurd. I mean, I remember back in the good old days on Grease Lightning, we'd also ski at our elementary school, which was called Tecumseh, and they had a great sledding hill. And you'd go out during recess and sled. The good old times that I got my first concussion because the boys would jump in the sled behind the one that the girls were in, and boom, it would go

airborne and it landed on us. But that was, it was fun. We called that fun, Michael Knowles. Also, I've now concluded little children, little boys in particular, are basically indestructible because as I've been playing hooky from my own job the last few days and just kind of wrestling with the boys and dragging him around the snow, my littlest one, he'll just run into walls. He'll fall off of things. Feats that I didn't think the human body could tolerate. And they can do it. So if we're not going to let kids play around and do some kind of crazy, dangerous things when they're little, how are we going to get men someday? Well, I guess Canada probably won't. Maybe that's what the Trudeau government is after. No, you're right. When our kids were little, they would constantly hit their heads. And our pediatrician said he would always say, where did they hurt it? We call him and say, hey, this happened. And nine times out of 10 is on the forehead. And he would say, yep, you don't have to worry about the forehead. The forehead's good. Over all these years of evolution, the forehead has emerged, evolved to be the strongest bone in the body. And, you know, he was much more concerned if they'd hit it like on the low back of the head or like the temple, then, then the front plate we're stopping evolution. We're, we're not letting

any strengthening of ourselves, our bodies, our minds occur at all anymore. That's what happens with the regression. I always loved the meme of, of evolution for however many millions of years. And then I don't know, sometime around 1987, I think, it just started to reverse. And now we're all just kind of hunched over. Pretty soon, we're going to be quadrupedal and lose the ability even to communicate in a sensible way. That's the way it goes in a decadent culture, I guess. There's a lot to get to today, but I do. Can we spend a minute on Jordan Peterson, what happened to him? Most of the audience knows Jordan and he is Canadian. You kind of forget that because you

kind of see him from your home in America or you see him on the daily wire. He's in Canada. He's with our pal Gadzad up there fighting the good fight and what they're doing to him when it comes to his free speech and his allegedly offensive tweets is absolutely outrageous. He forgive me. I may not get this wrong. He's he's a Ph.D. right. He's a psychologist, I think, and thus must require a license. And it has to be renewed. And you have to make sure you're following the rules of the licensing body.

And they're mad if memory serves. I didn't refresh myself on his original offense, but it wasn't one of them. They were mad that he said something about how he did not find some obese model beautiful. I'm like, it was his, his personal tastes about what's beautiful and what's not was on the list of problematic statements. He had made some of his pro his statements about the trans insanity. And now he's being ordered into like a re-education camp up there. You will be made to lust after obesity, Megan. Okay, Big Brother has declared it and you will lose your career. Even if you are the most famous and influential public intellectual in the world,

you will lose your occupational license if you do not do that. It sounds really silly. It sounds really petty, but this kind of bureaucratic tyranny always hinges on the petty. It always hinges on the apparently trivial because it's in apparently trivial matters that these bureaucrats can really demonstrate how much power they have over you. So it's terribly unjust what they're doing to Jordan. I was with Jordan just a couple of nights ago. And the man has a very realistic outlook about how politics is working these days. And so

in his tweet reacting to this decision, he said, you've won this battle, but this war isn't over. It's really only just begun. Don't say I didn't warn you. You have been warned. Selfishly, as someone who loves observing the culture, and in particular watching Jordan Peterson interact in the culture, I'm thrilled that they made this decision because I cannot even imagine the fuss that this man is going to make at the reeducation camp. Something tells me that Jordan Peterson is not going to go down quietly. No, he's going to completely turn the entire camp against the counselors. It's going to be super fun to watch, but it's crazy. I mean, just, it's a reminder, not that we don't have free

speech erosions in the United States of America. We see them every day being pushed by the left in particular. But up in Canada, I mean, the evil top hat neighbor, it could be a lot worse. They're they're actually forcing him to undergo this reeducation camp. He fought it to the highest level. That appeal was just denied. So now he's actually going to have to do it. And I'm just going to guess they have a rule against hidden cameras in the reeducation camp because that you'd have to join Daily Wire plus right now. You should already join it anyway. We have to right now in order to get the Jordan hidden videos. OK, could you go back down to the less evil head underneath the top hat? And that's us. Presidential politics in full swing this week as Trump wins Iowa. I mean, I was just thinking about it. Just as an aside, Trump won 98 of 99 counties. The only county he lost was by one vote to Nikki Haley. And the only support she had in Iowa, according to the polls,

was with the independents. The Republicans were not voting for Nikki Haley. So think about we know that that was a feat. And I talked about yesterday, it was a big comeback, but think about what that does say about poor DeSantis. I'm sorry, but like the guy seemed at times like he was running for president of Iowa. He went to all 99 counties. He had the best ground game. The super PAC spent tens of millions of dollars. He didn't win one county, Michael, not one. Everyone's going to be playing the blame game. The DeSantis campaign is doing that a little bit now. And the potential culprits are the media. You heard Governor DeSantis say the other day that Donald Trump had a Praetorian guard of conservative media defending him.

I don't think that's accurate. I think in the early days of the DeSantis campaign, I think the conservative media were overwhelmingly in support of his candidacy. I think Fox gave him a lot of boosts. People over at The Blaze gave him a lot of boosts. The majority of my colleagues outright, early and emphatically endorsed Governor DeSantis, and a lot of other people in the conservative media did as well. So perhaps some of that support leveled out over time. I myself don't make endorsements as a general rule in primary campaigns. I think I might be the last man in America who still really likes Donald Trump and really likes Ron DeSantis. But it just seems to me-

I feel that way. Certainly. Look, there might be a fair number of people who think he did a good job in Florida. He could have a great political career ahead of him. But Trump is the guy now, that it's something of a fait accompli. And so I don't think you can blame the media. People are going to blame DeSantis and say he's a bad candidate. I think he's a pretty good candidate.

Is he a little bit stiff? Is he quite as fluent and conversational and funny as Trump? No, he's not. But I think he's actually a very good candidate. I think he's a varsity politician. People are going to blame the campaign. The campaign made a bunch of mistakes, but I don't even think it was a really bad campaign. I think that the reason the DeSantis campaign is now for all intents and purposes over is because of circumstance. It's just the way that the stars aligned in this race. The problem, as I suspected from the beginning of the DeSantis campaign, is that Governor DeSantis' strengths were going to be his tragic flaw. That the great strength of DeSantis, the whole campaign pitch was he's Trump without the baggage. He's all the best parts of Trump

without the bad parts of Trump. So he can win over support from the Trump supporters, but he also won't totally offend the establishment and the more clubbable kinds of Republicans. And the fact is that left him as a man without a home. Because yes, Trump supporters like DeSantis, but they like Trump more. They don't want New Coke, they want Coke Classic. And so he wasn't able to win enough support from the Trump camp. And the people who don't like Trump don't want anyone who even remotely resembles Trump. So the campaign pitch of Trump 2.0, bigger, better, faster, stronger, was never going to work for those people. It was actually going to turn a lot of them off. This is how you've seen Haley emerge as a very, very long shot opponent to Donald Trump, but still probably the more credible opponent to Trump right now is the GOP wants a choice, not an echo. Trump is being treated effectively as an incumbent in this race. I think fairly so. This is a once in a century political

situation where a president is running for a non-consecutive second term, still has a lot of support. The only path in the race is to be anti-Trump. DeSantis' identity contradicted the only path that was available to him. And that's how you've seen Haley emerge as a long shot, but potential unseater of Trump. All that is very interesting. I want to get into all of that. I do want to say for the record, agree on the Coke thing. However, Coke Zero is better than Diet Coke. Just for the record, it is. It's better. Who knew? It is. It's much better. You know, they force it on you when you go over to Europe and then you come back

here and say, you know what? They're onto something. On the notion, because a lot of people are debating this right now, should he have gone after Donald Trump more? My friends over at Commentary Magazine, all along they'd been saying, why isn't he attacking Trump? They're not big Trump fans. Why isn't he attacking Trump? They're not big Trump fans. Why is he attacking Trump? And that really was an impossible challenge for him because today my same friends at commentary had on Nate Silver, not, not Nate Silver, Steve Kornacki, um, you know, the big polls guy for NBC news and he's entertaining and he's, you know, I like watching him on the big election nights cause he seems like a straight shooter Kornacki. And, uh, he was making the point that any of these Republicans who really went after Trump, I mean, you know, the names

fell precipitously and, and were loathed by the Republican party, Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson. Um, he may not mention another one who's not coming to mind. And then he talked about what happened to Nikki Haley in Iowa when she started to emerge as in the minds of Iowans, an anti-Trump Republican, you know, her message started to get a little bit sharper. And I think it was more as a result of like his surrogates, you know, Vivek really hammering her, sort of putting her on the wrong side of MAGA, that kind of thing. He said her, I wrote it down. Her negatives went up 15 points and her positives with Trump voters went down 11 points. So the, the, the more she was seen as opposite Trump, the worse she did in Iowa. Well, what?

But MK, she finished finished third in Iowa and did better than many suspected she might. Well, she was doing well with the independents there. That's the group she and the group she really did well with were the people who were independent. They were voting Republican in this in this primary. And they didn't like Trump. The never Trumpers liked Haley. The people who are voting for Ron DeSantis do like Trump and they do like DeSantis. But to your point, they like Trump more. Yes. And so Haley, who from the beginning people wrote her off, I said, don't write her off. She's

a very shrewd and successful politician. She managed to be a centrist governor of South Carolina, then to ally herself with Trump and be Trump's ambassador to the United Nations and very popular in that role. And then she left the Trump administration basically with a ticker tape parade. Trump said lovely things about her. And then she turned on Trump and then she said she wouldn't run if Trump were to run again. And then she did run if Trump were to run again. But through all of that, she's managed to make it down to the final three candidates. And since there's now no path whatsoever to victory for the DeSantis campaign, one might even say she's down to the final two. So she's run a very good race to become the number two person. I still don't really see a path to victory for her, even if a lightning bolt comes out of the sky or out of some Democrat against Donald Trump. Because as you say, Megan, she was popular among independents and Democrats in Iowa, not really among Republicans. Then when she goes to New Hampshire, where the polls show that she is surging, New Hampshire

Republican politics is a little bit different from national Republican politics. Very different. Maybe she does well there. We'll see. She's not even effectively on the ballot in Nevada because the GOP in Nevada is opting for a caucus system, which they used to have there before the state legislators changed it in 2021. The rule is if you're on the primary ballot, which was pushed by the Nevada government, then you can't appear in the caucus. All of the

other GOP candidates opted for the caucus. So Nevada's not even in play. In South Carolina, Trump is leading by what, 30 points or something like that? And then in Michigan, Trump is way, way ahead. That's all before Super Tuesday. So it's just impossible to see how this works for anyone. Probably Nikki Haley's game is to try to make a credible showing in New Hampshire, kick DeSantis out of the race, assuming that DeSantis has to get out before Florida so he doesn't suffer a humiliating defeat in his own state, and then try to gobble up enough delegates that she can have a little bit of leverage at the convention, probably can't pull a George H.W. Bush in 1980, probably doesn't

have enough support to say, let's unify the party and I'll be the VP, but she might be able to ask for something in the administration. But other than that, this whole primary seems to be an exercise in futility, as many of us suspected it was from the very beginning. Another thing Kornacki said was that 77 percent of her supporters in Iowa have negative views of Donald Trump. So the vast majority of her supporters, people who voted for her in Iowa, do not like Trump. But he pointed out that nationwide Republicans, about 80 percent, have positive views of Donald Trump. So you're right about the distinction in New Hampshire. It's all well and good to be able to notch a win if she's able to. That's a big if. But it's not representative of what's coming her way. She has to win among Republicans,

real Republicans, in order to become the Republican nominee. And the party, she's not going to find 77%, you know, percent who don't like Donald Trump or enough to win, who don't like Donald Trump to put her over the edge, you know, going forward. So I don't I think it is not correct to say the answer is to just criticize Donald Trump more, though she's starting to. She's starting to anyway. You know, hearing her message get a little sharper and his is getting sharper toward her. And it's you know, it's interesting to me, Michael, because she's kind of trying to paint him as like Joe Biden and Donald Trump is the ticket nobody wants. I'll help you avoid this calamity. There's some truth to that. A lot of

people don't want it, but it's probably happening. Then Trump fights back by posting things like this. I don't know if you saw on his Truth Social, he posted a picture of Nikki and Hillary merged. It's Hillary Clinton, I think. I forgive me, but it's got like an enormous double chin. I think, I don't know if that's actually Hillary Clinton's chin and Nikki Haley's face. It's very unattractive. Do we have it? Can we put it up? And people are like, Trump has a meltdown. Oh, there it is. See? Oh, oh, God. And it says Haley at the bottom, but it looks like Hillary's hair and Hillary's red pantsuit. Anywho, it's not his meltdown. It's politics. And yeah, it's getting ugly. Thoughts on it?

I keep seeing these headlines. I saw it in Drudge today. Trump's meltdown over Haley. Would Matt Drudge have described Trump's criticisms of Vivek just two days ago as a meltdown over Vivek? He went after Vivek in the lead up to the Iowa caucuses. Now they're chummy, chummy, and they're going to be rallying all around the country. Would he have said the same thing about Ron DeSantis 16 months ago? Trump was regularly attacking Ron DeSanctimonious and going after him, but it wasn't a meltdown. It's Donald Trump just training his fire on where he sees the threat. The threat was Ron DeSantis in the early days of the primary, such as it is, and he neutralized the threat. Then there was a minor threat from Vivek, who had been actually quite complimentary of Donald Trump, and today is once again complimentary of Trump. But he saw a

little bit of a threat there, and Trump rather is a sledgehammer. So he's not going to have a lot of subtlety. He's going to go after Vivek and say he's fake and he's not MAGA and whatever. Then Vivek is out of the race. And now it's just logical to train his attention on Haley. But even the way that he's doing it, I mean, you show me that picture that now I can't get out of my head. He's laughing. He's joking. And he's earned the right to laugh because his poll numbers are just so high. Iowa showed us that the polls seem pretty reliable. And so he's really got nothing to worry about outside of the prosecutors or I don't know, the assassins that the Democrats might send to get him.

Because if he's allowed to appear on the ballot and people are allowed to vote for him, they're going to. He does need to fear those criminal prosecutions, the federal ones in particular, and honestly, the Georgia one. If it's if it stays alive, we'll get to the news there in a little bit. You mentioned Vivek. He did officially endorse Trump and made his first appearance on the campaign trail with Trump in Atkinson, New Hampshire last night. Here's a little bit of how that looked in SOT2. We have challenges to address in our own party right here at home. So you know what? If you want somebody who's going to foist onto you to use your social media account, you want to use a driver's license to do it, to have the right to use the internet? This man's not your man.

There's another candidate in this race who'll do that for you. It's Nikki Haley. You want to send, you want to cut social security, you want to cut Medicare, you want to cut veterans benefits so we can fork over more money to Ukraine so some kleptocrat can buy a bigger house? Vote for Nikki Haley, not this man right here. Not another one. There is not a better choice left in this race than this man right here. And that is why I am asking you to do the right thing as New Hampshire and to vote for Donald J. Trump as So you could hear some chants of VP in the audience. I mean, look, I'm not a political prognosticator in this way. I don't run campaigns. I don't keep fingers on the tabs of how people are doing with this focus group or that. But I don't think there's any chance of him choosing Vivek Ramaswamy

as his VP. What do you think? It seems unlikely because Vivek was a relative unknown. I mean, that's what's so amazing about this race. Nobody had known Vivek. I actually go back to college with Vivek. He was at the law school while I was an undergraduate. So I've known that this guy is really sharp and talented for a long time, but the broader public had never heard of him until what, a year ago at most. And he went from zero name recognition to polling at something like 8% in the GOP primary and doing pretty well. I mean, that's very impressive. He outlasted senators and governors. That's amazing. But I don't really see Trump picking another Trump-like figure. You know, Vivek is a very wealthy guy. He leans a little bit populist. He comes from business.

He's not a career politician. So Trump already has that. Trump already does that. And he'll probably balance out the ticket with someone who compliments him. That's what Mike Pence's role as the running mate was in 2016. It's probably not going to be Mike Pence this time, I would imagine. But I could see someone there more to compliment him. Now, would Vivek have a role in an administration? I could easily see that sort of thing happening. Yeah, maybe. But I can't help but notice in those comments from Vivek that Trump is a weirdly unifying figure for the Republican Party because Trump attracts the libertarians.

He attracts the people that that whole campaign pitch was Nikki Haley wants to spy on your computer and see what websites you're going to. He attracts that side. Make you register under your real name. Register under your real name, de-mask you. But then he also attracts the traditionalists and the conservatives who are a little bit more willing to wield state power. He attracts the people over at Compact Magazine and the American Post-Liberal. And he says that we need to focus on strengthening our communities more and we need to use the government to do some good. So he actually, maybe for the first time since Reagan, seems to bring together what was once

called the three-legged stool of conservatism, the traditionalists, the libertarians, and even the foreign policy hawks. Right now, everyone's painting Haley as a neocon. She seems much more inclined toward foreign intervention than Trump is. But don't forget, Trump is also the guy who brought peace to the Middle East through the Abraham Accords. Trump is the guy who took out Iran's top general. Trump is the guy who obliterated ISIS in Syria. So he was willing to use American military force, I think in a much more judicious way than some of his predecessors. But for all that we hear that Trump has destroyed and split up the Republican Party, from my vantage, it looks like he's unified those three legs better than anyone since Reagan. If Trump could control his temperament,

the party would be behind him 98%. You're exactly right. The way he governed should have been to the appeal of virtually every single Republican and then some, you know, outside the party as well. It's his temperament that people find objectionable, you know, and the temperament I'm using that word in a sweeping way. You know, it's the guy who doesn't comply with the subpoena when he gets hit with, you know, like his fighting nature benefits him and undermines him. Um, and some people are just, and they don't want the drama, you know, like I want to go about my life, not me, cause I'm a newswoman, but most people want to go about their lives thinking about themselves and their kids and their community and not about Donald

Trump. But when he's president, when he's in the national spotlight, he sucks up all the oxygen. It's all you can talk about. I could think about all anybody else is talking about. You turn on the evening news. There he is. You turn on the morning news. There he is. You pick up a morning paper. He's there again. The entertainment shows. He's there. The nightly award shows. He's there. He's everywhere. And people get exhausted, right? Exhausted. My friend, Alan Estrin, who's the executive director of PragerU, he made this point to me months ago. We were all talking about how it's not really about Donald Trump. It's about

the party, or it's about the country, or it's about this policy, or it's this movement. And he said, you know, Michael, I think it really just is about Donald Trump. You know, great men move history sometimes, and Donald Trump is a world historic figure, whether you love him or hate him. And it is about him. People are just fascinated by this guy. He operates differently. He's an American original. It makes us pull our hair out sometimes. It makes us cheer sometimes. But we can't look away from him. And Alan's point, as a screenwriter in Hollywood, is that because of that, because his role in the narrative is that of the protagonist, that the party is just going to be focused around him as long as he is around. And these were back in the days when we thought maybe it'll be DeSantis, maybe it'll be this guy.

But no, actually, that observation has proven to be true. And if Donald Trump has dominated headlines and tabloids and captured people's attention for 40 years or more now, that's not going to change anytime soon, no matter how much the policy wonks in the GOP might wish it were so. Well, I mean, I have said for a long, long time, I remember, oh gosh, I don't remember what year it was, but I was at Guy Benson's wedding and I was talking to Hugh Hewitt, who was there. We were talking about Trump. This is many years ago. And I said that, you know, and this is, this point has been made by others too, but just that that's the thing about Trump. You know, it's like, you have to take the good with the bad, the temperament and the lashing out and like sort of the erratic behavior. It's, it's all part of the same package that comes with a guy who stood by Brett Kavanaugh, who didn't fold when the knives were out for that guy like we've never seen before and who didn't fold in the face of four criminal indictments, but stood up

and fought and actually flies to unnecessarily the defamation damages trial with E.G. and Carol, the woman who accused him of sexual assault and like he didn't have to be there. He flew to there to to draw attention to it. It's just it's a complicated package, but it works. It's worked on television as an entertainer. It's worked in the White House as a politician, not to the taste of everyone. Get it. But here's the interesting thing about Trump along those same lines. On Monday night, when he won Iowa, he gets out there and struck a more conciliatory tone, right? Like called DeSantis Ron, who is real progress, called Haley Mickey, complimented them, made really nice comments about Melania and the loss of her mom. And, you know, he sounded like a sweet guy, which is a gear that he has. And now here

we are today. We're not only is he tweeting out the Hillary combined with Nikki face, but he's referring to her as Nimrata, like her, the name on her birth certificate, her name on her birth certificate is Nimrata Nikki, uh, whatever the maiden name was. And why is he referencing her given birth name in a tweet about her today, right? Like, you can just hear the MSNBC-ers like, dog whistle! This is Trump. Megan, do you remember the scene in The Godfather where Michael gets beat up by that cop and he's talking to Tom Hagen and he's talking to Sonny and he says, I want to meet up with him and I'm going to bring a gun and I'm going to assassinate this cop. And Sonny says, what?

You're an Ivy League guy. You're a military guy and when you get one punch and you want to go blow his brains out all over your Ivy League suit? Come on, don't take it so personal, Michael. And what does Michael Corleone say to his brother? He says, this is not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business. That is what Donald Trump does. That is how the man operates.

His critics insist that he's a thin skinned narcissist who takes everything very personally. I don't think that's true at all. He ran a bruising primary against Ted Cruz. He accused Ted Cruz's father of killing Kennedy. He called him Lion Ted, L-Y-I-N apostrophe. It was a really, really nasty primary. And then the primary's over, and what does Trump do? He says, oh, he's beautiful, Ted. I like him now. He's good. He's running against Ron DeSanctimonious. Then he says, oh, no, Ron, he did a good job. Nikki did a good job. And then Nikki seems to be a threat again. So he goes after Nikki. It's business. This is just how the man operates. And so he'll turn on a dime. If Nikki drops out of the race tomorrow, you won't hear any more Nimrata and you won't see any more Hillary memes. He'll just move on. He's

oddly focused and disciplined, at least when it comes to vanquishing his enemies and then moving on from them to new enemies. And there's another piece of it too, which is a little different, which is his entire opinion of you revolves around how you see him. If he thinks you like him, he likes you. If he thinks you've got problems with him, he does not like you. You can see it in these town halls with people. You know, they stand as a Mr. Trump, like the Fox News town hall the other night. And somebody said, OK, you know, who are you planning on voting for in the Iowa caucuses? You, sir. I liked you. I knew I liked you. The smile comes. It's genuine. They have a warm exchange. Trump turns on the charm. Somebody's like, I'm a DeSantis voter. Like, you can see

the wall go up. He's not one of those like, I'll win you over. He's more like, all right. Right. He's he's that guy. And I'll tell you a funny story. When I interviewed him in September, the first thing he says to me when I go in there, he wanted to talk once again about that debate question. But then he's like, I hear you pro-Trump now. You're all pro-Trump. I'm like, okay. I try to be fair, Mr. President. And then I sit down to interview him and I ask him some nice questions and I ask him some tougher questions. And we get to the part about the indictments and then it's getting a little prickly because those are some tough questions I have to ask. And you can almost see the look on his face, Michael, like she is not

pro-Trump. She is not all pro-Trump. What's happening? How did I, what, why did I sit down across from this person who is not? And then, you know, it landed and it was fine, but that's how, that's the only lens he has pro me or not pro me. And I mean, that's why people like me, journalists fall within his crosshairs and then get out of him and so on and so forth. But like, it's how he sees the world. Donald Trump is not the first statesman or political philosopher to suggest that the fundamental question of politics is whether you're a friend or whether you're an enemy. In our extremely ideological age, we sometimes forget this. And when we hear from political commentators and elected politicians who spent their summers

going to study camp at a think tank in Washington, D.C., or poring over the pages of some wonkish policy from some economic institute, we forget that basic bare bones politics is the art of inclusion. It's bringing people together. In a democracy, it's getting 50% plus one to support you. It's about friends and it's about enemies. That's how Trump views it. So I don't mean to diminish his policy wins, whether they come from personal insights or whether they come from just having good policy advisors. He's been better on policy than any Republican president in my lifetime without question. But he gets something that I think a guy who had a career in New York real estate is going

to get better than some career politician, which is that if you're going to win elected office, if you're going to actually go to Washington and make laws rather than just go home, you got to win friends and influence people. That has been a consistent theme in his political career. People will attack it as being shallow or self-serving or corrupt even. But that has been the way democratic politics has operated from the very beginning. And if the other candidates had taken note of that, perhaps they would have fared better against him. It's a good criticism of democracy, but you don't want to hate

the player. You got to hate the game. I'll tell you a nice story about Vivek Ramaswamy, too, who I know on a personal level before he ran for president. Didn't go to school with him, but I helped him with his books and so on. But he ran, and I like Vivek, and I think I'm the main reason that David Sachs wound up in his corner because I made them make up on my show debate and help them make up in any event. Then he said this stuff about nine 11 and I hit him hard. It was, I thought that was absurd. I didn't like the conspiratorial stuff. And, uh, let's just say we've had a couple of private text exchanges about it, which have been fine. You know, he's not mad and I don't back down in my positions either. But then I'll tell you, I invited him on the show after the presidential

debate that I hosted. And he said, yes, right away. He came on the set and my hairstylist, who's my friend too. And you know, the hair and makeup, those are the best people to ask the opinions of because they see so many people. They have a much wider sampling of humanity than you or I probably do. And she, not only did he come on, he was very gracious to me and, and, you know, gave me the interview. Every single, like everyone who touched him, the, you know, the A2, the guy who put the mic on him, the guy who made sure he could hear with the earphones, the cameraman, my hair and makeup team, which had to, you know, make sure he was camera ready, like gracious, kind, try to earn, learn people's names. I mean,

he was there for a total of eight minutes. Um, so it's like, even if you hit them, even if they recognize you might not be totally in their camp, I think the great ones can get past it, can give you an interview, can be polite and understand like the nature of journalism, how it works, how it can't be too friendly other or it stinks. And the interviews get no pickup. And you know, once you recognize somebody is in the tank for somebody, how much you trust them. If you want that as your, as your news product, then just go get, go get, go to that? If you want that as your, as your news product, then just go get, go get, go to that. If you want that for Trump, go listen to Steve Bannon every day. You're good. That's, that's fine. If you want that for Vivek, go listen to Tim pool every day.

There's nothing wrong with what those guys do. It's just a different product, right? Anyway, I have respect for all these guys. I don't have respect for the other side. Joe Biden would never sit for an interview with me. Same as Hillary Clinton, as she was out there saying I was a terrific journalist because I had this contentious exchange with Trump. Never once sat with me, never agreed, even when the left was loving me because she quite literally did not have the balls, neither physically nor theoretically, in no way. So anyway, there's my little rant about our weak politicians and our strong ones. But also think about, Megan, your role here in this kind of funny exchange. I heard you were pro-Trump. Are you an anti-Trump now? Which side are you on? You say, well,

I'm a complex person that has lots of different views and I'm my own identity and I don't just exist to serve a politician or another, but your interview with president Trump helped him more than many other interviews he's done in as much as people listened to it. People heard his views, how his views have changed since 2020 or 2016. They saw him grappling with some tough questions. They see that the guy still has some muscles on him. He can still engage with tough questions. You know, it's a yes man is not a true friend to anybody. And it certainly doesn't make for interesting TV. It's so true. And honestly, I got to take a break, but I want to say this other thing.

So Ron DeSantis eventually got to the point where he engaged with adversarial media. I mean, really adversarial like MSNBC, but his first foray into media, other than the ones who loved him, uh, included a sit down with yours truly, which I appreciated. He was extremely gracious. And so was his wife. Um, but I do think that was one of his mistakes as we do sort of the postmortem. I realize it's a little too soon. He's still in the race, but as we do that, I really do think that was a big mistake. He should have put himself out there. It was a mistake to only go to sycophants for the first three, four months of his campaign or the time leading up to the launch of

the campaign. He can do it. He can debate. He's smart. He can defend himself in his positions very well. Why would he choose to hide behind the banner of the protective conservative media sphere? That made no sense to me. I think he's finally come around to that because, as I say, I see him on Morning Joe now, but too late, too late. All right, Michael knows. Let me take a pause right there. Quick, quick break. Michael's with us for the show. Don't go anywhere. Michael, my team was reminding me during the break that not only were those things happening with Vivek that I just mentioned, but like Canadian Debbie, Debbie Murphy, my one of my EPs was saying he saw her on the stage when he was, you know, coming up and he used her name. Like

he remembered, he was like, Debbie, I'm so sorry. I was lost. And then he came by himself. He didn't have a team of people surrounding him. You know, he didn't need an entourage. Like all that stuff is to the guy's credit. I really do hope that he's got a long future in politics and I don't want to hear any more about nine 11.11. Okay. Here is the reaction from the sitting president of the United States to the drama happening over on the GOP side. Take a look and to listen at the commander in chief. You know, it's kind of funny. All these Republican candidates in the primary trying to beat Donald Trump. I'm still the only person to ever beat Donald Trump. I'm looking forward to it again for the

good of this country. Okay, so I got a couple of questions for you. First of all, why is he sitting at the kiddie table? He looks like he's down here. He's like down here with his little hands like this, right? Doesn't he? Like a little person. I need to know which photographers and cinematographers the Biden White House hires. Because you remember there was that picture with Jimmy and Rosalind Carter where Joe Biden looked like the Incredible Hulk, like he was going to put Jimmy Carter in his pocket. And then now it looks like he's an ant or something. He's, I don't, there's obviously a perspective problem. Why didn't somebody say, we don't want him to look like a little person. We want him to look big. If anything, we want him to look, you know,

larger than life. So secondly, Steve Krakauer, my EP pointed this out. How many takes do you think that took? And is there any way the original script was only 12 seconds? Zero chance. No, no, zero chance. He's not a one take wonder, that's for sure. And the sad thing is, we know that that was the best take. They obviously used the best take and it wasn't very persuasive about historical or future events. I think we need to see it again. Can we see it again? Can you watch it again? Read Racket. You know, it's kind of funny. All these Republican candidates in the primary trying to

beat Donald Trump. I'm still the only person to ever beat Donald Trump. And I'm looking forward to it again for the good of this country. So that jump cut, as we call it in the biz, where you can see they've sliced it and they zoom in, was obviously there for a reason. He screwed it up. He couldn't get through it. And they couldn't get a second take, I guess, with him in the original position, or he couldn't get through even that short bit one time. So they had to use the up close from the second take. That's my belief on what happened. This is terrifying. I'm not Steven Spielberg, Megan. I spend a lot of my life on camera. You spend a lot of your life on camera. It would just seem to me that some good

direction for the president in that video would have been to open his eyes. I think that statements are more persuasive when your eyes are open and you're not mumbling in your sleep while you while you give them on to victory. Think about it. Think about it. Like Trump. You know, what is Trump? Six foot three. He's a large man. He's always got the nice suit on. You know, he looks together and then he's looking over at Biden. You're right. I got to add that to my bit. And he's down here with like the little hands like, I'm the only one who ever beat Donald Trump. I'm going to do it again. No one's afraid of that. No one. But I suppose in a way, it's even more audacious because in 2020, the guy didn't run a campaign. He occasionally showed up.

There were three people in the audience, but he stayed in his basement. And this time he's even live streaming from the basement with the tiny little hands. And I guess what he's really saying is, I don't even need to run, man. We've got such a lock on the system. I don't even need to run. Well, is that a preview, right? That's one of the questions. Is that a preview of what we're going to be getting over the next 10, 11 months, Michael? Is that the new campaign? Spliced videos controlled by his team where he could spit something out in 10 takes? Certainly, at the very best. Don't forget, 10 or 11 months, Megan, when you're 150 years old, as the president of the United States is, that's a long time. That's a lot different than 10 months when you're 25 or 30. And so this is the most vibrant, vigorous Biden we are going to get. Can you even imagine what the man is going to look like in October of 2024?

No, I cannot. I will give you some good news. I saw my cardiologist last week. I always go, you know, my dad died at a young age of a heart attack. So I see my cardiologist. He did tell me that our children are going to live to be 120 and their children could live to 140. This president, I don't think so. All right. Stand by Michael Knowles. We'll pick it up in two minutes. Let's talk about some weirdness happening in the Republican party right now, as somebody who works at the Daily Wire, where there's like backlash against people who are supporting Ron DeSantis. I don't understand why like hardcore MAGA supporters are so like you're seeing tons of posts on X. We've got the receipts. You people who are Johnny come lately to the Trump train. We know who you are. And like

people suggesting the Daily Wire might as well just close up because it was so pro-decent. Like, I don't get it because the last time I checked, politics is a game of addition. And the more people you have coming over to your side, the better off you are and the more chance you have of winning. So what's happening there? This is natural. It always happens in primaries. You might expect it to happen more when there are clear ideological distinctions between camps. You know, the right wing conservatives against the Chamber of Commerce establishment neocon types or something, you know, and there would be bad blood and enmity. In this case, it's particularly silly because Trump and DeSantis are running basically on the same platform. And DeSantis' career as governor of Florida

was spurred on by Trump's presidency. And they diverged a little bit, I guess, over COVID. That was the big break where DeSantis' strongest campaign line was that Trump gave the country over to Fauci. Though I'm somewhat skeptical that anyone would have been able to resist the COVID regime, anyone in the office of president, which is a harder place to do it from than a state capitol. But either way, it was a good campaign line. Other than that, the guys are basically the same platform. And perhaps that's why there's so much enmity there is sometimes the most tense political fights can be when the difference is so small. But guys, you know, get over it. It's time to come together.

I was quite happy with the field of candidates in 2024. I like DeSantis a lot. Trump is the nominee for all intents and purposes. I really like Trump. He's the best president in my lifetime. It's okay, guys. We can move on. Especially when Ronald Reagan said, if you agree with me 80% of the time, then we're not 20% enemies. We're 80% allies. In this case, Trump and DeSantis agree on what, 99.997 percent of things. It's OK. I get it. Everyone fights during the primary. Now move on and let's support the Republican and beat Joe Biden. As my 10 year old would say, take the dub, take the dub, the W like you guys won. You should. Well, they just, you know, have your victory lap. We were right. You were wrong. And then accept the support because, you know, Trump's going to need every single voter he can get and every political

commentator he can get to offer a fair assessment of what's about to happen to him. And it's going to be brutal. You know, I've been I sometimes I'm not a cable news consumer anymore. I just I find it so annoying. It's it's amazing to me to turn on cable news these days after having five years now, just basically entirely in the digital lane, consuming and then broadcasting too. How annoying it is. The product is just so outdated. However, it's interesting to me to do it, especially at places like MSNBC or CNN, just to see what's their messaging around all this. And some of the things they've been saying, which I think are fair, like Carville was on last night on the 6 p.m. hour on MSNBC, and he was saying, the Democrats, we don't lose anymore. We don't lose. Look at how we've done

in all of the elections since Trump was elected. And he was talking about the devastating losses or, you know, at best close calls, um, that they've imposed on Republicans over the past several years. Now, Trump wasn't on the ballot in 22. He wasn't on the ballot in 23. He was on the ballot in 20. Um, well, he wasn't on the ballot in 18 though. You know, those midterm elections tend to be a referendum of the sitting president and so on, but they're basically saying. But the midterm elections, Megan, are a referendum and they almost always cut against whoever, whichever political party has the White House. So sure, you can say there was some backlash against Trump there, but that would be true of any president. And I'm totally with you

on your point here when you say, look, he wasn't on the ballot in this election. He wasn't on the ballot in that election. And even in 2020, I'm not going to go so far as to say that, you know, there was a secret cabal of people rigging the ballots. I think there were all sorts of problems with that election. I think there was clear evidence of fraud in certain places. I think in Pennsylvania, they violated the state constitution to push the widespread mail-in ballots. But even if you think there wasn't enough fraud to have swung the election, in any case, I think everybody has to admit that the Democrats changed all of the election rules in the weeks and months before that election to favor them, especially with the widespread mail-ins. Obviously, they'd been pushing to get rid of voter ID for many, many years, and they used COVID as

the excuse to do that. So it's not an excuse it's not not to say that trump doesn't bear any responsibility for how the campaign went but if the best that the left can argue here and the best that trump's critics can argue is that he lost in 2020 when they changed all the rules specifically to rig him and they shut down the whole world with a pandemic i don't know i don't really blame the guy entirely for that. That's a once in a century kind of a situation. But the nonstop coverage of his legal trials will try to paint him in the worst possible light. And the Democrats right now, their ink is dry. Right now they've been sitting it out. They have not been fighting the battle that we've been watching over the past couple of months. That's been Republicans doing infighting amongst themselves. The Democrats have been sitting on the sidelines like, OK, this is great. Go for it. Wait till we get involved. And they're about to.

And Andy McCarthy has a long post up on this over on National Review. I love Andy. I think he's brilliant. And he's been saying all along that he really, really, really believes that the Democrats wanted Trump to be the nominee. And of course, it's because they think he's brilliant. And he's been saying all along that he really, really, really believes that the Democrats wanted Trump to be the nominee. And of course, it's because they think he's the most easily beatable with the lawfare that they're going to do to him and how much this is going to be in the press. And here's just like, I thought it was interesting that David Axelrod tweeted this out, understanding that this is Andy's, the brilliant Andy McCarthy is saying this is so. And I know we're all saying that everybody sees what's coming, but like, these are people who are saying, no, I'm telling you

it's going to be a game changer. It's it could make the difference. David Axelrod tweets the following. It's become too easy to skip over the obvious, but staggering point about 24, partly because none of the remaining GOP candidates and all too few of the party's elected leaders are willing to make it. Colon. The Republican Party is steaming toward nominating a candidate for POTUS who is facing four criminal indictments, including one for plotting to overturn a free and fair election. He very well could be a convicted felon by the Republican convention in July. And he could win!

We should not lose sight of the meaning of this. It would be a stunning rebuke of the rules, norms, laws, and institutions upon which our democracy is founded and would have profound implications for the future. Now, you and I, I think, both see this exactly the same way, which is that's not how Republicans look at it or right-leaning independents. They see you people as having rebuked the norms and institutions of the past by using lawfare to try to take down one half the country's choice, or at least millions of Americans. They say you as having done that, and Trump is just having to fight it. But it's not going to come down to Republicans and Democrats necessarily. Yes, turnout matters, but those independents get the final say. They're critically important in any of these elections. And as we steamroll towards nominating Donald Trump, do you think that the party needs to

be more concerned about what those Dems and that media is about to do to try to win over those independents in the next 10 months? No, I'm a great admirer of Andy McCarthy, but I think on this point, he's mistaken. I think the prosecutions only help us, not only among conservatives, but among independents, among Democrats.

I believe it was Pew, some research institution, put out a poll of what Americans think about the 2020 election. Between 2021 and today, fewer Americans in every single political party, and that includes independents, believe that the 2020 election was legit and that Joe Biden was legitimately elected. Put aside what actually happened in 2020. That is a PR disaster for the Democrats. I'm not saying public opinion shifted by 30, 40, 50%, but

you see a drop of something like six points among voters. Furthermore, a clear majority of Americans, according to every poll taken on this, believe that the prosecutions against Trump are politically motivated, that they're unjust, which is obviously the case. Then you start to dig into what these prosecutions are actually about. Nobody who would ever be persuaded to vote for Trump is going to care that he had some classified documents and that the Trump side is going to be able to argue in the court of public opinion, if not in an actual law court, that other presidents have done similar things, that Joe Biden had plenty of classified documents at his home next to his Corvette with his criminal son right next to it. And it's not going to work. Then you look down in Georgia, perhaps we can get to it, but the major corruption

scandal involving the DA in Georgia and the prosecutor in the Georgia case, that's going to blow up that entire case. Then you see all of the other attempts to prosecute the man, the notion that he ravished some woman that he maybe met one time in a Bergdorf Goodman. We remember that case from New York, that the business case that says that Mar-a-Lago is worth something like $3, you know, it's just insane. I think they valued the property at $14 million. It's a joke. It just all seems so preposterous. So I'm not saying it can't work as a matter of the law. I'm not saying they can't throw the man in an orange jumpsuit. I just think they have totally gotten ahead of their skis here, and they're misreading the way that not only Republicans, but independents and even many Democrats are going to react to it.

Let's go down to Georgia and talk about what's happening with Fannie Willis down there. So, you know, she got out this Sunday to try to make herself the victim at the pulpit in her Baptist church down in Atlanta, which was absurd. I mean, in my church, they talk about God, Jesus, the Bible, Psalms, the gospel. They don't talk about Fannie Willis and what a victim she is. We don't have like the guest speaker come in and play the victim for us to, I don't get it. But if you're gonna have anybody come in, shouldn't their message be about God as opposed to, you know, poor me, why are they coming after me, the black prosecutor and my alleged lover? Okay, Fannie. We're going to find out whether those two are having an affair or not. They haven't denied it. It's been alleged by

one of the defendants in that case, one of the 19 defendants, not Trump, but one of the other defendants. So what we found out, here's one of the things she said when she was at that church the other day and why she thinks she and this special prosecutor, who is black, she is black. Two of the other special prosecutors brought in are white. Why she thinks they're being unfairly persecuted. She says, oh, they're only going after the black one. And me, you know, why are my questions, my qualifications being questioned and why are his? And one of the things she said in defense of how she's treating these three was the following. Listen to Sat one. I appointed three special counsel. This is my right to do paid them all the same hourly rate. They only attack one.

Okay. Paid them all the same hourly rate. Now, this is irrelevant because what even if they all got paid the same, the allegation is that unlike the other two, she went with the first one to Jamaica and to Napa and to Florida on the taxpayer dime and had a little margaritas or problem for many, many legal ethical reasons. But let's take her at her word. The Daily Caller did an in-depth report suggesting even that's a lie. They've said that they have seen the documents relating to the money that's being paid to these three special prosecutors and that this Fannie Willis's alleged lover, Nathan Wade, his firm has been billing $250 an hour. Now, as recently as May, this past May, her office was paying the other special prosecutor, this one guy, John Floyd, $200 per hour. And the year before that, months before that, he was only getting $150 an hour. Now, did he get some big raise from $150 an hour to $200 and then

to $250? There's no evidence of that. So it's possible she's not even telling the truth about that. Meanwhile, it's also true that that other prosecutor has his hours capped at a certain number and we do not have the same cap on her alleged lover. So all of this may just be one long sleight of hand to downplay the huge fees that she has paid her alleged lover versus the other two. I would submit it was an unnecessary lie if it was a lie, because it doesn't go to the heart of the case. The heart of the case is not that she paid him more, though that would be interesting. It's that she paid him and then went on lavish vacations with him while under an obligation to look like she is above partisan politics and above

having any legal or financial incentive to herself to keep this case going. Michael, what do you make of it? The question is also why she even picked this guy. He is completely unqualified. He has no experience prosecuting RICO cases. Don't forget the case against Trump here is implausibly a RICO case, the kind of thing they use against the mafia. He has no experience doing that. He's got very little prosecutorial experience whatsoever. This is a guy who's handled municipal matters like parking tickets. So why did he get picked for this case in the first place? These are not questions that I, a far right-wing Republican, am bringing up alone. The Washington Post was bringing up these questions. The Washington Post pointed out how strange it is that a matter that ordinarily would

have been handled by civil servants and government bureaucrats is being farmed out at a very expensive rate to some outside law firm, the lawyer for which is taking the DA on all sorts of fancy vacations that you've already cited. So I'm not surprised by any of this. These are the people who are prosecuting the chief political rival to the sitting president. Of course, they're corrupt. These are the people who are bringing about a constitutional crisis, totally unprecedented with no legal or political basis whatsoever. Yeah, these are very, very corrupt people. But now we're learning how pervasive that corruption is, that it involved, it involves everything you want from a good political scandal. It involves graft. It involves weaponizing the government against your enemies. And it might even involve romance.

Hmm. Um, the Nate, the latest news on that is attorneys for a media coalition, I don't know who else is in there, I know CNN is one of them, is now asking the Georgia judge overseeing Nathan Wade's divorce proceeding to unseal his divorce records, saying this possible relationship has now become a matter of public concern. And I've told the audience before they're seeking Fannie Willis's deposition in that divorce proceeding. We'll find out why. But the lawyer for one of Trump's co-defendants who filed this motion to get Fannie Willis booted from the case, as well as her whole office, says she has seen the records that she was provided access to them before they were sealed and is saying those two

are in an extramarital affair. Um, and that even though the stuff is sealed, she'll be able to prove it once they unseal it. He filed for divorce from his wife, November 2nd, 2021, which was literally the day after he started working for Fannie Willis. The allegation is that the affair preceded that. And she said, Hey, why don't you come over and work for me? He filed for divorce, did it. And now they've been seeing the world together. This people that you have to understand, some people might be saying, so they're having an affair.

Who cares? You don't understand that the law puts extraordinarily high ethical burdens on prosecutors. Given the power they have, peeps, think about the power they have and that she's trying to exercise in this case. They can put you behind bars for the rest of your life, even if you're an innocent man, if they turn on you and decide to come for you, if they're unethical. That's why we require very, very, very high ethics for these people. And we require more than that they have the ethics. We require them to behave in a way that it's beyond any appearance of impropriety. It can't even have the stank of impropriety.

Fannie, you're in trouble. And you tell me, Michael, I don't know if you watched any of like the speech she gave at that church. Do we have a soundbite from the other day? Take a look at her. Take a look at her in action talking about how, you know, they're going to play the race card against her. Just watch this. Why does Commissioner Thorne and so many others question my decision in a special counsel? I appointed three special counsel. This is my right to do. Paid them all the same hourly rate.

They only attack one. First thing they say, oh, she gonna play the race card now. But no, God, isn't it them who's playing the race card when they only question one? Why are they surprised that a diverse team, that I assembled, your child, can accomplish extraordinary things? God, wasn't it them that attacked this lawyer of impeccable credentials? How come God, the same black man I hired, was acceptable when a Republican in another county hired him and paid him twice the rate?

Oh, y'all ain't hearing me. Why is the white male Republican's judgment good enough, but the black female Democrats not? I don't know. I mean, in our church, we talk about the gospel, but OK. So you tell me, because there's a very good chance that this trial is going to be broadcast. Unlike the federal trials, I expect there will be cameras inside this courtroom. And if Fannie Willis is the one trying this case, pulling any of that nonsense, Michael, she may win over a Georgia jury, an Atlanta jury. She very well may do it, but she is not going to win over the nation to the point earlier about whether these four prosecutions actually play

a role in turning those critical independents against Trump. They're going to see what they're dealing with here. The way that you know that the defendants have got this woman dead to rights is not even just her refusal to deny the allegations, but it's that immediate playing of the race card. And going further, you know, she's taking the Lord's name in vain here. This is all vanity, the way that she's playing this race card. Oh, why me? Why me? Why am I being held accountable for my corruption and my actions? It's really, really ugly. And we haven't even touched on perhaps the most disturbing aspect of corruption in this case, which is that the prosecutor in question, Nathan Wade, appears to have billed Fulton County $4,000

for meetings with Biden officials. So now, hold on, you've got the prosecutor in this case who is alleged to be having an affair with the DA and basically giving the DA in-kind kickbacks by taking her on these lavish vacations. They're all conspiring to take down the chief political rival to the president of the United States. And now the prosecutor is meeting with Joe Biden's lackeys to go after and get his chief rival. And then by the way, he's charging the

taxpayer money for doing it. It's so astounding in its brazenness, in its audacity, in their insane belief that this kind of corruption at every level would not be exposed. Will they be held to account for that as a legal matter? I'm not sure. But as you say, Megan, as a matter of PR, there is nobody in his right mind who could think that this is anything but profoundly corrupt. And stupid. It's stupid. This was just a dumb ass move. You know, better, you know, better as a lawyer, nevermind as a prosecutor. Um, it's not about your skin color. It's about what's up here, Fannie. That's what you need to work on. Okay, let's shift gears because I always love hearing Michael Knowles on anything cultural.

And there's been a couple of stories in the news that I want to get to with you. All right, so I confess, I never watched this show, The Boys. And I have yet to watch True Detective, which is surprising because I love true crime, but it's on my list. So apparently there's this gal

who starred in both of those. Her name is Erin Moriarty and she's 29 years old and she's a beautiful actress, but she's decided to completely change her face. This is a picture of her before, which I think was relatively recent. I know within the past year or so, very beautiful girl. So beautiful that she was becoming a very famous Hollywood actress put on camera and on screen and on multiple shows and movies. Now look at her. Stand by. We'll put it up in a second. Look at that. She's got the Kim Kardashian lips. She's made her nose so skinny. It looks like a pencil now. She's got like what appeared to me to be cheek implants. You know, you'd like huge, the cheekbones are like out to here. Look at, she looked like a nice, beautiful, natural gal. And I'm sorry not to pick on this Moriarty gal, but more and more young women are doing this, Michael. It's not about an objection to plastic surgery. It's about an obsession with

turning yourself into this fake version of yourself, truly like a Kim Kardashian disciple with the enormous lips and the teeny tiny nose and the huge overdone fillered cheeks. I don't know what's in there. And I, I find it like a sign of mental illness. It's extremely upsetting. It's a, it's a massive turnoff to me. I really want to get in the heads of these young girls and say, please don't do this. What do you make of it? It's not just an individual mental illness. It's actually a social illness. The reason that a beautiful girl would do something like this, and she's not the only one, is because we're living in hyper-reality. This is a concept developed by the philosopher Baudrillard, expounded upon by a great Twitter account

named Vocal Distance. I had him on my show not too long ago to talk about it. Hyperreality is the idea that back in the old long time ago days, someone would go to a bush and pick a strawberry and eat the strawberry and say, oh, the strawberry is really, really good. But if you want an even more concentrated version of the strawberry flavor, you can squeeze it and make strawberry juice. And then if you want an even more concentrated version of the strawberry flavor, you can squeeze it and make strawberry juice. And then if you want it to be even more intense than that, you could make a kind of a strawberry concentrate out of it. And then one day, a candy maker is going to come along and he's going to say, you know, I think we're going to take this strawberry flavor. We're going to make strawberry ice cream out of it or a strawberry gummy. Yeah, that's right. We're going to get that flavor and we're going to

make it into some kind of candy. And then, you know, we're going to actually, we're going to make a Jolly Rancher out of the strawberry. And now, you know what? We're going to make a Jolly Rancher soda out of the strawberry Jolly Rancher, out of the candy, out of the concentrate, out of the juice of the strawberry. You get to the end of this and the strawberry Jolly Rancher soda doesn't taste anything like an actual strawberry. You've concentrated it. You've intensified it so much. It's become such a caricature of itself that it's totally unrecognizable. It's lost its core identity. This is what happens with people's appearances today. I think it's a result of, as you say, reality TV. It's a result of social media. It's a result of all of these bizarre fads.

Oh, women with fuller lips are more attractive than women with thinner lips. Okay, now we're going to balloon our lips out so that they take up half of our face. Oh, women with more curves are more attractive than pencil-shaped women. Okay, well now we're going to take it completely out of proportion and it becomes grotesque and ghastly. I really hesitate in any way to criticize this woman or any other woman's appearance, but it's a social phenomenon. So many women are doing it. And so I beg them, I implore them. I say, ladies, plastic surgery almost never, maybe not one single time ever has made someone look better. All of these cosmetic procedures are-

Oh, I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. You disagree? Oh, I've seen a lot of women benefit from, in particular, nose jobs. And men, I've seen that too. Look, I'm not against plastic surgery. This is something else. This is like a mental disorder.

This is extreme. When you start off incredibly beautiful and you end up like a plastic Barbie version of Kardashian, like what and who did that to her? Who is the surgeon who said, yes, I will keep going. Yes, I will stick all sorts of crap into your cheeks and I will give you the whatever nose job, the extreme nose job to where you're basically your nose has disappeared. You know, it's like just a tiny little line down your face now. And I will pump your lips up to where like, there's no space between the top one and your nose and your bottom one in the base of your chin. This you're making these people look other like AI, like other than human. And when I actually

saw her photos, I thought, is this an AI generated face? Is this real? Maybe this is just like a scandal somebody's put together to get people talking because sometimes people do that. But apparently it's real. She's done this to herself. And look, she's not the only one. I would be lying if I didn't say my whole family stopped and looked at looked at the latest pictures of Lauren Sanchez, who's engaged to Jeff Bezos. I don't know what she's done to herself, but she looks nothing like she used to look. Well, yes, when she was younger, but even when she first started to date him, I don't know what's happened to the cheeks. The breasts are out to here. The face is pulled and prodded. She's going out in her lingerie. Now this is the latest thing to wear a thong

underwear and a sexy bra and just some lace overlay on top of it, which is like, I'm sorry, but she looks like a hooker. That is, you look like a hooker and you're dating the richest man in the world or one of them. Like try to be a little classy. Must everything be an expose of your obviously over enhanced assets? I, I don't mean to be such a prude, Michael, but I just feel like we're losing something as a society. I don't want my daughter looking at that. And I don't want my sons looking at it either, but we did because there it was in the New York Post. It was hard to avoid. And where are we all looking at it? We're all looking at it on our screens, which is exactly the point that you're making. The way that these women are modifying themselves and even just dressing and presenting themselves is like an AI robot of a person.

That's because the beauty that we see around us now is not in the real world with which we interact, decreasing every single day, but it's our screens. Photographs make everyone look a little bit different than they do in real life, and especially with all of the digital enhancements that people can make, they look rather different even than they would have 10 or 20 years ago. We become totally sucked into this virtual reality. Now add onto that the ideological dimension of liberation. I think part of the reason why the transgender

movement became such a craze over the last six or seven years is because of this technological fact. The more that we live in the digital world, the less our bodies matter, the less we identify with our bodies. Even the way that we speak about our relation to our bodies is in a gnostic way these days. We talk about our true selves being trapped in a certain body. If the body doesn't accurately reflect our true selves, whatever that means, then we're just going to chop our bodies up. This is a major shift from the way that for all of Western civilization we thought about our souls and bodies, which is that they're in a hylomorphic union forever as long as we exist on this earth. If you think, no, my body is just an accident and I can change it to better correspond to

my true metaphysical self, then you're going to start chopping yourself up and ballooning out other parts and injecting poison into your face. There's really no end of that. It's a real, not to sound too religious here, but it's a real trick of the devil. It's just a vice and an addiction and a temptation that's going to leave you looking in the most extreme case, like Michael Jackson, which seems to be the standard of beauty that a lot of young women are aiming toward. Yes. Or like that's that, uh, that social light. She's Swiss. I think they call her the cat woman online the cat woman online or just like you can't even recognize she looks like a cat. She looks like a human cat now. I just look. I think somebody needs to intervene. I feel like these are unethical plastic surgeons. Someone needs to say I used to watch that show Nip Tuck back in the day. It was entertaining. Then it got really weird and dark, but it was kind of cool. And, you know, somebody needs to step in when you see that you've got an addict here. You know, like the same way that the bartender will say when the guy's barfing at the end of the bar asking for another glass of scotch.

It's time for you to stop, sir. The plastic surgeon needs to say it's time for you to stop, madam. Like you've gone too far. This is an aesthetic that you're going for. It should literally be a nip or a tuck. It shouldn't be like this drastic makeover of already beautiful women who are obviously suffering mentally. That's my own judgment. I realize I'm passing it and it's not my life to lead. It's theirs. I just feel like I really hope this isn't the truth for my daughter when she gets older. And I hope it's not the truth for America's daughters. The point you just made, Megan, was so important because what you said is, look, there's an objective standard here. And we can tell that, okay, if you want to do a little bit

of work here or there, maybe that's within reason. But the people who totally transform themselves in this way that is making them look worse, we shouldn't be doing that. Someone should intervene. But what that implies is that there are objective standards. There's objective standards of health, of sanity, of beauty, of truth, of morality. And I certainly think that. I think reasonable people think that. But in our culture, we're told now that everything is subjective, everything is relative, and the only moral criterion that matters is consent. So if an adult consents to do something increasingly, even if a child consents to do

something, if you ask the left, then they should be permitted to do that, even if it's going to harm them, even if it's objectively disordered. So then we face this question. It's like we're getting rid of regular faces, like we're getting rid of real human faces. You know, I've told the audience I'm in the midst. I've gone off and read some other things in the meantime. I'm going to be honest. The book is dragging. But I've been listening to Barbara Streisand's biography, her memoir.

It's almost a thousand pages. It goes on. But I have to say, I appreciate the fact she talks about in the book. she never got a nose job because she was worried that it was going to change her voice. But also she says she kind of likes her nose. Like she likes her face the way it is. It's a very large nose, but it works on her. And Barbara Streisand, like you see her in funny girl and you see her in the way we were, and she's got real moments of beauty, but we're kind of losing that. It just feel like more and more. I see these young girls and they look just like this plasticized version of this girl where like everything is skinny or

then like puffed out. Like you've got the certain things that are allowed to be skinny. And then you've got the things that must be puffed out, like your cheeks and your lips and your ass and your breasts over the top. And it's like, who's in there? What's what was what used to be there? I don't know. And it's all the same standard. It's not like the way reality is where you've got your blondes, you've got your brunettes, you've got your green eyes, you've got your blue eyes,

you've got your people with this nose and that nose and these cheeks and those cheeks. It all has to be some version of Kim Kardashian. Something's happening to us and I don't think it's healthy. And I think it's related to TikTok

and it's related to Instagram. It's no accident all this crap has happened since the explosion of social media in the past 10 years. I'll give you the final word on my weird rant about people's choices. I love the Streisand example because what does Barbara Streisand look like without her nose? It's a very distinctive feature. I wouldn't recognize her. I wouldn't be able to pick her out of a lineup if not for her nose. And it's, sure, I suppose some other nose might be more beautiful, say, but it's hers and it's distinctive. And that's lovely. We love to talk about individuality in our day and age. And yet we seem to want to stamp out any authentic individuality that would

actually distinguish any of us from the other. Men and women are different. Different groups of people are different. Individuals differ from one another. That can be a fine and a beautiful thing. But if you don't have a strong sense of what your identity is, who you are, how your soul relates to your body, how you relate to your family and your community and your whole country, and ultimately how you relate to your God, who, by the way, identifies himself in the burning bush as I am who I am as being himself. Well, if you don't have that strong sense of identity all the way down, you're just going to be left with this question, who am I? And you're going to be constantly seeking after fleeting identities that will never satisfy you and that will leave you completely

undifferentiated. It's so true. And you think about, I mean, one thing I'll say about Streisand is like her talent. I realize her politics are lunatics or they're crazy. I've told the audience before she pulled me aside at an event in 2016. She didn't understand why the coal miners would vote for Trump. What? Literally, the Democrats, including Hillary, are saying that they're going to end their business. Why wouldn't they vote for Trump? Anywho, that's her politics. Whatevs.

But she had this extraordinary career where she was lauded as one of the most talented and the most beautiful, listen to the biography, women in the world by, you know, allegedly had sex with Marlon Brando and like had a lot of wonderful lovers, married a very gorgeous man, James Brolin, who's one of his best quotes or something like, I don't like going to sleep at night because I'm going to miss her. I can't wait to wake up next to her in the morning and keep talking. Like, that's awesome. There are so many other ways to develop yourself. Not again. Like I realized that the plastic surgery is one step away from dying your hair, right? Or I get the Botox and I get that makeup. Um, but it is a step away. And the more you lean into that lane, like the more

you run a real risk of looking like somebody totally different from how God made you. I don't, it gets uncomfortable for me. Michael Knowles, you're the best. You look great just as you are. Don't change a thing. Thank you, Megan. I'm calling off the rhinoplasty. Wonderful to be with you as always. See you next time. Right now, get the Sirius XM app for free for three months. Hear over 425 expertly curated channels, including ad-free music for every genre, artist, mood, and more. Hear concerts featuring the biggest names in iconic venues and exclusive in-studio performances. With SiriusXM, you'll get more sports in one app than anywhere else.

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Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. Offer details apply. All right, let's kick it off with Felix in Connecticut. Felix, what do you make of how the GOP primary is going? Hi. Well, first and foremost, I have to say, Megan, please tell Doug, your husband, thank you for that wonderful book. I called in when he was on with you and I ordered the book. It was phenomenal. Loved it. Read it. That's so nice. Thank you. It's called The Mysterious Case of Rudolph Diesel. And it went back on The New York Times bestseller list just this week. He's crushing it. So thank you, Felix, for buying the book. All of our out. It's clearly the best path for Trump. We need to get

behind him because the Democrats are going to throw everything they have against us. And we need to consolidate around him, who is clearly going to be the, you know, the voice of the conservative movement. And he has been. And I think that's what. All right. Let me ask you this. Can he win? Because DeSantis supporters, some others say, you know, how does he he lost seven million votes. So how do we get more voters into the Trump column this time or who who are they going to be? Who who that hated Trump last time now likes him and will vote for him? Well, his message, he's got to be a little more conciliatory like he did in his speech. And if he just continues to talk about the economy, what he's going to do with fossil fuels and the relationship of oil versus the ability of the Iranians and the Russians to prosecute the wars they have because we've enriched them,

because we've abandoned our fossil fuel industry. You're saying stay on the issues. You're saying stay on the issues. Stop the ad hominem. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. And given our... Not that disciplined on that subject, Felix, as you know. I'll give you the last word. Yeah. Okay. Last word is, I think you alluded to who your vice president pick is going to be. And I think you're thinking Tulsi Gabbard. I think Christine.

OK, I am not thinking Tulsi. Good guess. But thank you for playing, sir. I feel like stay in touch and keep watching and reading. We appreciate it. Let's go to Wayne in North Carolina. Wayne's got thoughts for who Trump will pick as VP or should pick as VP. Which appreciate it. Let's go to Wayne in North Carolina. Wayne's got thoughts for who Trump will pick as VP or should pick as VP. Which is it, Wayne? What do you think?

I'm with your last caller. I was if it's a female, I think Kristi Noem. And I wanted to let you know about the same as I think I spoke to you a few months ago and said he just he just doesn't grab people. He doesn't have that charisma. And it's too bad because I live in Florida and I've seen what he's done. He knows how to govern. I can tell you that my adult children with their nine grandkids and eight of them in school, they love the guy because they're not concerned about what the dei and the girls going in boys bathrooms and vice versa um teaching five-year-olds about gender and and you know the doctor taking a guess on what your sex is when you're born they're not worried about that at all right now anyway since they still have him but he just doesn't have that star power. I don't know what

it is, but he doesn't have it. Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you, if they lived in a state like mine, where it's happening left and right, they might care more. It might be nice to, it must be very nice to have Ron DeSantis as your governor. And it looks like Florida is going to have him for a few more years, the way things are going. Thanks for calling in, Wayne. We appreciate it. All right, let's see. Who else has got some thoughts on VP Joe? Joe down in Texas. Hey, Joe, what's your thought?

Thanks for taking my call. And it's a pleasure to talk to you. Your previous caller stole my thunder. I was going to say Governor Naomi. I think she could do a good job. I think she's got the personality. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. sorry thank you ma'am i apologize uh a little nervous talking to such a beautiful woman anyway i do that and and and what i would like to make a point a point about is that i think women all women of childbearing uh ones that have child children future childbearing grandmas, everybody should be up in arms

about the fact that all these illegal aliens have come across the border. They are going to take our money, future money that the taxpayers are paying. They're going to take their jobs. There's not going to be any jobs for these kids. There's not going to be any scholarship for them to get ahead in life because, as we have seen through the equal opportunity, I believe I got that right, that they made a mandate for people that have to be of certain color in a job at 1%, 2%. Well, it's going to work that way for the illegal aliens. They're going to tell our corporate owners, tell them that they have to have 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, 20% eventually because I'll be 20 million.

I just saw something online saying Princeton, the freshman class at Princeton this year, the incoming class, they accepted 16% white. I need to verify this, but I saw an article about it. 16% white. Guarantee you that the applicants were way more than 16% and that the quality of the SATs and the grades for the white applicants, I'll bet you was top-notch and would have justified far more than 16%. I believe it was the same number of blacks in the first year class and all sorts of diversity in there. And that's fine to have 16 percent black class, but there's only 13 to 14 percent blacks in the United States. So they're overrepresented. Whites are vastly underrepresented in that. And so there is an obvious discrimination, which, of course, the U.S. Supreme Court just spoke to.

And I see your point. The more immigrants we allow into the country, and these are not lawful, but we want them to be. It's very clear the Democrats want them to be. They want to become citizens. They want to start voting. Many of us believe that's part of the plan. How's that going to go in 18 years? So these are concerns a lot of people have, Joe. You're not alone. Thank you for calling in with your thoughts on it. Okay, let's see. Let's go to Sharon in Florida. Sharon, what's your thought on it. OK, let's see. Let's go to Sharon in Florida. Sharon, what's your thought on the GOP primary and Trump? Well, I mean, clearly Trump is the nominee.

I mean, everyone really needs to just I'm listen, I like Trump a lot. I voted for him the first time. Do I wish there was some other option? Sure. But there's not because we are going to lose this country. It's something I mean, he cannot put Nikki Haley on the ticket. There's no way. I mean, I think she's just as much of a Democrat as Joe Biden. I don't see anything even Republican or independent about her. I just find her very, I don't know, annoying. I just,

I really don't like her. I find she talks down. She kind of talks out of both sides of her mouth. I just, I'm not interested in her at all. And the way things are going, I just think there needs to be real change and something's got to give. I mean, I was listening to your last caller. There are so many things, even in Florida that, you know, I can't believe people are not upset about, like really, truly upset. I mean, I mean, the way things are at the grocery store, the way things are, I mean, your last caller was talking about, and you were saying about, I heard, you know, the, the percentage of, you know, white people that were accepted to wear Princeton. I'm seeing it here. I mean, there is such discrimination in these schools for white boys. I mean, I have three girls and a boy. I mean, I'm in Florida. And literally,

I had an issue at my school where, you know, they give these standardized tests. He was really high on the first one. The second one, he went down a little, like a little bit, right? It was, you know, he got a five. He got like a lower five. You know, the teacher is saying, well, he doesn't take it seriously. Well, what are you talking about? You know what I mean?

Like they're embracing mediocrity in school. They're sure. And I share these feelings. I feel like, yeah, my three white children, but in particular, the boys, they're they're going to have to get if they were to get if they were going to get into any sort of top tier school. And I don't want them going to the Harvards of the world, but any time they're going to have to have over a 4.0. They're going to have to have perfect scores on the SATs or the AC. Otherwise, they won't even be candidates. They won't even

be and be capped. Like it's absurd. These are terrible, absurd, unattainable standards. We're not pushing our kids to do any of that crap. But I'm just saying if if you wanted them to go like my husband went to Duke, we wanted to go to Duke, that we'd have to ruin their childhoods in order for them to get in now because they're white and they happen to be boys. So we're telling these kids I'm seeing this firsthand. I have a son who's incredibly intelligent. And I'm not just saying that like he was tested. The county tested him. Now, well, he's too confident.

I'm not sending him to school for you to tell me he's – I'm glad he's confident. I say this all the time. It's like you and your husband are going to be like, oh, we'll work on that. We'll undermine him more at home. I'm sorry to cut you off. I only have 14 seconds before the computer ends our call, but I hear everything you said. I share your frustrations and you're right. I mean, maybe the answer is we just let these school systems fall apart and a new one will rise up as better and more fair. All the best to you, Sharon,

all the best to all my audience for listening and calling in. Really appreciate it. We'll do it more often. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.